{"id":142190,"date":"2019-09-09T12:00:28","date_gmt":"2019-09-09T11:00:28","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.transcend.org\/tms\/?p=142190"},"modified":"2019-09-03T11:14:48","modified_gmt":"2019-09-03T10:14:48","slug":"brics-was-created-as-a-tool-of-attack-lula","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.transcend.org\/tms\/2019\/09\/brics-was-created-as-a-tool-of-attack-lula\/","title":{"rendered":"BRICS Was Created as a Tool of Attack: Lula"},"content":{"rendered":"

Former Brazilian leader wishes emerging economies were closer, recalls Obama \u2018crashing\u2019 Copenhagen climate meet.<\/em><\/p><\/blockquote>\n

\"\"<\/a>

Former Brazilian leader Lula holds hands with Chinese President Hu Jintao, left, at the BRICS summit in Brasilia on April 15, 2010. Lula wishes his country had a strategic partnership with Beijing.\u00a0 Photo: Dida Sampaio \/Agencia Estado<\/p><\/div>\n

29 Aug 2019 – <\/em>In a wide-ranging, two-hour-plus, exclusive interview from a prison room in Curitiba in southern Brazil, former Brazilian president Luis Inacio Lula da Silva re-emerged for the first time, after more than 500 days in jail, and sent a clear message to the world.<\/p>\n

Amid the 24\/7 media frenzy of scripted sound bites and \u201cfake news\u201d, it\u2019s virtually impossible to find a present or former head of state anywhere, in a conversation with journalists, willing to speak deep from his soul, to comment on all current political developments and relish telling stories about the corridors of power. And all that while still in prison.<\/p>\n

The first part<\/a> of this mini-series focused on the Amazon. Here, we will focus on Brazil\u2019s relationship with BRICS and Beijing. BRICS<\/a> is the grouping of major emerging economies \u2013 Brazil, Russia, India and China \u2013 that formed in 2006 and then included South Africa in their annual meetings from 2010.<\/p>\n

My first question to Lula was about BRICS and the current geopolitical chessboard, with the US facing a Russia-China strategic partnership. As president, from 2003 to 2010, Lula was instrumental in formatting and expanding the influence of BRICS \u2013 in sharp contrast with Brazil\u2019s current President, Jair Bolsonaro, who appears to be convinced that China is a threat.<\/p>\n

Lula stressed that Brazil should have been getting closer to China in a mirror process of what occurred between Russia and China:<\/p>\n

\u201cWhen there was a BRICS summit here in Cear\u00e1 state in Brazil, I told comrade Dilma [Rousseff, the former president] that we should organize a pact like the Russia-China pact. A huge pact giving the Chinese part of what they wanted, which was Brazil\u2019s capacity to produce food and energy and also the capacity to have access to technological knowledge. Brazil needed a lot of infrastructure. We needed high-speed rail, many things. But in the end that did not happen.\u201d<\/em><\/p><\/blockquote>\n

Lula defined his top priorities as he supported the creation of BRICS: economic autonomy, and uniting a group of nations capable of helping what the Washington consensus describes as LDCs \u2013 least developed countries.<\/p>\n

\"\"<\/a>

Former Brazilian leader Lula speaks from a room in a prison in southern Brazil. Photo: Editora Brasil 247<\/p><\/div>\n

He emphasized:<\/p>\n

\u201cBRICS was not created to be an instrument of defense, but to be an instrument of attack. So we could create our own currency to become independent from the US dollar in our trade relations; to create a development bank, which we did \u2013 but it is still too timid \u2013 to create something strong capable of helping the development of the poorest parts of the world.\u201d<\/em><\/p><\/blockquote>\n

Lula made an explicit reference to the United States\u2019 fears about a new currency:<\/p>\n

\u201cThis was the logic behind BRICS, to do something different and not copy anybody. The US was very much afraid when I discussed a new currency and Obama called me, telling me, \u2018Are you trying to create a new currency, a new euro?\u2019 I said, \u2018No, I\u2019m just trying to get rid of the US dollar. I\u2019m just trying not to be dependent.\u2019\u201d<\/em><\/p><\/blockquote>\n

One can imagine how this went down in Washington.<\/p>\n

Obama may have been trying to warn Lula that the US \u2018Deep State\u2019 would never allow BRICS to invest in a currency or basket of currencies to bypass the US dollar. Later on, Vladimir Putin and Erdogan would warn President Dilma \u2013 before she was impeached \u2013 that Brazil would be mercilessly targeted. In the end, the leadership of the Workers\u2019 Party was caught totally unprepared by a conjunction of sophisticated hybrid-war techniques.<\/p>\n

One of the largest economies in the world was taken over by hardcore neoliberals, practically without any struggle. Lula confirmed it in the interview, saying:<\/p>\n

\u201cWe should look at where we got it wrong.\u201d<\/em><\/p><\/blockquote>\n

Lula also hit a note of personal disappointment. He expected much more from BRICS.<\/p>\n

\u201cI imagined a more aggressive BRICS, more proactive and more creative. \u2018The Soviet empire has already fallen; let\u2019s create a democratic empire.\u2019 I think we made some advances, but we advanced slowly. BRICS should be much stronger by now.\u201d<\/em><\/p><\/blockquote>\n

\"\"<\/a>

Lula and US President Barack Obama, on left, attend a meeting with Chinese and other leaders in Copenhagen in December 2009 at the COP15 UN Climate Change Conference. AFP \/ Jewel Samad<\/p><\/div>\n

Lula, Obama and China<\/strong><\/p>\n

It\u2019s easy to imagine how what has followed went down in Beijing. That explains to a great extent the immense respect Lula enjoys among the Chinese leadership. And it\u2019s also relevant to the current global debate about what\u2019s happening in the Amazon. Let just Lula tell the story in his own, inimitable, Garcia Marquez-tinged way.<\/p>\n

\u201cOne thing that the Chinese must remember, a lot of people were angry in Brazil when I recognized China as a market economy. Many of my friends were against it. But I said, \u2018No, I want the Chinese at the negotiating table, not outside. Is there any discord? Put them inside the WTO, let\u2019s legalize everything.\u2019 I know that [Chinese President] Hu Jintao was much pleased.<\/em><\/p>\n

\u201cAnother thing we did with China was at the COP-15 [Conference of Parties to the UN Framework Convention on Climate Change] in Copenhagen in 2009. Let me tell you something: I arrived at COP-15 and there was a list of people requesting audiences with me \u2013 Angela Markel, Sarkozy, Gordon Brown; Obama had already called twice \u2013 and I didn\u2019t know why I was important. What did they all want? They all wanted us to agree, at COP-15, that China was the prime polluting evil on earth. Sarkozy came to talk to me with a cinematographic assembly line, there were 30 cameras, a real show: Lula accusing China. Then I had a series of meetings and I told them all, \u2018Look, I know China is polluting. But who is going to pay for the historical pollution you perpetrated before China polluted? Where is the history commission to analyze English industrialization?\u2019<\/em><\/p>\n

\u201cThen something fantastic happened. An agreement was not in sight, I wanted Sarkozy to talk to Ahmadinejad \u2013 later I\u2019ll tell you this thing about Iran [he did, later in the interview]. Ahmadinejad did not go to our dinner, so there was no meeting. But then, we were discussing, discussing, and I told Celso [Amorim, Brazil\u2019s Foreign Minister], \u2018Look,\u00a0 Celso, there\u2019s a problem, this meeting will end without an agreement, and they are going to blame Brazil, China, India, Russia. We need to find a solution.\u2019 Then I proposed that Celso call the Chinese and set up a parallel meeting. That was between Brazil, China, India and perhaps South Africa. Russia, I think, was not there. And in this meeting, imagine our surprise when Hillary Clinton finds out about it and tries to get inside the meeting. The Chinese didn\u2019t let her. All these Chinese, so nervous behind the door, and then comes Obama. Obama wanted to get in and the Chinese didn\u2019t let him. China was being represented by Jiabao [Wen Jiabao, the prime minister].<\/em><\/p>\n

\u00a0\u201cThen we let Obama in, Obama said, \u2018I\u2019m gonna sit down beside my friend Lula so I won\u2019t be attacked here.\u2019 So he sat by my side and started to talk about the agreement, and we said there is no agreement. And then there was this Chinese, a negotiator, he was so angry at Obama, he was standing up, speaking in Mandarin, nobody understood anything, we asked for a translation, Jiabao did not allow it, but the impression, by his gesticulation, was that the Chinese was hurling all sorts of names at Obama, he talked aggressively, pointing his finger, and Obama said, \u2018He is angry.\u2019 The Brazilian ambassador, who said she understood a little bit of Mandarin \u2013 she said he used some pretty heavy words.<\/em><\/p>\n

\u201cThe concrete fact is that in this meeting we amassed a great deal of credibility, because we refused to blame the Chinese. I remember a plenary session where Sarkozy, Obama and myself were scheduled to speak. I was the last speaker. When I arrived at the plenary there was nothing, not a thing written on a piece of paper. I told one of my aides, please go out, prepare a few talking points for me, and when he left the room they called me to speak; they had inverted the schedule. I was very nervous. But that day I made a good speech. It got a standing ovation. I don\u2019t know what kind of nonsense I said [laughs]. Then Obama started speaking. He didn\u2019t have anything to say. So there was this mounting rumor in the plenary: He ended up making a speech that no one noticed. And then with Sarkozy, the same thing.<\/em><\/p>\n

\u201cWhat I had spoken about was the role of Brazil in the environmental question. I\u2019ll get someone from the Workers\u2019 Party to find this speech for you. The new trend in Brazil is to try to compare policies between myself and Bolsonaro. You cannot accept his line that NGOs are setting fire to the Amazon. Those burning the Amazon are his voters, businessmen, people with very bad blood, people who want to kill indigenous tribes, people who want to kill the poor.\u201d<\/em><\/p><\/blockquote>\n

_______________________________________________<\/em><\/p>\n

\"\"<\/a><\/em>Pepe Escobar is a Brazilian independent geopolitical analyst. He is a frequent contributor to websites and radio and TV shows ranging from the US to East Asia. He is the former roving correspondent for Asia Times Online. He has been a foreign correspondent since 1985, and has lived in London, Paris, Milan, Los Angeles, Washington, Bangkok and Hong Kong. Even before 9\/11 he specialized in covering the arc from the Middle East to Central and East Asia, with an emphasis on Big Power geopolitics and energy wars. He is the author of \u201cGlobalistan<\/a>\u201d (2007), \u201cRed Zone Blues<\/a>\u201d (2007), \u201cObama does Globalistan<\/a>\u201d (2009) and \u201cEmpire of Chaos<\/a>\u201d (2014), all published by Nimble Books. His latest book is \u201c2030<\/a>\u201c, also by Nimble Books, out in December 2015.<\/em><\/p>\n

Go to Original \u2013 asiatimes.com<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

29 Aug 2019 – In a wide-ranging, two-hour-plus, exclusive interview from a prison room in Curitiba in southern Brazil, former Brazilian president Luis Inacio Lula da Silva re-emerged for the first time, after more than 500 days in jail, and sent a clear message to the world.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":4,"featured_media":142192,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[180],"tags":[547,239,120,550,393,276,267,260,487,378,651,541,1134,234,109,287,985,911,126,172,921],"class_list":["post-142190","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-brics","tag-brazil","tag-brics","tag-conflict","tag-corruption","tag-coup","tag-democracy","tag-geopolitics","tag-history","tag-human-rights","tag-journalism","tag-justice","tag-latin-america-caribbean","tag-lula-da-silva","tag-media","tag-politics","tag-power","tag-social-justice","tag-surveillance","tag-violence","tag-west","tag-whistleblowing"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.transcend.org\/tms\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/142190","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.transcend.org\/tms\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.transcend.org\/tms\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.transcend.org\/tms\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/4"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.transcend.org\/tms\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=142190"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.transcend.org\/tms\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/142190\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.transcend.org\/tms\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/142192"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.transcend.org\/tms\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=142190"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.transcend.org\/tms\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=142190"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.transcend.org\/tms\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=142190"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}