Candid talk from Brazil upsets some

Brazilian Foreign Minister Celso Amorim meets U.S. chief trade negotiator Susan Schwab in September 2007. (Photo/Agência Brasil)

Speaking off the cuff is standard Brazilian political practice, where such U.S. innovations as talking points and staying on message often go out the window when politicians open their mouths.

That practice, however, is getting Brazil into some trouble lately.

On Saturday, in advance of contentious World Trade Organization negotiations to be held in Geneva today, Brazil's Foreign Minister Celso Amorim told reporters that rich countries' alleged distorting of facts in the negotiations was reminiscent of the tactics used by Nazi propaganda chief Joseph Goebbels.

"Goebbels used to say if you repeat a lie several times it becomes a truth," Amorim said. "I am reminded of Goebbels."

The comment earned immediate rebuke from U.S. chief trade negotiator Susan Schwab, whose parents are Jewish Holocaust survivors. Her spokesman called the comment "incredibly wrong." Brazil's Foreign Ministry eventually apologized.

That comment followed another bout of controversial candidness from Brazilian President Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva earlier this month while on a state visit to Vietnam.

During a meeting with Gen. Vö Nguyên Giáp, known as Vietnam's military genius in the country's defeat of both French and U.S. forces, Lula overflowed with praise and admiration.

Lula hails from leftist roots, and some in his government fought as guerrillas against Brazil's dictatorship.

Upon meeting Giáp, Lula heaped on the praise, and his Chief of Staff Dilma Rousseff, a former leftist guerrilla, had her picture taken with the retired general.

"All of those who love democracy see you as a reference," the president told Giáp.

Lula later told the Vietnamese prime minister, "How Vietnam captured the imaginations of diverse generations of Brazilians in its fight for sovereignty."

And the elegies kept coming. Lula told reporters that through the Vietnam War, "I learned to stand by the side of the weak, of the oppressed. The Vietnamese were short, skinny, against the Americans, strong, fed with hamburgers. We learned to stand by David versus Goliath."

While those comments haven't draw any response from the Americans, the Brazilian mainstream media reported them critically.

Comments

[SiberianRat]

While his comments were far from graceful, the idea that Vietnam did indeed have its right for sovereignty is true. The US was last in a long list of illegal occupiers and invaders. Like in Iraq, many soldiers thought they were doing the right thing by fighting in that war, with thousands dying and thousands more suffering terrible physical and psychological wounds in the name of trying to impose "democracy" on a foreign population. Millions of Vietnamese were killed or injured. I've been to Vietnam and have visited places like Ku Chi where the Vietnamese show basically how they used tunnels, bamboo sticks, and much of the US' own unexploded ordinance to wage a highly effective resistance to the US military. Rather than learn from that, we're repeating many of the same mistakes in Iraq and Afghanistan. While the US might have the most powerful military hardware in the world, the military planners fail time and time again, with disasterous results for all involved.

[Aparicio Caicedo]

Brazil is just starting to feel confidence of it self as a emerging global power.