The Mexican president responded to the US: Fentanyl is an American problem
The fentanyl crisis” that claims the lives of tens of thousands of Americans every year is a problem created in that country, said Mexican President Andreas Manuel Lopez Obrador, better known as AMLO.
“We don’t make fentanyl here, and we don’t consume fentanyl.” He advises Americans to “address their own problem of social degradation” instead of waging war on drug cartels.
America is preparing a military intervention in Mexico, the president says: You are threatening our sovereignty
The Mexican president said the addiction epidemic in the US is due to social problems such as single-parent families, parents kicking their own children out of their homes and children putting their parents in nursing homes and “visiting them once a year,” not the availability of the drug.
Obrador’s statement comes days after US Senator Lindsey Graham called for “the release of our American fury and power against the drug cartels”. Although he emphasised that he was not calling for an “invasion of Mexico,” the belligerent Republican said the Pentagon should “destroy the narcotics production laboratories that are poisoning Americans.”
And insult to Mexico and a lack of respect for Mexico’s independence
The Mexican president dismissed Graham’s comments as “an insult to Mexico and a lack of respect for our independence and sovereignty” and threatened to tell Mexicans and other Hispanic Americans living in the US to vote against the “inhumane and interventionist” Republican Party.
Mexican Foreign Affairs Secretary Marcelo Ebrard agreed that the US senator’s proposal was “catastrophic” for the cooperation between the two countries. “They know that the fentanyl epidemic did not come from Mexico but the USA. In the fight against fentanyl, we are investing more effort than ever.”
Drug cartels that once smuggled heroin and cocaine have switched to the more profitable trade in fentanyl and methamphetamine. They produce it themselves in large super labs.
While fentanyl, which is 50 times stronger than heroin, is rarely used in Mexico, the government recently launched a campaign to warn citizens, using images taken in parts of US cities infested with the drug.
The US Drug Enforcement Agency (DEA) seized over 379 million doses of fentanyl last year, enough to kill all US residents. About 70,000 Americans die from opiate overdoses each year, which has increased since the early 1990s.
It is time for Mexico to join the BRICS!
If the situation is presented, I believe Mexico would be interested. Mexico has excellent relations with Brazil, Russia, China and India and has a lot of common ground. The USA has never respected Mexico, and Canada follows all the US dictates.
Mexican Geopolitics desperately need to break that US Dollar yoke for many reasons, the main ones being:
1. Regaining control/independence over its economy. NOT a single cent leaves or enters Mexico without it passing through the US. Any foreign currency that “enters” Mexico HAS to be exchanged in NYC. First into dollars, then pesos (from Euros to Yuan, Bolívares, Rubles, etc.) and vice versa. Mexico’s federal reserve bank is the US Fed Reserve, as with the rest of Latin America. These are the origins of the eternal battle between Argentina and the US, the dependence Chavez wanted to break, what Castro achieved, and what El Salvador is trying with their eCurrency experiment.
2. That situation increases financing costs quite a bit. Imagine that for every Euro you get, you lose some cents twice: Once when converting Euros to US$ and then converting them to Pesos. If the FOREX spread is 1–3%, multiply it by 2. The US Fed makes a 3% commission for every Peso Mexico spends or earns. THIS applies to almost all of Latin America! That’s quite a handsome LITERAL royalty, isn’t it? You can also call it the US commerce tax. Hence why the US can also run those irrational deficits. They get those royalties paid for every single cent that transits through Latin America and every single oil barrel sold in the Western world.
3. For that same reason, Currency reserves are kept “under custody” in the US. Specifically, NYC Federal Reserve Bank on 33 “Liberty” St. Those are used as “guarantees to secure” Mexico’s international transactions.
“Gold Standard”
There have been at least three attempts by Mexico to go back to the “gold Standard” but based on Silver since it is top producers of it. The most recent one was in the early 2000s, even before the financial meltdown. It went nowhere. Politics…
However, after what happened recently, the US “froze” (stole) Afghani and Russian Intl. Reserves (a sacred NO TOUCH thing) via “presidential speech”; most of the world freaked out, and ALL are looking for ways to protect their savings/reserves. HENCE ALL are looking for an alternative way to save their wealth by avoiding US$ dependency.
Back to Mexico, the country has been looking for ways to become “US Fed free” since our Insurgency (the mid-1800s). It only happened during Don Porfirio’s “dictatorship” (the early 1900s). That effort was cut short thanks to a “Revolution against a Dictator” (sounds familiar? Libya, Syria, Iraq, etc.). The other attempts were in the 70s-80s when Mexico went broke 3 times in a row (sounds familiar).
I hope to return to Latin America’s possible future within BRICS soon.
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