Ibero-American News Digest

Brazil Steps Up Role as Key British Imperial Outpost in Americas

May 28 (EIRNS)—The Lula government this week formalized Brazil's role as the key enforcer for the British Empire in Ibero-America at this critical moment, signing a Memo of Understanding with the International Monetary Fund to establish a "Joint Regional Training Center for Latin America" to train government officials in issues of imperial monetarist policy. The training center will be run by the IMF Institute, Brazil's Foreign Ministry, and the university run by Brazil's Central Bank (UniBacen).

Africa is targetted, too, as the IMF reports that the new center may also offer seminars for high-level government officials, expanding a ten-year-old program under which Brazilians have given an average of 12 training courses per year to Ibero-American and Portuguese-speaking African public officials.

Brazil's Central Bank is headed by a representative of the British East India Co.'s Boston Vault, Henrique Meirelles, who was president of FleetBoston Global Bank and of BankBoston Corporation before Lula da Silva called him in to head the Bank at the outset of his Presidency. In the past ten days, Meirelles was honored, first in Wall Street, and then in London, as "Personality of the Year" for his alleged help in holding the international financial system together a few months longer, after the 2008 Lehman Brothers collapse.

The Brazil-IMF agreement was signed during a two-day visit by IMF chief Dominique Strauss-Kahn, in which containing Germany's sovereign action against derivatives was also discussed. Strauss-Kahn spoke out publicly against "national oriented responses" to the crisis, insisting that "Brazil has a key role to play in global economic governance."

Mexico Gets Clobbered with 'British Week'

June 1 (EIRNS)—With the collusion of their political leaders, the people of Mexico have just had to suffer through the obscenity known as "British Week"—200 hours over a nine-day period of British "cultural" displays (music, film, art, theater) plus business conferences—allegedly designed to show how the two nations are bound together by their common history and culture.

British Week is part of a broader "Think Britain" campaign which the Foreign Office (FCO) has organized together with the British Embassy in Mexico and several Mexican government ministries, based on the premise that the two governments are "strategic partners." It is all the more offensive that the FCO has launched this campaign this year, when Mexico celebrates its Bicentennial on Sept. 16, thus distorting the early history of Mexico as a sovereign nation.

British Week's propaganda crowed that Great Britain, not the U.S., was the first nation to officially recognize Mexico's independence in 1825, and then to become its most important foreign investor. This, one journalist argued, "made the U.S. very jealous."

The reality is starkly different. Even from before Mexico's Sept. 16, 1810 declaration of independence from Spain, Mexican independence leaders looked to the United States as their model. As Lyndon LaRouche pointed out on May 30, "the American tradition [in Mexico] was very strong." The British knew this, and targetted Mexico for destruction, to the point that, today, it "is a destroyed country.... There is no optimism with Mexico as a process," LaRouche said. Contrast this to Argentina, he added, where "you have a longstanding hatred of the British," which was on very public display during the May 25 celebrations of the country's Bicentennial.

Thus the organizers of British Week were unhindered in promoting the Empire's cultural degradation and economic destruction as Mexico's future. British Week's big business event, hosted by Mexico City Mayor Marcelo Ebrard, was on how Mexico's private sector can collaborate in promoting the genocidal "low carbon" agenda to deal with climate change. The British Embassy's website brags that "this is one of a number of similar events that the British Embassy will be helping to organize all around Mexico this year." The U.K. Trade & Investment Office, headed by HRH Prince Andrew, is urging Mexican companies to take advantage of the "business opportunities" to be had at the 2012 Olympic games in London.

Perhaps looking toward British Week, on May 5, the London School of Economics held a seminar entitled, "Mexico: UK's Strategic Partner?" which noted that [collapsing] Mexico "presents itself as a strong emerging market filled with business opportunities" for Great Britain.

Mexican Congressman: Mexico Should Help With BP Oil Spill

May 28 (EIRNS)—In a private discussion with EIR, a prominent Mexican Congressman of the PRI party angrily denounced the way President Barack Obama has handled the BP oil spill, calling him "irresponsible," and saying that neither Obama nor BP know how to handle the situation. He strongly agreed with Lyndon LaRouche's demand that BP be immediately nationalized, and said that, in fact, the governments of the United States, Mexico, and Cuba should be jointly working on the problem, as the most directly affected nations. "We, as countries, can't just sit by and wait for BP to do something," he said.

A biologist by training, the PRI Congressman said that there is clearly huge destruction going on, and that BP is showing no real concern at all. He said he doesn't believe anything that BP has been saying about the spill and its consequences, and noted that Mexico has asked to send some cruisers to the area to see for themselves—but was told "no." He recalled that Mexico also has experience with offshore oil accidents, including the infamous 1979 blowout of Ixtoc in the Gulf of Mexico; that well spewed oil for ten months before it could be stopped, and it was in only 50 meters of water.