Brazzil

well, pretty accurate from my experiences here.

Just wish some of these idiots who try and pronounce that brazil is a wonderful place to live could sit in the shoes of the 40+ million who make less than 2 dollars a day for a couple months.

I think that the biggest idiot is you, who chose to live among us...
Go home to a "safer" place. For instance, a city as clean, organized, and well-developed as New Orleans comes to mind...
Tchau moron

40 millions on two dollars a day makes me feel you are not well informed. Certainly your CIA people goofed again. Two dollars a day is half minimum wage. Street vendors use to make more than that.
Where have you had your experiences here? Copacabana Palace? Itanhangá golf club?
Now, just tell us, what is a nice guy like you doing in a place like this? Dan Mitrione was also doing something around Latin America until the tupamaros fixed him.

Maybe Sue Branford could tell us about the Scotland Yard and the brazilian they assassinated in London. It is now a long time and the truth is hidden under
secret d´état .
It is too clear some foreigners have a flair for favelas, crime, póverty.
As to football, it is too early to rejoice. Wait and see.
Parreira was stupid I admit. Ronaldo should not be playing. I have heard that some obscure publicity contract has that he must play every match. Had he not played but Robinho the store would be different .
Anyway it is too early to suppose you already have a corpse to feed vultures like ... who?

Once a friend spent a few days with a british couple in London.
The couple and the two-year old boy used the same and very same water for bathing. First the boy, then the wife, and finally the husband.
For washing the plates they would fill up the sink and threw all plates into it and then washed everything in the very same water.
They did not have dinner. A snack was enough for saving money.
Their hone was adjoining another. At night they could listen to the neighbors talking.

They were middle class, but life was far from free of worries.
When Thatcher was P.M. she started a politics that sent millions out of work.
The present P.M. isa a liar who has sent thousands of young men
to a fate worse than death itself.
If you read the Guardian you can see about the mental conditions a lot of these come from war. Neurosis would be too light to describe it. .

Correction: store -- no ; story -- yes.

quote:

"40 millions on two dollars a day makes me feel you are not well informed."

Obviously, you're the one that's not well informed....which statistics do you want?? Those from the brazilian government itself or the United Nations?

Really getting tired of posting this s**t over and over for you idiots that have never stepped foot in brazil and find it unbelievable that this type of reality exists for huge percentages of the population here.

One million reais is $445 thousand dollars and not $445 million dollars. The income of the PCC is mistated.

Thanks for this article. I am a native, black and European descendent= true Brazilian and I support to death the Brazilian soccer team.Brazil is still a young country with 500 years and a brite future ahead.....We are learning and developing our society as we did with soccer( imported from Brits) and hope with no biesed view of this changing world...

is the income growth of the poorest 10 %, then let me asked how the wealthiest faired, because if :
- they invested their money Without Risk at the short term government rate they made far more than 23 %....in 3 years....even after taxes.
- they invested in the Bovespa and they at least doubled or even tripled their money.
- they invested in real estate and they also made far more than 23 %.

Then please explain how the wealth disparity has been reduced....EVEN somewhat.

Concerning the violence, there is not even a pause during the WC.
Just read what happened 2 days ago with the new explosion of violence in the jails !
The PCC is putting some pressure....again !
They will win....no doubt.

And if a country of 500 years is still a young country, what will you say in 500 years ?
The USA is "only" 200 years old and is the world engine, while Brazil remains on the queue despite being quite older !
What have you done during these 500 years ???
Not much....as per ALL economics and social stats.
You lagged for 500 years and will continue to do so for the next 500 years....minimum.
You even lag compared to ALL developping countries.

WAKE UP ! STAND UP !

CONCERNING THE IDIOT AND THE MORON WHO SAYS THAT IT IS WRONG THAT 40 MILLIONS OF BRAZILIANS LIVE WITH LESS THAN $ 2 PER DAY :
PLEASE GIVE US YOUR STATS AND YOUR SOURCES.

STOP HIDING THE TRUTH LOZEIDA, you dont even know what is happening outside your city that has the biggest number of kidnapings in the world.

You are a medieval country with archaïc laws that are not even applied !!!!!!
Simply stated your THE WILD WEST.....LIKE AMERICA WAS 200 YEARS AGO.
This shows how kate you are in your development !

"Time" magazine for June 26, 2006 front page cover boasts India as "India incorporated." Time runs a long article giving accolades to India and its prosperity. Basicly sizing it up to be a great nation. The article points out thought that while India has 23 billionaires, 10 more than China has, 81% of it's population lives on $2 a day or less compared with China that has 47% of it's population living on $2 a day or less. Now I don't know how well I want to trust these figures. I'm not sure how well I trust many figures depending on how they are derived. I remember my brother telling me that in the U.S. the homless shelters report a figure or estimation of unemployment quite contradictory to the U.S. federal governments reports of unemployment. I have no idead who would be right.

But at any rate... I'm no math whiz, but by my calculations if Brazil has 40 million people out of 180 million people living on $2 a day or less, that would come out to about 22% of it's population. Which begs a number of questions concerning U.S. bashing of Brazil but accolades given to China and India. It also begs the question, if poverty is the only or major source of homicide in Brazil or the world, why then is not India and China having PCC type gangs shuting down cities like the PCC did in Sao Paulo, Brazil?

I would also like to know how middle class Brazilians could not know the PCC exist if there crime and murder is as rampant as it is? I don't doubt the PCC is as that bad, I just find it hard to believe middle class Brazilians could not know about them. I mean I grew up in a predominately middle class neigborhood in the U.S. and gangs, murder, and rape were a part of life. I find it hard to believe it is safer living middle class in Brazil than it is in the United States.

I would also like to know how come gringo media focus so much only on negative things about Brazil yet seems to spotlight the positive things about India and China so much more frequently?

Article and commentary I found interesting on theworldforum.org under "Brazil doesn't know Brasil"

www.theworldforum.org/story/2005/3/26/153958/271

Quote:

"One million reais is $445 thousand dollars and not $445 million dollars. The income of the PCC is mistated."

Reply: Thank you because the $445 million confused me. Nonetheless $445 thousand per month is a lot.

I think Sue Branford is certainly right about one thing though: Brazil's prisons are a nightmare and only help breed and facilitate more crime and orginized crime. As well if masses of people are unsafe or feel unsafe in Brazil they will take to a culture and element that gives them the best practical sense of protection be it violent or even criminal.

quote:

"But at any rate... I'm no math whiz, but by my calculations if Brazil has 40 million people out of 180 million people living on $2 a day or less, that would come out to about 22% of it's population."


You're exactly correct!


quote:

Select a country: Bangladesh Benin Bolivia Brazil Bulgaria Burundi Cameroon Côte d'Ivoire China Colombia Dominican Rep Ecuador Egypt El Salvador Estonia Gambia Ghana Guatemala Guinea Haiti Honduras Hungary India Indonesia Iran, Islamic Rep Jordan Kazakhstan Kenya Kyrgyzstan Lao People's Dem Rep Lebanon Lesotho Madagascar Malawi Mexico Morocco Mozambique Namibia Nepal Nicaragua Niger Nigeria Pakistan Peru Russian Federation Rwanda Senegal Sierra Leone South Africa Swaziland Tajikistan Tanzania Togo Turkey Ukraine Uzbekistan Yemen Zambia

Selected EarthTrends Data:

BRAZIL

Variable Value
Gini Index{1} 58
Population living on less than $1/day{2} 8%
Population living on less than $2/day{3} 22%
Poverty Gap $1/day{4} 2%
Poverty Gap $2/day{5} 9%
Access to improved sanitation{5} 76%
Access to an improved water source{5} 87%
Literacy rate, all adults{5} n/a
Life expectancy, both sexes{5} 68 years
Definitions and Sources
{1}Data are from surveys administered during 2001. Ranked by per capita income



http://earthtrends.wri.org/povlinks/country/brazil.php

It's folly to talk about comparing incomes in dollars world-wide.

The purchasing power of the local currency is what's important for such comparisons.

Also, these income statistics don't include non-cash income, such as subsistance farming, barter, payment in kind, etc. That's how most of these low-income people can survive on what appears to be an insufficient income.

listen, less than 2 dollars a day is around 4 reais per day, or right around there.

If you think that any human can survive in a "decent" fashion on 4 reais per day you have no idea of the reality here in brazil.

And this certainly isn't an income that "appears" to be insufficient....IT IS INSUFFICIENT!

The problem with Brasil's prisons is not there harshness; they are too soft.We(brasilians) need to get tougher on criminals( BOTH WHITE COLLAR, RICH, POLITICIANS, and normal day to day banditos), and really show them that CRIME DOES NOT PAY. At the moment, crime does pay.Crime is a very effective and feasible way to make wealth without risk or fear of sufficient penalty in Brasil, or that the penalty will be served to anywhere near the extent of the sentencing. I dont break the law, I respect the law, so why should other people break the law and not face due and severe penalty for breaking laws.
Much tougher love needed in Brasil. Much tougher.

----Brazil is still a YOUNG country with 500 years and a brite future ahead.....

Canada is only 139ish years, don´t use that ole "we´re a young country" excuse with us. Brazil after a thousand years will still be run by a bunch of monkeys without a clue.

There’s still crime in the city but it’s good to be free

Quote:

"It's folly to talk about comparing incomes in dollars world-wide.

The purchasing power of the local currency is what's important for such comparisons.

Also, these income statistics don't include non-cash income, such as subsistance farming, barter, payment in kind, etc. That's how most of these low-income people can survive on what appears to be an insufficient income."


Reply:

This makes sense.

such as subsistance farming, barter

Boy those Cariocas and Paulistas are some damn fine subsistence farmers . . . I've seen entire banana plantations on patios in highrise apt. complexes . . .

Even though I agree with everything you said, You have to remember that Brazil is a third world country.One thing is for sure, and that is that the inequality will stop for the poor and the Blacks one day. Either through politics, or as Malcolm X said,"by any means necessary"

Quote:

"such as subsistance farming, barter

Boy those Cariocas and Paulistas are some damn fine subsistence farmers . . . I've seen entire banana plantations on patios in highrise apt. complexes . . ."


Reply:

That's a fair point you make (in sarcasim). But I'm going to assume the other poster might be including gardening, and not just farming, into the equation.

I look at flogao.com sometimes, and I notice mostly white Brazilians, but I see a lot of mulattas and morenas on their too, be they teenagers or young 20 somethings. Though I hardly ever see any blacks. But I also notice many of these white girls, mulattas, and morenas, take photos with each other, hugging each other, in a comfortability that is quite rare if ever to see in the United States. The great majority of mulattas in the U.S. identify as Black and seem to feel only accepted (at least more so) around Black women. The antagonism between white girls and mulattas (as well morenas) seems to be far more marked in the U.S. than in Brazil. In the U.S. it is rare for certain color groups to hug each other and smile in photo, certain color groups just maintain a certain distance from one another.

Can someone in Brazil tell me if these young ladies in this photo are of a classic middle class Brazilian family or a classic rich Brazilian family? Because I see many dark girls on flogao of this socio-economic level.

Picture: www.flogao.com.br/amoasmulheres2/foto/015/59452119

One cannot compare, as he does, developing countries with the poorest countries.
It would be like comparing the richest nations with Brazil !!!!!!

Also, One cannot compare China and India with Brazil.

China and India have a far lower GDP per capita than Brazil !

It remains that Brazil has the world highest poverty rate when compared to its GDP per capita !

SIMPLE !

Nothing to be proud of !

A director of the World Bank said recently that it is amazing how Brazil, with a relatively high GDP per capita for a developing country, has so much poverty.
Some Brazilians areas look like a poor African country !

Cheers !

The Brazilian PPP per capita is around US$ 8000.- and the non PPP is around Us$ 4000.-

Now you can do simple maths : 22 % of the population are making less than Us$ 4 per day using the PPP.

Now, if you put Bill Gates in a Northeast Brazilian stadium with 45'000.- fans,all, statistically speaking, would be millionnaire and in US$ !
It remains that only Bill is the multi billionnaire and the other 44'999 are poors!

Quote:

"One cannot compare, as he does, developing countries with the poorest countries.
It would be like comparing the richest nations with Brazil !!!!!!

Also, One cannot compare China and India with Brazil.

China and India have a far lower GDP per capita than Brazil !

It remains that Brazil has the world highest poverty rate when compared to its GDP per capita !

SIMPLE !

Nothing to be proud of !

A director of the World Bank said recently that it is amazing how Brazil, with a relatively high GDP per capita for a developing country, has so much poverty.
Some Brazilians areas look like a poor African country !

Cheers !"


Reply:

India's GDP for 2005 is topped $800 billion according to Time magazine. And it had the second fastest economic growth rate in the world, enough to gain India 10 extra billionaires in a single year and top it over China in number of billionaires. Hence massive wealth went into Indian economy but did not touch let alone trickle to the masses of poor people.

Brazil by contrast had a GDP for 2005 at a little over $600 billion, posted modest economic growth, and more of its wealth is distrubuted throughout the country than in India.

So India has a larger GDP than Brazil but with over 2/3 of it's people living in poverty.


Excerpt from Time Magazine, dated June 26, 2006:

"Although India boasts more billionaires than China, 81% of it's population lives on $2 a day or less, compared with 47% of Chinese, according to the 2005 U.N. Population Reference Bureau Report. That class divide is starkest in cities like Bombay, where million-dollar apartments overlook million-population slums. For all it's glitz, Bombay remains a temple to inefficiency. In 2003 it had one bus for every 1,300 people, two public parking spots for every 1,000 cars, 17 public toilets for every million people and one civic hospital for 7.2 million people in northern slums...

India's GDP (gross domestic product) growth was 8.4% last year vs. 10% for China, while foreign investment in India was an estimated $8.4 billion, compared with $72.4 billion in China.

But India does possess one indispensable asset, which has sustained its democracy and catapulted it to the cusp of global power: ingenuity of its citizens. And nowhere is it in greater supply than in Bombay. 'Things just happen here,' says Sanjay Bhandarkar, managing director of investment bank Rothschild's India. 'Because people have to make things work themselves.' The rise of China has been the product of methodical state planning, but India's is all about private hustle, a trait that Americans can appreciate. Rakesh Jhunjhunwala, a billionaire trader in Bombay, says initiative represents Bombay's - and India's - advantage over it's competitors. 'It's people who make countries,' he says, 'not governments.' "


Time magazine also says that "about 2 million people of Indian descent live in the U.S. The average household income of Indian immigrants in the U.S. is the highest of any ethnic group." In other words poor Latin Americans come to the United States, whereas poor and uneducated Indians by-in-large stay in India and her educated and better to do Indians immigrate to the U.S.

If gringos can respect the "hustle" of Indians in India - a nation as corrupt or moreso than Brazil - than it should be able to respect the "hustle" of the average Brazilian to make it and live in life.

I also found it interesting the Time article implied elsewhere that one of the reasons India should be considered a good country and showered with accolades is because *it is no longer giving the United States a pain in the ass, but rather is a friendly ally and may help U.S. interests in Asia against China.*

Which begs the question is gringo animosity against Brazil rooted in not just prejudice against Latino's but in the fact Brazil is not as docile to and ass kissing to the U.S. as India is?

More excerpts from the Time article, related to Bombay and India, which perhaps can have some insightful correlations to Sao Paulo and Brazil.

Excerpts:

"As the subcontinent's New York City, Bombay is built not on tradition but on drive... The city's stock exchanges account for 92% of the country's total share turnover, and the nation's central bank and hundreds of brokerages and investors have set up their Indian headquarters there, including such globals powerhouses as HSBC, JP Morgan Chase and Bank of America. Bombay handles half of India's trade, and its southern business district is one of the centers of global outsourcing boom. India's music industry and much of its media are based in Bombay, as is India's Hindi film industry, Bollywood. Such concentration of business activity breeds a sophisticated, cosmopolitan outlook - hence Bombay has India's best hotels, bars, restaurants and nightclubs. And everyday, according to the official census, hundreds move to the city to seek their fortune.

To migrants from India's poor states, the metropolis is known as Mayanagri, the City of Dreams. To its slums come people from India's villages, hitching rides and dodging train fares, prepared to sell spicy peanuts at traffic lights for a few cents a day and pay $1 a month to live in a tin hut. For some of them the principal opportunity the city offers is a life of crime - running bootlegging operations or gambling dens - or renting out the hovels in which millions of Bombay's inhabitants live. Just as for Bombay's gilded elit, the city is the place to be. 'I came from nothing,' says a Bombay gangster who grew up in Bihar, India's poorest state and owns 30,000 huts in four slums. 'Now I have money, phones, cars, houses, a wife and two girlfriends. If you were me, you'd love Bombay too.'

That not to say it's easy to love. If you judge Bombay by governance, it sounds as though the city is falling apart. In a calamity last July that was mercifully forgotten with the advent of Hurricane Katrina weeks later, heavy monsoon rains flooded Bombay for a week as the city's 150-year-old drains and sewers collapsed. At least 435 people died. The infastructure bears other scars of neglect. In the city's small and ancient stock of trains, each is crammed with an average of 4,500 people, although most have a capacity of 1,750. As a result, passenger groups say, an astonishing 3,500 travelers die every year on the tracks, hundreds simply falling from trains... Movie director Shekhar Kapur, who returned after years in London and Los Angeles, says living in Bombay means confronting the class divide daily: 'This must be one of the few places on earth where the rich try to work off a few pounds in the gym, step outside and are confronted by a barefoot child of skin and bones begging for something to eat.'

Those urban extremes can be hard to take, but locals pride themselves on their pluck and self-reliance. When the floods hit last year, rescue workers were nowhere to be seen, but shanty dwellers sheltered businessman, slum children rescued film stars, and untouchables saved holy men. 'There was a feeling that went through people,' says film producer and director Mahesh Bhatt, who is suing the city for its alleged mishandling of the crises. 'We realized no one was going to descend from the heavens to solve our problems, and we were going to have to do it ourselves.' "

The article goes on to say regarding international foreigners coming to work in India:

"The reason for the influx, says Gupta, is that anyone in any profession can rise faster and higher in Bombay than almost anywhere else. The author E.B. White said, 'No one should come to New York to live unless he is willing to be lucky,' which could just as easily be said of Bombay today. Says Gupta: 'That's the thing about Bombay. It's the place of possibility'...

India's great hope hope runs on hope itself. Hope is the reason Gupta stays in Bombay, despite falling ill from diesel fumes each time she crosses the city. Samant says it's why, unlike in New Orleans, the people didn't disintegrate with their city after the floods. Hope brought Bombay together and keeps it together. 'Look at Dharavi,' he says of the city's notorious slum, biggest in Asia. 'The place has a GDP of $1 billion a year. Dharavi makes you realize everyone has a stake in keeping Bombay going.' One day all those millions of expectations will have to be satisfied. But for now, the City of Dreams is living up to its name."


In one of my previous posts I have to correct myself on India's billionaires. I'll just quote the magazine: "A surging stock market has boosted the number of Inddian billionaires to 23 - 10 of whom are new this year - compared with eight in China. India's billionaires boast a combined net worth of $99 billion, an increase of 60% from the year before."


I'm not Brazilian, and I have no answers to Brazilian problems, but two things occur to me. Like the United States, Brazil has both a cowboy/guacho past and a strong culture of guns. And that's not to say either the U.S. or Brazil should outlaw guns, but certainly guns have an impact on the way orginized crime functions and spreads as well as on a individual city's or nations homicide rate. The other thing that occurs to me is that perhaps more Brazilians - at least those with enough food in their stomachs - can look upon Sao Paulo and Brazil more as the "cup half full" instead of the "cup half empty." Certainlt Sao Paulo has as much hustle, culture, liberal open mindeness, and industrial drive and savy as New York City and Bombay.

Keep your head up Paulistas and Brazilians!

Brazil began miscegenation 500 years ago. Therefore, now you have less and less real black people, contrarily to the USA where prejudice is rampant.
Nowadays, in the US you keep involved with a divided country (whites X blacks ) while in Brazil the population becomes whitier ands whitier.
In 100 years the US will still be talking about African-Americans (ridiculous ) instead of just saying "Americans".

Classifying people according to color of their skin is o fim da picada.

A friend of mine , who is a very intelligent woman, went to visit India. She was dismayed at the conditions millions of people live there. You are talking about a minority (also millions ) . Mostly, they have no good habits of hygiene, they live in slums, s**t on the streets, schooling is deficient.

The highest PPP per capita and the GDp and the PGG and the UDS makle you think that you know what you are saying. However , Time said that India bla...bla... and New Orleans bla , bla , Oh. they are so well off even after Katrina. Bla, bla, and the GDP And the PQP, and the KLU, and the Klux and the Klan, and hahaha.

The directyor of the world bank said: bla, bla, bla...
And the neighbor of my cousin said: bla, bla, bla,
And a Brazilian said: PQP, quem é este panaca? ,
And bla, bla, and the guy I met said: bla, bla,

And the guy behind the bar counter said: bla, bla.

It´s simple math: 2x2=7
And bla, bla, bla.
My pal said: bla ( sorry he was sick that day )

An I asked the guy in the elevator: What is best the bla or the blaaa?
Do you know what he said? Guess what. PQP - AUA

Canada is only... and Canadians are a bore. They have no joie-de-vivre.
Americans are worse. Their films and their TV are a disgrace. Obese people and McDonalds go together. And they are everywhere in the States.
Oh, $$$ bla, bla, Gupta said: bla.,
Mehta said: Oh my God, where is my manual???

Kenneth Courtis in his essay contribution to the Time article says:

"In 1997, much of eastern Asia's flourishing economy was leveled. Next were Russia, Turkey and Argentina; Brazil teetered on the brink. By early 2001, Silicon Valley, the pride of the U.S. economy, was crashing, while entire sectors of the so-called New Economy disintegrated.

The tech wreck may be over, but it has left a legacy of low prices. Tech companies had to dump on the market everything from fiber-optic networks to computer chips, as deperate investors struggled to raise cash. That slashed telecommunication costs at the very moment that emerging markets were producing skilled and hungry generation information workers. Result? The offshore outsourcing revolution and downward pressure on global production costs that keeps inflation under control. Equally powerful are the Ultra-low-cost emerging-market manufacturing bases, led by China. With more than 1 billion people set to enter the urban labor markets of China, India, Brazil, and Indonesia in the next 20 years, all those pressures on prices will only intensify.

More immediate forces are also at work to keep prices from surging. Despite some wishful thinking, growth in Europe is slowing, not accelerating. A large part of U.S. growth has been driven by booming real estate prices. But in the past two years, the Fed has increased rates 16 times, so real estate-driven consumption is yesterday's news. Tomorrows's story will be the sharp fall in U.S. growth as consumers face higher mortgage costs. That dynamic could become nasty, given the record level of U.S. household debt, government deficit and unequal current-account shortfall."


Aravind Adiga essay contribution to the Times article says:

"Located in India's southwest coast, Mangalore is hot, hilly and carpeted in coconut palms. When I was growing up, young men of all religions were united by shared values of hardwork, enterprise and a desire to get out of Mangalore as quickly as possible. My brother left when he was 18. I left when I was 16...

But the past decade has seen extraordinary change - and extraordinary excess - in Mangalore. The fastes growing industry is education. During the 1980's, higher education became the only way out of a broken system for many fustrated young Indians. The best doctors and computer engineers had a fghting chance of nabbing a lucrative job offer from Silicon Valley or Manhattan. So boys and girls throughout India streamed into colleges and institutes, where they studied calculus and organic chemistry with a passion that was probably unrivaled anywhere else in the world. In recent years, the trend has accelerated. Mangalore had one medical college when I left; it now has five as well at least four dental schools and 14 physiotherapy colleges. Some 350 schools, colleges and polytechnics are listed in its yellow pages.

A lot of new colleges, predictably, focus on computer education. They tempt young recruits with the prospect of rewards that would have been inconceivable before the outsourcing boom...

The city's new affluence manifests itself in subtle ways as well... Others spoke in a similar manner of a simpler life that was disappearing... A Catholic friend's daughter had married a Hindu, and her family no longer spoke to her. A Hindu friend's daughter had been divorced by her husband. Divorce, extramarital affairs, interreligious marriages, homosexual flings - the doors of experience had swung open in Mangalore. The small city had grown up."


Time also runs a separate article on "the new battle over America's low-wage workers" titled, "Trying to Make A Decent Living." In the same June 26, 2006 magazine. Picturing two Black American low-wage workers (one a young man the other a middle aged woman; both janitorial) it says in caption of one:

"Craig Jones, Cincinnati, Ohio. $6.50/hr. Jones wears a bandage after being mugged and shot recently after work. He walks home every night because he can't afford a car on his near minimum-wage salary."

"His employer, Professional Maintenance, a cleaning contractor, usually scheduals him just four hours a night, five nights a week, so Jones' biweekly paycheck amounts to about $260, before taxes. The monthly rent for his spartan ground-level apartment in a once industrial part of town is $215, so there's little left after phone and utility bills and food. He hasn't bought a new piece of clothing in years."

The article says Jones is 27 years old. So there is a silent lesson in Jones American experience, to a person in Mangalore, to a person in Brazil: *Education or skilled trade and craft, as well as staying out of felony convictions into the prison system, are the most sound way to rise economically.*

Brazil could learn a lesson from Mangalore, India as well as China: *Invest in your peoples education.*

BRAZIL STOP SENDING YOUR ILLEGALS TO THE U.S.A.!!!!WE ARE ABOUT TO "'RETURN TO SENDER" !!!!!!!!

BRAZIL STOP SENDING YOUR ILLEGALS TO THE U.S.A.!!!!WE ARE ABOUT TO "'RETURN TO SENDER" !!!!!!!!

From Time article "Trying to Make A Decent Living."

"The major difference between Gray and Jones, say advocates for low-wage workers, is that she lives in a city where janitors are unionized and have collectively negotiated salaries considerably above the minimum wage, what they call a living wage. The living-wage movement has been building steam as outsourcing moves millions of relatively high-wage manufacturing jobs over seas, leaving behind less mobile, low-paying ones such as health-care aides, security guards and janitors."

Former North Carolina Senator John Edwards saying: "But my feelings now on the subject are stronger than they've ever been. You can't live on $6, $7, or $8 an hour and have anything to fall back on. Instead of getting ahead, which most families want to focus on, they're focused on survival."

The article continues: "One of the key battlegrounds of the new offensive is Cincinnati, which gained 8,400 service jobs in 2004 alone... 'What happens in Cincinnati is more of a lens into future of work in this country than what happens in New York City or Los Angeles. It's workers in these smaller cities doing the low-wage work who set the tone for how workers are treated throughout this country.'

Pittsburgh janitors fought and unionized and won out to increase their wages along with decent benefits. Now their city is flourishing far more than cities like Cincinnati. In Pittsburgh home ownership is up even amongst the poor. The photos of Gray's nice and furnished home from that of Jones spartan unfurnished apartment with no bed but just a mattress is like the contrast between night and day. Gray now helps work to get janitors in other U.S cities like Cincinnati to unionize.

"Pittsburgh is its Exhibt A. Once hailed as America's Iron City, Pittsburgh has gone from a manufacturing stronghold to a service-dominated economy... When Gray recently told a group of Cincinnati janitors about her wages, health-care coverage and vacation time, 'they didn't believe me,' she says. 'They wanted to see my pay stub'...

As Janitors' wages have risen, salaries for Pittsburgh jobs have followed suit. Security guards, for instance, working in buildings where unionized janitorial workers are employed, have seen their earnings advance in parallel. Over the past three years, the median household income in the city has grown nearly 3%, from $39,643 to $40,699, adjusted for inflation. And annual janitorial-job turnover, as high as 300% in Cincinnati, is just one-tenth that rate in Pittsburgh. As a result, contractors' cost for recruitment and traing are signficantly lower. 'For a community and its families, wage gains for low-income workers mean the difference between living precariuosly at the edge of the economy and having a stake in the American Dream,' says Beth Schulman, author of 'The Betrayal of Work: How Low-Wage Jobs Fail 30 Million Americans'...

Cincinnati shares many attributes with Pittsburgh. Both are Rust Belt cities with midsize populations - 314,000 for Cincinnati and 322,000 for Pittsburgh - and workforces similar in size and composition. Each has seen its once mighty manufacturing base crumble... But they diverge in their treatment of janitors and low-wage workers, and living-wage advocates say the results are telling. In Cincinnati neighborhoods like Over-the-Rhine and West End, where Jones lives, are poor wages coupled with high rates of drug use, street violence and truancy have created a cycle of interdependent problems. More than half the adult black males in the two neighborhoods are without full-time work. In the West End alone, 76% of the children under 5 are living in poverty, and per capita income is $9,759 a year."


Craig Jones is in photographed in one of the pictures, at work dumping trash, with a big white bandage over his left facial cheek, where he was shot after being mugged, His left eye is consequently swollen and bruised. -- Life is brutal and merciless, going onto higher education, tech training, or something of the sort is the best way for a Brazilian, Indian, Chinese, or American to break from and escape the tragic grip of poverty and the despair and crime rideen neighborhoods that often comes with it.

---Canada is only... and Canadians are a bore. They have no joie-de-vivre.
Americans are worse. Their films and their TV are a disgrace. Obese people and McDonalds go together. And they are everywhere in the States.
Oh, $$$ bla, bla, Gupta said: bla.,
Mehta said: Oh my God, where is my manual??? --

Point proven, give enough monkeys a typewriter and eventually one will crack out a phrase or two. Let's distribute another million computers in Brazil, and maybe, just MAYBE one will be able to make some rational sense.

A conversation I had last week here in Alagoas with two local lady lawyers I was teaching English to:
Me; I just don´t understand why, with all the terrible poverty here in the North-East, the poor people don´t at least hold street demonstrations and try and improve their living conditions. You know, agitate for clean water and better schools, things like that.

Lady lawyer1; slightly confused. Why would they do that?

Me. Well that´s what would happen in Europe, the French would block the roads, for example.

Lady lawyer2 . But it wouldn´t achieve anything except the troublesome people would become injured or die.

Me: Injured? Die? How? Why?

LL1 Because the police would stop them.

Me: How?
LL2: They would probably round up the leaders, beat them up a bit, you know, to warn them to stop making trouble.

LL1 And then if these people did it again, and there was real trouble, the politicians would have them killed by pistoleiros.

Me? You can´t be serious!

LL2: Of course. The state is controlled by about 20 families, they all marry each other and keep the money and the power. Anyone who threatens their power they just kill them. Lots of examples if you want.

Me: So I´d better not teach my poor students in the favela all about peaceful protest and so on.

LL2 Are you mad?

LL1; No he isn´t , he´s just a European who has no idea how Brasil works.

Me; Well I´m learning fast!

LL1. Just go to the beach, enjoy the football and the rodizio and the sunshine and the mulattas like all the sex tourists who come to the North-East. Don´t you think?

LL2; Yes, I agree, don´t interfere. It´s none of your business. We don´t go to England and tell you how to run your country, do we? And anyway, you shoot Brazilians in England, so what right have you got to come here and tell us how to behave?

Me; Right. Let´s get back to the present perfect, shall we.

Quote:

"LL1; No he isn´t , he´s just a European who has no idea how Brasil works.

Me; Well I´m learning fast!"



Reply:

Given this is coming from you I doubt that tale.

But assuming all that is true - and I have read the North East is ran by dynastic families not to unsimilar to antebellum south in the United States although more violently in Brazil - it's up to the people to muster courage for change. A many a U.S. citizen died - no less WWI veterans marching on Washginton D.C. - protesting laws or trying to orginize labor.

But regardless the North East is not cosmopolitan Sao Paulo. And it was in Sao Paulo that the PCC burned buses and murdered police while sending fear into the masses. It is the *favelas* that were estabished as squatter camps for all the rural people - such as from the North East - migrating into the industrial cities such as mighty Sao Paulo.

You see, even though I have never stepped foot in Brazil, reading (being "fundamental" as it is) has it's benefits, because my reading books on Brazil allows me to at least catch areas of your propaganda in which you attempt to distort things to project Brazil lack luster and empty of any virtue or civilization. Such as your attempt to confuse and convince readers that have never been to Brazil that the culture of the North East, as well geography, is one in the same of the megalopolis Sao Paulo.

Granted one can only learn so much from books, and experience is a far greater teacher, as well actual experience predicates *truth.* Nonetheless reading can help a mind grow when experience lacks, and can help increase better judgment and discernment.

Now bite my ass. And go Brazil!

America is a s**t hole
Written by Guest on 2006-06-21 11:53:55
--------------------------------------------------------------------------------
America is a s**t hole with nothing to offer but the prospect of being in debt and maybe making a decent living.

Americans are the s**ttiest people on earth. Black Americans treat each other like total s**t. If you don't toe the party line they will make your life a living hell. White Americans are culturally BANKRUPT. They don't know drumming from drooling. Americans are cynical and negative about everything. If roads aren't perfectly paved, if they don't have 5000 TV channels, and they can't stuff their fat faces for 24 hours straight they will whine until you can't hear yourself think. I hate America, I want your money not your friendship. f**k it! I don't want your money, give me mine back. I am taking my funloving black butt to Bahia to spend the rest of my youth basking in the glow of peace, culture, and life.

Actually I think Brasil is the best country I´ve ever been to in my life, (I´ve been to 48 so far)which is why I have upped sticks from cold wet miserable England and moved to Alagoas. I wasn´t trying to denigrate Brasil or Brasilians in any way, other than to add my sixpenceworth to the main article. Until recently I taught English in three local favelas, and the students were the best I´ve ever had, their optimism and happiness shines like a beacon, which is why I started the conversation with the middle-class lady lawyers whose children I really dislike teaching, spoilt little brats. I just don´t understand how such hard-working and intelligent, if uneducated, people can put up with such violent and blatant discrimination for so long. The ladies anwered my question; fear, pure and simple. Poor peopleknow that if they step out of line they will get into serious trouble. But I didn´t want to give the impression that all is bad, it isn´t. There are few more beautiful places than Alagoas, and fewer still places with such friendly kind people. If you haven´t visited Brasil, I urge you to do so, but come with an open mind. It´s like nowhere else on earth.

The author states:

"Many will see in the exploits of talented youngsters from deprived backgrounds such as Ronaldo, Ronaldinho and Kaká a projection of their own dreams."

Ronaldinho and Kaká came from "deprived" backgrounds?Since when has it been considered deprived to be from the middle class?

I’m the person who wrote “Exchange rate fallacy”, and I have a very good idea of the reality in Brazil. I was writing about survival, not having a “decent life”. The fact that there’s not mass starvation in Brazil is ipso facto proof that it is possible to survive in Brazil on a very small amount of money. I am equally sure that life is a living hell for many of the people that have to survive on a minimum salary or less.

Let me introduce you to a much more grim alternate reality. People from India who might read this should realize that I am only writing about what I observed, I am not “India bashing”.

I spent some time in India in 1975. Here’s how it was (and I pray to God that it’s different now):

In the cities there were people working 16 hours a day, seven days per week for US $0.25 per day. You might well wonder how they could survive on this pittance. It was enough money to buy one meal per day of flat bread or rice and lentils, and with careful budgeting, some used clothing every three or four years.

The poorest people, at the lowest rung, lived on the sidewalks and under bridges. Their only possession was usually a blanket (very obviously never, ever, washed) that they used to cover themselves while sleeping. The next rung up, if they were lucky enough to find a bare piece of ground and some cardboard, sticks, and maybe some plastic sheet, lived in small huts.

The rung above the hovels (and this is highly subjective) was the slums, which were built haphazardly five stories high out of whatever was available. They covered a large area, and the passageways were narrow enough that you could easily reach out and touch the walls. I’ve walked through favelas, but you couldn’t have paid me enough money to walk through these slums in India. One of my Indian friends described them as “sick”. The population density was about 5,000 people per hectare, the highest in the world. This works out to less than 2 square meters of floor space per inhabitant (about 18 square feet per person, actually). In the surrounding areas, my friends advised me not to wear a ring on my finger because otherwise someone was likely to cut off my finger in the crowd in order to get my ring. The police were routinely armed with submachine guns.

Most Brazilian favelas that I have seen would have been considered middle-class in India at that time.

Also at that time, the government of India had instituted a program of forced sterilization in order to try to reduce the population growth. Villages that resisted having all of their women sterilized were bombed by the Indian Air Force. There was only one channel on television, and the programming consisted mainly of video of smallpox victims.

In the cities, if you looked like you might have any money, you were mobbed by beggars. By this I mean that if you didn’t tell the first beggar to get lost, within two minutes, you would be surrounded by fifty or more beggars to the point where it was impossible to move. The government was rounding up beggars, loading them on trucks, taking them out of the cities, and dumping them in the countryside in the middle of nowhere.

The average salary for government workers was about US $300 per year, which was considered “well-paid” and placed them solidly into what passed for India’s middle class. A skilled worker, such as a journeyman gem cutter, was paid about US $1.00 per day.

I got an invitation to stay with a family and accepted it. They were considered upper-middle class, but not quite rich. The family made about US $1000 per month from a clothing factory. They had a three story house and a servant. There was running water and electricity in their house, and adequate food. In the kitchen they had a two-burner counter-top gas stove that used bottled gas. They didn’t have a refrigerator or any other appliances.

The water for bathing was heated in a plastic bucket with an electric heating coil. I was warned to be careful not to allow the coil to be plugged in out of the water or it would burn up, and a replacement would be expensive and hard to obtain.

The bathrooms had a hole in the floor with a pot that collected excrement. These were not flush toilets; there was a bucket of water to use for washing down the unit. Every two weeks, the untouchables would come and clean out the pots.

They didn’t have a telephone, and transportation consisted of a Vespa-type motor scooter and a bicycle. Entertainment consisted of a transistor radio for the family, which frequently didn’t have batteries because they were too expensive.

Remember, this is how the upper-middle class lived.

Corruption by officials was rampant. One could see bribes being passed in public for mundane things like a seat on a train that was “full”. I even had a customs officer offer to give me money to buy something for him from the duty free shop at the airport.

Outside of the cities, the poor people generally fared better when times were good, and seemed happier. There was very little money in the countryside, and much was done by barter. Please note that only monetary income is counted in the statistics, and this can be misleading, particularly in the countryside. On the minus side, there was a lot of share cropping by greedy landowners, and when the crops failed, a lot of people would starve to death.

An interesting side note was that more than once I had people come to me as an American, and thank me for the food aid that the U.S. has sent under the Kennedy administration in the mid 1960’s. They told me that that they would have starved to death without it. I guess sometimes foreign aid actually does get to the intended recipients.

Anyway, I hope those that read this can realize that US $2 per day is still a long way from the bottom.

hey bud, this is 2006, and I've been here in northeast brazil for the last 8 years, 2 dollars a day isn't even HALF the minimum wage here in brazil, and people that make minimum wage, 350 reais per month, can't make it on only that, by themselves.

2 dollars a day here in brazil is MISERIA....an absolute battle to survive!

what is the point writing about a place how it was 30 years ago...
things change a lot in 30 years

yeah, his dribble made absolutely no sense and had absolutely nothing to do with nothing.

Seriously ignorant of someone trying to tell us how things were in India 30 f**king years ago to try and relate that 2 dollars a day "ain't that bad".

Those conditions he was describing, they exist here in brazil TODAY...and worse!

There ARE living conditions that are WORSE than in the favellas, just drive on up to the northeast....you'll see 'em camped out alongside the road in their tents made out of hefty trash bags and sticks and are situated in dirt...and now that its the rainy season.....they literally live in the mud!

You had to have been there.

I was giving an example of how things used to be, and I realize that it was 30 years ago, but trust me, it was a LOT worse than anything that Brazil has to offer. Does Brazil have hundreds of thousands, or even millions, of people dying each year from starvation? I think not.

I actually left out some of the worst things, like parents maiming their own children so that they could make more money as beggars, etc.

My point was not that trying to live on two dollars a day is a good thing - it is not. I was just pointing out that there are worse things than that.

Also, today in India, things presumably are better, and they could get better in Brazil as well with the right changes.

I work for an NGO and have recently been to India and Brazil working in the last few years. A fevala in Brazil is luxury to one in an Indian city. And that's before you add in the benefits of Brazil.i.e. Samba, football and bunda. The rural poor in contrast are about the same, but Brazil is more urban than rural - most people forget that. India is the opposite. Health care in india is non existant. At least in Brazil the HIV patients get free treatment.In the present time I'd rather be Brazilian than Indian if I was given a choice,but in the long term India will supercede Brazil unless Brazilians change their attitude and respect to each other. The poor in Brazil are expanding 6 times faster than the middle / upper classes so a tipping point is enevitable at some point. Develop or die.

Hey Bud,

When's it going to be NINE years? I'm getting tired of your posts about how you've been in Brazil eight years, so nine years would make a nice change.

Do you think that being in Brazil for eight years make you an authority on Brazil? I've been in Brazil for double that, so does that make me twice the expert on Brazil that you are? If your arguments can't stand on their own, then writing about how long you've been in Brazil makes zero difference.

Many people write here about how bad things are in Brazil. How many of you have actually done anything to make things better in Brazil, anything at all? If you have, good for you! If not, "put up or shut up".

US FOOTBALL TEAM: GO HOME.

Thanks. I´ll keep this statement in mind.
I´m so used to foreigners saying bad things about Brazil...

Regarding the issue of race or racism in Brazil and its correlation to poverty, I PM'd a guy I converse with on another forum geared towards mixed race people and started by a few mulattos in the U.S. I sent him the same flogao.com link I queried about on here, because unlike me he has been in Brazil, plus I have always understood him to be of fair and sober mind, as well as experienced in the world.

I asked his permission to post his reply here on this board as long as I excluded his name/handle. Here is his first reply to me:


"Hey Justin:

I was in Brazil in 1993 for 6 months. I was doing a kind of Peace Corps type thing through a Danish organization. I traveled pretty much along the coast of Brazil-south to north, but most of my contacts were with very very poor people.

The problems I have with many of these discussions about racism in Brazil (yes it does exist, where doesn't it) is definition. People will conclude that because the wealthy are primarily white and black people are primarily poor, whites are exclusively wealthy and the poor are exclusively black, and this is racism.

The reality is more complicated....Where I spent most of my time, the state of Sergipe in the northeast, the poor were actually primarily mixed. When I say this I mean these people appeared to be for the most part so outside of the black and white phenotypes that even mulatto wouldn't readily describe most of them. As a group, they appeared to be African/Amerindian/Portuguese/and even Dutch (the Dutch had colonized portions of the Northeastern Brazil). Even at that time when my thinking on race was very different from my thinking now, it was difficult for me to accept that these people were all black.

Now as far as the middle classes (as small as it is sadly), based on my experiences (and these are mine), they appeared lighter than the poor generally, but there was much overlap. Again many middle class people in Sergipe (mind you this is the equivalent of Mississippi in the U.S.), looked no different from many people on this message board, including the two of us. Some looked like Jennifer Lopez-meaning they were olive-complected with “European features”, but definitely had other ancestries. Others were even more ambiguous. But many of these people did not see themselves as white.

Example: One of our traveling companions had friends in the City of Belo Horizonte in central Brazilian state of Minas Gerais. We stayed with his girlfriend and her family. Her parents were originally from the state of Bahia, but described themselves as morenos. Many of her cousins looked the same way: light olive of very dark olive skin tones with straight hair and angular features, almost like a person from India. Yet I met some of their friends who I presumed were middle class as well, but these people looked more like you or me. Based on my observations, there didn’t appear to be a hard and fast rule that middle class people have a certain complexion, though the well to do were generally whiter than everyone else. In summation, people who were not wealthy were very diverse in appearance, though distinctly black people were less common. The poor were also diverse in appearance, but distinctly black people more common but not the majority. Different Brazilian cities or regions may be different and in Belo Horizonte, I saw a few distinctly black middle class people.

I’m at work, so I’m not able to look at the pics you posted, but I will say that the current president of Brazil is white (sort of) and comes from a desperately poor background. His whiteness didn’t guarantee him the presidency, and
he is as white as the former president who definitely not poor.

In the end, racism exists in Brazil, but the place is so class-bound and jumbled up genetically, that there is less racial tension than there is here. Personally, there were things on the racial front in Brazil I liked and disliked, but I do not think it would be prudent for Brazil to adopt a more U.S. approach to race. That would be disastrous for many reasons.


I’ll look at the pics when I get home and post some of the pics of my trip to Brazil, especially some of the folks I worked with so you can get a feel for how the people look."

Give a monkey a typewriter and he will write an essay on respect to differences
Give an American Joe Schmo a computer and he will tell you how every country should become a copy of America.

Here are some subsquent relpies back and forth to one another in Private Message. Again I was given permission to repost these on here by the party I was conversing with. Are convo is regarding the flogao.com photo link I sent him as well posted on here:


HIM: "BTW, I just looked at the pictures. Some of these darker women would be middle class, some not. You probably wouldn't see many of them amongst the wealthy.

The lighter, "white" girls you'd probably see in the middle class rather than the lower classes, but it's not like Brazil is devoid of poor white women. There are alot of them in the country, just like here. Of course there are loads of poor Aryan-looking women in the southern part of Brazil, but people like that predominate.

I'll post some of my pics from Brazil so you can see the broad cross section of phenotypes among the desperately poor folks amongst whom I worked."


ME: "@ bold: I'm amazed you say that. I was expecting - hell I was certain - all the young ladies from dark brown to white would at least be middle class (upper middle class in relation to the U.S.). None of them have the outward attributes of broke down poverty. The way they dress (mean "material consumption"/consumerism) and their smiles denote middle class attributes to me of what I imagine of Brazil. Hell many black lower middle class neigborhoods in the midwest here, are much harder in the face, less inviting and friendly, bespeaking ready to fight and war."


HIM: "One can infer from my statement that it would be difficult to determine class background of many Brazilians by looking at their skin tone. I guess that's what I was trying to convey. So, yes, if we look at things beyond skin tone/complexion-demeanor, attitude, healthy teeth (ha-ha)-all of these women could be /are members of the middle class or at least they are not part of the desperately poor. I was looking strictly at skin color and not other less obvious markers of class (like many in the U.S.), which you were doing. That’s insightful on your part and overlooked by many. May I suggest in posting your responses to people about this issue you address this fact that there are other physical markers of class to which we don’t pay attention.

I guess what I was saying and what you were implying was skin color alone does not determine a person’s class position in Brazilian society. Though the wealthy are more or less exclusively white, everybody else is multihued. Naturally this varies from place to place. The south is much whiter than the rest if the country."

Give a guy 6 months in Brazil and he will think he is an expert. Have you been to the South? Have you contacted German, Polish, Ukranian, Russian, Spanish... descendants?

Have you been a boy, a teen in Brazil? Have you learned the Brazilian folklore songs? Do you know the Brazilian history? Have you learned to like football as a Brazilian does? Would you react to a situation as a Brazilian would?
I had an American friend for 40 years - he is dead now - He learned a lot about Brazil. He got married to a Brazilan woman. He was very well welcomed by people he met.HE NEVER STOPPED BEING AN AMERICAN IN MOST WAYS.
Anyway, he had good qualities and I became his friend.

Quote:

"Corruption by officials was rampant. One could see bribes being passed in public for mundane things like a seat on a train that was “full”. I even had a customs officer offer to give me money to buy something for him from the duty free shop at the airport."


Reply:

One of the young men on another message board I belong too, is Canadian and East Indian. In a thread about India - pointing out its good and beautiful attributes I might add, along with some less flatering things about it - he seemed to express a bitterness or resentment towards India, including regarding his last trip there. But one of the big things he seemed to express animosity for - and I'm speaking of the tone of his writing - was about the corruption. If memory service me correct he made some snearing remark that once you enter India be prepared to start paying off the police and et cetera.

The day American whites accept American blacks and miscegenate widely, I will believe in US equality.
Being a dicotomic country (blacks on one side and whites on the other side ) reflects the pending problem.
Brazil has been mixing up races and colors for 500 years and this has caused a complexion you cannot clearly define.
However, you can absolutely say that every new day Brazil is becoming less and less black.
In 100 years the US will still be grappling with the white X black discussionBy then, Brazil will have been out of it for a long time.

Cite a country where there is no corruption. You can be corrupt fo US$100.00 as well you can be corrupt for 100 billion dollars.

Could you , please, tell us how it is in Mars. I suppose you haven´t also been there.
How about Indonesia, have you been there? How is it in there?
Maybe you could, enlighten us about planet Venus -such a romantic word - I suppose you have not been there yet, but you have read about it, haven´t you?
Ha.- sorry I can´t laugh freely. You are not just funny.

cite = name

Go Brazil,
Americans, go... home.

Bye. I had too much for today.

quote:

"Does Brazil have hundreds of thousands, or even millions, of people dying each year from starvation? I think not."

See...right there!! Seriously, a LOT of you people are IGNORANT about brazil!

Brazil DOES have hundreds of thousands that die every year due to malnourishment and a lack of access to suitable drinking water!

This is FACT!

Now, I DID NOT say STARVATION.....i said MALNOURISHMENT, and the effects therof, AS WELL AS a lack of access to suitable drinking water.

Brazil has an estimated 40 MILLION of its own citizens, that equals 20% of its population, that is "threatened by hunger".

Go to Fome Zero's own website, that is the brazilian program to eradicate hunger.


http://www.fomezero.gov.br/


quote:

"I´m so used to foreigners saying bad things about Brazil..."

So now you know how it feels to be an american.


quote:

"Do you think that being in Brazil for eight years make you an authority on Brazil? "

I don't know about an authority, but in my eight years here, and started travelling here 12 years ago for the first time, since then I've had and have 3 businesses here in brazil, have been married to a brazilian, have brazilian children, so I would say that in many aspects, in particular business aspects, ie. much of the bureaucracy that exists here in brazil, that I'm more familiar than many brazilians themselves.

I'm no self-prclaimed expert, but I certainly know a helluva lot more than many that post here that have taken their "gringo tour" to Rio staying in Copa Cabana and thinking "this is brazil".

There's even one poster here that has admittedly never stepped foot in the country yet talks about it like she's lived here all her life.

Also I'm familiar with other cultures and countries, first world countries, in which I've spent decades. So I have several reference points to compare things to. The vast majority of brazilians naturally are not familiar with other cultures, haven't spent years and years in other countries, and don't have other reference points to compare their reality to.

Speaking generally, I know that it's possible for large countries to have good infrastructure, education available for everyone, an attitude of respect for others and the law, and enforcement of the law.

Many brazilians think that the reality in brazil is "normal" because they have nothing else to compare it to.

quote:

"Cite a country where there is no corruption. You can be corrupt fo US$100.00 as well you can be corrupt for 100 billion dollars. "

You are correct, there is corruption in all countries, BUT, certainly not to the degree and level that exists in brazil.

As far as corruption is concerned brazil takes a backseat to no one, the countries that rival brazil in corruption are dictator led countries in africa.

But the worse part about corruption in brazil is the IMPUNITY. It is the reason that it continues. There are even laws that protect brazilian politicians from prosecution for many things that an average citizen would be prosecuted for....THIS IS WRONG!

Being a politician in brazil is literally having a license to steal. Why not?? If caught you won't go to jail, not for more than a few days, and that's only when it's something that is flagrantly corrupt. Maluf steals over 450 MILLION DOLLARS and spends 40 days in jail?

I'll bet he'll never serve another day. Hell, he may even run for mayor of sao paulo again.

Fernando Collar was talking about running for mayor of sao paulo several years ago after he stole 200 million dollars and had to resign the presidency!

And now PT...the party who for years and years said they were different, that they weren't corrupt. And look what happens, the largest corruption scandal in brazilian history.

I recently saw a report made by a branch of the brazilian federal government that confirmed that corruption exists in 77% of all brazilian municipalities!!!

SEVENTY-SEVEN PERCENT! That is not just "a little corruption", that is a PLAUGE of corruption. Any country, not only brazil, where corruption is so widely perpetrated is going to have drastic effects on its economy and it's society as a whole sooner or later.

If brazil doesn't do something significant in respect to reducing corruption soon we're going to have a lot more than just the PCC burning a hundred buses in sao paulo....you can be certain of it.

Check out the white house and you will find out where corruption begins in america.
By the way, you now have over 5000 deand and over 10,000 injured. - Sorry, I am so sorry for them. They are/were innocent , young people . - Ah. I´m also sorry for the 100,000 iraquis assassinated.
Oh., yes, have you ever heard the name enron, petroleum, alaska forests, stealth flights over Europe?

Re: they have nothing wlkse to compare it to.

We have america. We have the american multi-corporations, we have american politicians ( how many american presidents have died aup to now? ) , we the frontier guards who are bribed to let foreigners in, we have the american starlets who agree to be f**ked so that they get ahead, we have sinatra-mafia, we have american box-mafia, we have, we have ... no time left.
I give you an advice. Open up your todays newspapers. Read them inteligently. (if you can ) You will find out a new world.
Who knows you give up bugging the readers and find out a new direction in your life.

quote:

"Oh., yes, have you ever heard the name enron, petroleum, alaska forests, stealth flights over Europe? "

Hey bozo...stealth flights over europe isn't corruption, lol. Either is "the alaskan forests"...that's destroying the environment, not corruption.

And about enron, terrible thing, unquestionably. But do you see the CEO's of Enron on trial??? You bet your ass you do, and they will likely get years in prison....

Try coming to brazil and your own elected congressmen, senators, mayors have hundreds of millions of DOLLARS of public money in Swiss bank accounts!!

And in a country where 20% of the population is "threatened" by hunger....truly disgraceful!

And to the above poster...think it's once again the little african girl...once again....your dribble isn't even coherent!

The people on flogao will be middle or upper class in Brazil as they have access to technology, digital cameras and the internetat home, plus the educatiion to use it. The class situation in Brazil is more complex (and more henous) than the colour. There is plenty of interatial mixing - parents often have kids of different colour - but there is hardly any interclass mixing.

Don't believe the hype. I am an American. Yes racial relations are f-cked up here but they are f-cked up in Brazil too. Why are you trying to "become less black". Why do you see no black faces on tv? Why is the highest paid Brazilian entertainer a white blonde female? Why few whites in the favela?

Sure the races mix in Brazil. When most black women are employed as live in domestic help I guess race mixing is the result.

Say what you will. I am not denying that race relations don't suck here but they suck in Brazil too. White Brazilian men seldom marry black women. They just use them sexually and let the little mixed bastards from those matings roam the streets of Brazil homeless and hungry. This is what Brazil calls "positive" race relations.

Quote:

"The people on flogao will be middle or upper class in Brazil as they have access to technology, digital cameras and the internetat home, plus the educatiion to use it. The class situation in Brazil is more complex (and more henous) than the colour. There is plenty of interatial mixing - parents often have kids of different colour - but there is hardly any interclass mixing."


Reply:

This would make much more sense given that I see *very many* dark young women posting and possing on flogao.com. Compared to the commentary that only white people in Brazil are middle class or better and fate for some one dark (morena to mulatta or darker) is abject poverty.

So I can much easier accept your answer - which jibes with what I hear about Brazilian classism anyways.

Quote:

"Say what you will. I am not denying that race relations don't suck here but they suck in Brazil too. White Brazilian men seldom marry black women. They just use them sexually and let the little mixed bastards from those matings roam the streets of Brazil homeless and hungry. This is what Brazil calls "positive" race relations."


Reply:

There are plenty of mulattas or morenas on flogao.com dressed and living like what seems to me clearly middle class standards at minimum. Meaning they are being raised in said households of soci-economic level, or have obtained the level on their own.

You should be aware, I'm not the only mulatto in the U.S. (and there are some in Europe too) who will not trust the negative words of white and black gringos concerning mixed Brazilians. I have met more than one black American woman that has flatly told me she wish nothing to do with men of my color. So many of us are aware of the low opinion many of you white and black gringos have of us. Some of us prefer to cast our lots with the growing latino empire in the U.S. strecthing into Latin America. As the song from the England soccer (football) movie "Green Street Hooligans" says:

"One Blood."

Sooooooo stupid to take the example,prices, salaries of 30 years ago.

Do you believe that Brazil was any better then ???????????????????????

Brazil is susch a great country that even today there is hunger and under nourrished citizens by the tens of millions.
This doesnt stop them to export US$ 40 billions annually in agriculture.......INSTEAD OF FEEDING THEIR SOCIETY FIRST !!!!!!!

This is Brazil : everything for a few, the rest for the vast majority !

I am from India myself and have been to Brazil 5 times (once every year since 2000) though I live in the USA.I spent 3 weeks every time. I have a few friends originally from brazil and actually spent a few days in the homes of two of their families.

First of all I fail to see the relevancy between the actual article contents and mention of India.

Secondly yes,
Misery is present everywhere in India to a scale where Brazil is far better. In India, your life is worth nothing if you are poor.I have never seen people starving to death in Brazil. In India, such things would not even get the back pages in a newspaper.

Please do keep in mind that the Indian community in the USA is somewhat of an artificial entity and does not represent a cross-section of India in general.
Of course, you would not even be able to come to the USA from India unless you have a certain level of education and wealth.

However the one thing that I did find different is the level of violence in Brazil. I am actually from Bombay itself and despite being much poorer(say compared to Rio), violent crime is rare and Bombay is largely safe to the general public even in the bad areas.

However corruption (especially extortion and racketeering) is omni-present.

quote:

"Don't believe the hype. I am an American. Yes racial relations are f-cked up here but they are f-cked up in Brazil too. Why are you trying to "become less black". Why do you see no black faces on tv? Why is the highest paid Brazilian entertainer a white blonde female? Why few whites in the favela?"


This question needs to be answered satisfactorily for brazil to claim they are not a racist society.

Why are 90% of the extremely poor, those making less than 2 dollars a day, black?

Coincidence?

"Which begs the question is gringo animosity against Brazil rooted in not just prejudice against Latino's but in the fact Brazil is not as docile to and ass kissing to the U.S. as India is"?

You get what you give, you spout ridiculous insults, thats what you get in return. Yea I am really anxious to be friends with any idoit that spends his time insulting me.

I lived and worked in Brazil for a very short time, but I love the country, the people, the music and did I mention the people. So yea Brazil has become a free fire zone in Rio and Sao Paulo. But there is a Brazil outside of Bahia, RIo and Sao Paulo, that Brazil is made up of some of the warmest, giving and fun people I have meet in any country. Sex tourists never see the real Brazil or meet real Brazilians.

The US is not just NYC, Philly, Chicago and LA. Bye the way race realations in the US are big buisness, people/groups make millions off race baiting and claims of racial inequality. So no matter how much race relations have changed it will never be enough and there will always be bad press. Pass a law preventing people/groups from making money off equal opportunity and race baiting, bet the news reports how good race relations are in this country.

Quote:

"I am from India myself and have been to Brazil 5 times (once every year since 2000) though I live in the USA.I spent 3 weeks every time. I have a few friends originally from brazil and actually spent a few days in the homes of two of their families.

First of all I fail to see the relevancy between the actual article contents and mention of India.

Secondly yes,
Misery is present everywhere in India to a scale where Brazil is far better. In India, your life is worth nothing if you are poor.I have never seen people starving to death in Brazil. In India, such things would not even get the back pages in a newspaper.

Please do keep in mind that the Indian community in the USA is somewhat of an artificial entity and does not represent a cross-section of India in general.
Of course, you would not even be able to come to the USA from India unless you have a certain level of education and wealth.

However the one thing that I did find different is the level of violence in Brazil. I am actually from Bombay itself and despite being much poorer(say compared to Rio), violent crime is rare and Bombay is largely safe to the general public even in the bad areas.

However corruption (especially extortion and racketeering) is omni-present."


Reply:

Please understand, from my stand point I was not attempting to bash India, even though she has some significant injustices.

But India, China, and Brazil are often mentioned as three nation that are expected to become finacially powerful nations to influence the globe in the future. So one of my reason for comparing India with Brazil was to show it is hypocritical for U.S. opinion to gove accolades to India (in light of her great inequality) yet bash Brazil as one of the worse nations (or worst nation) on earth. I also hoped to present some information to show Brazilians that they can learn from the Indians by investing in the education of its young people.

All this has correlations to "quality of life" which the article by Sue Branford has implicit implications in.

Quote:

"
"Don't believe the hype. I am an American. Yes racial relations are f-cked up here but they are f-cked up in Brazil too. Why are you trying to "become less black". Why do you see no black faces on tv? Why is the highest paid Brazilian entertainer a white blonde female? Why few whites in the favela?"


This question needs to be answered satisfactorily for brazil to claim they are not a racist society.

Why are 90% of the extremely poor, those making less than 2 dollars a day, black?

Coincidence? "


Reply:

"Black" is a subjective term. According to the U.S. I'm "Black." Which is ironic since I'm half white German and don't look anything like a Bantu.

So depending on how one quantifies "Black" will determine if 90% or 5% of Brazilian poor are Black. Its subjectively rationalization. Some of those young ladies in the flogao links are darker than I am. Yet I'm "Black" in the U.S. and though they are darker than me they are not considered "Black" in Brazil.

Quoted:

" 'Which begs the question is gringo animosity against Brazil rooted in not just prejudice against Latino's but in the fact Brazil is not as docile to and ass kissing to the U.S. as India is?'

You get what you give, you spout ridiculous insults, thats what you get in return. Yea I am really anxious to be friends with any idoit that spends his time insulting me.

I lived and worked in Brazil for a very short time, but I love the country, the people, the music and did I mention the people. So yea Brazil has become a free fire zone in Rio and Sao Paulo. But there is a Brazil outside of Bahia, RIo and Sao Paulo, that Brazil is made up of some of the warmest, giving and fun people I have meet in any country. Sex tourists never see the real Brazil or meet real Brazilians.

The US is not just NYC, Philly, Chicago and LA. Bye the way race realations in the US are big buisness, people/groups make millions off race baiting and claims of racial inequality. So no matter how much race relations have changed it will never be enough and there will always be bad press. Pass a law preventing people/groups from making money off equal opportunity and race baiting, bet the news reports how good race relations are in this country."


Reply:

You have some valid points.

I think sometimes too, urban city life every where might just be filled with pricks and people trying to get over on you. I was up in a very small predominately white town not to many months ago. I became aquainted (sp?) with and friends with a few white men and women that were of a *totally* different culture than me. They drove trucks, hunted, came up small town or rural, one was Protestant, and they listened to different music than I did not to mention they talked much different than I did. Yet they were some of the most welcoming, accepting, and coolest people you could ever meet.

But come back to the city... and damn near every color of people you run into can be pricks. And the Black areas in which I came up in, in whom I sound like in speach, have shared experiences and similar struggles, in whom I have much more cultural similarity to, will be the first ones (generally speaking) to try to cut my throat from behind after they had already shaken my hand while standing in front of me.

quote:

""Black" is a subjective term. According to the U.S. I'm "Black." Which is ironic since I'm half white German and don't look anything like a Bantu."

Oh jesus...here we go again.

OK....90% of the people that are making less than 2 dollars a day in brazil are NOT WHITE.

Does that clarify for you?

Quote:

" 'Black" is a subjective term. According to the U.S. I'm "Black." Which is ironic since I'm half white German and don't look anything like a Bantu.'

Oh jesus...here we go again.

OK....90% of the people that are making less than 2 dollars a day in brazil are NOT WHITE.

Does that clarify for you?"


Reply:

Yes it clarifies it better. And I would hazard to guess racism is a contrinutor to that.

But is racism the only contributor to that? Maybe or maybe not.

However how are we framing this issue of race in our minds, and what means "racism" to us. In your previous post you stated 90% of the poor making $2 a day or less are *black.* If 85% of those people looked like Mariah Carey and 5% of them looked like Pele does that constitute the sole factor being racism? What is the factor between "Old Money" and the "Ne Rich" in Brazil? If the New Rich are skyrocketing in numbers, how long has this phenomina been going on? What are the family backgrounds of these poor people making $2 a day or less? Did half of them come from middle class backgrounds in Brazil, but due to racism were forced into the very bottom of society? What percentage of these people that make $2 a day or less have skill trades in high demand or college education?

Brazil does not operate on the "One Drop Rule" but places like the United States and Britan do. If we reversed the "One Drop Rule" 90% of those peoples in Brazil living off of $2 a day or less could more than likely be considered *white.*

But I'm wondering how many of those people making $2 a day or less are actually classified as "Black" in Brazil? How many are classified as "Pardo" or something else? I guess that would be my question.


I'm cutting and pasting this from another site I was one, it's an excerpt from an article, on the illogic of the "One Drop Rule" that so many North Americans believe to be biological fact.

'I was originally interested, however, in discovering when children learn the one-drop rule precisely because it has no basis in biology. Dark skin doesn't genetically dominate lighter shades. Common sense in this regard is insensible. The absurdity of the biological reading of the one-drop rule is obvious if we rephrase it. How reasonable is it to say that a white woman can give birth to a black baby but a black woman can't give birth to a white baby? Obviously, not very reasonable.'

well, if you believe the census' in brazil then nearly 60% of brazil's own population classify themselves as "white".

VERY few people in brazil claffify themselves as "negro", or black. Many with the skin color of Pele, who would be considered black in every other country on the planet, classify themselves as "moreno".

Why the negative stigma of being classified "negro" or "negra"?

Why does brazil want to portray it's image as if the people here look like they were born in Sweden or in the heartland of the U.S.? The models here are white, blue eyes, blond or light brown hair. Those are certainly not typical brazilian characteristics.

"BRAZIL STOP SENDING YOUR ILLEGALS TO THE U.S.A.!!!!WE ARE ABOUT TO "'RETURN TO SENDER" !!!!!!!!"

Oh the defenders of "free-market is a must everywhere" closing their borders!

Oh the ironing!

Quote:

"well, if you believe the census' in brazil then nearly 60% of brazil's own population classify themselves as "white".

VERY few people in brazil claffify themselves as "negro", or black. Many with the skin color of Pele, who would be considered black in every other country on the planet, classify themselves as "moreno".

Why the negative stigma of being classified "negro" or "negra"?

Why does brazil want to portray it's image as if the people here look like they were born in Sweden or in the heartland of the U.S.? The models here are white, blue eyes, blond or light brown hair. Those are certainly not typical brazilian characteristics.


Reply:

True the majority of Brazil polls itself as white. However it would be disingenuous to portray the majority of non-white Brazilians as predominately black, in the sense of Wesly Snipes or Oprah Winfrey. And Brazil believes in one race: the homo sapien sapien. Within the one race their is a wide variety of *types* - this is a more accurate view of Brazilian race structures I believe.

Brazil *types* people according to a range of things such as hair type, facial features, and not just skin color. This actually jibes more accurately with modern anthropology on the issue of "race." Brazil also takes the added step of allowing the persons socio-economic class to factor into their identification of race, which is where a clearer picture of Brazil's racism and classism is illuminated.

I've observed through what I have read on Brazil and from some of the past comments of Brazilians on here to me, that terms like "negro" and "mullato" infere social behavior and class in the Brazilian imagination and not biological inferiority per se. So in other words black Brazilian women, per biological, would historically be viewed and depicted as sensual and beautiful female women, same thing with the mulatta. However, it's *blackness* and measure of, denotes a social behavior in the Brazilian mind. I think partly perhaps, due to the roll baptism historically played socially in Brazil. Black slaves that accepted Baptism were socially elevated above non-baptized black slaves, one was considered civilized but still a slave if baptized. If not baptized one was regarded as both a slave and a barabarian - per black African customs. Likewise the mulatta was consider sensual and sexy but socially untrust worthy.

So racism has existed and exists in Brazil, but that does not mean in the same context as that of the United States. And I'm not about to start arguing which is better or worse. However one can't judge Brazil properly through U.S. social conventions. In the U.S. blacks for instance have historically been portrayed as ugly, stupid, and closer to monkeys than humans. Hence today in the U.S. no matter how much money a black person makes, he or she is still considered a "porch monkey" to some whites. Because in U.S. eyes everything is simply at the biological level, so mulattos are often thought half the ability of either whites or blacks.

Models are models... run by a predominately gay male designers that prefer women to look like flat chest, stright-up and down, pre-pubescent boys I might add. Mexico, India, Nigeria, Brazil, all take the lightests females with the most Euro-centric features to model. Brazil is hardly the most racist nation on earth. Hell even the Japanese idealize euro-centric features - just look at their mangas and the number of people that go in for plastic surgery to make their eyes less slanted.

I have been told that in Brazil, by way I look, I would be officialy classified as "pardo." However I would be considered mulatto, yet people would refer to me as "moreno" so as not to *offend* me. So I am to get overly worked up and emotional about the fact in Brazil I'm to flee from being identified as "mulatto" as another dark person is about "negro"?

Brazil appreciates her mulatta and especially morena composition to Brazilian society. And unlike the United States she has never disparged the bubble butts of the negra.

"Black" like "mulatto" are terms orginating from the Europeans. Most of black Africa did not run around identifying themselves as "black" prior to the Europeans. Kind of like Europeans at one time did not run around identifying themselves as "white." People identified themselves by their tribe, ethniticy, or nation at onetime. So I find it a matter of personal power to identify myself as I choose likewise the same going for Brazilian whether want to call themselves negro or not.

quote:

"Oh the defenders of "free-market is a must everywhere" closing their borders!

Oh the ironing!"


Funny you titled your comments as you did. Because if you only knew how ignorant, and so stupid your comments sounded that I really did actually laugh.

A "free market" has absolutely NOTHING, ZERO, ZILCH, to do with being irrelevant to millions of illegals existing in ones country.

Every single country on the planet has laws, rules, regulations concerning immigration, legal and illegal.

And you can bet your ass on this, that the VAST MAJORITY of countries have STRICTER guidelines to become a resident, or citizen, than the United States.

Did you know in brazil to become a PERMANENT RESIDENT, that means having a "permanent visa", you basically have TWO options.

1.) Marry a brazilian

2.) Invest a minimum of 50,000 DOLLARS - And, this amount was just recently lowered from 250 thousand DOLLARS!

So, since brazil has been a big advocate of reciprocity, wouldn't it only be fair for the U.S. to do the same to brazilians wanting a green card?

In the history of the U.S. it has accepted the poor and downtrodden, as well as people politically persecuted from all over the world. Today it is a different story, and any human could understand why when there are 12-20 MILLION of ILLEGALS in the country.

Brazil doesn't want you to have residency in their country if you're a foreigner....UNLESS you have money!!

So if you want a residency in brazil, you better plan on marrying a brazilian, OR investing 50K!

quote:

"Oh the ironing!"


LOL...got a lot of laundry to do eh?

hehehehe

"So, since brazil has been a big advocate of reciprocity, wouldn't it only be fair for the U.S. to do the same to brazilians wanting a green card? "

I don't think you are building an apartheid wall to keep Brazilians away...

It's nice to see you attempt at manipulating the reality: americans are lying thieves, who like to preach not only about "free-markets" but also "freedom & democracy" to those who are dumb enough not to diferentiate empty discourses from hard actions.

Laugh away. You got the "power" don't you?

Integrity, however, you are going to die without.

But you don't care. You care for your brand new house!

And your repressive murderous military "toys".

"LOL...got a lot of laundry to do eh?

hehehehe "

Canadian eh?

No I am being sarcastically adolescent like americans looove to be while they SERIOUSLY kill! kill! kill!

Quote 'Brazil is susch a great country that even today there is hunger and under nourrished citizens by the tens of millions.
This doesnt stop them to export US$ 40 billions annually in agriculture.......INSTEAD OF FEEDING THEIR SOCIETY FIRST !!!!!!!

You sound a f**king commie c**k sucker, tis called capitilism buddy if they dont export how they can pay the bank IDIOT RED FAG'

BRAZIL I DO NOT CARE IF YOU ROT IN YOUR OWN FILTH ,CORRUPTION ,CRIME ,INFERIORITY COMPLEX ,DISEASE ,IMPOTENCE, MARXISM ,SOCIALISM,ANTI AMERICANISM,CULTURE OF THIEVES,BANKRUPTCY,WORSHIP OF DEAD MARXISTS (CHE GUEVARA),DELUSIONS, IGNORANCE,ETC. JUST STOP SENDING YOUR ILLEGAL ALIENS TO THE U.S.A.! FOR WE ARE ABOUT TO " RETURN TO SENDER"!!!!!!!

Quote: BRAZIL I DO NOT CARE IF YOU ROT IN YOUR OWN FILTH ,CORRUPTION ,CRIME ,INFERIORITY COMPLEX ,DISEASE ,IMPOTENCE, MARXISM ,SOCIALISM,ANTI AMERICANISM,CULTURE OF THIEVES,BANKRUPTCY,WORSHIP OF DEAD MARXISTS (CHE GUEVARA),DELUSIONS, IGNORANCE,ETC. JUST STOP SENDING YOUR ILLEGAL ALIENS TO THE U.S.A.! FOR WE ARE ABOUT TO " RETURN TO SENDER"!!!!!!!

I am understnad that you are worried that you and your familly are too lazy to compete with intelligent and hardworking immigrants. Maybe you should spend less time here and got back to school. With a High School diploma you may be able to stop mopping floors, cleaning toilets, sponging off welfare or whatever you do to scrape a living.

"BRAZIL I DO NOT CARE IF YOU ROT IN YOUR OWN FILTH ,CORRUPTION ,CRIME ,INFERIORITY COMPLEX ,DISEASE ,IMPOTENCE, MARXISM ,SOCIALISM,ANTI AMERICANISM,CULTURE OF THIEVES,BANKRUPTCY..."

An american preaching about thieves and bankruptcy... Hello Eron!

Ugly mass-murderous hypocrites.

quote:

""So, since brazil has been a big advocate of reciprocity, wouldn't it only be fair for the U.S. to do the same to brazilians wanting a green card? "

I don't think you are building an apartheid wall to keep Brazilians away... "


No, not building an apartheid wall. But is brazil??

So if we take the SAME ACTIONS in respect to immigration AS BRAZIL....we're building an apartheid wall??

So you've confirmed the "unfair" immigration practices used in brazil as well as the hipocritical stance held by brazilians in respect to this topic by that very characterization.

Afterall, what's good for the goose is good for the gander isn't it?

quote:

"It's nice to see you attempt at manipulating the reality: americans are lying thieves, who like to preach not only about "free-markets" but also "freedom & democracy" to those who are dumb enough not to diferentiate empty discourses from hard actions."

Freedom and democracy doesn't mean that United States, or ANY COUNTRY ON THE PLANET has an "open door" policy in respect to immigration!

If you can't go through the DEMOCRATICALLY ELECTED immigration procedures, and obtain your residency or citizenship LEGALLY, then the United States, or whatever other country in the world, has the LAWFUL RIGHT to refuse, deport, or detain, said offenders.

Do you understand that Scooby?

Have to love people like yourself that believe the U.S. should have hundreds of millions of illegals, let's just welcome EVERYBODY, and destroy the U.S.?

NO COUNTRY IN THE WORLD DOES THAT!

AND COUNTRIES LIKE BRAZIL ARE MUCH MORE DIFFICULT TO OBTAIN PERMANENT DOCUMENTS THAN THE U.S.!!

QUOTE:

"An american preaching about thieves and bankruptcy... Hello Eron!

Ugly mass-murderous hypocrites."

Praytell, what nationality are YOU??

Please don't say brazilian, I don't want to break something falling off my chair in laughter!

What will us gringos do when global warming and an impending ice age trash the northern hemispere?

TO THE POSTER CLAIMING "IMMIGRANTS IN THE USA ARE INTELLIGENT HARDWORKING WITH A HIGH SCHOOL DIPLOMA. " MAYBE LEGAL ONES WHO CAN SPEAK ENGLISH. BUT OF COURSE THAT IS EXACTLY THE RESPONSE YOU GET FROM A ILLEGAL BRAZILIAN IN THE USA. A TOTAL DISREGARD FOR THE LAWS, THE ABSOLUTE INABILITIE TO BE TRUTHFUL, THE INATE PROPENSITY TO FRAUD . DISRESPECT TO THE COUNTRY IN WHICH THEY THEMSELVES ENTERED ILLEGALY.AND A TOTAL DISREGARD FOR THAT COUNTRYS LAWS. AND AS FAR AS MOPPING FLOORS,CLEANING TOILETS,SPONGING OFF WELFARE,THAT IS EXACTLY WHAT ILLEGALS DO IN THE US . AND THEIR EMPLOYERS? OTHER ILLEGALS "AMIGOS IN CRIMINAL SOCIETE" ! THE WORD WHICH ILLEGALS DO NOT COMPREHENDO IS >>>>>>>> ILLEGAL!!!!!!! FRAUD!!!!!! TAX LAW!!!!! IDENTITY THEFT!!!! ILLEGAL MONEY TRANSFER!!!!!! TRAFFICKING!!!!!!!! ETC,ETC,ETC, CAN ANY SANE AMERICAN EXPECT ANY OTHER RESPONSE FROM A LYING ,THIEVING ,FRAUDING,CRIMINAL,A BLOOD SUCKING PARASITE ,THE ANSWER TO THAT QUESTION IS OBVIOUS ! ARREST!!!! IMPRISON!!!!!! DEPORT!!!!!!!!

i don't know why anyone want to live in the US legally, I was there legally on an assignment and i left in 2 months instead of staying for a year...it's a f**kin hell hole, americans are bucnk of greedy motherf**kers, they wrok like a f**kin dog all day and then go home and watch tv , they only live for 3 things, a house an SUV and a big TV with 400 sports chanels,they work with their sweat and blood to pay for these things, they have no f**kin life no family values just plain greed , just stay in your countries even if you are poor believe me you are better off

I meant why anyone want to live in the US illegally

quote:

" don't know why anyone want to live in the US legally, I was there legally on an assignment and i left in 2 months instead of staying for a year...it's a f**kin hell hole, americans are bucnk of greedy motherf**kers, they wrok like a f**kin dog all day and then go home and watch tv , they only live for 3 things, a house an SUV and a big TV with 400 sports chanels,they work with their sweat and blood to pay for these things, they have no f**kin life no family values just plain greed , just stay in your countries even if you are poor believe me you are better off..."

well, I sure wish you could do a better job convincing the 12-20 million illegals in the U.S. that currently exist!

And thousands more come everyday.

I seriously and wholeheartedly wish you the best of luck with convincing illegals to "stay at home", but it doesn't look like people with your same thoughts are having much success.

Obviously, having a meager existance in the U.S. is a much better reality than where they came from.

By the way, sounds like you went to the U.S. to work for a year?? But came home after a couple months? Couldn't cut the mustard huh? They fire your lazy ass?

quote:

"What will us gringos do when global warming and an impending ice age trash the northern hemispere?"

Only the northern hemisphere?

You need to study a little more. All the fluorocarbons and carbon monoxide produced by the U.S. is going to be NOTHING compared to the Amazon forest being destroyed!

And just who's job is it to protect the Amazon?? It IS in brazil....isn't it?

But brazil can't even control their two main financial and tourist centers...Sao Paulo and Rio de Janeiro....organized crime calls the shots there....so why should the Amazon be any different?

"They fired your lazy ass?"

Yes they did...

And then they went "golfing".

Dumb parrot.

"CAN ANY SANE AMERICAN EXPECT ANY OTHER RESPONSE FROM A LYING ,THIEVING ,FRAUDING,CRIMINAL,A BLOOD SUCKING PARASITE ,THE ANSWER TO THAT QUESTION IS OBVIOUS ! ARREST!!!! IMPRISON!!!!!! DEPORT!!!!!!!!"

If only the world could do the same to america...

Iraq should deport them all.

quote:

""They fired your lazy ass?"

Yes they did...

And then they went "golfing". "

Those are the "perks" of being the boss!

"Those are the "perks" of being the boss! "

So your argument is a fallacy.

(..As they usually are from americans.)

Dumb parrots.

Obviously the U.S.A. SUPERPOWER and U.S.A.OBSERVER posts are from the same person. Pay no attention to this clown. He’s a leatherneck who whacks off to the flag while singing god bless America. Probably got an STD from a hooker. Assumes she was from South America so now he feels the need to vent his anger at Brazilians. Not all people from the U.S. feel the way he does. The few that share his views will be dealt with. And Mr. Superpower Observer, she was white trash with lots dark makeup on. Couldn’t you tell? You should have worn a jacket!

Uncle Sam is a whore with a strap-on. It’s a shame the people of both of these countries are having their asses pimped by their own government.

This is from an American who stopped buying the s**t they try to sell us a long time ago.

I’m a cop who gets paid by a ten year old coke dealer. He says he looks up to me.

India and China are a good example of uncheck population growth. The world doesn't have enough resources to give the people in these countries a high standard of living. The conditions in Brazil might be bad if you compare them to North America but, not India and China.

"Uncle Sam is a whore with a strap-on. It’s a shame the people of both of these countries are having their asses pimped by their own government. '

The DIFFERENCE is that we IMPEACHED *ours*.

What have you DONE besides talking (WHEN you talk)?

Tell me, please.

In Brazil there is a stigma attached to you if you are black. Therefore, for a long time most black Brazilians refused to call themselves black. In former president Cardoso's book he talks about the black social clubs in Brazil. Before TV de Gente went on the air, you would not see a black face on TV. Now, all of the stations are rushing to put non-whites on TV. In Brazil, you could be arrested if you complainted about racial discrimination in a business. In the USA, we developed an educated class of blacks who latter tried to up lift other blacks. In Brazil, you could not do that because the lines were not drawn the same way. If you think that was bad, Brazil was rule by one bloody dictator after another and took away the rights of everyone except the small whit ruling class. By the way Lula is the first leader that didn't come from that white ruling class and that is why he is despised by them. Finally, for one to understand Brazil and it's racial setup, one must look at this country history.

quote:

"The conditions in Brazil might be bad if you compare them to North America but, not India and China."

There are conditions that exist for many brazilians that are just as bad as anywhere on the planet. Living in tents made out of sticks and plastic trash bags in the dirt/mud. Naturally no running water, no sanitation facilities, and living alongside highways.

Quote: "In the USA, we developed an educated class of blacks who latter tried to up lift other blacks."

Reply: "We"? That would imply you are of the U.S.


Quote: "In Brazil, you could not do that because the lines were not drawn the same way."

Reply: And yet there are dark Brazilians living middle class and plenty of black Americans in the U.S. prison system.

Quote: "By the way Lula is the first leader that didn't come from that white ruling class and that is why he is despised by them."

Reply: And yet what is interesting is that President Lula came from hard poverty, selling peanuts in the street as a child, to working in a factory & lossing a finger, to becoming a union leader, to becoming President. Whereas Clinton and Bush, like the typical U.S. Presidents, themselves come from the university system and white collar work. The United States does not elect men that have worked, sweat, and bleed in a factory lossing a finger, to the Presidency of the United States. Let alone man that has been union leader.

From the boys that become girls (trannies), to the factory and union leader that becomes President, to the kids of the favela or jungles that win the World Cup. Anything is possible in Brazil!

"There are conditions that exist for many brazilians that are just as bad as anywhere on the planet. Living in tents made out of sticks and plastic trash bags in the dirt/mud. Naturally no running water, no sanitation facilities, and living alongside highways."

Before you show your ignorance again, I suggest that you actually visit India so that you can see for yourself.

If one of the really poor in India was lucky enough to have something of actual value such as a hefty bag, they would sell it or trade it for food.

quote:

"Quote: "By the way Lula is the first leader that didn't come from that white ruling class and that is why he is despised by them."

Reply: And yet what is interesting is that President Lula came from hard poverty, selling peanuts in the street as a child, to working in a factory & lossing a finger, to becoming a union leader, to becoming President. Whereas Clinton and Bush, like the typical U.S. Presidents, themselves come from the university system and white collar work. The United States does not elect men that have worked, sweat, and bleed in a factory lossing a finger, to the Presidency of the United States. Let alone man that has been union leader. "

What a bafoon!!! That goes to show how much history you know about the U.S.!

Anything is possible in brazil huh?

Try being born a black women in a favella and at the end of the day being worth tens of millions, or even hundreds of millions of dollars.....it's not an uncommon story in the U.S.

Please my man, the U.S. IS the country of opportunity.....it's sure as hell not brazil!

quote:

"Before you show your ignorance again, I suggest that you actually visit India so that you can see for yourself.

If one of the really poor in India was lucky enough to have something of actual value such as a hefty bag, they would sell it or trade it for food."

Before you show your ignorance of brazil....you should get acquainted with the poor of the poor in brazil.

You being so informed and all, I'm sure you know that there are thousands upon thousands that die in brazil EVERY YEAR from malnourishment and lack of excess to suitable drinking water.

I never stated that brazil was worse than India, but the worst cases in brazil equal the worst cases of anywhere on this earth.

Quote By Eric Lipton - Washington , June 26 - Among the many superlatives associated with Hurricane Katrina can now be added this one: it produced the most extraordinary displays of scams, schemes and stupefying bureaucratic bungles in modern history, costing taxpayers up to $2 billion Unquote

Quote The blatant fraud, the audacity of the schemes, the scale of the waste - it is just breathtaking, said Senator Susan Collins, Republican of Maine, and chairwoman of the Homeland Security and Gvernmental Affairs Committee. Unquote.

to the poster" bend over"...... you claim that your american?? NOW COME ON YOU !! YOU APPEAR TO BE A BRAZILIAN FAG !!!!!!! HATE AMERICA DO YOU?? OF COURSE YOU DO . AFTER ALL YOUR THIRD WORLD HELL HOLE IS 300 YEARS BEHIND THE U.S.!!! GET OVER YOUR INFERIORITY COMPLEX LITTLE ONE. I AM ENJOYING MY AMERICAN COMPUTER INVENTED BY US AND THE INTERNET ACCESS TO THE WORLD !!!!! ANOTHER AMERICAN TECH.INVENTION!! NOW TELL ME PUNK WHAT HAS YOUR COUNTRY DONE FOR THE WORLD ?????

oh i forgot you have a soccer team ..... congratulations on your win against ghana!! now i wonder how many of your fellow countrymen will actually return home? do not send them our way we have enough of you in the u.s. .... and apparently they will be soon returning as well ,it seems their illegal !!!!!!!

Quote: "What a bafoon!!! That goes to show how much history you know about the U.S.!

Anything is possible in brazil huh?"

Reply: So in your use of assertions and exclamation marks that is suppose to support all of what? Your strong emotion stringent patriotism?

President Lula is a combination of a person who arose out of abject poverty, worked in a factory, lost a finger while working in a factory, became a union leader, and then became president of one of the largest Democracies on earth (with some of the finest bunda on earth too I might add). No U.S. President was ever a union leader to my knowledge, let alone the all those attributes of Lula I mentioned combined. Certainly in modern times the United States has shown neither a propensity to move and elect intellectuals into the Presidency nor to move and elect men who have actually experienced bleeding and sweating in blue collar labor into the U.S. Presidency.

A perfect example is former President Bill Clinton, and I mean no ill intent against him, but he was hailed by much of Black America as "the first Black President of the United States," because he grew up in a fatherless home. But Bill Clinton himself arose out of the stuanch university high education system and then went into white collar work. He is quite distant in knowing what it is to sweat and bleed for your bread, unlike however President Lula (again I can't overstate his loss of a finger while laboring).

At the end of the day, Lula accomplished an astonishing feat of rise that would have proven utterly impossible in the U.S. - Infact let everyone on Brazzil.com no matter their nationality, wait and observe next Presidential elections in the U.S. and see if any of the final contenders are men that have hailed from out of solid blue collar sweat and blood jobs, if the U.S. will elect such a man into its Presidency, and see if I'm proven wrong.


Quote: "Try being born a black women in a favella and at the end of the day being worth tens of millions, or even hundreds of millions of dollars.....it's not an uncommon story in the U.S.

Please my man, the U.S. IS the country of opportunity.....it's sure as hell not brazil!"

Reply: Not uncommon huh? Yes I'm sure it happens, but it is a rarity and oddity that any Black woman born and raised in U.S. ghettos becomes worth tens and hundreds of millions of dollars.

Hell I was raised around black people and have met tons of black people from all over the U.S. from my time in the Marine Corps. And I only know personally *one* Black woman to become a millionaire. And she became that by marrying a young white dude who inherited his wealth from his father.

Just because Oprah or a few Black women come from out the ghettos of the U.S. and become multi millionairs does not mean most Black Americans are familiar with this as a common experience in their social reality. Most poor folks know poor folks. Most poor Black folks in the U.S. also know middle class Blacks. Most of them don't know rich Black folks unless it's one of the many competeing big time drug dealers that came from out their neighborhood or choose to remain in their neighborhood.

Quote: "What a bafoon!!! That goes to show how much history you know about the U.S.!

Anything is possible in brazil huh?"

Reply: So in your use of assertions and exclamation marks that is suppose to support all of what? Your strong emotion stringent patriotism?

President Lula is a combination of a person who arose out of abject poverty, worked in a factory, lost a finger while working in a factory, became a union leader, and then became president of one of the largest Democracies on earth (with some of the finest bunda on earth too I might add). No U.S. President was ever a union leader to my knowledge, let alone the all those attributes of Lula I mentioned combined. Certainly in modern times the United States has shown neither a propensity to move and elect intellectuals into the Presidency nor to move and elect men who have actually experienced bleeding and sweating in blue collar labor into the U.S. Presidency.

A perfect example is former President Bill Clinton, and I mean no ill intent against him, but he was hailed by much of Black America as "the first Black President of the United States," because he grew up in a fatherless home. But Bill Clinton himself arose out of the stuanch university high education system and then went into white collar work. He is quite distant in knowing what it is to sweat and bleed for your bread, unlike however President Lula (again I can't overstate his loss of a finger while laboring).

At the end of the day, Lula accomplished an astonishing feat of rise that would have proven utterly impossible in the U.S. - Infact let everyone on Brazzil.com no matter their nationality, wait and observe next Presidential elections in the U.S. and see if any of the final contenders are men that have hailed from out of solid blue collar sweat and blood jobs, if the U.S. will elect such a man into its Presidency, and see if I'm proven wrong.


Quote: "Try being born a black women in a favella and at the end of the day being worth tens of millions, or even hundreds of millions of dollars.....it's not an uncommon story in the U.S.

Please my man, the U.S. IS the country of opportunity.....it's sure as hell not brazil!"

Reply: Not uncommon huh? Yes I'm sure it happens, but it is a rarity and oddity that any Black woman born and raised in U.S. ghettos becomes worth tens and hundreds of millions of dollars.

Hell I was raised around black people and have met tons of black people from all over the U.S. from my time in the Marine Corps. And I only know personally *one* Black woman to become a millionaire. And she became that by marrying a young white dude who inherited his wealth from his father.

Just because Oprah or a few Black women come from out the ghettos of the U.S. and become multi millionairs does not mean most Black Americans are familiar with this as a common experience in their social reality. Most poor folks know poor folks. Most poor Black folks in the U.S. also know middle class Blacks. Most of them don't know rich Black folks unless it's one of the many competeing big time drug dealers that came from out their neighborhood or choose to remain in their neighborhood.

next month I am visiting brazil to attend a seminar, because this is my first visit to brazil I decided to do some research about the country and came across this web site.
What a bunch of losers here specially americans, you guys must have such miserable lives, you come to this site and bash brazil, if you don’t like brazil just stay away from it
What’s the point just ranting and ranting and ranting, I have traveled many countries and some of them I really hated it but I don’t go to their web sites and rant about it, no country is free of problems
get a life you guys

hey when you leave for brazil take all these illegal alien parasites with you. americans can,t afford these criminal scumbags.good luck on your research and hold on to your wallet! and do read the state departments warning to americans traveling to brazil to beware of glue sniffing pickpockets robbing foriegners for a few centivos.

hey when you leave for brazil take all these illegal alien parasites with you. americans can,t afford these criminal scumbags.good luck on your research and hold on to your wallet! and do read the state departments warning to americans traveling to brazil to beware of glue sniffing pickpockets robbing foriegners for a few centivos.

quote:

"What a bunch of losers here specially americans, you guys must have such miserable lives, you come to this site and bash brazil, if you don’t like brazil just stay away from it..."

Well, if you read the articles posted here, where many describe the vast unjustices in brazilian society, you'll see that MANY here tend to put the blame for just about anything on the U.S.

When you arrive in brazil....you'll get a taste of "gringo treatment" on your first taxicab ride! (the vast majority will charge you MORE than they would a brazilian....because you don't know any better!)

GET A LIFE YOU GUYS.
I bet you never been 100 miles away from your home.

You, who are coming to Brazil with such an open mind, are welcome.

Quote A hotel owner in Sugar Land, Tex. (What a Poetical name), has been charged with submitting $232,000 for phantom victims. And roughly 1,100 prison inmates across the Gulf Coast apparently collected more than (please, sit down).
than $10 million in rental and disaster-relief assistance.

----------------

The most I read here is that America is the land of justice and law-abiding people. Your newspapers don´t agree with this.

LOL...and obviosly hurrican katrina exposed huge holes and disorganization within FEMA....that's why it's being revamped, and possibly even eliminated!

Those prisoners received 10,000 a piece, and obviously the mistake has been CAUGHT.

What's brazil's excuse for the DAILY corruption of BILLIONS of dollars and NO ONE gets punished?

Great article, like the one on Alex Bellos' website!

quote:

"The most I read here is that America is the land of justice and law-abiding people."

And generally speaking, that statement would be CORRECT.

But people like you like to show the EXCEPTIONS to the rule, and act as if it IS the rule.

In brazil, corrupt practices ARE the rule, honesty is the EXCEPTION to the rule.

What else could one say about a country where 77% of ALL municipalities participate in corruption, and in EIGHT STATES there was a 100% rate of corrupt practices among those municipalities!

And these stats are from a BRAZILIAN FEDERAL GOV'T. SOURCE!

"LOL...and obviosly hurrican katrina exposed huge holes and disorganization within FEMA....that's why it's being revamped, and possibly even eliminated!

Those prisoners received 10,000 a piece, and obviously the mistake has been CAUGHT.

What's brazil's excuse for the DAILY corruption of BILLIONS of dollars and NO ONE gets punished?"


Sir, you are not an studious person of Brazil so being an average foreigner how do you consider yourself so prepared to judge a whole society of 500 years? Do you know how it was built, formed, organized and ruled? You know what nations had predominant roles in the course of Brazil's business? Do you know what was done in the eitheenth century when nations were competing for comodities and consumres from their colonies? These are not excuses. You just can't come to Brazil and judge from your failed moralities without trying to understand how the wealth of rich nations were formed and how this society was produced. You can't lie and hide yourself, that's simple as that.

1. it is true that lots of brasilians want to come to US and become illegals. let;s be intellectually honest about it. just talk to the consulate at brasil and you know all the trickeries brasilians use to come to US and become illegals.
2. having said #1, illegals from brasil only constitute a minor percent (may be less than 5%) of all illegals in the US. by Pew Hispanic Foundation's own research, Mexicans constitute the largest (55%) segment of all illegals.
3. we, as american, no reason to get angry with the brasilian illegals as it is OUR government which fails to defend our border and enforce existing immigration laws on the books.
4. for brasilians, as i am not one, my friendly advice is just be intellectually honest about things. a lot of the angry comments from brasilians on this posting reflect a matter of self denials, denial of economic truth of brasil, denial of extreme poverty in brasil and denial of social ills against women and minorities.
5. finally, i love brasil and the brasilian culture. however, love should not meant being blind to all the reality in brasil which is not as pretty as brasilian soccer.

"Before you show your ignorance of brazil....you should get acquainted with the poor of the poor in brazil. "

I've been throughout Brazil from the South to the Northeast. Have you?

I know the poor of Brazil, and also the poor of India. I was a volunteer at a leper colony in India, and have also tried to help people in Brazil. Have you done anything to try to help instead of complaining about how bad things are?

If you have not been to India or China, you have no basis for comparison, and are no different from the people who have been criticzed here for commenting on Brazil without ever having been there.

brazilians get so bugged out when americans fire salvos of FACTS on them in response to their ignorant rants !their vile anti U.S.A. bulls**t is hilarious.of course americans enter internet sites the world over,... because we can.....the internet is our invention ! Along with the computer!! all we hear from south america is anti usa propaganda... your criminal networks exporting illegal aliens to the U.S.A.do you think americans will let this go on without consequences.i don,t think so! we can not allow illegals to stream in from any countries and their are quite a few offenders. this is not an inditement on any entire country but a focus on the criminal traffickers in the business of document fraud,and the trafficking of illegals.

quote:

"Sir, you are not an studious person of Brazil so being an average foreigner how do you consider yourself so prepared to judge a whole society of 500 years? Do you know how it was built, formed, organized and ruled? You know what nations had predominant roles in the course of Brazil's business? Do you know what was done in the eitheenth century when nations were competing for comodities and consumres from their colonies? These are not excuses. You just can't come to Brazil and judge from your failed moralities without trying to understand how the wealth of rich nations were formed and how this society was produced. You can't lie and hide yourself, that's simple as that."

Ok, so what exactly is your justification of the plauge-like corruption AND impunity that EXISTS IN BRAZIL TODAY?

The way the portuguese settled it 500 years ago?

The military coup in the '60's that was supported by the U.S. gov't.?

I've heard it all before. And the hard facts are that brazilian politicians ARE and HAVE BEEN screwing brazilian society and their own people for DECADES now.

These politicians are elected to a position of responsibility and are supposed to be accountable to the "people", not the other way around, as it exists today.

They have even made laws that make it extremely difficult for politicians that STEAL here to be prosecuted! Who is responsible for that?

The British? The Americans? The Portuguese?

These are ALL convenient EXCUSES as to why corruption exists and is the RULE instead of the EXCEPTION to the rule.

When brazilian society DEMANDS that these politicians be RESPONSIBLE for their actions, and punished accordingly, ONLY THEN will changes be made....and not until.

quote:

"4. for brasilians, as i am not one, my friendly advice is just be intellectually honest about things. a lot of the angry comments from brasilians on this posting reflect a matter of self denials, denial of economic truth of brasil, denial of extreme poverty in brasil and denial of social ills against women and minorities. "

Well, in my many years of experience in brazil, and with brazilians, generally speaking, it's next to impossible for them to be honest about the problems in their country. Although I do know a "few" that fully talk about the problems in brazil with full knowledge and understanding, and some of them are brazilians that are 70+ years old, and realize the problems that have existed and do exist and don't try and put the responsibility on anyone else besides themselves and their own elected officials.

When you start to discuss these problems with the vast majority, they take offense, personally, and then they start to "attack" and talk about situations that have happened in the U.S.....as if they are the RULE in the U.S. and as if these situations "justify" the everyday practices of corruption here.

Common ones are Hurrican Katrina, U.S. support of the brazilian military coup in the 1960's, the war in Iraq and Enron.

The perceptions and ideology that americans and brazilians have towards their elected officials couldn't be more different. In the U.S. the people realize that these politicians have their positions because of the trust and confidence of the "people", and are responsible to "the people".

In Brazil these elected officials are treated as "royalty", as if they are "kings". You can believe that in my years in brazil I have been in numerous situations where a local or state politician has been accused of huge corruption, stealing hundreds of millions of dollars, and when he appears in public the general population treats him as if he were a"king". It's actually quite nauseating to see. And this very type of behavior and ideology is reinforcing this very type of behavior to continue. I'll illustrate a true story at the end.

Brazilians have a VERY short memory in respect to corrupt politicians, at the time the situations happen some get angry, but a few months later all is forgotten and they think, "well he's just one more".

Brazilians need to DEMAND that these corrupt politicians be punished, and when they're not they need to deomonstrate their anger and refusal to accept the impunity that has existed for so long here in brazil. When and if these politicians who are stealing millions and millions, and billions and billions, of dollars, actually start serving 5,10, and 20 years in prison, they'll think twice before stealing public monies.

OK...true story. Fernando Collar, as well as an ex-president of Argentina who resigned because of a corruption scandal, as Collar did, both live in Miami, Fla.

Coincidentally they both frequent the same restaurant in Miami. Naturally its a very "chic" restaurant, and I know the former owner, he has since sold it. Shortly after I moved to brazil nearly ten years ago I travelled to Miami and ate dinner at my friends restaurant. When I informed him I was living in brazil he told me this true story.

The ex-argentinian president was at his restaurant when an argentinian entered, when he noticed the ex-president of his country that stole hundreds of millions of dollars there, he started to talk to him, and naturally the conversation did not go well, the argentinian citizen started calling him a thief and one thing led to another and the ex-president actually ended up leaving the restaurant....one would think from embarrassment, and justifiably so.

Some time passed by and Fernando Collar was eating dinner at his restaurant. A brazilian was already there when he arrived and saw him enter. The brazilian approached the ex-president who resigned because he was caught stealing 220 million dollars..........and asked for his autograph!

You are right in the USA most of the leaders comes from the upper class. However, one of the greatest president this county ever had came from a shack and self educated. He was Abe Lincoln and he kept this country together under his leadership. Also, the income of the black population in the USA is larger that the whole country of Brazil.

Quote: "You are right in the USA most of the leaders comes from the upper class. However, one of the greatest president this county ever had came from a shack and self educated. He was Abe Lincoln and he kept this country together under his leadership."

Reply: Lincoln indeed did come from a humble background. He was a frontiers man and had experience in that kind of hard life. He was supposedly very physically strong to as a consequence. Lincoln was probably also, very likely, homosexual. He shared his Presidential bed with an Army captain every time his wife left out of town. Not to mention the guy wore the Presidents nightshirt on those occassions.

Nonetheless that was back in the 1800's. And in contemporary times the United States is not going to elect a bearded man who sleeps with other men, and whom knows how to swing an axe, into the U.S. Presidency.

And the U.S. has never elected a former *union leader* into the Presidency, nor will it ever in the percievable future.

And if U.S. Black Americans can claim Bill Clinto as "The first Black President of the United States" simply because he was raised by a single mother... than along those same logical lines Brazilians can claim Lula as a Black President of Brazil since he not only was raised by a single mother but came up hustling peanuts in poverty like more than a few dark & Black Brazilians. Not to mention he is much swarthier than Bill Clinton (much shorter too. Which is another thing... it is highly unlikely the U.S. would ever elect a short man to be President. There's more chance of a high school drop out female porn star of feminist values becoming a U.S. President than there is of a short man of the highest intellectual caliber)


Quote: "Also, the income of the black population in the USA is larger that the whole country of Brazil."

Reply: Ah... more facts used to give disingenuous impression an American tradition in propaganda. Yes well... the United States has a GDP that towers over all nations on earth. If the total sum income of Black America presses above that of the entire GDP or even collective income of all of Brazil, then it does the same perhaps, over France and Canada.

But what does all that really mean? Especially in terms of buying power in each persons own nation? I mean you have Black Americans in prisons, on welfare, et cetera... all Black Americans are not making large dollars. I mean Black Americans living in Compton don't live like rich Paulistas.

"The brazilian approached the ex-president who resigned because he was caught stealing 220 million dollars..........and asked for his autograph!"

He might have resigned, but "resigned" ONLY AFTER the WHOLE of Brazil went to the streets DEMANDING his impeachmnent.

What about americans?

Their lying leaders implode the two WTC towers, start a war with an innocent nation because that's where Bin Laden was, after putting out a PHONY video of his "confession" (and the public never EVER "demanded" for an apology). They they lie some more and say that Saddam was behind it too. They then attack another innocent nation because of the "mushroom clouds", with presentation on the UN of ALSO PHONY evidence. They create TRILLIONS in debt.

And what americans do?

NOTHING.

They come here and start to preach about Brazil's "corruption" and "complacency".

Riiiiiight!

Brazil had voted their leaders long ago with their voting RIGHTS.

Americans not satisfied with FREEDOM and DEMOCRACY installed a DICTATORSHIP.

And what did americans do?

PAID FOR IT.

So get lost HYPOCRITICAL americans.

You are murderous trash.

Quote There are the bureaucrats who ordered nearly half a billion ( HALF A BILLION !!!!???? ) dollars worth of mobile homes that are still empty, and renovations for a shelter at a former Alabama Army base that cost about $416,000 per evacuee ( PER EVACUEE - PER EVACUEE - PER EVACUEE ).

The most disturbing cases, said David R. Dugas, the United States attorney in Louisiana, who is leading a storm antifraud task force for the Justice Department, are those involving government officials (GOVERNMENT OFFICIALS !!!??/ ) accused of orchestrating elaborate scams.
( Oh !!! )

"Charities also were vulnerable to profiteers. In Burbank , Calif. a couple has been charged with collecting donations outside a store by posing as Red Cross workers. In Bakersfield, Calif., 75 workers at a Red Cross call center, their friends and relatives have been charged in a scheme to steal hundreds of thousands of dollars in relief.
Wow. What a show! 75 ? Friends plus relatives... That´s a big party.

Oh, God . What a messy story !! Such a calamity !
Too bad the newspaper disclosed that. Is that real or is the New York Times just dreaming of it? Pranksters...

quote:

"And if U.S. Black Americans can claim Bill Clinto as "The first Black President of the United States" simply because he was raised by a single mother... "

Not only is that a ridiculous statement and claim, but I have NEVER heard that before in my life.

And anyone, black person or not, to say that Bill Clinton was the first black president because he was raised by a single mother???

That's ludicrous...the man is/was, and always will be, snow white. There are MANY white children that are raised by single mothers...and also single fathers, in the U.S.

As far as the U.S. electing a short presient, another ridiculous statement, there have been NUMEROUS throughout U.S. history. You can rest assured that americans really don't pay too much attention to the physical stature of a presidential candiate...his record and achievements, as well as where he stands on the issues certainly count for a lot more than his height(lol).

quote:

"He might have resigned, but "resigned" ONLY AFTER the WHOLE of Brazil went to the streets DEMANDING his impeachmnent."

And you can believe this, it WASN'T the brazilian PEOPLES demands that forced Collar to resign, it was Roberto Marinho, he put him in the presidency, and he took him out as well.

If that is all it takes to remove a corrupt brazilian politician from office, why in the world haven't the braziliains taken to the streets over mensalão and the PT scandal??? Afterall, the amount of money that was diverted and the extent of the corruption makes Collar look like childs play.

Quote:

"What about americans?

Their lying leaders implode the two WTC towers, start a war with an innocent nation because that's where Bin Laden was, after putting out a PHONY video of his "confession" (and the public never EVER "demanded" for an apology). They they lie some more and say that Saddam was behind it too. They then attack another innocent nation because of the "mushroom clouds", with presentation on the UN of ALSO PHONY evidence. They create TRILLIONS in debt."

First of all, SHOW us this proof of the U.S. gov't. involved in 9-11. Because with the THOUSANDS of LEGITIMATE american media, engineers, scientists, until this day, HAVE NOT BEEN ABLE TO PROVE THE U.S. GOV'T HAD ANY INVOLVEMENT IN 9-11.

But I guess some 17 year old idiot sitting at an internet cafe in brazil that just watched 9-11 Loose Change knows better huh schnitnitz??

Show us the proof....please, if you can do that I'll take it upon myself to make certain it gets in the hands of the major media outlets in the U.S. and the justice department.



quote:


"Quote There are the bureaucrats who ordered nearly half a billion ( HALF A BILLION !!!!???? ) dollars worth of mobile homes that are still empty, and renovations for a shelter at a former Alabama Army base that cost about $416,000 per evacuee ( PER EVACUEE - PER EVACUEE - PER EVACUEE ).

The most disturbing cases, said David R. Dugas, the United States attorney in Louisiana, who is leading a storm antifraud task force for the Justice Department, are those involving government officials (GOVERNMENT OFFICIALS !!!??/ ) accused of orchestrating elaborate scams.
( Oh !!! )

"Charities also were vulnerable to profiteers. In Burbank , Calif. a couple has been charged with collecting donations outside a store by posing as Red Cross workers. In Bakersfield, Calif., 75 workers at a Red Cross call center, their friends and relatives have been charged in a scheme to steal hundreds of thousands of dollars in relief."

And just HOW did you hear about this????

Ohhh, that's right, from the american media!!

And what did you say?? That David Dugas the U.S. attorney is investigating this situation and has uncovered these details???


Ummm'k...well, the U.S. is not brazil, and you can bet that when those that are put on trial for bilking the federal gov't. out of money on fraudulent charges and taking advantage of this terrible tradgedy when convicted WILL ACTUALLY GO TO JAIL......AND FOR MORE THAN 40 DAYS!!!(as happens on occasion in brazil only when ONE politician steals hundreds of millions of dollars....the other times the don't serve a day, and MANY don't even lose their positions!!!)

"First of all, SHOW us this proof of the U.S. gov't. involved in 9-11."

The proof was shipped to China.

Big opressive communist China. The one you don't DARE to "bring freedom" to.

And this removal of EVIDENCE is a CRIME in itself.

But no matter. For unethical people like you this doesn't matter.

At all.

"Winning" does.

You are right. Thanks God Brazil is not the us. Some Americans like you are incredible.. You show them the evidence , but they just pretend that is a trifle.
You remind me of the story about the lion and the rat..
A lion was wandering in the woods and met a rat. He clawed the little thing and prepared to gobble it.But, at the last moment the lion was atartled at the appearance of his prey.
"What a little animal you are, said the lion. "
The rat, just like you, commented:
"Oh, I´ve been ill lately".

You have been ill lately, haven´t you?

So, you think two billion dollars are just nothing. Scamming is nothing, burning out the people´s money is just nothing.
Ok. stay right there.

I think you ought to make an effort and read extensively. Maybe you spend your time saying a lot of empty words on this site and forget to get informed. I am not the one to show you the way out. You have a right to be wrong.

I have been to Brazil over the last fifteen years and made many friends in that country. I spend a loto time in SP and about 15% live very well but, the other 85% have to struggle. In the USA 75% of the blacks are doing good and the other 25% are struggling. When I get on an airline in Brazil, I am the only black on the plane. In the USA try taking a trip and see how many blacks faces will be on the plane. Now, as far Abe Lincoln, all I know that he was not educated or rich but, a great president. As far as his sex life, you started out saying he might have been gay and ending by saying that he was gay. The reason given, that he slept with a man. That was a common practice for the the people on the frontier to share their beds with overnight guests.

quote:

"And this removal of EVIDENCE is a CRIME in itself."

LOLOLOLOLOL!!

Removal of evidence???

The twin towers destroyed? 3,000+ people died? 4 airliners hijacked?

Obviously a plot that involved the executive branch, the military, the CIA, the FBI, the NSA, the pentagon, FEMA, and many others???

Must've been THOUSANDS of people involved in this "conspiracy".....show us the proof or shut your ignorant ass up.

And as all the conspiracy theorists do when asked to show proof.....they stammer, stutter, and shut their ignorant mouths.

And as far as doing research into 9-11....I believe I've seen and read just about all of the highly regarded "conspiracy theorists" books and seen the documentaries.

But I'm not ignorant enough to just look at them....I looked at the other side of the coin as well. And when one looks at ALL the FACTS, you may come to the conclusion that the U.S. gov't. knew more than they have let-on....but they have no complicity.

And to state otherwise is simple fanatacism.

Quote: "As far as his sex life, you started out saying he might have been gay and ending by saying that he was gay. The reason given, that he slept with a man. That was a common practice for the the people on the frontier to share their beds with overnight guests."


Reply: Naw, never ended by saying he was gay. I did end by saying the U.S. people will not elect a bearded man who sleeps in bed with other men as President today.

Of course we are digressing off topic but Lincoln was President when he was sharing his bed with that Army captain, not out on the old frontier. Plus he only did it when ever his wife was away. Most Presidents don't *confide* in low ranking officers like captains also. Of course none of this means or proves he was homosexual. But it is enough to question if he was or not.

Quote: "As far as the U.S. electing a short presient, another ridiculous statement, there have been NUMEROUS throughout U.S. history. You can rest assured that americans really don't pay too much attention to the physical stature of a presidential candiate...his record and achievements, as well as where he stands on the issues certainly count for a lot more than his height(lol)."


Reply: According to wikipedia the trend in the height of the U.S. Presidents is going upward. The average height of the U.S. male is 5 foot 9 inches. Jimmy Carter was listed as 5'9" which would make him the shortest U.S. President of recent modern times. There was only one or two U.S. President at 5'6" and that was a looooooong time ago. Plenty of U.S. Presidents at 6 feet and over. But when you average the height out wikipedia lists it at an average height of 5 foot 10, while another site averages it out at 5 foot 11.

Here's a quote from www.shortsupport.org/News/0236html:

"Of course, to the human psyche, taller is often better. Popular figures ranging from athletes to fashion models to presidents are, for the most part, several inches taller than average. (Of the past 13 presidential elections, the taller candidate has won 10 times, the most recent exception being George W. Bush.)"

there seems to a be clash in the world between the truth and the lies LAW ABIDING VS: LAWLESSNESS.THESE CLASHES HAVE OCCURRED IN THE PAST AND THE TRUTH ALLWAYS PREVAILS!THE CULTURE OF MARXISM A SYSTEM WHICH ADVANCES ITSELF ON LIES AND DECEPTIONS HAS FAILED (THE SOVIET UNION).CAPITALISM A SYSTEM BASED ON FREEDOM AND DEMOCRACY (U.S.A.)HAS BECOME THE WORLDS SOLE #1 SUPERPOWER.THUS WE MUST ASSUME THE ENEMYS OF TRUTH FREEDOM AND DEMOCRACY ARE" LAWLESS LIARS ".KIND OF LIKE THE" INSANES " VS:" THE SANES".NOW WHO WOULD YOU BET ON IN THIS ??????

Quote: "Not only is that a ridiculous statement and claim, but I have NEVER heard that before in my life.

And anyone, black person or not, to say that Bill Clinton was the first black president because he was raised by a single mother???

That's ludicrous...the man is/was, and always will be, snow white. There are MANY white children that are raised by single mothers...and also single fathers, in the U.S."


Reply: There are indeed many white children in single parent (mother) homes. It was the popular Black American author Toni Morrison who first stated it he was the U.S. first Black President because he was raised by a single mother. And Toni Morrison is no small figure or influence in Black Americana (good writer too. I enjoyed a few of her books)

Here are excerpts from a news story googled online, it honors him as the first Black President for other reasons though:

"Clinton Honored As 'First Black President' at Black Caucus Dinner
By Marc Morano
CNSNews.com Senior Staff Writer
October 01, 2001

(CNSNews.com) - Former President Bill Clinton was honored as the nation's first black president Saturday at the Congressional Black Caucus (CBC) Annual Awards Dinner on in Washington, DC...

However Rep. Maxine Waters (D-Calif.) said she has no idea what people mean when they talk about Clinton being "the first black president. "I don't know what that means. I don't know what that means," she commented as she walked away."

I cut & paste this:

"LITTLE ROCK, Ark. (AP) - Bill Clinton, once famously described by author Toni Morrison as "our first black president," is being inducted into the Arkansas Black Hall of Fame as an honorary member. The former president will be the first non-black recognized in the hall's 10-year history. He is expected to attend the Saturday night event.

"It is this community's way of saying thank you to him for the work that he has done," Charles Stewart, the hall's chairman and founder.

The honor is in recognition of Clinton's appointment of blacks to high levels in both state and federal government, and his post-White House efforts to fight AIDS in Africa and the Caribbean, Stewart said.

Among others slated for induction are R&B and gospel singer Al Green and Dr. Edith Irby Jones, the first black graduate of the College of Medicine at the University of Arkansas for Medical Sciences.

Past inductees include poet Maya Angelou, Ebony and Jet magazine publisher John H. Johnson Jr. and former Surgeon General Dr. Joycelyn Elders."

quote:

"Bill Clinton, once famously described by author Toni Morrison as "our first black president," "

Ok, so ONE author callled him "the first black president"...WHY did he do so??

It WASN'T because he was raised by a single mom....it was because he put many blacks in positions of authority in the federal gov't. and took many initiatives in favor of blacks.

quote:

"The chair of the all-Democratic caucus, Rep. Eddie Bernice Johnson (D-Tex.), told the crowd that Clinton "took so many initiatives he made us think for a while we had elected the first black president."


quote:

""I think it's a function of the work I have done, not just as president, but my whole public life to try to bridge the racial divide and the fact that even when I was a little boy I had friends who were African-American," he explained."

"Rep. John Lewis said Clinton "has the rare capacity of connecting with African- Americans. He understands the hopes and dreams and the frustration of African- Americans. We identify with him and he can identify with us." "


Being raised by a single mom had nothing to do with why "some" blacks characterized him as the first black president.

Quote: "Ok, so ONE author callled him "the first black president"...WHY did he do so??

It WASN'T because he was raised by a single mom....it was because he put many blacks in positions of authority in the federal gov't. and took many initiatives in favor of blacks."


Reply: Dude, first you stated my *claim* that anyone - no less Black Americans - in the U.S. declared Bill Clinton "the first Black President" was ridiculous and that you had never heard this before.

Now you make a mistake - incalculable for a Black American - by refering to Toni Morrison as a "he," as a *man.* Toni Morrison is a Black woman and one of the most celebrated novelists in the Black American community (if not mainstream America too). She is a highly looked up to figure.

Furthermore every Black American in the U.S. - unless his or her head has been buried in a sandbox - knows that Toni Morrison stated Bill Clinton was the U.S. first Black President because he grew up in a single parent home. It was the talk of all Black radio for a while. With people calling in agreeing or disagreeing. But mostly Black people seemed to agree with the statement.

For you not to know this - LMAO! - you must have total and complete disconnection from Black America. Kind of like a rich Paulista totally disconnected from life and culture in the surrounding favelas.

By the way... Bill Clinton was a talented guy and he certainly was not the monster the Republicans tried to make him out to be. But while Black Americans often say, seemingly from what many of them hear other Black people repeat, that Clinton helped out Black people so much, this is not entirely accurate and is much exaggerated. - Clinton appointed some Black people to high levels yes, but so has George W. Bush. Clinton actually is the one who pushed through welfare reform (while numerically more White women were on welfare, on higher percentage of the Black female population in regards to Black America was disproportionately on welfare. Consequently his policy had major implications and affects on Black America) something Republicans all ways wanted to do, Clintons economic policy was fiscally conservative (minus Earned Income Tax Credit), the Republicans have always been fiscally conservative, Clinton is the one who signed NAFTA into effect, something the Republicans always supported - and went directly against orginized labor in the U.S.. Clinton might have had some positive policies towards HIV/AIDS in Africa, and that is to his benefit. But he is also the one who with drew troops out of gangland controled Somalia and refused to intervien in the slaughter/genocide going on in Rawanda - unlike his determined intevention into the Serbian/Kosovo conflict in Europe.

Really there is not much Bill Clinton "did for" Black America other than charm her and give her due esteem. Which is a good thing or can be. But has for hard material wealth and related policies that transform in real ways communities - Bill Clinton did little to nothing in this regard "for" Black America.

Black Americans have loved him because they identified with him, and because the Republicans ferociously attacked him. In Black America's heart and eyes the Republican party is akin to the KKK.


Quote: "Being raised by a single mom had nothing to do with why "some" blacks characterized him as the first black president."


Reply: You had no idea his characterization in Black America as "the first Black President." You evidently have never listen to Black American talk radio. Therefore you are utterly unqualied to pontificate that it had "nothing to do with" his being "raised by a single mom."

Which is luaghable as it was one of the *biggest* talk subjects of his Presidency in the Black American community - that is to what validity does Toni Morrison statement about him being the "first Black President" in relation to his being raised by a single mother have?

But I'm not going to beat this subject to death. It is what it is.

"
"And this removal of EVIDENCE is a CRIME in itself."

LOLOLOLOLOL!!

Removal of evidence???

The twin towers destroyed? 3,000+ people died? 4 airliners hijacked?

Obviously a plot that involved the executive branch, the military, the CIA, the FBI, the NSA, the pentagon, FEMA, and many others???

Must've been THOUSANDS of people involved in this "conspiracy".....show us the proof or shut your ignorant ass up.

And as all the conspiracy theorists do when asked to show proof.....they stammer, stutter, and shut their ignorant mouths.

And as far as doing research into 9-11....I believe I've seen and read just about all of the highly regarded "conspiracy theorists" books and seen the documentaries.

But I'm not ignorant enough to just look at them....I looked at the other side of the coin as well. And when one looks at ALL the FACTS, you may come to the conclusion that the U.S. gov't. knew more than they have let-on....but they have no complicity.

And to state otherwise is simple fanatacism. "

The evidence WAS removed.

The steel-iron from the towers were of 30foot-long pieces. "Coincidently" the size ready to be put in trucks.That was done before any study on the causes could be done. Differently handled than any other criminal activity.

Of course you are going to say that this has nothing to do with nothing and will say that "CONSPIRACIES DO NOT HAPPEN".

Then you say that we are the fanatics.

Lying criminal.

http://www.911revisited.com/video.html

quote:

"Of course you are going to say that this has nothing to do with nothing and will say that "CONSPIRACIES DO NOT HAPPEN"."

The president and his own cabinet can't keep a secret without a leak....you seriously think that hundreds, and more than likely, THOUSANDS, of people involved in a conspiracy and NOT ONE person coming to the forefront and saying, "ok, I was involved, and this is what happened?"

And if this conspiracy ever got out, the truth be known, unquestionably would not only george bush's career be over, but he would more than likely be put to death, and if not by the american justice system, by the american people. Not to mention he would go down in history as a figure such as Hitler......too far-fetched my man.....makes no sense, but more than that, there is NO PROOF.

Oh yeah, I forgot, they removed the proof....lol.

"Oh yeah, I forgot, they removed the proof....lol. "

Why are you Lying Out Loud, criminal hyena?

Do you think your empty words will change the FACTS?

For someone so intent in "telling like it is" for sure you try to hide almost everything...

Didn't they remove the PROOF in your little corrupt world?

Because they did REMOVE the proof in ours.

Have a read:

--_____________________________________________--


AMEC Destroys Evidence in WTC Cleanup Scam

by CHRISTOPHER BOLLYN

A foreign company - headed by a Knight of the British Empire - managed the controversial clean-up of the rubble at the World Trade Center and the Pentagon.

Although the terror attacks of September 11 were clearly criminal acts of mass murder, no effort was made to preserve the integrity of the crime scenes and the essential evidence was disposed of like garbage.

Former New York City Mayor Rudolph Giuliani was made a Knight of the British Empire - after he hired two large British construction management firms - both headed by Knights of the British Empire, to oversee what many experts consider to be massive criminal destruction of evidence.

DESTRUCTION OF EVIDENCE

The editor-in-chief of Fire Engineering magazine, William A. Manning, issued an urgent call to action to America s firefighters at the end of 2001, calling for a forensic investigation and demanding that the steel from the site be preserved to allow investigators to determine what caused the collapse.

The destruction and removal of evidence must stop immediately, Manning wrote.

Such destruction of evidence, he said, shows the astounding ignorance of government officials to the value of a thorough, scientific investigation of the largest fire-induced collapse in world history.

For more than three months, structural steel from the World Trade Center has been and continues to be cut up and sold for scrap.

Crucial evidence that could answer many questions about high-rise building design practices and performance under fire conditions is on the slow boat to China, Manning says, perhaps never to be seen again in America until you buy your next car.

I have combed through our national standard for fire investigation, NFPA 921, but nowhere does one find an exemption allowing the destruction of evidence for buildings over 10 stories tall, Manning said.

Clearly, there are burning questions that need answers. Based on the incident's magnitude alone, a full-throttle, fully resourced, forensic investigation is imperative.

Three months later, the Science Committee of the House of Representatives reported that the WTC investigation was hampered by the destruction of crucial evidence.

The committee report of March 6, 2002 says, Some of the critical pieces of steel were gone before the first [investigator] ever reached the site.

The investigation Manning called for never happened, and never will, because the essential evidence is now destroyed: Valuable evidence has been lost irretrievably, Chairman of the Science Committee, Sherwood L. Boehlert (R-NY) said.

The [FEMA-sponsored] building performance assessment currently being conducted of the World Trade Center is just that: an assessment, not an investigation, Prof. Glenn Corbett of John Jay College of Criminal Justice in New York City told the Science Committee in March.

Corbett had previously called the FEMA-led investigation uncoordinated and superficial.

The World Trade Center disaster demands the most comprehensive detailed investigation possible.

No event in our entire fire service history has ever come close to the magnitude of this incident, Corbett wrote in the January 2002 issue of Fire Engineering.

You would think we would have the largest fire investigation in world history. You would be wrong, he wrote, We are literally treating the steel removed from the site like garbage, not like crucial fire scene evidence.

--_____________________________________________--

So LIE AWAY laughing idiot. Lie Out Loud away.


A man who lies to himself, and believes his own lies, becomes unable to recognize truth, either in himself or in anyone else, and he ends up losing respect for himself and for others. When he has no respect for anyone, he can no longer love, and in him, he yields to his impulses, indulges in the lowest form of pleasure, and behaves in the end like an animal in satisfying his vices. And it all comes from lying to others and to yourself.

Fyodor Dostoyevsky.

quote:

"A man who lies to himself, and believes his own lies, becomes unable to recognize truth, either in himself or in anyone else, and he ends up losing respect for himself and for others. When he has no respect for anyone, he can no longer love, and in him, he yields to his impulses, indulges in the lowest form of pleasure, and behaves in the end like an animal in satisfying his vices. And it all comes from lying to others and to yourself."

That's a good description of yourself and your political objectives!!

And the pentagon and pennsylvania??

There's enough thousands upon thousands of legitimate professionals that are undertaking this "conspiracy" theory and even suing the federal government. We don't need your fanatical anti-american tirade and regurgitation of well-known statements and "theories". I would assume most quite informed about what's going on.....I certainly am, and not from just watching "loose change"....lol.

If there's anything to your concpiracy perpetrated by nearly every federal gov't. agency involving hundreds if not thousands of people it will come to light....and as of this moment....NADA.

So you keep LYING and trying to spread your propaganda along with Alex Jones and the rest of the fanatics.....mmm'k?

Did ya know that Neil Armstrong's moonwalk was produced in hollywoood????


;-)

Was the evidence REMOVED or it wasn't?

"We don't need your fanatical anti-american tirade and regurgitation of well-known statements and "theories". "

And don't be such an obvious hypocrite. There is nothing "anti-american" in searching for the truth.

Aren't you in a Brazilian site being "anti-brazilian"?

So YOU can, but others can't.

Hail Hitler!

Idiots.

go ahead Alex, or should I say Delmart Mike Vreeland....they're allowing internet access at the canadian prisons now eh?




You would think that everyone would be able to agree on the details of an event viewed live on television by millions of people as it happened. Fat chance. The September 11 attack was pulled off by everybody except al Qaeda, and it was accomplished using everything except airplanes. Why? Because that would be too easy. Whether you blame the Mossad or George W Bush, a bomb, a missile, the devil or a UFO, one thing is painfully clear: We're all a bunch of gullible chumps who will believe just about anything we see with our own eyes. Sucker!

To our readers around the globe:

You would think that the American people would have learned a little skepticism by now. They've seen 40 years of CIA wrongdoing, including ridiculously implausible plots like assassinating Fidel Castro with a cigar and the Kennedy Assassinations. They've seen unlikely government conspiracies proven beyond a shadow of a doubt, plots like Watergate and the MKULTRA mind control experiments. For God's sake, the U.S. government has even confessed to feeding radioactive mush to retarded children -- just to see what would happen. The real question isn't "Why would you believe the U.S. government was behind September 11?" Rather, the question is "Why wouldn't you?"

As you may have gathered, not everyone agrees on the credibility of the "official story" of the September 11 attacks on the United States. And why should they? Virtually everything the U.S. government has ever done regarding the al Qaeda terrorism network is shrouded in secrecy and full of what appears to be rampant speculation.

Nevertheless, some skeptical viewpoints are healthier than others. In the wake of the most spectacular terrorist attack in history, an assortment of nuts stepped forward with their alternate histories of the event, including several that popped up within weeks of the actual event itself.

The notion of investigative reporting as instantly gratifying speculation is fostered by the 21st century media revolution, in which bloggers are accorded the same social status as Dan Rather. Most, if not all, of these conspiracy theories are the product of many long laborious minutes of sweat devoted to dreaming them up. There are a few unanswered questions that may give even the sanest individual pause, but these quibbles are nearly irrelevant compared to the magnitude of the allegations made by the loudest and looniest.

The September 11 theories break down into two simple categories: "Whodunnit?" and "How did they do it?" Within this binary question, however, many planets of weirdness can be found orbiting.


Intelligence Run Amuck
If you live in the United States, you might be surprised at just how many people around the world believe that the CIA was behind September 11. Although the usual suspects (David Icke and the like) began concocting the usual fairy tales within hours of the event, the global conspiracy machine has really kicked into overdrive since.
The CIA theory is most popular in France. Within a month of the September 11 attack, French author Thierry Meyssan began promulgating a theory that culminated in the book titled L'Effroyable imposture, or the which roughly translates as "Appalling Fraud." It was called 9/11: The Big Lie in its American edition.

Meyssan, who is not a journalist no matter how hard he tries, was drawn to the case when he noticed that the images of the jet that crashed into the Pentagon just didn't look right. It's unclear how he reached this conclusion, since a jet had never crashed into the Pentagon before, leaving no comparative basis for a proper evaluation. His theory was based primarily on the fact that you couldn't see the wreckage of the plane anywhere.

Funny thing is, you couldn't see the wreckage of the planes that hit the World Trade Center towers either. That's because they were, as the scientists like to say, "blowed up". Unperturbed by the fact that two planes were obliterated in fiery crashes on live television the very same day, Meyssan parlayed his vision into a book that was a bestseller in France and around the globe, and not a bad seller in the U.S. either.

According to Meyssan, who was a respected French intellectual prior to 9/11, the U.S. government wanted people to think the Pentagon was a plane crash instead of a truck bombing or a missile attack. He also claims the planes that hit the World Trade Center were piloted by remote control and not hijacked. All this, he claims, was done not by al Qaeda but by the U.S. government.

In conspiracy theory parlance, this is known as a "false-flag operation" -- a type of intelligence campaign which, according to the tinfoil hat crowd, involves pulling off a covert action and blaming it on someone else.

The only part of Meyssan's premise that is really compelling is the motive -- to provide a rationale for the U.S. to invade Afghanistan and Iraq and steal their oil.

Everything else in Meyssan's theory contradicts the notion that the conspirators possessed even the a shred of common sense. If the U.S. was really behind the attack, wouldn't it make sense for them to just hijack the planes themselves?

Come on! Why in God's name would they undertake a massive plot using sci-fi technology costing probably billions of dollars, when they could just hijack the planes themselves for only the cost of life insurance? For that matter, if they remote-controlled two jets to crash into the WTC, why not just do the same thing at the Pentagon, instead of hitting it with a missile and then pretending it was a plane?

How could the conspirators be such morons and yet execute the most successful cover-up in human history? (OK, maybe the second most successful.) The obvious answer is probably also the correct answer: They can't, they didn't, and this whole line of thought is even less worthy of your consideration than the secret of Area 51.


The Usual Suspects
While Meyssan's rantings are pretty far beyond the pale of reason, the general idea that the attacks were sponsored by the CIA or the Israeli intelligence service, the Mossad, is extraordinarily widespread, particularly in the Arab world. Variations on this idea have been published in Egypt's government-run newspapers and aired on Arab television all over the region. Even the king of Saudi Arabia has hinted as much, recently blaming a spate of al Qaeda-linked terrorist attacks on "Zionists."
One variation on Meyssan's theories also embraces the logic-challenged notion of remote controlled planes, but argues they were controlled by the Mossad instead of the CIA, in order to goad the U.S. into attacking Israel's enemies. Although this theory still suffers from being terminally elaborate, the Mossad is at least a slightly better suspect than the CIA, which couldn't even kill Castro, let alone 3,000 people in a synchronized attack on live TV.

The main problem with all this speculation is that it's based on the idea that al Qaeda was not responsible for the attacks. This flies in the face of a mountain of evidence. Even if we grant that evidence presented after the fact by U.S. government officials is automatically suspect, there is ample documentation to support al Qaeda's role in the attacks.

The most obvious example: Khalid Shaikh Mohammed admitted to planning the attacks in an interview with Arab media. al Qaeda documents reported by al Jazeera also confessed the attack. Hundreds of al Qaeda-linked propaganda pieces celebrate the attacks. The hijackers left suicide videos which were subsequently circulated by al Qaeda-linked Web sites around the world.

Furthermore, the historical record clearly indicates that al Qaeda had long been planning exactly this kind of attack, including copious material in the public record long before 9/11 ever happened. Ramzi Yousef was planning to crash airliners into U.S. landmarks, including the Pentagon and the World Trade Center, and that plot was reported years before 9/11 ever happened. al Qaeda-linked terrorists were looking at ways to crash airplanes into U.S. buildings as early as 1993, when the FBI and the Egyptian government were clued into a plot to steal an airplane and crash it into the U.S. embassy.

And while you can't always trust what the government tells you, the sheer volume of U.S. documentation released after the 9/11 attacks is staggering. In addition to the extremely improbable scenarios under which the CIA or the Mossad would actually have executed the attacks, an entire agency of the U.S. government would be needed just to handle the hundreds of thousands of pages of document forgeries now in circulation supporting most elements of the official story.

In addition, the mythical conspirators seem to have carefully planted a series of whistleblowers who would inexplicably pop up to blame the government for its mind-blowing but strictly bureaucratic failures to prevent the attack. Just for verisimilitude? It boggles the mind.

The conspiracy theorists do have one explanation which makes all of the above problems go away: Everyone in the media is working for the Mossad. Including this author.

OK, Fine. But Still...
Of course, a 9/11 conspiracy doesn't have to involve remote control planes, false flags and Jewish spies infiltrating Rotten.com. There are a number of more modest proposals in circulation.
Many conspiracy theorists argue that the U.S. had advanced warning of the attack, but allowed it to proceed anyway. Let's just get one thing straight right up front: This is a much easier case to make.

That doesn't mean it's right, of course. But you don't have to skip your medication in order to wonder.

A favorite among Americans on the far right and far left, this theory usually proposes that the U.S. allowed the 9/11 attacks to take place so that the Bush administration could revoke the constitution, declare martial law, conquer the Middle East and cancel the elections.

A problem with this plan, so far, is its obvious failure. After all, the Constitution hasn't been revoked (just severely diluted). And the Middle East hasn't been successfully conquered (though not for lack of trying). Martial law hasn't been declared (although thousands have been rounded up with no charge and detained without legal counsel). And the elections weren't canceled (though there's the usual debate as to the validity of their results). Um, did we say "obvious" failure? Let's move on.

The idea that the American government would allow a massive attack on its homeland for political purposes isn't new. For decades, rumors have swirled that government was warned of the attack on Pearl Harbor, but allowed it to take place anyway, in order to catapult the U.S. into WWII. And it's a lot easier to cover up an ignored warning than to cover up remote controlled planes and false-flag hoodoo.

Even within the official story, there are several examples of actual warnings that were missed, but none of them were completely specific. The infamous Phoenix memo warned that Osama bin Laden was training terrorists to fly airplanes. Zacarias Moussaoui's laptop computer wasn't searched in time to uncover contact information for other members of the hijacking plot.

Ramzi Yousef's earlier plane crash plot had vanished into the dusty pages of history. Several intercepted electronic communications warning of the attack were not translated by the National Security Agency until the day after the attack. The CIA knew the names of two hijackers but failed to put them on a watchlist that would have kept them out of the country.

The list of officially "missed" warnings is rather long, but none of the cited examples said anything like "On September 11, 2001, al Qaeda will hijack four airplanes and crash them into U.S. buildings."

Or at least, that's what they want you to believe.


Some Credible Conspiracies
There are a number of stories in circulation about specific warnings prior to 9/11, as well as numerous questions about how and why things blew up or fell down the way they did. Some have been covered in the mainstream press, others are perennial e-mail forwards. The most credible claims include:
Sibel Edmonds, an FBI translator hired after 9/11, was appalled to discover that a giant stack of documents the FBI possessed prior to September 11 indicated very clearly that a major attack was coming, and that it involved airplanes. Edmonds was subsequently told to work slower -- because she was making her colleagues in the department look bad. She was then fired for reporting a security breach by one of her colleagues. Sadly, this story is completely true and was confirmed by the Justice Department, which then retroactively classified its confirmations so that Edmonds couldn't use them in a civil suit over her termination.

In July 2001, a moderate Taliban minister warned the U.S. that al Qaeda was planning a "massive attack." Shortly thereafter, Egyptian intelligence warned the CIA that al Qaeda had recently sent 20 operatives to the United States, and that some of them had trained as pilots.

San Francisco Mayor Wille Brown received a call from someone identified only as his "airport security" on September 10, 2001, warning him in a nonspecific manner about air travel, as reported by the San Francisco Chronicle. Some follow-up articles, reported by random non-journalists on the Internet, claim that the call came from Condoleezza Rice, but those reports are apparently based on nothing. (Editor's Note: Please don't e-mail us to tell us what those reports are based on. Really.)

Many people have questioned the collapse of WTC7, an adjacent building in the World Trade Center complex that housed a CIA station, among other things. Most of these theories are accompanied by the usual kinds of specious analysis that the building "couldn't possibly" have collapsed due to the apparently insignificant stresses caused by the total collapse of the world's two tallest buildings just a few hundred yards away. Some have proposed that the building was bombed, others cite police transmissions that seem to indicate the building was demolished by emergency crews. These unresolved questions are more credible than the Pentagon missile theory, but no solid evidence has yet emerged to prove foul play.

The official lore of September 11 has it that United Flight 93 crashed after the passengers stormed the c**kpit in an effort to retake control of the plane from its hijackers. (Whether they made it into the c**kpit is not clear.) But there have been persistent and credible suggestions that the flight may have been shot down by the U.S. military. In the confusion of 9/11, there were several points at which internal government communications indicated there may have been a shootdown, and Flight 93 was apparently headed for the White House. Vice President Dick Cheney ordered the military to shoot down any hijacked planes approaching the White House, and in a conversation with Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld a few minutes later, official transcripts quote Cheney as saying, "It's my understanding they've already taken a couple of aircraft out." Rumsfeld responded that he could not confirm that statement. The official story is "there was no shootdown," but a reasonable person can wonder.


Somewhat Less Credible Conspiracies
After these examples, the stories get hairier and the documentation gets dicier. Among the fringe claims of pre-9/11 warnings:
David Schippers (the lawyer who impeached Bill Clinton) claimed to the press that FBI agents told him they knew an attack was coming on lower Manhattan, and that they knew the names of the hijackers in advance. Schippers additionally claimed he tried to call Attorney General John Ashcroft a month before the attack to warn him. The mainstream media has not confirmed any of these claims. It may be unfair to lump Schippers in with the following claims, but after he explains the above story, he tends to launch into an uber-terrorist conspiracy rant that undercuts the credibility of his relatively simple claim of forewarning.

Delmart "Mike" Vreeland was sitting in a Canadian prison in mid-August 2001 when, for reasons unknown, he passed guards a piece of paper. It sat in a locker until after September 11. Vreeland, a con man charged with credit fraud, had written a page full of mostly incoherent notes which fortuitously included the words "Pentagon," "White House" and "World Trade Center" (as well as "Sears Tower," "World Bank," "Royal Bank" and others). After 9/11, Vreeland claimed he was a U.S. intelligence agent who had learned of the attack in Russia. He also claimed to have invented the Star Wars missile defense system... You know, the one that doesn't technically exist. As it turned out, Vreeland has a mile-long rap sheet for various frauds and scams. While parts of his story still raise significant questions, you wouldn't want to buy a bridge from the guy.

Needless to say, the Illuminati trackers are all over this story. According to some theories, the September 11 attack was part of an evil mind control plot to implant the number "11" into the minds of Americans. In addition to the date, one of the flights was numbered 11 and the towers themselves looked like one giant eleven.This number-planting somehow leads invariably to creating an Illuminati army of zombie minions, or something like that. You will be shocked, shocked to hear that the mainstream media has once again been unable to verify the existence of this plot.

Don't think the UFO lobby is sitting this one out either. The September 11 attack is just the first wave in a conspiracy to destabilize American society in order to prepare people's minds for the arrival of extraterrestrial visitors. These theories are often accompanied by "mathematical proofs" that a jetliner could not possibly destroy the World Trade Center. The UFO lobby has itself benefitted from the 9/11 attack, because everyone is paying a lot more attention to what's in the skies these days.

No survey of kooky 9/11 conspiracy theories would be complete without a visit to the weird wonderland inhabited by David Icke, conspiracy theorist extraordinaire. Like many others, Icke theorizes that September 11 was a massive global conspiracy designed to kick off the long-awaited New World Order on behalf of the aforementioned Illuminati, whose members include Dubya, his dad, Clinton and Saddam Hussein, among many, many others.

According to Icke:


Bin Laden, deeply misguided as he may be, is no more responsible for what happened this week than I am. His name was introduced with the most obvious co-ordination immediately after the disaster unfolded in the same way that the background to Lee Harvey Oswald was being circulated BEFORE President Kennedy was even dead.
The idea that this guy from the mountains of Afghanistan with far more mouth than substance could be the "Mr. Big" of this enormous operation is utterly insulting to anyone of even basic intelligence.

So what explanation would not be utterly insulting to anyone of even basic intelligence?

...the agenda from the death and destruction in New York and Washington [was] co-ordinated by forces within U.S. borders. Those responsible are possessed by non-human entities and have no regard for human life any more than most humans have regard for the death and suffering of cattle.
See? I think we can all agree you'd have to be some kind of IDIOT to think that September 11 had anything to do with al Qaeda.

The Paranoid Style

It would be comforting to think that such information would have an impact on the Sept. 11 conspiracists -- but, alas, true believers are rarely moved by facts that contradict their preconceived notions.

Historian Richard Hofstadter encapsulated this political strain with his 1965 essay "The Paranoid Style in American Politics." As Hofstadter puts it, "I call it the paranoid style simply because no other word adequately evokes the qualities of heated exaggeration, suspiciousness, and conspiratorial fantasy that I have in mind."

While Hofstadter ascribes such beliefs to the political fringes, Sept. 11 kicked the trend into high gear, and the "paranoid style" has become much more prevalent in the years since. Sept. 11 conspiracy theorists now include politicians such as Cynthia McKinney, actors such as Charlie Sheen, professors, journalists and documentarians.

Indeed, adherents often point to the presence of so many well-educated and otherwise rational people in their ranks as proof of the validity of their claims. But delusional thinking has never been confined to the realm of the uneducated.

The underlying factors likely have more to do with psychology. Indeed, it is often said that conspiracy theories are born out of a sense of powerlessness. In the wake of Sept. 11 and the emergence of the nihilistic threat of Islamic terrorism, feelings of impotence and vulnerability were all too natural. All Americans were affected by such fears. But instead of facing the daunting truth, the Sept. 11 conspiracy theorists chose the path of denial.

Immersed in a political belief system in which the United States (and Israel) is always the bad guy and never the victim, adherents refuse to give credence to any development that does not fit this narrative. So rather than blaming the perpetrators, they fall back on familiar demons. After all, an enemy one can grapple with is much more appealing than the unknown. Such beliefs offer the tantalizing possibility that there's an explanation for a reality that all too often seems incomprehensible.

I encounter this kind of thinking in the form of feverish e-mails from readers insisting that if I just "knew the truth" I too would understand what's behind it all. And no doubt I'll receive more than a few in response to this column. But I've looked into the abyss and I have yet to see or hear anything to validate such fantasies.

Then again, I could be part of the conspiracy, too.

While you try really hard to "debunk" conspiracies "theories", the FACTS still remain:

They REMOVED the evidence out of the crime scene.

In any other criminal investigation that's a huge criminal act in itself.

So be an apologist, and lie away.

If you are being paid for it, it's understandable. If you are not, then, huston you have a problem.

lol...if we don't believe the wild conspiracy theories "we" have a problem?

And this rhetoric of "you're being paid" truly shows the paranoia that exists in that little mind of yours.

Wake up and spit sonny, everything is not a conspiracy Alex!

I don't have to try hard to debunk anything, the proof speaks for itself.

Oh yeah, geesh, I'm sorry, they melted all the proof, sent it on a slow boat to china....and the rest of the crash sites?

Do your homework Melvin....objectively. Look at BOTH sides objectively. Look at the FACTS and PROOF that has been SHOWN.

You're a fanatic.

quote:

"The most obvious example: Khalid Shaikh Mohammed admitted to planning the attacks in an interview with Arab media. al Qaeda documents reported by al Jazeera also confessed the attack. Hundreds of al Qaeda-linked propaganda pieces celebrate the attacks. The hijackers left suicide videos which were subsequently circulated by al Qaeda-linked Web sites around the world."

...explain that Mr. Moore.

quote:

"If you are not, then, huston you have a problem."


What? What's wrong with Angelica???

hehehehe

"And this rhetoric of "you're being paid" truly shows the paranoia that exists in that little mind of yours. '

That's because you either don't know how to read, OR you are trying to lead the statements to a single-minded direction.

"IF you are being paid for it, it's understandable. IF you are not, then, huston you have a problem."

Because, you know, there IS a possibility of you being paid for it. IF it is so, "it's understandable". "You gotta do what you gotta do" right?

IF NOT, then "huston you HAVE a problem".

It's TWO POSSIBILITIES.

And the first one is more understandable since your insistence in not being truthful is really a PAID constant.

Now, if you are not being paid, then, YOU HAVE A PROBLEM.

But you will say that WE have a problem and NOT ANSWER THE f**kING CLEAR QUESTION.

"No event in our entire fire service history has ever come close to the magnitude of this incident, Corbett wrote in the January 2002 issue of Fire Engineering.

You would think we would have the largest fire investigation in world history. You would be wrong, he wrote, We are literally treating the steel removed from the site like garbage, not like crucial fire scene evidence. "

ONLY those who have something to HIDE, act the way they did.

SPIN IT AS YOU MAY.

The FACTS are the FACTS and will continue to be the FACTS until you "REWRITE H-I-S-T-O-R-Y".

Which I don't doubt, if every thing goes according to your petty pathetic tired decadent PLAN.

(Now say that you ALSO "we don't have plans".)

"Oh yeah, geesh, I'm sorry, they melted all the proof, sent it on a slow boat to china....and the rest of the crash sites? "

And even though everthing was PULVERIZED - even STEEL - they found "surprise suprise" the "passport" of the "terrorist"...

Suuuuure! We are all "fanatics" "loonies".

CRIMINAL lying IDIOTS.

quote:

"Because, you know, there IS a possibility of you being paid for it. IF it is so, "it's understandable". "You gotta do what you gotta do" right?

IF NOT, then "huston you HAVE a problem".

It's TWO POSSIBILITIES.

And the first one is more understandable since your insistence in not being truthful is really a PAID constant."

hey jackoff, YOU are the one that started this ridiculous rhetoric of someone being paid, lol.

Just because I, as well as millions upon millions of others choose to believe the real EVIDENCE that has been provided, as well as all the holes you could drive a mack truck through, instead of the crackpots such as yourself, we MUST be being paid by the american gov't.

I'm truly dumbfounded at how blind and stupid, not to mention naive you are. The only time I've denied being paid by anyone to make the statements I have is when you have made statements that, "he's being paid", or "if you're being paid"....wtf Alex Jones!! Seriously, you need to up your dosage of your meds.

And the only criminal lying idiot on here is YOU....as of this moment you have only posted RHETORIC......NOT ONE PIECE OF EVIDENCE......NOT ONE!

Yet all these wild conspiracy theories have tons and tons of PROOF....EVIDENCE, that DO NOT suport the claims. The ONLY person "spinning" here is YOU...afterall, what would you call people that have NO PROOF of outlandish claims, and yet there is PROOF to the contrary, but yet YOU continue your SPIN!

There's no need wasting more time on you bud, it's obvious that you've got your mind made up.....yeah, it was Bush who orchestrated 9-11. Killed his own citizens, and has masterminded the greatest coverup in human history.

And what about Al-Queda's own confessions and claims of responsibility?? Guess that's just "spin" as well huh Einstein?? Guess they're involved in the conspiracy with the U.S. gov't.

Ignorance never ceases to amaze....

quote:

""IF you are being paid for it, it's understandable. IF you are not, then, huston you have a problem." "

And Einstein.....the reason for me asking about "Angelica" is because her NAME is HUSTON....lol. When stating, "hOUston we have a problem", as in the Apollo 13 situation....they were talking to NASA ground control in HOUSTON, TEXAS....HUSTON is a last name, lol, but I guess that one flew right over that pea-sized brain of yours....figures, kinda puts things in perspective as the type of people that fall for these ridiculous theories.

ALEX JONES FOR PRESIDENT!!!

Why don't you shove a dictionary in my hungry most-powerful life-and-death-deciding ass and teach me how it's said?

I have AMERICAN dollars!

I'm the best of the best.

And the rest is only the rest.

"hey jackoff, YOU are the one that started this ridiculous rhetoric of someone being paid, lol."

And it IS a possibility.

YOU saying that's not, does not make it so.

DUMB idiot. (or perhaps not so dumb, I know)

no dickhead, I said I'M not being paid to make the statements that I've made...and that's exactly what you inferred.

Maybe you're being paid...but I don't believe that, because time and time again you've shown your intelligence in your posts...but if you are being paid it must be something like a brazilian salario minimo....lol.

quote:

"Why don't you shove a dictionary in my hungry most-powerful life-and-death-deciding ass and teach me how it's said? "

shove a dictionary in YOUR most powerful life-and-death-deciding ass????

Is that how you characterize YOUR ass??? Hope you're not in brazil....they like you types!!

"no dickhead, I said I'M not being paid to make the statements that I've made...and that's exactly what you inferred. "

I said that's a possibility.

Another possibility is that you are LYING about it.

And no matter what you say, the FACT remains:

It's a POSSIBILITY.

And if you are not being PAID, as I ALSO said:

Huston you have a problem.

(Because we know you have a problem understanding satire.)

quote:

"(Because we know you have a problem understanding satire.) "

that's not satire my friend...that's ignorance, lol.

The Amazon has flourished for 16 million years through 25 ice ages and the rise of the Andes mountains. It sounds to me like the only place left on earth that could be habitable, someday.

if brazil doesn't start enforcing their own legislation, there won't be an amazon in other 25 years. They destroyed a piece the size of massachusetts just within the last few years.

you know all will go to hell!

we are all sinners!
wake up fools!
do you know in 2030 we will have a catastrophe beyond any1s imagination?

you are all keeping busy trying to put some sense in your lifes....
Lies....truth.....Reality...
believe it.