I understand we have our own problemas and they are not small. Education, social security, unemployment, the war, transportation, growing deficit, health insurance, mortgages, entertainment industry ( "It warn't me, " they'll say.)
And I didn't include the troubled lives of our former PWT, I mean, our celebs.
However, my countrymen and women, it is vital that Americans start reading about the rest of the world, especially in our days of globalization. Did you know Mexicans working here send more money to Mexico than all the money made by industries in Mexico? What will happen as construction slows down and they have no jobs?
France is an influential country. Lionel Jospin, Socialist party, had to go after he was unmasked; he wasn't really a socialist. He was a member of a tough Trotskyist group, the Lambertistes, or OCI, or Liberdade e Luta, in Brazil. Socialist is where everybody draws the line. Communism, although never having existed in any country, that's right, communism scares the bejeezuz out of most people trained in scare tactics after the November 1917 revolution.
Nicolas Sarkozy is a right-wing pal of Le Pen, the ultra right-wing old fart in Southern France. He doesn't like people of color. if you watch the link in yesterday's links you can see it for yourselves. He speaks to white folks only. When he spoke to a few minority young men hostility was quite thick.
He wants to change immigration laws. He forgets the North-African descent French are... French. They were born in France, many can't speak their parents' native tongue anymore.
He hands easy solutions about the 10% unemployment. "You work and if you don't work you have a chance at another job. If you don't..." Hey, Sarkozy, f**k you and the chéval you rode in on, d'accord?
His solution to the despair and hopelessness in the ghetto (banlieue) is quite different from the set of laws Lyndon Johnson signed in 1964. He wants more police. How simple, more police, more prisons, more security.
He's never heard of policies of inclusion, very talked about by the socialists around the world, aware of the crises that can explode.
Then he states something that scared me, a dead ringer of the words of Mario Henrique Simonsen, Roberto Campos and other economists for the rich, the IMF, and multinational companies during the days the military oppressed Brazil:
--We can't distribute wealth we don't have. It's like baking a cake. We must wait for the cake to grow and then we can share it.
When I heard him parrot the eternal excuse to exploit the people and not benefit them I had shivers running down my spine. After so many years of exclusion in Brazil, the druglords are taking over Rio. Each day the Rio Body Count banner shows the growing number of dead due to violence. The middle class and the pornographically rich hide in their homes.
Today is Friday, let's lighten up. I found a French reggae song mocking Sarkozy's proposition of chosen immigrants to France when he is of Hungarian origin. Click and voilà.
A white American, an American black, and a Mexican were stranded on an island after Katrina. They stumbled upon a lamp. After negotiations the genie granted them a wish each. The American black said, "I wish I were in a place where my brothers and sisters weren't oppressed, and we'd be happy, just African-descendants."
He disappeared and woke up in Haiti, where their revolution against the French killed all of the French who were not of color.
The Mexican said, "I wish I would be somewhere people wouldn't make fun of my culture and accent."
He woke up in Cabo San Lucas, waiting on tables at a resort hotel.
The genie asked the white American what he wanted. "Nothing. I'm perfectly fine now." Vas-y, Sarkozy.
seeing Mommy shrink in a bed, her self long time gone.
