garanhuns blog

Ronaldo/ Junio

2010-04-01T13:11:00.003-03:00

Minha ideia é a siguente: Vcs podem reunir os Bloggers no Bloggar,e cada vez que um deles faz um post no blog particular, a gente usa isto site como um "mirror", um espelho, para eles. Estou adicionando algumas coisas nele que talves vcs gostariam de deixar. Me deixem saber...

test

2008-01-08T15:10:00.000-02:00

mekamekahi test test test

BLOGGED MOVED

2008-01-05T20:14:00.001-02:00

ok, new year, new blog:
WICKETS AND GUAYABA

I will use this one to test stuff out so there wont be new material here. Thanks

Start of a New Year

2007-12-28T11:27:00.000-02:00

Well, I did not post in over a year. Absouflockinglutely no time whatsoever. We had an excellent season, made the first division, and finished in second place. Right now we are under the gun, getting the stadium and field ready for the first division. As usual, lots of work to be done.

Sarussi

2006-08-11T08:41:00.000-03:00

ok havent been posting much, lots of work to be done here, but it looks like i will go back to the states for a few weeks while i take care of some visa issues.. i can tell you that one of the very first things id like to do is go to sarussi for a sandwich and an ironbeer..

Castro condition leads to santeria

2006-08-04T16:30:00.000-03:00

this appeared in various brasilian news websites today..

Saúde de Fidel provoca aumento de rituais de "santería"

thats from reuters which is translated below

this one appeared in o globo, basically the same story..

04/08/2006 - 12h20m
Saúde de Fidel Castro provoca aumento dos rituais de 'santería'

Reuters

MIAMI - A doença do líder cubano, Fidel Castro, levou os praticantes da santería, religião afro-cubana que recorre ao sacrifício de animais para se comunicar com os deuses, a apelar por ajuda divina. Os pedidos servem tanto para apressar a recuperação dele, quanto para garantir sua morte. A postura depende do lado do estreito da Flórida em que se está.

Estes são tempos difíceis para criaturas como galinhas, cabras e, neste caso, pombos. Segundo estimativas de especialistas em assuntos religiosos, até 3 milhões de pessoas em Cuba e 60.000 na Flórida praticam a santería.

O vendedor Oscar Osorio afirmou que cerca de 20 pessoas recorrem a sua loja diariamente, em Little Havana (bairro de Miami com grande concentração de cubanos), para comprar aves, pólvora e jóias usadas nos rituais em que pedem aos deuses que tirem a vida de Fidel a fim de poderem regressar para casa.

Enquanto os cubano-americanos da Flórida imploram aos deuses pela morte de Fidel, em Cuba alguns deuses ouviram apelos para que curem o presidente.

- Estamos rezando por ele porque esta é uma situação muito dolorosa para todos nós - afirmou o babalaô (espécie de sacerdote da santería) Guillermo Diago, em Havana.

Membros da Associação Cultural Iorubá de Cuba disseram ter arrecadado dinheiro para comprar animais a fim de sacrificá-los em nome da saúde de Fidel.

- Nossa postura é a de seguir os planos dos deuses, planos esses que são de compreender e apoiar as decisões tomadas por nosso líder máximo - disse o grupo.

Em Miami, as pombas brancas são as mais procuradas no momento porque, sendo um símbolo tradicional da paz, o significado dela é tanto político quanto religioso. "As pessoas querem paz para Cuba", afirmou Osorio.

Para o azar das aves, vendidas a US$ 15 cada, o preço da paz inclui seu sangue e suas penas.

Os adeptos da santería não são os únicos preocupados com o futuro de Fidel. Nas igrejas católicas de congregações dominadas por cubanos, os padres falaram sobre os fatos

ocorridos recentemente na ilha e pediram paciência aos fiéis.

Santeria followers sacrifice doves for Cuba, Fidel
Fri Aug 4, 2006 8:56 AM ET

By Jeff Franks

MIAMI (Reuters) - The white dove looks warily at shopkeeper Oscar Osorio as he pulls it from a cage and holds it in his hands.

"I don't think he trusts me," Osorio says while he gently rubs the dove's feathers and spreads its wings for a visitor to admire. "I think he knows what's coming."

The bird has reason to be nervous, because the illness of Cuban leader Fidel Castro has moved adherents of Santeria to appeal for divine help in hastening either Castro's demise or his recovery, depending on which side of the Florida Straits they live.

Santeria is the voodooish Afro-Cuban religion that uses animal sacrifice to communicate with the gods, which makes these tough times for favorite sacrificial creatures such as chickens, goats and, in this case, doves.

As many as 3 million people in Cuba and 60,000 people in Florida are believed to be involved in Santeria, according to religious experts.

Osorio said about 20 people a day are coming into his "botanica" in Miami's Little Havana section to buy birds, powders and jewelry for rituals in which they ask the gods to please finish off Castro so they can return home.

The white doves are most popular at the moment because, as traditional symbols of peace, their significance is as much political as religious.

"People want peace for Cuba," he said.

Unfortunately for the birds, which sell for $15 each, the price of peace includes their blood and feathers.

Sometimes, said Osorio, a genial man with a round belly, his customers prefer to just clean the birds and let them fly away. "Those are the lucky ones," he said.

While Osorio disagrees with the concept of asking gods to kill someone, even if it is the hated Castro, from whom he fled a year ago, he does not question his customers' motivations.

"I need the money. I need the money," he shouted.

FACT-FINDING RITUAL

After Cuba announced on Monday that Castro had stomach surgery and put brother Raul in charge, Rigoberto Zamora, a babalawo, or priest, of what he calls Yoruba, the African name for Santeria, performed a fact-finding ritual.

After sacrificing a couple of black hens and a rooster to satisfy the hunger of the gods, he got the word from them: Castro is already dead; he died on Monday.

"We were astonished by such good news. It made us happy because politically we are against Fidel," said Zamora, who left Cuba in 1980 and lives in the Miami neighborhood known as Little Havana.

The news from the gods was not all good. It turns out that Castro's demise will be followed by three months of intense fighting before peace is restored, he said.

While Cuban-Americans in Florida beseeched the gods to kill Castro, in Cuba the same gods were asked to make him well.

"We are praying for him because it's a very painful situation for everyone," said babalawo Guillermo Diago in Havana.

Members of the Yoruba Cultural Association of Cuba said they were collecting money to buy animals to sacrifice for Castro's health.

"Our position is to follow the plans of the gods, which are to understand and support the decisions taken by our maximum leader," the group said.

Santeristas are not the only religious types preoccupied with Castro's future.

In Miami's Roman Catholic churches with heavily Cuban congregations, priests spoke about the events in Cuba and urged patience.

But Little Havana shopkeeper Maria Vazquez, who sells toilet paper imprinted with Castro's image and T-shirts with anti-Castro messages, said, "We are praying every night that he is dead."

"It's probably not the Christian thing to do, but it is very human," said Vazquez, who fled Cuba with her family when Castro took power 47 years ago and longs to return.

(Additional reporting by Rosa Tania Valdes in Havana)

who is in command here?

2006-08-04T13:54:00.000-03:00

according to this story, a junta is in command of cuba... it also says at the end of the article that carnaval has been postponed until there is an update in castros condition..

Seis homens do governo de Fidel Castro estão no comando do país, segundo o diário El País
Belisa Figueiró
SÃO PAULO - A aposta oficial de uma sucessão institucional e um governo de direção defensiva já está se confirmando em Cuba. Segundo o jornal El País, seis homens estão no comando durante o afastamento do presidente Fidel Castro, além do seu irmão Raúl, nomeado como representante oficial. Todos são membros do governo castrista.
Entre eles, destaca-se o secretário do Comitê Executivo do Conselho de Ministros, Carlos Lage, de 54 anos. Ele foi responsável por aplicar as reformas de abertura econômica na década de 1990 e já atua como primeiro-ministro. Felipe Pérez Roque, ministro das Relações Exteriores, é um dos colaboradores mais próximos de Fidel e junto com Lage foi secretário pessoal do presidente durante seis anos.
Outras duas peças-chave nesse cenário, de acordo com o jornal, são os comunistas ortodoxos José Ramón Machado Ventura, atual chefe da organização do Partido Comunista de Cuba (PCC) e José Ramón Balaguer, que idealizou a organização e representa com Raúl a continuidade histórica. O presidente do Banco Central de Cuba, Francisco Soberón, que também atua no processo de "recentralização" econômica, está no mesmo grupo.
Assim como Raúl, nenhum deles apareceu em público até agora. Por enquanto, analistas e diplomatas concentram seus olhares para os movimentos do PCC e na saúde de Fidel, cujo mistério ainda continua. Os comentários informais, segundo o El País, são de que o estado do líder cubano não é grave e se recuperaria antes da próxima Cúpula do Movimento dos Países Não Aliados, prevista para acontecer entre 11 a 16 de setembro, em Havana.
Na capital, o carnaval cubano foi adiado até que haja um novo boletim médico ou aviso oficial sobre Fidel. O coordenador do Comitê de Defesa da Revolução (CDR) e sexto membro da direção, Juan José Rabilero, afirmou que está "fortalecendo a vigilância popular para evitar uma manifestação contrária à revolução".

the wall street journal on fidel

2006-08-04T11:22:00.000-03:00

the wall street journal and peggy noonan stick it to fidel
The Fabulous Castro Boys All about Raúl, ruthless and reformer? Wednesday, August 2, 2006 12:01 a.m. EDT
To outlive one's enemies is said to be a kind of revenge. This would explain the big, noisy party on Calle Ocho in Miami Monday night when Cuba announced that Fidel Castro was undergoing emergency intestinal surgery for hemorrhaging and had passed power to his 75-year-old brother Raúl.
Whether Fidel is sick, dead or only merely testing the response of Cuba's military and political elite to the anointing of Raúl is still not clear. El Maximo Lider did qualify the power transfer as "temporary." But the old man turns 80 on August 13 and even he won't live forever. The most likely scenario is that we are now watching preparations for a transition of Cuban power not seen for 47 years.
Fidel is not only the longest-reigning dictator in the history of the modern world; he is also the archetype of the paranoid communist micromanager. He is known to be ruthless, insecure and distrustful, to the point of executing ideological allies suspected of disloyalty. He has also been obsessed with anti-Americanism for more than a half-century. If Cubans are malnourished and the country resembles a rundown 1950s' museum, so be it. Fidel has been more interested in his legacy as the revolutionary who stood up to the imperialists. The odd admiration for his handiwork among many on the U.S. left--he may be a dictator but the health care is good!--is a mystery of our time.
Enter Raúl, five years younger than Fidel, and, historically, every bit as dedicated to the revolution. During their exile in Mexico in the 1950s, Raúl was the brother who befriended Che Guevara and he encouraged the adoption of a communist hard-line in 1960. Beginning in Mexico and especially when consolidating power after they overthrew Batista in 1959, Raúl did the bulk of Fidel's political dirty work.
And yet, despite this brutal past, Raúl is now widely thought to be the reformer. Some of this is relative, given the harshness of his narcissistic older brother. But Cuba watchers say that Raúl has been known to express concern for the suffering of the Cuban people under the current system and has been a consistent voice for economic change.
As minister of defense, Raúl has also been in charge of the military which owns and profits from the most lucrative businesses in Cuba, particularly tourism. He has undoubtedly noticed how China's military has prospered from creeping market liberalization. Should the U.S. trade embargo be lifted, he knows that he and his cadre of raulistas would be the immediate beneficiaries.
Raúl has already successfully won one internal round for economic reform. Back in the early 1990s, when Soviet support ended and the Cuban economy sank ever lower, he pushed to allow at least some private economic activity, as well as more foreign investment, to alleviate the scarcities. Small farmers' markets, "restaurants" in private homes and taxi services permitted to carry tourists popped up around the country. Along with Spanish hoteliers putting capital down on Cuban beaches, these changes helped reverse a desperate slide.
Those same reforms also began to threaten Fidel's power, however. And he quickly closed the tiny space for Cuba's private sector, creating a system of economic apartheid in which foreigners and the military have prospered but ordinary Cubans have been shut out. Many of the revolutionary faithful are believed to be exceedingly dissatisfied with the resulting inequalities.
Raúl is aware of the political risks of creating more private economic space, and we would expect political repression to continue as he tried to consolidate his own control once his brother dies. Yet, as the world saw after the collapse of Communism in Europe, freedom movements are hard to contain once unleashed. Ask Mikhail Gorbachev. Raúl would probably attempt to imitate the Chinese model of opening up to foreign investment and private Cuban business while keeping strict political control.
If Raúl wants to go in that direction he may also make some conciliatory gestures to the U.S., shelving his brother's anti-American rhetoric and offering cooperation on bilateral issues. The U.S. will have to be ready to respond, and in ways that use American influence to leverage more freedom. One helpful step to take now would be to repeal the 1996 Helms-Burton Act, which stipulates that a U.S. President may not lift the trade embargo as long as Fidel, Raúl or anyone they have appointed are in power. This denies the President important discretion and reduces the possibility that the U.S. could promote peaceful change through economic engagement with a post-Fidel Cuba.
Whether it comes sooner or later, Fidel Castro's death will be a moment of hope for the liberation of an island that was once a jewel of the Americas. If Raúl wants to go there, the U.S. ought to help show him the way.
No Más Castro may be dead. It's time to kill Castroism.
PEGGY NOONANThursday, August 3, 2006 12:01 a.m. EDT
It has long been my bitter hunch that the man I can't help think of as the last monster of the 20th century, Fidel Castro, creator and warden of the floating prison to our south, would die of old age in a big brass bed, a snifter of brandy in one hand and a good cigar in the other. No firing squad, no prison. He'd leave thinking he got away with it all. He had that kind of luck. The devil takes care of his own.
I hated that hunch.
Now Cuban authorities say Castro has temporarily stepped down due to ill health. And it is possible this is true. It is just as possible that Castro is dead, and that what we are witnessing is not the graceful and temporary relinquishing of power--that would be unlike our Fidel, whose frozen fingers would more likely have to be peeled off the steering wheel with the back of a hammer--but the spinning of the death of a monster whose sudden departure might shock the people of Cuba into something like movement toward progress. And so Fidel is "sick" and his brother "stepping in." One suspects that in the coming weeks Castro will "take a turn for the worse," and that Raul Castro will take to hurried midnight visits to an empty hospital room, offering afterward to the waiting media both color coverage and play by play: "The tubes have been taken out. He mouthed the words, 'Tell the people I love them, and leave them in good hands.' "
Then, once the spontaneous mourning demonstrations have been arranged, will come word of his passing.
The pre-positioning of Raul solves a potential struggle for succession and inhibits competitors. The world gets used to him. Things continue as they were. Forty-seven years becomes 48, and 49 . . .
What to do now?
How about this: Treat it as an opportunity. Use the change of facts to announce a change of course. Declare the old way over. Declare a new U.S.-Cuban relationship, blow open the doors of commerce and human interaction, allow American investment and tourism, mix it up, reach out one by one and person by person to the people of Cuba. "Flood the zone." Flood it with incipient prosperity and the insinuation of democratic values. Let Castroism drown in it.
The American economic embargo of Cuba is 40 years old. It has been called ineffective--it did not produce Fidel's downfall. It has been called effective--it kept the squeeze on, demonstrated what communism reaped and reaps. In any case it was right to deny a monstrous regime contact with, and implicit encouragement from, the American democracy.
All fair enough. But the monster may be dead and is surely dying. In any case, what remains of Cuban communism dies with him. Cubans don't know what they are economically except one thing: poor.
Castro survived the ruin of his economy--he had the guns--and he used his resistance to isolation to enhance his mystique. Fearless Fidel faced down the yanqui. Still, he was forced to swerve and pivot. In 1994, after Soviet cash supports had ended, he was forced to allow some modest individual self-employment.
With Castro gone, why not seize the moment for some wise, judicious, free-market love-bombing?
As in: Allow Americans to go to Cuba. Allow U.S. private money into Cuba. Let hotels, homes, restaurants, stores be developed, bought, opened, reopened. Use Fidel's death to reintroduce Cubans on the ground to Americans, American ways, American money and American freedom. Remind them of what they wanted, what they thought they were getting when the bearded one came down from the Sierra Maestre. Use his death/illness/collapse/disappearing act as an excuse to turn the past 40 years of policy on its head. Declare him over. Create new ties. Ignore the dictator, make partnerships with the people.
Yes give more money to Radio Marti and all Western government efforts to communicate with the people of Cuba. But also allow American media companies in. Make a jumble, shake it up, allow the conditions that can help create economic vibrancy and let that reinspire democratic thinking. The Cuban government, hit on all fronts by dynamism for the first time in half a century, will not be able to control it all.
That is how to undo Fidel, and Fidelism. That's how to give him, on the chance he's alive, a last and lingering headache. That's how to puncture his mystique. Let his people profit as he dies.
If he is actually ill, why not arrange it so that the last sounds he hears on earth are a great racket from the streets? What, he will ask the nurse, is that? "Oh," she can explain, "they are rebuilding Havana. It's the Hilton Corp. Except for the drills. That's Steve Wynn. The jackhammer is Ave Maria University, building an extension campus."
Imagine him hearing this. It would, finally, be the exploding cigar. That's the way to make his beard fall off.
What is the reason we don't do this--open Cuba as far as we can, retake it with soft, individual, and corporate power, let the marketplace do the heavy lifting? Tradition, habit, prevailing concepts. Politics. As all but children know, Florida is a swing state, and Cubans forced to flee Castro--and their children, grandchildren and great grandchildren--justly and rightly hate Fidel, dictatorship, all dictatorships. Their vote is significant and can swing the swing state. Cuban Americans know how to cohere and to show loyalty and antipathy within the democratic drama. Good. But I hope they are thinking about how to defeat Castroism now, today, with today's conditions. They're in the right war, but all good fighters know to shift troops, weapons and tactics when the landscape changes.
There is little President Bush can do, which, considering the politics of the matter, would be a relief to the White House. The president's hands are pretty much tied by the 1996 Helms-Burton Act, which keeps the U.S. government from lifting sanctions on Cuba or changing current arrangements until Castro frees his political prisoners and announces authentic elections.
Assuming he's too dead to do that, it won't happen. It wouldn't happen anyway, as he never admitted he had political prisoners or didn't hold real elections.
Congress could repeal Helms-Burton, and the administration could flood the zone, drowning Castroism in it. This could yield a great public good not only for the people of Cuba, and America, but the world.

Juanita Speaks

2006-08-04T11:07:00.000-03:00

ok the castro story is still running, so im gonna pass along a couple of items from the brasilian press... "Se Raúl Castro tomar o poder em Cuba esta será uma oportunidade que deve ser aproveitada porque ele é mais aberto do que Fidel" here, juanita castro, sister of fidel and raul says raul is more "open" than fidel.. she goes on to say now is the time to approach cuba and normalize relations... in this story, juanita says alive but very ill.. she says he is out of intensive care.. she spoke to someone on the island "who knows what goes on with fidel".. the phone call was disconnected.. she tried to call back but the line is constantly busy.. shes concerned because she never has had problems in the past getting through.. she says despite ideological and political differences, he is still blood, and she has nice memories of their childhood.. she says she and fidel have argued on the phone in the past, on political issues.. juanita says that in the past, people have gone to her pharmacy asking for help back in the island, letting a family member leave, or assistance with a relative who in prison.. in the past she had no desire to visit cuba, but says she would go today if fidel asks for her.. she again said that she was hurt with the way many exiles took to the street to celebrate the news about fidel, fidel may be fidel, but he is still my brother, blood.. on raul, she says he is very different from fidel, and more open to change..

for thr 411 on cuba, visit babalu blog

2006-08-03T13:03:00.000-03:00

ok i noticed that alot of people have stumbled on this page due to searches on fidel and cuba, and while i made a few posts on it, thats really not what i planned to blog about.. basically i just wanted to post a few odds and ends about my day to day here in garanhuns, and different news items that i found interesting.. if you want to really find out about fidel and cuba, i highly recommend BABALU BLOG.. while i dont agree 100% with val on some issues, he does a fine job.. he also has a load of links on other pages dealing with cuba.. enjoy it!!!

time for a break

2006-08-02T17:49:00.000-03:00

ok so the past couple days was alot of castro-cuba blogging, but i got a sort of break today, when i headed down to the stadium, "o gigante do agreste" to watch the local team, sete de setembro against íbis... íbis is pretty much known in brasil as the worst team ever.. they went years without a victory or a goal, kinda like columbia university in college football a few years back.. sete won on a fluke goal.. but at least now i can die saying i got to see ibis play.. íbis, the most infamous team in all of brasil.. i got to say this about the passion here.. people dopnt care if its a small unknown team, its their team and thats all that matters.. the 100 or so fans in the stadium today feel the same love and passion as fans of the larger teams do..

a realidade de cuba

2006-08-02T13:23:00.000-03:00

OK i am REAL sorry i cant translate this right now, but i got a game to run out to right now and thought this is of interest.. the paya article appeared in a brasilian magazine called VEJA.. its a crappy babelfish translation, but you can try reading it in portuguese, think in spanish..
a realidade de cuba
The official announcement that the dictator Fidel Castro, 79 years, was operated of a intestinal hemorrhage - (ACI - Havana 01ago06), and passed control of the government his brother Raul of 75 years, made the Cuban people to remember the famous prophecy of Saint Antonio María Claret, in middle of century XIX, that Cuba would again insert in the ' Concert of the Nations ' soon after the death of Fidel Castro, with a brief period of internal violence. The Spanish saint was Archbishop of Cuba between 1851 and 1857. In accordance with one strong verbal tradition and with writings conserved for the Congregation that it established, the Virgin of the Charity of Cobre disclosed to it that the Island would more than suffer a dictatorship from 40 years, and that [ Fidel Castro would finish with the death leader it ] in its bed. The prophecy spoke of a young leader very bold, bearded and folloied of other also bearded men, and that it would be acclaimed by all and that would be taken possetion little by little of the power, submitting the Cuban people to a railway dictatorship that would last 40 years, during which Cuba would suffer to numerous calamities and penúrias. E that finally this man would die in the bed. The people has this prophecy in high account, and the world waits that, in fact, it has a return of the democracy Cuba. Since that for the weapons the dictator Fidel Castro knocked down president Fulgêncio Baptist, to the 8 of January of 1959, and implanted, there, a railway communist dictatorship, and since then, the Cuban people did not know more what it is freedom and democracy. He does not have the free press and nor elections. From there, the Country lived under exclusive regimen of the Communist Party of Cuba (PCC), lead with hands of iron for the dictator, Fidel Castro, eliminating the adversaries. It says the unsupicious "Black Book of the Communism", written for the French historian Stéphane Courtois, and a team of six collaborators, who:"Havana and Santa Clara had been palco of executions em.massa. In accordance with the foreign press, this summary purification made 600 victims between the partisans of Baptist, in only five months. Execution courts had been organized, created to pronounce executions solely... In May of 1958 all the religious colleges had been closed, the respective buildings had been confiscated, also the Jesuit college of Belen, where Fidel makes its studies. Envergando its uniform, the Maximum Leader declared: ' that the falangistas priests if prepare to make the luggages '. The warning was not gratuitous, since in 17 set 1961, 131 priests religious diocesans and had been expulsos of Cuba. In the arrest of La Loma of los Coches, a thousand ' against revolutionaries ' had been more than fusilladed ". (Ed. Bertrand Brazil, 3ª. Ed. RIO DE JANEIRO, 2001, pg 770)The religious persecution in Cuba was enormous, as it also happened in all the communist countries, Russia, China, Vietnam, Cambodja, among others. The churches had been closed; religious and religious they had been imprisoned, exiled or died; e the religion alone could be practised under the guardianship of the State. The children and the young, in the day-care centers and the colleges, receive fort and constant marxist indoctrination, enaltecendo the "Revolution" and its "commander" Fidel. according to more respected not conforming Cuban, Oswaldo Payá, Fidel he was not imprisoned for being an international celebrity, and affirms: "the end of the communism in Cuba depends only on the biological fatalismo: the death of the dictator " (SEES, 18 May 2003). In 2003, the opponent was with the Pope in the Vatican, met with the Secretary of State, Colin Powell, in Washington, and had its enclosed name enters the candidates to the Prize Nobel of the Peace Is a practicing catholic, whom dirige established and the "Christian Movement Release", and a reference for the future of Cuba its is well articulated proposal of a pacific transistion for the democracy. Payá is also the mentor of the Project Varella, the below-signed one asking for to opening politics. In Havana, where it works as engineer of hospital equipment maintenance, it it does not give a step without being followed by the policy. But it is not left to intimidate. Still boy, was the only pupil of its primary school that if refused to enter for Communist Youth. Adolescent, led a manifestation against the Soviet invasion of the Checoslováquia, in 1968.
In interview to the magazine "VEJA", Payá said that "always it had a great disinformation on the Cuban reality. All the Soviet block, including the Government Cuban, was specialist in launching a false image of our Country. The world always saw Cuba as the island of the freedom, populated of revolutionary, legendary and romantic leaders. We had here of everything, little freedom and equality ". E also affirms that "a culture of the fear arraigada in Cuba Exists has decades... The express totalitarianism if by means of exerted mechanisms of control on the population... It has a complete monitoring on the citizens, what it inhibits any possibility of personal growth or individual freedom." (VEJA, 18 May 2003).
Philip Aquinofelipeaquino@cancaonova.com

Juanita Castro on the news out of Cuba

2006-08-02T11:58:00.000-03:00

pretty good article in todays herald on juanita castro and the news out of cuba..
Cuban leader's sister not crying, not cheering
While her big brother has ruled Cuba for more than four decades, Juanita Castro Ruz presides over a small local pharmacy -- and tries to keep a low profile.
BY TERE FIGUERAS NEGRETE
The only place in Cuban Miami, it seemed, not abuzz with the excited chatter of exiles was a small pharmacy off Southwest 27th Avenue -- a tacit courtesy toward its diminutive and elegantly dressed owner, the little sister of a man most consider a ruthless dictator.
No joyous exclamations of Cuba libre. No chisme, or gossip, about the stricken Fidel Castro.
''People have been respectful,'' said Juanita Castro Ruz, who fled the island more than 40 years ago after working with the underground against her brothers Fidel and Raúl. An ailing Fidel this week handed Raúl Castro temporary control over the island's communist government.
''I have differences with my brother, ideological and political,'' said Castro, who owns the Mini Price pharmacy at 2671 SW 27th Ave. and has largely shied away from the often contentious nature of exile politics.
Tuesday was no different, with the 73-year-old Castro emphasizing she had nothing to say about her 79-year-old brother, his illness or the state of affairs in her homeland.
''I'm not going to be making any declarations about that,'' she said, idly straightening a row of Advil bottles.
Nearby, her team of pharmacists made polite chitchat with elderly patients awaiting prescriptions. No one brought up anything remotely related to Cuba, and Castro said she takes pains to ignore local Spanish-language stations -- especially on a day like this.
''I never listen to the radio. There is so much hatred in this community. And they will say that all Castros are the same,'' she said. ``And that is a lie.''
While she is no fan of her brother's politics and chose to live her life in exile, she said she had mixed feelings about the hordes of celebrators who took to the street the night before, leaning on car horns well past midnight.
''Ninety-nine percent of them didn't have the courage to stay and fight,'' she said.
The man so many people publicly hoped was dead -- or at the very least, dying -- is family, after all.
''This is a spectacle, all this happiness,'' she said, shaking her head. ``I can only say that I am human.''
Before she defected to the United States in 1964, Juanita Castro operated a boarding house for university girls -- at least publicly. Her home in Havana, next-door to a Chinese laundry, was also known for running a supply house and escape route for those opposed to her two big brothers.
She is fiercely protective of her family name, nonetheless.
Last year, she won a libel suit in Spain against Alina Fernández Revuelta, the illegitimate daughter of the Cuban ruler, who defected 15 years ago.
Castro sued over passages in Fernández's book, Alina: The Memoirs of Fidel Castro's Rebel Daughter, which she said libeled her parents.
The book depicted Angel Castro -- father of Fidel, Raúl and Juanita -- as a murderous land baron who exploited his workers, and their mother, Lina, as a mixed-race peasant who practiced witchcraft.
Fernández, who hosts an evening radio program on WQBA, has said the book was accurate and based on previously published material.
She could not be reached for comment Tuesday.
Juanita Castro said she does not recognize Fernández as family. She has no children of her own and said she has ''been talking with people'' in Cuba about her brother's health, but declined to elaborate.
''Los lazos de sangre son fuertes,'' she said with a shrug. The ties of blood are strong.

Fidel will fight until the very last moment

2006-08-02T11:32:00.000-03:00

Fidel will fight until the very last moment, according to Ricardo Alarcon, but that moment is far off, according to Ricardo Alarcón
“Fidel vai lutar até o último instante” Data: 02/08/2006
O presidente do Parlamento de Cuba, Ricardo Alarcón, um dos principais aliados de Fidel Castro, afirmou ontem que o presidente cubano "vai lutar até o último instante", mas que este momento ainda "está muito distante", segundo a agência de notícias oficial de Cuba.
"O líder cubano sempre irá lutar até o último instante. Mas este último instante ainda está muito distante", declarou Alarcón.

Cubans in Brasil react to Fidel news CLEANED UP TRANSLATION

2006-08-02T09:05:00.000-03:00

this was in a brasilian paper today, its a babelfish translation cause im swamped right now, but its enough to understand the article...

Three Cubans who live in Brazil follow with surprise and concern the news on the health of Fidel Castro, 79. Submitted to a surgery of intestine in this Monday, the president of Cuba provisionally delegated the control of the government his brother Raúl Castro, 75.

Cuban Idália Morejón, 40, teacher of Latin American literature of the PUC (Pontifical University Catholic of São Paulo), living in Brazil as political refugee for eight years, affirms that had "an ambiguous" feeling when she heard the news . "While we wait for Fidel to' fall ' to recoup freedoms, at the same time it would be as if a family father died", she said.

Morejón desires to come back Cuba with her son Javier Arrests, 15. "Since I arrived here I feel that I am preparing myself to go back". she affirms. The teacher, however, is skeptical with regard to changes with the possible definitive exit of in power. "It's not that if Fidel to die, all the structures go and disappear. Everything is planned, the government has been preparing for some time now".

But Morejón says she fears the presence of Raúl in the power. According to her, the brother of Fidel is an disagreeable figure that can take "measured extreme" in case of popular revolt.

Surprise and concern

The Cuban translator Amaury Bu Wilson, 37, arrived from Cuba three weeks agoto live in São Paulo, said to the Folha Online that he felt "surprised and worried" when he heard of the illness of Fidel, but that he imagines "that this is not the last crisis". On Raúl, he has another opinion.

Wilson thinks that Raúl does not have the same force and the same empathy that Fidel between the Cuban people and, therefore, waits that "everything runs in a calm form and that Fidel comes back to the command". He said he desires that another President is to the control of the United States when, for some reason, Fidel has to abandon the power definitively. Milanez makes said.

"I do not want to think about the one that comes later. No matter how hard I want things chnage, I prefer to wait at least until the president of U.S.A., George W. Bush, is out of power ".

The Cuban photographer Mailin Milanez, 35, has lived in São Paulo for almost a year, says that she felt "strange" when she listened to the news. "This isthe first time that they give a notice with antecedence. Normally Fidel gives one week and starts the speculations: I had a cold, pneumonia. I find that they had informed before because he's going to be away for a while '."

Indignation

Although to express the desire of that some things change in the country, Milanez and Wilson they had revealed indignation when seeing the Cuban opponents who live in Miami commemorate the internment of Fidel. "I do not like to see the people commemorating", said Wilson. "I feel anger", added Milanez.

Via email, Cuban student Valéria Mancheva, who lives in Havana, affirmed to the Folha Online, that the day today was normal, despite the notice on the health of Fidel. "The day was just like any other. The only information that we have is what was divulged in the letter of Fidel, where he communicates to have delegated power temporarily the Raúl Castro and explains the reason."

Cubanos no Brasil divergem sobre afastamento de Fidel Castro02/08/2006 00:04:05 - Folha On LineTrês cubanos que vivem no Brasil acompanham com surpresa e preocupação as notícias sobre os problemas de saúde de Fidel Castro, 79. Submetido a uma cirurgia de intestino nesta segunda-feira, o presidente de Cuba delegou provisoriamente o controle do governo a seu irmão Raúl Castro, 75.A cubana Idália Morejón, 40, professora de literatura latino-americana da PUC (Pontifícia Universidade Católica de São Paulo), que vive no Brasil como refugiada política há oito anos, afirma que teve um sentimento "ambíguo" quando recebeu a notícia. "Ao mesmo tempo em que esperamos que Fidel 'caia' de uma vez para recuperarmos liberdades, seria como se um pai de família morresse", disse.Morejón deseja voltar a Cuba com seu filho Javier Prendes, 15. "Desde que cheguei aqui sinto que estou me preparando para voltar". afirma. A professora, porém, é cética com relação a mudanças com a possível saída definitiva de Fidel do poder. "Não é que se Fidel morrer, todas as estruturas vão desaparecer. Está tudo planejado, o governo está se preparando faz tempo".Mas Morejón diz temer pela presença de Raúl no poder. Segundo ela, o irmão de Fidel é uma figura antipática que pode tomar "medidas extremas" em caso de revolta popular.
Surpresa e preocupação
O tradutor cubano Amaury Bu Wilson, 37, que chegou de Cuba há três semanas para viver em São Paulo, disse à Folha Online que se sentiu "surpreso e preocupado" quando soube da doença de Fidel, mas que imagina "que esta não seja a última crise". Sobre Raúl, ele tem outra opinião. Wilson pensa que Raúl não tem a mesma força e a mesma empatia que Fidel entre os cubanos e, por isso, espera que "tudo corra de forma tranqüila e que Fidel volte ao comando". Ele disse desejar que outro governante esteja à frente dos Estados Unidos quando, por algum motivo, Fidel tenha de abandonar o poder definitivamente. Milanez faz coro. "Não quero pensar no que vem depois. Por mais que eu queira que mude muita coisa, prefiro esperar pelo menos até que o presidente dos EUA, George W. Bush, esteja fora do poder".A fotógrafa cubana Mailin Milanez, 35, que vive em São Paulo há quase um ano, diz que achou "estranho" quando escutou a notícia. "É a primeira vez que dão uma notícia assim com antecedência. Normalmente o Fidel some uma semana e começam as especulações: estava com gripe, com pneumonia. Acho que avisaram antes porque ele vai ter que ficar afastado um tempão'."
Indignação
Apesar de expressar o desejo de que algumas coisas mudem em seu país, Milanez e Wilson manifestaram indignação ao ver os dissidentes cubanos que moram em Miami comemorar a internação de Fidel. "Não gosto de ver as pessoas comemorando", disse Wilson. "Sinto raiva", acrescentou Milanez.Por e-mail, a estudante cubana Valéria Mancheva, que mora em Havana, afirmou à Folha Online, que o dia hoje foi normal, apesar da notícia sobre a saúde de Fidel. "O dia acaba de amanhecer como outro qualquer. A única informação que temos é a divulgada na carta de Fidel, em que ele comunica ter delegado o poder temporariamente a Raúl Castro e explica o porquê."

Fidel died in 1981

2006-08-01T11:20:00.000-03:00

with all the news that fidel is dead, lets keep in mind that he may already have died back in 1981.. he was replaced by alexis papagos, and that was the real reason elian was sent back..

Fidel Castro died in 1981, and was replaced by a look-alike CIA plant. The dictator ate tainted shellfish and died. CIA infiltrators wasted no time in covering this up, and installing an agent named Alexis Papagos to impersonate Castro, and run the country. This information comes to THE UNCOVEROR via Cuban national, Igor Davidovich Martinez.
Why, then, does the U.S. government maintain the embargo against Cuba? "The CIA is turning a great profit by selling contraband Cuban goods on the black market," says Martinez, "and they don't want to give that up." The CIA sees to it that the embargo stays.
What tipped Martinez off? Before 1981, the real Fidel Castro nearly always wore a military uniform. After that year, "Castro," really Alexis Papagos, appeared more often in civilian clothing.
This prompted Martinez, and several others to start digging. Of those who discovered this deception, only Martinez remains alive.
The plot almost failed. A few people in 1981 heard of Castro's death, and began a rumor that he had died of syphilis, but the CIA quickly made those people, some of them Americans, Disappear. They needed the world to think that Castro was still alive. They didn't want you to know, but thanks to THE UNCOVEROR, now you do.

CUBAN CHILD ALMOST BLOWS CIA'S GREATEST SECRET: CASTRO IS A CIA PLANT!
Why is the U.S. Government so eager to send little Elian Gonzales back to Communist Cuba? He holds the secret of the CIA's central operative in the Cuban Goverment: Fidel Castro! (See the UNCOVEROR'S original Fidel Castro exclusive) This startling revelation was brought to us by an anonymous source from within the CIA itself! It was very dangerous for the person who we will call AGENT X to bring us this information. Apparently Elian's mother was willing to risk her own life and that of her son's to bring this news to the Cuban people of Miami, FL. The CIA had been scouring the Carribean after she fled Cuba and presumed her lost at sea prior to Elian's discovery by a fisherman.According to our source, AGENT X, she imparted all she had uncovered about the imposter Castro (really CIA agent Alexis Papagos) to her young son, in hopes that someone would find him should she perish. The CIA sought desparately to snuff this information and thus sent Elian's "father" on a crusade to the U.S.A. to retrieve the boy. "The man isn't even his father, he's another agent for god's sake! They need to have him back in Cuba under their control," AGENT X explained to us, frustrated over the plight of this innocent child.AGENT X's stroy is validated by the INS Raid that recovered Elian from the family he was staying with. Why would Immigration Services send an armed raid to pick up an illeagal alien child? To keep people under their control! The family of the man who was keeping Elian here in the U.S. has been threatened under the pain of death to not disclose what he knows. He refused to speak to us, scared of what "Big Brother" will do if he talks. We can only be thankful for the few scrupulous Agents like, AGENT X, that work in the CIA who are willing to put life and limb on the line to bring this disturbing information to the UNCOVEROR. Shortly after telling us this story, AGENT X was "reassigned." We can only speculate on his whereabouts, and pray for his safety...

is this the day?

2006-08-01T11:14:00.000-03:00

well the news coming out of cuba has spread like wildfire.. kind of interesting the way i found out.. theres a bar i drink at from time to time.. late last night theres a knock on my door and its one of the girls that works there.. she came to tell me that for some reason there was a bunch of people on the tv jumping up and down, with the flag that is on your soccer jersey (she was talking about my cuba soccer jersey).. so i grabbed my jacket and headed off to the bar.. sure enough, the national news broadcast was showing the images from little havana.. like ive said before, lets wait and see, but if it is true, heres what im going to do.. first ill head down to the church and say a prayer for his soul.. sfter all, who needs prayers more than him.. but after that, im going to buy three of "colhetes" (big ass bottle rockets) and set them off.. then im going to get shit faced drunk, not for me, but for anyone who wanted to see this day and didnt make it..

42 midgets vs a lion

2006-07-26T12:04:00.000-03:00

this story has been running around on the web for some time, and YES, I KNOW ITS FAKE, but its just so damn funny.. Lion Mutilates 42 Midgets in Cambodian Ring-Fight... here is the page where the whole story is explained.. laugh it up..

The Wonder of Voodoo Economics

2006-07-25T14:22:00.000-03:00

The Wonder of Voodoo Economics
Bush 43 gets it.
By Rich Lowry
Who says you can’t cut taxes, increase spending, and reduce the federal budget deficit all at the same time? That’s what the Bush administration has managed to do. Two decades after then-presidential candidate George H.W. Bush characterized Ronald Reagan’s idea that tax cuts would spur revenue-generating economic growth as “voodoo economics,” the witch doctor is again at work.When President Bush pledged in 2004 to cut the deficit in half by 2009, critics guffawed. The Boston Globe headlined a story, “Bush’s plan to halve federal deficit seen as unlikely; higher spending, lower taxes don’t mix, analysts say.” “Fanciful,” “laughable” and “all spin,” said the critics. Well, it turns out that 2009 might be coming early this year. The 2004 deficit had been projected to hit $521 billion, or 4.5 percent of gross domestic product. Bush’s goal was to cut it to 2.25 percent of GDP by 2009—not exactly as stirring a national goal as putting a man on the moon, but one that was nonetheless pronounced unattainable. This year, the deficit could go as low as $300 billion, right around the 2009 goal of 2.5 percent of GDP.The key to the reduction is revenue growth, which has been stoked by economic growth. Government revenues are up 12.9 percent in the first eight months of this year over the same eight-month period last year—without any tax increases. When individuals, investors, and corporations have more cash in a growing economy, they send more to the federal government in tax payments.This, despite—or, more accurately, because of—a couple of rounds of Bush tax cuts that were supposed to have been fiscally ruinous. The Bush tax reductions played some role in the economic expansion and therefore are responsible, partly, for the increased revenues. This doesn’t mean that tax cuts “pay for themselves,” as their most fervent advocates say. But they certainly can offset some of their own cost. In 1999, the Congressional Budget Office was projecting 2006 total federal revenues of nearly $2.4 trillion, prior to anyone foreseeing Bush’s tax cuts. This year, revenue could go as high as nearly $2.4 trillion, even after those tax cuts. In January 2003, prior to Bush’s second round of tax cuts in that year, the CBO guessed revenues would be close to $2.4 trillion this year—again, in the ballpark of where they could be this year. According to Brian Riedl of the Heritage Foundation, if annual spending increases in the Bush years had been limited to the rate of the Clinton years, roughly 3.3 percent, there would be a federal surplus now. Instead, spending has been growing at 8 percent a year. That demonstrates that the formula for deficit reduction from the 1990s—moderate-spending restraint coupled with higher-than-expected growth-generated revenues—would work again today, if only someone could manage the moderate-spending restraint.Another similarity from the 1990s is that the revenue surge is driven by high-end earners and corporations. Liberals always rue it when the rich get richer, but when they don’t, the federal fisc tends to be ruined because they are the ones who pay most of the taxes. The deficit climbed unexpectedly in the early Bush years and is declining unexpectedly now, not because the projections for economic growth were wildly off, but because the kind of people who pay the most taxes took a bath early in the decade and are recovering now. Almost 47 percent of income taxes are paid by those making more than $200,000 a year, and they are thriving again. A chunk of the current revenue surge is also from corporate income taxes, which are up 30 percent over last year. There are limits to voodoo. Today’s fiscal improvements will be overwhelmed by the exploding costs of entitlements just over the horizon. In light of that, we should be maintaining a high-growth, low-tax economy to reap all the benefits of growth, but dutifully restraining entitlements. That’s not sorcery, but just good sense.— Rich Lowry is author of Legacy: Paying the Price for the Clinton Years.(c) 2006 King Features Syndicate.

Von Richtofen case comes to a close

2006-07-24T08:33:00.000-03:00

Suzanne Von Richtofen got 40 years for the killing of her parents. Daniel and Christian Cravinhos got the same sentence. Two stories below.

Brazilian trio get 40 years for slayings
By STAN LEHMAN, Associated Press WriterSat Jul 22, 8:05 AM ET
A wealthy young woman, her lover and his brother were convicted Saturday in the deaths her parents, a crime that riveted Brazil with a tale of love across rigid class lines. Each was sentenced to about 40 years in prison.
Manfred and Marisa von Richtofen were beaten to death at their home in a wealthy district of Sao Paulo on Oct. 30, 2002.
Manfred von Richtofen, the great nephew of the World War I German ace known as the Red Baron, and his wife disapproved of their daughter's relationship with Daniel Cravinhos, who is from a lower-middle-class family.
Prosecutors said Suzanne von Richtofen, Cravinhos, and his brother Christian plotted the murder because they wanted the couple's estate, valued at $920,000.
"The three, acting in cold-blooded fashion, plotted and carried out the murder of the von Richtofen couple out of greed," Chief Prosecutor Roberto Tardelli told the jury on Friday.
Prosecutors said Richtofen, 22, let the brothers into the house late at night and checked to make sure her parents were sleeping. Then the brothers sneaked into the bedroom and bludgeoned them to death with iron bars.
The house's library was ransacked to make it look like a break-in and Daniel Cravinhos and Richtofen went to a motel to fabricate an alibi, police said.
The brothers, who confessed to the crime, took some $7,000 from the house. Investigators were led to Christian Cravinhos when he purchased a motorcycle the day after the murder, paying for it with 36 $100 bills.
Richtofen was driven by a desire to "get her hands on the money and assets her parents had worked so hard to obtain," Tardelli said. She "wanted her freedom and her independence without having to work for it."
Defense attorneys were expected to appeal. Richtofen's lawyer, Mauro Octavio Nacif, tried to convince jurors that she did not orchestrate the killings.
"If Suzanne had not met Daniel, would her parents still be alive today?" he asked. "Of course they would. This crime was committed only because Daniel wanted to. He was the only one with a motive — money."
The lawyer for the Cravinhos brothers blamed Richtofen. "The only person responsible for all this is that young lady," Geraldo Jabur said, pointing to her.
More than 200 people packed the courtroom for the final session, which ended early Saturday.
During the five-day trial, Daniel Cravinhos, 25, and Christian, 30, claimed Richtofen persuaded them to kill the couple because she said her parents often mistreated her. Daniel Cravinhos said her father tried to sexually molest her, but Richtofen denied it.
Richtofen accused her estranged boyfriend of threatening to leave her if she did not help kill the couple.
"I couldn't resist his spell. He was like a God for me," said Richtofen, adding Daniel was her first lover.
"He once told me to imagine how wonderful it would be to live with him without the presence of my parents," she said. "A few months later, he told me the time had come to get rid of my parents, and if I didn't follow him, he would abandon me."

Brazil sentences woman for killing parents
Sat Jul 22, 11:10 AM ET
A former law student from a wealthy family has been sentenced to 39 years in prison for killing her parents in Brazil's most publicized murder trial in recent years.
The jury in a Sao Paulo court found Suzane von Richthofen, her boyfriend Daniel Cravinhos and his brother Cristian guilty of murdering her parents in October 2002.
All three have confessed to the crime.
In a city with one of the highest homicide rates in the world, this drama in a well-to-do family repeatedly grabbed media headlines for nearly four years.
Suzane, a 19 year-old law student at the time of the crime, let Daniel, 21, and Cristian, 27, into her parents' home in a middle-class neighborhood of Sao Paulo, prosecutors said.
The two brothers beat the parents, Marisia and Manfred von Richthofen, with an iron rod while they slept, they said. In addition, they were convicted of smothering the mother with wet towels and trash bags.
Prosecutors said the three committed the crime to take control of the Richthofen's belongings. Police said Suzane planned the murder because her parents had prohibited her relationship with Daniel.
Suzane's lawyers said Daniel persuaded her to participate.
Judge Alberto Anderson Filho sentenced Suzane and Daniel to 39 years in prison. Cristian was sentenced to 38 years, a spokesperson of the Sao Paulo court said.
The rulings are subject to appeal.
According to local press reports, Manfred von Richthofen, a naturalized Brazilian and an engineer, was the grandson of a brother of "Red" Baron Manfred von Richthofen of Germany, who shot down 80 enemy aircraft in World War I before being killed in action in 1918.

The Sports Economist

2006-07-20T13:25:00.000-03:00

theres a handful of blogs i like to drop in on, and here is one that is one of my favs, mainly cause it combines sports and economics..
THE SPORTS ECONOMIST does a nice job of covering a wide array of sports.. in the last few posts, its covered the NBA, the italian soccer scandal, horse racing, ultimate fighting (UFC), and the tour de france...
if you enjoy both sports and economics, its worth a look...

XVI Festival de Inverno; Garanhuns, Pernambuco

2006-07-20T13:12:00.000-03:00

Here is the lineup of acts on the main stage, in the main city plaza....
XVI Festival de Inverno
Garanhuns, Pernambuco

Praça Gualadajara
A partir das 21hDia 20/07 – Quinta-feiraAbertura do 16º Festival de Inverno de Garanhuns

Noite dedicada à Cultura Popular

Mestre de Cerimônia: Salustiano Convidados: Lia de Itamaracá, Orquestra de Frevo da Bomba do Hemetério, Cia. de Dança Popular de Tuparetama, Maracatu Piaba de Ouro, Banda de Pífano de Dois Irmãos Caruaru, Bacamarteiros, Ivanildo Vila Nova, Galego Aboiador, Coco Popular de Aliança, Maracatu Porto Rico. Participações: Silvério Pessoa, Jorge du Peixe, Otto e DJ Dolores
Dia 21/07 – Sexta-feira

Renato Godoy

Irah Caldeira

Nando Cordel

Elba Ramalho

Dia 22/07 – Sábado

Bambás

Silvério Pessoa

Vanessa da Mata

Nando Reis

Dia 23/07 – Domingo

Os Valvulados

DJ Dolores

Otto

Nação Zumbi

Dia 24/07 – Segunda-feira

Companhia do Forró

Gláucio Costa

Jorge de Altinho

Magníficos

Dia 25/07 – Terça-feira

Banda Flash

Augusto César

Os Pholhas

The Fevers

Dia 26/07 – Quarta-feira

Léo Noronha

Gina Sollo

Paulo Diniz

Oswaldo Montenegro

Dia 27/07 – Quinta-feira

Luciole Maranhão

Moonlight (Garanhuns)

Clã (Portugal)

Los Hermanos

Dia 28/07 – Sexta-feira

Karla Cibele

Gustavo Travassos

Junio Barreto

Maria Rita

Dia 29/07 – Sábado

Eclipse Urbano

Lady Murphy

Uptown Band

Barão Vermelho

frosty the snowman visits garanhuns

2006-07-20T13:01:00.000-03:00

festival de inverno (winterfest) starts today, and here is a pic of the new orelhão (payphone) they installed, the frosty the snowman edition..

The strange case of Suzane von Richtofen

2006-07-18T09:45:00.000-03:00

The strange case of Suzane von Richtofen.
this is one of the stories that has all of brasil talking.. it has sex, murder, and money.. its had twists and turns.. at one point suzanne was interviewed for a national tv show, and during a commercial break, the cameras caught her lawyers coaching her to cry as she spoke of the murder.. the tv here has round the clock coverage, just like the oj trial..
Man admits killing girlfriend's parents
By STAN LEHMAN, Associated Press Writer Mon Jul 17, 10:03 PM ET
SAO PAULO, Brazil - The former lover of a wealthy young woman testified Monday that he killed her parents because they opposed their affair, which crossed Brazil's rigid class lines.
Daniel Cravinhos, 25, said he beat Manfred and Marisa von Richtofen to death with an iron bar as they slept at home in a wealthy district of Sao Paulo because the couple's daughter, Suzane von Richtofen, persuaded him to do it.
Cravinhos said 22-year-old Richtofen told him she was sexually abused by her father and beaten by her mother.
"She said she hated them and wanted to see them dead," he said as the trial opened Monday. "I was shocked."
Cravinhos and his older brother Christian are accused of the murder, but the younger brother said he killed the couple himself at his lover's behest.
Manfred von Richtofen, 49, was an engineer and the great nephew of the World War I German ace known as the Red Baron. His wife was a psychologist. The couple disapproved of their daughter's relationship with Cravinhos, who is from a lower middle-class family, the daughter's lawyers have said.
Cravinhos said the father had threatened to disinherit Richtofen from his estate, worth a reported $954,000, if she did not end their relationship.
Cravinhos said Richtofen persuaded him to test a gun in her parents' bedroom three months before the murder to see if it made too much noise, but then discarded the idea of shooting them.
He said Richtofen let the brothers into the house on the night of Oct. 30, 2002. Armed with iron bars, they sneaked to the parents' bedroom, but his brother "froze," he said.
Daniel Cravinhos testified he then hit each parent "four to six" times in the head and covered their faces with black plastic bags so Richtofen's younger brother, Andreas — who was out at an Internet cafe — would not see them.
Christian Cravinhos said on the day of the crime, the couple came to his house looking "extremely agitated and nervous."
"Both said they were going to kill Suzane's parents," he told prosecutors.
Prosecutors said they would seek the maximum sentence of 60 years in prison for Richtofen and the two brothers — 30 years for each killing.
Richtofen's attorneys have said Cravinho threatened to leave her if she did not get rid of her parents.
Police say the Cravinho brothers took some $7,000 from the house, and investigators were led to the older brother when he purchased a new motorcycle the day after the murder, paying for it with 36 $100 bills.

XVI festival de inverno in garanhuns

2006-07-17T14:21:00.000-03:00

XVI festival de inverno.. winterfest.. 10 days of music and food and non stop partying.. there are tents and stages set up all over town, and each area has a different style/ type of music so there is something for everyones tastes.. this year they are going to feature cuban music at one of the stages, so im excited about that.. theres a handful of cubans in this town, mostly doctors and dentists who left cuba over the years, and they are also excited and proud that this year cuban music will be showcased and represented.. the fun starts each night at about 10 PM and doesnt stop till the early hours the next morning.. not much gets done during festival.. i will try to post pics of the fun..

fidel castro dead?

2006-07-12T08:21:00.000-03:00

this guy has been killed off more than i dont know what.. ive heard this story a million times now.. one of the things i was afraid of before i moved to brasil was that i would miss the scene in miami when fidel castro finally died.. there are stories buzzing all over the internet.. val at babalu blog has some info here, and links here, and here is a story.. of course, there are those that think he was killed off in 1981 and replaced by alexis papagos.. (thanks to sergio at babalu who found that story)

more on zidane

2006-07-12T07:56:00.000-03:00

someone in the comments section asked for a bit more on the zidane incident.. here is a link to google news with more info, and here is another.. follow tem and you will find more info on it.. this story is bringing everyone out of the woodwork.. in this story, an iranian official says zidanes reaction was a result of islamic pride.. in this story a far right italian politician has interesting comments.. here is a snippet : Meanwhile, the far-right vice-president of the Italian Senate stoked anti-French feeling in the country on Tuesday, branding the French team as "blacks, Islamists and Communists".Roberto Calderoli, head of the right-wing popular Northern League party, refused to retract earlier comments in which he hailed Italy's defeat of France in Sunday's World Cup final as "a victory for Italian identity"."When I say that France's team is composed of blacks, Islamists and Communists, I am saying an objective and evident thing," Calderoli was quoted on Tuesday as saying by the Ansa news agency.Italy's all-white team, from a largely devout Catholic populace, had won against "a France team which sacrificed its own identity by lining up blacks, Islamists and Communists to get results," Calderoli had said on Sunday.

everyone has an opinion....

zidane

2006-07-11T13:29:00.000-03:00

just one way to describe the zidane incident:

O mighty Caesar! dost thou lie so low?Are all thy conquests, glories, triumphs, spoils,Shrunk to this little measure? (julius caesar 3.1.148)..

one of the best players in the history of the game, the best french player ever.. more cantona than platini...

Garanhuns to Araua, Aracaju, and back to Garanhuns

2006-07-11T13:02:00.000-03:00

THE TRIP FROM GARANHUNS TO ARAUÁ
ok it was a VERY long trip and week.. for starters, we had serious bus problems.. soon after the trip started, one of the wires that sends juice the windshield wipers was frayed and came loose.. every 30-45 minutes theyd come undone and we had to stop and reconnect them.. things became unraveled, literally, when we blew a tire and it was just shredded to pieces.. we pulled over to the side of the road to change it, only to discover the jack did not work.. luckily, a truck driver that had pulled over had one in working condintion and lent it to us.. he was really nice about it, he waited almost 45 minutes as we changed it and refused to take money from us for his trouble.. "we are all on the road, and one day i may need your help", is what he said and then drove off.. the kids enjoyed the fact that a bus for an all girls school pulled over and their driver helped us.. you take one bus with 60 boys ranging in ages from 11-17, and take another one filled with about 50 girls ranging in ages from 13-19, and you get quite the event.. we got the spare on, but it was bald.. we had to drive slow into the next town to get a new tire.. while we waited for the new tire, we got lunch.. this whole process delayed us about 5 hours.. we got in to arauá alot later than we had planned, but at least we made it to arauá, in the state of sergipe..
THE TOWN OF ARAUÁ
think small... imagine a one mule town.. now, imagine a town smaller than that.. the only place with internet access was city hall.. not much to do in this town.. i like small towns, but this was too much.. everything stops after about 8PM.. it got so bad we got away two nights after the games were done.. the first place we visited was estância, a bit bigger than arauá but smaller than garanhuns.. we got the kids pizza.. the second trip we made was to a town called boquim, and i really liked this place.. small, but it still had signs of life.. there was a plaza in the center full of girls looking for guys, and guys looking for girls.. the players really enjoyed it..
THE TOURNEY IN ARAUÁ
the tourney was very competitive.. there really wasnt a bad team there.. the teams came from various states here in the northeast: bahia, sergipe, alagoas, and us, pernambuco.. all the teams had ups and downs, but in the end, all classified for the finals.. the youngest group lost in the first games of the semi finals on an own goal.. the middle group lost on penalties.. the older kids made it to the finals, but lost on penalties as well, and we ended up with a second place trophy.. all the other coaches came over to tell us ours was the most organized, most professional looking group, and many offered players to train with us.. in the future we are going to hold our own tournament here in garanhuns and many will bring their teams to participate in it
BACK TO GARANHUNS
if the road to arauá was difficult, the road back to garanhuns was worse.. this time the other tire blew.. we got it patched up, but about 45 minutes later, it blew out AGAIN.. we decided to drive to aracaju, a beach in sergipe.. we tired to find a hotel for the night, but due to an event, most everything was booked.. at 4 in the morning we finally found a hotel where we could get 10 rooms and cram the kids in.. the next day while we got the tires fixed the kids went to the beach.. it was the first time a few of them had ever been to the beach and they really enjoyed themselves..

What Could the N.F.L. Learn From the World Cup?

2006-07-11T08:58:00.000-03:00

From the Freakonomics Blog..
What Could the N.F.L. Learn From the World Cup?
The World Cup final was both predictable (Italy’s comeback and eventual triumph after the early French goal) and bizarre (Zinedine Zidane’s farewell head-butt). Not a great game but not bad.
The consolation match on Saturday, between Germany and Portugal, wasn’t much more exciting—except for the hometown German fans, who saw their young team secure third place in the tournament with a 3-1 victory.
But even if you weren’t a Germany fan, it was nice to have one extra game after getting hooked on all this soccer over the past few weeks.
Which led me to think: why doesn’t the N.F.L. have a consolation game?
It could be held the Saturday afternoon before the Super Bowl, presumably in the same stadium. Imagine the N.F.L. held such a game this year. It would have matched the losers of the conference championship games, the Denver Broncos and Carolina Panthers. Not the most exciting matchup imaginable—but, as with the World Cup, with a nation of TV fans having followed the teams through the regular season and playoffs, I’d imagine there would be plenty of interest. And plenty of money to be made for the N.F.L. and the many other people who have a piece of the football pie.
You could surely object to this idea on the grounds that the Broncos and Panthers, having lost in the conference championships, just want to go home and couldn’t work up the vigor to play another game. But hey: this is the league that sends its all-stars to a Pro Bowl after the season, in Hawaii, a game that absolutely nobody watches. And yet they still go, and they still play it.
The N.C.A.A. used to hold a consolation game during its Final Four weekend, but I believe it was abandoned it in the early 1980’s. I think the N.F.L. would do a good enough job with a Consolation Bowl that it would become part of the fabric of what has become Super Bowl weekend. And by creating a 3rd and 4th place finisher in the N.F.L., the Consolation Bowl would make 2nd place—i.e., the Super Bowl loser—a bit more meaningful, whereas now everyone complains that no one ever remembers the loser of a Super Bowl.
Considering how adept the N.F.L. is at maximizing profits, goodwill, and opportunity, I’m guessing this idea has already come up for conversation at league HQ plenty of times. Here’s hoping that Paul Tagliabue, the forward-thinking outgoing N.F.L. boss, watched enough World Cup to think that it might be worth giving it a try.

theres a new trophy in garanhuns

2006-07-10T14:53:00.000-03:00

just a quick note on the tourney, we finished in second place, and brought back to garanhuns a trophy.. the player holding it is the team captain, named aponay.. hes a (brasilian) indian..

back in garanhuns

2006-07-10T14:00:00.000-03:00

well, i finally made it back to garanhuns.. it was a long week, and the bus trip seemed even longer.. give me some time to catch up with the work in the office and i will update everyone on the tourney, the trip, and new happenings, but in short, its great to be back in garanhuns...

off to another copa..

2006-07-01T18:41:00.000-03:00

ok one last post before i leave.. right now i got 45 or so kids running around at the stadium.. they will spend the night there and tomorrow morning at 5 AM or so we leave for arauá, sergipe for a one week tourney, III copa ouro, against similar schools.. this is a good test run for future tourneys.. we get to work out all the kinks and each tourney runs smoother.. now, on the brasil loss.. they played like crap, france was the better team.. but what surprised me was the reaction.. i thought people would be walking around like zombies.. i only saw one guy and a couple girls cry.. the rest, they are partying on like if nothing happened.. they figure, we will celebrate to cheer ourselves up.. pretty intersting.. ok in out for a week..

Run Away! Run Away!

2006-07-01T11:12:00.000-03:00

June 26, 2006, 5:49 a.m.Run Away! Run Away!A short history of the party of surrender.By Mario LoyolaThe text of the Kerry-Feingold proposal to withdraw American forces from Iraq contained an element of unintended comedy: The President shall redeploy, commencing in 2006, United States forces from Iraq by July 1, 2007 … leaving only the minimal number of forces that are critical to completing the mission of standing up Iraqi security forces, conducting targeted and specialized counterterrorism operations, and protecting United States facilities and personnel (emphasis added). Since that just about is the mission, the proposal would have had no effect at all on troop levels. So its sole purpose was to serve as a declaration of surrender. Most Democrats, however, preferred the surrender declaration proposed by Senator Carl Levin, which not only did not specify a date, but in fact hardly specified anything at all. This rather effete (and eerily French) inclination to seek defeat has a rich history in the Democratic party, going back at least to the Kennedy administration. Despite sweeping declarations about paying any price, etc., for the success of liberty, Kennedy’s foreign policy was actually based on the notion that war most often results from miscommunication. That, apparently, was his thinking when he reassured the Soviets that we would not attack if they raised a wall in Berlin. (They didn’t know that before, which is why they hadn’t built it). The predictable result, a few months later, was the Berlin Wall, which saved the Communist regime of East Germany from death-by-mass-emigration. What is harder to divine is what Kennedy might have been thinking when he waited until the Bay of Pigs invasion was underway before deciding to pull American air and logistical support. Thousands of Cuban exiles, who were in fact willing to pay any price for the success of liberty, threw their lives away on the beach or rotted in jail for decades. And then, of course, we have the Cuban Missile Crisis, which was caused most fundamentally by Khrushchev’s desire to see if there was any limit to Kennedy’s submissiveness. (Fortunately, there was a limit to the Pentagon’s.) The roots of the Democratic defeat-fetish grew deeper in the weary Johnson years, during which nearly a million American boys were sent to the other side of the world by a president who was driven there almost purely by domestic politics and who appears never to have worked up any real resolve to win. By the time 1968 rolled around, Johnson himself gave up, and withdrew from the reelection battle.Nixon and Kissinger came to office convinced that Vietnam was unwinnable (which, by that point, may have been true) and that the key thing was to surrender without appearing to have done so. They started negotiating with everyone — the North Vietnamese, the Chinese, and the Russians — to try to triangulate a settlement that would bring “peace with honor.” For most Democrats, there was no reason to sugar-coat it — surrender tasted just fine by itself. They put enormous pressure on the administration to withdraw, with or without concessions from Hanoi. In diplomacy, this is called a unilateral concession; in strategy, we use a different term: Surrender.Interestingly, it was at about this time that “neoconservative” Democrats started to give the party a more hawkish tilt. The détente inherent in triangulation brought Kissinger into increasing propinquity (so to speak) with the Soviets, which made some Democrats very angry. Led by Senator Scoop Jackson (and his aide Richard Perle) these Democrats demanded that the Nixon administration extract concessions from the Russians in exchange for the grain credits we were offering them — in particular, that the Russians allow tens of thousands of Jews to leave the Soviet Union. But this hawkish trend faded just a few years later, when the neoconservatives were driven from the Democratic Party by a president for whom defeat was a moral virtue. The basic message of the Carter presidency was that America is on the decline, and we have to accept it. Though the Carter years are really too depressing to think about, I recently came across an interesting and telling anecdote: The Delta Force units that took part in the disastrous Desert One operation were under orders not to use lethal force if they got as far as the embassy in Tehran and encountered a hostile crowd. (As Mark Bowden revealed, they had little intention of following these ridiculous instructions). In fact, Carter has dedicated his entire career to American surrender. After Saddam’s invasion of Kuwait, he lobbied the Security Council to vote against the Gulf War resolution, by writing letters to each of the members. (Only Cuba and Yemen followed his sage advice). More recently, he has worked to establish warm relations with many of America’s enemies, most scandalously Hugo Chávez.After a long interregnum of American victories, Clinton brought the Democrats back to the White House and proceeded to pack as many defeats into eight years as was humanly possible. There was North Korea, Bosnia, Somalia, Iraq, Rwanda, Iraq again, and Kosovo. Bosnia and Kosovo eventually turned into victories, but not before we allowed the Serbs to win. In Bosnia, we actually helped the Serbs by drawing Bosnian Muslims into undefended “safe havens” and then looking on with some concern while the Serbs slaughtered them. In Kosovo, Clinton also tried to lose, by allowing Belgium (Belgium!) to block NATO from planning for the use of ground combat troops even as a contingency. The result was that 800,000 Kosovar Albanians lost their homes, and many tens of thousands their lives, before General Wesley Clark finally pounded Belgrade into submission with air strikes. He was promptly fired. The greatest of Clinton’s achievements in the realm of defeat-fetish was his response to al Qaeda’s declaration of war on the United States. After our embassies in Kenya and Tanzania were destroyed, Clinton valiantly lobbed scores of cruise missiles at a milk factory in the Sudan and several empty campsites in Afghanistan. The only effect on Osama bin Laden, besides giving him a reason to laugh at us, was to convince him that we were weak and would quickly accept defeat if we were hit hard enough. And now, with the Iraq war, the Democrats are at it again. Their comparison of Iraq to Vietnam is, to say the least, a stretch. The insurgency in Iraq has failed to achieve a national geographic scope; it has no foreign countries supporting it; it has no political program that anyone can understand; and it does not even have the scant military effectiveness of the Viet Cong. But there is one striking parallel with Vietnam: The Democratic party is once again mired in a race-to-the-bottom debate about how best to make America surrender. As events in the Senate showed last week, there is diversity of opinion among Democrats on that issue; victory, on the other hand, has almost no support within the party. Senators Clinton and Lieberman, among the only Democratic politicians who think that victory is both possible and necessary, routinely get booed at public functions when they even mention the dreaded “v” word.The basic problem for the Democrats is that Americans are not instinctive losers. And because the Democratic base is split between moderates who want to surrender in Iraq, and liberals who want to surrender generally, they can’t exploit the biggest vulnerability Republicans have, which is, of course, the war. Any time the Democrats are forced to take a position on the war, they alienate a part of their base, and embarrass themselves in the process. This is why last week’s defeat of the two surrender declarations in the Senate is such good news for Republicans; the Democrats appear to have made surrender the essential theme of their political platform. As a result, they may yet snatch defeat from the jaws of victory come November. —Mario Loyola is a writer in Washington, D.C.

update

2006-06-30T13:13:00.000-03:00

ok guys i was without internet for a week or so as we set up the new office.. sunday im leaving for a tournament ans will be without internet for another week or so, but after i get back i should be able to update regularly.. miss you all...

Brazilian kids see soccer as a way out of slums

2006-06-30T12:04:00.000-03:00

Brazilian kids see soccer as a way out of slums
By Daniela Perdomo Thu Jun 29, 4:41 PM ET
SAO PAULO, Brazil (Reuters) - Vila Brasilandia, an poor, remote neighborhood in Sao Paulo, has been gripped by World Cup fever. Rough portraits of the Brazilian squad adorn walls. Green and yellow national flags hang overhead.
The decorations lend a festive atmosphere to the otherwise gloomy vision of sidewalks cluttered by wheelbarrows, scrap metal, and cardboard.
In the midst of a maze of unpaved roads that don't appear on city maps is the Espaco Crianca Esperanca (Child Hope Space), a project jointly run by a Brazilian group called Sou Da Paz, or I Stand for Peace; the Globo television network; the city government; and UNESCO, a United Nations cultural agency. It offers athletic, artistic, and academic programs to kids and young adults.
Soccer is the most popular activity. Many kids idolize soccer stars who grew up in their neighborhood or others like it where shantytowns mix with working-class row houses.
In a place like Brasilandia, where half of kids under 19 have not completed elementary school and juvenile homicides are routine, the community center offers an alternative to a life of crime, and for a lucky few, a route to fame and fortune.
"Soccer is a way out," said Roberto Carlos da Silva, who coaches field soccer at the Espaco, and has worked with stars such as Deco, a Brazilian who now plays on the Portuguese national team. "The time they are on the pitch, is, more than anything, time they are off the streets."
Just last week, Silva discovered what had happened to a 15-year-old who had not shown up to practice for several weeks. The mother came to let him know that her son had been caught stealing a cell phone and sent to juvenile jail.
The staff at the Espaco hope that involvement in soccer and other activities at the center will make such cases far less common.
"Today's big goal is to transform this place; to bring safety not through walls or armed guards" - a reference to the facility's set-up - "but through well-being and community. And we want to make the kids feel like actors in this transformation," says Rodrigo Damasceno, a project director.
Most of the kids who play soccer come by every day. One of them, 12-year-old Lucas, is considered one of the facility's "revelations." His coach, Orlando Alves Ferreira, a former goalie for Club Portuguesa, wants to show him to scouts once he grows a little more. Right now Lucas is just shy of four feet
.PROS FROM THE NEIGHBORHOOD
Lucas plays forward, scores lots of goals, cheers for the Corinthians club, and knows the name of every player in all 32 teams in this year's Cup. While his teammates say they would like to be firefighters if a soccer career does not pan out, Lucas is unwavering: "I won't be anything else."
The hope is real. The boys know that Viola, who was on Brazil's 1994 winning team, grew up in Vila Brasilandia. Vitor Augusto, 11, who plays on the same scrimmage team as Lucas, says his cousin, Jefferson, 19, now plays for a team in Japan. Jorge Luiz, 13, prides himself on the fact that his father played for Palmeiras' second-division team.
Though Silva estimates that less than 5 percent of the kids he coaches will ever play the sport professionally, he tells his players, "If you don't become a player, at least become a human being."
"Soccer is a beautiful game. It seeps into all areas of your life and can teach you to be an honest, kind, good person," Silva said.

feijoada

2006-06-27T08:56:00.000-03:00

ok so here in brasil we get these ridiculous two hour lunches, not productive at all, it messes up your day cause while i have tons of crap to get done the whole town pretty much shuts down between 12-2pm, and its freakin nerve racking when you are in a time crunch to get stuff done.. but if you cant beat’em, join’em.. brasil’s national dish, FEIJOADA (say fay-zho-ada, the z in the zho part i pronounced like dge).. it was traditionally served on sunday.. there are various tale as to how this dish came about, all deal back to the slave days, when the portuguese were colonizing brasil, but the one most commonly told says that during the week, the family would give all their leftovers to the slaves.. this would be meats: mostly pork, linguiça (a portuguese style sausage), carne de sol (sun-dried meat, like beef jerky) etc.. the slaves would then save them till sunday, take a big crock pot, make beans (frijoles, or here, feijão quick note on feijão.. here in the northeast, its more the custom to eat the red beans, and in the south, black, however with feijoãda, its made with black beans..) and throw in all the meats, and cook it.. they serve it on a dish, and TOP it off with rice.. for some reason, the custom, at least when ive been paying attention, is to serve the beans/ meat first, and the rice goes on top.. anyways, that’s my culture lesson for today.. if you find a good brasilian restaurant in your area, give it a try, or come visit and you can try it.. here is one recipe here is another and another..

brasil-japan game

2006-06-23T12:22:00.000-03:00

high point of yesterdays game was a goal by juninho pernambucano.. since hes from this state everyone feels a connection to him, and the place just erupted when he scored... the celebration was a bit more intense for him.. most people seem to be coming around to "forgiving" ronaldo for whatever they were mad at him for, scoring two goals seems to have that effect.. and most everyone was happy to see rogerio ceni get some playing time once the game was in the bag.. brasil wins the group and everyone is awaiting the knockout stages.. at this point, you win, you advance, lose, you go home.. for most fans here, this is when the copa "really" begins.. tomorrow is "festa de são joão" which is a really big deal here in the northeast.. tomorrow after a meeting with the kids parents regarding the tourney i talk about here, i will go to união dos palmares, in maceio, a state just south of here to see a friend.. probably wont update till late monday..

The Onion takes a kick at the World Cup

2006-06-21T16:30:00.000-03:00

The Onion takes a kick at the World Cup
Devastated By U.S. World Cup Team's First-Round Loss, Nation Grinds To Halt
June 15, 2006
NEW YORK, LOS ANGELES, and WASHINGTON, DC—With the Dow Jones average down over 600 points, factory productivity in a downward spiral, and workplace attendance down by nearly a third, experts say the U.S. World Cup team's heartbreaking 3-0 defeat at the hands of Czech Republic on Monday has brought life across the soccer-crazed nation to a virtual standstill.
"What happened in Gelsenkirchen has indeed dealt a grievous blow to the morale of the American people," said President Bush, who had promised his constituency a swift and speedy victory in the World Cup this year and whose popularity has taken a 9 percent hit since the U.S. team's loss. "I want the citizens of this great nation, the world's only remaining superpower, to know that I grieve alongside them and urge them to be strong in our hour of darkness, and urge them to return to their jobs and schools despite their heavy hearts."
Mere days ago, the feeling across the nation was one of great joy, eager anticipation, and optimism for the prospects of the most talented American team to ever take the field. It is estimated that over 85 percent of U.S. households were watching the USA–Czech Republic matchup. And going into the game that most Americans have been waiting for, analyzing, and all but living for during the past four years, schools, offices, shopping centers—everything, in fact, except vital services—closed their doors as the game began.
Now, days after the end of penalty time, many of those doors are still closed.
"I take full responsibility for losing the game," said Claudio Reyna, whose shot off the crossbar of the Czech goal as the U.S. trailed 1-0 in the opening half of play has been shown to coincide with a significant bump in the suicide rate, a momentary increase in reports of domestic violence, and a $0.45 increase in the per-gallon price of gasoline. "But we still have games to play in this opening round. I realize that the United States, more than any other country, loves this game. But that is no reason for so many people to cancel their weddings."
The general feeling of hopelessness may be felt across the United States, the nation the rest of the world thinks of as Pelé's adopted home, the land that popularized the term "soccer," and Americans are finding many different ways to voice their despair.
Hundreds of yards of black bunting hung over the head and arms of the Statue of Liberty has yet to be removed by the New York City Parks Department; similar shrouds have appeared on Mount Rushmore, the Golden Gate Bridge, and Hawaii's Pearl Harbor Memorial. Las Vegas casinos are running skeleton staffs at the tables and doubling the size of security shifts, at once worrying over their empty floors and fearing retribution at the hands of World Cup gamblers who bet on the U.S. out of loyalty. And the House of Representatives, which traditionally remains closed throughout the World Cup, called a special session for the specific purpose of introducing a bipartisan bill that would change America's national sport back to baseball.
"This cannot last," said Bruce Arena, coach of the U.S. World Cup team and by extension effectively the second-most powerful man in America, in an address televised simultaneously on every national channel Wednesday night. "We cannot have crops unharvested in the fields, the doors of our churches sealed shut, the Stars and Stripes fixed at half-mast, all because of our dishonorable standard of play. We cannot ask you to forgive our loss to the Czechs, as that must be left to the wisdom of the God of our fathers. We have always been a nation blessed with strength, not only in our love for our soccer teams, but in our love for one another, and we must call on both now if we are to endure these dark days."
At press time, the U.S. team is scheduled to play Italy on Saturday and Ghana the following Thursday, and the National Guard has reported moderate casualties while attempting to contain hooligan activity in the nine largest U.S. cities.

Those Crazy Thai Monks

2006-06-21T14:14:00.000-03:00

Mad Thai monks too tired to take alms
BANGKOK (Reuters) - Buddhist monks in Thailand are too tired to receive early morning alms because they are staying up late to watch the World Cup, a Thai newspaper reported on Wednesday.
The Nation quoted a woman in the northern city of Chiang Mai who said her birthday celebrations were ruined because monks at a city temple were not awake to receive her morning offering, a mandatory religious ritual in the predominately Buddhist country.
The woman, who declined to be identified, said she was told by a senior monk that most of his young colleagues were still asleep because they had stayed up to watch the games which can go on well past midnight.
The Sangha Council, which oversees the tens of thousands of Buddhist temples in Thailand, has not banned monks from watching the World Cup but said it should not interfere with religious activities.
Chiang Mai chief monk Phra Thep Wisuthikhun said he had received complaints about "inappropriate behavior" at seven temples in the province. "It is the duty of the abbot of each temple to supervise the behavior of young monks, making sure that their religious activities will not be affected by the games," he told Reuters.
In neighboring Cambodia, some 40,000 monks have been warned they could be defrocked if they became too excited while watching the games.
"If they make noise or cheer as they watch, they will lose their monkhood," Phnom Penh patriarch Non Nget told Reuters this month.

ad wars

2006-06-21T11:51:00.000-03:00

there are few rivalries like the one between brasil and argentina.. right now during the copa there are ads poking fun at the argies.. they do the same thing.. here is an example of the ad wars.. back during "eliminatorias" (qualifying) an argentine condom company produced the first ad, the blue one.. after brasil won the game, they gave a "measured" response

Watching The Wheels

2006-06-20T09:58:00.000-03:00

this pretty much sums up how i feel about being here..

People say I'm crazy doing what I'm doing,
Well they give me all kinds of warnings to save me from ruin,
When I say that I'm o.k. they look at me kind of strange,
Surely your not happy now you no longer play the game,
People say I'm lazy dreaming my life away,
Well they give me all kinds of advice designed to enlighten me,
When I tell that I'm doing Fine watching shadows on the wall,
Don't you miss the big time boy you're no longer on the ball?
I'm just sitting here watching the wheels go round and round,I really love to watch them roll,No longer riding on the merry-go-round,I just had to let it go,
People asking questions lost in confusion,
Well I tell them there's no problem, Only solutions,
Well they shake their heads and they look at me as if I've lost my mind,
I tell them there's no hurry...I'm just sitting here doing time,
I'm just sitting here watching the wheels go round and round,I really love to watch them roll,No longer riding on the merry-go-round,I just had to let it go.

~john lennon~

Aw crap!!!

2006-06-20T08:18:00.000-03:00

Doctors probe heart attack risk for football fans
COLOGNE (Reuters) - World Cup football causes joy and despair and even ends marriages but now doctors are studying whether the thrill of it all can be literally heart stopping.
Previous research during international football tournaments has found an increase in the general incidence of heart attacks, particularly on days when tense matches have had fans on the edge of their seats.
In the new FIFA-approved study researchers will receive blood samples from heart attack victims all over Germany watching football at the time of the attack, allowing them to look for traces of stress hormones which can clot the blood.
Doctors will also receive samples from anyone who collapses in a stadium during a World Cup match and whose blood may show higher levels of hormones then those fans watching at home.
"Patients are asked precisely what they were doing at the time of the attack -- whether they were following football on the radio or television, or even watching the pundits after the game," David Leistner of Munich's Ludwig Maximilians University told Reuters.
"So far, on the days when Germany has played we have received a lot more blood samples," he added.
First results are due in October.
A study in 1998 found the number of heart attacks increased by 25 percent on the day and in the two days after England lost to Argentina in a penalty shoot out at the 1998 World Cup
In the new FIFA-approved study researchers will receive blood samples from heart attack victims all over Germany watching football at the time of the attack, allowing them to look for traces of stress hormones which can clot the blood.
Doctors will also receive samples from anyone who collapses in a stadium during a World Cup match and whose blood may show higher levels of hormones then those fans watching at home.
"Patients are asked precisely what they were doing at the time of the attack -- whether they were following football on the radio or television, or even watching the pundits after the game," David Leistner of Munich's Ludwig Maximilians University told Reuters.
"So far, on the days when Germany has played we have received a lot more blood samples," he added.
First results are due in October.
A study in 1998 found the number of heart attacks increased by 25 percent on the day and in the two days after England lost to Argentina in a penalty shoot out at the 1998 World Cup
Researchers in Switzerland also found heart attacks in the country increased by 60 percent during the 2002 World Cup in Japan and South Korea -- even though the Swiss team was not even competing.
The findings prompted calls for emergency heart attack equipment to be installed in stadiums during Euro 2004.
"If it really is the case that higher stress levels can increase the chance of a heart attack then attending football games may have to carry a health warning," said Leistner.
Doctors advise those football fans who may be at greater risk of heart attack anyway due to obesity, high-cholesterol or diabetes, to refrain from drinking excessively during the World Cup tournament.

small things

2006-06-19T18:22:00.000-03:00

ok one of the small things i really enjoy about this town.. 6PM, 1800 hours... the Ave Maria... this town is small enough that no matter where you are, youre within hearing distance of the churches, and their bells.. and every night, at 6PM, they play the Ave Maria.. no matter where you are in this town, you cant help but hear it.. and its kinda soothing and peaceful and nice.. add that in the small things i really cant explain but really make me enjoy this place column..

updates for 6/19

2006-06-19T13:25:00.000-03:00

we made a change for the copa event.. we just werent getting a crowd for the games that didnt involve brasil, so we will only run the big screen during their games.. the replacement bulb for the projector is expensive, so it became cost prohibitive to run it for every single game.. once the second round starts we will see if there is a demand, and it is enough to warrant running the projector.. i get the feeling that for the quarter, semis, and 3rd place and final match we will be running the full card, provided brasil makes it to the final.. if they lose in the knockout rounds, there wont be much interest.. the other big project i have is the tourney i mentioned earlier, and i have TONS of stuff to put together and not much time.. im gonna be really busy with that so if i dont post much, you guys know why..

what have you done for me lately

2006-06-18T16:43:00.000-03:00

yay brasil won.. yay brasil advances to the next round.. people are dancing naked in the streets and splashing around in the fountain.. imagine what the scene willbe like if the win the copa.. BUT... all is not well in the land of futebol and samba.. the fans are upset because ronaldo fenomeno had a bad game.. they cheered when he left the game.. and if he doesnt improve his game, an angry mob with torches and pitchforks will be waiting for him.. all you hear in the streets is not that brasil won, or advanced, but that ronaldo played lousy and should be benched next game.. oh well....

updates

2006-06-18T08:34:00.000-03:00

ok guys in addition to the copa, our school is entering a copa of their own, III copa ouro, in arauá, sergipe, the first month of july.. this has me running around as well.. the good thing about this tourney is that lots of scouts from pro teams go, so it gives exposure to the kids and the school.. im gonna be busy juggling both i may not be able to post all the time..
today is the brasil v austrailia, and everyone is excited for the game.. if brasil wins they automatically qualify for the next phase, so expect a huge party if they win.. i dont want to think what will happen if they lose..

its peanut butter jelly time!!

2006-06-16T08:11:00.000-03:00

best news ive had in a long time.. (my boss) andy and his family will live here for the next year to resolve issues with the school and get this project really moving.. they brought down a huge tub of peanut butter and jars of grape jelly.. im gonna eat peanut butter jelly sandwiches like theres no tomorrow.. its one of the things i really miss..

ronaldo health scare

2006-06-15T13:12:00.000-03:00

right now, the entire country is talking about this.. same thing happened before the world cup finals in 98.. no one is too happy with ronaldo at this moment, for a perceived lack of effort last game, and this isnt helping

you just cant win

2006-06-14T17:26:00.000-03:00

ok guys im loaded with work, so you need to make do with two posts that i saved for an occasion just like this, when i was crunched for time, like today.. yes, brasil won, but the fans and media are NOT happy, especially with ronaldo fenomeno, as seen in this article (its in english)..

The Soccer Wars

2006-06-14T17:13:00.000-03:00

The Soccer Wars

Bono Says the World Cup Is a Peacemaker. Not Quite.

By Daniel W. Drezner

Sunday, June 4, 2006; Page B01

The World Cup is coming, which means a flurry of desperate attempts by tournament promoters to excite Americans about an event that electrifies the rest of the world. This year is no different. ESPN, which will broadcast most of the games in the United States, is airing a series of ads with members of the rock band U2. In one, Bono says that the World Cup "closes the schools, closes the shops, closes a city and stops a war."

If stopping a war seems like an exaggeration, another ad explains soccer's peace-building qualities in more detail: "After three years of civil war, feuding factions talked for the first time in years, and the president called a truce. Because the Ivory Coast qualified for the World Cup for the first time. Because, as everyone knows, a country united makes for better cheerleaders than a country divided."

Does the World Cup really put a stop to war? Does soccer, known for its dangerously rowdy fans, have the conflict-reducing powers that ESPN and U2 proclaim? To be charitable to the World Cup, which this year will be held in Germany starting June 9, the evidence is mixed. It is undeniable that soccer has the power to unite -- but its power to divide should not be underestimated.

The belief that sports can be a source of peace dates to the start of the modern Olympic movement. But social scientists are split on whether competitive sports reduce or inflame conflict. A 1973 article by Richard Sipes in the journal American Anthropologist distilled the debate into two simple, but contrasting, arguments. One is that combative sports and war are substitutes for aggressive behavior -- that the presence of sports is a healthy way for people to discharge their competitive urges. The other is that sports induce a warlike attitude, abetting conflict rather than reducing it.

Sipes tentatively concluded that sports foster aggression. It is possible, however, that the worldwide appeal of soccer (well, minus the United States and Canada) has a pacifying effect. Former German foreign minister Joschka Fischer recently declared that once the tournament starts, "a football will become the symbol of our One World."

There are certainly tangible examples of soccer soothing the savage beast of war. What did the British and Germans do during the famous 1914 Christmas truce across the trenches during World War I? They played a soccer match (the Germans won, 3-2). During the peak of popularity for Brazilian soccer phenom Pele, the combatants in the Biafran war in Nigeria declared a two-day truce so they could watch him play. Of course, in both cases, the cessation of conflict was only temporary.

Soccer has also functioned as a useful outlet for postwar grievances. For generations after World War II, the conflict resonated in soccer matches between the Netherlands and Germany. Franklin Foer, editor of the New Republic and author of "How Soccer Explains the World," argues that the Dutch did not fully recover from the war until Dutchman Frank Rijkaard spit on Rudi Voller's mullet during a 1990 second-round World Cup match. Rijkaard's loogie was the only shot fired in restoring Dutch pride.

Successful teams have also provided the occasional boost for national comity. The Ivory Coast example cited in the ESPN ad works here. Since 1999, the country has been mired in coups, rebellions and ethnic conflicts. When the national team -- the Elephants -- qualified in October 2005, the head of the Ivory Coast Football Federation pleaded with President Laurent Gbagbo to restart peace talks. Elections are scheduled for October of this year. While a truce is in place, however, Human Rights Watch warned in May that both government and rebel forces were devoting their energies to terrorizing civilians.

The problem is that historically, soccer has been just as likely to be the trigger for war as the trigger for peace. The best-known example took place in June 1969 between El Salvador and Honduras. Immigration and border disputes between the two countries had reached a boiling point at the same time that a three-game elimination match between the two national teams was taking place. Rioting during the second game led the two countries to break diplomatic relations. Two weeks later, the 100-hour Soccer War took place, resulting in about 2,000 casualties.

Soccer also played a role in the run-up to the Balkan wars of the 1990s. In March 1990, Red Star Belgrade, a Serbian team, faced Dinamo Zagreb, a Croatian team, in the Croatian capital for a league title, a scant two weeks after Croatia elected nationalist Franjo Tudjman as president. According to Foer, that day was the first time in a half-century that Serbs and Croats openly fought each other. Red Star and Dinamo fans became so violent that the Serbian team had to be taken away by helicopter. Fifteen years after the match, the Zagreb daily Vecernji list observed, "The game that was never played will be remembered, at least by the soccer fans, as the beginning of the Patriotic War, and almost all of the contemporaries will declare it the key in understanding the Croatian cause." The leader of Red Star's ultranationalist fans -- the Delije -- was the notorious Arkan. He later recruited from the Delije to form the paramilitary force that engaged in ethnic cleansing of Croats and Muslims during the war, and ultimately was the victim of a gangland-style killing.

While success at the World Cup can bolster national pride, losing can reap the whirlwind. A working paper by business professors Alex Edmans, Diego Garcia and Oyvind Norli finds that "losses in soccer matches have an economically and statistically significant negative effect on the losing country's stock market." Some individual players suffer consequences worse than that. Colombian defender Andres Escobar, responsible for an own goal in a 1994 World Cup loss to the United States, was killed upon returning to his hometown of Medellin.

Soccer will never bring about peace on its own. The flip side is also true -- by itself, soccer cannot start a war. The World Cup, like the Olympics, suffers from a case of overblown rhetoric. Bono's assurances to the contrary, the passions inspired by the World Cup embody both the best and worst forms of nationalism.

ddrezner@gmail.com

Daniel W. Drezner will be an associate professor of international politics at the Fletcher School at Tufts University starting in the fall.

smooty

2006-06-14T16:56:00.000-03:00

there are some words and phrases here in brasil that are taken from they way they sound in english, but written the way they sound in portuguese.. there is a chain of juice bars here called amazonia mix.. they have some really delicious combinations of fruits, most of them not readily available in other countries.. i have lunch there maybe twice a month, and get juice there maybe once a week.. last week they introduced a "new product" called "SMOOTY".. i got curious and wanted to try it.. i just hadnt had the time, with the copa event and all.. ever since they introduced it, all you saw were signs and banners around town, and radio spots, promoting this new, exciting, delicious drink at amazonia mix.. so today i finally went in and got my "smooty"..know what it was? a smoothie.. kinda like the crumpets incident (inside family joke, but if someone wants to know, ask me or my mom or annette..)

big day is here

2006-06-13T08:37:00.000-03:00

in a matter of hours brasil makes its debut in the world cup.. the whole country is like little kids on christmas eve.. im really excited about being here for the world cup.. today will be the first real test for our event, and we expect a really nice crowd.. the success of the event hinges on how well brasil does in the copa.. the further they go, the longer the event runs, the more $$$ we can raise for the school.. got to run out and set up the bar, but i will check in later tonight and post how everything went.. peace and love to you guys..

last chance

2006-06-12T08:39:00.000-03:00

ok today is our last chance to work out the kinks before the first brasil game tomorrow against croatia.. todays first game is japan versus austrailia, and even though those these teams are in the same group as brasil, we dont expect much of a crowd.. today also happens to be dia dos namorados, brasils version of valentines day.. we decided against opening the bar up for the early game.. the first game we are going to show today is usa versus the czech republic at 1300, and the last game today is at 1600, italy versus ghana.. ghana is a team i think could surprise people in this world cup.. its gonna be a bit hectic, cause everything needs to be fine tuned for brasils debut tomorrow, which is another holiday here in garanhuns.. its festa de santo antonio, saint anthony, who is the patron of the town, its only a holiday here.. thursday is yet ANOTHER holiday, this one national, corpus christi, so we expect lots of traffic for the games.. ill keep you guys posted on how things go..

the water donkey

2006-06-12T07:40:00.000-03:00

ok i mentioned to some of you that a donkey brings drinking water to your house.. in case you wanted to see it, here it is.. this is the way it works.. there are a few posts around town that sell filtered or spring water.. every morning several carts like this one line up, fill the big blue tank, then they go around town asking people if they want (or need) water.. people then fill up those 5 gallon (19 liters) water bottles and other containers.. this routine happens every day.. one of the drawbacks of using donkeys to deliver water is they sometimes leave big huge pieces of poop.. not fun stepping into those

whats in a name?

2006-06-11T19:14:00.000-03:00

in brasil, most everyone is known by their apellido, or nickname.. ask people who edson arantes do nascimento is, or maria da graça meneghel, and you will probably get blank stares.. but say pelé or xuxa, and everyone knows who you are talking about.. i havent read up or studied on why this is and how it came about, but i probably will at some point.. but just to share, here are some of the nicknames ive picked up here so far, in no particular order:
americano
gringo
cuba
cubano
gaginho (gago means stutterer, in brasil, porky pig is called gaginho)
miami (and one person calls me mi-to you guys it would sound like my, which sounds alot like mãe in portuguese, which means mom, i kinda think thats funny..)
baiano (this means someone from bahia, another state here in brasil, this is because i once wore a jersey of esporte clube bahia, and people just assumed i was from there)

how soccer transcends politics

2006-06-11T08:56:00.000-03:00

ok those of you that know me know my political views.. pretty much further to the right than franco and the john brich society.. but when it comes to soccer, its different.. i can put politics aside to watch and enjoy the games.. i know that if cuba was playing id be rooting for them to go all the way, regardless of who is in charge.. back in the cold war days, i would love to watch the big red machine of the soviet union play.. wouldnt happen in the olympics..i can still remember papa getting mad at me cause i laughed my ass off and cheered when a soviet diver tried to do a backflip and cracked his head on the cement platform.. in 98 when iran beat the us 1-0, all i could think of was "wow, they played a freakin awesome, tight, solid game.." such is the case today, ironically enough, with the iranians again.. at 1300 brasil time (12 in miami, 6pm in nuremberg) the iranians square off against mexico.. two teams that can play a brand of soccer exciting and enjoyable to watch.. when it comes to copa, i dont root on political lines, but on the teams themselves, the players, the style of play.. i never cared what the italians did in the olympics, but i cant stand the style of soccer they play.. i like boca juniors in the argentine league, one of my favorite teams in the world, but as a national team i cant stand the argies, they dive too much.. there is alot of talk and controversey about iran in this worldcup, mainly because of their president mahmoud ahmadinejad and comments he made about israel and the talk of their nuclear capabilities.. there are rumors he was part of the student group that stormed the us embassy and took the hostages.. but for the copa, and ONLY for the copa, i see him as a fan of the game, i happen to think its cool when the national president goes off to see his team play in the copa and take part in training.. apparently, mahmoud is a big time soccer fan, as was kadaffi from libya.. to sum it up cause i got to get to the copa event, if you guys want to understand how much i love this game and this event,think how important it must be to me if i can put politics aside for one month, and just enjoy the games for what they are.. for those who care, the early game is serbia montenegro v holland, the middle game is mexico v iran, and the late game is angola v portugal, a game that raises political implications, back to the colonial days.. enjoy them!!

copa day2, end of day

2006-06-10T18:32:00.000-03:00

well you can call today the first "real" day of the copa event.. nice crowd, a few people bought shirts, and one guy even said hed come back with the guys he plays "peladas" with and buy 20.. slowly but surely the event is taking form.. the games today were exciting.. in the first game england bested paraguay on an own goal by gamarra.. paraguay could have won if they knew how to finish.. trinidad and tobago surprised everyone holding sweden to a 0-0 tie, sweden should have won that game by two or three goals.. in the final game, the ivory coast surprised as well by giving argentina a hell of a match, the ivory coast played their hearts out but in the end, argentinas experience gave them a 2-1 victory.. lets see what tomorrow brings.. the pics on top are from todays event.. love and miss you guys.. :)

copa day2

2006-06-10T07:01:00.000-03:00

ok guys it’s a bit early here, 0646 (5.46 am, dst, miami time), but I got stuff to do even BEFORE todays copa games, that begin at 1000 (9am dst miami) with a game im really looking forward to watching, england v paraguay.. the 1300 (12pm dst) miami game is sweden v trinidad and tobago, and closing up the days games at 2100 (3pm dst miami) is argentina v ivory coast.. aside from working the event i need to go to the stadium in the morning for a practice game between the b team to test some players out.. woe is me.. part of my work requires me to watch every game of the world cup and watch games in person.. oh well....

test run

2006-06-09T18:52:00.000-03:00

ok we did a test run today for the first two games, we had some glitches with the projector, it would keep shutting off, but that seemed to be an overload problem with the circuit breaker.. we have some problems with the glare from the screen, and we should be able to solve that tomorrow.. poor me, i need to watch every single stinkin game of the world cup and get PAID!!! 64 games of world class soccer instead of being cooped up in the office, or back in miami worrying about hurricane this or tropical storm that.. oh well, such are the sacrifices i made when i moved to brasil… on the games, costa rica impressed me, but germany was too much for them.. poland disappointed, they missed at least three goals, one on a fast break, and two that hit the post.. ecuador played solid, well enough to shut the eurosnobs up, and if costa rica plays against poland like they did against germany, they might be fighting ecuador for second place in the group..

finished product

2006-06-09T10:50:00.000-03:00

literally running out he door to get to the event and set up, but I wanted to show you guys the way the shirts came out.. compare it to what I originally sent them.. such is the way things are done here in brasil.. now some of who you heard my frustrations can see what the reality is..

finally in the spirit of the world cup

2006-06-09T08:01:00.000-03:00

finally, in the spirit of the world cup, a special post, just to put up a special picture.. its for papa, papi alfredo, abuelita ana, mima fela, canita, papapa, gaston, yia, gueli, pin and papi miguel who can read these posts from above and will watch every game.. its for mama.. its for mami marcelina.. its for my sister who will think its funky.. its for henry, jose, and val who will get a kick out of it.. its just a pic of me with a cuban soccer jersey.. enjoy..

copa event

2006-06-09T06:45:00.000-03:00

ok everything seems set up at the bar.. we set up the screen, tested the projector, and all went well.. so far so good.. i will be very busy at the event but will keep you guys posted.. at the too is just a pic of the screen, and a big brasilian flag put up in the bar.. its there everyday, not just for copa.. which brings up an interesting point.. country bars aside,how many bars do you go into back in the states that ALWAYS display the american flag? its not just this place,most every store, bar, cafeteria, even the cabaré and boites have the flag.. (quick note, one of the cabarés has a picture of Jesus hanging up right on top of the bar and dance floor, which is kinda amusing in its own way).. anyways, i just think national pride is a funny thing, how people express it around the world..

COPA!!!!!!!!!!

2006-06-09T06:31:00.000-03:00

: well its down to hours.. the copa starts at 1300, brasil time, 1800 in berlin, 1200 in miami,, 3 years and 11 months of waiting, for a whole month of nothing but the best soccer in the world.. inspired by my good friend jose at hispanic marketing today i have decided to post my first round picks, which appear at the end of the post.. the whole city, the whole country,most of the world with few exceptions, is ready for this to begin,, here, the schools have let the kids wear brasil jerseys in lieu of uniforms.. banks, government and city offices, in fact most every type of office have rescheduled their ours so as not to conflict wioth brasil and other high profile games.. some weeks back there was a huge war between the police and a criminal gang in other large cities, and part of the deal made to stop the nonsense was to allow the prisoners to get access color tvs for the copa.. thats a whole another issue, social commentary post, but my point is, in this soccer mad country, even prison riots and civil unrest are connected to to copa.. ok guys i have ALOT to get done but will try to keep in touch..
group a
germany-poland

group b
sweden-england

group c
argentina-holland

group d
mexico-iran

group e
italy-ghana

group f
brasil-croatia

group g
france-sou korea

group h
saudi arabia-ukraine

the copa event

2006-06-08T07:54:00.000-03:00

ok the copa event.. so this is what happened.. I was sitting at a bar/ restaurant (here, most every place is both) having dinner and the owner is complaining that every bar in town has a big screen.. so this light, it goes off in my head and I call him over.. in my head I came up with the following plan.. I would get him the projector and the big screen, set it up in his bar.. id get these shirts (they are called kits here, I will explain that later) printed up with the schools name, the bars name and RUMO AO HEXA (on the road to hexa, because if brasil wins this world cup, it is their 6^th, the hexa championship) printed up.. id make up banners and get radio sports to promote the event.. id charge a cover of R$5 (about US$2.30) per person every day they came to watch the games in the bar.. as an option, they could by the “kit” at R$15-R$20 (its about US$6.73-US$9.00, we still haven’t decided how much it will be) and watch all the games without having to pay each time they came.. the owner of the bar (btw, his name is nilton, and the name of the bar is mercatto) gets to keep all the food and drink he sells, and the school gets to keep the money form the cover charge and shirts.. we are also going to make up tickets, where people write down what they think the final score and stats from that days games will be.. we sell the sheets at R$1 or R$2 and whoever picks the most games right will get half the money, and the school gets half the money.. right now this event is taking up A LOT of my time, and I need to get back to work on it.. ok love and miss you guys….

free gym membership!!

2006-06-08T07:45:00.000-03:00

Entry for May 30, 2006: ok guys not much new to report, dont know if i told you but the owner of a gym here gave me free membership in trade for english lessons while i train with him, and he gave me a new program to start, so thats kinda news i guess, and brasil is getting ready for the world cup.. everything pretty much stops when brasil is playing.. winter is rolling in, there are some days i dont see the sun at all.. stuff with the school is moving along, we started clearing another field today, it should be done tomorrow, they will stop at 3.30PM for a "warmup" game that brasil is playing in preparation for the world cup.. everything is aok.. love and miss you guys..

easier?

2006-06-07T11:37:00.000-03:00

ok guys maybe this is easier for everyone.. one central place where anyone can post, comment blablabla.. im gonna transfer the fotos to another site, havent figured that out yet.. i dont have too much time right now because the copa event has alot of odds and ends i need to complete..this way ma you can forward this to whoever, wherever and anyone can post if they like.. everybody happy now? like tony the tiger said, grrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrreat