Lula

His mere name goes to show, how efficient the Portuguese language can be. In Dutch, for example, Lula da Silva would translate as ‘Pijlinktvis van den Bosch’. Or, in English, ‘Squid from the Forest’. Enjoy!

But seriously, has anyone got the faintest of clues, if there is any truth in the claims against Lula? I mean, what’s next? Mandela, Gandhi, and King jr. were on the take as well?
It’s so hard to digest, innit – Lula, o antigo herói do povo, the former hero of the people. First, Dilma Rousseff, his almost as popular successor and the first female president of Brazil, was maneuvered out under suspect circumstances – to say the least – and now Lula. Lula, of all people!
Last night he turned himself in to be imprisoned, in Curitiba, a huge city in the south of Brazil, found guilty as charged for corruption. Lula, I mean – not the city.

At the base of the indictment against him posed a beach apartment, a gift from a constructor whom he supposedly helped to pinch some contracts. Even the fact that Lula claimed, it was not his at all, didn’t seem to exonerate him.
I mean, I know what my reaction would be, if someone rang me up to say that I’m the owner of a priceless condominium in Cascais, the ‘Long Island’ of Lisbon …
Yippeeeeeee!

But really, a beach house? Isn’t that a bit fishy?
Pardon? Sea fishy, you say?
Oh, give over! Be serious for a moment, will ye!

One cannot help to wonder …
I mean – let’s be honest! – it would not be the first time, would it, that the CIA would give a leg up to a government that could be more advantageous to American society (i.e. a government that needs more weapons).
Remember president Salvador Allende of Chile? And his successor Pinochet?

Okay, maybe it’s a bit farfetched, what I’m suggesting here. Sometimes a bird, if it walks like a duck and talks like a duck, is simply … a duck (and not the woman next door).
On rare occasions though these days, I agree. It’s not merely the Russians that know how to create and use fake news to their advantage. Are we actually still looking for those weapons of mass destruction in Iraq? Maybe we were looking in the wrong place, I couldn’t help to ruminate this afternoon, when I watched the news and saw the horrible images of an attack with chemical weapons on – apparently defenceless – civilians in Syria who just want to be left alone to live their life.

This weekend we have an enormous festival going on in our village on the rio Guadiana. Every year countless people come to visit our hamlet of around thirty souls to attend the Festival do Peixe do Rio – the River Fish Festival. So, once a year one can watch the most horrible images on the news accompanied by loud and cheerful music and singing in the background.
And I think to myself, what a … world!

What’s next? Kim Jong-un turns out to be a character escaped from Disneyland?
You can’t surprise your humble servant anymore.