calvisson-leblon

“‘In the name of Jesus-Christ you are all cured. Let what needs to be done be done in the name of God.’ ” Joẩo de Deus. In the original story, a shopkeeper in a flower shop grows a plant which feeds on human blood and flesh.   In the Brazilian version, the shop’s owner Jo ẩ o Teixeira de Faria, feeds on his devotees by exploiting their distress, gullibility and innocence.   In the thousands, followers come from around the word to visit his spiritual healing center in the middle of Brazil where they are tricked, milked and often sexually abused.   “Jo ẩ o de Deus” or “John of God” Teixeira’s nom de guerre ruled the roost of world-renowned faith healers, mediums, psychic surgeons, and in other words quacks.   His fans are world celebrities like Oprah Winfrey, soccer stars and even Lula da Silva and Dilma Rousseff, two former Brazilian presidents.   Brasilia, being just 100 kilometers away, the current president Michel Temer, also paid a visit.  ...

I thought I was aware of most of the mining shenanigans, but the Bisbee Deportation of July 1917 had escaped me.   Bisbee is a mining town in Arizona, USA.   By Wild West customs deportations were not unusual, as it was the time-honored way to get rid of the Native American problem.   However, in Bisbee, some 1200 pesky mine workers and their supporters were deported in cattle trains to the New Mexico desert with the stated purpose of letting them die there.   Now, having lost two-thirds of its mining-heyday population, Bisbee qualifies as a near ghost town, and has joined the Old West mining tourism circuit.   In Arizona, where Old West nostalgia merges with mining history, tourism is a key economic driver.   Bisbee is not as famous as Tombstone, only 20 miles away.   Founded in 1879, Tombstone was a boom town of the American frontier; now it has become the poster town for the dynamic ghost town tourism.   Although silver had been disco...