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...

It is all about anger and change, stupid! This blog doesn’t endorse Jair Bolsonaro, his views go against the liberal and feminist values of this blogger.   Foreign media have rightly described him as a far-right firebrand, a Brazilian Trump, a Brazilian Duterte and worse, a tropical clone of Hitler.   The media publicized his inflammatory viewpoints on women, blacks, gays, democracy and his yearning for the past military dictatorship.   All this is true.   Conversely, Haddad, the Worker Party (PT) candidate is celebrated as a decent and able politician.   While the foreign media admonishes the Brazilians not to vote for Bolsonaro, it failed or was unwilling to understand why he will almost certainly be elected on Sunday, October 28.   How did we get there? 1-This election is all about anger (violence, corruption, worse-ever economic recession, lack of opportunities and unemployment) and change (get rid of self-serving parties and their corrupt polit...

We joined the crowd to visit the landmarks: Corinth, Mycenae, Mystras, Epidaurus and Monemvasia.   But we went off the beaten track to discover Peloponnese’s hidden or less popular treasures.   Thanks to the European bail-out, Greece has finally emerged from its self-inflicted financial mess.    However, it is still the land of a carefree, and I could add careless behavior and flouting the rules is a national badge of honor.   This local trait is particularly noticeable on the road where rules seem to apply to foreigners only, and since in summer the Greeks become a minority population within their own country, this free-for-all is manageable.   Last year, Greece welcomed 32 million tourists, a three tourists per inhabitant ratio!! In all matter of road safety, Greece compares with a third world country, and it stands near the bottom of the EU safety ranking.   Fortunately, in Peloponnese there is much less traffic than in Italy and France.  ...

The Finns are getting used to global warming.   They no longer walk bare chested in Helsinki streets as they did twenty years ago when I first visited the capital of Finland! The month of July 2018 broke all temperature records in Scandinavia.   During my visit early August, the mercury hit 32⁰ C in Helsinki! In Savonlinna, 800 kms south of the Arctic Circle, 29⁰ were registered during our stay.   Lapland did not escape the sizzling sun either. It was the hottest month of July on record since 1838 when the Finnish Meteorological Institute was founded.   Compared to the 40⁰ C recorded in Calvisson, for me 32⁰ felt Arctic! The local animals were suffering from the crippling heat too.   Newspapers reported that reindeers were joining beach goers for a swim, and trains were delayed because locomotives overheated and flocks of elks had taken refuge in railroad tunnels!!!                         ...

A couple of weeks ago, friends and I went to see a show in the Ar è nes de Nimes, the famed Roman amphitheater in the south of France.   Nearly every summer night les Ar è nes hosts singers, orchestras, folk shows or corridas (bullfights).   No doubt, these arenas are busier nowadays than during their pane e circo (bread and circus) glory when gladiators, beasts or Christian martyrs were providing gore-loaded entertainment.   This year’s gladiators are called Lenny Kravits, Sting, Indochine, and Norah Jones, the pop music glitterati.   The late Johnny Halliday performed last year in a sold-out amphitheater.   It was built to accommodate 25,000 spectators, but now only seats 13,000 because modern staging takes about a quarter of the seating area.   We were about 8,000 enjoying the farewell concert of Italian composer Ennio Morricone.   With tickets priced between Euro 50 and 200, it is not a bad business for a city the size of Nimes with a popula...

Recently, Gerard Collomb, the French Interior minister stated that migrants were “benchmarking” European countries to assess which one offered the best social advantages.   He was probably focusing on economic migrants rather than political or war asylum seekers.   It is actually opportune that migrants do benchmarking since they have to recoup their journey investment! Obviously, the minister’s comments made many people on the left of the political spectrum wince; however, his observation only reflects the reality of the situation.   He was repeating what many migration experts had said all along. Economic migrants, particularly Sub-Saharan Africans spend large amount of money to be able to land on the European shore to seek asylum.   Most of them have travelled on borrowed money.   The media wrongly focuses on the people-trafficking phase in the failed state Libya.   However, the fees paid to the smugglers are only the tip of the iceberg! This rac...