How Brazil's Olympics Message Beat a Queen Jumping from a Helicopter - Yet Is a Warning on Oligarchs

Global American values

August 6, 2016

The Brazilians did more with their opening in message than other cities did with hundreds of millions and James Bond and the Queen look alike jumping out of a helicopter.

They conveyed a message about how they came to be as a country, a mix of African, European and Native. They conveyed the message of the adjustment they have had to make to deal with their conflicts and respect each other.

But then they went on to take up bigger issues so it wasn't just about THEM,  a huge country that holds half the world's endangered Rain Forests, but has massive economic inequality.

They conveyed a global message with a video showing Earth HEATING UP as the time lapse shots showed our eyes how our blue planet is turning into an orange HOT -- that impacts all children and future generations. Like frogs sitting in a warming pot, we don't notice it. The message was worth more than China spending $100 million on flashy stuff while their citizens choke on some of the blackest air in the world...(even china is now leading in green energy development because breathing coal dust is killing millions of Chinese every year.)

It also gave a sense of what Brazilians are like - they are warm and like to dance, drink. They have their annual Carnival which we call Mardi Gras. A friend of mine went and loved it. I would need to lose 30 years to do it and live to tell.

I met the Brazilian people on a trip for a large company when I was young and they were the same then, warm and friendly. It was the first time I had been approached by women in a bar! That just didn't happen in the USA or European places I had been to (that story is part of "Better Times Ahead April Fool" at the link below.)

The opening ceremonies didn't say that Brazil is losing that valuable rain forest by clear cutting that is turning it into vast wasteland, all for a quick buck. Its president wasn't there because she is being impeached. Her predecessor is under investigation for fraud - and it was that way when I was there about 1980. 

We Americans aren't perfect but we are nuns compared to the official corruption in places like Brazil, South Africa, Russia, etc. - unless we got a President Trump, who would like to be a WORLD OLIGARCH - just him and Putin, brother oligarchs, billionaires with a common interest in getting rid of the free press and carving up the world between them, NATO allies be damned. Trump has already banned major media from his events, and he is only a candidate!  He has a strange fixation on dictators he likes to praise, including North Korea's Kim Jung Un who murdered his own uncle to assert his authority!

Brazil has massive income inequality where the rich 1% have it all while the 99%  have nothing. That same inequality was made possible in the USA by the 2001 Bush tax cuts, which put all the benefits at the top 1%, so that a hedge fund manager making billions pays less percentage tax than his secretary--so a Trump can play with the tax code and pay ZERO taxes. That is probably why he has refused to disclose his tax returns as all other candidates have for 40 years. 

Rules don't apply to billionaires, right? If they did, someone wanting to be president would produce his returns like everyone else so the public knows the truth, unlike countries like Russia and China, and Brazil.

We need to avoid becoming like Brazil, with oligarch billionaires like Mr. Trump cutting deals for themselves at the top while the middle and lower income people get left out so that even an Olympics will not benefit them when the games are over.

If you agree, please SHARE.

Michael Fjeltand, BBA/JD

Terrorism Analyst/Author

"Better Times Ahead April Fool"

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