new blog entry from David_Mattock

Sent: Monday, May 21, 2007 3:35 PM
To: wwo@worldwithoutoil.org
Subject: new blog entry from David_Mattock


Brazil awoke today to more extraordinary scenes. As I looked across the Rio bay this morning from my apartment I saw what the entire city is now gathering on the beaches to gawp at. It boarders on the unbelievable. Today 3 cruise liners rolled into the bay carrying thousands of refugees, not all Brazilians either.

We had heard some pieces on the news about how other countries have been rounding up their immigrant population and shipping them off back to their respective countries. These three ships have supposedly come from Europe. We don't know which. What we do know is that crews of the ships after docking quickly flew out of the country on one of the few remaining airlines, all paid for by their respective countries, leaving us to sort out this mess.

The conditions on the ships border on the inhumane. The press and people are outraged, since the majority of our people where brought here in similar conditions as slaves. The refugees who are Brazilians are being sent back to their respective families or put up in temporary housing. The others, nearly all of them Latin Americans, though it seems that there are a few Africans and Arabians thrown into the mix, will be slowly sent back home. However those that aren't Latin Americans aren't so keen to go back to their home countries anyway and given Brazils more than welcoming nature towards immigrants I suppose space will be found for them.

Its not lost on us than in the last few weeks the number of people who are flying into the country applying for permanent visa have shot up. The irony is that these are the rich and the powerful of their own countries now fleeing for better times in our little backwater country, ha!

The amusing aspect is that our immigration control, in this area, has become the tightest most difficult to get through. Namely its costing them thousands of reais to get through. I'm told the lawyers are earning huge amounts. The big news took place when a couple of Hollywood stars tried to move in and where denied visas. An appeal later and a lot of publicity (some negative) meant that our countries foreign minister, in a pr coup for the current administration publicly stated that they would be able to stay.

It seems that everybody now wants to come live in fair Brazil, for years people have been trying to escape to seek a better life, now it's the reverse. It's quite an odd feeling to realize you know live in one of the worlds most powerful nations..

On the fuel front everything proceeding as normal, no hiccups or anything of note really. Where just making the stuff as fast as we can. The price has inched its way up slightly but the government is making sure we hold back enough to keep our country running. It helps that some orders we cancelled after the ships to take away the petrol didn't turn up.

In other news the Volkswagen Brazil division claim that they will have a viable bio fuel plane engine in a few months and brazil airlines will get a discount of some kind in order for them to get back up and running as fast as possible. This is namely for the benefit of the budge airlines, a whole bunch of them that have gone bust. Only TAM is doing regular service but that is at a much reduced number of flights per day and they are exclusively for the rich. Needless to say the orders have been flying in. Oh and happiest of news my wife's pregnant, so tonight we are going to celebrate in style!



Netizen David_Mattock