Jack & Jill Politics

UPDATE: Here’s video of Lula’s inflammatory & eyebrow-raising statement (thanks to BlackVoices and alert JJP reader spirit_55z).

This is a real shot across the bow for those world leaders heading to the G20 Summit next week. There are a couple of translations here of what President Lula actually said. Both are pretty special, hilarious & strangely satisfying especially after U.S. conservatives’ craven attempt to lay the blame for the world’s economic struggles on the Community Re-investment Act (CRA) and black and brown people who dared to try and buy a house. It was a typical, “blame the niggers” strategy, so obviously ridiculous given the role of predatory lending targeted at minorities in the subprime mortgage meltdown that it was disproven and discounted quickly. The other layer of irony here is that Lula is considered white in Brazil.

FT.com:

Brazil’s President Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva on Thursday blamed the global economic crisis on “white people with blue eyes” and said it was wrong that black and indigenous people should pay for white people’s mistakes.

Speaking in Brasília at a joint press conference with Gordon Brown, the UK prime minister, Mr Lula da Silva told reporters: “This crisis was caused by the irrational behaviour of white people with blue eyes, who before the crisis appeared to know everything and now demonstrate that they know nothing.”

Daily Mail Online (UK):

President Lula said it was completely unfair that the poorest people in the world were suffering most for the mistakes of wealthy, Western financiers.

‘This was a crisis that was fostered and boosted by irrational behaviour of people that are white, blue-eyed, that before the crisis looked like they knew everything about economics,’ he declared.

‘Now they have demonstrated that they don’t know anything about economics.’

President Lula, head of Brazil’s main left-wing party, said that ‘no black man or woman, no indigenous person, no poor person’ had been in any way culpable for the global banking crisis.

‘I’m not acquainted with any black banker,’ he said. ‘The part of humanity that’s responsible should pay for the crisis.’

Dayam. Well OK then! Wish I could have seen the look on Gordon Brown’s face when this smackdown went down. (Anyone got a youtube clip?) Apparently, I’m not the only one looking forward to being on scene at the G20 Summit in London next week. Lula, who heads up the world’s tenth largest economy, is clearly planning to bring the noise: 

Turning to the G20 summit in London, he added: ‘Normally we are very polite with each other – but this meeting in London, it has to be a little bit spicy, a little bit of heat.’

I’ll be doing my best, thanks to the G20Voice program to bring you the real, unfiltered deal from London. It’s going to be ON. Meet the other 49 bloggers from all the G20 countries here.