At a joint presser with British PM Gordon Brown, Brazil’s President Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva said the current global economic crisis was caused by “white people with blue eyes.”
In a narrowly empirical sense, Lula is right, of course, as a look at Henry Paulson would show. (Geithner and Bernanke both have brown eyes, and George W. Bush’s have a permanently glazed-over look.)
On the other hand, Lula doesn’t have the darkest of skin tone himself. And, while not blue, his eyes are hazel-green more than dark brown.
Beyond that, WTF got into him? He’s been known, amongst the various left-of-center leaders in Latin America, as a relative moderate. Blame the developed world without implying a "racial" gene for greed.
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