Terrorists ain’t what they used to be. By Christopher Hitchens – Slate Magazine
SAO PAOLO, Brazil—A panel at a beautiful annual literary festival in Brazil, held in the almost Utopian coastal town of Parati, found me matched with Fernando Gabeira. This comparison reduced my own limited charisma value to something like zero: Gabeira has excelled at every cultural activity in Brazil from journalism and book writing to bikini modeling (is there, I wonder, a Brazilian wax for men?) to politics. A founder of the Green Party of Brazil and a leading parliamentarian, he delivered a barn-burning speech earlier this year against the exorbitant corruption of the ruling Workers’ Party and, implicitly, of its celebrated head, President Luiz Inácio ‘Lula’ da Silva. After a lifetime of politics and adventure, Gabeira is counted by numberless Brazilians as a great charmer and wit, as well as an all-round good egg and upright citizen.