================================================= Expat Worlds Bi-Monthly Digest ================================================= 22 November, 2004 Vol. 6, Issue 19 .....IN THIS DIGEST..... ==== THE STORY =================== -=The Truth About America=- ==== OTHER EZINES ================ ==== EW SPECIAL ================== -=Western European Bank Account=- ==== HUMOR, TRIVIA, NEWS AND MORE... == -=Trivia=- -=News Story=- -=Traveller's Tales=- -=Jokes=- ==== THE RESOURCE TIP ============= -=Flashnote=- ==== INSIDE THIS MONTH EXPAT WORLD == -=Table of Content=- ==== THE STORY ================================== BRAZILIAN RESIDENCY AND PASSPORT Expat World has linked up with an old associate who specializes in getting Brazilian residency and eventual citizenship for people with special needs. Brazil offers some of the best non-extradition treaties and welcomes new residents and protects its citizens from being preyed on by "outside" governments and agencies. The program that the EW associate is running is not for everybody but if you are some-what well off, like the idea of living in the most progressive country in South America, have some "special" needs and objectives and love those dental floss bikini clad beautiful women of Brazil, we may have the program for you. Here's the skinny: Here are the two best and quickest ways to obtain Brazilian permanent residency. These programs are becoming more and more popular for clients with money. Being a Brazilian permanent resident leads to Brazilian citizenship/nationality in one (1) to four(4) years depending how you acquire Brazilian residency. After becoming a Brazilian citizen you can ally for Portuguese nationality and cut the waiting time down to 3 years to become a Portuguese citizen, i.e. a EU citizen. To obtain permanent residency in Brazil the following documents are necessary for our associate to obtain "Residency Approval." This is normally obtained in 30 to 120 days depending on the time of year. Holidays, Carnival, ect ... sometimes effect this approval time. 1. A clean police report from your country of residency, authenticated by the Brazilian consulate nearest to you. 2. A notarized letter from your retirement fund, bank, or financial institution confirming your retirement income. This letter has to say these funds are from "retirement" and can he transferred to the exterior including Brazil. This letter also needs to be authenticated by the Brazilian consulate. 3. An original copy of your birth certificate, also authenticated by the Brazilian consulate. 4. A copy of every page of your present passport. Valid for at least 1 year, also authenticated by the Brazilian consulate. The above documents are necessary for obtaining residency through the retirement program. With this application you will need to FedEx all these documents to the EW associate after they have been authenticated by a Brazilian consulate nearest your present residency. Upon receiving these documents we will quickly translate them into Portuguese and return them to you to take back to the Brazilian con-sulate for them to send this application back to Brazil by diplomatic pouch. Once it arrives in Brazil our associate will have every thing ready to approve your application and then the immigration department will fax this approval to the Brazilian consulate in Beverly Hills, California EW's associate will also notify you that your application has been approved. The Brazilian consulate will then call you to have you come in to receive your consulate residency approval stamp in your passport. They will normally give you 90 days to enter Brazil and apply for all your Brazilian identification and banking number. Atthis time the federal police will then place another final stamp into your passport. You have to enter once every two years to keep it valid. You qualify for nationality after 4 years with this type of retirement resi-dency visa. If you have a problem with obtaining any of the documents mentioned above you need contact EW associates in Brazil . They can normally assist. Cost for the above: US$ 40,000 for one person, US$ 5,000 for your spouse, and US$ 3,000 for each child under 18 years old. If you include your wife she also needs a clean police report, birth certificate, copy of your marriage license, copy of every page of your spouse's passport. For your children only birth certificates and passport pages. All of these docu-ments also need to be authenticated by the Brazilian consulate. Only one trip to Brazil is necessary after you have been approved and your passport stamped by the Brazilian consulate closest to your present residency. On this trip to Brazil we will apply for your national ID. Card and federal banking number, and obtain the final permanent residency stamp by the federal police. We also may apply for your Brazilian driver's license, if you bring a current valid license with you. Remember, the financial requirement for one applicant is minimum of US $2,000, plus US $1,000 for each family member. Example: Husband, wife , two kids, minimum retirement income US $5000. Hus-band and wife only is US $3000. The amount of retirement funds you report are NOT subject to income taxes in Brazil. The more you declare the better off you will be. It will be easier to explain later if ever asked how you bought your home, car or business in Brazil. The normal age to qualify for this "Retirement Visa" is 50 years old, but EW's associate has successfully processed one fellow who is only 37 years old. PERMANENT RESIDENCY BY WAY OF MARRIAGE "The Marriage Route." The same documents are necessary as in the "Retirement Program" and they have to also be au-thenticated by your nearest Brazilian consulate where you live now. The only document that is not nec-essary is the "proof of income". We will need for you to go to your OWN consulate in Brazil to obtain a declaration that you are a single person. If divorced we need a copy of the decree that also has to be authenticated by the Brazilian consulate. If your spouse has died we need a copy of the death certifi-cate, also notarized by the Brazilian consulate nearest to your home. You will need to travel to Brazil a total of 3 times to qualify for the marriage residency. Here's when and why: 1. To apply for your marriage license and/or give power of attorney to our lawyer/attorney for him to get married in your place if you do not want to stay around for 30-40 days to stand in on your own mar-riage. (You might want to kiss the bride). 2. The second time you will come to Brazil is when you (and your wife)have a 5 minute interview with the federal police of our choice. 3. The third time you visit Brazil you will again go to the federal police to receive your final residency stamp into your passport and apply for your national I.D. And banking card number. 4. Then after one year you qualify for nationality . Our associates can also assist in this process, we can normally obtain approval within 6 to 9 months. This is a completely different process than the resi-dency program, after nationality approval you will he required to go before a federal judge to become a naturalized citizen. You also will be required to speak basic Portuguese. If you use our associates services with either process, it will take about 2 years total from beginning to end for citizenship/ nationality. So you will have this time to learn basic Portuguese. Being a Brazilian can also shorten your waiting time to become an EU Portuguese citizen in 3 years when you apply as a Brazilian. EW's associates have Brazilian attorneys that work with their programs that draw up the proper con-tracts and prenuptial agreement to protect everyone involved 100 percent, not only you and your assets but also the wife's interest. These contracts and agreements are bullet-proof for our associates clients. The officials know all the women involved and in 20 years our associates have not had one problem. If you choose this route you will be well covered and protected. Lastly, if you have some of the necessary documents ready before some of the others are available, take them to the Brazilian consulate to be authenticated, then take the others as you received them, so they get to know you better. This always helps. The consulate will have some minor costs. EW's Brazil-ian associates' cost is US $ 50,000 plus 3 percent escrow fees. After we receive the application in Bra-zil normal completion time is 30 to 120 days. Fees are held in an escrow account in one of the strongest and most protected banking venues in the world - in Belgium in a very respected bank. Your funds will be held in escrow and released only on your approval of permanent residency in Brazil. If you are seriously interested, contact Expat World with "Brazil" in the subject heading of your email to: office@expatworld.net. We will get you introduced to the team in Brazil. ==== OTHER EZINES =============================== ASIAN TIMES ONLINE Asia most trusted source for news, business,commentary and analysis from throughout Asia and our world. (www.atimes.com). ----- Subscribe now to the "Timely Time Management Tips" newsletter. Free tips sent to you to help you get more done in less time, with less stress. Send your email now to: mailto:timemanagement-subscribe@topica.com ----- japan-guide.com Extensive, up to date online guide on Japan living and travel related information. http://www.japan-guide.com/ ==== EW SPECIAL ================================= WESTERN EUROPEAN BANK An Account with Internet Banking and a Visa Card! Here at Expat World we do the impossible. We are now able to get you a personal account at a major Western European Bank based just on a copy of your passport. We've been asked by many of our readers and client's if we can do this and have now plowed through the almost impossible post 911 hysteria to find a bank with a reasonable attitude. Before you become suspicious this account is NOT with the former Eastern block bank in Latvia, Estonia, Hungary etc. It's a 5-star bank complete with internet banking access and a Visa card which has branches located throughout its home country and other EU nations. For details go to and select SPECIALS from the top menu or email us at office@expatworld.net with "Western Europe Bank Info" in the subject heading. ==== HUMOR, TRIVIA, NEWS AND MORE... ================ NEWS STORIES Author Says Bush and Blair Are Mangling English LONDON (Reuters) - The English language is being destroyed by a "deadly virus of management speak" which has infected the mouths and minds of politicians like Tony Blair (news - web sites) and George W. Bush, a leading UK journalist said Monday. The British Prime Minister and his ally the U.S. President are mangling the language, destroying its meaning by avoiding the use of verbs, twisting nouns into verbs, and endlessly repeating phrases until they become "zombified." "It's deeply depressing," says John Humphrys, one of Britain's leading political journalists and the author of a new book, "Lost for Words," about the demise of the language. Humphys' book laments the growth of "cliched, dumbed-down, inflated and bogus management-speak" which he says now passes for English. In particular he criticizes political leaders for being sucked into using meaningless phrases and hackneyed mantras to disguise policies or protect themselves from accountability. Humphrys has been a journalist for 45 years and in his current post as a presenter on BBC radio's news and current affairs program "Today," he regularly interviews world leaders. "The whole essence of a good lively democracy is that one has good lively argument," he told Reuters in an interview. "But this kind of language kills real debate." "And nobody is prepared to stand up and say: 'what does that mean?' because the assumption is made that if you don't know what it means then there is something wrong with you." MASTER OF MANIPULATION Humphrys says the original culprits in the destruction of English are "business gurus who are trying to sell their own particular theories and have invented their own ridiculous phrases and vocabulary to accompany those theories." But for him the more sinister development is that such language has taken root in political discourse. Humphrys picks on Bush -- who once famously used the word "misunderestimate" -- and pokes fun at him as someone who "often speaks as though English were his second language." He also labels the U.S. leader a "master of the language of political manipulation" and accuses him of sweeping aside all the nuances of notions like freedom, truth and democracy and instead firing the words out like "dum-dum bullets." "Repetition has taken them beyond cliche," Humphrys writes. "They have become zombified words whose meaning is no longer the point." Blair, too, is singled out as a king of language corruption. Humphrys notes Blair's apparent fear of verbs and mocks his speeches, which are peppered with verbless phrases like "new challenges, new ideas," or "for our young people, a brighter future" and "the age of achievement, at home and abroad." By using this technique, Humphrys says, Blair is simply evading responsibility. "The point about verbs is that they commit the speaker," he writes. "Verbs cement sentences to their meaning so it's not surprising that politicians tend to mistrust them." Humphrys also blames institutions like the European Union (news - web sites) and the world's media for the decline in standards of English. He laments the inclusion of such words as "pertannually" in the proposed EU constitution -- and despairs that when concerns were raised, the word was replaced with "insubdurience." He urges the public, and journalists in particular, to reject meaningless phrases and to demand they are explained. "When you get enough people pointing it out, the public starts to spot what is going on," he says. "That's why the battle has to be fought." "We should expect -- and should demand -- that when people are setting out policies or trying to persuade us of something, they engage in proper debate and don't simply give us a set of unchallengeable propositions." --- 'Virgin Mary' sandwich back on eBay A 10-year-old grilled cheese sandwich a Florida woman says bears the image of the Virgin Mary was back on eBay Tuesday after the Internet auction house initially canceled bids that went up to $US22,000. Owner Diana Duyser, 52, of Hollywood, Florida, said eBay earlier pulled the half-sandwich from its listings, telling her it does not allow items intended as a joke. But the snack was back on eBay Tuesday along with a picture of a sandwich bearing what appears to be the image of a woman's face. "I made this sandwich 10 years ago. When I took a bite out of it, I saw a face looking up at me; it was Virgin Mary starring (sic) back at me. I was in total shock; I would like to point out there is no mold or (disintegration)," the message said. It says the sandwich, preserved in a plastic box, has brought "blessings" to its owner. "I have won 70,000 dollars (total) on different occasions at the casino nearby my house; I can show the recipts (sic) to the high bidder," the message said. But Duyser was out of luck on the reported $US22,000 bid she got for the sandwich before eBay disqualified the auction. "The last time this was listed, there were over 80,000 viewers," the message said, adding that the auction elicited many e-mails, some of them "downright cruel." The starting bid on the latest auction was $3000. --- Lovers caught out A Bahraini couple caught by a crowd having sex in a parked car at an isolated area off Tubli beach were released after the man promised to marry the woman, it was revealed yesterday. They were spotted when a group of people out for an evening walk on the beach noticed a suspicious movement inside the car, said report in our sister paper Akhbar Al Khaleej. The two lovers, who were semi-naked, attempted to escape after the onlookers forced the doors open. The tearful girl said her lover had promised to marry her and pleaded with the crowd not to report them to the police. The crowd agreed after the man vowed to marry the girl soon. ----- TRAVELLER'S TALES ALL MOD CONS: House for sale. Two beds, two receps., single garage, one full-time job. That's the deal being offered to homebuyers in the Fukushima prefecture village of Izumizaki in Japan. The town is so hungry for citizens that it will arrange employment for people who move there. The latest wheeze follows the announcement that homebuyers will receive up to ¥3 million ($26,872) in bus or train tickets since the village is several hours' commute from the nearest metropolitan centres. The town has lots of factories, but 136 of the 197 residential plots remain unoccupied, the Mainichi Shimbun reported. Have you noticed how a tone of panicked desperation makes enticements somehow rather unpalatable? ----- Oxymoron: recent history ----- You can kill a fly by hitting it with a newspaper. But you can't do that with a tiger, unless you hit it really hard, for a really long time. -- Graham Morgan ----- "The stylist had no bottoms, period, for me. Nothing. No underwear, no bathing suit bottoms. I said, 'You better find me some frickin' bottoms.'" -- Current Playboy cover girl DENISE RICHARDS to Tonight Show host Jay Leno on the problems she encountered during her shoot. ----- Boot Camp It was decided by Microsoft during a brilliant brainstorming session that military service would improve the skills and discipline of their finest technician. So off to boot camp he went. At the rifle range, he was given some instruction, a rifle, and bullets. He fired several shots at the target. The report came from the target area that all attempts had completely missed the target. The Microsoft tech looked at his rifle and then at the target again. "Hmmm.," he thought, "I'll get to the bottom of this in no time." He looked at the rifle again, and then at the target again. He pointed his still loaded rifle at the ground in front of him and fired. A cloud of dust kicked up, and a little dimple was left there in the dust. "Yep, it's working," he concluded. The technician yelled out to the others at the target end, "The rifle is in working order, and the bullet seems to be leaving this end just fine. The trouble must be at your end!" ----- Top 10 Things Men Know About Women: 1. 2. 3. 4. 5. 6. 7. 8. 9. 10. ==== THE RESOURCE TIP ============================ FLASHNOTE How often do you have to write down something somewhere for some time? You may be speaking on the phone and you have to put down somebody’s telephone number but your phone book is far away, or you may have to save URL to be able to use it in a few minutes or you may have just to copy a couple of pieces of a text and edit them, etc. There can be a great many of similar examples. What do you usually do in such cases? Someone opens Notepad, someone uses personal information managers(e.g. My Notes Center), someone uses some other programs for keeping and processing texts. But all these variants have one drawback – lack of speed. Say you use PIM – as a rule it’s a “heavy” class program, besides, before you can use it as a rough copy you should first find a place where you can safely write without being afraid “to litter” or to damage some important notes. Flashnote has been created exactly for such cases. Just when you need a rough copy to save or to process some pieces of a text. Get it at . ==== INSIDE THIS MONTH EXPAT WORLD =============== EXPAT WORLD NEWSLETTER (VOL.16 ISSUE 09) Table of Content: - TEN SURVIVING OUTPOSTS OF THE BRITISH EMPIRE - BITS & PIECES - PAYPHONE DIRECTORY - BY PASS CENSORSHIP FILTERS - ERASING DATA - DISAPPEARING - BRAZILIAN RESIDENCY AND PASSPORT - RELIGIOUS RIGHT VERSUS EDUCATION - NEW CAMERA WOULD COME IN HANDY IN BEATING THE CHADOR DRESS IN THE MIDDLE EAST - MULLAH, MAY I? - POSTCARDS TO THE WORLD - YOUR EMAILS - PARTIALLY OUT FOXING THE FOX - QUALITY OF LIFE - THE SCANDINAVIANS GET IT RIGHT, ASIA FAR BEHIND - G'DAY MATE - LIFE LOOKING GOOD IN THE LAND OF OZ - STOP THE PRESS, LET EXPAT WORLD READERS CASH IN - OFFSHORE NEWS - THE WORLDS BEST TAX HAVEN - ALDERNEY, THE LITTLE MENTIONED CHANNEL ISLAND TAX HAVEN - INTERNATIONAL SNIPS AND CLIPS - BUYING ABROAD 20 TIPS - THE UNIVERSITY OF EDUCATE U - CRAPPER RAPPER - A LETTER TO THE IRS - BREAKING NEWS - FART FACTS YOU MISSING SO MUCH Each week the EXPAT WORLD DIGEST gives you just a smattering of what you can find in the EXPAT WORLD newsletter that we produce once a month. Why not get the whole story and subscribe now to our electronic version for just US $30 per year. Go to our website: www.expatworld.net to sign up. ********************************************************************* EXPAT WORLD - the newsletter of international living URL - http://www.expatworld.net Email - office@expatworld.net ---------- End of Expat World Digest --------------------------------