Sometimes the robotic clicking of a remote can lead you to fantastic things.
Like this Christiane Amanpour interview of Uruguay's president Jose Mujica.
Read the CNN article here:
It's so refreshing to see someone in political life, let alone a president, who doesn't talk like a slick car salesman.
On relations with the US:
What is it like for a former Marxist guerrilla to enter the White House, that most potent of Western’s symbols?
“I cannot deny reality,” he told Amanpour. “I don't know whether I like this planet or not, but I have to accept it.”
There is not just one “United States,” he said. Yes, the country wields tremendous – “scary” – influence in Latin America, and the relationship between the region and America has a troubled history full of attempted coups and CIA operatives.
“However,” he said, “there's also a big debate in the States. There's human progress. There's a technological and scientific development that helps the whole of humanity. So we cannot just put everything in one bag and just say one word to describe the U.S.”
“I know that the U.S. is a bit of a global policeman, but I also recognize something really positive about the U.S. which has helped humanity.”
On Uruguay legalizing marijuana:
“It is a measure against trafficking, drug dealing. We are trying to snatch the market away from them, because it's 80 years now that we are repressing drug use.”
“So like everywhere in the world, repression by itself doesn't do the job. We are trying to find another way.”
Regulating use of the drug, he suggested, could even lead to a decrease in usage.
“When you surround that with this forbidden aura, you are actually calling the younger to take it up. However, if you place it as a controlled product that you can purchase at the chemist – like some other drugs like morphine, which is used for certain prescriptions – then we are taking the mystery out of marijuana and we hit the drug dealers.”
On his past life as a political prisoner:
“If you catch a black ant, a normal common ant, you grab her with two fingers, you put her right inside your ear, and you hear it scream,” he told Amanpour. “But of course you need time to do that. And you have to be really lonely.”
“When you spend a long time by yourself in solitary confinement, a frog, a rat that comes to eat because you leave some crumbs there – it's life. It's the life you have there.”
On being the 'poorest president in the world':
He donates 97% of his salary, drives a 1987 Volkwagen Beetle – the original “peoples’ car” – and sells flowers with his wife at their home.
Mujica, a former Marxist guerrilla, lives in the same modest Montevideo house he always has, forgoing the presidential palace.
“I do not need much to live. I live in the same way I used to live when I wasn’t a president and in the same neighborhood, in my same house, and in the same way. And I am a republican” – small ‘r.’
“I live like the majority in my country lives. It was a majority who voted for me. And that's why I identify with them. Morally, I do not have the right to live like a minority in my country.”
*****
On a totally whacked-out tangent, the only other politician who seems to be (relatively speaking) a straight-talker and someone who doesn't beat about the bush (too much) when answering journalists' questions is the mega-creepy Amit Shah.
Watch his interview with CNN-IBN's Rajdeep Sardesai and tell me if I've lost it:
Like this Christiane Amanpour interview of Uruguay's president Jose Mujica.
Read the CNN article here:
It's so refreshing to see someone in political life, let alone a president, who doesn't talk like a slick car salesman.
On relations with the US:
What is it like for a former Marxist guerrilla to enter the White House, that most potent of Western’s symbols?
“I cannot deny reality,” he told Amanpour. “I don't know whether I like this planet or not, but I have to accept it.”
There is not just one “United States,” he said. Yes, the country wields tremendous – “scary” – influence in Latin America, and the relationship between the region and America has a troubled history full of attempted coups and CIA operatives.
“However,” he said, “there's also a big debate in the States. There's human progress. There's a technological and scientific development that helps the whole of humanity. So we cannot just put everything in one bag and just say one word to describe the U.S.”
“I know that the U.S. is a bit of a global policeman, but I also recognize something really positive about the U.S. which has helped humanity.”
On Uruguay legalizing marijuana:
“It is a measure against trafficking, drug dealing. We are trying to snatch the market away from them, because it's 80 years now that we are repressing drug use.”
“So like everywhere in the world, repression by itself doesn't do the job. We are trying to find another way.”
Regulating use of the drug, he suggested, could even lead to a decrease in usage.
“When you surround that with this forbidden aura, you are actually calling the younger to take it up. However, if you place it as a controlled product that you can purchase at the chemist – like some other drugs like morphine, which is used for certain prescriptions – then we are taking the mystery out of marijuana and we hit the drug dealers.”
On his past life as a political prisoner:
“If you catch a black ant, a normal common ant, you grab her with two fingers, you put her right inside your ear, and you hear it scream,” he told Amanpour. “But of course you need time to do that. And you have to be really lonely.”
“When you spend a long time by yourself in solitary confinement, a frog, a rat that comes to eat because you leave some crumbs there – it's life. It's the life you have there.”
On being the 'poorest president in the world':
He donates 97% of his salary, drives a 1987 Volkwagen Beetle – the original “peoples’ car” – and sells flowers with his wife at their home.
Mujica, a former Marxist guerrilla, lives in the same modest Montevideo house he always has, forgoing the presidential palace.
“I do not need much to live. I live in the same way I used to live when I wasn’t a president and in the same neighborhood, in my same house, and in the same way. And I am a republican” – small ‘r.’
“I live like the majority in my country lives. It was a majority who voted for me. And that's why I identify with them. Morally, I do not have the right to live like a minority in my country.”
*****
On a totally whacked-out tangent, the only other politician who seems to be (relatively speaking) a straight-talker and someone who doesn't beat about the bush (too much) when answering journalists' questions is the mega-creepy Amit Shah.
Watch his interview with CNN-IBN's Rajdeep Sardesai and tell me if I've lost it:
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