#987 – The Expat Files: Cultural Sensitivities, Cosmetic Surgery, and Citizenship

Automatically transcribed from the original recording; names and wording may contain errors.

[00:00] South of the border down Mexico way That's where I fell in love when the stars above came out to play and now I wonder Hello there all you ex-pat wannabes. I'm Johnny Mueller and you're listening to the expat files living in Latin America The show that tells you just what it's like to live work play and or retire down here in Latin America It's a mix of the good the bad the ugly and the great and it's all right here. So let's get started Well, let's see how to start this thing today. I remember now I woke up this morning Thinking what can I be oversensitive about today? You know since I'm of German ancestry, there are things all over the place that are totally insulting to my heritage

[00:48] Don't believe it take the sauerkraut aisle in Walmart now that totally offends me Then there's all those Harley guys driving around with those World War two infantry helmets I know they're cool-looking but man that hurts my feelings Everywhere I go. There are subliminal signs of people Rubbing it in that the Germans lost World War one and World War two and that they're a nasty race of Teutonic warmongers Where's my support group? I'm sure I can find one on the internet Maybe even get a grant from Bill Gates or Soros and what about those five gallon outdoor gas cans Jerry cans They call them. Yeah, that's right Jerry's Krauts I know people are whispering the J and the K word behind my back You got no right to the J or the K word unless of course you've got some German blood then you get a pass

[01:36] Then you could even sprinkle them in your Teutonic rap songs Hey, by the way, any of you guys out there have Soros's email Oh, and by the way, the other day someone asked me if I believe in ET's aliens Extraterrestrial civilizations and all that and I said, you know statistics overwhelmingly support that I believe they're around all right But I don't believe they ever made it to another planet Simply because I think at a certain point when they got so evolved that they discovered social media They extinguished themselves or simply auto lobotomized What do you think? I mean, we're well on our way now, aren't we? Oh and here's something you never hear discussed, you know to be president of the US You have to be 35 years old That's not right. That's blatant reverse ageism. Those are old dead white man rules. Don't you know?

[02:25] How about we strike that from the Constitution and allow six seven and eight year olds to be president? I know I know the case can be made that has already happened more than a few times Mentally that is oh and by the way, I forgot to tell you a couple of shows ago I was talking about I was at a hard rock hotel all inclusive If you heard that one you heard me complain it was nothing to write home about well at one of the events You know, they have lots of events at those all inclusives Like stuff for kids at the pool water sports games shows for adults and of course a couple of casinos Well at the casino, they were having some kind of Marlboro cigarette promotion. Yep. They were giving away free hats and t-shirts They had some hot girls in skimpy outfits dressed as cowgirls and of course a tall dark and handsome

[03:11] Latino version of the Marlboro man all dressed up chaps ten gallon hat the whole works and I got to thinking Marlboro man, that wouldn't be allowed up in the states. That would have to be Marlboro person, right? I don't get it, man. The world has gone stupid this hypersensitivity crap has become so stupid But then again stupid is the new normal, right? So then why did I start out the show today with this kind of rant because of this email you gotta hear this one This is from Calvin and Calvin's a bit testy today He says Oh Johnny if I got a gripe about what matters and what doesn't matter It's like so many other things what matters and what doesn't matter is in the eye of the beholder Especially in this world a wash with plastic surgery and sex selling everything from cigarettes to perfume to Fruit Loops

[04:00] Wait a minute. Wait a minute Cal Johnny here. Can you still say Fruit Loops? How about vegetable loops? I guess that would offend certain mentally handicapped people, too Can't have that can't be taken a blowtorch to a snowflake. Hmm. I got it Veggie loops. There you go. That won't offend anybody at least for now. Anyway, all right, then Cal says Johnny It's a fact that the bigger a woman's bra size the more doors are open to her That's a fact and the more favoritism. She's afforded in most every walk of life Except possibly in church though Maybe not though especially in the media and in the entertainment world where the pressure is on to get a boob nose or butt job and Johnny it's also a fact that in many cultures plastic surgery is a rite of passage for girls in both the USA and

[04:52] With upscale classes and countries like Colombia and Venezuela and Brazil In fact, many Asians are now getting their eyes westernized as a rite of passage, too Alright meet Johnny here interrupting for a second just to tell you a little boobs on the ground story. I mean boots That's something to be avoided at all costs on ladies boobs on the ground Anyway in every Latin American city, they've got a number of malls. They're called Centro commercialis commercial centers And if you ask someone what's the highest end mall in the city, they'll know it by name right away It's the mall with the nicest cars in the parking lot the most high-end gringo franchises It's always a fashion show for the rich and a place to be seen now in Guatemala City

[05:38] For example city of a couple of million the most upscale mall where the wealthy ladies and gents go to be seen and hang out It's called phone to bella mall. It's even got a Maserati and lotus dealership inside Well, it's also a fact that they've got many upscale high-end boutique restaurants there, too Where it seems to be the fashion on certain days of the week It's especially Sunday for young teenage girls who's just had a nose job to make an appearance That's why on practically every Sunday morning if you walk through the place You're bound to see a young lady or two or ten with that telltale little white bandage over the bridge of her nose And maybe even a black eye or two. Hey that happens It's one of the secondary effects when you get your nose busted up or reset whether on purpose by accident or by paying a surgeon

[06:24] Oh, and by the way, I have a couple of Latino gay friends, too And they're always talking about when they get the money. They're gonna get a nose job. I'm not kidding It's kind of funny too because their noses are alright I'm the guy with the big honker and I got the dough and I never gave much thought to have in mind fix So then what's that got to do with anything well That's just another little useless piece of information you pick up along the way when you've been down in Latin America For as many years as I've been oh and one of these guys who owns a chain of very successful beauty parlors He says every gay guy. He knows wants his nose fixed even the ones who've already had their noses fixed So what's it like up by you? So anyway Cal goes not to say you'd think in a fairer and logical world No one in history whatever gets successful and filthy rich by doing nothing but sitting on their enormous

[07:14] Silicone enhanced rear ends, but then a decade or so ago out of nowhere came the Kardashians So Johnny here's my gripe women with enhanced boobs butts and lips get a leg up and preferential treatment in this world Fact is a guy could have a really big Jones and they have operations for such things I understand yet. He gets absolutely no leg up at all. No pun intended a Big Schwants opens no doors in the real world except of course on the fringes and porno fantasy land But that doesn't count with polite society Whatever that is though you hear lots of ladies on the internet and in Hollywood movies saying big dicks matter But I don't believe it Unfortunately, it seems to be a myth. What are they supposed to matter about? So then where is the BDM support groups?

[08:00] I checked on Google you just can't find them So in reality big dicks don't matter no matter what you've heard and though I'm sure you can start your own activist group There are just too many clubs to join and you have to pick the battles You know, you can win and the BDM battle for most guys was already lost in the gene pool The moment you were conceived in the meantime, I'm off to the pharmacy Johnny one of the few positive effects of this virus thing is that it's a lot easier and Less embarrassing these days for a good Catholic boy like me To walk right up to the lady at the counter of the pharmacy Plunk down a sawbuck and buy condoms now that you have to wear a mask every day's like Halloween Oh and Johnny one last thing off-topic you talk about guns in Latin America and how only in three countries

[08:46] They're really not allowed Cuba Venezuela and Mexico. Well Johnny. I just like to say if it weren't for guns You know, we wouldn't be here right now American people fended off Britain from taking us over not with fists or butter knives if you read your history You'll find even the ladies and young kids back then knew how to lock and load signed Cal from, Missouri B.s. Johnny. I don't suppose you'll be reading this on the air due to sensitive subject matter as the disclaimers always say on TV Well Cal I read it. I'll tell you why it reminded me of a couple of instances where my own Latina girlfriend or girlfriends. We're absolutely shocked to hear that up in the states A guy will buy tampics tampons and sanitary napkins for his girlfriend wife mother

[09:34] Whatever if it appears on the grocery store shopping list, I mean, come on I'm sure everyone listening to this program has done that for one of his girlfriend's mother Whatever well as it turns out because of the deeply ingrained strain of machoism here in Latin America You'll never see a male a Latino by a tampon tampex or sanitary napkin It's an unwritten rule and absolutely verboten In fact, I first noticed this weirdness some years ago when I was shopping in a big grocery store with my girlfriend We were loading up the cart going through aisle after aisle She tossed a pack of tampons or whatever into the cart and when we got to the checkout she grabbed them Walked ahead of me pulled some dough from her purse and bought them herself She explained to me later that it's just not right for a guy to buy that stuff

[10:21] She was being thoughtful and didn't want to embarrass me. She said though. I was totally clueless of her intent Man, the crazy stuff you learned when you're living down here a long time Oh and now is a good time to mention that I don't want to turn this show into a Lonely Hearts Club thing for gringos and gringas that are coming down Latin America, though. I certainly could do it You should see all the questions I get from people about mating dating love and romance I get it from both angles gringos looking to hook up with Latinas and from gringas wanting to hook up with Latinos So never fear. I will be doing an upcoming show diving deep into the mating dating love and romance thing here because you know It's not a lot of expat gringo gringa gonna be some wannabes. So hang on. We'll be hitting that subject hard shortly

[11:11] Oh and a disclaimer here if you're the sensitive type, you might want to skip that show, but I guarantee it will be amusing Alright moving on, you know a couple of shows ago I mentioned that there's a huge increase in American expats renouncing their US citizenship And you know, I keep on the stuff in the claptrap data coming out of the mainstream media and you know, there's a lot to hate and distrust about the regular news and one thing that Particularly bothers me is the fact that every time I see an article about more and more gringos and expats renouncing their citizenship It seems like somewhere in that article or blog they say people are leaving because of Trump In fact, you see that so often it's as if the same guy or news service is writing the same article or putting out the same

[11:58] Press blurb. Well, I'm here to tell you right now. That's total misinformation Oh, and I'm not saying that when Trump got elected a lot of people didn't claim They were gonna get the hell out of the US and renounce you heard that from practically every media outfit coming out of Hollywood Truth be told if everyone who said they were gonna leave the United States when Trump got elected if they really had gone California would be a ghost date But no one left even the big talentless blabber mouths like whoopi Goldberg who kept saying it over and over again She and the rest of them are still sitting pretty in Hollywood truth Be told just as many non Hollywood people said they were gonna leave the United States if Obama got elected many of them actually did get the hell out With a good percentage of them renouncing their citizenship So to set you straight on the facts regarding renouncing US citizenship

[12:46] There always was a small trickle of people renouncing until around 2010 then it began to snowball when the Obama administration passed the notorious foreign account tax-compliant act That's fat cut inflicting accounting misery on US expats everywhere then in 2014 the US government raised the renunciation fee from 450 bucks to 2350 bucks and they slapped on a massive exit tax to that said let me excerpt this brand new article That just came out talking about that very thing It says and I'll paraphrase as usual to cut out the boring stuff It says now it may be true that most expats aren't crazy about Trump Americans abroad tend to be however Cosmopolitan professionals often married to foreigners or following international career paths as well as a large proportion of expats

[13:40] Who happen to be retired people living on pensions and Social Security? but the fact is when expats these days watch their home country news or Talk about the US and what's happening there at local dinner parties just in the last couple years It stopped being fun and entertaining It's gotten damn serious with so many millions of expats now wondering which countries are really the banana republics But neither Trump or Obama We're not the reasons why so many expats have been trying to drop their nationality in the last decade It's the system the nightmare of American tax and financial Reporting has hit them hard with the fact that any account or asset deemed in Washington DC to be foreign

[14:26] Instantly puts you on a list and makes you and yours a suspect Automatically requiring extra disclosures that can be ruinous in time expense and peace of mind The fact is the US is almost unique in the world in Taxing its citizens on their nationality versus taxing them like every other country does where they reside the US government's also uniquely parochial in being unable or Unwilling to distinguish between say rich Americans living stateside and stashing money offshore in a Panama bank account Versus a middle-class American who happens to be married to a German and teaching Elementary school in Germany and all hell starts right there with that conflation of problems the US bureaucracy makes no distinction

[15:13] The fact is before 2010 American citizen-based taxation didn't necessarily disrupt the life of an expat Let's say teaching English in Panama That's because very few expats even knew about the horrendously complicated reporting rules or bothered with them Because they came online just recently but FATCA which raised its ugly head in the early 2000s required everyone living overseas to make new and redundant Disclosures or face the prospect of tens of thousands of dollars in fines even prison and here's the kicker It also requires all foreign banks brokers and insurers to report Gringos living abroad to the IRS or face draconian measures and sanctions like being kicked out of the swift

[15:58] International money transfer system which to a bank would be like taking a bullet in the head So it's no surprise at all that most foreign banks and brokers have stopped taking US persons and green card holders as customers And that has locked out many American expats living overseas from being able to do retail finance in their new countries Worse yet the European Union now has started passing laws with bureaucratically Sublime names such as MI FID 2 and PRP 2 PS That impose new similar rules on everything from mutual funds to life insurance And all this has scared the banks and brokers who have American expat clients living in Europe, too So now they've all started to kick out their customers who've got US ties

[16:46] Nationalities or clients who live even part-time out of the US with dual addresses Leaving expat Americans financially marooned in their desperation Several US citizens living overseas have been taking their struggle to the courts One Fabian Langrais a French citizen who is also an accidental American because he was born in California Wants to invoke and use the European Union's data privacy laws to try to have fat cut declared illegal in Europe Good luck with that you go against big brother There are few victories, but on the whole a new feeling is arising with Americans abroad They feel ostracized by their own country More and more angry and agitated every time they read the paper or see the news and get this it says of the estimated 9 million Americans living overseas if they happen to be a political group or a block which they aren't

[17:38] They'd be able to wield Tremendous political power being that 9 million people would rank them ahead of 40 US states by population But they have no such organization Support groups or paid lobbyists in Washington, of course, it's unfair discrimination against expats abroad, but they don't have power Advocacy, that's why the US taxpayer accuracy keeps bearing down on them. And so the citizenship Renunciation snowball continues to roll and pick up speed and now from the what you didn't know Department And probably never would except for the fact that someone in government Read a musty old file tucked away for years and was so amazed and flabbergasted. He leaked it. Listen to this Did you know there was an Israeli plan in 1969 to resettle?

[18:26] 60,000 Muslim Palestinians in Paraguay and the guy who found this stuff a senior reporter for Israeli Public Broadcasting Corporation says quote the extent and the numbers and the methodology used for this plan is quite amazing Then it says the Israeli government concocted the secret plan knowing there would be many problems in their newly acquired Palestinian Muslim Gaza Strip So the question was what to do with the Palestinian Arabs that came under Jewish rule the people were sure to resist Well, they gave the job to Israeli spy agency Mossad who did come up with an ingenious solution They knew Paraguay had a strong man dictatorship who they could make a deal with monetarily

[19:12] So the Mossad brokered a secret agreement through the Paraguayan Institute of Agriculture and Immigration to absorb 60,000 Arab Muslims over a period of four years the plan guaranteed Israel would cover the immigrants travel expenses and would give them each 700 bucks in 2020 dollars and the Paraguayan government would get 250 bucks in today's currency Per person and get this on arrival Palestinians would receive Paraguayan residency rights and after five years they'd get citizenship and passport Then it says according to official Israeli documents a down payment of three hundred fifty thousand dollars was made for the first 10,000 immigrants that's about three million bucks in today's funny money dollars The total bill estimated at 33 million back then that's a little over

[20:01] 250 million bucks in today's funny money and the Israeli government even set up a travel agency in Gaza to entice Palestinians and provide them with relevant documentation Then it says through the human rights lens of 2020 the plan may appear shocking But we're talking about a different time over 50 years ago. So then what went wrong? Well, the plan actually got off the ground with the first 30 Palestinians making the 7,000 mile journey But it all came to a grinding halt when two of the first 30 guys walked into the Israeli embassy in a sunshine Paraguay and shot a young clerk and that by the way was considered the first act of Palestinian terrorism against an Israeli abroad Anyway after the guy got shot it created a huge scandal around the Paraguayan

[20:47] Resettlement plan and the project was aborted though if all would have gone well and according to plan It's been calculated with birth rate statistics Paraguay would now be a majority Muslim country man the things you never knew and we never find out till generations have passed huh speaking of things You never knew about Latin Americans past. How about this one? I like to call it things about Latin America You never learned in history class Did you know that Dominican Republic came within a hair's breath of being a US state it came so close? No, I'm not talking about Haiti. That's on the other side of the island of Hispaniola. I'm talking about the DR now back in the 1860s and 70s the DR wasn't called the Dominican Republic was just called Santo Domingo That's what the capital city is called now

[21:34] But before then the whole country was called Santo Domingo in a way I can understand why they don't tell this story because I'm sure lots of sensitive people are gonna get pissed when they hear this But it's true. I'll start out by saying that before the Emancipation Proclamation Lincoln Abraham Lincoln headed a group that wanted to permit export of freed slaves to a country in Africa Fearing that the South would never incorporate freed slaves into their society and economy That was his plan B. However, once the slaves were freed they could vote the Consensus amongst the blacks was that they were citizens with rights in the states and they didn't want to go anywhere However, after a few years in the KKK Atrocities started in the south and all that resentment that came about down south to the former plantation owners and aristocrats

[22:24] Just wouldn't accept Negroes as fully emancipated citizens Well after Lincoln was shot his African plan died and Johnson his vice president came in and he was a terrible president and was impeached Then General US Grant was elected for two terms but he found he had to continuously send troops down south to counter the KKK tortures and hangings and all that and The fact that there were two southern states that now suddenly had new black voting populations that were greater than the white populations and that didn't go down well at all with the old guard and One of the main KKK goals was to stop blacks from voting in black congressmen and senators So they scared the black population off at the polls. So in 1869 Grant had a plan He believed all territories in the Americas would eventually become free of their European masters

[23:12] Including all the islands in the Caribbean and he thought many of them once free would be annexed by the US as new states After all there were French Spanish Dutch and Portuguese territories and settlements all over the Caribbean that were starting to gain independence beginning with Haiti in 1804 and the DR in 1844 so in 1869 President Grant sent the committee of senators to the Dominican Republic known as Santo Domingo back then and Had secret deliberations with the president for the US to absorb the Dominican Republic as a new US territory leading to statehood And when they got back to the US they had a treaty an agreement to sign and make it legal But before the vote they had to debate it in Congress and here's the congressional record of what Grant said he said Santo Domingo, which is the Dominican Republic now does have fewer than

[24:01] 120,000 inhabitants on the other hand He could support a population of 10 million it possesses rich and fertile soil Excellent harbors and wonderful climate and the greatest abundance of forests and mines He said the free labor market in Santo Domingo would sound the death knell for slavery in Puerto Rico and Cuba Both still with slavery as escaped slaves would find sanctuary there He said Santo Domingo Dominican Republic should belong to us There is not one sound argument against annexation by the way the president of the DR held a referendum and they Overwhelmingly agreed that they wanted to be a US possession and then a state However, the big reason why Grant wanted Santo Domingo so much was as he said And this is a quote in having Santo Domingo as a US state

[24:46] The emancipated race of the South would have found there a congenial home where their civil rights might stand unimpaired Unquote and yes, even the great black leader of the time Frederick Douglass visited the island on that Senate fact-finding commission and he said he was all for the idea and thought Santo Domingo's annexation as a state would strike a blow where slavery still existed and Raised the world's opinion of the mental and moral possibilities of the colored race by the way back in those days around 1870 did you know that Brazil had an Emperor? So then you might ask why isn't the DR a state right now because one guy killed it in the Senate Senator Charles Sumner from Massachusetts He was the one guy they needed as a swing vote and he asked Grant in a private audience

[25:33] To give one of his buddies a patronage job as a quid pro quo for his vote on the annexation Of the Dominican Republic. Well, it turns out US grant had some foul dealings with the guy that summoner wanted him to appoint And grant would it do it? So it was a Mexican standoff and summoner voted it down So simply because grant wouldn't appoint a guy He didn't like as a favor for summoners vote today. The DR remains an independent third world Latin country So in the end grant and all the rest of Congress besides this summoner guy wanted the DR as an escape valve for black Emancipated slaves a place a state that could freely go to where they wouldn't be screwed with at all Now I know just be telling you this right now

[26:20] It's gonna piss off a lot of people because everyone's so pathologically sensitive if you want I'll give you the links to all this and really it's a lot more interesting than the little snippets I've given you right now. It's just that I don't have time to lay it all out for you here Oh, and why did I mention Brazil because Brazil was the last country in the Western world to abolish slavery? It was 1888 and here's something else that's funny in 1876 the US centennial the first World's Fair was held in Philadelphia Didn't call it a world's fair. They call it a centennial fair made more sense. Anyway on May 10th 1876 with a crowd of a hundred and eighty six thousand on hand US grant open the fair By cutting a ribbon and making a speech with the Emperor and Empress of Brazil Even though it was a full 12 years before Brazil abolished slavery. All right, that said just a little bit of breaking news

[27:12] I just found out that September 18th Guatemala's Airport will be open for all visitors So jot that down and remember my next expat insider seminar will be in Guatemala and El Salvador January 8th through the 14th 2021 for all the details and sign up info just go to expat plan B dot-com You've been listening to the expat files living in Latin America If you need some help with your own plan B We can schedule a one-on-one phone or Skype consult Just send me an email the expat files at gmail dot com And if you want to get on the waiting list for my next week-long expat insider seminar in Central America Where you're guaranteed to get a two to five year head start on your plan B Send me an email the expat files at gmail dot com. No spamos