Joyful residents of Rio de Janeiro's 800 favelas were dancing in their shit-filled streets today, after President Luiz Inacio Lulu Twiggy da Silva announced that Brazil may soon be signing a $4bn deal to purchase 36 French Rafale fighter planes.
France's President Sarkozy, meanwhile, was enjoying the South American nation's Independence Day celebrations in Brasilia, in a welcome break from his duties as chief salesman for France's huge arms industry.
"The relationship between Brazil and France is not one of supplier and client, but of partners," he told Brazilians who were both literate and lucky enough to have enough spare cash to buy a copy of newspaper O Globo. "In exactly the same way that workers who slog their guts out for multinational corporations are no longer contemptible wage-slaves, but valued associates."
The Rafale has faced stiff competition from Boeing's F/A-18 Killer Bee and Saab's Gripen Trek TNG - but Mr Sarkozy's canny sales technique has already persuaded Brazil to purchase five submarines and fifty transport helicopters, complete with extended warranties and built-in MP3 players.
"When I set off every morning down the hill to haul buckets of murky water back up to my tumbledown shack, I want to know that all those foreign-owned oil rigs off our shores will be defended by state-of-the-art warplanes capable of blowing things up at nearly twice the speed of sound," announced sewage-recycling associate Hugo Neves. "My family's daily gamble with death from dysentery is a small price to pay, if it ensures the safety of these valuable assets owned by BP, Total and ExxonMobil."
"Mr Sarkozy really is a fantastic salesman," agreed his neighbour Severino Calixto, whose photogenically-ragged son scrapes a meagre living for the family by showing camera-waving tourists around the few stench-free parts of the colourful shanty-towns beneath their hotel balconies. "His glib salesmanship convinced me to sell my daughter Fortunata to a brothel to raise the cash for an oxygen-free pure copper SCART lead, so I can connect a DVD player to my TV set. Now all I need is a DVD player, a DVD and a regular electricity supply to take my mind off the never-ending misery of abject poverty."
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