Brazil a model for troubled Middle East, says Obama

Yaho ^ | 3/20/11 | Tangi Quemener - AFP

[NormsRevenge]

RIO DE JANEIRO (AFP) – US President Barack Obama held up emerging powerhouse Brazil on Sunday as a model of economic and democratic transformation that leaders in the troubled Middle East should try to copy.

Obama's keynote address in Rio de Janeiro was the highlight of his visit to Brazil, the first stop on a three-nation Latin America tour overshadowed by US-led military action in Libya.

The speech came after France, the United States and Britain launched missile and bomb attacks on Libyan air-defense targets to prevent Moamer Kadhafi's forces from crushing a month-old uprising against his rule.

Obama did not mention the strikes in the speech, but, on his first trip to Latin America as president, made a point of flagging Brazil to Middle Eastern leaders as a golden example of what they could achieve.

"We are seeing the struggle for these rights unfold across the Middle East and North Africa," Obama said, speaking in a famed Rio theater.

...

Brazil endured more than 50 years of of populist and military regimes until 1985, when civilian rule was restored.

Obama, who had earlier toured the notorious "City of God" slum, poignantly recalled how he had watched "Black Orpheus," a movie set in a Brazilian favela, with his mother as a child.

"My mother is gone now, but she would have never imagined that her son?s first trip to Brazil would be as president of the United States," he said to cheers in the crowded Teatro Municipal in Rio.

Among the guests at the event was Rinaldo Gaudencio, a local performer who looks exactly like Obama and has mastered his gestures.

[OrangeHoof]

Brazil a model for troubled Middle East, says Obama

...particularly their beaches and Carnival! :-P

[nascarnation]

Ditch those burquas ladies and rock the bikinis.

[Polybius]

Umm, WTF is that, smartass?

That's Tom Brady, quaterback for the New England Patriots.

He now looks like that because his Brazilian super model wife "won't let me cut my hair". (He actually said that.) So now, according to Randy Moss, it's hard to tell the two apart.

You need to be an NFL fan to get the joke. ;-)

Tom Brady, Randy Moss Separated In Locker Room ..... Randy Moss and Tom Brady had to be separated in the locker room following a fight that revolved around hair insults. ..... Apparently, Brady told Moss that he should shave his beard and Moss told Brady he needed to hit up the barber so he’d look less like Justin Bieber (actually, Moss reportedly told Brady he looked like a girl, but the Bieber joke would’ve been much funnier, no?).

[Clemenza]

Most of the pardos are mulatto. Many, if not most would be considered black in the US.

Brazil arguably has more people of African descent than any country in the western hemisphere.

[Doe Eyes]

Except for that whole Muslem thingy..........
What a stupid thing to say?!

Did Obama say that?

[Caipirabob]

Thanks for the info!