Barack Obama to visit City of God in Rio de Janeiro

[alp227]

Source: The Guardian

When the world's most powerful man touches down in Rio this weekend he will receive a handwritten letter from a man called José.

"To his excellency, the president of the republic of the United States of America," it will read. "Felicitations for the happy idea of coming to see our great nation and above all the City of God. Signed, José Neves."

Neves is an 80-year-old community leader from the City of God, a shantytown in western Rio de Janeiro which gave its name to Fernando Meirelles's 2002 blockbuster movie.

And on Sunday he is expecting a visit from Barack Obama, who is tipped to visit the favela as part of a five-day bridge-building tour of Latin America intended to bolster the US's shrinking regional influence against an economic and diplomatic offensive from China.

Read more: http://www.guardian.co.uk/world/2011/mar/18/barack-obama-city-god-rio

[dipsydoodle]

1. shrinking ?

I'd said it already shrunk from todays events in Brazil.

See elsewhere.

[rabs]

4. You mean this ....

... from Latin American forum ...

Link includes photo of anti-Obama events in Rio this evening. Not exactly a warm welcome for Obama, even though he is not supposed to show up until Sunday.

Think Hil's ambassador in Brazil, Thomas Shannon, is going to catch hell for now foreseeing this. The same could happen in Santiago and San Salvador.

http://www.democraticunderground.com/discuss/duboard.php?az=view_all&address=405x49923


:hi:

[lbrtbell]

5. Dear God, I thought this stuff ended with Bush

I never thought we'd need to wear these with a Dem in the White House.......

[Faygo Kid]

2. That would be powerful.

A dangerous place, but a powerful statement if he goes.

[JDPriestly]

3. Obama is checking out the future of the US.

Argentina was the victim of Shock Doctrine economics. It was always poor, but Syn-Rand style economics really pushed the middle class down.

http://www.naomiklein.org/articles/2009/05/cure-layoffs-fire-boss