Whose side is Brazil on?

THIS is a grand time to be a Brazilian, and especially to be Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva, the country’s inspirational president. Long the chronically underperforming giant of Latin America, Brazil is now on every list of the half-dozen or so new places that matter in the 21st century. It seems that no international gathering, be it to discuss financial reform or climate change, is complete without Lula, a former metal worker and trade-union leader whose bonhomie and instinct for conciliation between political opposites make him friends everywhere. “He’s my man,” gushed Barack Obama at the G20 summit in London; Fidel Castro calls him “our brother Lula”.

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The Economist