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Ambassador Clifford M. Sobel will serve as the next Ambassador of the United States to Brazil starting this month. Mr. Sobel's previous posting was as Ambassador to the Kingdom of the Netherlands, from 2001 to 2005.
Until becoming Ambassador to the Netherlands, Clifford Sobel was Chairman of Net2Phone, Inc., a public company listed on the NASDAQ and the largest provider of Internet telephone service, marketing a broad range of enhanced Internet communication applications. Recently, Net2Phone formed a joint venture with Cisco, specializing in Network Management Software. Ambassador Sobel was also Chairman and President of SJJ Investment Corporation and CMS Realty Company, where he was responsible for investment decisions in a wide variety of areas. From 1985 to 1991, he was founder and board member of Norcrown Bank of Roseland, New Jersey. During the 1970s and 80s, he founded and later became chairman of several companies that designed, manufactured and imported fixtures in retail environments. By presidential appointment Ambassador Sobel served on the United States Holocaust Memorial Council in Washington, D.C., between 1994 through 1998. He was on the board of the Lexington Institute, a wide-ranging public policy think tank based in Arlington. Virginia, whose primary focuses are education reform, national security, deregulation, corporate governance and tax rate reduction. Prior to his service at The Lexington Institute, he served as Chairman of the Board Overseer of The Alexis de Tocqueville Institution, also a public policy think tank. From 1987 to 1989, he was appointed to the U.S. Government Industry Sector International Trade Board. Ambassador Sobel was on the advisory boards of Empower America and the Republican Leadership Council, and served on the board and as a member of the policy committee of Business Executives for National Security (BENS). In 1995, he was asked to testify before Congress on fast-track international trade treaties. He was a delegate to the Republican National Conventions in 1996, and in 2000, and served on the Platform Committee and the Sub-Committee on Foreign Policy in 2000. He served as the New Jersey financial chairman of the primary and presidential campaigns for then-Governor George W. Bush. Ambassador Sobel attended the University of Vermont and graduated with honors from New York University's School of Commerce with the Bachelor of Science degree in management. In 1999, he was awarded an honorary Doctorate of Laws degree from Kean University, New Jersey, in recognition of his public service contribution. Former Ambassador to Brazil, John J. Danilovich, is currently Chief Executive Officer of the Millennium Challenge Corporation in Washington. Mercopress - www.mercopress.com
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The small, coastal town of Condé is located just a twenty minute's drive from João Pessoa, the capital of Paraíba. The Northeast of Brazil has historically been a place of encounter and mixing between peoples. For millenia groups of indigenous people fished, farmed, migrated and sometimes fought along this large, fertile area. 
The Brazilian diplo-MÁ-cia (bad diplomacy) carries on its accelerated course towards the non-acknowledgment of human rights, although sometimes it takes pleasure in saying that it does precisely the opposite. The visit of Iran's president, Mahmoud Ahmadinejad, is another example of a diplomatic omission that verges on hypocrisy. 
On July 4, 2006, representatives of Argentina, Brazil, Paraguay and Uruguay met in Caracas to sign the protocol for the entrance of Venezuela into the Southern Common Market (Mercosur). After two and a half years, the protocol was approved by the legislative bodies of Argentina and Uruguay, and as of now it may be only days away from being ratified by the continent's economic megalith, Brazil. 
Some sectors of the fight against AIDS have suggested that Thabo Mbeki, the former president of South Africa, committed genocide through his absence from the fight against the illness in his country throughout his two terms. 
One hundred and eleven years after Brazil abolished slavery, the number of workers deprived of their freedom is still huge. They raise cattle, produce charcoal, sugar cane or timber. Some of them, most undocumented Bolivians, work in basements of small apparel factories in São Paulo and other metropolis. 
On November 7, 2009 a few friends and I had an opportunity to take a look inside a Brazilian jail outside the city of Rio de Janeiro. We were able to take some amateur footage of our experience on video (see link below). It's no surprise, of course, that the typical Brazilian jail lacks some of the functionality of those in North America or Europe, but our experience that day was quite shocking. 
Depletion of the Amazon Rainforest is not a new concern facing environmentalists, biologists, ecologists, and a growing number of the Amazonian indigenous peoples. For decades they have feared for the fate of the world's most biologically diverse and species-rich hothouse. 
Geisy Arruda made history this week in Brazil, but for all the wrong reasons. What began as a poorly planned fashion statement has become a worldwide tale. Geisy decided to wear a pink mini-dress to her private college in São Paulo state, and after that, all hell broke loose. 
The push of vigilante groups in Rio de Janeiro's favelas (shantytowns) in the last three years is the most important and alarming information of the just-released study by the Rio de Janeiro University's Violence Research Center (Nupev-Uerj). 
A dispute over drug trafficking territory in Rio de Janeiro has intensified lately, leaving in its wake unprecedented acts of violence, such as the downing of a police helicopter in the northern zone of the city on October 17. Three policemen died and another two were injured. This event has drawn the attention of the international media, who are raising the issue of public security for the 2016 Olympics to be held in Rio.