"But even if I'd been in downtown São Paulo, the events in Baghdad would have seemed distant. Brazil is a floating world, a parallel universe of such size and cultural density that little enters or escapes its gravitational field. It is well accustomed to shrugging at Northern madnesses and continuing to pursue its own profoundly complex affairs.

Brazil is the world's largest Inside Joke. It is, to those who get it, sufficiently involving to render even such external considerations as the possible outbreak of Armageddon slightly irrelevant.

Besides, it seems to have an instinct for peace that runs the length of its history and is wisely aware that even opposing the bellicose behavior of less enlightened cultures adds energy to the cyclone of war. Brazil doesn't study war no more. The only organized conflict Brazil is likely to enter involves no weapon more lethal than a soccer ball."