Odd Bedfellows, Unpantsed

I’ve had my eye on Transparência Brasil for a while now, as I have on its parent organization, Transparency International, which is its only declared source of funding — and which itself is substantially funded by multinational energy concerns, including Exxon, that ethical paragon — international grand master of astroturf PR and the mindfuck style of information warfare.

There’s something very funny going on there. TB’s “don´t vote for mensaleiros” campaign in particular smells of a Nixonian Rovean dirty tricks mindfuck — I use the term in its technical acception — given that the congressional investigation into an alleged cash for votes scheme never did prove the existence of such a scheme according to anything a gringo tourist with a course in high school civics under his or her ample belt would recognize as due process of law, with precautions to preserve the integrity of that process, and civilized standards of proof.

Although it did turn up a cash pipeline that was going into illegal campaign coffers, the investigation ended in “pizza” when it turned out that, while members of a number of parties had availed themselves of its services, the scheme itself appeared to have been mounted in Minas by the governor and then-president of the PSDB, and may well have benefited the national party.

Investigation dissolved by party-line vote, as I recall — the party of government voting to continue, the opposition voting to wrap it up, who now imply in their campaign materials that the government party hushed the matter up.

Transparency also includes due process of law, it seems to me — of which there was laughably little in that case.

TB has said nothing about the grotesque fact that Paulo Maluf, the former São Paulo mayor and governor, fresh out of jail, and impeached former president Fernando Collor, stand excellent chances of being elected to the Senate.

That’s like appointing the ghost of Spiro Agnew to the Supreme Court, if you need a local equivalent to help you understand the enormity of the sacanagem here.

Or better: Bull Connor for Civil Rights Commissioner.

Watching the “scandal” on TV from both near and afar — as a gringo down in Brazucoland watching it every night on the TV, preempting the soap operas — it made me feel like I was right back home again — in gerrymandered Texas.

Almost as laughable as Civita telling a Wharton interviewer that Brazil’s press never reports on business corruption because, in all but trifling cases, it is the government that corrupts business.

This inspired pre-election rant from Fazendo Media of Niterói and Porto Alegre tends to point to the same set of factoids that have set me to puzzling, and even to flesh them out a bit, though I am still checking up on this Abramo character — whose offices, I discover, are actually not that far from the office suite we own and rent out, in Pinheiros.
What I translate below is merely the preface, mind you: the entire essay on “The Globo Standard Candidate” is a treatise of some 300 laudas.

The executive director of Transparência Brasil, the journalist Cláudio Weber Abramo recently read, and recommended on his Web site, the book “The phony consensus: The mass media and the formation of the ultra(neo)liberal agenda in Brazil”.

When WordPress.com changed the freaking template I use on this blog, it borked the proper paragraph spacing inside of blockquotes.

This is really cramping my style. I am a fiend for clean typography. Translation continues in italics.

The author is Francisco Fonseca, professor of political science at the Fundação Getúlio Vargas. Abramo recommends the book and says “it presents an original perspective on the behavior of the most influential media vehicles in Brazil”.

The constant one-note ideological samba hammered home by the mass media monopoly is hardly an original subject, but it certainly does remain a major obstacle to democracy .

Commenting on Cláudio Weber Abramo’s praise for the book, Internet user Luiz Lago quips:

“It’s great to see a political scientist from the Fundação Getúlio Vargas deciding to write something on the subject. Because when mere mortals such as myself raise the same question, we are simply written off as paranoids”.

He’s right.

‘Networks of Influence’

Source: UCTV/Google Video. The 2004 report from the Center for Public Integrity is here.

Doodad of the Day

Click to zoom.

The doodad of the day is Genealogy of Influence using Touchgraph.

Shown here: The Aristotle branch.

Missing: Avicenna (Ibn Sina), as well as (1) the further development of Islamic Aristotelianism, and (2) subsequent returns to Arab Aristotelianism during the Renaissance and Baroque.

London’s Bridge is Falling Down

Save the London Stock Exchange (This is Money, U.K.):

That the LSE should have become a pawn rather than a knight in the fight to unify the world’s bourses under global brands is madness. It ought to be in the driving seat of the consolidation.

McKinsey Calls for the Clampdown

The McKinsey Quarterly: Reining in Brazil’s informal economy:

The gray market thrives in Brazil, where the informal economy generates nearly 40 percent of the national income. Many companies don’t pay their taxes and ignore regulations, thereby gaining an unfair advantage over their law-abiding counterparts while hurting the nation’s productivity. Brazil’s onerous bureaucracy is partly to blame: burdensome regulations, high taxes, and weak enforcement conspire to encourage evasion because the benefits outweigh the relatively small possibility and cost of being caught.

The “take-away”?

Brazil’s economy could grow by an additional 1.5 percent a year if its government launched a concerted effort to reduce the size of the gray market, as many other countries have succeeded in doing.

Bearing Down

Court Finds BearingPoint In Default to Bondholders: I have this sneaking suspicion that Google will bail them out, possibly through an acquistion.

But don’t bet good money it. I’m just spitballing.

Buemba! Buemba! Buemba! NMM Radio Official Launch!

The New Market Machines Radio is:

Out of alpha and sticking to a schedule, it’s the New Market Machines Week in Review from São Paulo, Brazil: BRIC-centric coverage of global media and finance with a pandeiro beat in the background.

This week, more tainment than info, but still: Brazil overhauls IT tax incentives; new pools of dark liquidity; pig****er media politics in Mexico leave risk managers jobless; the Merc in India; Citi scandal No. 1,001(a); Cardosonomics dissed; Red Hat routed; and more.

Dear Globo: Love, Lula

Veja íntegra da carta enviada por Lula para TV Globo (Folha de S. Paulo): Lula writes to Globo at the last minute before last night’s presidential debate, as follows:

“Venho agradecer, respeitosamente, o convite desta emissora para participar do debate sobre as eleições presidenciais, marcado para hoje. Sou um dos políticos que mais participou de debates eleitorais neste país. No entanto, é fato público e notório o grau de virulência e desespero de alguns adversários, que estão deixando em segundo plano o debate de propostas e idéias, para se dedicar, quase exclusivamente, aos ataques gratuitos e agressões pessoais.

I write to thank you, respectfully, for your invitation to participate in a debate on the presidential elections in Brazil, scheduled for today. Among Brazilian politicians, I am one of those who have participated in the most public electoral debates. However, the degree of virulence and desperation on the part of certain candidates is a public and notorious fact. They have pushed the discussion of proposals and ideas to the back burner in order to focus exclusively on gratuitous personal attacks.

Tenho demonstrado, em toda a minha vida, compromisso com os princípios democráticos e disposição para enfrentar qualquer tipo de debate. Somente na TV Globo, participei de três entrevistas ao vivo no “Jornal Nacional”, no “Jornal da Globo” e no “Bom Dia Brasil” com perguntas livres e contundentes. O tom polêmico destas entrevistas, e a maneira como me comportei, demonstram que não tenho receio de enfrentar o debate franco e democrático.

My whole life, I have shown a firm commitment to democratic principles and a willingness to enter into all kinds of public debate. On TV Globo alone, I have taken part in three live interviews on the Jornal Nacional, Globo News and Bom Dia, Brasil, facing tough, spontaneous questions.

Não posso, porém, render-me à ação premeditada e articulada de alguns adversários que pretendiam transformar o debate desta noite em uma arena de grosserias e agressões, em um jogo de cartas marcadas.

I cannot, however, subject myself to a premeditated plan set up by certain opponents who intend to transform tonight’s debate into a forum for crude attacks, in a game in which the cards are marked.

Aproveito para reafirmar o meu respeito à TV Globo e parabenizá-la pelo trabalho isento que vem fazendo na cobertura destas eleições.”

I take this opportunity to reaffirm my respect for TV Globo and to congratulate it for the impartial way it is covering these elections.

A correspondência é assinada por Lula.

Love, Lula

This ought to play well with the base, who will recognize that last sentiment as an exercise in the crudest sort of irony.

Tupi Machinists Get Hard-Fought Break

The elections are generating the sturm und drang here in Brazil, but the front-page lead story in the Gazeta Mercantil is Lula’s signing into law of a major overhaul of IT research & development incentives, as written into the tax code under Geisel & Collor.

The measure relieves IT firms of a great deal of the tax burden on their products — and limits the participation of foreign firms in the government and state-run enterprise IT market.

The Brazilian government’s decision to replace tens of thousands of desktops and servers with Linux and FOSS in 2003 was a blow to Microsoft, leading other countries to consider the same step. And Redmond has fought a determined rear-guard action to reverse the policy.

Serra Shadowed by IstoÉ

Terra.com.br/istoe vs. veja.abril.com.br. Source: Alexa.com

IstoÉ Online continues to feature an investigation of charges of corruption and racketeering against former Health Minister and São Paulo mayor José Serra, while the rest of the media calls it a sleazy little tabloid.

Which you have to laugh at. But not because it has not often been true of this newest shirttail relative of the Time-Life family — though next to Veja, it looks like the freaking Economist for journalistic probity — as would the Weekly Standard, if you held them up together.

Clintonian Contrarian Disses Cardoso

Democratising globalisation: Joseph Stiglitz interviewed by Justin Vogler of openDemocracy: Interesting stuff, pointed to by a link from a local Brazilian columnist.

For example:

But hadn’t the logic in Latin America been to follow the west’s rules unconditionally in order to attract western foreign investment?

“Well, interestingly, one consequence of Asia’s greater independence has been that they’ve attracted more foreign investors”, says Stiglitz. “Actually one of the problems in Latin America was that many saw foreign investment as a solution in itself. But look at South Korea; it developed very fast with almost no foreign investors. This notion that the panacea comes from outside is, I think, flawed.” National capital, he concludes, is probably much more important than foreign investment.

‘Globo’s Finest Hour’

Mario Marona of the Jornal do Brasil writes: “The Globo TV network can decide the election.”

It’s ironic that TV Globo, which worked so hard this year to be perceived as impartial with respect to the election campaign, may well be 24 hours away from deciding the elections once again.

Beebsoft Rules the Public Waves

BBC signs web deal with Microsoft (Media Guardian). Ugh.

The BBC and Microsoft have signed a “memorandum of understanding” for developing the next generation of the corporation’s internet-based services. The BBC director general, Mark Thompson, and the director of new media, Ashley Highfield, agreed the non-exclusive deal with the Microsoft chairman, Bill Gates, in Seattle.

Factoid of the Day

Brazil’s Instituto Ethos, an NGO dedicated to corporate social responsibility, is underwritten by Hewlett-Packard, a for-profit apparently dedicated to the craziest kind of corporate irresponsibility.

How’s that for cheap irony?

No, but seriously, HP has been on the NMM radar for a while now in view of the kinds of public-private partnerships and quango strategies it gets involved in, such as the Open Economies Project.

And the case itself — illegal wiretapping and pretexting of journalists and others — will be very familiar to students of the Brazilian media, where, for example, Kroll is accused of wiretapping business rivals of the Opportunity Fund in a dispute over a prime telecom M&A deal.

Citi Scandal No. 1,001

Trader Admits To Inflating Profits By $20m For Big Bonus (Here is the City, London):

CBS MarketsWatch reports that the former head of Citigroup’s energy-derivatives trading desk in New York faces up to 5 years in clink, after admitting to falsifying company records in order to obtain a bigger bonus payout.

Garbage in, garbage out:

Belgians Give SWIFT Kick in Pants

Belgium Criticizes U.S. Bank-Data Sharing

BRUSSELS — The Belgian government released a report Thursday criticizing a U.S. surveillance program on bank transfers, citing privacy concerns. Belgian Prime Minister Guy Verhofstadt said the U.S. should “have previewed” both the Belgian government and European Union authorities on the bank-data-sharing program. He called for talks between the EU and U.S. to reach an agreement on what type of privacy safeguards were necessary. While these talks took place, Mr. Verhofstadt said the data program could be continued.

Reuters: Telemarketing Model for Bangalore Bureau

Never before has a world-class news agency pursued in such a brutal fashion the idea that journalism is mutating into an assembly line for news..

Observatório da Imprensa reports: Reuters will increase staffing at its Bangalore news bureau fifteen-fold in the medium term, to 1,500 “journalists.”

The post is by Carlos Castilho. I translate.

That the globalization of journalism is here to stay finds plenty of support with this report on the Reuters news agency’s decision to increase to 300 the number of reporters in its bureau in the Indian city of Bangalore, where economic news from around the world that the London headquarters considers less important is produced.

Uncle Rupert Joins P. Diddy: “Vote or Die!”

News Corp’s MySpace signing up voters

AP — The youth-heavy online hangout MySpace.com is launching a voter-registration drive to engage its members in civics.

Brazilian Mayor Pulls Blog

Fim do blog do César Maia (Cocadaboa):

The ten main reasons why Rio de Janeiro mayor Cesar Maia (PFL) stopped writing his blog on Blogspot.com, according to a well-known wag:

10. The Internet ain’t for me. Lies, fraud, no security … unlike politics in Rio.

9. My momma didn’t raise me to beg for votes. Not on iBest.com, at least.

8. The Jornal do Brasil won’t leave me alone now that it knows I’m just another idiot who will write for free.
7. The real César Maia threatened to sue.
6. I need to focus more on Orkut.

5. Some guy named Kibe Loco is stealing all my jokes!

4. People actually started paying attention to what I say.
3. It’s impossible to update your blog every day if you don’t have an illegal electricity hookup.

2. There was no opportunity for overbilling on the project.
1. I’ll have plenty of time for that sort of thing when I go to jail.

Penny Stock of the Future: RHAT @ 20.34 -5.98 (-22.72%)

Wow. What is up with Red Hat today?

Brazil Media Race Run on Astroturf: YouTube Version

I got a pretty good idea of the “Netroots vs. the MSM” angle on the Mexican elections story, and now I’m idly trying to collect some data on the same theme here in Brazil.

Here’s a question to start with: Why was blogger Alcinéa Cavalcante kicked off of UOL, by order of a local election court, for implying that PFL pol, former president, and ARENA stalwart Josè Sarney, who is running for rerelection in Amapá, is crooked — Sarney’s family owns the Rede Globo TV retransmission franchise in the northern state of Maranhão, where his daughter is running for governor — while this “grassroots” video, which hammers home a key, and factually challenged, talking point of the PSDB-PFL campaign, runs on Google Video and makes the same kinds of charges against their opponent?

I have read a lot of Brazilian history that deals with Sarney’s political resume, and I would tend to say that “crooked” is really too mild a word for what he is.

(Update on that cross-jurisdictional Blogspot U.S.-Blogger Brasil story, by the way: Alcinéa Cavalcante is now required to give Sarney equal time on her U.S.-hosted Blogspot blog, a Rio de Janeiro electoral judge has ruled.)

It turns out to be a complicated question that ha