Brazil: 60-day Seal on Voting Machines

Urnas eletrônicas ficarão lacradas por 60 dias para preservar dados: I am not sure whether this is a new procedure or not. Maybe I can find an answer here (PDF) or, most importantly, here (DOC).

As urnas eletrônicas utilizadas durante as eleições do último domingo vão permanecer lacradas por 60 dias, contados a partir da proclamação formal dos resultados, que ainda não foi realizada.

The electronic voting machines used during last Sunday’s elections will remain sealed for 60 days, starting from the formal declaration of the results, which has not yet taken place.

O ministro Marco Aurélio Mello, presidente do TSE (Tribunal Superior eleitoral), deve proclamar em breve o resultado das eleições. Pelo calendário eleitoral deste ano, a divulgação oficial dos resultados deve ocorrer até o dia 14 de novembro.

Minister Marco Aurélio Mello, president of the TSE, is expected to announce the results shortly. According to this year’s electoral calendar, the official publication of the results must occur by November 14.

John Dickie: Death In Mexico

More4 News Blog: Death In Mexico: Here is an on-the-spot observer who can be contacted, vetted and held accountable for his reporting — unlike Global Voice Online’s constant go-to guy on the Oaxaca story — and whose story jibes with the bulk of the professional and amateur reporting out of the embattled southern Mexican city.

What you will not be told by most media, especially in Mexico, is that the three hitmen that attacked the barricade where Brad and other journalists were, have been identified as local policemen. They wielded AR-15 rifles and various pistols and fired indiscriminately into the crowd. Brad was probably not targeted (even though state radio (Radio Ciudadania: 99.1 FM – pirate government radio broadcasting from unknown location) is saying Brad “was an armed terrorist, and there is more to this than meets the eye” and “Indymedia is a branch of the APPO”), but he was the unlucky one, hit full in the chest, right in the solar plexus, by a 9-mm wide pellet of steel travelling at around 1000 meters per second.

NMM-TV: Brazil Election Governance Post-Mortem, Part I

Just posted to Google Video:

Why Lula?

From Conversa Afiada (IG)

1. Because Alckmin was weak
2. Because Cardoso tripped Alckmin up
3. Thanks to his social programs
4. Thanks to his economic policies
5. Because Lula has charisma

I don’t disagree completely with that rough weighting of the different factors, although the question of the former PSDB president’s role is a bit more complex than that. I would assign those 12 points to Lula’s social and economic programs and lump the first two questions together as “because the PSDB is totally dsyfunctional right now.”

Pentagon To Increase Use of PR ‘Surrogates’

Pentagon memo reveals launch of new PR war (SF Chron):

WASHINGTON — The Pentagon is buttressing its public relations staff and starting an operation akin to a political campaign war room as Defense Secretary Donald H. Rumsfeld faces intensifying criticism over the Iraq war.

It is to be sold to the public as a “fact-checking” operation:

In a memo obtained by the Associated Press, Dorrance Smith, assistant secretary of defense for public affairs, said new teams of people will “develop messages” for the 24-hour news cycle and “correct the record.”

It is a marriage of information warfare and political marketing:

The memo describes an operation modeled after a political campaign — such as that made famous by Bill Clinton’s successful 1992 presidential race — calling for a “Rapid Response” section for quickly answering opponents’ assertions.

It will involve a more intensive use of surrogates.

Another branch would coordinate “surrogates.” In political campaigns, surrogates are usually high-level politicians or key interest groups who speak or travel on behalf of a candidate or an issue.

It will leverage the “new journalism” of the “new media.”

The plan would focus more resources on so-called new media, such as the Internet and Weblogs. It would also include new workers to book civilian and military guests on television and radio shows.

“Fair & Balanced”: Harvard Law Bloggers Give Equal Weight to Disinformation

Camera vs. firearm: “Equal violence on all sides.”

Attribution to another publication … cannot serve as license to print rumors that would not meet the test of The Times’s own reporting standards. Rumors must satisfy The Times’s standard of newsworthiness, taste and plausibility before publication, even when attributed. And when the need arises to attribute, that is a good cue to consult with the department head about whether publication is warranted at all. –The New York Times, Guidelines on Integrity

Bill Keller obviously just doesn’t “get” the Internet.

Global Voices Online : The last moments of Bradley Roland Will:

But as one of the blogs David Sasaki quotes had it, there’s a balance to be struck between outrage at the killing of Brad Will, and at the mounting number of local deaths and injuries.

The blog, apparently, is Mark in Mexico, cited heavily in David Sasaki’s post titled Fear and Misinformation Abound — presumably for reasons of “balance.”

Fear, uncertainty and doubt abound. Global Voices Online in a nutshell.

The mysterious Mark’s confirmation bias is attributed by Sasaki to his “sardonic, anti-left attitudes.”

What I would like to know is who signs the guy’s paychecks.

Whoever this Mark in Mexico is — I tried fairly hard to track the guy down, and he appears to have no real life prior to popping up as the proprietor of this school, about which I can also find no information — I have to say that his main role has been to amplify disinformation.

Mark — whom I have tried repeatedly to reach by e-mail to ask him questions about his work — has worked especially hard to amplify the disinformation, for example, that there is equal violence on both sides of the Oaxaca conflict, that the strike was fomented by armed communist agitators for national political reasons, and that the federal police are independent third parties that are now intervening to calm a local conflict.

The Mexican federal police, I submit to you are a narcosyndicate-infiltrated nightmare beyond what you can imagine. Study the San Salvador de Atenco incident. Leave the questions of legality out of it and simply focus on the what happened to woman protestors after they were arrested, and the male prisoners forced to walk a gantlet of riot police armed with clubs.

Not the “stick ‘em in a cell and let the system have ‘em” professionalism you are used to at home, where an Abner Louima case, for example, is huge news because that kind of thing is, thank goodness, a shocking anomaly.

Anyway, Mark in Mexico consistently reports incidents that never happened, are reported nowhere else, and for which he offers no supporting evidence. His frequent sightings of “armed thugs” intimidating little old ladies in the Zócalo is a typical example.

In other words, Mark looks an awful lot like a shadowy, systematic liar.

Given that nothing that he says checks out, and no information is available to confirm his cover story, I, unlike Olavo de Carvalho, would not repeat a single word he says as fact, or recommend, as GVO does, that readers merely discount his apparent ideological bias, as though he were merely an overenthusiastic Red State blogger.

The real bias here appears to be against the outmoded values of the “reality-based community.”

See also Oaxaca Blog Wars.

Civita is Civil with the Casa Civil

Mino Carta, gadfly of the Brazilian mass media, advises:

Engana-se quem aponta a edição de livros didáticos como o centro das pendências da Abril com o governo federal. Roberto Civita, boss da editora, mira em negócio muito mais fabuloso, a internet sem fio. Especialistas falam em centenas de milhões de reais. Outros, em bilhão.

If you think that textbooks are the focus of the Editora Abril’s pending business with the federal government, you’re wrong. Roberto Civita, the boss of the place, has in eye on a much more fabulous business: Wireless Internet. Some specialists talk about hundreds of millions. Others of billions.

Ao enredo: Civita tem tido conflitos recorrentes com os capatazes da revista Veja. Há alguns meses pede moderação em relação ao governo Lula. Reportagens contra o PT e a administração federal teriam sido engavetadas. Nos corredores da empresa, o boss arriscou-se a afirmar que contrataria Dilma Rousseff, ministra da Casa Civil, para administrar a Abril.

To our story: Civita has repeatedly clashed with his henchman at Veja magazine. Several months ago he asked for moderation in relation to the Lula government. Reports harmful to the PT and the federal administration were to be set aside. In the hallways of Abril, he even ventured to say that he would hire Dilma Rousseff, minister of the Casa Civil, to run Abril.

Rohter’s One-Note Samba

The reporter in 2001: Eerie likeness to Capt. Beefheart

Marcel Sá, who writes the excellent Toda Mídia blog for the Folha de S. Paulo, notes the latest from the very first journalist to be inducted into NMM’s adopt-a-reporter program for the factually and ethically challenged: Larry Rohter of the New York Times.

Do correspondente do “New York Times” que estava para deixar o cargo quando escreveu que Lula bebia e foi ameaçado de expulsão, Larry Rohter, no despacho intitulado “Presidente do Brasil é reeleito com vitória esmagadora” (landslide), já traduzido no portal UOL:

From the Times correspondent who nearly his job in Brazil when he was threatened with expulsion after writing that Lula drank to excess, Larry Rohter, in a dispatch entitled “President of Brazil is reelected in a landslide,” which has been translated on the UOL news portal:

– Superando uma série de escândalos de corrupção e políticos que mancharam a sua imagem e minaram a sua credibilidade, o presidente do Brasil, Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva, obteve a reeleição em uma esmagadora vitória.

“Overcoming a series of corruption scandals involving politicians who stained his image and undermined his credibility, the president of Brazil was reelected in a landslide.”

O despacho praticamente se estende sobre um só assunto, escândalos.

The rest of the article deals almost exclusively with one subject: scandals.

Next in NYSENext

We now return to our regularly scheduled preoccupations.  DealBook today:

The New York Stock Exchange may be trying to sew up its $11.3 billion merger deal with Paris-based Euronext, but no one is making it easy for the American exchange.

The Los Angeles Times weighs in with its roundup of all things NYSE Group and Euronext, and it concludes that, with European politicians turning up the heat, the New York market may have no choice but to raise its offer.

Carvalho x Zero Hora

From the Ex-Petista blog: “Police find fingerprints of PT members on the money!” Source not stated. Photos are demonstrably Photoshopped. Sophomoric hokum on the face of it.

Mídia Sem Máscara cries “censorship” as the Zero Hora daily of Porto Alegre fires Olavo Carvalho as a freelance contributor. Their note, reproduced on the MSM site:

Caro Olavo de Carvalho, Em razão de sua manifestada incomprensão dos valores éticos que norteiam este jornal, solicito que considere desnecessário o envio de novos artigos para publicação. Os pagamentos pelos artigos anteriores serão efetuados até este domingo.

Dear Carvalho, Because of your demonstrated incomprehension of the ethical values that guide this newspaper, I request that you not consider it necessary to send us any more articles. Payment for previous articles will be made by this Sunday.

Signed by Marcelo Rech, editor of Zero Hora.
Carvalho’s reply:

Ilustre senhor, Já mandei seu jornal à merda ontem. Sua cartinha é desnecessária, assim como o seu dinheiro. Quanto aos seus “valores éticos” o senhor tem toda a razão: não os compreendo. Quanto mais os conheço, menos os compreendo. Eles são um verdadeiro mysterium iniquitatis.

Illustrious sir, I have already written off your piece of shit newspaper. Your note is unecessary, as is your money. As for your “ethical values,” you are entirely correct: The more I learn about them, the less I understand them. They are a veritable mysterium iniquitatis.

Signed, Olavo de Carvalho.

No More Windows CE for Ceará Elections?

Will Windows CE be exiled to Ô do Borogodô? Will it go to live in the Casa da Mãe Joana?

OLinux (Brazil), Oct. 13, 2006: Brazil’s election authorities ponder switching from Windows CE to Linux for voting machines.

It suprises me that open-source e-government was not more of a political issue here, as it was in the Spanish elections that sent Aznar home, as I remember reading.

It remains to be seen if the Science & IT and Culture ministries will use this apparent Lula mandate to recover lost ground in that area.

O diretor geral do TSE, Athayde Fontoura, admitiu a possibilidade em entrevista publicada pelo jornal Washington Post.

The director of the TSE, Athayde Fountoura, admitted the possibility in an interview published inthe Washington Post.

The Strange Saga of Rosy Pantaleão, “Journalist,” Campaign Flack and Civic-Minded Dedo-Duro

The “director of journalism” for the TV UAI NETWORK in Pouso Alegre, MG, who is also a PSDB campaign official there, tries to stem a flood of Internet commentary that paints her as a sort of Brazilian Jeff Gannon — or the outfitter and operator of one, at least.

Tomei conhecimento hoje pela manhã, que a Polícia Federal teria concluído que eu teria levado um rapaz para gravar um vídeo - ou que o valha - em que denunciava saques e transporte de dinheiro para a compra do dossiê contra políticos do PSDB, por integrantes do PT.

I found out yesterday morning (10/26) that the federal police have supposedly concluded that I might have had some kid record a video — or the equivalent — in which he denounced withdrawals and transportation of money for the purchase of the dossier against PSDB politicians by members of the PT.

Não é verdade, como não é verdade que eu seja servidora pública.

Not true, just as it is not true that I am a public employee.

Tomei conhecimento do vídeo nesta quarta-feira, dia 25 de outubro, por intermédio de jornalistas do `Jornal do Estado` de Pouso Alegre. Imediatamente, ao verificar o teor do vídeo, entrei em contato com a Polícia Federal que enviou dois agentes ao meu escritório para pegar uma cópia, sendo que, inclusive, abri um `FTP` exclusivo para a Polícia Federal.

I learned about this video on Wed., Oct. 25, from a journalist from the Jornal do Estado (MG) here in Pouso Alegre. As soon as I learned of the contents of the video, I contacted the federal police, who sent two officers to my office to pick up a copy. I even opened an FTP session just for the PF.

I assume she means she uploaded the file to the PF via secure FTP.

Can we see the logs, please?

Devo salientar que no momento em que fui ouvida pelo delegado Daniel Daher, fiz questão absoluta de ressaltar que era da executiva municipal do PSDB e que não gostaria de levar tal fato para o lado político, uma vez que agi como cidadã.

I want to underscore that when I was deposed by Daniel Daher, I made a point of saying that I has part of the PSDB executive committee for the city but that I would not want the matter to end up as a political question, given that I acted as a citizen, not as a partisan.

Pistolero PRIzewinner: How Much Does This Man Earn Per Journalist Shot to Death?

CMI Brasil:  Fotos dos paramilitares que atiraram

From Oaxaca, photos of the man who, eyewitnesses say, killed a New York photojournalist.

Reports say eyewitnesses have identified the man as a local PRIsta. Same with his pals there:

Notes on the Great Caixa Dois Conspiracy Theory: Spidering The NED-IRI Ecosystem

Click to zoom.

If you have followed the 305 lawsuits filed under the brand new rules for elections in Brazil this year, you may recall a complaint filed by the PT coalition requesting that Alckmin’s candidacy be revoked for laundering money through international NGOs, among them an organization called JULAD, or “Latin American Youth for Democracy.”

Dismissed for insufficient evidence, but the facts that went on the record are worth tracking down. Hence the latest in what the Riddler calls my “conspiracy theories,” but which I call, in all seriousness, my pro-am attempts at “organizational network analysis.”

Orkut Outs the O Globo Everyman?

An undecided voter from Fortaleza belongs to an anti-Lula community on Orkut called “President Mullah,” say pro-Lula Netroots Baker St. Irregulars.

Amigos de Lula has an interesting bit of partisan fact-checking today: Who were the “undecided” voters selected by IBOPE for the final debate on the Globo network?

In fairness, it should be said said that the Lulabloggers only “out” one alleged ringer here, which could well be explained as an infiltration by the Alckmin campaign, or as a sophomoric prank on the guy’s own initiative.

Sort of a Jeff Gannon-style “astroturf” strategy, which is why the case interests me.

A Rede Globo montou uma farsa no debate eleitoral. Com o intuito de ajudar o candidato Geraldo Alckmin, a Globo levou ao debate várias pessoas que segundo o Ibope eram indecisos. Só que agora, o site de relacionamento Orkut mostra a verdade. Tudo não passou de uma armação da Globo.No debate de ontem, a regra era que os eleitores indecisos formulassem uma pergunta para os candidatos.

The Globo network mounted a farce in the final debate of the election season. To help Geraldo Alckmin, Globo brought in a number of people who according to IBOPE were “undecided.” But now, social networking site Orkut reveals the truth. It was all a frame-up on Globo’s part.