"The devil's aversion to holy water is a light matter compared with a despot's dread of a newspaper that laughs."
"Thunder is good, thunder is impressive; but it is lightning that does the work."
"No high-minded man, no man of right feeling, can contemplate the lumbering and slovenly lying of the present day without grieving to see a noble art so prostituted."
Latin American Zeitgeist consultant emeritus
"Eu sou o rei dessa folia, pra delírio da Fiel"
Roberto Civita: Infotainment Outlaw
For jaw-droppingly arrogant and extreme violations of minimal standards of journalistic integrity, this blog no longer spends a tostão on any Grupo Abril or associated (Disney) infotainment products.
(L) 2005 Libre Commons Res Communes License. This log of my open-source wetware-Internet interface design work is outside of all legal jurisdiction and takes its force and action from the constituent radical democratic practices of the global multitude against the logic of capital. Void where prohibited by a little man with a gun in his hand.
Ação questiona empréstimos para privatização da Eletropaulo.
Suit questions loans in Eletropaulo privatization.
O Ministério Público Federal no Rio de Janeiro ofereceu denúncia à Justiça contra cinco ex-presidentes e 12 ex-diretores do Banco Nacional de Desenvolvimento Econômico e Social (BNDES) responsáveis pela concessão de empréstimos para a privatização da Eletropaulo, em 1998. A denúncia, que tem como base relatório do Tribunal de Contas da União (TCU) e notas técnicas elaboradas por analistas do MPF, foi recebida pela 5ª Vara Federal Criminal do Rio de Janeiro, dando início à ação penal pública.
The Federal Public Ministry (MPF) in Rio de Janeiro filed a complaint against 5 former presidents and 12 former directors of BNDES who were responsible for loans issued during the privatization of Eletropaulo in 1998. The complaint, based on a report by the TCU (federal public acccounting tribunal, analogous, I suppose, to the ill-fated PCAOB) and technical reports by MPF analysts, was filed in the 5th Federal Criminal Court in Rio, opening a public criminal proceeding.
“Do what thou wilt shall be the whole of the law”: Not a recipe for enticing investors to your free and open capital markets.
El Financiero, which I think you could rightly call Mexico’s premier financial daily, launches what I think is a quiet broadside againt Plan Calderón today in its “Intelligence Unit” column.
Crime, the analysis suggests, is less of a concern to foreign investors than the unpredictability of contract and other rights enforcement in the Mexican judicial system.
The unspoken point here: No matter what Transparency International says, the corruption is jaw-dropping and the police, army, government and judiciary may well play a larger role than the cocaine and marijuana rackets do.
Investigadores de El Colegio de la Frontera Norte (Colef) sostienen que, en términos empíricos, la violencia delictiva puede frenar la llegada de capitales extranjeros, pero nada que quite el sueño.
Researchers from the College of the Northern Border (Colef) argue that, in empirical terms, criminal violence may negatively affect the flow of foreign investment capital into Mexico. But not to the extent that we should lose sleep over it.
Al interrogarles sobre ¿cómo influye la inseguridad pública en la decisión empresarial de invertir en México?, coinciden en que la inseguridad jurídica y la incapacidad para hacer respetar los derechos de propiedad y el cumplimiento de contratos son los verdaderos retos para las autoridades mexicanas para fomentar la llegada de más capitales extranjeros al país.
When asked how lack of public security weighed in business decisions about investing in Mexcio, [the researchers] agreed that uncertainties about the legal system and the lack of gurantees that property rights and contracts will be enforced are the true obstacles that Mexican authorities need to address in order to stimulate foreign investment.
Porfirio Díaz, demagogic dictator of the mythical republic of Eldorado, in Glauber Rocha’s Terra em Transe (1967). The main character would be a broadband rentier if the film were remade today.
Appropriately enough, my Net Virtua cable broadband connection is going through its daily freaking brownout at the moment, so I am unable to link to the item I just noted on the Web site of ABUSAR (Associação Brasileira dos Usuários de Acesso Rápido) — the vigilante consumer’s union for Brazilian broadband users.
The acronym Abusar, by the way, means what you might guess it does:
It is cognate with the English word ‘abuse.’
Also appropriately enough.
The latest good news for modern Brazilian internauts is actually not the following note, posted well before the Christmas season, which may portend an end to broadband service that recquires Brazilian broadband subscribers to pay a monthly kickback to a third-party ISP that adds no value and provides no actual service.
The real good news — sort of — is the follow-up to the appearance of that star of hope over Bethlehem.
My wife, for example, has an aDSL line from Telefônica’s Speedy, but also has to pay UOL as her “ISP.”
Which is freaking outrageous. And one has no other options: the market is an aDSL-cable duopoly at the moment.
No dia 12/10/2006 será realizado um comunicado no Jornal Diário da Manhã, com circulação em todo o Estado de Goiás. Informando que devido à decisão judicial no Estado de Goiás, a partir de 13/10/2006 a Brasil Telecom passa a atender os clientes Banda Larga no Estado de Goiás, dispensando a contratação de provedor de Internet. Devem ser atendidos os clientes (novos clientes e clientes da base) de todos os segmentos (Massa, PME, Governo e Corporativo), para todos os planos do Turbo que manifestarem interesse em dispensar o provedor. Ou seja, tem de solicitar !
On Oct. 12, 2006, a legal notice will appear in the Morning Daily newspaper, which circulates throughout the state of Goiás, stating that due to a legal decision by a state court, starting on Oct. 13, Brasil Telecom will begin providing broadband to customers in Goiás without requiring a subscription to an ISP. This will apply to all clients (new and existing) in all market segments (mass-market, SME, government and corporate) of all Turbo plans who indicate an interest in dispensing with an ISP.
In other words, in order to [stop being gouged], you have to request it!
This press release from iQurious arrives in my Gmail inbox — a key component of the NMM open-source Bloomberg box, though it is possible that other news alerts services might be just as good.
I have not formally compared them.
Look, you know the drill here, if you read the blog: it’s all about how a professional consumer of public relations sorts the daily flux of flackery into two piles: “Probably bullshit” and “possibly not bullshit.”
Once a vast, vast proportion of the content on post-contemporary flackwires is summary dealt with, then, the “possibly not bullshit pile” can be filtered further using tests designed to determine more precisely the S/PN ratio — sense to patent nonsense.
But there is an important caveat: Sometimes otherwise capable companies, with products or services that in a world ruled by a just and loving God would merit a fair chance of finding a market, hire lousy hack publicists.
I do admit that — although I tend to think of it, in my more cynical moments, as “The Wal-Mart Defense” — as a methodological axiom.
All I am saying here, then — knowing nothing of the company in question — is that the following is a good example of how to direct your release straight into my “probably bullshit” pile.
With prejudice.
First step, as always: circle the adjectives and buzzwords.
AUSTIN, Texas, Jan. 31, 2007 — iQurious(TM) Corporation, leaders of the revolution in application delivery, announced at the Government Technology Conference (GTC) Southwest that they have released iQaradigm(TM) 4G, a version of their groundbreaking iQaradigm application delivery system built specifically for federal, state and local government organizations. iQaradigm 4G, a set of software, tools, templates, and services, is built to save government agencies dramatic amounts of time and resources when creating, upgrading, and maintaining their IT infrastructures.
The clause that begins “when creating …” is a classic dangling modifier, because the grammatical subject of the sentence is “iQaradigm 4G.”
Based on extensive study, computer-aided by the NMM buzzword database, “Revolution,” “paradigm [shift],” “groundbreaking,” and “dramatic [savings of time and resources]” are among the words most highly correlated with the RTS, or “rhetorical of the technological sublime, which is itself proves to be significantly correlated with hype that does not pan out on closer inspection.
Kassab faz “piada” com cratera do metrô e vídeo cai na web (Folha de S. Paulo): The mayor of São Paulo makes a “joke” about the smoking hole in the ground at the Pinheiros Station on the Yellow Line extension of the local subway system — which is a very groovy system, in many ways, by the way, except for the fact that is vastly more expensivethan the NYC system in terms of local purchasing power — and the video winds up on YouTube.
Download it quick.
Lawyers with gel in their hair are no doubt working up one of their boilerplate SLAPP suits as we speak.
O prefeito de São Paulo, Gilberto Kassab (PFL), aparece em um vídeo publicado no YouTube nesta semana comentando de forma jocosa um detalhe que lhe chamou atenção na tragédia da estação Pinheiros do metrô. [veja aqui]
Sampa mayor Gilberto Kassab (PFL) appears in a video published to YouTube this week, commenting, in a joking manner, on a detail that caught his attention during the Pinheiros Station tragedy earlier this month.
“Tem aquele motel ao lado do buraco do acidente do metrô que, quando veio o estrondo, imagina a zoeira que foi! Todo mundo saindo dos quartos…”, narra o prefeito. Segundo ele, a cena teria sido uma comédia para quem estava lá, “apesar da tragicidade do momento”.
“You’ve got this hotel right by the hole in that subway accident; when the shaking started, imagine the uproar! Everybody running out of the rooms,” the mayor relates. According to him, the scene must have been comical for someone who was on the scene, “despite the tragedy of the moment.”
I believe he is referring to one of São Paulo’s Tokyo-style so-called “love motels.”
Which, I have to say, really are something else. My favorite: The O Diabo (“the devil”) chain which litters the road to the Guarulhos International Airport. “Hey, honey, let’s go to the devil.” Kind of like dive bars named “The Office”: “Hey, honey, I am going to be late. I’m still at The Office.”
[rim shot].
A good money-laundering investment, one hears, these franchises.
Not a very good joke, but what the hell? A really, really bad joke is still a joke. When the world is running down, you make the best of what’s still around.
We saw Kassab on that same program last evening, celebrating an Ohtake-designed — we like to pronounce it “Oh, tacky” — dedicated busway designed to cut the communte time from Eastern Zone of the city to the downtown area by half.
Which if it works would be really quite nice. Less reason for the Sem-Teto to invade downtown buildings. Good for the nightmarish periferia, in theory.
The project, like many of the Alckmin-era pharaonic jeitinhos for the city’s traffic nightmares — cars floating away every time it rains, for example, or traffic backed up all the way to Santos — had been rusting for years. “Half-sunk, a shattered visage lies …”
To be fair, however, journalist Mino Carta, on his blog, was just the other day joking about the fact that the seventh fatality in the case was found with cocaine on his person. He quipped to the effect that the moral of the story might well be that “a random sample of São Paulo residents has now shown that one in seven are drug dealers.”
And another seventh are corporate lawyers [rim shot].
Random death. You have to laugh to keep from crying.
WASHINGTON, Jan. 24 /PRNewswire-USNewswire/ — New research by political scientists challenges the belief, widespread following the hotly contested 2006 presidential election, that Mexican society is divided by deep political divisions. The findings conclude that claims of such divisions are unsupported by recent field research and that a better understanding of the state of Mexican democracy depends on improved observation of politics among Mexico’s political elite — which are more polarized now than at any time since 1988. The research is presented in a special symposium entitled “The 2006 Mexican Election and its Aftermath,” and includes contributions by seven political scientists who have been heavily involved in generating new sources of data to analyze Mexican politics. The symposium appears in the January 2007 issue of PS: Political Science & Politics, a journal of the American Political Science Association (APSA).
The cold, hard question, I suppose, for the superior risk manager, is whether they can prevail, and whether the price of tortillas is consistent with Calderón’s pledge to “guarantee the security of foreign investments in Mexico.”
I tend to think that publications like La Jornada are the canary in the coal mine in this respect.
It is not a good sign for the Autonomous University-published daily, for example, that men linked to the 1968 Tlateloco massacre — and allegedly to the narcotraffic as well — are now firmly in charge of Mexico’s military.
I have a running bet with a foreign correspondent friend and colleague here that press freedom will soon be more explicitly curtailed — jailings and mass firings of journalists and installation of government shills in the key editorial positions, and draconian legal action, rather than the odd one-off assassination by glue-sniffing rent-a-sicários and their cousins from the local force – and that other aspects of a permanent state of exception will soon be explicitly evident in Calderón’s policies.
You might feel reassured by the notion that political polarization in Mexico is “confined to the elites,” but then again, you might well have your head firmly up your ass if you buy that notion without duing the due diligence on the downside risk.
Therefore, I translate Mr. Fazio’s analysis, on the theory that there is at least a slight chance that this point of view represents a downside risk to the strategy of armed liberation of markets kept closed by “populist dictators.”
Calderón was elected with 35% of the vote in an election with 60% turnout, according to Wikipedia –I thought I saw a much lower figure the other day, let me check that — and as Brazil’s Lula pointed out at Davos, while Chávez was reelected in 2006 with some 63% of the vote in an election with 75% turnout. Lula was reelected with 61% of the vote and 83.2% turnout.
Systematic election fraud — at the national level, at least — has not been alleged by anyone in Venezuela or Brazil, that I know of.
El modelo Calderón
Con una diplomacia de “mercado”, oportunista y sin principios, y un discurso y prácticas políticas de corte ultraconservador propios de la guerra fría, Felipe Calderón y el Partido Acción Nacional se aprestan a ser más funcionales a Estados Unidos en su proyecto de reconquista en América Latina.
With a “market driven” diplomacy, opportunistic and devoid of principle, Felipe Calderón and PAN are in a hurry to sign up as employees of the United States in its project to reconquer Latin America.
En Davos, Suiza, al más puro estilo foxista, Calderón alabó al “libre mercado” y criticó las expropiaciones, las nacionalizaciones y las “dictaduras personales vitalicias”. En México, Manuel Espino, un anticomunista cerril que preside al PAN y a la Organización Demócrata Cristiana de América (ODCA), anunció que la derecha “va por todo” en Latinoamérica, con la mira puesta en tres objetivos principales: Cuba, Bolivia y Venezuela; los mismos que figuran en la agenda subregional de Washington.
In Davos, Calderón praised “the free market” in the purest tradition of Vincente Fox and criticized expropriations, nationalizations and “personal dictators for life.” In Mexico, Manuel Espino, the crude anticommunist who presides over PAN and the Christan Democrat Organization of America, announced that the right “is going for it” in Latin America, with its eye on three objectives: Cuba, Bolivia and Venezuela, the same targets that loom largest in the regional agenda of Washington.
Marco Valério Fernandes de Souza: Kojak fan, mineiro, ad man and slush-fund facilitator. The hand gesture pictured in this Wikipedia portrait, in Brazil, by the way, means “shove it up your ass” rather than “okay.” A little Brazilian Wikihumor by the poster.
Blog do Mino, the quasi-daily pensamentos of the veteran Italo-Paulista muckraker, informs:
A Polícia Federal entrega amanhã ao STF os resultados de suas investigações sobre o valerioduto mineiro. Sim, a turma tucana recebeu recursos públicos, via empresa de Marcos Valério, para financiar a campanha de 1998, incluindo o atual senador Eduardo Azeredo, ex-presidente do PSDB. Como se sabe, na conclusão dos seus trabalhos, a CPI sobre o valerioduto sugeriu o indiciamento de Azeredo. Rápido no gatilho, o Conselho de Ética e Decoro Parlamentar do Senado arquivou a representação contra o ex-presidente do PSDB, sob a alegação de que o episódio se deu depois de sua eleição ao senado. A máfia russa, ou siciliana, ou japonesa, não fariam melhor caso estivessem no poder.
The Federal Police will turn over to the Supreme Court tomorrow the results of its investigation into the Minas Gerais money-laundering and political slush-fund pipeline known as the Valerioduto, after Belo Horizonte ad agency impresario Marcos Valério Fernandes de Souza [above --Ed.]. Yes, the PSDB gang did get public money, through the ad man’s agency, to finance its 1998 campaign, including current Sen. Eduardo Azeredo, former party president. As is already known, at the conclusion of its investigation, the congressional probe of the matter recommended the indictment of Azeredo. Fast on the trigger, the Senate Committee on Ethics and Parliamentary Decorum tabled the charges against the former PSDB president, on the grounds that the episode in question occurred after his election to the Senate. The Russian, or Sicilian, or Japanese mafia could not have done it any better had they been in power.
Accused telecoms dirty warrior Daniel Dantas approaches his judgment at Nuremburg?
The Braziian insurance-industry virtual trade rag PORTAL NACIONAL DE SEGUROS & SAÚDE carries this update on the Dantas-Opportunity-Brasil Telecom-[Citigroup-Kroll-...] industrial espionage case from the editor of Consultor Jurídico — one the better-written and -reported legal publications around, IMHO.
With some extravagant exceptions, but oh, well. You get what you pay for.
To hell with fiction. Check this out.
Justiça paulista deve decidir nas próximas semanas um pedido de falência contra a segunda maior concessionária de celulares do país: a TIM. O pedido tem origem na quebra de um bloco de empresas que, segundo os prejudicados, integrava o grupo Telecom Itália, controladora da TIM. As empresas falidas tinham à sua frente a Tecnosistemi e a Eudosia, encarregadas da instalação de antenas utilizadas hoje pela operadora.
A São Paulo court will decide in the next few weeks on a petition by creditors relating to the second-largest cellular telephony provider in Brazil: TIM. The petition arose from the bankruptcy of a “business ecosystem” of firms that, according to the creditors, where part of the Telecom Italia group that controlled TIM. The failed firms were led by Technosistemi and Eudosia, which were in charge of installing the antennas used today by the operator.
Windows Vista pirata é vendido a R$ 15 em bancas de SP: Straight from the streets of São Paulo, the Folha de S. Paulo newspaper reports today that you can buy now Windows Vista (Paraguayuan Edition) for R$15, or around US$7 from street vendors..
Ele custa R$ 989. Mas, na rua Santa Ifigênia (região central de SP), um Windows Vista Ultimate “genérico” custa R$ 15. Já na avenida Paulista (zona sul de SP), o preço é mais “salgado”: R$ 20 –2% do valor de um original.
It costs R$989 [or about US$466 --about 2.6 minimum monthly salaries]. But on Santa Ifigênia Street (downtown São Paulo) you can buy a “generic” version of Windows Vista Ultimate for R$15. On the Av. Paulista (Southern Zone), the price is a little fancier: $R20 — 2% of the list price for the original.
El secretario de la Defensa Nacional, general Guillermo Galván Galván, provocó inquietud al nombrar como su secretario particular a un oficial acusado de participar en la guerra sucia de los años setenta, y como director administrativo de la dependencia a quien, en el sexenio foxista, fue calificado como “el Córdoba Montoya de la Sedena”. Esto, sin contar una red de altos mandos marcados por el influyentismo, el plagio industrial o los presuntos nexos con el narcotráfico…
Mexico’s secretary of defense, Gen. Galván Galván, has provoked concern by naming an officer accused of participating the “dirty war” of the 1970s as his private secretary, and will retain as administrative director of the cabinet department a man who came to be known during the Fox years as “The Córdoba Montoya of SEDENA.” And that is not to mention the officer’s record of command posts marked by cronyism, industrial espionage and alleged ties to the narcotraffic.
Córdoba Montoya was an infamous power behind the throne in the Salinas, Zedillo and Madrid governments in Mexico who, among other things, was indicted for corruption and fraud in the failed construction of the World Trade Center Mexico. SEDENA is the Mexican Secretariate of National Defense.
For the last few months, anyone who consulted the Veterans Affairs Department’s Web site to learn how many American troops had been wounded in Iraq and Afghanistan would have found this number: 50,508. But on Jan. 10, without explanation, the figure plummeted to 21,649.
Which number is correct? The answer depends on a larger question, the definition of wounded. If the term includes combat or “hostile” injuries inflicted by the enemy, the definition the Pentagon uses, the smaller number would be right.
But if it also applies to injuries from accidents like vehicle crashes and to mental and physical illnesses that developed in the war zone, the meaning that veterans’ groups favor, 50,508[,] would be accurate.
Letting it all hang out: More thoughts of Chairman Maia.
The “ex-blog” of the Rio de Janeiro mayor beats a favorite undead horse of mine in its Jan. 29 dispatch: Brazil’s corruption scandals have one thing in common.
And it is not political or economic ideology or party affiliation.
It is crooked flacks & hacks playing both sides of the public-private partnership.
The guy who runs White House communications strategy is a career sports marketer, for crying out loud.
Another case in point, around which the otherwsie fractious “public diplomacy” think-tank squad has been rallying for some time now: Karen Freaking Hughes.
Again, I admit it openly: I am quite a fan of the pefelista mayor of the Cidade Maravilha, qua (non-)blogger.
But I repeat: I am agnostic as to Rio politics — mainly because I find them utterly incomprehensible on the surface and appalling when you scratch the surface.
Would the Naked Maia make a good successor to Brooklyn borough president Marty Markowitz? (Okay, bad example.)
I am not qualified to pronounce.
Because we are not in Kansas anymore, Toto. My grudging and still unregretted vote for Bloomberg in New York is nontransferable to the facts on the ground here, as I am coming to dimly understand them. Insofar as anyone really does.
I translate, as ever, as fast as I can type, crudely.
Polished work product costs money.
POLÍTICA E AGÊNCIAS DE PUBLICIDADE!
Politics and PR Agencies!
01. São inúmeros e repetitivos os casos de CPIs, escândalos, evidências e investigações que ocorrem em torno da execução dos contratos dos governos com as agências de publicidade. Aliás, não cabe em tese às agências mais do que responder a seus clientes não tendo -em tese- responsabilidade sobre o cumprimento ou não dos governos da legislação que caiba. Claro que há exceções a esta regra, cujo caso explícito foi o da agência do seu Marcos Valério que cumpriu papel de intermediário politico-financeiro.
The parade of congressional investigations, scandals, audits and investigations related to contracts between (Brazilian) governments and PR agencies is endless and endlessly repetitive. What’s more, the PR agencies themselves are not really obliged to do much more than do what their clients ask them to do, given that — in theory — they lack any responsibility for ensuring that the governments in question are complying with the pertinent laws. Yes, there are exceptions to this rule, most notoriously the case of Marcos Valério of Belo Horizonte, who assumed the role of a political-financial go-between.
In addition to the PAC economic stimulus plan, which reduced the price of computers, Submarino [Brazil's leading online retailer "in the Amazon mold," or with ambitions in that direction, at least, except that the Amazon experience does not throw 7 server exceptions per session, as I noted the other day --Ed.] has decided to launch a special promotion on computers for the entire Southeaster region, with free shipping. To give you an idea, a Pentium 4.30GHz machine with 256MB RAM and an 80GB hard drive and a 15″ monitor is going for R$1,599 [around US$760, or a little over four months of statutory minimum salary in Brazil and maybe 75% of a US minimum wageover an average month] a discount of R$100.
And with what operating system? Ah, here we go, the spec sheet for a brand that I am not familiar with, called AmazonPC, which operates in the Zona Franca de Manaus.
Look for Amazon.com to sue the Amazon River and the state of Amazónas for infringement on its intellectual property.
The machine cited ships with “Linux,” but Submarino does not specify what flavor.
High summer and rains like the sudden wrath of God are upon us here in São Paulo. Preliminary signs suggest that the blackouts will arrive just as promptly as the exorbitant bills.
The first lightning blackout hit at about 6:00 this evening.
A transformer exploded, the lights went out briefly, then power was rerouted and the lights came back on …
Briefly. Split seconds.
Until another transformer exploded nearby.
And so on.
I have counted three series of cascading transformer explosions in the neighborhood so far, with five or six or seven consecutive explosions in fairly rapid order in the one that jangled my nerves the most.
I may have misspoken when I said the infamous frog farm belonged to the wife of Sen. Dornelles. The Estadão article today says the young director, whose mother is reportedly a paulistana — the Estado also misstates his age as 23; he is now 28, although I have also seen 27 cited as his age, but started the film when he was 23 — belonged to the wife of Jader Barbalho.
E o exemplo dado é o caso do ranário (the frog farm) de Jader Barbalho, que foi acusado de desviar US$ 9 milhões da Sudam (Superintendência de Desenvolvimento da Amazônia), operando um orçamento de R$ 300 mil. “O “crime organizado chegou ao centro do poder” no Brasil. Jader fez o que queria na Sudam. Aprovava o que queria pelo valor que queria”, declara o diretor. Em uma outra cena, surge um entrevistado brasileiro, não identificado, que fala em português e diz: “Sempre recebendo propina, sempre recebendo suborno”.
The example given is the case of “the frog farm” of Jader Barbalho, who was accused of embezzling US$9 million from Sudam (the Amazon Development Superintendency), which had an [annual?] budget of R$300,000. “Organized crime has infilitrated the heart of power” in Brazil. “Jader did whatever he wanted with Sudam. He approved whatever he wanted to approve for whatever amount he wanted,” the director says in the [You Tube interview]. In another scene, a Brazilian interview subject, who is not identified, speaks in Portuguese and says, “Always getting bribes, always getting payoffs.”
I thought the BBC story identified Dornelles as the husband of the frog farmer, but now I seet that it transitions to a discussion of “the Senate president,” whom it does not name.
Yes, that was Barbalho, elected president of the Senate in 2000.
I guess I was confused by the fact that man’s name is not used — why is that? — and a photo of Dornelles appears right beside that copy.
My bad. Caveat lectorbibiciniensi.
Dornelles’ frog-unrelated problems include charges that he benefited from a scheme that skimmed millions out of the social security fund, the INSS.
Hmmm, besides being a relative of Tancredo Neves, he is apparently also a relative of Getulio Dornelles Vargas.
Am I right? Which just goes to show you: when you run governments as a family business you can tend to confuse modern democracy with feudalism.
Excerpts from the Estadão piece:
SÃO PAULO – “Esse filme não é para ser exibido no Brasil”. É com este aviso nada ortodoxo que começa Manda Bala! (Send a Bullet), documentário dirigido pelo americano Jason Kohn, que venceu o Grande Prêmio do Júri do Festival de Cinema de Sundance, o mais importante festival de cinema independente do mundo, que foi encerrado no domingo em Park City, Utah, EUA.
“This film is not for exhibition in Brazil.” With this unorthodox advisory begins Manda Bala (Send a Bullet), a documentary directed by Jason Kohn, which won the grand jury prize at Sundance, the yada yada yada …
Why not? Brazilians are already unable to see Beyond Citizen Kane, even though they really want to.
Why make an exposé and then refuse to show it to the people with a direct interest in the corruption it depicts — and the means to do something about it?
I sense ayahuasca in the Kool-Aid.
And I still cannot understand how an allegedly fluent Portuguese speaker and up an coming cinematic genius would think translating the idiomatic phrase manda bala as “send a bulllet” was a good idea.
The most exactly English equivalent being:
MUTT: Hey, can I talk to you a minute?
JEFF: Shoot. Fire away. You may fire when ready, Gridley. Go for it. Knock yourself out. Faddal. Go right ahead. Just do it.
Add your regional variants here. My sociolinguistic programming is mainly an overlay of Brooklyn on a substrate of Southern California valley dude, deeply contaminated with the technical jargon of postmodern literary criticism, the dead-letter file of medieval Romance literary dialects, H@X0R-speak, and the nitty gritty copy desk.
Kohn se recusa a falar com jornalistas brasileiros. E, a julgar pelo aviso, não pretende exibir seu filme no país onde nasceu a idéia de seu filme, que, como antecipou o Estado, já está fazendo barulho por botar o dedo na ferida escancarada da corrupção e da impunidade brasileira.
Kohn refuses to speak to Brazilian journalists. And to judge from the warning, he does not intend to show the film in the country where the idea for the film was born — a film which, as the Estado foresaw, is already making a lot of noise by sticking its finger in the open wound of corruption and impunity in Brazil.
Rede Globo vs. Internet (Crash Tester): The Web site poll picture above, from Globo.com, asks Lusophone Web site visitors, “Do you you use the Internet?”
75.10% of Web site visitors had the presence of mind and the malicious wit to answer “no.”
Ergo, 75 percent of visitors to Globo.com visit without using the Internet. By baixando o santo, one supposes. Or astral projection.
A Globo é uma empresa de se admirar: maior audiência de televisão brasileira, manipulação de opinião pública, pequenas fortunas à cada votação do Big Brother Brasil 7, etc. Aparentemente, o legado de Roberto Marinho não foi coisa pouca e a Rede Globo de Televisão continua bem, obrigada, fazendo a alegria da familia brasileira.
Globo is a company to marvel at: The largest audience in Brazilian television, manipulation of public opinion, makes small fortunes on every episode of Big Brother Brazil, and so on. Apparently the legacy of Roberto Marinho was no small thing and the Globo TV Network is doing fine, thank you very much, still bringing joy into Brazilian homes.
Mas na internet é uma mancada atrás da outra. Foi até moderninho quando lançaram o blog dos Big Brothers, o G1 é um portal bem bacana… só que o site Globo Online acaba com qualquer admiração que se possa ter pela Rede Globo na rede. A primeira ação maravilhosa no site é o bloqueio do uso do Ctrl C, para que as notícias sejam exclusivas do site.
On the Internet, however, it has been one stumble after another. It was quite modern of them to launch a Big Brother blog, and G1 is a groovy news portal, sure. But the Globo Online Web site itself makes you lose any respect you might have had for the Globo Network’s approach to the network. The first genius move was blocking the use of Ctrl-C, so that the news will be exclusively carried on the site.
All you need to do to get around this silly feature is view the pages source code — Ctrl-U in Firefox — and cut and paste from there. –Ed.
Closed Book Report: A while back, I translated some passages from Denis Robert and Ernest Backes‘ book on the Clearstream scandal, in which the “handling” of the business press is discussed.
It seems relevant in light of the Dantas case that is moving back into the spotlight here in Brazil, in which journalists have been accused of take bribes in return for fabricating perjured testimony in support of a scheme involving commercial espionage … and more.
Note: The present day, in the following passage, is the date of publication, Feb. 2001. Cedel was the precursor to present-day Clearstream, a subsidiary of Deutsche Borse.
Cedel cultivates privleged relationships with some 40 key journalists, mainly American and English. We were able to get our hands on a list of these for internal use, with annotations by Cedel management. Headed “Key Journalists,” the document sorts journalists into groups according to the way they serve the firm’s interests.
In the first group are to be found the “friendly” journalists. These–four names are listed–work for publications specializing in finance, such as Euromoney, Euroweek and International Financing Review. The document explains: “These journalists are influential and contribute to a public image of Cedel as a firm with a dynamic management, devoted to its clients.”
Let’s translate, then try to annotate and fact-check.
Note that the MSM Web site was a major outlet for amplifying the talking point that Lula I and the PT conspired with criminal gangs to assassinate police officers in order to discredit Geraldo Alckmin in the area of public security, a point repeated by both Alckmin and Jorge Bornhausen during last year’s campaign..
This follow-up and gist from the Hora do Povo explains that in the article in question, based on the Federal Police report, Attuch stands accused of helping to fabricate false testimony by a federal witness whose story he “broke” in an “exclusive interview.”
In typical Rovean fashion — “No, you are!” — the best counterattack to being called a fabricator is to accuse your accusers of being the real fabricators.
A revista Carta Capital, braço midiático do Governo Lula e do PT na grande imprensa paulista, parece ter perdido a vergonha na cara, porque na sua última edição, publicou o fac símile falsificado de um e-mail trocado entre o banqueiro Daniel Dantas e Leonardo Attuch.
CartaCapital magazine, the media arm of the Lula government and the PT among the major São Paulo media [audited circulation is about 75,000, I think. Is that major? --Ed.] apparently has no shame left. It has published a forged facsimile of an e-mail exchanged between banker Daniel Dantas and Leonardo Attuch.
A revista atacou de Carta Brandi, a carta falsificada que derrubou Jango do Ministério do Trabalho, no Governo Vargas. O e-mail dá a impressão que Attuch fez a entrevista a mando de Dantas. Até mesmo Luís Fernando e o desequilibrado e rico site Carta Maior já vacila diante do mar de lama. Só Mino e meia dúzia de escribas híbridos continuam apostando em Papai Noel.
The magazine has attacked with [its own version of] the Brandi Letter, the forged document that toppled Jango as Vargas’ Minister of Labor. The e-mail gives the impression that Attuch did the interview at the behest of Dantas. Even Luís Fernando and the rich, biased site Carta Maior is hesitating before the sea of mud. Only Mino and his half-dozen hybrid scribes continue to bet on Santa Claus.
Attuch’s Breaking the Contract defended, as a heroic enterprise in the Ayn Rand mold, the Mendes construction firm, which returns to the headlines today over the Line 4 scandal. Scroll down to begin reading translation of his latest screed.
Consultor Jurídico carries Leonardo Attuch’s reply to Luis Gushiken, which I’ll translate — hastily, as always, so no wagering — pra inglês ver.
Most of Attuch’s work seems to be done for IstoÉ Dinheiro. ID, I am sorry to say, I find pretty putrid by the standards of local business sections and weekly business glossies.
As to Attuch himself, a Federal Police report from Operation Jackal dedicated five pages to the reporter’s relationship with Daniel Dantas and states quite clearly that he cooperated with the Opportunity Fund to write articles favorable to its interest.
For parallel findings about the business press in the Clearstream scandal in Europe, see my Closed Book Report.
I think I have that PF report here somewhere; I’ll try to translate a paragraph or two for you, just as an appetizer.
Attuch’s reply here is very similar to Veja’s campaign during the recent inquiry into its reporting on a “secret meeting” between two suspects in the “dossier” case: Stalinist police-state persecution!
Veja was caught out-and-out lying in that story, in my opinion.
As a vigilante consumer of the local media here in Brazil, I generally find that if you triangulate from the Estadão business section and CartaCapital, supplemented with doses of Forbes Brasil and some of the excellent little industry-specific trade rags you find floating around, you can do completely without the shinola they peddle over there at ID.
ID reminds me of nothing more than the kind of scabrous mixture of disinformation and editorializing in news storites that has been going on at Investor’s Business Daily in the last year or so.
Not the Bloomberg way at all, the way these rags do (other people’s) business.
If you cannot mount persuasive arguments, then make sure that your opponent is not able to make her own argument. Shift the focus of the debate: change the subject, preferably to a subject in which you are in the right; dwell on how much you know, on how hard you have worked to get where you are, on how your work is unjustly devalued and despised. Or simply lead the debate into a blind alley from which it cannot escape. In that case, both parties lose, but this is a better outcome for the party who was going to lose in any event.
Lula’s former flack in chief: I am sick of those Karate Kid jokes!
Fazendo Media: a média que a mídia faz today notes a development in one of the principle “dominos” in that banned campaign ad from the last election season, the one that suggested that the Lula government was massively corrupt.
It was banned by the federal election courts because none of the corruption charges have yet to be substantiated.
Except maybe for Delúbio Soares, who was allegedly mixed up with the Belo Horizonte money laundering mafia run by ad man Marco Valério “Baldy” Sousa.
No wait, last I heard, his day in court was postponed by a heart surgery he underwent.
Zé Dirceu, Antonio Palocci — the former mayor of Belo Horizonte — and other prominent government petistas have yet to have their day in court, while the cases against other dominos in that ad never proceeded.
And the “dossier” scandal, as we have already noted, resulted in no criminal charges after an intensive investigation.
You can think of Gushiken as having been sort of a cabinet-level Ari Fleischer, I guess, with control of the government advertising and PR budget.
You can see the astroturf video I am referring to, from the 2006 Alckmin campaign,in this NMM-TV Zeitgeist Newsreel, with my sucky subtitles.
The suit dealt with an article on his “blog” in which he accused the scrappy muckraking business weekly of receiving bribes from the government for pro-government coverage in the form of advertising buys.
A carta abaixo foi enviada pelo ex-ministro Luiz Gushiken à Polícia Federal e tem o objetivo de cobrar investigações sobre os jornalistas Diogo Mainardi, Lauro Jardim e Leonardo Attuch, além do banqueiro Daniel Dantas. Para Gushiken, os quatro podem estar difamando sua imagem porque tiveram os interesses contrariados enquanto foi ministro.
The letter reproduced below was sent by former Minister [of Institutional Communications] Luis Gushiken to the Federal Police and demands an investigation into journalists Diogo Mainardi, Lauro Jardim and Leonardo Attuch, as well as banker Daniel Dantas. According to Gushiken, the four men have been slandering him because he acted against their interests when he was minister.
O documento foi divulgado pela página Conversa Afiada. Segue a íntegra abaixo:
The document was published on the Web site [of Paulo Amorim, a CartaCapital founding and contributing editor]. The entire text:
Fiscal e empreitera são acusados de corrupção (Terra): In the scandal over the collapse of the Pinheiros Station on the Yellow Line here in São Paulo — disclosure: Our neighborhood, where we own a home, is supposed to benefit from the project — the Folha de S. Paulo disinters a Jarndyce-like civil suit that has been resuscitated by the local public prosecutor on behalf of some of the recently interred victims, charging corruption.
Why not criminal charges, I wonder?
Maybe that will come afterwards, in a kind of legal pincer movement with the ongoing criminal investigation.
The charge is that the state-employed, Alckmin-appointed construction manager on the project conspired with one of the contractors on the project during the bidding process.
O Ministério Público Estadual de São Paulo está movendo ação civil pública contra o gerente de construção da Linha 4 (Amarela) do Metrô de São Paulo, Marco Antonio Buoncompagno, e uma das empreiteiras responsáveis pelas obras nas quais sete pessoas morreram soterradas no último dia 12. Eles são acusados de ter participado de esquema ilegal de contratações públicas na década de 90. Buoncompagno, que nega a acusação, é o atual encarregado pelo governo do Estado de fiscalizar as obras e foi nomeado durante a gestão do ex-governador Geraldo Alckmin (PSDB).
The State Public Prosecutor of São Paulo (MPE-SP) is pushing a public-interest civil suit against the construction manager of the Line 4 project for the São Paulo subway system, Marco Antonio Buoncompagno, and one of the contractors responsible for the works in which seven people died in the Jan. 12 collapse. They are accused of having taken part in an illegal public contracting scheme in the 1990s. Buoncampagno, who denies the charge, is currently the state official in charge of oversight of the project, and was named during the administration of former governor Geraldo Alckmin (PSDB).
Last we heard from him, he was engaging in unpaid advertising for the Intel-inside “$100 laptop,” in a post that pointedly ignored the several “digital divide” options the Brazilian government was negotiating and promoting at the time.
The IT portion of the current economic stimulus package now makes it crystal clear that Brazil will favor local industry over foreign suppliers to produce cheap machines for use by the “digitally excluded.”
You may not like it. You may find it “protectionist.”
But it is, after all, a fact you have to deal with.
And now this nonsense:
The Brazilian blogosphere is becoming one of the main fronts in the battle against Internet censorship. The reason for that can be the growing audience created by the amount of time local internauts devote to web surfing, which was once again rated as the highest in the world. But it can also derive from the silliness displayed by local authorities on decisions that directly meddle with the very core of what has come to be accepted as Internet freedom. The attack this time centers around the 2007 Pan American Games in Rio and takes the form of a policy that prohibits the participating athletes from maintaining blogs, flogs, video logs or personal websites during the Games. And — if that wasn’t enough — Internet media won’t be allowed to present any story or news featuring audiovisual content of the competition, not even trainings in public locations.
What local authorities are we talking about? Cui bono?
As I commented on the GVO post in question:
I believe this is an IOC policy as well, is it not?
A policy insisted on by certain member nations to protect the value of their media franchises with respect to their “amateur” athletes? Corporate sponsors have much more to do with this than governments, as I understand it.
I could be wrong. But Murilo does not identify the lurking evil powers that be that are behind this perfidious plot.
The BOC is an “independent” non-profit, just like Berkman — or Davos, which also requires accreditation of bloggers, and “mainstream media” as well, and places strict limits on their coverage. Their prerogative as a private club.
In his attempt to link the issue to government censorship notwithstanding, Murilo disinforms grotesquely as usual.
The specter of “Internet censorship” in Brazil is a canard, as Murilo well knows: his day job, after all, is with the Ministry of Culture’s Office of Strategic Affairs. Or was, at least.
Mr. Murilo is a man who wears many hats. This is not an ad homimen argument, either: Mr. Murilo seems to have a bit of a structural conflict of interest between his institutional roles and his hobbies, as I have noted before.
But Dornelles was leading another player in the ill-fated CPI on Corruption, a timeline of which can be found here.
Currently a Progressive Party (PP) federal Senator from Rio de Janeiro, he served, first as Minister of Commerce and Industry (1996-1998), then as Minister of Labor (1998-2002), under Fernando Henrique Cardoso.
He states that he represented Brazil on the IMF Board of Governors in the mid-1980s
He had also served as Secretary of the Treasury under José Sarney, who assumed office when his uncle died before taking the oath. He is a nephew of former president-elect Tancredo Neves, whose grandson is the current Minas Gerais governor, Aécio Neves.
Cardoso argued that an independent probe of alleged malfeasance in the May 2001 flap would be harmful to the country, a rationale similar to that taken by Sen. Alberto Goldman over the racketeering probe into the Daslu luxury boutique in São Paulo last year:
“… this arrest could lead to an economic crisis. Businesses will say: why invest in Brazil if we are going to wind up getting arrested?”.
A measure to form a congressional panel of inquiry (CPI) into the matter was voted down; the campaign was led by 2006 presidential candidate and former São Paulo governor Geraldo Alckmin, who called the probe “politically motivated” and “a danger” to Brazil’s reputation and economic well-being.
At about the same time, as I was just reading in the archives of the Agência Senado, a proposal to investigate Sen. Antônio Carlos Magalhães (Bahia) for involvement in hacking into the electronic vote-tallying equipment on the floor of the Senate — Brazilian legislators vote secretly, if you can believe that — was also turned back, despite a judicial finding of fact in the case.
Dornelles was elected to the Senate in 2006 on the PP-PMDB slate of Gov.-elect Sergio Cabral..
It as, as we read in endless writeups of the same press release
… an account of government corruption and kidnapping in Brazil
Manda bala does literally mean “send a bullet,” but it is more precisely equivalent to the expression “shoot” — as in “go ahead, I am listening.”
It also gets used as an equivalent to “go right ahead,” “go for it, dude,” “enjoy” and things like that.
“Boy, this barbecue looks yummy! Can I try it?”
“Manda bala, rapaz!”
There is an online confectioner called Manda Bala in Brazil — the name puns on bala, bullet and bala, bite-sized candies, by metaphorical extension. As in “Send Candy.”
Candygram for Mongo.
LOS ANGELES – O filme americano “Padre Nuestro” (ainda sem título em português) obteve neste domingo (28) o grande prêmio do júri no Festival dea Sundance, o mais importante do cinema independente, que também premiou “Manda Bala”, documentário sobre o crime e a corrupção no Brasil.
How difficult is it going to be to translate the title Padre Nuestro into Pai Nosso?
Knowing the practices of Brazilian film distributors, the thing will come out under a title like “A Journey to Remember” or “Mexican Divorce.”
Or, more likely, a title that gives away the ending.
The director describes his work:
Kohn says, “I really thought of “Manda Bala” as a non-fiction ‘RoboCop’”
Life imitates Hollywood banalities, in other words.
The Wal-Mart supercenter press in the E-R has surely prompted many people to form their opinions on this issue based on what they have read in this paper. So it is in the interest of fair, accurate reporting that I am writing to clarify a fact from your 2006 front-page article on the CEPCO Wal-Mart survey which, for some readers, seemed to be an “official” green light for the supercenter project.
A competent editor, note, would have inserted the exact reference to the story in question: “… your 2006 front-page article [Vol. XI, No. 83, p. 1, Headline, Byline].”
Then again, this is a newspaper that uses “Dumb Ass Staff Writer” as its standard anonymous byline.
I swear to God. They do.
A search on the newspaper’s Web site did not turn up any article by that general description — or any article referencing CEPCO, for that matter. Bad indexing, it seems.
Readers should know that Jessica Freitas, who was identified in your article as a surveyor [sic; pollster, I gather, is what Renee means --Ed.] and CEPCO employee, was listed as public relations staff on The Linscheid Co. Web site, which is Bob Linscheid’s company.
This is an all-too-familiar astroturfing technique: Provide deliberately incomplete information in the sourcing of facts and opinions in order to “mislead without technically lying.”
El IFE: obsesión nazi: John Ackerman of UNAM and Proceso magazine — and a consultant to the World Bank on transparency issues — blisters the ears of Mexico’s elections commission as a crucial freedom of information case filed by the magazine moves toward a decision by Mexico’s federal elections court.
The court seated an entirely new panel of justices in November, presided over by Flavio Galván.
Es gracioso imaginar a Don Quijote de la Mancha luchando contra los molinos de viento que confundía con gigantes; sin embargo, es profundamente estremecedor atestiguar la absurda pelea del Instituto Federal Electoral (IFE) contra el nazismo que, de acuerdo a las alucinaciones de nuestros funcionarios electorales, se encuentra escondido en la libertad de expresión y el derecho a la información.
It is amusing to imagine Don Quixote tilting at windmills that he mistakes for giants, but it is shocking to witness the absurd battle of Mexico’s Federal Elections Institute against the Nazism that, according to the hallucinations of our election officials, lurks within the freedom of expression and the right to information.
Si los argumentos de la primera respuesta que el IFE ofreciera a la revista Proceso respecto a su solicitud de acceso a las boletas electorales eran risibles y jurídicamente débiles (véase, Irma Eréndira Sandoval, Involución democrática, Proceso número 1558, p.18), los razonamientos ofrecidos el pasado 14 de diciembre son francamente insultantes, peligrosos y constituyen a todas luces un retroceso de más de una década en el desarrollo de la transparencia en México. En esta segunda resolución, los consejeros del IFE citan normas alemanas que estuvieron diseñadas ex profeso para combatir el resurgimiento del nazismo en ese país. En Alemania la ley permite al Estado suspender derechos fundamentales como la libertad de expresión, de prensa, reunión y libre asociación para aquellos ciudadanos que tengan la intención de “combatir el régimen fundamental de libertad y democracia”. Cobijándose de forma absurda en este ejemplo, los consejeros quisieran que en México se suspenda el derecho constitucional a la información para aquellos ciudadanos y periodistas “nazis” que busquen investigar lo ocurrido el 2 de julio de 2006.
If the arguments set forth in IFE’s first response to Proceso magazine with respect to its petition to access the ballots from the July 2, 2006 election were laughable and legally shaky (See Proceo 1558, p. 18), the rationale it offered on Dec. 14 was frankly insulting and dangerous and in any event represent the rolling back of more than a decade of progress toward government transparency. In this second resolution, the IFE commissioners cite German regulations designed to combat the return of Nazism to that country. In Germany, the law allows the State to suspend fundamental rights such as freedom of expression, press freedom, and the freedom of assembly and association in the case of citizens who intend to “combat the fudnamental order of liberty and democracy.” Latching on, absurdly, to this model, the commissioners want to suspend the constitutional right to information for those citizens and “Nazi” journalists who seek to investigate what took place on July 2, 2006.
MEXICO CITY – Felipe Calderon’s enemies cannot so easily dismiss him anymore as el chaparrito, or “the short man.”
“Pipsqueak” gives you a better sense of how the term is used colloquially.
Besides, they tend to call him Fecal — cognate with the English word — or Calderbrón, from the Spanish insult term, cabrón. Or worse. “The Spurious One” and “The Usurper” are currently popular.
Look, I read a fair number of Mexican papers every day. I have never heard Calderón called el chaparrito.
Maybe his momma calls him that.
A month ago, Calderon’s inauguration as Mexico’s new president threatened to break down into a fist-swinging melee, with opponents determined to stop him from taking the oath to protest what they say was his fraudulent victory. It looked as if his presidency could start out as another disappointment for Mexico.
The stated motive of the protest was the presence in and around the Congress — unconstitutional, according to the opposition — of the Armed Forces and federal police directly under the command of the Presidency.
But then Calderon did something his predecessor, Vicente Fox, wasn’t known for. He stood his ground, refusing to cancel the ceremony and appearing in Congress to face down the hollering opposition lawmakers.
The man took the oath at 3 minutes after midnight, sneaking in through a side door and backed by a battalion of Marines outside, flashed the fascist salute — arm extended, palm down — then vamoosed almost before anyone even noticed he had been there for what was essentially a staged photo op.
Later that day, Calderón gave his inaugural address to a carefully screened audience in a presidential auditorium, again under heavy praetorian guard security.
Imagine the American president refusing to come to Congress to deliver the State of the Union address. Fox at least came and delivered his report, even if he did not get to speak.
That set the stage for Calderon’s bold first move in office. He deployed federal troops to the country’s narco-battlefields. They poured into Acapulco and also disarmed corrupt police in Tijuana. They chased down traffickers in Calderon’s home state of Michoacan, where the bespectacled, Harvard-trained lawyer donned an army cap and jacket and stood among them.
Some of the dire prognostications of that Proceso magazine editorial have already been confirmed, as 11 of the very same police officers who had been dispatched to “disarm corrupt police” were filmed taking bribes during the operation.
As a prominent figure in Plan Colombia noted in a recent interview on Calderon’s ambition to imitate the Colombians commented the other days — I think that is in the translation queue –
the unification of federal police proposed by Calderón provides no mechanism for rooting out police corruption. The result, the expert predicts, will be a rapid and fatal metastasis of what is now, at least, compartmentalized police corruption.
And those disarmed Tijuana police? They just got their guns back, one has read just today. Let me dig that up.
Correct. And not a single one arrested, according to the muckraking Zeta of Tijuana. But 11 feds, in town for the big anti-corruption push, were filmed accepting bribes.
Calderon’s firm-handed start has raised his stature and helped earn him more of the popular legitimacy he lacked after his disputed, razor-thin election victory, raising hopes that he will make a difference in the lives of 107 million Mexicans.
Calderón’s plan to control a sudden exploson in the price of the basic food staple was declared dead, by the governors conference, which stayed away in droves, within a week.
Fuel and other consumer staples are a source of worry as well. As a local metro daily noted:
According to Cargill, another factor that inhibits the benefits of the government deal is the fragmentation of the points of tortilla production. The deal covered only 5,000 points of sale, but the country has 150,000 points of sale in all.
I keep asking myself, whatever happened to the great Brazilian open-source e-government initiative of Lula I?
It seems to be reasserting itself. Here’s another data point I collected in the course of my surfing: the Web site of the Ministério Público da União is now Plone- and Zope-powered and W3C-certified as browser-agnostic.
Gen (Ret.) Figueiredo.One witness in the civil trial underway at the moment, Maria Amélia Teles, testified that Col. Ustra personally tortured her for ten days while her children watched, tortured her children while she watched, then told her, when she was alone in her cell, that he had tortured one of her children to death.
A civil case currently underway in a São Paulo court seeks to hold a certain Col. Ustra responsible for the torture and disappearance of persons in his charge when he commanded DOI-CODI and the infamous Operation Bandeirantes during the 1970s.
Brazil has been under from UN pressure to revoke its amnesty law for some time now, a process that under debate in Chile as well, pursuant to an order from the Inter-American Human Rights Court.
In that context, the blogger at Total Alert reproduces a recent speech by the President of the Clube Militar, Gen. Gilberto Barbosa de Figueiredo — on the subject, at a recent event “honoring” Col. Ustra.
Gen. Figueiredo is a leading light of an NGO for former “public servants” in the military dictatorship, called TERNUMA, or “Terrorism Never More,” where you also find folks like Olavo de Carvalho in constant activity.
As you may recall, the current “superminister” of the Casa Civil — she dislikes that characterization, I read today — Dilma Rousseff, is a former guerilla, as was her predecessor, Zé “Rasputin of the Planalto” Dirceu.
I translate.
Exmas autoridades, Exmos Srs Presidentes dos Clubes Naval e de Aeronáutica, Almirante José Júlio Pedrosa e Brigadeiro Ivan Moacyr da Frota, associados dos três clubes que promovem este encontro, senhoras, senhores. Nosso homenageado, Cel Carlos Alberto Brilhante Ustra.
Esteemed authorities, presidents of the Navy and Air Force Club, Admiral Pedrosa and Brig. da Frota, members of the three clubs that are promoting this meeting, ladies and gentleman, I give you our honoree, Col. Carlos Alberto Brilhante Usta.
Regional elections tribunal “washes it hands” and sends a petition to impeach Gov. Cassol and Sen. Expedito up to the federal elections court.
The federal elections prosecutor wants the two officials not to be seated because they engaged in vote-buying. The conduct of the presiding judge seems to speak for itself. I translate.
Seguirá para decisão do Tribunal Superior Eleitoral (TSE) o recurso do Ministério Público Eleitoral contra a diplomação e registro das candidaturas do governador reeleito Ivo Cassol (MD), do senador diplomado Expedito Júnior (MD), de sua mulher Val Ferreira e do irmão de Expedito, o ex-candidato a deputado estadual José Antônio Gonçalves Ferreira, todos acusados de envolvimento num esquema de compra de voto.
This man is high on the NMM-Tabajara Infoquality Test Labs blacklist of highly, highly dubious local hacks and flacks.
So this ought to be good.
And here it is: how biased can Veja really be if they are now reporting on an elections scandal that involves the PSDB in Alagoas?
That is the first part of the fairy tale Uncle Luiz spins for us this week.
I note at the outset that it is impossible to read this fine piece of public-interest journalism without paying for a copy of Veja magazine.
There is no pay-per-article option.
So it is really hard for me to pronounce on that aspect of his analysis. Because we continue to refuse to pay for Veja magazine.
Will a subscriber please cut and paste the text into an e-mail for me?
Na sequência dos escândalos dos dois últimos anos – mensalão, sanguessugas e dossiê Vedoin, para ficar nos que deram mais ibope – não foram raros os leitores deste blog (e decerto de outros) a acusar a mídia de facciosismo, apostando na hipótese de que se fossem tucanos ou pefelistas os principais acusados das maracutaias a cobertura dos jornais em cada caso seria muito menos estridente.
In the series of scandals of the last two years — slush funds and vote-buying, the ambulance overbilling scandal and the Vedoin, to take just those with the highest IBOPE ratings — many readers of this blog (and others, of course) accused the media of factionalism, betting on the theory that if it PSDB or PFL politicians were the main figures accused of wrongdoing, the newspapers would have been much less strident.
It is rare to see Lula getting wide coverage of his international appearances — his last UN speech was essentially blacked out here — but this event got wide play last evening on Globo News and other channels that we watched.
We do not even bother to watch the Jornal Nacional anymore — drinking every time they say something absurd was destroying my liver — but the Globo News channel (40 here on Net in Sampa) is all right.
Lula’s remarks on the Iraq war were especially widely covered in Brazil.
It is a striking about-face, I find, from the general cant according to which Lula’s sort of Cledus-equivalent accent, tinged with gravelly lisping, along with his stumpy, nine-finger bearing and his fondness for soccer-political metaphor, are an embarassment to the nation.
About time, too.
Whatever you think of Lula in terms of your own political calculus, the guy is no chump — or Chávez. He’s a real freaking Brazilian — and in a good way, I think, in the sense that you can horse-trade with the guy with some degree of confidence that even if he is not favorably inclined, he will at least not ratfuck you.
I use the term “ratfuck” in its technical acception, as coined by Donald Segretti. It’s crude, yes — sorry about that — but that was the eact term devised by the folks who made the benign legacy-admission technocrats currently occupying Blair House what they are today.
Davos, Suiza, 26 de enero. Las posturas divergentes entre los gobiernos de America Latina se expusieron en Davos. Mientras el presidente mexicano Felipe Calderón criticó los prejuicios contra el libre comercio que zanjaron el ALCA, las expropiaciones ocurridas en Venezuela, Bolivia y Argentina y las “dictaduras personales vitalicias”, su homólogo brasileño Luiz Inacio Lula da Silva, reivindicó el bloque sudamericano, dentro de éste a Hugo Chávez y a Evo Morales.
Differences among Latin American governments were on display in Davos today. While Mexican president criticized the damage done to the gains brought by NAFTA, the “expropriation” taking place in Venezuela, Bolivia and Argentina, and “personal dictators for life,” his Brazilian colleague defended the South American block, including Chávez and Morales.
De Chávez, el brasileño señaló que fue electo tres veces democráticamente y dijo que si alguien tiene miedo porque Evo Morales quiere nacionalizar el gas debe entender que sus recursos naturales son la única riqueza que tiene Bolivia.
Regarding Chávez, the Brazilian pointed out that he had been elected democratically three times, and said that those who fear that Evo Morales might nationalize natural gas have to understand that natural resources are the only wealth that Bolivia has.
Alckmin the Harvard scholarship boy: As honest and competent as his hair is long?
Banco desmente Alckmin sobre contrato do Metrô (Terra): The World Bank contradicts former São Paulo governor and Harvard scholarship boy Geraldo “The Quasher” Alckmin, saying that the “turnkey” contract for construction of the Yellow Line extension to the São Paulo subway, as negotiated, was not forced on the picolê de chouchou, as he had stated publicly.
A direção do Banco Mundial (Bird) contradisse ontem declaração do ex-governador de São Paulo Geraldo Alckmin (PSDB), que na segunda-feira passada defendeu as obras da Linha 4 do Metrô (Amarela), afirmando que o modelo de preço fechado (“turn key”) foi exigência da instituição, que financia as obras tocadas pelo Consórcio Via Amarela, orçadas em R$ 2 bilhões. Logo após a declaração, Alckmin já tinha recuado, dizendo não saber se a modalidade do contrato fechado pelo governo paulista era exigência ou apenas recomendação do banco.
The board of directors of the World Bank yesterday contradicted a declaration by former Sampa governor Alckmin (PSDB), who last Monday defended the Yellow Line project, saying that the “turnkey” model was required by the World Bank, which is financing the R$2 billion project. Soon after making the statement, Alckmin backpeddled, saying that he did not know whether the type of contract was a requirement or merely a recommendation of the institution.
Integrity and competence, Alckmin- and Harvard-style.
Look, the official line from the federal elections court in Brazil, the TSE, concerning this little flap over e-voting in Alagoas, was that only a given lot of machines, manufactured in 1998, lacked the memory needed to run the new version of the software — released last year — properly.
Fonte: TRE-AL, em 14/08/2006. Dados sujeitos à atualização.
According to data published by the Alagoas election court itself, however, 75% of the machines used in the election were manufactured in 1998 (above).
The latest story making the rounds, then, is, not that the machines lacked memory capacity, but that a transcription error in the disk-drive hardware was responsible for garbling the electronic records downloaded from the machines.
The printed bulletins, however, we are to believe, are to be taken as accurate and sufficient as Plan B for recovering the election results, despite “loss of integrity” is 35%-40% of the internal log files.
Sen. Suassuna: Only recently, and barely, one hears, escaped impeachment by Ethics Commission of Brazilian legislature in the “bloodsucker” federal ambulance procurement skimming case. To loud jeers from some sectors — many sectors — of the general public. But other matters pending may still bring him down. As a local anticorruption project noted back in November: “Documents from the Banestado congressional investigation show that Suassuna moved nearly $2 million through the Delta Bank, in Miami, and funded other foreign accounts through black-market currency traders in Rio de Janeiro without the proper documentation from the Central Bank.”
Fifteen federal deputies will join him in the perp walk.
All part of this garish and ongoing scandal over a “mafia” that skimmed money out of a federal program designed to provide new ambulances to hundreds of municipalities.
The alleged trajectory of the laundered money suggests that we may finally have our first concrete glimpse soon of how a caixa dois — political slush fund — really works. Mark your calendar and tune in to the local equivalent of Court TV.
The coverage pattern is impressive: Almost no coverage in the print media, but top story in the all the national TV newscasts.
Latin American Zeitgeist consultant emeritus
"Eu sou o rei dessa folia, pra delírio da Fiel"
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