Huffington’s Colonel Kurtz: “Exterminate the Brutes”

This is not a psychopathic Brazilian criminal who wants to eat your NGO. This is a corrupt Brazilian policeman in his spare time, increasing his earnings by a factor of ten by immolating his enemies in “the microwave.”

Which Are Worse: Brazil’s Bandits Or Its Leaders? (Chris McGowan, in The Huffington Post):

Three French NGO workers were stabbed to death Tuesday at their group’s headquarters in Rio’s Copacabana neighborhood. Christian Pierre Doupes, his wife Delphine Douyere, and Jerome Faure ran Terr’Ativa, which helped children in poor communities. They were allegedly murdered by three men, one of whom was Tarsio Ramirez, an accountant for Terr’Ativa who had been accused of embezzling 80,000 Reais from the group (roughly $38,000). According to O Globo newspaper, Ramirez was a homeless child who was rescued from the streets of Rio ten years ago by the agency. The murders were especially violent and Jerome’s body showed signs of torture.

This provokes a familiar diatribe:

The grisly slayings of Christian, Delphine and Jerome reflect a disturbing trend in Brazil, which has one of the highest murder rates in the world. Not only is violence out of control, but torture is becoming commonplace as an accompaniment to killing. Criminals, especially members of gangs, often see cruelty as a mark of machismo. They take pride in being indifferent to the suffering of their victims …

Actually, that applies both to criminals and police. And especially to criminals who are police, from law enforcement agencies with a long and unchecked institutional culture of of torture and extrajudicial executions going back to OBAN and DOI-CODI in the 1970s.

It is somewhat surprising to me to see a Huffington blogger parroting the same hysteria that has characterized the media coverage here in Brazil on the latest poster child for the crusade to exterminate the brutes.

Perhaps it should not be; the political blogging industry, after all, whether Red State or Blue, seems to shares the same commitment to apocalyptic rhetoric and the appeal to atavistic emotions.

These incidents are, in fact, sad to say, actually a matter of routine here, first of all, and secondly are showing hopeful signs of an incipient reversal as new policy initiatives kick in.

The implication, as always, is that the latest case only proves that violence is quickly streamrolling out of control and attaining apocalyptic levels.

Violence is slightly less awful than it has ever been, and getting slightly and steadily better. But there may be a long slog ahead before its gets markedly better. Some fundamental governance change need to be consolidated first.

See also

1. World in Crisis: Reuters on the Virtually Naked Cidade Maravilha
2. World in Crisis, II: Carnival of Flackery
3. Brazil: Hysteria Industry Consolidation in the Air
4. Sampa: Churning the Fuss Over Burning The Bus?
5. Free Overseas-Market Media Clipping for the Marketers of Manda Bala
6. Reuters: “Lula Is Soft on Crime”

Brazilians who operate this noise machine tend to be fighting to preserve the hog heaven of the hard men, as the government brings law enforcement back under civilian control, along with other aspects of the state, such as domestic aviation. See Rio: Cabral Backs Off On Bogotá and Look, Here’s The Scoop on the Brazilian Bureaucracy Wars.

But perhaps this is not surprising, given the “local sources” that McGowan cites: The O Globo newspaper and Veja magazine. The same sort of people that folks like Larry Rohter generally mean when they cite “local press sources” to give substance to their fairy tales.

The interesting question about this case in particular might be whether or not it fits another emerging NMM hypothesis: Rio de Janeiro NGOs can get to be a real barra pesada because they make attractive fronts for dubious actors.

Who is this McGowan guy, anyway?

Cargill: Outlaw in Pará?

Santarém, Pará.

MPF/PA requisita embargo urgente do porto da Cargill em Santarém (Press release, Ministério Públic Federal, Brazil).

International logistics Cargill has crossed my radar more frequently recently, mainly for its high public profile in the Mexican tortilla crisis, as a silent bit player in the quiet corruption scandal over Gil Díaz’s maneuverings in the Mexican customs administration, and for the way that a Globo TV news reporter, absurdly, managed to mistake its facility in Paranaguá for a public maritime freight depot in report designed to bash the government there for making a massive hash of things in Paraná, the state to the south of us here in São Paulo.

The reelection campaign of incumbent President Squid had featured port and airport renovation and construction prominently in its advertising to argue that its infrastructure investments had paid off and helped Brazilian export industries.

Now, a Cargill port facility in Santarém, Pará, inside the massive Amazon estuary in Northern Brazil, is getting close scrutiny from federal authorities on environmental grounds, and the MPF — the top federal civil prosecutor, I guess you could say — wants an emergency shutdown of its operations there.

Without fully understanding all those cases I think you could at least say Cargill is a firm with a lot of political risk at the moment.

I translate into my notebook for future reference. I need to try to study up on environmental policy and enforcement, partly because I have a feeling that a tidal wave of esgoto is about to come rolling down the content pipeline and I would sincerely like not to drown in it.

Also, at some point I am going to go up there and have a look-see and I would like to understand what I am looking at.

O Ministério Público Federal no Pará requisitou ao Instituto Brasileiro do Meio Ambiente e dos Recursos Naturais Renováveis (Ibama) uma inspeção urgente no porto da Cargill Agrícola S.A, em Santarém (oeste do Pará). O pedido é para fiscalização por analistas ambientais e paralisação imediata das atividades do porto, além de autuação da empresa por operação irregular. O ofício foi enviado hoje, 26 de fevereiro, ao gerente do Ibama em Santarém e deve ser atendido no prazo de dez dias.

The MPF instructed the Brazilian Institute on the Environment and Renewable Natural Resources (Ibama) to conduct an urgent inspection in the port operated by Cargill Agrícola S.A. in Santarém, eastern Pará. The request is for an inspection by environmental specialists and the immediate stoppage of activities at the port, as well as legal action against the firm for operating irregularly. The document was sent on Feb. 26 to the Ibama director in Santarém and must be responded to within 10 days. 

O embargo a ser imposto pelo Ibama é conseqüência das sucessivas derrotas judiciais da Cargill, empresa com sede em Minneapolis (EUA) que construiu e colocou em operação um terminal graneleiro no Rio Tapajós sem elaborar estudos de impacto ambiental (EIA-Rima). A irregularidade foi apontada pelo MPF em processo ajuizado em 2000 (2000.39.02.000141-0), que obteve liminar favorável do juiz federal Dimis da Costa Braga, antes da construção do porto. Na tentativa de reverter a decisão, a empresa impetrou sete recursos e foi derrotada em todas as instâncias do judiciário – Tribunal Regional Federal da 1ª Região, Superior Tribunal de Justiça e Supremo Tribunal Federal. Agora, a decisão transitou em julgado, ou seja, não cabem mais recursos e a ordem deve ser cumprida.

The embargo to be imposed by Ibama is the outcome of series of legal defeats for Cargill, headquartered in Minneapolis (USA), which built and began operating a grain terminal on the Tapajós River without conducting an environmental impact report (EIA-Rima). The irregularity was pointed out by the MPF in a lawsuit filed in 2000 (2000.39.02.000141-0) in which it obtained an injunction from federal judge Dimis da Costa Braga, prior to the construction of the port. In an attempt to reverse the decision, Cargill filed seven appeals and was defeated at all levels — the district court. the court of appeals and the Supreme court. Now the decision is final: No further appeals are possible and the order must be complied with.  

PhReaking: Hong Kong Flack-Hacking Case

Infosecurity lapses can bug the hell out of your customers.

SEC sues PR hackers: Some newsflow arbitrage is mildly illegal and not conducive to the orderly operation of free and open markets.

The US Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC) has filed fraud charges against a Hong Kong-based company that allegedly hacked into corporate servers to access advance PR filings and made at least $2.7 million in the past two months by trading on the stolen data.

Another reason to be wary when rocket-scientists armed with glittering generalities promise to deliver you “unique information few have seen before it becomes news.”

The regulator has obtained an emergency asset freeze against Blue Bottle – which is described as an accounting and tax consultancy — and its owner Matthew Charles Stokes.

Not Blue Bottle the antispam company, I assume. Quick: Issue a “we are not THAT Blue Bottle” press release! But let me check.

EDGAR data shows a fellow by that name as a stakeholder in a firm called Helios and Matheson of Singapore and Chennai.

The Commission alleges that the defendents fraudulently gained access to non-public information using illegal “devices and schemes” which may include hacking into computer networks and gaining electronic access to systems that contain information about imminent news releases.

And who did they allegedly victimize? Pay-for-play infotainment network geniuses and the leading computer security specialist.

The firm is accused of using the stolen data to trade in securities of at least 12 US companies, including AllianceBernstein, Symantec and RealNetworks.

One Owner for Univision

Above: Felipe Calderón of PAN receives crucial support from Brozo the Televisa ambush interview clown. Source: YouTube. Televisa will not take over the U.S. Spanish-language broadcaster, nor will Vicente Fox head the network under its new ownership. Some superflack with deep K Street ties will head it instead. Adjust your bets accordingly.

El Financiero has some media deal squeal that maybe even Dealbook has not got around to yet: Televisa sells out its stake in U.S. Spanish-language broadcaster Univision, which is being acquired by a “group of investors” called Broadcasting Media Partners.

México, 28 de febrero.- Televisa, la cadena más grande de televisión y radio en México, confirmó que venderá todas sus acciones en la cadena estadounidense en español Univision Communications Inc., luego que los recientes propietarios nombraron al próximo director general de esta última empresa.

From The Identity of Identify and Non-Identity File: Florida Elections Again

PKI identify management system used by the DEA’s Office of Diversion Control. Could a DNS poisoning attack dupe the end user?

Is it just a glitch in the system? (Times-Union, Duval Country, Florida).

“Glitch” is one of the most interesting Google News keyword searches there is, I find.

This case, which just popped up on screen,  reminds me a lot of a case that we saw here in Sâo Paulo in the last election, for example: Will the Real Revolutionary Movement of Wladimir Please Stand Up and Be Counted?

It started with a computer making a mistake. Shocking, I know. But while we’re debating what some humans in a polling place did, let’s not forget that this all stems from what some voter identification software didn’t do: accurately identify a voter.

You will recall that a ChoicePoint-generated list of voters ineligible to vote because of felony convictions wound up denying the vote to tens of thousands of voters with the same, or similar, names but different identifying data — in some cases, the criminal John Jones from North Dakota was white and the poor bastard who did not get to vote in Florida was black, and had never been to North Daktoa, for example — as convicted felons in other states.

In case you missed it, just when it looked like our local elections might be dull, we have a juicy little subplot in, of all places, the race to see who oversees local elections. We have a security video given to the Times-Union by someone hoping to see Jerry Holland lose his bid to remain Duval County supervisor of elections. We have accusations that Holland acted improperly in August, allowing a woman to vote twice in 45 minutes. We have counter-accusations of the video being obtained illegally and interpreted inaccurately.

Current Wetware Content Downloads: The Critique of Pure Carta

Hard numbers on the foot-pound biting power of fanged biological weaponry. Floofy-woofy cutie-wootie munchkin-cats. The problem being that the former can sometimes try to eat the latter. We have that problem, in fact, although our cats are street smart and not especially floofy woofy. Newsstand, Santos bus terminal, in São Paulo’s spooky port city, as recently reconnoitered.

Some people collect stamps.

I collect published instances of logic-chopping and other rhetorical fleurs du mal, and I also enjoy reverse-engineering the editorial strategy of glossy magazines in various fields. I really like magazines. Working on magazines. Reading magazines. The magazine, potpourri of fabulous factoids, is a great genre. Long live the magazine.

In theory, this is part of an exercise specifically targeted to my technical chops as a business editor — if that is what I plan to keep working at, although lately I find myself interested more in working in the anonymous trenches of journalistic and technical translation.

Still, I often find myself wandering off into other areas that interest me as well, including fashion magazines, general-interest newsweeklies, sports rags, specialty rags, and gossip rags. And combinations thereof.

This week’s Carta Capital — one of my favorite magazines down here in Brazil, run by the veteran journalist who received this year’s journo of the year award from the foreign correspondents — tends to confirm two pet theories of mine.

(1) That some of the nonsense that crept in to the magazine lately crept in because Mino Carta was on vacation.

And (2) that the magazine’s recently sealed partnership with the U.K. Observer means that I am just going to have to accept having to read manipulative, blowhard, massively overwritten, political marketing-laced Fleet Street nonsense from time to time.

But did I not move semi-permanently, on a rotating basis, to the Southern Hemisphere just because I wanted a break from that sort of thing?

First, however, it was interesting to read the magazine’s take on a campaign being launched by the federation of Brazilian Catholic bishops advocating for closer attention to the problems, social and environmental, of Brazil’s Amazon Basin region.

Would this campaign join the chorus of the general “Lula has failed to address the impending environmental apocalpyse!” meme?

Remarks from Lula on not permitting “obstructionist” environmental lawsuits to thwart the Rio San Francisco big dig — the river’s waters will be partially diverted into irrigation for the drought-prone Northeast — led to a barrage of criticisms along the lines of “Lula betrays his peasant origins by defending people who burn down the rainforest to support their primitive swidden agriculture.”

Same folks who violently — literally, violently, as in running death squads — oppose land reform.

Brazil’s environment minister, Marina Silva — a figure of some moral stature — is likely staying on in her post. But you read very little about the activities of her ministry.

It was interesting, on that score, to note that federal police running a huge white-collar crime sting in the Zona Franca de Manaus, by the way.

This is a notable noise-machine product from the fatherland, property and family cabal down here in Brazil, and observers of political Catholicism are naturally on high alert with the Pope arriving to declare Brazil’s first saint in a São Paulo soccer stadium, hard on the heels of a Lula-Bush exchange of visits.

On the other hand, a prominent São Paulo cardinal recently moved to Vatican City to take up a key post, leading to further speculation about the balance of power of various factions.

As has the case of the Guarani-speaking former bishop who is running for president of Paraguay.

On that same story, Carta has a backgrounder in this issue titled “The Return of the Jesuits.”

It comes out at the same time as a characteristically vandalistic Larry Rohter filing from Assunción on the case.

You can count on Rohter — like clockwork, this guy — to build up the public of grotesque, ultraviolent anti-democratic crooks in the Pinochetist mold as bulwarks against populism.

Much as Reagan celebrated the nun-raping Contras as “the moral equivalent of the founding fathers.”

But let’s start with the Amazon, a wild and wooly region that provokes an awful lot of paranoid, apocalyptic drivel in the rabid, nakedly self-serving press and the fascistoid Netroots here.

I am going to translate a bit of the brief note straight out of my glossy newsstand copy, FYI, as a benchmark for later developments.

“Swiftness of Dow drop due to computers”

Propagation of light through space “due to the luminiferous aether.”

Swiftness of Dow drop due to computers (BusinessWeek):

Dow Jones & Co., the media company which manages the flagship index, said around 2 p.m — just two hours before the New York Stock Exchange was to close — it was discovered computers were not properly calculating trades. The company blamed the problem on the record volume at the NYSE, and switched to a backup computer.

This seems to contradict the Reuters headline on the story and the Dow’s own statement: Glitch hits Dow average but prices unaffected.

NEW YORK, Feb 27 (Reuters) – A technical glitch hit the system that calculates the Dow Jones industrial average <.DJI> on Tuesday, but it did not affect stock prices, a spokeswoman for Dow Jones Indexes said.

The spokeswoman made the following point:

“At around 2 p.m. we realized extraordinarily heavy volume coming in and that caused a delay in the Dow Jones data system,” said Sybille Reitz. “As a result the calculation of the Dow average temporarily lagged behind the market decline. We then switched over to a backup system, which resulted in a rapid catch up in the published value of the Dow,” she said.

But she emphasized that no calculation errors were involved. The problem was in the publication of the output.

Reitz added that at no point did the swing in the index affect stock prices. “The calculation is absolutely correct, we just had a delay in the output.”

Which is bad enough, as NMM noted yesterday:

Did the market really go nuts because its brain was suddenly deprived of the oxygen of information?

Still, (2) either BusinessWeek knows better when it writes that “computers were not properly calculating trades,” or (2) it is garbling the facts.

Did they fact-check the Dow Jones statement and find it inaccurate and full of spin, warranting a report whose wording seems to contradict it?

Let’s have a read.

“Go Manual If You Can!”; W$J Infographic Informs

Post-hack ergo propter hack?

After a Rough Morning, A Data Backup Jolts The Blue-Chip Average: The Wall Street Journal starts answering a transaction-network nerd’s probing questions.

It puts three warm bodies on the case — none of them, it seems, summer blogging interns working on lifestyle stories for the weekend edition — and cranks it out by the morning edition. And it does so even though its own parent company may be on the hot seat in the case. Which it properly discloses.

I am going to read this with great attention. Thank you.

And compare it with other coverage. BusinessWeek’s coverage — Swiftness of Dow Drop Due to Computers — could not possibly be more meatheaded than its headline. Could it? That’s a bit like saying “Swiftness of sunset due to force of gravity!”

This is why the NMM(TV)-SNBCNNBS open source Bloomberg box, with its severely restricted budget for paid content, continues to fork out $99 a year for the W$J, and considers it cheap.

If you want to cut the fat in your operating budget, fire the Moonie-infiltrated editorial board.

Speaking of headlines “backlog” would have been a better choice of word for the headline than “backup,” since “backup” is commonly used to describe procedures for “backing up” data — copying them to a secure location to avoid catastrophic loss of valuable information.

In this case, in fact, the “backup” system was the eventual solution, not the problem, it seems.

Words matter.

The Brazilian Portuguese verb that fits the occasion is entupir, as in

Meu amor, minha vida
Minha privada entupida.

Swing Low, Shanghai

Shanghai stock exchange: pandemonium in the panopticon.

I read it first in El Financiero (Mexico): Shanghai seeks the proper price, but global markets continue to respond to the wild rumors with lemming-like panic.

Pekín, 28 de febrero.- Las acciones chinas se recuperaron hoy tras la mayor caída en diez años registrada ayer, y los dos mercados de valores del país cerraron con ganancias y volumen de negocio alto.

Chinese stocks recovered today after the biggest in drop in ten years was registered yesterday, and the country’s two stock markets closed with gains and high volume.

El índice general de Shanghai acciones convertibles y no convertibles subió 109 puntos respecto a la jornada anterior -un aumento del 3.94 por ciento- y cerró con 2.881.07 puntos.

The Shanghai index of convertibles and non-convertible issues rose 109 points over the previous day — a rise of 3.94% — and closed at 2,881.07 points.

En Shenzhen, el índice general subió 248 puntos en relación a la última sesión, un 3.19 por ciento más, y cerró con 8.039.70 puntos.

In Shenzhen, the index rose 248 points, 3.19 percent and closed at 8,039.70.

The Viola Caipira: A Charming Demonstration

YouTube features an educational project from Brazilian flyover country. The group shown here is the Orquestra de Sanfona e Viola from Mimoso do Sul, Espirito Santo. The video is crude. The song is good.

Source: ViolaCaipira.com.br.

Disorder Management and the Downfall of the Dow: Which Glitch is Which?

In Portuguese, bubble means bolha: Carta Capital on NYC real estate and fears of a cheap and sleazy credit crash. Today on the beach at Santos, near Posto No. 3, at the barraca of the good folks from Ô Pirata.

Three items to ponder, under the general heading of stunning declarations left unclarified.

(I) I come back from today’s exploratory expedition to Santos to read that the Dow Drops to Close More Than 416 Points Down.

My main stake in the great game — a piddling handful of shares, so I am not exactly standing on the ledge outside my office — is EWZ:

-4.23 (-8.59%)

For me personally, that means some niece or nephew is not going to get that iPod they wanted for their birthday. Just as well.

My stop-loss order is programmed. Fidelity, my online broker, however, has, as I recall — bitterly — utterly botched up “a set and forget” stop-loss order of mine in the past, selling at the wrong price and costing me money.

So I am keeping an eye on that.

A mysterious comment in the Washington Post report, however, suggests that the law of supply and demand was not fully in command of prices, as per the classical theory of how markets work. The WaPo:

Officials later said the precipitous fall was caused by a technical problem that caused a backlog of sales orders to come through suddenly.

I would really like to hear more about that.

First of all, who would say such an astonishing thing?

Second of all, did anyone think to ask them why they think that is true?

And another question: to ‘come suddenly through” what? What information system are we talking about? Who built it and how does it work?

Glitches, their causes and their consquences are kind of a hobby of mine.

I also tend to think that making sure you follow the 5 Ws checklist when reporting portentous statements on matters of great moment makes for better information quality control.

(II) The Reuters headline today: Glitch hits Dow average but prices unaffected.

NEW YORK, Feb 27 (Reuters) – A technical glitch hit the system that calculates the Dow Jones industrial average <.DJI> on Tuesday, but it did not affect stock prices, a spokeswoman for Dow Jones Indexes said.

(III) Dow Jones Newswire itself reports: NYSE plagued by trading glitches.

Rio: Federal “Support” In Killing Zone, Not Just Green Zone

Coquinhos from our own personal Green Zone. We are zipping off to the beach at Santos today for a quick Sampa off-day miniholiday.

Rio: Força Nacional vai atuar na zona norte (Terra/O Dia): The FNSP, the state-federal public safety task force, will “support” the military police in operations in Rio shantytowns starting in March.

This is important because the FNSP, which vets and trains police agents from other organizations under the auspices of the federal Ministry of Justice, is trained in human rights protection and proportionate use of force, while the activity of Rio PMs constantly raises questions about Geneva Convention compliance, for example.

See Geneva Convention Out the Window in Rio Free-Fire Zones?

The news angle is that among the areas to be patrolled will be the shantytown where a notorious crime recently went down: the dragging death of a young boy, caught in his safety belt during a carjacking. With a toy gun. Sad as freaking hell, and also the occasion of vast hysteria in the press in the classic Veja-style “The macumbeiros of the MST want to eat your babies” mold. See also Veja’s Mogadishu Bombardment Blueprint.

This being O Dia, the sidebar is headlined “Parents of João Helio Badmouth Lula.” Last week they were badmouthing the Rio PMs for towing their car and wanting them to pay through the nose to get it out of impound. As the Naked Maia noted a while back (Surrender Unto Cesar! The Naked Maia Strikes Again — this and other spot translations from the “ex-blog” of the Rio mayor are among the most popular posts on the NMM. Go figure.):

The other day, at a dinner in a fashionable restaurant, a senior editor for a major national media operation was saying — that same red wine again — that the fundamental thing you have to do to “loyalize” your audience is to trash the government. That this is the common attitude of people who would rather not take responsibility for their own failures and therefore like to hear that all of their problems are the government’s fault. Trash, criticize, find errors and generalize them, show one side of the dispute as if it were the whole picture, this is the kind of thing the reader or view or listener never tires of hearing, and the people who thrive in the media business are the ones that give the people what they really want.

Maia is a bit of a compulsive raconteur — cynics have dubbed him King of the Factoid — but this observation, at least, is amply corroborated every time you tune the TV to Channel 18 or 40 on NET in São Paulo.

As a vigilante consumer of public safety services, I am waiting for the program to fuck up royally before I start trashing it. It has not fucked up royally so far.

And the talk about helping out people who live in the Red Zone, not just the Green Zone, appeals to me. May they walk the walk.

Today’s intel report:

Equipes da Força Nacional de Segurança (FNS) vão reforçar o policiamento feito pela PM na zona norte do Rio de Janeiro no início do mês que vem. Os agentes ficarão nas áreas do 3º BPM (Méier), 16º BPM (Olaria) e 9º BPM (Rocha Miranda) – esta última foi onde houve a morte de João Hélio Vieites, 6 anos. Em entrevistas durante o Carnaval, os pais do menino, Rosa Cristina e Elson Vieites, criticaram a falta de policiamento na zona norte. Hoje, o Ministério Público vai denunciar à Justiça por latrocínio e formação de quadrilha armada os quatro bandidos maiores de idade que participaram do crime.

Teams from the National Public Security Force (FNSP) wil reinforce PM policing in the Northern Zone of Rio de Janeiro starting at the beginning of next month. The agents will operate in the areas of the 3rd PM Battalion (BPM), the 16th BPM (Olaria) and the 9th BMP (Rocha Miranda) — the latter was where João Hélio Vieites, 6, died recently. In interviews given during Carnaval, the parents of the young boy, Rosa Cristina and Elson Vieites, criticized the lack of policing in the Northern Zone. Today, the Public Ministry will indict four adult suspects in the case for theft and armed gang-banging.

The newsflow on the 16th BPM in particular is consistently disturbing. On signs of apparent indiscipline by military personnel in general, see Militias, Marines and the Traffic Thumb Noses at Rei Momo.

There was a report in O Globo the other day that the FNSP would “leave Rio after Carnaval, to return only for the Pan-American Games in July.” I guess not.

I do not understand why FNSP (national public safety force) constantly gets shorted to FNS (national security force). FNSP is still the official moniker, I believe.

“É preciso levar também segurança à zona norte, ao subúrbio, e não focalizar tudo na área de elite, tipo zona Sul ou, por exemplo, no Sambódromo, onde estão os turistas”, disse Rosa a O Dia, há uma semana. O crime foi no dia 7 de fevereiro, quando o Corsa onde estavam João, sua mãe e irmã de 13 anos foi cercado por bandidos em Oswaldo Cruz. Rosa e a filha conseguiram sair do veículo, mas não tiveram tempo para retirar o menino. O bando arrancou com o carro e o garoto, preso pelo cinto de segurança, foi arrastado por 7 km, até Cascadura.

The Solar Lottery: Dueling Press Releases

Agência Brasil follows up on the Brazilian bombshell of the day: A scandal involving an alleged money-laundering scheme that involved purchasing tickets from the national lottery system in the desired amount.

One of the tickets would then conveniently pay off, or the fraudsters would present a forged winning ticket, returning the sum to the holder as “winnings.”

It reminds me a bit of the plot of  Philip K. Dick’s The Solar Lottery, which involves a scheme to defraud a chance-driven mechanism of social control that is itself inspired by J.L. Borges’ “The Lottery in Babylon” and RAND Corporation minimax theories.

And here’s the rub: Sen. Álvaro Dias (PSDB) of Paraná, who loudly broke the story, said the scheme flourished from 2003-2006.

But the federal Caixa Econômica Federal says that most of the instances cited occurred before 2000, during FHC I and II.

The dynamic is a familiar one: the mensalão scandal here, involving money-laundering into political slush funds, also uncovered some potential wrongdoing during the Lula years.

But the congressional inquiry was shut down when it was discovered that Belo Horizonte Baldy — publicist Marcos Aurélio de Souza — may have set up the scheme for the benefit of Sen. Azeredo of Minas Gerais in the 1990s.

Sen. Azeredo resigned as PSDB  president in the wake of the revelations.  His case is pending. See Belo Horizonte Baldy Bombshell to Burst.

The other aspect is that you have two versions of the story being pushed out over the wires: The press release from the Senator, published through the Agência Senado, and the story with the additional informaion through the Agência Brasil, which is part of Radiobras, the government (executive) broadcasting operation.

A Caixa Econômica Federal afirmou que a maioria dos pagamentos de prêmios de loteria citados pelo senador Álvaro Dias (PSDB-PR) como lavagem de dinheiro ocorreu há mais de seis anos. Isso contradiz o senador tucano, que disse hoje (26), em plenário, que a irregularidade ocorreu entre 2002 e 2006, ou seja, majoritariamente durante o primeiro mandato do governo Lula (2003-2006).

The CEF said that most of the payments of lottery prizes cited by Sen Dias (PSDB-PR) as money-laundering transactions occurred more than six year ago. This contradicts the Toucan senator, who said today (Feb. 26) on the floor of the Senate that the irregularities occurred between 2002 and 2006, mainly during the first mandate of Lula (2003-2006). 

“A maioria dos pagamentos citados pelo senador ocorreu até o ano 2000”, diz nota oficial da Caixa, que garante cumprir “rigorosamente” as determinações contidas na resolução nº 3 do Conselho de Controle de Atividades Financeiras (Coaf).

“Most of the payments cited by the senator occurred before 2000,” said an official statement from the CEF, which promised to comply “rigorously” with the findings in Resolution No. 3 of COAF, the Council for Control of Financial Activities.

The People Have Faith in Electronic Voting!

I caught this today on Rondonoticias | A Informação mais Confiável! (“the most trustworthy information”) from the wild northern climes of Rondônia.

Again, however, it confirms my theory: Brazilian newspapers simply copy and paste press releases from the judiciary off the wires and run them as news.

Coverage of issues outside the news agenda dictated by the judiciary’s public relations machine is almost nonexistent, while access to court filings and documents is unbelievably complicated and technically unreliable.

I say it again: As a stranger in paradise — a Brooklynite in Brazil — I find this jaw-dropping.

A judge, in my innocent Tom Sawyer world, is someone who only voices his or opinion publicly in formal sessions, which are readily available to the public, and only after taking official notice of and deliberating deeply on the facts in the case.

I remind you of the behavior of the chief federal elections judge here:

TSE president’s Marco Aurélio Mello’s declaration to the press that the “dossiergate” affair “is worse than Watergate,” and endorsing the impeachment of da Silva” … is the most egregious of those bizarre and unjudicious ex parte remarks I have mentioned here and there over the past couple of weeks. Mello … later admitted that the TSE had yet to take judicial notice of the matter, and that he spoke without any familiarity with the facts in the case. The TSE later summoned presidential adviser Freud Godoy to testify on the matter — before, if I have my facts straight, the Federal Police had taken his deposition.

Godoy was later cleared of wrongdoing. The chief investigator from the PF called the accusations levianas. “Stupid,” basically.

Back in Kansas, meanwhile, instead of a press office that produces its own television programming, your courts have a court clerk who xeroxes enough copies for the courthouse press corps who are constantly hanging around asking annoying questions.

I actually worked as a city clerk in Oakland once, you know. I ran bid unsealings on city contracts, among other things.
So it’s jaw-dropping that the judiciary here has its own public-relations machine, first of all.

And jaw-dropping that it controls coverage of its own activities to such an extent. And jaw-dropping that it lobbies Congress on legislation in its own institutional interests. See also The Wild and Wooly Saga of Brazil’s Election “Mini-Reform”.

And jaw-dropping, finally, in the nonsense it promotes under the rubric of “voter education.”

See also Mello Still Life of the Ex Parte Party in Alagoas Algorithmic Anarchy Case, and this viewing note on its television channel, TV Justiça.

Today, along with a renewed wave of warnings about the upcoming deadline for squaring accounts with the elections authority — a legitimate enough topic for a media blitz, since the consequences of noncompliance can be amazingly stuff, up to and including losing your right to apply for a passport or attend a public university — there is this.

A Justiça Eleitoral é a instituição mais confiável para a população brasileira, revelou uma pesquisa realizada após as eleições de 2006. O levantamento foi feito pelo Instituto Nexus – Centro de Informação Estratégica para avaliar a imagem da instituição e aferir a efetividade da campanha Vota Brasil 2006 – e divulgada no site do Tribunal Superior Eleitoral (TSE). A pesquisa também atestou que a urna eletrônica é uma unanimidade nacional.

The election authority is the institution must trusted by the Brazilian people, revealed a poll conducted shortly after the 2006 elections. The survey was conducted by the Instituto Nexus Center for Strategic Information to evaluate the public image of the institution and assess the effectiveness of the Brazil Votes 2006, and was published on the Web site of the federal elections tribunal (TSE). The survey also showed national unanimity on the electronic voting machine.

Published on the Web site several months ago, but relaunched as a press release this week.

Brazil’s Dossiêgate: The Day of the Undead Aloprados

The other Marcus Aurelius: “The object of life is not to be on the side of the majority, but to escape finding oneself in the ranks of the insane“

PF pode indiciar mais de 15 laranjas por dossiê antitucanos (Agência Estado, the Estado de S. Paulo wire service): The other shoe keeps trying to drop in the mountain of money case made by Edmilson “Bruno Surfistinha” Bruno of the Brazilian Federal Police, but it remains hard to tell whether the beast is a barefoot millipede or a sací — the legendary pipe-smoking one-legged trickster of Brazilian folklore.

One item to note, for fans of the case: The attempt to indict gubernatorial candidate and Sen. Aloisio Mercadante of the PT-SP has been recommended for dismissal — prompting a Folha de S. Paulo op-ed by the Senator that I will translate for you in a bit. But the Supreme Court, this AE report suggests, can still overrule that recommendation.

Along with the PF’s characterization of the charges against presidential advisor Freud Godoy as “disingenous” and “stupid” (levianas), and others, the development opens more gaps in the infamous “domino theory” attack ad mounted by the PSDB-PFL “Coalition for a Decent Brazil” of Geraldo “I am not responsible” Alckmin.

See also Operation Tabajara: “Idiots, Yes, Criminals, No”.

That ad was ordered off the air, with right of reply to the Alckmin’s opponent, on the basis that it was, er, based on facts not in evidence. But it circulated widely on YouTube nevertheless.

All hail, YouTube, Amazonian headwaters of all inconvenient truths.

Cursed be YouTube, Amazonian headwaters of all lies and jest.

It is amazing the degree to which you find the exact same people arguing each of those positions with the same mouth-foaming passion at one time or another. Or even simultaneously.

Much like blogging evangelist Jefferson Morley of the WaPo’s Global Opinion Roundup, in fact.

The drip, drip, drip of official findings also makes this an opportune moment to remember what was, for me, the most vivid moment of the election season last year: The ex-parte maracutú that emerged from the mouth of the chief justice of Brazil’s elections court, Marco Aurélio de Mello, recently described by an admirer in Consultor Jurídico as “Famed for his independent stance and for having the courage to tell the truth in public.”

As I wrote before:

Among the “truths” that Justice de Mello has uttered in public was the proposition that the “dossier” case was “a Brazilian Watergate” and merited “the impeachment of the President of the Republic.”

He later explained that he was not apprised of any of the facts in the case, and immediately subpoenaed this Mr. Godoy for an elaborate show trial. Mr. Godoy was never charged.

See also Arrest, Detain, Then Discover the Crime.

Subsequent developments continue to support the notion that Carta Capital magazine was asking the correct questions in that piece.

Today’s dose of truthiness, then, translated hastily for Kremlinological parsing.

In the deep Kremlinological background: The current struggle for a successor to the outgoing head of the federal police, and the “struggle in the dark” between the ala toucana and the alleged ala petista of the department. In my observation, however, the ala petista — I suppose there could be such a thing — tends to be defined to include anyone in favor of governance reform.

The report, by the way, is by Catarine Piccioni of the Agência Estado, who also works for the online news service Olhar Direto.

As is common at metro dailies all over these days, the Estadão print edition and the online and syndication operations are under separate management, I believe it is.

And the difference in approach is often palpable.

Cuiabá is the capital of Mato Grosso, where the “ambulance mafia” operated and where the “mountain of money” cases is being overseen by a federal district court.

The Ball of Fire case, meanwhile, is also ongoing in Mato Grosso do Sul.

On which see also Brazil: Ball of Fire Flames Get Higher For Paraguayan Marlboro Men.

The “thick jungles” of the north and south seems like appropriate settings for this Hobbesian drama, in fact.

The weird thing is that Justice Pertence, whose name has arisen in the latter “thick jungle” investigation, will be ruling on the recommendations of the public prosecutor in the former “thick jungle” investigation.

CUIABÁ – O delegado Diógenes Curado Filho pretende indiciar mais de 15 pessoas sob a acusação de terem atuado como laranjas no episódio do dossiê contra os tucanos José Serra e Geraldo Alckmin. Os indiciamentos por crime contra o sistema financeiro nacional dependem apenas do retorno do inquérito à Polícia Federal de Mato Grosso.

Police official Diógenes Curado Filho intends to indict another 15 persons for allegedly acting as “cutouts” [fronts, frontmen] in the episode involving the dossier against PSDB candidates José Serra and Geraldo Alckmin. The indictments for financial crimes await only the report from the Federal Police of Mato Grosso.

“The Adjective Kills”: A Sonnet From the Portuguese

The borchuga morning edition: last bastion against the onslaught of the content managers?

Basta frequentar, ocasionalmente que seja, a revista “Veja”, e ler um subproduto jornalístico, chamado Diogo Mainardi, para se perceber o empreendimento reaccionário que estava (e está) em movimento. Há tempo, Hélio Fernandes, irmão do Millôr, e director da “Tribuna da Imprensa”, publicou um artigo terrível, no qual revelava as fontes económicas e alimentares daquela revista. E A extraordinária, por volumosa, vitória de Lula não está firmemente consolidada. A direita brasileira é golpista, e tem escrita uma história sangrenta contra a democracia. Nunca perdoou a Lula as grandes alterações sociais realizadas. E tem “esquecido” os “mensalões” do tempo de Fernando Henrique Cardoso.

It is is enough to read, however infrequently, Veja magazine and its journalistic byproduct, Diogo Mainardi, to see the reactionary undertaking that was (and is) underway in Brazil. Some time ago, Hélio Fernandes, brother of Millôr and director of the Tribuna da Imprensa, published a stunning article in which he revealed the economic sources of this magazine. And the extraordinary, because substantial, electoral victory of Lula is still not firmly consolidated. The Brazilian right is coup-minded, and his written a bloody chapter in Brazilian history against democracy. It has never forgiven Lula for the social changes he has realized. And it has “forgotten” the “mensalôes” — political slush-fund scandals — from the time of Fernando Henrique Cardoso.

Writing in Portugal Digital, Batista Bastos of the Lusitanian Jornal de Negócios contemplates “the death of the newspaper” — “this revolution is irrevocable!” — and the advent of journalistic innovation with picaresque post-Salazarist impatience.

Sad to say, you often read better news coverage of Brazil — I am not speaking about individual examples of reporting, but a coherent news agenda, with the important things well organized according what actual readers want and need to know about, and the nonsense passed over in silence — in certain Portuguese online publications and news agencies than you do in the major metro dailies and newswires here. There is a lively ongoing debate among Lusitanian journobloggers that is well worth following simply for the original contributions they have to make at the theoretical level.

See also Brazil: Why All Pipelines Flow To the Sea of Noise for a parallel local critique.

The problem being, of course, that Portugal and Brazil are two nations separated by a common language. Aqueloutros? Díspar? Manigâncias? Ô ki? But it is worth the effort.

If only the Tribunal da Imprensa had a search engine for its archives.

Porquê “de referência” o “Público” e o “Diário de Notícias”? Não são mais bem escritos, não são mais “plurais”, não são mais dedicados à causa pública, não são mais equânimes.

Why do we call O Público and the Diário de Noticias “the papers of record”? Neither is well written, or pluralistic, or dedicated to the public interest, or balanced, anymore.

Mexico: (Michael) Hammering IFE

The heavily plasticized womanoid who called Rep. Murtha a “coward” on the floor of the House was both Florida Secretary of State and chair of the Bush election campaign in the state in 2000. The USA is a banana republic now. 

Anuncian empleados de IFE paro ante eventual despido (El Universal, Mexico City): When life gets interesting, good newspapers do, too. And life is always interesting if you look at it from the right angle.

I cannot take my eyes off this IFE case in Mexico, partly because it makes such an interesting parallel to the trials and tribulations of elections governance in Brazil and on my home turf back in Gringolândia.

See also my initiating-coverage post on Banana Republicanism.

El Instituto Federal Electoral (IFE) despedirá entre el miércoles y el jueves a alrededor de 300 personas de oficinas centrales, y unos mil en total en todo el país, que incluye a trabajadores administrativos de bajo rango, como parte de la reducción de 720 millones de pesos del presupuesto, informó el dirigente de los trabajadores Germán Manuel León Rodríguez, quien anunció un paro y una movilización ante “esa liquidación masiva”.

The Federal Elections Institute (IFE) will lay off around 300 employees of its central offices on Wednesday and Thursday, and another 1,000 around the country, including low-ranking adminstrative personnel, as part of the reduction of 72 million pesos in its budget, said the leader of the workers, Germán Manuel León Rodríguez, who announced a work stoppage and a mobilization against this “massive liquidation.”

En el marco de esa protesta, agregó, se repudiará también la decisión del Tribunal Electoral del Poder Judicial de la Federación, de haberle negado a los trabajadores del Instituto el derecho a organizarse en sindicato, contraviniendo con ello la Constitución y acuerdos con la Organización Internacional del Trabajo (OIT).

As part of this protest, he added, they will repudiate the decision by the supreme elections court (TRIFE) that denied IFE workers the right to organize a union, contravening the Constitution as well as an accord with the ILO.

Of Fish and Monkeys: A Think-Aloud

“Seizing of the Nanking Palace.” See also “Spontaneous Joy as the Free Iraqi Forces Seize Firdaus Square.”

Even as jurors pondered whether Vice President Cheney’s former chief of staff should be convicted for lying about what the Bush administration did to smear one of its critics, there was Cheney accusing another adversary of doing the work of the terrorists.

Smearing Like It’s 2003: Post pundit E. J. Dionne Jr. illustrates an NMM rule of thumb according to which

Noise machines are like sharks: If they stop swimming, they die. But they only have one gear: full steam ahead toward the smell of blood.

Known informally as the “drinking your own Kool-Aid” fallacy.

The fabricate-and-smear cycle illustrated so dramatically during the case of I. Lewis “Scooter” Libby explains why President Bush is failing to rally support for the latest iteration of his Iraq policy. The administration’s willingness at the outset to say anything, no matter how questionable, to justify the war has destroyed its credibility. Its habit of attacking those who expressed misgivings has destroyed any goodwill it might have enjoyed. Bush and Cheney have lost the benefit of the doubt.

The problem with that analogy, of course — and the problem with biological and ecological metaphors for human collective undertakings in general, along the lines of the “business ecosystem” pseudo-theory promoted with shark-like blind persistence by the Harvard Business Review and James “The Second Superpower” Moore — is that sharks are extremely successful predators that have not evolved beyond their basic business model for millions and millions of years.

Swim with your mouth open towards the smell of blood until something else swims into it. Then bite whatever that is. See also The Structure and Function of the White Shark Brain.

How the White Shark translates sensory input and its brain’s internal chemistry to behavioral output largely remains a mystery.

Microsoft, the paradigm case of the post-modern business ecosystem in the HBR pantheon, seems to like to do business this way.

And Conway’s Law apparently applies.

Yet Cheney has learned nothing and forgotten nothing. His latest demon is House Speaker Nancy Pelosi, whom he accuses of validating al-Qaeda’s objectives.

Condaleeza Rice on fictitious weapons of mass destruction:

“We don’t want the smoking gun to be a mushroom cloud.”

Colin Powell on Iraq:

“You break it, you own it.”

Dick Cheney:

“Failure is merely inevitable success whose time the Almighty has not yet seen fit to announce.”

If you swim toward the smell of blood with your mouth open long enough, something will swim into it that you can bite.

Xico Sá Takes Pyjamas Media to the Praça

The Praça da República, across from the Victorian train terminal, the Estação da Luz. “The people who sleep in the park support Quintus for mayor” — satirical Pompeiian campaign grafitto.

Item: no mínimo | Ponte Aérea SP » Blog Archive » Feios, sujos e malvados. Xico Sá, the São Paulo anchor of the Rio-SP “air bridge” column, is a local columnist who styles himself a flaneur and likes to focus on the human element of the urban scene.

See also Kassab’s Krusaders in Kollege Follies.

In this column, he perpetrates an act of madness by a blogger not content with the “pyjamas media” tradition of citizen journalism.

This headcase takes his pajamas out to see who’s sleeping in the “renovated” Praça República.

They used to kill queers on the Praça República at night, notoriously.

The column is titled “Ugly, dirty and evil” — a reference to “The Good, the Bad and the Ugly,” I think; Clint Eastwood’s new films are out now and getting lots of push — and reports on the progress of what Mr. Sá calls “the bum-proofing of downtown.” I translate hastily.

- Que banco que nada, banco é lugar de malandro ou de namorado, eu durmo é aqui na beira do lago, ainda escuto o barulhinho da água, parece o do riacho perto de casa lá em Piracicaba – diz o paulista Francimar Matias, 42, morador de rua do centrão de SP, que acaba de escolher sua nova cama no jardim da Praça da República, reinaugurada há cinco dias. Nascido no Sudeste como a maioria dos sem-teto e mendigos da cidade –é o que revelam as pesquisas do gênero desde 2004-, Francimar, esfarrapado mas altivo, camelô de bugigangas e discos piratas na 7 de Abril, é uma das milhares de evidências demasiadamente humanas de que o urbanismo à prova de miseráveis da gestão Kassab (PFL) não tem conseguido limpar os “feios, sujos e malvados” das passagens públicas como desejava.

“A bench? No way? Benches are for bad men and boyfriends, I sleep here by the lake, I hear that sound of the water, it’s like that creek by my house in Piricicaba,” says São Paulo resident Francimar Matias, 42, a street-dweller in downtown São Paulo, who has just chosen himself a new bed in the gardens of the Praça da República, reopened five days ago. Born in the Southeast like most of the homeless and beggars in the city — as revealed by surveys of this population done in 2004 — Francimar, ragged but proud, a street vendor of trinkets and pirated disks on 7 de Abril Street, is one of thousands of human, all too human examples of how the poverty-proof urban planning of Mayor Kassab (PFL) has failed to clear the public thoroughfares of the “ugly, dirty and evil” as planned.

Jimmy Wales Says Something Enormously Freaking Stupid

A History Department Bans Citing Wikipedia as a Research Source (New York Times): Why should this even be newsworthy?

When half a dozen students in Neil Waters’s Japanese history class at Middlebury College asserted on exams that the Jesuits supported the Shimabara Rebellion in 17th-century Japan, he knew something was wrong. The Jesuits were in “no position to aid a revolution,” he said; the few of them in Japan were in hiding. He figured out the problem soon enough. The obscure, though incorrect, information was from Wikipedia, the collaborative online encyclopedia, and the students had picked it up cramming for his exam.

See also “The Technical and Educational Failure of Enciclomedia”, under the subheading “Enciclopedia Will ‘Change the Course of History.’”

When any idiot can write the Internet, the Internet will mainly be written by idiots.

This is a fact of life, and I do not advocate legislating against it.

That would be tantamount to self-censorship. For in most areas, I am one of those idiots.

It is, I think, better to draw more and more people into the collective task, as Craig Newmark says, of providing the network with an “immune system” against, as I wrote a while back,

… those who argue that terminological precision as used for purposes of precisely and unambiguously coordinating human collaboration and mediating human disagreements is a Stalinistic limitation on their God-given personal freedom to make suicidally stupid unilateral decisions that fuck things up for everybody else.

But there are people out there trying to convince us otherwise.

Jimmy Wales is a case in point.

His response to the kerfluffle:

Jimmy Wales, the co-founder of Wikipedia and chairman emeritus of its foundation, said of the Middlebury policy, “I don’t consider it as a negative thing at all.”

He continued.

He continued: “Basically, they are recommending exactly what we suggested — students shouldn’t be citing encyclopedias. I would hope they wouldn’t be citing Encyclopaedia Britannica, either. “If they had put out a statement not to read Wikipedia at all, I would be laughing. They might as well say don’t listen to rock ’n’ roll either.”

Happy Vegetables Notebook Entry No. 5

Item: Information for Press reporters in the UDV Supreme court case.

The case in question is Gonzales v. O Centro Espírita Beneficente União do Vegetal, and had to do with a “religious freedom” appeal filed by U.S. members of the União do Vegetal regarding their use of psychoactive plants in religious rituals.

There’s an interesting case study (PR-Br) on the Web site of the Brazilian presidency, which I may get around to translating.

Why do I mention it? I admit, it is a bit of an odd topic for someone mainly interested these days in (1) enterprise technology big digs and, non-professionally, (2) the Charles Bukowsi Memorial Center for Classical Latin Studies.

And Latin America bluegrass music, of course — mandolins, cavacos, violas caipiras, banjos and berimbaus. The twang’s the thang.

But it keeps coming up in the most unlikely contexts.

See A Psychedelic Reagan Revolution in the Concrete Jungle and Ayahuasca and the Economic Hit Man, for example.

Mr. Murilo of the Brazilian federal MiniCult, for example — a Brazilian quango operator and blogging-industrial evangelist whose activivities I have gotten interested in following, as a specimen case of a certain, er, innovative approach to political activism and democratic governance — moonlights as the “worldwide” Webmaster for the related Santo Daime movement.

A number of other folks at (Hearing) Global Voices Online have ties to “faith-based organizations” as well.

The U.S. Dept. of State has ponied up a fair amount of public money to “media democracy promotion” projects, with matching contributions by politically active religious organizations, as I have noted.

See Alt.Finance and the Anti-MSM and From the Jihadis For Jesus “Good News for Modern Man 2.0″ Gnostic Apocalypse Consumerism Files.

But the IRS has been notably humorless about the New Philanthropreneurshipism — aka “rendering unto Elmer Gantry that which is Caesar’s” — and apparently getting more so.

See Tax Man to Philanthropreneurs: Quem Não Deve Não Teme, and, for a Brazilian version of the debate, Dilma: All Quangos Are Created Equal.

All of which piques my curiosity about the influential role of Moonies on the world stage these days.

Rio: Social Software-Driven Misanthropreneurism

The Peacemakers in mourning: “The battle flag of Rio das Pedras, Rio de Janeiro”

Ação de milícias no Rio inclui foto de satélite: At the Folha Online here in São Paulo, you apparently have an easier time pitching stories if they have a Web 2.0 angle

Case in point: Rio Militias use Google Earth to scout terrain!

But at least we are getting more and more reporting on the phenomenon, now that we have finally acknowledged that it exists.

São Paulo vigilante groups — grupos de exterminio, esquadrões da morte — we saw last May, brandishing their tee-shirts on the floor of the state assembly.

Is there some difference between those groups and militias? They tend, one reads, to serve the same purpose: combatting falling property values by pruning unwanted local human fauna, though in São Paulo, you hear more about deals with commercial property owners than about militias in residential neighborhoods.

The reporter on this story, Raphael Gomide of the Rio bureau of the São Paulo metro daily, has earned himself a “dossier” from a retired Col. collaborating with Olavo de Carvalho — Virginia-based holder of a journalist’s visa and self-professed darling of the neocon seminar circuit — and his Mídia Sem Máscara “press observatory” Web site.

Gomide is found guilty of “ignorance, bad faith” and the publication of “half-truths” of “an anti-military nature.”

Which, given the site’s ties to folks like the modern-day Brig. Gen. Figueiredo, and revelations about the massive overlap between militia membership and military personnel, is actually pretty creepy.

You do get the feeling sometimes that these off the reservation oxymoronic military intel types are up to the same old infowar as always.

Again, I am not taking sides in a polarized partisan dispute, either, I do not think: as one finds well documented in the work of historian Elio Gaspari — not exactly a booster of the current government, I think you fairly say — even Geisel and Golbery thought these people were brutally stupid.

See also Zé Dirceu, Evil Genius:

Look: You read Gaspari’s chapters about how even Gen. Geisel complained bitterly about the blatant way the SNI and CIE invented subversive backgrounds of mythological proportions for guys they did not want to see get appointed dog-catcher — “we should just burn all those BS archives and start over,” he told Golbery once — and …

… and, well, it makes you think about the drawbacks of a national “intelligence” community that operates with the same epistemological creativity as Fox NEWS — and apparently drinks its own Kool-Aid.

The case against Gomide:

Raphael Gomide da Folha de São Paulo, da Sucursal do Rio, que neste episódio vinha se destacando com difusão de matérias ressaltando meias verdades de nítido caráter anti-militar, inclusive dando cobertura ao rumor de acordo entre militares e narcotraficantes para recuperação das armas, atingiu o pico de sua desfaçatez – mutilou uma orientação do Comandante Militar do Leste, sobre Segurança Orgânica, de forma a transmitir seu conteúdo como se fosse uma severa reprimenda a todos os seus subordinados. É mais como se todos tivessem errado e além disto menosprezando o elogio que a nota de 14 de março transmitira aos participantes da Operação. Este tipo de nota é normal, sempre que um Comando queira ressaltar para seus comandados determinados assuntos de seu interesse, quaisquer que sejam. Só revanchistas boçais do tipo Gomide, ignorantes e de má fé, não sabem.

Raphael Gomide of the FSP, from the Rio bureau, distinguished himself in this episode by publishing articles featuring half-truths with an obvious anti-military slant, including giving space to the rumor of a deal between military men and the traffic for the recovery of weapons. He achieved the heights of disingenuousness when he distorted a classified instruction from the commander of the eastern military zone, by publishing its content as if it were a severe reprimand to all of his subordinates. [He makes it sound] like they had all messed up and what’s more, ignores the praise contained in the March 14 letters to operation participants. This type of note is normal whenever the commander wants to underscore certain points to his subordinates, whoever they are. Only arrogant, mediocre, disingenuous revanchistas like Gomide do not know this.

The case in point was series of reports on breaches of discipline within the Brazilian armed forces, and the governance reforms introduced by the minister of defense, Walter Pires, in order to make military commanders, er, more responsive to civilian authority.

Various reporters are described as former Konsomol members and the like.

See previous notes on revanchismo and amnesty.

Brazil, like Chile, is under some diplomatic pressure to review its amnesty laws, release archives of the military governments, and implement reconciliation processes. The Folha reported a while back, I recall, that a certain number of dictatorship-era archives recently disappeared. I need to track that down.

If intimidation is a factor, and you would guess that it might be after reading stuff like this, maybe the Rio press can return the favor by reporting on São Paulo’s problems, in the spirit of dueling tourist towns trying to trash one other.

On the other hand, Gomide’s reporting here is reportedly based on interviews with militia leaders.

So, then: Web 2.0-themed militia intel from the revanchista Folha de S. Paulo, for translation, annotation, and cross-reference.

“Squid Hid Motorola No-Bid!”: The Folha Files the Amicus Brief

The Games: Picaresque porcarias from PAN pickers and panners. 

Governo dispensa licitação para o Pan: The Folha de S. Paulo reports that the Brazilian federal government “invoked national security measures” — “of the kind customarily used by the military dictatorship” — to provide Motorola with a no-bid contract for the Pan-American Games in Rio this spring.

Then again, the Folha de S. Paulo sometimes just out and out lies, and no other publication had the story at the time we read it.

So we should probably try to see whether or not this is a trademark Folha wankfest before getting all excited.

On screaming “authoritarian temptation” every five minutes for the past five years, see also:

And Opponents of Media Monopolies Are Stalinists!

Later in the news cycle, as I wrote the other day, the Estado de S. Paulo, the competing metro daily here — in a recent ad blitz for its classifieds, the Folha claims a circulation four times greater, but then again, Brazilian audited circulation can be a, er, wobbly thing at times — runs the same story as a sidebar to the other announcement by the national public safety czar yesterday.

The Estadão’s version is something of mirror image “he said” retort to the Folha’s more widely distributed “they said” story.

But at least it manages to gist both sides of the story within the body of the same dispatch, and to file it on the same day as the news hook in the story, which was.

The Folha hung on to its story for 12 day after the publication in the Federal Register-analogous newswire here before “breaking” it.

You will sometimes will hear me complaining — bitterly, using colorful, R-rated language — about “he said, she said” stories.

As a default option for “balanced” coverage, I do find them unspeakably lazy, lacking in value-added and prone to abuse.

But as a fallback position when reporting a breaking story that you do not have time to research the background to — deadline is a merciless bitch goddess — sometimes “he said, she said” can be the only honest solution.

You register the existence of a set-to today, then follow on the next with a researched story on the background, if you think the current landscape of cases and controversies merits that treatment.

A Jakob Nielsen in the Jungle-Style Aside

If the Ministry of Justice Web site had a freaking search form, by the way, it might be easier to actually find the item that is referred to here and check it out for oneself.

Enter a search term into the search box in the Website of the Official Diary — once you actually find the freaking thing — and you immediately get this error message:

The requested URL /jsp/busca/aguarde.jsp was not found on this server

Not helpful, as Don Rumsfeld used to like to say, before disappearing into the black hole of historic failures to write his Nixonian memoirs.

I much prefer the increasing number of Brazilian federal Web sites based on Plone, although most all of the data-driven sites still seem to be driven by infinite monkeys with typewriters churning out fatal server exceptions. (See alsoThe Truthiness & Travesty Server Throws an Exception.)

Most notoriously the public contracting database for the regional elections tribunal in Alagoas, which today is still throwing

Exceção de E/S: The Network Adapter could not establish the connection

According to Google News, the Folha story ran in local papers throughout Brazil, as a wire-service item.

But the Folha’s briefer “equal time” response from the federal agency that awarded the contract, the SNSP, seems to appear only in the unnews-spidered Folha print edition, which is subscriber-only.

We only subscribe because UOL is Neuza’s absolutely useless, but you have pay them a cut anyway, ISP for her Speedy ADSL service.

Chávez x O Globo: True Bluster and Phony Alarms

Geraldão and Neuzinha, Saturday night at the boteco: A summit of the senior GenX Paranhoses + the gringão. On the agenda: When Geiselist grandparents hung out with Allendist grandparents in Santiago, in Portunhol, without bloodshed. Remarkably enough. In the foreground: Donald Westlake’s Adios, Scheherazade (1970). Great book. Will translate to Portuguese on local wage scale.

Chávez faz duras críticas ao jornal O Globo (EFE): Uncle Hugo makes headlines in Brazil blasting the O Globo newspaper’s parachute-journalism correspondent in Caracas for asking “loaded questions” and being, in effect, “a paid lackey of the oligarchy and an imperialist attack dog.”

It happens to be a true factoid, I read, that O Globo maintains more journos in New York than it does in Manaus, say, or other Latin America capitals.

The cheerful spitballing from the baseball-mad Bolivarian might remind you, it is true, of the way Bush & Cheney treated the New York Times a while back when it did not like what the Grey Lady was reporting.

Not a pretty sight, that, even if the arriviste “content management” mucky-mucks at the Grey Lady are massively to blame for the plummeting credibility of what is, after all, still a world-class journalistic talent pool.

Another case in point of how our great fortress of democracy, and its venerable institutions — Harvard, for example, with its on-campus noise machines, secretive spending of public money, professorships with more corporate sponsors than a pair of Formula 1 overalls, and a tech-vendor driven “curriculum” “research” — has degenerated into banana-republicanism of late.

The thing that struck me, however, was that Uncle Hugo made headlines everywhere else yesterday by announcing he has uncovered “yet another” plot to assassinate him.

One would, of course, prefer to see professsional Venezuelan police perp-walking the suspects and displaying the machine-guns passed to the Tradition, Family and Fatherland cell through the diplomatic pouch before getting too excited about that.

We New Yawkers personally suffered too much from the apocalyptic prophecies of Homeland Security secretary Tom Ridge in the last few years not to believe that political hacks of any ideological persusasion simply cannot be trusted to give you the straight dope on lurking dangers.

Until proven otherwise.

But when the press, as happened here in Brazil, fails to even report the statement, much less try to run down the underlying facts, you are simply left in the dark. As always.

Because the bundled Brazilian press syndcation, TV and radio monopoly, characteristically enough, prefers to cover the angle that bears more or less nakedly on own business interests.

Interests, it will tell you to your face — like they think you are just another slack-jawed yokel rather than a fabulously hard-bitten metrosexual Brooklynite — that just happen to coincide with the interests of a general public for whose intelligence it constantly and explicitly expresses utter disdain, in the great tradition of Gen. Figueiredo: “Brasileiros de merda, que não sabem votar.”

From the “Dictatorship of the Labor Unions” File

Speaking of the flamboyant Drudge-like Internet journalist Roberto Kuppê — “hated by the corrupt and beloved by readers,” if he does say so himself — last seen wondering about an alleged electoral grand guignol in Rondônia, in northern Brazil, here’s an interesting item for the “flowers of rhetoric” file, clipped from the Correio Brasiliense and etherized in a jar like a rare butterfly:

We last saw the Correio in action pushing the notion that the Lula I government was the font of all corruption and Geraldo “I am not responsible” Alckmin — the Vicente Fox of São Paulo and Harvard Yard — the font of all virtue.

Which, though certainly the PT has proven in the last few years that some if its member are not above falling in with the generalized maracutaia — the Gushiken affair is allegedly a case in point, but I tend to doubt it, given the flimsiest of the supporting superstructure of conspiracy theory — is one of the stupidest things I have ever heard.

It also ran that apologia pro vita sua interview with Sálvador Pertence in which the top-ranking justice, whose name appeared on wiretaps in a smuggling case in connection with the sale of verdicts in federal courts, spins a jaw-droppingly meatheaded fairy tale about the infinite guile of evil communist Supermen, political corruption and impunity.

Students of Brazilian history will readily recognize the phrase “dictatorship of the trade unionists” as the principal justification for the April 1, 1964 coup d’etat that overthrew Jango Goulart.

Margaret Thatcher picked up the same mantra in the 1980s. There’s a good case study of the theme on Brasil Indymedia, with reference to the “dicatatorship of the cartels” and Microsoft, that I will translate for you later.

Have a read:

BRASÍLIA-Um poder que vai além das decisões em assembléias. Os sindicatos de todo o País, formam uma poderosa força capaz de eleger até um presidente da República. Neste caso, até reeleger. O presidente Lula é um belo exemplo: é de origem sindical. O Correio Braziliense, um dos mais importantes jornais do País, traz em reportagem de capa, esta realidade impressionante. Depois de garantir postos-chaves nos principais endereços da Esplanada dos Ministérios, estatais, fundos de pensão e bancos públicos, os sindicatos ampliam o seu poder no Congresso Nacional. Na Câmara, os 55 deputados de origem sindicalista representam uma bancada maior que a dos partidos trabalhistas juntos e se articulam para formar um bloco. Não é à toa que se vê pela imprensa atritos entre sindicalistas, denúncias contra sindicatos e deputados de olho nos gastos destas entidades. Um deputado estadual de Rondônia, Alexandre Brito (PSDC), ousou abrir a “caixa-preta” de 17 sindicatos de lá e foi “metralhado” por todos, desistindo de fazê-lo. Sindicatos movimentam milhões de reais. A maioria dos recursos provindos do pagamento de mensalidades, é gasta sem controle. Não há fiscalização na aplicação do arrecadado pelos sindicatos.

Brazil: IT Contrarian Burned in Effigy by Elections Inquisition

JUS SPERNIANDI — a blog by a retired Brazilian judge with some interesting life experience to recount about his time served on Brazilian election courts in the south of Brazil — reproduces an open “letter to Brazilian voters” from Mr. Brunazo Filho of Voto Seguro, Brazil’s most active advocate on the question of e-voting security, I think you could say.

I try to follow the Yahoo Groups mailing list — which is completely open to the public, by the way, although you need moderator approval to post — regularly, although sometimes I hold off because I am trying to see what the Brazilian media reports before checking it against the Netroots scuttlebutt.

Kind of like taking a practice test without peeking at the gabarito in the back of the book.

Brazilian Computerworld, by the way, has picked up today on this Feb. 20 piece in its English namesake on an initative by Sen. Feinstein to have the GAO do a thorough audit of electronic voting.

There is, by the way, another hot and heavy potential elections scandal that has quietly disappeared from the media, involving the elections in Rondônia, in which

According to the Web site of journalist Roberto Kuppe, an IT technician of the TRE founded a group (or racket) to sell election results to those paying between R$100,000 for a state deputy, R$200,000 for a federal deputy, and R$500,000 for senator and governor.

Did I just happen to miss the media blitz that proves that Mr. Kuppe is wildly full of shit and that no such scheme existed?

Imagine you are the editor of a major U.S. cable news network and you read a wire-service report that this kind of thing is alleged to have occurred.

I bet you would pick the phone right the hell up and immediately order a tense, edgy infotainment music theme and a garish animated graphics package for saturation coverage that would make the Anna Nicole Smith death (wolf)blitz(er) look like 10 seconds of America’s Funniest Home Videos.

Mr. Brunazo Filho writes:

Senhores eleitores brasileiros,

Dear Brazilian voter:

Na semana anterior ao Carvaval, acompanhado da adv. eleitoral Maria Aparecida Cortiz, fomos a Brasília para acompanhar o andamento de diversos processos junto ao Tribunal Superior Eleitoral, TSE.

The week before Carnaval, I and the elections lawyer Maria Aparecida Cortiz [co-author on Brunazo's book on the subject, which I am still trying to get a copy of but translated a chunk of an excerpt and review here] to observe the progress of various matters before the federal elections tribunal, the TSE.

Tivemos oportunidade de conversar com vários funcionários das secretarias administrativa, judiciária e de informática daquele órgão e pudemos notar, entre eles, um forte sentimento de revolta contra o Prof. Clóvis Torres Fernandes do ITA/CTA.

We had the opportunity to speak with various officials from the administrative, judicial and information sciences divisions of the TSE and were able to observe in all of them a strong sense of anger against Prof. Torres Fernandes of the ITA/CTA.

Torres had written in rather that the TSE’s explanations for technical failures and anomalies in a 1998 model voting machine used in the contested election were incomplete, unsatisfactory, and, well, er, as I read it, stupid and bogus.

O Prof. Clóvis é o autor de um relatório de análise das urnas eletrônicas utilizadas em Alagoas em 2006, que apontou problemas na geração dos arquivos de controle de eventos (logs) de muitas urnas-e e que levaram à conclusão da falta de confiabilidade do resultado naquelas urnas.

Prof. Fernandes is the autor of a report on his analysis of voting machiens used in Alagoas in 2006, which pointed to problems with the generation of log files on system events in many voting machines, which led him to conclude that the results reported from those machines were not reliable.

Mexican Ombudsmen: A Black Year For Transparency, Press, Human Rights

“I am not a mano dura”: Calderón, Harvard MBA and frequent fister.

Denuncia Soberanes que fue víctima de persecución política (El Universal): Mexico’s federal human rights ombudsman meets with President Calderón and says that during the Fox years he was “the object of political persecution that was ‘tolerated and perhaps even sponsored by the Chief of State.’”

Blame Vicente Fox for everything seems to be a growing national pastime. And now some are saying he is might get tapped to head a U.S. Spanish-language television network. If he beats extradition, that is.

A year-end report from the agency that adminsters Mexico’s much-touted FOIA-equivalent law, meawhile, finds that only two federal agencies are currently in compliance.

El presidente de la Comisión Nacional de los Derechos Humanos (CNDH), José Luis Soberanes Fernández, denunció que en la administración pasada fue objeto de persecución política “tolerada y quizás auspiciada desde la jefatura del Estado”, sin que esta situación haya sido aclarada todavía.

The president of the National Human Rights Commission (CNDH), José Luis Soberanes Fernández, charged that during the last adminstration he was the object of political persecution that was ‘tolerated and perhaps even sponsored by the Chief of State.’

Al rendir su informe de labores 2006, el ombudsman nacional señaló que en ese año se debilitó al Estado y se dejó a México en una situación precaria.

As he turned over his 2006 report, the national ombudsman pointed out that the Mexican state had been weakened this year and left Mexico in a precarious position.

El Zorro Leaves Mexico Nude, Crude and Socially Irresponsible?

“Eat skyrocketing tortillas, drink tequila, and be merry, for tomorrow we are going to have to suck it up.” Petropundits in a pique on Mexican oil numbers, screams bonfiery of the vanities DF daily.

Reservas probadas de crudo en México, para menos de 10 años: Numbers to double-check on Mexico’s crude reserves, from yesterday’s La Jornada.

Las reservas probadas de crudo de Petróleos Mexicanos (Pemex) tienen una vida esperada con respecto a los niveles actuales de explotación menor a 10 años, con lo que se ubican en el límite inferior respecto del que registran las grandes petroleras internacionales como Exxon-Mobil y Shell, que cuentan con 15 y 10 años, respectivamente.

The proven crude reserves of Pemex have a life expectancy, at currrent levels, of less than 10 years, lower than estimates by large multnational oil companies such as Exxon-Mobil and Shell, which put the figure at 15 and 10 years, respectively.

Virtual Lowlands

The virtual kraal vs. the virtual favela: A gated paradise on Virtual Earth for the creative key influential.

ING creates Dutch ‘mini-state’ in Second Life (Finextra)

Dutch banking group ING has ceated a virtual mini-state – ourvirtualholland – on screen-based 3D-world Second Life.

See also Fears of brand damage scaring banks away from Web 2.0.

A study by a consultancy that blogs called Conchango suggests that U.K. banks are leery of vigilante consumers and message control.

“It proves that there is work to be done much to dispel the confusion about how new technologies and functions can be applied,” says Altendorf. “Web 2.0 does not mean relinquishing control of your brand and handing it over to the consumer, but rather adopting a more collaborative approach.”

Correct. A kinder, gentler application of the Figueiredo-Faith Popcorn approach to the vigilante consumer. See also New Technorati Tool “Lets Brands Monitor and Remove Objectionable Content” From the Noosphere.

Ah, if only we could all just get the Internet the way the visionary blogging Elmer Gantrys do.

Perhaps the Limeys just need more Dutch courage.

Death and Carnaval: Counting the Corpses

Don Carnaval and Doña Cuaresma.

RJ: balanço da Saúde aponta 198 mortes no Carnaval: 198 people died during Carnaval in Rio de Janeiro this year, against 270 last year.

Patients treated for gunshot and edged weapon wounds numbered 54, against 150 last year.

This according to the State Secretary of Health and Civil Defense, the first report of this kind under the new “this is not going to turn into another Bogotá” Governor.

On Friday, Feb. 16, 2007, The Scotsman ran this headline, bylined to MICHAEL ASTOR AND PETER BLACKBURN in Rio de Janeiro:

Death Clouds Carnival

I studied in Scotland back in the 1980s, by the way, and witnessed scenes during one of those classic Celtic-Rangers hooligan bust-ups in Glasgow that I will never forget.

Compare this BBC story from December 2005:

Scotland’s homicide rate for 2004-05 was the highest in almost a decade, according to newly released figures. There were 137 victims of homicides in Scotland, 29 more than in 2003-04, and the highest annual total since 1995-96. Justice Minister Cathy Jamieson said a strategy to tackle the “cultural acceptance” of violent behaviour would be rolled out next year

Glasgow’s murder rate for the period was 55 per million (5.5 per 100,000). Glaswegians tend to stab their friends and family, according to statistics. But Scots are also justly famed for being hard to kill. I’m of Scottish descent, so I can take a piss out if I want to.

Rio’s was 42 per 100,000, highest in the world, though not a world record:

Bogotá registered rates of 61 per 100,000 in the mid-1990s, and Cali had an eye-popping 114 per 100,000 one year.

Until they cracked down on firearms.

New York City’s reported rate in 2005: 4.5 for 100,000.

Baghdad’s murder rate is controversial. Remember FOX News, in 2004, defending number-bungling by Sen. Trent Lott, challenging the use of “non-murder deaths” in the count? You know: if a headless body floats by in the river and there are no cops around to do the forensics or file the charge, does it make a stink? A number of 195 per 100,000 was kicked around at one point. See also

• Humpty Dumptyism Watch: The Pentagon’s Numbers Racket

São Paulo’s was 36.9 per 100,000 for 2005. But then again, if you correct for socioeconomic conditions and geographical distribution in the cityscape …

A 2005 national gun control referendum in Brazil failed by a wide margin. Wherein lies a tale.

I wonder if you can get the statistics for the last ten years? And I wonder how many rounds were fired by the police this year compared with prior years?

“But Alice, I Already Told You That I Am Not a Mythomane”

Real name: Vincent Furnier.

The Web site of Revista Piauí, an ingenious and blatant cannibalistic misprision of The New Yorker that recently launched here in Brazil — I am actually not that fond of it, but then again, I am not its target audience — today features a brilliant Brazilian writer whom I also happen to be doing.

All nice and legal, mind you.

And now she has threatened not to feed me anymore unless I give her free publicity.

Somewhere among the billion key influentials reached by the New Market Machines Web log every day is a literary agent ready to turn my loving wife, Neuza Paranhos, into the next something or other.

Female rock ‘n’ roll Jorge Amado? Anti-magical unrealistic Brazilian Isabel Allende?

The monthly short story contest, a new feature, requires entrants to include a set phrase in their very brief contributions.

This month: “But Alice, I already told you that I am not a mythomane.”

Tough one.

Neuza’s story has been included among the entries site users can vote for.

I translate. With two beers in me, mind you. Or else.

But I warn you: translating Neuza is difficult. Her language has a density of cultural allusion that borders on the untranslatable. Plus, she’s kind of nuts. How about this: She is a female rock ‘n’ roll Guimarães-Rosa of the concrete sertões. I say that because Alice, in this story, reminds me a bit of G-R’s Diadorim, from Grande Sertão:Veredas.

I have been reading G-R’s correspondence with his German translator on and off for a year now. One of the best books on translation I have ever come across. Anyone interested in doing an English-language edition?

Uma pessoa pode molhar o beijo em batom e queimar as lentes de contato azuis numa redoma de kohl. Essa mesma pessoa pode ser estonteantemente sexy, viver alheia numa nuvem de patchouli e se chamar Alice. E você pode passar as noites de sábado montando a criatura como se ela fosse a Barbie. E era isso mesmo que eu fazia com Alice Cooper, meu namorado. Todos os brilhos e cintilâncias que eu repudiava, essas coisas que não cabiam na minha vida ascética de estudante de sociologia, eu deixava pra Alice.

Imagine someone who drowns their kisses in lipstick and smokes up their blue contact lenses with a poisoned ozone layer of kohl. Imagine that that someone is drop-dead sexy, lives in another world, on a cloud of patchouli, and is named Alice. Imagine that you spend your Saturday nights posing this divine creature as if it were a Barbie doll. For that is exactly what I used to do with Alice Cooper, my boyfriend. All the glitter and glimmer that I refused for myself, all those things that had no place in my existence as a serious student of sociology, I left to Alice.

“The Army Will Not Patrol the Streets of Rio de Janeiro”: Pan-American Games Edition

UOL Sports has the report today as the countdown to the Pan-American Games commences.

The Folha de S. Paulo, meanwhile, has a report on what it hints was an irregular no-bid contracting process at the MiniJustice that selected Motorola to provide IT security infrastructure for the Games.

More on that it when somebody comes along and puts some meat on the the usual glittering generalities and factually fuzziness from the Folha’s Brasília bureau. The story is sourced almost exclusively to Motorola competitors, and reads like it was cribbed from their legal briefs, but is angled with the moralizing bombast that typifies the Folha’s greatest hits of hysterical sacanagens.

FSP: Promote some people from the reportagem local up there to the D.F. and bring the people you got there now back here to pound a metro beat. It will do them good to climb down in the smoking hole or interview some hookers there off the Av. Paulista. They can lunch at the Sujinho. Good cheap grub.

Ah, the Estado sportswire has some perspective here. It’s a good NMM story because it potentially involves close tactical observation of IT Big Diggers throwing Latin American spitballs.

They all seem so pleasant and competent back home — their dirty work gets done by astroturf noise machines — but send them off to the tropics and they invariably seem to go all Heart of Darkness on you. “Technology is strategic! Exterminate the brutes!”

I could be off-target with this admittedly beer-fueled kneejerk analysis, but, hey, ratfuck FUD campaigns in complicity with crooked little toady journos are not unknown here, so you start to get a little gun-shy when you read such things. I will work on that tomorrow.

Meanwhile,

O secretário nacional de Segurança Pública, Luiz Fernando Corrêa, revelou na sexta-feira que o Exército não vai patrulhar as ruas do Rio de Janeiro durante os Jogos Pan-Americanos e vai dar apenas apoio logístico e náutico. O policiamento será feito pela polícia fluminense e pela Força Nacional de Segurança.

The National Public Safety Commissioner, Mr. Corrêa, said Friday that the Army will not patrol the streets of Rio de Janeiro during the Pan-American Games and will provide only logistical and naval support. The policing will be done by the Rio police and the National Security Force (FNSP).

This is an important point to clarify, because prior to New Years and Carnaval there was a lot of erroneious reporting on this question in the press, particularly by UOL and the Folha de S. Paulo, acting together and separately.

In the end, it was clarified — by the Estadão, which is the paper that I buy when I buy the paper now — that (1) the FNSP is a mixed body under joint federal-state civilian command, and (2) the military would not patrol off its bases in Rio.

Top military commanders made that very, very clear, I thought, in a top-level meeting with Lula, Dilma, and all the bigwigs.

Even so, we saw an incident in which a Marine patrol, patrolling off-base, wound up trading gunfire across a major freeway with somebody or other armed, reportedly, with top of the line Heckler-Koch assault weapons, during Carnaval.

In a shantytown community, Vigário Geral, that was being visited in that time frame by the Minister of Culture and music legend Quincey Jones.

I have to yet to understand how that happened.

Corrêa disse que pretende implementar um novo conceito de segurança no Brasil nos Jogos do Rio, em julho.

Corrêa said he intends to implement a new security concept for Brazil at the Rio games in July.

“Na rua não terá Exército porque o número de policiais e o complemento da Força Nacional de Segurança já são suficientes”, declarou o secretário.

“There will be no Army in the streets because the numbers of police and the FNSP complement are enough,” he said.

“Aquele conceito de caras pintadas, mochilas nas costas e uniforme não condiz com o espírito dos Jogos. Queremos um policial de relacionamento”, acrescentou Corrêa.

“That idea of soldiers with camouflage-painted faces, rucksacks on their back and military fatigues is not consistent with the spirit of the games. We want relationship policing,” he added.

Rio: Tostes is Swiss Cheese on Toast

Gritty real crime, in which the victim was a criminal cop and the criminals may have been, too.

A TARDE On Line (Rio de Janeiro) reports that a senior Rio police officer, Inspector Tostes, who was dumped for involvement in running “one of Rio’s oldest militias,” has been found murdered. See “Top Rio Cop Was Militia Commander,” and

• Rio Militias in the Spotlight After Murky Clashes?

A Tarde is saying that the Civil Police are testing the theory that Inspector Tostes’ death may be related to his involvement in the caça-níqueis, or illegal gambling machines, industry.

Evidence showed up late last year — on a USB pen drive — that led to the arrest and suspension of some 150 cops who showed up on payroll records, indicating that they had been paid off to protect and to operate the illicit business.

A former Rio police chief, recently elected to the legislature, Mr. Lins, was also arrested in that federal police sweep. As was a Globo TV reporter.

If the Tostes theory pans out, it ought to lead some more concrete information on a much-reported but little-substantiated aspect of organized crime in Rio: The militias are funded by vice-lords who control, or are themselves, politicians.

Which is a little more complex, I continue to insist, than the story of “the forces of law and order versus the narcotraffic” that the likes of Larry Rohter of the New York Times insist on feeding you.

As I mentioned, the Gov. of Rio, Mr. Cabral, has backed off recently on campaign statements in which he said he favored the Bogotization of Rio public safety. See also Paramilitary Contratemps Pummels Plan Colombia. His public safety commissioner is a former federal police organized crime specialist.

The first thing Cabral did upon being sworn in was to activate a new federal-state cooperation program, the FNSP.

A Polícia Civil investiga se o assassinato do inspetor Félix dos Santos Tostes, de 49 anos, pode ter ligação com o envolvimento do agente na máfia dos caça-níqueis e com a milícia (grupo paramilitar que expulsa os traficantes e cobra dos moradores por proteção) da Favela Rio das Pedras, em Jacarepaguá (zona oeste). Acusado de chefiar os milicianos dessa comunidade e de comandar a casa de bingo Rio das Pedras, Tostes foi executado com 34 tiros anteontem no bairro do Recreio dos Bandeiras [sic] (zona oeste).

The Civil Police are looking into whether the murder of Inspector Félix dos Santos Tostes, 49, might be linked with the policeman’s involvement with the one-armed bandit mafia and with the militia (a paramilitary group that expels drug traffickers and charges residents for protections) of the Rio das Pedras shantytown in Jacarepaguá (Eastern Zone). Accused of leading the militiamen of this community and running the Rio das Pedras bingo palace, Tostes was executed with 34 gunshots the day before yesterday in the Recreio dos Bandeira[nte]s neighborhood, Western Zone.

Sun Undone

The Toronto Sun is now an emaciated thing, having been put on a starvation diet by Québecor, which acquired it in 1999.

Once lively Sun now in the shadows: A Toronto Star columnist laments the decline of a competitor gone to seed.

The item comes from the NMM keyword watch on “editorial independence” — as in the group that acquired the newspaper is not living up to the “editorial independence” clause in its concession contract, in the name of “convergence” and Journalism 2.0, according to the columnist.

The CRTC dictated that Sun TV and the Sun’s newsroom should never meet. But here is Canoe Live, which is a local news show, shot in the Sun newsroom using what is left of Sun staff.

It gets better – or worse, depending on your point of view.

Slim to the Iron Auditor: “Bring it On!”

Telmex: en el mercado y no en tribunales, la competencia en las telecomunicaciones: Carlos Slim’s Telmex says “bring it on” to Telefonica, which recently hired the, er, reputationally challenged former treasury secretary Gil Díaz to head its mobile subsidiary (La Jornada).

The flack quote was to the effect that “the question of competition will be settled by the market, not in the courts.”

Disclosure: We are disgruntled Telefônica Brasil customers. But one hears that Telmex’s fees are the highest in the world.

Instituciones como el Banco Mundial, el Banco de México o [sic] la Comisión Económica para América Latina y el Caribe han señalado en los últimos meses que existe una falta de competencia en la industria mexicana de telecomunicaciones, donde empresas como Telmex dominan 80 por ciento del mercado; existe una baja penetración de Internet y en especial de banda ancha, o dos empresas tienen exclusividad sobre la televisión. Estas instituciones refieren que la falta de competencia en las telecomunicaciones es una de las limitaciones al crecimiento de la economía.

Institutions such as the World Bank, the Bank of Mexico and CEPAL have pointed out in recent months a lack of competition in the Mexican telecommunications industry, in which firms like Telmex dominate 80% of the market. There is low Internet penetration, and especially broadband penetration, and two companies completely dominate the television market. The institutions point to the lack of competition in telcoms as one of the factors limiting economic growth.