Proceso on Medina Mora: “Complicit Omissions” and Quaint Customs

Alberto Gonzalez and Medina Mora: “Productive discussions” earlier this year, but is Beto still providing the adult supervision? See also Mexico: Congress Suspects Soft State of Exception.

In Michoacán, for example, according to the report delivered to Medina Mora, Ye Gon had a network dedicated to drug distribution and the receipt of shipments. This cell had the support of state and federal police and even active duty military personnel.

Omisión Cómplice (Proceso, Mexico): The investigative weekly has gotten its hands on more investigation files. These things just sort of trickle out a document at a time, like — well, like pages turning that are the days of our lives [swelling organ music].

See More Gaddis Letters Detail the Borking of the Man Behind the Meth!

The new documents flesh in some more Five Ws with respect to the general facts stated in the DEA indictment about the “man behind the meth” and his Sino-Sonoran brain-cell destruction express.

The political hook here, if true: Current Mexican attorney general Medina Mora — Secretary of Public Security under Fox — had been apprised of Ye Gon’s activities in 2005, Proceso reports, and regularly updated thereafter.

But did diddly about it.

Potentially a companion political focal point to that shot of Fox handing Ye Gon his Mexican green card — which Televisa showed over and over and over and over last week.

Predicted rebuttal, if any: “I read many reports. I cannot be expected to remember them all.” Gonzalez memory syndrome is infectious, in other words. Mark my words.

What makes this a New Market Machines item? A lot of the good information came from Ye Gon’s beancounter. Which just goes to show you: if you want the straight dope, in detail, ask a member of the reality-based community.

The reported presence of heavily armed and extremely nasty anti-Zeta commandos in the Ye Gon organization is a pretty interesting tale in and of itself. Let me just clip to the record pra inglês ver and then we can collate, okay?

En el caso Zhenli, el gobierno de Felipe Calderón intenta presentar como golpe a la delincuencia lo que en realidad supone una cadena de complicidades –u omisiones, por decir lo menos– entre el crimen organizado y altos funcionarios de su administración y la de Vicente Fox. Basadas en reportes oficiales, las investigaciones de Proceso en torno al caso aportan nuevas evidencias de lo anterior. He aquí nombres, cargos, antecedentes …

In the Zhenli Ye Gon case, the government of Felipe Calderón is trying to present as striking a blow against organized crime what in fact presupposes a series of complicities — or omissions, in the best case — of high officials of the Fox administration with organized crime. Based on official reports, Proceso’s investigations into the case now bring you new evidence. Names, job titles, prior records …

Cuando el empresario Zhenli Ye Gon realizaba sus actividades ilícitas en el gobierno de Vicente Fox sin ser molestado, el entonces titular de la Secretaría de Seguridad Pública (SSP), Eduardo Medina Mora, recibió el siguiente parte informativo de los agentes de la Policía Federal Preventiva (PFP) Iván René Torres García y Gabriel Adolfo Solana Fonseca:

As Ye Gon was going about his illicit business during the Fox administration without being bothered, Fox’s Secretary of Public Security, Eduardo Medina Mora, received the following report from two federal police aganets, Iván René Torres García and Gabriel Adolfo Solana Fonseca:

“…se tuvo conocimiento (de) que al producto químico n-methyl-acetilamino (metilacrilamida) se le realizaron muestras al momento de ser importado del país de China a través de los agentes aduanales Nelson Prida Barrio, José Luis Pérez Riva, Benito Guerrero Herrera, Sonia Prieto Flores y Fany Gordillo Rustrian, liberado en los meses de diciembre de 2005 y enero de 2006 en la aduana de Manzanillo, Colima, el cual según los resultados del laboratorio, no correspondía al producto declarado…

“… It was learned that samples of the chemical product n-methyl-acetylamine (methylacrylamide) were taken, at the moment it was being imported by Customs agents Nelson Prida Barrio, José Luis Pérez Riva, Benito Guerrero Herrera, Sonia Prieto Flores and Fany Gordillo Rustrian, who released the shipments in December 2005 and January 2006 at the Customs facility in Manzanillo, and according to lab results, the samples did not correspond to the product declared.

Paraná: Political Blood Sport Banned From Public TV!

TV Educativa of Paraná: public affairs programming on the plight of pensioners hit by the failure of Varig Airlines, from May 2007.

TJ proíbe comerciais da TV Educativa que atacam a imprensa (Bem Paraná/Jornal do Estado, Paraná, Brazil): The state supreme court in Paraná forbids “commercials used to attack news organizations and compare [its own spending with] the publicity spending of previous governments” on the government-run TV Educativa in the state.

Imagine if Tony Snow wanted to correct a fact reported in the newspaper and the newspaper refused to publish his response?

Sure, the Bush White House engages in a lot of FUD and phony factual challenges, but suppose it was something as simple as whether Laura Bush had her hair styled yesterday or not? And the perfidious Francophile New York Times simply refused to regret the error?

One more case to clip for the “Latin American media wars” file.

O deputado estadual Valdir Rossoni (PSDB) conseguiu, através da Justiça, retirar do ar os “comerciais” usados para atacar órgãos da imprensa e também comparar com governos anteriores os gastos de publicidade, transmitidos pela TV Educativa.

State lawmaker Valdir Rossoni (PSDB) got a court order to take off the air the “commercials” used to attack news media and also to compare the publicity expenditures of previous governments, as broadcast on TV Educativa.

Rossoni havia protocolado no dia 26 de junho uma ação popular contra o governador Roberto Requião e a TV Educativa para impedir a veiculação das inserções e também a verificação dos custos de produção e devolução, aos cofres públicos, dos valores gastos. No dia 25 de julho, o juiz convocado do TJ, Eduardo Sarrão, deferiu a ação na sua integralidade.

Rossoni had filed suit on June 26 against Governor Requião and TV Educativa to block the airing of the inserts. The station was also to verify the cost of production and return the money to the state coffers. On July 25, Judge Sarrão ruled in favor of the suit, in its entirety.

As campanhas começaram a ser exibidas no mês de junho, após a mobilização dos deputados de Oposição para investigar os gastos com publicidade no governo Requião, nos anos de 2005 e 2006. Os comerciais faziam críticas aos gastos com propaganda do governo Jaime Lerner, além de ataques a vários veículos de imprensa que, segundo o comercial, estariam agindo contra o governo estadual por não estarem recebendo verbas publicitárias.

The campaigns started to be aired in June, after a mobilization by opposition lawmakers to investigate expenditures on publicity in the Requião government during 2005 and 2006. The commercials criticized the advertising expenditures of the Lerner government and attacked various news media, which, according to the commercial, were acting against the state government because they were not receiving state advertising funds.

A recent sample of the combative relationship between government and the Fourth Estate, from the TV Educativa Web site:

O jornalista Celso Nascimento publicou nesta sexta-feira (27), em sua coluna no Jornal Gazeta do Povo, informação falsa sobre a participação da primeira-dama Maristela Requião na comitiva que acompanha o governador Roberto Requião em viagem aos Estados Unidos. O jornalista mentiu, mesmo consultando a Casa Civil, que no dia anterior esclareceu que Maristela não acompanharia o governador em sua viagem a Nova Iorque, para nova homenagem a Copel. Manipulando dados de viagens oficiais, o jornalista destacou supostas despesas e insistiu na divulgação mesmo com confirmação, pelo órgão responsável pelas viagens oficiais, de que a diretora do Museu Oscar Niemeyer ou qualquer outro membro da diretoria não participariam desta viagem.

On Friday, July 27, in his column in the Gazeta do Povo, journalist Celso Nascimento published a false report about the inclusion of First Lady Maristela Requião in the contingent accompanying the Governor on a trip to the United States. The journalist lied, even after consulting the [governor's office], which the day before had explained that the First Lady would not accompany the Governor to New York … Manipulating data on official trips, the journalist pointed to supposed expenses and insisted on printing the story even though he had confirmation, from the agency handling official travel, that neither the director of the Niemeyer Museum or anyone other board member were going on the trip.

“RCTV is Feisty and Independent”: W$J

From an exposé on an RCTV news program. A banner is photoshopped in reading “Fuente Tiuna.” “This is Fuente Tiuna [a presidential retreat, I believe] just look,” says the morning happy-talk news program’s host.

This is the original. The producers of the anti-RCTV YouTube spot say they tracked it down to a blog post called “Hummer Overfloweth” on a site called “The Mess that Greenspan Made.” Which identifies the locale as a hotel parking lot in California. Some kind of HMMVV promotional love-in. 

If journalists have a rigorous style that precludes the kind of words that invite scrutiny–adjectives, adverbs and modifiers–they’ll do better. –Matthew Winkler, editor in chief, Bloomberg LLC.

Venezuelan Cable Station Faces Chávez Showdown: José de Córdoba of the Wall St. Journal thinks Venezuela’s RCTV is “feisty” and “politically independent.”

Has he actually watched it?

CARACAS, Venezuela — A samba band snaked through the studios of Radio Caracas Television on July 16 to celebrate the broadcaster’s return as a cable station just seven weeks after President Hugo Chávez refused to renew the station’s broadcast license, knocking it off the air.

Technically, it was CONATEL that issued that ruling, was my understanding.

Also, I saw video of the relaunch festivities, but I do not recall any samba band in attendance.

Some sort of bright, rhythmic Latin music, yes, but not something Nelson do Cavaquinho would have recognized as the work of the poetas of his beloved estação primeira. I could be wrong.

The new cable version of RCTV, called RCTV International, was just as feisty as the broadcast version had been. Popular anchorman Miguel Ángel Rodríguez started his show with a Chávez critic who blasted the arrest of four university students for handing out political leaflets during a soccer game. Next, a Catholic bishop warned that Venezuela was sliding toward totalitarianism. “I’m so happy to be back,” beamed RCTV co-anchor Luisiana Ríos.

Did that incident with the students actually occur? Possibly.

But if you have ever actually watched RCTV, you know that it tends to run nonexistent facts fairly often. Such as a parking lot full of HMMVVs at a California hotel, crudely Photoshopped to suggest it was a government parking lot.

See, for example “Mountains of Money”: RCTV and Teleamazonas in Action.

But the celebration turned out to be premature. The Chávez government last week announced legal requirements that may force RCTV International off cable outlets tomorrow, possibly silencing the opposition broadcaster for good.

Or possibly not.

Essentially, the Chávez government is requiring RCTV International — a Miami-based company which gets much of its programming from Caracas-based RCTV and transmits to Latin America — to register as a Venezuelan content producer. The registration requirements, which include airing Mr. Chávez’s marathon speeches, would make the cable venture economically “unfeasible,” says Marcel Granier, RCTV’s chief executive officer.

I cannot confirm from other news sources that the registration requirement involves running marathon Hugo speeches.

Let someone who writes facts like a responsible adult — with sparing use of adjectives — summarize the dispute:

After the Chavez government denied the channel a renewal of its license to broadcast on the nation’s VHF spectrum, RCTV came back on Monday of last week as RCTV International on cable and satellite subscription television. Since then, the channel has claimed that it does not have to comply with mandatory government public service messages or play the national anthem twice daily, as is required of all national broadcasters by law.

Ye Gon: “The Mountain Money Is TOO Evidence”

The monster iceberg of lettuce in question. Source: www.dea.gov

In the view of Olea Peláez, the SAE director is guilty of embezzlement for having distributed the money without judicial authorization.

Es ilegal disponer del dinero: abogados (El Universal): Calderón is pissing on due process, say lawyers of the magic (disappearing?) mountain of money.

Los 205 millones de dólares asegurados a Zhenli Ye Gon sí constituían una prueba en su contra, por lo que la decisión del gobierno federal de repartirlos no fue legal, afirmaron los abogados penalistas Raúl Guerrero Palma y Xavier Olea Peláez.

The money seized from Ye Go is too evidence against, for which reason the federal government’s decision to distribute it was not legal, say criminal law experts Raúl Guerrero Palma and Xavier Olea Peláez.

To the extent that Mexico is governed by the rule of law at all, it goes without saying.

The democratic rule of law being a Communist plot and all.

En entrevistas por separado, ambos abogados consideraron que no es válida la explicación del director del Servicio de Administración y Enajenación de Bienes (SAE), Luis Miguel Álvarez Alonso, sobre los motivos para distribuir el dinero asegurado, pues dijo que de acuerdo con el Ministerio Público, el dinero había causado abandono en favor del gobierno federal y debía repartirse entre la PGR, el Poder Judicial y la Secretaría de Salud.

In separate interviews, both attorneys concluded that the explanation offered by Álvarez Alonso of the SAE, on the reasons for distributing the sum seized, are not valid. He said that according the Public Ministry, the money was abandoned and forfeit in favor of the federal government and should be divided between the PGR, the judiciary and the Secretary of Health. 

Al respecto, los penalistas recordaron que existe una orden de aprehensión contra Ye Gon por operaciones con recursos de procedencia ilícita (lavado de dinero), entre otros delitos, y que el monto asegurado es, precisamente, una evidencia dentro de esa acusación.

The penal experts, however, recalled that there is an outstanding arrest warrant on Ye Gon for money-laundering, among other crimes, and that the cash is evidence of this accusation.

Ye Gon Case: “The Mountain of Money Is Pure As Driven Meth”?

The Everest of Benjamins in question. Source: www.dea.gov

El dinero incautado a Zhenli fue enviado a EU para autentificarlo y contarlo: “The mountain of money was sent to the U.S. merely to authenticate and count it,” La Jornada quotes the Mexican SHCP (Treasury) as saying.

The headline: “Government says Ye Gon’s money was not illicit!”

That is, the money is not evidence in the criminal case in Mexico against the reputed “man behind the meth,” according to the federal attorney.

Which, oddly — if it is a fair angle on what the Mexican Treasury is saying — is exactly what the guy’s Mexican defense attorney has been saying.

Which would leave us in a curious situation: The DEA says the guy made tons of money off of drugs, stored it in his closet, then shipped it off to Las Vegas to launder somehow. Precursors sold to drug cookers for sale to gringos.

You need all those elements to prove the guy is in the drug business.

Unless maybe he was a drug charity of some kind. “Take these drugs for free; we will only charge you for the support personnel needed to talk you down.”

Are the Mexicans going to argue that he was making money off of drugs, but none of that $207 million dollars was it?

Or will they rely on evidentiary findings in the U.S. trial when they finally get their hands on “the man behind the meth”?

Proceso has this pithy summary of the back story:

Obligadas por una solicitud de información por vía de la Ley de Transparencia, la Secretaría de Hacienda y el Servicio de Administración y Enajenación de Bienes (SAE) tuvieron que informar, el pasado 4 de julio, que el dinero fue enviado al Bank of America de Estados Unidos. Nunca dijeron cuándo, cómo ni por qué.

Forced by a freedom of information request, the Treasury had to report, on July 4, that the cash was sent to the Bank of America in the U.S. It never said when, how, or why.

The chain of custody, as I understand it, was from Banjercito to Bank of American Mexican affiliate Santander to Bank of America, as a certified custodian, on behalf of the Federal Reserve.

El hecho causó revuelo. Interpretaciones diversas y disímiles sobrevinieron, aunque abrevaron en una: el gobierno –acosado y nervioso por la imputación de Ye Gon, en el sentido de que una parte de todo ese dinero era del Partido Acción Nacional, que presuntamente serviría para la campaña presidencial–, se estaba deshaciendo de una prueba fundamental que podría implicarlo.

The revelation caused a stir. Various conflicting interpretations abounded, although they all boiled down to one: The government — besieged and nervous about Ye Gon’s accusations, to the effect that some of this money belonged to the National Action Party and allegedly was for use in the presidential campaign — was getting rid of fundamental evidence that could implicate it.

Colombia: “Major Was Key to Mobbing Up of Army”

Don Diego

The officer is the son of retired Col. Homero Rodríguez, former director of the La Catedral prison at the time the late Pablo Escobar escaped from there.

Mayor (r) que burló detención domiciliaria es clave en infiltración de mafias en Fuerzas Militares: “A retired major who flouted house arrest played a key role in the infiltration of the Armed Forces by mafias,” reports El Tiempo today.

El ministro de Defensa, Juan Manuel Santos, aceptó que la situación afectó niveles muy altos en el Ejército y anunció reorientación en la contrainteligencia.

The Minister of Defense, Juan Manuel Santos, admitted that the situation affected high-ranking Army commanders and announced a revamping of counterintelligence.

Según se reveló, detrás de la red del narcotráfico que reclutaba militares estaba el mayor (r) Juan Carlos Rodríguez, quien estaba condenado a 12 años por tráfico de armas y droga, pero un juez le dio casa por cárcel el año pasado en una inusual decisión, en mayo del 2006.

According to the minister, behind the narcotrafficking network that recruited soldiers was retired major Juan Carlos Rodríguez, who was sentenced to 12 years for arms and drug smuggling but was allowed by a judge to serve his time under house arrest in May 2006 — an unusual decision.

Brazilian Air Disaster: “The Runway Was Not Officially Released”

“Revelations of the black boxes!”: Ecce Veja, which, when it leaps to conclusions, very often crashes and burns.

Pista de Congonhas foi liberada sem homologação após reforma: It was the runway! It was the pilot! It was the aircraft! It was the Air Force! God was punishing Lula! It was neo-paganism! The pilot had aborted the landing! The pilot had not aborted the landing! Yada yada yada!

All of those factors, of course — I have more and more sympathy for the by-the-book General Kersul, Brazil’s head crash geek, as time goes on — need to be tracked.

And how they might or might not fit together needs to be explained to the public using words of one-syllable, for dummies. Like me. (Unless you happen to think that instrumental rationality is a Communist plot.)

The Folha ought to produce a volume in its “the Folha explains” series of paperbacks on basic epistemology. Which the Abril Course in Journalism then ought to assign as a textbook. It is not a complicated as some would have you believe.

“If your mother says she loves you, get a second source, then run with it.” That little proverb sums up huge swaths of the subject rather nicely, for example.

Today, at any rate, the Folha de S. Paulo usefully contributes some bucket-work to the legal dimension of the “runway” factor.

The contracting on the runway renovation project — one of the firms on the project was also a contractor on the Line 4 “Smoking Hole” subway project from earlier this year — is being looked at closely by beancounters.

On the smoking hole — we could see the smoke rising from our house, by the way — see also “In Hell, The Engineers Are Brazilian and the Musicians Are German.”

That is just an old joke, of course. The real problem, some experts say, may simply be too many non-engineers working as engineering supervisors.

A Infraero liberou a pista principal do aeroporto de Congonhas, em São Paulo, no final de junho, antes do acidente com o Airbus-A320 da TAM, sem a homologação oficial de entidades do setor aéreo. O superintendente de empreendimentos de engenharia da Infraero, Armando Schneider Filho, disse hoje à CPI do Apagão Aéreo da Câmara que não expediu nenhum documento formal sobre a liberação da pista por não considerar essa prática necessária.

Infraero released the main runway at Congonhas airport in São Paulo at the end of June, prior to the crash of the TAM Airbus A320, without an official release from aviation agencies. The superintendent of engineering projects at the state-owned airport authority, Armando Schneider Jr., told the congression commission on the air travel crisis today that he did not issue any formal document releasing the runway because he did not consider this practice necessary.

“Eu desconheço qualquer necessidade formal ou documentação que determine que a pista seja verificada”, afirmou. O superintendente afirmou, no entanto, que o IPT (Instituto de Pesquisas Tecnológicas) acompanhou toda a execução das obras –mas não tinha autonomia para a sua liberação.

“I am not aware of any formal requirement or documentation that determines that the runway be verified,” he stated. He also said, however, that the IPT (the state Institute of Technological Research) ovesaw the entire project — but did not have the authority to release the runway for use.

The IPT has lately engaged in an artillery duel of press releases with Infraero, trying to rebut the implication that it had okayed the work. It says, in a nutshell, that that was not its job, which was merely, as I understand it, to take measurements and generate data on certain engineering aspects of the project.

From the Brazilian Police Blotter: “Fed Killed Fed To Cover Up Child-Fucking Extortion Racket”

“Child prostitution is a sickness without a cure,” writes Eduardo Carvalho of Última Hora News. See “Brazilian Police Arrest The Antichrist!”: Horace Greeley of the Grotões, on the hazards of DYI investigative journalism in the Brazilian regional and local press.

Ex-delegado da PF é preso acusado por morte de colega: “Former federal police agent arrested over death of colleague.” The case goes back nearly a decade. The problem of “justice delayed” is something of a burning issue of public debate these days, as you can imagine, with the prospect of no resolution to the case of the PT 3 and Belo Horizonte Baldy until 2010.

I have gotten a lot of comment on my post Roraima, Brazil: Judge Borked on Child-Fucking Charge.

Not everyone agrees that using crude language to describe crude facts really is a best practice, and there is a risk as well, correspondents say, of sensationalizing such incidents, or encouraging overgeneralization and cultural stereotyping.

Both valid points to debate, as is the frequent argument that dwelling too much on police corruption undermines the respect for law and order by feeding the pernicious “folklore of corruption.”

To which I reply that honestly and opening reporting the fact that Brazilian police do show themselves very capable of policing themselves is vital to restoring respect for law and order.

This case, in fact, could be used to illustrate the price that dedicated, honest Brazilian police sometimes have to pay to get this done.

That counterargument is, of course, not original with me. I simply find that its proponents get surprisingly little ink in certain sectors of the Brazilian news media. See Brazil: “Ethics, Lies and Law Enforcement Journalism.”

As to child-fucking, ask investigative journalist Gilberto Dimenstein if child prostitution is not a real problem in Brazil. I read his astonishing book on the sensitive subject and was convinced that it is — though the book could use less tearing at the heart-strings and more dry epidemiological statistics to balance it, I thought. Or ask Luis Barbom, the rural São Paulo journalist who ran an exposé on child prostitution by local officials that resulted in convictions for the same.

Oh, wait. You cannot ask him. He was executed by a classic two-man, motorcycle-powered, hooded sicário-style hit squad earlier this year. Military police are investigated for possible involvement. See

• Brazilian Media Union: Slain Journo Was “Not a Real Journalist”

See also Scenes From the Sicário City Post: “Tabledance Mafia Takes Out Top Prosecutor.”

“You as an outsider simply do not understand our traditions” is something you hear a lot. As though we were talking about something as quaint and celebratory as the festas juninas — kind of a Brazilian Sadie Hawkins Day — or that our “okay” hand gesture has an obscene connotation in Brazil.

On the other hand, you also often hear: “Even I, as a native of this place, simply cannot understand our traditions.” Such as droit de seigneur, for example.

In this case, a former fed is arrested for ordering a hit on a colleague who threatened to blow the whistle on an illegal scheme to extort businessmen in exchange for not charging them with “corrupting minors.”

O ex-delegado da Polícia federal Carlos Leonel da Silva Cruz foi preso hoje em Teresópolis, no Rio, acusado de mandar matar o também delegado da PF, Alcioni Serafim de Santana. Cruz estava foragido da Justiça. Santana era corregedor de Polícia em São Paulo e investigava crime de concussão (extorsão praticada por servidores públicos) cometido pelo ex-delegado Cruz e outros policiais.

Former federal police official Carlos Leonel da Silva Cruz was arrested in Teresópolis, in Rio de Janeiro, and charted with ordering the killing of fellow PF official Alcioni Serafim de Santana. Cruz was a fugitive from justice. Santana had headed PF internal affairs in São Paulo and was investigating “concussion” (extortion practiced by public employees) committed by Cruz and other police agents.

Paraiba, Brazil: “The Governor Paid My Water Bill with a Mountain of Flying Money!”

Cunha Lima: Dad was governor, too (just as Collor’s dad was governor of Alagoas). The father is famous for having attempted to murder a political adversary in a crowded restaurant — and getting away with it. While in office. Boing. Pop’s Wikipedia autohagiography by proxy lists his profession as “poet.” He is currently serving as a Brazilian federal legislator for the “Coalition for a Decent Brazil.”

“During the second round of the elections for the state governor, a number of motorcycle couriers visited the public housing complexes on the outskirts of João Pessoa and Bayeux. They picked up electricity, water and telephone bills and brought them back paid, so long as residents voted for Cunha Lima, the incumbent governor who was running for reelection. … The PF found all the receipts for the accounts paid on behalf of Cunha Lima voters in a kind of “slush fund” central for the governor’s campaign, operating out of the Concorde Bldg in João Pessoa, in the offices of car rental impresario and moonshine manufacturer Olalo Cruz Lira.” –IstoÉ magazine, July 15

‘Não renuncio’, diz governador da Paraíba: “I will not resign, says Paraíba governor.”

See also Willy Stark in Paraíba: Toucan Canned.

I am interested in such cases because, as you recall, recent American history has given rise to the hypothesis that elections that get decided in the courts can turn out to be precursors to a plague of banana-republicanism.

Cunha Lima denies the check-writing campaign, but seems to be failing to mention another vote-buying scheme for which he is reportedly also borkable: A scheme to pay the bills of public housing residents if they voted for him.

The alleged operator of this scheme, armed with an illegal weapon, threw R$300,000 in cash out of a window of his car rental agency offices in order to avoid being caught with the evidence.

So reports IstoÉ, citing a confidential police report in an ongoing judicial inquiry.

O governador da Paraíba, Cássio Cunha Lima (PSDB), afirmou nesta terça-feira (31) que não renuncia a seu mandato mesmo correndo o risco de perder os direitos políticos. “Em absoluto não renuncio ao mandato que pertence a mais de um milhão de paraibanos”, afirmou o governador.

Paraiba governor Cássio Cunha Lima (PSDB) said today that he will not resign his office, even running the risk of losing his right to stand for election. “I will absolutely not resign my mandate, which also belongs to more than a million Paraibans,” he said.

Cunha Lima teve o mandato cassado pelo Tribunal Regional Eleitoral (TRE) da Paraíba na segunda (30).

Cunha Lima has his mandate canceled by the state elections tribunal on Monday.

Por cinco votos a um e após oito horas de julgamento, os juízes do tribunal determinaram a cassação, a perda dos direitos políticos até 2009 e uma multa de R$ 100 mil. Ainda cabe recurso ao Tribunal Superior Eleitoral (TSE).

… The decision can still be appealed to the federal elections tribunal.

A decisão do TRE é de que o segundo colocado nas eleições de 2006, o senador José Maranhão (PMDB-PB), assuma o governo após a publicação da decisão.

The TRE’s decision is that the second-place finisher, Senator José Maranhão (PMDB), should assume the government after the decision is published to the Official Diary.

The PMDB-PSDB dynamic reminds me a lot of the PAN-PRI dynamic in Mexico, in certain respects.

Rio: Paramilitary Soap Opera Finale Looms!

Bem Paraná (Brazil) runs an Agência Estado piece on the pending finale of TV Record soap opera Vida Opostas (“Opposite Lives”), a West Side Story-style Romeo and Juliet revamp set in a Rio de Janeiro favela beset by warfare among the police, militias (the militias are the police) and drug traffickers (Seu Fausto the militiaman gets a cut of the drug trade).

Previous notes and clips:

• Brazil: “Opposite Lives” Is Maximum Militia-Themed Infotainment
• Brazil: Soap Opera Portrays Rio Militias

O destino dos personagens de “Vidas Opostas”, que termina em 17 de agosto, começa a ser traçado. E a notícia não é das mais animadoras para os tipos do mal, e, surpreendentemente, tampouco para a turma do bem. O autor Marcilio Moraes antecipa que alguns mocinhos da novela das dez da Record serão recompensados pelas boas ações, como manda a tradição nos folhetins, mas outros serão vítimas de desfechos trágicos. O mesmo vale para os vilões. Parte sairá de cena satisfeita, outra castigada.

The fate of the characters of “Opposite Lies,” which ends August 17, is beginning to be written. And the news is not very encouraging for the bad guys, nor, suprisingly, for the good guys either. Scriptwriter Marcilio Moraes expects that some of the young people from Record’s 10:00 soap will be rewarded for their good deeds, as tradition demands, but others will be victims of tragic outcomes. The same goes for the villains. Some will walk away satisified, others will be punished.

O novelista fugirá dos finais clássicos. “Tal como em uma peça de Shakespeare, ‘Vidas Opostas’ começou com uma grande batalha e vai terminar com outra. Na verdade, com outras, porque haverá guerras no asfalto e na favela do Torto. ‘Quem vai dominar o emblemático morro?’ será uma das perguntas que os telespectadores se farão no final”, fala. “A novela não vai terminar com casamentos, não vai provocar aquele ‘quem fica com quem?’, mas terá mortes.”

The scriptwriter says he will avoid classic soap finales. “Like a Shakespeare play, Opposite Lives began with a big battle and will end with another.”

I am trying to think of a Shakespeare play that begins and ends that way.

“Or really, with others, plural. Because there will be war on the asphalt and war up the hillside at the Torto shantytown. ‘Who will control the symbolic hillside?’ will be one of the questions viewers have at the end,” he says. “This soap opera is not going to end in weddings, it is not going to stimulate the usual ‘who is going to end up with who.’ People are going to die. “

Rio: “Militias on the Offensive”

Bat macumba oba: The Batman shield marks protected homes and businesses in Rio’s Eastern District — and the campaign advertising of two local candidates — ex-policemen and brothers. Parapolitics is a family business, I guess.

The basic problem of public security in Rio de Janeiro is this new factor, the militias, which are just policemen who used to make up a clandestine structure, always illegal and hidden, in terms of violence, but who now are joining a much more open scheme which actually competes in the market for crime, for illegality. … The current government does not know how to deal with this deepening of the relationship between the police, the police apparatus and organized crime properly speaking, which is happening right out in the open. – José Cláudio Souza Alves, UFRJ

O Dia Online (Rio de Janeiro) reports that the Pan-American Games truce — and news blackout — may be over:

Rio – Milicianos que controlam comunidades em Campo Grande e Santa Cruz planejam nova ofensiva para conquistar outras favelas da Zona Oeste do Rio. Informações recebidas por policiais da 34ª DP (Bangu) e da Delegacia de Homicídios (DH) da Zona Oeste revelam que o objetivo do grupo é atacar as favelas Vila Vintém, em Padre Miguel, Vila Aliança, em Bangu, e Vila Kennedy.

Paramilitaries who control communities in Campo Grande and Santa Cruz are planning a new offensive to conquer other Western District favelas in Rio de Janeiro. Intelligence received by police at the 34th Precinct (Bangu) and the Homicide Division in the Western District reveal that the objective of the group is to attack Vila Vintém, in Padre Miguel, Vila Aliança, in Bangu, and Vila Kennedy.

Since there is a lot of reporting to the effect that the militias are to some degree or other (and to what degree, exactly?) coextensive with the police, this sort of news is always a bit perplexing.

Segundo os agentes, a milícia já teria tomado a Favela da Metral, vizinha à Vila Kennedy, além de ter tentado ocupar a Favela do Rebu, em Senador Camará.

According to police, the militia has already taken the Favela da Metral, next to the Vila Kennedy, as well as trying to occupy the Favela do Rebu, in Senador Camará.

Willy Stark in Paraíba: Toucan Canned

The flag of Paraíba: “I deny!” I hear that João Pessoa is a ridiculously lovely place, by the way. We are itching to go there.

Attorneys alleged that, in ordering 35,000 checks social assistance checks distributed, without a specific law or budget item, the Governor was behaving just like President Lula with respect to the Bolsa Família social assistance program.

TRE cassa mandatos do governador e do vice da Paraíba: The subject of an IstoÉ magazine exposé — which accused him of wandering around the state cutting public assistance grant checks and handing them out personally with a cheerful “Vote Quimby!” — the PSDB governor of the Northeastern state of Paraíba has his mandate canceled by the state elections tribunal (TRE).

Background:

• Paraíba Pilantragens Update: Vote-Buying Investigation Remanded
• Brazilian Election Governance: Paraíba Pilantragens Proliferate
• Brazilian Feds: Suassuna Was a Sanguessuga!
• More Possible Paraíba Patiferias

JOÃO PESSOA – Por cinco votos a favor e um contra, o Tribunal Regional Eleitoral da Paraíba (TRE-PB) cassou, na noite desta segunda-feira, os mandatos do governador da Paraíba, Cássio Cunha Lima (PSDB), e do vice-governador, José Lacerda Neto (DEM). A Corte Eleitoral paraibana mandou dar posse ao segundo colocado nas eleições de 2006, o atual senador José Maranhão (PMDB), e o vereador Luciano Cartaxo (PT), nos cargos de governador e vice da Paraíba.

By a 5-1 vote, the TRE of Paraíba on Monday evening canceled the mandates of Governor Cunha Lima (PSDB) and lieutenant-governor José Lacerda Neto (PFL). The elections court ordered the second-place slate from the 2006 elections, Sen. José Maranhão (PMDB)

The PSDB governor of Alagoas still faces charges that he benefited from massive e-voting fraud in his election.
Meanwhile, in a story not widely reported — O Globo stuck a few lines about it on one of its punditry blogs and decided it had covered the story — federal police have now confirmed that Eduardo Azeredo, the sitting Senator and former president of the PSDB who resigned during last year’s election campaign over charges of illegal campaign slush-funding and money laundering, used both private and public money to run his gubernatorial reelection campaign in Minas Gerais.

See also Azeredo Campaign Funded From The Bald One’s Laundry.

Ecce the Coalition for a Decent Brazil.

Again, I say this not with the intention of fortifying its political rivals (the Coalition for an Indecent Brazil), but only because I think it is important to try to gauge how often what I call “the rhetoric of hysterical virginity” is accompanied by gross hypocrisy.

(Faith-based neocon lawmakers caught with their pants down in D.C. bordellos being the current equivalent mini-scandal in gringoland.)

I find that there is enough of a rough correlation that I tend not to believe people who engage in the rhetoric of hysterical virginity — even when they are espousing a cause I might tend to support, in a general way.

Cunha Lima é acusado de compra de votos e foi responsabilizado pela distribuição de 35 mil cheques de R$ 150,00 e R$ 200,00 na campanha eleitoral do ano passado para pessoas carentes. No entendimento dos juízes do TER paraibano, a distribuição de cheques da Fundação de Ação Comunitária (FAC)- órgão do Governo do Estado – se caracterizou em abuso do poder político e econômico, além de conduta vedada aos agentes Públicos.

Cunha Lima was accused of vote-buying and was found guilty of distributing 35,000 checks of between R$150 and R$200 in the last elections to poor persons. The TRE-PB found that the distribution of checks from the Community Action Funds — a state agency — constituted abuse of political and economic power, as well as conduct prohibited to public servants.

Chile: “Digital Revolution Against Microsoft!”

Alejandro Ferreiro says the document he signed “does not alter the policy of technological neutrality set by the government or establish commercial alliances with any firm in particular.”

You say you wanna revolution? Well, you know, we all wanna change the world. –Nike advertising jingle

Ciberrevolución en Chile contra Microsoft: El Mundo (Spain) reports — as Truth Happens (NYSE;RHT) and (Hearing) Global Voices Online have also noted.

The density of tropes related to the “rhetoric of the technological sublime” in the El Mundo writeup creates a fog of hyperbole so thick that a petition with 738 signatures on it becomes the freaking Battleship Potemkin.

“Without it, life would be hell on earth.” Microtec advertisement, Veja magazine, issue 87. File under “the rhetoric of the technological sublime (RTS) in postmodern technology PR, Velvet Elvis tendency.” Main indicator of the RTS: glittering generality words related to radical, permanent metaphysical change that piggyback on apocalyptic hopes. See also belief in the imminence of The Rapture.

El Pais writes up it as well … in a more journalistic fashion which includes actually reporting some of the terms of the deal in question. The devil generally residing in the details.

And to its credit, the wiki of the Digital Liberation project itself also links to defenders of the deal, with an admonition to comrades “not to demonize” the guy who writes to defend it.

Other interesting recent “Second Superpower” campaigns include the Seven Wonders exercise in “vote early, vote often” e-democracy and the “write in support of declaring the AUC political prisoners” initiative of Colombia.gov.co:

• E-Democracy in Action: “Are The Paras Seditious?”
• Wonders of the Online World: Cariocas Game The System

All opinions are equal, but the opinions of Web site visitors are more equal than others.  Remember when the Taylor machine piles up the letters in front of Jimmy Stewart in Mr. Smith Goes to Washington?

Microsoft PR, of course — of which (Hearing) Globo Voices Online is a semiofficial Buck Rogers auxiliary space cadet cadre — is very fond of the rhetoric of revolution and apocalypse itself. See, most recently,

• Bill Gates Preaches Revolution In Cartagena

Imagínense la situación. El Gobierno de Chile firma con Microsoft un acuerdo que convierte a la compañía de Redmond en el proveedor informático de la administración.

Imagine the situation. The Government of Chile signs a deal with Microsoft that makes Redmond the official IT provider of the administration.

Sin concurso público, transparencia ni alternativas. Tanto es así que se firmó en mayo y se supo de su existencia en julio. Como es lógico, muchos chilenos se cabrean, montan en la Red el Movimiento de Liberación Digital y empiezan a ser conocidos.

Without competitive bidding, transparency or alternatives. But just such a deal was signed in May, and made public in July.

May 9, 2007, to be exact.

By the Development Minister, Alejandro Ferreiro Yazigi, formerly the securities and insurance commissioner (the mapuche Christopher Cox, as it were.)

El Pais registers the official response:

Además, el ministerio de Economía del país, a través de su directora de Comunicación, Milly Miranda, ha desmentido a ELPAIS.com que el acuerdo fuera secreto y asegura que hubo una rueda de prensa el mismo día 9 con los periodistas como testigos para dar fe de un acuerdo que, en todo caso, servía para recibir donaciones de Microsoft y “en ningún caso era de carácter comercial”, lo que justifica, según Miranda, la ausencia de un concurso público.

The Economy Minister, through his communications director, Milly Miranda, denied to El Pais that the deal was secret and says there was a press conference on May 9 with journalists as witnesses to a deal that, in any event, dealt with receiving donations from Microsoft and as “in no way commercial,” which justifies, Miranda says, the absence of a public competition.

El Mundo blogs on in full digital Maoist mode:

Naturally, many Chileans are digging their heels in, are setting up the Movement for Digital Liberation on the Web, and are starting to get recognition.

Generating Steam Heat: Nassif on the Contemporary Brazilian Alt.Media Blitzkrieg Bop

“Seizing of the Nanking Palace.” See also “Spontaneous Joy as the Free Iraqi Forces Seize Firdaus Square” and “A grass-roots groundswell of podcasters rise up to bum rush Billboard Magazine!” “The emergent revolt of the users” is a (usually phony) “innovation journalism” masterplot.

All the politicans making crazy sounds
And all the dead bodies piled up in mounds
And I guess that I just don’t know
– Lou Reed, “Heroin”

An example of a failed appeal to pathos was the attempt by some one from a pro-life group to get candidate Clinton’s attention during his first run for the presidency. Once, in a large crowd, he reached out to shake hands, and someone put a dead fetus in his hands. The attempt was to shock him into the realization that a fetus is a human being, but the result was to create a repugnance, not toward the person who had performed the abortion, but toward the person who had put the fetus in his hands. –“An introduction to pathos”

The Cansei astroturf campaign is showing signs of morphing into that fetus, I think. The question “why did you not give that thing a decent burial instead of using it as a political prop?” being the first that springs to mind.

Helena Chagas of iG (Brazil) comments on recent demonstrations orchestrated by the astroturf campaign known as Cansei (“I am sick and tired of …”) and registers a certain degree of weariness with political noise machines in general.

I sympathize.

This is an interesting debate and I will try to clip some of the primary sources to file for future reference.

Luis Nassif, for, comments on an enormous Jornalistas&Cia. autohagiography by proxy with the Grupo Abril’s Roberto “The New Lacerda” Civita — a simultaneous reputational counteroffensive for a multimedia content cartel frequently criticized (including by me) for producing gabbling, viciously slanted pseudojournalistic parainfotainment of a crudeness rarely equaled.

Cases in points:

• Veja Só: Editorial Integrity at Brazil’s Grupo Abril
• “Violence is a Natural Part of the Political Process”: Diogo Mainardi and the Hog Heaven of the Hard Men
• Veja: The Senator Had Sex! But Is He Screwed?

I will translate that Civita interview for you as well, when I get a chance.

The “grassroots movement” orchestrated out of a big advertising agency and factions within São Paulo’s industrial federation, FIESP, launched a massive national multimedia advertising campaign this week, coordinated with massive coverage of a demonstration at the scene of the Congonhas air disaster.

Three persons were arrested for spray-painting “Down with Lula” on the ruins of the TAM facility there at the end of the runway.

See also Brazil Air Disaster: Birth of an Astroturf Campaign.

Meanwhile, elaborate puzzlement is expressed by sundry pundits as to why none of this seems to impact on the approval rating of the chief executive — not even, as one pollster notes today, among the social class most likely to use the air transportation system.

Could it be that life is simply not all that apocalyptic for most Brazilians? It may not match the Better House and Gardens centerfold yet, but “things are slowly getting better” (along with, it is true, “why can’t things get better faster?”) is a frequent point of conversation in corner bar and beauty parlors, I tend to find.

We, for example, fly with reasonable frequency and never run into hassles vastly greater than those we run into in the U.S. travel system. Perhaps we are extremely lucky. Or perhaps the “our brand is crisis” campaign is mainly the rhetoric of hysterical virginity fed back through the Clan Marinho’s million-megawatt megaphone.

For example, 21% of flights were delayed (over 45 minutes or over 1 hour; the measure varies) in Brazil today, during the coldest week of winter. Now, I read in government statistics that flight “delays” in the U.S. last December ran to nearly 30%. Unlike Brazil’s ANAC, however, we gringos publish elaborate statistics breaking it down causes (nearly half of those were weather delays, as I read), regions, carriers, and every other dimension you can think of.

The campaign reminds me of nothing so much as the campaign by the Coparmex-backed Cidadania en Movimiento (an NGO “incubator” listing some 1,424 nonprofit groups) during last year’s election season in Mexico.

Or the pro-RCTV demonstrations in Caracas. High media saturation, extremely modest participation, no genuinely spontaneous adhesion documented.

Ms. Chagas approaches the issue from a familiar angle: When you feel that you are under siege by noise machines, should you fight noise machinism with more noise machinism?

E por falar em confronto. O PT reúne sua executiva amanhã para discutir uma forma de reação aos “Cansei” e “Fora Lula” que pipocaram nos últimos dias a reboque de instituições como a Fiesp, a OAB e os partidos de oposição. É preocupante a perspectiva de a marcha da classe média e dos empresários bater de frente com alguma outra que venha a ser puxada pelos petistas e seus aliados na Av. Paulista. Mas irão os petistas e o governo assistir a essa mobilização de braços cruzados? É a tal história: radicalização provoca radicalização, e depois que as coisas chegam a um determinado ponto, fica difícil retroceder.

There is talk of going to war. Worker’ Party leadeship is meeting tomorrow to debate how to respond to the “Cansei” and “Down With Lula” campaigns that are popping up in recent days, driven by institutions like FIESP, the OAB, and the opposition parties.

Actually, I have only seen the OAB São Paulo underwriting the “movement.” I am interested to see what the national OAB will do.

Hildebrando117 Reloaded: Remembering the Aristegui Demonstration

Here is what I was talking about earlier with respect to public-private partnerships in data brokerage on the ISOSA model (“FBI Slush Fund For Data Brokerage Deals!”).

Carmen Aristegui of CNN Español’s original breaking news report on the Hildebrando117 database interface affair — hastily subtitled, but you get the gist.

From the Bancroft Watch: “News Corp. Says Its ‘Highly Unlikely’ To Buy Dow Jones at Current Count”

Murdoch takes to his airwaves on the Cavuto cavalcade of pumpery-dumpery. Six minutes in, Cavuto says “I guess I oughta disclose that I am building a business channel for you.” In a deal in which journalistic integrity loomed large, the moment constituted something of a double message, I thought.

News Corp. Says Its ‘Highly Unlikely’ To Buy Dow Jones at Current Count (W$J). But then again, News Corp. says a lot of things.

As of late yesterday family members holding about 28% of Dow Jones’s overall voting power had committed to support the deal, The Wall Street Journal reported today. The spokesman says if that holds true, News Corp. likely wouldn’t take the deal to a full Dow Jones shareholder vote.

As a W$J subscriber, I am glad to hear it.

Rio: “Police Reinforcements Will Stay On”

“A holiday in other people’s misery”: recent Rio graffito mocks logo of the Pan-American games. The notion that coordinated police and militia actions were undertaken to prevent afavelados from messing up the show is frequently encountered in online forums, I find.

Rio ficará com 75% do aparato de segurança do Pan, diz Lula: The Estadão confirms what had been unofficially reported before.

Some 75% of the outside police forces brought in to reinforce security for the Pan-American Games in Rio de Janeiro — mainly this carabineiri-like Força Nacional — will remain behind.

Gov. Cabral and his state public safety secretary are on the record, from earlier this year, as saying the FNSP could be used in operations against illegal paramilitary groups (made up of moonlighting police personnel, mostly). So expectations for action on the problem of policing the police will be raised, I imagine.

Federal subsidies to bring the base wage of police up to 4 or 5 minimum salaries have also been announced.

On policing the police during the Games themselve, this incident was evocative, I thought:

• Rio: “San Francisco Cops Report Shakedown”

SÃO PAULO – O presidente Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva fez um balanço sobre os 17 dias dos Jogos Pan-Americanos, ocorridos no Rio, em seu programa semanal de rádio Café com o Presidente. O governo federal investiu mais de R$ 560 milhões em segurança e, segundo o presidente, “75% disso tudo vai ficar no Rio de Janeiro”, como esquema de inteligência, aviões e carros.

President da Silva looked back on the 17 days of the Games in Rio on his morning radio show. The federal government invested more than R$560 million in security, and, according to the president, “75% of all of that is going to stay in Rio de Janeiro,” including the intelligence scheme, aircraft and cars.

“FBI Slush Fund For Data Brokerage Deals!”

Connect the plots: The first vague guesswork outlines of a possible data-privacy regulatory arbitrage pipeline. At left: What we know. ChoicePoint obtained the data by paying off Mexican officials and their outsourced proxies, then handed to over to the FBI for sharing with the “community” for “counter-terror” and “antidrug” use. At right: so how did data come to be in the possession of PAN, the party of Calderón de la Farça, on the other? A vague hypothesis, but hey, you think maybe Alberto Gonzalez had something to do with it? Dick Morris has confirmed that he works for Calderon.

FBI asks Congress for phone record slush fund | The Register: The June 26 report from the cheerfully vulgar U.K. tech tabloid with the urubu for a mascot acquires new relevance because Alberto Gonzalez and proxies are arguing that the top lawman did not, technically speaking, lie to Congress about wiretapping because the real issue of the Ashcroft bedside visit was a data-mining program, not eavesdropping, as the New York Times reports today.

It’s the Clintonian “I did not have sexual relations with that woman” meme all over again, where sexual relations is narrowly defined as vaginal intromission, excluding oral intercourse. To be fair, however, if there were adequate oversight of the budget line item and the program, “slush fund” might be a little exaggerated.  If.

Now, recall that in Mexico, the FBI (journalists have seen the contracts) hired ChoicePoint to acquire the 65 million-record database of Mexican voters. The Fox government outsourced management of that data to a private data management firm, which sold the data illegally to ChoicePoint employees.

Mexican authorities attempted to arrest ChoicePoint employees in the case as they fled the country. Mexican executives of that firm, originally charged with treason, were later let off with fines on lesser charges.

An apparent interface to that database later wound up in a CNN Español exposé on a Web site that carried the branding of the PAN presidential campaign and had “Hildebrando1117″ as a password.

Hildebrando is an IT enteprise integrator and data broker owned by the brother in law of Felipe Calderón.

It was also hired by the federal elections commission (IFE) to do the quick count in the 2006 national election. The quick count was bungled royally — though not as royally as the Ecuadoran elections quick count later that year, conducted by a Brazilian consortium whose executives had to flee the country to avoid a fraud probe — and, ahem, contrary to the random walk hypothesis to a surprising degree.

The Web site appeared to allow users to look up the private records of Mexican voters. It is illegal for political parties to have such data.

PAN dismissed the demonstration as a prerigged Web site not showing what it purported to show. Which given the parameters of the demonstration, does not hold a lot of water. IFE, which had contracted Hildebrando to do its PREP count, promised to investigate. Impartially and thoroughly.

Conflicts of interest? Only those who fail to “get” the Internet worry about such things these days!

I will show you that demonstration again later, I am working up some audiovisual on this.

National Public Radio reported this week [June 26] that the FBI has requested $5.3m from Congress to pay telecommunications companies for customer data, funding a massive database that would provide agents with convenient access to customer phone and email records. Just in case.

Which telecommunications companies was it meaning to pay? Verizon figured prominently in the EFF’s work on exposing this practice, I recall.

The request provides the legal coda to the controversial domestic spying program unveiled by the New York Times over a year and a half ago, and serves to raise again questions that were never fully addressed in the interim. At the time, many believed rumors that the telecommunications industry profited by selling personal data to the feds – after all, the American telecommunications industry has a long history of selling personal data to the highest-bidding telemarketer, so why wouldn’t they hustle it to the government? That twist on the surveillance saga had pretty much faded from view until now, when the FBI decided to bring the database program out of the proverbial closet.

Peru: “Shoot to Kill” Exception Protested

“Dr. Hélio Bicudo was elected a Federal Deputy in 1990 and then re-elected in 1994 … during that period he authored important bills and proposed constitutional amendments that would have introduced changes in the structure of the Police, the judicial branch of government and the prison system. Salient among these was Bill Number 3320 of 1992, which narrowed the jurisdiction of the states’ military criminal courts so that they would no longer be competent to prosecute and punish crimes committed by military police in the course of discharging their police functions … a member of the São Paulo Military Police alerted Dr. Bicudo that while at the Officers Club, he had overheard a conversation among colonels in the São Paulo Military Police in which it was suggested that an “accident” or “mugging” might befall Dr. Bicudo, to prevent passage of the aforementioned bills.” – Hélio Bicudo v. Brazil, Case 12.397, Report No. 80/05, Inter-Am. C.H.R., OEA/Ser.L/V/II.124 Doc. 5 (2005)

Amnistía Internacional Perú reports: Provided with powers to legislate by decree, the Garcia government decrees that soldiers and police who kill persons in the performance of their duties cannot be charged criminally for wrongful deaths.

La Asociación Pro Derechos Humanos (APRODEH) expresa su profundo rechazo frente al Decreto Legislativo 982, que modifica el artículo 20 del Código Penal declarando inimputables a los integrantes de las Fuerzas Armadas y de la Policía Nacional que causen lesiones o muerte “en el cumplimiento de su deber y en uso de sus armas en forma reglamentaria”.

Pro Human Rights (APRODEH) expresses its profound repudiation of Legislative Decree 982, which modifies Article 20 of the Penal Code by declaring that members of the armed forces and national police who cause injury and death “in the performances of their duty and using their weapons in a regular manner” cannot be found criminally responsible.

This sounds a bit like a move in the direction of Brazil’s legacy justice system, where “military police” still cannot be tried for crimes committed while on duty in common courts, but only in military courts by superior officers.

Garcia has also suspended constitutional rights in portions of the countryside with reported Sendero activity (real or imagined). Coupled with his jaw-dropping Red-baiting remarks about striking teachers in recent weeks (he apologized for those remarks in a nationally televised address just now), it all has a sort of 1960s and 1970s feel to it. “The dictatorship of big labor! Communism is a failed ideology! Take them to the soccer stadium!” That sort of thing.

Resulta totalmente contrario al derecho a la vida y a la justicia que policías o militares puedan matar ciudadanos sin ser procesados por ello. Toda muerte debe ser investigada y, si se produce de manera dolosa o negligente, sancionada. Es evidente que esta medida puede generar peligrosos abusos de autoridad que quedarían precisamente impunes por la muerte de las víctimas. Inclusive podría generar que se atente directamente contra la vida de dirigentes sociales y se hacen más probables las muertes en custodia policial. Igualmente, muchos de los procesados por violaciones de derechos humanos podrían señalar este artículo para beneficiarse, porque el principio de retroactividad benigna indica que una nueva ley se aplica a quienes han cometido crímenes con anterioridad, si les es más favorable.

It is totally contrary to the right to life and to justice that police or soldiers can kill citizens without being tried for it. Every death must be investigated and, if it was the result of criminal intent or negligence, punished. It is obvious that this measure may produce dangerous abuses of authority that would leave the deaths of victims in a state of impunity. It might even lead directly to deaths of the leaders of social movements and make deaths in police custody more likely. Likewise, many of those being tried for violations of human rights could point to this article to shield themselves, because the principle of “benign retroactivity” indicates that a new law applies to those who committed prior crimes, if it is more favorable to them.

Brazilian Air Disaster: News Coverage Postmortem, Reel No. 1

Brazilian Air Disaster: News Coverage Postmortem, Reel No. 1

I have been studying up on the rarified subject of what makes for good and bad aviation disaster coverage (the IRE has a good “tipsheet” on the subject). Here we look at TV Globo (kneejerk reaction: the Wolf Blitzer-style “crisis center” anchor desk journalism is characteristically pompous, tendentious, vacuous and absurd, but the field reporting is not bad); get a glimpse of the CENIPA (crash investigation agency) chief, who has manifested indignation over skeevy leaking to the skeevy press in an ongoing investigation (and has international standards bodies on his side, in fact); and look in on a Radiobras forum on what Brazilian airports need in the way of modernization.

Correction: After saying, “as the report we are about to here will tell, you the pilot tried to life off and go around,” Bonner actually asks his field reporter, “The TAM building is not directly in line with the runway, am I correct?” The point is (1) that the aircraft veered before crashing, (2) the aircraft was wheels down as it crossed Washington Luis Avenue and (3) the airport lacks a safety zone designed to accomodate eventual runway overshoots.

Peru: “Fujimori Plagiarism Included Falsehoods”

“Orlando Alvarez admits he copied paragraphs from Fujimori’s defense pleadings in a ruling against the extradition of Fujimori. In doing so, he stated a falsehood as truth: That the Colima group was formed before the Fujimori government.”

Juez Álvarez admite que plagió fallo: I have been looking to see if other news sources are reporting that the plagiarism charges against the Chilean judge who turned down Peru’s request to extradite Alberto Fujimori include the proposition that the judge plagiarized falsehoods and affirmed them as truths.

Defenders of the judge say the procedure — cutting and pasting language from defense and prosecution briefs — is normal.

The plagiarism charge results from the failure to acknowledge the source of someone else’s words. Defenders of the judge say this lapses is a merely formal one. “If the argument is good, you use it.”

Only La República of Lima has reported that so far, as follows:

… lo preocupante del plagio del juez Álvarez es que mediante ese acto se dio como ciertos una serie de hechos que no están documentados en el expediente de extradición y no son ciertos.

“… the troubling think about Alvarez’s plagiarism is that in doing so he affirmed as true a series of facts that are not documented in the extradition petition and are not, in fact, true.

Orlando Álvarez llega a decir que Japón rechazó la extradición, cuando en realidad ese país solo pidió una aclaración –por errores en la traducción de los documentos al japonés–, y dejó en nada el reclamo peruano, cuando Fujimori huyó a Chile.

Orlando Alvarez asserted that Japan had rejected the extradition, when in fact that nation has only requestion a clarification — because of errors in the translation of the documents into Japanese — and had ignored Peru’s complaint when Fujimori fled to Chile.

El juez chileno también aseguró que Perú ocultó pruebas que favorecían a Fujimori, porque solo las incluyó en el expediente de extradición a pedido de los abogados de Fujimori.

The Chilean judge stated that Peru concealed evidence in favor of Fujimori because it only included them in the extradition petition at the request of Fujimori’s lawyers.

Lo real es que el procedimiento de extradición peruano establece que la fiscalía incluye en el expediente de extradición los documentos que considere prueban la acusación y que la defensa por su parte pedirá incluir las partes que considere le favorece. Es decir no hubo una intención de ocultar nada, sino que eso forma parte del trámite de extradición en Perú.

The fact of the matters is that Peru’s extradition proceedings require the prosecutor’s office to include the documents in the petition that it believes prove the accustations, while the defense asks it to include evidence it considers favorable. That is to say, there was no intention to conceal anything. This is a normal part of an extradition proceeding in Peru.

Otras mentiras de la copia

Other “cut and pasted” lies

El juez Orlando Álvarez dice que el grupo Colina se formó antes del gobierno de Fujimori, sin embargo, no existe pruebas de ello. Lo que hay en el expedientes, son diversas versiones que dicen que antes de los ‘90 había grupos de operaciones especiales que se creaban para determinadas acciones y luego desaparecían. Un grupo estable, como Colina, solo operó en los ‘90.

Orlando Alvarez says the Colina [death squad] was formed before the Fujimori government, but there is no proof of this. The pleadings set forth various versions according to which before the 1990s, special operations groups were created for specific operations, then disbanded. A stable group, such as Colina, only operation in the 1990s.

Álvarez también da como cierto, a partir de la versión de Fujimori, que las víctimas de la universidad La Cantuta en algún momento luego de su captura fueron llevadas a la Escuela de Comandos y que el jefe de esa unidad los rechazó. Sin embargo, de ese hecho solo hay rumores a partir de la extraña muerte, tiempo después de los sucesos de La Cantuta, del jefe de esas unidad militar. Los agentes de Colina han reconocido que los asesinatos se produjeron luego de salir de la universidad en la carretera Ramiro Priale.

Alvarez also affirmed, based on Fujimori’s affirmation, that the victims at La Cantuta University were taken to the Commando School after their capture, and that the head of this unit refused to accept them. However, regarding this alleged event there are nothing but rumors, based on the strange death, some time after the events at La Cantuta, of the head of this military unit. Colina agents have acknowledged that the murders occurred right after leaving the university along the Ramiro Priale highway.

This point was repeated prominently on the cover of the [old Newsday-style] daily tabloid (above).

Mexico: FOIA Report on Antinarco Campaign Shows Few Narcos Bagged

Fresh off their stunning engagement in San Salvador Atenco — as seen on TV! — the New Centurions take their show on the road.

Of 1,180 persons arrested in federal organized crime operations, only 19 were charged with organized crime and activities, and only 76 for narcotics trafficking. The largest percentage were undocumented persons trying to get to the United States.

Indocumentados, mayor porcentaje de detenidos en operativos de la PFP: “Largest percentage of persons arrested in PFP organized crime operations are [mojados],” reports La Jornada, based on information gleaned from a request to Mexico’s fledgling IFAI bureaucracy– a program similar to our FOIA.

The numbers will probably be used by some commentators to reinforce the analysis whereby the Calderón anticrime crusade, which includes accelerated militarization of policing, is something of a Potemkin Village. See also

• And Speaking of Anti-Crime Crusades

But speaking of which, are there statistics on military activity as well? I am not sure whether the Mexican army has independent police powers in these operations or not.

The FOIA-IFAI angle actually interests me most. Of these cases, the most dramatic is Proceso’s application to recount the ballots, still pending before a TRIFE (federal elections tribunal) with no magistrates remaining from the court that ratified last year’s elections that, as an El Financiero analysis showed, has ruled against IFE, the federal elections commission, on a notable number of occasions — and, say court watchers, referred to IFE’s competence in, ahem, less than admiring terms on occasion. I believe the word “derision” was used.)

The cases often involve some interesting semantic parsing of the concept of transparency. See, for example, Mexico’s IFE: Open-Ended Exceptions to Transparency. “For our friends, anything; for our enemies, transparency.”

To the numbers:

El mayor porcentaje de detenidos en los llamados operativos federales conjuntos contra el crimen organizado, en el periodo que va de diciembre de 2006 a marzo de este año, fueron indocumentados, según consta en la respuesta que la Policía Federal Preventiva (PFP) dio a un pedido, tramitado por este diario ante el Instituto Federal de Acceso a la Información (IFAI).

The largest percentage of persons arrested in the so-called joint federal “operations” against organized crime, in the period from December 2006 to March 2007, were undocumented, according to a response to a freedom of information request to the federal police (PFP).

“The Folklore of Corruption”: Notes Toward a Big Think

“Internet user catches the moment: Someone jumps from building in flames.” Not. It was a cheap, RCTV-style Sino-Paraguayan Photosop hack. See Brazil: UOL Citizen Journalism Is Fake News. The Folha is the portal’s anchor content sludge-pumper.

“The folklore of corruption is good business — for the corrupt.” — Elio Gaspari

One of the more interesting thoughts I have heard anyone express about the problem of corruption, and bagunça and baderna in general, in Brazil recently — or elsewhere in the “emerging economies” — was a note by historian Elio Gaspari in the Folha de S. Paulo on “the folklore of corruption.”

See

• Gaspari on the Brazilian Air(ist)ocracy: “Fubar is Lucrative”
• Brazil: “The Folklore of Corruption”
• Brazil:”The Spectacle of Corruption”
• Brazil: The Media Rides Its Lobbyhorse

So I started reading up on the subject.

Becaue one of the things that strikes me intuitively, as a cautious boil-before-drinking consumer of what comes down the Brazilian “content pipeline” from Brazilian news organizations, is that a lot of coverage of the issue is willfully obtuse as to the distinction between corruption scandals and actual incidents of illegal activity that adversely affect the effective administration of justice and efficient operation of free and open markets to such an extent that wise representatives of the popular will pass laws against it.

Deu no Jornal, for example, a project of Transparency Brasil, is a project for monitoring, and fomenting, newsflow on “corruption,” but seems to make no allowance for the difference between “scandal” and “incidence.”

Sarkozy’s slush fund account at Clearstream was scandalous.

So was the fact that Sarkozy did not have a slush fund at Clearstream, as charged by anonymous sources out to ratfink the guy.

In the end, only one of the two scandals can be counted as an “incidence” of “corruption.”

Deu No Jornal’s quango-tangoing editor pisses and moans that the Brazilian press is not responsible for the “boy who cried wolf” syndrome that affects it (Brazil: “The Media is a Scapegoat!”).

But he is wrong.

And in his capacity as a “special correspondent” to the Los Angeles Times — I guess the LAT is following the example of the Washington Post and the BBC, cutting staffing costs by running “reporting” by people on NGO payrolls as its own work product — he commits gabbling acts of FUD, I think.

Asked why his newsmagazines never cover private-sector corruption, to take another example, Roberto Civita of the Grupo Abril told Knowleldge@Wharton last year that this is because private-sector corruption, or private-sector corruption of the public sector, simply does not exist.

The recent “World Bank study of corruption” in Brazil, reported by many news organizations as indicating “increased levels of corruption” there since 2003, was another case that caught my attention. See

• “Brazilian Corruption Deepens”: World Bank
• “Wolfowitz Lied About Integrity Appointment“

So anyway, on that general topic, I have been reading an interesting little study from the Hungarian Gallup Institute, from December 1999, titled “Basic Methodological Aspects of Corruption Measurement: Lessons Learned from the Literature and the Pilot Study.”

Colombia: Rashomon Over Grim El Valle Harvest

The bearded hard men: anachronistic remnants of the Cold War. Source: ANNACOL

Diputados del Valle murieron en medio de fuego amigo entre guerrilleros de las Farc (El Tiempo): President Uribe has said 11 FARC hostages were murdered by their captors, in some sense or other.

It was not quite clear to me whether he was invoking the moral responsibility of kidnappers in general or suggesting some sinister fact-pattern, such as making good on a threat to execute if armed rescue were to be attempted.

A lot of the relatives are totally against armed rescue, which Uribe has also hinted at. For a sense of why, read García Marquez’ News of a Kidnapping.

FARC said last week that the captives were killed in the crossfire during a raid by American and Israeli mercenaries.

El Tiempo got swarms of comments accusing it of practicing “cryptomarxist pseudojournalism” for having dared to give ink to the assertion — though of course it balanced the story with official reaction and independent assessments. El Tiempo seems like an awfully good newspaper for responsible adults to me. Nice Web site, too.

“Cryptomarxist pseudojournalists” are apparently those who dare spill ink on inconvenient memes.

Uribe has taken a page from the Rove playbook in the past and called this sort of behavior — fully airing public cases and controversies — irresponsible. El Tiempo — owned by the Santos family — has perservered, for which reason it was disinvited to Uribe’s prime-time live TV press conference on the Petro allegations. See

• Uribe in His Own Words
• The Autumn of Uribe, II
• The W$J Vouches for Uribe
• Colombia: Mr. Petro Goes to Washington

It’s like arguing that reporting the fact that Al-Qaeda “successfully attacked” the Twin Towers on Sept. 11 would be giving aid and comfort to the enemy.  Bullshit, of course. They said that wanted to do it. They did it. Success is setting a goal and achieving it. Successful attack. (And why is Osama bin Laden still alive, again?)

Now, the head of the DAS — something like the Colombian FB(C)I(A) — says the kidnapped lawmakers were “killed in an exchange of fratricidal fire among FARC units.” In the “fog of war,” it seems. Based on a report from an undercover informant.

The DAS has a Noguera problem to take into account — the former DAS head placed in preventive custody recently for, among other things, waging infowar against the Colombian public. See also

• Colombia: Narcoparapolitician Promises FARConarcopolitics Scandal!

How to weight the Noguera factor? I confess I have no idea at this point. So no wagering.

The FARC last week refused an offer to let the OAS mediate the handing over of the bodies of the deputies. The French were reportedly, or rumored to be, favored for that role.

Former presidential candidate Ingrid Betancourt — I just dragged out her book, Until death do us part, for a reread, in fact — is a dual French-Colombian citizen.

Whatever happened to the flap over the Sarkozy adviser and Sorbonne professor who alleged consulted with Latin American militaries on how to run, ahem, armed public-private partnerships? By the way? See

• Colombia: “Sarkozy’s Sorbonne Think-Tanker Counsels Parapoliticians”

El Tiempo likes to have the headline double as the lead, continuing on into the first paragraph of small type. Nothing wrong with that. It’s a distinctive mannerism is all. Hence:

Así lo aseguró el director saliente del DAS, Andrés Peñate, en rueda de prensa en la que además dijo que los restos de los políticos están siendo trasladados a una zona entre Valle y Cauca.

That is what acting DAS director Peñaté said at a press conference, during which he also said that the remains of the elected officials were being taken to a zone between Valle and Cauca.

Guerrilleros de las Farc, que iban a apoyar a 16 subversivos del frente 60 que cuidaban a los ex diputados del Valle del Cauca -secuestrados en el 2002- terminaron enfrentados al creer que se trataba de militares y, en medio de ese ‘fuego amigo’, murieron los dirigentes políticos.

Guerillas of the FARC, who were going to support 16 subversives from the “60 Front” who were carrying for the former elected officials in the Cauca valley — kidnapped in 2002 — wound up in a firefight because they were believed to be soldiers, and in the midst of this “friendly fire,” the political leaders died.

Chile: “Judge Reputation-Launders Fujimori Press Release!”

“Orlando Alvarez admits he copied paragraphs from Fujimori’s defense pleadings in a ruling against the extradition of Fujimori. In doing so, he stated a falsehood as truth: That the Colima group was formed before the Fujimori government.”

Juez Confiesa Copia de Texto (Chile.com): Chilean-Peruvian relations are tense at the moment — will Groucho Garcia lead Freedonia to war to get people’s mind off military procurement scandals and the “leaky Navy” intelligence scandal?

And in the middle of spear-rattling over border issues that go back to the heyday of the Emperor Maximillian, as I vaguely understand it, the extradition of Alberto Fujimori is, of course, a contributing factor.

The Chilean judge who turned down the extradition request, reports the Lima daily La República, not only copied and pasted sections from court filings in Fujimori’s defense, but also put his imprimatur on, ahem, nonexistent facts in doing so.

Which strikes me as what I sometimes like to refer to as “reputation laundry” — concealing the source of a message by attributing it to someone else, someone with a reputation for impartiality.

Astroturf PR campaigns in the Richard “Rashomon” Edelman mold are predicated upon the underlying technique. And as the Bill Keller told New York Times staff after Jayson Blair and Judy Miller:

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

This case seems analogous.

Bill Keller seems like a pretty wise and practical guy.

The Lima daily, meanwhile, says that in doing so, the judge “stated a falsehood as truth.” The first Chilean reports I am reading do not mention that, so let me check that out. In the meantime, the gist:

El juez Orlando Alvarez reconoció que copió una parte de su dictamen en el que negó la extradición de Alberto Fujimori y señaló que en dicho informe plagió varios párrafos del alegato de la defensa del ex Mandatario.

Judge Orlando Alvarez acknowleded that he copied part of the ruling in which he denied the request to extradite Alberto Fujimori, saying that he plagiarized a number of paragraphs from the former Peruvian president’s defense pleadings.

TAM Disaster: “Too Soon To Blame Pilots, Experts Say”

“What Veja reports the pilot might have done”: Globo infographic actually illustrates speculation based on incomplete information. Click to zoom.

When airplane disasters strike, inaccuracy and unfairness are the rule in deadline coverage, not the exception. “People in the aviation industry just laugh at us, and they have a right to,” asserts Elizabeth A. Marchak, a reporter for the Cleveland Plain Dealer who has spent recent years investigating aviation safety. “Reporters get it wrong a lot of the time. –Columbia Journalism Review, “Covering the Unfriendly Skies” (Sept/Oct 1999).

Para especialistas, é cedo para culpar piloto por acidente em SP (G1/Globo): The Globo news portal does a decent job of balanced debate reporting on the Veja magazine cover story this weekeend, as cribbed uncritically by the national and international press, according to which the disaster on TAM Flight 3054 on July 17 was caused by pilot error.

Is anyone running a prediction market or betting pool on the eventual findings, by the way? “Which factor will the investigation find was decisive, if any?” “None of the above” should be an option in the contract.

The Brazilian Air Force invokes international standards and says that leaking of black box data is a recipe for FUD that can undermine the integrity and credibility of an investigation in which the public has a compelling interest:

• Brazil: “Please Keep the Black Box Black.”

Reality-check: There is, in fact, a general international concensus that flight-recorder and investigation work product short of official conclusions should not be handed out to the likes of Veja magazine — or responsible journalists either, for that matter.

The Brazilian Air Force suffered some initial confusion in digging the black box out of the smoldering wreckage. See

• Brazil: Where’s The Black Box?

On the other hand, in an accompanying infographic, illustrating the Veja theory of the crash (above: the configuration of the throttles upon impact, or upon touchdown, or at some point during the landing procedure — I have read the Veja “report,” based on a leaked Airbus circular, and that point is not made at all clear –) Globo winds up presenting gabbling disinformation.

In the last in a 10-slide slide show, it shows a computer-animation recreation of the crash in which the aircraft is shown as being airborne and diving down into the Tam Express depot at a steep angle.

I cannot show you a screenshot because the animation clip is too short. But that is what I am looking at here. 45-degree dive. Very distant objects coming nearer. Explosion. It looks like a screenshot from a 1980s-era arcade game. The kind you played in convenience stores when you were a kid.

Unless there is some revelation I have missed, the TAM Airbus A320 was not airborne and in a steep dive when it crashed.

It was wheels down and trying to decelerate when it crossed the boulevard. Or so Bonner told me.

Ecce Globo and the art of virtual-reality event recreation.

In Second Life, the laws of gravity do not apply.

In an earlier report, on news organization — I believe it was Globo also — put a pilot on a PC with a copy of Microsoft Flight Simulator and reported, breathlessly, that the pilot “was repeatedly unable to avoid the crash.”

“Covering the unfriendly skies”

Covering the unfriendly skies (Columbia Journalism Review, 1998): As I read up on how not to cover an aviation disaster — a topic that we find personally relevant as we book our return flight to São Paulo later this summer — I ran across this article, which does a nice job of covering a range of cases and listing a number of journalistic fubars.

See also Veja Magazine: “Pilot Error Caused TAM Crash!”

I clip to file.

… the crash that “had bad journalism written all over it” – as The Washington Post’s Phillips put it — was the 1996 explosion of TWA Flight 800 off New York’s Long Island. “That was just the epitome of bad aviation coverage.”

Hysterical atmosphere.

Widespread terrorism fears inflated the bomb theory in much of the media — a theory that since has largely been discarded. A month earlier, a truck bomb had killed U.S. troops in Saudi Arabia. A few days after the crash, a bomb went off at the 1996 Olympics in Atlanta. Newsweeklies and TV news magazines did special features on terrorism, portraying TWA 800 as part of a trend. But aviation specialists and aviation beat reporters knew full well that mechanical problems could have caused the jet to explode. The NTSB’s probe is still going on, and investigators hope to assign a probable cause of the crash by early next year. The agency is pursuing only mechanical causes for the explosion at this time.

Veja Magazine: “Pilot Error Caused TAM Crash!”

“Revelations of the black boxes!”: Ecce Veja, which, when it leaps to conclusions, very often crashes and burns.

When airplane disasters strike, inaccuracy and unfairness are the rule in deadline coverage, not the exception. “People in the aviation industry just laugh at us, and they have a right to,” asserts Elizabeth A. Marchak, a reporter for the Cleveland Plain Dealer who has spent recent years investigating aviation safety. “Reporters get it wrong a lot of the time.” … Only a handful of journalists is well versed in aviation safety. Officials of the NTSB call the regulars who show up at crash sites “the Seven Dwarfs,” because those mainstays sit together in the front at crash scene briefings.–Columbia Journalism Review, “Covering the Unfriendly Skies” (Sept/Oct 1999).

Although there may be general areas of aviation safety information that are suitable for public consumption, access to detailed data, which would include most recorded information, would almost certainly be counterproductive. But you can bet that many in the media would like to get their hands on such information all the same. The fact remains that the public, and that includes most of the media, has neither the background knowledge, the analytical skills, nor the incentives to help us much with the painstaking, complex, and often frustrating task of furthering aviation safety. –Lindsay Fenwick, Airline Pilot’s Assocation, 1999 (paper delivered to a NTSB Conference on Event Recorders)

Erro de comandante é a causa de acidente, diz revista (“Error by aircraft commander caused accident, says magazine”).

Ecce Veja. “Surely some revelation is at hand? If not, just make something up.”

El Pais of Spain also picks up the story today and also headlines it, at the top of the front page, as fact, with Veja as its only source.

(UPDATE: I later translated Alberto Dines’ comment on the story here: Veja Magazine: “How To Fabricate a Scoop.”

I would like to boast that great minds think alike — Prof. Dines is far and away il miglior fabbro of the two of us, of course — but the convergence of opinions probably has more to do with the fact that the fundamentals of passable journalism do not require rocket science to grok.)

Just days after the head crash investigator of the Brazilian Air Force asks lawmakers to keep flight-recorder data from the crashed TAM Airbus confidential — citing international standards and practices for crash investigations — Veja magazine publishes an (anonymously sourced) report based on someone (it does not say whose) interpretation of leaked flight-recorder data.

The Tupi crash investigation agency, CENIPA, issued a press release saying that the “cause” pointed to by Veja is merely one hypothesis among a number of others — not covered by Veja — that are guiding its investigative work at this preliminary stage.

Folha and G1 reports on a press conference given by the chief investigator, Air Force Gen. Kersul, say the head of CENIPA (1) swore up and down that the Air Force did not leak the data to Veja, and (2) said the attribution of the crash to pilot error is extremely premature and irresponsible.

On Gen. Kersul’s statements on how to run a proper crash investigation up to international standards, see Brazil: “Please Keep the Black Box Black.” That response seems to be exactly by the book, too.

The risks to investigation integrity of premature publication is an interesting debate, as I have been reading up on in this 1999 NTSB conference proceedings on the subject.

I have also been meaning to try to find a parallel case from a U.S. news organization for comparison purposes. What do the Seven Dwarves (above) think about the topic? (In 1999, the CJR cited Don Phillips of the Washington Post as the proverbial “dean” of transportation reporters. He is now at the International Herald Tribune.)

And do any of the editorial integrity guidelines deal with ethical conduct in these specific situations?

Results from the NTSB probe of a fatal mishap in the Midwest that killed 29 were recently released, I notice the other day. Might make a good comparison case.

Veja can of course argue that as a putative news organization, it is not bound by the international convention not to make public “opinions expressed in the analysis of information, including flight data recorders.” The “Bob Novak excuse” for its Judy Millerism, in other words. It has freedom of expression! It can say anything that comes into its pointy little head! True or not!

But the reason stated for that International Civil Aviation Organization standard is that premature publication can be contrary to the public interest in the integrity of the investigations process.

Leila Suwwan of the Folha:

Segundo o brigadeiro Jorge Kersul Filho, chefe do Cenipa (centro que investiga acidentes aéreos), o momento é de “cautela” e “seriedade” para que dados isolados não sejam interpretados incorretamente.

According to Gen. Kersul, this is a moment for “caution” and “seriousness” lest isolated data points be interpreted incorrectly.

X + Y = $207 Million: The Week in Adding Up the Mexican Mountain of Money

Televisa shows Ye Gon getting his green card from Fox. Over and over and over and over and over and over.

What is the ultimate Truth, reality and, what is the real ulterior motive of the current Mexican authorities behind all these alleged “Chinogate” scandals in the wake of tortures, and most recent dramatic development after the first groundbreaking publicity made by the Associated Press on July 2, 2007? — Ye Gon press release, July 18, 2007

Writing in the Diario de Yucatán, Carlos Medina Plascencia finds that none of the stories being told in the quest for ultimate Truth really add up.

Or at least none of the stories being told in Mexico.

The DEA warrant application, published by Televisa last week, also seems to have some lacunae to fill in.

Ideal, I am guessing, would be to present a jury with (1) Ye Gon’s Mongolian ephedrine showing up in methamphetamine mixed in with snot-DNA traceable to El Chapo’s nostrils, and (2) maybe a $100 bill with El Chapo’s wallet-lint on it in Ye Gon’s utility closet.

But the DEA at least had enough of a circumstantial case to get the ham sandwich indicted and move the case forward.

Reports on the grand jury suggested that more information on concrete bad acts were put before the jury than were dreamt of in the warrant application. Lawyer friends — and years of Law and Order reruns, of course — assure me that is par for the course. Standard prosecutorial Texas hold-em.

The smoking-gun part of it, the charging agent swore: positive tests for ephedrine at a Ye Gon-owned plant from samples analyzed at DEA labs. So that much, at least may well be small-t true (unless Mark Furman drove around with the samples in the trunk of his car for a week).

Anyway, having clipped all the raw Romance-language news flow I could on the “man behind the meth” for the last week or so, as fast as I could type — and remember, this is all merely “information precursor” at this point; it still needs to be cooked — I am now looking for a few good attempts to put two and two together.

“None of it adds up” seems to be a typical reaction, judging from a quick scan of the Saturday take from Google News México.

The most interesting thing, I find, is the degree to which Ye Gon’s U.S. attorneys and his Mexican attorney seem to be describing parallel universes. In the U.S., goes the story so far, $150 million of the money is not Ye Gon’s, and is dirty in some way — as a DEA informant cited in the indictment says Ye Gon told him.

The DEA informant, according to the indictment, says Ye Gon told him the money was not just to be stored, but also to be laundered, and that it was drug money.

Ye Gon, meanwhile, seemed to be sticking with the story that he was told, at least, that the money was from or for a political slush fund — though he seems to have backed off saying that he knows that to be true.

Accoding to his Mexican attorney, however — Milenio had a podcast interview with the guy on this yesterday — the money is all his, but none of it is of illegal origin and the Mexican government has to give it all back.

El caso de Zhenli Ye Gon seguirá siendo aún cuento chino, mientras las autoridades mexicanas insistan en la increíble historia del presunto delincuente que actuó en solitario.

The Ye Gon case will continue to be a “Chinese [fairy] tale” so long as Mexican authorities continue to insist on their own incredible story of the alleged criminal who acted alone.

Left-Coast Red Teams “Hack Into Electronic Voting Machines”

Zerésima for a Brazilian voting machine: Analogous to the “zeroed” odometer on a new car, it certifies that the equipment is “in perfect working order.” The gizmo churned out anomalous results in a state election in Alagoas last year.

… no security should ever rely solely on secrecy of defensive mechanisms and countermeasures. While not publishing details of security mechanisms is perfectly acceptable as one security mechanism, it is perhaps the one most easily breached, especially in this age of widespread information dissemination. Worse, it provides a false sense of security. Dumpster diving, corporate espionage, outright bribery, and other techniques can discover secrets that companies and organizations wish to keep hidden; indeed, in many cases, organizations are unaware of their own leaking of information. –Matt Bishop, UC Davis, Overview of Red Team Reports from California’s 2007 “Top To Bottom Review” of e-voting machines used in the state.

Scientists’ Tests Hack Into Electronic Voting Machines in California and Elsewhere: The New York Times reports.

An item to send along to the folks at Brazil’s Voto Seguro, whose efforts, as an aficionado of electronic beancounting systems, I follow.

The Brazilian Congress has convened a subcommittee on e-voting security, but the search for explanations of perplexing data from the state gubernatorial elections in Alagoas last year — a candidate with pre-election poll numbers suggesting an easy victory is resoundingly thumped, according to official results while quality-control systems apparently failed on a massive scale — has died on the vine.

Voting machines, diskettes and paperwork were later found incincerated in a vacant lot near a warehouse where software was uploaded by an IT outsourcing firm hired by the state elections tribunal. But don’t just take my word for it:

• The Urnas of Alagoas: Picking Up The Pieces
• Alagoas Election Techie: What? Us? Fraud? Naw.
• Alagoas: Elections Evidence In Bonfire of the Vanities?
• Alagoas: Bonfire of the Vanities Update

Brazilian election authorities continue to resist open-source adoption for elections software, I think it is fair to say. Technology contractors seem to be lobbying heavily to continue the black-box codebase approach to security (which the California Red Teams advise against). But there are also some hints, for example, that Windows CE will no longer used. The Brazilian federal lotteries are all now Penguin (Linux)-powered, I read.

Computer scientists from California universities have hacked into three electronic voting systems used in California and elsewhere in the nation and found several ways in which vote totals could potentially be altered, according to reports released yesterday by the state.

The state government commissioned “red teams” and is in the process of posting their reports, according to which:

Each “red team” was to try to compromise the accuracy, security, and integrity of the voting systems without making assumptions about compensating controls or procedural mitigation measures that vendors, the Secretary of State, or individual counties may have adopted. The red teams demonstrated that, under these conditions, the technology and security of all three systems could be compromised.

Manufacturers: Diebold Election Systems, Hart InterCivic and Sequoia Voting Systems.

The reports, the latest to raise questions about electronic voting machines, came to light on a day when House leaders announced in Washington that they had reached an agreement on measures to revamp voting systems and increase their security.

Voter verification.

The House bill would require every state to use paper records that would let voters verify that their ballots had been correctly cast and that would be available for recounts.

Brazil Air Disaster: Birth of an Astroturf Campaign

HOWARD BEALE: want you to get up right now, sit up, go to your windows, open them and stick your head out and yell – ‘I’m as mad as hell and I’m not going to take this anymore!’ Things have got to change. But first, you’ve gotta get mad!… You’ve got to say, ‘I’m as mad as hell, and I’m not going to take this anymore!’ Then we’ll figure out what to do about the depression and the inflation and the oil crisis. But first get up out of your chairs, open the window, stick your head out, and yell, and say it [screaming at the top of his lungs] “I’M AS MAD AS HELL, AND I’M NOT GOING TO TAKE THIS ANYMORE!” — Paddy Chayevsky, Network

… emotional appeal is not always the weapon of tyrants, it can be the shield of liberty as well. And emotional appeal is not always an illogical trick, it can bring the facts into a clarity which some notions of logic would disallow. So if democracy rests partly on rhetoric, and rhetoric rests partly on the appeal to the emotions of the audience, then the defense of democracy must involve an understanding of emotional appeal. What is an emotion? What is it to appeal to it? — Bryan Register, “The Logic and Validity of Emotional Appeal in Classical Greek Rhetorical Theory“

Don’t get mad; do something!

Doria afirma que ‘Cansei’ é movimento cívico (Terra Magazine, Brazil): The “Civic Movement for the Rights of Brazilians” is an astroturf campaign.

… the term astroturfing pejoratively describes formal public relations projects which deliberately seek to engineer the impression of spontaneous public reactions to a politician or political grouping, product, service, event, etc. by many diverse and distributed individuals acting of their own volition, when in fact the efforts are centrally coordinated. The goal of such a campaign is to disguise the agenda of a client as an independent public reaction to some political entity—a politician, political group, product, service or event. Astroturfers attempt to orchestrate the actions of apparently diverse and geographically distributed individuals, by both overt (“outreach,” “awareness,” etc.) and covert (disinformation) means. Astroturfing may be undertaken by anything from an individual pushing their own personal agenda through to highly organized professional groups with financial backing from large corporations, non-profits, or activist organizations.

The term plays on the name of a well-known brand of artificial surface used in sports stadiums and the notion of “grassroots” politics. See also Trust 2.0: Triumph of the Shill?

A grassroots political movement is one driven by the constituents of a community. The term implies that the creation of the movement and the group supporting it is natural and spontaneous, highlighting the differences between this and a movement that is orchestrated by traditional power structures.

Example. The Wikipedia article on the subject comes with this disclaimer:

This article or section deals primarily with the United States and does not represent a worldwide view of the subject.

The explosive growth of weird little Wikipedia disclaimers and objectivity challenges I find astonishing. While someone post this disclaimer to the article on “democracy” because it does not reflect the thinking of Kim Jong Il on the subject, for example? Is the article on phlogiston fair to scientists who still defend phlogiston theory?

But anyway, so, is “astroturfing” really such a bad thing?

The perjorative connotation comes from the implication that such campaigns are deceptive — or, in the case of a message addressed to emotions, insincere (deception or dissimulation about the speaker’s own motivation rather than some independent fact).

The infamous Edelman Worldwide “spontanous outpouring of support from Winnebago-driving Nascar dads for Wal-Mart” blogging campaign — the spontaneous Nascar dads were outed as undeclared paid shills, which meant that Richard “Rashomon” Edelman was advising his client to tell you The Truth 2.0 — is often cited.

“Grassroots” campaigning funded by COPARMEX in Mexico — the Mexican counterpart to FIESP, the industrial federation behind this campaign — was used to circumvent technical legal limits on political advertising in that country’s elections last year, for example.

When charges of election fraud first surfaced, COPARMEX-funded, arms-length “grassroots” front groups ran a massive ad campaign defending the competence of the federal elections commission, IFE (one of whose self-admitted failings was that it did not curb the use of funny money for an out-of-bounds media blitz in that campaign.) By filibustering while changing the subject in heavy rotation on prime-time TV.

See also Felipe.org: Democracy 2.0.

Imagine it: General Motors funding an ad campaign to defend (or criticize) some Supreme Court decision or other to the public at large.

The basic gambit here is incomplete disclosure of institutional affiliations — or as the buzzmachinists are fond of calling it, “identity management.”

For example, in a “fake news” report run by a Fox affiliate last year — produced by Intel but claimed by Fox News as its own reporting — Genevieve Bell was identified simply as an “anthropologist” rather than fully as an anthropologist who works for Intel, which seemed to imply that she is an independent expert on the subject and nothing else.

For a Brazilian precedent, see also The Legend of the Lurking Lobbyist: The ‘Identity of Identity and Non-Identity’ Gang Strikes Again.

In this interview with Brazil’s Terra Magazine, the coordinator of the Cansei (“I’m Sick and Tired of …”) project — a prominent ad executive who has already lined up free TV advertising time — denies that he is the coordinator of anything.

It’s all spooky emergent behavior on the part of smart mobs! This is not old-fashioned shilling for the house! It’s an innovation revolution in disintermediated New Age social communications!

Passadas 48 horas do acidente com o avião da TAM em Congonhas, um grupo de empresários começou a organizar o movimento “Cansei”, lançado hoje em campanhas publicitárias por todo o país.

Within 48 hours of the TAM crash at Congonhas airport, a group of business owners began to organize the “I’m Sick and Tired” movement, launched today with advertising campaigns all over Brazil.

No site www.cansei.com.br, a campanha, oficialmente chamada Movimento Cívico pelo Direito dos Brasileiros, é assinada apenas pela OAB-SP. Mas tem o apoio declarado de empresários, outras associações de classe e ONGs.

The Web site of the campaign, which is officially known as the Civic Movement for the Rights of Brazilians, is signed by the Order of Brazilian, São Paulo chapter, but has the declared support of business owners, other industrial and trade associations, and NGOs.

A reunião que criou o projeto foi no escritório de João Doria Jr. que, no entanto, nega ser o líder de qualquer movimentação: “Não tem autor. Decidimos isso para colocar como um movimento cívico”.

The meeting that created the project was held in the offices of João Doria Jr., who, however, denies being the leader of any movement: “It has not author. We decided this to place it as a civic movement.”

Justice, Chaos and Destruction: The Brazilian Parapolitical Netroots, Exhibits

Justice, Chaos and Destruction: The Brazilian Parapolitical Netroots, Exhibits:

Our firehouse here in Brooklyn — which lost people on September 11, like many firehouses in the city — has a death’s head surrounded by flames painted on its doors.

It also has a free air pump for bicycle tires, a sign that the fire department thinks about community relations. We like those guys. They are Our Heros.

Such gruesome displays remind me of some of the flash displayed by Brazilian military police. And there is a certain amount of tradition behind them as well, a comparable historical trajectory.

In the late 19th century, after the Civil War, volunteer firehouses in New York were often essentially criminal gangs running protection rackets on the side, often fighting one another at fire scenes because graft was at stake.

Rio: “San Francisco Cops Report Shakedown”

Argentine tourists posted these photos to Flickr earlier this year. They wound up in the newspaper. Handing your assault rifle to a tourist is not something you would see an NYPD Hercules cop doing, I venture to guess.

Policiais dos EUA acusam PMs do Rio de extorsão: RAPHAEL GOMIDE of the Rio bureau of the Folha de S. Paulo newspaper reports that two Rio military policemen were arrested for extorting two San Francisco police officers who were in town for the Pan-American Games.

The story has been getting quite a bit of local play.

Gomide has been the subject of some sinister commentary in the Brazilian police blogosphere — there is such a thing — over his reporting on militias and other issues relating to police governance.

See also Rio: The Tourist Battalion Rips Off Giant Suffering Jesus!

Dois policiais militares do Rio foram presos anteontem acusados de extorquir dinheiro de dois policiais americanos de férias. Eles afirmam que foram obrigados a entregar o equivalente a US$ 1.400 (cerca de US$ 1.100 mais R$ 600) e um iPod para não serem presos.

Two Rio PMs were arrested this week on charges of extorting money from two vacationing American police officers, who said they were forced to hand over the equivalent of US$1,400 (US$1,100 in cash plus R$600) and an iPod in exchange for not being arrested.

Os quatro turistas, todos policiais, foram abordados pelos soldados Ânderson de Souza Trindade, 27, e Ulisses Peixoto da Costa, 30, na madrugada de quarta, quando estavam em um táxi após deixarem a boate Help, em Copacabana.

The four tourists, all police officers, were stopped by PM privates Souza Trindade, 27, and Peixoto da Costa, 30, in the early morning hours Wednesday, as they were in a taxi after leaving the Help nightclub in Copacabana.

Aha, well, see, there’s part of your problem.

Help is the most notorious joint for hooking up with prostitutes in all of South America. It is a veritable Wal-Mart of hookerdom.

Stay the hell out of Help, is my advice.

Seriously: I absolutely do not condone prostititution, but if you really, really must get your name in the paper as a law officer hanging around a joint where local laws (which are enforced by people who in some cases may allegedly — Rio: “Palace Guard and Militiaman Pimped Child Sex Slaves on Upscale Beach” — also be getting a piece of the action) are being broken in someone else’s country, for God’s sake, ask your doorman.

And if you were just looking for a nice evening of legit nightclub entertainment — as your leaving Help unescorted, as it were, might charitably be taken to suggest — see what’s on at the Canecão. It’s a swell joint at good prices. We have seen some kick-ass shows there.

Segundo relato das vítimas, os policiais ameaçaram prendê-los porque um deles, John Battle Junior, tinha um canivete suíço -o que não é crime nem contravenção penal no Brasil. Os PMs liberaram dois integrantes do grupo e levaram Battle e um amigo para um carro da polícia.

According to report filed by the victims, the police threatened to arrest them because one, John Battle Jr., had a Swiss pocket knife — which is not a crime or misdemeanor in Brazil. The PMs let two members of the group go and took Battle and a friend to a police car.

Ye Gon: More Gaddis Letters Detail the Borking of the Man Behind the Meth!

Televisa shows Ye Gon getting his green card from Fox. Slick little Web video gizmo from esMAS!

Hace 2 meses DEA no tenía historial criminal de Zhenli (“Two months ago, the DEA had not criminal history on Ye Gon”): El Universal is the latest beneficiary of what I have started thinking of as “The Gaddyss Letters” — apparently (not so) confidential memos from the DEA head of mission in Mexico to his opposite number in SIEDO.

This refers to a certain Mr. Gaddis, a former top DEA guy in Colombia with some interest in the Rasguño case, for example, as far as I can tell.

El Universal has shortened it to “Gaddys” today. Go figure. Maybe the guy has a funny signature or a dyslexic secretary.

Previous Gaddis Letters leaked to the press — usually to La Jornada or Proceso — have been dated later than this one (April 17), I think.

I had read somewhere that the DEA was supposedly watching Ye Gon’s financial transactions as far back as 1997, but perhaps that source — I believe it was a Mexican lawmaker at a sound-bite session — was garbling the fact that its current investigation went and looked that far back into the available records.

The grand jury indictment, I noticed, reportedly referred to acts between 1999 and 2007.

La Agencia Antidrogas de Estados Unidos (DEA) armó en dos meses la acusación criminal contra Zhenli Ye Gon. Apenas el 17 de abril en una carta “confidencial”, la DEA reportó a las autoridades mexicanas no tener antecedente criminal alguno contra del empresario de origen chino, pero antes de la primera quincena de junio tenía ya todo listo para acusarlo, pues el día 15 presentó el expediente ante una corte federal.

The DEA worked up its criminal charges against Zhenli Ye Gon inside of two months. On April 17, in a “confidential” letter, the DEA reported to Mexican authorities that it had no criminal history against the Sino-Mexican businessman, but by the first half of June it had everything ready to charge him, which it did on July 15.

En la citada carta y cuya copia posee EL UNIVERSAL, el director regional de la DEA en la embajada de Estados Unidos en México, David L. Gaddys, informó que “nuestras bases de datos no registran ningún arresto o historial criminal” de Ye Gon y de 16 de sus coacusados en México.

In this letter, of which this newspaper has a copy, the regional director of the DEA at the U.S. embassy in Mexico, David L. Gaddys [sic], reports that “our databases have no record of an arrest or criminal history” on Ye Gon or any of his 16 co-defendants in Mexico.

En su misiva dirigida al titular de la Subprocuraduría de Investigación Especializada en Delincuencia Organizada (SIEDO), Noé Ramírez Mandujano, recomendaba ponerse en contacto con el agente especial de la DEA, Eduardo Chávez, quien se encargó de armar el expediente criminal de Zhenli Ye Gon, para cualquier pregunta o petición sobre el caso.

In his letter, addressed to the head of the anti-organized crime division (SIEDO) at the PGR, Ramírez Mandujano, he recommended contacting DEA agent Eduardo Chávez, who was assigned to prepare criminal charges against Ye Gon, with any questions or requests SIEDO had.

TAM Disaster: “Was It The Runway?” (Part IX)

Like Windows Vista, the decoded TAM “black box” has not officially come back yet, but is already for sale on street corners. Source: G1.

Diálogo entre torre e piloto da TAM confirma pista escorregadia (G1/Globo/Jornal Hoje (TV Globo)): It was the aircraft! No, it was the runway! No, it was the aircraft! Another in an endless series of variations on a basic theme:

• “Debate Shifts” on Congonhas Causes: Reuters

In the absence of and ahead of all the facts and just the facts, debates do tend to shift a lot. “In the sleep of reason,” as Goya said, “monsters are born.”

Globo must be finding this hysterical soap opera over the putative causes of the Congonhas air disaster a boost to its sagging ratings, because it keeps right on with it.

The data from the flights recorders is due back from the NTSB today.

Me, I am sympathetic to the Air Force guy who told Congress, “We will know when the responsible adults have gathered and analyzed all the data. Until then, stop leaking to the soap opera scriptwriters at Globo!”

See Brazil: “Please Keep the Black Box Black”

See also TAM Crash: Did São Paulo Tower Call for a Shutdown? I told you the tabloid TV news would jump on that angle.

O Jornal Hoje, da TV Globo, teve acesso ao conteúdo do diálogo entre a torre de controle do Aeroporto de Congonhas, em São Paulo, e os pilotos do avião da TAM que bateu e explodiu no fim da tarde do dia 17 de julho.

Jornal Hoje, a TV Globo newscast, had access to the contents of conversations between the control tower at Congonhas and the pilots of the TAM flight that crashed and burned on the early evening of July 17.

What is the source of this recording or transcript? The black box? Or recordings of radio traffic from a source on the ground? Official source? Unofficial source? Where did you get this? Or why can you not tell us where you got this?

O comandante do vôo 3054 acionou a torre para informar que ia pousar. Ao autorizar o pouso, o controlador de tráfego informou que a pista 35 esquerda, a principal do aeroporto, estava molhada e escorregadia. O piloto confirmou que recebeu a informação e pousou.

The commander of Flight 3054 contacted the tower to inform it of his intention to land. Upon authorizing the landing, the controller told him that runway 35 left, the airport’s main runway, was wet and slippery. The pilot confirmed receipt of the information and landed.

Na transcrição do diálogo ficaram registradas também as palavras “vira, vira, vira”. Mas ainda não se sabe quem teria dito isso.

The transcript of the conversation also reflects the words “Turn! Turn! Turn!” But it is still not know who said those words.