Moving and traveling can be a real nightmare.
Here are three firms that have added considerably to our personal nightmare:
I list them in ascending order in Dante’s Inferno. That is, the higher the ranking, the lower the circle of hell reserved for them — the lowest circles being reserved for purveyors of false representations, as you will recall.
I will explain when I get a chance.
Capt. Guimarães (l.) with Rio mayor Cesar Maia (second from left): Fat Tuesday and the Rede Globo meet the hog heaven of the hard men.
General Kruel, indicted in 1959 on charges of official corruption, involvement in the jogo do bicho numbers racket, drugs, pimping, and illegal casinos, among other things, wound up resigning as police chief. But he continued his military career and in March 1964 was commanding the Second Army in São Paulo, supporting the coup d’etat and betraying the confidence of the federal president.
Chefe da policia pelo telefone mandou avisar / Que na Carioca havia uma roleta para se jogar (“The chief of police called me up on the telephone to let me know they had a new roulette wheel to play down at the carioca club”) — “Pelo Telephone,” the first popular samba recorded in Brazil.
I’m going way down South where a man can be free … –“Hey, Joe”
When you see these amateur videos on YouTube celebrating the feats of death-dealing feats of Rio’s BOPE — the subject of former BOPE Captain Rodrigo Pimentel’s fictionalized memoir Elite da Tropa — consider this selection from an ongoing translation project of mine.
And aside from the connection between the death squad with the culture industry — Polygram was founded by Philips, the President of whose Brazilian subsidiary underwrote the Cansei astroturf “movement,” while the Globo network has exclusive rights to broadcast the carnival societies of LIESA, controlled by Captain Guimarães — consider also the kurious kareer of General Kruel. And compare
The Associated Press and others want you to believe that the problem of militias in Rio de Janeiro is a new phenomenon. “It is emergent! It is a spontaneous response to (recent) state failure! It is enabled by new technology!”
This is utter, gabbling horseshit.
Not only is it not a new phenomenon, or a phenomenon merely analogous to the anos de chumbo, as O Globo seems to want us to believe, it is a phenomenon that is literally and substantially continuous with a long tradition of parapolitical corruption, warlordism and antidemocratic ultraviolence.
Are you starting to get the picture now as to why the busting of jogo do bicho mafias all over Brazil may be a much, much more significant anticorruption story than the Moscow show trial of the PT 3?
(It was interesting to see the federal prosecutor tell the Estado de S. Paulo today, in an aside buried several paragraphs in, that he will, in fact, bring charges against all alleged clients of the Belo Horizonte Baldy slush fund pipeline. On which see
The leading light of the “For a Decent Brazil” coalition resigned from the presidency of the leading opposition party and admits that his campaign exploited the same money-laundering conduit for political purposes starting in the mid- to late 1990s.
He does not admit, however, that he should be held resp0nsible for illegal acts committed on his behalf, but without his knowledge, as he says, from which he may have benefited politically.
If I were covering this story, I would basically report it this way: The current government complains of a double standard in this respect. See
Fine. Let’s fact-check that proposition.
Are they paranoid or do they have a point? Larry “Hooker with a Heart of Gold” Rohter assures us they are paranoid. But in terms of information put on the public record by public legal proceedings, and five years after many of the facts alleged, we still simply do not know. And will not know for at least another two and a half years of the PT 3 trial — and, if the federal attorney keeps his promise, the High-Tech Borking of the Toucan X as well.
And I mean, come on: If we discovered that Jack Abramoff happened also to be dealing with corrupt Democrats, what would we want to see happen? Speaking for myself, I would want to see the bastards thoroughly borked. Wouldn’t you? Regardless of party. Without fear or favor. People like that should not be earning a living on taxpayer money. Do you really think most Brazilians feel any different than you would?)
To the history lesson, Part III.
In Rio de Janeiro, the 1960s witnessed the rise of the Special Assignments Service (SDE) Scuderie Le Cocq, the Golden Boys, the “Olaria Winter,” and other groups that would represent the face of the death squad up until at least the end of the decade. This was the phase of the death squad during which “(…) the policeman became a hero after killing the bandit, and recounted his feats of derring-do with undisguished pride, piling horror story on horror story.”
At the end of the 1960s, greater and greater numbers of mutilated corposes with signs of torture and no signs that the victims had been involved in a gunfight, began showing up dumped along roadsides and in isolated places.. The killing carried out by various groups generically referred to as “death squads” grew at an alarming rate. But from that point on, the perception also gained ground that, behind the PR and marketing facade of the death squad were to be found corrupt police tied to crime, extortion and drug trafficking.
Decorative mosaic, Conjunto Nacional (1958) office block and shopping mall, Avenida Paulista at R. Consolação, São Paulo, Brazil.
If anything characterizes our times, it is a sense of pervading chaos. In every field of human endeavor, the windstorms of change are fast altering the ways we live. Contemporary man is no longer anchored in certainties and thus has lost sight of who he is, where he comes from and where he is going. — The American Society for the Defense of Tradition, Family and Property, quoted in my Spinning the World Backwards.
A government clipping service notes the O Globo report.
A follow-up to
The New York Times’ latest report on the PT 3 matter, however, is causing waves once again. Some local observers thought it reprised the gabbling “folklore of corruption” of the Los Angeles Times’ “Lula is the Teflon Don” hit piece that ran a while back. I will translate some reactions in a bit.
Coup noises are getting made. It is really, really amazing to me how frequently and loudly coup noises get made in Brazil. Larry Rohter’s job, of course, is to tell you the Brazilians are paranoid on this point. (Or it was, at least. Maybe his replacement has the same assignment — and the same two masters, and the same lunch partners from the Consulate. I hope not.)
But just imagine if Senator Clinton or Schumer (or Craig or Specter) got up on their hind legs on C-SPAN today and screamed for the glorious patriotic forces to pour out of the barracks into the streets and purge the nation of the forces of subversion and corruption that occupy the White House today!
Tanks ringing the White House. You would plotz. I would plotz. Wavy Gravy and Pat Buchanan would join hands and plotz jointly.
But that sort of rhetoric is heard every day in the Brazilian new media. It never fails to blow my mind.
Com a ausência dos três comandantes militares – que foram convidados, mas não apareceram – e na presença de ex-ativistas políticos que lutaram contra a ditadura, o presidente Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva lançou ontem o livro que faz balanço dos 11 anos de trabalho da Comissão de Mortos e Desaparecidos Políticos e negou se tratar de revanchismo. Na solenidade, coube ao ministro da Defesa, Nelson Jobim, falar em nome dos militares. Ele afirmou que as Forças Armadas consideravam o lançamento do livro natural e que não esperava reações, mesmo que isoladas. Mas alertou que, se houver, não serão bem-vindas.
In the absence of three military commanders — who were invited but did not attend — and the presence of former political activists who fought the dictatorship, president da Silva yesterday launched a book that summarizes 11 years of work by the Commission on Political Deaths and Disappearances, denying that it was a form of “retributionism.” At the ceremony, Minister of Defense Nelson Jobim spoke for the military. He said the Armed Force consider the release of the book normal and expect no reactions, not even isolated ones. But he warned that if there were, they would not be welcome.
Kicking back and reading Maierovitch, São Paulo, Brazil. At left, Justice Mendes, from the Carta Capital story on the Extra-Large Pizza With Everyone On It? case — which is, again, a major factor in the mad, mad Maluf matter.
As long as it is believed that representatives should be accountable, then there are clear advantages to having them deliberate in public, but as long as it is also believed that representatives should exercise a degree of independent judgement in making decisions, then transparency can also have costs … recent discussions of transparency in government have often overlooked the fact that it can have both costs and benefits. –David Stasavage, “Public versus Private Deliberation in a Representative Democracy”
Ironically, we as journalists dug our own hole on this issue. The restrictions go back to a landmark trial in 1965, the case of Billie Sol Estes v. Texas. Journalists and photographers covering that trial acted so outrageously that the Supreme Court slammed the door on cameras in the courts. … If the Supreme Court is to open its doors to cameras, it has to be convinced that journalists will behave themselves and act professionally, recognizing the serious business of justice takes precedence over “good TV.” –Al Tompkins, “A Case for Cameras in the Courtroom” (Poynter Institute)
The condemnation of O Globo’s publication of the photos is a totalitarian, arbitary and oligarchical attitude.” –Albert Dines.
I have tended to have a rather bloodthirsty reaction myself to the O Globo “scoop” on instant messages intercepted by telephoto lense at the historic political show trial of the PT 3 +37. The Order of Brazilian Attorneys called it “shocking and criminal.”
But Walter Maierovitch of the Instituto Brasileiro Giovanni Falcone, a former “drug czar” and “spies and mafia” columnist for the generally pro-government CartaCapital — but see the magazine’s “The Dark Side of the PT” issue, which sets forth some interesting caveats — disagrees.
His general angle of attack generally being that the judiciary should be Job One in a general clean-up of Brazilian dysfunctional governance. He thinks judges need more adult supervision and sunshine than they do privacy at this point. See also
Interesting guy, in a position to know what he is talking about, and with unquestionable moral authority to have an opinion subject, writes cogently. Not a Moonie of any kind, as far as I can tell. I translate pra inglês ver.
Como faço todas as quintas feiras, rumei, por volta das 20.30 hs, à redação da revista Carta Capital.
As I do every Thursday, I cruised through the newsroom of CartaCapital around 8:30 pm. Continue reading
The Tupi CIA fairly recently adopted the araponga as its symbol — an attractive scavenger.
The replacement of the current ABIN director, Buzanelli, ought to decrease military control over ABIN, according to the O Globo report.
Lacerda troca Polícia Federal por chefia da Abin: Lacerda swaps the federal police for top job at the national intelligence agency. I clip to file pra inglês ver.
BRASÍLIA – O diretor-geral da Polícia Federal, delegado Paulo Lacerda, assumirá a chefia da Agência Brasileira de Inteligência (Abin). Para seu lugar na PF irá o delegado Luiz Fernando Corrêa, atual secretário nacional de Segurança Pública, do Ministério da Justiça. O diretor da Abin hoje, Marcio Buzzanelli, foi informado de que está fora pelo ministro-chefe do Gabinete de Segurança Institucional, general Jorge Armando Félix.
The federal police director, Lacerda, will take over the Brazilian National Intelligence Agency (ABIN). Replacing him at the PF will be the current National Public Safety Secretary from the Ministry of Justice, Luiz Fernando Corrêa. The current ABIN director, Marcio Buzzanelli, was informed that he was out by the head of the Institutional Security Cabinet, Gen. Jorge Armando Felix.
Corrêa is something of the midwife to the PRONASCI program, the “PAC of public safety” (referring to the economic stimulus package known by that acronym.) Or so I gather. Roughly speaking.
As mudanças nas cúpulas da PF e da Abin foram decididas ontem à noite pelo presidente Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva, em reunião com o ministro da Justiça, Tarso Genro – que vinha defendendo a nomeação de Corrêa para a PF. Corrêa é ligado ao PT, foi indicado para a secretaria pelo ex-ministro José Dirceu e tem respaldo das bases corporativas da polícia. Não conta, porém, com o apoio da maioria dos delegados.
The changes were decided on last night by President da Silva in a meeting with the Minister of Justice, who had been defending Corrêa as a good choice for the federal police. Corrêa has ties to the PT, was nominated for the security post by former minister Dirceu, and is backed by associations representing federal agents. He does not, however, have majority support from the delegados, their supervisors.
CC (Brazil) from mid-june: “Disneyland of Wiretapping. Outlaw it, no. Stop leaks, yes.” The siege of the President’s brother united government and opposition in criticism of federal police methods, but this should not be used to impede investigations. A Ministry of Justice proposal would widen the use of surveillance.” See also Behind the Music: The Estadão on the Leaky Police and Brazil: Globo and the Leaky Police. Again.
]Divulgar ações da PF interessa à sociedade, diz Lacerda: ELDER OGLIARI of the Estado de S. Paulo briefly interviews the outgoing head of the Brazilian federal police, Paulo Lacerda.
He will move on to head “the Brazilian CIA,” ABIN.
Which is actually quite an interesting development. He had been talked about as the new head of the Brazilian EPA (sort of), IBAMA.
A former ABIN chief was implicated — in some murky way, along with moonlighting U.S. security consultants, as I recall — in helping Daniel Dantas in his bid to control Brasil Telecom. You should read Lucas Figueiredo’s book on the history of the agency, The Ministry of Silence.
Some of the things the agency’s predecessor, the SNI, got up to were just jaw-dropping. The bungled attempted agitprop bombing of a concert venue with 20,000 people inside, for example, at the outset of “redemocratization.” Concerns, albeit muted ones, have long been voiced over the agency’s loyalty to the new constitutional order.
I call Mr. Lacerda, tongue in cheek, the head of “a politicized Gestapo” simply because the phrase has been heard many times in reference to the federal police — in particular over the famous raid on the Daslu luxury boutique, where the daughter of former São Paulo governor Geraldo “My opponent is in cahoots with the drug traffic and FARC” Alckmin worked as a senior buyer.
Alckmin’s state treasurer told a legislative commission under oath that Alckmin’s daughter arranged a meeting with Daslu officials to lobby for an exception from accounting rules. They wanted to use the same sort of accounting principles that Enron “innovated,” I think it is roughly fair to say.
Harvard Law professor Mangabeira Unger famously echoed this meme in a Folha de S. Paulo op-ed modeled on Zola’s famous “j’accuse” editorial in which he called the Lula government “the most corrupt in the history of Brazil.” He has since apologized — “I made the mistake of believing what I read in the newspaper,” he argued, astonishingly — and been appointed to a second- (or possibly now third-) tier strategic planning post in the Lula cabinet. See
Apparently they are firmly committed to Veritas 2.0 — the Pontius Pilate worldview, you might say — over there at Harvard Yard these days.
Most recently, Veja magazine ran an “exposé” reporting that members of the Supreme Court “suspected” that a “rotten element” inside the federal police was conducting illegal surveillance as a part of a political dirty-tricks campaign to pressure the court over a high-profile case.
Last year, Veja ran another exposé accusing Lacerda of having illegal offshore bank accounts. The source: Daniel Dantas, apparently.
Veja‘s defense of the story was pure Judy Millerism: “You are only as good as your sources.”
You see, the thing is that Veja magazine simply out and out lies. As a foreign correspondent friend of mine from another South American country whispered to me once. “No!” I exclaimed, in mock surprise.
It is a Donald Segretti-style ratfink machine for rent. Cheap.
In my observation, the federal police has done quite a credible job of policing itself, however. Corrupt feds are falling left and right. Whether they are getting all of them, or the right ones, or are merely engaged in selective “political persecution” and a Claude Raines-style “show of efficiency,” as some conspiracy theorists insinuate they might? Time will tell.
But you also need to understand the epoch-making significance of their busting the jogo do bicho of Rio de Janeiro, I believe. Any coverage of the issue that omits that topic — such as the Los Angeles Times hit-piece on Lula as “the Teflon president” — is not briefing you properly on the current scenario.
One case still pending: The curious career of Edmilson “Bruno Surfistinha” Bruno.
Lacerda replies to critics of the agency he headed.
PORTO ALEGRE – O diretor-geral da Polícia Federal (PF), Paulo Lacerda, defendeu nesta quarta-feira, 29, a instituição das acusações que sofre, entre as quais as de fazer pirotecnia e de exagerar nas buscas em escritórios e nas escutas telefônicas em suas investigações. Durante palestra na Federação das Associações Comerciais e de Serviços do Rio Grande do Sul (Federasul), em Porto Alegre, Lacerda afirmou que as críticas não se sustentam. “Desvio de milhões dos cofres públicos é fato”, sustentou, para explicar que, nesses casos, a divulgação de informações interessa à sociedade.
The director of the federal police, Paulo Lacerda, yesterday defended his institution against accusations it has suffered, among them that it engages in “fireworks” and commits excesses in the search of law offices and the use of wiretaps in its investigations. During a lecture to the Federation of Commercial and Service Associations of Rio Grande do Sul, in Porto Alegre, Lacerda said those criticisms do not hold up. “Misappropriation of millions from the public coffers is a reality,” he said, explaining why, in these cases, the publicizing of information is of public interest.
The latest from NMM(-TV)SNB(B)CNN(P)BS —
Reflections — in some cases extremely dim ones — of recent media-manufactured realities in South American YouTubery. “The O Globo newspaper spies on the Supreme Court”; Public safety in TV according to TV Caos; The manifesto of the pirate broacaster “Cooty TV”; an ORVEX course in economics for dummies; “Contra Chávez,” the video game; Brazilian evangelicals complain of press coverage; the ratfinking of an independent-minded Globo pundit, primary documents. Plus cameo appearances by the sex Senator’s baby mom — appearing soon in the Grupo Abril’s Playboy Brasil — and Larry Rohter. In general, more specimens of the rhetoric of hysterical virginity. NMM(-TV) … does not endorse the views, implicit or explicit, of clips displayed here for discussion purposes.
I wish life could be Swedish magazines
–Iggy Pop, “Five Foot One”
“So what if I like to wear $1,000 boots made out of an elephant’s ear?”
–Oscar Maroni Filho
Though he says his client does want to seek asylum, Majzoub also says he has no real intention of leaving Brazil. “The idea is for him to run for mayor of São Paulo and face Kassab in a debate,” he said. “He has already received two invitations [to run], one from a large national party and another from a smaller party, concentrated in São Paulo.” He did not reveal the names of the parties.
Dono do Bahamas não pode pedir asilo, diz representante da ONU: “United Nations representative says Bahamas owner cannot seek asylum.”
The São Paulo press is preoccupied with the case of Oscar Maroni, a flamboyant local nightclub owner, the legitimacy of whose permit to construct an 11-story hotel near the Congonhas airport after the July aviation disaster became a media scandal.
After the man made remarks to a local TV interviewer about the existence of “deluxe prostitution” at his nightclub — reportedly say “it would be hypocritical to deny it,” but I have yet to review the clip myself — prosecutors moved to have him arrested.
Efforts by the city government to close, condemn and raze the building have led to a see-saw battle in the courts, with one judge ordering the closure of the hotel and another ordering it reopened.
As I noted before, the man’s apologia pro vita sua “using this extremely democratic medium, the Internet” also became something of a minor sensation. I have subtitled it (hastily) above.
I like to call this “the case of the sex-death hotelier” — the characterization is tongue-in-cheek, mind you — because that is precisely the tabloid scandal angle on the story. It is a specimen case in “the rhetoric of hysterical virginity,” in other words.
The man’s defense is that (1) the permit from the Air Force to build the hotel was kosher and the building is up to code, and (2) it is hypocritical of São Paulo’s mayor to single him out for a moral crusade against prostitution for, as he says, mere political purposes.
São Paulo is in the middle of a really jaw-dropping (I find) police and political corruption scandal (one that the papers scarcely report on, however) after a gambling mafia spreadsheet showed up bearing the names of — everybody. Just everybody. See also
It’s not unlike the saga of Al Capone’s ledgers, really. Life sometimes does imitate art about a former life.
At the same time, the São Paulo narcotics division is being probed for extorting the Lollipop Guild — the organization of the Colombian drug lord “Chupeta” Ramírez-Abadia.
So there are those — I would name the sources by name, but hey, if Larry Rohter of the New York Times can get by with “press sources say” and “local observers say,” it must be all right for me to monger rumors as well — who will tell you that we are witnessing a lot of “rounding up the usual suspects” to keep this lurid tale in the headlines and the corruption woes of the local police pushed down to page C-29, right by the classifieds for pet psychics.
Cynics that they are.
Personally, I have absolute and unswerving faith in the hysterical moral virginity of Gilberto Kassab and Geraldo Alckmin. I am sure Kassab’s brother is doing a fine job running new projects at São Paulo equivalent of the MTA, and that his appointment had nothing whatever to do with considerations other than his stellar qualifications for the job, for example.
O representante no Brasil do Alto Comissariado da Organização das Nações Unidas para Refugiados (Acnur), Luiz Varese, disse ao G1 que a entidade ainda não recebeu qualquer pedido de ajuda do brasileiro Oscar Maroni Filho, conhecido em São Paulo como dono da boate Bahamas e preso desde 14 de agosto sob acusação favorecimento e exploração da prostituição, formação de quadrilha e tráfico de pessoas.
The representative of the UN High Commissioner on Refugees in Brazil, Mr. Varese, tells G1 the commission has received not request for assistance from Oscar Maroni, the well-known nightclub owner arrested on August 14 on charges of prostitution, racketeering and trafficking in persons.
Vintage roleta with bichos. Source: Musem of the Policia Civil, Rio de Janeiro
PF prende grupo acusado de desviar R$ 180 milhões: “Feds bust group accused of misappropriating R$180 million.”
Translation note: Is tax and customs duty evasion a form of desvio? I always tend to associate that word with “misappropriation of public funds” — that is, people using money that does not belong to them for their own purposes.
The case began when the guy left his data lying around unencrypted on a laptop. (You know, the way some of our own federal employees sometimes do with our private data.)
A Polícia Federal (PF) realiza na manhã de hoje, em cinco Estados, a Operação Zebra. Onze pessoas foram detidas em Recife e encaminhadas para a sede da PF no Cais do Apolo. Um avião, um helicóptero, dois iates, 20 carros de luxo e dez imóveis de alto valor foram apreendidos. Um dos presos possui 150 veículos em seu nome. Segundo a polícia, os presos fazem parte de uma quadrilha ligada ao jogo do bicho e são acusados de crimes como contrabando, sonegação fiscal, lavagem de dinheiro e corrupção de agentes públicos. O grupo teria desviado cerca de R$ 180 milhões em impostos por ano.
The federal police are carrying out Operating Zebra this morning in 5 states. 11 persons were arrested in Recife and sent to the PF headquarters (down by the docks). An aircraft, an helicopter, two yachts, 20 luxury cars and 10 high-value real properties were apprehended. One of the persons arrested had 150 vehicles registered in his name. According to the police, the persons arrested were part of a bicho [numbers-racketeering and gambling] organization and are accused of smuggling, tax easion, money laundering, and corruption of public officials. The group is accused of avoiding R$180 million in taxes per year.
A caça-níquel machine offered for sale recently on MercadoLivre.com.br — “Brazil’s answer to E-Bay.” Banned components come in along the great Sino-Paraguayan Silk Road and Phony Marlboro Pipeline. (E-Bay sold the Virgina Tech killer the ammunition he used, did you read that?)
Deputado pode ser denunciado por comandar máfia: “State lawmaker may be charged as mafia leader.”
“May be”? “May be”? Monkeys, as Wayne Campbell likes to say, may fly out of my butt. Wake me when he is.
He is the former commandant of the state military police.
Is this leak journalism, or have the indictments been made public?
This report from Terra’s own newsdesk does not source any of this information, and the one person cited, the ethics officer of the state assembly there in “thick jungles of the south,” says he has not been officially notified.
O deputado estadual José Ivan de Almeida (PSB-MS), o Coronel Ivan, poderá ser denunciado à Justiça Federal sob a acusação de comandar uma organização criminosa de exploração de caça-níqueis.
State deputy José Ivan de Almeida (PSB-MS), known as “Colonel Ivan,” could be charged by federal prosecutors with commanding a criminal organization that operated illegal gambling devices. Continue reading
Chefe da polícia pelo telefone mandou avisar
Que na Carioca havia uma roleta para se jogar …
Bicheiros voltam a ser presos no Rio (Terra, Brazil).
Let loose on a habeas corpus writ — Rio: Captain Guimarães Gets Out of Jail — the Big 3 of Rio racketeering have been re-arrested.
Os bicheiros Aniz Abrahão David, o Anísio, Antonio Petrus Kalil, o Turcão, e Ailton Guimarães Jorge, o Capitão Guimarães voltaram a ser presos na manhã desta quarta-feira, no Rio de Janeiro. Eles estão entre os 12 detidos num desdobramento da Operação Furacão 1. Segundo a PF, documentos apreendidos no dia 13 de abril constatam crime de lavagem de dinheiro promovido pelo grupo.
[Gambling racketeers] Anísio de Beija-Flor, “The Big Turk,” and “Captain” Guimarães, were re-arrested this morning in Rio de Janeiro. They are among 12 persons arrested in a new development in Operation Hurricane. According to federal police, documents apprehended on April 13 provided evidence of money-laundering by the group. Continue reading
“The Authoritarian Temptation: The PT’s attempts to monitor and control the press, television and culture.” Translation: “Dilma could decide those zero-down spectrum concessions we got were the fruit of crooked dealings! Get rid of her, I don’t care how!” The Editora Abril donates generously to journalism training institutes.
The Brazilian journalist does not feel free to write. More than just having to follow the editorial line of the publications they work for, the complaints principally have to do with coercion by political or business groups. — Revista Imprensa Online, June 2007. (That article has been removed from the Web site of the publication, I am noting.)
É hora de rever a concessão da TV Globo: Hamilton de Souza, dean of the journalism school at PUC-SP and editor of the official magazine of the MST, suggests that the Brazilian government should do to Globo what Hugo did to RCTV. The article is from August 13.
Realistically, I would rate the possibility of this happening as a snowball’s chance in Hell. The Minister of Communications is a former Globo executive and talking head, first of all.
Further, the current government’s stated policy, at least is to open the playing field to more competition and alternatives, not to reengineer the currently very limited playing field — the so-called Six Families scenario of concentrated media ownership. It looks very much like a market solution, almost, alongside the method King Hugo I decided to go with.
Further, the national journalists’ union is pushing — this will be a somewhat familiar scenario to anyone who watched the birth of financial industry SROs in gringolândia, for example — for industry and professional self-regulation. Some of the proposals seem substantial rather than pra inglês ver, too. See
Mrs. NMM(-TV) and I, selfishly, tend to think — and bear in mind that I am married to one of the legions of highly qualified but starving and chronically jobless Brazilian journalists — that letting a hundred channels bloom might actually help make the job market look less like a slave auction in ante-bellum Mississippi. See also
At any rate, Hamilton’s modest proposal — he writes a diverting weekly column on media for Caros Amigos as well — makes an interesting counterpoint to a fairly recent commentary by Alberto Dines on the subject:
I sometimes wonder whether or not the strikingly non-Mainardian approach to journalism represented by Globo’s G1 news portal — which very often actually plays it straight, remarkably (I find myself tending to read G1 and Último Segundo as my main sources of general news these days) — might not represent an experiment in the Gustavo Cisneros gambit on Globo’s part.
The venerable Venevision tycoon, you recall, made a very public point of saying the Venezuela broadcaster would stop trying to be a player and start just calling the best play by play possible. See
Até o final deste ano mais de cem emissoras de rádio e TV precisam renovar seus processos de concessão para continuar em funcionamento. Algumas das principais redes de TV estão nessa situação, inclusive a Rede Globo, que é a mais poderosa emissora do País – pelo alcance de suas transmissões, o grande número de geradoras e retransmissoras e pelo papel que desempenha na defesa dos interesses políticos e econômicos das classes dominantes.
By the end of this year, more than 100 Brazilian radio and TV broadcasters need to renew the broadcast concessions in order to keep operating. Some of the main TV networks are in this situation, including the Globo network, the most powerful in Brazil — based on the reach of its transmissions, the number of generators and retransmitters it owns and the role it plays in the defense of the political and economic interests of the dominant classes.
Fatigue: What are you sick and tired of? Top to bottom: Having to queue up; the traffic; being afraid; corruption; the “I am sick and tired …” movement.
Writing in Congresso Em Foco — a sort of a Brazilian The Hill — Celso Lungaretti provides a post-mortem on the “I am sick and tired …” protest movement organized by FIESP (the COPARMEX of São Paulo), the São Paulo chapter of the Order of Brazilian Attorneys, the president of Philips Brazil, and an ad executive and “business innovation thought leader” who, as the former interim governor of São Paulo, Claudio Lembo, pointed out, makes a living running beauty contests for poodles.
I think it makes an interesting comparison with the reputational debacle that was Edelman Worldwide’s “Spontaneous, Emergent Surge of Blogging NASCAR Dads for Wal-Mart” campaign.
The blogging NASCAR dads were paid shills.
Mr. Dória attracted broad ridicule after an interview in which he parroted the rhetoric of the “smart mob,” trying to deny that the “social movement” was orchestrated by anyone. Which was gabbling nonsense you didn’t need a degree in rocket science to spot a mile off.
The national OAB refused to endorse the campaign.
Reporting on the São Paulo rally of the movement, Globo’s G1 news portal pointedly led with the way event organizers reportedly snubbed the families of crash victims. Families were prevented from sharing the stage with dancing, pracing Globo entertainers and event organizers because the latter had more plainclothes security surrounding them than the President of the United States.
That certainly did seem like an astonishingly bone-headed gaffe for people who get big bucks to win the hearts and minds of the great unwashed to be making. See
And finally, prominent members of the public relations profession denounced the campaign as an irresponsible, antidemocratic exercise in hysterical virginity.
On the other hand, was the campaign really a total failure? Outside Brazil, a number of journalists and analysts were either fooled by the Potemkin Village or complicit with the illusionist, trying to get the rest of us to believe that white tigers are really materializing out of thin air. See, for example,
Tenham sido 2 mil ou 5 mil os cidadãos presentes ao ato público do Cansei na Praça da Sé, o certo é que, para uma metrópole como São Paulo, isso equivale a uma gota d’água no oceano. Na verdade, as próprias lideranças do movimento não esperavam grande coisa depois que a OAB Nacional pulou fora, deixando a decisão de apoiá-lo ou ignorá-lo às seccionais. E o que se viu não deu nem para salvar as aparências.
Whether there were 2,000 or 5,000 citizens present at the Cansei rally in São Paulo’s cathedral square, the one thing that’s certain is that in a metropolis the size of São Paulo, attendance was a mere drop in the ocean. In fact, not even the leaders of the movement expected much once the national OAB washed its hands, leaving the decision on whether to endorse or ignore it up to the regional chapters. But what we witnessed that day was not even enough to keep up appearances.
Vigilante consumerdom: angry Argentines spank the Spaniards. Source: Iconoclastas.
Última Instância (Brazil) — a competing legal affairs news service to the Correio Forense and Consultor Jurídico — reports:
“Federal court bars Telefónica from requiring Speedy users to sign with an ISP.”
My wife is a Speedy subscriber in São Paulo.
Telefónica requires her to subscribe to the UOL ISP, which adds absolutely no value at all. Provides no service or support. Fixes no gizmos. It offers a piece of software for managing your connection that a 13-year-old hacker from Hackensack could write in about 15 minutes. And calls it macaroni. That’s it.
This in addition to paying Telefónica for the privilege of enjoying its “eight eights” uptime, rush-hour “traffic shaping” — it denies that it does this — and catastrophic service failures every time the Eletropaulo transformers in the neighborhood start exploding.
Which tends to happen when it rains. In the São Paulo summertime, it rains every day.
The last time Teléfonica’s outsourced tech support crew came in, they told my wife, in a roundabout way, that if they fixed the connection according to the terms of their contract with Telefónica, it would continue to fail repeatedly.
However, if she would make a separate monthly payment to the outsourced tech support provider, they would guarantee continuity of service.
In other words, a jeitinho with a hint of extortion to it.
I use NET cable Internet in part because when I inquired about Speedy, the sales manager simply out and out lied to me. He told me that it is technically impossible to manage an aDSL connection in Linux. I would need to “upgrade” to Windows in order to subscribe. He evidently thought I was an idiot.
NET (Globo and Carlos Slim) is no prize, either — especially given how much they charge you for it. But what are you going to do? It’s a rent-seeking duopoly. A rent-seeking duopoly from hell, you might say.
These people are unbelievable.
O juiz federal Marcelo Freiberger Zandavali, da 3ª Vara Federal de Bauru, interior de São Paulo, proibiu que a Telefônica exija a contratação de serviços de provedor de internet para quem quiser utilizar o serviço de conexão à internet por banda larga da companhia, o Speedy. A ação foi movida pelo Ministério Público Federal.
Federal judge Zandavali of the 3d Federal Bar of Bauru, [upstate] São Paulo, barred Telefônica from requiring users of its broadband Internet connection service, Speedy, to subscribe to a third-party ISP. The suit was filed by the federal public ministry.
Segundo informações do Ministério Público Federal, a decisão retroage ao mês de setembro de 2003 e a Justiça determinou que a empresa e a Anatel (Agência Nacional de Telecomunicações) indenizem, com correção monetária, o valor pago aos provedores pelos consumidores desde aquela data. A sentença é válida para todo o estado de São Paulo.
According to the MPF, the decision is retroactive to September 2003. The court ruled that Telefónica and Anatel must refund the amount consumers paid to ISPs since that date. The ruling applies to the entire state of São Paulo.
Ouch! That means we will be eligible. As I understand it, at one time Telefónica and UOL had an exclusive deal, but now the Spanish telecom has signed a deal with the Grupo Abril as well. Continue reading
O Globo defended intruding upon the private deliberations of Supreme Court justices by invoking the value of “democratic transparency.”
Too often, it is the media-created event to which people respond rather than the objective situation itself, as was the case when media provoked anxiety resulted in massive public rejection of food products reported as potentially related to an outbreak. Development of new approaches in mass communication, most recently the Internet, increase the ability to enhance outbreaks through communication. –Boss, Leslie P., “Epidemic Hysteria: A Review of the Published Literature” in Epidemiologic Reviews, Vol. 19, No. 2.
Fads can be incredibly lucrative: mass hysteria and stupidity can make a real difference to a business’ bottom line. … –Rhymer Rigby. “Craze Management.” Management Today. London: Jun 1998. p. 58
I keep thinking back to my (creepy) encounters with some of these FUD-amplifying infowar bloggers out there on the Internet these days.
Such as that fellow with the imperfect command of English who identified himself in the comments thread as journalist John Dickie and informed me — David “Fear and Misinformation Abound” Sasaki-style — that in the Oaxaca conflict, “truth is nowhere.”
Or being called a “cryptomarxist journalist, who think they understand Mexico” for trying to determine whether attempts to discredit reporting by El Universal on the Ye Gon affair were credible themselves.
And I will never forget that Brazilian op-ed I read — I am still trying to find the clip so I can cite this properly — which refers to the “tradition of Romantic journalism” along “Fourth Estate” lines is “nothing but a pornography of facts.”
I have been getting deeper into reading Kristin M. Lord’s The Perils and Promise of Global Transparency.
When I first read through it, I said I thought it had some organizational problems and needed to focus more on cases and less on theory. (But then again, I am not a political scientist, so you should not take that as a peer review. I am not, as they say, in the book’s target audience. I am also an extremely picky little bastard.)
See also What’s So Great About International Transparency?
On the other hand, the treatment of the Rwandan genocide, and particularly the roll of mass media in fomenting the mass frenzy and keeping it rolling, is well written, well documented, and chilling of course.
I thought it was worth clipping to file.
The old fashioned-way: By typing it in. So any typos are due to my fat fingers.
Before the genocide began, Rwandans chose to listen to RTLM in a relatively open and competitive media environment. After the genocide began, however, nearly all other media were silenced, which severely curtailed domestic transparency. Some Rwandans with short-wave radios could hear contesting descriptions of events, but RTLM challenged outside sources of information, telling Rwandans to ignore the “biased and ill-informed” reports. C. Kellow and H. Stevens cite the following RTLM announcement broadcast on May 14, 1994:
Historical amnesia as reputation management strategy: The 2007 edition (2d) of this fawning revisionist history of the Folha publisher appears under the PubliFolha imprint, but another edition was on the market under the MegaBrasil imprint in 2006.
“The attempt to anticipate the vote of the justices is sheer speculation, without basis in actual fact. There is nothing more untrue than reports in the newspapers that justices were supposedly sought out by emissaries of the government interested in obtaining a preview of their decision.” –STF press release last week.
Resultado contradiz previsão – 28/08/2007: the ombudsman of the Folha de S. Paulo daily takes the paper to task for running an anonymously-sourced prognostication on how the Brazilian Supreme Court would vote in a matter of great public moment.
Which failed to pan out.
Miriam Leitão-like, the Folha reported that “high-ranking government sources said” that four justices were against accepting a certain count of the indictment. The vote, however, was 10-0 in favor of accepting the count.
The Folha, Mr. Magalhães notes, wrote:
“Quatro ministros não veriam provas suficientes na denúncia para justificar uma ação penal contra Dirceu. Seriam: Gilmar Mendes, Celso de Mello, Eros Grau e Cezar Peluso. Eles poderiam excluir outros acusados sob o mesmo argumento. Outros quatro ministros do STF, de acordo com a cúpula do governo, teriam propensão a aceitar a denúncia: Ellen Gracie, Joaquim Barbosa, Carlos Brito e Marco Aurélio Mello. A maior incerteza é em relação aos votos de Cármen Lúcia Rocha e Ricardo Lewandowski”.
“Four justices do not see sufficient evidence in the charges to put Dirceu on trial on this count: Mendes, Celso de Mello, Grau and Peluso. They may drop charges against other defendants on the same grounds. Another four justices, according to high-placed sources in the government, are said to be in favor of accepting it: Ellen Gracie, Barbosa, Brito, and Mello. The greatest uncertainty is over the opinions of Rocha and Lewandowski.”
Pois ontem a decisão do STF contra José Dirceu foi unânime, 10 a 0.
The decision to try Dirceu on this count, however, was voted up 10-0.
Screenshot taken on MediaBistro.com, July 17, 2007. A BBC producer will teach you how to manage your identity on Wikipedia! Click to buy! See “How to Commit Autohagiography By Proxy”: BBC Producer on MediaBistro.
PBS recognizes that the producer of informational content deals neither in absolute truth nor in absolute objectivity. Information is by nature fragmentary; the honesty of a program, Web site, or other content can never be measured by a precise, scientifically verifiable formula. Therefore, content quality must depend, at bottom, on the producer’s professionalism, independence, honesty, integrity, sound judgment, common sense, open mindedness, and intention to inform, not to propagandize. –PBS Editorial Standards. (See also PBS: “The Imaginary News & Nonsense Agency”)
We live in a world — as Linda Stone [of Edelman client Microsoft] describes — of continuous partial attention. –Richard Edelman
A few days ago, one of these “content managers” who earn their living laying people off in order to “enable to the company to compete,” came out in one of the “papers of record” against “this thing they call [institutional] memory.” Huffing and puffing, he wrote: “Newspapers have absolutely no need of memory.” With that attitude and style, the man is obviously nothing but a two-legged jackass. But the truth of it is as that it was the senior editors who, through their notorious subservience, gave rise to the origin of this species. –Batista Bastos, Jornal de Negócios (Portugal), February 2007.
We are entering, we are told, a weightless, frictionless, speed-of-light age in which we will all be but address nodes in an endless flow of information packets, scurrying message handlers continuously assaulted from all directions. So far as scholarly life is concerned, that is still more specter than reality; promises (or threats) of e-books and downloadable doctoral theses and flooded-over inboxes aside, communication still proceeds at a more or less human pace, in a more or less politic manner. However, to judge from the on-line blizzard of charge and countercharge that has attended the mere rumor of Patrick Tierney’s blistering indictment of anthropological practice in the Venezuelan Amazon, Darkness in El Dorado, it may not do so very much longer. Such established academic customs as looking into books before reviewing them, editing drafts before publishing them, and couching even polemic in consecutive argument may well be on the way out — runes and relics of a less hurried time. In cyberspace, it is velocity that matters. Velocity and volume. –Clifford Geertz
When Bad News Follows You: The Public Editor of the Grey Lady, Clark Hoyt reminds us of an important point, one that the rhetoric of the technological sublime in postmodern tech PR tends to gloss over.
First, that googling is not a magic technique for accessing the truth, the whole truth, and nothing but the capital-T Truth.
And that good information is not, by nature, fragmentary.
Factoids and memes are, by nature, fragmentary.
Good information, on the other hand, sometimes does not emerge until you apply an awful lot of patient elbow grease, and in the fullness of time. Sometimes you waste time following false leads, or letting someone pull the wool over your eyes. You get discouraged. You are tempted to call it day and let Unsolved Mysteries have it.
But at the end of Kurosawa’s Rashomon, something is revealed.
Forensic anthropologists can perform amazing feats of reconstruction based on anatomical fragments.
In other words, developing good information requires paying constant complete attention in the long run — or hiring someone to do it for you. Like a good news organization.
And keeping good records for posterity so the next generation of naked apes can benefit from the observations you made. Details you thought unimportant today, but dutifully recorded anyway, might loom large in the World of Tomorrow. Who knows?
Somehow, the editorial guidelines of PBS — which I believe gets some of my taxpayer dollars, right? — have developed into a gabbling apology for intellectual laziness and sloth. The vandals, it seems, have stolen the handle.
A BUSINESS strategy of The New York Times to get its articles to pop up first in Internet searches is creating a perplexing problem: long-buried information about people that is wrong, outdated or incomplete is getting unwelcome new life.
Mr. Hoyt describes the case of a man accused of wrongdoing who was later cleared (roughly speaking; it’s a little more complex than that, but that’s the gist). The Times reported both the accusation and the letter clearing his name, but the story about the accusation is now the No. 1 search result on his name.
He has been inadvertently noise-machined, it seems.
I often go back to entries in this notebook and make a cross-reference: “Update: But see ‘Elvis exhumation confirms the King only lives on metaphorically.'”
Kraus’s situation is an unhappy byproduct of something called search engine optimization, which The Times has been using to make money by driving traffic to its Web site. Technically complex, search engine optimization pushes Times content to or near the top of search results, regardless of its importance or accuracy.
Anti-Dirceu cartoon — Zé is at left, with Palocci, right, buddy-buddying with the World Monetary Fund — suggests renegotiation of sovereign debt was crooked. (Similar to the Patiño flap in Ecuador.) No charges in that sense ever brought, that I know of. Did I miss something? Brazil paid down a ton of its debt, converting it to internal debt in the process. Lula said “We are now the owners of our own nose.” Our handyman back in Sampa, at least, was mightily and sincerely impressed by that feat. Here, Lula prefers beer to wine. Lots of it.
José Dirceu responderá por formação de quadrilha: Supreme Court will hear a count of the local equivalent of a RICO charge against the former minister of the Casa Civil.
He will also face a count of “passive corruption,” UOL reports.
Which is awfully confusing to read, because Consultor Jurídico has reported he would face a count of “active corruption.”
The difference being between receiving valuable consideration and dishing it out.
It is a difference that makes quite a bit of difference, in fact.
So whose reporting do we rely on?
I tend to trust the CJ to get the facts straight and UOL(the Internet arm of the Folha de S. Paulo group) to gabble absurdly. One reason:
It is not fair to judge on the basis of an isolated incident, of course. But examples can be multiplied, I find.
Yes, the charge is active, not passive, corruption.
Watch the UOL ombudsman column for the correction.
Or not.
Amazingly, in the short space of time since I clipped the original lede below, UOL has corrected the error without acknowledging it or indicating that the original report was revised, with corrections. Except to note that it was “updated at 12:18 pm.” Typical nonsense. See also
The real news here, I think: Justice Mello thinks the charges could take two and a half years to resolve once set for trial. Which would, of course, keep the matter open until the 2010 elections. The alleged acts in question date back to 2002 and 2003. To the newsflow: Continue reading
Omitted from broadcast commentary as posted to YouTube — is it really the version that aired? — but published in the O Povo newspaper: “When Lula pointed to corruption under Cardoso …” Lula is a whore! (And so was Cardoso!)
“The folklore of corruption is good business — for the corrupt. –Elio Gaspari.
And Jesus said unto her, Neither do I condemn thee: go, and sin no more. –John 8:2-11
If you cannot mount persuasive arguments, then make sure that your opponent is not able to make her own argument. Shift the focus of the debate: change the subject, preferably to a subject in which you are in the right; dwell on how much you know, on how hard you have worked to get where you are, on how your work is unjustly devalued and despised. Or simply lead the debate into a blind alley from which it cannot escape. In that case, both parties lose, but this is a better outcome for the party who was going to lose in any event.–InfomediaTV (a Porto Alegre-based Microsoft stealth-marketing contractor)
We are all prostitutes / Everyone has their price. –The Pop Group
In Brazilian public discourse — over the gazillion-jigawatt megaphone, at least — one of the most commonly used David “Fear and Misinformation Abound” Sasaki-style FUD memes you hear over and over and over and over again is the notion of a ladrão chamando ladrão de ladrão. “A thief calling a thief a thief.”
We have seen a number of really prime specimens recently:
Rates of school attendance in Ribeirão Preto. Tracks per capita armored-limo ownership closely. Click to zoom.
After threatening the man, saying he would be arrested, Dias Rolo and Cravo proposed an “accord” to avoid the opening of a police investigation. They began with a demand for R$600,000, and after a few days of negotiations settled on R$400,000, paid in installments.
Consultor Jurídico (Brazil) reports: 3 federal police agents sentenced for extortion in the wake of a 2004 .
According to the folklore of corruption, this means that the federal police could be lousy and teeming with examples of the legendary banda podre (“the rotten elements”)!
A theory that will only fly if you can convince us that the steady and implacable anticorruption house-cleaning the federal police have been doing under ministers Bastoz and now Genro is something of a Potemkin Village featuring victims of political persecution.
Which is, of course, what certain news organizations have suggested. Most notably Veja magazine, which gets positively schizogenic on this point. Often within the pages of a single issue. If the cops bust someone they are out to ratfink, they are Elliot Ness and the Untouchables. If they clear someone Veja is out to ratfink, they are in the iron grip of the banda podre!
Which is why we do not read Veja. It makes you stupider.
A related meme, one actually promoted with great gusto by the O Globo newspaper: Corruption arrests are up massively since 2003. Thus, the Lula Era is massively more corrupt than previous eras!
I am toying a lot with this notion of the “folklore of corruption” these days. It’s the most useful idea I have gotten my teeth into in a while.
The case of “Veja wrestles the sex senator,” to take another example from someone else’s C-SPAN?
From a rhetorical and public relations point of view, it’s really a titanic struggle between two memes:
More on which soon. You noodle and noodle and noodle, like an infinite roomful of monkeys with typewriters and sometimes out of all the idle words you type, what seems like a modest piece of non-nonsense emerges. (It ccould still be nonsense, of course, or need further refining.) But to the newsflow: Continue reading
Marco Valério Fernandes de Souza: Kojak fan, mineiro, ad man and slush-fund facilitator. The hand gesture pictured in this Wikipedia portrait, in Brazil, by the way, means “shove it up your ass” rather than “okay.” A little Brazilian Wikihumor by the poster. Personally, I am careca de saber why Brazil is not witnessing a trial of the Belo Horizonte Baldy 500 — every politician the man ever laundered money for from the mid-1990s to the present day. Will someone please explain this to a confused Martian anthropologist?
STF aceita 37 dos 40 acusados como réus no quarto dia de julgamento (Valor): After refusing to indict them on misuse of public funds, Brazil’s Supreme Court says the PT 3 — Dirceu, Soares, and Genoino — must stand trial on “active corruption” charges over the specific transactions in an arrangement to share party campaign funds with a political party in the government base.
But they will apparently not be borked over similar transactions with members of other political parties. Am I reading this right? I should be looking to Consultor Jurídico (and its competitors in the legal news space) for the straight dope, actually, rather than Valor. Google News pumps the content efficiently, but it does not boil it for you.
The PT 3 were absolved last week of charges involving misuse of public funds.
The Globo-Jabor theory, of course, was that this was a massive vote-buying conspiracy designed to perpetuate the Lulist forces in power, just like Hugo! An antidemocratic coup d’etat! But then again, Globo often gabbles, confabulates, and just plain lies its ass off.
The countervailing theory — I am giving you a spitballing comic book version, but you get the gist — is that the scheme was not illegal but was incredibly stupid politically, because a lot of the people in allied parties who got money for their campaigns in this way wound up spending it on the moral equivalent of hookers and opium.
A fact that should have been foreseen before giving them money. It was like giving crack to Marion Barry for Christmas, in other words. Which is why all those folks — many of them with long, dedicated, and by most accounts honorable, service to the party were expelled or busted down to private by the party’s ethics board.
Also on the other side of the question: Given that the key man in the money-laundering scheme started operating for the then-party of government in the mid- to late 1990s, why is this not the trial of everyone that Belo Horizonte Baldy ever laundered money for?
I think that’s a fair question, actually. Why is that? It would make a great civics lesson in how politics actually gets done and a great debate over what political reform measures are needed. (Such as the ones currently stalled in the Brazilian congress while Veja mud-wrestles the sex Senator.) Continue reading
Letter to Diego. Intrusive Globo photo popup interface is apparently designed to prevent you from actually viewing the image. This can be worked around. The house ad that appears is cross-branded with the tattoo: it uses a font similar to the lettering style on the man’s back. Ecce O Globo: We use your pain to market our brand.
Members of the militia include military police from area battalions, “PIs” (“swollen feet,” as residents are known) and even drug traffickers from the faction that was expelled, who decided to throw in their lot with the police.
Grupos impedem que moradores de favelas formem livremente associações comunitárias: Part of the O Globo daily’s weeklong series on “the (a) new dictatorship” in the cidade maravilha. It accuses police of being — and being in business with — criminals. Headline:
“Groups prevent residents from freely forming community associations.”
Whoever this group of reporters is — and more power to them — they are closing in, I think, on the X da questão: Rio’s version of parapolitics.
RIO – De um ponto alto da Avenida Brasil, André vê a Favela Kelson’s, na Penha, do outro lado da via. Eleito presidente da associação de moradores, ele há nove meses não caminha por suas vielas. Na sétima reportagem da série “Os brasileiros que ainda vivem na ditadura”, O GLOBO vai contar como as forças que dominam as favelas impedem o exercício do direito de associação, fundamental para a organização comunitária e a representação política. Na Kelson’s, a milícia tomou o poder do tráfico e expulsou André, que está ameaçado de morte. A associação foi fechada. Segundo ele, os milicianos levaram a TV de 29 polegadas, o DVD e o freezer da salinha usada para cursos profissionalizantes.
From a point overlooking the Avenida Brasil, Andre gazes across at Kelson’s Shantytown, in Penha, on the other side of the highway. Elected president of the residents’ assocaition, he has not walked through its narrow alleyways for nine months. In the seventh report in the series, “Brazilians who still live under the dictatorship,” O GLOBO will tell you have the forces that dominate the shantytowns interfere with the right to freedom of association, which is fundamental for community organization and political representtion. In Kelson’s, the militia seized power from the drug traffic, expelling André, who is living under the threat of death. The residents’ association was closed. According to André, the militiamen made off with his 29″ TV, his DVD player and the freezer he used for professional training courses.
TupiTube Too: The Censored Wit and Wisdom of Arnaldo Jabor (NMM(-TV)SNB(B)CNN(P)BS / Google Video):
A follow-up to Fact-Checking Arnaldo Jabor.
What I find really astonishing is that the version of the infamous “censored” Jabor commentary uploaded to YouTube and the text of the commentary published by a Brazilian newspaper around the time the commentary was pulled from the Web site of CBN present multiple differences.
The version purporting to be the commentary as originally broadcast omits a number of the choicest allegations that Jabor makes in the written text.
So it seems that either (1) the text was revised for print publication, or (2) the version posted to YouTube and represented as the commentary as it aired has been edited and toned down.
Either (1) someone has made an error in transcription, or (2) two versions of the commentary were published, one without potentially libelous factual assertions and another with potentially libelous statements.
Which would, of course, be dishonest.
The YouTube version posted under the heading of “this is the commentary that was censored” has been expurgated.
We have seen Globo mistranscribing its own broadcasts before, either through incompetence or bad faith, by the way. See
Some examples that I discovered:
Carobinha, Rio de Janeiro: Underground Rio van service vehicle, stuffed with black-clad corpses wearing combat boots. See Rio de Janeiro: “Carobinha Death Toll Reaches 10.″
… Sgt. Silva Oliveira, shot this morning in São Pedro da Aldeia in the Lake District, may have been the victim of mafia groups who run van services in the Western District of metropolitian Rio de Janeiro and dispute black-market transportation routes. … Along with the arrests, the police seized three assault rifles, 5 pistols, 44 clips, five Nextel radios, three radio transmitters, four cell phones, two binoculars, four ninja masks, two pairs of eyeglasses, and two hand grendades
Presos no Rio policiais suspeitos de matar menino em ataque a família (G1/Globo): “Rio police arrested on suspicion of murdering child in attack on family.”
The father of the family was a sergeant in the military police himself.
The four policemen, two from the state judicial police [if that is a good translation; the Policia Civil] and two from the military police, are being investigated for involvement in a “van mafia” — an underground alt.public.transportation scheme similar to the perueiros and lotações found elsewhere in Brazil. See also
These businesses are often linked in news reports to the business activities of the paramilitary groups known as milicias [“militias”].
Dois policiais civis e dois policiais militares foram presos na manhã desta segunda-feira (27), em São Pedro da Aldeia, na Região dos Lagos do Rio. Eles são suspeitos, segundo a polícia, de matar um jovem de 13 anos, enteado do sargento PM Francisco César Silva, e de tentar matar o sargento e a mulher dele, ambos baleados.
Two state policemen and two military police troopoers were arrested this morning in São Pedro da Aldeia in the Lake District of Rio. They are suspected of murdering a 13-year-old boy, the stepson of military police Sgt. Francsico César Silva,, and trying to murder the sergeant and his wife, both of whom were shot. Continue reading
Tupi YouTubery: The “censored” Jabor commentary.
Lula tried to cover up the crimes of his criminal gang by appealing to the supposed crimes of previous administrations, such as the heading off of commissions of inquiry, vote-buying, unproved political slush funds. He and his party think they are paragons of “metaethics,” a “supermorality” that will absolve them of everything, and for this, Lula used lies and half-truths to respond to the accusations of mensalões and “bloodsuckers” in his government. –Arnaldo Jabor, Globo
I love journalism too much to refrain from writing hard words about what they publish over there. And the worst of it is that the overwhelming majority of the “old guard” in all the newsroom agree with me. A few days ago, one of these “content managers” who earn their living laying people off in order to “enable to the company to compete,” came out in one of the “papers of record” against “this thing they call [institutional] memory.” Huffing and puffing, he wrote: “Newspapers have absolutely no need of memory.” With that attitude and style, the man is obviously nothing but a two-legged jackass. But the truth of it is as that it was the senior editors who, through their notorious subservience, gave rise to the origin of this species. –Batista Bastos, Jornal de Negócios (Portugal), February 2007.
This columnist has no political identification with Dirceu or Genoino, although I would like to talk with both of them. I don’t know Soares or Pereira personally, nor do I appreciate their policy positions. But I think the profiles of this public figures the media has promoted tend to demonize them. These days, if a public figure is targeted, he is very likely to be [bum-rushed] simultaneously by newspapers, magazines, blogs, columnists, TV and radio. And those who are opposed to this game of [”bork and be borked,” or “lynch and be lynched”] are pointed to as “pizza” plotters. —Carlos Brickman.
The former president of the opposition PSDB political party has now admitted that his 1998 reelection campaign benefited from slush funds run by the same central figure in this case, advertising executive Marcos Valério. See
As Brazil’s Supreme Court deliberates this week, case by case, over whether to accept 40 indictments in the so-called “mensalão” cases, it is interesting to look back to two cases of censorship from last year’s elections, where the “mensalão” and “dossier” scandals were major campaign issues. See also
The results of these pretrial proceedings, and any subsquent trials, should finally provide evidence to confirm or rule out some of the conclusions jumped to in those “censored” campaign messages.
It seems only fair, given that Globo, Abril and others predicted the outcomes of the cases in question, to measure their performance as prognosticators. Do they owe me a beer? Or do I owe them?
First, there was the “Coalition for a Decent Brazil” running the famous “domino theory” campaign advertisement. The spot showed persons accused in the “dossier” case lined up as dominos, which, as they toppled one by one, finally left the incumbent president tottering as well.
In his farewell interview with the Estadão last week, Larry Rohter of the New York Times provided a similar tip to the Brazilian Supreme Court on how to approach this week’s case: Emulate Howard Baker in the Watergate hearings and ask repeated, What did the president know, and when did he know it?
Which is essentially advice that has already been taken, as you saw with the “domino theory” advertisement, and as you will read below.
The president of the federal election tribunal shouted into the gazillion-jigawatt megaphone of the news media that the “dossier” case was “a Brazilian Watergate” that merited the impeachment of the incumbent president.
He later clarified that he was only commenting on what he had read in the papers, not on the basis of having taken official notice of the case. He then went onto preside over proceedings that actually exonerated one of the principle “dominos,” this poor bastard of a Freud Godoy guy. Cascade of dominos interrupted.
(Larry was never satisfied just calling the play by play. He wanted to be a player. What the hell was that guy smoking? And with whom?)
Polycarpus I, spiritual father of Brazil’s Veja magazine.
Embattled Attorney General Resigns | New York Times
Earlier this month, at a news conference, Mr. Bush dismissed accusations that Mr. Gonzales had had stonewalled or misled a congressional inquiry. “We’re watching a political exercise,” Mr. Bush said. “I mean, this is a man who has testified, he’s sent thousands of papers up there. There’s no proof of wrong.”
Let the beatification of St. Alberto Gonzales, martyr to the ideals of the Federalist Society — end life tenure for judges to facilitate revolving-door institutional arbitrage — begin.
And let’s not forget about Forbes journalist Paul Klebnikov, either. They also assassinate those who merely squint at spreadsheets. I have young colleague who once told me that she got out of general-audience nesreporting because business journalism is safer and more straightforward. True enough, but that is only because we live in a country where business is not politics is not war. And fact is not fiction. Yet.
10 held over Russian journalist’s murder (Financial Times): Among them, criminals and cops, and spies, and cops and spies who were criminals.
Which raises the question: Does the Russian government assassinate its critics in the press using mobbed-up cops and spies moonlighting as death-squadders? Inquiring minds would like to know.
On the business environment in which Russian journalists operate generally, see
The state energy company Gazprom owes so much of the news media that it practically is the news media. It’s Montesinos and Peruvian TV or O Globo and the president-generals all over again. In this day and age. Despite the Internet. Imagine.
Russian investigators have detained ten people in connection with the killing of Anna Politkovskaya, the crusading journalist and fierce Putin critic who was gunned down outside her apartment building in Moscow last October, Russia ’s prosecutor general said on Monday.
Serious progress.
”We have made serious progress in the Politkovskaya murder investigation,” Russian news agency ITAR-TASS quoted Yuri Chaika as saying. ”Ten people have been arrested in connection with this case and literally, in the very near future, they will be charged with carrying out this grave crime.”
Mafia death squads, cops and spies.
Journalists at Novaya Gazeta, the independent newspaper renowned for its investigative journalism where Ms Politkovskaya worked, said those detained included members of a well-known ethnic criminal group specialising in contract killings as well as former and current employees of law enforcement agencies and secret services. In a statement on the newspaper’s website, it said these officials ”took orders to provide operational cover for murders and other criminal acts and conducted their own racketeering business”.
The Cansei “movement” starts posting its advertising spots to YouTube.
Video Current Content Downloads No. 5: “Philosophies for Sale”
Now dba NMM(-TV)SNB(B)CNN(P)BS. Make a note of it.
Meaningless sensationalistic fluff: Manda Bala (“Send a Bullet”)
If anything characterizes our times, it is a sense of pervading chaos. In every field of human endeavor, the windstorms of change are fast altering the ways we live. Contemporary man is no longer anchored in certainties and thus has lost sight of who he is, where he comes from and where he is going. — The American Society for the Defense of Tradition, Family and Property, quoted in my Spinning the World Backwards.
It has finally arrived: Manda Bala has opened in New York, as our dear friend the Monkey Woman phones in to report. So we can finally maybe give it a rough fact-check. See also
Just reading the reviews and publicity for it made me think the film was very likely a gabbling exercise in the folklore of corruption. After doing some digging into the person accused of the corruption indicted by the film, for example, I discovered that the “frog farmer” is accused of getting away with some millions of dollars.
The director consistently threw around the word “billions.” Which would be an exaggeration by at least three orders of magnitude over what the man — he is still serving in the Senate — allegedly skimmed out of the Amazon Basin monitoring project he ran in the 1990s.
In emotional terms, that’s the difference between finding a quarter in the street and finding $250 in the street.
The New York Times reviews it under the headline “Something is Rotten in the City of São Paulo.”
Including this film, which Stephen Holden just savages.
“Manda Bala” (“Send a Bullet”), a flashy documentary about corruption, injustice and frog farming in Brazil, is a weird hybrid of political exposé and sensationalistic fluff. As it flip-flops between one mode and the other, it suggests a combination of “Darwin’s Nightmare,” the recent deadly serious French documentary about the despoiling of Lake Victoria, and “Mondo Cane,” the sensationalistic 1962 film that inaugurated a genre of globe-trotting documentary voyeurism.
During the Sundance publicity pump-up, the director describes his work:
Kohn says, “I really thought of “Manda Bala” as a non-fiction ‘RoboCop’”
Life imitates Hollywood banalities, in other words. Which kind of fits an evolving hypothesis of mine about the correlation between the “life imitates art” meme and bad journalism. See also
To the critical savaging: Continue reading
“Straight-razor to the quick: the thread of the anticorruption operations has already [chopped off the head] of [the owner of Gautama] and [the minister of Mines and Energy] and now is nearing the neck of the President of the Senate.” Violent imagery straight from the media playbook of Mexico’s Gente Nueva. The article does not accuse the Senator of any relationship to Gautama, however. It accuses him of accepting money from a big construction firm, Mendes Junior. The former minister of Mines & Energy stepped down, but now is said to have been cleared in the case and is reportedly negotiating a return.
“There is no more tolerance in this country for these kinds of billion-dollar deals and these greedy companies that, breaking the law and harming the national interest, make a fortune on concessions they got from the Brazilian state. Now that is a promiscuous relationship between the public and the private sectors in its most perverse form.” –Sen. Calheiros in the Brazilian Senate last week.
The Grupo Abril corporate Web site (good luck finding it) has this on the pending commission of inquiry into its business dealings. Background:
Nota da Abril sobre tentativa de abertura de CPI da parceria TVA/Telefônica.
The Grupo Abril has the following statement about the attempt to open a congressional probe of the TVA/Telefônica partnership.
Whether this is a “partnership” or an effective transfer of control seems to be a fact at issue in the case. Compare the El Tiempo deal in Colombia, where seller and buyer engaged in similar semantic counting of angels dancing on the heads of pins:
At issue here are limits on effective control of national media by foreign companies. “Telecommunications is strategic,” that sort of thing.
“É uma tentativa espúria de alguns poucos, dentro e fora do Parlamento, para manipular a Câmara dos Deputados de modo a atingir a Abril pelos fatos que VEJA tem revelado sobre o senador Renan Calheiros”.
“It is a spurious attempt of a handful of persons, inside and outside of Congress, to manipulate the Chamber of Deputies so as to attack and hurt Abril, because of the facts that Veja has revealed about Senator Calheiros.”
The user rating system for stories on Estadao.com.br includes one negative rating, one neutral rating, and three positive ratings, including “good,” “as good as it can possibly be” [ótimo] and “beyond as good as it can possibly be” [excelente]. Which needless to say is shamelessly skewed. It appears to have cribbed the interface and ratings scale from the Web site of Colombia’s El Tiempo. The way it’s worded, it’s not clear whether you are voting on the subject matter of the story or the paper’s reporting on the story.
Luis Nassif, the iG news portal’s most-read journalist-“blogger,” writes in cautious praise of the Estado de S. Paulo daily.
Esta semana o “Estadão” fez uma matéria isenta sobre o Bolsa Família. Depois, um editorial bastante crítico em defesa das fotos no STF. Fez uma matéria técnica sobre os problemas da venda da TVA. E críticas contra a carga de impostos. E, hoje, uma entrevista jornalística e respeitosa com o presidente da República.
This week the Estado de S. Paulo daily did a very objective story on the Bolsa Familia subsidy program to poor families, and a very critical [that is, well-reasoned] editorial in defense of the photos at the Supreme Court. It did a technical story on the problems with the sale of TVA [by the Grupo Abril]. And criticisms of the tax burden. And today, a highly journalistic and respectful interview with the President of the Republic.
Lula said he would not consider running for a third term in 2010 (which would require another constitutional amendment), saying “those who think they cannot be replaced wind up as mini-dictators.” This cuts two ways for domestic consumption, I think: It takes a little poke at Hugo, and it also takes a little poke at Cardoso, whose second mandate required a constitutional amendment as well, which Lula always makes a point of saying he vehemently opposed as a measure that only prolonged the plague of hyperthyroid presidentialism — the “unitary executive,” as the Federalist Society likes to call it — in Brazil.
Dentre todos os veículos da grande mídia, hoje em dia, é aquele com mais condições de romper com a cumplicidade do modelo de cartel de opinião, que vigorou nos últimos anos, e se firmar como uma voz independente, sem deixar de ser crítico, sem deixar de fazer jornalismo.
Of all the major news organizations nowadays, the Estadão is in the best position to break with the model of the “opinion journalism cartel” that has flourished in recent years and establish itself as an independent voice, without abandoning the critical spirit or doing journalism.
That interview with Larry Rohter was also tough, thorough, revealing and informative, I thought.
So I would like to second that impression pra inglês ver (bearing in mind hat Nassif is something of a “dean of Brazilian journalism,” while I am just some guy with an Abe Simpson predilection for getting mad at the news, of course).
Screenshot taken on MediaBistro.com, July 17, 2007. A BBC producer will teach you how to manage your identity on Wikipedia! Click to buy! See “How to Commit Autohagiography By Proxy”: BBC Producer on MediaBistro.
Among the chief offenders, the all-time champ is Diebold, the voting machine manufacturer. But there are a host of others, including Pepsi, Mickey D’s, Dell and even Nortel. But governments are not far behind. South Africa and Israel are the poster children for the phenomenon.
Three primary channels of communication serve to enhance the outbreak: face-to-face or visual communication,indirect conversation or gossip, and the mass media. Both the negative effects of the presence of the media and the negative effects of the actual reporting are frequently mentioned in reports of these outbreaks. The media reports are used as cues by potential cases for appropriate illness behavior responses and can initially alarm those at risk while later ridiculing those who became ill with reports of “groundless hysteria”. Too often, it is the media-created event to which people respond rather than the objective situation itself, as was the case when media provoked anxiety resulted in massive public rejection of food products reported as potentially related to an outbreak. Development of new approaches in mass communication, most recently the Internet, increase the ability to enhance outbreaks through communication. –Boss, Leslie P., “Epidemic Hysteria: A Review of the Published Literature” in Epidemiologic Reviews, Vol. 19, No. 2.
Fads can be incredibly lucrative: mass hysteria and stupidity can make a real difference to a business’ bottom line. … Explains Gerry Masters, secretary of the British Association of Toy Retailers, while a craze only happens with the right recipe and the right products, it often happens without retailers actually doing anything. —Rhymer Rigby. “Craze Management.” Management Today. London: Jun 1998. p. 58
Sur Wikipedia la chasse aux vandales est ouverte: The “innovation” blog on France’s Les Echos cheers on the hunt for “vandals” on Wikipedia kicked off by the Wikiscanner project.
See also How to Consider the Source on Wikipedia.
Now, if I understand this correctly, the software only tracks people who contribute without creating a user profile, leaving a record of their IP address in the History file of a given entry.
To manage your identity, all you need do is create a user profile and then provide false or incomplete or misleading information about yourself. A backdoor for FUD artists is hard-wired into the project’s DNA.
If you link approvingly to the article on “black,” you are likely to find that someone has added a redirect to “white” the next time you go to refer to it.
There is much quality content on Wikipedia at any given moment, of course — I often quote it myself, after boiling it first — but the project constantly degenerates into low-intensity information warfare over the defense of entries that attract the attention of so-called “vandals.”
The bloodthirsty hunt for whom reminds me of nothing so much as Claude Raines putting out the call to “round up the usual suspects” in Casablanca — the vice racketeers that the chief of police is not being paid off by. A Potemkin Village show of efficiency. But so long as you are systematically prevented from considering the source of postings there, the issue is something of a red herring.
Working on Wikipedia is a highly educational exercise in public debate and deliberation, of course. Don’t get me wrong. I make some small contributions myself from time to time.
As a “smart mob” method for generating the kind of “hive mind wisdom” that Jimmy Wales constantly gabbles about, however, it is highly inefficient. Because time spent soldiering in the infowars is also time those minds could be using proactively and creatively rather than merely defensively — or aggressively.
Time is money because life is short. For which reason, as the Budd commission on BBC journalism noted, it is a waste of time to give equal time to nonsense. (See also the NMM Comments Policy.)
Which is not to say that the Wikimedia software is not a fabulous invention. I use it for note-taking myself on
Apache/2.2.3 (Ubuntu) PHP/5.2.1 Server at 127.0.0.1 Port 80
But the software is not the problem — or the solution. The problem is keeping the human wetware honest. A problem that predates the Internet and would continue in the same form even if weird cosmic rays (or a deus ex machina of your choice) made all electrical systems on earth stop working tomorrow. So I tend to take the following with a grain of salt:
Bravo et merci à Virgil Griffith. Grâce à ce jeune américain de 24 ans, on sait désormais repérer l’identité de ceux qui viennent « tripatouiller » les articles qui ne leurs plaisent pas sur Wikipedia. Le bruit courrait depuis longtemps aux Etats-Unis que des parlementaires « nettoyaient » la page Wikipedia les concernant. Pour les prendre la main dans le sac, Virgil Griffith a eu une idée tellement simple que personne n’y avait songé : le Wikiscanner.
Bravo and thanks to Virgil Griffith. Thanks to the young American, 24, we can now discover the identity of those who come in and “fiddle” with articles that they do not like on Wikipedia. The rumor has long circulated in the United States that members of Congress were “cleaning up” the entries about them. To catch them red-handed, Virgil Griffith had an idea so simple that no one ever thought of it before: Wikiscanner.
… we must dare to be free, even as we weep at the pain of those who offer up their own flesh to the hot steel, as have the policemen who have fallen these last months, watering the soil with blood and honor so that the seeds of peace may be sown. — Lt. Col. Mário Sérgio de Brito Duarte, former BOPE commander and current head of strategic planning for Rio’s state public security department.
TRAVIS BICKLE: They’re all animals anyway. All the animals come out at night: Whores, skunk pussies, buggers, queens, fairies, dopers, junkies, sick, venal. (a beat) Someday a real rain will come and wash all this scum off the streets. –“Mean Streets”
Corpos dos mortos em MG não tinham projéteis recentes, diz IML (G1/Globo): “No recently fired projectiles found lodged in bodies of prisoners killed in Minas Gerais, says medical examiner.”
The Brazilian congress is looking into the prison system in Brazil’s heartland state, and in particular an incident in which 25 prisoners died after an unexplained fire during a fight between two rival gangs.
Death-squad activity is under investigation in the incident. Cause of death has yet to be determined. The commission will request a second opinion from an independent outside medical examiner.
“Queima de arquivo,” or “burning the files,” is an expression used to describe destruction of evidence. Compare the current case described in Homicídios, SA: 1,000+ Corporate Actions From Brazilian Murder, Inc.
According to the investigations, the military police suspected of being part of the gang would arrive early at the scene of the crime and cover up the evidence to guarantee the impunity of the assassins. Many times, they themselves carried out the murders.
Destruction of evidence is also being investigated in the case of alleged summary executions during a police operation at the Complexo do Alemão in Rio de Janeiro earlier this summer. See
I seem to recall that shortly after the new state government of Rio entered office, the newspaper announced the foiling of a plot to assasinate the new state health secretary.
He had reportedly been poking around the medical examiner’s office. You never read much follow-up coverage to that story.
A Polícia Civil e a Secretaria de Defesa Social de Minas Gerais suspeita que policiais tenham facilitado a chacina dos presos. As autoridades também vão investigar se foi usado combustível para queimar as celas. Alguns parentes das vítimas disseram durante depoimentos colhidos nesta sexta-feira (24) que muitos detentos estavam sendo ameaçados de morte.
The state judicial police and the state public safety department suspect that police may have facilitated a massacre of prisoners. Officials also want to know whether fuel was used to burn the cells. Some relatives of victims said during testimony on Friday that many inmates had been receiving death threats.
Also in this issue: “Why Dubai is an island of progress in the Middle East.” But see also UAE: Draft Labor Law Violates International Standards (Human Rights Watch, March 25, 2007). You’ve seen Syriana, right? Like that, or like Jorge 40 helping Chiquita with its, ahem, proactive collective bargaining strategy. Veja is bullish on medieval kingdoms with a Caymans-style financial sector, apparently.
“As the FSA must ultimately approve any deal and since the exchange is considered a strategic industry, its tone thus far does not bode well for Borse Dubai being approved as a fit and proper owner of the OMX.”
The objective of the rules on public takeover bids is to ensure that a bidder gives the shareholders sufficient time and information to enable them to reach a properly informed decision on the bid. Also, false markets must not be created in such a way that the normal functioning of the markets is distorted.
Borse Dubai broke law, but Swedish regulator won’t take action: An improper press release may have queered a takeover bid for Nordic exchange operator OMX.
Which is interesting. U.S. regulators have also paid close attention to pumping and dumping in the service of insider trading over the gazillion-jigawatt megaphone in recent years, of course.
Meanwhile, Brazil’s national union for journalists is currently debating whether or not proposed regulations designed to curtail their role as plausibly deniable conduits for skeevy (dis)information arbitrage is “Stalinist” or not. See
Sweden’s Financial Supervisory Authority (FSA) will not take any action against Borse Dubai, despite concluding that the exchange broke the law when it announced the purchase of a 28.4% stake in OMX.
Let me find that announcement for clipping to file
In a statement the regulator says: “Finansinspektionen rules that the press release that Borse Dubai made public on 9 August 2007 was a public takeover bid as defined in the Act on Takeovers in the Stock Market.”The statement continues: “When Borse Dubai made the press release public it had not undertaken to follow the rules that Nordic Exchange Stockholm has stipulated for such offers. As a result, FI notes that Borse Dubai has breached the law.”
The DIFX acknowledged the charges:
Borse Dubai acknowledges the conclusions announced by the Swedish Financial Services Authority (SFSA), and we look forward to continuing to work with them as our offer for OMX progresses. We continue to believe that our all cash offer of SEK 230 per share for OMX is in the best interests of OMX and its shareholders and represents long term value for OMX stakeholders by participating in new opportunities in high growth markets as part of the combined OMX – Borse Dubai group.
The New Market Machines 
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