“Brazil Borks Internet Monkey Auctioneer and Hero of the Planet!”

“Did Larry Rohter do good journalism?” Brazilian Press Association, 2004. The government tried to have the Times reporter’s visa cancelled over a [sleazy hit-piece sourced to sleazy hacks, when sourced at all] implying the president of Brazil was a drunken lout.

Brazilian Judge Releases Dutch Scientist (AP).

The reaction story is Arrest of Scientist Causes Concern.

The naturalized Brazilian — which makes him a Brazilian scientist of Dutch origin, does it not, copy desk? — says Brazil is “criminalizing science.”

Van Roosmalen blames the state’s powerful logging interests and overzealous environmental regulators for orchestrating his conviction and accuses them of trying to discourage scientific investigation. “They are criminalizing science,” van Roosmalen told The Associated Press in a telephone interview this week from the Amazon city of Manaus. Scientists have rallied around van Roosmalen, saying the case highlights a growing conflict between scientific research and Brazil’s efforts to protect the Amazon with some of the world’s toughest environmental laws.

Petition in support:

“Dr. van Roosmalen’s situation is indicative of a trend of governmental repression of scientists in Brazil,” read a letter signed by nearly 300 international scientists at an Association for Tropical Biology and Conservation meeting in Mexico.

ATBAC’s executive director is an employee of the Smithsonian Institute. Which makes him a government employee, too. Who funds it? Its Web site does not say. It may seem uncharitably suspicious of me to ask, but these days, you just never know. Junk science is a strong suit of the current ruling mob.

Larry Rohter’s last dispatch mocked the Brazilians for their — he insinuates — paranoid belief that other nations have designs on their Amazonian biowealth and public intellectual property.

Maybe. That topic does get discussed quite a bit.

But look here, have you read about the case of the German firm that got a global copyright on the term rapadura?

That meant that Brazilian producers of the raw, hard brown-sugar product — I like it in my coffee — could not legally market the product — which they have been cranking out using ox-driven mills since 1503 — under that name abroad.

French wine labels are subject to the AOC labeling control. If it is bubbly but made in Texas, it is bubbly, not champagne. Suntory’s founder went to extraordinary lengths to bring Scottish distilling methods to Japan — with fine results, many say. But it’s not Scotch whiskey, and it certainly is not that peaty Islay stuff made by galoshes-wearing sheep farmers on storm-tossed rocks off the North Sea coast.

A Japanese firm made a similar play for the term açaí — a (yummy) fruit native to the Amazonian Basin. And see also

• Starbucks Tries to Corner the Market on Amharic

Besides, the problem here is reportedly that the Dutch-Tupi scientist tried to auction off naming rights for new monkey species over the Internet. Without proper authorization.

Which I would not call an essentially scientific activity, would you?

A creative gambit for financing research, maybe.

So the case may have more to do with intellectual property and the state monopoly on financial transactions involving public property than it does with science per se.

TV Globo, for example, was charged recently for running an illegal lottery — a 2003 football coverage promotion that it actually profited from to the tune of several million dollars.

Which technically makes the infraction something of a financial crime. More on that in a bit.

Brazil has gotten less good-humored about tax evasion, opaque private transactions involving public property, and such nagging problems as numbers racketeering that fund paramilitary organizations and send money out of the country through Sicilian mafia money-laundering networks.

We cannot lower taxes, they argue, until we start borking more tax evaders.

Anyway, that’s a first guess. Let me try to figure out what exactly the rationale of the Brazilian authorities is here. Meantime, the newflow:

Over the past decade, Roosmalen, a naturalized Brazilian, has described seven new monkey species in the Amazon and has garnered a number of international awards for his research and defense of the Amazon. In 2000, Time magazine named him one of its “Heroes for the Planet.”

Yes, but then again, it also named Mr. and Mrs. Bill Gates (+Bono, who is sort of like The Fonz who lives in their garage) its Power Couple of the Year for 2005.

2001: Rudy Giuliani.

He tried to auction off the rights to name the new species over the Internet, with the proceeds going to help preserve their habitats. But the court ruled that since he was working for a government agency when the monkeys were found, only federal officials were entitled to decide on the names.

Going to help who preserve their habitats?

Imagine that: Brazilian federal employees selling off state property for their own account, without authorization.

If you put it that way, it does sound like a potentially Malufian quango tango.

If, that is, you accept the principle that the natural environment is a public good entrusted to the sovereign powers that be. And that’s not a completely insane idea, is it?

He was also charged with keeping monkeys at his house without authorization, AP reports.

Brazil is sensitive to the issue of biopiracy, and prosecutors contend the sentence shows that scientists must follow the nation’s strict environmental laws.

Let me see if any of the Tupiblawgers have an enlightening comment.

The exact structure of the Internet auction deal would be interesting to learn.

On a recent exercise in Brazilian Internet democracy that was something of an absurd farce — one that UNESCO pointedly disassociated itself from — see

• Wonders of the Online World: Cariocas Game The System

And is the following a comparable case of a Second Superpower play?

• E-Democracy in Action: “Are The Paras Seditious?”

There is this idea afoot in the world, you know, that some nations, or groups of people, cannot manage their own natural resources responsibly and need (armed Green neocolonialist) adult supervision.

See, for example,

• O Jornal Nacional (Brazil) x O Jornalismo: A Case Study

The Globo-TV Bahia “report” — which journalistically speaking is a piece of scandal-mongering nonsense — implied that poor descendants of slaves cannot be trusted as stewards of the land to which they applying for title.

On the other hand, a prominent Brazilian business executive was arrested recently for desmatamento on his own property, which also has an environmental-protection rider on the title.

He was also booked on illegal weapons violations.

The guy, it turns out, was armed to the teeth and plentifully supplied with capangas.

Brazilian environmental enforcement officers have a way of turning up execution-style slain.

Again, that Globo “report” shows trucks coming in and carrying off contraband hardwood. But it does not identify who is employing the man they catch doing it. Who owns the truck? Who takes delivery? Who takes the profit? What exactly is the deal there?

If you cannot tell me exactly what the deal is, you cannot convince me that it is shady, or that the guy you are perp-walking is the main culprit. I was not born freaking yesterday.

Globo does not bother to tell me.

Honey, where’ the remote?

Contrary to the proposition that ownership leads automatically to good stewardship, Brazilian latifundários are responsible for quite a bit of environmental degradation themselves, according to some studies I have browsed and bookmarked.

Brazil just announced a fairly substantial decrease in deforestation levels in its territory, I read.

I find this statement peculiar, from the AP story:

“I think my father felt that if he followed all the necessary requirements, he’d never get anything done,” Vasco van Roosmalen, the scientist’s son, told The Associated Press. “He had the attitude that if he was doing the right thing, the rules were not important. That can get you into trouble in Brazil.”

That is a perfect description of the famous Brazilian jeitinho, in fact. And the self-justification of Rio militias, for that matter.

To hell with the rules, let’s just get things done.

The favelas themselves, for example, are a monument, for good and ill, to the jeitinho. I need a place to live. If no one is building one I can afford, screw it. I am building one myself.

We use many jeitinhos ourselves in our daily lives, in fact. Can we afford to formally hire a cleaning lady? No. Labor laws are a nightmare, though some of this bureaucracy is starting to get streamlined. Do we have a cleaning lady? Of course we do, and an excellent one we share with a network of friends. This is the most mundane example of the jeitinho.

The trick is to make the rules easy enough to follow, and the advantages sufficient, that people will sign on.

So the idea that, as a general matter, failing to follow the rules can get you into trouble in informality-plagued Brazil — where in some situations the “for our friends, anything; for our enemies, the law” principle can still prevail, moreover — seems a little counterintuitive.

It also seems like a curious excuse for an employee of a government agency, where the jeitinho, when the jeitinho involves helping yourself to publicly money, probably should get you into trouble, whether your work for Brazil or for Uncle Sam.

Just ask the departing head of the Smithsonian, right?