"The devil's aversion to holy water is a light matter compared with a despot's dread of a newspaper that laughs."
"Thunder is good, thunder is impressive; but it is lightning that does the work."
"No high-minded man, no man of right feeling, can contemplate the lumbering and slovenly lying of the present day without grieving to see a noble art so prostituted."
Latin American Zeitgeist consultant emeritus
"Eu sou o rei dessa folia, pra delírio da Fiel"
Roberto Civita: Infotainment Outlaw
For jaw-droppingly arrogant and extreme violations of minimal standards of journalistic integrity, this blog no longer spends a tostão on any Grupo Abril or associated (Disney) infotainment products.
(L) 2005 Libre Commons Res Communes License. This log of my open-source wetware-Internet interface design work is outside of all legal jurisdiction and takes its force and action from the constituent radical democratic practices of the global multitude against the logic of capital. Void where prohibited by a little man with a gun in his hand.
Paraguayan photoshop job from the Ex-Petista blog, cited by Olavo Carvalho as a reliable source in a Zero Hora column: “Police find fingerprints of PT members on the money!” Source not stated.
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.
Who is the true master of the universe in the age of Time magazine’s YOU? A technologist like Larry Page or Sergey Brin perhaps or maybe a marketer like Tim O’Reilly or John Battelle? Or could it be Edelman, Richard Edelman, the ubiquitous CEO of the even more ubiquitous Edelman PR agency, the largest private PR firm in the world. Edelman gets the Web 2.0 revolution better than anyone. He understands that there are no absolutes in this world, that everyone is self-created, that we — individuals and corporations alike — are all responsible for establishing our own version of the truth.
Congresso Em Foco — sort of a Brazilian version of The Hill — features Celso Lungaretti on “Goebbels-inspired noise machines of the left and right.”
In the process, Lungaretti makes an astonishing factual claim, without backing: That JIBRA, or the Independent Journalists of Brazil, headquartered in London, is an expression of Workers’ Party propaganda.
It is the only concrete example that Lungaretti cites, in fact, of alleged Goebbels-style PT propaganda.
Which makes that aspect of this “fair and balanced” analysis of the phenomenon something of a “one-sparrow Spring” — a specious generalization from a single case. “Ronald Reagan had thick, oily hair. Therefore, all Republicans have thick, oily hair!”
But I myself once interviewed a very interesting and thoughtful former GOP congressman from the upper Midwest who was as bald as a cueball.
The problem is that I have been wondering about JIBRA myself, and have been unable so far to confirm anything that has been reported about it. I have tried fairly hard, too. I should probably see if there is any new information on the subject.
So far, I have not been able to trace any of the publications attributed to it to anyone identifiable, much less to supporters or members of the Workers Party.
In one case, there exists a blog that cites JIBRA frequently as somebody else’s work, but whose putative author bears the same name as one of the putative “London exiles” — even though the blog itself is datelined Fortaleza, Ceará.
The people who tend to spread the JIBRA memes are those kinds of bloggers who tend respond to the invitation to provide a profile by saying things like “Who am I? I often wonder that myself! Who is anyone, really, in the greater scheme of things?”
My favorite case: The “ex-petista” blogger cited as a source by Olavo de Carvalho. The portrait of the blogger showed a Bozo-style circus clown. See
The story of the “conspiracy theory” was spread, in fact — as I noted in that prior post — by a blog called Alerta Total.
Which has a long history of spreading the same sort of “tradition, family and property” gibbering that Lungaretti ostentatiously bashes here.
Which seems to imply that the source of Lungaretti’s claim that the left are a bunch of Goebbels-style propagandists may be the same source he spends most of the article assailing the credibility of.
Which makes me tend to suspect that this is the same sort of thing we saw in Colombia recently: Disseminating a message and attributing it to someone else in order to discredit them.
Most recently, for example, “Fidel Castro endorses Hillary Clinton for president!”
It’s a variation on the ancient Pompeiian satirico-political graffito: “The smelly bums who sleep in the park urge you to vote Claudius for mayor!”
An interesting, but fundamentally boneheaded, gambit in “how to win an argument without being right”: reverse plagiarism in the service of a straw man argument, with specious generalization from a single case.
This [blog post] is basically a conflation of cinema-induced fantasy, anti-Americanism, anti-President Bush, anti-capitalism, and fear of propaganda stemming from World War II. –Richard Edelman
A good horse runs even at the shadow of the whip. — Zen koan.
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
Some commentary on recent journalistic coverage of two Brazilian governance scandals: corruption at the Central Bank ca. 1998, and the emerging story of the bald ad man from Belo Horizonte and his political slush-fund pipeline. With off-the-cuff notes on the Record-Globo face-off and an homage to Richard Edelman and Faith Popcorn.
Publicly traded, goverment-controlled, multinational, socially and culturally engaged. Are paramilitary protection rackets trying to dump on the federal firm that controls the pump? Could prove to be a case for the Darwin Awards.
But let us have a read and see. And more power to O Globo reporters who are being allowed to cover such risky stories, in any event.
RIO – Agricultores da área rural de Nova Iguaçu, integrantes de um projeto de hortas comunitárias patrocinado pela Petrobras, estão sofrendo ameaças de uma milícia que se articula na região da Posse. A situação é motivo de preocupação na estatal e foi tema de reunião nesta sexta-feira. O projeto de agricultura orgânica, na comunidade Gerard Danom, é desenvolvido às margens de dutos de combustível. Segundo a polícia, o grupo miliciano poderia ter também agentes de segurança do estado. Seus membros exigem dinheiro em troca de “proteção” e, só esta semana, destruíram duas vezes plantações e instalações da comunidade.
Farmers in the rural districts of Nova Iguaçu, members of a community gardens project sponsored by the state-owned energy firm, Petrobras, are suffering threats from a militia that is emerging in the Posse region. The situation is a cause for concern at Petrobras and was the topic of a meeting held Friday. The organic agriculture project in the Gerard Danom community is being carried out alongside the routes of fuel pipelines.
Meaning that they are on federal property?
Providing a pretext for asserting federal jurisdiction?
An airliner crashes, killing 200. And who do they arrest? The guy who owns the whorehouse! –Current bar joke, São Paulo, Brazil
When airplane disasters strike, inaccuracy and unfairness are the rule in deadline coverage, not the exception. “People in the aviation industry just laugh at us, and they have a right to,” asserts Elizabeth A. Marchak, a reporter for the Cleveland Plain Dealer who has spent recent years investigating aviation safety. “Reporters get it wrong a lot of the time.” … Only a handful of journalists is well versed in aviation safety. Officials of the NTSB call the regulars who show up at crash sites “the Seven Dwarfs,” because those mainstays sit together in the front at crash scene briefings.–Columbia Journalism Review, “Covering the Unfriendly Skies” (Sept/Oct 1999).
Yes, but in the days before Journalism 2.0 and “innovation journalism” and “radical impartiality,” a lot of that gabbling bad coverage probably still represented a sincere, but inadequate, effort to actually get the story right.
Some of the issues involved are, after all, rocket science. Literally.
But now imagine a news media that simply does not give a damn whether it gets the story right or not.
Conversa Afiada (Brazil) reprints an interesting e-mail conversation with philosopher Marilena Chauí — former culture secretary for the city of São Paulo, under PT mayor Marta Suplicy, and author of What is Ideology? — on media coverage of the aviation disaster at Congonhas airport here in São Paulo this summer.
I have clipped and commented quite a bit of local coverage, but perhaps the most relevant bits of further reading might be
Later, if I feel charitable, I will give you some of the debate over Ali Kamel’s absurd, logic-chopping defense of Globo’s — and the Jornal Nacional’s in particular — breathtakingly stupid and irresponsible coverage of the incident and the subsequent investigation.
Era o fim da tarde. Estava num hotel-fazenda com meus netos e resolvemos ver jogos do PAN-2007. Liguei a televisão e “caí” num canal que exibia um incêndio de imensas proporções enquanto a voz de um locutor dizia: “o governo matou 200 pessoas!”. Fiquei estarrecida e minha primeira reação foi típica de sul-americana dos anos 1960: “Meu Deus! É como o La Moneda e Allende! Lula deve estar cercado no Palácio do Planalto, há um golpe de Estado e já houve 200 mortes! Que vamos fazer?”
It was late afternoon. I was at a country resort with my grandchildren and we decided to watch the Pan-American Games on TV. I turned on the TV and happened on a channel that was showing a huge fire, while the voice of the announcer was saying: “The government has killed 200 people!” My God! It’s like Allende and the bombardment of La Moneda! Lula must be holed up in the executive office building, there’s a coup d’etat and 200 are dead! What are we going to do?”
Mas enquanto meu pensamento tomava essa direção, a imagem na tela mudou. Apareceu um locutor que bradava: “Mais um crime do apagão aéreo! O avião da TAM não tinha condições para pousar em Congonhas porque a pista não está pronta e porque não há espaço para manobra! Mais um crime do governo!”. Só então compreendi que se tratava de um acidente aéreo e que o locutor responsabilizava o governo pelo acontecimento.
But as my thoughts turned in this direction, the image on the screen changed. A female announcer appeared, roaring: “One more crime in the ‘aviation blackout’! The TAM aircraft did not not have proper conditions to land because the runway was not ready yet and because there is no room for maneuver! One more crime of this government!” It was only then that I understood that this was an aviation accident and the the announcer was blaming the government for the incident.
The Head case: The Catalonian she-Zelig testifies to tragedy. Source: New York Times.
As for her educational background, she has told people that she has an undergraduate degree from Harvard and a graduate business degree from Stanford, though officials at both universities said they could not find records of a student by her name.
In reality, Alicia Esteve Head belongs to a well-known Barcelona business family that found itself implicated in the 1992 economic scandal known as the Planasdemunt Affair, one of the biggest ever in Catalonia. Her father and her brother were sentenced to prison for forging documents (short-term bonds) issued by the Barcelona firm BFP.
on the ontopsychological status of one Tania Head.
The Catalonian daily La Vanguardia said Tania Head was better known in Barcelona as Alicia Esteve Head, publishing a photograph of her with colleagues taken when she worked as a management secretary in the city between 1998 and 2000. Associates told the newspaper she often recounted unlikely stories which put herself at the centre of the action, notably one of a high-speed car crash in which she was badly hurt.
Oddly, I am not finding that on La Vanguardia’s Web site. Maybe its search engine is not very good or it has not posted the story yet.
Google found it. The newspaper’s own search engine did not. This happens a lot. Review the performance of your search provider early and often, Webmasters.
La Vanguardia quoted a former colleage as saying that Esteve Head also had a scarred and deformed arm, which she blamed on a 200-kilometre (125-mile) an hour crash in a Ferrari with her fiancé.
Eros “Cupid” Grau to Lewandoski: “Did you see that the military police invaded the law school at USP?” “No, I didn’t see that.” “A lamentable thing.” O Globo defended intruding upon the private deliberations of Supreme Court justices by invoking the value of “democratic transparency.”
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”
You can be aggressive in hunting down news, that’s one thing. It is quite another thing to be agressive in a way that disrespects authority. You must not let your authority be disrespected. … In those who have authority, that authority is intrinsic, it is innate. … if you do not respect yourself, journalist will not respect you, just as no one at home will respect you. A single look can generally resolve half such problems. The way you look at them when you answer, and the journalist will not persist in posing a disrespectful question.–Antônio Carlos Magalhães
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. –“A Profile of the Brazilian Journalist”
Or worse.
NA HORA (Brazil) cuts and pastes a Contas Abertas (“Open Accounts”) gisting of the results of a report by a U.K. group called Article 19 on, basically, why it sucks to be a Brazilian journalist.
Which actually tends to corroborate what my own network of private informants tell me, by the way. That it pretty much sucks to be a Brazilian journalist.
Article 19’s major financial supporters (2005 financials):
UK Foreign and Commonwealth Office
Open Society Foundation (Soros)
UNESCO
Ford Foundation
Swedish International Development Cooperation Agency
MOE, the Missión de Observación Electoral, set out to discover correlations between elections irregularities and a number of other risk factors, including:
attacks on freedom of the press
the presence of FARC
the presence of the ELN
the presence of emergent criminal-paramilitary groups, including narcoparamilitaries, groups emerging from the ranks of demobilized “paras,” God knows what else, and combinations thereof
the incidence of armed clashes
the incidence of “internal displacement (expulsion)”
They published their observations in map form with a color code not unlike that used by our Homeland Security nationwide terrorist risk indicator — which to my knowledge was set on “amber” on the day it was rolled out and has never budged from “amber.”
Fuzziness and fear: If the threat remains constantly elevated, does that mean I should never leave home without my chemical warfare protection gear? It’s as though the Teleprompter monkey on the weather desk were to tell you, not what the risk of rain was on a given day, but that “You never know what’s going to happen next, so be prepared for anything!” Waste of taxpayer money of the century?
El Tiempo headined a story yesterday on the study something like “Government admits risk to elections process in 76 [seventy-six] municipalies.”
The text of the story on the MOE study, however, refers — accurately, I think — to 576 [five hundred and seventy-six] municipalities with extreme, high, or moderate risk from one or several of these factors.
We should check to see if ET regretted the error.
Samples:
Number of ballot-boxes interfered with, for reasons of public disorder, by municipality.
In Rio, the problem was never the Red Command, but the “Blue Command,” the military police. The problem is police corruption. There is this impression that crime is high in Brazil. It’s not. Police corruption is high. Criminality flows from the corruption of the police. When the police stop being corrupt, crime goes down. When kids [interviewed in Falcão: Children of the Traffic] say they pay part of the cop’s salary, that’s true. The traffic, in reality, is a partner of the Brazilian police. –Hélio Luz, former chief of the Rio state judicial police, to the Zero Hora newspaper, May 2007. See Top Rio Cops: “Their Priority Was to Protect The Mafia”
The Brazilian press is full of phony “scoops” and “scandals,” but in that case the Estado de S. Paulo produced the real McCoy: It photographed four men, posing as federal agents, trying to wrestle the owner of a currency exchange house into a car, saying they were arresting him on money-laundering charges.
O secretário estadual de Segurança Pública, José Mariano Beltrame, determinou nesta sexta-feira (28) ao delegado titular da Polinter, Herald Espíndola, que tome depoimento dos policiais que estavam de plantão na noite de quinta-feira (27) na carceragem do Ponto Zero, em Campo Grande, de onde o delegado aposentado Paulo Sérgio Cardoso Figueiredo, de 57 anos, fugiu na quinta.
On Friday, state public security secretary Beltrame ordered Polinter commander Herald Espíndola to take statements from policemen who were on duty on Thursday, September 27, at the Ponto Zero jail in Campo Grande, from which retired federal police officer Paulo Sérgio Cardoso Figueiredo, 57, escaped on Thursday.
These days, Brazilians seem to learning about a saying we gringos have used for years: “Making a federal case out of” something. Meaning, “making a big deal” out of an issue, making a lot of noise about something rather than dealing with it with quiet discretion.
“Let’s not make a federal case out of this, shall we?”
Sometimes, of course, you need to make a federal case out it.
When a journalist was shot on the outskirts of Brasília recently, for example, local authorities asked for federal assistance, and troopers from the National Public Security Force (FNSP) were dispatched to the area.
RIO - O ministro da Justiça, Tarso Genro, colocou a Polícia Federal à disposição das autoridades do Rio de Janeiro para investigar a suposta intimidação ao juiz André Ricardo Francis Ramos, que teve sua casa invadida na quinta-feira, 27, por três supostos assaltantes, uma semana depois de decretar a prisão de 58 policiais militares do 15º Batalhão de Policia Militar de Duque de Caxias.
Minister of Justice Genro offered the services of the federal police to Rio authorities in investigating the supposed intimidation of Judge Ramos, who had his home invaded on September 27 by three supposed robbers, one week after issuing warrants for the arrest of 58 military police troopers from the 15th BPM of Duque de Caxias.
O secretário Nacional de Segurança Pública, Antonio Carlos Biscaia, considerou a ação dos criminosos, “uma ousadia inaceitável”, e disse que já entrou em contato com o secretário estadual de segurança Pública do Rio, José Mariano Beltrame, para articular ações conjuntas no caso.
The national secretary of public security, Biscaia, called the actons of the criminals “unacceptable and outrageous” and said he had already contacted Beltrame, the Rio state public security secretary, to plan joint actions in the case.
A casa do juiz, na Baixada Fluminense, foi invadida quando apenas a mulher do juiz estava no local. A identidade dela está sendo preservada pela polícia. Ela escondeu-se no banheiro, quando ocorreu a invasão. Os supostos assaltantes levaram apenas um celular, mas quebraram portas e janelas.
The judge’s house in the Baixada Fluminense region of the state was invaded while his wife was home alone. Her identity is being kept confidential by police. She hid in the bathroom while the invasion was going on. The supposed robbers took only a cell phone, but smashed doors and windows.
Foi Ramos quem autorizou a prisão dos policiais militares acusados de envolvimento com traficantes das favelas de Caxias. A investigação foi feita pelo delegado local, André Drumond. Com a autorização judicial, no dia 17, ele deflagrou a Operação Duas Caras.
Ramos was the judge who issued arrest warrants for military policemen accused of involvement with the drug trade in the shantytowns of Caxias. The investigation was conducted by a local police official, Drumond, who, armed with the warrants, rolled out Operation Two-Face on September 17.
São Paulo TV moment No. 1: A distraught carroceiro, 50, who has reportedly been mixing antidepressants and beer, holes up in his home, holding his wife and four children hostage and brandishing a machete of the kind used to cut sugar cane.
He might as well be wearing a sandwich board announcing, “I want to commit blue suicide.”
Every single news channel goes live to the scene and stays there. Suspending commercials.
The case has the potential to develop into another Ónibus 174 — the documentary of a bus hijacking in Rio produced by the same team that brought you Tropa de Elite.
The hijack took place in June 12, 2000 (Valentine’s Day in Brazil) and was broadcast live for 4 and a half hours. The whole country stopped to watch the drama on TV. The film tells 2 parallel stories. Not only does it explain the dramatic events that unfolded as the police tried, and failed, to handle the hijack situation; but it also tells the amazing life story of the hijacker, revealing how a typical Rio de Janeiro street kid was transformed into a violent criminal because society systematically denied him any kind of social existence. Both stories are interwoven in a such a way that they end up explaining why Brazil, and other countries with similar social and economic problems, are so violent.
In the end, the military police are not filmed shoving the man’s lifeless corpse into the trunk of a viatura, never to be seen again. The GATE hostage negotiator who talked the man down is interviewed. He seems like a very nice guy. Another police spokesman suggests that treatment, rather than punishment, might even be appropriate in the case.
The star of the show is Fátima, 12, a relative of the man, who participated in talking him down and became the family’s informally designated spokeswoman. She proves to be impossibly lovely, intelligent and articulate, even as a jostling scrum of dark-suited, gabbling TV reporters shoves microphones and, in one hairy-wristed and highly visible case, cell phones in her face .
Even if her grammar — “ele já largou as faca” –betrays her as a local version of a Cockney. (The last issue of Veja magazine but one featured a cover-story exalting proper grammar as the key to career success! If you lie, but avoid using the gerund, you will go far.)
(The hostage negotiator has a hick accent himself — which urban metrosexuals here sometimes mock mercilessly, but I find kind of charming. They say it is influenced by the Foghorn Leghorn drawl of immigrants from the American South after the Civil War.)
So, with the all-seeing eyeball of the TV news looking on, casual ultraviolence is avoided. Good for the all-seeing eye.
It will be interesting to see, however, to see how the man is treated once the cameras are turned off, and whether the all-seeing eyeball will actually follow up on that angle of the case. My beer-money bet says it won’t. But maybe the brand-new Record News will pleasantly surprise me.
TV moment No. 2: The official TV channel of the state legislative assembly airs a newscast produced by the state military police, anchored by a uniformed man with lots of fruit salad on the chest of his tunic.
La fanatica anti-fujimorista se queda con la boca abierta nunca penso que el pueblo peruano saliera en miles a proteger la libertad del presidente que trajo la paz cuando los terroristas asesinaban a miles de peruanos indefensos mientras ella se hacia millonaria reciviendo millones de las ongs pitucas
The fanatically anti-Fujimori journalist is slack-jawed I never thought the Peruvian people would come out in the thousands to protect the freedom of the president who brought peace when the terrorists were assassinating thousands of defenseless Peruvians while she became a millionaire getting millions from NGOs.
A confusão entre “glória e poder” terá levado o actual presidente da França, Nicolas Sarkozy, a incriminar Dominique de Villepin, anterior primeiro-ministro, no âmbito do caso Clearstream, um esquema de cobrança de comissões ilegais no qual o antigo chefe de Governo é um dos arguidos. A acusação de Villepin consta de um dossiê ontem confiado aos juízes que ouviram o depoimento do antigo governante, num dia em que ressaltou uma óbvia mudança de estratégia.
“Confusing power with glory” may have led the current president of France, Sarkozy, to incriminate Dominique de Villepin, the previous prime minister, in the Clearstream case — a scheme in which illegal commissions were collected in which the former head of government is one of those indicted. Villepin’s accusation is made in a dossier he presented yesterday to judges who took his testimony, on a day that brought an obvious change in strategy on his part.
The latest NMM(-TV)SNB(B)CNN(P)BS posting to Dailymotion:
Some snippets from the rekindled debate on the issue of election fraud in the 2006 national elections in Mexico, stoked by the passage of elections reforms by the federal congress. Which agreed to (1) utterly bork the astonishingly untruthful and gabbling federal elections commisioners and (2) outlaw the purchase by private parties of political advertising from Mexico’s TV duopoly. Look, I do not necessarily support the policies of the candidate who allegedly lost here. I am not a Mexican. What do I know? But I am telling you, if that election was not as a phony as a $3 bill, the Mexican government has produced no credible evidence of it to date. And Dick Morris has admitted to working for the campaign of the “winner.”
Rede Record’s São Paulo auditorium, last night ringed with Hollywood searchlights and news choppers: Ambitions to become the other all-seeing eyeball-like gizmo.
SÃO PAULO – Sem se apresentar como bispo, o fundador e líder da Igreja Universal do Reino de Deus e proprietário da Rede Record, Edir Macedo, inaugurou na noite desta quinta-feira o seu novo canal de TV, o Record News, protestando contra o que chamou de “monopólio da informação” no País. Ao lado do presidente Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva e do governador de São Paulo, José Serra, Macedo iniciou seu discurso com um ataque velado à concorrente TV Globo – dizendo que sua empresa “por anos foi injustiçada por um grupo que tinha e mantém o monopólio da informação no Brasil”. Ressaltando que o canal de notícias será gratuito – os da Rede Globo são exclusivos para assinantes da TV paga – Macedo disse que o novo canal pretende levar informação de qualidade aos brasileiros.
Without referring to himself as a bishop, the founder and leader of the Universal Church of the Kingdom of God and owner of the Record TV network, Edir Macedo, inaugurated last evening his new TV channel, Record News, by protesting what he called the “monopoly of information” in Brazil.
What did you want him to do? Wear a mitre?
Are we really supposed to believe that because Macedo did not mention that he is the bishop of that televangelist church that he is successfully pulling the wool over our eyes? I know full well that Macedo is the bishop, and I am not even from here. It’s a public and notorious fact. How to make the point without visbily editorializing in the news hole:
Founder and leader of the Universal Church of the Kingdom of God and owner of the Record TV network, Edir Macedo inaugurated last evening his new TV channel, Record News, by protesting what he called the “monopoly of information” in Brazil.
Save yourself a few keystrokes in the bargain.
(The president’s nickname, Lula, means ’squid’ — although it is probably merely a sing-song coinage rather than a reference to something squidlike about the man. One of his brothers is known as Vavá, for example.)
We actually watched this spectacle on our Brazilian-made Gradiente flatscreen (a surprisingly cheap and good gizmo) last evening.
As I read the story, however, this actually represents the repurposing of a channel formerly known as TV Mulher (roughly, “She TV.”)
No new concession was granted, merely permission to pump new content through an established content pipeline.
“Germán Medina (above) is not a hooker-themed blackmailer like J.J. Rendón.”
A good horse runs even at the shadow of the whip. — Zen koan.
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
The report is from El Tiempo (Bogotá), which also reports that the “king of black propaganda” may soon have his contract terminated by the La U political party. More on that in a bit.
An aide to a La U legislator reportedly got the Zen master of gabbling nonsense on tape threatening to create a hooker-themed scandal if the legislator did not accede to a political bargain Rendón’s client was proposing to him.
Semana magazine, meanwhile, reports that opposition leader Carlos Gaviria is now attributing the astonishing incident of a U.K. Guardian op-ed, published under his byline but not authored by him, to the work of the Bolivarian Donald Segretti.
The thought had occurred to me, too.
Also in Semana: “Risk of political violence in 576 townships in upcoming municipal elections.”
An El Tiempo headline to the same effect today cites “76″ townships.
Gaviria explica esta serie de acusaciones al hecho de que detrás del gobierno hay hombres como J.J. Rendón especializados en hacer montajes, difamar, calumniar de sus adversarios políticos para que estos inviertan su tiempo más valioso en aclarar cosas que no ha hecho. Calumnia, calumnia que algo quedará, dice el refrán.
Gaviria attributes these events to the fact that behind government there are people like J.J. Rendón who specialize in frame-ups, defamation, and slander of political opponents, in a bid to force them to waste valuable time explaining [nonexistent facts]. Slander, slander, slander until something sticks, as the saying goes.
A saying most often attributed to Joseph Goebbels.
Press releases are not news; they can form the point of departure for a news report, but nly so long as they are substantially followed up on. They can never be published without a substantial effort to research, corroborate and complement the information they contain. –Editorial manual of Último Segundo (Brazil)
Glittering generalities are emotionally appealing words so closely associated with highly valued concepts and beliefs that they carry conviction without supporting information or reason. Such highly valued concepts attract general approval and acclaim. The appeal is to emotions such as love of country, home; desire for peace, freedom, glory, honor, etc. They ask for approval without examination of the reason. They are typically used by politicians and propagandists. The term may have originated with the Institute for Propaganda Analysis.
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 and business groups. –“A Profile of the Brazilian Journalist.”
File under “plagiarisms of the press release that actually contain less information than the press release itself does.”
Writing for the Observatório da Imprensa (Brazil), “journalist and translator” Leneide Duarte-Plon describes a campaign by six French journalists’ unions against “the press barons.”
And alleged attempts by the Sarkozy government to pressure and control the free press.
… seis sindicatos de jornalistas convocaram a imprensa na segunda-feira (24/9), em Paris, para dar início a um movimento de resistência contra o controle da mídia pelo capital e pelo poder político. Este, na avaliação dos jornalistas, exerce pressões pela proximidade entre o novo presidente da República, Nicolas Sarkozy, e os barões da imprensa. Os exemplos de matérias censuradas são numerosos.
Six journalists’ unions held a press conference on September 24 to inaugurate a movement in resistance to the control of the media by capital and political power. These forces, the journalists say, having been putting pressure on journalists due to the close relations between the new President, Sarkozy, and the barons of the press. The examples of censorship are numerous.
Name one.
Ms. Duarte-Plon does not provide a single example.
Or identify the six unions by name.
How many journalists’ unions are there in France?
How many adhered?
How many did not?
Only one spokesman for this movement is quoted, briefly — saying something noble-sounding and utterly tautological — and identified by name.
Demands for new legislation are mentioned, but there is no explanation of the specific provisions being lobbied for; the issue is glossed over with vague references to principles that very few people oppose: liberté, egalité, fraternité.
Quoi ! Des cohortes étrangères
Feraient la loi dans nos foyers !
Quoi ! Des phalanges mercenaires
Terrasseraient nos fiers guerriers !
The evocation of emotionally charged principles, evoked without reference to concrete facts: a textbook case of “journalism” based on glittering generalities.
When journalists utterly and systematically fail to provide me with the most minimal answers to the Five Ws, I tend to suspect they are trying to pull the wool over my eyes.
Pragmatism without boundaries: Brazil’s official political philosophy?
“This is a done deal. Why do you ask? Have you heard something?” Vice-President Alencar asked journalists. –Folha de S. Paulo on the Mangabeira Unger nomination process, June 15, 2007
Ontem, o Senado rejeitou por 46 votos a 22, a Medida Provisória 377/07 , que criava a pasta. Com a decisão, também ficam anuladas as contratações de cerca de 600 funcionários para a estrutura da secretaria. Foi uma derrota imposta pelo PMDB ao governo.
Yesterday, the Brazilian Senate rejected Provisional Measure 377/07, which created the office of Secretary of Long-Term Planning of the Presidency. With that, 660 civil service jobs destined for the office were also wiped out. The defeat of the measure was imposed by the PMDB.
On what Cidade Biz editorialized — acidly, but coherently enough, I thought — on the eve of the government’s appointment of the former Harvard Law professor and heir to Deweyean constructivism, see also
The Diário do Grande ABC (São Paulo, Brazil) reports: Cops probed over a massacre in Ribeirão Pires are suspected of having had an equity stake in an autombile chop shop — where stolen cars are taken to be stripped for parts — that was denounced to the police by one of the victims.
A chacina do último dia 15, em Ribeirão Pires, pode ter sido motivada por vingança. Os quatro policiais militares suspeitos de envolvimento no crime teriam ido ao bar do bairro Quarta Divisão naquela noite para acertar contas com um delator. O homem procurado teria sido responsável pelo fechamento de um desmanche clandestino, que os policiais tinham participação.
The massacre that took place in Ribeirão Pires on September 15 may have been motivated by revenge. The four military police troopers suspected in the crime may have gone to the Fourth Division bar that night to settle a score with an informer. The man they sought was thought responsible for the closing of an underground chop shop in which the policemen had a stake.
O desmanche funcionava na Avenida Miro Attilio Peduzzi. Mesma rua do bar onde ocorreu a maior chacina do ano – com oito mortos. O comércio irregular foi fechado pela polícia um dia antes dos assassinatos. Três dos mortos tinham passagem pela polícia por receptação de carro. O que reforça a linha de investigação da polícia.
The chop shop operated on Miro Attilio Peduzzi Avenue. The same street as the bar where the worst massacre of the year took place, leaving eight dead. The irregular business was closed by police one day before the murders. Three of the persons killed had police records for receiving stolen vehicles, which reinforces the theory under which the police investigation is proceeding.
O projéteis encontrados no local do crime e nas vítimas são de armas 9 milímetros (da Força Armada e da Polícia Federal) e de revólver 380, fácil de ser comprada. Os laudos da balística do Instituto de Criminalística que serão decisivos para comprovar ou não a participação de policiais no crime estão para ser apresentados.
The bullets found at the crime scene and in the victims were from 9mm pistols (used by the armed forces and federal police) and .380 revolvers, which are easy to buy. Results of the ballistics tests by the criminalistics institute, which will be decisive in proving or disproving the involvement of the four policemen, have not yet been presented.
That is my personal freaking shadow at lower left, dude. I used to work in that freaking building.
As for her educational background, she has told people that she has an undergraduate degree from Harvard and a graduate business degree from Stanford, though officials at both universities said they could not find records of a student by her name.
I first read this story on the Terra news portal in Brazil, which recreates the woman’s entire story in at least a dozen paragraphs of breathless narrative build-up before arriving at the dramatic reversal, or anagnorisis:
Mas informações recentes determinam que parte alguma de sua história pode ser corroborada.
Oh, okay, I see now: Terra’s was a straight translation of the New York Times story.
“Not one single part of her story can be corroborated.”
Merrill Lynch, for whom she says she worked, says it never had an employee by that name working there at the time in question, for example.
USA Today, on the other hand, gets to the gist of the story, inverted-pyramid style, in the third paragraph, with only a minimum of dramatic build-up.
Which I prefer. Because, although the Times headline does tip you off to what is coming, who has time to read a dozen paragraphs or so of lies?
The value of the narrative lede here is almost purely theatrical.
Please.
Just give me the gist upfront and save the histrionic details for later. I am a busy man.
The Survivors’ Network dumped Head as president after it learned about the Times story. Her name no longer appears on the group’s list of officers, but a cached version includes this biography:
Child’s play: The Beeb used to model the English language; now it merely tortures it.
Like to take a cement fix
Be a standing cinema
Dress my friends up
just for show
See them as they really are
Put a peephole in my brain
Two New Pence to have a go
I’d like to be a gallery
Put you all inside my show
–Bowie, “Andy Warhol”
A further cases in point regarding the current state of the journalistic profession in Blighty and its former crown colonies. See also
Yentob appeared in footage manipulated to make it look as if he was conducting interviews for BBC1’s Imagine series even though he was not actually there.
Writes Brazilian radio journalist Milton Jung (my translation):
Soon after I entered the business, there were [tales of] a war correspondent who dug a trench in his hotel room and never left it until the conflict was over. His tactics were simple: He sent his photographer out to the battlefield with a tape recorder in hand. That provided the audio background to the bulletins that he issued over the telephone, live, from his hotel headquarters.– Milton Jung
A very similar fact-pattern is at issue here:
He [Yentob] allowed images of himself to be inserted, nodding in apparent agreement with guests, despite the fact that the questions were being posed by a researcher or producer.
There is a certain type of Brazilian journalist whom the media back home like to market as an expert on New York City.
But who also appears to have some kind of tracking device attached to their ankle — kind of like Apóstolo Estevão of Renascer — which prevents them from venturing more than 7 blocks to the east, west or south of Central Park. (North of the park? Harlem? Are you kidding?)
On pain of having their head explode.
They’re like the blind man who grasps the tail of the elephant and concludes that the beast must be some kind of hairy snake. See also
The woman appears to be recycling something she read in the gabbling, neoconservative New York Sun without citing the source.
Os vereadores de Nova York querem passam uma lei para que as multas recebidas pelos ciclistas que fazem serviços de entrega para refeições sejam repassadas para os proprietários de restaurantes As multas vão de US$ 100 a US$ 300, dependendo da infração e foi pensada para responder às milhares de queixas sobre direção perigosa que chegam à Câmra dos Vereadores referentes aos ciclistas da cidade. Mas muito acham que o tiro vai sair pela culatra: os donos de restaurantes serão desestimulados a contratar este tipo de transporte para fazer entregas. Foram 1800 reclamações aparenas no Upper East Side, uma das áreas mais caras da cidade. Os veredaores contaram que receberam reclamações até de uma menina de 9 anos de idade que se dizia com medo de andar na rua por causa dos ciclistas. Muitos veredadores são favoráveis também a tornar mais rigorosa a lei de trânsito para ciclistas. Uma decisão sobre o assunto deve sair nas próximas semanas.
The Content is Free URL where I first read the work of the pseudo-Gaviria, visited today. More honest would have been, “The page you were looking for turned out to be a hoax, sorry. Which is why we removed it.” Click to zoom.
It is the policy of the Guardian to correct significant errors as soon as possible.
El Tiempo reports –and includes a screenshot of the Guardian Web site showing the article in question running with the byline of Carlos Gaviria.
I saw it myself, however, on the Comment is Free Web site, without a byline. I should have taken a screenshot, sorry.
It was the work, reports Radio W, of an “activist and spokesman” for Justice for Colombia named Mark Donne.
Who, Radio W reports, acknowledges signing Gaviria’s name to an article written in the first person, recapitulating Gaviria’s political career.
Which is just astonishing to me.
Net effect, on my scorecard: The message, “These are the kind of people who support critics of the Uribe government” wins the day.
Chalk up another one for J.J. Rendón.
Has the Guardian issued a correction yet?
Not that I can see.
It did issue this correction today, regarding an article on the release of the film Tropa de Elite:
Brasilia, rather than Rio de Janeiro, is the capital of Brazil — the error was introduced during the editing process (Film shows burned bodies and executions as real Rio, page 26, September 24).
Marco Valério Fernandes de Souza: Kojak fan, mineiro, ad man and indicted slush-fund facilitation defendant. 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. Though the man’s maracutaias demonstrated a lack of partisanship rare in Brazil — the same has not been true of the two separate trials involving what looks an awful lot to me like the self-same money-laundering scheme.
The PSDB has decided to wash its hands of the issue of Azeredo’s involvement in the scheme. Party leaders avoided defending him in any way ahead of time and are waiting to see what the federal prosecutor has to say on the episode. Behind closed doors, Azeredo, who met this week with PSDB president Jereissati of Ceará and Senator Vãnia of Goiás in the office of Senator Guerra of Pernambuco, is demanding the party take a firmer stance in his defense. But that did not happen. He will have to defend himself alone.
In the view of this publication, an article cannot merely be “technically correct.” The journalist may write: “So-and-so is involved in a robbery.” Or the journalist may write: “They stole So-and-so’s wallet.” Both can be understood as “technically” correct. But the first version induces the reader into the erroneous belief that So-and-so may have stolen something. –Editorial manual of Último Segundo (Brazil)
Another exercise in journalistic selective attention for the day.
The Folha de S. Paulo headlines the story:
“Aécio Neves defends Eduardo Azeredo, calls him ‘a good man.’”
“Aécio Neves says Azeredo owes society an explanation over charges [that he headed, and knowingly benefited from, a scheme to launder embezzled public money into a political slush fund].”
The tenor of which is: No one in his party is defending Azeredo.
BELO HORIZONTE E BRASÍLIA – O governador de Minas, Aécio Neves (PSDB), falou pela primeira vez sobre o inquérito da Polícia Federal que poderá resultar em denúncia ao Ministério Público contra o senador Eduardo Azeredo (PSDB) e 157 políticos de Minas. O próprio governador e o ministro das Relações Institucionais, Walfrido dos Mares Guia, estariam entre os acusados de envolvimento com o mensalão mineiro.
Minas Gerais governor Aécio Neves (PSDB) spoke today for the first time over the federal police investigation that could lead to a federal indictment of Senator Eduardo Azeredo and 157 Minas Gerais politicians. The government himself and the current minister of institutional relations, Mares Guia [of the PTB, Azeredo's former lieutenant governor] might be among those charged of involvement with the [so-called] “Minas big monthly.”
- Acho que cada um tem que responder em relação às denúncias. Os homens públicos devem, todos eles, em qualquer momento, estar absolutamente prontos para dar explicações à sociedade – disse o governador nesta terça-feira.
“I think everyone has to provide an answer with respect to these charges. Public men, all public men, have the duty to be absolutely prompt at all times with explanations to society,” said the governor [yesterday].
O documento da PF cita o envolvimento dos políticos num esquema de caixa 2 durante a eleição de 1998, quando Azeredo tentou se reeleger governador de Minas. Segundo Aécio, há uma diferença muito grande entre o que ocorreu no plano federal – no episódio conhecido como mensalão – e os problemas que ocorreram na campanha do então candidato Azeredo. O governador argumentou que conhece bem o senador e ex-governador, que é um homem de bem.
The federal police report cites the involvement of these politicians in an illegal campaign finance scheme during the 1998 elections, when Azeredo was trying to win reelections as Minas governor. According to Neves, there is a big difference between the scheme at the federal level, known as “the big monthly” — and that the problems of the Azeredo campaign. The governor said he knows Azeredo well and that he is a “good and decent man.”
Yes, well, then again: perfectly nice people sometimes do wrong things.
Asked whether the decision to support demonstrations against the automatic renewal of TV concessions might not backfire on the federal executive, Tatto responded with a smile: “No way! Our government is a Christian one: They beat us and beat us and we turn the other cheek.”
We know that you, President Squid, are going through a serious political crisis, and that handing the Minicom over to Costa was a step you had to take to wrangle some support from conservative groups that control media outlets. Groups that will not hesitate to abandon you whenever they feel like it.Still, we ask you to reconsider this nomination. In a few years, the political crisis will be over, but the missed opportunities for technological progress will remain as a harsh reality for Brazil. –Brazilian Free Software Foundation petition
Opposition parties are likening the proposal to the borking of RCTV by Uncle Hugo in Venezuela. Then again, some of those people tend to “go Nazi,” as I call it — also known as “screaming Stalinism!” — at the drop of a hat in such debates.
“The drug traffic votes for Lula” — a variant on that ancient satirical Pompeiian grafitto according to which “the smelly drunks who sleep in the park support Marcellus for mayor” — being one of the most scabrous current pieces of nonsense along those lines.
The ex-blog of Cesar Maia made this point very explicitly last week, for example, in calling for the impeachment of the sitting president for criminal association with “narcoguerrillas.” Brazilian diplomats had offered Brazilian territory as a neutral site for meetings between FARC and Chávez on bringing an end to the squatting of the hard men in the jungle after all these decades.
Some opposition political leaders, I hasten to add, don’t.
Which as I always say shows some wisdom and respect for the reality principle. I personally think. May they prevail over the gabbling Moonies in the upcoming cage-match for the heart and soul of the PSDB — whose former president is currently waiting to see if he is going to be indicted on charges of laundering embezzled public money into offshore political slush funds.
How much political leverage does the governing faction here think they can wring from the disturbing spectacle of the opposition’s gabbling hypocrisy on this point, anyway? Stay tuned and you may find out.
Meanwhile, the Estadão — whose parent corporation is itself, one reads, something of a vulnerable niche player in a Brazilian infotainment services business ecosystem dominated by the gargantuan cyclops of Globo — has fairly consistently reality-tested such fits of the screaming memes. In my observation. See, for example:
A cúpula do PT cobrará do governo a mudança do modelo de concessões de rádio e TV, com o argumento de que o sistema precisa ser “mais democrático”. Em reunião da Executiva Nacional, a primeira após o retorno de seus dirigentes de viagem à China, o PT decidiu ontem insistir na agenda batizada pela oposição de “chavista”: pedirá ao Ministério das Comunicações que reveja critérios de concessão para torná-los mais transparentes e menos políticos.
The leadership of the Workers’ Party will demand that the government change its model for TV and radio concesions, arguing that the system needs to be “more democratic.” In a meeting of the national executive board, the first after party leaders returned from a trip to China, the PT decided to insist on an agenda which the opposition is calling “Chávez-inspired”: It will ask the Minister of Communications to review the criteria for granting concessions in order to make them more transparent and less politicized.
In given conditions, all contradictory aspects possess the character of non-identity and hence are described as being in contradiction. But they also possess the character of identity and hence are interconnected. This is what Lenin means when he says that dialectics studies “how opposites can be . . . identical”. How then can they be identical? Because each is the condition for the other’s existence. This is the first meaning of identity. –Mao Tse-Tung
The front page of the Financial Times at this hour features the following sidebars to its main story on a pending stock-exchange M&A deal. A deal of the kind the NMMist tracks when he is not monitoring newsflow on death squads and electronic zebu auctions:
I follow that deal with interest, but do not blog much about those sorts of things because that is work, and this here is just blogging.
I just wanted to note that the FT asserts two contradictory propositions at the same time about the effects of the deal dynamic on shares of the publicly-traded Nordic exchange operator and market machine-shop tech Big Digger:
‘TV Globo is the Brazilian Hollywood,’ Veja, 1976, during the Geisel dictatorship. “If the Jornal Nacional does not report it, it never happened,” said Gen. Figueiredo. Nowadays, the same can often be said of what it does report.
TV was still a rarity, so it was the movie theatres that the coup-plotters lay siege to. Shown before the main feature, Jean Manzon’s short subjects terrorized moviegoers with the possibility of a communist dictatorship. They invited audiences to fight back against “disorder” and “chaos,” symbolized by images of strikes, marches and demonstrations.
To attain any success it is quite clear that the Federal government cannot avoid or escape responsibilities which the mass of the people firmly believe should be undertaken by it. The political processes of our country are such that if a rule of reason is not applied in this effort, we will lose everything–even to a possible and drastic change in the Constitution. This is what I mean by my constant insistence upon “moderation” in government. Should any political party attempt to abolish social security, unemployment insurance, and eliminate labor laws and farm programs, you would not hear of that party again in our political history. There is a tiny splinter group, of course, that believes you can do these things. Among them are H. L. Hunt (you possibly know his background), a few other Texas oil millionaires, and an occasional politician or business man from other areas. Their number is negligible and they are stupid. –Dwight Eisenhower, 1954
Reflecting on the 40th anniversary of the April Fool’s Revolution, the Piratininga Group (Brazil) recalls the role of the news media in the 1964 military coup d’etat in Brazil, as a benchmark against which to assess its contemporary behavior.
Executive summary: Plus ça change, plus ça la meme chose.
Os 40 anos do golpe militar de 1964 foram lembrados de várias maneiras. Na maioria das vezes, com a falta de memória que é própria de nossa história, sempre bem aproveitada pela grande mídia. Mino Carta fez questão de lembrar e Paulo Henrique Amorim, de avisar. Mas só isso não basta.
The 40th anniversary of the 1964 coup was commemorated in various ways. In most cases, with the amnesia that is typical of our history and which the news media misses no chance to exploit. Mino Carta made of point of remembering, and Paulo Henrique Amorim, of issuing a warning. But this is not enough.
No 40º aniversário do terrível golpe de 64, a Globo fala da ditadura com desprezo. Cospe no prato que comeu porque está com o pires na mão. Quer o bilhão e meio que o Banco Nacional de Desenvolvimento Econômico e Social está pronto a lhe dar. A Folha destaca o apoio que deu à campanha das Diretas-Já com uma bem-feita campanha publicitária. Só não diz porque 20 anos antes das Diretas, ficou calada diante do golpe que acabou com as eleições para presidente. O Estadão nada fala sobre a manchete que publicou dois dias depois do golpe: “Democratas dominam toda a nação”. O Jornal do Brasil faz de conta de que não participou de uma tal de Rede da Democracia. Uma armação entre os principais jornais cariocas, criada em 1963 para derrubar João Goulart.
On the 40th anniversary of the terrible coup of 1964, Globo now speaks of the dictatorship with disdain. It now bites the hand that once fed it because there is money on the table: It wants the billion and a half the National Social and Economic Development Bank (BNDES) is about to give it. The Folha de S. Paulo stresses its support for the “Rights Right Now” movement as a competent publicity campaign. What it fails to tell you is that 20 years before the Rights movement, it kept silent in the face of the coup that put an end to presidential elections. The Estadão says nothing about the headline it published two days after the coup: “Democrats control the entire nation.” The Jornal do Brasil wants us to believe it had nothing to with a certain Network for Democracy. A conspiracy among the principal newspapers of Rio de Janeiro created in 1963 to overthrow Jango Goulart.
Libraries must be public because democracy presupposes that access to information be public. But today, a lot of information is not found in books. It is found in televised images. We need to find a way to construct databases of video images. The wealth of vintage Brazilian TV on YouTube is often remarked upon these days — including, for example, Brizola’s famous “right of reply” message to the Globo network, which has been viewed tens of thousands of times.Such databanks exist, but are more or less precarious and are all private, which is to say, closed. If someone wanted to review what the Jornal Nacional reported yesterday, they would have some difficulty. If they wanted to see what was reported a year ago, it would be well nigh impossible. It’s gone. It vanished into thin air. Thinking of a way to store TV and making this archive part of the public domain is an urgent task, therefore, although an expensive proposition, but it is a right of the TV viewer. –Eugênio Bucci. See Brazil: The Boobs Talk Back to the Tube.
When a TV Globo reporter was arrested on charges that he moonlighted as a spy for the gambling mafia — tipping it off to law enforcement plans to move against it, based on information he got from his journalistic sources — Globo apparently expunged any reference to the man’s previous career from Globo.com.
A scandalous legal and ethical breach alongside which the Jayson Blair case at the New York Times looks like an old E.B. White column in the New Yorker in which “it’s” is erroneously used instead of “its” as the possessive form of the pronoun.
That is, I could find no reference to José Messias Xavier there when I checked. Not one. I should probably check again.
The Estadão — my own preferred daily journal of conservative-leaning opinion and metropolitan governance news for South America’s most humongous megalopolis, with occasional demurrers — does at least seem to have a consistent and principled interest in setting the historical record straight, and keeping it straight, I tend to find. See for example
Renato Cruz of the Estado de S. Paulo (Brazil) reports:
O Arquivo Público do Estado de São Paulo fechou uma parceria com a AMD, fabricante de microprocessadores, para digitalizar o jornal Última Hora, e tornar seu conteúdo disponível na internet. A publicação foi criada em 1951, no Rio de Janeiro, e circulou até 1971. A primeira etapa do projeto, com seis meses de duração, vai transformar em bits 36 mil páginas, que correspondem a 60 meses de jornal.
The Public Archive of the State of São Paulo has closed a deal to partner with AMD, the microprocessor manufacturer, to digitalize the Última Hora newspaper and make its content available on the Internet.
Sort of like the digital Brooklyn Eagle made available through Brooklyn Public Library back home.
For a comparable recent deal here in São Paulo, see the SUN-IBM partnership with the Cardoso Foundation to digitalize the former president’s (scandalously semiprivatized, critics charge) presidential papers.
The digitalization project is interesting in and of itself, from a tech-geek and business point of view, but the foundation was also roundly criticized for accepting donations from the state-owned sewer company, headed by an alleged political crony of Cardoso’s:
None of the pyrotechnic Globollywood ultraviolence in the film — which was actually extremely modest by Die Hard or 007 standards — is nearly as emotionally devastating as that climactic moment in which the camera just focuses wordlessly on the killer’s naked face and refuses to turn away.
After we took our life in ourhands, trying and failing to buy a copy on the street in the Santa Ifigênia — “Crack City” — neighborhood of São Paulo the other day, my wife Neuza asked me to download the pirated version of Elite da Tropa — “The Trooper Elite,” I tend to want to translate it, though “Elite Squad” seems to be the English title they have chosen — so we could see it for ourselves.
I speak fluent Bittorrent, and the film currently has 500 seeders and 200 leeches on the link I found to it.
Done and done. Badda bing. Badda boom. I am now no better, or worse, than your standard Sino-Paraguayan retail outlet at the camelôdromo. But I do plan to buy a ticket to see the film in theaters, if only just to watch the audience reaction.
Neuza’s comment: “Holy cow, the entire cast of Tropical Paradise” — the latest blockbuster Globo primetime soap — “is in this thing!”
(There are few options for making it as an actor in Brazil that do not pass through the Globo soap factory. Some of the things I have seen the amazing Lázaro “Madame Satã” Ramos have to do to pay his dues in the soaps were — I swear to God — literally Amos ‘n’ Andy embarrassing.)
Which explains a lot.
All the critics and pundits and eggheads here in Brazil seem to be questioning whether the screenplay, from an intensely personal fictionalized autobiography by former BOPE officers, is not self-serving, tending to glorify and celebrate the extreme ultraviolence, torture and inhuman vigilantism depicted here.
After watching the whole thing, from beginning to end, I no longer think that is entirely true. And a director’s cut could rectify a lot of that.
The film sets out to be — and at certain points manages to be — a sort of Brazilian Full Metal Jacket.
The problem is that at certain points it does not have the courage to stick with Kubrick’s deadpan irony, his creepy minimalism, his Brechtian estrangement gambits, his unrelenting, pitiless gaze.
At the end of Full Metal Jacket, you recall, the soldiers who have fought the Battle of Hue disappear into the fog of war singing the theme song from Disney’s The Mickey Mouse Club.
He’s our favorite Mouseketeer,
we know you will agree
M-I-C-K-E-Y M-O-U-S-E
In the slang of the period, “Mickey Mouse” had become an adjective denoting everything that is phony, preposterous, nonsensical, contrived, useless, plastic fantastic, treacly, bogus, deceptive, illusory, childish. Nonsensical to a degree that is insulting to the intelligence of the person on whom the nonsense is to be foisted.
A polite synonym for incompetent, self-deluded gabbling bullshit. Such was the verdict of the American fighting man on the massive clusterfsck of Vietnam, in Kubrick’s masterful portrait of the conflict.
It still has that connotation among my generation as well: “Was it all it was cracked up to be? Naw, man, it was totally Mickey Mouse.”
This film, however, begins and ends — in the pirated version we saw — with a slick, pumped-up, head-banging version of Bope vai te pegar — “Man in Black, what is your mission? Go into the favelas and leave corpses on the ground!” — that seems calculated to top the charts.
Or serve as the theme song to a cross-marketed first-person shooter game.
On which piece of carioca law-enforcement Netroots folklore, see also
If the film were stripped of its infotainment trappings, however, to focus more exclusively on the dark landscapes of emotional reality explored by its ensemble of actors, it would lose very little and possibly gain quite a bit.
Yes, the hypnotic, ever-present, hysterically moralistic voiceover of Captain Nascimento is a compulsive litany of many of the all-too-familiar rationalizations you read in a “sex and death” tabloid press that apologizes with Pavlovian gusto for police ultraviolence — and has for decades.
But these are just his words. They are the words of a man on the edge who is trying desperately to talk himself down. They contradict themselves, they perserverate, they are complex and incoherent and mutable and repulsive and anguished and self-pitying and sociopathic and tender and enraged.
They serve to convey all the screaming neuroses of a man, abandoned by his wife and child and popping anti-anxiety pills, who finds himself flat on his back on the couch. (A police psychiatrist collaborated on the book from which the film was made).
Nascimento’s are words whose total inadequacy to the emotional truth of the protagonists whose story is told here — of trying to hold on to your humanity in the face of the insane reality depicted here — is the whole dramatic point of the picture, I think.
Watching Rede Globo’s Fantástico (Brazil) — Second Life is not just a game, it’s an actual alternative reality! — questioning the verisimilitude of infotainment is like seeing Timothy Leary or Baba Ram Dass invited to chair the ethics committee of the American Psychological Association.
jornalista desde 1983. pela UFRJ. É especialista em Relações Internacionais pela UnB. Foi redator na Ciência Hoje, pauteiro na Manchete, repórter na IstoÉ e diretor de sucursal na IstoÉ Dinheiro. Fez artigos na revista argentina Notícias. Foi repórter especial no Globo, na Folha e na TV Globo. Coordenador de Economia no JB. Editor regional da sucursal Brasília no Estadão. É repórter especial e colunista no jornal Valor (que, ressalve-se, nada tem a ver com este blogue). … É mau percussionista, clarinetista hediondo e pavoroso no violão.
… a journalist since 1983, graduating from the federal university in Rio. Specialist in international relations at the Univ. of Brasília. Former editor of Science Today, coverage planner at Manchete, reporter at IstoÉ and bureau chief for IstoÉ Dinheiro. Wrote for the Argentine magazine Notícias. Special reporter for O Globo, the Folha and TV Globo. Economics coordinator for the Jornal do Brasil. Regional editor for the Estadão’s Brasília bureau. Special reporter and columnist for Valor (which has nothing to do with this blog, mind you) … bad percussionist, criminally incompetent clarinet player, and stupefyingly awful on the guitar.
I commit my criminal outrages upon the cavaquinho and viola caipira.
He writes:
Estava lendo o Reinaldo Azeredo, e, como sempre, apavorando-me com o volume de rancor que a turma evacua na caixa de comentários lá dele, quando chega O Globo na redação, e me sinto confortado pela excelente discussão levantada pelo jornal dos Marinho. Tropa de Elite é ou não um filme facista?
I was reading Reinaldo Azeredo [of Veja magazine] and, as always, was slack-jawed at the volume of vitriol that the mob deposits in that comment thread of his. At that moment, the O Globo daily was delivered to the newsroom where I work and I felt comforted by the excellent discussion I read there. Is Tropa de Elite ["The Trooper Elite"] a fascist film, or is it not?
É o tipo de filme que não vi nem verei; leio os artigos para não ficar fora do debate, mas tenho outras idéias sobre como representar a violência no cinema (Dogville é meu preferido, a violência sem glamour, apesar da Nicole Kidmann, ai Nicole). Quando me vejo em frente à tela, com meus filhos ao lado, sou o pai mala, sempre alertando para essa doentia maneira hollywoodiana de ver o mundo, ou pelo sexo despersonalizado ou a violência catártica e sensualizada. O sexo como instrumento de poder e a violência como norma na solução de conflitos, essa é a sociedade da doutrina visual contemporâena. Não é um mundo muito divertido na vida real.
It’s the kind of film I don’t go see and never will.
Trying to to figure out what to read, and what not to read, every day in São Paulo, Brazil, so as not to get stupider with the passage of time to the point that they throw us out of the reality-based community. High-end retailer refers us to the teeming streets of Crack City in search of replacement parts for our production facilities. A brief note on tropical cats and the Amazonian TAZ. Political slush-fund money-laundering pipeline reverse-engineering exercises. Who could have foreseen the Brazilian LAN house explosion? Quite a few sentient beings, as it turns out.
As a commentator on Radio W’s coverage of the story notes, however:
OJO QUE LO DE CARLOS GAVIRIA PARECE EN UN BLOG NO EN EL PERIODICO COMO TAL
Look: That thing of Carlos Gaviria appears on a blog, not in the newspaper as such.
That seems to be correctly observed and on point, too.
Approval of the free-trade agreement with the United States is being held up by demands from the new congressional majority that Colombia reform its labor laws pretty substantially.
Bleeding-heart liberal overreaction to those mass graves in the countryside, no doubt.
Juan Manuel Santos acusó al presidente del Polo de escribir la columna en la que supuestamente hablaba contra Colombia y el presidente Uribe; Gaviria afirma que nunca escribió ese texto.
Juan Manuel Santos accused the president of the Alternative Democratic Pole coalition of writing the column that allegedly speaks ill of Colombia and President Uribe. Gaviria disclaims authorship of the article.
El periódico inglés confirmó a la emisora ‘La W’ que el movimiento Justicia por Colombia envió el documento haciendo creer que era autoría del presidente del Polo.
The British newspaper confirmed to Radio W that the Justice for Colombia movement sent the article, giving to understand that it was authored by the president of the Pole.
And they did not double-check the sourcing of the article?
Santos le pidió el lunes al Gaviria que le explicara al país por qué le está haciendo el juego a ONG que propone la congelación de la ayuda militar que Gran Bretaña envía a Colombia.
On Monday, Santos asked Gaviria to explain to the nation why he was playing the game of an NGO that is arguing for a freeze on British military aid to Colombia.
A nationwide phenomenon: “The Le Cocq was accused of 30 political murders in 18 years, on top of the nearly 1,500 murders a year that transformed Espirito Santo into the second most violent state in Brazil. It was created in Rio in 1965 by police who wanted to avenge the death of Detective Milton Le Cocq. Horseface, the bandit who killed Le Cocq, was killed with more than 100 gunshots and his body covered with a poster depicting a skull. … A legislative probe of the drug traffic pointed to six Espirito Santo state police officials and 24 policemen as members of organized crime. All of them belonged to the Scuderie Le Cocq … the members of the Scuderie Le Cocq created a campaign financing scheme for mayors, legislators and aldermen. When these candidates took office, the Scuderie would show up to demand a bribe in the form of fraudulent public contracts.”
Accused of murder and belonging to a death squad in Osasco, Pvt. Natanael Viana, 38, was taken into preventive custody by judicial order. He had been accused by the police ombudsman in 2001 of alleged involvement in another death squad, but the case was archived and Viana returned to active duty. “To this day there is no proof he killed anyone. In 2001, the process was the same: a charge that generated an exhaustive search for evidence that was never found,” said the colonel.
São Paulo’s Secretaria da Segurança Pública issues a press release on a press conference yesterday regarding steps taken in the case of military policemen suspected of death-squad activities.
O coronel Roberto Antonio Diniz, Comandante Geral da Polícia Militar, informou, em entrevista coletiva concedida na tarde desta segunda-feira (24), na sede da corporação, que 121 PMs que tiveram uma conduta irregular já foram expulsos ou demitidos da corporação neste ano. “Temos 90 mil policiais no Estado, que realizam um milhão e 500 mil intervenções por mês. É de se esperar que haja alguns desvios, mas fazemos o possível para evitá-los”, disse o coronel.
Col. Diniz, state military police commandant, reported yesterday in a press conference at PM headquarters that 121 troopers found to have engaged in misconduct have been expelled or fired from the force this year. “We have 90,000 policemen in the state, involved in 1.5 million actions per month. It is only to be expected that some misconduct will occur, but we do what we can to avoid it,” the colonel said.
Sobre o envolvimento de PMs com grupos de extermínio, o coronel declarou que “a PM tem uma filosofia bem clara, que está fundamentada no respeito à vida e à integridade das pessoas. Nós jamais estaríamos de acordo com esse tipo de atuação”, declarou. Segundo o coronel, pelas investigações realizadas até hoje não foi constatada a atuação desses grupos dentro da corporação.
Regarding the involvement of troopers in death squads, the colonel stated that “the state PM has a clear philosophy, based on respect for life and the physical integrity of persons. We would never agree with that sort of conduct,” he said. According to the colonel, investigations realized to date have not turned up any such groups acting inside the force.
Headline in A Tarde (Salvador, Bahia, Brazil) today:
Back when I first met my wife and we traveled to Los Angeles together on family business of mine, our friends back in São Paulo all wanted the same thing: Go to a certain boutique in Westlake and get everyone a cheap “Free Winona (Ryder)” t-shirt.
Which we did. I also took Neuza to the Saks Fifth Avenue on Wilshire Blvd. where Winona was arrested for shoplifting, snapped her with the bronze statue of John Wayne at the editorial offices of Hustler magazine, took her to the Westwood military cemetry where my granddad, the Colonel, is buried, and showed her the UCLA hospital where I was born.
I was talking (drinking “stupefyingly chilled” beer) with some friends here in Sampa the other evening and none of them were aware that the saga of São Paulo “sex entrepreneur” Oscar Maroni has been featured on the front page of the Wall Street Journal:
They did, however, tell me the joke that’s going around about the guy:
A plane crashes at Congonhas, killing nearly 200 people. And who do they arrest? The guy who owns the whorehouse!
A follow-up, from G1/Globo.
Se por um lado a confecção de camisetas com as inscrições “Free Oscar” foi encarada como mais uma “jogada de marketing” do dono da boate Bahamas, Oscar Maroni, na outra ponta, a instituição de caridade para onde o dinheiro das vendas é direcionado agradece à popularidade do empresário, preso desde 14 de agosto.
If on one hand the making up of t-shirts bearing the inscription “Free Oscar” has been tagged as just another “marketing ploy” by the owner of the Bahamas nightclub, Oscar Maroni, on the other hand, the charitable institution to which the proceeds of sales of the t-shirts is destined is grateful for the popularity of the businessman, who has been in jail since August 14.
“What is the greatest pride of the São Paulo native today?” Top answer: “Stick a fork in it, this sucker is done.” Second: “Cultural ferment and bohemia.” Third: “The power of money.” Fourth: “The Mayor’s Clean City law.” Source: the late, lamented No Mínimo.
Na terça-feira da semana passada, 11 de setembro, o ex-chefe da polícia civil de São Paulo, Mario Jordão Toledo Leme, assumiu a subprefeitura da Sé em São Paulo. Nomeado pelo coordenador das subprefeituras e também empresário do ramo imobiliário, Andrea Matarazzo, Leme assumiu o posto após se afastar do cargo de delegado-geral da Polícia Civil de São Paulo, no qual atuou entre dezembro de 2002 a dezembro de 2006.
On September 11, former state police chief Mario Jordão Toledo Leme was named the subprefect for the Sé district (historic downtown) of São Paulo. Named by real estate entrepreneur Andrea Matarazzo, the city’s coordinator of subprefectures, Leme assumes the post after stepping down as state police chief, in which cpacity he served from December 2002 to December 2006.
O afastamento de Leme do cargo deu-se após denúncias de corrupção envolvendo membros de sua corporação, além de divergências com o Secretário Estadual de Segurança Pública, Ronaldo Marzagão. O novo subprefeito iniciou sua carreira policial trabalhando como investigador do Dops (Departamento de Ordem e Política Social), órgão de repressão da ditadura militar que matou e torturou diversos militantes políticos da época.
Leme’s departure came in the wake of corruption charges involving state police, as well as differences with state public security secretary Marzagão.
O interrogatório é muito fácil de fazer
pega o favelado e dá porrada até doer
O interrogatório é muito fácil de acabar
pega o bandido e dá porrada até matar
Translation: “Interrogations are very easy to do: Just grab the shantytown dweller and beat him until it hurts. Interrogations are very easy to finish off: Just grab the bandit and beat him until he dies.”
Another one
Bandido favelado
não se varre com vassoura
se varre com granada,
com fuzil, metralhadora?.
“You don’t sweep up shantytown bandits with a broom: You sweep them up with hand grenades, assault rifles and machine guns.”
The debate over the forthcoming Miramax-Paramount release on the cops of Rio SWAT continues. We translate this and that for Harvey Weinstein’s publicists to clip.
The Jornal de Debates (iG, Brazil), for example, this week features five responses to the question “Why is the credibility of the Brazilian police so low?” Asks Bruna Abs, more or less: “Are the police really discredited, or are they victims in this scenario?” The piece provides with a flashback to my days of grading hundreds and thousands of student papers — with pleasure, mind you, and more power to the young inquiring mind, anyway.
Com o filme “Tropa de Elite”, a polêmica de corrupção na polícia vem à tona novamente. O filme aborda o tema e traça um paralelo entre atitude de policiais militares convencionais e os do BOPE (Batalhão de Operações Especiais). Os convencionais são apresentados como facilmente corrompidos, mas sempre alegando o baixo salário como causa. Alguns aparecem gerenciando casas de prostituição e outros negócios ilícitos. Os do BOPE aparecem como os justiceiros, aqueles que vão consertar os erros dos primeiros.
With the arrival of the movie ["The Trooper Elite"], the controversy over police corruption is surfacing once again. The film deals with the subject and implies a comparison between conventional military police and the troopers of the Special Operations Battalion. Conventional PMs are shown as easily corruptible, but always alleging their low salary as the cause.
Some are shown running houses of prostitution and other illicit businesses. BOPE troopers, meanwhile, are portrayed as vigilantes who come along to repair the errors of the conventional troopers.
On which controversial slant to the narrative, see also
Nunca fui abordada por um policial do BOPE, logo não posso afirmar nada. Mas uma vez, voltando de bicicleta com um amigo de Copacabana à meia-noite, dois policiais convencionais nos abordaram, pois acharam estranho uma moça andando de bicicleta tão tarde. Há problema nisso? Como isso nunca tinha me acontecido, fiquei muito nervosa; e quando um deles pediu para revistar minha bolsa, abri imediatamente tremendo. Eles remexeram em algumas coisas, leram até um bilhete meu. Não encontraram nada de errado, e então nos dispensaram. Um deles chamou meu amigo de “abusadinho”, que, vendo minha tensão, começou a argumentar que achava um absurdo a abordagem. Mas a discussão é: a polícia está desacreditada?
I have never been stopped by a BOPE trooper, so I cannot speak to that issue. But once, riding home from Copacabana on my bicycle with a friend at midnight, two conventional PMs stopped us, finding it odd that a young woman would be out riding her bicycle so late. Is there a problem with that? As I had never been stoppped before, I was very nervous; and when one of them asked to search my purse, I opened it up immediately, trembling. They stirred the contents around a bit and even read a note of mine. They did not find anything amiss, so they let us go. One of them mocked my male friend as a “poor little guy” after he, seeing how nervous I was, starting arguing that the stop and search was absurd. But the subject here is: Do the police lack credibility?
Latin American Zeitgeist consultant emeritus
"Eu sou o rei dessa folia, pra delírio da Fiel"
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