"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.
Will all subequatorial Cisco boxes go dark, bringing an abrupt and catastrophic end to the tropical Information Age? There are those who say so, but none of them seem willing to stake their credibility on the prediction by signing their name to it.
The investigations to come might will require all these companies to report on their pricing, taxes collected, logistics and other details to confirm or rule out information obtained during Operation Persona.
The Gazeta Mercantil (Brazil) corrects earlier reporting by InvestNews on the Cisco affair down here in Brazil.
But it does finally get to what I think is probably the really burning question here: Who might be next to suffer a thorough borking from the tax man over illegal tax and tariff evasion practices?
How bad might it get? And for whom?
The really intriguing issue that remains for me, I think, rereading the press release from the feds on the case, is the case of the Panamanian law firm that, the feds made a point of charging, engages in a lot of irregular practices, not just in Brazil, but in the region.
And what Panama-based international lawfirm would that be anyway? You think maybe the fledgling Mercosul is already comparing notes?
I do think you see signs of some coordinated action already. Telefónica being challenged by regulators in other South American countries over its philosophy of customer service — “We’re the phone company. We don’t care. We don’t have to.” — for example …
Some excerpts:
SÃO PAULO, 18 de outubro de 2007 – Diferentemente do que foi publicado hoje na matéria “Caso Cisco deixa mercado de tecnologia apreensivo”, a Network1 não distribui os produtos da Cisco no Brasil, mas de concorrentes da multinacional americana. Segue abaixo texto corrigido:
Unlike what was published today in the article “Cisco case leaves tech market uneasy,” Network1 does not distribute Cisco products in Brazil, but rather the products of Cisco’s competitors. The corrected text follows:
Além de macular a imagem, quem fez compras da empresa teme não receber os produtos. O momento é de tensão para o mercado de telecomunicações. Todas as operadoras telefônicas fixas e celulares, call centers e empresas de internet em geral compram roteadores e sistemas de rede internet da Cisco Systems, envolvida na Operação Persona da Polícia Federal, que ontem prendeu 40 pessoas suspeitas de envolvimento em fraude fiscal, incluindo o presidente Pedro Ripper e o ex-presidente Carlos Roberto Carnevali. O volume da sonegação pode atingir R$ 1,5 bilhão, segundo a Polícia Federal.
Besides staining its public image, those who ordered from Cisco are afraid they will not get the products they ordered. It is a tense moment in the telecommunications market. All the fixed-line and cellular telephone operators, call centers and Internet providers in general buy routers and Internet systems from Cisco, which is involved in Operation Persona, in which 40 persons were arrested on suspicion of fraud, including Cisco Brasil president Ripper and former president Carnevali. …
Gutierrez: A local paper described him as contrariado.
U.S. Secretary of Commerce, Carlos Gutierrez, who was taking part in the same seminar, was surprised to hear of [the alleged] tax avoidance by Cisco. “I did not know of that case, so I cannot comment,” said Gutierrez, visibly irritated. Asked if the case would affect the current trade negotiations over double taxation by the two countries, he had no comment.
”País é propício ao subfaturamento”: The Estado de S. Paulo collects some reactions to the Cisco case here — in which we now learn that all individuals arrested have been charged, I am reading here from another source.
Also interesting are the two (creatively spelled) comments to the article.
The latter of which is by way of being something of a dubious proposition, given that the USCC and the association of Latin American AMCHAMs operate out of the same H Street SW address in our Nation’s Capital.
O excesso de impostos e as altas tarifas de importação fazem do Brasil um país propício para o subfaturamento de importações. Essa é a opinião de Mark Smith, diretor-gerente para assuntos de hemisfério ocidental da Câmara de Comércio dos Estados Unidos, que reúne 3 milhões de empresas americanas.
Excessive taxation and high import tariffs make Brazil a country susceptible to the undervaluation of import goods. That is the opinion of Mark Smith, director of Western Hemisphere affairs for the U.S. Chamber of Commerce, which represents 3 million U.S. firms.
“Subfaturamento de importações é muito comum no Brasil, há uma série de questões estruturais que criam um ambiente propício para as pessoas fazerem isso no País – carga tributária pesada, tarifas de importação altas”, disse Smith, em seminário sobre as relações Brasil-EUA, realizado ontem na Câmara de Comércio, referindo-se às acusações que envolvem a Cisco Systems no País.
“Undervaluation of import goods is very common in Brazil, there is a series of structural questions that create an environment conducive to people doing that there — a heavy tax burden, high tariffs,” said Smith during a seminar on Brazil-U.S. relations held yesterday at the Chamber of Commerce, referring to the accusations involving Cisco Systems in Brazil.
If you know what COPARMEX is, in Mexico, you have some idea of what FIESP is generally about.
I have been meaning to take a few notes on the guy, but have procrastinated.
Recall that when FIESP put its name to the Cansei “grassroots movement,” Skaf very visibly stayed out of what turned out to be something of a public relations debacle.
Monopoly-dominated markets tend to lead to underemployment of, and premature baldness and ulcers among, qualified managers. I tend think you have a lot of well-educated managers here itching to manage for their own account.
O vitória do empresário Paulo Skaf, 48, na eleição da Fiesp (Federação das Indústrias do Estado de São Paulo) marca o retorno da oposição à federação pela primeira vez desde 1980.
The victory of Paulo Skaf, 48, in the (2004) election for the leadership of the São Paulo State Federation of Industries marks the return of the opposition forces to power for the first time since 1980.
Ye gods! The massive magic mountain of money of Zhenli Ye Gon, accused Sino-Paraguayan pseudoephedrine philanthropreneur and “man behind the meth.”Source: www.dea.gov
Official sources acknowledged that the difference in the two figures was caused by the eagerness of certain public employees to divulge the information “in order to look good to their superiors.”
Rick: How can you close me up? On what grounds?
Renault: I’m shocked, shocked to find that there is gambling going on here!
Croupier: Your winnings, sir.
Renault: Oh, thank you very much. Everybody out at once.
En Colima sólo se decomisaron dos toneladas de seudoefedrina: PGR (La Jornada): In an item for the W$J’s Numbers Guy — I enjoy that blog of theirs — the Mexican federal tax authority has to explain that rumors of a big rock candy mountain of meth and Ecstasy precursor were greatly exaggerated.
File under governmental public relations nightmares.
El decomiso reciente de un cargamento de seudoefedrina dejó en claro la falta de coordinación entre las dependencias encargadas de combatir el narcotráfico y, en consecuencia, la diferencia en la cantidad de droga decomisada.
The recent seizure of a shipment of pseudoephedrine reveals the lack of coordination among government agencies in charge of combating narcotrafficking and, as a consequence, [explains wildly] divergent reports on the quantity of controlled substances seized.
En principio, el Servicio de Administración Tributaria (SAT) informó del aseguramiento de 514 costales de 30 kilos cada uno, con un total de 15 toneladas 420 kilogramos de seudoefedrina. Sin embargo, ayer la Procuraduría General de la República (PGR) y la Secretaría de Marina dieron a conocer que el peso real de la droga decomisada es de casi 13 toneladas menos.
At first, the tax authority (SAT) reported the seizue of 514 sacks containing 30 kg each, for a total of 15 metric tons and 420 kg of pseudoephedrine. However, the federal attorney’s office and the Secretary of the Navy announced that the real volume of controlled substance seized is some 13 metric tons less than that.
Likewise, when the Manhattan District Attorney indicted former São Paulo governor Paulo Maluf earlier this, Larry Rohter of the New York Times, editorializing in the news hole, said he found Morgy’s entree into foreign affairs “bizarre.” See
I thought Morgy expressed himself rather clear on why it makes sense to cooperate with foreign governments to avoid aiding and abetting massive kleptocrats:
“We are not going to become a Grand Caymans on the banks of the Hudson.”
As a New Yorker myself, I second that emotion. If I wanted to live in Paraguay — God help those poor people anyway, and best of luck to responsible adults bent on cleaning the place up — I would move to freaking Paraguay.
Cisco itself has issued a statement acknowledging a problem with its network of resellers, and said it would cooperate with Brazilian federal authorities. It noted that executives at its Brazilian subsidiary had not yet been formally charged.
It was, I thought, a very well thought-out damage-control press release.
Another detail that struck me was the Brazilian federales, at their news conference at the event, were careful to say that criminal charges, if any, will apply to individual conduct, not to the corporation — which may, however, owe some back taxes.
The New York Times notes the incident only briefly today, off the no-nonsense Dow Jones Newswires:
In a news release, Cisco said it was “cooperating fully with Brazilian authorities.” Cisco said Brazil represented approximately 1 percent of its overall business.
I was wondering about that last point: COMPUTERWORLD Brazil ran a story suggesting that the incident could produce a scandal of “Enron-like” proportions and seriously erode the CSCO share price.
Its single source: a consultant (whose clients happen to be Microsoft and Intel, though the publication does not think you need to know that in order to “consider the source”).
The whistleblower was a “disgruntled former employee,” the NW Cisco blogger emphasizes — without identifying the employee or detailing the circumstances of his or her separation.
The retribution of a fired Cisco employee has led to the seizure of a commercial jet, large sum of cash, a sizeable cache of Cisco networking equipment and the arrest of the Latin American top brass employed by Cisco.
A profile of one of the arrested executives.
Carnevali [!] joined Cisco in 1994 and has always been able to keep pace with the international growth of Cisco, managing to show results above average. An Electronic Engineer who graduated from Santos (Sao Paulo, Brazil), he holds the degree of Manager Businesses awarded by the University Mackenzie (Sao Paulo, Brazil), as well as a specialization in marketing and an MBA from Stanford University (USA).
Graduated from what university in Santos? UNISANTOS? UNIMES? UNIP Santos? FATEC?
Santos is a tough, tough town. Chicago during the Great Depression tough. Sort of a runner-up to Rio in the contest to name “the Miami of the tropical coast.” Miami in the 1980s, that is.
On the intellectual tenor of a Mackenzie University education, read some of the recent writings of its rector (who, naturally, blogs):
Time will tell whether the emergence of the quasi government is to be viewed as a symptom of decline in our democratic government, or a harbinger of a new, creative management era where the purportedly artificial barriers between the governmental and private sectors are breached as a matter of principle. — Kevin R. Kosar, “The Quasi Government: Hybrid Organizations with Both Government and Private Sector Legal Characteristics” (Congressional Research Service, February 13, 2007)
A ONG DO PSDB QUE TRAFICAVA DROGAS NA FAVELA (YouTube). A videblogger notes a detail in the blockbuster film Tropa de Elite that I noted myself in passing: Some embedded political commentary.
No filme Tropa de Elite existe uma ONG que faz supostamente “trabalho social” numa comunidade favelada do Rio. Mas a rigor é abrigo de “playboyzinhos brancos” que servem de “mulas” para colocar a droga na Universidade e nos ambientes bem-nascidos da Zona Sul, e comitê eleitoral tucano disfarçado. O “dono” da ONG é um candidato a Senador da República, cujo número é 451 — número do TSE para os candidatos do PSDB.
In the movie [Elite Squad, as I think they mean to call it in English --Ed.], there is this NGO that is supposedly doing “social work” in a shantytown community, but in fact is a front for “little white playboys” who are shown working as mules moving drugs onto the university campus and into well-to-do neighbhorhoods in the Zona Sul — and is also a campaign committee for the PSDB political party in disguise. The man who controls the NGO is a federal senator, whose ballot number is 451 — a number assigned by the federal elections tribunal for the PSDB.
Vintage roleta with bichos. Source: Musem of the Policia Civil, Rio de Janeiro
Chefe da polícia
pelo telefone
mandou avisar
Que na Carioca
havia uma roleta
para se jogar …
… 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. –See Espirito Santo, Brazil: “The Zombie Corpse of the Scuderie Le Cocq”
Arcanjo led a criminal organization that involved “nickel-hunter” gambling machines, jogo do bicho [”numbers rackets] and a factoring house used to siphon public money into political campaigns.
“The mafia got you elected, so now the mafia owns you.”
When we finally get a handle on just how frequently such conversations occur, and do not occur, in Brazil, we will have a handle on the dimensions of political corruption in Brazil.
And not before.
Most of the rest is just hysterical hot air.
I am getting to be pretty firmly convinced of this theory, as the evidence keeps trickling in.
Bem Paraná / Agência Estado (Brazil) on that other development in the Commander Archangel case:
Uma quadrilha foi presa hoje, em Mato Grosso, acusada de operar o jogo do bicho no Estado. Dois delegados da Polícia Civil, seis policiais – quatro militares e dois civis -, além de empresários, foram presos por policiais do Batalhão de Operações Especiais da Polícia Militar (Bope). Ao todo, 17 pessoas foram detidas acusadas de corrupção e formação de quadrilha. Novas prisões serão decretadas, segundo o Ministério Público.
A criminal organization was arrested yesterday in Mato Grosso on charges of running the “numbers rackets” in the State. Two precicint commanders of the state judicial police, six rank and file police agents — four military and two judicial — and business owners were arrested by members of the Mato Gross special operations battalion (BOPE). In all, 17 persons were arrested and charged with corruption and criminal conspiracy. New warrants will be issued, according to the state prosecutor.
The ageless Gloria Maria of TV Globo’s Fantástico emotes hysterically at the TelePrompTer: “Rio is Iraq.” Also frequently heard: “Rio is Vietnam” and “Rio is Haiti”(which is also, of course, Vietnam and Iraq).
NGOs dream of using the criminal power and the weapons of the traffic in favor of a social revolution they deem to be imminent and inevitable … It is needful for us not to heed their caveats, and to assume the risks and the collateral damage. It would be impossible to be more explicit than the words of Gov. Sergio Cabral about the narcotraffickers: “They are terrorists, they are evildoers.”– Col. Mário Sérgio de Brito Duarte, former commander of BOPE, the “trooper elite” of the Rio military police — unofficial but highly publicized motto: “We kill to create a better world” – and currently in charge of strategic planning for SESEG, Rio de Janeiro. See BOPE Blogs: “Only the Hard Men Can Save the City”
“The stigmatization of traffickers by the media provides the actions of genocidal police with a free pass,” he writes. In the book, he says the ideas of an “army of marginals,” a “parallel State” is “as delusional as the idea that there were chemical weapons in Iraq.”
Also from the Estadão today, from reporter Pedro Dantas, a follow-up on a story we saw on the boob tube ourselves last night: the publication of a book by a Rio police official, Orlando Zaccone, who argues that the power of the drug traffic in Rio de Janeiro is deliberately “exaggerated” by the police and the sensationalist press.
The headline: “Police official launches anti-Tropa de Elite to demystify the drug trade.”
The Estadão has been playing off the public profile of the popular film, contrasting it with the current situation of Brazilian law enforcement, fairly regularly and systematically, under the general heading of “art does not really imitate life all that well.” See also
Arcanjo led a criminal organization that involved “nickel-hunter” gambling machines, jogo do bicho [”numbers rackets] and a factoring house used to drain public money into political campaigns.
A Notícia Digital (Mato Grosso, Brazil) notes the transfer of João Arcanjo Ribeiro — the former state judicial police official turned reputed bicho ["numbers rackets"] king of the state — to federal custody.
“The Archangel” allegedly had a newspaper publisher whacked for reporting on his dealings. Whacked by a hit squad made up of state military policemen. The man had published an article calling Ribeiro “the Al Capone of Mato Grosso.”
O bicheiro João Arcanjo Ribeiro corrompia agentes públicos, intimidava testemunhas e comandava o jogo do bicho de dentro do presídio Pascoal Ramos, em Cuiabá. Essa foi a justificativa do Ministério Público Estadual para requerer a transferência imediata de Arcanjo para o presídio federal de Campo Grande (MS). Para o MPE, a cela de Arcanjo no Pascoal Ramos funcionava como um “escritório de operações” para a celebração de “negócios comerciais” do crime organizado.
The bicho banker João Arcanjo Ribeiro corrupted public agents, intimidated witnesses and ran his illegal jogo do bicho lottery business from inside the Pascoal Ramos prison in Cuiabá. That was the state prosecutor’s argument for requesting his immediate transfer to the federal prison in Campo Grande (Mato Grosso do Sul). In the view of prosecutors, Arcanjo’s cell at Pascoal Ramos functioned as an “operations center” for the “business dealings” of organized crime.
A juíza Selma Rosane Santos Arruda, da 2ª Vara Criminal, atendendo ao pedido do Ministério Público, determinou a transferência de Arcanjo. Segundo o MPE, Arcanjo é um “elemento de altíssima periculosidade, detentor de poder e de patrimônios extraordinários, condenado por alguns crimes e ainda acusado por outros mais”. Além disso, na justificativa, cita que o bicheiro formou um império criminoso comparável às máfias italianas e americanas e que ele é “cheio de simpatizantes nas Polícias Civil e Militar”.
Judge Selma Rosane Santos Arruda of the 2nd Criminal bar accepted this petition and ordered Arcanjo’s transfer.
“Shame on the CPMF! “The ministry of citizens warns: Deputies and senators, the CPFM is hazardous to the health of the Brazilian people” (a parody of cigarette warning labels). A counter. The campaign is apparently something of a Swift Boat Veterans for Truth-style, plausibly deniable 501(3)(c)-equivalent astroturf noise machine run by the 20-something heirs and assigns of the Magalhães and Bornhausen dynasties. “You, with your vote, have the power to change Brazil! Do not let your elected representatives extend the CPMF. Get together with friends and neighbors and hit the streets, yelling at the top of your lungs, SHAME ON THE CPMF!”
7 mil comparecem a evento contra CPMF: 7,000 turn out for a rally against the CPMF, a “check tax” on financial transactions that yields R$40 billion in annual revenues to the federal government, and which is up for renewal in the Senate at the moment.
The hysterical virgins out for the head of the “sex Senator” had threatened to stall the vote if he was not borked — “starving the beast” of funding for social and economic stimulus programs, as the Gingrichian revolutionary vanguard used to say.
And forcing it back into the arms of international lenders, is the counterargument from the Squidist forces. The main talking point of which in recent years has been “Brazil is now the owner of its own nose.”
A pretty effective talking point, too: The current government is rated as “good” or as “regular” (apparently they do not differentiate between “sucks no worse than usual” and the Yiddish horizontal hand-waggle indicating “I can live with it”) by all but 18% of persons surveyed by IBOPE, last I read. Unchanged within the stated margin of error.
G1/Globo runs it with an “eyebrow” of “disappointing turnout.”
Cerca de sete mil pessoas compareceram ao ato contra a Contribuição Provisória sobre a Movimentação Financeira (CPMF), no final da tarde desta terça-feira (16), no Vale do Anhangabaú, na região central de São Paulo, segundo estimativa da Polícia Militar.
Some 7,000 people appeared at a rally against the CPMF late yesterday afternoon in the Vale do Anhangabaú district of downtown São Paulo yesterday, according to military police estimates.
The 5,000 at a similar rally for the Cansei campaign last month — sponsored by the same people — was estimated by a number of press observers as no more than 2,000.
Os organizadores do evento – a Frente Nacional da Nova Geração e entidades comerciais, empresariais e civis, como a Federação das Indústrias do Estado de São Paulo (Fiesp) e a Ordem dos Advogados do Brasil (OAB) – estimavam o comparecimento de um público bem maior, de pelo menos 1 milhão.
The organizers of the event — the National Front of the New Generation and such commercial, business and civil society groups as FIESP and the Order of Brazilian Attorneys — had estimated a much larger turnout, of at least a million persons.
E quem foi ao Anhagabaú estava mais interessado em assistir aos shows de artistas populares – como Netinho, NXZero e a dupla sertaneja Zezé de Camargo e Luciano – do que propriamente protestar contra o “imposto do cheque”.
The people who showed up at Anhagabaú were more interesting in seeings shows from pop music acts like Netinho, NXZero and the country music duo Zezé de Camargo and Luciano than to protest the “check tax.”
“Without it, life would be hell on earth.” Microtec advertisement, Veja magazine, issue 87. File under “the rhetoric of the technological sublime (RTS) in postmodern technology PR, Velvet Elvis tendency.”
If I had a nickel for everytime I heard someone saying that the latest political scandal down here — which almomst inevitably turns out to have been a tempest in a teapot — is “another Watergate,” I would be sucking on a lifetime supply of chouchou-flavored popsicles right now.
Here’s what I think: I think the entire tech import sector here has a major chill running down its spine at this moment. I think you will probably see other multinationals get called to account for similar transgressions by their local Nostromos, and that this is a mainly a shot across the bow before lowering the boom.
Because one thing you tend to notice here is that schemes like this tend to get set in motion precisely because “my competition is doing it, so I cannot afford not to.” Pure punditry and guesswork, on my part, mind you. This is a blog. You get what you pay for. I am simply too lazy or busy to substantiate much with actual legwork.
But then again, so is this article from COMPUTERWORLD.
Caso as investigações da Polícia Federal comprovem o envolvimento intencional de executivos da Cisco em procedimentos de sonegação fiscal e descaminho, a companhia poderá se envolver em um escândalo com proporções desastrosas semelhantes ao da Enron, em 2001. Especialmente se as autoridades norte-americanas apoiarem as denúncias feitas pela polícia brasileira após as investigações no País.
If federal police investigtions can prove the willing participation of Cisco execs in tax evasion and misappropriation of funds, the company could find itself in a scandal of disastrous proportions similar to the Enron affair of 2001. Especially if U.S. officials support the charges made by Brazilian police.
Essa é a avaliação de Robert Enderle, presidente e analista sênior do Robert Enderle Group, consultoria norte-americana que conversou com o COMPUTERWORLD após os procedimentos desencadeados pela “Operação Persona”, conduzida pela PF na terça-feira (16/10).
That is the evaluation of Robert Enderle, president and senior analyst of the Enderle Group, a U.S. consultancy, who spoke with COMPUTERWORLD after news broke of Operation Persona.
Ifs, ands, and monkeys flying out of my buts.
This is a pretty typical one-source “he says, he says” pundit story from COMPUTERWORLD.
For over 20 years Rob has worked for and with companies like Microsoft, HP, IBM, Dell, Toshiba, Gateway, Sony, USAA, Texas Instruments, AMD, Intel, Credit Suisse First Boston, GM, Ford, ROLM, and Siemens.
Which makes me think this “bigger than Enron” hype is nothing more than a FUD-driven stealth-marketing salvo in the armed tech monopoly wars. Boil before consuming.
“Without it, life would be hell on earth.” Microtec advertisement, Veja magazine, issue 87. File under “the rhetoric of the technological sublime (RTS) in postmodern technology PR, Velvet Elvis tendency.”
The Gazeta Mercantil (Brazil) confirms it: The multinational tech giant whose Brazilian chief executive has been perp-walked for engaging in Sino-Paraguayan “quaint customs” — along with a number of federal tax authority officials who were bought off to let the scheme operate — is Cisco Systems.
Next task here: Evaluating Cisco’s crisis communications on the episode. And exploring the Cisco-MUDE “business ecosystem” to see what other fallout might be expected.
(October 20: Updated spot news on the case, in draft-quality translation:
In a paid ad in the Estado de S. Paulo yesterday, Cisco pointed out that only four of the 40 arrested in the case were Cisco employees, characterizing the case as mainly a “problem in our distribution channels.” Which is acctually not a completely absurd interpretation of the facts as we know them.)
The illegal import scheme described here, by the way, resembles the scheme of which the “Monkeyman” — primatologist van Roosmalen, the “martyr to science” — was accused: Importing video production equipment under the guise of a “donation” to a federal environmental agency, then reselling it to a Brazilian production company and passing the profits back to the foreign seller, avoiding import duties. See
The incident also reminds me of that interview that Roberto Civita gave to Knowledge@Wharton about a year ago in which, asked why Brazilian “investigative journalism” focuses exclusively on political corruption and rarely, if ever, on business corruption, replied that, in Brazil at least — “we are not yet as sophisticated here as you are in the United States” — corporate corruption in Brazil simply does not exist.
It is not primarily a matter of business corruption; it’s mainly a matter of corrupt public-private relationships. As far as I can recall, we have never had any exclusively corporate scandals.
This is a bit like saying that, in a case of a man who beats the snot out of his wife every night — or vice versa — that the problem here is “a dysfunctional relationship.”
Avoiding the question of agency. Whose fist connects with whose nose? The man’s consistent talking point on other occasions: It is government that corrupts the private sector, not the other way around.
You know the type: “All taxation is a form of government corruption!” In which case evading taxation — with representation or not — is a sacred duty of all true sons of liberty! The corrupt government will only waste it!
Not that these people do not have plenty of representation themselves, mind you … See
17 de Outubro de 2007 – Um mega-esquema de fraude na importação e distribuição de equipamentos de alta tecnologia para redes corporativas de internet e telecomunicações operado por uma multinacional líder no segmento no mercado mundial, a Cisco System, dos Estados Unidos, foi desarticulado ontem pela Polícia Federal (PF) e Receita Federal. Segundo estimativa dos órgãos, nos últimos cinco anos a Cisco e outra multinacional, a Mude, comandaram esquema que sonegou mais de R$ 1,5 bilhão em multa e tributos de importação que deveriam ter sido recolhidos aos cofres públicos.
A massive fraud scheme in the importation and distribution of high-tech equipment for corporate data and telecommunications networks, operated by Cisco Systems, was broken up yesterday by the feds and the tax authority. According to estimates from those two agenices, in the last five years, Cisco and another multinational, MUDE, commanded a scheme that avoided paying $1.5 billion in taxes and penalties into the public coffers.
Skipping some details we already have on file.
A PF pediu também o apoio da polícia americana para localizar e prender outros cinco executivos das duas empresas, que trabalham nos Estados Unidos. Foram aprendidos US$ 10 milhões em mercadorias nos endereços da Cisco e outros R$ 45 milhões de mercadorias junto à Mude – maior distribuidora dos produtos importados ilegalmente -, US$ 290 mil, R$ 240 mil em espécie e 18 automóveis de luxo.
The Brazilian feds also asked for support from American police in locating another five executives of the two firms, who work in the United States. Seized in the raids were US$10 million in merchandise from Cisco offices and another $45 million in merchandise from MUDE — the largest distributor of illegally imported products — along with US$290,00 and R$240,000 in cash and 18 luxury automobiles.
First, we show that periods of high stock market valuations are systematically followed by large increases in reported frauds. We then show that during periods of suspicious accounting, firms hire and invest excessively, while insiders exercise options and sell stocks. When the misreporting is detected, firms shed labor and capital and productivity improves. In the aggregate, our model seems able to account for periods of jobless and investment-less growth. –”The Economics of Fraudulent Accounting,” Simi Kedia and Thomas Philippon, NBER Working Paper No. 11573, August 2005, Revised February 2006, JEL No. E0, G3. Copyright reserved by the authors.
Quoi ces cohortes étrangères!
Feraient la loi dans nos foyers!
Quoi! ces phalanges mercenaires
Terrasseraient nos fils guerriers!
The newsroom staff has organized an entire section on the debate over the proposed sale to the LVMH luxury goods group, with testimonials from a number of prominent biz brains. Here, Thomas Phillipon of NYU’s Stern School of Business offers an answer to the burning question of the hour:
The debate is heating up here in Brazil as well, with a proposed rule from the CVM — the Tupi SEC — to curb “pump and dump” and “gabbling ratfink” tactics in the business press — including what I like to call “nam myoho renge kyo journalism,” I would imagine. See
There is fierce resistance here, under the by now all too familiar banner of that peculiarly libertine notion of “freedom of expression.” I have a recent article in my clippings file from Consultor Jurídico in that general vein that I will excerpt pra inglês ver when I get a chance.
Disclosure: I used to hang around a lot of those Stern seminars on market structure and the like when I was trying to figure out how on earth to earn a living covering rocket science when my degree was in poetry, and took a few courses at the NYU continuing ed program in publishing once upon a time. The NYU Weltaunschauung has therefore probably infilitrated my brain, insidiously.
Next thing you know I will discover that it has been infiltrated by the same infinitely guileless communist supermen as the Council on Foreign Relations. See
Un grand nombre de journaux, de radios et de chaînes de télévision français sont détenus par des groupes industriels, et le rachat des ” Echos ” par LVMH ne ferait que renforcer cette singularité nationale. L’enjeu recouvre deux questions distinctes. Premièrement, quel est le rôle des médias dans la gouvernance économique ? Deuxièmement, quelle est l’influence réelle de la nature du propriétaire sur le contenu d’un journal ? Une étude américaine récente montre l’importance des médias pour la détection des fraudes financières.
A large number of newspapers, radio stations and TV networks in France are owned by industrial groups, and the sale of “Les Echos” to LVMH only reinforces that singular fact about the French news media. The deal raises two different questions. First, what is the role of the news media in economic governance? And second, What is the real nature of the influence the owner has over the content of a newspaper? A recent U.S. study shows the imporrtance of the news media to the detection of financial frauds.
México, D.F., 15 de octubre (apro).- La Procuraduría General de la República (PGR) informó hoy de la detención y presentación ante el Ministerio Público Federal de Felipe Angel Zamora Alvarez, administrador de la Aduana de Altamira, Tamaulipas.
The Mexican federal attorney’s office (PGR) said today it had arrested Felipe Angel Zamora Alvarez, administrator of Customs in Altamira, Tamaulipas, and presented him to the Federal Public Ministry.
Peru is also reporting a major narcobust related to that world-famous narcoairline with which U.S. businesses have now been forbidden to do business. Show of efficiency time to coincide with the FTA debate?
La captura del funcionario se dio en cumplimiento de una orden de localización y presentación, con el fin de que declare sobre la introducción ilegal al país del mayor cargamento de cocaína en la historia, de 11 mil 720 kilogramos.
The arrest of the official came as the result of a warrant for arrest and questioning over the illegal introduction into Mexico of the biggest shipment of cocaine in history: 11,720 kg.
You give us three minutes, we’ll give you the world.
Now there’s spiritual warfare
and flesh and blood breaking down
Ya either got faith or ya got unbelief
and there ain’t no neutral ground
The enemy is subtle,
how be it we are so deceived
When the truth’s in our hearts
and we still don’t believe ? –Bob Dylan, “Precious Angel”
Ambush interview by TV BAND with the Globo journalist who “revealed all” to the Grupo Abril’s Playboy Brasil recently; on Brasil Urgente, criminal suspects get the living snot beat out of them in scenes reminiscent of Mel Gibson’s The Passion of the Christ; a much-maligned faith-based call-in show on love over the Internet; a Brazilian Elmer Gantry speaks in tongues; and more. Part of a continuing survey of armed media monopolies and their noise machines from Oiapoque to Chuí.
“Cisco Networking Academy will change the face of the Third World,” a friend of mine — a sort of economic hitman type — once prophesied. Accumulated goodwill would certainly come in handy right about now.
A Receita Federal do Brasil, em conjunto com a Polícia Federal e o Ministério Público Federal, iniciou nesta terça-feira (16/10) a operação Persona, com o objetivo de desarticular um esquema de fraude envolvendo empresários brasileiros e a subsidiária da multinacional norte-americana Cisco Systems, informam fontes ligadas às investigações.
What we already know.
Noventa e três mandados judiciais de busca e apreensão e 44 ordens de prisão temporária expedidos pela Justiça Federal de São Paulo estão sendo cumpridos por 650 servidores dos órgãos envolvidos na operação nos Estados de São Paulo, Rio de Janeiro e Bahia.
More of what we already know.
Procurada pela redação do IDG, a assessoria de imprensa da Cisco Brasil disse que ainda não tem informações para fornecer.
Sought out by the IDG newsroom, Cisco Brasil press office said they have no information to offer yet.
The protest leader, PSDB deputy Alberto Goldman, explained the rationale for the protest. According to Goldman, “this arrest could lead to an economic crisis. Businesses will say: why invest in Brazil if we are going to wind up getting arrested?” That is: in the Toucan view of the world, the only folks that ought to be in jail in this country are the chicken thieves! The businessman who evades taxes, sends money out of the country illegally or commits other crimes can’t be touched and can even count on the help of certain politicians — who will later get a nice campaign contribution. See Cultural Reference Lexicon Entry No. 48: Daslu
SÃO PAULO – A Receita Federal e a Polícia Federal deflagraram na madrugada desta terça-feira, 16, a Operação Persona, cujo objetivo é desarticular uma rede de fraudes no comércio exterior envolvendo uma multinacional americana. Segundo a Receita, a empresa é líder mundial no segmento de serviços e equipamentos de alta tecnologia para redes corporativas, para internet e telecomunicações.
The Federal Revenue and the Federal Police unleashed Operation Persona in the early morning hours today, October 16. Its objective is to bring down a network of fraud in foreign trade involving a U.S. multinational. According to the tax authority, the firm is a global leader in the area of high-tech equipment and services for corporate networks, Internet and telecommunications.
Uh oh.
Brace yourself for a wave of screeching lectures from the usual suspects on the dangers of “nationalism,” “protectionism,” “socialism,” “demagogic populism” and, of course, the inference that “nationalism + socialism = Nazism.”
The firm in question receives the courtesy of not being perp-walked — mentioned by name — in this report. Or in any other news reports on the case so far. Cisco Systems is the guess going around, but I stress GUESS.
I have not confirmed it, so please: no wagering. Seriously. I do not know that for a fact. And I really do not think either humans or algorithms should be making investment decisions based on what they read on blogs.
Empty anticorporate cant from the Via Dutra Sutra: Fire in the hole over toll road dole.
Time will tell whether the emergence of the quasi government is to be viewed as a symptom of decline in our democratic government, or a harbinger of a new, creative management era where the purportedly artificial barriers between the governmental and private sectors are breached as a matter of principle. — Kevin R. Kosar, “The Quasi Government: Hybrid Organizations with Both Government and Private Sector Legal Characteristics” (Congressional Research Service, February 13, 2007)
jornalista, comentarista econômico da TV Globo e âncora da rádio CBN. Neste espaço, comenta e analisa notícias econômicas.
Journalist, economic commentator on TV Globo and Radio CBN news anchor. In this space, he comments on and analyzes economic news.
His Wikipedia profile seems to have been edited substantially by an anonymous contributor from a Grupo Abril corporate network (do a whois on 200.185.243.203).
After working as a state government flack — a Tupi Tony Snow or Bill Moyers (who flacked for LBJ, remember) — in the Montoro administration, he went on to run news operations at TV Band.
I never read the guy. He tends to constantly utter mystifying hogwash on the order of “if the stock market does not continue to rise, it stands a very good chance of either falling or moving sideways. So be very, very frightened!”
Seriously. I am not exaggerating for effect. Much.
His prognostication of severe turbulence and terrifying chaos in the Brazilian capital markets because of exposure to the American subprime-mortgage debacle? It has not happened yet. Quite the contrary, so far. The guy is a prime example of nam myoho renge kyo business journalism, I tend to think.
Still, the Sardenberg blog will serve to introduce an interesting economic debate here in Brazil at the moment, after the federal government auctioned off concessions to operate federal highways to a number of multinational corporations, many of them Spanish, last week. O Globo and the Estado both ran heavy coverage packages along the lines of “this hypocritically antineoliberal government privatizes even more than the last one did!” Compare:
At the same time, the trade-unionist Hora do Povo is issuing dire warnings that the state government of São Paulo — run by the opposition Toucans of the PSDB — is also preparing another wave of privatizations, having commissioned an asset valuation of state-owned firms.
The cant is almost identical in both cases.
Which leaves you in this peculiar situation in which both extremes in the debate join forces to demonize “privatization,” “public-private partnerships,” and the like.
(The difference being that when you read a trade-unionist newspaper with a big old picture of Che on the cover, you are at the very least not likely to be misled into believing that you are going to get a wholly impartial analysis of the situation. There is, at least, some truth in advertising.)
The interesting and useful perspective on the issue, however, lies in comparing the devils in the details of the deals.
The federal government, for example, argues that the deals it has just cut will produce highway tolls that are substantially lower than similar deals cut in the last decade or so by its political foes, the Toucans, in São Paulo for state highways.
The “war of the militias,” however, may also have political and electoral motivations. According to one line of investigation in the case, Tostes had collided in recent months with the city councilman of Rio das Pedras, Nadinho (PFL), the principal political leader in the community and an old ally of Tostes. The falling out reported grew worse during the last campaign, when Tostes decided to defy Nadinho and not support the reelection of Rodrigo Maia (PFL), son of mayor Cesar Maia, to the federal House. The inspector preferred to campaign for former state public safety director Pública Marcelo Itagiba (PMDB), a federal policeman whose served as state safety director during the second half of the Rosinha Matheus administration. –Agência Carta Maior (Brazil), February 23, 2007
Vereador é suspeito de mandar matar inspetor Félix dos Santos Tostes: O Globo (Rio de Janeiro) reported on October 8 that a city alderman is the prime suspect in the proverbial “gangland-style slaying” of police inspector Félix Tostes, riddled with bullets as he was coming out of his girlfriend’s apartment earlier this year.
Someone has apparently leaked the case file to O Globo, which does not, however, identify its source.
As mayoral elections approach, the political influence of illegal armed groups, with ties to organized crime and comprising policemen and firemen who use summary executions to impose their notion of order in off-the-grid communities — it gets to be an interesting question, I think you could say.
Rio governor Cabral has said recently that his administration has “depoliticized” police by ending nomination of precinct commanders by politicians. Those commanders reportedly have to deliver blocs of votes in order to get those nominations, and the same can reportedly go for policemen at the top of the promotion list.
The suggestion that the killing may been motivated by a political turf battle between the PFL and the PMDB is a pretty garish one. And yet a number of journalistic sources have now provided information suggesting that this sort of thing does go on in Rio.
Which is why I think, if you have paramilitary groups, funded by and in equity partnership with the bicho bankers, running a voto de cabresto scheme to get their guys into local politics, at some point, local analysts are going to have to start putting 2 + 2 together and comparing their situation with Colombian parapolitics.
This is obviously not a happy thought, especially for a world-class tourist town, but it may be a painfully useful and necessary one.
RIO – O vereador Josinaldo Francisco da Cruz, de 40 anos, o Nadinho de Rio das Pedras, é apontado em inquérito – número 2007.001- 034901- 0 – como o principal suspeito de ser o mandante de assassinato do inspetor Félix dos Santos Tostes, no Recreio dos Bandeirantes, em 22 de fevereiro, informou, nesta segunda-feira, uma reportagem do jornal “O Globo”. A investigação da Delegacia de Homicídios da Zona Oeste (DH-Oeste) constatou que o político recebeu 12 ligações de um Nextel entre meio-dia e 17h do dia em que Félix foi morto. O rastreamento do sinal da Estação Rádio-Base (ERB) revela que o aparelho, possivelmente usado por um dos matadores, foi ativado na área do crime.
City alderman Josinaldo Francisco da Cruz, 40, known as “Nadinho of Rio das Pedras,” is pointed to in Police Inquest No. número 2007.001- 034901- 0 as the principal suspect of having ordered the assassination of Inspector Félix dos Santos Tostes in Recreio das Bandeirantes on February 22, O Globo reported this Monday. The investigation by the Western District Homicide Bureau showed that the politician received 12 calls on his Nextel (two-way radio) between noon and 5 pm on the day the inspector was killed. The signal trace on the Radio Base Station reveals that the device, possibly used by one of the killers, was used near the crime scene.
O Nextel está em nome de uma empresa e também foi usado para fazer contato oito vezes com um homem, já identificado nas investigações, que estava em um imóvel na Rua Senador Rui Carneiro, onde Félix foi executado com mais de 20 tiros de fuzis calibre 7.62 e 5.56, além de pistola 45.
The Nextel is registered to a private company and was also used to contact a man, identified by investigators, who was in a house on Senador Rui Carneiro St., where Félix was executed with more than 20 shots from 7.62 and 5.56 rifles and a .45 pistol.
A análise das ligações sugere que o homem colaborou com os matadores, informando a movimentação de Félix. O inspetor, que foi lotado no gabinete do ex-chefe de Polícia Civil Ricardo Hallack, era investigado por suspeita de chefiar a milícia em Rio das Pedras, em Jacarepaguá.
Analysis of the calls suggest the man was working with the killers, informing them on Félix’s movements. The inspector, who worked on the staff of former state judicial police chief Hallack, was being investigated on suspicion of heading the militia in Rio das Pedras, in Jacarepaguá.
He was also being investigated for involvement in “putting the fix in” for the “nickel-hunter” illegal gambling machine rackets, along with former police chief and elected state lawmaker Álvaro Lins.
The militia there — “The Peacemakers” — practically held the local equivalent of a bagpipe parade to St. Patrick’s Cathedral for the guy, with its emblem prominently on display.
Pouco antes das 17h do dia 22, Félix deixava a garagem de um prédio, onde havia passado parte da tarde, quando uma Blazer preta parou à frente da picape Hillux usada pelo inspetor. Três homens desceram do veículo e dispararam vários tiros no policial. O inquérito da DH-Oeste cogita uma possível relação entre a morte de Félix e a execução, 19 dias antes, do ex-PM Jorsan Machado de Oliveira. Ligado ao inspetor, Jorsan foi assassinado por homens que ocupavam um Honda Fit, com adesivo da Polícia Militar.
A little after 5:22 pm on February 22, Félix was coming out of the garage of a building where he had spent part of the afternoon when a black Blazer stopped in front of his Hillux [sic] pickup truck. The DH-West investigation contemplates a possible link between the inspector’s death and the execution, 19 days earlier, of former military police trooper Jorsan Machado de Oliveira. With ties to the inspector, Jorsan was assassinated by men riding in a Honda Fit bearing a military police sticker.
The Link section of the Estado de S. Paulo sets out to evaluate the three candidates for the “One Laptop per Child Program” here in Brazil alongside kids and teachers at schools taking part in the pilot program.
O programa do governo federal Um Computador por Aluno – que promete distribuir um laptop para cada criança nas escolas públicas do Brasil – começa a sair do papel no mês que vem, quando deverá ocorrer a licitação para a compra de 150 mil máquinas de um dos três modelos em estudo: o XO, o famoso laptop de US$ 100; o Classmate, da Intel; e o Mobilis, da indiana Encore.
The federal government’s One Computer per Student program — which promises to deliver a laptop to every child in the Brazilian public schools — gets off the drawing board next month, when the selection process will be held for the purchase of 150,000 machines from among three models: The XO, the famous “$100 laptop”; the Intel Classmate; and the Mobilis, from India’s Encore.
Os aparelhos adquiridos serão distribuídos em 300 escolas de até 500 alunos espalhadas pelo País, numa fase-piloto que determinará se e como o projeto será levado adiante.
The machines acquired will be distributed in 300 schools with 500 students or fewer throughout Brazil, in a pilot phase to determine whether the project will go forward, and if so, how it will proceed.
Apesar das intenções do governo, não será nada fácil fornecer um laptop para cada estudante. Hoje, há 37,6 milhões de alunos em escolas públicas no País. Ao que tudo indica, o XO é o laptop com mais chances de ser escolhido, por ter o melhor custo-benefício. Nesse caso, equipar todo mundo custaria R$ 12,7 bilhões.
Despite the government’s plans, it will not be easy to furnish a laptop to every student. Today, there are 37.6 million students in Brazilian public schools. All indications are that the XO is the machine with the best chances of being chosen, having the best cost-benefit profile. In that case, equipping everyone would cost $12.7 billion.
Which would make for a unit cost of some R$335, or about US$188. Why are we still calling it the $100 laptop again?
How did it get famous for a feature that it does not have?
The Peruvian government recently suspended the broadcast licenses of radio stations in the quake-ravaged region of Pisco — see that newsreel on the case, above — over allegedly “irresponsible” charges that earthquake relief in the region had devolved into a vast carnival of waste, fraud, corruption, freestyle kleptocracy, and generally what Thomas Hobbes thought of when he used the term “the state of nature.”
It seems to be quite true, however, that initial news reports, quoting Peruvian seismologists, downplayed the magnitude of the seismic event. These errors were later corrected when U.S. seismologists weighed in with the correct figure of 7.9.
Now this:
Las irregularidades cometidas en la compra de raciones de alimentos en el Seguro Integral de Salud (SIS) para los damnificados del terremoto del 15 de agosto son tan evidentes que hasta el mismo presidente del Consejo de Ministros, Jorge del Castillo, exigió ayer desde Puno apresar a los responsables de la irregular adquisición.
The irregularities committed in the procurement of food rations by the national health service (SIS) for those affected by the August 15 earthwaure are so evident that even prime minister Castillo, in Puno yesterday, called for the arrest of those responsible for the irregular procurement.
“Neologisms and the Knowledge Society: Functions of Language in the Era of Globalization.” So what are the revolutionary new functions of language in this brave new world, anyway? One cannot know. “This page uses Windows Media Technology. Your browser [Firefox] does not support them.” Which is by way of being, what’s the pseudoterminology they use nowadays? A non-antiuntruth? True 2.0? It’s Windows Media Technology that refuses to support my platform. Source: Telefónica Foundation (Spain). Click to zoom.
“It was intended that when Newspeak had been adopted once and for all and Oldspeak forgotten, a heretical thought should be literally unthinkable, at least so far as thought is dependent on words” –George Orwell, 1984
EUPHEMISM, (n.) 1. a socially acceptable word or expression used to replace unacceptable or taboo language, as words or expressions for bodily functions. 2. a substitution for straightforward language that tactfully conceals or, in the extreme, falsifies the meaning of that which it replaces.
If there’s one product American business can produce in large amounts, it’s doublespeak. Doublespeak is language that only pretends to say something; it’s language that hides, evades or misleads. With doublespeak, banks don’t have “bad loans” or “bad debts”; they have “nonperforming assets” or “nonperforming credits” which are “rolled over” or “rescheduled.” Corporations never lose money; they just experience “negative cash flow,” “deficit enhancement,” “net profit revenue deficiencies,” or “negative contributions to profits.” –William Lutz, “Life Under the Chief Doublespeak Officer”
The Wall Street Journal’s Deal Journal Web column — a worthy competitor to the New York Times‘ Dealbook — copes elegantly today with a problem that is frequently encountered by journalists and other categories of naked ape.
We need to make conversation about a burning issue of the day, or what’s more, figure out what do about it. The problem is that we need more information before we can reach any firm conclusions about it. What to do?
Genuine questions are forms of language designed to elicit more information. This is what journalists (used to) do for a living.
Faced with a big, fat empty page, a deadline, and the realization that you know next to nothing about the topic of the day, here’s what you do: Call up various people who might be in a position to know and ask them to explain it to you.
Run it in the space-hogging format of a Q&A transcript. Stick in headshots of the people you talked to to pad the page. Bada bing. You are done in time for lunch, and you do not have to worry about failed speculative prognostications coming back to make you look like nothing more than just another a gabbling, logic-chopping pundit.
The Deal Journal poses an excellent question today, for example:
When does an “improvement in liquidity” represent a “bailout”?
Take an inventory of what we do know, framed in terms of what we fear, and hope, might happen next:
Consider that an estimated 25% of the total $400 billion SIV universe comes from Citigroup-affiliated SIV funds. And that Citigroup-affiliated funds have already sold $20 billion in assets. At its most simple, the superconduit is a means by which a large collection of banks can keep “reasonable” pricing on some of their affiliated securities. And it is this pricing that is the key to the whole operation. It’s obvious they won’t be priced at market rates because there’s not much of a market to begin with (and why the superconduit exists in the first place).
Given that, the question is:
But where exactly do they get priced? To whose benefit? And by which standard?
Calderón to Televisa: “Young man, starting today I am putting my foot down! Go back to your post as a good soldier for the Presidency!” Source: El Universal (Mexico) (I think, let me check).
… the Hechos (”Events”) news program likened electoral reform to the massacre of October 2, 1968, called it a “law in the style of Hugo Chávez,” and the two national channels of the network — 7 and 13 — ran a long spot on October 4 and 5, more than a minute long, which criticized the salaries earned by Senators.
El rencor “abandonados”: The resentment of TV and radio concession-holders who feel “abandoned” by Mexican president Felipe Calderón, as this week’s Proceso magazine observes it. A follow-up to
Besides the election reform, there was the Supreme Court’s finding of unconstitutionality with regard to the “Televisa Law” — permanent automatic renewals of concessions, among other things — and the subsequent “betrayal” of PAN Senator Creel Miranda, who suggested that maybe the Televisa Law was a sleazy political quid pro quo crammed down lawmaker’s throats in the first place in exchange for support for the Calderón (Manchurian) candidacy. See
El “abandono” en que, según los concesionarios de la radio y la televisión, los ha dejado el presidente Felipe Calderón, es más que un reproche. El reclamo sigue cobrando forma de revancha, de venganza, como en el caso de TV Azteca, que bombardea a su auditorio con reclamos al gobierno calderonista. Muy poco han logrado en el ánimo de los concesionarios las débiles señales conciliatorias del presidente.
The “state of neglect” in which radio and TV concession-holders say Calderón has abanonded them is more than a mere reproach. The grievance has taken the form of revenge, as in the case of TV Azteca, which is bombarding its viewers with complaints about the Calderón government. The weak signals of reconciliation emitted by the president have done very little good.
La noche del martes 9, en el salón Chapultepec del Hotel Camino Real, el dueño de Grupo Radio Fórmula, Rogerio Azcárraga Madero, pidió la palabra para advertirle a sus colegas de la Cámara Nacional de la Industria de Radio y Televisión (CIRT) que si el presidente Felipe Calderón no respondía en su discurso del día siguiente al reclamo de entrega de “combos” –estaciones adicionales en FM para cada uno de los propietarios de AM– y de seguridad jurídica para refrendar las concesiones de los radiodifusores, “quiere decir que nos está abandonando”.
The evening of October 9, in the Chapultepec Room of the Camino Real Hotel, the owner of the Radio Fórmula Group, Rogerio Azcárraga Madero, took the floor to warn his colleagues in the National Radio and TV Chamber (CIRT) that if President Calderón did not respond in his speech the following day to their complaints over the concession of “combos” — additional FM station for each holder of an AM radio concession — and for legal certainty in the renewal of broadcasting licenses, then, “that means he has abandoned us.”
Costa Rica’s TSE: still counting those ballots. Chain of custody issues to be looked at later.
Stupid freaking Brazilians, that don’t know how to vote properly” –President-General Figueiredo of Brazil on a spanking taken at the polls by ARENA, the party of the generalíssimos.
A gente não sabemos escolher presidente
A gente não sabemos tomar conta da gente
A gente não sabemos nem escovar os dentes
Tem gringo pensando que nóis é indigente
Inútil
A gente somos inútil –Korzus (Brazil), “Inútil (Useless)”, from Mass Illusion
Yes, nós temos bananas Bananas pra dar e vender Banana menina Tem vitamina Banana engorda e faz crescer – Alberto Ribeiro and João de Barro
YouTube reproduces a floor speech by Ohio’s Senator Brown in which the disheveled heartland heartthrob with the Yale B.A. describes the FUD strategy used in the recent Costa Rican referendum, as well as the astonishing “arm-twisting” — do you know that story? — used to pass CAFTA in the first place.
Seriously, what would happen if Administration officials — dedicated democracy exporters all — were found to have broken another democratic people’s election laws at the behest of Chiquita freaking “we armed both the FARC and the AUC” Banana Brands?
I know it sounds insane, but other countries have laws against foreign interference in our elections. Come to think of it, so do we.
Do we really think that having Susan Schwab’s name signed to a front-page editorial during the “election ceasefire” period, conveying disinformation, is a harbinger of success during the next try at getting Doha done?
Do we really think that people who live in [literal] banana republics lack critical reasoning faculties? Bananas, the nutritionists tell us, are actually a form of brain food, you know. (We have a banana tree growing in our quintal here, in fact.)
Most recent comment, on previous Spanish and Spanglish comments on the “NO” side of the issue:
All of the people wtitting here don’t know a heck of commerce or economics, chicos por favor soy tica, no se metan en lo que no saben, el desarrollo va de la mano del libre comercio, estudien un poco.
“The global newspaper in Spanish.” The New York Times has had so little to do with with actual life in New York more than 10 blocks on either side of Times Square for so long now that you half expect them to roll out a new brand as well. How about The Metrosexual Times? More truth in advertising, that, I sometimes think. Not that there is anything wrong with trying to be a global paper, mind you. I just tend to think that trying to sell it as “hyperlocal”is semantic sleight of hand.
This book had its origins in a narrow question: What’s new about the digital expressive space, and what’s not? … What’s next for text? –Richard Lanham, The Economics of Attention
Riding in a Stutz Bearcat, Jim
You know, those were different times!
Oh, all the poets they studied rules of verse
And those ladies, they rolled their eyes –Velvet Underground, “Sweet Jane” (1969)
Ever since reading the defense of the Innovation International newspaper consulting group by one of its clients — the incredible gabbling, logic-chopping Ali Kamel of Globo (Brazil) — I have been interested in the list of “ideologically diverse” publications he mentioned as examples of the group’s work, including Libération (France) and USA Today.
As I said, at first glance, what all those publications seem to have in common is that they maintain “news bureaus” inside Second Life, and “report” what goes on there as if it really mattered in the scheme of things. See also
DESDE QUE HACE BASTANTES meses comenzamos los esfuerzos que culminarán el próximo domingo en el primer gran cambio que EL PAÍS experimenta en sus 31 años de historia, hubo una pregunta que se habría de repetir luego en tantas reuniones que acabó por convertirse en el primer gran escollo que parecía necesario solventar antes de poder avanzar. Primero, con timidez, asomó en citas internas, de la casa, donde esbozábamos ideas aún nonatas y garabateábamos borradores que todavía no lo eran; pero después devino en un crescendo al que se sumaron, a ambos lados del Atlántico (por eso somos el periódico global en español), tantos amigos, lectores y colaboradores:
Ever since we initiated the efforts that will culminate this Sunday in the first big change to EL PAÍS in its 31-year history, several months ago, a question has been repeatedly raised in so many meetings that it seemed to have become the very first issue we needed to address before going forward. Timidly at first, it showed up in internal communications, as we sketched ideas still in embryonic form and dummied up page designs that had yet to get off the drawing board. Later, I heard a crescendo of voices on both sides of the Atlantic (we are, after all, a global newspaper in Spanish), from so many friends, readers, and contributors:
The SIP says they cannot get hotel rooms, and blame the Bolivarian brigades.
EL TIEMPO does not bother to interview the people who might have direct knowledge of the fact in dispute: hotel managers and reservations clerks.
Varios hoteles se negaron a reservar habitaciones a sus integrantes para la reunión del 2008. El presidente de la SIP, Rafael Molina, alegó que es una forma ‘torpe e indirecta’ de cerrar puertas.
A number of hotels have refused to reserve rooms to SIP members for its 2008 meeting. SIP president Rafael Molina alleged this was a “sleazy and indirect” way of barring the group.
The head of the Lagardère media and defense group says Villepin knew, despite his denials.
In France, the smart-bomb manufacturers also produce the news, I guess. Much as Gazprom does in Russia. I will have to follow up on that: I am arriving late to the story, so I am merely clipping to file at this point. So no wagering, please.
On October 4, Tim Hepher of the Mail & Guardian had noted the gathering momentum of the scandal in the French press: “Media scent scandal in EADS share probe.”
French newspapers mined the Watergate archive to describe the political ramifications of a share trading scandal enveloping Airbus parent Eads on Thursday, posing questions about “Who knew what, and when?”
Blanket coverage of suspicions of “massive” insider trading, which have been sent to prosecutors, focused on the risk of instability at Europe’s largest aerospace and defence group and the background role of French and German governments.
“Following suspicions of massive insider trading at Eads, the scandal is turning into an affair of state,” said tabloid Le Parisien under a bold front-page headline, The Affair.
Preliminary elements of what could develop into one of Europe’s largest insider trading investigations were sent to prosecutors by the French stock market regulator AMF in September and disclosed by Le Figaro newspaper on Wednesday.
From the trade-unionist Hora do Povo newspaper — whose Wikipedia profile has been edited to describe it as a planfetinho [sic] que …
… [p]ublica diversos artigos e acontecimentos, como os do Fofocas, é [sic] mentiras desvairadas. É um jornal ligado a extrema esquerda política brasileira, com forte ligação principalmente com o Partido dos Trabalhadores é ao grupo terrorista MR8, por esse motivo, é criticado por uma atuação totalmente parcial.
… a [pamphleteering little rag] that publishes a variety of articles and news items, like Gossip items, and bare-faced lies. It is a newspaper linked to the Brazilian extreme left, with strong ties mainly to the Workers’ Party and the terrorist group MR8, for that reason, it is criticized for its totally biased coverage.
Ah, Wikipedia. Without the sparkling erudition of your vast mobs of smart people, where would we be? Staring at flickering shadows on the walls of Plato’s Cave, that’s where. Naturally, the entry is now tagged with several NPOV (neutral point of view) challenges.
O Diretório Nacional do PT, reunido na sexta-feira (5), divulgou resolução destacando que “reafirma a posição da bancada e da Executiva Nacional, em favor da instalação de uma CPI para investigar a aprovação da compra da TVA, operadora de TV a cabo do grupo Abril, pela transnacional Telefônica, em um negócio de cerca de R$ 1 bilhão”.
Meeting on October 5, the PT (Workers’ Party) national leadership published a resolution in which it “reaffirms of the parliamentary benches and the national executive in favor of installing a parliamentary commission of inquiry into the purchase of Abril’s cable TV operator, TVA, by the multinational Telefónica, a deal worth nearly a billion reals.
As local political pundits are noting (G1, the Estadão): Now that the “sex Senator,” Renan Calheiros, is on leave from the presidency of the Senate– and unlikely to return, some pundits want to bet you — the Executive and both houses of Congress are all presided over by the PT — President Squid at the Granja do Torto, Chinaglia (sort of an Italo-Tupi Tip O’Neill, I tend to see the guy) — in the house, and Viana in the senate.
So what does that correlation of forces bode for the political risk scenario Abril and Telefónica find themselves facing? With their deal still to be signed off on by CADE, the antitrust regulator?
You should also note that ANATEL (the Brazilian FCC) is under new management since approving the Abril-Telefónica deal last year. It’s now chaired by a Mr. Sardemberg, a reputed technocrat, strategic planning nerd, and minister of Sci-Tech under FHC II, I believe it was.
Anatel last week announced a “bill of rights” for cable TV subscribers.
Big freaking aliens invade the land where the naked ladies dance!
Piqué aux jeux: Une leçon de journalisme: Erwan Cario of Libération (Paris) responds to criticism by Gilles Klein of Le Monde that Libeŕation appears to have rented out a two-page spread in the front of the book for Microsoft marketing dressed up as legitimate editorial — or advertorial:
An advertisement that resembles a newspaper editorial or a television program but promotes a single advertiser’s product, service, or point of view.
“Libération aime Microsoft : une double page promo sur Halo 3″. Gilles Klein, journaliste et blogueur (Pointblog, Le phare, Agoravox, MSN et sans doute d’autres), illumine ma matinée. J’apprends donc que Libé est devenu “porte-flingue” de Microsoft, voire son “bras armé marketing” (subtil retournement d’un des titres). Suit un long texte ou l’auteur, scandalisé, démonte la double page.
Gilles Klein, a journalist and blogger (on Pointblog, Le Phare, Agoravox, MSN and other places, no doubt) has brightened my day. I learn from him that Libération has become a “spokes-gunslinger” for Microsoft, an “armed wing of the Microsoft marketing department” (a subtle play on one of the headlines). A long article follows in which the scandalized author demolished the two-page spread.
En lisant attentivement, je n’ai pas très bien compris (mais ça doit venir de moi). Il me reproche alternativement d’en faire la pub (avec l’illustration et des données selon lui glanée dans la com’ de Microsoft) et d’en dire du mal (du coup, il ne fallait pas faire de double). Mais bon, le texte est suffisamment ponctué de points d’interrogation outrés (mais pourquoi n’ont-ils pas fait ci ou ça?) pour qu’on comprenne bien que, quand même, je suis un peu un vendu malgré moi. Ou un mauvais journaliste. Ou les deux. Et, parce que Gilles Klein est vraiment très fort, il explique ce qui aurait été un vrai traitement de vrai journaliste selon lui : “décrypter le jeu avec un sociologue, donner une carte blanche à une Ariane Mouchkine super énervée, ou à un gamer implacable, ou encore tester le jeu avec des jeunes de Clichy sous Bois ou du Neuf Trois”, le tout illustré par “un dessin de Wilhem”.
I read it attentively, and do not understand it all that well (but that may just be me). He reproaches me, on the one hand, for publishing the thing (with illustrations and data supposedly glean from Microsoft promotional material) and on the other, of speaking ill of the game …. But okay, the text is sufficiently punctuated with question marks (but why did they not to do this or that?) for one to understand that I am something of a fellow who sold out despite himself. Or a bad journalist. Or both. And, since Gilles Klein is really quite the authority on the subject, he explains what a real journalist would have done, in his view: “decoded the game with a sociologist, given free rein to some super-angry poet, or a tireless gamer, or maybe tested the game with kids from Clichy sous Bois or the 93rd,” all to be illustrated by “a cartoon by Wilhem.”
According to Klein, the substance of the review was “it has not an iota of originality, but then again, it has no flaws, either.”
D’abord, c’est Willem. Ensuite, c’est cool, je suis fan de son travail. Vraiment. Et puis, c’est vrai, ça, un sociologue (c’est bien, un sociologue, ça rend tout de suite un article plus pertinent) aurait permis aux lecteurs de comprendre l’importance stratégique de cette sortie. Comment ai-je donc pu oublier le sociologue ? J’aurais aussi pu demander à son pote, “l’expert”…
By the way, it’s “Willem,” not “Wilhem.” He’s cool, I’m a fan of his work. Really. And yes, it’s true, a sociologist (a sociologist is all you need to make an article more relevant) might have helped the reader better understand the strategic importance of this launch. How could I have forgotten to dig up a sociologist for the article? I could also have called in his buddy, the “expert” …
She goes by the name Bruna, the Little Surfer Girl, and gives new meaning to the phrase ”kiss and tell.” First in a blog that quickly became the country’s most popular and now in a best-selling memoir, she has titillated Brazilians and become a national celebrity with her graphic, day-by-day accounts of life as [an underaged] call girl here. But it is not just her canny use of the Internet that has made Bruna, whose real name is Raquel Pacheco, a cultural phenomenon. By going public with her exploits, she has also upended convention and set off a vigorous debate about sexual values and practices, revealing a country that is not always as uninhibited as the world often assumes. –Larry Rohter, “She Who Controls Her Body Can Upset Her Countrymen,” New York Times, April 27, 2006
NMM(-TV)SNB(B)CNN(P)BS warns you: There is adult content in the above “TubiTube newsreel” in translation — including a graphic oral sex scene.
Oddly, the scene in question was broadcast during the family hour as part of an “exposé” on street prostitution in Butantã, an upscale neighborhood of São Paulo, on a show called A Hora do Povo — not to be confused with the trade-unionist newspaper of the same name.
The newsreel begins with a clip from the dystopian Robocop (1987) — one of whose running gags is the bombarding of media audiences with absurdly slanted news and ridiculously coarse and salacious entertainment programming as a method of intellectual and moral deconditioning.
Not Hot Fuzz or the Trooper Elite: A country boy falls among hapless, crooked Buenos Aires cops who have this eerie sense that UFOs are watching their every move and that the Rapture is nigh.
Cinecismo (Argentina) — “Cinecism,” if you get the play on words there– reviews El bonaerense — the local nickname for the Buenos Aires police department — released in Brazil as “On the other side of the law.”
I always find myself really, irritated by the way Brazilian distributors have of utterly mangling the original titles of movies.
We rented this one at this upscale locadora called 2001, along with my own umpteenth viewing of Le salaire de la peur (”Wages of Fear.”) The ultimate film on the expat experience, dude.
2001 maintains hundreds of feet of shelf space for contemporary American titles, often badly dubbed (100 copies apiece). It reserves about 10% of that space for “national titles” [one or two copies apiece] and a measly collection of titles from other nations south of the Rio Bravo.
Not a Mexican film in the bunch, for example, although you can find a (very incomplete) Buñuel collection, for example, in the “art” (old and somewhat turgid) section. We rented Él the other day, for example, but had to stare at the cover for a long, long time to figure out that O Alucinado ["the mentally unstable guy"] was that that one Buñuel title we always wanted to see but never had.
If Buñuel wanted to make sure that we interpreted the “He” of the title as a gibbering head case, he would have given the film a title that made that point.
But he didn’t. He deliberately didn’t. And what they have done to Hitchcock’s North by Northwest? You do not even want to know. It’s an outrage. There ought to be a law.
Likewise for 2001’s collection of Argentine cinema, which we are big fans of. There is none to speak of.
But Nove Rainhas [remade as the flat, uninspiring Criminal back in gringoland, but itself worthy of the Mamet classics that probably inspired it, such as House of Games]?
Plata Quemada?
Freaking good movies.
(But you will need subtitles, even if you have good Spanish. Argentine Spanish is many things, but the evening newscast on Univisión it is definitely not.) Read the rest of this entry »
Le Monde columnist “La Phare” — Gilles Klein, who also writes Pointblog, a longtime favorite of mine — makes his case that a two-page spread on the Microsoft game-playing box that ran in Libération fairly recently is advertorial:
An advertisement that resembles a newspaper editorial or a television program but promotes a single advertiser’s product, service, or point of view.
A Libération editor then defends the article on his blog. “Upon closer reading …” I will clip the case for the prosecution first. When I get time. I promise.
Ever since reading Globo Journalism director Ali Kamel’s defense of the newspaper consulting firm Innovation International, I have been thinking to myself: With endorsements like that, who needs negative reviews?
In order to deflect charges that gabbling disinformation is (still) practiced at the Rio de Janeiro media conglomerate — see the stunning intellectual dishonesty Kamel displays in “Globo Gabbles on Communist Indoctrination Textbook Plague!” — Kamel points to the traditionally lefty Libération as another client the consultancy had worked with, along with other papers around the world.
Most of which seem to have in common, on first glance, that they have “news bureaus” inside the “virtual world” of Second Life. But see
“Halo 3 : ça va flinguer” Un appel en Une, en tête de la colonne avec un visuel, et une double page en début de journal (page 4 et 5) décorée de deux aliens qui ont, chacun, la hauteur de la page, ce n’est pas un magazine Microsoft consacré à la Xbox, c’est Libération…. le quotidien. Si, si… Raté ! Vous lisez sur la Une “ça va flinguer“. Vous vous dites Libération a peut-être décrypté le jeu avec un sociologue, donné une carte blanche à une Ariane Mouchkine super énervée, ou à un gamer implacable, ou encore testé le jeu avec des jeunes de Clichy sous Bois ou du Neuf Trois ?
A callout on the front page, at the top of the column, with a graphic, and a double-page spread in the front of the paper (pp. 4-5) decorated with two aliens, each as high as the entire page. This is not a Microsoft magazine dedicated to the Xbox. This is Libération, the Paris daily newspaper. One page one, you read “Good for gunning them down.” I got him. I got him. I missed! What would you guess? That Libération has decoded the game with the help of sociologist. Has it given free rein to an angry poet? To an unstoppable gamer? Or has it tested the game with some young guys from Clichy sous Bois or the 93rd?
Ben non… Voila le titre de la double “La Xbox sort l’artillerie lourde“. Et pan, vous prenez cette “lourde” double en pleine poire. Libération est devenu un porte-flingue de cette artillerie lourde. Vous lisez “Le bras armé du marketing” un des titres des quelques courts textes qui émaillent la page, bien aérée, contrairement aux pages d’infos du reste du journal, vous vous demandez si ce n’est pas Libération qui est le bras armé du marketing de Microsoft….. On est content pour Microsoft, qui reçoit un beau coup de main pour ce lancement important, (oui le jeu sort aujourd’hui en magasin, c’est annoncé à la Une, rappelez-vous) mais avec ou sans Libération, le succès paraissait assuré. Autre titre ou intertitre “Un arsenal de poncifs” : on parle du jeu ou de la double page ? Parce que si c’est le jeu, fallait faire une brève, cela suffisait…
Well, no. Look at the headline on the two-page spread: “Xbox brings out the big guns.” Libération has become a holster for those big guns. Go read, “The armed services of marketing” — one of the headlines on the text boxes that dot the page, which is very airy, unlike the close-set type of the rest of the news section. You will ask yourself whether Libération has not enlisted in the armed services of Microsoft.
The Casas-Sánchez memo to Arias: “Some urgent actions to reanimate the Yes on CAFTA campaign.” First and foremost: A media blitz based on “fear, uncertainty and doubt.” Kevin Casas, who resigned from the government, is under investigation for illegal use of public funds to benefit the “Yes” campaign. His permanent replacement as Minister of Planning was announced yesterday.
“For our friends, anything; for our enemies, the law.”
“Some 23% percent of working-class respondents indicated they could run into problems if they talked about the FTA, or otherwise expressed hesitation about discussing the issue.” –University of Costa Rica School of Statistics, Institution of Social Research. “Referendum and Free Trade Agreement, Telephone Surveys Between July and September, 2007.”
The major newspaper in Costa Rica published on its front page a letter by U.S. Trade Representative Susan Schwab warning that the U.S. would refuse to renegotiate the terms of the free trade agreement with Costa Rica if CAFTA was voted down.
The memo is dated July 29, 2007, and is addressed to the president and prime minister of Costa Rica by Kevin Casas (former Minister of Planning, a professor of The Theory of the State at the University of Costa Rica and a lawyer representing the Arias Foundation) and Fernando Sánchez, a lawmaker in the government coalition (and, like Casas, an Oxford-trained political scientist).
(I am assuming from the fact that Casas resigned over the flap — his replacement was named today — that he actually wrote this. I have not seen any claims yet that the document published by Costa Rican newspaper was doctored or dummied up out of thin air.)
They propose that a YES committee be formed immediately to defend that position in the CAFTA referendum, and that the President be a member of that committee.
At another juncture, they propose organizing visits by senior government officials to the country’s largest private employers. Such as Chiquita — “Well, okay, yes, we ran guns for the AUC, but it was to protect our workers” — and Dole.
They suggest covering the visits as “information sessions on the government’s economic development plan, … or some such thing.”
“So as to cover our [backsides] with the TSE [elections tribunal],” they continued.
But allegedly the government is not allowed to use its command of the gazillion-jigawatt megaphone to through its weight behind one proposition or the other. Vincente Fox is in some trouble down in Mexico right now for the some sort of thing (Dick Morris told him to do it).
Casas was honored by the World Economic Forum in as one of 250 young leaders. Along with executives from Intel, Google, Apple and a Harvard Business School professor. And Jimmy Wales, the Confucian sage of Wikipedia.
I have been translating some sections off the PDF posted by the principal opposition party. Casas’ “innovation journalism” campaign, as outlined in the memo:
6. Plan and launch a massive campaign in the media: Beyond what can be done in communities and the business community, in the little time remaining, we must have absolutely no shame about saturating the media with publicity. Precisely because time is short, it is absolutely vital that we direct this campaign in two directions:
Debunk the idea that this is a struggle of rich against poor: This will require carefully choosing the faces that will represent “Yes” in the campaign, the use of workers and small business owners exclusively.
Likewise, we must ratchet up the decibels to a massive degree, along with the presence of the government’s social agenda in the media and official speeches.
We must stimulate fear. This fear has four types (modes):
The Casas-Sánchez memo to Arias: “Some urgent actions to animated the Yes on CAFTA campaign. First and foremost: A media blitz based on “fear, uncertainty and doubt.” Kevin Casas is under investigation for illegal use of public funds to benefit the “Yes” campaign. His permanent replacement as Minister of Planning was announced yesterday.
La Nación also ran an interview with the Chamber of Commerce, who argued that the local textile industry would collapse if “no” won the day. At the same time, it omitted to report on insistent statements by congressional leaders and other lawmakers from the (U.S.) Democratic Party that called upon Schwab to desist, noting that it is Congress, not the president of the United States, that has authority over trade agreements, and that Costa Rica actually runs none of the risks announced by the Emperor’s envoy.
Vice-President and Minister of Planning Kevin Casas temporarily vacated his post due to an internal administrative investigation into whether he committed illegal acts to favor the “Yes” campaign. A close advisor to Arias, Casas is accused of using public funds to support the “Yes” campaign. –September 17
Just hours before Costa Ricans went to the polls in the world’s first ever popular referendum on a NAFTA expansion, the Bush administration intervened in the country’s sovereign election by threatening economic retaliation if citizens rejected CAFTA. Nonetheless, the super-close vote outcome there debunks Bush’s spin that Latin Americans are crying out for NAFTA-style deals * just as Bush trots out the same tired argument to gain support for NAFTA expansion to Peru, which is opposed by religious, labor and retiree groups there, and will be voted on by Congress in the coming weeks. –Todd Tucker, Public Citizen (using the new comment feature on Google News)
Costa Rica: referendo espurio: “Spurious referendum” on CAFTA in Costa Rica, opines Ángel Guerra Cabrera in Mexico’s La Jornada.
Whether the charges of fraud are valid or not, there are at least two warning signs that bear looking into:
dueling opinion polls — including one commissioned from a market research firm that lists the Presidency of Costa Rica as a client, along with numerous business associations and firms like Dole and Chiquita, that indicated “a technical tie”; and
a memorandum from government advisers to the Costa Rican head of state — Kevin Casas and Fernando Sánchez — outlining a “fear campaign” and “media blitz” to push through the “yes” option.
The quality of controls on the vote-tabulation process also needs careful looking at.
We saw a an astonishingly vacuous “happy talk” by-product of that same media blitz here in Brazil, I think, produced by a TV Globo reporter:
The memo recommends as follows (draft translation):
We must stimulate fear. This fear has four types:
Four headings for fear:
Fear of loss of employment:
Fear of an attack on democratic institutions:
Fear of foreign meddling in the NO campaign:
Fear of the effect of a NO vote on the government:
Under “fear of the effect on the government”:
All the polls show a great deal of satisfaction with the President and Government. Many people have simply not made the connection that the triumph of NO would leave the Government in a precarious position, with its effectiveness totally undermined, and the nation in a state of ungovernability. They have to be induced to make this connection.
More on that in a second.
Según diversas encuestas de opinión, los votantes en favor del no, que eran menos de 30 por ciento en diciembre de 2006, ascendían el pasado 4 de octubre, tres días antes del referendo, a 55 por ciento –12 puntos por encima del sí–, dato confirmado en un sondeo encargado por el ultraneoliberal diario La Nación.
According to various opinion polls, voters intending to vote “no,” who were less than 30 percent in December 2006, rose on October 4, three days before the referendum, to 55% — 12% more than “yes” — a datum confirmed by a poll commissioned by the ultraneoliberal daily La Nación.
There were eight accredited polling firms, including Unimer — used by La Nación, and predicting the 12-point triumph of “No” — and Demoscopia — used by Al Día, and predicting the technical tie. I am looking at TSE document on the subject here.
En esas 72 horas, cuando estaba prohibido hacer propaganda por cualquiera de las dos alternativas, La Nación y sus congéneres difundieron a bombo y platillo declaraciones de Susan Schawb, encargada de negociaciones comerciales del bushismo, en que amenazaba con privar a Costa Rica de las preferencias arancelarias provistas por la Iniciativa para la Cuenca del Caribe y negaba la posibilidad de cualquier renegociación del TLC si era rechazado.
During the 72 hours when it was prohibited from running advertising for either of the two alternatives, La Nación and like-minded news organization bombarded readers with statements from Susan Schwab, Bush’s trade negotiator, in which she threatened to deprive Costa Rica of preferential treatment under CAFTA and ruled out any renegotiation of the FTA if it were rejected.
Latin American Zeitgeist consultant emeritus
"Eu sou o rei dessa folia, pra delírio da Fiel"
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