“Bogus Boatos on the Bossa Nova Buck”

Source: BCB (2003)

The Banco Central do Brasil dispels a rumor (boato):

Em razão de boatos que circulam especialmente no Rio de Janeiro e em Fortaleza, o Banco Central esclarece que não há fundamento nas informações de que estaria recomprando moedas de 1 real com a figura de Juscelino Kubitschek e do prédio do Banco Central. Assim como as demais moedas bimetálicas de 1 real, as moedas com a figura de Juscelino Kubitschek e do prédio do Banco Central permanecem normalmente em circulação e valem o correspondente a seu valor de face, ou seja 1 real. O Banco Central somente recebe moedas que estejam danificadas, com suspeição de legitimidade ou em processo de recolhimento (perda de poder liberatório).

In reason of rumors that are circulating, especially in Rio de Janeiro and Fortaleza, the Central Bank of Brazil announces that there is no foundation to reports that it may be buying back 1-real coins depicting former president Kubitschek and the Central Bank building.

Which is possibly even more of an architectural abomination than that Federal Gothic fortress that Ben Bernanke hangs out at. (I am not a big fan of Brazilian Brutalist hypermodernism, or Oscar Niemeyer.)

Against Babel: The World Bank Scrubs the Hubbub

Anti-Babel: A translation hub designed to reduce the hubbub.

A few years ago, the World Bank woke up to the fact that it sucked at translation.

So it decided to develop

A Document Translation Framework for the World Bank Group and Strengthening Public Information Centers

How has that worked out, I wonder? They promised to produce a progress report in 2004, but I cannot seem to find that on their Web site.

I hope the current availability of the online multilingual terminology database it has developed is not indicative of its progress since then:

I ask because lately I have gotten more involved in thinking about how to help improve the process of translating financial reporting and investor relations materials of various types. And do it relatively cheaply. See, for example,

• “A Rumbling Wrack and a Hell of an Engeneer”

Who does this sort of thing well, and how do they do it?

NYSE-Euronext, for one, it seems to me, from a quick inspection, does this sort of thing pretty well. I should write to them and ask them how they do it.

The principal risk to the Bank lies in not undertaking the investment to manage translation needs more effectively. Without an integrated quality assurance process, or guidelines and criteria to help staff make decisions on languages or translations, the Bank is not carrying out its responsibilities to communicate effectively with stakeholders and people affected by its work.

The consequences of mistranslations:

Rio: Looting of Beer Truck Leads to Reshuffle of Military Police Blogging Brigades

GloboNews segment cites the blog of the officer in charge of internal affairs for the state military police of Rio: “The poorly paid Soldier who lacks decent working conditions becomes easy ‘prey’ for corrupters.”

The film invaded the streets, the TV networks, public debates, the newspapers, the magazines, and, worst of all, the mind of every Brazilian, fascinated with the “hero” who tortures and kills criminals and is a member of the finest urban combat unit in the world, the Special Operations Battalion (BOPE), a troop of “SOCIAL HEROES,” the pride of all of us military policemen and the State Military Police of Rio de Janeiro. … To our mind, the soldier is a hero, especially in the impressionable minds of young people, so that destroying this reality is an antisocial crime, pardon my emphatic way of putting it. –Col. Paul on the film Tropa de Elite, which depicts police corruption and indiscriminate, off-the-reservation ultraviolence.

Cabral exonera comandante da PM e pune oficiais que lideraram manifestação: “Rio de Janeiro governor Sérgio Cabral fires commander of state military police (PM) and punishes senior officers who led protest.”

O Globo reports. The story was covered extensively — and excitedly — by GloboNews. On whose Web site I now cannot seem to find the story. Okay, here is the segment we saw.

But it is hard to get a read on the significance of the change in command other than that it is extremely significant, and that it comes in the wake of a “videoscandal” in which Rio PMs are shown helping themselves to cases of beer from a hijacked truckload.

Also shown was an incident in which PMs from a reputed “narcobattalion” celebrated their release from the disciplinary barracks by shooting off fireworks, dancing in the street, and driving off in luxury cars.

The narcobattalion whoops up it upon receipt of “get out of jail free” card.

The reporter quotes the state public security secretary as saying (but does not show, for some reason) that he will change the command of every single military police battalion in the state. The word faxina (“clean sweep, spring cleaning”) got used several times.

I would venture to say that the key message here from the governor and his security secretary, as they were shown talking on the TV last evening, was that (1) current police leadership has no control over its subordinates and (2) insubordination to civilian authority will not (no longer) be tolerated.

That is to say: The dog seems to be insisting that the tail stop wagging it.

Also dismissed was PM internal affairs command Col. Paul.

“A Rumbling Wrack and a Hell of an Engeneer”

If you are looking to sink some capital into Brazil’s Bovespa, you might be interested in taking a look at the following sector, from the “industrial classification” section of its Web site:

Construction and Engeneering

Also of interest:

Consultive Engeneering

Which I suppose might be something like “engineering consulting services,” depending on the classification system one consults. Brazil’s is the

• Classificação Nacional de Atividades Econômicas / CNAE

Further research on the term is required.

See also

• “In Hell, The Engineers Are Brazilian and the Musicians Are German”

“The Kenya National Human Rights Commission Is Enaged in Moral Panic”: Officer Kiraithe

Kenya Police Spokesman Eric Kiraithe Responds to KNHRC Preliminary Report on 454 Killings (Google Video):

News of executed corpses being dumped in wooded areas to be eaten by hyenas is a case of moral panic, Kenyan police spokesman tells KTN TV.

The Kenyan police are “highly professional civil servants” forming “value-added partnerships” to “improve the quality of life of Kenyans,” but are constrained from discussing national security matters.

Strikes me as sinister doublespeak. You?

See also

• “Still Behaving Badly” (KNHRC, December 2007)
• “For the past six months, corpses have been bobbing up in Kenya’s rivers and rotting in forests; they have been dumped unceremoniously beside roads and in morgues — hundreds of young men, most dispatched with a single bullet to the head.”
• Kenya: “Militia, Police, World Bank Contribute to Post-Election Turmoil”
• “Did The Kenya Police Influence The Outcome Of The Kenya General Elections 2007?”
• Kenyan Political Violence: Checking Back With the Morgue

“Who Stopped the Heart of Jango Goulart?”

Goulart foi morto a pedido do Brasil, diz ex-agente uruguaio: A former Uruguayan spy imprisoned in Brazil tells the Folha de S. Paulo that deposed former João Goulart, who died of a heart attack in 1976, was poisoned “at the request of the Brazilian government.”

In an operation financed by your tax dollars.

We saw quite a bit of dismissive commentary on the claim last evening, including a verdict of “sensationalist and implausible” from the commentator on TV Gazeta’s evening news program.

“Why would Gen. Geisel, who drove the process of democratization, consider Goulart a threat who needed eliminating in 1976?” the fellow asked, “rather than during the late 1960s, when he formed the Frente Ampla with Lacerda and Kubitschek to push for redemocratization?”

Which seems like a fair question — as long as we are speculating rather than fact-checking. But then again, as Mrs. NMMist pointed out, under AI-5, the chain of command came to be regarded as optional, and a lot of the hardline officer corps simply opted for the “if it feels good, do it” approach to military order and discipline. See also

• Carnage and Carnival: The Curious Career of Captain Guimarães

Jango morreu envenenado, afirma Mario Neira Barreiro

Jango died of poisoning, says Mario Neira Barreiro.  

Sérgio Fleury teria dado a ordem para o assassinato

Sérgio Fleury supposedly gave the order for the assassination.

Presidente deposto teria dito aos agentes que sabia da espionagem: “Sei que estão me vigiando, mas não sou inimigo de vocês”

Former president said to have told agent he knew he was being spied on. “I know you are watching me, but I am not your enemy.”

Preso desde 2003 na Penitenciária de Alta Segurança de Charqueadas (RS), o ex-agente do serviço de inteligência do governo uruguaio Mario Neira Barreiro, 54, disse em entrevista exclusiva à Folha que espionou durante quatro anos o presidente João Goulart (1918-1976), o Jango, e que ele foi morto por envenenamento a pedido do governo brasileiro.

Imprisoned since 2003 in the maximum security penitentiary in Charqueadas, Rio Grande do Sul, the former Uruguayan intelligence again Mario Neira Barreiro, 54, said in an exclusive interview with the Folha that he spied for four years on former president Goulart, and that Jango was poisoned at the request of the Brazilian government. 

A Working Note on Words Slurred, Preferred and Absurd

Dinking around with Glossword, a simple Web-based terminology database organized according to pretty good multilingual terminology and thesaurus-authoring practices, such as those employed by IATE.

As far as translators are concerned, terminology is primarily an ad hoc affair, more a matter of filling in the blanks in their knowledge than systematically studying a constellation of terms in a given universe of discourse. –Robert Bonnono, “Terminology for Translators—an Implementation of ISO 12620″

That, in a nutshell, is the problem that consumes my time these days.

A client has asked me to review a fairly huge collection of glossaries related to business reporting.

I have to find a an effective (and diplomatic) way of communicating to this client that the ad hoc method of constructing and compiling these glossaries means that using them in practice is likely to produce an unacceptable level of failures to communicate.

It is, to use one of my favorite New World Lusophone words, a gambiarra — a kludge.

Kludge: patched solution; a makeshift combination of hardware and software put together to solve a computing problem that is effective but not suitable for manufacture.

Mexico: “Convergence Insurgencies Emerge in Cable Wars”

La guerra del cable (Proceso No. 1630): Mexico’s “cable wars” pit Carlos Slim’s Telmex against Televisa in a battle to shape “digital convergence” policy proposals that threaten (promise) to alter the (non)competitive landscape.

Having been reading recently about the battle for control of Russia’s NTV — I had not been aware of the role Spain’s Telefónica had played in that complex and bloody affair — and as someone who tries to pay attention to similar developments in Brazil (though at the moment I am behind on my reading), I file this under the provisional heading of “armed media monopolies, the Hobbesian state of nature and.”

El consorcio televisivo que preside Emilio Azcárraga Jean vuelve a mover sus piezas para impedir que la Secretaría de Comunicaciones y Transportes dé el aval para que Telmex se convierta en proveedor de contenidos vía televisión por cable y de servicios convergentes de telefonía e internet –el llamado triple play. Ante el temor de que el dueño del Grupo Carso les coma el mandado, Televisa le echó encima a las empresas de televisión por cable… La batalla por el control del mercado de las telecomunicaciones comienza a cobrar fuerza.

The broadcasting consortium presided by Emilio Azcárraga Jean is once again moving its pieces in order to prevent the Secretary of Communications and Transportation from backing a plan to let Telmex become a provider of cable TV content and convergent telephone and Internet services — the so-called “triple play.” Fearing that the top man at the Corso Group will eat them alive, Televisa has launched an assault on the cable TV companies. The battle for control of the telecommunications market is starting to heat up.

Sâo Paulo: “El coronel sí tiene quien le escriba”

Col. Rodrigues gets shot down like a dog.

Polícia prende três PMs suspeitos de assassinar coronel: The Estado de S. Paulo devotes its top Web story to developments in the assassination of the top military police commander in the northern zone of the city.

As it should. It would be nice if it dedicated the top of the print edition to the story as well. Instead of leading with a hoisted camel.

Primary emphasis on “oddly enough” infotainment: What do angry airborne camels have to do with the price of arroz, feijão and aipim?

I cannot tell you how demoralizing it is to live in an urban environment full of fear, uncertainty and doubt about which cops are really cops and which cops are really criminals. Not to even mention the criminals who dress up like cops — getting their cop uniforms from cops.

What is this, a New World Lusophone version of Weegee’s New York?

See also

• The Assassination of Col. Rodrigues: The Animated Version
• São Paulo: Who Gunned Down Col. Rodrigues And Shot Up the Bad Boy Bar?
• São Paulo Police Blotter: “The Colonel’s Killer Wore Combat Boots”

General Panic at Société Générale: Of Loopholes, FUD Machines and Gambiarras

Rogue trader: “Yond Cassius has a lean and hungry look …”

LOOPHOLE: A way of escape, an evasion; a corruption of “louvre holes.” (See LOUVRE.)

Louvre boards in churches. Before chimneys were used, holes were left in the roof, called loovers or leuver holes. From the French l’ouvert (the open boards). –E. Cobham Brewer, Dictionary of Phrase and Fable (1898)

Kludge: patched solution; a makeshift combination of hardware and software put together to solve a computing problem that is effective but not suitable for manufacture.

Rogue trader costs Société Générale EUR5bn; back office controls skirted:

French banking group Société Générale SocGen is reporting a massive EUR4.9 billion in losses perpetrated by a rogue trader who used to work in its middle office division and who used loopholes in controls and risk management procedures to conceal fictitious transactions.

There will be a lot more interesting comments to read on this case than mine.

I personally plan to consult Financial Engineering News on the incident, because I think the “how” angle on this story is likely to be the most interesting: Why the loopholes existed, and how the “rogue trader” gamed them.

(Oops. FEN has ceased publication. Which is a shame. One of the best specialty business publications in any sector, I always thought. )

Everyone immmediately thinks of (Ewan “Ben Kenobi” MacGregor as) Nick “The Rogue Trader” Leeson, but it actually might be more interesting to compare the case to Enron’s “Fat Boy” and “Death Star” elecricity trading gambits, or Citigroup’s “Dr. Evil” German bond trading strategy.

The (shocking!) news immediately made me think of a technology audit project I once worked on for a flagship client of one of those Big X global consultancies, as a humble project editor.

The challenge, to put it bluntly, was to find a very diplomatic way of saying that the automation of internal controls — the global financial institution’s “policy server,” as the jargon goes — was deeply afflicted by the GIGO principle and, consequently, shot through with business logic that was likely to produce the workflow-automation and transaction-processing equivalent of that crayon Homer Simpson shoved up his nose into his brain as a child.

The bank says the junior trader – who hasn’t been named, but who earned less than EUR100,000 a year – had “in-depth knowledge” of risk control procedures from his previous position in the bank’s middle office, which enabled him to “conceal these positions through a scheme of elaborate ficticious transactions”.

Bumbá Meu Moto-Boi: Crosstown Traffic in Old São Paulo (Vote Quimby)

“City gives up on exclusive motorcyle lane” (G1/Globo). After one day, if I am understanding this correctly.

O guarda ele quis me autuar
O guarda ele quis me autuar
Me disse que até ia ajudar
O prefeito a se candidatar
E o outro candidato eliminar
O guarda ele quis me autuar
–Zebu Cavaco and his Cur-Deus Homos

I had a very long day yesterday, and the CPTM commuter train, plagued by delays because of upstream track repairs, presented a queue that reminded me of the line for the Magic Mountain roller coaster at Disneyland when it first opened, years and years ago.

So I decided to take a cab from an unfamiliar ponto.

This is a risky procedure, as I should have known, but I was extremely, extremely tired.

As a result, my cheerful cabbie got us incredibly, incredibly lost — I said Sumarezinho, not Sumaré — and I wound up paying R$50 for a guided tour of the entire city that got me nowhere nearer my final destination.

Which was: a plate of medium-rare miolo de alcatra, a lovely salad with olives, an impressively gooey heartland-produced cheese of some unidentifiable variety, balsamic vinegar and field greens, and a bottle of Mendoza cabernet, consumed on our big, fat sofa beside my good wife, watching a subtitled version of Scorcese’s After Hours.

Appropriately enough, given that my day was also all about misadventures in urban transportation.

At one point, I handed the cell phone to the driver, with my wife on the other end.

When the driver returned the phone to me, my wife said, forcefully, “Your driver is deeply disturbed, and possibly dangerously insane. Get out of that cab ASAP and get on the subway.” My wife is always right, of course, so I did just that.

On the bright side, during my whirlwind tour of rush-hour traffic, I was able to observe a couple of civic improvement projects that have earned a lot of attention — and derision — recently.

One was the sidewalk improvement project on the Avenida Paulista, the other a sudden mayoral decree banning the practice motorcyclists have of zipping along between cars in the endemic (pandemic) stop-and-go traffic.

See also

• The Sidewalks of São Paulo: The Paulista Gets a Botox Injection

The incumbent São Paulo version of “Diamond Joe” Quimby of Simpsons fame is running for reelection. He has now reportedly embarked on a whirlwind, pre-nomination campaign of “one public improvement per day” to go along with a notable prime-time advertising blitz — including “back to back to back” TV spots during the Jornal Nacional and the prime-time soap opera on Globo.

Where is all the money coming from for those spots, anyway? We understood that partisan advertising was limited by law to the obligatory free political announcements bloc that the networks provide. In theory. (See also TSE Clips Toucans Over Tirades, Cancels Communists).

Anyway, as far as I could see with my own eyes, the spectacular facelift at the corner of Av. Paulista and Consolação, scheduled to snarl traffic in the area for months, has to date only managed to jackhammer up about 20 square meters of the distinctive, rough-hewn, black and white mosaic sidewalk. And has yet to replace a single square mm with the attractive and durable space-age compound the (rather fuzzy) proposal for the project had induced me to envision.

Meanwhile, even as the city government hastily withdraws an attempt to crack down on the, er, highly creative and wildly improvisational use — think Ornette Coleman or Mingus — of urban roadway space by motorcylists , I spot some hastily erected signage inviting motorcyclists to ride in the faixa cidadã — the “citizenship lane.”

Fujimori Trial: “Vladi Called The Death-Squad Shots”

“Edmundo Cruz, witness”: The head of the investigative reporting team at La República testifies in the Fujimori trial. He and two colleagues literally discovered where the bodies were buried. Literally.

Sangue, sangue, sangue
Vejam só este jornal
Verdadeiro hospital
Porta voz do bangue-bangue
Da polícia central.
–Miguel Gustavo, “Jornal da Morte”

As always, should you or any member of your IM Force be caught or killed, the secretary will disavow any knowledge of your actions.

Montesinos dirigió el grupo Colina y dio ‘luz verde para matanza de Barrios Altos: “Montesinos ran the Colina group and gave the green light for the Barrios Altos massacre.”

La República (Lima, Peru) has the daily summary of the trial of former president Alberto Fujimori.

File under “bodycounts, contemporary Latin American” and “mafia spreadsheets,” but what is most interesting is the spotlight directed at testimony by investigative journalist Edmundo Cruz. I will try to take some notes on that when I get a chance.

Declaró agente Flores Alván, en juicio a Fujimori. Además, reveló que la creación de ese comando de la muerte obedeció a una nueva política antisubversiva a partir de 1990.

So said agent Flores Alván during Fujimori’s trial. He also revealed that the creation of this death squad obeyed a new antisubversion policy implemented in 1990.

Dictador. Alberto Fujimori no tiene cómo contradecir las declaraciones de los agentes arrepentidos del grupo Colina.

PHOTO CAPTION: Dictator. Fujimori is unable to contradict the statements of repentant Colina group agents.

El asesor presidencial y jefe de facto del SIN Vladimiro Montesinos dirigía el Destacamento Colina y autorizó la matanza de los Barios Altos, reveló ayer el agente de inteligencia Marco Flores Alván, conocido como “Maflo” o “El Escribano”.

Presidential aide and de factor head of the intelligence service Vladimiro Montesinos ran the Colina Detachment and authorized the massacre in Barrios Altos, intelligence agent Marco Flores Alván, aka “Maflo” or ["The Scribe"], testified yesterday.

Veja Magazine Is Like Cancer: Metaphor as an Illness

The problem with Veja is not that it is partisan. The problem is its journalism of defamation, of speculation about other people’s biographies, its falsification of quotes and documents, its practice of slander and personal offense.

Um dia ouvi o samba
Ouvi tambem baião
E música caipira
Eu tambem acho bão
Casei com uma tonta
E mudei pro Brasil
Terra da piada pronta
E a Editora Abril
[...] A coisa aqui tá preta
A imprensa é marrom
Mais bater nessa viola
Ué, isso sim é bom.
–Zebu Cavaco

Brazilian business journo and blogger Luis Nassif continues his war on Veja magazine (Editora Abril).

As you know, I do not consume Abril products.

Why? Because this toxic sludge they crank out is just plain, well, unbelievable. Literally and metaphorically speaking.

Anyway, I was just looking through his back postings to see if Nassif has anything new to say on a very serious-sounding charge of conflicts of interest at the última flor de fáscio, but have not found it yet. See

• Nassif the Thief: “Editor-Shill Bodes Ill for Abril”

I am still trying to get that organized — I do have other things to do, you know — but thought this recent editorial correction was interesting in its own right.

I am not sure what article Nassif decided needed to be pulled and “copydesked,” but it apparently involved the possibility that the “Veja is a cancer on Brazilian journalism” metaphor might be taken too literally.

See also

• Brazil: “Veja is a Cancer Upon the Grupo Abril!”

Writes Nassif:

Alguns leitores me chamaram a atenção para o fato de que esse artigo do Weden poderia dar margem a ilações com doença que acometeu determinado jornalista. Não tinha me dado conta disso e, certamente, nem o Weden – que, ele próprio, mostrou-se preocupado quando um comentário permitia ilações com problemas de outro jornalista.

Some readers called my attention to the fact that Weden’s article might leave room for drawing inferences about a disease suffered by a particular journalist. I had not noticed that and neither, I am sure, had Weden — who was concerned about a comment that made insinuations about the problems of a certain other journalist.

Por isso, tomo a liberdade de suspender temporariamente o texto, solicitando ao Weden que o copidesque para ser republicado.

For that reason I have taken the liberty of temporarily removing the article and asked Weden to give it an edit before it is republished.

Weden writes:

Obrigado, Nassif, por ter retirado o texto.

Thanks, Nassif, for taking down that article.

Current Content Downloads, São Paulo Light Commuter Rail Edition

The Brazilian edition of Goldfarb’s Death of a Dissident. The takeover of NTV by Gazprom is a classic case study in the field of “armed media monopolies.”

Brooklyn: Public-Private Arbitrage in the OTC “Drugs For Information” Markets

Drugs-for-Information Scandal Shakes Up New York Police Narcotics Force: the New York Times covers a cop corruption story the way it should be covered: loudly and thoroughly, but factually.

Compare

• “One in Every 2,000 New York Cops Is a Corpse-Robbing Hophead!”

… four police officers in Brooklyn are under arrest in a case that involves paying informants not with cash or leniency but with the very drugs they craved, taken from the dealers who were arrested after the informants pointed them out. Two of the officers were charged in an internal sting last week after another was caught on a department audio tape bragging about the practice in September, officials said.

In Brooklyn, you cannot just take people out to the jungle and shoot them in the head if you think they might be guilty, now or in the future:

Prosecutors have moved to dismiss more than 80 criminal cases because the officers caught in the scandal were considered critical to successful prosecutions, law enforcement officials said, and the office of the Brooklyn district attorney is analyzing about 100 more potentially tainted cases.

“Dollar Plunges, Markets Recover”: A Transandean Perspective

“U.S. cuts interest rates drastically; Dollar falls all over (itself) the world; Peruvian central bank faces dilemma over maintaining its foreign exchange model.” This week will go down in the history of South American journalism as “The Week of the Downward-Pointing Bar Chart.”

“It Takes a Thief To Catch A Thief”

Somehow I got on a mailing list for announcements about (how to stop people from) defrauding retail payments systems for fun and profit.

This session from The Retail Business Show 2008 sounds like it might be kind of fun.

Convicted ex fraudster Elliot Castros [sic] tells his unique story as the only British individual who has stolen hundreds of thousands of pounds from the credit card system. Led in the interview by Keith Marsden, MD of 192.com, Elliot will be divulging the weaknesses he identified in numerous banks security systems, how he committed online fraud and how he managed to evade capture for so long. This unique presentation helps the audience to better understand the metholodgy of a fraudster and how retailers can defend their businesses against fraudulent attacks.

Author, with Neil Forsyth, of Other People’s Money,

“An exhilarating Brit variation on Catch Me If You Can” – Arena Magazine

In South America, It’s Depressing Bar-Chart Tuesday

La República (Lima, Peru): “Due to worldwide stock exchange crash: Pension funds at risk. Pension fund investments in the Lima exchange and abroad may be directly affected by exchange losses.” You think? The Estado de S. Paulo led its front page with the same depressing bar chart, but LR published a more comprehensive list of world bourses.

General celebration (possibly premature, but I am not an expert on such things) yesterday as the BOVESPA (São Paulo State Stock Exchange) pulled out of its nosedive (+4.45%) — thanks, according to the Estado de S. Paulo, to seriously good news for Petrobras (another big old pool of flammable fossil ooze found in deep water in the Santos Basin) and the Fed rate cut.

“Lignes directrices pour la gestion de projets de normalisation terminologique”

ISO 15188:2001(E). Click to zoom.

What I plan to do all day for the foreseeable future, if I can convince someone to pay me to do it.

“Stratfor 2.0 Is the New Journalism 1.0″

[Stratfor] filters out the noise in the news and tells you what actually matters.

We were able to agree that it was an essential element of impartiality that when a matter was controversial the viewer or listener would be able to make a judgement based on a fair assessment of all the relevant arguments and information. Relevant information should not be excluded nor should the presentation clearly favour one view over another. We recognised that this requirement had to meet the familiar point that it was not necessary to be impartial between sense and nonsense. –The Budd Commission on BBC Business Journalism.

Strong majorities in Brazil (80%), Mexico (76%), USA (74%), and Great Britain (71%) believe that the concentration of media ownership in fewer hands is a concern because owners’ political views emerge in reporting.

Or commercial interests.

This arrives in the open-source Bloomberg box this morning: Media Bias and Stratfor 2.0 | Stratfor.

File under

• “Journalism 1.0 Is the New Journalism 2.0″

I enjoy reading Stratfor analyses. I sometimes disagree with them — not always for any good reason, mind you, but just for the joy of being contrary. This is a mild character defect of mine. Admitting it is the first step to overcoming it. But it has its uses.

Their products are a bit too expensive for my purposes (which in most cases are just idle curiosity about things that will never lead to paying gigs), but I am generally interested in what they have to say. You can learn stuff from these guys, or at the very least get pointed to a fresh perspective.

Aaric S. Eisenstein, VP Publishing for the intelligence newsletter, writes

Follow a thought experiment with me: Assume traditional news media have absolutely no political or partisan agenda. (Work with me here….) And in the interests of reportorial objectivity, each article, TV segment, etc., has a variety of inputs from people with diametrically opposed views yelling at or — at best — speaking past each other. For good or ill, market realities have forced traditional media to appeal to niche markets, polarizing them toward either the far left or far right.

I dispute the notion that market realities “force” publishers to do any such thing. This is a pernicious myth promoted by gabbling Moonies like Ali Kamel of Globo in Brazil.

I see this as a massive failure of marketers to realize that the customer they are marketing to values qualitity and impartiality. See, for example,

Brazilian News Media Garbles Survey Data on the Question, “Does Your News Media Report Honestly and Accurately?”

And the BBC’s (gabbling) press release on the survey in question:

• World Divided on Press Freedom

Stratfor continues its pitch:

The vast bulk of news consumers seem to accept this. Or maybe they just don’t know they have a choice?

The Fever Dream of the Yellow Press: What the Factoid Is Wrong With These People?

Jornal do Trem: Cheerfully amateurish little free weekly covers the Great “Yellow Jack is Back!” Panic of 2008. “On the wings of the fever: “Authorities try to contain the alarm of the population, which fears a general epidemic of yellow fever.”

Many political analysts and journalists continue to ignore, in an irresponsible manner, the findings of the public health authorities. … the government says one thing and the news media promote another, and this is bad.– Temporão of the MiniHealth

On his blog, Brazilian biz journo Luis Nassif comments on the moral panic over yellow fever, in a couple of posts so far. See also

• Moral Panic Notes: Further on the Great Yellow Jack Attack of 2008

His headline: “The media’s fever.”

If I were giving it an English headline, I might use the proverbial phrase “fever dream” to denote the general cluelessness about — or deliberate disdain for — best practices for covering public-interest risk-management stories.

Nassif is a sensible, old-school kind of guy and a regular read of mine. I do not always agree with him (or know enough about the subject to have an opinion). But I always come away having learned a little something.

Which is my general mission in life. Isn’t it everybody’s?

Today, for example, Nassif explains why Valor Econômico is such a pretty darn good newspaper in the W$J mold.

Now if he would only explain why the subscription prices have to be so incredibly freaking astronomical. What is the thing printed on, freaking gold leaf, hammered out by hand by Amazonian craftsmen?

The first post dates from January 20.

Na “Folha” de hoje, com muitos dias de atraso, entrevista com o Ministro da Saúde José Gomes Temporão analisando a febre amarela da mídia. A entrevista foi para Angela Pinho e Johanna Nublat, da Sucursal de Brasília, com pequena chamada de primeira página (clique aqui).

In today’s Folha de S. Paulo, many, many days too late, an interview with the Minister of Health, José Gomes Temporão, analysing the media’s version of the yellow fever [scare.] The interview was given to Angela Pinho and Johanna Nublat of the Brasília bureau, which a small call-out on the front page (click here).

If you want to find responsible adults at the Folha, besides the ombudsman, the reportagem local seems to have quite a few, and a handful seem to be hanging in there at the Brasília bureau as well. May they all be promoted to positions of responsibility.

Alguns trechos:

Some excerpts:

O número de casos vem diminuindo de maneira consistente desde 2000 e é bem menor do que em 2003. Isso tem a ver com a dinâmica de circulação do vírus em regiões de mata e com a entrada de pessoas não vacinadas nessas regiões. Todos os anos o Brasil apresenta casos de febre amarela silvestre porque nós temos matas, macacos, mosquitos e o vírus, circulando permanentemente nessas regiões. O que aconteceu, de uma certa forma, é que houve uma interpretação por algum motivo equivocada da população que desnecessariamente começou a procurar vacina mesmo não necessitando.

The number of cases has been dropping consistently since 2000 and is a lot lower than it was in 2003. This has to do with how the virus circulates in jungle regions and the entry of unvaccinated persons into those areas. Every year Brazil presents some cases of sylvatic yellow fever because we have jungles, monkeys, mosquitos and the virus, circulating permanently in these areas. What has happened, in a way, is that there was an interpretation — a misinterpretation, for some reason — on the part of the population, who began unnecessarily to seek out vaccination even when they did not need it.

“The Tijuana Institute of Applied Assassination”

Welcome to Tijuana
Con coyote no hay aduana
–Manu Chao

El Financiero (Mexico) reports:

México, 20 de enero.- Agentes de la Policía Federal Preventiva descubrieron en Tijuana, Baja California, un centro de adiestramiento de sicarios, presuntamente pertenecientes al cártel de los hermanos Arellano Félix, donde aseguraron un arsenal.

PFP agents have discovered a training center for assassins in Tijuana, presumably belonging to the drug cartel controlled by the Arellano Félix brothers, where they seized an arsenal.

Possibly, but best to boil before consuming. On which see also

• Mexico: From Ecstasy to Agony in High-Profile Drug Bust
• Mexico: “Show of Efficiency Generates Phony Numbers in Marching Powder Bust”

“Chavez is Gay: An Ever More Insistent Rumor”

“La polémica surgió, a partir de un artículo publicado por el reconocido periodista Luis María Anson, en el diario El Mundo de España, hace unos días.”

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

“Newspapers are like revolvers: You keep them around so you can pull them out when it’s time to open fire.” — Julio Mario Santo Domingo

Item: ¡Qué machera la de Chávez!

Political columnist “D’Artagnan” of El Tiempo (Bogota) defends the validity of reporting on rumors.

File under

• “Rumors: Voices That Insinuate”

In this case, the rumor that Hugo Chávez says, as Crassus (Lawrence Olivier) insinuates to the Greek slave Antoninus (Tony Curtis) in Stanley Kubrick’s great Spartacus:

My taste includes both snails and oysters.

The front-page callout to the column: “Chávez and Homosexuality: An Ever More Insistent Rumor.”

Con su sexto sentido, ya son varias las venezolanas que lo repiten insistentemente: el Presidente de Venezuela es lo que aquí denominamos, con tanta gracia, de doble ojal. ¿Bisexual?

Using their sixth sense, quite a few Venezuelans are repeating insistently: The president of Venezuela is what we call hear, with such great wit, [a two-way hole(?)]. Is he bisexual?

Plays for the other team. A switch-hitter. That sort of thing.

No pocos dirán que se trata de un vil chisme y, peor aún, que recoger ese tipo de infundios carece de todo rigor profesional. Otros alegarán que eso resulta increíble, pues si lo que Chávez ha demostrado de sobra son actitudes de chafarote, constituye un imposible físico que alguien presumiblemente tan macho y corpulento tenga preferencias homosexuales.

Many will say this is nothing more than a vile rumor and, worse still, that picking up on this type of malicious rumor is a complete lack of professionalism.

The needle on my NMM-Tabajara signal-to-noise meter immediately snaps to the hard right, pegging out in the red (“Diogo Mainardi” or “vicious stupidity”) zone.

The NMMTSTNM® recommends that I stop reading immediately because I am being crudely bullshitted. The NMMTSTNM® is not infallible, of course, but it serves me reasonably well in my quest not to believe in too many nonexistent factoids or get overexcited about too many gabbling trivialities.

Others will argue that this rumor is not credible, given that, if it true that Chávez has amply demonstrated [how handy he is with a cavalry sabre [?]], it would be physically impossible for someone presumably as macho and full-figured as he is to have homosexual tendencies.

“Brazilian Yellow Jack is Back”: Cyclical or Apocalyptic?

Yellow fever cases reported, Brazil, 1980-2006. Source: WHO. Chart by NMM-Tabajara Boring Infographics Labs. I am not sure whether 2005 and 2006 represent zero cases or simply a lack of data. A definite zero is reported for 2001. Click to zoom.

How bad is this year’s bump in sylvatic yellow fever cases in Brazil? How shocking? How afraid should we be?

An 8th confirmed death from the disease has been announced, and a ninth awaits confirmation. O Globo reports 12 confirmed cases so far. The Ministry of Health reports 31 cases of people getting sick from overdosing on the vaccine.

News coverage here in Brazil focuses on the rise in the number of cases over the same period last year, but is the rise from one year to the next itself anomalous?

I was listening to an interview with a monkey scientist the other, for example — I cannot remember where, but it was not on one of the main news channels — who said that the disease tends to ebb and flow among monkey populations because of breeding patterns.

The more monkeys that get sick, the greater the risk to humans. Monkey survivors of previous monkey die-offs acquire immunity, so the disease tends to ebb until those survivor monkeys breed, producing non-immune junior monkeys.

Something like that. The guy was saying outbreaks tend to be cyclical for that reason.

Is that true? Have there been previous notable bumps in the disease? And how did the press cover them at the time?

I do not have time to thoroughly research that question, but someone probably should.

And I did find this in the archives of the Terra Brasil news portal, for example, from 2001: Mortes por febre-amarela cresceram 116% em 2000.

O número de mortes por febre amarela no Brasil aumentou 116% no ano 2000 em relação a 1999. Segundo estatísticas da Fundação Nacional de Saúde (Funasa), foram registrados 39 óbitos no ano passado, contra 18 mortes em 1999. A Funasa alerta que todos os brasileiros que viajam para a Amazônia e o Centro-Oeste devem se vacinar pelo menos uma vez a cada dez anos, período de validade da vacina.

The number of deaths from yellow fever in Brazil grew 116% in 2000 in relation to 1999. According to statistics from the National Health Foundation (Funasa), 39 deaths were registered last year compare with 18 in 1999. Funasa warns that all Brazilian who travel to Amazônia and the Mid-West should vaccinate themselves at least once every ten years, the effective life of the vaccine.

I would make that 117%, rounding up in the usual way from 116.666%.

Most deaths tend coincide with the rainy season, from January to March.

“Difficulties of a Beancounting Terminologist”

The Accounting Review, December 1941.

Financial translators generally have years of experience in the business world prior to taking up translation. Unfortunately, even the best of them haven’t worked at every company in every industry. What’s more, they are restricted by the fact that terms vary greatly, even within the same language, country or industry. And there is just no convenient way of translating something that simply doesn’t exist yet in another country’s economic reality (any Americans out there ever have a ‘postal checking account’? Or preference shares issued to the government upon nationalization?). Financial translation is an art, not a science. –Zen and the art of multilingual financial reporting

This is precisely the big, fat hairy problem that is bugging me these days:

Language, translation and the problem of international accounting communication.

Author: Evans, Lisa
Journal: Accounting, Auditing & Accountability Journal
Pub.: 2004
Volume: 17
Issue: 2
Pages: 210(39)
ISSN: 09513574
Subject: ACCOUNTING; COMMUNICATION; TERMS & phrases; TRANSLATIONS

Description: Language : English AN : 13613413 The use of technical terms to communicate accounting information can lead to misunderstandings when the meaning of such terms is not fully appreciated by the recipient of the information. The discipline of translation studies suggests that full equivalence in translation between languages is rare. This suggests that the risk of misunderstanding is exacerbated when technical terms are translated into another language. This paper examines the implications of mistranslations of technical terms in the context of theories from linguistics, which suggest that language influences the way we think. It uses three examples of accounting terminology to illustrate these problems. It concludes that the choice of an inappropriate label in the translation of accounting terminology is detrimental to international accounting communication and creates problems for users and preparers of translated financial statements as well as for researchers in, and students of international accounting and for those involved in harmonisation and standardisation of accounting.

Rio: Life Imitates the Globo Soap Some More

“… In truth, the soap opera depicts the international fashion for pole-dancing … Such themes [current fashions, inserted into works of fiction] are inevitable if one is to depict contemporary society, with the proviso, of course, that they be treated ethically and seriously, exactly as TV GLOBO is doing in its soap opera DUAS CARAS.”

I am for obscenity and against pornography. Obscenity is a cleansing process, whereas pornography only adds to the murk. –Henry Miller, in George Plimpton, Writers at Work (1963)

Women: Down with sexism! Down with sexism!
Man 1: Look at all those feminists.
Man 2: Are you thinking what I’m thinking? [they both reach for bottles of beer, shake them up, and spray the foam on the protesters. This magically turns them into bikini-clad party animals.]
Both Men: Yeah! Yes! All right!
–Duff beer commercial, The Simpsons, February 1993 (Episode 9F14)

From the Extra daily (Globo) of Rio de Janeiro today, more “life imitates cheesy soap operas” — also known as the Larry Rohter meme — cross-promotion for the soap opera Duas Caras (“two faces, two guys”).

The soap has recovered some its audience, leveraging the controversy over the “pole dance” episode, averaging some 40 points — still well short of the 66 points (the dreadful) América commanded at its peak just a handful of years ago.

Extra invites us to check out the real-life Déboras who sell snacks and drinks on the Rio beaches!

Débora, if you have not kept up with the plot, helped Bernardo sell beer on the beach by promising all of Bernardo’s customers she would show them her tits if business was good.

Business was good.

Débora kept her word and showed Bernardo’s customers her tits. Whereupon Bernardo’s jealous wife Amara followed suit.

See

• Globo: “Débora Shows the World Her Golden Globos as Titty-Bar Explodes!”
• O Tempora, O Mores: The Moral Seriousness of a Globo Soap

Rio: “Whacking a Major Pain For the Man With the Van Was Planned”

Underground Rio van service vehicle, loaded with black-clad corpses wearing combat boots. See Rio de Janeiro: “Carobinha Death Toll Reaches 10″

Transporte alternativo irregular: milícia tramou morte de major: “Underground alternative transport news: Militia plotted to kill police major”

Extra (Rio de Janeiro, Brazil) reports.

RIO – A Polícia Civil e a Corregedoria da Polícia Militar descobriram um plano de assassinato de um major da PM que, lotado no Departamento de Transportes Rodoviários do Estado (Detro), é encarregado de reprimir o transporte alternativo irregular. Segundo informações passadas ao Disque-Denúncia (2253-1177) e ao presidente do órgão, Rogério Onofre, o oficial, não identificado por razões de segurança, seria executado por policiais de uma milícia que explora veículos piratas.

The state judicial police and the military police internal affairs division have discovered a plan to assassinate a military police major who, assigned to the state transportation department (Detro), is in charge of cracking down on irregular transportation services. According to information received by the anonymous tip hotline and Detro president Rogério Onofre, the officer — whose name was not given for reasons of security — was to be executed by policemen from a militia that operates pirate transportation services.

There is nothing funny about the ongoing “van wars,” which may well have nasty synergies with other “wars” in recent years, such as the “nickel-hunter [one-armed bandit] wars” and the “drug wars” and the political trenches. On which see also

• Rio: “Batman Had a Plan for the Van”

Extra had reported that evidence exists linking a Rio city councilmember and alleged militia warlord — if we may introduce that colorful term for elected officials whose mandate may rest on a “vote Quimby or my friend here will blow your brains out” campaign strategy — to this illegal business.

Moral Panic Notes: Further on the Great Yellow Jack Attack of 2008

Jornal do Trem: Cheerfully amateurish little free weekly covers the Great “Yellow Jack is Back!” Panic of 2008. “On the wings of the fever: “Authorities try to contain the alarm of the population which fears a general epidemic of yellow fever.”

Moral crusades advance claims about both the gravity and incidence of a particular problem. They typically rely on horror stories and “atrocity tales” about victims in which the most shocking exemplars of victimization are described and typified. Casting the problem in highly dramatic terms by recounting the plight of highly traumatized victims is intended to alarm the public and policy makers and justify draconian solutions. At the same time, inflated claims are made about the magnitude of the problem. A key feature of many moral crusades is that the imputed scale of a problem … far exceeds what is warranted by the available evidence. — Ronald Weitzer, “The Social Construction of Sex Trafficking: Ideology and Institutionalization of a Moral Crusade,” Politics Society 2007; 35; 447

Too often, it is the media-created event to which people respond rather than the objective situation itself, as was the case when media provoked anxiety resulted in massive public rejection of food products reported as potentially related to an outbreak. Development of new approaches in mass communication, most recently the Internet, increase the ability to enhance outbreaks through communication. –Boss, Leslie P., “Epidemic Hysteria: A Review of the Published Literature” in Epidemiologic Reviews, Vol. 19, No. 2.

Ministério diz que 31 pessoas estão internadas por superdosagem (G1/Globo, Brazil): The Ministry of Health warns of ill effects from taking unnecesary doses of yellow fever vaccine. Cases of “overdose” has hospitalized 31, it announces.

Coverage of the yellow fever “outbreak” provides yet another case study in the propensity of the major Brazilian news media for “moral panic” journalism.

It was interesting to compare coverage of this health alert, for example, with the coverage of risk assessments of an energy shortage, caused by low rainfall and consequent depletion this year by the likes of Globo’s Miriam Leitão on GloboNews the other evening.

Leitão, on her program teaser: “The government says there is no risk of rolling blackouts. But that’s not true!”

“The government lies about everything!”

But as far as I can tell — and you have to dig critically on your own to get a fair picture of the situation — the government is not saying there is no risk of blackout. No risk manager in their right would ever say there is absolutely no risk of anything. Leitão seems to be engaging in a cheap straw-man argument. As usual.

The goddamn gummint, as far as I can see, is saying that it finds that the risk of blackouts are within its target parameters in some regions, but higher than its target parameters in some areas, and that it is using these assessments to decided whether or not, and when, to turn on the supplementary generation capacity offered by a network of fossil fuel-powered plants.

There have been some interesting articles on alternative analyses of the situation — most of them reflecting the point of view of industries who see their fuel and energy costs rise when cogeneration plants add demand to the market.

Legitimate analyses to consider, so long as they parties sponsoring them are identified and their stake in the game is made clear. These are parties that stand to lose more if risks materialize, and so are understandably in favor of tighter risk margins.
But in the end, we simply ignored the Leitão teaser and did not watch the show.

Miriam Leitão, we tend to find, does not know what the hell she is talking about, or care to know, but tends to screech her opinions very loudly into the gazillion jigawatt megaphone anyway. Like some sort of human cockatoo. See, for example,

• O Globo: “Chávez Won the Referendum Because He Manipulated the System!”

Uncle Hugo did not win the referendum.

Ecce Globo. Which is not to say that there are not signs of intelligent life at the Organizações Capivara. This yellow fever FAQ from the G1 news portal, for example, seems reasonably well done.

I really think keeping a close eye on the original reporting that G1 produces — as opposed to the toxic content it merely aggregates and recycles — provides a useful indicator of the future direction of Globo journalism.

I think the people doing that sort of work on the Globo news portal should probably be given TV programs and newspapers to run, once Globo fires Ali Kamel (and Miriam Leitão) with extreme prejudice.

In the meantime, I thought the funky little free paper they hand out to commuters on CPTM commuter line here in São Paulo illustrated both the positive and negative tendencies of press coverage of the yellow fever panic here rather neatly.

From the Money Laundering Files: Schenectady Hawala Blues

This is the CENTRAL SCRUTINIZER …
That was Joe’s first confrontation with The Law.
Naturally, we were easy on him.
One of our friendly counselors gave him
A donut … and told him to
Stick closer to church-oriented social activities
–Frank Zappa, Joe’s Garage, Act I, Scene II

Desperate nerds in high offices all over the world have been known to enact the most disgusting pieces of legislation in order to win votes (or, in places where they don’t get to vote, to control unwanted forms of mass behavior). –Ibid., Act I, Prelude

One of the most interesting Google News Alerts programmed into the unpatented NMM open source Bloomberg box” (Google News Alerts + Gmail, basically) is a standing search on the term “hawala.”

Empire State News, for example, had this recently: A Schenectady man busted for running an informal remittances program that sent disembodied fundage over the Internets to the Sudan.

Although the focus on hawalas is part of the GWOT, no terrorism ties are charged in this case.

Albany – The New York State Police Special Investigations Unit in conjunction with the Albany Joint Terrorism Task Force, the FBI, the New York State Office of Tax Enforcement Criminal Investigations Division and the Attorney General’s Organized Crime Task Force arrested Osman Osman, 51, of 32 Elm Street , Schenectady, NY for Enterprise Corruption and Unlicensed Money Transmitter.

Multicultural Consulting Note: A Search For the End to a Notorious Mutual Incomprehensiveness

My future consulting work for a New York-based intercontinental IR consultancy seems like it will have mainly to do with unfortunate intercontinental ballistic misunderstandings (ICBMs) like the above. Eliminating them to the degree possible.

Better, perhaps, off the top of my head:

The quest for convergence to international accounting standards

Sampa Diary: Blue Line Doesn’t Run on Time

Outside the trains don’t run on time
He believes it’s not coincidence
–Gang of Four

Linha Azul do Metrô pára após pane em trem na Estação Paraíso: “Blue Line stops running after train [breaks down] in Paraíso station.”

Paraíso and Ana Rosa jointly you Brooklynites can sort of think of as the Atlantic Terminal of São Paulo. It’s a significant secondary transfer point from the north-south corridor to the Green Line east-west corridor, which is what we generally take (we live near the Vila Madalena station).

SÃO PAULO - A Linha 1-Azul do Metrô está praticamente parada desde às 7h25 desta sexta-feira, 18, depois de uma composição quebrar entre as estações Ana Rosa e Paraíso. A linha faz a ligação entre o Jabaquara e o Tucuruvi - entre a zona sul e a zona norte da capital - e não há previsão para o problema ser normalizado, segundo o Metrô. Esta é a quarta vez, nos últimos 13 dias, que um defeito em linha prejudica os passageiros do metrô de São Paulo.

Line 1 (Blue Line) of the São Paulo subway system has been practically at a standstill since 7:25 am after a train broke down between Ana Rosa and Paraíso stations. The line connects Jabaquara and Tucuruvi, in the southern and northern zones, respectively, and there is no estimate on when normal service will be restored, according to the Metrô authority. This is the fourth time in 13 days that a malfunction has inconvenienced subway passengers in the city. 

São Paulo: “Of 7 Death-Squad Cases Last Year, 4 of the 8 (or 9) Death-Squad Cases Last Year Were Solved”

Accounting for corpses: The local press often has trouble counting higher than one.

In 2007, the Zona Norte registered 7 of the 13 “massacres” that occurred in the city. At least 34 persons were killed in this way in the area — in the entire city, the toll was 58. Of the 8 “massacres” that took place in the Zona Norte, 4 were solved by an investigation run by PM internal affairs and the regional command. In all 4 cases, PMs were involved, and were arrested.

Coronel morto em SP investigava atuação de seus subordinados em chacinas: Col. Rodrigues of the military police was investigating the involvement of subordinates in death-squad killings. The Folha reports.

Other sources — we heard this on the TV news — report he had also punished subordinates for taking bribes to protect the gambling rackets. The press coverage today is silent on that factoid. Is it true?

A polícia de São Paulo busca pistas que levem aos assassinos do coronel José Hermínio Rodrigues, 48, morto a tiros, quarta-feira (16). Rodrigues era chefe do Comando de Policiamento Metropolitano 3, responsável pelos 5º, 9º, 18º e 43º Batalhões da PM, na zona norte da cidade.

São Paulo police are looking for clues that will lead them to the murderers of Col. Rodrigues, shot to death on Wednesday. Rodrigues led the Third Metropolitan Patrol Command, responsible for the Fifth, Ninth, Eighteenth and Forty-Third Military Police Battalions in the northern district of the city.

Quando assumiu o comando do policiamento da região, o coronel passou a participar das investigações sobre o suposto envolvimento de seus subordinados em chacinas e na atuação de grupos de extermínio.

Upon assuming command of patrolling in the region, he took part in investigations about the alleged involvement of subordinates in “massacres” and participation in death squads.

Em 2007, a zona norte registrou 7 das 13 chacinas ocorridas na cidade. Pelo menos 34 pessoas foram assassinadas na região dessa forma –na cidade, foram 58 mortes.

In 2007, the Zona Norte registered 7 of the 13 “massacres” that occurred in the city. At least 34 persons were killed in this way in the area — in the entire city, the toll was 58.

“At least 34?”

Das oito chacinas na zona norte, quatro foram esclarecidas em uma investigação com a participação da Corregedoria da PM e do comando regional. Em todas havia a participação de PMs, que foram presos.

Of the 8 “massacres” that took place in the Zona Norte, 4 were solved by an investigation run by PM internal affairs and the regional command. In all 4 cases, PMs were involved, and were arrested.

“Of 7 death-squad cases, 4 of the 8 death-squad cases were cleared”? Perhaps they mean last year’s (officially reported) cases, plus this first incident of 2008.

Último Segundo, meanwhile, has this backgrounder today:

As nove chacinas ocorridas desde janeiro de 2007 fazem da zona norte de São Paulo a região com maior número de casos no Estado. Só os números da parte norte da capital representam 30% dos casos ocorridos em todo território paulista. As informações são do jornal “Folha de S. Paulo”

The nine “massacres” that have taken place in the Northern Zone of São Paulo makes it the area with the largest number of cases in the state. The numbers from the northern district of the capital city represent 30% of the cases statewide, reports the Folha de S. Paulo.

On one such case, and how it was “cleared,” see

• “I Am Death”: No Proof
• “I Am Death”: 20 Police Probed in São Paulo Death Squad Case

The Assassination of Col. Rodrigues: The Animated Version

The colonel lies in a pool of blood beside his mountain bike. Source: Último Segundo

“This was an execution. This was a death-squad member, without a doubt, based on the way it was done. I think this line of investigation should get top priority,” said state police ombudsman Funari.

Investigação sobre morte de coronel termina em troca de tiros (“Investigation into death of colonel ends with shots exchanged”): Globo and other national TV news programs covered the story extensively.

Globo’s coverage was based heavily on the use of (bad, Second Life-style) computer simulations of the event, as is its habit.

Uma denúncia sobre o paradeiro dos assassinos do Coronel José Hermínio Rodrigues levou a polícia a uma rua, na Zona Norte de São Paulo. Ao ver os PMs, dois homens teriam entrado numa casa. Houve troca de tiros. Um suspeito foi morto e o outro fugiu. Ainda não foi confirmado o envolvimento deles no assassinato do coronel.

A tip received about the location of the murderers of Col. Rodrigues led police to a street in the Northern Zone of São Paulo. On catching sight of the military policemen, two men reportedly entered a house. There was an exchange of gunfire. One suspect was killed and another fled. Their involvement in the assassination of the colonel has not been confirmed.

Último Segundo has this, meanwhile:

SÃO PAULO – Júlio César Derrotta Salume, de 18 anos, foi morto por policiais militares na tarde desta quinta-feira em uma ação que buscava suspeitos do assassinato do coronel José Hermínio Rodrigues, nesta quarta-feira.

Júlio César Derrotta Salume, 18, was killed by military police on Thursday afternoon during a police action seeking suspects in the assassination of Col. Rodrigues on Wednesday.

Segundo Jorge Elias Francisco, delegado titular do 40º DP, ao ser abordado, Julio Cesar disparou contra os policiais militares. No revide da Rota, ele acabou sendo atingido e morreu no local. A ação ocorreu em uma casa na Rua Sarita, no Jardim Primavera.

According to the precinct commander of the 40th DP, when approached, Julio Cesar fired on the military police. When ROTA fired back, he wound up being struck and died at the scene. The action took place in a house on Sarita St. in the Jardim Primavera.

Resistance followed by death, in other words.

Globo states categorically that shots were exchanged, without sourcing that statement.

US attributes that statement to an official police source, who is apparently basing his statement on reports from the military policemen involved. Policemen from ROTA.

In other words, US helps you to understand that this is double hearsay. Neither presents interviewswith independent eyewitnesses at the scene (which, I will grant you, is not an easy thing to do in such cases).

On ROTA, see also

• “São Paulo’s Trooper Elite”: The Estadão on ROTA

São Paulo: Who Gunned Down Col. Rodrigues And Shot Up the Bad Boy Bar?

Bangue-bangue at the Bad Boy bar, Zona Norte. Source: GloboNews

Sangue, sangue, sangue
Vejam só este jornal
Verdadeiro hospital
Porta voz do bangue-bangue
Da polícia central.
–Miguel Gustavo, “Jornal da Morte”

Serra confirmed that a hit-squad murder is one of the theories of the crime, given that the colonel was conducting investigations into military police ties with criminals.

Col. Rodrigues was in charge of investigating the involvement of military police in massacres in the Northern Zone of the city.

Serra lamenta morte de coronel e defende punição rigorosa: The governor of São Paulo issues a statement on the assassination of the military police commander for the northern region of the city.

Military police sources quickly attributed the colonel’s death to an attempted robbery.

The state judicial police have not ruled out assassination by military police, in part because of the commander’s inquiries into relationships between military police and criminal groups.

And in part because a witness reportedly said the assassin was wearing combat boots. See

• São Paulo Police Blotter: “The Colonel’s Killer Wore Combat Boots”

SÃO PAULO – O governador de São Paulo, José Serra, lamentou nesta quinta-feira, 17, o assassinato do coronel da Polícia Militar José Hermínio Rodrigues, que comandava o policiamento da zona norte da capital paulista. Serra defendeu que os responsáveis sejam punidos de forma rigorosa. “Eu conhecia o coronel, tinha relações de amizade com ele. Era um homem sério, competente, decente, voltado à segurança das pessoas, que foi assassinado de maneira fria”, disse ele.

Governor Serra lamented the assassination of Col. Rodrigues, chief of policing for the northern zone of the capital city. Serra called for those responsible to be punished severely. “I knew the colonel, I had a friendship with him. He was a serious, competent, decent man, dedicated to other people’s safety, and was murdered in cold blood,” he said.

São Paulo Police Blotter: “The Colonel’s Killer Wore Combat Boots”

PM é suspeito por morte de comandante da polícia: “Military policeman is suspected in death of police commander.”

A Polícia Civil investiga a hipótese de homicídio na morte do comandante do policiamento da Zona Norte de São Paulo, coronel José Hermínio Rodrigues. Ele foi executado com pelo menos seis tiros, a maioria na cabeça, no final da manhã desta quarta-feira (16). Inicialmente, a Polícia Militar (PM) cogitou a possibilidade de uma tentativa de roubo. Mas a Polícia Civil tem entre as várias hipóteses investigadas uma possível execução praticada por um policial militar.

The state judicial police of São Paulo are investigating the possibility of murder in the death of a police commander, Col. Hermínio Rodrigues, in the northern district of the city. He was executed with at least six shots, most in the head, in the late morning today. Initially, the military police was considering the possibility of a robbery attempt, but the state judicial police are including the theory of an execution carried out by a military policeman.

O comandante era considerado rígido e pode ter sido alvo de vingança. De acordo com informações da Polícia Militar, Rodrigues foi assassinado após ser abordado na Avenida Engenheiro Caetano Álvares, região do Mandaqui, por homens que estavam em motos. Segundo a PM, o comandante andava de bicicleta quando foi cercado pelos criminosos.

The commander was considered “strict” and may have been targeted for revenge.