Rio: “Batman For Senate”

Delegado diz que milícia lançaria candidatos ao Senado e a uma prefeitura do Rio: Extra (Globo) reports on last week’s testimony from the head of the 35th Police Precinct in Campo Grande, in the city of Rio de Janeiro, on the activities of cops who run paramilitary pizzo protection rackets in his jurisdiction.
Press coverage of [...]

“VarigLog Cannot Be Shot Down Just Yet”

Dilma Rousseff, Minister of the Casa Civil. The “dossier” scandal and “tapioca” scandal have fizzled, but the Varig scandal — a by-product of the “chaos in the skies” scandal — is bigger, and the fuse is lit!
Liminar impede Anac de cassar concessão da VarigLog: “Injunction prevents federal civil aviation authority from suspending concession of VarigLog [...]

Tropical Steampunk: To Paranapiacaba By Rodoanel

Tropical Steampunk: To Paranapiacaba By Rodoanel

Correction: The actual dateline should be July 6, 2008. I get those J months mixed up, and time sure does fly when you are having tropical fun.
Net Serviços broadband sucks. Only Guatemalan broadband sucks worse, and I bet you Carlos Slim owns that, too. Haitian broadband [...]

Nelson Rodrigues: High Melodrama and The Snickering Neighbors

The Drummonds: Tropical kings of the Corinthians.
“Senhora dos Afogados, by Antunes Filho” — Digestivo Cultural (São Paulo) reviews the play we saw the other evening, “Our Lady of the Drowned,” by Nelson Rodrigues, produced and directed by Antunes Filho of Teatro Macunaíma.
Teatro Macunaima being one of the redeeming signs of intelligent life in the southeastern [...]

Brazilian Real Estate Development: Ghost Condos in the Sky

CartaCapital this week has an interesting note on the Brazilian real estate sector, though it does not figure in the content available on the weekly’s Web site.
The gist of it is that after raising a huge amount of capital through IPOs last year, the outsized, overweighted Brazilian real estate development sector may be turning into [...]

“What’s Bad For Globo Is Good For Brazil”

As part of my note-taking on the Brazilian media wars, I have been collecting documents recently on House Bill 29.
The measure’s remarkable tramitação through the Brazilian congress — it was originally proposed by opposition Sen. Jorge Bornhausen as a bill removing any and all barriers to foreign ownership of Brazilian broadcasters and content producers, before [...]

“Risk of More Internet Blackouts in Brazil”: Universalization Guru

Vigilante consumerdom: angry Argentines spank the Spaniards. Source: Iconoclastas
Elvira Lobato of the Folha de S. Paulo interviews a former Anatel offical in charge of universalization about the recent “Internet blackout” suffered by the state of São Paulo, which brought e-government and enterprise networks crashing down and — despite what Telefônica initially claimed — left home [...]

“I am (not) a rent-a-blogger!”

Eu não sou blogueiro de aluguel: I am not a rent-a-blogger!
Global Voices Online points out a manifesto recently published by a group of Tupi DYI publishers to denounce undisclosed conflicts of interest and stealth marketing among the Lusophone bloggerati of the Southern Cone.
The problem, of course, is not necessarily being for rent. This is not [...]