I Read It in Terra Magazine: “Rohter Floats Lusophone Memoir”

“One of the weirdest things about Brazilian journalism is the fact that it still lends credence to what U.S. newspapers, and especially the New York Times, have to say about this country.” –Kenneth Maxwell, in an op-ed in the Folha de S. Paulo
Além da cachaça no New York Times: Victor Hugo Soares of Terra Magazine [...]

Dantas’ Inferno: From Doleiros to Debentures

Port privatization has led to cartelization and a drag on exports, exporters claim.

Dantas lavou dinheiro no porto de Santos, acusa PF: Daniel Dantas laundered money through the Port of Santos, charges federal police. The Folha de S. Paulo continues to leak out the final federal police report in the case against the Bahia-born, MIT-trained investment [...]

Bait and Switch: The Battle of the Madeira River Is Fought on Astroturf

The Painel column of the Folha de S. Paulo today provides a classic case study in “astroturf” campaigning and “greenwashing” –if the item is true.
Sourcewatch has a good article on the practice in question:
Campaigns & Elections magazine defines astroturf as a “grassroots program that involves the instant manufacturing of public support for a point of [...]

Dantas’ Inferno: “The Umbrella Agreement and the Ratfinking of Judge Cunha”

Veja magazine, March 2002: “The Dossier Wars: Politicians and spies have set up a slander industry in Brazil.” This is absolutely true, and Veja itself is that industry’s McDonnell-Douglas.

A spurious dossier began to spread around Rio according to which she had bought a deluxe apartment in Ipanema. Strange persons began hanging around the building where [...]

“When the Emperor of Ice Cream Has No Disclose”: Brazilian Industry Self-Regulator Issues Disclosure Guidelines

From my pile of discarded outtakes from the Sambodian newsflow of the day: the Valor Econômico business daily reports that a financial services industry group I have never heard of before has proposed clearer, stricter guidelines on disclosure to investors.
I translate to file (hastily) for personal edification and future reference. The Brazilian capital markets have [...]

Dantas’ Inferno: FENAJ To Defend The Integrity of Brazilian Journalism

Daniel Valente Dantas. Graphic: Veja magazine, May 2006, when it reported: “Daniel Dantas has a list that may show illegal offshore bank accounts controlled by the president and party bigwigs.” Veja had plenty of evidence that “almost certainly does not” was the word to use instead of “may.” A stellar example of unquestionable integrity from [...]

Brazilian E-Elections: Fraud Goes Down in Maranhão?

Our voting machines have been tested by prestigious U.S. universities to see if they could be used in elections there. They did not pass the security test.
Jornal da Band: Urna Eletrônica (YouTube): According to the evening newscast of the Bandeirantes network, in a report aired on Tuesday, voters in Caxias, in [...]

DMG: Uribe’s GotterDaMmerunG?

El terremoto DMG: “The earthquake that is the DMG scandal.”
El Tiempo (Bogotá) editorializes today.
Las impactantes imágenes de los saqueos y quemas de oficinas ayer en Mocoa resumen la explosiva situación que ha generado el desplome de las ‘pirámides’. Mientras uno de los más fuertes inviernos azota con fiereza a la mitad del país, las repercusiones [...]

Mexico: “The High-Tech Lynching of the Teacher’s Pet?”

…in the case file there appear photocopies of some 30 credentials that Martínez Rocha was carrying the moment of his arrest; one identifies him as a member of the PFP police intelligence division, while the other 29, according to investigators, were to be sold off in order to credential Sinaloa cartel employees as police officers. [...]

Odebrecht in Ecuador: “The Risks of Privatized Diplomacy”

The Great Smoking Hole of December 2006, at the future Pinheiros Station, Yellow Line, São Paulo subway.

A perigosa diplomacia das empreiteiras: The journalist and historian Elio Gaspari comments in today’s O Globo on the diplomatic incident with Ecuador.
Have you read about this? It involves an allegedly half-assed job delivered by Construtora Norberto Odebrecht in the [...]