Dantas’ Paradise: “Spy Shop Gets a Venue-Swap”

E Dantas leva mais uma…: Score another one for Daniel Valente Dantas, reports Terra Magazine (Brazil)

Daniel Dantas se livrou de mais uma na Justiça. No último dia 28 de outubro, a desembargadora Cecília Mello e a segunda turma do Tribunal Regional Federal da 3.ª Região, em São Paulo, decidiram, por iniciativa própria, enterrar uma parte importante da Operação Chacal.

Daniel Dantas has gotten out of another scrape with the law. On October 28, Judge Cecilia Mello and the Second Chamber of the Regional Federal Court for the Third Region in São Paulo decided unilaterally to bury an important part of the Operation Jackal case.

O leitor de Terra Magazine deve se lembrar: Operação Chacal foi aquela realizada pela Polícia Federal em 2004 e que indiciou Daniel Dantas e outros por crimes de quebra de sigilo, divulgação de segredo, corrupção ativa e passiva, receptação, quadrilha, quebra de sigilo telefônico… Espionagem, enfim.

The reader will probably recall that Jackal was that federal police operation from 2004 in which Dantas and others were indicted for invasion of privacy, breach of confidentiality, active and passive corruption, receiving, criminal conspiracy, invasion of communications … of spying, in short.

Denúncia acolhida, o processo correu por quatro anos na Justiça Federal de São Paulo.

Accepted for trial, the case has been dragging on for four years in a São Paulo federal court.

Eis que, no final de outubro último, decidem encerrar o caso (ou parte dele) de maneira, no mínimo, surpreendente.

In October, however, they decided to close the case (or part of it) in a suprising manner, to say the least.

Sem delongas, a decisão: “A Segunda Turma, por unanimidade, de ofício, concedeu ordem de ‘Habeas Corpus’ para reconhecer a incompetência da Justiça Federal para julgar o presente feito e para declarar a nulidade dos atos decisórios da ação penal nº 2005.61.81.002929-6, inclusive o recebimento da denúncia, determinando o encaminhamento da ação penal à Justiça Estadual do Estado de São Paulo; tornando sem efeito a liminar anteriormente deferida e julgando prejudicada a impetração (RELATOR P/ACORDÃO: DES.FED. CECILIA MELLO) (EM 28.10.2008 )”.

Without further delay, the court … unanimously and de oficio grants habeas corpus, acknowledging the lack of competence of the federal court to hear the present case, including the recognition of the charge, and determines that the case be forwarded to the state court of São Paulo …

“The Bugger Was Veja’s Source on Bug”: Rumor

OCULAR PROOF OF THE IMPENDING APOCALYPSE: “They are watching us. Even the Presidency and the Supreme Court suspect they have been targeted for espionage. No one is safe. This is the end of privacy in Brazil.” Below the dek: a facsimile of the leaked report by Supreme Court security (full-size available to subscribers only.) The federal justice minister said he does not think the Presidency is being spied on by the police or ABIN. The Brazilian spy agency called Veja’s reporting “irresponsible,” in a press release. Source: Veja.com

Ricardo Noblat of O Globo Online — the Rio de Janeiro daily’s designated blogger and preferred online point of entry to the more viciously slanted parts of the paper’s news coverage has this humdinger of an unsourced rumor today:

O ministro-chefe do Gabinete de Segurança Institucional, general Jorge Felix, já identificou o araponga da Agência Brasileira de Inteligência que grampeou a conversa travada por telefone entre o ministro Gilmar Mendes, presidente do Supremo Tribunal Federal, e o senador Demóstenes Torres (DEM-GO). Trata-se do mesmo araponga que entregou à revista VEJA a transcriação da conversa.

The head of the executive branch’s Institutional Security Office (GSI), Gen. Jorge Felix, has now identified the spy from the Brazilian National Intelligence Agency (ABIN) who bugged the telephone conversation between Chief Justice Mendes and Sen. Torres (PFL-Goiás). It was the same spy who turned over the transcript of the conversation to Veja magazine.

ABIN is subordinated to the GSI, which makes Gen. Felix its boss.

This would be a fascinating development, if true.

Veja‘s infamous cover story on the incident was a classic “moral panic” campaign, calculated to provoke outrage in its readers over the suspicion that vast, shadowy forces might be out there bugging anyone and everyone, up and down the line and right, left and center.

“No one is safe.”  Be afraid. Be very, very afraid. The Police State knows exactly what kind of pizza you are ordering (four-cheese+pepperoni) from La Gallega, and how many times a week! It sees you when you’re sleeping! It knows when you’re awake! It knows if you’ve been bad or good, so be good for goodness’s sake!

See

• Veja: “Dantas Habeas Corpus Judge Was Bugged by Thugs!”
• Tupi Spies: Veja Lies

Wouldn’t it be peculiar if the honest citizen who, fed up with these abuses, came forward to denounce the thuggery of this tropical COINTELPRO was also the thug in question?

Dantas’ Inferno: “One End Was Moo, the Other Money”

PONDEROSA IN PARÁ: Cattle ranch in Eldorado de Carajás said to have been used as a money-laundering front. The ranch was invaded at one point by MST members protesting the alleged impunity of the Bahian banker, Daniel Dantas. Source: G1 (Globo)

The cow is of the bovine ilk
One end is moo, the other milk
–Ogden Nash

Analysis of the Dantas’ Inferno case today from the Folha de S. Paulo — whose turn it is to leak the federal police report from the next phase in a series of investigations into alleged bribery, fraud and money-laundering by the Brazilian investment banker (also on trial in a previous case involving industrial espionage and illegal wiretapping).

See also

• Dantas’ Inferno: New Clues Ooze From “Rigorous Secrecy”

Dantas says in his defense that he is the victim of massive, conspiratorial political persecution.

Esqueça as idéias grandiloquentes de conspiração e o apelo de chamar banqueiro de “capo” (chefe mafioso) -características que contribuíram para tornar folclórico o inquérito do delegado Protógenes Queiroz sobre a Operação Satiagraha. O novo relatório da Polícia Federal sobre Daniel Dantas é seco como um artigo do Código Penal. Em vez de teorias e especulações, o delegado Ricardo Saadi se concentra em descrever os crimes principais que a PF atribui ao banqueiro: gestão fraudulenta e lavagem de dinheiro.

Forget the grandiose notions of conspiracy and the slanted manner of referring to the banker as a mafia “capo” — qualities that contributed to the folkloric quality of Queiroz’s report in the Satyagraha (Dantas) case. The new federal police report on Daniel Dantas is as dry in style as a paragraph from the Penal Code. Rather than theories or speculations, investigator Ricardo Saadi has concentrated on describing the principal crimes attributed to the banker: fraud and money-laundering.

O relatório de 243 páginas e cinco anexos foi entregue gravado em CD na última sexta-feira ao juiz federal Fausto Martin De Sanctis, da 6ª Vara Federal Criminal de São Paulo, e está agora com o Ministério Público Federal.

The 243-page report, with five appendices, was delivered on a CD last Friday to federal judge De Sanctis and is now in the hands of the federal prosecutor.

Business and economics pundit Luis Nassif has a commentary today on the fritura — defamation campaign — supposedly being mounted against the judge in the press. He seems to have a cogent point. See, for example

• The Authoritarian Temptation of Dr. Fausto: “Dantas Judge Is Nazi-Inspired”

No documento, uma atividade aparentemente paralela de Dantas ganha relevância central: a Agropecuária Santa Bárbara Xinguara, empresa que em três anos se tornou proprietária de um dos maiores rebanhos do mundo, com cerca 500 mil cabeças, segundo Dantas, ou 1 milhão, de acordo com estimativas do mercado.

In this document, what may seem like a sideline of Dantas’ business activities acquires a central role: Agropecuária Santa Bárbara Xinguara, a cattle ranching business that in three years acquired one of the largest herds in the world, with nearly 500,000 head of cattle, according to Dantas, or 1 million head, according to market estimates.

Named 2008 Cattle Ranch of the Year by FAEPA, the Agriculture and Animal Husbandry Federation of Pará.

Quantum Spin: Veja’s Designated Blogger on Race and Politics

"We Brazilians are not racists," writes Globo journalism czar Ali Kamel. This seems to me to be the opposite of true. Life in Sambodia strongly reminds one of apartheid South Africa in many ways, in fact. I have never met so many open racists in my life as I have in my Sambodian boteco conversations. Racist like Rhodesian border guards. Crazy racist.

The delusional is no longer marginal. –- Bill Moyers

Entrelinhas is the blog published by DCI political editor and Observatório da Imprensa associate editor Luiz Antônio Magalhães.

In this post, he points out what he argues is some boneheaded quantum massaging of the numbers by Veja.com’s designated neo-Lacerdist blogger Reinaldo Azevedo — Brazil’s most prominent contemporary exponent of the gabbling and hysterical political rhetoric pioneered by tropical Fascist Plinio Salgado in the 1930s.

On whom see also:

• Veja Só: The Dedicated Blogger on the Looming Bolivian Bloodbath

Azevedo had reportedly written in his column that numbers from the recent U.S. elections proved that race was not a factor in the election of Barack Obama:

A FARSA RACIALISTA: OBAMA FOI ELEITO PELOS BRANCOS

The racial argument is a farce: It was white voters who elected Obama

Wrote Azevedo:

A nossa sorte é que jornalistas e analistas políticos não constroem casas, ou elas cairiam sobre nossas cabeças. Também não são cirurgiões, ou arrancariam as vísceras do paciente ao tentar lhes reparar algum mal. Obama, o suposto candidato de uma minoria nos EUA, foi ELEITO PELOS BRANCOS, mas a clivagem que se faz para analisar o resultado é a racial. É UM MOVIMENTO DE ESTUPIDEZ COLETIVA. É o triunfo do politicamente correto sobre a razão. Os números são inquestionáveis. E, ademais, se é para falar em racismo, então racistas foram os negros e os hispânicos, que teriam VOTADO CONTRA UM BRANCO.

Lucky for us that journalists and political analysts don’t build houses. If they did, those houses would collapse on our heads. Or that they aren’t surgeons, or we would wind up with our guts yanked out in the effort to cure our illness. Obama, supposedly the candidate of a minority in the United States, WAS ELECTED BY WHITE VOTERS, and yet the point of cleavage cited by those seeking to explain the results is a racial one. THIS IS AN EXAMPLE OF COLLECTIVE IDIOCY, the triumph of political correctness over reason. The numbers are unassailable. And besides, if we are going to talk in racial terms, then we should say that blacks and Hispanics were racists for supposedly VOTING AGAINST THE WHITE CANDIDATE.

Magalhães comments:

O jornalista Reinaldo Azevedo lida melhor com as palavras do que com os números. No comentário publicado em seu blog e reproduzido abaixo, ele refuta os argumentos expostos aqui sobre a eleição de Barack Obama. Bem, o ultraconservador colunista de Veja não percebeu que as suas próprias contas mostram que Obama venceu exatamente pelo voto dos negros, ou seja, que a questão racial teve importância, sim, na eleição. Senão vejamos, usando os números de Reinaldão:

Azevedo is better with words than he is with numbers. In the commentary on his blog reproduced [above], he rebuts the arguments made here about the election of Barack Obama. What the ultraconservative Veja columnist failed to see was that his own numbers show that Obama won precisely because of the black vote. That is to say, race did matter in the election. Let’s check it out, using Azevedo’s own numbers:

Rio Militias: “Lins and Itagiba Cited by CPI; Busts Shed Light on Batman Flight”

Bangue bangue bangue. Bada bingo, bada bicho.

Chefe da policia
Pelo telefone
Manda me avisar
Que na Carioca
Há uma roleta
Para se jogar
–Donga

Itagiba e Lins são citados em documento: The president of a federal congressional probe into supposed “excesses” in the use of electronic surveillance inthe making anticorruption and organized crime cases was the public security secretary of Rio de Janeiro at a time when the Rio “militias” — vicious extortion and black-marketeering rackets run by cops, firemen and prison guards — began to boom, O Dia reports.

A state assembly investigation of “militias” cites Marcelo Itagiba as having benefited politically from the “Vote Quimby or Officer Friendly here will blow your head off” style of political coercion practiced by these groups.

Talk about your police state. Policemen turned elected politicians through armed coercion of voters by paramilitary criminals: Welcome to Rio de Janeiro. It’s like Medellin, except with really nice beaches.

Meanwhile, the legislative commission recommended the indictment of former state police chief Álvaro Lins — in jail on charges of putting the fix in for the gambling mafia — for the same political tactic.

Rio – O comando da Segurança Pública no governo Rosinha Garotinho foi citado no relatório da CPI por facilitar a vida das milícias e tirar proveito eleitoral das comunidades. Entre os indiciados está o ex-chefe da Polícia Civil, Álvaro Lins — preso em Bangu 8 —, que foi eleito deputado estadual em 2006 e teve acesso irrestrito aos currais eleitorais dos grupos paramilitares.

Top leaders in the public security area during the Rosinha Garotinho state administration were cited in the final report of the CPI of Militias as having made life easy for militias and benefiting politically from militia-dominated communities. Among those accused are former state police chief Lins … who was elected to the state legislature in 2006 and was given unrestricted access as a candidate to “electoral corrals” created by the paramilitary groups.

Brazil: Putting a Bridle on the Black-Hat Lobbyist

Editor of the Jornal do Commercio‘s Confidencial column, Ahmed Aziz — often praised as a wily and well-informed gentleman of the press, although I don’t really see it — notes a recent debate over “white-hat” and “black-hat” lobbying here in Brazil.

The Brazilian lobbying profession is completely unregulated.

You have never seen such goings-on in all your life, even if you have accompanied the life and times of Jack “Victim of the Politics of Personal Destruction” Abramoff. These people could eat Abramoff raw as a diet-conscious appetizer before proceeding to the soup course.

O seminário internacional que discutiu, esta semana, em Brasília, a regulamentação do lobby no Brasil foi marcado pela pluralidade de opiniões. Os seis painéis realizados evidenciaram alguns consensos. Um deles é que o lobby é atividade legítima, própria de regimes democráticos, nos quais é natural haver a intermediação de interesses.

The international seminar held this week in Brasilia on the regulation of lobbying in Brazil was notable for the diversity of opinions expressed.

Headline of the official press release on the event: “Seminar was notable for diversity of opinions.” The rest of Aziz’s note on the event is also plagiarized selectively, verbatim, from the official press release, without attribution to the source.

Once you master Control-C and Control-V, you, too, can become a prominent opinion-maker for the Brazilian press corps!

The six panels held did display some points of consensus, one of which is that lobbying is a legitimate activity proper to democratic regimes, in which it is natural for interests to seek representation.

Copped directly from a Hilary Clinton campaign speech, this.

The seminar was held by the Controladoria Geral da União (CGU), a sort of Brazilian GAO with functions parallel to those of the autonomous Tribunal de Contas da União (TCU) — which a situationist senator recently suggested should be abolished.

The TCU is a bit like the Supreme Court — its appointees are all dug-in political appointees of a previous opposition government, most of them are PFL-DEM party hacks — and the current situation accuses them of politicizing government bean counting, much as Alberto Gonzales proposed to do for American justice.

For that reason, you have this peculiar situation of warring government accounting offices, the CGU (a self-regulatory body of the executive branch) and the TCU. I suppose it is not so completely alien a concept, given, for example, the parallelism between the GAO (an agency that advises Congress) and the executive-branch OMB.

No painel que discutiu a legitimidade e os limites éticos, Sepúlveda Pertence, ministro aposentado do Supremo Tribunal Federal e atual presidente da Comissão de Ética Pública, disse ser preciso vencer a resistência à própria palavra, freqüentemente vinculada, segundo ele, a métodos ilícitos de aliciamento. Pertence se mostrou cético quanto à possibilidade de que a regulamentação discipline o que chamou de “lobby do mal”.

In the panel on legitimacy and ethical constraints, Sepúlveda Pertence, retired Supreme Court justice and current chairman of the Commission on Public Ethics (of the Brazilian federal executive) said it is necessary to overcome resistance to the term “lobbyist,” which is frequently associated, he said, with illegal methods of persuasion. Pertence seemed skeptical about the possibility of disciplining the so-called “black-hat lobbyist” through regulation.