«Lula: Scumbag In Chief»

 

Lula the Nine-Fingered

Via Viomundo: «Senator Calls Lula Brazil’s Leading Scumbag in Convention Speech»

The opposition PSDB is holding its leadership convention this week and seems determined to pursue a rhetoric of hate-mongering that has not served it well in the past.

Goias governor calls Lula “the biggest scumbag in Brazil.”

The comparable term in Portuguese is «canalha», variously translated as «douche bag,» «dirt bag,», «scumbag», «miscreant» and «fucker.»

Goiás governor Marconi Perillo (PSDB) recently referred to former president Lula Lula da Silva (PT) as a “scumbag” in remarks on the “monthly payola” case during the PSDB party convention that confirmed Senator Aécio Neves (MG) as party leader. “Never before in the history of this country has it been so difficult to mount an opposition to the biggest scumbag in this country,”  Perillo stated in his speech

Perillo used the term several times, stating that he had warned Lula of the scheme of monthly payments to lawmakers in exchange for support in the Congress. “One day I got up the courage to alert this scumbag to the fact that his government was making monthly payoffs to congressional deputies. Since that day I have joined Artur Virgílio, José Agripino, and Tarso Genro among his major detractors.”

The governor highlighted his “solidarity” with Aécio Neves in the 2014 campaign and called for party unity. “We are going to prove to Brazil that we are capable, that we are competent, that we are public-minded, that we know how to manage public funds and assets.”

Support

Another sign that the PSDB has not learned the lesson of its «moral panic» marketing — «we are virgins and our enemies, painted harlots» — is Pirillo’s own political biography, which includes solid evidence of close ties to the numbers racketeer Carlinhos Charlie Waterfall Cachoeira and to Senator Demostenes Torres, who resigned from office when ties of his own were discovered with Cachoeira.

In a speech criticizing the government, the leader of the Democratas, Senator José Agripino (RN), praised the government of Fernando Henrique Cardoso said that the PT had “shown its claws” when it arrived in power.  “While we did what we always do, they led Brazil into the future. When they occupied their seat and showed their claws, they befouled themselves in a monthly payola scheme, a corrupt scheme that Brazil now rejects.” During his speech to the convention, Agripino said he felt at home in supporting the PSDB. The senator critiqued the 10 years of the PT in the federal government. “In their incompetence, they brought inflation back and traded cheap foreign debt for R$ 2 trillion in internal debt.

The president of the  PPS, federal deputy Roberto Freire (SP), insisted on his party’s support for the “Toucan” Aécio Neves. “We are able to stand with Aécio, we were with him in Minas and will be again in 2014, without a doubt.” Freire said he expects “difficult times” during the campaign, pointing to the presidency’s attempt to impose a bill in the Congres that would asphyxiate new political parties, restricting their TV time and their access to the Party Fund.  “We will encounter difficult times going up against a government that, because it lacks respect for freedom, will use means to win the election using marked cards.” Freire also stressed the urgency of working in opposition to the PT government. “I believe it is of the upmost inportance for Brasil not just to call ourselves parties of the left, but to be parties of a democratic republican left.  This is the challenge before the PSDB, to confront those who do no respect democracy and republican institutions.

Rio | Batman Returns

Parapolitics: City council candidate displays Batman militia symbol

I read it in the Folha de S.Paulo. Partial translation: C. Brayton

Every Friday night, two motorcycles with no license plates cruise the streets of Guaratiba in the Western Zone of Rio de Janeiro, demanding money from local business owners.

On the weekends least five different locations inside the community, with its population of 110,000, host funk dances overflowing with drugs and booze.

Electronic slot machines are stashed away in warehouses or the false bathrooms of bars so that residents can play while drinking the one brand of beer that is “authorized.”

Local residents avoid talking about the situation and business owners are afraid.

And yet it it is precisely this area the Archdiocese of Rio de Janeiro has scheduled to receive 2 million persons during a July 28 visit from the pope. It is here that Francisco will celebrate his first mass in Brazil, marking a high point of World Youth Day.

Guaratiba is dominated by the largest militia group in Rio, which controls another five neighborhoods in the region as well. Militia members, for example, set opening and closing times for local business.

ON the arrest of the faction leader: «Batman, you lose! »

Truth Commission SP | Who the Hell Was Halliwell?

I read it in the Estadão.

Ongoing work by federal and state truth commissions related to the military dictatorship of 1964-1985 has turned up the log entries of persons entering and exiting the notorious torture facilities of São Paulo — among them a U.S. diplomat who was a frequent visitor.

U.S. citizen  Claris Halliwell, identified as a regular visitor to S. Paulo’s Department of Social and Political Order — DOPS — during the military dictatorship, was a diplomat working out of the São Paulo consulate as a political attaché.

According to a telegram dispatched in 1973 by the U.S. Embassy to the Department of State, he began to receive threats because of his activities.

The name Halliwell came to light after  a series of  log books or sign-in registers were found in the archives of the defunct department — one of the most significant centers of political repression in Brazil during the 1970s.

A state-sponsored study of these records showed Halliwell spending time at the DOPS building between April 1971 and November 1973. Identifying himself as a “consul,” in 1971 he visited the site twice a month, on average, meeting directly with frontline agents of the political repression, many of them accused of torturing political prisoners.

Contacted for comment by the Estado, representatives of the Consulate São Paulo said they could not confirm Halliwell’s stay in São Paulo because they did not keep records from that far back in time. They might be found, however, in the U.S. National Archive.

But it will not be easy. A preliminary search turns up only a declassified exchange of messages between Brazil and State, detailing the threatening calls targeting Halliwell.

THERE IS A POSSIBILITY THAT THIS INCIDENT MAY BE LINKED TO THE FIRE BOMBING INCIDENT AT THE HOME OF CONSUL JAMES W. LAWLER ON MAY 18, 1973, OR TO A SERIES OF HARRASSMENT CALLS RECEIVED IN JUNE

Still, there are a substantial number of results from the 1970s on the keyword “DEOPS.” Download for later reading.

Vi O Mundo provides more detail — although I think is no correct to call Halliwell a «consul». He was one of those attaché sorts of people. 

Kassab and the Vehicular Inspection Racket

Everyman Kassab rides the Metrô

As limited as my understanding of local politics is, something told me this day would come: I predicted that ex-Mayor Gilberto Kassab would eventually come to grief over issues of public morality.

After all, among his first official acts was the nomination of his two brothers to head New Projects on the Metrô and to run SPTrans, the metro bus service.

The story received very little press coverage, but represents yet another opportunity for the incoming mayor, Haddad, to seek out bureaucratic dysfunctions and set them straight.  Will technocrats prevail over patronage? It will be interesting to see. People like result-oriented politics — leave bus fares alone, build more housing, install more sewers, and thank you very much for the break on our electricity bill.

But on to today’s clipping. Source: Estadão.

Former mayor Gilberto Kassab (PSD) is now a defendant in a criminal proceeding. He is accused of violating the law governing public tenders when he hired the firm Controlar to administer vehicle inspections in Brazil’s largest city. According to the state prosecutor, the contract cost taxpayers and motorists R$ 1.1 billion.

Post Mortem Ergo Propter Mortem | Citizen Journalist Down

How much has changed since the Globo reporter’s 1992 exposé on São Paulo’s Maluf-era “police who kill”? Not much.

Ever since a group of military police riddled an entirely inoffensive neighbor of ours with bullets just a few yards from our front gate, I try to jot down other cases of this kind — the kind traditionally known as “resistance followed by death.”

To be fair, on January 9, the state trotted out a less Orwellian formulation: death as the consquence of an interaction with police, roughly. A note of mine from 2010 provides some of the context,.

• Post Hoc Ergo Non Propter Hoc: “Resistance Followed by Death Cases” Rise Sharply

True to form, the case of Mr. Aquino, our neighbor, has faded quickly from the headlines.

• The Aquino Case | Fallout Hits the PM
• The Aquino Killing | Policing Up the Brass?

Another receent case in point — one with a citizen journalism angle to it — was the posting of an amateur video showing a São Paulo military police officer shooting a visibly unarmed and compliant suspect in the back, somewhere in the Southern Zone.

As soon as that footage came out on YouTube,  an amazing coincidence occurred: across the street from the previous crime scene, there was an extreme-overkill execution in which something like 50 rounds were expended on a man claiming authorship of the video, as he sat with friends in the local bodega, across from where the original crime occurred. The assailants reportedly entered the bar shouting, “Police!”

So what next? 

Samboja | Residents Revolted

Source: iG | São Paulo.

Quality of life has deteriorated in the opinion of São Paulo city residents.

According to a poll taken by the Nossa São Paulo network, city residents assign the city, on average, a score of 4.7 on a scale of 1 to 10 in terms of quality of life … “This is the lowest indicator we have seen since we began the survey,” said Márcia Cavallari, the CEO of market research firm Ibope, during the announcement of the results this morning.

Oddly, the results do not appear on IBOPE’s news page today.

In 2012, 8 out of 10 S. Paulo residents described traffic as bad or extremely bad, according to the survey. Most indicators have fallen in comparison with previous years. “Of the 169 items studied by the survey, 82% scored less than the arithmetical mean of 5.5 out of 10,” said Marcia, addiing: “17% of these items scored above the mean [5.5]“. Last year, 22% of these areas scored higher than average.

Mayor Fernando Haddad took part in a debate organized by the NGO Nossa São Paulo on Thursday.

I cannot seem to locate the event on NPS’s news page as well.

In the survey of 1,512 city residents, conducted between November 24 and December 8, 56% of the interview subjects said they would leave the city if they had the opportunity to live elsewhere.

Among interview subjects, 58% were born in the city. Of the 42% of non-natives, 82% have lived in São Paulo for more than 10 years. The survey also show that 7 in 10 São Paulo residents use the bus system every day and report an average wait of 21 minutes.

Oded Grajew, coordinator of the Nossa São Paulo network, says that the numbers suggest there is something very wrong with the city.

Listings to the Left | Carta Capital Under Fire

Source: Comunique-se

Carta Capital magazine stands accused by the state’s attorney of Minas Gerais of forging a document used to illustrate articles on the so-called «monthly payola of the PSDB» … The infraction alleged by the magazine was supposedly committed during the reelection campaign of Minas governor Eduardo Azeredo (PSDB) in 1998.

Isto É magazine — above — also reported on documentary evidence in the case, in a September cover story The document in question is sometimes called the «Lista de Mourão» after its mentor, Cláudio Roberto Mourão da Silveira.

In a press release, the state prosecutor states that “on December 3 of 2012, the editors of Carta Capital were served with Notice No. 108/2012-SCI-PGJ, informing the magazine’s senior editors of the falsehood of information published in the article in question, “Return to the origins,” in the November 14 edition.

The article, written by Leandro Fortes, states that the former governor and current federal deputy withdrew more than R$100 million from state-owned firms and passed the funds to politicians and judges, most of them linked to the PSDB,  as well as to media companies.

The list included the name of Supreme Court justice Gilmar Mendes, former presidente Fernando Henrique Cardoso and Goiás governor Marconi Perillo (PSDB).

According to Fortes, this scheme to skim money from the public coffers was much worse than the «monthly payola» of the PSDB’s rival, the PT.

“For those who have watched the trial in the Supreme Court, with its innovative doctrine of «de facto dominion» and its guilty verdicts based on subjective intuitions, the «Toucan payola» will prove even more shocking thanks to the presence of something sorely lacking in the current case: inequivocal and decisive proof.

Dominio do fato is a controversial legal doctrine under which hierarchical superiors can be held responsible for bad acts by subordinates, even when demonstrably unaware of such acts For instance, the central player in the «PT payola» scheme was found guilty without any evidence of bad acts on his part. The judges reasoned that given his position, he must have or should have known of the scheme. The German legal scholar who authored the concept has appeared in a handful of interviews questioning its use in this case.

Coordinator of CAORIM, the Center for the Operational Support of Criminal Prosecutors, Joaquim José Miranda Júnior filed a police report with the Belo Horizonte Forgery and Fraud division, charging CC with journalistic fraud, The state’s attorney of Minas Gerais claims the document bears a forged signature of prosecutor Adriano Estrela, suggesting that the underlying sources of the story were “forged” and “inauthentic.”

On holiday, Leandro Fortes told Comunique-se he knows nothing about the accusation by the MP-MG.

Jornal da Mídia adds:

The lista … was produced by a known forger, who did jail time long before creating the list in question. The document is registered in the notary office and its signatures notarized. It contains gross errors, such as describing the alleged beneficiaries as holding offices they would not hold until several years after the registered date of the “document.”

Carta Capital replies immediately with the following op-ed.

I have been reading here and there that the Minas Gerais prosecutor is accusing this magazine of forging documents in the case of the «Toucan payola. I repeat: we have been accused by the MP of creating and publishing false documents from a law suit, according to reports on the Internet. The author of this serious accusation will have to back his words with evidence in a court of law.

As to the Web sites that hastened to spread this “information,” without contacting us for comment, I would like to repeat that CC does not publish police records or forged documents, does not accuse without evidence to back it, does not transform corrupt politicians into paragons of public morality  does not transform a wadded up piece of paper into a brick, does not associate with racketeers like Carlinhos Cachoeira and does not use the services of black bag, private-sector intelligence operators — who have become the true “investigative reporters” of Brasília.

The pejorative description reflects Mino Carta’s contempt for the contemporary Veja magazine, a magazine he founded in mid-1968.

The reference to a wadded-up piece of paper refers to a political propaganda set piece used during the last presidential election. Passing through a poorer  neighborhood in Rio, the candidate was struck on the head by a wadded-up flier thrown by a union member.

The mainstream press turned the incident into an exemplar of how vicious and violent government supports are. It really was absurd, and yielded quickly to online mockery.

We do not belong to this club, and this attempt to lump us with in the others is pathetic  We do not practice the journalism of the sewers.

As to the  «Toucan payola» document, like the Furnas list before it, it is once again self-evident how much political power is being brought to bear on the effort to undermine its credibility.

This time around, however, the participation of the MP of Minas is impressive. The  Furnas List was also described as a phony. Former governor Azeredo continues to use this argument — that the list is a forgery — in response to documents that describe how the «pipeline» operated in his back yard.

One faction of the “fair and independent media” simply parrots Azeredo to see if it can make the forgery theory stick. But a report by the federal police criminalistic lab has proven that the list was not tampered with and that the signatures are authentic.

The report by Leandro Fortes, as usual, was based on documents received from trusted sources, including participants in the lab experiments that ripened into the slush fund laundering scheme developed for the PSDB by  Marcos Valério de Souza, later used by the PT. We are absolutely confident in our reporting..

The original report ran in Issue No. 723,, November 11, 2012.

Furnas List

Mourão List

Elite Squad II | Reviewing the Review

I read it on the Web site of the Instituto Ludwig von Mises Brasil.

Cristiano Fiori Chiocca reviews the film Tropa de Elite II — Elite Squad II: The Enemy Within, directed by José Padilha.

As I may have mentioned, a recent regulatory clampdown on audiovisual content producers and distributors here in Brazil means that foreign-owned cable TV operations — Sony, Disney, Universal, Fox, A&E, TNT, Telecine, AXN, MGM, HBO, MAX, NatGeo, Discovery, History Channel … must air a certain proportion of content «made in Brazil».

I always think what a shame it is to see Brazilian theatrical talent relegated to the quick as a wink dubbing credits at the end of every Simpsons episode — and how it grates on your nerves that the dubbers chose to make Bart a baritone.

It is equally disappointing to see that the available back catalogue of the Brazilian film industry seems so shallow, though we hope that programmers will start digging deeper, striking it rich with such classics as Assalto ao Trêm-Pagador.

At any rate,, as our cable plan complies with regulation, we are starting to see the same movies over and over and over  and over, day after day after day — case in point: Elite Squad and Elite Squad II: The Enemy Within, two films about official corruption and the culture of violence in Rio de Janeiro.

This sort of regulatory activism  is just the sort of thing that drives the libertarians of the Instituto Millenium crazy.

Closely associated with ABERT, the Association of Radio and Television Broadcasters, on the one hand, and neoconservative and neoliberal movements in Germany and the U.S. — its game plan comes straight from the Atlas Toolkit — IMIL is mostly a forum for venomous libertarian rantings of the third degree.

Adeus, Kassab

Life is what happens to you while you’re busy making other plans.

The conservatively inclined but civic-minded Estado de S. Paulo often does a fine job of cross-checking lists of political promises with lists of practical achievements.

Today’s paper runs a post mortem on the performance of outgoing mayor Gilberto Kassab.

Source: Portal ClippingMP.| Estado de S. Paulo
Translation: C. Brayton

A mere 123 of the 223 objectives listed at the outset of the Kassab administration — 55.1% of the total — were carried out, according to the list of objectives announced in 2009.

The mayor says the city government’s “efficacy rate” is 81%, but this figure includes projects not yet completed. Among the main projects promised but not completed on time was the construction of three hospitals, the creation of more day care vacancies, drainage projects, and 60 km of bus corridors.

As part of his “efficacy rate,” the mayor counts both finished and unfinished projects, but says we will leave the city in better shape and with more resources.

The final report of Agenda 2012, the official planning document announced by Kassab in 2009, shows that only 123 of its 223 commitments — 55.1% of the total — have been met as Kassab’s four years in office come to a close. Nevertheless, the mayor says that the city’s “index of efficacy” stands at 81%. This number includes projects that were initiated but not completed.

This was the first time a São Paulo mayor has published a planning document detailing the goals of the administration.  The publication of such a planning document was ordered by the city council in February 2008 in an amendment to the city’s Organic Law that gives incoming mayors three months to define objectives to be met during their term in office.

Bureaucratic and regulatory problems, as well as difficulties in obtaining environmental licenses account for at least part of Kassab’s performance. Among the principal works not completed on time were hospital construction, an increase in daycare capacity, drainage works and 66 km of bus corridors.

These performance were neverthless cited in order to raise the city’s “efficacy rate.” According to the mayor, this index takes into account the bureaucratic status of the city’s projects — contract complete, property rights established, bidding process executed — to measure how far the city has come to completing the road to its objective.

Yesterday,  Kassab said he is leaving “a better city, with more resources” to mayor-elect  Fernando Haddad (PT), who has until March to define his goals.

Actually, Haddad published a highly detailed plan of government during the election campaign.

My browser thanks the candidate for dialing down the Flash the next time around, by the way.

Whether Haddad will do any better at minimizing bureaucratic friction is the question.

Kassab finishes out his second term with very negative polling numbers: 42% rate his government as bad or the worst. Only 27% rate it as good or best. These figures are the worst for any mayor in history except Celso Pitta (1997-2000), with 74% negatives.

Kassab was Pitta’s secretary of urban planning.

It is odd that the Estado does not touch on the Nova Luz project — urban renewal in a  historic downtown neighborhood abutting present-day Cracolândia — Crack City Sambodia.

On a Personal Note

Our little neighborhood here in the Vila was the focus of some of the parks development that the Kassab government promoted.

Our local praça is now a popular spot, with kids playing, dogs sniffing the Internet of dogs and urban DIY greengrocers importing their household grown compost.

It was also the site of a fatal police shooting in which a local resident was shot eight times during a police stop and search. This happened 25 meters from our front door.

 

The park is not exactly a world-class urban green space, however. As an architect neighbor and another, an engineer, remark, the materials used for the pedestrian paths — sand and brick dust on either shoulder — will soon wash down into the abutting creek.

The playground equipment is dangerously far from up to specs.

If you ask me, the city’s most typical project is the urban reforestation project the city eventually got around to doing on our next door neighbor’s property: A moribund, fenced in sapling bearing the brand of the city environment secretary.

Remember “Ozymandia”?

Look on my works, ye mighty, and despair!

 

In short, long live the Potemkin village.

Veja and the Virginity Auction

We are all prostitutes
Everybody has their price …
– The Pop Group

Source:  Lux | Portugal

Catarina Migliorini, the young Brazilian woman who became widely known for the «quasi-unprecedented» auctioning of her virginity, is on the cover of Editora Abril’s Playboy Brasil, January edition.

Catarina’s virginity was auctioned off to a Japanese bidder for $780,000, or about €591,000.

The contract must withstand judicial review before being consummated. According to Catarina, the deal  with the Japanese man is for the act to occur aboard an aircraft, during a private flight.

The young girl achieved such notoriety during the auction that she plans to film a documentary on the subject in Australia.

Feminist-libertarian blogger Cynthia Semíramis offers a close reading of the publicity stunt and its gender-political ramifications.

It is curious to observe how Veja, a bastion of capitalism and the free market, changes course when a woman decides to sell her virginity — as is her right! — in a process that is strictly capitalist in nature.

Expecting Veja to navigate according to any steady moral compass at all is poor political and cultural seamanship.

What I personally found curious was the double use made of the episode by Veja and its sister publication Playboy Brasil.

Is everything for sale? Votes? Political support? Citizenship? Justice? Blood? Kidneys? Babies?

The Veja cover — above — uses the case to promote a classic moral panic

Our barcoded Jezebel is framed as an allegory for money changers in the temple and the 30 pieces of silver and all the other elements of a sense of diffuse and pervasive moral decay: cultural, political, economic, religious. She is the muse of the «mensalão» — the money-laundering slush fund scandals affecting both government and opposition.

Those who start the panic when they fear a threat to prevailing social or cultural values are known by researchers as moral entrepreneurs, while people who supposedly threaten the social order have been described as “folk devils”. –Wikipedia

This commonplace theme is frequently found in the writings of Globo columnist Arnaldo Jabor, author of Pornopolitica. It is, in fact, Jabor’s one-note samba.

I have used up all the scale I know
and in the end I find
I’ve come to nothing, or nearly nothing

There is a long tradition of moral panic journalism over the past century in the Brazilian press — including the most tragic  moral entrepreneur of them all, Carlos Lacerda.

Take a trivial example: a comment on the Web site of the opposition-learning Consultor Jurídico regarding a recent influence peddling charge involving second- and third-echelon officials of  the federal presidency.

The big lie is one of the cardinal sins that make up the molecular structure of this gang of thieves, bums and scam artists that compose the PT and its “allied base” — the latter made up of measly little political prostitution rings who parade their wares in the public square.

Some enterprising rhetoric grad student should attempt some day a critical history of Brazilian indignation.

Paperback Writer & The Bearback Rider

The image of Catarina straddling a large white teddy bear borders on the pedophiliac.

The cover shot betrays the widely documented and typical preference of the Brazilian gentleman reader for the bunda rather than the breasts.

Nothing could be more distinct than the conceptual framing of the two covers.

The Playboy Catarina takes us on an innocent romp through the nursery  and extends to Elvis the invitation he sang about:

Let me be your teddy bear

I have not much time to bring to bear on the topic at the moment, but it would be interesting to compare the case of Catarina with that of Mônica Velloso, the political marketer and ex-Globo journalist who, during her long-term affair with a federal senator, secretly taped their pillow tall, in a scandal that led to the senator’s stepping down from the presidency of the Senate.

«Diogo Mainardi: All politicians are bums to some degree»

A curious set of synergies were at work in that case.

After Mônica and her lawyer negotiated an exclusive interview with Veja — Mystery woman reveals all! – the same lawyer negotiated the fee for her appearance in the altogether — Mystery woman reveals all! — in Playboy, a sister publication to Veja.

The centerfold ran with an exclusive interview of Veja columnist and noted moral entrepreneur Diogo Mainardi, above.

It should probably come as no surprise, of course, that different magazines targeting different readerships would differ in their overall orientation and editorial line. It should probably not come as a surprise, by the same token, that Abril magazines engage in editorial synergies when they want or need to.

The degree of centralization and cross-promotion in content production at Abril would be an interesting factoid to have on  hand.

Remembering Fawn

Finally, the case is of a certain historical interest to note the parallels with the Fawn Hall scandal — the former secretary was named a sex star of 1987 — [*] named  during the Iran-Contra hearings.

Catarina signs a contract at the offices of the Abril group. Source: Veja.com