Abril Fools & The Downfall of Waterfall

Brasilianas.org,a Ning community anchored by economic and  business journalist Luis Nassif — I am a subscriber-contributor — once again raises the specter of corruption in the relationship of the major news weeklies to organized crime. This takes some guts, seeing as how Nassif found himself on the wrong end of a a series of defamation [...]

Culture Wars | Pagef***er Strikes Back

Via Folha de S. Paulo (Brazil) The state high court of  São Paulo has handed down a restraining order obliging Google to exclude sites from its search results that retransmit, live and without authorization, the  TV programming of the Globo network. The order obtained by Globo and Globosat was handed down by Judge Denise Cavalcante Fortes Martins [...]

Vulture Culture | An Impromptu Link Sociology

Item: SEC Launches Inquiry Aimed at Private Equity. Federal regulators have launched a wide-ranging inquiry into the private-equity industry that examines how firms value their investments, among other matters. The Securities and Exchange Commission’s enforcement division sent letters to private-equity firms of various sizes in early December as part of an “informal inquiry,” according to the [...]

The Dirty Business of Democracy | Lula Praises «Dirty Bloggers»

   Lula criticizes media, thanks “bloggers” | Exame magazine “The blogs” — what some wag among us gringos has dubbed the Commentariate — are now officially a suprapartisan trend in Brazil. Long professionalized by the political opposition and their guerrilla marketers, a core of mostly professionally written blogs and identifying itself as “progressive” is emerging in [...]

New From the Nose for Newsaphone

Learn how to fool search engines and optimize your sites and blogs Gilpérez set to lead Telefónica Latam: buzz Just horsing around with the headlines this morning, as usual. The Latin American digital convergence market is just about the most interesting game on the planet, if you squint at it correctly — a version of [...]

Novos Mercados-Máquinas: IBM e Febraban?

Aí, o jeito que o tempo têm de complicar as coiss. No meio da década dos 2000, eu editava um jornalzinho sobre a indústria financeira. Tinha meu gabinete quase na esquina da Rua Wall com Water. Na época, a NYSE — a Bolsa de Nova York — era a NYSE que sempre tinha sido, ou [...]

Redefining the Brazilian ONG-NGO?

A communiqué from ABONG, the Association of Brazilian NGOs — a much weaker counterpart to the GIFE, the Group of Foundations and Institutes, which represents corporate and family philanthropic trusts, for the most part. ABONG hopes to see some of its proposed reform measures for the sector implemented. Brazilian philanthropic foundations are not notable for the transparency of [...]

Merda | Merval and Mainardi

Veja magazine’s Max Headroom by live link to Manhattan Connection in New York New and noted from the drib-drab of Cablegate telegrams is the account of a meeting between the U.S. ambassador and two “prominent local journalists” in Rio de Janeiro. Merval & Mainardi: On The Side of Serra and Uncle Sam « CartaCapital. It [...]

Boa Vista, 51 | Sambodia’s All-Tea Party Channel

In 2000, the legal news service Notícias JusBrasil noted that former mayor and governor Paulo Maluf, along with current vice-governor Guilherme Afif, had been ordered to repay the state for election material printed up with state property and labor and the sale of a building below market price to the São Paulo Commerce Association, the ACSP [...]

The Nowhen Bridge to Nowhere | La Tribuna, Santos

Ferryboat, Ilhabela-São Sebastião A Tribuna files a curmudgeonly editorial on a not atypical Brazilian experience. People will cite the title of the famous paean to Brasil by Stefan Zweig, Brazil: Nation of the Future, and .find all sorts of irony in it Taking the advice of a virtual colleague, I try to read more of [...]