The Fearless Independence of the Editora Abril and Other Tall Tales of Its Kind

Blog da Cidadania‘s Edu Guimarães is a leading figure in the self-styled «progessive blogsphere» here in Brazil.  He writes, Some days ago, a friend of mine employed by the Editora Abril phoned me to describe his worries over the scandal involving the newsweekly Veja — that is to say, involving the possibility that group publisher Roberto [...]

Corruption | Waterfall in Nextel Hell

Today, via Vlad, a newkey man in one of my endless siftings through egocentric networks in Portuguese. It is not for nothing that the Brazilian press picked up on the compliment paid last week to Brazil’s President Dilma by her fellow iron lady, Hillary Clinton. As a major political scandal shifts to high gear in the [...]

Demóstenes Torres and the Leaky Police

 «The lawmaker and the outlaw law breaker».Photo montage: SBT network From the Terra news portal, further developments in the decline and fall of Senator Demóstenes Torres, this time published first in Globo’s Época weekly newsmagazine. Senator Demóstenes Torres allegedly requested the assistance of racketeer Carlinhos Cachoeira in procuring World Cup contracts for a friend’s public relations firm in [...]

Civita Dei | Notes on The Brazilian Education Lobby

Brasil Escola – an educational publication of Brazil’s Record media group — observes, correctly, a major source of difficulty in trying to cover, in any comprehensive way, the actions of corporate, private and third-sector lobbies, and combinations thereof. The trouble is that the lobbying industry here is just about as unregulated as Liberty Valence. I translate: [...]

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 [...]

Abril Fools | The Privateering of São Paulo’s PBS

Alberto Dines, grand old man of the Brazilian press, complains, in Observatório da Imprensa, of the privatization of public broadcasting. I translate: Would the BBC or PBS establish long-term partnerships with British or American commercial broadcasters? Hardly, although they do collaborate with one another. The Ford Foundation, for its part, bankrolled the initiative of Fred W. [...]

The Militias of Rio | Operation Peacemaker

The militias of Rio — protection and black marketeering rackets run by moonlighting or retired police and firemen — are so vivid in the popular imagination that they figure in the latest Globo prime-time soap, if only tangentially. The evil Tereza Cristinga of Fina Estampa hires an ex-fireman, working as security chief at her condominium, [...]

Musical Electric Chairs | Electricity Regulation in Brazil

AES Eletropaulo has just returned to us a crispy stereo and burnt-out microwave oven, both fried in a lightning strike or massive surge or something of the kind last month. Big Government made them do it. We filed a complaint with the company and receive a voucher in return for repairs services from any one [...]

Endowment Fever | Crimson Tide on the Rio Pinheiros

The Folha de S. Paulo reports: The University of São Paulo plans to imitate Harvard, establishing a private endowment to be filled up by alumni and, one suspects, principally, corporate sponsors, and then magically quintupled by ronin financial rocket scientists from Connecticut. What is odd in this puff piece, however, is that while Harvard has been a [...]

Militia Watch | Justice Delayed in Witness Execution Case

Source of the above: Movement Against the Rio Militias From a standing news alert on Rio’s militias — paramilitary racketeering enterprises run mainly by off-duty or disgraced police, firemen and the odd soldier. These groups use heavily armed coercion to elect their own candidates to city hall and the state legislature, where they enjoy the [...]