Summit of the Syndicates | Labor-Management in Talks On Labor Peace

When you live in a Third World country like the U.S.A., you often find that trade unionists have been hunted to extinction, as still occurs in Colombia. The result is that there is no one left to sit around a table, smoke cigarettes, and hash out what all sides can agree on. The result is a new 19th century.

Idaho militias, Oklahoma Cities and Haymarket Massacres.

For that reason it is fascinating to read the headline on page 4 of Valor today that “Fiesp and labor councils to negotiate pro-industrial pact.”

It was not that long ago that the Força Sindicial led the state judicial police on a strike that was put down by rubber bullets to the head at point blank range by the policia militar — above.  No one has ever taught the PM that rubber bullets are supposed to be bounced into peoples’ shins. Every thing you see them out there blasting away, they are aiming for the brain.

The cops don’t need you
and man they expect the same …

With an economy tilted 60-40 toward agribusiness and a historical schism between CUT and Força Sindical on the trade unionist side, there is apprehension that Brazil might not yet escape its traditional role as a commodity exporter and finished goods importer. Ethanol, as a finished good manufactured right in the canavial, has provided an attractive solution, but not all militants for land reform are wild about it.

The Brazilian plan to role out their own first microchip soon, for example — it will be used as a tracker ear-tag for Nelore cattle. And it makes very nice executive and mid-range passenger jets, by Embraer.

Mainly, however, in a year of tight budget restraints, federal resources are tending to go toward alleviating some of the more anachronistic troubles of the campo, agreste and sertão – from claim-jumping and land expropriation by the latifúndio to “working conditions analogous to slavery” and generalized death squad activity.

The Brazilian Northeast has been privileged to receive the lion’s share of social spending under Lula I and Lula II.

According to Valor, Paulo Skaf of Fiesp — a socialist candidate for governor of S. Paulo who recently signed on with the centro-centrist PMDB — will sit down with Arthur Henrique of CUT in talks moderated by Paulinho da Força of the Força Sindical to put together a set of joint recommendations to slow “deindustrialization.”

The project will be known as “the Management-Labor Accord for the Future of Production and Employment.”

Explosions and Urban Drought | Where Are We, Fallujah?

Diário do Comércio reports: We are not the only neighborhood to suffer from exploding electrical transformers in the greater metro area.

These explosions, which never fail to scare the hell out of me, are regular occurrences during heavy rains, which peak in the summer months of Januray through March.

An AES Eletropaulo tranformer burned out around 5 p.m. yesterday, interupting service at the Baixo Cotia water processing plan, which provides water to some 350,000 reisidents of Itapevi, Jandira and part of Barueri, in the Greater Metropolitan Area.

In a press relese, Sabesp said that since replacing a transformer takes at least 4 hours, cities in the region may go without water. The company recommends rationing of water until service is restored.

Another district will have to wait until October to resolve problems caused by an electrical blackout that hit pumping stations in the area, the DC says.

Resients of the Jardim São Norberto, in the extreme southern district of São Paulo, have had problems with their water service for several weeks now, sincee a blackout took out 46 pumps in seven elevaors. In a press release, Sabesp said the area is in distant region at a high alititude, explaining the difficulty of serving it. Further, the company said, the area is densely populated with many irregular hookups to the water system. Work is planned for October of this year, but until then no solution to the problem is foreseen..

.

CEMIG | The New Model PPP?

Something you don’t see every day in a lot of countries are firms like Sabesp, the multilisted public-private sanitation department, and, according to a tip from the carioca feuilleton Relatório Reservado, CEMIG, a listed PPP from Minas Gerais in the electricity sector.

Firms of this type have great political significance — sometimes to the detriment of their good governance. Sabesp was and is to be a model of its kind, reflecting positively on the administration of the PSDB over the past 16 years by universalizing access to basic sanitation — and doing so more efficiently than the federal government, which is less open to private-sector participation in planning and management.

In Sambodia, a “turn key” contract was adopted for new subway construction to have been completed by now. A giant smoking hole opened up in the ground and now the new quilometragem will not be delivered until some hazy point in the future, it seems to me.

With the advent of the CGU — an audit office oft the federal executive parallel to the audit tribunals run by the judiciary branch, which are always causing a scandal — the countryside is swarming with bean counters.

This creates a certain virtuous circle of political one-upsmanship that bodes well for the Sambodian future, I think.

The problem with Sabesp is that its duty to shareholders and its duties to customers make it what I call an example of a “multiple pesonality order.”

On the TV, an advertising blitz for Sabesp as the crowning achievement of the state government, at a time when the ex-governor was running for president. In the newspapers, whole small towns being washed away in torrents of mud and feces, and beaches closed for exceeding the allowable limits on the presence of human fecal coliform bacteria.

In Guarujá recently, over 1,000 cases of dysentery were being reported per day. Sabesp preferred to stick to its utopian future-oriented RI — “this model will be exported throughout the Amerias!” — and just plain ignore the difficult questions. This is an infallible sign of a bad crisis communicator, I always think. You have to be ready to knock the screwball into left for a clean single when these things come up.

Now, according to RR, there are signs of restructuring for similar purposes at Cemig, the electrical power utility part-owned by the state and partially floated on the Bovespa. I will see if I can gist what they believe they know, with the caveat that I have no way of knowing whether they actually know it.

The state government is joining with government contractor Andrade Gutiérrz, they say, with an eye to slicing the equity pie a little differently in order to create the conditions for listing Cemgi on the Novo Mercado, the highest governance rating on the S. Paulo Stock Exchange — where Sabesp will be found already listed. 

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 — presided over by Afif at the time..

The state high court said the two men had used public resources for private ends.

I recently wrote an analysis showing how Afif continues to do so, in my dodgy Portuguese. According to the editor in chief of the ACSP’s newspaper, O Diário de Comércio, Afif continues to sit on the paper’s editorial council even as he serves in the state government.

Furthermore, political allies of the politician have been made vice-presidents of the newspaper, including the sitting mayor, Gilberto Kassab.

But let me get to all that after setting down the gist of the previous case in English. .

The state high court has denied the appeal of the 1982 candidate for vice-governoor, Guilherme Afif Domingos. The politician was ordered, along with fellow PDS candidate for governor,, Reinaldo de Barros and federal deputy Paulo Maluf, to reimburse the state official press (IMESP) for the use of employees to print propaganda advertising the sale of the IMESP building to the ACSP, presided by Afif at the time. The amount to be repaid will be determined during thes sentencing phase.

That is to say, it took 28 years to punish a garden-variety act of corruption.

The PDS was an ersatz partisan agglomeration ostensbly advising and consenting to the ruling military dictatorship.

The original trial court found that the defendants benefited personally from this use of state supplies and manpower, which they received free of charge.The printed material was entered into evidence. According to the deposition of a typesetter, between January and July 1982, the print shop was used improperly to produce newsprint propaganda for the  PDS candidates.

These materials had also been delivered to an official party office, located on the ranch of Maluf’s mother. These same facts were attested to by other witnesses, who said that IMESP management forced them to perform the work with threats of firings.

Another element taken into account by the TJSP in the case against Afif had to do with the building housing the print shope .  IMESP owned the building, but sold it to the ACSP at lower than market  price at a time when the politician was the president of the association.

Now, employing similarly deft public-private role arbitrage, Afif has turned the DComércio into the most direct possible link between the Brazilian hard right and the Tea Party pseudo-movement — mainly thanks to correspondent Olavo de Carvalho, a self-appointed emissary to the neocons now appearing regularly on Blog Talk Radio.

Some time ago, I believe I translated a passage from his Epistle to the Sambodians, chronicling his attempts to warn neocons to the menace of Lula and begging for money to keep up the good fight. At the time, all four major dailies that carried his writings — the Folha, Estado de S. Paulo, O Globo, and Zero Hora — had dropped him from their staffs, leaving him without a cosigner to validate his journalist’s visa.

For the letter, see

• Olavo de Carvalho: The Council on Foreign Relations is a Tool of the Communist Devils

My ultimate aim, which though it may be impossible is nevertheless morally imperative and worth the effort, is to stem the billion-dollar flow of financial assistance without which the Latin American communist revolution would die on the vine,

he wrote at the time. The man is absolutely off his rocker. As I often say, if you want to read just one book to help you understand the mentality of the Brazilians extreme right, it would be Carvalho’s translation of Schopenhauer’s treatise on informal fallacies, creatively misprised, not as a guide to the perplexed — the prologemenon is as touching as they come — but as a how to guide.

Carvalho retitled the book How to Win an Argument Without Being Right — and had the gall to sign Schopenhauer’s name to the title he never wrote, to boot.

It appears that DComércio now plays the role of guarantor for the visa that keeps Carvalho in Virginia, though I could not swear to that quite yet. .

This official newspaper of the chamber of commerce, with the mayor and a pantheo of DEM-PFL politicians listed as vice-presidents on the masthead, essentially just funnels the ideology and political agenda of the Cato and Heritage Institute directly into Portuguese print.

The only thing like it I have ever seen is in the archives of the last century: Última Hora, the only newspaper dedicated to the defense of the dictator Vargas, having been secretly financed and established for that purpose.

The paper is also the culmination of a campaign by the Sambodian Instituto Millenium — directly organized and subsidized by Cato, Heritage, Atlas, the Kennedy School, State, USAID, NED and that whole gang — to take a radical stand on freedom of the press late last year.

The keynote speaker at that event, Carlos Alberto di Franco, is an Opus Dei supernumerary and spiritual advisor to the current governor, Geraldo Alckmin. This by his own confession in a 2006 magazine interview that did not go down too well with the Alckmin campaign.

He also runs the Master [sic] em Jornalismo, an Opus Dei-founded University of Navarra extension course for local content managers, as well as a media consulting firm of his own that shares many clients with the Navarra-founded Innovation Media Consulting — such as the Wall Street Journal and New York Times.

Among the consultancy’s founding partners were senior executives from the Editoral Abril and the Grupo Estado. In that sense, what we have witnessed at a lot of the major metro dailies has been a Brazilianization of our journalism.

This is not a good thing. Brazilian journalism, in general, gabbles hysterically.

Now, the VP of Marketing for the company that hosts the ASPC’s Web site, Sandra Turchi, is a frequent guest on Globo’s Small Companies, Big Businesses — a joint venture between the network and Endeavor Global and designed to make the youth of Brazil Ayn Randier.

The program began as a publicity campaign by Professa Propaganda, then turned into a radio show with a clever sleight of hand: the lead partner of Professa simply formed an NGO and hosted the show as a journalist employed by that NGO.

Turchi also lectures at the Escola Superior de Propaganda e Marketing,

She is also VP of Marketing for Boa Vista S/A, a firm with R$50 million in capital that says it invests in “non-financial assets, performs collections and registration services, and handles “distribution of credit awards to NGOs.”

Boa Vista has the precie same street address as the ACSP; 51, Rua Boa Vista, Sé.

It could even be the old  IMESP building we just heard about.

Sandra is also VP Marketing for the trade association representing customer call centers, ABRAREC — the same business Boa Vista is in, apparently.

Boa Vista’s servers host a panoply of e-businesss related URLs, while another contributor to the DComércio happens to be the president of the national Câmara-e, or Chamber of E-commerce.

The virtual newspaper’s blogroll — that is, its inventory of durable outlinks, important for SEM-SEO purposes — includes a direct pipeline to virtually every very loud member of the neocon Commentariat still not in captivity, not to mention heavy doses of the Tea Partiers and government agencies like USAID and NED.

In SNA terms — social network analysis — in fact, the DComércio is merely the hub that directs the navigator to the “authority” — that is what those numbers mean on the schematic of the network.

In a minute, if you will allow me, I will show you that this linking behavior is systematic and deep — not just a mention here or there, but dozens of redundant links, incorporating this body of discourse deeply into the DNA of the paper.

Dang, the gizmo is otherwise engaged. But here, in this network of institutions related to Brazil’s biofuels industry, you can see that each site is represented by a number, and that each adjacent number is accompanied by a value in parentheses. That value is the number of links from one to the other.

Thus, in the case shown, site 1 links to site 2 exactly 361 times — probably meaning that it is a permanent element of every page, just as twitter.com/about is of every twitter page view.

You see the same pattern emerging with the DComércio.

Particularly prominent, I thought, were plagiarisms in translation of campaigns against teacher unions by front groups in recent years, as SourceWatch has thoroughly reported on. The state governor sicced the military police on the state teachers when they struck last year.

And those boys are not all sweet and considerate, like your Egyptian riot police. I have seen them in action. They are totally out of control.

It is an eerie feeling: after all these years watching the right-wing netroots evolve, to hear the same shibboleths, now pronounced in Portuguese and repeated over and over again on every bat channel, is creepy and disorienting.

I will not belabor the case, which in any event still needs work.

The legal structure involved is complex, obviously,  and happily, IANAFL, although I am at least trying to learn how to research a company at the cartório the way I would back home.

What I find difficult to understand are various facets of the situation — not least how Afif could be elected vice-governor when a law went into effect last year banning public officials convicted of misconduct in office from standing for office that year.

Sandra Turchi, it turns out, is a columnist-blogger for the paper as well, which comes very close to 100% syndicated content — including publications like Wired in bad, poorly paid translation.

It is, in other words, the very model of a modern “glocal” online newspaper, running almost automatically on newsfeeds with the exception of regular contributions from a small cabal of bat-rabd editorialists.

Among its “original” features are a tax  ticker — a virtual version of the federal debt counter that has stood at the corner or 42nd and Bryant Park for decades — a feed from UN radio, a blog that essentially just plagiarizes everything that comes out in Globo’s Galileu magazine, and of course, the topic cloud, which indicates an interest in the two major political parties, the big leaders, and, looming large, the ever-popular Olavo de Carvalho.

Recent alliances among communities of pratice such as the engagement of Brazilian PR professionals by the APC.org and the Society of Professional Journalists — who actually gave Judith Miller an award! I quit immediately – are also noticeable in the content mix.

In sum, this is exactly the sort of propaganda rag USAID puts together to parachute into failed states — heavy on American popular culture, largely automated, with just a few tame natives brought onboard to give the impression that the editorials are not being written directly by the U.S. Ambassador, personally.

There will be a — grotesquely failed — separatist putsch on the Bolivian model in the next four years, I predict. Hold me to it. I could owe you a beer.

Currently working on, for serious: Brazilian alt.fuels.

Caught | Rotten Rio Cops

Brasilianas.Org reports: arrest of high-level police officials for corruption

I told you this would happen: as state police move to secure territory in shantytowns where drugs and gambling rackets have enormous power to corrupt, they would do so under the watchful eye of federal police.

I translate, rapidly and carelessly.

RIO – More than 350 federal officers are on the streets of Rio this morning serving 45 arrest and 48 search warrants on state judicial and military cops accused of corruption, robbery and involvement with drug gangs.  PF investigations indicate that the police arrested were playing a double game, tipping drug gangs to police operations against them.

One of the criminals tipped off was allegedly Antonio Bonfim Lopes, known as Nem, who heads a drug gang in Rocinha and Vidigal. In September  2009, he was forewarned of a major federal operation to arrest him.Investigation indicate that a right-hand man to the chief of the state legislative police warned the criminal personally.

The size of the bribes indicates the seniority of the persons involved.

According to the feds, some of the crooked cops got up to R$ 100,000 in bribes per month to protect the drug gangs. Furthermore, the accused allegedly robbed the criminals they were protecting. The most recent crimes took place in Penha and the Alemão complex, when military and judicial police were caught red-handed looting cash and valuables from residents and drug grangs..

This morning’s operation is being coordinated by the State Secretary of Public Safety, the state unified internal affairs division (CGU) and state prosecutors.At least two judicial police stations have been searched, along with residences all over Rio.

At 7 a.m. or thereabouts, the feds issued a press release on Operation Guilllotine, saying the operation came about after an investigation into  leaks inside another operation being run out of a state police precinct in Macaé, called “Operation .22 Parabellum”,  whose objective was to arrest the drug dealer “Rupinol”, who had operated in Rocinha with Nem.

Sugar | A Coopersucar Is Not Born Every Minute

I have often wondered who the Brazilian “Exxon of biofuel” would turn out to be.

If the development of the sector gets handled the usual Brazilian way — big marketers and risk managers fed by a star alliance of SME producers — there will be a heavyweight champion at the end of this process, I sense.

Many like Cosan, a market-quoted company domiciled offshore, which acquired the entire Esso chain of fueling stations last year, it was, I think.

But I am always more interested in Coopersucar myself.

There is something about Cosan that makes me want to think of it as an Enron of fuel-grade ethanol rather than a Standard Oil. I cannot back up that hunch with reasons, mind you — just a subjective sense of an excess of flash and filigree — so. I study the situation when I have time.

I am planning a full crawl of the biofuel sector today, in fact — after a successful data mining of Big Beef. I am getting good at this.

Anyway, hence two items of interest this morning — first, Cosan quarterly results down 83% on volatile sugar prices and a less than successful harvest.

The second is this note in the Rio-based tipsheet Relaório Reservado — always provocative, at the very least, though it will never be loved by RI directors. I will just gist, not wanting to infringe any copyrights.

Coopersucar — here is its «hot site», an anglicism I have yet to quite grasp the purpose of — is measurably the reining sugar giant of Brazil and has signed a deal with Jamal al-Ghurair to create a joint shipping venture, Copa Shipping Company

This deal “may be just the tip of the iceberg,” according to the tipsheet. 

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 the regional press. Under subsidies put in place by Lula I and II, small and midsize newspapers are going through a fascinating phase. A “glocal” mode of journalism is being introduced to the countless Pasadenas of Brazil — small cities with populations up to 100,000.

The example I like to cite is the lady in the queue with me reading two papers, neither one of them one of the competing metro dailies– the free Destak and Brasil de Fato.

Our editorialist provides us with a very nice lead on the theme of time passing — – “dictators like Pinochet and Saddam have risen, fallen and died” — to dramatize plans for a Santos-Guarujá bridge that have been in the works since 1970.

Since Santos is actually a place I might consider living someday — if it did not frighten me so much — I translate the gist of the editorial complaint and mark it one our personal Sambodian geolocation map.

Note to self: Also add Old Downtown Recife and Ouro Preto.

During all this time, the bridge, which was not a new idea even in 1970, remained as it ever was: a figment of the popular imagination. It would have been the world’s largest bridge in terms of traffic volume,handling 28,000 vehicles a day — not a meaningful world record, to tell the truth, but something..

The record delays have flowed from government inaction, which even in the face of such enormous demand cannot manage a short, dry traffic connection between the two principal cities of the Baixada Santista. Only those who depend on the ferry system to get to work and return home everyday can really tell you how irritating it is to wait sometimes 10 or 20 minutes to board a ferry to take you to the mainland. You will often have to suffer a half-hour delay  upon debarking should one of the ferries conk out, as they often do. Inevitably, it will be raining like the dickens at the time..

And so it was thaat José Serra, 2007-2010, during the PSDB’s 15th year running the richest state in Brazil, announced that it was withdrawing plans for a tunnel (seen as an ideal solution at the time) and relaunching plans for a bridge. Serra had the gall to unveil, with all the pomp and ceremony of a ribbon-cutting,  a tiny scale model of the project, one year later, the 16th of the São Paulo reign. He promised a toll-free crossing, as is currently the case with the ferries.

After revealing plans for the bridge – scheduled to break ground in late 2010 – the governor filed them in the deepest, darkest drawer in the  Bandeirantes Palace, at the beginning of this year, for lack of funding, leaving it up to  Paulo Alexandre Barbosa, a former PSDB state lawmaker who served as head cheerleaderfor the project all these years, and currently serving as state social development secretary, to try to beat out the flames.

Some say the failure to deliver is just the result of another cynical campaign promise, in this case by last year’s presidential campaign. . Others blame the conflict between Serra and his sucessor, current governor  Geraldo Alckmin, who belong to different PSDBs.

Together with  Saulo de Castro Abreu Filho, state secretary of transportation, o Paulo Alexandre of Santos, has tried to smooth over the episode promising a meeting today at which the bridge will be one of the main items on the agenda.We should know soon what fruit those discussions bore.What will be hard to know is is when the suffering of the citizens of Santos and Guaruja, the main victims, will finally be over.  .

.

Human Suffering to the Highest Bidder | The Pornography of Misery

One of the recently leaked State Department cables described a fascinating media war breaking out, if I remember right, in Italy, where Berlusconi commands a formidable media machine. Or perhaps it was Thailand, where competing media moguls vie for power. Or Colombia, for that matter.

Vejam só este jornal
Verdadeiro hospital
Porta voz do bangue-bangue
Da polícia central

Comunique-se covers the last development in the Globo-Record wars of religion as Record, bankrolled by a powerful Protestant evangelical denomination, takes aim on its decades-olds ratings leadership.

There has been a great deal of talent poaching between the two networks, most going off to Record, which pays higher salaries, one hears.

Journalist Luciano Zimbrão is accusing TV Record of stealing images shot by him but sold exclusively to TV Globo. The video shows the rescue of Marcelo Pinheiro Fonseca, trapped for 16 in the rubble of Teresópolis,during the tragedy that befell the mountains of Rio last week.

The video was signed over to TV Globo and local TV stations, according to Flávio Ricco in his column, giving TV Globo national exhibition rights on Sunday evening’s Fantástico. But a Record producer identified as Monique, said she contracted the filmographer, said she was at TV Terê, which was getting the live feed. Zimbrão had promised exclusive rights to TV Globo along with other images, such as the rescue shown nationally on Fantástico. The producer pressed her case but seemed to understand the position the videographer was in. Even so, the footage was shown on Record’s Domingo Espetacular, before Fantástico.

First of all, fighting over a scoop while some poor woman lies buried for 16 hours is Brazilian journalism in a nutshell. Brazilian popular journalism is a kind of pornography of human misery.

Secondly, if TV stations and newspapers would only bear the extra cost of having someone on the payroll, these divided loyalties would not crop up with such frequency.

“It was nasty what they did to me. They burned my professional with Globom even . I helped Globo produce the report, it was two days of work. But  Record put the footage on first, and what’s more, in a sensationalistic manner”, he said.

A Record spokesperson denied any illegality  The broadcaster said the video was a kind gesture by TV Teré. But Zimbrão disagrees. “TV Terê called me saying Record was interested, and put me in touch with the producer, but I told here I had already signed a deal with Globo”.

WikiLeaks | The “This Oil Is Ours” Factor

Natalia Viana. of Carta Capital — who has contributed Portuguese-language reporting to the WikiLeaks site on matters of interest to the Brazilian public — has mounted a WikiLeaks blog with the imprimatur of the weekly newsmagazine.

“The oil is ours!” has been a patriotic reallying cry since the days of Getúlio Vargas — who founded the state-owned Petrobras — and the debate over the model for the exploration of the pre-salt finds off the Brazilian coast is a good example of what the Clifford Sobels of the world contemptuously deride as Brazilian “paranoia.”

I translate.

“Will the oil industry succeed in lobbying against the pre-salt bill?” This is the title of a lengthy telegram sent by the U.S. consulate in Rio de Janeiro to Washington on December 2, 2009..

This and a further five telegrams divulged by  WikiLeaks show how closely the U.S. diplomatic mission to Brazil has paid attention to rumors about the drafting on rules on pre-salt exploration  – and how hard they lobby for big oil. .

The documents reveal how unhappy oil companies are with the pre-salt legislation approved by the Congress  – and especially with the fact that  Petrobras will serve as the sole operator  – and how hard they have worked to scuttle the bill in the Senate. .

Some seem to have accomodated themselves to the facts on the ground, if GE’s acquisition of Wellstream — and its opening of a $100 million research center in Rio– is any indication.

“They are the professionals and we are the amateurs,” was the remark attributed to  Patrícia Padral, director of Chevron no Brasil, regarding the law passed by the Brazilian lower house . According to Padral, PSDB presidential candidate José Serra promised to alter the rules if elected. .

Howls go up. Expect the accuracy of the report to be questioned.

Not long after the first proposals for exploration emerged, the  Rio de Janeiro consulate sent a confidential telegram summarizing the responses of oil company executives.

Dated August 27, 2009, it shows that Petrobras’ role as sole operate was viewed as “anathema” by the industry.

The fact is that the Brazilian government changed the rules for the pre-salt fields. Exploration companies will not, as they do in other places, receive a concession to operate the fields, becoming “owners” of the oil discovered for a fixed period. In the pre-salt files, they will have to follow a revenue sharing model, handing over at least 30% to the federal government. And Petrobras will be the sole operator of all oil fields..

Exxon Mobil international affairs director, Carla Lacerda said that  Petrobras would control all purchases of equipment and technology and all hiring, possibly to the detriment of American contractors.

Chevron government affairs director Patrícia Padral goes further,,accusing the government of making “political use” of the model.

They plan to use the money on social programs, this is true.

Another heavily criticized move was the creation of  PetroSal to manage the new reserves.

Fernando José Cunha, Petrobras chief executive for Africa, Asia and Eurasia, goes so far as to tell the economic attaché that the new company would end up sapping Petrobrás resources. The only possible rationale for the new company is politicial : “The PMDB needs a company of its own to run.”

The party, Brazil’s largest, does have that reputation to live down.

Even with all the complaining, the telegram makes it clear that American firms want to stay in Brazil and benefit from pre-salt exploration.

In Exxon Mobil’s view, the Brazilian market is especially attractive given the increasing scarcity of access to resources elsewhere in the world..

“The rules can always be changed later,” Patrícia Padral of  Chevron reportedly said..

The same attitude was reportedly taken by  PSDB presidential candidate José Serra, segundo, according to the December 2, 2009 telegram.

Entitled “Will the oil sector be able to stop the pre-salt law?” it details the industry’s lobbying strategy..

One of the major concerns of the Americans was that the model might favor the Chinese competition, given that  China’s state oil company could offer higher returns to the Brazilian government.

Patrícia Padral is said to have complained of apathy on the part of the opposition: “The PSDB has not even shown up for this debate.”

It is a highly popular measure, after all.

According to Padral, José Serra was opposed to the law but demonstrated no “sense of urgency.” “Let these guys (from the  PT) do what they want. The bid solicitations will never come off, and then we will be able to show everyone that the old model actually worked … and we will change everything back,” Serra reportedly said..

The best thing, according to  Padral, was to resign oneself to the new rules. “They are the pros and we are the amateurs,” she reportedly said regardomg presidential advisor Marco Aurelio Garcia  and communications secretary  Franklin Martins, the main powers behind the legislation.

That Garcia is a smart guy.

“With the industry resigned to passage of the bill in the lower house, the strategy now is to recruit new partners to work on the Senate, trying to pass substantial amendments and trying to delay the outcome until after the October elections,” the diplomatic cable concluded..

Among the partners to be recruited were OGX, owned by Eike Batista;  FIESP, the São Paulo industrial federation; and the National Confederation of Industries (CNI).

Paulo Skaf of FIESP ran for governor on the Socialist ticket. Imagine!

“Lacerda, from Exxon, said the industry plans to play man-to-man defense in the Senate, but that in any event, Exxon would mount its own lobbying efforts as well.”

Chevron said that future ambassador Thomas Shannon might wield considerable influence in the debate, and pressured for his confirmation..

“Oil companies are going to have to be careful,”the cable concludes. “A number of contacts inside the Brazilian congress feel that by talking openly about the matter, foreign oil companies run the risk of galvanizing nationalist sentiment and hurting their own cause.”

That would have been my advice, too. Every time Lula gets his picture taken in orange overalls and a hard hat, turning some new ceremonial spigot from which economic opportunity will soon come gushing forth, Joe Brazilian is mighty impressed.

Maybe I should get some nice suits made and turn consultant.

Botando a Boca No Trombone

Zeca do Trombone

A Lusophone is someone who speaks the Portuguese language natively or by adoption. As an adjective, it means “Portuguese-speaking.” The word itself is derived from the name of the ancient Roman province of Lusitania, which covered an area that is today Portugal.

Sousafone é um instrumento de sopro da família dos metais. Trata-se de uma tuba especial que o executante apoia no ombro para que possa executá-la enquanto anda ou marcha.

Here in Brazil, botando a boca no trombone (“putting your mouth to the trombone”) is an expression that means something like “going and telling the whole world about it,” “complaining loudly about something,” “blabbing it all over town,” “coming out with it.”

Think of our expression, “getting on the horn.”

This new blog of mine has in mind to do something of the kind with the news clipping on Brazilian business that I have fallen into the habit of doing lately.

As you may or may not know, I am a business and technical translator and journalist from Brooklyn, New York, living in São Paulo with my better half, the lovely Mina de Letras.

I am not exactly quite sure yet what I mean to do for a living down here, but in any event have been taking copious daily notes for a while now on Brazilian business news pra inglês ver (for non-New World Lusophones, that is) — compiling sources (reliable and unreliable), talking with local journalists, reading mountains of books, newspaper and magazines, downloading spreadsheets and prospectuses, and generally trying to scout the place out as thoroughly as possible.

Why not, I thought, not stick these running notes up on the Web? Without all the pasquinagem — satirical clowning around — I tend to indulge myself in on my previous blog, The New Market Machines.

Which has more or less outlived its usefulness to me, I am beginning to think.

Think of it a New World Lusophone version of NMM’s “open-source Bloomberg box” concept: How much good business intelligence can you dig up from open sources, and how well can you use free, open-source software to churn into some kind of useful form?