DMG: Uribe’s GotterDaMmerunG?

"Get your prepaid card": From DMG's Panamanian Web site

El terremoto DMG: “The earthquake that is the DMG scandal.”

El Tiempo (Bogotá) editorializes today.

Las impactantes imágenes de los saqueos y quemas de oficinas ayer en Mocoa resumen la explosiva situación que ha generado el desplome de las ‘pirámides’. Mientras uno de los más fuertes inviernos azota con fiereza a la mitad del país, las repercusiones del ‘terremoto DMG’ han desbordado toda previsión: desde las filas de damnificados en el estadio El Campín hasta las emotivas acusaciones al presidente Uribe pasando por el surgimiento de un nuevo escándalo político. Nadie pensó que terminaría por socavar hasta el proyecto de reelección del 2010, como sucedió ayer en la Comisión Primera de la Cámara.

The dramatic images of the looting and burning of premises in Mocoa yesterday sum up the explosive situation generated by the collapse of the pyramid schemes. As a terrible winter lashes half of Colombia, the aftershocks of the DMG earthquake have exceeded all expectations: from victims queuing up at the El Campin stadium to the emotional accusations against President Uribe, giving rise to a fresh political scandal. No one thought the affair would go so far as to undermine the 2010 reelection referendum, as it wound up doing yesterday in the lower house of the national congress.

Uribe had sought to mount a referendum on a Constitutional amendment allowing him to pull a Chávez-Bloomberg gambit and run for a third consecutive term (even as the legality of the last constitutional amendment allowing his reelection remains in question.)

El Espectador is calling that project a dead duck today, though the political parties differ on that evaluation. Under study now, apparently, is an amendment that would allow Uribe to run again in 2014. Or so I gather from a quick read-through of the news.

Uribe made a point of making public his tax returns, but I am not quite sure I understand why. Has he been accused of receiving income from pyramid schemes? Actually, the editorial refers to this fact. Read on.

Desde hace tres semanas, las réplicas del terremoto se reproducen en las más variadas esferas: política, económica, judicial, social y del orden público. En Nariño, Putumayo y Cauca, los departamentos más afectados por la crisis, la confusión y el malestar de miles de damnificados de estas estafas han dado paso a la rabia y el caos, como lo muestran los 15 heridos de los disturbios en Mocoa y las amenazas de violencia en otras zonas vecinas. A esto se suman verdaderas tragedias, como el secuestro del abuelo del administrador de una pirámide y el suicidio de un taxista endeudado.

For three weeks now, the aftershocks of this earthquake have been felt in various areas: the economy, politics, the judiciary, the social sphere, law enforcement and public order. In Nariño, Putumayho and Cauca, the provinces most affected by the crisis, the confusion and apprehension of thousands of victims of these swindles have given way to rage and chaos, as shown by the 15 wounded in the Mocoa disturbances and the threat of violence in neighboring areas. Add to this the veritable tragedies that have occurred, such as the kidnapping of the grandfather of a pyramid scheme operator and the suicide of a deeply indebted taxi driver.

Dantas’ Inferno: Investigating the Investigation; TV Globo in Nextel Hell

Daniel Valente Dantas. Graphic: Veja magazine, May 2006, when it reported: “Daniel Dantas has a list that may show illegal offshore bank accounts controlled by the president and party bigwigs.” Veja had plenty of evidence that “almost certainly does not” was the word to use instead of “may.” Ecce Veja

In all four locations, teams of TV Globo journalists were present even before the federal police arrived to serve the warrants.

Há mais investigações sobre policiais da Satiagraha do que sobre o próprio Dantas: There are more investigations into police who conducted investigations in the Satiagraha case than into Daniel Valente Dantas, its principal suspect, reports Rubens Valente of the Folha de S. Paulo today.

If you have read Misha Glenny’s McMafia, you will already be somewhat familiar with the figure of Brazilian police investigator Protógenes Queiroz, who is featured prominently in the book as the courageous and dedicated Brazilian cop who (more or less) took down the Sino-Paraguayan smuggling king Law Kin Chong.

I say more or less because, although the King of the 25 de Março was convicted and sentenced — for attempted bribery of a congressional investigator into smuggling and product piracy — his sentence was later reduced, and he apparently continues to operate.

See

• São Paulo Diary: The Law King Gets Out of Jail

Brazilian federal police, I think it is fair to say — I follow the Web site of the professional association of delegados — tend to get very angry when they arrest someone and then the superior instances of the federal courts let them go, whereupon they flee the jurisdiction.

(Like Salvatore Cacciola, for example, or judges accused of selling verdicts to the mafia in the so-called Hurricane case in Rio.)

Passados quatro meses da prisão e soltura do banqueiro Daniel Dantas na Operação Satiagraha, já existem mais apurações federais a respeito da própria operação do que investigações contrárias aos executivos do Opportunity.

Four months since the arrest and release of banker Daniel Dantas in Operation Satiagraha, there now exist more federal investigations of the investigation of Dantas than investigations into Opportunity executives.

A Satiagraha, deflagrada em 8 de julho passado, resultou até agora em dois inquéritos relatados pelo delegado Protógenes Queiroz: um trata de corrupção ativa (Dantas teria tentado subornar um delegado por US$ 1 milhão) e outro de suposta gestão fraudulenta do banco.

Satiagraha, conducted on July 8 of this year, has to date led to two charges on the recommendation of federal police investigator Protógenes Queiroz: One for active corruption (Dantas allegedly tried to bribe a federal police agent with US$1 million) and another for alleged banking fraud.

O primeiro inquérito deu origem a uma denúncia formulada pela Procuradoria da República e acolhida pelo juiz da 6ª Vara Federal Criminal, Fausto Martin De Sanctis. O segundo inquérito está sob avaliação na procuradoria e na 6ª Vara.

The first charge led to an indictment by the federal prosecutor, accepted by Judge de Sancits of the 6th Federal Criminal Bar. The second is still under evaluation by the court and the federal prosecutors.

Em contrapartida, há pelo menos três apurações em andamento contra os investigadores da Satiagraha. Ao deixar o comando da operação, Queiroz denunciou que integrantes da cúpula da PF, em Brasília, boicotaram seu trabalho, ao negarem o envio do reforço pedido de 50 policiais. Depois disso, Queiroz passou a ter de dar explicações à PF e hoje é alvo de pelo menos dois inquéritos.

On the other hand, there are at least three investigations underway into the Satiagraha investigators. Upon leaving command of the investigation, Queiroz charged that top leadership of the federal police in Brasilia boycotted his work by denying his request for 50 police agents as reinforcements. After making this charge, Queiroz was forced to explain himself to federal police leadership and is now the target of at least two investigations.

O primeiro foi aberto pela PF de Brasília, por ordem da direção-geral do órgão a partir de uma reportagem da revista “Veja” que afirmou ter havido suposto grampo ilegal contra o presidente do STF, Gilmar Mendes, o senador Demóstenes Torres (DEM-GO) e integrantes do governo Lula.

The first is being conducted by the federal police in Brasilia by order of the head of the agency, based on a report in Veja magazine that stated there was alleged [sic] illegal wiretapping of the Chief Justice of the Supreme Court, Senator Torres of Goias, and members of the Lula government.

“Alleged,” nothing. Veja stated it as an established fact, based on (an anonymous source) who is (allegedly) an insider at the Brazilian National Intelligence Agency (ABIN). It has never identified the source and claims the audio that would prove bugging actually took place got “lost.” Quack.

Dubya in The Tropics: Elio Gaspari on Mesopotamian Mandraquices

"Why Bush infuriates the world; plus Magalhães: The Power, Charisma and Truculence of a Political Phenomenon." Not even the essentially neoconservative and neofascist Veja dared speak well in public of King George II, Baron of Texarkana, Yale and Harvard legacy admission, and idiot princeling of King George I.

As mentiras de Bush têm até carta falsa: Elio Gaspari, a journalist and historian of the military dictatorship — and one of the most reality-based conservative brains in Brazil — uses news of the election of Barack Saddam Hussein Osama Obama to remind Brazilian readers that Bush lied and people died.

Faltam 76 dias para George Bush deixar a Casa Branca, levando para a História seu legado de mediocridade, mentiras e mandraquices. Seus oito anos de governo serão material para estudo dos fracassos. Uma coisa triste como visita a mina abandonada.

Seventy-six days remain before George Bush vacates the White House, taking with him a legacy of mediocrity, mendacity and magical thinking.

“Magical thinking” is actually a mistranslation of mandraquice, which derives from Mandrake the Magician and means that Bush was practiced at the art of deception. But I wanted to preserve the alliteration there.

His eight years of government will provide a case study in failure. A sad spectacle, like a visit to an abandoned mine.

A campanha eleitoral e a crise financeira abafaram as revelações de um livro devastador, capaz de surpreender até os conspiromaníacos do antiamericanismo. É “The way of the world” (“O mundo como ele é”), de Ron Suskind, ex-repórter do “The Wall Street Journal”.

The election campaign and the financial crisis have drowned out the revelations of a devastating book, capable of surprising even the most dedicated of anti-American conspiracy theorists. The book is The Way of the World by former Wall Street Journal reporter Ron Suskind.

Suskind conta que em março de 2003, quando os Estados Unidos invadiram o Iraque, a Casa Branca recebera de duas fontes a informação de que Saddam Hussein não tinha armas de destruição em massa. A primeira viera de um ex-chanceler iraquiano que estava na folha de pagamento da Central Intelligence Agency. A segunda foi levada a Washington em fevereiro pelo chefe do Serviço Secreto inglês, Sir Richard Dearlove.

Suskind relates that in March 2003, as the United States invaded Iraq, the White House received information from two sources that Saddam Hussein had no weapons of mass destruction. The first came from a former Iraqi foreign minister on the payroll of the CIA. The second was forwarded to Washington in February by the head of the British secret service, Sir Richard Dearlove.

“ABIN Plans To Steal the Elections For Lula!”

Simulation of electronic democracy on the TSE Web site: Until recently, required Windows, but is now penguin-powered.

“We have no evidence that points to the existence of fraud involving the electronic voting machine.” –Gustavo Fruet (PSDB-São Paulo)

CPI dos Grampos põe em dúvida segurança das urnas: Members of the Brazilian opposition in a parliamentary commission of inquiry focusing on court-ordered wiretapping are using charges that ABIN bugged the Supreme Court for Lula to raise suspicions that ABIN may be tampering with the Brazilian voting machine for Lula.

The Estado de S. Paulo reports. The money quote:

“We have no evidence that points to the existence of fraud involving the electronic voting machine.” –Gustavo Fruet (PSDB-São Paulo)

If they did have evidence, this story might actually be news rather than a gabbling factoid based on at least three nested contrary-to-fact conditionals.

He who assumes makes an ass …

Some members of that wiretap commission had been overheard on wiretaps leaked to the press, discussing what sounded quite a bit like criminal behavior, such as having witnesses against them and their friends whacked out.

I will have to go and see what those very knowledgeable folks at Voto Seguro — a Brazilian e-voting security forum and advocacy group who know all there is to know about how to phreak various flavors of Diebold and other democratic beancounting devices — have to say about the credibility of this suspicion. (First comment on the topic in the forums is: “A spectacle of disinformation from all sides …”)

The opposition is about to get whomped in the national municipal elections, it looks like.

It may be interesting in engaging in the pseudologia of e-voting fraud to cast the result into the outer darkness of David Sasaki-style fear, uncertainty and doubt, like its brethren at ORVEX, the  Miami-based anti-Chavez cult of gibbering agitprop.

BRASÍLIA – O suposto envolvimento da Agência Brasileira de Inteligência (Abin) com escutas ilegais pode colocar sob suspeita as urnas eletrônicas utilizadas nas próximas eleições.

The supposed involvement of ABIN in illegal wiretaps may cast suspicion on the electronic voting machines used in the next elections.

Sambodian Scenes: “Ad Hoc Secondary Market in Driver’s License Points”

A Detran-SP CNH (state driving license). Source: Jesus Me Chicoteia ("Whip me, Jebus"). The guy looks a lot like my brother-in-law.

Senha de delegado era usada em fraude no Detran-SP: The password of a senior traffic cop was used in a fraudulent scheme at the São Paulo DMV-equivalent in which points lost from drivers licenses due to infractions were transferred to innocent drivers.

In exchange for money, naturally.

A bar conversation interlocutor the other night was making just this point: People here are cynical about things like the new zero tolerance policy for driving under the influence, for example, because, as he put it bluntly, “the cops are for sale, and everybody knows it.”

A Corregedoria do Departamento Estadual de Trânsito de São Paulo (Detran-SP) investiga um esquema criminoso de transferência de pontuação das carteiras de motoristas multados para outras, de inocentes, cujos números de CNHs foram usados para abrigar os pontos.

The internal affairs department of the state traffic authority of São Paulo (Detran-SP) is investigating a criminal scheme in which point losses were transferred from the license of ticketed drivers to the licenses of other, innocent, drivers, whose drivers license numbers were used to store the point losses.

Colombia: Milo Minderbender & The Wages of Fear, Uncertainty & Doubt

Electroservicios to its insurance company: "Evil, ubiquitous Communist supermen blew things up!" Except only not, not at all, not really. "The company took care not to blow the towers up completely so as not to incur additional costs," Semana reports.

… the success of the company, created in 2000, was essentially due to its blowing the transmission towers up and then charging ISA to fix them.

Yossarian: You made a deal to bomb our own base?
Minderbender: A contract is a contract. That’s what we’re fighting for.
–Buck Henry, Catch 22 (screenplay)

Negocio redondo: Semana (Colombia) tells a fascinating story about

Un operativo del DAS dejó al descubierto la aberrante historia de una empresa que dinamitó más de 300 torres de energía para luego cobrar miles de millones de pesos por repararlas.

… an operation by the national police (DAS) [that] exposed the bizarre story of a company that dynamited 300 electrical transmission towers in order to charge billions of pesos [hundreds of thousands of dollars] to repair them.

The company blamed the FARC for the attacks, but as it turns out — according to the DAS sources cited by Semana — the FARC fighters involved in the scheme (if they were, in fact, FARC fighters, a fact the report does not substantiate except by citing official sources) were actually engaged in a little good old-fashioned free enterprise on the side.

It’s a fascinating little tale of war profiteering in which both sides try to make a few bucks off keeping the violence, and the fear, alive. What I like to call “the hog heaven of the hard men.”

It bears an uncanny resemblance, in fact, to a scenario from Joseph Heller’s novel Catch-22 (later a Mike Nichols film with screenplay by Buck Henry) in which the war profiteer Milo Minderbender gets so deep into the profiteering end of the war that American B-29 bombers are ordered to bomb their own airfields.

With its estimated 8,000 fighters, the FARC seem to be behind everything dubious that happens on the South American continent.

I tend to think of this as the “folklore of infinite Communist cunning.”

You see a lot of it down here.

A former governor of São Paulo who ran for President in 2006, for example, claimed the drug-running FARC plotted with the rival PT political party and the drug-running PCC criminal organization to assassinate military police in the state that year, in order to undermine his national candidacy.

Pressed to provide evidence, he backed off the claim as hard fact, shading off into the realm of conspiratorial plausibility. The sort of quacking nonsense that Dick Morris gets paid to tell candidates to say, in other words, or to get someone like Diogo Mainardi to publish.

The same gabbling rumor campaign has cropped up again recently, ignited by a report in Cambio magazine about mentions of Brazilian officials on the “Raul Reyes” laptop. The article notes that there are no e-mails from the Brazilian officials mentioned to the FARCs on the laptop, the chain of custody of which is a little funky. See

• Colombia: “Scotland Yard May Inspect Reyes Computers”

The letters pages of the Estado de S. Paulo this Sunday, for example, is completely made up of letters saying, “See! The PT is conspiring with the FARC!” These are the same sorts of people who will tell you that the MST is a terrorist organization on a par with al-Qaeda.

Jose Maria “ETA Did 11-M” Aznar of Spain, for example:

• Spain’s 11-M: “The Parallel Inquest”
• Aznar on the Phantom Menace

Which is pretty much just utter quacking nonsense, no matter how much of a pain in the ass the constant trespasses of this movement of “landless rural workers” may be.

Coincidentally, the same former governor is running for mayor of Sâo Paulo at the moment, against a cabinet minister from that rival party, after undertaking urban management studies at the Kennedy School of Government at Harvard University. Perpetual font of great banana-republican statesmen and monument to the triumphant Bay of Pigs approach to hemispheric relations that it is.

Back to Cauca province, Colombia:

Desde 2005, cuando comenzaron los sistemáticos ataques a las torres de energía, las autoridades se conformaron con sindicar a la guerrilla, a pesar que el 93 por ciento de todos los atentados contra la infraestructura eléctrica del país ocurría en esa zona.

Since 2005, when systematic attacks on the transmission towers began, authorities had gotten in the habit of blaming the guerrilla, even though 93% of the attacks against the electrical infrastructure of Colombia were occurring in this specific area.

Sin embargo, desde finales del año pasado, cuando más de 100 torres fueron dinamitadas, un grupo de detectives del DAS retomó el caso y empezó a analizarlo detenidamente. Gracias a esa paciente labor, descubrieron varias cosas que les llamaron la atención. Todas las torres dinamitadas pertenecían a la empresa ISA. Las cargas explosivas eran ubicadas en el mismo lugar. El modus operandi era el mismo en todos los ataques.

Since late last year, however, when more than 100 towers were dynamited, a group of DAS detectives revived the case and began analyzing it closely. Thanks to this patient labor, they discovered various facts that called attention. All the towers belonged to the same company, ISA. The explosive charges were always placed in the same way. The MO of all the attacks was identical.

“Globo Gabbles on Gaucho Gran Guignol”

A couple of months back, IstoÉ magazine apologized for having Photoshopped out a message criticizing São Paulo governor José Serra (“Down with Serra!”) from a photo of an MST rally. Left: The photo IstoÉ ran. Right: the unretouched photo. As if no one already knew that the PSDB and the Landless Workers do not tend to get together down to the pub every Friday for beers and darts.

The professedly pro-government Grupo Beatrice complains that Globo’s Jornal Nacional evening newscast reported, er, nonexistent facts about a political flap in Rio Grande do Sul last evening.

In a related fubar, the Jornal do Brasil reportedly ran this headline on the affair today:

“Corrupção abala governo do PT; Yeda Crusius vai mexer no alto escalão gaúcho”

“Corruption brings down PT government; Crusius will announce changes to cabinet.”

The current government of the state is occupied by the PSDB, the PT’s arch-enemy. The PT is currently opposition, not situation. The Jornal do Brasil quacks.

The gaucho state government is undergoing a revamp as the result of a political corruption scandal involving the classic Brazilian schematism: (1) No-bid contracts awarded to (2) political cronies in charge of public agencies who (3) subcontract out to other cronies, generally in the private or “third” (philanthropic) sector, who (4) (over)bill the public treasury for services (rendered or not rendered) and (5) kick the money back to political slush funds, after (6) everyone else takes their cut and (7) exports it to their shell corporation in the Caymans.

This is the sort of thing that tends to give the term “public-private partnership” a bad name around here.

I note the item not for its political content — I actually tend to think Yeda is not in the Nixonian loop in this scandal — but because, as a hobby, I try to collect and chase down cases in which the Globo infotainment empire allegedly airs nonexistent facts whose airing can only be explained by assuming (1) that everyone who works on the JN is about as intelligent as your average kangaroo, or (2) that the JN is a permanent font of gabbling un-, anti-, and disingenuous partial truth on purpose.

Partial result, midstream: Many cases of Globo engaging in sleazy mis- and disinformation have been documented to our satisfaction. The Grupo Beatrice has designed a running graphic element that it uses whenever it thinks has caught Globo being Globo:

“The Jornal Nacional deliberately hid this news. Globo journalism is criminal.”

Como definir a linha editorial do jornal televisivo de maior audiência no país, o Jornal Nacional, da Rede Globo, que simplesmente sonega e deforma informações quase todos os dias? Na noite de 11 de junho, essa prática foi utilizada mais uma vez. Ao “noticiar” os conflitos de rua ocorridos em Porto Alegre, o JN “informou” que se tratou de uma invasão da Via Campesina a um supermercado para protestar contra a alta do preço dos alimentos. Isso e nada mais. Omitiu-se, entre outros, o pequeno detalhe de que se tratava de um protesto contra a corrupção no governo Yeda Crusius e que os policiais agiram para evitar que os manifestantes chegassem perto do Palácio Piratini.

What can the editorial line of the most-watched news show in Brazil be? Does the Jornal Nacional omit and distort information every day? On June 11, this practice was used once again. “Reporting” on street clashes in [the gaucho capital] Porto Alegre, the JN “informed” us that this was an invasion by the Via Campesina movement of a supermarket in protest of rising food prices. Period. It omitted to mention, among other things, the small detail that this was actually a protest against corruption in the Crusius government, and that police acted to prevent protesters from approaching the Piratini Palace, seat of the state government.