Dig the PIG: “Veja Lies”

"Are we really swine?" Yes. You really are.

“No high-minded man, no man of right feeling, can contemplate the lumbering and slovenly lying of the present day without grieving to see a noble art so prostituted.” –Mark Twain

A fellow member of the Luis Nassif online community reports the latest in countless atrocities against simple honesty perpetrated by the folks at Veja magazine (Editora Abril, Brazil).

As the foreign correspondent of a major Argentine daily once told me, sotto voce, as if it were not glaringly obvious already: “Veja lies, you know.”

Sidnei Soreiro reports that he was irritated by what he felt was a gratuitous attack on presidential candidate Dilma Roussef — the post-Lula continuity candidate — by a Veja columnist and resolved to comment online. He writes:

Irritado com o artigo, resolvi então enviar um comentário e qual a minha surpresa foi apresentado. Mas com o sentido alterado.

Irritated by the article, I decided to comment, and to my surprise, the comment was published. Only with the meaning altered.

Rio: The Naked Mayor on Chowning the Asphalt

Capt. Guimarães (l.) — a military torturer turned king of the jogo do bicho and president of the League of Independent Escolas de Samba — with Rio mayor Cesar “Chairman” “The Naked” Maia (second from left) during Carnaval

According to A.L., the harassment intensified after he filed the complaint [against military police]. Two months later, two hooded assailants executed A.L. in the street near his workplace, riddling him with some 32 shots, according to the police and autopsy reports.

As Human Rights Watch issues a quite negative report, with numerous recommendations, on progress made against summary executions by Brazilian police, …

• Lethal Force: Police Violence and Public Security in Rio de Janeiro in São Paulo (December 2009; English)

former Rio mayor Cesar (“The Naked”) Maia comments on the current scenario in the Olympic city of 2016 — where police kill one suspect for every 23 suspects arrested.

(U.S. police kill around 1 in 37,000.)

I translate an excerpt, in haste, focusing on the Naked Mayor’s latest thoughts about the militia situation — which compares pretty directly with Colombian parapolitics in the wake of the CONVIVIR program with respect to the deep penetration of public institutions by diversified paramilitary criminal organizations — the so-called parallel power.

What we here sometimes refer to as the hog heaven of the hard men.

Maia was characterized in a report by the AP during his last term as a vocal supporter of the mafia-style protection and vice rackets run by off-duty police and firemen in 177 Rio neighborhoods. See

• Rio: Militias Hit the Green Zone
• Rio: The Naked Maia Is Shocked! Shocked! By Carioca Parapolitics!
• Rio: Deadly Days for the Man With a Van
• In Memoriam, Inspector Tostes
• Rio de Janeiro: The Copacabana Serpico?

and quite a few others.

He says nothing to dispel that characterization here.

(Like American neocons, Maia is a former orthodox Marxist turned Trotskyite of the far right — and is a great admirer of Dick Morris to boot.)

I translate in haste: