On Laity and Lay TV | Paulo Victor Melo

Source: Brasilianas.Org | Carta Capital

By: Paulo Victor Melo | Intervozes

Topic: Religious Proselytism in the Brazilan Media

Translated: C. Brayton

That is to say, the representative of Brazilian civil society at the head of the Social Communication Council of the Senate is a Catholic archbishop..

Paulo’s is the  most intelligent take on the topic I have seen.

The deluge of religious proselytism on TV is assuming a growing importance, and not just this week, as a result of the papal visit, but as a historical tendency of the Brazilian media, which fails to respect the diversity of faiths and the laity of the State

Since the highest figure in the Catholic Church set foot on Brazilian soil on Monday, July 22, the major open-to-air broadcasters of Brazil have dedicated a huge portion of their programming and content to Pope Francis’s every step.

Judging from the TV screen, Brazil appears to have ground to a halt; nothing unrelated to the daily llife of  the Argentine Jorge Mario Bergoglio can find a place in the  news.

The TV news shows have turned themselves into extensions of the Vatican PR office.

Brazilian TV news shows and yellow press are always turning themselves into extensions of somebody’s PR office. This is their main problem. 

Pinheirinho | Real Estate & Rape

Source: Brasil de Fato| Brasilianas.Org

The PM infiltrated men into the Pinheirinho prior to the eviction. The police agents were even spotted  at a general assembly held in the central warehouse of the community and closing with the performance of “The Cordel-Rap of Pinheirinho” at 9:30 p.m. on January 21, 2012. Police say the action was designed to avoid more violent confrontations with residents. But the PM tactics were criticized by a number of public safety experts.  According to Walter Maierovitch, “the Military Police used techniques from the time of the dictatorship. It infiltrated in order to identify the leaders.”

The forced eviction of slum squatters from the Pinheirinho community in suburban São José dos Campos in early 2012 is back in the news, as  the trial begins of the 13 law enforcement personnel involved in criminal charges arising from the case.

The facts seem to speak for themselves, pretty much, but the first of these episodes may shed some light on current ones.

A lieutentant, two sargeants, a corporal and nine privates of ROTA — the elite “ostensive patrol” unit of the PMESP — were indicted this Wednesday (July 24, 2013) by military police internal affairs for sexual abuse, torture and inflicting bodily harm.

The crimes were committed last January during the invasion by the military police (PM) as part of the ejection of local residents in  Pinheirinho, a slum in São José dos Campos, in inland São Paulo.

I keep wanting to call it “upstate São Paulo,” but São Sebastião is not Fire Island. (Come to think of it, a favela is not necessarily a “slum,” either. )

The six victims, four men and two women, had been approached by police in the Campo dos Alemães neighborhood, about 3 km from Pinheirinho, around 11:30 p.m.. Three were walking in the street and were stopped by police, who accused them of drug use.  The other subjects ran into a house, where they were detained.

The criminal complaint was registered by one of the women in the house.  At the time, she informed the state prosecutor that they had been forced to perform oral sex and that one of the men was [impaled?].

Empalar … my research tells me … is a mode of torture involving the forced insertion of some elongated object into some orifice.

The materiality of the assaults was confirmed based on forensic evidence and medical inspection of the bodies of the victims.

The PM did not learn of the charges until it read about them in the press in January 2012.  The police officers involved were then immediately removed from active duty. Another trooper, from the PM Operations Command (Copom) in São José dos Campos, was accused of prevarication — when a civil servant fails to perform official duties — when she answered the 190 call from one of the victims but failed to draw due attention to the situation.

Violent Foreclosure

Pinheirinho, with its 1.3 million cubic meters, belongs to the bankrupt estate of Selecta, a company belonging to the Naji Nahas group.

1,600 families who had lived in the area for 8 years, were evicted in a violent manner by more than 2,000 police, who were carrying out orders from a state court and the São José dos Campos city government.

This all happened in late January of 2012. Most recently:

On Friday (19 July, 2013 ), some 400 former residents carried out a lightining occupation of Pinheirinho to protest the delay in construction of popular housing for families evicted a year and a half ago. The promise made by city and state governments immediately following the eviction has not been met, and the ex-residents say that the rent subsidy of R$ 500 paid by the city is not enough to pay for housing in the city.

After the eviction, Pinheirinho was completely abandoned.. Where once stood hundreds of houses, small businesses, public squares and churches, there is a giant, overgrown  vacant lot. The belongings of families violently evicted were stored in a warehouse, where they remain.  The former residents claim that after the blitz attack by police, an unidentified group set fire to the warehouse, burning the furniture stored inside.  (Additional reporting by Sindimetal/SJC)

A blow by blow of the incident maintained on Wikipedia makes for an interesting point of comparison with current police doctrine on how to get someone to do what they would rather not, and damn the consequences.

The PM showed up at the site on 22 January 2012 and began the eviction operation at 6 a.m.

Around 7 a.m., some residents , who to that point had not reacted, began to resist. Residents and journalists say the PM used gas bombs and rubber bullets in an indiscriminate manner even where resistance was lacking.

The daily O Estado de São Paulo ran a story on pregnant women allegedly assaulted by police even though they were not putting up a fight. Jenifer Moreira, 18  and five months pregnant, was attacked with pepper spray while waiting for the PM to arrive and perform triage. Acccording to Jenifer, “it was a whole lot of screaming. The police arrived with bombs and spray. My eyes were burning.” By sometime around 5:00 p.m., the PM had established control over 50% of the neighborhood.

On January 22, 2,000 PMs reinforced by members of the civil guard, along with two Eagle helicopters, armored cars, gas bombs and rubber bullets, carried out the eviction. Also on the scene were 220 patrol cars, 40 dogs, and 100 horses. 30 people were arrested, 16 or 17 early on and another 14 on the morning of January 22.

(At the outset of the operation, official sources reported 11 arrests.) A young man who was shot and seriously wounded and other residents also wound up in hospital.

Scenes of violence were transmitted over the UOL Web portal and at least three other outlets and … showed PMs launching bombs and rubber bullets at residents, including women with children at their breast running away as fast as they could. Residents later responded with barricades. A car belonging to TV Vanguarda, a Globo affiliate, was burned.

Globo often catches a lot of flack — not a metaphor — from all sides during fighting in the streets.

A 15 year-old-resident of Campo dos Alemães confesses responsibility.

At 5:30 p.m., residents of the neighborhood next door threw rocks at police and broke down the wire fence that surrounded the Campo dos Alemães sports and recreation center. In reprisal, they received rubber bullets and gas bombs. At one point, the Guarda Civil Municipal went so far as to fire into the air and aim rubber bullets directly at the crowd.  At 5:53 p.m, the climate remained tense, and the occupation was only 50% complete.

Trade union groups and news portals say that the city used tractors to tear down a chapel built by the community , as well as other property improvements. At  8:00p.m., residents clashed again with the PMs. Explosions and gunfire were  heard after the burning of a car near a PM base.

On January 23, the task  was still not accomplished. The PM said that the eviction went peacefully, but the Folha de São Paulo was present when officers of  the Guarda Civil Municipal were beating residents and the PM using their gas and pepper. Rumors were that six cars burned during the night were destroyed by movement sympathizers and not residents.

The PM infiltrated men into the Pinheirinho prior to the eviction. The police agents were even spotted  at a general assembly held in the central warehouse of the community and closing with the performance of “The Cordel-Rap of Pinheirinho” at 9:30 p.m. on January 21, 2012.

Police say the action was designed to avoid more violent confrontations with residents. But the PM tactics were criticized by a number of public safety experts.  According to Walter Maierovitch, “the Military Police used techniques from the time of the dictatorship. It infiltrated in order to identify the leaders.”

Rio | Protesters Demand Openness of Police IDs

Source: O Globo

• PM do Rio trades infiltrators for uniformed officers in Rio protests | O Globo

Police officers were identified with labels in large letters and numbers on their bulletproof vests in order to facilitate complaints of abuse to the ombudsman. OAB members applaud initiative.

July 25, 2013 | 20h 08

Felipe Werneck – Agência Estado

RIO – The Rio de Janeiro mililtar police — PMERJ — today inaugurated a new approach to the handling of protestors during a protest carried out on the street where state governor Sérgio Cabral resides, in Leblon, Southern Zone, Rio. Along with the heavily armored caveirão, the water cannon — nicknamed the “burucutu — and the shock troop, installed behind a barricade of metal bars on Aristides Espínola street, 1,000 uniformed policemen identified as such in large letters and numbers on their vests have been added to the scheme of policing the crowd.

The police circulate in groups among the protestors, searching the backpacks of some. It is an approach that has earned praise even from attorneys who have observed the protests since the beginning.  “Starting today, we will act inside the crowds in order to prevent crimes and to home in on groups using the protests as an opportunity to commit crimes,” said detachment commander Lt. Col. Mauro Andrade. “”The Shock Battalion has been unable to screen crowd members in this way during earlier protests,” he added.

The colonel  says that members of the new group normally work stadium crowds and are specialized in physical restraint.  “We could see there was this missing element and we are trying to adapt.” Regarding the lack of identification of police by name, Andrade said “this is not ready today, but it will be.”

Police will often remove their name tag before wading into a violent rumble in the streets to avoid accountability. We have seen this often ourselves. .

Protestors are now calling for the wearing of name tags in addition to the encoded IDs accessible only by police commanders in the field.

Siemens Sins Again

 

Source: Deutsche Welle

Image: ProPublica

Not long ago, Siemens was at the center of one of the largest corruption scandals in the history of German business. In November 2006, a vast bribery scheme came to light, leading to the dismissal of practically the entire management team in the first quarter of 2007.

In response to the problem, the company adopted an anticorruption program and a new management, led by Peter Löscher, and guaranteed that it would prefer to miss out on lucrative deals than to involve itself in illicit practices.

A fresh case in Brazil, however, exposes how difficult it is for the Munich-based company to turn words into deeds. Last week, Siemens notified Brazilian authorities of the formation of a cartel, in which it participated, designed to fraudulently fix price for the purchase of railway equipment and construction and maintenance on train and subway lines in São Paulo and Brasília.

In a communiqué published after the announcement was made public by the Brazilian press, the group said that its management is aware of the investigation and recalled its efforts since 2007 to develop an effective system of controls, and said it was “the obligation of all employees to comply with the antitrust laws.” The company also reported that it is cooperating fully with Brazilian authorities.

According to the daily Süddeutsche Zeitung, however, the irregularities committed in Brazil were first reported to the company in 2008, that is, after its promises to change, and nothing changed.

In June 2008 strong indications emerged of illicit dealings, the Zeitung said. At that time, a Brazilian federal deputy and a former Siemens employee described in detail the manner in which Siemens closed deals with competitors. The accusations involved bribes paid to Brazilian officials. The case was very similar to the case in which Siemens announced its wrongdoing, the newspaper said. In 2010, new evidence appeared which, like previous evidence, led nowhere.

The SZ suggests that Siemens did not investigate the facts at the time in order not to suffer a disadvantage in the dispute for projects related to the World Cup 2014 and the Olympics of 2016.

The megascandal of 2006 came as a shock to Siemens at the time and gave rise to a profound process of change, for which it paid dearly. In the course of the scandal, a Munich court found the company guilty and levied a fine of 201 million euros.

The U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission, also opened an investigation against Siemens, which is listed in the stock exchyange. An out of court settlement cost Siemens another US$ 800 million.

In all, the damages suffered by the company in this episode are estimated to be nearly 3 billion euros, including fines, auditor fees, and supplementary tax collection.

Not long before the verdict, in January 2007, was condemned by the European Union, together with 11 other multinationals, to pay a 750 million euro penalty for formation of a cartel that manipulated high tension electricity installations. The major portion of the penalty — 400 million euros — was paid by the German group. It was the second largsest fine ever levied against a company in the Eurozone.

Pressured by the U.S. government, Siemens hired the former German finance minister Theo Waigel to ensure that the company was in fact modifying its business cultural and implementing the agreed-upon reforms. Waigel and his team interviewed more than 2,500 employees around the world between 2009 and 2012, and when it delivered its report, it was full of praise for the company. “Siemens implemented all our recommendations,” Wagel declared in late 2012.

Apart from Siemens, subsidiaries of other multinationals were allegedly participating in the cartel denounced by Siemens, including the Frence Alstom, Canada’s Bombardier, CAF of Spain and Mitsui of Japan. These allegedly negotiated illegally the price they were to pay in the public tenders, seeking to impose prices 10% to 20% higher than market value.

In early July, the Brazilian antitrust authority Cade, conducted an operation with the federal police that served warrants of 13 companies supposedly involved in the schemee, located in São Paulo, Diadema, Hortolândia and Brasília. Analysis of the fruits of those searches should take about three months.

The charges brought by Siemens inform that the cartel acted in at least six public tenders. The real extent of the misconduct, the duration of the scheme and the damages caused remain unknown, however. The deals involving Siemens are valued in the hundreds of millions of euros. In the early 1990s, the German firm won the contract for the construction of the first phase of what is now Line 5 of the São Paulo subway, estimated at R$ 600 million and in which an illicit deal involving Alstom is said to have been cut.

There may also have been irregularities in a 2000 contract for the provision of ten trains, built jointly by Siemens and Mitsui. And there may have been fraud in contracts signed by Siemens in 2007 and totaling R$ 96 million per year for maintenance of the Brasilia subway. In this case, the German firm made an illicit deal with Alstom, which supplied the trains to the government of the Federal District.

In denouncing the scheme, Siemens, according to the local press, signed a leniency agreement, guaraneeing the company and its executives immunity against prosecution in the even that formation of a cartel was proven. In return, Siemens will cooperate in the investigation.

Siemens’ accusation of cartel formation in the railway sector comes at a sensitive moment. Next month, an auction is scheduled for the TGV train that will link Rio and São Paulo, the first of its kind in Latin America.

The companies in the alleged cartel are among the most promising bidders in the dispute for this megaproject, estimated by the Brazilian government at R$ 35 billion.Along with the five multinationals accused of price-fixing, only five other companies in the world are cable of building the TGV. Only the Korean Rotem has expressed an interest in bidding on the project.