Intercontinental Ballistic Raghead Bashing? | Federal Police et Cia.

Brasilianas.Org notes a real shocker of an investigative piece by Leandro Fortes of Carta Capital this week.

It concerns a Brazilian federal police official accused of colluding in systematic anti-Islamic defamation campaigns carried out by the Brazilian mainstream media, funded illegally with your gringo tax dollar, and carried forward with the connivance of disgraced former federal district governor José Roberto Arruda.

The anti-Islamism of the gabbling neocon Commentariate slipped the surly bonds of gravity long ago, as we know, of course.

For a note — in alleged Portuguese — on the Arab-Muslim fallacy, see

• São Paulo Confidencial | Démarche à Comunidade Musulmana

Suffice it to note the domain DIRTYARABS.PAJAMASMEDIA.COM in the online configuration of the Claremont chapter of said Commentariate.

I was fairly struck, from the earlier Wikileak cables, by how badly the Consulate described the ethnic make-up of São Paulo’s large, prosperous — and almost universally Syrian or Lebanese Catholic as Catholic can be — Arab-descended population.

To give you a trivial example, both the city of São Paulo — Kassab — and the state –Alckmin = al-Kamin — are run by Arab-descended public men. There are practically more Arabs here than there are Japanese — and there is an Amazon of Japanese around here. Great sushi town, this.

The Consulate had challenged the Brazilian census on the datum whereby Brazil has only 127,000 Muslims, but failed to offer any well-founded numbers of its own. They seem not to know what they are talking about.

I will translate a few excerpts provided by my blogging buddy on the general outlines of the story.

The network of Terror in Brazil! VEJA has privileged access to documents from the CIA, FBI, Interpol, the U.S. Treasury and the Brazilian federal police showing that extremists use Brazil as a base of operations and recruit members! We hunt down and photograph five of them! Photoshopping in the poster of Osama behind the man’s head is the sort of heavy-handed bullshit the magazine engages in on a regular basis.

The gist of it is that Leandro believes he may have caught himself a federal agent on the payroll of the CIA. The Brazilians tend to hate it when the CIA get mixed up in these sorts of things.

Upon resigning as federal district secretary of public security on 19 April, the federal police delegado Daniel Lorenz said he could no longer put up with “political interferences” in his department. Lorenz had lasted only four months in the job, recommended by former executive director of the federal police Luiz fernando Corrêa to governor-elect Agnelo Queiroz of the PT.

The fact is that the PT government lifted not a finger to spare Lorenz, a former head of the federal antiterrorism united (SANTER) and former director of intelligence at the Federal Police the historic conflict among the civilian and military police forces of the federal capital, many of their number now elected legislators trading barbs in the district assembly.

The PT left Lorenz to rot on the vine, but it had a good reason for doing so.

FSP: FBI Sent Bait for Hate to Haití Não É Aqui

Exit polls show Chávez referendum victory. But Chávez had already conceded quote your shitty little victory end-quote by then. O Globo was worse: CHÁVEZ WON BY CHEATING! (Hugo lost.)

The Bergen Record newspaper in New Jersey reviewed Mr. Turner’s court documents and found the FBI had admonished Mr. Turner in July 2007 for his rhetoric and “the potential of it inciting acts of violence” but continued to use him. The FBI also paid Mr. Turner to meet with a wealthy, white supremacist in Brazil.

An item today from the Sunday Folha de S. Paulo tends to reinforce the deep prejudice of every New Yorker: that New Jersey is a mobbed-up banana republic — run out of the Bing of Tony Soprano and Co. –where we are frightened to set foot. (I have ridden PATH exactly twice in 13 years.)

The item also reflects on the quality of journalism at the often-ridiculed FSP.

The local fishwrap presents information that is readily available in the public domain as <based on secret sources>.

Eu, hein? (Roughly, <pull the other one.>

This story was broken by 419 news sources (Google News results) on November 30, 2009. Two weeks ago.

And the FSP is regurgitating it as a red-hot scoop involving investigative reporting of the most romantic kind.

Eu, hein? (Roughly, <there is one born every minute>.

O FBI, a polícia federal norte-americana, ajudou a bancar a ida ao Brasil de um radialista e blogueiro radical de extrema direita de Nova Jersey como isca para atrair e identificar grupos extremistas brasileiros contrários aos Estados Unidos, de acordo com pessoas que tiveram acesso a documentos do governo norte-americano.

The FBI … helped bankroll a visit to Brazil of a white-supremacist radio personality and blogger from New Jersey as bait designed to attract and identify Brazilian extremist groups who oppose the U.S., according to persons who had access to U.S. government documents.

According to the dozens of other journalists — I can make a list of their bylines if you like — who covered the trial of this FBI informant code-named <Valhalla> and requested copies from the court clerk. (I bet you can even download them from the Internet for a minimal fee to cover court expenses.)

Harold “Hal” Turner, 47, viajou a Curitiba, no Paraná, em 2005, onde se apresentou como líder da National Alliance, um dos maiores grupos de supremacistas brancos dos EUA. Ali, se encontrou com um simpatizante brasileiro, com quem teria discutido doação de US$ 1 milhão à causa americana, e com um representante da Sociedade Árabe Brasileira.

Hal Turner, 47, traveled to Curitiba, Paraná, in 2005, where he represented himself as leader of the National Alliance, one of the largest white-supremacist groups in the U.S. There, he met with a Brazilian sympathizer, with whom he allegedly discussed a US1$ million donation to the cause, as well as a representative of the Brazilian-Arab Society.

TV Cultura Ombudsman on Roda Viva: Chaer and Azevedo Stunk Up The Show

Reinaldo Azevedo and Márcio Chaer, in their attempt to misuse the program as a personal platform in the face of such delicate issues and such a controversial interviewee, conspired against the journalistic quality and balance of this edition of Roda Viva. The program’s directors should reflect on their criteria for selecting interviewers in the future.

The Ombudsman of TV Cultura (São Paulo) has been kept busy by the controversial episode of the public station’s venerable interview show, Roda Viva, this week with Supreme Court Chief Justice Gilmar Mendes.

See also

• Veja’s Designated Blogger: The Chief Justice And I (And Especially I) Were Superb on Roda Viva!
• The Apostheosis of Gilmar Mendes: Nassif, In Disbelief

In a recent post, Ernesto Rodrigues, the station’s ombusdman, defends the overall journalistic quality of the program, but laments the choice of Reinaldo Azevedo (Veja) and Márcio Chaer (Consultor Jurídico) as part of the interview panel.

Laments in rather emphatic terms.

These franks criticisms reportedly touched off a barrage of thuggish responses from Azevedo supporters, who function very much like Rush Limbaugh or Matt Drudge “dittoheads” — the style of “journalism” Azevedo practices, which you can think of as essentially Lusophone Limbaugh.

On which more later. The debate is not complete without a few choice quotes from Azevedo’s droogies, with social graces straight out of Clockwork Orange.

“O senhor se indispôs com delegados, Polícia Federal, Ministério da Justiça, Ministério Público, juízes e associações de juízes. Todos eles são contra o estado de direito? O que aconteceu?”

“You have been involved in quarrels with police investigators, the federal police, the Ministry of Justice, the Public Ministry, judges and professional associations representing judges. Are all of these enemies of the democratic rule of law? What happened?”

Esta pergunta simples e reveladora, feita pela jornalista Eliane Cantanhêde, resume a importância e o interesse despertado pelo Roda Viva com o presidente do STF, Gilmar Mendes, quaisquer que fossem, antes, ou sejam, depois, as opiniões dos telespectadores sobre o magistrado. A pergunta de Eliane também é emblemática de um programa que, nem sempre com a ajuda de parte dos entrevistadores, diga-se, abordou todas as polêmicas conhecidas e em pauta sobre as decisões e idéias do presidente da principal corte de justiça do país.

This simple and revealing question, posed by journalist Eliane Cantanhêde, sums up the importance and the interest awakened by Roda Viva‘s interview with Chief Justice Gilmar Mendes, jurist. Eliane’s question is also emblematic of a program that, though not always with help of all its interviewers, let it be said, touched upon all the well-known and current controversies regarding the decisions and ideas of the chief justice of the highest court in the land.

A âncora Lillian Witte Fibe, cumprindo de forma competente a função de garantir que todos esses assuntos fossem abordados, abriu com duas perguntas que muitos gostariam de fazer: onde está o áudio do suposto grampo da conversa de Gilmar Mendes com o senador Demóstenes Torres e qual a responsabilidade do STF pelo vazamento de um ofício reservado do tribunal à revista Veja?

Program anchor Lillian Witte Fibe, competently assuming her role of making sure that all these matters were touched on, opened with two questions that many would like to ask: Where is the audio of the alleged wiretap of a conversation between the Chief Justice and Sen. Torres, and what role did the Supreme Court play, if any, in the leaking of an official court report to Veja magazine?

On the latter issue, see also

• Dantas’ Inferno: Did Daniel Have a Man in Supreme Court Security?
• Dantas’ Inferno and Veja’s Source: Fortes on the Chief Justice’s Private Spy Shop