A few minor complaints about your recent coverage of the Brasilian elections:
1. When you cite sources like Datafolha or Veja, it would be a nice to tell your non-Brazilian readers that they have a strong and freely admitted right-wing bias.
2. You could at least try to hide your disappointment that the "scandal" you tried so hard to peddle didn't really take off.
3. When you say that Lula "deepened" Fernando Henrique Cardoso's economic policies, it would be good to point out that this did not include the wholesale privatization of public resources, or the meek obeisance to the IMF and World Bank.
3b. Actually, maybe it would be better not to say it at all, given that it is not true, per se.
4. The idea that Dilma might steer the country to the left is not, as you suggest, a universal "concern." Nobody really believes that this will happen, but a lot of my friends think it would be a good idea.
I'm not trying to endorse Dilma or anybody else, but I think it's important to look at how relentlessly the NYT distorts its coverage of Latin America to promote a neoliberal agenda that's in line with Brasil's right wing. Given the paper's importance on the world stage and its supposed neutrality, its coverage is often cited in Brazil as an example of unbiased outside reporting, even though most of its content comes cribbed from ideologically slanted sources (imagine reporting on the States based only on what's in the Wall Street Journal or Fox News).
http://www.nytimes.com/2010/10/03/world/americas/03brazil.html?ref=americas
segunda-feira, 4 de outubro de 2010
segunda-feira, 20 de setembro de 2010
campanha legal... (cool/legal campaign - english at the bottom)
logo depois da performance na sexta-feira passada, encontrei o suco - guerreiro austríaco que filmou várias encarnações de "cada um no seu quadrado" - em frente ao "studio portátil" da campanha de rodrigo bethlem, o responsável para a implementação do choque de ordem e atual candidato a deputado federal.
os produtores de "choque tv" negaram fazer parte da campanha do bethlem, evidentemente por pensar que eu e suco fomos apenas mais dois gringos sem noção. dizeram que a cidade agora estava mais limpa, mais segura, etc e tal, e que as remoções de ocupantes de prédios abandonados, favelas, e a população da rua estavam sendo feitas para "cuidar" dessas pessoas, apesar de não saber responder para onde eles vão. mas é assim mesmo:
acontece que a campanha do bethlem já violou centenas de vezes as leis criadas por ele.
http://oglobo.globo.com/pais/eleicoes2010/mat/2010/09/09/campanha-de-rodrigo-bethlem-ex-secretario-da-ordem-publica-poe-propaganda-em-locais-proibidos-pela-legislacao-917598090.asp
...e a ordem continua tomando conta.
english:
soon after the performance last friday, i found suco - an austrian warrior who filmed several encarnations of "cada um no seu quadrado" - in front of the "portable studio" for rodrigo bethlem's campaign. bethlem, who's currently a candidate for national congress, is responsible for implementing the "shock of order" campaign in rio.
the producers of "shock tv" denied being part of bethlem's campaign, apparently because they thought that suco and i were just two more clueless gringos. they said that the city is cleaner now, safer, etc, and that the removal of residents from occupied buildings, favelas, and the street was taking place to "take care of" these people, though they didn't know where these people went after being "cared for." but that's how it goes...
so-called urban cleaning tends to have an exterminatory vision of "lower" populations. the killings of amadou diallou and shawn bell - both unarmed black men shot by the police - are well-known cases in new york of the amplification of force under "zero tolerance." could it really be that in rio, where the police already kill more people proportionally than in any other city in the world (according to a study published last year), there will be any other effect? accompanying bethlem's discourse, it's hard to believe...
in other words: for the "shock of order," living on the street is another example of bad behavior, like parking illegally or pissing in the street. all three are inconveniences that bethlem will do away with.
as it happens, bethlem's campaign has already violated the laws that he created hundreds of times...and order keeps taking charge.
os produtores de "choque tv" negaram fazer parte da campanha do bethlem, evidentemente por pensar que eu e suco fomos apenas mais dois gringos sem noção. dizeram que a cidade agora estava mais limpa, mais segura, etc e tal, e que as remoções de ocupantes de prédios abandonados, favelas, e a população da rua estavam sendo feitas para "cuidar" dessas pessoas, apesar de não saber responder para onde eles vão. mas é assim mesmo:
the medicine is bitter
as chamadas limpezas urbanas tendem a ter uma visão exterminatória das populações mais "baixas". os assassinatos de amadou diallou e shawn bell - ambos negros, sem armas, baleados pela polícia - são casos bem conhecidos em nova iorque como efeitos da ampliação de políticas de força no esquema "tolerância zero". será que no rio, onde proporcionalmente a polícia já mata mais do que em qualquer outra cidade do mundo (segundo um estudo publicado no ano passado), terá algum outro efeito? acompanhando o discurso do bethlem, é difícil acreditar:
cars on the sidewalk
peeing in the street
population on the street
ou seja: para o choque de ordem, o fato de alguém morar na rua é outro exemplo de mau comportamento, como estacionar ilegalmente ou mijar na rua. os três são inconvências com quais o bethlem vai terminar...
the sheriff getting rid of this stuff
http://oglobo.globo.com/pais/eleicoes2010/mat/2010/09/09/campanha-de-rodrigo-bethlem-ex-secretario-da-ordem-publica-poe-propaganda-em-locais-proibidos-pela-legislacao-917598090.asp
...e a ordem continua tomando conta.
english:
soon after the performance last friday, i found suco - an austrian warrior who filmed several encarnations of "cada um no seu quadrado" - in front of the "portable studio" for rodrigo bethlem's campaign. bethlem, who's currently a candidate for national congress, is responsible for implementing the "shock of order" campaign in rio.
the producers of "shock tv" denied being part of bethlem's campaign, apparently because they thought that suco and i were just two more clueless gringos. they said that the city is cleaner now, safer, etc, and that the removal of residents from occupied buildings, favelas, and the street was taking place to "take care of" these people, though they didn't know where these people went after being "cared for." but that's how it goes...
so-called urban cleaning tends to have an exterminatory vision of "lower" populations. the killings of amadou diallou and shawn bell - both unarmed black men shot by the police - are well-known cases in new york of the amplification of force under "zero tolerance." could it really be that in rio, where the police already kill more people proportionally than in any other city in the world (according to a study published last year), there will be any other effect? accompanying bethlem's discourse, it's hard to believe...
in other words: for the "shock of order," living on the street is another example of bad behavior, like parking illegally or pissing in the street. all three are inconveniences that bethlem will do away with.
as it happens, bethlem's campaign has already violated the laws that he created hundreds of times...and order keeps taking charge.
quinta-feira, 6 de maio de 2010
tortured justice...
in my "generation and communication of knowledge" class on monday, we started talking about - or around - torture. last week, brasil's supreme court issued a new ruling on 1979's general amnesty law, which allowed political exiles back in the country at the same time as it protected everyone in the hierarchy of official state torture. according to the supreme court, the torturers are still untouchable. this included everyone from the guys doing the actual shocking, beating, cutting, and killing to the higher-ups who invented new forms of keeping people in intense pain. maybe most of all, it covers the ones who gave the orders, and who determined that torture would be an official state policy. the ruling's not much of a surprise. based on a lot of what's happened since the official end of the dictatorship in 1985, the laws enacted during the dictatorship are still valid, even though they were created by a political class that was ruling illegally.
the ruling made some headlines the day after it came out, but it doesn't seem to have attracted too much attention or protest. this is what we were trying to decode in class. inevitably, someone brought up argentina, where the memory of the dictatorship is a lot more vivid, and where citizens and (to a lesser extent) the state have done a lot more to keep it visible.
las madres de la plaza de mayo - a protest group made up of the mothers of disappeared children - in june, 2007.
painted design on the sidewalk of the plaza de mayo.
it's a fascinating and necessary comparison, though in a lot of settings in brasil, it's colored by a persistent inferiority complex that sees argentina as more sophisticated, cultured, intellectual, and "advanced" (in other words, more white and "european"). and the student who brought up argentina bought into that stereotype completely, positing that argentina is a more developed (re: better) country, and that brasil still wasn't advanced or sophisticated or first world enough to confront its past.
(no mention, of course, of argentina's genocide of its black population in the 19th century.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Afro_Argentine
but i digress).
so of course, i had to go ahead and point out that i come from an "advanced," "sophisticated," "first world" country that for at least the past 8 years has maintained torture as an official state policy. no one here had heard of the fahad hashmi case, which the us media seems to finally have noticed now that it's too late. i don't know much about the specifics of the case, though my friend brian pickett has been the main force behind keeping protests and vigils outside the manhattan correctional center for almost a year. more info here, via nimm:
http://blogs.aljazeera.net/americas/2010/04/28/hashmi-symbol-0?utm_source=twitterfeed&utm_medium=twitter
http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2010/04/27/syed-hashmi-american-stud_n_554211.html
it's hard to imagine anyone who, after 3 years in solitary confinement wouldn't plead guilty to trumped-up charges, especially if doing so meant avoiding a lifetime spent in similar conditions. it's one of the ways the brasilian dictatorship broke the resistance, using torture to break their opponents and get them to name names. it's sad to see a present-day example of how well this strategy works, and sad to know that - across decades and continents - the torturers are still untouchable.
the ruling made some headlines the day after it came out, but it doesn't seem to have attracted too much attention or protest. this is what we were trying to decode in class. inevitably, someone brought up argentina, where the memory of the dictatorship is a lot more vivid, and where citizens and (to a lesser extent) the state have done a lot more to keep it visible.
it's a fascinating and necessary comparison, though in a lot of settings in brasil, it's colored by a persistent inferiority complex that sees argentina as more sophisticated, cultured, intellectual, and "advanced" (in other words, more white and "european"). and the student who brought up argentina bought into that stereotype completely, positing that argentina is a more developed (re: better) country, and that brasil still wasn't advanced or sophisticated or first world enough to confront its past.
(no mention, of course, of argentina's genocide of its black population in the 19th century.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Afro_Argentine
but i digress).
so of course, i had to go ahead and point out that i come from an "advanced," "sophisticated," "first world" country that for at least the past 8 years has maintained torture as an official state policy. no one here had heard of the fahad hashmi case, which the us media seems to finally have noticed now that it's too late. i don't know much about the specifics of the case, though my friend brian pickett has been the main force behind keeping protests and vigils outside the manhattan correctional center for almost a year. more info here, via nimm:
http://blogs.aljazeera.net/americas/2010/04/28/hashmi-symbol-0?utm_source=twitterfeed&utm_medium=twitter
http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2010/04/27/syed-hashmi-american-stud_n_554211.html
it's hard to imagine anyone who, after 3 years in solitary confinement wouldn't plead guilty to trumped-up charges, especially if doing so meant avoiding a lifetime spent in similar conditions. it's one of the ways the brasilian dictatorship broke the resistance, using torture to break their opponents and get them to name names. it's sad to see a present-day example of how well this strategy works, and sad to know that - across decades and continents - the torturers are still untouchable.
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