Brazzil

Great article and pity you couldn´t nail the guy. May I suggest that the next time you want to play hardball with a Brazilian politician, you take a large, freshly made custard pie. Then, should you fail to get the sort of response you deserve, well at least you´ll enjoy an element of satisfaction when the pie slams into their fat bloated face. As an added bonus you´ll probably make headlines yourself!

and probably last be seen put in a military police vehicle never to be heard from again!!

I would agree. Don't mess with those guys if you care to live another day.
I haven't heard anything good about the Bahian senador.

Fascinating.!
(and I thought I was the only gringo living in Sto. Antonio!)

they just don't mix well, especially in Brasil. Stick with the bundas and beaches in Bahia and away from politics, I'm sure the local Gov't folks would love to make an example of you if you get in the way.

I really enjoyed your article, but as one who has been all over the Developing world will tell you. Unless you are prepared to die, do not meddle with these politicians in Bahia, lest you vanish into thin air or get deported on a trumped up charge.

I am neither powerful nor skilled enough to get in anyone’s way, so I’m safe for the time being.

The real courageous journalists in Brazil are those in small towns that dare to take on local corrupt bosses. It’s the small time thugs that are the most dangerous. Take a look at the lead sentence from the 2005 Brazil report of Reports Without Borders:

“Violence against the media continued in 2004 and two journalists were killed (as in 2002 and 2003), showing once again that journalism is still a dangerous business outside major cities….” http://www.rsf.org/article.php3?id_article=13214

As for ACM and the PFL, when ACM worked at the service of the dictatorship as first the mayor of Salvador and then the governor of Bahia, a newspaper called “O Jornal da Bahia repeatedly went after him for corruption, and his alliance with the military. The editor of the now closed newspaper (it shut down for financial reasons, years after its prolonged conflict with ACM had come to a close), wrote a book about his experiences called “Memórias das Trevas, uma devassa na vida de Antonio Carlos Magalhães”

The book is a detailed accounting of ACM’s coloration with the dictatorship and his attempts to intimidate the media, but unfortunately its horribly organized and takes a lot of patience to finish.

My piece has its successes and failures. I’ll write a critique of it in my blog a week from now.

Peace all,
Jared

Who made the media de "MESSIAH" ??

Kind of funny the way they pretend to care about other people.

You have de 4 powers

Church
Government
The Rich
The Media


They are most the time Bias to one side and only care about keeping their jobs and position of Messiah i

Is just a EGGGGOOOOOO trip

Two details were missing in my last post.

The name of the organization is “Reporters Without Borders”, and not the type-O I offered.

Also, the former editor of O Jornal da Bahia has a name. It is João Carlos Teixeira Gomes

Sorry, dear readers, for my horrendous tendency toward type-Os.

My hope is that Brazil's debt burden will force the privatization of those state pension funds. Smaller-scale stories involving influence peddling in these institutions are rife at a lower level. I know of one posh spot in Rio's Barra Shopping that was financed this way. There are even full-time "representatives" who work at unlocking state favors such as pension fund investment and subsidized BNDES loans.

Raymundo Faoro lives...

Congratulations for the initiative.

You forgot to ask one question from the governor, why there is hardly no elected black officials in Bahia. As you know the state is 80% black.