The trial of President Dilma Rousseff is the story of the hour here in Sambodia.
Since we no longer have basic cable, we search for a live feed of Dilma’s testimony online.
It is a little difficult to find.
Neuza finally locates it on the site of the Spanish daily El País, Brazilian edition.
Hoje eu só temo a morte da democracia.
«My only fear this day is for the death of democracy», Dilma says.
Coverage to Coverage
The following image is large, and I have yet to find out how to scale with Jekyll – needs Imagemagick – so scroll down for the time being, please.
El País has an excellent technical summary of the impeachment charges – see below – whilst Globo focuses on tabloid emotions and dramatic exchanges inside the Senate. No wonder. Globo is the greatest soap opera factory in the world.
I am a bit confused by the «ao vivo» tag on its G1 portal, meanwhile. That video appears to have been recorded earlier, and comes with a very long, non-dismissable advertisement.
The Silver Venus, as it is known, and other media outlets – there are shockingly few on the Brazilian media landscape – have also pointedly referred to the opposition senators bent on the impeachment of Dilma as «the government benches» or «the government (coalition) – as though the removal of Rousseff were a fait accompli.
Say it often enough and it becomes true.
Now, as it often does when Brazil is in the international headlines, Globo covers the coverage, though often a lot gets lost in translation.
Where Globo reports blandly on the «close attention» paid to the case by the foreign press, Der Spiegel, for example, uses the terms machtkampf and putsch in its banner headline. Loaded terms, I would say.
We should check whether the coverage reviewed by Globo in representative of the entire range of opinion.
A Google News search – without the br– shows coverage by BBC, Guardian, Washington Post, NPR, Swiss Info, USA Today, CNBC, and the Wall Street Journal, all filed at noon.
Oh, and Newswek, Heavy and the Telegraph. And many more
And that does not include other French & German-speaking sources other than Spiegel and Le Monde.
We should also check whether the foreign press sources that are described really say what Globo says they do.
Globo lies.
Meanwhile, Back in Sambodia
El País, meanwhile, back in Sambodia, does us the service of explicating the impeachment charges and how to grok the «stew» of legalese in the case:
Pedaladas, decretos de suplementação orçamentária, Plano Safra, meta fiscal. A sopa de termos que envolve o impeachment de Dilma Rousseff, que desde quinta-feira é julgada no Senado Federal, dificulta a compreensão até mesmo dos espectadores mais atentos. Mas, afinal, do que a presidenta afastada é acusada? Explicamos abaixo cada ponto da denúncia que, ao final, enseja uma guerra de interpretações jurídicas.
Enquanto Isso No Meu Cafofo
Neuza, a life-long petista, is very excited and inspired and simultaneously rendered despairing by today’s developments.
The Facebook jungle telegraph is calling us to the Avenida Paulista for an anti-impeachment street protest but I am already in my pyjamas and smoking jacket and on my third ouisquinho escocês – let the world go to hell.
I have done more than enough marching for this life – the last time was the 2004 Republican Convention in New York City and I was mainly on the streets to film the protests in an ironic light.
Most often the invasion of Iraq to punish Bin Laden – how grotesque was that? – goes ahead in any case.