Stories about Brazil from January, 2007
Brazil Again: Blogs Banished from 2007 PanAm Games in Rio
The Brazilian blogosphere is becoming one of the main fronts in the battle against Internet censorship. The reason for that can be the growing audience created by the amount of time local internauts devote to web surfing, which was once again rated as the highest in the world. But it...
Brazil: Paulo Coelho's The Alchemist
“By all rights, Paulo Coelho's The Alchemist should have single-handedly delivered a knock-out blow to any popular conception that Latin American literature is ‘good’ literature. The novel is, simply put, execrable tripe.” So begins Posthegemony's ranting review of what it terms Coelho's famous work of “anti-literature”. Still, Jon admits that...
Brazilian Blogs on Chávez, Lula and the Mercosur Summit
Presidents from most South American countries are gathered in Rio de Janeiro for a meeting of the Mercosur trading group, and Hugo Chavez is again the attention drawer. Local bloggers have been substantially posting about the Venezuelan president since he announced the move to cancel the broadcasting license to (TV...
Cicarelli Case: Censorship and Boycott Dialectics in the Brazilian Blogosphere
Almost everybody with an Internet connection in Brazil has already seen Daniela Cicarelli's steamy video on the web since it first appeared four months ago and got linked on the first page of the main news portals. Funny as it is, the recent blocking of YouTube to many internauts in...
Brazil: Politicians and Editors
Colin Brayton translates a post from Cesar Maia, ex-mayor of Rio de Janeiro on that funny friendship between politicians and the media.
Brazil: Supermodel Sex Scandal = YouTube Blocked = Poor Reporting
Colin Brayton lends his extensive free time to following the Daniela Cicarelli sex video scandal and the mainstream media misinformation that has followed. Brazil-based Ricardo Carreon says: “My god, we really need the judges to understand how the whole internet works. And we really need them busy on issues that...
Saddam execution video re-ignites death penalty debates worldwide
Over the past four months, we've tried to feature and contextualise videos we felt should be seen and debated by a wider audience. Today's featured human rights video is something completely new. You may be one of the millions who have sought it out online – or you may have...
Lusosphere Debate Over Saddam's Last Scene
Despite the dreadful subject, Saddam's execution has become the very symbol of an year that has definitely changed the media as we knew it. The empowered delivery of citizen content through web 2.0 services and news sites is providing a totally new environment for news distribution, and the effects of...
Brazil: Portuguese Slave Trade
With the bold assertion that “the history of Brazil is the history of the persistence of slavery,” The Wolf Report dishes out some statistics about the Portuguese slave trade.
Brazil: Women at the 8th International Free Software Forum
Liz Henry writes that G2G, a women-only group, will be going en masse to the 8th International Free Software Forum, April 12-14, in Porto Alegre, Brazil.
Brazil: New iCommons Chairman
Heather Ford of iCommons announces that Brazilian lawyer Ronaldo Lemos will take over Joi Ito's role as Chairman. The next iCommons Summit will be held in Dubrovnik, Croatia from June 15 – 17.
Brazil: Marta Vieira da Silva, Football Superstar
The Global Game has pieced together an incredible and inspirational biography of the 5'3″ Brazilian 20-year-old prodigy Marta Vieira da Silva. Here's just a glimpse: “Marta’s background [is complex]: the perennially water-challenged “backlands” area, more than 1,000 miles northeast of the country’s political and tourist centers, that provides her cultural...
Brazil: Vigilante Militias Take Over Rio de Janeiro Slums
Marginal Revolutions reports about the vigilante militias that allegedly have taken over Rio de Janeiro slums, ruling as feudal lords and imposing taxes, as a result of the collapse of legal policing in these areas.