Apparently, Lula and his advisers haven’t learned anything from the current crisis. Following Severino’s resignation, the administration is in full throttle trying to regain the Chamber’s control. How? Offering up to half a million reais in parliamentary amendments, in hopes of turning precious votes in favor of their candidate, ex-Political Articulation minister Rep. Aldo Rebelo (PC do B - SP).
My friend Renato Parada is a great example of how our current political crisis can have a positive effect on society. A few months ago, it was rather unusual to see any sort of political commentary on his blog. When it happened, it was usually mockery. Nowadays, though, he has become perhaps the most “fair and balanced” political voice of Insanus’s blogs.
Take this post, for example. While I wouldn’t be so quick as to say all those who can’t read are ignorants, he makes a pretty good point, specially for a country where voting is compulsory. So, to the post:
The Senate has approved a bill for restricting campaign spending, which was then sent back to the Chamber (Brazil’s House of Representatives). Instead of making amendments to the text approved by senators (which would mean another trip to the Senate), the bill’s relator at the CCJ (Constitution and Justice Comission) decided to cut some provisions and present the final text for voting.
According to this piece at Folha de S. Paulo, she decided it was better to let go of some parts than having to send a new text back to the Senate. This way, she hopes the bill will be voted and approved in time for next year’s presidential elections.
While Olavo de Carvalho in typical fashion says Brazilian politics are beyond salvation, due to nationwide corruption established as part of a leftist agenda, Guilherme Fiuza lends a rather more humorous and sharp view of Lula’s clumsy foreign politics, even making a fool out of the UN in the process.
Over at TPMCafe, Matthew Yglesias notes how difficult it is to find nuanced political commentary on the German elections, written by Germans. I tend to read quite a few political blogs every day, and I must say I haven’t seen any links to German newspapers’ op-eds, let alone to German political bloggers. What little information we can gather is either from news agencies (and pretty much devoid of any perspective) or from American bloggers (usually drawing conclusions based on information from the same mainstream media they’re so used to criticize).
This is certainly not a new or unusual problem. Take our good ole’ Brazil, for instance. If you look for news in English about our current political crisis, you’ll be stuck with Larry Rohter’s rather untrustworthy dispatches for the New York Times. Maybe a more thorough and fitting piece on The Economist. But you’d be hard put to find out what is actually being written in Brazil’s newspapers or magazines.
The idea behind Banana Pundits is to try and gather some of this information (I was gonna say ‘wisdom’, but that may be too strong a word for some of the things we’ll be posting here), and make it available in English. So, our main purpose is to translate articles and news, from sources either interesting or renowned. Yes, it means we’ll post things we disagree with or downright make fun of, as well as that which we thing is coherent or even intelligent.
And while there will be the occasional “personal post” by the authors, it shouldn’t be the rule. We’re here to translate the pundits, not be pundits ourselves. Which is not to say we won’t comment or at least introduce whatever we translate (we don’t expect US readers to know who Ricardo Noblat is, or how influential a journalist he is, for example). In the end, it should turn out like any other political blog, with two peculiarities: 1) it will be Brazil-centric, with original content written by brazilians; and 2) instead of quoting just part of a piece, and linking to the original, we’ll post whole pieces.
We’re aware there may be copyright issues involved in some of the things we translate, as well as the author’s pride. For now, at least, we’ll just carry on and see what comes out of it. It should also be noted that, right now, we are only two translators/bloggers, with jobs and college to worry about, so blogging should be light at this point. We’d be happy to add new members to the crew, and especially happy if eventually some of the pundits would start sending their own translations.
Enough, then. To the hard work. Hope our job may be of some use to someone.
