The New Market Machines Radio

Getting ready for tonight's climactic debate on the Globo network between the PT incumbent and the PSDB-PFL challenger in the Brazilian elections, we leave you with a musical interlude to get you in the mood ... including the Anglospherean debut of Brazil's hottest new band, O Cordel do Fogo Encantado.

I may just give up working and become a wandering Fogohead ...

Dateline: The largest city in Latin America.

Live on tape from the lobby of the World Federation of Exchange's annual meeting in the wasteland that is Morumbi, São Paulo; in governance vote, KQED exec wants a Bush-like state of exception; Richard Florida peddles the same old snake oil; plus the latest from Caetano Veloso: "Odeio você!"

On strike for better working conditions after assassination of Russian journo.

The Brazilian political scenario; big bank strike busts out; FEBAN and Microcode; racial democracy and other myths; the open-source e-government that never came to be; corruption rules my soul; plus Robert Lefkowitz on Orwell and Open Source(TM), in a nod to the pods.

Brazil votes; plus, from the news desk, mondo global market machines stories with an Act III yet to be written, from India, Russia, Mexico, China and, of course, Brazil; Man overboard; Bob vs. Chico; Globo talking heads warm up the blinking lights, though failure to schedule democracy for primetime continues to irk; and the best country song ever about the generals and their Economic Miracle ...

Out of alpha and sticking to a schedule, it's the New Market Machines Week in Review from São Paulo, Brazil: BRIC-centric coverage of global media and finance with a pandeiro beat in the background.

This week, more tainment than info, but still: Brazil overhauls IT tax incentives; new pools of dark liquidity; pig****er media politics in Mexico leave risk managers jobless; Citi scandal No. 1,001(a); Cardosonomics dissed; Red Hat routed; and more.

Plus the other city that smells not so nice they named it twice channels the 1970s Lower East Side. Now with extra animal noises. Confiram! Aproveitem!

The week ahead in the emerging markets: morning headlines; Shanghai corruption scandal; M$FT in Rio; the yellow press goes whole hog ahead of Sunday's election in Brazil. Plus monkeys bite me!

Indymedia Brazil and the CC mailing lists boil with protest over the June launch of the iCommons project in Brazil. I translate.

Redmond controls the media moment; barring dissenters; Red Zone & Green Zone assumptions; portraits of the CC user; participatory culture in a five-star hotel?

Musical interludes: Lenine, "O Dia Que Faremos Contato"; Hermeto Pascoal, "Fica Mal Com Deus." Special guest appearance by the ghost of D. Boon.  

I lost five minutes out of this podcast somehow, right in the middle, where the musical interlude cuts in suddenly. Oh, well.

Today: Initiating regular coverage of top headlines from the principal national and regional business pubs in Brazil; Ambulance mobster lies his ass off, and the press prints every word; why cultural minister Gil has to moonlight as a rock star; and a shoutout to my bro in law in Chile ...

The dossier scandal: media mudwrestling at its most fascinatingly repulsive; Thai coup deals Brazilian bourses a blow; Carrefour beats Wal-Mart to the church of the consumer credit;  BNDES shifts gears; Central banks notes big gringobuck inflows and progress in the war on the Cayman Island bank account; Petrobras will open plants in Venezuela, but Chavez's "devil" crack goes unreported; plus the newsdesk idolizes Macunaíma, and Los Tigrrrres del Norrrte ...

Voices from the Brazucosphere: The new Lacerdas in action; TV news redeems itself, says Mino Carta; Joi Ito parachutes in to the Zona Sul; The World Negotiation Forum fills São Paulo with gurus, each with a list of six easy to remember principles that they recite over and over and over and over ... ; Underestimating the povão; "This country for sale or rent!"; plus barking dogs, hammering handymen, and Rita Lee: "When the world is running down, you make the best of what's still around."

Bolivia boggles 'Bras, but cooler heads prevail; Bovespa borks; Chavez blows off Calderbrón; the capoeira of digital political scandalmongering; Globo and Net Virtua suck; so does Telefónica Speedy; vigilante consumerism in alien milieus; Bush approves public database of federal contracts; Latin American journalism endorsed by Broadcast Board of Governors; FCC shreds the documents; robots hunt dark liquidity; plus an homage to Chico Buarque, here in town throughout October -- WITH WEB EXCLUSIVE, a preview of Chico's new album, Carioca ...

I wander through each chartered street,
Near where the chartered Thames does flow,
A mark in every face I meet,
Marks of weakness, marks of woe.

In every cry of every man,
In every infant's cry of fear,
In every voice, in every ban,
The mind-forged manacles I hear:

How the chimney-sweeper's cry
Every blackening church appals,
And the hapless soldier's sigh
Runs in blood down palace-walls.

But most, through midnight streets I hear
How the youthful harlot's curse
Blasts the new-born infant's tear,
And blights with plagues the marriage hearse.

Sampa and a mad dog in the noonday son: Marks of weakness, marks of woe; the digital divide index is flat at horrendous; Bolivia goes bonkers; Silicon Valley, Pernambuco; where to buy the Gazeta Mercantil; MV Bill tells it like it is (uix);

Musical interludes:

1. Cramps, "Aloha From Hell"
2. Tom Zé, "Augusta, Angelica, Consolação"
3. MV Bill + Os Racionais, "Muita Treta"
4. Swingle Singers, "Bacchic Sha-do-baba-la-diddy-diddy "

Odd network behavior means it's time to run some traceroutes; how to get a handle on information superhighway road rage; plus political scandalmongering, decoded.

Gonzagão on technological and economic change, and eerie signals from Recife. Neuza bugs the cable guy. The G20 meets in Rio de Janeiro. Brutal layovers as Varig folds. Innovations in tech tariff avoidance. Campaign dicky tricks and churrasco do prefeito: "Pork versus where's the beef?"

And on "The Pod People," measuring the area of the Twilight Zone: Hector Tovar of the Los Angeles Times from Mexico City, and Dave Weinberger on social network and organizational analysis, from the Syndicate conference, with audio marginalia.

And how I felt five years ago to the day, in Lower East Sidese.

Political economy and mass mediamongering bits and bytes, spontaneously interpreted by yours truly; plus a new history of PAN traces its long ties to the International Republican Institute and the NED.

From the newsdesk, GDP au gogo; philology you can boogie to.

 I am still having to send my communiques overland, via motoboy, from the broadband-deprived cave where I am hiding in the Vila Bia district of the megapolis.

Here is our hangover edition from Sept. 7, including:

1. Early spring and the thoughts of the paulistas turn to ultraviolence;
2. My Pat Kiernan imitation: the morning papers
3. Humint report
   
4. Huddling with the NMM kitchen cabinet of local culture-shock consultants

An intercontinental ballistic edition of NMM Radio:

1. Dealing with broadband deficit: tips for the traveler
2. What bossa nova is, and what it is not: a musical interlude and tutorial
3. Benchmarking the Brazilian media: Carta Capital and IstoÉ on elections, fiscal policy and the march of history.

The NMM crew arrives safely in Sampa; plus The Pod People, with Anil Dash and a twist on the usual leftist critique of media concentration ...

A literary meditation on the ethics and psychology of the motivated trader from the annals of Brazilian folklore: "The Horse Who Shit Money," a fable from the backlands of the Northeast.

A horse that shits money? That would be quite a money-making market machine indeed, if it were true. With a demonstration of the viola caipira from Cururu.

A new feature on the NMM Radio: A weekly in-depth take on coverage of a single story from the week's newsflow.

This week: Kudos to KCRW for the only in-depth roundtable discussion of events on the ground in Mexico, and a violent heaping of scorn on the Wall Street Journal's Latin American desk for phoning in sophomoric editorializing rather than substantive reporting -- an egregious case of journalistic malpractice.

Incidental music:

Carmen Miranda, "Camisa Listada" (Source: Ao Chiado Brasileiro)
Tribe Called Quest, "What's the Scenario?"

Correction: The PAN spokesman is a Mr. Sarukhan, not "Sarkhuman." I think the name of an evil character from Tolkien crept into my brain there ...

This, according to the NMM's army of Web-spidering newsflow audit robots, is the sand and friction impairing the perpetual motion of the global capitalist market machinery this week ...

Musical interlude: Ramblin' man tunes. Vô imbolá!

One correction: The interview with Mr. Gomes is from The New Communications Review.

The final Pod People pilot episode before we leave on a jet plane for Brazil.

In this edition:

1. How to take your bazooka along when you fly
2. Get your piping hot tamales here: The little tramp of Mexico City cries Viva Zapata!
   
3. The world gets its first C-level blog czar
   
4. Mistrusted as a flack but beloved as a blogger
5. The future of advertising after the Cluetrain Revolution
6. The op-ed as premium podcast material: paying for mere opinion
7. Playboy suffers culture shock in Indonesia

Incidental music: Captain Beefheart, Dalis Car, Lou Reed, Satellite of Love

You would think that transitioning from northern hemisphere fall to southern hemisphere spring woul get easy after the first few times you do it, but it always takes a psychic toll. Since we are out rustling up my Brazilian resident visa today, enjoy a nostalgic musical interlude, in which I recreate my college DJ days with a set of songs that, for me, define the Brooklyn-B-burg-East Village axis of evolution.

On-hold music we would actually like to hear ... a musical interlude. Enjoy.

See if you can tell where I resumed recorded after running up and down four flights of stairs to carry up 30 kg of cat food to keep the beast happy while we're gone.

In this episode:

1. BusinessWeek as podcaster: the good, the bad and the lazy
2. On the scene in Mexico
3. Coke, Pepsi and pesticide: a season in public relations hell
4. The Engines of Our Ingenuity, il miglior fabbro
5. An Army of Davids debated at the Cato Institute: beer, content and the social Gospels
   
6. A Mexico City Mr. Natural solves the problem of democracy and defeats the evil Judge Engaña-Bobos.
7. The International Monetary Fund surrenders without a shot to Raul Seixas and Lampião
   

A special Latin American edition, featuring: Blogging while nervous; a visual guide for the blind to Mexican electoral fraud; exercises in comparative corporate governance; the NMM goes whole hog into the BRIC markets; reporting outside the Green Zone; why there could have been no Elvis without Carmen Miranda;  carnivalesque transpositions of  legitimate and black market machines; Jackson Pollock passed out here; my FBI file;  and more.

Musical interludes and motifs, among others:

1. Martin da Vila, "Pelo Telefone"
2. Os Mutantes, "El Justiciero"
3. Carmen Miranda, "Chica Chica Boom Chic"
4. Antibalas Afrobeat Orchestra, "What is this America?"
5. Hermeto Pascoal, "Fica mal com deus"
6. Buzzcocks, "Autonomy"

Featured this week: Sony buys Grouper; quotable snips and snaps from the Syndicate Conference not the "syndication" conference, as our boob of announcer says several times); and how search engine motorists can get the data miners off their tail. Plus my butthead of a neighbor on bongos and the Tasty-Freeze ice cream theme.

Incidental music: Tom Tom Club, Wordy Rappinghood

Musical interlude: Timbalada, U-Maracatú

How fast can I whip out a podcast? If I don't stop to edit out every hem, haw, and lapsus linguae, I'm definitely getting faster.

So you get to hear me breathe heavily, stumble and bumble, and growl at my wife with your news. A bit like watching the raw satellite feeds from the news network.

Breathe from the diaphragm. Project. Stop smoking.

This week in the week in review: Cross-border data privacy; hedge fund regulation; the Journal builds itself a Potemkin Village in Mexico; Senzhen business journalists caught up in a web of corruption; India's Internet filtering program run wild; and other deals, steals, and wheels within wheels.

And some traveling music to get us in the mood for our upcoming airlift to Sao Paulo (at about 20'30'').

1. Luiz Gonzaga, "Xote das Meninas"
2. John Hiatt and Randy Scruggs, "City of New Orleans"

Incidental music: Small Faces, "Wicked Messenger"; Gang of Four, "Contract"

 The title is a corporate communications executive's succinct summary of the risks and opportunities that blogging poses for the business organization in the age of information warfare:  Delivery of the authorized message through authorized channels is no longer effective when so many wicked messengers "are unauthorized, and they can act."
 
First tech rehearsal of a new segment, tentatively titled "Pod People": clips and commentary from the multimedia stream of consciousness, abused with awful punk-rock mixology.

In this maiden 'cast: The BBC's Kafkaesque utopianism; IBM's global director of corporate communications on the risks and opportunities of media democracy, both inside and outside the firewall; a gimlet-eyed CWA organizer on reforming corporate media, from within and from without; DJ Mala Yerba on a public service media campaign from Mexico's elections commission; and election monitors describe the scene in the Zocalo in Mexico City on July 2. Plus the usual mumbling, and Heights-themed shoutout.

Monitoring the struggle of the "netroots" against the "mainstream media" amid Mexico City mobilizations over charges of massive electoral fraud. Key developments, key players, key strategies. Musical interlude at 21:00.

This is basically a terrible case of me mumbling to myself, so remember: This is only a test! In the future, scripted narration, better elocution, audio snippets from the best of the pods to relieve you of my nasal droning.

Skip to 21'00'' for a four-song musical interlude you might enjoy better.

Note a new, proposed permanent audio element: The Small Faces' "Wicked Messenger" as a shorter lead-in to the news briefs. "Wordy Rappinghood" as a lead-in to the "Jargon Watch" feature?

This program under construction.

As usual, I have not bothered to clean up all the outtakes and twists of the tongue, so spare me your derision on that score, if you please.

And yes, it takes 1:41 to get through the intro to the content, which is too long. But I do love TCQ and that jab at Bono.

Contents: A proposed program format; jargon watch: quangos, quaggas, taqueo, saqueo and tamalero; the week in review; "I said get offa yer ass and DA-YUNCE!"

Additional reading:

ACLU v. NSA: District Court Ruling

Music credits:

1. Young Marble Giants, 'Credit in the Straight World'
2. Tribe Called Quest, 'What's the Scenario?'
3. Jon Hassel, 'Caravanesque' (a tribute to Miles Davis)
4. Manu Chao, 'Welcome to Tijuana (Tequila, Sexo, Marijuana)'
5. Toots & The Maytals, 'Funky Kingston'

Here, fresh from the NMM studios in Media City, Dubai, is a special edition of the NMM podcast on the Mexican elections.

It's really embarassing to hear myself pronouncing Spanish names and phrases with a (bad) Brazilian accent. Sendero al Fecal comes out sendeiro ao fecau ...

I'm badly in need of some real voice talent for this little podcast! Really, the whole thing is kind of a wank -- me trying out my sound bites over and over again. I would be better off just translating headlines from the Mexican press on the subject.

Here's another important study from UNAM:

• R. Mansilla, Benford's Law and the July 2 PREP Results (Spanish)

I'm a little peeved at Podomatic, where I have been posting my podcasts: The posting form seems to be screwed up. I'm not over my storage or bandwidth limits. What gives?

Here, at any rate, is NMM Podcast #3, Week in Review: Margin of Terror.

As usual, I was too lazy to edit out the outtakes, so if you listen carefully you can learn my pet name for my wife and hear me hemming and hawing a lot and starting over.