How would you classify the deliberate imposition of delay on the circulation of a magazine that criticizes and, to some extent, mocks a certain power? As censorship? Why not call it an act of corruption? Censorship is supposed to be explicit, contrarily to the case here.
The Economist's "Brazil's fall" edition (1st of the year) has not yet reached the points of sale in São Paulo (so, quite certainly nowhere in the country). It is likely to be released next Monday, just when the current edition (Jan 14th) would normally be available for the general public.
So retailers, small or big, are actually faced with three editions at once to sell. Are they happy or in trouble? Room for three editions?! Who will buy this third edition in the line? None of the retailers want this third edition now.
Welcome to the method of censoring a weekly publication by freezing the circulation of it "a little bit" so that the manoeuvre remains unnoticed while attaining its objective. I bet such strategy is also an exclusive Brazilian product.
If all the three editions to be released arrived at the stores and newsstands on Monday, the current issue of The Economist would become again available at the right time but losses due to the boycott would be set for the sellers, and the "vacation" of the magazine in Brazil, a fully successful game. But there have been signs that, as the boycott was denounced here, the burden of keeping the lateness is to be extended in a move bound to become one more internationally recognized Brazilian 'way' of doing things. Upholding the 'vacation' excuse means not yet making more than one edition available at the same week.
In order to make believe nothing is - or ever was - wrong, a big store is saying customers that the ones in charge of the distribution of magazines were on vacation. Intriguing: another weekly magazine I follow - Hello! - was not, and is not late.
On the positive side, Brazil's list of innovative items for export is growing. First, football players, then zika vírus (at least one case reported - to Bolivia), and lately the export of mechanisms of corruption that are never caught, such as violating freedom of expression involving the first magazine in the world (The Economist), imposing loss of sales to the magazine as well as to Brazil's own businesses and... get away with it.
As Brazil is going through Olympic economic problems (to borrow the expression from another journalist), wickedly interfering with national retailers is, besides corruption, a lack of leadership sense and conscience beyond any established classification. Let's establish it now and call it... Olympic corruption blended with 'Dismal Dilma' and 'Reckless Rousseff'?
Infuriating the president
Need a proper, also literary translation of those two expressions playing with the president's name in the article "Brazil's fall?" I have translated those expressions, characteristic of The Economists's mastery I have so much admired for decades:
Dilma de mal (com a vida)
Tá russo Rousseff.
Tá russo Rousseff.
The newspaper Estadao - who exclusively translates articles of the magazine in Brazil - did not face the challenge of translating those expressions, which are the two subtitles in the above mentioned article That newspaper translated "Irredeemable?" instead.
