It seems that for those acting in their own disposition forget that the UDHR has 30 articles, and not 29. The 30th Article of the UDHR is perfectly clear:

Nothing in this Declaration may be interpreted as implying for any State, group or person any right to engage in any activity or to perform any act aimed at the destruction of any of the rights and freedoms set forth herein

So how is it that sovereign states that adopt and recognise the UDHR accept the engagement of organisations, parties and other sort of entities that disregard the 30th Article?

Don’t get me wrong. I agree that instead of having extremist political groups or militants operating in the underground, is better to have them out in the open as it is easier to monitor their activities, and to expose their views. Concerning the recent decision of BBC to invite a far-right activist to a television debate, UK Prime Minister Gordon Brown said that he believes it is a duty to expose racist and sectarian politics – which I agree – and that “anybody who listens to what they are really about will find that what they are saying is unacceptable.” Well is this last bit that I am not so sure about. Mr Brown is parting from the principle that everyone has the same opinion. And unfortunately, this is not the case. If that was the case, there wouldn’t be any racism. Particularly, the political party in question wouldn’t have its supporters – which it does, no matter how minimum they are. This is a false consensus bias.

My concern is the use of democracy and the UDHR to destroy these same principles, or to deny these principles to others. An example that is often cited as the use of democracy for the destruction of democracy is the rise of the NAZI party in Germany.

After being elected through democratic means, the NAZI party started to impose authoritarianism and ideologies that destroyed democracy and oppressed minorities, to say the least. Following the defeat of the NAZI regime and the revelation of their atrocities to the whole world, it was the overall consensus that something had to be done to prevent the same to happen in the future. With this in mind, the UDHR was adopted in 1948.

Yet we don’t need to go that far in history to see events of democracy being used to destroy democracy or to thwart the UDHR. You can see clear examples in recent events where state leaders, once elected through democratic means, are violating constitutions to impose their authority, perpetuate their rule and oppress any sort of opposition.
So I think about what Mr Brown said:

“Anybody who listens to what they are really about will find that what they are saying is unacceptable.”

And I wonder: Is there anybody listening? If so, who is listening?

Let me just make one brief point here: The reason we are seeing this escalation of violence is because the police is acting to tackle crime and pacify areas controlled by crime – and the criminals are fighting back. Rio is facing a now-or-never situation, where the government is aware that a change must be made, particularly for the 2014 World Cup and for the 2016 Olympic Games, which are serving as a major catalyst for such changes.

Let’s not forget that one day after being elected the city to host the 2012 Olympic Games, London was hit by a coordinated terrorist attack on its public transport. Since the UK government is under constant threat of international terrorism, one could argue that the public in general would be more vulnerable to violence in the 2012 games rather than in 2016 games. Drug-lords want to sell drugs; international terrorists want to kill people in the name of their ideology.

Being a Special Constable is one of the best decisions I have ever taken in my life. It was more than a volunteer work. To me it was a great honour. But as I went to live abroad, I had to resign from the MET. But g-d how I miss being a cop. Particularly on those weekends when nothing is happening and you are just staying home. I wish I was on the beat helping people in need. London was my home for nine years and I will always have a space in my heart for it.

If you live in the UK and you wish to do something good for your community, if you have that sense of duty in your heart, if you like helping people and being a good person, then I strongly recommend that you consider joining the Special Constabulary. It doesn’t need to be the Metropolitan Police One. There are Special Constabularies in every police service in the UK. Trust me. If you are of a good character, this experience will change your life for good – forever.

For more information, you can visit this website.

Plus there will be a lot of surfing, scuba diving, kayaking… You know, all those little perks you get from living in a sunny place like Rio de Janeiro.

Don’t know about you, but I find ludicrous that while “developing countries” like Brazil have strict regulations against such shenanigans, the UK is decades away on customer rights.

An uncanny coincidence or a total rip-off? Well just watch this Youtube video and decide for yourself.

Unfortunately this is not the first case of plagiarism in the music industry, and many cases which are in fact of a much higher profile tend to go unoticed. For instance, check out this Led Zeppelin video.

Sigh… And they used to be my biggest idols! Don’t get me wrong they still rock and I didn’t throw away my Led Zeppelin CDs. But I simply can’t respect them like I used to.

About four years ago, a relative of mine engaged in a public inflamed argument with Brazilian skinheads in a discussion forum in Orkurt (which is Google’s social networking portal, similar to Facebook). The argument went out of hand, and one of those skinheads found some pictures of my relative’s daughter (who was about 8 years at the time) and published some Photoshop collages of his girl in pornographic scenes. In Brazil (and I would guess in any civilised country, really) this is a serious offense depicted in the penal code, which can led to some serious jail terms.

The girl’s father attempted to contact Orkut’s support service, but he was informed that “Orkut wasn’t responsible for the content posted by their users”. After arguing with Orkut’s support for about three days, he asked for my help. I tried to contact Google about the incident but there was contact information to be found. No phone numbers, no emails – there was simply no way for end users to contact Google for support. I then tried to use the white pages, and found out Google’s main telephone number in the USA. As I explained the problem we’re having, I got a similar answer as my relative did: “Google wasn’t responsible for the content posted by their users”. The whole experience was as if Google was completely unaccountable to anything that happens on their systems, and customers attempting to talk to anyone at Google would be treated in a very patronising and condescending manner which such petulance, as if they were some sort of telemarketing reps attempting to sell magazine subscriptions to the White House.

Since Google was getting prepared to enter in the Brazilian market at the time, I decided to push a little harder. I told them that they better start playing ball and respect the laws and constitutions of the countries they are planning to operate on, or else they would start with the wrong foot. The lady on the other side of the phone then told me to call another number, and quote the password “Pizza” when I call – which I did, but never got a proper call back.

The case of my relative’s daughter wasn’t an isolated case in Orkut. The whole incident started because of some racist users creating hate groups. There were also cases of frauds and all sorts of scams running, and even users selling CLASS A drugs through the system – and yet Google continued to wash their hands. This whole Pontius Pilatus attitude really got into my nerves. So when Google finally got into Brazil, they got to feel the heat. The government demanded Google to hand over details of any users under suspect of committing criminal acts, and subpoenas started to be fired at Google’s backend followed by threats of “our way or the highway” by the Brazilian Supreme Court’ – It was music to my ears. Then Google finally decided to play ball, which was often followed by some nice sugar-coated PR on how they do their best to follow the local regulations.

I thought this whole experience would make Google start to realise their liabilities within the spectrum of corporate social responsibility… Well shame on me. Google’s YouTube is a good example on how Google will fight to the last minute for their right of I can’t be bovvered (sic). No matter how much I flagged inappropriate videos of Brazilian criminal factions – Google wouldn’t move a finger to remove such videos. Some of those videos were extremely graphic promoting drug trafficking, violence towards law enforcement agencies (including the picture of a police officer whose head was blown wide open by a gunshot), apology to illegal weapons and gang warfare (including the picture of murdered members of rival criminal factions, with decapitated heads and burned bodies sodomised with wooden broomsticks).

Then yesterday Google releases some nifty piece of PR on how YouTube is getting proactive against terrorism clips. How nice of them!? Well the small print is that Google had USA’s senator Lieberman on their neck demanding the removal of terrorist-related videos. But still, how nice of them…

Sérgio Vieira de Mello was a man who lived his life to honour the principles for which the United Nations was created: To help ease the suffering of people and mediate conflicts around the world. Sérgio Vieira de Mello was a pivotal figure within the United Nations that legitimised the organisation’s existence. A charismatic figure and remarkable diplomatic, he worked to resolve conflicts in several regions including Lebanon, Cambodia, Bosnia, Rwanda, Kosovo and Timor-Leste. He died five years ago in a coward attack in Iraq.

Although my first exposure to video-games was to the earlier Atari 2600, the earlier Nintendo handhelds and then it’s Nintendo Entertainment System, it was with computers that I had my experience of really being immersed into the virtual worlds. Computer Role Playing Games were (and still are, in my opinion) much richer in personal computers than they could in videogame consoles. Although the first role playing game I played was Dragon Warrior for the Nintendo, the first role playing game that really made me immerse into the game world was Hero’s Quest I (later renamed to Quest for Glory I). In Hero’s Quest, you play the role of a wannabe hero which needs to do good deeds and save the land in order to prove itself worthy of the title of hero. Instead of simple actions, repetitive battles and linear boring dialogues, I found myself having to type what I wanted my character to do and to say in order to move along the plot. Dialogs were extremely rich, and I found myself really thinking as the character I created in order to advance on the game. I spent countless days (no – months) playing and re-playing the game, and all of its sequels. I was about 13 years old at the time and I remember quite well spending half of my days thinking either about girls, or about if one day I could ever be a great hero like in Quest for Glory.

I simply love adventure and role playing games (and still do – if I had the time to play them) like King’s Quest, Monkey Island and Police Quest. I got so hooked into Police Quest that I even though that one day I could be a Police Officer (what were the odds eh!? ).

But perhaps the most influential game I have ever played was the Ultima Series, in which you play the role of The Avatar – a hero from a far away world sent to the land of Brittania to rid the world from evil. Besides complex dialogs and non-linear quests and complex story-lines, Ultima had an elaborate set of principles and virtues which made players immerse into questions of moral and ethical grounds, making the character of the Avatar to lead by example in order to advance within the game.

Playing Ultima through my teenage years really influenced my way of reasoning. It made me wonder, question and further think on the subjects of ethics and moral grounds, developing in me an interest that brought me in contact with several different beliefs – from spiritual teachings such as Abrahamic religions and Buddhism to philosophical schools such as Stoicism. It made me want to understand how people see spirituality through different eyes, and I came to develop my own set of values and “virtues” that I deemed important for my personal growth and enlightenment.

It is fair to say that, in part, it influenced my ways of accepting people’s own way of dealing with their spirituality and God. Making me believe that

we’re all looking into a prism, but as each of us see it through different angles, we’re seeing different colours. But the reality is that we’re all looking at the same prism *.

* That is, as as long as you don’t try to push or shove at me the idea that the colours that you see are better than the ones I see – we can all be happy.

Being a good cop, being a hero, being the saviour of a land by doing and promoting good deeds to drive evil away… Are those values so démodé? I mean, do I risk being labelled a “fag” by some 13 years old boy because I like playing games where I’m a good guy? Instead, games nowadays like grand-theft auto promotes no values whatsoever, besides how to be a parasite sociopath. I do believe, based on my own experience and the experience of those close to me who played computer games, that video games DO influence people – perhaps on most of the people out there it wouldn’t influence them directly on their behaviour, but it can definitely influence people on their reasoning, and in their values. Now you combine this with the right set-up: poor upbringing, no job, no money, no future, bad company, depression, dire straits…

In less than three weeks, there has been news of horrific crimes in Brazil, Greece and Canada in which victims have been mutilated. Call me old-fashioned pansy, but I think we need a stop on the violence-o-metre, don’t you?