Right now one might be wondering if I am a fascist or a communist, or some sort of enemy of the free world. No, not at all. In fact on the contrary.

Back in 2008, I wrote a post condemning Google’s nonchalant attitude towards what users do when using their services. I read a bunch of articles about this new announcement by Google, and some of them seems to me to be a bit (well, way) out of line. Particularly this one which says that “Brazil’s 3,663 data requests and 291 removal requests [...] underscores Brasília’s restriction of free speech”. According to articles like this; racism, pedophilia and cyber bullying are the same as freedom of speech (if citing Article 19 of The Universal Declaration of Human Rights).

Funny, it have The Universal Declaration of Human Rights (UDHR) right in front of me, and according to this document, the author of this article is wrong. In fact, he is full of bull. This is yet another case (as I did before) of citing Article 30 of the UDHR:

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.

Basically Article 30 asserts this isn’t the “world of do as you please regardless of others by saying you have the right to do so because of the UDHR”, like many people (including many at Google, as per my previous article) seem to claim.

And I am proud to see that the Brazilian government seems to be on pair with the UDHR. Is targeting pedophilia a violation of free speech? No, because paedophilia is abusing the human rights of its victims, thus it is against the UDHR. Is targeting racist websites and pages in Orkut (Google’s social platform, mostly popular in Brazil) a violation of free speech? No, because racism is against the UDHR (Articles 2, 3 and 5 just to name a few). Is targeting cyber bullying (Article 12)… You get the idea – so I hope.

Kudos to the Brazilian government for sending the right message to Google and the rest of the world. We shall defend the UDHR in its entirely (and not just what is convenient to a few) along with our constitution.

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?

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…

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?

Now the Brazilian president signed a decree that imposes new regulations for call centres (source). If you have ever suffered in the hands of poor service delivery through call centres then get ready to feel avenged. You’ll love this!

From 31^st July 2008 all companies that provide the following services (amongst others) will have two months to adapt their call centres to the new legislation:

• telephony;
• communications;
• water supply;
• electricity supply;
• terrestrial transportation;
• airline transportation;
• financial services (including credit cards); and
• health insurance.

The new legislation enforces the following decrees:

• The decrees were divided in five groups: access, quality, transparency, cancelation (of services) and general rules;
• For services of uninterruptible supply (e.g.: water and electricity, cable TV and telephony), all call centres must be available 24 hours, 7 days a week;
• Companies must provide a unique FREE phone number to attend their variety of services;
• A customer call can only be transferred once from one customer care operator to another, in order to ensure that customers don’t have to overly repeat their issue;
• Customers have the right to request a case history in order to track the resolution progress of their query;
• Customers must have the option to override a telephone based menu at any time and request to speak with an operator;
• Service cancelations must take effect immediately; and
• Companies that fail to follow these regulations could be fined to a sum of up to R$3,000,000.00, in accordance with the Código de Defesa do Consumidor (Consumers Defence Code).

Now can you imagine if companies such as BT and Sky ever had to follow a similar decree? One can hope, if ever…

However, the authors also righteously assert that Brazil is not yet a superpower and that there is yet a lot to be done – particularly with regards to the public sector, infrastructure and the bureaucracy faced by organisations. This is the last bit I would like to stir some thoughts about.

I do think massive reforms are needed in regards to corporate legislation. But while Brazil should look around and learn from the experience of other successful economies in what to do, I think it is mostly important to learn what not to do. Let me develop on this thought.

I’ve been living in Europe for over eight years, and I have noticed organisations doing things in here that they simply wouldn’t get their way with in Brazil, particularly with regards to employment laws and consumer rights. What I mean is that although Brazil has problems, they can get much worse if Brazil just open its market to foreign investments by simulating other economies, without taking into considerations the singularities of the Brazilian market.

In the Canadian documentary “The Corporation“, a psychological profile is drawn upon American corporations as if they where physical human beings. Following this premise, the documentary illustrates how organisations tend to display a psychotic and egocentric profile. The documentary asserts that the main issue with corporate legislation in the USA is that it allow organisations to act like individuals within the constitution, whilst there is no single individual that could be taken into account for all the actions perpetrated by the organisation. The bottom line is: who is the culprit when an organisation crosses the line of ethical behaviour? Now imagine a country like Brazil with all the problems it still has to overcome, full of psychotic organisations.

Well in Brazil companies are also seen as individuals. You have pessoa física and pessoa jurídica (i.e.: physical individual and juridical individual). But there are also strong laws with regards to consumer rights and employment rights, and having lived abroad for over fourteen years and being a constant traveller interested in foreign markets, I am yet to see legislations on these matters that would match those of Brazil’s. Foreign companies really find a hard time in Brazil when trying to implement some of its questionable domestic practices. I always giggled when I read on Brazilian newspapers that yet another European telecom got its ears pulled by the Brazilian ombudsman due to some of their shenanigans, like trying to penalise customers for switching mobile networks.

I the UK, I have seen two page employment contracts, in which employees would be bound by a dozen pages “employee handbook”. This often means organisations can change the contents of their “employee handbook” from time to time and the employees are automatically subjected to its terms by proxy. I have even seen extreme example of an employee handbook attempting to override the laws of the land, in whicn an organisation was cheeky enough to put a clause in its employee handbook which stated that “if a crime was committed within the organisation premises, employees were forbidden to inform the police and they should inform a member of the board instead”.

What I also love in the UK is the fixed term contracts that state that the given organisation can change the terms of its contract at any time they want without prior notice. Picture this: You sign a contract for a TV subscription service for a period of twelve months. Months after you signed the contract, the service provider decides to raise its prices in 25 percent. You can’t get out because you are bound on the terms of the original contract. In Brazil, as soon as the organisation makes a change in the contract to which customers disagree, customers would be able to pull out of the fixed-term. In the UK, you would have to go to court in order to prove your rights.

So I DO think reforms in company legislation is a must for the Brazilian economy. But as chaotic and crazy it can be for a foreign company to establish itself in Brazil nowadays, in a (not so perfect and totally incidental) way this Babel tower of bureaucracy has kept the country safe from being on the mercy of corporatism — We have enough problems already!

I took the liberty to quote the “The Hunt for the Red October” movie opening quote at the beginning of this post. In the 1990 movie, the captain of an advanced first-strike soviet submarine addresses his crew, claiming that they’re on a game of chess with their old adversary.

And I must take my hat off to the Kremlin: Not that I agree with their politics, but I must confess that they seem to surprise the west over and over again with their moves. Keeping on with the chess analogy, Kasparov’s fatherland is showing off to the world how the game is meant to be played (ironically, that is regardless of how Kasparov himself may feel).

To me, Russia proclaiming the end of the Soviet rule and a shift to democracy was one of the biggest strikes of evil geniuses I’ve witnessed so far. With the end of the cold war declared, Russia was officially acknowledged as a friendly democratic country. On the other hand, it inherited virtually all of USSR foreign relation protocols, including partnerships and mutual aid with socialist regimes. Plus, having veto power within the UN Security Council gives Russia an (unfair?) handicap advantage – making a game of chess look more like a game of tic-tac-toe from this side of the (former?) iron curtain.

Moldova is a former Soviet Republic, located between Romania and Ukraine. A unrecognised breakaway republic, called the Pridnestrovian Moldavian Republic is located within its eastern border with Ukraine. A Russian “peace keeping” mission is present in the region since 1992, which according to the government of Moldova, “is against the political will of Moldovan constitutional authorities and defies the unanimously recognized international norms and principles, being qualified by Moldovan authorities as a foreign military occupation illegally deployed on the territory of the state” (source).

Since they say a picture is worth a thousand words, take a look at the flags and coat of arms of the previous Moldavian SSR, the current Moldovan Republic and the Pridnestrovian Moldavian Republic (separatist Transnistria). Can you spot the similarities?

Moldavian SSR (until 1991)	Moldova (present)	Trasnistria State (separatists)

Another regime that has (unconditional?) support from the Kremlin is the Republic of Belarus. It’s (so far perpetual) president Alexander Lukashenko is seen by his critics as an authoriarian leader which policies are influenced by a nostalgia for the Soviet regime. Let’s have a look at their flags and coat of arms as well:

Byelorrusian SSR (until 1991)	Republic of Belarus (present)

Can you spot the similarities? It would be funny if it wasn’t sad. But now trying to be completely pragmatic (if one could ever) – how is this different from what truly democratic western countries ever did? Russia’s move, in my opinion, echoes the stand of the British Empire with regards to South America’s independence from Spain. Breaking South America in small sovereign states would hinder the possibilities of a super power in the region with a stronger bargaining power.

Thus, to me Russia’s strategy just reinstate that capitalism and communism is just two different sides of the same coin.