V1V4 L4 R3V0LUC10N!

So, LulzSec are out there making life hell to a bunch of companies and organizations, and now their bros in Brazil are up for a fight against the government. I'm just not sure how much of it is for fame and how much is for an actual change in the country. Yet, I would love to see some "WikiLeaks" on how our money has been spent lately, specially the 2014 World Cup money! Don't know if hacking is the way though...

Anyway, I hope these last attacks wake our government up not only to the importance of cyber security, but to how protesting in the XXI century ins't really gonna take place on big avenues and city halls anymore, as people begin to gather world wide petition sign-ups from the comfort and anonymity of their own homes.

Brazil suffers its biggest cyber attack – yet

The service interruption of government websites and the disclosure of the supposedly personal data of top-ranking politicians claimed by hacking collective LulzSec is part of a string of cyber attacks that have taken place in Brazil in the last 48 hours. This is considered the largest cyber offensive in Brazilian history.

The Brazilian government and presidency websites, Brasil.gov.br and Presidencia.gov.br were brought down yesterday and was followed by the military-esque, now-familiar cry of “Tango Down!” on the Twitter feeds of LulzSec and its Brazilian arm, LulzSecBrazil. The hacking group is deemed responsible for attacks at the US Central Intelligence Agency (CIA) and Senate, as well as the Serious Organised Crime Agency (SOCA) in the UK.

Other websites operated by government departments were also hit by the hacking attacks, such as the tax collection agency and the Ministry of Sports. The latter department also had supposed staff login details for restricted areas of its website leaked.

The website of oil giant Petrobras has also been hit and became unavailable yesterday, but the company attributed the collapse to “a high number of simultaneous accesses”, highlighting that no damage to data had been caused.

Following the attacks, LulzSec posted a Twitter message which read: “Our Brazilian unit is making progress. Well done @LulzSecBrazil, brothers!”

Pinging the Brazilian government, revenue and presidency web sites at 4:31pm BST showed they were all unreachable from São Paulo.

Members of the group have also gained access to supposedly private data from São Paulo mayor Gilberto Kassab and the country’s president Dilma Rousseff, which included federal revenue contribution numbers, email addresses and telephone numbers.

In his Twitter account, Kassab expressed sympathy to the president and labelled the attack as a “brutality”.

“Facts like this show how the technology needs to advance to prevent the action of vandals, ” the mayor added.

LulzSec Brazil is now calling on hackers and activists to pillage government data for secret information, in an operation dubbed Anti-Security. Fellow cyberactivist group Anonymous – to which the recent attack on the International Monetary Fund (IMF) is attributed – has joined forces with Lulz in the hacking attacks. In a You Tube video, a representative of the Anonymous Brazilian arm said:

“Anonymous has been watching the widespread manipulation of information in Brazil for a long time and decided it’s time to take a stance about it. A government without transparency and citizens lacking information are the greatest threats to democracy and Brazil is heading more and more towards those threats and therefore taking away the little freedom the population has left.”

Many of the information leaked about the politicians are public, but the attacks raise questions over the efficiency of the country’s incipient cyber security efforts. The Brazilian government is set to launch a cyber defense unit staffed by the Armed Forces to protect the country’s critical infrastructure and enable the mitigation of cyber attacks.

However, is  the government ready for what could possibly be a digital revolution? While some Brazilians take to the streets and literally “bang the drum” to demand transparency and democracy, there could now be an army of tech-savvy and angry citizens looking to resolve issues the country has had to contend with during the major part of its 511-year history – in a more forceful manner.

The recent developments in Brazilian politics, such as the discovery that Dilma Rousseff’s chief of staffAntonio Palocci had gotten 20 times richer during four years in office, and the president’s decision to sack him earlier this month, was received as the start of  a move towards transparency. Until it was discovered that the government is proposing to start blocking the release of archived government documents – a u-turn on the announced policy to de-classify everything after fifty years.

The law that would give access to government documents was supposed to be signed on May 3, World Press Freedom Day, but the vote has been postponed several times due to  resistance from the chair of the Brazilian external relations committee, Fernando Collor – who also happens to be a former president impeached on corruption charges in 1992.

So, regarding the official release of information it is one step forward, two steps back.

While these events are seen by many shoulder-shrugging Brazilians as just another example of ‘untouchable’ politicians, it could well be that these recent antics by the elected leaders were the last straw for a group of techies.

Techies who are now ready to take justice into their own hands.

http://itdecs.com/2011/06/brazil-suffers-its-biggest-cyber-attack-yet/

Pissed at Taxes Again...

I love browsing the web for news about my country in English, it's refreshing to see ideas from people who are outside the sh*t-pit, it gives you completely different perspectives and ideas you can't think of when facing these petty little problems headfirst everyday. Also, as you grow used to all this, you come to forget how everything could be much better and just stop dreaming with solutions.
So here's an interesting article which faces the taxing problems in Brasil from a different standpoint, instead of fighting-off taxes, it sees them as benefic assets to the country, as long as the people (and the media) has more control over how they're spent.

Hell, for the amount of taxes collected in this country our cops could already be riding BMWs around artificial palm-shaped islands, where everyone in the country would be given two-story mansions to spend the summer, lol! So, yeah, I kinda agree with this article.


Brazilian taxes: huge, but where do they go?

The worst thing about Brazilians taxes - which are the heaviest of any country in the hemisphere - is not the amount of tax paid or how government often misuses them, but rather that Brazilians don’t even know how much tax they pay in the first place. Recently, the Folha de Sao Paulo reported that the average Brazilian will work from January 1 to May 29 for government, just to pay taxes. Is it fair that hard-working Brazilians spend almost half of the year working for a government that provides them with services of questionable quality and scope? It might be fair, if Brazilians knew what they were paying and how their money is being used. Unfortunately, tax and fiscal transparency in Brazil is still wanting.

If Brazil is to advance - to be a competitive, fair, and progressive country - it should make greater tax transparency a priority. Brazil urgently needs to move forward with a freedom of information law, which currently awaits passage in the Senate. Promised by former President Luiz Inacio Lula da Silva but delayed since at least 2006, this law provides citizens with the regulated right to ask for specific information and obligates governments at the municipal, state, and federal levels to respond within limited timeframes. The law is a first step toward greater transparency, and it also obligates government to be more proactive in disclosing information about public funds.


Notwithstanding the soon-to-be-enacted freedom of information law, government needs to become more proactive about tax transparency. Other countries have long maintained such traditions. In Canada, gasoline stations clearly show consumers that fuel is subject to a 13 percent harmonized sales tax (federal and state), 10 percent federal excise tax, and a 14.7 percent state gasoline tax, making for a total of 37.7 percent tax. When consumers buy anything at a store, sales tax is calculated at the moment of purchase. So if I buy a radio for $100, when I go to pay I will be charged $115: 7 percent federal, 8 percent provincial tax. In this way, consumers begin to understand what they are paying, and they begin to be concerned about how government is using their money — they start to demand more accountable government.

RELATED: Who are the BRICS?

In Brazil, by contrast, taxes are hidden: value added taxes, fuel taxes, import taxes, circulation taxes, financial taxes, industrial production taxes, among others. The cost of an average car in Brazil includes approximately 27 to 30 percent tax, according to the website, Dieta do Impostao(the Big Tax Diet), more than twice what Canadians pay, which explains why cars in Brazil are more expensive than just about anywhere else. But Brazilians are ignorant to these facts because of deficient tax transparency.

The business organization Confederacao de Industrias do Brasil (FIESP and FIRJAN, for example), is undertaking a campaign to inform Brazilian citizens how much they pay. As the insatiable Big Tax character of the Dieta da Impostao tells us, Brazilians pay 53 percent taxes on gasoline, and pay more than 70 different taxes in total.

Where does all this money go? Some important projects are being undertaken with public money, including projects that center on public infrastructure, education, and health. Yet a 2008 report by the FIESP’s DECOMTEC estimates that between 65 and 110 billion Reais are lost to corruption every year, or about 1.4 to 2.3 percent of GDP. Much of the blame can be placed on a lack of transparency, which prevents citizens and the media from effectively monitoring government. The freedom of information law now in the Senate, and urgently requiring the attention of legislators, is a first step towards a fairer, more efficient, and professional Brazil.

*This article is completely credited to csmonitor.com and its writer Greg Michener, I did not write it.
http://www.csmonitor.com/World/Americas/Latin-America-Monitor/2011/0601/Brazilian-taxes-huge-but-where-do-they-go

This is I!

As I make more and more social network profiles on the internet, it's becoming difficult to keep track of them, so a profile picture you see on my Facebook probably isn't the same you'll see on my MySpace (do I have a MySpace?).
Being so, let me make you -my millions of fans- aware of what I might look like out there:

This is me as Borat (2006):

*You guys remember Borat, right?

This is me as a genetically modified punk :

 *by Diego Bianchi

This is me as a cartoon, with my infamous anarchist military jacket, 

shooting at people with my finger pistols:

*also by Diego Bianchi

This is me as a skinhead-looking, xenophobic, world-hating creature:

*In real life I'm a very affable person who is 

sensitive and may cry at the end of a movie.

This is me trying to eat Brazilian BBQ:

*Damn thing won't rip!

This is me feeling like a bada**:

 

This is me feeling pleased by something I just made:

This is me looking high:

...and finally, this is me after trying a Nuclear Joint:

*People, I seriously don't smoke weed! 

I just happen to look this way, stop asking!

Hello, fellow humans...

I've had this Blogger account for a long time now, I opened it ot use it as an advertising tool when I was hyped about one of those "get your free PS3" scams, and never used it since then.

Well, I've never really had the patience to post anything here, but lately it came to my attention just how many hours of my life I, for some unknown reason, spend leaving huge comments (more like speeches) on other people's blogs, social networks, or websites.

So there comes the idea: why not post them here? At least I can look at them again in the future and gaze upon my own creations. Hehehe!

So here is my first post...

I was bored the other night browsing through Google News, I usually type in "Brazil", "Brazil Tax" or something of the kind (by the way, I must be one the very few 20-yr-old guys who spends his time of boredom reading the news instead of playing games or watching porn) in an almost subconscious search for good changes in my country, and found this:

http://www.brazzilmag.com/component/content/article/99-june-2011/12591-brazils-zero-misery-plan-gets-us-126-bi-a-year-to-lift-16-million.html

*If you look at the bottom you'll see my big ass comment, just so you know I'm crazy enough to actually post these comments

It was about another one of these social programs the Brazilian government is promoting, this time it's a big one, aiming at lifting the rest of th country out of poverty and onto the middle class. Well this is cool, but in Brazil most things the government does are a lot more about elections and re-elections than really doing something good for the country. In this case, the government keeps this slogan of Brazil as "The World's Powerhouse!", "Emerging Superpower!", or "Booming Economy!" in a way to fascinate the people into thinking things are getting a lot better when they really aren't, at least not for us. Now the government has this national slogan of "A Rich Country With No Poverty" when still, very few people have the feeling of being in a rich country.

That's the stark difference between being rich and simply having a lot of money... and that still is what differs us from developed countries.

Our mindset, even on resolving our poverty problems, still is of a poor country, and this is a little bit of what I develop on my comment...

Here's the comment I that threw me on:

Another socialist future failure
written by Ferdinand, June 04, 2011

This is just another stupid socialist program to reward laziness that will fail. Brazilian taxes are among the highest in the world. Most of the economy depends on government orders. The dream of the middle class youth is to become a civil servant because the market is already concentrated on the companies that supply the state, all the others having been absorbed by the big ones. In fact what we see in Brazil is the beginning of a national-socialist economy. More taxation to keep these programs working will mean the destruction of the free market in the country. You dont fight poverty with state-sponsored alms but with creating conditions for the free market to fully develop

...and my response:

I really agree with you, maybe not entirely, since these programs ARE of great benefit, but Brazil does takes the wrong turn when dealing with internal growth.

The country still occupies a spot in the list of 5 nations with the heaviest taxation in the world! And no noticeable reforms have been made so far. Products which (after much insistence from a minority of the government) are labeled as "needs", such as milk or meat, have specific laws added to waive them from some of the taxes. That's how computers came to be sold cheaper in the country, even though the quality:price ratio is still ridiculous when compared to developed countries.

The daily consumist life of an average Brazilian makes it almost unexplainable how Brazil still has internal growth:

Starting the day with a trip to the supermarket, Brazilians struggle to buy even the simplest daily "luxuries" such as a box of cereals or a bottle of orange juice: no matter how enormous the country's capacity of production is, these goods will still cost at least three times as much as in the US!

Now let's say our average Brazilian wants to build a home office, so he goes to the mall where he finds a "good" deal: 1,000R$ for a LOCALLY PRODUCED laptop which would cost about 300 dollars in the US!

Besides the laptop he also wants to buy a wireless router, but the cheapest one is 180R$! And let's remember that we're talking about a person who earns in Reais and spends in Reais, so spending 180R$ in Brazil feels a lot like spending 180U$ in North America!

Besides the router and the laptop, he wants to buy a chair and a desk. Well, for some strange reason the simplest wheeled chair will cost him about 200R$ and the desk that fits his needs is 300R$!

Conclusion, he'll probably only buy the laptop for now, splitting it into 12 monthly payments of 93,33R$ (interest!) on his credit card, and he better forget that All-Star he was staring at because it'll cost him another 200 of his hard-earned Reais![laughs]

Finally, when the end of the month comes, and our hero wants to buy himself a ride, I hope he's been saving money for a while because a "popular" car in Brazil, even when striped of basics such as A/C and automatic transmission, will still cost some 24,000R$!

Taxes here are so incomprehensible that taxation on products made in Brazil usually equal those imposed on imports, which where supposed to protect our industry, getting to the point where imported goods can actually be cheaper then national ones.

In my opinion, Brazil's market thrives out of stubbornness, and, if the country does not pay twice as much attention on reforming it's taxation, interest, and internal growth policies as it pays on social programs, these (social programs) could be have a disastrous end, as the smallest shift on economy could send this new, state-dependent, lower middle class right back into poverty.