Monthly Archives: March 2012

A person’s perspective on public affairs determines the way of acting. Joseph de Maistre, a strategist and critic of the French Revolution at the end of the XVII Century, wrote: “Opinion is so powerful in war that it can alter the nature of the same event and give it two different names, for no reason […]

One would think that victims would be the first to be interested in what is referred to as “due process” of law. In essence, the concept implies that the procedures that judicial authorities follow in their inquiries and investigations must adhere strictly to legal limits, and cannot be unfair, arbitrary or unreasonable vis-a-vis the person […]

“The first principle is that you must not fool yourself,” said physicist Richard Feynman, “and you are the easiest person to fool.” This is how our perception of Brazil seems to be these days: it is easier to conjure up barriers on likenesses and differences than to identify what is relevant and to adopt a […]

Would it be possible for a solution that appears to be perfect in concept to be nothing more than a false start, a chimera? Einstein affirmed that “we can’t solve problems by using the same kind of thinking we used when we created them”. It seems to me that in discussions on how to confront […]