Sorry for posting about politics again, but we are fighting for our future... Tomorrow, Saturday 29th there's another mobilisation to surround the Congress, surrounding it, to let "them" know they don't represent us and we have had enough of their policies and attitudes (with the latest episode of police violence being another shameful and despicable example of a government that has lost any glimpse of credibility).
Tomorrow, our hopes, future and rights are with the ones in Madrid (and the rest of cities committed for the event). We have no fear.
An imaginary conversation between the only honest politician in our country and a potential voter, today, on the Spanish Election Day Eve.
Politician: You are an old man who thinks in terms of nations and peoples. There are no nations. There are no peoples. There are no Russians. There are no Arabs. No BRICS. No America. There are no third worlds. There is no West. No European Union. No United Nations. There is only one holistic system of systems, one vast and immane, interwoven, interacting, multivariate, multinational dominion of dollars. Petro-dollars, electro-dollars, multi-dollars, euros, rubles, pounds, and shekels.
It is the international system of currency which determines the totality of life on this planet. That is the natural order of things today. That is the atomic and subatomic and galactic structure of things today! And YOU have meddled with the primal forces of nature, and YOU WILL ATONE!
Am I getting through to you, dear voter?
You get up on your little twenty-one inch TFT HDI screen and howl about Spain and democracy. There is no Spain. There is no democracy. No PP or PSOE. There is only Banco Santander and Inditex and Telefónica and LaCaixa, Endesa, Repsol, and Abertis. Those are the nations of the world today.
What do you think the Russians talk about in their councils of state - Karl Marx? What do you think Merkel and Sarkozy talk about in their meetings -saving the European welfare state? They get out their linear programming charts, statistical decision theories, minimax solutions, and compute the price-cost probabilities of their transactions and investments, just like we do.
We no longer live in a world of nations and ideologies, dear voter. The world is a college of corporations, inexorably determined by the immutable by-laws of business. The world is a business, dear voter. It has been since man crawled out of the slime. And I have chosen you, dear voter, to reveal this truth.
Voter: But why me?
Politician: Because starting tomorrow, you can stop this nonsense. Please,think for a minute before voting.
And if Iceland should be the model to follow, Spain is the shameful example of what we mean by giving up to the pressure of the market, banks, and the countries that rule the European Union. Here's another article, by professor Vicenç Navarro (sorry is written in Spanish, but I guess an online translator would do fine) about why WE MUST celebrate a referendum in order to, we citizens, have our say regarding all this economic nonsense. Otherwise, we will be certifying the death of Spanish democracy.
Un referéndum necesario
[...]La democracia queda limitada en España a votar cada cuatro años sin que se le ofrezca a la ciudadanía la oportunidad de participar en referéndums vinculantes y otras formas de democracia directa que permitieran una mayor capacidad de incidencia de los ciudadanos en el quehacer común. [...]La única expresión de desaprobación que los representados tienen a su alcance es dejar de votar o votar por opciones distintas cada cuatro años. Ello es un indicador de lo enormemente limitada que es la democracia española. Hemos estado viendo recientemente cómo partidos gobernantes (tanto a nivel central como autonómico) están aprobando medidas altamente impopulares, que no estaban incluidas en sus propuestas electorales, y que se están llevando a cabo supuestamente por mandato de los mercados financieros, a quienes nadie ha elegido. El 82% de la ciudadanía estaba en contra, por ejemplo, del retraso de la edad de jubilación; el 86% en contra de la congelación de las pensiones; el 68% en contra de los recortes del gasto sanitario, y así un largo etcétera, lo cual no fue un obstáculo para que la mayoría de las Cortes españolas aprobaran tales medidas. Una consecuencia de ello es la enorme distancia que se está creando entre representados y representantes, con la pérdida de legitimidad de los últimos. No es de extrañar que la clase política dominante esté considerada por la población como el tercer gran problema que tiene el país. Y estamos a punto de ver otro caso en el que una decisión de enorme trascendencia (la reforma de la Constitución, para garantizar un límite al gasto público) se está proponiendo por la dirección de los dos partidos mayoritarios, medida que no estaba en el programa electoral de ninguno de ellos (y que afectará negativamente a la calidad de vida de la mayoría de la población).
I suggest you to read this great article by Deena Stryker, that I was lucky to find at the interesting website Daily Kos. It explains briefly how a country, Iceland, can collapse, economically speaking, and go back stronger while opposing to follow the unique's receipt the rest of the European countries (Greece, Spain, Italy, Portugal on top) seems to be forced to take in the "sacred name" of the market. Is a bit long, but worth every second of your time, so please read it. This are the opening paragraphs:
Iceland's On-going Revolution
As one European country after another fails or risks failing, imperiling the Euro, with repercussions for the entire world, the last thing the powers that be want is for Iceland to become an example. Here's why:
Five years of a pure neo-liberal regime had made Iceland, (population 320 thousand, no army), one of the richest countries in the world. In 2003 all the country’s banks were privatized, and in an effort to attract foreign investors, they offered on-line banking whose minimal costs allowed them to offer relatively high rates of return. The accounts, called IceSave, attracted many English and Dutch small investors. But as investments grew, so did the banks’ foreign debt. In 2003 Iceland’s debt was equal to 200 times its GNP, but in 2007, it was 900 percent. The 2008 world financial crisis was the coup de grace. The three main Icelandic banks, Landbanki, Kapthing and Glitnir, went belly up and were nationalized, while the Kroner lost 85% of its value with respect to the Euro. At the end of the year Iceland declared bankruptcy.
Contrary to what could be expected, the crisis resulted in Icelanders recovering their sovereign rights, through a process of direct participatory democracy that eventually led to a new Constitution. But only after much pain.
What an enormous lesson. To overcome the crisis, why don't become more democratic, inclusive and active, instead of letting the ones that created the problem start again? It's a bit embarrassing to read the article when PP and PSOE, the two biggest parties in Spain, have decided to reform the constitution together, in order to satisfy the markets, and without having a referendum. Let's learn something from Iceland, please!
