Does National Sovereignty reside in the people?

Hopelessly the day is getting closed. Next march the nineth everyone must go the ballot boxes, to cast our votes, to behave as trully democratic animals. That's because the human being is no more a political animal to become in a weird entity whose responsabilities with the community seems to get over once his election has being held, showed his ID and got out from the voting school. There is the end. The same happens with politicians obedience to the commitments they've made during the electoral campaign. The remaining three years three hundred and sixty four days they'll do whatever they want to and voters will get back to their four hours a day watching tv, mortgage and family car. Nobody fullfill its part of the voting process contract. Politicians manipulate data, make interested interpretation out of every opinion poll and promise and hide everything that could mean lossing votes. Voters don't analize the programs, they and become the election day in a kind of soccer game in which our team must win by any means necessary.

In Spain eleven million people vote for a right wing whose only aim is to . Another eleven million people vote for a socialist party which is not a socialist party at all and which, going the polls in the early 1980's with a message of change, did not only leave everything politically untouched, it destroyed the public services too. The remaining parties have it too complicated to be well represented due to the voting law of the Spanish State which makes the third political party in number of voters, the sixth in number of parliamentarians. We are walking into a two party-system which isn't really that way. When working on important issues for citizens, as housing or inflation are, none of them represents an alternative for voters. Politically, both are placed more on the right wing idealogy than on the left one. What's hard to understand is twenty two million people which should be defending the same interests, all of them dealing with labour capacity, vote for politicians who protect the interests of the economic class that owns the means of production.

Everything is nonsense. Only a minority of people work every day of the year in improving our environment and we are not content with being asked once, to be ignored and scorned the rest of the time. Democracy should be on the streets and it would be essential to create direct participation strategies. Meanwhile, never depending on who is ruling, power is still in economy hierarchy hands which really are who controls everything. That's because the national sovereignty that resides in the people means to vote the candidate you like the most once every one thousand four hundred and sixty days.

Cuestionar cada cuestión / Questioning every question

Debemos cuestionar su autoridad, la hora a la que nos levantamos cada mañana o la talla de calzado que vestimos. Debemos cuestionarnos cada cuestión. Debemos actuar como si no supieramos nada, comenzáramos a caminar el largo camino de la vida o tuvieramos nuestra mente todavía vacía. Debemos actuar como niños para no perder la inocencia y la ilusión por las pequeñas y nuevas materias. Debemos, probablemente, debido a que es el único modo de avanzar, de crecer, de mejorar.

El mundo, tal y como lo conocemos, se acerca a su final. En un orden socioeconómico basado en el petróleo, los pozos se están vaciando de oro negro. No es sólo una cuestión de medios de transporte o de consumo de energía. Se va a convertir en una cuestión de hambrunas también. Las sociedades, mal llamadas, desarrolladas, de Europa y Norteamérica han destruido su estructura agraria. Hasta ahora ha sido más barato producir carne y vegetales en el tercer mundo e importarlos al primero que hacer lo que hubiera sido medioambientalmente sostenible: producir la comida cerca de donde iba a ser consumida.

Por un lado, los precios del petróleo se van a incrementar. Eso significará que los productos que traemos del exterior serán más caros de lo que lo eran antes. Por lo tanto, habrá una gran cantidad de personas que no tendrán acceso, incluso, a bienes básicos a los que si pueden acceder ahora a muy bajo precio. El mercado interno de alimentos, debido a que habrá desaparecido en su mayor parte, no podrá suministrar de productos básicos a todos los ciudadanos. Además, el calentamiento global habrá contribuido a reducir el rendimiento de los cultivos y del ganado con lo que las dificultades serán más complicadas de superar. Por otro lado, las naciones del tercer mundo que dependen del monocultivo entrarán en una crisis económica nunca antes vivida, del mismo modo que nosotros. Tenemos delante un oscuro futuro.

Estas son las razones por las que deberemos abrir nuestras mentes todo lo que sea posible. Deberemos afrontar un mundo completamente diferente en el que no hemos estado nunca. La imaginación, la solidaridad y el socialismo serán las herramientas principales que nos ayudarán a superar la crisis. De este modo, compartiendo productos básicos y no básicos y diseñando la forma en que pudiéramos hacerlo, no nos veremos en la obligación de renunciar a cierto bienestar. Cuanto antes comencemos, mejor.

We must question their authority, the time we wake up everymorning or the shoe size we wear. We must question every question. We must act as if we know nothing, were starting to walk the long path life is or still had our mind empty. We must act as children as to never loose our inocence and the excitement for the tiny and new matters. We must, probably, because that's the only way we are going to move forward, grow and improve.

The world, as we've known it, is coming to an end. In a social economic order based in oil combustion, the wells are running out of black gold. It's not just a matter of transport or energy consumption. It is going to be a question of famine as well. The European and Northamerican, badly named, developed sociaties have destroyed its agrarian estructure. Until now, it's been cheaper to produce meat and vegetables in the thirld world and import them to the first one than doing what had been environmentally sustainable: producing food near where it was going go be consumed.

On one hand, petrol prices are going to increase so every product we brought from overseas will be more expensive than it was before. A vast amount of people won’t have access to, even, basic goods they can purchase now at very low prices. The domestic food market, because it will have mostly dissapeared, won’t be able to supply of basic goods every citizen. What’s more, global warming will have contribuited to decrease the crops and cattle perfomance so the dificulties will be even harder to overcome. On the other hand, thirld world nations depending on single crop farming will enter into an economical crisis they’ve ever experienced so we will. We have ahead a dark future.

These are the reasons why we must open our minds as much as possible. We will have to face a whole entire different world we’ve never been into before. Imagination, solidarity and socialism will be the main tools which will help us to overcome that situation. That way, sharing basic and not basic goods and designing the way we could do it, won’t have to give up on certain welfare. We’d better begin as soon as possible.

¿Por qué luchamos? (I) / Why do we fight for? (I)

Me cuestionaba una compañera, por la que tengo un gran cariño, la utilidad de trabajar para transformar esta sociedad nuestra de la que, ya sea por acción o por omisión, somos responsables. Cierto es que este esperpento intimida. Cada día te esfuerzas en modificar su trayectoria y compruebas que sigue caminando el mismo sendero erróneo. A lo largo de los años ves como algunos compañeros y compañeras abandonan. Quizás porque la tarea parece propia de locos. Puede que debido al temor de no alcanzar jamás el horizonte fijado. O simplemente por desmotivación. La fe es un sentimiento extraño que desaparece del mismo modo incomprensible en que surge. Aunque aquí no tenga ninguna connotación religiosa y esté sólidamente cimentada en profundos planteamientos políticos, sociales o ecológicos -equivocaciones incluidas-. De hecho, incluso los que abandonan son conscientes de que las banderas que en un momento levantaron siguen teniendo su lugar. Aunque no les compense la inversión en tiempo, motivación o preocupaciones. Imagino que todo se reduce a responder a la pregunta de por qué luchamos.

Es necesario en cada momento hacer lo que uno considera correcto o, al menos, intentarlo. Eso supone, sobretodo, romper la línea que separa la teoría de la práctica. Las ideas no tienen capacidad transformadora. Suponen tan sólo un medio, el fin debe ser siempre la actuación. Nadie en su sano juicio sería capaz de afirmar que el planeta es un lugar perfecto en donde cada individuo puede desarrollar totalmente sus capacidades. Los más concienciados extenderían el concepto de individuo a los ecosistemas y sus integrantes. ¿Qué me diferencia a mi, entonces, de esas personas? El hecho de pretender que mis ideas se conviertan en acciones. Y, aunque bien es cierto que es complicado llevar algúnos planteamientos a la práctica, intentarlo no lo es. En el intento adquirimos nuestra dignidad de transformadores sociales. Por eso luchamos y, por eso, es preciso involucrarse en la modificación de la sociedad. Alcanzar el horizonte fijado supone una cuestión secundaria.

Del derecho al pataleo hablaremos otro día...

A good friend of mine wondered if it was any useful to work to change this society we are, one way or another, responsible for. It’s true this monster intimidates you. Every day you do your best to modify its trajectory and check it’s still walking the same mistaken path. Throughout the years you see how some mates quit. Maybe because the task looks more like a mad people’s job. Or maybe, because of tiredness. Faith is an unusual feeling which disappears in the same difficult way to understand it comes up. Even though, in this context, faith has no religious connotation and it is based on strong political, social and ecological approaches –assuming we could be wrong-. In fact, even those who quit are conscious the flags they once raised still have thir place now. They just don’t feel the struggle compensates their time, motivation or worries. I am sure all of this is about answering the question: what do we fight for?.

It’s necessary, in every moment, to do exactly what you think is correct or, at least, to try it. That means, above all, breaking the practice-theory line. Ideas can’t change anything. They are just the mean, the aim must always be acting. Nobody can assure planet Earth is a suitable place in which every human being can make the most of every ability he has. This should be extent to ecosystems and animals. ¿What are the differences between me and that people who believe having ideas is enough? The fact I pretend my thinking to be taken to actions and, although, certainly, it’s uneasy to take some approaches to practice, trying it it’s not. When we try we acquire our social transformers dignity. That’s why we fight for and, therefore, that’s why it’s important to get involved in the society transformation. Reaching our aim it’s a secondary matter.

About the right to get angry we’ll talk some other day...