About scotland and catalonian process

Just a short thought that has come to my mind recently. A few years a go, in Belgium there where a huge political crisis that left the country without official government during 541 days (close to a year and a half). During this crisis the north (Flemish) and the south (Wallonia) were at the limit of rupture.

The European Union Treaties wasn't an extra problem then, and was also explained that they thought in a triple break, leaving the Bruxelles capital region as an special area as the EU capital. At that time no one have says that those two new possible countries should request a for (re)admission as state member.

Why, nowadays, the Scottish people are threatened that, depending on the result of the self-determination process, they will have to request their admission from scratch? Why also Catalonia people, whose process is an even worst situation because the Spanish government denies any right to vote, are threatened to be expelled from the Union?

About Spanish time region change

Recently have started in Spain a debate about change the time zone to recover the one used when the republic. I think, it's curious that I didn't heard since now about this change. I know that Greenwich meridian cuts the territory and even that we are not in the same zone than England (UK). But it was forgotten to mention to me by anyone that before it was.

According to what I have heard this days, was during the second world war, when the nazi German invade France, they have changed the time zone of France (who where also at Greenwich) to set the same than the invader and the Spanish dictator waved his ally changing the Spanish also.

So far so good? Up to this point there is nothing else in the matter of set back the time zone or not. Every year we change from winter time to summer time and vice-versa, with caring about time zone business.

But the justification I have heard to support this change I think is point less. You can read in the press, that this will help to improve productivity, or that the siesta have the will be gone, or that this will improve working habits...

This is not the solution on the working habits at all! How can think that if some one that is working from 8am to 7pm, will change its work time schedule if politicians change the time zone? The only effect on the change of the time zone, will be that the sun will shift the rise and the set, but will not point the real problem of the Spanish productivity. The exampled journey will be tagged between 7am to 6pm, that is useless for working habits!

There is a brain fire recorded thing in Spain: it is not much important how much you work, the important thing is how much hours are you at work (how much seems that you work). And this is the issue about the working habits and the productivity. Many bosses likes to see you heating the chair and they don't like to see you being the first that leave the office in the evening (even if you have been the first to arrive).

Until this issue is not fix, the working habits will still be bad... In this country, what the boss expect from you, is to see you doing unpaid extra-hours even if you don't have anything to do. And never thing in register those hours, I've work with a time clock machine than automatically signs you off after the 8 hours even if you are still in the office. If you do that, the boss will be happy with you, if you work hard but you don't stay more (except when something really unexpected happen) you will be classified as "not very committed to the project".

Once I had a boss that told me: "we don't want workers that only does eight hours". Put the time zone you want, if the origin of this sentence is not fixed, the balancing between work and family time will be lopsided hopeless...

In other European countries, there are companies points you an assistant when you trigger overtime alarms, to help you to organize your time or detect if you are overloaded.

About many recent anonymous comments

This blog has been configured with rights to post comments to anyone (including anonymous users), and without moderation level. Even that, blogger is blocking spam comments and they are mailed to be check if they are "no spam". Those comments include links to webshops and that is why I didn't pass them to publish.

The reason on this post is that, since a month a go I see a "peak" of a few comments referencing the type of topics on this blog. At the beginning I didn't care about this, because I write about what I want to write, tagging with labels that an eventual reader can discriminate about the topics (assuming that someone else is reading this blog).

This is not a business blog at all. As the name says, when it was chosen, the main topics are cryptography and synchrotron things. This has been mentioned in the opening post and a bit later when I have broaden my intentions. But I am human, an alive human, and the things changes. This change can be said that starts with the first post tagged as politics. My live is not only my job, and my interests are far away from "live to work", I am more on the "work to live". Work is a need on this society system. Further than contribute to the community (an ideal view of the work), to work by now is a need to have the minimums to still be in this society. Even if you like or not the current organization, you need it to still be.

What is happening by today, specially in the behaviour where I live (that is what I can see with my eyes) is too bad to still be only post about the initial topics of this blog. The life is much wider than businesses.

22 arrested versus 29 injured

The original title of this post was 'European Strike 14N' because testerday we had a call for strike in many places in Europe. Some of the European countries doesn't have the right for a general strike (like Germany). In fact the bigger calls was in the south of the continent: Portugal, Malta, Cyprus, and Spain have had a journey strike, in Greece they had a 3 hour call for strike (remember that they have had 2 journeys of strike last 10th). In Italy the call has been made for 4 hour.

But why the today's news have changed my mind? I thing there is a mismatch in the police actions when the injured people in the demonstrations are more than the arrested (worst when the is not intersection between the arrested joint and the injured joint).

Well we have to think that one of the injured is a riot police man that has run over by a police ban:

Another of the incredible videos of the demonstrations is the one that a 13 yeas old kit has been injured in Tarragona:

After watch the video I have hallucinated with the hits on the girl close to where other physically protect the kit. After the girl protest to the riot controller, she have received the shield hit only to be telling something to the police. This girl doesn't look to be a menace to those police men. But after she have received 3 truncheon hits by two different elements of those shielded giants.

News like this ones that gives more injured people than arrested, makes me think that their method is not working because more innocents (because they hasn't been arrested) have been injured, further when they often say that they have identified hundreds of violent persons.

It is also incredible when the police count as injured their riot controllers with wrist pain. Where the origin of this pain is the hit with the truncheon, and they are not counting all the beat by this truncheons. In the case of the people in the protest, you must finish in the hospital with a big damage to be counted in this list.

The German miracle

Taking the Spanish media and the international information that arrives to this country, Germany is where they pave our streets with gold. The PIIGS have their economies compared with Germany with the risk premium.

The gods of the markets decides above everything in a politics system that would be named marketcracy. And if the markets decides that a virgin worker must be sacrificed, the politicians, like a high priest does what ever is necessary to obey the god will.

But mass media are also priest on this system. They make up the reality to adapt the collective think to the global order. Lying to the plebs about how the things happens in other places. But some times they made a mistake throwing something that allows to understand.

In Germany, you have an special tax if you belong to a religion. Each church receives depending on the people that follows this religion. Then belong or not to a religion is translated to money for the ecclesiastic hierarchy.

Today, in the news, I have seen that in Germany the Catholic Christian church is denying religious services to the people that decide to save money by refusing to be Catholic. That means you save 8% tax, by refusing to mention your faith to the government. I think before, you must be practitioner to pay that, because if you don't follow the church activities was use less to pay. Then I think the people that is taking this decision are real believers with real money problems.

The plebs in the PIIGS have received the message that in the north, where the things are made in the good way, they work and they like fine. But the reality is different. In this wrong capitalism, where wins are private and loses are publicly shared, all the plebs are suffering to maintain the rich. It's still the save think than always, it's a class conflict. We didn't finish it, it's only one season more.

The Andalusian labourers and the significant differences of sensitivity before the robbery

Following a similar idea than one of my previous posts I have read something on this matter:

"The Andalusian labourers and the significant differences of sensitivity before the robbery"

I like to share here and translate it:

No one like that some one else robs what is ours. The think is like this from immemorial time that the human beings we have occurred to rules and institutions to avoid it and to punish to that do it.

I understand, therefore, the anger of the owners of the supermarkets where a group of Andalusian laborers has removed food. Although the objective is noble, I have already said that to anybody it likes that someone else robbs what is own and I understand him, then, that they have reported to the authorities.

I even understand that these have been mobilized immediately and leaders of some parties have requested quickly that are punished to the guilty. Is what the spokesman of the Popular Party has done in the Congress, Rafael Hernando, who affirmed that he hopes that the deputy of United Left, Juan Manuel Sanchez Gordillo, is denounced by robbery because, according to there is saying, “the laws are had to fulfill and must have exemplary conducts. This form of protests seems to me lamentable and I hope that Justice intervenes in the affair”. 

I already say that it seems normal to me. But what, nevertheless, it does not seem so normal to me it is that these authorities and the politicians who have been scandalized so much by the theft of the laborers are so little sensible to other much more great robberies that happen to newspaper in our country. That is to say, that they have got upset as much by a theft of small account and they do not persecute the great robberies and swindles.

Let us see: 

Let us suppose that the labourers filled each one of the shopping cart with food by value of 300 euros each one (what he would mean, by the way, that the stolen total amount is very small for Carrefour and Mercadona, because between both company they obtained 845 million euros of benefits in 2011, and if we suppose that they gathered 25 cars of food is that with that benefit they would be possible to be filled to 2.8 million cars with food by value of 300 euros each one).

Now let us compare this theft with other three robberies of which they have taken place or they take place day to day in Spain: 

a) Robbery of the electrical companies.

The engineer Antonio Moreno has demonstrated that “every day that happens without the Government approves the official rule that he defines in what consists “the suitable renovation and update of the park of accountants”, the electrical companies receive the following amounts illegally (including the VAT):

- More than 600,000 euros by a service (“the suitable renovation and update of the park of accountants”) that do not given because the Government not yet has defined of what this service consists.

- Between 196,000 and 342,000 euros by the positive error that has 80% of the accountants because they have not been verified periodically because the Government not yet has published the corresponding norm”.

That is to say, that the company electrical (single to receive a service of renovation and update of accountants that does not render) robs every day to the Spaniards equivalent to 2,000 shopping cart with food by value of 300 euros each one, which represents about 730,000 shopping cart after the year.

As it can be seen in the Web of Brown Antonio (http://www.estafaluz.com) if the other concepts of the continuous swindle of these companies are added, it would be that the very many ones are robbing us equivalent to more shopping cart.

b) Robbery of the preferred participations.

As it is known, a good number of banks deceived thousands of Spanish savers placing “preferred participation to them” as if those products were deposits, without informing to them of which in fact those things are something like actions without right to vote and whose single cash could be recovered in very leonine clauses (a news tv report of Tele5 on this subject here).

As a result of that fraud of the banks around a million people there are lost the immense majority of its savings, calculating that those losses, a true robbery, can have a value of between 10,000 and 30,000 million euros.

If we accepted the lowest estimation (10,000 million), it is that the banks have robbed to a million Spanish citizens, and only by the concept of preferred participations, the equivalent to 33 million shopping carts loaded with food by value of 300 euros each one.

c) Fiscal fraud.

According to the technicians of the Ministry of Finance the 72% of the fiscal fraud (that is of about 89,000 million euro altogether), is made by the biggest fortunes and the greatest enterprises corporations, which means that these didn't pay to Finance's Ministry about 64,000 million euros to the year.

If we accepted that to evade the payment of taxes to which we are compelled it is a robbery to the society, it is that the great fortunes and corporations rob to all the Spaniards the equivalent one to 213 million shopping carts loaded with food by value of 300 euros each one.

To these robberies we could add others to great scale, like that the deceived families who contracted with banks credits with fraudulent clauses ground (information here and here), those that practice the pharmaceutical companies (information here), or and endless suffered daily of bad practices of the banks that cost thousands of million to all the Spanish citizens (adicae). Neither mention the global robbery of astronomical amounts of money that the financial crisis has supposed, the banking rescues, etc.

In conclusion: it could seem reasonable to me that it is wanted to persecute and to condemn the labourers who have stolen a few shopping carts of food by value of about 7,500 euros and not on its own benefit. But what I ask myself it is another thing:  how is possible that such judges, public prosecutors, police, authorities… that they are persecuting and that will finish jailing to the labourers responsible by the theft for a few shopping carts of food do not persecute with similar fervor to those who amounts are robbing us that are several million greater times?

I do not know that the readers think but, at sight of this so contradictory behavior and the poor effective persecution who have those multimillionaire robberies, with what I think they criminalize the labourers not because the robbery itself but by another thing worries to them: because to whistle-blower to show the worse and more revolting shame of our opulent world is seen: the hunger. A suffering, do not forget, that the result of the lack of resources is not an accident nor but, as said the previous Relator of the Nations United for the Problems of the Feeding, Jean Ziegler, “a organized crime  against the Humanity”. And he is for that reason, I create, who the criminals who commit it or who help to commit do not want it that he is spoken of it.

So do not be hypocritical: If the authorities that demands the respect to the order and the property were coherent and ended the true thieves who are robbing to the immense majority of the society there would not be more labourers taking eaten of the supermarkets. 

When there are two laws

Now a days, specially during this crisis, it becomes much more evident that even before the double standard of the law. There is two ways of justice in Spain, and certainly every where else in this world but often they have more precautions, where today is too much evident.

It's not the same punishment for things that are morally equivalently wrong, and the worst is when the punishment depends on your social class. As rich as you are: more impunity you have.

This country is plenty of examples of this. Should be Felix Millet in jail due to a misappropriation of public founds? There are people in jail to have robbed much less, but he is not prisoner. The Catalan health system is also soiled by scandals. And the corruption of this both cases splash too many politician, when at the same time the mass media hides this informations. And even all this things the citizens have to pay an extra € per each medicine prescribed by your doctor of the public health care system. I know people who can not take the medicines because they are too expensive and to buy it they have to eat less.

Scandals of corruption jumps to the news very often in spite of the effort to cover and hide it. Where is the solidarity and equitable redistribution. Every where is the same shit.

And law doesn't act, is absolutely blind in this cases. But in the protests from the citizens in the country, we are criminalized. Even if it is a pacific protest in the street, the can accuse the citizens of resistance to the authority to make possible to punish it with jail in a similar form than if your protest is violent.

By criminalize the actions of the working class, that includes unemployed and retired, when fights for the rights and duties of this society, the problem is not solved at all: it makes it more complicated.

All of us have rights and duties, and I insist all of us. Politicians have also duties and not only their rights. Their actions won't be free of consequences. Often is said that the workers forgets our duties, but don't generalize because is not general. And why the consequences only falls down to the plebs? Many politicians and rich forgets their duty to obey the law.

But what they are doing is to change the law in order to have their own full permission to do what they like. That is not the way. Well is a way, but is not the way to live together peacefully.

When politicians creates a hole in the bottom of the bag

Yesterday, there where an announcement in the Spanish parliament about the biggest cuts ever seen in this country. And what was the reaction of our representatives? 50 seconds of applauses... Very very sad to see "my" representatives applauding the president because of the hardest blow  up to now.


Are we in a representative democracy? The current government have won election with promises that the firsts month start to be invalidated. Just after they won, the budget publication was delayed until regional elections.


Those politicians are not serious! There is not left and right anymore.


What about the recent announcement:

• Increase the VAT from 18% to 21% (reduced VAT 8% to 10%), and probably move products from reduced to normal (this means from 8% to 21% in one step).
• Reduce the salary of the public workers about the 7% (masked saying that is cutting the extra payment of Christmas). Usually the annual gross salary is divided in 14 payments, even if we call it extra, they are part of the salary.
• Reduce the number of local representatives on villages, towns and cities.
• Reduce the unemployment payment after 6 months without a job.

This last one is specially insulting. This president have said specifically, this is to motivate the people to find a job. Is this suggesting that the 25% of the Spanish workers doesn't have a jobs because they don't want it!

And from the ones who have a job, there is a field in the salary where is subtracted each month some money for an unemployment, insurance like, bag. And in case that I lost my job, I can get this and the number and time depends on how much I have placed there.

Well it work this way:

1. You put some part of your salary in a bag. And the time you can have this insurance unemployment payment depends of how much you have placed in.
2. There is a top of the bag. After you reach this top you contribute to the common. That means: you continue paying the insurance but you will not give anything more back.
3. and now, in the middle of the game, some one decide that what you thought you had in the bag will be less in case you need.

Imagine you insurance decide unilaterally to reduce the covers but you are still forced to pay the bill with out an option to change.

But the problems are still there, and will not be fixed with this measures. Even more, this will made them worst:

1. Unemployed will have less to circulate money, and not really contribute to find a job that doesn't exist.
2. Employed will not circulate money because we don't know for how long we will have this job. Sooner or later, will we lose the job and confirm the theory?

But in this country the real problems are still there. The biggest problem of the tax fraud is not the question of the with or without VAT. Even if this is very big, the fraud is when the numbers are big enough. Maybe the global of this problem is big, but the big fraud made by not too many have very big numbers. Why we have a tax amnesty?

Some of my doubts:

• Where is this country going?
• What can we have by pacific protest in the squares? (15M like)
• Are the politicians, and the ones who move the threads from the shadow, aware about the increase of the hate to them by the respectable citizens?
• Are they aware that punishing the pacific protest like terrorism or authority resistance, is the way to justify violent protests? (price by price...)

Next Saturday: "(...) faced a major economic crisis (...) and exacerbated by a regressive system of taxation (...)"

When solutions are the answer to different problems

With in this Spanish crisis, many problems have been identified. The main issue are the possible solutions. Every day in the news the citizens are informed about new creative solutions to that problems. The issue of those solutions is that too often they are solutions for other problems or only partial solutions for the announced problem.


Last one is the Spanish health care system. From the last years many times have mentioned that the level of the retirement system is too high, unsustainable. The country can not support that level and the age of retirement was extended and the conditions worsen. It looks like only the public retirement systems was affected and nothing mention about private retirement plans.


Following the same path, the medicine prescriptions from the public health care are now, again, in the target point. Again the terms and conditions "changes during the game" with only one side agreement.


Ok, in Catalunya the citizens will pay extra fee for a prescripted medicine, and also the pensioners who had their medicines for free will have to pay for them. Also Spanish government have its own plan to increase the fee in medicines according to the incomings. Abstractly it looks good, it looks to have solidarity principle. But not in this country.


But what about the very old issue of the containers of the medicines? Long a go have said and now forget, that the containers of the medicines wasn't adapted to the treatments. Very loud have said that this mismatch costs a lot of money to the public resources. Even that the solution is to increase the part that the citizens pay directly by the use instead of fix the problem of the sizing of the medicine boxes.


Well done. This problem is not fix because the implemented solution doesn't fix completely the problem and it's only a temporally patch. Typical Spanish.


Furthermore, because this new fee depending on the incomings request to cross data from treasure department and the health care department a new fraud comes to the surface: an enormous fraud using sanitary cards. That's not new, it was already from long a go in the list of usual frauds in health care. Well they simply quantify it.


But all the citizens will suffer the consequences of this fraud? Isn't this solution worst for the ones who did it correctly? And again, this is a partial patch, it doesn't fix the problem.


A few day a go, another economical announcement from the government: "The with VAT or without it, must finish". The government will fight the black economy when a few weeks a go they promote a tax amnesty.


Day by day we see this, once again and again. Big adds with very big solutions, and after a few days they are forget or implemented in a way that didn't fix the initial problem.


We rescue the banking when the government is not acting to get save the citizens. The system of the mortgages it's dark. In capitalism there are wins and losts of the bets. We know the banks have carried a risk giving loans, but now we can see that in practice they only win.


When the things goes wrong they receive public money to refloat. Public money that created public debt. Due to that the citizens saw how the rules changes during the game (retirement, taxes,...) but the banks law cannot change to avoid a perverse system where the bank move you out of your home, you loose it, and you still have a debt with this bank (who can be bigger that the initial) and if need the bank is rescued.

On the passing years

"Too much times have rained" from the first stone in half 2006 to today. We have worked hard to see this machine up and running. An incredible amount of effort, some one count it, some one forget it.


Even if the politicians have inaugurate this facility in 2008, it's now when this resource can be used. If I remember correctly, when this has been inaugurated we have been doing the booster commissioning, the installation of the storage ring wasn't completed and don't imagine who the beamlines was.


But today, we have started receiving the first friendly users. In this case, a very similar thing happen. In the news is indistinguishable if they are friendly users (that means we are in the last part of the commissioning) or if they are the users that have applied to the user office call for proposals.


But we have a synchrotron!

Uou! There is a detail on this picture. We have the letters of the synchrotron name painted in the roof of the warehouse. This warehouse is a building in side the are of the synchrotron but the machine and the beamlines are in the circular building in the centre of the image.


Can we see this letters closer?

What the hell! This letters are uncoloured, but they has been painted in 2010 (just when the salaries of the workers has been cutted) and repainted in February 2011.


Why do we have 4 big letters in the roof of a secondary building of this facility?

Can this be only to distinguish the building in google maps?


In a country like españistan everything it is possible. Cut salaries, when paint superfluous letters in a roof.

Spain a tax haven

Can somebody explain me the difference between a tax amnesty and a tax haven?

Spanish brain exodus

Spanish economy is not living the bests moments, we have to complain with austerity, understanding the necessary cuts as a need to save to country... Who the hell believes that? Specially when someones are not affected by this cuts: the ones who "decide" this cuts, and the ones who order this deciders to do this cuts.


One of the results of this cuts has been mention in science. In the synchrotron we are not special. Not for the good, neither for the bad. We are only another more in the same case. We only are another example of what's happening.


From the lasts years, many of the workers in this facility left the project to find better work conditions in terms of salaries, conciliation of family live and work, better perspectives in jobs and qualifications. When the perspective is the sadness of your career and the only way to improve is to scape of the country, the result is very bad. Alba is becoming a training camp for other institutes. A non negligible percentage of the workers left the project to go work in other big facilities, when this had not been finished yet, with the consequent lost of knowledge.


Before Easter an important part of the workers of the synchrotron have lived what the last workers statute law modification (badly named labour marker law, a worker is not a product or this "market" word is insulting us). The accelerators group have had unilaterally modified their work conditions. Yes, the management agreed to negotiate this modification with the workers representatives, but it wasn't so real. Also due to that, many internal tensions has been generated and increase the sadness of the workers. And this was for free, because from 2011 the workers representatives were asking to talk about the shifts regulations, the on-call service, and who experiments can cover their support service to the users. Only one of this three aspects have been "fixed" with this "substantial work conditions modification".


But, we don't have real management! We have an acting director and another two open positions in key places: accelerators and experiments division heads! Only service divisions are still having the same head (administration, engineering, and computing). The time have given us more calm and quiet corridors and meetings with the new acting director, but the real issues didn't change so much.


Back to the Spanish situation, with cuts in the very basic columns of a society: I say education and health. Followed by cuts every where else where the 90% of the citizens are with the silly support of 9% of the richness thinking that they can become on the 1% of the sickening richness. But without doing anything to the ones of themselves who steal and embezzle the "poor" resources of this country.


90% of the people have to suffer to maintain the level where the 10% is accustomed. I understand that everyone who can, at any small opportunity, left this country.

Without consequences for the guilty

Spain have recently changed the party in the government. The budget deficit have suffer a deviation of ~27 billion euros. The outer government have closed the numbers in the 6% (~64B€), and the inner government says 8.5% (~91B€). Who can this be possible? What the hell have happened with the money?!

Mathematics are an exact science, and it look macro economics doesn't use mathematics (what the hell means creative financing, can I use it with my salary?). If I made a mistake in my domestic economy of around a 2'5% I'll have a problem. And my problem will have consequences for me (only hoping not to my family).

But in the case of the politician-economists, the consequences are not for them. After this calculations they start with cuts. They apply the consequences to somebody else: to the citizens.

In Greece, they organize a rescue in April 2010. The news have said the the Greek doesn't have the skills to manage their country and its democratic government has been deposed and substituted by some technocratic people from the market election: being a marketcracy. But two years after, too much blood, sweat and tears spilt by the citizens: a second rescue has been "necessary".

All the suffer has been in vain. Markets wants more. This wasn't enough! But does this have consequences for the "inventors" of the first rescue? Are they judged due to their fault?

It's easy to do this adjusts, knowing that to fail doesn't have consequences for you. A normal worker of any company will be fired due to an error of a millionth part of this deviation!

In Spain, the last labour reform (check if it's really the last when you read this, there are too many in short times) have reduced the price to fire a worker. The reason? To create more job positions. Even if they look antonymous, it is an insult to see the bankers millionaire compensations when they have failed in their tasks. And the consequence goes to the base of the workers.

When a worker cannot pay the mortgage, all the family suffers a eviction, but this worker cannot pay because s/he has been fired as a consequence of the more powerful person does a mistake. This more powerful person (politician, or a corporation manager) receive an extra prize for the mistake (in the other of M€) when the worker are evicted.

This worker have this heavy debt forever. Being impossible to pay that even if s/he works again. The consequences due to lost the job are enormous. But a budget deviation of billion euros doesn't cause consequences for the ones who did this numbers.

Have we lived over our possibilities? Or the issue when the rich doesn't have enough, and they like to continue living better and better, and having more and more; event if the consequence is that the poor must live (an die) worst?

marketcracy and demodure

Occidental countries when on wars like modern crusades to propagate the democracy. Occident have imposed the democracy to the "retarded" countries. We have imposed by force, what we say it's the best way of government. We have deposed tyrannies to impose democracy by the words of the guns. Replace dictadures by demodures.


But at the same time, when the citizen people are requiring something to the governments, they are not listened. People is illiterate and the enlightened is only in the hand of the government. Event if the people is requiring the things pacifically or by violent protest, the lit have it's tools to quiet the protests.


Markets are forcing countries to suspend the democracies (with casino practices). Now is the market abstraction who talks with our representatives and they translate to the people what have been transmitted to them.


In the marketcracy, we vote to choose the interlocutor to the oracle of the market. And our representatives obeys to its designate justifying the sacrifices that the people must do (not apply it to the representatives or the rich).


In the name of the gods money and debt, we have to kill a virgin worker every hour or they will became angry and the consequences will be worst.


I have to insist, this gods doesn't exist.

Hollywood industry origin against piracy

Which was the origin of Hollywood? I have read what wikipedia says in the third paragraph of the previous link:

  Various producers and filmmakers moved bases from the east coast to escape punitive licensing from the Motion Picture Patents Company.

A funny reading of that can be, the ones who nowadays are "injured" due to the piracy have started their business with tricks to avoid payments on a patent. The ones who nowadays are moving the flag about the intellectual property menace against piracy, they was the ones who escape the law.


Sure this doesn't represent all the entertainment industry, but even thinking that the ones who escape from this punitive licensing are a minority of this producers and filmmakers, their group origins are "affected" by that.


Many voices, victim like, are justifying the FBI action of the shutdown of megaupload to say that this place is stealing their incomings. But what about the people, with contents in megaupload without a problem of copyright that with this action are being affected? This action is affecting people with less money than the entertainment industry, but the police is not protecting them.


Furthermore, what's the cost of this international operation? Are the governments of this world expending the same number of money trying to clarify the world's bank crisis/fraud? Are this governments fighting against speculation on the markets, specially in the field of the price of the food? Although the money doesn't exist, the cost of the banks black hole is much bigger than the calculated to eradicate the world's poverty in less than one generation.


It is also ridiculous to see the public show on the TVs with images of the big house of the main boss of megaupload (how big is the house, the number of cars he have and the words he put in the plates, his eccentricities in an european cannonball, the guns he would have at home,...). But what do you expect to find in the big houses of the bosses of the entertainment and similar industries? Do they have less eccentricities? They can't reach the end of the month with their salaries?


It looks like a try to break the public image of this people. It remembers me the George Orwel's 1984. When the people was arrested, a long list of bad actions are repeated everywhere to criminalize the person.


I'm not defending, I'm only talking about the public circus created to change/manipulate opinions. This action is not to fix the problems for the common good, it's only to improve the incomings of the ones who have lots of it.

Free internet services

When a dog is bought in a pet shop, the animal has a family for free. It's like when you have a free service (as a free beer) on internet, it means that you are the product...

SOPA protest

Today is one of the days where many internet services are protesting against SOPA (Stop On-line Piracy Act) and PIPA (Protect Intellectual Property Act). In Spain there is also a similar Act under the name "ley Sinde". There are many reasons to protest to some law like this ones. 


Why the governments are acting against the intellectual property issues harder than the economical fraud?


What is worst, do not pay the contribution to the state or to referee here to hamlet:


Hamlet:
Get thee to a nunnery: why wouldst thou be a
    breeder of sinners? I am myself indifferent honest;
    but yet I could accuse me of such things that it
    were better my mother had not borne me: I am very
    proud, revengeful, ambitious, with more offences at
    my beck than I have thoughts to put them in,
    imagination to give them shape, or time to act them
    in. What should such fellows as I do crawling
    between earth and heaven? We are arrant knaves,
    all; believe none of us. Go thy ways to a nunnery.
    Where's your father? 
Hamlet, act 3 scene 1.

debt, money and credit

Two months a go I have write some ideas about money. Yesterday I read the Spanish translation of an interview to David Graeber (I think this is the original in English). I didn't read before about this guy, who is described in Wikipedia as "American anthropologist and anarchist".


It's interesting what he says about the origin of the money, specially the sequence between credit, debt and money. Before the existence of money, there where already credit and debt. And the coinage of the money was (at least in the mentioned cases) the solution to pay the troops. The people who produces something, had something to exchange, but the troops needs coins to get things. This coins are after requested by the boss to the people to pay the taxes to pay the troops.


It's also interesting from this interview reading that the debt make slaves. How the extortion can create and produce a relation of debt. Changing what is said there with the word "Mafiosi" by "the markets", and "extortion" by "speculation" you can describe the current situation of this "European debt crisis".


But still the money doesn't exist. Yes, today the banknotes and the e-cash are used all the days by (almost) every one. We all are in the loop, specially in the loop of the debt more than in the richness. Renting your arms in a factory for a salary, is the way of debt. Non of the ones who have accumulated richness have get it working hard 40 years in a factory. We lived over our possibilities? Well, you can be agree or not, the thing is that the ones who says that to the PIGS are still living with in the same good way than before.


Governments have to generate debt to pay the black holes of the banks, and this debt is bought by the banks who next will request money to the governments. This is like a pyramidal trick, there is no way to get out of it. Maybe only with the system reset.

Money doesn't exist

In the Tang dynasty, something starts changing. Since then the money starts to have another representation: the banknote. This, that have seen as an improvement because the traders doesn't need to carry the weight of the metal pieces. They has been able to travel in the empire with the possibility to exchange the paper into money based on metal. An at that time, the paper had a meaning in precious metal.

From that time to our days many times the "smart" leaders have realize how easy is to print more paper that the precious metal that they have.

The last time that this solution have set is a very big historical event in the richness of the world, it was when the US president Nixon breaks the direct conversion between the dollar and the gold. After that all the meaning of money is that it's something that can be exchanged for goods. It's only based in our trust on its value. At that time, the meaning of money have change.

Even worst, today we have one hack further: the electronic money. Now it's not necessary to have the banknotes in a safe who backup the e-cash. Like with the gold coverage brake, but worst. If previously was easier to print a paper than have a precious metal: have a couple of bits in a computer is even easier.

Why, with today's world crisis, the concept of the money have an even worst meaning? Apart of the problem with the meaning of the money, the concept of the debt is corrupted by the economics engineering. It doesn't have sense when I hear that Greece have cheat in the numbers many years a go helped by banks. The rating agencies are trying to clean their faces saying that now they are doing their task (not having everyone with the "excellent") but not assuming responsibilities in the subprimes and the huge collapse in 2008.

After this brake down in the (north-occidental) world, the IMF, have said to the involved democracies what they have to do. But the ones who applied they medecine are not in the path of solution, but the ones who did the opposite way are improving (iceland). Even that, the orders that this IMF are saying to the countries, for example about the retirement, it doesn't corresponds with what they do to itself.

Even forcing some of the PIGS to make changes on their constitution, Belgium have been in a political crisis on about 480 days without government. During this time their economy has been not enormously affected by the world crisis, far from that, their economy grew during this period of frozen budgets and laws. We may learn from the Belgium "solution".

The ECB also dictate its will to Italy and Spain (at minimum) to have their "service" or "protection". When the ECB is loaning cheap money to the banks, and this banks are loaning countries like Greece with a much bigger interest, the meaning of this institutions are loosing its meaning.

There is money to save and rescue the banks and don't left them abandoned to the markets. This new money can be new circulating money (like print more banknotes) or injecting money in soft credits to the banks (like creating bits of e-cash in a server). This to fix the banks' cheating, doubling money using the fractional reserve. That is, only a fraction of the deposits are "in the safe", there is a part that can be moved by the bank to produce more money. But then this money can be count in different ways, two, three or many times. The same money can be counter by me, by you, maybe by a third.

But the countries are left to its luck in the markets (where this banks play). There is no money for the social politics, we have lived out of our possibilities and we have to reduce the budget. But rescuing banks and paying enormous compensations to fire its executives who fails in its task. It's possible to "print" new e-cash to save the banks (with an inflation risk), but due to this risk this cannot be done for the countries.

But their big numbers are related with the normal people, who live normal lives. When they fail in economics, all of us suffers, but not them. Perhaps, they will have a headache because a crash in the market. But for the normal people this means a problem to eat during all the month. An this is not only headache, is also stomach ache...

In the Madrid's community, there is no money for the education. But the visit of the Catholic pope to this community cost more money than this cut. And this is only the community investment on this act, because many companies have "donate" money to this act in exchange on some fiscal benefits (due to that I have remembered the expulsion of the money-changers of Christ in the temple).

In Catalunya, even that in 2003 the gasoline have add a new tax called "sanitary cent". But further than a cent, it was a percentage corresponding to a cent on that year. Even that in 2008, Brussels say this tax is not legal, our politics refuses to remove it. This tax has been made to pay the sanitary bill, and they say is strictly necessary to avoid other less popular measures like the co-payment (you pay something "symbolic" every time that you visit the doctor). But now, 2011, they still talk about this co-payment and still say they don't have enough money to pay sanity service.

They never have enough! A solution for today is only an excuse. What they say today can be the opposite of what they will say tomorrow.

And in Catalunya there is another example of what I see as this economics engineering swindle. How can be possible that the debt of the Catalan government depends on the "column" where somebody puts the cost of a metro line of the Barcelona's city? This is a cost, an inversion, a money paid to the providers (and probably to be paid to the creditors). It doesn't have sense that the numbers can be "make-up" this level. It's unacceptable that in economics the result is fussy depending on how you did the numbers.

Now Portugal have cut the special payments for Christmas and summer. Back to Catalunya, the region government have said that their executives will not receive their Christmas payment this year. The news said that they will save 1.8M€ and the measure will affect about 350 persons. Easy 1'8M€ / 350px ~ 5000€/px: they are not in the media of salaries. Why there is no consequences to this "executives" when they fail in their task? But my doubt is which will be the workaround to pay them using another "ways"?

In the rescued banks (using "public" money) is even worst: the bank managers receive tones of money to be fired. If I do such a mistake like they did in my job, I'll be fired with out any payment, and probably with a lawsuit.

There are millions of persons unemployed in Spain (and the rest of the PIGS, and in the rest of the world). But locally it looks more like a lockout. Since 2008, many companies have instrumentalized this crisis for a cheapness firing the workers and reduce the salaries of the ones who "survive" to their burn. With this crisis, this country is only making big and deeper the bags of poverty. Making the social fracture much bigger. The ones that have more are have even more, the ones that have something are pushed together with the ones who already didn't have nothing before the crisis.

My conclusion is that the representation of the meaning of the richness has been lost. The hack of the banknotes and the mistake that is print more banknotes that the precious metal in the safe has go one step further: the mistake of generate more e-cash than the banknotes the supports this bits. The central banks are injecting this e-cash to big hole of the multiple-counting made by the banks, making this multi-count real or signed by this authorities (e-cash emission using bank soft credits). And to contain their hyperinflation, they force the final citizen to be push to the poorness cutting the social goodness and the menace of the unemployment.

The unemployed people doesn't have money to exchange for goods, but the ones who still have a jobs doesn't know for how long it is, and doesn't exchange their e-cash. This is what is avoiding an issue of removing the banknotes from the banks. The banks are being saved to maintain the confidence of the people in the e-cash. Because behind the e-cash, there is no banknotes, behind there is no precious metals, behind there is no richness.

Behind the capital and the speculation there is nothing. The production of goods is less productive in this society than generations of hacks to cover mistakes. This society is an imaginary giant made by real feed of mud.

Spanish constitution

This august, and in a urgent way, spanish parliament has started a modification of the Spanish constitution. Like al the laws they can be changed, but the answer to any request to modify this constitution has been always "NO".


Spain is a monarchy. During the lasts years we have had the discussion in the media and between the politicians and the pro-monoarchy  about the convenience to modify this constitution for better equality of generate. What that means?


From the child of the king of Spain, the women can only inherit if no men has born. Than means if they have 7 child and the 7th is a boy, the previous 6 women will not be queen (even if they are better or not).


But after a long time says that is not easy to modify the constitution, because this request 2/3 of the parliament and a dissolution of it self after the modification and a referendum... This time the modification can be done without the plebs referendum and very very fast: in less than a month...


The issue of this modification is more than what the media-news says. Is not only a thing of the top on the debt, is not the issue of not ask the "demos" of this "democracy", in my opinion is the introduction of a sentence: "135.3 (...)y su pago gozará de prioridad absoluta.(...)" (and its payment will have absolute priority).


I'm not an economist, but more than a modification to avoid a too big debt, it's a modification to avoid to follow the way of Iceland. I think that because also "135.4 Los límites de déficit estructural y de volumen de deuda pública sólo podrán superarse en caso de catástrofes naturales, recesión económica o situaciones de emergencia extraordinaria que escapen al control del Estado (...)" (this debt limits can be exceeded in some cases, one is an economic crisis, like we have now). This don't fix the current "problem" of the debt, because there is an exception for a case like where we are. One of the things that fixes is to make unconstitutional the Iceland solution.


Update: It looks like the Iceland solution have had better results than Ireland's. Just the countries who follows the rules of the IMF, the ECB and the rest of experts, are still in crisis with out symptoms of recovery.