Oil Exploratory drillings in Canarian Islands

Monday, June 30, 2014



The execution of these oil explorations is not a legal issue. The Supreme Court resolves in its field of competence. Legally, there is no objection.

It corresponds to the Government to decide whether it is convenient from an environmental point of view; if it is appropriate for the quality of the civic life; if it is in favor or against the inhabitants of the Canary Islands; whether it is or not hazardous for the current and future economic interest in relation to the high attraction of tourists and residents...

The executive power should not rely on the proper sphere of the Court.
Everyone must face his own responsibilities.

Why not consulting the scientific community?

Really, Minister, would you say that it is “extraordinary news” to initiate some activities that can cause irreversible damages?  Why to look for black gold when there are white clathrates on the seabed?

Recently, I heard Professor Chu, advisor to President Obama, saying the following:  “The Stone Age ended when there were many stones; the oil age will end when there is still a lot of oil”.

Israel and Palestine

Thursday, June 12, 2014



Peace between Israel and Palestine should urgently cease to be a discretionary option accepted by Israel.  It is enough! Again and again hopes on reviving the peace process have been fruitless. And the Palestinian confined humiliatingly seeing how another opportunity vanishes.

Lluis Bassets in his excellent article entitled “The End of the Street” – “El final de la Calle” (“El País”, April 3, 2014) expresses that present negotiations will end without success -as so unprecedented- and without any alternatives.  The current “street” does not offer glimpses of new solutions right now.

The “quartet” and Blair (how was appointed one of the “three of the Azores” as mediator?), the former protagonist countries of Middle East, a European Union only concerned on the premium risk... walk to fail any other initiative.

Settlements remain......, it continues to be impossible that the United Nations, which gave Israel the condition of “State” in 1947, may do the same, based on a peaceful coexistence, with Palestine.



I had the opportunity to follow very closely the development of the Oslo Agreements with Yasser Arafat, Isaac Rabin and Simon Peres.  When Isaac Rabin offered solutions that successfully culminated the process, a bullet cut off his life.  Like another bullet had eliminated the Egyptian Rais Anwar El-Sadat some years before...

So now Netanyahu could not continue deepening the "maybe final shipwreck of the peace talks”, in the words of Bassets, a popular outcry, the voices of millions of world citizens should spread unstoppable through the cyberspace.

The power of the citizens.  It is not possible to remain as passive spectators.

Ukraine: urgent solutions

Wednesday, June 4, 2014



When everything about the coup is known and the Government “settled“ in Kiev, it appears that the best way to establish coexistence is a federal State and call elections.

The EU should review quickly, after many failures, its foreign policy. Now, once again, the solution is in the United Nations to which should be entrusted to ensure a reliable electoral process.

I think it is worth reproducing the article of the Blog I published on the 10th of last March:

There was –if neoliberals of the G7, G8, G20 recognize it or not- a democratically elected president. This president -as it often happens!- did not behave very democratically.

And a popular uprising began. Up to here all is right.

What happens is that suddenly appeared armed to the teeth insurgents, acting with extreme violence and a very suspicious confrontation strategy. By brute force regained power lost at the polls.

The European Union, that should have reacted immediately, finished as spectator (satisfied because there are too many interests, especially related to the numerous pipelines) and blessed the new government not taking into account the “procedures" used. Everything is fair, because the fuels they receive worth a lot...

The Russian minority in this part of Ukraine does not count as well as the non-Russian of Crimea (the Ottoman Crimea, Russian and then "given" to Ukraine by Khrushchev) Putin has warned not to play with this “Russian territory”... and now there is a real threat of military confrontation.

They must return to the polls. A well prepared election throughout Ukraine under the supervision of the United Nations should be presented- it is clear that the "plutocratic groups" are not useful to fix things but exclusively complicating them- whose result could be a federation or confederation which would ensure a democratic self-government to respond to the cultural and political life of Ukrainians as a whole diversity.

The unity in diversity would have been solved and would have given a splendid lesson to those who have always subordinated to markets the key dimensions from a historical, ethnic and cultural point of view...

Global consciousness for ineluctable deep transformations

Tuesday, June 3, 2014



I

We cannot continue tolerating that each day thousands of people die of hunger and abandonment, mostly children aged 1 to 5 years, while more than 3 billion dollars are spent on weapons and military expenditures.

It is necessary the transition from an economy of speculation, production delocalization and war to an economy of sustainable global development based on knowledge, accompanied by setting priorities at world scale (food, access to water, health, environment, education and peace). All under a re-founded United Nations, representing "We, the Peoples" ... provided with the necessary personal, technical and financial means. Only in this way can we tackle intergenerational responsibilities, "our supreme commitment" in the words of President Mandela.

We cannot continue tolerating that "the welfare State" shelter just, in the best case, the 20% of humanity in the prosperous neighborhood of the global village. The other 80% live in conditions incompatible with equal human dignity, in a progressive gradient of precariousness.




-Nor can we tolerate that democratic multilateralism has been replaced by plutocratic groups (G7, G8, G20 ...) expecting that a few rich countries “rule” the other 196!

- How can we accept that the human family is still living with the "sword of Damocles" of the atomic bombs, nuclear warheads?

-How can be accepted that, according to recent data from Oxfam, 85 personas hold wealth equivalent to half of the humanity (3,3 billion persons)?

-How can we accept that the States, progressively weaker, are puppets of large multinational companies, progressively strong?

When I look into the eyes of my grandchildren and my great-granddaughter, I think of all the worlds ‘children and the terrible verses of José Ángel Valente – “I expected your voice...- and it failed” and the emphatic phrase of Albert Camus - “They were despised because while they could do so much they did so little“-.

Facing the physically and conceptually somber horizons, I read and reread the illuminated poem of Miquel Martí i Pol: "That all is to be done and everything is possible ... but who but all?".

Yes, who but all?

Together we can.

It is time for global awareness, of global citizens.


I come from the land of the Ebro. I am from Barcelona. I feel deeply Catalan. And Spanish. And European. But I feel, above all, world citizen.

The challenges are global.

Our response today can already not only be heard but listened: the new communication technologies allow the popular outcry.

There are more women taking decisions today.  The woman is the cornerstone for this different future we wish.

The future has to be yet written.  Let us invent it.

Let’s be able to look far and high.

The coming generations claim it us.


II

In the Transition, with determination and courage, everyone tried that a General was substituted by a civil person. And in this way the political pluralism was achieved, with important concessions that should not be forgotten, of those who subordinated many sections of their trajectory to the rising democracy. And the essential structure of the State started.

“Unfinished Symphony”, said Adolfo Suárez, facing the immense pressures that conceived a coup d’état for a coalition Government headed by a military.  That “red Spain but not shattered” left unfinished the authentic federal articulation of Spain, without historical privileges.

The Autonomous Communities have been a good alternative to previous “verticality”.  The result is visible.  But a long time ago both the internal and external context advised changes in the Constitution, -especially the eight chapter in depth- so the Spanish State could play the important role that corresponds in the European Union and in the democratic multilateralism.

The Spanish nationalism has been more aggressive and inappropriate in some occasions that peripheral.  Those million signatures against the Catalan Statute, the repeated outbursts and “passivity” of the government, have exacerbated those who are convinced that the full development of their cultural identity, gathered to the great capacity for self-government, would allow more welfare to the whole population.  The process has originated, from truly autonomous aspirations, to independent ones.  Instead of finding fulfilment to the fair aspirations with well-accredited political formulas, -the United States of North America, Germany, Brazil, Mexico...- they are considering secessions  that are not foreseen in the European Union or the United Nations, and above all do not contribute to the urgent need to tackle  - “Who if not all”-  the great global challenges.

Let's get together and find the appropriate formulas. They exist. We have the duty to find them. Or invent them. Now it is the time to decide the paths of tomorrow that were left incomplete more than 30 years ago because of those anchored in the past. Now we need watchmen of the future, with a vision of the whole Earth. Taking into account all citizens of the world. Taking into account our own descendants.