There is usually two sides to a story, this is the case of the Somalian pirates.
The only thing that makes the news about this country are the acts of piracy. The last two weeks the number of ships taken by pirates has increased exponentially. The quantities asked as ransom are in the millions of dollars. The last ship taken is a tank ship with oil worth 100 million dollars.
This ships are usually boarded on international waters or in waters of countries that can not fight this actions, so different national and international authorities are taking measures to protect the ships that travel this area. This week one of this pirate ships has been sunk by the Indian navy. NATO ships are also patrolling this waters to discourage more pirate attacks.
As usual the only response that international community has is to take military actions.
Somalia is a forgotten country that obtained its independence from Britain and Italy in 1960. The country has been involved in different civil wars almost since 1970 and has not been an stable state authority since then.
This means that the country has none of the minimum services that population needs to live a decent life. No education, no sanitation, no healthcare, no water supply, no justice system, no police, nothing.
Recurrent droughts and recent floods has destroyed almost all the means of surviving of the populations, no agriculture, no cattle, no commerce, nothing.
Most of the pirates were fishermen that have lost their mean of surviving. No state authority means no protection of jurisdictional waters. Most of the areas where Somalian fishermen used to work are now used by fishermen from other countries. It is interesting a story that has just appeared on BBC news explaining this situation. The story adds some other points that I did not knew, like the illegal dumping of wastes on Somalian waters. It is not enough to stole their resources, we have to poison their waters too.
Developed countries have done nothing about Somalian problems, its a poor country with no resources, so the people of this country are no priority, they do not exist.
It is absolute hypocrisy to use military actions against people that has been driven to piracy by desperation. It is morally regrettable to waste resources in military actions that could be used to help Somalian people.
Maybe International courts that can judge acts against humanity should raise a criminal case against developed countries for genocide by omission in the case of Somalian people.
Friday, November 21, 2008
Wednesday, November 12, 2008
Why spanish movies are so bad?
Year after year the films made in Spain attract less and less people to the movie theaters.
The public has not much consideration for the spanish movie makers and almost all the movies shown each year make less money that they cost. We are talking about movies that have a production cost between two and five millions euros (you have to add to this the promotion costs) that sell at the most half a millon euros in tickets.
The only exception to this are movies that barely can be considered as spanish, with foreign directors and almost all foreign cast. They are considered spanish movies just because some part of the money come from spanish producers.
So, where is the problem?
Usually the story of the many spanish movies is just plain stupid and are made for people that like this kind of movies. Other movies tell a story that does not interest people anymore, like the ubiquotous spanish civil war, or try to exploit some polemic issue that only interest to the writer of the script and the director of the movie.
The quality of the actors are no better, usually the movies use actors that have some notoriety because they appear in some tv series. There are other actors that are plain bad, but there are famous for some strange reason. I have always though that in spain there are no more professionals in the actor business, they are just glorified amateurs that appear as quickly as they disapear.
Movie theater tickets are also expensive, you have to pay around 7 euros and there are better ways to spent that money when the probability to feel robbed after seen the movie is very high. You always can see the movie in tv one or two years later for free, there is no rush.
But the problem is not the prize of the tickets, the problem is that money from our taxes are going to the producers of those movies. So we are robbed twice each time that we decide to see a spanish movie.
Maybe is time to think again about to try to save spanish cinema, in this times of crisis there are another priorities. You can not save something nobody cares about.
The public has not much consideration for the spanish movie makers and almost all the movies shown each year make less money that they cost. We are talking about movies that have a production cost between two and five millions euros (you have to add to this the promotion costs) that sell at the most half a millon euros in tickets.
The only exception to this are movies that barely can be considered as spanish, with foreign directors and almost all foreign cast. They are considered spanish movies just because some part of the money come from spanish producers.
So, where is the problem?
Usually the story of the many spanish movies is just plain stupid and are made for people that like this kind of movies. Other movies tell a story that does not interest people anymore, like the ubiquotous spanish civil war, or try to exploit some polemic issue that only interest to the writer of the script and the director of the movie.
The quality of the actors are no better, usually the movies use actors that have some notoriety because they appear in some tv series. There are other actors that are plain bad, but there are famous for some strange reason. I have always though that in spain there are no more professionals in the actor business, they are just glorified amateurs that appear as quickly as they disapear.
Movie theater tickets are also expensive, you have to pay around 7 euros and there are better ways to spent that money when the probability to feel robbed after seen the movie is very high. You always can see the movie in tv one or two years later for free, there is no rush.
But the problem is not the prize of the tickets, the problem is that money from our taxes are going to the producers of those movies. So we are robbed twice each time that we decide to see a spanish movie.
Maybe is time to think again about to try to save spanish cinema, in this times of crisis there are another priorities. You can not save something nobody cares about.
Friday, November 7, 2008
They need them too
The last two years has appeared recurrently in the news a story about how many engineers need Europe to maintain the economical growth and the need of the industry.
The last couple of months the story has changed to how many qualified immigrants we need to fill all the jobs that will create Europe in the next years. The number is about one hundred thousand people.
There are some problems that our governments are ignoring.
The first one is that the countries where this people will be coming from need them more than we do. It is stupid to fund programs to help developing countries when we are taking their human capital. There are no development without qualified people (doctors, engineers, lawyers, teachers, ...). All the money that we can give can not replace them. To take away this people will kill the economies of these countries.
The second problem is why we do not have as many qualified people as we need. In Spain during the last ten years the people that goes to the university to obtain a degree has descended abruptly. This is very evident in the engineering schools.
There are many reasons for that, one of them are the level of the compulsory education in our country. The last PISA report gives to our country one of the worst evaluations of the last years. The lower the level, the more difficult to the students to obtain a degree. More and more students abandon their studies after the first year of their degree because of lack of an adequate level of preparation.
The other reason are the salaries of the people with a degree and the perception that having a degree is not a guarantee to have a good job. Statistics say other thing, the salary of people with a degree double the salaries of non qualified workers and unemployment is lower.
But people not live by the statistics, only the perception that the effort of five or more years of hard work does not pay enough lead to people to other career choices.
Where is the solution? In my opinion, if you want engineers, you have to prepare the people that you need from the beginning. Putting more money into the first levels of education is a good start.
Evidently, our industry has to change too, they have to appreciate more the education that people receive and try to use them to innovate and create new opportunities. We need that because obviously we do not want that our people have to go to more developed countries to find a job adequate to their capabilities. And this is just the problem that we have started with :-)
The last couple of months the story has changed to how many qualified immigrants we need to fill all the jobs that will create Europe in the next years. The number is about one hundred thousand people.
There are some problems that our governments are ignoring.
The first one is that the countries where this people will be coming from need them more than we do. It is stupid to fund programs to help developing countries when we are taking their human capital. There are no development without qualified people (doctors, engineers, lawyers, teachers, ...). All the money that we can give can not replace them. To take away this people will kill the economies of these countries.
The second problem is why we do not have as many qualified people as we need. In Spain during the last ten years the people that goes to the university to obtain a degree has descended abruptly. This is very evident in the engineering schools.
There are many reasons for that, one of them are the level of the compulsory education in our country. The last PISA report gives to our country one of the worst evaluations of the last years. The lower the level, the more difficult to the students to obtain a degree. More and more students abandon their studies after the first year of their degree because of lack of an adequate level of preparation.
The other reason are the salaries of the people with a degree and the perception that having a degree is not a guarantee to have a good job. Statistics say other thing, the salary of people with a degree double the salaries of non qualified workers and unemployment is lower.
But people not live by the statistics, only the perception that the effort of five or more years of hard work does not pay enough lead to people to other career choices.
Where is the solution? In my opinion, if you want engineers, you have to prepare the people that you need from the beginning. Putting more money into the first levels of education is a good start.
Evidently, our industry has to change too, they have to appreciate more the education that people receive and try to use them to innovate and create new opportunities. We need that because obviously we do not want that our people have to go to more developed countries to find a job adequate to their capabilities. And this is just the problem that we have started with :-)
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