New Social Contract

          The weaknesses of our current social model exposed by the current economic crisis, pose a serious reflection on the functions of the state as a guarantor of social stability and balance, to allow the peaceful coexistence of various classes, rich and poor remedied.
         The objective of a more just and caring can not pass by the fallacy that involves the utopia of egalitarianism. Everyone is born equal, but we are all born different, with different motivations and cravings. Trying to impose a single standard is like trying to impose on the rainbow one just color.
         A more just and caring society should try to soften and blur the differences between those who have everything and those who have nothing in the logic of equal opportunities in access to a life of better quality, but do not promote laziness, ignorance and incompetence.
         A more just and caring society should focus on creating a large middle class, capable of generating wealth to help the weak to have a better life than they would be designed while maintaining the focus on work, effort and expertise as a guarantee of rights and not just the simple fact that one exists, or is being possessed of an identity.
          It is undeniable that the current social model is exhausted, unable to meet the needs of day-to-day, it is unfair and ineffective, serving those who should not serve, excluding those who ought to include.
          The construction of any viable social model requires acceptance by all parties, or at least a significant majority is so-called social contract.
          In preparing the new social contract is needed to determine what the boundaries of public assistance in their various fields of activity, ie what is the limit that whoever is willing to pay for those who do not pay to have something.
          It is critical to define the limits of assistant functions  of the state, and how much will cost, who will pay and the like will pay and what the mechanism for monitoring to be carried out with rigor and penalties on those who do not fulfill their obligation to be as payer, whether as beneficiary.
          This border is to be measured taking into account the available resources and be adjustable to produce a rich period of time.
          Promising to infinity when resources are finite only with the ambition to come to power, is to promise what is not will be able to comply, with the discredit and undermine the already fragile foundations of democracy, opening the door to new forms of totalitarianism.

Medicine, Medical Doctors and Health Systems

            Our country has experienced a strike by doctors with significant membership but most likely a significant part of the population did not understand, which presented as a flag to defend the National Health Service
            The strike is a right and a form of struggle usually provided in the constitution aimed at improving the working conditions of the professional group concerned and also in this case the main demand was the defense of medical careers.
            We are currently witnessing the industrialization of medicine, the medical institution of a "low-cost" with the consequent devaluation of the medical procedure, a continuous and progressive process "operarialization" of the medicine, forgetting that the only professional who is responsible for making a diagnosis and establish a treatment is the doctor, to do a health system against this professional group does not seem to do much good for health.
            The practice of medicine today is a complex activity requiring an extensive range of scientific knowledge by mature clinical practice in order to be able to decode a set of signs and symptoms in order to build a diagnostic capable of supporting a treatment to alleviate the suffering of the patient, a task delicate and of great responsibility where any misstep can lead to catastrophic results.
            The knowledge dies with us and there is no mechanism of its intergenerational transmission loses are inevitably on the horizon of time. Defending medical careers is to ensure that the knowledge accumulated over thousands of years is not lost and is transmitted to new generations so as to be expanded and himself a source of new knowledge.
            The right to health care is enshrined in the Universal Declaration of Human Rights, in particular Article 25, one of the pillars of the state as we understand them today, democratic.
            The right to health care as any other right is not innate, but is often the result of conquests wrested from irons and sacrifice of human lives, varying according to geographical and social community to which it relates and the prevailing values at the time.
           With scientific medicine began in Greece with Hippocrates. Galen took in his teachings and gave them continuity in the beginning of the Christian era. In the Middle Ages to cure diseases was the task of religious orders, which made sense because at that time was mainly attributed to the divine cause diseases, but this time the leprosaria.
          Hospitals appeared in continuity of support structures for pilgrims and this time the minor surgery practiced by barbers, since the tools used were for the two functions. At the turn of the first millennium the writings of Hippocrates gained new value and medicine began to be studied in universities. It was the Renaissance that medicine has gained a higher dimension and this season are many names that contributed to the breakthrough.
         In the nineteenth century medicine has definitely entered the field of science. Medical assistance was previously a privilege reserved mainly for the wealthier classes had to be paid by them, may also have access to it through mutual associations with nature, which formed a basic social protection system of the participating members that entreajudavam in situations of illness, disability, widowhood unemployment, orphans, or dependent on the charitable action of the religious orders in the case of the most needy.
         The industrial revolution and the perception of high costs associated with the disease of workers or to his death that created major losses of productivity were the basis of the first welfare systems.
The Health Service first began in Germany with Bismarck, with the mandatory health insurance for workers against the others, creating a model that still exists on other forms, in certain countries.
         In the postwar period was established in Britain the model devised by Beveridge that led to the national health service in that country where the funding is no longer made based on securities to be made to pass directly through the general budget of the state through taxes .
        The British model was adopted after April 25 to create our National Health Service, currently under fire due to cuts that want to streamline your name in the ration on their access to citizens.
        The cloaked SNS rationing is twofold, the balance of public accounts and the creation of a new branch of business that really matters to the financial sector has invested millions in it. It's very different implement a health policy based on public interest or financial interest, although both have to be supported in a cost-benefit logic to ensure its sustainability.

Staying at € at any cost?

Greece will vote today. Greece will choose whether to continue with the foreign interference that forces an austerity atrocious that blindly crushing the middle class, which is the Greek people as pigs (PIGS), establishing a recessive spiral for which there is no light at the end of the tunnel or if  want to go its way, running the risks of doing so.
In both the scales, the options are bad.
Did the Greeks will choose to die from the cure, or walk to a "suicide redeemer"?
Will they wait to be slaughtered by the markets slowly until they are stripped of all their property, or will they give a new lesson to the world and show that with the despair anyone did not play?
Will they wait until  can no longer be bound outside the €, or will they anticipate this design?
 I think that for the average citizen will not be very useful mantain the€ if you are not any euros in his wallet.
Only is justified to stay in a society or association if this remains  advantageous. For too bad that the future is out of the €, in the € future it does not seem bright.
It may be that this time is not yet the Greeks tear the agreement with the Troika, but should not be long for this to happen.
Treat an entire people as corrupt and lazy forcing him to live in poverty does not seem a good calling card for Europe of the XXI century.
The History of Portugal and the rest of Europe was made without the €. The single currency could and should be an asset for the construction of a European identity. A single currency without a tax harmonization, social, wages, rights and duties is to build the house by the roof: a storm across the Atlantic is to throw everything away.

Mediterranean identity, a factor to enhance

   The peoples of southern Europe, where it has to include France, much as she wants to escape to his fate and identity, have a cultural, biological, social and cultural heritaget that should unite them, rather than put them away.   Our civilization has grown and developed in the Mediterranean basin, first in the Middle East, where the first civilizations were born, then in Egypt, to achieve its great explosion in the Greek civilization, which has brought important contributions both within the Arts, whether the level of Science, examples of which are Medicine, Philosophy, Physics, Astronomy, Mathematics, Politics and brought us the Democracy.
   The Roman empire, who succeeded him, brought a model of administration, a language, a pattern that definitively marked the people who lived within its domain.    The barbarian invasions from the center of Europe only brought the darkness in the Middle Age.   It was the audacity and innovative spirit that led to the Portuguese that they put in small boats to discover new worlds outside Europe, scene of successive wars, saturated by a feudal warmongering that enslaved the people, that made our country discover his  vocation,  which is making more sense in this poor and humiliated forgotten corner of Europe .
    Also our neighbor Spain, had an equally large role in this discovery of new worlds, being responsible for the discovery of America and the iberization of Central America, much of South America and an increasing portion of the United States of America.   We can proudly say that Iberian people opened new horizons, expanding the known world, exporting our culture, language and values ​​for various continents, giving rise to new countries, making the first real globalization.
    The French Revolution brought the people to power,  projecting in an unique wayt he ideals of Liberty, Equality, Fraternity, well loved by of the world Left and that the Right never had the courage to openly oppose, although it does so in a covert way.
     And Germany? The German arrogance brought to the world two bloody conflicts that ever left them humiliated and destroyed, a lesson they should never forget.    It was precisely the devastating effect of World War II that led to the creation of a European community, in way to could serve as a buffer to any expansionist and bellicose desire capable to bring back the pain of the war once more to this continent.   Today the European Union is divided into PIIGS not PIIGS. I think it is time for PIIGS raise his head, honor their past and make a fist on the table - and if I need a kick - in a Europe that rejects them,  to unite around a common plan which made valid again the European project .
   It is my conviction that if Latin countries of southern Europe ( PIIGS +France) ara acapable of organize collectively and acting together, can act as a new cultural, economic and military capacity  giant, to assert itself independently in a globalized world, with ability to survive of an utopian Europe, germanocentric and increasingly nationalist, sinking day by day.

12M. Portugal, one year later ... What is the difference?

He spent a year since the 12M, the demonstration of portuguese indignados, and in that time wat has changed? The Right came to power!In Portugal and Spain! How can the youth revolt, which envolved the whole society and not just precarious workers has become a massive vote on the Right, who defends the precarity, deconstructs the wellfarel state, increasing the gap between the very rich and very poor and leaves the strategic sectors in the hands of a faceless and soulless capitalism ? Just because the Left has failed to convince almost no one. But why the Left has failed to convince hardly anyone? Because the Left has encysted in a cycle of decadance! The Left is no longer a set of values, an ideology, to become a caste of good speakers who move in the power, using a benefits package mirroring those assigned to a feudal Right, but better moving in the proximity between public and private interests.The Left is not more a rational Left to become a libertarian Left, where freedom is confused with anarchy and irrationality replaced the equilibrium in which the duties have been replaced exclusively para rights.

A Left without rules,  consumerist , opportunistic and hypocritical does not work, or rather, only works as there are those who pay for the ramblings of those who took power with the promise  to promote the realization of the wishes of a headless body who use the vote as if they were watching a football game! Of course, the Right which is rulling us will fall and the  Left wiil return to power.
I hope that during this time the Left can understand why she failed,  understand the reality of a world inevitably globalized, to be sober, ecological, sustentable, to promote individual happiness by promoting collective happiness, to be an example to be able to enforce the rules, be humanist without falling into the facilitisme, be fraternal without losing authority, and without forgetting that the world is composed of human beings who have feelings, individual desires and affections.

Do not fret only: Dare! Have Ambition!

Do not fret only: Dare! Have Ambition!
Socialism for the Twenty-First Century: a Utopia, a lie or a solution? to Saturday, January 28, 2012 at 18:28
     
       Stéphane Hessel wrote a book which calls for outrage against this type of society that encourages the exploitation of man by increasing the gap between the richest and the poorest. It is necessary to find a new model of distribution of wealth that privilege an increment of large middle class able to sustain a Welfare State that protects a number that if you want less and less needy people and to make a relentless fight against the handful of very rich that uses alllegal expedients to evade taxes.
      It is usual to hear that the state's that we are is fault of the  politicians. In Democracy politicians are elected by the people and if we Think they ares incompetent is not enough just outrage. It is necessary to intervene civically, contributing to the replacement of politics by other more capable. Is not enough require the politicians to solve our problems with ad hoc gatherings of angry, occupation of squares and folklore. It is necessary to think, reflect, be informed, discuss problems in order to find innovative solutions that are sustainable, in order to effectively solve a problem that devastates the rights won through sweat and blood for several generations since the industrial revolution.
       The state of Social Welfare that we have today in Western societies is not innate, but a benefit gained  that only exists while it is preserved and to be preserved need to be viable in a world with more than 7 billion people who claim the same rights that we have and what we want for our children.
       It is legitimate aim for the impossible, because much of what we have today results from ambition and dream of some who often paid with their lives the utopia of a more just and fraternal world and that could make the impossible possible, but after that much work is needed, persistence, ability to cope with the vicissitudes of an innovative route to make feasible the legitimate ambition to live a better world.
      Do not just an inconsequential and comfortable indignation. You need to step forward to take advantage of that 1 percent inspiration that only comes to fruition with 99 percent perspiration. However to get 1 percent of inspiration is sometimes also necessary to hear 99 percent of unconnected ideas and know-how filtering in order to use the wheat that is hidden in the midst of so much chaff.
      Revolutions can be easy to do, but to make them bear fruit and contribute to improving the standard of living is already much more complicated and laborious. Sterile revolutions usually end in dictatorships, wars in the middle, as with the French Revolution gave rise to Napoleon Bonaparte, with the consequences we know.