Democracy

Nowadays, most people seem to think that living in a Democracy [solely] means that one can protest and speak freely against what the government and politicians decide and do. With the caveat that corporate media favor some discourses at the expense of the others, and influencing "public opinion" is a multi-billion dollars business - so actually, only the interests of the rich class are efficiently promoted.

This is a trap. Democracy is NOT just about protesting against decisions. Democracy means that the politicians, all who are elected by the people, must represent us in their decisions! We must ask from them to follow what the people wants, not take decisions in the interest of billionaires and against the interest of the people and then let us protest (freely and peacefully, and many times without effect) against these! They are our representatives and should act accordingly. Otherwise, if we are not active politically and just protest from time to time, the following three outcomes are inevitable:

- Our "threshold" of accepting decisions against our interests will inevitably increase - the natural effect of repetition and tiredness of protesting

- More and more frequently the protests will be ignored by the politicians. A good example is the one with the pension reforms in France few years ago, when millions protested, with no outcome.

- The rights to protest themselves will be progressively limited, while the Democracy will fade and regress towards an Oligarchy.

The solution: in our rapidly transforming world, we the people must exert control on our representatives in the Parliament and at the local/regional levels much more frequently than once every 4/5 years (during the elections, which are also crippled by misinformation). We must keep informed and push for implementing means of changing our representatives who are not speaking for the ones they represent - even monthly if it is needed. It may seem extreme, but it is the only way in which we can keep our representatives to really be our representatives - not following the interest of the big capital instead. And it is technically possible nowadays - but, as with all the rights, this will not come by itself, it has to be obtained.

Arms and death

In the turbulent times we live nowadays, we are induced into thinking that large scale military conflicts are inevitable in the (near) future, that our only chance is to produce more weapons - to discourage „the enemy” and be able to respond to an attack. As in Orwell's "1984", it doesn't matter much who's the enemy - as the US recently demonstrated big time, with the Trump administration including European allies in the "non-friendly" group...

Americans are fooled (by powerful, billionaire-owned media) into believing that Europeans and Chinese, and generally all other nations are stealing from them; Europeans are fooled into believing that Russians want us their slaves. The Chinese probably are closest to reality when they feel threatened, because the economic prowess of China fuels adversities from the other big powers, and many nuclear submarines are fishing in the waters around China...

The question is: do we, the people (of US, China, Russia or Europe) want war?

Because this is the present course: huge investments in weaponry in Europe (hundreds of billions taken from health, education, infrastructure channeled to "defense spending" - fast-track and largely unaccountable!), and be sure of the fact that these weapons will be used, one way or another! (against Russia, China, or internally between fighting groups within Europe)

USA rebuilds the nuclear arsenal, and invests heavily in new types of weapons, plus AI for military purposes, plus restarting the useless (and exorbitantly expensive) "space defense". China has to keep up and increases dramatically its nuclear arsenal. Russia already spends a large fraction of its budget for military, since they invaded Ukraine, and this spending is poised to increase.

I see a lot of people enthusiastic about more weapons, a more powerful Europe, etc - and I think they should visualize, when they speak about weapons, the bullets penetrating the skull of their beloved ones, fragments of human beings flying around after and explosion, buildings collapsing during bombings, the uncountable women and children raped and mutilated in each and every war - these could be their wives, their sisters, their kids. This is the war. Not the heroic stories in some movies. War is death, misery, torture. Think about this, next time you want more weapons in Europe. 

Why do we, the people of these countries, accept this situation? Why there were not powerful anti-war meetings in Russia in 2022? Why the opposition to the currently loudly proclaimed "re-armament of Europe" is quasi-invisible?! Why the Americans accept the culture of war and confrontation?

Is this the human civilization of the XXI century? Is this all we can? Because if the answer is yes, then we are all doomed, my friends.