SME's in Export Business /1

SME's have it tougher than larger companies when it come to export.

A current update on this well-known topic, as far as Catalan SME's are concerned, can be read at this week's L'Econòmic: an excellent interview with Daniel Calleja on SME's, their export chances and the EU.

Also, check on the "think small" ideas put forth here in the same magazine. Will SME's get us out of the crisis rather than larger companies?

Highly recommended readings!

'The Internship' - "Los becarios"

I was to write about some serious stuff but today it's time for a break: I went to the cinema and saw "The Intership" (Span. "Los Becarios). A funny movie, good to take some stress off you. Nice and naive ciriticisms to Google (and similar tech companies), a real "pièce-bien-faite' where everything ends ok, mainly de American dream of "keeping on dreaming". A must if you look for some 90 mins of relaxing entertainment

The English trail of the film can be seen here

And yes, tomorrow more serious stuff...

Sort en tenim, de les exportacions...

Com que aquest blog no és per tractar d’actualitats escabroses com la de PRISM, em centro en els meus temes que són el turisme i l’exportació. D’entrada hi ha una bona notícia: les exportacions catalanes van tanir un creixement rècord l’any passat. Hem exportat més que mai. Sort en tenim, dels mercats exteriors… la notíca surt avui al Punt/Avui i és un cosol en aquests moments:

Ho està fent especialment bé el sector industrial, des de l’alimentari al maquinari. Endavant doncs! Són moments difícils però amb talent i amb esforç ens en sortirem.

On the PRISM Scandal and its Consequences

OH, BARACK !

Well, here we are, in the aftermath of PRISM.

We all knew it, dear Barack: Big Brother is watchig us (“Right from the keyboard” as an official put it last week). Not that losing one’s privacy is new in the digital world: by the begin of this year 50 million users of Evernote saw their passwords stolen. Zillions of Facebook users also saw their access data hacked some time ago, and not too long ago it was found out that Apple stores navigation customers’ data on their I-Things and uses it to their benefit (Apple’s nor the customers, of course).

New spy stories come up every now and then: last month, The Guardian revealed that UK officials collected data from G-20′s delegates last year. In the middle of it all, a new, subtle war between the US and China hacking each others’ servers — there is probably much more to that than it leaks to the general public. And the “Assange Affair” is still on.

So there’s no week without a piece of news of that kind, which makes not only internet users but also the general public (well, that’s more more less the same) suspicious about the net’s security.

Of course, on top of this cake there is the Snowden Case. The revelations of Mr. Snowden are frightening, fantasies like Big Brother or George Orwell’s “1984″ becoming real, almos touchable. Now we know for sure: privacy on the net is as good as zero and instead there is the total control of the citizen’s lifes and interests. Media have left us with striking images, like your press conference, dear Barack, where you try to justify all this mess: one of the most progressive US presidents, a constitutional lawyer, justifying what is unjustifiable and happily announcing the US administration’s “Big Brother Turn”.

Will US judges accept collected data this miserable way? That’s an important point in this story. But poor Americans have been so terrorised that 62% of them are in favour of less privacy for more “security” (only 34% think the ther way). But this is no wonder: whenever an antiterror operation is launched, as recenty was in Boston, it seems much more important frightening the local population than catching the terrorists (well, at least as important as). Boston was a proof for this type of scenario.uu

And geeeezzzz how they are after Snowden, boy !!! They are going for the whistleblower, wheareas, if the world was a normal place, you would have dozens of resigning letters on your desk, Barack.

Once they are in power, progressists find it difficult to cope up with security matters. These matters are ‘far’ from them so they are left in the hands of ‘experts’. We all know how difficult this is to overcome, dear Barack, you are not alone in that. But leaving these matters to the security lobby is pre-programming a disaster: security must encompass the rest of one’s political programm, otherwise we easily fall into a kind of schizophrenia.

Shall we get back 20 years and forget about the internet and the progress it has brought about? Certainly not. But what are we Europeans waiting for? We must develop a European intra-net which ensures at least intra-European privacy. That’s a most urgent task.

Here in Europe two women have put forward interesting views, check on Google the articles by EU’s Vice President Viviane Reding and Sabine Leutheuser-Schnarrenberger, Germany’s Justice Minister. Summing up they say that security is not and end in itself and we must learn from history to avoid past mistakes… when citizens are spied collectively that way, security won’t certainly increase, but freedom certainly will decrease.

Check Mrs Leutheusser-Schnarrenberger's article here as well as Mrs. Reding's opinion