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Madrid's HiTech Shanty Town
Alien54 writes: "As reported in CNN, a hi-tech shanty town has arisen in Madrid, Spain, complete with pirated utilities and computer access. Known locally as El Campamento de Esperanza (The Camp of Hope), it is now a village of about 1,200 inhabitants, with libraries, bars, hot showers and cafeterias serving daily meals. They are skilled engineers and technicians, formerly employed by Sintel Telecommunications, a Spanish telecom company that filed for bankruptcy protection in 2000. With a mixture of ingenuity and tenacity, the workers have transformed their claim to $10 million in unpaid wages and refusal to accept forced resignations into a national issue, by squatting on the property where they used to work." Such a thing could never exist in the U.S. for longer than it took to load up the tear gas grenade launchers.
Sintel was a profitable comp. with big contracts with Telefonica, the ex-monopolistic Spanish telco. The Spanish right wing government sold it very cheap to Mas Canosa, yeah... the miami cuban mafioso, who proceeded to dismantle everything for as much he could get and forgot about the company. So what the workers are asking the geovernment why the fuck did they sold the company to that scumbag....
And many people also don't know that the cops were firing tear gas in response to Molotov cocktails and golf balls being thrown at them. The protestors only stopped throwing them when they RAN OUT of molotov cocktails and golf balls.
Hell, even the ironically named "Indymedia" admitted this.
10 PRINT CHR$(205.5+RND(1)); : GOTO 10
OK, nice points from a foreign country, now let me explain this to you.
I live in Spain ans I work on a internet tech company.
1- Living here in Spain is as expensive as living in usual places in the US, but far more cheap than living in NY or in SF.
2- Most of the companies here doesn't permit siesta, that's a wonderful image created in foreign countries by people of the south of Spain, in big cities (like Madrid or Barcelona) people get 1 hour to eat, 2 hours as maximum (depending on the company policy) and in this time you cannot do siesta
3- This tech people have gone to unemployment and they have offers to go to another companies, but they are in their right to protest because the company that went to bankrupcy is owned by a country company (Telefonica), and they don't want to pay the pendent wages, that's quite miserable from the government and Telefonica (considering that telefonica is miserable per se).
4- Get off your image of Spain, come here and try to do some work, you'll get amused.
That are my 0.02 Euros =P
May the source be with you!
Blaming the US for the Quebec police is stretching things.
Ever hear about the Quebec or Candian police doing anything like that when the US isn't involved? The meeting may have taken place in Quebec, but it was about North American free trade. The main proponent of which is the US, who also tends to deal with its citizens like that when they protest.
Of course you always have a few bad incidents, and with a watchdog media that needs to fill the insatiable news demand of america, any incident gets blown out of proportion.
Exactly how do you blow out of proportion a dude getting sodomized with a broken broom handle while in custody? Nobody needs to sensationalize that, that's just plain torture. Also, while you talk about the crimes cops commit in a very blase way as "a few bad incidents" I have to wonder how many times this sort of thing happens and it's never reported. You probably prefer the american cops to other countries because here in america they don't use nazi tactics, keep people's rights away from them and torture them. Oh but wait...they do.
-- Truth goes out the door when rumor comes innuendo. -- Groucho Marx
1) unarmed black (or white) men shouldn't run away, at night when an arrest warrant is being served. If he hadn't run, he wouldn't have gotten shot.
Oh, I'm sorry, I didn't see the logic that running away from a cop deserves the death penalty. It's all so clear now.
2) The guy who sodomized the poor guy with a broken broom handle is now serving a lengthy stretch in a state prison, so what is your point?
Uh, that he did it? Regardless of whether or not he went to jail, he did it, and cops all over America are commiting other crimes as well. I think what got that guy was the media. If it hadn't been reported nation wide, his own police unit probably could have covered it up enough. That's another thing that makes me sick about cops. Their loyalty to one another forces them to lie for one another even when they know that one of their members is in the wrong.
Cops are people, and people break laws, what is important is that they are punished when they do.
But only when they get caught, which isn't very often. And even when they do get caught, it's a citizens word against a cop's. Who is the judge listening to?
4) Last I heard, the guys that beat down Rodney King are doing a stretch in a federal prison.
Whether or not cops are in prison has nothing to do with what I'm talking about, which is that they are often extremely brutal motherfuckers that are often willing to do some pretty nasty things to people. Cops are often small, small human beings. The type that got made fun of in junior high and could never get dates. Give them guns and clubs, and you get the crimes that I listed. Just because somebody went to jail for them doesn't mean they're any less horrible or any less likely to occur in the future.
But then again, you're probably a middle class whiteboy who doesn't have to worry about these types of things, since you're never a target. What do you care?
-- Truth goes out the door when rumor comes innuendo. -- Groucho Marx
Siesta isn't lazy hours, it's sanity. Your body's natural rhythm is to slow down at around 2PM.
And just *imagine* how much nicer your life would be if you could knock off for a little nap in the midafternoon. Hell, give it a try for a month -- I'll bet you'd *never* want to go back.
One of the problems with the American headspace is that "live to work" is the meme, instead of "work to live."
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Don't like it? Respond with words, not karma.
This sounds like something out of Max Headroom, where even homeless people had TVs lying around.
"The days are very long and you have to keep yourself busy," said Jose Maria Casado, who used to install cellular antennas.
One can sympathize with the protesters, but they have to understand, that's business, and over here in the US it does happen regularly (people getting laid off without pay) and shamelessly by many in the technology industry [see FuckedCompany] however most people here simply move on to other jobs.
Are things that bad in Spain where they have to protest in such fashion because there are no jobs or something? Personally I would get another job and move on with life. Perhaps after I got another job I would use my own money to take them to court in an appropriate fashion as opposed to sitting around waiting for someone to listen.
Yes I know protesting for a cause is semi politically correct, but being without work isn't going to pay my bills, and I'll be damned if I forcefully made myself live in a camp town when I could do as I said, make money then take them to court. They're lucky Spain doesn't have FEMA over there or that shit'd be over quickly
Want Root?
.....you realize a bunch of squatters living under blue tarps in a self-created techno-ghetto probably have faster Internet access than you
Anarchy?
The US has a drug war.
The US has more people in prison, by percentage, then Stalin did in the former USSR.
The prohibition laws against drugs and alcohol were proposed by the USAs cult leaders, who complained that "one could not properly serve the lord while under the influences of these substances"
America's prison industry is the fastest growing segment of the economy.
Treatment, not tyranny.
Free America's POWs. End the drug war.
For more information, see:
http://www.lycaeum.org/drugwar/buckley1.html
Treatment, not tyranny. End the drug war and free our American POWs.
Treatment, not tyranny. End the drug war and free our American POWs.
See my user info for links.
I haven't grown up all over the world, but I have visited all over the US, and I've had cops point guns at me and treat me generally like shit more times that I can count. Once, when working a trade show in San Jose, I had to get a cheap hotel room on the "bad side of town" because all the rooms in the city were full. The next morning the cops busted in with six guns pointed at me, drug me out of the room in my underwear and then searhed my room immediately after I denied them permission. Why? Because I rented a car the day before that had been reported stolen a year in the past. The cops were rude and very rough, and after I showed them proof that I had just rented the vehicle, didn't even apoligize. I've had several similar run ins with the law in Europe (The Netherlands, Spain) and I can say that each time the cops were much more polite. The best thing: when I reach into my pocket or bag for a passport or something, they don't freak out and point their guns at me!