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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.
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.
.....you realize a bunch of squatters living under blue tarps in a self-created techno-ghetto probably have faster Internet access than you
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!