9mm.

by gentleman player Tue Aug 30, 2005 20:34

the press conference by the Sants neighbourhood assembly has generated 70 articles in spanish and catalan media now. & they might be considered by many newsagents as providing an "opposing line of opinion" to less than 15 other spanish press articles of the right. Sants is one of those neighbourhoods where both policia nacional and guardia civil are referred to as forces of occupation. & whomever the "persistent grafitti taggers" were, they were very possibly kids of the barri (neighbourhood).

El Cuerpo (as "The Bill" are known to spanish telly fans, have arrested are very quickly processing 2 suspects, and the Metro has of this morning volunteered as plaintiff)
& as of writing they have just been released.

according to their lawyers and the Barri (barrio = neighbourhood) assembly they have been identified by the securitas agents, and not the police, it has been suggested that one of the detained was linked to the event after a visit to hospital early Sunday morning. The original report of a pitched battle between "okupes" or squaters and police and security has now been quietly dropped, yet one assertion that there were no injuries remains...

&... the CCTV footage is not available.

http://www.barrisants.org/


There is already serious disquiet at the political profile of many who are recruited by the numerous security companies who are issued fire-arms and what seem an inordinate amount of ordinance.
Like do they need all those bullets?
& that disquiet is quickly spreading to the agents of policing in the city of over 2,000,000 people where many cultural and nationalist sympathies are to be found.

The PP (party of spanish unity) has already declared the incident and all incivicism" in general (including irish tourists) to be the fault of the tripartite. Thats who Sants votes for.

Is it possible, the policemen fired in the air not only to "warn" the vandals, but impress the security men?

Is it possible they were facing a threat we little understand throughout civilised europe, and had no option but to leave bullet holes at less than six foot in the wall?

At what stage does a grafitti / vandal merit to be the first corpse of a "combat anti-social behaviour" campaign. One which has in the last week been much fueled by all media participants. But was given un-needed or un-warrented social profiling by the right wing press, "this is where the vandal lives".

here are links in spanish as I know mostly don't read catalan, just like a Metro guard, its foreign seperatist stuff.

the ABC newspaper has by the way declared BCN to beyond the law. Does that mean its time to shoot skateboarders?

http://actualidad.terra.es/nacional/articulo/asamblea_barrios_sants_metro_465839.htm
http://www.elperiodico.com/default.asp?idpublicacio_PK=5&idioma=CAS&idnoticia_PK=238240&idseccio_PK=5&h=050829
http://actualidad.terra.es/sucesos/articulo/joven_sants_ingresado_incidentes_metro_464516.htm
http://www.lavanguardia.es/web/20050830/51191754565.html
http://www.abc.es/abc/pg050830/prensa/noticias/Nacional/Sucesos/200508/30/NAC-NAC-042.asp

It might be noted, that the police complaints procedure in Spain is regarded as more reliable than the Irish by Amnesty. The spanish are worse at being nasty to prisoners though. Have to say that.

by iosaf - not really robert fisk and being honest I wrote the last comment and the article!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!! Tue Aug 30, 2005 23:23

I have as your trusted correspondent on location gone to tour the area of occupation, it being only a short metro journey from my home in the old city, & I having nothing better to do, other than see with my own eyes, and report in my own words to you went there.

to tell you-

the graffiti types, the ocassionally anti-social, those who travel on public transport systems without a valid ticket, those interested in arming the garda siochana, those not interested in arming them and in favour rather of deploying the irish army in raheny, those of you who skateboard, live in cardboard boxes, who make your living selling cocaine and beat your wives to death on holidays, those of you who fear that the rightwing press of Spain is right and Barcelona is indeed a lawless place.

The station where the incident occured, is open to the air. its the first such as the line it serves leave the inner city to go to the western suburban areas called "hospitalet and cornella", which are the most densely populated and poorly serviced per capita in the spanish state. There are two entrances.
One very familiar to me, I had a friend who lived there when rent was cheaper and kept in his sculpture workshop a near labyrinth of broken televisions. He, in the end had to move because his yard and workshop became infested with wild cats who continued inbreeding till they looked very strange. And the partygoers who had paid the rent before didn't like "the smell". Opposite is the squated social centre, C.S.O. Can Vies, which celebrated its 8th anniversary as an okupe centre last May 6th. The walls are covered (not surprisingly) in anarchist, republican and independence murals. It is arguably the most graffiti-ed metro station in the city. The steps take you down through an underpass which pass under regional lines which serve 9 platforms in the nearby completely enclosed and underground "Sants international station" as well as the metro. The community has long campaigned that this lines be covered, and the plans are on the desk with the council. It reminds one of certain parts of the Bronx, that are so fixed in our popular imagination thanks to Hollywood culture, this is how a "subway" station ought look.
I had remembered this underpass as a near bustling market, where merchants from as far away as pakistan offered the passerby a cheap copy of the current american movies. There were none in evidence today. The infringers of copyright appear to have been the first to take flight.

There were only a few people waiting on the metro. Neither armed police ("the forces of occupaton") or the security guards with revolvers and bullets but very few doggies, were present on the scene. I felt scared.
I admit this, to you the reader, I felt scared.

I knew I was in "outlaw territory", the formerly familiar station has recently converted to the front line in the war on terrorising anti-social behaviour.
& furthermore I knew the CCTV wasn't working and hasn't been for a while.

I approached a little old lady, being well trained by urban survival experiences too dark to write, or broadcast on an afternoon's chatshow. I thought about asking her about "the forces of occupation", but thought it might be better to soften her obvious distrust of a foreigner first.
"do you like the grafitti mrs?" served to break the ice. She glanced around nervously before replying "I never look at it".

The implications are clear, there is an air of intimidated silence, in what was one of the most outspoken republican neighbourhoods of the city only a week after the annual street festival with inflatable bouncy castle for the kids and dancing till two hours after normal closingtime, and catalan openly spoken on the street.

I loitered on, watching as trains on the "red line" brought commuters to and from hospitalet and cornella to the city, judging as best I could the type of individual leaving the carriages. Unfortuanately I can not tell if they were well-spoken, and only their clothes light and sparse as it is august were a clue to their standing in wider society. I compared them quickly with the others within the carriages who know nothing of this neighbourhood on the front line other than a regular stop and two minute wait looking at bronx style graffiti. I felt suddenly impelled to point at the bullet holes, and shout "look here! this is how it begins!!". The passengers within seemed to me to turn their attention to the other side almost as one commuter.
"You don't want to know!" I caught a grip of myself, the proper forum awaits, I'll bring it to indymedia: thought I.

Will the breakdown in civilised values that the name "metro station mercat nou" has come to be a synonyous with; youngsters who are cheeky with their parents, the mass market in spray paint, and the disregard for the precarious employee in security spread to every such community in Europe?

Will the long awaited "statut" the 25 year reform of Catalonia's constitutional relationship with the spanish state founder on the events of recent days?

Will the pikes come out of the thatch, and the grandsons of that woman who looks the other way, move on from grafitti to some other expression of the ancient animosity?

I leave the barrio, taking a bus back to the old city, looking at the tourists mostly drunk by this time it is past 8, shouting at each other and doing what they can not do at home. Above in the windows looking down from well appointed apartments I see northern european faces look down in dismay. A generation have tried to get onto the property ladder by investing in summer retreats in the old city. what will happen to them? Who will listen to their pleas for a different more law- abiding, upmarket Barcelona?

I finally return home. turn the locks, make sure the shotgun by the door is loaded, you never know, I live on narrow streets, the cops don't come in here. I turn on the tv. My Partner asks have I boobytrapped the lightbulb on the porch, "yes dear I have". "within your rights my dear" does she reply.

i feel better now, there are the readers to think about.

by iosaf Wed Aug 31, 2005 02:12

was mauled by a rottweiller handled by one of the Securitas employees and thats why he was at hospital.

There is to be a concentration of unhappy people in Sants on Friday, and there have been concentrations today at the holding cells.

This type of thing, really reminds people what they think "social" is, and who they blame for "social problems" and as well as generating media pages and becoming the talk of the town, is now Barcelona's feature. The police always lie, in every state the first version of such events is always a damage limitation spin effort, which hurts cross community relations by re-inforcing stereotypical ideas.


http://barcelona.indymedia.org/?category=criminalitzacio

by iosaf Wed Aug 31, 2005 16:48

Is being beaten with batons, surrounded with armed guards, mauled by a rotweiller, and stitches for that and then the subject of 4 warning shots not enough for painting a graffiti?
Does the punishment really have to be a prison sentance as well?

I was impressed. I decided to go CNN style, in search of the "real story" and "real people" that make the connections on a global basis.
I asked round the neighbours where I might find a Madrid Royal Football Club t-shirt. After some phone calls, I was directed to a local business man (who asked to remain anonymous) on one of the central streets of downtown Barcelona. A pretty typical affair, selling key rings, flags, mexican hats with bobbins, and souvenir samurai swords.
He brought out a cardboard box, opened it, and through my interpreter explained that the "beckham number" is the one. I puzzled over this, but then my guide explained that to the local business man I probably looked engurlish and not Irish. I was to find later in the day that this worked to my advantage...

Several hours later we arrived in the predominantly 1960s migrant satelite town of Rubí outside of Barcelona. By now I had prudently added blonde streaks and donned the Beckham T-shirt. My guide left me at the train station, where a little over a year ago, in the sight of security guards, a young moroccan was beaten to death in retaliation for the March 11 bombings.

I was on my own now. & I can tell the reader I felt scared.

The bar was pretty typical, tv in the corner, gambling machine, a group of men smoking cheap filterless cigarettes at the counter, a small but tough looking woman of andalucian appearance sizing me up from the other side of a cold display of tapas. Butifarra and chorizo and what looked like a two day old egg and tuna salad.

"i'm looking for tips on the work". I said.

There was a pause as as one, the customers sized me up, one moved aside to reveal a private security guard in the corner reading the TV pages of the ABC madrid published newspaper. He had taken off his amunition belt and his revolver was slung nonchanantly across the back of his stool.

"english?" he asked.
___________________________________
(now I'm syndicating this, and a lot of it is still with the legal team, so come back for the next thrilling installment- will Iosaf manage to get "a word of a friend" and his door in the career of private gun wielding security?
Will the snobby dublin accent be recognised and the lack of glotal stops be noted by any of the new "crew"?
Return to this page.
http://www.esfazil.com/kaos/noticia.php?id_noticia=11426

by iosaf Wed Aug 31, 2005 19:16

I felt more scared than before, years of snooping around, sticking my nose in other peoples' business, asking questions and being curious has taught me the form.
*Speak only when spoken to.
*Answer the questions quickly.
*obey the instruction.

What was I to do? I could be honest, admit I was Irish, but then the next question would come - kathurlick or protestant. For the umpteenth time since I had left my country I would stand in a foreign pub, wondering whether the subtlety of my quaker great grand-dad and the question of the sephard blood would be lost.

"I'm dutch.(thought again sounds deutsch, he might think i was german.)
"Holland. Nederlands!" I almost shouted.

The man in charge smiled a little, nodded to the old woman who brought over a bottle of cheap spirit drinking alcohol with a label depicting a bull. "you look like Gaza". He laughed, the bar laughed with him. "I thought you looked Irish" said a scrawny skinhead in a spanish national FC t-shirt, I hadn't noticed him before, perhaps he had come from a backroom. He came over to have a closer look at the potential new recruit. "Did you read some Barrett?" he asked in passable english.

The situation was getting sticky, and no doubt about it. I cut straight to the chase.
" a friend told me you can help me get a job, I used to be a security guard in Dublin" [shit!
why did I say Dublin????] sweat was pouring down my back.
"Where in Dublin?" asked the man in charge, in castillian, his question was immediately
translated to english by the intellectual.
"hector Gray's" I replied. "Christmas sales".
"novelty goods, household items, toys for the kids".

"Call me tomorrow Gaza" a mobile phone number was scrawled quickly on a piece of a paper. I picked it up. As they always write in the tradition of pullitzer and sindo-

"i made my excuses and left".

___________________________________
Antonio Sales author of one the last year's bestselling books in spain "diary of a skin".
ISBN: 8484602508
He lived as a "mole" in the spanish neo-nazi movement for one year, bringing his hidden camera into pubs, into work situations as a private security guard, to football matches.
Sadly his work can not be called sensationalist. In early 2005 a march was called by private security company employees by the largest union by membership in Spain the CCOO. Many of corporate companies which are present in Ireland, and one which is favoured by the ministry of justice for private public partnership employed the demonstraters.
A group of 20 skinheads brought a falangist flag to the demonstration and walked offering nazi salutes through the city of Barcelona. The trade union has not called another demonstration or brought attention the working conditions of Spain's private security guards since.
___________________________________
sin é.
change the pub. change the station.
change the football shirt. you have what would occur in Dublin. what did occur in Ireland. What is a daily low level horror faced by ordinary citizens throughout europe.

by cough splutter Fri Sep 02, 2005 15:18

has spent the summer being slammed for "a permissive and over tolerant attitude to the real culprits". The "real culprits" are those that listen to punk music or look the way okupes looked when there were still squats before nice mr Clos closed them and built tourist apartments.
Anyway Mr Clos has announced an action plan to stop "incivism" which will launch later this month. [when the tourists have gone].
More of the catalan police (mossos d'esquadra) are to be used, they've had their own incidents in the last year, (they really like the baton) but somehow are thought to be less "the forces of occupation" coz they have a different history and speak a different language and are recruited from nice boys and girls in the countryside of Catalonia who want their force to be the national army some day.

Our streets in the old city are being cleaned!
and we get more cameras with film inside!
Tourists will be cautioned for shitting on the street and vomiting! No more sex in the window of Mc Donalds!

I feel safe now. the porch light is no longer boobytrapped. I can safely forget about the private security gaurds. The guns go back in the oiled bags and will be buried again.
Only one thing. Grafiti art is a serious crime. Akin to looting. Be warned- come here on holidays without the spray.

by observer Thu Sep 22, 2005 19:49

Interesting how the once huge hip-hop graffiti is nowhere near as prominant as it was in the US in the early 80s. In contrast, American visitors are often shocked to see parts of continental Europe (e.g. Rome, Barcelona, Munich, Berlin) covered in graffiti. Some of it the worst looking scrawls and tags you've ever seen...

by iosaf Fri Nov 18, 2005 18:07

is to add your nickname to an article.
in the case of Willie, his photo deserves to put here.
May we remember him forever as 9mm Willie.
& when his turn comes for the flag draped coffin, we'll get to dance on his grave too.
(once the muck has settled)

Willie 9mm O Dea - minister for arms glorification. Will he get a flag draped coffin?

by Hector Grays Fri Mar 16, 2007 22:56

who is the main subject of this text & work of genius by iosaf mac diarmada [me] has been with us since surplus was first noticed.


In the 19th century police forces began all over the western world - & not all were to follow the model of Robert Peel's militia. A not unsubstantial amount of people have never accepted state policing. Within those who have and those who didn't are a much smaller but for my purpose "ahora mismo = right now" not unsubstantial minority have focused on the role played by secret societies in policing.
I'm talking to you.
The mid 19th century saw several dominant ethnic or linguistic groups in Europe as elsewhere move to nation-state creation including Italy. In all societies where such states emerged, arms and militia were plentiful & mostly adequate to the purpose. It took at least one generation from the first post-Napoleonic continental war complete with modern ordinance and arms traders to see the largest extant secret society form. I am of course referring to the American civil war and the KKK.

It is my educated opinion, that the obvious infiltration by masonic orders of all accepted rites (frank, scot and york) in the police forces of Europe provided a useful bulwark of belief in fraternity, liberty and equality against other possible formations of state empowered militia in the judicial process. Ruefully I admit those other formations would seize control of both judicial and executive processes rendering legislative functions defunct in the early 20th century. [meaning - fascism came along anyway]. One "national state" case remained as extra-ordinary against such models of "duty based" community judicial activity and career option. That of the UK cries for attention due to its anomalous development. & forged under the shadow of the UK's near millenial constitutional and rights dilemmas - Ireland was never to enjoy in either of its 20th century statelets a police force whose membership universally reflected the liberties of those policed.

The moment a judicial or jurisprudential system is allied to a state (& not a religion just for example) it requires the delineation of a border - or very exceptionally as in the case of the late 19th century USA a "frontier" [it might be argued that frontier-ism is an element of the Colombian state question]. Certainly that is the line being taken by Chiquita the banana US corporation which confirmed yesterday its admittal of 2005 that it has been funding a Colombian right wing terrorist organisation..... the same one which infiltrated the government......not farc......(they do coke not nanas)............different soils make for different cash crops..................

It is has been observed - that many of those who fail entry to police forces join private security companies. It has also been observed in "migrant integration" situations - that one community holds either private or state security apparata - and services by such privilege the criminal needs of the same ethnic group.

The Spanish police have left the neighbourhood of Sants now - so has the graffiti - (just in case you actually did bother to read the work of genius from top of page to here as instructed). They have been replaced by a national police who reflect the community if not the actual community. For that's a problem with "community" - there are many senses & only some overlap. So I suppose the analogy or "comparison and contrast" is no longer useful or even amusing to many readers. Perhaps I'd be better reflecting on the history of the English or Scottish police forces and the development of private security? Maybe exploring yet again the odd way the gardai came into being and the extraordinary constitutional errors which have afforded them such excessive impunity and opacity. "to top it off" how they are selected & recruited - the epitomy of the "good family" versus "bad family" Irish classism. No it is as I write a lot, best to keep the focus of sectarianism and division on the wee (not so wee) north where we like it - not on the splendid Eire. So in that case did elements of the RUC facilitate criminal activity by some smaller groups? oh well - in Ireland you call a gun amnesty "decommissioning" because Ireland has to be and be seen to be different from any comparitive population group.

Will in the future as in New York and Boston - an immigrant group control the policing entity and right wing brotherhoods and secret societies and facilitate a sort of Irish Joseph and Rose Kennedy?

only time will tell. The Irish people are very lucky, blessed in fact - they have a political excuse for everything. I'm pinging my work. 9mm

I never got that job as a private security man.