Spanish Congress Rejects Internet Censorship Law 229
TuringTest writes "A commission of the Spanish Congress has rejected a law that allowed the closure of web sites that provide unauthorized downloads. The government couldn't reach enough support from its allies, not because they opposed the law in principle, but because of the way it was redacted and the lack of negotiation. Recently the Spanish Senate rejected a law on net neutrality. Also the Wikileaks cables disclosed pressure from the USA on the Spanish government to pass a law to reduce Internet sharing of music and media, which is legal in Spain."
packing my bags ... (Score:3, Informative)
and moving to spain
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Hope you don't carry, 'cause in Spain you can only do it to and from a range. Freedoms can be funny things like that - you get one, you lose one.
Some people prefer other freedoms (Score:5, Insightful)
Sometimes two different 'freedoms' may clash. It looks like Spanish people feel that it is better to be free of the fear of huge amounts of guns on their streets than the freedom for the majority of citizens to carry guns on their streets.
I've lived in Europe for 40 years and never once have I thought "I'd feel safer walking to the shops if I had a gun on me or knowing that lots of these other people walking around on the streets had guns on them".
Re:Some people prefer other freedoms (Score:5, Insightful)
The right to bear arms is to protect yourself from the government, not from the riffraff.
Regardless of whether it works or not in this day and age, that is the reason for the right.
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The Law: SWAT team, flashbangs, CS grenades, door-breaching revolving shotgun, high-powered sniper rifles, professional police with training in simulated urban combat.
Maybe guns were a good way to resist the government when the second amendment was written, but not now.
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Yes, you can mount a guerilla resistance. Depending on the enemy, this can work, or it can not.
At any rate, the cost in civilians is high. Very, very high. One hallmark of guerilla warfare is the lack of fronts. Do you think people would be willing to risk the life and comfort, of them and their loved ones, for freedom?
If you do, take a look at the last decade and how we celebrated the erosion of our liberties for the facade of protection and think again.
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that echos my point. the military (controlled by own own government) has bigger toys and no citizen can defend himself against this.
200 yrs ago it was possible. today its not.
otoh, 200 yrs ago, I'm not sure that fellow citizen was our biggest fear. today, its more likely that guns will be used by 'bad guys' on the street than by our own government directly against us. police are there to mostly clean up *after* the fact, never to *prevent* crime.
its easy to argue that guns, now, would be more useful to
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The Law: SWAT team, flashbangs, CS grenades, door-breaching revolving shotgun, high-powered sniper rifles, professional police with training in simulated urban combat.
If it ever gets serious enough where a significant percentage of the population decides to take up arms against the government, then there will be plenty of people building devices that remove most of the advantage the government starts out with.
Between IEDs, radio jammers, computer viruses, and who knows what else, the authorities would be in tough shape if they had essentially only better hand weapons as their only advantage when outnumbered 100:1
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Outnumbered 100:1? No problem. Do you really think that in a full blown civil war situation we'd get armed citizens vs. "special" police force?
Let's pretend for a moment I am the government. First, I'd make sure that I control the media and label everyone opposing me a traitor and anti-american insurgent. Next, whatever area is under the control of the 'rebels' gets cut off. No water, no power, no gas, no nothing. Don't like it? Come out, or throw the 'rebels' out. Your call. The most powerful weapon in a c
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"Regardless of whether it works or not in this day and age, that is the reason for the right"
Examining a right regardlessly is like commenting a dish tastelessly.
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we already *are* occupied by an unwanted force.
hint: its our own government.
and the right to bear arms to keep our own give in check was lost around the time the gov stopped letting citizens have 'serious guns'. it was under the guise of 'safety' but it was really about not letting *another* revolution happen, ever again. NEVER let the population have strong toys. every government knows this.
ours keeps the 'right to bear arms' on the books but it has no teeth. if The Man wants you, you're toast. no amo
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We are to a point that whoever controls the military controls the country. We are one step away from dictatorship.
This is why states should have militias.
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You know, this stuff about being "occupied" by our own government sounds nice and all, but I don't think it really holds up under rational analysis. Yes, a significant number of Americans are unhappy with their government, but to say that their government is an "unwanted force" that "occupies" or "oppresses" the people seems rather silly. See, the people themselves elected this government. Just a couple of years ago, millions upon millions of Americans were chanting "Hope!" and "Change!", and elected a n
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Very optimistic. You might remember that the Iraq had a bigger army, you might also remember how that worked out.
How does that assault rifle work against laser guided bombs?
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How do your laser-guided bombs work against roadside IEDs that explode whenever military convoys pass?
America's military is great at fighting conventional armies, but they totally suck at fighting guerilla fighters. That's why we're losing in Afghanistan, just like we lost in Vietnam.
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True, but if the government already has you disarmed where are you going to get them?
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Let's say it that way, it's quite hard to get guns legally in my country. I know few people who have none.
"If you outlaw guns, only outlaws will have them" is a bit far fetched, I would not call any of those guys outlaws. All you accomplish is that you incriminate people pointlessly. But it's a neat way to get search warrants, if you find nothing, you can at least rest assured that you'll find some kind of "illegal" firearm.
Re:Some people prefer other freedoms (Score:5, Interesting)
Sometimes two different 'freedoms' may clash.
Absolutely.
. It looks like Spanish people feel that it is better to be free of the fear of huge amounts of guns on their streets than the freedom for the majority of citizens to carry guns on their streets.
See, and this is where you, and perhaps they, lose me. Freedom from fear. People may give up personal freedom (and responsibility) in the hope that they will be safer and less afraid, but I seem to recall a rather famous quote about just that. In truth, there is little scientific support for the theory that strict gun control laws result in greater safety. They might result in less fear, but that's only a function of the public's ignorance.
I've lived in Europe for 40 years and never once have I thought "I'd feel safer walking to the shops if I had a gun on me or knowing that lots of these other people walking around on the streets had guns on them".
And for the most part, when it comes to personal protection, there is little scientific support for the theory that having access to more common firearms makes people safer either. Sadly, for being such a major issue, there's really very few well conducted studies on the issue since no one keeps track of how often firearms are used to deter or prevent crime, and very sporadic records on how often violent crimes occur (hint they are constantly reclassified by politicians that control record keeping and who want to seem effective ala, we have 50% fewer homeless and a huge increase in outdoorsmen in our city). The scientific consensus to date is there is no real correlation between gun control laws and violent crime when normalized for other factors, or perhaps a slight increase in violent crime.
But mostly I just wanted to point out what I see as your misperception. The individual right to carry firearms is a freedom. The right to stop everyone else from carrying them is not a freedom, it's a restriction. No matter how you try to redefine it as a "freedom to not feel fear". You can claim it is a conflict of the freedom to carry firearms and the freedom to continue living, but that is only in perception. One might as well argue free speech is not a freedom, because it conflicts with my fear that word viruses might infect my brain and transform me into a starfish. Rational people have to rely upon actual evidence and there is no evidence to date, that is an actual conflict, only a perceived one in the minds of those who have not actually formed their opinion using a rational methodology. When you wrote that the spanish people "feel" it is better, you were much more precise than perhaps you intended.
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Hmm. Did you bother to check gun deaths in Europe vs. gun deaths in the Untied States, before speaking?
I didn't think so.
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Hmm. Did you bother to check gun deaths in Europe vs. gun deaths in the Untied States, before speaking? I didn't think so.
You apparently didn't bother to think much at all. Do take a look at violent crime and murders in Europe and South America, and North America and everywhere else, by country and even legal jurisdiction. Notice a correlation between those numbers and gun control laws? No? Gee neither does anyone else. Sweden, for example has very liberal gun control laws and high rates of ownership, but some of the lowest rates of murder and violent crime in the world. There are, however, many very good correlations with mur
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You, sir, are a fucking idiot. A fucking idiot who can spew a lot of academic-sounding verbiage, but a fucking idiot.
I don't need to have hours of nitpicking discussion about what is and isn't a murder, followed by your ridiculous home break-in axe murderer bullshit scenario, to realize that a situation with guns involved more often escalates to death, than one with knives or sticks and stones, and that gunshot wounds more often, by their nature, create fatal injuries.
To wit:
http://www.nationmaste [nationmaster.com]
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You, sir, are a fucking idiot.
You can always tell someone is intelligent and about to make a persuasive logical argument when they start their comment with an emotionally based attack on the person they are responding to.
I don't need to have hours of nitpicking discussion about what is and isn't a murder, followed by your ridiculous home break-in axe murderer bullshit scenario
If you don't understand the difference between a "bullshit scenario" and an example that demonstrates a flaw in logic, maybe we should just stop the conversation here. You don't seem too interested in "logic" and crazy ideas like that, except as a talking point appeal to imagined authority (ala logic says you're a stup
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Dude, the guy carrying a gun around is the one that is afraid.
And it's not just the Spanish people, it's pretty much the whole developed world. The US is the minority there.
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- I am NOT free when someone near me has a gun because he may kill me so easily, that i must obey him to survey.
Its soooo simple...
This is a statement of fear. From this standpoint, you are not free when someone near you might have a gun because they could kill you if they had one, and you must fear him to have a consistent mind-state... because there are guns in your country, the laws do not actually prevent them, like laws of nature.
3rd World War will begin because of lack of freedom...
You're funny.
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Hi, i am from Spain. Guns: - I am NOT free when someone near me has a gun because he may kill me so easily, that i must obey him to survey. Its soooo simple...
That has nothing to do with freedom. By the same logic are you not free if people near you might have knives? Pointy pencils? What if they might have trained in the martial arts and lifted weights for the last decade? What if they have hired 5 private, unarmed but dangerous bodyguards? What if the person near you has a purple shirt and you for some reason believe the color purple will kill you? Are all these things removing your freedom? Would you support laws to ban all the aforementioned? Would laws makin
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Cars:
- I am NOT free when someone near me is driving a car because he may kill me so easily, that I must constantly live in fear that he may be drunk or get distracted and run into me.
Its soooo simple...
Airplanes:
- I am NOT free when someone near me is flying an airplane because he may kill me so easily, that I must constantly live in fear that me may have a mechanical failure or medical condition and crash into me, killing not only myself but hundreds of others.
Its soooo simple...
This is why we need to ban
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By the time most people realized just what kind of asshole Hitler was, it was way, way too late to do anything because by then they sure as hell would have removed every gun from then hands of civilians.
And that's why I think it would not have made a big difference. Or that it will make a big difference in the US should the time come.
In 1934 when Hitler took over, Germany was very supportive of him. People don't really like to admit that anymore, but he was the saviour. If you tried to kill Hitler by then o
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By the time most people realized just what kind of asshole Hitler was, it was way, way too late to do anything because by then they sure as hell would have removed every gun from then hands of civilians.
How? Guns aren't exactly large items that are hard to hide; it's trivial to hide one in your home, especially a handgun.
The only reason they were able to remove them so easily is because of gun registration. As long as there's no records about who owns a gun, there's no easy way to remove them from the han
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As if:
1) A 9mm was very effective against a Panzer.
2) Good parts of Spain didn't support Franco and fascism.
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2) Good parts of Spain didn't support Franco and fascism.
So which were the bad parts and which were the good parts?
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That's precisely why gun registration is such a bad thing.
Of course, these days, hunting rifles wouldn't be much use in battle anyway.
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There's a clear urban/rural split in how gun rights affect people. In the cities, we want people to not have guns, because gangs use them to shoot at each other and everyone else. In rural areas, people with guns can use them to protect themselves.
No one in urban areas use guns to protect themselves? No one in rural areas uses them for crimes? I think it has more to do with cultural, politically ingrained beliefs, and a culture of hunting than it does any real difference in crime.
So please don't include me in the "we" on whose behalf you speak. Regardless of laws, criminals will get guns and other weapons and commit acts of violence. Laws restricting gun ownership make little difference to these numbers but a whole lot of very controllable factors d
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Sometimes two different 'freedoms' may clash. It looks like Spanish people feel that it is better to be free of the fear of huge amounts of guns on their streets than the freedom for the majority of citizens to carry guns on their streets.
So you prefer the "freedom" of feeling free of fear of guns?
So would you advocate rounding up all minority people into concentration camps, so that you can have the freedom of feeling free of the fear that one of them may victimize you in a crime?
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Being able to carry a gun is one of the truly dumbest "freedoms" you Americans have. You can keep it.
Try living in my old place and walking a 3/4 of a mile through woods full of bear every morning and evening to get to your car. Then you can tell me how "dumb" it is that you're free to carry a firearm. Do you even think a little bit about the fact that not everyone lives the same lifestyle you do, in the same environment? Or would you prefer we simply kill off all dangerous wildlife in the world? Perhaps you prefer people are not allowed to travel in areas with dangerous wildlife? Really do you have a clue
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I was referring more to carrying a gun in every day life when you don't need it...
No, you were writing about the "freedom" of Americans to decide when they needed to carry a firearm instead of it being decided for them by the government. I know this because you wrote:
"Being able to carry a gun is one of the truly dumbest "freedoms" you Americans have."
Perhaps you intended to write something else, but you didn't. Maybe you need to slow down and spend a little more time thinking and composing before posting.
As for having a clue, I would wager I have more of a clue than you, as my choice of place to live does not involve a walk through 1.2 km of forest full of things that want to eat me, but to each their own.
Not all of us are as risk averse as you. As you write, to each their own. That's freedom.
Finally, killing off all dangerous wildlife in the world would certainly be a herculean task, but perhaps we can start with the gun wielding hicks such as yourself, and move on from there.
Getting a bit defensive are we? Do you really need to resort to personal attack
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The government did not decide that people in my country shouldn't carry fire arms, the people decided that, on account of them being dangerous...
When people decide something, that's freedom. When people pass laws to enforce something for all people, that's government and it is a restriction not a freedom. That's not to say all restrictions on freedom are bad or unjust.
As for how dangerous they are, certainly they are used by criminals, and by suicides, and in accidental deaths... just like many things are. Cars, backyard pools, many things are very dangerous. Freedom is when people decide individually and choose. As for use in commission of crimes,
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Good luck getting a job there.
Don't give them an inch, or all you have to do... (Score:4, Interesting)
It's already happening in the US. [google.com] Homeland Security to fourth amendment: "Fuck you."
Re:Don't give them an inch, or all you have to do. (Score:5, Informative)
What has particularly pissed off [eff.org] Spanish internet community is that the copyright laws the US is blackmailing through in Spain (via 301/trade sanctions) go way beyond what has ever been proposed here in the US - i.e. 3 strikes.
In a move that has only thrown more fuel on the fire, the US ambassador to Spain took an active role in discouraging democratic debate [google.com] about the new laws - agreeing by Spanish request to "influence" elected representatives so that they did not to meet or discuss the new laws with their constituents:
"[Sebastian] I was particularly concerned that the regional government of Madrid had been organizing meetings with Internet users. (...) He said that would be helpful if the ambassador could encourage regional president [Esperanza Aguirre] to stop.'s Ambassador agreed to raise the issue when meeting with the regional president."
"Spreading Democracy" in action, anyone.
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The world is turning against military expansion of empire so now it is necessary to do it financially. That is all.
pressure from the USA on the Spanish government (Score:5, Insightful)
to pass a law to reduce Internet sharing of music and media, which is legal in Spain
see how that filth works ? this is precisely why they are trying to take down wikileaks. because it exposes what filth they are doing.
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Just be happy no one is exposing the filth you do with your mother and sister.
Even if true it concerns only those 3. The filth that my gov does concerns me.
I smiled for a moment... (Score:5, Interesting)
Re:I smiled for a moment... (Score:4, Informative)
That raised protest, a DDoS attack to the web pages of ALL politic groups, a flood of emails and calls to the politics, and so on. That incidents produced some notices in national media that raised more the awareness of the public opinion.
At last, the politic groups was intimidated. The situation in Spain is critical, with a 20% of unemployment and a brutal credit crunch. So a high unpopular law as that could 'spark' some unrest.
Re:I smiled for a moment... (Score:4, Informative)
You're not spanish, or if you are, you're in denial. Spain had our laws and constitution stomped a week ago and nobody gave a damn. Had our worker rights ripped apart and nobody gave a damn. Our politics are a wealthy elite and the crisis don't touch them, but nobody-give-a-damn!
BUT, if you touch a local soccer team or closes music or video downloads, hell breaks loose.
This is Spain, and that's the reality in Spain.
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here, that concept is known as 'bread and circus'.
as long as the local distraction (soccer, in this case) continues, people will not rise up.
if a politician touches a 'third rail' (sensitive issue) then all hell can break loose. it would take a LOT, over here, though, to cause any kind of uprising. in the US, we're stuck in the 'fat, happy and slow' gear (as citizens) and we can't fix ourselves. I hope you can fix your self.
Re:... & slow (Score:2)
I'd say we're dejected and despairing rather than happy about all this.
redacted law (Score:2)
Re:redacted law (Score:5, Informative)
I believe that's a mistranslation or a mistake by a Spanish speaker. In Spanish, "redactar" means "to write" (as in a book, an essay, a law, ...).
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Redact [google.es]. Note in particular the definitions from Wordnet.
Spain beats with a fascist heart (Score:5, Interesting)
To give you an idea of the authoritarianism of Spain's government, around three weeks ago it issued a State of Alert [bbc.co.uk] because of striking ATCers which came down to, "If you refuse to work, you will be sent to jail." (Conversely, work sets you free.) Note that Spanish ATC was civilian, but an argument was formed that by striking you are denying people freedom of movement. This is probably one of the most Orwellian interpretations of "freedom" Western Europe has seen in recent years, and is the first time quasi-martial law has been enforced in Spain since the fall of Franco.
This is not the sort of government that is about to sympathise with filesharing arguments. It is, like all authoritarian governments, a stickler for procedure, and that's the only real reason this law didn't pass.
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Authoritarian != fascist. Soviet Russia was authoratarian, but not fascist. Iran has an authoratarian but not fascist government. Spain's current government is not fascist nor beats with a fascist heart, but it is one of the more authoratarian European governments, right up there with the British government.
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Authoritarian != fascist. Soviet Russia was authoratarian, but not fascist.
Not every aspect of Soviet Russia, perhaps, but Stalinism was an excellent example of fascism. Possibly more fascist than nazism, even.
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It's not merely about killing people and being authoritarian. It's about how society is structured. You're right that Stalinism had completely different roots than German or Italian fascism, and they were ideologically at odds with each other, but in the end, Stalinism wasn't so different. Through a completely different route, it got to pretty much the same location. It wasn't structured bottom-up, like communism should be, but very hierarchically top-down, with an almost divine leader, the politbureau as h
Re:Spain beats with a fascist heart (Score:4, Informative)
Communism: A political/economic theory with the proletariat (the people) at the centre, who wield power. In a communist society, there *is* no state - it has "withered away", to quote some old dead guy named Marx, who was also the only Marx in history without a sense of humour.
Fascism: A political/economic theory with corporations at the centre, with the government wielding power on their behalf.
Spain under Franco was Fascist, no argument.
Soviet Union under Stalin was *not* communist, in any way shape or form. It espoused communism, but there is a difference between using communism as a rationalization for your actions, and actually *being* communist.
The Soviet Union was, depending on the time, either a dictatorship, or an oligarchy (think dictatorship, but instead of having a single ruler, it is run by a group of individuals. That would be the Politburo). It could accurately be described as an oligarchy, a dictatorship, or a police state.
Spain under Franco could also be described as a dictatorship, a police state, *or* a fascist state. All are accurate.
But there is no possible way to describe the Soviet Union as fascist. It's just plain wrong.
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Fascism: A political/economic theory with corporations at the centre, with the government wielding power on their behalf.
This is one of two definitions that I encounter a lot. The other one is about society structured along concentric circles around the great leader and his inner circle. They're different, but they both get used.
Note that according to your definition, the US is also arguably fascist. (Not so much according to the second definition, though.)
But there is no possible way to describe the Soviet Union as fascist. It's just plain wrong.
Well, some experts disagree with you on that.
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Agreed, for some definitions of "Fascist". But since fascism implies some form of capitalism, you can probably pick examples that will show that almost *any* capitalist society is fascist. It's a lot like many personality disorders - we've all got bits of everything. It's only when it passes a certain threshold that it's considered to be a disorder or disease.
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Agreed, for some definitions of "Fascist". But since fascism implies some form of capitalism, you can probably pick examples that will show that almost *any* capitalist society is fascist.
Not quite. In a country with proper government regulation of business and a lack of corruption, you can have capitalism without fascism. Fascism is when the corporations take over the government, which is what we have in the USA.
Good capitalism: People > Government > Corporations
Fascism: Corporations > Governmen
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wait - franco is stil dead??
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They saved his brain, it seems.
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making as much as 900,000 euros *per year*
Just FYI, that doesn't really say much. I could say that Portuguese business owners make as much as millions per year, yet 99.6% of the businesses are actually very small and their owners don't make 1/100 of that.
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They refused to allow a bunch of over paid people, making as much as 900,000 euros *per year*
Irrelevant appeal to emotion.
to take the population hostage (again)
Awful redefinition of "hostage". I want an Xbox within half an hour and you're holding me hostage by not flying a helicopter to my garden with it.
by closing all airport operations.
No, AENA closed all airport operations because a set of air traffic controllers chose not to work...
Had previous administrations addresses this issue properly
...and other air traffic controllers were not available because you the Spanish voter didn't consider it important enough to negotiate either more reasonable terms for all parties or pre-arrange a fallback.
I'm very very satisfied that they did what they had to. Airports are a public service that must run at all times, and strikes must be properly notified, services must be working to a minimum rate, and so on.
Had must must must: all this ob
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At the same time, the same government was protecting said ATCers with government contracts, and by letting their union manage the training of ATCers altogether, which meant that there's no such thing as an ATC without a job. This makes sure there's no competition whatsoever, so they can keep going on strike every two years, when their salaries are well over an order of magnitude larger than the median Spanish yearly salary.
The government had extremely few options at that point.
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Spanish government beats with a fascist heart.
But then, which government doesn't these days?
Re:Spain beats with a fascist heart (Score:4, Insightful)
No, they didn't simply all walk out at 1700, but nice toeing of the government line. There was a gradual cessation of operations and not one flight was put in danger. This doesn't mean that what they did was the best way to go about things, and it might have been against their terms of employment and open them up to civil action, but none of this justifies forcing them to work.
. The difference is none of us get payed 17.000 euro every month.
Ah, so your argument comes down to, "You're paid more than me so I get to impose slavery on you when I like without warning!" If you want to campaign for fairer salaries, that's absolutely reasonable, but your method is probably the worst way imaginable. Sigh, Spain's in for a dark few years.
If they don't like what they're doing, go do something else, no one's forcing you to be an air traffic controller.
So they should stop "being an ATC" if they don't like it, but it's okay when they actually stop for them to be forced back to work?
I fear that any censorship/Copyright law is going to be defeated not because it's immoral but because of the twisted envy displayed above, which means any defeat is temporary and depends on either bribing the electorate or waiting a few years.
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Let anyone that wants to train as an ATC, and let supply and demand set up the appropriate price. Then, some of them can strike all day long. In fact, the law they were protesting about allowed people to get the training without going throught the ATC union, which is one of the things that pissed the ATCers off.
When a group's actions first set up a monopoly, and then use said monopoly in rent-seeking behavior, it's hard for them to get any real sympathy. When anyone that wants to be an ATC can at least trai
Re:Spain beats with a fascist heart (Score:5, Insightful)
1. I disagree that doctors and electricity generation staff shouldn't be allowed (through criminal law) to strike. If you get to the point where the only reason they're doing the job is because of the gun pointed at their head, you've already lost the point entirely. Regardless, you don't apply martial law to stop strikes: if you want to militarise some profession, which is effectively what you're doing when you make striking illegal, you do it in advance and make sure every worker has provided informed consent.
2. Are you asking who the controllers are working for? AENA is government-owned but the straw which broke the camel's back was the proposal to privatise.
3. Well, getting paid more doesn't make you immune to tiredness and the harm to conentration caused by working excessive hours. Nor does getting paid a lot mean you should lose the right to negotiate or to strike. You as voter are welcome to petition the government as employer to reduce air traffic controller wages, because the solution to hearing that a worker gets paid too much (as opposed to all the useless bureaucrats and bankers who gain ten times as much and are of no social benefit) is to make sure he suffers as much as you. Regardless, you're not welcome to enslave the air traffic controllers because you're bitter that they get paid more than you.
4. Quite.
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"...if you want to militarise some profession, which is effectively what you're doing when you make striking illegal, you do it in advance and make sure every worker has provided informed consent."
A large counter-balancing force to the strike is the risk that the company you're working for will not be competitive. You may lose your job if the organization dissolves.
In any job where there's a government granted monopoly, there is no such counter-force. Your company will never go bankrupt, you will neve
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OK, there are two different "rights to strike" here. One is the right to strike, under certain conditions and usually via a well-known procedure involving your union, without being immediately dismissed. This right varies across Western countries and often involves specific regulation in the public sector.
The other is the right to strike without having a gun held to your head and being forced to work. This is what Spain is denying (for ATC today and for you or me tomorrow).
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You are right that the continued deployment of emergency powers turns this from an immoral but typical government overreaction to a confirmed effort to reduce the freedom of the Spanish worker.
The maintenance of a clearly unconstitutional continued state of alert casts a shadow on the independence of the judiciary. But at least military rule means the trains^Wplanes run on time and people get to enjoy their holidays, which means popular favour for the government. Success!
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3. Well, getting paid more doesn't make you immune to tiredness and the harm to conentration caused by working excessive hours.
Well, it seems to be that way, because ATC are happy to work as many hours as needed as long as they are paid 3x the regular rate. So it seems that money helps with tiredness.
The thing is, the administration says "You have to WORK 1600 hours a year". And the ATCs says, "OK, but that's not real work hours, we'll take our vacations from there, our union hours from there, if we meet with a representation we'll take it from there too...". So instead of 1600, some wanted to work 1200 or so. And then, because m
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We take you to jail while you await a military trial as stipulated by military law. No guns or any kind of violence involved.
Nonsense. What would happen if you resisted arrest?
The genuine threat of violence is as the violence itself.
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OK, you're trolling, I'm done with you.
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It was hard to tell. Under Anglo-Saxon culture your viewpoint would be likely regarded absurd, but you'd done such a good job demonstrating the doublespeak in the Spanish government and popular viewpoint that I thought you might be real.
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What these assholes did (other than fucking up vacations and job interviews)
Oh boo hoo aeroplane travel is a fundamental right and people owe you.
was call in sick.
That's cheeky, and perhaps wrong, but it's not exactly an unknown method of staging a strike and there's enough evidence to treat it as a strike. Calling in sick when you're not sick is not justification for enslaving you. How many different government apologists will come forward today?
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. Calling in sick when you're not sick is not justification for enslaving you
Yes. Paying you 300 euros per hour and not letting you calling sick when you are not sick is slavery, no doubt.
Well, calling in sick if you are not sick is grounds for layoff. Yes, they can't lay off all ATCs yet, because there are no replacement for now, but hopefully they made a list of all these people that wanted to get a paid free day in the middle of the longest weekend of the year and leave 600,000 people without vacations.
I guess going from a salary of 900,000 euros a year to something like 100
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In Spain both are felonies, and criminals should be prosecuted.
But that's not what happened, is it? One simple principle of a country subject to the rule of law is that you charge a man with a crime you reasonably suspect he has committed. You don't highlight people who are unpopular then impose martial law to force them to work.
If you think they've committed "social security fraud", even when any reasonable man knows that they were staging a strike and bitter scrutiny of worker protections will be to every worker's detriment, petition the government to have them dealt
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but I can't stand that somebody calls fascist to spanish people (I say people, not government, because all spanish people supports the government in this case, except ATCers, of course :D ). Fascism is when privileged people try to keep their unacceptable privileges even when they damage their country and the people who lives in it.
The only ones that are being called fascists are those who compose the government and have taken the decision of militarizing the air controllers, after pushing them to a wild strike by approving a law taking rights away from then precisely the day before the longest long weekend in Spain, not the people. There's still a difference.
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The only ones that are being called fascists are those who compose the government and have taken the decision of militarizing the air controllers, after pushing them to a wild strike by approving a law taking rights away from then precisely the day before the longest long weekend in Spain, not the people.
They published that law (which was just a clarification of terms) that day precisely because the ATCs said they were going home for the rest of the year since they had already "worked" all the hours. The administration just told them how to do the math.
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They just stopped working and paralyzed the whole country.
That's weird, because I'm in the UK right now and bad weather has meant airports intermittently opening and closing on several days over the past fortnight. Oddly enough, and despite our awful lack of preparedness for snow+ice, it didn't "paralyze the whole country". Stuff still happens when people can't take a plane for a few days.
"desperate situations require desperate measures".
There's nothing desperate about not being able to fly. Even if there was, enslaving people is not an acceptable solution.
they relied on the fact that they control the whole Spanish air traffic and could block the country. That's not going on strike, that's not negotiating: that's blackmailing!
All business negotiations are based on assuming that you'
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Children in Africa are dying right now by the thousand because you are posting on /. when you could be working extra hours and donating your income to feed and house them. I am declaring a State of Alarm and you are required to work through all free hours until either you die or poverty is eradicated.
This is not slavery, it's just me setting your employer to me and you having to respond accordingly. No pistols, but I will lock you up (escorted by guys with pistols) if you disagree. The procedure is mostly b
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You end your day's duties in a safe manner [no-one's left without a route to Internet porn, or whatever it is you do] -> you choose not to work -> people die.
They end their day's duties in a safe manner [no planes fall out of the sky] -> they choose not to work -> people die.
Please explain what about the ATC staff makes them criminally liable and you not. Try not to argue like an Officer in a Royal Navy press gang while doing so.
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Do I have to explain why my posting on Slashdot does not make me liable for the deaths of children in Africa? Do you want me to answer that?
If the ATCs "caused" (in the sense of being criminally liable) transplants not to occur because they decided not to give their work, then you "caused" (in the sense of being criminally liable) African children to die because you decide not to give your money.
If you disagree, you need to explain precisely and clearly why this is not true. You can't keep crying "strawman!" "logical fallacy!" without explaining why, unless you're trolling. But you have just argued that there's nothing unreasonable about having
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Posting on Slashdot is not related to my donation/lack of donation to African children.
Yes, it is. You're relaxing when you could be earning money to donate that money to African children. But you don't want to do that work, even if the chain of events following means some people may die. Neither do the ATC guys.
If you claim that pistols were pointed at ATCs' heads you'll have to provide evidence for that.
Sure: they were drafted and if they try to escape the draft (by both refusing to do the work and refusing to walk to the nearest jail) they will be apprehended by men with guns. If they try to resist arrest, they will be treated as a military criminal suspect resisting arrest.
But if m
For some reason i feel like listening flamenco (Score:2)
Opposite to France (Score:2)
France has passed a law "Loppsi 2" which allows the Interior Minister to ban any web site without any legal process. The Ministry for the Interior sends a blacklist to ISPs which they have to enforce. Though ostensibly to cut down "child porn" and malware sites, there aren't any actual restrictions on what kind of site can be blacklisted and could be used to black out a site such as Wikileaks.
Phillip.
Legal is not the right word (Score:3, Informative)
I'll copy+paste myself from Osnews:
File sharing is not "legal" in Spain. It is something called, in the law world, "alegal" which means something is not regulated nor prohibited. To give a weird example: it is legal to say something because you have the right of free speech but... would it be legal to kill an e.t.? Right now, with the law in hands, that would be "alegal".
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If something is not ilegal, then it's legal. This "alegal" thing is a dangerous concept.
We can't expect the laws to define absolutely every aspect of the human (or alien!) experience.
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I dunno about your country, but our law is written "in the negative" (I forgot the legalese term for it). I.e. if there's no law for it forbidding it, it's allowed by default.
Personally, I consider laws that list everything I may do with everything else being in legal limbo or outright forbidden a bit disturbing.
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The use of the "alegal" adjective sounds like a bunch of crap. An action can only be illegal (i.e., explicitly stated to be against a law) or legal (i.e., the law either authorizes or does not mention). Trying to impose on the people this "alegal" concept is a lame attempt to sell the idea that although an action is perfectly legal, in the eyes of some irrelevant people it should not be considered as such. To put it in other words, it is yet another "piracy" or "dowloading is stealing". It's a loaded wo
Google translations needs more work (Score:2)
Clicking on the link in the summary brought me to the google translated version. Here's a fragment of the headache inducing result:
The arguments put forward by all parliamentary groups except the PSOE, passed from the doubts about the constitutionality of the text, in the case of CC, PP and ERC-IU-ICV, to consider the provision "a Pepe own fudge and Otilio Leak "as said ERC spokesman Joan Ridao, or" the law of the kick to the modem ", as stated by the deputy of ICV Nuria Buenaventura.
Yeah... most of my email spam makes more sense these days.
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SOMEONE MODDED THIS DOWN?
I mean, it was a) blatant karma-whoring by b) a stupid, obvious Monty Python reference, but still, who mods that down?
Did someone give Franco's ghost mod points? Is that you, Eric Holder?