But police abuse is certainly on an upwards trend - not surprising as our societies seem to crave "security" after being scared off by our politicians.

In the long run, we're all dead. John Maynard Keynes

Regardless of what I wear, I always cross to the other side of the road when I see police. A folk memory of Franco's time, maybe.

Bush is a symptom, not the disease.

After two days in the police dungeon I had the privilege of being yelled at by a judge, who described the protest as an "urban guerrilla" and alternately "paramilitary" action designed to hit La Rambla when the largest number of people would be present, in order to send the message that the squatters were a military force. At one point during my statement he interrupted me to yell that in the US I would be thrown in Guantanamo for such an action. He gave me a 30,000 euro bail (which a secretary later told me she had never seen for such charges in 25 years of working there) and sent me to Modelo prison.

[My vacation], oddly enough, had landed me in the same prison that once housed many of the anarchist revolutionaries of the Spanish Civil War. Once I arrived, I got down to just about the only thing one can do in prison: waiting, and organizing my new life within its much diminished horizons. At first I was under the impression that trial would come within a few months, but soon I found out it may take two years.

Sigh.

Bush is a symptom, not the disease.

Regardign the justice systm in Spain.. .I am sorry but this is Spain, it is not some kind of weird conspiracy against sqautters of left-wing people in general. Right-wing people have to live with it the same way.. so regardins our spanish beloved justice system.. yes it is ultra-slow, yes it is full of fascists... and fortunately the good thing is that you have excellent lawyers on the left-side... my only hope...

Regardign police  and left-wing movements .. that's another completely different game.

Standard anti-globalization protests were heavily targeted during the right-wing governemnt of PP.. and it somehow ended with the good relation with Zapatero...

But  squatters.. this is a compeltley different game!!! Squatters in Spain are not considered in the smae light as in Germany, SO police vs squatters belongs to a very particular Barcelona, Catalonia and Spain back and forth..

You can protest against Bush and you will be welcomed..against globalization and you feel at home..against poverty global warming... whatever...

But no.. squatters is different.. squatters is about housing, is about what is making the upper-middle class and some  middle-classes rich. Housing is what it is making rich people ultra-mega rich. Spanish constructors are buying utilities, banks.. you name it.

Add up that the police in Catalonia is controlled by the green party but the local police is controlled by the major.(the center-left party)... and there you have it.. the big question... Aren't they green/left after all? Shouldn they support squatters..???

Oh no my dear....:) YOu must add some ingridients..you must add inflirtators trying to move squatters towards violence, then you must add some important people recalling that Barceloan needs tourism (it is not really about housing.. they would say).. and then you have that catalan police is formed by member of the old national police reconverted...

ANd much more... taking housing... ok as long as you leave as soon the owner wants to become rich making new houses... and then squatters do not take it nicely.. adn then most of the neighboors support them.. but others do not..

As you can see .. a huge mess...but not an international endevour.. on the contrary.. the guy here stepped in to a very local war.

Imagine yourself in the middle of a war between two groups.. huge fight.. one of them happen to identify with an orange t-shirt..and then you happen to wear an orange t-shirt that day... and the other group thinks that you are trying to mock them by waring it in their territory..

Same thing... only that squatters and the center-left major are the two tribes (squatters and guardia urbana)... with a third tribe made of the green party in charge of changing the catalan police but with no control over the major police...

A pretty mess.... it is called dinnocent anthropologist syndrome.

A pleasure

I therefore claim to show, not how men think in myths, but how myths operate in men's minds without their being aware of the fact. Levi-Strauss, Claude

Repressive Tolerance, Herbert Marcuse 1965.

According to a dialectical proposition it is the whole which determines the truth--not in the sense that the whole is prior or superior to its parts, but in the sense that its structure and function determine every particular condition and relation. Thus, within a repressive society, even progressive movements threaten to turn into their opposite to the degree to which they accept the rules of the game. To take a most controversial case: the exercise of political rights (such as voting, letter-writing to the press, to Senators, etc., protest-demonstrations with a priori renunciation of counterviolence) in a society of total administration serves to strengthen this administration by testifying to the existence of democratic liberties which, in reality, have changed their content and lost their effectiveness. In such a case, freedom (of opinion, of assembly, of speech) becomes an instrument for absolving servitude.

Whatever the real relevance of this passage to your story, i'm struck by the argument. Could it be that we come to embody the liberties and the vision of the world that we see disappearing? By that process what we fight for looses substance, reality for everybody. Freedom is the fact that we fight for it? Equality is the mere existence of the idea?

Rien n'est gratuit en ce bas monde. Tout s'expie, le bien comme le mal, se paie tot ou tard. Le bien c'est beaucoup plus cher, forcement. Celine

If he had some PR sense, he'd write an article for the NY Times about an unwitting American tourist tossed into jail in Spain. Arguing anarchy in Counterpunch is playing into their hands. Hit them where it hurts.

The 228 Incident or 228 Massacre was an uprising in Taiwan that began on February 28, 1947 and was suppressed by the Kuomintang (KMT) government, resulting in between ten thousand to twenty [or 30] thousand civilians killed. [This] event is now commemorated in Taiwan as Peace Memorial Day. Official government policy had repressed the education of the events until recently, for various reasons. Many of the details of the incident are still highly controversial and hotly debated in Taiwan today.

After 50 years of colonial rule by Japan [and] two years of administration by the Republic of China, nepotism, accusations of corruption and a failed economy increased tensions between the local Taiwanese and ROC administration. The flashpoint came on February 27, 1947 in Taipei when a dispute between a female cigarette vendor and an anti-smuggling officer triggered civil disorder and open rebellion that would last for days. The uprising was quickly put down by the military of the Republic of China.

Violence finally flared the following morning on February 28. Security forces at the Governor-General's Office, using machine guns, fired on the unarmed demonstrators calling for the arrest and trial of the agents involved in the previous day's shooting, resulting in several deaths. Formosans took over the administration of the town and military bases on March 4 and used the local radio station to caution against violence. By evening, martial law had been declared and curfews were enforced by soldiers in trucks firing at anyone who violated curfew.

An American who had just arrived in China from Taihoku said that troops from the mainland arrived there on March 7 and indulged in three days of indiscriminate killing and looting. For a time everyone seen on the streets was shot at, homes were broken into and occupants killed. In the poorer sections the streets were said to have been littered with dead.

"There were instances of beheadings and mutilation of bodies, and women were raped," the American reported.

For several weeks after the February 28 Incident, the rebels held control of much of the island. Though the initial uprising was spontaneous and peaceful, within a few days the rebels were generally coordinated and organized, and public order in rebel-held areas was upheld by temporary police forces organized by local high school students. Local leaders soon formed a Settlement Committee which presented the government with a list of 32 Demands for reform of the provincial administration. They demanded, among other things, greater autonomy, free elections, surrender of ROC Army to Settlement Committee and an end to governmental corruption. [Feigning] negotiation, the ROC authorities under Chen Yi stalled for time while assembling a large military force on the mainland in Fujian province. Upon arrival on March 8, the ROC troops launched a crackdown. By the end of March, Chen had jailed or killed all the leading rebels he could identify and catch. His troops reportedly executed [between] 3,000 and 4,000 people throughout the island. [Some] of the killings were random, while others were systematic. Local elites were among those targeted, and many of the Taiwanese who had formed home rule groups during the reign of the Japanese were also victims of the 228 Incident. A disproportionate number of the victims were also Taiwanese middle and high school age youths, as many of them had volunteered to serve in the temporary police forces that were organized by the Committee and the local town councils to maintain public order following the initial rebellion. Several sources have claimed that ROC troops were arresting and executing anyone wearing a student uniform. Conversely, mainlanders were targeted by the rebels and many were killed. [The] initial purge was followed by repression under one-party rule, in what was termed "white terror," which lasted until the end of martial law in 1987.

Salon.com refers to George Kerr, a former American vice-consul in Taiwan who personally witnessed the events, and wrote the book "Formosa Betrayed". The current news is that Kerr's original report about the events has been scanned and available on the internet. Here is a citation of the events since mainland troops arrived, if you dare to read:

   Beginning March 9, there was widespread and indiscriminate killing. Soldiers were seen bayonetting coolies without apparent provocation in front of a Consulate staff residence. Soldiers were seen to rob passersby. An old man protesting the removal of a woman from his house was cut down by two soldiers. The Canadian nurse in charge of an adjacent Mission Hospital was observed bravely to make seven trips under fire into the crowded area across the avenue to treat persons shot down or bayonetted, and once as she supervised the movement of a wounded man into the hospital the bearers with her were fired upon. Some of the patients brought in had been shot and hacked to pieces. Young Formosan men were observed tied together, being prodded at bayonet point toward the city limits. A Formosan woman primary school teacher attempting to reach her home was shot in the back and robbed near the Mission compound. A British business man attempting to rescue an American woman whose house was being riddled with machine gun fire from a nearby emplacement was fired upon and narrowly escaped, one bullet cutting through his clothing and another being deflected from the steering gear of his jeep. Another foreigner saw a youth forced to dismount from his cycle before a military policeman, who thereupon lacerated the man's hands so badly with his bayonet that the man could not pick up his machine ...

    By March 17 the order of seizure or execution seemed to have become, successively, all established critics of the government, Settlement Committee members and their aides, men who had taken part in the interim policing of Taipei, middle school students and teachers, lawyers, economic leaders and members of influential families, and finally, persons who in the past had caused members of the Government or their appointees serious loss of face. On March 16 it was rumored that anyone who spoke English well or who had close foreign connections was being seized "for examination," and that many Japanese technicians in the employ of the Government were being taken.

Is this a government, or a high society mob?

In Spain, the old ´power mentality´ of the security forces is dying too slowly and unfortunately the common ´uniform complex´ also applies here.  We obviously have cases of police abuse and I am glad that they are usually reported and prosecuted.  An even better sign is that abuses perpetrated on immigrants begin to show up on the news, but I am happy you cannot claim either:

I did what I would have done in the US: follow the cops to see if anyone was arrested, if they needed help, if they were being beaten.

Didn't your mamma ever tell you 'when you see trouble, go the other way'?  But I get the feeling you found the adventure you came looking for and you are almost disappointed it wasn´t worse.

In fact, in my brief experience prison in Spain is better than in the US-more privacy, less aggression, better food.  ...

Amazingly, after just a few days, the struggling, broke collectives of Barcelona were able to raise the 30,000 euros and get me out of Modelo, back on the streets.

I am sure you will continue to have a good time because Barcelona is a great city, but try to join non-violent groups because they actually have a bigger impact in making changes for the better.  

If you have good ideas on how we can speed up the justice system and get rid of idiot judges, please let me know, or post on eurotrib.com

Our knowledge has surpassed our wisdom. -Charu Saxena.