Miche:
The reference to your nationality or ethnic origin meant that, after you reproducing an insulting expresion one person (I believe Alejandro Dumas) once said, I could also
easily make insulting jokes on the British and on latinos, but that would be adding wood to the fire
you lit. By the way, did you know that D'Artagnan, his main hero, was basque of origin? He was from Gascoigne, which is the modified name of Basconia (the french basque country, by the spanish border).
I don't think 'and Europe stops at the Pyrenees' is any worse than,"I don't want our cities to become a new Bronx or Harlem!"
You don't? Hmmm. As far as I know, an insult is something bad, said of something/somebody,
that's not true. For example, calling mr. Yeltsing a drunk cannot be considered an insult because he is (or at least, was, don't know nnowadays), whereas calling it ro Putin
would be an insult
because he isn't. I think nobody can deny that the mentioned areas are dangerous. The very N.Am media say so. So, not wanting your town to become something alike
cannot be considered an insult in any way. If I had said the same of ... (put here any super-safe N.Am. city),
then it would heve been an insult and people should feel offended.
It's only a matter
on who can take criticism and who cannot. Since Spain has never been politically, socially, economically, geographically, in Africa, your Dumas quote
was insulting. No matter that I am not very identified with the spanish nationalism, I dislike unjustified insults towards Spain, as I would against France or the USA. Besides, the fact it was written the way it was shows a will to unjustifiedly harm that doesn't say much good about you, in my opinion.
For goodness sake, I'm fed up of people feeling they have to be PC
Yes, it's all the same the same stuff. PC is about what you cannot say because it disturbs somebody else, like inventing new words to call the black people because you don't want to call them black (which they are). If you are speaking on a person, just because he is a person, you don't mention the colour, but if you are speaking on a black person, saying african-american doesn't change the fact that you're keeping in mind his colour. Pure hypocresy.
The same applies here. Those neighbourhoods are unsafe, the americans know it, and the world knows it because the americans have told us,
but one cannot say this because somebody could feel disturbed? Again hypocresy. Insult would be only if that wasn't true.
The PC and similars, like these attitudes that doesn't allow us to speak freely, deeply undermine the
so called basis of the american society and its beloved goal: freedom (in this case to speak).
Don't you tell me analogies about the 'boat' rubbish, because England has almost double the population of Spain though a much smaller country than Spain. I pay my taxes and wonder how will the country cope with yet further illegal immigrants and legal ones. I don't know the answers and their isn't a simple idealistic solution to it neither, so don't tell me about chauvism and not having anything to do with it.
Thank you for calling my analogy "a rubbish", that shows your respect for posters.
The very fact that the UK has higher population allows the country to receive more people with less strain, because they are a smaller percentage. For example, 1 million inmigrants in a 10 million people like London won't have the same effect in the housing prices than 1 million in a 4 million like Madrid. One of the reasons for rocketing prices in the rent and estate market in Madrid is the enormous inmigration.
Plus, the inmigration to the UK hasn't been as intense (in percentage over native population) as it has in Spain in the last years (at least in most of it's History, I believe), but more graded.
Besides, the UK economy is stronger, and creates more employment.
And although this is true, everyday more and more British are getting worse and worse paid jobs because the work market is too crowded. I met the orgaizer's family in a recent trip to Eastbourne (UK), and the father had been forced to retire early (50),
because his job , along with thousands of others, was outsourced to firms who offered the same position paying half the salary, his wife couldn't find a job, his daughter was bumping from one badly paid job to other (when she happened to have), his son had been doing practices and teaching English in Poland, working as a postman in Paris, and doing volunteer jobs, while trying to end a career he thought he probably wouldn't find a job that he could work in.
As for driving without licences and drinking while drunk, haha, the Spanish are experts at that because your whole system allows it and the police don't do anything because they participate too. I have to add, this is and WAS the norm even before the exodus of other Spanish speaking countries into Spain.
Well,
THIS is insulting, and it is, because it isn't true AT ALL. Spanish people doesn't use to drive drunk, even if you referred to an smaller percentage of alcohol in blood, ..., you can be fined even after having a couple of beers with a meal if you drive inmediatly afterwards, it's so tight. The police DOES many controls, specially in fun areas, and people have BIG fines and many times licenses are taken for months (years, I believe, in serious cases).
Disliking, as I do, the Guardia Civil, for being a remain of Franquismo, I have to say that, they are incorruptible in most cases (nothing to envy any european police) and very serious about driving sober, if that's what you mean. Which proves to be
again a lie, and thus, an insult on your part. Again, as you see, I am not emotionally linked to the insulted group since I hate them by their political fascist attitude, their tortures to my people, and so on, but THAT doesn't make ME be unfair in the other matters.
By the way, maybe I didn't make myself well understood:
not to speak of driving drunk, without license or insurance, the two latter being almost unexisting in Spain previously I meant driving without license or insurance, which was almost unexistant until latino inmigrants came, and nowadays is pretty common among them. And this is a fact that people in Spain is aware of.
I wonder WHERE you got that lies, since I believe you have NOT lived in Spain previously. Perhaps you were thinking of Ecuador?
Do you really expect that they should stay and greet the policemen rather than flee?!! Of course that is what a Spaniard would do
The point in the phrase you quoted, about the assaltants was that, because, obviously they flee (as any spaniard assaltant would do - Do I really need to say things like this in order not to hurt sick egos?), my support was in vane and I felt unable to do something more effective, and I felt sad because I see the situation deteriorate, and no solutions, but the mentioned previously, cause the police answer wasn't enough.
Joe Sambucca:
Your first post was so unacceptable (and insulting) that I planned to ommit any further comment but the said. It helps that you have rectified. Thanks.
I apologize if somebody felt hurt though I still believe I did nothing that should have hurt you, and if I did, it was not my intention. I guess we are much more free speaking in Spain, plain and direct, as I think I read time ago, when comparing USA and spanish styles.
Booklady:
First: I said nothing offensive to the inmigrant population in Spain, for offense can only come from lies (saying the truth can be no offense) and I didn't say any. Prove the opposite, please.
Second: Inmigration is no result of any empire. the USA have a lot and you supposedly didn't have one. Aregentina, Brasil, ..., too.
Also, the Spanish empire's last remains fell in 1898, but I didn't see any inmigrants when we were f*cked after the Civil War.
Inmigration is purely a matter that depends on where you suffer extremely bad living conditions (usually income) and where you get better ones. I know lots of inmigrants of latin origin that would be in the UK (much more profitable) if it weren't because of the language and climate. So, there is no "common heritage reason" to come to Spain, it's just more easy and comfortable, and economically interesting enough (coming from where they come).
Spanish people migrated to Germany, France and Belgium in hundreds of thousands in the decades after the war, and we didn't share any empire, not even the language.
I would not call the spanish search of ElDorado a inmigration issue, since they were invading forces. Would you call the new ElDorado (Irak), and their actual invading forces (USA, spanish, polish, british, ...) inmigrants?
There is
a BIG difference between the migration of some thousands of spaniardas in the 19th and beginning of 20th centuries (still, very, very few compared with the migration to the rest of Europe of the 50's/ 60's),
to countries that were in desperate need of cheap workforce to take fields from fores, buil infraestructures, and support these countries elites' wish to balance towards a highger europeans pecentage of population, in a growing economy, and
receiving inmigrants in a much smaller country, with a much higher percentage of innmigrants per native inhabitan It's not the same to receive let's say 100.000 (not so many I believe) spaniards in Argentina, having this country 10.000.000, for example (I am not looking for the data of the argentinian population in 1900 or 1930), and other countries .. than Spain nowadays, with a population of 40.000.000 receiving almost 2.000.000 inmigrants (in all of Spain, not only Madrid).
It's not the same receiving people mainly with strong moral fibre, that would probably die of hunger instead of robbing, than receiving some of the worst people of countries where corruption not only reaches the higher levels of the administration (all nowadays) but also the everyday living of a common person ("coimas"-bribery, custom of not paying taxes, ...), which is common in their countries of origin.
It definitely is NOT the same.
Besides, some of those who now call us "Madre Patria", were calling us the worst names when they were not in need of a work visa. In general, I have found often this attitude in argentinians, and, however, a genuine emotional link in cubans. As "Los Van Van" say "somos cubanos, español y africano"
Lyrics As a matter of fact, it's not the spanish population the one who needs cheap workforce in the fields, I promise you that adequate salaries would send people there
, it's spanish bussinessmen who own the crops and who get the profits , while the rest enjoys overcrowding, housing problems and low wages.
As for the "Spanish population rates declining", it is as it should be. The world is overcrowded, and Spain is not an exception. We are a little under the 2 persons per couple, which is the natural replacement birth rate. This should be enough to pay for retirement pays and to supply enough workforce to care for the elder.
Why doesn't it? because the payment workers get, and, thus, the money they can put aside for pensions is minimal. In the older systems where the young paid the retirement pays of the elder, having 6 children per couple would have solved the problem of a bad designed system, although the expansion should have to stop some time! no?
But in the modern systems, it's the investment of the part of salaries that is reserved for pensions systems in firms and states's debt, what pays for pensions. Everyday producing is more intensive in capital and less in human resources. The only long-term pensions system needs to be paid by Capital investments and not by a decreasing workforce monthly pays younger-pays-elders. Besides
in spite of the low birth rate, we still have more unemployed people than other developed countries (even with those false PP statistics) , so I don't think we need someone else to come and pay for the elder,
when our economy doesn't supply work enough for our own declining population. Third: The relation of inmigrants and crime is imposible to prove in each case, because each person is a world itself, however, there are
statistical proofs.
Like the ones that relate tobacco and cancer, the relation is statistically proved, for those who smoke get three times as frequently cancer as those who don't. For me, this is a proof, and the rates of increasing of violence with the increased inmigration is exactly as enlightening as that one. Besides, if you look at the newspapers, you only need to see the name and origins of the criminals and you get an instant idea, because them being nowadays about a fifth of the population of Madrid, a very high percentage of the crimes are made by inmigrants.
If this is NOT a proof for you, I am sorry, I believe they have not yet invented the "brain-reader" to give you better proofs.
As for me, if I live ten years in a neighbourhood with the same neighbours, and everything is OK, and a new neighbour comes and every week some of my tools dissapear from my garage, and in the other condos it happens the same with people of the same group (religious, racial, social, national, or any), I'll tend to believe that that
sudden change is due to the new
inputs. I think you know what happened with the cuban "Marielitos" that inmigrated to the USA. In this case, because of a trick made by Castro, the percentage of criminals that merged with honest refugees was much higher than in the USA od Cuba. We are suffering an inmigration that, sadly, includes too many of those. That saddens my inmigrant friends, who acknowledge it, and know they'll face prejudices because there are so many of those rogues.
Joe:
I didn't say all or even most of the inmigrants are criminals, I only say we should control inmigration because
among many honest ones, we receive too many of the others. In a country where, let's say 1 person in 1.000 is a criminal, getting an inmigration where 1 out of 50 is a criminal
will ALWAYS result in rocketing the crime rate no matter that 49 of the 50 are honest hard-working people. I am glad that those came, and most of my friend in Madrid, where I came from the Basque Country are inmigrants and honest people. But that (let's say) 1 out of 50 is too much. It´s changing this once peaceful safe country into something else.
As I said before, I think people has to be able to stand criticism. My own native city (Bilbao), is OK now, but years ago it was very dirty (industrial city, steel, ship construction, ...) with all kind of contamination , in air, land and water. I called it "my dear basurero (trash-depot?)". I loved it, and still love it, but when somebody said it was dirty, I had to agree, not to feel enraged, because it was true.
Chica:
Who do you think first settled Harlem?
I said:
If Harlem had been inhabited by the whitest scandinavian-americans, I would have said the same
I'll emphasize
had been inhabited for you, not
have been settled. I was referring to the present population of Harlem. It was a subjunctive (or conditional).
Cristobo:
Thanks for your support, that is what I meant about PC. You need to be explaining all the time you are not speaking of races et al, or someone will say with no reason or clue that you are being racist. It's like you have to
prove you are not a racist, when it should be opposite, there is the pressumption of innocence, insn't there? No in PC.
Booklady:
The gangs Cristobo is speaking about are hi-jackers, robbers,..., NOT the ones you remark, that are political, like the nazis ones in germany or the anarchist ones in Barcelona.
AND he is speaking of his thirty years of experience, although I would bet my parents (70) don't remember any either. However, when Europe was in the same social state that many of these third world countries are (education, civism, ...) I concede you that there were gangs of non-political criminals. If necessary, we can go back the needed centuries.
And a "punk gang", whose main criminal activity may be buying drugs IS NOT the same as muggers robbers and hi-jackers, by no means.
Mongo:
I don't know what you mean for "we deserve each other". I think I have not insulted anybody or "any place".
AND I did not speak of politics, I made a comment on public safety in my town, expressing my fears that it's going worse, and, as usual, somebody made it a flag of racism and anti-americanism or anti-NewYorkism, which my post didn't have, and here we have the same old sh*t.
I am fed up that everytime someone doesn't like something I say I have to defend myself of a bunch of accusations on things I am not (i.e. racist) supported on words I have not said (i.e. "all inmigrants are criminals").
usually the truth lies in the middle. many times it doesn't, like saying the rain falls from upstairs or it falls from downstairs (upward) doesn't make it fall horizontally by agreement. Rain falls downstairs to the earth, no matter what you and me opine.
Miche:
I´ll say it again: not one in a million of spanish people drive drunk. I think you are referring to drive
after having had some drinks, maybe be rather tipsy, and even those are in great danger of fines ,and they get them, and sometimes lose their license.
I am not speaking of those tipsy drivers, I am speaking of
absolutely drunk drivers, those who have to hold the head in the steering-wheel because they cannot keep it up by themselves, or those who are falling sleep while driving, ... Those are drunks! Not the ones who have three cuba-libres in four hours.
Thank you for your last words. As we only know each other a little, I thought you had changed yourmind about me, considering the written above. You may be sure I am not a racist, and will never be, that's why this matter is so painful to me that I stole 4-5 hours to my job to explain it today.
I get nuts how any spontaneous innocent comment I make ends up in longer and longer threads trying to justify wether I am a racist or a fascist or antiamerican, from my posts, which don't say anything about that matters. Maybe I have became "the one to shoot at" at the forum because of previous opinions on other sensitive matters?