Posts Tagged ‘Spain’
Pic of the Day
People walk past an activist during an Animal Naturalis demonstration to promote vegetarianism in central Barcelona.
Uh, OK.
Holiday couple spot their carjackers 1,200 miles from home
Some folks are prepared for carjackers
A Belgian couple on holiday in Spain spotted the armed criminals who had carjacked them at gunpoint a month previously in Liege, 1,200 miles away.
The unnamed pair saw Luc Jadoul, 47, and his girlfriend Gaëlle Deloge, 20, on a beach in Alicante.
Mr Jadoul and Miss Deloge had threatened the couple with a gun and hijacked their Nissan SUV while making a dramatic escape from a Belgian courthouse just four weeks before…
…The crime victims were amazed to see Jadoul and Deloge sunning themselves on the Torrevieja beach last weekend.
Incredibly, the stolen car was also parked nearby, just yards from where the carjackers were sunbathing.
Keeping their heads and showing a “sangfroid” praised by the police, the holidaymakers let down the tyres on the car and called the authorities, who made an “easy” arrest.
A firearm was recovered from the stolen vehicle…
Both are being held in Madrid before their extradition back to Belgium.
Jadoul was the subject of an international arrest warrant. Before becoming a fugitive, he was in prison and has multiple convictions for prostitution of a minor aged 13, violence and pimping…
“No one – certainly not the criminals – could have expected an ending like this,” said a police source. “There must be more chance of winning the lottery.”
If this occurred in the UK, the coppers probably would have arrested the Belgian couple along with the carjackers. They’d leave them in custody in the same jail while they spent a week sorting out legal opinions over them being mean to the crooks.
I certainly wouldn’t expect an ending like this in the United States. They would have been told to shove off until a copy of the original paperwork traversed the mail and arrived – proving that a crime like carjacking had actually been committed. If they were lucky, they wouldn’t be arrested for causing a disturbance and malicious mischief for letting the air out of the tyres. Either way, the crooks would have been allowed on their way.
Unless they were Black or Mexican, of course.
The rain in Spain
Thousands of pro-independence Basque citizens march in the rain in San Sebastián, northern Spain, to demand the freedom of Arnaldo Otegi, the former leader of outlawed Basque independence party Batasuna who was sentenced on 16 September to 10 years in jail.
I went looking for photos of the demonstration; but, my eye was caught by all the umbrellas. In Seattle or Boston, even in London or Glasgow, you wouldn’t see so many umbrellas in a rainy demonstration.
I haven’t the slightest explanation for the preference. It rings no responsive chord in these Celtic genes.
Dumb enough to answer the advert for a job as gigolo in Spain?
A gang of six based in Fuengirola on Spain’s Costa del Sol made at least €50,000 euros after persuading some 180 men to pay a joining fee to register as gigolos. The elaborate scam lured men in with advertisements in the national media promising vast returns for wining and dining lonely women.
Men wanting to follow in the footsteps of ‘Deuce Bigalow: Male Gigolo’ – a 1999 comedy about a fishtank cleaner who goes into business as a male prostitute – were then asked to pay joining fees of between €200 and €1,000 euros to be put on the books of “reputable agencies”. But the online agencies were hoaxes and the clients never materialised.
Police said the masterminds behind the scam were a husband and wife and her older brother. Three others were arrested for opening bank accounts used to transfer money from the victims for five per cent of the profits…
Police said they uncovered the network after receiving complaints from different men who said they had never received any work as a result of signing up with the agencies.
Falls under the category of “too good to be true” usually means too good to be true, eh?
Easier access to abortions + contraception = fewer abortions
A year after Spain brought in a controversial reform of its abortion laws, statistics show a decline in the number of terminations, putting paid to fears from opponents that rates would rocket. Women are terminating their pregnancies earlier than under the previous legislation, an association for licensed abortion clinics also reported.
Spain brought its abortion laws in line with most other European countries last July allowing abortion on demand up to 14 weeks of pregnancy and up to 22 weeks if there is fetal malformation or threat to the health of the mother.
Before its introduction abortions were offered under restricted circumstances and rarely in a public hospital…The vast majority of the 115,000 abortions carried out in 2009 took place at private clinics, many at a late stage of gestation, and were justified on the grounds that the pregnancy posed a “psychological risk” for the health of the woman.
The legislation saw a series of huge demonstrations by pro-lifers on the streets across Spain supported by the Catholic Church and the conservative opposition Popular Party (PP) who said it would cause a leap in the number of terminations.
But associations for abortion clinics across Spain said the number of terminations had in fact declined to various degrees depending on the region over the year…
Spain’s Health Ministry has yet to publish official figures but confirmed a pattern of decline which it attributed to a number of measures.
“The sale of the ‘morning-after pill’ over the counter, pregnancy prevention programs and the advent of new subsidised contraceptives are all helping reduce the number of unwanted pregnancies,” said Jose Martinez Olmos, Secretary General for Health.
Health workers reported that abortions were being carried out in the earlier stages of pregnancy than before.
The abortion reform was part of an ambitious programme of social change under José Luis Rodriguez Zapatero, the socialist prime minister, which led to repeated clashes with the Church.
Since winning power in 2004 his government has legalised homosexual marriage, eased divorce laws and dropped religious education from the curriculum in public schools.
Needless to say the Pope and his political pimps in Spain are pissed that all the holy disasters they guaranteed have not come to pass. Perish the thought that ordinary human beings learn they can run their lives pretty darn well without supervision from ancient invisible critters in the sky.
Spanish coppers arrest Anonymous members over cyber attacks
Daylife/Getty Images used by permission
MADRID — Spanish police arrested three men suspected to be members of the hacker group Anonymous on Friday, charging them with organizing cyber attacks against the websites of Sony Corp, banks and governments — but not the recent massive hacking of PlayStation gamers.
Anonymous responded by threatening to retaliate for the arrests…
Spanish police alleged the three “hacktivists” helped organize an attack that temporarily shuttered access to some Sony websites. They were not linked to two massive cyber attacks against Sony’s Playstation Network that resulted in the theft of information from more than 100 million customers.
Police also accused the men of launching cyber assaults on Spanish banks BBVA and Bankia, and Italian energy group Enel SpA.
The arrests are the first in Spain against alleged members of Anonymous, following the detention of others in the United States and Britain. Police told Reuters all three men were Spanish and in their 30s. One worked in the merchant navy.
Anonymous is a loose grouping of self-proclaimed hactivists who frequently try to shut down the websites of businesses and other organizations that it opposes…
To date, the group has not been linked to crimes for financial profit…
Spanish police said the accused, who were arrested in Almeria, Barcelona and Alicante, were guilty of coordinated computer hacking attacks from a server set up in a house in Gijon in the north of Spain.
The police did not rule out further arrests.
Though their rationales and excuses play heavily on calling themselves “freedom fighters” methinks that’s the result of too much time in mommy’s basement playing war games. They accomplish about as much positive political change as the average graffiti “artist” – which means little or none. Vandalism rarely does more than despoil the landscape – and “freedom fighters” like this almost never share an identity or ideology with ordinary citizens around the world.
In practice, the essential effect of their protest is to smother someone else’s voice, block expression they disagree with. Not a hell of a lot to do with freedom or democracy.
Faced with the prospect of hard time behind their role-playing, I expect some will flip and the arrests will continue.
Con artist claims magic potion can double your money
An African man who claimed he could double your money simply by applying a magic potion to currency notes has been arrested at a Madrid bar where the Ecuadorean owner nearly fell victim to the ploy, said Spanish national police.
Police arrived in time to catch the suspected thief, from Cameroon, with 1,120 euros that had been handed over by the bar owner. The suspect, 28, alleged he had run out of magic potion and would need to go home to get some more, a police statement and spokesman said…
He told police the suspect had come to the bar a week earlier claiming he could double currency notes by applying a magic potion, the police statement said.
Taking a chance, the owner provided a 20 euro note, and the suspect mixed it with various white papers, applied a brown liquid and white power, and mixed it up with cotton. Presto, and there were soon three 20 euro notes visible, the owner told police.
“He returned my 20,” said Tepan, who’s lived 16 years in Spain and has owned the bar in central Madrid for 11 years. When the suspect came back last Saturday, the owner provided 1,120 euros in various currency notes, after the owner and the suspect agreed on how to split up the proceeds from the doubled money, the police said.
The suspect put the bills in an envelope and sealed it with tape. Then he applied the alleged magic potion, repeating this various times, but finally told the bar owner he had run out of the magic potion and would need to go home and get more. But he promised to leave the sealed envelope at the bar…
“I realized he was trying to take the money,” Tepan told CNN. A neighbor called the police and Tepan’s adult son arrived and locked the door to the street, with the suspect inside the bar.
The police arrived and opened the sealed envelope but found only white papers inside. Then they searched the suspect, and found the 1,120 euros hidden in his clothing, the police statement said.
This is one of the oldest cons in the world. Usually the bait is a bit more rational sounding – like found money. Falling for a magic potion is more than gullible.
Convent robbers took amazing stash of cash from nuns
They have all taken the traditional vow of poverty, so police and tax inspectors in Spain want to know why the nuns at Zaragoza’s Santa Lucia convent claimed that a robber had stolen €1.5million in cash from them.
The nuns’ unorthodox banking system, using dozens of black bin liners stuffed with high denomination euro banknotes, has made investigators suspect that the cash they handled did not come solely from the Sunday collection plate. The fact that they later changed their story to claim that the money that disappeared while they were saying their prayers a fortnight ago only amounted to €450,000 has done nothing to allay those suspicions.
According to the evidence given to police, the nuns kept their haul of cash in a locked cupboard, much of it in the €500 notes favoured by those paying for, or receiving, services in Spain’s abundant black economy…
The nuns said they had been preparing to distribute some of the money to other convents in financial difficulties. Unlike most of the nuns who live in the hundreds of crumbling, half-empty convents dotted around Spain, the 16 Cistercians at Santa Lucia have no financial problems.
As expert restorers of old books, their services are constantly required by libraries and private collectors. Neighbours said the convent was always busy, with the nuns’ white van constantly driving in and out of the gates. One of their number, Sister Isabel Guerra, is a renowned portrait painter whose pictures fetch up to €40,000 each and are key to maintaining other Cistercian convents around Spain…
The nuns’ lawyer, Jesús Garcia Huíci, said…”The money comes from a lifetime of saving.”
So, if they are telling the truth, why didn’t they use a bank. I doubt if there’s a dicho in their catechism about refusing interest on savings.
Nope – changing your story to reduce the cash stolen by two-thirds is another footnote that prompts a bit more than curiosity.
Nun expelled from order for having too many Facebook friends!
A Spanish nun has been kicked out of the religious order where she lived the last 35 years in seclusion after spending too much time on the social networking site Facebook. María Jesús Galán, dubbed “Sister Internet” by her fellow nuns, announced on her Facebook page that she had been asked to leave the convent after disagreements over her online activities.
The 54-year old, who lists her hobbies as “reading, music, art, and making friends” had almost 600 Facebook “friends”at the time of her eviction and now has fan pages with thousands of supporters from around the globe calling for her to be allowed back into the order.
A computer was first brought onto the premises of the 14th century Santo Domingo el Real convent in Toledo, central Spain 10 years ago after the Mother Superior was persuaded it would lessen the need for nuns to enter the outside world.
“It enabled us do things such as banking online and saved us having to make trips into the city,” explained Sister Maria, who entered as a novice at the age of 21.
However, the nun quickly saw the possibilities and soon began digitising the archives contained within the convent’s ancient walls and making them accessible to the world.
In 2008, she won a local government prize for her painstaking work scanning the pages of precious texts held in the convent’s library. The award made headlines and she soon had scores of friends worldwide connecting through her Facebook page.
But despite admitting that her dedication to her vocation was as strong as ever she said she was driven from the convent by her fellow nuns who disapproved of her cyber activity and “made life impossible”.
I think regular readers here know I differentiate between those who are “religious” in the traditional sense of being dedicated to good works for humanity – and the range of useless nutballs in sectarian cults dedicated to hating fellow human because of one or another revelation.
Mean-spirited behavior, closeting your brain and demanding equally demeaning shutters over your peers is not what I believe to be the purpose of collective religious philosophy. The aristocracy of most major religions continues to practice exactly the opposite of their teaching. As we witness in this example.
Coppers seize Europe’s largest, most sophisticated cocaine lab
Police in Madrid seized what they called the “largest and most sophisticated cocaine laboratory” in Europe known to date, and arrested 25 people, Spain’s.
Anti-drug agents confiscated 300 kilograms of cocaine ready for distribution, 2 million euros in cash, 470 mobile phones, weapons and luxury cars.
The suspected laboratory was located in a farm on the outskirts of Madrid and police took it over “just before it was to begin operations,” the statement said.
The investigation started two years ago and police also seized 50 million euros in goods and financial assets linked to the laboratory, the statement said.
The suspects include Spaniards and Colombians. Some of the them ran a law firm to give the operation an appearance of legality but it is suspected of money laundering, a police spokeswoman said.
I’m not certain that running a law firm guarantees the appearance of legality. But, it’s always pleasant to learn of a criminal gang being busted.
