Anti-cop punk songs are timeless, which means of course that every so often they become timely again. The Spanish hardcore band RIP have one of the most famous and straightforward of anti-cop anthems, "Policia No!"--but I prefer this one, "Terrorismo Policial," maybe because I can't imagine an American band writing it.If you think of the great English-language anti-cop songs--Black Flag's "Police Story," The Dicks' "Dicks Hate the Police," Discharge's "State Violence State Control"--they are either abstract and blank-faced political haiku, or they're almost dramatic monologues. But they're all deeply cynical: when Discharge point to broken ribs and say "this is state control," or Black Flag reduces everything to "they hate us, we hate them, we can't win," we feel we are getting a lesson in hard knocks. But RIP, in what will seem to us a deep naivete, always recur to the refrain "gritos de libertad"--cries of liberty.Try to imagine Discharge or Black Flag bemoaning the unheard cries of liberty… Furthermore, the tune itself is almost a football chant--RIP might be the *slowest* hardcore band--sung with all the righteousness of loyalty to a team. I guess I find this very moving: that team is… us! And where Black Flag are certainly emotional--at the breaking point of delirious anger, in fact--and the Dicks spin their tale of shame and degraded, displaced class rage, RIP manage to sound hopeful and battered at the same time. Unembarrassed, not-lecturing, and definitely *not* concluding "we can't win"… to put a spin on a classic phrase: RIP teaches us, the only thing we have to lose is our cynicism.