Behind The Tapestry

Yesterday was a day of commemoration, the Basque community around the world remembered what took place on April 26th of 1937 when their beloved city of Gernika was demolished and burnt to the ground by Europe's Fascist powers. The combined forces of Hitler's Germany, Mussolini's Italy and Franco's Spain unleashed a devastating attack against the civilian population of the town, killing at least 1600 people, must of them women and children.

This crime went unpunished for one simple reason, the Allies (France, England and the USA) betrayed the Basques, their allies throughout the entire conflict. Eisenhower (a fascist himself) had promised to expel all Fascist regimes from Europe, but then he got scared before Russia and decided to easy up the restrictions on Spain, a country that had openly supported the Axis before, during and after the war (when hundreds of Nazis found safe haven under Franco).

If today Euskal Herria is not a free and independent country is in great part due to the Allies betrayal. Everyone remembers the Nuremberg Trials, yet, no one was ever taken before a court of law for the crimes committed by Francisco Franco in Durango and Gernika.

Pablo Picasso stated that he did not want his painting, the "Guernica" back in Spain until the democracy was restablished. Thanks to the campaign that sanitized Franco's crimes from recorded history and to a big lie called "the democratic transition" the painting is back in Spain.

Today the world is witnessing a cruel war unleashed by George W. Bush, Tony Blair and José María Aznar. Spain is again on the side of the fascist powers, only that this time it is the USA and England the ones conducting a genocidal war in Iraq. That may be the reason why the reproduction of Picasso's "Guernica" was concealed behind a blue curtain in the weeks previous to the inhumane bombing of Baghdad.

I've just found an article from The Washington Times that highlights this issue:

The cover-up

U.N. Report
By Betsy Pisik


A tapestry of Pablo Picasso's powerful anti-war tableau "Guernica" has hung outside the U.N. Security Council since 1985, and it would be difficult to imagine a more fitting example of site-specific art.

The original 1937 painting depicts the terrorized and dying civilians at Guernica, a small Basque village in northern Spain that Generalissimo Francisco Franco's Nationalist regime, battling the Republican government during the Spanish Civil War, allowed the German air force to use for target practice. About 1,600 civilians were killed or wounded in three hours of bombardment.

The estate of Nelson Rockefeller, who gave the money to buy what is now the U.N. compound, donated the tapestry expressly for that famous wall as a show of faith in the U.N. mandate.

Television cameras routinely pan the tapestry as diplomats enter and leave the council chambers, and its muted browns and taupes lend a poignant backdrop to the talking heads.

So it was a surprise for many of the envoys to arrive at U.N. headquarters last Monday for a Security Council briefing by chief weapons inspectors, only to find the searing work covered with a baby- blue banner and the U.N. logo.

"It is, we think, we hope, only temporary," said Faustino Diaz Fortuny, a Spanish envoy whose government owns the original painting. U.N. officials said last week that it is more appropriate for dignitaries to be photographed in front of the blue backdrop and some flags than the impressionist image of shattered villagers and livestock.

"It's only temporary. We're only doing this until the cameras leave," said Abdellatif Kabbaj, the organization's media liaison. He noted that the diplomats' microphone, which usually stands in front of a Security Council sign, had to be moved to accommodate the crowd of camera crews and reporters. With the Picasso as a backdrop, Mr. Kabbaj said, no one would know they were looking at the United Nations.

The drapes were installed last Monday and Wednesday — the days the council discussed Iraq — and came down Tuesday, Thursday and Friday, when the subjects included Afghanistan and peacekeeping missions in Lebanon and Western Sahara.

So when Secretary of State Colin L. Powell enters the council Wednesday to present evidence of Iraq's acquisition of mobile biological weapons labs and terrorism ties, he will walk in front of flags that wouldn't look out of place in the auditorium of a high school gymnasium.

U.N. Secretary-General Kofi Annan, who keeps a Matisse tapestry and a Rauschenberg collage in his private 38th-floor conference room, denies he had anything to do with the "Guernica" cover-up.

"If you heard all the things done in my name, you'd think I was everywhere," he joked Friday. "I heard it was artistic."

Mr. Kabbaj amplified thus: "We had a problem with, you know, the horse."

It was, of course, a camera crew that noticed that anyone who stood at the U.N. microphone would be photographed next to the backside of a rearing horse.

Can you believe the lame excueses given by the UN people?

And how about that Spanish diplomat? Please, his country was behind the build up towards war against Iraq, a war supported by some preposterous accusations by a drug adict terrorist called George W. Bush.

The tapestry was hidden behind a curtain, a curtain that also hides the crimes committed against the Basque people, crimes that the UN has been remiss to address, too busy granting sovereignty to fake states like Israel. Because therein lies the reasons why the UN does nothing about Euskal Herria and the Basque people, because they know that at the heart of the matter lies the right of an entire nation to its self-determination, to its full independence. right there in the power hub called Europe, a continent still struggling to get over its colonialist and genocidal past.

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