Thursday, May 31, 2007

De Juana to Leave Hospital

Seems like Basque political prisoner Iñaki de Juana will be discharged from the hospital were he was being treated after his long hunger strike to be allowed to serve the reminder of his sentence at home.

An article regarding this issue was published by EITb:

Iñaki de Juana could leave hospital within next few hours

Spanish radio station Radio Nacional reported ETA prisoner Iñaki de Juana Chaos has been already discharged from hospital, but Penitentiary Institutions said they have no information about that.

The General Direction of Penitentiary Institutions didn't know on Thursday at midday if the Hospital of Donostia-San Sebastian had discharged ETA prisoner Iñaki de Juana Chaos, as penitentiary sources said.

The source noted that even if doctors discharge De Juana today, he won't be able to leave hospital on the same day, as procedures have not been met.

Nevertheless, Radio Nacional informed he could leave hospital within the next few hours.

The prisoner will leave hospital when Penitentiary Institutions send the permit both to the Basque Public Health Services and Basque Police through fax.

De Juana Chaos was taken to the Basque Hospital from Madrid's Doce de Octubre on March 1 after a 115-day hunger strike.
Justify Full
.... ... .

Nagasaki and Gernika

This note was published at The Japan Times:

Guernica to get national peace hall annual show

NAGASAKI (Kyodo) The national peace hall in Nagasaki said Tuesday it will hold this year's antinuclear exhibition at the Gernika Peace Museum Foundation in Guernica, Spain, from June 27 to Sept. 9.

The Nagasaki National Peace Memorial Hall for the Atomic Bomb Victims will exhibit about 40 photographs showing the devastation in Nagasaki and Hiroshima following the 1945 atomic bombings and 10 items, including ruined school clothing and a piece of glass taken from a victim's body.

Guernica is commemorating the 70th anniversary of Nazi Germany's bombing of the northern Spanish city in 1937.

Sharing a similar past, Nagasaki and Guernica have developed friendly ties. Guernica Mayor Miguel Angel Aranaz paid a courtesy call in January on Nagasaki Mayor Itcho Ito, who was murdered in April.

"I would like to call for the eradication of nuclear arms by joining hands with people in Guernica who experienced a tragedy just like us," said Sakue Shimohira, the head of an organization of families of Nagasaki victims.

Actually, the bombing took place in the Basque Country, not in northern Spain.

.... ... .

Eusko Flickr : Hamaika ikusteko


Hamaika ikusteko
Originally uploaded by asier pagoaga.

Saturday, May 26, 2007

Orson Wells in Euskal Herria II

This is a segment of a documentary that Orson Wells produced about the Basque Country.

The segment shows a bit of the everyday life in Iparralde, the northern Basque Country. But pay attention to the last few minutes when it goes into the part that the Basques played in WWII, specially the very end when it describes how a young boy was tortured by the Nazis to obtain information about the boy's father who was in charge of smuggling Allied pilots, political dissidents and Jewish children into the southern Basque Country were they would be transferred to England.




I mention this because you will not find any information about this in the Yad Vashem nor the Simon Wiesenthal Center.

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Friday, May 25, 2007

Sol

We just published an entry about Eva Forest, now we present you this bio about Solomon Frankel and how he aided the Basque children that found refugee from Franco's genocidal campaign in England and how he fought against Franco's forces in Spain. It was published at The Independent, here you have it:

Sol Frankel

Veteran of the Spanish Civil War and the Battle of Cable Street

Jim Jump

Solomon Frankel, tailor and political activist: born London 31 March 1914; married 1943 Pearl Simonson (died 1999; one son, one daughter); died London 18 May 2007.

Sol Frankel was one of the generation of secular Jews who embraced Communism in the 1930s and 1940s and made the Communist Party an influential force in the political life of London's East End. He took part in the Battle of Cable Street against Sir Oswald Mosley's Blackshirts, fought in the Spanish Civil War against General Franco's Fascist-backed rebellion and returned home injured to pursue his political activism for another three decades.

Frankel was among a small group of Communists who defied the Home Secretary Herbert Morrison in 1941 and published the Stepney Worker after their party's newspaper, the Daily Worker, had been banned because of its criticism of the war effort and aims. Though naturally right-handed, he supplied cartoons for the stencil-duplicated paper drawn with his left hand, his other having been disabled by a bullet wound in Spain. The Stepney Worker continued to appear during the 19 months of the ban, leaving plenty of time for Frankel to fall in love with its editor, Pearl Simonson. They were married in 1943.

The high point of Communist influence in the East End came soon afterwards, with the election in 1945 of the Jewish Phil Piratin as the local MP, one of two Communists in the House of Commons. Frankel and his wife stayed loyal to the Party longer than most, the last straw being the Soviet invasion of Czechoslovakia in 1968, when they left and joined the Labour Party. "Socialism is my religion," he would tell his family and friends.

One of nine children of Polish-Jewish immigrant parents, Frankel was born in 1914 in Whitechapel, in the East End, and left school at the age of 14 to work as a tailor in the sweatshops of the local clothing trade. He witnessed the rise of Fascism and anti-Semitism in the 1930s, when Jewish-owned shop-windows were frequently smashed. He was a member of the Labour League of Youth but later left to join the Communist Party over what he saw as the Labour Party's failure to stand up to Fascism at home and in Europe.

Frankel was always proud of his involvement in the Battle of Cable Street when, on 4 October 1936, Blackshirts were prevented from marching through the streets where many of Stepney's 60,000 Jewish residents lived. The Communist Party mobilised its supporters to block Mosley's path. In contrast, the Labour Party urged everyone to stay away from the area - a hands-off approach that was mirrored in its initial support for the government's embargo on arms sales to the Spanish Republic. Frankel was in the thick of the Cable Street fighting, digging up paving stones and building the barricades.

The slogan chosen by the Cable Street demonstrators, "No pasarán" ("They shall not pass"), was the one used by the defenders of Madrid as they faced Franco's attempt to overrun the Spanish capital with help from Hitler and Mussolini. Frankel, like many other Jewish socialists, saw the Spanish Civil War as an opportunity to fight back against Hitler and Fascism. As many as 20 per cent of the 2,300 International Brigaders from the British Isles were Jewish.

Before going to Spain, Frankel was a volunteer at the refugee camp outside Southampton for nearly 4,000 Basque children who had arrived in May 1937 following the bombing of Guernica by Hitler's Condor Legion. He helped put up tents and dig latrines. Being in the camp on the day it was announced that Bilbao had fallen to the Fascists left a big impression on him. The children were distraught and the older ones rioted and broke camp. "We were up all night looking for them, trying to round them up. They called us 'fascistas'. They were trying to get away so that they could go back to Spain to fight against Franco."

The experience helped convince him that he should go to Spain. Aged 23, he arrived at the British battalion's base in Tarazona de la Mancha in December 1937 and, after training, was promoted to sergeant in the machine-gun company. He saw action in the Battle of the Ebro in July 1938 and was wounded in the fierce fighting around Gandesa. "I poked my head above the trench and a bullet grazed my hat," he said.

When I was shot I remember seeing the glint of an enemy rifle. I didn't realise I'd been shot, but I was thrown backwards. I had taken a bullet through the arm. When the stretcher-bearers came, they carried me away under fire. They were incredibly brave.

Nerves and tendons in his right arm had been severed and he remained in hospital in Barcelona for three months. His hand was left permanently partially paralysed.

His injury disqualified him from military service in the Second World War - though he was a volunteer air-raid patrol warden in the Blitz - but not from resuming his work as a tailor. He became a shop steward for the National Union of Tailors and Garment Workers and worked in East End factories until retirement in the early 1970s. He learnt to grip the cloth with his disabled hand clenched while sewing with his left hand.

After the war, with their home bombed out, Frankel moved to the suburbs of Golders Green, then Edgware and, in 1958, Crawley, though he still commuted to his work in the East End. Living in the north-west of London made him a member of the Wembley branch of the Communist Party, the same as Harry Pollitt, the Party's general secretary for 25 years. Pollitt was a frequent visitor to the Frankel family home, both on Party business and for social evenings. In 1973, Frankel and his wife moved to Wales and ran a guest-house near Aberystwyth, before settling in Leeds until Pearl's death in 1999, when he returned to London.

His idealism and political activism found expression during the 1950s and 1960s in the CND and anti-apartheid movements. He didn't return to Spain until democracy was restored after Franco's death in 1975. His final visit was in 2003, on the 65th anniversary of the Battle of the Ebro, when International Brigaders from around the world were reunited in significant numbers for probably the last time.


One small little detail, democracy has not been fully restored in Spain yet, and the Basque Country is still occupied, against the will of its people.

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Thursday, May 24, 2007

Eva

This bio about the great freedom fighter Eva Forest was published at ZNet:

Eva Forest: The Passing of a Spanish Icon

Supriyo Chatterjee

It was typical of Eva Forest, who died after an illness on May 19 at Hondarribia in Basque country, Spain, at the age of 79, to tell a friend days before her passing that she was living the best days of her life. A Left-wing icon whom the Spanish state could never silence nor smear, defiant till the very end of the harsh Spanish political system, and a great friend of Vietnam, Cuba and latterly of Venezuela and Bolivia, she is being remembered with great affection throughout the Spanish-speaking world.

Eva was born into a politically active family in Barcelona in 1928. Her painter father, an anarchist who felt that schools were a repressive institution, kept her at home for as long as he lived. It was some time after his death in 1936 that she set foot in a formal educational institute. That also was the year in which the civil war started and in 1939 Eva was at the point of being flown out to Russia from a nursery created with Swiss help for Spanish children, when her mother pulled her out of the truck moments before it set off towards the evacuation point.

Eva Forest gained a degree in psychiatry at Madrid and at the final year of her studies in 1955 she met and married Alfonso Sastre, playwright, essayist and a relentless critic of censorship lf the Franco era. They stayed together till the end, a couple who collaborated so closely in their work that they progressively thought and wrote alike.

With Aflonso's persecution in Spain, the couple left for Paris in 1956, where their first son was born. At this time, she moved away from psychiatry towards a "sui generis sociology" and wrote her first novel, Febrero. They returned to Spain in 1962 and she was detained after joining other women demonstrating in support of Asturian miners. She was fined, refused to pay it and was sent to prison with her new-born daughter.

In 1968, Franco imposed a state of emergency. Eva's response was to edit, along with her friends, a clandestine journal, Information, and the more widely circulated samizdat publication, State of Emergency. A Catalan by birth, her identification with the Basque cause started with characteristic fearlessness in 1970, when she was among those who worked to set up a solidarity committee during the farcical Burgos trial of 1970 against Basque prisoners, which ended with death sentences being handed out and later commuted following an international outcry. She was arrested in 1974 for writing under the pseudonym of Julen Agirre Operation Ogre, a book that detailed the car bomb assassination in 1973 by the Basque group, ETA, of Admiral Luis Carrero Blanco, Spanish premier and Franco's most intimate collaborator. Eva was tortured and kept in preventive custody for three years, accused of collaborating with ETA, a charge never proven.

Her account of imprisonment, translated as From a Spanish Prison, shone light on the arbitrariness of the Spanish justice system and her own humanity and capacity for love for her children, her family and others amid great adversity. Prison was also the impulse for her to set up TAT, a group dedicated to working against torture, and to write extensively on the subject. As a torture victim herself, she campaigned till the very end against torture, ruing that despite years of all the work, it still tended to be common place.

After her release, the family moved to Basque country where Eva lived till the end. She aligned herself with the Basque Left and was at one time elected as a regional Senator on a Left ticket. She was also an incorrigible internationalist who could feel as her own the pain of others. We are responsible for own actions and our own silences, she said and Eva did not do silence. She visited Iraq in 1998 and wrote a book about it, 'Iraq, a Challenge to the New World Order?' She was intrigued by the anthropology of the 'new man' emerging in Cuba, interviewing peasants who learn for the first time to speak out in public and live in solidarity with others.

Eva Forest was a prolific writer, of novels and polemical reports on issues that were not profitable to commercial publishers. Since 1990 she kept herself busy with Hitu, her own publishing company that functioned on cooperative lines. She would edit, translate, pack and even sell books. The most eloquent homage to her is something she had written as an eulogy for one of her companions: "Pick up the sleep of our deaths and turn them into a creative arm that perforates impossibles and drills through utopia in search of new ways of speeding up the process of humanisation." Alfonso, her own companion of a lifetime, survives her and so does his little prophecy: "And one day, companion, we will return in triumph to the inhabited space that never was ours".

(Eva Forest 1928-2007)

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Tuesday, May 22, 2007

Spain Shows Its Fascist Colors

Throughout his 40 years at the head of a murderous regime Francisco Franco enjoyed of an special treatment by the international community and the main stream media, everyone looked the other way. He was after all a "formidable ally" against Socialism, so, his numerous crimes were forgiven, and sadly, it seems like they were also forgotten.

How else can you explain the gusto with which Jose Luis Rodriguez Zapatero and his allegedly socialist government had used the Francoist minded Law of Political Parties against the nationalist Basque electoral lists?

Rodriguez Zapatero claims to represent the dreams and projects of those Spanish Republicans who escaped Franco's slaughter house, yet, he does not hesitate to use a repressive tool left to him by his predecessor, José María Aznar, a rabid extreme-right thug.

If the members of the Partido Popular have shown a complete disdain for the Basque people right to their self determination it is understandable, they are after all the ideological children of the likes of Hitler, Franco and Mussolini. But to see the members of the PSOE wanting to outdo the PP tells us a story of how democracy never truly arrived in Spain.

This note was issued by UPI:

Spain bans Basque party from elections

MADRID, May 16 (UPI) -- Spain's highest court has banned the Basque separatist group Abertzale Sozialisten Batasuna, or ABS, from participating in elections.

However, ABS party officials said they would field candidates in local and regional elections scheduled for May 27, EFE news agency reported Wednesday.

The head of the political wing of Basque separatists Batasuna, Joseba Alvarez, accused Spanish President Jose Luis Rodríguez Zapatero of abandoning the fragile peace process between the Spanish government and the Basque separatist group ETA.

Oh yeah, and I removed the biased 800 paragraph.

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The Fueros

Some history, courtesy of EITb:

Fiestas & traditions

The Fueros: Origin of the Basques' special status

05/21/2007

These Fueros consisted of a set of ordinances in public and private law which regulated the way the Basque Provinces and Navarra were administered.

In historical terms, the word Fuero usually refers to the foundational charters of cities and boroughs. These charters were designed to concentrate families in specific places and often included a number of privileges and exemptions. But where the Basque provinces and Navarra are concerned, the term Fueros does not refer to local dispensations but to a series of general laws that these territories laid down for themselves at a time when they enjoyed a large degree of autonomy. These Fueros consisted of a set of ordinances in public and private law which regulated the way the Basque Provinces and Navarra were administered.

The Fueros took shape as a body of law arising from a series of customs and habitual practices that were themselves a reflection of a specific way of thinking and feeling. Perhaps one of the most distinctive features of the Fueros as a whole is their flexibility in the face of changing social conditions.

As one expert put it: "A fuero isn't something that suddenly appears, like a new constitution; rather, it is something that is shaped gradually, grounded in history itself. So foral [the adjective derives from fuero] formulas cannot be discarded as inadequate; they are formed continually, are constantly renewed, and do not attempt to base their ultimate justification on preceding formulations. So each formulation is another landmark on the path to their final completion."

The term fuero has often been associated with privilege. But it should be said that the two have nothing in common. The Fueros do not derive from a supreme authority, but from the repeated practices of a community. To be able to draft such Fueros a community has to be autonomous, i.e., it must have the capacity to endow itself with the legal framework within which it carries on all its activities. So the Fueros are best defined not as a gratia, but rather as a ius.

These principles, defended by prestigious jurists, were repeated by Javier Pérez Anaiz in his El Concierto Económico: evolución, caracteres y fundamentos de la financiación vasca [Economic Agreement: evolution, nature and foundations of the system of Basque financing] published by the Basque Institute of Public Administration (IVAP) in 1992.

So it can be fairly said that the Fueros are an exceptional distinguishing feature of the Basque Country. Each territory (Bizkaia, Alava, Gipuzkoa and Navarra, in Spain; Benavarre, Laburdi and Zuberoa in France) has its own history and has shaped its own law, with a number of similarities and common forms.

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Thursday, May 17, 2007

Cynical Conde-Pumpido

When you know you are part of a repressive state and that your actions will be met with impunity, you can pretty much say whatever you want, and that is exactly what Candido Conde-Pumpido just did regarding the banning of the nationalist Basque electoral lists by the out of the closet fascist government of José Luis Rodríguez Zapatero.

Here you have a note published by EITB about this topic:

Politics

Public Prosecutor: "We possibly went too far, but it washed"

05/17/2007

Candido Conde-Pumpido voiced his doubts on their intervention barring so many lists of candidates for local and regional elections, since "there are towns in which there is practically no list of candidates left."

Spain's Public Prosecutor, Candido Conde-Pumpido, said he didn't know if "we have gone too far" after banning so many lists of candidates supposedly linked to outlawed Batasuna. The process culminated on Wednesday as the Supreme Court barred the registration of ASB (Union of Socialist Nationalists) as a political party at the Interior Ministry. As Conde-Pumpido said, there are towns in which there are "almost no lists of candidates. We possibly went too far, but it washed," he said, to highlight later that both the Supreme and Constitutional Courts endorsed his interpretation abiding by Parties' Law.

At an informative breakfast, Conde-Pumpido affirmed that in the process to hinder Batasuna's presence in elections what worked was "scalpel, and not garrotte. We removed the tumour, without hurting the patient."

The State's Public Prosecutor assured that some people believe the Parties' Law is "some kind of electoral Guantanamo," where there are 150,000 people that can't vote, even if the target of this law is "to push towards peace, and not towards violence." "The Parties' Law doesn't say that Batasuna's voters can't vote" and noted that if every time they vote for a list it has to be outlawed "we are pushing them towards violence," even if the law aims at integrating even those who reject a democratic system into it.

Anyway, he warned that Public Prosecution will be on the alert to see if there are judicially relevant circumstances that can be considered as a reason to outlaw a party. He specified that the public petition by Batasuna for the ballot for ANV (Basque Nationalist Action) is not a sufficient reason for its outlawing, citing the case of the Communist Party of the Basque Lands, legal leftwing nationalist party with representation in the Basque Parliament.


And some idiots insist on calling Spain a democracy.


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One More Albanian Nation

The note you are about to read is a perfect example of just how sick and twisted international politics really are.

It tells us about the decision by the UN to go ahead and provide the Albanians with a second nation, since Albania was not enough apparently.

The note by Slobodan Lekic appeared at Yahoo News, it is called "Other Separatists Buoyed by Kosovo Push" and it starts out like this:

From the jungles of Indonesia to Spain's Basque country, separatists of the world are drawing hope from the approach of U.N.-approved independence of Kosovo.

"The Kosovo precedent will be important for us," said Igor Smirnov, leader of the Trans-Dniester region that seeks to break away from Moldova. He maintains that his tiny enclave has an even better case for independence than Kosovo.

Another hopeful Kosovo-watcher is Iraqi Kurdistan. "It's important that Kosovo achieves independence through a U.N. Security Council resolution because that will establish a legal principle which will also some day apply to Kurdistan," said Mahmoud Othman, a senior Kurdish member of the Iraqi parliament.

So far so good, but then things start to turn for the worst:

The United States and European Union, which are backing a U.N. plan to grant "supervised independence" to the predominantly ethnic Albanian province of Serbia, dismiss suggestions that it would encourage separatist movements elsewhere.


Excuse me?

What did I miss here?

Let me start by saying that is quite appalling that the USA and the EU have the gall to dismiss what they call "separatist movements elsewhere". For Christ sake, they are about to provide the Albanians with a second nation just like that, out of the blue, but they refuse to acknowledge the legitimate demand by other nations to their own sovereignty?

Does Europe really need a second Albanian state? I mean, lets be honest, the first one is not faring that well and at least it has a coast line, the new one is landlocked besides being tiny and sadly underdeveloped.

How can the Europeans thinks that a second Albanian state is a good thing while at the same time openly stating that a Basque state, or a Scottish state, or a Corsican state are not needed.

And how come the Albanians can be called ethnic Albanians but according to the extreme right in the USA and other parts of the world if the Basques or the Sami claim to be an ethnic group they are labeled racists?

And so it is that the Albanians are different from the Serbians, but the Basques are not different from the Spaniards, how inconsistent don't you think?

Then the article goes on telling us about how Russia and of course Serbia, oppose the creation of this new Albanian state:

But the plan is strongly opposed by Serbia and Russia, which will settle at most for wide local autonomy.

Russian President Vladimir Putin warned in February that independence for Kosovo would be taken as a precedent by others, including pro-Russian breakaway provinces in the ex-Soviet republics of Georgia and Moldova.

This issue has become a major irritant in the already strained relations between the West and a resurgent Russia.

The latest attempt to defuse tensions foundered this week after Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice and Putin failed to find common ground. Kosovo also figures in Russia's wider dispute with the EU, jeopardizing plans to create a "strategic partnership" between Moscow and Brussels.

But wait, there is more, check out this paragraph by this Finnish gentleman:

The author of the Kosovo plan, former Finnish president Martti Ahtisaari, said he did not believe a precedent would be set by granting the province independence. "No two problem areas are the same," he said.

How so?

How come Kosovo and Euskal Herria are not the same? Could he be more explicit please?

The author of the article provides an answer for double faced Ahtisaari:

But in some of the four dozen territories around the world aspiring to break free, Kosovo's future looks set to have far-reaching effects — especially if separation is engineered through a Security Council resolution.

"Kosovo's independence would certainly have broad and destabilizing consequences for many other secessionist conflicts," warns Bruno Coppieters, head of the Political Sciences Department at Brussels Free University.

In Indonesia, it could have a powerful impact on the two separatist-minded provinces of Aceh and West Papua, said Damien Kingsbury, a key adviser to the separatist Free Aceh Movement.

Indonesia, which has already lost East Timor, "is always sensitive about issues affecting territorial integrity, so it will be very worried," Kingsbury said.

The U.S. and EU insist Kosovo is a special case because it has been a ward of the international community since a U.N. administration was set up in 1999. That followed a brief aerial war during which NATO ejected Serb forces accused of mounting a campaign of ethnic cleansing against the 2 million Albanian inhabitants.

Oh yes, and then the fail to mention the ethnic cleansing of Serbians and Macedonians carried out by the ethnic Albanian KLA/NLA.

Now check out this Daniel Fried idiot being just plain fascitious:

"A new Security Council resolution would clearly specify that this was a unique case not applicable to other regions," Assistant Secretary of State Daniel Fried said in a recent interview.

Fried said the Bush administration intends to sponsor the new resolution, based on Ahtisaari's plan. "Kosovo will be independent one way or the other," he said.

What he is saying is, the world will do whatever the USA says, hey, the Albanian Americans are paying me good money to say this.

Enter the European Union:

While the European Union also insists Kosovo is no precedent, some of its member states have their own restive regions to contend with — Catalonia and the Basque country in Spain, Flanders in Belgium, Hungarian nationalists in Slovakia and Cyprus' breakaway Turkish Republic.

Hold your wild horses European Union.

Kosovo is not a precedent?

Are Lithuania, Estonia, Latvia, Czech Republic, Slovakia, Bosnia, Slovenia, Macedonia and Montenegro a precedent?

Why is Europe being so blind about what just happened in Wales, Scotland and Northern Ireland?

Why nothing seems to be a precedent for the hopes of self determination of the Basques, Catalans, Corsicans and Britons among others?

Well, according to the article, Basque and Kurds have something to say about it:

A parliamentary spokesman for the Basque Nationalist Party, the main party in the regional government of northern Spain's Basque region, sees the Kosovo plan as "a very positive development."

"We think this could be a very good precedent, and someday we could aspire to something similar," said Josu Erkoreka.

Othman, the Kurd, said it is inaccurate to argue Kosovo is somehow special.

"Just like Kosovo, Iraqi Kurdistan has also been under international protection (since the 1991 Gulf War). There is no difference," he said in a telephone interview from Baghdad.

Any move by Iraq's Kurdish provinces to break free would create a major political headache for Washington and invite armed intervention from neighboring Turkey, which has its own restless Kurdish minority.

And finally, some rather cryptic words by some Tim Judah:

Tim Judah, a London-based Balkan analyst and author, said the Security Council ideally should grant Kosovo independence but simultaneously repudiate unilateral secessions elsewhere.

But he expects that "whatever the Security Council does may nonetheless encourage some secessionist groups somewhere."

But of course Judah, because no matter how many colonialist minded lunatics like yourself are out there, the will of the people will always prevail.

Because you know what Tim Judah?

The Security Council is telling people that when the United Nations demand from the nations without statehood to find a peaceful and negotiated solution to their self-determination dreams it is plain out being deceptive, because the Security Council is about to grant independence to a region of Serbia as a feeble response to the pressure exercised by the Albanian-American community and the lobbyists they hired to turn the Congress members attention over the issue.

As always the media has played an important role by creating a wall of lies and misconceptions around the Kosovo Liberation Army, a murderous organization that under the protection of the UN Blue Helmets carried out authentic ethnic cleansing operations against the Serbian population of Kosovo. This KLA later morphed into the National Liberation Army because many Albanians wish to wrestle away portions of land from Macedonia, Greece, Croatia and Montenegro to create what they call the Greater Albania. The NLA had its 15 minutes of fame a few years ago when again, protected by the UN, tried to spark conflict in neighboring Macedonia claiming that the Albanians were too being mistreated by the Macedonians.

They failed then, but after Kosovo gains its independence the NLA will make sure to keep expanding Albania. And a whole new ethnic cleansing era will start, because these NLA thugs really enjoy murdering defenceless people.

One last thing, the UN is being so hypocritical about the whole issue that it is not mentioning that one of the reason why this independence is supposed to be "supervised" is because they are requesting from Kosovo not to join Albania at the most pure Texan style.

But I am telling you now, Kosovo will become part of Albania within five years of winning its independence.

I leave you with a couple of questions; why is the UN so adamant about telling other ethnic groups to forgo of their self determination plans when the own UN Charter enshrines the right of all people to their self determination?

Why is the European Union, a union of European nations playing by the rules of the states, forgetting about all the nations within those states?

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Sunday, May 13, 2007

Total War

In my previous post regarding the Armenian Genocide I asked when is anyone going to make Spain accountable for the crimes committed by a number of its governments against the Basque people. Well, how about this article published by the Boston News:

War without limits

New scholarship on the origins of 'total war,' from the French Revolution to World War II, helps explain the war on terror

By Christopher Shea | May 13, 2007

Sometimes it seems as if the country has fallen into a high-stakes, all-consuming global conflict, and sometimes it seems that nothing has changed at all.

In the war on terrorism, American soldiers and intelligence agents are active on every continent. At home, our cities gird themselves for a major attack. The country, Vice President Cheney and others argue, faces an "existential" threat. We are pitted, one contributor to The Wall Street Journal wrote, against "an enemy who will stop at nothing to achieve world domination and force a life devoid of freedom upon all."

Yet most Americans live very much as they did before Sept. 11.

To historians, the situation poses an intriguing paradox that has sparked fresh interest in the concept of "total wars," conflicts that burst through the old boundaries of fighting and came to define warfare for at least the first half of the 20th century. The idea was first articulated during the mechanized horror of World War I, but historians today are pushing for a deeper understanding of the phenomenon, an effort that may yield insights into the conflicts unfolding today.

Two scholars have just published studies -- one on Napoleon's Europe, the other on the annihilation from the air, by German bombers, of the Basque city of Guernica in 1937 -- that trace the roots of total war. These works, and others, argue that total wars have been, in part, a product of modern technology (poison gas, bombs, etc.) and the modern economies that can produce these weapons on a mass scale. But, this burgeoning work suggests, total wars are also very much a product of modern ideologies that contribute to the idea that a nation at war should hold nothing back.

"I think the rhetoric that is used today has opened us up into being dragged deeper and deeper into a series of conflicts," says David A. Bell, a historian at Johns Hopkins University and author of "The First Total War: Napoleon's Europe and the Birth of Warfare as We Know It."

In his book, Bell stresses how ferocious nationalism and revolutionary fervor led the French to view their enemies as people who needed to be exterminated, not just defeated -- a decisive shift from an earlier Great Power style of warfare. The conscription of hordes of French civilians into the army, too, swept away aristocratic traditions that placed certain limits on war's conduct. Anti-revolutionary opponents, whether French peasants or Austrians, were now "sanguinary hordes," "barbarous," and "vipers": all deserved disembowelment.

It's that kind of invective Bell has in mind when he hears phrases like "the evil ones" today.

Omer Bartov, a historian at Brown who specializes in 20th-century European conflict, says he partly agrees with Bell's broader thesis: French mass mobilization and all-or-nothing ideology were harbingers of future total war -- but only harbingers. "Total wars don't just mobilize people -- they mobilize all the resources of the nation-state," he says. "That can happen only after the industrial revolution."

Bartov's own work stresses those mechanical and industrial aspects of total war. In "Murder in Our Midst: The Holocaust, Industrial Killing, and Representation," for example, he argues that many aspects of the Holocaust -- poison gas, mass slaughter, bureaucratic efficiency -- built on "innovations" of World War I, for him the first true total war.

Ian Patterson, a Cambridge University literary critic, points to Guernica as the source of a different innovation in the evolution of total war: primal fear of death from the skies. Armies bombed civilians during World War I, but not efficiently. In "Guernica and Total War," he argues that it was the Spanish Civil War, and specifically the attack on Guernica, that created the template for the later bombings of London, Dresden, and Hiroshima.

At Guernica, whose horrors were immortalized by Picasso, German pilots even lingered to strafe the civilians (and sheep) who fled the firebombing. Guernica, Patterson says in an interview, "brought home to people that there wasn't anybody anywhere who wasn't vulnerable, who wasn't potentially part of a future war."

One of the central questions of the new scholarship is how far back the idea of total war can be pushed -- how widely it can be applied without rendering the concept meaningless, according to Roger Chickering, a military historian at Georgetown University who has co-edited several volumes on total war published by Cambridge University Press, the most recent of which is "A World at Total War" (2005).

The wholesale slaughter of World War II confirmed that a new kind of conflict was at hand, but 20th-century historians have also read the total-war concept not just back to the French Revolution, but also to the American Civil War (with special reference to the North's industrial might and William T. Sherman's march to the sea), and even the Philippine-American war. Chickering believes the term captures something new, and freshly horrifying, about modern conflict, and yet has also written that the concept inspires "bombast, confusion, misinterpretation, and historical myopia."

Patterson believes that it is an important idea. Underwhelmed by American attempts to minimize civilian casualties during its 2003 air attacks on Baghdad, Patterson writes: "The U.S. military's strategy of 'shock and awe' in its attack on Baghdad in the Spring of 2003 suggests that the same approach is still around in the 21st century."

But William M. Arkin, a national security and human-rights fellow at the Carr Center for Human Rights Policy at Harvard, says that Patterson's equation of Guernica and Iraq is not just factually obtuse but morally counterproductive. Post-Vietnam updates to the Geneva Conventions have explicitly banned the targeting of civilians in bombing raids, and make doing so a war crime. The comparison of Baghdad to Guernica, because of the obvious hyperbole, implies that the new Geneva rules have made no difference, that moral progress is impossible in the conduct of warfare.

"When we run around imagining that militaries are still living in eras of total warfare and Dresden and carpet-bombing," Arkin says, it "dilutes the pressure that constantly needs to be brought to bear on states to behave in a modern way."

The better message, in his view: The era of total war is over, period.

Too bad Bush, Blair and Aznar do not agree with Mr. Arkin.

Anyway, there you have it, seems like there is plenty of documentary evidence to take Spain to task for its crimes against Euskal Herria.

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The Armenian Genocide

Once again the Basques prove to the world that they can show solidarity with other peoples and nations around the world struggling for full recognition of their rights. This note you are about to read comes to us via Armenian News:

Basque Parliament recognizes Armenian Genocide

/PanARMENIAN.Net/ During a plenary meeting the Basque Parliament on April 20, 2007 approved an institutional declaration on the 92nd anniversary of the Armenian Genocide, independent French journalist Jean Eckian told PanARMENIAN.Net.

The text says: "The first genocide scientifically planned, organized and carried out in the history of humanity, was perpetrated by the Young Turks and ideology of the Pan-Turkism against the Armenian people, which generated the murder of almost two million people. Crimes of this nature must be denounced to prevent their repetition. Human and national rights should be restored culprits should be condemned. This genocide must deserve the sanction of the Basque people and all the people of the world.

Basque people and institutions rejected ethnic, religious or political discrimination, and this Parliament always denounced all the acts of genocide, by considering that the walk of time does not imply the lack of memory. The denunciations of the genocides by our Parliament like those of Bosnia, Kosovo, Iraki Kurdistan and the Ukrainian artificial famine of 1932-33, etc, are clear examples.

By this institutional declaration, the Parliament unifies its voice with those of the other institutions and Parliaments like European Parliament, Council of Europe and multitude of official and regional Parliaments, as well as the international institutions and humanitarians who denounced these facts.”

The Basque Parliament included 6 articles in which it affirms the authentic character of the Armenian Genocide; denounces Turkey’s systematic negationism and rejects the frontier and economic blockade imposed on Armenia. Moreover, the Parliament, under the signature of the president, Izaskun Bilbao Barandica, declares sympathy to the Armenian people, and supports their efforts to consolidate its democratic process and to affirm in the Caucasus area a stable space of cooperation and freedom.


I hate to sound overly pragmatic but, will the Armenians recognize the right of Euskal Herria to its independence? Will they demand that Spain is made accountable for all the crimes committed by the Francoist governments (Franco's and Borbon's) against the Basques?

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Herri Urrats in Senpere

We applaud any initiative to strengthen Euskara, even more so these days that Spain and France are bent on denying the Basque culture and identity. This article was published at EITb:

Senpere celebrates Basque schools day

The commitment to the Basque language and to the Basque schools is so rooted in the Basque society that thousands of people attend every year the festival in order to enjoy the day and to pay tribute to the ikastolas.

Thousands of supporters of the Basque language and culture are expected to meet today in Senpere to celebrate Herri Urrats. Herri Urrats is the festival of the Basque schools in the Basque provinces south-west France.

Every year events are organised in the different regions of the Basque Country to raise money for ikastolas (Basque language schools). The commitment to the Basque language and to the Ikastolas (Basque schools) is so rooted in the Basque society that thousands of people attend every year the festival in order to enjoy the day and to pay tribute to the ikastolas.

Music will be the main protagonist. Basque bands such as Peio ta Pantxoa, Anje Duhalde, Gatibu, Zea Mays and Kerobia will entertain the spectators. Even children will have a place with stands with games and clowns. The day will also be packed with dance performances as well as sports activities and other kind of attractions.

Organisers aim at getting enough funding to be able to guarantee a wide teaching offer. The funds raised from this event will go towards the restoration of the Bernat Etxepare and Xalbador Kanbokoa school’s facilities and towards the victims of the floods that have hit the area recently.


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Friday, May 11, 2007

The Ban on ANV and AS

People that think they know everything about the political conflict that pits Euskal Herria against Spain usually utter two lame excuses when they have to explain their rejection of an ancient nation to its self determination.

They are:

a) Spain is a democratic state, sure things are not that bad for the Basques.

b) Basques must resort to democratic ways to pursue their demands for self determination and must renounce to violence.

Well, this article published by EITb shows that Spain is not a democratic state since democratic states do not ban political parties and that the Basques are actually using democratic ways to forward their political goals but Spain won't allow it.

Here it is:

Constitutional Court rejects appeals from Basque parties ANV, AS

No appeals can be brought against the Court’s decision. The 133 lists of candidates of Basque Nationalist Action (ANV) and all candidates of Abertzale Sozialistak are banned from running in May 27 local elections.

Spain's Constitutional Court on Friday upheld a ban against hundreds of Basque candidates running in regional and local elections later this month because of links to the outlawed party Batasuna.

The tribunal was ratifying a Supreme Court ruling Sunday that barred all 246 candidate lists presented for May 27 election under the banner of Abertzale Sozialistak, or Basque Nationalist Socialists and 133 belonging to Accion Nacionalista Vasca, or Basque Nationalist Action.

The ban had been sought by the Socialist government and the state prosecutor's office, who claimed the candidates represented the outlawed party Batasuna.

"The Constitutional Court has backed our stance,'' Justice Minister Mariano Fernandez Bermejo told leading Cadena SER network. "Those who legally shouldn't be in the elections won't be."

There was no immediate reaction from Batasuna, which insists its participation is an essential condition for keeping alive a peace process that began with a so-called permanent cease-fire by ETA in March 2006.

Batasuna was outlawed in March 2003 on grounds that it was part of ETA. The government has said that if it wants to participate in elections it must abide by a law that obliges all parties to reject violence.


If you do not have a political party to vote for and you feel like all your political options are being denied by one of the states that occupy you land, what else is left for you if the international community refuses to do something about it?

By the way, the Basques rejected that same Constitution that is being used today to ban Basque political parties. Seems like they knew it was not of any good for them since then.

So, the next time you demand from the Basques to "give up violence" think again, is obvious that it is Spain the one that needs to give up its 5 centuries campaign of hate and violence against the Basque people.

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Aupa Etxebeste!

Here you have a review of the movie "Aupa Etxebeste" appeared at The Age:

Basking Basques enjoy family farce

May 11, 2007

The foibles of village life and a hunt for status have a lesson for all, a Spanish film director tells Craig Mathieson.

''APPEARANCES are important everywhere, but especially so in a small village," notes Spanish writer and director Asier Altuna, who is definitely speaking from experience. Born and raised in Bergara, a small hamlet in Basque country, his first feature - the wry comedy Aupa Etxebeste! - captures the farcical response that occurs when a family is too proud to bow down before the judgement of their friends and the gossip of their neighbours.

Naturally, when the film (released in Spain in 2005 and now showing in Melbourne as part of the 10th Spanish Film Festival) was finished, Altuna screened a print for his family and friends in Bergara, which had also served as the production's location. The response, he recalls, was uproarious, but afterwards, amid the congratulations, everyone had the same question: "Which family in the village did you base that on?"

The answer is none of them. The idea initially came to Altuna, now in his late 30s, several years ago, when he was in Bergara during the summer holiday season and half the village's inhabitants had shut up their homes and embarked on their status-conscious annual holiday. He idly wondered if it would be possible for a family to hide inside their house for the requisite month's break to save face and expense.

"When I began writing the story, I told my father the idea and he told me that it actually happened - not in our village, of course, but in the next one," Altuna says, speaking through an interpreter. "But if you go to the next village and ask them about it, they'll tell you it happened in the next village along. It's a modern Basque myth - the family that hid in their house because they couldn't afford to go away."

In Altuna's movie, co-directed by Telmo Esnal, the stakes are raised because the father of his fictional Etxebeste family is a candidate in the forthcoming mayoral elections. Patrizio Etxebeste (Ramon Aguirre) is a seemingly affluent local figure who picks up every tab in the local bar and frets at even the suggestion of a social slight, but with the closure of his family's textiles factory the conspicuous consumption of he and his wife, Maria Luisa (Elena Irureta), has bankrupted the family.

"A man without money is a walking corpse," remarks Patrizio's father, Luziano (Paco Sagarzazu), who bridles at his son's closure of the business he started. Desperate to avert the perceived shame, Patrizio packs up his family (completed by a teenage son) and they drive off on holiday, only to sneak back home that night to take refuge behind the drawn curtains and locked doors.

"The film is a critique about politics and people and the way that superficial things can have too much of an influence," explains Altuna. "I liked the idea of being able to combine that with a comedy."

While various producers pressed for an up-tempo farce, where discovery was a constant threat, Altuna and Esnal have made a more considered piece. Hidden away at home, with just each other for company, the Etxebeste clan come to their senses and lose their minds. They try to recreate a beach holiday in their lounge-room, while trapping pigeons for dinner on their terrace. But slowly the masks they present, to the village and each other, slip away.

"I wanted to unfold the characters, so the audience could truly understand them, instead of just laughing at the situation they've got themselves into," the director says.

Another distinguishing factor for the production is that it's made in Basque, not Spanish, the first feature so made in 18 years. More than 2 million Spaniards identify themselves as Basque - most of whom live in the three provinces that were declared an autonomous community within Spain under amendments to the country's constitution in 1978 - but only 600,000 or so speak the language.

"It limited the audience in one way, but we had an excellent response in Basque country and it had a far better attendance than we expected," Altuna says.

"Basque people really wanted to see a film made in their own language, although in the rest of Spain we were just a tiny independent release."

The filmmaker is adamant that his decision to make a feature in Basque was merely because he'd made his earlier short films in his native tongue. Nonetheless, given the armed struggle waged by Basque separatists in recent decades, and the earlier repression of Basque culture under the Franco dictatorship (the dilapidated Etxebeste factory in the film has the Spanish name Echeveste above the front door, because of now defunct regulations outlawing the use of Basque), some must have considered it a statement?

Altuna demurs: "I never intended to make a film only for Basque people," he explains. "I just wanted to tell a story that could be universally understood."

Altuna certainly considers himself a Spanish director, pleased at the breadth of titles Melburnians will see at the Spanish Film Festival, if somewhat unsure about the direction the Spanish film industry is taking.

"There are too many films made in Spain at the moment and a lot of them die after opening day because they can't reach an audience," he observes. "Because there's a lot of funding available, there's actually not enough script development. Films get made whether they're ready or not."


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Wednesday, May 09, 2007

Building Bridges

This article comes to us thanks to EITb:

IV World Congress of Basque Communities to take place in Bilbao

Under the motto Zubigintzan (Building Bridges), the IV World Congress of Basque Communities will gather for the first time in Bilbao representatives of the Basques abroad from July 9 to July 13, 2007.

The Basque Government, through the Directorate for Relations with Basque Communities, is organizing the IV World Congress that, under the motto of Zubigintzan (Building Bridges) will gather for the first time in Bilbao, representatives of the Basques abroad from July 9 to July 13, 2007.

As stated in Law 8/1994, every four years a World Congress will be held in order to promote the encounter and relations among the Basque Clubs and Communities (NABO, FEVA,...) and the Basque institutions. Three representatives from each country with a registered Federation of Basque Clubs, or from countries without a Federation but registered Basque Clubs will be attending as full right members. Up to now, three Congresses have been celebrated.

This IV Congress, under the motto Zubigintzan, will try to promote and open new communication ways among individuals, associations, companies and governments, building bridges in many different directions with the main goal of narrowing the distance between the Basque Country and its diaspora.

A document of conclusions will be written based on the deliberations of the Congress. These conclusions will be read before the Advisory Board of Basque Communities, for their consideration while elaborating the Four Year Institutional Action Plan 2008-2011.

All participants of the IV Congress of Basque Communities will have to fill the application form with their personal data before May the 10th, 2007. The three representatives of the countries with officially registered Basque Clubs will be the full right members of the Congress, as well as the special guests of the Lehendakari and the speakers.

The full program can be found on the website of the Basque Government.

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Tuesday, May 08, 2007

In Southampton

Nations must never forget their past in order to build their future. This article about the solidarity shown by individuals and organizations based in Scotland, Wales and England for the children of Euskal Herria is something that we can never forget. This article regarding the operation that saved thousands of youngsters from Fascism comes to us courtesy of EITb:

Southampton commemorates anniversary of Gernika children's arrival

Nearly 4,000 refugee children arrived in Southampton in May 1937 aboard the steamship Habana, while the Basque region was being attacked by General Franco and his German allies during the Spanish Civil War.

Basque children who 70 years ago fled Nazi bombs to find sanctuary in Britain are to be reunited in Southampton on Saturday 26 May.

Nearly 4,000 refugee children arrived in Southampton in May 1937 aboard the steamship Habana. It sailed from Bilbao with a Royal Navy escort while the Basque region was being attacked by General Franco and his Nazi German allies during the Spanish Civil War.

The arrival of the Habana on 23 May 1937 remains to this day the largest ever single influx of refugees into Britain. The town of Gernika had been destroyed by Hitler’s Condor Legion only a few weeks earlier. The bombing sparked a public outcry that persuaded a reluctant British government to accept the refugees, who were cared for entirely by volunteers.

This year's commemoration at the Southampton Solent University Conference Centre will be attended by surviving refugee children who settled in Britain along with several of the children who returned home. Some of those travelling from the Basque Country will retrace their voyage of 70 years ago by crossing the Bay of Biscay by ferry.

The commemoration will be attended by representatives of the Spanish government and the Basque regional government, as well as by local MPs and dignitaries and the children and grandchildren of the refugees. A plaque recording the anniversary will be unveiled by the representative of the Spanish government.

The event is being organised by the Basque Children of ’37 Association UK, a charity run by the children and their descendants. The commemoration begins at 11am at the Southampton Solent University Conference Centre (157-187 Above Bar Street, Southampton SO14 7NN).

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Saturday, May 05, 2007

Basurko Back in Bilbao

This article comes to us thanks to SeaSailSurf:

Velux 5 OCEANS : Bilbao and Euskadi celebrate with Unai Basurko • Basque skipper returns home

Saturday 5 May 2007

Even a huge thunder storm with lightening and hail couldn’t dampen the mood in Bilbao (Basque Country, Spain) this morning. The Basque people came out in their thousands to hail their local hero, Unai Basurko, as he completed the VELUX 5 OCEANS around the world yacht race. With hundreds of boats out on the water and thousands lining the shore along the entire river entrance, a jubilant Basurko celebrated a podium finish, beating Sir Robin Knox-Johnston into third place in the overall rankings. Although he finished fourth in the third leg from Norfolk, Virginia (USA), behind the British sailing legend, he managed to arrive in time to secure third.

As Basurko crossed the finish line at 10:03 local time (08:03 GMT), a flotilla of hundreds followed the Basque skipper up to the Puente Colgante bridge, Basurko’s spiritual landmark, before returning to the port of Gexto. Thousands of fans lined the route and welcomed their hero into Gexto. 158 days, 18 hours and 25 minutes after leaving home, a proud Basurko jumped off PAKEA and joined the elite group of people who have sailed around the world alone. He is the only rookie to have completed The Ultimate Solo Challenge in this edition, a testament to his dedication and passion for his sport.

Speaking from the crowded marina in Gexto, Basurko commented, “I am very pleased to be on land and to see so many friendly places. It has been such an amazing welcome home. I have done it! I have done it! It is a moment that you imagine during the entire journey, normally with sunshine, certainly not with strong winds and rain. To see so many people despite the weather and the big seas is brilliant. It shows that the people have engaged with the race and understand how difficult it is to sail around the world. I am the rookie of the race, and with so little time to prepare my boat I never expected to get to Fremantle let alone finish third. I have overcome all the problems and gone from nothing to everything.”

“I hadn’t seen land since America, I didn’t see Galicia or Asturias because of the cloud, so the first land I saw was my home, the Basque Country. It was very emotional arriving here. PAKEA left but PAKEA returned. You have to enjoy it and be part of it. There are lots of bad moments, but for every bad moment there are three or four good moments. This is the best moment and thinking of coming home has kept me going through the hardest points.”

David Adams, Race Director of the VELUX 5 OCEANS, added, “Unai’s spectacular arrival marks the end of what has been an incredible race since day one. The Basque people have taken this race and our skippers into their hearts and it was fitting that we should celebrate the end of the race with Unai’s arrival and his podium finish. Unai is a young skipper and has constantly improved as the race continued and he got to know his boat. He certainly deserves the third place finish and the welcome he received from Bilbao was very much deserved.”

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Friday, May 04, 2007

Scotland's Pro Independence Party

This article published by the Baku Sun shows that the Spaniards flat out lie each time they say that the Basques are the only Europeans seeking independence for their nation:

Scots to vote for independence-seeking party

by David Stringer
EDINBURGH, Scotland — Scotland this week marks the 300th anniversary of the day it united with England to give birth to Great Britain. Yet as it observes the milestone, Scots are poised to hand a resounding election victory to a party that vows to dismantle the union.

For Treasury Chief Gordon Brown, the proud Scotsman preparing to succeed Tony Blair as Britain’s prime minister in the coming months, there’s a bitter irony: With his moment of triumph in sight, his homeland may be slipping from his grasp.

Latest polls show the Scottish National Party is set to sweep elections to Scotland’s regional government on Thursday, claiming a mandate to chart a path toward an eventual split. The party, which has pledged an independence referendum by 2010, dreams of an independent nation matching the economic successes of neighboring and similarly populated Ireland and Norway, rather than relying on heavy subsidies from London. At the heart of the matter is the nature of nationhood at a time when the European Union — an even broader umbrella — might be seen as a guarantor of peace and prosperity no less great than Britain. And while Scotland would not have automatic entry, few believe it wouldn’t ultimately join the now 27-member club.

There are significant economic subplots. With independence, Scotland would control lucrative oil and natural gas reserves in the North Sea. The SNP also promises drastic corporate tax cuts that would attract foreign investment and, it claims, transform Scotland into a Tartan Tiger on par with Ireland’s Celtic Tiger. Brown and the governing Labour Party, however, say breaking free would wreck the Scottish economy. The territory lags behind England economically and benefits far more from British public spending than it contributes in national taxes.

And it would be a humiliation for Labour to have presided over the breakup of Great Britain — even though the English and the Scots share a surprising antipathy last demonstrated in the widespread refusal of Scots to support the beleaguered England soccer team at the 2006 World Cup.

Will a divorce take place? Perhaps not so fast. Despite the SNP’s growing support, an independent Scotland may yet remain far off — as it has been in Spain’s Basque country, which has had broad powers of self-rule since the late 1970s.

Polls show that less than a third of Scots currently want to leave the union, and even SNP party activists acknowledge rancor over Blair’s 10-year premiership is helping their cause as much as a desire for independence. Fueling the SNP’s success has been dissent over the Iraq war and domestic policies Scots feel have stunted the territory’s economic growth.

But a booming, independent Scotland is the vision SNP leader Alex Salmond sells to shopkeepers as he darts between stores in the border town of Selkirk, the historic spot where William Wallace, the famed patriot who resisted English occupation, was named guardian of Scotland — or de facto head of state — in 1298. Unlike the legendary outlaw given Hollywood treatment in the movie “Braveheart,” Salmond claims efficient governance will prove a Scotland ruled by his party can manage the nation’s affairs without interference from London.

“This is about having a chance to show what we can do as an administration,” Salmond said. “Then, in 2010 we’ll ask the voters of Scotland for their permission, in a referendum, to move forward to independence.”

Polls suggest his party will claim the largest share of seats in Scotland’s 129-member parliament and form a coalition government — probably with the Liberal Democrats, who have previously sided with governing Labour. Results of the ballot held every four years are expected to be called from the early hours of Friday. Labour has been the largest party since Scotland’s parliament was established in 1999, following an overwhelming vote in favor of a domestic legislative body in 1997. It has never run second in a Scottish poll since 1955.

Scotland’s parliament passes laws on education, health and justice and can alter income tax in Scotland by 3 pence (6 U.S. cents; 4.5 euro cent) in every pound, but London retains primacy on all matters relating to Britain as a whole — including defense, energy and foreign relations.

Lawmakers and analysts claim Blair may have brought Thursday’s predicted defeat upon himself — by failing to foresee his move to devolve some powers to Scotland would take root and trigger renewed debate about ties to England. If Scotland’s parliament is “good enough to look after health and education, why not the economy or foreign policy?” pondered Salmond, already a House of Commons lawmaker and hoping to win a Holyrood seat and lead the Scottish authority. Actor Sean Connery is the party’s leading celebrity supporter and claims “there will never be a better opportunity than now,” to move toward independence, lending his distinct Scottish burr to a campaign video.

Convincing voters of the need for secession will take more than movie star endorsements, pollsters claim. John Curtice, politics professor at Scotland’s Strathcylde University, says support for separation has hovered at 30 percent for decades. But by delaying a Scottish referendum until 2010, he said, Salmond will aim to use quarrels with London to prove the case for separation. “If London continually says no to Holyrood (as the parliament is known)the SNP will hope they’ve proven Scotland needs self-governance,” said Curtice.

Salmond’s chief foe will be Brown, who has launched an urgent defense of Great Britain, telling an Edinburgh rally any split would leave Scotland bankrupt and marginalized on the world stage. Voters aiming to use Scottish elections to sting Blair will cause an enormous headache for his successor, said analyst Phil Cowley, handing him a mischievous neighbor who could undermine Brown’s authority ahead of national polls in 2009 or 2010. “He has always seen Scotland as his fiefdom,” Cowley said. “When you do badly in the fiefdom, you suffer.”

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Thursday, May 03, 2007

A Bountiful Land

This article comes to us via EITb:

Basque Gastronomy : Produce from the land

05/03/2007

The queen of fruits in Euskadi is undoubtedly the apple, which forms the base of stewed apples with dried fruits, eaten at Christmas and is also used in cider production.

Although agriculture was late in coming to the Basque Country, during the last twenty-five years the Basques have used produce from the land in their every-day cooking especially pulses and cereals, without forgetting fruit and vegetables

One of the most highly-esteemed products were the broad beans which, fresh or dried, were, because of their high calorific value, one of the cornerstones of humble, every-day cooking.

Kidney beans, which originally came from overseas were included later in the Basque diet, together with potatoes and maize. However, the two different varieties, red in the north and white in the south, soon took root in our cuisine either on their own, with cabbage or as a base for succulent and filling stews.

Cornflour also gave rise to essential products which have formed a part of every day cooking such as fine tarts, "talos" or "morokil", a sweetened mixture of cornflour and milk.

Potatoes were also a great find for Basque cuisine. People from Bizkaia are terribly proud of the role which the potato plays in "marmitako", a stew made of tuna and potatoes.

Peas, beans and other types of vegetables are used to create mixed vegetable dishes, ratatouille and leaf-beet stalks which are stuffed and battered. Other vegetables such as the cardoon, prepared with almonds and a light, creamy sauce are present during christmas cooking. And we must not forget leeks with the delicious thick soup called "porrusalda" which is made from them.

Red peppers, both fresh and dried, form the basis of legendary recepies such as Bizkaian cod. And we should not forget the delicate and tasty hot peppers, one of the basic elements both of new Basque recipes and traditional "piperradas".

The queen of fruits in Euskadi is undoubtedly the apple, which forms the base of stewed apples with dried fruits, eaten at Christmas and is also used in cider production. Baked apples also make a perfect pudding. Another fruit of which many varieties can be found in the Basque Country, is the chestnut.

Just as with cherries and walnuts, their production has dropped considerably as a result of the substitution of autochtonous trees for others, which are more productive (such as pine, used for wood production), but they have not been forgotten.

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Tuesday, May 01, 2007

Gernika's Sapling in Elko

The Tree of Gernika is a strong identity symbols for the Basque people around the world, this is why there is an effort to bring a sapling of the original tree to each corner of the globe were a Basque community is located. This article found at the Elko Daily tells us about the one in that city:

Tree of Gernika sapling takes root in Elko

By JARED DuBACH - Lifestyles Editor
Monday, April 30, 2007 3:02 PM PDT

ELKO — Amid the distinct sound of Basque tongues and the wafting aroma of grilling lamb chops, members of the Elko Basque Club, friends and family gathered Saturday at the Basque Clubhouse to dedicate a recently planted sapling from the Tree of Gernika.

Event coordinator Jess Lopategui said the tree represents hundreds of thousands of years of freedom.

“The government was based on honesty and hard work,” Lopategui said.

Gernika was a major hub for the Basque country. Meetings were held and treaties signed under the vast groves of oak trees that grew around the city. Each new king of Spain would travel to the Basque country to uphold the old treaty, which said the Basques would hold loyalty to the king as long as they were free to govern themselves.

Eventually, the sheltered tree would be the only thing standing after the German Condor Legion bombed Gernika on April 26, 1937.

Lopategui said the club is also working on planting another tree — an aspen to commemorate the importance of Basque shepherds. Aspen trunks with Basque names and icons carved into them are already at the clubhouse, waiting to be arranged with the tree.

After Lopategui’s speech, the crowd was led by Maite Moiola in the song “Gernikako Arbola.” Moiola said she was born in Bermeo, Biscaya, but feels closer to the old country now that the sapling has been planted at the clubhouse.

“I’ve sung this song for a long time,” Moiola said.

Another sapling from the Tree of Gernika was planted in the Elko Peace Park Thursday in memory of the bombing’s 70th anniversary.

Bob Echeverria said the planting of the saplings in Elko is a good thing because the Tree of Gernika is an important part of Basque tradition and culture.

Mayor Mike Franzoia said descendants of the tree have been planted all around the world by Basques in their yards to help keep the Tree of Gernika alive, both philosophically and literally, in the event the main tree dies from disease. Many are in Boise, which is where the saplings at the clubhouse and in the Elko Peace Park originated.

The Basque government recently sent a message to Basques worldwide to promote peace and human rights.

For 90-year-old Mary Etcheberry, the bombing of Gernika had a lasting effect on her life. Etcheberry was teaching in France as a young woman when the bombing occurred. From France, Etcheberry went to Italy and onto the United States in 1940, where she first married Frank Jayo and later Sam Etcheberry.

“This is something nice,” Etcheberry said of the ceremony. “I came here to celebrate this.”

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