Web Attack Against Ibarretxe

What would you know?

Rodríguez Zapatero is now resorting to a shady web of pro-Aznar thugs to carry out his dirty campaign against the Basque Autonomous Community's president, Juan José Ibarretxe.

Here you have the note from the San Jose Mercury News:

Basque government president's invite sparks dissent via Web

By Lisa M. Krieger
Mercury News
Article Launched: 01/26/2008 01:34:19 AM PST

Vehement protest has greeted the decision by Stanford University to invite the controversial president of Spain's Basque regional government to speak on campus.

Juan José Ibarretxe is author of a hotly debated proposal for a referendum on independence for the mountainous region of northern Spain.

While resistance to a Feb. 14 seminar with Ibarretxe started on campus, much of the mounting pressure comes from the other side of the world.

A globally circulated online petition with more than 3,500 signatures holds names of people far outside the Stanford community, including a European Parliament member and the sister of a Sevilla official assassinated by ETA, a Basque terrorist group. Even Spain's regional government of Navarra has weighed in, sending a letter of protest to Stanford President John Hennessy.

Campus dissent is nothing new, but technology is delivering regional disputes to college door stoops. Speaker selection is traditionally an internal affair, protected by policies of academic freedom.

Because of the Internet, "Spaniards can easily bring their feelings to bear. They don't even need an envelope and a stamp," said University of California-Berkeley school of journalism Professor William J. Drummond.

In Stanford's tiny Spanish community, there is no consensus on the visit, said Manuel Franco Sevilla, president of Iberia, the Spanish students association at Stanford.

Nor does the average student hold a strong opinion. "I don't think the general population of students at Stanford are really aware of this visit," Sevilla said.

The international protesters say that Ibarretxe does not deserve a platform at Stanford because he calls for a referendum on Basque independence from Spain and France. His visit - coming on the eve of Spanish elections - is politically motivated, they say. They criticize the professor who invited Ibarretxe, saying he shares the president's ideologies.

The petition opposing his visit was organized by a graduate student at Stanford, who asked not to be identified due to fear of reprisals against his family in Spain, and software engineer José Manuel Camporro of San Jose, who grew up in the Basque city of Vitoria and came to California four years ago.

"It's not a free speech issue," said Camporro. "I agree it is important to get informed about any situation or opinion, but there are always good and not so good sources of information. When a professor invites a politician of his same ideology during the election process, that's not academic anymore."

"Stanford chose to invite one of the most prominent representatives of the regional neo-nationalism in Spain," he said. "Most of the Basque population lives in fear. We can't speak freely there, and that's why it is funny that anybody mentions 'free speech' regarding Mr. Ibarretxe."

Stanford Provost John Etchemendy, of Basque descent, responds that a college campus is a place for all views to be aired, and that even unpopular views deserve a platform.

Stanford professor of Spanish and Portuguese Joan Ramon Resina defended the event, titled "A Proposal To Transform the Basque Conflict" and sponsored by the Freeman Spogli Institute for International Studies. He says that Ibarretxe's popularity is proven by continuous victories at the polls. Ibarretxe's party has governed the region since 1936, interrupted only by the Franco dictatorship, he said.

"This is hard to accept by political opponents, whose level of tolerance is so low that they cannot countenance a formal address by Mr. Ibarretxe at a prestigious university," Resina said.

Worried about the increasing number of universities that have rescinded invitations issued to outside speakers, in July the American Association of University Professors reaffirmed its official policy, saying "the freedom to hear is an essential condition of a university community and an inseparable part of academic freedom."

Within the past five years, Harvard University was pressed to cancel an Irish poet; the College of the Holy Cross in Massachusetts canceled a speech by a British cleric. Colorado College and the University of Colorado were urged to cancel a leading Palestinian representative. The visit by Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad to Columbia University last year triggered a deluge of e-mails and phone calls to university President Lee Bollinger.

Protest has a long and healthy tradition on college campuses, said UC-Berkeley's Drummond.

What's changed, he said, are the global complaints of Internet-posted petitions.

"People can register their feelings in a concerted way," said Drummond. "The Web has proved to be great for organizing widely separated communities."

Yes indeed, the web is an amazing tool, and in the hands of reactionary individuals like this Camporro character it can become a dangerous weapon.

Now, I stand corrected, Provost Etchemendy is proving to be an all-weather Basque, my respect to his work and his courage.

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