Basque Political Prisoners Join Boycott Against Israel

This article was published at Workers World:

Movement spreads to boycott Israel

Kathy Durkin

The Palestinian Unified Call for Boycott, Divestment and Sanctions (BDS) against Israel is taking hold and growing in unions, universities and among political forces on many continents.

A worldwide focus is organizing for March 30—Global Boycott, Divestment and Sanctions Action Day—when progressive forces are being asked to carry out concrete, strong protests to further this key campaign in solidarity with the Palestinian people.
www.pflp.ps

Many exciting actions and commitments to the BDS campaign have taken place within the last month.

Inspiring activists worldwide, Basque political prisoners at France’s Fresnes jail strongly spoke out for the people of Gaza, despite threats of reprisal. They avowed, “We, Basque political prisoners, refuse to buy [Israeli] products [in the canteen] [to] show our solidarity with [the] Palestinian people.” (www.bdsmovement.net)

On Boycott Israel Day, Feb. 14, picket lines circled grocery stores throughout Denmark. Protesters targeted produce sold by Israeli companies, especially Carmel Agrexco, Israel’s biggest exporter of fruits and vegetables, which are grown in occupied Palestine.

The city of Stockholm, Sweden, has terminated an agreement with Veolia Transport because it is connected to a tramway project in Israel.

The BDS call has swept through Norway’s union movement. Six top Norwegian unions and many organizations are calling for a campaign to end state investments in Israel. The Union of Trade and Office Workers, Norway’s biggest union of store workers, has called on its members’ employers to stop purchasing Israeli goods.

The Norwegian Trade Unions confederation, which represents 20 percent of the country’s population, condemned Israel’s bombing and invasion of Gaza and called for strong protests. (More than 28 cities were sites of protests during the siege.) This union also expressed solidarity with COSATU when South African dockworkers refused to unload an Israeli ship last month.

Italy’s largest metalworkers’ union, the FIOM, representing 360,000 members, has called for war crimes’ trials for Israeli officials for the Gaza siege. The union also demands agreements be terminated between Israel and Italy, and between Israel and the European Union.

An academic boycott of “all Israeli institutions participating in the occupation [of Gaza]” was announced in a call by many French academics, who are promoting a wide scale BDS campaign and want to see war crimes’ trials for Israeli leaders.

The Consumers Association of Turkey called for a nationwide boycott of Israeli, U.S. and British goods that are sold by companies that “openly declare their support and cooperation to Israel [and] the ones that transfer funds to [the] Israeli Army.” Among companies listed are Coca-Cola, Pepsi-Cola, Starbucks, McDonald’s and Burger King. (bdsmovement.net)

The Association of Social Workers of Mauritius has called for the removal of Israeli products, including food and medicines, from store shelves and for a boycott.

University workers’ delegates in the Ontario branch of the Canadian Union of Public Employees, which represents 200,000 public sector workers, just passed a resolution which calls for an academic boycott of Israel. It calls for an educational campaign on Israel’s “apartheid,” asks the union to back the BDS movement, and more.

The Australia BDS campaign has picked up steam, especially in recent weeks in Sydney. There have been direct actions, campus organizing and strategizing on long-term campaigns. A key target is Max Brenner Chocolates, an Israeli-owned company in the transnational Strauss group, which supports the IDF’s Golani brigade, notorious for its ruthless offensives in Gaza, the West Bank and Lebanon.

And as of March 1, the city of Tulkarem, which is in the Occupied West Bank, is initiating an all-out boycott of Israeli food and other products.

March 1-8 will be the fifth annual Israeli Apartheid Week. It will be commemorated with cultural events and protests in the Occupied West Bank at universities and refugee camps, and in cities worldwide. Activities will help to build the BDS campaign under the theme of “Standing United with the People of Gaza.” (stopthewall.org)

Articles copyright 1995-2009 Workers World. Verbatim copying and distribution of this entire article is permitted in any medium without royalty provided this notice is preserved.

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Boycott Against Israeli Products

This article was published at the Worker's World page:

Movement grows to boycott israeli products

Published Feb 23, 2009 10:12 PM

Furious at Israel’s horrific siege of Gaza and inspired by the courageous people of Gaza, workers, students and progressive activists are organizing sit-ins, demonstrations and other acts of solidarity with the Palestinian people.

Many groups are getting on board and endorsing the Palestinian-led call for an international campaign for boycott, divestment and sanctions (BDS) against Israel.

From South Africa, where union dockworkers heroically refused to unload an Israeli ship, to Irish activists, Basque unionists and students in Britain and the United States, momentum is growing in the struggle to cut ties to Israel.

Students across Britain, including Palestinian and Arab youth, have taken direct action and occupied 21 campuses to protest Israel’s military assaults on Gaza and to demand their schools end links to the Zionist state and to the British weapons maker BAE Systems, which arms Israel.

In London, students held sit-ins at Goldsmith University and the London School of Economics, among others. Similar protests spread through England to Birmingham, Sussex, Norwich, Warwick, Oxford, Leeds, Cambridge and elsewhere. Some protests have won concessions from university officials.

At Manchester University, 1,000 students equated Israel with apartheid-era South Africa and called on the administration and student union to boycott Israeli companies and support Gaza and the BDS movement. The student union agreed.

Strong sit-ins have been held in Scotland at the universities of Dundee, Glasgow, Edinburgh and at Strathclyde.

Other solidarity actions continue. British MP George Galloway and 300 volunteers left Ramsgate Feb. 14 in a 110-vehicle caravan, whose vans, fire truck and ambulances were filled with community-donated food, medicine, clothes and toys to be donated in Gaza. Viva Palestine, Stop the War Coalition, Muslim groups and trade unions organized this 5,000-mile journey.

Irish organizations join BDS campaign

The Irish Congress of Trade Unions, with 600,000 members in 55 unions, is prepared to start a boycott of Israeli goods. The Jan. 31 Irish Times carried a full-page ad, headlined “Irish Call for Justice for Palestine,” sponsored by the Ireland Palestine Solidarity Campaign. Its 350 signers called for the Irish government and people to boycott Israeli products and to support the BDS campaign.

When thousands of Irish marchers in Derry commemorated the 37th anniversary of Bloody Sunday—when British soldiers killed 14 unarmed people in 1972—they carried 1,000 Palestinian flags in tribute to the Palestinians killed by Israeli bombs in Gaza. The names of children killed were posted at the Children’s Wall. Sinn Fein’s banner read, “Solidarity with People of Gaza, Stop the Blockade.”

Welsh activists were arrested in Swansea at a Tesco’s grocery store after they seized produce grown on illegally occupied Palestinian land. The media reported their message calling on Wales’ people to support a countrywide boycott of Israeli goods.

Demonstrations in more than 30 cities in Basque Country, with 30,000 participants, have called for BDS and linked the Basque and Palestinian struggles. Trade unions joined a Bilbao demonstration calling for a boycott of Israel. Ten municipalities called for breaking ties to Israel.

In Catalonia, protesters leapt onto a basketball court to disrupt a Barcelona-Maccabi (Tel Aviv) game, waving Palestinian flags and signs saying “Boycott Israel.”

Professors and university employees in Quebec also endorsed the Palestinian Federation of Unions of University Professors and Employees’ call to boycott Israel.

The BDS campaign is growing in the U.S. As Hampshire College students successfully campaigned for school divestment from Israel, a University of Rochester sit-in was organized by Students for a Democratic Society. They demanded no school ties to U.S. and Israeli militarism in the Middle East and aid for Gaza schools. Iraq Veterans against the War and Rochester Against War took part.

Macalester College students occupied the Minnesota Trade Office in St. Paul last month, then picketed there on Feb. 6, demanding that the state end all trade with Israel.

And New York University students began a divestment campaign at their school.

A 24-hour demonstration outside the World Zionist Organization’s New York office, from Feb. 12-13, drew 900 Jewish activists. Jews Say No targeted Israel’s blockade of Gaza and the ongoing occupation and demanded justice for the Palestinians.

Meanwhile, thousands of e-mail endorsements from the U.S., Canada and worldwide have poured in to the Jews in Solidarity with Palestine campaign. (See IACenter.org)

A cultural boycott is also underway. Chicago protesters wearing bandages stained with red paint, symbolizing Palestinian casualties, recently picketed the Israeli Batsheva Dance Company. The International Solidarity Movement and the Palestinian Campaign for the Academic and Cultural Boycott of Israel plan protests wherever the dance company performs.

The Palestinian BDS National Committee has issued an international call for a Global Day of Action in Solidarity with the Palestinian people and for concrete and bold BDS actions on March 30 to make this mobilization “a historic step forward in the new movement.”

Articles copyright 1995-2009 Workers World. Verbatim copying and distribution of this entire article is permitted in any medium without royalty provided this notice is preserved.

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Embers

I found this poem by Mac McKinney at Op Ed News:

Reviving the Embers of Guernica, a Poem

by Mac McKinney

Every now and then there are these iconic moments in the history of the planet that become monuments to man's inhumanity to man (and woman). One such has always been Guernica, the hapless Basque town that was bombed into rubble by the German Luftwaffe Condor Legion and Italian Fascist Aviazione Legionaria in 1936 in support of Franco's Nationalist war against Republican forces, and also, apparently, as collective punishment by the Germans for the death of one of their pilots nearby. It was the first city demolished from the air and set the precedent for bombing civilian populations. Picasso immortalized Guernica with his painting of the same name.

There have been other iconic Guernicas since then, where whole cities are sacrificed to the dogs of war in collective punishment for rebelling against the powerful, such as, just recently in Iraq, the city of Fallujah. Now we have Gaza.

I am not a painter, but I can spin a few lines of poetry, so below is a poem I wrote about this ongoing slaughter. Furthermore, the whole world is invited to express themselves about the outrage of Gaza through the arts.

Reviving the Embers of Guernica

by Mac McKinney

The ashes of Guernica are stirring again.

The embers of ruins are glowing again,

whispering the name of Gaaazaaa.

***

The ghostly Luftwaffe is flying again,

searing and blackening the skies overhead,

launching its terror on Gaza.

The Fascist race is marching again,

teaching new Basques a lesson again,

hundreds for one, their formula.

***

The plotting board is bristling again

with targets for bloodlust and suffering again.

Struggle is futile, bombs hammer.

***

The well-dressed men are dissembling again,

masking their sadism with speeches again,

blaming the victim's resistance.

***

The cries of children are echoing again.

The shrieks of women piercing ears again,

while buildings collapse throughout Gaza.

Somewhere an artist is stirring again,

savagery moving his hand again

Excellent poem, moving, hopefully people will finally understand that violence has never been the answer.

By the way, this is what the author tells us about himself:

Student of history, religion, exoteric and esoteric, the Humanities in general and advocate for peace, justice and the unity of humankind, not through force, but through self-realization and mutual respect. I have also just come out with my first book, a combination of poetry, photography and essays entitled "Post Katrina Blues", my reflections on the Gulf Coast and New Orleans two years after Katrina struck. Go to the store at http://sanfranciscobaypress.com/ to purchase.

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Food for Nahr El Bared

This note comes to us thanks to Relief Web:

Basque Government donation aids food security in Nahr El Bared

The Basque Government has contributed US$192,308 over the past year towards UNRWA's Relief and Early Recovery Appeal to provide humanitarian relief work for 27,000 refugees displaced from Nahr El Bared Camp.

The donation was used to procure food items between September 2007 and August 2008, to complement the food assistance for displaced refugee families from Nahr El Bared.

The project contributed to the ongoing UNRWA intervention to ensure food security for all of the families from Nahr El Bared and ensure that all of the families affected by the Nahr el-Bared conflict are able to maintain basic nutritional standards. Addressing the problem of food accessibility, potentially reduces the burden on overstretched healthcare providers, and relieves tensions amongst the community. It also allows families to redeploy their resources towards restoring their livelihood.

This project was part of the Emergency Appeal, which ran from September 2007 to 31 August 2008. UNRWA is seeking further support from donors for Nahr El Bared and launched the Recovery and Early Recovery Appeal in September 2008. This is an appeal for $42.7 million to maintain temporary services- up to December 2009 – for the displaced pending reconstruction. Interventions include temporary shelter for 16,000 refugees and emergency food rations for all 27,000 displaced as well as other essential services such as temporary healthcare, education, water and sanitation.

The first stages of a major reconstruction and recovery effort of Nahr el-Bared camp – to rebuild the camp and allow displaced refugees to return to their homes – are now underway. A phased approach to reconstruction is planned, through which families will begin to return to their homes inside the camp by the end of 2009. The reconstruction is due to be completed by mid-2011.

Just in case you want to know, Nahr el-Bared is a Palestinian refugee camp located in northern Lebanon.

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Jewish Blogger Supports Hitler's King

There is a Jewish blogger by the name of Joe Gandelman who did everything he could to win the "Basque-phobe of the week" award some months ago.

This week him and his underlings have been posting about how McCain (the Republican candidate to the US presidency) dislikes Zapatero.

Thanks to the tag Spain at the bottom of one of his posts I was able to find one from last November in which Joe Gandelman has nothing but accolades and compliments for Juan Carlos Borbon, the king of Spain.

Admiring a power figure that belongs in the middle ages is bad enough, but to admire an individual that rose to power thanks to the meddling of two of Europe's worst dictators is too much.

How did this happen?

Simple.

Back in 1936 a military coup d'etat against Spain's democratically elected government was staged by an dimwit little man called Francisco Franco. The rebellion was bound to fail until Adolph Hitler and Benito Mussolini decided to support Franco and his followers. Thanks to an air bridge set in place by Hitler's Luftwaffe Franco's troops were able to leave Africa. With the military aid provided by the two fascist powers Franco was able to win a long and devastating war. He then proceeded to rule Spain with an iron fist, unleashing a genocidal campaign against everyone who opposed him. After the death of Admiral Carrero Blanco at the hands of Basque freedom fighters his only other option to perpetuate his government was to impose the figure of the king to the Spaniards in the person of Juan Carlos Borbon.

So, if it hasn't been for Hitler's support Franco would have failed in his military uprising, and if it hasn't been for Franco's decision to name him king, Juan Carlos could have never been back to Spain's throne. So in all reality, Borbon has to thank Hitler for the life of luxury and unchecked power he and his family enjoy today.

This is what Joe Gandelman (a Jewish that supports the Zionist occupation of Palestine) thinks of Juan Carlos (a man who is king thanks to Hitler) and how he came to power :

When I lived in and wrote from Spain between May 1975 and December 1978, I had the supreme pleasure of a lifetime, to live in a wonderful country that, before my astounded journalistic eyes, made a peaceful “evolution without revolution” transition to democracy from the dictatorship of General Francisco Franco.

And most Spaniards agreed there was one seemingly-quiet and above-the-fray man who had the guts to help make it happen — perhaps more than anyone else.

Evolution without revolution? More like a pact of complicity and silence to ensure that non of the high profile members of Franco's regime would ever be prosecuted for their crimes against humankind.

Joe Gandelman's intellect is so limited that he thinks that there can be democracy where there is a king. When a country is ruled by an individual who is above the law that applies for the rest of the citizens there can never be a democracy, it is called a monarchy.

The guts? Borbon had Spain's armed forces backing him up, who needs guts?

To this day, he still doesn’t get the credit that so many Spanish journalists and foreign diplomats (who would talk about it privately from 1975-1978) gave him. He navigated his country, and what some felt was a reluctant and potentially resistant military, through the dangers of shifting a nation and its establishment towards democratic elections and to until-then-taboo more relaxed social values.

Spanish journalists and foreign diplomats worked together on a propaganda campaign to sanitize Franco's regime, which included to clean up Juan Carlos Borbon's act. After the war and despite having provided Hitler with his limited support (Spain's military was not up to task) during the war, Francisco Franco became an important ally for the USA in its "cold war" against the USSR. So the US based news agencies were quick to implement a campaign to divest Francisco Franco of its unholly alliance with the Axis and make him look like a palladin of capitalism against the communist threat. And that is exactly what Joe Gandelman is doing today, to continue to convince people that Franco was not than bad after all.

The military obeyed Franco, the military knew there was a reason for Franco to name Borbon his succeso, Borbon was educated in military intitutions, the military knew some steps had to be taken to release some pressure, the military was part of the plan to "transform" Spain into a democracy, the military knew that there can not be true democracy when the figure of a king is imposed to a society by you guessed it, the military.

I hope you are ready for this:

And the bottom line is that King Juan Carlos, handpicked by Franco (who was widely believed to have thought KJC would be pliable to the kind of establishment he had in place when he was living) risked it all. He stood at the middle of an incredibly-dramatic and dangerous period of democratic evolution and never blinked in the face of rightist and leftist resistance (sometimes manifesting itself in sporadic violent acts).

Franco took Juan Carlos (notice who Gandelman insists of capitalizing the word king being that he is the citizen of a republic one would expect less submission to such an anachronistic figure).

Rightist resistance? He represented and represents the right! Who else can represent the right more than a king educated in military institutions?

Now check this one out:

When I was there everyone knew that the easiest way to halt the democratic evolution would have been for someone to rub “El Rey” out.

But the King was a toughie. He persisted, and democratic Spain had a man on the inside who could have resisted the change but instead quietly did what he could do to encourage and consolidate it.

Gandelman is tip-toeing around the fake coup d'etat staged by Borbon's closest friends, the one that people like him hail as the pivotal moment in which Borbon "proved" his unflenching compromise with democracy.

Maybe Gandelman could care to explain to us how is it that non of those who took part in the "coup d'etat" against Borbon was sentenced to the firing squad. Another compromise to advance towards peace and transition leaving behind "the hatred that divided the nation"? More like a covert operation to remind the Spaniards that Borbon could summon the military at any time he pleased, a stark reminder for every one to stay put and keep quiet, like in Franco's times.

The post continues with Gandelman's "moderate" view about the consequences of having an authoritarian ruler like Borbon ordering an elected Latin American president to shut up, until he says this:

But Juan Carlos KNOWS what REAL fascists were like.

Of course, he is one.

Did you know that Juan Carlos Borbon was the "de facto" ruler of Spain even before Franco's death?

Did you know that he co-signed many of Franco's death sentences against those prosecuted for opposing Franco's regime?



Note: I do not link back to Joe Gandelman for one simple reasons, he does not allow my comments at this blog, so this is the way I excerzise my right to reply.

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Oxford's Comfort

When one hears of Oxford one thinks of excellence in education.

Then you read the article titled "Basque discomfort" at Oxford Analytica and you start to doubt it.

This is what they say about themselves:

About us

Company Profile

Oxford Analytica is an international, independent consulting firm drawing on a network of over 1,000 senior faculty members at Oxford and other major universities and research institutions around the world.

Impressive, over one thousand of them, so, let us analyze the article:

Basque discomfort

Basque Regional President Juan Jose Ibarretxe of the moderate Basque Nationalist Party will attempt to trigger on Tuesday a referendum on Basque autonomy, when he appeals to the European Court of Human Rights over the Spanish Constitutional Court’s decision to outlaw the referendum.

Ibarretxe first floated the idea of a “consultation” in September last year, and narrowly passed it in the regional parliament only with the support of a parliamentarian thought to be close to Basque terrorist group ETA. The Basque branch of the nationally ruling Socialist party (PSOE) and the main national opposition party (PP) rejected the idea, and appealed to the Constitutional Court. The Court ruled in favour of the national parties, saying that only the central government could call such a referendum.

September last year?

For the love of Pete, Ibarretxe has been talking about a referendum, consultation or whatever you want to call it since at least 2003. Something tells me that the author started doing research about the issue less than a year ago, a week perhaps.

The vote, scheduled for October 25, was to ask whether to have enter a dialogue with ETA, and whether to hold a political debate on the "right to decide of the Basque people" -- implying eventual cessation of the Basque Country from Spain. The central government strongly opposed both proposals.

Now, this time the author willfully misdirects the readers, Ibarretxe's first question is not "whether to have enter dialogue with ETA" but "if they favor a negotiated solution to the conflict if the armed Basque group ETA was willing to end violence".

That is a big difference. The way the author poses the question plays right into Spain's preposterous accusation that Ibarretxe is advancing ETA's agenda departing from the notion that when it comes to Basque self determination "everything is ETA", meaning, the Basque society does not deserve a shot at independence because it favors violence.

Echoes of Ghandi's non violent campaign to liberate India from England come to mind, but that independence process in particular is the exception to the rule due to one simple fact, colonialist powers ALWAYS resort to violence when it comes to their colonies wanting to regain their sovereignty.

One more thing, all what Ibarretxe wants is to reform the political relationship between the Basque Autonomous Community (which includes only three out of the seven Basque provinces) with Madrid, a far cry from independence.

Following the failure of its attempt to engage in dialogue with ETA in 2006 -- for which it had been harshly criticised by the opposition -- it has ruled out any return to the negotiating table, instead opting to crack-down on all organisations associated with the terrorist group. This resulted in the ban by the Constitutional Court of two political parties believed to be ETA’s political wing and which enjoy respectable representation in Basque local and regional assemblies. The second proposal was seen as a clear challenge to the constitutional order and territorial integrity of Spain. It was opposed not only by the PSOE and PP, but also the Spanish public at large. Moreover, it created divisions within Ibarretxe’s PNV, which ultimately benefited the Socialists in March’s general election.

Terrorist group? This from a citizen of a country that is taking an active part in the murder of dozens of thousands of innocent civilians in Iraq, Afghanistan and Palestine over oil and gas profits.

I am not even going to mention the principle of law called "presumption of innocence".

And what about this grammar gaffe: "two political parties believed to be ETA’s political wing"... two political parties, one wing. Man I am glad I did not waste my money studying at Oxford.

Ibarretxe is unlikely to succeed with his appeal to the European Court of Human Rights. But in order to save face, he might opt for snap regional elections, trying to capitalise on growing tensions between the Basque country and the central administration following the ban of the ‘pro-ETA’ parties. For Prime Minister Jose Luis Rodriguez Zapatero, this might mean less cooperation from the PNV on the national level; an unfortunate result as his minority government depends on the support of regional parties. However, Zapatero’s categorical support of the constitution and hard anti-terror stance leaves the PP with no room to criticise him.

Well, look it that, the author knows that Strasbourg will betray the Basques, like every other international community's organization in the past.

Something tells me that this Oxford educated chap does not favor the independence of Wales and Scotland.

.... ... .

Solidarity With Palestine

This information comes to us thanks to the Palestine News Network:

Basque delegation shows artistic solidarity in Gaza

25.07.08 - 10:54

Gaza / PNN - A joint project between Palestinians from the Gaza Strip and an international delegation resulted in the creation of an artistic mural in Gaza City.

The Palestinian Progressive Youth Union (PPYU) and the Progressive Student Action Front (PSAF) collaborated to organize a project with a group of young artists from the Al Aqsa University of Fine Arts and a delegation from the International Basque Foundation, an organization from the Basque region of northern Spain.

Young Palestinians, artists and members of the Basque delegation created a mural on the headquarters of the Legislative Council in Gaza City to show their solidarity with Palestine.

At the conclusion of the work, the PPYU and the PSAF hosted a meeting in which they reiterated the importance of such visits in order to expose the repressive practices against Palestinians in the Gaza Strip, as well as in the West Bank.

The Basque delegation learned about the problems facing young Palestinians in Gaza and the particular difficulties experienced by university students.

Both sides affirmed in the meeting the need to plan for future visits and joint events, and expand the cooperation between the parties involved.

.... ... .

Hands Off

This article published at the Media Monitors Network highlights the hypocrisy by the leaders within the international community that one day demand freedom for the Kosovars, the next day they deny that same right to the Kurds and one day later they are back to demanding independence for the Tibetans, here you have it:

"Not You! You!!!"

Uri Avnery

"The world media are shedding tears for the Tibetan people, whose land is taken from them by Chinese settlers. Who cares about the Palestinians, whose land is taken from them by our settlers?"

"Hey! Take your hands off me! Not you! You!!!" - the voice of a young woman in the darkened cinema, an old joke.

"Hey! Take your hands off Tibet!" the international chorus is crying out, "But not from Chechnya! Not from the Basque homeland! And certainly not from Palestine!" And that is not a joke.

LIKE EVERYBODY else, I support the right of the Tibetan people to independence, or at least autonomy. Like everybody else, I condemn the actions of the Chinese government there. But unlike everybody else, I am not ready to join in the demonstrations.

Why? Because I have an uneasy feeling that somebody is washing my brain, that what is going on is an exercise in hypocrisy.

I don't mind a bit of manipulation. After all, it is not by accident that the riots started in Tibet on the eve of the Olympic Games in Beijing. That's alright. A people fighting for their freedom have the right to use any opportunity that presents itself to further their struggle.

I support the Tibetans in spite of it being obvious that the Americans are exploiting the struggle for their own purposes. Clearly, the CIA has planned and organized the riots, and the American media are leading the world-wide campaign. It is a part of the hidden struggle between the US, the reigning super-power, and China, the rising super-power - a new version of the "Great Game" that was played in central Asia in the 19th century by the British Empire and Russia. Tibet is a token in this game.

I am even ready to ignore the fact that the gentle Tibetans have carried out a murderous pogrom against innocent Chinese, killing women and men and burning homes and shops. Such detestable excesses do happen during a liberation struggle.

No, what is really bugging me is the hypocrisy of the world media. They storm and thunder about Tibet. In thousands of editorials and talk-shows they heap curses and invective on the evil China. It seems as if the Tibetans are the only people on earth whose right to independence is being denied by brutal force, that if only Beijing would take its dirty hands off the saffron-robed monks, everything would be alright in this, the best of all possible worlds.

THERE IS no doubt that the Tibetan people are entitled to rule their own country, to nurture their unique culture, to promote their religious institutions and to prevent foreign settlers from submerging them.

But are not the Kurds in Turkey, Iraq, Iran and Syria entitled to the same? The inhabitants of Western Sahara, whose territory is occupied by Morocco? The Basques in Spain? The Corsicans off the coast of France? And the list is long.

Why do the world's media adopt one independence struggle, but often cynically ignore another independence struggle? What makes the blood of one Tibetan redder than the blood of a thousand Africans in East Congo?

Again and again I try to find a satisfactory answer to this enigma. In vain.

Immanuel Kant demanded of us: "Act as if the principle by which you act were about to be turned into a universal law of nature." (Being a German philosopher, he expressed it in much more convoluted language.) Does the attitude towards the Tibetan problem conform to this rule? Does it reflect our attitude towards the struggle for independence of all other oppressed peoples?

Not at all.

WHAT, THEN, causes the international media to discriminate between the various liberation struggles that are going on throughout the world?

Here are some of the relevant considerations:

- Do the people seeking independence have an especially exotic culture?

- Are they an attractive people, i.e. "sexy" in the view of the media?

- Is the struggle headed by a charismatic personality who is liked by the media?

- It the oppressing government disliked by the media?

- Does the oppressing government belong to the pro-American camp? This is an important factor, since the United States dominates a large part of the international media, and its news agencies and TV networks largely define the agenda and the terminology of the news coverage.

- Are economic interests involved in the conflict?

- Does the oppressed people have gifted spokespersons, who are able to attract attention and manipulate the media?

FROM THESE points of view, there is nobody like the Tibetans. They enjoy ideal conditions.

Fringed by the Himalayas, they are located in one of the most beautiful landscapes on earth. For centuries, just to get there was an adventure. Their unique religion arouses curiosity and sympathy. Its non-violence is very attractive and elastic enough to cover even the ugliest atrocities, like the recent pogrom. The exiled leader, the Dalai Lama, is a romantic figure, a media rock-star. The Chinese regime is hated by many - by capitalists because it is a Communist dictatorship, by Communists because it has become capitalist. It promotes a crass and ugly materialism, the very opposite of the spiritual Buddhist monks, who spend their time in prayer and meditation.

When China builds a railway to the Tibetan capital over a thousand inhospitable kilometers, the West does not admire the engineering feat, but sees (quite rightly) an iron monster that brings hundreds of thousands of Han-Chinese settlers to the occupied territory.

And of course, China is a rising power, whose economic success threatens America's hegemony in the world. A large part of the ailing American economy already belongs directly or indirectly to China. The huge American Empire is sinking hopelessly into debt, and China may soon be the biggest lender. American manufacturing industry is moving to China, taking millions of jobs with it.

Compared to these factors, what have the Basques, for example, to offer? Like the Tibetans, they inhabit a contiguous territory, most of it in Spain, some of it in France. They, too, are an ancient people with their own language and culture. But these are not exotic and do not attract special notice. No prayer wheels. No robed monks.

The Basques do not have a romantic leader, like Nelson Mandela or the Dalai Lama. The Spanish state, which arose from the ruins of Franco's detested dictatorship, enjoys great popularity around the world. Spain belongs to the European Union, which is more or less in the American camp, sometimes more, sometimes less.

The armed struggle of the Basque underground is abhorred by many and is considered "terrorism", especially after Spain has accorded the Basques a far-reaching autonomy. In these circumstances, the Basques have no chance at all of gaining world support for independence.

The Chechnyans should have been in a better position. They, too, are a separate people, who have for a long time been oppressed by the Czars of the Russian Empire, including Stalin and Putin. But alas, they are Muslims - and in the Western world, Islamophobia now occupies the place that had for centuries been reserved for anti-Semitism. Islam has turned into a synonym for terrorism, it is seen as a religion of blood and murder. Soon it will be revealed that Muslims slaughter Christian children and use their blood for baking Pitta. (In reality it is, of course, the religion of dozens of vastly different peoples, from Indonesia to Morocco and from Kosova to Zanzibar.

The US does not fear Moscow as it fears Beijing. Unlike China, Russia does not look like a country that could dominate the 21st century. The West has no interest in renewing the Cold War, as it has in renewing the Crusades against Islam. The poor Chechnyans, who have no charismatic leader or outstanding spokespersons, have been banished from the headlines. For all the world cares, Putin can hit them as much as he wants, kill thousands and obliterate whole towns.

That does not prevent Putin from supporting the demands of Abkhazia and South Ossetia for separation from Georgia, a country which infuriates Russia.

IF IMMANUEL KANT knew what's going on in Kosova, he would be scratching his head.

The province demanded its independence from Serbia, and I, for one, supported that with all my heart. This is a separate people, with a different culture (Albanian) and its own religion (Islam). After the popular Serbian leader, Slobodan Milosevic, tried to drive them out of their country, the world rose and provided moral and material support for their struggle for independence.

The Albanian Kosovars make up 90% of the citizens of the new state, which has a population of two million. The other 10% are Serbs, who want no part of the new Kosova. They want the areas they live in to be annexed to Serbia. According to Kant's maxim, are they entitled to this?

I would propose a pragmatic moral principle: Every population that inhabits a defined territory and has a clear national character is entitled to independence. A state that wants to keep such a population must see to it that they feel comfortable, that they receive their full rights, enjoy equality and have an autonomy that satisfies their aspirations. In short: that they have no reason to desire separation.

That applies to the French in Canada, the Scots in Britain, the Kurds in Turkey and elsewhere, the various ethnic groups in Africa, the indigenous peoples in Latin America, the Tamils in Sri Lanka and many others. Each has a right to choose between full equality, autonomy and independence.

THIS LEADS us, of course, to the Palestinian issue.

In the competition for the sympathy of the world media, the Palestinians are unlucky. According to all the objective standards, they have a right to full independence, exactly like the Tibetans. They inhabit a defined territory, they are a specific nation, a clear border exists between them and Israel. One must really have a crooked mind to deny these facts.

But the Palestinians are suffering from several cruel strokes of fate: The people that oppress them claim for themselves the crown of ultimate victimhood. The whole world sympathizes with the Israelis because the Jews were the victims of the most horrific crime of the Western world. That creates a strange situation: the oppressor is more popular than the victim. Anyone who supports the Palestinians is automatically suspected of anti-Semitism and Holocaust denial.

Also, the great majority of the Palestinians are Muslims (nobody pays attention to the Palestinian Christians). Since Islam arouses fear and abhorrence in the West, the Palestinian struggle has automatically become a part of that shapeless, sinister threat, "international terrorism". And since the murders of Yasser Arafat and Sheik Ahmed Yassin, the Palestinians have no particularly impressive leader - neither in Fatah nor in Hamas.

The world media are shedding tears for the Tibetan people, whose land is taken from them by Chinese settlers. Who cares about the Palestinians, whose land is taken from them by our settlers?

In the world-wide tumult about Tibet, the Israeli spokespersons compare themselves - strange as it sounds - to the poor Tibetans, not to the evil Chinese. Many think this quite logical.

If Kant were dug up tomorrow and asked about the Palestinians, he would probably answer: "Give them what you think should be given to everybody, and don't wake me up again to ask silly questions."

A few days ago we published a similar opinion by Michael Collon at the Spanish version of our blog.

.... ... .

Fearful Spain

At the blog Xenia Kerimova you will find a post titled "When the deepest of Spain's fears emerges", and it goes like this:

Franklin Roosevelt once said: “The Only Thing We Have to Fear Is Fear Itself”. The context has obviously nothing to do, but Spain should keep this sentence in mind.

Miguel Angel Moratinos, Spain’s Foreign Minister, justifies Spain’s opposition to recognizing Kosovo as an independent state stating that unilateral independence is not allowed by international law. Even if this is true indeed, no one will ever believe this is the actual reason for Spain to be against Kosovo’s independence. Spain is actually showing here its own fear, a fear to a Basque and a Catalan secession with Kosovo as a precedent. No matter how many times the Spanish government states there is not a single similarity between Kosovo and the Basque Country, the truth is its reluctances to accept Kosovo’s independence show the deepest of Spain’s fears.

The question is: can a country just keep on ignoring another country forever? I don’t think so, and sooner or later Spain will have to assume Kosovo being an independent state. Spain did not recognize Israel as a country when the State of Israel was created in 1948. The important thing is Spain finally had to, even if 38 years afterwards.

I went ahead and highlighted the juiciest part.

Oh, and by the way, Spain is late 500 years in recognizing Euskal Herria's sovereignty, their time is up I would say.

And when will Israel recognize Palestine?

.... ... .

Call to International Solidarity

A blog called Pan African News Wire has published a post called "Solidarity for Survival, A Call to Stop Ethnic Cleansing and the imminent assault on Gaza". The topic is an essay by someone called Kali Akuno who addresses the punitive operation being prepared by the Israeli government against the Gaza Strip.

Here you have the opening statements:

The Question

Are the revolutionary and progressive movements in the US going to sit idly by and wait for the Zionists and imperialists to raze Gaza to the ground? Or are we going to take preventative action to stop the genocidal assault being so thoroughly planned (and executed) right in front of our eyes?

What is at Stake?

The US Left, and all of its national and social sectors, must be clear about what Palestine represents in the capitalist world-system today. Palestine is the barometer of the extent to which imperialism is willing to go to in the present era to liquidate the struggles for national liberation. In Palestine, particularly since the elections of January 2006, we see the overall political and financial commitment of imperialism to crush any movement that threatens the political integration and homogenization now required for capital accumulation.

Where white supremacy, colonial occupation, capitalist patriarchy, mass incarceration, and economic strangulation are not enough to either contain or destroy the national consciousness and anti-colonial sentiments, ethnic cleansing and genocide are now wholly justifiable and permissible options for imperialism. This is what is happening to Palestine, specifically to the people and political forces in Gaza being deprived of electricity, water, medical aid and supplies, and food by the Zionist occupying forces.

After a few more paragraphs it mentions the Basque people:

It should go without saying that given Palestine's preeminent position amongst the anti-colonial struggles of the world that if imperialism is able starve and cleanse Gaza in order to liquidate its liberation movement, either in whole or in part, the prospects for the remaining national liberation struggles, either less well-known or developed (ex. the New Afrikan and Puerto Rican liberation movements against US colonialism, the Basques, the Kurds, and countless 1st Nation or Indigenous Peoples), to attain self-determination and independence will be seriously compromised, if not practically extinguished for the foreseeable future.

I recommend that you read the entire article, is well worth it.

~ ~ ~

Youth and Conflict

This article about how youths cop with the political conflict in their homeland was published at the BBC page:

'Think about your friends, not the conflict'

Young people from parts of the world like Lebanon, the Basque area of Spain and Palestine have been in Wokingham on a youth exchange. BBC Radio Berkshire's Henry Kelly spoke to them.

"I never imagined that London is like it is, with small houses."

Nekane, a nursing student from Bilbao, spent a day in London as part of a week-long youth exchange taking place in Wokingham.

She's from the Basque area of Spain and has been brought together with young people from countries like Turkey, Lebanon, Palestine, Syria, Jordan and France for the week.

The idea is that everyone gets to talk about citizenship, share each other's experiences, and learn a bit more about people they would never normally meet.

"I've enjoyed it," says Nekane. "We're learning that we must find some common link.

"Both parties must give something. Communication is very important and in the Basque country, communication between the Government and ETA isn't there.

"We always think we have big problems in the Basque country but we know the Palestinians have bigger problems. We're similar in our situations."

Borders and friends

Hanin lives in Ramallah, in Palestine. She's still at school but harbours a desire to study psychology at university. She agrees with Nekane.

"As a group we try to tell other people from different countries how the situation is in Palestine.

"I try to explain how bad our situation is, how we suffer on the check-points. We spent twelve hours on the border when we came here and had a very bad time.

"We can't go anywhere. You have to pass through three check-points to get to different countries."

Hanin admits she has no Jewish friends and doesn't know any Israelis. She has never, to her knowledge, met an Israeli.

So would she like to? "Well, why not?" She says.

'Closer together'

And Ruba, from Lebanon, reckons the only way to stop that kind of conflict is with more talking.

"The problem in Lebanon is there's a lack of communication and trust between Lebanese parties," says Ruba.

"Now I'm learning to tolerate diversity more and accept people with different backgrounds and perceptions of the world.

"Lebanon is a cocktail of everything in the world and we can make it happen, we can come closer together."

The youth exchange on which Ruba, Nekane and Hanin find themselves is funded by the European Commission, and arranged by the council in Wokingham.

Youth worker Detta Regan told us what the exchange has involved.

"We've done so much. We've had various workshops - this morning the Palestinians did a workshop on security. We've been to London, and we've been canoeing, cycling and team-building.

"Today we've got an arts day. But in between we've had discussions about the areas that make up citizenship, like identity and security."

'Extraordinary' experience

Detta has plenty of experience working alongside young people in areas like Lebanon and Palestine, and says bringing them together is crucial - for British teenagers as much as those travelling from abroad.

"It's really important that young people learn an understanding of each other. So many people have no idea where these countries are and it's an opportunity to sit and talk about it.

"Then they might not think of Lebanon as a place of conflict, they'll think of the friends they've made there."

As Ruba, who lives around 30 miles from Beirut, observes, travelling to Wokingham is bizarrely the easiest way to meet her near neighbours.

"The whole experience is extraordinary. Palestine and Syria are the closest countries to Lebanon and we don't have the chance to interact together.

"Even having the opportunity to meet our neighbours, along with people from England and the Basque Country... it's the whole experience.

"In Lebanon we love life and like to enjoy our time, but you don't know which car will blow up. It's just irritating to know that there's all this conflict and you don't know when we'll live in peace again."

.... ... .

Visiting Palestine

There is a great support towards the Palestinians in Euskal Herria, that is why I was glad to find this article at EITb:

Basque members of parliament visit Palestine

The Basque delegation will attend several meetings where it will explain the Basque conflict to European representatives and members of autonomous parliaments.

A group of Basque members of parliament headed by parliament president Izaskun Bilbao is in Palestine on an official visit. The delegation is made up of Basque parliament president Izaskun Bilbao Barandica, president of Human Rights Committee Iñigo Urkullu and members of parliament Gema González de Txabarri, Mertxe Agundez, Leopoldo Barreda, Itziar Baztarrika, Unai Ziarreta and Aintzane Ezenarro.

Izaskun Bilbao has committed herself to tackle the Basque conflict at the following meetings: A conference for presidents of autonomous parliaments and another one for European regional assemblies.

Bilbao has arrived in Ramallah accompanied by members of Basque parliament’s Human Rights Committee. They have been welcome at the Palestinian parliament by the deputy president of the institution.

Basque parliament president has expressed her wish that violence will disappear and peace will be established in Palestine. She has also urged Isarael to recognise the Palestinian country and has suggested some steps to solve the conflicts in Palestine and in the Basque Country.

Yesterday the group was welcome by the woman Mayor of Ramallah and they also met several social organisations. The trip will finish on Monday.

Just like the Spaniards and the French must end their colonial occupation of Euskal Herria, Israel must renounce to its genocidal campaign against the Palestinian people.

.... ... .

Haaretz's Take on Terrorism

It is a bit weird to read about terrorism at a newspaper from a country that is considered to be involved in what is widely seen as state sponsored terrorism.

I could have dismissed the whole thing but right off the bat the author places ETA among his list of terrorist organizations, a list that does not include the Irgun nor the Israeli Defence Forces. And well, this is simply unacceptable.

Now, despite his obvious bias which blinds him from seeing all the carnage that the Zionists have visited upon the region due to their nightmarish obsession with an expantionist Jewish state, the article does contain a few good things.

Example:

2. 'One man's terrorist is another man's freedom fighter.'

More of a half-truth than an out and out lie, given the propensity of supporters of one side to explain and forgive atrocities committed by that side, while condemning and often exaggerating atrocities committed by the other.

It is worth noting that definitions of terrorism are legion and agreement is rare.

For the purposes of this piece, however, we will use a formula contained within a UN report issued last year, which defined terrorism as any action: "intended to cause death or serious bodily harm to civilians or non-combatants with the purpose of intimidating a population or compelling a government or an international organization to do or abstain from doing any act."

For the purpose of this piece, therefore, we will declare that any side which intentionally attacks non-combatants is practicing terrorism.

With Melitón Manzanas, Admiral Carrero Blanco and all the Guadia Civil elements targeted by ETA this definition makes ETA commandos into freedom fighters.

3. All resistance to illegal occupation is legitimate.

Intentional attacks on innocents are inherently illegitimate

How about Durango and Gernika? And the GAL?

8. 'The objective of the [(check one) war / incursion bombing campaign / liquidation raid] in [Lebanon / Gaza / northern Samaria] is the swift release of the kidnapped soldier/s.'

There is little persuasive evidence that the kidnappers of IDF soldiers can be bombed, assassinated, or otherwise militarily pressured into agreeing to release the captives they hold.

There is more than circumstantial evidence to suggest that the kidnapping may become a pretext for military action aimed at attacking an organization which engages both in guerrilla activity and in terrorism, with Hamas and Hezbollah the primary illustrations.

Whoa!

Finally, hidden in the entire article a pearl of truth. This paragraph tells us that yes, what Israel did in Lebanon can be considered terrorism.

9. 'If there were no occupation, there would be no terrorism.'

It is debatable whether this statement fits better into the status of a lie or a contention. It is, in any event, an argument which has lost much of its power in the wake of the pull-out from the Gaza Strip. Within days, evacuated settlements were used as launching pads for rocket attacks that markedly increased terrorist attacks against southern Israel.

Uh oh, back to the bias. Israel left the Gaza Strip but there is plenty of kibbutzim in the West Bank, ergo, the occupation continues.

10. 'Terrorism is the only defense of oppressed peoples against the vastly better equipped oppressor.'

On the surface, terrorism seems to work, despite its moral failings. But in the case of the Gaza withdrawal, hailed by Hamas as the Great Victory of Resistance, it may be persuasively argued that Israel would have withdrawn from the Strip years, perhaps even decades before, had terror groups not worked to foil every attempt at a peace agreement.

The fact is that Israelis were trying to find a formula to leave Gaza for years. There were even many in the settlement movement who viewed Gaza as a distinct liability to the wider cause.

One thing is certain - terrorism is self-destructive on the broadest levels. It has cost the Palestinians their once-broad support in Israel and around the world for the swift creation and recognition of an independent Palestine.

Terror attacks following the disengagement have persuaded most Israelis that further withdrawals would be mistaken.

Terrorism, particularly the concept of suicide bombing, has tarnished the Palestinians' good name in the world, and their image of David in the contemporary Goliath myth.

There are many diplomatic, political and public relations alternatives to terror. Had the Palestinians focused on them and not on the armed struggle, they would have had statehood long ago.

What a lie, the whole world supports the Palestinian right to statehood, if it was not for the USA there would be a Palestinian state as we speak.

Oh yes, this is supposed to be an experiment, so if you want to be part of it go check out the article "The 10 most useful lies about terrorism".

~ ~ ~

On the Eve of September 11th

The Miami Herald published an article about the lack of artistic ways by US artists that deal with the September 11th demolition of the World Trade Center and the partial destruction of one of the five sides that comprise the Pentagon.

The author somehow compares this event with the bombing of Gernika and it comes to a logic conclusion, is there a Picasso "Guernica" for September 11th?

Is there?

Is there a Picasso to remember the fall of the Catalonyan Republic to Franco, Hitler and Mussolini?

The Republic of Catalonya was after all, founded on September 11th of 1931, a fact that many Spaniards want us to forget today.

Is there a Picasso to remember the military coup against the Chilean government which ended with the murder of Salvador Allende?

We can not allow ourselves to forget that it was the USA the force behind this event that also took place on a September 11, an event that would usher an era of terror and death for the Chilean society at the hands of Augusto Pinochet.

Here you have an excerpt of the article:

Apocalypse now: Sept. 11's influence on arts and entertainment.

Posted on Sun, Sep. 10, 2006

BY EVELYN McDONNELL

emcdonnell@MiamiHerald.com

On April 26, 1937, German and Italian planes bombed the Basque city of Guernica, killing hundreds -- probably thousands -- of mostly women, children and the elderly and almost completely destroying the non-military town. It was a bombing with no strategic purpose except to inflict horror and oblivion on a civilian population: Guernica was Ground Zero of modern terrorist warfare.

Within three months, Pablo Picasso had memorialized the fascist slaughter with perhaps his greatest painting. Today, when we think ''Guernica,'' we think of the artist's Cubist evocation of agony -- those twisted, turning human forms -- and then of the ghastly evisceration that inspired it.

Five years after three planes crashed into the World Trade Center and Pentagon, destroying buildings, killing thousands and shattering the American psyche, the worlds of art and entertainment still have not come to terms with the terrible events of Sept. 11, 2001. There have been efforts, forays, angles, documentations. But, ''is there a Guernica for 9/11?'' asks documentary photographer Joel Meyerowitz, creator of the book Aftermath: World Trade Center Archive. "I don't think so.''

Maybe Meyerowitz is not asking the right question: ''Should there be a Guernica for 9/11?'' Is the absence of a definitive piece capturing that day a failure on the part of 21st century artists, or an act of honoring?

Comparing 9/11 to Guernica is somewhat unfair. Picasso, after all, didn't have to compete with CNN. In the era of 24-hour instant news, the arts don't have the same opportunity to shape our perception of world events: They reel to keep up, to make sense of the senseless, to tap into feeling in a world overloaded with information. A captivated (or, perhaps, captive) audience experienced 9/11 as a mediated event as it happened, unfolding in real time on millions of TVs -- individualized by our own phone calls to loved ones, or by our proximity to Ground Zero. For miles and months around Manhattan, noses confirmed what eyes saw on small screens -- or you could watch the smoke yourself, atop buildings from Brooklyn to New Jersey.

It's not a day anyone wants to relive, or see sentimentalized, commercialized, exploited

Continues...

I want to tell one thing to Evelyn McDonnell and Joel Meyerowitz. You insult the memory of those who died in Gernika on that day.

There should never be a "Guernica" to remember September 11 because the painting by Picasso was and is an indictment against the fascist powers that conducted that massacre. September 11th was used by fascist minded US citizens to install an extreme right government in an already arrogant and meddling nation. George Bush, Dick Cheney and Donald Rumsfeld are today's Hitler and his henchmen. Tony Blair and the dethroned José María Aznar are Bush's Franco and Mussolini. September 11th was used by the US military as an excuse to attack and destroy Afghanistan and Irak directly and to continue to suffocate Lebanon and Palestine with the proxy Israeli army.

So the answer is no, there should never ever be a "Guernica" to commemorate the day the extreme right (supported by the oil money of the Saudi Arabs) decided to take the USA into a new era of imperialism and global domination. If anything, you can compare September 11 with the alleged attack by the Polish army against a German radio station back in 1939.

~ ~ ~

Colin, the American Falangista Basque-Phobe

I thought he was gone for good.

My mistake, he was just taking a break.

In the past, I have been amiable to Colin Davis, an American blogging from Galiza.

But if there is something unacceptable is just how easily some US bloggers side with repressive states.

This is what he wrote in his returning post:

The other bit of really bad news was that ETA finally came out of the long grass and said, in effect, that territorial expansion of the Basque Country certainly was a precondition of their ‘permanent’ ceasefire. A familiar fraud, this one.

Meaning, Mr. Davies in all his ignorance, product of his faulty education in the United States of America, really thinks that the Basque Country comprehends only the three provinces that today are part of the Basque Autonomous Community.

Just how ignorant can he be about the history of the Basque people?

Even US based historians agree that there is seven Basque provinces, and that through history, Navarre has been the one political entitity that the Basques called home for hundreds of years. Well, today Navarre is not part of the Basque Autonomous Community, in part due to the actions of the dictator Francisco Franco.

So, when Colin Davies and other US citizens deny that Navarre is the Basque Country, what they are doing is spousing the point of view of a fascist totalitarian and genocidal maniac that was ushered to power by Adolph Hitler and Benito Mussolini.

So, before he deletes my comment to his idiotic Basque-phobe post, I reproduce it here:

Territorial expantion of the Basque Country?

Are they asking for Gascony or La Rioja to be added to Euskal Herria?

I don't think so.

It is amazing how Americans understand so little about freedom, democracy and self determination.

And before you get on your high horse on how ETA finally came out of the long grass remember, the USA is a terrorist state currently murdering dozens of thousands of people over oil profits.

Just one final thought, the United States of America is the largest terrorist organization in the world, let us remember how they brought death and misery to the Phillipines, Hawaii, Cuba, Guatemala, El Salvador, Nicaragua, Panama, Grenada, Colombia, Chile, Afghanistan, Irak, Palestine, Viet Nam and Cambodia, to name a few. Also, they have their fair share of home grown terrorist groups, the most famous of all of them, the Ku Kux Klan.

So, I would say, US citizens are the last on the list when it comes to blaming anyone for using violence to reach a goal.

.... ... .

Basque Victims of Torture in Spain

For some reason I forgot to mention the report by the Clearing House from Australia concerning their investigation on torture carried out in Spain against Basque political prisoners.

Then this morning, Mizgin, author of the blog Rasti about Kurdish issues, sent me an email about the coverage by Istanbul Indymedia (Turkey) about this note.

Well, here you have it:

The Spanish Inquisition

(By the way, it takes too long for the video to show, so, if you want to see it, you can go to the web edition of Basque newspaper Gara)

For years now, the Basque people of Spain have alleged that Spanish police have regularly tortured suspects, arrested for having connections with the Basque separatist group ETA. Recently, those allegations have been backed up by the UN Human Rights Commission.

Broadcast Dateline 06/05/06 - SBS Australia

REPORTER: David O’Shea

Four years ago, Susana Alesanco and Juan Cortes were like any other couple getting on with their lives.

SUSANA ALESANCO, (Translation): I was 31 years old, I was at university, on a research project, I was… things were fine with me. I had my partner, my life was fine.

But on January 17, 2002, their world fell apart. Heavily armed police raided Susana’s family home. This is actual footage of the arrest.

SUSANA ALESANCO, (Translation): Lots of cops entered my home carrying torches and machine guns. It was like a scene from a movie.

The police suspected that Susana and Juan belonged to the violent Basque separatist group ETA. They were taken to a secret location in Madrid for interrogation. Under Spain’s tough anti-terror laws, they could be held incommunicado for up to five days, isolated from their families and lawyers.

SUSANA ALESANCO, (Translation): I had no idea why I was there, they asked me so many questions, about my friends, about who I went out with, about my brothers. Thousands of questions about where I had worked, about the trips I had taken. I got the feeling that everything I’d done in my life had been a crime.

Like thousands of Basques before her, Susana alleges she was tortured during the five days she was held incommunicado. Basque human rights activists produced these images which recreate some of the torture commonly described by former prisoners.

SUSANA ALESANCO, (Translation): Without a doubt the worst moment of all, the worst experience was in the last interrogation when, when they simulated a rape. They positioned me, ready to rape me. For three days they had been threatening to rape me. By that stage I , by then I was convinced they’d do it.

Susana says that she was deprived of sleep, sexually assaulted, asphyxiated, threatened with execution, and electrocuted - all methods of torture which inflicted pain without leaving marks.

SUSANA ALESANCO, (Translation): They kept me naked, threw water on me, they applied electricity to me….it’s hard to believe these things can happen in a democracy and very hard to prove. But that is what happened to me, I went through that and by the fourth day I couldn’t stand it any longer.

REPORTER (Translation): So there was a point where they broke you?

SUSANA ALESANCO, (Translation): Yes, that is right, completely.

At that point Susana signed a statement saying that Juan was a member of ETA and that she was a collaborator. This admission was later retracted. Since that time Susana and Juan have been out on conditional release, awaiting trial. They face a 7-year sentence.

Susana’s story is not unique. Theo Van Boven, the former United Nations special rapporteur on torture, has looked at scores of similar cases and concludes the Spanish police torture to extract confessions.

THEO VAN BOVEN, FORMER UN SPECIAL RAPPORTEUR ON TORTURE: The suspects will be softened up after torture and they will sign statements, the type of statements the government wishes them to make. That's one thing. And I think also that torture has quite a long tradition in this country. We had the Franco dictatorship up till - what is it? - 1975. And so it has been rooted, I think, in a long history and you don’t wipe that out from one day to another.

The government in Madrid dismisses torture allegations, saying they are part of ETA strategy to discredit the Spanish state. Antonio Camacho is the powerful Secretary of State for Security.

REPORTER (Translation): In 2006 there’s still torture in Spain, How can this be?

ANTONIO CAMACHO, SECRETARY OF STATE FOR SECURITY, (Translation): Look, this government is very clear abot this, and our daily polices demonstrate it, that we will not accept any kind of torture.

While the Spanish Government says it will not accept torture, the well-known case of Unai Romano is difficult to explain. This is his photo before and after his time in police custody in September 2001. He accused the police of beating him. The government said the injuries were self-inflicted and is suing him for defamation.

The former United Nations special rapporteur on torture, Theo Van Boven, was so concerned at reports from Basque human rights groups that prisoners were being tortured, he listed Spain alongside countries like Indonesia and Uzbekistan in his 2002 report. The then Spanish government was not happy.

THEO VAN BOVEN: They thought that my report and the recommendations should be put in the wastepaper basket - that was the only suitable place where my report should stay.

So outraged was Madrid, Van Boven was invited to Spain to investigate the facts on the ground. But as he tells this Barcelona conference on torture, the government's attempts to convince him his sources were wrong backfired.

THEO VAN BOVEN: The visit in Madrid was tense and tough. The authorities - some of them - and members of parliament went far beyond a technical discussion. They wanted to give me a lecture, particularly on the Basque problem, and I could not... I just felt this was an obsession.

It’s impossible to understand the Spanish Government’s obsession with the Basques without understanding the Basque obsession with independence from Spain.

Until the 1970s Basques were not permitted to use their language, but they never lost their strong sense of national identity. In Hernani, near the French border, these people meet to sing Basque folk songs every Sunday morning. From windows around the square, people hang photos of Basques held in Spanish jails and banners demanding they be brought back to Basque prisons.

ETA has waged a horrific campaign on the Spanish state for decades. It has killed over 800 people in terrorist acts over the past 20 years. The government responds by sentencing the killers to thousands of years in prison. The current socialist government has continued the hardline response instigated by the previous conservative administration.

ANTONIO CAMACHO, (Translation): I think the struggle against terrorism has been maintained by all democratic governments throughout the history of this country. This government has been particularly careful to maintain pressure in the police struggle against ETA. And consequently, there have been more than 200 arrests in the two years or so that this government has been in power.

ETA’s bombs and the government’s draconian response have polarised opinion in Spain about the Basques.

ROSA URIZAR DE PAZ, (Translation): They think we walk around t he streets shooting people, blowing things up. They think we go around collecting revolutionary taxes and so on.

Rosa Urizar de Paz knows a lot about the struggle for independence. Her son joined ETA when he was 22 and has spent the last 15 years in prison. Rosa makes no apology for her family’s nationalism.

ROSA URIZAR DE PAZ, (Translation): This sign here means that everybody in life must sacrifice something sothat a few don’t have to sacrifice everything. That is what it means. This one was killed at the hands of the police.

Rosa’s favourite bar is clearly pro-independence. It is a virtual shrine to the many Basque prisoners.

ROSA URIZAR DE PAZ, (Translation): Look how beautiful our girls are.

Among them is a photo of her 22-year-old daughter Amaia. She was arrested in October 2004 and is still in prison. She, too, has accused the police of torture. Her case provoked outrage in the Basque country after she wrote a graphic statement describing the torture.

AMAIA, STATEMENT: They were all laughing, one of them held me by my neck while the other put the barrel of the gun in and out of my vagina and grabbed my breasts very violently. I could feel the cold metal inside me and they kept saying it was loaded and would be my fault if it went off.

ROSA URIZAR DE PAZ, (Translation): you know what hurt me the most? Have you read what she wrote about the torture? Of all those things, the thing I found most upsetting was the terrible loneliness…those poor kids suffer when incommunicado, while they’re being held by the civil guard or the police.

When Rosa visits her other daughter at work, she finds her on the phone to Amaia. Each week she is allowed a 5-minute call from her prison in Madrid.

ROSA URIZAR DE PAZ, (Translation): How are you darling? Yes Okay. How I wish I could hug you, very well my love, do you need anything? What about the dentist?

Amaia has now been in custody for 1.5 years and can be held for up to four years without trial.

ROSA URIZAR DE PAZ, (Translation): Okay my darling, I love you too darling. Bye.

On her way home Rosa bumps into a friend whose daughter is also in jail and has also complained that she was tortured.

FRIEND, (Translation): Some are eventually freed, having committed no crime at all, they have been tortured, put in jail, and they have had their lives ruined. Most of them are just kids. Just kids. Maybe because we’re talking like this we’ll get ten years and join our girls.

Outside the Basque country the allegations of torture haven’t gained much traction. Anyone with a connection to Basque nationalism tends to be dismissed as a terrorist sympathiser by the national government and media.

MARTXELO OTAMENDI, (Translation): There are many here who turn a blind eye to torture here but show concern about torture in Ireland, torture in Brazil, Argentina, Chile, Palestine or Iraq

Martxelo Otamendi was arrested in 2003. He was one of nine directors of a Basque language newspaper called 'Egunkaria'. Five of them say they were tortured and they became known as 'the VIP torture victims'.

MARTXELO OTAMENDI, (Translation): At the time of all the outrage about the American torturers in that Iraqi prison, I said those images were of Egunkaria detainees. We just need to change the hood colour and swap the uniform of the marines.for the uniform of the civil guard.

Otamendi was arrested and his newspaper was shut down on the grounds that it was controlled and financed by ETA - an allegation that is yet to be proven.

In San Sebastian, thousands of people turned out for the city’s largest-ever demonstration. Meanwhile, Otamendi was being interrogated in Madrid about interviews he had conducted with the ETA high command. During the five days of incommunicado detention, he says he suffered stress positions, a mock execution, sexual harassment and asphyxiation.

MARTXELO OTAMENDI, FORMER TV PRESENTER (Translation): And then twice I was subjected to bag torture, which consists of putting a plastic bag you’re your head. And with a plastic bag over your head you feel like you are going to choke. It’s not a big plastic bag from a market with enough oxygen to last two hours, no it becomes a mask that moulds to your face, and the feeling of suffocation is immediate.

When the former TV presenter Martxelo Otamendi spoke out about his experience, it convinced many doubters that torture was indeed taking place.

MARTXELO OTAMENDI, (Translation): People wonder if they are capable of torturing the newspaper’s directors, what would they do to a 20-year-old, who’s unknown, not famous, somebody nobody knows? And someone the media won’t pay much attention to.

Otamendi believes the last conservative government ordered the closure of the paper and tortured him and the four others as a warning to other Basque nationalists.

MARTXELO OTAMENDI, (Translation): I think that with torture as I’ve said before, in the black period of the Popular Party They wanted to give Basques a shock, to frighten them, so they would give up their cause. The politicians’ plan was to close the newspaper, detain the staff and torture them. So that people would get the message that they were serious.

REPORTER, (Translation): But you don’t have any proof that it’s government policy, that’s just speculation.

MARTXELO OTAMENDI, (Translation): Yes, of course, it’s an opinion.

When the UN’s special rapporteur on torture, Theo Van Boven, finished his state-sponsored tour his report to the UN Human Rights Ccommission was damning.

THEO VAN BOVEN: It is my considered view in the light of the internal consistency of the information received and the precision of factual details, that these allegations of torture and ill-treatment are certainly not all invented and practices of this kind, though not systematic, were more than sporadic and incidental.

The Spanish delegation in Geneva was furious.

SPANISH AMBASSADOR TO UN, (Translation): someone’s made a big mistake, and those who know the country and it’s problems, know who it is. On reading the report, no one with any knowledge of our country would recognise Spain in it.

When the Spanish Ambassador to the UN couldn’t believe that the proudly democratic Spain was being tainted with torture.

SPANISH AMBASSADOR TO UN, (Translation): All that’s left for me to do in the name of a truly democratic state that leads in the defence and promotion of human rights is to express disappointment and bitterness at the lost opportunity and the outrageous injustice that the rapporteur’s report represents.

It was all the worse for the ambassador because he was the one who had advised his government to invite the special rapporteur to Spain to prove that torture did not exist. Once he had read his statement, the entire delegation got up and walked out.

THEO VAN BOVEN: They were extremely - what should I say? - disappointed. "We invited him, we had a certain scenario in mind and he did not fulfil our expectations." So I think that added to the fact they reacted so strongly.

It was a difficult time for Spain. Just two weeks earlier, terrorist attacks had rocked Madrid and prime minister Aznar was voted out of office for trying to blame the attack on ETA. The new socialist government claims that torture allegations are being properly investigated.

REPORTER< (Translation): But when Basques have been detained under the regime of incommunicado detention, do you agree that there have been incidents of torture?

ANTONIO CAMACHO, (Translation): You can not generalise, each claim of torture must be investigated.

REPORTER, (Translation): Let’s look at some examples of people reported having been tortured.

ANTONIO CAMACHO, (Translation): You can tell me the allegations, but it doesn’t mean there’s a serious investigation. European countries conduct serious judicial investigations in the most appropriate manner and with the required guarantees for all parties, in order to investigate these matters. A journalistic investigation is not acceptable for a state which follows the rule of law.

In the Basque country the issue of torture still strikes a raw political nerve. Thousands of people turned up for this anti-torture rally in San Sebastian in February.

MARTXELO OTAMENDI, (Translation): The big turnout was expected, because people are pissed off with the practice of torture. Because people want it to end once and for all.

THEO VAN BOVEN: For long in Spain it was a sort of taboo subject in Spain. Officially torture did not exist, or hardly existed in this country. Now this is raised at this meeting and I think this is a beginning of a movement against torture in Spain which is important.

But despite the change of government, allegations of torture during incommunicado detention continue.

REPORTER: There is no denying the reality that last year, during the Zapatero Government, there were over 50 cases documented in the Basque country of torture again. So, I mean, 50 too many, no?

THEO VAN BOVEN: It is apparently a practice that is very persistent so therefore I think in addition to accommodating and changing the political climate there must be a firmer position taken on the issues of torture also by the present government.

REPORTER: Do you see that ever happening?

THEO VAN BOVEN: Well, I'm hopeful.

The present government is clearly sensitive about the persistent allegations of torture.

REPORTER, (Translation): There are many people and many organisations, including Human Rights Watch, the Council of Europe, Amnesty International and 37 groups that met in Barcelona that have agreed that there is torture here in incommunicado detention…

ANTONIO CAMACHO, (Translation): Which country in the European Union, hasn’t had cases of torture reported?

REPORTER, (Translation): In the European Union as far as I know, Mr Theo van Bovan, the former rapporteur, said that there used to be in Northern Ireland, but now most of the allegations concern Spain.

ANTONIO CAMACHO, (Translation): Turn that off for a moment…

REPORTER, (Translation): No…

ANTONIO CAMACHO, (Translation): Turn it off for a moment! Let’s talk about the terms of this interview, turn it off. Turn it off for a moment.

MARTXELO OTAMENDI, (Translation): The Spanish government won’t own up to torture until a solution to the Basque conflict is found.

REPORTER, (Translation): Why can’t they admit it before then?

MARTXELO OTAMENDI, (Translation): Because if they do they will go to jail. The Minister would go to jail, it would be like in Argentina and Chile, where senior police and military officers are being prosecuted. In 20 years time some judges will start doing that here too. But I want this done now.

The prospects for a political solution to the Basque problem took a dramatic turn for the better last month. For the first time in its history ETA declared a permanent cease-fire as a prelude to negotiations.

ETA, (Translation): At the end of this process Basque citizens must have the final word and decide on their future.

Any decision on the future for the Basque country is going to have to deal with the issue of torture which has poisoned trust in the Spanish Government.

PEOPLE, (Translation): We are the Basque warriors to set the Basque country free. We are prepared to give our blood for freedom. Let us warriors all go and get our flags.

After decades of violent struggle, it will not be easy to bridge the gulf of trust between the Basques and the Spanish Government.

(In accordance with Title 17 U.S.C. Section 107, this material is distributed without profit to those who have expressed a prior interest in receiving the included information for research and educational purposes. Information Clearing House has no affiliation whatsoever with the originator of this article nor is Information Clearing House endorsed or sponsored by the originator.)

Thanks for the heads up Mizgin.

Update: Mizgin provides with an excellent analysis of the video about torture against Basques in Spain in his post "Similarity and its discontents". It is a must read post, mainly because of the parallels he draws between the Basque and the Kurdish situation.

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