Archive for March, 2007


Everything is negotiable

By: psr, 2007-03-25

A recent public demonstration in Pamplona (Spain) claimed that the Navarra autonomous region cannot be part a negotiation. This demonstration was organised by the local government of Navarra, and is officially motivated by the talks and political negotiations that the Spanish government of PM Rodríguez Zapatero conducts with the assassins of ETA. The terrorists call for a new state which includes not only the Basque Country, but also Navarra and the French Basque Country, so the gun-point influenced political negotiations are really a cause for concern in Navarra.

It’s worth noting that the public demonstration may also be driven by the party currently in Navarran government, to rally support in the upcoming local elections (in May 2007).

In doing so, however, the Navarran government has argumented that Navarra has …

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2007-03-25 | Spain | Trackback | No Comments »

Third death victim of ETA in four months

By: psr, 2007-03-06

This past weekend ETA killed one more person, the third dead despite ETA’s so called “permanent cease fire”. An old man died from respiratory complications caused directly by the smoke he inhaled in his home, after ETA set a bank branch on fire in the same building.

Like with the Madrid Airport bomb last December that killed 2, the government and ETA will probably say it was not their intention to kill anyone. What cynics: do they think themselves as some sort of super-beings who can control the extent of the bombs they set off? They can’t, and any deaths caused by those bombs are directly ETA’s responsibility.

It’s been three days since the death of this man, and the primer minister Rodríguez Zapatero still has …

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2007-03-06 | Spain | Trackback | No Comments »

Blackmailing works on Spain’s PM Rodríguez Zapatero

By: psr, 2007-03-05

Finally, as expected, the Spanish government of PM Rodríguez Zapatero gave in to the blackmailing of the criminals of ETA. The jailed ETA man who went on a hunger strike has seen his sentence softened, getting out of jail and doing his time comfortably in his home.

While it is true that the government is allowed by law to exchange the jail sentence for home detention, this is meant for exceptional cases. There’s certainly nothing excepcional in this case; this prisoner’s own decision to stop eating is not an illness: it’s just blackmail.

So last week the government freed the killer, out of fear that he might have otherwise died of starvation, and that his death would have been seen as provoked by the Spanish government.

This hunger strike …

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