Do you have a blog?

I would like to move our conversation out of Joe’s blog.

Regarding your post at the Command Post, it was you who used it as a reference for this post. You had the choice to link to one of your own posts with a wider view of what happened on March 11th. It was you the one that chose the post that resembles Aznar’s campaign of lies and deceptions the most, not me.

I could take you to task for what you wrote on that post that highlights your Basque-phobe nature, but actually, you did it again on this present post. Here is what I am talking about. The only time when you talk about the Basques is when there is an ETA attack, in doing such you become a resonance box for the ill intentioned campaign in the main stream media that insists in likening the Basques with terrorism. In your posts you consistently avoid to issue any criticism of Spain and its more that faulty democracy. You have never talked about the hundreds of thousands killed by Franco and the strong ties between the PP and the Franco regime.

And that is why I am making such an issue of you being a Jew, you seem to like the PP and Franco, and since Franco was an ally of Hitler, well, your infatuation with the Spanish political class is startling to say the least.

And yes, I liken Euskal Herria to Israel, you know why? Because the same basic human right protected in the UN Charter that allowed for a Jewish state is the one that calls for a Basque state, wether the Spaniards and the French like it or not.

You reject that idea, of a Basque state. How does people call those who reject the idea of a Jewish state?

You say you will not read my blog again? Nothing new there, if you had read it you would have a better insight of the Basque struggle for self determination by now, not the tainted one given by your friend Barcepundit who dedicates his blog to attack both Basques and Catalonian nationalists.

But if you give me your address, I will send you an Olentzero gift.

Your post had lots of errors and I simply can’t put aside posts here to answer them.I also do NOT do blogwars. I just move on to other blogs to read. But you post was less an exposition of the issue of the Basque issue and demonstrations, and more just an angry personal attack on me. Which is your right. My mother does the same thing.

To start with, you are upset about my old Command Post editorial which WAS written when all news agency speculation centered on ETA being behind the train bombings. No, I didn’t make it up and I was not paid by the government in Madrid to write it. I wrote it within the context of what Reuters, the Washington Post, the New York Times, the Los Angeles Times, the San Diego Union, AFP, ABC, CBS, NBC, Time, Newsweek, Novosti News Agency, Fox News, AP, EFE and a zillion other news agencies reported in the early aftermath of the bomgings.

And — if you bothered — you could have probably researched my later TMV posts, which followed the story as it was clear that was NOT ETA and noted as such. You would have read my posts about the fall of the PP government.

This is what blogs usually do:we (unfortunately) report and comment on the news agency and newspaper reports. Blogs have the potential of doing original reporting, but few do. We’re often more like extended op-ed pages, commenting on quotes we give readers, giving them links to more stories — relying on the reporting, perceptions and conclusions of those who are DOING original reporting. So you picked the ONE POST written at that time to label me a Francoist sympathizer.

Also, in no matter what context, I’ve had very few people over the years respond to my posts by noting on their blog that I am a Jew. Yes, I understand you were likening the Basque Country to Israel. But I was never called a so-called or alleged Jew before. Except by the frustrated Cantor who was trying to teach me for my bar mitzvah. I have to be a good Jew: I love Chinese food.

I did laugh out loud at being called a “Basque phobe.” You are not aware of the many stories I did over for the Chicago Daily News, the Christian Science Monitor etc. My journalistic mentor in Spain was the late Ricardo Utrilla who helped found Cambio 16 and met with me in his office several times a week and even arranged to have dinner with me and my parents when they visited Madrid. I never heard him called anti-Basque or a Francoist before. Another tidbit: The Christian Science Monitor paid much of my expenses for me to travel to the Basque Country to do two very long (double-page, centerfold) special features on the post-Franco Basques and I also did shorter stories on things such as Basque language schools. I had great contacts up in Bilbao and Santender. When I cabled the Monitor’s then-Foreign Editor David Anable to tell him I was leaving Spain, he cabled back a short message: “The Basques have lost their friend.” But I don’t think you’re interested in that.

So, yes, I have seen your post which is the kind of post we really avoid posting or linking to here – an attack on someone who writes an opinion versus a detailed explanation of why someone may disagree with ideas or analysis ON AN ISSUE.

In any event, I read it completely. And everyone who dealt with me as a journalist and as a blogger knows I don’t go after and demonize people who write opinions with which I disagree. So I’ll respectfully pass on a response, just as I’ll pass on reading your site.

But if you send me your address, I’ll be sure to send you a Chanuka card.

Gernika, for anyone that doesn’t know, was a brutal slaughter of an entire village during the Civil War. Oh, and BTW, it was GERMANS that did that, with the support of Franco. You can hardly call Spaniards “in denial” of the matter, as one of THE most famous paintings of Picasso is on the subject and one of the most reviled people in Spain is Franco himself. The fact that we take things like bombings of supermarkets and casas-cuartel (apartments that house Civil Guards and their families) as bad is not because we don’t appreciate the bravery of men who blow the legs of little girls in their desperate struggle for independence, it’s because They. Are. Murderers. Look it up, you’ll find most Basques don’t like them either. Many (not necessarily a majority) support independence, but not by violent means. I understand them too, ETA has killed more Basques than anybody else. Way to show your love for your people, huh?

Let me start by saying that your nation commited the largest genocide in documented history.

In the process, your nation wiped out entire cultures and civilizations.

If that was not enough, your nation played sidekick to the must publicized genocide of last century.

You cry for your 800?

Is that all you got?

If I wanted to lower my speach to match yours all I would have to say would be one simple sentence: Gernika 1937.

Spaniards are so infatuated with death that they obsessively quote the 800. The day you come to terms with all the death and destruction you have caused in this planet you will begin to build a country with a real democracy. And you will understand that to be free you need to let others go free.

Pretty good job, quoting a prominent Basque-phobe like Barcepundit but shying away from a blog that presents the Basque side. Moderate, indeed.

Now, this ideal you have of the perfect country called Spain is mystifying. How can a country that clings to its colonialist past, drowning the dream of entire nations (Navarre, Catalunya, Galiza, the Canaries) to their self determination, can be called a democracy, is beyond me.

Tonight I have to catch some sleep, but I can promise your little piece of Francoist propaganda will get an answer tomorrow.

Just because it’s you I’m going to answer your absolutely ridiculous comment. The Basque country, as I’ve mentioned previously, gets a great many privileges; more than any other Spanish province. They get a disproportionate amount of taxpayer money. They have autonomous police, health care, schools, you name it, all courtesy of the Spanish taxpayer. The Israeli treatment of Palestinians and the Spanish treatment of Basques is basically night and day. Also add to that that it’s calculated that Basque independence is supported by only 30% of Basques themselves. And I’m betting that would go down further if the possibility of real independence solidified and instead of being a hazy dream Basques realized that the men with the guns were going to get the government. I don’t fully agree with my countrymen on Israeli matters, but comparing the two situations is silly, at best.

But by all means don’t let mere facts get in the way of your opinions.

I’ll start with a small recap of the situation as it stands today:

There have thus far been two major protests against ETA, one right after the attacks, called for by the AVT (Terrorism Victims Association) and heavily influenced by the opposition party (PP) and the one just yesterday, officially called by labor unions and other but with the not-at-all subtle backing of the government. The second protest was boicotted by the opposition. Presumably they wanted the theme changed from “For peace” to “For freedom”. The organizers changed it to “For peace and for freedom” to convince the PP to join. They declined. Sound like almost child-like bickering? That’s because it is. The PP spokesman said they didn’t go because it wasn’t a protest against ETA but against the PP. That, my friends, is absolute buls%&@t.

I went to both protests, the one backed by the opposition and the one backed by the government, and I can safely say that the most politically exploitative one was the opposition rally. I was surprised in both cases, for different reasons. The first protest I expected to be an outraged protest against ETA, that’s why I went. Instead it was a hate-fest against the president. I heard dozens of cries of “Zapatero dimisión!” (a call to the president to step down) and not a single cry against the damn terrorists! The impresion (I’m hoping mistaken) is that they hated the government more than the terrorists. I went to the rally yesterday to bear witness. I truly expected to see much the same thing, a huge hate-fest against the PP while ignoring the actual badguys. I was then entirely surprised to find that, with a few exceptional chants against the PP, that never spread for very long, the basic theme was very much for peace, against ETA, and the need for unity.

Mind you, I’m very much against the negotiations. ETA has done this before. They feel the noose tightening, so they call a cease-fire, call negotiations in order to regroup and rearm. Both parties have done this, both have shown humiliating weakness in the face of the enemy. I could go on and on about the special privileges heaped upon the Basque region in an attempt to bribe the terrorists into peace, and the special treatment of their prisoners. It boggles the mind.

As for Barcepundit saying that we at the protest haven’t a spine….well I’ll reserve the kind of retort that occurred to me at that point. I’m guessing that the “dialog” chants he speaks of was from the rally in Bilbao (capital of the Basque region, where many people want independence though most through peaceful means), because I can assure him that in the two in a half hours I was in the protest in Madrid, dialog didn’t cross anyones lips. He should as well as any of us; the Spanish people WANT their government (PP AND PSOE) to fight the terrorists, they HATE the softness and they wish that the parties could stop their bickering for just a bloody minute and get their act together. What many Spaniards feel is despair, as Robert Mayer notes. This has been going on for 40 years, many of us see no good solution. I think negotiations won’t work. I don’t think vicious repression of the terrorists will entirely work either, but I’d rather do that than pamper them and hope they play nice.