Marco,

Read the Palestine Autonomy Accord, and compare it to the Basque agreement. Forget the political and ideology differences. Both areas have their own police, etc.... but both are still under the strictest control of their respective benefactors. You may not want to see it, but political science people in world wide think tanks see the problems as being quite similar.

The simple fact is that there are factions within both areas that refuse to accept the accords. Period! Like it or not, that's the way it is. In Basque Country you have ETA and far left wing politics that constantly stirs the pot. In Palestine, you have fundamentalist Moslems who have the same philosophy. Experts believe that the "only reason" that there isn't more unrest in Basque Country than present is because there is more employment, and the people make more money than Palestinians. They feel that the conditions of poverty in Palestine pushes more people towards Jihad.

I know. One is political, the other is religion. So what? Governments in Moslem nations are often controlled by religious conviction. An example is Iran.

So tell me? If you don't believe negotiations are essential with Basque Country, how do you propose stopping the killing?

Wolf

Well, as I have written before I don't believe the situation in the Basque Country has any resemblance with the situation in Palestine.

Have you been in the Basque Country Wolf? I have, and I have not seen anything that coarses my freedom there, nor the freedom of the basques who live there. Moreover, I have nationalist friends, and very close family who will laugh if they see such comparison.

Do you think the spanish government bombard the Basque Country three times a week each time ETA commints a murder? Or that ETA uses katyusha missiles to bombard Madrid? If you walk around Vitoria, San Sebastián or Bilbao, or any other city or basque village you will not see any single soldier, and you probably won't see police (no more than in any other spanish city).

The autonomy given to the Basque Country it is not only in paper but in practice. Do you know that the word "Spain" is not found in the books schoolers learn until they are 16 years-old? That the Ertzaintza (autonomic police) has or had orders not to intervene against some kinds of terrorism? Who is governing the autonomic parlament, a national party or a nationalist one? How many ETA or nationalist dirigents has the spanish government killed over the last 30 years? zero?

Finally, would you negotiate with a terrorist who you knows is menacing you to kill people? (for example the terrorist of Oklahoma or any other one). There is only one thing to negotiate with ETA: when and where they leave violence and weapons, perhaps including a certain degree of forgiveness to the jailed terrorists.

BUT, any other topic (self determination, independency, autonomy, federalism,...) may be discused in the apropiate forums: The Basque Parlament and the Spanish Parlament.

That's my point of view.

(Un)fortunately, I've been on vacation and have missed the last 40 posts in this thread. Hey Marco, did you mean to peg the "suffering" of Hispanics in the US on the US? It seems to me that the real culprit in all of that was Spain who forced religion (and syphilis) on the "native" population. The Southwest (or "aztlán" as many "brown priders" like to call it) wasn't more than missions and sand before the US industrial machine got a hold of it (for better or for worse) and made it semi-productive. As for the plight of the American Black, I'm from a free state, and don't advocate slavery of the body or the mind...had I been alive in 1782 or 1815 or 1857 I'm certain I would've advocated abolition. My Judeo-Christian ethic dictates that to me.

Since I wasn't alive then, I couldn't do anything. All I can do now is be me and tolerate everyone (except idiots who have no respect for community, country or their neighbor...I can speak out all I want against those morons, as this is a country which freely allows me to do so).

Here's an interesting thought that is often miscontrued as xenophobic, etc.: If you don't like it, leave. Sure you can try to "change your surroundings". That's what ETA is trying to do. It's their country too, and they don't feel the need to leave, as they'd rather fight for what they feel is theirs. I don't agree with that logic, but as Wolf pointed out, I've never been in that situation before, either.

CaliBasco [Who would love to bore all of you with more incredibly long posts, but has a stronger desire to ingest comestibles, and therefore has decided to go home]

Calibasco,
either I misunderstood you or you're mixing up completely differerent things.

Firstly, Hispanics were not such, but various peoples and civilisations, when the Spanish came and imposed their religion on them. That was a few centuries ago, but nowadays the fact is Hispanics are discriminated in the States, although things are inevitably going to change for purely demographical reasons.

Secondly, whatever riches the US industrial machine, as you call it, may have brought to previously non "colonised" parts of North America, the fact is that the majority of its native inhabitants were either slaughtered while fighting the invading US army or gradually annihilated as a people through imprisonment in controlled camps, and that was all done by the US government.

As for the Afro-Americans, I wasn't trying to blame you for slavery, but everyone knows that black people have suffered brutal discrimination in large parts of the US way after slavery was oficially abolished. In fact, it is pretty obvious that things have only got better to an extent for black people in the States; they are still discriminated in thousands of subtle and less subtle ways, and they constitute a disproportionate high percentage of the immate population in the US and are several times more likely to be executed than white people for the same crime.
Does any of this sound like tolerance to you?
Thought so.
So please, please, no more lessons from the US on that issue.
Cheers.

Hi Wolfgang,
I haven't read the text of the Palestinian Autonomy, but whatever it says, and however much it may sound like the Basque "Estatuto", I cannot, as you ask me to, forget the political and ideological differences, and even less how these are translated into day-today reality. What's on a paper is on a paper, real life is a different matter. Of course think tanks spend their time looking for similarities in real life conflicts; indeed, theoreticians as they are, that should be their first task (being a scientist, I consider myself a one-person think tank and know what that's about). However, once the similarities have been noted, you have to start looking at differences, because in the real world it's pretty obvious that what has been a good solution to a problem may not work for another.
I have no idea how to stop the killing, that's for sure. Negotiations are always a good idea, but ETA have made it very clear that the only thing they're ready to negotiate is independence for the Basque country. If that were to happen, they would have earned that only because they were ready to kidnap and murder innocent people. Such a thing was probably right in the past, and maybe is hard to avoid in non democratic countries. In present day Spain I find it unacceptable. As I said, in a negotiation, both sides should be ready to make concessions. Is ETA ready to do it? I don't think so.

Marco ,about slavery , unless you your self are an African-American , you can not possibly undrestand the issue from both sides. Unless you live here , you can not undrestand it at all on a personal level.

If you are Spanish , Portugese or citizen of any other european 'explorer' nation , then your ancestors are just as guilty , often more so , than so called 'americans'regarding mistreatment of natives ,or any other 'original people'in the Americas.
Europeans brought their conquer and destroy attitudes to this continent in the first place and it ridicilous to blame americans for that.

Well, slavery has nothing to do with terrorism (maybe that both are an extreme lack of tolerance) but Zzeus, your message catch my attention because of two matters:

First, I think you don't have to be afroamerican to understand what slavery or racism is. Everyone has the right to give his opinion about such matter, don't you think?

Second, my ancestors are not guilty of the barbaric things made in America as a continent. My ancestors didn't go there, they stayed here in Spain. I think that the majority of spaniards or any other europeans who went there stayed there. But I believe is useless to blame current americans (not only north-americans) or europeans of things done 4 hundred of years ago, don't you think?

Regards.

Fernando

Fernando , I agree with you 100% , I just hope Marco , as a scientist and well educated , would also see the matter in a less onesided light.
It is absolutely useless to critizice todays generations , in europe or here , of things that happened many hundrerds of years ago.

Marco's comments regarding attitudes towards African-Americans , in the USA , and the treatment they recieve here , and conditions they live in , in general seems to have much more recent tone to it.
And if one does not have any personal experience about something that happens in an other country , culture thousands of miles away , it is difficult to understand those arguments or points of views as anything else as , at best , somewhat biased propaganda.

I agree with Marco, actually. When I personally hear people of color discussing racism and discrimination it is never about slavery. It is about current, REAL, and painful personal events. To say, "Well, my family never had slaves," trivializes and dismisses things that are very much a part of our culture. Plus, few Americans know enough about their family history and geneology to actually make that claim, although some do...

Also, why do you have to part of a group to know that the treatment of that group is wrong? I am not Jewish, but I am perfectly able to grasp the atrocities of the Nazis and gage the anti-semetic comments I have heard over the years. Frankly, it is more frightening that people separate themselves enough from others that they can see oppression and discrimination against themselves and have no compassion for the people they themselves hate. Believe me, after working two years with refugees from all over the world, I found it so sadly true (I once heard a Bosnian client say she wanted to cut the vaginas out of every black woman so they couldn't have any more of those black babies. this was a woman whose black social worker had run herself ragged making sure she and her family were safe and had what they needed herethat was the most blatent of many horrible comments I heard from one group towards another).

Anyway, I understand how it might be insulting to have a foreigner "presume" to understand the basque/spanish situation, but sometimes distance can give a more neutral perspective. I have also met Europeans who are far more well-informed of certain situations in the U.S. than the average American. I am not saying that is the case in this particular thread, but I wouldn't discount someone's informed opinion simply because they are not of your nationality...

Zzeus,
I wouldn't like to keep discussing this. May I just say that I agree with Fernando and Nicole: you only need to be a human being to understand the suffering of another; race and nationality don't matter.

Also, I never set out to blame present Americans for anything, I was trying to reply to someone's argument in this thread according to which problems in the Basque country would be due to the intolerant nature of the Spanish nation (or state), as opposed to the ever tolerant United States. As I said in my original post, I think both our countries (and indeed, as you point out, most European countries) have a lot to be ashamed of in that respect.

Finally, I'm not quite sure whether your bit about "biased propaganda" was intended for me, but if you read carefully the message that prompted your reply, you will realise it contains facts, nothing else.