Eta 'ready to disband'

[Sasha]

25 November 2012 Last updated at 05:39 GMT Basque separatists Eta 'ready to disband'

http://news.bbcimg.co.uk/media/images/64365000/jpg/_64365247_t2hcf811.jpg Eta have suffered a spate of arrests, including that of Izaskun Lesaka, suspected of heading the group's military operations

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Basque terror suspect arrested (http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-20358094)
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Spain rejects Eta talks request (http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/world-europe-18090167)


The Basque separatist group Eta has said it is ready to disband, give up its weapons and enter talks with the French and Spanish governments.
According to a summary of a statement published on a Basque newspaper website, the group wants to negotiate a "definitive end" to its operations.
Eta has fought a 45-year campaign for Basque independence, but has lost support in recent years.
Last year it announced an end to its campaign of violence.
The new statement suggests the organisation wants to go a step further by disbanding completely and turning in its weapons.
The full statement is due to be published on Sunday.
The summary published on the website of the Basque newspaper Gara suggests Eta is ready for talks, but will attach conditions to disbanding.
They include the transfer of Basque prisoners to prisons closer to their homes - a long-standing Eta demand.
The Basque country straddles the border between Spain and France.
Eta is believed to be responsible for more than 800 deaths, and is considered a terrorist organisation by the European Union and the US.
It has been weakened in recent years by a loss of support among Basque people, and a number of arrests, including that of the group's alleged military leader in October.
Eta's decision came on the eve of elections in the Spanish region of Catalonia, in which Catalan nationalists calling for a referendum on independence are expected to do well.



source; http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/world-europe-20482620

[Yet_Another_Boring_Marxist]

I'm a maoist but at this point it might be a good idea to try Catalonian tactics for succession. Yes violence is the sole road to socialism, but they have no pretense of socialism and at this point it looks like the bourgeois doesn't mind redrawing the border again when it comforts the angry masses.

[Sasha]

The Spanish government outright rejected the proposal, stupid idiots, even if the ETA keeps refraining from future actions now they have no way to get their hands on the arsenals, now the weapons and explosives either might be used if the eta ever restart their armed campaign or they might get sold to criminals or real terrorists. And all because the stupid Spanish government didn't want to make a few reasonable concessions, even the English made more concessions to the ira.

[Yet_Another_Boring_Marxist]

eta arent maoists

I know but generally Maoists are in favor of guerrilla tactics, hence I wanted to qualify that before some one comes in and tells me how weird it is for a Maoist to discouraged a guerrilla group.

[Prometeo liberado]

The major capitalist powers used the events of 9/11 to usher in the age of the "terrorist" dominated foreign policy. The money trail was shut down and torture has practically become the rule rather than the exception. Who paid the price besides the average citoyen? FARC, IRA, CUBA, PLO, IRAN and ETA. Besides Iran, these groups can not operate without outside assistance. ETA is merely acknowledging the setting of the sun so to speak. Tomorrow's a new day I guess.

[Sasha]

Dude, ETA liived through decades of franco fascist repression, the new anti-terrorism wave might be the straw that broke the camels back but if they still had the popular support like they used to they would be fine. National-liberation just became irrelevant under globalized capital...

[Prometeo liberado]

Dude, with globalized capital came the increasing need to seek global sources for hard cash. 9/11 took the gloves off as had never been seen in the history of the world. With new technologies and a greater capacity to monitor financial transactions the old way of doing things simply became too costly. Give it a name or date and that's 9/11. Martin McGuiness said something about this when confronted about the issue of decommissioning. The people simply had a different view and attitude of of so called terrorism after 9/11. This article may shed some light on what I'm saying.
By Ed Curran
Tuesday, 13 September 2011
http://cdn.belfasttelegraph.co.uk/multimedia/dynamic/00622/World_News_6-1_jpg_622881t.jpg

The National September 11 Memorial in New York (AP)

On September 11, 2001, I was about to hold an early afternoon editorial conference in the Belfast Telegraph. Someone suggested we turn on the television in the editor's office as something incredible appeared to be happening in New York.This day would rank in our lives in the same way as the murder of President John F Kennedy did for millions around the world 38 years earlier.
The question of where were you when Kennedy was shot would become, for a new generation, where were you when the twin towers collapsed.
And, just as with Kennedy, the special editions of newspapers began to roll off the presses everywhere, including in Belfast that September afternoon.
What we didn't realise then, but know now, is that September 11 altered the Western world's perception of terrorism most notably where it mattered most for Northern Ireland - in the Irish-American heartlands across the Atlantic.
As a result, we live in a very different atmosphere today. How times have changed in only one decade.
For example, take this past weekend and Sinn Fein holding its first ard fheis in Northern Ireland at the Waterfront Hall.
I remember attending the civic dinner to mark the Waterfront's opening. Because most guests wanted nothing to do with Sinn Fein, its councillors were diplomatically seated in a corner with editors like myself.
How times have changed. Now we have a Presbyterian minister addressing the ard fheis. The Lord Mayor of Belfast is also a member of Sinn Fein. He was a teenage boy on 9/11 and not even born to experience the worst of the Troubles.
How times have changed. I thought that, too, as I looked out over a rain-swept Belfast one Friday evening this month. The word normality sprung to mind - and not only because of the weather.
From my vantage-point, I could see three sets of floodlights beaming through the dusk. To my left, in the west of the city, the lights of Casement Park, more centrally, those at Windsor Park, and over on the right, Ravenhill.
Belfast was out on the town and at play, a far cry from the days when hardly an entertainer, or sportsperson, would dare to come to Northern Ireland and the city was a cultural desert.
The following day I stood with tens of thousands enjoying the Portrush Air Show and, in the evening, attended the Clandeboye festival, where the packed audience gave a standing ovation to the inimitable Barry Douglas and his Camerata Ireland musicians.
How times have changed, indeed. But would it really have been like it is today if 9/11 had not happened?
The attack on New York proved to be a catalyst for those who wanted to reject violence, as so many did in Northern Ireland. The events of 9/11 made terrorism the dirtiest word on Earth and no more so than here where it had destroyed so many lives, businesses, jobs and property.
As the world looked back yesterday at that cataclysmic event, we who had experienced terrorism for so long had more reason than most to remember not just the victims of the twin towers, but those who died through violence much closer to home.
For every victim in New York, this small province had one also. For every family that mourns to this day across the Atlantic, there is another here doing the same; feeling no less pain, suffering no less loss.
Had September 11 not happened, I wonder would we be as far advanced in the peace process. Might the political parties have procrastinated for years over the decommissioning of IRA weapons, or any number of other obstacles to a lasting peace?
In reality, the terrorist game was up the moment those planes crashed into the towers. Toleration of terror lay buried in the rubble of New York.
The heat in the kitchen had become too great. Only the old republican diehards - the so-called 'dissidents' - have closed their ears and eyes and stayed put.
The smart guys in the Irish republican movement, such as Gerry Adams and Martin McGuinness, swiftly understood the message of 9/11.
Osama bin Laden had given them an unassailably persuasive argument to use against any hardliners. The notion that bombing and killing in Ireland is an honourable cause worth a dollar in a charity bucket in some Manhattan pub belongs to yesterday.
Out of the terrible evil we all witnessed on 9/11, some good has come in this small corner of the Western world.

[Prometeo liberado]

what is thhe above post about.?
i doub arests of eta members as any bearing on their surender

these small national liberation movements seem more active today thanever.since the past 20years without guns or leftist politics

Which ones and how do you quantify "..more active today thanever."?

[Yuppie Grinder]

what is thhe above post about.?
i doub arests of eta members as any bearing on their surender

these small national liberation movements seem more active today thanever.since the past 20years without guns or leftist politics

Nice spelling. Also, you're objectively wrong. National liberation has been historically out-moded from a revolutionary perspective for like a billion years and as Psycho correctly stated above, it's pretty much irrelevant generally in the era of Late Capitalism.

[Prometeo liberado]

ok.the admin is always right.so how to explain independence groups in western europe?eg.spain,corsica,sardinia,scotland,wales, italy ,south.etc-

These examples are movements, not armed para's. I think, for the sake of this thread, we are dealing with the paramilitary question.

[bcbm]

Nice spelling.

not all members here speak english as a first language and among those that do there are varying degrees of education, making this sort of insult inappropriate. please don't do it again.

[Os Cangaceiros]

Dude, with globalized capital came the increasing need to seek global sources for hard cash. 9/11 took the gloves off as had never been seen in the history of the world. With new technologies and a greater capacity to monitor financial transactions the old way of doing things simply became too costly. Give it a name or date and that's 9/11.

I don't think that's necessarily true. There are new technologies but there are also (arguably) even more ways to subvert those technologies. The global financial system is not secure...organized crime is thriving in today's era. A global financial system that even approaches being secure would need a global financial authority with some real power, and I don't think that's going to happen.

Add to that the fact that the US government foolishly tried to prosecute "terrorist money" the same way they tried to track down laundered drug money. But that's a whole different thing: when prosecuting drug cases, one looks for dirty money that becomes clean, and with "terrorism" it's just the opposite (legitimate money that eventually becomes "dirty").

The main reason for the decline of national liberation struggles is probably some combination of what psycho said, and the fact that there's no more USSR...

[Danielle Ni Dhighe]

National-liberation just became irrelevant under globalized capital...
Where there's military occupation by an imperialist or colonialist state, there's relevance for national liberation, at least for the people directly affected. The real problem has been that national liberation movements have too often substituted armed struggle for mass struggle as their primary tactic.

[Avanti]

the basques have

had it too comfortable

ironic

that they stop the struggle

just when spain's economy

is flushed down the toilet

but maybe

eta were just

60-70 year old men

at this point?