March 15, 2004

spanish bombs pt. two

2 Comments

Jeff Jar­vis makes a few good points about the elec­tion in Spain.
1. Millions of Spa­nish rally en masse to pro­test the bom­bings.
2. Yep. Nothing like a good street demo to get Al Qaeda to fall in line.

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2 Responses to “spanish bombs pt. two”

  1. Nia says:
    March 16, 2004 at 9:58 AM

    Hugh, I don’t know if you’re refe­rring to the demons­tra­tions of Fri­day or on Satur­day. Since you men­tion “millions”, it should be Fri­day you’re tal­king about. I think you’re (partly) mis­sing the point. These are the rea­sons why the whole of Spain was in the streets last Fri­day.
    1. Lots of us thought it had been ETA, not AlQaeda. For about 20 years or so, peo­ple who were ETA’s tar­gets were very afraid of spea­king up. Living in the BAs­que country and not being openly natio­na­lis­tic is/was a mor­tal dan­ger. Lots of peo­ple lost their fear roughly around 1997 (I can tell you why if you’re inte­res­ted). The demo meant, as so many other have meant since 1997, “ETA: kill us if you want to but we’re not afraid of you any­more”.
    2. The govern­ment called the demo, it was not spon­ta­neous or really “a pro­test”. The con­ser­va­tive party used the best chance they had to turn everyone’s grief into a call for _unity_ (the demo’s slo­gan inc­lu­ded a defense of our Cons­ti­tu­tion, which the non-terrorists sepa­ra­tists was to reform!!!).
    3. Plenty of peo­ple, inc­lu­ding me, marched to show our sym­pathy for the peo­ple of Madrid. It’s silly, small and sym­bo­lic, but it’s bet­ter to grieve with two million peo­ple than to do it on your own. I felt as if I was atten­ding a fune­ral.
    Right?

  2. hugh says:
    March 16, 2004 at 11:49 AM

    Fair enough. But the pro­blem with Al Qaida remains. Whether they’re correct or not, they’re currently con­gra­tu­la­ting them­sel­ves for win­ning their first Euro­pean gene­ral elec­tion.
    Europe can expect simi­lar tac­tics in the future.
    With what’s at stake, for the for­mer govern­ment to willingly try to make short-term elec­to­rial gains by bla­ming ETA, while kno­wing full well AQ was invol­ved… that really was unfor­gi­va­ble, not to men­tion stupid.