Current Affairs

A US company, Pandemic, is going to sell a videogame, named Mercenaries 2: World in Flames, in which a US invasion is simulated in a country ruled by a tyran with the grasp of the oil refineries and with the final objective to throw out the tyran. This has worsened even more the US-Venezuelan relationship.

“The players take the place of soldiers to throw out a hungry tyran/dictator who varies the supply of Venezuelan oil, unleashing an invasion that makes the country a war place“. The simulated mission is began by a Marines’ commando to take it by a military assault.

This happens when Caracas has reinforced its alliance with Iran about the nuclear crisis. Ahmadinejah said:

“We hace a lot of common ideals and aims that unites us profoundly. And our common enemies’ position are each day less strong”.

Their common interests are so great they lack the same thing: oil refineries. As a result they are just making a new one jointly.

This came afterwards Bush said he was worried about an important erosion in democracy both in Bolivia and Venezuela.

Newsweek comments also about Chávez:

Venezuelan president Hugo Chávez is the new rock star of world politics. His impassioned rants against globalization, with animated poses to match, make front-page headlines almost daily. The commentariat-particularly in Europe-seems to buy Chávez’s line that Latin Americans are so disenchanted by their short tryst with liberalism that they now prefer a strongman to spread the benefits of a commodity boom. The recent moves by a Chávez soulmate, Evo Morales, to renationalize the energy resources of Bolivia reinforce a growing perception that Latin America is lurching to the radical left.

Read it all.

US had made arrangements to consider Lybia is fighting against terrorism. I was not the least happy about it. And at the same time Gadaffi says he is going to receive Chávez. As a result, Washington is going to suspend the selling of weapons to Caracas because of its lack of collaboration with the fighting of terrorism.

So Chávez is going to ask Oliver Stone to make a film about the failed coup d’état that took place in April 2002. “I am sure that there are a lot of people that are not willing the truth to come out because this people is going to investigate to have the truth and is going to tell both the good and the bad that happened then”, Chávez said. What? The same man who said that Castro is one of the wisest man on Earth is going to find the truth?

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These last days, we have been living here the “Debate on the State of the Nation”, although no one has told us which Nation they are referring to. One of the things everyone was very anxious to see is what does Zapatero wants to do about ETA. But nothing was spoken about it in the 1st day of the Debate.

Of course, the second day it was considered, but just because the PP had no possibility of contradicting and critisize the Zapatero Administration.

ETA terrorists have been appearing in TV in an Ossama bin Laden style. But the PM said he wanted, nevertheless, to begin talks with them.

He said: “Just as I announced, next month I will communicate to the political forces the start of the process of dialogue to achieve the end of violence with Eta.”

BBC is biased as ever: they titled a special about ETA “The end of an era”. That is curious: there is no end, really. There are a lot of people, ETA victims, which are there, suffering the pain of having lost parents, wifes, husbands, sons, daughters, etc. Or being themselves severely wounded.

With ETA terrorists happens just the same as with Islamic terrorists. If I criticize the terrorists, I am only critisizing people who are using terror and force to achieve political gains. But there are people who are confounding both the Islamic terrorists with all Muslims and Eta terrorists with all Basques, just as Barcepundit says here.

Of course, ETA victims have been organising peaceful demonstrations to show their reject to Zapatero’s program. This photo is from the one of June 4th 2005:

Anyway the Government has made everything posisble to diminish the importance of these protests. Here you can read what one of the victims’ association thoght about Zapatero in May 3rd 2005, just three months before this demonstration.

Another photo from Times On Line:

In this stage Rajoy asked in Parliament: are you going to negotiate the autodetermination right with Basque Country? And Zapatero said: No, what happens? don’t you listen to the PM? See this video:

(video in Spanish). Found here.

So, now the President of PSE (Basque Socialists) Patxi López, has said they are going to have talks with Batasuna, the political wing of the terrorist organization. Then José Blanco, the Secretary of Organization from PSOE, also said they were supporting that, but only “if Batasuna respects the law”. Well, it’s curious but the Antiterrorist Agreement between PSOE and PP, and the subsequent Political Parties Law, said political parties who were interested in violence or defended it were going to be illegalised. This is the case of Batasuna, which has not condemned any of the terrorist attacks ETA has made along these years. Zapatero has also added he will negotiate even if there is no peace, even if ETA is not for an end of violence. What people here believe is that they are going to be legalised again without any consideration to those Agreement and Law. PP has just said that any possible meeting will be illegal.

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Astounding:

Interior minister Alfredo Perez Rubalcaba said yesterday that the administration “has not yet reached the conviction that ETA wants to put an end to violence…although the process has solid foundations.” After the interview with two masked terrorists published in the ETA-front newspaper Gara, which made it clear that ETA had not renounced any of its objectives, and the report from the French police that ETA is still stealing cars in the south of that country, Rubalcaba backed off the Zapatero administration’s former optimism.

Well, he must be the only optimist in Spain after the televised interview of two ETA members I wrote about here. But there is more: looks like Mr. Zapatero is going to ask the Congress an authorization to negotiate with ETA.

Rubalcaba also said that there won’t be bringining together all the ETA prisoners in Spain. Well, I really do not believe him…

As ElenaB writes in her blog, there are people who say openly that we, people who are for the defense of freedom and justice and, so, against any treatment that means a negotiation with ETA, we do not want its end. Yes, that is a very normal and common “theory”, but really that is NOT true. We want peace, but not a peace that means surrendering to criminals who only intend to impose their political projects by terror.

Meanwhile, Mexico is going to extradite 6 ETA terrorists (whatever the link says they are no activists).

By the way, what has to do South Africa in Spanish Affairs? I do think that anything. But they do not:

The African National Congress is encouraged by prospects for a peaceful and lasting resolution to violence in the Basque region of Spain, it said on Thursday.

This was after a meeting between the Basque political party Batasuna and the ANC in Johannesburg on Wednesday.

The ANC was represented by secretary general Kgalema Motlanthe and Batasuna by Urko Aiartza Azurtza, the ANC said in a statement.

In March Basque separatist group ETA announced a permanent ceasefire.

“The ANC is further encouraged by the stated intention of Spanish Prime Minister José Luis Rodríguez Zapatero and the Spanish Socialist Workers Party … to seek a peaceful and just outcome,” the ANC said.

The Spain Herald

Two masked ETA members, interviewed by the pro-ETA newspaper Gara, confirmed on Sunday that its extortion letters sent to Navarrese businesses were mailed out after its declaration of an “indefinite cease-fire,” contradicting prime minister Zapatero’s claim that the letters had been mailed before the declaration. The terrorists said, “There are economic needs in order to carry on the struggle, and today the struggle for liberation continues, causing these needs, including economic ones.” The etarras stressed that the truce is conditional, depending on whether the Zapatero administration accepts ETA’s political price, self-determination and the annexation of Navarre. The two showed no sign of the “flexibility” and “correct path” that the administration had attributed to ETA. According to the terrorists, ETA has already done its part to promote the peace process by declaring the cease-fire, and they insinuated that further steps would be taken if the administration made its commitments specific.

So really there are no truce: they are only trying to impose themselves on all the other Spanish people. And Zapatero has lied… again.

EL MUNDO (in Spanish) adds -this is new- that “France says this is an Spanish issue. They are lying: this is also a French issue “. Otegi also paid homage to the ETA prisoners dead in the French prisons. But the French press has not published anything about this issue. The site of the French Government does not say anything either.

But there are also good news: Alcaraz reelected president of AVT - The Spain Herald

Francisco Jose Alcaraz was reelected president of the Association of Victims of Terrorism on Saturday by 601 votes in favor to 43 against. There were nine abstentions. Opposing candidate Pablo Broseta pulled out of the race after the AVT’s assembly approved the association’s budget. The PP praised Alcaraz’s reelection because “the victims want to be in the center of the process to put an end to terror.”

Alcaraz said at a press conference, “The results make it very clear that the previous board of directors was supported by the majority of the members.” He added that some members had asked him to continue working in favor of psychological aid for the victims of the March 11, 2004 bombings in Madrid. Alcaraz promised that the new board of directors would “fight for memory, dignity, and justice toward the victims of terrorism.”

I agree.

UPDATE: VIA Pajamas Media, I read Barcepundit has written about this topic.

Tags: Alcaraz, Asociación de Víctimas del Terrorismo, AVT, ETA, PSOE, Spain, terrorism, Truce, Zapatero, France, Villepin

After Somalia, looks like another country is risking the beginning, well, er, continuing of another bloody war: Guardian Unlimited | The Guardian | Rebels sink Sri Lankan navy boat

Background of this issue in TIME.com:

Civil War Looms After Sri Lanka Sea Battle - Examiner.com

The truce monitor says they are at war.More in Yahoo News.

Eeh, and the Tamil Rebels Threaten a Return to War - Examiner.com

You can see a chronology of the attacks of the Tamil TERRORISTS here (CAUTION: harmful photos). BBC also has a report on them.

From Times On Line:

Violence has cost Sri Lanka dear. About 64,000 people have been killed and a million displaced. Investors have been scared away, development has been stunted, tourism hurt; terrorism has got a grip in the island and among Tamil communities overseas. With evidence of widespread intimidation of Tamils abroad, many countries, including Britain, have proscribed the Tigers. After India’s ill-fated attempt at peacekeeping and the assassination in 1991 of Rajiv Gandhi, there is concern at the possible spread of the conflict into India - though, so far, little evidence of this or of support from Indian Tamils for the rebels. A return to war would be a disastrous setback. Both the Government and rebels must be made to see the cost of such folly.

With that results is astonishing they want to begin another civil war. Or continue the last one.

And to the calls by the European Union about the attack, the Tamil rebels have answered: From News from Russia:

The Liberation Tigers of Tamil Eelam on Wednesday denounced as unfair and one-sided the European Union’s decision to bar the Sri Lankan separatists from entering EU member countries.

“The Tamil people and the Liberation Tigers are shocked at this decision by the EU,” the guerillas’ political wing chief S.P. Thamilselvan told reporters in the northern rebel stronghold of Kilinochchi.

The EU said in a statement Monday that Tamil Tiger representatives will be refused entry to member states until further notice while the body decides whether to add the group to its list of terrorist organizations, according to the AP.

The statement said the Tigers’ “continuing use of violence and terrorism” threatened the country’s fragile peace process.

Well, er, this in fact is undermining the European Union policy about the word terrorism. Hmm, well, that is ONLY for Islamic terrorists in fact…

Tags: Sri Lanka, terrorism, Tamil Tigers, terrorist organisations, European Union

You can read here and here. Just another humanitarian crisis caused by clashes between Islamic fundamentalism and secular forces. Hmm, let’s hope UN finally proves useful to some extent.
I have written “hope”, not “believed”.

As I wrote earlier, the situation in Somalia is very unstable:

From Interested-Participant

After 15 years without a national government, Somalia is a battlefield. Tribal militias and Islamic fundamentalists, allegedly tied to al-Qaeda, are struggling for control and many people are dying.

From KhaleejTimes.com:

Islamic militiamen and secular fighters battled Wednesday for control of Somalia’s capital despite promises of a cease-fire, as the death toll rose to at least 90, with nearly 200 others wounded.

The sounds of heavy weapons echoed through the city, but the fighting was not as intense as it had been in the previous three days. The battle between the Islamic Court Union and the Alliance for the Restoration of Peace and Counterterrorism has centered on the northern neighborhood of Sii-Sii, with neither side gaining an advantage.

BBC NEWS | Africa | Truce collapses in Somali capital

Can a humanitarian crisis happen in Somalia (again)? BBC NEWS | Africa | Somalis flee as city battle rages

Ein? So they want the Islamists to win? But there is more: