Eta declares permanent ceasefire
The Basque separatist group Eta has declared a permanent ceasefire.
Eta is blamed for killing more than 800 people in its four-decade fight for independence for the Basque region of northern Spain and south-west France.
In a statement released to Basque media, the group said its objective now was "to start a new democratic process in the Basque country".
I was wondering how quickly they will make that decision. In the good ol' days of decolonisation and cold war "one man's freedom fighter is another man's terrorist" seemed to make sense. Everything has changed after 9/11. Nowadays people tend to ignore the "freedom fighter" bit.
If one method does not work, you try a different one. That's what politics is all about, pursuit of goals. You weigh your cons and pros and use the method which would give you the needed results.
posted by amitav at 3/22/2006 07:34:00 PM
1 comments
1 Comments:
"there are no rules for deciding when something doesn't work."
Of course there are rules. The rules are whatever you decide them to be. Having a criteria for success is very important. In this case ETA wants independence from Spain. It does not matter to it if independence comes through certain degrees of autonomy, just as long as in the end they get to have their own sovereign state.
"but the reason for the change in strategy may be because some ass who was abused as a child and hence had developed violent tendencies finally kicked the bucket"
Small group using terrorist methods hoping for a heavy handed response by the dominant power which in turn would make the group more popular is an old tactic which has been successfully used by many groups. One of the latest success stories is KLA in Kosovo.
While I am not disputing that one of the leaders of ETA was abused as a child, you have to remember that ETA probably does not have a rigid hierarchial leadership. If it had, it would have been decapitated by Spanish secret services long time ago. Most probably it uses the small cells operating autonomously method. For your theory to work this would mean that quite a few people were abused as children and have now all kicked the bucket at the same time.
Political Science is BS, but if you ignore it altogether, then you do end up with easy solutions like "kill 'em and all let God sort them out"
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