Targetting Spain - another M11 bomb for another Election?

by O as if : spoor Sun Jan 20, 2008 21:53

These are spanish language links which don't really add much to the scant information already presented. For what it's worth, the initial TV statements by the local Catalan minister of the interior and leader of the Catalan opposition had that far away look of careful recitation of a formula. That they both said exactly the same thing with the same far away look in their eyes, suggested that they indeed repeating a formula. It is always too easy to blame any event, atrocity or move to terrorist tactics (from mere discussion of same) on the over-arching structure of Al Qaeda. Indeed it's a mistake full stop & period.

That one of the reported targets was a small & vaguely "liberal" prayer space rather pretentiously designated a "mosque" around the corner from my home causes me serious worry. I've extensive links to the Pakistani and other Asian ethnic groups in this city & have worked along side many of their activists on several issues. The suspension attack on the Lal Masjid or Red Mosque of Islamabad, the suspension of the Pakastani constitution & subsequent assassination of Benazir Bhutto all prompted texts and comments from me which were faithful to the opinions I hear from members of Barcelona's Pakistani community. (c/f http://www.indymedia.ie/article/83379 http://www.indymedia.ie/article/84912 http://www.indymedia.ie/article/85648 )But they are for the most part not the most religious of types. We find ourselves yet again in this city at least having to consider not only the prejudice and criminalisation of a community which mostly (but not exclusively) lives in abject poverty outside of normal regularised conditions & a hope of equal citizenship rights & the social rights of that community to organise & selects its own ministers of publick worship .

I have never been a great fan of attacking religious sub-groups or prelatures beyond a certain point of generalisation. Thus though expressing a consistent mistrust & anomisity to in Roman Catholic terms the prelatures of Opus Dei or Legion of Christ - I've never argued that for their complete abolition & legal restriction even if many good reasons may be found to argue their consistent & organised attempts to undermine democratic society & secularism & the efforts made by some of the members to undermine social or civil rights to the point of threats, attacks etc on abortion providers or spokespeople for sexual minorities. & so I thought unwise - the decisions to blanket ban & tar with the Al Qaeda brush all associated with the political organisation Hizb ut-Tahrir which memorably saw a British secret service D notice sidelined in the wake of the London July bombings by European journalists. c/ f http://www.indymedia.ie/article/71169

I would also consider it unwise (after consultation with local Pakistanis) any move to illegalise such other informal groups in Barcelona or to make the point the UK & Ireland now.

I have & always will maintain that our security, that is the collective security of European societies and working people in our places of labour & transport systems in terms of "an Islamist Extremist threat" is best served by improving the conditions of migrants & genuine non-exploitative assitance to their states of origin. We are entering a multi-citizenship Europe. Our security is measured in 15 minute phone calls from call centres to the suburbs of crowded cities in Asia and shared public exchange in little villages. Not by closing ashrams, smearing mosques with ill reputation (for many of the ignorant public see culprits rather than potential victims) or adding yet more groups to lists of proscription are we going to end this pattern. & the pattern to which I refer, is the consistent attempts to recreate easy domestically made explosives & use recruits - single men without close family support or economic prospects but heightened religious delusional resolve to attack.

I leave this with one last thing I feel ought be highlighted. Whatever one wish say about the bombings in Europe or tourist resorts used by Europeans attributed to Al Qaeda of the last four years, one thing has not occured yet on this continent - use of terrorist tactics to promote seccessionist or separatist agenda in Asian states. It seems if Barcelona was to be bombed soon, it was not our metro nor our trains (which never run on time anyway) but one of our mosques. Not to throw our election or feed conspiracy theory & subvert democracy - but to divide men & women in the state of Pakistan. As I wrote many months ago - that's how things go pop.
I dearly wish & pray if things go pop, they go pop far away from my city or places my people congregate. But you know how it is - things go pop all the time far away & we don't do anything about it.

We now face a situation where the community of the mosque raided (but not note to arrest its staff) are claming the detained are only a prayerful community.

http://www.swissinfo.ch/spa/internacional/detail/Deteni...ty=ti
http://news.bbc.co.uk/hi/spanish/international/newsid_7...5.stm
http://www.elpais.com/articulo/espana/Desmantelado/grup...2/Tes
http://www.elpais.com/articulo/espana/Solo/predicadores...7/Tes

additional coverage in English language from Basque TV which tells of the preparations for tomorrows arraingment court appearance in Madrid which should see evidence against all 14 presented. Apparantly the intelligence community is "sifting" painstakingly. Yep. Sure if yer man in the Bin Laden lookalike suit took so many months to sift - then these people need to get out of their bunkers & away from their phone taps & out from behind their CCTV. But we all know how it goes. Working class people die in massacres. Together we can stop these things. & the time to adopt a common plan of action is now - not the nasty morning before March 9th we've to see the ambulances scramble.
http://www.eitb24.com/new/en/B24_83566/politics/ARRESTE...tify/

by iosaf Mon Jan 21, 2008 00:06

I've been waiting on an opportunity to frame the forthcoming General Election to the Spanish Congress & Senate & current electioneering. I didn't want to introduce the campaign & coverage of it from a South American angle, nor from either Basque or Catalan angles. Years ago I used cover many elections in a series "how ______ voted & not voted". http://www.indymedia.ie/article/69442 http://www.indymedia.ie/article/73567 http://www.indymedia.ie/article/50048 I'd point anyone to the search engine and archived articles of this site, especially those who are interested in the lengthy campaigns & surprises which brought Aznar's regime to an end & brought Zapatero to wherever it is he is now. Aside from the impressions I got & still get from living (& despite my best intentions) and working in the Spanish state, I also was back then (2003-2005) greatly endebted to the team (wilfried & family) behind the very long standing internet group & site "electionworld". They of course accepted the eager invitation of the wikipedia foundation to become a central part of that website's meticulous & neutral coverage of elections of all types.

Democracy & democratic participation are emergent quantities in social organisation which at any time are subjected to antonymical & perverse forces such as commercial media & large political party financial organisation. Such antonymical forces are it appears essential to the presentation of democratic participation by the citizen in his or her states structure. There will be time for many theses on such things later on. Naturally the largest anarcho-syndicalist grouping in the Spanish state the historical CNT will call for abstention & as in times past I'll be happy to link to their election day declaration which hasn't really changed an iota since before we had elections. Unless your ancestor in the early 19th century earned 500 guineas a year without the off shore banking in which case fair play to you for having a working class conscience in the early 21st century - but hot shit on a cold day - it wasn't such a long time ago - we're still descended from slaves & whores.

So Wilfried & Wikipedia have set up the template for 9/3/08 in English here -
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Spanish_general_election%2..._2008
There you'll find a lucid description of the main parties who each present electoral lists to the public. It's an odd system which means it's impossible to vote out or "not vote in" someone like big swinging Mickey Mc Dowell. Under an electoral list system he would still be in the Dail. The Wikipedia page also gives you the opinion polls so you can watch how the futurologists are shaping it all down. My favourite quote thus far is from the Lehandakari of the Basque ruling nationalists who predictably will side with the largest Catalan party the christian democrats in supporting either PP or PSOE if the seats get to coalition arrangements. He said he's fed up with the good vibes of Zapatero which doesn't lead the Basques anywhere. Ah but he's doing his referendum on a the right to a referendum in October with whomever is new prime minister...
Meanwhile Catalonia didn't get its high speed train delivered long past the PP under Aznar using a coalition with the above mentioned Catalan christian democrats. It's the slowest high speed train in history. Ironically Sarkozy offered in December to build Morocco a high speed train which they will quite probably for national pride's sake get up & running before, they just started laying track.., But both Basque and Catalonia are the fringe of the 350 Congress deputies and 208 elected senators. This is a fight between the right PP & the liberal PSOE.

The PP have gone far right. It really seemed there could be very little further they could go without dragging tanks onto the street which like him or not the King seems to impede (or control) - but they managed it all the same. The PSOE have really done zilch in the last four years other than very good advertising, get a few thousand single sex couples paying tax a different way & allow basic foodstuffs to go through 40% inflation in the last quarter. I'm talking peak onions & milk - & no one is ever going to get a fucking house in their life ( no vas a tener una casa en la puta vida! No tindràs una casa en la puta vida! are the slogans of the access to housing campaigns http://www.vdevivienda.net/ ) For those who would quote me on the axiom "governments win elections"; I must admit so must remind that cases such as a Spanish state election are especially interesting because no-one ever really wants to admit who the government actually is. It's an odd reticence which even casual observers of the UK or USA or Chinese or Cuban ballot box activity wouldn't normally have. & then there will be as this article began - "the terrorist threat."

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Spanish_general_election%2..._2008

How the Spanish State will vote & not vote : the right v the liberal - whoever wins you lose

by iosaf Mon Jan 21, 2008 01:10

Probably means nothing to you, sure half the front bench of the PP are tied to the "Legion of Christ" & more than half are Opus Dei. But for those more interested in the idea of muslim terrorists bombing an Irish holiday destination than the Spanish General Election - here's a link on "tablighi Jamaat" http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tablighi_Jamaat#Allegation...orism
you can look at how many members of that are in Guantanamo here -http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Allegations_that_Tablighi_...orism
and for the record the Irish Sunday Independent's report on the arrests & how Spain is on "high alert". http://www.independent.ie/world-news/europe/spain-on-hi....html that was orange as it happens. Off it now. & just for the main point of this new thread I suppose I should link you to an explanation of who the "Legion of Christ" are - http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Legion_of_Christ after all "Tablighi Jamaat" (pronounced tabliihi by the way nobody bothers with the jamaat bit) aren't running for the next Spanish government. They've just auditioned for the background roles. I hope readers understand the illustration.

by spoor Wed Jan 23, 2008 13:57

Monday the Guardia Civil asked for an extension on the interrogation period of the 14 suspected terrorists (Islamic). They got it. 2 were released last night. Last night the Guardia Civil arrested 4 suspected members of the GRAPO (mao-ist terrorist or maybe they were marxist). But neither of them are punting the elections they go under the terrorist threat sideshow category. & you could see this bit of news in the same light, for the result of the election won't really depend on the voting power of EHAK or ANV (proxy parties for basque seperatism) but how the Spanish in Spanish land perceive it will surely get their minds off the panic buying & gnawing sensation of impending doom in the tummy. Spain’s Minister of Justice Mariano Fernández Bermejo has announced he will request the beginning of the procedure to outlaw the two Basque parties next Friday during the cabinet meeting as “they have become part of ETA’s network and serve“ the Basque armed group.
http://www.eitb24.com/new/en/B24_83940/politics/BASQUE-...tlaw/

.....Spain's Supreme Court, the highest one in the country, found former members of the board of the Basque parliament guilty of disobeying a Supreme Court ruling and sentenced them a suspension from public office and obliged them to pay whopping big fines. Juan María Atutxa, Gorka Knörr and Kontxi Bilbao, the three former members of the board of the Basque parliament, were found guilty of disobeying a Supreme Court ruling when they refused to try and dissolve the Sozialista Albertzaleak party in the Basque parliament in November 2003. (SA was a batasuna proxy) Atutxa was the "ceann chomhairle" of the Basque parliament.
http://www.eitb24.com/new/en/B24_83718/politics/Supreme...ying/
....."The Basque premier Juan José Ibarretxe stated Tuesday that the Basque Government “neither understand nor accepts” that Basque Parliament’s former president Juan Mari Atutxa, and former members of the Basque chamber Kontxi Bilbao and Gorka Knörr “committed any crime” when they refused to try and dissolve Basque leftist party Sozialista Abertzaleak in 2003.........." All the same those 3 have been found guilty of disobedience which makes their centre nationalist party look all r-a-d-i-c-a-l to your average Basque voter, don't you know.
http://www.eitb24.com/new/en/B24_83821/politics/ldquoAT...ther/
OF course the lehanadakari is about to finish his court case for talking to Batasuna (one of those times Batasuna just got called Batasuna & not one of those times you don't see Batasuna but whomever you see is obviously being there on their behalf........very crafty.)

Oh yep - & the CIU Catalan centre right formation have decided the high speed train route to Barcelona will be a condition of their support for any coalition agreement with either the sexually liberal & feather boa party the PSOE or far right moustaches & beard wearing party the PP.

you know as soon as your tummy starts gnawing, it's too late..,
no-one is going to hear your scream anyway.

by spoor Wed Jan 23, 2008 21:10

Lovely place for holidays coz you lot can generally afford taxis & car rental. My good unworthy & almost always unclean self live here & have to use public transport. Like several million others who do (live in Barcelona & use public transport) I seem to remember being told last weekend there was no imminent threat. Then along came the protected witness & proto-bang-bang - staying in bed for a few days this week would have been an exagerration & not playing the game. You've got to be plhegmatic. Ask anyone who lives in Baghdad. You can't let terror affect your democracy as more than one Roman Catholic convert has said. You've give to keep going. Feel that feather boa constricting your windpipe?
It could be worse, the far right could be in power & the Spanish state would still be in Iraq.

cmprehensive coverage of eveyrthing including analysis & videos & pdf files of court, police, resident groups, Pakistani representative group & the whole story thing may be read in Catalan here :-
http://www.vilaweb.cat/www/noticia?p_idcmp=2710607&p_ed...neral

In Spanish here :- http://www.lavanguardia.es/lv24h/20080123/53429405852.html
http://www.elpais.com/articulo/espana/detenidos/Barcelo...6/Tes

Oh yep not only does it seem in a wrapped up judicial way that 3 of the 10 jailed of the 14 detained were going to suicide bomb public transport last weekend, it also seems not a single one of them is or was an Indian. http://www.hindu.com/2008/01/22/stories/200801225981120...0.htm

by spoor Sat Jan 26, 2008 11:37

the aborted attack on Barcelona's metro last weekend was according to a protected witness, infitrator & presumed agent of the French secret service, to be followed by similar attacks in France, Germany, the UK & Portugal. The first attack in Barcelona was going to get a video from Amir Baitulá Mehsud of the Waziristan Taliban all the way off in the borderlands of Pakistan & Afghanistan to make it all officially "Al Qaeda". Some Irish readers might have noticed the new "Monopoly World Edition ©" competition. It's being promoted on the RTE news site, perhaps as an attempt to save the housing market in the face of market ditherings. Paris & London predictably enough are going to get the indigo top-whack rent with hotel & four houses just before you get to the end of the board & claim your 200 squid. The bunch of three houses before on the green squares are NY, Rome & Sydney, then the yellow "quite expensive but not on the embassy circuit" yellow squares will be Dublin, Tokyo & Barcelona. Of course you can change that by voting. http://www.rte.ie/news/2008/0122/monopoly.html http://www.monopolyworldvote.com/en_US/world/leaders/rank-1
http://www.elpais.com/articulo/espana/atacamos/metro/Ba...1/Tes

So this thread is not only about Terror! but also voting in the Spanish General Election 2008 http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Spanish_general_election%2..._2008 I thought to let you know how both Basque parties ANV & EHAK have seen the processes which will illegalise them begun in time for March 9th. This of course will mean anyone in Basque or sort of Basque lands who would vote for an independence option won't have to bother getting out of bed & braving the Al Qaeda. Unless it's for the morning after pill. (link english http://www.eitb24.com/new/en/B24_84226/politics/BASQUE-...e-go/ )

On which worrying but better safe than sorry note I can tell you of ZP's electoral sweetie promise this week to offer the "morning after" pill free on the social security or E111 if you're an Irish Tourist.

To be balanced (as I am) I must also inform you of Rajoy (of the PP's) sweety in tax reduction by which the poor people & some rich people numbering no less than 18,000,000 shall enjoy varying reductions in income tax which many people find ingenious ways to avoid paying anyway.

The "united left" party has suggested lowering the age of voting from 18 to 17. If it didn't work for Pat Rabitte it will suffice to keep them out of power & the embarrassment of being properly blamed for not restoring the republic.

The Basque nationalists are of course moving into the "naughty" territory being left behind by the now almost completely illegalised, brushed under the carpet or banged up in jail doing English classes, weights & yoga Basque seperatists. They haven't really come up with any proposal other than to march down the street with them this afternoon as they realise that almost all of them are clocking up fines, prohibitions for holding public office & time of sweaty sticky bums on court's accused bench. (link english - http://www.eitb24.com/new/en/B24_84293/politics/DEMONST...s-to/
)

Youtube and TVE (spanish telly) have cobbled together a page where you watch vids from all the ghouls. http://es.youtube.com/elecciones08 If the election were as simple as counting Youtube viewer-hits we'd have Ratzinger doing a twice daily Angelus by mid March & I think it would be safe to forget the "morning after" pill.

by iosaf Wed Jan 30, 2008 22:06

The horrible thing about the 2004 general Election in Spain was how the regime of Aznar managed to shadow the whole democratic process with constant day-in day-out talk of terrorism. Since last Saturday we've learnt that 2 ETA membesr have been arrested, one ETA member died in Cabo Verde the small bunch of islands off of Africa where he had been mugged (which injuries he died from) & robbed of 2euros last weekend. Then we learnt that there are in fact 2 more Islamic terrorists who weren't arrested along with the 14 (2 of whom were released) who of course started this thread. Morocco decided to arrest one of the remaining fugitives from the M11 attack this week and he will become the first person extradited from that state to Spain just in time for the election. & over the pyrennes in France - the french kindly dug out 2 ETA suspects to keep our mind of terror.

Oh yes.

Zapatero has offered 400euros tax rebate to every worker and pensioner who pays in income tax (you fill out the forms yourself US style) except of course for the self-employed. The left-wing candidates for the election the IU have pretty accurately said that is akin to bribery. The PP have decided they will "correct" the gay marriage law if elected. Most people never really understood how simple & yet how politically outré the PSOE's civil union adjustment was. Rather than formulating a new kind of contract, which is how every other EU state went about it and Ireland might do - the PSOE simply included the phrase "regardless of gender" in the legislation which allowed for civil unions. Bingo in a Feather Boa - anyone could get married & adopt kiddies which is wonderful but when one considers that the right wing PP has held regardless of abstention or participation its share of the Spanish electorate since "the transition" and that both the main nationalist blocks of the Basque & Catalonia are also strongly "catholic & centre right" in orientation - it was always going to the silliest wonderful thing Zapatero did. I said as much years ago in a few places. To put it succintly again - there is a logical order to the extension of rights - four years on the promise of a tax rebate if they win does not help one forget nothing is cheaper, no solution to the asymetrical federalism of the Spanish state & its Basque & Catalan problems are in sight & most of all - I'm sick to the back teeth of glitzy adverts telling me how well they've spent European money which might as well have been raised in an Irish financial centre.

your links -

http://es.youtube.com/elecciones08
http://www.gasparllamazares.es/cosas_importan.htm
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Spanish_general_election%2..._2008

by iosaf Thu Jan 31, 2008 01:53

Anyone reading my last update would think the Spanish elections were all about Terror the threat of Terror! or the mere hint of terror .

Sorry for misleading ye. Nik Sarkozy & Angela Merckel (who are respectively the president & prime minister of France & Germany) have openly declared their support for Mariano Rajoy's campaign. They want him in the driving seat in Madrid come March 9th. It's official and front page news tomorrow (or today) with a photo. They have supported him "with all their heart"

I wonder does this mean Sarkozy & Merckel are anti-gay?

The photo of the trio of ghouls together will perhaps in time come to rival that of plucky little Aznar next to Bush & Blair in the Azores back when sorting out Sadam Hussein seemed a piece of short term cake. Speaking of Aznar, the Italian right winger Fini has just proposed the plucky little moustachio'ed one as president of the EU...........he'll be on your coins yet.

( you may see the photo here with english coverage http://www.typicallyspanish.com/news/publish/article_14...shtml & read about it here with spanish language - http://www.elpais.com/articulo/espana/Merkel/Sarkozy/de.../Tes/


& keeping balance - today's "PSOE ZP bribe" is 5 billion euros for Madrid's trains. If you go up the page you see that the trains that actually need money enough to be a "viable junior party coalition condition" are in Barcelona.

hmmmmmmmmm. I've never seen either Sarko or Merckel in a feather boa. & I've just checked the internet to see if Carla Bruni ever wore one either. You know the answer..........

We (on the genuine left, anarchist & socialist independence circuit circles of Basque or Catalonia) are facing a horrible prospect. & it is this - abstention will & it is utterly mathematically probable, I assure you, return a right wing laden with Catholics & Sarko clone government. But going out & voting on March 9th will only stop that happening by putting Zapatero back in. As the Catalan christian democrats are putting it - the PP and the PSOE are the same for Catalonia. They're the same for the Basque too. But it goes beyond the Catalans & the Basques. They're used to it. It's the queers!!!! Nope - it's not them either, four years of equality has seen only a few thousand lesbian couples adopt kids and only netted a few billion extra pink euro fiscal contributions & by now even the glamorous telly gossip programmes are losing viewers too.., We've to think a bit more about this election. It's about the future of "hispanidad". It's going to have a huge bearing on the future of South American democracy. You know - the continent where kids sniff glue, the Argentine presidents are married to each other, the Venezuelan leader dates Naomi Campbell & your kids want the coke.

Thank God, the Guardia Civil ( who aren't running for the election ) are doing their best to get a Terror story into the newspaper every day. That's all I can say. If it wasn't for the terrorists, I'd remember how scared I was about the democrats.

your links -

http://es.youtube.com/elecciones08
http://www.gasparllamazares.es/cosas_importan.htm
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Spanish_general_election%2..._2008

by iosaf Sat Feb 09, 2008 21:58

Since the arrests which started this article & coverage of the Spanish General Election of 2008 http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Spanish_general_election%2..._2008 certain little cracks have become visible in the normally very shaded & discreet world of European secret service co-operation. The French expressed upset at the Spanish "burning" of one of their agents whose subsequent protected witness status led to the presumed prevention of suicide bombings in Europe in January. France then released two ETA prisoners whose arrests are mentioned up the page rather than extraditing them to Spain. Then the British got a mention. It emerged that MI5 or the British domestic secret service was waiting at the airports of London to bring into custody - 6 Pakistanis on flights from Barcelona that weekend. & embarrassment of mistakes, proof positives of non-commited co-operation - those 6 men turned out to be Pakistani bignobs on the Musharref team if not card carrying members of that state's secret service. The Brits blamed the Spanish, then the French then it all ended up with a Guardian article & demands from the Pakistani community of Barcelona for formal apologies.

english article -
http://www.guardian.co.uk/pakistan/Story/0,,2255007,00.html
coverage from Catalan independence platform which has excelled itself on all the curious little tale of Al Qaeda in our midst so far http://www.vilaweb.cat/www/noticia?p_idcmp=2733202

_______________________

The Vatican got complaints from the Spanish government after its congress of bishops in the Spanish state called for an anti-PSOE vote, not got calling civil unions between homosexual men or women "marriage" but for talking to ETA.

_______________________

The IU left reformed marxist commie party expressed interest in coalition with ZP. I've already linked to their leader's page in the last comment.

_______________________

The PSOE (ZP party) said it would cut funding to the church of Rome if it wins & impose fines of 3,000 on people who filled their swimming pool or watered their gladioli or any such garden plant, herbage, shrub or vegetation if in a drought zone. The PP offered a program of reforestation equivalent to planting one tree every hour for the next 4 years.

_______________________

The Spanish judiciary arrested two of the last prominent members of Batasuna & locked them up whilst also illegalising the "proxy" parties of Basque seperatism the EHAK & the ANV.

______________________

hope you got the hint about the cracks there..,


links to wikipedia & youtube
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Spanish_general_election%2..._2008
http://es.youtube.com/elecciones08

by iosaf .:. ipsiphi Fri Mar 07, 2008 22:29

The Spanish state will celebrate a general election on Sunday & as is traditional the day before is free of overt political propaganda leaving the enfranchised a chance "to reflect".

I as a European citizen have no right to vote in this election which will see a goverment formed to determine the fiscal, social & political future within the paltry bounds of a neo-liberal superstate structure for the next four years. There are millions of other Europeans & non-European migrants resident in this state who likewise are not called to exercise franchise. Perhaps unlike many of those I adhere to the political declaration of the 1st international as articulated by the anarcho-syndicalist trade union the CNT which is traditionally made on the eve of such ballots.

As would be expected ETA made their appearance in the form of a 9mm bullet to the nape of the neck of the PSOE councillor Isaías Carrasco earlier today.

As would be expected the Roman Catholic Church called for its half of Spanish society to vote against the PSOE.

As would be expected the liberal press of the USA, Ireland, France & the UK expressed their hope that the "modernising project" of Zapatero's PSOE continue.

As would be expected the IU party of the left declared interest in coalition subject to a minimum wage of 1000euros a month & abortion on demand & social security. Their website was hacked a Franco flag put in the place of such communist conspiracies.

As would be expected the PP true to their fascist roots after spending 3 years preventing dialogue in the Basque conflict & falsely maintaining that ETA had committed the M11 atrocity decided to seek the "middle ground" voters by offering a future Spain free of illegal migration & filled with cheap onions, no matter the price of crude oil.

The smaller parties of Basque & Catalan indepedence in the face of judicial manipulation & denial of their central state funding called for "blank votes".

The Basque majority nationalist party (right wing) called for support for its leaders "external association project" & "referendum on a right to a referendum for self-determination".

The Catalan majority nationalist party (right wing) called for support for its leader's lung cancer operation & thanked God & did not properly rule out coalition with the PP.

I repeat the illustration which I left above, for it is most apt. If that is an indulgence & it is removed I pray the comment be left.

The opinion polls before ETA's assassination of the curiously hebraically named Isaías Carrasco were on a knife edge. There are some, in far away places ignorant of the plight & marginalisation of hundreds of prisoners in the Basque left seperatist movements of the armed force tradition who might think the elections are thus put no the nub of a 9mm bullet to the nape of a neck.

I have written many times, that the problems of this state, of the country where I live, which I consider part of a plurinational reality, may not be corrected in one legislature alone.

Let us see if the enfranchised of the Spanish state realise what it is at stake. At end the propaganda of the PSOE pitched between calls for "optimism" against food inflation & the worst housing crises in Europe & the grotesquely Orwellian "if you don't vote they'll come back". I thought of Snowey of Animal Farm, Orwell's molotov - "Jones will come back!". But therein is a truth, the PP hold their share of the vote every election. It is their opposition who stay @ home. Likewise the PP called for people to vote their leader Rajoy the successor of Aznar into power "for head & heart" & "clear ideas". Too many young people who vote on Sunday will not properly remember what that "head & heart" was. It was the Prestige which didn't spill fuel. It was the WMD in Iraq. It was ETA bombing Madrid on M11.

links :-
english wikipedia -
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Spanish_general_election%2..._2008
spanish youtube -
http://es.youtube.com/elecciones08

liberal or fascist - whomever wins you lose..... how do you want to lose?