France deals mortal blow to the terrorist organization ETA.

[Flagg]

SPAIN SEES FRENCH CAPTURE OF BASQUES AS MAJOR VICTORY


MADRID, Oct 4 (AFP) - The Spanish and French governments on Monday hailed a "historic" victory against armed Basque separatist group ETA following the weekend arrest in France of ETA's political leader and 16 associates.
"This is a major step towards ending the violence of the terrorist group ETA. ETA's destiny can only be its demise," Spanish Prime Minister Jose Luis Rodriguez Zapatero told reporters.
Zapatero and French President Jacques Chirac lauded the joint efforts of both countries' police forces in dealing ETA its heaviest blow in more than a decade.
In a telephone call to Chirac, Zapatero passed on "the thanks of the Spanish government and the people" to France for tracking the ETA members down.
Chirac replied that "this was the result of exemplary Franco-Spanish cooperation which we must pursue resolutely."
Zapatero stressed earlier that ETA had "to understand that, in a democracy, political objectives can only be laid down through words and ideas, never through violence."
Florencio Dominguez, an expert on Basque affairs, told AFP that whereas ETA had managed to bounce back from previous "decapitations of its leadership," "this time it will do so with much less force."
The Spanish political establishment's optimism came the day after French authorities reported the arrest of 17 people including Mikel "Antza" Albizu Iriarte, ETA's political leader and chief theoretician, and his partner, Soledad "Anboto" Iparragirre Genetxea, a suspected former military chief of the group, in the Pyrenees-Atlantiques region near the Spanish border.
Spain's public prosecutor has called for Iparraguirre, suspected of more than a dozen killings, to be extradited to Spain, judicial sources said Monday.
The sources added that Spanish judge Baltasar Garzon would seek to question "Antza" in France, having four years ago opened an investigation into the same suspect for "belonging to an armed group."

http://www.ttc.org/200410041848.i94imgg11723.htm



Just something you'll never hear or read about in the American "liberal" media.

[Nlighten1]

1. Wait, wait, wait....

The French caught terrorists? Real terrorists? This is a slap in the face to the Bush admin who has been trying to catch terrorists for years and have failed.

[ladybugg33]

18. No, no, tell me they didn't do this without a firing a shot?

How can that be. Didn't they need some kind of "shock and awe?"

[cshldoc]

23. White terrorists don't count

Ah but these were white terrorists, not those funny-smelling, oddly-dressing naughty little brown brothers of ours that keep causing so many problems, so it doesn't count.

[fudge stripe cookays]

2. Can anyone explain

...why it is so impractical for the Basques to have a separate homeland? I'm really just curious.

I don't know much about the homeland situation itself, but I have heard that the Basque language and culture is one of the most unique in the world, they're fiercely independent, and "some people say" that they are the descendants of the survivors of Atlantis.

My dog is Basque. :D
FSC

[bemildred]

6. It is my impression that the Basque people, in general,

would settle for local autonomy, which is what they had in the
past, before Franco, and that the ETA are in the way. So taking
the ETA down is a good thing, and should clear the way for a
negotiated settlement. One reference for the history: "The Spanish
Civil War", Hugh Thomas.

[Flagg]

7. The Basque region is the most autonomous region in Europe.

They want Complete independance from Spain and France.


http://www3.europarl.eu.int/omk/omnsapir.so/pv1?PRG=CALDOC&LANGUE=EN&TPV=DEF&FILE=20010131&TYPE=ALLDOC

[Freddie Stubbs]

14. Do a MAJORITY of Basques actually want independence?

There have been Puerto Rican terrorists who were pushing for independence, despite a majority favoring either continuing the status quo or statehood.

[FlashHarry]

17. Hell, the Savoyards have been seeking independence for years!

Every bloody nook and cranny in France wants its freedom. Savoie Libre! indeed... Then again, so do the Welsh!

[bemildred]

19. The ETA does, to be sure.

I had the impression that they (ETA) suffer from a lack of support
among the basque people in general, for precisely the reason
you state.

[Flagg]

3. Just out of curiosisty. How many of you in America had heard about this ?

'Cos this was major news here yesterday on the European media.

[Dogmudgeon]

13. I did, but I'm interested in Basque culture

I've had several Basque friends along the way -- both from Euskal Herria and Basque-Americans.

It was reported on most of the major news channels, including NPR on the radio; but most of the news was about the impending debate.

--bkl

[Tight_rope]

25. It didn't make the news in Houston, TX!

[DemocracyInaction]

4. You mean them thar' foreigners are actually going after and

eliminating terrorists instead of just randomly picking a country, invading it, giving it terror, killing over a thousand troops and bankrupting this country!!!??? Damn those terrible foreign devils....no wonder we don't hear the news about it over here.

[Tight_rope]

26. LOL...Welcome to DU DemocracyInaction

[The Velveteen Ocelot]

5. Alors! Looks like the French could teach Shrub a thing or two.

For a bunch of effete, snooty, wine-drinking, snail-eating, Gauloise-smoking ferriners, I guess they are pretty good at nabbing terrorists without invading countries that the terrorists didn't come from.

[semillama]

8. The basques are pretty unique

I always feel really bad that some of them felt they had to resort to terrorism.

The basques don't speak an Indo-European language. Some scholars think that their language group dates way back to Stone age, pre-agricultural European hunter-gatherers. Basque fisherman may also have been making trips to North America well before Columbus as well.

I'm not up on the history of ETA and the Basque conflict, though, so I can't speak to any current history of repression.

[Ediacara]

15. Basque MAY be linked to Etruscan

There are two theories in linguistics, one saying that Basque is a true isolate and its roots undecipherable, another stating that it's quite similar to Etruscan (another isolate) and Aquitanian, both European languages with no modern descendant languages.

This Basque group in turn, is related to Caucasian languages, Chinese, and Na-Dene (one of the three major North American language groups) languages. Almost all other Eurasian-American language groups (Indo-European, Uralo-Altaic, Amerindian, Afro-Asiatic, Eskimo-Aleut) seem to form another branch, and most others (continental African groups, Australian, Polynesian, South Asian etc) fall outside of this huge group.

[Dogmudgeon]

22. Basque linguistics

Basque is modern Aquitanian. There is not much extant Aquitanian writing, but the Romans conducted some censuses (censae?) in the area. The principal word and family names are clearly Basque, like Oxso (Ochoa, "of the Wolf (family)") and Belex (Beltz, "Black").

Etruscan is not clearly connected to Basque; and based on computer studies of the alphabet and transliteration of the extinct language of Iberian, there's no connection there, either.

Basque has most successfully been "related" to some of the languages of the Caucasian sub-family. The connections between Chinese and (Na-)Dene have been well refuted. Other connections are claimed to exist between Japanese, Ainu, Korean, and ancient Mesopotamian. Most such arguments are made by "proto-World" and "Nostratic" language theorists. The best connection on word-stock alone is with Berber (Tuareg), which is supported by genetic studies of the DNA of modern Basques and Berbers, though similarity in words is a provably unreliable indicator of language relatedness where the divergence in languages is over 1000 years, as would be the case with Basque and Berber.

Larry Trask, a linguist and Vasconist, refutes most of these ideas in his writings on Basque linguistics. His logic is sound, and his authority as a linguist is respected, but his position is far from the only one. Still, his work is accessable to the lay readership, and you can't go wrong in relying on his stuff to get a basic foundation in Basque historical linguistics.

Further out in the borderlands of speculative linguistics, Edo Nyland presents the idea that most of the modern languages were cobbled together out of Basque aphorisms and puns by Benedictine monks in the Middle Ages. He makes a valiant, but ultimately unsuccessful, case for this. (Recently, however, he has fallen into the gunsights of the Skeptic community, so links on his name are now increasingly connected to screeds and cheap shot web mail postings.)

No one has yet ventured a guess about what language(s) the Atlanteans may have spoken. The situation is so dire that Disney had to go and invent one for their movie. :)

--bkl

[fudge stripe cookays]

10. Yeah...DAMN those "cowards." n/t

[moondust]

9. "mortal blow" without an all-out invasion?

What are those uppity Frenchies trying to do? Upset Halliburton? This hurts the image of neocon terrorist fighters everywhere! </sarcasm>

[Commie Pinko Dirtbag]

11. Won't register on freepers' minds (or what passes for it).

http://www.freerepublic.com/focus/f-news/1233992/posts

Two completely senseless coments and that's all - and it was posted yesterday.

"Maybe if we ignore the truth it'll go away."

Edit: more mindless horseshit in other threads:
http://www.freerepublic.com/focus/f-news/1235856/posts
http://www.freerepublic.com/focus/f-news/1234660/posts
http://www.freerepublic.com/focus/f-news/1234477/posts

My, are they IMPERMEABLE or what?

[Flagg]

12. They're just dumb is all.

To: Mike Fieschko
Great. I'm sure Chirac will send the confiscated arms to Falluja.

3 posted on 10/03/2004 7:58:19 AM PDT by Shqipo (The gloves are on and the corners are empty.)

[Hobarticus]

16. What? Treating terrorists as criminals and not enemy combatants WORKS?

Fascinating...

[Vox_Reason]

20. <sputter> <sputter> It can't be!!!

You mean the '93 WTC bomber and his co-conspirators are IN JAIL?!?!

Because of the hard work of the CLINTON JUSTICE DEPARTMENT?!?!?!?

But... But... They were evil-doing brown people whose extended relatives (particularly the women and children) deserved to be bombed into the stone age!!!!

The Bush* record of success against terrorist attackers of the US is FAR better! I mean, just COUNT how many successful prosecutions Ashcroft has against terra-ists since 9/11!!!!!

[Rochambeau]

21. Ahhh, the reading of Freeped Republikkk is a bit like porn.

Entertaining, sometimes, unwholesome and pernicious, always.

[DivinBreuvage]

24. Basques killed Roland in 778 - but curiously enough, Muslims got the blame

This kind of thing has been going on between the Cross and the Crescent for a long, long time.

[Tight_rope]

27. Those damn Frenchies are making the Chimp look bad!