In those resistance years there was close contact between Sinn Féin, IRA and Euskadi Ta Askatasuna (ETA, the resistance movement of Euskal Herria). There was much they had in common, the defence and creation of a national tradition and culture that was threatened. ETA too has been ‘listed’ as ‘terrorists’ and has not always had control over the activities of its members.

During the fascist era, ETA was supported even beyond their own Basque people who suffered more than many under the regime. ETA drew international attention to their cause and violent repression by the Franco regime. Their assassination of Almirante Luis Carrero Blanco took place in 1973. He was appointed by the dictator as Prime Minister to rule after the dictator’s death. The transition to democracy from 1975 and the continual radicalization of ETA led to a steady erosion of support from the people.

In March 2006, ETA declared a “permanent ceasefire”. Talks were opened by the Spanish Presidente del Gobierno Zapatero. Later in the year a bomb was detonated in a parking lot at the international airport after three confusing warning calls from the movement. Two Ecuadorian immigrants were killed. ETA has itself been unable to administer the ceasefire it had itself declared. The Presidente del Gobierno released a statement stating that the “peace process” had been discontinued.

ETA has returned to a form of action that no longer assists their people. It has lost the rationality of resistance and that is always possible. Both power and resistance can be marked by destructive irrationality. Time will show how long it will take them to learn.

Appeal

We appeal to all movements for democracy and international solidarity to join us in challenging the policy of power. To join us in challenging national and supranational terrorist legislation, international “terrorist lists” and the so-called “global war on terror.”

Through present anti-terrorist legislation, states have attempted to curb the freedom of expression and the political rights of their citizens, including the right to extend moral and material support to resistance and liberation movements throughout the world.

Such support is now at risk of prosecution within the terms of anti-terrorism legislation. The role of international solidarity, which in the past has made an important contribution to conflict resolution, is under severe threat.

This erosion of political and human rights is driven by a neo-liberal state strategy where the liberalization of economies and markets is accompanied by repressive state regulation of political activity and expression. Within this perspective, the “war on terror” is a global project seeking to contain and crush popular resistance to the expropriation of essential resources by increasingly deregulated market forces.

Resistance is now redefined as an expression of “international terrorism.” Several states have grasped the opportunity to define resistance movements in terms of the so-called “global war on terror,” thereby seeking to confer upon themselves a guise of international legitimacy. The threat of state terrorism is today the most immediate and lethal threat against the peoples of many nations.

Together we must challenge the political paradigm underlying the so-called “global war on terror” and the proscription of organizations through so-called “terrorist lists.” Such terrorist lists can only contribute to the marginalization of social and political movements, excluding them from an international political dialogue, which in itself is a necessary step towards a negotiated political resolution of the conflicts of which they are a part.

There is a law beyond all laws, a law beyond all laws of the state: the human right to resistance for those who have no other way. And now and in the future we must defend:

· The right of peoples to resist illegitimate government and foreign occupation;
· The right of peoples to take up arms against oppression where all other means have been exhausted;
· The right to create new forms of people’s power which serve the economic, social, political and cultural aspirations of the people; and
· The right of citizens of all nations to extend their support, material and otherwise, to these struggles for economic, political, social and cultural emancipation.

We must go on, we cannot go back. The world still waits for change. It waits too on environmental change, a threat of hunger and flight to the poor and powerless. The crops will die, the prices rise, and the suicides of the poor have already reached a desperate level. The hungry who survive will flee from continent to continent. They will drown in seas and be met with walls and wires and weapons and all the barriers of power.

Without their revolt and a model of change that serves the basic interests of humanity and of the earth itself, the world and its future will be formed by present power, its continual exclusion of the poor and powerless, its mistreatment of the earth itself. In its history it has taken the lives of those it conquered and continues in taking the life of nature, accelerated faster now than the process of nature itself. In their own time things have changed throughout millennia, now the death of nature is from day to day. There are forms of life that never will appear again, we have seen many for a last time.

It is this last time that must change. And in all of this, liberation movements seem in themselves insufficient any more. They can no longer struggle only for the life and future of humankind. They must secure and liberate the needs of the earth, its life and the future for all its kind. We need the revolt of a humanity that wishes to live and continue living long on this living, moving and so unique a planet which we call the Earth. Posted by (Bulatlat.com)

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