Is that it?

Busy times here at thebadrash tower. We bought a new gas grill (like a barbecue, but for cheats) and have been experimenting with it with varying degrees of success. Hint for those just starting out on the barbecue road: when chicken looks like it's cooked, cook it some more. And then some more. Alternatively, puke up a couple of times the next morning.

The big topic for bloggers here has been the unsurprising end to ETA's ceasefire. The usual suspects were quick to voice their traditional mixture of "String 'em up! / Hanging's too good for 'em!". In a way, they're right. If we killed everybody in the entire world, none of these things would happen.

Personally, I don't think the ETA story is that important.

What I find most interesting is whether the Spanish government pursued the Political Parties Law with too much vigour. This policy ended up by denying potential ETA supporters the vote as each party which looked like it might represent their views got proscribed. Stupid move. It makes no sense to ban political parties, even if you consider their supporters to be arseholes, terrorists or whatever. Investigate sources of funding, personal and corporate conduct of the party's members, beef up council database security to stop the thugs getting targets' personal data (though they could probably do this without a database, anyway)... but allow the party to exist. Give it the chance to enjoy limited democratic power as it's elected to town councils and help to lead it away from terrorism.

Comparisons with Northern Ireland are, on the whole, idle and unhelpful. Batasuna needs to publicly denounce violence at some point... and they will, but only if they're operating as a political force. Denying them a democratic voice prolongs the violence.

Ostensibly, the main winners in the current situation are the PP and ETA. Not really that surprising: the two need each other. ETA thrives on the sort of nonsense spouted by halfwits like Aznar and Rajoy, while those halfwits gain their folk devil with which they can terrorise the electorate. Sure, you could present this as a case of the PSOE failing to heed the PP's warnings about ETA all this time. Or you could remember that the PP has been the first opposition party in Spanish democracy to commit itself to wrecking any chance at negotiations, while simultaneously accusing the left of being 'soft on terror'. This led to the absurd wave of banning party lists.

But what about the airport bomb? It was disgraceful, of course. There will probably be more bombs and they'll all make me sad, frightened and angry. But they'll never have the effect on me that I've seen on several blogs: that they can somehow be solved by abolishing democratic rights for a small proportion of the population. This is not a solution, it's a causal factor. Sometimes, one wonders whether those in favour of such a policy secretly know that it'll only cause more trouble... perhaps that's what they want.

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