Towards the end of a call this morning from Geneva my caller reminded me of something nagging. The legislatives in Spain are on the 14th (and suddenly I know much, much more about Catelan variations from the Latin 1code set, and about Catelan cultural institutions and political parties than I did a week ago). I check Le Monde throughout the day, from the 5am wake-up to shock, to the evolving count, now 13 bombs, 190 dead, and 1,250 1,400 wounded, and still growing, and the side-bar that this was, or wasn't, the work of the ETA.
The reminder, the seed stuck between the teeth, was not OBL as an alternative to ETA, but something older. The August 2nd, 1980 bombing of a second class waiting room at the Bologna railway station. Eighty-five people were killed and over two hundred wounded. Bologna was a Communist Party electoral stronghold and had been targeted previously, by the Italian right.
Ten years later a number of S.I.S.M.I. officers were tried for the crime. The defendants included a General Secretary, a General and a Colonel. They were convicted. Their convictions were later quashed, but convicted they were.
It is too early to guess, and guesses are always just that, guesses, but it is worth remembering that the right in Europe is armed, and the function of "bourgois mobs" of the Tom DeLay form, or other acts of terrorism, are elections outcomes management.
We're all grieving the dead, the wounded, and the frightened.
Posted by at March 11, 2004 02:00 PM | TrackBackThis from translated comments at IraqWar.ru:
Remember Italy
автор guest в 12.03.2004 [15:57]
Massacre of humble workers in the "red belt" of Madrid? Wait a moment, is like the "tension" strategy of the net Gladio in Italy's 80: train massacres of "red" workers by neo-fascists and secret service, backed by the CIA against the evil italian communists. Today Spain's governement problem is worse: evil reds + plus-evil separatist are likely to kick in free elections the forces of "law and order"...