And so to Friday. Awake early and catching up with news. It seems there are developments in the Boston Marathon bombing case. A firefight in the Watertown area of Boston has led to the death of one suspect and the apprehension of another. An incident at Massachussets Institute of Technology has led to the death of a police officer.
I am also following the live arrest of the "Donostia 8". Eight Basque youths have been convicted by a Madrid court of "terrorist" affiliations, basically of membership of the organisation Euskadi Ta Askatasuna ("Basque Homeland & Liberty", often known by the acronym ETA).
Even the name "Donostia" is a loaded political term. It is what Basques call the town known in Spain (and by many foreigners) as "San Sebastian".The court sentenced them to six years for what the youths claim is simply pro-Basque-Independence political activity.
As I write they are struggling with local police in Donostia. Their friends formed a "popular wall" around the eight to prevent their arrest. By the miracles of live internet streaming I can follow the struggle. Six of the youths have been arrested but the police are unable to move them to prison because protesters have blocked the roads.
The chances are that by the time you read this events will have moved on. I await with interest the fate of the Donostia 8.
By chance I am currently reading Paul Preston's "The Spanish Holocaust", In his account of "Inquisition and Extermination in 20th Century Spain" Preston recalls the tensions within Spain in the 1930's between the landowning classes, the military elite, landless peasants, national minorities, the rise of fascist ideology, the struggle of workers and peasants culminating in the Civil War and the retribution which followed.
It used to be a common belief that former Spanish dictator Francisco Franco was somehow not as "bad" as Hitler or Mussolini. He simply had a slightly smaller canvas to work on.
Franco's oppostion to Socialism, Anarchism, Basque and Catalan national aspirations and let's not forget Freemasonry and the Jews was total in its scope.
Where does this leave our young friends in Donostia? What lessons does their history teach them? The bombing of Guernica in the Civil War presaged terror bombing by vast fleets of aircraft in the wars to follow. That was the lengths the Spanish Nationalists were prepared to go to defeat their enemies.
National minorities in Spain as in the rest of Europe could well always bear in mind the need to protect themselves against the violence of the state that denies them their aspirations.
Basque and Catalan nationalists have defied the might of the Spanish state in many different ways. The Catalans plan to hold an independence referendum in 2014. The Spanish state is rattling its sabres already. Retired Colonels make public pronouncements about the Army not allowing Spain to be divided. The Spanish Ministers say nothing by way of rebuke. The ghosts of Civil War are started from their graves.
The Irish Statesman Charles Stewart Parnell once said "No man shall have the right to fix the boundary to the march of a Nation" . I have sometimes found this a troubling quote. Marching is what armies do and I am essentially a peaceful sort of guy. What I take it to mean is that no-one can legitimately say that the right to self-determination is anything other than an absolute right. A right to be exercised at will.
How does this impact on Scotland and its national aspirations? I make no pretence of neutrality here. I will be voting "YES" in 2014. I have supported independence for Scotland for as long as I can remember having a political thought.
I support our independence not because I am a nationalist. I'm not. I support independence because I oppose the right of the British state to exist.
The national aspirations of the Catalans and the Basques take place in a different arena. The Spanish state although having granted some autonomy to Euskadi and Catalunya has now decided to put a stop to any onward march. The Basques and Catalans clearly have other ideas.
The British state has granted a degree of autonomy to Scotland precisely in order to prevent our onward march. Donald Dewar "Scottish" Labour's so-called "Father of the nation" was absolutely clear about this. Oh, how it has backfired on them.
Unlike the Spanish state, the British state maintains that Scotland is an equal partner in a union. Equal in the sense of being in bed with an Elephant perhaps, to borrow an observation which I have heard ascribed to Tom Nairn.
"Union" with our powerful southern neighbour is indeed like being in bed with an elephant. Every move the elephant makes leaves us worrying about the future.
The British state insists on a nuclear arsenal, on illegal wars of oppression, on opposition to the most basic standards of social security and protection for its subjects (in the British state we ARE subjects of the Crown by the way, not citizens).
I can feel no obligation or loyalty or sense of duty to any state like that. When will the Colonels start writing to the Daily Mail?
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