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To: rrufff who wrote (7416)3/3/2004 4:00:44 AM
From: GUSTAVE JAEGER  Respond to of 20773
 
Re: Posters, from the safety of their European internet cafe, can't understand what it is like to live with the daily fear of crazed suicide bombers. Death might strike at the supermarket, a disco, a movie theater or a bus, or even a cafe.

Yet another of your glib fallacies... High time for the Israelis (and their American apes) to take a leaf out of the French book:

Issue 202 of SOCIALIST REVIEW Published November 1996 Copyright © Socialist Review

The big picture

Battle of Algiers

By Gillo Pontecorvo


The Battle of Algiers was released in 1964, two years after the Algerian people won their war for independence from France. It was one of the most hard fought national liberation struggles, with 1 million Algerians killed out of a population of 9 million. Gillo Pontecorvo reconstructs the main political events in Algiers between 1954 and 1957.

It is a powerful film. The French government banned it until 1971. It was also shown by other national liberation movements ­ the Viet Minh in Vietnam, the IRA in Ireland and the Sandinistas in Nicaragua. Cinematically it has influenced generations of film producers, from Costa Gavras's Z and Missing to Oliver Stone's Platoon and Salvador.

The film follows the life of Ali La Pointe from street hustler and petty crook to a commander of the FLN (National Liberation Front) bombers in Algiers. The film is shot in black and white and, without one foot of newsreel, creates the illusion of on the spot reporting. Pontecorvo uses mainly amateur actors. The film shows the brutality of the French, with harrowing scenes of the execution of two FLN activists, the Pieds Noirs' (European settlers) bombing of the Casbah and the torture of FLN suspects. It explains why individuals commit acts of terrorism and how the FLN became a mass organisation.

The war for independence raged all over Algeria but the film concentrates on the city of Algiers. The Muslim quarter known as the Casbah was home to over 100,000 Muslims despite being only 1 square kilometre. The FLN turned it into a `no go area' for the French. Many of its buildings were hiding places and bomb factories, from which was launched the bombing campaign of the French zone.

Although Pontecorvo leaves the audience with no doubt that he supports the FLN, he is not uncritical of the tactics used. In some of the film's most powerful scenes, he shows the results in slow motion of bombs going off both in the Casbah and in a Pied Noir cafe, milk bar and air terminal. As the camera pans across the carnage all you hear is a haunting, sorrowful piece of music by Bach accompanying the look of anguish in all the victims' faces.

To deal with the FLN's bombing campaign the French government brought in the paratroopers. Many of them had witnessed the crushing of the French army by the Germans, their own humiliation by the Viet Minh in Dien Bien Phu and the catastrophe of Suez. For the paras the fight in Algeria was about regaining national pride. The second part of The Battle of Algiers shows the paras capturing and destroying the FLN's organisation, leaving only Ali to continue the war.

Finally the French paras surround Ali and his three accomplices in their hiding place. By murdering and imprisoning the FLN the French beheaded the Algiers movement. For two years afterwards the city of Algiers played no major role in the war.

However, it is in the final scenes of the film, of the mass uprisings in Algiers two years later, that Pontecorvo shows the power of ordinary people. With the exception of Eisenstein, no other director has captured a mass movement so well.

He takes the camera into the crowd so the audience feel as if they are involved.

The cries made by the women from the backs of their throat [the "youyous"] combine with the sound of tanks rolling up the street and the voice of the radio commentator to make you believe you are witnessing the event. He also focuses on individuals in the crowd who have previously been seen taking part in the bombing campaign, now not merely individuals but part of a mass movement.

Pontecorvo, like many other European film makers at that time, was influenced by the Communist Party. He joined the PCI (Communist Party of Italy) in 1941 and became a commander in the Resistance, but left in 1956 over Russia's invasion of Hungary. He became a left independent and supporter of the national independence struggles of the 1950s and 1960s. While making documentaries in France he worked for the FLN running money from France to Swiss banks.

He made two other fims in this period: KAPO, a film about the concentration camps in Nazi Germany and Queimada, a brilliant film about a slave uprising starring Marlon Brando. However, his disillusionment with the new governments of liberated nations left him very demoralised. He now makes his living as the organiser of the Venice Film Festival and making television commercials.

The war for independence had a massive impact on France. It brought down six prime ministers. It caused the collapse of the Fourth Republic and twice plunged France into near civil war. Algerians won their independence. Nobody has shown the heroic struggle against colonialism better than Pontecorvo in The Battle of Algiers. He created a masterpiece.

Martin Smith



To: rrufff who wrote (7416)3/3/2004 4:41:59 AM
From: GUSTAVE JAEGER  Respond to of 20773
 
Re: If Israel returned to 1967 borders, somewhat modified for defense, Hamas and the terror organizations would continue in existence.

Of course! However, that should not be an argument for opposing a Palestinian state... Get real: do you expect TOTAL peace between Israel and her Arab environment? Do you plan to wage war against the Palestinians and deny them a state until each and every Arab organization resorting to violence against Israel is eradicated? But that kind of Utopian pacification is impossible --it has never happened, whether in Northern Ireland, in India/Kashmir, or in Spain:

Spain's Basque government vows to push regional autonomy one step further

Friday, 26-Sep-2003 9:40AM PDT

Story from AFP / Denis Teyssou

Copyright 2003 by Agence France-Presse (via ClariNet)

VITORIA, Spain, Sept 26 (AFP) - Spain's autonomous Basque government on Friday vowed to pursue a controversial plan to change the region's political status to one of "free association" with the rest of the country, prompting furious criticism from Madrid.

The president of the Basque government, Juan Jose Ibarretxe, told the regional parliament in Vitoria that the "new statute of free association" -- which essentially pushes autonomy one step further -- would be based on the "respect for the right of the Basque people to decide their own future".

He also offered to debate the issue with Madrid, but stressed that the Basque government intends to put the plan to a referendum regardless of the outcome of its talks with the central government.

Should Ibarretxe's project succeed, Euskadi, the Basque name for the region in the country's north, would be freely associated with the remainder of Spain by the will of its inhabitants rather than by the current constitutional arrangement that granted the region its autonomy, under the so-called 1979 Statute of Guernica.

But the plan will have to run the gauntlet of furious opposition from a right-wing Spanish government which derided it as "separatist and secessionist. "

Ibarretxe, of the Basque Nationalist Party (PNV -- in power in Vitoria since 1980), first drafted the plan a year ago. He revealed Friday that the Basque government was set to approve the project on October 25 and that it would be put to a vote in the regional parliament in September 2004.

After that, the Basque government would seek to hold six months of talks with the central government in Madrid with a view to modifying the region's autonomous status.

In Madrid, the conservative government of Spanish Prime Minister Jose Maria Aznar immediately warned it would oppose the plan, insisting that it "seeks to break apart the political and constitutional framework" of Spain, said government spokesman Eduardo Zaplana.

Zaplana insisted the Basque region already enjoyed "a level of autonomy unknown in Europe."

[...]

Alluding to the violence by armed separatist group ETA, whose commandos have killed about 800 people in the past 35 years, Ibarretxe said he wanted to cut out "a cancer that does terrible harm to the Basque image throughout the world."

He added that the plan "is decisively going to contribute to slamming the door on violence and expel ETA from our lives."

Ibarretxe's reference to an all-embracing vote was seen as a reference to the banning earlier this year by the Spanish judiciary of Batasuna, ETA's political mouthpiece.

Ibarretxe said last year's sinking of the Prestige oil tanker off northern Spain, a catastrophe that polluted the whole of the north coast, as well as the war in Iraq -- supported by Madrid but not by the Spanish population at large -- justified his mission to give the Basques greater control over their own affairs.

He called both issues "two significant examples of the great chasm, the divorce that exists between Basque society and the Spanish government.

"The enthusiastic support of the Spanish government for the war against Iraq ... is an illegitimate, unjust and erroneous decision ... adopted without United Nations approval, against our European allies and against the will of Basque society," Ibarretxe charged.

quickstart.clari.net

As you can see, there'll always be diehard extremists in both camps: even if Britain relinquished Northern Ireland altogether, there would still be IRA fanatics calling for expelling all the Catholics from Ireland... Likewise, in the Basque country, extremists would push their luck and call for annexing the French Basque country... and on and on. Yet, that didn't prevent both the Spanish and the UK governments from negotiating with their breakaway foes.



To: rrufff who wrote (7416)3/3/2004 5:54:55 AM
From: GUSTAVE JAEGER  Read Replies (1) | Respond to of 20773
 
Re lapsus calami in my post #7459:

"...calling for expelling all the Catholics..." should read:
"...calling for expelling all the Protestants..."



To: rrufff who wrote (7416)3/3/2004 6:20:01 AM
From: GUSTAVE JAEGER  Respond to of 20773
 
The successive metastases of Judeofascist terrorism: OAS - Gladio - Al-Qaeda...

Algeria: The Generals' Putsch

[...]

Important elements of the French army and the ultras joined in another insurrection in April 1961. The leaders of this "generals' putsch" intended to seize control of Algeria as well as topple the de Gaulle regime. Units of the Foreign Legion offered prominent support, and the well-armed Secret Army Organization (Organisation Armée Secrète--OAS) coordinated the participation of colon vigilantes. Although a brief fear of invasion swept Paris, the revolt collapsed in four days largely because of cooperation from the air force and army.

The "generals' putsch" marked the turning point in the official attitude toward the Algerian war. De Gaulle was now prepared to abandon the colons, the group that no previous French government could have written off. The army had been discredited by the putsch and kept a low profile politically throughout the rest of France's involvement with Algeria. Talks with the FLN reopened at Evian in May 1961; after several false starts, the French government decreed that a cease-fire would take effect on March 19, 1962. In their final form, the Evian Accords allowed the colons equal legal protection with Algerians over a three-year period. These rights included respect for property, participation in public affairs, and a full range of civil and cultural rights. At the end of that period, however, Europeans would be obliged to become Algerian citizens or be classified as aliens with the attendant loss of rights. The French electorate [that is, including metropolitan France] approved the Evian Accords by an overwhelming 91 percent vote in a referendum held in June 1962.

During the three months between the cease-fire and the French referendum on Algeria, the OAS unleashed a new terrorist campaign. The OAS sought to provoke a major breach in the ceasefire by the FLN but the terrorism now was aimed also against the French army and police enforcing the accords as well as against Muslims. It was the most wanton carnage that Algeria had witnessed in eight years of savage warfare. OAS operatives set off an average of 120 bombs per day in March, with targets including hospitals and schools. [*] Ultimately, the terrorism failed in its objectives, and the OAS and the FLN concluded a truce on June 17, 1962. In the same month, more than 350,000 colons left Algeria. Within a year, 1.4 million refugees, including almost the entire Jewish community and some pro-French Muslims, had joined the exodus to France. Fewer than 30,000 Europeans chose to remain.

On July 1, 1962, some 6 million of a total Algerian electorate of 6.5 million cast their ballots in the referendum on independence. The vote was nearly unanimous. De Gaulle pronounced Algeria an independent country on July 3. The Provisional Executive, however, proclaimed July 5, the 132d anniversary of the French entry into Algeria, as the day of national independence.

The FLN estimated in 1962 that nearly eight years of revolution had cost 300,000 dead from war-related causes. Algerian sources later put the figure at approximately 1.5 million dead, while French officials estimated it at 350,000. French military authorities listed their losses at nearly 18,000 dead (6,000 from noncombat-related causes) and 65,000 wounded. European civilian casualties exceeded 10,000 (including 3,000 dead) in 42,000 recorded terrorist incidents. According to French figures, security forces killed 141,000 rebel combatants, and more than 12,000 Algerians died in internal FLN purges during the war. An additional 5,000 died in the "café wars" in France between the FLN and rival Algerian groups. French sources also estimated that 70,000 Muslim civilians were killed, or abducted and presumed killed, by the FLN.

Historian Alistair Horne considers that the actual figure of war dead is far higher than the original FLN and official French estimates, even if it does not reach the 1 million adopted by the Algerian government. Uncounted thousands of Muslim civilians lost their lives in French army ratissages, bombing raids, and vigilante reprisals. The war uprooted more than 2 million Algerians, who were forced to relocate in French concentration camps or to flee to Morocco, Tunisia, and into the Algerian hinterland, where many thousands died of starvation, disease, and exposure. Additional pro-French Muslims were killed when the FLN settled accounts after independence.

Data as of December 1993

workmall.com

[*] The OAS launched terrorist attacks in metropolitan France as well:

"... in February 1960 and in April 1961 [ de Gaulle]... had to use emergency powers to put down risings by the European settlers and the military in Algeria. The Secret Army Organization (OAS) resorted to terrorism in Paris and to attempts on his life [and André Malraux's]."

mt.sopris.net