In 1986, the then President of the USSR, Mikhail Gorbachev presented an audacious proposal of disarmament that was made public on January 15th of that same year. That proposal broke with the logic of the Cold War and made enormously uncomfortable the dominant elites of the Capitalist states.

The German Chancellor Helmut Kohl, making himself the spokesperson of these sectors of the Western oligarchy, had the audacity in 1987 of defining the peace proposal of the Soviet president as nothing than a “Goebbelsian” campaign and in the USA in 1990 the National Security Advisor for George H. W. Bush declared the following: “Mr. Gorbachev is only interested in creating divisions in the Western Block and thinks that the best way to do it is through a peace offensive.”

Definitely, PEACE is not what the financial oligarchies want.

I mention this episode at the end of the decade of the 80’s because I am totally persuaded that the commitment to PEACE from ETA in our country has generated great discomfort in the financial-oligarchical sectors which was designed and led (and they continue doing so) the so-called Spanish Political Transition.

Because there is a problem in the Spanish centres of political power, but also in the media and economic: too many people think that with a low-intensity ETA and an Abertzale Left with limited rights is better than the end of ETA because while ETA exists the Basque Country will be captive, it won’t be able to move. The idea that underlies this thought is that it is better for there not to be an end to violence than a bad ending.

After so many years, “antiterrorism” is a political and economic business and there are people who fear its end. This is the reason for why the state refuses over and over again the hand extended to them… and they will continue doing so… let’s not be deceived.

Arnaldo Otegi, Basque Political Prisoner.