1937-Gernika 70th Anniversary and film

by iosaf Thu Apr 26, 2007 12:10

She was only 41 years of age & is still angry the truth was covered up. Josefina is one of about 200 people, many in their 80s, who are still alive to describe what they witnessed on that day. Today, it is not the bombing that makes her most angry, but what followed. "They burnt the city down with their planes and they denied they had done it - they blamed it on the Communists," she says. "My sister was 13 years older than me and they told her that the Reds had destroyed {Gurnika} Guernica. But she said: 'No, the Reds don't have planes.' And they said to her: 'You little Red, we're going cut all your hair off.' Why? Because she was telling the truth. We couldn't even say the truth about the attack."
http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/europe/6583639.stm

One of the first people I met when I came to live in the Spanish state (indeed one of my first students) is an arms-dealer (licensed & legal middleman of death & sports). He related to me at length the story of how the arsenal of Guernica was painted white less than twelve hours before the first dive bombing in history. It was curious that the arsenal survived the attack which demonstrated practically a new tactic of aerial warfare which in many ways was the grand-father of today's precision bombing. Needless to say the arsenal proved useful for the victors who rewrote history and put the reds up against the wall and cut their kids hair off.
But it wasn't just the story of how Guernica was dive-bombed that was covered up. The meticulous preparations and selection of the target demand attention. Within a year (early march) Barcelona became the first city to suffer blanket bombing (http://indymedia.ie/article/35563 65 years and one day before the Iraq war). It's grid city proving really easy to destroy "square by square". Even by that stage the allies were still happy in Orwell's words (of 1941"the lion & the unicorn") to sell razors to cut their own throat & continued to supply both fascists and nazi's with material & no small moral support. Orwell had begun work on his still very thought-provoking call to English socialism as "above my head as I write highly civilised human beings are trying to kill me" after returning from the Spanish civil war through France and within a few weeks of the first bombs on London - which fell in the financial district's silk street (where all the modern buildings are now). & now in our days only a few thousand survivors of either dive bombing or blanket bombing remain. But at least here in Catalonia there are a wealth of resources which show you which squares were bombed day by day. You can really see the start of modern warfare.

But the cover up didn't end there.

Just before the illegal war on Iraq - "January 27 2003 a large blue curtain was placed to cover the work. A diplomat stated that it would not be an appropriate background if the ambassador of the United States at the U.N. John Negroponte, or Powell, talked about war surrounded with women, children and animals shouting with horror and showing the suffering of the bombings"
(cf http://indymedia.ie/article/26805 ) It took a global outcry to reverse that.

Guernika is not just a symbol of war & suffering - it is a reminder of the way the merchants of death like to test their products & hone their skills. As much effort and planning went into Hitler's divebombing as any missile test today or by comparison the first broadcasts by the USA through it's "radio liberty" network at the Soviet Union from Catalonia's Girona under Franco's dictatorship. We are still only scraping the top of a barrel of poison - Franco from beginning right through to end assisted first Axis powers of Nazis and Mussolini and then NATO in their weapon development. All too often people even here make the mistake of simply thinking the monsters helped him or he survived so long thanks to the horror he unleashed.

The un-covering of Guernika was perhaps one of the few things the anti-War protests of 2003 achieved ironically enough. A symbol so powerful that even the Bush administration felt it. By the time they covered it in the UN building - faithful to scale copies (and it is a large canvas) were being carried on the streets of the Spanish state and worldwide as anti-war banners. It needs no slogan and with some effort and not too much skill can be copied by anyone and understood by everyone.

by ipsi Thu Apr 26, 2007 12:24

needless to say the files on how the first dive and blanket bombings were planned & prepared were lost.

John Negreponte (then US ambassador to UN) (later US ambassador to Iraq) then held post of 16 US secret services joint head - now unemployed. never held elected office

de Villepin - then French minister of foreign affairs - later Prime minister of France - soon to be unemployed. never held elected office