Saturday, February 28, 2004

Here's a petition which I can wholly support: the signers want CNN to use the term "terrorists" rather than "separatists" to describe ETA. Terrorists, of course, is exactly what ETA are.

Update: Here's the lead paragraph from CNN's story on the ETA bust; the cops caught an ETA supply caravan in Cuenca with enormous quantities of explosives. Speculation is the bomb was planned to hit the Madrid offices of El Mundo; they had enough explosives to blow a thirty-meter-deep crater.

MADRID, Spain (CNN) -- Spanish police Sunday seized more than 1,000 pounds of explosives and arrested two suspected members of the Basque separatist group ETA who were planning to carry out an imminent attack in Madrid, an official said.

Now, come on. This is ridiculous. Separatist, my ass. ETA is a terrorist gang. Both CNN and Reuters need to change their policies and change them now. I know it's only a little thing, merely symbolic, but it really does hurt to see that bunch of murderers and bombers, who shoot in the back and target children, dignified by the term "separatist" or, even worse, as Reuters said, "guerrillas".

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