Talk about "racial hatred " in the context of Islam is misleading. Including Islamic fundamentalism. It's not about race, it's about culture and religion, and about different ideas about the direction the world should take.

It's still pretty unclear, and you can't trust anyone in this kind of thing - after all it's easy enough to leave a few Arabic language tapes around, or plant them - but I'd put my money on this being some kind of Al Qaeda operation rather than ETA.

And I feel pretty cynical about the haste with which the Spanish government tried to jump to picking out ETA as the culprits. The evidence about the "type of explosive" needs to be examined by some technical experts without an agenda, before it can be trusted.

"...the only thing it succeeds in doing is stiffening resolve." But, if it was Al Qaeda, that would be the very objective. I would suggest that, in the mindset of the people responsible, "stiffening the resolve" would seen as a term for the kind of response likely to lead to bad mistakes being made, that in the longer run will undermine the ability of the system to survive. They may be wrong, but they aren't playing for a settlement and a negotiated end to the bloodshed.

That's where they differ from organisations like ETA or the IRA, or Saddam in his day. Those kind of distinctions matter. Know your enemy.