From today's Vanguardia:

Two hundred intellectuals and artists sign for ideological pluralism

Some two hundred personalities from the Catalan cultural world, among them the journalist Maruja Torres, the authors Rosa Regás and Ramón Folch, and the actor Joel Joan, have signed the manifesto on liberty backed by the Foundation for Peace and the NGO Justice and Peace, issued on October 3 in Barcelona, against "ideological uniformity".

A total of 32 personalities, among them the author Manuel Vázquez Montalbán, the singer Lluís Llach, and the architect Oriol Bohigas, read on Oct. 3 the manifesto "For a world in which all worlds fit, no to the reduction of liberty", which is intended to be the "starting point" for those who reject war and defend political pluralism.

The document calls on the citizenry to "the defense and the amplification of liberty, human rights, justice, dialogue, and peace", criticizes decisions made by the Government like the Political Parties Law (illegalizing Batasuna, the pro-ETA party), the "decretazo" (modification of the Education Law that would, like, make school way too hard), and the Foreigners Law (which lets the government kick out at least some illegal aliens), and in addition denounces the United States's doctrine of preventive defense.

The document was also signed by the lawyers Francesc Casares and Gil Matamala and the philosophers Josep María Terracabras and Francisco Fernández Buey, and the urban planner Jordi Borja, who defended the necessity of accusatory manifestos like this one, since "the world is threatened" by the president of the United States's "new Fascism and aggressive imperialism".

No comment, except to say that these people are all notorious Communists and a fine sample of our local population of blabbering ignorant loudmouths. Note that none of the people who are mentioned as signers have real jobs. (If Bohigas is a real architect I'm Mark Steyn.) And what they mean by ideological pluralism is they want us to let Marxism back into the house of intellectual respectability. Oh, well, most of these people are over 55 and drink and smoke a lot, so they'll probably die pretty soon. Except Joel Joan, who is sort of our Alec Baldwin but dumber. Maybe more like our Woody Harrelson. Lluís Llach, in particular, is rumored to have a major strike against him on the living-a-long-time front. Oh, yeah, this appeared as a news article in the politics section, not on the editorial page; it isn't even boxed and labeled something like "News Analysis".