Reports that a Spanish judge had freed the alleged Al Qaeda members arrested a couple of weeks ago here in Barcelona jumped the gun a little; they will be held at least for another week while more evidence is presented against them......The high school kids cut class and had an antiwar demo today downtown; five of them got themselves arrested. Cool. Of course their mommies and daddies won't let anything happen to them. Get this, on March 5 they've called a nationwide high-school students' strike against the war. What kind of turnout do you think they're going to get? If I were a high-school teacher I'd schedule a major exam for that day. No makeups. Miss it, get a zero......It is starting to look like little time will be wasted fooling around before the invasion of Iraq. Wanna bet they introduce a Security Council resolution tomorrow after Hans Blix tells them that Saddam still isn't cooperating? Rumor has it that Condi Rice is leaning on Blix big-time; she went to see him Tuesday. Colin Powell is accusing the Weasels of "delaying", "diverting attention", and "getting Iraq off the hook". That's pretty strong language. I think he means it. Even Powell is disgusted by the Weasels. The Reichsminister to the UN said the Reich was backing Paris on a proposal for more inspections that will be made tomorrow, if the French ambassador has the gall to propose it after Blix's second report......Spanish TV is reporting that Americans are panicking in craven fear. Now, now. Stocking up on bottled water does not a panic make. If café chat is any sign, and I'm fairly well tuned in on the café-chat radar, people here in Barcelona are a bit concerned about what might happen, but I wouldn't call it a panic. I doubt things are too much different in Kansas City......I still think the alleged Bin Laden tape is phony, though I will admit it might have been some sort of montage using his voice; they must have thousands of Bin Laden tapes out there they could edit together......Aznar met with Reichskanzler Schröder. They didn't call one another poopheads, but they strongly disagreed publicly on the war......The Vangua is making a very big deal about the Pope's envoy in Baghdad......Mexico and Chile will probably back a US resolution in the Security Council, though they don't dig preventive war. They dig the concept of multilateralism more than they don't dig preventive war, however......There is talk that our very own major-league terrorist gang, ETA, was behind that last FARC bombing in Bogotá that killed 35 people in a nightclub. There is all kinds of evidence of an ETA-FARC connection......Baltasar Porcel says that American arrogance has always been intolerable......A fourth large Barcelona chain of English-language academies, Cambridge School, has gone down, closing 13 centers and leaving nine thousand students in the street with courses paid for in advance through bank loans. This is turning out to be a major consumer fraud. English-teacher unemployment is through the roof, since with Opening, Brighton, Oxford, and now Cambridge down, and with Wall Street having closed down half its centers, about 500 people have been thrown out of work since September 2002 when Opening crashed. The talk among local English teachers is that times are tough, and I have heard that several people have gone back to England......Perhaps the biggest news of the day here in Barcelona is that Fútbol Club Barcelona president Joan Gaspart has resigned effective immediately and has been replaced by Enric Reyna. This is a major Convergence and Union coup, since their men have taken over the organization of the club to the detriment of Gaspart and his predecessor, José Luis Nuñez, both of whom are strong PP sympathizers. Watch Barça become much more stridently Catalan nationalist.