The Tripartite Axis of Weasels is holding out in NATO, unwilling to cave in to the pressure of the other sixteen nations to prepare to defend Turkey, which has formally invoked Article Four for the first time ever. That means that all other NATO member states are required to participate in consultations. France, Belgium, Germany, the Vatican, and the EU are not going to help "the U.S. and its fifteen loyal allies", which would be Canada, Iceland, Norway, Denmark, Holland, Luxembourg, Poland, the Czech Republic, Hungary, Greece, Turkey itself, Spain, Portugal, Italy, and the UK, to protect Turkey. Admittedly, Turkey is already under American protection, and it also has the second largest military in NATO, with 700,000 troops including a 50,000-man rapid reaction force which can be ready to move in a few hours and three mobile infantry divisions (not already committed to any of Turkey's frontiers) in reserve, plenty of attack helicopters, about 1000 M-60 main battle tanks, and 164 F-16s and more than 200 other planes, mostly F-4s. Additionally, Turkish soldiers have the reputation of being tough and well-trained, unlike, say, the Belgians. The Turks could stomp Iraq on their own if they had to. The Turks, however, want reassurance that they will be supported internationally to pacify Turkish public opinion. Additional note: Turkey is friendly with Israel, and the two have been known to cooperate on international and military issues. The Economist has reported on this more than once.

Small note: Luxembourg has changed sides. They were originally going to go with the Weasels but flip-flopped. Outside the Weasels, it looks like the Dutch and Norwegians are on board with the Alliance.

An audiotape claimed to be from Osama Bin Laden appeared last night on Al-Jazeera. The Vanguardia's front-page lead headline is "Bin Laden asks for support for Iraq", and there is a quarter-page photo of Osama on page 4. I originally thought, until I read closely, that photo was new and that Osama was really alive; it's merely an old photo of Osama on a television screen saying "Al-Jazeera Exclusive". In the caption they tell you that photo is from the archives. The whole thing is intentionally misleading. First, there's not one whit of evidence that this tape is really from Osama. It's just an audiotape. So the headline is completely false because it lacks the word "Alleged". Second, the photo appears to be new. It isn't. Third, Osama is dead anyway, because if we didn't kill him his poor health did. Osama's kidneys didn't work, among other things, and he hadn't been able to get dialysis on the run. Fourth, the tape says that all Islam should defend Iraq. That's dumb. That's only going to get Iraq in worse trouble. It's like when the Ku Klux Klan endorses a candidate for election: no help.

Possibilities: 1) The tape is American disinformation aimed at showing there's a Bin Laden-Saddam connection. 2) The tape is some kind of Al Qaeda message to Osama's followers. 3) The tape is Al Qaeda disinformation aimed at sowing confusion. 4) The tape is Iraqi disinformation, a last-ditch effort at rallying worldwide radical Islam behind secular Saddam. 5) The tape really is Osama. I figure number two and number four are most likely, especially since the speaker on the tape refers to the Baath Party as Communists, but says that Islamists can nonetheless ally themselves with it. A good rule of thumb for sniffing out who's behind obvious propaganda is whether it includes a mild attack, rather beside the point, on somebody. That somebody is likely to be the source of the information, and he's included the mild attack to distract attention from himself. Saddam would never call himself a Communist, would he? Uh, yeah, he might, if there were an overriding purpose.

The French are all mad because they've been taking a bunch of flak in the American press. Le Monde is complaining about "Francophobia" in the States. The Vanguardia says that "Sectors of the (American) press and the diplomatic corps present a certain recurring vision of France as a country where anti-Semitism runs wild and synagogues burn every day." Uh, excuse me, but synagogues do occasionally burn and an awful lot of French folks voted for the anti-Semitic Le Pen in the last election. The French are concerned enough that they're sending a delegation to try to pacify American public opinion. Bet it don't take. Le Monde does say that the "virulent campaign" can be understood as "the answer of an America too frequently presented on this side of the Atlantic as a gang of trigger-happy cowboys ruled by a simplistic fundamentalist preacher." Uh, yeah. I can't get over this complaining about the United States finally speaking out, and loud, against the insults that have been continually sent our way over the last sixty years. When we finally get mad and respond, they act surprised and get mad themselves. Screw Old Europe.

Enric Juliana comments in the Vangua that "the Catholic Church has been subjected to a moral lynching in the United States". I've seen that line or something similar in several Vangua articles; the Vangua is Catholic and monarchist. No, the Catholic Church is suffering from a serious loss of credibility after too many Catholic priests were caught molesting the kiddies left in their care and too many bishops and cardinals who knew exactly what was going on were caught doing nothing to solve the problem, not punishing the guilty priests, allowing them to stay in positions where they had access to children, and generally covering up the whole thing. Anyone who thinks Richard Nixon's behavior regarding the Watergate scandal was immoral and despicable should think that this behavior is a hundred times worse, since Nixon covered up some insignificant political dirty tricks and the Catholic hierarchy covered up for repeat, pathological child-molesters. This is not a case of one poor, confused guy who once did something he shouldn't have. This is a case of MANY active pederasts with a pattern of behavior who were protected from the law, and even from punishment within the Church. Moral lynching, my ass. The American Catholic Church committed moral suicide.

There is certain resentment in Spain, and perhaps particularly in Catalonia, toward the United States on the part of Catholic intellectuals, I'm not sure why. Some of it must be because the US is majority Protestant, though the Catholics are the largest single religious group there, and because many US Protestants were openly anti-Catholic bigots until about the time of World War II. Some of the rest, though, is based on a traditionalist dislike of modernity and change, which the United States symbolizes in Spain. And there's a good part due to the liberation-theology leftism that reigns among much of the hierarchy, and there's another good part in Catalonia due to the fact that the section of the Catalan Church based at Montserrat is ultra-Catalanist and therefore anti-anythingelseist. (If you're looking for the Spanish Catholics in Catalonia, try Poblet.) Enric Juliana says, "...the unipolar new order could be a much more dangerous threat (than Communism) to Christianity in the long run: a slow but inexorable dissolution...Catholicism is the only "international movement"...capable of planting a strong moral objection to the "new order"." Gee, I thought the usual European criticism of America was that it was run by a bunch of religious nuts. But a religious European, Enric Juliana, says we're going to destroy the Catholic Church and that we're more dangerous to Christianity than the Communists. Looks like we can't win either way. Meanwhile, the Pope's emissary, French Cardinal Roger Etchegaray, is "praying for peace" in Baghdad.

The Iraqis have granted entrance visas to fifty "human shields". They will spread out to various neuralgic points in Baghdad. I'm nominating these guys right now for the 2003 Darwin Awards. I vote we pay no attention to their presence or absence when selecting military targets. I also vote we don't do anything more than we have to after the war to get them home alive if they're Allied citizens, and I vote we charge them with treason if war breaks out for giving aid and comfort to the enemy. If they're not citizens of an Alliance nation, I don't see why we should care whether they get out alive. And that goes double if they're French. I suppose basic Allied moral decency will prevent us from abandoning them to their fate, though.

The opposition parties in the Spanish Parliament called a vote that, if passed, would have tied the government's hands if a war breaks out and would have aligned Spain with the Weasels. It failed 151-175, with all the parties except Aznar's conservative PP voting in favor. Convergence and Union's Xavier Trias is trying to sit on the fence. He wants "public opinion to know we're working for peace" so that if war breaks out it will be because it was inevitable, "not just a whim", and that's why they voted in favor. Meanwhile, they're making noises about the peace march on the 15th; the manifesto says "Preventive war is a threat for the peace and the security of the world" and "(This is) an attempt to guarantee the control of the oil and to reorganize the region as a function of the political and economic interests of the United States." It stinks of anti-American conspiracy theory. Cándido Mendez of the Socialist labor union UGT said, "No blood for oil". Socialist leader José Luis Rodríguez Zapatero said, "Let's be responsible and stop the war". José María Fidalgo of the Communist union CCOO said, "We must defend different values and interests than the Bush Administration". And Gaspar Llamazares of the Communist United Left said, "Aznar is alone in the maze of the war and the American far right". Wimpo Artur Mas of Convergence and Union is going to cut short a visit to Quebec (the Catalan nationalists are always visiting Quebec) to come home and appear in the antiwar demo.

Mariano Rajoy of the PP blasted the Socialists, accusing them of having no principles and of trying to take advantage of the Iraq crisis for short-term political profit. He pointed to the repeated Socialist flip-flops on the issue; yesterday Zapatero admitted on TV that he was against the war personally but would accept it if there were another UN resolution. That's not much different from the official government position, and is distinctly contradictory to the strident antiwar posture the Socialists have been screaming out for months. Zapatero really is a weasel; he's trying to weasel out. He'll have a good old time shouting slogans at the demo and then support the war after it's over.

The Vangua published a Jimmy Carter op-ed. I didn't read it. But Quim Monzó notifies us that there is a website called Masturbate for Peace whose mission statement is "You can't love others if you don't love yourself. Evidently, masturbation is the greatest expression of self-esteem. So it is natural that we citizens of the world should unite to masturbate for peace." One of their slogans is "War is wrong, whack your schlong". Several people have written in explaining exactly how they will onanize for peace. In great detail. It is considered acceptable to self-pleasure either collectively or individually. Quim Monzó says, "I'm telling you this because the big demonstration will be next Saturday, the 15th, and it would be nice to see, in action, on the Paseo de Gràcia, the local members of this interesting movement."

Sadly, the Iberian lynx, the world's most endangered feline, is one step closer to extinction upon the death of a male who had been captured sick more than a year ago. They have to catch another male now for the breeding-in-captivity program, and it might be good if this one were healthy. There are between 160 and 200 Iberian lynxes alive in the Sierra Morena and the Doñana swamp, not enough to guarantee the survival of the species in the wild. Poaching, being hit by cars, tuberculosis, and the lack of rabbits are all factors in the decline of the species; the dead lynx had tuberculosis. There is a female at the Barcelona zoo. It's a beautiful animal, but the poor thing is locked in a tiny pen. They keep talking about greatly expanding the zoo, which would allow them to put the big cats in more appropriately-sized enclosures. But, anyway, if you ever come here check out the lynx at the zoo.