Well, the big demo starts in just under two hours. As I have said before, the Barcelona demo is sponsored by, among others, the Socialist Party and its labor union, the Communist Party and its labor union, the Republican Left, and conservative Catalan nationalists Convergence and Union. Also among the sponsors are a group of violent anarchist squatters and at least two organizations that justify and apologize for ETA terrorism. Are these people pacifists? Of course they are not. They approve of the use of violence in circumstances where it favors their ideological goals. They approve of Zapatista violence and of Sandinista violence and Tupamaro violence. They approve of the Russian Revolution and of the French Revolution. They approve of the violence used against businesses that stay open the day of a general strike. At least some of them approve of the violence meted out against the United States on September 11; I am sure that all those who vote Communist, some 5% of Spaniards, and those to their left, another 1 or 2 percent, approve of the attacks and think America got what it deserved.

This is not a pacifist demo. If it were, they would be protesting at the French intervention in the Ivory Coast. They're not. They would be protesting at the ridiculous situation in Central Africa in Congo and Rwanda and Burundi and Uganda with Zimbabwean and Angolan troops in the middle and the French with no idea what to do, but they're not. They would be protesting at the brutal gangs running Sierra Leone and Liberia and Guinea and the rest of West Africa. They've never heard of those places. They would have been protesting at what happened in East Timor. They didn't. They would have been protesting at the Russian crushing of the Chechens, whether bandits and terrorists or not. They didn't. They would have been protesting at the evil Taliban takeover of Afghanistan. They didn't. They would have been protesting about Bosnia and Kosovo--wait a minute, they did. Half of them blamed America for the "root causes"--y'all who weren't over here then may not have heard about the anti-intervention demos in Europe over Kosovo, especially--and protested against our intervention and the other half blamed America for not intervening fast enough.

This is just not an anti-war or anti-violence protest. None of these people gives a rat's ass about the Iraqis. If they did, they'd do something to help to overthrow the murderer and oppressor Saddam. This is, pure and simple, an anti-American protest. It is an opportunity for a crew of the usual suspects, the left and the nationalists, to spew hatred and enjoy doing it. I forgive them. It's not their fault they hate us after all the crap both their media and our media fill them full of. The ones I won't forgive are the little crowd of Americans who protested at the American embassy in Madrid yesterday. They have their right to voice their opinions, of course. And I have the right to despise them for those opinions. It's in appalling taste, it shows a lack of moral compass, and it's just plain stupid for an American to join in this America-bashing, America-smearing orgy, especially in a foreign country. It's like a black guy marching at the head of a Klan rally and carrying the torch they're going to use to light the cross.