Check out this article from today's Vanguardia that they picked up from Agence France Presse.

"Vive la France!"
American pacifists find their antiwar cry

"Where are you from?" asks the Washington taxi driver distractedly as he listens to the news on the radio. "I'm French". He turns around and smiles: "Then the ride is free!" Like him, many Americans have suddenly begun to cling to France, converted in their eyes into the last barrier before the warlike caprices of their government.

While the American media of communication compete in Francophobic commentaries and denounce the "treason" and the "cowardice" of the French, "Vive la France!" has become the pacifists' slogan. Frequently cited in Internet antiwar messages, the motto "Vive la France!" has also appeared on the banners of the recent large demonstrations.

Activists or anonymous citizens, these Americans have generally never trod European soil, but, cornered between the media and a political class now willing to go to war, they cling with hope and emotion to the symbol of France. "It's nice to know, simply, that there is someone, somewhere, who says no to the Bush administration and who makes it restrain itself," says John Catalinotto, spokesman for the antiwar group ANSWER.

This activist, a pacifist "since Vietnam", admits that a few days ago he went out on the streets with an old pack of Gauloise cigarettes as an amulet. While some have called for a boycott of French products, "you can be sure that at this moment there are people lining up to buy French cheese on the shelves of the supermarkets."

From behind the counter of the Bistrot du Coin, a French restaurant in Washington, Florence Lebourg remembers that last week "a group of clients told me that they had come on purpose to stock up on French products in order to support us." And the messages of support that arrive daily at the French embassy have totaled 600 to 1000 since the end of January.

Can any of this possibly be true? I, personally, don't mind people shouting "Stop the war!" I figure that's covered under the freedom-of-speech clause of the Constitution. But if I ever hear about anybody who's American shouting "Vive la France", I will personally severely chastise the miscreant. With one of Jane Galt's two-by-fours.

They're making a big stink right now about the high-speed train from Madrid to Lleída. It's supposed to begin circulating normally sometime this month, and they made four test runs which showed that there are definitely a few bugs in the system. It doesn't look to me like any of the problems are too serious, but they do need to be fixed. This, as far as I know, is typical with big engineering projects--you've got to test them. What we learned with those test trips is that more work is needed. Good. Nobody got killed finding that out and the problem will be solved although there'll be a month's more delay. Big deal--when they get it finished all the way to Barcelona, which may not happen now until 2005, it'll be a major piece of infrastructure that will change a lot of people's lives and people will forget about this. Right now, though, it's another weapon the opposition is using on the PP--first the water plan, then the oil spill, then the education plan, then the antiwar protests, now the high-speed train. The Socialists have got some very tasty weapons that they can use against the government. Good thing they're too dumb and too divided to actually put together a functioning campaign outside Catalonia and Andalusia.

If I were the PP I'd point out that the first high-speed train link (inished in 1991) was not from Madrid to Barcelona and from there to Paris by way of Montpellier, which any idiot would figure is the logical first step. No, it was Madrid to Seville. Now, that's a nice piece of work they did, and it's a good thing we have it, but come on, you connect your first city to your second city and then to the rest of the world. That's your priority. Instead, they connected Spain's first city with its fifth city and the line ends there. Why'd they do that? Pork Barrel City. Felipe González, the Socialist Prime Minister from 1982 until 1996, made damn sure that his hometown, Seville, was going to get a big piece of the infrastructure being put up for the 1992 Olympics and Expo. Córdoba, also in Socialist home base Andalusia, got a station, too, as did Socialist Ciudad Real.

Saddam made some bogus disarmament offer. The Americans said yeah, right. Blix and the French and the Rooskies said something about how this was showing that the inspections were working. Aznar and Blair met in Madrid, reaffirmed their positions, leaned on Mexico and Chile a little, said Saddam was a liar and couldn't be trusted, and generally stood firm. Supposedly the Russians are sending out feelers about how to back down when the crunch comes. Tony and Chema also talked about labor reform in order to combat unemployment. They also said some stuff about the future EU having only one president who would be in charge of foreign policy. I gather this is entirely contrary to what France and Germany want. Meanwhile, Lionel Jospin called on Chirac to use France's veto in the UN Security Council. Real smart, Lionel.