Everyone knows all about the war, I suppose. It's being reported in Spain like this: The Vangua's headline today is "No to the war floods Barcelona; Hundreds of thousands march during four hours with good behavior; Police charges and sixty injured at end of Madrid demonstration." Yesterday it was "Hell in Iraq; Tremendous rain of missiles and bombs over downtown Baghdad; Land offensive begins in south, where oil wells burn; Iraqi army division with 8000 soldiers surrenders near Basra; Turkish troops penetrate northern Iraq despite American opposition." Friday it was, "Land invasion of Iraq begins; Anglo-American troops move toward Basra; Severe, selective bombing of official centers in Baghdad; Sixteen soldiers die as US helicopter crashes."

I would say that, in general, the Vangua's news coverage has been pretty fair; they do point out that many, even most Iraqi troops seem willing to surrender, that several sons-of-bitches like Chemical Ali have been blown straight to Islamic hell where they will be forced to endlessly service seventy-two nymphomaniac Divines (if women go to Islamic hell, they get 72 Ron Jeremys), that what we've seen so far of the Iraqi public is welcoming the invading troops, and that very few civilians have been killed as far as we know. Unfortunately that figure is a little higher than zero, but let's keep it as low as we can, even if we have to put our troops into danger in order to do so.

Here's a nasty comment from their correspondent, Tomás Alcoverro, the guy who wrote in such purple prose about the sights and smells of Jenin: "Despite these spectacular attacks on Baghdad, so far there has been a limited number of victims (officially). Four killed and 220 wounded, mostly children and women. (Fair enough so far.) The civilian population, which the American leaders are trying not to attack in its offensive (more than fair, that), is still the innocent cannon fodder as in every war." Wait a minute, dickface, didn't you just say that very few civilians have been hurt and that the Allies are doing their best not to hurt any more? Cannon fodder, my ass. Jesus Christ. This is the first war in history in which one of the sides, ours of course, is doing the best it can to spare not only "enemy" civilians but also enemy soldiers.

The Vangua is running Robert Fisk's dispatches. They are as full of crap in Spanish as they are in English. I will not bother commenting on them any further. Xavier Batalla is trying to weasel out of the "We're not naive, we know that the fact that Saddam is a dictator who tortures his people isn't the only reason we're going in; the most important reasons are that Saddam constitutes a threat to the US, its allies, and his own neighbors, and that Saddam is in league, loosely, with other rogue states and several terrorist gangs" realpolitik argument. He says that we had to go into Kosovo because there was a question of days or even hours in which the incipient genocide of the Albanians needed to be stopped, but that Saddam's been in power for years so that there's no urgency in getting rid of him through war. Right. Sure.

Nutcase Rafael Poch in Peking, who is pro-North Korean, says that it's cool if North Korea goes to war because it has the right to make a preventative attack, since the Americans are obviously planning to hit North Korea. He says that North Korea should not tamely wait to meet its end like Iraq did. This guy is not merely stupid. He's insane. I cannot believe that a newspaper claiming to be responsible could print his dangerously violent ravings. Just for fun, he calls South Korea a "vassal" of the United States. That sounds to me like, besides being a lie, a grave insult to the people of South Korea, who are fiercely independent-minded and who DEMOCRATICALLY elected the government that has expressed open support for the US.

The Pope, as usual, missed a good chance to shut up, saying the war "threatens the fate of humanity"--just a little overblown there, J.P., especially since it's Saddam who directly threatens the fate of a whole lot of humans--and that "Violence and weapons can never solve humanity's problems." Dunno, seems to me that it was with violence that we beat the Nazis and with an arms race that we beat the Soviets. Pretty successful, I'd say. Those were a couple of big problems there, Naziism and Communism.

Yesterday's demo in Barcelona, with a march from Plaza España down the Paralelo to the central government's delegation on the Paseo Colón, beteen the harbor and the Parque Ciutadella, was sizable, some 150,000 people. The organizers are claiming a million, of course, and are calling a general strike on Wednesday. I'll be sure to shop in stores that stay open that day. They got about 20,000 out in Madrid, though they claimed a million. The pacifists threw all kinds of shit at the cops in Madrid and they finally charged and beat the living crap out of them. Go Cops! Seventy peace-lovers who had been throwing beer bottles were injured. Cops! Cops! Cops! Thump 'em! Beat 'em! Let's go, Cops! Nightsticks, truncheons, Cops, Cops, Cops! Don't hurt 'em too bad, but let them know that that kind of behavior is not socially responsible nor a sign of civic values. There was a cool photo of some peacenik committing sabotage in San Francisco having his face ground into the sidewalk while being handcuffed. Anyway, the Madrid government warned people that if they participate in illegal demos or behave illegally in a legal demo, they will face the consequences.

Dumb Letters To the Editor: ...they want to sell us the military intervention as the only solution to fight against a regime that, according to the United States and its allies, possesses dangerous arms of mass destruction that the Americans themselves sold the Iraqis, when the real question is centered basically on power, wanting to control one of the countries where the United States has most economic interests (Anna Sans Caudet, Barcelona)...We must convince the other through the force of reason, not defeat him or annihilate him with the force of arms (M. Angels Manén Folch, Barcelona)...Damn Bush and his hawks. Damn the court jesters of the American emperor. Damn you, Aznar and company, because with your support of the illegitimate attack on Iraq you are sending Iraq "to the shit", you're sending all of us to "the shit". You go there, both to the war and "to the shit". It's your fault and we will all pay the consequences but, most importantly, people will die. Although you don't care (Manel Zaera Idiarte, Amposta)...Bush and his hawks have stubbornly started an unjust and cruel war against Iraq, with the excuse of disarming it, when the real motive of controlling its oil and and expanding its power (Antonio Aparicio, Barcelona)...Spain is one of the countries that are going to commit many murders in the next weeks or months, directly or indirectly. And everything is motivated by economic interests, by the aspiration to show who is the boss in the world (the US) or that to "show up in the photo" next to the powerful ones or because of who knows what secret, dark promises (Juan Antonio Criado, Barcelona)...The cost of the war is paid for by the State with the money from its citizens' taxes. The profits will go to private companies, controlled by the lobbies in the US (Santiago Martín, Barcelona)...France, Germany, Russia, and China have shown respect for international law (Enric de N. Palacios, Barcelona)...Will Aznar carry, wrapped in his colossal flag, the cadavers of those which make us hangmen because of his support of the United States? (Sergio Barrera Perea, Reus)...The capitalist system has caused the power of the citizen to reside in his consumption, without noticing that with every purchase and every sale the basic principles of democracy are being eaten away (Borja Vilaseca, Martorell)...We all know that the cause of the current wars and conflicts is based on economic injustice, the great difference between comfortable Western society and the rest of the countries.(José Rodríguez, Olesa de Montserrat)

On Saturday Rafael Poch, the nutcase, went to a meeting of 1200 "Chinese intellectuals" who are against the war on Saddam and quotes several of them extensively. Here's the best quotation from someone billed as the ex-ambassador to Russia, Yang Shou Zheng, "The first American interest is the oil, they're thieves and they want to steal it. We should consider them paper tigers and not fear them. We have a 5000-year-long history and if we want to be more powerful, we must study the ideas of Marx, Engels, Lenin, Stalin, and Mao." This guy is living on Planet Claire.

Zap is still going on about how he wants to deny the Americans the use of bases in Spain. Meanwhile, the Catalan Parliament passed a resolution agianst the war which called on the Catalan people to "speak up against the war". The PP was the only party who didn't support it. Convergence and Union is still trying to sit on both sides of the fence; this time they supported the resolution. They'll do something contradictorily pro-war tomorrow or Tuesday.

Here's the absolute most offensive thing I've read printed in La Vanguardia, perhaps ever. It's by Gregorio Morán, who is an old-line communist who blows off steam by insulting the United States or the Aznar government every Saturday. I normally don't quote him because his articles always say the same thing, and he's not nearly as "good" as Baltasar Porcel or Eulàlia Solé. This one is especially "good", though, really an achievement for Morán. He's normally a windbag; his columns occupy almost a full page and they're hard slogging through and I usually just don't bother. He's managed to express his real opinion quite concisely this time, buddy, he sure has.

...I still believe exactly the same thing (about Vietnam), and I keep the books and documents of the Vietnamese, including some poems by Ho Chi Minh, excellent, for sure. That iniquitous war liquidated entire generations of Vietnamese and undermined the morale of an empire, an empire I hope and believe is gasping out its dying breaths. In case you don't understand me and you think I'm being ambiguous, I'd like to be specific: I fervently desire, and will put all the strength I have into helping, the defeat of the United States Army, whether in Vietnam or in Iraq, for many reasons, but one above all: it represents everything I have fought against since I had the use of reason. Of course during the Vietnam War everything was very clear, and if the Vietcong communists won then the Vietnamese won...