Here's today's page two signed article from La Vanguardia by Alberto Abian. The background is that a couple of days ago the Guardia Civil beat some poor bastard to death in the Roquetas de Mar police station.

From Los Angeles to Roquetas

Until now we thought that the California police forces were the only ones capable of being involuntarily videoed by amateurs while beating black citizens to death. Now, it turns out that some Civil Guards seem to have emulated their colleagues in Los Angeles, with the difference that the camera was in the police station itself and the victim was a white farm worker from Almeria.

WHAT? When was the last time the L.A. cops beat a black citizen to death? And why this comparison, when there are police forces around the world that really beat people to death, or worse, all the time? And there has been more than one police brutality scandal right here in Spain, like when the cops right here in Catalonia put a schizophrenic Danish kid in the hospital and got filmed doing it a couple of years ago. And if you thought the Rodney King beating was ugly, you haven't seen this one. So let's lay off the shocked innocence, Mr. Abian.

Here's Spain's dumbest intellectual, Manuel Castells, a couple of days ago in La Vanguardia.

We're at war, they say. And in war all measures are valid. It was with that argument that Iraq was invaded, razed, and destabilized in search for weapons of mass destruction that didn't exist.

My ass. What a cheap straw man. No one argued that all measures are valid, because if we thought that way we wouldn't have lawyers attached to every unit telling them what they can do and can't, and there would be a whole lot more dead Baathists than there are now if we did everything we could to them. And as far as "destabilized," is Mr. Castells saying he prefers Saddam's allegedly stable sadistic tyranny?

Legal insecurity for everyone is growing, especially for those who look like Pakistanis or Somalis or Moroccans or Arabs or Afghans or any other imaginary face of the habitual suspects, including Brazilians and Ecuatorians (or dark Spaniards?)

Oh, what a crock of crap. Note that Mr. Castells wants to sign up the Spaniards to his list of victim groups that evil racist Western society is oppressing.

Indiscriminate restriction of civil liberties leads to Al Qaeda's first victory: they are changing our societies into something very far away from the democratic way of life.

What an old, tired argument. The British pacifists made that argument in World War II, saying that if we resist the Nazis we'll become just like them. And what indiscriminate restriction of civil liberties?

...Bush threatens the only thing he knows, bombing.

And they call the Americans simplistic.

...the Israelis have changed from an open and democratic society to a militarized and paranoid country with strong racist tendencies.

You heard it here first. Israel is racist, paranoid, militaristic, undemocratic, and closed, says Mr. Castells. I personally think Mr. Castells is bigoted, superficial, incompetent, and a worshiper of totalitarianism and violence, as he never criticizes any of the groups that are really militaristic and undemocratic, like the PLO, PFLP, Hezbollah, Hamas, and company.

There's a lot more but I've had enough.