La Vanguardia was rather interesting today.

Banner headline: "Iran seeks dialogue with liberation of 15 British sailors."

Gee, I'd say Iran is playing the Godfather and letting us know he can extort us like this whenever he wants.

Rafael Ramos, Vangua correspondent in London, kicks off his Page 3 article, top of La Vangua's international section, with:

"And the Oscar for best performance in the political theater goes to.....Mahmoud Ahmadinejad!" The rest of his article is at the same level. I'm so tired of Spanish commentators explaining everything in images. It's a serious fault. I suppose we do it, too, but they really read a lot into images.

Ramos claims there was a swap of hostages, that the Americans turned over an Iranian diplomat they'd captured committing crimes inside Iraq in exchange for the smiling, handshaking Brits.

Tikrit Tommy Alcoverro, La Vangua's paid-off correspondent in Beirut, announces on page 4 that the Syrian regime is thrilled with Speaker Pelosi's visit. Official regime newspaper Al Bass, mouthpiece of the Syrian Baath Party, said that Pelosi's "valorous mission recognizes the part played by Syria and shows that there is more than one criterion in dealing with the Damascus Government." I think anything you do that the government of Syria praises is absolutely the wrong thing to have done just by definition.

Joaquim Ibarz, La Vangua's respectable and serious Latin American correspondent, says that Fidel Castro and Hugo Chavez are full of crap when they say things like "Ethanol means the internationalization of genocide," since Chavez set up a project to convert Venezuelan sugarcane into ethanol just weeks before Bush announced he thought it was a good idea. Cuba and Venezuela plan to jointly modernize ten sugarcane-to-ethanol plants that already exist in Cuba. Brazil is irritated at Castro's big mouth.

Scandal: Spanish taxpayers' money is to go to Cuba in the wake of foreign minister Moratinos's visit. Cuba's debt of €1.7 billion to Spain is to be "renegotiated." "Bilateral cooperation" is to be "renewed in all fields: economic, financial, cultural, and developmental." A "permanent and formal mechanism of political dialogue" is to be created between Spain and Cuba, under conditions of "mutual respect, equality, and acceptance of respective political and legal structures."

Meanwhile, Cuban foreign minister and chief gamouche Perez Roque said, "The prisoners in Cuba are not part of this agenda."

Hey, Zap, doesn't look like you got much of a quid pro quo for getting your tongue all covered with the shit dripping out Fidel's tumor-riddled asshole, does it?