Spain is taking the terrorist attacks in Algeria and Morocco very seriously. An organization called Al Qaeda of the Islamic Maghreb has claimed responsibility for the bombings in Algiers. It is apparently a fusion of the Salafist Combat Group and several other Islamist terrorist groups. They killed twelve people in Cabilia, the Berber region to the east of Algiers, during December. It seems that they got themselves organized in February of last year after the Algerian goverment turned loose 2300 suspected Islamist terrorists.

The Zap government has put Spain on a "level 2 alert." This is the second highest level of security, and it means that places where crowds collect or which provide basic services (e.g. airports, power plants) are to be closely watched. Each police unit is to file individual reports on anything suspicious they see. There are at least 70 undercover agents operating in Ceuta, according to La Vangua, which says that there are at least as many infiltrated spies among the Islamists there. Ceuta contains at least 3000 Maghrebi illegal aliens, among whom the Islamists recruit heavily.

Al Qaeda, in its communique claiming responsibility for the bombings, declared, "We will not rest until we have liberated the land of Islam from Jerusalem to Al Andalus." Al Andalus, in case you didn't know, is Spain. Looks like Zap's cutting and running from Iraq didn't do a damn bit of good. Appeasement never does.

Says Walter Laqueur in today's La Vanguardia, "Why call for a Muslim reconquest now? Spain, after all, withdrew its troops from Iraq as a gesture of good will." Because the Islamists want to dominate the entire world, remember, and Spain is to be one of the very first dominoes to fall. People who don't understand this and think that negotiations of any kind are going to work with Islamists are dreaming.

La Vanguardia ran an interview with Baltasar Garzón yesterday; Garzón says a) "We should consider that in Spain we are facing a very high risk of a new Islamist terrorist attack" b) Al Qaeda has training camps in southern Algeria near the Mali frontier c) The Spanish cities of Ceuta and Melilla on the north coast of Morocco are Al Qaeda's number one target d) We must take Al Qaeda's threats against "Al Andalus" seriously, because they do e) It's very hard to investigate these Islamist terrorist groups because they're mostly semi-independent at least.

Meanwhile, Al Qaeda is using retarded children as suicide bombers in Iraq. The United Nations, whose word I would normally never take seriously, cites twelve documented cases, including the March 21 Baghdad market bombing. One 13-year-old suicide bomber was sold by his parents to Al Qaeda for $10,000. And there are still people who don't understand that we, and I mean the liberal, civilized West, are fighting pure evil, and Iraq is the number one battlefield.

Comment on the Tele Madrid documentary: The Catalan media is absolutely furious, much more so than Iberian Notes ever gets at Catalan media anti-Americanism. La Vangua calls the documentary "false," "biased," and "exploitative" on today's editorial page. Funny how they don't say things like that when Catalan TV shows documentaries like the one on the Aryan Nations that they rerun so often, the one on "Jesus Camp," those nutcase jobs claiming the US government was behind 9-11, or Bowling for Columbine. Or the Al Gore movie and traveling circus sideshow. Looks like the shoe's on the other foot now and they don't like it one bit.

Good news. They're going to run the Barcelona subway all night on Saturdays starting next week. If they're going to tax us, I don't particularly mind if the money goes to such useful forms of public transportation as the subway. Much better than Catalan national sports teams. At least spending the money on the subway gets people where they're going, as well as hopefully reducing traffic and drunk driving accidents.