Bad news from the US for the Spanish economy: Wholesale prices were up 1.1% in March. Inflation in the US means more inflation in Spain, and we're already close to 5% over the last year.
There is a great deal of concern in Spain about the sharp increase in grain prices (up 80% since 2005), since Spain is an exporter of vegetables and fruits but an importer of cereals. The grain price rise is because of bad harvests in 2007 in Australia and South America, growth in India and China, the sharp hike in oil prices (as oil is necessary to process and transport grain), and the use of grain to make fuel. Of course, increased grain prices mean increased meat and dairy prices as well, since farm animals eat grain too.
And the people who are hurt worst by food price inflation are, of course, the poor of the world, since they spend a much greater proportion of their incomes on food than wealthier people do. Methinks that Europe's Enlightened and Illustrated should denounce the selfishness of the oil cartel in limiting production to keep prices high and thus hurting poor folks everywhere. Not gonna happen, though.
Geopolitical point: Most of the OPEC countries don't export anything significant except for oil, so they have to spend the money that they're taking in on food and other necessities, all of which they import. This means that the US, as the world's largest grain exporter, pretty much has the non-grain-producing world over a barrel in the same way that the OPEC countries do; the difference is the Americans don't use food as an economic weapon. Not yet, anyway. The countries that are really going to get squeezed are those that don't produce either energy or grain. Spain, for example.
La Vanguardia's editorial today talks about a possible "food hecatomb," meaning mass starvation. They specifically blame it on using grain to make biofuels, and claim that "staple foods are the objective of international speculative capital." If I didn't know any better I'd say they're blaming it on those damn Jews again. Anyway, they want somebody (the UN security council, specifically) to make everybody else stop converting grain to fuel.
Get their conclusion: "While the United States has always considered grain production as a geostrategic factor, in Europe it has not been so. Here farmers have even been subsidized not to produce it. It is time to change the policy. The Unesco stresses the urgency of changing the rules of world agriculture, which is under the dictates of the large multinational corporations, to the detriment of global well-being."
1) Actually, I don't think the US has ever considered grain production as geostrategic, though that may change 2) the US has also paid farmers not to produce grain 3) "Changing the rules of world agriculture"? That is, putting the Alliance of Civilizations in charge of it instead of the market? 4) "Multinational corporations" dictate everything? Sounds like those damn Jews and Americans one more time. 5) Notice that La Vanguardia does not say one word about the role of oil prices in general and OPEC policy in particular in the high cost of food. It's all the speculative capitalist multinational corporations' fault.
You probably saw Berlusconi got elected for the third time as Italian prime minister. He's a crook, but at least he's a pro-American and pro-NATO crook. Good news: The Commies won zero seats. They got an 80% turnout, which is really high, especially by American standards.
The press is making a big deal out of Carmen Chacon's first review of the troops as Defense minister because she's a pregnant woman and the Army is traditionally very unfond of change. I guess it is sort of a big deal, symbolically, since it stresses that the Army is under civilian control, and Spain was a military dictatorship for four decades and then had a real coup attempt in 1981. However, the army has been substantially reformed and most of the old Franco guys have been retired or dead for years. They haven't seriously interfered in politics since the coup attempt, which was opposed by the great majority of the officers anyway. I doubt they felt humiliated by receiving orders from a woman, since the troops have been taking orders from women noncoms and officers for years now.
The plagiarist Marius Serra records an urban legend / conspiracy theory traveling around the Catalan Internet: the "multinational insurance companies" are flying a squadron of small planes over central Catalonia that are spraying silver sulfate in order to prevent hail, so that they won't have to pay out on their policies, and that the drought is a consequence of this practice. Supposedly three hundred people have seen the planes. Wow. You'd have to be more than abnormally stupid to believe that. Inbreeding in Solsona?
There are a lot of language purists running around claiming that our kids can't write correctly because they use their own jargon, spelling, grammar, etc. in SMSs and e-mails. No, our kids are smart enough to distinguish between two different registers. They just don't know how to write correctly in either of them.
Looks like the goddamn bus drivers and the city have agreed on a last-minute deal and the strike will come to an end. The city caved in: the drivers will get two days off a week, and fewer hours, with no pay cut, and no disciplinary action, even against those guilty of sabotage. The sabotage has continued, though; over the weekend thirty ticket-validating machines were destroyed, and last night nine buses had their tires slashed and a non-striking driver was attacked (they threw red paint all over him). No arrests were made, of course.
I get a lot of Google hits for Isabel Pantoja. Pantoja fans: Her boyfriend Julian Muñoz, accused of stealing everything in Marbella that wasn't nailed down, went back to jail in la Pantoja's car after a three-day furlough presumably spent with his sweetie. Co-conspirator Juan Antonio Roca, charged with extortion, embezzlement, tax fraud, money-laundering, leading an criminal organization, forgery, illegal weapons possession, influence-peddling, and abuse of power, got out of jail on €1 million bail.
Reminds me of a joke: Lincoln had to pay back Pennsylvania Republican party boss Simon Cameron for his crucial support, and he made Cameron his first secretary of war though he knew what Cameron was like. Supposedly one day Lincoln said, "I believe Cameron would steal anything, excepting a hot stove," and a Cameron supporter said, "Take that back," and Lincoln said, "All right, I believe that Cameron would steal anything, including a hot stove."
Showing posts with label goddamn bus drivers. Show all posts
Showing posts with label goddamn bus drivers. Show all posts
Tuesday, April 15, 2008
Friday, April 04, 2008
So La Vangua has an article marking the 40th anniversary of the assassination of Martin Luther King. No problems here except for a very common Spanish media error: They don't suss that when an American has three names, 99% of the time the second name is what we call a middle name, and not the first surname as it would be in Spanish. So they habitually refer to Martin Luther King as Luther King rather than King, and to James Earl Ray as Earl Ray rather than Ray.
By the way, the Spanish National Health thinks my middle name, Stuart, is my first surname, and so every time I have any business with them I have to make sure they check the files under both names. Also, people from phone companies who call me up trying to sell me their cellular plan always ask for Señor Stuart; I know right off the bat if a caller is "roast leg of insurance salesman," or, like, somebody from the office or the bank.
The "Maradona of the Rambla," who's been doing stunts with a soccer ball and passing the hat among the tourists on the Rambla near Plaza Catalunya for as long as I can remember, is retiring because he's reached 65. He claims the world record for keeping a soccer ball in the air the longest, and he's a well-known local character. Another Barcelona icon saddles up and rides off into the sunset.
The Zap government is definitely not going to send any water from the Segre-Ebro to Barcelona. Now Zap claims he'd never heard about the idea before he read about it in the papers. The Catalan Socialist environment counselor, Francesc Baltasar, looks like a liar: before the election he publicly denied, not once but twice, that the Generalitat was considering an aqueduct to transfer water from the Segre to the Llobregat. Then he got into a moronic semantic argument over the meaning of "transfer water." Turns out now they were considering precisely that the whole time; on November 29 they held a meeting at the environmental ministry in Madrid to discuss what to do about the drought, and decided to hold back any public announcements until after the election. Most likely head to roll: Environment minister Cristina Narbona.
The words "transfer water" are politically loaded, since the PP's goddamn water plan to transfer Ebro water to Valencia, Murcia, and Almeria, was shot down by a Catalan-Aragonese Socialist intransigent opposition to sending any Ebro water anywhere else. Now the PP is in position to embarrass the Socialists with their plan to transfer Ebro water to Barcelona, since the Socialists had argued that any water transfer would create an ecological tragedy.
The forecasters are predicting a rainy spring, which would be a very good thing. There are some dark clouds coming out of the northwest today.
Coverage of the American elections over here centers on the Democratic race. Al Gore has managed to make himself into a figure beloved among the Catalan enviroleft and the rest of the Do-Gooders International, and Obama's proposal to make Al some kind of environmental czar has gone over big here. Chelsea and her difficulties with people asking her about her dad and Monica has also been big news. Obama and Reverend Wrong didn't get nearly as much coverage, and Hillary's Bosnia thing has pretty much blown over. Notice that Spanish coverage focuses on personalities rather than issues, but a lot of American coverage does too.
Updates: The ETA killers of Isaías Carrasco have not been caught yet, and I have heard virtually nothing about the case since the election. I also haven't heard anything recently about the Islamist terrorist cell rounded up in January--remember, the ones who were going to plant bombs in the subway. Zap never got his meeting with Bush at the Bucharest summit, the meeting that the PSOE had made such a big deal about; Spain's still in the freezer as far as the American administration is concerned. And the goddamn bus drivers aren't striking today or next Thursday, but they're going on an indefinite strike starting April 15.
The goddamn Jehovah's Witnesses, who in Barcelona are a bunch of Brits, came around today wanting to leave some literature. I was polite but told them firmly I wasn't interested. What they do is target people with English names; they rang at my doorbell and asked over the intercom if I spoke English. The Mormons, who are a bunch of Americans, don't come around to your house, but they target English-speakers on the city streets. I respect their right to their beliefs, but I also have the right to be left alone.
By the way, the Spanish National Health thinks my middle name, Stuart, is my first surname, and so every time I have any business with them I have to make sure they check the files under both names. Also, people from phone companies who call me up trying to sell me their cellular plan always ask for Señor Stuart; I know right off the bat if a caller is "roast leg of insurance salesman," or, like, somebody from the office or the bank.
The "Maradona of the Rambla," who's been doing stunts with a soccer ball and passing the hat among the tourists on the Rambla near Plaza Catalunya for as long as I can remember, is retiring because he's reached 65. He claims the world record for keeping a soccer ball in the air the longest, and he's a well-known local character. Another Barcelona icon saddles up and rides off into the sunset.
The Zap government is definitely not going to send any water from the Segre-Ebro to Barcelona. Now Zap claims he'd never heard about the idea before he read about it in the papers. The Catalan Socialist environment counselor, Francesc Baltasar, looks like a liar: before the election he publicly denied, not once but twice, that the Generalitat was considering an aqueduct to transfer water from the Segre to the Llobregat. Then he got into a moronic semantic argument over the meaning of "transfer water." Turns out now they were considering precisely that the whole time; on November 29 they held a meeting at the environmental ministry in Madrid to discuss what to do about the drought, and decided to hold back any public announcements until after the election. Most likely head to roll: Environment minister Cristina Narbona.
The words "transfer water" are politically loaded, since the PP's goddamn water plan to transfer Ebro water to Valencia, Murcia, and Almeria, was shot down by a Catalan-Aragonese Socialist intransigent opposition to sending any Ebro water anywhere else. Now the PP is in position to embarrass the Socialists with their plan to transfer Ebro water to Barcelona, since the Socialists had argued that any water transfer would create an ecological tragedy.
The forecasters are predicting a rainy spring, which would be a very good thing. There are some dark clouds coming out of the northwest today.
Coverage of the American elections over here centers on the Democratic race. Al Gore has managed to make himself into a figure beloved among the Catalan enviroleft and the rest of the Do-Gooders International, and Obama's proposal to make Al some kind of environmental czar has gone over big here. Chelsea and her difficulties with people asking her about her dad and Monica has also been big news. Obama and Reverend Wrong didn't get nearly as much coverage, and Hillary's Bosnia thing has pretty much blown over. Notice that Spanish coverage focuses on personalities rather than issues, but a lot of American coverage does too.
Updates: The ETA killers of Isaías Carrasco have not been caught yet, and I have heard virtually nothing about the case since the election. I also haven't heard anything recently about the Islamist terrorist cell rounded up in January--remember, the ones who were going to plant bombs in the subway. Zap never got his meeting with Bush at the Bucharest summit, the meeting that the PSOE had made such a big deal about; Spain's still in the freezer as far as the American administration is concerned. And the goddamn bus drivers aren't striking today or next Thursday, but they're going on an indefinite strike starting April 15.
The goddamn Jehovah's Witnesses, who in Barcelona are a bunch of Brits, came around today wanting to leave some literature. I was polite but told them firmly I wasn't interested. What they do is target people with English names; they rang at my doorbell and asked over the intercom if I spoke English. The Mormons, who are a bunch of Americans, don't come around to your house, but they target English-speakers on the city streets. I respect their right to their beliefs, but I also have the right to be left alone.
Friday, March 28, 2008
La Vanguardia has an article on what they call the Bologna process (what the goddamn university non-students were "striking" over), which is supposed to help make European universities competitive with American ones. According to La Vangua, of the 535 best universities in the world, 308 are in the US, 50 in the UK, 26 in Canada, 20 in Germany, 19 in Japan, and 1 in Spain, which is the University of Barcelona medical school.
Massive cognitive dissonance for Yankee-bashers: Americans are supposed to be ignorant, unintellectual, and uncultured. Yet the US has all the top universities and the most Nobel Prize winners, for whatever that's worth, and it attracts thousands of students from all over the world.
La Vangua claims that the US spends 3% of its gross national product on research and development, while the EU spends 1.2%, and that 5% of Americans between ages 30 and 50 are enrolled in university or post-graduate studies, while only 2% of EU citizens are. Therefore, the Bologna plan will devote more public spending to raising these percentages. The problem is that the majority of US R&D spending comes from the private sector, and that the 5% of Americans continuing their educations are doing so in order to reach personal, not public, goals.
Many Spaniards I've talked to are very critical of the Spanish university system; I've heard people say that it's based on memorization and regurgitation, that it discourages individual initiative, that it doesn't teach students how to think, that professors are distant and uninterested in students as individuals, that it's too bureaucratic and regimented, and that there is a lot of nepotism and patronage involved in choosing instructors. A personal observation of mine is that many Spaniards resort to invoking authority as evidence to back up their arguments--so-and-so said this so it must be true. I think they learned this at the university.
Poverty in Catalonia: 19% of Catalans live below the poverty line, which is a yearly income of €8276 (about $12,100) per person, up from 17.2% last year. Comparison with the US: About 12% of Americans live below the federal poverty line, which is $10,400 for an individual living alone and $21,200 for a family of four. In-kind benefits, such as food stamps, school lunches, and public housing, do not count as income in the US for purposes of measuring poverty. 46% of poor households in the US own their own home, 30% have two or more cars, 63% have cable or satellite TV, and 91% have a color television.
Here in B-ville, the city government is all excited about the tacky souvenir shops that surround touristy places like the Sagrada Familia and the Ramblas. Indignation waxes, especially at the flamenco-dancing dolls and the big Mexican sombreros. I have to admit I'm surprised at how popular the Mexican hats are among the Dusseldorfers, Rotterdammers, and Liverpudlians. If you buy one and walk around town all the locals think you're a complete idiot, but I figure everybody who reads this blog already knows that.
Personally, I never buy stuff at souvenir shops; I always get something at the museum gift shop. I especially like little reproductions of animal statues; my favorite is the Egyptian cat-god from the British Museum. Here in Barcelona, the City History Museum's shop on Calle Llibreteria has nice stuff worth at least looking at. They sell little silver reproductions of a Visigothic (early medieval) horse that was found during an archaeological dig, which are a bit pricey but worth it.
The goddamn bus drivers voted to go on strike indefinitely beginning on April 15 if the city government doesn't give them what they want. So far more than 200 buses have been sabotaged by the strikers.
Latino gang fight in L'Hospitalet. Gunshots fired. One hospitalized, stabbed in arm and leg. Three arrested. Gang involved: Dominicans calling themselves the "Black Panthers," in English. This is getting a bit out of hand.
Value-added tax (IVA) receipts are down 8% since January 1 due to the halt in the construction sector. This is going to play hell with the budget.
Ronaldinho has burned his bridges: his manager (and brother) threatened to sign him up with Real Madrid, and claimed he could legally break Dinho's contract for a €16 million buyout, far less than the €125 million buyout clause in his contract. So don't let the door hit you in the ass on your way out. Luis Fernandez, Dinho's coach at Paris-St. Germain, just came out with a book accusing him of being a selfish player and breaking all the team rules, especially those related to eating properly and staying home at night.
Massive cognitive dissonance for Yankee-bashers: Americans are supposed to be ignorant, unintellectual, and uncultured. Yet the US has all the top universities and the most Nobel Prize winners, for whatever that's worth, and it attracts thousands of students from all over the world.
La Vangua claims that the US spends 3% of its gross national product on research and development, while the EU spends 1.2%, and that 5% of Americans between ages 30 and 50 are enrolled in university or post-graduate studies, while only 2% of EU citizens are. Therefore, the Bologna plan will devote more public spending to raising these percentages. The problem is that the majority of US R&D spending comes from the private sector, and that the 5% of Americans continuing their educations are doing so in order to reach personal, not public, goals.
Many Spaniards I've talked to are very critical of the Spanish university system; I've heard people say that it's based on memorization and regurgitation, that it discourages individual initiative, that it doesn't teach students how to think, that professors are distant and uninterested in students as individuals, that it's too bureaucratic and regimented, and that there is a lot of nepotism and patronage involved in choosing instructors. A personal observation of mine is that many Spaniards resort to invoking authority as evidence to back up their arguments--so-and-so said this so it must be true. I think they learned this at the university.
Poverty in Catalonia: 19% of Catalans live below the poverty line, which is a yearly income of €8276 (about $12,100) per person, up from 17.2% last year. Comparison with the US: About 12% of Americans live below the federal poverty line, which is $10,400 for an individual living alone and $21,200 for a family of four. In-kind benefits, such as food stamps, school lunches, and public housing, do not count as income in the US for purposes of measuring poverty. 46% of poor households in the US own their own home, 30% have two or more cars, 63% have cable or satellite TV, and 91% have a color television.
Here in B-ville, the city government is all excited about the tacky souvenir shops that surround touristy places like the Sagrada Familia and the Ramblas. Indignation waxes, especially at the flamenco-dancing dolls and the big Mexican sombreros. I have to admit I'm surprised at how popular the Mexican hats are among the Dusseldorfers, Rotterdammers, and Liverpudlians. If you buy one and walk around town all the locals think you're a complete idiot, but I figure everybody who reads this blog already knows that.
Personally, I never buy stuff at souvenir shops; I always get something at the museum gift shop. I especially like little reproductions of animal statues; my favorite is the Egyptian cat-god from the British Museum. Here in Barcelona, the City History Museum's shop on Calle Llibreteria has nice stuff worth at least looking at. They sell little silver reproductions of a Visigothic (early medieval) horse that was found during an archaeological dig, which are a bit pricey but worth it.
The goddamn bus drivers voted to go on strike indefinitely beginning on April 15 if the city government doesn't give them what they want. So far more than 200 buses have been sabotaged by the strikers.
Latino gang fight in L'Hospitalet. Gunshots fired. One hospitalized, stabbed in arm and leg. Three arrested. Gang involved: Dominicans calling themselves the "Black Panthers," in English. This is getting a bit out of hand.
Value-added tax (IVA) receipts are down 8% since January 1 due to the halt in the construction sector. This is going to play hell with the budget.
Ronaldinho has burned his bridges: his manager (and brother) threatened to sign him up with Real Madrid, and claimed he could legally break Dinho's contract for a €16 million buyout, far less than the €125 million buyout clause in his contract. So don't let the door hit you in the ass on your way out. Luis Fernandez, Dinho's coach at Paris-St. Germain, just came out with a book accusing him of being a selfish player and breaking all the team rules, especially those related to eating properly and staying home at night.
Thursday, March 27, 2008
Not much news today, either. The biggest story this morning is that the goddamn bus drivers are on strike again, just like every Thursday. They sabotaged ten buses today, breaking windows and puncturing tires. At least this time three arrests were made; the strikers had been destroying city property and endangering the passengers with complete impunity until now. The only striker arrested so far had been one who punched a cop.
Archaeology news: They found proto-human remains (specifically, a jawbone including teeth) dating back 1.2 million years at the Atapuerca site in Burgos province; they believe the hominid jawbone belonged to a Homo antecessor, which scientists think was a direct ancestor of Homo sapiens. These are the oldest proto-human remains discovered in Europe.
Get this: TV3's story says in the very first paragraph: ..."the scientists who discovered (the remains) included Catalan researchers." Local pride is great, but I'm not too sure that the region where a few of the archaeologists were born is worthy of inclusion in the lead. By the way, they also repeatedly spelled Homo antecessor wrong, using a single S instead of the correct double letter.
Cultural news: Eduardo Mendoza, my favorite living Spanish (and Catalan) author, has a new book out called "El asombroso viaje de Pomponio Flato." Pomponio is a Roman who investigates murder charges against a fellow named Joseph (who has a very gifted child) in a town called Nazareth. I plan to check it out soon.
I have to admit that Barcelona's "Bicing" scheme, despite its ridiculous pseudo-English name and my repeated predictions of total failure, is working out pretty well. They've got 130,000 people signed up, and you see people riding the bikes all over downtown. The service is currently being extended to my neighborhood, Gracia, and I guess I'm going to sign up, though I have a bike of my own. I'm still wondering how many inexperienced riders are going to get killed in Barcelona's hellacious traffic.
If we don't get some rain around here pretty soon we're headed for water rationing, despite the multiple denials we had been hearing from the authorities for months. When total reservoir capacity goes under 20% (right now it's at 20.5%), we'll be rationed to 230 liters/person/day, half of what New Yorkers use. If it drops to 15%, they'll reduce water pressure. If it goes down to 10% there will be a complete water cutoff one day a week, and if it goes below 5% that means two days a week of complete cutoffs. Smells to me like we're all going to stink this summer; oh, well, plenty of folks around here only shower once a week anyway.
In February Spain's budget surplus fell by 27% compared to last year, since tax receipts are down due to slower growth than expected along with the rise in oil prices. Zap's balanced budgets are great, but current projections for the future are based on overly optimistic economic growth estimates of more than three percent. But growth may be as low as 2% in 2009. I bet if he tries to keep all those campaign promises he made, good-bye budget surplus.
Archaeology news: They found proto-human remains (specifically, a jawbone including teeth) dating back 1.2 million years at the Atapuerca site in Burgos province; they believe the hominid jawbone belonged to a Homo antecessor, which scientists think was a direct ancestor of Homo sapiens. These are the oldest proto-human remains discovered in Europe.
Get this: TV3's story says in the very first paragraph: ..."the scientists who discovered (the remains) included Catalan researchers." Local pride is great, but I'm not too sure that the region where a few of the archaeologists were born is worthy of inclusion in the lead. By the way, they also repeatedly spelled Homo antecessor wrong, using a single S instead of the correct double letter.
Cultural news: Eduardo Mendoza, my favorite living Spanish (and Catalan) author, has a new book out called "El asombroso viaje de Pomponio Flato." Pomponio is a Roman who investigates murder charges against a fellow named Joseph (who has a very gifted child) in a town called Nazareth. I plan to check it out soon.
I have to admit that Barcelona's "Bicing" scheme, despite its ridiculous pseudo-English name and my repeated predictions of total failure, is working out pretty well. They've got 130,000 people signed up, and you see people riding the bikes all over downtown. The service is currently being extended to my neighborhood, Gracia, and I guess I'm going to sign up, though I have a bike of my own. I'm still wondering how many inexperienced riders are going to get killed in Barcelona's hellacious traffic.
If we don't get some rain around here pretty soon we're headed for water rationing, despite the multiple denials we had been hearing from the authorities for months. When total reservoir capacity goes under 20% (right now it's at 20.5%), we'll be rationed to 230 liters/person/day, half of what New Yorkers use. If it drops to 15%, they'll reduce water pressure. If it goes down to 10% there will be a complete water cutoff one day a week, and if it goes below 5% that means two days a week of complete cutoffs. Smells to me like we're all going to stink this summer; oh, well, plenty of folks around here only shower once a week anyway.
In February Spain's budget surplus fell by 27% compared to last year, since tax receipts are down due to slower growth than expected along with the rise in oil prices. Zap's balanced budgets are great, but current projections for the future are based on overly optimistic economic growth estimates of more than three percent. But growth may be as low as 2% in 2009. I bet if he tries to keep all those campaign promises he made, good-bye budget surplus.
Thursday, March 20, 2008
It's Semana Santa (which PC touchy-feely education types have renamed "Spring Vacation") and so there's no news since everybody's on vacation already, even though the official Catalan four-day weekend doesn't begin until tomorrow.
Turns out one of the people killed in the gas explosion was the crazy woman who set it off.
They found two containers filled with ten kilos of explosives and a timer in a rural area in Ciudad Real: it was apparently an ETA drop-off for a traveling cell to pick up that fell through. The cops suspect it's just been lying there since 2006.
TV3's top story this morning, and La Vanguardia's second international story on pages 4 and 5, was the Communist-organized anti-war demonstration in Washington. I checked CNN and Fox News, and had to search for the story; it wasn't on their websites' front page. Interesting how much weight the Catalan media puts on such a minor story. The article doesn't mention how many demonstrators there were, but a few thousand at most showed up, so it was no big deal at all.
So how does La Vanguardia's Eusebio Val report the minuscule turnout? "Despite wide opposition to the war among the citizens, the people who act out these feelings of protest in the street are always few. The accelerated lifestyle and the great distances in American cities are not favorable to these demonstrations on a working day...The immense majority of the Americans who reject the war prefer to express it in private and with certain resignation."
If we don't get some rain around here sometime soon, water stocks will be virtually zero by the end of the summer, and there will have to be rationing and cutoffs. Tankers will begin coming in from Marseille and Tarragona in May, and old wells on the Barcelona plain are being opened up. Barcelona citizens use only 110 liters of water a day, while New Yorkers use 500; if people weren't already pretty frugal with water (because it's expensive), we'd have run out a long time ago. La Vanguardia says that the future lies in desalinizing plants, but the problem is that the process requires a good deal of energy.
In case you hadn't already figured it out, all those "authentic" Dalí and Miró lithographs being sold on Ebay are fake. The FBI and the Mossos busted an art forgery gang based in Barcelona and Chicago; eight persons were arrested here. By the way, I think Dalí is clever but not an artist of the first category, and I don't get Miró's stuff at all. I wouldn't walk across the street to see a Miró. I think other Catalan and Spanish painters like Sorolla, Casas, Nonell, Rusiñol, Fortuny, Utrillo, and Gris, along with architects like Domenech i Muntaner, are much more interesting.
The goddamn bus drivers are on strike again today.
Barça plays at Valencia tonight in the second leg of the Copa del Rey semifinal; in the first leg Valencia earned a 1-1 draw in the Camp Nou, so they win in case the second leg goes 0-0. Ronaldinho is on the shit list big-time; he's being kept out of this game as well. Other players high on the shit list are Deco and Marquez. If Valencia gets eliminated coach Ronald Koeman will likely be fired.
Turns out one of the people killed in the gas explosion was the crazy woman who set it off.
They found two containers filled with ten kilos of explosives and a timer in a rural area in Ciudad Real: it was apparently an ETA drop-off for a traveling cell to pick up that fell through. The cops suspect it's just been lying there since 2006.
TV3's top story this morning, and La Vanguardia's second international story on pages 4 and 5, was the Communist-organized anti-war demonstration in Washington. I checked CNN and Fox News, and had to search for the story; it wasn't on their websites' front page. Interesting how much weight the Catalan media puts on such a minor story. The article doesn't mention how many demonstrators there were, but a few thousand at most showed up, so it was no big deal at all.
So how does La Vanguardia's Eusebio Val report the minuscule turnout? "Despite wide opposition to the war among the citizens, the people who act out these feelings of protest in the street are always few. The accelerated lifestyle and the great distances in American cities are not favorable to these demonstrations on a working day...The immense majority of the Americans who reject the war prefer to express it in private and with certain resignation."
If we don't get some rain around here sometime soon, water stocks will be virtually zero by the end of the summer, and there will have to be rationing and cutoffs. Tankers will begin coming in from Marseille and Tarragona in May, and old wells on the Barcelona plain are being opened up. Barcelona citizens use only 110 liters of water a day, while New Yorkers use 500; if people weren't already pretty frugal with water (because it's expensive), we'd have run out a long time ago. La Vanguardia says that the future lies in desalinizing plants, but the problem is that the process requires a good deal of energy.
In case you hadn't already figured it out, all those "authentic" Dalí and Miró lithographs being sold on Ebay are fake. The FBI and the Mossos busted an art forgery gang based in Barcelona and Chicago; eight persons were arrested here. By the way, I think Dalí is clever but not an artist of the first category, and I don't get Miró's stuff at all. I wouldn't walk across the street to see a Miró. I think other Catalan and Spanish painters like Sorolla, Casas, Nonell, Rusiñol, Fortuny, Utrillo, and Gris, along with architects like Domenech i Muntaner, are much more interesting.
The goddamn bus drivers are on strike again today.
Barça plays at Valencia tonight in the second leg of the Copa del Rey semifinal; in the first leg Valencia earned a 1-1 draw in the Camp Nou, so they win in case the second leg goes 0-0. Ronaldinho is on the shit list big-time; he's being kept out of this game as well. Other players high on the shit list are Deco and Marquez. If Valencia gets eliminated coach Ronald Koeman will likely be fired.
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