Ironically, one of the things that English-speakers find most difficult to understand when they come to Spain are English words or names pronounced by Spaniards. That's not surprising; French names and words are very difficult for us English-speakers to say correctly. That's because French possesses sounds that English doesn't (front rounded vowels, nasal vowels, that French R) and English possesses sounds that Spanish doesn't (the W, the SH, both TH sounds, the J, the V, and several of the vowels, especially the schwa (the "uh" vowel sound) and what's often called the short I, as in "hit" or "sit". Spaniards give all vowels what some would call in English a "long" pronunciation. What we do when we hit a French sound that's not native to us is to pronounce the closest English sound to it, and that's just what the Spanish do when they run across an English sound they can't say: they substitute the closest Spanish sound for it.

Both the W and the V sounds are pronounced by Spaniards sort of like the English B, so "whiskey" is pronounced "BEE-skee", "web" is "behb", or if you're Catalan, "behp", and "Vermont" is "behr-MON". "Virginia" is "beer-HEEN-ee-yah". "Woody" Allen is "Boo-dee". Clint Eastwood is "Cleen EASS-boot."

The J usually becomes a Y, so "John Wayne" is "Yohn BYE-nay". Michael "Jordan" is "YORR-dahn". "George Washington" is "Yorr BAHCH-een-tohn" (or "BAHSS-een-tohn"). "Jack" Daniel's is, of course, "Yahck".

The SH generally becomes a CH sound, as in "Chicago", pronounced in Spanish with a hard CH, "Chee-CAH-goh". "Shakespeare" is "CHAY-speer", making him sound like a tea-drinking Nazi war criminal. It may also become an S, as in "George Bush"--"Yorr BOOSS". New "Hampshire" is Nueva "HAHM-seer".

The two TH sounds--one voiceless, as in "three" and the other voiced, as in "bother"--come out differently. The voiceless TH generally becomes T, so "birthday" is "BEERT-day" and "Elizabeth" becomes "Eh-LEE-ssah-beht". "Perth" is "Peart". "John Wilkes Booth" would be "Yohn BEEL-kehs BOOT". The voiced TH is unpredictable, but often comes out as a T, an S, or a Z. "Brother" would be "BROH-tair". Or "BROH-zzehr". "Martin Luther King" is "MAHR-teen LOOT-hair KEEN".

This is occasionally slightly funny. I went to the bakery a couple of days ago to get some chapata bread and they had this pie on display made out of some egg custard with ham and cheese on top. It was labeled "Kiss de jamón". Question: What product were they purveying? And why was it called a "kiss"? No, it has nothing to do with tourists, everyone in this neighborhood speaks Spanish or Catalan.

Let me go off track a minute. I've corrected thousands of English-language compositions in my time. I consider myself a pretty tough grader, but I'll let spelling mistakes on difficult words slide if the word is used correctly and the writer obviously knows what it means. There are a lot of words in English that are simply very hard to spell correctly, and occasional mistakes are quite acceptable as long as there's not a pattern of error. I think most American teachers these days probably would follow this rule if more of them knew how to spell. I'm very tough on punctuation, though, probably because all my English teachers in junior high and high school were very tough on it. Mrs. Duke in 10th grade English gave you a zero if you had any punctuation mistakes, for example. I figure that there are very simple rules for punctuation (yes, I know I don't follow the rules myself with quotation marks, but I do follow my own coherent system just because I like it better. When I teach I teach the standard rules) and that it's just plain carelessness if you don't learn them. Especially on my Up-Shit-Creek-With-a-Turd-for-an-Oar list are people who commit comma splices and run-on sentences. Spaniards do this all the time. They don't learn the goddamn punctuation rules in Spanish, which aren't that different from those in English, because the teachers don't care about things like paragraph breaks or not sticking eight goddamn sentences together with nothing but goddamn commas. They do care about spelling, though. Hoo, boy, do they ever care about spelling. Spanish is a language with relatively few sounds compared to English, and it also has very regular spelling rules, again in comparison with English. The only real problems native speakers with eight years of school behind them ought to have are with the letter H, which is silent, and with B and V, which are pronounced the same. Anyone who finishes high school should be able to spell Spanish perfectly. High school and university teachers, if they are hard-nosed, will flunk students over one spelling mistake--in science or social science classes, not only in language and literature. This is considered being tough but fair, because after all, it is highly uncultured to spell words wrong and everyone knows it. So we Americans and the Spanish are exact opposites: we let spelling slide but are fanatics about punctuation, and they don't bother even teaching punctuation but are psychos about spelling. Go figure.

Back off track again. English-language figures with three or more names, like Martin Luther King, generally have two first names and one last name. Martin Luther King's surname is "King". James Earl Jones's surname is "Jones". This generally works for Americans, though not always, and it works less often in Britain, where David Lloyd George's surname is Lloyd George, for example. Spanish people, though, have one first name (or a compound like José Luis which everyone recognizes) and two last names, first the father's and then the mother's, though they may use only one. My wife's name is Remei Guim Galofre, and she uses the name Remei Guim, though she adds on the Galofre for legal papers and bank accounts and phone bills. Some people use both surnames, like the businessman and jailbird José María Ruíz Mateos, always called "Ruíz Mateos"; Rodríguez Ibarra, the prime minister of Extremadura, Durán i Lleída, a leader of Convergence and Union, and García Lorca, the poet. Most people who use both surnames have a very common first one and use the second one to distinguish them from all the other Juan Garcías out there. Occasionally you'll see someone who drops the first surname and uses only the second, like Pablo (Ruíz) Picasso or (José) Antonio (González?) Banderas. Or official national bimbo Ana (García) Obregón. Catalanists will use the second surname if it's obviously Catalan in origin, if their first surname is obviously Spanish. Durán i Lleída is an example. The soccer player Óscar García Junyent is another. Alfred Rodríguez Picó, the TV3 weatherman, is one more.

Anyway, though, this difference confuses Spanish newspapers, who often refer to King on second mention as "Luther King" as if Luther were his first surname. James Earl Ray is often double-surnamed as "Earl Ray". Frank Lloyd Wright was identified in the Vangua in a headline as simply "Lloyd" just this week, something like "New blueprints by Lloyd discovered." I've seen Lee Harvey Oswald referred to as "Harvey" and John Wilkes Booth referred to as "Wilkes"--which, ironically, the real Booth used as his first name.

The urban legend about whatever starlet / bimbo / old hag / ho--it depends on which country you're in--had her breast implants explode on an airplane is told in Spain about Ana Obregón.

By the way, Spanish TV women's-show hostess Belinda Washington claims, first, that that's her real name, and, second, that she's a descendant of the real Yor Bahsseentohn. Impossible. Washington died childless. As far as anybody knows, anyway.

Last Sunday the Vanguardia published this interview with Jean-François Revel, the French essayist and author, always brilliant and controversial and extremely often right. The French get a well-deserved bad rap for having perpetrated Derrida and Foucault and Sartre and foisted them off on the rest of an unsuspecting world as "thought", but there are Frenchmen who are equally eminent who talk good old-fashioned sense and Revel is one of them. Give Revel, who is 80, the respect he deserves. He was country (pro-capitalism and democracy, anti-Communist) when country wasn't cool. I should have done this translation several days ago, but my social life interrupted, which is probably a good thing. Anyway, here goes. The questioner is Victor M. Amela. His questions are in italics.

Revel is a bulldozer of ideas: solid, potent, unstoppable. When in Europe the equation "intellectual=leftist" was still in effect, Revel banged his shoe on the table with "Neither Marx nor Jesus" (1970). He continued lashing Nazis and Communists (he equated them in "The Totalitarian Temptation", 1976) and political Utopias: "They have been the incarnation of evil, murder, and immorality!" he said to me four years ago. Now he is slapping those he calls "anti-American obsessives" upside the head.

Who are you referring to?

I am capable of being occasionally anti-American, but never systematically anti-American. I am referring to those who are systematically anti-American, those who fall into a pure obsession.

Couldn't it be that you are systematically pro-American?

I am systematically looking for the truth. That's my obsession!

So in all this, what's the truth?

That the information publicized in Europe about the United States is normally false, systematically hostile viewpoints, biased, pregnant with resentment. Lies.

Lies? Do you believe that?

Yes, I detect the resentment of the weak against the powerful.

The United States is a superpower.

Oh, sure, all right, but ask yourself this: Why is the United States a superpower?

Because of its military strength, its...

No, no, go to the roots. The United States is a superpower because of Europe! It isn't one because of its own merits, but because of the demerits of Europe.

Be more specific.

The United States became a superpower in the twentieth century because Europe committed suicide.

How?

In the twentieth century, Europe damaged itself with two totalitarian systems of extermination: Communism and Naziism. And besides, it decided to bleed itself dry militarily twice in the two world wars.

True, true...

And who came to save Europe from itself on both occasions? The United States! And, look here, the Americans didn't want to come over...It was we who begged them to come.

Right, but...

And, besides, since 1989 they've been the winners of the Third World War, the Cold War, due to the grotesque collapse of the Communist bloc. The fall of the Wall has made them even more of a superpower!

So...what are you getting at?

That the United States's world hegemony is the daughter of historical determinism, of evolution, not of an imperialist agenda, not of so-called American imperialism.

Now are you denying the existence of American imperialism?

The Romans built an empire, a genuine military empire, from the origin of a small tribe in Latium that continued conquering new lands, one after another...the United States, an empire? The United States is a little group of Europeans who went to fill an almost vacant continent, and they have enough work doing that! I insist: The United States is what it is, not because of its abilities, but because of the stupidity of the rest.

You say that in Europe they lie about the United States. Is Bush's bellicosity a lie?

Here we say, "Bush the son wants to finish Bush the father's job, when he attacked Iraq." But it was Iraq who attacked Kuwait! Saddam is a very dangerous guy. He invaded Kuwait after a war against Iran in which 700,000 people died. 700,000 people!

But if we can avoid another war...

Saddam has systematically laughed at the UN and Europe. Before the Gulf War he refused to negotiate anything.

And the United States crushed him.

An international coalition, including Arab countries, expelled him from Kuwait.

You support Bush, then.

Bush is defending the right to disactivate anyone who represents a threat to everyone. And Saddam used chemical weapons against the Kurds! He's a real danger!

Jean-François Revel faces off against anti-Americanism, a well-established way of thinking in the active antiglobalization movement, which Revel also bashes.

The antiglobalization people only want to correct the injustices of globalization.

Injustices of globalization? Thanks to globalization today there is less hunger in the world than 50 years ago. Hunger is in retreat! Agriculture with genetically modified seeds has multiplied cereal production by ten. Now there are no longer the famines there were in India fifty years ago.

But in Africa...

In southern Africa there is still hunger, yes, Whose fault? Local politicians, insane people like the megalomaniac Mugabe, who has made prosperous Zimbabwe into hell: by transferring agriculture from white control to black, (losing the experience of the white farmers), he's destroyed agriculture and three million people have starved to death. And Africa has received more aid per capita than Asia or Latin America!

In France there are antiglobalization activists, like Bové.

Yes, our ineffable destroyer of McDonald's, that great thinker...

Are you making fun of Bové?

Do you know what the "homeland cooking" the very protectionist Gallic farmers are advocating consists of? Very European cows and poultry...fed with used industrial oils, dioxine, and sewer excrement mixed with plaster and beet pulp...This is our well-loved homeland cooking! Its great purity contrasts with American junk food, of course.

Globalization is the remedy against hunger, then?

Yes: let's get rid of customs barriers. Today, the subsidized farmers of the rich countries (that of Bové and the French agriculturalists, for example) are crushing under those in the poor countries. Thanks to subsidies, Europe and the United States export their products at artificially low prices.

Do Bové and company hurt farmers in the poor countries?

Yes: the European antiglobalization advocates, while defending their own interests, are the worst enemies of the hungry people. In order to put an end to hunger there it is imprescindible that there be democratic governments and free trade there. Democracy is a fundamental prior condition for the elimination of hunger! Amartya Sen, Nobel Economics Prize Winner, says so, and it's true: if there are poor countries that make no progress, it's because they don't have democracy.

Revel has fervently defended democratic capitalism ("liberalism") for forty years, since his first books and until today. In order not to be confused by terminology, I asked him for some definitions.

How do you define "liberalism"?

It is the only reasonable system! It is the system that guarantees a separation between political power and economic power--which allows the market to function--and for which political democracy is imprescindible.

Is there liberal democracy in Russia?

More or less...but stained by a very strong police tradition. What's happening there is like in China, which is liberalizing its market without giving up political authoritarianism: they don't understand that the only road to prosperity passes through full democracy.

What do you think will happen?

That can't hold up for much longer; it will blow up. At some moment the market economy will collide with the political structure.

I came to the interview with a recent copy of the French weekly the Nouvel Observateur, with a cover titled "Have we all become 'reacs' (reactionaries)?", in allusion to the French sociopolitical environment.

The French, reactionaries?

It's trendy in France to talk about the "new reactionaries" in reference to certain writers and thinkers. Nonsense!

Don't those reactionaries exist?

No. There are people who have finally understood that socialism failed and the only system that works is liberal capitalism with political democracy.

Who will watch over the welfare of the weakest citizens?

The structure of the liberal system accepts policies of solidarity and redistribution of wealth for those who have the most difficulties.

With socialism marginalized?

Yes, because Socialism was based on the collectivization of the means of production and exchange. This has failed, it's already the past. The real reactionaries are those who are nostalgic for this failed past!

But there are no communists left!

Yes, there are, and really, I'm more Marxist than they are! Because Marx taught that theories must be demonstrated through praxis, experience, and praxis has demonstrated that communism does not work. But they still believe in it! They're pseudo-Marxists!

Has communism been a belief, a faith, a religion?

Yes. the belief system, the ideology, are always marginalized by praxis, the facts. That's why an ideology can last so long although reality may contradict it. If it fails, its faithful say it was the fault of circumstances and human beings: they will never admit that the cause is in the ideology itself.

It was all a beautiful Utopia...

Political Utopias have already done too much damage to Europe. Trying to convert morality into a collective matter ("we'll create a just, ideal society!") leads to murder.

Speaking of morality, I ask Revel about his point of view on whether the European Union constitution should or not include a clear allusion to the Christian roots of Europe.

Should we put it in writing that Europe is Christian?

No. There's no need, thank you very much. We Europeans have fought for two centuries to achieve the secular state, that is, so that religion is a respected right in the private sphere but it should not interfere in the public sphere: not in politics, not in science, not in the schools. If we've already achieved that separation, should we turn back now? Maybe people are anxious for solid references and clear values.

But if religious codes dominate our social lives, then what will happen? In France there are 4.5 million Muslims, and many refuse to attend class when Voltaire is taught, because Voltaire wrote against Mohammed (and against Catholicism). They don't want to know anything about Darwin because it contradicts the Koran, or do homework on Fridays. So why have we fought during two centuries for secularism, the separation of the political and the religious? No: neither Islamic nor Christian restrictions. Europe, secular. For everyone's good.

And, within Europe, how do you see Spain?

From the dictatorship, it became one of the most democratic countries in Europe. In Spain, your Left has not been totalitarian, and your Right has achieved the largest economic growth in Europe. Aznar's Government has been successful, without a doubt.

And its anti-terrorist policy?

Look: modern terrorism only acts against democracies. There is no terrorism against Saddam, for example! Well, there should be no place for terrorism in a democracy, since all issues must be debated in Parliament. And, since ETA and Batasuna are the same thing, it's good that Batasuna has been outlawed.

From now on, our standard response to idiotarians will be, "Jean-François Revel / Would say, "Go to hell."

Here's an example of just how hard negotiations can be and how difficult it is to get both sides to comply with what they have agreed to. And we can't accuse anyone of being a bullheaded foreign intransigent or an crafty alien snake-oil salesman because, guess what, everyone involved in this mess was American! The question of what to do about captured prisoners-of-war was critical during the American Civil War (1861-65). Each side held tens of thousands of prisoners, and both sides treated their prisoners quite badly. The death rate in both Confederate and Union prisons was high--a distant relative of mine, a great-great-grandparent's brother, died in the Union prison at Elmira, New York--but Andersonville, Georgia, is the best-known and by far the most deadly of the prison-camp hellholes of the Civil War. When Andersonville opened in 1864 the Confederacy was already collapsing, on the defensive on all fronts and east cut off from west by the Union capture of Vicksburg, sealing off the Mississippi. Food was short for everyone and there was little to spare for prisoners, and men died by the thousands in Andersonville during the summer of 1864. They could have been saved through a prisoner exchange, but they were not, and the following passage by John McElroy, a journalist and Union soldier captured in Virginia and sent first to a Richmond prison and then to Andersonville, which he survived, explains why.

THE EXCHANGE AND THE CAUSE OF ITS INTERRUPTION--BRIEF RESUME OF THE
DIFFERENT CARTELS, AND THE DIFFICULTIES THAT LED TO THEIR SUSPENSION.

Few questions intimately connected with the actual operations of the
Rebellion have been enveloped with such a mass of conflicting statement
as the responsibility for the interruption of the exchange. Southern
writers and politicians, naturally anxious to diminish as much as
possible the great odium resting upon their section for the treatment of
prisoners of war during the last year and a half of the Confederacy's
existence, have vehemently charged that the Government of the United
States deliberately and pitilessly resigned to their fate such of its
soldiers as fell into the hands of the enemy, and repelled all advances
from the Rebel Government looking toward a resumption of exchange. It is
alleged on our side, on the other hand, that our Government did all that
was possible, consistent with National dignity and military prudence,
to secure a release of its unfortunate men in the power of the Rebels.

Over this vexed question there has been waged an acrimonious war of
words, which has apparently led to no decision, nor any convictions--the
disputants, one and all, remaining on the sides of the controversy
occupied by them when the debate began.

I may not be in possession of all the facts bearing upon the case, and
may be warped in judgment by prejudices in favor of my own Government's
wisdom and humanity, but, however this may be, the following is my firm
belief as to the controlling facts in this lamentable affair:

1. For some time after the beginning of hostilities our Government
refused to exchange prisoners with the Rebels, on the ground that this
might be held by the European powers who were seeking a pretext for
acknowledging the Confederacy, to be admission by us that the war was no
longer an insurrection but a revolution, which had resulted in the 'de
facto' establishment of a new nation. This difficulty was finally gotten
over by recognizing the Rebels as belligerents, which, while it placed
them on a somewhat different plane from mere insurgents, did not elevate
them to the position of soldiers of a foreign power.

2. Then the following cartel was agreed upon by Generals Dix on our side
and Hill on that of the Rebels:

HAXALL'S LANDING, ON JAMES RIVER, July 22, 1882.

The undersigned, having been commissioned by the authorities they
respectively represent to make arrangements for a general exchange of
prisoners of war, have agreed to the following articles:

ARTICLE I.--It is hereby agreed and stipulated, that all prisoners of
war, held by either party, including those taken on private armed
vessels, known as privateers, shall be exchanged upon the conditions and
terms following:

Prisoners to be exchanged man for man and officer for officer.
Privateers to be placed upon the footing of officers and men of the navy.

(additional verbiage deleted)

ARTICLE II.--Local, State, civil and militia rank held by persons not in
actual military service will not be recognized; the basis of exchange
being the grade actually held in the naval and military service of the
respective parties.

ARTICLE III.--If citizens held by either party on charges of disloyalty,
or any alleged civil offense, are exchanged, it shall only be for
citizens. Captured sutlers, teamsters, and all civilians in the actual
service of either party, to be exchanged for persons in similar
positions.

ARTICLE IV.--All prisoners of war to be discharged on parole in ten days
after their capture; and the prisoners now held, and those hereafter
taken, to be transported to the points mutually agreed upon, at the
expense of the capturing party. The surplus prisoners not exchanged
shall not be permitted to take up arms again, nor to serve as military
police or constabulary force in any fort, garrison or field-work, held by
either of the respective parties, nor as guards of prisoners, deposits or
stores, nor to discharge any duty usually performed by soldiers, until
exchanged under the provisions of this cartel. The exchange is not to be
considered complete until the officer or soldier exchanged for has been
actually restored to the lines to which he belongs.

ARTICLE V.--Each party upon the discharge of prisoners of the other party
is authorized to discharge an equal number of their own officers or men
from parole, furnishing, at the same time, to the other party a list of
their prisoners discharged, and of their own officers and men relieved
from parole; thus enabling each party to relieve from parole such of
their officers and men as the party may choose. The lists thus mutually
furnished, will keep both parties advised of the true condition of the
exchange of prisoners.

ARTICLE VI.--The stipulations and provisions above mentioned to be of
binding obligation during the continuance of the war, it matters not
which party may have the surplus of prisoners; the great principles
involved being, First, An equitable exchange of prisoners, man for man,
or officer for officer, or officers of higher grade exchanged for
officers of lower grade, or for privates, according to scale of
equivalents. Second, That privates and officers and men of different
services may be exchanged according to the same scale of equivalents.
Third, That all prisoners, of whatever arm of service, are to be
exchanged or paroled in ten days from the time of their capture, if it be
practicable to transfer them to their own lines in that time; if not, so
soon thereafter as practicable. Fourth, That no officer, or soldier,
employed in the service of either party, is to be considered as exchanged
and absolved from his parole until his equivalent has actually reached
the lines of his friends. Fifth, That parole forbids the performance of
field, garrison, police, or guard or constabulary duty.

JOHN A. DIX, Major General.

D. H. HILL, Major General, C. S. A.

SUPPLEMENTARY ARTICLES.

ARTICLE VII.--All prisoners of war now held on either side, and all
prisoners hereafter taken, shall be sent with all reasonable dispatch to
A. M. Aiken's, below Dutch Gap, on the James River, in Virginia, or to
Vicksburg, on the Mississippi River, in the State of Mississippi, and
there exchanged of paroled until such exchange can be effected, notice
being previously given by each party of the number of prisoners it will
send, and the time when they will be delivered at those points
respectively; and in case the vicissitudes of war shall change the
military relations of the places designated in this article to the
contending parties, so as to render the same inconvenient for the
delivery and exchange of prisoners, other places bearing as nearly as may
be the present local relations of said places to the lines of said
parties, shall be, by mutual agreement, substituted. But nothing in this
article contained shall prevent the commanders of the two opposing armies
from exchanging prisoners or releasing them on parole, at other points
mutually agreed on by said commanders.

ARTICLE VIII.--For the purpose of carrying into effect the foregoing
articles of agreement, each party will appoint two agents for the
exchange of prisoners of war, whose duty it shall be to communicate with
each other by correspondence and otherwise; to prepare the lists of
prisoners; to attend to the delivery of the prisoners at the places
agreed on, and to carry out promptly, effectually, and in good faith,
all the details and provisions of the said articles of agreement.

ARTICLE IX.--And, in case any misunderstanding shall arise in regard to
any clause or stipulation in the foregoing articles, it is mutually
agreed that such misunderstanding shall not affect the release of
prisoners on parole, as herein provided, but shall be made the subject of
friendly explanation, in order that the object of this agreement may
neither be defeated nor postponed.

JOHN A. DIX, Major General.
D. H. HILL, Major General. C. S. A.


This plan did not work well. Men on both sides, who wanted a little rest
from soldiering, could obtain it by so straggling in the vicinity of the
enemy. Their parole--following close upon their capture, frequently upon
the spot--allowed them to visit home, and sojourn awhile where were
pleasanter pastures than at the front. Then the Rebels grew into the
habit of paroling everybody that they could constrain into being a
prisoner of war. Peaceable, unwarlike and decrepit citizens of Kentucky,
East Tennessee, West Virginia, Missouri and Maryland were "captured" and
paroled, and setoff against regular Rebel soldiers taken by us.

3. After some months of trial of this scheme, a modification of the
cartel was agreed upon, the main feature of which was that all prisoners
must be reduced to possession, and delivered to the exchange officers
either at City Point, Va., or Vicksburg, Miss. This worked very well for
some months, until our Government began organizing negro troops. The
Rebels then issued an order that neither these troops nor their officers
should be held as amenable to the laws of war, but that, when captured,
the men should be returned to slavery, and the officers turned over to
the Governors of the States in which they were taken, to be dealt with
according to the stringent law punishing the incitement of servile
insurrection. Our Government could not permit this for a day. It was
bound by every consideration of National honor to protect those who wore
its uniform and bore its flag. The Rebel Government was promptly
informed that rebel officers and men would be held as hostages for the
proper treatment of such members of colored regiments as might be taken.

4. This discussion did not put a stop to the exchange, but while it was
going on Vicksburg was captured, and the battle of Gettysburg was fought.
The first placed one of the exchange points in our hands. At the opening
of the fight at Gettysburg Lee captured some six thousand Pennsylvania
militia. He sent to Meade to have these exchanged on the field of
battle. Meade declined to do so for two reasons: first, because it was
against the cartel, which prescribed that prisoners must be reduced to
possession; and second, because he was anxious to have Lee hampered with
such a body of prisoners, since it was very doubtful if he could get his
beaten army back across the Potomac, let alone his prisoners. Lee then
sent a communication to General Couch, commanding the Pennsylvania
militia, asking him to receive prisoners on parole, and Couch, not
knowing what Meade had done, acceded to the request. Our Government
disavowed Couch's action instantly, and ordered the paroles to be treated
as of no force, whereupon the Rebel Government ordered back into the
field twelve thousand of the prisoners captured by Grant's army at
Vicksburg.

5. The paroling now stopped abruptly, leaving in the hands of both sides
the prisoners captured at Gettysburg, except the militia above mentioned.
The Rebels added considerably to those in their hands by their captures
at Chickamauga, while we gained a great many at Mission Ridge, Cumberland
Gap and elsewhere, so that at the time we arrived in Richmond the Rebels
had about fifteen thousand prisoners in their hands and our Government
had about twenty-five thousand.

6. The rebels now began demanding that the prisoners on both sides be
exchanged--man for man--as far as they went, and the remainder paroled.
Our Government offered to exchange man for man, but declined--on account
of the previous bad faith of the Rebels--to release the balance on
parole. The Rebels also refused to make any concessions in regard to the
treatment of officers and men of colored regiments.

7. At this juncture General B. F. Butler was appointed to the command of
the Department of the Blackwater, which made him an ex-officio
Commissioner of Exchange. The Rebels instantly refused to treat with
him, on the ground that he was outlawed by the proclamation of Jefferson
Davis. General Butler very pertinently replied that this only placed him
nearer their level, as Jefferson Davis and all associated with him in the
Rebel Government had been outlawed by the proclamation of President
Lincoln. The Rebels scorned to notice this home thrust by the Union
General.

8. On February 12, 1864, General Butler addressed a letter to the Rebel
Commissioner Ould, in which be asked, for the sake of humanity, that the
questions interrupting the exchange be left temporarily in abeyance while
an informal exchange was put in operation. He would send five hundred
prisoners to City Point; let them be met by a similar number of Union
prisoners. This could go on from day to day until all in each other's
hands should be transferred to their respective flags.

The five hundred sent with the General's letter were received, and five
hundred Union prisoners returned for them. Another five hundred, sent
the next day, were refused, and so this reasonable and humane proposition
ended in nothing.

This was the condition of affairs in February, 1864, when the Rebel
authorities concluded to send us to Andersonville. If the reader will
fix these facts in his minds I will explain other phases as they develop.

I had an idea earlier this weekend; I've been rather social lately, since a couple of days ago we went out for dinner with Remei's friend Nati and her boyfriend, and then last night my pals Clark the Virginian and Murph the London Irishman came over. We listened to this bluegrass CD my sister sent me from Nashville and, uh, indulged in vice. Anyway, Murph and I did; Clark left to go see his girlfriend and Murph, somewhat the worse for wear, wound up spending the night. While indulging in vice with Murph, though, I had a thought: I've got to start making a little money off this. So I had this idea.

Blogger had the gall to have a redesign contest. Normally, in the business world, things work like this: you need, say, advertising, you go to several agencies, you choose whichever company you like the best (whether because you like their past work they showed you, because they offer a great price, because their young art director seems to have a lot of fresh ideas, whatever), you hire them and give them your guidelines and you agree on a budget, and they go to work and do the job. Well, Blogger did it the other way around. They said, "Hey, guys, all of you out there, let's see a finished job for a site redesign. All of you who want to enter our contest do the whole redesign job, and we'll pick the one we like the best. The rest of you, you've wasted your effort as far as we're concerned."

So I figured, "Hey, why can't I do that if Blogger did? No one can criticize me for following this now seemingly accepted business practice." Therefore, we're announcing the official Design a Logo for Us Contest. If you know your way around HTML code and want to come up with a design for a logo for Iberian Notes, you're free to enter. I was thinking of something like a map of Spain in red with Catalonia in yellow and Barcelona marked with a dot on the map, and Inside Europe: Iberian Notes in navy blue across that. But you can probably think of something better. Anyway, I'll go to that company that makes T-shirts and coffee cups and the like and get some made with YOUR logo on them! Then I can sell them and make like two bucks off every fourteen-dollar T-shirt or whatever the deal is. You get a free T-shirt out of it.

Just in case you're interested, we've been averaging 150-250 hits a day lately, more if other blogs link to us in their texts; for example, Pejman linked to us a couple of days ago and sent 75 hits over here in a day. Jessica from Chloe and Pete linked over here earlier this week and sent about 25 people over. Other hit sources: by far the most importantly, both to us personally and as a percentage of total hits, about 200 regular readers have us bookmarked and visit at least once a week or so; about a hundred come each day. Twenty-five people come over every day from the InstaPundit blogroll, five or ten a day from Samizdata, and a total of about 25 a day from like-minded smaller blogs like ours (Mount Beacon, Atlético Rules, Buscaraons, Dissident Frogman, Cinderella Bloggerfeller, No Replacement for Displacement, Sasha Castel and Co., Nordic Musings, Rainy Day, and the Belligerent Bunny). We also get about ten Google hits a day. That adds up to a minimum of 165 a day; in reality we range from rather less than 165 (on Sundays) to a good bit more, since we get a couple of text links a week from other blogs. Any text link is worth at least ten hits that day, and anyone whose blogroll we're on will send over at least occasional hits, no matter how small or new the blog. The only time we actually broke a story that got round the Web was back in June, when we noticed that on the Harvard-MIT anti-Israel petition there were eighteen signers from Chomsky's department, and on the pro-Israel petition that came out in response, there were no signers from MIT Linguistics. We figured this conformity and lack of dissent was worth writing about and InstaPundit picked it up; we got 1100 visitors the first day and 600 the day after. Those numbers are extremely rare for us. Anyway, we got more than 5000 hits last month and we're at 2600 so far this month; we had a total of 31,000 on the old site, which we started in February but which nobody read until about April except for Patrick Crozier and Tom from Tom's Desk and a couple of the guys down at the clinic, those who can focus their eyesight enough to read and have attention spans long enough to boot up a computer and aren't heavily sedated most of the time, which makes a total of about three, including the staff. Grand total: about 38,600. This is considerably better than fanzines and underground newspapers used to do in the old days.

David Frum has something intelligent to say in NRO:

The Lesson of the Scuds

To me, one of the most interesting facts about that Yemeni Scud story was that the intercepting ship was Spanish. It’s a reminder of two things – that America is not waging this war in the unilateralist way the president’s critics complain – but second, that our allies receive too little attention and too little credit for their contributions.

My American Enterprise Institute colleague Radek Sikorski, the ultra-robust director of the New Atlantic Initiative, likes to remind Euro-skeptic conservatives that most of the troops now present in Afghanistan come from Europe, not the United States.

But if the forging of an effective coalition to fight the war on terror is an American success story, the larger relationship between the U.S. and its allies is not – and that failure is not entirely the allies’ fault. The U.S. has made a major commitment to anti-terrorist public diplomacy – but so far, almost all the effort has been dedicated to the Arab and Islamic world, and virtually none to the allied countries of Europe, Australia, and Canada. Americans did not make this mistake in the Cold War.

The U.S. has been dismantling its public diplomacy structure for more than two decades now. It needs to be rebuilt – and fast – as a global project, not just a unique appeal to one uniquely hostile region of the world.

Here in Catalonia creches--you know, representations of the stable where Jesus was born with the figures of the shepherds and Joseph and Mary and the like--are very popular. Down at the Plaza de la Catedral they're holding the Fira de Santa Llucía, St. Lucy's Fair, where stands that sell figurines and such are set up, and in the Plaza Sant Jaume they put up a large-scale Belén (Bethlehem, as they call it). Some places even have Belenes vivientes in which people represent the creche figures. By the way, this column in Spanish by Quim Monzó from the Vangua a couple of days ago is well worth reading. I'll translate the first paragraph. (I recommend Monzó for people who read Spanish or Catalan pretty well. The guy's written some good stuff, especially in the short story, essay, and newspaper column departments. And he's no idiotarian, though he's not especially conservative. Just Google his name and you should get plenty of links.)

Last week Barcelona Parks and Gardens posted on their website that the creche they set up every year in the Plaza Sant Jaume will this time serve as a political protest against "the serious situation that thousands of people are suffering in the Near East and the need for dialogue for peace". The creche will be "inspired by the Palestinian countryside" and there will be dunes, palms, olive trees, bushes...I reread the text without managing to understand what the political protest content was. Will they put figures of Israeli soldiers and tanks between the chestnut tree and the aluminum foil river? Will there be Palestinians holed up in a miniature reproduction of the Church of the Nativity in Bethlehem? Will the caganer have the head and body of Ariel Sharon? Maybe even, infiltrated among the little shepherds, they'll put a figure of a Hamas militant about to blow himself up with a belt of explosives.

Says Robert Hughes in his must-read-for-anyone-who-wants-to-come-here, Barcelona :

If you find yourself in Barcelona just before Christmas, go to the Cathedral and browse the stalls that have been set up in front of its façade, where figures for the creche are sold. They are what you expect; the shepherds, the Magi, Mary, Baby Jesus, the sheep, the oxen. But there is one who is a complete anomaly, met with nowhere else in the iconography of Christendom. A red Catalan cap, or barretina, flopping over his head, the fellow squats, breeches down, with a small brown cone of excrement connecting his bare buttocks to the earth. He is the immemorial fecundator, whom nature calls even as the Messiah arrives. Nothing can distract him from the archetypical task of giving back to the soil the nourishment that it supplied to him. He is known as the caganer, the "shitter", and he exists in scores of versions: some pop-eyed with effort, others rapt in calm meditation, but most with no expression at all; big papier-mache ones three feet tall, minuscule terra-cotta ones with caca pyramids no bigger than mouse turds, and all sizes in between. During Christmas 1989, the Museum of Figueres held an exhibition of some five hundred caganers, borrowed from private collections all over Catalonia. (There are, of course, collectors who specialize in them.) It was solemnly and equably reviewed in the Barcelona papers, with close-up photos of one or two of the figures, just as one might wish to reproduce a David Smith totem or a nude by Josep Llimona. The origins of the caganer are veiled in antiquity and await the attention of scholarship. Sixteenth-century sculptures of him exist, but he seems to be curiously absent from medieval painting. He is, essentially, a folk-art personage rather than a high-art one. His place is outside the manger, not inside the altarpiece. Yet he makes an unkistakable entrance into twentieth-century art in the work of that great and shit-obsessed son of Catalonia, Joan Miró. If you look closely at The Farm, Montroig, you will see a pale infant squatting in front of the cistern where his mother is doing the washing. This boy is none other than the caganer of Miró's childhood Christmases; it may also be Miró himself, the future painter of Man and Women in Front of a Pile of Excrement. Nor can it be an accident that the other scatologist of modern painting, Salvador Dalí, was a Catalan.

Hughes goes on to have a little fun with the Catalans. Everything he says is, of all things, true.

The Catalan preoccupation with shit would make Sigmund Freud proud; no society offers more frequent and shining confirmations of his theories of anal retention. In this respect, the Catalans resemble other highly mercantile people such as the Japanese and the Germans.

The pleasures of a good crap are considered in Catalonia on a level with those of a good meal. Menjar bé i cagar fort / I no tingués por de la mort, goes the folk saying: "Eat well, shit strongly, and you will have no fear of death."

The image of shit has a festive quality unknown in the rest of Europe. On the Feast of the Kings, January 6, children who have been good the previous year are given pretty sweetmeats; the bad ones get caca i carbó, "shit and coal", emblems of the hell that awaits them if they do not mend their childish ways. These days the coal is left out (not true: you see sugar-candy colored black in the shape of lumps of coal) and the gift consists of brown-marzipan turds made by confectioners, some elaborately embellished with spun-sugar flies. Then there is the tío, or "uncle", a cross between the French bûche de Noël and the Mexican piñata. This artificial log, filled with candy and trinkets, is produced amid great excitement at Christmas; the children whack it with sticks, exclaiming "Caga, tiet, caga!" ("Shit, Uncle, shit!") until it breaks and disgorges its treasures.

Hughes then goes on to explain that Remei's village's hero, Vicens García, the famous Rector of Vallfogona, Catalonia's greatest (and only) Baroque poet in the early 17th century, wrote On a Delicate Matter, "which roundly asserts that no person, however low, not even a Portuguese, could have anything bad to say about shit."

Here's a Vanguardia article from last Christmas season; seems that somebody made the mistake of letting members of the Great Unwashed, the Teeming Millions, the Booboisie, or whatever you prefer to call them, know that caganers existed.

The caganer war has broken out. A controversial display by the Catalan artist Antoni Miralda in the Copia Museum in the town of Napa, California, has awakened the protest of the inflential Catholic League for Civil and Religious Rights, which has 350,000 members, and which is demanding the removal of some of the figurines on display. Contacted by telephone by this newspaper in his studio in Miami, Miralda said he was "very worried" and "enormously surprised" by the situation, since "we're dealing with a work that does not have the slightest intention of causing offense." He added, "The problem is that these people haven't understood anything at all."

Although, in Catalonia, the appearance of a celebrity as a caganer means nothing more than his consagration in the world of fame, on the other side of the Atlantic, Miralda wakes up every day these days with aggressive cover stories from local newspapers where, next to photos of his figurines, the question "Is this culture?" is asked, and the letters to the editor even talk about "pornography". William Donohue, president of the Catholic League, said yesterday, "I don't understand what motive he has to show the Pope and some nuns defecating to show his appreciation for Mother Nature."

"I've already spoken with the management of the museum," says Miralda, "and they're very worried. They're going to talk to the Catholic League and explain to them what a caganer is and I hope they'll retract. I've already told them that, in my country, these objects are bought in front of the Cathedral as part of the holidays." Though he doesn't know how everything is going to turn out, he says, respectfully, that whether or not to remove his figurines or not "is the director of the museum's decision." But the director, Peggy Loar, will not give in, she said yesterday.

...Miralda isn't sure why this has happened to him when "there are so many publications and exhibitions with caganers--even the Metropolitan has them in its collection of creches!" Nevertheless, to the Catholic League, the exhibition is "insulting, gratuitous, and unnecessary," and Donohue states that he will fight against it because "it is financed with taxpayers' money". The Copia Museum is one of Robert Mondavi's projects--he is one of Napa's most important winemakers; he contributed $20 million. The museum, which has received very good reviews, ended up costing $74 million. the difference was paid for by the state of California. Its annual budget is covered by private donations.


Just a couple of comments: 1) I don't buy that "no desire to offend." This guy must know that there are conservative religious groups in the US, since it's part of the stereotype that Americans are religious nuts. He's an artist, so he must have heard of the Andrés Serrano Piss Christ hoo-haw and that other one, I think at the Brooklyn Museum, where they had the Virgin Mary covered with elephant dung or something. If he'd just exhibited plain old regular caganers, probably no one would have said anything, but the Catholic League (didn't they use to be the Catholic League of Decency or something like that, or was that another organization?) disapproves of depicting the pope and nuns taking a dump. If Muslims objected to depictions of Mohammed taking a dump, I think their disapproval would be taken into account. Remember, the Catholic League wasn't angry about the caganers in themselves, it was angry that the leader of their religion was depicted in such a disrespectful way. 2) This is why I am against spending ANY GOVERNMENT MONEY AT ALL on arts and culture and the like. If people want museums, ballet, drama, and the like, let them pay for it themselves. I am willing to make an exception for the Smithsonian and for other such national museums, the British Museum and National Gallery, for instance, or the Louvre or Prado. Don't tell me that museum couldn't have been done for half the price with generous contributions from Robert Mondavi's wine-growing pals. It's not like Ernie and Julie Gallo are running short of cash.

By the way, here's today's editiorial cartoon from the Vanguardia. Check it out.

Today's top headline in La Vanguardia:

Bush returns the missiles confiscated by Spain to Yemen

US releases cargo ship with 15 North Korean Scuds after confirming destination

Washington praises Spanish Navy assault in Indian (Ocean)

Here's a list of current, up-to-date Spanish colloquialisms to spice up your vocabulary. I got them all out of Sin control; they're all used frequently by ordinary people. You might call them examples of respectable slang.

gorrear (v.)--to bum, to scam, to invite yourself to something. Me gorreó un cigarro--he bummed a cigarette off me.

a saco (adv.)--very hard, very fast, to the max. Trabajamos a saco--we worked our butts off.

ir / estar de juerga (v.)--to party, to go partying. Estábamos de juerga hasta las 6--we were partying till six.

ser pan comido (v. phr.)--to be easy, to be a snap. El exámen fue pan comido.--the exam was a snap.

un rollo (n.)--a drag, a bummer. La fiesta fue un rollo--the party was a drag.

tropecientos (mil) (n.)--a lot. Te lo he dicho tropecientas (mil) veces--I told you a thousand times.

fatal (adj. / adv.)--terrible. He dormido fatal--I slept badly.

genial (adj. / adv.)--wonderful. La película es genial--it's a great movie.

Feminine Language: I'm not being sexist, this is a concept in linguistics and philology. There are words and expressions that are used mostly or only by women; if men use them, it sounds juvenile or effeminate. Women who want to be perceived as no-nonsense or businesslike also avoid feminine language. Examples in American English are "precious", "sweet", and "cute". I can imagine some women saying "itty bitty", but not a man. This seems to be true in all languages. Here are some examples from Betty's Spanish.

chiflarle, molarle--function like gustarle and mean the same thing. ¡Me chiflan las fiestas!--I love the holidays!

mono--cute. Tu hermanito es muy mono--your little brother is really cute.

-ito--diminutive suffix. Me he comprado unos zapatitos y una faldita--I bought some (little) shoes and a (little) skirt.

-ísimo--augmentative suffix. Este niño es monísimo--this child is so cute.

Here's the list of the Hollywood 100 from MSNBC so that ninety-nine percent of us can boycott anything these people have anything to do with. Fortunately, it is absolutely impossible to consume any Hollywood product without encountering one of these people in it. Therefore, we will simply have to stop watching TV--exceptions made for music, news and sports, Clint Eastwood movies, and stuff like the History Channel--and going to mass-market movies, which will be healthy for all of us. That will give us more time to be with our families and friends, read books and blogs, translate porn for Frenchy the porno purveyor, and the like.

(Thanks to Rumination, a cool blog that you guys ought to check out.)

Here's the list and our comments.

Gillian Anderson--Too bad, she's hot.
Edward Asner--Are you surprised? I would like to tie this guy up in one of those caves where millions of rabid bats live and watch them devour him.
René Auberjonois--Wasn't he the gay guy on Benson?
Amy Aquino--Who dat?
Jordan Baker--Who dat?
David Bale--Who dat?
Kim Basinger--Not surprising, Kim suffers from "lights on but nobody home" syndrome.
Ed Begley, Jr.--Wasn't he the goofy guy on some Eighties doctor show?
Theo Bikel--Who dat?
Barbara Bosson--Wasn't she Dick Van Dyke's wife or something? Or was it some other Dick?
Jackson Browne--How's Daryl, Jackson? Slapped her around lately? Is that restraining order on you still in force?
Peter Buck (REM)--Like their music, don't like this guy.
Diahann Carroll--Between making psychic TV friends late-night infomercials, had time to sign. Or is that Dionne Warwick?
Eugene J. Carroll, Jr. (Rear Adm. U.S. Navy (Ret.)--Good thing he's Ret., I'd hate to have wimps like him in charge of anything important. Notice that he's a REAR admiral, with all that implies.
Kathleen Chalfant--who dat?
Don Cheadle--too bad, I liked him in "Traffic".
Jill Clayburgh--I thought she was dead. Didn't she get killed in Looking for Mr. Goodbar?
David Clennon--who dat?
Jack Coleman--who dat?
Peter Coyote--Yeah, right, if Peter Coyote knows anything about anything but snorting coke I'm Jodie Foster's girlfriend.
Peter Crombie--who dat?
Lindsay Crouse--who dat?
Suzanne Cryer--who dat?
Matt Damon--are you surprised after the ignorant political speeches they put in his mouth in that dumb movie those guys claimed they wrote?
Dana Daurey--who dat?
Ambassador Jonathan Dean (U.S. Rep. to NATO-Warsaw Pact)--Probably during the Carter administration.
Vincent D’Onofrio--who dat?
David Duchovny--I never liked the X-Files, I can't stand that UFO BS.
Olympia Dukakis--are you surprised? I am. I figured nobody on the left would ever want to be associated with anyone named Dukakis again.
Charles S. Dutton--who dat?
Hector Elizondo--who dat?
Cary Elwes--who dat?
Shelley Fabares--who dat?
Mike Farrell--I would love to watch this guy get squeezed to death by a boa constrictor.
Mia Farrow--This woman is completely insane. Does everyone realize this? She needs to be committed, not be asked for her opinion about current events.
Laurence Fishburne--Too bad. I liked him.
Sean Patrick Flanery--Who dat?
Bonnie Franklin--Thought she was dead. She looked like she was in her fifties back in the Seventies.
John Fugelsang--Who dat?
Janeane Garofalo--The absolute dumbest thing I ever heard a Hollywood star say was several years ago after O.J. was acquitted, on Politically Incorrect. She said that the fact that OJ got off was due to the patriarchal society that didn't care whether men killed women. Uh, Janeene or however you spell your name, remember that there were TWO victims, one of whom was a MAN. Also, O.J. obviously got off largely because no black jury would convict him after the pre-trial circus. Duh.
Larry Gelbart--The evil genius behind the subversive TV program MASH.
Melissa Gilbert--Laura Ingalls is a Commie rat fifth columnist tool of Satan?
Danny Glover--Gotten any good roles lately, Danny?
Elliott Gould--I can't believe this guy is still alive, either. He sure looks like he ought to be dead.
Samaria Graham--Who dat?
Robert Greenwald--Who dat?
Robert Guillaume--When was Benson on, like in 1979?
Paul Haggis--Eat him. Whoever he is.
Robert David Hall--Who dat?
Ethan Hawke--Oh, yeah, here's Hollywood's other resident intellectual.
Marg Helgenberger--Who dat?
Ken Howard--When was the White Shadow on, 1977?
Helen Hunt--Rumor has it she is the biggest bitch diva pain in the ass in Hollywood.
Anjelica Huston--Too bad. I liked her. I guess I shouldn't be surprised that her political ideas are wacky.
LaTanya Richardson Jackson--They let a member of the Jackson family sign this thing and they want it to have credibility?!?
Samuel L. Jackson--Too bad. He was great in Pulp Fiction.
Jane Kaczmarek--Who dat?
Melina Kanakaredes--Who dat?
Casey Kasem--Oh, shut up, Casey, your program was the lamest thing ever on the radio. Is it still on?
Mimi Kennedy--Who dat?
Kevin Kilner--Who dat?
Jessica Lange--Not surprising, she was already on our boycott list.
Téa Leoni--Too bad, she's hot.
Donald Logue--Who dat?
Wendie Malick--Who dat?
Camryn Manheim--Who dat?
Marsha Mason--I read this as Marsha "Manson" and wondered fleetingly if either Marilyn or Charles had a sister.
Richard Masur--Who dat?
Dave Mathews--The musician? Yeah, like he has time to think about global issues between bong hits.
Kent McCord--Who dat?
Mary McDonnell--Who dat?
Robert Duncan McNeill--Who dis pretentious three-named Wasp guy?
Mike Mills (REM)--Like the music, don't like this guy.
Janel Moloney--Who dat?
Esai Morales--I think he's the guy who played the Hispanic gang dude on Hill Street Blues and like eight other cop shows.
Ed O’Neill--Yeah, getting this top intellect to sign adds a lot of prestige to the signers' list.
Chris Noth--Who dat?
Peter Onorati--Who dat?
Alexandra Paul--Who dat?
Ambassador Edward Peck (former U.S. Ambassador to Iraq)--Probably during the Truman Administration.
Seth Peterson--Who dat?
CCH Pounder--Who dat?
David Rabe--Who dat?
Alan Rachins--Who dat?
Bonnie Raitt--Can tolerate the music, don't like her.
Carl Reiner--Too bad. I liked him. What about Rob? Didn't have the guts?
Tim Robbins--Not surprising. I would like to see him being devoured by piranhas.
Eric Roberts--Julia's brother? Why didn't Julia sign? Didn't have the guts?
Steve Robinson, Sgt., U.S. Army (Ret.) (National. Gulf War Resource Center)--Good thing this guy was a sergeant, because if he had been an officer I would have made sport of him.
Mitch Ryan--Who dat?
Susan Sarandon--Not surprising. I would like to see her slowly strangled with the last extant copy of Thelma and Louise.
Tony Shalhoub--Who dat?
Jack Shanahan, Vice Adm. U.S.N. (Ret.)--Good thing this wuss is Ret. We don't need weenies like this ordering our guys around. Note that he's a VICE admiral, which fits in well with that other guy, the REAR admiral.
William Schallert--Who dat?
Martin Sheen--Not surprising. I would like to see the whole Sheen family buried up to their necks and then pour honey in every visible orifice.
Armin Shimerman--Who dat?
Gloria Steinem--I thought everyone had already forgotten about her. Playboy bunny days are long gone, huh, Gloria?
Marcia Strassman--Wasn't she Gabe Kaplan's wife? Or was that on TV?
Michael Stipe (REM)--Like the music, absolutely hate this guy.
Susan Sullivan--Who dat?
Loretta Swit--Another nitwit associated with the evil Communist TV program MASH.
Studs Terkel--Has it ever been cleared up whether this guy holds a Party card? I'm serious.
Lily Tomlin--Is exceedingly ugly, so ugly I shouldn't mention it out of common decency.
Blair Underwood--Who dat?
Dennis Weaver--Didn't he shoot his wife? Or was that Baretta?
Bradley Whitford--Who dat?
James Whitmore
James Whitmore, Jr.--Who dey?
Alfre Woodard--Isn't she one of those serious black actresses? You know, the ones who always play the kind, gentle, wise schoolteacher?
Noah Wyle--Who dat?
Peter Yarrow--I really did think this guy was dead. If he isn't, he ought to be. I suggest that action be taken post haste. And why didn't Paul and Mary sign? Are they dead, too? Is Peter really alive or is this some kind of cryogenic time warp?
Howard Zinn--What the hell is this Communist, and he really is, doing as a signer? I'll hold judgement on most of the rest--probably a lot of these people are so dumb that they're not sure what they signed but like, dude, think that peace is cool--but this guy is clearly a non-patriot, and it's ridiculous that any document that claims to be signed by American patriots should include the name of this human cesspool of intellectual offal.

Spain Goes to War: Spanish Navy Boards North Korean Ship Carrying Scuds

On Monday, off the southern tip of India, the Spanish frigate Navarra and its accompanying ship Patiño, on patrol in the Indian Ocean as part of Operation Enduring Freedom, were informed by the American navy that a North Korean ship, flying no flag, was approaching. The Navarra ordered the North Korean cargo ship, which claimed to be carrying cement, to stop. It refused and the Navarra sent its speedboats out to prepare a boarding. The North Korean ship again refused to stop and the Navarra fired warning shots. Then the cargo ship stopped and was boarded. According to Defense Minister Federico Trillo, the ship contained fifteen Scud missiles with fifteen high-explosive warheads and various chemicals, which have apparently not been analyzed yet. The ship was bound for Yemen, whose government has alleged that it was buying the missiles legally. Yeah, right. As Trillo said, "We've caught them red-handed." (con las manos en la masa, literally "with their hands in the (bread) dough".) The crew and officers were arrested and turned over to the Americans. I guess we get to keep the cargo ship as a prize of war, or have I been reading too many eighteenth-century British Navy novels?

I highly recommend that President Bush make a big deal out of this. One of the main causes of European resentment against the US is that America is arrogant and prepotent. What that really means, of course, is that they feel ignored, disrespected, and underappreciated and this turns them against the folks who they think aren't appreciating them enough. That's perfectly reasonable. Remember that happiness is caused by others giving you your props, shame is caused by not being able to live up to the props that you know you're going to stop getting pretty soon if you don't shape up, and anger is caused by not getting the props you think you feel you deserve. When the Europeans think about America they feel both shame and anger, shame at the fact that they've lost the importance they had only twenty years ago and the props that go with it, and anger because they still feel they deserve the props they've lost. This is not infantile behavior, it's natural human behavior.

Well, one way to improve the situation is by giving the Spaniards some props for this one. They did their job well and made an important contribution. American appreciation for this show of military solidarity would decrease some of the shame and anger felt around here with regard to America.

Here's how important American approval is to the Spaniards. The Vanguardia is a conservative newspaper, which doesn't prevent it from printing a good bit of Marxist crap, but it's socially very conservative, very pro-monarchy and pro-Church. It's owned by this nobility dude named the Count of Godó, and the Count of Godó has set up this thing called the Count of Barcelona Foundation in honor of the father of the current king of Spain, Don Juan de Borbón, one of whose titles was Count of Barcelona. I suppose that King Juan Carlos now holds the title. Anyway, the Count of Barcelona Foundation has set up this award called the Count of Barcelona International Prize, and the very first one was given to...get this...drumroll...the New York Times! At the very moment when the Times is at the darkest moment of its history, when Howell Raines's editorship has made the paper nothing more than an American Guardian!

The specific excuse adduced was the exemplariness of the Times's reporting after 9-11. Arthur Sulzberger, Jr. showed in person to collect the prize, which consists of a small, ugly bronze statue and a hundred thousand euros. The Vangua devotes FIVE full pages to this, including a front-page color photo of Sulzberger, his wife, the Count of Godó himself (squeezing into the photo, which is focused on him), the Queen, the King, and Princess Cristina and her husband Iñaki Urdangarín. They also put out a special TWENTY-EIGHT page Culture supplement on the relationship between Barcelona and New York, which I wasn't actually aware existed, but if they say there's one, all right, I'll go along. Most of the supplement consists of five New Yorkers kissing up to (haciendo la pelota a) Barcelona opinion and a bunch of Catalans kissing up to New York opinion. This whole episode, a piece of manufactured news if there ever was one, is something that is very important to them. It means respect, it means attention, it means that Barcelona and Catalonia and Spain are significant.

Note: Juan Carlos officially calls himself Juan Carlos I. Somebody needs to tell him that you don't get to be a I until there's a II. That's why, in, say, English history, King John is just King John and King Stephen is just King Stephen because there was never a second king with one of those names, and why Elizabeth I was never I until the current Elizabeth II inherited the throne. This drives me right straight up the wall.

Here's a blog in Spanish by a young woman named Betty (Elisabeth, probably, not an uncommon name here) called Sin control. She lives in Barcelona, she's pregnant, and she seems very nice if a little flighty. She avoids politics and the like and talks about more down-to-earth stuff; don't underestimate her intelligence, she writes beautiful colloquial Spanish. Check it out if you can read Spanish.

Here are some excerpts from a letter to La Vanguardia by a fellow living in Charlotte, North Carolina, named Juan Mullerat. He says:

How can a country which considers itself the main world power leave its people without electricity?...Thousands of businesses are still without electricity in the middle of chaos, they say worse than Hurricane Hugo which happened a few years ago. Almost 1.6 million homes are without heating...shopping centers looked like ghost towns last night...A technologically advanced country, the majority of whose people think they live in Utopia, is now living in the 19th century or worse, because "we weren't ready". A representative of Duke Power said yesterday that all repairs would not be finished for 12 days! Obviously I live in a "ghost country", in the two meanings of the term. (The word ghost, or fantasma, in Spain means someone who talks big but does little.)

Juan, let me explain something to you. You have been in a FREAKIN' ICE STORM. Ice storms are unusual but happen every few years, and I can tell you that it gets scary when the lights go off and they cut off the gas and the trees and power lines start crashing. It's even scarier if you're racing one driving up through Oklahoma and it catches you at about Lamar, Missouri. Trust me. Good thing my sister was driving because I'd have slid us off the road and we'd have had to wait for the snowplow and tow truck guys, who might not have gotten to us for a good few hours. What you do if you live in America is be prepared for freaks of nature like tornadoes and hurricanes and blizzards and have a few cans of food, a lighter, a flashlight, a few candles, a battery radio, spare batteries, and a couple of bottles of water on hand. There's nothing you can do to stop an ice storm, and there's nothing you can do to alleviate its effects. The trees and power lines are going to come down and people are going to get killed. The best way to avoid getting killed is to just stay home until everything's pretty much over, which shouldn't take more than a couple of days. Then there is all kinds of junk all over the streets that has to be cleared up, and that's hard and dangerous work because of the power lines, which in their turn have to be put back up and reconnected. There's no way to speed up the needed work, and thank God those guys know what they're doing, because I sure wouldn't know what to do and would get myself electrocuted or crushed by a falling branch.

Juan, I guess what I'm trying to say is take a little responsibility for yourself. Be prepared for nasty acts of Nature, because Charlotte gets plenty of them though it has the sort of climate most Americans like best--four seasons, mild winters, a little snow but usually not much, not horrifically hot summers, and enough rain to keep the forests, fields, and yards green but not so much that you don't see the sun three days out of four.

Here is a fairly random sample of recent weather disasters in the US, from the World Almanac.

2001--Tropical Storm Allison, $5 billion damage, 41 dead.
2000--Drought / Heat Wave, $4 billion, 140 dead.
2000--Western Fire Season, $2 billion, 0 dead.
1999--Hurricane Floyd, $6 billion, 77 dead.
1999--Oklahoma-Kansas Tornadoes, $1.1 billion, 55 dead.
1998--Texas Flood, $1 billion, 31 dead.
1998--Northeast Ice Storm, $1.4 billion, 16 dead.
1997--Mississippi-Ohio Valleys Tornadoes and Flood, $1 billion, 67 dead.
1997--West Coast Flood, $3 billion, 36 dead.
1996--Hurricane Fran, $5 billion, 37 dead.
1996--Blizzard of ´96 and Flood, $3 billion, 187 dead.
1995--Hurricane Opal, $3.3 billion, 27 dead.
1995--Southern Storms and Flood, $6.6 billion, 32 dead.
1994--Western Fire Season, $1.1 billion, ? dead.
1994--Southeast Ice Storm, $3.3 billion, 9 dead.

So, dude, like, stop complaining and find out how to volunteer for the cleanup. I'm sure they could use people, at least to serve coffee and donuts.

Here's the Washington Times story on the situation in North Carolina from two days ago. This clearly counts as a major disaster, with more than 27 dead and billions of dollars in damage. Meanwhile, here in Barcelona, the traffic lights still short out every time it rains (rained today; bingo, the light at Balmes and Plaza Molina went out and things snarled up badly before they got a cop to the corner to direct traffic), and the government is being accused of "not being ready" for the oil spill.

Seems that a bunch of Hollywood lefties want us all to know about their opinions on foreign policy. Great. As soon as I find the complete list, I'll link to it so we can all boycott movies and TV shows in which they appear. Meanwhile, this link lets us know in advance who some of them are. National Review provides this parody.

Here's the good sports news. The Chiefs are waking up. Joe Posnanski, who is a very good sports columnist, devotes his column to the Chiefs' awesome offensive line, who blast open huge holes for magnificent running back Priest Holmes, who is arguably the best player in the NFL right now, and give quarterback Trent Green, who is a competent pro and who wears a Super Bowl ring, plenty of time to run an effective passing game just like back in the Seventies, when teams would pass only fifteen or twenty times a game but those would be real passes, not little dinks. With three competent wide receivers, brilliant tight end Tony Gonzalez, and top return man Dante Hall, the Chiefs can light up almost any defense. The problem is the defense, which for most of the season has been just as bad as the offense is good. In the last two games, though, the Chiefs have shut down admittedly pathetic Arizona and the unpredictable Rams to a total of only ten points. Now they finish the season against the Broncos, Chargers, and Raiders. They're 7-6. 10-6 is possible. The Chiefs offense can do the job, and if your defense can shut down Priest Holmes you deserve to win anyway--the Chiefs have no right to complain if the other guys play well enough to hold their offense to 17 or 24 points. The question is whether the Chiefs defense can hold the other guys to, say, 27 or 30 points. If they can do that Holmes and the offensive line just might put them in the playoffs. I predict that these next three games will be some pretty exciting football.

Here's the bad news. Barcelona choked again, this time 1-0 in Madrid against a bad team, Rayo Vallecano. There's no excuse for this. We don't expect Barça to win every game, but it is fair to demand that with all the money they spend on players--and a lot of that money comes from the 104,000 season-ticket holders and from the six million Catalan households who sit through the advertisements that TV stations pay millions of euros for--they put together a team that is competitive. This team is not functioning. Saviola is a good little player but he's not the top goal-scorer they need. Neither is Riquelme. They wasted the money they got from the sale of Figo on Petit, Overmars, Geovanni, and Rochemback, none of whom have had any effect. Rochemback is not a bad midfielder, but he's not worth nearly what they paid for him. Mendieta is playing poorly, which really is a surprise. Meanwhile, Couto, Nadal, and Pellegrino, all of them sold off years ago, are having good seasons yet again, just when Barça could use a couple of defensemen, and Simao, who was supposed to replace Figo but never really got a chance, is tearing up the Portuguese league. Sonny Anderson is tearing up the French league. Rivaldo is playing well at Milan. And Barça can't beat Rayo Vallecano, which is like being so bad you can't even beat the Royals.

Barcelona plays Newcastle this week at home in the Champions' League, where they are 7-0-0 but have beaten only one good team, AS Roma. Newcastle, coached by Sir Bobby Robson, Barça's ex-coach, whom they never should have got rid of and especially not for Van Gaal, is a good team. If Barça beats them there are grounds for limited optimism. If they tie, it's not good. If they lose, it will be just about the last straw, and if they lose again, Van Gaal will be fired, assuming he hadn't already been. Joan Gaspart, Barça's elected club president, is on the verge of being forced to resign. Good. Everybody hates him. Earlier this season some guys made a banner with a picture of Mr. Burns from the Simpsons and labeled it "Gaspart". Cracked everybody up because Gaspart really does look like Mr. Burns, but nobody had made the connection before. The TV cameras picked it up and now they run the shot of the banner as part of the highlights every time Barça loses. See, whenever Barça loses, which is a lot these days, they also run long stories on how the Barça has really been losing a lot lately. Gee, this wouldn't be a campaign by Convergence and Union, the Catalan nationalist party, who control local television, to put their own man in charge of the Barça in the place of the PP sympathizers, especially Gaspart, running the board of directors, would it? Of course it would. A big deal a few weeks ago was made when Sixte Cambra of Convergence joined the board in an attempt by Gaspart to reach out to the powerful CiU faction within the club. Cambra will stab Gaspart in the back as soon as he gets a chance. I normally sympathize with the PP, but the fact that I respect and approve of Prime Minister Aznar doesn't mean I want that prick Gaspart to run the soccer team into the ground.

Here's what they need to do. Fire Van Gaal. Give me the job as coach. I'll run a lineup of Bonano in goal, Puyol, Cocu, Gabri, and Navarro as defensemen, Xavi and Rochemback in midfield, Riquelme as the "quarterback", and Overmars, Kluivert, and Saviola at forward. This lineup will give up goals. It had damn well better score a few. And we'll put Luis Enrique anywhere we can shoehorn him in when he comes back.

In the Spanish first division Real Sociedad, Valencia, Celta, Betis, Mallorca, and Real Madrid are at the top. At the bottom are Rayo, Sevilla, Español, and Recreativo. In the English league it's Arsenal, Chelsea, Man U and Liverpool at the top and Bolton, Sunderland, and West Ham at the bottom. In Germany it's Bayern Munich way out front and then Borussia Dortmund and Werder Bremen; at the bottom are Kaiserslautern and Cottbus. In Italy AC Milan, Lazio, Inter Milan, and Juventus are at the top and Atalanta, Reggina, Torino, and Como at the bottom.

As I've said, I have five cats. The youngest, Oscar, is long, slim, sleek, and all-black. Bart is about three and is a stocky, muscular, red-tabby and white little cat who is not too smart but who is very affectionate. Lisa is a dark gray tabby with a white front and a high, squeaky voice. We found all three of them as kittens. Chang and Eng, the Siamese twins, found us; they lived on top of a roof below our back window in the last place we lived, and they sort of invited themselves in back in '96. They were already adults; the way to tell them apart is that Chang only has one-third of a tail and has crossed eyes. He also drools. A couple of minutes ago I walked into the kitchen, where Chang was sitting at my head level on top of the microwave, which is on top of the fridge. I went over to him and he proceeded to happily bump and rub his head against mine; this behavior is cat language for "I am content and I like you. Pet me." Then--and I saw it coming--he shook his head fast like a wet dog does. Cat drool all over my face. Yecch.

Hitchens does it again, this time skewering anti-Americanism in Slate. He's dead on-target, making many of the same points we've made here (and that Paul Hollander also makes) very eloquently. I love his line about America's being the source of libertinism and vice and sedition and that we should be proud of that. Jonah Goldberg from NRO also says several things we've been saying. My, aren't we all clever? I hope this guy from Opinion Journal is telling the truth about his attempted attendance at an antiwar protest.

Today's back-page interview in La Vanguardia is with Michel Girin, who is the top EU oceanographer; he was the guy in charge of the Erika cleanup in 1999. It seems to me that most of what he's got to say is pretty reasonable.

-What can we do now?
–Grit our teeth, work hard, and not lose hope.

–Everything looks terrible here.
–I understand. It's an ecological, economic, and human tragedy, but we can fight against it. Look: I went swimming at the beaches affected by the shipwreck of the Aegean Sea in summer 1993, seven months after the accident, and in France the waters where the Erika sank in December 1999 were already clean in summer.

--That fast?
– If it's cleaned up correctly, yes. The first thing is to collect all the fuel possible, and then Nature can regenerate itself. I'm not saying there isn't ecological damage, besides the economic damage, but it's not eternal. After two years a recovery is visible and it is completed in ten years

–Ten years! That's a long time for people live near the sea or from it
–I know. But there are no immediate or perfect solutions. Everybody needs to understand that.

–Too many mistakes have been made.
–I'm trying to be cold and unemotional. Don't expect any easy criticisms from me because I've been in charge during several crises like the Erika and I can assure you I made the decisions that my intelligence, the circumstances, and the pressures that I received permitted me. Later it was very easy to contemplate these done deeds from the comfort of an office, and with all the facts in hand, say that I had made errors

–Did you make errors?
–When you make a decision, you don't know what the weather will be like in five days or whether the ship will break in half and sink.

–You could tow it to a port.
–No port will accept a damaged ship. Would any port have accepted the Prestige?

–?
–There are politicians who say that ports should be obligated to give refuge, but when I hear this, I think, "Great, so if there's no danger let's send the dangerous boat to Paris or Madrid." Maybe one day we can begin discussing the creation of a network of ports of refuge, compensating local people for the risk.

–What has the Prestige taught us?
–For those of us who make a career out of combatting these catastrophes, it's a special case. It's a historical example for the world.

–Why?
–The Prestige is the first case in the history of shipping in which the option of a hurried distancing (of the ship) from the coast toward the high seas and then sinking it has been used.

–So?
–Until now all these accidents happened with the ship sinking near the coast. The fact that the sinking was so far out has positive aspects. It gives us time to fight spilled oil on the high seas with pumping boats like the 11, from 7 different countries, that have already pumped out 10,000 tons of fuel from the Prestige. This is good for everyone.

–So what's the bad part?
–The bad part for a lot of people is that the spilled oil is going to float along hundreds of miles of coast in the form of small oilslicks. The not-so-bad part for Galicia is that all the oilslicks that go somewhere else won't wash up on their beaches.

–“Nunca máis”, (Never again), the Galicians say. Will there be “máis”?
Yes. That is the sad truth.

–Why?
–Day before yesterday there was a collision between an oil tanker like the Prestige and another ship off the coast of Singapore that caused a spill of 400 tons of oil into the sea. Every week there's a spill of a hundred or more tons and every year there's one of more than a thousand tons. It's like car accidents.

–But that happens far away from us.
–Yes, but sometimes it happens here, too. It's also true that the Prestige has marked a tipping point. The European condemnation has never been so loud and I think this will force the EU to take very serious measures; there are demands from all over Europe for more protection for the coastlines.

–What will happen?
–Measures will be taken. I'll leave it for the politicians to decide which ones, but I know what they are.

–Tell us.
–There are many, and on many fronts: improve the ships, improve the training of the captains, improve work schedules, improve the ports, improve the laws.

–What for, since nobody obeys them?
–Force them to be obeyed making the companies responsible for the economic damage, and the ecological damage too. Prohibit them from using our ports if they don't offer guarantees. These days the shipowners declare bankruptcy or hide behind an insurance policy that insures nothing. It's complicated, but we must make progress, and anyway the laws we have are obsolete.

–Why?
–The laws of the sea have become obsolete because they provide an unlimited guarantee of the right of ships to circulate freely through the English Channel and the other main sea passageways...

–Like the Strait of Gibraltar.
–Yes, when those international laws were passed, they were fair and necessary for world trade because then cargoes were not dangerous for the people and the environment. But today 50,000 tons of oil or chemical products in a ship are an enormous danger for everyone. They have no right to travel by sea without controls.

I disagree with Girin about towing the ship to port. It seems to me that the Prime Minister could have decided, "Look, let's get this ship somewhere it won't do too much damage," and have towed the ship into the port of El Ferrol, which is an ugly dump and anyway was Franco's hometown. Damage outside the port of Ferrol would have been insignificant, a few hundred tons of oilslicks, and as for damage inside the port, who cares? Evacuate the population and bomb the place flat and burn up not only the nasty oil but also the ugly town. Well, OK, that might be a little excessive, but the idea would be to concentrate the damage in the least bad place. That's called cost-benefit analysis and is not a really hard thing to do if you are cool and unemotional.

Note that Girin's automatic reaction, when asked how to alleviate the problem, is to demnd new laws and law enforcement. I actually agree with him; just like there's an international standard for aircraft and an international network of air-traffic control, I don't see why we can't have a system of ship-traffic control which would supervise dangerous cargoes and set standards that ships transporting this hazardous stuff would have to meet. I mean, traffic by truck is controlled and supervised, and so is every other form of transport I can think of. You're not allowed to drive gasoline tanker trucks through downtown Barcelona for obvious reasons. Why can't we do something like that with ships?

I also disagree with Girin about the utility of insurance policies. The American system of oil tanker control requires that tankers docking in a US port have an effective insurance policy; therefore, it's something that can be done, as we proved when we tightened our rules after the Exxon Valdez in 1989 and haven't had an important spill since. You get those insurance company inspectors and actuaries looking over your oil tanker and, believe me, if there's something wrong with it you're going to find out when they invalidate your policy as fast as you can say "Rustbucket". It shouldn't be too hard to regulate oil tankers, since almost by definition oil tankers sail between oil-producing countries and oil-using countries. If the big oil-using countries slap high standards on tankers, and pressure the big oil-producers to do the same thing, that ought to take care of the problem without creating some new international body. If you combine real insurance policies, tough port standards, and a ship-traffic control like air-traffic control, that ought to do it, I say as we sit in my comfortable office far away from the problem.

Did you notice that the Spanish interviewer's first reaction when the French scientist proposed tougher laws was to cynically say, "Why bother, nobody obeys the law anyway?" The problem with this attitude is that it makes it very easy to justify, say, cheating on your taxes, or evading solid currency overseas, which is why there's no money in Argentina--it's all in Argentines' bank accounts in Miami, and not just the rich people, either, but the whole damn Argentine middle class. This negative attitude is common to all Spanish-speaking countries; Spain, for example, never had a decent government until democracy arrived in the late Seventies. No wonder people don't trust the government, but you have to learn to do so as a society in order to have an effective fiscal policy. This is what they call an asignatura pendiente in Spanish; in school, that means a required course you haven't passed yet.

I mentioned a couple of days ago that Girona, north of Barcelona, is the unfriendliest place I've ever been. Toledo is full of Fascists, who are assholes by definition. Chicago, outside the singles-bar district at Rush and Division, where everybody is so drunk that they're tolerably nice, ranks right up there. There are a lot of nasty people in Houston, though my opinion may be tainted because my grandmother lived in a lousy neighborhood there, near Hardy Road and Crosstimbers just north of 610, until the late '80s. No problem with the Mexicans--they were cool, just regular hardworking folks trying to move their families up in the world. Yeah, they'd drink some beers and turn up the gadinga-dinga music on Saturday nights, but that doesn't hurt any, and they'd invite you if you were around. When I was about 16 I made friends with the girl next door, Cristina, whose family was from Reynosa down on the border and who was in and out of my grandma's house--Granny was the kind of old lady who'd talk about niggers and Meskins, just as a matter of course, but her behavior didn't have anything to do with her language, if you see what I mean. I think if I were, say, black, I'd rather deal with a white person who is a straight-shooter although somewhat racist, but not in a hateful way, than with some liberal who is always tiptoeing around on eggshells trying not to offend. No, the problem around there were the white people, who were about as rednecky as I've ever seen, and I don't mean picturesque farmers up in some Appalachian holler, but people who owned lots of guns and mean dogs and worked as repo men and bounty hunters. I ran distance in high school and worked out every day, even when visiting the folks, and I carried a two-foot-long iron bar when I went running in that neighborhood, ostensibly for the mean dogs, but really for the mean people. I can't believe they never held a cross-burning. Had they, I imagine there'd have been a pretty good turnout, and everybody would have brought his own sheet and pint of Evan Williams. By the way, the absolute biggest redneck I know is my dad's cousin Larry, who lives in Lufkin, Texas. Hi, Larry! Since you can't read this, I don't know why I bothered to say that. I remember the last time we went to visit them, twenty years ago, and Larry talked about niggers the whole time in a hateful way, his kid Kenneth tried to pick a fight with me (Larry said it was fine, that Kenneth liked to fight and that he would only mind if Kenneth ever ran away from a fight), and his other kid whose name escapes me cut her foot on a piece of broken glass while running around the front yard barefoot and it was gushing blood. We left and in the car my mom, who is very diplomatic, said, "You know, I believe I would have taken that girl to the emergency room," and my dad kind of snorted and said, "I have never been so appalled in my life," which is strong language coming from him. We haven't seen them since. They didn't get invited to my sister's wedding, I know that.

As for friendly places, all of California is right up there except for San Francisco leftists, Berkeley students, and rich folks in LA. People in Kansas City are really very nice. New Orleans earns a high ranking. My sister says Nashville people are super-friendly. You won't believe this, but every time I've been in London, the only place I've really been in England, everyone was great except for the bums hanging around Euston Station. Narbonne and Nîmes are particularly friendly places in France, Soria, Santander, Zaragoza, Córdoba, Navarra in general, and Barcelona (if you stay away from the Cataloonies--hint: run should you learn that an Elèctrica Dharma concert is imminent. Also flee the mere appearance of sardana bands and sardana dancers) are congenial cities in Spain. Oporto in Portugal is full of nice people.

I listen on Internet-streaming radio to bluegrasscountry.org. Now that I have a decent computer and an ADSL line it's easy to get and sounds good. I imagine that if you have an old puter and a dial-up line it might be hard to get. (By the way, there's another good Internet-only country station, KWCA. I don't know any more info than that, but if you google something like "KWCA country" you'll get it.) Anyway, bluegrasscountry.org picks up this Australian bluegrass show from Sydney, and the DJ just a couple of minutes ago was reading off some of the e-mails they'd gotten. One was from these quarry workers in Virginia who said that they were thrilled to be able to listen to this Internet "station" because they couldn't find a radio station near there that played bluegrass, honky-tonk, and classic country in general. The DJ said, "Good on ya, mate, you know you can always count on us Ozzies." Damn straight. The Ozzies, Kiwis, Canucks, and Brits can be counted on, and Spain, Portugal, Denmark, and Norway, as well as Italy, and the Pro-American Three, Poland, Czech Republic, and Hungary, are showing lots of backbone. Romania and Bulgaria fall in there, too, two countries making great strides and earning themselves a place in the West. And, of course, stalwart Israel.

Cool Stuff Machiavelli Said:

For he who innovates will have for his enemies all those who are well off under the existing order of things, and only lukewarm supporters in those who might be better off under the new.

Hence it comes that all armed Prophets have been victorious, and all unarmed Prophets have been destroyed.

It should be borne in mind that the temper of the multitude is fickle, and that while it is easy to persuade them of a thing, it is hard to fix them in that persuasion.

He deceives himself who believes that with the great, recent benefits cause old wrongs to be forgotten.

Still, to slaughter fellow-citizens, to betray friends, to be devoid of honour, pity, and religion, cannot be counted as merits, for these are means which may lead to power, but which confer no glory.

Those cruelties we may say are well employed, if it be permitted to speak well of things evil, which are done once for all under the necessity of self-preservation, and are not afterwards persisted in, but so far as possible modified to the advantage of the governed. Ill-employed cruelties, on the other hand, are those which from small beginnings increase rather than diminish with time.

...The aim of the people being more honourable than that of the nobles, the latter seeking to oppress, the former not to be oppressed.