When I think "diaspora", I think of the Jews and the Armenians and the Irish. This article from the Economist, which is a month old now, is definitely worth a read. It's about the influence that people from a nation who are living overseas, away from home, can have on their home countries, and gives a ton of examples of diasporas that I hadn't thought of--the Ghanaians, the Eritreans, the Balts, the Mexicans, the Chinese, the Italians, the Tamils, and more. Thinking about it, I'll bet a significant proportion of Anglo-Canadians in Ontario are part of an American Tory diaspora; others went to Britain or the West Indies. There's definitely a Gallego diaspora in the Americas, so much so that a common Latin American pejorative for "Spaniard" is "gallego".

I remember a story--seems that the Spanish ambassador in Buenos Aires came by the Casa Rosada for some reason and one of Eva Perón's parties was in full swing at nine in the morning. A somewhat exalted Evita shouted, "Get that gallego de mierda out of here!" The ambassador drew himself up to his full Castilian blue-blooded, blue-veined height, looked down his aquiline nose, and replied, "Tell Mrs. Perón the gallego will be leaving but the mierda will be staying."

Here's a link from As, one of the Madrid sports papers, to a series of articles about Dmitri Piterman, one of the Ukranian diaspora. Piterman was born in Odessa but became a millionaire businessman in America. Several years ago he bought a second-division Catalan soccer club, Palamós, for some unknown reason. He coached the team himself, but nothing particularly special happened. Anyway, he just bought himself a First Division team, Racing Santander. They're historically an "elevator" team, one that continually goes up and down between Second and First divisions. He's going to turn Racing around, he says, and his first plan is to sign Romario. He's been trying to coach the team himself but they've sued him, alleging that he doesn't have a coach's license and therefore can't be a coach. Piterman, quite reasonably, doesn't consider soccer coaching to be related in any way to brain surgery and wonders why the hell he needs a license to tell a bunch of guys in skivvies to kick the ball in the goal. This is taken as being "brash and American-style". Wait until Al Davis and Jerry Jones and that schmuck in Washington decide to invest in the Spanish soccer league and provide it with some much-needed, uh, professionalism. Actually, sports owners the world around are huge jackasses. The real Jesús Gil and our own Joan Gaspart, not to mention Ruíz Mateos's wife, are prime examples of folks who would do the NFL proud.

In case you were wondering what's at the top of the charts in the UK, it's a Russian adolescent female duo named t.A.T.u. with their new LP/CD, Pedophile Pop. Link here for all you ever wanted to know about Julia and Lena! Iberian Notes: your one-stop source for entertainment news.

Here's Sky News's take on the phenomenon, with information about Lena and Julia's hot new videos, if you know what I mean, and I think you do. Check out the photo. I completely agree with one of the interviewees for this article: "It's disgusting to see record companies appealing to the dirty-old-man market."

Well, there's not a whole lot of big news on the Iraq front, according to the Vanguardia. The back-page interview today went to Pierre-Richard Prosper, who is, curiously, American. With a name like that he should be writing semiotic criticisms of class and gender roles and their dysfunction in a post-socialist society, but he's the "U.S. Ambassador to Try War Criminals", which is something I'd never heard of before. He's been trying war criminals in Rwanda, the ex-Yugoslavia, Sierra Leone, and Afghanistan. He really doesn't say too much you haven't heard before except for his explanation of what's happening in Guantánamo. "We have divided the 600 Taliban prisoners into three groups. The first group, of 11, were released because they did not represent a danger toward the world. Then there are those who are a threat but should be tried in their country of origen...(the others) are those who said under interrogation that they would attack the West as soon as they could. They, and the group who should be tried in the US because of their leadership role, must stay at Guantánamo." The other good bit is when the interviewer asks him, "And Kissinger? What do you think about Judge Garzón's attempt at interrogating him?" Prosper's answer is, "Ha, ha." Says the interviewer, "Doesn't that worry you?" Prosper answers, "Ha, ha."

The Gang of Eight's letter has had a pro-alliance effect on European opinion, especially the fact that the universally respected Vaclav Havel signed it. Here's the Vanguardia's page two lead editorial signed by Alfredo Abián. It's titled "Havel and the anti-imperialists" and is in italics below.

The Alliance of Anti-Imperialist Intellectuals, who turned the Goya awards (Spain's Oscars) into an antiwar protest, would probably condemn Vaclav Havel for his alignment with the United States. Although the Czech dramatist, who left the presidency of his country yesterday, cannot be denied his status as an honest intellectual. The problem is that Havel's personal experiences and discourse are excessively sophisticated for those who consider that capitalism is the leading world terrorist. Havel was a prisoner of the Iron Curtain: censorship, arrests, five years in prison. This is why he scorns the slogans and rhetorical flourishes that real Communism used in its day to capture so many honorable people. but he also knew how to keep the idealism that led him to call for a world in which the voice of the poets would be as powerful as that of the stockbrokers, although directly afterward he warns against those who want the planet to become a poem by the hands of pipers and troubadors. Havel understands that politics must benefit humanity and that therefore one must act consciously without paying attention to criticism or the polls. He defends attacking evil in its own lair, even through the use of force. Among other things, because he has always thought that the Second World War could have been avoided if Paris and London had not made concessions in order to appease Hitler's Berlin.

OK, I think I've calmed down enough to write about the continuing soap opera that is FC Barcelona. Hated coach Louis Van Gaal was fired last week and then they couldn't decide who they should get to replace him. For several days the Barça was without a coach as club functionary Antonio de la Cruz filled in until they finally decided who Van Gaal's replacement would be. That someone turned out to be Serb Radomir Antic, whose last two major accomplishments have been getting first Atlético de Madrid and then Oviedo sent down to Second Division. Antic takes over as coach today.

De la Cruz was the coach Saturday night as a frightened and decimated Barca squad went into the Calderón to face Atlético de Madrid before 55,000 fans waving red and white flags and scarves and howling, "Down to Second! Down to Second!", meaning Second Division. Proud Barcelona is one of only three Spanish clubs (the others are Real Madrid and At. Bilbao) which has never descended to Second since the league was founded in 1929. So far.

Cocu and Kluivert were suspended for one game for accumulating too many yellow cards, so they missed the match, as did an injured Saviola. De la Cruz threw a defense together consisting of Bonano in goal and a back-line four of, right to left, Puyol, Christianval, De Boer, and Reiziger. Bonano's confidence is shattered and he can't play with his feet; if the opposing forwards pressure him he chokes up and makes bad and dangerous passes. Cost him a goal last week and damn near cost him one this week. Steady, stalwart Puyol is definitely the team's MVP, but he can't do it all. Christianval, who has barely played this year because of a series of injuries, limped off again yesterday after twenty minutes. Oleguer from the B-team, who is like 19, was the only defenseman on the bench that could sub him, and he did a fine job. None of Atlético's goals came from the right side. They all came from the left, defended by over-the-hill Frank de Boer, whose decline has been tremendous since he left Ajax, and out-of-position and over-the-hill Reiziger, who is right-footed but was playing on the left side. These two guys were toast all night, which is why Barça got schnockered, 3-0.

There was plenty of blame to go around. Midfielder Xavi had a decent game, but his partner Rochemback was dreadful until he got himself kicked out of the game during a scuffle with Jose Mari, who had started it, but they both got sent off. And the offensive four were just awful. OK, Riquelme wasn't too bad, but right-winger Mendieta apparently has been taking suck pills, because he sure has sucked this year. As recently as two years ago he was one of the elite Spanish players. Then he went off to the Italian League, where he apparently learned how to suck. Forward Dani is through and should not be playing. And left-winger Overmars has recovered his speed but hasn't learned how to kick the ball accurately in the direction of the goal, which is his major failing.

Atlético has this season's Rookie of the Year, Fernando Torres, who is a hell of a forward and scored their first goal after burning Reiziger and De Boer. Then Contra burned Reiziger and De Boer and centered to Emerson's head for the second. Finally, with a few minutes left, former Barça player Luis García burned Reiziger and De Boer all by himself and scored number three. Good night, Mrs. Calabash. Reiziger and De Boer will be in the hospital for weeks with third-degree burns and so won't be able to play any more.. Actually, I wish the cited gentlemen no physical harm, but if that's the only way to get them out of the game, then so be it.

God help the Barça because nobody else can at this point. They're now in fifteenth place. Out of twenty teams. They are now having the absolute worst season in their history, even worse than those grim early 1940s teams of the postwar period. Imagine the Yankees losing a hundred games. That's what this is like. The Lakers this year might be an appropriate comparison, since they were supposed to make the finals again and instead may not make even the playoffs.

It's interview day in today's Vangua; they've got a three-pager with Jordi Pujol. Who's Jordi Pujol? Jordi Pujol, around here, is sort of a cross between Mayor Daley and Yoda. He sure looks a lot like Yoda. But he's a tough political boss like Mayor Daley, and his Convergence and Union Catalan nationalist party has been, up to now, a well-oiled machine that has given Pujol six (or seven? I lose track) consecutive terms as Prime Minister of the Generalitat de Catalunya, the Catalan regional government. He will step down when this term runs out in nine months.

The Vangua has a two-page interview today with Romano Prodme, boss of the European Commission. Prodme is an Italian Socialist. Most of the interview is a load of wank, but there are a few little pearls here.

Interviewer: Do you belong to the old Europe that Donald Rumsfeld, the American secretary of defense, has just criticized?
Prodme: Yes, yes, yes! I belong to the wise Europe, and I've said that it isn't age, it's wisdom. This has been my answer, because countries like Germany and France, which have turned their history of doubts and tragedies around and who are now together, are wise countries.

I: ...Chirac and Schröder have defended a multilateral concept of international relations anchored on the United Nations against the unilateral tension of the U.S. Are we beginning to see the real question?
P: Yes, but it's not the first time we've seen the problem. Last summer's debates over the International Criminal Court were of the same kind, like the debates over the Kyoto protocol. In every case, I've declared myself in favor of multilateral cooperation. i think, in the long term, that it will not be possible to have a unipolar world.

I: Are relations between the UE and the US entering a crisis?
P: Yes. There are problems...these political differences are very worrying.

I: You just told European Voice that Bush should stay out of European affairs.
P: That is another problem. I have never made a speech saying that Mexico should form part of the United States. I already said it to Clinton when we were talking together about Turkey and I repeat it now: it's our business. And, from my point of view, the pressures over the subject of the International Criminal Court and the expansion (of the EU) are interference. Enough! Stop! It's clear. The rules and the size of the European Union are totally European problems, and this is why we have to open a debate about how to transmit to the Europeans the idea that we are the actors of our destiny, the protagonists of our future. We, with all due friendship with
the Americans.

So much for multilateralism, which means to Prodme, "Let us tell you what to do and then you go ahead and do it. Our business is our business and your business is our business, but our business isn't your business." So America can't encourage Europe to admit Turkey, which Prodme is against; America can't refuse to let a bunch of foreigners try its soldiers and government officials, which Prodme is for; America can't set its own environmental standards, which Prodme is against; and America can't defend itself as it sees fit, which Prodme is against. However, the EU can tell Americans that they won't let Turkey into their little club no matter what and so we should shut up (oh, I forgot, the Europeans are in favor of negotiations. For other people), that they want the right to put our country's official representatives on trial whether we think they've done anything wrong or not, that we have to live by whatever environmental standards they deem appropriate, and that we have to consult them before defending ourselves. They can also tell us to stop executing murderers, not to plant genetically-modified seeds, to give away lots of money to Third World dictatorships, to refrain from collecting money owed us, to permit anyone who wants to immigrate to do so, and that we're generally a bunch of simplistic, stupid, racist, uncultured, arrogant, ill-mannered, aggressive, fanatical shits. Should you dare to talk back, like Donald Rumsfeld did in a tone much more delicate than the typical European strident howling, buckets of scurn will be dumped on your head.

What I would like to see, when the Iraq war is over, is for George W. Bush to say, "You know, you Europeans are right. We should stay out of your business. Therefore we are withdrawing from the UN and from NATO. All UN officials and delegates will lose their diplomatic license plates and pay all back parking tickets, including a 100% fine, and will be summarily deported. We will proceed to make bilateral or multilateral agreements with the countries we see fit regarding international cooperation. All other countries are perfectly free to do the same. No, I'm sorry, Mr. Prodme, I just don't have time to talk with you now, as I have some allies to visit with. Schedule's pretty much booked up, you know. Now, Mr. Meggyesy, what were you saying about a Hungarian-American commercial agreement? Why don't we call up Mr. Blair and Mr. Howard and a few of your neighbors to see if they want to join, too? What is that, Condi? A message from who? Gearhead Schröder? Is that guy still in office? Tell his successor we'll call him."

The Space Shuttle disaster is, of course, the lead story in today's Vanguardia. The headline is "Space tragedy", and there's a large photo of the seven dead astronauts. The Vangua's lead editorial makes this generally good point: "For a minuscule but influential sector of the population, especially in the United States, the present circumstances of international tension, with a war on the way and the permanent threat of terrorism, will feed all kinds of conspiracy theories, whipped up by the presence on board of an Israeli officer. Reality, however, seems to be much simpler: the margin of safety, even in aerospace missions, is not and can never be absolute." That is, accidents can happen and one just did and there's nothing to do about it except mourn the dead and ensure that that particular accident doesn't happen again. I do have a quibble with the editorial, though; the conspiracy theorists are not especially influential in the United States (except on the far left), but rather in Europe, where they make up a major section of the population. In Greece 95% of the people think we're going into Iraq not to get rid of Saddam but to grab the oil, and this belief is almost as widespread in Spain.

There is a news analysis article, however, by someone who signs himself "Andy Robinson, New York correspondent." This guy is an American anti-globo lefty who is big on Marcuse, Fanon, and Chomsky, since every American who he agrees with is always billed as "a student of" one of these three guys. What that really means is someone who parrots the same old slogans that somebody else made up in about 1967, or 1847. Robinson's screeds show up occasionally--he's the guy who wrote the ridiculous story on the King assassination that we mentioned a few days ago. His angle is always "United States = bad: the inside story of what's really happening". The title of his little piece is "Wounded pride". Here are a couple of paragraphs.

The images of Ronald and Nancy Reagan, shocked and impotent while the technological pride of the United States went up in white smoke the morning of January 28, 1986, were almost forgotten. After the rapid bombing of Afghanistan, in 2001 even smart bombs had regained their reputation, which had been lost after the errors of the Gulf War and the embarrassing bombing of the Chinese embassy in Belgrade...

In the military theater, Uncle Sam's technological ego suffered another hard blow after a series of evidence became known, proving that father Bush's and CNN's spectacular state-of-the-art technological weapons didn't work. The laser-guided missiles got lost in the dust storms of the Iraqi desert: of the 970 projectiles fired at nuclear and chemical factories, none hit its target, and the Patriot missiles weren't able to shoot down Saddam's old Scuds.

Nevertheless, confidence in perfect technology had been recovered in recent years. Despite the estimated 3000 civilians killed in the Afghan war, the long-distance bombs and airplanes without pilots were considered potent examples of the reaffirmation of American state-of-the-art technology. A new version of the Patriot will play a key role if there is a war in Iraq. And under pressure from the military-space lobby led by companies like Lockheed Martin, NASA has even brought back the space nuclear program. The launching of two small nuclear rockets had been planned for May. "If one of them disintegrates like the Columbia, a lot of people will die of cancer wherever it falls," says Grossman.

My impression of Mr. Robinson is that he is one of George Orwell's nationalists. A nationalist may be fiercely loyal to a country or an idea, or he may fiercely oppose one, because of his emotions rather than logic and reason. A nationalist differs from a patriot in that a patriot wants to see his unit become stronger but does not wish ill on other units, while a nationalist's goal is to subjugate other units to his. ("Buy American" is patriotic, though stupid. "Don't Buy Japanese" was a fairly common bit of American nationalism in the early eighties. See what I mean? A patriotic sports fan wants to see his team win. A nationalist sports fan wants to see his team's rival humiliated. He doesn't care if his team comes in next-to-last if the rival comes in last.) The most important thing for a nationalist is the comparative prestige of his chosen country or idea. Orwell says that one may be a positive or a negative nationalist--one may decide, for example, that one hates Communism, and then will think about nothing else except destroying Communism's prestige. I think Mr. Robinson is something not all that uncommon on the American left, someone from the teacher / journalist / bureaucrat class who feels alienated from the American society that he has not been especially successful in and therefore resents those who have been successful within the system. He wants to do a hit job on what he almost certainly sees as American pride and arrogance, so he brings up not only the Challenger, which makes perfect sense, but the only partial efficacy of high-tech weapons during the Gulf War, which has nothing to do with the subject.

You almost certainly already know this, but just in case you don't, the Space Shuttle Columbia blew up today on re-entry. All seven astronauts were killed. Terrorism has been ruled out. An investigation, of course, will take place. This is the top story on both Catalan and Spanish TV this evening..

It's time for today's European diplomacy update. Slovenia and Latvia have joined the countries who signed the pro-alliance letter that the Wall Street Journal commissioned, Aznar drafted, Blair rewrote, and eight other European leaders agreed to. Brussels is royally pissed off; the Eurocrats consider the letter to have been a rupture in the EU's common foreign policy, as if such a thing existed. They're whining about both the message of the letter and the way it was publicized; they're whining because they're beaten. Whipped. They've lost. They know it. They are not going to get anything resembling what they want and this is not the last tantrum they're going to throw, since emotionally Old Europe is about as mature as a toddler, thinking of nothing but itself and its own comparative prestige and unwilling to admit it didn't have much to start with and now has a lot less.

Javier Solana was made to look like a moron because the day before the Gang of Eight's letter came out he'd said that any decision on Iraq would have to be made by the UN. So what's the problem? Solana is a moron. He must be if he'd say something as obviously false as that. I've hated him ever since he did a human interest interview that I read and he started telling funny, rather sympathetic stories about Kim Jong Il. It seemed about as appropriate as, I don't know, reeling off a skein of light-hearted Hitler anecdotes. Meanwhile, I can't think of a single productive thing he's been responsible for as director of EU foreign policy.

The right-wing German press is baying for Schröder's defenestration, saying that the French are going to sign on with the alliance leaving Germany in the cold thanks to Ger-hardhead. He's trying to use the anti-American plank to pull out a decent showing for his Social Democrat party in the upcoming state elections in Hesse and Lower Saxony, but the Social Dems are going to get their asses kicked no matter what happens. Schröder's weeks as Chancellor are numbered. The French press is in a monumental snit. The Socialist organ, Libération, kicked off with the headline "Bush and his eight mercenaries". Boy, they're mad. Good. It pleases me to see frustrated left-wing Frenchmen. Libé called the eight states "vassals" and said, "The leaders in Washington dream of torpedoing the emergence of a powerful Europe that could contest its leadership." Yeah, my ass they do. Libé is so arrogant and self-absorbed that it thinks the Americans are actually worried about the EU becoming a rival.

They did a survey in the 15 EU countries; to the question, "Do you think your country should be involved in a military attack on Iraq if the UN decides in favor of one?" The percentage of respondents saying yes were: UK 79%, Denmark 71%, Holland 68%, France 67%, Italy 66%, Luxembourg 63%, Belgium 56%, Portugal 56%, Ireland 51%, Germany 45%, Spain 45%, Sweden 39%, Finland 31%, Greece 25%, Austria 19%, and the EU average was 57%. It seems to me that this is evidence of solid support for an Alliance attack on the part of the peoples of both new Europe and Old Europe: 67% of the people in France answered responsibly, for example. It sounds to me like the French government is out of sync with its voters, but then we knew that anyway, since fewer than 20% of them voted for the current president in the first round of the most recent elections, nearly the same percentage voted for racist reactionary Jean-Marie Le Pen, and about the same percentage voted for a melange of assorted Commies and Trots.

Here in Spain the Socialists are completely lost; they're in well over their heads and have no idea what to do. Socialist leader Zapatero is not taking a clear position; what it sounds like is that he's against the Iraq war unless France decides for it, which they will do after Feb. 5's Security Council Showdown. Mariano Rajoy, a PP heavy hitter, blasted the Socialists for their 1986 campaign against joining NATO and then their about-face and their support for joining up, for forgetting that the Socialist government under Felipe González had participated in Gulf War I, for not listening to Felipe when he said that it's not a good plan to get into a position where you'll have to change sides halfway through, and for not defending Spain's interests through an active consensus foreign policy. He didn't have to mention that the Socialists were responsible for the organization of an anti-ETA death squad under Felipe and that they therefore should perhaps abstain from making moral judgments about others who feel the need to defend themselves in an open, aboveboard way.

The Catalan nationalist party, Convergence and Union, has also come out against the war. Loudmouth Convergence deputy Ignasi Guardans, who is a self-satisfied little prick, accused Foreign Minister Ana Palacio of lying on the floor of Parliament and refused to retract his statement; he later told Miss Palacio, who is pro-alliance, that "You don't support the United States, you support their most reactionary right wing," after blaming the United States for the existence of the Franco dictatorship. This is the sort of behavior that one would expect from the Communists or the Basque wackos but not from a respectable, moderate political party. Convergence party boss Jordi Pujol, who is an old fox and should never be underestimated, needs to call Mr. Guardans on the carpet and remind him that bugs don't fly into closed mouths. Meanwhile, Convergence spokesman Felip Puig compared Aznar to Le Pen. People who say ridiculous things like that often regret it later. I suspect that Mr. Aznar will personally assure Mr. Puig's regrettance at some future date.

Spain is preparing for war. A hospital is being set up at the Rota naval base for wounded alliance soldiers. Rota is also preparing to handle a large number of Allied soldiers as an intermediate transit point. The Spanish fleet will patrol in the Med, the Atlantic, and the Indian Ocean as part of an Allied fleet, and Spanish AWACS planes will be used. There will also be Spanish participation in the post-war peacekeeping force.

Well, the Iraq situation is still rather on the back burner; the big news is the huge winter storm that has hit all of northern Spain, including interior Catalonia. Here in Barcelona it's about 7ºC and windy, a rather chill winter's day, but temperatures have fallen to -15ºC in the Pyrenees with snowfalls of up to 2 1/2 meters and winds as high as 200 km/h. The north winds (in northern Catalonia it comes straight out of the north and is called the tramuntana; in southern Catalonia it comes out of the northwest and is called the mistral) are one of the more unpleasant aspects of the Catalan winter, since they blow hard every day and never let up. Waves were four meters high at Roses, when the normal Mediterranean waves are like a foot high. The winds were so high that there was a major forest fire up in Santa Cristina that burned up 300 hectares--a soccer field is about half a hectare. 400 people had to be evacuated. The Valle de Arán up in the Pyrenees (nice place, worth a visit) is cut off since both the Vielha tunnel and the Bonaigua mountain pass are blocked off by the snow and the only way in and out is through France. Most of the high-altitude ski resorts have had to close down, both because the storm makes it impossible to ski and because no one could get there to ski anyway. (People in Barcelona love skiing. Good slopes are three hours or so by car from BCN. Some people go every weekend.)

I remember once taking a geography class that dealt partially with people's perceptions of geography. I had a good idea for a term paper, that of looking at the radio networks of various sports teams to see how far a city's influence extended. For example, if you look at a map of Missouri, the St. Louis Cardinals dominate most of the state; the Kansas City Royals have followers who care enough to listen to the games on radio only in the northwestern quarter of Missouri, the area that's more influenced by KC than by St. Louis. I just got the idea of looking at the cities listed in La Vanguardia's international weather report; the hypothesis is that the places listed are those of most importance for the Barcelonese. I've classified the cities:

European capitals: Andorra la Vella, Amsterdam, Athens, Berlin, Brussels, Budapest, Copenhagen, Dublin, Stockholm, Helsinki, Lisbon, London, Moscow, Oslo, Paris, Prague, Rome, Warsaw, Vienna.
European non-capitals: France: Chamonix, Lyon, Montpellier, Nice, Perpignan. Germany: Frankfurt, Munich. Switzerland: Geneva, Zurich. Italy: Milan, Naples, Turin.
North American cities: Boston, Chicago, Los Angeles, Miami, Montreal, New York, San Francisco, Toronto, Washington.
Latin American cities: Buenos Aires, Caracas, Havana, Managua, Mexico City, Montevideo, Rio de Janeiro, Santo Domingo, Sao Paulo.
Middle East / North Africa: Cairo, Istanbul, Rabat, Tunis.
Rest of world: Hong Kong, Manila, Nairobi, New Delhi, Tokyo.

It looks to me, then, as the Barcelona vision of the relative importance of places is, first, Catalonia, with weather reports for about 30 cities listed; then the rest of Spain, with about 50 cities on the list; then Europe, and especially France, Italy, Switzerland, and Germany--the Balkans are not significant in Barcelona's eyes, with no city listed between Budapest and Athens, and neither is the former Soviet Union except for Moscow; then North America and Latin America--Latin America, with nine cities listed, is clearly important in the Barcelona view of the world, more so than it is to most people in most other European countries; then North Africa, close to Spain, with three cities listed. The rest of the world, Asia, Oceania, and especially sub-Saharan Africa, count little in the Barcelona worldview.

Here's a link from Front Page; it's some real red-meat Nelson Mandela-bashing. It has some good Mandela quotes. It is by Lowell Ponte and therefore is just a bit hysterical in tone.

It looks like Iraq crisis news is cooling off; the lead headline on today's Vanguardia is "Alleged parking garage murderer arrested". They got him yesterday. Video cameras at a bank branch and at a subway stop identified him, his photo checked with the guy who had rented a motorbike parking place for a month, and they arrested him and compared his DNA with the hairs found in the first victim's hand. Fair cop. He's from La Mina, a crappy neighborhood in far northeast Barcelona largely populated by gypsies--there are some 16,000 there. La Mina has a bad rep partly because of them and partly because of the payos who live there. The murderer is a payo, a non-gypsy, and the gypsy community is much relieved that it wasn't one of them. La Mina is full of dirtbags--the bunch of thugs that beat a guy to death for fun last year outside the Puerto Olímpico, a complex of nightspots down by the harbor, were from La Mina. They were payos, too. Fortunately, La Mina is rather distant from downtown Barcelona and if you come as a tourist you will get nowhere near it since there's nothing worth seeing within a five-mile radius of the place. Everyone is very happy that this guy has been busted. There's a general feeling of relief. I imagine the public outcry (it never reached exactly panic stage, but people were afraid over this case--maybe something similar to the public reaction to the Washington snipers on a smaller scale) that was caused was partly because of the upscale neighborhood and the respectable nature of the victims, and partly by the general tone of concern and worry, not quite fear, prevalent here due to the international situation.

Anyway, on the front page below the fold, the Vangua's top international headline is "US manages to divide Europe", in reference to the letter from eight European leaders in support of the European-American alliance. Slovakia and Albania, of all countries, have signed onto the letter. The story behind it is that the Wall Street Journal contacted several European leaders to suggest they write an article in support of the trans-Atlantic alliance. José María Aznar wrote the first draft and circulated it. They didn't even bother sending it to France, Germany, or Greece (Greece is one of the most anti-American countries in Europe, even worse than France), and the Dutch declined to sign because they didn't want to contribute to any division within the EU.

German Chancellor Schröder has said that Germany will not vote under any circumstances, in the UN or anywhere else, in favor of military action. The German liberal / Christian Democrat opposition, which is quite strong and getting stronger, is making a big stink about Germany's possible diplomatic isolation. Schröder's party, the Social Democrats, is going to get creamed in two key state elections (Germany's federal, it has states like America, more or less, which in particular have a lot of economic power). In Hesse, one of Germany's richest states (its major city is Frankfurt), the conservative Christian Democrats, who already hold the state, will roll with an absolute majority. In Lower Saxony, northwest Germany, rather more industrial and poorer than Hesse, the Christian Democrats will sweep the current Social Democrat state government out of power; the polls are saying Christian Dems 46-48%, Social Dems 35-37%. This gives the Christian Dems control of the Bundesrat, the upper legislative house, from where they will be able to block pretty much any Social Dem proposal they want. Schröder's popularity is plummeting as unemployment increases and the economy fails to heat up. He's using the anti-war platform to try to swing these state elections to his party, and he's failing. I don't think this defeat will bring down the government, but Schröder's not far from having to resign simply because the opposition will blockade anything he tries to do--and his international posturing looks like mere bluffing when it can be seen that his own people don't support him on anything except being antiwar, and even there there's a division of opinion.

Former Spanish Prime Minister Felipe González (to whom this country really does owe a great deal despite little things like, uh, the government organizing a death squad) has been talking a lot more left since he left power--Mario Soares of Portugal has been doing the same thing. Felipe called Aznar "Bush's altar boy", and said that "The (WSJ) letter means a breaking of the European Union treaty and opens up a wound that will be difficult to repair." Oh, shut up, Felipe. If you're worried about opening up wounds and causing divisions, why don't you consider moderating your antiwar position instead of demanding that everybody else moderate their pro-alliance position and calling that "negotiation"?

Remember. We're not pro-war. We're pro-alliance. Now, if the Atlantic alliance (except for a couple of weasels) should be in favor of a war with Saddam, who are we here at Iberian Notes to say no? I think that's a pretty good label to stick on those of us who are in favor of a tough policy toward terrorists and rogue states. Pro-alliance. Hey, if the pro-abortion people can call themselves pro-choice, we can adopt some slightly misleading way to frame our position too. (Note: I'm in favor of legal abortion on demand in the first trimester of pregnancy, and afterward only in case of a threat to the mother's life, mostly for practical political reasons: restricting abortion any more than that would cause a political blowup much bigger than any the anti-abortion people have managed to cook up so far.)

Nelson Mandela is blowing whatever little credibility he has left. I believe that Mandela is a strong person but not necessarily a good person. I think messiah figures, from Gandhi to Kenyatta to Lenin to Hitler to Nkrumah to Mandela, tend to be self-aggrandizing and utterly convinced of their own rectitude and messiahhood. They can do horribly evil things--don't tell me Mandela didn't know about the murders that the ANC committed--and justify them for the Cause. Anyway, Mandela accused President Bush of wanting to "sink the world into a holocaust" and of "acting outside the United Nations". Well, accusation number two is fair in spirit but wrong in fact, because Bush is acting within the United Nations--if not, why is Colin Powell going to speak there on February 5? And accusation number one is ad hominem bullshit which can't be taken seriously by any adult.

Meanwhile, the European Parliament voted 287-209 to reject "any unilateral military action". The Parliament considers that a preventative strike against Saddam would be a violation of international law and that the violations of SC Resolution 1441 that have been exposed by the UN inspectors "do not justify the resort to military action." The Socialist, Liberal (which surprises me, these guys are supposed to be pretty moderate), Green, and European Left parliamentary groups supported the measure. The three Catalan nationalist Eurodeputies also voted in support. An amendment by the Popular group to add an amendment that would have called Saddam's violations of Resolution 1441 to be "continual and serious" was voted down 251-255. The Spanish PP leader in the Europarliament called the vote a manifestation of "a false, irresponsible pacifism". The leftist Eurodeputies had a good old time holding up "No War for Oil" signs.

The Vatican has shot off its mouth, showing extremely bad moral and political judgment. Cardinal Angelo Sodano, Vatican secretary of state, said, "The United States has not learned the lesson of Vietnam," and called for the Vatican to work to prevent a war against Saddam. He suggested that the Vatican send an envoy to Baghdad, and said "If this war is declared the gates to Hell will open", quoting approvingly Amer Moussa, foreign minister of Egypt and secretary of the Arab League. This is not a move calculated to win the sympathy of American Catholics, many of whom are furious at the Church because of the boy-buggering bishops in black and the craven coverup of the corruption of children. Expect defections to increase. American Catholics are often "Reagan Democrats" and fiercely pro-American. They are not gonna like this when they hear about it.

Crime update: The cops claim to have identified the parking garage murderer and they are now looking for him. As for the Tarragona doctor's boyfriend, he's definitely run off to Holland and the case is in the hands of Europol. If you're in Holland and you see a blondish balding well-built 30-ish Spanish guy, rat him out to the nearest cop.

OK. I've been putting this off all week. Our city's beloved FC Barcelona, "more than a club", the most important civic institution in the city with the possible exception of giant savings bank La Caixa, is having the worst season of its history. The glorious Barça, symbol of Catalonia, is in twelfth place (out of 20 teams) with a record of 6 wins, 5 ties, and 8 losses for a total of 23 points at the exact halfway point of the season. Real Sociedad is in first with 12 wins, 7 ties, and 0 losses for 43 points.

Except for a couple of seasons in the postwar era in Spain (the World War II era in Europe), Barcelona has never played so poorly. Nobody can remember a Barça this bad. I can't remember the Barça ever finishing lower than fourth. The last bad season they had was 87-88, and even that year the Barça qualified for European competition. This year they won't. It will be the first time since European competitions began that Barça will not qualify, which I believe is a European record. They need to come in at least fourth to qualify for the Champions League; currently in fourth place is Betis with 33 points. No chance. They need to come in at least seventh to qualify for the now fairly pathetic UEFA Cup, which is considered much more of a minor-league competition now that it takes the 5th, 6th, and 7th teams from the major European leagues rather than the 2nd, 3rd, and 4th teams that it used to take. In seventh place is Mallorca with 27 points, which I guess is surmountable. They may make the UEFA after all.

Anyway, despised coach Louis Van Gaal has been canned. After his firing, he agreed to renounce €2.5 million of his €6 million three-year contract. This is less than most of us expected him to be making and adds to the suspicion that Dracula, Mr. Burns himself, despised team president Joan Gaspart, only hired Van Gaal because he was available cheap after being fired by the Dutch national team when he failed to qualify them for last year's World Cup. Gaspart is a mama's boy. You know how some poor kids get picked on and bullied at school because they're small and weak? I hate that. If I ever catch any kid picking on any other in my class I blast him verbally until I've got him frightened and then I send him to the director's office. (That's not really a plan. It's just what I do because I get so angry. This is one reason why I cannot teach children any more. Somebody would get hurt and I'd go to jail.) But you know how there are a few kids who are little weasels who provoke everyone else and deserve every ass-kicking they get because of all the trouble they stir up? That's Gaspart all over. He whines and whimpers and is just a huge crybaby in general.

And he's incompetent. Barcelona is one of the richest clubs in football, or at least it was, and they banked something like sixty million dollars for Luis Figo straight of Real Madrid's pocket. So what does Gaspart do with the money? Overpays for overrated over-the-hill players (Petit, Overmars, Andersson) or overpays for overrated young guys who do well in South American leagues. From what I've seen of Saviola and Riquelme, they're competent players, but they're not big stars. They looked great back in the Argentinian league, but most of the really good Argentinian players are in Europe, so they weren't facing top-quality competition back home. Rochemback, usually on the bench, and Geovanni, who has already been loaned out to Benfica for what's left of the season, also both cost way too much money. So did Gerard, when they bought him back from Valencia, where he had played well, to the Barça, where he hasn't. And Gaspart gave Rivaldo away for free to save six million euros.

Anyway, last weekend Barcelona lost 2-0 in Vigo to Celta and that was it for Louis Van Gaal. A short recent history of FC Barcelona: Johan Cruyff as coach: 90-91 won Spanish League, 91-92 won League, Champions Cup, 92-93 won League, 93-94 won League, lost final of Champions Cup 4-0 to Milan, team broken up, 94-95 nothing, 95-96 nothing. Bobby Robson as coach: 96-97 UEFA Cup. Louis Van Gaal: 97-98 League, 98-99 League, 99-00 nothing. Llorenç Serra Ferrer as coach: 00-01 nothing. Charly Rexach as coach: 01-02 nothing. Louis Van Gaal as coach: 02-03 nothing. The fans are fed up waiting for a winning team and Van Gaal is not providing it. He has been booted and it looks like Charly Rexach, Barcelona's jack-of-all-trades, will finish out the season as coach, mostly because they don't have any money to spend on anyone else.

The Vanguardia's headline today, which seems a bit sensationalistic to me, is "Bush begins countdown to war". Well, I suppose it's true. The Vanguardia is taking for granted that there will be an Iraq war and that it will begin soon. There's a lot of replay of Bush's State of the Union speech, including a full page with the most newsworthy sections. The general take is that it was a good speech, well-done, and that it accomplished the important purpose of laying out clearly when and where damning evidence against Saddam will be presented.

A letter signed by eight European leaders, President Vaclav Havel of the Czech Republic, and prime ministers Aznar of Spain, Blair of the UK, Berlusconi of Italy, Barroso of Portugal, Medgyessy of Hungary, Miller of Poland, and Rasmussen of Denmark expressed solidarity with President Bush and asked that the EU show unified support for the United States.

The letter says, "The true link that unites the United States and Europe is represented by the values we share: democracy, individual freedoms and human and legal rights."

"The attacks of September 11th showed how far the terrorists--those enemies of these common values--are capable of going in order to destroy them...Today more than ever the trans-Atlantic link is a guarantee of our freedom."

"The relationship between we Europeans and the United States has stood the test of time...thanks to the continual cooperation between Europe and the United States we have been able to guarantee peace and freedom on our continent. The trans-Atlantic relationship should not become a victim of the persistent attempts by the Iraqi regime to threaten world security."

"We should remain united insisting on the disarmament of the Iraqi regime. The solidarity, cohesion, and determination of the international community constitute our best hope of achieving it peacefully. Our strength is in unity."

"Saddam continues to maintan the same line as always: deception, rejection and failure to fulfill the resolutions of the United Nations. Our governments share one responsibility: standing up to this threat. If we do not, we will be negligent toward our own citizens and the world."

"We can not tolerate that a dictator should violate systematically these resolutions. If he does not fulfill them, the credibility of the Security Council will disappear and world peace will be affected."

That's pretty strong language. I'd sign that letter. "Eight European leaders and Iberian Notes agree on declaration of principles and intentions." Terrific stuff. This ought to show that Europe is behind the United States despite what the French and Germans would have you think. The Axis of Weasels has signed up Belgium and Luxembourg on their side in NATO; they are blocking any NATO response to the United States' request for logistic help in case of war. That's it. That's all the support they've got. They have NOBODY ELSE behind them. They are risking being left out in the cold diplomatically, not to mention the other foreseeable consequences of backing the wrong side in a war. That is why I think Chirac will allow himself to be persuaded to, at the very least, change his NATO vote and support UN Resolution #2. I'm not so sure about Schröder. Even he may come over, though it may cost him the next election.

This is mind-boggling. The second edition of the huge TV hit "Operación Triunfo" (a sort of Pop Stars / Big Brother thing--contestants all live together, learn to be pop singers, play concerts, and the winner represents Spain at the hallunicinatorily bad Eurovision Song Festival next summer) closed out Monday night with the victory of Ainhoa Cantalapiedra--great Castilian surname, her family must be from Soria or Burgos originally. Arnaldo Otegi, who is most likely a paranoid schizophrenic from what I've observed, and I'm pretty good at these diagnoses, since I have some experience in the field of mental illness, said that Ainhoa's win was a setup, see, because Ainhoa is a Spanish-speaking Basque girl. "There are people who have an interest in, at the next Eurovision Festival, seeing all us nice little Basques there all rooting for Ainhoa, which is just like rooting for Spain," said Otegi, spokesman for whatever Herri Batasuna, the political branch of ETA, is calling itself these days. Otegi then took his pills and soon after drifted into a catatonic state from which he was not aroused for the next fourteen hours.

The only conspiracy theory I've got about "Operación Triunfo" is that the fat chick automatically wins because she is the one the majority female audience sympathizes with most. This is the second year in a row, and the program is only two years old, in both of which the fat chick has won. People identify with her more than with the hotter babes.

Speaking of which, my pal Clark, with whom I am entangled in a couple of arguments down in the Comments section (hey, people, keep those comments coming, that's what they're there for), is the Most Famous English Teacher in the World, because he's in charge of the English-class part of the program. About 7,500,000 people watched the finale Monday night, and all of them follow the show so they all know who he is. It looks like ratings are down by about a fourth since last year, but what they got is still pretty good, solid hit-show numbers. No longer runaway-success numbers, but good enough so that they're casting OT III for next year. OT comment: OT contestants had 6 of the top 10 LP/CDs in Spain in 2002. The Spanish music industry is really pissed because these OT punks are getting their sales and gigs.

Hey, Clark, why don't you come over after work Thursday, or failing that, Murph and I have tentative plans to go to Miguel's on Friday night. You in? I haven't seen you for a while.

A few days ago we mentioned the "parking garage murders". Two women were murdered in the same parking garage within twelve days in the middle-class neighborhood of El Putxet, right next to our neighborhood of Gràcia. The garage was a private one, open only to the owners or renters of the parking spaces located in the basement of a large apartmemt building. The only way in is if you have the key or the remote control that open the door, unless you somehow manage to sneak in directly behind an entering car and not get noticed. It is held as a condominium by the owners of the parking spaces, most of whom live or work very close by. The murdered women, coincidentally, both held parking place number 15 but on different floors. Everybody associated with the parking garage has apparently been checked out.

The most interesting lead is a guy who telephoned the first woman's husband asking for €2000 in exchange for the identity of the murderer; they set up a meet with him but he didn't show. The cops definitely suspect him. They're passing around photos of known criminals who meet the following description: 30-ish, white, well-built. The killer, assuming it's the same guy, is known to have stolen the first victim's bank card and to have withdrawn €300 from her account from a cash machine without a videocamera, but the motive is thought to have been murder rather than robbery. The most interesting speculation that I've heard is that the second victim's husband hired a hit man to kill her. He screwed up the first time and killed the wrong woman on the wrong floor of the garage but in the right space. So he went back after the heat was off and killed the right woman. The reasons I like this hypothesis are that it provides a motive for both actions. Also, whoever did it was a pro as he left few clues behind him. This would also provide a reason for the different methods of the two murders; the first one was stabbed and the second woman was beaten to death. The pro did it that way because he knows that normally a killer uses only one technique no matter how many people he kills, and in this way he throws off the cops.

The neighborhood is in terror. Some people are parking in the street because they're afraid to go into parking garages. Husbands are picking up wives who work in the neighborhood. They're setting up impromptu watch organizations though there are "more police than at the Moncloa". The Vanguardia reporter says that the tension in the neighborhood is growing rather than shrinking because of the lack of progress made in the investigation and that "no one talks about anything else (in the cafés), not even Van Gaal (Barcelona's much-hated just-fired soccer coach)."

Also, a young woman doctor from Tarragona disappeared eleven days ago and there's no trace of her. The cops are looking for her boyfriend, who disappeared the day after the woman. He took money out of a bank machine near the airport and is suspected to have taken a flight to Holland. A blanket from the woman's bedroom, stained with blood, and fingerprints were found inside her car. He is known to have quarreled with her recently because he told her a stack of lies about himself, including that he was a teacher of English, when he was really a taxi driver. However, their wedding was still on for the upcoming autumn. The cops are waiting for some DNA results to come back before they put out a warrant for him.

Everybody in town seems to be talking about only three things, and that's pretty much what you see on the TV news too: Iraq, the Barça, and the "parking garage" murders.

The Vanguardia's lead story is on Bush's State of the Union speech; they call it "one of the most transcendental speeches of his term." Bush accused Saddam of lying and specifically said that Saddam holds 25,000 liters of anthrax, 38,000 liters of botulism toxin, 500 tons of sarin gas, mustard gas, and VX nerve gas, and 30,000 warheads capable of carrying chemical weapons. That sounds to me like a solid, direct, specific accusation of a "smoking gun" that Bush will now have to back up. Bush also said that there is evidence linking Iraq and terrorist groups, including Al Qaeda, obtained through espionage, secret information, and the statements of arrested prisoners. Colin Powell will present this evidence, which includes photographs, to the UN Security Council on February 5. The Vangua has reported that the British will have a draft resolution ready by then.

The Vangua pays comparatively little attention to the rest of the content of Bush's speech, though they do resume the key points: a $674 billion tax cut over ten years (good move, George!), the necessity to extend health care protection to more of the uninsured (Important problem! Let's hear some specifics. This is a public quality-of-life issue, and it's perfectly justifiable to spend tax money for everybody's benefit to control contagious diseases like TB and AIDS and hepatitis C--they said on today's news that one million Spaniards may have hep C and most don't know it--and to improve the general level of health of the population. How about my plan for a National Preventative Health?), and federal subsidies for religious groups that rehabilitate drug addicts and alcoholics (Bad move, George! The government shouldn't subsidize any religious institution except for, of course, giving it a tax exemption as a charity. Exception: education vouchers "spent" at religious schools. You could argue that the subsidy is not being given to the school, but to the parent, who has the option of choosing one of a number of schools, some public, some private, and some religious.

Back to Iraq. The Vangua has a good report on the diplomatic maneuvering going on right now in Europe. It looks like Blair, Aznar, and Berlusconi, the Gang of Three, the Triple Alliance, the Troika, the Third Triumvirate, are on board with Bush despite a few quibbles. Australia, Poland, the Czech Republic, and Hungary are also listed as being on board. In addition, Slovakia, Romania, Bulgaria, Estonia, Latvia, and Lithuania are behind the US. Anyway, Berlusconi is meeting with Blair today and will meet with Bush tomorrow, after which he will go to Russia and get Putin on board; Putin will need to have his palm greased but will almost certainly go along. Berlusconi and Putin are known for being simpáticos. They're both crooks, so that might have something to do with it. Tomorrow Aznar is meeting with Blair in Madrid. Bush and Blair are meeting at Camp David on Friday, and Blair is then going to France where he will meet with Chirac on Monday and get him on board. Bush, meanwhile will meet with Leszek Miller, prime minister of Poland (remember that name, you'll be seeing it a lot in the weeks to come) on Monday. Miller is already on board so this is probably a pep talk.

All of this makes me think that there will be a showdown in the UN Security Council on February 5 and that the British will propose a second resolution authorizing the use of armed force against Iraq. The US, UK, Spain, France, and Russia will vote yes. China and Germany will abstain. The resolution will pass and the war will begin very soon, within a few days. It will end very soon with a complete collapse of the Iraqi regime. Fewer than 1000 Iraqi civilians will be killed in the fighting, but there will be some gruesome scenes when rough justice is meted out by the people against Saddam's thugs. Very unpleasant stories will come out and many former anti-war people will be convinced of the war's justice after all of Saddam's atrocities are revealed. We then will have to occupy Iraq for at least five years. Since they can produce three million barrels of oil a day, the income from that ought to be more than sufficient to rebuild the country.

Spain has announced that it will not send troops, but will authorize United States use of its bases here. Spain will take charge of logistics in the Mediterranean, and will prepare to back up the Turks if that should be needed. It will provide hospitals and, after the war, a specially trained Guardia Civil unit with experience in Kosovo will form part of the occupation and peacekeeping force in Iraq. That sounds like cooperation pretty much to the limit of Spain's abilities. They really haven't got much of a military.

The Socialists have been challenging Aznar to go to the Congress of Deputies (Parliament) and state his case on the Iraq war. He will do so on February 5, the same day that Powell goes to the UN. Gee, you think Aznar might know something about what Saddam's got up his sleeve that they're not telling us yet? The Socialists are puffing out their chests and bragging that Aznar is only going to speak to the Parliament because they pressured him into it. The Socialists these days are really a bunch of jerks. Felipe González is not my idol, but he did preside over Spain's climb to real First World status during his administration between 1982 and 1996. The guys they've got now, though, are small-minded and petty; they have no plans or ideas except that of opposing Aznar and his governing PP, and so they whine, whimper, and complain every time Aznar announces he's thinking of getting someone to mow the lawn at the Moncloa.

Also, the Americans shot a bunch of Talibans in Afghanistan, eighteen says the Vanguardia, and captured another dozen. These guys were hiding out in the mountains near Pakistan, from where what's left of the Taliban are obviously being supplied. This is the biggest anti-Taliban operation since last March's Anaconda. Anaconda was, of course, much bigger.

The Vanguardia's take on the Iraq situation is that the inspectors' report was "ambivalent". They didn't say that they'd found any weapons of mass destruction yet, but that they certainly weren't ruling out that Saddam may have some. The inspectors complained about lack of "full and sincere" cooperation on the part of Saddam, and they suspect that Saddam is hiding important quantities of chemical and biological weapons. Hans Blix asked specifically about what happened to massive amounts of VX nerve gas, mustard gas, and anthrax, which Iraq definitely had in the nineties and has not accounted for, much less in their 12,000-page declaration on the weapons in their possession; Blix called the pile of documents the Iraqis gave him "recycling". That is, garbage. Blix also suspects that the 16 warheads adapted for chemical weapons that were found may be "the tip of the iceberg". Blix says that he believes that the Iraqis are attempting to hide information from him. However, he asked for more time to continue inspecting.

We think the United States should just say No. (Not to drugs. I'm saying No to saying No to drugs. To further inspections.) First, this was supposed to be Saddam's last chance to come clean. He was supposed to be totally forthcoming with all the information he had and to directly answer all the inspectors' questions while letting them go wherever they wanted. He hasn't been. He is clearly trying to hide something. That right there is a breach of the UN resolution by Saddam. Second and most important, the UN inspections have been merely a distraction. They have not addressed the real point, which is this: In the wake of 9-11, the United States has decided that further terrorist massacres are not going to happen again. The United States suspects that Saddam's government, based on its more than twenty-year record of international criminality, may be working towards another such massacre. Therefore, the United States has decided to get rid of Saddam Hussein, and I am sure that Saddam Hussein is merely the first name on the list. All the UN blah-blah and mumbo-jumbo is merely window-dressing, aimed at tranquilizing those consciences that haven't gotten it through their heads yet that the war is already on and it was Saddam who declared it.

Interestingly, Ari Fleischer contrasted Saddam's obstructive behavior with that of Ukraine, Kazakhstan, and South Africa when they denuclearized for real. Those countries would have been more than thrilled to show UN inspectors their own secret porno collections should the inspectors have requested it. They'd have submitted to the international equivalent of proctology. They said, "Please, please, come inspect us! Ooh, ooh, inspect us some more, don't stop now! Oh my God......" Levity aside, they were serious about what they were doing. Saddam obviously is not.

I wonder what Bush is going to say about the State of the Union. I bet he lets loose at least one of the cards he has up his sleeve, probably one which will prove that Saddam really does have weapons of mass destruction and we can prove it beyond a doubt. If that happens, the French and Germans will have one more chance to get on board when Bush asks for a second Security Council resolution for appearances' sake in the first week of February. If France vetoes it or Germany votes "No", that's their business, and they will face the diplomatic consequences, but that's not to be worried about at this point. The Allies are likely to act soon after the passage (or failure) of the resolution. If they act after a No resolution, the United Nations will be fatally wounded--well, really, it'll just be the coup de grace for the UN, which has proved itself to be little more useful than the League of Nations. Lots of "ifs" here, I know.

By the way, Bush called up Aznar on the phone again, something Aznar is always ready to make public; Fleischer called Spain "a close ally whose counsel is much valued in the current circumstances." Fleischer congratulated Spain on the recent Al Qaeda bust. In case you were wondering, all sixteen of the arrested still in custody have been bound over for trial and are sitting in a lovely Spanish prison. Let's hope they don't put these guys in Can Brians, our local jail that's about as hard to break out of as a chicken farm with no chicken wire.

Catalunya TV is reporting that Hans Blix has given his report to the UN; Iraq has not made clear what happened to quantities of VX gas, anthrax, and Scud missiles, among other things. The only cooperation the Iraqis have given has been passive. Sounds to me like there's a smoking gun here.

Just a comment. I noticed on TV that Hugo Chávez was speaking from behind a lectern on which was draped a Venezuelan flag. Now, my trusty World Almanac has a picture of the Venezuelan flag, with a broad yellow stripe on top, then a blue stripe, and then a red stripe, with seven stars in a rainbow arc in the middle of the blue middle stripe. The flag Chávez was using, though, had a large black Venezuela below the arc of stars, and the shape of Venezuela on that there flag did not correspond to that on your National Geographic map. It corresponded to that of Venezuela AND Guyana. Seems that Chávez is claiming that Guyana is part of Venezuela. Now, there's been a long-standing border dispute between Venezuela and first, the British, who took over Guyana as a colony and held it until the 1960s, and then the Guyanese, when they became independent. The Americans at one point at the turn of the century were called in to mediate the border dispute between Britain and Venezuela. Now it looks like Chávez is claiming the whole thing. He's the typical nationalist jerk who gets wrought up over lines in the jungle, and that kind of person is very dangerous; look what happened in 1995 between Ecuador and Peru, Official Dumbest Latin American War of the Nineties. (The Official Dumbest Latin American War of All Time would be the time El Salvador took on Honduras over the results of a soccer game--or the time Paraguay went at it with Brazil, Argentina, and Uruguay and only like 30,000 Paraguayan men survived, so polygamy had to be introduced to restock the population--or when Peru and Bolivia went after Chile and got creamed--or that time Bolivia and Paraguay had it out over the utterly useless Chaco--or the other two previous Ecuador-Peru wars--or Argentina deciding to take on the Royal Navy--or Santa Anna taking on the US again in 1846, after he'd already been beaten by just the Texans. Only Cool Latin American War Effort Ever: when Brazilian troops fought with the Allies in the Italian campaign between 1943 and 1945.)

Is anybody in America writing about this incredible piece of irony: that France has unilaterally deployed military forces in the Ivory Coast, also known as Côte d'Ivoire? An attempted coup in that former French colony has turned into a nasty civil war. France brought together a group of other West African countries, most of which are French satellites and are considered to be within Paris's sphere of influence, and representatives of both sides in the conflict, at a meeting under the supervision of Jacques Chirac and Kofi Annan in Paris. Now's when the story gets good. This is from today's Vanguardia; the reporter's name is J.R. González Cabezas, who's in Paris.

Violent anti-French reaction in Ivory Coast capital

The capital of the Ivory Coast was yesterday the scene of violent demonstrations against France, in rejection of the agreement reached in Paris to put an end to the civil war. The riots broke out while the conference of West African leaders was preparing to ratify an agreement in the French capital itself, under the active protagonism of Chirac and with the approval of the UN Secretary General, Kofi Annan. What happened in Abidjan confirms the fragility of the commitment formalised in Paris and also the risk assumed alone by France in its diplomatic and military adventure.

After intervening personally on Saturday to obtain President Laurent Ghagbo's acceptance of the agreement, Chirac had to intervene again on Sunday to demand Ghagbo's energetic call to put an end to the violent anti-French riot in Abidjan. The (French) minister of Foreign Affairs, Dominique de Villepin, did not doubt in attributing the events to "extremists close to power".

Starting on Saturday night, dozens of thousands of furious supporters of President Ghagbo, many of them armed with machetes and clubs, invaded the center of Abidjan and assaulted the French Embassy, which was attacked with stones and Molotov cocktails. Hundreds of exalted demonstrators tried to penetrate into the 43rd batallion of marines' military base; they are garrisoned in the capital. The French cultural center, a students' group, department stores, and various business and government offices were also attacked there.

The French soldiers used anti-riot weapons to repel the demonstrators, who also burned the Burkina Faso consulate; that country is accused of supporting rebel groups. Air France suspended its two flights to Abidjan, while Ghagbo and the French ambassador hurried back to the country, where 16,000 French nationals live.

The agreement for the formation of a government of national reconciliation with the presence of the three rebel groups is considered as a finish by Ghagbo's followers. "When the war is not won, one discusses and arrives at compromises, and I have not won the war," he said before leaving Paris, after formally agreeing and promising to put the accord completely into practice, as Chirac demanded. France's unusual interventionism has gone so far as to name, in Paris, the "consensus" prime minister and new strongman of the Ivory Coast, Seydon Diarra, age 69, a Muslim from the north. The EU has pledged €400 million to reconstruct the country.

I am staggered at, first, how much this looks like any early-20th century American intervention in some banana republic, and second, that the French are acting just as unilaterally as you please. They got their other West African dependents to put their stamp of approval on the French military intervention, but I don't recall France consulting with, say, the United States on this, and Kofi Annan is apparently looking on smilingly, though I don't remember ONE SINGLE UN RESOLUTION SAYING THA...OK, OK, I'll calm down and, like chill out for a minute. There. Nice, calm, dignified. I even edited out a seven-letter present participle.

The Vanguardia's take on the Iraq situation today is that the US has made it public that it is willing to go it alone and attack Saddam Hussein. Colin Powell, the designated dove in the Administration, the good cop as opposed to Rumsfeld's bad cop, said at the World Economic Forum in Davos that the Americans "will act although others are not ready to join us", that "if Iraq doesn't disarm, it will be disarmed", and that "It is a fact that Iraq has weapons of mass destruction".

Meanwhile, the Social Forum, the Rainbow Festival of the Perenially Indignant in Porto Alegre, Brazil, has kicked off, and though absolutely nothing useful or original will be said or done there, it is getting big coverage in Spain. Lula da Silva said that he wants us to give him some money. He also said "Peace is not a moral obligation, but a rational imperative, and a peaceful solution at the hands of the UN must be found." The Vanguardia's correspondent mentioned that Da Silva talked a lot about poverty and stuff but said nothing concrete in the way of plans to do anything. Lula's pal Hugo Chávez showed up and "was received with enthusiasm" and "harvested support". Chávez claimed that he will introduce the "Tobin tax" "against monetary speculation" in Venezuela, which I calculate ought to deepen Venezuela's crisis regarding currency reserves. He didn't bother mentioning how, when, or with what he is going to do this.

Maybe we could call Castro, Chávez, and Lula the "Axis of Evel Knievel", since they're all like motorcycle stunt riders, either accelerating at full speed towards the jump off the cliff over the Snake River into oblivion (Lula), already well out over the canyon and heading into a steep nosedive (Chávez, who has also lost control of the steering mechanism on his bike), or having crashed straight into the canyon floor when his (red) parachute failed (Castro).

Cultural note: Barcelona is quite a civilized place to live. It has a brand-new "National" Theater and 34 other stages for plays. Stuff that you might have heard of that's currently on includes "The Vagina Monologues" (hey, I didn't say it was all good or anything), "La Casa de Bernarda Alba" (there's always a Lorca revival on), "Sexual Perversity in Chicago" (there's almost always a David Mamet on, too), "Excess" by Neil La Bute, and "Arsenic and Old Lace". There are two bits of existential pretentiousness on, one by Bergman and the other by Camus. There are two local comic "showmen" on, Ángel Pavlovsky and idiotarian Pepe Rubianes, the internationally-known mime group El Tricicle, four musicals (two local originals) that I've never heard of before, and two plays by local dramatists (J.M. Segarra and J.M. Benet i Jornet, both of whom are also pretentious as all hell, but hey, at least they're producing local drama in big theaters and people go to see it). Local favorite actors Joan Pera and Paco Morán, who are very funny and who always have a crowd-pleaser--these guys' shows, Neil Simon-like comedies, run for months and sell out on the weekends--have another one out. Part of their schtick is they adapt these foreign plays so that the characters and their actions fit in with Catalan and Spanish daily life and popular culture--Oscar is a Barça fan, of course, in their version of "The Odd Couple". Also, fitting in with bilingual real life here in Barcelona, Pera (the straight man) speaks Catalan on stage and Morán (the clown) speaks Spanish. It's a masterful formula. Everybody's happy linguistically and can sit back and enjoy the show.

I am not much of a fan of classical music and don't claim to understand it, but if you like that sort of thing, Barcelona has a first-class opera house, the recently rebuilt and expanded Liceu, and two major concert halls, the much-criticized new Auditori and the Art Nouveau Palau de la Música Catalana, inside a spectacular Domenech and Montaner building. If you're a music fan you'll want to make a concert at the Palau part of your agenda while here. There's something on almost every night and prices are quite cheap. You don't have to dress up though, like, leather shoes, slacks, and a shirt with a collar might be nice.

There's a major trend that I've noticed here. All kinds of Eastern European orchestras are touring Western Europe playing popular favorites. They are advertised on billboards and with stick-up posters around the city. Coming to Barcelona soon are the Bielorussian Chamber Orchestra doing Handel's "Water Music" and Vivaldi's "Four Seasons", the Bulgarian State Opera Orchestra and Chorus doing chorales by Verdi and Bizet and "Carmina Burana", the Minsk Symphony doing De Falla's "Aranjuez", Rachmaninoff's Second concert for piano, "Swan Lake", and "Scheheradze", and the Russian National Orchestra and Chorus doing Bach's "Passion of Saint Matthew", Beethoven's Ninth, and Schubert's Unfinished. They must be making money doing this, giving the people what they want, and they must not have been making too much dough back home because if they had been, they'd be there, not here.

The Communists produced too many classically-trained musicians, more than their internal market could support, and not enough pop and rock and gadinga-dinga music. This is a beautiful example of the laws of supply and demand--there's not enough demand and too much supply of classical music in Eastern Europe since Communists disdained pop music and trained musicians only in classical styles, underemployed Eastern classical musicians see there's money in the West but not much demand, they create a demand by advertising they're going to play pieces that ordinary Joes like me have actually heard before, and they carry around prestigious-sounding names to reassure the casual concert-goer that he's seeing a real quality performance.

Meanwhile, I'll bet five bucks that Western pop groups are raking it in in Eastern Europe due to the lack of tradition of commercial pop over there. I know there are a lot of American groups playing American music--country, blues, gospel, rockabilly--who tour around Western Europe calling themselves authentic Americans with real roots and soul. There are a lot of Europeans interested in those kinds of music, but not enough of them to make that stuff part of the mainstream over here--but enough to pack a club. What these Americans are is competent bar bands who'd make a decent living back home but get treated as if they were, like, the real thing over here. Often, if it's a smaller band playing in a small club, only the frontman will be American and his sidekicks will be locals.

In the Sunday section of today's Vanguardia, there's an article titled "A State Crime?". It's a full-page story, and the hook is that one William Pepper has published another book, this one called "An Act of State: The Execution of Martin Luther King". William Pepper is a notorious conspiracy fruitcake whose crowning achievement was, in 1999, to persuade a mentally borderline Memphis jury to decide, in a civil case, that one Lloyd Jowers had been behind the King conspiracy. The award was $100.

The best book on the King assassination is Gerald Posner's Killing the Dream, which concludes that James Earl Ray did the murder, possibly with the help in the planning and the getaway of at least one of his brothers. It cannot be excluded that there was a low-level conspiracy, as it was a well-known rumor in America's prisons that there was a reward out, to be paid by some racist businessmen, for King's head. There's an outside chance that rumor might have been true.

I googled "william pepper king conspiracy" and found these five articles from fairly respectable sources, all of which condemn Pepper as a fraud, a nut, or both: The Washington Post (by Gerald Posner, a must-read), Court TV, CNN/Time, Slate, and the Boston Globe (another must-read, by Christopher Hitchens).

Here's the article, in italics, of course.

Maybe it was because of the glacial cold that froze the large neogothic tower of the Riverside church in Harlem last Thursday, but an audience of thirty people didn't seem like much to listen to the lawyer and former collaborator with Martin Luther King, William Pepper, at the release of his new book, "An Act of State: The Execution of Martin Luther King". The work is the fruit of an investigation which has stretched on for more than ten years, in which Pepper has brought to life a series of evidence that prove that King was the victim of a plot coordinated by various American intelligence services, with the collaboration of the Army, the Memphis police, and the local Mafia.

"The media in the United States doesn't want to listen, this book will never come out in the newspapers," assured Pepper. And, in fact, despite the unending homages to the black leader rendered these days because of Martin Luther King Day, only the weekly Village Voice has published an article about the book. The New York Times asked Pepper for an op-ed, but they pulled out at the last moment.

Although Pepper's exhaustive investigation seems made for Hollywood, after the success of Oliver Stone's JFK, not even television has shown any interest. White but committed, Pepper worked with King during the year prior to his assassination on April 4, 1968. "They were times," Pepper recalls, "in which the reverend and civil rights activist became radicalized, strengthened his opposition to the Vietnam War, and widened his accusations to include "economic racism".

Just a year before falling, hit by a sniper's bullet on the balcony of a Memphis hotel, King had made a speech in the selfsame Riverside church in New york, and the rebellion of the Afro-Americans spread throughout the country and combined with the campaign against the war. "After that speech in this church," Pepper explains, "a hundred cities were under siege and the country in flames. They were very frightened in Washington, and King had to be eliminated."

This lawyer's arguments do not have much to do with the movies. Pepper is Professor of Law at Oxford University (???--not the one in England) and has been accumulating abundant evidence since he began representing James Earl Ray, the small-time crook who was accused of the death of King because of alleged racist motives and who remained in jail until his death in 1998.

"Ray was a docile, passive person who was no more racist than any working-class guy," explains the researcher. "He told me that he said he was guilty because they'd warned him that if he didn't confess, he'd fry in the electric chair." In any case, as soon as Ray entered jail, he asked for another trial. "Ray," says Pepper, "was set up in an operation planned together by the Army's military intelligence staff and a group of arms traffickers linked to the Mafia."

For this chronicler of the life and death of King, it is proven that the intelligence services considered that it was an absolute priority to subvert the civil rights movement, so they even infiltrated its ranks. The King operation was carried out by the Army, "because it had more blacks than the CIA and so it would have to take care of the protests."

"The role of the Army and other governmental agencies that collaborated in the murder of Dr. King," writes Pepper in his book, "has been one of the most sinister secrets of our country." According to his version, that afternoon of April 4, 1968, a team of Green Beret snipers just arrived from Vietnam had traveled to Memphis with one order: to assassinate Martin luther King and another black leader, the reverend Andrew Young.

Two of them, who now, after changing identities, live in Costa Rica and are Pepper's direct sources, were posted on the roof of a building nest to the Lorraine Motel, where King was staying the day before leading a demonstration of sanitation workers, principally blacks, as part of his campaign against economic racism.

Forced to change the room he had been given on the first floor for 306, on the third floor and much more exposed. King leaned over the balcony and was hit by a bullet that entered his jaw, went through his neck, and lodged in his shoulder. He was pronounced dead on arrival at the hospital.

Nevertheless, it wasn't the military intelligence agents who had fired, says Pepper. When he was aiming at Young, the military sniper, Pepper's source, heard another shot. It had been fired, Pepper assures, by Earl Clark, a Memphis policeman who was hiding with one of the members of the gang of arms traffickers among the weeds of a nearby vacant lot. Clark, according to the investigator, was following orders from the Mafia padrino of Memphis Frank Liberto and his superior in the New Orleans Mafia, Carlos Marcello, involved in illegal arms trafficking to Latin America.

After King's assassination, the protest movement in which the campaign against the Vietnam War and the struggle for Afro-American civil rights entered into decline. A year before, Malcolm X--another irreplaceable leader--fell victim to another bullet. "Do you think the government killed Malcolm, too?" asked a middle-aged black woman in the Riverside church. "In the case of Martin Luther King I know for sure," Pepper affirmed; "with Malcolm X it would be a speculation, but yes, I believe the government killed him too."

Many of those present, survivors of the struggles back then, let it be known that they think the same thing. "The groups of special operations went to the demonstrations with photos of thise who the authorities considered to be dangerous, with orders to select them as targets in case a riot broke out," said Pepper.

What was said that day in Harlem should have been a front-page news story, if not in the United States, in the rest of the world. But it was too cold for the journalists to go to the Riverside church.

You see what we're up against over here? This article can kindly be understood as the ravings of a paranoiac schizophrenic or unkindly considered as the cynical lies of a charlatan, depending on what you believe William Pepper is. What it's not, though, is anything that anybody with the slightest common sense could believe. It is out-and-out bullshit. Bullcrap. And bullfuck. Yet it is published in La Vanguardia, the conservative leading newspaper--200,000 or so daily circulation--in Spain's second-largest city, as if it were fact. They didn't bother looking up William Pepper, that's for sure, so they're guilty of gross journalistic negligence at the very least. Of course, if they did look up Dr. Pepper, as he likes to be called, and discovered what a nut everybody respectable says he is, then they're guilty of bad faith. I suspect the latter, though the former can't be ruled out. Probably some combination of the two.

But if you're an average intelligent educated Spanish Joe who believes what he reads in the paper and sees on the TV news about the US, you see this crap and you believe it. Perfectly reasonably, they say, "Hey, that's what I read in the newspaper, so I believe it's true." No wonder they all think America is Satanic, if this is what the conservative press stakes its journalistic respectability to print. Imagine what the leftist press is like.

I did look up the Village Voice piece. It's mildly skeptical, not nearly enough. It does mention that Dr. Pepper's next mission is to go to Venezuela and preside a "fact-finding commission"--at Hugo Chávez's personal request.

It's an incredible day in La Vanguardia. I'm going to be here translating and typing all afternoon (hey, people, if you need an English-Spanish / Spanish-English translator with lots of experience, just e-mail me at crankyyanqui@yahoo.com). Why? Because the only weapons we have against the idiotarians are logic, reason, facts, and ridicule in our war for the hearts and souls. Translating this vile steaming putrid suppurating filth (remember that disgusting room that Luke and Han Solo and Chewbacca get stuck in in Star Wars? Even more maggot-infested than that) gives us an ability to use those weapons against idiotarianism.

I've wondered whether what I've been doing here is mere "preaching to the choir", since I've been asked about it. I've decided that no, what I write is not going to convince too many people who have already decided that I'm wrong. However, it might convince some people who are right now sitting on the fence, not sure of what to think. It might also reinforce the opinions of those people who are predisposed to sympathize with my libertarian free-market hawkish perspective. So, since I'm not convincing a lot of Socialists and anti-Americans, am I wasting my time? I don't think so. It's not a waste of time at all to either provide more ammunition to your side or to try to bring over people who might not have made up their mind yet.

Now, what I need to try to do better is to focus my posts. I want some of them to give support to other people who share my ideas, and perhaps influence my allies on smaller points within the general framework of a democratic capitalist system (e.g. we may both be free-market on economics but you might believe in, say, exclusively private health care, while I would defend a mixed private-public system). But I want other posts to try to convince middle-of-the-roaders to come over to democratic capitalism, to vote for candidates and parties that support a democratic capitalist system. One thing I'm going to do in those posts is to cut down the ridicule and sneering (and bad language) that I so gleefully fill this blog with. Middle-of-the-roaders are people who aren't sure what they think, who can't choose between two or three or four options, and who are looking for someone to persuade them and win them over. Being straight-up, treating your opponents with respect, and trying to see the merit in opposing points of view while being firm in your own basic convictions is what will persuade the undecided of your decency and reliability.

Now we'll see whether I can actually do that. To paraphrase St. Augustine, "Give me good taste, credibility, and dignity--but not yet!"

Anyway, Cinderella Bloggerfeller has a post on today's Bartasar Porcel eruption. Someone also provided a rather free translation of Porcel's column at the Axis of Porcel HQ. Our translation here is somewhat more traditional yet less expressive. It's in italics. Wiseass comments by us which will only serve to annoy moderates and drive them away are not.

Models of War

The American secretary of defense, Donald Rumsfeld, has insultingly nicknamed us "Old Europe". Well, he did it to France and Germany, which means the same thing. Because if it turns out that Spain, because Aznar blindly follows Bush's war drums, is the New Europe, we're ready: we're Luis de Galinsoga's (a Francoist writer) "sentinels of the West" again! Rumsfeld adds that the new center of European gravity has moved to the east. Where? Russia, Chechenia, the former Yugoslavia, Bulgaria, places they barely know the location of? I don't think Bush is ignorant, as they say; I think his whole team is. Besides, so inefficient in preparing war--these months of rummaging around bellowing at thousands of soldiers have exasperated the Americans themselves--or in hunting Bin Ladin like Aznar has done and is doing with the chapapote (Galician oil spill).

Comments: a) the last sentence is out-and-out incomplete, with no subject or predicate, and can't be justified as a case of intentional rule-breaking for stylistic purposes. It's a case of Porcel's not even bothering to go over the three or four paragraphs of rant that he sents in to the Vangua every day. b) Porcel knows less about preparing war than my cat Oscar. c) Note the standard canard that Americans know less about geography than the cultured Europeans. My response when confronted with someone who tries this one--"Americans don't know where Barcelona is"--is always, "Oh, I managed to get here just fine. You just fly from New York to MADRID--that's BARAJAS Airport, near Madrid, which is the CAPITAL of SPAIN. Barajas, near Madrid, is a BIG airport to which LOTS of flights come from New York. Then you change to a SMALLER plane to fly on to Barcelona." If they persist I say, "Look, give me one really good reason why someone in Kansas needs to know where Barcelona is. It's not like he cares or anything." Fisticuffs are normally threatened at this point. d) Note that Porcel proudly includes himself among the "Old Europeans" without any invitation at all to do so. e) Note Porcel's obvious bad faith; he knows perfectly well that Rumsfeld and Fleischer were talking about NATO allies Poland, the Czech Republic, Slovakia, Hungary, Romania, and, yes, Bulgaria, rather than Russia and Chechenia and Serbia, as the "New Europe". Were I from a Western European country, I would not shoot off my mouth regarding what happened in the former Yugoslavia.

Saddam is a brutal dictator who is only good at oppressing the people and submitting it to hunger, but Bush wants to overthrow him, we don't know exactly why, unless it's to give it to other masters, like for instance his allies the Saudi rulers, one of the major embarrassments on the planet and who whip up the fundamentalism that blew up the Twin Towers more than Saddam himself. And all because of the chapapote! Why doesn't Bush go to Galicia and get what's there, which has even been blessed by Fraga (the conservative prime minister of Galicia, rather a Strom Thurmond figure). It's shocking that international politics have reached such low quality.
Comments: a) Nice "yes, but". b) More bad faith or just stupidity: Iraq will not be turned over to the Saudis. That is just not on anyone's agenda. c) The Galicia oil spill, of course, had nothing to do with American international policy. Porcel is blatantly trying to swing both disparate clubs the Spanish anti-Americans and anti-Aznarites are trying to bash Aznar on: the oil spill and the upcoming Iraq war, which are entirely unconnected.

But we should be specific: the minister in Washington labels us old-fashioned because we don't believe in war or in war without reasons. That is, Germany, with three horrible wars in a century, the biggest that humanity has seen, and France, unleashing them too or suffering from them, while the peace of the EU has broght us an unimaginable tranquility and prosperity, should embrace weapons because (America says so), with blind enthusiasm. Donald Rumsfeld: we must remember that name and, if we see him on one side of the street, cross over to the other side. Russia, massacring the Chechens yesterday and today, and with its gulags behind it, has become the model: uf!

Comments: a) Russia is not the model for anything. It's Poland, the Czechs, and Hungary who are the model. This was explicitly stated. Porcel's bit of bad faith and / or ignorance is repeated, making it clear that the first time wasn't a mistake. b) Mr. Porcel, you and the rest of the European Left did damn little to dump the gulags on the trashpile of history. c) The contempt for Rumsfeld is rather pathetic, since it's fairly obvious who the better man is when we compare Rumsfeld and Porcel himself, and anyone who's been writing a newspaper column which opines on international issues for like about the last fifteen years ought to know who Donald Rumsfeld is already. d) Europe has enjoyed peace since 1945 because of NATO and the American nuclear umbrella, not because of anything the European Union ever did. Since Mr. Porcel is so eager to consider himself alluded to by the phrase "the Old Europe", he might remember Old Europe's admirable skill and dexterity in handling the Yugoslavian debacle. Old Europe neither can nor will fight and so it tries to make a virtue out of this.

It's true that the United States was basic and decisive in freeing western Europe from Naziism and we must be thankful. But this constant desire to go to war, whether with the Rifle Association which has the country under siege, with General Custer and company eliminating the Indians, with the ferocious internal racism, with the exporting of films with demential violence, or with its protection for the dictatorships of the south, it is not at all convincing, no.

Comments: a) Note the SECOND "Yes, but" of this article. b) It's obvious that Porcel's concept of the US comes almost completely from the movies, not from any sort of research into or reading about the subject. c) Boy, a good Porcelazo doesn't come along too often, but when we get one, it's a good one.

John Bono from No Replacement for Displacement has a hilarious takedown of the Rolling Stones' pretentious anti-global-warming concert.

I just do not get this column from NRO. If I read it right, the author is saying that real pirates and buccaneers were horrible people, and it is incongruent that pirates have rather a rebellious, devil-may-care image today when in real life they were horribly frightening. So far so good. Then he tells us that he thought it was appropriate that the Patriots won the Super Bowl last year because of their name. OK, no prob. Then he says we should root against the Buccaneers because their name is so inappropriate, like calling a team the Rapists or the Robbers or the Murderers. I'm still with him, but the problem here is that the Buccaneers' rival is the Oakland Raiders. Uh, the Raiders use pirate imagery, too, and have been using it for more than forty years, while the Bucs have only existed since '77. In order to be consistent, we would have to root against both teams for glorifying pirates. I always root against the Raiders, no matter what--I could no more root for the Raiders, ever, even if they were playing the SS Amerikanisch Fussball Reichsformationgruppe team, than I could for the Cowboys, or the Yankees, or the Lakers--so I'm going to ignore the whole glorifying-pirates issue and root for Tampa Bay. Even though they have some insufferable loudmouths on their team and I like Rich Gannon and Jerry Rice.

Just a few jottings while wondering whether Shane McGowan ever got his teeth fixed...Sandra Bullock, in Madrid to flog a movie with Hugh Grant, said, "Why doesn't Bush take a vote so that the American people can give their opinion?" Uh, Sandy, we already did that. It's called an election. Hugh Grant kept his mouth shut, demonstrating that he really is smarter than most actors...The "parking garage" murderer is still on the loose after killing two women in twelve days in the same uptown Barcelona parking garage. The papers are really hinting that the cops are interested in the second victim's husband. In both cases the killer took the victim's credit card and tried to use it; he got 300 euros out of a bank machine after the first murder...A band calling itself the Misfits, with Jerry as the only original member left, Marky Ramone on drums, and Dez Cadena of Black Flag on guitar played here in Barcelona. They did about forty songs, including half a dozen Ramones covers. I'm sorry I missed it, though those guys are just as big dinosaurs now as the Floyds and Zeps and ELPs that they started out as a reaction to were then...Johann Mühlegg, the "Spanish" "winner" of two gold medals at the Salt Lake City Winter Olympics, has been hit with a two-year suspension for what they call "doping" over here. He got mad at the German Olympic committee and decided to change nationality, so he sold himself to the highest bidder, who turned out to be Spain--€72,000 per gold medal. Mühlegg won two gold medals in cross-country skiing. He then came in first in the main event, the 50-km race. He then failed a drug test. They stripped him of the medal for the 50-km race but allowed him to keep the other two. His suspension will run out before the next Olympics, so he's training away...Pau Gasol almost had a 20-20 game; he had 24 points and 17 rebounds against Sacramento. The FC Barcelona basketball squad's pride and joy, Slobovian (or some country called something like Slobovia) small forward Gregor Fucka, is having a disappointing season. We have nicknamed him, of course, "Mutha".