Here's one to send in to Hollywood Idiots or whatever that website is called: it's rebel singer Patti Smith, now 57 and looking it. Yeah, right, Patti, how really rebellious is someone who's still living off the royalties from her only hit song, which is a Springsteen cover, for Chrissakes? Anyway, Patti's in town to, get this, read seven poems, "accompanied by guitarist Oliver Ray." By the way, they refer to her as the one who "introduced punk to the United States." Wrong again. Punk is an American invention. The Ramones introduced it into Britain. All that stupid shit about, like, getting half your hair shaved off and sticking a safety pin through your eyelid and sewing pork chops to your bowling shirt and gobbing on the dance floor and spouting nihilistic bullshit and naming yourself "Billy Christ" and whatever else punk culture was, agreed, that's British, but the music is American in origin.

Anyway, they interviewed Patti (not the one who sang "The Warrior", the one who sang "Because the Night") in the Vangua today. Here goes...

Q. Poetry as a weapon of agitation has a long tradition in your country, at least among more enlightened circles.
A. Yes, but now we're going through a critical moment, not only in my country but in the rest of the world. That's why I think one of the most interesting and exciting movements is antiglobalization. Really, it's the only one that has a planetary dimension, and it is mobilizing many more people than the powerful thought. And in my country too, it's even worse, with all the people who are in opposition to something, more than ever after 9-11, are criminalized; I'm envious of Europe. Look, I was at the demonstration in Paris and I didn't see any police; in London, the same thing; in Spain, same thing. On the other hand, in the United States the people who are opposed to the war and to Bush's government feel intimidated, even physically intimidated. That is the difference, the tragic difference.

Q. Doubtlessly, you've been accused more than once of being antipatriotic.
A. Sometimes it seems that dissenting poets are the greatest terrorists in my country. I think the true patriot is someone who fights for freedom, which is something that makes up the history of my own country. From this point of view, President Bush is not a patriot but a nationalist, someone who doesn't care about other people's freedom.

Q. In a country like yours, where the citizens do not seem to be big fans of reading, poetry is not a weapon with a great future.
A. Poetry has a growing audience, very concentrated, that's true. I don't distinguish between read poetry and sung poetry, which is what I do. The role of the poet in this world in this sense is very necessary now because we need a critical voice about the Pandora's Box that the Iraq war has opened up, a catastrophe that the American public is viewing, anesthetized by the government and the media.

Right. Poets who speak against the government in America are criminalized. My ass. It's Cuba where people, including poets, who speak against the government are actually IMPRISONED. As for poets in America, I think we've jailed a total of one, Ezra Pound, for collaborating with Mussolini's Fascists, and that was like sixty years ago. If you want to call Thoreau a poet, fine, he spent a night in jail once. BFD. Walt Whitman likely got picked up for soliciting sailors at one time or another. Edgar Allan Poe, Stephen Crane, and Dylan Thomas, who wasn't even ours, and Brendan Behan, who wasn't either, probably got thrown into one drunk tank or another a few times.

Also, it's about time we came up with a couple of literary reference metaphors better than "opening up Pandora's Box" and "the emperor has no clothes". I am heartily sick of both of these.

The Guardian lays into Tam Dalyell, the second loudmouth British leftist to screw up big-time in recent weeks. First Gorgeous George Galloway and now Tam Tam Go; hope either Pilger the Pimp or Beirut Bob's next. Anyway, check it out for an exposure of the anti-Semitism so tragically common among the European Left, much worse than what remains of the anti-black racism of Trent Lott and his ilk on the Southern Republican paleo-right. That does still exist and I strongly denounce it--evil old men Strom Thurmond and Jesse Helms, along with neanderthal Dems Fritz Hollings and Robert Byrd, the man who holds the Guinness record for most buildings named after him in West Virginia history and who also is probably the only remaining elected official in America to have ever been a member of the Ku Klux Klan. (Link through FrontPage.)

If you're interested in the story about trade in cat and dog fur, here's a link to an activist group called Voice 4 Dogs. It's an activist site and so I won't vouch for the accuracy of everything in it, but you might check it out. I've made up my mind on this one, and my position is somewhat different than the one you'll see farther down. If we kill rabbits and pigs and sheep for their meat, all right. Humans are naturally omnivores and if you eat meat, that's your right. I am not going to criticize you. I don't eat meat, but I won't say you shouldn't. (Full disclosure: I do occasionally eat fish and arthropods, at restaurants or at someone else's house. Never birds or mammals. Haven't done it since I was 13. I also do my best not to buy mammal meat for the cats.)

But, unless we're Eskimos or, like, a stone age tribe in the Amazon, we don't need furs or skins. We Westerners can live just fine with leather substitutes and fake furs. Since we're already killing millions of cows, it would be pretty dumb not to use their skins to make leather, and I do wear cow leather shoes and belts. If we stopped eating cow, though, then I'd change my position on leather.

I'd like to see the fur trade outlawed. I don't care whether that's non-libertarian or not; it simply is not necessary to kill animals for that purpose, whether minks or seals or beaver or cats, and I would therefore like to see it illegalized. What to do with the domestic animals: sterilize the great majority of them and let them live out their lives peacefully. The number of domestic animals would drop 99%, and we could be eugenic and choose the ones we don't sterilize for characteristics that promote good health and high quality of life--i.e. none of those too-short Persian noses or deaf Siamese. Those domestic animals who will be descended from those few not sterilized (naturally, we'll keep neutering 99% of them) will be scarce, expensive, and highly cherished, just like horses are today in the West.

It'll never happen, of course. It's much too utopian. But I am never going to buy anything ever again that might possibly be made from an animal skin or animal fur. And I am going to continue picking up the abandoned cats that I can on the streets.

This article from Fox News, if it turns out to be true, is a signal of the effectiveness of US policy in the Middle East. Iran is worried enough to sit down and talk nice and maybe continue permitting democracy to develop; I've always said that the collective leadership in Tehran could be dealt with without using military force, and if the Syrians are really willing to play nice, too, then we ought to be able to deal with Hamas and Hezbollah and the al Aqsa Martyrs and the like as they deserve to be dealt with. If these gangs were cut off from their sources of money and arms--no more Saudi cash, no more cash from Saddam, no more safe havens in Syria and Lebanon and Afghanistan, no more training in Libya, no more arms from France and Russia and China and North Korea, no more hiding out among the radicals in London and Paris--they would be crushable.

It seems to me that the new world order, enforced by a loose Anglo-American-European-East Asian coalition, is going to be a) No interference with democratic states; b) Tolerance for non-democratic states that are not genocidal internally or threatening to others externally; c) No tolerance for those who massacre their own people or threaten their neighbors; d) Extermination for terrorists. If we can move Syria and Iran from group C, where they are now, to group B, it will all have been worth it. If we can get either of them to move anywhere near group A, something greatly good for the whole of humanity will have happened. If we can get Iraq even halfway to group A, then the war is completely justified. And if we can wipe out the various international terrorist gangs, which is very obviously the next military step, that'll force the Palestinians to accept a peace deal and, perhaps, make Palestine a group B state on the way to being group A. Those are a lot of ifs, a whole lot of ifs. But I'm optimistic; I think we're on the way to a much more peaceful world five years from now. If we can get the Chinese to be responsible and tell Kim Jong Il to behave himself.

They got Oscars and Emmys and Tonys and Grammys and Pulitzers, none of which either Murph or I is ever going to win, so we figured we could give out some of our own awards. Each award winner receives, apart from a swift kick in the ass, a signed copy of José María Mendiluce's latest novel about a volunteer in a Palestinian refugee camp becoming conscious of the need for Third World solidarity, and five euros off admission to Barcelona's Forum of Cultures 2004, to be held in February 2005.

We're gonna call these awards "Oscars", too, after my cat Oscar. I figure we have as much right to use the name as the Academy. The name fits our award winners because Oscar is sneaky, sly, unstable, not especially smart, doesn't bathe often, and has never been known to utter a single epigram. Trophies consisting of dried Oscar vomit scraped from this very floor, tastefully mounted upon a genuine wood-grain fiberboard plaque, can be found for sale in the lobby.

So without further ado, let's move on to the nominations.

IBERIAN NOTES OFFICIAL "OSCAR" ACHIEVEMENT AWARDS:

CURRENT EVENTS

Arnaldo Otegi Award for Questionable Sanity
 Xavier Arzallus, Basque nationalist leader and wannabe Pol Pot
 Remei Margarit, alleged psychologist and user-up of space in la Vangua
 Javier Nart, TV debate opponent of mouthpiece of Iberian Notes conspiracy

Jimmy Carter Irrelevance Trophy
 Jacques Chirac, a lame duck in a frog pond
 Bono, Ireland’s next president
 Barbra Streisand, California’s next governor

Jesús Gil y Gil Award for Being On the Make
 George Galloway, rebellious against Tony but surprisingly supine regarding Saddam
 Hillary Clinton, who is not running in 2004. Just wait till 2008.
 Carlos Menem. They can’t really, can they? It’s Argentina. They can.

Bin Laden Award for Most Mysterious Disappearance
 Saddam Hussein, either roadkill under rubble or honored guest in Bielorussia
 “Stakeknife”, former IRA informant, soon to be formerly alive
 Al Gore. He won’t really, will he? It’s Al Gore. He will.

ARTS

Operación Triunfo Award for Biggest Flop in Pop
 Madonna, morally flabby slag
 Rosa from OT. Where have you gone, Rosa Lopez? A nation turns its lonely eyes to you.
 The Dixie Chicks. Don’t dis the president if you’re country singers, girls. Rule Number One.

Adolfo Aristain Award for Most Boring Socialist-Realist Angst-Flick
 Los Lunes Al Sol, a Bardempotheosis of boredom. The Full Monty, but not funny.
 Kamchatka. Where the hell is that?
 Los Soldados de Salamina, a Commie take on a Fascist novel. Result: tedium.

Baltasar Porcel Cup for Poet Most Out of His or Her Depth
 BP himself, see daily column of drivel, drool, dreck, and dogma
 Harold Pinter . Poetic enough, as you can’t understand the dialogue.
 The late Ezra Pound. Anybody that nutty deserves some kind of posthumous recognition.

Robert Fisk Hysteria In History Lifetime Achievement Award
 Noam Chomsky, still crazy after all these years
 Tomás Alcoverro from La Vanguardia, dean of the Beirut press corps. And likely the single most corrupt journalist in the whole Middle East.
 Maruja Torres. If they could bottle “shrill”, this is what it would taste like.

SPORTS

Van Gaal Award for Least Popular Sports Personality
 Lovely Louis himeslf, hired and fired by the same club twice in three years.
 His boss Joan Gaspart, who managed to spend fifty million euros on Marc Overmars and Emmanuel Petit
 And Enric Reyna, his successor, for being dumb enough to volunteer to inherit the Gaspartosaurus

Maradona Trophy for Most Money (More than €15 million) Wasted on a Signing
 Geovanni. He sucks.
 Rochemback. He sucks.
 Overmars. He sucks.

Splintered Shin Award for Worst Hackers in Spanish Football
 The entire defence of Atlético de Madrid, savage but smiling
 The entire defence of Sevilla, cheered on by ten thousand squatters waving red flags
 Carles Puyol, hoist on his own petard when he got his own face smashed this season

Anti-.Synergy Worse-Than-Its-Parts Team Award
 Barça. Never before have so few wasted so much money on so little.
 ETA. The fat lady is singing, you scum
 Axis of Weasels. Three lightweights take on the champs, and Rocky was just a movie.

Jesús Gil at Ibidem links to this BBC story on the European trade in cat and dog fur. I have to agree with Jesús that if we raise cows and sheep and rabbits to kill for food or fur or whatever reason, then there's no reason we can't do that with cats and dogs either. Enough cats and dogs are put to death every year in so-called animal shelters anyway, for no really good reason, that it's hard to be angry at people who kill animals in order to put part of the animals' bodies to use.

That said, I'd certainly like to find out who is selling cat skins here in Barcelona. I'll denounce them to Jordi Portabella, the loudmouthed Republican Left leader and City Councilman. He's the guy who got the Barcelona pound to adopt a no-kill policy, to his credit.

What I'd really like to see is a policy to sterilize most domestic cats and all strays possible; that way, soon, cats would become less common, rather expensive, and highly cherished, rather in the same way that cruelty to horses (there was a very serious movement in Victorian England against such cruelty, which was seen every day in the streets; Black Beauty is the classic anti-cruelty-to-horses novel) has ended now that horses are rare, expensive, and cherished. And, to be very crude about it, the same thing is true of the treatment of human children. Now that there's one to the family, a lot more care of them is taken than in those not-so-long-ago days when there were nine, of whom seven made it out of infancy.

I'd like to see the same thing done for dogs as well, and I'd be in favor of a couple of breedicides, sterilizing all dogs of several problematic breeds--dobermans, rottweilers, pit bulls, maybe a couple of others. Those breeds would die out in this very generation, and human lives would be saved. No, I am not implying that this sort of dog eugenics should be applied to people, so please don't call me a Nazi.

It's always fun to flip through the Sunday Vangua because it's a double-size dose of pure Vangua Old Europeanness. See, Catalonia is the most Old European place in Europe. Catalanists have identified themselves with England, Germany, and / or France rather than Spain since Catalanism became an important political movement in the second half of the nineteenth century. The thing about contemporary Catalonia is that it has always had an income higher than the rest of Spain's but lower than France's and Italy's, but a cultural level similar to that of France and northern Italy (Or Madrid and Old Castile.) Catalonia therefore tends to disdain Spanish culture and to adulate Paris's or Milan's or London's. The Catalan Francophiles think the French are superior beings and that France is a model for Catalonia to follow--and if a Catalanist doesn't think that about the French, he probably does think that about the British or the Germans. (Note: Some 50% of Catalans are Catalanists. Some 20-30% of Catalanist Catalans are Cataloonies.)

The Francophile and Germanophile Catalanists are more French than a poodle (or more German than a dachshund) because they've transferred their nationalism to France or Germany. Catalanists are highly nationalistic about their national culture, and justifiably so, though the main thing that distinguishes Catalan literature from any other country's is that no other national literature is full of boasting about how great Catalonia is. But a Catalanist can't be proud of the military or diplomatic or sports status and prestige of his chosen power unit, Catalonia, because Catalonia has null international prestige. It's virtually unknown outside Western Europe.

And, of course, a Catalanist can't be proud of Spain's military or diplomatic or sports successes because he has chosen Catalonia rather than Spain as the power unit closest to his heart. Choosing Catalonia implies rejecting Spain, and many Catalanists, mostly Cataloonies, actively desire misfortune for Spain. Certainly many Barcelonese root against the Spanish national soccer team; the Spanish national squad plays here only very rarely, because when given the chance the football federation chooses to play on a home field, not in enemy territory.

What this means is that a Catalanist has to choose a major power unit to support. It's kind of like those baseball fans in Columbia, Missouri, who don't have a big league team in their town, so they have to decide between the Kansas City Royals and the St. Louis Cardinals if they want to root for a real team playing in the sphere and at the level where it really counts. Who cares if the single-A Columbia Peckerwoods beat the Springfield Inbreds or not? Well, people in central and southwest Missouri, nowhere else. Equally, who really cares what the Catalan regional government decides? Well, people in Catalonia, nowhere else. If you're a Catalanist who wants to take a position that ain't just woofin' on any world event of importance, you've got to pick one of the various sides that are confronting one another, and those three sides have been the Brits, the French, and the Germans during most of the 150-year history of Catalan nationalism. The Yanks, being Johnny-come-latelies and opposed at one time or another to all three of the Catalan Europhilias, are not a side chosen by many. There were a good few people who chose up sides with the Russians back in the good old days, but since about 1989 we haven't heard much from the Russophiles, assuming there are any left besides Remei Margarit. They've all gone over to the French.

Anyway, the Franco- and Germanophiles around here are even more radically Old European in their attitudes than the Old Europeans in Paris and Berlin, since somebody who suffers from a philia toward a foreign national group is only capable of seeing the good about that adopted national group--and to him anybody who supports a national group opposed in some way to his chosen philia is pure evil. Thus the Catalan Francophile is much more aggressively pro-French (and thus anti-American and British) than a Frenchman himself. When you combine this with good old traditional Iberian anti-American feeling and the Marxist-anarchist-Leninist socioeconomic perspective of many Catalanists and almost all Cataloonies, it's no wonder this place is seething with Yankee-hatred. Only the Anglophiles, who are often but not always "liberals" in local terminology, have been backing Britain and the US in the current international crisis triggered by 9-11--and there are not a few Anglophiles whose philia is for the British Left, and those guys are of course supporting the Beirut Bob Fisk / George Galloway wing of said British Left.

Enough generalizations about those wacky Catalans and their Cataloony minority.

There was a major ETA bust near Bordeaux Friday night. They got one of the leaders of ETA's "military branch", two hit men, and one infrastructure collaborator. Apparently there have been two more arrests made based on the information they squeezed out of these guys. Anyway, the French and Spanish antiterrorist squads had these people's house under surveillance and made the move to arrest them--naturally, they waited as long as possible before making the bust to see if anybody else they could identify showed up. The four arrestees were packing up their (stolen) cars to leave, so they sprang the trap and arrested the lot.

There have so far been seventeen arrests made of ETA terrorists this year in France. Excellent. I sure hate to give them the credit they deserve, but the French police have done an excellent job rounding up terrorists recently.

I've said this before. My position on this one is that in Kansas we have the death penalty for first-degree murder. To execute someone he must first be found guilty by a jury, have sentence imposed by the judge, have said sentence confirmed by the jury, go through an obligatory appeal before a different judge and jury, go through all other appeals the convict's lawyer can think of, and then have the death warrant signed by the governor. Those are an awful lot of people who have to sign off on an execution, and if all those people are corrupt and stupid then injustice will likely be done. But if the jury members are honest citizens, if the judges are decent and impartial, if the governor lives up to his oath of office--and, let's be serious, most of the time those things are true, society is not corrupt through-and-through as the Left would have you believe--then there are a lot of safety valves in the system. You gotta get at least two juries and two judges and the governor to agree that what a guy undisputably did was not just an average murder, but premeditated and intentional with an aggravating circumstance. (The aggravating circumstances are, I think, serial murder, rape-murder, torture-murder, felony murder [done in the course of committing a felony, e.g. bank robbery, carjacking, mugging], murder of a law enforcement officer, murder-for-hire, and murder committed by somebody serving a prison sentence).

Well, I'd add terrorist murder to that list of aggravating circumstances and start toasting these etarras convicted of murder, not only the triggermen but also those above them in the hierarchy who give the killers their orders. In the States that's what we did with Tim McVeigh, who certainly had it coming. I think that would do a great deal to diminish the appeal of joining the ETA, and I wouldn't mind if those executions were televised. If you think the death penalty is a deterrent, which I firmly do, then it ought to be as deterring as possible. As many people as possible should therefore see it. If you don't believe in the death penalty, you should want executions to be televised, too, so that the people can see how horrible the death penalty is and will want to abolish it.

Spain's in full campaign frenzy--the political campaigns here are really like those in America now, they begin the day after the last election, but they're not as aggressive as the constant campaigning in America--since election day is just two weeks away. Official campaigning begins like three weeks before election day, and that's when the various parties are allowed to paste up signs all over the cities and when they get free space on all the TV stations to run their commercials.

At the national level Aznar has been working the crowds in Murcia and Valencia and Ruíz Gallardón looks like a good bet to repeat as Madrid mayor; he's been appearing all over the city with Ana Botella, Aznar's wife, who is quite attractive in a rather haute-bourgeoise sort of way. Zap went to Murcia too and called Aznar Bush's lapdog again. C'mon, Zap, keep playing up the war. Identify yourself even more with Saddam. People like to back a winner. You're a loser. Zap promised to solve the drought problem in the southeast in some other way than the controversial government water plan. He didn't say how but promised it would be in a solidarious manner. Gas went to Bilbao and gassed about how he didn't like terrorist violence but didn't believe in getting tough on terrorism either. Or something like that. He called for the "rebel vote"; since AuB, ETA's political branch, has been prohibited, Gas is trying to appeal to their voters. The diff between the Commies and the Sucialists in the Basque country is that the Suciatas are, at least, on the government's side against terrorism, while the Commies are trying to ride the fence. They are part of the current coalition with the Basque nationalists of all stripes that governs the Basque country.

I will give the Socialists this. They are social democrats, not too much different than our Democrat Party in the US. They do not want a dictatorship of the proletariat. They're wacky about a lot of stuff, but no more wacky than Bernie Sanders or Dennis Kucinich or Howard Dean. The more moderate ones aren't that different from, say, Robert Byrd--that is, mostly interested in pork-barreling everything possible to whatever poor area they come from. (See also González, Felipe.) They are not hardliners, they support democracy and at least sort of accept the market economy and oppose the ETA and usually aren't horribly anti-American, just a little. Their winning an election would not be a tragedy. But if Gas and the Commies managed to inveigle the Sociatas into another Popular Front--oooh, that would suck.

Here in Catalonia, Convergence and Union (the conservative Catalanists in charge of the regional government--they get most of their vote from the rural counties) is swinging hard at Pasqual Maragall, the popular former mayor of Barcelona and now boss of the Catalan Socialist party. Maragall's not running in this election, since we're not having regional elections here; the Socialists have put up Joan Clos for reelection as Barcelona mayor, of course. Clos will be reelected easily, and CiU knows it. So what they're really doing is campaigning against Maragall and girding up for the next regional election, which is where there real source of strength is. One thing CiU is trying to do is pick up a few more City Council seats in the ring of Spanish-speaking industrial suburbs surrounding Barcelona; they have virtually no representation there, and they're not going to gain too much more. Those districts are all solidly Socialist. In Barcelona itself the four uptown neighborhoods--Sarrià-Sant Gervasi, Les Corts, the Eixample, and Gràcia--vote Convergence and Union, while downtown--Ciutat Vella--and the five outlying districts within the city limits, Sants-Montjuic, Sant Martí, Sant Andreu, Nou Barris, and Horta-Guinardó, vote Socialist. The few wealthy Catalan-speaking suburbs--Sant Cugat, Bellaterra, Sant Just, and Sant Joan--vote Convergence, while the rest of the poorer Spanish-speaking suburbs, as I said, vote strongly Socialist.

I didn't know this. Chemical Inma Mayol, Commie candidate for Barcelona mayor and currently Joan Clos's coalition partner in the City Council, is the hose-monkey-partner of Joan Saura, the boss of Initiative, the Catalan Communists. These two have been cohabiting for years. I smell nepotism. And what's that on Inma's breat--uh, never mind.

The Partido Popular has no chance in Aragon because of the damn water plan and the problems with the high-speed train; they'll be the single most-voted party there, but they'll lose to a Socialist-Communist-Aragonese Regionalist Party-Chunta Aragonesista coalition when it comes time to constitute the next legislature.

By the way, there's an Iraqi immigrant dude running for City Council on the PP ticket in Tarragona; he's eighth on the list, so he's not going to get a seat, but I think that's pretty cool. He supports Spain's efforts to get rid of Saddam Hussein, of course.

By the way, we've added several new blogs to the blogroll. Every single blog over there is personally recommended by me for one reason or another. There are about twelve added in the past week or so, so look on over to the left and check some of them out. Some of them are at least partly in non-English languages. Try to figure out what they're saying. I think that's fun.

Thanks very much to Annie Embree, Official #1 Reader of Iberian Notes, for being the only reader not my mom--the only one! who took the hint back on April 14. In case you're wondering what the hint was, look back through the archives for Apr. 14. I type my fingers to the bone for you people and this is the thanks I get! Annie will receive, as part of the #1 Reader Award, the right to wear a ribbon officially proclaiming her "Miss Iberian Notes" at all swimsuit talent competitions she should happen to enter. Also, her e-mail goes automatically to the top of the list whenever I get around to checking it.

I've been listening to a good bit of country music lately through Internet radio and I've done a little thinking about it. First is that country is extremely formulaic as far as the lyrics go (yes, there are many exceptions); there are ten or twelve themes that make up 90% of country songs. There's the cheatin' song, the lost love song, the train song, the outlaw song, the miss-them-Blue-Ridge-Mountains-back-home song, its variant hate-it-up-here-in-Detroit song, its other variant, the old-folks-back-home song, and the we-done-grown-up-real-poor song. I love all of them. And then there are those creative songs that deal with something else. I like those even better.

There are three country music themes I hate, though. One is the drinkin' song. I'm not on anything resembling an anti-alcohol crusade--I drink moderate amounts of beer and wine, and I used to drink way too much, so I know what it's like--but come on, drinkin' ain't good for you. I can deal with the "Friends in Low Places" or "Family Tradition" drinking sing-along tunes--they have their place, which is to provide a let's-get-rowdy atmosphere, get people up on the dance floor, and encourage beer consumption--but the ones I can't stand are those morose, cry-in-your-beer, "If Drinkin' Don't Kill Me Her Memory Will" songs. To put it mildly, those songs are not real psychologically healthy.

A second is the Nashville-pop-has-ruined-real-country-music song. Everybody's got a tune called something like "NashVegas" about how those phony record executives don't let them play the real old-time music. That's BS because all these people have been permitted to release those songs by those phony record execs. Even George Strait, Mr. Phony singer of MOR pop tunes like "Marina del Rey", has one out called "Murder on Music Row" about those record company execs. There's an analogy with the Chomskys and the Sontags who proclaim in the pages of the New York Times and from university lecterns around the country that their free speech is being repressed; of course, if there were real repression, those two would years since have been locked up incomunicados.

The third is the good-darky song. This type is patronizingly racist. The usual theme is there's an old blind blues guy who used to play guitar in the small town I grew up in and I used to listen to him for hours while he dispensed nuggets of folksy wisdom. Completely fictional, of course.

On the record "Will the Circle Be Unbroken III", which I highly recommend, there's a song done by Alison Krause called "Catfish John" which fits right into the good-darky theme. Catfish John was "born a slave in the town of Vicksburg" (that means that the song itself takes place around 1920, say, at the latest) and now he is a "river hobo". The singer is a middle-class Southern country girl who was "proud to be his friend" and spent her free time with him.

In 1920 in Mississippi. Yeah, right.

Blacks and whites did not mix much in the South--still don't, except in the workplace. Lower-class whites despised blacks and were fully capable of treating them with a viciousness and cruelty unimaginable today, and middle-class whites were often kindly disposed toward blacks but considered them inferior, of course. It was, oversimplifying greatly, the difference between hateful racism and patronizing racism. To a middle-class white "good Negroes" were mammies and loyal servants and people who worked hard and "knew their place". One could feel kindly toward a black person, but one would never accept him as an equal or a "friend".

Here's the refrain of the song:

Mama said don't go near that river
Don't be hangin' round old Catfish John
But every morning I'd always be there
Walking in his footsteps in the sweet Delta dawn

This is what a real Southern white middle-class Mama in around 1920, who had kindly feelings toward old Catfish John or who at the very least didn't want to see the poor old bum get mixed up in any trouble, and was horrified at the thought of what might happen if the proletarians of either race got out of control, would have told her daughter:

Hear me, girl, don't go near that river
'Cause if something happens and you fall in or get lost
That night they'll drag old Catfish John out of his shack
And hang him on the nearest live oak, if he gets lucky and they don't burn him at the stake

Catfish John would have drowned in the great Mississippi flood of 1927 if he'd escaped lynching because of this dumb little pre-"To Kill a Mockingbird" white girl who kept following him around and brought him to the attention of the local proto-trailer trash, who don't much cotton to little white girls hanging around some disreputable Negro who lives in a shack by the river and who don't need much of an excuse to organize a movement to grow some more strange fruit.

Here's an article from the New Republic via FrontPage on why the Franco-German military plan is a joke, in case you needed to know why.

And here's one from Slate on why drugs are fun. This guy gets a little hippy-dippy about, like, that doors of perception and integrating your consciousness stuff. However, the main problem with the anti-drug juggernaut is that I sincerely do not get the point.

Look. Taking drugs is fun. Smoking pot is fun. There are some other drugs out there I wouldn't mess with, cocaine first of all, and opium derivatives--I was once prescribed Percodan and I can tell you that I'd have taken that stuff as long as they let me, nonstop if possible--and anything made in a lab. That kind of thing seems unnecessarily dangerous to me. There are plenty of fun drugs like pot and mescaline and mushrooms and peyote and all those South American huya cucha tea drinks that are, like, natural substances. I am aware that taking these things probably isn't especially good for you if you do it in large quantities, but I've never heard of anyone overdosing on or dying from or freaking out on or beating somebody up on or having to rob old ladies to get their fix of any of those natural, traditional (people have been using all of these drugs for thousands of years) substances.

That's not quite true. I knew a girl who died in a car wreck, fell asleep at the wheel on I-70 between KC and St. Louis, and I wouldn't be surprised if she was high--she wasn't drunk, they checked that, it was in the paper. She used to smoke a lot, and she might have fired up a couple for the road, I don't know. But if pot was a factor, then this just shows you you shouldn't drive, or for God's sake handle machinery, while under the influence of any drug.

On the other hand, let's see, I once saw a drunk guy fire a shotgun through a closed door. Fortunately there was no one in the room on the other side. I saw three drunk guys pitch a refrigerator out a third-floor window once. I knew a guy who got six years in jail for dealing acid big-time, and he was dealing to support a coke habit. I knew a guy who got ten years for his part in a drive-by shooting; he was all messed up on alcohol and speed when he fired the gun. Didn't think anybody would really get hurt because it was a .22 rifle. Killed somebody. I know a girl who got raped after a Dead show while everyone involved was drunk and on god knows what else, almost certainly speed. Crank is big in Kansas, has been for twenty years. I knew a guy who committed suicide by stealing a '49 Ford or whatever and crashing it into a culvert south of Topeka doing like ninety miles an hour. The paper said that parts of the car were scattered over, like, hundreds of feet, and I assume parts of this guy Dennis were, too. Alcohol was a factor.

I can't see legalizing speed--the stuff is just too dangerous--or cocaine or the opiates. But I have no idea why pot is illegal and alcohol is legal. Seems to me like alcohol does far more damage than any other drug out there, and yet we can't make that illegal. It's too much a part of human culture. We try to regulate it, and some societies seem to be able to handle it better than others--Spaniards don't seem to get nearly as aggressive when they drink as us rednecks do, and they don't get in anywhere near as many fights as they do in Britain on Friday night at 11:05. We know for sure that illegalizing it won't work, because we tried it and we failed. I think that illegalizing pot and the natural psychedelics is much stupider than illegalizing alcohol, because we can all chalk up several human disasters caused by alcohol among those we know. I've never heard of anyone getting divorced because he got crazed and fighting mad every time he got high.

Make pot and the natural psychedelics completely legal. Limit their sale to licenced outlets. Growing your own would be legal, of course, but selling it without paying the excise tax wouldn't be, just like you can brew your own beer at home, and you can give it to your friends, but if you start producing twenty cases a week in your basement and selling them for twenty bucks each Liquor Control will be up your ass, at least in Kansas. Missouri is so much in the pocket of Anheuser-Busch that I'm not sure if they have a state liquor control. That and all those redneck counties who elect their state reps on the basis of whether he's for the revenuers or not. Basically the rule is if there's more Baptists in the county than rednecks, they're for the revenuers, and if there's more rednecks than Baptists, then they're agin' 'em.

Anyway, though, you'd have to be 21 to buy this stuff, and all the tax money would go to the state for, say, the education fund. You can usually get a vice bill past the Kansas Lutherans and Methodists out west if you stipulate the tax proceeds will go to the education fund. That's how we finally got liquor by the drink legalized--it's still county-option, but if you live in a civilized county they have regular bars which can serve any sort of booze and stay open till two. Anywhere in the state taverns are legal, but taverns can sell only 3.2 beer and they have to close at twelve. Used to be you had to be 21 for a real bar or to buy anything but 3.2 beer, and it was 18 for 3.2 and for taverns. See how idiotic and byzantine American state alcohol laws are? The stuff is such a social danger that where you can use it and how you use it and when you can use it have to be very tightly controlled. We learned in about Hogarth's time that if people are allowed to drink gin all day, they will do nothing more than drink gin all day. Anyway, that's how they got the state lottery through, too. Gin and circuses.

Finally, we'd do away with all the time and effort we waste on controlling pot and mushrooms; I'd like to spend at least some of the money we got from legalizing psychedelics to go to alcohol treatment, alcohol being the truly dangerous and highly legally controlled substance it is.

Here's the transcript of Bush and Aznar's press conference from Fox News, just in case you're interested.

The Vanguardia's take, in its page two editorial signed by José Antich, the director (editor-in-chief, I guess), is that the addition of the ETA's political puppet, Batasuna or Euskal Herritarok or AuB or whatever their name is this week to the American terrorist shit list, plus the possibility of holding Israeli-Palestinian negotiations in Madrid, are at the very least the quid pro quo Spain deserves for cooperating with and helping the Alliance. Antich points out that the US has already helped Spain quite a bit in its anti-ETA struggle with high-tech assistance, and there was, maybe still is, an FBI team of computer experts supporting the Spanish anti-terrorist cops in their efforts.

The major consequence of the American adding of these guys to the terrorist list is that it will make blocking terrorist transfers of funds much easier; it will also help when Spain takes the illegalization of Batasuna / AuB to the European Union in order to get them illegalized in all twenty-five countries.

Antich's conclusion is, "Aznar has made an almost personal crusade of the struggle against the terrorism of ETA and its allies, and Bush has understood." This is a nice feather in the cap for Mr. Aznar, as were all the attractive photos that are in the newspapers and on TV of the Spanish Prime Minister being treated as an equal by the President of the United States during his visit. Give the man a couple of more political Brownie points. The two things that Spanish voters are historically very concerned about (the war in Iraq briefly broke into this top two, but has already fallen back out as everyone forgets about it and as Saddam's minions keep getting hauled in) are unemployment and terrorism. Well, unemployment is down no matter how you measure it, the economy is cruising along in decent shape, and the ETA hasn't done anything nasty in a long time, at least partly because the government has been arresting their guys right and left. The PP is going to hold its own in these elections, folks.

I mentioned this briefly a while back; Aznar's government has managed to get AuB / Batasuna outlawed. They will not be allowed to run in the May 25 elections. This has been upheld by the courts.

The Socialists' reaction to all this was muted--all they can say is, "Uh, good, guess we're in favor." The Basque Nationalists, the United Left, and Batasuna's responses were that this is all government propaganda. Arnaldo Otegi of Batasuna, the "political party" that has supported the killing of nearly 900 people by ETA, called Aznar and Bush "the murderers of thousands of Iraqis." I'm normally against violence but I would love to go into the ring with Otegi, no holds barred, lumberjack style. None of this Marquis of Queensberry crap.

The other bit of international news related to Spain is that the US has unilaterally lifted its economic sanctions against Iraq, and the US, UK, and Spain are going to back a UN resolution to lift international sanctions.

FC Barcelona update: Presidential elections will be June 15. Being president of the Barça is like being president of the Rotary plus the Leawood Country Club plus the Shriners plus the Jayhawks Booster Club plus the Chamber of Commerce plus the United Way, all at the same time, in your typical American small town. That's how big the Barça is in this here big small town.

FC Barcelona update: Enric Reyna, interim team president, resigned as of today. There will be elections for a new president and board of directors, but they haven't announced when. They may be waiting for the end of the soccer season. Nobody's running the club. The big news is that Reyna announced the club will be €55 million in the hole at the end of the season. That's a lot of money. They're going to have to sell players and won't have the dough for any big signings. Bummer.

Meanwhile, Real Madrid plays Juventus tonight in the first leg of the Champions' League semifinal. I'm rooting for Madrid because 1) Qadafi's kid owns 7.5% of Juventus and 2) because if Madrid wins Barcelona fans will be pissed off. Should be a good game. It's on TV1.

Aznar is going to Washington again today; this is the fourth time in a year. They're going to talk about the goofy Franco-German defense plan, terrorism, especially the ETA, the future of NATO, and the like. Aznar is going to ask that the United States add Herri Batasuna, or AuB, or whatever they're calling themselves now, to the American terrorist shit list, which we will apparently be happy to do. Spain thinks this is cool because they will be able to use it as a lever in the European Union to get Batasuna put on the EU terrorist shit list. Aznar will also express Spain's desire to cooperate on making a Middle East peace plan that will be viable or whatever. He would like to have any international conference on Israel and the Palestinians held in Madrid. I bet he gets what he wants.

Beirut Bob Fisk is back in the pages of the Vangua! He's got all of page six. Here's a summary, paragraph-by-paragraph, so you don't have to go to the trouble yourself.

I) Bob hates Bush and Rumsfeld.
II) There will soon be a resistance movement of the Iraqis against the occupying American troops that will cause lots of terrorism, Bob hopes.
III) The Yanks are murdering lots of Iraqis and lying about it.
IV) So Bob is really excited about Shiite terrorist gangs starting up (with ties to Hezbollah!) because the Yanks started the war to get the reconstruction contracts for companies tied to Bush.
V) Bob makes an apples-and-burritos comparison between Iraq in 2003 and Greece in 1944. Nobody understands why except that there was fighting in both places. Bob sure hopes that there will be a revolt against the Yanks like there was against the Brits in Greece in 1944, it seems.
VI) So, what will happen is that the "Shiite resistance" will rise against the Yanks, who will accuse Iran and Syria of supporting said resistance and use that as an excuse to take them over too.

I have a prediction to make, too. I will bet that the chances that Beirut Bob Fisk will turn out to have been on the take from Saddam are greater than the chances than Bob's Paragraph VI above will come true. Why? Saddam is known to have presented Western journalists with luxurious houses in the Middle East, especially in Beirut. Bob lives in a luxurious house in Beirut. Newspaper reporters don't make a lot of money. Bob hasn't sold too many books; if he had, I might be able to name one, and I can't. If Bob can demonstrate that he paid for his own house all by himself with money he earned from his scribblings, I will personally kiss his ass in Trafalgar Square.

UPDATE: Check out this article from the National Review by a correspondent from Time who was embedded with the 101st and compare it with what Beirut Bob and Tikrit Tommy have been saying.

The Jedman sees one of his students while driving and is called upon to philosophize:

I was stopping at this intersection when I saw one of my clients crossing the street in front of me. Briefly, I thought about steamrolling him because even though I kind of like him, he causes me a lot of trouble. He is the same guy I tried to nail with the nerf football. It would have been a bone crushing, bloodspilling, brain rattling instant death for him. Even though it is wrong to hurt people, my biggest problem with this plan is me having to go to jail for such a repulsive act of violence. This was the part of the plan that I didn't like. Instead, I really freaked him out by yelling at him out of the window. He loved me for it. I'm glad I seem to exhibit self-control with great frequency. This may keep me from having fun, but it keeps me out of trouble. theJEDMAN

Unemployment has dropped to 8.9% in Spain, the lowest it has been for years, according to the government. Auto sales are up, corporate profits are up, the stock market is holding steady, and annual growth is projected at around two percent; that figure may well be too low. If "it's the economy, stupid", then the PP should do well in the May 25 municipal and regional elections, because the economy is in pretty good shape. It's amazing what a balanced budget will do for your economy, and Mr. Aznar is looking at a fourth consecutive full year of balancing the budget in 2003. This is a lesson that Mr. Bush should perhaps learn. Mr. Aznar's other big policy tip for Mr. Bush has been "Let Powell talk more and Rumsfeld talk less", good advice for PR purposes in Europe.

If I were Mr. Aznar, I'd be running hard on a "you never had it so good" platform, while playing on the factors the voters most appreciate about him and his administration: efficiency, honesty, experience, knowledge, and the handling of international affairs. I'd also be running on reliability, something along the lines of "I'm the guy who makes the tough decisions and is honest with the people about them", when the SocioCommunists criticize him for the past year's publicity black eyes the PP has suffered.

Finally, I wouldn't worry about the fact that people don't much like Aznar personally. Aznar doesn't seem like a very likeable man to me, either. He's better off with the situation as it is now without risking the disaster of faking an attempt to get close to the ordinary folks. Aznar's big negatives are that he is not perceived as willing to dialogue and that he is perceived as being distant from the people. Well, those things are true. Aznar is no glad-hander and he's cold, and he's pretty arrogant when he thinks he's right, which is most of the time. People have voted for him anyway because he is seen as competent and incorruptible and the Socialists are seen as not competent to organize the seventeenth annual Sigma Nu "JamaicanMeCrazee" theme party without stealing the keg fund, much less a government.

Don't risk your positives on trying to present Aznar as something he isn't. It won't work. Let the people like Zap more than they like Aznar. They trust Aznar a hell of a lot more than they trust Zap. Don't blow that trust by setting up some goofy meet-the-people photo op where Aznar does something dumb like eat a tamale with the cornshuck wrapper still on. (Supposedly Jerry Ford did that one year in Texas at some Republican outreach to the Hispanic community kind of thing.) The Catalanists got laughed at big-time about a year ago when they hired a fairly well-known flamenco-rock band, Maite Vende Cà, to play a neighborhood fiesta they were sponsoring in Nou Barris, Barcelona's Andalusian ghetto, and tried to get the crowd to listen to their politicians speak between acts. Of course they got roundly booed and hissed at. Let's us not do anything like that.

Here's Cecil Adams from the Straight Dope on Martin Luther King's, uh, shortcomings. I link to this because it contributes to King's de-sanctification. King was important as a catalyst for change, of course, but he wasn't the Messiah, and an occasional story pointing out his all-too-human faults is appropriate. Other plaster saints who don't get enough rotten tomatoes thrown at them: Albert Schweitzer, Nelson Mandela, Dag Hammarskjold, Bertrand Russell, Leo Tolstoy, Bobby Kennedy, Mahatma Gandhi, Simon Bolivar. Other nominations are encouraged.

Here's a hit job piece on Amnesty International and its dumb internal squabbles from the Washington Times. Looks like some wacko got prominent enough in the organization that they couldn't just kick her out when she turned out to be a wacko. I love it when politically correct groups get out-politically corrected.

Here's your periodical Spanish Elections Update. With twenty days to go until the countrywide municipal elections and regional elections in 13 of the 17 autonomous regions, a Vanguardia poll shows the Socialists with a three-point lead, 42.3%-39.3%, over José María Aznar's PP, were a general election to be held tomorrow. The Communist United Left would pull 6.1%, Catalan nationalists Convergence and Union 3.2%, the Basque Nationalist Party 1.5%, and "others" 7.6%. The Vangua doesn't give us any info on sample size or any of that stuff, so we have to figure there's a three-point margin of error and the two big parties are effectively tied in their GENERAL appeal to the public.

Then, of course, these are municipal and regional elections, not generals, so voters will be considering the local candidates' records and personalities as well as those of the party leadership. Due to the excellent results obtained by the PP in all elections since 1996, it has more local and regional incumbents than the Socialists, and incumbents have a definite advantage. Also, the PP consistently and historically does a couple of points better in the ballot boxes than in the surveys.

Nothing to worry about, guys. No need to panic. Things are actually looking pretty good. How good? Well, since "it's the economy, stupid", only 25% of Spaniards said that they thought the economic situation was "bad" or "very bad"--49% said it was "good" or "very good"--, and 52% of them said that they had a "generally favorable" opinion of the Government's record over the past several years that it has been in power. 38% had a "generally unfavorable" opinion.

Those statistics demonstrate that the Spanish people are, for the most part, pretty content with the way things are and the way things are going. There is no huge, angered mob of radicalized voters pissed off about the education bill and the oil spill and the war and all the unpopular measures the government has taken recently.

As for the war, 27% of Spaniards now say they approve of the Spanish Government's policy regarding the war. That's way up from the 4% they were talking about in the days leading up to it. As more and more negative stuff about Saddam keeps coming out, and it seems like every day they find a new mass grave, more and more people are going to remember having actually been in favor of the war. 36% are willing to say that "After the war, Spain's international standing will be much better or better", and 38% will allow that "Now that the war is over, its consequences will be generally positive". This is a genuine swing in public opinion. There are now enough Spanish people willing to recognize that the Yanks were right and Saddam had to go that you can actually hear discussions in the cafés and on the streets, rather than just general "no war" agreement. Even in Barcelona, which is so far-left politically correct that the chairman of the Stock Exchange used to be the boss of the Republican Left of Catalonia party.

All right. I have a Declaration of Principles to make. The verb "to grow" is normally INTRANSITIVE. It does not have a direct object, except in colloquial use when it can substitute for "cultivate": I'm growing tomatoes in my garden. It is often used in relation to economics and business, with the meaning "to get bigger": The company is growing, the economy is growing.

But you CANNOT say The President wants to grow the economy, we are trying to grow our company. The verb you want to use instead of "to grow" is "to increase" or "to augment" or maybe "to develop" or even "to spread", and if none seems to fit, use "to cause s.t. to grow" or "to make something grow".

From now on everyone caught making this mistake will be rhetorically flogged, as will everyone continuing to confuse "it's" (contraction) with "its" (possessive), and everybody confusing "marshal", "Marshal", "Marshall", and "martial".

Here's Michael Kinsley from Slate taking a large piece out of Bill Bennett, a well-known very moral "paleocon"--a conservative who is more devoted to traditional social ways than to the free market, national defense, and civil liberties, and who is definitely not a libertarian, as we are here. Bennett is best known for being Dan Quayle's intellectual advisor and for writing several books on virtue; I believe he was drug czar for a while but I'm not sure.

Well, it seems that Mr. Bennett is a problem gambler and has gone through millions of dollars. The guy is clearly a ludopath, which is just another psychological addiction--it's not physical, like alcohol or nicotine or opiates or caffeine. It's more among the lines of, say, porno addiction; there are people who rent six pornos a day and spend ten straight hours...well, you get the picture. If you don't believe me, check out True Porn Clerk Stories (absolutely hilarious; unfortunately Ali, the writer, is out of the porn business now and there will be no further entries. The link is down near the bottom of the blogroll on the left). Well, Bill Bennett is the moral equivalent of that guy in the dirty raincoat with the sticky hands. His addiction doesn't make him a bad person, but it does make him unfit to cast moral aspersions on anyone else who has any kind of addiction, or who commits any other sort of pleasurable sin.

I don't expect people to be perfect. I sure am not. But I do expect people who advise other people on morality to be, well, moral, unlike Bill Bennett, whose gambling problem would long since have destroyed his family and his life if he were a regular working-class Joe.

Here's a comparison with what I would consider reasonable betting for a rich guy. Michael Jordan is well-known as an excellent golfer, and he likes to play for money. He'll apparently bet his opponents on not only the complete 18 holes, but on every single hole, even every stroke. He'll bet as much as fifty thousand bucks on a golf game.

Well, first, as far as I know, Mr. Jordan doesn't do a lot of betting on anything else but golf. Second, Mr. Jordan is betting on his own ability and skill at golf (and his exceptional physical coordination, and his famous intelligence) rather than on the roll of the dice or the draw of the cards. He probably wins half the time anyway, so he more or less breaks even. You don't more or less break even betting at the casino. Third, even if Mr. Jordan loses every single golf game he plays, and if he plays for big money once a week 50 weeks out of the year, that's a maximum of $2.5 million a year he can lose. At that rate he'll be broke in a hundred and forty years or so.

By the way, does anybody else out there think Michael Kinsley is a snide little weasel most of the time?

UPDATE: Here's a Jonathan Last column from the Weekly Standard saying that Bennett's gambling is no big deal. Yeah, it is, since ol' Bill spent so much time telling us mortals how to act. Last says that Michael Jordan does bet big money in casinos, so he very well may really be a ludopath, too, contradicting what I wrote above.

This, by the way, is one of the many clues that the Iraq war story is over. If there were anything the public were greatly interested in about Iraq anymore, we'd be hearing about it. Instead Bill Bennett's gambling addiction becomes the subject of the day. So I'm linking to another Weekly Standard story by a reporter embedded with the Third Infantry in Baghdad on how things are going over there; this article says they're going very well and that a lot of the negative news coverage is biased reporting. I bet our diet of Iraq stories gets reduced to just a couple a week starting about now, barring some unforeseeable disaster.

Here's the dope about the Pope from Fox News.

Here's an article by Carlos Semprún Maura from Libertad Digital. I just thought it was kind of interesting. I haven't posted too many pro-American articles from the Spanish press, mostly because there aren't too many. Libertad Digital is almost the only place you'll find real pro-Americanism in Spain. Oh, by the way, guys, Mr. Controversial, Pío Moa of LD, is not particularly pro-American or pro-British; he's got the old Spanish Catholic anti-Americanism, angry at Spain's weakness and America's comparative power, distrustful of Protestantism (and Masonry--these LD guys have a real bee in their bonnet about the Masons), suspicious about the change and progress that America symbolizes, and unwilling to give up the paternalistic state in exchange for the risks of competition, again seen as "Anglo-Saxon".

Europe is dead, the world isn't

There is a lot of talk about a confrontation between two Europes, Tony Blair's and Jacques Chirac's, a united Europe allied with the United States, or a powerful Europe, a rival or even enemy of the USA.

It is true that Chirac has softened the terms of his anti-Yankee discourse, but he continues working toward his imperial dream of a powerful Europe led by France and supported by Russia and the Arab countries, an imperialist and highly reactionary dream, since, besides, in his search for any sort of alliance against the American "empire", he acts like the PNV (Basque Nationalist Party) does toward the ETA; that is, he implicitly uses Islamic terrorism and the Arab dictatorships to create a "frente unido, jamás vencido" (united front, never conquered). We've just verified this in the case of Iraq, not only with the fraud of the inspectors, but, as the British press is revealing these days, a collaboration, just as real as secret, of the French authorities with the Iraqi tyranny until the war came.

It goes without saying that Tony Blair's European vision, and that of the majority of the democratic countries, members of the EU or candidates, seems more realistic and democratic than the French imperial dream because, with things the way they are, Chirac has the support of the immense majority of the French people. But the European political crisis has been so serious, the disagreements so deep, over subjects much more important than the common agricultural policy or the liberalization of public services or even the entry or not of Turkey into the EU (just what we need!), that all these ceremonies of the Convention, the plan for a European constitution, a president, a government, a foreign policy, an army, are all a bad joke. All of this, so what?, if there's nothing inside. The candidates to join Europe, yesterday submitted to the Soviet yoke and before that, for some of them, the less ferocious Ottoman yoke, (or the comparatively benign Hapsburg or Romanov yokes) do not want, either their citizens or their governments, to participate in the construction of a new empire, especially one that goes against the United States. Therefore, instead of accelerating the authoritarian construction of a powerful Europe, which would crash us straight into a wall (there is not the slightest doubt), destroying the very idea of a Europe of cooperation, more pragmatic and efficient, it would be better to set a timetable to strengthen the only positive thing, or, at least the most positive thing created in Europe, the common market.

Spain yesterday, just as much as Poland today, base their desire for Europe, essentially, on the end of economic autarchy, on an open economy, on trade without frontiers, and despite all the problems and ups-and-downs, this is what has really existed and progressed toward the euro. And this is what we have to protect and improve, accepting great flexibility on political issues (war or peace, alliance or rupture) for each nation. "We've only made Europe a free-trade area", say dismissively the old-fashioned nationalist or imperialist politicians; well, this has caused a considerable increase in the welfare of the poor, one of the fundaments for any really progressive policy. Getting down to it, the different Spanish governments have maintained themselves firmly in the common market, while in foreign policy, say, the differences are notable. The government of Felipe González supported--symbolically--President Bush during the Gulf War, while Prime Minister Aznar, supporting--symbolically--President Bush in the second act of that same war, has become, it appears, the lapdog of Yankee imperialism. Politics is even more irrational than the economy...

As Antonio Escohotado reminded us the other day in an article in El Mundo, of the 220 member states of the UN, 150 are dictatorships.

This is sad reality, and all the statements on international law, human rights--protected by Libya--the defense of democracy, and other tomfoolery, are nonsense. To go no farther, China, a permanent member of the Security Council, a great world power with nuclear arms, is, above all, a one-party dictatorship, without the most elemental freedoms of opinion, of organization, without the right to strike, et cetera. Therefore, the hawks in Washington are completely right when they propose creating an international democratic alliance, outside the UN, outside the UE, which wouldn't be a mere reform of the Atlantic Pact, being more universal, since countries like Japan, Taiwan, India, or Australia could form part of this new alliance. In my view, the basic criteria of such an alliance are as demanding as they are simple; free elections, a plurality of parties and unions, freedom of expression, and a market economy. To this we would have to add, under the current circumstances, the will to defend ourselves against Islamic fundamentalism, tyrannies, and the rest of the terrorists, whether nationalist, Marxist-Leninist, or narcoguerrillas--defending and fighting for democracy, recognizing democratic legality. And doing it like, for a good example, our (Aznar's) government against ETA, without the Socialist Party's GAL (80s government anti-ETA death squad) or the vile complicity of the Basque Nationalist Party. And, of course, keeping this new alliance under preparation in the correct perspective, France will be absent. You can't defend democracy and Saddam at the same time.

Well, the Pope's in Madrid and there is a lot of Popery and the like in today's papers and on the news. Jesús Gil is a practicing Catholic, and he has all sorts of good up-to-the-minute coverage of the Pope's visit on his blog Ibidem, so check it out. He's a lot more suited to cover this than I am, since he is actually in Madrid, is actually going to see the Pope and form part of the enormous crowd, actually understands what the stuff they do as part of the rituals and all means, and is actually a faithful believer and so understands the significance of this visit.

The crowd that is going to turn out in Madrid today is going to be well upwards of a million people, a considerably bigger turnout than any of the antiwar demos of February and March--they claimed up to a million people but more likely got a couple hundred thousand, max. I'd like to see the Remei Margarits and the Eulàlia Solés of this world analyze that phenomenon. Could it be that many more people in Spain are strongly Catholic than strongly anti-American? Could it be that the anti-war protests were just a passing fad, the cool thing to do for a few weeks until they were forgotten about, along with the poor Iraqi people? None of the people turning out to see the Pope are doing it because it's the cool thing to do this week. They're going out there because they, like, believe in God and stuff. And there are an awful lot of them.

Well, yesterday was Labor Day, May 1. The turnout at the demonstrations was tiny. Some guy from Simtel, a company in Madrid whose workers are on strike for some reason, whacked the Workers' Commissions' (CCOO's) president over the head with a stick and made him bleed profusely for, like, not being radical enough or something. CCOO is the Communist-linked union; the UGT (General Union of Workers) is linked to the Socialists, the CGT (General Confederation of Labor) is linked to the Trots in the POR, the Revolutionary Workers' Party, and the CNT is what's left of the good old anarchist National Confederation of Labor.

This actually means something because in every company with more than a certain number of workers, there has to be a company labor committee (comité de empresa), and I was on ours at the Institute for a year. Your job on the labor committee is to negotiate any complaint the workers have with the management. Frankly, often it's an important body; it can call a strike, for example. If there's a dispute over someone's contract, the committee's lawyer takes charge. If the company wants to fire a worker, the committee acts like as big a pain in the neck as it can and makes sure he gets the biggest severance pay possible.

The positions on the labor committee--ours was made up of five people--are elective. We were always cooperative enough that pretty much anyone who wanted to be on the committee got on, but in larger companies--there are upwards of several thousand people working at the Seat factory in Martorell, for example--the elections are quite competitive, with the various unions each running a slate of candidates. Anyway, though, the committee has to choose a union to represent it, and we went with the Socialist UGT, I think mostly because it's generally the least radical and because the dues you have to pay are the lowest.

This system, by the way, is one of the many leftovers from the Franco regime. The Franco government was very paternalistic. Spaniards--Latins in general, I think--are historically averse to the risks involved in raw capitalism, and the Franco government was not too bad about giving the people more or less what they wanted. What they wanted was a guaranteed job for life, health care, a pension, and to be left alone. The Franco regime provided that. None of the jobs were real good or anything, and people didn't make a lot of money, but after 1946 (when World War II finally ended and the international economy started getting back on track; '39, '42, and '46 were the three hardest years of the postwar period) nobody went hungry, and if you didn't shoot off your mouth too loud the police wouldn't bother you.

That system of entitlement of cradle-to-grave security is what a lot of Spaniards believe is the most important facet of the government. One of the reasons Spaniards like Fidel Castro is "he gave his people doctors and schools", and Spain has historically had both a literacy rate and a life expectancy considerably higher than its economic position would make you think. Though Spaniards have always earned a good bit less than the French and the Italians, and Spain has been unable to mount a real military since about 1714 due to lack of funds, important quality-of-life factors in Spain like infant mortality, life expectancy, literacy rate, and years of schooling have always been at around French and Italian levels and well above, say, Greek and Polish and Romanian levels. Doctors and schools are important here.

And the Franco government provided them, though admittedly not as lavishly as those provided today. It did its paternalistic jobs with its anti-employer labor laws and its establishment of the current health care and educational system and pensions, and the people were more or less happy. They certainly didn't do the slightest thing to overthrow the Franco regime and, apart from a few very unpleasant cases, the Franco repression was not anywhere near as constricting as a truly totalitarian regime's.

Now, of course everyone in his right mind prefers the democratic system of parliamentary monarchy we have today to Franco's military dictatorship, but there were some things Spaniards decided they very much liked and wanted to keep from the old system; one of those things they kept and have jealously guarded is the welfare state. They have an awful lot of security in Spain, much more than the individual does in the United States. Your freedom is more limited in Spain, though, especially economically; the bureaucracy chokes back what should be the most booming economy in Europe. Jeez, if we had a liberalized economy without all those regulations, the growth rate here would be 6% every year. On the other hand, we wouldn't have the almost complete security for life the Spanish welfare state gives us. Couldn't afford it. And, given a choice, the Spaniards would overwhelmingly go for the security at the expense of the freedom.

Keith Windschuttle takes Noam Chomsky to the woodshed in the New Criterion, via FrontPage. Check it out. There aren't any brand-new arguments here, but all the standard (and correct) ones are very cogently put.

I've got a post up on EuroPundits on the May 25 municipal and regional elections here in Spain. I did my best to make it kind of interesting. It's one of those pieces like spinach--it's good for you. I tried to make it sort of interesting. If you're a regular reader of Iberian Notes you've already seen most of the stuff I put up over there in one form or another here. So check it out, or not, as the case may be.

Here's a link to a red-meat story from FrontPage on "Peace Studies" courses of study at American universities. The article's pretty much what you'd expect, a lambasting of the university Socialist cadres. What I would like to know is what employer would hire someone with a degree in Peace Studies as opposed to, say, something useful like business administration or engineering or computer science, or a solid liberal arts degree in something like philosophy or history or English lit. Probably Greenpeace.

Here's a piece from the Weekly Standard by a reporter who's gone out with the Yanks on a peacekeeping patrol. I like the part where they get a call over the radio asking for advice because the lions at the zoo have gotten out and one of them ate a horse and the zookeeper has fled and won't come back while the lions are still loose. The guys at the zoo don't want to shoot the lions but this horse incident has got them a bit shaken up, it seems. Well, horses are valuable in a country like Iraq, and we can't have a bunch of huge pussycats going around eating them, much less snacking on the citizenry. I bet there's somebody among the troops who knows how to use a lasso--got to be at least one amateur rodeo cowboy among that lot--and I'd get him and tell him to throw at the lions' back legs. We'd be ready to shoot if he missed and the lion attacked, of course. If you've got their back legs tied up you ought to be able to drag them back into their cages.

Here's one I've been saving up to do one of these days. It's Maruja Torres from El País's Sunday magazine.

The Only Certainty

I don't want to forget that today my eyes and my conscience are overflowing with horror and I know that I am not alone in my impotence. And although the day that you are reading me, things have changed, or even improved, I want to remember, and remind you with me, that there were days of ignominy of which we were faraway, distressed witnesses. The torn-apart victims; the children murdered one atop another, as if they were sleeping in the middle of a nightmare of the evil of others; the blood soaking badly-bandaged stumps, the mutilated bodies, the entrails. The blank stares, above all the blank stares. In the atrocious hours, long hours of the battle of Baghdad, they are coming to my house, to my country, governed by one of the most obsequious representatives of this century's moral misery, those blank stares of pain and surprise, of infinite sadness, of the loss of all hope, are coming. Of fear, of panic. Of anger, of rage. Of offended dignity, of defended dignity. Barely armed men who resist in the trenches, others who have survived in pieces and in hospital beds who barely have the strength to send to the world, through the camera, the only thing they can bomb us with: their recently discovered hate toward an enemy they do not even know. And those operations performed without anesthesia, and that rice that keeps arriving to the port when what is needed is water, and that marine who gives a demonstration of rap to the defeated children. A dark boy, surely enlisted for a hot meal, surely from a vile building in a miserable slum: you, who are like the conquered ones but without knowing it.

And the cries of the mutilated babies when a camera focuses on them and takes shots of them, as if they already knew that they are not only cannon fodder but TV news fodder.

And bombs and more bombs, and fire and more fire, and destruction and more destruction. And invading soldiers swaggering around, blinded with disdain and indifference as much as by their military superiority, leveling what were streets, houses, small shops, and whispering avenues.

Against forgetting everything we have seen, from far away with our hearts in flames. I don't know what is happening in this world today, that other cadavers have been swallowed up by the crater opened up in Mesopotamia, besides the innocence, the tranquil existence of the poor and the oppressed, legality, decency, and justice. I also don't know how many of my journalistic comrades will have died in the war that should never happened, and we know who is responsible.

If today, while you are reading, is a day in which death does not fill the headlines and we are already being invaded by the fever of what they call reconstruction, and we're busy with the ups and downs of the market, don't let them fool you. Remember what is happening while I am writing and which I am pallidly trying to write on this page, on this inscription against forgetting. And think that behind all the big words there is only one, as vile as the men which it represents: greed. We have seen what we didn't want to see, but we have seen it. And this is our only certainty.

I have several certainties. One is that Maruja is extremely self-absorbed, since she goes on and on about how she herself feels about the situation. My guess is that she is bipolar and has a narcissistic personality disorder. Trust me on this one. I'm good at this stuff. I'm the only one of you who's ever been committed to a mental hospital.

The second is that this is an atrocity piece, of which there have been so many about this and every other war. For atrocities, those perpetrated by Saddam and his international terrorist co-conspirators--and that perpetrated on September 11, 2001 (remember that one? There weren't too many bodies left after that one to pierce anybody with their blank stares)--are infinitely worse than the admittedly tragic deaths of some 800-1200 Iraqi civilians in the War on Saddam. Some of these deaths were admittedly perpetrated by the Americans and the British, zero of them intentionally, unlike Saddam placing military targets within populated areas, the Fedayeen forcing the ordinary civilians to be suicide bombers, and the explosions in the Baghdad markets that we didn't cause. And saying "Who cares whether you meant to kill them, they're dead anyway, just like Saddam's victims" is flat-out relativism, the idea that the morality of an act is not in its intention but in its effect.

A third certainty is that this here tantrum Maruja spit out onto paper is caused by a deep, deep anti-Americanism, since she never criticizes anybody else anyway and since she goes on about dignity and rage and the invaders and the like. She's what Orwell would call a transferred nationalist, someone who stakes her psychological identity on a profound feeling akin to nationalism but not directed towards a nation. Maruja is a Stalinist, a hardcore Red. She bet on the wrong side, and she bet on the wrong side big-time. She lost everything when the Berlin Wall came down, and that's why her dignity is injured and she is full of rage; every time the Americans, the sworn enemy of her chosen faith, do anything that demonstrates their power, influence, and prestige, which her own Stalinism has completely lost. That's how she feels, psychologically destroyed by the failure of the godhood of Communism and especially by its rejection by most other people, and she's projecting the crash of her world all around her upon the suffering Iraqi civilians, imagining that they must feel the same way she does.

A fourth is that she's an ignorant racist. She obviously knows nothing about American black people and especially nothing about American Marines who are black.

Here's one for you foodies that I found through Slate, a review of a visit to El Bulli, the Michelin Guide Three-Star Super Mega Famous Restaurant up in the Empordà. It's food-porn, basically. The diners involved in this meal thought it was excellent, especially given the prices, which, according to them are very reasonable--135 euros for the thirty-course meal, wine not included. You would apparently pay double or triple in Paris. Don't bother if you don't book, like, a year in advance or whatever.

Since I am an amateur eater, I would not waste my money on such a meal since I'd never appreciate it. As I've said before, though, there are many very good restaurants in Barcelona where you can eat very well for less than thirty bucks, wine included. For fresh seafood at unbeatable prices, the places to go are the Puerto Pesquero in Santander and the Viejas Calles in Bilbao.

Coincidentally, here's a story from the Telegraph that says El Bulli is the second best restaurant in the world, down one spot from last year.

Here's an interesting article from the Weekly Standard about geopolitics and OPEC and oil production and the like. It is illuminating for those who, like me, don't really know anything about the oil industry.

Methinks InstaPundit has fallen for an urban legend--note the lack of specifics and the two different versions. So--since the story is BS, let's not worry too much.

DON'T SNIFF THE MYSTERIOUS WHITE POWDER: Well, this story isn't really that funny:

An Egyptian merchant-marine sailor met "someone" in Cairo and was given a suitcase. He traveled to Brazil to join his ship, which was loading bauxite intended for Canada. He was supposed to deliver the suitcase to "someone" in Canada, but being curious about the suitcase he opened it while in Brazil, and shortly thereafter died from anthrax. Like as not, having found the legendary white powder he suspected it was drugs, and took a sniff to see.

I don't know if he really sniffed it -- another account I saw suggested that he died of intestinal anthrax -- but this is a rather serious worry.

UPDATE: Here's more, suggesting that worry is appropriate.

posted at 10:35 PM by Glenn Reynolds

Well, somebody out there thinks we're right: Andrew Sullivan is on board with us (that's fun to say; we finally beat him to this one) as saying that the Times and Telegraph reports on Saddam's ties with Al Qaeda and France's leaking secret information to Saddam are a big deal and are not getting nearly enough media attention.

We agree with Andrew's Sunday Times (of London) column, now up on his site, about idjit hard-right Reps like Newt Gingrich and Rick Santorum shooting off their mouths and blowing all the political capital Bush has saved up. Both Newt and Rick missed good chances to shut up, and Sullivan is right to worry about the various strands of the Republican party unraveling (though they're a lot less likely to unravel than the Dems' unstable minorities-labor-feminist-university-Socialist-cadres coalition; let's not panic yet, people). However, we're not with Andrew on Bush's tax plan, which he slams as being "supply-side" economics. This article from the National Review adds a little bit of light to the extremely confusing subject of the federal budget. Check it out.

The best baseball blog out there is Rob and Rany on the Royals, written by two thirty-fiveish baseball columnists. One of them is Rob Neyer, whom I actually sort of know; we lived in the same college dorm. He probably wouldn't remember who I am. Anyway, though, Neyer is now a daily columnist with ESPN, and if you like baseball a lot, you ought to read him; he's one of Bill James's disciples. Warning: Neyer is a major idiotarian regarding politics, but he almost always keeps it out of the blog and his columns. We shouldn't judge his baseball writing by his political ideas.

Neyer is into a couple of offbeat stats which he and the other "sabermetric" (i.e. statisticics-interpreting) baseball writers have been talking about for a while. One is the OPS, which is simply the player's on-base percentage (better indicator than the traditional batting average of how often a guy gets on rather than making an out) plus the player's slugging average (indicator weighting how many bases the guy gets per plate appearance). It's a rough stat but really does distinguish between a guy who looks good but really doesn't do much and a guy who is better than he's normally considered to be. A pretty good major leaguer will have an OPS above 800, and a guy whose OPS is above 1000 is a damn good player. Guys like Neifi Perez whose OPS is under 500 should be playing in, like, Omaha.

Another rough stat Neyer uses to measure the overall quality of an entire team is to look at the team's position in its league in two hitting categories, home runs and walks, and two pitching categories, home runs allowed and walks allowed. A team gets one point for its league position in these four categories.This is the Beane Count, named for Oakland executive Billy Beane. The top score is of course 4, meaning you are the best in the league in all four categories. A good playoff team would be in the 20s or low 30s. The Yankees so far this year have a Beane Count of four. That's how good they are. The Royals are still in the twenties.

He also uses this thing Bill James made up called the Pythagorean Standings: looking at what a team's ratio of runs scored to runs allowed is and using that to forecast what a team's record "should be according to the stats". It's pretty accurate, usually never off by more than about 3-4 games either way at the end of the season.

Let's try that with soccer. Specifically, with teams' ratios of goals scored to goals allowed. Here's the ratios for the Spanish first division in the order of their league standings.

Real Madrid 2.12
Real Sociedad 1.45
Deportivo 1.44
Valencia 1.92
Celta 1.50
Málaga 1.11
Sevilla 1.04
Betis 0.95
Atlético Madrid 1.08
Athletic Bilbao 0.92
Mallorca 0.81
Barcelona 1.17
Racing Santander 0.83
Español 0.90
Valladolid 0.85
Villarreal 0.74
Recreativo Huelva 0.66
Osasuna Pamplona 0.74
Alavés Vitoria 0.56
Rayo Vallecano 0.50

That pans out. The five teams at the bottom are all below 0.75. The three teams that descend to Second will come from these five. The ten teams in the middle, between 0.80 and 1.20, are mediocre. Then there are three teams that are good, at around 1.50, then Valencia at 1.92, and then Madrid at 2.12. The two real anomalies are Valencia, who ought by all rights to be in second place rather than fourth, and Barcelona, which should be in sixth place rather than twelfth as the best of the mediocre crew.

So what factors are causing Barcelona's and Valencia's poor actual performance compared to their goal ratios? Well, Valencia is still fighting for a Champions' league spot, so they're not doing that lousy, and they played this year's Champions League all the way to the quarterfinals, which neither Deportivo, Real Sociedad, and Celta had to do, so their guys are a lot fresher since they've seen fewer games. Particularly interestingly, second-place Real Sociedad, who I thought would wilt under pressure, is having a terrific season and are a legitimately fine squad. It may help that their foreign stars, Nihat, Kovacevic, and Karpin, are from such non-charismatic football countries as Turkey, Yugoslavia, and Russia and don't go to big-time Nike exhibition games in, like, Japan the way the Brazilians and Argentines do.

As for Barcelona, they also played in the Champions' League through the quarterfinals, and their foreign "stars" are Brazilian and Argentinian, so being tired might have something to do with it, too, though first-place Madrid has made it all the way to the Champions' semis and their guys ought to be just as tired. But Madrid has a deep bench with Guti and Morientes and McManaman and Solari and Flavio, all of whom can pick up the slack when they need to. Barcelona's bench is crappy.

But most importantly, Barcelona is demoralized. Their players have no confidence and can't usually hold a lead. It's already been made clear that a lot of them are going to be looking for new jobs come June 30, and the coach knows he's gone at the end of the year, and the interim club president has already resigned. Nobody's running the team and everybody knows it.

Good. I hope they descend to Second.

I'm pretty sure that the next big wave of stories coming out of Iraq will be full of lots of neato information from Saddam's files. So far we've got George Galloway's corruption, the records of the meetings between Iraqi government officials and Al Qaeda, and France's passing on diplomatically-obtained American information to Saddam.

Here's a piece from the Weekly Standard about the theme; check it out. The question everybody's asking is what's going to come out next.

My guesses: much more evidence of French and Russian collaboration with Saddam, much more evidence of Iraqi ties to international terrorists in general, and much more evidence of corruption in the international press. Not real difficult guesses to make, mind you, but how much you want to bet that half the French press is on the take and a good bit of the Spanish press as well? The only name I'll mention as a for-sure suspect is Scott Ritter, and I think we know very well what Saddam had on him: photos of the guy having sex with children.

If you go to National Review Online's site right now, you'll see nothing but this message on a white background:

Hacked by DarkHunter ... Freedom for palestian and Iraq ... gr33tz to #USG and #teso channels

Looks to me like the documents showing French intelligence cooperation with Saddam and Saddam's contacts with Al Qaeda are going to be today's big story, so here is a paragraph-by-paragraph quick-hitter from today's interview with Baghdad Bob Fisk--well, now he's Beirut Bob because he states that his home city is Beirut and that's where the interview took place--in the Vanguardia just to show how wrong about everything Tikrit Tommy's best buddy usually is. You name the event, Fisk will figure out how to completely miss it in his forecast while beating the Allies over the head with last week's story. Anyway, the Roman numeral corresponds with the paragraph.

I) The Shiites are going to pull an uprising against the Yanks and the Brits.
II) The looting of the museum and library in Baghdad was the Yanks' fault.
III) There's some nasty conspiracy behind the looting in Baghdad.
IV) The robbery of valuable items from said museum was planned.
V) Some bad people must have given the Iraqis maps of where the valuable stuff was.
VI) The looting was obviously an American plot.
VII) Bob warned an American marine that a ministry was being torched; said marine refused to do anything on the grounds he was guarding a hospital.
VIII) The Americans did nothing to stop the looting.
IX) The Americans shouldn't have attacked Saddam's military establishments near civilian areas.
X) Doing that may have killed 14 civilians.
XI) The Yanks are evil because they used cluster bombs. They are as much war criminals as the Saddamites.
XII) Thousands of Iraqis must have been killed.
XIII) The Yanks are bad because they fired on cars that didn't stop when ordered to.
XIV) The Yanks murdered journalists.
XV) The Yanks attacked Al Jazeera TV in Baghdad on purpose.
XVI) The Yanks lied about why they fired at the Palestine Hotel.
XVII) The Yanks really lied a lot about why they fired at the Palestine Hotel.
XVIII) The Yanks are big liars in general.
XIX) The Yanks should have known there were journalists in the hotel, and they are big liars.
XXX) The Yanks are war criminals and they lie a lot, but some of the ordinary grunts are OK guys.
XXXI) Saddam is alive and is hiding out in either Baghdad or Bielorussia.
XXXII) The Sunnis and Shiites will unite and expel the American troops.
XXXIII) Judith Miller's stories in the NYT are Pentagon / CIA propaganda.
XXXIV) The Yanks won't attack Syria because it has no oil.
XXXV) The Yanks are occupying an Arab capital city.
XXXVI) "We have entered a new imperialist era".
XXXVII) The Yanks invaded Iraq for the oil.
XXXVIII) We, as journalists, must demand that those who rule over the people tell us why they are doing things and stop lying.

See how fast and easy it is to compress Beirut Bob's thought into easily digestible--well, totally indigestable, but you know what I mean--little nuggets. Thank God I took care of that or you'd never have read through the whole thing. It's two whole pages in today's Vangua.

BREAKING NEWS

This article from Libertad Digital says, first, that the Sunday Times of London is reporting this morning that documents found among the ruins of Baghdad show that France was informing Iraq about the progress of Franco-American diplomatic discussions. If this is true, French perfidy is much greater than I had thought it was.

Second, the Sunday Telegraph of London is reporting that they have documents demonstrating contacts between Saddam and Al Qaeda dating back to 1998. If this is true, that's the smoking gun. There's the justification for the war: they collaborated with terrorism.

Now you have to wonder what else is going to turn up in those files. I bet plenty more incriminating stuff is yet to come out. This is going to be even more fun than the overthrow of Mr. Squalid Dictator Hussein itself was: the implication of the Axis of Weasels in Saddam's international racketeering ring. Baghdad Bob Fisk, as usual, just got dreadfully wrong-footed.

Here's the story from the Telegraph. Here's the little summary of the story from the Times--you need to live in the UK to get in to the whole thing for free.

Dossier reveals France briefed Iraq on US plans
Matthew Campbell, Baghdad
France gave Saddam Hussein's regime regular reports on its dealings with American officials, documents unearthed in the wreckage of the Iraqi foreign ministry have revealed.

I swear this just happened to me. I went down to the Dia discount supermarket (it's a big no-frills chain) to pick up a few things before they close at 8:30 and don't reopen until 9 on Monday. Got some skim milk, muesli, a chocolate bar with almonds, some frozen eggrolls, some of those spinach linguine-like substances, tuna for the cats, cat litter, OJ, and Fanta lemon. Perfectly normal Saturday evening shopping experience, don't you figure? Nope.

A few other people were in line, too, and directly in front of me was a longhair dude and a local progressive-looking university chick who was about 19. I'd seen him hanging around the squat down on the plaza a few times, so I twigged them for squatters. Very ungenerously, the whole time I was waiting in line, they were bickering in wonderful communalist style about who was going to pay for the twelve one-liter bottles of beer they had in their shopping cart.

(By the way, I've heard the two checkout girls, one's Polish and one's from the Philippines, complain that the squatters "borrow" the shopping carts without asking and only infrequently bring them back. When somebody says, "Hey, you can't take those outside the store", they whiningly wheedle, "Come on, be cool." [Venga, tía, enróllate])

So, anyway, the guy, who is Argentinian, says that he's going to pay for one and that some dude named Alejandro gave him five euros to pay for six liters. The hippie-looking girl says you can't buy six liters of beer for five euros and gets out her cellphone and tries to figure it out on the calculator. The guy has to hold back some of his dough, like everything more than the price of a liter, it seems, and repeats that he has Alejandro's five euros several times. Bingo, twigged him, he's a counterculture scam artist.

Then, get this, the girl turns to him and within my hearing, not to mention that of everybody else in line and the checkout girl, and says, "Let the guiri go first while I figure this out." "Guiri" is the fairly mild Spanish ethnic slur, along the lines of "mick" or "kraut" or "wop" in American English, used to refer to people of Northern European ancestry, and the guiri is me. I am a little annoyed, anyway, and plan the devastating comeback line I would use should they actually offer to allow me to jump the queue: "No, no, que las charnegas pasen por delante de los guiris." (No, let the charnegas go before the guiris.) A charnego is "a person of Spanish ancestry" here in Catalonia and is quite an insult--and almost certainly the girl is a charnega, because there are very few Catalans who are "of pure roots".

Unfortunately, they don't let me cut in front of them and I can't use the devastating comeback line. Damn. Just when I had one all ready.

Anyway, they continue to bicker and the hippie girl calls up someone on her cellphone while the longhair dude is trying to scam the checkout girl--he's divided the bottles up into three groups and he's going to pay for his one separately from the ones that Alejandro's fiver is going to take care of, which will be separate from the rest, which the girl is going to pay for. He's trying to confuse her and slip past a couple of the bottles while she's making change from the one he bought and then the ones Alejandro's fiver bought, if you follow me. The checkout girl doesn't let him. She is no dummy. The girl talking on the cellphone is shafted because she winds up having to pay for like eight of their twelve bottles herself.

Anyway, I take care of all my business, the Philippine girl checks me out, I pay with exact change, and get out of there while the squatters still haven't bagged up their stuff and are arguing because the girl had to come up with like twelve euros for whatever the amount of beer she had to pay for was.