This is a story from the Associated Press today. The AP is in italics. My comments are in regular type.

As world leaders gathered Monday for the annual U.N. General Assembly, French President Jacques Chirac — already deeply at odds with the Bush administration over the war in Iraq — accused Washington of obstructing a worldwide campaign to eradicate poverty.
Chirac spoke after the U.S. administration declined after two high-level meetings to endorse a final declaration that was supported by 110 countries. The nonbinding document called for a "renewed political mobilization" to help more than 1 billion people trying to eke out a living on less than $1 a day.

Note the words "nonbinding" and "declaration" and "political mobilization". In other words, nothing serious, just another blast of hot air aimed at taking the high moral ground. Sorry, M. Chiraq, we all know that such empty posturing is the behavior of the weak. The strong do not posture. They act.

"However strong the Americans may be, in the long term, you cannot successfully oppose a position taken by 110 countries," Chirac told a news conference. "You can't oppose that forever."
Chirac planned to return to Paris Monday night, making it impossible for him to meet with President Bush who speaks before the General Assembly when it officially opens Tuesday. Bush did not attend the Monday meetings.

We certainly can oppose something so meaningless with absolutely no damage whatsoever. As for meeting with President Bush, even if Chiraq had stuck around I don't think he'd have gotten one.

Chirac said he and and Brazilian President Luiz Inacio Lula da Silva would propose new approaches to fund the alleviation of poverty, although the preparatory meetings resulted in no specific proposals.
"The price of selfishness is rebellion," he warned. "We should ensure that the world's unprecedented wealth becomes a vehicle for the integration, rather than exclusion, of the most underprivileged. It is up to us to give globalization a conscience," he said.

Wait a minute, Jack. Are you calling us selfish and exclusive and concienceless? That's rich, seeing as how the United States has provided more aid (99% wasted) to the Third World than France, Germany, and Spain put together, and seeing as how everybody in France would be living in mud huts eating grass right now if not for the Marshall Plan. France has certainly been generous to folks like Saddam, though, I will say that. As for the dumb "root causes of terrorism" argument, that's already been so completely shot down that I won't bother doing it again. By the way, note the words "no specific proposals".

Bush has said his speech will emphasize international humanitarian concerns as the world body begins two weeks of meetings in the midst of an upsurge of violence in Iraq and a massive humanitarian crisis in western Sudan.
The document adopted after Monday's meetings, but not signed by the Americans did not make specific anti-proverty proposals but said the time had come "to give further attention to innovative mechanisms of financing — public or private, compulsory and voluntary, of univeral or limited membership" to raise funds to fight poverty.

I saw Bush's speech. He pointed out that we're spending fifteen billion dollars in Africa to fight AIDS, malaria, and other diseases. That sounds specific to me. Again, no specific proposals by Chirac, just a load of wank. And I think "innovative methods of (compulsory, public) financing translate to "Give France some control over your money, you evil rich Americans, so we can waste it propping up our former Empire of cheap-ass African dictators."
U.S. Agriculture Secretary Ann Venemen rejected the idea of a global tax proposed in a February U.N. report and favored by some of the participants, including France, saying it was impossible to impose.
"A global tax is inherently undemocratic," she said.

That's right. Nobody but the US government is going to tax US citizens. The rest of y'all around the world can do whatever you want.

Silva said overwhelming hunger and unemployment in developing nations was contributing to international violence.
"How many more times will it be necessary to repeat that the most destructive weapon of mass destruction in the world is poverty?" he asked during a speech at a session that focuse on a U.N. report about the growing divide between the world's haves and have-nots.
Asked later whether he was concerned by the lack of U.S. support for the declaration, Silva told journalists that the United States had taken an important step by sending a representative.

There goes Lula again with the root causes argument. You want to cure poverty in Brazil, Lula, there are a few things you can do all on your own. Just ask Xavier Sala i Martin. Anyway, poverty doesn't cause violence, fanaticism and greed (both caused by envy) cause violence.

The report said the income gap between the richest and poorest countries has widened over the past four decades and the vast majority of the world's population could fail to see the benefits of globalization.
"Fair globalization must begin with the right of everyone to a job," Silva said, stressing that "dignified work, like the fight against hunger, cannot wait."

First, the fact that the rich are getting richer faster than the poor are getting richer is not a bad thing, it's a good thing, since everyone is getting richer. Second, I'm tired of the word "globalization". The world economy has been global ever since it began sometime during the Neolithic age, and it's never been fair. And third, nobody has the right to a job, since rights are free (they do not have a cost) and your "right" is somebody else's obligation. You have the right to look for a job, but nobody has the obligation to give you one.

According to Bjorn Lomborg, who cites UN figures, world life expectancy has risen from 30 to 67 years since 1900. Only 18% of people in the Third World suffer from hunger, down from 35% in 1970. Only 16% of young people in the developing world are illiterate, down from about 75% in 1915. 80% of Third World people have clean drinking water, up from 30% in 1970. In the last ten years caloric consumption in the Third World has risen 8%. People around the world are richer, healthier, and better off than they ever have been. That does not mean things are good enough. It does mean that they aren't nearly as bad as one might think after listening to Chiraq and Lula.

"We have more leisure time, greater security and fewer accidents, more education, more ameneties, higher incomes, fewer starving people, more food, and a healthier and longer life. This is the fantastic story of mankind, and to call such a civilization 'dysfunctional' is quite simply immoral." (Lomborg, The Skeptical Environmentalist, pg. 328.)

I just watched Bush's speech at the UN. I'm not sure it was a home run but it was definitely a triple off the wall. Bush made the case for democracy around the world and emphasized the idea of "human dignity" as what the US and its allies are fighting for in the War against Terrorism. He linked Afghanistan and Iraq as different battlefields in the same war against murdering fanatics. He openly spoke in favor of a Palestinian state and criticized Israel's settlements policy as he called yet again for peace in Palestine: his emphasis, though, was on the corruption and cruelty of the current Palestinian leadership, as he said that peace would be impossible while the current leadership was in place. Bush talked tough about Darfur, calling the current situation genocidal. The two things that most impressed me were 1) that Bush accepted partial American responsibility for the situation in the Middle East, stating that American policy had too often worked in the interests of stability and not enough in the interests of democracy and freedom and 2) that he did not back down on Iraq; he said America and its allies would stand firm and achieve victory. No flip-flopping or panicking here.

This was the speech of a President, not that of a mere politician.

The terrorists in Iraq have murdered another American and they are holding one more American and a Briton. They will undoubtedly be killed soon. Every atrocity they commit should merely make the will of the West stronger. Excluding our friends in Paris, Berlin, and Madrid, of course, who have no will whatsoever. There is only one way to stop terrorism and that is to kill those people who are committing it. I'm surprised that so few people are willing to say this publicly, even over here in supposedly conservative Kansas City.

Time magazine has a piece on our friend Zap and an interview with him. No comment, except to say that Zap is a dope.

I certainly did mistranslate El Pais's slogan for the advertisement they produced the other day: as well as using the photographs of the World Trade Center atrocity in an attempt to stir up business, they used the slogan "Un dia da para mucho." This has two different meanings: the first is, as I said, "A lot can happen in one day". The second, even more offensive, is "You can accomplish a lot in one day." Fortunately, El Pais has done the decent thing and apologized on their editorial page--though I still think that what they're really sorry about is letting their real feelings for the US slip through.

As for our friends Dan Rather and CBS, thay've finally admitted they were wrong about the phony memos. Jeff Greenfield was on CNN; Judy Woodruff asked him how this could have happened and Jeffy said it was human error. Judy mentioned that there are some people who think the media has a liberal bias and might possibly be gunning for Bush. Jeffy said nope, that it was an honest mistake. Jeffy went on to say, insinuatingly, that it is the Bush campaign that has benefited as a result of this hoo-hah. No, no media bias there at all.

The Chiefs suck. Can you say "six and ten"?

You guys should absolutely check out Franco Aleman's Barcepundit. From there, if you don't read Spanish, just click on Barcepundit in English. Franco is holding down the fort while I'm gone and doing a hell of a job as usual, with comments on CBSgate, El Pais, La Vangua, those idiots in the Spanish government, and just about everything else. In particular, he reproduces an advertisement from El Pais which shows a photo of New York taken the morning of Sept. 11 and another one taken on Sept. 12, with the obvious difference that there are two large buildings in the left photo that don't appear in the right one. The slogan? "A lot can happen in one day. Subscribe to El Pais and get three months free." Gee whiz, why didn't they use photos of, say, Atocha Station before and after the events of March 11 this year? Or maybe a before-and-after of one of the kids in the school at Beslan? What poor taste. Disgusting.

Quick update on coverage from Spain in the American press: CNN has been reporting that 1. Aznar is going to speak before the Parliamentary commission investigating the 3-11 bombings and the government's response thereto and 2. ten Pakistanis have been arrested in Barcelona, accused of forming a low-level organized crime syndicate dealing in phony IDs and p[assports and pirate CDs and DVDs. They are apparently not linked to Al Qaeda but allegedly have provided money and logistical support to radical Islamist groups. The KC Star has a paragraph on the arrests.

Comment on the KC Star: Its coverage of local issues--city and state government, mostly, and local occurrences--is first-rate, considerably more detailed than what you find in Spain. Its coverage of national issues is a good bit more sketchy and mostly depends on the wire services. It's not a bad summary, but you'd want to, at the very least, read one of the national newsmagazines and/or the Sunday New York Times and/or the Wall Street Journal and/or listen to talk radio and/or watch TV news, in addition, as far as the mass media goes. As far as international issues, there's really not very much and it's all off the AP wire. Exception: Iraq, where the coverage is both more detailed and less prejudiced than what you get in Europe. For anything else about the rest of the world, the Kansas City Star is not sufficient.

I suppose this has everything to do with local folks' priorities. The KC metro area is about 1.5 million people; there are some 2.5 million people in all of Kansas and like 4.5 million in Missouri. Add up Missouri and Kansas and you get an entity very like Catalonia in population, though much greater in size. Missouri and Kansas put together would be a medium-small European country in population that batted well above its weight economically, and that's about most people's everyday scope. Chicago? Denver? Dallas? Those places are beyond our local scope.

Since American government is much more decentralized than European governments generally are--that is, most decisions about education, police and fire protection, public utilities, government social services, criminal and civil law, banking and insurance regulation, public and private transport, intrastate commerce regulation, and some taxes are made at the state or local level with between some and no federal input--people tend to be a good bit more concerned about state and local news than they would be in Europe. National news is also very important, since the federal government is responsible for a lot of stuff, too. International news just isn't so big a deal except for Iraq and other fronts of the War on Terrorism to most people around here, which is why coverage in the KC Star is so limited. Maybe a proper comparison would be, for media purposes, that a US state (in our case, two states since we're right on the line) is comparable to a European country, that the federal government is comparable to the European Union, and that you don't hear much about the rest of the world either in the US or Europe unless something big happens there.

Note for confused people about local geography: Kansas City is in Missouri, right on the Kansas state line, where the Kansas River flows into the Missouri River. The rivers were named long before there were any white permanent settlers in the area. Missouri became a state in 1821, and Kansas City was founded about that time, though it didn't become important until 1850 or so. Kansas didn't become a territory until about 1850, and it became a state in 1861. So the story is that the municipality of Kansas City was named for the Kansas River and has nothing to do with the state of Kansas. Later, as Kansas City, Mo., grew, its metro area spilled over into Kansas. There is a city called Kansas City, Kansas, about 1/5 the size of KCMO, across the state line. (Most of it is a real hellhole.) South of KCK is Johnson County, Kansas, where many of the middle-class suburbs are, including Leawood.

Well, we've been here for a couple of days now in lovely Leawood, Kansas. Here are some first impressions after two years outside the United States:

1. Everyone seems to be very prosperous. Not that people in Barcelona are poor, but it's clear that the standard of living here is much higher, and real estate has gone up in price a good deal though not as much as in BCN. I see virtually no real poverty. There isn't anyone who doesn't have the minimums except for the few local homeless. Working class folks ain't rich by any stretch of the imagination, and dad and mom both have to work at least part-time, but things aren't too bad for anybody and are pretty good for most people. This does not strike me as a temporary blip; it strikes me as a real gain.

2. Government services are not anywhere near as ungenerous as they are painted by the lefties in Europe. Just for example, if you are a family of four and you earn less than 170% of the poverty level income (170% is $34,000 or so), your kids qualify for reduced price school lunches. $34,000 is a hell of a lot more than Remei and I make, put together, in Barcelona.

3. The only big problem I see that people here have is health care. Now, I pay 8% of my income in Spain for social security (=health care plus pension) taxes. I don't think most people in the US pay 8% of their incomes for health insurance, but I don't have the facts, either. What I do see is people who would be in big trouble if they didn't have decent insurance, like my parents. This is what most people I know seem to be concerned about. I really don't know what I would do to fix the situation; I believe that strict controls on malpractice suits and jury awards would help a lot, I do not think insurance should cover bogus so-called alternative medicine (e.g. chiropractic, vitamin therapy, acupuncture, psychoanalysis--google the website Quackwatch for the real information on this), and I think that Americans have a silly fixation on the idea that "I want to choose my own doctor". No, if you're not paying for it out of your own pocket, you don't get to choose your own doctor. By the way, doctors in America make way too damn much money. But from these personal prejudices of mine to a coherent plan there is a long way.

4. People are nowhere near as dumb as the average bigoted European thinks. Most Americans are much better informed about domestic affairs than most Spaniards are about their domestic affairs, and most Americans are not ill-informed about significant international affairs. Yes, probably only about 2% of Americans can identify the prime minister of Spain, probably not much more than 5% have ever heard of the Catalan language, and I doubt more than 10% could accurately place (not find--any idiot who can read a map can do that) Barcelona on a blank world map. You did hear me say "significant", though.

As for what they call in Spain "general culture", everybody who's ever been to college has plenty. People who haven't been to college often don't. Is that a surprise? I think what bothers Spaniards is that in Spain, there's a connection between cultural level, class, and money. It is expected that someone with enough money to travel the world is of at least bourgeois, social class. In America there are a lot of working-class people with lots of money and no culture who have never been anywhere near a university except to supervise the installation of the air-conditioning and earn more for doing that than an assistant professor makes in six months.

5. People here are very polite. And they don't shout and scream and get angry all the time. Also, service in bars and restaurants and the like is good, and you generally tend to get what you pay for.

6. People have lost weight since about five years ago. There's a real move toward eating healthier and doing more exercise. It's not a "cult of the body" thing, it's people behaving more sensibly in general. Yes, there are fat slobs out there, but they're about 15-20% of the people. Then there is everybody else, many of whom are slightly or moderately overweight, but that's not incredibly unhealthy or unsightly. There sure are a lot of people around here who wear ugly clothes, though--except that one thing you see a lot more of in Spain than here is people wearing polyester. Americans tend to wear ugly natural fabrics.

7. It sure seems like there are a lot of people who want to be victims. Everybody can now identify himself as a victim of some kind who can demand special treatment. "Treat me with more respect! I have Asshole Personality Disorder and it interferes with my ability at social interaction in a way that unfairly influences my ability to..." You know what I mean. Gays are especially obnoxious about this.

8. New music sucks. So does new TV. And new movies. Good thing there are a lot of interesting books and plenty of old music out there to discover.

9. The mainstream American media is tremendously biased toward the left. This is also true in Spain, but at least they don't pretend to be neutral or unbiased over there.

10. The Chiefs' defense bites the big one. No way they'll get beyond the first round of the playoffs. Jed says we should go for it on fourth down every time, and onside kick after every score, since the other team will score whether or not the Chiefs punt or kick off deep.

8. People drive much more carefully than they do in Spain.

We're leaving for Kansas City today for a bit of vacation. Stay tuned for more stupidity-bashing from the other side of the Atlantic, including an evisceration of the Kansas City Star, within the next few days.

Well, it looks like the Dems have decided to play dirty. InstaPundit has the link. Susan Estrich, who is most likely operating as a Hillary stooge as usual, has a nasty piece out accusing Bush and Cheney of being alcoholics, stating with no evidence that they have racked up several drunk driving arrests between them (Bush has one from the early Seventies before he quit drinking), and also insinuating that Bush is cheating on his wife. Evidence: Seems there's a Kitty Kelley book coming out, and we all know how reliable she is. For good measure, she throws in some more unsubstantiated accusations of draft-dodging.

The Dems are flailing. They're furious that Kerry's Vietnam record is being challenged. The man's Vietnam service is part of his public record. Well, folks, that's what he's running on, so it's logical that the Reps would attack it. That is not a dirty trick. Bush and Cheney are not running on a platform of marital fidelity and sobriety, and their personal lives are not part of the public record.

Also, the challenges the Reps have made against Kerry have been made based on evidence, not innuendo, exactly the opposite of Estrich's charges. Susan, let's see the facts. If you can prove Bush and Cheney are philandering drunks, do it. Then the American people will be able to decide whether it matters or not. Seems to me that the Reps have managed to prove that John Kerry lied about his Vietnam record. And the American people seem to be deciding that that does matter.

This was the part of Estrich's piece that struck me:

"The arrogant little Republican boys who have been strutting around New York this week, claiming that they have this one won, would do well to take a step back. It could be a long and ugly road to November."

This is not the first time I have seen radical feminist women attack men's adulthood and sexuality. So the Republicans are "little boys", are they?

What would Ms. Estrich think if we said that she and her beloved Hillary are just little girls who should stay out of things that are the business of real men?

And, if the Dems want to play dirty regarding sex and drugs, I imagine there's plenty more good stuff out there on Kerry. You're telling me that a wealthy liberal counterculture young man in the 1970s wasn't doing cocaine? What about Kerry's divorce? Might there have been some screwing around related to that? (Here in Spain, it would probably look worse to be the cuckolded husband than the deceived wife, by the way.) And--the big one--money. Why precisely did John marry Teresa? Was it her unattractive face or her unpleasant personality, or maybe was it some other reason? That, to me, is a much uglier possibility than any accusations of drunk driving or adultery. See, if the Dems like innuendo, the Reps can come up with lots worse.

Finally, if Estrich actually had anything good, she'd save it for an October surprise, the way the Dems did back in 2000 when they released Bush's drunk driving arrest at the last minute before the election. And I don't think they have anything good, because if they did they'd already have used it back in 2000.

Point Number One: The Chechens have a legitimate beef against Russia. They were incorporated against their will into the Czarist empire during the 19th century. They were savagely mistreated by Lenin and Stalin, so much so that when the Nazis invaded, they collaborated. In revenge, Stalin deported the lot, along with the Ingush, to Siberia in 1944. Khrushchev allowed them to go back home, but thousands had already died. The Chechens then had to put up with more decades of Soviet misrule.

Point Number Two: This is no excuse for taking over a school and murdering four hundred people, mostly children.

Got that? I don't care how badly your people have been screwed over in the past. That was then and this is now. If you're going to go back to the days of Caucasus blood feuds, we're going to have to stop you, and "we" means the civilized world.

I am appalled by the comments of Spanish Socialists Javier Solana and Miguel Angel Moratinos, demanding explanations from Vladimir Putin and yammering on about dialogue and finding the root causes of terrorism and all that crap. Terrorists only understand one language, and that language is what comes out the muzzle end of an assault rifle.

I also believe that this is all the same war. If the Chechens aren't in league with Al Qaeda and the other Middle Eastern terrorist gangs, like the boys from Hamas who just murdered sixteen Israelis, or the Saddamites in Iraq who just murdered twelve Nepalis, not to mention seven Iraqi policemen in Kirkuk, then what were ten Arabs doing among the hit squad that took over the school in Beslan?

Finally, I'm not sure how Vladimir Putin can be blamed for this tragedy. My understanding of what happened in Beslan is that the terrorists took over the school, held more than a thousand children and other people hostage without food or water for two days, somehow caused an explosion that made many of the hostages attempt to flee, and then fired on those escaping, shooting them in the back. The Russian security forces had the place surrounded and the bombs and the gunfire started. Bodies were falling left and right. What were the security men going to do? They reacted quickly and went in shooting. I don't know who gave the order, or if there was one, but it seems safe to say it wasn't Putin because, of course, he wasn't on the scene.

It's the same enemy, folks. The civilized world has got to destroy them. Or else we're next. Remember the WTC. Remember Bali. Remember Madrid. Remember Fallujah. How short some of our memories are. Particularly those of the Spanish Socialists.

Problems with Nationalism: George Orwell wrote in his essay, "Notes on Nationalism", that there is a difference between patriotism and nationalism. A patriot is someone who loves his country, its people, and its culture, but has no desire to force his culture or religion or lifestyle on anyone else. His patriotism is only one of the many factors, both emotional and rational, that forms his worldview. A nationalist, on the other hand, is someone whose worldview is emotionally based on his love for his chosen power unit, which may be a state, a people, a political system, a religion, or whatever. A nationalist thinks only or mostly about the comparative prestige and power of his chosen unit.

According to Orwell's definitions, I consider myself an American patriot. I don't want the United States to annex anybody else's territory. I see no need to force American culture on anybody. I believe that if you leave us alone, we ought to leave you alone. Sure, I have emotional, non-rational feelings toward the United States, but I try to keep them under control and not let them dominate my thinking.

Excessive nationalism can have various negative consequences.

1) Irredentism. You believe that your power unit should control territory that doesn't belong to it. Milosevic's Greater Serbia and Hitler's Greater Germany are classic examples. When Catalan nationalists start talking about the Països Catalans, including not only Catalonia proper but also Valencia, Baleares, and Roussillon, as a single unit, that's a problem since none of those places want to be part of Catalonia. And let's not even mention Gibraltar. Oops, I just did.

2) Internal divisions. You believe that some of the people within your unit are not part of your group. Hostility toward immigrants is a very common consequence of this. We see this in the United States; some Americans fear that the country is being flooded by Spanish-speakers. Our man Jordi Pujol recently made a very nasty crack about how immigration is going to make Catalonia a land of mestizos. This is made even worse when there are several groups who have lived within the same territory since time immemorial; for example, in Catalonia, there are some people who believe that others are not good Catalans because of the language they speak or the political party they vote for. In Spain, there are people who believe that many Catalans are not good Spaniards for the very same reasons. When taken to an extreme, this leads to ethnic cleansing and even genocide. Fortunately we're nowhere near that around here...but up in the Basque Country...

3) Falsification of history. Nationalists have the habit of ignoring facts when they don't fit into their chosen worldview. For example, Sabino Arana invented his own history of the Basque country which has nothing to deal with reality. Some Spanish nationalists claim that there is a Black Legend (the Inquisition, expulsion of Jews and Moors, ethnic purity, foreign aggression) that has been greatly exaggerated by foreigners who wish to slander Spain's name.

4) Excessive emphasis on symbolism. September 11 is the Catalan national holiday. So what are they fighting about? What flag should fly over the City Hall. Who should lay flowers at the Holy Statue of Rafael Casanova. This is a serious distraction from real issues.

5) Excessive emotionalism. This leads to poor decision-making. The classic example is probably Japan in 1941; they knew they were going to lose but went to war anyway.

6) Ignorance of other groups. Nationalists have the bad habit of assuming that either everybody is just like them (a common American error) or that everybody else is completely different. This is generally because nationalists are obsessed with their own unit to the point that there's no room in their brains left for the comprehension of other units. What this leads to is stereotyping of others. In Barcelona there's a real problem with this: many people who think they're well-educated about the world are so self-absorbed with nationalist issues that their comprehension doesn't extend south of about Tortosa.

7) Bitterness. Some Catalans, for example, live in a constant state of anger because they believe that Catalonia is an oppressed nation under the Spanish jackboot. They obsess over it. This is probably not good for their mental health, and it makes them unpleasant to be around.

George W. Bush is going to win the election. The Democrats are so mad they could spit. Just look at Slate or Salon or the New Republic. They can't stand it. Bush's convention bounce is going to be enormous and they know it. I don't think Mickey Kaus minds, though.


The Democratic convention was a big fat zero. Nobody was impressed. Nobody's mind was changed, or even influenced. But Zell Miller, Arnold Schwarzenegger, Laura Bush, Dick Cheney, Rudy Giuliani, and company have successfully gotten the Republican message out. The bases are loaded and two runs are already in. And Bush hasn't even spoken yet. He doesn't need a home run; a line-drive single will do.

The message is very clear. If you want to win the War on Terrorism, vote for Bush. And John Kerry is not fit to be President. The Republicans have completely blown away any pretense he ever had to be taken seriously as a national politician. If I were a Dem, I'd just give up on Kerry now and vote for Ralph. At least he believes what he says.

I think I know what's gotten into Andrew Sullivan. (Have you read some of the crap he's been putting out?) When you get right down to it, Mr. Bareback is a single-issue commentator. He cares only about gay rights; everything else, even the War on Terror he has supported, is secondary to him. Bush is against gay marriage; therefore, Bush must lose. Sullivan has blown all his credibility. Sad. Go back to Provincetown, Andrew.

On Sunday La Vanguardia published an interview with Carles Fontserè, an old Spanish leftist (now 88) from Civil War days who designed propaganda posters. He fled to France after the war was over, where he complains about being mistreated by the French, who weren't sure what to do with the horde of leftist refugees (some of them very dangerous people) and so locked them up in camps. That's where we start, in France in 1939 before the outbreak of World War II. I quote:

"INTERVIEWER: ...How did you feel when you saw yourself so mistreated?

CARLES FONTSERE: First, discombobulated. We arrived there thinking we were a collective, part of an army. Soon I saw that I had to fight for myself, take care of myself. I decided my obligation was to escape from that concentration camp. Other comrades, on the other hand, enlisted in the Foreign Legion or in work brigades for France, a job for slaves! Then, when those comrades were captured by the Nazis, they sent them to the camps as prisoners of war of an enemy army, which they were.

INT: Did you escape?

CF: I refused to be a slave for France. I put all my intelligence and all the strength of my 23 years into escaping from there. I studied the wire fence and the routine of the guards, and I discovered a possibility. And, crawling like a snake under the wires, I escaped.

INT: Bravo!

CF: When I did so, I deserted from the honorable ranks of the antifascist martyrs. I gave them all the finger: the guards and the prisoners! I rebelled against that fate of martyrdom.

INT: You say that as if the rest decided to be martyrs.

CF: I think that's true, many of them accepted that fate. Not me. And today it seems that you are only one of the good guys if you have suffered a lot. Well, although many "good guys" may become indignant, I will say that I had fun in exile, I had a good time.

INT: Did you make it to Paris?

CF: Yes, with no money or papers. At the beginning, I was hungry, but when I got some pencils and paintbrushes I earned a good living drawing for various publications.

INT: Was there a cultural life in Nazi-occupied Paris?

CF: A great deal. Jean-Paul Sartre began to be known during those years, and Albert Camus expressly left Algeria for that Paris in order to present his works successfully. There was a lot of intellectual, artistic, and cultural life in Paris under the occupation!

INT: Clandestine?

CF: No! The Nazis organized free concerts in the streets of Paris. I came from a lousy concentration camp and I found music in the streets: marvelous!

INT: But they were Nazis!

CF: Look, the German soldiers entered Paris hand in hand with the French soldiers, and they loved Paris, and they protected it. The economic activity in France didn't change: there was electricity, telephones, everything. The head of the German General Staff in Paris, Hans Speidel, met with French artists and intellectuals like Cocteau, Guitry, Gallimard...In the streets, the German officers stepped off the sidewalks to let you pass. In the five years I was in Paris I never saw an armed German soldier in the streets. They didn't need to (carry arms)! They gave chocolate to the people in the streets.

INT: Wasn't there any resistance?

CF: Of course not. That's a myth, invented later by Gaullists and Communists. There was agreement, there was collaboration. According to what I saw, there were 40 million Petainist Frenchmen! The Germans respected the French army, and Petain, with that agreement, saved Paris and the French from destruction. It was intelligent and sensible. Remember that Germany had the most powerful army in Europe...The Nazis respected the Spanish Republican fighters more than Franco. They admired the way we had formed a Popular Army, the way we resisted for three years. Hitler, who was a Socialist, respected the Spanish Reds.

INT: But the Germans turned over Lluís Companys (the leftist, Catalanist president of Catalonia during the Spanish Civil War) to Franco.

CF: Companys made a mistake. Instead of presenting himself proudly to the Germans as president of the Generalitat, he walked around Paris like everybody else. I tried to free him when he was held prisoner a few days in La Santé in Paris: along with other Catalans, we wrote a letter to the German commander. It didn't work. But the Germans didn't like the way Franco had him shot, and after that they never permitted a single Spaniard to be turned over to him.

INT: You always excuse the Nazis.

CF: No, I just say what I know, and the truth is that Germany represented at that time the most avant-garde and advanced of Europe. Their rulers were young, while the French were ancient.

INT: Young and perfidious.

CF: Look, Goebbels was wrong: while the Americans made dozens of movies about perfidious Nazis played by the leading Hollywood stars, the Germans didn't make even one about the Americans! What a lack of propaganda! Also, the Nuremberg trials were more propaganda than justice.

INT: Come on...

CF: They executed four of them who they didn't need, but they accepted in the United States scientists who had made Nazi bombs, like Von Braun! Thanks to him the Americans made it to the moon. And where do you think senator McArthy (sic) got those lists of Reds?

INT: Where?

CF: From the Gestapo archives that they bought from Colonel Muller, a Nazi who had them in Switzerland and went over to the United States with his dollars.

INT: Meanwhile, you stayed in Paris.

CF: I was there from 1939 to 1948, yes. (Later he went to the United States, where he lived until his return to Spain in 1973.)"

My only comment is that Carles Fontserè is the most amoral person I have ever heard of, and he dares to boast about his amorality. I wish the so-called Free French had shot the son-of-a-bitch back in '44.

Oh, yeah. For more fun with Google, try some combination of "Not in Our Name", "ANSWER", "Workers World Party", "Revolutionary Communist Party", and "Communist front". Fascinating what turns up.

La Vanguardia has given its featured space on the letters to the editor page to one Juan López de Uralde, the executive director of Greenpeace Spain. López slams Bjorn Lomborg ad hominem, claiming that Lomborg is a liar when he said he was a former member of Greenpeace. In fact, Lomborg never appeared on any official Greenpeace membership list. Says López, "In order that Lomborg's media strategy function, it is basic that he present himself as a "repentant ecologist". He knows why he had to invent a past he does not have." In other words, it's a conspiracy! Typical Spanish logic.

Lomborg's response is that he believed that a person like him who gave money and support to Greenpeace and went to meetings and protests and signed petitions and the like was a member. Lomborg was never on any Greenpeace list of official members, but the Greenpeace organization includes only a hard core of a few dozen cadres in each country where it is present as official members--and they make all the decisions. Very few Greenpeace activists are actually members with a voice in the organization.

Also, Lomborg does not present himself as a "repentant ecologist". He is an environmentalist. He simply believes that the environmental movement would be much better off if it stuck to the facts rather than using scare tactics.

López also says, "The book "The Skeptical Environmentalist" has been denounced in Denmark for "faults of scientific rigor" by the Public Committee in charge of guaranteeing the rigor of scientific publications."

This is Lomborg's statement on his website:

"The Danish Committees on Scientific Dishonesty (DSCD) have finally ended their case on March 12, 2004, rejecting the original complaints. They have decided that the original decision is invalid and has ended any further inquiry.

The Danish Ministry of Science, Technology and Innovation has, on December 17, 2003, repudiated findings by the Danish Committees on Scientific Dishonesty (DSCD) that Bjørn Lomborg’s book “The Skeptical Environmentalist” was “objectively dishonest” or “clearly contrary to the standards of good scientific practice”.

The Ministry, which is responsible for the DSCD, has released a highly critical assessment of the Committee’s January 7 ruling. The Ministry finds that the DCSD judgment was not backed up by documentation, and was “completely void of argumentation” for the claims of dishonesty and lack of good scientific practice.

The Ministry characterises the DCSD’s treatment of the case as “unsatisfactory”, “deserving criticism”, and “emotional” and points out a number of significant errors. The DSCD's verdict has been remitted."

So. Mr. López of Greenpeace has slandered Mr. Lomborg, accusing him of having ulterior, hidden, conspiratorial motivations behind his statements and publications, calling him a liar regarding his environmentalist activist past, and saying that the Danish Committee on scientific dishonesty has censured Lomborg's book without mentioning that said committee's censure has been repudiated by the government ministry in charge of that committee.

What I find interesting is that Mr. López of Greenpeace didn't bother to come up with one factual argument to rebut Mr. Lomborg's position.

Also, if we want to go ad hominem, Greenpeace is a wonderful target. Greenpeace was indicted in a US court for criminal conspiracy in 2003. Greenpeace has been accused in the US of money laundering--of transferring tax-free donations to a non-tax-free subsidiary without paying the required taxes. The Greenpeace organization has been repeatedly criticized for its lack of transparency and the dictatorial control that its cadres exercise over it. Greenpeace is a big business; it takes in more than half a billion dollars every year, including contributions from major foundations such as Merck and Rockefeller. Greenpeace has repeatedly broken the law in its protests and endangered the lives of both its activists and others.

No links, of course. However, I suggest Googling the words Greenpeace, indictment, money laundering, foundations, membership, and transparency. There's a lot of interesting stuff out there.

You may be wondering how La Vanguardia gets away with publishing crap like this letter or Ramon Aymerich's article. The answer is that nobody from the outside ever reads it or has the slightest idea what kind of libels it is spreading, so it never gets sued. Yet 200,000 Spaniards read it every day and, presumably, believe it. No wonder most of them are gibbering imbeciles when it comes to economics, politics, and any other significant issue. And La Vanguardia is probably the best newspaper in Spain. Imagine what people who read El País believe.

Here's another "Modern Parents" by John Fardell out of the latest issue of the British comic Viz.

The Ethically Aware Parents Group are having a cookout; we can see boxes marked "Vegan Garlic Burgers", "Whole-Grain Garlic Rolls", and "Eco-Friendly Charcoal". They all have scraggly beards (if male), nose rings (if female), and are dressed ethnically. Meanwhile, Tarquin and the other children are off behind the shed cooking up some sausages and hamburgers.

Malcolm: I hope the young people have got plenty of sunblock on...the global warming's really bad today.
Nigel: Yes, this sunny weather just isn't natural. We never used to get hot weather in July.
Malcolm: I know. Just think of what this is doing to the polar ice caps.
Trevor: The icebergs will go extinct.
Sylvia: All the planet's rainforest regions will turn into barren deserts.
Cressida: All the Earth's water vapor must be escaping out through the hole in the ozone layer.

Nigel: I blame Western science.
Daphne: Absolutely. And now all these polluting scientists are pretending to be environmentally concerned. It makes me sick!
Trevor: All scientists are white middle-class males. That's the problem.
Sylvia: If we all lived like the pre-industrial non-science-based peoples of the Third World, everything would be lovely. It's been scientifically proven.
Nigel: It's all to do with the Environmental Chaos Theory. If an extinct butterfly can't flap its wings in Borneo, you get a hurricane in Wales. It's been proven.
Daphne: I blame overpopulation.
Malcolm: Well, absolutely. All those millions of unwanted Thrid World people are breathing out far too much carbon dioxide. The planet can't sustain them.
Sarah: Western pharmaceutical companies have kept Third World populations artificially high so that they've got more people to sell their contraceptive pills to.
Cressida: That's right. These people are deprived of a scientific education so they don't understand the risks.
Sylvia: When we went to see the Taj Mahal, there was hardly room to stand.

Nigel: Now it's starting to rain! It isn't natural. We never used to get rain in July.
Malcolm: I know. Just think of what all this rain is doing to the endangered butterflies in Borneo.
Trevor: Their wings will get too soggy to flap.
Daphne: The rain will cause sea levels to rise. Half of London will be underwater.
Cressida: All the planet's desert regions will turn into floodplains.
Sarah: All this rain must be pouring through the hole in the ozone layer.

Nigel: The earth has never seen such extreme weather as we see now. Mankind used to live in peaceful harmony with the elements.
Malcolm: Gaia, the Great Earth Spirit, is angry. Her forces of Nature are turning against mankind.
Sarah: It's all the fault of our Western consumerist society.
Trevor: Total environmental meltdown is just around the corner.
Cressida: Gaia will restore her eco-balance by wiping us all out with skin cancer, food shortages, and rising sea levels.

(Seven hundred years ago. Our ethically aware parents are m, s+tanding around outside a hut wearing fourteenth-century clothes.)

Proto-Nigel: The world hath never seen such extremities of weather as we do suffer now.
Proto-Malcolm: God is angry. Mankind hath incurred His great wrath.
Proto-Sarah: It be all the fault of our sinful ways of living.
Proto-Trevor: The end of the world is nigh.
Proto-Cressida: God will restore His order by destroying us all with plague, famine, and flood...

Not too subtle but a pretty good point.

La Vanguardia is particularly bad today. Asshole Andy Robinson has a "news" piece from New Madrid, Missouri, in which he conclusively demonstrates that midwestern Americans are a bunch of ignorant fanatical Jesus freaks. I hope Andy makes fun of the wrong guy in the wrong bar around those parts. He also denounces those midwesterners who dare to go to the Republican convention in the holy city of Manhattan, where they obviously should stay out of since progressive New Yorkers don't want them around. They're so gauche, you see.

One Ramon Aymerich has an article that exemplifies a lot of typical Spanish bad logic and bad faith in argument. It's about Bjorn Lomborg, whose book is well worth reading.

"The case of the Dane Bjorn Lomborg must be unique in the field of social science. A statistician of vaguely environmentalist beliefs in his youth, Lomborg switched sides after reading the economist Julian Simon. He wrote three articles in which he denies several basic assumptions of environmentalism: global warming, the lack of biodiversity, and deforestation. Collected in the book "The Skeptical Environmentalist", they brought him to fame."

Yeah. Lomborg slaughters an awful lot of environmentalist sacred cows in his book, and he does it with the same numbers and the same studies the environmentalists use. He does not investigate or do research; he is not a scientist. What he does is examine whether the conclusions that environmentalists draw from said studies and numbers are legitimate according to the laws of statistics and probability. He demonstrates conclusively, in my mind, that the environmentalists' conclusions are generally bogus. Lomborg shows that the panic over global warming, dimunition of biodiversity, and deforestation is greatly exaggerated.

"From the beginning, Lomborg has gained the hate of the ecologists and the enthusiasm of the businessmen who contribute the most to global warming. His theses are tranquilizingly simple: the environmental apocalypse has been exaggerated, there's nothing technology can't solve, and the market will decide how urgent these problems are when their costs have been quantified..."

An extremely common argument around here is to call an argument you disagree with simple or simplistic. Lomborg's arguments are anything but. His book references hundreds of studies with thousands of footnotes. Lomborg does say that those environmentalists howling disaster are wrong. He emphatically does not say that there's nothing technology can't solve; he says that technology will solve some problems and create others. Duh. The whole point of new technology is to be able to do something you couldn't do before--that is, solve a problem. And Lomborg is absolutely right when he says that any government making environmental laws needs to look at the economic costs and benefits thereof. Also, note that Aymerich has already begged a question when he says that those businessmen who contribute most to global warming support Lomborg's analyses. No, no, first you have to prove that global warming a) exists and b) is a problem before you go around accusing people of profiting by it. That would get you flunked out of Introduction to Logic where I went to school.

"...What if Lomborg really isn't the convert he pretends to be? And what if he were merely a professional sophist whose discourse is used now from the neocons' trenches in order to pulverize three decades of environmental research?"

What if you, Mr. Aymerich, stopped assuming everything is a conspiracy? What if you didn't insinuate that people who disagree with you have been bought off by the powers that be? What if Mr. Lomborg is a honest man who actually believes his analyses are correct? And note that Mr. Lomborg's theses are based on the statistical analysis of the studies published during a lot more than three decades of environmental research. Lomborg does not attack the studies. He attacks those who draw unwarranted conclusions from the studies because they don't know jack-shit about statistics and probability.

"Just like the Bush administration has questioned birth-control policies because of their Malthusian connotations, Lomborg is useful now to settle accounts with books free of all suspicion such as "The Limits of Growth" by the Club of Rome (1972) or the Carter administration's Global 2000 report (1980). The ideological swing is so strong that Lomborg's adepts' crusade against the theory of global warming is very similar to that which the fundamentalists began twenty years ago against the theories of Darwin."

Note Mr. Aymerich's use of guilt by association. If you agree with Bjorn Lomborg, you're doing so for ideological reasons, you're some kind of anti-Darwin fundamentalist, and you most likely are going to vote for George Bush. Lomborg's whole point is that statistics have no ideology and that if anyone's been manipulating the facts for ideological reasons, it has been the people who have shouted that the sky is falling based on faulty conclusions drawn from ignorance of mathematics. Does anyone understand that line about Bush and Malthus, by the way? Also, just one more point: Global 2000 and "The Limits to Growth" have both been long since discredited, mostly because everything they predicted was wrong.

"Lomborg's relevance--you guessed it--is in the opportunism of his discourse in the middle of the debate over Kyoto and CO2 emissions into the atmosphere. But it is surprising and strange that the anti-Kyoto sectors don't make recourse to dissident scientists (there aren't any) to invalidate the theory of global warming, and on the other hand they get a statistician--something like the pharmaceutical industry's getting an industrial engineer to deny that AIDS existsd. Strange and surprising, but there it is: Lomborg, the man with the easy answers."

See? Lomborg's a creature of the evil corporations who want to stop the Kyoto accord. Well, first, the Kyoto accord has been dead ever since the U.S. Senate rejected it unanimously, 95-0, back in 1995. No significant nations have actually made any plans to meet its criteria. Second, there are plenty of scientists who disagree with the standard environmentalist doctrine on global warming. Third, it's cheating to compare global warming with AIDS; AIDS exists. You still have to prove that global warming exists and is significant, Mr. Aymerich. Fourth, I certainly would consult an industrial engineer if I were going to manufacture anti-AIDS drugs, just as I would consult a statistician if I were going to draw conclusions based on statistics. Fifth, notice how Mr. Aymerich insinuates again that Lomborg is part of a conspiracy.

Conclusion: Ramon Aymerich is unintelligent, a poor writer, a worse logician, dishonest in argument, ideologically biased, and a conspiracy nut. Par for the course in Spain.

Oh, just one more comment: Mr. Lomborg is openly gay. I just bet he's in league with those Christian fundamentalists.

Want some more bad losership? For some reason, men's field hockey is a traditional Spanish strength. Many top-level field-hockey players come from the Catalan city of Terrassa, where the sport is more important than soccer. Except for the Barça, of course. Anyway, this is the top Olympics story in today's La Vanguardia. It's by J. R. Casanova.

"Two illegal goals, including the one in sudden death overtime that gave the victory to Germany two minutes into the second overtime period, pushed Spain off the podium that its team deserved...they deserved the medal that the Danish judge took away from them...The Spaniards had already protested the very first goal scored against them..."We saw it clearly. It shouldn't have been a goal," said Kiko Fábregas. "I think we did more than they did to win."

Waah. Waah. Waah.

Waah, waah, waah. Crybabies. Whiners. Poor sports. Bad losers. Bush-leaguers. Pussies. Excuse-makers. Spoiled children. Faced.

Today's Vanguardia shows everything that's wrong with the Spanish attitude toward sports and toward the United States. They just cannot deal with the fact that they lost. Somebody must have cheated.

I quote from Juan Antonio Casanova's article:

"The USA had two decisive weapons yesterday: the outside shot and the immeasureable help of the referees...the Americans did everything--committing clear traveling and three times the fouls that were called on them...the referees gave them all the doubtful loose balls, some that clearly belonged to Spain...No surprise because of the official interest that the USA continue in the Games...Why was there no European referee?...The referees' abuses kept increasing and Gasol could not score in the last eight minutes..."

Did you get that? He's saying that it was all fixed beforehand anyway because the powers that be wanted the Americans to win, so the referees gave the game to the USA. Otherwise, of course, things would have been radically different.

Says Juan Bautista Martínez, regarding a time-out that US coach Larry Brown called late in the game with the US up by eight, "Brown's action exemplifies the arrogance of NBA basketball, which, when the outside wrapping of the marketing comes off, will use any dirty trick, not to win seductively, but to crush the opponent and stomp on his throat with their boots...Everyone (in the arena) wanted to see the USA lose because of their players' petulance...they aggressively booed the controversial referees' decisions, and the excessive permissiveness of the referees in the paint. When they refereed the game according to the NBA rules, the Spanish players, especially Navarro, became unhinged..." He also accuses American assistant coach Greg Popovich of "physically intimidating" Spanish coach Mario Pesquera when Pesquera threw a temper tantrum and got in Larry Brown's face, screaming and finger-pointing, at the end of the game.

I don't think I can root for the Spanish basketball team any more, and I will actively root against any team that Pesquera coaches or that Navarro or Calderón (the two whiniest and most babyish players) plays for in the future. Also, if I were one of the American players, I might be tempted to give Pau Gasol an exceedingly hard time next time I saw him on an NBA court. Within the rules, of course.

Notes: The two referees were from Australia and Mexico. They called 27 fouls on the Americans and 18 on the Spaniards.

There's been a huge explosion of bad losership today in the Spanish press regarding Spain's loss to the US in Olympic basketball. Really pathetic. The following article from CNN-Sports Illustrated is by Jack McCallum. I'd link and italicize but since those buttons are not on my screen due to the atrocious Blogger redesign, screw it.

JACK McCALLUM:

As long as the United States was playing the part of inept Colossus, bricking 3-point shots, getting dazed and confused by international rules, generally looking like a team that was going home without a medal for the first time in Olympic history, everything was all right in the world of Olympic basketball. But when the U.S. kicked it into gear on Thursday afternoon against Spain in the quarterfinals of the medal round, all hell broke loose.

Playing in front of an anti-American crowd that booed and whistle-jeered them throughout -- King Juan Carlos of Spain was there but I don't know whether he was booing -- the Americans finally found their shooting touch, and their aggressiveness, during a 102-94 victory over Spain, which was the best team in the tournament during pool-round play and now finds itself playing for seventh place. Spain's players and its coach, Mario Pesquera, have reason to be peeved at a system that has them go unbeaten in five games, then get eliminated by a team that had lost twice.

Not surprisingly, the U.S. emerged as the bad guy, but not merely for ending Spain's medal hopes.

Enraged by a late timeout that Team USA coach Larry Brown had called with America leading by a comfortable margin, Pesquera (a) said his respect for Brown was a thing of the past because of the late timeout, (b) charged that "the game had been played by NBA rules and not FIBA rules," which permitted too much traveling and physical play, (c) hinted that the Americans had laid down in the pool round and (d) stuck the knife even deeper into Brown by commenting that Dean Smith, one of Brown's coaching heroes, "would've never done anything like that."

I've been a consistent critic of the U.S. play in Athens, but Pesquera was out of line for a variety of reasons.

Brown was too cautious in calling for the late timeout and, in retrospect, probably wouldn't do it again. But he says that he tried to signal for the timeout earlier, with the U.S. up eight, but didn't get the attention of the refs until 23 seconds were left and the lead had grown to 11. Then Brown tried to cancel the timeout, which can be done in international rules, but the refs granted one anyway. I don't know whether that is true, but I do know that teams have blown big leads in short amounts of time and that this American team is not particularly reliable at holding onto the ball or making free throws.

Brown and two of his assistants, Gregg Popovich and Roy Williams, tried to explain all of this to Pesquera after the game, but the Spanish coach would have none of it. There was an angry exchange as the teams left the court, and Pesquera may well have gone after Brown physically had there not been a crowd around.

Second, the game was indeed physical and, for wont of a better term, NBA-ish. But that's partly because Spain plays that way, too, a fact that Brown had talked about the day before the game. Though no one in the U.S. camp would say it publicly, the Americans were ecstatic with this first-round draw because they knew it was an ideal matchup.

Third, the U.S. didn't lay down in the pool round; it just played abysmally, primarily because it couldn't shoot, an aspect of the game that is inevitably beginning to improve. (It could hardly have gotten worse.) Pesquera's implication is that the U.S. laid down to arrange a certain matchup; otherwise what's the point of laying down? That charge is groundless. The Americans had no way of knowing what team would end up where in the other group and, in fact, didn't even know that it had finished fourth in Group B until the results were in on games over which they had no control.

Finally, the comment about Dean Smith was simply bush. Pesquera should've directed his anger at the system; I had some sympathy for him in that regard. After five preliminary games, the pool winners, in this case Spain from Group A and Lithuania from Group B, should be allowed to come back and contest for the bronze if they lose a first-round game in the medal round. But Pesquera chose to lash out at the obvious target, which is certain to amp up the anti-American feeling for Friday's semifinal game, probably against Argentina.

I just watched the US and Spain play basketball. The Americans won though Spain was in the game until about the last five minutes. The Spaniards played very well; the only one with NBA-level talent is Pau Gasol, but Navarro, de la Fuente, Fernandez, and a couple of others are fine players who would have done very well at the NCAA level.

I started out rooting for Spain for various reasons. First, I live here. Second, I'm a Pau Gasol fan. Third, I don't like the American team; you've read all the people who know more about basketball than I do explain why they suck. Fourth, as a KU alumnus, I have very mixed feelings about Larry Brown--on the one hand he coached the Hawks to their only NCAA title, but on the other hand he got them put on probation and took off for a better job. Fifth, I tend to root for the underdog, as I imagine most people do.

Anyway, the announcers on TVE1 were very fair and balanced during most of the game, but with about five minutes left, as the Americans began to pull away, they suddenly became very nasty. They started complaining about the referees' calls, as did the Spanish players and coaches. The Spanish coach started screaming and finger-pointing, and several of the Spanish players broke into mock applause of the US team in the last few seconds. Then the announcers started complaining about the fact that if you lose in the quarterfinals, you're out of competition for a medal. Now, of course, these were the rules set up beforehand, which everybody agreed to before the Olympics even started. But the sudden outburst of "bad loserness", to coin a phrase, made me so irritated that I wound up cheering when the Yanks won.

Spaniards tend to be very bad losers, and I think I know why. It's because of the extreme rivalry between Barcelona and Real Madrid. If you're a real Barça supporter, you know the whole thing is fixed so that you'll lose and Madrid will win no matter how well your team plays. You honestly believe this, and you honestly believe that it's somehow important in the scheme of things. Every time your team loses it's because the other guy cheated and the refs were fixed beforehand, and the bitterly partisan sports press floats dozens of rumors about the other team's skulduggery. And, of course, Real Madrid is not merely a sports team. It's evil incarnate. The players are crooked, the club management is corrupt, and the fans are thugs.

If you're a Madrid fan, you tend to take the rivalry a little less seriously--it's kind of like Red Sox fans take the rivalry a lot more seriously than Yankee fans. The bitterness of the fans of the team that normally loses is greater than the arrogance of fans of the team that normally wins. But the Madrid press and Madrid supporters are just as obnoxious as Barcelona fans, and according to them Barcelona has never beaten Real fair and square, either.

This extreme rivalry in which you never accept that hey, our team lost and that's all there is to it, the other guys played better, that's what happens in sports, has carried over to all sports in Spain. If we win, we're the greatest ever; if we lose, it's because the fix was in.

Besides, people, this is just sports. It's not like it actually matters which bunch of eight foot tall guys throws a ball in a hole the most times.

Comment: America has certainly not supported its Olympic basketball team this year, for many reasons. Just for example, they suck at playing as a team, and I could go on from there for several more paragraphs. But I wonder how much of it has to do with the fact that all the players are black.

Get this one. Miguel Angel Moratinos, Spain's Foreign Minister, is all mad because the Iraqi government and the Americans are not respecting the "Olympic truce" in Najaf. What Olympic truce? Did the Russians pull out of Afghanistan during the 1980 Summer Games? What about the goddamn PLO in Munich in 1972? Are Al Sadr's boys observing the alleged truce? Olympic truce, my ass. The Olympic Games are just a show. All that alleged Olympic idealism is just so much bullshit. It's all about the money and the TV ratings, baby. But it seems to provide a rationale for Moratinos to do some self-righteous posturing.

Moratinos, you might recall, is the guy who claimed that he had been asked by the powers that be to mediate between the Israelis and the Palestinian Lack of Authority. He also got called on the carpet by Tony Blair and then went outside after the short, tense meeting (all by himself) and said that the British were perfectly happy with the Socialists' weaselly behavior regarding Iraq. I know a little something about mental illness, and I suspect Moratinos suffers from an inferiority complex which causes him to overestimate his own importance in the scheme of things.

Haven't written for a long while. It's August here and really not too much is happening. I suppose you might have seen the minor flap created when the eight female ministers in Zap's cabinet (yes, like a good politically correct well-meaning idiot, he's named a cabinet that's 50-50 men and women) posed for Vogue. Of course, they got criticized both from the far left, for objectifying women, and from the PP, who accused them of not taking their roles as ministers seriously enough.

They've been having the Fiesta Mayor of Gracia over the last week or so. Gracia, the neighborhood where I live, is known within Barcelona for having a unique personality--sort of politically aware working- / lower-middle- / petit-bourgeois- class. Up here we still talk about "going down to Barcelona" when we mean going downtown (we're perched on the side of a hill above the city); it's almost like a small town within Barcelona. There's definitely a strong local identity. Anyway, they have a big bash of a Fiesta Mayor in which they have lots of traditional stuff, like dances in the squares and decorating the streets in high-school-gym-dance style and lots of free food if you know where to look for it. That and lots of booze, of course. The local squatters, however, have decided to take over the fiesta and raise hell until six in the morning while fighting it out with the local skinheads. Meanwhile, all the drunks who normally hang out in uncool places are showing up here from all over the metro area. Everyone up here is royally pissed off because Gracia is already the coolest party district in town, if you're an adult who prefers listening to good music and a couple of quiet beers in an interesting bar to partying and puking all night. The locals get pretty pissed off about all the noise, with some reason, and the Fiesta Mayor has been pretty much the last straw. People are mad up here.

The Forum is an absolute and complete disaster. They've gone so far as to announce false attendance figures. Meanwhile, they had to shut down the main building for a couple of days because it was leaking--for some brilliant reason, they decided to cover the roof of the building with water.

The Vangua hasn't said too much that's horribly offensive recently--you know, just some more of the same crap about how Americans are stupid and ignorant mixed in with pro-Saddam arguments. Same old everyday thing that I've already translated eight hundred times. It looks like Asshole Andy Robinson, special British correspondent in New York, has been paying some attention to me and Franco A. and Trevor, because he's started documenting his articles. However, he still doesn't bother mentioning that all his sources are from the extreme left. Tikrit Tommy Alcoverro is reporting on Najaf from back home in Beirut. He sure seems to have a vivid imagination. Anyway, virtually nobody in Barcelona is exposed to any information that might somehow be interpreted as, well, not anti-American. At least not from the newspapers and the TV. There's a right-wing radio station, the COPE, but they're often just as dumb as the local left. As for information from the foreign media, Josep Sixpack doesn't know English or any other non-local languages.

Thought I'd do a piece on the American elections for a little change of pace. La Vanguardia's lead editorial says that the Bush-Kerry race looks like it will be very exciting, that there is a great deal of "polarization", and that there will be a large electoral turnout. Meanwhile, some Frenchman named Pascal Boniface, who is the director of the Institute of International and Strategic Relations in Paris, and who appears to think he's very smart, has a piece on the op-ed in which he takes eight paragraphs to call George Bush a poophead. See, the US overthrow of Saddam was "morally unjust" and "inefficient strategically" because of the "American quagmire in Iraq". Such geniuses as Michael Moore, Benjamin Barber, Dick Clarke, George Soros, and Zbig Brezinski think Bush is a poophead, too, so this is evidence that being anti-Bush isn't the same as being anti-American, because all those people are American, too. Boniface actually says that "The best proof of this is that in the US more and more personalities are adopting deeply severe postures with respect to George W. Bush. These attacks, on occasion very vehement, cannot be interpreted as anti-American, since they come precisely from the US." It's just like being anti-Sharon doesn't make you anti-Semitic, says M. Boniface.

Hold it right there. If you dislike Bush just because he's the US president, and you dislike Sharon just because he's the Israeli prime minister, then you ARE anti-American and anti-Semitic. And how could a good French intellectual be anything else? M. Boniface gets off a pre-emptive strike, calling those of us who insist he IS anti-Semitic and anti-American scum guilty of making "a dishonest amalgam of ideas."

Anyway, for some serious talk about the elections. With help from the excellent site Election Projections, here is what one probable outcome might look like.

Bush MUST WIN: The eleven states of the Deep South (Virginia 13 electoral votes, North Carolina 15, South Carolina 8, Georgia 15, Kentucky 8, Tennessee 11, Alabama 9, Mississippi 6, Arkansas 6, Louisiana 9, Texas 34). If he loses more than one of these states, he loses. He'll almost certainly sweep the Republican Solid South, though.

The fourteen states of the Intermountain West and High Plains (Alaska 3, Idaho 4, Kansas 6, Montana 3, Nebraska 5, North Dakota 3, Oklahoma 7, south Dakota 3, Utah 5, Wyoming 3, Colorado 9, Wyoming 3, Colorado 9, Arizona 10, Nevada 5, New Mexico 5). Bush can afford to lose at most two of these states, and New Mexico and Arizona are probably going to be close. If Kerry can win five or six Southern and Western states, he wins the election.

Kerry MUST WIN: The four states of the Pacific West (California 55, Oregon 7, Washington 11, Hawaii 4). Oregon and Washington look a little iffy; if I were Bush I'd spend some time up there and make Kerry fight.

The thirteen states of the Northeast (Maine 4, New Hampshire 4, Vermont 3, Massachussetts 12, Rhode Island 4, Connecticut 7, New York 31, Pennsylvania 21, New Jersey 15, Maryland 10, Delaware 3, District of Columbia 3, West Virginia 5). Kerry needs a sweep here; he can only afford to lose Maine, West Virginia, and New Hampshire. Bush will fight hard in Pennsylvania and if he can win there, things look very good for him all over.

UP FOR GRABS: The eight states of the Midwest (Ohio 20, Indiana 11, Illinois 21, Michigan 17, Wisconsin 10, Minnesota 10, Iowa 7, Missouri 11). This is where the real war will be fought. Bush's Southern and Western support base will more or less balance off Kerry's Pacific and Northeast base. Bush will win Indiana. Kerry will win Illinois. No questions there. Bush must win Ohio and Missouri and pick up at least two other Midwestern states. Iowa and Wisconsin look like his best bets.

Florida (27). This atypical state--or maybe super-typical because of its variety--is as up-in-the-air as it comes. Whichever candidate wins it will likely win the election.

By the way, here are the current polls: Bush's job approval was 51% according to Gallup on 8/11 and 46% according to Pew on 8/10. In a Bush-Kerry-Nader race, Zogby on 8/12 has Bush 43%-Kerry 47%, Gallup on 8/11 has Bush 48%-Kerry 46%, and Pew on 8/10 has Bush 45%-Kerry 47%. Looks to me like the popular vote is very close three months before the election.

If the popular vote is this close at this time in the election year, it's a pretty safe bet that the incumbent President is going to win. First, Kerry has already had his convention bounce, the surge in the polls that's supposed to happen after the candidate gets the spotlight at his party's convention. Bush hasn't had his yet. Second, Bush is a known quantity. People know what he stands for. Kerry doesn't have much of a national image and is still little-known to many Americans. Many people are therefore susceptible to having their image of Kerry framed by Bush's people. Third, the Kerry campaign hasn't got any dirt on Bush. If they had, the Dems would have used it back in 2000; remember, the best dirt they had on Bush was a 30-year-old drunk driving conviction. They released it the weekend before the November election, and this cost Bush in the vote. We don't know what kind of dirt Bush has on Kerry, but I get the feeling the Bush campaign knows several things about Kerry's Vietnam days and Seventies political career that might be troublesome.

Fourth, the economy's doing fine and the big issue everyone is up in arms about is gay marriage, not Iraq. If people's attention is focused on this minor question rather than on issues which Kerry has some basis to criticize Bush about, Bush wins. Fifth, my bet is that we have more and more success in Iraq and the War on Terrorism, and that the Bush campaign will use 9/11 to remind people of why the war is being fought. Sixth, Kerry is boring and a jerk and people don't like him, and the more they're exposed to him the less they're going to like him. At least some people like Bush. Nobody, but nobody, likes John Kerry. Seventh, some of the radicals are going to vote for Nader again, costing Kerry a percent or so, which might make the difference.

So, barring disaster, I see a fairly easy Bush victory. Not a landslide; Kerry will win a minimum of 150 electoral votes. I doubt it will be nearly as close as people around here are guessing, though.

Well, the Olympics are on TV so since I have nothing real important I have to do I have it on channel 2 (advantage: all-day coverage of even minor sports; disadvantage: Spanish announcers much more chauvinist than even American announcers. Bob Costas is Mr. Neutrality and Professionalism next to these guys) while I listen to "Blonde on Blonde" and read "Fascism" by Stanley Payne in Spanish.

I figure the Olympics need to be culled. What I would do is get rid of embarrasingly minor sports and only have those sports where winning the Olympic medal is the biggest thing you can do in the sport. So I would say:

KEEP: Track and field; boxing (that is, honest boxing); gymnastics; wrestling; swimming; diving; weightlifting.

CULL: All the rest for either being minor boring sports (e.g. team handball) for which the yearly championship is much more important; important professional sports where Olympic competition is well below top standards (e.g. basketball, tennis, soccer, baseball, cycling, even volleyball and water polo); or traditional military sports of no interest today (pistol shooting, archery, fencing).

Well, here's the news. There's some silly arguments going on about whether Spain is one nation or whether it is a plurinational nation or whether it isn't a nation at all, and whether this ought to be in the Spanish Constitution or the European Constitution or whatever. Maragall and Sevilla and Bargalló and company all have something nonsensical to say.

Boy, I dunno. On one level these Gibraltar-Catalonia-Basque Country-Spain nationalist arguments are juvenile and childish efforts whose only purpose is to gain more prestige for the groups they champion and more power for themselves. On another level, this is a really basic question that hasn't been completely answered yet, and that problem is political legitimacy.

This is difficult for us Americans because there's no problem of political legitimacy in the United States. It's safe to say that at least 98% of Americans agree that the United States government is legitimate. If you ask them why, they'll just look at you funny. "Well, you know, we vote for the Congress, and they make the laws, and we vote for the President, and it's all organized and written down in the Constitution, and we've been doing it for more than two centuries now and the last major complaint we had was between 1861 and 1865." Even extreme leftists and rightists, of whom there are proportionally quite few in the US, often proclaim themselves the real upholders of American democratic values, as against the major parties who have "betrayed" them.

This isn't true in Spain. You'd be surprised at how long memories go back around here. The current royal dynasty, the Bourbons, were placed on the throne in 1714 after the War of the Spanish Succession; Catalonia and the other regions of the Crown of Aragon were forcibly incorporated into a Spanish nation-state. Before that the Aragonese territories had had different laws and privileges than the other Spanish kingdoms. So there's grievances number one and two: the Bourbons are an illegitimate dynasty in the first place, since they were placed in power by the various European states after the War of the S. S., and their control over Catalonia is illegitimate because it has imposed a foreign system of laws and rights different from those that were previously accepted in Catalonia.

(Note: the ultra-Spanish nationalists who get their underwear all knotted up over Gibraltar should reflect that the Treaty of Utrecht, which gave England Gibraltar, also gave to the Bourbon dynasty and the centralized Spanish state direct control of the former territories of the Crown of Aragon. Seems to me they might reflect before calling Utrecht neocolonialist and imperialist and all that.)

Skipping a couple hundred years of alleged Bourbon oppression and two or three rebellions by the Carlists, who never accepted the legitimacy of the Bourbon dynasty, our man Franco overthrew a communist government in 1939 (after an anti-communist coup d'etat by General Casado), which in turn had overthrown anarchist and far-left militias in 1937, which had overthrown a parlimentary Republic in 1936, which had pushed out a limited monarchist parliamentary state in 1931. Meanwhile, the Catalanistas in Barcelona and the Socialists and other leftists in Asturias, in 1934, also attempted to overthrow the Republic but failed.

So right there you have a bunch of people who don't respect the legitimacy of the current Spanish state: those who say the current government isn't legit because of its Franco heritage, those who say only a leftist state can be legit, those who are against all monarchies, those who are particularly offended by the Bourbons, those who claim the '34 revolt was legit, those who hold a brief for those romantic but sickeningly violent anarchists that Christopher Hitchens still fantasizes about, and so on. Now, these folk are nowhere near a majority, but you'd be surprised to hear what we consider normal and rational people to go off on a ranting tangent related to some 300-year-old war. This is what they mean by Old Europe. Really Old Europe.

Somebody called the World Survey of Values has come out with the results of a questionnaire about religion. Check out these stats. Of those surveyed, 96% of Americans, 85% of Spaniards, 72% of the British, 100% of Egyptians, and 99% of Iranians believe in God. 88% of Americans, 51% of Spaniards, 56% of Britons, 100% of Egyptians, and 98% of Iraqis believe in heaven; 75% of Americans, 37% of Spaniards, 35% of Britons, 100% of Egyptians, and 98% of Iranians believe in hell. 81% of Americans, 53% of Spaniards, 58% of Brits, 100% of Egyptians, and 98% of Iranians believe in life after death.

60% of Americans and 36% of Spaniards go to church at least once a week; 71% of Americans and 33% of Spaniards pray.

I'm not at all surprised, though the Vanguardia's first line in the story is "The image that Spaniards themselves and many foreigners have as a unanimously Catholic and very religious country is not true." That shouldn't be news to anyone who has actually spent some time here. Sure, they have a lot of religious festivals, but they're mostly an excuse to get drunk and party. Most people, especially the younger, the more urban, the better-educated, the better-off economically, and the more, uh, male, are not particularly religious. The family that only comes to church for Christmas, Easter, and first communions and weddings, is a local stereotype.

Here's Alfredo Abián's signed editorial on page two of today's Vangua: "...the United States wins a medal, because there 75% of those surveyed takes for granted that hell exists. The problem is that Bush's homeland has become a theme park of sects in need of a supernatural threat. Without counting the reverend "telepreachers", the American paratheological fair includes deacons capable of finding the Mark of the Beast on a bottle of Heinz ketchup, clerics who pray for the Antichrist to come and let loose the final Armageddon; ultra-enlightened Mormons who have split off from the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-Day Saints, along with all kinds of born-again Christians." Mr. Abian says that it's just as well that Spain isn't particularly religious, which I actually agree with him about, since I'm a hardline agnostic, and adds that the four countries where absolutely nobody doubts that Satan is out there are Pakistan, Indonesia, Egypt, and Morocco.

I'll respond to Mr. Abián by saying that most American religious believers are perfectly stable people, that there are a bunch of sectarian wackos who get a lot of media attention but who have very little influence, that one aspect of religious belief in the US is that blacks are the most religious and socially conservative Americans, and that Mr. Abián certainly wouldn't want to do anything so un-PC as to critically stereotype blacks or Hispanics or immigrants, who add up to some 30% of Americans, for generally being religious believers. I'll add that in the US people have almost an infinity of religious choices they can make, unlike Spain, where the only option has always been Catholicism. I'll also add that just because Tom Cruise and John Travolta are Scientology wackos and that Madonna seems to have lost her last marble with this kabala crap does not mean that those jokers in Hollywood have anything to do with real American life. And, by the way, as Mr. Abián is kind enough to point out, the real dangerous religious nuts tend to pray on Fridays.

Anyway, the Vangua has been interviewing tourists on the Tourist Bus. They came across three young Belgian girls who said this: " 'This getting up at 10 AM is great, and taking a nap after lunch is wonderful. In Belgium people get up at seven and have no free time after lunch, though we get off work earlier. In Barcelona, in Spain, everything is calmer, people take things much less seriously, while in Brussels everything is much more sped-up. And here it's always sunny.

(Editor's note: They're right about the taking things less seriously. That's one reason why Spain's GDP per capita is several thousand bucks a year below Belgium's. They're also right about the after-lunch debate--that is, do you prefer ninety minutes or two hours for lunch in Spain, but a quitting time of seven or seven-thirty, or quitting time at 5 or 5:30 but only half an hour for lunch like in the rest of Europe. That seems like a personal choice to me. They're also right about the sun. They're wrong about the briskness of life here; this is August and half the city has shut down. Most of the year there are lots of people rushing around in vain, late to three different appointments, looking for the right goddamn bureaucratic paperwork necessary to, like, pay their automobile tax or something.)

The stereotypes keep coming. 'The bad thing is the food. Everything is too greasy and heavy, with lots of eggs and meat dishes, always chicken, omelets, and fried potatoes. In summer, especially with this heat, fresh and light food is more appetizing, like vegetables, fruit. That's much healthier.'

'Yeah, the bad thing is the food, but the worst thing is the way men look at you, the things they say in the street without knowing you at all. The first time it's funny, it calls your attention, but then you get really tired of it. I was on an Erasmus scholarship in Seville, for six months, and I got tired of telling men that just because I was blonde I wasn't necessarily German and I didn't necessarily speak English. In Belgium people don't do that. Ever.'

(Editor's note: They're right. Spain is still a pretty sexist place, and lots of men do make comments, often rude, to passing women, and they're not shy about trying to pick up foreign women. Blatantly. It's not just, "Hi, honey, you're a hot babe", but more like "Great tits! So, your place or mine?" Anyway, at this point a couple from Seville sitting there butts into the conversation, furious at the alleged stereotyping.)

'In Seville we like pretty women, and we don't think it's bad if it's done with gracia,' says Emilio from the next seat, turning around. 'And, excuse me, little girl, but do you know what gaspacho and salmorejo and salad and ensaladillas are?' asks his wife, María José. 'You can't come to Spain for two days of sightseeing, eat in a couple of fast-food places, and talk like that about the cooking. It's absurd.'"

(Editor's note: Note how free Spaniards are throwing around stereotypes of other countries but how they can't stand it when they're stereotyped? First, the girl who was in Seville for six months, not two days, knows what she's talking about. Second, Spanish food is particularly bad when served at affordable restaurants that cater to tourists and/or working-class locals. It is greasy and fried and heavy and served hot and is just the thing to make you sick on a ninety-degree afternoon. Gazpacho and salad are generally not available. Ensaladilla rusa, which is just potato salad with egg and mayonnaise, is, but it's likely to give you salmonella. Now, if you go to a good restaurant, you'll eat very well, but you'll pay for it. Just like pretty much everywhere else. Third, Spaniards are notorious for ripping off tourists in vacation spots, and they get more than 50 million to rip off every year.)

Now, I like Spain very much. But those Belgian girls are a lot closer to the truth about Spain than Alfredo Abián is to the truth in the United States.

I don't think anybody over here gives much of a crap about the Olympics.

Well, it's still hot and humid and I'm doing a lot of sweating; if you think you can beat the stinkiness of my feet, please send your putrid sneakers and socks to: Partido Socialista Obrero Español, C/Ferraz, Madrid, Spain. I'm sure they'll appreciate it.

We went out to the pueblo last weekend and it was nice and pleasant as usual. We went swimming and farted around generally and did nothing useful.

Here's the goofy new bit of Catalooniness. for the last couple of years it's become popular among many Spanish young folks to wear T-shirts with the profile of the Osborne bull on them. Osborne is a big maker of brandy down in Jerez--their most popular brand is Veterano, which is just fine to dump in your coffee in the morning. Their symbol is a profile of a bull in black, and they began putting up huge signs with their bull symbol all over Spain on the highways way back when, I guess something like the old Burma-Shave signs there used to be all over the US. So, the Osborne bull has become sort of symbolic, like an old-time thing that everyone knows about that's always been there. And some smart guy started printing the Osborne bull on T-shirts, and people thought it was cool and bought them. Then people started putting little Osborne bull stickers on the back of their cars.

(NOTE: this is a sure sign of someone's being tacky and tasteless here in Spain: does the guy put stickers on the back of his car, especially those which are the equivalent of those "Makin' Bacon" bumper stickers that people buy at Stuckey's? If so, he most certainly hasn't been to college.)

So the Cataloonies decided they needed to hit back against this Osborne bull epidemic. They've come out with two sticker and T-shirt possibilities: one is the typical Catalan donkey, which is on at least one of every ten cars, and the other is a black cat (CAT = Catalonia, get it?), which seems to be much less popular. Some people, I guess as a joke, have started putting on stickers of a moose in profile. I'm not sure what that would have to do with anything.

Well, it's hot and humid here in Barcelona as usual in August. My strategy is knocking off as early as possible from whatever I'm doing and go sit in a nice air-conditioned bar. We've spent a couple of weekends out in the pueblo and we're going back this Saturday. It's hot there, too, but the air is dry and clean and there's always a breeze. The house is nice and cool, too, down in the cavelike basement.

Half the city has left town for the August month of vacations. Many shops and other places are closed; others are on reduced hours. Up here in Gracia it seems strangely empty; downtown, or course, is swarming with tourists. Advice for Non-Eurail Semi-Adult Visitors: Try to find somewhere to stay outside the Old City. It's much more relaxing. Spend a day looking around the Ramblas, sure, and then get away from there and check out the rest of town.

John Kerry is going over very well over here, largely because everybody just hates George Bush. Now, nobody in Spain actually knows anything about either of the two men, but they've all got plenty of opinions. Meanwhile, Zap is doing quite well in the polls, for some unknown reason. Here's the saddest part: "What are the three main problems that exist in Spain today?" Answers: Unemployment 61.1%; ETA terrorism 47.4%; Crime 20.1%; Housing 19.7%; Immigration 17.0%; Economic problems 13.0%. Gee, wasn't it about five months ago that almost 200 people were killed in Madrid by terrorists of the Al Qaeda variety? How come that's not on the list? Answer: The Spanish genuinely beleive that Islamist terrorism is not their problem, and that the pullout from Iraq has gotten them off the Islamist hitlist. You may have seen that they have just warned of an Al Qaeda plot against American financial centers and have raised the alert level: the Vanguardia, of course, claims it's just a political ploy by Bush. These people have conspiracies for breakfast, lunch, and dinner.

Guess what? The Forum has come out with a strong condemnation of sexist violence and patriarchy!

Cartoon on Friday in La Vangua. George Bush, flanked by two military officers on a podium, announces: "After Afghanistan and Iraq, our next humanitarian objective is to liberate the oil fields of Sudan--excuse me, I meant free the refugees." That's right, they've been printing story after story over here explaining that there is apparently some oil in Sudan--big deal, there's almost certainly oil under my parents' backyard in Kansas City. So of course, all this talk about people starving to death and evil militias and slavery and oppression of Christians is just a cover-up for another oil grab. Just like Afghanistan, Panama, Haiti, Somalia, and Bosnia were all oil grabs. And, of course, everything is a conspiracy.

Breaking News: Jerry Falwell Supports Gay Marriage; Britney Spears Scores 1600 SAT; Robert Fisk Writes Something Not Totally Anti-American. In yesterday's Vanguardia he's got a piece about the Iraqi police and how proud and loyal they are. About time, since it's been the Iraqi police those terrorist bastards are mostly trying to kill. I suppose the anti-American angle is that Fisk portrays these guys as poorly-paid, badly-armed, and not getting the respect they deserve. OK, I can see his point, though I don't believe the bit about their Kalashnikovs jamming after firing two shots. My understanding is that 1) Kalashnikovs are simple, sturdy, and effective weapons that will function with minimal care and 2) there are enough guns floating around Iraq that the cops ought to be able to get something better than Kalashnikovs anyway.

The 3-11 commission has adjourned without deciding anything. Both the Socialists and the PP behaved like idiots, the PP trying to justify their (our) major screwup--not act of bad faith, screwup--in originally attributing the bombings to ETA, and the Socialists attempting to insinuate that there was, too, an act of bad faith, which is just not true to my knowledge. La Vanguardia ran a pro-American editorial (more breaking news) on the 9-11 commission, saying that it actually did what it purported to do, investigate and draw a conclusion without letting politics get in the way. This whole 3-11 commission has been, pretty disgracefully, an opportunity for partisan sniping and nothing more.

Everybody's in a snit about the alleged diplomatic offense committed by the British government in sending defense minister Geoffry (sic) Hoon to next Wednesday's celebration of the 300th anniversary of the capture of Gibraltar by the British. Everyone from the PP to Izquierda Unida is all fired up. Izquierda Unida has censured the British government for its "imperialist and philo-Fascist attitude". The Socialists said Britain's behavior was "colonialist". The PP said Zap was too incompetent diplomatically to persuade the British that such activities don't do much good except to inflame the most revanchist side of Spanish nationalism. Nobody pointed out that Gibraltar is British territory according to a treaty Spain signed, that if the Crown wants to nominate Ozzy Osbourne to serve as the Grand High Poobah of Gibraltar, it has no obligation to consult Spain on the matter, and that the people of Gibraltar are unanimous on only one issue: they don't want to join Spain.

The latest outrage the Spanish public is up in arms about is a proposal to charge each person who visits the National Health one euro per visit. I think it makes sense. One euro is a small enough amount that paying it won't hurt anybody, not even the poorest widow on a pension, and certainly not the average Joe, yet it's a round enough number that people might take it seriously enough not to show up at the local clinic every day just for something to do.

Also, I remember reading an interesting study done by some education people (still more breaking news!) on English-as-a-second-language programs aimed at immigrants in the United States. What they did was test different groups at the different centers offering English-for-immigrants in, I think, Queens or somewhere like that. Some groups were charged a nominal sum, ten dollars or the like, for their semester of English classes, and the rest were given the classes for free. What they found was that the students who were paying the small sum were considerably more motivated and--this is key--had much better class attendance. They therefore learned much more, on average, than the students who were not paying. The small payment of their own money gave them a stake in the class and made them want to get their money's worth out of it. Let's see if people start taking the national health service (which, as I have stressed, is excellent in my opinion, though overbureaucratic. The doctors and personnel are first-class and the equipment and medicines are, of course, the latest) a little more seriously.

Back on page 35 of Friday's Vanguardia there's a story about the opening of a new art exhibition; it's called "From Paris to the Mediterranean: The Triumph of Color". They have 85 works by mostly French artists painted in Provence attempting to catch the light of the Mediterranean between about 1860 and 1940, and the painters include Manet, Renoir, Van Gogh, Corot, Modigliani, Cezanne, Vlaminck, and Utrillo, as well as many other big names. There are also several major works by less well-known painters like Maguin, Signac, and Picabia. I'm going to go check it out, of course; no hurry, it's on till October 10. Ironically, this little exhibition is of a great deal more cultural value than the whole damn Forum, excluding of course the Chinese warriors. And it cost probably about one-one thousandth of that whole shebang.

FC Barcelona and Real Madrid are both touring East Asia raking in some cash playing exhibitions while beating up on some J-legue teams. At this point I'm guessing we're going to see a 4-3-3 lineup like this one: Valdés; Belletti, Puyol, Márquez, Sylvinho; Deco, Xavi, Van Bronckhorst; Giuly, Ronaldinho, Larsson. Expect to see plenty of Gabri, Gerard, Luis Garcia, and Iniesta. Oleguer and Navarro will be the backup defensemen. That leaves nobody but Xavi and Puyol as starters from the horrible team of two years ago. Rustu is going to be sold to somebody; they can't keep a player of his quality on the bench and they can't use him because they'll have too many "extracommunitarians" on the roster. I believe they can have four on the roster and three on the field at any one time. Gerard is horribly overpaid; I imagine if he stays on the team he either has taken or will take a salary cut. They are probably going to get rid of Saviola; he has apparently pissed them off by playing for Argentina in the South American cup instead of training with the Barça club. He played well, but what that's done is raise the price they can get for him. The big soccer news around here has been over Etoo, who is from Cameroon, plays for Mallorca, and is owned 50-50 by Mallorca and Madrid. Supposedly Barcelona wants to buy him, but Madrid is asking a very high price for their half of his contract. This is apparently very exciting news.