Among some circles in Barcelona, it was widely speculated today that La Vanguardia's Uselessman, Josep María Casasús, arrived at work this afternoon at one PM because he had spent the morning in one of the private booths at the Blue Box sex shop on Calle Aragón. Said Anna, a passer-by, "Boy, that guy in the stained raincoat sure looked a lot like that fellow from La Vanguardia."

Power Line has a piece on European soccer. The Italian soccer star Paolo di Cinio of the Roman team Lazio gave a fascist salute to a cheering crowd last weekend after scoring a goal. Di Cinio is well-known as a Fascist; he openly says he is one. This is apparently not that unusual in Italy, where Mussolini's granddaughter is in Parliament; I am sure that giving the Fascist salute is not illegal, but is almost certainly against the rules of the Italian league. I would hit the guy with a long suspension and a major fine if I were the league president.

Power Line, I think, understimates the racist and radical elements that are part of European soccer. Virtually every team in Spain has a band--a street gang, basically--of extremist supporters; Barcelona has the Boixos Nois, Espanyol the Brigadas Blanquiazules, Real Madrid the Ultras Sur, and Atlético Madrid the Frente Atlético, just for example. The last bits of extreme violence I remember were at (I think) a Celta-Compostela second division game where somebody got stabbed and badly hurt, and before that, a couple of years ago, some Frente Atlético guys killed a Real Sociedad fan outside Atlético's stadium.

These bands of extremists are normally made up of skinheads and fascists, though among the Sevilla crowd they're radical leftists--I believe Sevilla's crowd is the only active hooligan squad on the left, not counting the Athletic Bilbao thugs, who are pro-ETA. The Sevilla crowd beat the living shit of a stadium security guard a couple of years ago; it was all filmed and shown later on TV. Barça's crowd, contrary to popular belief, is just as fascist and racist as any other gang of hooligans. The shameful thing is that these crowds of extremist supporters are normally allowed into the stadium free and even recieve subsidies from the clubs, since they're the loudest and most fanatical fans. Several years ago one of the Boixos Nois leaders died of a drug overdose--this guy had a police record as long as my, uh, arm--and they held a minute of silence for him in the stadium. Supposedly the Joan Laporta regime at Barcelona is doing something about this, but whatever's being done isn't nearly enough.

Every soccer crowd in Spain has racist elements, largely but not exclusively the work of the skinhead hooligans. What they do is make "uuh-uuh-uuh" monkey noises whenever a black player on the other team gets the ball, and they scream "macaco" and "mono" (Spanish for monkey). Occasionally the odd banana is thrown on the field. Barcelona's crowd is notorious for baiting Real Madrid's Brazilian player, Roberto Carlos; several years ago somebody hit him in the head with a cigarette lighter thrown from the stands in the Camp Nou, and he dropped like he was shot. Madrid's crowd is, in turn, known for baiting Barcelona's Brazilian star, Ronaldinho. Back a few years ago Barça had a black player named Giovanni; they treated him so mercilessly in the Santiago Bernabeu that when he scored he flipped off the crowd in triumph and bought himself a suspension. He still probably thinks it was worth it. I certainly do.

The most recent European scandal was a couple of months ago, when at a Spain-England international allegedly friendly match at the Santiago Bernabeu in Madrid the crowd pulled this racist crap before international cameras and made Spain's football fans look like a gang of fascist thugs, since the non-hooligan part of the crowd got into it big-time, too. This was right after Spain's national coach, Luis Aragonés, referred to Thierry Henry as "un negro de mierda", which was generally translated as "a black shit" and what I would translate, slightly more idiomatically, as "a fuckin' nigger".

Clearly Spain has a long way to go. The very first thing they have to do is ban all those thugs from the stadiums. They should be able to sell those seats (the gangs usually occupy one particular part of the stadium) to the general public with some decent marketing; if you can't get the fans out to see great players like Ronaldinho and Deco, you've got problems. Banning the hooligans would clean up the atmosphere no end. It's worked in England. And in the US we have nothing similar; the Oakland Raiders' fans are a bunch of fat drunk guys in makeup pretending they're tough, and that's about as extreme as it gets for organized sports thuggery.

As far as the sports side of soccer news goes, Real Madrid stomped Atlético last night 3-0 and Villarreal cleaned up the pitch with Barça by the same score. Barça had probably its worst game of the season; let's just hope their mediocre play was the result of their having the last couple of weeks off and not the result of these guys all running their legs off. Riquelme and Forlan had great games for the "yellow submarine", as Villarreal is called because of its yellow shirts. Barcelona is down to 14 first-team players. Supposedly they want to sign a forward and a midfielder, but they don't like what's on the market right now. Besitkas wants five million for Carew and I might actually give them that, since Carew's pretty good and still young. He's no superstar, but he can fill in adequately at center-forward, spelling Etoo or allowing him to move to one of the wings, until Larsson gets back, and he can then compete with the aging Larsson for the spot as Etoo's backup, most likely successfully. Not that I don't like Larsson, but Carew's a guy who still has an upside to his career and might stick around for a while, while Larsson is like 33 and is out for the rest of the season with a busted ligament. Barcelona is still in first place with a seven-point lead over Real Madrid.

Notes on the Spanish Military:

It's considerably more professional now that most of the old Francoists are long dead and the army is professional rather than conscript. It's still ungainly, though, and its role is not focused.

Spain has basically these military responsibilities, in approximately this order:

1. Do not allow Morocco to take over Ceuta, Melilla, and the Canary Islands.
2. (they can't say this out loud) Do not allow any attempt at revolt within Spain.
3. Fulfill its alliance with NATO and the United States.
4. Be useful in humanitarian efforts.
5. Participate actively in international military coalitions.

So here's what I'd do. I'd maintain "tripwire" forces in Ceuta, Melilla, and the Canaries. Morocco is not going to do anything silly, since its bilateral alliance with the US will restrain it, and all of NATO would come down on Morocco if that didn't work. But just in case everything goes to hell, Spain needs a small but elite, effective integrated air / naval / land force based somewhere in Andalusia that could be sent to any or all of these places in the event of a Moroccan attack. That takes care of responsibility number one, and this force might also be useful for responsibilities number three and five, assuming Spain only goes into such a coalition with the US and / or NATO.

Regarding responsibility number two, I would maintain a small, well-trained force of light infantry. These guys wouldn't be much good for combat, though they could fight if they had to; they wouldn't have very sophisticated weaponry, but they wouldn't need it because their real job is to suppress any uprisings that might happen in the Basque Country. The biggest pieces of weaponry they'd need would be Bradley light tanks, patrol helicopters, and ground-to-air missiles, and just a bare minimum of that. I would spend money and time training all of these guys as paramedics, truck drivers, military police, construction engineers, and communications / electronic pros. Then they'd also serve for responsibility number four, and they would be able to defend themselves though not mount any offensive operations; we can assume that Spain would be in no position to send out humanitarian aid if there were a real threat within the country.

Regarding responsibility number three, this one should not be where you spend your big money. There's no point in Spain possessing anything more than the bare minimum of planes and ships to patrol the areas around it in case US and NATO forces are needed elsewhere. Even if Spain spent jillions of euros, it could never catch up to American military competence, and since we have no evil imperialist plans to grab Algeria's natural gas or whatever, there's no point in even trying.

La Vanguardia's Uselessman, Josep María Casasús, did not mention the little problem with the front-page color photos of the wrong disaster in his column this week, either. He most likely spent the week masturbating in his cubicle while fast-forwarding through six to eight "barely legal" porno movies per day, according to knowledgeable sources here in Barcelona.

Zap and his minions had their meeting and decided that Spain would send 650 military personnel to Southeast Asia, including five planes and a hospital ship. The cost of the mission will be some 6 million euros. Everybody seems to be keeping score here, as both Catalunya TV and Libertad Digital--and those are two rather different media outlets--pointed out that this will make Spain the fifth largest contributor of troops overall and the third among European countries. It still hasn't been announced where they're going, though the first contingent will begin leaving on Monday. Hey, at least they're doing something. Individual Spaniards have been generous in their contributions, and the government is kicking in six million euros in real money and fifty million in loans that can only be used to buy Spanish exports, as well as a moratorium on paying back the debt (some 500 million euros) that the affected countries currently owe Spain. Well, hey, that's something. The PP is complaining that the Zap government's reaction has been slow, that announcing millions of euros in aid is sort of cheesy when ninety percent of it is loans to prop up the Spanish export market, and that six million in real money ain't enough. Precisely the same complaints and criticisms that the Spanish media leveled at the United States, which swung into action as soon as it was possible to get the ships steaming.

The big domestic stink going on is that this ETA guy who murdered 25 people is going to get out of prison. He was sentenced to nine billion years in jail, but in Spain the maximum time served is thirty years. This dude got twelve years off for good behavior, and they're going to turn him loose after eighteen years in prison. They have to. That's the law. He earned his time off according to the rules. Three other major ETA terrorists, all multiple murderers, are also scheduled for release this year after serving less than 20 years. I actually sort of admire the well-meaning naivete of the Spanish judicial and penal system, with all that emphasis on rehabilitation--but let's face it, this is completely nuts. If you can't lock up a terrorist multiple murderer for life, what is the point of a prison sentence? This guy will be right back in business as soon as he gets out; he's showed no repentance.

Just a few quotes from the news pages of La Vanguardia:

"The UN retook yesterday the leadership and coordination of international aid to the victims of the December 26 earthquake...the most vulgar political games had become so notorious that it was impossible to hide them...Invoking the "operability of humanitarian action", Washington's initiative expressed its hostility toward the relative autonomy of international organisms..."

Wait a minute. Washington and Canberra are the only governments that can actually do much of anything on the ground, which is why they've been doing it, and the last thing we need is another layer of UN incompetent bureaucrats getting in the way. Read the Diplomad if you don't believe me.

"European and Asian criticisms yesterday caused Colin Powell to state that this group would be dissolved and would align itself under the direction of the UN...Powell Sunday began a pressurized tour of the region to try to overcome the bad image that Washington's cold official reaction to the catastrophe was causing...When Jan Egeland described this attitude as stinginess, Washington raised first to 15 million and then to 35...Until the brains in the White House realized their chance to improve their deteriorated image in Southeast Asia and the world in general, the sum was not multiplied by 10 to the current 350 million dollars. A sum that is less than the UE's $3 billion, Japan's $500 million, or the more than $800 million announced by Australia, but the great military and media mobilization has placed the US in the center of the news about the humanitarian effort...Each year the United States spends $450 billion on defense..."

"The principal regional objective is to station troops on the Straits of Malacca, in order to control the energy supplies of China and East Asia with the excuses of antiterrorism and piracy...as well as new concessions for the two American companies present in the gasfields of Aceh. One of them, Exxon Mobil, has annouced a donation of $5 million as part of its PR campaign. Only ten days away from the human disaster, the reality of political games makes its manifest apparition...To Kofi Annan, it is imperative that $977 million appear rapidly and in cash."

Nope, no matter what you do you just can't please some people. These people are called "knee-jerk anti-Americans". Meanwhile, Spain is still dithering, though the Spanish Red Cross has apparently sent three planeloads of supplies, and Zap is talking about sending troops and a medical team, which of course won't arrive until after they're no longer needed. Zap hasn't mentioned how many troops there will be or where they will go or how much it will cost or even when they will be leaving; this will all be decided at a big old meeting tomorrow. Spain has pledged over $60 million in aid, but the problem (as Barcepundit says) is that the great majority of the dough is not in cash gifts, but in loans that can only be used to buy Spanish imports. In other words, Zap is trying to subsidize the Spanish export economy while the Vangua accuses the Americans of playing political games. In its news pages.

(Note: One thing the Spanish Red Cross sent were five water treatment plants to purify drinking water--good move, but they didn't have the capacity to move them themselves, so a US Navy ship did it.)

Just a reminder to a couple of the folk who post in the Comments section: I generally don't respond to trolls, though I make occasional exceptions. However, before you "challenge" me to write about a subject of your choice, I suggest you use the search function above, because I have most likely already written about it. It actually works. For example, if you type in "Truman", you'll find this piece I wrote way back in November 2002.

Saturday, November 30, 2002
Posted 16:00 by John
This was a good question from the Comments section, and I thought it deserved a good answer, so here it is.

Just a thought, but why didn't the victorious allies get rid of that cunt Franco at the end of the war?
Des | Email | 11.25.02 - 8:55 pm

During the war, Franco's personal sympathies were with the Axis. However, he managed to avoid openly committing himself to their side (in part he got lucky; he made major demands on Hitler in 1940 in exchange for joining the Axis, which Hitler refused. If Hitler had met those demands Franco would have entered the war and gone down for sure) and by '44 Churchill was openly flirting with Franco, knowing the war was won and not wanting to make it any longer by having to fight Spain, too. Using military force to overthrow Franco was never on the Allies' menu.

Anyway, on June 19, 1945, at the San Francisco Conference, the United Nations (which was the reincarnation of the Allied Powers) voted unanimously to exclude Franco's Spain. Then, at the Potsdam Conference later that summer, Stalin proposed that everyone break all relations with Spain, a worldwide total boycott, and that the Allies should aid the "democratic opposition" within Spain; Truman was in favor, though he feared another civil war, but Churchill wasn't. (This might be the last time the Americans and Soviets ever agreed on anything.)

Churchill pointed out, first, that Britain had strong trade links with Spain and the last thing anybody needed in Britain in 1945 was more people out of work due to a trade cutoff. He also said that "interference in the internal affairs of other states was contrary to the United Nations Charter." (Paul Preston, Franco, p.540; Chapter XXI in general). So Churchill made the same argument against getting rid of Franco that the anti-war people are making against getting rid of Saddam, who, to use your terminology, is an even bigger cunt than Franco was. Now, I'm not saying Franco wasn't a right cunt in many ways, but Saddam manages to out-cunt him, in my opinion. In the middle of Potsdam, Churchill lost a general election to Clement Attlee, who became Prime Minister; Attlee and Foreign Minister Ernest Bevin did not change British policy toward Spain. Anyway, the decision made at Potsdam was to definitely exclude Spain from the UN, but not to use economic and other diplomatic sanctions to try to force Franco out. Britain won out over the Soviets and Americans.

Bevin washed Britain's hands when he said to the Commons on 20 August 1945, "The question of the regime in Spain is one for the Spanish people to decide." Charles de Gaulle, president of the French Council of Ministers, "sent a secret message to Franco to the effect that he would resist left-wing pressure and would maintain diplomatic relations with him" sometime in summer 1945; French Foreign Minister Georges Bidault was also against action against Franco.

In January 1946, Dean Acheson, American Undersecretary of State, "suggested a joint declaration from France, the United States, and Britain that for Spain to be accepted into the international community, the Spanish people would have to remove Franco and set up a caretaker government to organize elections." But by then Washington was coming around to London's position, and Lord Halifax, the British Ambassador in Washington, pointed out the danger of a Communist takeover in Spain to Acheson. "American pressure diminished...British policy in fact aimed at restraining the French and the Americans from taking precipitate action against Franco." (p.552)

On 26 February, a month after De Gaulle's resignation, the French government closed the frontier with Spain and broke off economic relations after Franco executed ten left-wing guerrillas. France wanted to bring the question of a total economic blockade of Spain to the UN Security Council, but both London and Washington did not want to give the Soviets a chance to influence anything. On 4 March Paris, Washington, and London released the Tripartite Declaration, in which they called Franco a right cunt but said "There is no intention of interfering in the internal afairs of Spain." Franco privately accused Truman of being a Mason, which, of all things, he really was. It was no secret; it's in his autobiography.

Then on 5 March Churchill made the "Iron Curtain" speech in Fulton, Missouri, and it was all over.

Take a minute to check out the blogroll. I've edited it down, removing blogs that seem to be dead or that I can't find a current link to. I fixed every link I could find. Then I added ten or fifteen links that I've been reading a lot recently. Most but not all of them are pretty well known.

I just wanted to comment that a couple of very fine websites that I read regularly, like ¡No Pasarán!, have posted recently about a new French paper called "L'antiaméricain primaire", which is on its second issue. Go check it out on their site or just Google the name of the paper. I am convinced it is a joke, that it's a satire of French anti-Americans rather than an anti-American sheet in itself. The tone reminds me of "Larry the Liberal" on the blog Blame Bush! (which I need to put on the blogroll, too). I mean, come on, with headlines like "Americans lay turds that are too big", or "They did not either land in 1944", this can't be for real. One more thing is that the expression "antiaméricain primaire" is common in France; it means "knee-jerk anti-American" and is only used as a criticism, e.g. "Oh, you just say that because you're an antiaméricain primaire." But go check it out yourself and see what you think. Especially, click on the press kit at the bottom of the paper's webpage under the two front covers that are displayed. There's a hilarious profane rant aimed at visitors who are "working for an american mass media" along with phony headlines like "The biggest American star is French!" next to a photo of Brad Pitt, or "The Eiffel Tower is taller than the Statue of Liberty!", or "We've got the real French fries!" or "Let's see you build a bridge like the Pont du Millau!" next to a photo of a flock of sheep with the bridge off in the distance.

As you have probably heard, the Basque Parliament voted in a surprise on December 30 to pass what is called here the Ibarretxe Plan, named for Basque Country prime minister Juan José Ibarretxe of the Basque Nationalist Party (PNV). They got the support of the ETA's political wing, Herri Batasuna or whatever their name is this week, which holds three seats in the Basque Parliament and normally abstains from voting. The details of the plan don't matter, because it's never going to happen, but the main plank of the platform is a referendum within the Basque Country on Basque "sovereignty", whatever that is. Now, this is clearly unconstitutional and there's no chance it's going to happen.

Zap is actually handling the crisis reasonably. He's called up Ibarretxe and arranged a meeting, at which he might make a couple of mild concessions, but he will attempt to convince Retch that this whole thing is dumb and a waste of everyone's time. Zap won't convince him, but he'll be able to say he offered dialogue. Then the Retch Plan will go to the Spanish Parliament, where it will be shot down with both the Socialists and PP against it. Then, if it somehow gets past the Spanish Parliament, of which the possibilities are about the same as those of legalizing gay marriage in Saudi Arabia, Zap will take it to the Tribunal Constitucional and they'll declare it unconstitutional.

So nothing is going to happen. Lots of sound and fury signifying nothing.

Some bunch of experts decided that it would be a good idea to send the Generalitat de Catalunya archives from the 1930s to Barcelona from Salamanca, and so Zap is going to follow their recommendations. The Cataloonies are jumping up and down in joy. The Spainiacs are spewing fire and brimstone. I, personally, don't care. It's just symbolic. I would certainly hope that the Catalan government is going to pay for the transfer of the files, but except for that I don't see how this affects anybody or anything. I mean, I assume all these files are on microfilm or maybe even on-line anyway, so they can be consulted easily by any historian or researcher who needs to consult them. If they aren't, maybe that ought to be a higher priority than actually moving the damn papers themselves around.

Just a few sentences from today's La Vanguardia, all from the news pages:

"Washington's growing protagonism is seen in some circles as an attempt to deprive the United Nations of relevance, besides the evident political interest in improving America's image in Asia and prevent the crisis from feeding political radicalism--Islamist, in the Indonesian case--in societies already very unstable...The absence of the Democrat ex-President, Jimmy Carter, Nobel Peace Prize winner, who has been extremely critical of the war in Iraq, was widely noticed...The Administration suffered criticism due to the timid initial response to the catastrophe, above all when one remembers the avalanche of sympathy toward the US after the September 11 bombings..."

Now, wait a minute. I was here in Spain and there was not even a ripple of sympathy toward the US after the September 11 bombings. The general attitude in the media and among too many ordinary people was one of "those goddamn Yankees had it coming", with some honorable exceptions. What I remember was "The world awaits Bush's revenge", or whatever the exact wording was, as the main headline on El País's front page. That's what I remember.

"The presence in the delegation of the President's brother is officially justified by his experience in managing emergencies, like the hurricanes that often strike Florida, but there are also those who speculate that this might be a way to promote his status regarding future political ambitions, including the Presidency...The United States, India, and Australia to a lesser degree Australia are playing a geopolitical game in order to extend their influence through the region through aid...It is only fair to recognize that the American people has a long philanthropic tradition that is taught in school and that is very present in everyday life."

Well, that last comment is more than fair and quite generous. I'm not so sure about the other five, though.

Here are the answers to the Christmas quiz on American statistics, since I figure anybody who would have sent in an answer has already done so.

1. b
2. c
3. c
4. a
5. a
6. c
7. d
8. a d c b (b and c are actually almost tied; don't count a d b c as wrong)
9. d
10. d
11. a d c b
12. a
13. c
14. b
15. c

Hmmm. This is interesting. If you go to La Vanguardia's website, www.vanguardia.es, and then click on "Clasificados", the classified ads, right on the top bar there of the home page, and then from there click on "Contactos", you get this website:

http://www.bcnexcita.com/index.html

There's La Vanguardia looking out for its readers' needs again. Looks like they're providing visitors to their website with prostitution services as well as the weather, the horoscope, and Fred Basset. I wonder if the Conde de Godó knows he's a paid shill for pimps. Wanna sue me over that?

La Vanguardia has committed the worst, stupidest screwup you can possibly imagine. On Friday they ran two big color pictures on the front page showing a group of people standing on a beach and then trying to run away as a huge wave comes in on them. The captions labeled the photos as having been taken December 26, the day of the tsunami, in Indonesia. Newspapers around the world contacted them in order to get the rights to the photos.

Today the shit hit the fan. They were hoaxed. Some guy who is supposedly a Spanish businessman out there e-mailed them these photographs that they printed. He, in turn, had supposedly received them from an Indonesian company he has contacts with. Turns out the pictures are from a typhoon in China two years ago. Their excuse is they did a lame-ass fact-checking job--they assumed the photos were legit because the guy didn't ask for any money, and they did determine that the photos hadn't been Photoshopped. Here's part of the fun: they learned later on Friday, that very day, that the photos were not what La Vanguardia had claimed they were, but they didn't get around to running the correction until today. Our hard-working ombudsman, Josep María Casasús, did not mention the incident in his column today, though he had all of Saturday to write up his piece. (He did write about his journey to Villalba, Lugo, on November 20, 2004, where he was present at the XV Congress of Communication of the Xunta de Galicia along with two other ombudspersons.)

La Vanguardia ran the correction in a small box on the front page below the fold and printed a more ample story on page eight. Remember when the Daily Mirror got caught over those fake photos of British troops "torturing" Iraqis? When it hit the fan they printed a screamer headline all over the front page saying "Sorry, we were hoaxed". I believe some important people resigned over it. Of course, CBS News had to run a massive apology, Dan Rather in person, when they ran that fake story about George Bush's National Guard service, and Rather was forced to resign. Two big powerful guys at the New York Times resigned over the Jayson Blair fake stories scandal. Heads rolled at the BBC after they got caught running bogus information about the Iraq War.

What do you think's going to happen at La Vanguardia? Probably Casasús will come out next week with some excuse about how it wasn't really their fault and they were just trying to do what such a fine upstanding organization as theirs does, which is run sensationalistic graphics guaranteed to shock and thrill their readers without bothering to check if it's true...oops, I mean inform their readers of important events around the world.

What he did this week was run some long gassy words full of nothing while he justified his lack of any action at all regarding the opinions that La Vanguardia's reporters print as facts in every story that they write. According to him, if he did anything, that would be censorship, and if you don't like it sue us. The last line was, "We must not forget that the press has a commitment to values of liberty, justice, and truth that justify it as the ethical motor of solidarity and progress."

What a worthless bag of wind this man is. And if he doesn't like it, he can sue me.

Good God. They're talking at least 125,000 confirmed dead and as many as 400,000 more in Indonesia. There are maybe millions of refugees all over the place; fortunately, fears of massive epidemics seem to have been exaggerated. This is the worst thing I ever remember happening. The photos of the bodies piled up on the beaches--you've seen them. The aid is beginning to get there. The Americans, Aussies, and New Zealanders have got an airlift going and they're flying supplies into Banda Aceh, by far the worst-hit area, in C-130 transports. Unfortunately, one of the things they're carrying in are 80,000 body bags. The very professional and fairly large Indian Navy is sending out missions all over the Bay of Bengal, and the Americans are sending two battle groups loaded with supplies. International aid is flowing in from all over the world; they're saying they've already collected $500 million. Dozens of countries and millions of individuals are contributing. There's so much stuff coming in it's already piling up at Banda Aceh; they're having transport difficulties, not enough trucks and the roads are all washed out anyway. Sounds to me like helicopters might be a good idea; how about all the traffic helicopters at all the radio stations across America fly over there? They could make it in, say, 500-kilometer jumps by way of Alaska, and the cost of fuel and its availability would of course be no problem. They could be there in two or three days. Or we could stash several dozen of them inside one of those huge transport planes. The British did something similar at Dunkirk, but instead of traffic helicopters it was fishing boats. If the Saudis want to help out, a big old tanker full of gasoline would be nice. I bet they have plenty to spare. InstaPundit says that an easy way to give is through Amazon, which is running an aid campaign; 100% of the money Amazon collects will go directly to the Red Cross. Fox News says that, and I quote, a coalition of "the United States, Australia, Japan, India, and the United Nations" will be coordinating aid. So Clare Short has this to say, from the Scotsman via Matt Drudge.

United States President George Bush was tonight accused of trying to undermine the United Nations by setting up a rival coalition to coordinate relief following the Asian tsunami disaster.

The president has announced that the US, Japan, India and Australia would coordinate the world’s response.

But former International Development Secretary Clare Short said that role should be left to the UN.

“I think this initiative from America to set up four countries claiming to coordinate sounds like yet another attempt to undermine the UN when it is the best system we have got and the one that needs building up,” she said.

“Only really the UN can do that job,” she told BBC Radio Four’s PM programme.

“It is the only body that has the moral authority. But it can only do it well if it is backed up by the authority of the great powers.”

Ms Short said the coalition countries did not have good records on responding to international disasters.

She said the US was “very bad at coordinating with anyone” and India had its own problems to deal with.

“I don’t know what that is about but it sounds very much, I am afraid, like the US trying to have a separate operation and not work with the rest of the world through the UN system,” she added.

Fuck you, Clare Short. You're no goddamn help at all, and all you can do is bitch. Besides, if Fox News is right, you're wrong, because they say the UN is part of the coalition. Jesus Christ. This is the clearest case ever of "no matter what you do, it's wrong" anti-Americanism, not to mention a slam at the uppity former colony India, which is of course incapable of doing anything like, say, taking some responsibility and getting some shit done, because it's just got too many problems, you know.

I forgot to mention something in the last post. It is not uncommon here for demonstrators to demonstrate just to be a pain in the ass. For example, there is a neighborhood called Gavà Mar near the airport. The residents are all p.o.ed because there's too much noise. (So why did you idiots buy houses by the airport? The airport's been there for much longer than that neighborhood has.) So they decided to hold a demonstration. Fine, you would think, let them stand in front of City Hall with their protest signs, even if their cause is stupid and selfish. But, nope, that's not what they did. They blocked the access road to the airport and wouldn't let anybody through. For more than an hour. Hundreds of people missed their flights or had to walk more than a mile from the demonstrators' barricade to get to the terminal. Traffic was backed up for kilometers. This just happened a couple of weeks ago.

Why the hell weren't they all arrested and trucked off to jail and charged with disturbing the peace, being a public nuisance, blocking a public highway (which, of course, belongs to everybody), and interfering with law enforcement and public emergency vehicles? That's not a peaceful demonstration. That's interfering with other people's rights. Something similar happens during the summer, every year, when farmers all get together and blockade the rural highways while "demonstrating" for more subsidies. Occasionally they set up barricades of burning tires. They're never dragged off en masse and booked on charges of being a general pain in the ass. I bet if that happened just two or three times these jerks would stop doing that crap and would confine their demos to the bounds of legality. I bet if the airport sued the organization that blocked the access road...in Spain it wouldn't do any good at all.

I just don't know what to say about the tsunami. What a tragedy. So many dead people. Entire cities were destroyed. Now we've got to help clean up the mess; the US has already promised $25 million and more will be coming. This is the biggest natural disaster that I can remember. They're talking 100,000 possible fatalities. And on top of everything some self-righteous UN prick called us "stingy", apparently because we don't give enough money to his organization or something. Meanwhile, some other idiots are calling Bush uncaring and callous for not cutting his Christmas vacation short. There are a few more things to worry about than scoring some cheap political points right now, asswipes. Like say actually getting some medical people and food and supplies and housing and stuff in there as fast as we can. And help make sure crime and looting don't break out, and that food and such are fairly distributed. This would be an excellent chance for nations like France and Spain to show some leadership and organize some solutions. One thing Spain might do is send a few batallions of paramilitary Guardia Civil police to help keep order, perhaps along with some of the Spanish army guys who were in Iraq and did very well there.

Just for your enjoyment, here are a couple more of those little pieces from La Vanguardia on religion in the United States. One of them is almost ironic now in the wake of the earthquake and tsunami; it was published on December 23. Here it is.

According to American fundamentalism catastrophes are a divine warning, an opportunity provided by Providence so that human beings will change their lives. The Civil War was interpreted by this sector as a punishment because the Constitution omitted the name of God, and the depression of 1929 because America adored the false idol of science. It was like that even until September 11, which was blamed on the relaxation of conventions and the religious apathy of the citizens. This point of view contrasts with that of the European reaction to the Madrid attentats, where there was no providentialist background noise when causes and responsibilities were being discussed. One of the characters that has supported Bush since his first term is Tim Le Haye (sic), who is considered the most influential evangelical voice and who is the author of best-sellers in a genre that has been called "biblical fiction". The messages from God, the prophecies, and the final battle between good and evil at Armageddon, Israel, are his princlpal themes.

Where do I start? First, it is true that some people considered the Civil War divine punishment. It was, however, punishment for having committed the sin of slavery. It is also true that somewhat fewer people considered the Depression divine punishment, for the sin of worshiping the false idol of money. It is also true that the great majority of Americans frankly don't worry too much about divine punishment. A couple of loudmouths, like Falwell and Robertson, did say some stupid shit after 9-11, and the entire country as one called them idiots. Americans do not believe that September 11 was a punishment from God, except for the eight weirdos holed up at a ranch in Idaho muttering about black helicopters and The Turner Diaries. And, of course, there must be some sinister connection between Bush and paperback novelists like Tim LaHaye, whose books are nearly as popular in America as The Da Vinci Code and The Dante Club are in Europe.

Here's another one.

To the American fundamentalists, Bush is a direct messanger from God. An important officer in the Pentagon, general William G. Jerry, an evangelical who has caused more than one controversy by interpreting the antiterrorist war as a religious war, said in 2003 that "Bush is in the White House because God put him there." Those who know Bush talk about his "supernatural certainty" in his determinations and in the confidence he shows about receiving inspiration directly from God. Conscious of that, Kerry repeated in the first presidential debate that "you can be sure you're right but be wrong." A few months ago, in a private meeting with Amish farmers in Pennsylvania, they say Bush said the following: "I am sure that God speaks through me." This Messianic character that is attributed to a leader of a nation--which is more reminiscent of the Messiah king of the Jews than the Messiah of the "good news" of the Gospel--is viewed with suspicion in Europe.

Let me make something clear. When a mainstream daily newspaper is saying that Americans think Bush is a messenger from God, or that Bush thinks God is speaking through him, there is something very weird going on over here in Europe. No wonder they're so crazy. They're completely paranoid about us. They suspect anything that Americans do. I swear if Bush went to a Baptist church one weekend they'd accuse him of preparing for Armageddon.

And as for that last anti-Semitic crack, let me point out that, uh, Europe is the continent that originated and produced Messianic leaders in the 20th century--or don't we remember Hitler, Stalin, Lenin, Mussolini, Trotsky, la Pasionaria, José Antonio, and even Franco? Now let's compare them to Roosevelt, Truman, and Eisenhower. Who would you vote for?

Two things I like about the Spaniards are their anti-authoritarianism and their live-and-let-live tolerance. I sincerely believe that these two marked traits that most Spaniards have are at least partly the reaction to forty years of not so much brutal but just plain boring Francoism. After the reprisals from the Civil War were over in the early forties, there wasn't too much killing done under Franco. There was, however, a lot of repression. Franco's ideal Spanish society was fairly military and strongly old-style Catholic, suspicious of foreign influence, paternalistic, traditional, and orderly and disciplined. Originality and creativity were not exactly officially discouraged, but they weren't presented as ideals in themselves as they are today.

If you'd lived through forty years of that, you'd be suspicious of authority and tolerant of individual difference, too, maybe even excessively so at times.

This leads to several problems we have today in Spain. The first is the lack of respect people have for the police. The police were seen in the Franco days as agents of the regime, whether fairly or not, and were widely regarded as corrupt and incompetent. (Franco did have a secret police, the so-called Political-Social Brigade, but they were small potatoes and not so much feared as disliked.) Well, today, now that we have a pretty professional, and democratic, police and security service--they've done a hell of a good job against ETA and Al Qaeda, and they've fought organized crime--the cops don't get enough respect.

Second is an excess of tolerance towards public demonstrations. The right to demonstrate was one of the shibboleths of the left during the late Seventies transition period. Well, I totally agree, when we're talking about a case of the people going out and peacefully making their opinions known. An example would be 2003's antiwar demonstration in Barcelona, which, much as I disagreed with it, was generally orderly and was conducted in a legal fashion, with municipal permission and police protection and all that. Spaniards love to go out and demonstrate now. Every chance they get, for whatever reason, they'll call a demo. Fair enough, if done according to the law. The problem is that this spirit of tolerance toward public demos makes society much too permissive toward blatantly illegal actions committed by demonstrators.

A third problem is a combination of a Marxist perspective on education--that society is capable of educating its citizens in the direction that whoever's in charge of society wants them and it to go--and a reaction to the horrors both of the Republican and then Francoist prisons. What this means is that the Spanish judicial system is much too permissive and has an idealistic emphasis on rehabilitation.

Keep all that in mind as we present the Iberian Notes roundup of news from around here.

One other problem we've got is that of skinheads and squatters. The skinhead phenomenon is common all over Europe. They're scum. I hate them. They're violent raving racist Nazi thugs, tattoo-faced football hooligan freaks. I can't decide whether they're stupider or uglier. Squatters operate all over Europe, too, but they've done especially well in Barcelona. They're scum. I hate them. They're violent raving left-wing anarchist morons, safety pins through their eyebrows and no bath for a month. I can't decide whether they're uglier or stupider.

So they had a skinhead-squatter gang fight in the street during the Gracia Fiesta Mayor back in August and some skinhead thug stabbed some squatter punk. The punk went into a coma. They arrested the skinhead who did it and then let him out on bail, of all things, instead of say locking him up on charges of aggravated assault and battery, illegal use of a weapon, conspiracy to commit an act of violence, belonging to a gang, and anything else they could throw at him. The punk just died after four months in a coma. Now they went out and slammed the skinhead in jail on charges of second-degree murder, which seems like the appropriate thing to do, for once.

So the squatters all got together and organized a protest demo march from plaza Urquinaona to plaza Sant Jaume on December 23. They trashed everything in their path, including bank branch offices, the McDonalds, and the city's official Christmas creche. They left trails of graffiti over every wall along their route, burned the trash containers, and pulled up a traffic light by the roots, as it were. Then they took on the cops in the plaza Sant Jaume, where the City Hall and the Generalitat building are. Three municipal and eight regional police oficers were injured. Four rioters were arrested. 200,000 euros of property damage was done.

The cops damn well knew something like this was going to happen. What I'd have done is, once they all get into the plaza Sant Jaume, which is a limited place, simply cut off all the exits, read the riot act, tell the crowd to calm down, and arrest anybody who doesn't. A few hundred cops ought to be able to handle that, and then we could throw the lot of them in jail for attacking the cops. That won't fly around here, though, I'm afraid. The squatters are claiming thirty of them were injured by the police. Good.

Meanwhile, the local cause celebre is some idiot fourteen-year-old kid sent out a bunch of anonymous e-mails signed the "Army of the Phoenix" to several supermarket chains, demanding that they label all their products in Catalan. If they didn't, he threatened them with computer harassment. He sent them images including that of a Spanish flag burning. Naturally, this was taken seriously. The cops hunted the perpetrator down and it turned out he was fourteen. They charged him with terroristic threats. The Cataloonies have come out en masse promising solidarity with the brave youth who was only expressing his freedom of speech. Uh, if you make anonymous threats if your ultimatum is not complied with, that's called extortion where I come from, no matter whether you're fourteen or not. I say he goes to Juvie for a year.

Meanwhile, the street crime rate in Barcelona is through the roof. If you're a lone woman tourist at night in a dodgy area, like say the Ramblas or the Raval or the Barrio Gótico, you're almost certainly going to be the victim of a mugging. If you're drunk or trying to buy drugs, that probability rises to 100%. I would advise anybody to be damned careful, no matter who you are. Keep an eye on what's happening around you and you should be all right, but use enough common sense not to get yourself into trouble. This is a disgrace, I am afraid, and I do not enjoy having to point it out. The cops know exactly who the street criminals, basically junkies and Arab street kids, are, and every single one of them ought to be behind bars.

Also, right now, there is a serious trial going on. It seems that two dirtbags by the names of Brito and Picatoste broke out of prison in March 2001. Those morons gave Picatoste a prison furlough, of all ridiculous things. He disappeared, of course, got six of his dirtbag friends together, and they made a plan. Brito threw himself down a stairway in the prison and got himself into the hospital, from which Picatoste and company broke Brito out while seriously injuring the two cops guarding him. One was left paralyzed. The two took off on the run and a couple of weeks later they came upon a couple parked out in the middle of the woods. They killed him, tied her to a tree, and Brito raped her. They were then arrested, and they've been charged with first-degree murder, attempted murder, illegal weapons possession, car theft, assault and battery, and rape.

Can we just hang these sicko criminals, please? No, I'm afraid. The prosecutor is asking 83 years for Brito and 72 years for Picatoste. The problem is no matter if they get ninety-three thousand consecutive life sentences they get out in thirty years no matter what. That's the law in Spain.

I admit it, I'm a nerd (though I claim not to be a dork, geek, spaz, goon, or doofus). I love statistics. I have entire books full of them and I can quote them at you all day long. I just went back to check on some stuff I'd said before. (I'm wrong about 1/3 of Americans being Catholic. It's 21%. The stats are Protestant 57.9%, Catholic 21.0%--though the Catholics are bigger than any single Protestant denomination--, other Christian 6.4%, Jewish 2.1%, Muslim 1.9%, nonreligious 8.7%, other 2.0%.) Anyway, I started flipping through the World Almanac and decided I'd come up with this quiz on US statistics. Let's see how well y'all do. Obviously, you're not supposed to go look up the answers; you're supposed to make your best guess among the four choices. Post your answers on the Comments section. My source is the 2004 Encyclopedia Britannica Almanac. First prize is a date with the Jedman. Second prize is a date with the Jedman with tongue. Third prize is a night in a cell downtown at 12th and Locust with the Jedman.

(Local Kansas City doggerel:

Hocus pocus
12th and Locust
There's a party in the city jail
You must be indicted
To be invited
Unless your mama throws you bail.)

1. What percentage of Americans are black?
A. 4% B. 12% C. 18% D. 26%

2. What percentage of Americans have moved from one house/flat to another in the last year?
A. 2% B. 9% C. 16% D. 31%

3. What percentage of Americans were born outside the United States?
A. 1% B. 5% C. 10% D. 19%

4. What's the average workweek in the US?
A. 39.5 hours B. 42.5 hours C. 46.5 hours D. 51.5 hours

5. What's the murder rate in the States per thousand people per year?
A. .06 B. .37 C. .96 D. 1.47

6. What percentage of Americans went to at least one movie last year?
A. 28% B. 45% C. 66% D. 86%

7. What percentage of American households own a car?
A. 54% B. 73% C. 84% D. 95%

8. Rank American consumer spending, in order first to fourth, on these leisure activities:
A. books B. spectator sports C. movies D. flowers and gardening

9. What are America's three biggest crops (in value, not quantity)?
A. Wheat, cotton, tobacco B. Wheat, corn, cotton C. Cotton, tobacco, corn D. Wheat, soybeans, corn

10. What's the median income per US household?
A. $19,000 B. $28,000 C. $35,000 D. $43,000

11. Which of these is a US household's biggest expense? Bonus point: rank them in order.
A. Housing B. Health care C. Food D. Transportation

12. Which country receives most American visitors?
A. Mexico B. United Kingdom C. Ireland D. Israel

13. What percentage of Americans have completed secondary education (high school until age 18)?
A. 53% B. 67% C. 84% D. 97%

14. What percentage of its GNP does the US spend on its military?
A. 1% B. 3% C. 9% D. 18%

15. How many Europeans visit the US every year?
A. 1 million B. 4 million C. 11 million D. 22 million

Here's an article from today's Avui by Pilar Rahola, which I've translated from Catalan. The title is "Francis Fukuyama is right: the militant anti-Americanism of Zapatero and his Islamist friends".

A general thesis, famously explained by such great thinkers as Hegel, Nietzche, and Tocqueville, states that modern democracy is no more than the secularization of Christianity. If we look at it in those terms, it is evident that it is difficult to visualize the democratization of Islam, since we are dealing with a history, a culture, and a tradition different from the West. In one way, this is the pessimistic vision of Samuel Huntington in his famous The Clash of Civilizations, which a good friend of his, Francis Fukuyama, is arguing against in his latest book, The Construction of the State. Revising his "end of history", which has been rotundly disproven by events and which he himself analyzes autocritically, Fukuyama makes two fundamental asseverations: the values of the Enlightenment are universal and universalizeable, and that radical Islamism, because of its own suicidal nature, will burn out in ten or fifteen years. He adds a statement that is pure common sense: "People want to live in freedom", even under the most strict Koranic regimes. They want it, in the same way they want scientific and medical advances, they want economic well-being, and they want social organization. That is, Islam is not incompatible with democracy, because the values it is based on are basic to human needs, beyond the religions or the cultures that define those needs.

I started this article with these notes on Fukuyama because, with all modesty, I have supported the same thesis for a long time. I maintain the conviction, which I have expressed in several articles, that the asphyxiating vacuum of freedom that millions of people suffer in the name of Allah is not caused by a cultural impossibility but a political will. And I maintain, as a consequence,that what we must do is denounce the stereotypes, take off the masks, and show the real face of the monster. It's not a god. It's not a religion. That which condemns a Nigerian woman to be stoned to death, which teaches Palestinian children of eight years to love martyrdom and death, which can kill a child from Ossetia in the name of a cause, which prays to Allah while it crashes an airplane into a tower, which fills the burning ruins of a train with death, or writes books which teach how to beat your wife, all this has one origin, the political will of certain regimes and leaders to traumatize Islam and convert it into the transmissor of a totalitarian ideology while sustaining the chain of social privilege. It is not true that Islamism is alien to the West, and the clearest example is Osama Ben Laden himself. Dressed as a medieval sheikh, with a royalist aesthetic included, ben Laden uses Western communication methods perfectly, his ideology has a nihilistic base which is rooted in the twentieth-century European totalitarianisms, and many of his practices have drunk from the fountains of Stalinism. As if it were a perfect symbiosis of Fascism and Communism with an Islamist aesthetic. That is: it is perfectly transmissible to the West, even though it bases part of its ideology on hate toward the West.

What, then, are the roots of the problem? The thesis I personally defend and that I now see corroborated in Fukuyama's magnificent book identifies those responsible for the Islamic conflict and does not get lost in the ethereal conflict of cultures and religions. The theocratic regime of Saudi Arabia is first on the list of the guilty, the real motor of the exportation of a paranoid, totalitarian, and violent Islamism, and the base of the Salafist ideology (doesn't she mean Wahhabist?-JC) that feeds the brains of the suicides and the hearts of their bombs. Saudi Arabia is a disastrous country, in submission to stratospheric corruption, governed by a bunch of despots who, during decades of wealth, have built nothing more than poverty, fanaticism, and anti-modernism. And which exports its totalitarian ideology to the whole world. Behind every imam who preaches the disrespect of freedom and enlightenment in European mosques, the Saudi hand is there. Behind the subsidies to the parents of the girls who cover themselves up there is the Saudi hand (or didn't you know that the veil is subsidized?). And the ideology that all the ideologues of terrorist fundamentalism support was born among the Saudis. Even in the case of the Egyptian Muslim Brotherhood. Obviously, countries like Iran, the direct financier of terrorist groups (like those which are staining the Iraqi Christmas with blood), or the terrorific Sudanese government, the paradise of Islamist totalitarianism, or also Syria, are on this list too. But, as Fukuyama himself says, no country is as dangerous as Saudi Arabia.

Where am I going with this? Toward some theories of political do-gooderism, of which Rodríguez Zapatero and his project of an alliance of cultures are the main exponents. I want to go there because I have the impression that his focus and the people he chooses to deal with are both incorrect. We don't have a problem with Islam, but with those who condemn Islam to be interpreted in a totalitarian way. And these are exactly the people who Zapatero wants to make into his allies. Maintaining the profound political imbecility of militant anti-Americanism, Zapatero thinks that King Fahd or the president of Syria or that of Iran should form part of the round table of the new world, as if it were logical that democracy should give its seal of approval to totalitarianism. Despots like King Fahd have never formed part of any solution to the Islamist problem; rather, they are the hard core of the problem, they are its source, they are today its focus. And at the same time Zapatero elevates them to the category of friends, while he puts down the evil Yankees. Could anyone be so wrong so honestly? Certainly, as the wise man said, there is no one more ignorant than he who is sincerely ignorant.

I love that phrase, "the profound political imbecility of militant anti-Americanism". I'll be using it in the future.

I knew I'd get in trouble over that last post. Just a few points:

1. I have nothing against the Church. I disagree with the official Vatican line on many things, including the Iraq war, divorce, contraception, and first-term abortion. Not to mention papal infallibility. But I respect the Church as an enormous organization basically dedicated to doing good. Sure, the Church has its faults and failures, but I bet 95% of what it does is generally worthy, which is a pretty high percentage for an organization made up of imperfect human beings.

2. I repeat what I said about Catholic influence on Spanish culture. Spanish atheists and Communists, who are all radically anti-clerical, still maintain a way of thinking that I believe is indigenous to Catholic culture, most specifically as regards attitudes toward Protestantism, the state, and the market.

3. I, personally, am a hard-core agnostic about one inch away from atheism. My family is from the Methodist tradition, basically low-church Anglicans. I do not deny the influence that this sort of Protestantism has had on my own way of thinking.

4. Most Protestants have nothing to do with Calvinism; the only Calvinist groups of importance I can think of in the States are the Presbyterians, most of whom are about as Calvinist as my cat Oscar, and the Dutch Reformed. In the States, you've got the Anglicans, Methodists, Baptists and most American-based fundamentalists coming out of that tradition; then you've got the Lutherans and their Germanic ilk, and we mustn't forget the Catholics, who are the largest single group in America with over one-third of the population. I believe America has more practicing Catholics than any other country. The thing about America is there's a lot of competition in the religious market and the Catholics have to compete just like everyone else. This makes the American Catholic Church, in my opinion, a good deal more progressive and active than its European counterpart, since it has to keep its members faithful or they might run off and join the Mormons or whatever. In Spain and Latin Europe, on the other hand, you've basically got two choices, Catholicism or some brand of anti-clericalism. This leads to problems we have around here, like the dust-up going on between the government and the Church on whether religion should be a required course in the public schools or not.

5. No, most Spanish Catholics do not know that there are almost twice as many American Catholics as there are Spaniards of any sort.

6. I maintain what I said about Gypsies and Latin American immigrants often being members of the very lowest social classes in Spain, just as I would affirm that blacks, white rednecks, and Mexican immigrants make up a disproportionate amount of the lowest social classes in the US. That's not an insult; I think it's a neutral statement of fact. How many Gypsies and Peruvian immigrants do you see rubbing elbows with the Catalan bourgeoisie up in Pedralbes? I also maintain that most converts to Protestantism in Spain are Gypsies and Latin Americans, and that their brand of Protestantism is charismatic and evangelical.

I was watching TV1 news this afternoon, and they of course reported on the rocketing of the American military base in Mosul which left about 25 dead. No complaints there. The problem was that the focus of the story was on alleged US censorship of the coverage from Mosul.

Now, that is just ridiculous, since reports from Mosul started coming out minutes after the attack happened, and they included disturbing images and verbal descriptions of American wounded and dead. TV1 itself showed them, and they appeared on the front pages of all the Spanish newspapers this morning. I do not know whether there is actual US military censorship going on, but I wouldn't be surprised if there is. That's what happens in wars, and I see nothing wrong with it. A journalist's right to free speech is abridged by the military's necessity to stop information from getting to the enemy. But the US military certainly did not prevent anybody from printing full-color photos on their front pages of wounded and dead American soldiers.

Let me point out that I have nothing against the media's showing us graphic and disturbing images of war. War is a terrible, ugly thing, and we need to see these images to remind us of what the people involved are really going through as we sit safely in our nice, warm houses. War should only be used as the very last resort, and these photos help make that very clear.

Changing the subject, I wonder if it is possible to say that Catholics and Protestants in Europe are different ethnic groups as well as being different religions. Here in Spain, I continually see reminders of how Catholicism affects Spanish culture; even Spanish atheists are affected by Catholic cultural attitudes. My favorite example is Spaniards' collective misunderstanding of the various Protestant factions. Now, in Spain there are very few Protestants, and Spanish Protestants tend to be charismatic evangelists who are most successful among the very lowest social classes, especially Gypsies and Latin Americans. Spaniards tend to identify Northern European Protestants with their local equivalents, who really are often poorly educated fanatics and often converts from Catholicism--and there's no one more radical than a convert. That, and of course they've seen all those Hollywood movies about inbred southern preachers handling snakes and damning Darwin while being hypocritical drunken lechers in private.

La Vanguardia has been running, get this, a series in the features section on how Americans and Europeans see religion differently. It's hilarious.

...The aspiration of the fundamentalist Chrisitan groups is that religion and politics should be as closely joined as possible. Bush's policies have created, in this direction, the so-called Faith-Based Initiatives. These are social programs carried out by religious organizations that receive million-dollar subsidies and which are the American answer to the European welfare state...

No, no, no. The two largest pieces of the American federal budget are Social Security (pensions) and Medicare/Medicaid (health care), at around 29% each. Defense, by the way, is 17-18%. I would be amazed if the "faith-based initiatives" cost even one percent of what we spend on these massive, long-established government programs. Most Spaniards don't even know these things exist. I will also point out that a lot of social spending is done at the state rather than the federal level, so it doesn't show up on the federal budget. Another comment I will make is that one nice thing about Americans is that they give lots of money to charity, more than double what Europeans give. The last comment I have is that if I found myself homeless in Kansas City, the first place I'd go is Crosslines, the interdenominational organization that helps out the homeless and the poor, and if I needed a place to stay I'd go to the Salvation Army.

The American moral has Calvinist roots. Each individual must answer alone to God for his actions and for the efficiency of his work as a sacred obligation to change the world. In Genesis, God gives Eden to Adam and Eve so that they can cultivate it, but after they eat the forbidden fruit he condemned them to work hard in order to get food. The Calvinists add that this punishment should be accepted with dedication because it is the true reason for the presence of man in this world far away from God. Max Weber's classic theory explains capitalism as coming from this accent on work and individual responsibility. For many Americans society does not improve through ideal state structures, but through the virtue, responsibility, and work of each member. Individual sin exists, but there are doubts about the existence of the collective. The Third World countries, for example, suffer because of the low virtue of their citizens.

I think you can actually learn more about the culture and society of the guy who is trying to interpret a foreign society than you can about said foreign society. Note that the anonymous author of this piece places a high value on the collective as against the individual, that he believes that the state should be entirely responsible for people's welfare, that he believes that individuals are not responsible for the circumstances they find themselves in, that he believes Americans are dour eighteenth-century Scottish Presbyterian beings who work entirely too much and never have any fun, that he considers that Americans judge others mostly on their material wealth, and that he considers Americans as quick to jump to an unfair negative judgement of people from other societies.

In the United States there exists the general belief that religion is important in order to be rich. Prosperity is a symptom of good relations with God. Poor people, on the other hand, are suspected of not obeying Him. It is the theology of success, and it is based on several passages of the Old Testament in which material success is equated with divine protection..."God bless you" (original English), used like our "adiós", has its roots in this spirit. Like the sentence "In God We Trust" written on every dollar or the invocation of God made on Wall Street after closing a million-dollar deal. TV preachers brodcast solidarious telethons in which blessings are given out according to how much money is put on the table, like the indulgences that the Reformation criticized in Europe.

American readers, I think, need to accept that this way of thinking about America and Americans is an integral part of Spanish culture and that it comes straight from the Catholic Church. We're not going to be able to change Spaniards' attitudes toward America because so many of them are so deeply held as an integral part of Spanish culture itself. America is held up in Spanish culture as the living example of the opposite of what Spain should want to be as it develops. Sure, the Americans are rich, but they're not happy, and they believe crazy things, and their morals and values are hypocritical, materialistic, and false, and they don't understand the way life should really be lived, which is of course the way it is done here in Spain.

Murph and I just spent half an hour trying to add an RSS feed to this blog. First, it looks like there's a difference between an ATOM feed, which you use if you use Blogger, and an RSS feed, and they're not the same thing.

Second, all I want to know is what I'm supposed to fill in when I see "Site Feed Server Path" and "Site Feed Filename" on the "Settings" menu on Blogger.

Third, what I really fucking want is to be able to press a fucking button and have the fucking computer do what I fucking want it to do. If it can't do that, what the hell is the point? I don't care HOW it works or WHY it works, and I don't want to need to know ANYTHING about computers except where the on/off switch is. If you can't push one button and have it work, it's not fucking user-friendly.

Fourth, why do I want a RSS feed anyway? I still don't know why it's any sort of advantage. I mean, all you have to do is hit the Iberian Notes link on your Favorites menu or on your home page or on Franco Aleman's or InstaPundit's and here it is.