Libertad Digital posted this thing I wrote for them just for fun. It's an excellent list of great Internet radio stations, if I say so myself. Also try "Cool Blue" and "Bluegrass Country".

El invento más grande de nuestras vidas
por John Chappell

Cualquier cosa que puedas imaginar se puede hacer por Internet, te lo juro. Si lo que te gusta es ver fotos de travestidos bajo tratamiento hormonal, te aseguro que están, y gratis. (Una pista: googlea Carmen de Mairena.) Ya que a mí no me va eso, paso bastante tiempo escuchando música a través de la radio por Internet.

No, no es exactamente la radio, lo estás recibiendo por cable o wifi, pero puedes escuchar a través de tu ordenador la programación de literalmente docenas de miles de emisoras de todo el mundo, anuncios incluidos. Para los que quieren mejorar su inglés (o cualquier otra lengua), no hay nada mejor que escuchar las radios que emiten en ese idioma.

Asegúrate de que tienes los altavoces del ordenador encendidos y el volumen a un nivel moderado. Entonces, ya sólo te queda hacer clic sobre el botón en el que ponga "Listen Here" o "Listen Live" o algo por el estilo. Y ya está, empezará a sonar una señal de radio que está siendo emitida en ese mismo momento en el otro lado del mundo.

A mí, siendo useño (una palabra nueva y útil de Pío Moa), lo que más me interesa es por supuesto la música de mi país, y las únicas emisoras que he escogido en este artículo son useñas. Hay, también, emisoras de muchas otros países que son muy interesantes, como las dominicanas que ponen salsa y merengue, las mexicanas que ponen rancheros y norteños, las argelinas con su musica raï, las jamaicanas, las brasileñas, y las del Cabo Verde. Hay que escuchar la música que hacen allí si te gusta lo afrolatino. Y, además, si quieres, hay música popular de Irán, India, Vietnam, y casi todos los demás países del mundo. Búscala por Google y la encontrarás.

Dicho esto, hay muchos que creen que la mejor emisora de radio del mundo es WWOZ en Nueva Orleans, que pone jazz y blues 24 horas el día. Es una radio sin ánimo de lucro, que recibe apoyos voluntarios de sus oyentes, y por eso puede poner lo que quiera sin que sea necesariamente un éxito comercial. Otra muy buena emisora de jazz es KCSM en California. Y si te gusta lo de Luisiana, escucha a KBON de Lafayette, "Louisiana Proud," que a veces emite en francés, y pone una mezcla entrañable de Cajun, country, blues, y lo que llaman "swamp pop."

Los amantes de la música soul y funk tienen WILV (wilv.fm) en Chicago, una emisora profesional que se llama "Love FM." Los que prefieren la rhythm and blues no se deben perder WJLD en Birmingham, Alabama. Estas dos emisoras tienen una audiencia básicamente afroamericana

En Estados Unidos la "radio pública" (National Public Radio, NPR) recibe algunos apoyos del gobierno y otros de sus oyentes. Su programación es interesantísima, aunque izquierdista bienpensante cuando trata de las noticias y los temas sociales. Las emisoras de la cadena frecuentemente tienen alguna conexión con la universidad local, y cuando no emiten la programación nacional suelen poner música. Dos de las radios públicas mas interesantes son KCMP, que programa rock alternativo, y KUT en Austin, Texas, que pone country-rock.

Yo, personalmente, soy un fan del country, y mi emisora preferida es KHYI en Dallas, Texas. Lo bueno de esta emisora es que los pinchadiscos no ponen a Kenny Rogers ni a John Denver, sino a Johnny Cash y Merle Haggard, a Dale Watson y Junior Brown, y tienen un sentido del humor muy, pero que muy, useña. (Cuando España y Portugal firmaron el acuerdo de los Azores con Bush y Blair, los pinchadiscos se emocionaron tanto que sugirieron a sus oyentes que fuesen al supermercado y comprasen aceitunas y vino de la península ibérica, puesto que no podían pensar en ningún otro producto español allí en medio de Texas.) KHYI es una emisora comercial y muy profesional, y los anuncios a veces son tan buenos como las canciones. KNBT en New Braunfels, Texas, es semejante, el estilo de su música es lo que llamamos "western swing," para distinguirlo de la "bluegrass," más propia de los Apalaches. La legendaria WDVX en Knoxville, Tennessee, es el máximo exponente de la corriente apalache del bluegrass y el folk. Y, para una experiencia absolutamente no profesional, escucha WDVR en Nueva Jersey, otra emisora sin ánimo de lucro. Nunca sabes lo que vas a oír, o folk o Celtic o country o incluso rap, pero sabes que el pinchadiscos (todos son voluntarios) será un enamorado de la música que escoge.

There have been a couple of comments in favor of boycotting Spain and Old Europe. I must respectfully disagree. Remember, a boycott hurts the good people as well as the ones you don't like. If I may express my personal prejudices a minute about different bunches of Spaniards:

Political:

PP voters: You'll like 90% of them. Salt of the earth. 10% are way-out right-wing nuts, often super-Catholic.
CiU voters: At least 50% are wonderful folks. Half of the rest are almost as wonderful, but they're hung up on the Catalan thing. The other half of the rest are nuts, either far-out Catalanistas or wackjob Catholics.
PSOE voters: Half of them are pretty reasonable most of the time. The other half are either poorly-educated bigots or nuts.
Abstainers: Mostly working-class and not particularly interesting.
Others: Mostly nuts. Some PNV voters aren't too bad, but they're all Basque-wacky.

Social:

Urban white-collar: Generally reasonable and interesting folks, well-educated and cultured. 20% are political idiots.
Urban civil servants: Generally nuts. 20% of them are not political idiots.
Urban small business: Varies. Some are the most incredible people you've ever met. Some are the biggest assholes you can imagine. Most, of course, are somewhere in between.
Urban intelligentsia: As a rule idiots. And boring. To be avoided. Teachers are the worst.
Rural people: I love them.
Urban blue-collar: Friendly and open, and often good-hearted, but many are pretty much dopes. 20% aren't.
Underclass: Like underclass anywhere. Avoid them.
Immigrants: Wonderful people except for the Moroccan street kids and the Rumanian gypsies.

See? At least 40% of Spaniards are people you'd like to meet. And, of course, if you choose to deprive yourself of the riches of the Prado, the Alhambra, the Escorial, the Sagrada Familia, and Spain's other historical and cultural heights, you're only hurting yourself.

Here's something I wrote that Libertad Digital posted Monday. Thanks again to Fernando for the editing.

La política del barril de cerdo

Una de las expresiones más antiguas de la jerga política estadounidense alude a la costumbre de los políticos a tratar de satisfacer los deseos de sus votantes. El deseo más cercano a la cuenta corriente del votante suele ser también el deseo más cercano a su corazón, y por eso los varios candidatos al Senado y a la Cámara de Representantes prometen mucha inversión gubernamental en su estado o su distrito. Los que cumplen sus promesas frecuentemente son reelegidos.

Esto, despectivamente, se llama "la política del barril de cerdo." Supuestamente, en el siglo XIX, la típica promesa de un candidato de poca monta sería un barril de carne de cerdo ahumada gratis para cada votante si salía elegido. Entre los practicantes actuales más famosos y asiduos de este peculiar modo de hacer política es el líder demócrata en el Senado, el ex-jefe del Ku Klux Klan Robert Byrd, quizás más conocido por los visitantes de Virginia Occidental por el hecho de que cada autopista, oficina de correos, juzgado, y puente lleva su nombre. Incluso John Kerry, todavía senador de Massachusetts y pacifista notorio, salió hace unos días en los periódicos por exigir que una base militar en su estado, que el Pentágono quiere cerrar por inútil, se quede operativa. Los republicanos, por supuesto, le acusaron de practicar lo del barril de cerdo.

Esto del plan Maragall sobre la financiación catalana me huele a beicon. Si entiendo bien, Maragall quiere reservar un cierto porcentaje de los impuestos recaudados por el gobierno central dentro de la región autónoma de Cataluña. O sea, Maragall quiere un mínimo garantizado del reparto del barril de cerdo para Cataluña. Está muy bien, forma parte de la gran tradición democrática, pero conviene llamarlo por su nombre.

La respuesta cínica de un político experimentado norteamericano a los disparates maragallianos sería algo así: "Mira, hombre, si tus parlamentarios no pueden sacar suficiente cerdo para que tus votantes estén contentos, quizás dichos votantes estarían más felices con otro partido y te lo dirán en las próximas elecciones. O sea, a por el cerdo. Esto se entiende perfectamente. Pero queda muy feo disfrazar esto bajo la capa y la máscara del nacionalismo patriótico que defiende los propios derechos históricos de tu pueblo."

El sistema norteamericano del reparto de los impuestos funciona de ese modo. Hacienda recauda los impuestos federales, o sea, centrales. El Congreso reparte el cerdo. Cuando hay suficiente cerdo para todos, entonces se gasta lo que sobra en la defensa y cosas necesarias de este tipo.

Si tu estado quiere más cerdo, entonces lo que haces es recaudar impuestos en tu estado. Los más típicos son sobre la propiedad inmobiliaria, un IRPF estatal (mucho mas bajo que el federal, normalmente, porque cuando el IRPF estatal sube demasiado mucha gente se traslada a otro estado), sobre la venta (un tanto por ciento; por eso pagas un dólar con diez por un periódico que en su portada pone que cuesta un dólar cuando te dispones a comprarlo en el aeropuerto de Nueva York), y sobre el alcohol, el tabaco, el juego, y la gasolina (los llamados "impuestos sobre el pecado").

O sea, que todos los representantes catalanes, madrileños, vascos, murcianos, y cántabros compiten por el cerdo. Esto está muy bien, y que los que no traigan el cerdo a casa no vuelvan al Parlamento. Pero si el hambre de tus votantes no está saciado con lo que puedes traer a casa desde el gobierno central, lo que tendréis que hacer es sacar más cerdo de tu propio estado. Canalizar este hambre en el deseo de venganza por unos agravios históricos mayoritariamente o falsos o exagerados para desviar la atención de los votantes famélicos no está nada bien. Lleva a una desvertebración entre regiones innecesaria y contraproductiva.

Lo que no está mal es ser honesto sobre lo que realmente quieres hacer, y si esto es traer dinero a Cataluña para construir aeropuertos y escuelas y hospitales y carreteras, perfecto. Hay que mantener contentos a los votantes, pero sin pasarse. Hay que ser responsables con el cerdo, porque si comes demasiado te pones enfermo y el país acaba como Argentina. Este quizás es el genio del sistema anglosajón: consigue controlar la cantidad de cerdo que se reparte, para que todos coman pero para que nadie engorde.

Hay un viejo chiste político muy famoso en Estados Unidos. Un político está estrechando manos en un pueblo pequeño. Se encuentra a un anciano del lugar y éste le pregunta por qué debería votarle, y el político le dice, "Bueno, señor, hace cinco años voté a favor de subir su pensión, y hace diez años conseguí los fondos para el hospital nuevo, y hace quince años abrimos la universidad pública para que sus hijos estudien, y hace veinte años presenté la resolución que permitió abrir el casino donde trabaja su nieto." Y el viejo le responde, "Vale, pero ¿qué has hecho para mí recientemente?"

Lluís Foix, of all people, in La Vanguardia, of all places, blew the whistle on some absolute bullshit prepared by, get this, the Barcelona city government's Institute of Education for the purpose of, get this, using it in the schools. Impostor Enric Marcó was a major source for the book. It's called "Republicans and Republicanas in the Nazi concentration camps." From the chapter "The Nazi genocide today and other genocides," Foix quotes,

"Of all the problems that exist today, probably there are two that, at the moment of writing this educational unit, have many similarities with Nazi genocide and the ghettos which the German Nazis created to isolate the Jews from everyone else...they are the construction of the wall of shame in Palestine and the jailing of Taliban prisoners at the military base the United States has on the island of Cuba, in Guantanamo."

The Barcelona city government is going to pass this crap out in the schools, this explicit moral comparison between the Nazi genocide and current American and Israeli actions. Do I need to point out that my great-uncles Homer and W.B. and Zeb actually got dragged out of Texas and sent to Europe where they actually shot some Nazis, or that the Spanish Republican prisoners at Mauthausen were liberated by none less than the Americans, or that the Israelis are the children of those who suffered real genocide, not those Spaniards who were locked up because some of them were Stalinist murderers?

Find me a gas chamber at Guantanamo or a death camp in Israel, you shits.

Meanwhile a Catalan delegation went to Israel and behaved like a bunch of assholes. First they had an homage to Yitzhak Rabin, and the Catalan flag wasn't there, so separatist leader Carod-Rovira refused to attend it. Refused to attend a ceremony honoring a prime minister murdered precisely because he tried to make peace because his region's flag wasn't there! Then there was a ceremony in homage to the victims of the Holocaust, which the Spanish ambassador was at, and they only had a Catalan flag, which bothered the ambassador since his country's flag wasn't at an official government occasion. They played regional symbolic politics at an homage to the victims of the Holocaust! Then, get this, on Friday premier Pasqual Maragall and ERC leader Carod-Rovira paid a visit in the morning to the Holocaust Museum, the Wailing Wall, and the Holy Sepulchre. They were so deeply impressed with the solemn occasion that they bought a souvenir plastic crown of thorns and Maragall got a photo of Carod wearing it in front of everybody with a huge smile on his ignorant, arrogant face. And some people dare to complain about foreigners' inappropriate behavior in Spain! Gee, let's make fun of Jesus after visiting the most sacred sites of the Jewish and Christian religions and the museum dedicated to the real victims of genocide.

The Israeli ambassador to Spain's reaction was, "It is lamentable and inappropriate that a ceremony in which respect was to be shown to one of our heroes, a Nobel Peace Prize winner, was marked by an incident internal to Spain." Duran Lleida, of Convergence and Union, the Catalan moderates, said, "It was an embarrassing show. Real clownishness, like Charlie Chaplin." Duran called for "respect toward Christians and for what Jerusalem signifies." The PP's Jorge Fernandez Diaz said he felt "embarrassed. More than an official visit of leaders of a country who have to show an appropriate image, this looks like a bunch of buddies on a trip behaving ridiculously." Pasqual Maragall said, "The visit was an exceptional success." I think they let Maragall start drinking again, because he sure has been acting like it recently. The guy is a notorious alcoholic.

Meanwhile, poor Victor Harel, the Israeli ambassador here in Madrid, also had to deal with the offensive history textbook the city government came out with. He said, "We feel very badly. It is shameful to include the issue of the Palestinian wall in a text about the Holocaust. The text shows a complete lack of sensitivity and the banalization of the Holocaust, and we cannot permit that, Comparing the Nazi era with Israel's current policies crosses the red line and becomes anti-Semitism. " Harel demanded "the text be retired immediately and its content be rectified, omitting all references to current Israeli policy." Meanwhile, the Israeli embassy has contacted the Spanish foreign ministry and Israel's president, Moshe Katsav, is going to call Maragall on the carpet and, I hope, chew him up one side and down the other.

Official reaction from the Barcelona city government? Socialist clown Marina Subirats, in charge of the municipal Institute of Education (why we need one I have no idea), said, "The sentence in which the Palestinian wall is mentioned is the opinion of the authors that the city government will not censor." Later, after being talked to loudly and clearly by somebody with a brain, probably from the foreign ministry, she said, "We don't want a diplomatic incident. Although this controversy is totally disproportionate, we will, together with the authors, revise the entire text before its distribution. This material has not yet been handed out and is in the process of correction because of its references to Enric Marcó."

Good job, guys. You managed to offend the Israelis, the Americans, the Catholics, the non-Catalan Spaniards, the Jews, and the memory of the dead. Not bad for three days. Not to mention looking like fools for swallowing all of Enric Marco's lies.

How long are Spain's voters going to let this go on?

Check out these bits of news from the Spain Herald from last week.

El País blaims White House for Newsweek error

Despite Newsweek's retraction of its notorious story on supposed profanations of the Koran, El Pais, Spain's best-selling newspaper, blamed George W. Bush for Newsweek's error both in an editorial and on the news pages. El Pais belongs to Spain's largest media corporation, Prisa, property of Jesús de Polanco. A reporter from El Pais, José Manuel Calvo, calls into question the falsity of the story, and claims that the wounds of the Iraq war have not healed as the protests in the Muslim world showed. Calvo wondered, "Is the published story, despite the retraction, true, or are these only accusations that are part of a tried-and-true strategy? Or both? Since last year, the Guantanamo prisoners have made 'credible charges of religious humiliation,' according to the Constitutional Law Center in New York, one of the organizations that advises the inmates." Calvo's piece turns the story in its head, saying, "Though Newsweek retracted its story Monday, under pressure from the White House, and the Pentagon says that Al Qaeda militants have orders to charge religious profanation, the interest of the tens of thousands who were offended is not knowing whether the story was true or not, but that it was published." On its editorial page, El Pais tries to make the retraction look less important, saying the story was just a news brief that wouldn't have been so important but for the Iraq war. Says El Pais, "Trying to blame the messenger for the blood spilled and America's loss of prestige is a supreme act of cynicism on the part of the Pentagon, the State Department, and the White House. The administration is responsible because of its rigorously opaque information policy on terrorist issues, and because it permits the existence of a prison like Guantanamo, a legal limbo outside all civilized convention, where US soldiers do whatever they want, with no control but their own, with the hundreds of Islamist suspects interned there...It is no accident that the most demagogic use of the now disproven story was made in Afghanistan, a country on the brink despite American military presence, where Al Qaeda and its supporters have great power, and whose president, a firm ally of Washington, has serious problems exercising power outside his capital." Newsweek's false report may have led to rioting in Afghanistan that killed at least 16 people.

What bogosity, which by the way was followed up by a similar piece in La Vanguardia. Gee, if Newsweek prints a lie, and a bunch of people get killed in rioting, it's America's fault and Bush's in particular. Also note the "fake but accurate" justification being thrown out here; it doesn't matter whether Newsweek's story is actually the truth, the important thing is it may be a lie but a reflection of the greater truth, which is that America is evil. Similar "fake but accurate" information, you'll recall, was provided by CBS News about Bush's military record and, most recently, here by our unmasked impostor, Enric Marcó, about his alleged imprisonment in Nazi concentration camps.

SGAE supports Internet "drivers' license"

The SGAE is Spain's private union of creative workers, and manages the intellectual property of more than 66,000 members, such as authors, songwriters, film directors, scriptwriters, and musicians. During its fourth workshop on digital journalism yesterday, SGAE lawyer Pedro Farré proposed, "Just as you need a license to drive a car, you should need a license to use the Internet. The objective is to eliminate the anonymity provided by the Internet. The Internet is not a regulated world, and liberty cannot exist without responsibility." Journalist and blogger Arcadi Espada responded, stating that Ferre's idea "means saying that anonymity should be prohibited in 'civilian life'." Espada believes that "some things are much more dangerous than anonymity," in reference to Newsweek magazine's publication of a false story that may have resulted in violence. Arcadi Espada called Internet "the most important philanthropic enterprise ever conceived." Meanwhile, industry, tourism, and commerce minister José Montilla warned yesterday that in the digital press sector "new products of doubtful utility and legality, such as some kinds of newsletters or blogs, are being created." Montilla added he did not mean "that this kind of product is pernicious in itself, nor anything of the sort, but some of them do not meet the fundamental norms that define the profession of journalism. Every medium of communication must be solvent and credible, which some of these newsletters and blogs are far from being, colliding with the freedom of expression and information." Montilla said, "There are legions of those damaged by digital newspapers, among them myself. Damaged because of some actions that, sometimes, were caused by concrete interests of those very sources of information."

And they say the Socialists don't want to censor anybody. Sounds to me like they want to censor this here blog. If you're not "solvent and credible," and you go ahead and express your ideas, does this mean that you're "colliding with the freedom of expression and information"? Who is going to give out licenses of solvency and credibility? The state, I suppose, since it's in charge of drivers' licenses too. Welcome to the new Socialist Internet. This would be in clear violation of the First Amendment back home in the US, and I imagine it's pretty damn unconstitutional around here, too.

80% of Spaniards say they're Catholic

79.3% of Spaniards identify themselves as Catholic, while 11.7% are nonbelievers and 4.9% say they are atheists, according to a survey of 2500 respondents taken in March by the government-owned polling bureau CIS. Of the Catholics, 41.7% rarely or never attend mass or other religious ceremonies, except baptisms, weddings, first communions, and funerals. 19.7% of Catholics attend several times a year, 13.1% every month, and 17.2% every Sunday and Christian holiday. 2.3% go more than once a week. In other results, those surveyed considered Spain's most important problem to be unemployment; their concern over terrorism, the second most important problem, is decreasing. Citizens' concern over housing and immigration is rising.

I just thought that was interesting. This means about 20% of the 80% who identify as Catholics actually go to church regularly. That sounds about right to me. One point is a lot of those churchgoers are old ladies, whose numbers are of course dropping. I think Spain is a basically secular country of distinct Catholic tradition. That is, they aren't observant Catholics anymore, but they sure aren't anything like Protestants, of whom Spain has never had more than about seventeen.

Here's a piece I wrote for Libertad Digital they didn't use. In case you didn't already know, Barça won the League for the first time since 1999. At the celebration of the title in Barça's stadium, Samuel Etoo, who played several years for Madrid's youth team, shouted into the microphone the traditional culé slogan, "Madrid, cabron, saluda el campión," which translates more or less as "Madrid, you bastards, hats off to the champions." He then apologized the next day, since it really was kind of offensive, and especially with the kids watching and all.

Congratulations to the fourteen, later sixteen, players who won the title. Many of Barça's players, including backup goalie Jonquera, defender Edmilson, midfielders Gabri, Motta, and Gerard, and forward Larsson, were injured early in the season and missed most of it. The starting eleven was Valdés; Belletti, Puyol, Oleguer, Van Bronckhorst; Xavi, Márquez, Deco; Giuly, Etoo, Ronaldinho. These eleven guys, plus Iniesta, who was the twelfth man, frequently substituted for Giuly but can play almost any position, and the only player to appear in all 36 League games, Sylvinho, who was a backup but stayed healthy and ate up a lot of minutes with solid defense on the left side, and Damià, from the youth squad, who filled in a few games at right defense when Belletti got hurt and did very well, kept Barça in first place in the League start to finish and in good position in the Champions' League, in which they reached the quarterfinals before getting knocked out by Chelsea, not exactly disgraceful. These fourteen played alone, with a little help from midseason signings Albertini, who soon got hurt himself, and Maxi López, who showed some real promise, three times every ten days for five months. Real Madrid, who have a good team, put on a massive final assault, winning seven games in a row before tying Sevilla away, and couldn't catch Barça, or even come close.

This was one of the best seasons I've ever seen a team put together, and I've been watching Spanish soccer since 1987. I think the team I liked best was Robson's 1997 Barça, which won the Cup and the UEFA but didn't quite win the League, with the 1991 team that won the League and the Champions' League second. This Barça team is third on my favorites list, and we're expecting big things from them next year. All the stars are still young and hungry, and Barcelona has them tied up for the next couple of years at least. The only player on the starting eleven over 29 years old is Van Bronckhorst, who's 30, and hardly the team's best player. Closer to the worst, not taking anything away from Gio, but when the competition for best player includes Ronaldinho, Deco, Etoo, Xavi, and Puyol, it's understandable that a solid left defender with a good left leg wouldn't be the top star. Another attractive thing about the team, by the way, is that most of them are family guys, not wild partiers. Only Etoo is known for hitting the town big-time, and if he's going to score 25 goals a year he can keep doing it. He starts scoring seven goals a year, then it's time to review the standards of behavior.

Supposedly Van Bommel, the midfielder from PSV Eindhoven, is a signing for sure next year. Santi Esquerro, Athletic Bilbao's right wing, and Luque, Deportivo's center forward, are the Spanish players supposedly on Barça's list. I still don't think they should have ever let Luis García, the one on Liverpool now--there are at least three Spanish players named that--get away.

Anyway, here's that thing.

Enemigas

Los estadounidenses como yo, aficionados al deporte, siempre encontramos chocante el hecho de que los equipos professionales de fútbol en España tienen conotaciones políticas. In EEUU no es así; no hay equipos derechistas o izquierdistas o nacionalistas o separatistas. Soy hincha de los Kansas City Chiefs en el fútbol americano, lo que quiere decir que siempre me quedo decepcionado al final de la temporada porque nos han eliminado en la primera ronda de los playoffs; apoyo a los Jayhawks de Kansas, mi alma mater, en el baloncesto universitario, lo que quiere decir que siempre estoy decepcionado al final de la temporada porque nos han eliminado en el final four; y soy de los Kansas City Royals en el béisbol, y entonces nunca me decepciono, porque somos tan rematadamente malos que si los Royals solo pierden cien partidos,`podemos estar contentos.

Pero apoyo a estos equipos porque son los de mi ciudad o mi universidad, sin otras razones. Ningún de estos equipos representa nada más. En contraste, en España los varios equipos tienen simbolismo político y/o nacionalista, cosa que sencillamente no entendemos los de allende el Atlántico; la única excepción es el equipo de fútbol americano de la Universidad de Notre Dame, el cual recibe apoyo de muchos católicos por razones obvias.

Está claro que la rivaldad entre el Real Madrid y el Fútbol Club Barcelona es mucho más sentida que cualquier otra rivaldad, quizás en el mundo, y ciertamente en comparación con EEUU. Esto tiene que ver con el gran odio que hay entre las dos ciudades, Barcelona resiente el hecho de que Madrid es la capital, Se cree lo suficiente grande y gloriosa para ser una capital ella misma. No le falta razón; es una ciudad más importante económicamente y culturalmente que muchas capitales de estado europeas, como Bruselas, Dublín, Lisboa, Bern, Estocolmo, y una larga lista más. Pero Madrid es la capital, y seguirá siendo la capital, y los barcelonistas, tanto deportivos como políticos y culturales, no pueden tragar esto. Antes muertos todos que arrodillarnos ante Madrid.

Mientras tanto, en Madrid existe mucho resentimiento hacia Barcelona, y no le falta razón tampoco; si fuera madrileño, estaría enfadado por los intentos constantes de Barcelona de desbancar a Madrid de su puesto como capital y, si esto no es posible, denigrar a Madrid para que parezca mal simbólicamente. Esta rivalidad es la fuente del catalanismo político; si Barcelona no puede ser la capital de España, entonces quiere ser la capital de su propio estado independiente. Los del resto de España, por supuesto, se sienten ofendidos porque piensan que los catalanistas se consideren superiores, tan superiores que no deben vivir bajo el yugo de Madrid. Y de aquí viene el madridismo deportivo, político, y cultural.

Este gran resentimiento que las dos ciudades se tienen es conducido hacia el deporte, e incluso las autoridades locales lo toman tan en serio que se enfadan unas con otras sobre los resultados de la liga profesional de fútbol y las declaraciones de unos futbolistas profesionales. Señores Aguirre, Simancas, Maragall, Zapatero, creced de una vez. Nuestra sociedad es amenazada por el terrorismo tanto nacional como internacional. No vale la pena enfadarse por algo tan obviamente simbólico como el fútbol cuando lo que necesita España es la unión entre sus dos ciudades más grandes para hacer frente a los enemigos de todos.

Here are the two columns I wrote in Spanish for Libertad Digital that they posted last week. Thanks very much to Fernando for the editing.

Jerga socióloga

A partir de la década de 1840 millones de irlandeses se vieron forzados a emigrar a Estados Unidos a causa de la pobreza y el hambre. Los habitantes de Irlanda vivían bajo el férreo mando inglés, que les tenía sojuzgados y sin oportunidades. No podían tener tierras, no podían estudiar, no podían practicar su religión, no disfrutaban, en suma, de ninguno de los derechos humanos básicos. Esto contribuyó a lo que llaman los sociólogos "la cultura de las expectativas disminuidas." La idea de que no había futuro llegó a ser una de las bases de la cultura de Irlanda.

Es decir, que en Irlanda la gente no tenía expectativas para el futuro. ¿Para qué trabajar duro, para qué hacer planes, para qué tener esperanza? No les iba a servir para nada. No había posibilidades de mejorar su situación. Por esa razón los irlandeses no solían trabajar mucho, ni esforzarse en nada, simplemente porque no se beneficiarían de ello. Esto es fácil de entender; de haber sido irlandés en aquella época, tampoco me habría esforzado yo.

El problema empezó cuando emigraron a Estados Unidos. Aunque, naturalmente, América no era el paraíso, había oportunidades de verdad allí, había trabajo, había escuelas, existían los derechos básicos. Pero los irlandeses no se aprovecharon de estas posibilidades porque en su país natal habían aprendido que el esfuerzo era inútil. Al contrario, ganaron fama en Norteamérica por perezosos, borrachos, incompetentes, sucios, y gente de poco fiar. Y merecidamente.

Les costó dos generaciones a los irlandeses en EEUU superar su cultura de las expectativas disminuidas. Con el tiempo, aprendieron que había oportunidades que podían explotar. Pero les llevó más de cincuenta años.

En España existe un síndrome semejante. No es una cultura de bajas expectativas económicas, es una cultura de bajas expectativas políticas. Durante doscientos años antes de 1975, los españoles aprendieron que el sistema político era corrupto, dictatorial, incompetente, injusto, arbitrario, y a veces asesino.

Después de 1975, en cambio, hemos tenido un sistema gubernamental básicamente decente. Se han cometido errores, claro que sí, pero ahora tenemos una democracia con las garantías propias de un estado de derecho. De uno de los países peor gobernados del mundo, España se ha convertido en uno de los países mejor regidos por sus políticos.

Lo que pasa es que los españoles no lo reconocen. Siguen pensando que la política tiene que ser corrupta y que los políticos son a lo mejor incompetentes y a lo peor asesinos en masa. Esto es la causa del pasotismo español; parte de la cultura de España es el desdén hacia la política.
A los irlandeses les llevó cincuenta años aprender que su cultura de las expectativas disminuidas no funcionaba en su nuevo hogar ultramarino. Los españoles han pasado ya treinta años en democracia. Espero que no se tomen muchos años más en aprender que su cultura política no funciona en esta nueva era.


Emociones no justificadas

Robert D. Kaplan, el ilustre periodista norteamericano, autor de varios libros y ganador de otros tantos premios, escribió en su libro "Los fantasmas de los Balcanes" allá por 1993: "Ahora que el comunismo ha caído y los soviéticos han sido expulsados, hay muchas emociones a rienda suelta en los Balcanes que han perdido su uso legítimo." Kaplan hablaba de los nacionalismos balcánicos, tanto viejos como nuevos, que aparecieron casi inmediatamente después del fin del imperio ruso y que causaron tanta muerte y destrucción.

La situación en España es semejante. España sufría muchos años de mal gobierno, especialmente entre el fin del siglo XVIII y 1975, y muchos españoles lo pasaron bastante mal durante aquella época. Así las cosas, no debe sorprender a nadie que se produjesen movimientos contra el poder establecido, ya que no dirigía bien el país. Los carlistas, los nacionales, los anarquistas, los falangistas, y todos los demás tenían como meta arreglar España; por supuesto, las soluciones milagrosas de cada grupo fueron equivocadas, pero había una justificación para buscarlas.

Lo que ocurrió en Cataluña durante los primeros tres cuartos del siglo XX, al igual de lo que ocurrió en el resto de España causó resentimiento. La diferencia entre Cataluña y el resto de España es que muchos catalanes canalizaron su disgusto con el status quo en el nacionalismo. Llegó a existir un importante movimiento popular allí cuyo apoyo al nacionalismo catalanista se convirtió en una cosa mucho más emocional que racional.

Pero a partir de 1975 España comenzó por primera vez a ser un país gobernado por los representantes de los electores bajo el estado de derecho. Los españoles ganaron los derechos de expresión, de confesión, de asamblea, de un juicio justo, y de hablar en el idioma que les daba la gana.

El nacionalismo catalanista se encontró en seguida sin argumentos racionales. Los catalanes ahora tienen su propio gobierno, su propia salud pública, su propia enseñanza, sus propios impuestos, su propia policía, sus propios juzgados, y ad infinitum. ¿Qué más pueden querer? Nada, pero el nacionalismo siempre buscará un agravio. Aunque hoy en día en España vivimos mejor que nunca antes en la historia, su irracionalidad les llevará a quejarse de todo como siempre han hecho. El problema es que sus quejas ya no son justificadas, y espero que sepamos combatirlas antes de que nos lleven a los Balcanes de Kaplan.

Sorry I haven't been here for so long. I spent the last week in Madrid visiting the folks at the Spain Herald, which of course you ought to be reading religiously every day for the skinny on Spain, talking to Robert Duncan, who is starting a new project called Spero News that I am doing some editing for, and hanging out with my friend Richard. We saw the Durer exhibit at the Prado and went to the Thyssen museum, as well as taking trips to El Escorial and Segovia. We hung out one night with my contact Carlos, who is a real nice guy, and we found a bar run by some Bulgarians called La Bruja on Calle Lope de Vega, near Calle Huertas and Plaza Santa Ana, that we highly recommend. Inexpensive and very friendly with tasty Bulgarian food, which is basically standard Mediterranean fare, good stuff. Try the quichelike substance, which is called baritza or something like that. Richard had a good time here in Spain; he thoroughly enjoyed everything. I really do recommend that you guys come and visit in case you haven't already. Don't boycott us just because Zapatero's an idiot. You'll like the sights, the cities, the landscape, the weather (most of the time), most of the food, and most of the people. You won't like tourist hell places like Lloret or Salou, so just stay away from them. That way you can avoid all the--if I may put it euphemistically--working-class Europeans of low socioeconomic status whose alcohol consumption so much of the Spanish economy is dependent on. Also, of course, avoid unattractive suburbs such as Santa Coloma de Gramenet and Vallecas, where the local working class of lower socioeconomic status whose alcohol consumption the rest of the Spanish economy is dependent on hangs out.

The hilarious yet pathetic news is this guy named Enric Marcó, who had gone around ever since 1978 claiming he was a Spanish Republican survivor of the Nazi concentration camp in Flossenburg, was unmasked this week as an impostor. He had actually volunteered in 1941 to work in Germany with one of the transports of volunteers Franco sent. Nobody really knows how many Spanish Republicans were killed by the Nazis. Several thousand, probably. What happened is tens, maybe hundreds of thousands, of these guys, some of whom were basically innocent and some of whom had been guilty of participating in the revolutionary violence in Republican Spain, fled to France after the collapse of the Republic at the beginning of 1939 so that Franco wouldn't get his hands on them. Many of those who Franco did catch he had shot. Some of them probably had it coming and some didn't. Those who fled to France were interned in unpleasant detention camps. Some signed up for the French Army or for French labor batallions and some didn't and some died. After a couple of years the Francoist terror had pretty much burned out and some went back to Spain. The Nazis grabbed some of them and put them in concentration camps for political reasons, since they were mostly leftists. A few, such as former Catalan prime minister Lluís Companys, were deported by the Gestapo and turned over to Franco's tender mercies. Most of those who were imprisoned by the Nazis were in Mauthausen, and many died there. The survivors formed an association which is known for its left-wing activism.

Here one must point out that there is a difference between these guys and the Jewish and Gypsy victims of the Holocaust. The Spanish Republicans were persecuted by the Nazis because of what they had done and what their political ideas were. The Jews and Gypsies were persecuted because of who they were ethnically, not politically. The Jewish and Gypsy victims of the Holocaust were of all political stripes, and most had no political ideas at all. All Spanish Republican victims were, of course, radical leftists. The Spanish Republicans had in their time persecuted other people of different political or religious ideas. The Jews and Gypsies had persecuted nobody. This is not an excuse for the Nazi treatment of the Spanish Republicans, but their suffering, tragic as it was, and what happened to the Jews and Gypsies were two very different things.

Enric Marcó, anyway, was a liar and a fraud. He had been going around for almost three decades as a professional victim. There have been several articles in the Spanish press wondering why Marcó did what he did. The answer is simple. He wanted to feel good about himself. He wanted to have others sympathize with him. He enjoyed being the center of attention. He liked being a hero, lionized by those leftists who naively believe that the Left is Good and the Right is Bad; he got Socialist cabinet minister Carme Chacón to cry on the floor of Parliament with his heart-wringing story, which was of course all made up. The guy volunteered to work for the Nazis, for God's sake. He's not only a fraud, he was a collaborator.

Enric Marcó's imposture brings back memories of such famous exposed phonies, all heroes of the Left, as Anita Hill, who lied about alleged sexual harassment by right-wing judge Clarence Thomas; Rigoberta Menchú, who lied about her family's history in Guatemala; Lillian Hellman, who lied about her own history and her ties with the Stalinists; Jesse Jackson, who lied about his relationship with Martin Luther King; Edward Said, who lied about his family's alleged persecution by the Israelis; Ward Churchill, who lied about his American Indian ancestry; François Mitterand, who lied about his Vichy collaborationist past; and Bill Clinton, of course, who lied about everything to everyone, including the United States Congress.

What do they all have in common? They all basked in the attention of the correct-thinking folks of the Left. It's fun when everybody feels sorry for you and thinks you're a big hero. When their credentials were checked, though, they turned out to be fakes. One wonders how many other stories of victimization are made up. One also despairs at the undeserved discredit that will be cast upon the histories of true innocent victims of persecution by these frauds.

The Jedman is really putting out the bloggage for all his fans and friends, so click on the link over there in the blogroll. Learn about Jed's experiences playing disc golf, going to Hooters, attending rock shows, fighting against superficiality, and being impeded by security guards from finding true love, while fulfilling his responsibility to the impressionable youth of this nation. If you are wondering where the sensitive yet masculine, desirable yet available, gentlemen are, look no further.

Well, again, I haven't had all that much to write about. My friend Richard, whom I've known since I was 16, was here in town earlier this week, and so we spent some time running around town. It was a good excuse for me to revisit some places I hadn't been for a while; it had been months since I'd walked up to the Parque Guell, and it's only half a mile up the hill from our house. Not much in the Spain Herald, either, which of course you should be reading every day. The biggest alleged news around here is that there might be a deal coming between the Socialists and the Basque Nationalists to form a government in the Basque Country. Part of the problem is that hopes of a truce and then negotiations with ETA have been raised, and I think they're unrealistic. Optimists point out that ETA hasn't killed anybody for two years now. Leftists don't mention that ETA actually is very close to collapse and the hard-line policies the Aznar government followed deserve most of the credit for bringing them there. There has been a lot less general bogosity on international affairs in the press, indicating that the anti-gringo faction around here has had to admit that improvement in Afghanistan, Iraq, Palestine, Libya, Lebanon, Egypt, Pakistan, even Saudi Arabia is real. There are occasional rather snobby sniffs at your basic American foibles, like those dopes in the Texas legislature who passed a bill against sexy cheerleaders. As if other countries didn't have their own dumb foibles. Eusebio Val in the Vangua has decided that's just one more step in the power of the Puritan theocracy that rules the United States.

I'd be commenting more often but there's not much to comment on. It's been a slow week in the news. No deal yet on the next Basque government. Housing prices are through the roof, 15% per year; the areas seeing especially high growth are Castilla-La Mancha, probably due to expansion of the Madrid metropolitan area, and Murcia, newly prosperous territory in the southeast. This looks good for us, since we're locked into a five-year lease on this place, and they can't raise the rent, while Remei has her mother's apartment in Barcelona and the house in the country, whose value is skyrocketing. Immigration is up to almost 9% of Spain's population, a dramatic change very quickly. Ten years ago there weren't many immigrants and the ones there were were your standard Moroccans and Latin Americans. Now we got all those people and Eastern Europeans and Africans and Chinese and Pakistanis as well. Hey, I'm all in favor. Barcelona's much more vibrant than it used to be and a lot of the reason is the immigrants. They're really not used to all these foreigners around here, though, and there are going to be some conflicts. I'm optimistic; I think immigrants are going to fit in here pretty well. There are a good few pessimistic voices out there, though. I'll try to go into this more in detail in the next post.

I know I'm harping on the subject, but it has occurred to me that I have posted many criticisms of the United States on this blog. Here's one from Lincoln's birthday, Feb. 12, 2004:

An important branch of our family--the Chappells, Colleys, Whitneys, Shannons--originates in the town of Paris, Texas, which was a hotbed of lynching; in fact, the burning of Henry Smith on January 31, 1893, at Paris, is possibly the single most notorious mob murder of all. Smith was a retarded black man accused of killing and raping a young girl. He escaped to Hope, Arkansas, Bill Clinton's hometown, just a hundred miles up the road, where a posse caught him. He was taken back to Paris by train, where a crowd of at least 10,000 turned out to see his death. It was well-planned; a scaffold was built so the crowd could see, and special trains were run to Paris from as far away as Dallas and Fort Smith, along with the posse's train, full of spectators from Texarkana and Clarksville. Here is a contemporary account. You probably don't want to see this picture.

Here is a list of black men lynched in Paris:

William Armor, John Ransom, John Walker, September 6, 1892
Unidentified man, September 19, 1892
Henry Smith, January 31, 1893
Jefferson Cole, August 26, 1895
George Carter, February 11, 1901
J. H. McClinton, December 25, 1901
Henry Monson, January 27, 1913
Irving Arthur, Herman Arthur, July 6, 1920

That's eleven men killed by lynch mobs in one small Southern town. In addition, during this period, there were three lynchings in neighboring Red River county and one in neighboring Delta county. Of course, I suppose that some of the people who participated in or witnessed these lynchings were ancestors of mine. Our folks were lower-middle class farmers; they owned their land but had no money or social status. These were precisely the people most likely to join lynch mobs. However, these are not the kind of family stories that your grandma passes on to you.

Anyway, I have no illusions about human nature.

If you've been reading the Spain Herald religiously as you ought to be doing, you'll be up on the news from over here. If not, I'll fill you in briefly: Parliament passed gay marriage, which includes the right for gay couples to marry--not "enter into civil unions", marry--AND adopt children. I've been going back and forth on gay marriage. Most of the time I figure, hey, no sweat, if they want to get married it's no skin off my nose, and so few people are gay (3% or so, not Kinsey's 10%) and relatively few of them are going to get married, and even fewer of them will want to adopt children. As for adopting kids, I figure that being raised by a couple of alternative lifestyle guys who actually want the kid is probably better than a lot of situations a lot of kids find themselves in now. Some of the time, though, I'm against it, mostly when I get pissed off at Andrew Sullivan.

The Socialist administration is going to do something very intelligent, for once, which is to make divorce easier. Right now it's a difficult and expensive morass of red tape. Supposedly they're also going to make abortion easier to get, which might kick up a real storm of opposition. I bet they get away with gay marriage and divorce and don't even bring up abortion. If they do it'll blow up in their hands. Right now abortion is effectively available in Spain. No point in staking any of your political credibility on the subject.

Anyway, it looks like the lavender marriage thing will go into effect sometime this summer. Prepare for Joan Clos and Inma Mayol to make a big scene about presiding over the first gay marriage in Barcelona. Rocco Buttiglione will not be invited. What I wonder is how the Spanish Socialists and Communists can balance out their Castro-love with their newfound respect for diversity, because Castro, of course, persecutes gays.

Meanwhile, the media is making a big stink about the Pentagon investigation concluding the Abu Ghraib tortures were an isolated incident, a unit gone out of control, and exculpating general Ricardo Sanchez and three of his aides. TV3 took advantage of the opportunity to compare the situation at Guantanamo to Abu Ghraib, and to rerun the photos, of course. The two cases are totally different. At Guantanamo, remember, the prisoners there are Al Qaeda / Taliban captured in Afghanistan, and the controversy is whether the techniques used there, under higher-up supervision, such as sleep deprivation, getting cold water thrown over you, etc. in order to get suspects to talk, count as torture. The details about this were made public by the US military; Heather Mac Donald is the best source on this. The victims at Abu Ghraib were Iraqis, possibly innocent, not under interrogation, and their treatment was unknown to higher-ups and most certainly not authorized. There's no controversy. Everyone agrees that what happened at Abu Ghraib was torture, there's no dispute over that, and as far as I can tell those responsible have been punished.

That idiot Pasqual Maragall has now suggested that Catalonia should join the Francophonie. God knows why. He's also proposed that French should be the "second language" taught in schools, which I assume would put it ahead of both Spanish and English. Brilliant.

They're trying 24 alleged dirtbags who formed part of the Spanish connection in the September 11, 2001 bombings. Three of them, Imad Eddin Barakat Yarkas, "Abu Dada"", Driss Chebli, and Ghasub Al Abrash Ghayoun, are charged with being direct accomplices in the attacks. Abu Dada is connected to all the Islamist cells turned up so far in Spain, including the bombers of the trains on March 11, 2004. Two others are accused of personally preparing Mohammed Atta at the meeting held in Salou in June 2001, when the date for the plan to go off was set. Abu Dada was arrested two months after 9-11, and Spain has arrested more than 150 suspected Islamist terrorists since the attacks. The trial is expected to go on for months and set a precedent for the trial of those accused in the March 11 bombings, to be held in spring 2006.

I haven't commented much lately because we've been busy at the Spain Herald this week and I can only spend so much time in front of the computer.

Everybody knows all about the new Pope. I think Ratzinger was a pretty good choice, conservative and in John Paul II's tradition, but not crazy like, say, Lefevre. He's certainly got the intellectual credentials. Now maybe there won't be much Vatican news for the next few years, which would be a good thing because I am heartily tired of this story. The Vanguardia has literally been running 10-12 pages daily on the subject. Now, this is understandable because the Vangua is very pro-Church and they make no bones about it, but everybody's been playing it up big-time.

The Basque elections went off fairly cleanly. The main problem has been this: Batasuna, ETA's front political party, was outlawed a couple of years ago by the Supreme Court under the Political Parties Act, which says that it's illegal for a political party to support terrorism. Batasuna's representatives were kicked out of the Basque Parliament, party offices were closed down, etc. So what they did, what they always do, was to change the name. First they set up a front group called AG, which stood for something like Aukera Gurriak. The Zapatero administration challenged their candidacy in court on the grounds it was a Batasuna front, a front for a front, and the court agreed and banned them. AG has not been heard from since. So they set up front group number two, called the PCTV, the Communist Party of the Basque Lands, and the Zap administration did not challenge them even though they're just as obviously Batasuna as AG was.

So the PCTV won nine seats out of the 75 in the Basque parliament. The total breakdown of seats is: Basque Nationalist Party (PNV) 29 seats, down four over their total in the 2001 election; Basque Socialist Party (PSE-PSOE) 18 seats, up 5; People's Party (PP) 15 seats, down 4; PCTV 9 seats, up 2; Basque Communist Party (EB-IU, traditional Communists) 3 seats, no change; Aralar (a nonviolent split off Batasuna) 1, up one.

What this means is that there are several possibilities to form a government. Probably the most likely is that the PNV will govern alone from the minority, making pacts as necessary. Second most likely is some sort of understanding between the PNV and the Socialists; I doubt they will openly form a coalition and split up the Cabinet posts, though they might. Third most likely is an arrangement between the PNV and the PCTV. The problem here is that the PNV would thereby burn its bridges in the Madrid parliament, where it has some influence, because joining up with the terrorists would not go over well there at all. Theoretically a Socialist-PP-Communist-Aralar coalition would only get 37 seats against a PNV-PCTV total of 38, and both the real Communists and Aralar are more likely to ally with the nationalists than the two "Spanish" parties.

Another thing this means is that the Ibarretxe Plan is dead, since the Ibarretxe administration had pretty much campaigned on the idea that last Sunday's election was a referendum on the Plan. Well, Ibarretxe's party lost five seats. Even Ibarretxe admits that if the election was a referendum, the Plan lost.

There is an unfortunate trend in country music toward doing bluegrass covers of classic rock tunes. I think Dwight Yoakam kicked it off ten years ago or so when he covered "Crazy Little Thing Called Love," which actually made sense because it's kind of a country song in the original version. Then somebody did a good cover of "Fat Bottom Girls", which again is basically a country-blues tune when you get down to it. Then the poo hit the fan and somebody did a whole album called "Lonesome Skynyrd Time" in bluegrass, which took the concept a little bit too far, but still kind of makes sense because there was of course a lot of country in Skynyrd. Then this group called Hayseed Dixie (get it?) came out with a bunch of bluegrass AC/DC covers, and the joke was funny the first couple of times you heard it. Then they got popular and did Motorhead's "Ace of Spades" not-really-in-bluegrass, which became a big hit and officially made country covers of rock songs uncool. Now there's a whole bluegrass tribute album to the Moody Blues, of all awful bands, and they just played "Knights in White Satin" on KHYI. We don't need this.

I don't normally deign to go out of my way to write posts responding to critics in the Comments section, but I am going to make an exception in this case. I am annoyed by people who accuse me of insulting Barcelona, Catalonia, and/or Spain. I would not live here if I did not like it. As a matter of fact, I could earn a lot more money if I went back to the States, assuming my mental health held up.

To demonstrate that I have written many positive things about Spain, let's pick two months more or less at random, one from the early days of this blog and one from recent times, specifically avoiding "big news" months like the Iraq war, the March 11 bombing and subsequent election, and the November 2004 US election.

Here's some stuff from June 2003.

I have been accused of speaking scornfully of Catalan intellectuals. But, come on, if this is the best they can do, no amount of scorn is unjustified. And remember, Baltasar Porcel is the Official Catalan Candidate for the Nobel Prize for Literature. Wouldn't it be great if they actually gave it to him one of these years?

OK, that actually was pretty snarky, but we are talking about Baltasar Porcel here.

As I've said before, Iberian Notes does not take sides on the Spanish Civil War. We're in favor of the victims and against the killers. That means we detest both sides, the revolutionaries and the reactionaries, equally.

That should take care of those who call us Francoists.

They actually had a cool anti-war protest here in Barcelona. First there was a manifesto that was a typical anti-Yankee tantrum, but then they read Lysistrata, the comedy by Aristophanes in which the women of a city at war refuse sex to their husbands until they stop the war. Well-known local actors, to whom I will give no publicity, were the readers. That's pretty classy; I much prefer Greek theater to the normal fare at a demo.

Isn't that pretty tolerant of me?

One of the reasons I appreciate Spain is its tolerance for cannabis use. I think it might be because all working-class men and most middle-class men over about 30 years old have done military service, and they learned to smoke dope in the Spanish Army. No kidding. There wasn't anything else to do, and Spain controlled northern Morocco (including the Rif, where more dope is grown than anywhere else in the world) until 1956 and the Spanish Sahara, due south of Morocco, until 1975. Spain still controls Ceuta and Melilla, outposts on the coast of the Rif, and the Canary Islands, just a few miles off the Moroccan coast. Andalusia is a short boat ride from the heart of the Rif. All these guys who were in the Army smoked dope, and they learned from personal experience that it's no big deal. Therefore they don't think it's some sort of evil monster.

See? I said Spain's policy on cannabis was better than America's.

I love Barcelona. I really do. Hey, just a couple of days ago it was Corpus Christi, and they have a cool local tradition: on Corpus, in the fountains in the city's several medieval cloisters, they place an egg on top of the spout and the water plays with it; I assume the inside of the egg is blown out first. Anyway, though, the egg is continuously held aloft by the water spouting up. It's called "l'ou com balla"--"the dancing egg". It's pretty to see inside the cloisters at Santa Anna or Felip Neri or Sant Pau. But I bloody well hate the verbena de San Juan, St. John's Eve. San Juan is a big holiday in Catalonia and they blow off tons of fireworks and everybody goes out and parties their asses off. There is an excellent fireworks display every year, but my problem is that every single kid in Catalonia is blowing off hundreds of firecrackers per second even as I speak.I don't like big crowds or loud noises. They make me nervous. They frighten the cats. And I don't like party nights when everybody goes out and gets wasted en masse. It's amateur night, a whole lot of people who aren't used to drinking hitting it way too hard and getting smashed and puking all over the place and starting fights and generally acting like a bunch of morons. Conclusion: If you like going out and wandering the streets and getting trashed and spending lots of money and being subjected to sharp loud noises and getting puked on, San Juan is your night. I will admit that the city's fireworks display is pretty spectacular for people who like that sort of thing. But except for that, I stay home on the night of San Juan.

That's pretty positive, isn't it? And the part that isn't positive is affectionate toward everybody but drunks. Also, anybody who doubts I know my way around town ought to be convinced by that little post.

This article from the Telegraph about street crime in Barcelona is sadly all too true. Muggings, pickpocketings, and purse-snatchings are much too common. Tourists who appear to be well-off are the main--really only--targets. Locals are rarely molested. The main culprits are Arab street kids. This is not racism. It is a fact. Holes in the Spanish legal and judicial system prevent us from either locking up the little bastards or deporting them. Yes, they were born poor--they now have plenty of ill-gotten cash and flashy name-brand sports clothes--and have had crappy lives. No, that doesn't give them the right to victimize those people who were not born poor and have not had crappy lives.

That isn't positive at all. However, if you read the whole post, some of which will piss you off, you will see that it is CONSTRUCTIVE criticism. That is, it identifies a serious problem and calls for action. It is not bitching for the sake of bitching. It shows that I care, because if I did not care I wouldn't have wasted my time alerting people to something that very badly needs to be fixed.

Anecdote. A couple of years ago I was in KC and I went to get my drivers license renewed six months before it ran out. The clerk down at the DMV got a little suspicious and asked why. I replied that I was going abroad and just wanted to make sure I had a valid license. She asked where and I said Spain. She said, "Oh, you'd better watch out in Barcelona, it seems like half the people who come in here for new licenses got robbed in Barcelona." If the first thing that comes to the mind of a typical, standard American, a clerk at the Kansas Department of Motor Vehicles, when she thinks of Spain, is "Barcelona is dangerous" and not "Spain is beautiful", then we've got a problem, Houston. Over and out.

This is another paragraph from the same post. Is this criticism constructive or not? Do I want to make things better or do I just not care?

Aznar, however, is scrupulously democratic and has been so ever since he discovered sensible conservative politics during his university days. If he were American he'd fit well into the moderate Republicans. He'd be rather left for a Republican on government spending issues. Aznar might also fit in pretty well with the Democrat "far right", but those Charlie Stenholm Texas wheeler-dealer guys might be too corrupt for his taste. See, one of the things Aznar did was to clean up the Spanish conservative wing, getting rid of old Franquistas and local caciques. The most famous to fall were Cantabria's Juan Hormaechea, who did some jail time, and the PP's Balearic confederation, up to their eyeballs in corrupt construction-development sleaze. By the way, several notable people who later joined the Socialists also worked in the government under Franco. To be fair, these were "technocratic" administration rather than ideological guys--somebody's got to take charge of the country's finances, for example, whether we've got a dictatorship or not. Two examples are former economics minister Miguel Boyer and the late former foreign minister, Paco Ordonez. Boyer has now jumped the Socialist sinking ship and is considered close to the PP.

Is this a reasonable conservative take on recent Spanish politics or not? Remember it was written while Aznar was still in power, in June 2003.

This damn Gibraltar thing--the Spaniards consider Gibraltar España Irridenta and they want it very badly. They consider the current situation, with Britain owning Gibraltar, intolerable and unacceptable. They also know they can't go to war with the Brits over this. So they continually pressure the British, and everybody else who might have some influence over them, to turn over Gib. Now, the problem is that 99% of the Giblets don't want to be turned over to Spanish sovereignty, and the British can't just turn 'em over without their say-so. This isn't like it was Hong Kong or something. Or, more accurately, Spain ain't China. Next thing the Arabs are going to start yelling for Gib to be turned over to them, since they did, after all, hold it from 711 to 1492, while Spain only held it between 1492 and 1714.

I wouldn't call that positive or negative. It's history. Is it unfair? Am I lying?

American Movies Most Overplayed on Spanish TV: 7. All those slapstick parody movies with Leslie Nielsen 6. Those damn Chevy Chase vacation movies 5. Thelma and Louise 4. Fried Green Tomatoes 3. Those pieces of crap with Clint Eastwood and the ape 2. The Shawshank Redemption 1. Mississippi Burning

What's wrong with that?

We preview Barcelona life in the immediate future
by Alan Murphy and John Chappell
“ANOTHER WORLD IS POSSIBLE”
OFFICIAL FORUM-2004-THOUGHT COMPLIANCE DIRECTIVE #4032

All Barcelonans will be obliged to appear naked at the Diagonal Mar Fine Arts and Sustainable Urbanism Peace Camp at 6.25 AM tomorrow for the inauguration of the “International Workshop on Gender-neutral Encounter on Clothes-Optional Peace and Arts Sustainable Governability Project for Solidarity”. Organic pita bread and garlic-lentil casserole will be served for breakfast. All citizens must bring their pita-bread ration card, from which two Forum Solidarity Points will be subtracted.Those with “NO TO WAR” already tattooed on their left buttock cheek will be exempted from the Semiotic-Workshop on Body Messaging this evening. Those who have not yet fulfilled their solidarious commitment will have the message tattooed this evening. All citizens with surnames A-M will report to the Rigoberta Menchu Tattooage and Ethical Body-Piercing Commissariat at the site of the Lenin Barracks in Plaza Espanya by 22.00. Those with surnames N-Z will report to The Jose Saramago Forumization and High-Colonic Enema Institute, at the Port Olympic, also before 22.00. Failure to comply will result in obligatory attendance at the Sustainability of Solidarian Forum-Thought, to be held at the Manresa Rock Quarry from August 1-31 2004. As you all know, our right buttocks are being reserved for the “ANOTHER WORLD IS POSSIBLE” message to be inscribed there for the gala Closing Ceremony. Expect another directive on this during September.

Yours in solidarity,
OUR DEAR LEADER, JOAN CLOS
COMMISSAR FOR SOLIDARITY COMPLIANCE, INMA MAYOL

I thought that was funny. I understand if you don't, but it's not offensive or anything.

Now here's one for Andrew Sullivan's Sontag Award. It's Paul Auster, who is very popular here among our local Illustrated and Enlightened--a good rule of thumb regarding fiction is if the Barcelona critics like it, it's probably a bunch of pretentious crap.

OK, that was pretty snarky, too, but I stand by it. I agree that the New York and London critics are equally obnoxious.

Auster, by the way, shows his philistinism regarding Spanish culture when he states he is going to Madrid to meet Pedro Almódovar and then to Granada to see Lorca's house. Oh, jeez, has any American ever heard of any Spanish writers except García Lorca, who is massively overrated and is still known--not read by anyone but Spanish lit majors, though--today largely because of the manner of his death? Trust me, people, forget all that crap about how Lorca reaches down into the soul of Spain and puts the depth of sensitivity of the pueblo de España into words on the printed page. Spare me that "Verde que te quiero verde" stuff. And I personally wouldn't bother crossing the street to talk to Almódovar. We'd have nothing to say to one another. He would hate me and I probably wouldn't like him.

See, my point here is that I LIKE, admire, and respect Spanish culture--there's so much more in Spanish lit than Lorca that most English-speakers know nothing about. I don't like Lorca. Of other 20th-century Spanish authors, I prefer Unamuno, both Machados, Juan Ramon Jimenez, Pio Baroja, Josep Pla, Eduardo Mendoza, even Miguel Hernandez and Camilo Jose Cela and Merce Rodoreda. Among many others. Spain's 2oth century literary record is excellent. And I don't like Almodovar, but I wouldn't like him if he were, say, Bulgarian either. The guy who really gets dissed in this post is none other than American author Auster.

There's bad news today regarding two of Spain's biggest social problems, illegal immigration and domestic violence. Nine immigrants drowned when their raft sank off the Canary Isle of Fuerteventura, the island closest to the Moroccan coast. So far in 2003 ten rafts are known to have sunk, with 67 confirmed dead or missing and presumed dead. These statistics include 15 drowned off Fuerteventura in January and 12 drowned from a raft found between Tenerife and Grand Canary in February. Yet the Spanish media go wild when a truck full of illegal Mexicans get found dead somewhere in West Texas. The problem in both countries seems to be the same to me; more people want to come to Spain and the US than, at least some believe, either country can handle. As long as that attitude persists, there will be illegal immigration and some illegal immigrants will die, since illegal immigration is by definition dangerous and full of low criminals likely to take your money and dump you in the sea under the pretext of guiding you to the promised land. By the way, Iberian Notes strongly supports the execution of "coyotes" who abandon their "clients" to die. That's first-degree premeditated murder with the aggravating factors of extortion and breach of promise. Hang them. They're scum.

More than forty people have died in Spain this year as victims of domestic violence. Yesterday, in the crummy part of the Sant Andreu working-class area of Barcelona, a man beat his common-law wife to death with a hammer. The two were fiftyish alcoholics. They had met seven months ago and she invited him to live with her, since he had nowhere to go. The two argued and fought all the time, according to the neighbors, and threats of violence were heard several times by different witnesses. The cops spent a lot of time breaking up fights at their place. Once she locked him out and he took off all his clothes and pounded on her door until three in the morning (there's the pacifism and tranquility of nudism for you). She finally got a restraining order. Not much later he jumped her from behind when she opened the street door to her apartment building; he was waiting inside and clubbed her to death with a hammer. She had been out walking her dogs. The reporters point out that the dogs, found in a state of shock by the woman's body, immobile and trembling, were the only so-called irrational animals in this story. This, of course, is another case of premeditated murder with aggravating circumstances, including violating a restraining order and breaking and entering to get into her building. There's no insanity defense since he knew what he was doing and knew that it was wrong. Hang him. He's scum.

This is not insulting. This is news. These are social problems. I point out that the same problems exist in America. I also slam the hypocrisy of certain elements of the Spanish media on this question. Well?

One Spencer Tunick, a New York "artist", called upon the people of Barcelona to come out and get photographed nude en masse. 15,000 people signed up and 7000 actually came out--at four in the morning--to get naked and get photographed on Avenida María Cristina near Montjuic. They're saying it's the "greatest collective artistic nudity" in history, breaking the record of some 4000 naked leftovers from the Sixties set by Tunick himself in Melbourne. Anyway, at 6:20 AM, Tunick decided the light was correct and posed the crowd two different ways, lying on their backs and curled up in a fetal position. He was finished by 7:45.

Says our intrepid reporter, Justo Barranco, "The most generalized feeling was that it was strange that the situation didn't seem strange," "We, all together, feel surprisingly like brothers and sisters," "Blai, a young teacher who came with his boyfriend, said, 'I thought it would be like a dream in which you wake up and you're naked and everyone else is too'," "People began doing "the wave" and shouting 'No to the war'," and "(Tunick) reminded us of the paradox that in Barcelona his work is celebrated as an "artistic happening" while in his country, the United States, and in his city, New York, it would have been considered a crime."

Oh, geez, here it is again, that part of the American Black Legend that says we are puritanical philistines. Nobody would have said boo if Mr. Alleged Artist put on his show in Central Park as long as he had a municipal permit, which they would have given him in the holy name of Art. It's New York. They've seen everything. This would be no big deal there, certainly not front-page news in the local newspapers. If he'd tried to put this crap on in Central Park, though, the Great Unwashed would have stood around in enormous crouds hooting and hollering and generally making fun of the stupid assholes who get up at four in the morning and get naked in the chill dawn in order to promote the notoriety of (and make money for) a fraud calling himself an artist. Our New York volunteers would not have enjoyed themselves nearly as much as the collection of pseuds, wannabes, and phonies who make up our city's element of the Illustrated and the Enlightened and who showed up at Montjuic.

Is it not a good thing to make fun of these people? I mean, come on, standing around naked for almost four hours before dawn is not very smart.

Manuel Trallero, the Vangua's gadfly, blows the whistle in his column in today's edition in an article titled "Catalunya racista".

"One of the most extraordinary things that has happened recently is that the so-called Plataforma per Catalunya has managed to win City Council seats in several Catalan municipalities, among them Vic. The fact that a xenophobic and racist organization has obtained such a result has seemed to all of us the most normal and natural thing in the world. No one has been screaming to the heavens or rending his garments. As usual in Catalonia, nothing happens around here.There is a perverse logic according to which, if there are immigrants, the logical result is racism. Racism in Catalonia is no longer socially looked down upon, it's not politically incorrect anymore. The attempts of the media of communication to hide their heads under their wings have failed.It isn't just that Mr. Anglada has won his first council members--Mr. Le Pen started off in France in exactly the same way--it is that anything goes against the immigrants. From the president of the Generalitat (Jordi Pujol) who blames them for the possible disappearance of Catalan--blames them, precisely those who just got here-- and who minimizes the violence in Can Anglada over and over, to the (racist) public statements of his honorable wife (Marta Ferrusola), or those of the former leader of the (ultraCatalanist) Republican Left, Mr. Heribert Barrera, who still holds his well-deserved medal awarded by Parliament, or the evacuation of a few immigrants camped out in the Plaza Catalunya, decreed one summer by (Communist) vice-mayor Mrs. Inma Mayol ("Chemical Inma") while the real mayor was out of town, while the workers of the Sintel company, all white, of course, camp out on the Paseo de la Castellana in Madrid as long as they feel like it.We've accepted that all this is normal, habitual, everyday, and that it forms part of us, ourselves. That is why Mr. Llauradó has committed the offense of raising suspicions when he denounced that Mr. Bassat did not use his second surname in order to hide his Jewish origin. This is an attack of, pure and simple, anti-Semitism, which anywhere in Europe would have provoked an enormous scandal, but here has been unnoticed.We still have the consolation that, if the cases of woman-battering are higher in Catalonia than in the rest of Spain, it is not because we Catalans are stupider and more violent (más energúmenos) than the Spaniards, but because our women are braver in calling the police. We Catalans, according to some, are seen as racists because we admit it, while the Spaniards keep their mouths shut. All I can say is good for them."

That is pretty critical. Manuel Trallero wrote it, not me.

Can we pass a law forcing members of the Basque Nationalist Party to be those who clean up the blood and guts and human hands blasted onto rooftops that ETA leaves lying all around Spain? Yes, Mr. Zugazugatxoia, that's you. Please pick up that severed hand and carry it down, the coroner is waiting, and then use these paper towels to mop up the blood and collect the bone fragments. Now may we have your reaction towards the latest ETA atrocity? You still seeking to remedy the root causes of the discontent of the oppressed Basque people, who are as wealthy and privileged and free as any group of people in the Western world, before worrying about arresting murderers and breaking up their support groups? Don't puke all over that hand, we need it for evidence, and we hear the widow wants to bury it along with the rest of her husband later.

That was pretty critical of certain people. Anyone out there disagree with me? Anyone deny that this post shows I hate ETA and care about the people who are ETA's victims and who deserve to live?

(In my mother-in-law's village, Montoliu de Segarra, they shot the priest. He was apparently fingered by two locals who were in the POUM, and a POUM hit squad came down from Cervera. My mother-in-law really detests the POUM even though it was Franco who put her dad in prison. She kind of gets the point of the brutality of the Franco regime--she hates Franco, too, but in a different way--but she doesn't understand the seemingly random killing of the POUM. --JC)

That's history. And my mother-in-law's real feelings.

Here's part of a fisking of a piece from Slate. My comments are in parentheses.

The first wave of oppression followed the Carlist Wars of the 19th century, after the Basques supported the losing cause of the pretender Don Carlos. (Because the Basques were reactionary rural Catholics and so was Carlos. They lost a lot of their autonomy after the defeat of the Carlists, but "oppression" is a pretty loaded word.) Things got much worse under Generalissimo Francisco Franco, who came to power after the Spanish Civil War and outlawed the speaking of Euskara. (Franco's dictatorship was unpleasant but not horrible, and speaking Basque at home and in private, and at church or among friends was never outlawed, nor could it be. By the Fifties published works in Basque were appearing again and a network of ikastolas, schools that teach both the Basque language and nationalistic politics, had been founded.) This repression led to the creation of ETA (Euskadi Ta Askatasuna—"Basque Homeland and Liberty") in 1959. (The above is a pretty cheap-ass justification for turning loose a terrorist gang to kill as it pleases.) Though the Basque region was granted considerable autonomy after Franco's death, a small faction of separatists, (how about the T-word? Where's the T-word? The ETA are a bunch of Ts) who believe their culture is threatened, continues to fight for complete independence. There have been 839 people killed as a result of ETA attacks since 1968. (About 839 too many.)There are about 600,000 fluent Euskara speakers in Basque Country today, with the vast majority on the Spanish side, and another 400,000 speak Euskara as a second language—there has been a tremendous Euskara revival in Basque schools over the past two decades. (Still, most students in the Basque country study in Spanish, and most people who aren't born into a Basque-speaking family stay with Spanish. About a quarter of the Basques, maximum, can communicate in Basque.) A sign of the Basques' pride in their tongue is their word for themselves, Euskaldunak—"possessors of the Basque language." (That won't save you from getting murdered by the ETA, though, as José María Korta found out.)

Any complaints about my commentary? Any lies there? Any doubt that my sympathy is with Jose Maria Korta and the other ETA victims? Does anyone think I don't want to make Spain a better place? And have any of you done as much as I have to condemn terrorism? Remember, people around the world read this blog, 200 to 400 daily, and some of them are American and British journalists and diplomats and business people. I've affected their ideas. I've also received threats. Have you?

Andy Robinson in Tuesday's La Vanguardia: "Opinion and lack of rigor define new journalism in US". Methinks this is a case of that old cliché about people in glass houses and stones. Andy takes advantage of the opportunity to accuse the Bush administration of "poisoning the coverage of the war in Iraq by using anonymous sources."

We're getting better at doing things at the Spain Herald. I think if you follow the Herald's news coverage every day you'll have some kind of idea of what's going on in Spain, though of course our news stories are not neutral. They are, however, honest. I've never seen Herald management intentionally publish a lie.

The main problem with the Herald is now the same problem that exists in all aspects of Spanish politics: too damn much stress on symbolism. I think the stress on symbolism here comes from several sources:

1) Leftover behavior from the Franco regime, which marked both the right and the left before 1975; the majority of media bigwigs had their opinions formed before Franco's death. Under Franco (at least post-1955 or so) the press was semi-free; there were some things they could not do, like criticize Franco or the army or the Church, but they did have some liberty. One thing they were allowed to do was make a big deal out of symbolism, and so all kinds of ceremonies and flag-raisings and parades and official meetings got massive coverage, much more than they deserved, and they were interpreted by the Spanish press in the same way Kremlinologists used to look at photos of the Soviet leadership and base elaborate theories on who was standing next to Brezhnev. This has held over and won't go away until media outlets are run by people born after about 1965, too young to remember much about Franco.

2) There's not really a whole hell of a lot of major news in Spain. It's a country of 40 million people, and it's sort of comparable with California in population, size, GDP, lifestyle, and climate. And military power. Considerably less happens here than in California, though, because Spain doesn't have an international metropolis like Los Angeles. When you get past foreign policy, economics and business, and terrorism, not much happens around here except for your typical domestic politics stuff which is not of great interest to most people. The media therefore blows up little things of symbolic importance only in order to have something to write about.

3) The Spanish media is openly biased, with the biggest split between the right-wingers (the COPE) and the lefties (SER) on the radio; government-subsidized TV and radio, whether national or regional, are of course run by the government and say what the government wants them to say. This means every media outlet has a bone to pick with somebody, and when there's nothing important going on they'll inflate little things in order to have something to slam the other side with.

4) This is a country where one of the biggest political issues, regional nationalism, is mostly symbolism. Who gives a rat's patoot whether butcher shops have to label their merchandise in Catalan? Does it matter whether a bunch of old papers are archived in Salamanca or Barcelona? People to whom nationalism is important care a lot. Now, the regions have plenty of autonomy and anyway Spain is a democracy inside the EU, so there's nothing really important to complain about--so they make a big deal of whose flag should fly over the Manresa city hall or which politician didn't show up for whatever demonstration.

5) This is a country which is still deeply divided between right and left over historical issues, especially the Spanish Civil War and the Franco regime. People my age remember Franco and lots of people who are 75 or 80 remember the Civil War--and nobody is finished with the fight. Physically, yeah, it's all over, but ideologically it isn't, so big stinks are made over things like whether to remove old plaques on walls with references to the regime on them. Every time they get a chance to commemorate or not commemorate something, a big deal is of course made.

6) Spanish people love demonstrations. They'll organize a demo at the drop of a hat, and mostly for pretty dumb reasons. My favorites are the ones they hold when somebody gets stabbed, strangled, or shot in order to show they're against it. I mean, who's in favor of people getting murdered? This is not precisely a controversial issue. This means that they're willing to go out and march over the name of a street or whether a statue ought to be removed or whose national anthem ought to be played before a soccer game. Or, get this, whether Catalonia ought to have its own roller-hockey team. My attitude is that anybody who thinks roller-hockey is a real sport ought to be forced to go through one NFL practice, but that's just me.

Barcelona got beat fair and square by Real Madrid last night, 4-2, in another exciting game from our boys in blue and red. Unfortunately, the last few exciting games they've turned in have not had incredibly positive results: eliminated from the Champions League by Chelsea, held to a tie at home by Betis, and now a loss at Madrid. Not much to worry about, though, since Barcelona controls its own destiny. They have a six-point lead plus the goal-average, effectively seven points, since if Barça and Madrid end up tied for first place Barça wins out. There are 21 points, seven games, in play, and neither team faces a particularly difficult schedule for the rest of the year.

Barcelona started out very weak on defense again, and Zidane and Ronaldo scored on headers within the first twenty minutes. This is exactly what happened against Betis and Chelsea, allowing the other team to get ahead early. This two-goal lead allowed Madrid to play conservatively, strong on defense (Gravesen was particularly good, and Helguera had probably his best game of the season) and looking for the fast break. Barcelona had a lot of chances at goal but could not seem to score until Etoo recovered a loose ball and poked it in for 2-1. Madrid then scored on another fast break that Raul knocked in right before halftime for 3-1, and it looked like it was pretty much all over.

After the half, Barça came out fighting but just could not seem to score. They had at least eight or nine chances and muffed them all. Meanwhile, Owen, who had an excellent game, as did Beckham, scored 4-1. Barça did not give up, they never do, and had a couple more chances at goal; Ronaldinho scored 4-2 in minute 75 and it looked like Barça might have a chance to tie if a miracle happened, but it didn't and the game ended up 4-2. Fair win to Madrid. The Barcelona press didn't complain too much, the way they usually do when Madrid wins. There weren't really any incredibly questionable calls; the ref was prudent and let them play, and it never got too rough.

Silver lining: The team never gave up. None of the players are in bad form. Some are not on hot streaks, but nobody is looking really bad. There's no reason why they shouldn't win most of the rest of their games, and they ought to be able to get 15 points (five wins out of seven games, or four wins and two draws) in what's left of the season.

Dark cloud: Etoo got hurt and will miss four weeks. Puyol was not playing at 100% because he got hurt a week and a half ago. The defense didn't look good. They can't keep letting other teams score so much, and Valdes did not have a good game, either.

Yeah, but: The reason they got Maxi Lopez was in case Etoo got hurt or needed a rest. Give the kid a chance. He didn't look too good against Betis but last night he was just fine. Ronaldinho looked pretty good. He's not off form, he's coming off an unlucky streak. There's a difference. Deco couldn't play last night, and he'll be coming back for the rest of the season. Give Puyol another week of rest and he'll be 100% next weekend.

We'll see what happens. That's why they play the games.

Wacky Anti-American Crap of the Week:

Wim Wenders, in La Vanguardia April 8: "The US became paranoid and has been living in fear since September 11...the shock, the fear the Americans felt afterward, and how the US government created the conditions to propagate this paranoia in favor of its plans...The windmills (an American film character) has in his mind were created by television propaganda...The paranoid person is incapable of viewing himself objectively...The most tragic thing you have to understand about the US is the lack of information...The American Dream has been fiction for a long time...(Poverty) is a subject that isn't popular in the US because they don't want to know that the wealth of some comes from the poverty of many." Wenders also complains about the fact that nobody in America wants to distribute his new movie and he's had to do it himself.

Let's see, Wim. American people are paranoid and live in fear. The government creates TV propaganda to make them this way so it can stay in power and accomplish its plans, whatever they might be. If Americans complain they're not paranoid they must be wrong, because they can't see themselves objectively, and besides that they're badly-informed, probably because they believe all the government propaganda. Americans are fools who don't understand the American Dream, whatever that is, is dead, and besides, they exploit everybody else to gain their wealth.

Noam Chomsky couldn't have said it better himself. And then Winders wonders why the Americans aren't lining up to see his movie, which, if it's anything like Paris, Texas, or Wings over Berlin, is long and boring and doesn't make much sense.

Here's some crap from Hugh Hewitt published in the Weekly Standard. I must say Hewitt is not one of my favorite conservative commentators, but he really should have thought at least four times before writing this.

Non-Catholics are best advised to keep silent on matters of doctrine within the Church. It is, after all, no more the business of a non-Catholic what the Church commands on the celibacy of its priests than it is a non-Muslim to opine on the proper keeping of Ramadan.

This reminds me of an argument I once had in college with a black friend of mine named Frank, who was in sort of a militant phase, and he had a list of resolutions the Black Student Union had made, almost all of which I disagreed with (they did want the university to recruit more heavily among Kansas black students, and I thought that was a good idea, especially if they started early in high school). His response to my criticisms was "You don't know what it's like to be black."

Boom. It's kind of hard to respond to a blatant play of the race card like that. I shoulda said "You don't know what it's like to be white, so does this mean nobody has the right to have opinions?" but of course I didn't think of it then. He got over the militant stuff pretty soon, but not all his friends did. Frank and I continued getting along--we were partners on the final project in a Spanish class the next semester--but we never talked about the subject of race very much again, not that I was ever going to bring it up in the first place anyway. I haven't seen him for almost fifteen years now.*

My reaction to Hugh Hewitt is kind of similar. Non-Catholics and non-Muslims have every right to opine about both Catholicism and Islam and their internal doctrines. If nothing else, because what the Catholics and the Muslims do affects all the rest of us, and so if a bunch of extremist Catholics start a campaign to bomb abortion clinics or if a bunch of extremist Muslims decide to bomb commuter trains or if a bunch of Irish morons have spent the last god knows how many years killing one another over whether their kids should get buggered by single Catholic priests or married Protestant scoutmasters, then the rest of us have got something to say. If Islam in certain countries includes clitoridectomy as one of its matters of doctrine, or if in certain countries it countenances slavery, or if it won't let women visit doctors or drive cars, or if it promotes blowing up Jews, I think the rest of us have a right to complain, just as when we complained about suttee and thuggee and untouchability and the caste system in Hindu India. Or does Mr. Hewitt think sharia, integral to Islam, is something we all ought to live under? Or that anybody ought to have to live under?

I'm a hardline agnostic who is not prejudiced, as I think all religions are equally dumb. I think anybody who fasts for religious reasons is a dope, so that should take in both the Muslims and the Catholics. I think anyone who imagines that saying magic words somehow means anything is a dope, so that includes the Catholics and the Muslims. I think anyone who believes that food or drink can be sanctified is a dope, so that includes them both. Being such a dopey man that you won't let dopey women officially intercede with God as part of your magic rituals, too, is ridiculous, and that takes them both in, too. Now, I have no problem with honest dopes who interpret their magic beliefs to mean they have to help and love others, be kind to people's grandmas, don't steal anyone else's stuff, and the like. I actually admire them greatly if they live up to the standards their beliefs set for them, which in some individuals are very high standards. It's damned hard not to covet, for example, or not to be proud. And, of course, lots of people who are dopes on this particular question are very non-dopey on most other issues.

So I leave it open: Who's right, me or Hugh?

*Nice guy. Hell of an athlete--he had a football scholarship. He was the first person I actually saw dunk a basketball. He liked to party, and I was more laid-back, but I actually don't distinctly remember a couple of bashes he threw. Good-looking chicks, that I do remember. A surprising amount of the football jocks at KU back then were smart--a lot of them were history majors for some reason, and I was in several upper-division history classes with 300-pound defensive ends asking smarter questions than me. They lost all their games, though--Sports Illustrated called KU, K-State, and MU "the Bermuda Triangle of college football" one of those years when the three teams all went 1-10, with each team's only victory against one of the others. (Can't be a dope and play football unless you only do one thing, which is why the special teams units in the NFL tend to contain several real dopes who are good at running real fast and smashing into people and not much else. They played positions in college but couldn't remember any plays and their natural talent got them through, but that don't work in the No Fun League.)