I am personally damned glad that some sort of position has been taken on torturing prisoners.

My attitude is this:

You treat prisoners, no matter who they are, as you would treat your own soldiers in your own military prison. Don't baby them, but don't torture them either.

My logic is this:

We deserve to win because we are better than they are.
One of the reasons we are better than they are is that we don't torture people.

So us going out and torturing people kind of fucks up that logic, doesn't it?

I don't mind harassment-type interrogations with all the psychological stuff they can think up. We do that to our own people when the cops are grilling them. But inflicting pain is not what we do. Which is why I'm glad we're not going to be doing it anymore.

I'm still for the war, more so than a few months ago. The success of the election in Iraq makes me even more positive. We're going to win and fewer people are going to die and everybody, especially the Iraqis, is going to be better off than with that mass murderer, on whom I would cheerfully pull the trigger, and no joke, I could do it, running the country. They should have just shot him as soon as they determined his identity, Ceaucescu-style.

And one of the reasons we're going to win is that Bush has promised that the Americans d0n't torture people. He's put his neck on the line, and if there's any evidence that any torture goes on in the future, his credibility becomes zero. This gives us a major piece of the moral high ground. See, everybody knows that the terrorists torture people. And we have a lot of winning of the moral high ground to do, so let's get right to it.

10 People I'm Happiest We Fried

10. Marion Pruitt, sicko spree killer of five.
9. Aileen Wournos, murdered seven johns.
8. Alton Coleman, spree baby-rapist, eight victims.
7. Kenneth McDuff, sicko spree murderer of 14.
6. William Bonin, homosexual "Freeway Killer," 14 victims.
5. Douglas Gretzler, spree torture-killer of 16.
4. Ted Bundy, 22 victims.
3. John Wayne Gacy, child-rapist, 33 victims.
2. Gerald Stano, Florida torture-killer of 41.
1. Pee Wee Gaskins, psycho Southerner who may have killed more than 100.

And, of course, Tim McVeigh is hors de categorie.

These people are so morally foul that I just can't see leaving them alive, whatever the other arguments on capital punishment are.

A big stink is being made over here about a Spanish citizen under a death sentence in the Philippines. The alleged criminal, Francisco Larrañaga, is the son of a Spanish jai alai player and an upper-class Philippine woman, whose family has political connections. The victims are two young women, about 20 years old, whose surname is Chiong. Their father works for a guy who is a big shot in the local mafia. Supposedly, on the island of Cebu, Larrañaga and seven others, who were spoiled rich brats on drugs, picked up the two Chiong girls one day in 1997, raped them, and killed them. One's body has never been found; the other's was found at the bottom of a ravine. Supposedly. Larrañaga's lawyers claim that it has not even been proven that the body is that of Marijoy Chiong. Larrañaga claims to have an alibi, but the only witnesses--agreed, there are more than 20 of them--are friends or classmates of his. Several other witnesses identified Larrañaga and the other seven in a car with the two Chiong girls. I am not sure if any of these people are telling the truth. Especially not the main prosecution witness, a guy named Rusia, who was one of the eight. Rusia, who turned state's evidence and got off, says he and the other seven did the crime, raped and killed the girls. However, he's been in prison twice in the US and his whereabouts are unknown. There seem to have been irregularities at the trial as well; Larrañaga's lawyers claim he was not allowed to testify on his own behalf. He and the others were convicted and got life in prison. Then, something very strange happened: the case was reviewed, and the punishment changed to death. I wasn't aware that such a thing could happen in any legal system. Oh, yeah, in here somewhere the judge, who had convicted these guys in the first place, there was no jury, committed suicide. Maybe.

Larrañaga's family is mounting a media campaign to save him. Philippine president Gloria Macagapal Arroyo says she will not sign any death warrants, which means that Larrañaga is at least temporarily safe from lethal injection. However, temporarily is not permanently.

My attitude is that I am not in favor of coddling criminals, and I think those convicted of heinous crimes deserve the death penalty. Kidnapping, raping, and murdering two young women is about as heinous as it gets, and if these guys did it, fire up the syringe. The problem is I am not convinced these guys are guilty. Exhume the body of the girl said to be Marijoy Chiong and DNA-test it to see if it's her, and to see if any of these guys' DNA are on it. Then proceed from there. But don't execute people if there's a reasonable doubt to their guilt. Hell, you're not supposed to convict people if there's a reasonable doubt to their guilt.

One thing to remember is that Larrañaga is getting all the attention because he's an EU citizen and his family has money. You have to wonder how many people get railroaded by the system, especially in the Third World; I'll bet surprisingly few, but I'll also bet it happens sometimes, and disputes between local elites and mafias are just the sort of context that someone getting railroaded might happen in. Interest in these cases is only taken in places like Europe when there's a Westerner involved.

My understanding, by the way, is that since the US brought back the death penalty in 1977 nobody innocent has been executed.

One reason I haven't posted recently, besides being busy with the Spain Herald and all--I think we've improved it, I really do--is that I've been having a debate with myself over the Iraq war. I don't like blood and killing and death and terror and I think it's a terrible thing for both the civilians and the Allied troops, not to mention the now-legitimate Iraqi government and military.

I suppose what we did was trigger a civil war, mostly pitting two ethnic groups (Shiite Arabs and Sunni Kurds) against one (Sunni Arabs). The Sunni Arabs had run the place since it stopped being an Ottoman colony in 1917, which it had been for the last about four hundred years, and became a British colony. I'm really not sure exactly when it stopped being a British colony, though the year 1932 comes to mind; I remember that the British invaded Iraq in World War II and overthrew a pro-Nazi regime. And grabbed the oil. I do know Iraq had governments somewhere between lousy and horrific between the end of World War II and the overthrow of Saddam by the Allies in April 2003. And those governments were all run by Sunni Arabs for Sunni Arabs. Obviously, in a democratic Iraq, the Sunni Arabs would no longer run everything. Therefore, many Sunni Arabs oppose the democratic government, and a fraction of them are willing to kill.

So we have an ethnic civil war on our hands--again, most Sunni Arabs don't want to fight against the democratic government, only a few do, but that few is enough to cause lots of trouble, which we see every day on the news.

Meanwhile, there is a separate but linked war going on between the Allies and Al Qaeda and its terrorist allies. That war is being fought all over the world, as the explosions in Jordan and Pakistan and Spain and Britain and Morocco and Indonesia show. It is also being fought in parts of Afghanistan, on the ground, against Taliban loyalists. And Al Qaeda has joined in the Iraqi civil war on the side of the violent minority of Sunni Arabs.

So how do the Americans fit in here? Well, one of the mistakes we made in Vietnam was to bail out and ditch the South Vietnamese and Cambodian governments. Just look at the horrors that led to. We can't ditch the democratic Iraqis, no matter what. Doing so would undoubtedly lead to much greater horrors than those we see on television news now. So we're effectively in a civil war on one side. I think if we admit that this is the situation, it might clear up a lot of our thinking. We've got to fight Al Qaeda around the world, because not doing so is suicide. And we have to fight antidemocratic forces in Iraq. Let's make sure we can keep the two separate.

Al Qaeda is basically an ideological movement. The Sunni Arabs are basically a nationalist movement. They're fighting on the same side in Iraq. Al Qaeda is also linked to nationalist groups in many Muslim countries, including Algeria, Morocco, Egypt, Palestine, Syria, and the Philippines. They're fighting on the same side in those countries, too.

I suppose this means that no matter how much we dislike seeing the results of the latest bombing in Baghdad, and knowing how much people are suffering, bailing out of Iraq would mean giving a victory to Al Qaeda, which would then have a home base even more convenient than Afghanistan to plot terror, and giving a victory to the insurgent Sunni Arabs, who would then certainly genocide the Kurds and Shiite Arabs. I think, practically and ethically, looking back to examples such as Munich and the Vietnam pullout, the West has to beat them here and now in Iraq. This means no American pullout. Even though two thousand of our guys have been killed, and I would guess at least 15,000 Iraqi civilians. Not to mention large quantities of terrorists, both nationalist Sunnis and Al Qaeda, who will bother us no more.

What's our exit strategy? Well, let's admit we don't really have one, just like Roosevelt really didn't have one in 1942. Whatever we have to do to win the war, because we don't want to fight it in New York and Washington. And Madrid.

Does the end justify the means? I don't think so in the case of torture. I think it's pretty clear that nobody's being tortured in Guantanamo. As for those bleeding hearts who seem to care more for terrorists' rights than for Westerners' simple right to live, what do you want us to do with them? Turn them loose? That's not going to happen. If people are being tortured in secret CIA prisons, well, that would be very wrong if it were happening. Although I haven't seen the slightest real evidence that it is. I also think it's clear that the Abu Ghraib tortures, from which apparently no one died, were an aberration and an isolated incident.

Also, let me make this clear, if it turns out there are secret CIA torture prisons, we can't do that. That wouldn't make me want to stop the war or bail out of Iraq, but it would make me want to fire lots of our intelligence, military, and political leaders and get us some new ones who can win the war without torturing people.

And the Iraqi people are going to suffer less if we stay than if we go. So we have to stay now that we touched off the fuse. The fuse was going to blow sometime, Iraq couldn't go on as it was under Saddam, but we lit it and we need to be honest with ourselves about that. I, personally, was in favor of lighting it back in 2003.

Don't forget to read the Spain Herald.

Thoughts on the disaster:

1. What the natural world is capable of is astounding. Good thing it isn't like this all the time.

2. The European press and assorted American idiots are blaming the disaster on global warming. Wrong. Global warming, according to the theory, will change the climate in the long term rather than the weather in the short term. Also, first, lots of responsible scientists don't believe that global warming even exists, and second, a lot more say that even if it does exist, it's a natural phenomenon that isn't caused by human behavior and that humans can't do very much about.

3. The same people are also saying that there would have been a better response to the disaster if not for the Iraq war. Wrong. Only about 12 percent of the American military is stationed in Iraq.

4. There has been a terrible failure of the American civil defense system, and the guilty parties are the local governments in and around New Orleans and the state of Louisiana. They had NO PLAN, and they are the government bodies in charge.

5. The FEMA is also responsible, as they should have made sure that those jokers down there had a plan.

6. The disaster isn't the fault of the levee system, as the river levees held and the lake levees, which were the ones that failed, were only built to handle a Category Three hurricane. This was a cost-benefit decision. We have to make those sometime, somewhere, and I'm not going to blame the people who made that one. The lake levees, which had recently been inspected, were in good condition before the hurricane hit.

7. The federal government screwed up as soon as they didn't take control within six or so hours of the levee break. Agreed, I'm blasting them for a sin of omission. Well? Look at the consequences. I knew hell had broken loose as soon as the announcer on KBON radio (Paul Marx) said the levee had broken, and he sure as shit did, too, because you should have heard his voice. Somebody among the top guys in the Administration should have figured this out, too.

8. I bet next time an evacuation is ordered people will actually obey it. I've seen too many photos of smashed-up cars that people could have used to get out. Blaming the victim? No, not those who were too poor or too weak or too sick to get out. But the rest of the victims made a terribly bad decision. This doesn't mean we should not rescue them or that their deaths are not tragic. But not evacuating when you can is like parking your car downtown with the door unlocked. If it gets stolen, well, some of it is your fault for not taking basic minimum precautions.

9. The reason most of the victims are black is that most residents of New Orleans, something like 60%, are black. Most black residents are poorer than most white residents, and are more likely to live in mostly-black neighborhoods, which tend to be lower-lying than wealthier mostly-white neighborhoods. You also have to figure that there were at least 10,000 people who really were so poor they didn't have a way to get out of town and that 99% of them were black. This does not say good things about American society. You judge a country by how it treats its weakest and we failed this time. We don't always fail. Most of the time we succeed. But this time we failed.

10. Fortunately, we don't always fail at everything. This is never going to happen in the United States again, because we have more than learned our lesson.

11. I demand that EVERY state and EVERY county write up an emergency evacuation plan within thirty days, because I'm a lot more worried about enemy-made disasters than I am about natural disasters, at least outside fault zones and hurricane country. If this had been a nuclear, chemical, or biological bomb, which just might go off in Leawood, Kansas--why not? It's just as likely as anywhere else--would Kansas City have been prepared? At the very least, would there have been a plan? This needs to be a top priority. Those places that already have evacuation plans, congratulations on your sense of responsibility, and publicize them right now.

12. Things would probably have gone a lot better without so many damn guns all over the place.

13. I've thought about it and I don't believe we ought to rebuild New Orleans where it is, just as I wouldn't rebuild San Francisco where it is after the earthquake hits it, and as I wouldn't rebuild a city that got nuked no matter where it was. The site is just too dangerous. Move any buildings worth saving and dynamite the rest of it. And while we're at it, let's allow the Mississippi to assume its natural course, which is down the Atchafalaya. Since we're going to need some big-scale social engineering in Louisiana anyway, let's do it all now.

14. President Bush has not been impressive. Not that I think President Kerry would have been.

New Orleans is a dead city; it will never be rebuilt as it was. Almost 100% of the city's housing has been destroyed, along with everything else, the shops and offices and hospitals and schools. If I were President Bush I would deliver a biting-the-bullet speech declaring that more than a million Americans' lives have been completely uprooted and will never be the same, since they will not return to where they came from. Then I would proceed to start resettling people permanently. Where to get the money? Slap a special one percent income tax on the American people. Our social contract says that we bail one another out when disaster strikes, and I help you today because tomorrow I might need your help.

It makes no sense to rebuild New Orleans, since we've known for hundreds of years that the site of the city is impractical. Blow it all up and let it return to swamp. Move any historic buildings deemed to be salvageable to Memphis or Shreveport. The only reason the city was there was to serve as America's largest port. The port isn't there any more, and Baton Rouge will work just as well as the large seaport needed as the entrepot to collect mid-America's riches carried down the Mississippi and transfer them to ocean-going ships.

What do we do with the people? Well, America, here's your chance to be generous. Let's figure there are a million people who are going to need new homes. We have fifty states, some larger and richer than others. I figure Kansas ought to be ready to take in twenty or thirty thousand people at least; I call on the Shawnee Mission school district to open its ample, safe, dry school gyms up to everybody they send us. If we can do that, what can California do?

Most of those who evacuated in time ought to be able to pretty much take care of themselves until their insurance payments come in. Of course, they'll need all sorts of help, but we can provide that. Problem Number One are all the people, maybe 100,000, who did not evacuate in time and are now either dead or barely surviving among the wreckage. First we need to get the survivors out of there, and I am disappointed that it took us so long to get the armed forces helicoptering and boating people out of there. The moment the hurricane had passed by was the moment to evacuate everyone possible. Now we're running out of time, and the death toll is going to climb among those still stranded.

(Note: The Vanguardia is blaming the slow federal reaction on the Iraq war, of course. Seems that all our military strength is over there in Iraq. Yeah, right.)

Problem Number Two is that probably 95% of the people who didn't evacuate on time are poor and black, according to the photos I've seen. That's who the looters are, and I'd be looting abandoned grocery stores too if I were stuck in what's left of New Orleans because I didn't have a car to get out. (Though, of course, I wouldn't be stealing stuff I didn't need, but I don't think I can expect everyone to live up to my ethical standards, especially when surrounded by floating dead bodies.)

Who cares about looting now. Taking material things doesn't bother me. Problem Number Three isn't stealing from stores, it's the armed gangs going around taking advantage of the complete collapse of law and order. This is what anarchy means, all you blackshirts out there on your Pacific Northwest college campuses. Those who are strong, that is, young men with guns, are victimizing those who are weak, who are pretty much everybody else. I don't see any other solution for this but getting the weak out of there. There's no point in spending resources on stopping the aggressors when the victims are going to die anyway if they're not moved.

Nice, white-bread Johnson County, Kansas, is going to have to learn its lesson. We're all Americans and that means we have to move these now-homeless people, whom many of us scorn, in with us. This is going to create more than one headache as we learn to deal with the New Orleans poor among us.

That's what we get for not having learned that the New Orleans poor count as "us" before. There is still far too much racial and class segregation in the United States, inherited from what Paul Johnson called one of America's two original sins, slavery. Agreed, it's gotten much better over the last forty years, but forty years isn't that long compared with 250 years of slavery and 100 more of apartheid.

Now it's time for well-meaning folks around the country to put their money where their ideals are, and take poor black people from New Orleans into their homes, neighborhoods, and schools. If your community isn't willing to take in as many refugees as it can hold, and pay for their upkeep until they can be resettled there permanently, then there's something wrong with it.

It's a damned shame that such a historic, beautiful city (in parts; 80% of town was an absolute hellhole) is materially dead, but its people will carry its best traits--along with its worst, I fear, but what do you do now--to the rest of the fifty states.

Here's a piece from today's La Vanguardia by Eusebio Val on the Amurrican Peepul in the wake of Hurricane Katrina.

Active resignation 'made in USA'

Seasoned by furious nature, Americans are less prone to call for help from the State

The Americans are not a people prone to complain or to wait for the State to solve their problems. The heirs of pioneers who suffered many setbacks, of millions of immigrants who arrived with the clothes on their backs, seasoned by furious nature, they normally accept with active resignation situations like those created by Hurricane Katrina and the frequent disasters caused by floods, extreme cold, tornadoes, droughts, and forest fires. The American character is pragmatic and solidarious, in addition to carrying optimism in its genes. It demands that the authorities contribute to alleviating misfortune, but it knows well that in the long run it is one's own efforts and those of the community one lives in which make the difference. This is why volunteerism at all levels is a national institution, as is taking up collections. A foreign observer is surprised at the speed and effectiveness with which they get to work.

In American culture the idea of starting over from zero, of reinventing oneself, of moving thousands of kilometers to get a new job and overcome a crisis, does not frighten as much as in Europe. With this disposition, with the persistent idea that "we'll get out of this," it is easier to face the always painful loss of a home or destruction of a business.

Active resignation is expressed in several ways when faced with adversity or simple unexpected discomforts. In the sometimes chaotic American airports, passengers accept delays and cancellations with stoicism and patience. They are aware that dense air traffic and the weather cause things to go wrong. Instead of throwing useless tantrums, they prefer to find some other alternative in order to get home as soon as possible.

After the devastating hurricane Isabel, which leveled North Carolina in September 2003 and caused serious damage in the Washington area, the residents of the suburbs came out onto the streets as soon as the storm was over in order to assess the damage and begin clearing up themselves. Improvised brigades of residents with chainsaws cut up the fallen trees in the streets in order to reopen the way through. Hundreds of thousands of customers, including La Vanguardia's office, were without electricity for days or weeks.

Despite the discomfort of living without electricity in such a technical society, citizen reaction was very moderate. Everyone did whatever he could to make the best of the problem. Gasoline generators were sold out, as were batteries and butane stoves. Bars in areas with electricity were filled with people with portable computers. As occurred after other hurricanes, some people organized collective barbecues with the food they had stored in their freezers.

Mr. Val, that's more than fair enough. Iberian Notes pardons your past sins. Note that in order for the Americans to get any praise from the Europeans we have to suffer a disaster. Also note what Mr. Val stresses as American characteristics, because if he's pointing them out to Spanish readers, then they're much rarer over here.

This emergency blog is covering Hurricane Katrina. WWOZ in New Orleans is off the air. KBON.com in Eunice, LA, is alternating music and news.

They just ran a bit on Catalunya TV on about 50 renegade Americans who held a demonstration in Madrid against Bush and his evil war for oil, holding up signs with all the standard slogans. Most of them were your typical granolas. The camera focused on this effeminate fratboy leading chants of "One, two, three, four, we don't want your fucking war." Wrong decade, guys. And, whatever your thoughts about the Iraq war, it's disgraceful to demonstrate against your own nation while in a foreign country. I forgot who said "Never praise your own country while at home and never criticize it while abroad," and I know that's a paraphrase, but I concur. And I seriously question the demonstrators' patriotism.

By the way, you all know what They in the media and Hollywood are trying to do. They're trying to tell us again how much fun being against the Vietnam war was back in the sixties and show us how much fun it can be again to resist American warmongering tyranny (at no cost to your own self in the short term). I would worry, because They are going to puff up media stunts like the Cindy Crawford brouhaha as much as they can, and They are going to portray the military and the government as negatively as possible in mainstream entertainment.

I think We need to pull a preemptive strike. Our side of the media needs to emphasize 9-11, how it provoked America's attempt to destroy international terror, and how it led to our overthrowing Saddam Hussein. People have forgotten all about 9-11. Eighteen-year-old kids now were 14 when it happened. I think it's time to remember why America is in Iraq in the first place and why we can't leave until Islamist/Arab nationalist terrorism is dead, and I mean literally dead, as in turning the bodies of those who participate into small pieces.

And I think the upcoming fourth anniversary of 9-11 would be an excellent excuse for an all-out media blitz, using athletes, college coaches, country musicians, and local TV personalities. We're not fighting for the hearts and minds of the Upper West Side and the Castro, we're fighting for the hearts and minds of those who watch the mainstream media in Columbus and Des Moines.

The Brits have had a few pints too many this week, methinks. From the Guardian:

Here, in the heart of London Zoo, there has been another sighting of a species not native but increasingly common to Britain, Homo exhibitionist.

It is not a native species, but its origins are shrouded in mystery. Some believe it was accidentally imported from the US while others insist it could only have arisen from genetic mutation. Whatever the explanation, the sudden appearance of three males and five females on the zoo's Bear Mountain is thrilling.

We may be watching evolution in action. Or, we may be watching eight intrepid volunteers shivering their way through an inclement August Bank Holiday as part of the world's first "human zoo". They will live in an open enclosure for three days (though in a nod to the insulatory inadequacies of fig leaves, they will be allowed home each night) as part of a project designed to demonstrate man's impact on the environment and reveal his fundamentally atavistic nature.

Whether three days will be long enough to secure some real Lord of the Flies moments is a matter of debate, but let's hope someone is keeping an eye on the fat guy.

Thirty people applied to take part. Those who made the cut included veterinary student Simon Spiro, "zoo-obsessed" Anna Westbury, Thomas Mahoney who wanted to get back to nature, and actor, model, musician and martial arts expert Brendan Carr. He secured his place by writing a poem. "I got a laugh like a hyena but get the hump like a camel, so cover me in fig leaves as I'm the ultimate mammal," went one persuasive, if sub-Popish couplet.

The volunteers will be treated like animals but kept amused with games, music and art. And if that isn't enough to incite them to violence, what is? Expect pigheads on sticks by Monday.

It would be so cool if this actually does get ugly and Brendan freaks out and blood is spilled. I imagine the zookeepers would break it up before he actually chewed through Anna's throat wolverine-style.

First things first. As far as I know, squatters as they exist now got started in the late '60s in hippie liberated places like Copenhagen, Amsterdam, London, and West Berlin. What they did was move into unoccupied houses and apartments and live there for free. After the hippie thing died out a few squatters hung on, and they showed up in Barcelona in the early '90s. That is, long after Franco was dead.

Those who hung on were not the flower-power types, who were all nice and middle-class and by about '71 were social workers or teaching el-ed. They were street people, and they still are. They may claim to know something about politics, and a few of them actually may, but basically they're nihilists and extreme hedonists. Dionysians, if you will. They proclaim they are anarchists and certainly act like they have the right to destroy whatever they want.

There are something like 20-35 squats in and around Barcelona, each one with 5-10 people living in it and a larger group of hangers-on. The real squatters are hardcore leftist radicals, dedicated to the overthrow of everything by every means possible. They look and act like your standard punks. They are generally streetwise and individually out for their own interest--they live off the hangers-on and their contributions, and are very careful about not sharing any of their own stuff.

The hangers-on are middle-class college kids who will mostly get slightly smarter in a couple of years and get nice middle-class jobs at La Caixa but pretend they're still radical and do dumbass things like vote for Esquerra or Iniciativa. They generally don't know they're being used by these hardcore squatters, and they actually think they believe the nihilist anarchist rhetoric. If a middle-class college kid spends more than about three years with these guys he's likely to join up with them and not get out for years.

Here in Barcelona the squatters are loosely organized. There are a couple of what they call collectives that claim to have representation from the various squats and to be in a position to negotiate with city authorities and the like. They do have access to lawyers, we know that, and are more than happy to use the loopholes in the law to save themselves punishment. A strategy they use is--since they can't be kicked out without a judicial order, and the owner of the property has to file a brief with the court to get said order--is for the lawyers to look through the property register for places that have a lien on them so that there's no legal owner who can go to court. Catch-22.

La Vanguardia is reporting that a good deal of the conflicts we've been having between civilized people and the local squatters are the fault of a bunch of Italian anarchists who have moved in here because Spanish law is weak and not enforced anyway. I buy that up to a point. The main thing the local squatters are pissed off about is that a handful of them are going on trial in Madrid for some rioting they did here back in around 2002, and I don't see the Italian connection there. As for the rioting here in Gracia at the recent fiesta mayor, they arrested a couple of Italians, but they also arrested some locals, one of whom is from the posh suburb of Sant Cugat.

La Vangua's campaign is in favor of more "civic behavior," but I've got news for them: Very few of their readers are out on the streets setting up barricades and throwing shit at the cops. The only thing that's going to stop uncivic behavior is arresting the people who behave uncivically, and that is something they do not do around here. Too much of Catalan society is still anti-law and order and looks benignly on dumb kids raising hell for no good reason because they're answering the contradictions of modern postindustrial dehumanizing society with humanistic self-expression.

This goes back to pre-Franco days: Much of middle-class society here was mixed up with very unpleasant elements (Esquerra Republicana and Estat Català, just for starters) during the twenty years before the Civil War. Then the Franco regime was obviously unpopular among these same people. Now that there's nothing whatsover to be angry about and we live in a prosperous democracy, this bunch is still not happy because, like, they didn't get everything they wanted from the Constitution so they constantly whine about it. This lot still doesn't deal very well with the concept that everybody has to obey the law, even their own kids.

They're also denouncing Lance Armstrong, two pages at the beginning of today's sports section, on no evidence whatsover for allegedly having taken EPO in 1999. Damn, the Europeans hate to lose. What crybabies. Of course, this comes from the French press. In addition, Andy Robinson claims that Google's plan to provide direct access to over 60 million books is somehow satanic. And, of course, France is afraid that somehow the Americans are going to take over world literary heritage, so they're trying to get the EU to spend more than a hundred million euros on its own program. Seems thay're worried that--guess what--people will read books on European history by American authors. Says the head of the French national library, "It's normal that there is an 'Anglo-Saxon' perspective on cultural heritage, but there should also be a European viewpoint. It is politically essential." And, of course, Portugal is on fire and everyone's unscientifically blaming it on global warming.

I want to know something. Who the hell is the government to tell me what I can put in my body? If I want to drink alcohol, that's my business. I should be able to drink as much alcohol as I want to without anyone telling me the bars close at 3 AM and the liquor stores close on Sunday or whatever. And who are we people over 21 years old to be telling those under 21 the same thing? There should be no minimum drinking age at all. If a six-year-old can get enough money, he ought to be able to buy a shot of Jack instead of a Hershey bar if he wants.

And by the way, who is the government telling that kid he can't go out and get a job to earn money for all the Jack or Hershey's he wants? And as for this taxes to discourage drinking shit, like they have in those tight-ass Scandinavian socialist states, that's a bunch of crap. Who is the state to tell me that they want to discourage my vice, but they don't want to discourage all those fucking people who eat meat, thereby murdering literally billions of animals every year, making Americans and Europeans into a bunch of fat slobs, and seriously offending the Hindu religion, to whom cows are sacred. Yeah, you. Every time you eat a burger you're eating a murdered cow and violating one of the most basic tenets of Hinduism, which I might point out has a hell of a lot more adherents than the goddamn Shiites and commits a lot less terrorism.

And as for this government controlling what other drugs I can take, that's bullshit too. I should be able to put anything I want into my body. That includes Laetrile and heroin. Why can't I just take all the antibiotics I want? That's my business. Same for getting vaccinations. Why should the government make me literally risk my life by putting a substance known to be poison into my body by force? And what's the deal with the American Medical Association, a fascist-style corporate guild, allowing only the self-selected few holders of the holy M.D. to tell the rest of us what we can take? Again, I'm manic-depressive. Why does that guy have the right to tell me I can't take whatever pills I want in order to treat my officially-diagnosed illness? I'd like to have what Elvis had, thank you, and plenty of it, please.

Now this gets me into that other thing which pisses me off, and that's the government telling me I can't drive as fast as I want while I'm on Quaaludes. What is the state doing telling me I can't drive eighty miles an hour wherever I want? I'm an independent actor, and one would think I would always have my own self-interest in mind. I'm smart enough to make my own decisions, even after a couple of Percodans. I can be trusted to make the correct decision about whether driving that fast is safe or not, and I will only do it where it's perfectly safe. I'm a really good driver, so I drive eighty a lot of places where most people would only drive, say, thirty-five, and I don't need to wear a seatbelt, either, and it's bullshit for anyone to tell me I have to do that, or follow any other so-called safety rules, either. Look at the Nascar circuit. A Nascar racetrack is the absolutely safest place to be in the world because all the drivers are highly professional and handle their cars perfectly. What would be, say, "cutting off another driver" (a bullshit anti-independenceist term for "exercising your freedom to travel?" They've got no right to tell me where I can't drive, and if somebody else wants to drive there too, well, hell, may the fastest driver win. The other guy needs to accept he's lost, get over it, and move on. If he chooses to object by, say, honking his horn and making obscene gestures at me, well, that's his business, and no one has any right to stop him from expressing himself.

And don't even let me get started on airplanes. Or guns.

Here's an entertaining little puff piece from Sports Illustrated about going mountain biking with President Bush.

There have been three consecutive nights of rioting here in the Gracia district of Barcelona with the excuse of the neighborhood Fiesta Mayor, which kicked off Sunday night and runs for a week. The Fiesta Mayor is a century-old tradition in which the residents of different streets compete to see who can decorate theirs most attractively. The themes and their realization are typical high-school dance stuff most of the time, though real money goes into putting the Fiesta together; the budget is several hundred thousand euros, much of which comes from taxes. Traditionally, the various streets hire dance bands, hold public dinners, and have puppet shows and the like. Oh, by the way, they sell beer. Lots of beer. On the streets, with the money going to each street's decorating committee. The local bars also make plenty of money.

What's happened over the last few years is that crowds of locals from all over the metropolitan area show up and get completely blitzkreiged, and the crowds get bigger and more violent every year. Our friends the squatters have taken over and run wild every night. Here are some quotes from La Vanguardia:

Some 300 youths faced off with the police early Wednesday morning...garbage skips were burned, motorcycles and urban furniture destroyed, several people were injured, including two regional and one local police officers, and two minors were arrested.

At around three in the morning the squatters and their friends got together in Plaza Rius and Taulet, about 1000 of them, and started bongoing and raising hell. At four the cops told them to go home, since the residents were furious and they had to clean the streets and pìck up the garbage anyway. The squatters started throwing bottles and other crap at the cops, and they set up two barricades on the Travesera de Gracia. The firemen showed up to put out the fires and were attacked as well.

Then, early Thursday morning, there was more squatter violence. Between three and six AM

the confrontations of the previous morning were repeated, with greater virulence, between youths and police officers. Garbage skips were burned and wastebaskets, portable toilets, phone booths, and other street furniture was destroyed. Some street decorations were destroyed, such as the giant sardine on Calle Tordera. Eight members of the riot squad and eight more youths were injured. Damage was estimated at €25,000. There were no arrests.

The police did identify thirteen leaders, who will be charged. Interestingly, Tordera is the only one of the 22 decorated streets that does not sell alcohol.

Now here's the really fun part. Guess who La Vanguardia's reporter focused on?

"This is the most exciting moment of my vacation," said Paul, an English tourist, while he ran through the streets of Gracia during the conflicts between the police and youths..."My night as an urban guerrilla" is the title of a page of the diary that Alessandro, an Italian tourist, is keeping during his stay here...In Calle Progrés, a group of tourists swam naked in the swimming pool that formed part of the decoration.

That's right, blame the tourists instead of the local scumballs and urban trash!

Check out this comparison between each of the 30 major league baseball teams and its most similar character on the Simpsons.

Here's a fun story about Kinky Friedman, who is supposedly running for governor of Texas. He couldn't be any worse than some of the other characters who have been governor in that state, like Pa Ferguson and Pappy O'Daniel. The serious question I'd ask him is whether he'd be willing to sign a death sentence.

My favorite Kinky song is "Asshole from El Paso."

Update on the helicopter crash: It happened near Herat, where some 850 Spanish troops are based as part of the peacekeeping force preparing for the September elections. NATO says the crash was an accident, but so far the Spanish administration is not ruling out the possibility that the chopper was shot down.

A Spanish helicopter crashed in Afghanistan killing 17 troops. Fox News has the story; nothing more than this in the Spanish media. Our sympathy and condolences to the families and the Spanish military.