This is off the Associated Press wire today:

GAZA CITY, Gaza Strip — Israeli forces opened fire Friday on a group of women who streamed to a Gaza mosque to serve as human shields for gunmen holed up there, killing one and wounding 10, Palestinian officials and witnesses said.

A 22-year-old Palestinian man was also killed in the northern town of Beit Hanoun, which troops seized Wednesday in a bid to halt Palestinian rocket fire on southern Israeli communities. More than 20 Palestinians, most of them militants, have been killed in the offensive.

Israeli tanks and armored personnel carriers quickly surrounded the mosque after gunmen fleeing troops sought refuge there, the military and Palestinian security officials said. Most of the gunmen — estimates ranged from one dozen to several dozen — were thought to be from the military wing of the Palestinians' ruling Hamas party.

That is, Hamas was hiding behind women and shooting at the Israelis. What cowardice. How pathetic. Follow the above link for the rest of the story.

Now here's TV3's story, their top international report on this afternoon's news:

The Israeli army's land and air offensive against the Gaza strip, which has already caused 34 deaths according to Hebrew sources and 25 according to Palestinian, continues. The most recent victims in an exchange of fire between soldiers and armed Palestinian activists at a mosque in Beit Hanoun. They are two women who acted as human shields so that the hundred women occupying the mosque could escape. Israeli army sources state that their soldiers shot at armed "militars" (literally "soldiers", but I think they mean "militants") who were participating in the women's protest at the mosque in the northern Gaza strip.

Wow. That's a completely different story. There was a demonstration at the mosque, not a bunch of terrorists using it as a fortress. Two righteous women were killed by the Israeli army while valiantly protecting fellow protesters.

It seems that there were a hundred women occupants. The majority, however, managed to escape when the victims left the mosque and attracted the attention of the Hebrew army. In all, it is thought there are still between fifteen and twenty Palestinian women in the two buildings that make up the holy place.

I've never heard TV3 call a church a "holy place."

The army, which has the mosque surrounded and has called on the Palestinians to surrender, stated that the Palestinians shot at them from inside the mosque. Some sources have also stated that military bulldozers have knocked down a wall of the masque, causing the roof to cave in above one of the rooms, which fell on the militants and may have killed some.

Meanwhile, the Israeli army's air offensive against the Gaza Strip continues. Hebrew airplanes fired two missiles that caused the death of four Palestinians. The first missile left three wounded and one dead. Half an hour later, a second missile killed three Palestinians in the same area. In three days of operation in Beit Hanoun, the Israeli army has killed 34 Palestinians, according to the electronic edition of the Israeli daily Yediot Aharonot. That figure contrasts with the number of victims given by Palestinian medical sources, who say that 25 Palestinians have died.

Jeez. With the media spouting such biased information, never mentioning why the Israelis have invaded Gaza in the first place--because Hamas is firing rockets at Israeli civilians--the fervid anti-Israel feeling in Spain, and especially Catalonia, is no surprise.

Thursday afternoon blog roundup while listening to Hank Williams:

Here's Planet Churro's commentary on yesterday's Catalan elections, along with his pre-election predictions.

Barcelona Reporter has more, including a chart with all the exact numbers. Several posts.

Nihil Obstat in Catalan and Red Liberal in Spanish (a dozen posts; read them all) have further comments.

The Rottweiler is unhappy with John Kerry. Note the photo. So is Daniel W. Drezner, though without profanity. Patterico is mad not only at Kerry, but also the New York Times.

Beautiful Horizons opines on the Nicaraguan election, and Publius Pundit reports on Hugo Chavez's involvement with the failed insurrection in Oaxaca.

Right Wing News has a thoughtful post on why Republicans should turn out next week.

Winds of Change has another excellent one on the struggle against Al Qaeda in Iraq.

And La Liga Loca fills us in on Real Madrid's poor showing in Bucharest, and warns the English to lock up their transsexuals because Guti might be on the way. (If I remember correctly, Guti has been romantically linked to transvestite Bibi Fernandez.)

One small change with more than 95% of the vote counted: it's CiU 48, PSC 37, ERC 21, PP 14, IC 12, Ciutadans 3.

Further notes: Maragall didn't look at all happy or too sober up on the stage while Montilla was claiming victory; Montilla's line was that CiU failed in its attempt to get more votes than the Tripartite. Zapatero's extensive campaigning in Catalonia does not seem to have done the PSC much good. CiU certainly did not do anywhere near as well as the surveys said. The PP is out of play; no one wants anything to do with them, and I imagine Ciutadans is in the same boat.

80% of the vote has been counted. It's CiU 47, PSC 38, ERC 21, PP 14, IC 12, Ciutadans 3. You can see the nationalist vote from the provinces coming in late. With these results, a CiU-ERC nationalist front gets the 68 seats it needs, so there are now three possibilities along with Sociovergencia and the Tripartite. The awful thing is that unless the PSC is willing to accept playing second banana in a grand coalition, the ERC national socialists will get to decide what the next government will look like.

The vote in Barcelona city: PSC 27.6%, CiU 27.3%, PP 13.0%, ERC 12.4%, IC 12.3%, Ciutadans 3.3%. You can see that Barcelona is less nationalist and more leftist than the countryside.

Big winners so far: Convergence and Initiatiative. Big loser Esquerra.

Official data with 53% of the vote in: CiU 30.1%, 47 seats; PSC 29.4%, 40; ERC 13.6%, 19; PP 10.8%, 14; IC 9.6%, 12; Ciutadans 3.0%, 3.

With 31% of the vote counted, the percentages for each party are barely changing with each new report. Now the distribution of parliamentary seats is CiU 45, PSC 42, ERC 19, PP 14, IC 12, Ciutadans 3.

Points to remember: Most of the early vote coming in is from Barcelona province, where the PSC, PP, IC, and Ciutadans are comparatively strongest. The three other provinces, Girona, Lleida, and Tarragona, are traditional strongholds for the nationalist parties, CiU and ERC. If the number of allocated seats changes, it will likely be to the benefit of these last two.

The turnout is very low. Regional elections get lower turnouts than municipals and generals, because a sizable number of voters who do not feel particularly Catalan do not come out for the regionals. In the generals and municipals, the Socialists generally win here in Catalonia, while CiU generally wins the regionals. Nobody, not even the parties involved, cares too much about the European parliamentary elections.

Right now CiU and ERC sum up 64 seats, four short of the 68 they need for a majority. If the votes are out there in the provinces, a nationalist front is not out of the question. Still, though, it looks like either Sociovergencia or the Tripartite.

They've just released another projection, with 15% of the vote counted: CiU 29.3% of the vote, 44 seats; PSC 31.7%, 43; ERC 12.9%, 19; PP 10.7%, 14; IC 9.1%, 12; Ciutadans 2.8%, 3.

Looks like there are two realistic outcomes: a CiU-PSC grand coalition, which is what I predicted, or Tripartite II, which I just don't think is going to happen.

We have to keep in mind that these are nowhere near definitive figures, of course. CiU seems to be doing much more poorly than expected, and the big surprise is Ciutadans, which I had completely counted out.

With 5.6% of the vote counted, TV3 projects the following results in the Catalan regional election: Catalan Socialists (PSC) 32.6% of the vote and 47 seats; Convergence and Union (CiU) 29.6%, 42; Republican Left of Catalonia (ERC) 12.7%, 18; People's Party (PP) 10.4%, 14; Initiative for Catalonia 8.6%, 11; Citizens of Catalonia 2.5%, 3.

Here in Catalonia, it's a Japanese girl's favorite day--Erection Day! This afternoon on the TV3 news, as is traditional, the first fifteen minutes were devoted to film of the various candidates depositing their ballots in the plexiglass urns. The results will be announced at 9:30 PM tonight, which would be 3:30 Eastern time in the US. Iberian Notes will liveblog them.

According to an October 15 survey quoted in La Vanguardia, Catalans identified the following as "principal problems at this moment":

Housing 60%
Immigration 58%
Crime 39%
Unemployment 30%
Health care 24%
Education 18%
Government finances 15%
Corruption 15%
Infrastructure 15%
Use of Catalan 13%

Looks like citizens' priorities are pretty clear. Housing prices are through the roof and significant Third World immigration is just beginning to affect Catalonia. Esquerra Republicana was playing the immigration card so heavily for a reason. People appear to be pretty content with the educational and health care systems, both of which provide fairly decent service for huge unwieldy government bureaucracies. And nobody gives a rat's ass about the language question except for the fanatics; I'll bet that 13% who think use of Catalan is a problem are exactly the same 13% who vote for Esquerra.

Wacky Anti-Americanism Watch: Halloween, as you probably know, was yesterday, and today is Todos los Santos, All Souls' Day, when Spaniards traditionally go to visit their ancestors' graves at the cemetery. I remember back in the mid-70s, when I was a kid, Halloween was basically a kids' holiday, and it wasn't really that big a deal. I don't remember adults participating, except to hand out candy to trick-or-treaters. Now, in the States, it's an excuse for adults to dress up and get drunk, and it's become one of the major celebrations of the year.

Some smart European marketers decided they'd try to sell Halloween junk over here and tried to introduce the holiday into Europe. They've had some success--by now everybody has at least heard of Halloween--but it's still most distinctly socially tainted as an American custom.

So, according to La Vanguardia,

Father Joan Maria Canals, Director of the Spanish Bishops' Conference's Episcopal Committee on Liturgy said that when a loved one dies, children are kept away from the corpse, while during the Halloween holiday, based on fear, death, the living dead, black magic, and mystical monsters, minors dress up using these elements. "Death is not a game or a party to have fun one day a year. What idea of death is left in the heart of the child who has dressed up as a skull and has been playing?" wondered Canals. "On one hand, schools and parents encourage their children to dress up on Halloween, and on the other, when the death of a loved one arrives, what happens?" In his opinion, Halloween must be given "a Christian meaning," since it is celebrated on the day on which the Catholic Church "recalls the memory of all those who are now in Heaven contemplating the Lord."

I think this guy might be taking the whole thing a bit too seriously. Wonder how he'd react to Mexico's Day of the Dead? That's even more morbid than Halloween. Oh, wait, it's Hispanic and Catholic. Must be OK.

Hell of a soccer game last night as Barcelona and Chelsea tied 2-2 at the Camp Nou. Barça dominated for most of the match, but Chelsea is a great team and was able to pull out a draw in extra time. Lots of good plays by both teams in a rough game. Ronaldinho is back in form. Barça now has to win its two remaining games, against Werder Bremen at the Camp Nou and against Levski in Sofia. If they can't do that, they don't deserve to advance.

The big news story around here is Danish public TV's investigation of illegal late-term abortions being practiced in Barcelona. One thing Americans don't realize is that most European countries have much stricter abortion laws than the US, where the Supreme Court has ruled that abortion on demand is a constitutional right.

Spanish law sets three conditions under which abortion is legal: 1) If the fetus is deformed. Two doctors must agree. Legal up to 22 weeks. 3.5% of abortions performed in Catalonia in 2005. 2) If the woman was raped. Legal up to 12 weeks. Only one abortion in Catalonia in 2005. 3) If the woman's physical or mental health is at risk. One doctor (counting psychiatrists) must agree. No theoretical time limit, though only seven, 0.04%, of 2005 abortions were performed later than 22 weeks. 96.5% of abortions in Catalonia in 2005. (Note: If seven, 0.04%, of all abortions were later than 22 weeks, that means the total number of abortions in Catalonia last year was 17,500, right? That seems a lot.)

Quite clearly, the risk to the woman's mental health is the enormous loophole here. Just get a shrink to sign off and it's D&C city.

The Danish TV network reported that in Spain, not only in Catalonia, abortions on highly-developed fetuses, as advanced as six months, are routinely performed. La Vanguardia says that if a cesarian section rather than an abortion had been performed in these cases, the children (no longer fetuses) would have survived.

The Danish investigators filmed a Barcelona doctor named Carlos Morin of the GBM clinic offering to perform an abortion on a woman 31 weeks pregnant, which is just plain infanticide, in exchange for €4000. Morin has a history of doing such things; an October 2004 Sunday Telegraph investigation reported that he had aborted 30-week babies. The Danish team interviewed a woman who had received an abortion at the EMC clinic in Barcelona at 27 weeks. Morin was a doctor at EMC at that time.

According to the Danes, Catalonia is a favorite destination for European women who want to abort, and some 5% of abortions performed in Catalonia (at least 830 in 2005) are performed on foreign women. London and Amsterdam, also homes of liberal abortion laws, are other popular abortion destinations for women from such countries as Germany and Ireland. The Danes also say that they believe further illegal, unregulated abortions are also performed in Barcelona.

Time for my personal opinion, which is pragmatic and will please neither side. Make abortion on demand legal, American style, as long as the fetus is non-viable, which I think is about 12 weeks. Then, when it becomes viable and is clearly a baby, make abortion illegal with a very few exceptions for women whose lives are actually physically in danger or fetuses with severe deformities who would not survive if carried to term. These exceptions would be hard to get, requiring, say, three gynecologists to agree.

Pointless thoughts while listening to Steve Earle:

You guys ought to check out the music clips I link to. It's all good stuff.

Today is the "day of reflection" before the Catalan regional election, when all campaigning is suspended. My guess is that Mas has run the best campaign and will win the most seats, but then what? He won't have an absolute majority. Some kind of pact will have to be made. Mas has already sworn he won't make a deal with the PP. Saura has sworn that his Initiative (Commie) party will not make a deal with Mas's CiU. That leaves only the national socialist Republican Left (ERC), whose irresponsibility dynamited the former Tripartite regional government (Generalitat of Catalonia) led by Pasqual Maragall, or a grand coalition between CiU and Jose Montilla's Socialists.

So can Montilla form a government without CiU? It would have to be a repeat of the Tripartite, and that wouldn't last long, since the Tripartite split over the Catalan statute of autonomy (in US terms, state constitution), and ERC is terminally irresponsible and cannot be trusted. And the Socialists and Commies alone aren't going to get enough votes for a majority. The answer is no.

That's Iberian Notes's official prediction for tomorrow night, when we'll be liveblogging the election returns: a CiU-PSC coalition, "Sociovergencia." This is the government that the surveys say most citizens would prefer; it would be a moderate government, rather social democratic, but we can live with that. The Socialists, most of whose supporters are Spanish speakers from the Barcelona industrial suburbs, will keep the Catalan nationalists of CiU more or less under control. Good. I'd prefer more of a free-market and decentralized system, of course, and that's the long-term trend, but in the short run we can live with a "business as usual" government.

Mas, as the larger vote getter, would get to be premier, but Montilla would demand the cabinet chief of staff ("conseller en cap") position and several juicy portfolios for his PSC.

Most interesting campaign note: All the candidates' wives except for Pique's discussed their intimate sex lives openly, starting with Saura's life-partner, Chemical Inma Mayol, the top Commie in the Barcelona city council, who informed us that Saura was tender and adventurous, or something like that, in matters regarding l'amour. Carod's wife had the best comeback; she said that she and Carod were great in the sack because they practiced a lot.

This is actually a great idea for the US; I think all candidates' wives or husbands should be obliged to report on their favorite acts of copulation and/or sodomy in detail. Jeez. Imagine Hillary Clinton discussing her sex life with Bill. That might be very dull. But, hey, since Hillary's the candidate this time, Bill would be the one questioned: "Well, actually, Oprah, she's an ice-cold frigid SS-guard bitch who won't give me head. But then again, so are you." Condoleezza Rice might also present a problem here. And I don't think Dick Cheney gets to have sex anymore, because he might have another heart attack and pull a Nelson Rockefeller on us.

Zap was the keynote speaker at Montilla's final campaign rally and called Montilla "the Lula of Catalonia." I dunno. Lula won his election, while Montilla is going to lose his. Neither one has a university degree, which Xavier Sala i Martin managed to get under Montilla's skin about.

Meanwhile, Mas went to the Ripoll monastery, sanctuary of the most atavistic Catalan racial feelings, and burst into tears while paying homage to "the ancient Catalan nation," which I believe is a necessary formality for any nationalist candidate. I don't think Mas takes this rhetoric too seriously, even though his speech was titled, "A declaration of commitment to the people of Catalonia before the tomb of Wilfred the Hairy," Guifré el Pelós, the founder of Catalonia's first ruling dynasty back sometime around AD 986. That's pretty hardcore blood-and-soil nationalism, that is.

By the way, if you ever get a chance to go up to Ripoll, do it. There are several other interesting places in the area, including Sant Joan de les Abadesses and Nuria.

I'm having problems publishing my posts. Apparently Blogger was down on Sunday; I keep getting a Java script error every time I try to publish. The posts don't get eaten, though; they show up on the beta. Here's hoping you get to read them pretty soon.

Every election I repeat my warning: Don't vote for the Partit Humanista, whatever you do. It's a front for an Argentinian ultra-leftist cult run by a mysterious guru called Silo. This is a post from 2003 on these guys, including several links; none of the basic facts have changed since then. Check out their campaign video for this year; it's hilariously stupid.

Aimless thoughts while listening to Ella Fitzgerald:

Not that much news from Spain. The last stink in the Catalan regional election, which is just around the corner on November 1, is that FC Barcelona club president Joan Laporta, known to be close to CiU, held a meeting and photo-op with CiU candidate Artur Mas. The Socialists started bitching, and Laporta met the next day with PSC candidate Jose Montilla. What still seems strange to me is the attempt to mix a sports team with politics, though I know this happens all the time in Spain.

Convergence looks like the clear winner, and there are rumors that they are actually hoping to score as many as 58 seats (out of a total of 135). The problem, though, is that if the vote comes out according to the surveys, the Tripartite parties will be able to form a majority and Montilla will be the next regional premier.

They held a demonstration in the Canary Islands today calling for a law allowing the islands' government to regulate the number of people living there. That is, they're pissed off about the number of African immigrants washing up on their shores, which the international media is still ignoring. I smell far-right racism all over this one.

Fidel appeared again, though only through government-controlled media; he didn't come out in public. He looked pretty bad; the old bastard is finally going to die one of these days soon. Looks like I was wrong about the Brazilian election; Lula is pretty sure to be reelected. And they've got a real genuine Communist revolution going on in Oaxaca, a place I have actually been to.

The French Intifada continues, and is getting worse; the rioters torched a bus in Marseille with the passengers inside, and one woman was burned over 65% of her body and is in very serious condition. They're trying to kill people now. This has become terrorism. They've crossed the line.

Barcelona crushed Recreativo on Saturday night with no problems, and Recreativo is not an awful team. Ronaldinho was considerably more active and aggressive than he has been lately, and Sylvinho and Belletti seem to be the halfbacks in best form right now. Gudjohnsen is not a center-forward. He would make a better midfielder. Some guy commenting over at La Liga Loca suggested that Barça change from its current 4-3-3 formation to a 4-4-2, since Barça has plenty of good midfielders but is short on forwards right now.

A lineup of Valdes; Belletti, Marquez, Puyol, Sylvinho; Xavi, Edmilson, Gudjohnsen, Deco; Saviola and Ronaldinho might do very well. Iniesta would be your twelfth man, to come out after halftime replacing whichever midfielder is having a mediocre game.

Real Madrid did not look strong against Gimnastic of Tarragona, though they won. Again, Robinho was Real's best player. I cannot believe Capello is not designing his team to get Robinho the ball as often as possible, since he and Van Nistelrooy are about the only players having good seasons for Madrid. Not true: Raul, surprisingly, has been playing quite well.

Surprise teams this year are Sevilla, currently in second place and having a very fine season including a victory over Barça in the European Supercup, and Getafe, which coach Bernd Schuster has turned into a solid midtable club that must be taken seriously. You have to figure that Sevilla is the top candidate for Spain's fourth Champions League slot--Barça, Madrid, and Valencia pretty much have the other three locked up. Getafe has an outside chance at a UEFA Cup slot, which would be excellent coming from a small suburban Madrid club.

The American elections are getting some news coverage over here; most of the stories seem to be using the angle that they will be a referendum on Bush.

I had a ridiculous experience last night; I went down to the Cafe Flanders on Plaza Rovira for a beer, and encountered a fellow American expat whom I will call Dick. This guy is fifty-fiveish, a slob with a round fat face, has no visible means of support, and just rubs me the wrong way with a sort of fake heartiness. I don't see much of him, and I'm just as happy about this. So Dick says, in his booming hearty fake voice, apparently trying to start a conversation, "So when are the next elections in the United States?" I say, "2008," wondering why he doesn't know this himself. "You mean we've got two more years of that shithead?" he replied.

I find it interesting that Dick would just naturally assume that I hate George Bush. Anyway, I said, "Well, I voted for him twice," in a rather friendly manner, and then quickly suggested that we agree to disagree on the subject. Then I bailed and went home.

Brief Friday afternoon blog roundup: Guirilandia has a worth-reading piece on the Catalan regional election, La Liga Loca has the weekend football preview, which Spanish football fans should not miss, and Publius Pundit and Pave France have updates on the French Intifada.

Peter Katzenbach and Robert O. Keohane have a fascinating article in the Hoover Institution journal Policy Review called Anti-Americanisms, which Arts and Letters Daily links to this week. Their thesis is that anti-Americanism is too broad a concept and so it should be more clearly defined and if necessary subclassified.

First, they differentiate between opinion and bias; they define anti-American opinion as reasoned opposition to American policies, and consider it unimportant in the long term, as those who oppose said policies will cease to do so when those policies change. Bias, however, is a tendency to always believe the worst about the United States.

Bias implies a distortion of information processing, while adverse opinion is consistent with maintaining openness to new information that will change one’s views. The long-term consequences of bias for American foreign policy are much greater than the consequences of opinion.

However, the authors rather overestimate the amount and influence of mere opinion. In all of Europe, biased anti-Americanism is rife. In 2006, according to a Pew survey, 56% of the British, 39% of the French, 37% of Germans, and only 23% of Spaniards had a favorable opinion of the United States.

The view we take in the volume is that much of what is called anti-Americanism, especially outside of the Middle East, indeed is largely opinion. As such, it is volatile and would diminish in response to different policies, as it has in the past. The left is correct on this score, while the right overestimates resentment toward American power and hatred of American values. If the right were correct, anti-Americanism would have been high at the beginning of the new millennium.

I don't agree. I think most Euro anti-Americanism is definitely based on bias and not mere opinion.

The authors divide bias, quite accurately I think, into four types, from least to most malevolent: liberal, social (which I would call "socialist"), sovereign-nationalist, and radical. Then they add two other "special cases," elitism and historical grievances.

Liberal bias: Liberals often criticize the United States bitterly for not living up to its own ideals...Hypocrisy in American foreign policy is not so much the result of the ethical failings of American leaders as a byproduct of the role played by the United States in world politics and of democratic politics at home. It will not, therefore, be eradicated. As long as political hypocrisy persists, abundant material will be available for liberal anti-Americanism.

Yep. The United States cannot avoid being seen as hypocritical. That's because it has ideals which are very difficult to live up to. Liberal anti-American bias is very common in Spain, affecting nearly all Spaniards at least sporadically.

Socialist bias: Many democratic societies do not share the peculiar combination of respect for individual liberty, reliance on personal responsibility, and distrust of government characteristic of the United States. People in other democratic societies may therefore react negatively to America’s political institutions and its social and political arrangements that rely heavily on market processes...Social anti-Americanism is based on value conflicts that reflect relevant differences in many spheres of life that are touching on “life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness.”

Yep. Socialist ideals are much stronger all over Europe than in the US. I'd say half of Spaniards are affected by socialist anti-American bias.

Sovereign-nationalist bias: Sovereign nationalists focus on two values: the importance of not losing control over the terms by which polities are inserted in world politics and the inherent importance and value of collective national identities. These identities often embody values that are at odds with America’s.

Yep. Nearly all Spaniards are subject to sovereign-nationalist bias at times. Catalan nationalists are a particularly interesting case.

Radical bias: It is built around the belief that America’s identity, as reflected in the internal economic and political power relations and institutional practices of the United States, ensures that its actions will be hostile to the furtherance of good values, practices, and institutions elsewhere in the world...For progress toward a better world to take place, the American economy and society will have to be transformed, either from within or from without. The most extreme form of contemporary radical anti-Americanism holds that Western values are so abhorrent that people holding them should be destroyed. The United States is the leading state of the West and therefore the central source of evil...Religiously inspired and secular radical anti-Americanism argue for the weakening, destruction, or transformation of the political and economic institutions of the United States. The distinctive mark of both strands of anti-Americanism is the demand for revolutionary changes in the nature of American society.

Yep. I'd say about one-fourth of Spaniards are radically biased against the United States, and what pisses them off most is that the US won the Cold War. They wish we had lost.

Elitist bias: Elitist anti-Americanism arises in countries in which the elite has a long history of looking down on American culture. In France, for example...

Yep. Every Spaniard who has graduated from high school thinks he's a member of an intellectual elite in comparison to us ignorant Yankees.

Legacy bias: Legacy anti-Americanism stems from resentment of past wrongs committed by the United States toward another society...Between the late 1960s and the end of the twentieth century, the highest levels of anti-Americanism recorded in Western Europe were found in Spain and especially Greece — both countries that had experienced civil wars; in the case of Spain the United States supported for decades a repressive dictator.

Yep. At least half of Spaniards blame the United States for the Franco dictatorship, in complete ignorance of anything resembling a fact, since the US was no more fond of Franco than any other member of the Western alliance and had absolutely nothing to do with his rise to power. I have actually heard Spaniards blame the US for not having intervened on the Republican side during the Civil War, if you can believe that.

The authors claim that there is no "grand explanation" for anti-Americanism, but they rather defeat their own case by their careful classifications. I would say that anti-American bias in Europe, at least, stems from some combination of these six factors the authors have identified, and different factors have different strengths in different countries--but each country is affected by all these factors to some extent.

They add that American culture is "polyvalent," which means that it is so huge and varied that virtually anyone can find something he doesn't like in it. Too atheistic, as conservative Muslims would have it, or too religious, as liberal Europeans would?

The authors' conclusion is rather weak, though; they wonder why we should care about anti-Americanism.

Perhaps the most puzzling thing about anti-Americanism is that we Americans seem to care so much about it.

I have three reasons: first, it reminds me rather too much of anti-Semitism and other forms of racism and xenophobia, and we all know what that's going to lead to if unchecked, an isolated America rather as Israel is isolated today. Second, it's illogical and irrational and contributes to further flawed thinking; anti-Americans use their anti-Americanism to reinforce their national socialist biases. Third, it does positive harm to American (and pro-American; we have many friends in Spain, difficult as that may be to believe sometimes) interests around the world. We'd all be much better off if Zap were not prime minister, for example, but the Socialists were able to play upon popular anti-Americanism after the March 11 bombings.

Anyway, go read the article and see what you think. The essay is the basis for a book to be coming out next year, which I am looking forward to reading.

Some bozo who cares more about bashing America than checking his facts posted the following in the comments section in regard to the death penalty:

If your system is so great why is your crime rate, murder rate etc so high?

Buddy, if you had done any research, like say googling "us crime rate", you'd have come up with lots of interesting websites, such as the FBI Uniform Crime Report, which says the US murder rate was 5.6 per 100,000 in 2005. The murder rate has been in steady decline since it peaked in 1991, when there were about 24,700 murders in the US. In 2005 there were about 16,700 murders, which means that the number of murders in the US has declined by one-third in the last 15 years, while the population has risen from 252 million to 296 million.

Coincidentally, while the murder rate has declined by one-third since 1991, the execution rate has increased quite a bit since then. Wonder if there might be some sort of correlation? I'll bet there is.

All crime in the United States has been in steady decline since 1991, not only in percentages but in absolute numbers. The absolute number of armed robberies, aggravated assaults, and property crimes peaked in that year, while the absolute number of forcible rapes peaked in 1992.

Nation Master says that in 2005, the international rankings for murder rates per 100,000 were:

1. Colombia, 61.7
2. South Africa, 49.6
3. Jamaica, 32.4
4. Venezuela, 31.6
5. Russia, 20.1

Most of the countries among the next 15 in the rankings are pieces of the former Soviet Union.

20. Poland, 5.6
24. United States, 4.2 (no, I don't know why the stat they give is different from the FBI's)
30. Finland, 2.8
33. Portugal, 2.3
40. France, 1.7
46. United Kingdom, 1.4
48. Spain, 1.2

So the average American is twice as likely to be murdered as the average Portuguese and between three and a half times as likely as the average Spaniard, using Nation Master's figures. That's actually not so bad, when you figure that the United States is a much larger, more complex, and more diverse place than either of those countries. Most importantly, what we see here is that the US murder rate is not extremely high compared to what it could be; the US rate is much closer to European rates than to Third World hellholes.

Now let's look at male suicide rates per 100,000, again from Nation Master.

1. Lithuania, 81.9

Most of the next ten or fifteen countries were part of the former USSR.

9. Finland, 43.4
12. Belgium, 37.3
14. Austria, 34.2
16. France, 30.4
21. Japan, 25.0
25. Germany, 21.8
30. United States, 19.8
47. United Kingdom, 11.0
50. Spain, 11.0

Hmm. Interesting. Civilized, European Belgium has a suicide rate nearly twice that of the US, and France's is 50% higher. If we add up the murder and suicide figures, the violent death rate for European Finland, progressive social democratic home of Nokia, is 46.2 per 100,000 per year. France's is 32.1. That of the United States is 24.0, and Spain's is an extremely low 12.2. So what's this fear and loathing in the United States stuff? You're more likely to die earlier due to violence in most of Europe than in the US. We see that Spain is an extremely non-violent country in both murder and suicide, which probably colors Spaniards' perception of how high crime rates are in other places.

Let's look at road safety now. Nation Master has a partial list of persons killed per billion vehicle-miles traveled, which does not include Spain. From the top:

Czech Republic 31.7
Greece 26.7
South Korea 25.0
Belgium 15.3
Japan 11.2
France 10.9
Germany 9.7
United States 9.4
United Kingdom 7.6

Looks like most Europeans are more violent on the roads than us Anglo-Saxons.

Anti-Americanism Watch: Check out this letter to Slate's advice columnist, "Dear Prudence." Unfortunately, yes, a standard enlightened-and-illustrated-European conversational gambit when actually forced to deal personally with a flesh-and-blood American is to express a wish that George Bush would die. And the Americans have a reputation for being unsubtle and tasteless over here, for some reason.

One of the major debates of the upcoming US legislative elections is happening in Missouri: the question of stem-cell research. Now, I don't know anything about stem-cell research, certainly not enough to form my own opinion without help. So I googled "gregg easterbrook stem cell", and, what do you know, he's got a basic introduction to the subject over at Belief.net.

Assuming Mr. Easterbrook is telling the truth, and there is no reason to doubt him, private companies can do any sort of stem-cell and cloning research they want to right now, as long as there's no federal money involved. That seems fair to me.

Therefore, this Missouri state constitutional amendment is a red herring. It doesn't matter what the Missouri constitution says about stem-cell research; that research will continue to happen no matter what. And if we wish to use federal money to support stem-cell research, that's the business of the US Congress and the federal courts, not of the Missouri state constitution. I am willing to bet that very little Missouri state money goes to stem-cell research. So it doesn't matter which way you vote on Amendment 2, and this issue should not affect your choice of senatorial candidate.

But, of course, both sides are trying to make it a campaign issue, and the celebrities have pitched in. Michael J. Fox, who as you know has Parkinson's (full disclosure: so does my father), has made a TV ad supporting not only the Missouri amendment but also the Democratic party, trying to link the hope for a cure to a particular political option. Social conservative celebrities, including three well-known Jesus jocks, are hitting back with their own ad, bringing up fears of Brave New World, and Rush Limbaugh has piled on, which surprises me as he's usually more responsible.

Both sides are behaving disgracefully, trying to score political points off the issue of whether devastating illnesses should be treated or not--of whether ill people should live longer. Of course they should, and the fate of the rubbish at an abortion clinic does not concern me nearly as much as the fate of people with cancer. That doesn't mean either side is justified in using scare tactics.

Very important note: According to Mr. Easterbrook, chances of dramatic cures being discovered through stem-cell research are very slim during the next five or ten years, at least.