The big news around here is still the death of Erika Ortiz. No cause of death has been announced; Libertad Digital, Spain's most tasteful news site, is speculating that she committed suicide with an overdose of barbiturates. La Vanguardia's take is that she was a shy and private person and did not deal at all well with media intrusion into her life, especially after she and her husband separated several months ago. I have to say that I had never heard of her before they announced her death, and I keep up with the print, Internet, and TV news pretty well, so the media intrusion can't have been that bad. Then again, who am I to judge.

If it's true that she committed suicide because of media harassment, it's time for the celebrity-oriented media to take a good, long look at its practices. I don't want the government to get involved, of course, but there should be some industry-wide minimal standards, one of which would be respecting the privacy of those who do not want to be news. There's a clear and obvious distinction between those who seek press coverage and those who do not want it.

They cremated her early this afternoon; Spanish burial practices are quite different from American. Here the funeral is almost always the day after the person dies, while in the US it's between, say, three days and a week after. This is why embalming is normal in the US and not practiced in Spain. Cremation used to be very rare, and is still uncommon among the working class here, but it's becoming more frequent as the cost of a cemetery niche keeps going up.

In Spain, of course, they bury people above ground in niches. They look like five-meter-tall concrete beehives. Apparently--I'm not entirely sure how this works--they stick you in the niche and let you decay for a few decades. Then they dump your bones into the ossuary, and reuse the niche.

I think one reason they embalm the body and delay the funeral in the United States is so that people can travel to the ceremony. Many families are scattered across the country, and can't get together on very short notice.

Zap named Mariano Fernández Bermejo to substitute Juan Fernando López Aguilar as minister of justice. There's been judicial turmoil in Spain in the last two weeks because of the De Juana Chaos case, Ibarretxe's being cited to testify about his meeting with Batasuna, and the kerfuffle at the Constitutional Court. So somebody's head had to roll, and apparently López Aguilar had failed to foresee any of these decisions and Zap was left unprepared. As for the Constitutional Court thing, Pérez Tremps hasn't made a decision yet and Rajoy and Zap sniped at each other in Parliament.

They busted another etarra in France in the wake of last week's arrest of Iker Aguirre in Portbou. This one, Pedro Álvarez Saleta, is apparently an infrastructure guy who rented apartments for ETA members and drove them to meetings and the like. ETA has stolen dozens of cars in France already this year.

Barça club president Joan Laporta is pissed off at Oleguer Presas for having said his political piece in the club's pressroom; Laporta said that he wouldn't have let Oleguer make such statements while representing the club at an official interview if he had known about it previously.

Al Gore's in town promoting his Chicken Little movie. He's done his slideshow thing and had a 1 1/2 hour meeting with Zap. Zap promised to make Al's movie part of the curriculum at every school in Spain.

Genius Joan Saura, the Catalan interior counselor (chief law-enforcement officer) said a few days ago that he wanted to legalize drugs. Cool! He has, however, been roundly hooted down by CiU and the PP, and Montilla told him to shut up.

Speaking of enforcing the law, three squatter punks took an iron bar to the famous "psychedelic lizard" in the Parque Guell, just up the hill from my house. They smashed in the head of the statue, which of course is a significant work of art. The cops got two of them only after it was too late; they suspect the other is hiding out at one of the squats in the area. One of them has a police record for, get this, participating in a fight between a gang of squatters and some locals. He tried to escape by breaking into an old lady's apartment and ordering her to get out. He's got several counts of theft and vandalism as well, including smashing the windows of parked cars and kicking a phone booth to death. Why isn't this guy in jail?

Great. How in the hell did these lowlifes ever think they could get away with such pointless vandalism? Answer: Because of broken-windows syndrome. There were no park police up there at night and bums were sleeping there and the local scumbags were drinking litronas and getting high and leaving garbage all over the place. Come on, Saura, do your job and have the cops patrol Barcelona's parks. And kick out the damn squatters instead of kissing their asses.

Gee, the suspension of the Italian league sure lasted a long time; play begins again this weekend. Stadiums which do not meet certain standards will be closed to the public; the games will be played before empty seats and TV cameras. Of course, the big clubs' stadiums meet the standards. This is not a bad idea, forcing clubs to build safer stadiums, but the real problem are of course the street gangs associated with the clubs. Meanwhile, Madrid coach Fabio Capello, get this, praised the Ultra Sur, Madrid's hooligans, for supporting the team.

The murder case in Fago is getting even better--now the guy who confessed to killing the mayor has withdrawn his confession. Meanwhile, the astronaut-love-triangle story is big news over here.

Big news in Spain: Erika Ortiz, the sister of Princess Letizia, Crown Prince Felipe's wife, was found dead today in her Madrid apartment at age 31. This is all over the media; they're currently speculating about the cause of death, which has not been announced.

Football update: The Spanish media is reporting that Barcelona plans to buy Cristiano Ronaldo for next season, that the deal is going to happen. Sounds like a great idea to me, he's young and a great player. The question is which midfielder do you get rid of--Deco, Xavi, or Iniesta? Doesn't make sense to have four skill guys to play two skill midfield positions. I suppose you could change to a 4-4-2 and play three skill guys along with Edmilson or Márquez as the defensive midfielder, but it looks to me like somebody is going to get sold.

Other players likely on their way out: Ezquerro, who is a decent player, but just doesn't belong here, Motta, who is nowhere near living up to his promise, Thuram, who has not been what was expected, and Jorquera, who is several years older than Valdés and not convincing as the backup goalie. Also, Barça is getting old at both fullback positions, with Zambrotta, Belletti, Sylvinho, and van Bronckhorst all over 30.

Barça defender Oleguer, a fine player, is also a political idiotarian, a Commie ultra-Cataloony. He even "wrote" a book last year full of his ill-considered ravings. Now he's written an article, published in a pro-ETA Basque newspaper, calling on the government to free De Juana Chaos. Question: If Fascist Italian player Fabio di Canio has been widely criticized for his extremist political views, why not Oleguer?

Spain and England play a friendly tonight, which should be fun. Both teams are notorious underachievers, and both are in trouble in the preliminary round of Eurocup qualifying. They don't like each other, either, after Spanish coach Luis Aragonés's highly racist comments about Thierry Henry and the Spanish crowd's racist jeering of the black English players.

Nobody's really sure what's happening at Real Madrid. Is Calderón in or out as club president? Is Capello in or out as coach? Is Madrid ever going to win another match after the 0-1 humiliation they suffered in their own stadium against Levante last week?

Note: There are currently 10 American players starting in the English Premier League. Mostly for mediocre teams, to be sure, your Fulhams and Watfords and Readings. I suppose the only two playing for important clubs are Howard at Everton and Ogeiwu at Newcastle. Still, our boys are getting a little better; I'll bet in two more years there'll be twenty of them. American players seem to do better in the physical English league than in the more skill-oriented Spanish or Italian leagues, and language and culture also have to be a factor.

There's a massive constitutional stink going on over here in Spain. It's confusing, but illustrative of the state of government around here.

1. A few months ago the Spanish parliament approved a new "statute of autonomy" (something like a state constitution in the US) for Catalonia, after negotiations between Socialist Prime Minister of Spain Zap and CiU leader Artur Mas.

2. The new statute is not popular on the Right or among centralist elements on the Left. The PP, among other organizations, filed a judicial review appeal to the Constitutional Court, saying that the new statute violated the Spanish constitution in a myriad of ways. The most important violations were related to the division of powers between the national and regional governments; the PP and its allies say that the statute arrogates powers to the Catalan regional government which the constitution reserves to the Spanish central government.

3. Well, that's fine, that's the way we do things in a representative democracy under the rule of law. If the legislature does something you think is unconstitutional, you appeal it to the courts.

4. On Monday, the Constitutional Court voted 6-5 to recuse judge Pérez Tremps, a leftist member of the Court, on the grounds that he had been paid as a consultant on the very issue of division of power for the Generalitat, the Catalan regional government, before his appointment to the Court. Note that Pérez Tremps did not feel it necessary to recuse himself.

5. This means that the Constitutional Court will most likely vote 6-5 to overturn the Catalan statute.

6. Media shitstorm.

7. Now there is pressure on Pérez Tremps to resign his position on the Court so that Zap can appoint another judge to take his place, which would presumably make the vote 6-6.

8. Many people have therefore concluded that one massive problem with democracy in Spain is that there is no pretense that the judiciary is a neutral honest broker. Rather, the judiciary is openly political. Which means that there will always be an element of society that refuses to accept its verdict as a honest judgement.

Gregg Easterbrook, of the Brookings Institution, Atlantic Monthly, and ESPN.com, is earth's best NFL columnist. Here's his take on the Super Bowl.

Easterbrook, however, says something laughably incorrect in about his third paragraph:

The popularity of American-style football is likely to grow internationally – gridiron is taking off in Mexico at the moment, for instance. Not only is football fun to watch and to play, most of the world continues to admire the United States and look up to us – it's our foreign policy the world disdains; the American dream remains beloved almost everywhere. As democracy expands and more nations liberalize, more nations will long to become like the United States. And since football resides near the core of American culture, more people internationally will want the sport. They will reason, "America is strong and free and prosperous, America loves football, maybe football somehow helps you become strong and free and prosperous."

Maybe in Eastern Europe, Asia and Africa, but not in Western Europe or Latin America, where everything about the United States is despised. It's not our foreign policy, Mr. Easterbrook, it's us they don't like.

Here's Andy Robinson in La Vanguardia on the Super Bowl.

Everything ended up as predicted despite the torrential rain. The Indiana (sic) Colts contundently defeated the Chicago Bears, 29-17, and Indiana quarterback Peyton Manning was voted Most Valuable Player. The Super Bowl--with 74,000 spectators in the stadium and millions at home--was the great cohesive holiday, the 50 states united by Joseph Addias's (sic) touchdown, the national anthem by old Billy Joel, Lay's potato chips, barbecue sauce, commercials from ailing General Motors, and Coca-Cola. Even Prince behaved himself. Gallons of ink were spilled in elogies for Tony Dungy, the first champion Afro-American coach, and no one spent too much time on the suicide last year of his 18-year-old son.

Stay classy, Andy.

From the "We're All Moderates Here at the Guardian" department:

Get this dreamy supporter of Go to Hell Hugo named Richard Gott:

A freshly mobilised and alert population is beginning to flex its muscles, taking part in political decision-making through a myriad local councils and ad-hoc committees operating at many levels. Nothing like this has happened in Latin America since the Cuban Revolution nearly half a century ago.

And when this guy mentions the Cuban Revolution, he's in favor of it. There's even more here, including a defense of Chavez's expropriations:

We know too that he wants to improve tax collection and to do something about gross inequality, the untackled evil throughout Latin America except in Cuba. We also know that he is hostile to unbridled capitalism, and has made friendly remarks about cooperatives and other ways of organising the private sector.

And a defense of the crackdown on the press:

Chávez is not a dictator and has never shown the slightest sign of wanting to become one. He has no blueprint that he seeks to impose on the country. He wants to extend press freedom for example, not to reduce it, and, while curbing the power to make money of irresponsible press barons like Marcel Granier of RCTV, he has also put state funds into the development of community radio and television stations...

To top that off, here's some guy named Edward Pearce who's pissed off that he gets called "anti-American":

The charge of anti-Americanism made by new right British journalists against critics of the Bush government is in itself a nonsense...

Dude. Critics of the Bush administration are not necessarily anti-American. People who complain about the society as a whole, who do not mention the good along with the bad, and who fall into oft-repeated stereotypes most certainly are.

That nation is, for a start, absurdly militarised...(it)has taken on Prussian qualities - qualities reinforced by bullying and manipulative populism: Prussia served by Fox TV...The United States is far too patriotic for the ultimate good of the rest of us. They salute a flag; they talk about themselves all the time...The United States, for all its vein of intense religion, attracts politicians fascinated by immoral acts...American society, so patriotic, so fundamentally deferential to money and power talking patriotism, is not shaped to stop them. For American life contains another poison - nicely cultivated fear...a country so self-preoccupied that, on the last figure I heard, only about 12% of citizens held passports, is ill-equipped to understand the complexity of those dangers.

Not much about Bush there, but a lot about power-mad manipulated hyper-patriotic ultra-religious panic-stricken self-absorbed ignorant Americans. Now get the last line:

"Anti-American" we are not; but darkly worried about America we certainly should be.

You are anti-American, Mr. Pearce. Your problem is not the Bush administration, your problem is all of us. You don't like us, and you wouldn't like us no matter what our president did. Why can't you just be honest and admit that?

The British press has been making a stink for several days about a friendly fire incident in Iraq, dating from only seven days after the invasion, when American A-10s made an erroneous attack on a British convoy that killed one British soldier. Fox News has the Sun's report (including a link) on the just-leaked video; of course, the two media outlets are part of the same corporation.

What the tape makes clear is that the soldier, Corporal Matty Hull, was killed in a tragic mistake. The pilots (reservists who had never seen combat before) and air traffic controller screwed up massively, and were overcome by remorse as soon as they realized what they had done--one of them started crying.

I do not understand why the Pentagon and the British ministry of defense tried to cover this up. Obviously, it was a military secret during the actual fighting, but after Saddam's armed forces had been defeated, they should have made the incident public.

I do understand the US military's unwillingness to turn its soldiers over to a foreign court. What I don't understand is why the US military did not itself publicly court-martial and discipline those responsible.

And what I want to know is who leaked the tape to the Sun.

John Derbyshire at National Review has a piece on West African immigration to Europe, especially Spain. We have been posting on this story for at least 18 months, and we've seen very few articles in the international press on the tragedy of the boat people who die by the thousands on their way to the Canary Islands.

Breaking news: They busted an Al Qaeda / Salafist suspected terrorist this morning in Reus, near Tarragona. This guy, a Moroccan, was part of an infrastructure group that sent 32 suicide bombers to Iraq. And there are those who doubt that we are fighting the enemy, who openly declare their goal of killing or forcibly converting those of us who prefer Western liberal democracy, on the ground in Baghdad.

Yesterday in Bilbao 18 of the 19 members of ETA's youth squad, Jarrai, who have been sentenced to six years in prison each for membership in a terrorist organization, were arrested in the middle of a pro-ETA show of force. The puppy terrorists and Batasuna leaders like Otegi and Permach held a demo outside a jai alai fronton, and then the "youths" retreated inside the building while the rest of the demonstrators (without using violence) impeded the police from entering to arrest them. The cops were filmed hauling the punks away while the pro-ETA crowd jeered them.

In probably related news, somebody set off a small bomb at the Baracaldo train station last night.

The PP, the Foro de Ermua, and the AVT had a demo on Saturday in Madrid against negotiations with ETA in particular and the Zap government in general. More symbolic politics; the Right opposition calls one of these demos every couple of months, and I don't see what good they're doing. One of the problems with demos is that in general only the most rabid partisans turn out, and those people make your cause look bad. The lefty hippies and anarchists and that lot who show up for all their demos make most normal people react negatively to their cause, while the far-right wingnuts who show up at these PP demos yelling (often in pre-constitutional language) that Zap is behind the March 11 bombings have the same effect. I would suggest fewer demonstrations and more attention to the virtues of the free market, the rule of law, and a realistic foreign policy.

Barcepundit has more.

Racial tension in Badalona: A bunch of Romanian gypsies squatted in an apartment building in that Barcelona suburb, and the local residents kicked up a big stink, though there was no violence. The gypsies, who had trashed the place and had been having all-night parties, have moved on, and the crisis is over until it happens somewhere else in a couple of weeks or months or so. Meanwhile, the conflict in the town of Vidreres, where some twenty gypsy families have set up a trailer camp, is still on. Locals accuse gypsies of extorting money from them and of defecating in the streets.

Most Spaniards dislike gypsies a great deal, and I'd say that some of them hate gypsies. They say gypsies are dirty and steal and beat up their women. I'm not real fond of a lot of gypsies myself. Yeah, that's racist and prejudiced.

Unfortunately, there is some justification for these stereotypes. Most gypsies are part of the underclass, and many behave a great deal like some underclass people in the US--that is, with a values system of their own, quite different from mainstream society. I would not willingly go to gypsy neighborhoods like Can Tunis, La Mina, or parts of El Carmel here in Barcelona, because those are bad areas and you might get robbed. Nobody who wasn't looking to buy drugs would go to Can Tunis, and the cab drivers won't go there. Now, there is a gypsy area around Plaza Raspall in Gracia, and another around Calle de la Cera in the Raval, and those are decent neighborhoods inhabited by decent people. Some gypsies do live according to the standards of society in general. But a disproportionate amount of them don't.

The Times got an interview with hunger-striking terrorist Iñaki de Juana Chaos, guilty of 25 murders, including a photo of him in shackles in his hospital bed. I say if he wants to die, let him. I have no sympathy for such a person, and if Spain had the death penalty, he would have been a leading candidate for it. I'd have voted yes if I were on the jury.

Anthony Daniels has a must-read piece in the New Criterion, a revisionist look at George Orwell and "Homage to Catalonia."

Mark Steyn has a whack at the environmentalist fundies, who he calls the ecochondriacs, and what we call the Joan Saura and Imma Mayol show over here. Key paragraph:

The question is whether what's happening now is just the natural give and take of the planet, as Erik the Red and my town's early settlers understood it. Or whether it's something so unprecedented that we need to divert vast resources to a transnational elite bureaucracy so that they can do their best to cripple the global economy and deny much of the developing world access to the healthier and longer lives that capitalism brings.

The European press, along with much of the American, makes me sick. Every Continental report on the war in Iraq denounces the Americans, the British, George Bush, and Tony Blair every single day.

I am repulsed by the press's total lack of concern for the majority of Iraqis who want to live in freedom and peace.

Remember, in 2005, 63% of Iraqis turned out to vote on their new constitution, and 78% of them voted in favor. Iraq has held several free elections with more than 50% turnout, including the one that put the current government in office.

But there are well-funded and well-armed gangs of terrorists who, for whatever reason, don't want peace. They prefer to kill, as we saw in the latest suicide-car bombing in a Baghdad market that killed at least 120 people. These gangs of terrorists operate almost exclusively in four provinces in the central part of the country, and they are committing the worst atrocities imaginable. They have killed tens of thousands of law-abiding people.

I do not understand why the press is not demanding that the terrorist gangs in and around Baghdad, who are aided by the Iranian and Syrian regimes and Al Qaeda, be crushed militarily. Every day they kill innocent people. Every day. And no one but the Iraqi government and the American and British armed forces is trying to stop them.

Don't fool yourselves. The terrorists operating today in Baghdad will be more than happy to operate in London and Paris as soon as they can.

Did Bush make mistakes? Yes, he made a lot. The most important was underestimating the threat of Islamist terrorism and not sending in enough troops for the postwar pacification of Iraq. The second was going to the United Nations, as if that gang of Third World dictators had any moral authority, to ask permission to take out Saddam. The third was giving any explanation for doing so, beyond a mere "Saddam is quite obviously a criminal who is a threat to world peace." And the fourth was not using US military power to interdict terrorists and their supply lines within Syrian and Iranian territory.

The fact that Bush made mistakes does not mean that the reason the war was fought was wrong, or that the war which is being fought now is wrong. No American war president has failed to make mistakes, some of them (Washington's near-crushing defeat at New York, the British capture of Washington DC, giving McClellan a field command, the defeat near the Yalu River, manufacturing incredibly crappy naval torpedoes, not firing MacArthur soon enough, backing down to Stalin at Yalta, screwing up the Treaty of Versailles, trying to defend the Philippines, choosing Vietnam as the place to stand up against the Communists, not taking Saddam out in 1991) much more serious than any George W. Bush has yet made.

Now Hillary Clinton, who voted for and vocally backed the Iraq War, has turned 180 degrees and is saying that if she had been president, the US wouldn't have invaded Iraq. She's also called for US troops to leave Iraq before Bush's second term ends.

What selfish hypocrisy. Hillary Clinton obviously cares nothing for the great majority of Iraqis, who support their democratic constitution and who are now being murdered by the hundreds by those who don't. And she does not realize that the people who are killing the Iraqis now are the same as those who want to kill the rest of us.

From the "With Allies Like These, Who Needs Enemies" department, here's Xavier Batalla in today's Vanguardia:

The Bush Administration has decided to turn the screws on the Iranian regime, which will not renounce its nuclear program, now minimized by Jacques Chirac, though he later rectified. Washington is officially motivated by the ideal of changing a dictatorship into a democracy. And in order to achieve this, it wants worldwide sanctions on Teheran, an initiatie that has caused concern among the other members of the Security Council.

Why is this initiative not convincing? Because the United States is the only member of the Security Council that has nothing to lose. Washington ended its political relationship and most of its commercial links with Iran a quarter of a century ago. And the Iranians are now buying automobiles from France, arms from Russia--which is courting them over natural gas--, and air conditioners from China, which in return gets 18% of the petroleum it consumes. The European Union, beginning with Germany, which sells generators to Taiwan, represents one-third of Iranian trade.

What a bunch of weasels.

From the "We're Not Anti-Semitic, We Just Don't Like the Way the Jews Are Running the World" department, by Manuel Castells, boldface mine:

...(The perspective of negotiations with Iran and Syria) is blocked, of course by Bush, but also by the powerful pro-Israeli lobby among the Democrats, including Senator Lieberman, who has the key to breaking ties in the Senate and who directly represents Israel's interests. And also Hillary Clinton, whose electoral base and financial support have decisive influence in the pro-Israeli media, particularly in New York.

Mr. Castells apparently does not know that, in the US, alleging that a person is not loyal to the US first and to any other country or organization second is considered bigotry and prejudice. For example, it wasn't until John F. Kennedy that the false idea that Catholics were loyal first to the Pope and only second to the United States was finally put to rest.

The Spanish media is also on a massive global warming kick; in an orgy of antiglobalization propaganda, La Vanguardia devotes its first-page main headline and three more interior pages to Green orthodoxy today.

Soccer violence went too far again last night in Italy as a policeman was killed by a homemade explosive during rioting between the street gangs loyal to Palermo and Catania. Literally hundreds of people were injured, as both gangs fought one another and the police. The Italian league has been suspended indefinitely. Last week a soccer gang fight led to the beating death of one man, and last month a black French policeman shot a rioter dead after a PSG-Hapoel match, as a lynch mob chased him and a Jewish fan. Here in Spain, a couple of years ago, a Celta-Deportivo game ended up with a man kicked to death, and the Sevilla gang brutally beat a security guard inside the stadium with the cameras on.

I don't know why the authorities don't make the clubs ban these gangs. They should not be allowed in the stadiums. I bet what would work is holding the home club financially responsible for the actions of its followers. That'd end a lot of the violence right there.

The Fago murder case would make an all-time classic roman noir. The cops arrested the local PSOE leader, who had had both political and financial problems with the PP mayor, who was found filled full of bullets. The suspect confessed this morning and said he was the only one involved, which the media doesn't seem to believe. The town was apparently sharply divided between partisans and enemies of the mayor, and the sleazier TV shows are playing this up big.

Looks like the big electrical corporate merger war is over, with German utility E.ON bidding €38.75 a share for Endesa, Spain's biggest electric power company. This is, of course, a much better deal than Spanish utility Gas Natural was offering. Anti-Zap polemicists claimed that Zap and the PSOE were favoring a Gas Natural takeover, and the Zap administration certainly did everything it could to block E.ON's bid.

Barça plays Osasuna tomorrow night in Pamplona. Since Osasuna is the roughest team in Spain (reet tough buggers, says La Liga Loca) and since it's going to be cold, Ronaldinho is sitting out. Eto'o is finally coming back, though, after nearly five months out, and that ought to improve this team a lot. Meanwhile, Leo Messi might be ready for the match against Racing next week. Barcelona was able to cling on to first place without these two guys, and I imagine that as they get back in form, Barça will pull away from valiant but overmatched Sevilla and the circus that is Real Madrid. Watch out for Valencia, whose injured players are also coming back, and who have the best group of Spanish players in the league. They are the team I fear most.

It's about time for another blog roundup:

Expat Yank has more on the attempted kidnapping and beheading of a Muslim British soldier.

La Liga Loca has its Flustered Weekend Preview up.

Davids Medienkritik has a guest post up titled "Why the Amis Are the New Nazis." A must-read.

Patrick Crozier, the guy who helped set up Iberian Notes, has a thoughtful reconsideration of the First World War.

Pave France has a whack at Jack's flip-flopping on a nuclear Iran.

This video is hilarious. !No Pasarán! links to a rather weak French contestant on "Who Wants to Be a Millionaire?"

The Euroserf has more on another EU attempt at censorship. Good thing the US has a First Amendment.

Roncesvalles remembers the sinking of the Wilhelm Gustloff.

Royals Review wants to know who the worst ever of our boys in blue was. I say Neifi Perez.

Publius Pundit has the text of Go To Hell Hugo's enabling act that makes him the Führer.

Rainy Day compares Jack Shafer and Christopher Hitchens.

Biased BBC has something nice to say about Jeremy Paxman.

John Leo speaks truth to the Thought Police at City Journal.

Dumb bit of censorship around here: Idiot alleged actor-comedian Pepe Rubianes has been charged with "insulting Spain," which is apparently against the law, and is facing a €21,000 fine. He spewed venom against Spain and Spaniards using the crudest and most ignorant language on TV3 back in January 2006, as you may remember. If he is charged with "inciting to hatred," he may be looking at three years in jail. Now, for sheer anti-American hatred, it's hard to top this 2003 Rubianes diatribe which we posted back then.

Though Iberian Notes despises Rubianes, we defend his freedom to be an asshole. Which he most certainly is.

More Spanish TV censorship, or at least what they'd call censorship if it was the Super Bowl: They aired the Goya Awards ceremony, Spain's equivalent of the Oscars, on a half-hour delay, I suppose so that no one would say anything offensive. Great. I'm in favor. The TV people have the right to do whatever they want, since it's their show. They can censor invited guests; if the guest doesn't like being censored, he doesn't have to go on the show.

But the Spanish media howled long and hard that the Yanks were committing puritanical censorship when they put the Rolling Stones on a five-second delay at the Super Bowl last year and told them not to sing the line "You'd make a dead man come" from "Start Me Up." I haven't heard any such howling now that they're doing it over here.

Oh, wow. This is so bad it's good.

My favorite comic magazine is Viz from England. They run a regular feature called the Profanisaurus, a glossary of crude and vulgar terms, which has greatly expanded my vocabulary. Here are a few words and expressions; let's see if you can provide definitions.

budgie's tongue (n.)
to crank (v.)
flavour of the month (n.)
Cleveland steamer (n.)
to draw an ace (v.)
heirbags (n. pl.)
biddy fiddler (n.)
belly warmers (n. pl.)
dirty Sanchez (n.)
ankle spanker (n.)
airplane blonde (n.)
banjo cleaner (n.)
wide-on (n.)
to tip one's concrete (v.)
crumpet trumpet (n.)
to shell (v.)
salad dodger (n.)
Catalan custard (n.)
to use live rounds in a training exercise (v.)
to Pink Floyd (v.)
to disengage the airbrakes (v.)
Heinz jacuzzi (n.)
shuttlecock (n.)
reserve chute (n.)

They had an anti-global warming protest this evening in Europe: everybody was supposed to turn out all their lights between 7:55 and 8 PM. Of course, I turned on all my lights, opened the windows, and cranked up the Hag doing "The Fightin' Side of Me." Remei said I was being childish, but I thought it was pretty funny. I didn't notice any participation on my street; everybody kept their lights on as far as I could tell.

Supposedly Woody Allen is going to film a movie in Barcelona with Penelope Cruz next summer. I haven't actually liked any Woody Allen movies since about "Annie Hall." Penelope Cruz is certainly one hot babe, though she was even hotter before the plastic surgery, of course. As an actress, I'm not much of a judge, though I have noticed that the only character she ever plays is a hot babe. If you've never seen "Jamón, Jamón," check it out, as Penelope is at her most babelicious.

Go to Hell Hugo has passed an enabling act which will allow him to make laws. I know that comparing someone today with the Nazis is a sign you have lost the argument, but I'm going to do it anyway. It was the enabling act that the Reichstag passed that allowed Hitler to seize total power in Germany. Venezuela right now still has hope: the press hasn't been completely muzzled and the opposition isn't in jail yet. This is going to be the last straw, though; Venezuela has officially become a dictatorship. I would leave now. Meanwhile, the shit is about to hit the fan in Ecuador. New President Rafael Correa has threatened "mucha violencia" if a new constitutional convention is not called.

Fausta has more at Pajamas Media.

Democratic Representative Loretta Sanchez has accused Democratic Representative Joe Baca of calling her a "whore." Where's the feminist wing demanding Baca's resignation? Oops, he's a Hispanic Democrat, not a white Anglo Republican.

Half of Spanish households now have an Internet connection. That seems kind of low.

The Audiencia Nacional, Spain's highest non-appeals court, has ordered that the CNI, the National Intelligence Service, declassify all information on alleged secret CIA flights in and out of Spain. Meanwhile, Germany has demanded the extradition of thirteen alleged CIA agents, which of course will happen when George Jones sings rap.

The controversy about Basque premier Ibarretxe's testimony on charges of meeting with an illegal political party, ETA-front Batasuna, has turned into a much-needed debate on the independence of the judiciary. In Spain, judges do not even pretend to be apolitical; instead, there are several major political organizations of judges, one leftist, one conservative, and one sort of in the middle. There are also some non-affiliated judges. This is, of course, absolutely wrong. A judge must interpret the law as she is wrote, not through his political perspective.

A bunch of ETA-wannabe fourteen-year-old kids profaned the grave of Gregorio Ordóñez, the Basque PP leader murdered by the ETA. That's just sick. Agreed, it's merely symbolic, but it shows total lack of respect for human life. This is the sort of person that the 15% of crazy mental Basques who support ETA produce, and that is one evil subculture. I'm not sure we'll ever completely crush ETA as long as such a significant fraction of society is pro-murder.

La Vanguardia says straight out that the UN is planning a pro-Kyoto Protocol campaign in order to pressure the United States. They plan to produce a whole series of reports to be released during all of 2007. Quote: "The Inter-Governmental Group of Experts on Climate Change (that is, the usual gang of crooks) has a program for the year that seems like the perfect script to put the US up against the ropes." Naturally, the Vangua's headline is "UN increases pressure on Bush to accept Kyoto." Of course, it's not Bush who's blocking American acceptance of the Kyoto Protocol, it was the Senate, who voted 95-0 against it back in 1997. During the Clinton administration.

They thought of a brilliant idea to reduce automobile traffic in Barcelona. They're planning to reduce tolls on turnpikes entering town for cars carrying two persons or more, in order to provide an incentive for people to carpool! Gee, that's creative and original! Next thing you know they'll actually build parking lots near suburban train stations so people can "park and ride"!

I was just disgusted by this story. (Note: I've been a vegetarian for 25 years.) There is an organization in Catalonia that wants to preserve historic breeds of farm animals. Great, sounds good to me, I love animals, and it'd be a shame for the Catalan donkey, of which about 300 remain, to disappear. So up in the Pyrenees, THEY KILLED TWO OF THEM AND TURNED THEM INTO DONKEYBURGERS, which 500 people ate. This was supposedly in order to get media attention. Said Jaume Mora, "Our goal is to promote the Pallars region as a gastronomic tourist destination, and we think this could be attractive." What exactly is attractive about eating donkey meat?

Aaron Hanscomb has a piece up on Front Page on anti-Semitism in Europe, and is kind enough to link to us. This one is much better than the Front Page piece we linked to yesterday.

Seems that the city of Miami is planning a celebration, to be held in the Orange Bowl football stadium, when Fidel dies. I'd hold off on the party until democracy is reintroduced in Cuba. By the way, Fidel hasn't been out in public for more than six months.

Iker Aguirre, the ETA guy who got arrested a couple of days ago on a France-Barcelona train, had been ordered by ETA leader Garikoitz "Cherokee" Aspiazu to plan a major attack in Valencia in the next three months. The proposed targets were Valencia harbor, which is being prepared for the America's Cup, and tourist areas in Alicante province. The attacks were to go off in April and May, right before the municipal elections. Crush these bastards now. To hell with "dialogue."

Basque Country premier Juan José Ibarretxe of the PNV has been summoned to testify as a witness in the case against Otegi, Petrikorena, and Barrena, the leaders of ETA-front political party Batasuna. Seems that Batasuna, though it was banned for supporting terrorism by the Political Parties Act, held an official meeting in April 2006 with Ibarretxe. This is illegal, since Batasuna is not allowed to carry on any kind of political activity unless and until it breaks with ETA. All the Basque nationalist parties held a protest demo in Bilbao that brought out 45,000 people according to the local police. The problem with the Basque nationalists is you're never sure whose side they're on, since they condemn ETA but oppose a government crackdown.

Francesc-Marc Alvaro takes a whack at Anti-System Imma Mayol in today's Vangua, calling her words "absurd," "an invitation to satire," "ultramoralizing and decorative parlor-pink fetishism," "frivolous," "an official imposture," and "far from reality."

Seems there was a riot last night at the Internment Center for Foreigners in the Zona Franca; a bunch of the prisoners beat up the guards and some of the other inmates. The riot was suppressed by the strong-arm squad. These guys are all of North African origin and mostly have long police records; they rioted because they heard rumors that they were going to be deported. I'm not sure why we haven't deported the lot already.

La Vangua has a full-page story on Paris Hilton today. Why? Why would anyone in Barcelona care? We have our own trashy celebrities over here and we don't need any more.

One clear sign of anti-Americanism (and anti-Semitism, and anti-everythingelseism) is out-of-context criticism. That is, if you're talking about something completely different and you throw in some America-bashing for no particular reason, you're most likely an anti-American. You are especially likely to be anti-American if your bashing is an oft-repeated stereotype.

So get this on the back page of La Vanguardia this morning. One Lluís Amiguet interviews one Clément Rosset, who is billed as a French-Spanish "philosopher." One of Rosset's pearls is: "Iberian culture knows how to find happiness in the tragedy of living." Huh? Since when? What a dumb generalization.

Anyway, Amiguet asks Rosset, "Why are we so afraid?"

First, who's "we," white man? I'm not particularly afraid of anything I can control; yes, I'm "afraid" of getting run over by a bus, as anyone sensible would be, but I don't exactly dwell on the subject, since I'm generally pretty careful to stay out of the path of oncoming buses. And as for things I can't control, I just have to accept that shit happens, and you play the hand of cards you get dealt.

But Rosset answers,

Because when you deny death, illness, and pain, you are much more afraid of everything. You fear that a sick person or even a dead one will sneak into the shopping mall and wake us up from the dream of consumption. Look at the United States: they live sunk in continual paranoia.

For some reason anti-Americans love to think that American society lives shaking in fear and panic. It's the most frequently-repeated Yank-bashing meme I see. Of course, nothing could be farther from the truth; in fact, I think Spanish society is more paranoid than American. You hear many more conspiracy theories over here; there's always some hidden power group that controls everything. Rosset manages to work in another Yank-bashing meme, that American society cares about nothing except for material consumption. And, of course, who says Americans deny death, illness, and pain? Seems to me that if we're a bunch of crazy Jesus freaks, as another oft-repeated meme goes, that means we're very concerned with the subjects of death and the afterlife, right? But with an anti-American, you can't win either way.

Amiguet replies, "The Frightened States of America."

Says Rosset,

Precisely because they have decided to hide the dark side of existence. If you accept it naturally, you are much less afraid, because you accept that someday you will get sick, die, get old, be ugly, sad, maybe you'll be alone, very alone...

1) The Americans have "decided to hide the dark side of existence?" How was that decision made? Did we take a vote or was it imposed by the Bush administration? 2) It seems healthier to me not to dwell on or obsess about unpleasant facts like illness and death that we cannot control. If you go around thinking about that stuff all the time, as Rosset seems to be recommending--he says, "The central question of philosophy is that we are going to die," and "We must be conscious of the immense joke of this existence: we are all going to die," you're likely to be miserable. Yes, we all know we are going to die, but why ruin a nice sunny morning contemplating it?

Christopher Hitchens praises Nick Cohen's book and rips the Left a new asshole. Check it out.

Go read this article at Front Page; it's a rather foaming-at-the-mouth denunciation of the Zap government, and the translation from Spanish is not particularly good. The author, of course, is totally biased against Zap and the Socialists; while he makes many good points, especially regarding Zap's (and leftist Spain's) anti-Semitism and anti-Americanism, he goes too far in more than one place. Even the title, "Spain: the European Iran" is a bit excessive. "The Zap Government: Wannabe France-Loving Weasels" would be more like it.

Here are a couple of paragraphs:

Zapatero introduced what the calls “the process,” Spain's very own Oslo Accords. The idea is to give the Marxist Leninist group ETA everything it asks for (including whole parts of Spain like Navarra, in a move some say reminiscent of Hitler’s claims over Czech Republic) in order to “bring peace.”

While I completely agree that Zap is a fool, he doesn't want to "give ETA everything it asks for."

Zapatero’s numbers are plunging faster than Bush’s.

Not yet they're not, unfortunately.

...but after putting his men in charge of many important business and banks, Zapatero promised Endesa to a government-friendly Gas Natural.

I've heard speculations of this sort, but haven't seen any proof.

(People are asking) if Moroccan dealings in Córdoba and Seville expelling non-Muslims from whole neighborhoods are not “occupation.”

I haven't heard about anything of this sort.

Saudi petrodollars are bribing increasing amounts of Spanish journalists through Muslim organizations in Madrid, Barcelona, Valencia and Murcia to talk about Iraq, but also about the Wahhabi version of the Middle East. Journalists earning less than 1000 EUR a month are driving BMW cars, and there seems to be a pact of silence inside many Spanish newspapers not to ask a single word.

If you're going to make charges like this, you've got to have proof. Some specific examples would be nice. I think Spanish journalists tend to be more incompetent and biased than corrupt. Possible exception: Tomás Alcoverro. I am convinced this guy, who owns a house in Beirut, is in somebody's pocket. But I can't prove it.

No wonder why Spanish Jews are considering aliyah.

I hadn't heard they were.

A country ready and willing to receive tourists? No, tourists should avoid it right away.

The Zap government infuriates me too, but you can't blame the whole country. Be anti-Zap, but not anti-Spain.

From the "We're Not Anti-Semitic, We Just Oppose the Israeli Government" department:

The Madrid suburb of Ciempozuelos, governed by the PSOE, of course, has announced that it will celebrate "Palestinian Genocide Day" on Saturday. In case you didn't know, Saturday is the international Holocaust day of memorial. Israeli ambassador Victor Harel said, "This is an act of pure anti-Semitism, in which the memory of the Jews and Israel are offended with monumental falsehoods." Harel called the Ciempozuelos mayor and city council "insensitive, ignorant, and acting in bad faith."

Meanwhile, the Asturias regional government, run by the PSOE, of course, financed and published a book called "Internationals in Israel" that calls Israel "a terrorist state" and calls for its "total defeat."

Zap met with the European Jewish Congress on Friday and said he was against anti-Semitism. However, he doesn't seem to have done anything about the behavior of his own party.

I was wrong to give credit yesterday to the Zap government; they actually did want the Audiencia Nacional to grant house arrest to ETA terrorist De Juana Chaos. They blamed the 12-4 vote by the judges on "pressure from the PP." The Basque regional government, headed by the PNV, called the decision "a mistake." Meanwhile, the cops busted an ETA terrorist on the train between the French border and Barcelona. The guy was carrying instructions for manufacturing bombs and stealing cars and six fake IDs, among other things. He's got a record for terrorist attacks, rioting, and concealing weapons.

The two major public opinion stinks going around are 1) the way dishonest renters are taking advantage of the Spanish law requiring a judicial order for an eviction, causing landlords not to want to rent out their apartments and 2) the panic in the middle-class Barcelona suburbs (urbanizaciones) over the perceived rising crime rate. Yesterday a homeowner in Sudanell, Lleida province, faced with a home invasion, shot one man dead and wounded another inside his house. The cops busted a third robber, and a fourth got away. La Vangua reports on its front page that suburban residents are starting up their own neighborhood patrols.

Weirdness: A Colombian woman named Darling Vélez applied for Spanish citizenship. They told her that the first name "Darling" was unacceptable; seems that Spanish law prohibits "ridiculous" first names, and first names that do not clearly indicate the sex of their bearer. Ms. Vélez will have to change her first name or be denied citizenship. That's absurd. Who the hell is some bureaucrat to judge that the name "Darling" is ridiculous? And I know an American woman named Joan. What, will she be forbidden Spanish citizenship because "Joan" is a male name in Catalonia? Or an American woman named "Harriet," which is a male name in Basque? And what about a Chinese person named, say, Ziaoshang? How are we going to detect the sex of that one? How about if the government stays out of what people decide to name their kids?

It's cold. There's snow all over Spain. Spanish drivers do not know how to drive in snow, which is understandable since it does not snow much here. Therefore, the highways are snarled up all over the country.

Manuel Trallero, who has pissed me off in the past, comments in La Vangua that Communist-Green pro-squatter anti-system third assistant mayor Imma Mayol goes to the same private eye doctor that he does, rather than using the public health system like my mother-in-law.

The Audiencia Nacional voted this morning to keep hunger-striking terrorist De Juana Chaos in prison; he's currently in the hospital, but he will not be sent home under house arrest, as he is demanding. Good. One thing about this guy is that he is not a repentant former terrorist, he's one of the most violent ETA loyalists. He's tried to escape from prison several times, has sent threatening letters to judges, and has celebrated ETA murders while behind bars. By the way, to the Zap government's credit, they're against turning him loose too.

There's a flu outbreak here in Catalonia. Hasn't hit me yet. The hospitals are full. Almost 200,000 people a day are seeking flu treatment in Spain. Meanwhile, more than 50,000 Catalans are on waiting lists for non-urgent operations. More than 14,000, including my mother-in-law, are awaiting a cataracts operation, about 6000 for bunions, 6000 more for knee replacements, and 5000 for hernias. I'm not complaining about the Spanish public health system, they've treated me very well, but it does have its disadvantages.

Somebody wrote a letter to La Vanguardia today pointing out that Ms. Anti-System, Imma Mayol, makes about €100,000 a year as third assistant mayor.

Tourists spent €8.6 billion in Catalonia in the first eleven months of 2006.

Some guy got stopped Monday night in Cunit at an alcohol checkpoint and he blew 0.68 mg/l on the breath test, so they immobilized his car, charged him, and turned him loose. About an hour later, the same cops were still manning the same checkpoint. The same driver came along in a different car. This time he blew 0.71.

Reminds me of a small-time drug dealer who lived next door to me in Lawrence, Kansas, in 1991-92. This guy's name was Tim, and he wasn't very smart. So one night he's driving home from the Jet Lag Lounge--Tim used to try to get me to go down to the Lag with him, saying, "There's some fine lookin' ladies at the Lag," which was true if your idea of a fine lookin' lady included missing teeth--and the cops nail him for drunk driving. So Tim goes back to the Lag the next night, and what do you know, the cops nail him for drunk driving again. He told me, "I think I can get out of this one. The cop accused me of drinking beer, and everybody knows I only drink Crown." This legal strategy did not work, and Tim got weekends in jail for three months. He instructed me to watch his stash, which he kept under the doghouse in the back yard.

People in the US might want to know that Catalan company Borges has reached an agreement to sell its olive oil and vinegar through Wal-Mart. Borges is headquartered in Tàrrega, about 15 kilometers up the road from my wife's hometown, Vallfogona de Riucorb. It's a pretty good-sized privately-owned company, doing more than €500 million a year in business, and it's a respected brand name in Spain.

In Spain Borges has a line of varietal olive oils that are especially good, and I particularly recommend the arbequena variety, produced mostly in southern Lleída province.

Vallfogona de Riucorb is also in the Costers del Segre wine denomination of origin area. and if you ever see any wines from there, try them. I imagine Raimat, which belongs to the major cava producer Cordoniu, is sold in the US; they make a very good and inexpensive cabernet sauvignon.

Go to Hell Hugo hasn't been receiving much criticism from our friends in the intellectual Left, even though he's shutting down the independent media in Venezuela. Funny, they all seem to think Bush is exercising some kind of iron censorship of the American media.

Canal Plus, which is owned by Prisa, the same pro-PSOE media company that owns El País, showed a documentary called "Jesus Camp" a few days ago, and the America-bashing hysterics are out in full force. The makers of "Jesus Camp" claim that their documentary is a neutral look at a summer camp for charismatic Christian kids; here's the trailer so that you can judge for yourself.

But here's how Canal Plus advertised the documentary: "While other children go on vacation, Levi, Tory, and Rachel train to be soldiers of God. Every summer they attend Kids on Fire, one of the thousands of camps in which they are instructed in the most radical evangelical Christianity, preparing them for the conquest of America in the name of Christ. Brainwashing that millions of American youth are submitted to." Neutral, huh?

Note: Spanish TV loves showing documentaries about the United States that focus on religion, racism, and ultra-right-wingers. TV3 repeats over and over a documentary on those weirdos out in Idaho who are racist survivalist pro-Nazi extremists. The problem with these documentaries is that if they're all you see, you get a very warped and twisted picture of reality. Yes, everything in the documentary about these guys is true. No, they have absolutely nothing to do with ordinary American life, since about 0.01% of the population falls into this category. They are also not a serious threat to anybody but themselves, and are about #1394 on America's list of "Important Things We Need to Do Something About." It took me half of Christmas dinner to explain to Remei's cousin Jordi that these wackos are an infinitesimal minority who everyone else thinks is crazy, rather than in the mainstream of society.

"Jesus Camp" looks like it falls into that same category of documentaries: yes, it's true, but no, it has nothing to do with the mainstream. Check out this paragraph from Wikipedia:

Some evangelicals have taken issue with the filmmakers spotlighting such an extreme group and then associating it with the 90 million-strong National Association of Evangelicals. (Camp leader) Ms Fisher's organization Kids in Ministry International was founded by herself and has absolutely no ties with any other major American evangelical denominations or the National Association of Evangelicals. The film might cause viewers to conclude that Ms. Fisher's camp represents even a fraction of evangelical practice when this is not the case.

Also, check out this piece by Ray Scarborough of liberal cable news network MSNBC.

Even one of the filmmakers told Christianity Today:

At the same time, I did notice some very admirable qualities to the children in our film. They're extremely articulate, they're smart, and they do good things for other people. They think about others, and they lack vanity I've seen in other kids. So on one hand, they're being raised very well. And it's complicated, because one might not agree with the adult that this person might become, or the direction this child is going. However, as children, they're extremely pleasant, and have a lot of things going for them. So I think, again, this whole film falls into a really big grey area. Which is what I think makes it a good movie.

CT also links to this movie review:

Denny Wayman and Hal Conklin (Cinema in Focus) write, "When a documentary explores a subgroup of a large contingent and implies that this defines the whole, then it is appropriate to call 'foul.' This is the case in Jesus Camp. … The implication is made that Pastor Fischer is a prime example of Evangelical Christians' beliefs and practices. This is not only untrue but it also leads to a pervasive misunderstanding."

Now get this, by Ferran Monegal in yesterday's El Periódico, boldface mine:

Infantile brainwashing

My hair stood on end last night while watching the shocking documentary "Jesus Camp" on Canal Plus. It showed us a summer camp for children between 5 and 15 years old in Kansas, Missouri (sic). A woman leader, like a Dr. Menguele (sic), but chubbier, brainwashes them every day with a cardboard statue of Bush presiding the sessions.

First they are submitted to rigorous collective hypnotism in which they are made to repeat, while looking at heaven as if possessed, slogans like "You are the special generation! You will change the world! Raise your hands! Bless George Bush! Let him feel your ardor! Pray for his soul! Tell him, Mr. President, one nation under God!" And after this witches' coven of kidnapping and brainwashing, most of the children enter a sort of general epilepsy, fall on the floor, cry, shout, chant hallelujah, try to touch the Holy Spirit with their hands, and more than one, at the end, openly says that God has entered him and that he guides his hand when he writes in his diary, and in his steps when he walks.

There's more. The parents of these children say, proudly, that their children have never entered a school. This community of brainless fanatic pseudo-evangelists normally educates their children by themselves "to prevent their being contaminated with scientific explanations: the only valid explanation of the world is divine."

I was scared stiff after seeing this documentary. Those spiritual exercises they made us do here, years ago, frightening priests who terrified us with the anger of God and hellfire are nothing in comparison with what we have seen. And the most terrible thing is that we do not know how many American children enter these terrifying camps of mental extermination every summer.

See what I mean? This guy is terrified. He's so biased about America that he really thinks brainwashed evangelical Protestants are coming to get him. They've never showed him a documentary of normal people going to a normal church, or not going to church, so he thinks that the behavior of a tiny handful extreme fundamentalists is somehow dangerous.

Mr. Monegal, there have been a total of zero fundamentalist Christian American suicide bombers, and a total of about three murders of doctors who performed abortions. These people are not dangerous. Weird, yes. But dangerous, no.

For a much more reasonable look at the documentary in Spanish, check out the Catalan Catholic webpage E-Cristians.

The prosecutor's office has announced that it will ask the court to put imprisoned ETA terrorist Ignacio de Juana Chaos under house arrest, as he is "at risk of death" due to the hunger strike he has been on since November.

De Juana Chaos was the head of ETA's Madrid cell, which was responsible for 25 murders. That's more than Jeffrey Dahmer, Charles Manson, and Jack the Ripper put together. Let him rot in jail and if he dies, that's his problem.

The big stink around here is poor performance by Renfe, Spain's train system, especially on the commuter lines in the Barcelona area. Yesterday a tree branch came down across the main Barcelona-Valencia line down in Tarragona province and caused all services to be shut down. In addition, the line from downtown Barcelona to the airport was out of service from 6:30 AM to 2 PM, which also snarled up the rest of the commuter network. 80,000 people were delayed for up to several hours.

My main complaint here is that Renfe is not a private company, it's state-owned, and you know what I think about state-owned companies. I can understand the argument that we should subsidize public transportation in order to discourage the use of cars and to make travel easier for everybody. People are demanding, though, that we get decent service in exchange for the tax money we spend, and they have every right to do so.

Our genius third assistant mayor, Communist-Green Imma Mayol, announced yesterday that she supported the squatters that currently plague Barcelona and that she considered herself "anti-system," which is Spanish code for idiotarian naive-Left frootloop. She boasted, "I rebel against injustice," and I guess that if she's anti-system that means she thinks the city she helps govern is an unjust place. Imma added, "I feel closer to a squatter than to a speculator." CiU responded that Mayol had invented a new category, "anti-system activists with an official chauffeur," and the Socialists, leaders of the Tripartite coalition that governs Barcelona and Catalonia, said, "You can't live inside the system by day and be anti-system by night."

By the way, a letter to today's La Vanguardia takes Mayol to task for shouting from the rooftops that Barcelona's air pollution is double the EU maximum, and demanding that sweeping changes be made, when she herself has been in charge of the city government's environmental department for the last seven years.

La Vangua also reports that a line of cocaine costs three euros in Barcelona. That's less than half the price of a mixed drink, and booze is cheap here too.

The cops busted an Al Qaeda guy in Badalona; he's a Moroccan accused of being part of the gang's finance and forgery infrastructure.

Most brilliant recent idea to alleviate the housing problem: ERC wants to slap a nine-euro-a-day charge on vacant apartments. Better ways to alleviate the housing problem: 1) abolish rent control 2) liberalize antiquated zoning laws 3) make it possible for landlords to evict renters who don't pay or trash the place, which they need a court order to do now.

You will want to read this book extract published in the Observer, of all places, by Nick Cohen. It's on the contradictions of the Left regarding Iraq, and one of Cohen's theses is that Leftists around the world are supporting real, genuine Fascists like Saddam Hussein and the Baath Party simply because they are anti-American. If you didn't think anti-Americanism was dangerous, here's some evidence.

Key paragraphs:

The apparently sincere commitment to help Iraqis vanished the moment Saddam invaded Kuwait in August 1990 and became America's enemy. At the time, I didn't think about where the left was going. I could denounce the hypocrisy of a West which made excuses for Saddam one minute and called him a 'new Hitler' the next, but I didn't dwell on the equal and opposite hypocrisy of a left which called Saddam a 'new Hitler' one minute and excused him the next. All liberals and leftists remained good people in my mind. Asking hard questions about any of them risked giving aid and comfort to the Conservative enemy and disturbing my own certainties...

Why is it that apologies for a militant Islam which stands for everything the liberal left is against come from the liberal left? Why will students hear a leftish postmodern theorist defend the exploitation of women in traditional cultures but not a crusty conservative don? After the American and British wars in Bosnia and Kosovo against Slobodan Milosevic's ethnic cleansers, why were men and women of the left denying the existence of Serb concentration camps? As important, why did a European Union that daily announces its commitment to the liberal principles of human rights and international law do nothing as crimes against humanity took place just over its borders?

Why is Palestine a cause for the liberal left, but not China, Sudan, Zimbabwe, the Congo or North Korea? Why, even in the case of Palestine, can't those who say they support the Palestinian cause tell you what type of Palestine they would like to see? After the 9/11 attacks on New York and Washington why were you as likely to read that a sinister conspiracy of Jews controlled American or British foreign policy in a superior literary journal as in a neo-Nazi hate sheet? And why after the 7/7 attacks on London did leftish rather than right-wing newspapers run pieces excusing suicide bombers who were inspired by a psychopathic theology from the ultra-right?

I'm always amazed at how seriously the Academy Awards, which are just a Hollywood publicity stunt, are taken by the news media over here. One would think that such outfits as El País and TV3 would scorn this capitalist showbiz opiate-of-the-people bread-and-circuses pseudo-event, but they don't. Antena 3 led off the news this afternoon with the story that Penélope Cruz had been nominated for best actress, rather than the news from Lebanon or Iraq or Alcorcón.

Looks like Penélope did good business by agreeing to serve as Tom Cruise's beard for two years. Rumor has it that Pe and Salma Hayek are, uh, planning to star in the film version of "Heather Has Two Mommies."

The cops have taken over Alcorcón, and the local scumbags are currently lying low. The story is they're planning a mass "demonstration" for next Saturday night, armed with baseball bats, in which presumably they will go hunting for sudacas, the local ethnic slur for Latin Americans. They're using text-messaging and internet to organize their activities. Great, just what we need, technologically aware and up-to-date racist mobs. Seems that the Latin Americans in question are by no means innocent, either; it's scumbags vs. scumbags. There are different reports on the Latins: some say they're Latin Kings, and others say they're not.

La Vangua mentioned that some of the local girls have taken up with Latin American boyfriends, which I will bet is one of the major causes of the conflict. You'd be surprised how important sex is as a motivation for racism. The Nazis made a big deal out of Jews corrupting innocent German girls, for example, and Southern white racists were more frightened of black men having sex with white women than anything else.

Real Madrid is apparently ready to get rid of Ronaldo; he's supposedly heading for AC Milan and they are now just haggling about the price. Ronaldo is fat and lazy and a bad influence on the younger players--he's been taking Robinho out drinking, and they showed up at practice hung over a couple of weeks ago. What a disappointing end to a very promising career. If Ronaldo had stayed with Barcelona...but he didn't. I'll bet Ronaldo is playing in MLS before the end of 2008. Figo, by the way, has signed with a team in like Dubai or somewhere like that. That's another guy who will be playing in MLS before too long.

Pau Gasol is supposedly moving to Chicago or Boston before the end of February, says La Vanguardia.

On the Latin Kings:

According to El Mundo, "The Catalan Generalitat has legalized the Latin Kings, the urban gang whose actions have been investigated on numerous occasions by the police, and from now on it will be called "The Cultural Association of Latin Kings and Queens of Catalonia"...The Barcelona city government, which aided in the process of legalization, has also made a commitment to aid in the legalization of the Ñetas, the other gang of similar characteristics, which is openly in confrontation with the Latin Kings...From now on, the recently legalized association will be able to enjoy all the benefits of a legal body, such as receiving economic aid and official subsidies."

According to El País, "The Latin Kings, one of the youth organizations with the largest social base in the United States and Ecuador, created as a brotherhood of support for Latin youths, appeared in Barcelona and its industrial suburbs in December 2002..."The Latin Kings are not a criminal group. It is an organization of aid and solidarity among young Latin American immigrants, although some sectors of the police, especially in Madrid, insist the contrary. It's true that their name has been implicated in some tragic events, but those are isolated incidents, which should not mean the criminalization of the group," said Carlos Feixa of the Barcelona city government."

Quick blog roundup:

A reader of Chicago Boyz has an excellent comment on anti-Americanism in Mexico.

Colin Davies posts on nationalism from Galicia.

Guirilandia takes a swing at just about everybody in Spanish politics, and kindly links to us.

Planet Churro is back and he's not happy with Carod-Rovira.

Publius Pundit fills us in on "Go to Hell, Gringos" Hugo Chavez. Our new nickname for Chavez, a play on "Give 'Em Hell Harry" Truman, is "Go to Hell Hugo."

Pave France has damning evidence on France and Rwanda.

¡No Pasarán! has more on language, Africa, and France.

Notes from Spain is bemused by obligatory nudity in Spanish movies.

Akaky is awesome. I can't believe everybody isn't reading his blog.

The Bad Rash actually has a reasonable and moderate post (on the future of the Left). In other news, Ronaldinho turned down a TV commercial offer, Imma Mayol admitted that she gets "a little hot" when Joan Saura slaps her around, and Bill Clinton reportedly failed to proposition even one woman on November 7, 2006.

La Vanguardia has one of its typical unquestioning reports on what Europeans call "altermundismo," the naive belief that "another world is possible." Seems they are having something called the World Social Forum in Nairobi. Says La Vangua's reporter, "Disputes over land were a factor, along with the fall in the price of coffee and tea, in the genocidal catastrophe in the overpopulated highlands of Rwanda, and they are a factor in the Sudanese province in Darfur."

This sounds to me like economic justification for genocide, as well as a way to blame what happened in Rwanda on someone else rather than the people who beheaded their neighbors with machetes.

Said Vandana Shiva, billed as "an Indian ecologist," "The green revolution in India destroyed the most prosperous land."

And, said Nmimmo Bassey, billed as "the African coordinator for Friends of the Earth," "So far, no genetically modified crops offer benefits to the consumer in terms of quality or price, nor have they done anything to alleviate hunger and poverty in Africa or anywhere else."

Gee, really? From Wikipedia:

There has also been rapid and continuing expansion of GM cotton varieties in India since 2002. (Cotton is a major source of vegetable cooking oil and animal feed.) It is predicted that in 2006/7 32,000 km² of GM cotton will be harvested in India (up more than 100% from the previous season). Indian national average cotton yields have been boosted to close to 50% above the long term average yield during this period. The publicity given to transgenic trait Bt insect resistance has encouraged the adoption of better performing hybrid cotton varieties, and the Bt trait has substantially reduced losses to insect predation. Economic and environmental benefits of GM cotton in India to the individual farmer have been documented.

Or how about this:

The majority of commercially available crops have an agronomic advantage like herbicide tolerance or insect resistance. These traits offer major benefits to the farmer and the environment. Importantly, economic benefits of GM crops in developing countries are more significant compared to industrialised countries because agriculture in these countries is a larger part of the economy, and employs a larger fraction of the labor force, and often agriculture suffers from losses of crops to insects which are remedied in insect protected GM crops. However, in industrialised countries, the consumer benefits from GM traits are mainly indirect, and channeled through their benefits to the environment, including promotion of efficient use of available arable land and water.

GM crops have shown to contribute to significantly reduced greenhouse gas emissions from agricultural practices. This reduction results from decreased fuel use, about 1.8 billion liters in the past nine years, and additional soil carbon sequestration because of reduced ploughing or improved conservation tillage associated with biotech crops. In 2004, this reduction was equivalent to eliminating more than 10 billion kg of carbon dioxide from the atmosphere. GM cotton has greatly reduced synthetic pesticide use in the US, Australia and India.

Or this:

Proponents say that genetically-engineered crops are not significantly different from those modified by nature or humans in the past, and are as safe or even safer than such methods. There is gene transfer between unicellular eukaryotes and prokaryotes. There have been no known genetic catastrophes as a result of this. They argue that animal husbandry and crop breeding are also forms of genetic engineering that use artificial selection instead of modern genetic modification techniques. It is politics, they argue, not economics or science, that causes their work to be closely investigated, and for different standards to apply to it than those applied to other forms of agricultural technology.

Here's why:

There is a significant amount of evidence suggesting that the Green Revolution had the effect of weakening socialist movements in many nations. In countries like India, Mexico, and the Philippines, technological solutions were sought as an alternative to expanding agrarian reform initiatives, the latter of which were often linked to socialist politics.

News from here in Upper Castellón:

La Vangua is making a big deal out of Hillary, Obama, and Bill Richardson all running for the Democratic presidential nomination, as if the sex or ethnicity of the president mattered.

There has been serious rioting in the streets of the Basque Country by pro-ETA youth vandals in the wake of the Supreme Court decision that ETA's minor league team, Jarrai/Haika/Segi, is a terrorist organization. Of course, they threw stones and molotov cocktails at the cops and torched trash containers and bank machines. Three arrests were made.

Convicted ETA murderer Ignacio de Juana Chaos, which is a great surname for a terrorist, has been on hunger strike since November 7. Why don't they just let him die, if that's what he wants? And if that's not what he wants, if he's just making a political point, then he'll call off the hunger strike when he's ready.

Meanwhile, many prospective PP candidates for city council posts in the Basque Country have withdrawn from the campaign after the end of ETA's "permanent cease-fire." Of course, they're afraid of being murdered by ETA. People living in the Basque Country do not enjoy full democratic rights, of course, because of this fear. They must contain their freedom of speech, assembly, and standing for office, if they do not want to be targets.

From the "If This Had Happened in Cleveland" department: Racial gang-fights in Madrid working-class suburb Alcorcón. On Saturday night local scumbags fought it out with Latin American scumbags, and it turned into a 100-strong rumble that ended up with four seriously injured and seven arrests. Last night some 400 armed local scumbags held a "demonstration" against Latin American gangs, especially the Latin Kings, a criminal gang that started in the New York prison system. Of course, they were really looking for some sudacas to beat up. The riot squad was called out and the local scumbags took them on with stones and set up flaming barricades; the cops responded with rubber bullets. We haven't seen the end of this one.

Note: The Catalan Generalitat has recognized the Latin Kings as a cultural organization, and apparently they are getting government subsidies.

The lefties in Madrid are starting up a new newspaper that will back Zap and compete with El País, Spain's largest newspaper and the unofficial voice of the Socialist Party. It will be called Público and sell for fifty cents rather than the standard one euro price for newspapers. I'm guessing this paper will be even farther to the left than El País, which is occasionally known to publish opinion pieces by moderates, and also that it will aim at the lowest common denominator because of its low price and the fact that your middle-class high-school or college graduates are happy with El País.

By the way, what's the deal with all newspapers costing a euro? Isn't this collusion in restraint of trade? The various papers compete among themselves with ridiculous promotions--La Vangua is currently distributing kitchen utensils, for example--that must cost a fortune and waste tons of paper. Why don't they get rid of the dumb promotions that few people want and cut the price? I'll bet El Periódico, just for example, would outsell La Vangua massively if they cut the price to fifty cents.

Local political dustup: Former twenty-year Catalan premier Jordi Pujol ran an op-ed article last weekend saying that the stickers showing a Catalan donkey that some nationalists stick on their cars, in response to the sticker showing a Spanish bull that some other people stick on their cars, are silly and immature. Pujol's op-ed was, of course, greeted by cries of "Traitor!" from the Toni Soler-Oriol Grau-Joel Joan wing of nationalism-obsessed scorn-filled TV3 "humorists" whose only attempts at comedy attack a straw-man caricature of backward Spain and ignorant Spaniards.

There were 72 domestic-violence murders in Spain last year. So far this year we've had two.

Malcolm Gladwell is today's back-page interview in La Vangua. I like Gladwell; I've read The Tipping Point and Blink, both of which I liked, though I didn't think either was an intellectual breakthrough. Gladwell is a terrific reporter and writer, but the conclusions he draws are not especially new or different.

I had two mild complaints with Gladwell. First, he said that he was "a leftist in the United States, but a centrist in Europe." C'mon, Malcolm, you're no rad, you're a moderate Democrat and a capitalist, and you would fit extremely well into the moderate wing of the PSOE. The European political spectrum is roughly equivalent to the American; the difference is that in most of Europe there are lots of little fringe parties with narrow appeal, while in the US there are two big ones that include people of a wide range of opinion. In Spain, Nancy Pelosi would be part of the left wing of the PSOE, and Ron Dellums would be a proud member of the Communist party.

Second, Gladwell calls himself biracial. He said in the interview, "When I grew out the Afro haircut that I am wearing now, the police started to stop me for no reason much more frequently." I'm not going to call Gladwell a liar, but the interview includes a large photo of him. He looks like Art Garfunkel in about 1971, except less-threatening and better-dressed.

La Vanguardia ran a survey today that makes it clear that the PP is significantly turning off a lot of voters with its hard line against Zapatero. The survey was taken early last week, after the Barajas bombing that killed two men and some of the political fallout.

If elections were held today, the PSOE would get 161-164 seats in the Congress of Deputies, the PP would get 138-142, CiU would get 13-14, and the Communists would get 13. 176 seats are needed for a majority. Currently the Socialists hold 164, the PP 148, CiU 10, and the Communists 5. Key stats: 58% have a worse opinion of the PP than they did one year ago. 60% said the PP's performance in the opposition had been "bad" or "very bad, and only 24% said "good" or "very good." 39% had "no confidence" in Rajoy, and 35% more had "little confidence." 68% said that "the PP distrusted the administration too much and irresponsibly caused difficulties in the peace process."

Methinks what this means is that Zap isn't incredibly popular, but folks really don't like Rajoy. It also means that the bombing did not move the political center closer to the anti-ETA hard line.

The PP needs to open itself up to internal democracy, because Rajoy is going to lose us the next election. We need primary elections within the party in order to choose the leaders, and if we had them I will bet you that Ruiz-Gallardon would win. Zap should be an easy candidate to beat--he's a naive weenie party hack--but Rajoy is not the man who's going to do it. He should step down now.

I will add that the crazy-ass wing of the party that believes in some kind of conspiracy between the Zap government, ETA, the PSOE, and of all people the CESID, the intelligence bureau, behind the March 11, 2004 bombings, is not doing the PP one bit of good among the moderates. Somebody needs to make those people sit down and shut up, or get out of the party. I can't believe that Aznar doesn't have these tinfoil-hat Acebes-Zaplana wingnuts on a tighter leash.

News from this here neck of the woods:

I was watching TV today and first a game show host and then a TV newscaster mentioned Mel Gibson, and of course both of them pronounced his surname "Jibson," with the "soft" sound. That sounds slightly obscene to me. "Ooh, gross, you got jibson all over my leg."

The Supreme Court ruled that Jarrai, ETA's youth brigade, is a terrorist organization. 23 of their leaders received a six-year sentence for belonging to a terrorist group; they were already under a two-and-a-half-year sentence for conspiracy, but for some reason were not in prison. The roundup has begun. Good. Lock them up and throw away the key.

40 people have been killed in a nasty winter storm that swept across northern Europe. Gusts of wind reached--get this--100 mph. Nasty, yeah, but no real big deal by American standards. If anything Katrina-size ever hit Europe the devastation would be immense, since most of Europe is even less prepared for really bad weather.

Catalonia got 15 million tourists last year, which is approximately 2.167 tourists per Catalan. Folks, admit it, we live well here in Barcelona, and tourism is a large part of our income. Yes, part of downtown Barcelona has become touristy. No, this is not necessarily a horrible thing.

Michael Radu has a piece at Front Page on anti-Americanism in the European media.

I've heard many Americans say they are surprised at the Yank-bashing tone of the European press, and wonder whether it is something new. It's not. Americans just hear about it a lot more now, thanks to the Internet, than they did before about 2000.

We haven't done a blog roundup in a while, so here goes.

Right Wing News has more on Barack Obama.

Some Cataloony is hassling Guirilandia, who neatly disposes of him.

La Liga Loca has the quotes of the week up. This is the single best source in English on Spanish football.

Notes from Spain has a podcast on San Anton in Madrid, which is the same as Els Tres Tombs in Barcelona--when you bring your pet to be blessed. This is probably the best Spanish lifestyle blog. They generally avoid controversial and political stuff, but they're great on everyday life in Spain.

¡No Pasarán! smacks down some conspiracy theorists.

Davids Medienkritik has Der Spiegel dead to rights again, this time on Iran.

Pave France looks at France and Iran.

Eursoc says the new far-right group in the Europarliament is no big deal, and points out more standard leftist hypocrisy.

Expat Yank opines on an English Parliament.

Samizdata gets revisionist about FDR. Check out the links. Iberian Notes's position: The New Deal is way overrated and didn't accomplish much. Nor was it precisely the work of Satan. And FDR won the war.

Publius Pundit has a serious-magazine-quality post on media malpractice at the Observer on the Litvinenko case. Read it.

Biased BBC has a roundup of articles from the British press on the BBC budget.

A Fistful of Euros comments on the 1956 proposal for a Franco-British merger, just released by the British National Archives.

I've added a link to Colin Davies, blogging from Galicia. Definitely check out his blog.

Here's an article from the Daily Telegraph on Barack Obama and the race question in the US. A few random thoughts:

1) Obama is certainly attractive and charismatic, and very intelligent. But are two years in the Senate enough government experience to run for President? Right now Obama is still a political amateur, and you remember what happened last time we elected an amateur--Jimmy Carter. Also, you'll remember that other outsiders, such as Ross Perot and Wesley Clark, have attracted attention and votes, but never came close to winning the big one.

2) There's no question in my mind that America is "ready" for a black or woman president. I don't think many people under about 50 are racist or sexist enough to refuse to vote, because of race or sex, for someone they think is a qualified candidate and ideologically compatible. I don't think that a whole lot of people between ages 50 and 70 are, either, outside Mississippi.

3) Obama's not culturally Old American Black, which is an ethnic category I just made up to refer to those who are descended from American slaves and suffered from discrimination within living memory. Old American Black people's families have actually been in the US much longer than most white people, descended from late-19th century immigrants. (Note: The Census Bureau uses the term Old American to refer to white people whose ancestors were in the US before the Revolution, and who don't have any ethnic group connection--e.g. they're not, say, Irish-Americans or Italian-Americans.)

I would divide American blacks into at least three groups: Old American Blacks, Jamaican- and West Indian-Americans, and New American Blacks, descended from 20th-century immigrants from Africa. Obama would be a New American Black, as would the community of Nigerian immigrants in Kansas City. Colin Powell is Jamaican-American--his folks came in the Twenties or so. Condoleezza Rice and Clarence Thomas are Old American Blacks.

You could further divide Old American Blacks into the old-line Southern urban middle class and the working class, who were mostly farmers or laborers, or went North. Martin Luther King, for example, was middle-class.

Of course, no ethnic group is monolithic. I would divide people living in Catalonia into five groups, for example:

1) Old Catalans. Origins in rural or small-town Catalonia. Speak a regional dialect of Catalan. Have few family connections outside Catalonia. Older Old Catalans may speak Spanish imperfectly.

2) Assimilated Catalans. Origins in Murcia, Aragon, Balearics, Valencia. "Rascas un catalán y salen sus antepasados bailando jotas."--Ivà. Immigrated to industrial areas, especially Barcelona, in the early 20th century. Speak a more standard urban Catalan. Often have Castilian surnames. Tend to be the most Catalanist of the groups.

3) New Catalans. Origins in Andalusia, Extremadura, Galicia. Immigrated to Barcelona suburbs in 50s and 60s. Second generation has adopted Catalan; speaks with a Castilianized "xava" accent. Have Castilian surnames and Catalan first names. Consider themselves Catalans. (Some Old Catalans may not consider them to be fellow-Catalans.) There is a good deal of intermarriage between groups 1, 2, and 3.

4) Non-Catalans. Similar to New Catalans, but have not adopted Catalan and do not consider themselves Catalans. Have Spanish first names. Tend to be less educated and of lower social class than New Catalans. Frequently do not intermarry with previous three groups.

5) Immigrants. From Pakistan, Morocco, China, Senegal, Romania, etc. Arrived here within the last 10-15 years. Normally don't know any Catalan, and do not consider themselves Spanish, much less Catalan.

News from here in Baja Occitania:

Head Cataloony Carod-Rovira babbled about how the Tripartite was going to promote the "social use" of Catalan. Seems they want to institute a policy of including "linguistic clauses" as part of the process of awarding public contracts, which seems discriminatory against companies from other parts of Spain and from the rest of Europe--and I thought we were part of the EU, where that sort of discrimination is outlawed. And get this--they want to extend this regional government policy to Catalan municipal governments as well. This is, by definition, unnecessary and even harmful government interference with both economic and individual rights.

According to Carod, "Catalan must be considered an unsubstitutable common heritage." The problem is, it isn't for more than half the people in Catalonia. At least three million are Spanish-speakers, and at least another half-million are immigrants, while 99% of native Catalan-speakers also speak Spanish with native fluency and accuracy. If all these people have any language in common, it's Spanish.

My position, as always, is that speaking Catalan is wonderful, but not necessary, if you live in Catalonia.

Meanwhile, TV3 reported that somebody did a study on second-language use in Europe, and discovered that while 79% of the Danes speak English, only 21% of Catalans and 18% of Spaniards do. And I guarantee you that those percentages are exaggerated in the Iberian cases. My guess is that around 10% of people under about 30 can get along OK in English and another 10% or so can speak it well enough to work in the tourist industry. Over about 35, it's very rare to meet someone who knows English.

Why? 1) Until recently you didn't need to know English if you lived in Spain, and most people still don't need to know it. So they don't need to learn it, and learning a language is hard work. 2) English is very badly taught in Spain, and the main reason is that most of the teachers don't know English. Hell, some translators don't know English. (I am currently rewriting a fifth-grade history text in English, to be used in Spanish schools, that somebody else very drastically failed to correctly translate.) 3) It's harder for Romance-speakers to learn English than it is for Germanic-speakers, because English is a Germanic language. Duh.

Oh, get this. Carod wants everyone in Catalonia to know Catalan, Spanish, English, and "a fourth language, which might be French." Yeah, right, most people in Catalonia can speak about a language and a quarter right now--that is, half-assed Spanish, half-assed Catalan, and "Don't Worry, Be Happy." (Note: Before anyone gets angry, I freely admit that most people in America speak half-assed English and nothing else. Four languages just seems excessive when folks don't even use their own very well.) And why French? Why not something useful like Japanese, Mandarin, or Arabic?

Immigration note: The PP claims that there are currently a million and a half illegal immigrants in Spain, and that 3000 persons are missing and probably dead at sea while trying to cross the Atlantic to the Canary Islands.

Other news: A Spanish court has reissued an arrest warrant for three US soldiers accused of murdering Jose Couso, a Spanish TV reporter, who was killed by gunfire from a tank in the battle for Baghdad. This is ridiculous. Some dope gets himself in a war zone and gets himself killed, so let's call the Americans murderers. I call on the US government and military to treat this warrant with the contempt it deserves.

Two local big stinks: The security guy who shot the Albanian robber whose gang was trying to break into his employers' house is still in jail without bail. I vote we give him a medal. And somebody murdered the mayor of the town of Fago in Huesca province, Aragon, filled him full of bullets, and nobody in town is talking. Very occasionally very weird things happen in little Spanish towns.

Europeans often criticize the United States over capital punishment. However, they ignore the use of the death penalty in such countries as India, Singapore, and Cuba. And Japan, where four men were hanged on Christmas Day 2006.