The New Yorker has a good piece on quotations, and the first paragraph focuses on spurious quotes--that is, Patrick Henry really didn't say "Give me liberty or give me death."

I can think of a couple of semi-spurious quotes: one is that nobody coined "He's a son-of-a-bitch but he's our son-of-a-bitch," until the 1960s; somebody, maybe Lyndon Johnson, used it to refer to Ngo Dinh Diem, but he probably didn't use it first. Latin American folklore says that quote was used in the early 20th century in reference to the first Somoza, but I've never seen any proof.

Another is "America for the Americans," which does not appear in the Monroe Doctrine, and was actually used as a Nativist anti-immigrant slogan in the 1840s or so. It has nothing to do with Latin America, either; the immigrants in question were Irish and Germans.

One from Spain is Unamuno's "You will win, but you will not convince" speech in Salamanca in 1936; he was extemporizing without notes and nobody was ready for him to say anything of note, so reports of the speech were all written down later. There is no recording. So we really don't know exactly what he said, though whatever Unamuno did say caused quite a tumult in the auditorium. Unamuno died just weeks later, so he wasn't there to ask later. By the way, everybody seems to think that in the Civil War Unamuno was pro-Republic; he was actually pro-National, though with reservations.

Another one from the Civil War is that no one knows exactly what was said during the famous phone call made by Colonel Moscardó's son, under duress as he was a Republican prisoner, to the colonel, who was leading the National resistance at the Alcazar in Toledo. It's generally agreed that the phone call was made, that the son told Moscardó that he was going to be shot, and Moscardó told the son to die bravely. But the exact words spoken are unknown.

Franco Aleman at Barcepundit links to this excellent piece from the Australian on anti-Americanism. Quote:

While Russian President Vladimir Putin was railing against US power at an international security conference in Munich on Saturday, a respectable case can be made that, as hegemonies go, the US is the most benevolent history has ever seen. Not perfect by any means, but certainly deserving of better treatment than the acid reflux and bile of Western elites. America is big, rich and makes mistakes. But for the past 50 years at least, it has been the ultimate guarantor of the Western way of life. Surely it deserves a more balanced press from its critics.

Denis Boyles from National Review has more on the subject. Check it out.

Colin Davies has excellent commentary on Spain and especially Galicia every day; he's one of the most regular and consistent bloggers out there. He's on my daily reading list.

Guirilandia has a think-piece on that endangered species, the macho ibérico. He's the opposite of regular and consistent, since he'll sometimes go a couple of weeks without posting, but he's always original.

Talk about regular and consistent: La Liga Loca brings us all the Spanish football news. Since it's Friday, it's time for the weekend preview. I posted this in his comments section:

I don't think they necessarily have to get rid of either Ronaldinho or Eto'o. Every sports team is full of big egos and I think these guys will figure out how to get along--especially if they win another League, as looks likely, and/or the Champions, which is at least a possiblity.If you get rid of one, though, it's Eto'o. You already have Saviola to replace him, not to mention Gudjohnsen, who is OK, and goal-scorers are available on the market for a lot less than magicians like Ronaldinho. There's only one Ronaldinho, and Barça has him tied up for years.

There are a few other arguments: a) Ronaldinho knows how to behave himself in public and wash the dirty laundry at home b) Ronaldinho seems to be much more popular among the players, and with the coaches, than Eto'o c) Ronaldinho sells a lot more jerseys, fills more seats in the US and Japan, and gets the Barça a lot more publicity than Eto'o d) Ronaldinho doesn't break nearly as easily as Eto'o; he's both bigger and stronger, and has no history of injuries.

Also, if I were Rikjaard, I'd stay at Barcelona. He'll have to put up with the same amount of crap if he goes to Milan, and he has the chance to be the greatest Barça coach of all time. If Frank stays four more years and wins a couple more leagues and maybe a Champions, he'll be legendary.

With everybody and his dog running for President, including Akaky, Iberian Notes is going to get into it early. We're for Rudy Giuliani. We like almost everything about him, especially his record. He was tremendous as New York district attorney and then mayor. This guy sent Mafia bosses to jail, cleaned up the city, and was right there when the bombs hit. He's liberal on social issues and tough on crime and terrorism. And he can beat Hillary.

That, of course, is the Number One question we Republicans need to ask ourselves when we vote in the primaries and caucuses a year from now. Can this candidate beat Hillary? Barring disaster, she's the Democratic candidate, and Republicans need to be planning to beat her now. So we need to grab the center and leave her out on the left, and liberal tough guy Rudy is just the person to do that. We would be complete idiots to choose some right-wing Sam Brownback primitive social conservative as our candidate, since we on the moderate right have already got the right-wingers anyway--who else are they going to vote for?

And I would love to see Lieberman as the VP candidate, but this time for the Republicans. If somehow Rudy doesn't come out as our man for Prez, let's draft Joe.

Tom from the Bad Rash doesn't agree with us. He says,

Much as it annoys Americans who loathe foreigners commentng on their politics, thebadrash.com is 'backing' Barack Obama to be the next President of the United States.

Actually, Iberian Notes loves it when foreigners take an interest in American politics, since it helps all of us be better-informed. We only object to biased or ignorant commentary. Tom's position is more than fair enough. He's for Obama, we're for Giuliani, may the best candidate win, and we'll see what happens at the polls.

Continued blog roundup:

Europhobia comments on the lack of diversity in the Europarliament.

Guirilandia makes fun of the Barcelona ajuntament.

La Liga Loca has the quotes of the week.

Pave France blasts Chiraq over Iran.

Eamonn Fitzgerald has a whack at the New York Review of Books over North Korea.

Publius Pundit takes Vladimir Putin apart.

Sal deTraglia runs a great Spain lifestyle blog, including some food porn.

Roncesvalles questions the enforcement of Germany's anti-swastika law.

The Euroserf blasts EU economic bullying. Short, sweet, and correct.

News from the 3/11 trial: Rabei Osman El Sayed, alias "Mohammed the Egyptian," the first of the defendants on the stand, denied any involvement in the bombings and refused to speak any further, but after a recess has apparently agreed to testify. He is currently serving a ten-year sentence in Italy for belonging to a terrorist organization; he was part of the infrastructure sending jihadis to Iraq from there. The Italian police bugged his apartment and caught him on tape bragging that the 3/11 bombings were his idea.

Gustavo de Aristegui, a reasonable man and one of the PP moderates, this morning limited himself to saying that he hoped that "the truth would come out" at the trial. He claimed that too much is still unknown about what happened, which I suppose he is sort of right about, but any operation this big is impossible to completely unravel. To continue with the metaphor, there are still a lot of loose ends, but we know the basics about the bombings: who did it, why, and how.

The Samuel Eto'o conflagration has been put out. Everybody had a nice talk, Eto'o claimed to have been misinterpreted, Puyol convinced him to behave himself, Ronaldinho hugged him for the cameras, and Rijkaard didn't punish him for first refusing to play and then shooting off his mouth. Let's hope that a big blowup like this is what the team needed in order to get its shit together for the rest of the year. Barcelona has about an 80% chance of winning the league championship, I think, and as good a chance as anyone to win the Champions' League, which would make it the first club to repeat as champions in this format.

To show how important the Barça is, TV3 has devoted the past two days to the Eto'o story, much more time than the 3/11 trial. The afternoon talk show has wrung at least three hours out of it. And La Vanguardia has given front-page color photos to the story, both yesterday and today. In La Vangua, Barcelona's most serious newspaper, the 3/11 trial got one page yesterday and two pages today, along with a banner front-page headline. The Eto'o story got three pages yesterday (including an anguished opinion piece titled "It'll never be the same again"), and three more pages today.

I have an article up at Pajamas Media on the beginning of the trial of the 3/11 bombers. Check it out.

We haven't had a blog roundup for a week or so. Here goes.

Mark in Mexico is doing some great local reporting from Oaxaca. Fascinating stuff.

Citizen Smash debunks the false "no spitting on Vietnam vets" urban legend.

La Liga Loca has the dope on Samuel Eto'o's verbal incontinence.

Fausta is your one-stop shop for Go to Hell Hugo news.

Expat Yank blasts a moronic UN report.

Brussels Journal profiles the Flemishaloony Vlamms Belang.

Colin Davies has thoughts on Spanish prison sentences.

Davids Medienkritik slaps the Austrians around for selling arms to Iran.

¡No Pasarán! links to another excellent Josef Joffe article.

Pejman agrees that Giuliani looks like the best Republican candidate right now.

Akaky is running, too.

Notes from Spain runs down the top ten Spanish celebrities. Don't miss this one.

The Spanish Supreme Court reduced De Juana Chaos's sentence for writing threatening letters to judges to three years, which means he gets out in one. You may remember that Spanish regulations allow De Juana Chaos to leave prison after serving 18 years of a 3000-year sentence for 25 murders; no matter how long a prison sentence in Spain is, the maximum time served is 30 years, from which De Juana Chaos got twelve off for good behavior or whatever. No news on whether he will continue his hunger strike. What a travesty. This guy killed five times as many people as Jack the Ripper.

This is the best cat video ever.

The Guardian has a piece up by Peter (not Paul) Preston on ETA, and if I understand him right--the article could have used some editing--he's saying that the Spanish government needs to make concessions to ETA in order to win ETA's trust, which in turn will permit real peace negotiations. Quote: "Talk doesn't always do it. Talking to terror means delivering, too." No, the Spanish government needs to hunt down those bastards and shoot or jail them all. Anyway, the usual gang of idiots joins in the comments, and it's quite entertaining for a few minutes.

My favorite Australian historian, Keith Windschuttle, has an book review article up at the New Criterion, saying that the 20th century was the century of the English-speaking peoples.

Key quotes: "The English-speaking peoples are temperamentally less inclined towards fanaticism, high-flown rhetoric, and Bonapartism than any others in history. They have respected what is tangible and, in politics at least, suspected what is not...Anglo-American capitalism, when allied to the right to own secure property and the rule of law, unleashed the energy and ingenuity of mankind. It formed the basis of the English-speaking peoples’ present global hegemony...Like the Romans, the English-speaking peoples would be envied and hated by others. They would sometimes find, Roberts argues, that the greatest danger to their continued imperium came not from their declared enemies without, but from vociferous critics within. One of the constants of their common culture’s freedom of expression has been its propensity to harbor a degree of internal censure that among many other peoples would probably prove fatal."

Nobel Prize-winning economist Edmund Phelps has an article at the Wall Street Journal arguing that Continental Europe's culture makes it a weak economic competitor.

Key quote: "Perhaps many would be willing to take it for granted that the spirit of stimulation, problem-solving, mastery and discovery has impacts on a country's dynamism and thus on its economic performance...The weakness of these values on the Continent is not the only impediment to a revival of dynamism there. There is the solidarist aim of protecting the "social partners"--communities and regions, business owners, organized labor and the professions--from disruptive market forces. There is also the consensualist aim of blocking business initiatives that lack the consent of the "stakeholders"--those, such as employees, customers and rival companies, thought to have a stake besides the owners. There is an intellectual current elevating community and society over individual engagement and personal growth, which springs from antimaterialist and egalitarian strains in Western culture. There is also the "scientism" that holds that state-directed research is the key to higher productivity. Equally, there is the tradition of hierarchical organization in Continental countries. Lastly, there is a strain of anti-commercialism."

Barcelona is a pretty tough sports town. There's basically one important thing, the Barça, and everything else is very secondary. There are two newspapers, Sport and El Mundo Deportivo, completely devoted to the Barça, and they fill pages and pages with Barça news every day. The lead story on TV3 sports news is nearly always the Barça, even if the only news is that Sylvinho is still injured and Motta has the flu. If things are going well, they love you, but beware when things are not. Players who do not perform well are mercilessly hooted, as Bogarde and Zenden and Reiziger can tell you.

So it's with more than a little surprise that I notice a growing tide of resentment in the Spanish media at the current unfriendly reception Pau Gasol, virtually Catalonia's only non-football hero (he played on the Barça basketball team, so he has worn the holy red and blue too) is receiving in Memphis.

Now, let's review why:

1) Gasol demanded to be traded. Yeah, that makes the fans love you. Imagine if Barça's best player demanded a trade after sitting out half the season. They'd crucify him.
2) He got the coach fired.
3) He can't get along with team president Jerry West.
4) He got hurt while playing for the Spanish team and missed half the season for Memphis while earning $13 million a year.
5) Memphis fans perceive that Gasol doesn't always give 100% and doesn't play defense. He doesn't play the low post, and takes too many outside jumpers.
6) They built the team around Gasol, and they haven't won a playoff game yet. Perception around the NBA seems to be that he's good, but he should be the second- or third-best player on your team, because if you don't have anybody better than him, you're going nowhere.
7) To quote: "Scoring a lot of points for a shitty team doesn't make you a good player."

So a Memphis radio talk-show host named Chris Vernon wrote a ditty called, "Ode to Pau, or Who Wants a Crying Spaniard?" By Barcelona standards it's pretty mild, since the lyrics merely make fun of Gasol's play and attitude, don't attack him as a human being, include no swear-words, and don't mention his mother.

Quotes: "He's great in the first half," "When he runs up the court it'll make you laugh," "His wondrous defense looks like it's stuck in the mud," and "Me gusta baloncesto, no me gusta Pau."

Check out some of the comments Vernon got on his blog:

You're a fucking ignorant retard. Also, you don't know shit about basketball. Stupid americans think their basketball is the best around the world. Oh, no, wait, you forgot, you lost the world basketball tournament. who won? spain? with what player? Gasol? Face it, people are just pissed because they know that they're loosing their best player. Who'd want to stay in a team with people who don't want to win and cant play basketball... who wants fucking crying americans that don't know about basketball. Get a proper job, freak, somewhere where you don't have to talk shit about other people.

Vernon, your C.I. is very near to the average level in USA, 0.Make an effort and you´ll reach it soon!The song is pathetic, a real shit. Maybe you´ll have to try other things to make money, like being politic. In thant country of non-brained people I´m sure you´ll be soon president!

Yes, we are africans and fond of Al Qaeda, and we will crash a plane against Graceland.

You ungrateful freak! Your are blinded by your stupidity!! Yankee go home!

The world had very bad luck, osama bin laden had had to destroy your fucking head, no the twin towersfuck you, little bastard

Maybe you need to be visited there in Memphys....don't leave your wife alone

Say thanks to spain cause today u are civilizated people thanks 2 us. And we have to say thanks 2 US cause thanks to them, all the world is in war. And of course, that wars are because they have a great sense of humor right? yes, i think that when people celebrates american people murders, is because they have a great sense of humor.

hijo de puta!!!! Te meterte con PAU es meterte con todoso los españoles. Eres un fuck america, fucking bush and all that. You are very stupid like your funking mother.what happen with PAU?? ies the best player that you ever seen in memphis. You like to be nigger but you are a fucking white men.Yesterday your mother suck my assand i'ts so great and free.your mother is a fucking bech

Hurra for the charlies that kick the american ashes.Hurra for the japanesses that attacked pearl-harborAMERICAN DEAD FERTILIZER FOR MY GARDEN

Notice anything these responses have in common?

There's a lot more in Spanish, which I didn't bother translating. In case you want to read the whole thing, here's Vernon's January archive which includes several posts on the subject.

News from Portugal: They're holding a referendum today on legalizing abortion; they need a 50% turnout for the referendum to be valid, and it looks like it'll be in the high 50s. All the surveys point to a Yes vote. Currently abortion is completely banned in Poland, Ireland, Malta, and Portugal; most other EU countries have some restrictions, though in the UK and Netherlands it's abortion on demand up to 24 weeks. It's estimated that some 20,000-40,000 illegal abortions are performed every year in Portugal; also, thousands of Portuguese women abort every year in Spain, where a loophole in the restrictions is easily exploited. There are two abortion clinics in Badajoz, five kilometers from the Portuguese border, that do 80% of their business in Portuguese women.

The trial of the 29 accused for the March 11, 2004 bombings in Madrid begins on Thursday. There is absolutely no question that the accused are linked up with both Al Qaeda and the terrorists currently operating in Iraq. Several of those going on trial are known to have recruited jihadis for Iraq, including Basel Ghayoun and Hassan el Haski. Daoud Ouhnane, who fled and for whom a warrant is out, was one of the actual bombers; he is believed to be in Iraq right now. Another of the March 11 bombers, Mohamed Afalah, suicide-bombed an Italian convoy in Iraq in 2005, killing 19 Italian troops. So why aren't the Spaniards screaming for the defeat of the terrorists in Iraq who are not only fighting the country's legitimate government, but also the armed forces of Spanish allies Italy, the US, and and UK, and who committed the murder of 191 people in Spain's capital not even three years ago? Let me repeat: THE SAME PEOPLE are behind both the Iraqi "insurgency" and the Madrid bombings. They are so clearly the enemy of all of Western civilization that you really have to be pretty damn dense not to see it. And, Spain, Western civilization includes us too.

Interesting little stink: Oleguer got dumped by his shoe company, Kelme, for his pro-De Juana Chaos statements made at an official FC Barcelona press conference and his article in a pro-ETA newspaper. Of course, the company has the perfect right to hire and fire whoever it wants to represent it. I will say one thing in Oleguer's favor: he's not a hypocrite. He's a total idiotarian, but he at least does not live the glittery football-star lifestyle.

Seems that the perceived crime wave in Spain is at least partly for real. In 2006, there were 8566 home invasions in Spain, 5.6% more than in 2005. I keep hearing people talking about how they want to get a gun. In Spain, there are basically two ways to get hold of a firearm. The first is if you have a hunting license. I figure that the biggest game around here is the jabalí, the wild pig, and that it would take a deer rifle to take one of those things down. That ought to do you for home protection. The second, get this, is to take up pistol target shooting. Right now you have to be a member of a club and have a license, but you're allowed to take your target pistol home with you. The guy in Lleida who shot the two criminals (who broke into his house and tied up his son) is a licensed target shooter, and he hit those two right between the eyes with his target pistol. Pretty good shooting.

Racial tension continues in Badalona, where the neighborhood of La Salut wants to expel the Romanian gypsies who have taken up residence there. It doesn't seem to be mere racism, since the Pakistanis and Chinese and Moroccans who live there all want to kick the gypsies out, too.

There's still no agreement about what to do with the cargo ship Marine I, which is drifting off the West African coast with nearly 400 illegal immigrants aboard, mostly Pakistanis. Supposedly it will reach the Mauritanian port of Nouadibuh today, but who knows what will happen to the people on board.

No official cause of Erika Ortiz's death has yet been announced.

The Anna Nicole Smith media feeding frenzy has just begun. I predict it will be as big as the OJ trial, which you may remember was the next-to-last frivolous media frenzy before 9/11. This will be the first post-9/11 return to the good old days before most of us had heard of Osama bin Laden. I remember seeing the Anna Nicole TV show a couple of years ago and deciding that the woman was nuts and heading for a breakdown. I do not remember her as any sort of pop-culture icon, as some over-heated commentators are already bloviating about.

Let's hope that this trial puts to rest the absurd conspiracy theory that blames the Zap government for the bombings.

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.