Here's my bit of conspiracy-theory paranoia here in Catalonia. TV3 and La Vanguardia, the two organs of the local establishment, are running a campaign in favor of "making Barcelona airport more important." So today the Chamber of Commerce, the employers' association (Fomento), and the Royal Automobile Club held what La Vangua called "an academic act" at IESE "in defense of the future of the Barcelona airport." The various universities, including UB and the Pompeu Fabra, backed the meeting, as did several professional organizations, including the engineers. So, of course, did the regional government, the Generalitat.

(Translation: Barcelona airport is building a new terminal, so it will have more flight slots. Right now the airport is run by a Spanish state-owned company called AENA. AENA's management has generally been somewhere between rather and extremely crappy. AENA will also have the right to decide which airlines get which slots for which flights in the new terminal. The Barcelona establishment wants more long-distance flights to prestige destinations like Tokyo and New York, and fewer cheap-ass EasyJet low-cost companies flying in drunken teenagers from non-prestige destinations like Manchester and Dusseldorf. Therefore, the Barcelona establishment wants the right to decide which airlines get which slots for which flights all for itself.)

Now come on. This is not news, and it is not from the grassroots, either. This is what was vulgarly referred to in those old Sinclair Lewis novels, like Babbitt, as "boosting." The local powers that be, from the government down to the media, have decided that what Barcelona needs are more long-distance flights, and they are trying to polarize public opinion behind them. That is a textbook example of what is called "manipulation" of the media and the public by your average everyday Chomsky worshippers around here. So manipulating the media is so bad we have to falsely accuse the Bush administration of doing it, but it's OK if it's done in our economic interest?

This is pure business. There's nothing but money involved here. There's nothing high-minded or idealistic about this campaign at all. The Catalan establishment is trying to get something it wants, and it has no qualms about mobilizing the local government, media, universities, and professional organizations.

Comment: I don't think the establishment is ever this unified in Kansas City. There are always dissenting voices, from the universities, which often take pride in their anti-business attitude, to the no-growth people, of whom there are a surprising amount, from the civil-rights organizations demanding their piece of the pie, from the unions demanding theirs, from the media, which are pretty much pussycats in KC compared to the rest of the US but are dangerously radical investigative Woodwards and Bernsteins compared to La Vangua's reporters.

Here's what TV3, which belongs to the Socialist-controlled Generalitat, had to say to kick off today's afternoon news:

Representatives from more than one hundred organizations from the business and academic world had a united public meeting in order to demand pressure that would permit El Prat airport to continue as a world reference as a node of communication, with international connections, and that the regional and municipal governments, along with society, should have the capacity to decide on the strategic actions that affect it...

This is not news. This is publicity. And you note they are not demanding that the airport be privatized. They are demanding that the Barcelona airport be turned over to them--specifically, the regional and municipal governments. And "society," whatever that is. I bet it's the Chamber of Commerce itself.

TV3 ran a visual, "OBSOLETE AIRPORT MODEL." Below it was this statistic: Intercontinental Flights Daily; London, 868; Madrid, 168; Barcelona 19.

That is not news, it is advocacy, and of the cheapest kind: blaming everything on Madrid. Look, I personally do not think that the airlines are dumb. I think the model of competition provides us consumers with the best of all possible worlds. If there was a demand for direct flights from Barcelona to, say, Tokyo or New York, someone would be filling that demand, and those flights would be available. Sounds to me like the Catalan establishment doesn't like what the market has to say--that is, the people who want to come here are mostly drunken teenagers from Newcastle and Rotterdam--and they want the government to do something about it.

La Vanguardia, meanwhile, headlines on the front page: "Iberia stockholders look for buyer," and below it, "El Prat fifth fastest-growing airport in world." The Catalan establishment is royally pissed off at Iberia, the former state-owned airline based in Madrid, because it decided to pull most of its flights out of Barcelona and hub out of Madrid. La Vangua is therefore thrilled to slam Iberia. It's talking up the report that Iberia is up for sale, that several major stockholders including Caja Madrid, BBVA, and El Corte Ingles are looking to cash in now and get rid of their shares, since Iberia stock is up 31% since January 1.

The Catalan establishment is quite open about talking up what they want AENA to do: grant as many slots as possible to Spanair / Star Alliance. So they are throwing all their support, mobilized by the local media, to back the interests of a particular corporation. This is what's wrong with the way things are sometimes done around here.

Inside, in the business section, there's a list of the airports with most passenger traffic. Unsurprisingly, the top five are Atlanta, Chicago, Heathrow, Narita, and LAX. There's a rather lame joke about not even being able to get to Heaven without changing planes in Atlanta on the way. 15 of the top 30 are in the US, including such metropoli as Denver and Minneapolis. Madrid is #13, with 45 million passengers a year, and Barcelona is #34, with 30 million. Barcelona's 10.5% yearly growth is trumpeted. But you have to look at the figures pretty closely, though, to see that Madrid's growth is 8.1%! Seems to me that both airports are going to gain more passengers, as economic growth in Spain continues at more than 3% yearly, and tourism is growing enormously.

Meanwhile, Zap said that the central government, through AENA, would keep its power to decide which airlines get which slots at the new terminal. He had a whack at the Catalan establishment, too, saying that the reason they were concerned about the airport was that the central government had spent €3 billion on it. La Vanguardia called Zap's attitude "state unilateralism."

Please tell me that I'm wrong, I'm paranoid, and that I'm a conspiracy nut. There are no economic interests behind political forces here in Spain, are there? If there really are economic interests behind political forces in Spain, might that not influence Spanish opinion about what is behind political forces in other countries, particularly the "Anglo-Saxon" ones? Is it possible that Spaniards might overestimate the influence of, say, the oil industry in the US, since economic interests are so powerful over here?

Not much news from around here. The PSOE has been blasting away at ex-Prime Minister Aznar's refusal to apologize for joining the Coalition in the Iraq War. Way to go, José María! Stand up to those appeasers of terrorists!

PSOE head apparatchik José Blanco wants the International Criminal Court to put Aznar on trial for war crimes. The PP's irresponsibility counts for little compared to this, wanting to bind over your country's former elected leader to a bunch of foreigners for trial and punishment--for having made the correct and morally difficult decision. I suppose the US will have to grant him political asylum.

One of the more childish examples of sniping against Aznar are the repeated mentions in the press to what is called "la foto de las Azores." Seems that Bush, Blair, Aznar, and Durao Barroso had a meeting in the Azores Islands right before the war began, and a photograph was taken. Ever since then, Spanish commentators (as always obsessed with images) have attacked Aznar for, alleging he entered the Iraq War in order to get his photo taken with Bush and Blair. Naturally, this ridiculous accusation is made by those whose lives would have been complete if they had posed in a photo with Arafat, Mao, or Che, and project their infantility onto others.

Batasuna leader Arnaldo Otegi is in big trouble; the National Court ordered him to be arrested this afternoon. He is to be tried, starting tomorrow, on yet another count of exaltation of terrorism. He's currently out of prison, but has a 15-month suspended sentence to serve. The National Court is going to throw out his appeal on yet another conviction, though, (but not until after the May municipal and regional elections) and he'll have to serve both sentences in a real prison. It's about time.

In related news, Otegi announced that it is an "error" to use terrorism in order to gain independence for the Basque Country. This will be news to all the victims of ETA. Of course, he's lying, and he left himself an out by claiming that ETA is only using violence "to achieve democratic conditions."

The Dutch health department has announced that, get this, they want to ban smoking tobacco in "coffee shops." Coffee shops in the Netherlands are places where they sell cannabis for consumption on the premises; they are technically illegal, but openly tolerated. You will still be able to smoke all the weed you want there, but you can't light up a Marlboro.

Contradictions in Catalonia: There's been a lot of talk around here about how we want to attract a higher class of tourism, not your low-rent European drunken youths that flock to the Catalan coasts every summer. So guess what--the Generalitat is extending legal drinking time for an hour starting this summer! Discos will be allowed to stay open till 6 AM, and "music-bars" (basically what we'd call a bar in the States, that is a place where you go to drink) until 3:30 AM. Cool, I suppose--I haven't been to a disco for years, or closed down a "music-bar," either.

Some Scandinavian magazine rated the beach at Barceloneta one of the top fifteen in the world. Huh? It's not one of the top fifteen in Barcelona province, much less the world, and the water is filthy. I remember going in once, many years ago, and getting all itchy. My favorite beach towns are Cadaqués and Collioure. each of which is worth at least a weekend.

Only German animal-rights activists would want to kill this little fellow. Fortunately, their calls will not be heeded.

Time for a quick blog roundup, since we haven't had one for about a week.

The Brussels Journal links to some rather sobering statistics on immigration into Europe from the Third World in the Telegraph. Check out the map. The former Soviet Union is being depopulated. Everyone who can get out of there is going. No ideology has ever been wronger, in both senses of the word, than Marxism-Leninism. Look what a mess the former Russian Empire made itself into during seventy years; it'll take another seventy to fix it.

Catherine Seipp died. That's a shame. Our greatest sympathy to her daughter, "Cecile Dubois."

Chicago Boyz has a rather sad bit of historical explanation.

Colin Davies isn't surprised that Spaniards like the EU, and he also has an extensive and very funny list of contemporary Spanglish terms.

Confederate Yankee doesn't feel too sorry for the illegal immigrants getting deported.

Davids Medienkritik is feeling satirical.

Eursoc is a bit dry about the EU's birthday celebrations.

Expat Yank shoots down a rather dumb moral comparison in the Independent.

Fausta has commentary, including video, on a ridiculous Barbara Walters interview with Go to Hell Hugo.

Guirilandia has some entertaining Barcelona photos with amusing captions. Check it out.

Ibex Salad runs his stock market recap every weekend. Very useful for a quick snapshot of the Spanish economy.

La Liga Loca has a roundup of last weekend's football action.

Pave France heaps deserved scorn on Dominique de Villepin.

Playing Chess with the Dead has another update on the March 11 trial.

Rainy Day reflects on the Iraq war.

¡No Pasarán! points out that Zapatero's appeasement of Al Qaeda has simply led to more blackmail of the West.

I completely agree with Christopher Hitchens about Iraq.

Bret Stephens has an article in the Wall Street Journal on the unholy alliance between the Islamist reactionaries and the European Left. Key paragraphs:

For Muslim voters in Europe, the attractions of the Socialists are several. Socialists have traditionally taken a more accommodating approach to immigrants and asylum-seekers than their conservative rivals. They have championed the welfare state and the benefits it offers poor newcomers. They have promoted a multiculturalist ethos, which in practice has meant respecting Muslim traditions even when they conflict with Western values. In foreign policy, Socialists have often been anti-American and, by extension, hostile to Israel. That hostility has only increased as Muslim candidates have joined the Socialists' electoral slates and as the Muslim vote has become ever more crucial to the Socialists' electoral margin.

More mysterious, however, at least as a matter of ideology, has been the dalliance of the progressive left with the (Islamic) political right. Self-styled progressives, after all, have spent the past four decades championing the very freedoms that Islam most opposes: sexual and reproductive freedoms, gay rights, freedom from religion, pornography and various forms of artistic transgression, pacifism and so on. For those who hold this form of politics dear, any long-term alliance with Islamic politics ultimately becomes an ideological, if not a political, suicide pact. One cannot, after all, champion the cause of universal liberation in alliance with a movement that at its core stands for submission.

Jay Nordlinger says in National Review:

You have to ask which the American president should be more worried about: correct policy or the approval of Le Monde. They don’t necessarily go hand in hand. Beyond which, when we say “Europe,” what do we mean? There is more to that continent than Frenchmen, Belgians, and David Cameron. When Eastern European leaders spoke out in favor of the U.S., Jacques Chirac said they were not “bien élevés” — that they were not well brought up — and that they “missed a great opportunity to shut up.” He further called them “infantile.” Frankly, I would rather appeal to a Czech or two than to Jacques Chirac. (You should hear Vaclav Havel on America.) Look: Trying to get Europeans to like you is a) a fool’s errand and b) not a fit concern for a U.S. president, particularly in war.

Meanwhile, some idiot in the Guardian justifies Iran's nuclear program and calls on the West to accept an Iranian bomb.

Last weekend was another big demonstration fiesta around here. The PP had a big old wingding in Pamplona against the incorporation of Navarre in the Basque Country, as extremist Basque nationalists demand and most Navarrese strongly oppose.

I am more than tired of all these damn demonstrations, especially when Rajoy comes out and demands that the Zap government pay attention to the voice of the people. Demonstrations are meaningless in a democracy. The voice of the people is expressed at the ballot box.

Anyway, the Zapathetics decided that they had to have a demo of their own, and so decided to protest against the Iraq War, with Communist, Palestinian, Cuban, and preconstitutional flags, along with banners emblazoned with Che's ugly mug. Signs bashed Bush and Blair and called for a boycott of the United States, along with demands for Spain to leave NATO and close down American military bases. Rosa Regas repeated the old lie about 650,000 victims of the Iraq war, and of course didn't mention that 99% of the victims there have been were killed by the terrorists. Pedro Almodovar was there, of course.

Zap behaves like he is still running for election, and he has only one issue: He's against the Iraq War and against the United States. There's nothing else he can appeal to voters with. He stands for nothing else except for peace with ETA on ETA's terms, and that's not exactly a winning position on that issue.

The Spanish press is making a big deal out of the Polish law that would require government workers to declare whether they had collaborated with the Communist regime or not. One point is that those who confess collaboration will not be punished. I'm not sure this law is such a good idea, either, though I would be in favor of opening up the secret police archives and hey, what's in there ought to identify plenty of spies and informers. La Vanguardia and El Periodico have both called the law a "witch hunt," though, which it most certainly is not, since there was no such thing as witches, but there were lots of collaborators with the Communists. I will note that the Spanish left has repeatedly called for the punishment of those who collaborated with the dictatorial regimes of South America during the '70s and '80s. Finally, I will also note that neither side in Spain seems very interested in identifying collaborators with the Franco regime here; I have never heard of a single Spaniard identified publicly as a Francoist informer.

La Vanguardia gave Andy Robinson pages 3 and 4 for an emotional outburst on the sad fate of illegal immigrants in the US, specifically Nebraska. Of course, it ain't no paradise for illegal immigrants anywhere, including Spain, but we'll let that slide. Seems that Immigration is "rounding up" illegals and deporting them, perhaps a total of a thousand or so in three recent raids. Which is what the law says Immigration is supposed to do, but Andy's upset. He quotes one Luis Lucar as saying, "There is a psychosis here right now, we are seeing violations of basic civil rights. Immigration has knocked down doors without a warrant in order to arrest people. There are children who have seen their mothers deported." An anonymous person adds, "I have very bad memories of the guerrillas and the army in Guatemala, and now the same thing is happening here with Immigration."

Now wait, there's a difference. The army and the guerrillas were killing people in Guatemala. Immigration is deporting people from the United States. Anyway, Andy quotes a union guy as saying, "It's no accident that they chose Swift, where we have union representation. It's an attack on organized labor." It's no accident that only Marxist conspiracy freaks habitually begin sentences with "It's no accident..." Andy also notes that the reason some children's parents have been deported is, get this, that the United States grants citizenship to anyone born within its borders, whether his parents are citizens or not. He fails to note that this law, as far as I know, is unique in the world. Mexico, for example, does not have such a policy.

My reaction to the whole piece is: So they deported a thousand illegal aliens from Nebraska. That's not even morally wrong, much less illegal. Why are the two main international news pages devoted to it, rather than, say, to the terrorist massacres in Iraq, the starvation in Darfur, the repression in North Korea, the Chinese labor camps, the anarchy in the Congo, the nuclear threat from Iran, or the mafia running Russia? The news that Al Qaeda has been using chemical weapons (chlorine gas) against civilians in Iraq got a small mention at the bottom of page 6.

Because, of course, one must bash America, mustn't one.

News from out here west of the Besós:

The story that's probably gotten the most attention recently in Spain is the suicide of a woman with muscular dystrophy who had been living in pain for years. She finally got the courts to allow her to turn off her life support. The Catholic hospital she was in would not comply with her wishes, so she was moved to a different hospital which would. Now she's dead.

This opens up the old euthanasia can of worms, of course. This is a pretty clear case of someone who consciously wanted to die, and it seems very cruel not to allow her to. There's an analogy here with De Juana Chaos, who threatened suicide through hunger strike. I'd have allowed him to do it without force-feeding him, which they did for a while.

We had a problem with this in the States, though, that was named Jack Kevorkian. Kevorkian facilitated suicide for many people who were nowhere near terminal cases; some of his victims were merely depressed, and he apparently talked people into killing themselves. It's the old slippery-slope argument that comes up on the terrorism and torture issue, too.

For a country whose media is constantly talking up alleged censorship in the United States, there have been a couple of good ones recently over here in Spain. The first was an ad campaign for the loud, flashy, and tasteless fashion firm Dolce & Gabbana. The photo shows a semi-nude gentleman, surrounded by three other semi-nude gentlemen, restraining a lady in a position somewhat reminiscent of rape.

A Spanish feminist group got all outraged, of course, and the government got into it, and D&G pulled the ad in Spain, saying that Spain "was still backward" and did not know how to appreciate artistic photography. I guess I don't, either--the photo seems just sleazy to me. Reminds me of Mapplethorpe. It doesn't appeal to normal heterosexuals at all. And, of course, the ad campaign did its job--it got massive publicity for the company, which Iberian Notes is right now providing more of.

Meanwhile, the (Socialist) regional government of Extremadura financed, with taxpayers' money, an exhibit of Catholic-porno photos. Naturally everybody got offended. The answer to this is really simple: no government financing whatsoever of the arts. Let the market take care of it. Get private funding. It's not like there aren't thousands of foundations passing out grants. If one of them wants to subsidize photos of Jesus having a wank, fine, but the government ought to stay out of it.

And, of course, the difference in the treatment handed out to Christians and Muslims is appalling. The Zap government criticized the famous cartoons of Mohammed for offending Muslims. But we can subsidize photos of the Virgin Mary giving Jesus head and that doesn't offend anybody.

Meanwhile, get this. The Generalitat, Catalonia's regional government, subsdizes this guy to make porno movies in Catalan. He has received almost €30,000 "in order to contribute to the diffusion of the Catalan language."

I think I'm going to apply to the Gene for a subsidy myself. Let's see. I'm one of the most flatulent people in the world, due to my vegetarian diet which is heavy on those beans and cruciferous vegetables, not to mention the occasional egg. I'm going to bottle my own farts. They're a work of art. My ringpiece is a musical instrument. Perhaps I'll even provide the audio for each bottled fart. I'm sure true aficionados will appreciate the difference between a long-built-up bean burrito fart and a quick-and-juicy scrambled eggs job. Where's my €30,000?

John in Tokyo, a regular commenter, posted in the Comments section about Pilar Manjón. I thought his post was worth reproducing here.

"Stockholm Syndrome. I usually dislike attempts to frame politics and ideology in psychological terms because people believe what they believe for many reasons and it is impossible for others to know why they do. In any event, the political psychoanalysis is usually just as ideologically distorted as the people/ideas it attempts to examine.

However, this case is just too blatant to ignore and too bizarre. One cannot help but wonder about the thought processes of Pilar Manjon. It's simply amazing that this woman (and she is not the only case like this) can direct her outrage and contempt at a wide range of targets, people she sees as responsible for creating the conditions in which her son was killed. But she has not even an ounce of anger toward the people who, you know, actually deliberately planned the murder of her innocent son and others.

This is a true inversion of cause and effect, she is blaming the people who oppose her son's murders, and thus, the cause of terrorism becomes fighting against terrorism, to her mind. Imagine that someone burns down your house. No matter how dissatisfied/frustrated you were with the response of the Fire Dept., Police, etc., would you ever become so unhinged that you stopped blaming the arsonist and focused your anger on the firemen? Granted, losing your house (or son) is traumatic and might make it hard to think clearly, and firemen should not be immune from criticism - maybe their mistakes made the problem worse.

However, the problem with this mentality is that it is unlikely to put an end to arson (or terrorism). In fact it encourages more, making it ultimately self-destructive. I honestly think that most educated, intelligent, good thinking, and good hearted citizens of Western countries have still not grasped this basic concept (for a variety of reasons). When (if) they do, terrorism will not survive long and many of the conflicts that plague us will dry up.

But until then, we are doomed to be targets of terrorism because we reward terrorists with the effects and outcomes that they desire. We become paralyzed, arguing endlessly about the proper meaning and response. We stop and consider their grievances and objectives (and even if their grievances and objectives are insane, there are are always a few points that do appeal to our sensibilities and which inevitably distract people like Manjon and our old friend Joan.) Most of all, many of us, like Sra. Manjon, strike out at all of the people who are trying to stop, arrest, or kill the terrorists, inadvertantly or otherwise, coluding with the terrorists against their enemies."

John in Tokyo 03.15.07 - 9:15 pm

I'm not sure what they did to this guy at Guantanamo, but whatever it was, it worked.

There's no question that some techniques used at Guantanamo, like sleep deprivation, Metallica at 100 decibels for hours, and especially waterboarding, border on torture. Not to mention all the psychological stress they must be using.

The question, as always, is does the end (=learning about lots of plots, foiling them, saving perhaps thousands of innocent lives, arresting more terrorists) justify the means (denying Khalid Sheik Muhammed the most elemental of his human rights)?

My answer, I suppose, is that it depends on the end and the means. In this case, I think the end in question does justify the means in question, basically because KSM is who he is. Everyone knew he was guilty as hell all along.

(Yes, I've heard the slippery-slope argument, and it has a lot to be said for it. We start out by forcing KSM to listen to "Enter Sandman" at 100 decibels for a week nonstop, and wind up like the Gestapo and the KGB with a Gulag of our own. It's a genuine concern. My response, I suppose, is that I don't think we've slid too far yet. An example of too far is Abu Ghraib. That wasn't anything like Guantanamo, in the sense that whatever goes on at Guantanamo is done on orders by higher authority, eventually reaching up to the President, while Abu Ghraib was a unit gone bad. But the sadism and perversion of the Abu Ghraib torturers, mixed with the fact that the people tortured there were small fry, clearly is far beyond the limit at which the end justifies the means.)

It sort of reminds me of what was effectively the US assassination of Admiral Yamamoto in 1943. Our intelligence learned that he was going to be flying from Point X to Point Y on Day Z, and our fighter planes were sent to blow him out of the sky. They did. Admiral Halsey's reaction was, "What's so good about that? I had hoped to lead that bastard up Pennsylvania Avenue in chains."

I think KSM is just as much an enemy combat leader during wartime as Yamamoto was, and deserves no better. Yamamoto pulled off Pearl Harbor; KSM pulled off 9/11. He will, of course, be executed after his military trial, I have no doubt about that.

Pilar Manjón, the leader of the pro-Socialist victims of terrorism group, gave a speech on March 9 listing everyone she held in contempt. Manjón's son was killed in the March 11 bombing. Manuel Trallero of La Vanguardia, who has pissed me off more than once, responds with some contempt of his own. Manjon's words are in bold and Trallero's responses in italics. It's long, and highly colloquial, so slightly edited.

For those who are violent
That's in the Bible. Amen.

For the Fascists
That's too easy.

For those who support the mustache (a reference to former prime minister Aznar)
And what about those who called the bombing at Barajas Airport Terminal 4 "an unfortunate accident" (a reference to PM Zapatero)? What about them, Mrs. Manjón?

For those who support wars
They're very bad, yes, ma'am. Good thing some of them lost their lives against Mr. Hitler or we'd all be goose-stepping. But they were very bad. Many were even Americans.

For those who support the torture at Guantanamo
I completely agree, Mrs. Manjón, but we're not bringing up the subject of Cuba today, are we?

For those who did not find the weapons of mass destruction
To hell with them. By the way, where were you when Saddam was cutting the Kurds' throats? Where?

For those who lied to us then
Of course. But for all of them, including the speaker on the Hora 25 program on (pro-Socialist) SER radio, who mentioned the rumors running around Madrid that the elections would be suspended. For him too.

For those who are lying to us now
Yes, that's even a sin. Saying we're better off than last year and not as well off as this year in the peace process. (a reference to PM Zapatero).

For the friends of the former prime minister
They, Mrs. Manjón, did not place the bomb that killed your son.

For the friends of the former interior minister
Ditto.

For the friends of Bush
Ditto.

For those who lose an election and get angry
I do not know a single politician who does not react in that way.

For those who bless the bombings
As Mr. Solana, secretary-general of NATO, a Socialist from the days of "NATO no," ordered and blessed the bombs that fell on Belgrade to stop the massacre in the former Yugoslavia.

For those who bark when they speak
You would prefer everyone to be silent, beginning with the church bells and finishing with the TV images. You decide who barks and who speaks. On TVE they already do that.

For those who use terrorism to justify everything
Not to justify everything, of course. But there are one thousand dead people on the table. Should we look away?

For those who insult me
Take them to court. Why don't you sue them? .

For those who threaten me
You're right. But would you mind giving us the names of those who insult and threaten you? Couldn't you give us a few details?

For all of those, and in my name, my most contemptuous contempt.
And for the murderers of your son, not a tiny bit of that contemptuous contempt? You didn't even mention them. Interesting, isn't it?

Just a couple of quick links--it's been a long, busy day, which included taking my mother-in-law to the hospital for a preliminary eye exam for her cataracts operation in two weeks.

The Times has a piece on the feud between Vargas Llosa and García Márquez. This is even more fun than Norman Mailer and Gore Vidal. I'd love to see Mailer and Vidal slug it out in a no-holds-barred caged death match, so I could root for them both to lose.

Jonah Goldberg has an article in National Review--it's on American politics, but is very applicable to Spain--on why controversy and dissension in a democracy are a good thing.

Snopes looks at a probably spurious quote attributed to Robert E. Lee.

The Daily Standard has details on a French law that would ban private individuals from filming acts of violence. And some people say America is full of censorship.

Julian Barnes has a review in the NY Review of Books of what looks like a very interesting history of the rivalry between England and France.

Tom from the Bad Rash has a post up on the PP demo in Madrid last weekend. I have a few disagreements.

It seems that the BBC are reporting on a new opposition demonstration in Madrid every weekend now, inadvertently showing the pictures of falangist flags and Nazi salutes that the Spanish media seems not to see.

I dunno. Much as I dislike demonstrations, I must admit that last weekend's went off without trouble. Since the Socialist Party controls TVE and TV3, and since I regularly watch the news on both, if there had been a lot of Nazi saluting I think I'd have seen it.

...the PP government released no fewer than 64 prisoners on the same basis as De Juana Chaos's original release schedule.

The number 64 comes from El País. My understanding is that the Aznar government had no legal choice but to release the ETA prisoners that they did, since it is the judicial system rather than the administration that decides when a prisoner's sentence is up. The Zapatero government did not decide to release De Juana Chaos from his prison sentence for the 25 murders he committed; that was done by the courts. What the Zapatero government did decide to do was to permit De Juana Chaos to serve out his sentence for writing threatening letters under house arrest rather than in prison. De Juana Chaos then called off his hunger strike, indicating that he found the Zapatero government's concessions to be sufficient.

In their largely unsuccessful co-opting of traditionally left-wing means of protest, the PP fail to offer one important thing: their alternative. They're opposed to dialogue with ETA, so how do we achieve peace in the Basque country? Not interested, is the response. "Wipe them out" is the stupid and unhelpful proposition from some foreign observers (who've never had to live under the threat of terrorism).

A) Forms of protest are not owned by anyone. B) I agree that demonstrations (in democracies; in dictatorships, demonstrators are more courageous than I would probably be) are a particularly infantile form of protest more typical of the Left than the Right. C) I may be wrong, but I think Iberian Notes is one of the "foreign observers" referred to. And I think the way you deal with terrorists, just like any other kind of murderer, is by throwing their asses in jail if they're just collaborators and hanging them if they actually pulled the trigger. I will add that I have most certainly lived under the threat of terrorism during my years in the United States and Spain, and that is one of the most important reasons why I despise terrorists. And everybody else in the world has lived under the threat of terrorism, too. Or don't we remember 9/11, Black September, Munich, Entebbe, Carlos the Jackal, the Red Army Fraction, Oklahoma City, Lockerbie, the African embassies, Casablanca, Bali, Baghdad...must I go on?

The truth is that no solution will ever be found without dialogue.

I'm not sure what good dialogue would do. ETA has basic demands--a referendum on independence, the annexation of Navarra, the release of their prisoners--that no Spanish government could ever accept. And the Spanish government has one basic demand--stop killing people--that ETA has not accepted yet. What exactly is there to negotiate about?

The AVT, while effectively a grassroots campaign group for the PP, technically remains a separate entity...

Yep. And Pilar Manjón's group is effectively a grassroots campaign group for the PSOE.

There are those in the PSOE who accuse this united front of plotting (or even attempting) a coup d'etat against the elected government.

Well, you heard it from Tom. The PSOE is accusing the PP of planning a coup d'etat. That is not the behavior of a political party that wants to calm down the political situation. It is not the behavior of a party that respects its opponents as a democratic opposition, either.

I think that's an exaggeration.

See, look, we can agree on something! There's still hope for Tom. He can yet be saved. Don't give up, brothers and sisters, we can lead him to the light! (Pardon me while I ululate for a while.) There, that's better. Amen.

Clive James has a must-read piece in Slate on Grigory Ordzhonokidze, one of Stalin's lesser-known but more important henchmen, including reflections on the nature of power.

By the way, I highly recommend Simon Sebag Montefiore's biography of Stalin; I've got a signed copy that I bought at the Waterstone's on Oxford Street.

Very quick blog roundup:

José at Barcepundit chastises the PSOE, deservedly, for their heated rhetoric. He points out that the big PP demo last weekend is exactly the same tactic that the PSOE used against the Aznar government.

Colin Davies has more, among his daily reflections.

Davids Medienkritik has more on global warming eco-hysteria and the German media. So does Expat Yank, on the British media.

Eursoc has an extensive look at Jack Chiraq in the wake of the announcement that he won't run again. So does Pave France.

Fausta looks at honor killings and the code of silence about them in Palestinian society.

Ibex Salad runs a weekly look at the Spanish stock market. Here's last week's.

La Liga Loca reviews the weekend in Spanish football.

Publius Pundit posts positively on the President's Latin America tour.

Sal de Traglia and friends have been out tapas-bar hopping in Madrid.

Playing Chess with the Dead does not like my ex-boss. I'm not a huge fan, either. I've met his son, who's a nice guy.

¡No Pasarán! points out the hypocrisy inherent in anti-Americanism.

The Wall Street Journal ran an editorial yesterday on Zap and Spain. As you might have imagined, it's not precisely pro-Socialist. It's generally good, but we have a couple of quibbles.

The Zapatero government has encouraged Catalonia, the Basque Country and other regions in this highly decentralized state to seek new autonomy deals that call into question the current constitutional order, and may be a stepping stone to the possible break up of Spain.

That's a little catastrophic, I think. The Catalan statute is going to be tossed out by the Constitutional Court. If, somehow, the statute survives, it's still nowhere near a step toward independence. I don't see Spain breaking up anytime soon. And Spain is not highly decentralized, at least not by American standards. Spanish regions have much less power than American states.

And, to complete the picture of a state divided, wounds from Spain's awful 1936-39 civil war and the subsequent four decades of General Franco's dictatorship that most people assumed were long healed were ripped open by Mr. Zapatero. In a break with previous Socialist rulers, he openly plays politics with history. Rusting Franco-era statues are ceremoniously torn down. The church and the so-called bourgeoisie--the enemies for the divisive Second Republic of 1931-36--have come under attack. Anyone on the right is, often by implication, a fascist.

That paragraph starts out OK. Zap has been irresponsibly waving the bloody shirt of the Republic. If the worst consequences so far are the removal of a couple of statues, that dumb Salamanca archive thing, and several boring documentaries on TV2, though, it's not yet time for us on the right to get agitated. Also, I have not heard Zap and the PSOE attacking the Church or the "bourgeoisie." Some juvenile loudmouths on the left, like Pepe Rubianes and his ilk, will attack anything that smacks of authority, but Zap hasn't gone that far. And, again, there are elements on the left of the PSOE that do throw around the word "fascist" to mean anything they don't like, but American idiotarian leftists do that all the time. Zap hasn't called the PP fascists, at least not yet.

I feel like I'm defending Zap, which is not something I want to do. I would never vote for him, and I hope he loses the next election. But he's not evil, he's just rather naive and not very smart. Spain will survive him.

From the "Never Praise Your Country When at Home, Nor Criticize It When Abroad" department:

La Vanguardia has an interview with Harold Bloom today. Bloom is much more famous in Catalonia than in America, since he has written positively about Catalan literature.

Interviewer: In your book you say the United States is not a democracy.

Bloom: That's it. We are not a democracy, and it is ridiculous for us to affirm that we want to bring democracy to the world, because we have no democracy to export. The United States is equal parts a plutocracy, a theocracy, and an oligarchy; political families that govern generation after generation.

Int.: American Religion insists on the special relationship that the American people has with God.

Bloom: More than 90% of Americans believe in God, though what fascinates me is that each one of them is convinced that God loves him personally. They think God is on their side. Bush, who is responsible for the current disaster in iraq and this country's deficit, says that Jesus is his favorite philosopher. Can you believe that he got through Yale without reading a single book?

What an East Coast intellectual snob. Furriners who wonder why 90% of America despises these people and ignores everything they say now know why.

However, Bloom, toward the end of the interview, demonstrates that he knows as little about contemporary fiction as he does about the country that he is a citizen of, that took his ancestors in, and that he scorns so harshly.

Bloom: Baltasar Porcel is at the same level as Don DeLillo or Philip Roth.

Yeah, at the same level of muddle-headed politics, I'd agree. At the same level of literary talent? No, not really, no.

You'll want to read this piece on global warming eco-hysteria from, of all places, ABC News. (Note: It's three pages.)

Key quote:

Herein lies the moral danger behind global warming hysteria. Each day, 20,000 people in the world die of waterborne diseases. Half a billion people go hungry. A child is orphaned by AIDS every seven seconds. This does not have to happen. We allow it while fretting about "saving the planet." What is wrong with us that we downplay this human misery before our eyes and focus on events that will probably not happen even a hundred years hence? We know that the greatest cause of environmental degradation is poverty; on this, we can and must act.

Climate change is a norm, not an exception. It is both an opportunity and a challenge. The real crises for 4 billion people in the world remain poverty, dirty water and the lack of a modern energy supply. By contrast, global warming represents an ecochondria of the pampered rich.

Yep. Poverty and disease can be at least partially fixed with decent government, private property rights, the rule of law, and access to free markets, along with development aid administered by the West. It wouldn't even cost all that much money. Several trillion dollars, of course, but a lot less than "fixing" global warming would cost.

One thing I find interesting is the religious and ideological nature of environmentalism. Environmentalism is mostly not a reasoned response to real problems, as conservationism is. Instead, as that environmentalist guy said in El Periódico the other day, it's an ethical (or, I'd say, unethical) movement. Environmentalists believe that Western society is evil and must be radically changed. Capitalism, growth, development, private property, the profit motive, individual economic rights--it's all got to stop. Bogus Marxism didn't work, so equally bogus environmentalism has replaced it; you have noticed, of course, that most Greens are also Marxists. Look no farther than Iniciativa, our local commies. They don't really give a crap about ordinary people or want to make their lives better in the here and now; that would be reformism. Instead, they want to throw out the whole system and start over, with themselves in charge, of course.

This is why environmentalists are against using biofuels, like ethanol, or building more nuclear power plants. They don't want to solve problems in a way that would make our current system better, since our current system is itself unethical and must be destroyed.

La Vanguardia's best columnist, Francesc-Marc Álvaro, today compares the global warning panic to the nuclear panic during the Cold War. He points out that nuclear destruction of the planet was a genuine possibility, while we're not even sure that global warming actually exists, whether it is man-made if it does exist, and whether it is a serious problem if it is man-made.

Quote: I do not want--and I think many agree--climactic change to become our new daily source of terror or frightening images of voracious deserts, overflowing seas, and perpetual storms to begin to haunt my dreams until they become nightmares. We didn't spend our childhoods watching images of antinuclear refuges on TV in order to spend our adult years terrified by climactic Apocalypse. Let's pay attention to the scientists, listen to the governments, consider the interests of the companies, but let us not accept a new conceptual Alien. Other things, like flourishing fundamentalism and populism, deserve much more space in the shop window of contemporary threats.

It's the third anniversary of the March 11, 2004 bombings. Al Qaeda murdered almost 200 people in Madrid. Most of the media turned on the government. The opposition PSOE won the election held three days later. The new prime minister, Zapatero, pulled Spanish troops out of Iraq as soon as he took office. The message he sent was one of cowardice and appeasement. We made them mad by sending troops to Iraq, so we'll withdraw our troops, and then they won't be mad at us anymore. If only it were so easy.

The West is at war with Al Qaeda and Islamist terrorists, in New York, London, Afghanistan, Iraq, and Spain too, a war we did not start. Zapatero does not recognize this. He honestly believes that if the West does not meet the Islamists' demands, some of which he considers legitimate, then the consequent struggle is our fault. And, twenty years ago, he believed that if the West did not meet the Soviets' demands, some of which he considered more than legitimate, then the consequent struggle was our fault.

Fortunately, Zapatero has little international power or influence, except among the Another World Is Possible crowd. After he loses the next election, which he probably will despite the PP's incompetence, he will be no more than the answer to a trivia question. Twenty years from now, he will be remembered vaguely as a figure of appeasement, much like Neville Chamberlain.

Unless, of course, Zarqawi and Osama win the war and reconquer Al-Andalus. Not likely, I agree. However, Zap and the rest of those who want the US to lose have most certainly not considered the consequences.

José at Barcepundit has a rundown on yesterday's demo in Madrid. Publius Pundit has more.

I don't like symbolic politics and demos and stuff like that. I like thought, serious talk, and real action, which the opposition PP has not been providing lately. Of course, the dreadful Zap administration has never provided any of that, either, so it's kind of like Scylla or Charybdis, not much of a choice.

The demo's purpose was to censure the Zapatero administration in general, its anti-ETA policies more specifically, and the transfer from prison to house arrest of terrorist Iñaki De Juana Chaos in particular.

Well, I agree with the demonstrators. I don't like Zap, his ETA policy, or his release of De Juana Chaos, either. I also think the Zap administration's attempt to deflect criticism of his own performance on the De Juana Chaos affair by attacking ex-PM Aznar's policies was about as demagogic as a political argument can get. No, it doesn't matter whether we're doing something stupid and wrong right now, because the PP did something sort of similar in the past!

I wouldn't have marched in the demo, though. I don't like the mass-rally attitude toward politics at all.

And my attitude toward De Juana Chaos, of course, is that he should be dead. Unfortunately, Spain has no death penalty.

Note: It's always fun, after a big demo, to look at the various reports of how many people were there. I've seen estimates ranging from 300,000 (El País) to 2.2 million (the PP). There were most certainly a hell of a lot of people there, and they were well-behaved; fortunately, no one did anything to tarnish the image of the Right, always a risk at public demos.

It was a wild one last night at the Camp Nou, where FC Barcelona and Real Madrid drew 3-3 in what is always the biggest game of the season. Certainly an exciting game--anyone who thinks soccer is boring should have seen this one. Neither team was disciplined, and both showed huge holes on defense. Leo Messi scored a hat-trick for Barcelona, and Ronaldinho had an excellent game. Here are the highlights from the match, along with a Spanish radio commentator's voice-over.

Madrid started the scoring with a goal by Van Nistelrooy off a defensive error by Thuram in minute 5, but Messi tied it up right afterward off a pass by Eto'o. Later in the first half Oleguer committed an obvious penalty, and Van Nistelrooy converted the penalty kick. Then Ronaldinho took the ball into the area from the left, shot, Casillas stopped it, but Messi volleyed in the rebound for 2-2. Near the end of the first half, Oleguer was sent off after two yellow cards, and Barça was left with ten men. Rijkaard substituted Sylvinho for Eto'o in order to set up a four-man defensive line, and nobody managed to score for most of the second half. Then Guti centered a free kick from the right of the area, and Ramos somehow knocked it in with the top of his head. It looked like Madrid was going to win, but in the last minute of regulation Ronaldinho got a through ball to Messi, who beat Casillas to make it 3-3. Three minutes of injury time, and Ronaldinho gets it into the area once more and Ramos knocks him down. It's a penalty, but the ref doesn't call it, and the game ends 3-3. There was only one more really dubious call by the ref; he warned Ramos for a brutal takedown of Ronaldinho from behind, and even the TV announcers agreed it should have been a red card.

So where does that leave Barça? Probably still in second place after today's matches, but within easy striking distance of Sevilla. Valencia is likely to make up points on Barça, too.

I now think Barcelona has a 60% chance of winning the League, down 20 points from a couple of weeks ago, with Sevilla and Valencia at around 20% each. They haven't been eliminated from the Spanish Cup yet; they came back and eliminated Zaragoza to go on to the quarterfinals, so they still have a chance to win that, too. The Cup is a comparatively minor trophy, but it would be nice to win it, and a League-Cup double would definitely salvage the season. That's still possible.

There's some debate around here about what to do with the squad for next year. Elements of the local media are talking about selling off a sizable number of players. I imagine that if Barça does not win the League, there will be even more calls for change in the clubhouse. That, to me, is nuts. This team has won two Leagues and a Champions, and you don't break up the squad over a second-place finish.

I think there are three groups of players on the club. The first is your group of core players from your own youth system. You want to keep every single one who's good enough to play in First Division. For the Barça, that would be Valdés, Puyol, Oleguer, Xavi, Messi, and Iniesta, all of whom still have upside to their careers. The second is your group of international superstars. You want to keep these guys, too, until they prove they're not superstars. Ideally, you sell your superstars one year before their performance begins to decline. That would be Ronaldinho, Eto'o, Saviola, and Deco. This might be a very good time to sell Deco. The third group are your solid professionals who you bring in to fill out the team. These guys are replaceable. They are Belletti, Márquez, Van Bronckhorst, Sylvinho, Edmilson, Gudjohnsen, Zambrotta, Thuram, Giuly, and Ezquerro.

I would: a) keep all the core players from the cantera, except for Motta, who I would ship out to anyone who will take him b) keep Ronaldinho and Eto'o no matter what c) keep all your pros who are under 30, which would be Márquez, Gudjohnsen, and Zambrotta. Sell the rest; their careers have entered the decline stage. Possible exception: Sylvinho, who is in great physical shape though he's about 33. Most players (except goalies) are done at about 30.

That would leave you with a basic lineup next year of Valdés; Oleguer, Puyol, Márquez, Zambrotta; Iniesta, Gudjohnsen (who played holding midfielder at Chelsea), and Xavi; Ronaldinho, Eto'o, and Messi. Saviola is your 12th man, the striker off the bench.

Now you need to sign some players; I'd bring in a right fullback, a left fullback, a central defender, a holding midfielder, a left winger, and a right winger. Olmo, from the youth squad, looks like he might be ready to step in as a central defender, and Dos Santos, also from the youth squad, is about ready to spell Xavi and Iniesta as playmaking midfielders. Also, strange as it may seem, I actually liked Real Madrid's idea of bringing in one superstar player a year. With these caveats: Get rid of one superstar a year, too, don't buy superstars you don't have a place for, and buy them experienced in Europe but still under about 26. Don't buy Latin American stars untested without a couple of years in a major European league. I'd get Cristiano Ronaldo; the local papers are claiming that Barça already has him tied up for next season. They should get some cash for Deco that they can spend on C.R.

We got a link from Slate (last paragraph). Cool.

If I may drop a few names, Iberian Notes has gotten links from National Review, Front Page, the Daily Standard, Andrew Sullivan, InstaPundit, and Little Green Footballs. We're on the blogrolls of the latter two. The funny thing is that the links we get are almost always on stuff I just dashed off in three minutes, like the Captain America post that Slate linked to, while stuff I spend a couple of hours on, like that post on the Spanish Civil War, are universally ignored.

There's a lesson here somewhere.

Tom from The Bad Rash says, regarding Ann Coulter,

This is yet another story which gives the lie to conservative 'ownership' and 'custody' of morality. I wouldn't mind them so much if they didn't spend half their time slagging people off for doing things they, or their mates, are perfectly happy to indulge in. The point is that no one, left or right, can own morality… but it is conservatives who frequently claim to.

I responded in his comments section:

Tom, many Republicans, among them Rudy Giuliani and Mitt Romney, are not social conservatives. The Republican Party is actually a coalition of several different factions, including the free marketeers, the deregulation folks, the small government / low tax squad, the foreign policy hawks, the business-as-usual people, patriotic traditionalists, cranky old folks who want to go back to 1910 or whatever–and the social conservatives, who are largely religiously based. Most Republicans fall into several of these categories (I'm a free marketeer and a foreign policy hawk, for example, and also an advocate of small, local government, but definitely not a social conservative), but few fit into all of them.

Each of these factions, along with each of the several factions of the Democratic Party (the unions, the civil rights establishment, government employees, the feminists, the universities, Hollywood, the big-city political machines like Chicago, the greens, the anti-system folks, and the socialists who have no other home)claims to have a monopoly on what the right way to do things is–that is, on morality. Every single political group claims to have morality on its side, always has, and always will.

So Marvel Comics has killed Captain America. I don't care, of course; I've never had any interest in superheroes or comic books, except for Mad and Viz. (Other things I never liked: Horror movies. Gilligan's Island and '60s comedies. Star Trek and space shows. '70s cop shows. James Bond.) But it made TV3 news this afternoon. Get this quote from their website:

Interpretations of the hero's end have not taken long to appear. Many see an allegory of the state of his country. It isn't strange, since Captain America incarnates the fundamental values of the United States, and so his death could be interpreted as the end of these values.

That's just earth-shatteringly dumb. This is a comic book character, for Christ's sake. Remember that nutcase thing Ariel Dorfman wrote back in the '70s on how Donald Duck symbolizes gringo imperialistic capitalism? This is nearly as bad.

One problem with Europeans' ideas about the United States is that most of them come from American popular culture, which as we all know has little or nothing to do with reality. They tend to take images very seriously as well, because they're much easier to understand than the complicated reading that would be necessary to have informed ideas about American governmental policy, much less the society as a whole or its history.

Arts and Letters Daily links to this Stephen Schwartz article, which was written as a response to the Eric Hobsbawm piece (in the Guardian, of course) on the Spanish Civil War that we commented on a few days ago.

Schwartz justifiably carves up Hobsbawm's ignorance of the subject and his parroting of the Stalinist line in his piece, but he repeats his own set of clichés in praise of the non-Stalinist revolutionary left. These groups, the Socialist PSOE, the anarchist CNT-FAI and semi-Trotskyist POUM, committed as many atrocities as the Communists did, and were no more democratic. Their middle-class allies, Manuel Azaña's Republican Left and Lluís Companys's Esquerra Republicana, were also guilty of collaboration with the assorted revolutionary groups and of a good few atrocities of their own; they were not democrats, but Jacobins, believers in radical change carried out by an intellectual vanguard--that is, themselves.

Of course, Schwartz admits none of this; he and Hobsbawm are both wrong. They merely sympathize with two different factions of revolutionary leftists. Neither understands that in 1936, Spain was sharply divided between Left and Right, that the Right had some pretty good arguments in its favor, and the Left had had a disastrous record since 1931. Nor will either admit that both sides, Right and Left, committed enormous atrocities during the war and deserve equal moral condemnation, or that when forced to choose between Franco, the Communists (who quickly dominated the PSOE and the Jacobins after the July 17 coup failed), or the CNT-POUM, a lot of people chose Franco. Most of those who chose Franco were working and middle-class center to right-wingers who had sympathized with the conservative CEDA, populist Radicals, or right-Catalanist Lliga Catalana before the war. (The Basque PNV originally threw in with the Republicans in 1936, and then pretty much switched sides in 1937.)

Quotes from Schwartz's article:

Hobsbawm embodies a principle on which I and others have long written: the distinction that must be made between the war of 1936-39 as experienced by the Spanish people, and the parallel conflict fantasized by intellectuals of a leftist persuasion mainly (and now retrospectively) situated, to paraphrase Trotsky, in the Bronx of the Young Communist League. The two had and have nothing in common.

That's Schwartz's thesis statement, and it's true enough.

This band of memory-murderers have never come to grips with the fundamental lie of Stalinist propaganda, which holds that the Republicans would have won the war if they had submitted to dictation from Moscow – a claim every educated Spanish individual knows to be absurd.

Schwartz is starting to go off track here. Yes, he's right about the Stalinists, but notice his last phrase there. Actually, there's still a lot of debate among historians between three theses: A) The Republicans would have won the war if they'd submitted to direction from Moscow. B) The Republicans would have won the war if they'd told Moscow to take a hike C) There was no way the Republicans were going to win the war no matter what. Hobsbawm believes A. Schwartz believes B. I tend to go for C. The problem with A is that they pretty much did submit to Moscow after the May 1937 mini-civil war in Barcelona, and the problem with B was that the CNT, POUM, and PSOE-Communist militias never once stopped a Francoist advance. Note Schwartz's extensive use of loaded language and his appeal to the spurious authority of "every educated Spanish individual."

But the Spanish, I am glad to say, know better than Hobsbawm what happened; they understand that the war involved five main forces. On the right, the counter-revolutionary military and, outside the Basque country, traditionalist Catholics, were supported by a tiny fascist movement.

By contrast, three distinct trends appeared on the Republican side:
a) the Catalan Left, Basque nationalists, and other liberal bourgeois trends who wanted to carry out a Jacobin-style modernization;
b) the proletarian upsurge of the CNT, Socialists, and POUM;
c) the Stalinist conspiracy to create a one-party dictatorship.

Schwartz has C down pretty well. As for B, what to some is a proletarian upsurge is a murderous rampage to others. I note that the Republicans killed more people in Catalonia, some 8000, than the Francoists did, and that most of them were victims of the CNT and POUM, killed in the last six months of 1936. (The rest were victims of, mostly, the Communists during the rest of the war.) And as for A, they were weak amateurs easily dominated by the much more ruthless and effective Communists.

He's flat wrong about the Right, though. In the January 1936 election that put the Popular Front in power, more than 4,000,000 people voted for the Right, mostly for the CEDA. Several hundred thousand more voted for what have been called Center parties, including the PNV. (Some 4,700,000 people voted for the Popular Front parties.) Not all of them were traditionalist Catholics, and even if they were, that does not mean they should be dismissed. They were simply people who did not believe that a revolution was a good idea, farmers, shopkeepers, skilled workers, professionals, and a good few manual workers.

The Right challenged the fairness of that election, by the way. ("The second round runoff contests were held at the end of the month under leftist supervision and considerable pressure from the leftist street mob." --Stanley Payne. After the Right won in Granada and Cuenca, the results in those provinces were invalidated by the Left.)

As for the army, the whole problem was that it was not united behind the July 17 coup. If it had been, there would have been virtually no resistance to the coup, and it would likely have gone smoothly with little bloodshed. But the army was divided about half-and-half between Right and Left, though most of the good units (the Legion and the Regulars) were under Rightist control. If the Left hadn't had some of the army. along with some of the Civil Guard and all of the Storm Troopers (the Republic's own police force), they'd have had nothing whatever to resist the coup.

Moscow tried to unite a) with c) to overcome b), but a) and b) had more in common with each other, and the attempt failed. Stalin, however, succeeded in effectively sabotaging the Republican defense; his discreet 1938 message to Hitler indicating Soviet willingness to withdraw support for the Republic was a crucial step.

No. A and C did unite under Moscow's leadership after May 1937, and B was crushed. Also, Stalin didn't sabotage the Republic so much as he used it for his own purposes. He would have been more than happy to see the Communists win in Spain, but he certainly wasn't willing to invest the money and take the necessary risks to do so.

As to the POUM, it is in discussing this phenomenon that Hobsbawm reveals the extent of his obliviousness about the Spanish civil war. He refers with something approaching disdain to “the murder of its leader Andrés Nin [having] caused some international protest.” In reality, as is well-known in Spain today, protests over the brutal murder of Andreu Nin were commoner in Catalonia than outside Spain, and the Catalan Stalinists never overcame the ignominy the crime brought down upon them.

Yes, Nin was brutally murdered by Comintern agents after the POUM was crushed in May 1937. The problem is that he and his Leninist-Trotskyist POUM were a gang of brutal murderers themselves, who had no qualms about shedding innocent blood to make the revolution. Note how Schwartz keeps going on and on about conventional wisdom in Spain and citing it as an authority.

In 1945, a faction of the POUM formed the Moviment Socialista de Catalunya, which helped organize a Stalinist-free Partit dels Socialistes de Catalunya (PSC) that was joined by other prominent POUM members in 1976. The PSC happens to govern Catalonia today. The outstanding historical figure of the post-Franco Catalan Socialists, Pasqual Maragall, served as an extremely popular mayor of Barcelona and president of the Catalan regional Generalitat, and has written and spoken vividly about the relevance of the POUM for modern Catalan politics.

Oh, come on. Today's PSC is run by José Montilla, the exact opposite of a fiery revolutionary. The PSC has absolutely nothing to do with the POUM. Pasqual Maragall a POUMista? It is to laugh. The PSC is a moderate European social democratic party, much like in Germany or Italy.

The Spanish people fought for three years, in a libertarian fashion – not limited to the CNT and POUM militias, but also in the militia formations of the Esquerra, the PSOE, and the Basque Nationalists, alongside the “traditional” Republican military units to which the Stalinists were so attached. As the Spanish today know very well, the militia units generally fought better than the militarized units. In particular, the Stalinist-controlled International Brigades and the militarized Republican soldiery with whom they were coordinated were known for incompetence in battle, desertion, and, in the case of many of the foreigners, their reassignment to special groups ordered by the Russians to kill leftist dissidents, since the Spanish would not carry out such duties.

Schwartz has gone round the bend into his own myth-making. 1) The Spanish people? Including the half of them who supported Franco? 2) The militias were lousy. They never won a battle. 3) The Republican Army and the International Brigades were pretty lousy too, and the only important battle they won was when they stopped Franco at the gates of Madrid in December 1936. They did, however, hold out for two more years after that lone victory. 4) I have never before read that "the Spanish would not carry out such duties" as forming firing squads. Plenty of people on all sides served in firing squads, of course, since probably more people were murdered behind the lines in the Civil War than were killed in combat.

Says Jordi Casabona in today's El Periódico:

Recently several persons have been seen, totally naked, strolling through the streets of Barcelona. One of them is an older man who, besides wearing old-fashioned shoes and socks, has an ostentatiously pierced penis. A couple of Sundays ago, I saw one on Calle Aragón who was only wearing cowboy boots and glasses. He was tall, about 30 years old, and he walked with a mixture of arrogance and dignity.

A few days an American friend who had been staying in our city told me, speechless, that he had seen the man with the old-fashioned shoes and socks and the pierced penis walking calmly down Calle Ferran. Not only could he not conceive that the passers-by practically ignored him, but that he managed to walk 100 meters without a patrol of policemen jumping on him.

I cold not avoid being surprised one more time how in our society there is frequently much more tolerance for individual behavior than for many people's ways of thinking or believing. Just the opposite of what happens in my American friend's society.

Interesting. Mr. Casabona says that American society is more tolerant of dissident thought or belief, while Spanish society is more tolerant of individual behavior. Spain is certainly tolerant of individual behavior; you can do pretty much whatever you want here. It really is more tolerant, in this sense, than the Midwest; in the Midwest most people wouldn't appreciate gentlemen walking around town indecently exposed. Or teenagers smoking hash in the plazas, or neighborhood fiestas that don't close down until 4 AM, or hardcore porno on the newsstands, or all the drag queens fruiting it up around here. (I swear Spanish society is really into cross-dressing, much more so than you might imagine.) I bet in New York or LA nobody would care.

He's right when he says that the spectrum of opinion in Spain is narrower than in the US, at least among high- and middle-brow circles. Pretty much, over here, you know exactly what most folks who claim to be educated think about every issue. Against the Iraq war, against global warming, against the Church, against big corporations, for bestiality. They all have exactly the same ideas, some sort of vaguely socialist do-gooding pacifist Catalan-but-multicultural green utopian dream.

El Periódico also did a photo-opinion section with five "experts" giving their opinion of the Al Gore movie and traveling snake-oil show. Notice the fact that their perspectives are nearly identical; that is, they all believe in Al's version of the issue. Some are a little more fanatical than others, though.

Josep Garriga, Climate Change Office: "He has done all of us working against climactic change a big favor. (The movie) is aimed at the US audience and those in the federal government who do not believe in (climactic) change. The data he presents are correct, though arguable."

A. Rodríguez Picó, TV meteorologist: "It must be seen, though it is a very American viewpoint. We must extrapolate here in Catalonia because here our society is different. If 2006 was the year of awareness, 2007 must be the year of action. We must change our habits. I sold my car."

Josep Enric Llebot, Autonomous University professor: "It is quite accurate, though sometimes it uses (future) impacts in an exaggerated manner, going to extreme situations. It's a good strategy for convincing people and showing them how we must act as individuals. It is in our hands."

Jose Luis Gallego, environmental journalist: "Climate change is more of an ethical revolution than an ecological one. There is only one truth, which may be uncomfortable for some. The movie and the book are magnificent. The message reaches everyone who has some conscience."

Miguel Á. Rodríguez, researcher: "It has broken down the barriers between scientists and society. The latter is only interested in what celebrities say. At a scientific level, the issue is super-decided. Within 15 years Bush will be criticized more for not signing the Kyoto protocol than Iraq."

So the range of enlightened opinion is:

Mr. Garriga is a true believer. He thinks sin is bad and those who fight it are good.
Mr. Rodríguez Picó wants to mobilize society against sin, and is himself a redeemed ex-sinner.
Mr. Llebot is in favor of lying in order to convince people not to sin.
Mr. Gallego states that there is only one Truth, which can be seen by a non-sinning elect.
Mr. Rodríguez names the Devil himself, the Sinner-in-Chief, who dares to scorn Holy Writ.

We haven't done a blog roundup for at least a week and a half, so here goes.

La Liga Loca has the Spanish football quotes of the week.

Ibex Salad has more on the olive oil market.

Fausta has all the latest Go to Hell Hugo news. It was great to meet Fausta by phone last week. We may do another interview sometime.

Expat Yank goes after a bogus BBC report and a Bush-bashing Boris Johnson piece in the Telegraph.

Davids Medienkritik is being harassed by some pinhead, and gives Der Speigel another well-deserved fisking for its gratuitous anti-Americanism. ¡No Pasarán! has more on the pinhead and his attacks on Medienkritik.

As he does every day, Colin Davies comments from Galicia; today it's about Spanish demos and quack pseudo-medical products.

Chicago Boyz has an excellent post on how the Left has gotten both Vietnam and Iraq wrong.

The Brussels Journal opines on the release of Red Army Fraction terrorists in Germany, and on lessons we could learn from Herotodus.

A Fistful of Euros nominates the Belgians as the unlikely heroes of the row over admitting Serbia to the UN.

Publius Pundit reports on women's rights protestors in Iran--where are the American feminists when you need them?--and on "Neo-Soviet Russia."

Playing Chess with the Dead points out a contradiction in the March 11 conspiracy theory. The author, Graeme, has also been summarizing each day of the trial; here's Monday's report.

Pejman likes the free market.

One of the most notorious works of pornography in English is My Secret Life by "Walter," an anonymous Victorian gentleman. The book was first published in 1888, and the, uh, action takes place between about 1840 and 1870. Walter commits literally thousands of sexual acts through the course of his sexual memoir, some of which are obviously fantasy but others of which ring true. In fact, you can learn a great deal about Victorian society by reading My Secret Life. There's your excuse! It's historical research!

Notes: a) Most of the women Walter has sex with are either professional prostitutes or women he offers money to b) Many of the rest of them are domestic servants c) Walter is a serial sexual harasser, and might well be accused of rape today d) He definitely uses his money and social position to exploit poorer women e) The lower classes seem to have few taboos about sex in Walter's world f) Walter doesn't classify people into hetero and homosexual; he is willing to engage in sex play with men occasionally, but not to participate in anal sex, which he thinks is dirty and shameful. I think today he would identify as hetero rather than bi g) Nobody in Walter's world knows even the most basic information about venereal diseases h) There are no new sexual practices. Walter partakes of just about everything possible. He's not into flagellation, but digs spanking i) Walter's courtship technique, when seducing a woman of more or less his social class, consists of making bawdy comments to her, grabbing her and kissing her by force, and then pulling out his wanger. He claims it works for him. I don't think so. One problem with pornography is that it portrays everyone as sex-obsessed and always ready for it. I really believe that idiot sexual harassers believe that the stuff portrayed in porno is all true, and think if they whip out their whackers women will be ready to service them j) There's a lot of great vocabulary in the book. I have added the verb "to gamahouche" to my personal lexicon. Now, instead of using "Yo' mama wears army boots" as an all-purpose insult, you can say, "Yo' mama gamahouches Rosie O'Donnell."

Not really much exciting news from around here. Rajoy has called another big old right-wing demo for Saturday in Madrid in opposition to the Zap government's decision to grant De Juana Chaos "second degree" prisoner status. I totally disagree with Zap's justification for his decision: that he did not want to create an ETA martyr. Yeah, great, now what you've done is turn a martyr into an ETA hero. I would much prefer him as a martyr.

Meanwhile, Zap has threatened to expose all manner of secret information about past PP negotiations with ETA while Aznar was in power. I'm not sure that's necessary, since Rajoy has said many times: that was then, and this is now, and we have learned something since then. Have you?

At the 3/11 trial, the head cops have been testifying anonymously about how they went about the business of the investigation, helping to sink the ridiculous ETA-PSOE-Bavarian Illuminati conspiracy coverup story that irresponsible elements of the right are pushing.

Comment: I met Jose from Barcepundit last night for a quick beer. We both agree that we are displeased with the PP leadership, and that we particularly cannot understand why the PP is doing so badly in the polls against the Zap administration. The Zap government is so bad, so weak, so incompetent, and Zap himself is so innocent and childish, that any competent political opposition would already have them dead and buried. If you have Barcepundit and Iberian Notes displeased with you, and you are a conservative party in Spain, you are doing something very wrong.

A couple of years ago there was bragging in some parts on the Continent about how the EU's new model of Airbus was going to really show the United States this time. Haven't heard much of that lately, as Airbus is cutting jobs all over. What an awful name, by the way. The whole point of going by air is that it beats the hell out of the bus. Why remind airline passengers of the very form of transport they're trying to avoid?

Airport comment: La Vangua and TV3 are kicking up a snit because 1) Barcelona doesn't have many intercontinental flights 2) Iberia has decided to hub out of Madrid and feed Barcelona traffic through there 3) Barcelona fears being reduced to the home of low-cost flights for cheap tourists like me and the east end of the Madrid-Barcelona air shuttle 4) All Spain's airports are managed by AENA, a state-owned company based in Madrid 5) Therefore, there must be some evil centralist Madrid plot keeping Barcelona down again.

My opinion: Of course each airport in Spain should manage itself, and that management should be in private hands. AENA should instantly be sold off, like all other state-owned companies, including Radiotelevisión Española and the EFE news agency. However, this issue isn't related to any of the airport complaints Barcelona currently has, and it's not like the locals want Barcelona airport management to be in private hands; they want it to be in the hands of the Catalan regional government, which would mean the airport would be run badly by bureaucrats speaking Catalan, instead of being run badly by bureaucrats speaking Spanish.

But the big news is the Liverpool-Barça Champions League match tonight. Liverpool beat Barça 1-2 in the first leg in the Camp Nou, and Barça needs to score two goals tonight at Anfield Road. That is not going to be easy. Liverpool is a good team. Tonight Barça has Eto'o and Messi, though, who they didn't have in the first leg. Barça is just coming off a tough away loss at Sevilla, who took over a two-point lead in first place, and on Saturday they play Real Madrid in what is always the biggest league fixture of the season, even if Barça is struggling and Madrid is sunk.

La Vanguardia gives the match a large front-page color photo, and then five full pages in the sports section. No question what they think the important story is.

Ann Coulter has really put her foot in it this time. Just plain tasteless behavior. You don't call a presidential candidate a "faggot." And the people who clapped shouldn't have. This is going to make conservatives look just great. Now Dem party leader Howard Dean gets a chance to get all puffed up and self-righteous, and call conservatives bigots. Obviously, the Republican Party should say nothing, since Ms. Coulter does not represent it. Methinks it is about time for reasonable elements of the party to distance themselves from her, though, since she's volatile and good at saying the wrong thing. National Review fired her a few years back for intemperate language.

Ten Things It's OK To Call John Edwards:

10. A flip-flopping asswipe
9. A hypocritical turdlicker
8. A Cleveland Steamer
7. A pussy
6. A lying piece of shit
5. A Democrat
4. One of those guys who's not going to get into heaven through the eye of a needle
3. Smegma
2. Almost as big an asshole as Jimmy Carter

And at Number One:

1. A lawyer!

I slightly botched the De Juana Chaos story yesterday; I can only plead that the story was still breaking then. De Juana Chaos has been given "second degree" prisoner status. This means that he has been sent to a hospital in the Basque Country, and when he is strong enough to leave hospital, he will be released from prison in order to serve out his sentence under house arrest.

That sentence, remember, is three years for writing threatening letters. De Juana Chaos will probably have to serve about a year of that in the comfortable surroundings of his home. He has called off his hunger strike, since he got what he wanted.

I must point out that the Zap government and the judiciary have behaved legally at all times throughout this mess. According to the legal code in existence when De Juana Chaos did those 25 murders, he couldn't be forced to serve more than thirty, and he had the same rights to time off for good behavior as any other prisoner. He has served his sentence, after those eighteen years he spent in prison are up. Unfortunately, that is the law. Now the question is what about that extra sentence for the threatening letters? Well, he was going to do twelve, and now he's going to do one year, at home. Looks to me like he won.

The PP's weak spot in their record is the fact that they freed a bunch of ETA prisoners when they were in power under similar conditions. Their answers are 1) yes, we were negotiating with them then, and look how they made fools of us. We've learned from that experience, and now you Socialists should, too, and 2) the laws forced us to turn loose the prisoners that we released because they had served their murder sentences, just like De Juana Chaos. But the ones we released didn't have extra charges hanging over them for terroristic threats, unlike De J. C.

La Vanguardia actually has pretty good coverage on the US presidential campaign, with Eusebio Val on page 3 on McCain. He got page 4 for an interview with Newt Gingrich, whom he bills as "an intellectual agitator of the right," which is fair enough.

Quotes: Val: Are you worried that the image of the United States has gotten worse in recent years?
Gingrich: "I am worried that the image of the United States government has gotten worse. I don't think the image of the country has gotten worse. There has been no decline in the number of people who want to come here as immigrants. There has been no decline in the number of people applying for visas. We have recovered the number of student applications. But it is obvious that the US government has failed miserably at explaining our values and beliefs."

Val: You defend the centrality of God in American political life. What do you mean by that? Doesn't that contradict the principle of separation between church and state that the United States was founded on?
Gingrich: "That statement is historically false. The United States was founded on a document that says that our Creator gave us certain inalienable rights. It was the Declaration of Independence. How can you explain where your rights come from, if not from your Creator? The United States, in fact, is a unique civilization that God gives power to you as a person, you are sovereign and you cede power to the government. It's very different from the European model...The French Revolution did not work here. We are not a secular society."

I'm not sure I necessarily agree with Gingrich here. a) There most certainly is a separation between church and state in the US. b) Taking your religious beliefs into account when you vote is not an interference with this separation. c) I'm no expert here, but the Founders were mostly some sort of deist or Unitarian or Quaker or something like that. They did share what we would call Christian ethical ideals, and they believed in some kind of higher power. It's important to remember that the Revolution occured before the Second Great Awakening, when what we consider fundamentalist American Protestant beliefs began. The Founders certainly did not intend for America to be a politically Christian country, but they didn't say anything about how they thought individuals should behave regarding religion. All they said about that was that everyone had the right to practice his own. They also didn't intend for American to be anti-Christian, either, unlike those wacky French Revolutionaries. Nor did they practice ritual sacrifice, again unlike the decapitators.

Xavier Batalla gets page 6 for a piece on Arthur M. Schlesinger, saying that he "died at age 89 without ever having left Camelot," which is pretty accurate. Andy Robinson gets page 9 to inform us that New York is allegedly full of rats, mice, and bedbugs. He claims that the UN building is infested by eels.

Industry minister, former Barcelona mayor, and general foo-foo Joan Clos called on everybody to join in "No Mobile Phone Day" in protest against the decision by the three big operators, Movistar, Vodafone, and Orange, to raise the rate for completing a call to 15 cents in order to compensate for the revenue they will lose because of a new law forbidding them to round up fractions.

1) What did they expect? If you cut down a company's revenues by legal regulation, it will take advantage of another (still legal) source of income in order to get back to the same revenue level. 2) Clos's personal participation in the protest will be to "cut back" his own mobile phone use, since his extremely important and very taxing job forces him to keep it on at all times in case some message with deep significance is coming through urgently. What an example of sacrifice for the youth of today. 3) Where the hell is the anti-trust office? Seems a bit suspicious that the three big companies all raised prices at the same time by the same amount.

Problems with members of the underclass who do not live according to the standards of mainstream society: A 19-year old man married an 11-year-old girl according to the "gypsy rite" in Lleida. Both families involved had agreed to the marriage. So had the patriarchs of the clan. So the social workers found out and the case went to court; the man has been sentenced to 1 year and 9 months in prison for statutory rape, since 13 is the age of consent in Spain. Now wait a minute. The people involved didn't think they'd done anything wrong. The whole clan attended the wedding, held in public. Yes, I know the law is the law, but you'd think they'd let the man off with a warning and a lecture about how people are supposed to behave. Fortunately, the girl and her family have been moved away from the husband. But the family were the ones who agreed to her getting married in the first place! What a complicated mess. You can't allow behavior repugnant to the mainstream and its laws to go on, but at the same time you're dealing with people with a completely different set of ethical standards, and it's hard to judge them by ours. So I guess the compromise is to break up illegal marriages, but don't jail people.

Just in case you folks were starting to think that the US was somehow uniquely violent, check out these headlines from today's La Vanguardia:

Civil Guard Shot to Death in Salou
Maximum Sentence for Rapist Out on Parole
Failed Kidnapping in Vic
Seven Neo-Nazi Youth Arrested
Saleswoman Beaten to Death in Sabadell
Gang of Robbers of More Than 20 Houses Arrested in Baix Llobregat

They're transferring De Juana Chaos to a hospital in Bilbao; he's been conceded less strict prison conditions. Note: He has not been released or paroled. He's still a prisoner. They've just moved him to medium security, which allows him to go to a different prison closer to his family's home. He is expected to continue his hunger strike, and to die from it one of these days pretty soon.

Zap came to Catalonia yesterday. He talked about expanding the Barcelona airport in very vague terms, and added some even vaguer stuff about how the Generalitat, Catalonia's regional government, would participate in airport administration. He did not mention the commuter trains crisis, which erupted again yesterday with three fires, hour-long delays on every line, and more angry passengers blocking the rails at the Paseo de Gracia station in downtown Barcelona. Two of the fires are suspected to be sabotage.

They're at the place in the 3/11 trial where the coal miners, who swapped the dynamite used in the explosions to the Madrid Islamist cell for hashish, get up on the stand and say they are innocent. Nobody believes them. Meanwhile, investigating magistrate Del Olmo has indicted another conspirator, Abdelilah Hriz, who is currently in prison in Morocco. His DNA shows up on a comb found in the Leganés apartment where seven of the bombers blew themselves up a month after the bombings, and on a pair of trousers found at the house in Morata de Tajuña where the terrorists actually put together the bombs.

Sevilla coach Juande Ramos was released from the hospital this morning; he is apparently all right. He says he doesn't remember the goal scored by his striker, Kanouté, which caused the Betis fans to start throwing shit on the field, including the bottle that KOed Ramos. I'll be disgusted if very strict measures are not taken at Betis, including the forfeit of the match in question.

The Spanish press has picked up on the story about Al Gore's using twelve times as much electricity as the average household.

The cops busted a clan of 38 Kosovars who have robbed more than 150 houses all over Spain. They were a well-organized gang, with a network of safe houses, a fleet of cars with phony registrations, lots of useful electronic and construction equipment (including a jackhammer), and a cell structure--they were divided into subgroups whose members did not know the members of the others. Apparently these guys have links to other Kosovar gangs operating in other European countries. Some good work by the cops. Now let's see how long these guys stay in jail.