There's a piece at Front Page magazine today that I would call "anti-European"; it makes the same very general and superficial claims about Europe that Euro anti-Americans make about the States. Check out some of these pearls:

Perhaps the best way to distinguish between the American and European systems is to take note of their different perceptions of the future. Americans by and large are optimistic about the future, and believe that their children and grandchildren will have a better future. The Europeans on the other hand have a fatalistic/hedonistic view of the future that might be summed up, as “Live for today because tomorrow we’ll all be dead.”

Come on. That's way too general. I know a lot of Americans who are not at all optimistic, and a lot of Europeans who are neither fatalists or hedonists. I've said before, and so have a lot of other people, that Americans tend to be more interested in opportunity and Europeans tend to be more interested in security, but the key word there is "tend". Americans and Europeans are both Westerners, and we are much more alike than we are different--especially when we compare ourselves to really un-Western places like, say, Cambodia, Afghanistan, or Burundi.

When facing the Soviet threat during the Cold War, the Europeans cavalierly said “Better be Red than Dead.” Today it appears that many Europeans are resigning themselves to be, “Rather Green (Islamic) than Dead.” It is a self-fulfilling wish since the Europeans are not having enough children and grandchildren to insure their future replacement.

Come on. History proves that most Europeans did not believe it would be better to be Red than dead, since the Western alliance hung together from 1945 to the suicide of the Soviet Union in 1991. Look at West Germany: the whole reason that country existed was that they didn't want to be Communists or dominated by Moscow. The Communists got healthy shares of the vote in France and Italy, but nowhere else. The peace and anti-nuclear movement was big in the '70s and '80s, sure, but they never had anything like a majority anywhere, and there were a lot of those people in the United States as well. Those folks now control the Democratic party, one of America's two main political groups.

And, of course, no Europeans want to live under Islamic law. If faced by an actual Iranian or Hezbollah or Libyan military invasion, they would of course fight. They haven't done too well fighting against the Islamist terrorist threat so far, but England and France and Germany have simply been around too long to become anything radically different from what they always have been. Their language, laws, traditions, and culture are not so easily replaced.

Today’s Europe is faced with a double-crisis. The welfare system is going broke, and its moral and legal order is falling apart. At the same time, the Continent is going through a terminal case of demographic decline.

Catastrophism. Pure and simple. None of these things are going to happen anytime soon.

After almost a century of reign by the welfare state, Europeans have grown totally dependent on the state, and lost their ability to take their destiny in their own hands. The nation states of Europe are simultaneously being undermined by the European Union.

Totally exaggerated. Most Europeans are somewhat more in favor of a larger welfare state than most Americans, but the two systems are much more similar than different. The EU nations have given up some of their sovereignty to the Union, but nowhere near all of it; hell, the EU is run by its member states. The biggest argument they're having is how much power each member should have in the decision-making process after the huge expansion.

If the EU were so terrible, why would everyone but Norway and Switzerland want to join it? If I were British I wouldn't want Europeization to go very much farther than it has, but Britain doesn't have to go any farther down the road if it doesn't want to. They are insisting that they will keep their own currency and central bank, and that they will not give up their military forces. And as for Spain, it's a hell of a lot better now than it was before it joined. The EU has spent gazillions of euros subsiding us down here; we were Europe's largest recipient state until the recent expansion.

One thing the EU has done very well (along with NATO) is to prevent those damn Europeans from starting any more of those crazy wars they used to keep having that spilled over into the rest of the world. Germany hasn't invaded anybody for more than sixty years; during the 70-year period between 1870 and 1940 they invaded France three times.

While individual conservative leaders including France’s Nicolas Sarkosy (sic)and Germany’s Angela Markel (sic) are seeking changes in the welfare system to boost employment and economic growth, the European public is still addicted to the existing system. Sarkosy and Merkel seek to reform the welfare state in order to save it, rather than eliminate it altogether.

a) If one wishes to seem informed about a subject, one should look up the spelling of the surnames of the important persons involved, rather than blowing it off and getting them both wrong b) "addicted to" is a bit strong c) What's this "eliminate the welfare state altogether" crap? We've got a welfare state going in the United States, in case you hadn't noticed. We spend more than a trillion dollars a year at the federal level on Social Security, Medicare, and income security. And no one but the hard-hearted wants to stop pensions and health care for the retired and disabled, or to leave the poorest among us to suffer hunger and cold. The question is not whether government money should be spent on social welfare, but rather how and how much. The Europeans tend to think that more money ought to be spent on such things than the Americans do, but nobody serious in either place wants to go back to the bad old days of mass poverty, disease, and ignorance.

While Americans proclaimed, “In God We Trust,” the Europeans have gradually abandoned the belief in the Judeo-Christian God and the moral direction it provided. They largely agreed with German philosopher Friedrich Nietzsche (1844-1900) who wrote that, “God is Dead.” In Auschwitz, the Europeans did away with the Judeo-Christian God altogether. And since then they have increasingly relied on the state to direct their lives. The state has become the source of order, legitimacy, and authority. And the state has since 1957 evolved into a super-state known as the European Union.

How totally superficial and stereotypical. Millions of Europeans are practicing Christians and Jews, and it is completely unfair to blame Auschwitz on anyone but Nazi Germany. And as for the state as the source of order, legitimacy, and authority, well, yeah. How is that different from the US? Do we get order, legitimacy, and authority from the Elks Club, the PTA, or the high school forensics team?

That's enough of that. Read the whole article; I'm sure you'll come up with a few objections of your own.

I put up a set of pre-1980s Johnny Cash videos over at Hard Country, so go check it out.

Two interesting links from National Review: This 2002 New Criterion article blowing a hole in the persistent myth that Americans who volunteered in the Spanish Civil War were labeled "premature anti-fascists" by the government, and this 1976 P.J. O'Rourke piece from the National Lampoon, which is possibly the most offensive thing ever written.

We just got back from our August vacation; Remei is back at work today and I have something I have to write up. Haven't been near a computer for nearly three weeks; we went out to Vallfogona for a week, then to London for a week, and then back out to the pueblo for another five days.

In the pueblo we did what we always do: go to the pool and go out walking with the dog. When I'm not doing that, I'm usually reading a book and hiding from my mother-in-law. London was a good trip; we saw our friend Elisabeth, and met her boyfriend and roommates, who are all very nice folks and quite interesting. We took a day trip to Winchester and spent a night in Bath, both of which are well worth a visit. On the two days it rained we went to the British Library, where Remei had never been, and the British Museum, where we dig all the stuff on the ground floor, the Egyptians and Assyrians and Greeks. I bought a little reproduction of the famous blue Egyptian ceramic hippo for ten pounds.

Last Sunday we went to the Notting Hill carnival, which was enormous and a little disappointing. I was expecting there to be live reggae bands and lots of floats with dancing girls, but there was no live music--it was all DJs, and most of them were playing hip-hop with heavy bass. There weren't many floats, either, and the ones that were there were all sponsored by beer companies and radio stations. The Jamaican food was good, and the variety of people was colorful to say the least. The crowds were so big that you could barely move in some places, though. Big crowds make me nervous. On the whole I'd compare it to Las Vegas; you really need to go once to see what it's like, it's actually kind of fun for a while, and one visit is probably enough for a lifetime.

My mother-in-law came back from the pueblo with us; she was going to stay another month, but she can't be by herself any more because she falls down a lot. She took a spill while we were gone and scraped up her knees and elbows, and did not tell the lady we had checking on her about it. She's well-behaved back here in our flat in Barcelona; if she gets cranky I give her something to eat and put Count Basie on the CD player.

As usual in August, there doesn't seem to have been much news while we were gone. The big story has been the death of Sevilla footballer Antonio Puerta last week; he keeled over during last weekend's game, walked off the field, and then had a heart attack on the way to the hospital. He died two days later at age 22. Puerta was a promising young player who won a spot on Sevilla's starting eleven last season and was an important part of the team that won five straight cup finals (two UEFAs, one Spanish Cup, one European Supercup, one Spanish Supercup). The media overreacted, of course; I'm sorry Puerta is dead, and I wish it hadn't happened, but they've been milking this one for all the pathos they can get.

A bunch of ETA guys got busted. They kidnapped a family and used their house to put together a huge car bomb, which they were going to let off somewhere that it would kill a lot of people. One of those arrested was the guy who bailed out of a taxi in Castellón a while back, and another one was in on the Barajas airport bombing.

The whole country is back to work today, the first Monday in September. The newspapers have been bringing out their seasonal stories big-time, and for the last week La Vangua has been full of reports on how the end of vacation and the beginning of the working year cause stress, and how some quack psychologist says you can solve it. There were surprisingly few traffic jams yesterday on the main roads back into the big cities; the last day of the August vacation is usually the biggest traffic day of the year. As usual, the death toll on the highways was appalling, with deaths in August up 6% over last year.

Fortunately, it hasn't been a particularly hot or dry summer. There haven't been as many bad forest fires as we usually have in summer, and we really didn't have to use the air conditioner in Barcelona. In Vallfogona, that old stone house is naturally air-conditioned, the town is 2000 feet above sea level, and the "marinada" (moist breeze down the Corb valley from the east) blows every evening, so summer is very tolerable there.

Joe asked in the Comments section whether these posts from La Vanguardia's reader forums are typical of Spanish thinking and, after thinking about it for about five minutes, my considered response is: I think so.

I pointed out catastrophism, belief in conspiracies, and knee-jerk hatred of the United States as the errors in thinking in the posts I reproduced. I think all three of them are pretty common, though not universal, in Spain. Keep in mind that some people may suffer from one or two, but not all three, of these mental pathologies.

Another thing to keep in mind is that some of the Europeans who support the United States do so for the wrong reasons.

There are some people in Spain who actually believe that America is an imperialist warmongering hyperpower, but this is a good thing because Americans are white, sort of European folk keepìng those damned Arabs in line. There are a few who are ultra-libertarians--I'm pretty libertarian myself, but within reasonable limits, I hope--who actually believe that America is the anti-welfare state where those who can't compete are ruthlessly crushed, and this is a good thing because Ayn Rand said so. There are also some who really believe that America is a Christian theocracy, and this is a good thing because divorce and abortion are not permitted there. (I've actually been subjected to this argument from a pro-American Spaniard who really wasn't very smart at all.)

I guess when we come down to it, a variation of the 80-20 rule probably holds true here, as it does in so many cases. (You know, 20% of beer drinkers drink 80% of the beer that is drunk, and so on.) Probably wherever you go in the West today, 80% of what 80% of people think they know is bunk. Most people are pretty ignorant and badly informed (not that this makes them bad people or less worthy); hell, remember that by definition 50% of people have a below-average IQ. I figure this is true everywhere in Western Europe and the US, and I'll bet that in countries where the people are less educated and their access to information is more limited, those percentages are even higher.

Anyway, here come the pro-American posts, after a story on Gaddafi's son's admitting that the Bulgarian nurses were tortured with electric shocks:

"Tired of Hypocrites": Electrical torture is habitual in Arab prisons, just like rape and the amputation of fingers, nails, and even eyes. But nobody cares about this. The entire horde of false "progres" is so obsessed with the US and with Israel that they have no compassion for the Arabs.

If an Arab tortures another one for nine years, it isn't news; if an Israeli or American soldier slaps an admitted terrorist then this is a crime against humanity! It's the same as ever, you don't give a damn about the Arabs themselves, you just use them because your war is against the United States or against Israel, not in favor of the Arabs.

"Aroundworld" (posting from the US): I support 100% of what you say. Have you noticed that nobody is giving his opinion around here?

"Mithridates": I'll give my opinion! And I absolutely agree with the above, that's enough of defending the alleged innocents who are really responsible for the atrocities that are happening, with cold blood they say that a woman has been subjected to electric torture---I'm sick of the 'moros'!!!!!!!

"Maitechu": What did you expect? Many of the gentlemen who write in are Arabs.

"Toni": There are those who take advantage of any little story to attack Bush, the US, and Israel. Those who have expressed their opinions so far are right, differently from those who do so only to work out their phobias (the Americans and the US) and fixations (Bush, the Israeli army).

"Juanelees": The truth is there is no government in any Islamic country that has even 1% credibility. And enforcing sharia law, that's just crazy.

"Gerard": We are making an Alliance of Civilizations with the torturers...we must comprehend them, they're other countries, other cultures, they want justice...at the same time, we are destroying Israel...and it will be the end of Europe.

"Catañol": I unconditionally support "Tired of Hypocrites".

My view: I agree with "Tired of Hypocrites" as well. He is clearly both well-informed and concerned about the Arab people. However, "Mithridates" mixes good arguments (torture is wrong) with racism (he clearly doesn't like 'moros,' which is a racial slur for Arabs in Spain.) "Juanelees" exaggerates; Turkey, Malaysia, Jordan, Tunisia, Morocco, Bangladesh, and Indonesia are all Muslim countries, and have fairly decent though imperfect governments. Also, "Gerard" is just a bit catastrophic himself. Anyway, flawed as some of their thinking is, there are some folks over here in Spain who are pro-American and willing to speak up.

Those wacky commenters at La Vanguardia's website are at it as usual! Check out these pearls of wisdom:

After a story on the European stock market:

The USA should be quarantined by the world since it is a cancer that must be removed. Today that country is no longer a model for absolutely anytning except for the systematic violation of human rights and basic rights, besides being an endemic disease for the rest of the world.

After a story on the European Central Bank:

...the increase in interest rates and their "effects" on the economy (a price increase for housing, to enrich some and impoverish others). Are there any fools who think this is not an accident? There is a plan drawn up by the big fish and if you like it or not, that's what we're going to get.

We are approaching the edge of the abyss.

Now I get it...because of all this with the PBN (sic; he means BNP, the French bank) funds, are we Europeans going to have to pay for American debtors?

(From a commenter in Miami) Yes, Europe is paying for the fall in the American Subprime (sic), and what is worse, here in the USE a very strong crisis is coming, the collapse of the real estate sector, contagion to other sectors, a lack of consumer confidence, that tsunami will reach Europe in a few minutes, goddamned gringos!!! VIVA EUROPA, IT'S MUCH BETTER THAN THE USA

I really believe things are getting worse. The rich are getting richer and the poor poorer. Until our system of values changes, when human values are what comes first in the world, I do not see the light in this dark tunnel. It is the end of the world.

After a story on Bush calling on Musharraf to allow free elections:

What? The spurious president of the USA calls for free elections? Will he leave his puppet in disgrace? Does he need one whose hands are not dirty?

Let's hope that the manipulator, and all his Western democratic acolytes, will respect the free and fair results. As they did in Algeria and more recently in Palestine.

Should we start with free elections in the USA?

How can that mental midget Bush call on his Pakistani hitman for free elections? Free as in Iraq, where they "elected" the current puppets who are "governing"? And will he call on his figurehead in Saudi Arabia for the same thing?

Free elections in the USA? Only millionares can run. What a fool you must be to speak of Yankee democracy. Go on, silly children, pay your mortgage without complaining.

The plan is simple. Pakistan calls an election, the Islamists win democratically like Hamas in Palestine, and the US will have its excuse to bomb the north of Pakistan without problems.

After a story on the Berlin Wall:

So we don't forget the Berlin Wall, we build walls in Ceuta, Palestine, or the Rio Grande in the US...before so they couldn't leave and now so they can't enter...one wall fell but others are being built.

After a story on Hugo Chavez, from a commenter in Los Angeles:

Hugo Chavez is a leader in all of South America. South America has been enslaved for more than 500 years by the imperialists like Spain, the United States, France, and others. Now they can't do it because the nationalists won't permit that slavery any more.

After a story on the anniversary of the Nagasaki bombing:

What is the US waiting for to apologize to Japan for this genocide? The Germans have done it, apologizing to Israel for the crimes of the Nazis. Every time a US president visits Japan he should kneel and pray at the monument to the victims in Hiroshima and Nagasaki. The current president could have done it since he is such a religious believer. And they should apologize for the massacres in Central America and Latin America and the coups d'etat financed and managed by the CIA (the family jewels). For Vietnam and Iraq and Afghanistan too. For the slavery financed by the Anglo-Saxons and also the other European powers. Have I forgotten anything?

After a story on a US antiterrorist offensive in Baghdad:

In a neighborhood in Baghdad! That's as if it were in a neighborhood of Vienna or Madrid. You can imagine what happens when there is a massive attack on a neighborhood where the majority are innocent civilians, women, children, and old people, and also youths who might be "enemy combatants," a euphemism invented by the USA in order to massacre civilian populations.

Note 1) the belief in conspiracy theories 2) the catastrophism and 3) the rabid anti-Americanism. But guess what? Some non-Yankee haters have finally spoken up! We'll bring you their comments tomorrow.

I put up two new posts on Hard Country, a Junior Brown set and a Hayseed Dixie set. I love Junior Brown. I don't understand why the rock fans and the Stevie Ray Vaughn followers aren't into him. Hayseed Dixie are hilariously funny the first time, and then the joke gets a little old, but check them out anyway.

News from these here parts: Fairly serious political crisis in Navarra. Backstory: In the regional election, the PP, the Socialists, and Basque nationalist coalition Nafarroa Bai split the vote so that no one party could form an absolute majority. After weeks of negotiations, the Navarrese Socialists finally cut a deal with NaBai, but Zap's central Socialist party vetoed it, causing the Navarrese Socialist leadership to resign. As a result, the PP, the largest vote-getter, will govern Navarra from the minority.

In the wake of the blackout, there are still some 150 electrical generators (each of which uses some 200 gallons of diesel fuel a day) scattered around the streets of Barcelona filling in for the gaps in the electrical grid. The generators are noisy, running at 90 decibels, and the people who live near them are royally pissed off. Supposedly they're going to be able to remove most of the generators in September, but Barcelona's electrical system won't be back to normal until February 2008.

The RENFE (Rogamos Empujar Nuestros Ferrocarriles Estropeados, Please Push Our Broken-Down Trains) commuter-train system has been breaking down nearly every day; this morning three different train lines were down because a lightning storm last night hit some transformers. RENFE has claimed that many of the incidents in recent weeks were due to sabotage, though they haven't filed any charges against anyone. Presumably the saboteurs would be from the machinists' union, which as usual is at odds with the company.

The other thing the locals are pissed off about is the motorway system, which is designed to handle normal traffic fairly well but which stacks up beyond belief when the massive flood of vacationers all leave for their holidays at once. The highway south through Tarragona was jammed up last weekend to the point where it took drivers five hours to pass through the bumper-to-bumper atasco.

And the airport, which has had an awful lot of delayed flights and lost luggage complaints recently.

Small bit of good news: A Belgian woman cave explorer got caught 600 meters below ground for three days in a cave in Navarra, but they finally rescued her alive and well.

The Odyssey marine exploration company has sued the Spanish government for harassment; you'll remember they found $500 million worth of gold and silver aboard a sunken ship, and Spain is claiming 1) the money is theirs because it was a Spanish ship (Odyssey says it was a British ship) and 2) the money is theirs because it was found in Spanish waters (Odyssey says it was found off the southwest coast of Britain). Spain boarded and captured an Odyssey-owned boat as it was leaving Gibraltar on July 12. Said minister of culture César Antonio Molina, "We will defend our patrimony, no matter where it is, with every means."

In August, everybody in Spain goes off on vacation. Everybody. Including politicians. So Catalonia's most powerful lovebirds, Communists Imma Mayol and Joan Saura, are in charge of both the Catalan regional and Barcelona city governments this week. Since regional premier José Montilla is on vacation, interior counselor Saura has been left in charge of the Generalitat, and with mayor Jordi Hereu on vacation too, second vice-mayor Mayol is in charge of the Ayuntamiento. Prediction: Something disastrous is going to happen and they're going to screw it up really badly.

La Vanguardia's lead editorial today is on how badly telecoms and computing engineers and technicians are needed around here, so if you're looking for work and know something about that, try Barcelona.

FC Barcelona young forwards Giovani Dos Santos and Bojan Krcic are looking extremely good this preseason. They're both only 17, they'll both be on the first division squad this season, they'll both see some playing time, and if they don't get hurt they may well be starting in a couple of years. I don't think the Barça has given either of them human growth hormone, as they did with Messi.

The comments on La Vanguardia's website are more fun every day. Their new design allows readers to add comments after every article, not only in the opinion section but also in the news section. Most of the people adding comments are completely nuts, and a large percentage are anti-American. I will bet this feature does not last long.

Check these out.

After a story on the Russian bomb that fell in Georgian territory:

A Russia unwilling to be what it really is, governed by a ruthless man (in a short while some heir of his will be just as frightening), is convenient, with pro-Western ex-Soviet republics supported by the Stars and Stripes (remember the warm welcome of Mr. Bush in Tiflis not long ago) that add up to an unresolved dispute in Ukraine, American bases in the East, the War for Energy in Asia...what is the result? Of course, an explosive cocktail. Someone will have to intervene, of course.

After a story on the Taliban threat to take more hostages:

Who doesn't kill? If the Taliban does that, well, the governments that say they're democratic also kill silently, when a country like Spain supports a dictator like Obiang, that is killing a country, when the United States supports a coup d'etat in Chile killing an elected president, that is killing too. All the regimes that are friends of the United States, France, and Spain kill, are corrupt, and are repressive, but since they are friends they say nothing.

After a story on possible US attacks on jihadis within Pakistani territory:

The US did not intervene in Europe out of the goodness of its heart! It was to implant their system and control the Soviets, a problem that has lasted until today but without Communists. The Marschall (sic) Plan worked thanks to the terrible exploitation of the countries of the Third World that also has lasted until today. Transferring what was stolen there allowed Europe to build what we have today!

Bush the butcher, certainly with the approval of his pals Blair and Aznar, has found another excuse to satiate his thirst for blood. When will he be tried for crimes against humanity? Or can he do and undo everything he wants? Why is the UN so tolerant of him?

Bush, Blair, and Aznar have their hands stained with blood!

They can't go around arming Bin Laden to fight against the Russians and then call him a terrorist, arm Iraq and say that its president is evil, or invade a country in the name of freedom without UN approval in order to get its oil.

If they make a mistake and kill a few civilians, the ones that survive and their relatives and friends will become new, completely justified terrorists. They should stay at home, since they have enough problems over there.

After a story on six foreigners' free Tibet demonstration in China:

The farce of the false ONGs financed by the imperialists in order to interfere with the Olympic Games has begun. They will all fail. The Chinese people can't be fooled, and are more united than ever with their Communist Party. The 21st century belongs to China, no matter how much the Yankee and European imperialists and their servile NGOs don't like it.

After an article on the anniversary of Hiroshima:

It is a good thing to remember the brutality that our species is capable of. It is a good thing to remember the immorality of an empire like the USA that, just like 60 years ago, is capable of bombing itself (9-11) in order to continue terrorizing the world (the Middle East) and keep its economic and military hegemony.

After an article on a skirmish on the Korean frontier:

If the USA didn't stick its nose in there, none of this would happen.

Fitst: Get the 30,000 NORTH American soldiers out of there. Second: North Korea renounces nuclear arms. Third: Open the frontier and declare mutual peace between the two countries (they are always at war). Fourth: Begin mutual commerce WITHOUT USA! Definitive goal: The reunification of both countries into the same people.

After a story on a terrorist attack in Iraq that killed 40 people:

The blame belongs to George Walker Bush and his running dogs, Blair and Aznar!!! The big profiteers of all this are Haliburton (sic), Texaco, Exxon, Shell...Every time we stop at a gas station we should think about how much blood is filling up our tanks.

After a story on the US army losing thousands of weapons in Iraq:

Since they're such imbeciles, the Yankee aggressors could give some "weapons of mass destruction" to the Iraqi forces, who pass it on to the patriotic resisters. That way the insurgents can clean up their country of the human scum that have invaded it.

After a story on Al Qaeda announcing it is proud of the March 11 bombings:

Al Qaida is an invention of the puppeteers who govern the world in order to justify to public opinion the great American salvation from international terrorism, and in that way have all the world under their power.

Al Qaeda is an American creation in order to have an excuse to invade countries with oil, which will be the most important source of wealth in the next fifty years.

After a story saying the US Congress had authorized wiretaps without a court order:

The elite of millionaires that controls the world has taken one more step towards controlling the citiznes. With the excuse of terrorism they allow themselves the luxury of tapping your phone legally, and they can even take you to a secret prison without even charging you and torture, all of it within "legality." This elite is installing a new Inquisition.

After a story on a terrorist attack in Baghdad that killed eleven people:

The Americans don't impress me in questions of war. They only did the great brave action of killing off the Indians to take their land, who fought with arrows, kicked the Spanish out of Cuba, Puerto Rico, and the Philippines to take them over themselves, and a few little battles during the two World Wars, not much.

After a story on a US military court's 110-year sentence for a soldier who committed rape and murder in Iraq:

It's a smokescreen. These guys don't give a damn about the girl, her family, and the rest of the Iraqis. They went there to do that, loot, rape, and murder.

It's curious that a country so much in love with the death penalty has decided not to apply it to a guilty convict. Is it related to the fact that the victim wasn't a young white girl from Wyoming?

Why hasn't the genocidal president of the US who ordered the atomic bombs to be dropped on Hiroshima and Nagasaki been tried? Or the genocidal president of the US who attacked Vietnam and caused so many deaths there?

The USA is certainly the country of freedom, since you can carry a gun to defend yourself against attacks. This is proof that justice and the authorities do not function and cannot guarantee the safety of citizens, so they have the freedom (the obligation) to take justice into their own hands if necessary. The USA has a curious concept of justice.

This is one case that we know about, because there is no doubt that the USA saviors of the world have committed more atrocities of this sort. We're not talking about the wars they start in third countries in their own interests, because then all their leaders should be in The Hague, which they do not want to recognize because it's not in their interest.

Every day we see the lawbreaking and murders these "saviors of the world" commit. Don't they have the death penalty? Then kill him, fuck it, kill him! Aznar and his buddies are embarrassing, saying these are the saviors of democracy. This was repeated 10000000 (sic) times in Vietnam. A demented people.

Do we know anything about the 600,000 Iraqis killed after the invasion? Have charges been pressed against Bush and his accomplices for starting a war with lies, mass murder, stealing oil, torturing civilians, and laughing at international law?

These are all posts from the last two days.

I put up another set of videos over at Hard Country, this time classics from the Seventies. Check it out.

There have been a few unfounded and ignorant comments, demonstrating total ignorance of the American and world economies, saying the United States spends so much money going around starting wars and killing people and generally not minding its own business the way we used to before World War I, that we don't have any money left over to keep our bridges from falling down.

They're wrong.

If you do something easy like google "US budget 2006" and then look at the very first link provided, which is the White House's Office of Management and Budget's official budget report, you get this:

United States GDP 2006 $13.865 trillion
Of that:
Corporate pretax profits $1.324 trillion
Wages and salaries $6.109 trillion
Other income (presumably rent, interest, capital gains, etc.) $2.722 trillion

Federal government receipts 2006 $2.273 trillion
Outlays $2.613 trillion
Deficit -$341 trillion

Outlays by function 2006
Defense $513.9 billion
International affairs $38.9 billion
Science, space, and technology $24.0 billion
Energy $1.3 billion
Natural resources and environment $30.9 billion
Agriculture $28.6 billion
Commerce and housing credits $7.7 billion
Transportation $70.8 billion
Community and regional development $20.3 billion
Education, training, employment, and social services $89.0 billion
Health $268.0 billion
Medicare (health care for the retired) $351.3 billion
Income security (welfare) $358.8 billion
Social Security (pensions for the retired) $550.0 billion
Veterans' benefits and services $68.9 billion
Administration of justice $43.2 billion
General government $18.0 billion
Interest payments $204.4 billion
Total $2.613.3 trillion

That is, the US spends 19.6% of its federal budget, and 3.7% of its GDP, on defense.

Note also that a great deal of non-defense government spending on education, infrastructure, welfare, and the like is done at the state and local level and does not show up on the federal budget.

Some groovy politically correct bits of federal spending:

$3.2 billion, an increase of $382 million, to continue to expand the President’s Emergency Plan for AIDS Relief.
$4 billion, an increase of 8.5 percent, for Federal housing and social programs for the homeless, including $1.4 billion for Homeless Assistance Grants.
$1.2 billion for international food aid, including a new initiative to provide $300 million as cash assistance, allowing emergency food aid to be provided more quickly to address the most urgent needs.
$74 billion over 10 years for health-insurance tax credits for low-income individuals and families that will ultimately help 15 million families purchase affordable health insurance.
$5.6 billion for the National Science Foundation’s vital science, education, and basic research programs, an increase of $132 million.
$260 million for the President’s Hydrogen Fuel Initiative, to help reduce our dependence on foreign sources of oil and create a new generation of hydrogen-powered vehicles.
$28 billion increase for student aid programs through 2015, including the retirement of the Pell Grant shortfall, an increase in the maximum Pell award by $500 over five years, and additional benefits to student borrowers, helping more than 10 million needy students cover the costs of college.
$603 million more for Title I to provide grants to improve education in low-income communities and support NCLB reforms, a total increase of $4.6 billion, or 52 percent, for Title I since 2001.
$3 billion, an increase of $1.5 billion, to expand the Millennium Challenge Account for foreign assistance, to encourage sound economic and governance policies in the developing world.

La Vanguardia's comments section has become very interesting; it's the new home in Spain of America-bashing. Check out these self-righteous ignorant fools who have never read a single book on the history of the Second World War chiming in on the Hiroshima bombing. Interesting that none of them mention Pearl Harbor, the Rape of Nanking, the sack of Manila, the Bataan Death March, the POW camps, or the battles of Okinawa and Iwo Jima.

So far there are four comments. Here they are in their entirety.

What hypocrisy. Thinking that those poor people were literally flattened by a nuclear bomb dropped by the country that is now trying to prevent the rest from having them. The only country barbarous enough to drop a nuclear bomb on the civilian population is the United States of America. We should never forget it.

So this guy is in favor of Iranian and North Korean nuclear weapons. Brilliant.

When the United States bombed two civilian populations with two weapons of mass destruction, a giant parenthesis that has not been closed yet was opened in history. The atomic bomb did not stop the Second World War, but rather originated a new era dominated by the forces of terror. The United States should apologize and commit itself to eliminating any future possibility of a repetition of the criminal acts being commemmorated today.

Gee, I dunno. I thought the Japanese stopped shooting at us after we dropped the bomb. That most certainly did stop the war. And, of course, no mention that, say, Germany or Japan or Russia should apologize for, I dunno, STARTING the war in the first place. Or any mention that Spain itself, and its Communist-Anarchist led Republican government, deserves a fair share of the blame for the destabilization of Europe in the 1930s.

It's a good thing to remember, in order to ask ourselves, who had and has weapons of mass destructions? How many hypocrites, liars, and Judases are walking around?

Plenty of them in Western Europe and the Third World. But Hitler, Stalin, Mussolini, the Japanese militarists, and the systems they established, are all happily dead, and the Marxist-Communist-leftist movement died with the Soviet Union and its slave states. Thanks to, of course, the atomic bomb.

Marvelous antinuclear principles: NO POSSESSION, NO PRODUCTION, NO CIRCULATION THROUGH OUR COUNTRY. Wouldn't it be a gift of life and intelligence if all countries adopted them? It's a dream; maybe someday...I join in the homage of the Japanese to their dead. NUNCA MÁIS!

I'm up for abolishing nuclear weapons as soon as we abolish human evil. Oh, wait, that might take a while.

I will pay no homage to the Japanese dead in World War II, and neither will the Koreans nor the Chinese nor the Filipinos. I am sorry that civilians died, but they died because their country attacked its neighbors and tried to make all of Asia its slaves. If Japan and its allies had won the Second World War, or if the Soviets and Maoist Chinese had won the Cold War, these fools would not be complaining about American nuclear weapons. They would be laborers in German or Russian factories (and not too concerned about minor issues like Catalan language rights, since not getting executed would be much more important to them) if they were lucky enough to actually be alive now.

From the comments on La Vanguardia's website about the Minneapolis bridge collapse:

That's the thing about "neoliberal" policies: they reduce taxes in order to increase business investment and consumption, then they reduce them again because the state must be reduced to the minimum and everything must be left in private hands, and then they reduce them even more to make the millionaires' lobbies happy. New Orleans was flooded because its levees were made out of cardboard and the bridges are collapsing because there is no money for infrastructure.

Instead of fixing the bridges, they keep building the wall of shame along the Mexican border. More typical arrogant American behavior.

THE ACCOUNTS ALWAYS ADD UP, IF YOU SPEND A LOT ON ONE THING (DEFENSE 50% OF THE WORLD BUDGET) THERE IS NOTHING FOR THE REST (INFRASTRUCTURE MAINTENANCE, EDUCATION, SOCIAL SECURITY ETC....) IT ISN'T THE MOST ADVANCED SOCIETY, IT'S JUST THE MOST-ARMED ONE

If there was a report two years ago showing structural deficiences, someone is responsible for the bridge collapse. Let's see if the USA responds quickly with the LAW, or maybe they'll be let off because the budget wasn't big enough since it wasn't for starting a war or going around killing people.

I understand the Americans less every day, and the current government of that country. Do you remember Caterina (sic)? Well, the poor people of that state are still waiting for the aid promised by their disastrous president, but they say everyone gets what he deserves. For me they can all go to hell (al carajo).

Things go on in every country, but a country as rich as the USA should spend more money on these things, but what they save on that and on social welfare, they spend on weapons to be the most powerful country, kill whoever they don't like, and if one dies they say he was giving his life for their country, a medal, the anthem, and see you later.

Disaster in Minneapolis. I can't believe anyone survived a 60-foot fall into a river with cars and pieces of bridge falling all around. Barcelona: Infrastructure breakdowns can happen anywhere. Our blackout was very inconvenient, but nobody died. TV3's site is leading with this story.

The Pat Tillman story has finally hit the news over here. Andy Robinson gets page 6 of La Vanguardia to speculate that the Pentagon ordered Tillman to be fragged by his own unit because he was going to meet with Noam Chomsky. How utterly senseless and irresponsible.

On page 4 La Vangua runs a very disturbing photo of the feet of five men dangling from a gallows in Iran yesterday. Seems that they were hanged for opposing the Islamist regime. 16 people were hanged at the end of June for crimes including adultery and homosexuality. But Europeans only protest when the Americans give the injection to a convicted murderer.

Zap is in Barcelona today to try to assuage la furia catalana over the blackout. Reading La Vanguardia between the lines, I get the idea that what has a lot of people around here pissed off is that Barcelona has lost its traditional competitive advantage over Madrid. Only thirty years ago Barcelona was the industrial center of Spain, and by far the wealthiest city. Now Madrid's metro area is 50% bigger than Barcelona's, and Madrid benefits from the economic switch away from industry and toward services and information more than Barcelona does. Quote: "The citizens are looking at a mirror of themselves that is very unlike the Catalan economic and social advance that was the locomotive for all of Spain."

Bergman and Antonioni croaked. That's a shame, of course, but Bergman movies bore me stiff and I've never bothered to see any Antonioni movies.

FC Barcelona is off on a preseason tour of East Asia to play three exhibition games, for which they will pocket a cool two million euros each. Some of the players have sounded off, saying that going on tour is not the best way to prepare the team for the regular season. What I would have said if I were club president Joan Laporta is, true, this is not the best way to prepare the team, but it is an excellent way to earn six million euros with which to pay you guys, so stop bitching.

Laporta's father-in-law is mixed up in a new business scandal. Mutua Universal, a Barcelona workman's-compensation mutual insurance company, is in trouble for allegedly embezzling money from the Spanish National Health, and Mr. Father-in-Law is the chairman of the board. He was in trouble back in 1999 for insider trading, but the National Court threw out the case.

The cops have run more than one thousand Romanian gypsies out of the San Roque district of Badalona. They've been arresting them for dumping garbage and defecating in the streets, hauling away unregistered or uninespected cars, and closing down illegal apartment rentals; they shut down 150 apartments where more than 1500 persons were living. So I suppose they'll move on to Santa Coloma or Hospitalet.

They've started octopus farming down in the Ebro Delta. I guess this is good news if you like octopus, and bad news if you are an octopus.

And guess what? They're holding Europe's largest gay festival here in Barcelona. More than 30,000 people are expected to attend LoveBall, as it's called. They should change the name to Bareback Mountain. Marc Almond is going to play, and there will be a "leather party" (original English). Can't wait. I bet a lot of viruses get passed around. The guys who sell poppers at the alternative lifestyle discos are going to have a great week.

It's August and so there's not a lot of news, which is usually a good thing. We've been going out to the pueblo every weekend, where we fart around, walk the dirt roads with the dog, and go to the pool. It's nice out there, hot but dry, and if it's too hot you go down in the basement, which is basically a cave. It hasn't been really hot yet in Catalonia; we haven't had to use the air-conditioner here in Barcelona.

We're going to London for a week in mid-August, and we'll take the train to Bath and spend two days and a night there. We'll be staying with our friend Elisabeth, who lives near Muswell Hill way up on the north side of town.

Political fallout from the blackout hasn't finished yet. Minister of industry and former Barcelona mayor Joan Clos has taken a lot of heat for saying there was nothing really wrong with the system of electricity distribution, while the rest of the Catalan Socialists have been sniping at the electric companies for their alleged lack of investment. Since Red Eléctrica is controlled (not wholly owned, but the state has the largest block of shares) by the central government, Clos obviously has to defend the performance of the Zap cabinet, and if that means he has to contradict the Catalan Socialists, then he will.

There are two big fires burning in the Canaries, one on Grand Canary and the other on Tenerife. 12,000 people have been evacuated. The fires haven't affected the tourist areas along the coasts, so no worries if you're traveling there.

La Vanguardia says 1) telecommunications engineers are badly needed in Catalonia, so if you know anything about that come here and look for a job 2) thieves have already stolen hundreds of meters of the electrical cable lying around the streets in order to sell the copper 3) Woody Allen has finished filming in Barcelona and has gone off to Oviedo 4) more than 53,000 people in Catalonia are on the National Health's waiting lists for surgery. One of them is my mother-in-law, who has cataracts; they did one of her eyes back in June, but they aren't going to do the other one until October. 180,000 Catalans are awaiting diagnostic tests 5) they're letting out the Vall d'Hebron rapist, who committed 16 rapes and did 16 years in jail. La Vangua says this has created "social alarm" 6) the Spanish guy who won the Tour de France is under suspicion as a possible doper because of his connection to the "operation Puerto" case 7) Spaniards spend €285 million a year on counterfeit brand-name products.

Quick note: Slate's Today's Pictures feature is about Barcelona, featuring 23 historical news photos by the likes of Cartier-Bresson and Capa. Check it out.

Other news: The electricity is back on, but there are 130 portable generators around town filling in for the parts of the system that were destroyed. They make lots of noise, and they're going to be here until February. People are still pissed off at the electric companies and the government; there's a lot of populist bitching about the conspiracy of evil corporations and politicians who are screwing us citizens over. There's also a lot of Cataloony bitching about how Madrid is "stealing our tax money." Endesa will begin refunds of €30-300 to its customers who lost power today. The counselor for industry, Antoni Castells, looks like he's the one who is going to take the heat.

Remember the signed-by-Noam-Chomsky Communist petition to have former prime minister Aznar tried for war crimes? I signed several silly things, like Ana Obregón and Sid Vicious, and encouraged others to do the same. Well, I just skimmed through the list of signatures, and they've removed all the creative stuff.

However, they still haven't figured out that they need to set their system to accept only one signature per IP, and you can still sign as many times as you want. So this time I signed as Heywood Jablome, Hugh G. Rection, Jack Meyoff, and Holden Mydick.

Other news from these here parts: Scary bit in La Vanguardia about the El Jueves case. It looks like the lese-majesté case against the magazine and its unfunny cartoonists is going to be thrown out of court, which is good. But the prosecutor's office is irritated because the confiscation of the issue with the doggy-style caricature didn't work; what happened was, of course, that images of the cartoon were spread through Internet, even though El Jueves's website was shut down, too.

So the prosecutor's office has suggested a change in legislation, apparently approved of by vice-prime minister Fernandez de la Vega. Confiscating publications would still be legal, and the idea is "to guarantee the effectiveness of confiscation by giving judges the power to prohibit the diffusion of any incriminated text or drawing through any medium, including the Internet, under the penalty of commiting a penal offense."

Wow. Looks to me like if this suggested law goes through, then Iberian Notes and Barcepundit would have been breaking the law by linking to websites that posted the doggy-style cartoon, and we could have gone to jail. And InstaPundit would be breaking the law, too, since he linked to our links to the cartoon. Does that mean they'd hunt him down over there in Tennessee?

Barcepundit links to El Jueves's cover cartoon this week.

Another major ETA bust in France this morning. They got a big fish, the head of ETA's logistics cell, and two of his subordinates. Yesterday they got one more etarra, a rather small fish, who ran a safe house for terrorists on the run. I really think ETA is mortally wounded, that they've shot their last bolt in this most recent failed campaign. 18 etarras have been arrested since they announced the end of their "truce" on June 6.

They let off two homemade bombs along the route of the Tour de France through the Pyrenees yesterday, with no effect. This might well have been the work of amateurs.

Al Qaeda in Spain update: The cops arrested a Palestinian and a Syrian in Madrid for raising money for the jihad. They're connected to Abu Dahdah, Al Qaeda's chief in Spain; one of them ran the photocopy shop Abu Dahdah used to copy jihadist propaganda for distribution in mosques. They're also linked to Mohamed Setmarian, a Spanish citizen and Al Qaeda military leader who was arrested by the US Army in Pakistan. Their technique was fairly sophisticated; they set up shell companies and laundered the terrorist money through them. €120,000 was found hidden in their apartments, along with lots of good evidence on their computers and cellphones.

BBVA, one of Spain's two giant banks, says the real estate market is slowing down and that prices will plateau and maybe even begin to decline by the end of 2008. Higher interest rates are causing an increase in the number of court cases over mortgage impayment in Barcelona; most Spaniards are on variable-rate mortgages.

The saga of the Afrioan boat people continues: another cayuco carrying 150 illegal immigrants washed up on El Hierro in the Canaries last night. At least this time nobody died.

Fernando García, La Vanguardia's correspondent in Havana, says that a one-liter tetra-brik of liquid milk in Cuba costs between 1.5 and 2 convertible pesos, or more than 15% of the average worker's monthly salary; it hasn't been available in the shops for the last two weeks at all. He adds that the buses are all half-broken down and don't have a schedule.

I don't know what to think about the release of the Bulgarian nurses. It's quite obvious that the guilty party in the transmission of AIDS to those Libyan children is the Qaddafi regime, and that the nurses and doctor are scapegoats. So I'm very glad they're free. But what's this about Qatar paying Libya $400 million for their release, and Cecilia Sarkozy taking part in the negotiations?

As for the Tour, I assume you heard that Rasmussen is out as well, and that another Italian rider got caught doping, too. Speculation in Europe, outside France, is that this might be the nail in cycling's coffin as a major sport.

I know that Lance Armstrong has never failed a drug test in his life and must be presumed innocent, but Jesus, everybody he rode against--Ullrich, Pantani, Riis--was on dope, and so were half the guys on his team--Landis, Hamilton, Olano. If he was actually clean when he won those seven straignt Tours, beating out an entire field of drug users, he must be considered the most dominant athlete of all time in any sport. I'm finding it harder and harder to believe that he could have been clean, though.

Barça note: The new team looks good, very good. Abidal and Touré are going to stabilize the defense. Rumors are flying about Deco, who supposedly has several good offers, and who might have to do some sitting if the front line is Henry-Eto'o-Messi and Ronaldinho drops back to midfield.

Fecsa-Endesa says that Barcelona has returned to "practical normality," but there are still some people without power here in Gracia. The Bar Vall is back on; Francesc, the owner, got interviewed on TV3 news today. The Forn Rabassa is still down, though, and the owner and the counter girl got interviewed, too. The fruit shop is still down as well.

They had some real big pot-bangings here yesterday afternoon, which I think is dumb but fair enough, but they also blocked off traffic on the Traversera de Dalt, causing a huge traffic snarl-up and inconveniencing literally thousands of people who have nothing to do with the power outage. That just pisses me off. It's the "we're angry at something, so we're going to make everyone else's life difficult, too" attitude. Where I come from, if you block the public highway and interfere with everyone else's rights, we arrest your ass and haul you off to the cop shop.

There is a lot, really a lot, of public anger here. It's mostly aimed at an amorphous "they," the Powers that Be, the hidden interests, those who control everything behind the scenes, care only about themselves, and cheat and manipulate all the rest of us. Paranoia and conspiracy theory, of course, but there's a lot of it around here.

TV3 is still most shamefully trying to deflect attention away from the political parties that control it. La Vanguardia says that the municipal Socio-Communist coalition, for the first time, is facing serious public discontent. Says Ramon Suñé:

The immediate reaction of Mayor Hereu and his team, to declare war on the electric companies, was not very convincing. Especially if we keep in mind the lack of pressure exercised during recent years by local authorities on those responsible for guaranteeing a necessary service. Among them is the Generalitat, which in 2005 promised the installation of a 220 kilovolt cable between the Vilanova and Maragall substations. That is, works planned for many years and that now, when the worst has happened, have had to be jerry-rigged provisionally.

Until Monday, foreseeable problems with the electrical supply did not particularly concern the Barcelona City Council. (There is no) reference, not even a thought, in the governing agreement signed by Jordi Hereu and Imma Mayol, on this subject.

Says Francesc de Carreras, a reasonable man, on the op-ed page:

The problem is not a cable that caused a blackout, something that could happen in any city in the world. The problem is that the camel's back has been broken; nobody trusts anyone. Not the politicians, nor the companies, nor the technicians, nor the media, that's how skeptical and disillusioned everyone is. The big blackout has been just one more turn of the screw. The paradox is that all this is happening in a Barcelona that considers itself the mirror of modernity, in a Catalonia with a high degree of well-being and prosperity. What is happening that has caused distrust to move in among us, so that many sag, rather exaggeratedly but with clear intention, that this is a Third World city in a banana republic? Probably the causes should be sought in a diffuse mixture of an ideology of self-satisfaction, cheap populism following the latest "progre" fashion, and greatly weakened political authority.

All of this began during the Pujolist period, during the '80s, in which the image of an ideal and marvelous Catalonia was manufactured, Catalans who would eat up the world. Maybe in order not to be left behind, the Left began to idealize Olympic Barcelona, "the best city in the world" in the unfortunate words of Joan Clos. All pure myth-making, sadly provincial. We are what we are: a great city, a wonderful country, but let's look in a mirror that isn't misshapen so that we don't fool ourselves. If we add to that a few drops of pacifism, feminism, ecologism, sexual freedom, and planetary solidarity, all very noble ideals, but in their most intellectually crude and demagogical forms, the cocktail is explosive; a self-satisfied Barcelona and Catalonia that "dismisses what it knows nothing of," like the Spain that Machado wrote about.

It's Day Three without power in parts of Barcelona; the areas still down include Gracia, Guinardó, Camp de l'Arpa, Sagrada Familia, Viviendas del Congreso, el Clot, and Virrei Amat. I've got power but a lot of people I know--Alberto, Choni, Nicola, Montse, Toni--don't. The fruit shop, Pakistani grocery, and Bar Zeus are all still without power. The Café Flanders and Bar Vall (which have electricity) are packed, since they have hot coffee, cold beer, non-rotting food, and air-conditioning.

They're going to have a demonstration this afternoon on Calle Escorial, bang pots and pans, and cut off the traffic. I don't like demos because there isn't much point in holding public protests in a democracy. I dislike pot-banging even more because it bothers other ordinary citizens who have nothing to do with the problem. And I specifically hate it when demonstrators block streets and traffic. All that does is snarl things up and piss off even more people. So I am not going.

Everyone is really pissed off and heads are going to roll. My guess is that mayor Jordi Hereu, who has been invisible through this whole thing, and Antoni Castells, the counselor for industry, are the most likely decapitees.

Imma Mayol was forced to admit that the city government had no Plan B in case something like this happened, and the Socialist municipal and regional governments are furiously trying to cast the blame on everyone but themselves, backed up by Generalitat-controlled TV3, which is clearly acting as a government mouthpiece and not as a neutral news outlet.

Oh, yeah, get this. They've called in the Spanish Army in order to use its portable generators; it's called "Operation White Storm." I hear no protests from the Cataloonies about this centralist reactionary militarist interference in peaceful progressive Catalan life.

10,000 clients are still blacked out, and nobody knows when their service will be restored. Fecsa-Endesa hopes it will be today, but no promises of anything. 70 traffic lights are still down, and traffic is a mess all over this part of
town.

One good thing: It's not particularly hot, and you don't really need air-conditioning, so nobody is dying from the heat as people did during the last big heat wave a couple of years back. The eco-weenies are claiming that our unsustainable non-solidarious consumer society is using too much electricity and that's why the blackout happened, which of course has nothing to do with anything.

I've been following the comments about the blackout on La Vanguardia's website, and I've classified them. The largest group is "Poor Me" complaints. The second largest group is complaints about capitalism and society in general and blames the electric companies; the third largest group blames the Socialists; the fourth largest are Catalanists who blame Spain and the PP. Then there are a few that blame CIU, a few defending the Socialists, and a few Spainiacs writing in from Madrid to gloat at the misfortunes of others.

Clearly the stupidest, however, was this. A woman named Nuria in London wrote in to say that they've had power outages there, too, and maybe people shouldn't get all hysterical. So some guy named Jose Luis replied:

If London is in chaos, too, that should not console us in Barcelona. The British and the Yankees are absolutely demented crazy imperialists, with cameras even in the shithouse. These genocidal speakers of inglish (sic) are not a reference for civilized people.

That's got to be an all-time record for anti-Americanism, or really Anglophonephobia, managing to work it in on a forum about a power outage in Barcelona.

50,000 clients in Barcelona still have no electricity, more than 30 hours after the lights went out. At least 30,000 will not have service restored until tomorrow at the earliest. TV3 is reporting on how pissed off the municipal and regional authorities are; they're blaming the whole thing on Fecsa-Endesa, which doesn't make any sense because it was a Red Electrica Española cable that went down and caused the blackout. TV3 is of course controlled by the same political parties that control the Ayuntamiento, the Generalitat, and the central government, so they're quite clearly trying to deflect the anger of the citizens in some other direction.

The most clear sign of TV3 manipulation: Antoni Castells, the Generalitat's counselor in charge of industry, announced this afternoon that everybody's electricity would come back on by 10 PM. That, of course, was complete bullshit. TV3 has taken that story off its website, and it did not make the 9 PM evening news. Communist second vice-mayor Imma Mayol, meanwhile, is posing for the cameras calling the situation "indigestible" and demanding that it stop right now and everybody's lights magically come on.

CiU and the PP are blaming Montilla, the Generalitat, Zap, and anything that smells like a Socialist for this mess. CiU has pointed out that the Generalitat failed to connect the Maragall substation, the one that caught fire, to two other substations, as they were supposed to have done back in 2005. Duran Lérida said that if the high-tension power connection to France had been built, as the right wanted to do a couple of years back, this wouldn't have happened as there would have been an alternate source of electrical supply. However, the environmentalists, specifically Imma Mayol's Commie-Green crowd, torpedoed the project. Meanwhile, Red Electrica is controlled by the central government, and you know who's in charge of that: Zap and, get this, former Barcelona mayor and now industry minister Joan Clos, known for bashing America and being the genius behind the Forum of Cultures.

Supposedly there are going to be more pot-banging protests tonight. If there are I'm going to crank up "High Voltage" on the CD and drown them all out.

Other news: They busted Spain's Public Enemy Number One in Portugal, a guy who had robbed thirty banks and killed three cops in the last few years. Can we please hang him? He sounds like a deserving case. Some judge in Murcia denied child custody to a lesbian mother on the grounds that lesbianism is bad, which is pretty ridiculous and will almost certainly get overturned. They busted a CNI (Spanish intelligence) agent for spying for Russia; he's been charged with treason, for which he may receive as much as--get this--twelve years in jail.

Tour de France cyclist Alexander Vinokurov, who won yesterday's mountain stage, tested positive for blood doping; Tour leader Michael Rasmussen, meanwhile, has been kicked off the Danish national team for missing two drug tests this summer. It's a very bad week for sports, what with the indictment of Michael Vick on federal animal cruelty charges and the announcement that a NBA referee has been fixing games. I'm amazed that neither US story has made it in Spain; many people here are actually NBA fans and you'd think they'd be interested, and they could use the race angle on the Vick story, something the Spanish media is never shy about doing.

The Barcelona blackout means that if a) you live in Barcelona b) you do business with a company in Barcelona c) you are coming to Barcelona, then you are most likely d) screwed.

TV3 is reporting that some 70,000 clients are still without electric power, and 30,000 of them will not have service until tomorrow at the earliest. 10,000 clients got their electricity back this morning. Some of the traffic lights, for example at Calle Mallorca and Paseo Sant Joan, are still out.

Here in Gracia electric power is still hit-and-miss. My building has power; we were only down for about three hours yesterday. Last night the streetlights on my street were on, but on the other side of Calle Escorial they were out. The fruit shop, the Pakistani grocery, and the Bar Zeus still don't have the electricity back on. The main market in Gracia down on the Traversera is still down, and they've had to throw away enormous amounts of food.

Supposedly they had pot-banging protests (caceroladas) against the power outage in several Barcelona neighborhoods last night, but I didn't hear anything. Spaniards love demonstrations. I can't imagine protesting against a power outage, though. I mean, we're all against them, and we all want the electricity to come back on, so exactly what good does banging your pots and pans do?

Fortunately, there were no serious incidents last night, no accidents, crime, or looting.

People are blaming the power companies, which I suppose makes some sense, but many of them have their targets wrong. Fecsa-Endesa is Barcelona's shareholder-owned retail power company, and the outage is not their fault. It was a Red Electrica Española cable that went down; REE is the state-owned company that runs the electrical grid and distributes wholesale electric power to the retailers.

REE's delegate in Catalonia, Lluís Pinós, said that the electrical grid had been affected by two recent accidents related to construction work going on. I'm not sure whether that's a legitimate explanation or just an excuse. We'll see.

Mayor Jordi Hereu demanded that REE get the power back on before tonight. Mr. Hereu, what good is that going to do? We assume they are working as fast as they can, and if they can't work any faster, why are you demanding they do so? Aren't you demanding something impossible, playing to the peanut gallery, just to look as if you had some control over what's going on?

TV3 is reporting that 110,000 clients in Barcelona are still without electricity as of 10 PM, and that it might take days to get everyone reconnected. The most seriously affected areas are Gracia, Guinardo, and Nou Barris, where 80,000 clients depend on the Paseo Maragall substation that caught on fire. The 30,000 clients on the left side of the Eixample, which depends on the Calle Urgell substation, will supposedly be back on line tomorrow morning.

The city basically can't do business, with many banks without power, not to mention offices and shops. Everybody dependent on computers has had problems, since they don't work too good without electricity.

Here in Gracia it's a little strange, with some buildings powered and others down. The Bar Vall on the plaza has power, but not the Bar Zeus down the street. The Pakistani grocery store is down, and so is the fruit shop on the plaza. We've got electricity here, but some other people in the neighborhood don't.

The police are getting ready for a "complicated night," as TV3 put it, with no streetlights in much of the city. The cell phone system was down for part of the day, and the fixed-line phones were down for about half an hour this morning.

This is going to mean trouble for the municipal and regional governments, since whenever there's a big screwup in Spain somebody gets the finger pointed at him, his head rolls, and society's displeasure is expiated. That somebody is often from the government, and I'm guessing that Mayor Hereu and regional prime minister Montilla, both Socialists, are going to take some heat. Also expect the PP to demand the resignation of every Socialist within range, and for the Catalan nationalists to pitch a hissy fit about how not enough public money is spent--they prefer "invested"--in Catalonia.

We got an Instalanche for the El Jueves post, along with a link from Barcepundit who himself got Instalanched, so lots of people at least looked at that one. Also, I searched Google for "el jueves," and Iberian Notes is 20th on the list of English-only searches. That brought in a lot of people.

Wacky stuff from La Vanguardia: there's a back-page interview with a guy named Francisco Klauser, billed as a "videovigilance expert," who says, "There are already companies in the United States that demand that their employees have chips implanted." So I googled "us companies chip implant," and got this story from the Times of London about how some British patients were having identifying chips implanted for medical reasons; this BBC story on how implanted chips might be used to identify dead or wounded soldiers; and this New York Sun story saying that one video surveillance company required its president and two staffers to get the chip that would allow access into the room where their confidential video footage is stored. The staffers were not required to have the chips implanted; one carries his chip on his key ring.

Oh, yeah, one more story, from the New Scientist:

Clubbers in Spain are choosing to receive a microchip implant instead of carrying a membership card. It is the latest and perhaps the most unlikely of uses for implantable radio frequency ID chips.

The Baja Beach Club in Barcelona offers people signing up for VIP membership a choice between an RFID chip and a normal card. VIP members can jump the entrance queues, reserve a table and use the nightclub's VIP lounge.

The New Scientist artiole says that as of May 21, 2004, only nine people had been implanted with the chip at the extremely tacky Barcelona bar, where I have never been and will never go. Since only two US workers have had chips implanted, and one is the president of the company, that means that there are more bar-hoppers in Barcelona carrying these chips than workers in Big Brother's United States.

The tinfoil-hat interviewee adds, "In the Unitred States there is a system called Echelon that can listen to all telephone conversations." Whoa. I've heard lots of ridiculous claims about Echelon (which of course doesn't exist; signals intelligence does exist, and always has), but saying that the US government can listen to all phone conversations is beyond normal nuttiness.

One more slightly wacky bit: there's a rundown of 20th century American first ladies on the occasion of the death of Lady Bird Johnson (whose real first name was Claudia). The author translates "Lady Bird" as "'señora pájaro,' a curious nickname." Of course, a ladybird, also called a ladybug, is a beetle with red wings that have black spots on them, and the translation to Spanish is "Mariquita." Which also means "fag," by the way.

Jesus de Polanco, the guy who ran the Prisa media empire, died at age 77. De mortuis nil nisi bonum, but his company was a Socialist propaganda organ in the same way that El Mundo and the Cope are PP propaganda organs. Prisa's 2006 revenue was €2.8 billion, and its profit was €228 million. In order, the company's biggest moneymakers are El País, which beought in an €83 million profit, Radio Ser, which brought in €74 million, and the Santillana publishing house, which earned €37 million. Polanco's TV station, Cuatro, is operating at a loss.

PP leader Rajoy made nice and went to the funeral, though he didn't like Polanco one least little bit. The PP was boycotting Prisa media outlets because Polanco called them extremists who were trying to start another civil war, and I assume the boycott will continue.

We had a major power outage in Barcelona this morning. TV3 is reporting that a high-tension transmission cable in L'Hospitalet went down about 11 AM, which led to two fires at substations, a big fire at the one on Paseo Maragall. The traffic signals went down and the city completely snarled up. Three of the subway lines went out of service. Hospitals were left without electric current and had to resort to generators. People were stuck in elevators. Today is going to be a total economic washout; there goes 1/250th or so of our yearly productivity.

About 300,000 customers were blacked out. Supposedly 150,000 customers are still down; the power came on here about fifteen minutes ago. There'll be a lot of criticism, and this was a massive malfunction. They don't know what happened yet. I still think most of Barcelona's infrastructure is pretty decent.

Problems: 1) Traffic; there are too many cars and not enough roads. 2) The commuter train system; it just plain sucks. 3) To my knowledge, some of Barcelona's sewage is still not treated before it gets dumped in the sea. Please correct me if I'm wrong about this. 4) The sewer system downtown needs to be completely replaced, since on bad days the Ribera smells like human feces. 5) The telephone-Internet system could stand some modernizing. 6) The traffic lights still go out when it rains. 7) Spanish road-building planners are lousy and there are some bottlenecks, like when you get off the Diagonal onto the Ronda de Dalt coming into town from the west, that were obviously designed by unusually bright chimps.

Positives: 1) The metro is pretty good. 2) Utility services--gas, water, electricity--are pretty good. 3) The sewers, and sewage treatment, are better than they used to be. 4) The airport is functional and is being expanded. 5) Long-distance train service is pretty good, and it will be better when the high-speed train reaches Sants station in a few months. 6) The port seems to function just fine. 7) The system of distribution of consumer products somehow manages to keep everyone fed and happy. 8) The Spanish National Health is actually quite good if a little inconvenient, and at least we don't have epidemics.

The satirical comic magazine El Jueves has been censored. Remember Zap promised us all €2500 for each new kid we have? So on the cover they ran a cartoon of Prince Felipe doing Princess Letizia doggy-style and saying, "You know what? If you get pregnant this will be the closest thing to working I've done in my life." Here's a link; scroll down to see the cover with the naughty bit Xed out. Not very funny or well-drawn, unfair to the Prince who actually works pretty hard as a PR rep for Spain, and in lousy taste, I agree.

However, censoring anything is an extremely bad idea. This whole fooferaw will simply draw more attention to the magazine.

Anyway, Judge Del Olmo of the National Court ordered the issue to be withdrawn from sale, and El Jueves's website is shut down. The basis for Del Olmo's action bans "calumniating or slandering the king and his descendants," lese-majesté, which is punishable by up to two years in prison.

That's ridiculous. The cartoon is clearly anti-monarchical political speech. I'm behind El Jueves, of course, even though it hasn't been funny since Ivà died back about 1994. What pissed me off is that the guy who drew the cartoon claimed disingenuously that it was a caricature of Tom Cruise and Katie Holmes, and that Del Olmo's dirty mind was imagining things. What a jerk. At least show some guts and stand by what you said.

In case you're interested, after that flap about the caricatures of Mohammed in that Danish newspaper, El Jueves's response was a drawing of its sweating, nervous mascot (who wears a court jester's hat) with the title, "We were going to draw Mohammed, but we shit our pants!" The mascot says, "Mohammed? No Mohammed here. Just keep going," while erasing a drawing; all that's left of it are some sandals and the bottom of a robe. The editor said the point was "to ironize the fear that these people inspire," but added that "the reactions of our readers are one thing to keep in mind, but it's different if you publish a drawing that might get your country's embassy burned down."

One more link: The people spreading scare stories about the danger to the Sagrada Familia caused by the tunnel for the high-speed train under Calle Mallorca have made a fake news video showing the "consequences" if the tunnel is built. Note the horrible English subtitles. I need to call these folks up and offer my translation services.

Political news: Josep Piqué has quit as leader of the PP in Catalonia. Looks to me like he was pushed out, since PP headquarters in Madrid picked the candidates for the general election without consulting him. He resigned the next day. Daniel Sirera, who was the head of the Catalan PP youth organization, has replaced him, which just confirms that headquarters was all ready for Piqué's resignation.

They might have to hold new regional elections in Navarra, since the PP, the Socialists, and the Nafarroa Bai Basque nationalists cannot agree among themselves who is to form a government, and they've each got about a third of the deputies.

UPDATE Monday: I don't know why this post wasn't posted when I posted it, if that makes sense.

Antena 3 led off its afternoon news today with the steam pipe explosion in Manhattan, which killed one person. TV3, by the way, got the story wrong, saying it was a transformer that blew up. Both networks took the opportunity to remind everyone who might have thought that America is a normal place just like, say, most of Europe, that the panicked Yanks spend their lives shaking in fear of terrorism.

This meme is very common in the Spanish press, and I think it's rooted in the wishful-thinking idea that, well, the US may be richer and stronger and more important, but we're better than they are at quality of life and we have to continuously remind ourselves of this in case we forget. This is why there are so many reports on crime and guns in America, though violent crime in the US is not much higher than in much of Europe and suicide is far less common. It's also why there's so much to-do in the press about the so-called "Mediterranean diet" and its superiority to fast food, as if that were the only thing Americans ate.

The steam-pipe explosion that killed one person was clearly more important than the sinking of a cayuco south of Tenerife in which fifty African illegal immigrants are missing and feared dead. We have been saying for years, literally, that it is time for the international press to wake up to the horror story of the African boat people; they're too interested in criticizing the American plan to put up a wall along part of the Mexican border, though.

Breaking news: This morning a suspected ETA member bailed out of a taxi near Castellón when it stopped at a police roadblock. He left his sports bag behind him, which contained explosives. The guy is currently on the run but they'll get him pretty quick.

13.4% of people living in Catalonia are immigrants, almost one million total; the rate of immigration is slowing, but not by much. In 2006 more than 50,000 immigrants arrived, fewer than in 2004 and 2005 but still a lot. Some professor dudes say that many of the jobs immigrants are occupying are the lower-status ones abandoned by Catalan women as they move up in the job market.

They ran an extremely foolish documentary on channel 33 last night called "The Corporation," which featured about ten minutes of Michael Moore, along with the other usual suspects like Noam Chomsky, Howard Zinn, and Naomi Klein. It went through all the old bogus propaganda stories, from the alleged "business plot" against FDR to the alleged collaboration of American companies with Nazi Germany, and called for "democratic control" over corporate actions. Of course, what that means is giving the government control over the economy. Now you connect the dots and guess which political parties control channel 33. Note that, of course, they won't be showing "Free to Choose" anytime soon.

The Washington Post, Tech Central Station, and Spiked all say the movie's a bunch of crap. Here's the whole damn thing on YouTube in case you want to watch it.

Time for another blog roundup.

Spanish Shilling comments on language use in Spain. Some of our regular readers will disagree with him.

Spanish Pundit has a news roundup. This is the first blog in English from Spain by a woman that I've seen.

Observing Hermann says Germans are stingy.

Notes from Spain doesn't see the point of going to Pamplona for the Sanfermines.

¡No Pasarán! slaps French bashers of McDo's.

La Liga Loca has the dope on the off-season Spanish football transfers.

LA-Madrid Files thinks there's too much porn on Spanish broadcast TV.

Ibex Salad has lots of Spanish stock market news, just in case you invest your money instead of spend it like most of the rest of us.

Guirilandia features a slice of Barcelona life.

Fausta sets us straight about the "shrinking Americans" story. I'm 183 cm, or 6 foot 1, and I'm noticeably taller than most folks around here. Younger Spaniards are a good deal taller than older Spaniards, but neither group matches the Americans or Northern Europeans.

Expat Yank spanks the new high mucky-mucks in the British foreign office.

Eursoc fills us in on aggressive Russian behavior in Europe.

Davids Mediakritik is tearing up the biased America-bashing German media. This is great.

Colin Davies just keeps on blogging from Pontevedra.

The Brussels Journal has a must-read post on the failures of Zap's foreign policy, especially toward Cuba. Don't miss this one.

A Fistful of Euros ponders the idea of European culture.

I asked my wife Remei about her memories of using Catalan during the Franco regime. She was born in a village named Vallfogona de Riucorb in 1960, and so was fifteen when Franco died and the transition to democracy began. Her parents were farmers who moved to the working-class Collblanc neighborhood in the Barcelona suburb of L'Hospitalet in the late sixties, and they spoke only Catalan with the family.

Says Remei, "It wasn't as bad as people say from my experience...In elementary school around 1972 we had an hour of Catalan class a week, it was like music, not really important like math or history...Outside class we spoke Catalan with the teachers who were Catalan, but they only used Spanish in class...It was mostly official, if you went to the city hall you used Spanish, and with the police. You always spoke Spanish with the Guardia Civil...In elementary school they told us that Catalan was a dialect, not a language. They made a big deal out of that...When I was born I was named Remedios, in Spanish, because that was the rule. I changed it to Remei in 1976 as soon as I could...In the early Seventies I remember music in Catalan, Serrat and La Trinca, and humor on the radio, I don't remember the comedian's name. My mom has some tapes by him. I don't remember TV in Catalan...In the village it was all Catalan, and in the city it was about 60 Catalan--40 Spanish. At work my parents spoke the language the clients spoke, just like today. People only knew how to write in Spanish, though...Nobody I know ever got in trouble with the government for speaking Catalan. About once a year you would meet an asshole (cabronazo) who would give you trouble and tell you to speak Spanish...Once I went to the doctor's office with my mom and she said, "Qui és l'últim?" and some woman said "Hable usted en cristiano, que no se la entiende."...I never felt discriminated against because I was Catalan. There was no pressure in my social class...In general things are much better today, of course. Catalan is really protected, actually."

I read this back to her and she said, "Perfect."

I posted four links to articles related to popular music over at Hard Country.

Tom at the Bad Rash has a post up castigating us, rather politely I must admit:

If you read other English-language blogs from Catalonia, you might get the impression that the story of Catalan being banned under Franco was made up by Catalan nationalists. This is completely untrue. Certain bloggers seem to have a perverse interest in undermining the history of Catalan, Catalonia and the repression during the Franco years. Make no mistake: under Franco, hundreds of laws and judgments were passed which effectively outlawed the use of the Catalan language. At best, the blogs which promulgate this myth are disingenuous. I reckon that they're aiming for an audience-pleasing tone of contrariety, which is, after all, the natural tone for successful blogs. Doesn't make it true, though.

I've never said Catalan wasn't repressed under Franco, and I of course deplore the treatment of Catalan-speakers under the dictatorship. What I have said several times is that Catalan's status changed many times under Franco's regime, and it's simplistic to just say "Catalan was banned."

In 1939, official use of Catalan was prohibited, including its use in schools, the civil service and legal system, books, newspapers, and broadcasting. However, of course, unofficial use could not be and was not prohibited; people used the language they always had with their families and acquaintances. I've never heard of anyone being executed or even going to jail for speaking Catalan to his mom, his buddies, the shop foreman, or the guy at the grocery store. My wife confirms this. So it's not like there was some sort of Gestapo or Stalinist linguistic terror, unpleasant as the anti-Catalan laws were, and that is what at least some Catalan nationalists are claiming.

Gradually, some of the anti-Catalan laws were relaxed; I wish I had more solid facts on this, and I've been searching the Internet for at least an hour, so it looks like I need to check down at the public library tomorrow.

I do know:

Publication of books in Catalan resumed in 1940, and by the early 1950s many books were being printed in Catalan as the dictatorship began to relax its control. (Key events: Reconciliation with the United Nations, the United States, and the Vatican.) Several literary prizes for books in Catalan were established during the Fifties. By the early 1960s, music and theater was permitted in Catalan--for example, Els Setze Jutges. Lluís Llach released the famous protest song "L'Estaca" in 1968 and was not arrested or anything. In 1962, the Edicions 62 publishing house was founded, and around that time Francoist censorship became less strict. Spanish and Catalan writers were henceforth basically permitted to write what they wanted as long as they didn't criticize the Franco government; therefore, there is a lot of '60s sociology, economics, and especially history still available in Catalan. Sometime during this period Catalan was permitted again on radio and TV. Catalan was reintroduced into the schools in 1971.

So, actually, after about 1950, Catalan wasn't treated particularly differently from Breton in France, Welsh in the UK, or German in northern Italy, and got rather better treatment than, say, Hungarian in Romania or Czechoslovakia. Or German anywhere east of the Oder.

I hold no brief for dictators in general or Franco in particular. I do have a problem with the exaggeration of Francoist evil for political reasons, which I smell behind some of the more outrageous Catalan nationalist claims (Franco banned the sardana, anyone?).

Get this. A bunch of alleged "intellectuals and artists" have an Internet petition up calling for ex-prime minister Aznar to be tried for war crimes in Iraq. The only name among the top 100 signers I recognized was Noam Chomsky. Of the signers who claim to be from an organization, looks like 95% are some kind of Communist, of course. If you want to sign the petition, here's the link. So far I've signed as Ozzy Osbourne, the Duque de Feria, Ana Obregón, and Sid Vicious, but I'll bet you can be more creative than I can.

There is one more piece of news: A former Barcelona provincial subprefect has been arrested, along with two civil servants and an employee of the Russian consulate, and charged with collaborating with the Russian mafia. They were providing false Spanish work and residence permits to anyone the Russians wanted them to. I really don't know much about it, but people say the Russian mafia is powerful in Spain, and that some of the money behind the construction boom is theirs. I suspect that there is some truth behind the rumors, but that Russian mafia money is a minor factor, and the main stimulus for construction is simply that Spain is Europe's Sunbelt.

Fortunately, the biggest news around here is that a rubber warehouse in the Vallés suburbs caught on fire yesterday and emitted a huge plume of black smoke visible for miles, that the Spanish cops busted a bunch of Internet kiddie porn pervs, that they're definitely going to run the high-speed train near the Sagrada Familia through a tunnel under Calle Mallorca, and that Zap is currently ahead of Rajoy in the polls. No terrorism, no stock market crash, no Esquerra Republicana topping the surveys. All is well.

Oh, yeah, the Sagrada Familia is an "expiatory temple," which I think means you get some time off purgatory if you contribute. Anyone who contributes to the new work going on has very poor aesthetic sense, and should actually have to spend extra time in purgatory for the sin of bad taste. The newer side portal designed by Subirachs is just plain ugly, not to mention dumb, featuring a faceless anatomically correct Christ and a bunch of Roman centurions who look like Imperial Stormtroopers.

We spent the weekend out in the pueblo as usual; didn't do much but go to the pool and walk the dog. The pool is especially nice, very clean and with full bar service. There were no clouds and the sky was pale Mediterranean blue, not the deep blue you see in the midwestern US. I like to swim down to the bottom and then turn over on my back and look up; all you can see is the sky and the sun through six feet of water. A whole lot of swallows (I assume European swallows, though we're not too far from Africa) live in Vallfogona, and they like to fly over the pool and then peel out, dive, skim the surface for a tiny sip of water, and then pull up and out. It would be even cooler if they did it in formation.

One of the other nice things about the pueblo is that there is no noise. If you walk up in the hills you oftan can't hear any man-made sounds at all. It's quite a contrast from Barcelona, which is one of the noisiest places I've ever been--beats London, Paris, and LA, not to mention Kansas City.

Fortunately, there isn't much news around here. They had a nasty bull run at Pamplona this morning and several people got hurt real bad, including one guy with broken bones in his ribcage and spine along with a concussion. An American caught a horn right in the ass, and some guy from Poland took a horn in the "perianal area," which sounds extremely unpleasant. TV3 has a photo. People, running with the bulls is dangerous, in case you hadn't figured that out already.

The Spanish woman injured in the Yemen terrorist blast who was in critical condition is now brain-dead, which means the toll rises to eight Spaniards and two Yemenis, not counting the suicide bomber.

The David Vitter prostitute scandal has hit the Spanish press, which is hammering on the hypocrisy theme. They have a point. If a Senator cannot keep his willy on a leash, he should not make pronouncements about what others do with their own unleashed willies. However, it is of course unfair to generalize from this one case that all Republican senators are hypocrites, or that hypocrisy is any more common in America than in Spain.

(Spanish hypocrisy isn't usually about sex; it's usually about solidarity and being holier-than-thou about the Third World, the consumer society, and ethical values. Lots of folks talk a good game about self-righteous do-gooder ideals around here, but very few follow up with any action.)

National Review said two things I thought were kind of silly; one was that "prostitution is illegal because prostitution is wrong," which makes no sense; why shouldn't people charge for having sexual relations, and how is that any more wrong than doing it for free? The other was that Larry Flynt has no moral standards. I'm not so sure. I bet Larry thinks that murdering people is wrong, and that robbing banks is wrong, and that raping children is wrong. He just doesn't think that either publishing nasty magazines or blackmailing hypocritical Republican senators is wrong.

They busted two more ETA terrorists in France yesterday; these guys were part of the cell in charge of stealing materiel, such as guns and explosives. Meanwhile, the cell they broke up in Santander was going to hit either the city hall or the courthouse with a car bomb.

Speaking of solidarity with the Third World, a Barcelona-based NGO called Intervida has turned out to be a scam; its directors have been charged with embezzlement, fraud, and conspiracy. Seems the contributions they were collecting went to buy real estate or shares in businesses, including the one that runs the Imax cinema here. Looks like they stole some €60 million.

The government has been running an ad campaign against domestic violence, which promises abused women that the law will do something to help and protect them. I call bullshit on that. 37% of the victims of domestic murder in the first half of 2007 in Spain had filed charges against their killers. 30% were under restraining orders. Two-thirds of the murders were committed in the victim's home, meaning the law is doing a lousy job keepìng violent men away from female victims. The first thing they need to do in domestic violence cases is get the woman out of there to a place where the man can't find her or can't get to her, and I have seen no signs of the government taking any such steps.

Barcelona signed Argentinian center-back Gabi Milito from Zaragoza for €17 million, the most they've ever paid for a defender. Milito is very good and is probably worth the money, especially since Puyol is injured and won't be able to start the season. These guys don't make all that much money, by the way. Milito, for example, will be paid €2 million a year, and he's one of the pillars of Argentina's national squad. I think Barça's highest-paid players like Ronaldinho get around €6 million a year. Kansas City designated hitter Mike Sweeney, who has sucked for years, is getting paid $11 million a year. There are lousy baseball players getting nearly double that. Also, Real Madrid signed Christoph Metzelder, another gimpy defender in the tradition of Woodgate and Samuel.

I've started a new site called Hard Country (hardcountry66.blogspot.com), where I hope to be posting at least once a week. It'll mostly be links to country, blues, rock, bluegrass, and American music in general. Links to the first two posts: A set of about fifteen 21st century country videos (more or less), and some Taj Mahal songs. Taj is playing Girona tomorrow night, on the steps of the cathedral, which sounds like a must-see to me. I can't make it, unfortunately, but you ought to try. He'll be there with the other guys from his trio; it won't be a full band. I'm not sure anyone around here has ever heard of Taj, but here's a chance to check him out live.