Chronicling Twenty Minutes of Google Research:

Here's a good one from La Vanguardia:

Zaragoza (EFE)-The government of Aragon and an international consortium today signed an official plan to develop the largest leisure and gaming complex in the world in the Los Monegros district of Huesca, with an investment of €17 billion entirely from private initiative.

Construction of the complex, to be called "Gran Scala," will begin in the third quarter of 2008. It will include 32 casinos, 70 hotels, 232 restaurants, some 500 shops, a horce racing track, a golf course, and several amusement parks and museums, according to the International Leisure Development (ILD) consortium, made up of a dozen companies from different countries.

Gran Scala, which will have the second-most casinos in the world, after only Las Vegas (United States), hopes to become the largest tourist destination in the Iberian Peninsula, with 25 million tourists in 2015, of whom the promoters calculate 80% will be foreign.

My first reaction: Geez, they're serious about this. I had laughingly noted it down a few weeks ago when it was first announced, doubting that it would ever happen. It sounds like a terrible idea, just terrible. Los Monegros is an ugly-ass desert in the middle of nowhere, hotter than hell in the summer and cold as yo' mama's cootchie in winter.

Now I am going to look up International Leisure Development, and I will bet that it is a consortium of oil shieks, the Russian mafia, arms traffickers, and sleazy property developers. "Sleazy property developer" is a tautology, I know, sort of like "crooked lawyer."

Here's their website. Note that it doesn't say who the companies that make up the consortium are. Also note that they hired a lousy translator, and that the French, as usual, seem to have something to do with it.

Here's what looks like a press release noting that the investors include British, Australian, French, and American investors. It adds that the comarca's economy depends on 80,000 acres of irrigated farmland and the pig-raising sector.

This dreadfully written press release informs us that ILD is currently working on a project called "Euro Vegas" in Hungary. Sounds like these guys are going around to everywhere that's nowhere in Europe and promising them Vegas-style gambling riches. They don't have any €17 billion invested in Euro Vegas, that's for sure.

Here's a rather more professional press release trying to ballyhoo the alleged development to British investors.

Ah, here we go, credible information. They're going to start off with a theme park called "Spyland," which sounds retarded to me, and I think the following paragraph illustrates which league these guys are really playing in:

The Reuters news service reported Thursday that Spyland has attracted $175 million in financing toward a $277 million goal for the first phase, of what will be a $438 million theme park. Construction could begin late next year, and the first phase could open in late 2010.

Seventeen billion euros, my ass. They've managed to borrow $175 million to build a second-division theme park. That's all they've got.

Here's some more news from Australia, this time claiming that it's a 28-billion-euro (confusion with Australian dollars?)project and adding that the promotors already struck out in Dubai and in France before flashing the big money before Aragon's eyes. Two of the members of the consortium are identified: Aristocrat Technologies and UFA Insurance.

Aristocrat is listed on the Australian stock market; their shares are worth eleven Australian dollars each. They look like a legitimate company, but they're not exactly a world heavy hitter. UFA Insurance appears to be a Lebanese outfit.

The Can Ruti hospital in Badalona is on fire, though authorities say it's under control. It was very smoky and quite impressive-looking. Three floors were evacuated. Sure seems like a lot of weird stuff has been happening around here lately, what with cave-ins and blackouts and fires. Maybe the indignant Catalanists have a point--it sure does seem like local infrastructure is getting worse. You can't blame only the central goverment, though; the regional and local governments deserve their fair share of the blame.

For example: The AVE screw-up: the Generalitat and the municipalities forced a solution that nobody liked and that is turning out to suck. The extension of the N-II to Lleida: it took like seven years for the municipalities to get around to approving the route. The Eix Transversal: they decided to build a brand-new road where there had never been one before between Lleida and Girona. Great idea, but they didn't make it four-lane divided limited access. The airport: That's the fault of everybody involved, including the Greens, who got all worked up about the wetlands in the Llobregat delta. C'mon, people, I'm all in favor of conservation, and wetlands are important, but when they're right in the way of expanding your airport, well, there's a trade-off there. The economic benefit is much greater than the environmental loss.

And, of course, so much money is wasted around here on crap like institutional advertising and re-numbering all the roads and buying thousands of newspaper subscriptions and keeping TV3 in business with its massive debt and the Forum and digging subway tunnels through soil you haven't even bothered to consult a geological survey of and subsidizing movies in Catalan that will never be seen, that they could probably build a tower all the way to the moon with the squandered loot.

Can you believe that Conrad Son gets tax money to make porno movies in Catalan? That makes just no sense whatsoever. I mean, seriously. Subsidizing porn? I thought porn was one of those sectors where investors are 100% private. And often have surnames that end in vowels.

Speaking of TV3, a Socialist deputy has suggested privatizing it, which is one of the best ideas I've ever heard. A Socialist who wants to privatize government television! Wonders will never cease. Of course, the Socialists are pissed off at TV3 because they've failed to take control of it; TV3 still has a very distinct Catalan nationalist bias. Evidence: The publicity they gave the nationalist-backed demonstration a couple of weeks ago.

The deputy, Manel Mas, told La Vanguardia, that in order to become the market leader, "TV3 must open up socially and accept linguistic and ideological reality, which the nationalist world tries to hide by making it seem that it doesn't exist. The greatest contradiction for a public media outlet is the existence of a single line of thinking in a complex and diverse society. It is evident that wishing for pluralist public media outlets, beyond nationalism, is an impossible dream at our house. If we're going to think in market terms, why not privatize TV3?"

The EU says that new housing starts in Spain are going to drop from about 750,000 now to about 500,000 by 2010, basically because there is now a new housing glut and prices are beginning to fall. I keep up with the real estate classifieds, and my highly uneducated guess is that prices are down by about 25% off their high about a year ago.

Today's campaign promise: PP leader Mariano Rajoy offers an €150 a month increase in retirement pensions, which sounds acceptable to me; if we're going to pass out public money, much better give it to old people who have worked hard than to porno film directors.

The eight (not ten) Catalan women who were deported from Cuba have arrived in Madrid safe and sound. Congratulations to them and their initiative. Get this: The Barcelona city council, controlled by the Catalan Tripartite (Socialists, Communist-Greens, and national socialists), said it had no position on the affair. So Francina Vila, their fellow councilwoman, gets detained, held against her will, and deported by a Communist dictatorship for holding up a banner saying "Democracia," and they've got nothing to say about it.

Tragedy in Algiers: Somebody, probably Al Qaeda according to Algerian authorities, set off two car bombs in the center of the city, killing at least 62 people and wounding scores more. One went off near the supreme court building, blowing up a school bus full of kids and killing most of them, and the other went off near a police station and a UN office. The first bomb did tremendous damage, nearly destroying the supreme court building.

Economics minister Pedro Solbes says that Spain's economic growth for 2007 will be about 3.8%, which is pretty good. He predicts growth of about 3% for 2008, with the slowdown due to high oil prices and "financial turbulence." Solbes warns of high inflation between now and about April, when price increases should level out. Exports are up, though consumer spending is down, and investment in capital goods is up though the construction sector is down. Unemployment should continue decreasing, says Solbes.

The Guardia Civil de Trafico is going to crack down big time on drunk driving at the Christmas holidays, so be forewarned; they will be setting up checkpoints and plan to do 200,000 breath tests. Sounds like a good idea to me. I was downtown in Barcelona yesterday evening, and I noticed a lot more cops, both Mossos and Urbanos, than usual, so maybe they are cracking down on the muggers and pickpockets too. About time.

Congratulations to moderate Catalanist party Convergencia's youth group. They sent ten of their women members, including Barcelona city councilwoman Francina Vila, to Cuba in order to support the dissident group Ladies in White (Damas de Blanco), whose husbands are prisoners in Castro's jails. The Castro regime rounded the Catalan women up, and they are being detained in a Havana hotel until they are deported tomorrow. Their crime? Standing together in the streets of Havana with a banner reading, "Democracia."

Vila said, "Our goals are to support the Ladies in White because of the situation of their husbands, sons, and brothers who are in prison, in a disgraceful condition, some of whom are ill and in danger of death. We also want to support the Ladies in White because they suffer from 'acts of repudiation,' they are insulted, they have problems getting work, and in leaving their houses to help their husbands and relatives."

She added, "Our support is so they will have the spirit to keep fighting, to put pressure on the Cuban government to free their husbands and relatives. We want to call international attention to the problem of Cuba, which is a totalitarian regime where there is no freedom of expression, or of assembly, or even to demonstrate, and we want to make the Ladies in White's cause internationally known."

By the way, "acts of repudiation" are a lovely Castroite custom. If you criticize the government, your block leader informs the Party, and they send a bunch of their bullies to your house to shout insults and throw things. You are harassed every time you leave home, because, you see, the people are angered by your counter-revolutionaritude and they are expressing their justified indignation.

Convergencia's youth group is hereby forgiven for all its past (rather mild) Cataloony sins, because they're on the right side when you look at the big picture, and they just showed some guts. It's one thing to talk a good game from behind your computer screen, like me, and another to actually stick your neck out, as they did.

Things are pretty hectic around here rignt now, because my mother-in-law Rosa took a fall two nights ago in her bedroom and broke her right femur near the hip. They're going to operate on her today and put a pin in her leg; she'll be in the hospital for a week--at Vall d'Hebron, the one where the three kids just got infected with hepatitis C. Uh-oh.

Actually, the Spanish national health service is doing its usual good job with Rosa. The system generally works if you're sick or hurt--they'll take care of you and fix you up right. The personnel is top-notch and the facilities are adequate, and they must be doing something right because Spain's life expectancy is longer than the US's.

Its disadvantages are 1) the system is said to not work that well in extreme cases; people with money generally leave Spain if they have some rare cancer or something and go to the US. 2) It's inconvenient and bureaucratic; the system could stand some streamlining. 3) They probably do screw up more than hospitals in the US do; every month or so there's a horror story from somewhere in Spain, and this month's is the kids infected with hep C.

4) They're not always good at personal attention to patients; they sometimes treat you like a number. 5) It's not free. Your Social Security tax is 8% of your gross pay, and your employer "contributes" an equal amount, so health care costs as much as it would for private insurance in the States. 6) Public health care in every country that has it tends to focus on currently existing problems--we've got an old lady with a broken leg--rather than on research into fixing problems in the future--stem cell experimentation.

I don't know how we'll deal with Rosa's not being able to get around, because this is effectively the end of her independence. She moved in with us in the summer because she was deteriorating rapidly already then; we took her to the neurologist and she said that Rosa's got cerebral atrophy. She's been losing control of her muscles since then, and fell down at least twice within the last couple of weeks. What she has been able to do on her own, though, is walk her little old dog down to the plaza twice a day, and to get up and go to the bathroom by herself. We've been able to handle everything else, you know, cleaning, cooking, laundry, personal care. I'm afraid, though, that she's not going to be able to do much walking when her leg finally gets better, however long that may take. She's a tough old bird, though. We'll figure something out.

Quick Friday news briefs: They busted an ETA member, packing a gun, up in the Basque Country; he's not the guy still on the run from the double murder in France. By the way, it turned out that of the three etarras who killed the two Civil Guards, it was the woman who did the shooting. There's been an unpleasant accident at the Vall d'Hebron hospital here: three children coming in for kidney dialysis were infected with hepatitis C. The Barcelona papers are making a big deal out of the first legal exports of what they call Iberian ham here to the United States; nothing unites Spaniards like their love for ham. I doubt any ordinary American will notice, since the stuff costs like fifty bucks a pound and will only be sold at a few gourmet shops; also, there's already an American equivalent, what's called Virginia ham.

I've been doing a lot of reading on 19th century American history through the e-books avaliable at Making of America, Google Books, and Project Gutenberg. Tremendous stuff is available there for free in tremendous quantities, an entire 1920s public library.

One thing I've been sort of working on mentally is a list of prominent 19th-century Americans who died of drinking too much. They used to drink incredible quantities, and many of them went around liquored up all the time. Every man, woman, and child drank an average of four gallons (16 liters) of pure alcohol a year before the Temperance movement took hold at the beginning of the Victorian era in the 1840s. America was nicknamed "the Alcoholic Republic." The first serious threat to the infant United States was the "Whiskey Rebellion," when farmers on the Pennsylvania frontier briefly rose up against a federal excise tax on whiskey. They grew mostly corn, and the cheapest way to transport their crop was by distilling it into whiskey first.

The ones I'm sure died directly from alcoholism are: Franklin Pierce, Stephen Douglas, Daniel Webster, Stephen Foster, Edgar Allen Poe, Sam Houston, De Witt Clinton, Andrew Johnson, probably Henry Clay, and probably James Buchanan. William Henry Harrison died of pneumonia, Zachary Taylor died of gastroenteritis, and James Polk died of overwork. John C. Calhoun died of tuberculosis, and U.S. Grant, though he drank too much, died of throat cancer. It was the smoking that did him in, not the drinking. Meriwether Lewis committed suicide, and he drank too much, and there was probably a connection. Andy Jackson probably died of pure stubbornness and meanness. I would not have made that man angry. He was a tough old bastard.

It's surprising how long five of the six major founding fathers, Franklin, Adams, Jefferson, Washington, and Madison, lived. The sixth, Hamilton, might well have lived to old age as well, but he was killed in the duel with Aaron Burr. Lincoln was so strong (he was a six-foot-four frontiersman with muscles like iron, and was known for his feats of strength as a young man) and had such healthy habits (he didn't drink, exercised regularly, and ate sparingly) that he probably would have lived a very long time if he hadn't been assassinated.

I was just thinking about RENFE, the Spanish rail network; RENFE stands for REd Nacional de Ferrocarriles Españoles. I always thought the joke that it stands for Rogamos Empujar Nuestros Ferrocarriles Estropeados (Please Push Our Broken-down Trains) was hilarious. These ironic acronyms go back a couple hundred years at least, and exist in English as well; at the time of the War of 1812, the United States Light Dragoons (that is, the cavalry) had USLD on their saddlebags; the joke was that it stood for "Uncle Sam's Lazy Dogs."

In addition, in English normal words can be turned into humorous acronyms, which I've never heard done in Spanish. FORD supposedly stands for "Found On Road Dead" and ADIDAS stands for "All Day I Dream About Sex." Fake acronyms are often invented to explain the etymology of a word; popular (and false) wisdom holds that TIP is "To Insure Promptness," FUCK is "For Unlawful Carnal Knowledge," and "POSH" is "Port Out, Starboard Home."

Can anyone think of any other examples?

Here is a first: A Dutch woman who underwent an illegal late-term abortion at a Barcelona clinic has been arrested in the Netherlands, and will be charged with infanticide under Dutch law. I haven't heard of anyone being arrested for undergoing an illegal abortion for a very long time. In the Netherlands abortion is legal up to the 24th week of gestation, six months, which means that the baby she aborted here must have been even later-term than that. Viable outside the womb. Aborting a lump of cells at eight or nine weeks isn't murder, but crushing a viable baby's skull most certainly is.

As I've said before, my position on abortion is pragmatic up to a point. Life functions a lot more easily for many people when abortion is legal, so much that a sizable minority would get extremely agitated if we completely banned it. Agitation is bad for society and should be avoided when feasible. Also, it's hard to conceive of a few undifferentiated cells as a human life. But by about 12 weeks a baby is pretty recognizably a baby, and extremely premature babies are now viable outside the womb. If it would live outside the uterus, then you shouldn't be allowed to kill it if it's still inside. So if I had a choice I'd legalize abortion on demand up to 12 weeks, and then strictly prohibit it with a very few exceptions that would be very hard to get.

One thing we could do around here is get rid of a little hypocrisy. Spain finally got around to modernizing the divorce law in 2005; now it's simple to get an uncontested divorce in Spain, you just hire a lawyer for five hundred euros and he takes care of it. Used to be you had to go through a lengthy process of "separation" before divorcing, and through two legal processes, the first to separate and the second to divorce. Of course the whole thing was a joke; people who didn't want to be married anymore just stopped living together, and probably went through the legal separation process. Most people didn't go so far as to get an actual legal divorce, though.

This situation was a major pain in the neck, besides being hypocritical, since it permitted separations, divorces in all but name. Well, now, let's get rid of the silly abortion law that makes a pregnant woman go to a psychiatrist to get a signed paper certifying that her mental health may suffer if she gives birth. Effectively, abortion on demand is legal in Spain, because the mental health suffering loophole is big enough to march an elephant through. Simplify it and let's be honest with ourselves, as Spain finally did with divorce. Legalize abortion on demand up to the twelfth week after conception.

The CSI television series has really caught on big over here, and now newspaper and TV crime reports play up what they call the Scientific Police and their role in detection. TV3 is leading off this evening with the story that the French police used DNA tests to identify the two arrested ETA terrorists. Toward the end they mentioned that the guns the etarras were carrying fired the bullets that killed the officers, and that eyewitnesses identified them as well, so the DNA tests are actually just one more piece of evidence in a very strong prosecution case. By the way, the woman arrested is a veteran terrorist with several years of experience; tne man is a rookie, who had been previously arrested for being part of ETA's recruiting apparatus. They're guilty as hell. Give 'em a fair trial and then string 'em up.

I think condemned murderers should be forced to listen to Johnny Cash hangin' songs over and over on an endless tape loop while sitting on death row. You know, "Twenty-Five Minutes To Go," "I Never Picked Cotton," "Joe Beam," and "Sam Hall." I bet Johnny did "The Long Black Veil" at least once, and I bet he did "Stagger Lee" too. And I think he did "Nebraska," which is an electrocutin' tune, but whatever. Throw in "Sing Me Back Home" by the Hag and that probably adds up to cruel and unusual punishment.

The European Commission is mad at Spain because broadband telecoms service costs 20% more in Spain than the EU average. Good. Go get those Telefonica monopolists and hit them where it hurts. You may remember that in June Telefonica got hit with a €150 million fine by the antitrust agency.

It's Constitution Day and millions of Spaniards came out to wave flags, sing the national anthem, and attend public readings of the document that guarantees their freedoms. Well, no, actually, they all either went skiing, to New York, or to Cuba. Besides, the national anthem doesn't have any words, making it hard to sing (this is probably a good thing), and the Constitution is about six hundred pages long and would take a week to read. I can see a few of the usual suspects around here getting together and burning it in the street, though; that'd be the largest gathering of the day outside the department stores and malls, which are open though it's a holiday.

El Periodico's New York correspondent interviewed some of the Spanish tourists running around the city. In case you're interested, she says that they're buying a bunch of crap like Manolo Blahnik shoes, and they're complaining the hotels are lousy and too expensive. One of them actually said the food was pretty good, but the wine was too expensive. Jeez, people, in the modern global economy you pay more for services and less for goods. The Manolo Blahniks are cheap, getting cooked for and waited on is expensive.

Actually, hotels in American big cities really are either lousy, old, and expensive, or nice, new, and very expensive. That's because downtown real estate is, you guessed it, expensive. The bargains are at the reputable chain motels like Red Roof Inn in the suburbs near the interstate; they've got clean beds, a TV, climate control, and a swimming pool. And, for some reason, an ice machine. All American motels have an ice machine. Motels out somewhere in Jersey are not practical for foreign tourists in New York, of course. Do NOT, repeat, DO NOT stay in a motel that is a) in a crummy part of town b) is not part of a chain and c) has a lot of people hanging out in the parking lot.

Tragedy in Omaha: some kid opened up with a gun in a mall, killed eight people, and then himself. The media agonized over America's violent frontier culture, and the NRA and the gun manufacturers were blamed by the conspiracy theorists. Also, tragedy in Germany: a mother suffocated her five children. The media did not agonize over any violent events in contemporary German history.

The second Civil Guard shot by the ETA in France, Fernando Trapero, has died. As always, our thanks go out to those who protect us against terrorists, and our sympathy to their families.

Some justice has been served: the French cops arrested two of the three etarras involved in the double murder, a man and a woman, while they were waiting for a bus near Toulouse. The third terrorist is still on the run but will likely be caught soon. The cops traced them through the series of cars they stole and abandoned. The authorities add that this episode shows ETA has lost its infrastructure in France, since the terrorists had no safe house to hide out at, nor contacts to help and protect them.

It's TV3's turn to run a story on how nearly everybody in Barcelona is packing up to go to New York over the upcoming four-day vacation. They all want to buy lots of cheap stuff. Be nice to them, New Yorkers, they're decent folks at heart, even though they don't tip and they get mad at the employees if their plane is delayed.

New housing starts are down 30% over last year in Catalonia. The bubble is now a black hole, a sucking vortex.

The Guardia Civil arrested 151 drivers across Spain in the first two days of the new drunk driving law; you can now get up to 3 to 6 months for a first drunk driving arrest. It's about time they cracked down on this. Can they crack down on the pickpockets and muggers in downtown Barcelona as well? They ought to raid all the whorehouses in town, too, because a lot of the women there are held against their will and somebody needs to bust the organizations behind it.

Looks like the RENFE commuter lines that were closed down during the Great Transport Snafu are back on line, but the FGC line isn't, and nobody's sure when the high-speed line will be ready.

The tragedy of the African boat people continues. Two cayucos washed up on the south coast of Tenerife last night with 88 living and three dead people on board. Nine of those still alive are hospitalized due to exposure.

Sports rumors: One of them says Ronaldinho will be sold to Chelsea over Christmas. The other says that Liverpool's 8-0 victory over Besitkas of Istanbul in the Champions' League was fixed. There has been talk that a lot of comparatively insignificant sporting events--e.g. second-round matches at Key Biscayne between a Ukranian and an Argentine--are fixed by Asian internet betting syndicates. I have heard that there is a good deal of bogosity going on in the Scottish football league.

Zap has promised to get rid of what's called the "patrimony tax," an annual tax on a person's net worth, which only still exists in France and Sweden as well as Spain. It mostly affects about a million upper-middle-class Spanish taxpayers. Sounds good to me, I'm always in favor of cutting taxes as much as possible, and this is a clear case of a tax on personal capital, capital that would otherwise be invested in something productive.

One reason Zap can get away with this is that he's run another budget surplus, which is also always a good thing when possible. However, he can get away with running a surplus because Spain's defense budget is about twenty-three cents; Spain is effectively a protectorate of NATO, it can't defend itself against anyone except maybe Morocco.

I slightly botched the story on the unconstitutionality of the Generalitat law that would allow the government to force owners of vacant apartments to rent them out. It wasn't the Spanish Constitutional Court that declared it unconstitutional, it was the Catalan equivalent, the Consell de Garanties Estatutàries de la Generalitat de Catalunya (formerly the Consell Consultiu).

La Vanguardia's Latin America correspondent, Joaquim Ibarz, is more anti-Chavez than anyone else in the world press. He hates Chavez even more than Andy Robinson hates the United States. I completely agree with him, of course. Ibarz was the guy who reported, several days before the referendum, that the surveys pointed at a No vote.

His lead this morning is, "Hugo Chavez, the omnipotent caudillo who insulted and threatened the entire world on Friday, died when he was defeated in Sunday's plebiscite, though he doesn't see it that way....He is left with no strength to impose his plans, without the capacity to subvert the continent." Right on!

Ibarz says: 1) The Chav lost because a lot of the working class voted against him. 2) There was a lot of attempted vote fraud. 3) It was the university students and General Raul Baduel who did the most to defeat the Chav. 4) On Sunday night, the Chav met for four hours with army leaders who refused to back him in a seizure of power. 5) The electoral board kicked opposition poll watchers out of the vote-counting premises. 6) So Baduel went on national television and warned the electoral board that there had better be no shenanigans. So there weren't. 7) Opposition leaders claim that the election result was rigged and that the No vote won by a lot more than the official 51%.

Another Ibarz quote: "By losing the plebiscite that should have perpetuated him in power, Chavez has been greatly weakened. Spanish companies can breathe easier. Chavez won't easily be able to threaten to kick them out of the country again. Venezuela is on the verge of economic collapse, and any irresponsible measure could set it off. Waste, inefficiency, and corruption have reached the point that the government was not able to reduce the great scarcity of vital staple foods--meat, milk, sugar, eggs, flour--during the referendum campaign. With the highest inflation in Latin Amerioa--despite price and currency exchange controls--and with the collapse of industrial and agricultural production due to the harassment of businessmen, the social situation will get worse after Christmas."

Ibarz thinks Chavez is politically dead, that since he is a lame duck who will now have to give up power at the end of this term, his supporters are looking to cut deals with anyone who is willing. The Supreme Court will be under weaker pressure to decide what the Chav wants them to decide. Ibarz predicts that Chavezites will badly lose the August 2008 regional and local elections.

Meanwhile, it's pretty clear that Putin rigged the Russian election; Germany, Austria, Great Britain, and the US have all complained, though at different volumes. The German government spokesman said, "Russia was not a democracy and it is not a democracy. According to our standards, these were not free, equal, and democratic elections. The result is not surprising if we look at the considerable limitations imposed on the opposition and on the freedoms of speech and the press." That's the way to tell 'em.

As you know by now, of course, the Chav lost the referendum by a reported 51%-49% vote, which means that the populace must have turned out such a heavy No that there's no way he could rig the election. The wounded Civil Guard is still in a coma. The Constitutional Court invalidated a Generalitat law that would allow them to force owners of vacant apartments to rent them out, on the grounds that it's an incursion on the rights of property. Kansas got a bid to the Orange Bowl for the first time since like 1971. Eight different guys are now claiming they had sex with Larry Craig, and Trent Lott's sudden retirement smells extremely fishy.

As I'm sure everyone knows, today is the big constitutional referendum in Venezuela. La Vanguardia, in a broadside at the Chavez regime, says, "Venezuelans will choose today between democracy and dictatorship. They have to decide between two ways of life, two national ideas, two antagonistic systems, two platforms that will define the fundamental structure of the state. Freedom is at stake in this referendum: the voter has to decide between the authoritarian, autocratic, and militarist option of Chavez, who wants to perpetuate himself in power and control the whole society, and the defense of the institutions."

Meanwhile, Hugo the Chav tossed another tantrum at Juan Carlos and again petulantly demanded an apology. He also threatened that if the PP wins the March election in Spain, "It's all over with Spain. Spanish companies can forget about staying here. Repsol will have to go. We'll nationalize the banks." Interference in another country's domestic politics, no? And then he complains that the Americans are trying to destabilize his government, which I hope we are doing, by the way.

La Vanguardia says that in Chavez's last speech, "He threatened everyone, as if Venezuela were his own banana plantation: Spanish banks; the opposition; Colombian president Alvaro Uribe; businessmen; oligarchs; "wannabe Yanqui" students; the US; Globovision; CNN; foreign correspondents; et cetera." I bet if an American newspaper called Venezuela a banana plantation the whole Third World would get mad and call us racists.

The article continues, "A cross between Juan Domingo Peron and Benito Mussolini, Chavez is trying to implant a socialism about which it is only known that it will be antidemocratic, with restrictions on freedom, on the road to limiting human will to one single way of thought, one single ideology, one single party, the single leader. And with Fidel Castro as the supreme guide. Faced with this shadowy panorama, the number of Venezuelans packing their suitcases increases."

I forget whose law it is that says that in an argument, whoever first compares a bete noire to Hitler loses. I have an addition to that, which I proudly baptize John's Corollary: In an argument, whoever compares a bete noire to Mussolini is probably right. Reasoning: He who picks Mussolini (who is way far down the list of most evil people ever, nowhere near contemporaries of his like Hitler or Stalin or even Franco) for his comparison has done so thoughtfully--if he were going for effect he'd use Hitler. Mussolini was a buffoon, a wannabe tough guy, just like Hugo the Chav. These guys are not what comes to mind when you think "evil", they're what comes to mind when you think "blustering bully."

Franco and Pinochet and real dictators like that were cold and calculating, harsh judges of humanity, and they didn't make idle threats. Forget the Chav; he's just another Peron or Mussolini. Castro, who is more than a bit Mussoliniesque and only survived because of the Cold War, is tougher than he is. And Castro's probably dead already.

The Civil Guard who was wounded in the ETA shooting in France is in a coma, "without signs of brain activity," and not expected to live. It seems that the murders were not planned; the ETA cell came upon the Spanish police officers in a cafeteria and decided right then to kill them, so they waited outside and did. I vote we hang murdering terrorist criminals, but maybe that's just me. I also vote we don't negotiate with ETA about anything.

Yesterday evening's demo was peaceful, fortunately. I had feared that the combination of echoes of the squatter riot and the Barça-Espanyol football game would get irresponsible youths from both extremes all fired up, which didn't happen. I'm not sure whether to call it a "success," as ever-nationalist TV3 did on this afternoon's news; they got about 200,000 people, enough to fill up Via Laietana from top to bottom. The organizers claim 700,000, as usual.

Nobody's still really sure what the demo was about, except that most of those involved were carrying a Catalan or Catalanist flag. The Zap government is interpreting it as an excuse to dress up irritation about the Great Transport Snafu in a nationalist cloak. The nationalist media is calling it a demand for more Catalan self-government.

Confusingly for outsiders, three of our local political parties were involved: CiU, the moderate Catalan nationalists; ERC, the Catalan national socialists; and ICV, which is Communist and Green and generally signs on to any expression of civil irritation at society although they are part of the governing coalitions in both Barcelona city and Catalonia as a whole. You wonder what a bunch of Christian Democrats are doing at the same demo with a bunch of unreformed Stalinists who support the Iraqi terrorists. The answer is that nationalism makes strange bed partners, though I don't believe that ICV is actually Catalanist--I think they'd join up with anyone indignant about anything.

One thing I find interesting here is what they call "institutional advertising," in which the political party in charge of a governmental body uses public money to put large advertisements in friendly media outlets praising what a good job they have done. Today in La Vanguardia the Generalitat's traffic department has two full color pages on how groovy the new 80 kph speed limits on metro area motorways are going to be.

The Espanyol-Barça match last night was excellent, ending in a 1-1 draw on goals by Iniesta and Corominas. It was a very physical game with good play by both teams. Iniesta, Messi, and Touré were the best Barça players, I thought, and Riera, Luis Garcia, and Corominas were the best for Espanyol.

Breaking news: Spain got Russia, Sweden, and Greece in its group for the Eurocup this summer. They should be able to get by the first round and then get eliminated in the quarters, as usual.

Oklahoma beat Missouri for the Big 12 championship, making Kansas clearly the conference's third team. Nobody expected anything like this at the beginning of the year.

Breaking news: ETA has struck back already. Two ETA terrorists shot two Spanish civil guards in a town called Capbreton in France, about 30 kilometers north of the French border. The two officers were working with the French police on an ETA investigation; they were unarmed, and shot point-blank in the back. One of them, Raul Centeno, was killed, and the other, Fernando Trapero, was seriously wounded and is in critical condition. The two shooters, both men, along with a woman companion, carjacked a woman and drove out of the area in her Volkswagen Golf toward Bordeaux.

ETA has been struck a massive blow. The police started rounding up 45 members of the ETA-front organization Ekin, who will apparently be found guilty of membership in ETA. 28 of them have already been arrested. Until now they have been free on bail. Their trial has lasted for more than a year, and the verdicts are scheduled to be released sometime before December 10.

Of course, we all expected the verdict to be guilty--in Spain, when they get to the point of actually trying somebody, they've generally got a very strong case against him. The judge has ordered their arrest on the ground they are flight risks, because they are looking at some seriously long sentences, between 4 and 19 years. Since 52 persons were put on trial, and there are warrants out for 45, seven were either acquitted or received suspended sentences.

Ekin, according to La Vanguardia, is the "social, political, international, economic, and media network of the ETA terrorist organization." Among those already under arrest are former Herri Batasuna leaders José Luis Elkoro and Francisco Murga, and ETA mouthpiece lawyer Txema Matanzas. They are going to be convicted on charges of belonging to a terrorist organization, defrauding Social Security and the taxman, and forgery. Here is the complete list of those tried.

What happened the last time that a bunch of ETA collaborators was sent to jail, when they rounded up the leaders of Segi, the youth brigade, was that they didn't surrender to the cops but went into hiding for a week. Then they held a mass ceremonial rally and turned themselves in to the law in a group, making great street theater and firing up all their supporters. Looks like the judge doesn't want to give this lot the chance to pull a stunt like that.

This means two important things. First, the judiciary has finally decided that so-called civilians who assist ETA are just as guilty as the thugs who pull the trigger. Second, one common hypothesis for an eventual deal cut with ETA--I would prefer no deals, just crush them, they're terrorists--is that ETA would turn over its arms in exchange for an amnesty for its members who didn't personally commit violent crimes. If this is the plan, then the government now has a lot more bargaining chips.

Supposedly, on Saturday, the Great Barcelona Transport Snafu will come to an end, and service on all the RENFE commuter and regional lines running south and west from Sants station will be restored. The FCG line running west from Plaza España will be out of service for several more months, and the high-speed AVE line will not enter service for at least three more months.

So get this. The extremely controversial plan to reduce the speed limit on the motorways entering the Barcelona metropolitan area from 100-120 kph (60-75 mph) to 80 kph (50 mph) will also take effect Saturday. Supposedly the objective is to reduce pollution, but I swear that don't make a damn bit of sense to me. I figure that you want the speed limit to be as high as safely possible so that traffic will clog up less. The more traffic clogs up, the more smog-producing gasoline is wasted by idling, not to mention the time wasted by everyone part of the traffic jam. In addition, driving slower than is safely possible irritates drivers a great deal, and irritating the citizens unnecessarily does not sound intelligent to me.

In Spain, we have public holidays on December 6 (Constitution Day) and December 8 (the Immaculate Conception), which means that week generally becomes a vacation for a lot of people. This year, according to La Vanguardia, Catalans' Number One vacation destination will be New York. Seems the dollar is very low and they all want to go over there and buy out the whole city. All I can say is if America sucks so bad, how come everybody wants to visit it?

So, anyway, all you folks in New York and Orlando, get ready for a flood of Spaniards the first week in December, especially between Thursday the 6th and Sunday the 9th. They're the ones complaining about the food and not leaving tips.

The six illegal abortionists arrested this week had a hearing and testified; they have been bound over without bail until Monday. Looks like they'll be charged with conspiracy, forgery, and practicing without a license as well.

The EU's economic growth rate this year is 2.9%, and the Eurozone's is 2.7%. Not stunning, but not total stagnation either.

Looks like the PSOE has reached similar conclusions to the PP about electoral strategy; they're trying to tone it down, especially in the areas of regional nationalism. The PSOE doesn't want to offend any nationalists by harping on the theme of the unity of Spain; they would rather not put off the ones they have a chance at winning over, and not fire up the ones they don't have a chance at in order to keep them at home on election day.

Fighting broke out last night around the Vicente Calderón stadium in Madrid. 17 people were injured when the local Frente Atlético hooligans took on the Aberdeen fans before, during, and after the UEFA Cup game. There was some criticism about the light touch used by the Barcelona cops on the Glasgow Rangers supporters who came here a few weeks ago; the Rangers fans drank a lot, smashed a few bottles in the Plaza Catalunya, and urinated prodigiously in public. But there was no serious fighting or vandalism, and nobody got hurt. I thought it was pretty good police work, myself; the cops kept it under control but didn't interfere as long as there was no violence. And the public urination, which is nasty, could have been taken care of by putting up a few dozen portable toilets.

This is interesting. Check this out. They found a huge trove, literally 100 times as large as a typical discovery, of dinosaur bones, while working on the high-speed train line between Madrid and Valencia.

Other news from round here: Inflation over the last 12 months, November to November, is 4.1%; half a point of that is in the last month, with a 5% increase on packaged foods. Econ minister Solbes says inflation will continue to rise over the next several months, effectively devaluing the currency.

Meanwhile, in September 2007 the number of new mortgages taken out in Catalonia declined 26% over September 2006. I think it's safe to say that the bubble has burst. In Spain as a whole, the number of new mortgages declined 10% over that period.

They did an international education study called the PISA 2006 report in 57 countries. They tested scientific knowledge, reading comprehension, and mathematics, and Spain did lousy. The United States didn't do any better. Finland came out on top, with 563 points, followed by Hong Kong with 542 and Canada with 534. Germany was 10th with 516, France was 21st with 495, the US was 24th with 489, Spain was 26th with 488, and Italy was 30th with 475. Mexico got 410, and Brazil 390. Within Spain, Castile-Leon scored highest with 520, Catalonia got 491, and Andalusia was at the bottom with 474.

I know how to fix the educational system. First, blow up all the education departments at every university in the country, and mercilessly liquidate the professoriate while hurling all education textbooks into enormous bonfires. And dancing the Carmagnole. Then savagely purge the teaching staffs of every school of all teachers who don't score an IQ of 90, which is about half of them. K mart is hiring, people, better get down there. Then double teacher salaries and only hire new staff with real college degrees. Then, lower the working age to 14. Allow alleged students to drop out then, or go to vocational school. Get the ones who don't want to be there, which is half of them, out of the academic schools.

The system would improve enormously.

The Guardia Civil put on a big Internet kiddie-porn sting and arrested 70 pederasts all around Spain. I had no idea so many people were so pervy that they needed to exchange photos of child abuse. Or so stupid they didn't know they would eventually get caught. Among those arrested are a high-ranking police officer and a psychiatrist, both in Zaragoza.

The Zap government held a meeting with the heads of the private TV stations regarding the "Patricia's Diary" murder. They said they should not be blamed for society's problems. What a cop-out. I don't think private TV stations ought to be censored; I do think they should have enough of a sense of decency and responsibility to follow certain minimum standards. And I would suggest that the TV stations should get on the ball and self-regulate, or the government might have to get involved, and nobody wants that to happen.

Springsteen is going to play the Camp Nou. People camped out, and they sold 55,000 tickets on the first day of sales.

Real Madrid bungled it last night in Bremen and lost 3-2, forcing them to win their last first-round match against Lazio in order to qualify for the next round. Valencia was eliminated from the Champions' League with a draw against Schalke. Chelsea, Milan, Man U, Inter Milan, Sevilla, Arsenal, and Barça have already qualified for Round Two, and Celtic is very close.

There's gonna be some Catalunacy on Saturday at 5 PM, since the Cataloonies and the Commies, along with CiU, who are usually moderate Catalanists but always have to wave the bloody shirt at election time, are gonna put on a big old demo downtown. Get this: Our old friend Joel Joan and Catalonia's only porno director who works in Catalan, Conrad Son, will be there. By the way, Son actually gets subsidies from the Generalitat in order to linguistically normalize porn. Joan and Jordi Pujol are already firing up the faithful, calling on them to come out "in favor of the dignity of Catalonia and against the insults of Rajoy and Zapatero."

The organizer of the rally is basically CiU, using the name of the Platform for the Right to Decide, which coincidentally is CiU leader Artur Mas's campaign slogan. They're trying to play on the Great Barcelona Transport Snafu, a major black eye for the Socialists, by demanding Generalitat control over the transport system, along with the right to collect all income tax paid within Catalonia and to spend it exclusively within Catalonia. The Catalanists are claiming that each Catalan pays €1000 more in taxes than he receives in government services, but they sort of skip over the fact that each Madrileño pays twice as much. And, of course, taxes are paid by individuals rather than regions, and since Catalonia is a wealthy region, it has lots of wealthy and middle-class individuals who pay comparatively high taxes. I thought all us leftists was in favor of progressive taxes.

Anyway, here's the least bold prediction ever made: The Junior Cataloony Youth Squad is going to put on a riot after the demo, probably with some help from the squatters, and some hell will be raised. The cops ought to be planning for it, and have eight hundred guys there ready to bust some heads. I bet they don't.

Other election news: Jose Bono is going to return to politics and run first on the PSOE list for Toledo. When he wins, he'll become speaker of the Congress of Deputies. I rather like Bono, he's more reasonable than your average Socialist, and I'd really like to see moderates like Ruiz Gallardon, Bono, and Miquel Roca start a Liberal Party in this country; if you could pull 10% of the vote you just might become the swing vote between the PSOE and PP.

La Vanguardia says that the PP is going to turn down the tone on its campaign and run more toward the center than the right, in response to the recent surveys that put them fairly close behind the Socialists. I've been telling them to do that for, oh, the last two and a half years or so.

Anyway, the PP thinks that there's no way they're going to gain any votes from the PSOE in the center--they've pissed off everybody who didn't already sympathize with them over this conspiracy theory bullshit--, so what they want to do is tone it down in order not to piss off the leftist voters and thereby reduce their turnout on election day. It seems that rhetoric about the unity of Spain and claiming that Zap sympathizes with ETA inflames many of these leftist voters. They would usually go Commie or radical regional nationalist, or stay home, but they may go Socialist if they are frightened enough of a PP victory that they'll vote for the PSOE as a lesser evil. Therefore, the solution is to sit down and shut up and not scare anybody.

Also, the PP figures that there are at least one and a half million shaky Socialists who are not regular voters and only came out in the last election because they were so worked up by the post-March 11 media frenzy. If those voters stay home, the PP wins, because PP voters are more faithful than leftist voters and more likely to come out and vote; the PP estimates that 90% of their regular voters are going to turn out, against 80% of regular PSOE voters. So, basically, the lower the turnout is, the more likely the PP is to win. This is probably true of conservative parties everywhere.