I wrote a real post but Blogger ate it. So here's a summary.

Three Spanish soldiers on peacekeeping duty wounded by bomb in Lebanon. Two etarras busted packing guns in Guipuzcoa. Cops find 125 kilos of explosives in cache. Cops beat living crap out of one terrorist. Who cares. Two more etarras on the run. Hope they catch them.

Election coming soon. Zap facing bad econ stats--high inflation, unemployment rising. PP trying to be centrist. PSOE scared of losing votes in Catalonia due to infrastructure screwup. Zap gov't to ban ETA front parties ANV and PCTV. About time.

Feb. 2006: Goddamn squatters leave cop in coma during riot. Now: Squatters on trial. Cop still in coma.

Spanish press making big deal out of US primaries, probably too pro-Obama.

Plan to connect Spanish and French electricity grids with high tension line. About time, again.

Barça won. So did Madrid. So did Espanyol. Now Barça faces Sevilla in the round of 16 of the Cup tonight.

Rosa's death coincides with a long article in yesterday's La Vanguardia titled, "Chronic emergencies." She died in the emergency room at Vall d'Hebron; they had transferred her on Saturday from Traumatology at Vall d'Hebron to the rehabilitation department at Pere Virgili, the former Hospital Militar. When the people at Pere Virgili discovered her urinary infection on Sunday, she was transferred to Emergency at Vall d'Hebron, where she died Monday morning; they did not check her into intensive care.

I got there at about 9PM Saturday night, and the emergency room was overcrowded and understaffed. They have about thirty cubicles, called "boxes" (they use the English word), where the most serious cases are secluded. Everyone else piles up on stretchers in the hallways. Rosa got a cubicle, but not a lot of attention from the staff, since they were so thinly stretched. The logjam of people in the central hallway was all older folks with breathing or heart problems, who were waiting their turn; I didn't see anyone with a trauma injury.

Here's the article, by Marta Ricart; it gets a front-page teaser, and occupies pages 26 and 27 of the January 3 issue. I've boldfaced the first three words of every paragraph so as not to put the whole thing in italics.

Chronic emergencies: Measures by hospitals and Health Department fail to prevent overcrowding every winter

"Three hours of waiting, at least one more than usual, is the very least that anyone who goes to the emergency room can expect to face these days. The overcrowding of medical facilities every winter, especially the emergency rooms, has become a chronic illness. The measures taken by the hospitals and the Health Department cannot prevent, one day at one hospital and another day at another one, emergency rooms from being overcrowded. The hospitals and the department attribute it to several factors, and assure us that the "winter reinforcements plan" is working. The hospitals admit that several aspects could be improved, but at the same time, they say that it is very difficult to solve the problem.

The emergency rooms, the general practitioners' clinics (CAPs), and the house calls service are flooded every winter because the demand for care for the flu and other viruses, which affect the entire population and especially aggravate the condition of those who are chronically ill.

Health counselor Marina Geli said on Tuesday that this increase in the demand for care has multiplied because of population growth in recent years in Catalonia, and the aging of the populace.

In the last week, according to Health, emergency room activity had been 14.7% more than usual (at the beginning of November, for example), with 11.4% more patients and 24% more hospital deaths. Emergency ambulance calls these days have been 52% higher than usual. The number of children's emergencies has declined over the last week, according to the coordinator of the winter plan, Josep M. Argimon. Health said yesterday that the situation in the hospitals is not critical. Things may get worse, since he predicts that this week and next week the number of adult patients will increase. Last winter, patient numbers increased dramatically during the second half of January.

The increase in demand for care has not been accompanied in recent years by an equivalent increase in medical capacity, complain the hospitals. It is compensated for by the winter reinforcements plan from December to April. "It prevents greater overcrowding," said Joan Manuel Salmeron, the emergency room chief at the Hospital Clinic in Barcelona.

The hospital emergency rooms are where the inadequacy of services is most obvious; they are too small; almost all the big hospitals (Vall d'Hebron, Clinic, Mar, Germans Trias) have plans for expansion. The delay in construction, one more year, is one of the most frequent complaints among health professionals.

At the hospitals they stress that 80% of the people who go to an emergency room go on their own, and so it is difficult to predict and regulate the flow of patients, unless that flow is limited. Many of those patients could be attended at the CAPs, but they prefer--despite the waiting--the high degree of specialization at the hospitals since it saves them further visits, according to Salmeron.

Boi Ruiz, the president of the employers' association Unió Catalana d'Hospitals, estimated that up to 80% of those who go to the emergency room on their own do not need hospital care. "We need," he says, "a civic campaign on the use of the health care system, just as we are trying to educate about saving energy. People should know which service they should go to according to each need, what is normal at each one, and they should become aware that the public system has limitations and it should be used correctly."

The hospitals use triage: a doctor or a nurse evaluates the patient in order to determine the seriousness of the case--there are five levels--and keep the more urgent from waiting. The hospitals say that medical care begins there, and that those who have to wait are not in serious condition. Many hospitals organize rapid diagnosis units, and others specifically for cardiac and respiratory patients.

In order to take the pressure off the emergency rooms, Health thought up 'emergency CAPs,' which can take stronger steps, but it has opened relatively few. Another measure is coordination among hospitals and emergency rooms. There are 'coordination groups,' especially in Barcelona, which meet in order to evaluate the demand for care and redistribute patients, says Argimon. Salmeron confirms that "coordination is becoming a reality." He believes that it is a model that will be introduced during the entire year, though the redistribution of patients needs to be further developed. The Hospital Clinic, on Sunday, could not keep up with the number of ambulances bringing in patients. Geli said that in recent days similar problems have occurred at Mar and Sant Pau. Argimon mentioned the increase in emergency ambulance calls.

Spanish hospitals have been reducing the number of beds--they are among the ones with the fewest in the OECD--for better financial results, but they must do more operations in order to keep the waiting lists down. This makes occupation high, and when demand increases, Emergency cannot rapidly order the check-in of patients and they accumulate in open spaces, Salmeron admitted. Manel Chanovas, the president of the Societat Catalana d'Urgències, said that the reduction of beds was done in order to promote new services such as outpatient surgery, which permits more patients to be attended each year.

These days the hospitals are increasing the number of patients released, and increasing 'home hospitalization' so as to have more beds for new patients. Those responsible for the winter reinforcement plan predict that they will be able to handle 18,109 additional patients in the next four months, 1015 more than last winter. For that purpose, extra beds have been set up at the hospitals (24 at the Clinic, 24 at Bellvitge), and Health is renting others at private clinics like Plató, Sagrat Cor, and San Rafael. Of these new patients, 14,357 will be for short stays, and the rest for 15 or more days. Argimon said yesterday that this capacity for patients had not yet been reached this winter. Professionals agree that beds for long-term stays are lacking at public hospitals.

Health's winter reinforcement plan increases, from November to April, the staffs at the hospitals by 187 doctors and 340 nurses. The unions say that this is not enough personnel to handle the increase in demand, since there is normally a staff shortage. Manel Chanovas said that the health care system had already reached its ceiling regarding available professionals. Although emergency facilities could be expanded and the budget could be increased, it would be difficult to make the staffs much larger, he says, "And Emergency is the last service in which professionals want to work because it is hard work, under great pressure, and with the worst schedule." Boi Ruiz adds that hospitals have difficulty finding new staff, especially nurses."

Thanks to everyone for the condolences expressed; Remei and I both appreciate it.

Here's a Rosa story I didn't hear until yesterday, since Remei understood I'd be squeamish and not want to know until necessary. Three summers ago, out in Vallfogona, Rosa let Perla the dog out to run around a little, and she came back with a badly wounded rabbit in her mouth. Rosa whacked the dog around pretty good while shouting an array of colorful profanity, and then turned her attention to the rabbit, which was in bad shape and wasn't going to live. So she broke its neck, skinned it, cleaned it, cooked it, and ate it.

To quote David Allan Coe: "If that ain't country...I'll kiss your ass."

My mother-in-law, Rosa, died yesterday morning of septic shock and multiple organ failure at Vall d'Hebron. It came upon her very quickly; she was fine on Saturday when her two brothers visited her, on Sunday morning she started showing symptoms something was wrong, in the afternoon they figured out it was a urinary infection, by Sunday evening she was unconscious, the doctors told us before midnight that the infection had generalized and she would likely die, and she finally did die at 7:15 Monday morning. The funeral is tomorrow in Vallfogona.

We're all kind of in shock; nobody was expecting this to happen.

I am not at all happy with the Spanish health care system right now. We gave her to them with a broken leg, and we got her back dead of septic shock. I got the idea that the nursing staff in the traumatology department was doing a rather half-assed job about any non-traumatological problems the patients might have, since they let Rosa's diabetes get out of hand, weakening her body, and then exposed her to a urinary infection, most likely through mediocre hygiene. And Wikipedia says the earlier septic shock is diagnosed, the better chance of survival for the patient, and they did not diagnose it early.

We'll miss her. She was a cranky old bat, and sometimes she made me furious, but she'd had a tough life, a tougher life than anyone else I know, and if anyone has an excuse for being cranky, it's her. She was also generous, helpful, and honest, and she loved animals, which makes her OK in my book despite everything else. She also loved the people around her, though she didn't always express it in the best way. She was a practicing Catholic though not fanatical about it; may God bless her, and I'm sure she made the cut for heaven, especially if St. Francis of Assisi gets a vote.

The blog will be off the air a few days, of course, but we'll be back, hopefully as obnoxious as ever.

All the newsstands in town are closed down because of a conflict between the press distributors and the retailers, so no more newspapers for the rest of the year unless you have a subscription, which isn't nearly as common in Spain as it is in the US. Meanwhile, our friends at the SGAE are in trouble after sending a private detective to videotape a wedding reception without permission, in order to prove that the venue was playing copyrighted music without paying the fee.

ESPN sports columnist Bill Simmons threw out a joke trade speculation in his NBA column the other day, in which all five Spanish players would be sent to Toronto. Marca, the Madrid sports paper, took it seriously and ran it as a real story.

Government-regulated utility rates are going up as they do every new year. Electricity rates will be increased by the official inflation rate, 3.3%; natural gas will go up 4.7%, and butane 5.2%. Butane is generally used by poorer consumers who don't have natural gas connections for heating water, indoor space heaters, and cooking stoves.

The development ministry has agreed to make the Pont del Diable Roman aqueduct outside Tarragona (here's the TV3 story with a photo) visitor-friendly. The project has been stewing for three years, and it's going to cost €2 million, which I am completely in favor of. Right now the aqueduct, which is one of the coolest things in Catalonia, is out in the middle of nowhere, and there aren't even any good road signs showing how to get there. You have to walk half a kilometer down this scraggly dirt road from the main highway. I remember the first time we took my dad there, he said, "In the States, if we had something like this, there'd be an information center with park rangers, and bathrooms and a Coke machine."

The bus strike will continue until at least January 4; the municipal transport corporation has basically agreed to give the strikers what they said they wanted, two full days off a week, with eighty overtime hours a year to be made up for with vacation days. Nonetheless, CGT, the Trot union behind all this mess, is holding out for more. Four of the strikers are on hunger strike. Next thing you know they'll be pouring gasoline on themselves and going up in flames in the Plaza Sant Jaume. The same bunch of Trotskyite agitators have fired up the Madrid metro cleaning staff as well; they've been out for thirteen days, the whole system is knee-deep in crap, and negotiations are going nowhere.

Catalonia's "national" soccer team is going to play against the Basque Country tonight in San Mamés; these traditional Christmas games exist more as an outlet for nationalist energies than anything else. Barcelona PP leader Alberto Fernandez Diaz called the game "a separatist rally with a ball in the middle." Now, now, let them play their soccer match, it's not going to hurt anybody and the players and fans will have a good time. Fernandez Diaz did say that this game is subsidized with public money, which if it's true, shouldn't be. No public money should go to spectator sports; that ought to be a strictly private sector, managed by independent private organizations.

On January 1 France will introduce a strict no-smoking law in all restaurants and bars. They tried that once in the early '90s and no one paid any attention, but I doubt there'll be any resistance from the smokers this time, what with such laws in place in other EU countries like the UK and Italy. In Spain the law's a bit wacky; bars and restaurants under 100 square meters can either permit smoking or ban it (about 80% permit it), and those over 100 m2 must either ban it or have separate smoking and non-smoking areas. Spain's law is pretty reasonable, I think.

More rumors are swirling about the possible sale of Ronaldinho to AC Milan, which is having a lousy year in the Italian league, though they're doing fine in the Champions.

I'm surprised I haven't gotten more Google hits for "sleazy lesbian incest video." You'd think there would be several million searches a day for that combination of words, what with all the pervs out there on the Net. Hell, who knows, maybe they're all searching for kiddie porn or something else much less wholesome than good old lesbian incest.

I googled, more or less at random (between quote marks), twenty two-word combinations that have appeared in Iberian Notes in the last few days. Here's how many hits each one got:

20. physical fallacy 338
19. catalan statute 1290
18. hispanic intifada 3890
17. skilled population 12,900
16. spanish courts 22,600
15. military geography 28,800
14. immigrant father 33,400
13. reduced salary 35,000
12. conservative politician 105,000
11. threatening letter 114,000
10. bus strike 117,000
9. oil revenue 291,000
8. illegitimate child 301,000
7. nationalist party 483,000
6. arms dealer 492,000
5. press charges 620,000
4. front group 639,000
3. portable toilets 815,000
2. city property 868,000
1. lesbian incest 2,260,000

The market has spoken. No more Catalan statutes. Lots more lesbian incest.

We're still on Christmas down time, and not that much is happening. Today is the Día de los Santos Inocentes, Spain's equivalent of April Fool's day. No one has tried to pull anything on me yet. Zap made a speech reviewing his four years in office, and declared that his two big mistakes were trusting ETA during the alleged peace process and mismanaging the Madrid-Barcelona high-speed line. I can think of a few more, like taking apart the PP's education law, shutting down the water plan to move water south from the Ebro and the Rhone, accepting the Catalan statute of autonomy, selling arms to Chavez and Gadafi, and, oh, yeah, bailing out of Iraq and kissing terrorist ass and believing that his jackass Alliance of Civilizations is going to change the world. I will admit, though, that Zap's regime has not been dreadful; he hasn't tried to nationalize the banks or anything.

Another fraudulent Spanish NGO called Alba has been busted; this one, based out of Almeria, was supposed to be helping poor immigrants, and instead was charging them €9000 each for work permits. The guy behind it set up a whole phony network of front companies. I hope that some Spaniards will begin to see that non-governmental organizations, no matter how solidarious their message is, are not always ethically superior to private companies and elected governments. Frequently they're a hell of a lot worse. Right now I think they're pretty gullible when presented with a charismatic figure who promises to change the world for a mere fifteen euro a month contribution.

Tragedy in Pakistan. Benazir Bhutto has been assassinated. This is going to be a mess. I hope not many people get killed.

Gross Domestic Product, 2005:

1. US $12.4 trillion
2. Japan $4.5 "
3. Germany $2.8 "
4. China $2.2 "
5. UK $2.2 "
6. France $2.1 "
7. Italy $1.8 "
8. Spain $1.1 "
9. Canada $1.1 "
10. India $0.8 "
14. Russia $0.8 "
31. Iran $0.19 "
36. Venezuela $0.14 "
104. Bolivia $0.10 "

GDP per capita 2005:

1. Luxembourg $80,000
2. Norway $64,000
3. Iceland $53,000
4. Qatar $52,000
5. Switzerland $49,000
6. Ireland $48,000
7. Denmark $48,000
8. United States $42,000
9. Sweden $40,000
10. Netherlands $38,000
13. United Kingdom $37,000
16. Japan $35,000
18. France $35,000
19. Canada $34,000
20. Germany $34,000
23. Italy $30,000
28. Spain $26,000
72. Russia $5300
73. Venezuela $5300
102. Iran $2800
120. China $1700
135. Bolivia $1000
149. India $700

For some reason La Vanguardia is not on the newsstands today, so I picked up El Pais this morning, and was quickly reminded of why I never buy that rag when I have a choice.

The editorial page features a cartoon by El Roto, who is never funny and always pseudo-philosophically pompous, besides being a lousy artist. The drawing is of an enormous American flag, with the caption, "When flags grow, people shrink." Sheer brilliance. Damn, I wish I'd thought of that one. Wonder why he picked the Stars and Stripes instead of an ikurriña or senyera?

Then on the next page one Andrés Oppenheimer (who seems to be reasonable about many other issues, especially Cuba and Chavez) has a piece titled "USA: the danger of a Hispanic intifada." It starts off like this:

The growing anti-immigrant hysteria in the United States, promoted by irresponsible television hosts and by the principal Republican candidates for the presidency, is dangerous: it might result in a "Latin intifada" in a not very distant future.

While watching the presidential debates, in which the Republican candidates compete to demonstrate who is the "toughest" against illegal immigration and even the Democratic candidates propose strengthened border walls, one cannot help wondering whether all this will not provoke a reaction on the part of the 13 million undocumented immigrants in the US.

It is not clear whether something like the Palestinian intifada at the beginning o the '90s might happen, when thousands of frustrated young Palestinians took to the streets and threw stones at the Israeli troops. Or something like the French intifada in 2005, when young socially marginalized Muslims burned cars and shops in the suburbs of Paris. Maybe it will be a more subtle phenomenon, like an explosion of violence among the youth gangs that now terrorize Los Angeles and other cities. Or an increase in crime by marginalized youth, raised in the streets of the large cities and with no chance to study or get legal jobs.

Boy, this piece for foreign consumption doesn't read anything like Mr. Oppenheimer's Miami Herald columns. In fact, it reads to me like a bunch of anti-system wank. An illegal alien intifada in the US? In your dreams. First, they're in the US because they want to be, and second, unlike French and Palestinian rioters, illegal aliens caught rioting in the US can be instantly deported back home. Also, Oppy is confusing crime and gangs with politics. The Latin Kings and Mexican Mafia are not precisely politically oriented. Nor, by the way, do street gangs "terrorize" entire cities.

Anyway, here's Oppy's conclusion:

My opinion is that this xenophobic hysteria must be stopped before it is too late...the millions of undocumented aliens in the United States will not leave. They will only become more desperate and angry.

Come, come, my good man, "xenophobic hysteria" is a bit strong. America's not xenophobic, it lets in hundreds of thousands of immigrants every year, and they are a good bit more welcome there than immigrants in European countries. It is not difficult for a legal alien to become an American citizen, and in fact it is positively encouraged, again unlike certain European countries. As for illegal aliens, Europe has immigration barriers and deports them too, don't you know, old chap. Or haven't you heard about the thousands of African boat people who die trying to make it to Spain?

One more bit of European douchbaggery: El Mundo reports that Italy is "indignant" over a mildly critical story in the New York Times. Seems that the Times noted that Italian creative arts are in the dumps, the people seem to be depressed, poverty is still high in some areas, the aging population is going to decline, and the economy is stagnant. From what I can tell, the NYT did not issue any moral judgments about Italy or the Italians.

Says El Mundo, "The subject fills entire pages of the newspaper, it is discussed for hours on radio programs, and it is commented on between dishes of pasta and pizza in the trattorias."

Jeez, people, that's a bit hypersensitive. The Italian press, just like the rest of the European media, runs anti-American articles by the kilo, calling the people ignorant, racist, and money-obsessed and calling the government a bunch of imperialistic Fascist warmongers. Americans, with a few exceptions like me, pay no attention at all. But let the New York Times mention a couple of unpleasant demographic and economic facts, and throw in the reporter's impression that the Italian people are "depressed," and an entire nation is ready to storm the US embassy.

Kitsap County, Washington, is apparently the redneckiest place in God's whole U. S. of A., and the local rag, the Kitsap Sun, gleefully chronicles the doings of the county's sobriety-challenged lumpenproletariat. Check out 1) this story involving a lug nut and a shotgun 2) this one concerning Christmas decorations 3) this one about a love triangle and a closet 4) this one, which includes pierced nipples. And they have even more. And more.

Slow news day everywhere in the world.

The biggest stink around here is a controversy over a Syrian arms dealer named Monzer al Kassar, who lives in Marbella, of course. This guy was accused of being in on the attack on the Achille Lauro and spent fourteen months in jail awaiting trial until the charges were dropped. The United States wants him bad for allegedly selling weapons used to harm US citizens, along with conspiracy and money-laundering; he was arrested in Spain in June, and the National Court okayed his extradition. El Mundo then accused the head of the Syrian secret service (that is, Gestapo) of writing a threatening letter to his Spanish counterpart--if Al Kassar was extradited, Spanish peacekeeping troops in Lebanon would "lose Syrian protection." Crude extortion. Syria has now denied the existence of the letter. Anyway, Zap and the cabinet are supposed to make the final decision on Al Kassar's extradition on December 28.

Other bits of news: Barcelona used-housing prices officially declined by 2% in 2007. I bet it's more than that. Meanwhile, the average price for a rental apartment in Barcelona is now over €1000 a month. Some criminals in Mauritania massacred a French tourist family of four; what I want to know is whose brilliant idea it was to go to Mauritania for a vacation ahd bring along the kids. Idiots. As if there weren't any nice places in France to visit. Hell, even an Arab slum in the banlieue is safer and probably more attractive than Mauritania. The slaughter on the Spanish highways continues, with 36 dead so far over the Christmas holidays.

ETA let off a small bomb the night of Christmas Eve in the Basque town of Balmaseda. Nobody was hurt, but the homes of fifteen families were damaged and they have been evacuated. The King gave his Christmas speech on TV. I didn't bother watching because I knew what he was going to say. The bus strike will continue until at least January 4; the city is going to take disciplinary action against a dozen of the drivers/vandals who sabotaged the buses, but they're not going to press charges, of course. Will Smith has made international news with his ill-expressed remarks about Adolf Hitler; what Smith was obviously trying to say is that even Hitler, a man the rest of us consider the epitome of evil, wrongly thought he was doing good.

Sports update: Barça got beat 0-1 by Real Madrid, as you probably know. They're now seven points back with 19 matches left to go. It wasn't a good game, but Madrid demonstrated that their guys work harder and are in better shape than the Barça players. I'm beginning to think that Frank must go at the end of the season, because several of the players simply cannot go all-out for a whole game. Prime specimen: Ronaldinho. There's no excuse for losing just because your guys don't do enough running. I also wonder whether Carles Puyol's body isn't breaking down from too many roids.

Sleazy lesbian incest video starring Penelope Cruz and her look-alike sister Monica! Check it out! The song blows, of course.

Here's something interesting on Google Books; it's titled Military Geography for Professionals and the Public, written by a US Army colonel named John Collins in 1998. Here's a review. Excellent basic stuff, full of things you've never thought of (check out the chapter on war in space), though 1) it's riddled with typos, poorly edited, and includes several words used with the wrong meaning and 2) the basic ideas in the human geography chapter are good, but a lot of the examples are lousy and a few are incorrect. I could fix this thing in ten hours, and they should have paid somebody like me to do so before publishing it.

They want sixty bucks at Amazon for a print copy of this.

La Vanguardia moved our friend Andy Robinson from New York and made him their roving antiglobalization altermundista antisystem correspondent. Andy and his ilk enjoy playing a game of wishful thinking; they like to "prove" that the evil American empire is about to crash, and that Europe or Russia or China or somebody, anybody, is going to muscle up and challenge American hegemony.

Not likely, since the United States has by far the world's largest economy, strongest military, and greatest amount of social and human capital. Andy and his ilk consistently fall for what's called the "physical fallacy," the idea that only tangible things have value. Actually, the most valuable possessions a country can have are a relatively stable, honest, and effective government, and an educated and skilled population. The only countries that have these intangible pearls and diamonds are the US, Europe, and parts of East Asia; the rest of the world is far behind and is going to stay that way for at least the next half-century.

Andy gets the front-page screamer headline and pages 3 and 4 of La Vangua's international section for this: "Geopolitcal consequences of energetic power: The superpowers of expensive oil: Energy resource nationalism sets off new Cold War."

Now, now, "a new Cold War" seems a bit excessive. Remember, the old one lasted forty years and scared the living shit out of everybody, including me.

The fun part, though, is that Andy is excited and enthusiastic about the prospect! Get this: He kicks off his article with a reference to the Communist Manifesto.

A specter is haunting the planet in these times of scarce energy resources and soaring oil prices. It is giving chills to the traditional capitals of power, and it unites leaders who are not at all assimilated to the liberal consensus of globalization, privatization, and free markets, from Hugo Chavez to Evo Morales, from Vladimir Putin to Mahmoud Ahmadinejad.

It is resource nationalism, the new geopolitical power of the oil and gas producers that extends from the Middle East to Latin America, from the former Soviet Union to Africa.

Note what these places all have in common: They have neither stable and honest governments, nor skilled and educated populations. Their economies are the size of Alabama's. The idea of any of these countries becoming a superpower just because it produces lots of oil shows profound ignorance of the way economics works.

Russia has, for example, a declining population whose life expectancy is decreasing, no unctioning financial system, a mafia-run government, a corrupt bureaucracy, large dissatisfied minority groups, a populace living in poverty, the world's worst alcohol problem, rusted-out antiquated industries, a minuscule service sector, a shot-to-hell infrastructure, enormous environmental destruction, and a 20th-century history of extreme violence, dictatorship, and terror. Russia can't even feed itself; apparently the people's main source of animal protein is frozen chicken legs imported from, like, Arkansas.

Oh, yeah, they've also got nuclear missiles, most of which would blow up on the launching pad, and a lot of oil. That hardly makes Russia a major power. It makes Russia a one-commodity exporter, and therefore dreadfully weak. The only thing Russia could do to hurt the United States, short of war, is an oil embargo, which would be cutting off their nose to spite their face, since their economy is so dependent on oil exports. Meanwhile, we'd confiscate all their overseas investments and slap a food embargo on them faster than you can say Colonel Sanders, while increasing oil imports from friendly states like Canada and Mexico. Americans would be forced to use less gas. Russians would be forced to live on three potatoes a day. Who do you think would blink first?

Back to Andy: "It is a strategic decision by countries with energy resources to use them in their own development instead of optimizing corporate incomes," said Roger Tissot, a market analyst with PFC Energy in Toronto.

I looked up Roger Tissot, who is actually a real expert. I found this quote: "Tissot foresaw no threat to oil supply from Venezuela and in fact reinforced that the Venezuelan government depends on its oil revenue to advance its political project...He mentioned Venezuelan owned Citgo Petroleum's important role in the distribution on gasoline and oil derivatives in the U.S."

Proving my point. If they cut off oil to the US, their economy goes tits-up, and we confiscate Citgo while cutting off their food supply--Venezuela can't feed itself, either, and not even Hugo Chavez is dumb enough to ignore this fact.

Andy also quotes a guy named Michael Klare. All you need to know about Mr. Klare is that he writes for the Nation and Mother Jones, and he has a book out called Blood and Oil.

Some of the bus drivers are on strike today, so the whole city was snarled up as usual whenever they put on one of these things. According to law, public workers are allowed to strike but must provide "minimum services," which in this case means they have to run 50% of the scheduled buses. The strike is supposed to last seven days, and should muck things up pretty good during the upcoming Christmas break.

The majority unions, the Socialist UGT and the Communist CCOO, are against the strike, and they agree with the municipality that any large-scale rescheduling should happen at the end of 2008. The municipality says that only 40% of the drivers went out today; the Trotskyist CGT union, a particularly nefarious bunch of agitators who got control over the workers' council and called this strike, claims that 85% of them went out.

The drivers are demanding two consecutive days off a week, and the company is willing to set things up so they'll get an average of 1.9 days off a week per year. Right now they get a minimum of 1.6 days off each week per year.

You know, their demand is not unreasonable, though if they want an extra 0.4 days off per week, they'll have to accept a slightly reduced salary.

The problem is the way they go about it. It's traditional in Spain for what they call "piokets" to go around and stir shit up whenever there's a strike. These dirtbags' behavior has nothing to do with a peaceful picket line; they attacked 28 buses today, breaking windows, smashing rear-view mirrors, and puncturing tires. On Calle Entença they threw ball bearings at a moving bus, smashing a window and injuring a passenger. About a hundred picketers blocked off the Sant Andreu bus garage and didn't let any of the minimum services buses out, and they got charged by the riot squad. Five hundred more picketers blocked off Calle Sants and refused to let anyone pass.

And picketers never, never get arrested. I'd haul the lot off to jail just like I would with any other bunch of vandals destroying city property and putting citizens in danger.

Repsol announced that it is going to sell off 25% of its Argentinian subsidiary, YPF, to a private Argentine citizen for $2.2 billion.

Zap and Rajoy are going to debate on February 25 and March 3 on television; the election will be March 9. I wouldn't have agreed to that if I were Zap. He's a couple of points ahead in all the polls and there's no reason he can't keep his lead barring a surprise disaster. The economy is going along pretty well and Spain doesn't have any incredibly serious problems--lots of things could be improved, and probably should be, but nothing is urgent. Debates aren't traditional in Spain anyway; in the US a candidate has to debate his opponent or he'll look bad, but those expectations don't hold here. Now Rajoy has a chance to look good at Zap's expense, and I think Rajoy's a better debater than Zap is. Zap has everything to lose and little to gain by debating.

Barça drew Glasgow Celtic in the first round of the Champions' League, and should have no trouble with them. There'll be another lot of Glaswegians in Barcelona, not long after 20,000 Rangers fans showed up and irritated many Barcelonese by getting drunk and urinating in the Plaza Catalunya. Hey, Mr. Mayor, how about putting out portable toilets this time?

You've probably heard that the US released three British citizens from Guantanamo, and they got shipped back to Britain. Spain has demanded the extradition of one of them, Palestinian Jamil al-Banna, on terrorism charges, and the British police have arrested him. They also arrested the other two, on British terrorism charges. Innocent little angels, these guys are not.

The National Court convicted 47 members of ETA-front organizations of membership in a terrorist gang; they have been sentenced to between four and 23 years in prison each. Five persons were acquitted. This case has been dragging on for years, and we all knew what was going to happen--the cops began rounding up those convicted a couple of weeks ago, just to make sure they didn't all go into hiding. Three of them are still on the run.

As we said before, this is important because 1) it's the first time Spanish courts have ruled that members of ETA front groups are just as much terrorists as the triggermen 2) a lot of Basque-wacky jokers are going to think twice now about publicly supporting ETA, since they know they can't do it with impunity anymore 3) if the government's plan is to negotiate with ETA (which I strongly oppose doing), then they have 47 new bargaining chips in jail.

Of course, the convicted prisoners tried to make a mockery out of the sentencing, shouting that they didn't accept the verdict of an "illegitimate court," making obscene gestures, and singing ETA rebel ballads. The judge ordered the courtroom cleared and that was the end of that.

A few days ago the Spanish Senate, in which the PP has the majority, passed a motion to censure development minister Maleni Alvarez. This is the first time ever that a minister has been censured by the Senate. The funny thing was that the Catalan nationalist parties, who put on a big demo a couple of weeks ago supposedly to protest the messed-up transport system in Catalonia, abstained because they didn't want to vote with the PP. So they held a demonstration against her, and then failed to vote for her censure. Boy, that's coherent.

The Catalan Parliament passed the pompously named Right to Housing in Catalonia Act, which gives the government the power to force owners of vacant apartments to rent them out whether they want to or not. The law is especially obnoxious in its interference with the right to private property, since landlords in Spain have very few rights due to other laws regulating rentals. Not only will the owner be obligated to rent out his vacant place, but he'll be placed under restrictive landlord regulations. The Socialist-Communist-Green-national socialist Catalan Tripartite passed the bill over the opposition of both CiU and the PP.

La Vanguardia is encouraging its readers to "send in photographs for an erotic calendar." Just what we needed, nude photos of a bunch of middle-class middle-aged Catalan Catholics.

It seems like the European political story that's gotten the most coverage this week is Sarkozy's romance with the model and singer Carla Bruni, who is an extremely hot babe. The funny thing is up till now she's been romantically involved with leftists and rock stars, not conservative politicians. Zap put his foot in it; reporters asked him to comment on the subject, and he said that Bruni was "more beautiful" than Sarko's ex-wife. He's right, of course, but isn't that superficial retrograde patriarchal sex-objectification?

The John Edwards sex-scandal story is heating up; the Enquirer, not earth's most reliable news source, is running with it and headlining that he has an illegitimate child with some crazy nutter chick from New York. If he were single it wouldn't matter; during the 2004 election, nobody got into John Kerry's agitated love life before he married Teresa, for example, and nobody's really gone after Rudy Giuliani hard about his own matrimonial troubles, at least not yet. But adultery is another thing in the voters' minds, and Elizabeth Edwards, who may be dying of cancer, is an important part of her husband's campaign. If he was cheating on her it'll look terrible.

Andrew Young, civil rights activist and former ambassador to the UN, apparently doesn't think Barack Obama is "black enough"; he was quoted as saying that Bill Clinton had had sex with more black women than Obama.

The thing about the US black community is that it's not one solid group, as many people seem to think. It's divided into "native American blacks," descended from Southern slaves, with their own distinctive culture, a 400-year history in America, and who further divide themselves into various social classes; West Indian immigrants, who started coming over about the time of the First World War, and whose culture is in some ways similar to but not the same as that of the natives; and African blacks, who have mostly come over in the past thirty years, and have nothing in common culturally with the other two groups but the color of their skin.

Obama is the son of a Kenyan immigrant father and a white mother, and part of his childhood was spent overseas. He really doesn't have any more in common with native American blacks than I do. Not that this disqualifies him from being president or anything, though I certainly wouldn't vote for him due to his left-wing political ideas and his lack of experience. In case you're wondering, Colin Powell is West Indian, and Condi Rice and Clarence Thomas are both native Americans.

So far I have no fearless predictions for the primary elections; I plan to vote for Giuliani, and McCain is more than an acceptable alternative. Huckabee, Romney, and Thompson are minor-leaguers in comparison with those two, and Ron Paul is nuts. If Huckabee gets nominated I might sit this one out rather than vote for him. Among the Democrats, I don't much like anybody. You probably know that the last Democrat I liked was Lieberman, and he's bolted the party and usually votes with the Republicans. Hillary, Obama, and Edwards are the only three candidates I think have a shot at the nomination, and Edwards has just been torpedoed. Hillary is probably the least offensive of the three.

Sports update: Everybody's gearing up for the big Barcelona-Real Madrid soccer game this weekend. Down at the bar I put three bucks in the pool on a 3-1 result. Messi's out, Ronaldinho will probably play, Henry is back, Giovani and Bojan are both fit, Gudjohnsen and Iniesta are in good form, and Milito is excellent.

Ronald Koeman, Barça hero and new coach of Valencia, has decided to break up the team; he's kicked off Cañizares, Albelda, and Angulo, three guys who have been with the team so long they think they're synonymous with it. Several more guys, like Baraja, are also on the way out. Koeman doesn't like their attitude, he says. Cañizares is kind of wacky; he says he's a Buddhist and takes all that yoga and meditation stuff seriously. He has been known to use nail polish to paint flowers on his toenails. I'm not complaining, he's been a good goalie for a long time, but he's now 38 and not getting any younger.

Two bits of news: My niece Caroline was born today, so welcome to the world, kid!

My mother-in-law Rosa, in the hospital with a broken leg, is diabetic, and her blood sugar got all out of whack and she nearly went into a coma. Fortunately they brought her out of it, and she seems to be OK, but she'll be in the hospital at least another week. She's pretty much senile now--doesn't know what year it is, doesn't remember my name, or her dog's name, doesn't know how old she is, doesn't remember who she saw yesterday--and she's declining fast. We'll have to wait until we get her home and see what happens before we make any decisions; I don't see why she can't live with us as long as she can walk with assistance.

It's been cold these last few days here in B-ville, which is not unusual for December, of course. What is unusual is the drought we've had over the past few months; Catalonia's reservoirs are at 29 percent of capacity, and they'll need to impose water rationing in a couple of months if it doesn't rain sometime soon. Winter and especially spring are the rainy seasons around here, and the soil needs that rain that it absorbs in spring in order to make it through the dry summer. If we don't get it, that means a bad harvest and a lot of forest fires.

They were working on a deal during the Aznar administration to transport water from the Rhone to Catalonia, and water from the Ebro to Valencia and Murcia, but the Socialists shot the water plan down when Zap took over. Too bad, we could use that pipeline from the Rhone right about now.

I have a dumb computer keyboard problem which I don't know how to fix. I'm sure it's just a question of changing one setting, but I don't know which setting needs to be changed. On my Spanish keyboard, when I hit the apostrophe-question mark key, I get a hyphen. In order to type an apostrophe, I have to hit the o a key at the top left. For a question mark I have to hit shift-9. What's the problem? Thanks in advance.

I'm probably the most technology-ignorant blogger in the world. I have no idea how to use a computer except at the word processor-Internet level, I don't know how to use a cellphone since I don't have one, I don't have a DVD or VCR or any of that stuff, I don't have an iPod, and I don't even know what any of the buttons on the TV remote control do.

Well, I never want to hear Zap criticize the Americans for anything again. We all agree that Gadafi is an evil dictator, right? He's certainly at least as bad as Franco was, and he's been in power for even longer. So Zap and Gadafi cut a deal for €12 billion with a B in bilateral commerce, including, get this, two billion euros worth of military weapons and a €3.5 billion Spanish investment in the Libyan oil fields. And it's Zap who gets all righteous and idealistic on us. Looks to me like he believes it's moral that Spain should profit from selling weapons to and buying oil from a crazy-ass tinpot dictator.

The current big stink going on around here is what they call the "digital canon." Spain's SGAE, the General Society of Authors and Editors, which represents musicians, authors, movie makers, etc., charges what is effectively a sales tax on digital copying technology to offset the alleged sales losses caused by private copying of copyrighted works. The system was introduced in September 2003 under the´Aznar administration. Now Rajoy's against it. All the rest of the political parties, except the PSOE, are also calling for it to be phased out.

So the Ministries of Culture and Industry got together with the SGAE and made this proposal to modify the fees: CD-Rs, 17 cents each. Cellphones or messengers with MP3: €1.50 each. MP3s and MP4s: €3.15 each. DVD-Rs: 44 cents each. Scanners: €9 each. CD burners: 60 cents each. CD=DVD burners: €3.40 each. These charges, of course, are paid by the consumer. In addition, value-added tax is charged on the fees.

The system has been criticized for several reasons, including 1) everyone pays the fees, including those who never make copies of copyrighted works 2) it's effectively a tax, but it didn't go through the same legal process as a straight-out tax would have to 3) the money doesn't necessarily go to the creator whose work is copied; instead, the SGAE parcels it out arbitrarily according to the artist's "importance."

I dunno; copyright law exists for a reason, in order to make sure creators get paid for their work. Some kind of system like this one is necessary; I'm just not sure this is the best way to do it.

What I do think is funny is the whole gang of left-wing alleged creative artists who have taken out half-page ads in all the newspapers in favor of the fees. That is, they want to make sure they get theirs, Jack. Don't ever believe an idealist when he says he doesn't care about money. Next thing you know he's going to start accusing all the rest of us of being consumerists and destroying his planet, while he continues flying around in his private jet and living in his huge mansion. Signers include such notorious working-class friends of the people as Pilar Bardem, Victor Manuel, Joaquin Sabina, and Ana Belen.

They arrested seven doctors involved in the illegal-abortion scandal. Now what they're going to do with them is perfectly legal in Spain: they're going to let them sit and stew in jail for the full 72 hours that the law says may pass before an accused person is given a court hearing, in the hope that somebody talks.

The real estate market is clearly crashing. The newspapers are full of ads for small places under €175,000, and medium places well under €300,000. 1015 apartments were sold in Barcelona in the last quarter of 2006, and only 505 have been sold during that period in 2007. It looks like the market peaked in around July 2006, and the fall has barely begun, despite the spin the real-estate agents are trying to apply.

Durex is going to close down its plant in Rubi, a Barcelona suburb, and lay off more than 250 workers. I'm sorry, there's absolutely no way you should be losing money if you're a condom manufacturer. That's a high-demand product if there ever was one.

ETA set off a small bomb in front of the courthouse in the Basque town of Sestao; the building was damaged but no one was hurt. The terrorists called in a warning before the bomb went off.

Meanwhile, ETA declared war on Spain again over the weekend, sending out a press release saying it was willing to attack Spanish law enforcement officers "at any time and at any place." It referred to the murders of the two Civil Guards in France as "executions." Yeah, you bastards, that's exactly what ought to happen to you scumbags after you get convicted, and there's no need to be finicky about the methods. Perhaps public guillotining, or maybe the good old Chinese bullet in the neck in a football stadium.

The fact that Zap actually thought he could trust these vermin and negotiate with them demonstrates his extremely bad judgment. And I suppose the deal for a truce in Catalonia that Carod-Rovira and ERC made with ETA at the secret meeting in Perpignan is now off.

Dumb Catalan media mess: The government of the Valencian Country, or Valencian Community, or whatever the hell the official name is for the autonomous region encompassing the provinces of Castellón, Valencia, and Alicante, has closed down TV3's broadcast station in Alicante. Here's the deal: According to very confusing laws, each autonomous region has the right to set up its own government-controlled TV channel. However, no region has the right to broadcast its channel into another region, since that would be unfair competition for that region's own public TV. No, it really doesn't make sense to me, either.

So TV3, apparently without even a by-your-leave from the Valencia regional government, set up a broadcast transmitter to send out TV3's signal in Valencia. And the Valencian government has called bullshit on that and ordered them to stop.

Naturally there's politics behind this, too. TV3 is Catalan nationalist; no one disputes that. In Valencia, however, the majority feeling is anti-Catalanist and pro-Spain, as is shown by the PP's electoral domination of the region. TV3 frequently criticizes the Valencian regional government and those Valencians who don't like the idea of a "Paísos Catalans" (Greater Catalonia) that includes Valencia.

TV3 complained, of course, calling the Valencian Generalitat's decision "a hostile act, deplorable, and unnecessary," and accusing it of playing to the gallery for electoral purposes. However, the TV3 spokeswoman had to admit that they had no legal right nor permission to broadcast in Valencia. TV3 wants to make an arrangement by which it would broadcast in Valencia in exchange for the Valencian regional station, Canal 9, being allowed to broadcast in Catalonia. The Valencian government does not consider this a high priority.

My opinion? If I were Valencian I would prefer to have as many free TV channels as possible, including TV3, even though I probably wouldn't want to watch anything on it but the football.

Spanish regional nationalists are currently confused about what to think over Bolivia. It seems that the country's six richest provinces, the ones that are mostly mestizo, Spanish-speaking, and in the lowlands, and whose chief city is Santa Cruz, have declared their own autonomy from the Bolivian central government in La Paz. The Bolivian government is run by radical populist Evo Morales, whose support base is in the four poorest provinces, mostly Indian, Quechua and Aymara-speaking, and in the highlands.

Now. Your Spanish regional nationalists make a big deal out of what they call "self-determination," a concept the hapless Woodrow Wilson foisted on the world in the notorious Fourteen Points. So theoretically they would support the Santa Cruzans in their quest for autonomy. But they're also Third World leftists, and they think Evo Morales is Jesus, or at least St. Paul, and they worship Indians (oops, sorry, the indigenous peoples) and hate evil Spanish conquistadores, and they're trying to blame Western companies like Repsol for stirring up the Santa Cruzans.

Result? Cataloony cognitive dissonance.

Alleged former terrorist Moammar Gadafi is in Spain. He gets to meet with both King Juan Carlos and Zap. He was greeted at the airport with full honors of state by defense minister Alonso. That's disgusting. This guy is a mass murderer. (Anyone else remember Lockerbie?) Sure, we have to deal with him, but we don't have to kiss his ass.

Crazy Muslim shit. It seems that the FC Barcelona coat-of-arms logo, which includes a small red cross on a white background, the Cross of St. George, Catalonia's patron saint, is not acceptable in Muslim countries. So what they've been doing with it in some of these places (Saudi Arabia and Algeria) is reducing the cross to a vertical red line. There are Muslims so ridiculously sensitive that they censor a football team's logo!

The club has responded that as far as they know, all the official shirts they sell everywhere in the world have the full, uncensored club logo. Any shirt with only a red bar is a pirate copy, they claim.

This latest Muslim snit over symbols started a couple of weeks ago when Inter Milan wore its hundredth-year commemorative jerseys, which are white with a red cross on the front, in a home game against a Turkish club. Some oversensitive Turk accused Inter of racism or something for wearing the jerseys with the cross.

So now the Barça fans are all stirred up, and they're universally furious at the sacrilege to their holy symbol. Not the cross in itself, but the desecration of the Barça shield. It's fascinating that in order to make a politically correct lefty Catalan into a raving xenophobe, all you need to do is insult the Barça icon. They were all, like, multiculti and antiimperialist and sympathetic to the need for self-esteem in the Third World over Salman Rushdie and the Danish cartoons and Ayaan Hirsi Ali, but the sanctity of the Barça is inviolate.

Other Barça news: They beat the crap out of Valencia last night, 0-3. Eto'o is back, and he scored two fine goals; Gudjohnsen knocked in the third off a psss from Giovani dos Santos. Both Ronaldinho and Deco started the game on the bench. Messi tore a thigh muscle and will be out for a month, so he'll miss next week's big game against Real Madrid. This was the first Barça away win for more than two months, and it should give them back some confidence. Valencia played lousy. They've got too many good players to put up such a sad show.

Former Barça`midfielder Guillermo Amor, who played in more than 500 games mostly during the Cruyff years, was seriously injured in a car accident last night near Tortosa. He had been one of the TV announcers on the Valencia-Barça game last night, and was driving home when he had the wreck at about 2 AM. He is currently in critical condition but is expected to live. Hope he's OK; I always liked him.

Boy, the promotors of this Vegas-in-Los Monegros thing have got their PR people working hard. Today La Vanguardia gave them a front-page teaser and then the first two pages of the national news section.

La Vanguardia says that the two chief investors are the Australian slot machine manufacturer and the French-Lebanese-Bahraini insurance company, which we already mentioned, and that others include the Thomson casino management firm, the British gambling tech company Hot Games, two Catalan real estate developers named Josep Carrera and Jaume Riera, and an Anglo-French investment firm called Havila Partners. In other words, Hilton and Hyatt and Sheraton and Holiday Inn and MGM ain't in on this one.

They save this paragraph for the end of the story: "Sources from companies in the sector in Great Britain were skeptical about the viability of this Pharaohonic project. 'The infrastructure for 25 million visitors isn't there, and they don't have the financing, either,' said an executive at an international casino corporation."

More realistically, Harrah's is preparing to build a Caesar's Palace hotel-casino in Ciudad Real. Just one, not 32.