You'll want to check out this excellent special report from the Economist on the American South. Europeans especially might be interested in a friendly but critical review of what's going on down there. (Note: Click "next page" at the bottom for more stories; there are about eight.)

I'm from a Southern family but spent most of my childhood in the North and Midwest, so I've always been ambivalent about the South, and when we lived in Dallas for a couple of years I was out and out hostile. I still can't stand a lot of things about that city. I can really do without the guns and Jesus stuff that's so common down South.

One of the interesting quotes in the report, though, is from a Northerner in Atlanta who suspects that many of the things he likes about the South (I assume he means that the people tend to be friendlier and more honest, and that the lifestyle is more relaxed) are partially due to the religious conservatism of many Southerners. I also thought the joke, "You might be a redneck if you have six patents and they all feature the words "hunting dog" in the disclosure documents," was pretty good.

The nasty racism that I remember in East Texas seems to be way down twenty-five years later, since a lot of the old racist folks have died off and the younger ones are comparatively free of that particular sin.

I hate Southern cooking, by the way, except for Louisiana food, which doesn't have much to do with what they eat in the rest of the South. Too greasy and too sweet. Being a vegetarian doesn't help; they can screw up vegetables quite easily. Note that in the report, Cracker Barrel, Waffle House, and KFC are named as successful Southern restaurant chains. Coincidentally, they're also the top three restaurant chains on my "Do Not Want" list.

The bus drivers are out on strike today, and there will be no service until 5 PM. Also, the doctors at the National Health general-practice clinics (CAPs) are out on strike today, 8 AM to 8 PM. They have a legitimate complaint: they're overworked and underfunded. But denying people medical help for a day isn't the way to change things. Meanwhile, 51,000 people in Spain are awaiting elective surgery. And, to top it off, the public school teachers are going out on Thursday, the 14th.

Of course, they picked the best day possible for a transport strike, since 50,000 people are in town for the mobile-phone trade fair and convention. Some hotels, meanwhile, have tripled their prices. This makes our city look real good in their eyes, and they'll want to come back!

Campaign promise update: Rajoy said he'd hire 30,000 new cops. Rubalcaba said Zap would hire 15,000 new cops to add to the 15,000 they already claim to have hired.

Zap claimed he'd never smoked a joint. I don't know whether the admission will help him or hurt him.

That loudmouthed idiot Pere Macias (of the normally responsible CiU) said that the PP's proposal that all students in Spain should study at least partly in Spanish "might cause a civil war during the next generation." Spanish rule of politics Number One: When in doubt, make catastrophic predictions to frighten the voters.

You probably remember that the PSOE did an excellent propaganda job several years ago when the oil tanker Prestige sank off the coast of Galicia and caused a medium-sized oil spill. Though the ship wasn't Spanish, and the Aznar government had no responsibility for the fact that it sank where it did, the Socialists managed to blame the PP for the accident.

Now it looks like the PP has a chance to turn the tables. A ship called the New Flame, that got stuck off Gibraltar seven months ago, has started leaking oil, which has covered the harbor of Algeciras, including the beaches. Zap's response? Complain to the British ambassador. It seems to me that the Zap administration is directly responsible, since they did nothing to get the ship safely to shore. I would absolutely hammer Zap's eco-credentials over this one.

Spanish troops killed a man in Afghanistan: a car refused to stop at a roadblock, and they fired at it and killed him. Good. They did their job. Now let's see if the Spaniah press reacts as it would if it had been an American platoon. I bet they don't.

They're having a big fashion show in Madrid. What made the international news was that they dismissed three models for being too anorexic. I don't know, they all look pretty anorexic to me.

The American primary elections are at the center of international news in Spain. The Hillary-Obama race has caught everyone's attention, to the point that the media's been paying too little attention to the Republicans, who have an excellent chance to win in November.

To recap: It seems that Hillary has support among white women, lower-income voters, and Hispanics, while Obama has support among white men, middle-income voters, younger voters, and blacks.

The Democratic race is nowhere near over; Obama should win today's primaries in Maryland, Virginia, and DC, but Hillary's not out of it even though she's fired her campaign manager and "lent" her own campaign $5 million, both of which are bad signs. The Ohio and Texas primaries on March 4 ought to be decisive, and if Obama wins both of those states it's all over. If not, Pennsylvania on April 22 may be the decider. Of course, this is great for the Republicans, with the Dems shooting themselves in the foot by attacking one another.

Andy Robinson gets a page 4 story in La Vanguardia to inform us that if Europeans are anti-American, then it's the Americans' own fault and especially George W. Bush's. Andy says that the United States's "brand equity" is declining, and adds in a snotty aside, "Although consumers from Vietnam, Chile, Nicaragua, and other countries might disagree, the United States had accumulated a considerable quantity of brand equity." I was actually under the impression that the United States had a comparatively good reputation in those places, since folks there have actually seen what the alternative is.

Meanhile, Pilar Rahola has a pro-Hillary screed in which she calls Obama empty and idea-less, which is true. She takes a shot at Euro Yankee-bashers, though:

We Europeans are experts at the art of getting the wrong candidate in the US elections. We massively applauded the candidacy of Senator John Kerry, despite the evidence of his probable failure. For Europeans, he represented the acceptable American, more cultured, better-mannered, better-read, more fashion (sic) than that Texan Bush, and therefore one of us. Besides, the Hollywood actors and the rock stars backed him, and that was enough to raise our silliness several levels.

...Nevertheless, fooled by Michael Moore's tendentious propaganda (the one who flies to anti-system conferences in his private plane), we decided that the electoral result had no contextual explanation, but rather that the Americans were very, very bad people and they had all become religious fanatics. And so we were happy in our contempt, since we all know that our conceited European superiority complex regarding the Yankees soothes our unconfessable inferiority complex. In reality, we are dying with envy, and that is why we need to point the finger at them in order to maintain our injured dignity.

Now it is happening again, this time in its flower (sic) version. Every self-respecting European is thrilled with Barack Obama, considers that Hillary Clinton is a genuine product of the system (as if Obama were not also part of it), and drools at the thought of his entering the White House.

A lot of people around here who I've talked to actually think that Obama is some kind of radical candidate. I had some guy tell me yesterday evening that Obama was going to reduce the power of the big corporations. I have no idea which idiot media outlet he got that from.

More good news from the anti-ETA front: Judge Garzon ordered 14 members of the new board of directors of the illegal ETA front-party Batasuna to be rounded up on charges of collaboration with a terrorist organization. Spain has the equivalent of a RICO law; that is, being part of a group that is declared illegal is, in itself, against the law. They are squashing ETA's infrastructure, and there is absolutely no way any of ETA's front parties are going to be able to run in the election.

One reason this is important is because Spain's genius campaign finance laws (which every party breaks and which causes lots of corruption) offer government campaign subsidies to political parties--so if an ETA-front party manages to get itself on the ballot, then it gets our tax money! And you know whose hands that campaign finance money ends up in.

This is a stunt that is often resorted to by a notorious South American cult, the Siloists, also known as the Humanist Movement. These guys set up something called the Humanist Party, whose goal is to get the free TV advertising and campaign finance subsidies to spread its guru's message. Once they actually set up something called the Green Ecologist Party and got like 20,000 votes, due to the confusion between their front group and the other (slightly less offensive) Green parties.

I personally would remove all limits on political campaign spending and donations, as it seems to me that you ought to be able to give as much money as you want to your candidate of choice, and that candidate ought to be able to spend as much money as he can get on his campaign. To keep things honest, simply require all donations over, say, $1000, to be announced at a weekly public press conference.

And I would bloody well get rid of anything even resembling a government subsidy for anything even resembling a political party, and that includes activist groups, so-called NGOs, and alleged think tanks and "educational" foundations.

Terrorist news: US Secretary of Defense Robert Gates said in Munich, "The Barcelona cell (broken up last month) seems to be part of the terrorist network run by Baitullah Mehsud, an extremist leader based in Pakistan and linked to Al Qaeda and the Taliban, whom we suspect of being implicated in the assassination of Benazir Bhutto." Good thing they got these guys before they blew anything up.

The pro-ETA crowd came out in Bilbao this afternoon and held an illegal demo that turned into a riot, cars overturned and garbage skips burned. They even torched a bus. The cops thumped 'em good. Go Cops! Three arrests were made, which doesn't seem like nearly enough to me. The rioters are angry because Judge Garzon has prohibited their front-parties from running in the March 9 election.

Three douchebags had themselves a neo-Nazi demonstration in front of the synagogue in the Call, Barcelona's old Jewish quarter just off the Plaza Sant Jaume, back in July 2006. Among other things, they made threats and incited to violence, which isn't free speech, it's a crime. So they finally got around to arresting them, only a year and a half late.

The bus drivers say they're going back on strike, and the metro workers are going to do the same. That ought to screw up the city real good and stress out all the rest of us.

Not much campaign news. Zap's trying to identify Rajoy with the Iraq war and the Church, and run against that. Rajoy is trying to hit on a hot-button issue, and he thinks he's found one with immigration, while he identifies Zap with the economic slump. It's not really an edifying spectacle. At least they've both quit making wild promises, for now anyway.

There's a tremendous amount of interest over here in the American primary elections, and for once some of the commentary heard in the streets and cafés is positive. The Spaniards like the idea of voting in primaries for the candidates of each party, since right now the candidates are chosen by small groups of party insiders. They're confused by a lot of things about the American system; what they find especially strange is that the presidential election isn't related to whoever wins the most seats in Congress.

Other strange stuff for them: You vote for more than one office in the US elections, and so you can split your ticket, vote for candidates of more than one party on the same ballot. There's no proportional representation in the US, which means there aren't any small fringe parties in Congress. The two main parties are wide-ranging coalitions of several groups, and so it's not unusual for a congressman to vote against the leadership of his own party. They also think it's funny that we have sheriffs, which they identify with Western movies, and that it's an elective post.

Barcelona played badly last night in Sevilla, but got out with a 1-1 draw on a goal by Xavi. They looked slow and out of shape. The defense was atrocious, with both Oleguer and Thuram starting. Ronaldinho came out in the second half but didn't do much, though the quality of play did improve a bit. Sevilla's got a kid named Diego Capel at left wing who is going to be very good. He ate Oleguer's lunch. Oleguer, by the way, might be sold to Lazio, which would be hilarious, the Cataloony Commie pro-squatter idiotarian playing for the most openly Fascist fan base in the world.

Spanish champagne Communist actor Javier Bardem, of the notorious Bardem family, won some award from something called the New York Critics' Circle. He plays "a monstrous, unscrupulous being who freezes the blood of the spectators"--seems the movie he's in is a bit violent. So get this: he claimed that he got the inspiration to act the part of a psychopathic killer "from President Bush."

La Vanguardia wonders whether Academy Awards voters will hold Bardem's valiant statement against him when that vote comes out. Hell, no, this is Hollywood we're talking about. He's just won himself some bonus points.

By the way, I'm boycotting the movie because I'm not going to give Bardem any of my money. Instead, for the first time ever, I'm going to pirate it.

More Spanish leftist media silliness: Check out this Socialist campaign video, featuring the usual suspects, all of whose careers saw better days about thirty years ago: Sabina, Bosé, Serrat, Victor Manuel and Ana Belen, and the rest of that lot. They've come up with the dorkiest, most retarded hand gesture ever to show their undying support for Zap. I think they're trying to imitate Zap's pointy, Dracula-like eyebrows, but they look like a bunch of dopes. Get this: El Mundo says the alleged artists involved are "doing things the American way." I don't think any bunch of American singers, even if it included Jackson Browne, would ever do anything so uncool in public.

Campaign rhetoric: Looks like Rajoy has hit a popular nerve with his declaration that immigrants should have to sign some kind of contract in order to stay in Spain. As an immigrant, I'm in favor; Rajoy's proposal wouldn't force people to do anything outlandish, but it would require them to learn Spanish and not cut off their daughters' clitorises. Zap's comeback was weak; he claimed that Rajoy's statement was an insult to immigrants, which this idea is not. Anyway, it looks like the PP has found an issue.

There's been some talk that Zap should have called elections for last fall, before the economic slump began. Now, the slump hasn't been too bad thus far, and it's mostly due to the standard business cycle, not Zap's policies. Still, he should have known a slowdown was coming, planned accordingly, and dissolved parliament back in about September.

Judge Garzon "suspended the activities" of the ETA front parties ANV and PCTV, making sure that they won't be able to run in the March 9 general election.

ETA set off a fifteen-kilo bomb in front of the courthouse in Vergara, in the Basque country. No one was injured, fortunately. Serious material damage was done.

The first high-speed train did its test run into Sants station in Barcelona yesterday, so they may actually have it up and running by election time. The question is whether that will help or hurt--it may remind people of the whole Great Transport Snafu.

Bad simile department: The guy in La Vanguardia reporting on the space shuttle launch said that the flames of the rocket lifting off were the color of gazpacho.

Drudge is reporting that Mitt Romney is going to pull out of the race for the Republican nomination, though Mike Huckabee says that he's still in. Whatever. McCain is clearly the nominee now, no question. Now let's see the conservative wing of the Republicans prove they're adults who can handle losing. With all due respect, the moderate wing got one of our guys in this time, and it's time for you to suck it up, do your duty, and back the party's candidate.

Another case of minority political groups in Catalonia blocking progress: CiU and ERC have decided they're against the high-speed train's passing through a tunnel under Barcelona. Jeez, people, minority groups have been blocking the route of the AVE through Catalonia for years. Not to mention the expansion of the airport, an exurban highway loop around the outer edge of the metro area, the electrical hookup with the French power grid, the water plan to send Ebro water south and bring Rhone water here, and about eighteen other useful projects that make a lot more sense than subsidizing movies no one will ever see.

Campaign promise update: Rajoy says he's going to deport foreign citizens who commit crimes in Spain. Sounds good to me, but I think he's going to have to change the penal code to do that, and another penal code change seems unlikely so soon after the last one. Zap said such a change was unnecessary, leading to the question of: so why aren't foreign criminals being deported, since the streets of Barcelona are full of them? Also, Rajoy promised to plant five million trees, for whatever that's worth.

The Ibex 35 was down 0.9% at midday, below 13,000 points. The European Central Bank is holding the line on interest rates at 4%. Banco Santander earned €9 billion in profits in 2007, up 19% over 2006, which is good news for the shareholders.

Contradiction: La Vanguardia headlines, "Lack of connections at El Prat airport puts brakes on growth of tourism," and "Barcelona to increase hotel capacity by 10% in 2008." Right next to one another. Well, which one is it? And, of course, if there is a market for more flignts to Barcelona, some smart airline is going to start providing them, no? If Clickair has cut its number of Barcelona flights, it just might be because the market's saturated, and they were losing money on them.

Meanwhile, the Barcelona hotel owners' association criticized the high rate of crimes against tourists, and the lack of lighting in the streets. Seems to me this ought to be a top priority for the city government, right? I mean, you improve Barcelona's reputation for safety from crime (which is lousy), more tourists are going to come, and there'll be more demand for flights and hotel rooms and all of that, no? Arresting and deporting the dirtbags who prey on both tourists and locals would improve everyone's quality of life immeasurably.

La Vanguardia online's readers' poll: "Should the Circuit de Catalunya (the Montmeló racetrack) be sanctioned because of the racist insults against Hamilton?" 1329 persons voted. 34% said Yes, 65% said No.

El Pais has a depressing summary of the Hamilton flap, titled, "I'm not racist, but you're a fucking nigger (negro de mierda)":

...There is an essential explanation, deeper and more profound, that changes the crudity of insults into other things. "They are trying to offend and hurt the rival. There is no deep-seated racism," said the veteran researcher and sociologist Juan Díez Nicolás. These subtleties are not appreciated in other European countries, especially in the United Kingdom, where the affair is still one of the top stories of the week, and has produced shock and indignation. "Racism is under debate in Spanish sports, and this reflects on the whole society," rotundly declared the BBC.

In Spain, certainly, it is seen in a different way. "This is not discriminating against anyone because of his race," says one of the psychologists consulted, and it is the diagnosis of most of the implicated parts of society. In this case, she says, the outburst meant. "He is the rival of Fernando Alonso, and treated him badly and disloyally last year when they were on the same team."

"So why didn't they just directly call him a bastard?" wondered the Guardian correspondent Paul Hamelos, both offended and surprised, who reached the zenith of his confusion and perplexity when an Administration official argued the excuse that it was Carnival. "Carnival!" he repeated, between anger and incredulity. Some of those who insulted the Englishman had their faces painted black, wigs with curly hair, and T-shirts with the sentence "Hamilton's family" on the front. It was a day for dressing up, "and the English don't understand that."

"Spain is not racist, all the studies show that," said the sociologist Diaz Nicolas. It's something else. "It's a lack of imagination, and troublemaking. It's not right. That's clear, but let's not confuse matters. It's as if they called someone Fatty or Shorty," says this professor.

That's a bunch of crap, because no one has ever been enslaved and brutalized because of his height or weight. Millions of people were bought and sold and put to forced labor during hundreds of years because they were black, and all of Western Europe is guilty, including Spain. Black people are justifiably particularly angered by racist insults, since those insults imply that blacks are less than human and deserve to be treated as inferiors.

At a deeper level, the analysis of several British professors cited by the Times calls Spanish society "not racist, but inexperienced in living together with immigrants." And this, they say, makes people "see insults regarding skin color lightly and indulgently." According to this thesis, Spaniards aren't more racist than anyone around them, but they have less experience in dealing with different people and the subtleties that entails. To the point that the Spaniards do not know how to calibrate the importance of these insults.

Yeah, that was one of my theses the other day: Spaniards don't have much of an idea of what offends people of other nationalities, and they often act like they don't particularly care.

Sectors linked to the Zapatero administration wonder why the Spanish government does not either complain about or demand apologies for the behavior of the notorious British hooligans when a team from the Isles plays in Spain. "We don't say that the English are drunken vandals because some of their football fans are," they insist, in a rather nationalist manner. Definitely, they state that the English "are exaggerating" about this question, a maximalism whipped up by the sensationalist tradition of part of their media.

"Are we minimizing it or are they maximizing it?" wonder high officials in the Spanish administration. Ibarra said, without a doubt, the former. "The official message for years and years has been that this is not increasing, and that they are just a few isolated cases. and this is false." According to Ibarra, the number of racist incidents in Spain has grown to the point of affecting 200 towns througout the country.

Let's see. The British are hypocrites? Check. The British are drunken hooligans? Check. Hamilton deserved it? Check. Controversy stirred up by British press? Check. We're not racists no matter what you say? Check. The insults are no big deal? Check.

Looks like McCain is going to be the Republican candidate; I just hope he doesn't pick Huckabee as his veep. Romney would be fine, so would Giuliani. The conservative wing of the Reps is grumbling, but they'll get in line, they have nowhere else to go. Unless Ron Paul splits the party and runs as an independent, which has to be the Republican nightmare. As for the Dems, it's still up in the air. Let's hope Hillary and Obama go down to the wire, sniping at one another all the way, and that the convention ends up being brokered. That'll piss off either Hillary's base, middle-class white women, or Obama's base, blacks, and hopefully reduce Democratic turnout big-time.

La Vanguardia's coverage is again complete: a front-page headline and photo, and the first four pages of the international section. Not even Andy Robinson is especially offensive; of course, he called the California primary wrong, predicting that Obama would win because of the youth vote. The fact that his story is bylined "Berkeley" might have something to do with his misjudgment.

Judge Andreu of the National Court has charged 40 members of the current Rwandan Tutsi government with genocide and crimes against humanity during the Congo War, along with the murder of nine Spanish citizens between 1994 and 2000. He has issued international arrest warrants for them. My reaction: 1) Isn't this extraterritoriality, which the Spaniards always criticize when we lock up bad guys at Guantanamo? 2) Did Spain ever charge any of the Hutus, the group that started the mass violence, with genocide? 3) I am all in favor of punishing butchers and murderers, no matter who they are, but it seems to me that military force will be needed to get these guys out of Rwanda. Who is going to provide that military force?

The Ibex 35 was up 1.4% at midday, led by the utilities, so the market hasn't crashed on us yet. The other European markets are showing very slight gains.

That old fraud the Maharishi finally croaked, outliving two of the Beatles.

Survey: 86% of Spanish men say that if they had an affair they wouldn't tell their wives. News: 14% of Spanish men are so dumb that they would tell their wives if they'd cheated on them.

Pronunciation guide for Europeans: Arkansas is "Ar-kun-SAW." Kansas is "KAN-zus." Houston is "YOO-stun." New Orleans is "New ORE-lins." Chicago is "Shih-CAH-go." Cleveland is two syllables: "CLEEV-lund." Miami is "My-AH-mee." Ohio is "Oh-HY-oh." Iowa is "AY-oh-wuh." Detroit is two syllables: "Duh-TROYT." Idaho is "AY-duh-ho." Seattle is "See-AT-tul." Memphis is "MEM-fis." (Not "Mehn-fees.") Delaware is "DELL-uh-wear."

Oh, Lordy, the stock market's taken another dive, this time down 5.2% to 12,800 points late this afternoon. The construction firms did worse than average, and the blue chips fell less than average. La Vanguardia blames it on Wall Street's 2% decline. The other big European markets were down about 3%.

32,000 real-estate agencies closed down in Spain during 2007, which is 40% of the total. Most of these were shoestring speculative one-person shops that thought the boom would go on forever.

Food prices in 2007: through the roof. Sunflower oil went up 34%, milk 25%, flour 22%, chicken 16%, pasta 16%, onions 15%, bananas 13%, eggs 11%, and sardines 10%.

We're definitely having a major drought, despite Sunday's rain, and the water restrictions the Generalitat told us wouldn't be needed are going into effect: no more watering gardens or filling swimming pools with drinkable water. They're already working on getting tankers to deliver water from the Rhone and from desalinizing plants, and they're also going to reopen a bunch of old wells closed down years ago.

Judge Garzon charged the president of the ETA-front party ANV, along with two other party leaders, with collaboration with a terrorist gang and conspiracy. This is apparently a necessary legal step previous to banning the party and prohibiting it from running in the March 9 election.

Here's a good one. Something called the Barcelona Observatorio came out with a quality of life ranking for world cities and guess what? Barcelona came out on top! Number One! King of the hill, cream of the crop, top of the heap! For the tenth year in a row!

Here's TV3's story on the Lewis Hamilton incident:

In England they did not like it at all when a handful of fans shouted at Lewis Hamilton during last weekend's training sessions at Montmeló, and the wave of denuncistions of racism that has appeared in the British press is threatening a diplomatic conflict. The English government does not seem happy with the apologies given by the racetrack's management nor with the censure of the FIA, and has called for the suspension of the Grand Prix of Catalonia.

Lewis Hamilton is a hero in England because he was supposed to take over from Damon Hill, the most recent English Formula 1 champion in 1996. His not winning the world championship was an authentic national tragedy, and they have not liked at all the fact that a handful of fans received him at Montmeló with signs, chants, insults, and racist attacks.

The English press, the first in feeding the flames of the Hamilton-Alonso rivalry, has accused Spain of racism, recalling episodes like Luis Aragones insulting Henry or the chants against Eto'o in Zaragoza, and has mounted a campaign to censure the intolerable conduct of a few fanatics.

The racetrack had already done everything possible to put an end to such conduct--they confiscated banners, prevented hostilities against Hamilton from the stands, and expelled fans--and official bodies have criticized it rotundly, but in England they are still denouncing the attack suffered by Hamilton above and beyond the sporting rivalry with the Spanish champion.

Because of this, the British sports minister, Gerry Sutcliffe, announced yesterday that he would send a letter to the FIA and the Spanish government prpopsing the cancellation of the Grand Prix of Catalonia, while demanding that steps be taken to combat the xenophobic campaign that Lewis Hamilton is the victim of.

Even TV3 is blaming this mess on the sensationalistic English press who are out to get Alonso; it claims that the British minister's anger is due to the media coverage and not to the racist insults, it whitewashes the performance of the track management, it chalks British irritation up to rivalry between fans rather than disgust at racism, it downplays the character of the insults (they were dressed up like monkeys yelling "fucking nigger" at him), it shifts the focus from Catalonia to Spain as a whole, and it falsely claims that only a few people were guilty of the insults when large parts of the crowd were.

There are four comments. One blames the English press and its hidden interests; one says the incident was no big deal; one calls the English hypocritical drunken hooligans; and the last blames the English press and says any anger is due to Hamilton's losing out last year.

I've examined the first 206 comments in La Vanguardia's online story on the Lewis Hamilton flap, and they're generally pretty depressing. I didn't classify all of them, but I did divide them into nine categories. Some of them fit into more than one category, so I chose the one that seemed most definite. Here are the results:

Reasonable responses: 16

Now into the cesspool.

The British are hypocrites: 29
The British are all drunken hooligans: 14
Catalans are not racist / The racists must be Castilians: 26
Hamilton is a jerk and deserved it: 11
General anti-British: 9
The controversy has been stirred up to benefit hidden interests: 7
Everybody's racist, not just us: 5
It's no big deal: 9

Here are a few individual examples:

Cat: If the Spanish supporters of Alonso cannot behave themselves, they should stay at home. In Catalonia we respect people and hate all kinds of racism. England should not confuse Spain and Catalonia. Catalonia is different in all ways.

Bob: Hamilton = Hypocrite Perfidious (British) Press = Superhypocrites Am I racist? So what.

Jordi: Who are the English to give us lessons about manners and behavior? They're a public danger every time they leave their country, a gang of drunks who do nuthing but drink and start fights: the great majority of them are trash; this is the pot calling the kettle black.

SentidoComun: Enough of this racism nonsense, they insult his color because it is a distinguishing characteristic, they could also call him Shorty because he's short or Baldy because he doesn't have much hair, racism is something different. Besides, these English are still killing Iraqis to steal their oil, and they get excited because a few morons dialectically attack a young millionaire. Crazy.

Pable: In Panama it is the same. Blacks with British surnames who were brought to dig the canal are angry and violent, not so the ones with Spanish surnames. Everywhere the british have gone, the blacks are angry, look and see if it's like that in Brazil. Don't cry about how people are treated in Spain, I was treated worse in Nigeria.

Carlos: These English are too fucking much, they have their minister intervene over a few insults, and when their holligan (sic) go around European cities cracking skulls and destroying the city, they don't give a shit. They should worry about their own dear compatriots. A public person like Halmiton (sic) shouldn't give a crap what they call him. Let it be clear that I'm against insults, as I am against the federation's favoritism toward that gentleman.

Antonio: Since last year they didn't get the f1 world championship even by discriminating against Alonso for not being British, and fearing that this year Hamilton won't win either, now they're trying to close down Spanish racetracks? Is there a people more racist than the English?

Eoneguin: Racism is a natural condition among human beings. Blacks are, even more among themselves. Arabs are, a lot. Asians are, in the most cruel way. And we whites have to feel guilty. Besides, what happened to "Chocolate Milk" was just kidding, at worst a joke in bad taste.

Ironico: The English are going to give us classes in morality, living together, racism, manners, and respect to countries like Spain? If England has been characterized by anything in its history, it is not the things listed above. They only care about being the center of the world. Maybe they should begin to set an example that they have changed and give back Gibraltar. Anyway, in my opinion, fuck them!

Axel_T: The English newspapers who are causing this kerfuffle are the sensationalist press, they are not serious, let us do the same thing, if it bothers them that a few guys paint their faces black for Carnival, fuck them!

Destroyer: If the English have become so polite let them teach their children not to come to Ibiza, Lloret, Salou, and the whole Mediterranean coast to set up ghettoes to get drunk and behave like vandals. Not to mention the Glasgow Rangers holligans (sic), although they're Scottish they're the same thing, when they came to BCN they destroyed everything in their path. By the way, who killed Lady Di and the "morito" who was with her? They should look at themselves first and then talk about others.

Basket Case: It's strange that the British accuse Spanish society of being racist. You only have to remember their history to see how hypocritical they are. Not to mention the character of many of them: arrogant, bossy, and against anything that is not Anglophone. Excuse me, but they disgust me as a collective.

Pere: It would be a good thing if the English were also scandalized by the invasion of Iraq or their hooligans, they are a gang of undesirables, as they have always been.

Correcaminos: Frankly I don't give a shit what the English think.

Update on the Lewis Hamilton flap: The British media is angry, and with good reason. Check out this story from the Times, including a photo of Spanish spectators in blackface wearing T-shirts reading "Hamilton's Family." The IHT is reporting that the crowd was yelling "puto negro" and "negro de mierda," and it was not just a few isolated individuals.

A quote:

Despite the perception abroad that Spain suffers from a serious problem with racism, the Spanish Government insists that there is little cause for concern.

“Spanish society does not show a racist tendency,” Estrella Rodríguez, the Government official charged with dealing with the issue, said after the attack on the Ecuadorean girl. “What happened in Barcelona is an isolated incident that cannot be tolerated, but the signs are that society is adapting to immigration in a mature way.“

Not everyone agrees with that assessment. The European Commission Against Racism, a network of pressure groups, said in a report that Spanish authorities were in denial about the existence of racism in the country. It charged the Socialist Government with “cowardice” in tackling the issue.

The standard Spanish response is, "We're not racist, we're just trying to insult whoever it is we dislike, and so if the recipient of our abuse is black, we'll give it to him for that."

Of course, I call bullshit on that. It is true, though, that Spaniards tend to be insensitive toward the feelings of others, and frequently downright rude by international standards. They hand one another the same kind of taunting that they hand outsiders. Also, Spain has always been somewhat of a provincial backwater, and many people here have no idea of what is considered acceptable behavior in the world at large.

Get this: A commenter at TV3's website said that Catalonia is not racist, and the incidents were caused by non-Catalan Spaniards. Yeah, right.

Judge Garzon ordered the arrests of Pernando Barrera, the spokesman for the banned ETA-front party Batasuna, and fellow pro-terrorist bigwig Patxi Urrutia, on charges of belonging to a terrorist organization. 19 of the 38 members of Batasuna's central committee are now in jail, either awaiting trial or after sentencing. Good.

Alzheimer's sufferer Pasqual Maragall has bolted the Catalan Socialist Party and, in an incoherent article in La Vanguardia, encouraged the citizens to turn in blank ballots at the March 9 election. Pasky's own brainchild embryonic political party, the Catalan Party of Europe, failed to submit a list of candidates and so cannot participate in the election. Somebody please get this guy to shut up before he makes a completer ass of himself than he already has. It's embarrassing to have him running around jabbering nonsense while billed as the former Barcelona mayor and Catalan premier. Oh, well, at least his silliness makes the Socialists look bad.

More racist public behavior in Spain: A bunch of fans of the racing driver Fernando Alonso screamed vile insults at his British rival, Lewis Hamilton, who happens to be black, at the Circuit de Catalunya racetrack in Montmeló. They got away with it on Saturday, but on Sunday the organizers actually kicked some of the loudmouths out, something soccer clubs do not do. The international federation has threatened the management with sanctions if it happens again, which doesn't seem like a strict enough punishment to me.

The British police, in a secret operation, arrested six suspected Pakistani terrorists at Gatwick Airport ten days ago after receiving a tip from the Spanish CNI. These guys are supposedly linked to the recently broken-up Barcelona cell.

So. This is good news. I'm always glad when terrorists get caught before they kill somebody. What I'd like to know, though, is where all the human-rights crowd is. We lock up a few hundred terrorists captured under arms, illegal combatants who have no rights at all under international law, and they pitch a fit and call us Nazis. I'd just like to know how many people the Europeans have locked up somewhere supposedly awaiting trial.

El Pais's election survey released today, in the wake of the Gallardon PP antics, and Zap's international and domestic embarrassments, shows the race very close: PSOE42.0% of the vote, PP 38.6%, IU (Communists) 5.1%. Turnout is expected to be about 73%, less than the 77% that voted in the 2004 election, which favors the PP. Also, three-quarters of PP voters in 2004 will repeat their vote, while only two-thirds of Socialists will do the same.

Campaign promise update: Carmen Chacon says the central government will spend €12.5 billion on the Catalan railway system. Meanwhile, Zap has decided he's going to use the Church as a punching bag in order to bring out his hardcore anti-clerical voters.

The shit is hitting the fan in Chad; there's an opposition revolt on and they've killed the head of the army. There is combat in the streets of the capital. France is evacuating Westerners, including six Spaniards; six more are still in Ndjamena. Let's hope this doesn't get too nasty.

Publico runs as its front-page lead story the bogus report from a George Soros-funded activist group, the self-proclaimed Center for Public Integrity, that the Bush administration made up some 900 lies about the Iraq war. As if it were a fact. They also claim that 150,000 people in Iraq have died, which is far too high, and of course they fail to mention that the great majority of those people were killed by the same terrorists who are trying to kill the Americans.

Publico is, of course, the Zap administration's lapdog media outfit. Zap's running against the Iraq war again, and there's no better way to do that than stick photos of Bush and Aznar on the front page with the headline "Five years of lies."

La Vanguardia has lots of coverage of the US primaries, most of whioh is pretty reasonable. However, they gave Andy Robinson the first two pages of the international section to use the movie "Crash" as an illustration of everyday life in LA, where the white man divides and conquers by pitting the blacks and Hispanics against one another. I swear next time somebody refers to a FICTIONAL GODDAMN MOVIE to explain purported facts about the United States, I am going to tie him up, super-glue his eyelids open, and force him to watch "The Green Berets," "Red Dawn," and "Missing in Action" over and over again until he begs me to waterboard him for a change.

So what do you know: in the magazine section Xavier Batalla uses "Mr. Smith Goes to Washington" to explain Obama's appeal. Look out, Mr. Batalla, I'm coming after your ass.

When the big news today is that Catalan basketball player Pau Gasol has been traded from Memphis to Los Angeles, you know there's not much going on. Gasol had wanted to get out of Memphis for years, and has whined about it in the past. He and his family have shot off their mouths about how Memphis is too small-town hick middle American for their exquisite taste, them being from Sant Boi and all.

Now let's see how he does under big-city media pressure.

One peculiarity: The Spanish press is reporting that Gasol "signed" (fichó) with the Lakers. No, he was traded to them for a couple of other players and two draft picks; he didn't have much choice in the matter, though of course he's happy about it. "Signed" also implies a new contract; Gasol is still under the terms of his old contract, and will be until it expires.

Here's Iberian Notes's commentary on how Gasol wore out his welcome in Memphis last February, including some choice anti-American ranting.

Economic news: Automobile sales in Spain are down 13% over January last year, which does seem to point at an economic slowdown. Even Zap says there's one coming, though there's no reason to think it'll be catastrophic. Catalan savings bank La Caixa saw an 18% decline in its profits, though they were still a nice healthy €2.5 billion in 2007. At midday the Ibex 35 was up 1.1%, so it looks like the panic that started two Mondays ago has finished. The IMF is predicting that the euro's value will decline--it sure doesn't seem like it can go too much higher--and that this ought to help out Spain's trade deficit, since the high price of the euro makes Spanish goods less ocmpetitive.

Today's campaign promise: Zap says he'll spend €10 billion on the Barcelona commuter rail system, twice what he promised to spend on the Madrid commuter network.

Our friends on the anticlerical left are angry because the Church criticized the Zap government for negotiating with ETA. Seems to me that the Church should be a private organization that can say anything it wants. It's not, though, in Spain, since it receives government subsidies, in clear violation of the concept of the separation of church and state. The left tends to fantasize about an all-powerful Church, but I don't think it really has that much influence, expecially not over government or the economy.

They found a beer keg full of thirty kilos of explosives by the side of a rural road in the Basque town of Guecho. It's not a bomb, since it had no timer or detonator or anything like that. The cops figure that an ETA logistics cell dropped it off in an inconspicuous spot for an operational cell to pick up.

Everyone's talking about the demise of Tele 5's "Aquí hay tomate," the sleaziest celebrity scandal TV show in Spain, and one of the most popular. It was number one in the ratings for a long time, and got three million viewers an episode. "Tomate" was the most-sued program in Spanish TV history.

Don't worry, there's plenty more sleaze out there where it came from. Remember "Patricia's Diary"? After that scandal when the show managed to provoke a murder, they were on their best behavior for a couple of weeks, with nice stories about kitty cats and little kids. Then they went back to their old format, of course; their most recent triumph was some poor woman who was looking for her father, who had abandoned the family forty years ago. So they traced the guy down and invited the woman on the show for a surprise. The tension is building, as Patricia goes through the details of the father's life after he left, and the woman is all happy and ready for her dad to walk out on stage for a reunion--and Patricia then tells her that he's dead. The woman, of course, bursts into hysterical tears, and it's another good day for the ratings.

Although the Catalan university teachers say their students can't read or write in any language, the educational department plans to require university students to pass the First Certificate English exam to graduate. Yeah, right, when pigs fly. They're going to require that ten per cent of university classes be given in English. Yeah, right, when pigs fly. Get this: 45% of Catalans between 15 and 29 claim that they "dominate" English. Yeah, right, pigs are flying.

They analyzed the sewage at the El Prat water treatment plant, and discovered that it accumulates between 1.5 and 3.5 kilos of cocaine a day--and it only serves half the city. (The cocaine metabolizes in the body and is excreted through urination.) That means that up to 3% of Barcelonese citizens use cocaine daily. The analysis also discovered the presence of ecstasy, amphetamines, LSD, and morphine, as well as pharmaceuticals: ibuprofen, antibiotics, and beta-blockers. The beta-blockers are killing some insects that are part of the Llobregat river food chain.

La Vanguardia again gave the first two pages of its international section to the US primary elections; Joaquin Luna calls McCain "a Republican candidate who is acceptable to European tastes." I may have to review my choice of candidate, on the grounds that if the European media likes McCain there must be something wrong with him.

Barça beat Villarreal 1-0 last night in a fairly good game to qualify for the semifinals of the Copa del Rey, the Spanish Cup. They face Valencia in the semis; the other semi will be Getafe-Racing Santander. You have to figure that Barcelona is the favorite to win out, but I don't think a Cup title will make up for two consecutive second-place League finishes. Ronaldinho played ten minutes at the end of the game, and Puyol got hurt again and is out for a month. His physical decline is appalling.

I've noticed that I've been getting links from alleged blogs that seem to be nothing more than a webcrawler, with no human attached. One of them is titled "John Edwards," one says it deals in Arkansas real estate, and one is just titled "Barcelona." Are these some kind of spam blog? Why would they exist? I don't get it.

Most of the news around here is campaign stuff. Rajoy got a feather in his cap yesterday when he received the endorsements of Nicolas Sarkozy and Angela Merkel, both of whom are considered reasonable moderates in Spain. He got his picture taken with them shaking hands and everything. This makes Zap look especially bad because he didn't get invited to the big boys' EU economic meeting and Italian lame duck Romano Prodi did. Zap had a meeting with Merkel today; that must have been a bit awkward.

There has been a popular backlash against all the rash campaign promises both sides have been making; the general reaction is "They're trying to buy our votes."

Meanwhile, the PP is attacking the Catalan system of linguistic immersion, in which public schools give all classes in Catalan except for a couple of hours of Spanish a week. They're right, of course; the system ought to be bilingual, since Catalonia is a bilingual place. What the PP is proposing is a quota system, under which some classes would be given in Spanish and others in Catalan. That seems a lot fairer to me.

This strategy, of course, is aimed not only at Spanish-speakers in Catalonia, but at the many people in the rest of Spain who are anti-Catalanist, which is fair enough, and also those who are anti-Catalan, which is not.

More transport screwups: Four Renfe commuter lines into Barcelona were shut down this morning, stranding a whole bunch of people; meanwhile, the FFCC line that runs southwest out of Plaza Espanya that was shut down during the high-speed line crisis has finally reopened, after three months.

Judicial incompetence: Three Ukrainians were convicted of a 2004 murder of an Andorran businessman (in sleazy prostitution and drug circumstances), and they got seventeen years each in jail. They committed a stupid-ass mistake in the procedure, and the three have been turned loose.

Meanwhile, the three squatters who left the cop in a coma at a February 2006 riot in Barcelona have been sentenced to between 39 and 54 months. That's ridiculous. They intentionally smashed him in the head with a rock. That's attempted murder. Six other rioters got two years each. The squatters are whining and saying the big bad justice system is out to get them. How pathetic. Those losers think they're playing a fun game of being amateur revolutionaries without any fear of ever being punished. Now that a handful of them get comparative slaps on the wrist--the three who tried to kill the cop would have gotten twenty years each at least in the US--they cry like babies because it's just not fair that they should be responsible for their actions.

Economics: Inflation in Spain over the last twelve months was 4.4%, and it's climbing. At noon the Ibex 35 was down 0.9%; the other European markets were down between one and two percent. Tourists spent €3.05 billion in Spain last year. That's a whole lot of money. We are the Florida of Europe, and Barcelona is our Miami.

La Vanguardia again devotes the two main pages of its international section to the American primaries. They're actually doing a pretty good job of covering the race so far.