National Court judge Ismael Moreno yesterday charged three of the suspected Pakistani terrorists with planning suicide attacks on Barcelona public transport (probably the metro) last weekend. Undoubtedly mass carnage would have been wreaked, London- or Madrid-style. Good thing they caught them in time. Moreno jailed ten of those arrested without bail. The three potential suicide bombers arrived in Barcelona in November and December of last year.

Moreno ruled, "Those arrested made up an organized group with a clear and specialized division of functions, ideologically linked by their profession of an extremist Islamic posture, in accordance with the principles of the Tabligh e Jamaa movement...The group had moved toward a more radical position that justified the indiscriminate use of violence as a legitimate tool to reach its political-religious goals...The nucleus had reached operative capability and was very close to achieving technical explosives capability, to be used in jihadist attacks, leading to the inference that the members of the alleged terrorist cell planned to carry out several different suicide terrorist actions last weekend, between January 18 and 20, on Barcelona public transport."

Judging by what I hear on the streets and the reader comments section in La Vanguardia, there is a serious backlash of anti-Pakistani racism going on around here. La Vanguardia's print edition repeats a few urban legends: that the government gives immigrants free apartments, that Pakistanis harass owners of shops they want to rent in order to force them to leave, that Pakistanis are all part of an illegal mafia organization that brings them over here and pays off the authorities, and the like.

We got a Google hit for "why do mens penises get stuck while having anal sex".

I don't think Iberian Notes has ever addressed this question, nor does it have any firsthand knowledge of the topic. Just a wild guess: Lubrication might be a factor.

Stock market news: The Ibex 35 was down 2.6% today at noon. Frankfurt, London, Paris, and Milan are all down a couple of points. La Vanguardia points at European Central Bank head Jean-Claude Trichet, who said this morning that controlling inflation was more important than lowering Euro interest rates. Investors, therefore, figure there will be no rate cut and thus no cheaper credit. However, it looks like the panic has been headed off at the pass.

Both political parties are trying to make hay out of the citizens' worries about the economy (which, I repeat, is not doing too badly, though things could be better). The PP is blaming everything on the Socialists, and the Socialists are blaming everything on the Americans. Both, of course, are wrong.

The Spanish government is going to begin the legal process of banning ETA-front political parties PCTV and ANV, under the Political Parties Act, on Friday. This means that they will not be able to run in the March 9 general election. Good. They've got evidence that these parties have the same funding structure as the already-banned front party Batasuna; among other things, notorious jailbirds and Batasuna bosses Arnaldo Otegi and Joseba Permach were using a PCTV credit card for their own nefarious purposes.

Get this: we had another major blackout in Barcelona this morning that affected 70,000 households in the city itself and its northern suburbs Badalona, Santa Coloma, and Sant Adrià. The power was off for twelve hours after a fire at the Badalona substation. They've jerry-rigged electrical supply again, but it'll take them fifteen days to repair all the damage. The infrastructure here in Barcelona really is crappy. The usual suspects say it's all Madrid's fault, of course.

The Guardia Civil arrested five members of the GRAPO's legal team this morning on charges that they're members of the organization. The Interior ministry says they were involved in "propaganda, financing, recruiting, proselytism, training, international relations, and information-gathering" for the terrorist group, which is Spain's leftover from the 1970s days of the Red Brigades and the Baader-Meinhofs. These guys are no joke; they've killed some 50 people in their career. The cops believe that they broke up the GRAPO's last functioning cell last year.

The judge released on bail two of the fifteen suspected Al Qaeda terrorists arrested last week in Barcelona. The rest of them get their hearings today.

Finally the Spanish press has an article on the death penalty that isn't full of hypocritical blasts at the US: La Vanguardia has a piece on capital punishment in Japan, where 46 death sentences were issued last year and nine criminals were hanged. They add that in Japan, the criminal's family is not informed of the execution until it is carried out, in secret. La Vangua says that the US, Japan, South Korea, and Taiwan are the only democracies that use the death penalty; what about India? And do Singapore, Malaysia, and Thailand count as democracies or not?

La Vangua also has a full-page piece on the South Carolina Democratic debate. Their reporter's take is that Obama was the loser: "(Obama) has a serious problem connecting with the lower-middle class and the Hispanics. His message is beautiful, but too intellectual and ethereal. He is a candidate who may captivate many Europeans, but will have a more difficult time with the Americans."

What they seem to be forgetting around here is that there are two political parties, and whoever gets nominated by the other one has a good chance at beating either Clinton or Obama. It's not just a Hillary-Obama horse race.

Local news: Wild pigs (jabalíes) are becoming a pest in the Barcelona suburbs and even on the fringes of the city near Collserola. I like them, myself, but the same thing is happening here now that happened in the US 20 years ago: wild animals, like deer, raccoons, Canada geese, and even black bears, have moved in with us because our nice, safe, green suburbs make an excellent habitat, with plenty of food and few predators. It seems, by the way, that the wild pigs' favorite foods are corn and sunflowers, but they also like pretty much any sort of human garbage.

This morning I tore out Pasqual Maragall's article from Monday's El Periodico; I derived great satisfaction from using it to pick up Perla the dog's poop while on our daily rounds.

There are two possible interpretations of this: 1) I am absorbing, osmosis-like, Catalan culture, along with its delight in everything scatological (see Robert Hughes, Barcelona), or 2) I am maturing and becoming more able to take pleasure in the smaller joys of daily life.

The Ibex 35 was at 12,880 late this afternoon, up 2% on the day. Looks like the fears of a crash have subsided. Telefonica is up 2.4%, Repsol is up 3.7%, Santander is up 4.5%, BBVA is up 2.9%, Iberdrola is down 2%, and Endesa is up 1.2%.

This afternoon the Spanish Ibex 35 came back, and is now more or less where it opened this morning. The other European markets have also recovered on the day. Everyone is waiting to see what Wall Street does. The Federal Reserve has just announced an interest rate cut of three-fourths of a point.

Here's Larry Kudlow of National Review. Note the second paragraph.

There’s a global stock market tsunami gathering force. It may hit U.S. shores very hard this morning.

Much of this is panic over a U.S. recession threat that has yet to clearly materialize. The world sell-off also vastly overestimates loan and credit problems among international financial institutions.

In any event, world central banks should immediately reduce rates and add liquidity first thing in the morning, no matter what the time-zone.

Fed head Ben Bernanke should have cut rates 50 basis points last week. He should do it first thing this morning. Then cut rates another 50 basis points on January 30.

Importantly, central banks must work together and cut rates together. They must coordinate to avoid major financial consequences. They must show investors, financiers, and business people that they are in charge.

In this deflationary environment, plunging commodities, stocks, and credit-risk-free government bond yields are all signaling central bankers to take charge. That means lower rates and more money creation.

Pronto.

Looks like the Fed more or less followed Kudlow's advice.

What happens when you give a retired politician with Alzheimer's a full page in El Periódico to opine on the American primary elections?

This, by former Catalan premier and Barcelona mayor Pasqual Maragall, on page 5 of yesterday's issue.

It is very difficult for Obama to win the elections in a country in which the "white anglosaxon protestants" (sic) have always governed. But the primaries seem to show that a miracle is not impossible. And I say a miracle, after the murders of John and Bob Kennedy, Martin Luther King, and Malcom X (sic), that is, the blacks or merely Catholics who have dared to say what America should be like and to have impossible dreams.

Some dreams kill, and if you don't believe it, ask Martin Luther King's widow. "I had a dream," (sic) said King. And he was a Protestant pastor, not a Catholic. But he was black, and they killed him. Or ask the wife of Colin Powell, the hero of the Gulf War, who said no to her husband's being a candidate for vice-president and, eventually, president. "They will kill him," (sic) she said. America is like that. On Main Street (sic), there is room for only one gunman, and that is the sheriff. They made poor Gary Cooper the sheriff against his will in High Noon, and he just barely got away in one piece.

Jeez. 1) What does High Noon have to do with the American primaries? 2) Talk about trying to explain everything about America through images from movies, all too common a sin in Spain. 3) Does anyone seriously believe that if Powell had run for office, he would have been assassinated because he's black? 4) Does anyone seriously believe that the Kennedys were assassinated because they were Catholic?

In Europe, authority comes from above: from God, the Church, history...In the first American Union it was different. The Pennsilvannia Dutch (sic) were there, with their wagons, hats, and beards. There were the South (Gone with the Wind) and the North. The North won, of course, and the Hispanic, Latin, and Catholic heritage nearly disappeared.

What the hell is this shit? What does Gone with the Wind have to do with anything? Or the Pennsylvania Germans, of whom the Amish are a minuscule sect? And since when were the antebellum Southerners Hispanic, Latin, or Catholic? They were more WASP than anyone else.

Northern Europe won out over Southern Europe in America too. As when, after the Invencible Armada, England won out over Spain. "You are a conquistador when you can't be a pirate," said Francis Drake, a pirate who was made a sir (sic) by Elizabeth I of England. But now something extraordinary is happening: the blacks of the South, though Obama was born in the North, may govern North America.

I mean, really. What does Sir Francis Drake have to do with the Nevada primary? And what do American black people have to do with Southern Europe? It's racist as hell, genuinely racist, to say that "the blacks of the South" will govern the country if Obama wins. The whole point is that Obama is an individual, not just some black guy, and if he wins, the minority group he belongs to will no more take over power than the Southern Baptists did when Carter was president. I mean, come on. If Joe Lieberman were elected, would Maragall say that the Jews had taken over America? If Romney wins, does that mean the Mormons are going to take over? With José Montilla as premier, does that mean the charnegos have taken over Catalonia?

Obama has some of all the "non WASP" (sic) ingredients, except that he's Protestant. He is a Gary Cooper who dares to defy the more or less corrupt establishment (sic); he is black like Malcom X (sic), King, and Powell, and he is charismatic like Kennedy, or he may be.

Are they going to kill him? It is more difficult now. The United States is not what it was. They can no longer completely ignore world public opinion. Europe is tied in per capita income and has a tighter spectrum of wealth distribution. Less poverty. This may help Obama, if the people are conscious of it. Possibly the minority that votes in the American elections, about 50%, is. Soon we will know. Everything points to a mobilization of women and Afro-Americans. We can't ask for more novelties.

Who is this "they" who might murder Obama? Is it that same evil conspiracy that did away with King and Malcolm X while ignoring world public opinion? What is this crap about the so-called establishment in the US being more or less corrupt? And what the hell do the facts that Europe is not tied with the US in per capita income, and that Europe does not have less poverty than the US, have to do with anything?

To finish, have you noticed that if the black Barack Hussein Obama wins the confrontation with the most extremist third world (Bin Laden), it will be a confrontation of first cousins? Obama/Osama? Isn't this a foretaste of a world scene different from the habitual North/South, East/West?

Obama and Osama are first cousins? What is this shit?

More stock market news: The Ibex 35, Spain's main stock index, is down more than one percent in the first hour of trading this morning. It fell 4% in the first few minutes, and then recovered somewhat. The Ibex went below 12,000 points before its (temporary) comeback. All the banks are off, with Santander and BBVA down 5% each early today. Repsol is down 7% and Telefonica is down 3%.

In Europe this morning, Frankfurt, London, and Paris are down three percent, Zurich is down four, and Milan is down five.

Yesterday's final results showed the Ibex down 7.5% to finish at 12,625 points. The biggest losers were Iberdrola (-12.5%), Sacyr Vallehermoso (-11%), Gamesa (-10%), Repsol (-10%), Santander (-9%), and Acciona (-8.5%).

La Vanguardia's finger-pointing focus this morning is Bush's tax cut plan, supposed to stimulate the economy, which it says is insufficient to stem the market slide. Maybe, but there must be dozens of other factors as well.

Stock market update: The Madrid Ibex 35 stock index fell 7% today to finish well below 13,000 points. Iberdrola, Banco Santander, and Repsol are all down eight or nine percent. Frankfurt is off six percent and Paris is off 5%.

Fortunately today is Martin Luther King Day in the States and the NYSE is closed, so everyone will have time to calm down a little and reflect.

I know nothing about the stock market except that schloops like us can't beat it, that there's no way (without illegal inside information) to predict which stocks will rise or fall at any given moment. The only thing you can do is put your cash in a diverse mutual fund, which ought to give you results more or less the same as the market average. And the stock market average does do better than any other investment does, over the long term.

Small investors will be hit hard; 7% of their share value has just disappeared. If you had €10,000 in Santander stock yesterday, you now have €9300. Unlike some folks around here seem to think, though, this money hasn't gone into someone else's pockets. If we use the standard analogy of the pie, then it's the whole pie that shrank, and everyone's piece just got smaller. Nobody's piece got bigger.

Iberian Notes's honor has been slandered. We have been accused of misogyny for calling Carmen Chacon an airhead.

We plead innocent, and adduce two pieces of evidence:

1) In the very same post in which we called Ms. Chacon an airhead, we praised Manuela de Madre and Pilar Rahola, both of whom are women.

2) A search shows that Iberian Notes has only used the word "airhead" once before: to describe two men, John Kerry and John Edwards, on April 26, 2003.

The Spanish stock market is taking a sharp slide today. At noon it had fallen below 13,000 points, down more than 4 percent. Sacyr Vallehermoso (the contractor that just won the bid to dig the tunnel under Barcelona to connect the AVE to La Sagrera) and Repsol YPF are down by more than 7%. Iberdrola is down 6%, Banco Santander is down nearly 5%, and Endesa, BBVA, and Telefonica are all down about 3%.

Stocks are down around the world this morning, with Paris, London, Frankfurt, and Milan all down about three percent and Tokyo down four percent. La Vanguardia's analysis says it's due to fear over an upcoming recession in the US; El Periodico and TV3 more or less agree.

Just a comment: I have no doubts about the honesty and patriotism of the Spanish intelligence service and the police, and I have no doubts about the staff of the Catalan police, either. However, I do not trust the politician in charge of the Catalan regional interior department, the Communist Joan Saura, and I certainly hope nobody tells him about any intelligence or police work that needs to stay secret.

Further information on the terrorist cell broken up in Barcelona: The fifteenth man arrested is also Pakistani. Most of the members of this cell are part of a radical Islamist sect called the Tabligh; the mosque that was raided on Calle Hospital is run by an imam from that group. They were planning attacks in both Barcelona and France; the Barcelona attack was to be a suicide bombing in another Barcelona mosque at prayer time on a Friday.

Police had been watching them for five years, and the cell had recently received financing through the Pakistani hawala money-lending network. They say that not all those arrested had the same degree of implication in the plot. More arrests may yet be made.

La Vanguardia has an election survey out (note: it was taken before the Pizarro and Gallardon stories broke), showing the PSOE with 42.3% of the vote and 162-164 seats, compared with the PP's 39.8% and 154-156 seats. Neither party would have an absolute majority, since 176 seats are needed. Presumably the Communists and their 5 seats would join up with the Socialists, meaning that they'd still have to deal with some combination of CiU (8 seats), the PNV (7), and ERC (6).

This is really close, just barely within the survey's margin of error. Though the survey shows that most Spaniards have a better opinion of Zap than of Rajoy, they don't completely hate Rajoy either. The PP has a chance at winning this one. Let's hope the Gallardon affair doesn't do too much damage. PP voters don't have anywhere else to go but abstention, but Gallardon is popular in Madrid and a few of his supporters might be so angry they'll stay home.

The debates that Zap agreed to with Rajoy take on new importance. They give Rajoy a chance he wouldn't otherwise have had at a direct confrontation. You can't dance with the champ, you have to knock him out, and Rajoy needs to clobber Zap, which I think he can do. Even better: the second debate is only six days before the election, meaning that Zap won't have much time to counter the effects of a defeat in the debates.

The results in Catalonia will be a clear Socialist victory, with the PP gaining a seat or two, the Commies and CiU staying about the same, and Esquerra losing a seat or two. No surprises here.

La Vanguardia predicts the key to the election will be the voters' pocketbooks, which does not look good for Zap. Not that the economy's going too badly, but inflation is up and credit is tight, and there are complaints among the citizens. El Periodico has a survey saying that Catalans asked to name the region's three top problems answered: transport and infrastructure (32%), unemployment (26%), housing (25%), and immigration (24%). Well behind are "the economy," the cost of living, "politicians," health care, pensions, and crime.

The US primaries are getting plenty of coverage over here; La Vanguardia is claiming that the Hispanic vote was key to the Nevada primaries, for which they show absolutely no evidence. The cliché they love to mention in Spain whenever Nevada comes up in the news is that in the state's rural counties, there are a good few descendants of Basques who came over as shepherds about 125 years ago.

The anthropologists at Atapuerca report that the Homo antecesor people who lived there 800,000 years ago ate each other, and that the Homo sapiens who lived there much later did the same.

Al Qaeda in Catalonia update: This evening the police arrested one more man in the Raval, bringing the total of arrests to 15. The Catalan interior counselor, Mr. Feng Shui himself, Joan Saura, claimed that Catalonia was "not a nest of terrorists." TV3 says that, of all suspected Islamist terrorists arrested in Spain, one-third are arrested in Catalonia.

El Periodico is out ahead of everyone else on this story; they say that the foreign intelligence service that tipped off the Spanish CNI was the French, that the authorities have been surveilling these guys for three years, and that they made the decision to arrest them because an important Pakistani radical was coming to town.

The police found 50 grams of peroxide of acetone, which was the explosive used by the London transport bombers, among other substances that can be used to make explosives. They're investigating whether the radical big fish brought the peroxide of acetone to the Barcelona cell.

These guys apparently have connections in both Great Britain and Portugal. They are also connected to a group of Pakistanis rounded up here in Barcelona in 2004, who were sentenced to up to nine years in prison each for belonging to an Al Qaeda affiliate called Sunni Therik.

El Mundo has a photo gallery, but it's not very exciting.

Breaking news: The Guardia Civil arrested fourteen people, twelve Pakistanis and two Indians, suspected of forming a terrorist cell, early this morning in Barcelona. Police operations have not yet finished, and there may be more arrests. The cell was planning a terrorist attack in Barcelona; police discovered bomb-making equipment, including timers, and chemicals that can be used to make explosives. They are also thought to have recruited and financed volunteer terrorists for Afghanistan.

Interior minister Alfredo Perez Rubalcaba said that the cell had been very recently discovered by the CNI, Spanish intelligence, with assistance from authorities in other unnamed countries. He added that the cell has not yet been linked to Al Qaeda, but that a connection has not been ruled out, and that it was a well-organized group. (El Periodico headlines that the cell was part of Al Qaeda, specifically a Pakistani branch called Mohammed's Army.) Rubalcaba also said that radical Islamists consider Spain a top priority target.

All the arrests happened in the Raval district, the area of the old city between the Ronda Sant Pau and the Ramblas, with a very heavy immigrant population; some of them were arreated at the unofficial mosque on Calle Hospital.

Note: The Spanish press has a language problem when talking about Indian citizens. "Indio" always refers to an indigenous North or South American, and so a citizen of India is a "hindú." Now, of course, some 10% of Indians are Muslims, and there are other religious groups like the Sikhs, too. In particular, I will bet you euros to churros that the two Indians arrested were most definitely not Hindus, but rather Muslims. But that's what La Vanguardia called them.

Milton Wolff, the last commander of the Washington-Lincoln Battalion of American Communist volunteers in the Spanish Civil War, died at age 92.

There is no question that Wolff was courageous.

That's about the only good thing I have to say about him.

He was a lifetime Stalinist, and served his master well in Spain, where he was eventually promoted to major in the Comintern's army. That is, he enforced the Party line. Each batallion had a Party political commissar, in charge of ideological purity. Of course, Stalin purged the International Brigades, just as he did the entire Comintern, and at least 500 men were executed, probably many more. Wolff not only knew this was going on, but actively participated, as is demonstrated by his survival and promotion.

The Lincoln Battalion did not particularly distinguish itself in combat; it mutinied after being thrown into the line at the battle of the Jarama valley in February 1937 and losing 120 men. The men blamed their officers, who were chosen by the Comintern for political reasons; one commander, Oliver Law, may have been murdered by his own troops. Wolff took over the batallion in April 1938 at the Battle of the Ebro.

Though Wolff served in Burma and Italy during the Second World War, he had no sympathy for the Allied cause until the Germans invaded the Soviet Union, as is seen in this quote:

"We fight against the involvement of our country in an imperialist war from which the great majority of the American people can derive only misery, suffering, and death."

Milton Wolff,
Volunteer, Abraham Lincoln Brigade
Speech, Veterans of the Abraham Lincoln Brigade Convention, May 1941

In the same speech, Wolff called President Roosevelt "a red-baiting, union-busting, alien-hunting, anti-Negro, anti-Semitic president on a jingoistic road to Fascism in America."

A few months later Wolff's opinions on the US entering the war changed for obvious reasons, and "Wild Bill" Donovan, the founder of the OSS, asked Wolff to recommend some of his men. Wolff was a Comintern agent controlled by Eugene Dennis, a member of the Party Politburo, and Dennis gave Wolff clearance from Moscow to recruit some thirty Lincoln battalion veterans to infiltrate OSS. Several of these people, including Jack Bjoze, Morris Cohen, and George Wuchinich, were proven to be Soviet agents by the Venona transcripts.

Wolff's postwar career included taking the Fifth Amendment before the Senate Subcommittee on Internal Security when asked whether he was a Communist Party member; mouthing pro-Soviet propaganda for the rest of his life; personally volunteering the services of the Lincoln Battalion veterans' organization to Ho Chi Minh; and raising money for both Castro and the Sandinistas. In addition, he probably invented and definitely spread the myth that members of the Lincoln Battalion were later classified by the War Department as unreliable "premature anti-Fascists.

Those who still sympathize with Stalin may consider Wolff a hero. I certainly don't.

Pilar Rahola is on a roll. This is from page 21 in yesterday's La Vanguardia.

Alliance...of what?

There is nothing worse than an ignorant person with good intentions. Of course, I would never dare compare prime minister Zapatero with a dunce, but I do think his international do-gooderism has led him to commit some of the most foolish actions of his administration. There is, for example, foreign minister Moratinos visiting Cuba and supporting the regime while ostracizing the democratic opposition. Or selling arms to the unpredictable and dangerous Hugo Chavez. Or being rude to the Americans while insulting their flag.* Or, of course, the lamentable incident when he wore a Palestinian kefia in the middle of the war in Lebanon.

If Zapatero's record were based exclusively on his international policies, we could justifiably start calling him Bambi again. Differently from his domestic policies, where he has made promises but not fulfilled them, in international policy Zapatero has been coherent, which is very bad news. When coherence means the systematic and uncritical application of the Little Red Book of the Good "Progre," with all the commandments of political correctness--"thou shalt hate the United States above all things"--taken to its most extreme limits, what we have is a fiasco, along with permanent improvisation.

From this do-gooder politically correct faith, born of the catechism of Mafalda, came an idea that is as pompous as it is disquieting, the Alliance of Civilizations, argued for at the UN with a simplicity that still today causes headaches among some intelligent minds of the left. This discourse included all the commonplaces that a certain paternalist left, of which Zapatero is a notable member, holds regarding Islam. If a common fault of the right is the lack of a sentiment of solidarity, then the left is suffering from an overdose of one-eyed solidarity that ends up allied to important enemies of freedom.

Look at the Alliance of Civilizations, which has begun its existence in Madrid. It seemed at its birth to be a contrast to the concept of a clash of civilizations, and so it won the easy applause of all those who think that complex problems require simple intentions. However, there is no clash, nor an alliance, among other things because there is no difference between civilizations. There is civilization--which includes the idea of free human beings--and there are those who want to keep their citizens, while hiding behind religious or ideological excuses, living in pure barbarism.

Civilization does not force a woman from Yemen to live in cruel slavery, or justify death by stoning in Saudi Arabia, or, in the name of a god, urge a young man to commit suicide while killing others anywhere in the world. This is a totalitarian ideology, religious fanaticism, and a medieval concept of society. That is, this is anti-civilization. When Zapatero, in the middle of the debate on Islamist terrorism, suggested an Alliance of Civilizations to which some of the most notable tyrants of the Muslim world would be invited as equals, he was committing an enormously dangerous mistake, one that is very unfair to all of those from the Islamic world who are fighting for freedom. That is why his Alliance is very perverse, very paternalist, and not effective at all.

With whom are we allying ourselves? With the satraps who go to official dinners at the Moncloa or with those who oppose all those regimes? With the violent sexism of fundamentalist Islam and its little oil kings, or the women who have raised their voices, risking their lives, to denounce it? Are we with King Abdulah bin Abdulaziz or with Ayan Hirsi Ali, Wafa Sultan, Talisma Nasrim, and so many other brave Muslim women? The answer seems to be clear: the freedom of women is not spoken of, nor is totalitarian fanaticism, nor anti-Christianity, nor anti-Semitism (which has become law in many of those countries). Therefore, we are left with a Bambi version of a song-and-dance routine. Lamentable, and in these times, highly irresponsible.

*In 2003, while he was leader of the opposition, Zapatero refused to stand up during an official parade when the American flag passed by. This nasty little symbolic snub cost Zapatero a good deal of international goodwill, and not only in the US.

Check this out. The Spanish National Library has digitalized more than ten thousand items from its collection. Here's the link. They have, among other things, manuscripts, books, engravings, drawings, maps, photos, and posters, including drawings by Velazquez and Goya, some of Leonardo's codexes, the first edition of El Quijote, engravings by Durer and Rembrandt, the 16th century atlas commissioned by Felipe II, and Civil War propaganda posters. Unfortunately, it's only in Spanish, so English-speakers may have some difficulty. They say they're going to digitalize more than 200,000 works over the next five years. See? It's possible to spend our tax money usefully. I bet this whole thing costs about one-tenth all the money wasted subsidizing crappy movies that nobody wants to watch.

Political bombshell in the PP. Madrid mayor Alberto Ruiz-Gallardon, the leader of the PP's moderate wing, announced that he may retire from politics after the March 9 election. He's stepped back from the position he took last night, when he said, "I have been defeated," and said he would certainly retire. Now he's saying that he will "reflect" after the election on what he'll do.

His motive was that PP leader Mariano Rajoy left him off the PP's Madrid list of candidates for the Congress of Deputies. Gallardon did make it clear that he was not bolting the party, as he encouraged his listeners to vote for Rajoy in March.

What this means: 1) The conservatives, led by Esperanza Aguirre, premier of the Madrid region, have won the power struggle within the PP. Piqué and Gallardón have been defenestrated. 2) This is the first open schism in the PP since the Aznar days; Aznar was always very good at keeping everyone in line and on message. 3) If Rajoy gets beat, he'll have to step down as leader, and Aguirre is now on top of the list to replace him. 4) This might cost the PP some votes among Gallardon supporters in Madrid. 5) The PP has moved strongly toward the traditional Catholic right and away from the center.

I keep saying that Spain needs a real liberal (in the European sense), moderate party, led by people like Gallardon and Pique, along with Miquel Roca, Rodrigo Rato, Rosa Diez, Fernando Savater, and Jose Bono. A party like that would win at least 15% of the vote and might just be the swing vote in the Congress.

I still hope Rajoy wins the election, because if he doesn't, it's four more years of Zap.

Get this: Catalan foo-foo green commie idiotarian Interior counselor Joan Saura, who is in charge of the police and crime and security and stuff like that, has had the main office redecorated along the principles of feng shui. I couldn't make this stuff up.

The Spaniah Olympic Committee has decided it doesn't like the new words for the national anthem, and won't use them in Beijing at the next Olympics. That effectively puts an end to that, since the new lyrics won't be submitted to the Congress of Deputies for approval. Bummer.

More hospital incompetence: Some crazy old guy in a long-stay hospital in Lleida beat his roommate to death with a hatchet. Jesus. He'd had the hatchet sneaked in to him six months ago, and had been planning to use it on somebody, he just wasn't quite sure who. He had also attacked somebody else in the past with a pair of scissors. Meanwhile, the private clinics in Barcelona are piling up with patients, too, due to the flu epidemic; this particular virus affects both the respiratory system and the digestive tract, and is very nasty.

Barça drew 0-0 against Sevilla last night in the second leg of their Cup tie, and qualified for the quarterfinals since they had drawn 1-1 in the first leg in Sevilla. Without Messi, Eto'o, and Ronaldinho, and Deco starting the game on the bench, it was a conservative, defensive, and non-speculative Barça team. Sevilla is very good; they're much better than their League record. Giovani and Bojan both got to play, and showed why they are future stars. One of the big English clubs should sign up Gudjohnsen, who is playing well but just doesn't fit in. Thuram is finished and should retire, and there are rumors that Zambrotta wants to go back to Italy next season. Milito has taken Puyol's job at center-back, and Puyol has moved over to right fullback in most games, replacing Zambrotta. Marquez is playing very well, sometimes at center-back and sometimes in the midfield, as is Abidal at left fullback. For someone who's 34, Sylvinho is doing a good job; he's still in very good shape, better than some of the younger players. I honestly think they have a chance to come back in the second half of the season, since Madrid isn't as good as its League record.

I suggest comparing this load of conspiracy wank from the Guardian and this collection of facts from the US Information Agency.

Here you go, movie fans: 102 million cinema tickets were sold in Spain in 2007, down 20 million from 2006, according to the ministry of culture. (And why we need one I don't know.) 13 million spectators saw Spanish movies, while the other 89 million saw foreign flicks. American movies grossed more than €380 million, and Spanish and British movies were tied for second with €70 million each.

This means English-speaking movies outgrossed Spanish movies by more than six to one--and Spanish movies are subsidized by the government! Give them free money and they still can't make anything people want to watch. Of course, those nasty neo-liberals would say that if you give them free money, they'll be even less likely to make something people might want to see.

"Pirates of the Caribbean III" was the top grosser, with "Shrek III" second and a Spanish flick, "El Orfanato," third. The rest of the top 25 grossing movies were all English-speaking except for number 25, "REC".

A statistic I would like to see is the percentage of spectators who watch English-speaking movies in English, what they call "original version" around here, as opposed to those that watch them dubbed into Spanish. I bet fewer than 5% of tickets sold are for movies in the original English.

By the way, I've noticed a lot of deaf people (how do I know? Because they talk to each other in sign language throughout the film) at theaters showing movies in their original language. This is because those movies are subtitled in Spanish, so the deaf folks can read what's going on.

The Spanish general election campaign is officially under way. The Catalan Socialists struck first with a genius idea: they've come out with their own Socialist perfume, which will be sold for one euro a bottle at Socialist rallies. So you know it must be real high quality stuff. This appears to have been a brainstorm of Carmen Chacón, the young airhead at the top of the PSC's Barcelona list. Manuela de Madre, a competent PSC machine politician and a self-made woman, was in charge of the unveiling of the product, and she admitted it was "a little bit silly." Not a bad publicity stunt, but no more than that; this is not the kind of move that impresses people with your seriousness.

The perfume's smell has been compared to air freshener and insecticide in the local press. The British media has also picked up on this one.

The PP did do something serious: they signed up Manuel Pizarro as their prospective economics minister, and he will run second to Rajoy on the PP's Madrid list. Pizarro is the former president of electric utility Endesa and of the Madrid stock market; when he was in charge of Endesa, he doubled the company's market value. He is closely associated with Rodrigo Rato, Aznar's old economics minister who went off to run the IMF.

The choice of Pizarro makes it clear that the PP is giving up on Catalonia, and is only hoping to bring out its hardcore voters here instead of trying to win the center. Pizarro is unpopular among Barcelona's business community, since he helped torpedo the deal through which Barcelona-based Gas Natural (partly owned by Catalan savings bank giant La Caixa) would have taken over Endesa.

More evidence: The PP is hammering hard on the nationalism issue both here and in the rest of Spain, blasting the current Catalan laws that discriminate against Spanish-speakers. There is a sizable anti-Catalan vote in the rest of Spain, and they are working their hardest to bring it out. Within Catalonia, this will only appeal to those who already sympathize with the PP. They won't get more than their usual 15% ceiling here; the latest surveys do show them picking up one or two seats in Catalonia, but they'd only go from 6 to 7 or 8.

My favorite Cataloony, Pilar Rahola--she's very solid on almost every other issue, and she's pro-US, pro-Israel, and anti-terrorist, but her blind spot is Catalan independence--has a piece in La Vanguardia blasting the FARC and Hugo Chavez for this business of releasing a couple of their 500 hostages. She says, "Those who are selling the most reactionary Latin American demagogy have won, those whose noise drowns out the words of the reasonable leftist leaders who also exist on the continent. The intellectuals of leftist hatred have won, those who only differ from right-wing hatred because the flags in which they wrap themselves seem more attractive." She praises Colombian president Alvaro Uribe, calling him "one of the best leaders in the entire region."

The crisis in the Barcelona hospital emergency rooms continues, with ambulances stacked up outside them waiting until the staff can get around to looking at them. There's a bad flu epidemic going on, and it's killing the weaker of the old folks. Hospital deaths are 25% higher than normal.

The bus drivers, whipped up to go on strike by the Trotskyist union CGT, and the city have been negotiating. They got nowhere; the CGT is unwilling to compromise. Even the Socialist UGT and Communist CCOO unions are against the strike.

They had a contest to write some lyrics for the Spanish national anthem, and some unemployed guy from like Albacete won. Let's just say that the new words aren't any better than those of any other national anthem, and considerably worse than the Marsellaise. By the way, the US could really use a new anthem, and I've always supported "This Land Is Your Land," by Woody Guthrie, even though he was a goddamn Communist. The tune is easily singable and the words make sense, unlike the one we have now. My second choice would probably be "Free Bird."

Very little news from around here, which is most definitely a good thing.

The Spanish Parliament has been dissolved, and the new one will be elected March 9, as we know. It should be a tight election; one hypothesis going around is that the PP wins the most seats but not an absolute majority, and has to depend on CiU to form a government. Zap and the PSOE are still ahead by a couple of points in the polls.

Factors to consider: The PP's voters are more likely to come out, as a general rule, and many PSOE voters in the last election were usual abstainers and so are even less likely to turn out this time. Spain's fairly mild economic problems have struck Zap at exactly the wrong time, since the economy's not predicted to pick up again until April; inflation and tight credit aren't going to help Zap any. However, Rajoy is not popular, and everybody thinks PP henchmen Zaplana and Acebes are dicks. The PP would stomp them if Rato were the candidate, but he isn't.

Balls-up in Buenos Aires: Aerolineas Argentinas, which is owned by the Barcelona travel agency Marsans, has been hit with a strike by its ground crew in BA and hasn't been able to fly since Friday. So the fed-up trans-Atlantic passengers in the secure area, who included at least some Spaniards, rioted, destroying airport facilities and attacking airline staff. Jesus. I understand they're pissed off, but you're not supposed to express your pissed-offitude with violence. These people rioted and should be treated as rioters, but of course the company isn't going to press charges, since they're in enough trouble as it is.

Speaking of assholes: One of my favorite Catalan traditions is Els Tres Tombs, when you go to the church in Sant Andreu on St. Antonio Abad's day (he's the patron saint of domestic animals) to get your animals blessed. This goes back to the old days, of course, when your living standard might depend on the health of your mule. Today you bring your cat, dog, or parakeet; Rosa used to bring her dog every year. They have a parade with horses and carriages and pass out candy to the kids, too.

So a bunch of the bus drivers, who are on an on-again, off-again strike, showed up and disrupted the proceedings on the ground that Mayor Jordi Hereu was there, and so they had to yell at him and annoy everybody else. They should have charged those jerks with the horse carriages; that would have gotten them the hell out of the way, and then the old ladies could turn their poodles loose to chew on the extremities of the wounded.

La Vanguardia is so hard up for news that today's lead story is, "Young families leaving Barcelona." Well, no duh, it's too damn expensive and the apartments are too small. Besides, suburbanization is a worldwide phenomenon, not just one of those un-Continentally Anglo-Saxon trends. The sociologists chalk it up to the Barcelonese not getting married until their mid-30s and then having 1.32 children per woman.

Note: They seem to have Hispanified the Americanism "gentrification" as "elitización," which isn't quite right; in the US, when a city neighborhood is gentrified, it means that middle-class people move in, not that the elite do.

Then the first three pages of the living section are about how traditionally-made bread is better than frozen-dough bread. Well, yeah.

One more: I've never understood why Spanish left-wing artistes, who normally have nothing good to say about anything American, are so quick to jump when offered an American award, no matter how insignificant. And the media has a collective orgasm. Case in point: Javier Bardem, of the notorious far-left Bardem family, just won the Golden Globe for best supporting actor. So who cares? But it's the second story on TV3, of all places, and the Bardems aren't even Catalan.

Somebody left a copy of yesterday's Público, Spain's new left-wing paper, around the café and I had a look at it this morning. (You might remember they were the ones running TV commercials featuring "readers" wearing T-shirts saying "Fuck Bush.") I get the idea this is going to become a steady fount of material.

Here's an opinion piece by one Daniel Vázquez Sallés on page 14 of yesterday's issue on the US primary elections, a popular topic this week in Spain. Its title is, "Mister Barack Obama or the American dream."

At first sight, Mr. Obama looks like one of those clean-cut be-bop trumpeters--close-cropped hair, perfectly-shaved chin, a suit that favors his slimness--, with his deep voice you would say that he's capable of whispering in your ear just like Chet Baker himself under the moon of April in Paris.

Very poetic. But I thought racial stereotyping was something only us Yankees did.

The truth is that Mister Obama has succeeded with the American electorate, and, most importantly, has managed to persuade a new generation of voters that has been active in its dislike for the political class for decades, and does not vote because of the ethical principle of dignity.

Wait. You're saying that those Americans who don't vote do so because they're ethically against it? Does that make any sense to anyone?

...a lacrimogenic Hillary Clinton (achieved) a tour de force which has allowed her to recover the ground lost by asking her loyalists for clemency. Very American. You think, from this side of the Atlantic, that those puddling-up eyes are crocodile tears, pure show business (sic) encompassing a certain old-fashioned tragedy difficult to understand for a European, less used to political comedy...

a) Hillary won the New Hampshire primary because she got a little choked up on stage? Bit simplistic, don't you think? b) My guess about why certain Euro alleged journalists ascribe such dumb reasons for the actions of American voters is that they themselves can't be bothered to do anything resembling research on what the different groups of said voters want from a candidate. c) Notice again how said Eurojournalists love to explain everything American with images. That's because they don't need to understand English to do so. They can't actually read the newspapers or understand the debates. d) Political comedy? You want political comedy, seems to me like Esquerra Republicana is the biggest laugh this side of the Raving Monster Loony Party, and Zap's Alliance of Civilizations is like something out of "Jackass."

Obama's great advantage is knowing how to use the new media and not feel uncomfortable among so much technology. Whether because of his age or his spirit of hard work, the reality is that the senator from Illinois knows how to take advantage of the media outlets not controlled by the big corportations, (like) Internet, YouTube.

a) Huh? Obama can't buy time on the media outlets controlled by "the big corporations"? Their news departments don't report on his campaign? b) So Hillary, Edwards, Giuliani, Romney, etc. just fell off a potato truck and haven't heard of these crazy kids' Internet thing? Besides, from what I've heard, it's Ron Paul who's using the Internet most effectively.

"Barack or the American Dream" could be the title of one of those black-and-white movies filmed by Frank Capra. If Hillary's tears do not conquer, what Barack Hussein Obama does once in the Oval Office, nobody knows. He will probably try to change the warlike policy and environmental strategy installed by Bush, Cheney, and Rice.

But the real hands that rock the cradle are the big majors (sic), the ones who install and remove presidents according to whether the Dow Jones or arms traffic rises or falls. They are the real power, that America that orders that God bless it, that America that orders the universe to bless it.

a) I guess this guy thinks a "major" is a large corporation. b) Note the Hollywood imagery, as usual. c) Conspiracy theory wank, of course--you just know those evil corporations are really controlled by the Rothschilds and the Rosicrucians. d) Foreign arms sales are a tiny percentage of the American economy, and at least we haven't sold any weapons lately to either Gadafi or Chavez, unlike certain Spanish prime ministers I can name. e) What the hell does that last line mean?

Fortunately or unfortunately, this circus they have put on during the 20th century has seen its midgets grow up, little bastards born and trained in camps in Afghanistan, Iran, Somalia, Venezuela, and an interminable list of nations that grew up under the great creator. Now, in full puberty, they discover that the mother is weakened and they want to emancipate themselves and slam the door.

Meanwhile, the citizens of America, so used to imposing external order as a basic foundation of their precious internal liberty, observe as the world escapes from their hands and they are vulnerable to the virus of terrorism. Faced with such a collective catharsis, a believing society like the Americans receives the candidates like the new Messiahs. Regarding fervor, Obama wins the prize. They have charged him with preventing climate change, defeating the Islamic enemy, returning self-esteem to the citizens, and as the song says, "that's show business" (sic), getting Doctor House to be the next vice-president of the USA.

We, from the provinces, will have to watch and obey.

Note that the author doesn't even pretend to sympathize with the American people, the way some other anti-Americans do.

I guess what I really want to know is: who takes this shit seriously? Does it actually make any sense to anyone? Why would an editor choose to publish it? Does anyone but me actually read it?

The American primary elections are getting tons of coverage in the Spanish press. Today La Vanguardia gives Hillary Clinton a front-page photo, and the New Hampshire story gets pages 3, 4, and 5. Then the story gets the second editorial on page 16, a Quim Monzó column on the same page, a Francesc de Carreras column on page 17, a Lluís Foix column on page 20, and a Jaime Arias column on page 5 in the Vivir section. They've pretty much got all a Spaniard might want to know about the primaries, and most of the coverage is pretty reasonable.

De Carreras, who is generally a good writer, makes an error when he says that "neocons" are people in favor of extremist Christian fundamentalist policies. No, people who have been labeled "neo-conservatives" are frequently Jewish and rather liberally-minded on social and religious questions; anyway, they see issues like, say, abortion or gay marriage, as unimportant compared with a tough foreign policy. The Project for the New American Century, called by some the "neocon bible," says absolutely nothing about religion or morality.

Arias is the only one who's full of crap. He says, just to wind things up at the beginning:

Rightly, for many years many Europeans have suggested that we should have the right to participate in the election of the president on whose policies our future, to a certain degree, depends on, and which we have seen with the influence of the American recession, petroleum at $100 a barrel, and the inflationary spiral..

Yeah, you'll get the right to vote in our elections when 1) you pay taxes to our government 2) agree to live according to our Constitution and laws and 3) give us the right to vote in your elections, too. What a dumb idea, and I've heard it repeated over and over by the usual suspects over here. You think that because the actions of China's government are important to the future of American citizens, that we should be allowed to vote there? Also, by the way, the US economy is not in recession, nor is it in an inflationary spiral. United States real GDP in the third quarter of 2007 increased at a 4.9% annual rate, and inflation over the first eleven months of 2007 was 3.9%.

Arias continues:

These price increases prove wrong those who believed in alleged profits from the intervention in Iraq.

Absolutely nobody (except ignorant moonbats) said that profits would be made from invading Iraq. Everybody with half a brain knows that war is very bad for business--trade is cut off, resources are used unproductively, people's talents and efforts are misdirected toward military purposes, taxes go up, expensive stuff gets destroyed, it costs a lot to clean up the mess, fit, trained, and educated young people get maimed and killed, and business and consumer confidence declines when the future is uncertain--and that is one reason why war is resorted to so rarely.

And he concludes:

Of course, in all this electoral hoopla, the great newspapers and TV networks of Yankeeland and some manipulated surveys are dominant. In large part, their interest lies in inflating the doubtlessly attractive personality of Obama, a swelling that is reminiscent of tactics used by other ultraconservative strategists in Europe itself. They are trying to support radical candidates with a double objective: to torpedo the moderates and denounce radical social programs, frightening the wealthy classes and provoking a healthy reaction.

A classic maneuver in order to later present themselves before public opinion, warning them that they must choose: "Either them or me." Now they seem to be saying, ""Either the Afro-American Obama, or us the neocons." When what they really fear is the return of the Clintons to the Casablanca (sic). That of Bill, above all.

Jesus Christ. What Arias should have written is something along the lines of:

I'm a paranoid conspiracy theorist who thinks that the American mass media is secretly in the hands of all-powerful racist neo-cons. I really don't know shit about anything, and I couldn't tell a primary election from my left testicle. But anyway, I have to make up a bunch of crap to fill up my space today. So here goes.

La Vanguardia has a list of the ten most watched on TV sports events of 2007. They were:

1. NFL Super Bowl, 97 million
2. Formula 1 Grand Prix of Brazil, 78 m.
3. Champions' League final, 72 m.
4. Rugby world championship final, 33 m.
5. World Cup track 100 meters, 24 m.
6. World Series final game, 24 m.
7. World Cup team handball final, 23 m.
8. Masters, last day, 21 m.
9. Wimbledon men's final, 21 m.
10. World Cup cricket final, 20 m.

I'm not actually that surprised; since it's not either an Olympic year nor the soccer World Cup, that's pretty much what I'd have figured. The article points out that 87 million of the Super Bowl viewers were Americans, and only 10 million were foreigners (and most of that lot probably Canadian). If we except the NFL as a peculiarly American phenomenon, then the world's biggest sports are, in order:

Auto racing
Soccer
Rugby
Track
Baseball
Team handball
Golf
Tennis
Cricket

Auto racing is the only sport big in every country in the world. There are lots of places where even soccer, generally considered the world's most popular sport, is not played, such as India and China.

The only one I don't get is team handball. What a retarded sport. If I ran a handball team, I'd sign up a six-foot-eight major league pitcher who can throw 95 miles an hour, pass to him every play, and have him fire away right at the goalie's nads every time. By the way, 16 million of the 23 million viewers were Germans.

Reminds me of a story from Jim Bouton's Ball Four. Back in 1963 the young flamethrowing Boston pitcher Dick Radatz was approached by a gentleman who invited him up to his hotel room, where he had a crate of oranges. Seems that the gentleman was a fetishist, and was willing to pay a couple of hundred bucks for Radatz to, and I quote, "throw oranges at his ass. Some of those oranges weren't too ripe, either, and they opened up some huge welts. That was my big year, too, when I could really bring it. He loved it."

Just one comment: The author of the article refers to us gringos as "subjects of Bush." Uh, no, that's Britain where people are subjects of the Crown. In the US we're citizens of a republic. That's sort of a basic difference there.

DOUBLE UPDATE:

Tom is absolutely right about "British subjects"; they legally became British citizens in 1983. That's what I get for listening to Murph without checking it myself.

The numbers on the most-viewed sporting events seemed off to me, too, so I checked them, and there are apparently two widely disparate ways of calculating viewership. With one of them you get very conservative figures like the ones above, and with the other one you get several billion people watching the World Cup final.

Here are the 2004 figures, for a comparison:

1. Football: Euro 2004 final Portugal v Greece 153 million
2. Olympic Games: opening ceremony 127 million
3. Olympic Games: closing ceremony 96 million
4. American football: Super Bowl 95 million
5. Olympic Games: men's 100m metres 87 million
6. Olympic Games: men's 200m freestyle swimming 66 million
7. Formula one: Monaco grand prix 59 million
8. Football: Champions League final Porto v Monaco 56 million
9. Basketball: NBA finals 25 million
10.= Tennis: Wimbledon women's singles final 21 million
10.= Tennis: Wimbledon men's singles final 21 million
12. Cycling: Tour de France final stage 16 million
13.= Football: FA Cup final Millwall v Man Utd 9 million
13.= Horseracing: Grand National 9 million
15. Rowing: University Boat Race 5 million

One of the two etarras (Martín Sarasola and Igor Portu) arrested yesterday admitted to being part of the cell that set off the Barajas airport bomb that killed two people. Interior minister Rubalcaba said that the terrorist the cops kicked the crap out of (Portu) had been resisting arrest. The police activity before the arrests apparently rousted two more etarras, named Mikel San Sebastián and José Iturbide, who booked it and are currently on the run. Meanwhile, the Guardia Civil found another ETA explosives cache, this one with 25 kilos.

Sarasola and Portu were also in on several other explosions that did serious property damage but killed no one. Their main job, though, was to serve as couriers of explosives and weapons to and from different ETA cells. They were what is called in Spanish police jargon "legales," that is, they had no police record and lived apparently ordinary lives with day jobs. Most terrorists that are arrested are "liberados," that is, known to the police and living undercover.

These dirtbags' plan was to set off a car bomb in the Azca shopping district of Madrid, which would undoubtedly have killed dozens of people if it had been carried out. I hope the cops were no more gentle with these guys than absolutely necessary.

No decisions will be made about the controversial high-speed train (AVE) tunnel, which is to connect Sants central station and the new train station in La Sagrera under the city, before the March 9 general election. It is supposed to run under Calle Mallorca, which will cause it to pass by the Sagrada Familia. A fuss is being kicked up by preservationists, who fear that the Gaudí temple (NOT cathedral, there's only one in a city and ours is downtown) may be endangered by the underground work. Your typical Luddites have joined in, as have those semi-fringe political parties who will sign on to oppose anything anybody's against.

Zap is passing out more free money. "Youths," persons under 30, will receive a 210 euros a month subsidy if they are renting an apartment, do not already own one, and have assets under €108,000. In addition, they get a no-interest €600 loan to pay the deposit. This is not pie-in-the-sky, they're already distributing the dough, just like they did with the payments to couples who have a child.

This is, of course, blatant age discrimination. The government's rationale is to help young people "emancipate themselves," that is, move out of their parents' house. I'm not sure why people under 30 deserve a subsidy and people over 30 don't, if they're living in the same economic conditions. If this were a subsidy to help poor people of any age pay their rent, I'd see the point, but that ain't what this is.

Merrill Lynch says that Spanish housing prices are in full decline, that housing starts are way down, and that credit has tightened up. They predict 2008 economic growth to be 2.5% in Spain, which is still good though not what we've seen in the last decade or so. They also predict the BCE will not raise interest rates until this summer, and so the government elected in March should cut taxes in order to increase disposable income and consumer spending. They say the average 2008 oil price will likely be about $82 a barrel, and that food prices around the world will continue to rise.

The logic behind this measure is that rents are really high in Spain, averaging €1000 (that's $1500, don't forget) a month in Barcelona. This is because the tenants' rights laws are so restrictive that nobody who doesn't absolutely need the money now rents out his empty place. (Also, it's much harder to sell a place that's occupied by renters, and during the recent housing bubble a lot of people were holding on to places waiting for the market to peak in order to sell. The market peaked in summer 2006. If I'm right about this, then rental prices should drop as more people decide to sell and more places come on the market.)

Portuguese author and darling of the left José Saramago is in the hospital and is so old that he's probably going to die. I'm sure he's a perfectly decent human being, and we wish him no ill will, but I don't like his writing or his politics. In fact, I think they both suck.

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.