News from around these here parts: La Vanguardia is actually providing fairly decent coverage of the American elections. Their man, Eusebio Val, seems to be pretty much transmitting the conventional political wisdom regarding the Democratic primaries, without too much bias. Congratulations to the Vangua for not turning this into another anti-American festivity.

Otherwise, there's nothing much new. The election campaign continues with both sides slagging off the other and Zap promising the moon--now he's going to build 60,000 apartments per year and rent them to young people at a rate no higher than 35% of their salaries. Yeah, right. One thing about Spain is that politicians don't bother explaining where the money is going to come from when they promise us what they think we want. I mean, if, say, Kerry made that proposal tomorrow in the US campaign, the very first thing both his opponents and the press would ask him is "So are you gonna raise taxes or cut spending somewhere else in order to get this money to spend on this program?"

Looks like the conspiracy theory du mois in the Vangua is the American plot against the Catholic Church manifested in the novel "The Da Vinci Code". Enric Juliana brought it up, some other guy wrote a piece I didn't translate which condemned the book but doubted there was actually a conspiracy, and now Josep Miro i Ardevol, a Catalan nationalist and pretty extreme Catholic, has this to say:

Things are what they are. When an operation is well-organized, we should admit it. And "The Da Vinci Code" is exactly that: an operation against the Church from a high-level source, at least as good as the anti-Jewish poison of the "Protocols of the Seven Elders of Zion". In that case the real author, it was learned, was the Czarist police. In this one, from the beginning, it's notorious public knowledge that it is Daw (sic) Brown. But what we haven't learned yet is the collective that is supporting it, the same that amplified to the point of paraoxysm the cases of pederast homosexuality of some American priests. It's the American political collective, which the excellent journalist Enric Juliana has described in these very pages. It will not be their last operation while the Catholic Church, truly universal and gifted with a strong center, as is the Papacy, continues as an alternative to the hegemonic model of globalization.

a) We will give credit where credit is due. Mr. Miro i Ardevol shows no signs of anti-Semitism and denounces the Protocols of Zion as a forgery by the Okhrana, which is what they were.

b) Mr. Miro i Ardevol is alleging an American conspiracy against the Church. That is nuts. Period. One-third of Americans are Catholics. Does Mr. Miro think that one-third of the responsible people in the US government are not Catholic? Of course they are. How is a plot like that going to be managed? This is flat-out paranoia.

c) Mr. Daw (sic) Brown's book is a NOVEL. It does not pretend to be the truth. It is a mystery-thriller, apparently trying to appeal to the same crowd that likes those boring Umberto Eco books and that insanely confusing Robert Ludlum crap. The basic theme of a mystery is that things are not what they seem and the detective must discover how. Very often, the thing that is not what it seems is a respectable organization, very frequently the US government (Seven Days in May, Six Days of the Condor, The Manchurian Candidate, JFK, etc. etc.) In this case, the rogue organization is the Catholic Church. I cannot think of another popular novel in which the Church is the infiltrated organization. Let me repeat: for Christ's sake, this is a work of fiction! And it's coming out of the same "anti-Catholic" American media industry that is also producing Mel Gibson's ultra-Catholic version of Jesus's martyrdom!

d) It is reprehensible for Mr. Miro to minimize the damage caused by the pederast (NOT homosexual, the two things are completely different; the great majority of gays, like the great majority of straights, are not pederasts) priests in the United States. The problem is not so much that there were a few pederasts in the priesthood; every large organization attracts some bad apples. But if the Church had been responsible, it would have moved its pedos to positions in which they had no access at all to children. And it would have turned in those who were perving off with kids, or at least gotten them some professional help. But the Church was not responsible and it tried to cover up the scandal while not transferring the pervopedos to Greenland to convert the walruses. This is why the archbishop of Boston had to resign. That is a goddamn disgrace. The Church is terribly embarrassed in the United States and deservedly so, and it's going to take a few years of penance to recover its former moral status.

e) It would be an extremely bad idea for the Church to ally itself with Old Europe and the Thirdworldistas against the "hegemonic model of globalization", which I think refers to American / British-style semi-capitalist democracy. (Of course no modern state is anywhere near laisser-faire capitalism.)

Sports: FC Barcelona is on a roll; they beat Osasuna away 1-2. Not that Osasuna is a particularly good team, but they're pretty tough at home. Saviola scored and Ronaldinho manufactured a goal all by himself which he put away with a chilena (bicycle-kick). I must admit that Edgar Davids is playing very well and that the team has been winning since they acquired him. Now, he's earning a million and a half euros from Barca for less than half a season, but that's pretty cheap figuring that Kluivert is costing you four million a half-season and he ain't doing shit. Not to mention the uselessness of the very expensive Marc Overmars. I'd recommend that Barca do what it can to bring Davids back next year if he keeps playing like this. He's 31, and Juventus decided he was over the hill, but it looks like they, and I, might have been wrong.

In the Spanish league, it's Real Madrid with 52 points, Valencia with 50, and Deportivo with 46, who are way out in front of everybody else and will certainly win three of Spain's four spots for the Champions League next year. Madrid, an enormously talented team that has until now played close to expectations, seems to be getting better and better, but Valencia is keeping pace just two points behind, and if either of them falters Deportivo has a chance to get into the race, too. I really like Valencia. They're a terrific team, and they play together like one. They don't have the big superstars that Madrid has, but all their players are good and they all play their asses off. As for the fourth spot for the Champions League, right now it belongs to no one else but FC Barcelona with 37 points, followed by Athletic Bilbao and Atletico Madrid with 36 each. Ronaldo is leading the league with 19 goals in 23 games, way ahead of Mista of Valencia with 13. Fernando Torres of Atletico has 12; rumor has it Barcelona is going to buy him for next season.

In other leagues: In Italy, Milan, Roma, and Juventus are way out ahead of everybody else. In England, it's Arsenal, Man U, and Chelsea bunched together at the top. Werder Bremen is out front in Germany but not by too much, with Bayern, Stuttgart, and Leverkusen behind them, and in Holland it's down to Ajax and PSV. Rumor has it that Barcelona wants to buy Van de Vaart from Ajax. Madrid is denying rumors that they're trying to buy Totti from Roma for next season.

Just a comment: I think that the United States was very lucky to have Roosevelt, Truman, and Eisenhower as Presidents between 1932 and 1960, the critical years of the 20th century. Every other nation had some kind of problem with their leadership at some time during that period. In Britain Stanley Baldwin and Neville Chamberlain were jokers (Churchill wasn't, but of course he was half-American); in France so were Daladier and Blum and Laval, though not De Gaulle; in Italy so was Mussolini. Hitler and Stalin and Chiang and Mao and the Japanese militarists were no jokers, but they were also all extremely bad people. In the States, you may disagree with Roosevelt's 1933-38 New Deal proto-socialist economic policies, which I about halfway do object to, but except for that we had somebody dependable running the country at all times. And the New Deal certainly did not wreck the country; it just probably wasn't the best economic policy for the times.

This post is a continuation of our series on the atomic bomb.

III. Leading Up to the Bomb

The Americans had captured Iwo Jima and Okinawa, with heavy casualties. They had destroyed most of the Japanese navy and almost all Japanese shipping. (The Japanese were very poor at both submarine and antisubmarine warfare. American subs sank Japanese ships virtually as they pleased.) American battleships were pounding coastal zones on Honshu and hundreds of B-29s had been hitting Japanese cities every day since February. A total of 260,000 people were killed in the March-August 1945 camapign of terror bombings against Japanese cities.

But the Japanese would not surrender.

The destruction continued relentlessly, at virtually no loss to the American bomber crews but at appalling cost to Japan; by July 60 percent of the ground area of the country's sixty largest cities and towns had been burnt out. As MacArthur and other military hardheads had argued, however, the devastation did not seem to deflect the Japanese government to continuing the war. In early April (1945), after failing to draw China into a separate peace, Koiso had been replaced as Prime Minister by a moderate figurehead, the seventy-eight-year-old Admiral Kantaro Suzuki; Tojo, though a deposed Prime Minister, nevertheless retained a veto over cabinet decisions through his standing in the army, and he and other militarists were determined to fight it out to the end. This determination exacted sacrifices which even Hitler had not demanded of the Germans in the closing months of the war. The food ration was reduced below the 1500 calories necessary to support life, and more than a million people were set to grubbing up pine roots from which a form of aviation fuel could be distilled. On the economic front, reported a cabinet committee instructed by Suzuki to examine the situation, the steel and chemical industries were on the point of collapse, only a million tons of shipping remained afloat, insufficient to sustain movement between the home islands, and the railroad system would shortly cease to function. Still no one dared speak of peace. Tentative openings made in May through the Japanese legation in Switzerland by the American representative, Allen Dulles, were met with silence: over 400 people were arrested in Japan during 1945 on the mere suspicion of favoring negotiations.

In midsummer the American government began both to lose patience at Japan's intransigence and to yield to the temptation to end the war in a unique, spectacular, and incontestably decisive way. They were aware through Magic intercepts that the Suzuki government, like Koiso's before it, was pursuing backdoor negotiations with the Russians, whom it hoped would act as mediators; they were also aware that a principal sticking-point in Japan's attitude to ending the war was the "unconditional surrender" pronouncement of 1943, which all loyal Japanese recognized as a threat to the imperial system. However, since the Russians mediated in no way at all, and since the Potsdam conference following the surrender of Germany indicated that uncinditional surrender need not extend to the emperor's deposition, America's willingness to wait attenuated during the summer. On 26 July the Potsdam Proclamation was broadcast to Japan, threatening "the utter destruction of the Japanese homeland" unless the imperial government offered its unconditional surrender. Since 16 July President Truman had known that "utter destruction" lay within the United States's power, for on that day the first atomic weapon had been successfully detonated at Alamogordo in the New Mexico desert. On 21 July, while the Potsdam meeting was in progress, he and Churchill agreed in principle that it should be used. On 25 July he informed Stalin that America had "a new weapon of unusually destructive force". Next day the order was issued to General Karl Spaatz, the commander of the Strategic Air Forces, to "deliver its first special bomb as soon as weather will permit visual bombing after about 3 August 1945 on one of the targets: Hiroshima, Kokura, Niigata, and Nagasaki". The attempt to bring the Second World War to an end by the use of a revolutionary super-weapon had been decided.

Source: The Second World War, John Keegan.

The subject of Noam Chomsky and his credibility has been brought up. Here is the best piece I know of on the subject, a complete intellectual demolition of Chomsky by Australian historian Keith Windschuttle in the New Criterion. Just in case you don't believe Chomsky is completely irresponsible, check out this passage by Windschuttle:

Despite his anti-Bolshevism, Chomsky remained a supporter of socialist revolution. He urged that “a true social revolution” would transform the masses so they could take power into their own hands and run institutions themselves. His favorite real-life political model was the short-lived anarchist enclave formed in Barcelona in 1936–1937 during the Spanish Civil War.

That ought to be all you need to know about Chomsky right there.

Here's a long tirade, mostly about Chomsky's anti-Semitic and neo-Nazi connections in France, by one Werner Cohn, who certainly does dislike Chomsky. Cohn attacks Chomsky from an old-time left-wing and pro-Israeli position.

Here is a 1998 article by Brad DeLong on Chomsky's falsification of alleged facts from alleged sources, and at the bottom it contains a series of links to other pieces denouncing Chomsky's mendaciousness. This is a 2002 article by DeLong on the same subject with new and different information.

This is a David Horowitz all-out assault on Chomsky, written right after 9-11. Horowitz is an American right-wing political activist, a converted Marxist, for those of you who haven't heard of him.

Wanna see Chomsky hang himself with his own words? Here's what Noam broadcast over Radio Hanoi back in the glory days.

And finally, don't miss this crackpot piece claiming that Chomsky is working for the US military and that he's one of the Illuminati. David Icke will be picking up on this pretty soon and will denounce Chomsky as a tool of the reptilian aliens from outer space who control everything. Then where are our leftists going to base their arguments, after Icke's devastating expose on the Chomsky = reptilian connection?

UPDATE: The following specific accusations against Chomsky are made in the Windschuttle and Horowitz articles.

Noam Chomsky:

said the US deserved 9-11 because of the "extreme terrorism" of US foreign policy

praised Mao's China--during the Cultural Revolution

openly supported Vietcong terrorism and called for the same in the Philippines

supported the Khmer Rouge; denied the mass killings in Cambodia; accused his critics on this issue of lying; falsely claimed the Economist as his source

lied about the 1998 attack on the Bin Laden pharmaceutical factory in Sudan; claimed that it resulted in tens of thousands of deaths; lied, saying that Human Rights Watch was one of his sources

believes the media is a mass conspiracy putting out "systematic propaganda"

claimed that the Bosnian Muslims were America's "Balkan clients" while opposing all US efforts to deal with Slobodan Milosevic

still denies that Robert Faurisson, anti-Semite and Holocaust denier, is a Nazi

Horowitz's article lays out these pearls of Chomskyan belief:

According to Chomsky, in the first battle of the postwar struggle with the Soviet Empire, "the United States was picking up where the Nazis had left off."

According to Chomsky, during the Cold War, American operations behind the Iron Curtain included "a ‘secret army’ under US-Nazi auspices that sought to provide agents and military supplies to armies that had been established by Hitler and which were still operating inside the Soviet Union and Eastern Europe through the early 1950s."

According to Chomsky, in Latin America during the Cold War, U.S. support for legitimate governments against Communist subversion led to US complicity under John F. Kennedy and Lyndon Johnson, in "the methods of Heinrich Himmler’s extermination squads."

According to Chomsky, there is "a close correlation worldwide between torture and U.S. aid."

According to Chomsky, America "invaded" Vietnam to slaughter its people, and even after America left in 1975, under Jimmy Carter and Ronald Reagan, "the major policy goal of the US has been to maximize repression and suffering in the countries that were devastated by our violence. The degree of the cruelty is quite astonishing."

According to Chomsky, "the pretext for Washington’s terrorist wars [i.e., in Nicaragua, El Salvador, Chile, Guatemala, Iraq, etc.] was self-defense, the standard official justification for just about any monstrous act, even the Nazi Holocaust."

In sum, according to Chomsky, "legally speaking, there’s a very solid case for impeaching every American president since the Second World War. They’ve all been either outright war criminals or involved in serious war crimes."

Noam Chomsky is not a serious intellectual of any sort. His record of supporting totalitarians, of distorting and lying about the facts, of making up sources, of using extremist rhetoric, and of outright paranoia completely discredit him. Nothing he says is to be believed; he's lied and distorted and just made stuff up too often in the past. In addition, he is a morally reprehensible human being.

Since the subject has come up, I am going to do a series of posts on the American decision to use the atomic bomb. This is one of the most criticized actions in history, and the basic criticism is hard to object to: Blasting a hundred thousand people to death is a very bad thing. But those who make this obvious point sometimes do not know the answer to this question: Compared to what?

I. The Committee Makes Its Recommendation

The highly secret "Interim Committee on S-1" met for the first time on May 9, 1945. The chairman was Secretary of War Henry Stimson. The other eight members were Stimson's special assistant, George Harrison; Secretary of State Jimmy Byrnes, President Truman's personal representative; Undersecretary of the Navy Ralph Bard; Assistant Secretary of State William Clayton; James Bryant Conant, president of Harvard; Karl T. Compton, president of MIT; and Vannevar Bush, president of the Carnegie Institute. On May 31 they were joined by physicists Enrico Fermi, Arthur H. Compton, Ernest O. Lawrence, and J. Robert Oppenheimer, and General George Marshall.

After extensive debate, that day the committee unanimously decided that "the bomb should be used against Japan as soon as possible". Byrnes reported the results directly to Truman, who "with reluctance had to agree, that he could think of no alternative," according to Byrnes. The bomb was going to be used. When and where were still to be decided.

Remember, at this time the battle of Okinawa was in full swing. It was probably the most brutal battle American soldiers have ever fought in. The Japanese dug into caves and pillboxes and fought to the death despite overwhelming American material superiority. The Americans lost 12,000 killed and 36,000 wounded. (Fighter pilot George Bush was shot down but bailed out into the water and survived.) Thirty American ships were sunk. The Japanese lost at least 110,000 dead soldiers, and as many as 150,000 Okinawan civilians were killed in the fighting. Nobody wanted to see another Okinawa.

Source: Truman, David McCullough.

II. Bombing Civilians

...Attitudes about the bombing of civilian targets had changed drastically in Washington, as in the nation, the longer the war went on. When the Japanese bombed Shanghai in 1937, it had been viewed as an atrocity of the most appalling kind. When the war in Europe erupted in 1939, Roosevelt had begged both sides to refrain from the "inhuman barbarism" of bombing civilians. His "arsenal of democracy" speech in December 1940 had had particular power and urgency because German bombers were pounding London. But the tide of war had turned...That winter, in February 1945, during three raids on Dresden, Germany--two British raids, one American--incendiary bombs set off a firestorm that could be seen for 200 miles. In all an estimated 135,000 people had died.

...In one such horrendous fire raid on Tokyo the night of March 9-10, more than 100,000 perished. Bomber crews in the last waves of the attack could smell burning flesh. With Japan vowing anew to fight to the end, the raids continued. On May 14, five hundred B-29s hit Nagoya, Japan's third largest industrial city, in what the New York Times called the greatest concentration of fire bombs in the history of aerial warfare. On May 23, five square miles of Tokyo were obliterated. As weeks passed, other coastal cities were hit--Yokohama, Osaka, Kobe.

(Source: Truman, McCullough, pages 393-393.)

The Axis powers started the practice of bombing civilians, and Japan was defeated by that very practice. The Axis converted Allied civilians into military targets. It is not appropriate to criticize the Allies for doing the same to the citizens of the Axis nations. John Keegan believes that the "moral corruption" of the Nazis and the Japanese militarists spread to the Allies; that is, the Nazis and the Japanese were willing to sacrifice everything for victory. The Allies couldn't beat them unless they were equally ruthless.

Just a note: During the Iraq War many critics of the Coalition accused Coalition forces of intentionally killing civilians. Nothing could be farther from the truth, of course. American and British forces did their best to avoid killing civilians whenever possible. If we'd wanted to, we could have completely obliterated Baghdad without using nuclear weapons. Nothing of the sort happened. Now, in World War II, nobody would have given a damn whether an American (or British, not to mention Russian, German, or Japanese) military action was going to kill enemy civilians. I imagine the general reaction would have been something like "The more, the merrier." Fortunately, this is not World War II anymore, and we don't have to live by World War II standards anymore, thanks to the people who won it.

Check out this New York Times article on animals and homosexuality. Seems that penguins and dolphins, not to mention the notorious bonobos, among others, form same-sex partnerships. Very interesting. I really love the headline, though: "The Love That Dare Not Squeak Its Name".

Since we're in the middle of the primary season in the States and heading for a general election in March in Spain, here's one of my favorite political stories. It shows how much big events can depend on little things and how, whenever there's a big screwup of some sort, alcohol is often involved.

It was the 1944 Democratic convention in Chicago and a group of powerful party insiders decided that Henry Wallace, the incumbent Vice-President, was a dangerous radical, and had to be removed from the ticket. They managed to get semi-approval for their plan from Franklin Roosevelt, who was clearly dying but who was to be reelected anyway. These party leaders knew that Wallace was not fit to be President, and they decided that Missouri Senator Harry Truman was their man, someone they could trust to take over as President when Roosevelt died.

At the Blackstone (Hotel), (party chairman Bob) Hannegan told Truman he might have to be nominated that night, depending whether they had the votes. They would have to be ready to move fast. Bennett Clark (the other Senator from Missouri) was supposed to nominate Truman, but no one knew where he was. Clark, whose wife had died the year before, was drinking more than usual. Truman went to look for him. Hannegan started for the convention hall.

The Wallace supporters tried to stampede the convention that night. Wallace gave a fine speech and momentum began to build on the convention floor for his renomination as VP. Bob Hannegan and Chicago Mayor Ed Kelly got to the convention chairman and convinced him to adjourn before Wallace's name could be placed in nomination by liberal Congressman Claude Pepper of Florida, who was jumping up and down on a chair while waving a flag in an intent to get the chairman's attention and the floor. Henry Wallace might well have been nominated for Vice President that night, and he would have succeeded Roosevelt as President. He also might have lost us the Cold War before it began.

Harry Truman had witnessed none of this. He had spent the night in search of Bennett Clark, finding him finally in a room where he was not supposed to be, at the Sherman (Hotel), and too drunk to say much more than hello. By then it was past midnight. "So I called Bob Hannegan," Truman remembered, "and said 'I found your boy. He's cockeyed. I don't know whether I can get him ready or not, and I hope to Christ I can't.'"

Truman and Hannegan sobered Clark up, more or less, and they got him to the convention the next day where he nominated Truman for VP.

But his speech for Truman was short and had none of his usual flair.

Ah, those were the days when politics was really fun. (Quotations from Truman by David McCullough.)

Here's the news from these here parts. As you only know if you've been following the Spanish media, Jose Maria Aznar spoke at a joint session of Congress in Washington. This is a nice honor, a good photo op, but no big deal since he didn't say anything we hadn't heard several times before. Most of the congressmen blew the event off and their seats were filled by diplomats in order to make it look like a full house. Still, it was a nice tribute to a steadfast ally.

The Vangua is making a big deal about some statements made by CIA director George Tenet; paraphrasing their story, the CIA never said anything about "imminent threats". They did say that Saddam had hostile intentions, intentions of rearming, a record of dishonesty, and the fact that he could do something nasty at any time.

They're also making a big deal about this Pakistani scientist who "sold nuclear secrets and equipment to Libya, Iran, and North Korea" all on his lonesome. Yeah, right. I have no problem believing that Pakistan sold that stuff to those criminals and dictators. I imagine it was done with full knowledge by rogue elements within Pakistan and especially by the Pakistani intelligence service. That's just a guess; I'm no expert.

To me this is just more evidence that the One Great Conspiracy Theory that I believe in is true. That theory says that there are a bunch of rogue states from Libya to North Korea, a bunch of terrorist organizations from ETA to Hamas to those whackjobs in the Philippines, and unpleasant elements within several non-rogue states like Saudi Arabia, Pakistan, and Egypt, that have a loose alliance and are known to have worked together in the past. Gee whiz, a Pakistani nuke scientist "admits" selling nukes to Iran, Libya, and North Korea? What the hell is going on here? It sounds to me like the threat from the Rogue Alliance needs some containing and if possible some rollback. Qaddafi's renunciation of his WMD programs is a good sign, for example.

As for Ariel Sharon and the Israeli pullback from the Gaza settlements: The way to peace is a complete pullout of settlements from the West Bank and Gaza in exchange for everyone's recognition of Israel's existence. The fence stays up and access through will be controlled by Israeli police. After five years of peace we think about taking the fence down. Sharon is the only leader who can pull this off because he is trusted as a hard-liner by the Israelis. No way the Israelis would have gone for a pullout from Gaza with someone they thought of as wishy-washy in charge.

The rumors abound about a possible split between the PSC (Catalan Socialist party) and the PSOE (Spanish Socialist Workers' Party). The PSOE is pissed off as all hell that PSC leader Maragall made a coalition with Esquerra Republicana, a pro-independence party, in the first place. See, the PSOE has no truck with Catalan separatism. Nationalism, like flags and sardanas, they can handle. Independence is something else. The Carod-Rovira crap with ETA was the last straw. The PSOE is seriously pissed off at its Catalan partners. It's even more embarrassing that the PSOE and the PP are allied in the Basque Country; that is, the differences between them are a lot smaller than between either of them and the Basque nationalists. And the PSC's slogan for the March 14 elections is "If you want it, we'll beat the PP", trying to appeal strictly negatively to those who dislike Aznar and Rajoy. And that's a lot of people around here.

Some unpleasant news about the Catalan health-care system; I am not personally complaining, mind, I am very pleased with the quality of the National Health here. But there are almost 60,000 people on the waiting list for a "non-essential" operation, including almost 10,000 who have cataracts, 7600 who need a knee replacement and almost 2000 who need a hip replacement, and, get this, 500 awaiting circumcision. Those people must either be Jewish, and there aren't many Jews around here, or have phimosis. Ouch. How can you make the poor guy wait for surgery to correct that? And there are nearly 10,000 with some kind of cyst or boil. Yuck, gross, get rid of that already, people! Give them their operations! We'll pay more if only not to see huge boils sprouting out of people's necks on the streets! 548 people are awaiting wart surgery. Oh, icky poo. I'd make a lousy doctor. "Uh, what's growing on you today? Warts, boils, goiters? Oh, Jesus, it's the Elephant Man."

Some nutcase in Esplugues, a suburb of Barcelona, stabbed his mom in the neck and buried her in quicklime in their apartment back in November 2002. Then he'd cry all night, screaming, "Mama, Mama, why did you leave me?" Finally the other relatives called the cops, after a year or so of this. Pure Ozarks. These folks were not your regular middle-class family; mom was a hooker who'd graduated to madam. The Vangua also says that more than 30,000 Spaniards practice sexual tourism with children in Latin America every year, among the top five nationalities. The others are France, Italy, Germany, and Belgium. Pervos going to Cuba to get laid cheap by good-looking hookers, under 18 if possible, desperate for hard currency. These are the people who support Fidel Castro's tourism industry. Also by the way, La Stampa in Turin says that Barcelona is the Mediterranean capital of homosexual tourism, the "Sodom of the Mare Nostrum". In the first six months of 2003 more than 600,000 gays visited Barcelona, and the area around Calles Diputacion and Concejo Ciento to the left of the Paseo de Gracia is known as "the Gaixample". I wonder whether Barcelona may have a concentration of switch-hitters whom men travel hundreds of miles to meet. Catalans are known for their anal fixations...

Since we're on the topic of sex, the actress Cayetana Guillen Cuervo, who is rather waiflike, blonde, and thirtyish, has announced through her lawyer (Cristina Almeida, of all people) that she's going to sue anyone spreading rumors that she is romantically involved with "a well-known politician". Rumor has it that the politician is no one less than Jose Maria Aznar. Hey, if it's true, good job! I wouldn't kick her out of be...oops, wait, I'm happily married, so I roundly deplore any such action taken by our Prime Minister, if such actions were taken.

Here, by the way, is a good story from Deepest America. It wasn't the Ozarks, but it could have been...

There's a debate going on down in the Comments section, and it's spilled over into Trevor's blog Kaleboel.

(Scroll down--you may have to scroll down a long way--to about the fifth post, titled Spanish / Castilian. Trevor, when I enter your blog, I get the "header" and then blank space about 3/4 the way down the scroll, if you see what I mean. Is this just my computer?)

Here's the official Iberian Notes Press Release on the topic.

1. In English the language spoken in Spain and most of Latin America is called "Spanish". "Castilian" refers to the dialect of Spanish spoken in the northern two-thirds of Spain; it's characterized by the "lisping" TH sound for Z and C before E or I. "Peninsular" refers to features common to all dialects of Spanish in Spain--for example, the use of "vosotros". This is English and those are the rules we use. It personally doesn't matter to me whether you or I say "espanol" or "castellano" when speaking Spanish. I think they are interchangeable. When speaking Catalan I say "castella", of course, that being the standard term in Catalan. You can say what you want as long as I can understand what you say.

(Note: Same deal works for "American". In English it means a person from the United States. [Also in French, German, Italian, and Russian.] Some people claim that in Spanish "americano" refers to anyone from the Americas. Fair enough, in Spanish. If the rule is that what we call "American", you call "estadounidense" or "norteamericano", then fine, when we're speaking Spanish that's the terminology we will use. But when we're speaking English I will use the right word in English. You can do whatever you want.)

2. I think that, absent government regulations, the language spoken in a place ought to respond to the market. That is, you will use the language(s) you need to use to get along. In that case, most people will speak both Catalan and Spanish, here in Barcelona. If you work at a supermarket, for example, some of the customers are going to want to use one and some are going to want to use the other, so it's perfectly acceptable for the boss to demand that the worker be basically competent in both languages, at least to greet clients, make change, and say goodbye.

However, there's something that Catalan nationalists refuse to accept, which is that people have the right to live here and not learn Catalan if they don't want to or need to. If I'm the client, you should adapt to my language. And if I'm the boss, you should adapt to my language. And if that language is Spanish rather than Catalan, or vice versa, then you'll just have to put up with it. See what I mean? It's not that hard.

For international purposes, Catalan has little appeal except for those who are interested in Catalonia, its culture, and its language. (Valuable things to be interested in. I am interested in them. That is why I live here.) They will want to learn Catalan. The rest will want to deal in Spanish or in English, whichever language they already know. You can't force foreigners to use Catalan, nor can you force people from the rest of Spain to do so.

Here's an example. Say you are half liquored-up at some party and it's two in the morning, and you are flirting with someone attractive. You both REALLY want to communicate to one another that your genitals are becoming inflamed. What language are you going to use? Let's say I speak English best, then Spanish, then Catalan, then French. You speak Catalan best, then Spanish, then French, and then English. Which language are we going to use? Now be honest.

InstaPundit is passing out recipes, so I suppose I should deign to catblog and recipeblog for at least one entry.

Sushi the cat is leaving us today. We stuck up some signs at vets and pet stores around the neighborhood and some woman who lives right here on the Plaza del Norte saw one and wants him. So it's going to be a little more peaceful around here, though we'll miss him. He's a good cat.

Here's how to stock up on decent vegetarian food.

MUSHROOM VEGGIE RICE

Slice up about half a pound of mushrooms. Cut up a leek. Add all the broccoli florets off a broccoli stalk. Saute the lot in olive oil. Add salt, pepper, 1 clove garlic, 1 cup dry rice. Saute another minute or two and then add 2 1/2 cups water and soy sauce to taste. I like a couple of spoonfuls but that's just me. Heat to boiling and then cover, turn down heat, and simmer about 20 minutes or until rice is done.

CREAM OF VEGETABLE SOUP

Take the broccoli stem(s) that you cut the florets off for the rice. Slice it up. Peel and slice up two or three potatoes, a carrot or two, and a leek or two. Feel free to add zucchini, cauliflower, green beans, etc. if you want. Saute the lot of veggies lightly in olive oil, just a minute or two, and then heat them to boiling in a pot with about one liter of water so the veggies are, like, half steamed and half boiled. Give 'em at least ten minutes over low bubbling heat. Add salt, pepper, and a half-liter of milk. Or less, depending on how thick you like your soup. If you like it really really thick, add another potato. Add a shot of brandy or sherry if you want, and then liquefy in the blender or with the "minipimer". Then let it simmer for a few minutes longer over low heat. The longer it simmers, the thicker it will be. Can be served hot or cold, like vichyssoise.

This ought to do you for a couple of days and will provide leftovers for another couple of days.

One of my various identities is that of teacher of English as a foreign language (EFL). Now, I have an MA in applied linguistics, which is basically general linguistics with an emphasis on second language acquisition. I was in grad school between '92 and '94, at the height of the touchy-feely years. The whole point of touchy-feeliness is to disprove all obvious traditional ways of doing things that are just too old-fashioned and judgemental and the like.

Well, the standard way we'd always thought of EFL was that the enemy to overcome is interference. The definition of interference is that the student's original language affects his competence in English: e.g. "I broke my shirt" instead of tore because the two words break and tear in English are just one word, romper, in Spanish. Another examlpe would be Spanish-speakers unable to distinguish between the J sound and the Y sound in English, because the two sounds are "different" in English but "the same" in Spanish.

The problem here is that a really good teacher of EFL must know not only the target language but at least something about the students' native language. That is hard to do. There aren't that many people who are really bilingual at an academic level. Teaching often doesn't provide enough money to satisfy these people, whose expectations are often high.

What the foo-foos tried to do was come up with a magic formula to make EFL easy. See, teaching EFL correctly is hard. You have to know the grammar inside-and-out, you have to understand vocabulary nuances, you have to be able to correct writing for content and style, you have to model appropriate English for your students, you have to provide them with large quantities of reading and listening input, and you have to do it over and over because they're not going to get it the first time. Also, you have to know how to manage a class. There's not a magic bullet. You have to write dozens of compositions and have thousands of conversations and do hundreds of dumb grammar exercises (which are nonetheless very useful because they demand that a student follow a standard model and learn to imitate it), and the teacher has to be competent enough to be able to teach all this stuff.

Problem: The educational system in America attracts many people of only modest talents, since it doesn't pay that well compared to the amount of crap you have to put up with.

Solution: Raise teacher pay in order to attract people who might otherwise become lawyers or get MBAs.

Problem: Right now we've got a bunch of incompetents holding down jobs in the public schools. We're gonna pay these losers the same sixty grand a year as these really competent people we're trying to attract?

Solution: Very strict competence exams in which you are required to demonstrate your competence and ability in your teaching field.

Problem: The teachers' unions won't stand for that.

Solution: Fire the lot of them on June 1 and advertise for college graduates to sign up at sixty grand a year. (Of course, we allow fired teachers to compete for the new jobs open, and I imagine we'll hire all the good ones back since we'll be paying them a lot better than before. As for the incompetents who can't pass the test, let 'em look for work in the growing field of 7-11 cashiering.) We oughta be ready to go by the end of August. Set up a new system in which a teacher needs a BA in his field and what we'll be generous and call an MA in education, a one-year course in which you learn mostly practical shit, like say the extent they can hold you responsible if you're on bus duty, you turn one way because little Billy is pushing little Johnny around, and little Keisha walks in front of a bus while your back is turned.

(That should be Education 101; not "Basic Curriculum and Instruction" but "What Can They Sue Me For?")

Failed Solution: Look for teachable formulas that will allow even the biggest idiot to somehow make it through el-ed on sheer effort and nastiness to successfully impart knowledge to students.

In EFL there have been dozens. One is called audiolingualism, in which you fire questions at the students in the target language so that they get to be able to reproduce the answers automatically. This actually has some value at basic levels, especially when you come to a point which just has to be memorized, like irregular verb forms.

Some are a lot weirder. There's one where you break out a box of colored rods of different length. Then you ask all these retarded questions like "Jose, tell Paco to put the black rod on the red one," or "Paco, which is longer, the black rod or your rod...no, no, the blue rod you're holding..." This can apparently be combined with this one from Bulgaria, in which you sit learners down in comfortable chairs, turn the lights down, and the teacher speaks reassuringly in the target language. Apparently you get the students into a stupor and they learn unconsciously or something.

What all the methods have in common is that they can be picked up fairly quickly by not-too-bright people, who are then considered to be fit as teachers when they know no grammar, nothing about writing, and have read nothing. You just teach according to the formula.

(The formula always includes a lot of group work, which I am in favor of for about a third to a half of class time, as long as everyone's speaking in English about a topic I give them, and using the grammar or vocab that we're working on. The problem here is you have to ride herd on group work to make sure they're really working and not just dicking off. I take notes on errors and answer questions and then take five minutes to correct them as a class at the end of each conversation group activity. Lots of folks just sit down at their desks, though, rather than monitoring. The formula also tries to minimize correcting, to the point at which some teachers don't correct their students' errors, in speaking or in writing. In addition, the formula de-emphasizes grammar. I have seen new teachers just out of college who had never heard of what a freakin' verb tense was, for Chrissakes. Supposedly doing grammar exercises doesn't help students learn, and it's a drag anyway, so we can just sort of skip over it. Yeah, right.)

I'm sorry. There's no magic formula for teaching or learning anything. The brighter the student, the quicker he'll learn, and the brighter the teacher, the more his students will learn. It's kind of like journalism: the best ones are those who studied something other than journalism at college. And the only way you'll attract the above-average people we need as teachers is giving them above-average pay and considerably better working conditions. I bet we wind up saving a lot of money in the long run. Imagine if even only half the time spent at school were useful! What a miracle that would be!

Let's see what you guys think of this logic.

a) The dominant culture in the United States is European. (More specifically, largely British.) The language, religion, legal system, ideolog(ies), cooking and sewing and building and working and farming traditions, are all of European origin. So why should the Europeans dislike the United States? After all, Americans are pretty much Europeans, and so disliking America is disliking yourself, if you're European. The dislike must, therefore, be due to some outside, non-European influence.

b) American Indians had a great deal of direct influence on the way early Euro-Americans lived. Euro-Americans adopted some farming methods and the like from the Indians. Unfortunately, there were too few Indians (when the Pilgrims landed the East Coast Indians had already been literally decimated by smallpox; 90% had died of a smallpox epidemic most likely caught from fishermen, who'd been up and down the Atlantic coast ever since at least 1500 AD) to have much of an effect on the European-Americans beyond basic practical stuff about planting corn and the like. And, anyway, the European-Americans killed some 20,000-40,000 of them in the frontier wars. So we can't really say they've had too much of an effect on making modern American culture what it is now. They haven't made Americans really different from Europeans.

c) Asians have never really come to America in large numbers until after World War II. While they've certainly played an important role in US history, from the Chinese labor gangs on the Central Pacific railway to the shameful deportation of the Japanese in California during World War II, again, there just haven't been enough of 'em until very recently to have made a defining difference between Europe and America. Not that Asians don't add a valuable flavor to American culture and all, they add to its dynamism and to its sheer variety, but they play the same role as they do in most European countries, which have Asians too. So that's not a major difference.

d) Hispanics have certainly played an important role in American history, and I would even argue that the Hispanic influence is important enough to be defining. Part of what makes America what it is--the cowboy tradition, the clothes we wear around the world now, Southwestern architecture, Texi-Cali-Mexi food, horses and cattle and ranching, border bilingualism, country and western music, large-scale grain farming--is due to Mexican Hispanic influence. And Puerto Rican and Cuban Hispanics give a distinct Caribbean flavor to many Eastern cities as well. (They've added to my diet, anyway, and for the better.) But that's all stuff that the Europeans like. At least they say they like it in its original, Latin American form. They love Hispanics when they're in Latin America. It's very hip and all. So the Hispanic influence in United States culture is not what irritates the Europeans about the US.

So it must be down to e) the African Americans. Now, the first blacks were landed in Virginia in 1619, meaning that their forebears were in America since before 99% of white people's forebears were. At the time of the Revolution the South was one-third black, and by 1860 blacks were a majority in several Southern states. Black people have had a great deal of presence in and influence on modern American culture, especially popular culture, and especially in the South. And their presence will only become greater, since you have to figure that before America began to dismantle Jim Crow in 1954 (Truman had already integrated the Army) black culture was officially discriminated against, and yet it still bubbled up like lava, unstoppably. Give it fifty more years of relative lack of racism and watch it flourish. Popular music and dance, folktales and legends, food, religion, dialect, and almost four hundred years of common history in the New World show the continuing major African influence on American culture. It is the basic mixture that truly makes the roots of American culture different from European. After all, Jim, the hero of the Great American Novel, The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn, is black.

Is this what the Old Europeans are objecting to?

One thing a lot of folks outside the United States often don't understand is the way the military system works. Since the draft was abolished in 1973 we have not had a conscripted army; it's been only volunteers. (Note: When men turn 18, they must register for the draft. You can do that at the Post Office. If they should need to reintroduce conscription in case of war, they've got the system ready to do so.)

What this means is that the army (let's just refer to the whole armed forces as the army to simplify things) needs to attract people to join or there won't be an army. So army service in the US is not particularly onerous and it provides a good number of benefits. (Of course, you have to risk getting shot, but probably 90% of soldiers are not in combat units, and even combat soldiers' risks are not all that high, when you figure that there are like one and a half million people in the army and about 500 have been killed so far in Iraq.)

First, it pays better than minimum wage and provides room and board and health care for you and your family. Second, they pay for your university education, I believe at the rate of one year of college for one year of service. Third, if you have any sort of aptitude, you'll get training in something sort of useful, driving a truck or communications or electronics or some other skill. Fourth, "1996-2000, Corporal, US Army" looks a hell of a lot better on your CV than "1996-2000, Burger-flipper, McDonalds".

One other thing the army does for some people is it gives them a sense of achievement. Hey, if you make it through basic training, you've proved something, because not everyone is tough enough or smart enough to do that. If you get promoted, hey, great, you know you deserved it. They don't pass out free promotions. And you get to go back to the old neighborhood wearing the cool-looking uniform. You also get a sense of camaraderie and fellowship, and since many Americans are patriotic, you get to feel (quite justifiably) that you're somebody important and virtuous because you're helping to defend your country and your fellow citizens.

I noticed today that the army is running ads encouraging people to join using the slogan "Earn dignity, honor, respect." That's what they're appealing to, and interestingly, that's exactly what street gangs promise their members. I'll bet that slogan works on a lot of people, since an army is really just a sophisticated street gang. It's got its soldiers, its turf, its hierarchy, its camaraderie, its violence, its symbols and uniforms, its discipline, its feeling of belonging, its probationary period that must be survived, its emphasis on honor and respect and duty and responsibility, the common feeling that you mustn't let your comrades down.

One thing the army is generally known as is the least racist major institution in America. Hell, a black guy made it all the way to the top, and success in the army depends exclusively upon your merit and competence, for obvious reasons. Who cares if your buddies are black or white? Your life depends up on them and you'd better get used to that. Most people do so remarkably fast, I've read.

There's a European stereotype, though, which says that American soldiers are all poor blacks and Hispanics. Now, it's true that army service tends to appeal most to the lower-middle classes, but you see all ranks of society (except the California and East Coast wannabe non-Americans) in the army. I'm not going to look the stats up; if you guys want to check me on this you can, but I have read that blacks are overrepresented in the army as a whole (the US is like 11% black, while the army is more like 18% black) but underrepresented in combat units (which are like 9% black). This, by the way, was also true in Vietnam. The legend that blacks were killed there in disproportionate numbers is simply not true.

Don't ask me why this should be. My guess is it's got something to do with relative educational levels of average blacks and average whites. The white person quite likely went to a better school than the black person and so is more likely to qualify for combat duty. Of course this isn't always true and there are thousands of exceptions.

Here's an interesting piece by Mark Strauss that criticizes elements of the antiglobalization movement for their anti-Semitism. (They apparently now want to be called "otherworldists".) Strauss points out the connections between the "red" (Marxist), "green" (environmentalist), and "brown" (ultranationalist) worldviews and how each one sees the Jews.

A summary of that commingled worldview, which we could call "Old Europeanism", might be "The Jewish-American capitalists (who also torture the martyred Palestinians) are oppressing the people, especially in the Third World (from where they suck their ill-gotten wealth), as they destroy our noble homeland, abusing our beautiful natural environment and eroding away our great historic culture with trashy pornographic Hollywood movies. We must defend our people, our culture, and our homeland, and we must help save the world from the clutches of the Jewish-American octopus."

Here's Strauss on red-green-brown rabble-rouser Jose Bove, in which Bove hangs himself with his own words.

The greens and the browns share another common cause: opposition to Israel. Given the antiglobalization movement’s sympathy for Third-World causes, it’s not surprising that French activist Jose Bove took a break from trashing McDonald’s restaurants to show his solidarity with the Palestinian movement by visiting a besieged Yasir Arafat in Ramallah last year.

But, in the case of the new left, the salient question is not: What do antiglobalization activists have against Israel? Rather, it is important to ask: Why only Israel? Why didn’t Bove travel to Russia to demonstrate his solidarity with Muslim Chechen separatists fighting their own war of liberation? Why are campus petitions demanding that universities divest funds from companies with ties to Israel, but not China? Why do the same anti-globalization rallies that denounce Israel’s tactics against the Palestinians remain silent on the thousands of Muslims killed in pogroms in Gujarat, India?

Israel enjoys a unique pariah status among the antiglobalization movement because it is viewed as the world’s sole remaining colonialist state—an exploitative, capitalist enclave created by Western powers in the heart of the developing world. “They’re trying to impose an apartheid system on both the occupied territories and the Arab population in the rest of Israel,” says Bove. “They are also putting in place—with the support of the World Bank—a series of neoliberal measures intended to integrate the Middle East into globalized production circuits, through the exploitation of cheap Palestinian labor.”

Opposing the policies of the Israeli government does not make the new left anti-Semitic. But a movement campaigning for global social justice makes a mockery of itself by singling out just the Jewish state for condemnation. And when the conspiratorial mindset of the antiglobalization movement mingles with anti-Israeli rhetoric, the results can get ugly. Bove, for instance, told a reporter that the Mossad, the Israeli intelligence agency, was responsible for anti-Semitic attacks in France in order to distract attention from its government’s actions in the occupied territories.

It's Super Bowl Sunday again--and, pardon me, the season is too damn long when the Super Bowl is played in February. Here's a story from Fox News on "the perfect American holiday".

My guess is that the Super Bowl is actually watched by 30 million people or so, real football fans or at least people who casually follow the sport. The rest of the 150 or so million viewers are just kind of there, hanging out at the party and watching the TV commercials.

Here's why I think the Super Bowl is such a big deal:

a) It's a great excuse for a party. Nobody watches the Super Bowl alone. You get all your friends together. And the party is gonna include beer. Lots of beer.

b) It's an unofficial holiday. Official holidays like Thanksgiving and Christmas and the fourth of July have their own traditional agenda, and people have family-type celebrations. But on the unofficial ones, like St. Patrick's Day, New Year's Eve, Halloween, and the Super Bowl, people get together with their friends, not their families. And they drink lots of beer, which you really can't do on a family holiday. Unofficial holidays are frequently more fun than official ones. (Note: There are frequently attempts to foment new unofficial holidays. The beer companies have been trying to do it with Cinco de Mayo for years.)

c) It's a unique sports event. In all the other major American sports, the champion is determined by a best-of-seven-game series, which means that to follow, say, the NBA Finals, you've got to watch several different games. Several of the games at least are on workdays, cutting down viewership. The non-fan doesn't get up for the event; he may not even know it's going on. But in the Super Bowl it's all down to one game played on a day off from work. So you can drink lots of beer. (This is even a plot twist in a Tom Clancy novel; the President gets drunk watching the Super Bowl and so he wants to nuke Iran when terrorists destroy the stadium. Jack Ryan has to stop him.)

d) It's a television event. American football is extremely television-friendly. There's a pause between each play in which the announcers can rerun the last one and explain it, so the viewer thinks he really knows what's going on. There are frequent breaks for commercials and for people to get up and pee or go to the fridge. There's usually not much going on away from the ball, so you don't miss any of the action as you do in soccer and baseball. And it's an action-packed, violent game. That sells, as you can see by looking at the success of violent action movies. Beer is also successful.

e) People are interested in TV commercials. (Note: Every English teacher has several conversational gambits ready for when he has five or then minutes to kill. The one that works best is getting students to tell you about their favorite TV ad--but in English, of course. People here in Europe like them too.) It shouldn't be surprising--commercials have terrific production values, are often clever and funny, show people products in an attractive way, and catch your attention and hold it. They're much better made than most of the crap on TV. Well, the Super Bowl has become the traditional launch date for new TV advertising campaigns, and people tune in to see them.

The Spanish equivalent is New Year's Eve, in which everyone watches TV until midnight and then goes out, gets loaded, and barfs all over the sidewalk in front of my house. Each TV channel puts on some big gala spectacular with all the network's stars. Everybody in the whole damn country is watching one of them. And the advertising companies take advantage of it.

This doesn't only happen in America. Freixenet, the cava company, puts out a Christmas ad every year. They hire some big star from America and have a huge production number with bubbling glasses and the like. They advertise for the advertisement--that is, you see full-page ads in newspapers and magazines saying "Tune in for this year's new Freixenet ad at 9 PM Saturday night on TV 1". Also, speaking of beer, Estrella has an annual campaign for which they manufacture a pop hit song every year, along with a big production number. It's shown exclusively on the soccer games, and the song always gets all over the radio for a few months after the campaign is released.

Here's Yank-hating Brit Andy Robinson in La Vanguardia today.

The Super Bowl is much, much more than an American football game in the US, it is the day on which the Americans try to celebrate what unites them although it be a Nike logo, a bag of Lay's potato chips, or a credit card sponsored by the NFL. They make heroic efforts to find signs of identity, even gastronomically, although the result of eating hot dogs slathered with chile con carne, ketchup, and mustard causes ulcers...Corporate brands like Pepsi and Anheuser Busch pay what is asked for the opportunity to hook into the sticky sentimentalism of the Super Bowl.

Note the evocation of three of the standard anti-American memes within one paragraph. The most dangerous is a) Americans are not really a people and do not have a national identity. (That's why they need the Super Bowl to unify them artificially, you see). (FOOTNOTE 1)

This meme is dangerous because it implies that there is such a thing as a people, that a people has an existence in itself which must be preserved, and certain groups qualify, like, say, the Germans, the English, or the Catalans, but that the Americans don't. "Blood and land nationalists" all share this belief about the Americans, and interestingly it's pretty much the same thing they still say about the rootless Jews who possess no authentic culture.

Then of course, there is b) America is the land of commercialism, consumption, and corporate dominance. This meme, I think, is a backlash against what people see in their own societies and they don't like. Well, says the Left, our people would all be good and solidarious with the poor and all, and uninterested in flashy and shallow popular entertainment, if it weren't for those evil capitalists, so let's blame the Americans. If you take this argument a little farther, you start demanding quotas against American popular entertainment, then you start demanding that certain content not be allowed, and then it's not far from there to censorship. And, says the Right, our people would be struggling to realize their authentic national identity and dedicating itself to such national values as hard work and sacrifice for the good of the people and the state, rather than watching TV, which is full of subversive ideas anyway. So let's blame the Americans. If you take this argument a little farther...well, you get censorship. (FOOTNOTE 2)

Then there's c), the most harmless, that Americans eat lousy food. I find it highly ironic that a Brit, of all people, is accusing Americans of eating badly. I mean, this guy Robinson comes from the land of the battered, deep-fried Mars bar, the country of bangers, chips, and mushy peas. (FOOTNOTE 3)

Seriously, my experience is this. Wherever you go, there are decent restaurants with pretty good food. Some places, like France, do it better than others, like Germany, but you can eat perfectly decently in any town in Germany. Also, wherever you go, there are many families who are good at home cooking, and that's always tasty wherever you are.

Now, wherever you go there are also lousy cooks like my grandmother and lousy cheapo food stands. The difference, though, is that in England a lousy cheapo food stand is called a "caff". In Spain it's called a "bar" or a "frankfurt". In America it's called "McDonalds". And at McDonalds they have clean bathrooms and hygienic food preparation, at least. You won't find that in English caffs or Spanish bars.

Also, a couple of points. England is the country where people put ketchup all over everything, and what they don't put ketchup on, they cover with brown sauce. In Spain it's mayonnaise. In the States, the number one condiment is Mexican salsa, and the flavor that keeps intruding where I don't want it is sour cream. Also, real Americans don't put ketchup on hot dogs. They might put chili on, and they might put mustard on, but they wouldn't combine the two. They also might put pickle relish or sauerkraut on. The gross thing they might put on is Velveeta fake cheese. That stuff really is nasty.

FOOTNOTES:

1. "When speaking of the German people, we are dealing with a fixed group of people who are defined by their nature and territory. There is usually a "natural" relationship between between a people and its territory, such that naming the people brings to mind a territorial area. On this particular section of the world with its climate, its beauties, and its nature the people's history took place. Here its inhabitants found the source of their strength. Here its cultural landmarks give evidence of its spirit. Here its myths and fables have their roots in the distant past.

Such a relationship between people and space does not exist in the USA. They have no myths and fables, only facts. They jumped right into the middle of history—the only instance in world history in which the development of a governmental system and a "people" could be observed by historians from the very beginning."

From Europe and America: Failures in Building an American People. Anonymous, Germany, 1942.

2. "One is never sure which of two characteristics is more prominent in the American national character and therefore of the greater significance: naivete or a superiority complex. When for example they say things about our region, our surprise at their ignorance is surpassed only by annoyance at their stupid insolence. The less they know about a matter, the more confidently they speak. They really believe that Europeans are eagerly waiting to hear from them and follow their advice. They took our strategic decision not to discuss their shallow culture before the war as a sign of admiration. Their greatest technical accomplishments are refrigerators and radios. They cannot believe that there are cultural values that are the result of centuries of historical development, which cannot simply be bought. It was no bad joke when, after the war, they bought the ruins of German castles and moved them stone by stone to the U.S.A. They really thought that they had purchased a piece of national history embodied in stone, and were naive enough to think that mocking laughter from Europe was respect for the wealth that enabled them to buy what their own tradition and culture lacked."

From God's Country by Josef Goebbels. Das Reich, August 9, 1942.

3. "American housewives can no longer survive without tin cans. They have become so lazy as a result of these tin cans that they can no longer cook like German housewives. When they came home in the evening after visiting the beauty parlor or working in an office, and before going to a cocktail party, they opened a can or two for their family's evening meal."

From America as a Perversion of European Culture. Anonymous, Germany, 1942.

Check this one out. Seems that many well-known people, including George Galloway and Charles Pasqua, were on the take from Saddam. He paid them off with oil coupons. The only person listed as a venial corrupt bribe-taker in Spain is some journalist called Ali Ballout, who seems to be the correspondent for Al-Jazeera in Spain. Here's a piece by Mr. Ballout which is not precisely pro-Coalition. Here's another one, an interview with some Aussie, in which he is called "Jihad Ali Ballout" and is rather pro-Saddam. This is a nice piece in which Mr. Ballout brags about how smart Saddam is. And here's a piece from the Guardian in which Mr. Ballout hoodwinks them.

This interview with Mr. Ballout is in Spanish. Here's a piece from the Washington Times in which Mr. Ballout lies through his teeth. And this is an article in which Mr. Ballout defends the Saddam Fedayeen / common criminal / foreign Islamic fanatic in their actions.

That ought to be enough evidence that Mr. Ballout, an important executive at Al-Jazeera and identified as a resident of Spain, is a paid agent of Saddam Hussein. that is, he is corrupt slime. He wouldn't criticize Saddam if his life depended on it, which it probably does, actually.

Now, when will the rest of the journalists who believed Mr. Ballout's broadcasts and articles and based their own reporting upon them rectify? Probably never. What would you expect, anyway.

I need to start seeing more movies. I swear, everybody has seen so many more movies than I have. Whenever a conversation turns to movies, it normally goes through eight or ten different flicks before we get to one I've seen. I've got to do something about this.

I mean, I feel like a total dork in any movie conversation. "Mmm." "Uh-huh." "Right." "Actually, I haven't seen that one. To be more specific, I've never heard of that one." "Uh, I read the book. Didn't know they'd ever made a movie."

Anyway, from now on I'm going to follow Stanley Kaufman's weekly recommendations in the New Republic. My taste tends to agree with Kaufman's: he likes a well-done Hollywood movie even though it's obviously commercial, he enjoys movies from a long way away about very different places, he likes European stuff but only if it's interesting, not that "deep" boring boring boring psychological crap. He is especially good about keeping track of "small" American films. I can't count the number of times I've looked at a Kaufman review, thought, "Hmm, interesting," and then the movie shows up here in a couple of weeks and I miss it.

So from now on I'll be trying to see at least one good movie a week. I have the advantage of living ten minutes' walk from the Verdi / Verdi Park nineplex, which is where the more artsy-fartsy movies go, and I'm forty-five minutes or so away by metro from the Icaria fifteenplex, which shows more commercial movies in their original version. (That's V.O. in the local movie listings.) The Verdi nineplex is a major attraction for people from all over the Barcelona area, and those folks also tend to have dinner and/or a few drinks in the area as well. It helps make the 'hood very, oh, I don't know, highbrow, with all the cafes and left-wing bookstores and off-off-Paralelo theaters and restaurants and other artsy-fartsy shit.

Here's an article from Libertad Digital on FC Barcelona. Seems that the Barca will be getting rid of a lot of deadweight come the end of this season. Kluivert, Overmars, Cocu, Luis Enrique, Gerard, Van Bronckhorst, Reiziger, and Rustu are not going to be around next season. That gets rid of most of the Dutch contingent, leaving Barca with only Davids, assuming he comes back next year. (Barca doesn't own him; he's on loan.)

They wanted to buy Reyes from Sevilla, but Arsenal got there first with the most money. Now, what a lot of people are saying is that this means Arsenal is going to get rid of Thierry Henry, whom the Barca would love to have. I reckon he will go to Real Madrid, though, thereby putting Raul, Figo, Ronaldo, Beckham, Zidane, Henry, Roberto Carlos, Salgado, and Casillas on the same team. I imagine that it will be the greatest club squad ever.

Now they want to buy Fernando Torres from Atletico, and also Luque and Joaquin. They'd like to sign Wilford, and there are a couple of young players in the smaller European leagues they'd like to buy "on spec". We'll see. I don't know how a Barca with Ronaldinho, Davids, Wilford, Torres, and Puyol as its top players--agreed, that's a much better prospective team for next year than this pathetic squad Barca's got now--will be able to compete with Madrid, or even with Valencia.

Y'all might be interested in this here article from Newsweek; it's the cover story of the European edition. The main story is on Jose Maria Aznar's excellent economic record as Prime Minister, and I couldn't have said it better. I genuinely think Aznar is the finest statesman alive; he's straightforward, honest, firm, disciplined, and, above all, conservative and competent.

Be sure to click on the link to "The Barcelona Model", which talks about our lovely city, and it really is lovely. The irony here is that Barcelona has been run by the Socialists ever since democracy was installed back in 1978, yet Newsweek finds it as praiseworthy as Aznar's conservative record. I can't deny that the Socialists have done a lot for Barcelona over the years. I think maybe more conservative parties would have done better, but you can't deny that people's standard of living, both economic and "social", has risen during the Socialist local regime. Note that the article is rather optimistic about the future of the Forum. I am much less sanguine.

Here's some more anti-American Nazi propaganda. Readers are again invited to note similarities between the ideas in this screed and the insults thrown at the United States by sophisticated people in Brussels and Vienna.

Baghdad Bob Fisk has been awarded the Godo Prize for Journalism by La Vanguardia. (The newspaper is owned by the wealthy Godo family; they're counts or earls or something like that.) The prize-winning article was the one he wrote about the alleged sacking of the museum in Baghdad. Now, that article has been completely discredited. There was simply no major looting of that museum. A few pieces disappeared and most of them were recovered. That's it. End of story.

So you wonder: What the hell are these people thinking? Fisk's article is just plain wrong and its wrongness has been repeatedly demonstrated. Do they know nothing beyond what their own national press produces? (Note: Fisk's articles appear regularly in the Vanguardia, with a circulation of over 200,000, more than twice as much as the Independent gets. Probably more people read him in Spanish than in English.) Or do they just not care? My guess is both. Despite their protestations, most Europeans know as little as most Americans do about what passes outside their own country.

In case you're interested, the five-man jury which awarded the prize included editor Alfredo Abian, whose pieces we have taken apart many times here at Iberian Notes, and Josep Maria Casasus, the less-than-useless ombudsman who claims that Iberian Notes, HispaLibertas, and Kaleboel are in the pay of the US government. (I only wish we were.)

National Review's Jay Nordlinger is at Davos at the big meeting of high mucky-mucks. He mentions Spain twice in his piece. Here's the first time, when Nordlinger quotes Dick Cheney expressing his thanks to the countries that had contributed to the coalition:

"Our military actions have also been carried out with the help of many allies and partners on this continent and around the world. It is no surprise to President Bush and me that 21 of the 34 countries keeping peace with us in Iraq today are NATO allies and partners. Along with Great Britain, Italy, Poland, Spain, and the Netherlands have all made substantial contributions, with Poland taking command of a multinational division and Spain making a major troop commitment. Thirty-eight countries have forces in Afghanistan, 28 from the European continent, as well as others from the Middle East, East Asia, and North America. In Afghanistan, Germany has taken a leading role in providing forces and in expanding the role of NATO."

I think that's pretty good evidence that the United States is feeling extremely friendly toward Spain. I think this is a good thing. I honestly believe that the best thing Spain can do in its own self-interest is ally itself with the States and Britain, and I also believe that this is Spain's most ethical choice. (They could side with Russia or China or the discontented Arabs, for example, or join up with France and Germany in an anti-American EU.)

Nordlinger scored an interview with Spanish Foreign Minister Ana Palacio, who, rumor has it, is both intellectually brilliant and personally pretty weird. She certainly isn't any good at standard social relations, but Nordlinger loves her:

I have gone on too long, and we should really wrap this Davos Journal up, but I'd like to say a quick word about an amazing European foreign minister: She is Ana Palacio of Spain, and she is not your average European official. Indeed, she sounds as though she could work for AEI. (The American Enterprise Institute).

She extols the role of the free market, she affirms the role of military force, and she is clear-headed about the role of the EU: It must be a freedom machine, or it will be no good. With terrorism, she has no truck whatsoever, no "root causes" nonsense or rationalizing. She says that what the Muslim world needs most is light: is freedom and the rule of law.

Against the Huntington thesis of a clash of civilizations, she cites Turkey. And, speaking of Turkey, what about the EU? When will the EU get moving in keeping its promise to Turkey, to let it in? That is what Palacio asks.

The problem of the Basques, she says, is nothing less than the problem of freedom: Half the population lives under threat of terror from the other half, and what kind of life is that?

I ask why her government joined the U.S. in Iraq. It couldn't have been for popularity, because most Spaniards were staunchly opposed. It couldn't have been for comfort within Europe — it certainly did not win Spain any points with the big EU powers. So, why?

Palacio explains it as a matter of "principles and values." Borrowing a famous phrase, she says that her government has "a certain idea of Spain, and a certain idea of Europe." Terrorism, she says, is the main challenge of the first part of the 21st century, and "we're on the same wavelength" with the Americans in assessing and dealing with this threat.

Like Donald Rumsfeld, she wishes that people would be more careful when they say "Europe." Europe is more than Paris, Brussels, and Berlin. Much more.

And anti-Americanism cannot — must not — be the glue of the European Union, because "you can't build an identity on an unhealthy premise. The refounding of Europe [an interesting way to put it: the refounding of Europe] is a big challenge, and must be done soberly."

That's pretty good, that is. That's an ally. That's standing up when you have to either hold firm or sit down and shut up. Spain has chosen to speak loud and strong. That takes a lot of courage when you're under all kinds of pressure to back down. Congratulations and thanks to Great Britain and Spain and Poland and all the other allies. Let's not forget our friends in El Salvador, Honduras, Nicaragua, and the Dominican Republic who stood with us and who have committed peacekeeping troops to Iraq, either.

Here's another Readers' Challenge, since the last one was so successful (33 comments, which I think is a record for this blog; I hereby name Andrew X as Third Prize Winner, meaning he gets to have his way with Baghdad Bob Fisk, including leather masks, cats-o'-nine-tails, and penis leashes). Read this 1942 speech by Dr. Josef Goebbels. Then compare it to your typical Old European Yankee-bashing rhetoric. How many similarities can you find? First prize winner gets to gloat about the fact that within three years Goebbels and his wife would be lying dead in the Fuehrerbunker after poisoning their own children. So who do you think Goebbels' modern-day heir is? Maybe Ignacio Ramonet?

Well, Catalan Prime Minister Pasqual Maragall has announced that he will accept the resignation of his erstwhile number two, "conseller en cap" Josep Lluis Carod-Rovira. However, Carod will not be expelled from the Cabinet; he's been demoted to minister without portfolio. Catalunya TV calls Maragall's decision "Solomonic". I think that means he couldn't figure out what the hell to do and he picked the worst option: he did something that is going to please nobody.

Look, what this guy did was hold a secret meeting with two wanted terrorists with no authority to do so. He went off on his own thinking he could make some kind of peace deal, without considering the rest of Spain. And if the deal is what the Madrid daily ABC says--that Carod was trying to swap a local ETA ceasefire in Catalonia for political support of ETA's political objectives--that is morally repugnant. In some countries it's called treason.

So if you're Maragall, you have two choices open to you. You take the moral high ground and fire his ass, or you take the political low ground and say he was just trying to make peace and slap him on the wrist while backing him against the attacks he's under. What you don't do is shilly-shally, flip-flop, dither, vacillate, and play with your dingaling while your subordinate is negotiating with terrorists on his own account.

Here's the latest scoop, straight from Catalunya TV. Carod-Rovira spoke at his party headquarters about half an hour ago. He didn't mention anything about his getting busted down to buck private cabinet minister. In fact, he was less than contrite. He seemed to be quite proud of his attempt at "seeking peaceful solutions", and he counterattacked the PP, saying that they were orchestrating a campaign of hate. He pointed out that PP leaders had met with ETA back in 1998 (which is true, but they were the governing party then and it was up to them to decide what to do on the terrorist issue), and wondered why he couldn't do the same thing. And then Carod became defiant and demagogic, saying that the people of Catalonia should decide whether he had done the right thing and not the PP. Therefore, he will head the party's list in Barcelona province in the March 16 general elections. He's going to try to turn the election into a referendum on himself and his actions.

I should point out that Carod's party currently holds one seat in the Congress of Deputies in Madrid. Polls taken right after the regional election, while they were riding high, allotted them a possible three seats. That is highly unlikely, but I had figured (before this fiasco) that the Republican Left had a good chance at pulling out two seats on election day. Now what? If he wins the seat in Parliament, does he resign as cabinet minister in the Catalan regional government? Or does he say that's a mandate for him to go back to his "conseller en cap" position just like before?

I say what we all do is make sure his goddamn party doesn't win any fucking seats at all. Turn out, turn out, to arms! Vote PP. Vote CiU. Vote Socialist. Don't vote Communist--let's not go that far. But vote for anyone reasonable instead of this joker.

Oh, well, this is great. The Socialists look like bigger schmucks than they did before, and I thought that was impossible. They are going to get slaughtered in March, and Carod is going to cost them votes in Catalonia big time. I will bet that the anti-Carod reaction is stronger than the pro-Carod "he's standing up to the evil government in Madrid" groundswell, and that the PP and CiU will benefit.

This semi-Cataloony friend of mine says that what's going to happen is that Carod will turn into the main man for people who are so infantile that their first reaction to the word "Spain" is "Vade retro, Satanas". They will vote for him as the spokesman against Madrid (a word Carod curiously repeated over and over in his speech as if it were Mordor). So the Republican Left will actually be helped by this mess at the expense of the other leftist parties, especially the Socialists. I don't think I buy it. ETA is so hated by the ordinary Joe that anybody getting too friendly with them is political toast. The only folks who will be attracted to Carod's self-incarnation as the paladin against the Great Evil Black Hole of Madrid are extremists who, all together, don't add up to ten percent of the vote. I can see Carod actually winning a seat, which is something responsible people should most definitely be against.

Oh boy oh boy oh boy. This is a good one. Josep Lluis Carod-Rovira, number two in the Catalan regional government and leader of the Republican Left of Catalonia political party, has admitted that he met secretly with the leaders of ETA, "Mikel Antza" (Mikel Albizu) and "Josu Ternera" (Josu Urrutikoetxea) in Perpignan, France, on January 3 and 4 of this year. Both terrorist leaders are wanted by the Spanish police and just about every other European law-enforcement agency.

Now, in case you didn't know, 1) ETA is the Basque radical terrorist gang that has killed more than 800 people, and 2) Carod-Rovira's party is a member of the governing coalition in the Catalan regional parliament, along with the Socialists and the Communists.

No responsible political leader should be meeting and negotiating with terrorists on his own. This ought to go without saying. That is the job of the national government, the Prime Minister, the Interior Minister, the Cabinet, you know, people like that. That's what the national government is elected to do, set national policy on key issues like security and terrorism. That is not what Josep Lluis Carod Rovira's job description as "conseller en cap" (roughly, regional cabinet chief of staff) consists of. Carod usurped the functions of the national government all on his own.

Carod's trying to weasel out, saying he was acting as Republican Left party leader and not as conseller en cap and that he has the right to "explore all means of dialogue in order to put an end to the violence." No matter what, though, you don't go meet in secret with wanted criminals if you hold public office. And you especially don't do it when there's an agreement among all the "democratic" parties that nobody's going to negotiate with that gang of terrorist murderers.

(What's there to negotiate about, anyway? ETA is damn near on its last legs, and even if it weren't no democratic state should submit to such blackmail. My terms would be: You guys all surrender. We pardon anybody not responsible for crimes of violence as a gesture, and send the rest of you to prison for the hard thirty years.)

Even nastier: The pro-centralist Spanish nationalist daily ABC, the guys with the scoop on this one, says that what Carod was trying to negotiate was an agreement that ETA would not attack in Catalonia, in exchange for the goodwill and assistance of the Republican Left. If that is true--and that's the equivalent of some state governor making a deal with the Mafia not to operate in his state in exchange for God only knows what--Carod is unfit to serve as dogcatcher.

This looks just awful for the Socialists. Just awful. See, the Socialists are the Republican Left's senior partner in the new Catalan administration, and they can be blamed as those responsible for bringing Carod into a position of political power. Major Socialist power brokers, led by Zap himself, and including Chaves, Caldera, Blanco, Bono, and Ibarra, have demanded that Pasqual Maragall, Socialist Prime Minister of Catalonia, fire Carod as his number two. So far Maragall is holding out; he's slapped Carod on the wrist, taking away his role as boss of the Catalan government's "foreign relations". Carod hasn't resigned yet. It's a matter of hours before he goes down.

The Socialists look just pathetic. Just pathetic. They make a governing coalition in Spain's most important autonomous region with these unprofessional jokers, which is what the Republican Left are. They bring these unprofessional jokers into positions of power and influence, and then the jokers go out and start dealing with terrorists. Not even Catalan terrorists! Basque terrorists!

Carod-Rovira has torpedoed Zap's campaign for Prime Minister. It was already taking water and the rats were bailing out, but it might still have made port without significant casualties. Zap wasn't going to win, but he might have held the PP short of an absolute majority. Maybe. Just possibly. But now Carod's holed him below the waterline and it's time to start singing "The Wreck of the Edmund Fitzgerald".

The serious question now is whether this is going to bring down Catalan Prime Minister Maragall with Carod. Maragall looks like a major doofus for not keeping Carod under control and/or for appointing someone with such poor judgement to such an important post. And that's assuming he didn't know what was going on. If he actually did know what Carod was doing he'll have to step down, too, and if Maragall goes down they'll have to call new regional elections.

The response of Commie leader Gas, by the way, is that this is some kind of PP conspiracy. Uh-huh.

ABC says they've got more and it'll be coming out over the next few days. This ought to be fun.

The big municipal news in Barcelona has been, for the last two or three years, this big wingding they're going to have called the Forum of Cultures 2004. See, the plan was to get some big world event to come here, since the city's only notable worldwide success (and they'll never let you forget it) was putting on the 1992 Summer Olympics. The problem was that no other major world events, like, say, a World's Fair, wanted to come here. But the city fathers were desperate for another chance to impress the world and get into the international major leagues, so our none-too-original Mayor, Joan Clos, dug up an old idea that had been floating around.

See, what they're going to do is have a big old alterglobalization multicultural sustainable solidarious whooptedo, though nobody is really sure yet exactly what is going to happen--they've published an extremely vague program which uses lots of words like "neocolonialist capitalism" and "culture of peace". And the damned thing is scheduled to happen this summer. All we know is that there will be a bunch of conferences and workshops, and that the construction work isn't going to be anywhere near finished. The only thing which seems of any interest to me is that they're going to get some of the terracotta soldiers from that two-thousand-year-old emperor's tomb in Sian, China.

(Murph swears this is true: The blurb for the display of the Chinese warriors says that the exhibition shows how the Chinese developed first a culture of war and then from that a culture of peace. Somebody tell the Communist government, which possesses the largest army in the world, about that.)

What this reminds all of us about is the Millenium Dome in London and what a fiasco that was. Murph says there are four points of similarity: 1) The incumbent inherited it from his predecessor. 2) Neither ever had a clear concept of what it was supposed to be, unlike, say, the Olympics or the Mozart Festival or whatever. 3) The people running both are a group of strange bedfellows, public and private entities, left- and right-wing parties, various kinds of governmental agencies, and the local developers. 4) In the year before both events were scheduled to happen, when the deadline was looming, there was general chaos surrounded by firings of some of those responsible.

There is one important difference: In Barcelona, at least, there is a major development plan, involving a hotel and a convention center and a public park and apartment buildings, and at least that will be here after the fiasco has cost Clos his political life.

As a matter of fact, that aspect of the Forum--the fact that some builders and developers and promotors and real-estate people and the like are going to make a ton of money--and its multiculti progre foo-fooishness--peace and love and flowers and caring and sharing--don't seem to fit together very well at all.

This is why it's under attack from both left and right equally. The local powers that be belong to either the mildly left Socialists or mildly right Convergence and generally disagree on all the little things but agree on the big one, that there is money out there to be made, and they're the guys who are going to make some money off this one. It's the PP on the right, who think that this whole thing is a waste of taxpayers' money on a stupid cause, and the groups on the left, who don't like the land-developers and real-estate people, who are against the Forum.

Here's a piece of criticism of the Forum, apparently from the left. And here's the English version of the Forum's program. Click on several of the links. See if you can make any sense out of anything.

Oh, by the way, admittance is going to be astronomical, at least twenty euros for a one-day ticket, and there aren't even going to be any roller-coasters or anything cool.

Spanish elections update: As you know, the general elections here are scheduled for March 14. El Pais, the pro-Socialist Madrid daily, published some poll results today. The People's Party has 42.5% of the vote, which would give them between 171 and 175 seats (an absolute majority is 176); the Socialists have 37.0% and are looking at 135-138 seats. The Communists are polling 5.5%.

On a ten-point scale, with 1 as lousy and 10 as great, the voters give Rajoy an average score of 5.25, the PP Administration 5.18, the Socialist Party 4.80, and Zap himself 4.59. (Note: This polling formula is very common in Spain.) So, candidate Rajoy is more popular than his party, while candidate Zap is less popular than his.

66.4% think that Rajoy will be the next Prime Minister, while only 11.7% think it will be Zap.

These numbers are pretty overwhelming. With seven weeks to go in the campaign, the PP has a big, big lead, and since their party is much more sophisticated and better organized than the PSOE, I see their lead getting bigger and bigger. The Socialist editorial writers for El Pais say that there should be a debate between the candidates--American-style debates are rare in Spain. If I were Rajoy I'd say no, since in a debate the favorite is risking his lead and has really nothing to gain, while the underdog is risking nothing and has the chance for big gains. No point in giving Zap a chance to look good on prime-time national TV.

Here's a very nice piece from the Straight Dope on the historical Johnny Appleseed. Mr. Appleseed was a real person who really did some of the stuff he was credited with doing; he was apparently a well-known traveler along the Ohio-Pennsylvania frontier in the early 1800s. I like slightly offbeat historical pieces like this one.

The Independent ran that thing with the "Harper's Index"-style list of statistics with an anti-Bush spin a couple of days ago. (By the way, several readers sent in excellent responses to both the Independent list and the Pilger piece. Some of their ideas are reflected here. Look through the Comments section down below.) We thought we'd come up with a list of our own:

Number of campaign volunteers drowned by George Bush while driving drunk: 0

Number of drunken parties hosted by George Bush after which female guests charge Bush family members with rape: 0

Number of times George Bush claimed to have invented the Internet: 0

Number of blow jobs received by George Bush from White House interns: 0

Number of lies about receiving blow jobs from White House interns told by George Bush: 0

Number of times George Bush has freaked out on national television: 0

Number of mass graves discovered in Iraq: Hundreds

Number of Iraqis murdered by Saddam: estimates vary, from around 300,000 to upwards of a million

Number of countries invaded by Saddam: 2

Number of countries which will ever be invaded again by Saddam: 0

Number of despotisms overthrown by US: 2, so far

Number of Kuwaities murdered by Saddam's troops: Hundreds

Number of Iraqi lives saved by Saddam's overthrow: Uncountable

Number of Palestinian suicide bombers' families paid off with $25,000 by Saddam: A lot

Name of first federal prisoner executed in the US since the Rosenbergs in 1953: Tim McVeigh

Number of murderers found guilty by Texas juries and sentenced to death by Texas judges, whose sentences were carried out as provided by law, during George Bush's governorship: 152

Number of innocent people locked up at Guantanamo: Probably 0

Number of innocent people mistreated under US Patriot Act: Probably 0

Ranking of Russia, France, and China among Saddam's weapons suppliers: 1, 2, and 3

Total number of demonstrators in Barcelona protesting against Bush: Estimates vary, upwards of 300,000, probably well under a million

Total number of demonstrators in Barcelona protesting against Saddam, Assad, Kim, Castro, Gaddafi, the Iranian mullahs, and other assorted dictators, tyrants, and despots: Maybe a couple thousand

Episodes of sacking and looting in Barcelona after the anti-Bush demonstration: 1

Number of arrests of violent rioters in Barcelona: 0