Yet another moral disaster for the UN. The NGO Save the Children has accused UN peacekeeping troops, and members of other "peace" and "humanitarian" groups, of routinely committing sexual abuse of children in the countries where they are stationed. The countries mentioned are Haiti, Liberia, Congo, and Ivory Coast. Some children are telling horrific stories. I know that charges of sexual abuse are often false--for an example, look at the wave of late '80s-early '90s false stories of Satanic child sex abuses at several US preschools, all of which were bogus--but Save the Children has so many independent accusations that at least some of them must be true.

I really think that when the Iraq and Afghanistan wars are over, the US ought to consider pulling completely out of the UN, which is rotten to the core, and help set up an organization of established democratic states only, based on NATO. And I mean democratic; Turkey, Singapore, Thailand, and Russia don't qualify, much less Morocco and Pakistan and Angola and Venezuela and China. I would be willing to give such an organization, which would be very hard to get into and not very hard to get voted out of, veto power over American overseas use of the military.

Interior minister Perez Rubalcaba said yesterday that ETA has already reestablished a new leadership, just a few days after the capture of the bull goose etarra, Lopez Peña. He added that he was going to put 800 more cops on the terrorism beat.

More PP infighting: Gabriel Elorriaga, the PP's press secretary, has come out against Rajoy. Elorriaga is known as a moderate, which is a change from the others questioning Rajoy's leadership; the rest of them are all from the right / Spanish nationalist wing of the party.

Another near-disaster in Catalonia. Get this one. A truck driver ran his truck off a bridge near Solsona in Lleida province this morning, crashing partway through the guardrail. The truck is now hanging off the side of the bridge, with the driver still in the cab. Nobody died. So what's the big deal? The truck is full of explosives. The area has been evacuated, and the cops are waiting for a large crane to arrive so they can pull the truck and driver to safety. Let's hope it works.

What I want to know is exactly how a guy driving a truck full of explosives manages to drive it off a bridge. Shouldn't he be going like ten miles an hour?

The combination of high oil prices, crashing real estate prices, and Zap's social programs have cut the budget surplus by 56%. Government income has declined, due to lower VAT receipts caused by the construction slump, and lower gasoline tax receipts due to the high price and decreased consumption. Spain is still running an €9 billion surplus, so we don't need to worry yet, and a little deficit spending won't hurt. But let's not make the American mistake of borrowing to keep consumer spending high and keep the economy out of recession. A short sharp shock might well be salutary for the US, and it looks like it's coming here too.

Ana Obregon update: Ana Obregon is an aging Spanish slutty bimbo and sometime TV actress. She has had sex with at least one-eighth of the men in Spain. Her last program was the repulsive "Ana y los siete," in which her character was the nanny for a large family by day and a stripper by night; the most horrifying sight in the history of Spanish TV was la Obregon's seminude silicone-laden body. So she's in trouble now for offering to pay her bodyguard to beat up a TV host who had made fun of her. I say that's conspiracy to commit assault and battery, a violent crime, and that she ought to go to the slam for it. Obregon denies the story and is threatening to sue the magazine that published it. I bet she doesn't do it, that she's all hat and no cattle.

(Contrast: I wouldn't want to put Isabel Pantoja in jail, even though she's mixed up in this Marbella corruption case and is almost certainly guilty of tax fraud, at the very least. She's a nonviolent, economic criminal, who shouldn't suffer loss of her physical freedom, but rather of her economic freedom. Sentence her to five years in public housing, scrubbing floors and eating off food stamps.)

Oh, by the way, you know the urban legend in which a celebrity with mega-fake boobs is on an airplane that loses cabin pressure, and her juggernauts explode? Here in Spain that celebrity is Ana Obregon. I've heard it in the US about Dolly Parton and Pamela Anderson.

Dumbest controversy of the year: Catalan chef Santi Santamaria has accused Ferran Adria and other celebrity chefs of ruining Iberian cuisine by using artificial chemical ingredients in their fancy expensive avant-garde dishes. So everybody's all excited, and, get this, they're debating the question on TV and the radio, and taking sides on it. Who gives a crap? It's obvious that nothing interesting has happened yet this week.

The death toll of the construction accident at the new CF Valencia stadium has reached four. Three of the dead have been identified, an Ecuadorian, a Bolivian, and a Spaniard. They're arguing about the causes now, but it's obviously not the fault of the men who fell, it's the fault of whoever was in charge of putting up the scaffold.

Barça update: Keita has officially signed. Pique is coming for sure. Rumor has it they want to sign forward Dani Guiza, who led the league in goals last year, from Mallorca, Hleb from Arsenal, Villa from Valencia, and Alves from Sevilla. Villarreal (not Recreativo; he was merely on loan there last year) is demanding €20 million for Uruguayan defender Martin Caceres.

Meanwhile, the Royals are dashing our hopes yet again. The season started out so nicely, and now they've lost eight straight on a road trip to Boston and Toronto, including a no-hitter by Jon Lester, a guy who has just come back from having cancer. Congratulations to Lester, it's a great story, but you hate it when it happens to your team.

Here's the Royals' best possible lineup in my opinion. By the way, OPS (On-base average Plus Slugging percentage) is the best statistic that measures a batter's performance, I think. You want your guys at the power positions (3B, RF, LF, 1B) to have at least an 800 OPS, and your guys at the skill positions (C, SS, 2B, CF) to have at least 750. A weak-hitting shortstop might have a 700 OPS, while a top hitter like Manny Ramirez or Albert Pujols might be well over 1000. Barry Bonds used to rack up a steroid-fueled OPS of like 1300 every year. Under 700 and you're a marginal player, one step away from the minors, unless you're an exceptional fielder or a reliable catcher.

L DeJesus CF 694
R Grudzielanek 2B 710
L Gordon 3B 799
R Guillen LF 718
R Olivo C 911
L Teahen RF 681
R Butler 1B 669
S Callaspo SS 660
R Buck DH 690

That just blows. Only Olivo and Gordon are doing their jobs, and Guillen is hitting well now after a disastrous April. That's it. Everybody else is hitting far below average for his position. And both Callaspo at SS and Butler at 1B are below-average defensive players, to boot. (The rest of the team is average or above-average, at least.) The Royals have above-average defensive players at both those positions. The problem is that 1B Gload's OPS is 573, and SS Peña's OPS is 388, which might be the worst in the history of the major leagues--and they've already given him more than 140 at-bats.

From today's El Pais in an article titled "Cuba and a hope named Obama": 'A Cuban academic declared that, differently from other occasions, the American electoral process is being taken very seriously this time in official circles. "In previous elections it didn't matter who won. Now it is different. McCain represents immobility. It would be the same policies as always there, and the same response as always here. But an Obama victory would move the whole political scene,' said this analyst, a member of the Communist party."

Another near-disaster here in Barcelona: Yesterday they were loading a cargo of dimethylamine off a ship in the harbor, and the crane dropped it, so the nasty poisonous inflammable stuff got all over the place and they had to shut down the seafront part of the motorway loop around the city for nine hours. The traffic jam was amazing.

I think one of the problems with Barcelona's infrastructure is that we're living on the edge. The system works OK in normal conditions, but let one thing go wrong--a rainstorm that shorts out the traffic lights, a sinkhole that closes down a commuter rail line, a power cable that comes down atop an electricity substation, a bunch of squatters blocking off the Via Laietana with their latest attempted riot--and the whole thing collapses, making everybody's life impossible and costing innumerable hours of work time, thereby decreasing our productivity and hurting our economy.

So CiU wants €5 billion more in tax money for the Generalitat from the central government. That would be OK if they were going to spend it usefully, but you know what they want it for: to pass out to their own clients in their own political machine. More money for TV3! And the Department of Linguistic Normalization! And their pet newspapers (mostly in provincial towns like Lleida, Girona, Manresa, etc.)! And their own "consultants"! And all the 175,000 civil servants employed by the Generalitat!

The cops have been running an anti-drug operation in the Zona Franca, one of Barcelona's most degraded slums. They've arrested and jailed 48 persons for drug trafficking, and have pressed charges against 373 more for drug dealing and 33 for illegal possession of a weapon. The story only mentions the nationality / ethnicity of two of those jailed, both Spaniards.

So everybody's excited about the Eurovision festival tonight. God help us all. Check out the video of Spain's candidate. El Pais says this whole thing is paid for with taxpayers' money through the Cervantes Institute (whose job is to promote Spanish culture around the world) and TVE, the state-owned (and why we need one I don't know) television network.

Supposedly Barça has bought the French-Malian midfielder Keita from Sevilla for €14 million, and has repurchased the Catalan defender (and product of Barça's youth team) Pique from Manchester United for €5 million.

ETA again: They set off a truck-bomb loaded with 60 kilos of explosives on the beachfront street in Guecho (Getxo), Vizcaya, at 1 AM today. They called in a warning an hour before the bomb went off, so nobody was hurt. For a big explosion--it left a crater a foot deep and six across--it did surprisingly little structural damage.

Constitutional Court confusion: Justice Roberto Garcia-Calvo, a conservative, died suddenly yesterday, leaving another vacancy among the court's twelve members. The Court had been divided six to six between "progressives" and "conservatives," with the progressive Chief Justice breaking ties. No one knows who's going to replace Garcia-Calvo, especially since four of the current Justices' terms expired in December and the PSOE and PP haven't been able to agree on who'll replace them, either.

Here in Catalonia the focus is, of course, on the controversial Catalan statute of autonomy (= regional constitution), which was passed by the Catalan and Spanish parliaments, but which has been held up by judicial appeals from both the opposition PP and from other Spanish regions. With Garcia-Calvo dead, the "progressives" would have an advantage if a decision on the statute were to be made now. Which is highly unlikely.

The Spanish construction sector's production was down 10% from a year ago as of March, the highest drop in the EU; the EU average is a mere 0.1% decline.

72% of Spanish soccer fans would rather watch soccer than have sex, which might have something to do with the birth rate around here.

ERC Catalunacy: Pepelu Carod-Rovira is going to Portugal to request support for Catalan independence. Why would he possibly think he's going to get any? Meanwhile, accused embezzler and influence-peddler Joan Puigcercos wants to be the party's candidate in the 2010 regional election so he can get Catalonia all ready for independence in 2014.

Defense Minister Carme Chacon said yesterday, "I am a pacifist woman, and the Army is pacifist too."

They had a big old demonstration in Amposta, a small Catalan city on the Ebro River, against sending any of their precious liquid to keep us clean and hydrated here in Barcelona. As usual in Spain, the organizers and the authorities claimed radically different turnouts; this time the organizers said 35,000 and the authorities said 6000. The selfishness is appalling, since the Ebro Valley towns and farms don't need the water to be sent to Barcelona through the new "mini-transfer" aqueduct supposedly already under construction. The whole point of sending this Ebro water to Barcelona is that Barcelona is buying the excess water that the Ebro Valley farmers aren't going to use.

I bet the murder in Reus becomes a big stink; the victim was a law-abiding citizen, a 37-year-old engineer from a nearby small town, while the alleged killer is a Spanish gypsy. That is not going to go over well around here, where gypsies are stereotyped as knife-wielding criminals. Which some of them are.

The Spanish First Division soccer season is over. Real Madrid is champion; other Champions League teams next year are Villarreal, Barça, and Atletico de Madrid; Racing, Sevilla, and Valencia (Cup champion) will play the UEFA Cup; and Levante, Murcia, and Zaragoza are relegated to Second. Just wait till next year. Meanwhile, this summer we'll have the Eurocup to keep us entertained.

ETA bombing update: They used a car bomb loaded with more thn 100 kilos of explosives. The explosion scattered debris in a radius of 100 meters. Serious damage was done to the barracks. The four wounded officers are in good condition at the hospital; one was trapped in the wreckage for two hours, and is currently in intensive care, but he's going to live. The cops found the car the terrorists escaped in; it was booby-trapped and the bomb squad deactivated a gasoline incendiary bomb. Can we please not negotiate with these terrorists ever again?

Electricity prices, which are regulated by the government in Spain, are going up; the National Energy Commission has approved an 11.3% rate hike to take effect in July. Econ minister Pedro Solbes says the administration will almost certainly sign off on the increase. The problem is that electricity rates are fixed by the government below the market price, and the utilities are €5 billion in the hole this year and €15 billion all totaled. It just doesn't work to force businesses to charge less than cost price for their goods. Looks like we're going to have to do a bit of belt-tightening around here, with higher mortgage rates, high food and gasoline prices, increased unemployment, and low economic growth. Every boom has its bust.

Speaking of which, Spanish GDP growth in the first trimester of 2008 was 2.7%; it was 3.5% in the last trimester of 2007. Solbes is calling it "rapid deceleration." Good news: Telefonica posted a €1.5 billion profit for the trimester, which will help out everybody's pension plan and mutual funds.

PP news: Maria San Gil has threatened to resign as PP president in the Basque Country if Rajoy doesn't move away from his new moderate position on regional nationalisms. Ms. San Gil, we all respect your courage and decency, but we've lost two elections in a row and something's got to change. Either get on the bus or get out of the way with as little fuss as possible. She has, by the way, ruled out challenging Rajoy for party leadership at the June convention.

Remember the Jose Couso case? He was the journalist killed in Baghdad when the Americans took the city back in 2003. He was pointing a camera out the window of the Palestine Hotel in central Baghdad and an American tank fired on him, thinking he was an enemy fighter or spotter. His family and the Spanish far left have never stopped trying to take the US Army, and specifically the three soldiers involved in Couso's death, to court in Spain for "murdering" him. So Spain's National Court has just thrown out their case for the second time. Maybe they'll get the message now: we're sorry he got killed, but bad things that are not crimes happen in battles.

Barça report: There's a movement taking shape to call a no-confidence motion against club president Joan Laporta. I bet it doesn't work. Supposedly they've already signed Alves from Sevilla, they're interested in Hleb and Drogba, they've offered Ronaldinho, Zambrotta, and €20 million to Milan for Kaká, and Puyol is mad and is talking about leaving.

The drought has finally broken. There's a low-pressure system over the western Mediterranean bringing counterclockwise winds from the east carrying moist air. It's going to rain until at least next Wednesday, at least four inches total in all of Catalonia, and this should make an appreciable difference in reservoir levels. It'll be a green summer out in the country.

The situation in Burma is beyond scandalous. It's openly criminal. Figures (probably exaggerated) of half a million dead are being thrown around, and there are reports of cholera and malaria outbreaks. The Americans and several other countries, including the Brits and Aussies and of course the Thais, are just waiting for permission to start flying in aid, and the xenophobic Burmese junta won't let them. Even the UN and Amnesty International are denouncing the junta. Meanwhile, of all things, they're having a pseudo-election tomorrow, a referendum on a new constitution. If this doesn't bring the government down--remember last year's rioting, brutally put down?--I don't know what will.

Meanwhile, in one of those slightly admirable and slightly silly ceremonies they have around here, the Generalitat's Catalonia International Prize has been jointly awarded to Burmese leader Aung San Suu Kyi and a Burmese woman doctor. The honorees will receive €100,000 in cash (rather generous) and an Antoni Tapies sculpture (rather worthless). My problem here: It seems to me that the moral stature of the awardees is higher than that of the awarders, and that the awarders are attempting to buy moral stature by associating themselves with the awardees.

Monica Terribas has been named president of TV3, so good-bye to hopes of its de-politicization. Even though the Socialists are in power, TV3 will always be the heart of nationalist influence in Catalonia. Monica is probably most memorable, at least to me, for her adrenaline-fueled (?) performance the night of the 2004 US election, and for her interview with Colin Powell, when she got a bit snippy and he bulldozed her.

Our friends in Esquerra Republicana have pitched in on the Free Franki crusade. Puigcercos and Pepelu Carod are vying to see who can be Cataloonier; Puigcercos has called on the government to liberate him. Carod took it farther and denounced "the impunity enjoyed by those persons and media that insult, defame, and lie about Catalan reality, its institutions, or its political representatives." Wow. Sounds like Pepelu's against free speech for everybody but him.

ETA update: The French cops found the car used by the terrorists who killed the two Guardias Civiles near Bordeaux, but the killers are still at large. No news on the murderers of Isaías Carrasco, who are also still at large.

Get this: 36 local cops, including the police chief, have been arrested in the Madrid suburb of Coslada for extorting protection money from bars and discos, and for collaborating with a Romanian gang that trafficked in prostitutes. I'm pretty sure that corruption among local cops is pretty well entrenched in Spain. I know some places in Barcelona that have been operating illegally for years, and they must be paying somebody off.

The cops rounded up yet another bunch of Internet kiddie-porn pervos, 17 this time. Jeez. These guys are just crawling out of the woodwork.

The Barça firestorm is growing. All the fans are mightily pissed off that the team looked so bad against Real Madrid. Eto'o, Edmilson, Xavi, and Bojan were harassed as they drove away from practice yesterday. There's a movement to get rid of Laporta, but I don't think it'll be successful. Rijkaard is officially out as coach and Guardiola in, and Beguiristain shows no signs of stepping down as general manager.