I suppose you've seen that the big news is that the German utility E.ON has mounted a "white knight" takeover bid for Spanish utility Endesa that is considerably better than the previous Gas Natural bid. My attitude is that this sort of deal is typical business practice and, if the shareholders accept the offer, I don't see what the problem is, either with the Gas Natural or the Endesa bids. However, the PSOE and the Catalanistas support the Gas Natural bid because Gas Natural is a Barcelona corporation and all the Endesa jobs and tax revenue would be moved to Barcelona, and the PP supports the E.ON bid because they've promised to keep all the Endesa jobs and taxes in Madrid.

Now the Catalanistas are mad, of course. Sorry, guys. La pela es la pela and this is a business move. E.ON is offering more money, 100% cash, per share, than Gas Natural, which is only offering 35% of the share price in cash. Business knows no nationality, and Catalan shareholders in Endesa will all be very happy to sell to E.ON because they will receive lots of filthy lucre.

Alleged historian David Irving has been sentenced to three years in jail in Austria for denying the Holocaust. My feelings: 1. Irving is certainly guilty as charged. 2. I can understand why Austria has a Holocaust-denial law. Hitler, after all, was Austrian. 3. However, I do not see putting someone in jail for his opinions, however reprehensible they might be. 4. Irving has already done three months in jail before trial, and he's backed down on his claims and admitted the Holocaust existed. Undoubtedly, he's lying, but he's been forced to humiliate himself publicly. 5. If I were Austria I'd deport him and not let him back in the country. That would close the book permanently on this guy and he would be relegated to the ash-heap of history, forgotten and unlamented. Keep him in jail and the neo-Nazis will make him a martyr. Turn him loose and he's just lying scum.

Barcelona stomped Chelsea 1-2 in the mud at Stamford Bridge. Watch this team play on TV if you get the chance. Barça is about as entertaining as soccer gets. I was not happy with Chelsea, as they watered the field to make it a swamp, and also played dirty, racking up 23 fouls and getting one of their guys red-carded for a very violent charge into Barça left wing Messi. Barcelona's superiority was clear in the number of shots on goal (9-4), time of possession (64%),  and corner kicks.

Far too much attention is being paid to the movie "Good Night and Good Luck" over here. The problem is that too many people on both sides of the Atlantic learn their history from the movies. Absolutely nobody in Spain understands that there was very serious Communist infiltration and espionage in the US government in the 1930s and 40s and that it was mostly rooted out by 1950, which is when McCarthy became prominent. McCarthy was never powerful, he was simply a loudmouthed demagogue, and he was already finished by 1954, when Edward R. Murrow produced his TV program.

As for the bird flu, I for one will be very surprised if there is an outbreak among humans. It seems to me that for once the Zapatero administration is more or less correct in its actions. I don't see what more they could do than what they're already doing, which is testing birds by the thousands all over the place. On the other hand, I'm not going around performing mouth-to-mouth on moribund pigeons, either. Still, I'm not worried.

I am worried about Hugo Chavez, who should not be underestimated. This guy has grabbed effective control of Venezuela. What I would do as soon as he steps out of line again is confiscate his Citgo chain of gas stations in the US. The problem is this guy is Castro with oil money and he's trying to export revolution. Isolate and contain him now. And nothing could be more irresponsible than selling Chavez military material, which Spain is going to do. For a country supposedly in favor of peace and love, Spain makes too much money selling arms to the Third World. Of all people, foreign minister Moratinos made a trip to Africa a couple of months ago, and one thing he tried to do was sell military stuff to all these countries like Angola. Ridiculous.

Here's a chain of ridiculousness. Great Britain occupies Gibraltar. Spain claims sovereignty over it, but the people want to be part of Great Britain. However, Spain occupies Ceuta and Melilla. Morocco claims sovereignty over them, but the people want to be part of Spain. And Morocco occupies the Western Sahara. The Saharans claim sovereignty over their territory, and the people want to be part of anything but Morocco, preferably an independent country of their own. The Western Sahara was a Spanish colony until 1975, and now it is a Moroccan colony. The United Nations has some sort of useless monitoring group in the area, but, for all the complaining that gets done about American imperialism there, very few complaints about Moroccan colonialism are heard at the UN.