Europe – Leeds's Singing Organ-Grinder

With Ibex in free-fall, La Vanguardia announces European bail-out

But we were hoping that there would be rather more than 99 euromillions.

The true origins of “Africa begins at the Pyrenees”

This deeply resented peripheralising aphorism was coined not by Alexander Dumas but by Dominique Dufour de Pradt or conceivably the Conde do Funchal.

Africa begins in the Pyrenees, according to this Sun OpenSolaris installer.

Link sink for 26/05/2009

Was S Felipe Neri the original big swinging dick?

Voter registration campaign for EU elections in June

Here, for example.

Spain impeding free movement of capital in Europe

Will the rich get their assets out of Spain before Zapatero manages to fleece them?

End of an affair?

Catalan Europhilia seems to be decreasing as contact with European institutions increases.

Professor Blumenbach of Göttingen’s views on beauty in women

T Bell, MD, Kalogynomia, or the laws of female beauty (1821): Professor Blumenbach of Göttingen, whose profound science and perfect impartiality no one can doubt, does not hesitate to say, that the English are the most beautiful people on the globe. Nor is this wonderful when we consider that ENGLAND, perhaps exclusively, presents the combination…

The madness of Níjar

Surprise has been expressed in circles, squares and other pleasingly simple geometrical arrangements of peapoles, that revolutionaries should want to destroy those who, according to Ken Livingstone and other prophets of the New Municipalism, are their nearest and dearest. What folly, my darlings! We creaky reactionaries know that revolutions always destroy society (and often themselves)…

Catalan in Europe

I only just found out that you can receive the European Parliament’s propaganda mag, Focus on Europe, in Catalan. The forked tongue of Brussels/Strasbourg says that “Focus on Europe gives a broad view of European Parliament news. This newsletter is addressed to a wide audience and is published in all EU official languages.” The Ebner…