I've never bothered even to begin to notice which political post on 'BC' (along with views on sex and religion) triggers the most comments, pro and strongly against, but Mike Larkin's doing pretty well with 'Blood on YOUR Hands' (Blogcritics).
It's scarcely surprising when he starts out with the assertion that "those who instigated the Iraq war have the blood of Madrid on their hands".
Though it's scarcely an extremist piece of writing, provided you read the rest, Mike has stirred up one or two people in the narrow-minded outer reaches of both sides of the political divide.
Spain's weekend election result has led to a lot of simplistic nonsense up here to the north of the country too.
 I'd hardly set foot in the Factory today when somebody suggested I might want to grab a copy of the daily rag, 'France Soir', for its cover picture and the Kid's growing 18th birthday collection (which will be the big headlines of her lifetime and earlier).
Thanks but no thanks.
For your information, if not edification, it looked like this and the caption means, in the unlikely event you can't tell, "Whose turn?"
Nobody will be astonished that 'W' is making the most -- or the worst -- of the vote's outcome, informing us that "the Left has no qualms about getting into bed with Al-Qaeda" '(merde in france)', while his buddy, 'the dissident frogman', is having a field day with 'The Difference'.
To a kindly communication from 'W' asking why I recently referred to 'MiF' as "that entertaining pair", I replied that I think I was confusing hysteria with schizophrenia.
zzz
 On a less sombre and absurd note -- and especially for Lee at 'Odessa Street', who can't live without Fela's music -- the next rather aged photo I found, uncredited, at an unlikely place in Japan, AFLANG, which, like it sounds, deals mostly in Japanese with the achievements of "students and researchers who have keen interest in African languages".
There are surprisingly few pictures of the late Fela in cyberspace, and most of those I spotted had him in black and white on stage, in rather less relaxed mood.
What triggered the search was an article in a Nigerian newspaper about 'Fela: through the eyes of Femi Bankole Osunla', which appeared in my newsreader at the weekend via 'allAfrica'.
"The photographs of Femi Bankole Osunla have introduced countless people to the beauty of Afro Beat as an art," writes Onome Amawhe in a good tribute, with anecdotes, about both artists. "His ability to capture performances and intimate moments of the maverick Fela Anikulapo Kuti during the golden age of Afro Beat, earned him the nickname 'Femi Foto,' as well as leading to his art now being associated with the genre. 'Fela’s afro beat,' declares Osunla, 'is now at the centre piece of our history that grows in eminence in each passing day.'
The 49-year old is now reaping the benefits of what is justly his."
(More in the 'Vanguard').
zzz
Another piece to grab my attention as I caught up on events outside Europe came from Chad the physicist.
"Coal miners have it much worse than academics, you see, so everybody should just stop complaining. Also, there are children starving in Africa, so eat your vegetables, you ungrateful little snots."
Well, yes, that's one way of seeing it, but Chad knocks down this -- again simplistic -- kind of argument in a thoughtful entry about what he describes as "The Starving Children Fallacy" ('Uncertain Principles').
Chad takes exception to David Lester's article moaning about whiners called 'Complain, Complain' in 'The Chronicle of Higher Education', which is apparently "topic of the moment in the academic blogging world".
zzz
For reasons almost all not worthy of bitching about here, I'm in a sour mood myself tonight. Apart from the purely personal ephemeral ones, I think that the shock of the massacre in Spain has finally hit home, worsened by some of the immensely stupid things I've been reading about its aftermath in the news and the blogosphere. As if the event was not tragic enough without fools rushing in to make capital out of it.
There's also good news and bad from west Africa. The really excellent tidings are that Laurent, my buddy in Ivory Coast, and his wife Ida now have a baby daughter.
The sad news is that over the past few days, friends in Abidjan have told me that they can no longer avoid the feeling that the extremists in that country are determined to plunge it back into civil war.
UN peacekeeping troops are due to arrive next month in Ivory Coast, where French and west African soldiers have been patrolling the ceasefire lines after a ceasefire signed more than a year ago, but there are extremely nasty indications that the truce is not going to hold.
One can hope that an analysis piece filed by the Factory (AFP/Yahoo) on March 7 will hold good. But since then, signs of trouble have worsened, even if the world's media are paying scant attention right now to what they're getting from their correspondents there.
A volatile band of thugs politely referred to in hard news copy as a "youth militia" allied to President Laurent Gbagbo, the Young Patriots, last week thought it a good idea to beat up magistrates whose appointments they didn't like, prompting Washington to go public with concern (VOA).
Looking in from the outside, it's only too easy to see a pattern to a whole series of such incidents. These fiery "students" are unleashed and do their worst. It's always afterwards that Gbagbo tells them that he really doesn't approve of that sort of thing.
Yeah. The disapproval and announced deterrent measures are beginning to wear pretty thin.
10:59:19 PM link 
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