Mr. Bean rules Europe

A neat bit of hacking yesterday, when some guy with computersmarts hacked into the official Spanish government website of its European Union Presidency for 2010 (it's still not working) and got Mr. Bean to pop up when visitors checked it out. The site was inundated with hits and then went down a few hours later.......

.......and Spanish officials then stupidly denied any hacking had taken place, probably embarrassed because of the fanfare they'd made of it. Officialdom's big mistake was to announce it had spent 12 million Euros in security measures on Spanish gov't websites....a red rag to a bull for any self-respecting blackhat. Anyway, message to Spanish flunkies is "Liar liar, pants on fire, we got the screenshot, suckaz".

The whole joke is about Spanish PM Rodriguez Zapatero, who has picked up the nick of Mr.Bean because of the lookalike thingy...

you be the judge!
(My thanks to Bina for improving this part with the better lookalike photo above)

.....but not cos of his Goth daughters.

¡Que viva España!

Do what with tourism???????

This one isn't really LatAm, but it is Spanish language, it is politics and it's definitely stuff like that. Spanish PM Zapatero (he of the crummy suits) was speaking at a press conference today after meeting Russian President Medvedev. The issue in question was bilateral tourism and Zapatero said

"We have made an agreement to stimulate, to benefit, to f**k, to help this tourism."

Don't believe me? Ok, here's the Youtube.

The exact words are (in the last 10 seconds of this 27 second video):

"Hemos hecho un acuerdo para estimular, para favorecer, para follar para apoyar ese turismo."

For those who suffer under the Castilian challenge, the offending word is "follar" (pron: fo' yar). Sure it's a blooper, but it's a damn good one. Just a pity the new US Prez is such a good speaker. Will we begin to miss those dubyaisms after a while?

Thanks for the headsup, UL.