Note: Updated Aug. 17 for comments from EBay Classifieds Group and our observation that EBay-owned Loquo.com has blocked browsers in the U.S. and elsewhere from viewing its content.

New blog posts from Craigslist founder Craig Newmark and CEO Jim Buckmaster point fingers (not saying which ones) at EBay for allowing sex-trade ads on its Spanish free-ad site, LoQuo.com.

Slamming both EBay and  California gubernatorial candidate Meg Whitman, EBay’s former CEO, Newmark and Buckmaster both posted blog items on Monday about “thousands” of pornographic ads on Loquo, Spain’s largest free-classifieds portal.

It’s unusual for Newmark to use his blog to weigh in on any issue that affects his business. And a double-barreled blast from both Newmark and Buckmaster has been totally unheard of — until now.  What started the rants was EBay Classifieds’ Facebook page:  Stop Craigslist human trafficking – Choose EBay Classifieds.

On his blog at cnewmark.com, Newmark quotes Buckmaster as saying the company is hosting “highly explicit photographs” on Loquo that are “hard-core pornographic images of unprotected sex acts.”

We checked the examples Buckmaster has posted on the Craigslist blog, and they’re beyond graphic. They’re extreme.  On Monday, we also checked out Loquo for ourselves. But if you’re in the U.S., you can’t, because as of this morning, Loquo has blocked U.S. browsers.  Our analysts report that Loquo is similarly blocking browsers in Germany, Portugal, the U.K. , Canada and Hungary as well. Presumably, it’s blocking all but Spanish browsers.

According to an article on Wikipedia (OK, you can’t believe everything you read),  pornography is legal in Spain, for anyone over the age of 18. Prostitution is widely accepted because of ambiguous laws on the subject.

EBay has been moving away from the Loquo brand in Spain, and now operates its core classifieds business in Spain under the EBay Anuncios brand.

“EBay Classifieds Group has been in the process of ensuring all of its sites are in alignment with its family-friendly values,” Jill Williams, global PR manager, told us. “As part of these efforts, we have been removing personals and dating categories from our classifieds sites around the world. We continue to work relentlessly in this direction and are confident that the last step in this process will be resolved in short order. ”

Loquo was acquired by EBay in 2005. At the time, Williams said, its focus on the general classifieds market.  ”Since then, the site has evolved to the point where it does not fit into the core focus of EBay Classifieds Group’s business. In 2009, we launched EBay Anuncios (EBay Classifieds), which shares a homepage with EBay.es and is now our core classifieds presence in Spain, replacing Loquo completely.”

We noticed that Loquo.com was not displaying a home page this morning but did not display a server-error message that typically occur during temporary outages. The page source revealed a one-line domain record that required a password to log in. Later this morning, a splash page came up, stating: “Our apologies, Loquo is not available in your country.”  The message was repeated in Spanish and Catalan.

In his blog, Buckmaster wrote: “We’ve been shown some ads currently live on EBay’s Loquo.com classifieds site, which features thousands of paid ads offering various sexual acts in exchange for money.”

Newmark wrote: “Gubernatorial hopeful Meg Whitman was fully aware of this business during her tenure at EBay.”

There’s no love lost between both companies, which are battling in court over the one-quarter stake (roughly) in Craigslist Inc. that EBay owns. A Delaware court heard testimony in one of the pending cases last winter; a ruling could be released any day.

Furthermore, of course, Craigslist is trying to portray itself as a white horse in the “there’s porn ads on them websites” battle — which is at least partly spurred by our research showing Craigslist will generate an estimated $36 million in “adult services” ads in the United States this year. Craigslist has been the subject of tremendous controversy because of its ads for prostitution — and has tried hard to convince anyone who’s paying attention that — to paraphrase, “other companies are running ads that are even nastier than we are; we’re the good guys in all of this.” Yeh, right.

Craigslist has eliminated many (most? all?) of the pornographic images that used to inhabit its pages. But it’s still a home for predators hunting for child sex — witness the arrest of 15 men in Polk County, Fla., this weekend on child sex charges, based on a “Craigslist sting” by the local sheriff — and for blatant prostitution ads.

(As we always hasten to add, Backpage.com, owned by the media giant Village Voice Media, is just one of many companies that makes Craigslist look like a church choir when it comes to explicit sex ads.)

In one last slam at Whitman in his blog post, Buckmaster calls her the “porn queen” and says the company made millions in revenue on pornography sales during her tenure as CEO.