Two days ago, we noted, coordinated twin suicide attacks left some 70 Shi'ite worshippers dead in Khanaqin, a town within Iraq's normally more tranquil Kurdish autonomous zone. Nov. 23 has seen a suicide attack—this time targetting a police convoy, and killing some 20 (only half of them police)—in Kirkuk, also in north but just outside the Kurdish-controlled zone. The attack came after a drive-by shooting on a liquor store lured police to the scene, in a busy market district. Earlier in the day, a suicide bomber detonated his car at a checkpoint on the south edge of Kirkuk, wounding three Iraqi soldiers.

The front-page synopsis below the headline of the New York Times's coverage of Bush's Nov. 20 meeting with President Hu Jintao in Beijing said it all:

Hu Jintao Cedes Nothing on Political Freedoms —Will Act on Trade

Economic "liberalization" without lifting the dictatorship an inch. Contrary to the lingering illusions of the idiot left, the model for the current Chinese regime appears not to be Mao but Pinochet. Bush, for his part, dumbed down the whole notion of human rights by reducing them to one item on a laundry list of concerns, somewhere just below the "intellectual property rights" of US compact-disk manufacturers:

From the British site Labour Friends of Iraq, Nov. 22:

Grassroots members of George Galloway’s left-wing Respect party have condemned as "unacceptable" the decision of the party leadership to exclude lesbian and gay rights from their manifesto for the general election earlier this year.

Well, after three years in Pentagon custody, José Padilla has finally been indicted. Attorney General Alberto Gonzales, announcing the indictment, tried to be as lurid as possible, charging that Padilla was part of a "North American support cell" to send "money, physical assets and new recruits" overseas to engage in acts of terrorism, and that he had traveled abroad himself to become "a violent jihadist." (NYT, Nov. 22) But several paragraphs down in the NY Times' coverage we get the straight dope:

Sen. Joseph Biden's Nov. 21 speech before the Council on Foreign Relations calling for a phased withdrawal of US troops from Iraq over the next two years is clearly intended as a response to Dick Cheney's bellicose tirade before the American Enterprise Institute that same day. Cheney merely demonstrates classical addictive behavior. He just can't stop himself:

Spain's largest ever trial began Nov. 21, as 56 people accused of links with the Basque armed separatist group ETA appeared in court in Madrid. It is the culmination of an investigation begun in 1997 by Baltasar Garzón, Spain's leading anti-terrorism judge, aimed at cutting off what prosecutors call the "stomach, the heart and the head of ETA."

The 56 are accused of belonging to groups that provided logistical support for ETA. Named organizations include the former political party KAS, its successor, EKIN, and the newspaper Egin, which was closed by order of Garzón.

On Nov. 16 Rosemond Pradel, general secretary of Haiti's Provisional Electoral Council (CEP), announced that presidential, legislative and local elections, already postponed twice, are being rescheduled to Dec. 27. Runoffs, if required, will be held on Jan. 31. Haiti's Constitution requires the new government to take office on Feb. 7. Interim Prime Minister Gerard Latortue confirmed the new dates in a telephone interview on Nov. 17. "The decision is firm and final," he said. But Patrick Fequiere, head of operations for the CEP, told reporters he was "completely in the dark about this business."

Two small explosions caused minor damage on the morning of Nov. 18 in branches of the BBVA Bancomer bank in Tlalnepantla and Atizapan de Zaragoza, cities in Mexico state just northwest of Mexico City. According to the Mexico state attorney general's office, several people threw a "firecracker" into the Atizapan branch at 3 AM, damaging furniture and files and shattering windows in the bank and in two nearby houses. The state authorities said a homemade device found in the Tlalnepantla branch later in the morning probably failed to explode properly, though it did cause some damage. Bank personnel didn't notice the device until 11:30 am, after it had already partially exploded. BBVA Bancomer is owned by the Spanish bank BBVA.