Czech Green Party MP Olga Zubová wrote an open letter to US President-elect Barack Obama, asking him to review the US commitment to the planned military radar base on Czech soil for the proposed "missile shield." "For the Czech Republic you as the new president of the United States are bringing hope to three quarters of the Czech population who, in recent polls, have repeatedly stated their disagreement with the intended bilateral missile denfence treaty to station the radar base on Czech soil, which is to be ratified in the near future by Czech parliament," says Zubová in her letter.

On Nov. 11, Poland's Independence Day, the extreme right group National Radical Camp (Oboz Narodowo-Radykalny-ONR) marched in Warsaw, in its second public show of strength this year. ONR also marched in June to commemorate the 1936 anti-Jewish pogrom in Myslenic. Warsaw anti-fascists mobilized to oppose the Independence Day march, launching a 150-strong blockade of the street, with banners reading: "NO PASARAN" and "WARSAW FREE OF FASCISTS." Police brought out a helicopter and a water gun to break the blockade. Protected by the police, the ONR continued their march on a different route. Nobody was arrested, but police took the ID of the anti-fas surrounded by the cordon. (Centrum Informacji Anarchistycnej-CIA, Nov. 11)

On the morning of Nov. 11, some 150 French police—including elite anti-terrorist forces—raided a farm at Tarnac in the Millevaches plateau and arrested nine young people, who ran the local grocery store. Four days later, the nine were sent before an anti-terrorist judge and accused of "criminal conspiracy with terrorist intentions." The newspapers reported that the nine "were tracked by the police because they belonged to the ultra-left and the anarcho-autonomous milieu."

President Hamid Karzai openly called for a timeline for NATO to withdraw from Afghanistan. At a Nov. 26 news conference with NATO secretary general Jaap de Hoop Scheffer, Karzai rhetorically asked: "How long will this war go? Afghanistan can’t continue to suffer a war without end." (NYT, Nov. 27)

President George Bush hailed the Iraqi parliament's approval of a landmark accord for US troops to remain in the country in three years—but a popular referendum on the deal was included in the legislation. As part of political bargaining before the vote, the Baghdad government agreed to demands by Sunni parties to hold a referendum on the accord no later than July 30. Even if the accord is voted down, Baghdad would have to give Washington one year's notice, meaning that troops would be allowed to remain in the country only until the summer of 2010. (AFP, Nov. 27)

The Indian navy seized two Pakistani merchant ships, asserting that they were used to drop off the Mumbai attackers in a series of small boats. According to Indian news agencies, intelligence sources pinpointed one particular cargo vessel that had stopped in Mumbai briefly before leaving for Karachi, Pakistan. Indian navy and coastguard vessels happened to be engaged in routine exercises off the coast of Gujarat and were immediately dispatched to intercept the vessel.

The New York Police Department has beefed up security at the city's subway and train stations after federal authorities warned of a possible suicide bombing over the Thanksgiving holiday. "Transit passengers in larger metropolitan areas like New York may see an increased security presence in the coming days," Homeland Security Department spokesman Russ Knocke said. "The increased personnel could include uniformed and plainclothes "behavior detection" officers, federal air marshals, canine teams, and security inspectors."

A glimmer of hope from the New York Times, Nov. 24:

A federal judge in Brooklyn ruled on Monday that the United States government could not use ethnicity as justification for detaining two Egyptian-born men who were questioned for four hours after a cross-country flight in 2004.