Australian authorities say they foiled a large-scale terrorist attack, arresting 15 people in raids in Sydney and Melbourne Nov. 7. Among the arrrested is Muslim cleric Abu Bakr, who had earlier this year stated his support for Osama bin Laden. One suspect who had been under surveillance was shot and wounded after he had allegedly fired at officers near Sydney's Green Valley Mosque. "I am satisfied that we have disrupted what I would regard as the final stages of a large-scale terrorist attack, or the launch of a large-scale terrorist attack here in Australia," New South Wales Police Commissioner Ken Moroney said. Australia's parliament rushed through amendments to anti-terror laws Nov. 3 to allow police to charge people suspected in the early stages of planning an attack. (Stuff.co, NZ, Nov. 7)

Yeah, we think it's pretty obvious too. The violence in France now enters its 12th night. It has spread to every major city, as well as Brussels and Berlin. The scale of the violence has been widely reported. Nearly 1,000 have been arrested, scores of police and firefighters injured, over 5,000 cars destroyed, and now one person killed—an elderly man in Stains who was beaten by rioters Nov. 7. Churches and schools have been firebombed, and police fired on with shotguns. And with the government now imposing curfews, this could only escalate. (NYT, Nov. 8; London Times, Nov. 7) But world press commentary has been singularly shrill and lacking in insight. This Nov. 5 (Saturday) condensed compliation of reports from the Independent Media Centers actually provides a little context (and with refreshing conscision, at that):

Senator John McCain, a former naval aviator who was tortured during his six-year captivity by the North Vietnamese Army (NVA), is, to his great credit, inserting an anti-torture clause into a senate bill, to the consternation of the Bushies. The following piece ran in the Jewish Telegraphic Agency Nov.7:

McCain: Israelis don’t torture
Sen. John McCain cited Israel as an example of a nation that successfully combats terrorism without resorting to torture.

A bill by McCain (R-Ariz.) restricting all U.S. government employees to interrogation techniques in the army manual passed 90-9 last month, but is meeting fierce resistance from the White House, which wants to exempt CIA agents.

Some 30,000-40,000 people marched through a heavy rain on Nov. 4 in the Argentine seaside resort of Mar del Plata, in Buenos Aires province, to protest the presence of US president George W. Bush among the 32 heads of state in the city to attend the Nov. 4-5 Fourth Summit of the Americas. The march was led by Argentine Nobel Peace Prize winner Adolfo Perez Esquivel, Bolivian leftist presidential candidate and coca growers leader Evo Morales, and Hebe de Bonafini of the human rights group Mothers of the Plaza de Mayo.

Following an 11th straight night of violence in France, extremely unseemly gloating is starting to emerge from the right wing in both America and Israel. Given that the uprising provides the opportunity to indulge both Francophobia and Islamophobia simultaneously, how can they resist? The basic theme is that a "bloody" crackdown is mandated to save Western civilization, but those effeminate frogs will doubtless shirk from this sacred duty. First, from our side of the Atlantic, this gem from the vile RedState.org:

According to the Voice of the Islamic Republic of Iran radio, Nov. 4, the supreme Iranian leader Ayatollah Ali Khamene'i appeared to distance himself from the statement of hardline Iranian President Mahmud Ahmadinezhad that Israel should be "wiped off the map." Khamenei said: "neither throwing Jews into the sea nor setting the Palestinian territory on fire is in accordance with our Islamic principles."

It is increasingly apparent that the Bush administration is riven by a divide between the State Department and CIA on one hand, which still cling to some semblance of traditional notions of state legitimacy, and Cheney and the Pentagon on the other, who have completely swallowed the neocon agenda of "American exceptionalism" and believe in a brave new statecraft that is above all rules. From the NY Times Nov. 2:

More than three years after President George W. Bush determined that the Geneva conventions did not apply to the fight against terrorism, his administration is embroiled in a sharp internal debate over whether to adopt language from those accords as a basic guide for the military's treatment of terrorist suspects, administration officials said.

The immediate dispute centers on whether a Pentagon directive that will establish minimum standards for the treatment of captured enemy combatants should be based on an article of the conventions that prohibits treatment that is "cruel," "humiliating" or "degrading."

What we gringos call the "Valerie Plame scandal" is in Italy being called "Nigergate," and Berlusconi's government is doing somersaults to dis-associate itself with the sleazy episode of forged documents that helped embroil the Italians in Bush's war. From the Italian news agency AGI Nov. 3:

"The Italian government and SISMI have denied any involvement in the creation of the dossier intended to show how Iraq was in possession of materials in order to build arms of mass destruction" claims Enzo Bianco, president of the Parliamentary Committee for the Control of the Secret Services, at the end of a hearing that lasted five hours involving the under secretary Gianni Letta and SISMI director Nicolo Pollari, dedicated to Nigergate. In substance, it emerged from the hearing that Sismi is completely unconnected to the dossier put together by Rocco Martin, an ex-service worker. During the course of the hearing Pollari recalled however that there was proof that pointed to the export of uranium from Niger at the end of the 'nineties. It was also Pollari who emphasised how, before the war, SISMI had said that Iraq would not be in a position to arm itself with nuclear weapons in the short to medium term. Going on to speak about the dossier, the SISMI head referred to having been in contact with other secret services but did not speak of the fake dossier.