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.

Readers of WW4 REPORT will be aware that we hate David Irving's filthy crypto-Nazi guts. But we oppose his imprisonment, just as we did that of the vile Judith Miller. We wish the Europeans would realize that locking up these intellectual hoodlums just makes them look like martyrs and paradoxically vindicates them. And then, as in the case of Holocaust revisionist Robert Faurisson (who was just sacked from the University of Lyon, not even locked up), you get people like Noam Chomsky running to their defense in The Nation. And then the right (especially the Zionists and neocons) jump in, portraying the left as a hotbed of anti-Semitism. And then, worse still, the left itself gets all confused about the ethics of genocide and historical truth.

More arrests in Italy--but note that this time they are being held under a new post-9-11 law that considerably dumbs down the standards for detaining suspects. These standards were weakened still further following the London attacks this summer, as the BBC noted. From the AP, Nov. 17:

A prominent French anti-globalization activist blamed the wave of urban unrest on failed government policies and the social and economic marginalization of immigrants. "Riots have nothing to do with Muslims, Arabs or African immigrants as propagated by the media," José Bové told IslamOnline.net Nov. 8. "The unrest has its roots in decade-old failed social policies to improve the situation in France's poor suburbs."

A forensic team working in the mass graves of Bosnia announced it had found the remains of 227 victims of the 1995 Srebrenica massacre Nov. 11. Murat Hurtic, the lead excavator, said the exhumation at the village of Snagovo, 30 miles north of Srebrenica, had discovered "147 incomplete and 80 complete bodies."

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):

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:

As unrest in the Muslim immigrant suburbs of Paris enters its ninth night, violence appears to be spreading to other towns such as Dijon, Marseille and Normandy, and into the capital itself. Trouble has now been reported from almost 90 towns around the capital, more than twice as many as the previous night, according to police. France's notoriously hardline Interior Minister Nicolas Sarkozy is now seeing conspiracies. "What we have been witnessing ... has nothing spontaneous about it. It was perfectly organized. We are trying to find out by who and how," he said. (The Hindu, Nov. 5)