Kerry rally in Miami, Friday, October 29

The international media were there en masse. Among just those I chatted with were TV crews from India and Italy, print journalists from Slovakia and Italy (those Italians run in packs), and a bunch of other unrecognizable accents and acronyms. The whole world really is watching.

Bette Midler and Bruce Springsteen opened for Kerry. Although Kerry is no Henny Youngman, he had a cute one-liner in his speech: "When the President heard I was going to be appearing with the Boss, he thought we were talking about Dick Cheney." (For non-Springsteen fans, "the Boss" is his nickname.)

Kerry also said something semi-sensible on terrorism, to the effect that: To fight the war on terror, we need the best intelligence in the world, which means we need the best cooperation with other countries that we've ever had.

Just recently Spain busted a suspected Al Qaeda operative. It was buried in a world news summary on page A7 in the New York Times.

For a good summary of the last week's developments, check out Jim Lobe's October 29 piece on the Inter Press Service web site:

Halloween Tidings from the 'War on Terror'
http://www.ipsnews.net/interna.asp?idnews=26073