Police stormed impoversihed Nairobi neighborhoods June 4 in search of Mungiki militants accused in a string of beheadings—killing 22 suspects and arresting 100 in overnight gun-battles. The raids came after two police officers were shot dead in the Kenyan capital's Mathare district. The Mungiki cult is suspected in the deaths of at least 18 people in the past three months, including 10 found mutilated or beheaded since May. The latest beheadings were overnight, the same time as the Nairobi gunbattles, in Muranga, 40 miles north of the capital.

From the New York City environmental group Time's Up, June 4:

NYPD Cuts Locks, Confiscates Bicycles and Arrests Bystanders in Bike Raid on East 6th Street
NEW YORK — On Thursday night, May 31st, the NYPD seized approximately 15 bikes locked on 6th Street between 1st and 2nd Avenue and arrested two bystanders who questioned the police action. Witnesses state that without any prior notice, the NYPD used circular saws to cut the locks off of about 50 bicycles on 6th street and allowed people to walk up and take bicycles without showing any proof of ownership. The NYPD then took away approximately 15 of the bicycles in an unmarked van. Bikes locked to D.O.T. bike racks were also seized. In at least one case, the NYPD sawed through a $100 lock even as the bike's owner showed the police her key to open the lock.

New York City Council member Charles Barron is demanding an investigation following death threats made against him on a website frequented by police officers. The site contains a message board called "NYPD Rant" in which two posts called for Barron to be shot in the head. Barron says he believes the posters are in fact members of the NYPD, and that the website should be shut down.

Tens of thousands of Colombian teachers and students and their supporters held marches on May 30 to protest a proposed Law of Transferences and a National Development Project (PND) that they say will cut funding for education and teachers' pensions. The marchers also opposed a "free trade" agreement (FTA, or TLC in Spanish) with the US. Contingents came from around the country for a march in Bogota that the government said drew 100,000 participants; organizers put the number at 250,000. Observers said the demonstration, which brought unprecedented disruptions to traffic, was the largest in at least two decades. This was the third march against the cutbacks in two weeks.

On May 31 Colombian senator Piedad Cordoba told reporters that the Revolutionary Armed Forces of Colombia (FARC), the country's largest leftist guerrilla organization, was close to freeing Ingrid Betancourt, the 2002 presidential candidate of the Oxygen Green Party, and her running mate, Clara Rojas, along with Rojas' child, who was born in captivity. The FARC captured Betancourt and Rojas in 2002. Apparently this is in response to a government plan to free a number of captured FARC members.

Former Peruvian presidential adviser Vladimiro Montesinos Torres, former Armed Forces commander Gen. Nicolas Hermoza Rios and retired colonel Roberto Edmundo Huaman Azcurra went on trial on May 17 for the alleged extrajudicial killings of three members of the rebel Tupac Amaru Revolutionary Movement (MRTA) during the military's assault on the Japanese ambassador's residence in Lima on April 22, 1997. Prosecutors were seeking a 20-year prison sentence for Montesinos, intelligence adviser to former president Alberto Fujimori (1990-2000), 18 years for Hermoza Rios and 15 for Huaman Azcurra. The trial was being held at the Callao naval base, near Lima.

Thousands of protesters at a mosque in Pattani, Thailand, agreed to stand down June 4 after Fourth Army Region Lt. Gen. Wirote Buajaroon signed an order to establish an independent panel to investigate widespread reports of assaults and harassment of Muslims by the Thai military. Local Muslims businesses had shut down in support of the protest, led by students from Ramkamhaeng university. The protest was launched June 1. Protest leader Tuvaedaniya Tuvaemaengae defended the students who hid their faces with scarves, saying that they were concerned about their safety. (The Nation, Thailand, June 4)

Now, let's see. A May 26 AP account by Larry McShane on the case of Syed Hashmi, a 27-year-old Pakistan-born US citizen and former Queens resident extradited from England back to New York to face terrorism charges, says he is accused of providing "military gear" to al-Qaeda in Pakistan. A June 1 AP account by David Caruso informs us that this "military gear" was rain gear—"waterproof socks and rain coats." And all he did was allow a friend to keep them in his London apartment. Are we the only ones who feel these "terrorism" cases are becoming alarmingly specious?