Days after receiving similar treatment in New York, Cindy Sheehan and entourage met with police harassment in DC. Writes Sarah Ferguson for the Village Voice Sept. 21:

On Sept. 22, a student protest at Cali's Universidad del Valle was brutally attacked by the Colombian National Police special anti-riot unit, the Mobile Anti-Disturbance Squad (ESMAD), which brought in an armored vehicle and fired live ammunition, hurled tear-gas cannisters and beat students with clubs. One chemistry student, Jhony Silva Aranjuren, 21, was mortally wounded and died later in the hospital; several others were also wounded. The students were protesting the cut-off of potable water to the Corregimiento de Villa Gorgona, a village in Candelaria municipality outside Cali, and aggressions against the civil population. (Red de Defensores No-Institucionalizados, Sept. 22)

The Niger Delta People's Volunteer Force, a militia group from Nigeria's oil-producing Niger Delta region, has seized a pumping station in protest of the arrest of its leader. More than 100 armed men in boats stormed the Idama flow-station, sources close to the Chevron oil company said.

Well, somebody, it seems, has found something more creative to do to protest the war in Iraq than march in orderly rows chanting monotonous slogans in unison. From New York Newsday, sept. 22:

NEW YORK -- A Manhattan judge Thursday dismissed the public nudity summons issued to an artist who was arrested after she protested the Iraq war by disrobing to display the words "STOP THE WAR" written on her naked body. [In Arabic too.—WW4 REPORT]

A recent story in New Jersey's Asbury Park Press sheds light on a highly esoteric group which can make a claim to being an indigenous American form of Islam, the Moorish Science movement. The story concerns Lee S. Crudup, who now goes by his "Moorish-American" name of Nature El Bey. Earlier this year, he was charged with—and acquitted of—failing to cooperate with Asbury Park police by giving a false name. He was convicted of not registering or insuring his car, and served 14 days in jail. He has now filed a federal suit, along with the Moorish Science Temple of America, accusing Asbury Park authorities of kidnapping him and illegally depriving him of his property under color of law. His numerous unorthodox legal arguments include that police have no right to stop citizens—only the sheriff, who holds the sole law enforcement office created by the state constitution, can do so, El Bey told the newspaper. But the larger issue seems to be the Moorish Science doctrine that Moorish-Americans constitute a separate nationality and are not subject to US law—or only to a strict constitutional interpretation. This doctrine has also brought followers of Moorish Science into frequent conflict with the IRS.

When a bomb exploded yesterday at the British embassy in Croatia's capital, Zagreb, causing minor injuries to a security guard, Prime Minister Ivo Sanader suggested it might be linked to Croatia's application to join the European Union. Britain is the current president of the EU, and one of several member states that has opposed Croatia's membership until it arrests its main war crimes fugitive, Gen. Ante Gotovina. (Reuters, Sept. 19) Croatian President Stipe Mesic condemned the incident as a "terrorist attack." But when an embassy employee, Damir Rovisan, was arrested today for smuggling in the device, Interior Minister Ivica Kirin said: "This indicates that this is not a terrorist act against the British embassy, but an act of an individual coming from criminal circles." Yet he admitted that no motive had been established for the bombing. (BBC, Sept. 20)

In a New York Times op-ed piece that ran Sept. 16 in the International Herald Tribune, Waleed Ziad of the Truman National Security Project questions Washington's interventionist consensus. In the piece, "Jihad's Fresh Face," Ziad writes:

The post-9/11 prevailing wisdom has held that military force and exporting democracy are the West's twin weapons against terrorism. Islamic fundamentalism is the product of a "medieval" mindset, we are told, and if we can deliver elections to the Arab world, our enemies will cower before the spirit of the Enlightenment.

New York City's Union Square Park, which had been a symbol of free speech in the aftermath of 9-11, has now become a symbol of censorship. This AP account appears in today's Newsday: