A small tentative step in the right direction—a little counter-vortex against the general downward spiral of global civilization towards ecological hell, permanent war and petrochemical totalitarianism. From amNewYork, Sept. 13:

City puts forth ambitious bike plan

After a series of high-profile bicycle rider deaths this summer, the city Tuesday unveiled its most ambitious plan ever to improve cyclist safety and access across the five boroughs.

From Newsday, Sept. 12:

Chilling testimony told in limo crash trial

Little Kate Flynn's body was not difficult to identify after she died in the wreckage of a head-on crash on the Meadowbrook Parkway, a Nassau medical examiner testified this morning: Her mother was still carrying her daughter's head at the hospital.

An urgent alert from the Iraq Freedom Congress:

US Troops raid offices of Iraq Freedom Congress (IFC) in Baghdad

On September 7 and 8, U.S occupying troops raided the head office of IFC in Baghdad. The raid came after a number of IFC public activities against the occupation. The troops were outraged when they saw the anti-occupation banners and posters showing international solidarity with the Iraqi people hanging on the walls. They reacted aggressively and ruined all internal doors, destroyed furniture, and confiscated most of the office property.

A military court in Jordan Sept. 13 convicted 10 people in two cases involving conspiracies to kill "Americans training Iraqi police" at the Muwaqqar barracks outside Amman. The court said the defendants were found guilty of "conspiring to carry out terrorist acts and of illegal possession of automatic weapons," in two plots foiled last year.

If, as we recently speculated, the White House was hoping it could groom Islamists in Syria as proxies to destabilize the regime, this ought to provide a little cold water in the face. In fact, much to the consternation of the neocons, we could see Washington mending fences with Damascus, viewing the Assad dictatorship as the most expedient proxy to put down the Islamists. Official embrace of the "terrorist" lingo indicates Assad may want such as arrangement, lest he be on the receiving end of the Pentagon's smart bombs. From Canada's CTV, Sept. 12:

Arun Gandhi, grandson of Mohandas K. Gandhi and founder of the MK Gandhi Institute for Non-Violence, spent Sept. 11 with Camp Democracy, a small tent city established by anti-war activists on the National Mall in front of the US Capitol. Gandhi joined peace campers in a march that set out from the Washington Hebrew Congregation and stopped at the National Cathedral and the Islamic Center before culminating at the city's Gandhi memorial.

There's a lot of this going around all of a sudden. Watergate figure and born-again evangelical Chuck Colson wrote for the Christian Post Aug. 18 (in a piece imaginitively entitled "The Clash of Civilizations"):

During the Cold War, there was a great clash of civilizations—communism vs. Western liberal democracy. And it threatened to destroy us in a nuclear holocaust. I was in the White House during those years. I can tell you, it was terrifying getting those daily briefings from the military. But the danger that we face from radical Islam today is even greater than the Cold War.