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.

Sarah Ferguson writes for the Village Voice, Sept. 12:

Conspiracy Types Lecture Regular Folks at Ground Zero
The fifth anniversary of 9-11 brought more sorrow and anguish to New York, but also more questioning of the official narrative of the attacks on the World Trade Center and Pentagon.

From Palestine News Network (PNN), Sept. 10:

Israeli settlers break into mosque and perform religious ceremonies under guard of Israeli soldiers
By Sa’ed Al Shouhki (Hebron)

Israeli settlers stormed the southern West Bank’s Halhoul Village Mosque at dawn Sunday.

International Security Assistance Force (ISAF) and Afghan army troops killed 92 Taliban fighters in the southern province of Kandahar, NATO said in statement Sept. 11. The statement said the figure was separate from the 94 insurgents reported as killed in the previous day, but left room for doubt about the accuracy of the casualty count. "Estimating enemy casualties is not a precise science," said Col. Chris Vernon of the UK, chief of staff for ISAF's Regional Command South. The new offensive, "Operation Medusa," was launched 10 days ago to drive Taliban guerillas from their stronghold the Panjwayi and Zhari districts of Kandahar province. At least 21 NATO troops are reported killed. (Times of India, Sept. 11)

Thousands of people marched on Sept. 10 in Santiago, Chile to commemorate the Sept. 11, 1973 coup in which Gen. Augusto Pinochet Ugarte overthrew the democratically elected government of Socialist president Salvador Allende Gossens. The march led from the center of the capital along the Alameda Bernardo O'Higgins to the Santiago General Cemetery to remember the victims of the coup and the subsequent 17 years of brutal military dictatorship.