Ten years after 9-11, there are many hopeful signs that the world is finally moving on from the dystopian dynamic unleashed by the attacks. As we pointed out after the killing of Osama bin Laden: Al-Qaeda has been utterly left behind by the Arab Spring, which has already overturned two authoritarian regimes (Tunisia and Egypt), with more almost certainly on the way. While there have been few and small Islamist protests over Osama's killing, basically secular and progressive protests against dictators are mounting throughout the Arab world, the greater Middle East and beyond. Al-Qaeda has been relegated to playing catch-up, hoping that continued terror attacks can transform the struggles in Yemen and Morocco from popular civil revolutions to jihadist civil wars. It hasn't been working. Alas, a brief review of the streets of downtown Manhattan on this day indicates how little these changes have extended to popular consciousness in New York CIty and the United States...

The US Department of Justice (DoJ) on Sept. 8 announced its findings from a three-year investigation that the Puerto Rico Police Department (PRPD) has engaged in repeated unlawful and unconstitutional behavior. The investigation, which began in June 2008, uncovered the PRPD use of excessive and unreasonable force, failure to protect First Amendment rights, and unconstitutional stops, searches and arrests. In its executive summary report (PDF), the DoJ acknowledged that the rights violations corresponded with a period of increased crime and pressure on the PRPD. However, such circumstances did not excuse the misconduct:

Returning to a prospect first raised after last year's flotilla affair, Israel's Foreign Minister Avigdor Lieberman has broached supporting recognition by the US Senate of the Armenian genocide as part of a diplomatic offensive against Turkey, the Hebrew-language daily Yedioth Ahronoth reported Sept. 9. The report came ahead of a meeting of a meeting of Foreign Ministry officials to discuss Israel’s response to Turkish Prime Minister Recep Tayyip Erdogan’s decision to downgrade Ankara’s diplomatic ties with the Jewish state. Amazingly, the report also claimed Lieberman had suggested that Israel back the PKK Kurdish guerillas (which will doubtless fuel the endless conspiracy theories in Turkish nationalist circles that the Kurds are the pawns of a Zionist conspiracy against the Muslim world). (AFP, Sept. 10; YNet, Sept. 9)

Oklahoma's constitutional amendment that bars the state's judges form considering sharia law is heading to the 10th US Circuit Court of Appeals in Denver, after Judge Vicki Miles-LaGrange ruled it unconstitutional, saying "the will of the ‘majority’ has on occasion conflicted with the constitutional rights of individuals." Oklahomans voted up the amendment last year by 70%, but Muneer Awad from the Oklahoma chapter of the Council on American-Islamic Relations (CAIR) filed a suit to keep it from going into effect. The district court found that the amendment amounted to an official disapproval of Islam by the state of Oklahoma, curtailing Muslims' political rights and violating the First Amendment. Oklahoma's Attorney General has appealed the decision. (KFOR, Oklahoma City, Sept. 9; WP, Sept. 8)

Egyptian authorities declared a state of emergency early Sept. 10 after a group of some 30 protesters broke into the Israeli embassy in Cairo overnight and dumped hundreds of documents out of the windows. The storming of the embassy came after a day of demonstrations outside, where crowds swinging sledgehammers and using their bare hands tore down the building's security wall. For hours, security forces made no attempt to intervene. The embassy's Israeli flag was torn down, and Tweeters on the scene indicate that a giant Palestinian flag was draped from the building's upper stories. The Israeli ambassador to Egypt, Yitzhak Levanon, together with his family and other embassy staff, have reportedly left Egypt. The protest began after a Friday rally at Tahrir Square, which brought out thousands for what was billed as a "Correcting the Path" demonstration (an apparent reference to recent usurpation of the Egyptian movement by Islamists). (The Guardian, RT, Sept. 10; JP, Inagist, Sept. 9)

The US Court of Appeals for the District of Columbia Circuit on Sept. 6 affirmed the 2010 denial of petition for a writ of habeas corpus for Guantánamo Bay detainee Shawali Khan. Khan is an Afghan citizen who, at the time of his capture in mid-November 2002, lived in Kandahar, and is accused of belonging to Hezb-Islami Gulbuddin (HIG), an active Afghan insurgency group with ties to the Taliban. On appeal, Khan contended there is insufficient reliable evidence in the form of government-offered intelligence reports to establish that he was part of HIG at the time of his capture. The court explained its standard of review in evaluating Khan's appeal:

Thousands of teachers and students took to the streets of several of Colombia's major cities Sept. 7 "in defense of public education." The demonstrations aimed to reject a proposal by the government of President Juan Manuel Santos to reform higher education. In the capital Bogotá, some 7,000 protesters took to the streets, while in Medellín some 1,000 teachers and students were protesting. The government of President Santos proposed reforms to Law 30, stating that the reforms will increase financial resources for universities to open spaces for additional students, improve the salaries of professors, and be more competitive in research.

The Peruvian NGO Cusichaca Andina recently won a grant from the World Bank to promote the revival of ancient Andean crops, including quinoa, amaranth, and indigenous varieties of potatoes and squashes. The indigenous crops, in danger of disappearing due to the increasing dominance of corporate hybrids, are thought to be more resilient and better adapted to the harsh local environment—making them potentially strategic in adapting to the challenges of global climate change. Public Radio International's The World reported Sept. 7: "[C]limate change is hitting the high Andes hard. Temperature and precipitation swings are becoming more extreme, the glaciers are shrinking fast, and a tough place to farm is becoming even tougher. So to help them deal with an uncertain future, residents are looking back in time—to before the arrival of Europeans."