Taking a tip from the "indignados" who occupied downtown Madrid for several weeks over the summer, hundreds of protesters on Sept. 17 established an encampment in Lower Manhattan's Zuccotti Park—now renamed "Liberty Square"—just three blocks north of Wall Street, where they have remained since, despite rain and an intimidating round-the clock police presence. Wall Street itself, of course, is inaccessible behind police barricades. When protesters marched down to Wall on the morning of Monday the 19th to greet the arriving traders and office workers, police quickly moved in, arresting six and dispersing the rest. (NYT, Sept. 19)

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 Council on American-Islamic Relations (CAIR) has called for a federal investigation and Senate hearings into an Aug. 24 Associated Press report asserting that the CIA helped the New York Police Department (NYPD) in spying on the city's Musilm communities. CAIR said it suspects the intelligence gathering described in the report violates the US Constitution, and the US Privacy Act of 1974, which bars the CIA from domestic spying. The report claims undercover NYPD officers known as "rakers" were sent into Musilm neighborhoods to monitor bookstores and cafes, while informants known as "mosque crawlers" were used to monitor sermons.

World War 4 Report editor Bill Weinberg, exiled from New York's WBAI-FM for his political dissent, has launched the first Internet edition of the Moorish Orthodox Radio Crusade, for the moment on YouTube. Many thanks to Stephen and Emerson Euphoria Sherman for production. In this initial episode, Weinberg relates the story of the radio show since its founding by Peter Lamborn Wilson more than 20 years ago, and explores the esoteric history of Moorish Orthodoxy and its links to the anarchist tradition. Some of the edits are a bit jumpy, but we believe it is an impressive first effort. Please note the annotations below, and tell us what you think.

A driver's license is a license to kill. James Bond has nothing on NYC auxiliary cops. From MyFoxNY, July 3:

Officer Identified In Police Van Incident
The driver of the auxiliary police van who accidentally hit a [sic] killed a pedestrian on Friday has been identified.

The US Court of Appeals for the Second Circuit on June 21 permitted a lawsuit against the Port Authority of New York and New Jersey (PANYNJ) arising out of the terror attacks of Sept. 11, 2001 to proceed. An electrical substation at the base of 7 World Trade Center (7 WTC) was destroyed when the building collapsed during the aftermath of the 9-11 terror attack. The substation was operated by Con Edison, a company that leased property from the Port Authority. Con Edison brought the action against PANYNJ for negligence in construction and design and breach of contract in 2002, arguing that the diesel fuel tanks PANYNJ had improperly allowed its tenants to use accelerated the building's collapse.

From the NY Daily News, June 17:

91-year-old Brooklyn man Milton Levine killed in hit-and-run
A callous driver struck a 91-year-old man on a Brooklyn street Thursday - and sped away after he saw the victim hit the ground, sources said.

An editorial from the New York Daily News, May 31:

Noncommercial, counterculture icon WBAI radio spirals into self-destructive 9/11-conspiracy madness

Lefty radio station WBAI-FM sure ain't what it used to be. No, it has gone off the dial as a peddler of vile 9/11 conspiracy theories.