As with the May Day mobilization, "terrorism" charges have emerged from the protests against the NATO summit in Chicago—or so the media are playing it, with headlines sporting the T-word. But it seems Sebastian Senakiewicz was charged with "terroristic threatening" for bad-assing that he had explosives hidden in the hollowed-out interior of his "Harry Potter" book (which he didn't). Mark Neiweem was charged with "attempted possession of explosive or incendiary devices"—basically, he was asking around for material to make Molotov cocktails. So neither of them have actually been charged with terrorism. (Chicago Tribune, NYT, May 20)

Readers of World War 4 Report will know that we are implacable enemies of the pathological global car culture, pillar of petro-oligarchical rule, and support the ultimate abolition of the internal combustion engine. And readers will know that your chief blogger is a long-suffering New York City bicyclist. So we would really like to take heart in Mayor Michael Bloomberg's controversial measures to accommodate bicycles. But since the very start, it has all smelled suspicious to us. The "congestion pricing" plan to charge motorists to enter Manhattan struck us as a prescription for turning the island into a sort of Manhattanland tourist theme park; the closing of large sections of Times Square to cars has coincided with administration of this "public" space being turned over nearly completely to the Times Square Alliance BID; plans to bar cars from the East Village's Cooper Square are similarly concomitant with delivering the historic plaza over to Cooper Union college and New York University as a virtually privatized space. Now, the plans for a bicycle-sharing program vindicate our worst fears...

In a surprise ruling, Obama-appointed US Judge Katherine Forrest of the Southern District of New York agreed with plaintiffs who had challenged provisions of the 2012 National Defense Authorization Act that Section 1021—concerning indefinite detention of (poorly defined) terror suspects. Judge Forrest found that Section 1021 fails to "pass constitutional muster" because its broad language could be used to squelch political dissent. Forrest rejected the contention in Obama's signing statement that the language in Section 1021 "breaks no new ground" and merely recapitulates the 2001 Authorization to Use Military Force (AUMF). "[T]his court finds that § 1021 is not merely an 'affirmation' of the AUMF," Forrest wrote. "To so hold would be contrary to basic principles of legislative interpretation that require Congressional enactments to be given independent meaning. To find that § 1021 is merely an 'affirmation' of the AUMF would require this court to find that § 1021 is a mere redundancy—that is, that it has no independent meaning and adds absolutely nothing to the government's enforcement powers." The suit was first brought by journalist-turned-talking-head Chris Hedges, and later joined by Noam Chomsky, Pentagon Papers whistle-blower Daniel Ellsberg, Icelandic parliamentarian Birgitta Jonsdottir, Kai Wargalla of Occupy London and Alexa O'Brien of US Day of Rage. The plaintiffs call themselves the "Freedom Seven."

The joke used to be that it was a holiday created by the greeting card industry, but does anyone send greeting cards anymore in this digital age—even on Mother's Day? You'd never know that the holiday actually has subversive anti-war roots if it weren't for periodic efforts by pacifists to rescue this inconvenient historical fact from oblivion. The latest such effort is an editorial on the lefty website Nation of Change, entitled "The Radical Roots of Mother's Day." We give them creds for serving the cause of historical memory—but, alas, we have the odious duty of calling them out on their own insidious revisionism, which sheds light on the weakness of a pure pacifist position. Here's the critical chunk of the text:

Isn't it interesting how different news outlets can take exactly the same facts and come up with completely opposite headlines? It seems that the US military advisors in Yemen, pulled out last year due to human rights abuses by the crumbling regime of Ali Abdullah Saleh, are set to return now that Saleh has been ousted and (sort of) democratic elections held. Defense Secretary Leon Panetta, questioned whether this could be a prelude to a greater commitment of ground troops, said: "There's no consideration of that." So The Hill, in its portentously named "defense blog" DEFCON Hill, heds its story, "Panetta guarantees no US troops headed to Yemen." The Christian Science Monitor, perhaps hoping an alarmist hed will result in more hits, opts for, "US sends troops to Yemen as Al Qaeda gains ground." Cute, huh? We hope both these publications will emulate the example of World War 4 Report in future, and give heds that accurately represent the facts. We note with chagrin that neither account actually bothers to tell us how many advisors are being dispatched, what branch of the armed forces they are from, or any other such details.

Khalid Sheikh Mohammed and his four co-defendants were arraigned May 5 in a military tribunal at Guantanámo Bay on charges of organizing the 9-11 attacks. Mainstream accounts are emphasizing the defendants' refusal to respect the court, and the outraged response of 9-11 survivors. Few journalists have been allowed to observe, so this report from AP is all over the Web and has run in several newspapers:

Media have over the past week and change been full of voices plugging hydro-fracking as the key to finally achieving US "energy independence." Forbes on April 17 cites its own survey of "more than 100 energy executives" (no doubt a very objective group) finding that "fully 70% of energy executives believe that, given a true national commitment, the US could achieve a high degree of energy independence within 15 years." This exercise in industry self-promotion disguised as a study, "2012 US Energy Sector Outlook," wins the headline "US Energy Independence in 15 Years?" Forbes does concede: "Admittedly, energy executives are hardly a disinterested group, but they should have a good sense of their own industry's capabilities." (Gee, thank you.) And the "fly in the ointment" of the fracking future—i.e. environmental concerns—is mentioned. But: "The vast majority of energy executives (88%) believe either that fracking is safe or that it will become safe as the kinks get worked out." The saturation use of the "energy independence" catch-phrase smells like a coordinated campaign. Here's a still worse example...

It sounds like an oxymoron, but it is starting to smell that way. The controversy over destruction of a mosque near the Golden Temple of Dambulla—a Buddhist cave-temple in central Sri Lanka which has been a pilgrimage destination since the third century, and is today a UNESCO World Heritage Site—bears echoes of the 1992 destruction of the Babri Mosque in Ayodhya, India, which ultimately led to the Gujarat genocide. This May 2 report by Sudha Ramachandran for Asia Times (interspersed with our annotation) is pretty chilling: