One year after the hysteria that followed the London bombings, we are treated to yet another terrorist scare emanating from the UK, with the alleged plot to blow up airliners mid-flight by mixing combustible liquids, supposedly discovered in the nick of time. While that dominates the headlines (much more so, note, than the real terrorist carnage in Mumbai, which generated barely a media flicker compared to the significantly less deadly London attacks), buried in the inner pages of even the New York papers comes another turn of the screw they started tightening a year ago. From the New York Daily News, Aug. 12:

Another turn of the screw. The NYPD unveils draconian new regulations in the ongoing crackdown on the Critical Mass bicyclists. The elitist New York Timess refuses to put this fine July 21 column by Clyde Haberman online for free, but we present it here in the interests of free speech and open discourse:

"¡Farouk Vive! ¡La Lucha Sigue!"
Vigil Commemorating the Life of Farouk Abdel-Muhti

New York-based Palestinian activist Farouk Abdel-Muhti died suddenly of a heart attack on July 21, 2004, three weeks before his 57th birthday and 100 days after he was released from immigration detention. Federal agents and New York City police arrested Farouk in April 2002, just as he was beginning to work as a producer of segments on Palestine at New York's WBAI-FM. The US government then held him in a series of county and federal facilities for nearly two years—in clear violation of his constitutional rights—and refused to release him until ordered to do so by a federal district judge.

Remember how the firefighters, cops and rescue workers who answered the call of duty at New York's Ground Zero were exploited shamelessly for war propaganda—as if saving lives in New York was somehow the same as taking lives in Iraq? Well now look what's happening to them. It seems all that talk about honoring the heroes was a mile wide and an inch thick. From the New York Times, June 23:

Yet again. All it takes is reading the New York Times to get pretty damn paranoid these days. From May 16:

Defendant Says Police Informer Pushed Him Into Bomb Plot
A Pakistani immigrant accused of plotting to blow up the Herald Square subway station in 2004 took the stand in his own defense yesterday and said he never wanted to carry out an attack until he met a paid police informer who treated him like a younger brother and inflamed his anger against the United States.

C'mon already. 9-11 was almost five years ago. When are people gonna knock it off already? From Newsday, May 13:

LI Sikh angered by terror suspicion
Indian immigrant Jaspal Arora, a religious Sikh, wears a turban everywhere he goes, including to morning workouts at the Mid-Island Y Jewish Community Center in Plainview.

From Newsday, April 26:

Nine New York City firefighters sued the city and its fire pension fund yesterday saying they were denied disability pensions even after the department told them their breathing disorders sustained at Ground Zero had left them unfit to serve.

New Yorkers are supposed to be celebrating this break in the long impasse which has stalled reconstruction at Ground Zero. And indeed Larry Silverstein's megalomania and greed have been an appalling spectacle. But, as we have repeatedly emphasized, rebuilding a skyscraper at the WTC site is a very bad idea, just as building the original Twin Towers was a very bad idea. The WTC helped transform New York from a working-class city of neighborhoods and industry to a sterile administrative clearinghouse for global finance and a culturally-cleansed playground for the rich. The new (and Orwellianly-named) "Freedom Tower" will only accelerate this process. And, obviously, as a hubristic symbol of American power, the old WTC invited terrorist attacks; so (we hate to say it) will the Freedom Tower--as is explicitly acknowledged by the unprecedented heavy hand given to the NYPD and security concerns generally in its very design. WW4 Report officially dissents from the celebrations. From Reuters, April 27: