The Rev. Al Sharpton joined New York City's monthly Critical Mass bike ride May 30 in another protest over the Sean Bell verdict. "Whether you're fat or skinny, gay or straight, we are all Sean Bell. We are all riding for justice," he told the Union Square crowd to enthusiastic applause. Standing beside Sharpton were Bell's fiancée, Nicole Paultre Bell; his father William, and civil rights attorney Norman Siegel. Sharpton then jumped on a bike and headed west on 14th St., followed by a swarm of fellow riders, NYPD and paparazzi. Bell's father drew laughter, quipping, "Justice is nice, but I just wanted to see Rev. Al ride a bike." (Daily News, May 31) Photos online at Gothamist.

A retired Colombian army general and former CIA asset was arrested May 27 over the disappearances of 11 people. Ivan Ramirez, formerly the Colombian Army's third in command, led an intelligence unit of soldiers in a 1985 raid that recaptured the Palace of Justice, which had been seized by leftist rebels during one of the country's most violent periods of its ongoing civil war. Prosecutors claim that his unit escorted 11 people, which included cafeteria workers and one rebel, out of the Palace as the military raided the building. These people were never heard from again.

Colombian prison authorities waited more than 48 hours before securing laptop computers and cell phones belonging to 14 right-wing paramilitary leaders who were suddenly extradited to the US on May 13. Eventually the prison authorities turned 10 laptops over to prosecutors, along with seven cell phones, one Blackberry wireless messaging device, six or more USB memory sticks, and 72 CDs belonging to Diego Fernando Murillo ("Don Berna"); the CDs were said to be "labeled with [mass] graves by region." Paramilitary leader Salvatore Mancuso's laptop was sent to a repair shop on May 10, two days before the extradition, and hadn't been recovered as of May 27. SIM memory cards from cell phones belonging to Mancuso, Ramiro Vanoy and Juan Carlos Sierra were also missing.

Brazilian president Luiz Inacio Lula da Silva made a brief official visit to Haiti on May 28. During the few hours before he headed off for a tour of Central America, Lula had a private conversation with Haitian president Rene Garcia Preval, took part in a signing ceremony for six agreements (including accords on agriculture, education and women's rights), and visited the headquarters of the United Nations Stabilization Mission in Haiti (MINUSTAH), a 9,000-member military force headed by Brazil.

On May 26 Chilean judge Victor Montiglio ordered 98 former police agents and military people to face trial for their involvement in the 1975 "Operation Colombo," in which 119 opponents of dictator Gen. Augusto Pinochet were kidnapped and murdered. This was the largest number of people tried to date in Chile for human rights violations committed under the 1973-1990 military regime, which executed or disappeared more than 3,000 people. The trial specifically cites the "permanent kidnapping" of 42 victims whose bodies have never been recovered.

World War 4 Report was founded in the immediate aftermath of 9-11 to monitor media coverage of the wars and interventions we all knew were coming. We have since evolved into an alternative news source, with an emphasis on solidarity with progressive forces and indigenous, land-rooted cultures in the many countries which have become a theater for the "Global War on Terror." We have some of the most in-depth, consistent coverage in English of the civil resistance in Iraq, the Tuareg insurgency in West Africa, the Zapatistas and related campesino struggles in Mexico and Central America, and indigenous movements in the Andes.

Our May issue featured William Wharton's book review of A Tibetan Revolutionary, memoirs of Bapa Phuntso Wangye—a Chinese Communist Party militant who became a dissident and advocate of autonomy for his native Tibet. Our May Exit Poll was: "Will Tibet explode again during the Beijing Olympics? Is there potential for an alliance between the Tibetans and Han Chinese workers and peasants against the Beijing bureaucracy? How about between the Tibetans and the Palestinians?" We received the following response:

On May 28, a court in Salamá, Baja Verapaz, Guatemala, sentenced five former members of the Civil Patrols, a paramilitary network established by the army during the counter-insurgency war, each to 780 years in prison for the killing of 26 indigenous Maya villagers in the 1982 Río Negro massacre, in which 177 women and children lost their lives. The five, former Civil Patrol members from the hamlet of Xococ, will serve 30 years, the maximum allowed by law, and will have to pay damages to the families of the victims. Arrest orders have also been issued for army captain José Antonio Solares, who oversaw the patrol and remains at large.