Bicyclists with Bombs :: Riding with Osama – Bicyclists with Bombs :: Riding with Osama

Published December 27th 2005, by New York Press
By Bret Liebendorfer

There’s nothing like some good old Times-hating from our friends at the
Post. According to Tuesday’s “Times Watch,” which takes up the paper’s
full editorial slot, the Times is at the forefront of the burgeoning
anti-anti-terror movement. Were our friends at the paper of A. Hamilton
and A. Peyser exercised over Times reports on warrantless spying and
extraordinary rendition? Of course.

But such sins together occupied less of this fire-breathing dispatch
than the Times’ stance in favor of the war on the war against bicycles.
Specifically, Times reporting on undercover NYPD infiltration of the
Critical Mass biking movement.

This seemed a strange report to object to, until we saw that the use of
such cops is “to protect the people of New York.” It starts with
bicycling, and ends in anarchy and terror, we suppose.

What was really shocking here was not so much the tardiness of the
Times’ story “breaking” the news, though, but the story’s irrelevance.
After a year of ham-handed police actions to shut down Critical Mass,
the last few months have been uneventful, netting zero arrests.

But even during the anti-Critical Mass heyday, would it really have
been a surprise that the same Manhattan police who block entire streets
(causing more traffic delays than the Brooklyn police, who usher the
procession along efficiently), throw cyclists off their bikes and
arrest dozens for “parading without a permit” would deploy  undercover
agents to find out the bikers’ true role as witting dupes for
Hazbollah? Or some such.

Real news concerning Critical Mass occurred a few months ago when the
NYPD went on bicycle lock-clipping sprees in areas where activists
gather, most notably the Bedford Ave. L stop, echoing an RNC-era move
when police gleefully clipped locks at Union Square, where
(coincidentally, of course) many of the activists were stationed.

The only reported act of violence during these bike rides–again, that’s
bike rides, not terror conferences–came when rapper Foxy Brown (or
someone driving her SUV) struck two cyclists with her gas-guzzling
terrormobile. This after having allegedly shouted vaguely racist and
homophobic slurs at cyclists when her trip to Louis Vuitton was delayed
when she fell behind the bicycling procession.

Despite the lack of violence, the Post fears that the Times is
compromising the NYPD’s ability to monitor “back-pack toting
terrorists.” Our suggestion? Send Andrea Peyser into the dark heart of
the Islamist–bicyclist alliance. It’s time she reclaimed her lost
columnist of the year crown.