Are Artists and Journalists the Enemy Sympathizers Our Government Takes Them For?

In this short article Baraa Shiban, a well-known and highly respected Yemeni anti-drone activist describes his detention and interrogation by UK officials on Monday under that country's "anti-terrorism" law at Gatwick Airport, where he had traveled to speak at an event. He was held for an hour and a half and repeatedly questioned about his anti-drone work and political views regarding human rights abuses in Yemen.

The legal charity Reprieve, which Shiban works for also noted that on Monday:

The Obama Administration once again denied a visa to Pakistani lawyer Shahzad Akbar, who represents family members of victims killed by US drones and is suing the US government, alleging that the drone kills are illegal. As Reprieve put it, by denying Akbar a visa, the Obama Administration succeeded in "preventing him from speaking in [C]ongress on the CIA drone programme next week", to which he had been invited by House members to testify. Reprieve added: "Before 2010 Mr. Akbar travelled regularly to the US. It was not until 2011, when he began representing victims of CIA drone strikes, that Mr. Akbar began having significant difficulty getting a US visa."

Also on Monday:

The Libyan-American rapper Khaled Ahmed, better known by his stage name "Khaled M", was removed from an airplane in the US without any explanation. During the civil war in Libya, he was hailed in US media circles for using his music to protest against the Ghadaffi regime. As his Twitter feed makes clear, this was part of ongoing harassment he experiences when flying at the hands of his own government.

The previous Friday:

Sarah Abdurrahman, an American Muslim and producer of the NPR program "On the Media", was detained for 6 hours at the US border in Niagra Falls when returning from a vacation in Canada with her family (all US citizens). She then reported on her own experiences as well as the systemic border harassment of US Muslims by their own government.

So what are we to make of these and other incidents? 

I think it's important to note that these were not isolated events, but rather small, incremental increases in the amount of intimidation which the authorities have been exerting both here in the U.S. and abroad.

For example last month authorities in the UK detained David Miranda, the partner of journalist Glenn Greenwald for 9 hours under the same pretext and last year the United State denied a visa to filmmaker Muhammad Danish Qasim. A Pakistani student at Iqra University's Media Science, he released a short film entitled "The Other Side", which highlighted the pain and havoc wreaked on surviving children and other relatives of drone victims. The visa denial meant he was barred from receiving the Audience Award for Best International Film at the 2012 National Film Festival For Talented Youth, held annually in Seattle, Washington.

NSA Surveillance and Cancer

Yesterday several Heads of State addressed the U.N. General Assembly in New York, and as you may or may not be aware, much drama ensued, particularly between the United States (Barack Obama) and Brazil (Dilma Rousseff) who canceled the only state visit that President Obama has offered this year after it was revealed that the United States has been spying on not only on the classified presidential communications of Roussseff's office, but also on key Brazilian corporate interests. She summed it up the country's attitude last week by saying “The Brazilian government is determined to obtain clarifications from the US government about any possible violations committed ... If the facts in the report are confirmed, then it’s evident that the motive for the ... espionage is not security or to fight terrorism, but economic and strategic interests.” to which National Security Advisor Susan Rice told the Brazilian foreign minister that his country had a right to be angry, admitting that the spying “raise[s] legitimate questions for our friends and allies about how these capabilities are employed.”

You can check out the full video (and transcript) of her ripping the Obama Administration a new one here, as well as Glenn Greenwald's (the source for all of Edward Snowden's document leaks) elaboration and tear-down of the NSA's other international activities and "Independent Review Board" here.

So how does cancer figure into the picture? 

In 2009 it was revealed that Rousseff had been diagnoses with a form Lymphoma (a cancer in the lymphatic system) not unlike the thyroid cancer that Argentinian President  Cristina Fernández de Kirchner was mis-diagnosed with last December, the cancer of Paraguay’s Fernando Lugo,  former Brazilian leader Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva, Venezuela's Hugo Chavez, or Cuba's Fidel Castro. That's one helluva lot of cancer, and one hell of coincidence! Do any of America's allies have cancer in such concentrations? -(Coincidentally of the same or similar varieties and in relatively short periods of time.) 

Ever heard of Polonium poisoning? -The presumed weapon of choice for both Israel's Mossad and the Russia's government/organized crime.

How come South American heads-of-state never seem to die of old age?

The Syrian Abyss

"If you gaze long into an abyss, the abyss will gaze back into you."

-Friedrich Nietzsche

A short article on what America's intervention in Syrian at this late stage in the "game" actually says about us as a nation. It questions the moral rationale that has "justified" our inaction up to this point while 125,000 Syrians (largely civilian non-combatants) have been killed and contrasts it with the outrage that has been expressed as of late over the use of chemical weapons on relatively small portion of that same population. 

-seem rather arbitrary to anyone else?

Also questioned is the effectiveness of any actions taken in behalf of a larger "Responsibility to Protect" where involvement is promised to be limited.

As a strict Libertarian, I've always found military actions taken outside of a immediately defensive nature to be completely counter-productive.

~Link to original article