We have received information that this was triggered by an opinion piece he published on the Huffington Post Monday, and we are currently trying to confirm this and learn more about the situation. We were unable to meet with him today because, we were informed, he was being processed. We will seek to meet with him tomorrow and follow all avenues to secure his release. The name of the piece is "Court Documents Prove I Was Sent to Communication Management Units (CMU)[Orwellian newspeak] for My Political Speech." If this is indeed a case of retaliation for writing an article about the BOP retaliating against his free speech while he was in prison, it is more than ironic, it is an outrage.

I love my children more than anything in the world, as I'm sure all of the parents reading this can relate. It's a strange way to start a post about free speech and word manipulation, but I assure you it's relevant. The recent story of a couple kidnapping their own children from a court-appointed custodian after having their parental rights stripped has jarred me to the core. This could easily be me, or you. What did the parents do that was so awful that they lost permanent parental rights of their boys? ABC reports:

According to earlier information, the couple lost custody of the two boys after attending an anti-government rally in Louisiana. The father was charged with possession of drugs (pot) in the presence of the children.

Cancer clinics across the US have begun to turn away thousands of Medicare patients as a result of the sequestration order signed into law by President Barack Obama on March 1. The action is mainly due to cuts to Medicare reimbursement for expensive chemotherapy drugs, which is making it financially untenable for clinics and oncologists to maintain their operations. In a joint statement, the Community Oncology Alliance warned:

“The sequester cut to cancer drugs threatens viability of community cancer care. In effect, the government is forcing clinics to subsidize Medicare—that is, to make up the difference between what Medicare pays and the actual cost of cancer drugs.”

The sequestration order mandates $85 billion in cuts by the end of this fiscal year to a wide range of government departments and services and will trigger furloughs of a million or more federal employees, as well as a pay freeze. States are already beginning to implement cuts affecting the nearly 4 million long-term unemployed who receive extended benefits funded by the federal government.

Washington Post: Cancer clinics are turning away thousands of Medicare patients. Blame the sequester

In a secret US cable published online by WikiLeaks, former ambassador to Venezuela, William Brownfield, outlines a comprehensive plan to infiltrate and destabilize former President Hugo Chavez' government. - Dispatched in November of 2006 by Brownfield -- now an Assistant Secretary of State -- the document outlined his embassy’s five core objectives in Venezuela since 2004, which included: “penetrating Chavez’ political base,” “dividing Chavismo,” “protecting vital US business” and “isolating Chavez internationally.” The memo, which appears to be totally un-redacted, is plain in its language of involvement in these core objectives by the US embassy, as well as the US Agency for International Development (USAID) and the Office of Transition Initiatives (OTI), two of the most prestigious agencies working abroad on behalf of the US.

The top Swedish prosecutor pursuing sexual assault charges against Julian Assange has abruptly left the case and one of Mr Assange's accusers has sacked her lawyer. - The turmoil in the Swedish Prosecution Authority's effort to extradite Mr Assange comes as another leading Swedish judge prepares to deliver an unprecedented public lecture in Australia next week on the WikiLeaks publisher's case. Fairfax Media has obtained Swedish court documents that reveal high-profile Swedish prosecutor Marianne Nye has unexpectedly left Mr Assange's case from Wednesday, and has been replaced by a less-experienced prosecutor, Ingrid Isgren. The reasons for the change have not been disclosed yet.

Al Jazeera: Top Swedish judge defends Wikileaks' Assange - Supreme Court chief calls sex charges against Julian Assange "a mess" and praises him for leaking secret US documents. Speaking on Wednesday at the University of Adelaide in Australia, Stefan Lindskog, chairman of the Supreme Court of Sweden, also listed legal obstacles to extraditing the 41-year-old Australian to the United States to face prosecution for exposing thousands of classified documents. Lindskog was critical of the Swedish criminal investigation, and suggested that Sweden's extradition treaty with the United States would not apply to Assange.

The US Department of Defense said Thursday it plans to sidestep a Congressional ban to purchase 30 helicopters from Russian state-owned defense firm Rosoboronexport, despite objections from US lawmakers who allege that the firm "has equipped the Syrian government to commit brutal crimes against civilians." - The 2013 National Defense Authorization Act, approved by Congress last year, includes an amendment that prohibits financial contracts between the United States and Rosoboronexport, except when the Secretary of Defense determines that such arrangements are in the interest of national security.

Israeli medical neglect killed Maisara Abu Hamdiyya. On April 2, he succumbed. He did so shackled painfully to his Soroka Hospital bed. He called going there "another journey of suffering." He was 64. He suffered from advanced throat cancer. It spread to his spine. - On 28 March, Palestinians in the Israeli jail of Eshel released a statement informing the world that 64-year-old prisoner Maysara Abuhamdia had lost his ability to move his body, and is expected to die at any moment. The statement was made public on the website Facebook by a prisoner support group called Kasr al-Qeid, or Breaking the Chains. The prisoners stated that the next statement that they would release would not be another call for help, but a letter of condolences to Abuhamdia’s family. The day before, the prisoners sent out another statement titled “Maysara is not alone” and called on Palestinians to do anything they can to secure his release.

Stephen Lendman: Israeli Murder by Torture and Neglect
Linah Alsaafin: Prisoner Maysara Abuhamdia dies; son accuses PA of betrayal
Occupied Palestine | فلسطين: Autopsy shows Israel neglected prisoner Maysara Abu Hamdiyeh

A court in France has fined French flag carrier Air France 10,000 euros ($12,800) for removing a pro-Palestine activist from a Tel Aviv-bound flight because the passenger was a ‘non-Jew.’ - On Thursday, the court found Air France guilty of a ‘clear-cut case of racial discrimination’ against Horia Ankour, who had intended to travel to Israel in April 2012 to attend the Welcome to Palestine protest. On the plane, an airline employee asked the 30-year-old nursing student whether she had an Israeli passport or was Jewish. After answering no to the questions she was escorted off the aircraft. The court has also ruled that Air France pay Ankour some 3,000 euros in damages and to cover her legal fees.

L'Indépendant: Une Audoise pourrait bien faire condamner Air France - Avec ces deux questions discriminatoires, j'ai été choquée. Cataloguée. Mais surtout humiliée", confiait hier la jeune Carcassonnaise, Horia Ankour, peu avant le début de l'audience au tribunal de grande instance de Bobigny (Seine-Saint-Denis). Bien qu'entourée de quelques amis, la militante pro-palestinienne avait du mal à cacher sa nervosité.

A 20-year-old Montreal woman is in trouble with the police over an Instagram post. Jennifer Pawluck took a snapshot of graffiti depicting a local top police officer with a bullet in his forehead. She [correctly] believes she's done nothing wrong. - The picture has gone viral since Pawluck posted it, while the original graffiti has since been removed. She is now facing a court hearing for her post, accused of criminal harassment and intimidation against high-ranking police officer, Ian Lafrenière.

Russia says the ongoing turmoil in Syria is turning the Arab country into a center of attraction for ‘international terrorists.’ Russian Foreign Ministry Spokesman Alexander Lukashevich said on Thursday, “Syria’s transformation into the center of gravity for international terrorists is becoming a reality.” It is a “frightening reality,” he added. The Russian diplomat further reaffirmed Moscow’s support for a national dialogue to end the deadly violence in Syria.

SANA: Russia Concerned about Some Countries' Involvement in Terrorism in Syria

Resource limits are invisible, so most people don’t realize that we could possibly be approaching them. In fact, my analysis indicates resource limits are really financial limits, and in fact, we seem to be approaching those limits right now. - Many analysts discussing resource limits are talking about a very different concern than I am talking about. Many from the “peak oil” community say that what we should worry about is a decline in world oil supply. In my view, the danger is quite different: The real danger is financial collapse, coming much earlier than a decline in oil supply. This collapse is related to high oil price, and also to higher costs for other resources as we approach limits (for example, desalination of water where water supply is a problem, and higher natural gas prices in much of the world). The financial collapse is related to Energy Return on Energy Invested (EROEI) that is already too low. I don’t see any particular EROEI target as being a threshold–the calculations for individual energy sources are not on a system-wide basis, so are not always helpful. The issue is not precisely low EROEI. Instead, the issue is the loss of cheapfossil fuel energy to subsidize the rest of society.

50% In Favor of Directly Breaking Them Up … Many More In Favor of Stopping Artificial Support and Letting them Shrink On Their Own. - A new Rasmussen Reports national telephone survey shows that 50% of U.S. Adults favor a plan to break up the 12 megabanks, which currently control about 69% of the banking industry. Twenty-three percent (23%) oppose breaking up the largest banks, while another 27% are undecided.