Paranoia in the Obama Aministration?

The following published by the UK Telegraph newspaper would make sense under Bush, he was an idiot. But the supposedly "liberal" Obama administration is still following the "playbook" laid down by Bush. This is nutty...

Hernando Calvo Ospina, who works for Le Monde Diplomatique and has written on revolutionary movements in Cuba and Colombia , figured on the US authorities' "no-fly list".

Air France said the April 18 flight was forced to divert to the French Caribbean island of Martinique before continuing its journey and that it might ask the US Transportation Security Administration for compensation.

...

The publisher accused the Central Intelligence Agency of being behind Mr Ospina's blacklisting, pointing out that the journalist was currently researching a book about the spy agency. "It shows to what degree its paranoia (has reached)," it said.

Air France said that as the flight was not due to stop in a US airport, it had not sent US authorities the passenger manifest. However, it sent one to Mexico, which apparently sent the list on. The crew were informed of the ban as they approached US airspace.

Mr Ospina, who has written several books and contributes to Le Monde Diplomatique, the left-wing French political monthly, said that he was informed of the order to divert the flight by its co-pilot.

"I was speechless and my first reaction was to ask, 'Do you think I'm a terrorist?'," he said. "He replied 'no' and said that was why he told me about it, adding that it was extraordinary and the first time it had happened on an Air France plane."

Maurice Lemoine, editor in chief of Le Monde diplomatique, said: "Hernando Calvo Ospina is a Colombian political exile in France who writes a lot denouncing the government of (President) Alvaro Uribe and the role of the United States in Latin America, and as a journalist has had occasion to interview top members of the Farc (leftist guerillas in Colombia). That seems enough for him to be considered a terrorist."

I have bolded the key bit: The plane was forced to divert. It had no intention of landing in the US, but the paranoid US authorities wouldn't let the plane overfly the US. That is truly nutty. I thought the US electorate had thrown the nuts out when they voted out Bush and voted in Obama, but apparantly not. I guess Obama is not yet "allowed" to control the CIA. The CIA is still running its own puppet regime and is "permitting" Obama to pretend to be the President and "in charge". Nutty!

This is just as nutty as the famed case of the CIA gutting Valerie Plame's book Fair Game. Go to the library and leaf through the book... lots and lots of blank pages. The CIA refused to allow her to print facts about her life in her biography, facts that were in the public record. This was pure vindictiveness on the part of the Bush administration. Read the NY Times review of this book and the expurgations inflicted by the CIA:

But Ms. Wilson and her publisher, Simon & Schuster, contend that much of the censored information is in the public domain — and that the suppression of information is itself part of Ms. Wilson’s story. So “Fair Game” has been published with the censor’s marks visible as blacked-out words, lines, paragraphs or pages. The publisher amplifies the book with an 80-page afterword by Laura Rozen, a reporter, who uses matters of public record to fill in some of the gaps.

Why do Americans put up with this heavy-handed idiocy from their government? It is bizarre. Americans love to boast about how "freedom loving" they are, but they have an iron-fisted government that disrespects fundamental rights. Somehow this is not noticed by most Americans. Bizarre.