The UK it seems, has joined the US in it\u2019s authorities and government developing a collective form of acute paranoia. A mildly deviant act by any petty criminal or a soul with mental health problems is immediately labeled a potential terrorist act before investigations have even begun.<\/p>\n
\u201cWe are fighting them over there so we don\u2019t have to fight them over here\u201d was the George W. Bush mantra. Anyone with half a brain was commenting after Afghanistan and Iraq that no American or British citizen would be safe anywhere on earth after the devastation their countries had wrought on nations which posed them not the slightest threat \u2013 mass murders, some would say genocides, based on illegalities and lies.<\/p>\n
Not only have the actions of governments given rise to retaliation in the West, but governments\u2019 own paranoia are threatening their own citizens.<\/p>\n
For example in the UK, on 25th July, a situation arose which Orwell surely could not have devised in his gloomiest forbodings.<\/p>\n
Faizah Shaheen, a psychotherapist working in the National Health Service in the UK\u2019s northern city of Leeds, returning from her honeymoon in Turkey was apprehended and interrogated by police officers at Doncaster airport, under Schedule 7 of the Terrorism Act, which provides for police detaining without grounds, on suspicion of involvement in criminal activities, including terrorism.<\/p>\n
Her crime? Reading a book.<\/p>\n
The book in question is \u201cSyria Speaks \u2013 Art and Culture from the Frontline\u201d: \u201cSyria Speaks is a celebration of a people determined to reclaim their dignity, freedom and self-expression. It showcases the work of over fifty artists and writers who are challenging the culture of violence in Syria. Their literature, poems and songs, cartoons, political posters and photographs document and interpret the momentous changes that have shifted the frame of reality so drastically in Syria.\u201d<\/p>\n