Molly Crabapple writes, "For My latest piece for Vice, I spoke with the men paid $200/month to build the Louvre and the Guggenheim Abu Dhabi."

A suit brought by four Muslim-American men with no criminal records asserts that the FBI put them on the no-fly list in order to pressure them to inform on their communities. Brooklynite Awais Sajjad, one of the plaintiffs, says that he was denied boarding for a flight to visit his sickly grandmother in Pakistan in 2012, and that subsequently, the FBI told him they would remove him from the no-fly list only if he worked as an FBI informant. — Read the rest

In the ACLU's new paper U.S. Government Watchlisting:
Unfair Process and Devastating Consequences [PDF], the group describes strange world of terrorist watchlists, including no-fly lists, where it's nearly impossible to discover if you're on a list, and nearly impossible to find out why you're on a list, and nearly impossible to get removed from a list. — Read the rest

Government lawyers spent seven years claiming that a Stanford student belonged on the no-fly list, all the while trying to conceal the bureaucratic error that mistakenly put her there. Right up until the end, the government—knowing what had happened—tried to get her case dismissed. — Read the rest

Despite a series of disgraceful dirty tricks, the TSA has lost its case against Dr Rahinah Ibrahim, a Malaysian academic who had been wrongly put on the no-fly list. The DHS engaged in witness tampering (denying Dr Ibrahim and her witnesses access to the courtroom by putting them on the no-fly list) and argued that neither Dr Ibrahim nor her lawyers should be allowed to see the evidence against her (because terrorism). — Read the rest

Phil writes, "Edward Hasbrouck of the Identity Project is doing a fantastic job of reporting on-site from Ibrahim v. DHS, the first legal challenge of United States government's no-fly list that has ever seen a courtroom. On the first day of trial, the judge learned that the plaintiff's daughter, scheduled to testify, was delayed because she had been denied boarding of her flight because she was put a Department of Homeland Security no-fly list. — Read the rest

The government of Malaysia hired a US PR firm to pay conservative journalists to write articles critical of a opposition leader running on a pro-democracy platform for The Huffington Post, The Guardian, The National Review, The San Francisco Examiner, Red State, and The Washington Times. — Read the rest

The SF Chronicle reports that a federal judge in San Francisco has "indignantly rejected" the Obama administration's attempt to use secret evidence to thwart the efforts of a former Stanford student to understand why she's apparently on a secret "no-fly" list. — Read the rest

The Velveteen Rabbi wrote a beautiful piece, in the form of a psalm, for The Children of Abraham / Ibrahim. Snip: "For every toddler in his mother's arms / behind rubble of concrete and rebar / For every child who's learned to distinguish / "our" bombs from "their" bombs by sound…" (via @ethanz)

Warning: some of your $18,000 10-ounce gold bars might actually be filled with tungsten. Gold goes for about $1800/ounce; tungsten is $1/ounce.

Chemical engineer Ibrahim Fadl, who owns a business in Manhattan's Diamond District, strips away the outer layer of a 10-ounce bar of what he thought was pure gold, sold to him by a customer at his gold refinery business.

I haven't read much by science fiction author Jack Vance, but the one or two books I read, long ago, I enjoyed greatly. One thing that stood out about Vance's writing was the way he occasionally used fancy words combined with a deadpan delivery that would be very hard to imitate ("The Green Chasch loped up on their massive beasts, holding yellow and black flags afloat on their lances, signifying truculence and bellicosity. — Read the rest

According to Newsweek, US intelligence officials report that al Qaeda's explosives expert Ibrahim al-Asiri and medical doctors have been designing bombs to be surgically implanted into the bodies of suicide bombers. The idea is that the technique would somehow foil airport scanners. — Read the rest

The people ransack the state security headquarters in Egypt, and archives of torture and oppression are unlocked: "This is a moment exposing what was hidden, but how this will be used is the problem. What is happening is too much for people to absorb and endure."—journalist — Read the rest

Ibrahim Mansi's birthday gift to employee Silvia Olveira, according to a lawsuit, was a vibrator: "When I opened it, I saw this thing. I was like, what is this? I didn't know what to do in that moment." Birthday suit: Gal miffed over vibrator gift [NY Post]

The Virginia DMV recalled the license plate on this truck for containing a coded racist message.

[T]he DMV agreed that the plate contains a coded message: The number 88 stands for the eighth letter of the alphabet, H, doubled to signify "Heil Hitler," said CAIR's Ibrahim Hooper.

Sound Unbound is a fantastic new collection of essays on digital culture and the future of music, edited by Paul D. Miller aka
DJ Spooky that Subliminal Kid — I had the honor of writing the foreword, but that's just for starters. — Read the rest

B. Frank says,

The Virginia Tech shooter [Cho Seung-Hui] had the words ""Ismail Ax"" written in red ink on his arm, according to this blog from the Chicago Tribune.

What does that mean? A google search shows nothing.

It's like an Ansari X Prize for developing democracies, sort of. Boingboing reader Pienso explains:

Dr. Mo Ibrahim, the African billionaire who founded Celtel — the cellular company that has connected the continent — has launched a 5 million dollar prize to be given to the most-effective African head of state.

From this Electrolite post, my vocabulary word for the day: Pecksniff. Damned if I know what it means (no, don't tell me, I prefer to guess), but I sure like the sound of it.

Denied a visa to attend the Grammy Awards, in which he's a nominee: Buena Vista Social Club musician Ibrahim Ferrer.

For the first time ever, my in-box was flooded today with multiple copies of an all-new, Iraq-themed variation of the classic Nigerian spam pitch.

By way of introduction I am Eng. Farouk Al-Bashar, I represent my family as the oldest son of the Al-Bashar family, who are the descendants of Ibrahim Al-Bashar Ali from one of the oil rich areas in Iraq…
We pray they remove Saddam as he is the cause of much hardship here, but our funds are trapped here and there is no avenue to transfer any amount from Iraq without Saddam knowing.