Things are really beginning to get ridiculous now.
posted by jeremy on September 22, 2004
& I damn near spit Red Hook all over the fucking monitor...
Reuters news service tells me this much, "Former pop singer Cat Stevens, a Muslim, was deported to Britain on Wednesday after U.S. officials said his activities could be "linked to terrorism" and his name was put on a U.S. no-fly list."
& onwards, down the rabbit hole... "Homeland Security spokesman Brian Doyle said Islam's (Cat changed his name to Yusuf Islam when he converted to Islam years back) Washington D.C.-bound plane was diverted on Tuesday to Bangor, Maine, after his name turned up on U.S. lists of suspected terrorists. He was questioned by officials and then taken to Boston to catch a connecting flight in Washington for London. "Why is he on the watch lists? Because of his activities that could be potentially linked to terrorism. The intelligence community has come into possession of additional information that further raises our concern," Doyle said. A law enforcement official who asked not to be identified said the United States had information that Islam, who visited the United States in May, had donated money to the militant Islamic group Hamas. Islam was denied entry to Israel in 2000 after the authorities there accused him of supporting Hamas. The former pop star denied the charges and said his charitable donations were for humanitarian causes. Among the charities he has supported are children affected by the wars in Bosnia and in Iraq as well as victims of the Sept. 11 attacks against America, which he condemned."
Huh. So. Uhhh... Gak.
Cat Stevens, singer of such hits as Moonshadow & Trouble, a potential terrorist? What? What?! I don't fucking buy it. Fuck, I wouldn't even rent that concept. Why did they divert his plane? Did these nimwitted mooks really think that Cat was gonna take over a 747, just possibly utilizing warbly slightly cheesy lyrics as some kind of weapon?
This scenario flashes thru my mind...
"Do what I say or I'll bust out Peace Train on your asses!" screams Cat, lunging foward at the stewardesses. Desperate & brave, they run down the aisle, screaming at the pilots to lock the cabin doors. "Western whores!" He shouts, & then "Allahu Akbar!" & begins to sing... "Oh I've been smiling lately, thinking about the world as one, and I believe it could be, some day it's going to come..."
& a plane crashes: 264 souls gone. OK. Yeah.
What the living fuck is going on? Why did they deport him? How can they deport him with out providing some kind, any kind of hard evidence?
It would be laughable if it wasn't so amazingly insidiously stupid.
But actually, as I calm down, think it over, load some Jesus & Mary Chain, finish my beer, I only have to think of the McCarthy Era to really find a context for this. Fine-honed paranoia has always worked well for our government. Keeps the sheep edgy & responsive to subliminally installed fears. The shit-stupid accusations volleyed about in the 40's, 50's & 60's by HUAC (the Un-American Activities Committee) were beyond belief... & yet it happened with scant public protest. Over 320 people were blacklisted from the entertainment industry... for the crime of mild to extreme liberalist views & by, mind you, a group of political thugs with a penchant for the Ku Klux Clan. Seriously. Ernest Adamson, HUAC's chief counsel, refused to investigate the KKK, stating that there was "insufficient information to base a probe". HUAC mainstay, Mississippi congressman John Rankin added, "The KKK is an old American institution."
Research it yourself. I don't have enough time to recount what's been well documented by a fuckeroo of historians... The info's right there, somewhere, waiting for you.
All I say: Shit don't change. It's just that now, instead of communist/nigger-haters, it's towel-head/camel-jockey despisers, lo, oil-lusters, running the show, crashing the civil liberties boat. Or something. Fuck if I know. All I know is that Cat fucking Stevens just got yanked off a plane, deported to England, for nothing really definable besides participating in the Islamic faith. Who's writing this half-assed comedy?
If I were Santa Claus I'd put some goddam coal in the goatfucker's stocking.
On an even lighter side, if you want to watch something really really funny, you should download the video of Eugene Armstrong having his head sawed off by Iraqi insurgents. I suggest listening to Don't Fear the Reaper by the Blue Oyster Cult as a soundtrack. It's really something to see. The uppermost fuckery of a stupid war can be found here... http://www.ulita.com/beheading.php
It's a fucking horrible hoot.
Addendum: Roughly 15 minutes ago I showed my ex Rachel the video of Eugene getting his head sawed off with a small, if sharp, knife. She almost threw up. Then she sat in bathroom & sobbed for maybe five minutes. In fact, she has yet to really stop crying.
"That was real." She told me, bleary, horrified, somehow shocked & "No shit." I responded. No shit. No goddam godfucking shit.
The actual facts of war, of violent death, seem to keep shocking people that I know & love. When a bomb fucking explodes & kills 123 humans... Well, good-fuck, 123 people died. How did they die? Painlessly? Without blood? Easily? Maybe a few, yeah, maybe a few. But from everything I ever seen or read, dug up on the net... Humans die hard. We have a penchant, a genetic predisposition, for fighting death till the very fucking last...
& death, when it ultimately comes, is usually messy. Bone pushing thru flesh. Blood pumping thru jaggedly torn arteries. Brains dripping from rent skulls even as the body itself keeps gasping for air. When I watched Eugene have his head sawn off, I listened, in stereo, to the sounds he made as he died. He fought for breath to the very end. Even as his head was ripped from his body.
Listen for yourself. Fucking listen & don't be so fucking shocked.
Nobody wants to die.
