You’re right, Mark, I didn’t make a point. I left it up to readers to draw their own conclusions. Most of the meat of that post was in the links. But I do have some points to make about this and will provide them in another post.

I don’t expect minimum wage employees to know who Cat Stevens was or is, or to know who Senator Kennedy is, for that matter. As far as I know, the incidents affecting Senator Kennedy were never left up to a minimum wage employee.

In any case, Yusuf Islam isn’t reported to have been kept off a flight because of a no-fly list. He’s reported to have boarded a plane in London, then was diverted from D.C. to land in Bangor, Maine, where he was separated from his family member, detained, interrogated, and eventually deported back to London. No reason was given. He said he was on his way here for legitimate business meetings in Washington D.C., Nashville, and Los Angeles, all having to do with either music or his charitable organization, Simple Kindness. He said he’d visited the U.S. some 19 times between 9/11 and May 2004, also on legitimate business, including an appearance with Hillary Clinton and Peter Gabriel.

Ken, you hit on a very good point, that of the difference between treatment of rich and poor travelers. If Islam wasn’t a somewhat public figure, we would never have heard of this. Or if we did, we would assume he was guilty of something. After all he has that Arab-sounding name, right? But being familiar with the music he wrote, I felt compelled to look at this more closely and wonder how someone I’d always seen as peace loving and communicating messages of love, hope and optimism could be involved with terrorism. The pieces didn’t fit together. (More to come.)

It’s impossible to know the unexpected future. Trying to predict who’s a future terrorist, given the aggressiveness of those who lead, will lose the only bastion of honor left for those who are poor and have either found or been trained that aggressiveness is a false path.

Those who are rich at least have their money to compensate: In the U.S., money buys relative freedom for those who can prove they’re not ‘terrorists’ or lawbreakers. Enough money apparently even buys laws through the loyalty of grateful legislators.

It’s not that bad being poor if you are treated with respect. Being told at every turn to identify oneself, to divulge personal data to armed police under the threat of being labeled terrorist, when one is honest and generally law abiding, while corporate CEOs transform our society to one of relative loss for most, but who seem to be able to protect their own ‘proprietary data’ behind shields of lawyers, is much too expensive in non-economic costs for those who can’t afford to hire a single lawyer. Having to prove you’re not a ‘terrorist’, besides the obvious difficulties in defining that word, at every intersection of one’s life, is too great a burden. Prove it once? No problem. Prove it over and over again and again? No thanks, that’s not respectful, and isn’t a world I choose to live in.

Did those doing the seemingly endless questioning of Yusuf Islam have a learning disability?

‘Aggressively’ finding ‘future terrorists’ (defined as pre-mass-murderers) weighs too heavily against everyone’s civil liberties. Even the definition of pre-mass-murderer is problematical. J&J is legally allowed to cause a statistical increase in lymphoma, some of which will likely go uncured and result in death for those who take Remicade. I guess if you’re a pharmaceutical corporation and kill the masses slowly enough, our government grants blessing in your name.

The cant of the post 9/11 security, specifically “Credible intelligence", as an explanation for unreasonable actions by them, has been undermined by the same government as a credible rationalization for loss of individual freedom, no matter how temporary the ‘detainment’ might be.

Just what is Homeland Security” up to? Protecting us? Or protecting something else? If so, what? How about some disclosure, Tom Ridge. It’s what you’ve prescribed for us little ones.

It does seem to take an interminable amount of time. Maybe if I were more technically oriented it wouldn’t.

For me also: Maureen O’Hara and Barbara Stanwyck.

Thanks for visiting. Detective fiction is probably the most rampant source of this. I’ve also seen it on television and some movies.

Our best talent is sapped into the unquenchable gulf of pop fiction and TV. No wonder we end up with Tomb Raider and sharp lawyers played by the ageless Heather Locklear.

I admire the Lauren Bacalls, the Katherine Hepburns. Where are they?