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September 22, 2004
Peace Plane

Passenger Cat Stevens Gets Plane Diverted

A London-to-Washington flight was diverted to Maine on Tuesday when it was discovered passenger Yusuf Islam — formerly known as singer Cat Stevens — was on a government watch list and barred from entering the country, federal officials said.
…
Homeland Security Department spokesman Dennis Murphy identified the passenger as Islam. “He was interviewed and denied admission to the United States on national security grounds,” Murphy said, and would be put on the first available flight out of the country Wednesday.

Cat Stevens – Peace Train

Now I’ve been crying lately,
thinking about the world as it is
Why must we go on hating,
why can’t we live in bliss

Cause out on the edge of darkness,
there rides a peace train
Oh peace train take this country,
come take me home again

Context:
Small Kindness
Yusuf Islam
Cat Stevens Lyrics
NYT – U.S. Wants All Air Traveler Files for Security Test

Hattip to reader Harry Chapin

Posted by b on September 22, 2004 at 06:29 UTC | Permalink
Comments

Just a thought…..wonder if there will ever come a time when, like Nixon’s Enemies List, folks will take it as red badge of courage to have been on this fascistic Watch List?

Posted by: RossK | Sep 22 2004 7:20 utc | 1

This is pretty ridiculous.
That said, didn’t Cat Stevens declared that he had no problem with the fatwah calling for the murder of Salman Rushdie because he was blasphemating Islam?

Posted by: CluelessJoe | Sep 22 2004 7:50 utc | 2

@Clueless Joe
He did write about it Yusuf Islam Issues A Formal Statement On The Rushdie Affair (slow site)

that is not to say I am encouraging people to break the law or take it into their own hands: far from it. Under the Islamic Law, Muslims are bound to keep within the limits of the law of the country in which they live, providing that it does not restrict the freedom to worship and serve God and fulfil their basic religious duties (fard’ayn). One must not forget the ruling in Islam is also very clear about adultery, stealing and murder, but that doesn’t mean that British Muslims will go about lynching and stoning adulterers, theives and murderers.

Posted by: b | Sep 22 2004 9:05 utc | 3

He protested Bush’s Iraq war, folks. If he were catholic, he’d be placed on the watch list too. Just ask Ted Kennedy.

Posted by: gylangirl | Sep 22 2004 15:38 utc | 4

I think, perhaps gylangirl has it about right.
Me, I’m waiting to see what happens next time they machine read my passport, or flash that thing in my eye like the last time I went through Toronto’s Pearson on the way to Dulles for a freaking science meeting in D.C. (I’m a cell biologist living North of the 49th, grew up in Canada, trained in the States and have an American born kid).
If they stop me I’d consider myself in good company seeing as it happened to Margaret Atwood recently.

Posted by: RossK | Sep 22 2004 18:45 utc | 5

Bruce Schneier is the absolute level-headed genius when it comes to security.
Here is his homepage.
Here is his op-ed on the no fly list.
And here is a link to an easily downloadable mp3 or ipod ready interview with him done by David Kaye.
(Highly recommended. I’ve listened to it twice while out walking.)
And here is a couple of snips from the transcript of that interview:
———–snip———-
Bruce Schneier: I really wrote “Beyond Fear” because we’re living in a silly security season in our country. We’re seeing so much nonsense after September 11th, and so many people saying things about security, about terrorism that just makes no sense, so I wanted to contribute to the debate. I wanted to write a book that people can read and then understand security.
They don’t have to agree with the conclusions; one of the things I say in the book is that security is personal, that there often are no answers. But I wanted people to at least understand how to ask questions, how to look at a security system, how to evaluate it because we’re being asked to take our shoes off at airports. We might be asked to live with a national ID card. We’re being asked to support invasions of foreign countries. We’re being asked to support all sorts of domestic and foreign policy in the name of security, and I’d like people to ask, “Does this make sense? Should we do this?”
————-next snip———-
Doug Kaye: Now a recurring concept in your book is probably typified by this example: “A terrorist who wants to create havoc will not be deterred by airline security; he will simply switch to another attack and bomb a shopping mall.”
Bruce Schneier: This is, I think, really important. I just did a hearing two days ago on Capitol Hill about CAPS II, about airline profiling, and one of the things I’m always struck with is how good we are at defending against what the terrorists did last year. We’re spending a lot of money shoring up our airlines, we’re now talking about shoring up trains. And money that we spend that simply causes the bad guys to change their tactics is money wasted.
You have a red and a blue door, and the terrorists go through the red door, and you say, “We must secure the red door,” so they go through the blue door the next time. What did you actually buy?
And one of my fears is that we spend lots and lots of money securing the airlines, and the terrorists move to the shopping malls or movie theaters or crowded restaurants or any of the things they do in Israel; that there are just so many targets that taking the target the terrorist happened to pick last year and securing it just sort of ignores the real problem.
——————————-

Posted by: koreyel | Sep 22 2004 19:32 utc | 6

13 million on terror watch list
Daily News Wash. Bureau, April 2004.
– U.S. border watchers are on the lookout for potential terrorists and other bad guys – 13 million of them.
The army of suspicious characters, including 20,000 identified by the State Department since the Sept. 11, 2001, terror attacks, is catalogued in a voluminous new watch list assembled for U.S. national security officials.
The mother of all watch lists will help officials in the State and Homeland Security departments “identify those aliens inadmissible or deportable,” President Bush wrote to the House and Senate intelligence panels.
U.S. officials combined existing immigration and terrorist watch lists from State, the Customs Service, the Drug Enforcement Administration and the FBI, Bush said.
The size of the watch list surprised some civil libertarians.
(…)
Link

Posted by: Blackie | Sep 22 2004 19:34 utc | 7

@blackie
Let me bet I am one of these 13 million. There is forgotten parking ticket I might have got 1989 in Florida. And then there is this blog….

Posted by: b | Sep 22 2004 19:50 utc | 8

hey b….not to mention that you’ve probably visited JK.com and WH.gov a few times on the same day.
And if you once gave $ to MoveOn, well that’s the kicker. You’re doomed.
Hell, I’d rather go to Maine than NYC anyway.

Posted by: RossK | Sep 22 2004 21:42 utc | 9

….or DC.

Posted by: RossK | Sep 23 2004 1:18 utc | 10

LA Times: When Really Bad Pop Stars Go Really Bad – The Cat Stevens threat looms.:

Hours after being refused entry into the U.S., 1970s recording star Cat Stevens lashed out at the government Wednesday, vowing to resume his recording career “immediately” as the ultimate act of revenge.
Appearing on the Arabic-language satellite TV channel Al Jazeera, a visibly angry Stevens — now known by the name Yusuf Islam — threatened to attack the United States with the full force of his insipid folk-rock music.
Brandishing an acoustic guitar, the erstwhile pop star warned that “no one in America would be safe from my insidious melodies” before launching into a spirited rendition of his 1971 hit “Peace Train.”
A spokesman for the CIA said experts needed more time to study the chilling video but that it appeared to be authentic: “We do not believe that anyone but the real Cat Stevens remembers the lyrics to ‘Peace Train.’ ”
On the campaign trail, Democratic presidential nominee Sen. John Kerry blasted President Bush for the Cat Stevens incident, saying Bush’s reckless actions had resuscitated an irritating singer’s long-dormant recording career.
“When George Bush took office, Cat Stevens was not a threat,” Kerry told a rally in Akron, Ohio. “Through a successful policy of containment, his music had mainly been limited to classic rock stations. But now, thanks to George Bush’s misguided decision to provoke Cat Stevens, we may be subjected to renditions of ‘Morning Has Broken’ and ‘Moonshadow’ and ‘Wild World’ for years to come.”
Aides to Kerry passed out lyrics of songs by Stevens, including this one from 1970: “I wish I knew, I wish I knew; what makes me, me, and what makes you, you. It’s just another point of view, ooo. A state of mind I’m going through.”
For his part, Bush defended the decision, telling a Denver audience, “Cat Stevens is the first front in the war on terror, with Seals and Croft a close second.”

Posted by: b | Sep 23 2004 10:26 utc | 11

yes, juancole.com (“informed comment”) recalls that yusuf was all for killing that blasphemer rushdie –
ashcroft and “cat” deserve each other, he concludes

Posted by: mistah charley | Sep 23 2004 16:00 utc | 12

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