American anti-terrorism measures stop terrorist

After years of systematic discrimination scrutiny, the United States Department of Counter-Terrorism has finally caught a terrorist.

John McCorrin, whom the media have dubbed Mohammed Al Shazir Al-Habar Muhammed Mahalamoud, was caught trying to enter the country yesterday afternoon with almost 1 kilogram of explosives. 

"The man was apprehended at Los Angeles airport with a bag of explosives in his luggage," said DCT spokesperson Miss Repree Zentation. "We can neither confirm nor deny yet whether or not the material was nuclear, but we can tell you that they all came in packages with frightening codenames."

Among the explosives found were small bombs codenamed "Roman Candles".
 
"We also found a small amount of projectname 'Tom Thumbs' and a few insidious-sounding 'Birthday Sparklers'. While we're not sure of the significance of these names, we can only assume they have something to do with rampant Islamic militant violence and democracy-hating right-wing religious facism,"  said Zentation.

Their suspicions were first raised when an alert came through on their global telecommunications monitoring network. According to senior analysts, the message sent between Mahalamoud and an as-yet unnamed accomplice was spine-tinglingly chilling. 

"I've got everything we need to finish off tomorrow night with a bang," the message read. "We're going to drop a lot of jaws with our little show. I'll see you soon, brother. Allah hu Akbar."

The system, which has been coded to pick up keywords like "bomb", "terrorist", "nuclear" and "muslim", been illegally monitoring calls, smses, and emails since before 2001. According to head of the project, Ian Ternet, this is the first time the system has picked up a media-branded confirmed terrorist.

"We usually a lot of false pings, like from any message talking about basically any video, internet post, movie or television show that has a muslim in it. We also get a lot of false hits from Star Wars," said Ternet.
 

Admiral Ackbar's name is often confused with praise to Allah, says Ternet

"You know, movies show us that terrorist carry around AK-47s, have turbans and scowling dark faces and inevitably scream "allah who allackbar" in crowded airports. It turns out that this isn't really the case all the time," said LAX arresting officer Ray Sist.

According to Sist, Mahalamoud almost snuck by airport staff by using an extremely cunning disguise. "To the untrained eye, he almost looked like an innocent, law-abiding citizen: no giant beard, no burkha, nothing. He almost got away," said Sist.

It was only after frisking twenty men who didn't have names like "Brett", "Kyle" and "Dylan" that their suspicions were aroused. "He had a very funny accent," said Sist. According to current security policy, funny accents are ground enough for a full cavity search.

However, Mahalamoud has been quick to defend himself. 

"I'm not a terrorist, for pete's sakes! I'm an architect living in Florida!" he said in an interview with those bastards from the loose, bleeding-heart, America-hating liberal leftist press.

Mahalamoud is expected to go on trial next month, with movie production for the series of events already underway. The movie, entitled "America fucks up another terrorist, booya" and starring Arnold Schwarzenegger, Chuck Norris and Sylvester Stallone, will hit god-fearing, gun-loving cinemas in early May.

Admiral Ackbar's name is often confused with praise to Allah, says Ternet

Name-change committee to present decision

According to a press release given out today, the committee charged with deliberating on the decision whether or not to rename Grahamstown will present its final decision tomorrow morning.

However, according to head of the committee, Will Renaimit, the decision has not been so clear-cut as many would at first believe.

"There are many issues facing Grahamstown today, such as the water problem, robbery, assault, rape and murder, but these are all subordinated to this new debate. After all, who can care about violent crime and extreme social issues - let alone do anything about it - when you can't agree on where, exactly, it happened?" he told reporters this morning.

Renaimit went on to outline the several options that the committee members have been deliberating since the name-change issue first arose.

"At first we toyed with the idea of just naming it Nelsontown, or Mandelaville, or even Madibasfontein, but we realised that might get our town confused with every street, road, stadium, shopping complex, bridge, highway, office block, university and town square that uses that overused much-loved moniker," said Renaimit.

This easy option out the window, the committee was forced to consider other alternatives.

"There's a Welsh man in our committee, and we know how fond they are of long, complicated names. He suggested that we just throw every option together, and please everyone," he said. However, after some trial runs and tests on official documents, maps and road signs, the committee decided not to rename the City of Saints, ""GrahamskanamakandhaeRhinijozingotownsbergsvillesfontein," he said.

The template for one of Grahamstown ???stown's new name

Soon after this development, tensions were high.

"We were at our wits' end," said another committee member, Rex Consile. "And then someone came up with a brilliant idea: if we choose one name above the rest, we'll only make one group happy, and everyone else unhappy. So why don't we just make everyone equally happy by making them all equally miserable with us?" According to Consile, this move came straight out of a post-2000 ANC Ministerial behaviour guidebook.

So, after almost a year of debates, fights and angry letters, the decision has been made.

"We'll make the announcement early tomorrow morning," said Consile. "We just hope that everyone's happy with the name 'ThetownthatusedtobecalledGrahamstown-town'."

*This article first appeared in Grocott's Mail under the title "A name that might stick..."