In her Vermont town, precious few knew Catherine Mayo

[cali]

BRAINTREE, Vt. -- An enigma on Flight 923, Catherine Mayo was a mystery in her small Vermont town, too.
<snip>

Mayo is largely unknown in this town of about 1,200, even to her neighbors, renting a modest, gray former schoolhouse surrounded by horse pastures but spending months overseas.

<snip>
"No one knows who she is," said Rachel Jarvis, 17, a clerk at The Royal Butcher, in neighboring West Braintree. "I've been on that road a thousand times and didn't know her," Jarvis said, referring to Mayo's street.

Mayo's son, Josh, 31, described his mother as a peace activist and said she had been in Pakistan since March. She has traveled there often since making a pen pal _ prior to Sept. 11, 2001. The pen pal hasn't been allowed to visit the U.S., he said. She dated a police officer there, he said.

<snip>

http://www.wcax.com/Global/story.asp?S=5295515

[Virginia Dare]

1. My tin foil hat is tingling....

Based on that information, it's entirely possible that woman may have been drugged.

[cali]

2. I don't see how you

get there from the informnation given. Sounds sadly as if she is bipolar to me.

[depakid]

4. Actually, her behavior wasn't typical of bipolar disorder

More likely somewhere along Schizoaffective spectrum.

I agree though, it is sad- and sadder still that she's being charged with a crime as opposed to being evaluated for treatment.

This entire country has gone collectively insane- evidenced first and foremost by its tolerance for its delusional corporate media and the policies and people it promotes.

[Virginia Dare]

5. Yep, that's a strong possiblility...

they are not mutually exclusive necessarily.

[iverglas]

3. Mayo in her own words

From the article linked:

In a rambling 2003 column for the Daily Times of Pakistan entitled "An American in Pakistan: A new kind of arrogance," Mayo criticized the United States.

"Once America decided that might is right, everything else became a cliché, too. When dissent is not allowed, all truth becomes predictable," she wrote.

The column in question:

http://www.flatrock.org.nz/topics/terrorism/miseducating_the_young_on_freedom.htm
(scroll down a bit; my emphasis)

... But if I invented a truth today, I know already that by the end of the day I would have to declare myself a failure. Someone would listen to me, and shake his head, and tell me that the truth doesn’t matter anymore. ...

Americans are not surprised that there are no weapons of mass destruction in Iraq. They are not surprised that Saddam Hussein cannot be found, ... . ... What surprises them is that people are asking questions. ... It goes right over the heads of Americans that when a crime has been committed, questions need to be asked.

Americans are true innocents when it comes to this. Since they did it, no crime has been committed, because America cannot do anything wrong. It is the innocence of an arrogance that even other empires in the world do not understand. ... Americans, on the other hand, make a false assumption based on the definition of democracy itself.

America relied on the free voice of its own people to tell the state when it was doing the wrong thing. Good prevails when every voice is heard with equal respect. There was no room in the American system for blind obedience. Each person in the country had the moral responsibility to speak his own truth, and to listen with equal seriousness to the truth of others. Judgments of right and wrong were made among the people themselves, through the humility of majority rule. When dissent is silenced, a person does not know the truth of the man standing next to him.

That sounds rather extraordinarily lucid, to me. If the letters her landlord described (in the article linked) as not making sense were anything like that column, the landlord would seem to be the perfect illustration of her point.

Haven't watched any south-of-the-border news for a few days; been too busy. So I didn't know anything about this story, and just did a brief googlenews search. It seems pretty obvious Mayo was delusional. I guess prosecutorial discretion -- the general principle of not prosecuting people who are too obviously not criminally responsible for their acts -- has been another casualty of the war on truth terror.

[iverglas]

6. and the British media say:

http://www.mirror.co.uk/news/tm_objectid=17583181&method=full&siteid=94762&headline=terror-plot-detectives-dig-up--bomb-suitcase---name_page.html

In America Catherine Mayo, 59, held over a "disturbance" when she had a panic attack on a flight to the US will appear in court today charged with interfering with a flight crew.

http://www.metro.co.uk/home/article.html?in_article_id=18665&in_page_id=1&ct=5

Fakes on a Plane

... Meanwhile, in other 'not actually terrorism' news, a passenger who sparked the mid-air security scare on a flight from London to Washington was confirmed to be carrying a screwdriver.

US citizen Catherine Mayo was also carrying cigarette lighters and matches and was charged with interfering with a flight crew. She apparently caused chaos as she paced the aisle, mumbling phrases peppered with the word 'Pakistan'. The incidents came just a week after officials in Britain claimed they had foiled a terror plot to blow up ten transatlantic jets.

And the Boston Globe does some investigative reporting:
http://www.boston.com/news/local/articles/2006/08/18/arrest_follows_years_of_outrage/

It was March 2003, the eve of the US invasion of Iraq, and into the office of dumbfounded Pakistani newspaper editor Najam Sethi walked an articulate, fresh-faced Vermont woman, saying she wanted to vent her anger at America in his pages.

Violence-plagued Lahore teemed with anti-American sentiment, yet Catherine C. Mayo seemed to move about with ease, Sethi recalled. And writing for the Daily Times of Pakistan, Mayo told about her 1960s activism. About her love of Cat Stevens and Howard Dean. About the mountains and lakes of her native Vermont. And about her shame and anger at America.

... Assistant US Attorney James Lang said the government was seeking to detain Mayo without bail on the grounds that she was a danger to the community and a risk of flight. "I think there's an obvious question here of competency," said Lang, adding that the defense was seeking to have a psychologist of its choosing evaluate Mayo.

... Mayo did not comment in court yesterday, but the picture that emerges from her intensely personal writings and from brief interviews with her family is that of a longtime liberal activist who became angry and devastated by the turn of events in the world since Sept. 11, 2001.

[cali]

7. This story

just gets sadder and more pathetic with each new turn; It's clear to me that she shouldn't be facing charges.