CENTRAL INTELLIGENCE AGENCY COULDN'T GIVE A SHIT ABOUT M.I.A.

An insider from the C.I.A. has revealed exclusively to Spinal Bap that the intelligence agency to which he belongs is not in the least bit interested in the activities, opinions, pronouncements, or (especially) the music of Maya Arulpragasam, aka M.I.A.

This information is contrary to the claims of Arulpragasam herself, who is under the impression that the C.I.A. has bugged the telephones of both her and her extended family, and that the agency’s operatives follow her every movement in surveillance vans disguised with the words “U.P.S.”, “FEDEX”, and “ICE-CREAM”.

The reason, M.I.A. believes, for her supposed observance are her outspoken, controversial, and undeniably radical comments in press interviews, a small number of which read as follows:

“Governments are, like, well bad, aren’t they? Do you know what I mean? Cos, they, like, do wars and stuff. And wars are bad.” (NME, 2005)

“You know that movie, The Social Network, yeah, well that movie is just propaganda conceived to cover up the fact that Facebook was actually invented by The Pentagon to survey the activities of the masses. It’s, like, totally what happened in that book, Big Brother by George Orwell… which I’ve nearly finished reading.” (Guardian Weekend Magazine, 2010)

“Terrorism is good, you know, if it’s for a good thing, but terrorism what is for a bad thing, that’s, like, well, a really bad thing. But, you know who the real terrorists are, don’t you? It’s the governments. And the oil companies. Yeah, I said it!” (New Statesman, 2008)

M.I.A.’s lyrics, she claims, are also cause for concern for the U.S. government. For example, the incisive and incendiary rap/poetry of 2010 track Lovalot:

They told me this country was free
The FBI, well they don’t like me
‘Cos I’m just like Bob Marley
And also loads like Mahatma Gandhi
Shuck-a-lucka-lee
Push pineapple shake the tree

Our C.I.A insider denied M.I.A.’s allegations, however, stating that “the state is on high terrorism alert, for God’s sake. The Taliban are continuously establishing more and more fundamentalist sleeper cells throughout the western world with the aim of destroying every aspect of our society, culture, freedom, happiness, our life as we know it. Don’t you think we’ve got better things to do with our time than follow the insipid actions of a Mercury nominated hip-hop/grime/world music fusion artist?”

He also urged other musicians to try to curb their egos and sense of self-importance, instead of perpetuating the damaging myth that the security services are wasting tax payers’ money on surveying celebrities who are both harmless and overexposed in the media in the first place. The C.I.A. operative, who has close connections with his British counterparts, asked us to recall the interview in which Radiohead’s frontman made similar announcements, around the time of the group’s comatose glitch-pop album Kid A. “Remember when Thom Yorke decided that MI5 had a file on him? I chased that up. Turns out they had a copy of OK Computer next to the office stereo, with a post-it note stuck to the CD case reading ‘about as threatening as a damp ham sandwich.’”

Though of course he would say that.