Category Archives: Homeland Security

Update I: Terrorism And The 'Three Ps'

Government, Homeland Security, Islam, Jihad, Terrorism

As liberals’ lackluster logic would have it, I wrote in “Coddling Killers,” “the ‘Three Ps’ — patriarchy, poverty, and powerlessness are responsible for terrorism. Never mind that Osama bin Laden is a millionaire. Or that the September 11 killers were scions of privilege. Or that Al Qaeda is hardly manned by illiterate peasants. No matter that from Russia’s Bolsheviks to South America’s Tupamaros and Montoneros, from Germany’s Baader-Meinhof Gang to Italy’s Red Brigades — terrorists have always been middle-class.”

Yes, “‘The typical terrorist is prosperous and self-righteous, writes Michael Radu of the Foreign Policy Research Institute. ‘The elite flocks to Islamist ideology,’ seconds Middle East scholar Daniel Pipes. ‘Militant Islam is not a response to poverty or impoverishment but results more from success than from failure.” (“Coddling Killers”)

Abdul Farouk Abdulmutallab, the Nigerian who attempted to detonate the Northwest Flight 253 from Amsterdam to Detroit on Christmas Day, is true to type; he’s a 23-year-old engineering student at University College in London.

Here’s a debriefing from DEBKAfile:

Alhaji Umarum Mutallab, former Nigeria First Bank chairman, ex-minister, told police Saturday, Dec. 26, that the 23-year old Nigerian who tried and failed to blow up the Amsterdam-Detroit Northwest Flight 253 Friday, Dec. 25, is his son. According to family members, he had been worried by his son’s extremist religious views and six months ago reported his activities to the US embassy in Lagos. Devastated by the news of the attempted bombing, he said he was surprised his son had been given a US visa.
The family confirmed that he had attended University College London to study engineering and later relocated to Egypt and then Dubai.
The Federal Government of Nigeria expressed its dismay at the attempted terrorist attack on a US airline and stated its abhorrence of all forms of terrorism. The Vice President has ordered a full investigation of the incident in full cooperation with the American authorities.
The London West End mansion apartment searched by UK police now turns out to be the family residence in London. London College University confirmed that a student named Umar Abdulmutallab was enrolled from 2005 to 2008.
Security experts said Abdulmutallab was armed with a sophisticated device consisting of liquid chemicals in a plastic syringe and a bag of explosive power, but only managed to cause a small fire before he was subdued by a passenger and the cabin crew.
The Dutch secret service is investigating how the Nigerian bomber’s syringe of chemicals managed to elude Schiphol airport checks when he boarded the Northwest Flight 253 from Amsterdam to Detroit.
Security experts say the plastic coating of the syringe may have prevented detection unless the bomber had been thoroughly frisked or exposed to sniffer dogs.
Security has been tightened stringently for US, British and Dutch airports and air traffic in case of a follow-up on the Nigerian student’s failed attack.
Passengers flying to the US from anywhere in the world have been restricted to one piece of hand luggage each under revised security measures at US airports. They have been warned of delays on arrival.
Counter-terror measures were stepped up at British airports and flights already bogged down by bad weather further delayed by subjecting all passengers to separate searches.

There you have it; Abdulmutallab is purported to be the son of a prominent, former Nigerian minister and bank chairman.

Update (Dec. 28): A GILDED LIFE. The Guardian has the goods on the “extreme privilege” that begets bomb making:

Abdulmutallab was:

• Son to one of the country’s most respected businessmen, who retired earlier this month as chairman of Nigeria’s FirstBank, the oldest bank in the country, with offices in London, Paris and Beijing. has wonderful parents, comes from a lovely family [affirmed by the fact that father’s moral compass drove him to report son’s militancy], he’s got lots of friends, he had everything going for him. [to which he reacted by isolating himself from kin and colleagues.]
• lived in a luxury block just off the London’s Oxford Street
• enjoyed during boyhood “the manicured lawns and tennis courts of the British International school in Togo”
• completed an international baccalauréat
• availed himself of school trips to the UK

On and on; all unheard of for a typical boy growing up in Africa.

Update I: Terrorism And The ‘Three Ps’

Government, Homeland Security, Islam, Jihad, Terrorism

As liberals’ lackluster logic would have it, I wrote in “Coddling Killers,” “the ‘Three Ps’ — patriarchy, poverty, and powerlessness are responsible for terrorism. Never mind that Osama bin Laden is a millionaire. Or that the September 11 killers were scions of privilege. Or that Al Qaeda is hardly manned by illiterate peasants. No matter that from Russia’s Bolsheviks to South America’s Tupamaros and Montoneros, from Germany’s Baader-Meinhof Gang to Italy’s Red Brigades — terrorists have always been middle-class.”

Yes, “‘The typical terrorist is prosperous and self-righteous, writes Michael Radu of the Foreign Policy Research Institute. ‘The elite flocks to Islamist ideology,’ seconds Middle East scholar Daniel Pipes. ‘Militant Islam is not a response to poverty or impoverishment but results more from success than from failure.” (“Coddling Killers”)

Abdul Farouk Abdulmutallab, the Nigerian who attempted to detonate the Northwest Flight 253 from Amsterdam to Detroit on Christmas Day, is true to type; he’s a 23-year-old engineering student at University College in London.

Here’s a debriefing from DEBKAfile:

Alhaji Umarum Mutallab, former Nigeria First Bank chairman, ex-minister, told police Saturday, Dec. 26, that the 23-year old Nigerian who tried and failed to blow up the Amsterdam-Detroit Northwest Flight 253 Friday, Dec. 25, is his son. According to family members, he had been worried by his son’s extremist religious views and six months ago reported his activities to the US embassy in Lagos. Devastated by the news of the attempted bombing, he said he was surprised his son had been given a US visa.
The family confirmed that he had attended University College London to study engineering and later relocated to Egypt and then Dubai.
The Federal Government of Nigeria expressed its dismay at the attempted terrorist attack on a US airline and stated its abhorrence of all forms of terrorism. The Vice President has ordered a full investigation of the incident in full cooperation with the American authorities.
The London West End mansion apartment searched by UK police now turns out to be the family residence in London. London College University confirmed that a student named Umar Abdulmutallab was enrolled from 2005 to 2008.
Security experts said Abdulmutallab was armed with a sophisticated device consisting of liquid chemicals in a plastic syringe and a bag of explosive power, but only managed to cause a small fire before he was subdued by a passenger and the cabin crew.
The Dutch secret service is investigating how the Nigerian bomber’s syringe of chemicals managed to elude Schiphol airport checks when he boarded the Northwest Flight 253 from Amsterdam to Detroit.
Security experts say the plastic coating of the syringe may have prevented detection unless the bomber had been thoroughly frisked or exposed to sniffer dogs.
Security has been tightened stringently for US, British and Dutch airports and air traffic in case of a follow-up on the Nigerian student’s failed attack.
Passengers flying to the US from anywhere in the world have been restricted to one piece of hand luggage each under revised security measures at US airports. They have been warned of delays on arrival.
Counter-terror measures were stepped up at British airports and flights already bogged down by bad weather further delayed by subjecting all passengers to separate searches.

There you have it; Abdulmutallab is purported to be the son of a prominent, former Nigerian minister and bank chairman.

Update (Dec. 28): A GILDED LIFE. The Guardian has the goods on the “extreme privilege” that begets bomb making:

Abdulmutallab was:

• Son to one of the country’s most respected businessmen, who retired earlier this month as chairman of Nigeria’s FirstBank, the oldest bank in the country, with offices in London, Paris and Beijing. has wonderful parents, comes from a lovely family [affirmed by the fact that father’s moral compass drove him to report son’s militancy], he’s got lots of friends, he had everything going for him. [to which he reacted by isolating himself from kin and colleagues.]
• lived in a luxury block just off the London’s Oxford Street
• enjoyed during boyhood “the manicured lawns and tennis courts of the British International school in Togo”
• completed an international baccalauréat
• availed himself of school trips to the UK

On and on; all unheard of for a typical boy growing up in Africa.

Update II: Make Me Thankful: Don't Enlist!

Criminal Injustice, Government, Homeland Security, Iraq, Islam, Jihad, Military, Political Correctness, Terrorism

The excerpt is from my new WND.COM column, “Make Me Thankful: Don’t Enlist!”:

“Instead of tough, immediate action against every cog in the military machine that promoted, pampered and palliated the mass murderer Maj. Nidal Malik Hasan, victims got a commission of inquiry.

Or in Pentagon speak, ‘a broad 45-day review.’

The state’s response to the slaughter at Fort Hood of 13 of its own by a Muslim Army psychiatrist, who also wounded more than 30 in the shootings at the Texas military post on Nov. 5, will be met, first, with more bureaucracy – more salaries for more slackers – and, thereafter, with a brick-thick report! …

Thinking of enlisting? You’ll be fighting not for country and countrymen; but will be granting a banal bureaucrat a lien on your life.

As for the inquiry cobbled together to stop future Hasans:

Permanent Secretary Sir Humphrey Appleby, a fictitious, but oh-so-real character in the brilliant British satires ‘Yes Minister’ and ‘Yes Prime Minister,’ would agree with me when I say that government commissions are where accountability goes to die.”

The complete column, now on WND.COM, is “Make Me Thankful: Don’t Enlist!”

Update I (Nov. 27): A correction to our friends over at the Libertarian Republican’s blog post: I’ve made it abundantly clear that it is not merely the military under Obama that suffers the afflictions highlighted in “Make Me Thankful: Don’t Enlist!”, and in “Your Government’s Jihadi Protection Program”—but the military, period.

Hozanas to the generic Hasan were the norm during Bush’s reign over the Army.

Patriotic Americans, as highlighted in “Take this, Mr. President, For Ramos and Compean,” were prosecuted and persecuted with equal zeal under Genghis Bush.

In the waning years of Bush’s G-d-awful term, I offered a flip-side argument: “Support The Draft … for politicians and bureaucrats”:

Having expatiated against the illegal, immoral and unconstitutional Iraq war from its inception, I’d recommend a different course of action in furtherance of freedom. For one, crying for the carping consular staff is a bad idea. They seem to want to enjoy the favors of office without bearing the burdens—to pick and choose those policies they are prepared to promote.

Creating a risk-free workplace for the already privileged government employee will do nothing to curb the State’s endless exploits. Coddling its recruits won’t place a dampener on government’s callous, confiscatory practices. The riskier the stakes faced by the political class, the better. Let as many of them as possible shoulder the consequences of the Iraq policy. Force more of the state’s pen-pushing laptop bombardiers to the empire’s fronts. Then, perhaps, will we witness policy changes that percolate down to The People.

Update II: The response to this column, public and personal, has been better than I had hoped. To think of the filthy hate mail I used to get when I wrote against the Iraq war for all those years!

If in writing this column, I’ve helped to save one life — then that is more of a reward than I could have hoped for. As is written in the Talmud (and plagiarized by Islam), “Whoever saves a life, it is considered as if he saved an entire world.” [Jerusalem Talmud Sanhedrin 4:1 (22a)]

In Brief: Unemployment, Climagedon, Jihad

Debt, Economy, Energy, Environmentalism & Animal Rights, EU, Homeland Security, Inflation, Law, Propaganda, Pseudoscience, Regulation

• Mainstream press has stumbled on an alarming figure, which I reported way back on 8/28/2009 : “nearly 1 in 5 Americans is either out of work or under-employed.”

The real unemployment rate is 16.3 percent. The discrepancy between the official and the awful numbers has arisen because the former count, conveniently, “only those who have looked for work in the last four weeks.”

• Climagedon or, rather, ClimaGate. Reports The IBD: “Hacked e-mails from Britain’s Climate Research Unit are only the latest evidence of climate fraud. Just ask NASA’s James Hansen about the faking of climate data or EPA employees about the suppression of climate fact.”

For years, noted scientists and other global warming skeptics have been accused of being on the take, their research tainted and funded by grants from Big Oil and other fossil-fuel interests.
Now, it turns out, it’s the warm-mongers who are fudging the numbers and concealing the inconvenient truth.

• To further hobble the economy and contribute to the climate chicanery, the president “will propose an emissions reduction target at a U.N. climate change summit in Copenhagen next month, the White House said Monday. … Obama said during his trip to Asia last week that the U.S. and China want the Copenhagen summit to lead to an agreement that has ‘immediate operational effect.'”

“Reincarnation of the Reds” is what it is.

MORE on the Obama connection.

• Finally, “Khalid Sheikh Mohammed and the others are going to plead ‘not guilty.'” Read the cuss-studded comments from the Daily Kos coterie.
This is an unremarkable defense. Still, Obama will rue the day he brings this circus to New York. Posturing on the Left and the Right will not change the fact that a show trial of the 9/11 defendants will turn into a farce.