Update III: It Worked With The Unabomber’s Brother, But Not With Abdul’s Father

America, Family, Homeland Security, Islam, Jihad, Terrorism

It worked like magic with the Unabomber’s brother, but not with the generic Abdul’s father. Not even a warning from dad could sway America to look upon a Muslim suspect with suspicion.

“FATHER OF TERROR SUSPECT REPORTED SON 6 MONTHS AGO.

“US Approved Passenger List.” NEWSWEEK is reporting that “Farouk Abdulmutallab (previously identified in the media as Abdul Mudallad), was entered into a database used by the government to deny or restrict U.S. … The fact that Abdulmutallab was not on the U.S. government’s ‘no fly list’ would help to explain why American authorities cleared the aircraft he boarded, Northwest Flight 253 from Amsterdam to Detroit, for takeoff. As NEWSWEEK reported earlier today, Dutch authorities say their U.S. counterparts were given the passenger list for review before the flight left the gate and its departure was not approved until clearance was received from the U.S.”

All the Kings Horses and All The King’s Men—the agencies the government has created to protect us—possessed all the requisite information needed to stop or supervise this character closely, but didn’t. Yawn. “Your Government Jihadi Protection Program” at work. (That’s why we need the state apparatus to manage medicine.)

The WaPo confirms too that, “The suspect, Umar Farouk Abdulmutallab, was added to a catch-all terrorism-related database … Abdulmutallab was not placed on any watch list for flights into the United States, however, because there was ‘insufficient derogatory information available’ to include him, another administration official said.”

Maj. Nidad Hasan all over again?

Update I (Dec. 27): HAVE TUMMY TROUBLES WILL TRAVEL. Mass contagion ensues. A passenger lingers in the loo too long and is apprehended, but certified “Non-Threatening,” eventually. The man “spent about an hour in the bathroom and got upset when he was questioned by the crew of the flight from Amsterdam,” reports CNN.

The security alert aboard a Northwest Airlines jet Sunday was the result of a “non-serious” incident, and the man questioned in connection with the scare does not appear to be a threat, a law enforcement source said Sunday.
The crew of Northwest Flight 253 — the same Amsterdam, Netherlands-to-Detroit, Michigan flight targeted Friday in what prosecutors called a bomb plot — reported a “verbally disruptive” passenger Sunday and requested police meet the plane, airline and airport officials told CNN. The man was questioned by police after the plane landed in Detroit early Sunday afternoon.

If you thought you were hassled at the airport before, just you wait. The Nigerians manning America’s airport screening posts will be reacting against Oma from Omaha will a vengeance.

Update II (Dec. 28): The Transportation Security Administration (T.S.A) wasted no time in retaliating against the sheeple for an attempted attack by a profile in suspicious behavior:

The NYT: “the new T.S.A. measures required an additional round of searches, including body pat-downs at airport gates overseas.

International travelers were also told that they could not leave their seats for the last hour of a flight, during which time they also could not use a pillow or blanket. They were also limited to one piece of carry-on baggage, including a purse or briefcase, and that piece had to be stowed in an overhead compartment for the last hour of a flight.

Airlines were ordered to turn off in-flight entertainment systems with maps showing a plane’s location, and pilots and flight crews were told not to make comments about cities or landmarks below the flight path.
There also were unspecified measures at airports in the United States, where lines at screening machines grew long. At the Detroit airport, officers in bright blue vests marked “Police” walked through the check-in lobby. … Henry Chen, 48, a businessman who lives in San Francisco, said he was shocked to have a female flight attendant barge in on him in the restroom while he was washing his face during a flight from Seoul. “It was kind of weird, to have a lady try to get in,” he said. “She said that they had to watch people being in the restroom too long.”

Update III: SO MUCH FOR LISTS. Homeland Security Secretary Janet Napolitano “acknowledged that U.S. authorities had placed Abdulmutallab on a general counterterrorism watch list that contains about 550,000 names, which is shared with airlines and foreign security agencies. Administration officials acknowledged Abdulmutallab was placed on that list a month ago after his father, a respected Nigerian banker, went to U.S. authorities in Nigeria with concerns about his son’s ties to militants.
Napolitano said without specific and ‘credible’ evidence of suspicious activity, Abdulmutallab could not be classified as the kind of greater security risk that would bar him from traveling to the U.S.”

[SNIP]

What does a Muslim, bomb-carrying boy need to do in order to get American attention? Go on Oprah? This is a cry for help!

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

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:

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

Updated: Liberals Rejoice

Healthcare, Left-Liberalism And Progressivisim, Regulation, Socialism

Sixty Democratic members of the Senate wrapped up what they had begun a few days back. On December 21, the Slimy Sixty voted to end debate on their version of the health care bill, a vote commonalty referred to as Cash for Cloture, for the bribes it required. Republicans have been impotent in this debate. Their conduct while in power during the last decade has guaranteed—and certainly warrants—their neutered status for years to come. Besides, when Republicans do raise objections, these are generally procedural, not principled. No, it was the ConservaDems who got to call the shots and dip their snouts deep in the troughs.

A left-liberal blogger like the righteous Ezra Klein of the WaPo believes that “the senators making up this morning’s 60 votes actually represent closer to 65 percent of the population. Harry Reid has much to be proud of today,” he quips.

[One of my favorite observations in Paul Gottfried’s “Encounters” is the one about “the Archie Bunkers” of America having gone the way of the dinosaur. That generation, Paul writes, “Has been replaced by a multitude of vastly more radicalized versions of Meathead, Archie’s fashionable liberal son-in-law who by now could be an editorial writer for the Wall Street Journal.” Or the WaPo, like young Klein.]

I tend to agree with Ezra that Americans have driven this move to recognize a commodity/good (health care services) as a natural right.

Klein is celebrating:

“[T]his bill will do most of the things supporters hoped it would do: cover about 95 percent of all legal residents, regulate insurers, set up competitive exchanges, pretty much end risk selection, institute a universal structure that we can improve and enhance as the years go on, and vastly reduce both medical and financial risk for families.”

No doubt, the “118 new boards, commissions and programs” created by the government will deliver medicine like never before.

Chuckie Krauthammer has a few half decent suggestions—tort reform, deregulation, interstate competition—except that as an establishment Republican, Chuckie swims in pretty polluted waters. He believes that “insuring the uninsured is a moral imperative”; and that taxing “employer-provided health insurance” the way to go. As I said, always procedure, never principles: that’s the Republicans for you.

Click BAB’s “Health Care & Fitness” Search Category for more.

Update (Dec. 26): “Given the degree to which the insurance market is going to be further regulated,” I wrote in “Healthcare Hell Ahead,” insurers will gradually divest of their market share, leaving so big a gap that the State will assert the need to move in by ‘necessity.'”

Peter Schiff postulates about a “devious possibility. Perhaps our elected officials actually intend to bite the hands that feed them. They could double-cross insurance companies by not raising the fine in five years, thereby forcing the industry into bankruptcy as millions of healthy people opt-out. During the ensuing ‘insurance crisis,’ our courageous leaders could ride to the rescue with a nationalized, single-payer system.”

Schiff on why the Bill is the beginning of the end of private insurance industry:

“This first round of reform could be labeled as the ‘neutron bomb’ of the insurance industry: it leaves some of the private apparatus standing, but it irradiates whatever remains of the industry’s market viability.

The bill’s centerpiece is a clause prohibiting insurers from denying coverage based on a pre-existing medical condition. However noble and marketable an idea, this proscription removes the very basis upon which any insurance model operates profitably.

A system of insurance requires that premiums be collected from a pool of low-risk people so that funds are available in case a high-risk event befalls a particular person. In that way, premiums can be low and coverage can be widely available, even if the benefits offered are hypothetically unlimited.

For example, homeowners buy fire insurance even though their houses are very unlikely to burn down. Recognizing that a fire could wipe them out financially, most homeowners endure the cost of coverage even if they never expect to collect. The same model applies to health insurance in a free market.

However, the health care bill removes the need for healthy individuals to carry insurance. Knowing that they could always find coverage if it were eventually needed, people would simply forgo paying expensive premiums while they are healthy, and then sign on when they need it. But insurance companies cannot survive if all of their policyholders are filing claims!” …