More was hidden than a bomb in some underpants

Kurt Haskell, the lawyer on the Detroit bound flight who witnessed the Nigerian "underwear bomber" suspect to be boarded by a "handler" at Amsterdam Schiphol airport without a passport, has just published some of his conclusions how this could have happened and why mainstream media took only a cursery interest in his story. The alternative news agency Mathaba has published some extensive background information on the incident.

The fact that in spite of clear warnings and intelligence information Abudlmutallab's multiple entry visa was not revoked is currently subject to much debate in the USA, and Haskell quotes an article in the Detroit News stating that his visa was kept valid in order to not foil a larger investigation into al-Qaida threats against the United States, so that investigators could get closer to apprehending the terror network he is accused of working with.

So effectively, the latest twist is that American security agents knew about Abdulmutallab and let him enter the United States unhindered, or even helped him enter the United States, so that he could lead them to other members of his terrorist network. Haskell quotes the Director of the National Counterterrorism Center (NCTC), Michael E. Leiter, admitting that: "I will tell you, that when people come to the country and they are on the watch list, it is because we have generally made the choice that we want them here in the country for some reason or another."

For a law-abiding patriotic American law professional like Haskell this is a stark discovery, but in his analysis he fails to take the matter to ultimate conclusion:
If US intelligence followed Abdulmuttalab, then they would not want this to be apparent to his alleged co-conspirators. However, they must have been following him for some time, in fact given the help they provided him with, he must have already turned informer or, have been trained and handled by them as an infiltrator of the alleged terror network. Hence, they must also have known about the explosives he was carrying aboard the aircraft. Now if they did not want him and their tracking of other terrorists to be found out, then they would not want an incident that obviously would warn off any others and stop him and them from getting anywhere near them. On the other hand, unless they expected him to try and detonate the device, they would not have had somebody filming the whole episode as witnessed by Haskell.

Further, if they knew about the man carrying a "bomb", then they either a) also knew that the device would not detonate or b) willingly put themselves and the travelling public at serious risk. The first option sounds more plausible.

Now if they knew he would attempt to detonate a device that could not cause serious damage, then the purpose of the exercise must be different from the one officially declared as the scare and his subsequent arrest would have foiled any plans of following him and tracing others through him, in fact warning them off. There only remain two possible objectives: either the whole occurrence it was staged to generate public fear or it was a test run to see how a youngster like that carries out a mission like that. If the first holds true, then the war on terror has become a grand propaganda exercise. If the latter is the case, then US officials are actively involved in the training and deployment of alleged terrorists. Either scenario raises a lot more serious questions than Haskell has dared to voice.

I doubt that he will be able to go any further with what he and his wife clearly saw. He has already received some intimidating phone calls as a result. The logical facts of the course of events also explain why the mainstream media won't touch the story or probe into it as it is the story of the collusion between the security services and the alleged terror networks they claim to fight, similar to the earlier CIA involvement in the "red scare", where whole communist cells in the USA where run exclusively by secret agents.

In my forthcoming book "Surrendering Islam", co-authored with American historian David Livingstone, we show how the subversion of Muslim organisations to further the ends of unholy and clandestine interests beset with wanting to dominate the world is not a recent phenomenon but one that has been accomplished a long time ago. Far from being dead, the Neocon clash of civilisations theory put forward by Huntingdon is being put into practice, fermenting an increasingly violent show-down between "Islam" and the "West", with both controlled in their declarations and actions by the same people.

The Age of paranoia

Be afraid, be very afraid! There may be a terrorist living in your neighbourhood. Don't take any chances. If you know of Muslim student looking up information on the location of airports around the world, don't hesitate to report him, so he can be duly arrested for possessing material likely to be of use to potential terrorists. If a non-Muslim student posing as pacifist protests by holding up a placard outside an army training base, don't leave things to chance, get police dogs and helicopter back-up. We can't have army cadets put in harms way before they even go to Afghanistan. If you're an airline pilot and one of your passengers is an orthodox Jew wanting to say his morning prayers, you better head for the nearest airport. If your passenger is a Muslim about to pray, you should try an immediate crash landing, maybe the Hudson River. We need better security. Ban the Burkha. Don't let those Muslim women get away with hiding their faces. God only knows what else they may be hiding. We live in very dangerous times.

Troubles is, where do you start and where do you stop. Why should there be naked body scanners only at airports? Did not the 7/7 terrorists try and blow up trains and buses? So did the Madrid train bombers. Why are we not strip-searched when entering a train station. Why can I board a coach or bus with as many bottles of water (or peroxide) as I like? Those terrorists sure are clever people. They've understood that it is getting harder to board a plane with explosives. Knowing that you can cause just as much carnage outside of airports, they're sure to diversify, so where are the risk assessments for public spaces unrelated to aviation? In Iraq scores of people get killed daily in bomb attacks since that glorious "liberation", and none of them at an airport.

Whenever a past attempted terrorist attack gets widely reported, the US government raises the security threat level from elevated to high or from yellow to orange, and the UK government follows suit by raising its threat level from substantial to severe. But if it's severe in the USA, then it's critical in the UK. So much for cooperation in fighting terror - they can't even agree on the terminology. What's severe on the European side of the Atlantic, isn't quite severe yet on American soil. But leaving this aside, why does the threat level never go up before an attack? Don't we all spend enough money on so-called intelligence? What is the basis of those classifications? Since they are for our own protection, shouldn't we be getting some transparency at least?

Unfortunately, there's nothing intelligent at all about the whole hocuspocus. In fact, whenever the threat level indicates that an attack is highly likely, we usually get a period of calm, whereas the attacks that lead to the subsequent raising of the threat level usually take place after the threat level has been indicating a lower risk. Of course, it is not for us lesser mortals to probe into the wisdom of such things. This is the job of security experts who sadly would be out of a job if things made sense or added up.

If an alien came to earth and read the papers or listened to the radio or watched television, he would immediately be on guard against those nasty terrorists. He'd be watching his back. He'd stop drinking water in case it exploded inside him. He'd wonder why people are allowed to wear clothes at all since they could be hiding explosives. He wouldn't ever risk using public transport. Chances are, he'd die in a car accident.

About 115 people die daily in car accidents across the United States. In the UK, a much smaller place, it is 8 people a day. Three times as many die in other accidents, for example at work or at home. In fact, people's homes are the most dangerous places of all. And as far as violent killings go, most people are murdered by somebody who knew them. Thus whilst going out is dangerous, staying home might not be an option either to prevent harm. Besides, your own children might have been radicalised by terrorist recruiters and start experimenting with explosives in the bathroom. Did I mention swine flu?

Anxiety disorder, characterised by irrational fear, used to be a psychiatric condition. Now it's become the social norm. If our governments really want to protect us and have our best interest at heart, they should invest in something rather cheap: a sense of proportion.

There, I said it. Now I'm waiting for that knock on the door.