Coming Soon to a Cinema Near You, The Christmas Tree Bomber

...And this time the leading star is a Huey Freeman (Boondocks) look-alike and he's a cutie! That was my first thought when I saw Mohamed Osman Mohamud's face headlining as the latest casualty of the West's war against terrorist bombers. While this latest production may not be not quite as funny as the Underpants bomber but it does stink.

 The U.S Feds followed this Somali hottie for months and they put him in jail??? They were undecided whether he fit the profile of a would-be terrorist so they baited him by selling him fake explosives. Is that fair, why didn't they just call me? I'd've been happy to stalk him for a year and suss out his terrorist street cred. 

But really tho' is it legitimate to provoke someone into action then arrest them when they act? Isn't this what the Feds used to do to the Black Panthers way back when? And COINTELPRO still does today? Mohamed was charged with attempted use of a 'weapon of mass destruction.' (notice the way Saddam/Iraq war type language slips into domestic security lexicon to create a threat-of-terrorism-is-very-real effect) Surely that bogus bogus bogus charge should read: attempted use of a dummy 'weapon of mass destruction'?

Having been successful in their mission the Feds were close at hand to drum the reality of the fake threat into the public's head as Special FBI agent Arthur Balizan told the press yesterday: 

"The threat was very real. Our investigation shows that Mohamed Osman Mohamud was absolutely committed to carrying out an attack on a very grand scale. I want to reassure the people of this community that, at every turn, we denied him the ability to actually carry out the attack"

While the Feds pat themselves on the back and the public gets all shook up about this latest Al Qaeda threat and bay for Mohamed's execution on live t.v, I'm still confused as to what opportunity exactly, the Feds were denying this man. Selling ineffective explosives to a wannabe jihadi rapper and fitness guru is a very, very cruel joke, especially when that state-managed joke carries a possible life imprisonment conviction. Do The Feds really get their kicks from playing tircks on youngsters in uneventful Oregon and Dallas, are the ones in Washington or NYC too street-wise to fall for this? 

At least the Times Square and Underpants bombers had intent to carry out workable plans, but they failed - but this dude was possibly unstable and he was tricked. I'm not so sure where trickery rates on the jihadist scale but sending Mohamed to prison may actually radicalise him and turn him against the state even more than he is now as a African immigrant and a Muslim - not exactly the most liked group in American society. But that's a just a small issue right? The important thing is this year the Feds have done a cracking job and arrested almost twenty would-be terrorists in the U.S, now TSA can happily roll out naked scanners at airports, malls, schools and office buildings to catch even more would-be terrorists - real or imagined, catch them in the terror, boys! As with all American cop movies, the Feds win in The Christmas Tree Bomber, and nobody, least of all the lapdog media, seem to mind that federal attempts at terrorist' honeytrapping mean the further curtailment of civil liberties, more mass disruption of public travel, encourages richter-scale levels of Islamophobia and justifies sending more troops to kill or be killed.

....one small step in Oregon, one giant step closer to war on Yemen.

p.s All bets are on for Obama issuing an amended waiver on the use of child soldiers in Somalia to fight terrorism by January.