text:
Arrest of 14-Year-Old Student for Making a Clock: the Fruits of Sustained Fearmongering and Anti-Muslim Animus
This hideous event is the opposite of aberrational. It's the natural, inevitable byproduct of the culture of fear and demonization that has festered and been continuously inflamed for many years.
There are sprawling industries and self-proclaimed career "terrorism experts" in the U.S. that profit greatly by deliberately exaggerating the threat of Terrorism and keeping Americans in a state of abject fear of "radical Islam." There are all sorts of polemicists who build their public platforms by demonizing Muslims and scoffing at concerns over "Islamophobia," with the most toxic ones insisting that such a thing does not even exist, even as the mere presence of mosques is opposed across the country, or even as they are physically attacked.
The U.S. government just formally renewed the "State of Emergency" it declared in the aftermath of 9/11 for the 14th time since that attack occurred, ensuring that the country remains in a state of permanent, endless war, subjected to powers that are still classified as "extraordinary" even though they have become entirely normalized. As a result of all of this, a minority group of close to 3 million people is routinely targeted with bigotry and legal persecution in the Home of the Free, while fear and hysteria reign supreme in the Land of the Brave.
What happened in Irving, Texas, yesterday to a 14-year-old Muslim high school freshman is far from the worst instance, but it is highly illustrative of the rotted fruit of this sustained climate of cultivated fear and demonization. The Dallas Morning News reports that "Ahmed Mohamed — who makes his own radios and repairs his own go-kart — hoped to impress his teachers when he brought a homemade clock to MacArthur High," but "instead, the school phoned police."
Despite insisting that he made the clock to impress his engineering teacher, consistent with his long-time interest in "inventing stuff," Ahmed was arrested by the police and led out of school with his hands cuffed behind him. When he was brought into the room to be questioned by the four police officers who had been dispatched to the school, one of them — who had never previously seen him — said: "Yup. That's who I thought it was." As a result, he "felt suddenly conscious of his brown skin and his name — one of the most common in the Muslim religion."
On Twitter, Anil Dash published a photo, provided by the boy's family, taken as he was led out in cuffs. Note that he's wearing a NASA shirt:
Photo: Anil Dash/Twitter
There's absolutely no evidence that this was anything more than a clock, nor any indication of any kind that the talented and inventive freshman built it as anything other than a school project. But even now, "police say they may yet charge him with making a hoax bomb — though they acknowledge he told everyone who would listen that it's a clock." According to the BBC, "police spokesman James McLellan said that, throughout the interview, Ahmed had maintained that he built only a clock, but said the boy was unable to give a 'broader explanation' as to what it would be used for."
The Dallas Morning News let Ahmed speak for himself by posting a video of him recounting what happened. Behold the Terrorist Mastermind:
The behavior here is nothing short of demented. And it's easy to mock, which in turn has the effect of belittling it and casting it as some sort of bizarre aberration. But it's not that. It's the opposite of aberrational. It's the natural, inevitable byproduct of the culture of fear and demonization that has festered and been continuously inflamed for many years. The circumstances that led to this are systemic and cultural, not aberrational.
The mayor of Irving, Beth Van Duyne, became a beloved national hero to America's anti-Muslim fanatics when, last February, she seized on a fraudulent online chain letter, which claimed that area imams had created a special court based on sharia law. In response, Mayor Van Duyne posted a Facebook rant in which she vowed to "fight with every fiber of my being" the nonexistent "sharia court." One anti-Muslim website gushed that Irving "is being called 'ground zero' in the battle to prevent Islamic law from gaining a foothold, no matter how small, in the U.S. legal system" and hailed her as "the mayor who stood up to the Muslim Brotherhood."
That led to support for a bill introduced in the Texas State Legislature banning the use of foreign law, which its sponsor made clear was targeted at least in part at these "sharia courts." The Irving City Council went out of its way to enact a resolution supporting the state bill. It was enacted in June. One of the City Council members who opposed the bill — William "Bill" Mahoney, who "denounced the vote and urged Irving to 'embrace the Muslims'" — then lost his seat in the city election "by a wide margin." I've spoken to Muslim groups in Irving and there is a small but thriving community there, which in turn has produced intense anti-Muslim animus.
People participate in a rally against a proposed mosque and Islamic community center near ground zero in New York, Aug. 22, 2010.
Photo: Seth Wenig/AP
Just like Ahmed's arrest, Irving is representative of the U.S. broadly, not aberrational. The U.S. just a few years ago went into a shameful fit of mass hysteria over a proposed Islamic community center near Ground Zero — as though Muslims generally were guilty of that attack — but since then, in obscurity, ordinary mosques have faced all sorts of opposition from their mere existence, or once they do exist, physical menacing and violence. A 2014 Pew Poll found that Americans feel more negatively toward Muslims than any other religious group in the country.
There are all sorts of obvious, extreme harms that come from being a nation at permanent war. Your country ends up killing huge numbers of innocent people all over the world. Vast resources are drained away from individuals and programs of social good into the pockets of weapons manufacturers. Core freedoms are inexorably and inevitably eroded — seized — in its name. The groups being targeted are marginalized and demonized in order to maximize fear levels and tolerance for violence.
But perhaps the worst of all harms is how endless war degrades the culture and populace of the country that perpetrates it. You can't have a government that has spent decades waging various forms of war against predominantly Muslim countries — bombing seven of them in the last six years alone — and then act surprised when a Muslim 14-year-old triggers vindictive fear and persecution because he makes a clock for school. That's no more surprising than watching carrots sprout after you plant carrot seeds in fertile ground and then carefully water them. It's natural and inevitable, not surprising or at all difficult to understand.
James Line
September 27 2015, 8:05 a.m.
Glenn Greenwald has no regard for the facts of this particular case.
Beatrice Munson
This kind of reaction is what makes me so embarrassed to admit I'm a citizen of the U.S. & tempts me to back to claiming when introducing myself, initially at least, that I'm Canadian, as we did in the 1970's & 80's.
One of the four police officers is quoted as saying, "Yup. That's who I thought it was."
Can we find out more about that ?
Dawkins said what?
"But Richard Dawkins, the evolutionary biologist and noted writer, scholar and contrarian, found something in Ahmed's story to take issue with — the use of the word "invention" to describe Mohamed's work. Dawkins went so far as to suggest that describing his clock as such was "fraud" and a "hoax.""
http://time.com/4042393/richard-dawkins-ahmed-mohamed-clock/?xid=tcoshare
Dawkins has done a lot of back peddling. As a noted writer and scholar, he should know that you check your facts before you publish.
And as an evolutionary biologist, he should have the brains to not be demanding of a 14 year old, who has just had his rights violated by adults in authority over him, that the child meet standards of accuracy, that he himself is failing:
Dawkins – "He didn't only claim to have built it. He claimed, on Youtube, that it was his INVENTION."
Seriously, an evolutionary bioligist, writer and scolar, is scolding a 14 year old, for using the word "invention". I would say that this is evidence that its true that expertise in one area doesn't prevent one from being an idiot.
Dawkins – "Disassembling & reassembling is great. But you shouldn't then claim it was your "invention""
What is Dawkins concerned about?, that America will be bamboozled into thinking 14 year old Ahmed invented the clock? Was Dawkins stung to learn that the little boy boy he saw playing with the model rocket in the park, didn't invent the rocket? Was he a believer in the hoax perpetrated by his friend's kid that the child invented the radio kit? What is Dawkins' motivation for questioning the use of the word "invention" by Ahmed, as if the biggest debate here is about who invented the clock? And not, how did this climate of Islamophobia descend on America.
AtheistInChief JLocke
Man I was so disappointed in Dawkins. I really wanted to believe that his problem with religion was the same as my problem with religion. But there is an anti-Muslim strain in these guys. I really am disappointed in him.
"INVENTION" – did nobody every take part in science projects in middle school/high school where the students were supposed to "invent" things? Is it not possible that this kid with immigrant parents is using this word wrong? No. Of course not. This 14 year old is engaged in "fraud" according to the great evolutionary biologist.
Unbelievable!!
Whenever I start believing in the illusion that reasoned argument alone is what will determine the course of politics, I am rudely awakened by things such as this:
"There are college students that are very supportive of Donald Trump, and there are some things that they are tired of hearing about their favorite candidate for president.'
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=L9P4LDGXOmQ
He wants to make America great again! It says so on his hat!
It just goes to show that the battle against racism is never won. With every new generation, with every new minority group, the battle starts anew. I can transpose "It's wrong to be a bigot against Blacks, Latinos, Jews" into how I view other groups. But obviously this isn't a skill possessed by everyone.
"The "Real Time" host mentioned me Friday night. Pretty cool. Except that he's totally wrong and sounds like a right-wing racist.
…What's astounding is that Maher is truly a great progressive voice on many issues. (And he's also a very talented comedian.) But how can he not see he's mimicking those on the right who had justified profiling of blacks and Latinos because some in these communities had committed crimes in the past? In fact, I bet if a Republican presidential candidate ticked off all the crimes committed by Latinos over the past 30 years and argued we need to profile all Latinos as a result, Maher would go ballistic.
This panel also made me aware of something else. It was only the non-white person on it, Ramos, who called out Maher's defense of profiling. (The other guests were Dallas Maverick owner Mark Cuban, Chris Mathews, and George Pataki.) It's very likely that Ramos has seen profiling of his own community and consequently understands how unjust, frustrating, and soul sucking it can be. It also has a negative impact on how members of minority communities view their own worth in America. "
http://www.thedailybeast.com/articles/2015/09/19/bill-maher-has-the-ahmed-mohamed-thing-all-wrong.html
Actually what amazes me more is when it's members of currently discriminated against groups, such as Blacks, sharing in the racism, against other minorities, such as Jews. But I guess it gives them a chance to be the one abusing power as opposed to being the victim for a change, like someone who was an abused kid, who gets the chance to beat his wife.
Ross Dunn
September 21 2015, 10:00 a.m.
A free America is one free of bigots, official bigots in uniform. The Principal of the school should resign. He is not an educationalist, but is a patsy to the establishment.
It seems to me that the people who aren't surprised this happened are moreso in support of bombing predominantly Muslim countries – because they're either just not interested in whats actually is going on there or its what looks like an attempt to overcompensate for spiritually weak/paranoid tendencies with an unshakable belief that the strength they need is for American representatives to "project" (nothing is quite real for people nowadays) an ability to kill or threaten to kill, harass, or be unfair to someone who has a different religion, skin color, or anything than their own.
(It also makes liberals angry and that's good because they never liked you. Revenge at last.)
You can't live in peace in this country be afraid of different religious beliefs existing. Its part of the landscape here. The best protection we can have is separation of church and state.
Hopefully our allies Israel and Saudi Arabia take an interest in that one day because then America may have a chance again.
There is no way to present support for this arrest an avoid looking completely foolish.
Going after this kid backfired. I'm sure attempts at damage control will continue, though.
This is war peacock!
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=tnnshEYrHzw
No doubt anti-Islamic forces are everywhere. But there is really not enough information for me to be certain that the kid is completely innocent. Was it actually a functioning clock? Kids sometimes do foolish things for attention. The kid could very well be telling the truth with his version. Even if he isn't, kids will be kids. The cops are idiots. Everything will be okay.
phineas Billy
" Kids sometimes do foolish things for attention. "
Yeah, like learn to tell time.
jason42
It looks like a bomb. My charitable side says this was a childish prank run out of control. My less charitable side is suspicious of the father.
Because it's very suspicious that the father rushed to get photos and a lawyer, and that the father has a history of political activism.
suave donger jason42
@jason42
An I Cower Under My Bed With A Butter-Knife Production
Bill Michtom jason42
Since it looks like a digital clock (which it is), my charitable side says you're a right-wing troll. My less charitable side says you're a spectacular ignoramus who is intellectually incapable of drawing straightforward conclusions from his environment (do you have a clock, or a clock radio, bozo?
phineas jason42
Damn hippies!
I just watched bill maher's panel discussing this kid. Fucking disgrace. Bill Maher has gone off the deep end.
Sillyputty AtheistInChief
It's both disappointing and amazing to watch: supposed progressive(s) on the panel actually devolved before your eyes as this clock-topic came up for discussion.
Not only did they all keep parroting incorrect information as to who knew what when, i.e., the Engineering teacher should have diffused the situation with facts (what Ahmed made was not dangerous) from the outset – they used misinformation to bolster the idea that it wasn't the communities reaction that was what was really the issue here – but rather that it reinforced their bias that Muslims/Islam as ideologies/entities were actually to blame.
As if things were that simple.
It was a true depiction that cognitive dissonance belongs to no specific ideology, and that no one is immune.
suave donger AtheistInChief
Chris 'Hypocrite' Matthews
@5:04 – "How do you know..?"
@6:47 – "Teachers said.."
http://youtu.be/aGit-XltUB4
phineas AtheistInChief
When Maher stated that flying planes into buildings takes courage, and got fired, he learned who butters his bread,
He's been irrelevant ever since.
I saw a photo of the 'clock' – a bunch of electronics in a briefcase – it looked like a bomb.
phineas Mario
It was half-a-bomb!
Americanegro
The li'l fella DIDN'T BUILD A CLOCK. He took a clock apart and put the pieces in a box.
manu Americanegro
So, this is your big takeaway?
Semantics? Like you got some building supplies, arrived on site and started laying bricks and putting the roof together. Yet, you didn't build a house?
This story is heart-breaking. Shows a truly disgraceful culture that's been brewing for a while now in the US. It's sad how few Americans are outraged at this.
Foghorn manu
"disgraceful culture that's been brewing for a while now "
The Zionification of America.
phineas Americanegro
He really wired together independent components of a digital clock that can be used for any number of purposes that use LED displays and timing circuits.
No commercial digital clock has components that look like what he used,
Dave Lindorff
I'll tell you how crazy it is. When our son Jed, in second grade in Upper Dublin, PA, came to school with one of those little tiny plastic swords that they sometimes use to pin together hors doerves, he was sent to the principal's office and we, his parents, were called in for a consultation. Jed was fascinated with drawing all kinds of swords at the time, and knew all their names (he was later admitted to the Philadelphia High School for the Creative and Performing Arts after auditioning with a drawing and painting portfolio, and is now graduating from SCAD as a cinematographer), and he wanted to use the little red plastic sword (a scmitar, I recall) to copy.
When we asked how they could be all worked up over such a tiny representation of a weapon, the principal said "He could have poked a kid's eye out!" I said, "You mean like any kid in the room could do with a pencil?"
That's the state we are in today in the US. Total cowardice, illogic and paranoia.
ThisCantBeHappening.net
Dabney Dave Lindorff
Hi Karl, I remember on my son's first day of second grade, he wore his beloved fossil shark tooth necklace… it was confiscated by the teachers as a "potential weapon." There was big to-do about it. Oy.
@Dave – when my son wore his beloved fossil shark tooth necklace to school on the first day of second grade – it was confiscated as a "potential weapon." There was a big to-do about it, I'll never forget. Oy.
phineas Dabney
You know, in 1968, when I brought in the little racing car and drag strip track I got for my birthday, the nun who taught 3rd grade confiscated it, as a "distraction".
The differnce between then and today was that I wasn't arrested, and when she learned it was a birthday present I was showing my friends, she apologized and gave it back.
I still didn't like her much after that, though. Considering I got beat up for hanging up her coat for her every morning.
phineas Dave Lindorff
Because, Dave, we've always been at war with East Asia.
By the way, I love your columns, and the fact you actually respond to comments.
Absolutely correct. We keep hearing that the 9-11 attacks are the worst terror attack on US soil, when in fact, the slaughter of Native Americans by Gen. Custer in the late 19th century were a much greater act of terror — one that included the massacres of women and children. Or one could reach back further to the slaughter of the Cherokee people in the Trail of Tears march not only ordered by president Andrew Jackson, but intended as a death march, just as was the march of Jewish and Gypsy and Communist prisoners from the Nazi death camps towards the end of WWII. In this case, the government deliberately supplied the victim native people with Smallpox contaminated blankets, and starved those who didn't die of disease.
Today, the US is overwhelmingly the most powerful nation in the world, but the American people are a trembling mass of gutless cowards afraid even to accept a few of the Guantanamo victims of our War on Terror, for fear they could wreak havoc from Leavenworth while awaiting an endlessly delayed fair trial (none of them is an actual terrorist — they were all turned over by corrupt people looking for rewards from US forces, or by corrupt security forces in Kabul and in Pakistan.
Land of the Free my ass.
founding editor of ThisCantBeHappening.net
karl Dave Lindorff
Have you read any of the criticism of Ward Churchill's claim that the US Army deliberately supplied the Mandan Indians with Smallpox contaminated blankets in 1837?
http://quod.lib.umich.edu/p/plag/5240451.0001.009?rgn=main;view=fulltext
Bill Michtom karl
Hi, karl, have you read anything about throwing irrelevant blather into a conversation.
phineas Bill Michtom
Why don't you enlighten us, since you're an expert.
Billy karl
That's a matter of historical record. I learned about that thirty years ago. I guess it's true, who knows? I doubt if the war crimes committed by Bush and Obama will be in the history books, any more than Reagan's.
The original, real terror going back that far has one word to describe it.
Syphilis!
Seen on George Takei's page.
I said: it's sad they thought that kid had a bomb.
She said: they didn't think he had a bomb.
I said: yes, they thought he made a bomb and even called the police.
She said: They just wanted to humiliate a little Muslim, African boy. They didn't think he had a bomb.
I said: Don't be a conspiracist. They might be a little prejudiced, but I'm sure they thought he had a bomb.
She said: Ok.
But they didn't evacuate the school, like you do when there's a bomb.
They didn't call a bomb squad – like you do when there's a bomb
They didn't get as far away from him as possible – like you do when there's a bomb.
Then they put him and the clock in an office- not like you do when there's a bomb
Then they waited with him for the police to arrive.
Then they put the clock in the same car as the police.
Then they took pictures of it.
I said: Damn
They never thought he had a bomb
Way to miss the story, chuckles.
This has less to do with "erhmagherd, brown people!" and more to do with persecution and fear of smart people. I have no doubt that his skin color and religion played some small part in the idiocy demonstrated by his school, but it is nothing that hasn't been done to thousands of white kids (and every other kind of kid) in school, before.
In the school system — especially the modern school system of the last twenty years — it has been dangerous to be an intelligent kid. An outgoing kid. A critical thinker. A maker. A doer. If you do anything outside of a very narrow band of "normal" as defined by a bunch of over-educated under-achieving teachers who resent smart students who actually *DO* things, you are going to be hassled and harassed. Period.
To suggest this is down to race and religion is to ignore simple things like all the white teenage girls arrested because a butterknife was found in their car on school property.
Americanegro no
The ability to take apart a clock and put the pieces in a box is not a sign of being smart.
You try it , and get back to us.
I think I'm going to make a similar clock and carry it into a mosque this weekend. Betcha I'll be praised as a genius and invited to the White House! LOL
At the time I was thinking along the same lines, Why didn't the Nobel committee give Adolf Hitler the award? And hope it would have the "desired effect"? Why don't they give it to Donald Trump now? Or me? Why not give it out as a lottery prize and hope the winner does something to advance the "fraternity between nations"? It makes as much sense as their giving it to Obama.
When Barack Obama was announced as the winner of the Nobel Peace Prize in 2009, even the fresh-faced president appeared a little shocked. "To be honest, I do not feel that I deserve to be in the company of so many of the transformative figures who've been honored by this prize," Obama said at the time.
Now, a former director of the Norwegian Nobel Institute has acknowledged that, in hindsight, he's not so sure if giving the prize to Obama was a good move either.
https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/worldviews/wp/2015/09/17/obamas-nobel-peace-prize-didnt-have-the-desired-effect-former-nobel-official-reveals/?postshare=451442496117960
Baldie McEagle
FYI Glenn: It's even easier to put carrots (or potatoes) in the ground and grow carrots (or potatoes) from them. Who needs seeds?
Baldie McEagle Baldie McEagle
speaking of kids' science projects . . .
Louise Cypher Baldie McEagle
. . . so definitely not speaking about this case . . .
bahhummingbug Baldie McEagle
Sigh … if it wasn't for me and Pedinska you people would starve to death.
Although carrots can be considered 'root' crops, like potatoes, carrots grown for consumption are almost always grown from seed. (*Carrots are biennial and therefore won't flower and make seed until their second year. In cold climates, open-pollinated carrots kept in cold storage through winter can be replanted in early spring for seed production purposes.)
As Pedinska points out below (so Glenn won't stick one in Hard-packed clay soil and think yum, yum.) you will need well-turned-worked soil (Plowed and Tilled) … although baby carrots will grow in heavier ground.
The Point is: a.) carrot-growing was a poor analogy by Glenn to describe, essentially, how xenophobia is 'grown' and b.) Glenn is not going to make it as a farmer… and should stick to his day job.
Glenn is not going to make it as a farmer… and should stick to his day job.
It's all right bah,we all have our specialties. Just means they can't get rid of us without cutting off their own lips to spite their stomachs. Or something. :-)
Hi Baldie! Long time no read. :-)
suave donger bahhummingbug
bah'..
A Sowing The Seeds Of Love Production
ht – 'tars fur fars'
phineas bahhummingbug
When I was a kid, we always had Queen Anne's Lace growing in the meadow nest to our house. That's almost carrots
John Kilcher
Fourteen years on after droning the hell out of some of the Muslim world and aiding in the recruitment of future jihadi's this saber rattling country continues to fan the fire with its demonizing a large percentage of the world. I am ashamed to be an American. A country built on wars and lies, lies, lies.
They wanted the kid, him to admit to all their manipulation alias known as gambits which are basically methods of suggestion for criminal entrapment by the corrupt law enforcement while under the color of law. Such beautiful criminal methods by the usa-law enforcement are what the population of the usa are in complete ignorance of and that includes judges and so called district attorneys.. – Alejandro.
Glenn what is going to happen to his fingerprints and so called mugshots which is nothing more than to create shame by memorializing it because the kid did not do nothing wrong, for it is the equivalent of arresting a kid with an iphone at school without ground for arrest to begin with.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=eyJGARvREgk&feature=youtu.be
J.D. Woosley
I applaud Mr. Greenwald for his plentiful use of hyperlinks in his articles. Many things differentiate Internet journalism from the earlier days of print, radio and television reporting. Foremost is the speed in which an unsubstantiated story can outpace fact checking. I believe Mr. Greenwald realizes this and provides us these links that we can check within seconds.
Aha! So he was trying to infiltrate NASA! They will stop at nothing.
Seriously, all I can say here is that I hope this happens to every single kid in every single school across the US and UK.
Lock them up for doing their homework. Beat them down for engaging in PDAs. Detain them for eating their lunch. Hobble them when they go to recess. Strip search them for using the bathroom.
The security state won't last another generation.
It wasn't his "homework", silly, or a "school project".
Baldie McEagle Louise Cypher
I didn't say it was, did I?
phineas Louise Cypher
It was worse.. It was , GASP, independent thought.
You should try it sometime
Additional observations by Reginald Braithwaite:
They knew right away that it wasn't a bomb, but instead of saying, "oh, ok," they got mad at him for making them afraid. That's a very bad emotion, being mad at someone for making you aware of how fearful you are.
So they almost immediately switched into, "It must be a bomb hoax," and that's what the principal tried to bully him into confessing, that he brought it to make them afraid.
When he wouldn't confess, instead of saying, "oh, ok," they called the police to escalate the intimidation. Who may or may not have been required to follow procedure in arresting him, I can't comment on that.
But it is now known that the police interrogated him while denying him the right to have his parents present, which is illegal. And they found no grounds for charging him with having a bomb, or attempting to hoax the school.
Meanwhile, the damned and double-damned principal was issuing press releases doubling down on his terrible choices, and the mayor has issued press releases backing everyone up except the brown kid.
I really think it comes down to, "We were unreasonably afraid, and we can't admit we were unreasonably afraid, so we must contort all reason to make it seem like we were acting with reason and prudence. Because nobody is allowed to admit they made a mistake, and nobody is especially allowed to admit they were fearful of nothing at all, because that is a sign of weakness."
The whole sad affair reminds me of myself as a small boy, when I told a little lie, and then doubled down on that little lie, and with every additional lie, the cost of saying, "I've been lying the whole time" seems to escalate, so telling another lie seemed like the only way out.
We can forgive this in children. But these are not children, they are people charged with taking care of our children.
https://twitter.com/raganwald/status/644642937825923072
FluffytheObeseCat Pedinska
"….it comes down to, "We were unreasonably afraid, and we can't admit we were unreasonably afraid, so we must contort all reason to make it seem like we were acting with reason and prudence. Because nobody is allowed to admit they made a mistake, and nobody is especially allowed to admit they were fearful of nothing at all, because that is a sign of weakness."
This. This is the crux of the matter. An initial look at & review of the device was wholly reasonable, given school authorities' responsibility to the student body and the community. However, what ensued was laughable and wrong. The authorities behaved like febrile hysterics, and then went overboard attempting to disguise or excuse their idiocy. Failures of good sense and decency occurred at multiple timepoints. i.e. School officials should have been 'talked down' by the police, not aided in their ass-covering effort.
This kind of thing has been encouraged by 'Zero Tolerance' policies of many kinds over the past ~15-20 years, particularly in public schools. However, the same flamboyant display of chickenshitismo has been normalized in other venues as well.
I'm ambivalent about the festival of derision that's occurring in the culturally coastal, 'liberal' pop press right now. People within this milieu are far from free of guilt in re our increasing public acceptance of cowardice (and stagy bullshit) from those in positions of authority.
Glenn's decision to run a photo of New Yorkers behaving just as badly (perhaps worse) over the siting of a new mosque near the World Trade Center was a good one. I appreciated the vivid reminder that it is not only Republican Pharisees in the Bible Belt who've shamed themselves this way recently.
Pedinska FluffytheObeseCat
An initial look at & review of the device was wholly reasonable, given school authorities' responsibility to the student body and the community.
Yup. One can do that without engaging, as you note, in the chickenshitismo however (a word I'ma steal, fer sure).
Completely agree. It's really good to see you in these here parts again!
Where was the outrage when kids were suspended for drawing pictures of guns or, in one case, when a seven year old was suspended for creatively chewing his pop tart so that it resembled a gun?
Stupid for the cops to arrest the kid, but I'll cut the teacher and school some slack. They've been programmed to react with idiocy.
Donald B. James
There was plenty of outrage over those incidents. Why are you pretending otherwise?
suave donger James
"They've been programmed to react with idiocy." -james
What's your excuse?
This O'Brien fellow is pretty good
– "James O Brien masterclass in how to deal with people demanding that Muslims apologise for terrorism "
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-Ad3TaNit7k
A caller "Richard" is stumped, when asked to explain why he and all Richards shouldn't apologize for Richard Reid, the "shoe bomber"
Is this the same person?, O'Brien can't understand the difference between analysis and apology. And thinks that ISIS has killed more Muslims than the British army, because all that British empire stuff happened in a time called "history".
Fun fact, many people think that "A day that will live in infamy" refers to Pearl Harbour, when in fact the US president, when declaring war on Japan, was referring to the day in the future when cheap Japanese electronics began flooding into the American market.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=EWZd55a7BTE
I can't decide if this O'Brien show is just pure silliness, but it has some racists actually being honest about their prejudices:
– "James O'Brien asks some of his audience members, including former UKIP councillor Rozanne Duncan, what words they are allowed to use to describe race. He also talks to some that feel uncomfortable around certain race groups."
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=skEEUrYHjp0
Really good call-ins
– "James O'Brien shows UKIP supporters why facts matter "
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zWZ9nKyfU7A
I would say this whole mess is the fault of the school officials and the police that were called in . I sure don't see how Muslims can complain about mistreatment or discrimination .Because they so often do use children , and they do attack innocents as a regular practice almost world wide . Jihad is a big part of Muslim's religion belief system .. They have no right to complain if they are being investigated . it is not discrimination just sensible safety precautions .
-Mona- eric
You are why they hate us.
lenk -Mona-
AtheistInChief eric
Jihad is a big part of Muslim's religion belief system ..
How do you know this? I grew up as a Muslim, and I never heard of this word until I read about it in the papers after 911.
It's like someone who's doesn't like the West, writing "The Crusades are a big part of the Christian belief system. They're still waging it. That's why they're here."
The point on the ground zero mosque. It's intensive to want to build a mosque on the graveyard of 3000 murdered in the name of that religion. The families didn't want it and were distraught and that has to take priority. If the builders were doing so in the name of peace then they'd have been sensitive and not wished to push ahead. What the author fails to tell us are the funding wasn't coming from the sources stated, forcing two leaders of the project to step down for links to extremism and dishonest (taqya) statements. Placing a mosque is seen as triumphant conquest in Islam and the Qur'an teaches this so from an Islamic perspective it is a symbol of conquest.
To state that the grieving families over reacted is truly insensitive if not wicked.
Over 26,000 fatal terrorist attacks in the name of Islam since 9/11. I'd hardly call concern an over reaction. Would you ?
We could of course put our fingers in our ears and say 'la la LA' as we don't want to hear the truth and the facts as they don't fit with cozy leftist ideals.
Until the Muslim community does more to show its fighting radicalism and not only coming out in force to perpetuate the Palestine lie then as a community people will naturally be cautious.
Autocorrect. Insensitive not intensive !
#infidel lives matter
http://www.thereligionofpeace.com
http://www.jihadwatch.org
Kitt Ed
t's intensive to want to build a mosque on the graveyard of 3000 murdered in the name of that religion. –Ed
Ed's hero:
"I do think it's unwise to build a mosque at the site where 3,000 Americans lost their lives as the result of a terrorist attack." –John Cornyn
Serious question to Ed: Are you deluded by following people like John Cornyn who is a politican and lies accordingly? Or are you yourself a liar and are just repeating convenient lies that others have supplied for you?
Despite what you might have heard, a 13-story mosque is not going to be built at ground zero in lower Manhattan. For that matter, a 13-story mosque is not going to be built within a few blocks of ground zero. Rather a 13-story building is going up which will contain, among other things, a mosque.
This might seem like an academic distinction, but in the heated debate surrounding Park51, or as the building is known more commonly, the "ground zero mosque," it really is an important one.
First here are the facts: The building in question is planned to be a Muslim community center, a sort of YMCA (or, I suppose, YMMA). The plans are for it to have fitness facilities (swimming pool, gym, basketball court), a 500-seat auditorium, a restaurant and a cooking school, exhibition space, a library, art studios, a 9/11 memorial–the impudence! the outrage!–and childcare facilities (which no doubt will soon be referred to as a "Manhattan Madrasa"). And it's also going to house a mosque.
But calling the entire building a mosque is a bit like referring to the Empire State Building as a 103-story Walgreens because the pharmacy chain has a store on the ground floor.
What "Ground Zero Mosque?"
pensword Ed
"It's intensive to want to build a mosque on the graveyard of 3000 murdered in the name of that religion."
You mean "offensive," but alas, even the benefit of free editorial assistance won't mitigate your ignorance.
Nobody wanted to build a mosque at ground zero. The very phrase "ground zero mosque" is indicative of the most egregious variety of media manipulation, of which you yourself appear to be the quintessential victim.
Park 51 is a community center about one-tenth of a mile from Ground Zero:
"[P]lans do call for the proposed structure to include fitness facilities, a 500-seat auditorium, a restaurant and culinary school, a library, and art studios, as well as a Sept. 11 memorial. Imam Feisal Abdul Rauf, one of the leaders of the Park51 project, said that the center would be modeled after the 92nd Street Y and the Jewish Community Center in Manhattan, and would be open to all New Yorkers."
http://www.factcheck.org/2010/08/questions-about-the-ground-zero-mosque/
Yes, it includes a mosque ~ one intended to offset a proximate mosque's loss of space in 2009. That proximate mosque, by the way, was Masjid Manhattan, which had existed 4 blocks from the original Twin Towers' site rather uneventfully since 1970. Oh, and there were also mosques in the Twin Towers themselves.
"The families didn't want it …"
Some families didn't want it, though some supported it. Get your facts straight.
"If the builders were doing so in the name of peace then they'd have been sensitive and not wished to push ahead."
Sensitive to whom? People who claim that my religion, Islam, was responsible for the September 11 attacks?
In fact, the builders should ignore entirely such bigotry, that it not define their motives.
"What the author fails to tell us are the funding wasn't coming from the sources stated, forcing two leaders of the project to step down for links to extremism and dishonest (taqya) statements."
There is no information about the source of funding for Park51. Your statements consist of pure innuendo as well as the cliche "taqiyyah" allegation that has been debunked ad nauseum by those who actually know the religion through sources more reliable than Pam Geller or jihadwatch.org.
"Placing a mosque is seen as triumphant conquest in Islam and the Qur'an teaches this so from an Islamic perspective it is a symbol of conquest."
More hot air. Quote the ayat, if you dare.
Strawman.
Where were these "terrorist" attacks? On American soil? Against non-muslims?
Do your homework. I'm sure you can come up with the answer if you know how to use a search engine.
Newsflash: Lefties don't have a monopoly on cognitive dissonance.
Ah, yes … There's the telltale sign: The dreaded "P" word.
Tough day in the boiler room, eh? Must be hard to spin the facts these days.
The Only Unusual Thing About Ahmed's Story Is Everyone Noticed
That episode illustrates the entrenched bigotry toward Muslims that still exists in the U.S., but it also points to another kind of discrimination happening daily in the nation's schools: the assumed criminality of black- and brown-skinned students, and the subsequent treatment of those students as criminals rather than children.
From the moment Ahmed's school called the police, to the handcuffs, the arrest, and the suspension, what happened to him happens to schoolchildren in Texas and around the country every day. And, sadly, it's much more likely to happen to brown-skinned students like Ahmed. […]
A 2011 study found that a remarkable 60% of Texas students had been suspended or expelled at least once between 7th and 12th grade, with Black and Latino students overrepresented, compared to their white peers. Only 3% of those were instances where state law mandated suspension of expulsion — meaning the rest of the 97% came at the discretion of the school.
Discretion — how schools decide whether a student gets suspended or just detention — is a big piece of the puzzle. Often, when people hear the numbers, they assume the children must have done something to deserve such treatment; what makes Ahmed's story so sympathetic is that he's so obviously a good kid. But although children of color experience disproportionate discipline at school, it's not because they are more likely to misbehave. Just as bias, even if it was unconscious bias, led MacArthur High School officials to see Ahmed's clock as a threat, it leads Black students to be suspended and expelled at three times the rate of their white peers for the same behavior. Ahmed may be exceptional for his mastery of technology but not for his being innocent. […]
Although the outpouring of support for Ahmed has actually opened up educational opportunities for him — including an invitation to be interviewed on TV to offers from astrophysicist Chanda Prescod-Weinstein to tour MIT, his dream school — the overwhelming majority of students who've been suspended or arrested face closed doors, not open ones. Those students are more likely to fall behind academically, more likely to drop out of school, and more likely to enter (or re-enter) the justice system.
[…] No child should have to face the adults charged with caring for him and realize that they see him not for his humanity but for his racial or religious identity. It should be Ahmed's humanity that saves him, not his brilliance.
http://www.refinery29.com/2015/09/94130/ahmed-mohamed-case-over-policing-black-school-kids-texas
They never thought #AhmedMohamed had a bomb:
They didn't call a bomb squad – like you do when there's a bomb.
Then they put him and the clock in an office – not like you do when there's a bomb.
I said: Damn.
They never thought he had a bomb.
https://twitter.com/edmondcaldwell/status/644624024455221248
musings Pedinska
Excellent deductions. In other words, they were trying to intimidate him for being a Moslem and using his curiosity and intelligence against him, chilling his rights. You have hit the nail on the head. This should be used in the lawsuit.
Baldie McEagle Pedinska
No, they thought he had a hoax bomb. A far less dangerous but far more useful kind of bomb.
And now someone wonders why everyone thinks that Americans are stupid…
Yes they are still trying to label Corbyn as anti-Semitic. Now I didn't know this but it seems Jews have a "sixth sense" that can detect anti-Semitism in someone, even if there is no evidence, astounding but true!
"Thousands of years of persecution have given Jewish people a sixth sense, and with Corbyn the alarm bells are ringing extremely loudly. There is a way in which he frames his views that makes me feel very uncomfortable. When I listen to Corbyn speak on almost any issue, I get the feeling this is a man who doesn't like my community."
http://www.theguardian.com/uk-news/2015/sep/17/britain-jewish-leaders-seek-clarification-jeremy-corbyn-policies
Well you know the saying – "Repetition is the sincerest form of propaganda."
-Mona- JLocke
The nub of it is this:
whether Labour would continue to oppose a boycott of Israel
These are Zionists who care much less about matters concerning Jews in the UK, and far more about attitudes toward Israel.
Jose JLocke
The barrage of nonsense being directed his way is rather impressive and desperate. One was particularly ridiculous: SandwichGate.
This is funny, a phone in caller, angry that Corbyn didn't sing the national anthem, is himself, unable to recall the second verse.
"I thought you rang me to remind me of how important it was! Those people died for you. You don't even know the words! What kind of a disgusting creature are you?
"They died for you, they shed their blood on foreign fields for you, and you don't even know the words? Unbelievable – except it's not mate, I'm yanking your chain. It's a stupid argument to suggest he should have sang it to honour dead soldiers when they don't get mentioned in the song."
http://www.independent.co.uk/news/people/james-obrien-stuns-caller-angry-at-corbyn-for-not-singing-the-national-anthem-10506098.html
Corbyn doesn't dress correctly, he doesn't eat the right sandwiches, he rides the wrong bicycle, do I need to go on???
William Bednarz
All four of the police officers should be terminated from any and all police work….What are they going to say "fear for their lives?" They need to handcuff him?? If they can not handle a little boy they should be honest enough to quit. As for what is parading around as a teacher – lack of intelligence – as much as the C.I.A. and N.S.A. failure to connect the dots…..any statement as to following procedures ????
Where is the truth? Where is the Justice?? I see plenty of insanity
We used to wonder about our place in the stars. Now we just worry about our place in the dirt.
dollyme
Must this family live in Texas of all the places in America? I ask that question after reading the Readers' comments in the Dallas newspaper….Is it the water in Texas that causes these irrational thoughts that I read posted in their paper.
Ahmed should be teaching there not going to school there….
Wish Amed would build me a clock before he goes to MIT on a full ride….
D dollyme
Not just Texas. Here is Boston, 2007: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/2007_Boston_bomb_scare
Since I can't post links here, please Google Boston Bomb Scare 2007. This craziness is everywhere now.
From EFF:
Tinkering Isn't a Crime—But It's Not Only Officials in Irving Acting Like it Is
EFF has said before, and we will say it again: innovation is not a crime. Perhaps we need to clarify that for anyone who wants to follow the example of Irving, Texas: innovation is not a crime—no matter what your religion or skin color. And it's not a crime just because law enforcement or even teachers don't understand technology. […]
You don't have to be a technologist or hacker to understand why Ahmed soldered together a home-made gadget and brought it to school to show his engineering teacher. […]
Ahmed himself explains what he did in a way anyone who has ever had the pleasure of building or fixing something themselves can empathize with: "I built a clock. It was really easy. I wanted to show [my teacher] something small at first." He did it because he could. He did it because he was proud of his work. He did it because he's smart and curious. In other words, he did it for the same reason hackers and makers across the globe explore and create.
We are among the many who believe that what happened that what happened to Ahmed was the direct result of his skin color and name. That's reinforced by the fact that the mayor of Irving, Beth Van Duyne, is well known for spreading outrageous fears about the so-called spread of Shariah law. We're happy to hear that Ahmed has a lawyer (the details of his detention and interrogation without a lawyer are concerning, to say the least) and that he's working with the Council on American-Islamic Relations in Texas.
But there's also more than racism here. As Marcus Wohlson at Wired put it, this was "[a] perfect shitstorm of Islamophobia and technophobia." Those who do not understand Islam vilify and fear it. And those who do not understand technology fear it as well. […]
We live in an age where you can't take things like that to school. Of course we've seen across our country horrific things happen, so we have to err on the side of caution.
What the police spokesman is saying here is truly alarming. He is saying that fear and panic should trump common sense and innovation. He's saying that schools should not encourage experimentation. He's saying that we should expect to live in a world where students have to question everything they do, or face what Ahmed faced—especially if they are racial or religious minorities.
https://www.eff.org/deeplinks/2015/09/tinkering-isnt-crime-its-not-only-officials-irving-acting-it
James Witt
Via Lee Glynn – I disagree, and I would suggest that this young man intentionally created this "clock" to appear threatening to stir up the discussion, take a look for yourself. A "clock", really? – https://www.google.com/search?q=student+clock+bomb&espv=2&biw=1250&bih=549&source=lnms&tbm=isch&sa=X&ved=0CAYQ_AUoAWoVChM
James Witt James Witt
Did anyone stop to think that maybe he made this to look like it might be a bomb, so when he does build a bomb no one will dare question it?
Mike Sulzer James Witt
Ah, paranoia to the second power. Having failed to show that it looks anything like a bomb, you forge ahead with deeper levels of speculation. Well done!
dollyme James Witt
Is the name really "Witt" or is that only half of the name?….
Sir..quickly get thee to a therapist to get relief from your unreasonable torment….Are you able to leave your abode without arms?
You are a silly, silly person…..
phineas James Witt
Since you are full of suggestion, would you care to suggest where he'll get the explosive material to make this bomb you are suggesting?
If he could get that, what's the big deal about the timer?
Today a clock, tomorrow, nuclear triggers, is that it JW?
"It was really easy", said young Ahmed, "I just took the flash units out of a few dozen single use cameras, wired them to this clock I made for freshman engineering c lass, and 'Allah be praised' , it really worked, watch…"
1122323 James Witt
I hope you are joking. If you aren't, you clearly don't understand how incredibly stupid you sound. You're statement lacks common sense. Say for a second this kid did want to bring a bomb to school, wouldn't it be less of a pain in the ass for him to #1 not show his teacher the original clock and #2 Just pack the "clock bomb" in his book bag and blow up the school the first time? I don't take bomb threats or violence lightly but holy shit. If he did want to commit a terrible act of violence he could probably come up with something less time consuming then bringing a "decoy" to class before hand.
Baldie McEagle James Witt
But making a hoax bomb was exactly what they arrested him for. So if he wanted to build a bomb, the smarter thing to do would be to go ahead and do it the first time without drawing attention.
If you think any of those pictures look like a bomb, you display your ignorance and paranoia. This is a teenager's electronic project, nothing more. It's funny how the more pictures you show, the more that becomes obvious.
What you might suggest and what his intent were are entirely two different things.
His intent is the "crux of the biscuit" to borrow from Frank Zappa, and he's explained himself with more aplomb than it took to build his little clock and what you can suggest is – hearsay.
Jose James Witt
Yea, that kid looks like a sophisticated political operative. He probably reads Chomsky in between electronics projects.
Louise Cypher James Witt
And with his father being a well-known Muslim activist, only morons could take this story as an example of anything but cunning Muslim activism.
Phil Ferro
This boy's intelligence scared people. He is obviously not of their ilk.
If he is as intelligent as he appears he will now understand that he will have to overcome adversity every day. The more he has to offer the more vulnerable he will be. Be strong and honorable…….
feline16 Phil Ferro
Well put. It seems his talent and enthusiasm were the real threats… but aren't they things we should be cultivating in our students???
James Jhonson
Nothing but a solute to you Mr. Glenn for being a voice of the oppressed.
Other day there was a Crane that fell in Mecca and killed almost 150 Muslims men, women and children. I happen to just passing by YouTube looking for some news videos about the accident. It was my mistake to look in the comment section. It was unbelievable. I can not even repeat the things that i red there. People have really forgotten the concept of justice and being in this "endless war" are losing their humanity. Americans can not even go from their home to work without depending on OIL from Saudi Arabia. Saudia Arabia is our biggest friend after Israel and UK yet people were openly celebrating death of people who died on the soul of Saudi Arabia. Mostly they were celebrating deaths of Muslims.
We need to figure out how we end up here. Otherwise we are all domed.
OT but not totally:
resourceful chimpanzee swats a camera-carrying drone out of the sky
The chimps didn't show "fear", they observed and acted accordingly.
It does seem to be true, bigotry in America has reached the stage where, to get ahead, even if you are not inclined to be a bigot, speaking and acting as one, could be seen as "politically necessary" by someone without the character to resist it.
"The irrational response of school officials in Irving, Texas isn't limited to one student, one school, one city or even one state. In 2015, anyone can engage in bigotry against Arab Americans and American Muslims and seemingly get away with it. Bigotry against us is acceptable (and sometimes even politically necessary) for elected officials, candidates for public office, pundits and others to advance their careers – or their television ratings. "
http://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2015/sep/16/ahmed-mohamed-clock-bigotry-american-muslims
For many Americans, pretending to be Islamophobic, could be a facade. Which is worse, someone who is genuinely a bigot? Or someone who acts as a bigot, but in their heart, knows what they are doing is wrong? It's almost even sadder, isn't it? A genuine bigot, could learn, could change. But someone posing as a bigot? What will they do? Pose as someone who's learned the error of their ways? Or quietly take on the persona of some other trending social ill?
Now that the kid has been invited to the White House, I bet Louise Cypher thinks that was his plan all along.
Louise, stop being ridiculous. That clock looks exactly like what a 14-year-old electronics enthusiast would build.
James Witt Jose
Really…you think this looks like a 14 year olds experiment? – https://www.google.com/search?q=student+clock+bomb&espv=2&biw=1250&bih=549&source=lnms&tbm=isch&sa=X&ved=0CAYQ_AUoAWoVChM
Yeah, to me it does. It looks like the shit I wired together when I was 14 – sans the LEDs, which weren't common – or cheap – in 1974. It looks like the experiments I cobbled together in college in my dorm room in college and it looks a lot like some of the computers and power supplies I've had laying around my house that I'd wired together in my 30s and 40s.
If you think this MUST be some nefarious device you've never build electronic projects from bare parts and should remain with your head in the sand – so we'll all be safe when IT explodes.
Really…you think this looks like a 14 year olds experiment?
Yes, that is exactly what it looks like. Surely even idiots such as you can understand that a lot of projects today involve the purchase, assembly, and programming of various kinds of digital, and sometimes, analog hardware.
phineas Mike Sulzer
I just learned of a nifty little psuchological phenomenon named after its discovers –
It seems people of little skill over-estimate their own skill and knowledge and people of high skill levels over-estimate the level of understanding of their opponents and the ease of learning what they know.
Geez Louise and this James WItt-less are obviously the former, learn to not be the latter – I have.
Mike Sulzer phineas
I remember reading about that study; I was actually a Cornell employee at the time. We had some fun applying the findings to some of those in our field.
But look, even that bank robber was capable;e of learning that lemon juice might erase ink, but that does not mean it would make him invisible on video. Yes, that was a tough lesson for him, but some people do eventually catch on just from verbal repetition, eventually.
Right. A second part of the experiment involved teaching the less skilled the true level of their understanding. After that, they more accurately determined their own skill levels.
The funniest part is, the dumb media are falling over themselves to call this Muslim provocateur "an inventor" when a) he himself stated that it took him "20 minutes" to make it, and b) it is obvious he simply took apart an alarm clock and put its parts in a case.
Chris Hayes' interview with Ahmed:
http://www.msnbc.com/all-in/watch/all-in-exclusive-with-ahmed-mohamed-526948931844
In my neighborhood, there is a flock of wild turkeys with less of a startle reaction than these officials who alarm and react to what they perceive as hoax bombs. musings in a response to Louise Cypher a bit further down the thread
On further musing of my own (no pun intended), I realized that the humor of this might be lost on anyone not familiar with wild turkeys. To ameliorate that misfortune, I would like to offer up a few videos to illustrate just how apropos musings' analogy really is.
How fast can a turkey run? Pretty darn fast:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=GyULaOtjNmQ
On turkey courage versus human courage (this one is particularly applicable):
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ItKrnhvALc4
And, finally, some general turkey info:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=cd5XPcTSP-E
Charlene Avis Richards Pedinska
I loved the wild turkey chasing the reporter so much that I posted it to Facebook.
Kitt Charlene Avis Richards
The turkey wanted a playmate and was probably intrigued by the light of the camera.. That's why he hung out waiting outside of the care for the lady to come back out to play.
This is good, the Americans are alarmed that someone other than them is using new weapons in Syria:
The Syrian military has recently started using new types of air and ground weapons supplied by Russia, a Syrian military source told Reuters on Thursday, underlining growing Russian support to Damascus that is alarming the United States.
"The weapons are highly effective and very accurate, and hit targets precisely," the source said in response to a question about Russian support. "We can say they are all types of weapons – be it air or ground."
http://www.reuters.com/article/2015/09/17/us-mideast-crisis-syria-russia-exclusive-idUSKCN0RH15S20150917
I don't know if the Russians would go out of their way to target the US, Australian, Canadian, and British pilots bombing Syria, but effective use of new weapons is a selling point. In the Falklands war, remember the "Exocet" missile? They couldn't keep up with demand after they sunk a few British ships.
And the Russians would deny involvement, as they and the Ukrainian government both did in the downing of the airliner over Ukraine. But whoever did it, Ukrainians or Russians, or someone else, the weapon was a SA-11 missile, not even a "new weapon", presumably like the ones the Americans are worried about.
But the Americans need to make up their minds, they don't like their adversaries using indiscriminate "barrel bombs", and here they are complaining about accurate and precise weapons. I guess it is that nobody will ever be able to match America's ability to fight wars with zero civilian casualties.
They might be talking about the s-300. They were shipped to Syria a while back, but it takes time to train people and deploy them. Perhaps that is what is happening now. But I love this headline about the missiles being sent to Iran. it sounds so sad. I feel like consoling him "There, there, we'll find you other nations to attack, you'll see!"
"Putin's Missile Could Make U.S. Attacks on Iran Nearly Impossible"
http://www.thedailybeast.com/articles/2015/04/13/putin-s-missile-could-make-u-s-attacks-on-iran-nearly-impossible.html
Ahmed Mohamed just wanted to impress his teachers with a homemade invention. The story of what happened next has made the 14-year-old from Irving, Tex., the object of national outrage and attention."He's just a bright 14-year-old American-Muslim kid … All he did was a science project for his school; He made an alarm clock to impress his teachers." …the school district and Irving officials remained steadfast in their belief that Mohamed's arrest was a reasonable attempt to investigate a "potential threat."
Ahmed Mohamed, 14, a freshman at MacArthur High School in Irving, Texas, had a mind for gadgetry and a great idea: he would build his own working clock and take it to school on Monday to show an engineering teacher. "It was the first time," he said, "I brought an invention to school to show a teacher." But everything went terribly, terribly wrong: Islamophobic teachers took his innocuous clock for a bomb and went so far as to have him arrested. All is well now, however, as the civil rights group CAIR and Barack Obama have stepped in, Ahmed's persecutors have egg on their racist faces, and Ahmed has been invited to the White House.
The teacher that said this "looked like a bomb" and the principal that called the police to have this young man arrested actually knew right from the start that there was no threat here. They actually knew it, and this is nothing more than a case of blatant racism. If there is a genuine bomb scare, or even the slightest thought of there being a bomb scare, whether it's in an apartment building, a shopping mall, or in this case a school, they would have immediately completely evacuated the building and called the bomb squad!
Why should the team be arrested for bringing a homemade clock to school? If he had been a white Christian with the last name Smith then you would be defending his rights rather than claiming otherwise….. President Obama, Secretary of State Clinton, and three of the Republican presidential candidate says he should not have been arrested and that they treated this situation racially.
Muslim community in all western countries need Masajid, state funded Muslim schools , Halal meat and Muslim cemeteries. West must learn to respect and tolerate those who are different. Don't these hypocrites idiots know what their ancestors did to Native American Indians they slaughtered 150 millions of Native American Indians! and also do they know that Great Britain invaded 80% countries around the world? They should call them terrorist first and as well call their ancestors terrorist! British did the same to Native American Indians and sadly they still treat Native American Indians badly! So Americans Indians know how you Muslims feel! They stolen Indian land and killed 150 millions of Indians the British did! They were forced to go to the white man's school and learn the language, culture and faith of the white man. Inspite of that, they are still the under dogs of the American society.
Children from minority groups, especially the Muslims, are exposed to the pressure of racism, multiculturalism and bullying. They suffer academically, culturally and linguistically: a high proportion of children of Pakistani and Bangladeshi origin are leaving British schools with low grades or no qualification.
In education, there should be a choice and at present it is denied to the Muslim community. In the late 80s and early 90s, when I floated the idea of Muslim community schools, I was declared a "school hijacker" by an editorial in the Newham Recorder newspaper in east London. This clearly shows that the British media does not believe in choice and diversity in the field of education and has no respect for those who are different.
Muslim is a citizen of this tiny global village. The whole world belongs to Muslims. It is a crime against humanity to send children to non-Muslim schools with non-Muslim teachers. Muslim children need state funded Muslim schools with Muslim teachers as role models during their developmental periods. There is no place for a non-Muslim child or a teacher in a Muslim school.
Muslim children in state schools with non-Muslim teachers are not in a position to develop positive self-confidence and self-esteem. Muslim children need state funded Muslim schools with Muslim teachers as role models during their developmental periods. There is no place for a non-Muslim child or a teacher in a Muslim school.
Muslim community would like to protect their children from the evils of the western society. You better educate your children and let Muslim community educate their children according the needs and demands of the parents.
Muslim schools teach Muslim children that sex outside marriage is a sin. Homosexuality is also a sin. Sex before marriage and homosexuality are western values and Muslims are not supposed to adopt them.
British values, which are said to include respect for legally protected characteristics such as homosexuality, religion, gender change, disability, race and marital status. what a warping of British values, the British values I was taught are respect for the institution of marriage, freedom of religious pursuit, freedom of speech, respect for the monarch. respect for others.
Indiscipline, incivility, binge drinking, drug addiction, gun and knife crimes, teenage pregnancies and abortion are part and parcel of British schooling. These are the reasons why majority of Muslim parents would like to send their children to Muslim schools with Muslim teachers as role models during their developmental periods. Only less than 5% attend Muslim schools and more than 95% keep on attending state and church schools to be mis-educated and de-educated by non-Muslim monolingual teachers.
There are hundreds of state primary and secondary schools where Muslim pupils are in majority. In my opinion all such schools may be opted out to become Muslim Academies. This mean the Muslim children will get a decent education. Muslim schools turned out balanced citizens, more tolerant of others and less likely to succumb to criminality or extremism. Muslim schools give young people confidence in who they are and an understanding of Islam's teaching of tolerance and respect which prepares them for a positive and fulfilling role in society. Muslim schools are attractive to Muslim parents because they have better discipline and teaching Islamic values. Children like discipline, structure and boundaries. Bilingual Muslim children need Bilingual Muslim teachers as role models during their developmental periods, who understand their needs and demands.
http://www.londonschoolofislamics.org.uk
-Mona- Iftikhar Ahmad
Muslim community in all western countries need Masajid, state funded Muslim schools ,
Not in the U.S. they don't. Or if they do they'll be left in need because such funding would be unconstitutional. Believe me, the Christians have tried and failed to get that only to (properly) be told no by courts.
Mike Sulzer Iftikhar Ahmad
The whole world belongs to Muslims. It is a crime against humanity to send children to non-Muslim schools with non-Muslim teachers. Muslim children need state funded Muslim schools with Muslim teachers as role models during their developmental periods. There is no place for a non-Muslim child or a teacher in a Muslim school.
You can take your fucking Muslim schools and shove them up your ass.
muntaba Mike Sulzer
but……but……i thought you were all muslim apologists here
Karl Iftikhar Ahmad
@Iftikhar Ahmad
Sir, are you Agha Iftikhar Ahmad, the Pakistani journalist who resigned from Geo TV in protest over its refusal to broadcast his interview with Shahid Masood.
Louise Cypher Iftikhar Ahmad
"a homemade invention"
Nothing was invented here. That fleabag Cecil the Lion – another recent example of brainless twitter morons getting enraged over nothing – invented more stuff than this Muslim provocateur.
"The whole world belongs to Muslims."
As for the rest of your moronic Muslim supremacist rant, you are at the right place – you will get a warm reception on The Intercept.
And thanks for making the anti-Islam case with such force – nothing better than when Muslim claims don't need to be misquoted, quoted out of context or even exaggerated, but simply quoted verbatim. Like your hate-manual Quran, invented by that 7th century murderer, the so-called "prophet".
The author apparently missed the boston bombing.. the shoe bomber… the ft dix 9.. etal… Muslims are scrutinized because they blow stuff up . Granted some adult should have stepped in, identified the kid as a non trouble maker and stopped the arrest,, but these kind of over reactions happen all the time.. little kids get thrown out of school for pretending to shoot with their fingers or for bringing in a kitchen knife to spread peanut butter.. very common for schools to overreact to the potential of violence which is exactly what they did.
William Rood Brian
I disagree with large portions of Iftikhar Ahmad's post above, but he makes an excellent point:
If there is a genuine bomb scare, or even the slightest thought of there being a bomb scare, whether it's in an apartment building, a shopping mall, or in this case a school, they would have immediately completely evacuated the building and called the bomb squad!
They never thought it was a bomb, though the falsely accused the boy of pretending that it was.
ed Brian
what you apparently missed was that "they" didn't start this nonsense and that what's happened in all of those cases is the result of "our" looking the other way while our gov't shows them what we're all about.
musings Brian
As you so astutely demonstrate, belief can be a problem.
You can't have a government that has spent decades waging various forms of war against predominantly Muslim countries — bombing seven of them in the last six years alone — and then act surprised when a Muslim 14-year-old triggers vindictive fear and persecution because he makes a clock for school. That's no more surprising than watching carrots sprout after you plant carrot seeds in fertile ground and then carefully water them.
Ok, so it's taken a day and a bucket of coffee (this morning) for me to finally realize that you should have consulted a gardener before making that metaphor.
Carrots are notoriously difficult to get started. Tiny little seeds that are easily under- or -oversown, often have really poor germination rates, require really well-cultivated – nay, practically special made – soil, have to be watered but also monitored closely to ensure that proper moisture is constant AND have to be repeatedly thinned to just the right distance apart or they'll throw up their tiny carrot arms, scream "Pffft!" and get all puny and langled-looking on you.
A better metaphor is bindweed, which not only has a near-100% germination rate for it's seeds but also propagates extremely well in the dark, traveling underground at speeds up to a foot per day (may be exaggeration, but only slightly) and can't be removed by weeding because even tiny pieces of root left behind will regenerate into a new, robust, life-strangling monster. And, like many of our most prolific propagators of anti-Muslim sentiment, it's flowers are large, white and tubular in nature.
If you, or anyone else at TI, would like engage me for consultation on future garden metaphors, you know how to reach me. I'm pretty inexpensive and come equipped with the ultimate garden weapon, a multitude of jars of home-canned habanero pepper jelly. ;-}
"mangled"-looking.
Off for moar coffee!
Rolling with the times Pedinska
I agree, Glen messed up, :-). After I read his carrot thing I found this bizarre carrot! NSFW perhaps.
http://www.bbc.co.uk/gardening/advice/pests_and_diseases/identifier.shtml?carrot_fly
Pedinska Rolling with the times
I see your one bizarre carrot…..
…and raise you 30 more. ;-}
http://www.bizarrescoop.com/carrots-with-bizarre-shapes/
Actually, I do understand why an English teacher would be a bit freaked out. High schools students have been killing on their respective campuses since Columbine, where they tried to also use bombs. The device in the pictures I've seen would make me think of the suitcase bombs with timers as seen on TeeVee.
But the simple expediency of getting the science teachers involved would have ended the matter where it should have been ended. There was no bomb and it was, as Ahmed kept saying over and over, just a clock. The science teachers would have known that, and apparently also know Ahmed.
tegh -Mona-
NOPE. straight bigotry. The English teacher, Principal and those 4 cops are all clowns. Your comment just show how afraid you really are…….what ever happened to common sense? this is what happens when fools believe all the fear mongering…….this incident showed who the cowards were and who the real American IS.
Pedinska tegh
Actually, I can see Mona's point. English teacher's are not necessarily science geeks though you're correct that the climate in that part of Texas – fanned by their own Mayor whose had some rather stupendous things to say about the encroachment of Sharia Law – hasn't exactly been copacetic to allowing ridiculous fears to erode and die a natural death.
But I also agree with Mona that cooler heads – i.e. the Principal and VP – should have prevailed. If the English teacher had actually listened to Ahmed and closely observed his own actions during her discussion with him about the clock and/or asked to talk to the science teacher(s) then this might have been averted. The Principal really bears the most responsibility for this turning into a fiasco.
Not sure what period Ahmed had English at school, but there seems to be a gap in time between when the English teacher told on him and when he was finally hauled off for a reckoning since he was taken out of a different classroom. If they really thought it was a bomb, then that gap could have proved disastrous. Again, they could have also talked to his science teacher – but didn't, or didn't choose to believe his assessment if they did – instead of having him hauled off in chains in front of his peers. And, as far as we know, even now when the truth has emerged and they should be tying to fix things they still haven't rescinded the 3-day suspension and doubled down on their stupidity in the letter they sent out to parents. So, no matter how you want to look at this, they didn't do a very good job of handling it once the English teacher – right or wrong – brought it to their attention.
Was their bigotry involved? Yeah, I'm pretty sure it was in the mix. Was it entirely wrong of the teacher to be concerned? Not necessarily. Did everyone act like responsible adults? Not even close.
-Mona- tegh
NOPE. straight bigotry. The English teacher, Principal and those 4 cops are all clowns.
As to the English teacher I disagree. People who know nothing about bombs except what they see on cops shows — and who are aware of all the student killings at high schools in the last 20 years — could be reasonably concerned. I know I would have been because I'm pig ignorant of what actually goes into making a bomb.
The cops reactions are, of course, appalling. As I said, by merely getting the science faculty involved the whole situation could have been stopped from going crazy and Ahmed would never have been frightened and humiliated.
phineas -Mona-
What goes into making a bomb?
Ingredient number 1:
EXPLOSIVES!
coram nobis -Mona-
People who know nothing about bombs except what they see on cops shows …
We are less imaginative now. And that an English teacher would not see invention or imagination. Weak, weak are we now.
O for a Muse of fire, that would ascend
The brightest heaven of invention,
A kingdom for a stage, princes to act
And monarchs to behold the swelling scene!
… can this cockpit hold
The vasty fields of France? or may we cram
Within this wooden O the very casques
That did affright the air at Agincourt?
— Wm. Shakespeare, Prologue, Henry V
"I know I would have been because I'm pig ignorant of what actually goes into making a bomb".
No this is the correct statement:
I know I would have been because I'm pig ignorant of what actually goes into making a bomb, designing foreign policy, understanding international humanitarian laws, laws of war, Middle Eastern conflicts, ethics in journalism…Yes I am a pig ignorant."
Nothing personal: A science teacher does not necessarily know what a bomb looks like. For instance, a typical IED might look like a cell phone, a clock, or just a soda can. That is why police and military units have special bomb/explosive experts to deal with those situations. That is why I call you a dumb ass. You sit on your ass for ten years, your mouth, your face smelling Greenwald's shit. Get out and learn something. See things for yourself dumb ass.
nuf said -Mona-
I believe once the police became involved there would only be one narrative; how are we gonna get this kid? They knew it could never be a bomb but it sure could be a HOAX! bomb (or a hoax hoax-bomb). The chief of police was on TV and he stated,"these days, you can't bring something with WIRES to school."
The Puritans are still here …
phineas nuf said
That's it! The police should be charged with creating a hoax hoax-bomb! It's brilliant.
Bill Rood
I have a dear friend who was handcuffed in front of his family and detained for several hours by Customs and Border Protection upon returning from vacation in Canada. Of course, they were unable to trump up any charges, so he was released. There was no reason for his detention other than cultural profiling, pure bigotry and possibly that his wife had been active in local peace groups. Nothing fit the profile of a terrorist. Their children were with them in the car and they were obviously returning from vacation.
Why is CBP trying to screen "terrorists" in the first place? Doesn't the State Department do its job when controlling passports? If a person is a terrorist, why are they issued a passport? If a person who has a passport becomes convicted of some terror related crime, why isn't his passport revoked and confiscated?
Being well-aware of the roll of Unitarian Universalists in the Civil Rights movement such as Viola Liuzzo, who was martyred, I tried to get my local Unitarian Church it's state-wide human rights group involved in this issue. My minister was ill at the time, so I understand that. But the state-wide committee's response was, "We don't have a committee for that." Not even a suggestion that I form one or advice on how to go about it.
I can't help but wonder if the hate hasn't progressed so far that people are afraid to speak up.
And Ann Coulter has managed to get attention again, that would be the "We should invade their countries, kill their leaders and convert them to Christianity", Coulter:
"What's worrying is that not everyone on Twitter gets this. Instead Coulter's 'effing Jews' post has had more than 1,500 retweets and sparked the hashtag #IStandWithAnn.
It mimics the hashtag #IStandWithAhmed, which was started out of supprt for a US Muslim schoolboy who was arrested for making an alarm clock (his teachers thought it was a bomb) and counts Barack Obama as a supporter
The messages contained on its thread a full of love. But #IStandWithAnn is full of racist bigotry. "
http://www.telegraph.co.uk/women/womens-life/11871409/Ann-Coulter-racist-Jews-tweets-Meet-Americas-most-hated-woman.html
If Coulter had said that the Republicans, and Democrats both pander to the Zionist lobby, I'd agree with her, and I'd say, what took you so long? But she said F-ing Jews, and given her track record of bigotry, I'm not prepared to give her the benefit of the doubt.
And for the mimicry of the IstandWithAhmed, It's as if bigots can't bear to see any compassion or sympathy for the people they discriminate against and bully.
Coulter is an athletic supporter of Trump so her cup does not runneth over.
I will note she used a lower case f when mentioning the Jews so I'm guessing the f-bomb is part of her everyday vernacular. That she doesn't mention Dems is normal; she vomits uncontrollably if she repeats the D word or the L word.
How many f—ing Jews do these people think there are in the United States?
— Ann Coulter (@AnnCoulter) September 17, 2015
Maybe it's to suck up to the Evangelicals.
Christie also talks @ Israel in response to the question: What will AMERICA look like after you are president?
All GOPs = prolife, pro-Reagan, pro-Israel. Pandering on all 3 tonight was EPIC. https://t.co/lZ0ZUtVdSf
I like the Jews, I like fetuses, I like Reagan. Didn't need to hear applause lines about them all night. https://t.co/4guFehK0CM
It's not about Jewish people; it's about Republican panderers. https://t.co/OmOL2B9K0E
The whole argument echoes a historic libel against Jews that they hold secret influence.
I'd say that influence is not so secret these days (h/t Walt/ Mearsheimer), but I wouldn't want to change history.
Criticism of Israeli policies is part of these perspectives. Thus, for example, on the refugee issue, scholars recognize that a certain number of Palestinians were forced from their homes. But, they also recognize that others left at the urging of Arab leaders and most left simply because warfare causes people to flee.
See, you can't blame isarel because it's war's fault, not the people who started the wars. Once the truth is explained you will see israel is a lovely land.
Coulter almost certainly knows that the ranting about Israel was not directed just (or even primarily) at Zionist Jews, who are a small percentage of the voting population. She would know that 63% of white evangelicals are Zionists. Including Mike Huckabee who's deranged on the topic.
feline16 JLocke
Well, well, the despicable Ann Coulter comes up. Although everyone may be entitled to their views, however objectionable, I find her hate-mongering jost odious.
I also saw that Tavis Smiley recently had her on. I was really disappointed. I usually like and respect Tavis, but that brought him down several pegs in my book. Why give her "your" platform to spread hate? Let her fend for herself.
This begs belief. But it is all too true. Thank you for writing so eloquently about the current state of national madness. The official ginning up of security hysteria has reached its logical conclusion. How can this hysteria be unwound? Write about this, Thanks.
How many people know that 9/11 was to be a day when the AG announced his findings from his investigation of the internment of Italians within this country during WWII but something else happened? Seeing this kid in handcuffs is proof that this country hasn't progressed one fucking bit.
I believed Muslims were treated better now than my family was treated during the war but apparently my cranium induced colitis kept me from reality. When will we remove those assholes from government? When will I/we pull our head out, when? WHEN!!!!!!!?
Thanks for covering this Glenn.
I didn't realize Tucker Carlson was still making a fool of himself. Fox is paying him to complain about Stephen Colbert's wearing of a "black lives matter" bracelet:
TUCKER CARLSON: So it's possible [Colbert] is so rich, famous, a celebrity guy, so totally out of touch he doesn't fully understand what that represents. But here is my concern, obviously Stephen Colbert is a talented character, but there is also a strain of self-righteousness in his comedy. I don't think it — I mean, do you really want to get into this your first week on air, diving face first into the most divisive social movement in America?
http://mediamatters.org/video/2015/09/13/fox-amp-friends-sunday-is-very-concerned-stephe/205511
I would place Carlson in the same category with Ann Coulter, people who only make the news by shamelessly standing behind idiotic statements.
Carlson still doesn't get it:
Tucker Carlson: Still 'Don't Understand' What Jon Stewart Was Trying to Say on Crossfire
It's been more than 10 years since Jon Stewart descended onto CNN's Crossfire to implore its hosts to stop "hurting America." And yet for many people, that moment is first thing they think of when they see Paul Begala and Tucker Carlson. But while Begala, who still works for CNN, has admitted that Stewart had a point about "excessive partisanship," Carlson still has no idea what The Daily Show host was talking about.
http://www.mediaite.com/tv/tucker-carlson-still-dont-understand-what-jon-stewart-was-trying-to-say-on-crossfire/
Pedinska JLocke
Speaking of Ms. Coulter, she apparently stepped in it in a big way last night while watching the debate. Via Greenwald on twitter:
Glenn Greenwald [email protected] 12h12 hours ago
Glenn Greenwald retweeted Ann Coulter
https://twitter.com/AnnCoulter/status/644346473304453120
Woops! Not sure how I missed your more recent comment on exactly that issue, but sorry to be repeating here.
JLocke Pedinska
Coulter must be sociopathic to say what she says, I like to think not all pundits are as dead inside as she is. Think of the good someone could do with a platform like the one she's had.
ANN COULTER, AUTHOR, "HOW TO TALK TO A LIBERAL (IF YOU MUST)": I think I was amazingly prescient a year ago when I said things were going well. I mean, since then we've had a free election in Iraq in which women voted, Shia, Sunni. They're working on a constitution. We had a free election in this country. In the last six months we've killed or captured about 50,000 insurgents.
And, you know, I heard last night's report but it's getting to be like background noise. I mean, I'm not a military expert. I don't know about the details on the ground. But I've been hearing that things are going worse since at least over a year ago. That cuts both ways. If things have been going worse, why isn't the elite Republican Guard (search) massing outside Manhattan right now?
http://www.foxnews.com/story/2005/08/05/ann-coulter-on-iraq-and-immigration.html
Surprise, surprise Glenn …
@IStandWithAhmed
Thank you for your support! I really didn't think people would care about a muslim boy. #Thankyouforstandingwithme #IStandWithAhmed
10:13 AM – 16 Sep 2015
Here's more stupidity:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8K0EYetQbK0
After Pearl Harbor, there were people in California who claimed that they feared a Japanese invasion. These are the people who demanded all people of Japanese ancestry be put in concentration camps. Afterward, some of them made quite a good thing out of seizing and selling the land that had been cultivated by the Japanese who were not there to defend it. I have the feeling that some of the people who preach fear of "teh terrists" are similarly motivated. The idea that ISIS fighters could wreak havoc on the United States is so absurd that I can't imagine why anyone would believe it, but Lindsey Graham and a lot of Right Wing Nut Jobs™ seem to be very successful at profiting from it.
http://www.wired.com/2015/09/heres-bomb-clock-got-ahmed-mohamed-arrested/
The clock picture literally looks like a poker chip case.
QuinceFlavoredKoolaid AtheistInChief
Close. It's a Vaultz brand pencil box, pictured on Amazon next to a James Bond style exploding pen and what is obviously a micro thermonuclear warhead disguised as a 5th generation i-pod nano.
http://ecx.images-amazon.com/images/I/61cjLbNE9EL.jpg
This child needs to be going to a school where there is at least one teacher who can look at his device and tell that it is a clock. There is a problem when someone who is motivated and talented is singled out for punishment. Nor was there even a sympathetic teacher who could ask him about what he made and how he made it. It is a real wasteland there.
On another level, it reminds me of the assassination of scientists in Iran who might possibly be capable of making nuclear weapons. And historically, it evokes a system in the south, during slavery, when it was a crime to teach black children to read and write, lest they communicate among each other and possibly find a way to freedom.
In short, this is tyranny in action and the leering face of supremacy, carried out through the willing connivance of people like that cop you see in the background.
Procopius musings
According to the first story I read, he showed it first to his "engineering teacher" (Is this really a thing? In high school?) who praised him for it but warned him not to show it to any of his other teachers, apparently knowing who the people are whom he works with. The lesson apparently didn't sink in. Ahmed apparently isn't used to interacting with stupid people. "… police spokesman James McLellan said that, throughout the interview, Ahmed had maintained that he built only a clock, but said the boy was unable to give a 'broader explanation' as to what it would be used for." What 'broader explanation' do they expect to extract from him? It's a clock. It's used to tell what time it is. That's all the explanation he needs to give. One question occurred to me, though: is this a charter school? It sounds like one, hiring pig-ignorant people because they're non-union. I hope he gets a really great lawyer and gets a big enough settlement that he can not only attend MIT of Cal Tech but can support his own laboratory for years.
musings Procopius
"engineering teacher" is this a thing? Ever heard of STEM?
I have been contributing to Donors Choose, where public school teachers around the nation ask for classroom materials in poverty areas, though I suspect Irving Texas is not one of those. Yes, engineering is now a thing. Consider how well they do these days, especially in computer applications.
William Rood Procopius
I heard he kept it in a backpack, but it had an alarm that went off, with some music. Don't know if that's true.
We know it had a purpose other than telling time and expressing his creativity, so his inability to explain how it could be used as a detonator is truly suspicious. Good grief!
nuf said William Rood
Don't know if that's true. We know it had a purpose other than telling time
Science is not your strong suit, is it?
feline16 musings
Excellent thoughts.
Do you think that after Obama has his photo op with Ahmed, the president might, I don't know, do his job?
"We get reports of bullying all the time"
Video: CAIR's Ibrahim Hooper on MSNBC to Discuss Texas Muslim Teen Detained Over Clock at School
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=iyxZWzmLsBU
This is funny, the Irving PD has been warned to lookout for other "time keeping security threats":
Video: CAIR Rep Joins Texas Teen Detained Over Clock on MSNBC's 'All In with Chris Hayes'
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6tDwL4l3wRQ
It's really touching hearing Ahmed describe the bullying he suffered as a Muslim, even before this incident. I'm glad it looks like he's come out on top. But what about all the other Ahmeds?
It's also pretty rare that MSNBC has anything worth posting here, Hooray for Chris Hayes, their token sane person….Maddow seems to have melted away into irrelevance.
Yeah. Hayes did a great job. He just looks like a nerdy kid. I had friends like him. I can't believe what led an adult to fear him. I can't wrap my head around it. What on earth has to go through my mind to reach the conclusion they did? It's unbelievable.
musings JLocke
But most of all, with the phantom menace of sharia law, they must be ever vigilant against an old specter of the South: uppity (Moslem) dark-skinned people. Their mayor sounds like a real vibrating string for all the threats that are published by our corrupt government, and have been since 9/11 "changed everything" except gullibility in the mentally-challenged American public officials.
Although I live in Boston, which has an undeserved reputation for being more sophisticated than the South, an MIT student was charged with using a hoax device when she appeared at the airport during Christmas holidays with a pin that had blinking LED lights on her jacket, to pick up a friend. The prosecutor, Martha Coakley, supposedly very liberal, disgraced herself by treating the event as an offense against public safety. Again, stupid from airport security on up to her…. The whole society has sprung so many rotten leaks in it, no wonder we cannot go forward.
Filip Maurits musings
I have a pin like that. Got it as a promo gadget from Google years ago…
The BBC is having trouble explaining why Corbyn is "left wing" but Cameron isn't "right wing":
Over 50,000 people sign petition saying that the BBC is biased against Jeremy Corbyn
They are asking the BBC to refer to David Cameron as the 'right-wing Prime Minister', because they often refer to the leader of the Opposition as 'left-wing'
http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/politics/Jeremy_Corbyn/11870998/Over-50000-people-sign-petition-saying-that-the-BBC-is-biased-against-Jeremy-Corbyn.html?utm_source=change_org
It is a campaign based on myths and deception, but it is extraordinarily clever. It allows the right to police the BBC: to make the corporation fearful of crossing certain lines, and to ensure that the right sets the political agenda.
…The truth is the BBC is stacked full of rightwingers. The chairman of the BBC Trust is Chris Patten, a former Conservative cabinet minister. The BBC's political editor, Nick Robinson, was once chairman of the Young Conservatives. His former senior political producer, Thea Rogers, became George Osborne's special advisor in 2012. Andrew Neil, the presenter of the BBC's flagship political programmes Daily Politics and This Week, is chairman of the conservative Spectator magazine. His editor is Robbie Gibb, former chief of staff to the Tory Francis Maude. After the BBC's economics editor Stephanie Flanders left for a £400,000-a-year job at that notorious leftwing hotbed, JP Morgan, she was replaced by its business editor Robert Peston. His position was taken by Kamal Ahmed from the rightwing Sunday Telegraph, a journalist damned by the Guardian's Nick Davies for spinning government propaganda in the run-up to the Iraq war.
http://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2014/mar/17/bbc-leftwing-bias-non-existent-myth?CMP=share_btn_tw
Thomas D. JLocke
If memory serves, wasn't it the BBC that said building 7 had fallen all the while showing that the building was still standing? What does that tell us about the BBC?
Common 'Tater
Hickory, dickory, dock.
Mohamed built a clock.
The clock struck one.
Police pulled their guns.
Michel Leduc Common 'Tater
Thank God your poem does not finish by " Hickory, dickory, shot…"
Like a story out of dc/marvel comics. Still ridiculing the police response will just worsen the situation. Accept it, learn from it and move on.
Pedinska Jason
Still ridiculing the police response will just worsen the situation.
I disagree. There are quite a few current examples of where calling the police out on their behavior is actually producing results. Just one example, this police officer was fired, arrested, charged with murder and denied bail all because a courageous passerby filmed him and decided to push back by publicizing the footage.
http://www.nydailynews.com/news/crime/bond-denied-sc-shot-dead-walter-scott-article-1.2360327
In fact, Michael Slager's initial lies about what happened were so egregious that his own attorney resigned once this footage came out.
So, no, the police don't get a pass on shitty behavior and ridicule/confrontation/pushback – whatever you want to call what's happening in this and other cases all across the country – is the ONLY way to get accountability from these public servants who we pay to wield disproportionate authority and weaponry over all the rest of us.
J. Titor
"police spokesman James McLellan said that, throughout the interview, Ahmed had maintained that he built only a clock, but said the boy was unable to give a 'broader explanation' as to what it would be used for."
Fantastic. Couldn't make it up.
"The behavior here is nothing short of demented" pretty well sums it up. The rest is details. Hmmmm… let me think, is there another example in the last hundred years in which a culturally advanced, western social democracy became demented as a nation? Gosh, I just can't remember.
The thing is, there is a double whammy embedded in this incident and related incidents, one which is political and the other which is personal. This is the loss of the presumption of innocence in both perspectives and it highlights a personal (sentimental, if you wish) aspect which is once tainted, one never comes out from under. Never.
I learned early. I knew a brilliant [drama] teacher in secondary school who was falsely accused of making homosexual passes at a couple of students. There was an in camera hearing, the teacher was completely exonerated, but his career was still over. He was dead in a gutter a year later.
Pardon me, but fucking human beings! On the other hand, it's a minor miracle and a credit to humanity when boys like this one do NOT turn into anti-social menaces. But he's been damaged.
stigira man
What is even more appalling is that America has become a nation of unpaid government agents who would succumb to all types of government inspired hysteria loosing all the vestiges of humanity and would denounce anyone on a whim, brother, sister, an innocent student, anyone in old tradition of Stalinist regime all that just for a hope of some undefined future benefit or just to be allowed to live and work. This incident shows how US has become a totalitarian regime permeating down to ordinary individuals .
The propensity of Americans to call security agents (police) on trivial, baseless premises , instead of taking responsibility to resolve the issue using peaceful negotiations or by seeking clarifications , is shameful.
Procopius stigira man
I can't help thinking about the busybody who called police about the two "free range" children walking home from the park. And the Pennsylvania prosecutor who decided to charge a teen-age girl with "distributing child pornography" because she sent a nude picture of herself to her boy friend. There are at least 2,500 felony offenses in the U.S. Code. Think you could learn them all? But never mind, the legal system is working the way it is meant to work.
Michel Leduc
Feel very sorry for the kid. Maybe he should have built a cookoo clock, an object the moronic people who arrested him might (?????) have understood as being a CLOCK.
feline16
@Glenn –
Don't know how to bold as Pedinska did, but could someone PRETTY PLEASE get the comments straightened out? The comments button at the top of each article still DO NOT WORK and since I have still never been able to get a story to open in its own tab, it is a real mess. I have commented on this, e-mailed Ms. Reed and two other TI staffers and have gotten no response. Using the site now is decidedly less friendly; could someone fix this???
MOST EXCELLENT piece Glenn. Saw this on NPR news just before coming here and was so glad to see this incident covered here. I do confess that it's very saddening and disturbing that you find this to be not an aberration but normative and even an inevitable outgrowth of the climate of fear that has been cultivated.
But I still am shocked a bit and totally struck by this: "But even now, "police say they may yet charge him with making a hoax bomb — though they acknowledge he told everyone who would listen that it's a clock." According to the BBC, "police spokesman James McLellan said that, throughout the interview, Ahmed had maintained that he built only a clock, but said the boy was unable to give a 'broader explanation' as to what it would be used for."
I'm glad several posters have jumped on the 'broader explanation' of what a clock is used for. Maybe these morons are used to sundials? But it is very troubling that their even still considering charging him with anything.
All involved with this assault on Ahmed Mohammed's liberties, ingenuity, and curiosity should be highly ashamed – if they could ever feel that!
musings feline16
"Maybe these morons are used to sundials?"
Even that device would be a challenge for them, but they'd better learn, because some day, it may be difficult to get the materials to even build an electrical digital clock.
Wouldn't it be funny if this one turned out to be a standard kit anyone could have purchased at Radio Shack (before they went out of business). Quick, check his mother's pantry and find out if she has pressure cookers. And while you're at it, burn all the spinning wheels in the land!
Hi Musings… so glad you caught my ref to sundials :-) !!!
Loved your post. Especially the ref to spinning wheels as my favorite fairy tale is "Sleeping Beauty."
We better be careful not to prick our fingers!
Like the Boston PD and their paranoid fear of light-brites. The threat to this country is when stupid people pool in one area.
tvjw03
"broader explanation of what it is used for" how about toe tell you what F*&^ing time it is ?
OK, I haven't scanned down thread to see if this has already been posted, so apologies if it already has, but at the Republican presidential debate, the subject of Ahmed Mohamed came up, and wow did these guys look out of step:
http://www.vox.com/2015/9/16/9341651/ahmed-mohamed-gop-debate
Somehow it keeps becoming all about Kim Davis. Oy.
coram nobis
Some of the voices on this thread are getting a trifle unusual. Fortunately, we can recognize this as code.
This is London. The BBC World Service now has more messages for our friends in occupied Europe.
Jean has a long moustache. Such is the priviliege these corrupt ziomasonsatanist in public office and their murderous corrupt law enforment dignify the population. See how well Marshal Petain supports the law of gravity. This has nothing to do your so called, "Islam Phoebia". It wounds my heart with a monotonous languor. Liberals run this town's school, this town's police force? Mme. Defarge made a crème brulée. Charlie Hebdo draws the French Justice Minister as a monkey – but you misread it because you are a dumb, ideologically blinded anti-Western zealot moron. Don Draper sold Marie-Antoinette a carousel.
And now back to our programme. We bring you Major Glenn Greenwald and his U.S. Army Air Force orchestra, with "Kalamazoo 6-5000."
Pedinska coram nobis
It will all get better once Mme. Defarge decides to share her crème brulée.
Until then, I am holding her hostage near the compost pile.
coram nobis Pedinska
Shouldn't you check with Gen. Eisenhower's HQ first? We need to be ready to greet our overlord, you know.
Lawyer up, Ahmed. I do believe your rights were violated and the State of Texas may owe you enough money to pay for your PhD program. And maybe even a personal lab where you could invent to your heart's content! Don't let this opportunity pass you by, young man. Make the most of it–sue their asses.
DataDiva WakeUpAmerica
They are, my friend, they are. The family has retained an attorney. Meanwhile, the POTUS has invited the young man to the White House, and Mark Zuckerberg has personally invited him to Facebook saying he would like to meet him. I think the kid is going to be a-okay. :)
That photo of him standing there is what you look like when you realize you are surrounded by idiots.
E Carol
Carol, my thoughts exactly lol
It's beyond funny, It's like their in their own private reality. Hilarious answer to question about Ahmed in the Republican debate:
CNN Guy – "After they determined it was in fact a clock, Obama invited that student to the white house…Governor Jindal how would you balance vigilance and discrimination?
Jindal – "We don't discriminate against anybody…You say to Muslim leaders, It's not enough to denounce generic acts of violence, you've got to denounce individuals by name"
CNN Guy – "Governor Jindal, I'm afraid you didn't answer the question"
Jindal – "If you are asking me if I'm glad he was released…Right now the biggest discrimination is against Christian business owners"
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8z8trU-q1yY
Dubya and the neocons certainly succeeded in making this nation's citizens into "paranoids" after 9/11…
This article is dead-on. I would like to see it extended to apply to America's African American citizens. They are not officially targeted by the War on Terror as scapegoats, as Muslims are, but I would argue they have always been targeted by the war for White Supremacy now overlapping with the War On Drugs.
They are less a "scapegoat" than a designated underclass or, as Michelle Alexander describes it, a separate social caste. Weapons sales and expansion of the police state are certainly also served by the War On Drugs and the White supremacy colonization project as they are by the War On Terror. This causes ethnic communities to be essentially viewed as foreign insurgents in their own country.
The fearmongering & dehumanizing has made beatings and murders of black citizens by the state continue to be commonplace even decades after the civil rights movement.
See Shaun King's article "Dehumanization Leads to Assassination."
Ahmed's school lesson: https://twitter.com/PresumptuousBug/status/644309967902670848
Such is the priviliege these corrupt ziomasonsatanist in public office and their murderous corrupt law enforment dignify the population not just to protect and serve the domestic (USA) population with genocide while under the color of law and official public office. In the meantime the usa does not want to label the recent South Carolina (dylan roof) shootings as terrorism but as "senseless murders" while treating a clock that this nine year old invented in just 20 minutes, consisting of a circuit board and a power supply wired to a digital display as a potential terrorist is the epitome of a worst than all the kosher totalitarian and kosher authoritarians regimes combined. – Alejandro Grace Ararat.
Well done Gelnn.
This has nothing to do your so called, "Islam Phoebia". The comment made by one officer does not reflect the opinions of many.
However, the issue has come from Liberals who run schools. Schools began expelling kids just for taking squirt guns to school. Kids in second grade have been expelled for having squirt guns, one very young kid was suspended or expelled for using his finger as a gun and another was kid, who was a
Cub or Boy Scout was suspended/expelled for taking his Scout knife to school by accident.
The schools and their "Zero Tolerance" have not allowed any exemptions. This incident, most likely had nothing to do kid being Muslim, but more to do with the rules created by school Liberals and the Zero Tolerance policies.
Days of common sense in schools are far gone!
Donald B. Jeff
Liberals have created rules forbidding kids from inventing things and from bringing clocks to school?
Liberals run this town's school, this town's police force?
Paul D Jeff
Paranoia and fear of violence and love of heavy-handed policing are all characteristics of the political right, not the political left or as you call them "liberals"
Joshua H. Paul D
Actually, it can be characteristics of either one depending on the specific regime; left vs right is more accurately described as an economic spectrum. This issue has more to do with the totalitarian vs libertarian spectrum, and historically we've seen both left-totalitarian (the USSR) and right-totalitarian (Nazi Germany) regimes. What we have here in America is certainly approaching that of a right-totalitarian regime.
http://www.politicalcompass.org
musings Jeff
I agree. There is more than enough paranoia to go around. Not only is there a war on Muslims, but also on boys.
Two notes:
There is a GoFundMe site set up to Bring Ahmed To Defcon.
https://www.gofundme.com/defcon4ahmed
Very close to goal in 3 hours if anyone wants to chip in.
According to this report, Ahmed is still suspended even though all charges have been dropped. And, he will be transferring schools at some point in the future.
TallyHoGazehound TallyHoGazehound
One more. And, when Matt Blaze asked for the closest hacker/makerspace to Irving, TX it was quickly pointed out that Ahmed had already been invited to Dallas Makerspace, and his dues paid through the first year. They're looking at how they might offer him a lifetime membership. The Dallas Makerspace is a 501(c)3 and dependent on donations.
Shadowy
I just read this out loud to my friend and we couldn't stop laughing throughout the first half of this article. It reads like a farce. Seriously, you can't make this stuff up. So if lawmakers in Irving are busy fighting windmills, then who's looking of the actual issues that face that community? Someone should write a play about them. The sky really is falling.
In a rare good move, President Obama has invited Mr. Mohamed to visit the White House. How that will play in Texas, I don't know, but it is certainly the right thing to do.
cxb471 24b4Jeff
No, it's not. It's a way of taking advantage of the situation to look cool, as his salivating supporters are posting all over the internet. That's all it's going to be, ever.
Who do you think just renewed the state of emergency?
Who do you think bombed 7 Muslim countries?
Who do you think planted the carrot seeds and watered them?
JG Miller cxb471
suave donger cxb471
@cxb471 / @jg miller
No, it's not. It's a way of taking advantage of the situation to look cool, as his salivating supporters are posting all over the internet. That's all it's going to be, ever..
Bullshit. It has nothing to do w/ Mr. Obama's transgressions, or your inflated ego(s). This is about an effort to right a wrong, and an opportunity to inspire future individuals to 'think outside the box' (pun intended).
Teachers and principals who don't defend their students shouldn't be in the profession.
Teachers and principals who call the police to report their students should be sued.
The whole point of childhood is learning.
When this becomes a criminal investigation — without cause — then the school professionals steal the little bit of safety youth should be allowed to make errors.
Schools are there for their students; teachers who don't protect their students shouldn't be in the profession. Teachers who claim they protect their students by scapegoating individual minority students should be fired.
Immediately!
Victoria milton wiltmellow
Despicable!
Randy milton wiltmellow
You can fire these teachers, but will that stop Islamophobia in America? I agree that the school fell down on its educational mission in this case, turning itself into an arm of the racist warmongering police state. But Glenn's thesis here, which I agree with, is that the problem is the fact that we have a racist warmongering police state in the first place! When do we get to fire the military industrial complex, the drone manufacturers, the "terrorism experts", Guantanamo, Homeland Security, and the NSA? The whole system is to blame for incidents like this, and firing the teacher and the principal – though justifiable – is not even close to a solution to the problem. As long as Congress and the White House and the corporate media can fan the flames of anti-Muslim bigotry with impunity, these horrible incidents will keep happening, guaranteed. Don't forget who planted the carrots!
milton wiltmellow Randy
I agree that the school fell down on its educational mission in this case, turning itself into an arm of the racist warmongering police state.
That's sort of my point. Whatever macro-shit happens, there's common decency that cannot be dictated, propagandized, or instilled through political harangues.
The teachers and principle should have known exactly what Ahmed was doing. The fact that they could attach such a sinister suspicion to a fourteen year old kid displays an incredible lack of empathy and concern for the well-being of their students. They should have known it wasn't a bomb because they knew the kid.
What happens when another student absentmindedly brings a knife to school in his/her backpack. Will these "professionals" call the police? Will they instruct all their students (as these did) to "see something, say something"? Have they exchanged their adult reasoning abilities for middle school hysteria?
What lessons do the other students draw from watching their supposed role-models overreact?
Apparently Ahmed's rights were violated:
"Mohamed, a freshman at MacArthur High School, insists he repeatedly asked officers to call his parents while being interrogated. Mohamed was questioned at the school, then taken in handcuffs to a juvenile detention center, where he was fingerprinted and interrogated without his parents present, according to police and Mohamed.
Texas Family Code is clear this was not supposed to happen.
"A child may not be left unattended in a juvenile processing office and is entitled to be accompanied by the child's parent, guardian, or other custodian or by the child's attorney," Section 52.025 states."
24b4Jeff Sillyputty
Surely, in the secret addendum to the Texas Family Code, it is made clear that the quoted provision only applies to juveniles with fair skin, blue eyes, and Anglo surnames. Besides that, it is doubtful that anyone who is unable to distinguish a clock from a bomb can read the Texas Family Code, or understand what is being said when it is read to them.
Lucky he lives in Texas. In New York he would have been shot or strangled.
dahoit 24b4Jeff
As a life long NY resident,I declare you an idiot.We would have laughed.This was a clock,not a bomb.sheesh,do you terrorists get scared easy.
It's precisely the fact that he live in TX,or one of those brainwashed moron states where they think they are free,when they are locked in cage of zioBS,that they reacted so.
Joshua Ryne? Goldbergs story doesn't rate attention?
If it was sarcasm,my apology,it's hard to decipher today.Cypher?British.
Donald B. dahoit
Come on. That's obviously sarcasm.
To answer my own question from down thread and for the bigots among us like Louise:
http://gawker.com/7-kids-not-named-mohamed-who-brought-homemade-clocks-to-1730999866
Below are seven students, not named Mohamed, who got off scot-free for the heinous crime of DIY timekeeping, plus a bonus kid who brought an actual inert bomb to school and wasn't suspended. (Mohamed got three days.)
Peter Mathis
Haley Zinke and Tasha Williams
Logan Weimer
Indy Brumbraugh and Cesar Limas
Tori Clark
Might seem like a simple question but would he have been arrested if he was white and called Matthew? Just a thought, hold on a minute am I allowed to have a thought or is that considered dangerous since I'm Muslim????? Thank God I live in Scotland!!
Even worse, I heard some hate-monger from a white supremacist hate site called Maajid Nawaz a "porch monkey" , surely this person will fired, no?
Louise Cypher Whendovescry
Nah. When they do it, it's not "punching down on the oppressed". So it's fine to call Muslim a "monkey" *if* you are a Muslim too, and you do it in the name of that poor, marginalized, oppressed, brutalized, misunderstood minority – even if you actually insult your own co-religionists in the process.
Otherwise, when for example Charlie Hebdo draws the French Justice Minister as a monkey – making an anti-racist point about French internal politics – but you misread it because you are a dumb, ideologically blinded anti-Western zealot moron, you are free to go ballistic – almost as ballistic as when some dirty smelly stray slobbering fleabag is getting "mistreated" somewhere on twitter.
milton wiltmellow Louise Cypher
So it's fine to call Muslim a "monkey" *if* you are a Muslim too, and you do it in the name of that poor, marginalized, oppressed, brutalized, misunderstood minority – even if you actually insult your own co-religionists in the process.
"Fine"?
What's the matter with you? Are you trying to be funny? Ironic?
Equating people with animals is never "fine."
(I suppose, an intimate endearment in private is okay.)
@ Milton Wiltmellow
Is it okay to refer to humans like Louise as a "cancer" or a "disease"? How about a fungus? Or a noxious plant? Or tar or dirt?
Ironic thing about it being inappropriate to equate people with animals, is that humans are animals. Mammals in fact. Presumably it is okay to equate people with animals in good ways, correct?
Now I'm not trying to be obtuse, I understand precisely why it is dangerous to diminish peoples' shared "humanity", or to "otherize" one group of humans by characterizing them as "lesser" or equating them to "animals".
But it has always struck me as a bit of an ironic prohibition. Ironic in the sense that it is probably an even more serious threat to all humanity's existence for humans to believe themselves "superior" to all other animals or living things or that they should and can have "dominion" over all living things without some very careful consideration being paid to the effects of such a worldview.
Humans are animals. We, like all other animals, are biological entities dependent upon (directly or indirectly) on all other living things within our shared biosphere. So while it is horrible when one group of humans diminishes another to the point of harm (physical or otherwise) that probably won't be humanity's undoing. It will be thinking we are somehow superior, special or above all other living things when we aren't–we are part of them and co-dependent upon them–and acting on that impulse or belief. It is very short-sighted and very unwise in my humble opinion.
Now I'm not trying to be obtuse …
Unintended consequence are still consequences.
Native Americans named themselves as animals — Sitting Bull, Crazy Horse, Black Hawk, etc. Their goal isn't derogation. Very much the opposite. Mayans used animal names. There is great nobility in all natural creatures — and especially to those cultures which live in some sort of harmony with nature..
Racial slurs however often take the form of comparing an entire race or religion (etc.) as animals. Pretending that racial slurs are actually honorifics is bizarre.
Those Tivilians are just like weasels, always stealing stuff.
Those Ammistians smell like dead fish. Always stinking up the place.
Those Parsissians look like hairy beasts shuffling around us decent people.
Making jokes based on these racial stereotypes is always not fine.
If you have a cat and you refer to people as "pussies", is it ever proper or decent? In my opinion you don't get to say, "I love my cat, therefore I can call Pat a pussy. It's my way of showing my respect to him/her."
For instance, continuing to refer to the Washington football team with a racial slur isn't ennobling for the subject … or for the speaker.
LC doesn't get to complain that those who take offense to racial slurs are "dumb, ideologically blinded anti-Western zealot moron[s] …" No. People who take offense to a racial (etc.) slur are "offended" because the intent is to offend. It is a bully's tactic.
Nor do you get to say that since the natural world deserves more of our respect, these slurs aren't really slurs.
The intent matters.
I think "disease" is a better term. Cancers can be cured. But the disease persists and will require continued fighting against.
rrheard AtheistInChief
I wasn't suggesting that derogatory language intended as a "slur" or intended to diminish or "otherize" another group of humans was acceptable. Ever. I apologize if somehow that was what you got out of my comment. And believe me, generally speaking, I am the first to take offense at another's denigrating someone based on an immutable human trait from skin color to gender or anyone trying to minimize another by equating a person to some part of a human being.
I was simply trying to point out the irony of one group of animals believing they can claim superiority over another group of animals, by equating them to animals. My point being, that there are only "differences" among animals not that some animals are "lesser" or "superior" animals. We are all are a part of the same incredible "life" and mutually interdependent on one another.
That's why I find it ironic (in one respect only) that humans can be so horrible to one another on the basis of things that have no ultimate independent importance or value i.e. skin color, sexual orientation, gender . . . whatever. They are just variations within our species. But I still think the bigger ultimate threat to human existence (it isn't bigotry or hate or war necessarily) is that we don't understand that we are one relatively insignificant, fairly recent, and fairly fragile species that doesn't understand the implications of our technology and ways of life that are impacting the biosphere all things living depend upon.
That's all I was getting at, not that irrational fear, hate, bigotry or any of the language that is couched in isn't important, because it is. Language is how we communicate ideas and it matters.
I agree with the general proposition that among all animals, humans are worse than most — if not worse than all.
But it's not our fingernails, teeth, hair, eyes, fingers, skin, etc. that make us the most ruthless of species.
When we turn all creation into various symbols (of supposed virtues or belonging) that we humans become most merciless.
I think it's incumbent upon all of us humans to deplore the sort of tribal racism on display when comparing (creating as a symbol) another set of humans with animals.
Vic Perry
It amazes me that people on this site continue to engage in good faith argument with Sewage Cyphon or whatever it calls itself now. Don't feed the trolls.
Louise Cypher Vic Perry
"Sewage Cyphon "
Your inventiveness rivals Ahmed's. Well done.
Louise Cypher
The funniest – and most hypocritical – intervention in this faux-outrage non-story is Obama's.
https://twitter.com/POTUS/status/644193755814342656
He called the kid to bring his "clock" to WH. Please. Try bringing a "clock" looking like this
http://motherboard-images.vice.com/content-images/contentimage/25700/1442424586962892.jpg
to WH in your backpack, asking to see the President so you can show him how to "make America great", and see how far you'd get. You'd be zapped like a mosquito before you could say "Allah Akbar".
24b4Jeff Louise Cypher
Louise has outdone itself with this one. A 14 year old builds something that the engineers in its home country could only assemble with the assistance of DARPA, and it complains about the messiness of the layout. Doesn't know an Op Amp from a capacitor.
Louise Cypher 24b4Jeff
Yeah, he didn't build that.
We may have gotten this story wrong, there's been an update:
BSN – Texas – 16 September 2015 – An Islamist hoax bomber apprehended in an attempt to detonate a suspected atomic clock in MacArthur High School in Irving Texas continues to refuse to answer police questions. The device, which had the perpetrator been able to arm with weapons grade plutonium, was of the size capable of destroying a medium sized city.
The Irving police, who were alerted to the suspicious individual by quick thinking teachers, were concerned that the device might be an atomic clock. The police spokesman told journalists on the scene "We googled atomic clock and the device matched such a description"
Atomic clocks are highly radioactive and the snooze alarm on the typical model has an equal output of one million chest x-rays. The police spokesman continued – "we couldn't afford to wait until the clock struck midnight, we made the decision to send the jihadist to Guantanamo for password extraction of the fail safe code"
The would be bomber's teachers, explained what tipped them off – "Ahmed was a good kid. I've never seen a rag-head that good. Something didn't add up. Then I saw the NASA T-shirt, and it hit me. He wants to blow us all into space. So when I saw the atomic clock, I knew there was little time to alert the police before our school disappeared in a mushroom cloud"
MArlio
Stupid teacher,Inferior principal and crazy and uneducated police officers! Use some common sense as you are behaving like the Three Stooges! What you you did to this child is horrific and unconscionable ie Stupid! You behaved like nazis!!
Alisande
I know if I were to take a homemade bomb to school, the first thing I'd do is SHOW IT TO A TEACHER.
Lana Alisande
LOL! Seriously
Granny Ralls
I was born and raised in Texas. To all Muslims: don't move to that backward thinking state. They are stupid, intolerant hillbillies. To t6he very talented, intelligent Mohamed: I hope your folks are able to sue Irving Police and anyone else who even insinuates you did something wrong because it's very clear what your school thought only because your ethnicity. I hope your parents sue and get enough money to move out of Texas, put you and your sibling(s) in private school and pay for 4 years of college tuition though it looks like you will be able to qualify for merit scholarships. Don't be discouraged. Not all so-called "Christians" and/or white folks are bigots.
Similar circumstance in Arkansas my son looked up word "Bomb" on school computer as in "it's the bomb" something happening. Caused a big up roar was taken to jail and had to under go counseling etc. Just happened after OK. bombing every body upset. I think a kid set him up and told teacher to get it going. That kid never punished.
https://twitter.com/naheedrajwani/status/644181522166116352
^ You'd have to be a moron – or Glenn Greenwald, if you belong to the school of thought which views the two as distinguishable – to claim that this looks merely as just another run-of-the-mill "clock". Denying that this looks suspicious is only possible if you – in some curious mental state of reverse-profiling, where you believe that *no* 14yo black Muslim could ever *actually* bring a bomb to school – are not thinking straight.
No wonder the image of the actual device is carefully hidden from view in all the ranting about this incident.
http://www.theguardian.com/us-news/2015/sep/16/homemade-clock-ahmed-mohamed-texas-officials-we-were-right
"On Wednesday, an Irving independent school district spokeswoman, Lesley Weaver, defended the school's decision to arrest Mohamed under Texas's "hoax bomb" statute after an English teacher reported the "suspicious" device to administrators.
"We will always take necessary precautions to protect our students and to keep our school community as safe as possible," Weaver said.
Weaver also said members of the public appeared upset because they hadn't seen photos of the "suspicious-looking item in question".
"Perhaps upon release of that photo there may be a little bit different perception about what took place, and people might have a better understanding of how we were doing everything with an abundance of caution to protect all of our students in Irving," Weaver said."
rrheard Louise Cypher
@ Louise
Okay, please provide a link demonstrating that a "14yo black Muslim" has "actually brought a bomb to a US school."
Also sounds like the Irving police have wisely decided not to press any charges whatsoever against the young man. And it looks like the President has invited him to bring his invention to the White House and HRC has tweeted out support for him, among others.
http://www.dallasnews.com/news/community-news/northwest-dallas-county/headlines/20150915-irving-ninth-grader-arrested-after-taking-homemade-clock-to-school.ece
thelastnamechosen Louise Cypher
If anyone actually believed this was a bomb, wouldn't they have evacuated everyone and called the bomb squad?
Even the people stupid enough to arrest this kid weren't stupid enough to think this was actually a bomb.
Louise Cypher thelastnamechosen
From what we know, one person – the English teacher – became suspicious when she opened the case.
Let me repeat: you would have to be a moron to think that no 14yo black Muslims could ever actually bring a bomb to school, and simply disregard – because "he is a Muslim", and "Muslims are unfairly targeted" etc. – your suspicions when you see a clock in a case (which, by the way, is 20 times larger than it needs to be, and is sloppy in design and execution – it looks like he simply took an existing alarm clock apart and remounted parts in a pencil case; every one of the props they used in the media interviews with this kid was something that he just took out of its proper case, he didn't "build" any of these things).
Mike Sulzer Louise Cypher
Denying that this looks suspicious is only possible if you – in some curious mental state of reverse-profiling, where you believe that *no* 14yo black Muslim could ever *actually* bring a bomb to school – are not thinking straight.
I see a circuit board with a nine volt battery clip. Where do you see anything suspicious that looks like a bomb? It even appears to be open and accessible for inspection. No bomb there.
Seriously, who is the moron here? Anyone with any brains cannot think that a circuit board is a bomb. They do not blow up. Students with interest in computers and engineering do projects that look like that all the time.
Deborah Mike Sulzer
Ah but you have just stumbled onto the US public's rate of scientific literacy.
Louise Cypher Mike Sulzer
"Where do you see anything suspicious that looks like a bomb? It even appears to be open and accessible for inspection. No bomb there."
Please. It wasn't "open and accessible" in class. This is a Police photo. And the perpetrator himself admitted he was aware that it looked suspicious.
The fact that this photo of the actual device is missing from most stories on this speaks volumes. You think it's just a coincidence the photo above this very article is just a generic LED display?
And to be a "hoax bomb", it doesn't have to have any explosives. But it was inside a case. It could be "foam", it could be "display", it could be "transformer" – or stuff that looks like those things. "Explosives" in real life don't actually look like those big sticks with ACME written on them from the cartoons, you know.
https://pbs.twimg.com/media/CPCnP7TU8AAYd0O.jpg
It's a good thing that security of American children doesn't depend on "thinkers" like you.
Better safe than sorry. And if you see something, say something.
Everything else on this is just people feigning outrage so that they can bash the West some more.
Please provide a link demonstrating that a "14yo black Muslim" has "actually brought a bomb to a US school."
Still waiting. Tick tock, tick tock . . .
Because if you can't then basically you are arguing "be fearful of hypotheticals" rather than statistically significant "threats/risks" and I can't think of a more cowardly irrational position to take.
In fact, by your logic, all people should report seeing bees flying around in the air to local authorities because a person has a higher likelihood of being killed by a bee sting than they do a "14yo black Muslim" child bringing a bomb to a school in the US.
I mean seriously, it's the fucking the absolute pinnacle of stupidity to argue what you appear to be arguing. Although I'm in no way surprised because you strike me as a grade A moron.
Wait a minute. You said that that picture looks suspicious ("Denying that this looks suspicious is only possible if you…"). I tell you it does not look suspicious, and you say "never mind, nobody saw that, it was in a case."
Who is the moron here?
I am 67 and have been designing and building electronic things since I was about 12, (although that is not my main job), and actually have a Phd in electrical engineering. I do know a circuit card from the essential parts of a bomb. You do not know anything about anything.
"and you say "never mind, nobody saw that, it was in a case.""
You claimed that "it does not look suspicious" but you are "designing and building electronic things since" you were "12" so you (presumably) know your electronics; this is an English teacher we're talking about, who saw that and became suspicious.
It wasn't "open and accessible for inspection" prior to it being noticed (because it was beeping), confiscated and opened by the teacher.
My emphasis on the fact that it was in a case is because clocks do not normally come in cases. The *only* instance where a clock and a case are connected in the mind of general public is a bomb. And I bet that this kid was very well aware that it will be misunderstood – it was probably his intention.
"At a joint press conference with Irving ISD, Chief Larry Boyd said the device — confiscated by an English teacher despite the teen's insistence that it was a clock — was "certainly suspicious in nature."
"The student showed the device to a teacher, who was concerned that it was possibly the infrastructure for a bomb," Boyd said."
Are you able to understand simple English?
So I'll take it that you can't support your theory because you couldn't find a single solitary example in hours of searching to demonstrate the following:
So that leads me to conclude you a frightened coward afraid of hypotheticals (in other words your imagination or theoretical possibilities) who doesn't understand the first thing about actual "threats" or risk analysis AND you are a raging bigot.
In fact you're so dumb you probably spend some portion of your day worrying about a giant asteroid striking the earth, which will necessarily happen (as it has happened in past), although it is statistically very rare over time (at least in terms of "human" time).
Some days it really embarrasses me that I have to share citizenship with frightened little idiot bigots like you.
Pedinska Louise Cypher
My emphasis on the fact that it was in a case is because clocks do not normally come in cases.
https://www.google.com/?gws_rd=ssl#q=clock+case
About 225,000,000 results (0.40 seconds)
http://www.bing.com/images/search?q=clock%20case&go=&form=QBIL&qs=n&sk=&sc=8-3
I'd venture a gamble, going completely out on a limb here, a and say nothing is a bomb until something explosive is added to it. Otherwise, the book of matches in my pocket would be a bomb, instead of a simple incendiary device
Louise Cypher phineas
"nothing is a bomb until something explosive is added to it"
Um, you silly person, it is impossible to know just by looking whether, for example, explosive is hidden inside in the case foam or somewhere else.
And then there's this:
http://www.statutes.legis.state.tx.us/Docs/PE/htm/PE.46.htm
"13) "Hoax bomb" means a device that:
(A) reasonably appears to be an explosive or incendiary device; or
(B) by its design causes alarm or reaction of any type by an official of a public safety agency or a volunteer agency organized to deal with emergencies."
Sec. 46.08. HOAX BOMBS. (a) A person commits an offense if the person knowingly manufactures, sells, purchases, transports, or possesses a hoax bomb with intent to use the hoax bomb to:
(1) make another believe that the hoax bomb is an explosive or incendiary device; or
(2) cause alarm or reaction of any type by an official of a public safety agency or volunteer agency organized to deal with emergencies."
So a reasonable person sees a big-ass clock beeping inside a case, with a cable wrapped around, hidden in a backpack, you'd have to be a real moron to simply let it slide, and of course it is impossible to know what the intention of the perpetrator is without investigating.
Yeah, because explosives don't have mass or volume. It's super-invisible, lightweight hyperspatial explosive in a parallel universe.
Did you see any wires actually attached to the case in your, now famous, picture. Let me guess, he used wi-fi to send a signal to the super-invisible, lightweight hyperspatial explosive in a parallel universe. Maybe the case itself is – wait for it – PLASTIC explosive
And you are calling ME silly!
musings Louise Cypher
In my neighborhood, there is a flock of wild turkeys with less of a startle reaction than these officials who alarm and react to what they perceive as hoax bombs. The turkeys are very resilient, and made it through a bad winter.
The thing is, they conserve energy by not over-reacting.
You said "better safe than sorry" about this humiliating arrest. I would say that the "mass" of dumber than turkey humans, glassy-eyed on Cokes and Cheetos, and permanently attached to their television sets when at leisure, are simply cattle in a feedlot, waiting the inevitable destruction of their kind, not by bombs but by people who still think and make things that work. Sure, they'll try and fight, but they have no real survival instincts left in them. They have thought they were "playing it safe" but in reality the stockyard is run by wolves and coyotes.
Jim Louise Cypher
'the perpetrator', Louise? Don't you mean 'the clockmaker'?
Tell you what. Stop typing, read some Chris Hedges, and then think very hard about your position.
I have to agree with you, because the first and most important thing any bomb-maker does is put a big-ass digital timer display on the outside of the case, so everyone will know when it will explode.
I know this is true because every bomb on TV shows and in movies has a big-ass timer display on the outside so all us morans know it is a bomb and that the hero defused it with a second to spare.
"on the outside of the case"
I've seen your picture 4 times now and I still don't buy your ridiculous argument that wires, a battery clip, a circuit board and of all things. a transformer and electrical cord – who makes a bomb you plug into a wall outlet! – constitutes a bomb, potential or otherwise! No matter where the display is located.
Under the circumstances, it's a good thing he didn't mount the clock in a soccer ball.
I think you need to get help for your obvious paranoia.
You idiot. To make a bomb, you need at a minimum just two things: a detonator and explosives. It is abundantly clear that the device this young man made contained neither. Oh, wait, you say, a clock is a detonator. WRONG. A clock can be used as a timing device to actuate the detonator. So could a cell phone, or a SPST switch.
"It is abundantly clear"
Um, you dummy, it is anything but clear on first glance, as anyone objective will agree when the actual device is shown to them. That is exactly the reason why media is not exactly plastering their reports with this photo – they know very well that the entire false narrative about the supposed unreasonableness of the school authorities and the police falls apart the minute this is shown.
And that is why the investigation was completely justified.
TimN Louise Cypher
For Christ's sake, Cypher, relax. It's a fuckin' circuit board. No plastic, no bomb. You, like the teacher and the cops, watch too many movies. And, with lines like these —
"It's a good thing that security of American children doesn't depend on "thinkers" like you. Better safe than sorry. And if you see something, say something. Everything else on this is just people feigning outrage so that they can bash the West some more."
–you're making a fool of yourself. But you go ahead, and thanks for patrolling The Intercept for your authoritarian comrades ("And if you see something, say something.")
nuf said Mike Sulzer
Anyone with any brains cannot think that a circuit board is a bomb.
Going back 40 years, the entertainment industry has used a 7-segment LED display to represent a count-down timer for a bomb. (Wiley Coyote used a wind-up alarm clock with curly wires coming off.) I'm sure the cops knew it wasn't a bomb. They are convinced the kid was imitating TV show bombs.
As I noted below, all anyone has to do is forget your backpack and you've got some explaining to do.
Mike Sulzer nuf said
They are convinced the kid was imitating TV show bombs.
I do not think that is a reasonable analysis of what the cops are convinced of. Maybe they were pretending to think that when they were considering charging him with making a hoax bomb. But that apparently has been dropped, probably because they figured out how ludicrous it was and how stupid it made them look.
Karl nuf said
@nuf said
Google the term "Ied timing circuit image." At the very top of the page is a 4 Digit, digital "kitchen timer" that is listed as an "Inert training device for bomb squads." In the related images to the right, the same kitchen timer is shown attached to an electrical circuit bread board (far right, top row). To the untrained eye, Ahmed Mohamed's clock in a box is eerily similar.
nuf said Karl
Ahmed Mohamed's clock in a box is eerily similar
My cell phone looks just like the cell phones that are used to detonate bombs on TV. The point being the police can claim that anything could potentially be a bomb device.
Jonn Mero Louise Cypher
Louise, it is dimwits like you that make Texas the most backward state in the Western world's most backward country! Ok, you got politicians that are the least competent and most corrupt, with a policeforce and a military that also fit that description, so crawl back into the cave you came from, because you are not ready to face the real world yet!!
Louise Cypher Jonn Mero
Who cares what you think; TX is currently Islamofascist-free, and that is the only important thing.
Ask people in Garland, who narrowly escaped being butchered by murderous Muslim terrorist thugs, what they think about the "corrupt policeforce".
Say will about Islam, but in no way is Islam fascist. Anyone who even uses that term has forfeited all claims to credibility.
Nonsense. You show your complete lack of even the most basic education about the subject.
To quote Christopher Hitchens,
"The most obvious points of comparison would be these: Both movements are based on a cult of murderous violence that exalts death and destruction and despises the life of the mind. ("Death to the intellect! Long live death!" as Gen. Francisco Franco's sidekick Gonzalo Queipo de Llano so pithily phrased it.) Both are hostile to modernity (except when it comes to the pursuit of weapons), and both are bitterly nostalgic for past empires and lost glories. Both are obsessed with real and imagined "humiliations" and thirsty for revenge. Both are chronically infected with the toxin of anti-Jewish paranoia (interestingly, also, with its milder cousin, anti-Freemason paranoia). Both are inclined to leader worship and to the exclusive stress on the power of one great book. Both have a strong commitment to sexual repression—especially to the repression of any sexual "deviance"—and to its counterparts the subordination of the female and contempt for the feminine. Both despise art and literature as symptoms of degeneracy and decadence; both burn books and destroy museums and treasures."
http://www.slate.com/articles/news_and_politics/fighting_words/2007/10/defending_islamofascism.html
Here, writing in 2007, he basically described Islamic State.
Yeah, for my information on Islam, I ask Christopher Hitchens. Who nest? Sam Harris?
But for my information on fascism, I do refer to Il Duce'
Fascism is a corpora-centric form of government. Islam is not fascist and there are no fascist Islamic states.
They may be theocratic. They may be nationalistic. They may be ethnocentric. But that doesn't make them fascist. The US is more fascist than the most dyed-in-the-wool Islamic state.
Get a grip, do you really enjoy making a fool of yourself?
"do you really enjoy making a fool of yourself?"
LOL. Coming from a dumb 9/11 Truther, this is truly funny.
If by " dumb 9/11 Truther" you mean an engineer who actually understands the laws of physics and refuses to ignore them when 3 buildings become dust and rubble in a few seconds, you've sure figured me out.
"who actually understands the laws of physics"
Sure you do buddy.
phimeas Louise Cypher
Gee Zus, you're a dimwitted paranoiac who can't figure out what makes a device a bomb or just an electronic circuit and you question my credentials, education and veracity? This is not the forum for it, but if you want, I'll debate the physics of skyscrapers with you anywhere you like.
If "Sure you do buddy" is the best you've got, I'll even do it with my left hemisphere tied behind my back and let you have a physics book.
QuinceFlavoredKoolaid Louise Cypher
Hey Louise, you may be on to something! I dug up an early photograph of Steve Jobs and Steve Wozniak posing next to one of their early "bomb hoax" prototypes. You have to admit, they both look rather sinister. Jobs' mustache is particularly incriminating.
I wonder if they had a fiendish master plan to make these devices so small they could fit in a person's pocket at which point they could blow up the whole world! Haha, what were they thinking? Like they could just name their company something sweet and innocent like peach or pear and everyone is going to run out and buy one? Silly evil masterminds.
http://www.computerhistory.org/revolution/personal-computers/17/300/1052
So the question is why neither of these kids were arrested when they were actually screwing around with something very dangerous. In fact one of them has probably significant shortened his own life?
http://news.nationalgeographic.com/2015/07/150726-nuclear-reactor-fusion-science-kid-ngbooktalk/
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/David_Hahn
Guesses, anyone? What's the difference between Taylor Wilson and David Hahn, and Ahmed Mohamed? I'll give you three guesses and one can't be that the latter brought his invention to school, because all three ultimately had encounters with the police.
Hi Glenn.
It appears that a portion of the thread containing publicly available contact info for the school's administrators, as well as examples of letters written to them by some posters here (myself included) has been deleted.
I have no doubt that this was done for some good reason, but would appreciate it if you, or whomever deleted them, could explain why this happened so that we can understand and avoid posting things that are considered inappropriate by TI going forward.
Thanks for your consideration. We don't want to put you guys, or anyone else, in a bad position.
Benito Mussolini Pedinska
The Texas Education Agency is afraid they could become a target of e-mail bombs. I think we have to respect the fears of the TEA, at least until all electronic devices in Texas can be disabled. It may be that the courage of the TEA leaves something to be desired, but being steeped in fear is better than the alternative of being sorry.
Deborah Benito Mussolini
No. I do not think we have to "respect the fears of the TEA." This isn't what the US is supposed to be, nor is it the posture of citizens in a democracy. Citizenship in the US system assumes robust adulthood; these folks are anything but.
Benito Mussolini Deborah
Support TEA'rs for fears.
>"Support TEA'rs for fears."
I kinda liked everybody wants to rule the world … https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ST86JM1RPl0
nuf said Benito Mussolini
If you first wash black tea you remove much of the dark tannins, giving a whiter cup. I believe such is the purpose of Baptism, too.
phineas Benito Mussolini
Wait, are you saying Texas is now checking for bombs made from tea leaves? What will the British students do now!?
Glenn Greenwald Pedinska
Hey Pedinska – I wasn't aware of this – will find out.
Pedinska Glenn Greenwald
I see it below in the thread now. Perhaps I missed it before (though I did a CtrlF search because I thought I was losing my marbles)….sorry to bother you. :-s
Ryan Tate Pedinska
It looks like the message got marked as spam during an automated sweep. Maybe due to the email addresses. It's been restored.
Pedinska Ryan Tate
Oh, thanks Ryan! Good to know it wasn't me! :-)
I've expressed anti-Islamic sentiments here, but they shouldn't be blamed for this. If you want to bash Islam, fine, stand on the sidewalk outside his classroom window and rip up a Koran. Carry a picket sign about Muhammad and Aisha. Haul a kid away in handcuffs and continue, even now, with some psychotic theory of criminal threats? No, that is all police state. It would work the same way whether they were going after anarchists, Christian militias, Communists, whatever. Sure, the police in charge of the police state have certain stuff that don't like, and that's what will be in the news with the next bogus charge tomorrow… it'll always be *something*, but not necessarily this.
Sarah Silverman on being politically correct – "I don't think there's anything wrong with changing with the times. It's a sign of being old, if you are put off by that."
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rR3yORawsjA
Rolling with the times
"President Obama has invited Ahmed to bring his clock to the White House."
Dabney Rolling with the times
I'll bet Obama is secretly a Glenn Greenwald fan.
AtheistInChief Dabney
Ha ha. That's funny..hahah. I'm rolling over.
I think he secretly fumes that he doesn't have the support of people like Glenn. That would give him true progressive creds. Instead now he has all these sycophantic Glenn Greenwald supporters who don't like him anymore. I think Glenn drives him nuts.
I bet he was a big Chomsky fan, till he became president.
But okay… that invite took some balls. I'll give him that much.
Dabney AtheistInChief
Yeah, so did averting a war with Iran, taking on the Israel Lobby, etc…
Credit where due, as GG says…
Okay :). But he's still terrible. I can't wait for Bernie.
Hope springs eternal…:-)
red r
Excuse me Mr Greenwald but Muslims were responsible for 3000 deaths at the NY world trade center. Please stop apologizing for the USA, stay in your mountain retreat and shut the fuck up. When there is a problem in this world who is the first country to step up to the plate. It sure as hell ain't the Muslim countries.
Luther Brixton red r
"Muslims" were not any more "responsible" for 9.11 than "Christians" were for the Holocaust. There were far more Christians involved in the atrocities of Nazi Germany than the number of Muslims responsible for 9.11, yet no one blames ALL Christians for 6 million dead Jews the way nutjobs in this country have bought hook, line, and sinker into the nonsensical hype that ALL Muslims were responsible for 3000 on 9.11.
Do you want to be blamed for Middle Easterners murdered by drone attacks? If not, then don't blame all Muslims for actions committed by terrorists.
Nearly one quarter of the world's population is Muslim. The fear of evil "Mooooooslims" was absurd enough in the wake on 9.11, but to STILL be in fear of ALL Muslims 14 years LATER is just pathetic.
Deborah Luther Brixton
Some of the threads here offer themselves up as confirmation of Glenn's argument. #irony
Wnt red r
Which deaths are this kid responsible for?
I understand if you want to support some kind of national security measure like cutting a deal with some Muslim country to take some of the Muslim Syrian asylum seekers off our hands, provided they are treated well. We shouldn't have to accept security risks so long as humanitarian needs are properly met. But while Muslims are here, whatever status they have, they should be treated equally under the law, because equal treatment under the law is more important than the risk of attack. That, after all, is the premise under which the U.S. conducts any kind of defense activity at all – otherwise, we would say, it is not worth telling soldiers to fight to preserve our rights if they could be injured.
cp dukes red r
To most of us 15 Saudi hijackers- and the support of some portion of the Saudi state were responsible. You know, our "allies." When Anders Behring Breivik killed 77 people in 2011 Norway did you blame conservatives everywhere for the murders?
phineas red r
"I admit, it, I sprinkled all that nanothermite into the dust from the WTC that was spread all over lower Manhattan."
-Osama Bin laden
Did he bring a clock or a glock to school?
Powell Gammill
OMG, he has a NASA shirt on. Terrorist!!!! Handcuff the intellectuals while the cretins rule.
200yearstogetitright
*HOME of the BRAVE, or *LAND of the FREE, or both. Come on Glenn. I know you're a Brit, but you can do better.
coram nobis 200yearstogetitright
Glenn is US, getitright. A gringo. And that unsingable song about "home of the brave" (an English tune, at that!) has a lot of dangerous lyrics about rockets red glare and bombs bursting in air. They should take a closer look at anybody singing that one, toot sweet.
@ Glenn
, "police spokesman James McLellan said that, throughout the interview, Ahmed had maintained that he built only a clock, but said the boy was unable to give a 'broader explanation' as to what it would be used for."
How's this for a "broader explanation" for the moronic Irving police–"umm, I was going to use the clock I made to tell time. Do you know what clocks are used for and how to tell time you moron?"
This story really really pisses me off. And I hope this young man's parents sue the shit out of the Irving police. I am sick to death of the level of cowardice this nation displays on a daily basis.
ooooh how different the news coverage would be if this boy was jewish!
NYT front page and all.
Why are you reprinting this article on GAWKER, of all places?
The twitter account in support of Ahmed which, best I can tell, was started approximately four hours or so ago, now has 27,700 + followers.
Idiotic Texas xenophobia aside (I mean, come on, that's just a given), the real question that continues to bug me to no end is how on Earth a 14-year old can be "denoted" with a religion.
"Muslim 14-year Old Arrested!"
This is a real crisis that continues (with virtually unstoppable inertia) to spiral unchecked and out of hand… the assembly-line like inculcation and labeling of youth with the pride and prejudices of their parent's mythology/ideology/religion. It is generally a foregone conclusion that no matter where a child is born they will be saddled with this kind of non-sense without anyone ever asking the "child" how they feel or what they might think about it.
The carrot metaphor is so perfectly right for all the wrong reasons…
In the slightly more perfect world we will never have ALL children would be taught about ALL religions whether "living" or defunct and they would then have the ability to make a decision whether or not they willingly wanted to chose some form of adherence to any certain ideology or religion. (Or some combination thereof.)
I wonder what kinds of stories would be written (and what the reactions would be) if this exact same thing happened to a "brown-skinned" 14-year old who was brought up by parents (even Muslim apostates) who "worship" the Flying Spaghetti Monster or were members (satirical as their "membership" might be) of the "Church of Satan"…
And no one needs to point out the obvious. "Muslims" are a "cause celebre" "en masse" and as such are afforded all measures of outrage (especially when treated unfairly by morons like these idiots in Texas) because of the rampant xenophobic culture of the USA. (A nation we fairly and squarely "settled" with wars of aggression and fervent genocidal actions against the people who had been living here for centuries beforehand, so there!)
Why is that again? Oh yeah, their version of the invisible patriarch in the sky is different than "ours".
Yes indeed, this will all end well…
FreeRadical Dax
I agree with you and am utterly disgusted with what happened.
However, I live in Texas, and I have seen many cases of Texas and Texans insulted with broad brushes, just as you have done.
So, on the one hand, you don't want collectivist notions and biases about religion to distort the picture of this boy, yet you engage in the same kind of thinking with respect to Texans.
Jason Dax
Could you imagine if the media clarified the religion of Christians children in all their stories? "A Christian student is kicked out of school for fighting!"
The English teacher needs to be sent to a workshop on race. And when she finishes THAT she needs to be schooled in simple physics. A breadboard and an LED and a couple of wires do not equal a bomb. The police and the school should offer an apology and I hope the parents sue the school district.
Deborah Joe
We need more kids like him!!!
Dilberts with the Knack. Kids who actually make things, invent stuff. Hopefully become the next Steve Jobs.
Now he is on the watch list, will have a hard time getting into a decent education and a fulfilling job. Becomes frustrated – disappointed in the US – starts hating what it done to hime and becomes a terrorist.
Well done School officials, police and all other idiots.
Aside (on a related TI topic): Don't let anyone tell you that public pressure has no affect:
http://america.aljazeera.com/articles/2015/9/16/court-halts-execution-of-oklahoma-man-who-claims-innocence.html?utm_content=nobylines&utm_campaign=ajam&utm_source=twitter&utm_medium=SocialFlow
Luther Brixton Pedinska
That's great news! No doubt the "law n' order" folks who don't care who gets executed, as long as SOMEONE is executed by the state, will be angry, but that's good news, too.
Joshua H. Pedinska
That's a relief. I hope Glossip is freed and gets some sort of compensation since the evidence seems to show he's innocent. It must be horrible to face being executed for a crime one didn't commit, which is one of the major reasons why the death penalty needs to be abolished period.
Great audio recording of James Blake's police attackers on Democracy Now, attacking another black man and woman:
– "As James Blake Calls for James Frascatore's NYPD Badge, Hear Firsthand Account of Cop's Violent Past"
http://www.democracynow.org/2015/9/16/as_james_blake_calls_for_james?autostart=true
Apparently Poor Officer Frascatore hurt his knuckle punching people:
JUAN GONZÁLEZ: Now, supposedly, the Civilian Complaint Review Board now, under Mayor de Blasio, is being run by a civil rights attorney, and—Richard Emery. And what's been your experience with the CCRB now in recent years?
KENNETH FINKELMAN: Right. Ironically, they're—it's become much worse dealing with them, because they have a new policy of suppressing all information. It used to be that you could get the raw data pursuant to the Freedom of Information law. That raw data was very useful. Now their position is, no raw data should be provided. As a matter of fact, they highlighted, in their yearly report, that they are being much more protective of police officers now. This is their claim to fame at this point.
…AMY GOODMAN: And Frascatore is still—this assailant is still on the force.
KENNETH FINKELMAN: No, they're getting ready to promote him to be a detective. And now the CCRB's only reaction is to suppress all information. I'm wondering if Mayor de Blasio even knows about this. I would like him to invite my client to the Mayor's Office and explain why the new policy is suppression of all information.
I'm the mother of a 14 year old son. What I see in that photo is a terrified and confused child. Handcuffs? He's skinny as a rail and can't be more than 5'5″. And they handcuffed him…
Oh, and the police looking for a broader purpose? Um. It tells time.
K. Smith
It's depressing and disgusting, but yes, the order of the day – the prevailing cultural and political forces in our society (fear and hysteria, nativism, militarism, etc.) – definitely created an environment that fosters this kind of insanity. And it follows that it should not be surprising. Still, the pathology and Orwellian groupthink of the school officials and police involved is just incomprehensible for any thinking person, and for that matter anyone with even the most basic commonsense.
Obviously you have not read the Koran. Read the Koran then get back to us.
Chris Claude
I've read it. It says that you shouldn't attack others except in self-defense. It also states that not only Muslims, but Jews, Christians, and others will go to heaven after death.
Luther Brixton Chris
No, he means hypothetically read it. Don't actually read it.
If you're not crapping your pants in fear, you're uninformed.
Cowardice – that's the new American way!
peace Chris
Quran allows marriage of Muslim men with Christian,Jew women but never to anyone who is not from religion of Holy books.The Quran specifically do not say Christian or Jews will go to heaven rather mentions the fact they are closer to Islam. Islam lays emphasis on fact that even a murderer(evil person or atheist) might eventually go to heaven if God forgives but a person who voilated human rights will never reach heaven unless that human on day of judgement forgives the person who voilated his human rights. God cannot save anyone if a human do injustice to another human.Christians and Jews likely are similar to Islamic concept and let us not forget it was Christian king of Ethiopia who provided refugee and protection to early Muslims when he heard Quranic chapter on Mariyam(Mary).Without that king help, Islam would have been finished.Later, the same king continously protected Muslims when Arab sent diplomats to demand that Muslim traitots be handed over.Its about time Ibrahamic faith stop fighting like kids and try to reach common grounds.
phineas Chris
NO! NO! NO! The OTHER Koran!
Fear has ripped the thinking out of the American law enforcement. There is so much wrong with treating an inventive kid like this. I suppose if he had his ham radio license we would of claimed he was also a spy.
Stop Iphaggotry
Typical American thinking: "It must be a bomb because all bombs I have ever seen, (which would be in Hollywood movies) have clocks on them."
Yes, no chemical reaction could ever occur unless there is a clock attached to it.
The tragedy here is society. The kid makes a clock. He set aside an area in his home for- not a mancave- but a workshop. Like what men used to do in this country- he will grow up as a man because he has some self preservation- he will never need to have an 18 year old girl install a washing machine for him. A flat tire will never be a cause for drama. He is a man who will never be the one seeking hero worship over things he BUYS. He is a man who will never drink a latte. Perhaps if any of these psuedo men that looked at his project had any understanding of basic engineering and manufacturing or had ever changed a tire or a lawnmower blade in their entire latte loving life, they would have known that it was nothing more than a clock. His name just isn't baseball, hotdogs and apple pie sounding enough for the cornfeeders, however, you wouldn't expect anyone named Joshua to be capable of making something.
I wonder if Sam Harris wrote anything about Muslims and clocks.
Joking aside, I think this is the effect of the Sam Harris ilk. Maintaining this perpetual "they're the enemy and will kill you" mindset. The kid is 14 for god's sake. So his teacher saw his NASA shirt and still thought he was dangerous??? It doesn't even make any sense.
White Americans are always trying to do the right thing so do the right thing and appolgize for once in your freaking life , I wonder if an Hispanic would reacted the in that mannor ,white americans are way to timid always fearing for the worst !!!!!!!!!!!!!!! apologize to that boy
"But perhaps the worst of all harms is how endless war degrades the culture and populace of the country that perpetrates it"
Is he talking about America? Social Media, TVs, newspapers, radios …have been poured with support for that kid. Are we still "degraded" even if the majority recognizes what is wrong and take a strong stance against it?
That is why you are called an anti American.
The fact that so many people took a stand against what is clearly wrong is the clear proof that years of wars did not degrade us. Maybe you are unable to notice it from Brazil.
Chris lenk
What about the part of America that arrested him?
Alana lenk
"The fact that so many people took a stand against what is clearly wrong is the clear proof that years of wars did not degrade us"
Lol yeah. This one case out of thousands (in the U.S. alone, never mind the shit we've done to people abroad and in places like Guantanamo that's Americans choose to ignore) really proves that years of our illegal, blood & resource-thirsty wars "did not degrade us." Whatever helps you cope, Lenk.
Alana Alana
*that Americans choose to ignore
Fucking autocorrect.
I was thinking it indicates that we are not all completely degraded, at least not yet. But it also indicates that there are a whole lot of us are. That is the problem.
Just want to give the kid kudos on staying calm and resolute as the police interrogated him. Apparently the police could not get Ahmed to say any words that they the police could claim as implicating himself. All the police could do was to come up with babble at the end. Locally about a year ago, the police accused a guy of robbery based on some fuzzy video. He ending up "confessing" to a series of crimes he did not commit under intense questioning. Luckily, the real criminal struck again and was caught.
I hope Ahmed's family sues the shit out of the school and PD. Also, the pathetic fuckhead Chicago "police" had the gall this morning to say that they're still calling it a "hoax bomb" even though they're dropping the charges. The useless morons think they can save face that way.
notouch torture Alana
You can't sue schools like that. In Australia,USA and throughout western world, whenever a human rights abuse happen that government uses a secret watch list(or no-touch torture list).Once added to this watch-list, the target is forced to leave the country or never dare file any legal case, how? They start electronic torture using EMF waves and techniques known as gang stalking. It is a known practice in Australia to force Muslims to live in exile who speak too much. Don't be suprised, if this family quits USA and decide to live in a third world country.Its part of the "one-eye, all knowing" USA government super-natural powers.A week of electronic torture(no sleep) using EMF is enough to break down any target. Ameirca keep sleeping.Let us not forget that US intelligence closely works with voodoo and psychic research.
coram nobis notouch torture
Oh, they can sue in civil court, and this would be a wonderful fact pattern for a Torts exam. Start with common-law torts like false imprisonment, defamation, intentional infliction of emotional distress (always stick IIED on a complaint), and lots more, then go on to statutes like deprivation of federal civil rights and color-of-authority stuff. Crossover to Remedies issues and talk about not just monetary damages but injunctive orders that would make this district change its methods.
Every person who, under color of any statute, ordinance, regulation, custom, or usage, of any State or Territory or the District of Columbia, subjects, or causes to be subjected, any citizen of the United States or other person within the jurisdiction thereof to the deprivation of any rights, privileges, or immunities secured by the Constitution and laws, shall be liable to the party injured in an action at law, suit in equity, or other proper proceeding for redress … — 18 US Code section 1983
coram nobis coram nobis
erratum: 42 U.S.C. 1983. Damn cut-and-paste.
Addendum to coram nobis's points:
Ahmed Mohamed [email protected] 3h3 hours ago
Going to meet my lawyer.
That would be the lawyer they denied him before questioning him, also sans parental input.
This school's administrators are in a shitpile that shows no signs of receding anytime soon.
And this is how you grow terrorists. By vilainizing impressionable young kids who instead of being encouraged to excel at things like math, engineering and computer science and one day become a great employee to a tech company or a professor etc. might ink: "Damn you USA!" or "Maybe there is truth in Muslim extremist propaganda". #FFS
coram nobis Colin
Indeed, and everybody might look up Nikolai Ivanovich Kibalchich as one such example. He was a 19th Century scientist of real genius in the field of rocketry and chemistry, but got in trouble with the Tsarist authorities over giving someone a banned book, and his career took a different path …
This is just the tip of the iceberg, Here's another "device" that Texas school kids could leave under cars and in washrooms…after proudly showing it to their teachers. But what's the broader explanation????
How to Make a Potato Clock
Before cooking up those delicious potatoes tonight, how about using them to learn a bit about the awesomeness of chemical reactions? You can actually build a clock that runs purely on potatoes. Give it a go.
http://www.wikihow.com/Make-a-Potato-Clock
Police interogator – Why did you make it look like Bin Laden?
Student – It's a potato.
Police interogator – "But why didn't you use a vegetable that was less shaped like something that could be mistaken for Bin Laden's head? What if it was left under a car and someone mistook it for a terrorist?
Student – You're punking me right?
coram nobis JLocke
A clever point. And uncomfortably plausible.
First clocks then encryption
I love how the people most likely to confuse real life with the movies are all blatant movie villains.
Now he's on The Watchlist, forever. Life over at 14.
coram nobis Sojourner Truth
He still has a three-day suspension, and that's in his school record for good, no doubt. Such notations have a way of not being the only one, only the first.
Mike Sulzer coram nobis
Exactly. What possible basis for a three day suspension is there? All he did was bring a home made clock to school. What he deserves is a three day apology.
Louise Cypher Sojourner Truth
One can only hope.
FreeRadical
Daniel Cummings, Principal
Patrick Smith, Assistant Principal
Discipline M-N
Jose L. Parra, Ed.D.
Torturestan FreeRadical
coram nobis FreeRadical
Footnote: this isn't some rural county, but in the middle of the Dallas metroplex.
FreeRadical coram nobis
True. I live in the suburbs of another big Texas city, and I've never seen anything approaching this level of unthinking hysteria.
Pedinska FreeRadical
Thanks for posting that information. My email:
Dear Principal Cummings and Associate Principal Thomas,
As a scientist with a long career in the field of HIV research I was stunned to read the following article regarding your school's reaction to a young man engaging his own creativity:
It pains me to realize that you, as administrators, were unable to manage this incident without engaging in the public handcuffing and removal of a student innocent of everything save the possession of a keen intelligence, brown skin and a suspect name.
I found your letter to parents, doubling down on the authoritarianism and unwarranted suspicion-mongering particularly egregious. Are homemade clocks on the prohibited list? Or just those brought to school by Muslim students?
You have literally made a joke of your own posted Mission statement to,
"meet the needs of culturally diverse students who will be equipped to become productive citizens and critical thinkers in a global society."
Let me point out that none of you met your culturally diverse student's needs by failing to object when a police officer – brought in by you to question him – stated immediately on first sight, "Yup. That's who I thought it was." That kind of prejudicial statement should have been immediately challenged by any administrator intent on meeting the needs of his students, irrespective of their culture. If you intend to supply society with critical thinkers, then I suggest you must first be inclined to actively engage in and practice it yourselves.
I really can do no better in expressing my dismay with your actions than repost here the sentiments of a commenter under the above-linked article who wrote:
They say there is a war on science in this county, and this might be evidence of how terrified of science we've become. Bad enough when Science is practiced by white men in institutions of higher learning and scientific institutes, but Science practiced by brown people? The horrors one can imagine.
This young man's experience just pisses me off into incoherence. As Glenn writes, it's not that this is the most egregious example of anti-Muslim bigotry (if not some variant of an outright virulent racism), but as a former teacher cognizant of how insular the STEM world is, and can be, it just makes me want to yell, What the hell were you thinking!!!
Oh, he couldn't give a precise explanation of what his clock would be used for? Goddammit; basic research can be like that. Innovation can be like that. Engineering can be like that. Applied research can be like that. Exploration for the joy of it can be like that. Being a damned kid can be like that! WTF
We have become such a weeine, sniveling, squeamish, piss-in-our-pants country. Shame on every single individual who was involved in Ahmed Mohamed's interrupted life. Shame on them! Shame on a country that cannot imagine the contributions of a divergent group. Shame on a country that cannot imagine the advances that diversity can bring. Shame on fucking Texas the epicenter of backward, retrograde, shriveled public school education…. and, a printer of many high school text books.
I hope you are able to step back, take a deep breath, and re-evaluate your treatment of this extraordinarily talented young man. It is your duty and, I would hope, your goal as educators and administrators to nurture and support the kind of talent this young man was eager to share with you and his fellow students. It's a damn shame that the treatment he has suffered under your kind ministrations is more likely to cause him to think twice in the future before engaging in the sorts of activities you claim to exist to encourage.
Kick ass letter, Pedinska.
Welp. Got an automated "out-of-office" message from the Superintendent.
Thank you for your e-mail.
I will be away from the office and will have limited e-mail access.
I will return to the office on Thursday, September 17th.
Should you need immediate assistance, please contact Karen Edwards at
See no reason to include the assistant's phone no. Not really her problem. Nothing yet from the other two.
Very nicely done. As JLocke notes: kick-ass letter, indeed.
A. Locasio Pedinska
That's the best response I've seen. I hope you send the letter to them as well as posting it here.
Isaiah Earhart FreeRadical
Thank you FreeRadical.
Here is a copy of the email I sent to the principal:
Mr. Cummings,
I am a father of a kid who just enrolled in his first year in one of the finest tech schools in the world. Thank god he did not have to endure the stupidity of your leadership.
Get Ahmed back in class, apologize, and expunge the districts stupidity from his record.
Isaiah Earhart
Pedinska Isaiah Earhart
I was too pissed to be succinct. :-)
"I was too pissed to be succinct. "
I have been venting all morning, too. When I was 14, I built an electronic circuit and stuffed it into a Poptart box. I poked a hole in the top for the photocell I used as a switch on an alarm circuit. When the box was placed into a drawer and the drawer was closed the thing was silent. Open that drawer with the lights on and it wailed away. My Chem teacher thought it was great to share with the class. That was 1977 and I still remember the satisfaction I felt over the project.
That is why I am as pissed as you that such a moment was stolen and destroyed by the adults. I sincerely hope that this young man will receive offers, such as the JPL invite, he might not have received otherwise. I hope he sues and is compensated with the resource to attend a top-tier school.
feline16 Isaiah Earhart
Isaiah –
Didn't really say it, but I really liked your letter as well. The reference to your son is so on target.
feline16 FreeRadical
Thank you so much for this info. I e-mailed those three posthaste.
My letter isn't as kick-ass as Pedinska's – closer to Isiash Earhart's but since we've been posting them:
"Dear Irving School Administrators:
You and the Irving police should be ASHAMED of your treatment of the wonderful student who built the homemade clock. Instead of rewarding his ingenuity and curiosity, you have punished him for NO reason.
He is t he kind of student we need more of. He should be given a formal and public apology – at the VERY LEAST.
There appears to be more to this story than is being focused on here. During the boys interview, he reveals that he placed the digital display and circuit board in a metal box and then wrapped a cable around the box as opposed to locking it because he believed that a locked box would induce "greater suspicion." Thus, it seems that even before bringing the "homemade clock" to school, the young inventor understood how his "invention" might be received by school authorities. I believe that the precocious lad understood that timed improvised explosive devices are very similarly constructed.
coram nobis Karl
Hyperlink?
Karl coram nobis
The Dallas News interview is part of the article… Is this what you are asking for?
From the interview: "I didn't want to lock it so it would seem like a threat, so I used a simple cable." His little device was something with wires stuck to components, so it needed a case of some sort. He was trying to avoid suspicion, just wanted to engage in a bit of Show & Tell, but suspicion, these days, is unavoidable, especially if the cops go "that's who I thought it was".
Near as I read your first comment, it can be read as "he was being devious". This is one way to start an internet rumor.
@coram nobis
If I meant to say that the young lad was being devious, then I would have used the word "devious." The assumption that the precocious lad was engaging in a bit of show&tell doesn't ring true to me. Not only did he not claim that, but an unlocked box alone would have effectively concealed that which was inside. It is more reasonable to conclude that this very intelligent boy was aware that, by taking the overt measure of securing the box with a cable, he would naturally garner heightened suspicion from school authorities. Not actually locking the box however allowed him to claim that he was not attempting hide anything. Yet, that does not ring true as well; absent the cable, there would have been less suspicion as there would have been no discernible way to determine if the closed box was locked or not simply by looking at it.
Mike Sulzer karl
If I meant to say that the young lad was being devious, then I would have used the word "devious."
Not actually locking the box however allowed him to claim that he was not attempting hide anything.
Now Mr Marx, I think the second sentence (and what follows) shows that you do mean to say that he was a being devious, despite what you say in the first.
@Mike Sulzer
The young man was attempting to create the false perception that there was something to hide when there wasn't. In fact, he was attempting to hide "no thing" for the purpose of creating that false impression. If you want to define that as devious then it is okay by me.
Is it OK if Coram does, too?
In any case, I do not think your description of his motivations is valid. Are you sure you know how 14 year olds think?
@Mike Saltzer
OK Mike, let's beat this insignificant, dead horse together:
Devious (def): showing a skillful use of underhanded tactics to achieve goals
Was the young lad skillful in applying underhanded tactics to get that which he intended (Positive affirmation)? I believe not.
However, if you believe that the lad used underhanded tactics to skillfully achieve that which he intended, then please feel free to characterize his actions as devious; If you need Coram to hold your hand while doing it, then go for it.
phineas karl
Perhaps he was simply trying to insure the box wouldn't accidentally open and ruin his clock. From the now famous picture, it doesn't look like anything is really secured to the box except the display.
But, hey, devious is as devious does, right?
MarkH karl
"The assumption that the precocious lad was engaging in a bit of show&tell doesn't ring true to me."
Maybe not to YOU, but it is fact. The news accounts clearly state that he had SHOWN his creation to another teacher and TOLD that teacher about it, before his English teacher's grotesque overreaction.
karl MarkH
Show and tell (def): a teaching method, used especially in teaching young children, in which students are encouraged to bring items they have selected to class and describe them to their classmates.
The fact that he showed his creation to a teacher (or two) and told that teacher about it is plainly evident and not in dispute. Even if used informally, the term "show and tell" connotes a certain degree of innocence that I believe is ill applied to this lad's actions.
-Mona- Karl
Karl, it appears Ahmed is talking about what he did after his first teacher
told him it looked like a bomb. Not how he initially designed it or that he
intended to flirt with looking like a bomb. Is anyone in the media interpreting it as you are?
told him it looked like a bomb. "
No, it does not!
Then who else interpreted it as you do?
Sorry, I am not going to play this game with you.
Torturestan Karl
It was the last day of school in 1978. By chance I was the first person to enter my Texas high school chemistry class, and a batch of what looked like half a dozen sticks of dynamite, bundled together with wire and topped off with a small alarm clock, was on one of the desks. It looked like a cartoon version of a bomb, and I figured it was a joke — flares disguised as a bomb to scare a disliked teacher.. and no doubt, some bullies. (I know this because the boy who 'planted the bomb' was severely bullied for many years. And I know that because he lived across the street from me for nine years.)
Unwisely, I moved to the very back of the classroom, a room full of bunsen burners, instead of leaving the building.
When our teacher entered the room I brought the bundle of flares to his attention and he froze, then rushed to grab it and ran out of the building to toss it in a trash can. He was pretty shaken, but carried on with his work. After a few minutes, S. stuck his head in the door and said "Did I forget something?", with a strange smile. In seconds Mr. C. had S. pinned up against the wall outside the class room, screaming "If you ever do that again I will kill you!"
That was it. S. left — he was a graduating senior, and Mr. C. went back to work. No police, no Principal, no hysteria. Nothing. The country did not need to be saved by the brave totalitarian Stasi thugs infesting the US today.
The point of this story is that Americans need to update the lyrics to the last few bars of the "Star Spangled Banner" to keep up with the times.
It still doesn't rise to the level of probable cause, esp. once these teachers and the principal, presumably having had an education, had looked into the box. As for the kid's explanation in the interview, albeit more coherent then most kids' excuses might be, is still the kind of goofy stuff some geeky kid that age might say.
All I see is wires and lights in a box, if I may borrow from Edward R. Murrow, and something that looked like a lunchbox at that. It seems that there were no grownups in that school that day. I see little more to this story than hysteria.
Actually, the video shows the lad holding a circuit board which presumably matched the timing circuit of the video display. Such circuits are identical to those used in IEDs. However, I agree with your summation that official hysteria seems to have been afoot that day. Personally, I would have sized the situation up as the mischievous act of a precocious, attention starved kid. Certainly, the engineering instructor would have been able to easily recognize the benign nature of the circuit and digital display. Yet, it appears that he chose to take it to the next level nevertheless.
Such circuits are identical to those used in IEDs. shown on the TV shows …
Karl, watch NCIS much?
Think much?
Kitt karl
I would have sized the situation up as the mischievous act of a precocious, attention starved kid.
Holy pomposity! I haven't seen a more laughable but chillingly creepy case of diagnosis from afar since Bill Frist diagnosed Terry Schiavo.
Karl Kitt
@kitt
Surprise, surprise… the Glennbot flatlander disagrees with the results derived from inductive reasoning.
You're an embarrassment to yourself. It's bad enough that you're claiming that your broken pin ball machine of rambling "reasoning" in your comment is deductive — which would be defined as, "seek to supply strong evidence for (not absolute proof of) the truth of the conclusion," but to tag on your boorish "Glennbot flatlander," pretending that means anything except for defining you as "an attention starved" blowhard, brings so much embarrassment to you that it's almost painfu to watch it unfold.
"…but to tag on your boorish "Glennbot flatlander," pretending that means anything except for defining you as "an attention starved" blowhard…"
Yet, it is you who sought me out to once again give free reign to your obsessive compulsive hostility. (There, there now. Everything is going to be all right! Not to fret.)
Since I'm not the boorish blowhard and the embarrassment to oneself who types psychoanalytic babble from afar about a teenager's state of mind, I'm not who is concerned about 'everything being all right'.
Lol!!! I do so enjoy your hysterical antics.
"Such circuits are identical to those used in IEDs."
They are also used in the digital clock on your night table. Anyone with half a brain can tel there was no explosive material in that case and a clock/timer in itself does not constitute a bomb or an attempt to make a bomb or bomb parts.
It's the lengths you people go through to justify your own prejudice and stupidity that is the danger, not a 14 yr old with a 555 timer chip and a LED display board in a box.
karl phineas
@ Phineas
I have already agreed that the school teachers and administrators were hysterical in there response.
It sounds like you have a bit of electronic training, as do I. What may be obvious to your trained eye is not the issue. It is my understanding that a beeping tone coming from a closed box in the possession of Ahmed Mohamed during class first alerted the teacher who sounded the initial alarm. The level of her response might be arguably justified, but it seems that things spun quickly out of control at the administrative level.
administrators were hysterical
I see that you are very fond of using that word. Perhaps you like to believe that using that word to describe others serves to highlight your passive aggressive namby pamby school marm style of voice.
Oh, Baby! Spank me, spank me good!!
Agreed. Hysteria ruled the day.
What's the real issue, in the end?
It's the attempt to justify hysteria in a way that makes the knowledgeable seem marginal, instead of the other way around.
it is akin to someone whose car backfires being charged with terrorism because some people thought it was gunfire. And then being declared a "genius" because he couldn't time his engine correctly.
That this is occurring has everything to do with young Ahmed Mohammed's ethnicity and not any facts of the situation. Regardless of what side you are on.
He's a "terrorist" because a simple digital clock he built from off-the-shelf components was not understood by those who can't understand.
And the clock was simple, not some profound piece of electronics it has been purported to be – even for a 14 yr old in 2015. His "ability" is mundane, not some threat, or demonstration of genius, even for a 14 yr old. All the necessary parts could be order on EBay for probably $40 and put together by anyone that could insert connector A into socket B.
Yeah, I have "a bit of electronic training" A BS in electrical engineering. His "feat" would be profound when I was his age, merely because the components were just being developed by guys with engineering degrees 40 yrs ago.
Now, it's as if I wired together a photocell and a light bulb in 1974, when I was his age. Crowing about that would have got me laughed at.
Things spun out of hand because instead of getting a little pat on the back and told not to disrupt class with a "beeper:" again, some "Lilliputian-brained" English teacher freaked about a make-shift clock in the hands of a "terrorist"
And now a kid with a marginal accomplishment as an electrical tech (for 2015) is going to be rolling in dough and teaching at MIT when he is 20.
"Good Grief" as Linus Van Pelt would exclaim.
Do you believe that the lad understood that his clock-in-a-box project was mundane? If so, then what would have been his motivation for bringing it in to school? What do you make of him talking about the amount of "suspicion" his clock would arouse if he carried into school in a locked box?
Fran Macadam
The irony and hypocrisy over fatuous claims of "foreign law" is particularly acute, since our country claims its own laws are extraterritorial, applying to everyone worldwide.
Two points to add:
1. It may not just be limited to the kids who are actually Muslim. Americans seem unable to distinguish between any South Asian/Middle Eastern religions or ethnicities, many of whom do turn up in firms like Intel, so this kid might still have ended up in bracelets if his name had been Pandit or Singh.
2. This, from the Guardian, worth highlighting.
In a letter sent out by Dan Cummings, head of MacArthur High School, the principal told parents that "Irving Police Department responded to a suspicious-looking item on campus yesterday. We are pleased to report that after the police department's assessment, the item discovered at school did not pose a threat to your child's safety."
Cummings recommended parents "talk with your child about the Student Code of Conduct and specifically not bringing items to school that are prohibited. Also, this is a good time to remind your child how important it is to immediately report any suspicious items and/or suspicious behavior they observe to any school employee so we can address it right away. We will always take necessary precautions to protect our students."
So, the next time someone says, "Teacher! He's looking at me funny!" …
http://www.theguardian.com/technology/2015/sep/16/sudanse-american-boy-handcuffed-homemade-clock-school
Daniel coram nobis
This isn't the first time in the last few years I have heard about an incident like this, and it isn't just people with Muslim names that this is happening to. The see-something-say-something campaign has teachers looking for anything with dangling wires and reporting it to police, just to be safe. The police arrest the individual, and call in the counter-terrorism people, just to be safe. The DA files preliminary charges, just in case there is more to the story. The individual is detained, for his own safety and the safety of the community. The school suspends the individual from classes, just to be on the safe side. They send out a letter warning people about a potential bomb-looking thing and brag about containing it, just to be safe and get ahead of any rumors. At no point during any of this process does anyone seriously believe there is a credible threat, but you don't get brownie points for reacting in a reasonable way. Once the police are called, it's a domino-effect, with one zero-tolerance maximum reaction triggering another, until you get to the judge/grand jury, who says "so what you're telling me is he brought a digital clock to school". Then, screeching prosecution halt, newspaper story, kid has to be relocated to another school/town, and school officials are congratulated for their tough stance on school safety.
Public schools today more closely resemble prisons today than educational organizations.
US News and World Report needs to check the criteria for their Best High Schools category. :-s
http://www.irvingisd.net/domain/205
And this is particularly rich (emphasis mine):
MacArthur HS Mission
Our mission at MacArthur High School is to meet the needs of culturally diverse students who will be equipped to become productive citizens and critical thinkers in a global society. We will accomplish this by providing a safe and positive learning environment that promotes school-wide success. We are committed to achieving state and national standards by incorporating data-driven instruction and collaboration in the classroom.
meet the needs of culturally diverse students
We have Baptists, Methodists, and Lutherans. We play both kinds of music, too; Country and Western.
We are critical of all thinking people, not just the ones that don't look quite like us.
a safe and positive learning environment
The police are quickly summoned anytime we don't understand something, even if it's obvious to an adult, because we know how ISIS recruits child soldiers and adults may not actually recognize what any potential child soldier would.
committed to achieving state and national standards by incorporating data-driven instruction and collaboration
We take data on terrorists and with close police supervision, we create a secret list. Then we use that list, secretly of course, to protect the innocent. Your child is safe with us.
Yes, it does leave itself open to multiple interpretations.
As you'll see in my letter to them above, I take them to task on it just a little bit. If I have misinterpreted, they now have my email addie and can respond to correct the error of my ways too. ;-}
phineas Pedinska
Careful, they may misidentify that email as a bomb.
From the comment thread of the Dallas Morning News, a defense of the school and police:
It appears that the kid was being deliberately provocative. If he's smart enough to build that, he must be aware that his heritage will raise the alert with others.
The left will never be satisfied with the way this situation was handled. If the administration had done nothing, and there had been a problem, they would have been the first ones to criticize
And then there was Star Simpson…. MIT student arrested for wearing LED jewelry at an airport.
https://boingboing.net/2007/09/21/mit-student-arrested.html
Mike Sulzer Bill Owen
Yes, Bill, I remember that incident. I suppose that they were little exploding LED bombs.
patrick mcneal
What is the legality of questioning a minor. It seems that five police officers interrogating a 14 year is a situation ripe for coercion.
"Bomb Hoax" what a load of BS. I have run into a similar circumstance where the police made a silly, dumb mistake but had gone to all this trouble so the couldn't just apologize and let me go. To save face and not be totally humiliated they ended fining me for something akin to jaywalking. The upshot is us regular folk are not allowed to question the validity of actions of those with power. They will always find some thing you did wrong.
A tweet quoted on the Guardian story:
If any of our early geek experiments had gotten the most terrifying response possible from teachers & police, would we have kept doing it?
Ahmed has received a three-day suspension from class. According to the Dallas Morning News, he has vowed never to take an invention to school again.
"Degrades the culture", Glenn? Yes, we're probably not going to have as much innovation as we used to, although it seems the defense and security industries are thriving.
"[Ahmed] showed it to his engineering teacher first thing Monday morning and didn't get quite the reaction he'd hoped for.
"He was like, 'That's really nice,'" Ahmed said. "'I would advise you not to show any other teachers.'"
This teacher had an obligation to support that student, especially since the teacher recognized that given the Islamophobic environment, showing the clock would more than likely trigger the result that it did.
Assuming the teacher was qualified in engineering, the teacher's support could have been easily been accomplished by showing the clock to the principal of the school and assuring them that it was harmless in the first place.
coram nobis Sillyputty
He would have had no idea that it would have escalated this fast. From the Guardian story:
in the hope of impressing teachers and fellow students in his first few weeks at MacArthur High School. But when he showed it to an English teacher after it beeped during her lesson, she told him it looked like a bomb.
Later in the day, the school's principal and a police officer came to pull him out of class, and again the principal told Ahmed that "it looks like a movie bomb to me".
It just takes one overeager informant, and a principal who has seen too much Hollywood.
By the way, the kid still has a three-day suspension. That, these days, has a way of becoming a permanent record, and making him more likely to attract further disciplinary or police attention later.
Sillyputty coram nobis
By the way, the kid still has a three-day suspension.
Speaking of consequences, just what exactly are the rights of any student in Texas public schools, specifically? Do they have the right to not speak until their parents have been notified? Does the police have the right to interrogate children if their parents have been not been notified?
It sounds like this child wasn't allowed to speak with his parents until after he was released from custody – and that seems completely fucked up.
I'm not sure about the situation in Texas. Other states, e.g., California, have tried to provide parents the opportunity to be present if a student is interrogated.
http://www.criminaldefenselawyer.com/resources/criminal-defense/felony-offense/can-cops-question-my-child-about-a-crime
It also depends on whether the kid is in "custody" — this boy was in handcuffs — and whether he has the presence of mind to ask for his parents or a lawyer and not simply answer questions. Either way, anything he says can be used against him later. Certainly if you yank a 14-year-old boy out of school, in handcuffs, and question him in isolation he may babble anything, and the courts probably won't exclude it later. Certainly a Texas court probably wouldn't.
Thank for that link. This seems an area that needs attention re: protecting minors civil rights to a degree that is more appropriate for their age. Too many adults fail to understand their rights and give them up unwittingly already – minors need more protection authoritarian acts, not less.
The kid is a maker, a tinkerer, in the grand American tradition. He doesn't need a "broader explanation".
Just watch "The Ox-Bow Incident". Classic shoot first, ask questions mentality of the Old West (still lives on today, especially in that would be nation state called Texas).
coram nobis Steve
"The Crucible" — the play or the film — might also be apropos.
Brilliantly written Glenn. Keep it up. this is the sort of conversation the People of the US need more than anything else.
Torturestan
Be afraid, Texas. It's what you do best.
patrick mcneal Torturestan
There is a lot amiss in Texas but Texas also has strong laws against public surveillance. Police aren't allowed to drive around recording license plates.
Cities and towns all across the state citizens are getting traffic cameras removed. And people are fighting the state to control or stop fracking and to stop the natural gas business from wasting fresh water to frack. This against the huge Goliath in the state the oil and gas industry.
The reason Texas is the way it is, is because the republican candidates for state government routinely out spend the democrats 5-1 going up to 20-1 on elections. This allowed the republicans to win a majority in the state house and carve up naturally democratic congressional districts and now that the Supreme court has released the south from the control of the voting rights (which was signed into law by a Texan) we get Ted Cruz and Ken Paxton which don't represent us regular texans as much as they represent the very wealthy Texans that pay for their election campaigns
Pedinska patrick mcneal
The shenanigans you note re: redistricting and political spending have long been rampant in Ohio as well. Would that we had your push back against public surveillance and fracking. Instead, presidential aspirant John Kasich has made it his business (and the state's too) to suck up and store as much of Pennsylvania's fracking wastewater as possible while his Atty General and perpetual asswipe, Mike DeWine, never met a surveillance device he didn't just love to pieces.
There is also the fact that your state has produced people I greatly admire such as the late, great Molly Ivins. No place or group is uniform in either sainthood or perfidy, but it can certainly be challenging to avoid dwelling on the negatives. As an Ohioan I know this firsthand. :-s
Houston's zoo is told it cannot ban people from carrying guns. http://tinyurl.com/qevzubf
Question: what would the police do if a gun-carrying Muslim man was spotted in the Houston zoo?
JC KD
What if he was a watch-carrying Muslim?
He couldn't answer the broader question of what a clock is used for? Maybe he was too surprised by adults that don't know what a clock is for?
Lina Katie
What is use of yours by the way. Did anyone asked you ? What is used of a oxygen. Everyone knows it. Onlu mentally retarded need to know or answer such stupid questions. People build cars. Noone asked them why you build it instead of buying from any brand. Because they understood it's hobby. And for your kind info he told that it's his hobby to make science project. Mental retarded kate
nuf said Katie
Good point. I can see a young version of myself looking back with bewilderment, too, at the dumbest question one could be asked. This has got to be a trick question, right?
coram nobis Katie
Ah, but to make an electronic clock, or any electronic device, from scratch?
I knew one kid in middle school who made a binary computer from plywood, electric switches and little lights. Of course, in that time it won the district science fair. Today, it would have gotten him arrested.
I see. Apparently some of these people think it is the circuit board that explodes. Too much TV.
I'll bet the kid even used both blue and red wires, too.
-Mona- nuf said
But there were no yellow wires. On TeeVeee there's always also yellow wires, so Ahmed didn't even try that hard.
We may sugar coat it, but knowledge in the hands of the citizenry is dangerous. I find it incredible that American schools are teaching students to make actual electronic devices. But I suppose this follows directly from the primary mistake, which is teaching students to read. Once that happens, there is nothing to prevent them from radicalizing themselves by consuming all sorts of written material that has not been approved for US citizens. I don't blame poor Ahmed at all – it is the school system which should be held accountable for this fiasco.
Mike Sulzer Benito Mussolini
Exactly; schools should concentrate on teaching the Christian religion as God intended.
suave donger Mike Sulzer
Digging the snark, Sulz!!
Benito Mussolini Mike Sulzer
I don't trust public schools to teach religion – that's what Sunday schools are for. As long as public schools avoid teaching science or history, they've done their job as far as I'm concerned.
coram nobis Benito Mussolini
Duce, they obviously didn't start with the core curriculum: credere, obbedire, combattiere. Once the youth have absorbed that, they're less likely to engage in spontaneous mischief like this.
Benito Mussolini coram nobis
An iPhone can read aloud – once it verifies the document is appropriate. So old fashioned reading is no more necessary than learning Latin. But your basic point that military drills are all the learning that's needed is true, at least outside of elite academic institutions.
SaytheNames
Thoughtful piece and of course this a ridiculous and dangerous event. But I have to suggest that "Your country ends up killing huge numbers of innocent people all over the world" is in fact "the worst of all harms" because those people are, you know, dead. "[E]ndless war degrades the culture and populace of the country that perpetrates it" comes in second. In effect what you've said above is that the living are the real victims here. Sorry, this is something I see implied frequently and it bothers me. I'm sure most, including yourself, don't consciously mean it.
Glenn Greenwald SaytheNames
It's a fair point you've raised, but ultimately mostly semantics, since the reason sustained degradation of a populace is such a big harm is precisely because, by turning them into violence-inured sociopaths or even hate-mongering, bloodthirsty savages, it leads to far more violence, aggression and deaths.
coram nobis Glenn Greenwald
Degrading the populace and culture still counts as ominous, Glenn. We're generating a population that is at once ignorant, paranoid and hostile, and thus indeed are more likely to support future aggression abroad and more extremism domestically. Meantime, innovators like this kid will be less likely to come up with anything positive. And by the way, Glenn: this kid still has a three-day suspension. Suspensions have a way, nowadays, of becoming a permanent part of kids' records, which makes this kid more likely to be subject to future disciplinary or police actions, and less likely to be admitted to university.
You know, if the real Jerry Seinfeld brought a clock to school, he wouldn't be arrested. I think people would say, hey, Jerry, didn't you finish high school yet? But I'm no Sam Harris.
Bill O'Reilly, Glenn Beck, Sean Hannity. These propagandists have filled vulnerable minds with hate.
https://twitter.com/IStandWithAhmed
Reportedly, this account was set up by the family for people to follow for updates. I have not verified that claim.
Thanks for that. Followed.
Nice to know that someone is planning on introducing the poor schoolmarms of Texas, who have forgotten what clocks look like, to the gentle charms of social media. ;-}
nuf said TallyHoGazehound
Some support and encouragement. I hope the kid makes it to JPL.
Ahmed, I'd be happy to show you how we drive the Opportunity rover. Come visit us at JPL any time. #IStandWithAhmed https://t.co/VtesUugxj3
— Mike Seibert (@mikeseibert) September 16, 2015
Brought my clock to work today. #IStandWithAhmed #Solidarity pic.twitter.com/h4Jr0siF1A
— Simran Jeet Singh (@SimranColumbia) September 16, 2015
I can't imagine if [I'd] be working @nasa today if anything like this had ever happened to me. http://t.co/OajWwPXchB #IStandWithAhmed
— Bobak Ferdowsi (@tweetsoutloud) September 16, 2015
Hey Ahmed, give me a call in a couple years. We could always use smart, curious & creative people. https://t.co/02a4feMrk5
How many professional scientists & engineers are thinking this a.m., "…I have no idea how to design and build a clock." ? #IStandWithAhmed
— Molly Peeples (@astronomolly) September 16, 2015
#IStandWithAhmed because I'm a physicist at MIT, and he's the kind of student we dream of having!
— Claire Lecaron (@Clairouux) September 16, 2015
I don't have a Twitter account, but may I suggest we start mailing Ahmed's school home-made clocks?
Two things about this are especially funny. The first is Police and school officials questioning the boy as to the purpose of the clock. I would suggest that anyone who doesn't already know the purpose of clocks, probably is lacking other common knowledge and should not be put in charge of the education or the protection of children.
And secondly, after having realized what they had done, the school sent out a letter to parents of the school, part of which reads as follows:
"I recommend using this opportunity to talk with your child about the Student Code of Conduct and specifically not bringing items to school that are prohibited. Also, this is a good time to remind your child how important it is to immediately report any suspicious items and/or suspicious behavior they observe to any school employee so we can address it right away. We will always take necessary precautions to protect our students"
http://www.scribd.com/doc/281348805/parentletter-suspiciouslookingitematmacarthur
Again, it stretches credulity that rather than apologize, they are implying…what? That clocks are suspicious? Clocks are prohibited?
It comes on the heels of this:
"Last week, 16-year-old Florida native Kiera Wilmot was arrested for exploding the cap off a plastic water bottle as part of an apparent extra-curricular science experiment. If charged with a felony as an adult, she could now face up to five years in prison for "discharging a weapon or firearms" on school grounds. But Wilmot family friend Roderic Brame told msnbc his "gut feeling" is that "cooler heads will prevail."
…"Her expulsion and arrest sends a very clear and striking message to students, especially urban students of color," wrote biologist Danielle Lee for Scientific American. "Don't try this at home, or school or anywhere. Science exploration is not for you!" Shortly after she wrote about the story, various other scientists took to Twitter with stories of the explosions they had caused during their own experimentation.
"We did much worse things [than Wilmot] when I was in school," said Brame. "Even in college, we made things that ignited and exploded in chemistry labs…We didn't get in trouble for that." He expressed hope that Wilmot would also evade excessive punishment for her experimentation."
http://www.msnbc.com/all-in/just-let-kid-get-with-her-life-sci
Let's see what the white kids are up to:
Schoolboy, 13, creates nuclear fusion in Penwortham
A 13-year-old Lancashire schoolboy has become one of the youngest people in the world to carry out nuclear fusion.
The last record holder was US student Taylor Wilson, who was 14 when he created nuclear fusion in 2008.
http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-england-lancashire-26450512
In contrast to the failure of the authorities, this WP writer has discovered that there is indeed a way to differentiate science projects from bombs:
Then there's the "bomb" itself, which Ahmed Mohamed says a police officer told him "looks like a movie bomb to me" — because, presumably, it had a circuit board and some wires. The differentiating factor for a bomb versus another electronic device, incidentally, is that it includes some sort of explosive.
https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/the-fix/wp/2015/09/16/why-ahmed-mohamed-should-be-a-topic-at-wednesdays-gop-debate/
The last line from Dallas Morning News:
He's vowed never to take an invention to school again.
Religion 1, Science zero.
eaglepowers nuf said
Which religion would that be?
nuf said eaglepowers
All of them. Science and religion don't mix by definition. Judging by the humility on display I'll take a stab and say the powers that be in Irving follow some version of Christianity …
Again, it stretches credulity that rather than apologize, they are implying…what?
Schools, like so many other institutions in our society, have become bastions of the imposition of and training for authoritarian principles. And, like so many of their societal compatriots, when shown the (ahem) error(s), and/or garbage output, that directly issues from their mandates and strictures immediately double down in hopes that no one will notice that they are slipping whilst knee deep in shit of their own making.
In service to that sort of behavior, they will do anything, including heaping further suspicion and scorn on a bright young student who did nothing more than be gifted with the wrong skin tone and name at birth to deserve it. They are tiny titans marinating in the glory of their small fiefdoms and they're not going to let something like a major sighting of their tattered Slip of Ignorance, dipping briefly but tellingly from below their homespun Skirt of Pomposity, interfere with the fevered imaginings they enjoy and indulge in so completely.
A reminder to readers: Texas is the state that is now trying very hard to whitewash history in the textbooks of this country.
"We are fighting for our children's education and our nation's future," Dunbar said. "In Texas we have certain statutory obligations to promote patriotism and to promote the free enterprise system. There seems to have been a move away from a patriotic ideology. There seems to be a denial that this was a nation founded under God. We had to go back and make some corrections."
Those corrections have prompted a blizzard of accusations of rewriting history and indoctrinating children by promoting rightwing views on religion, economics and guns while diminishing the science of evolution, the civil rights movement and the horrors of slavery.
Why is it important what Texas chooses to put in its textbooks?
[…] Texas buys millions of text books every year, giving it considerable sway over what publishers print. By some estimates, all but a handful of American states rely on text books written to meet the Texas curriculum.
http://www.theguardian.com/world/2010/may/16/texas-schools-rewrites-us-history
p.s. Thanks for those additional links reinforcing the difference in how these principals are applied.
"Principles". Got caught up in the subject matter….. ;-}
The first is Police and school officials questioning the boy as to the purpose of the clock. I would suggest that anyone who doesn't already know the purpose of clocks, probably is lacking other common knowledge and should not be put in charge of the education or the protection of children.
That had me scratching my head too. I suppose in an era where most people rely on their cell phones to tell them the time and wristwatches have all but become nonfunctional jewelry these folks could be excused for forgetting the history of timepieces. After all, as I noted below, they ARE pretty hellbent on determinedly warping history so perhaps this bit of it was an inadvertent victim. But still….one wonders how long it will take them to adjust to the advent of such things as Apple watches. :-s
"That had me scratching my head too."
If I could be serious for a moment, American police and school officials (obviously) know what a clock is. But for their statements to make…ANY…sense, we'd have to accept that in their minds, the five police officers that Ahmed's school brought in to interrogate and arrest him, had some rational basis for suspecting that the clock was a bomb. In this narrative, I don't see where, at any point, there was any reasonable basis for suspecting that the clock was anything other than what it was presented as. And to even get that far, for the school to bring in the police to begin with, we must accept that the teachers would have some reasonable basis for disbelieving what he was telling them.
But the police confirm that Ahmed never claimed that the clock was anything other than a clock:
"Ahmed never claimed his device was anything but a clock, said police spokesman James McLellan. And police have no reason to think it was dangerous. But officers still didn't believe Ahmed was giving them the whole story.
"We have no information that he claimed it was a bomb," McLellan said. "He kept maintaining it was a clock, but there was no broader explanation."
Asked what broader explanation the boy could have given, the spokesman explained:
"It could reasonably be mistaken as a device if left in a bathroom or under a car. The concern was, what was this thing built for? Do we take him into custody?"
Police led Ahmed out of MacArthur about 3 p.m., his hands cuffed behind him and an officer on each arm. A few students gaped in the halls. He remembers the shocked expression of his student counselor — the one "who knows I'm a good boy.""
So, we have the police justifying their actions with: IF the clock was left under a car…it could be mistaken for a "device"!!
and this: " He kept maintaining it was a clock, but there was no broader explanation."
If Ahmed "kept maintaining" that the clock was a clock, that would suggest to me that they kept asking him about it. If the police couldn't accept that the clock was a clock, despite the lack of any evidence that it was anything other than a clock, I can understand how he would be unable to provide a "broader explanation" that fit into the police's working theory that the clock was a bomb that theoretically could be left in a bathroom.
Think of all the backpacks at school … leave one of those puppies unattended somewhere and the world stops. Based on this officer's logic any child may be branded a potential terrorist.
This gets back to the narrative NSA's socrates would have us believe; make sure your government knows absolutely everything about you so your family may avoid an unpleasant misunderstanding.
I can only imagine what might have happened had he shown up with a pressure cooker filled with his mother's modified recipe for……chili. :-s
JLocke, there is no doubt in my mind that they were rationalizing their own prejudices after the fact. Once it became clear that this was a pretty stupid mistake, they had to reach for something, anything, that would make their conduct look plausible.
Hopkirk
He made an improvised egg timer.
This proves that in this particular school, students are genius and teachers are Idiots.
Glenn, what's a more common occurrence? An incident where there is obvious blatant discrimination against an innocent Muslim person like we see here, or a Muslim being killed or oppressed because of an antiquated and illiberal Islamic doctrine? Rather than focusing so much on the former and attacking people who are vocal about the latter, you should get your priorities straight.
Glenn Greenwald Bryan
An incident where there is obvious blatant discrimination against an innocent Muslim person like we see here, or a Muslim being killed or oppressed because of an antiquated and illiberal Islamic doctrine? Rather than focusing so much on the former and attacking people who are vocal about the latter, you should get your priorities straight.
Leaving aside the inane idea that these are mutually exclusive – adults can actually keep two ideas (or more!) in their head at once – I wrote about people like you just yesterday.
-Mona- Bryan
you should get your priorities straight.
Glenn Greenwald is a fierce, American civil libertarian, which explains his "priorities." If you are also an American or even a Westerner, your priorities suck.
Vic Perry Bryan
The more common occurrence is the third-hand whatabouttery on display in your comment, Bryan.
Alex Bryan
Why is that people who are 'vocal' about Islamic doctrine never support secular groups in Islamic countries, never support women's groups etc. etc.
What you do however, is think that muslim have some kind of hive mind and all think a like. Think that the muslims world is a black and white place. And that bombing countries is somehow going to stop the few idiots there are who are islamic terrorists – all it does is breed them
Mike Sulzer Bryan
Glenn, what's a more common occurrence? An incident where there is obvious blatant discrimination against an innocent Muslim person like we see here, or a Muslim being killed or oppressed because of an antiquated and illiberal Islamic doctrine?
Damn, people are being nice to you today. In the US we can prevent the mistreatment of of innocent teenagers, and others. Our control over what happens in Afghanistan is, well, not so much. You would argue that it is better to concentrate things that happen thousands of miles away, things that we have little control over (how is that war going?), rather than make the US a better place. You are an idiot.
Dienne Bryan
I bet you're one of those always asking Black Lives Matter about black-on-black violence, aren't you? I mean, not that you're racist or anything….
We have become such a weeine, sniveling, squeamish, piss-in-our-pants country. Shame on every single individual who was involved in Ahmed Mohamed's interrupted life. Shame on them! Shame on a country that cannot imagine the contributions of a divergent group. Shame on a country that cannot imagine the advances that diversity can bring. Shame on fucking Texas the epicenter of backward, retrograde, shriveled public school education…. and, a printer of many high school text books. Huzzah!, right?
Hope you don't mind, but your comment was so succinctly on the mark that I forwarded it to MacArthur High's twitter account: @MacArthurCards
Also, thanks for the link to the textbook issue. Much better summary than what I was able to find/link to in my comment.
Re this: Oh, he couldn't give a precise explanation of what his clock would be used for? Goddammit; basic research can be like that. Innovation can be like that. Engineering can be like that. Applied research can be like that. Exploration for the joy of it can be like that. Being a damned kid can be like that!
As someone who worked for years with physicians, scientists and laboratorians involved in seeking therapies/a cure for HIV/AIDS I can tell you that is spot on. Not only that, but one of the more profoundly delightful side benefits of working with these wonderfully creative people was seeing how the excitement for a new idea literally rejuvenated them, their colleagues and even their patients with the sheer joy that comes from discovery, that allowed them to touch that aspect of being a damned kid all over again. That these joyless fucks in Texas want to strip that from education is an incredible indictment of their soulless approach to life, learning and the world that surrounds them.
Mary McCurnin
How can we actually help this boy? What does he need right now?
Glenn,
I wish you had expanded on "And, it's easy to mock, …" because the broader context in which this event has taken place is rather shameful. It deserves a lot of attention because it is not just Irving, it is in a lot of places in the West.
The permanent state of war, coupled with the campaign of "fear the evil-doers" because they are everywhere, has been marketed to the general population so intensely and so pervasively that many Americans don't even recognize the actions of the school officials, police officers, or the mayor of Irving as anything unusual or inappropriate. I have read a few comments on various MSM sites this morning and it is extremely disappointing – a lot of these folks read this story and say – so what!
Froncek
Fear is a big money-maker.
TV & news outlets, gun sales, national defense, private security, etc.
It's lousy… people trying to make money exploiting other people. Once it gets going, it's hard to stop (and usually only apparent when 'looking back on it'.)
Glenn Coterill
I would love a piece of this lawsuit.
What an efen disgrace to Texas, the USA, and all intelligent humanity.
DCburbs
The BBC story has removed, "but said the boy was unable to give a 'broader explanation' as to what it would be used for." It still comes up in a google search.
Very broadly, what you use a clock for: to tell the time.
Is simply anyone let into the police in Texas?
Arun Khanna
And people wonder why Muslim in the Middle East are angry at us… Muslims are by far the most persecuted groups in the country after 9/11 and islamophobic people like Sam Harris and Richard Dawkins of the New Atheists movement are only strengthening this blatant racism.
charliethreeee
How are you equating this story with national fears of Islam? Am I missing something completely?
School officials have lots of unfounded fears. But to me, if anything, it's a fear of a Columbine type massacre, not fear of brown people.
Glenn Greenwald charliethreeee
Oh, totally: the clock would have been viewed exactly the same way had it been brought by a white Christian 14-year-old from a nice generation-old Texan family.
The fact that this happened in a city awash in anti-Muslim bigotry and obsessed with stopping "sharia law" is just a huge coincidence.
And this never happened, or if it did, it's probably also totally random and devoid of meaning:
When he was brought into the room to be questioned by the four police officers who had been dispatched to the school, one of them – who had never previously seen him – said: "Yup. That's who I thought it was."
charliethreeee Glenn Greenwald
I'm honored to have received a reply from you but I will pretend I do not have deer in the headlight eyes for a moment sir.
I have a white, teenage son who was expelled from a Florida charter school for reportedly mimicking a television character while in class. The incident was every bit as unfounded as the one you cite in Texas. Kids get kicked out of school and/or arrested for stupid stuff frequently sir. If you wear the wrong Tshirt they kick you out and call the cops. School officials (and police too) play the game of cover your ass quite well.
It appears to me that in both instances, a couple of police officers (and school officials) made some bad decisions. Now that is not totally random or devoid of meaning. Our police officers and school officials should be held accountable for bad decisions. But I don't think it's correct to say that this is an example of religious prejudice as alleged.
God speed sir. You can choose to believe this or not but I respect what you do. Forgive me for the form I choose to help you in your endeavors.
-Mona- charliethreeee
charliethree, it is absolutely true that American schools have long been unhinged in finding "dangerous" items or activities on the part of students. The examples of this mania are legion and the events Glenn writes of easily fit in this larger insanity.
Nevertheless, I have my doubts this would have happened had the same clock been brought to school by Billy Bob Crawford. Certainly, I can think of nothing but the young man's name and the color of his skin that would inspire an officer to, upon coming to arrest him, declare: "Yup. That's who I thought it was."
I agree with you that both hysteria from school officials as well the over-criminalization in the US are both big problems, and don't deny that either played a role in this particular incident. But, with respect, it's delusional or at least naive to believe his being Muslim and brown had nothing to do with this. Sorry to hear about your son: hope that worked out.
Maybe it was a combination of racism and hysteria and I think most of us are at least partially delusional so your second reply to me read well. Thank you, Glenn. My son and I live in a rural redneck town and he is going through puberty and trying to learn to cope with being gay but he will be fine just like the kid in this story. In the end, so long as his parents love him and help him understand what happened, love will conquer… I hope.
Maybe one day love will conquer on a more grand scale… I hope.
Colin MacWhirter charliethreeee
Yes, kids may get treated unfairly by authorites regardless of their background, but your son wasn't mistreated because of his skin colour or religion, whereas Ahmed Mohamed was, and explicitly so. That is the key difference.
It looks like a clock.
It works like a clock.
Its name is clock.
Then it must be a bomb.
Poor kid wants to be an engineer but he's stuck in the Texas school system where a Principal can't recognize a clock when he's staring it in the face.