Ahmed Mohammed and his hoax clock

LarryC wrote:

His crime isn't being smart. It's being brown.

Nah, the usual suspects are letting us know it's not about race. It's never about race, unless some evil divisive liberals are out there trying to divide us all by pointing out the blatant racism -

https://reason.com/blog/2015/09/16/l...

Who is Alex Stone? He’s the South Carolina 16-year-old who was arrested and suspended last year for writing a purely fictional story about a dinosaur in which he killed the prehistoric beast with a gun. Stone was a white kid.

I bring up his race for one reason, and one reason only: Some are suggesting that Ahmed’s race is the only reason he was treated so badly. This is the obvious, inescapable conclusion, according to many left-leaning pundits: school officials identified a kid with an Islamic-sounding name, saw him carting around a device he had built, and cried terrorist!

Bloo Driver wrote:

Nah, the usual suspects are letting us know it's not about race. It's never about race, unless some evil divisive liberals are out there trying to divide us all by pointing out the blatant racism

And here I thought you were going to link to this little gem...

Hah! I'd like to line them up, tan them something awful and give them toy guns to point at people.

OG_slinger wrote:
Bloo Driver wrote:

Nah, the usual suspects are letting us know it's not about race. It's never about race, unless some evil divisive liberals are out there trying to divide us all by pointing out the blatant racism

And here I thought you were going to link to this little gem...

WHY EGG IT ON. HOW DARE SOMEONE IN AUTHORITY POINT OUT OTHERS IN AUTHORITY HAVE MESSED UP?

Man. I can't tell which article is more ignorant, but I'm gonna go with the first one. The idea that you can compare kids being disciplined (overly, OVERLY disciplined for no damn good reason, mind you) for things like weapons and violent subject matter to saying this kid's clock is a bomb? And that's not racist? This guy is an idiot to think that if a white kid brought that people would react the same way at all. If Ahmed had brought a fishook and gotten arrested for carrying a weapon, the article would have a point. But nah.

LarryC wrote:

His crime isn't being smart. It's being brown.

Specifically, it's about being smart while brown. (Or black, I guess, given that his family's from Sudan, but American racial categories were never about logic to begin with. This is, of course, the same country where random Hindu and Sikh people were beaten up this past month because someone thought they looked like Muslims. So when an actual innocent Muslim kid gets the attention of the trigger-happy racists...)

I have no doubt that the police and school would have gone a lot easier on him if he was white. Likely would still have harassed him a bit, given the fears about school shootings, but based on the evidence on hand his race absolutely played a big role in their panic.

Plus, it's Irving ISD, which made the news again last year for repeatedly violating the Voting Rights Act, and whose mayor's claim to fame stems from persecuting innocent Muslim mediation services. Occam's razor suggests that there might be a racism problem in that town in particular.

Gremlin wrote:
LarryC wrote:

His crime isn't being smart. It's being brown.

Specifically, it's about being smart while brown. (Or black, I guess, given that his family's from Sudan, but American racial categories were never about logic to begin with. This is, of course, the same country where random Hindu and Sikh people were beaten up this past month because someone thought they looked like Muslims. So when an actual innocent Muslim kid gets the attention of the trigger-happy racists...)

I have no doubt that the police and school would have gone a lot easier on him if he was white. Likely would still have harassed him a bit, given the fears about school shootings, but based on the evidence on hand his race absolutely played a big role in their panic.

Plus, it's Irving ISD, which made the news again last year for repeatedly violating the Voting Rights Act, and whose mayor's claim to fame stems from persecuting innocent Muslim mediation services. Occam's razor suggests that there might be a racism problem in that town in particular.

Even that school... haven't had time to Snopes it yet, but apparently there was a security officer who put his hands on a hispanic student for having a phone (which is against school rules)... while another student (who put the story out on social media) tried to translate what the officer was saying and impress upon the officer that the kid did not speak English. The officer apparently did not care that the kid didn't speak English because he should know the rules while grabbing him.

Apparently Bristol Palin is mad at Obama for inviting Ahmed to the White House. She has decided that it promotes 'racial strife' and 'victimhood'. Also, she claims he was mistakenly arrested for building a bomb.

She's very clearly her mother's daughter, alright. If my eyes rolled any more I would be looking at my brain right now.

Am I the only one who is puzzled by the cognitive dissonance of Texans who seem to be hell bent on the normalization of personal violence through their whole "open carry" nonsense and their being so freaked out about a kid's clock that they felt the need to perp walk him out of school and interrogate him without benefit of counsel?

But totally not about race or religion. Totally.

Someone needs to send Ahmed Mohamed to NY so he can teach Tom Coughlin how to handle a clock.

Paleocon wrote:

Someone needs to send Ahmed Mohamed to NY so he can teach Tom Coughlin how to handle a clock.

/thread

IMAGE(http://i.imgur.com/iFDhSnW.jpg)

All I have to show from my teenage flirtation with conservatism is a signed picture of Reagan...

With what we know now about Republican ethics, I'd take a really close look at that signature, OG...

Especially if you are heading to Philadelphia soonish

Demosthenes wrote:

apparently there was a security officer who put his hands on a hispanic student for having a phone (which is against school rules)... while another student (who put the story out on social media) tried to translate what the officer was saying and impress upon the officer that the kid did not speak English. The officer apparently did not care that the kid didn't speak English because he should know the rules while grabbing him.

What part of Range: Touch don't you understand?

H.P. Lovesauce wrote:
Demosthenes wrote:

apparently there was a security officer who put his hands on a hispanic student for having a phone (which is against school rules)... while another student (who put the story out on social media) tried to translate what the officer was saying and impress upon the officer that the kid did not speak English. The officer apparently did not care that the kid didn't speak English because he should know the rules while grabbing him.

What part of Range: Touch don't you understand?

Damn it Irving, stop digging your hole deeper:

IRVING – Irving Mayor Beth Van Duyne appeared with TV host Glenn Beck Tuesday to discuss whether 14-year-old Ahmed Mohamed intentionally caused a scare at his school as part of a larger Islamist plot.
Gremlin wrote:

Damn it Irving, stop digging your hole deeper:

IRVING – Irving Mayor Beth Van Duyne appeared with TV host Glenn Beck Tuesday to discuss whether 14-year-old Ahmed Mohamed intentionally caused a scare at his school as part of a larger Islamist plot.

That is some satire-level doubling-down on their idiocy.

- Mayor, without knowing precisely what the danger is, would you say it's time for our viewers to crack each other's heads open and feast on the goo inside?
- Yes I would, Glenn.

Gremlin wrote:

Damn it Irving, stop digging your hole deeper:

IRVING – Irving Mayor Beth Van Duyne appeared with TV host Glenn Beck Tuesday to discuss whether 14-year-old Ahmed Mohamed intentionally caused a scare at his school as part of a larger Islamist plot.

Seems like people from all sides want to get in on the crazy

Gremlin wrote:

Damn it Irving, stop digging your hole deeper:

IRVING – Irving Mayor Beth Van Duyne appeared with TV host Glenn Beck Tuesday to discuss whether 14-year-old Ahmed Mohamed intentionally caused a scare at his school as part of a larger Islamist plot.

Well, I officially don't need to read any further to know how stupid that is going to be.

Also, Glenn Beck is still relevant?

I mean... I agree that he didn't "make" the clock. He probably repaired it. Or maybe he just recased it.

Merits of his project aside, there's still no way that resembles a bomb, and the whole situation was handled terribly. In fact, if that's a store bought device that he just modded that makes the whole situation even worse.

The City of Irving released a statement Tuesday that does not seem to support the theory that Ahmed's clock is part of a slowly-ticking conspiracy. The statement says the "investigation determined the student apparently did not intend to cause alarm."

Wow, really? You'd think a clock-builder would have more nefarious goals to uphold the legacy of all those evil world-dominating Swatch-makers. Seiko, Garmin, and Rolex evidently are companies that could stand to be under closer surveillance.

Chairman_Mao wrote:
Gremlin wrote:

Damn it Irving, stop digging your hole deeper:

IRVING – Irving Mayor Beth Van Duyne appeared with TV host Glenn Beck Tuesday to discuss whether 14-year-old Ahmed Mohamed intentionally caused a scare at his school as part of a larger Islamist plot.

Seems like people from all sides want to get in on the crazy

i would not really count Dawkins as "the other side".

Zudz wrote:

I mean... I agree that he didn't "make" the clock. He probably repaired it. Or maybe he just recased it.

Ahmed himself said that "it was easy" and that he wanted to start by showing his teacher something small. I think that was part of why he was shocked when the whole thing went down: It wasn't a project he'd spent weeks on; he'd literally just thrown something relatively easy together as a starting point for a conversation with his teacher.

karmajay wrote:
Chairman_Mao wrote:
Gremlin wrote:

Damn it Irving, stop digging your hole deeper:

IRVING – Irving Mayor Beth Van Duyne appeared with TV host Glenn Beck Tuesday to discuss whether 14-year-old Ahmed Mohamed intentionally caused a scare at his school as part of a larger Islamist plot.

Seems like people from all sides want to get in on the crazy

i would not really count Dawkins as "the other side".

Yep. Dawkins is very firmly on the side of the rampant right wing, but without religion as an excuse. He's just openly racist and hateful.

karmajay wrote:
Chairman_Mao wrote:
Gremlin wrote:

Damn it Irving, stop digging your hole deeper:

IRVING – Irving Mayor Beth Van Duyne appeared with TV host Glenn Beck Tuesday to discuss whether 14-year-old Ahmed Mohamed intentionally caused a scare at his school as part of a larger Islamist plot.

Seems like people from all sides want to get in on the crazy

i would not really count Dawkins as "the other side".

I deliberately didn't say the other side.

I think a severely underreported part of this story is the fact that Ahmed and his family are Sufis. For folks who are unfamiliar with the Muslim religion, Sufis are a constantly persecuted minority in Islam and often considered heretics within the religion from the Sunni sects most responsible from the sort of militant behavior we have all come to associate with the religion as a whole.

In many ways, our reaction to the Ahmed story says a lot about our ignorance of that religion and its history.

Paleocon wrote:

I think a severely underreported part of this story is the fact that Ahmed and his family are Sufis. For folks who are unfamiliar with the Muslim religion, Sufis are a constantly persecuted minority in Islam and often considered heretics within the religion from the Sunni sects most responsible from the sort of militant behavior we have all come to associate with the religion as a whole.

In many ways, our reaction to the Ahmed story says a lot about our ignorance of that religion and its history.

I was actually reading a piece about exactly that and how even conservative think tanks view them as a way to better engage with the larger Muslim world... though the fact that they're frequently viewed as heretics to extremists and even some more mainstream Muslims means I don't think even that think tank really understood what they were talking about.

Demosthenes wrote:
Paleocon wrote:

I think a severely underreported part of this story is the fact that Ahmed and his family are Sufis. For folks who are unfamiliar with the Muslim religion, Sufis are a constantly persecuted minority in Islam and often considered heretics within the religion from the Sunni sects most responsible from the sort of militant behavior we have all come to associate with the religion as a whole.

In many ways, our reaction to the Ahmed story says a lot about our ignorance of that religion and its history.

I was actually reading a piece about exactly that and how even conservative think tanks view them as a way to better engage with the larger Muslim world... though the fact that they're frequently viewed as heretics to extremists and even some more mainstream Muslims means I don't think even that think tank really understood what they were talking about.

Either way giving the Fox News and their fanbase far to much credit.. no way would they be able to think beyond "Muslim..brown skin..terrorist blarghh1!#@!"

Sufi's are the chill bros of Islam.
His dad bought pizza for reporters.