So a kid brings a homemade clock to school...

In My Humble Opinion
81

it’s a double edged sword of political correctness. Anything visually representing a weapon is so bad it cannot be viewed by others therefore children are forbidden to exhibit such an image in any form.

Objects that consist of the general working of a homemade bomb such as a timer, loose wires and a container should be viewed as suspicious unless the person possessing it is a minority.

Both are political correctness taken to the extreme. The Boston bombing is a good example. leaving a backpack is a suspicious event. Had it been full of potato chips and the owner been stopped by police and searched there would have been great moral outrage about a minority. People would have assigned it a slogan such as “walking while wahabi”.

A container with a timer and wires sticking out of it that is obviously homemade and has all the qualifiers for suspicion.

82

Except he *didn’t *leave it!
He carried it around with him.

And, OK - view his device with suspicion! That’s what the teachers who saw it did, and they determined that it was harmless.

It’s what happens after that that is the problem.

83

No, the latter is “complete nonsense position that nobody holds, and that you only propose so you have something you can dismiss easily instead of addressing what other people are saying” taken to the extreme. Or, y’know, straw man.

84

Suicide bombers generally don’t leave their bombs behind.

85

True. But there’s a key difference: suicide bombers carry bombs. Also, suicide bombers don’t go out of their way to show their bombs (which, again, this kid didn’t have–he had a clock) to authority figures. Also, and this is also key, suicide bombers tend not to be 14-year-old students in a Texas school. Also, and I don’t want you to forget, suicide bombers carry bombs.

86

So you have the official handbook of suicide bombers do you? Remember Columbine? What chapter is that in?

87

I once saw a video of a man who carried a big bag in a crowded market or community square. He opened his bag and excitedly called everyone around to look into the bag as if he had something remarkable to show. He was speaking in a foreign language so I have no idea what he was saying, but people were excited and approached. He detonated whatever was in the bag and killed a lot of people, including himself.

Clearly you have your mind made up about the possibilities or lack thereof. I presume you live in the US, where we have the luxury of being a little naive, but lets just assume that people who want to use destruction to cause chaos and fear don’t necessarily follow your script and can come in many ages, shapes, sizes, and colors.

88

Yeah, I saw that same video! It’s the one where he went up to a cop and showed it to the cop and said, “Look, Mr. Police Officer, at the clock I made!” and then put it back in the bag for an hour, and then did the same thing for another cop, and then for another cop, and then for another cop, before finally detonating it, right?

Because if that’s not the video you’re talking about, then your analogy fails at the most basic level.

Chapters 1-7, “White boys killing people at school.”

89

No. Why would it? I’ve read conflicting ideas on it (and think maybe the author of your link should have actually BOUGHT the clock in question and opened it before making the accusations) but even if the worst case scenario is that the kid essentially performed a case mod and was proud enough to show it off to his electronics teacher, that’s a thousand times more interest than most kids show.

Frankly, this whole “But did he REALLY build it?” schtick sounds like equal parts victim blaming (“Don’t feel sorry for the kid who was arrested – he didn’t really build the clock (so I guess he deserved it)!”) and petty envy that Microsoft sent him toys but these other guys got nothing. The kid is interested in electronics. Facebook and Microsoft and the White House didn’t contact him because they’re all desperate for digital clock makers, they did so because he’s a kid who showed sincere interest in electronics and got caught up in a shitstorm because if the insane overreaction of the school/police. It’s not as though the kid faked a clock and sent it in the the Microsoft “Build a clock from scratch and win a free tablet” contest.

90

so, this kid’s not smart enough or white enough to make a bomb?

91

You’re referring to the mass killing where a couple of shitheads brought guns and bombs and didn’t reveal them until the attack, thereby demonstrating that apparently everybody except you has a basic grasp on how terrorism works?

92

The package should be regarded with suspicion, but if it’s not designed to harm or appear harmful, then there’s no reason for anyone to be detained or searched. It’s not a crime to look suspicious or cause the police minor inconvenience.

But what if it doesn’t have a timer? Suicide bombs don’t need timers, they are manually triggered. What if there’s no container, just a circuit board? I mean, honestly, you’ve just criminalized half the science fair projects I ever did.

Can kids study electronics nowadays, or do you think we need to make them eat a piece of bacon as a prerequisite just to be safe?

93

Yes, because that’s exactly what I said. Or, to be more accurate, I said, “Carrots when stir-fried taste like peanut brittle.”

If you want to be actually accurate, of course, that’s nothing like what I fuckin said, and I think you know it.

94

Only, as I’ve said in another thread, that the media has made much of the kid “inventing his own clock,” which *sounds *like something a lot more accomplished and noteworthy than what he actually did.

Maybe the kid *is *the next Steinmetz, Tesla or Jobs… but taking the guts of an old Radio Shack clock and putting it in a much larger box, without a single visible modification, is not evidence of such precociousness or brilliance.

None of this changes the school, legal, police or social issues a bit, no. But part of the Out! Rage! has been that this kid was somehow special, over and above being just a kid, and a kid from a Muslim family, and thus the crimes of the the school and police are somehow compounded. They aren’t. (They are sufficiently unpleasant without that gloss.)

95

What if he brought it to school on purpose, with the idea that he would freak people out a bit, but since it wasn’t actually dangerous he’d be able to claim innocence and wouldn’t get in trouble? But things got out of hand and he did wind up getting into an unexpectedly bad situation?

Imagine Ahmed walks into a classroom, opens the case to show it to the kids or teacher, but doesn’t say anything right away, just lets them form their own conclusions for a second. Then, before the teacher can do too much, announces that it’s a clock that he made, or maybe just that this is what the inside of an alarm clock looks like. Teacher looks and sees some electronics but no explosives and nothing actually dangerous. Then the teacher tries to figure out if Ahmed is purposely trying to prank people, or is just oblivious to what it looks like. A few of his teachers decided to give him the benefit of the doubt, probably tell him it’s cool and everything, and then tell him to put it away. Ahmed gets some attention, maybe he gets some kids talking about him or wanting to see it, and maybe he gets to feel like he got away with scaring people for a second, which can be kind of fun.

Everything is good until he gets to the teacher who either doesn’t give him the benefit of the doubt, or at least thinks he shouldn’t be going around showing to everyone. This teacher obviously doesn’t think it’s a real bomb, she didn’t call 911 and she didn’t evacuate the school. She just calls down to the office to say, hey, someone needs to talk to this kid and figure out what his intentions are and get him to stop showing it around.

Then things start to get out of hand for Ahmed because the police are called in. This is probably school policy anytime a threat, rumor of a threat, threat hoax or anything like that is reported. Now, I don’t really know if the police interrogation was excessive or not. It seems somebody didn’t believe he didn’t know that his clock could be considered a threat and Ahmed’s excuse sounded a little fishy but he stuck to his story so it was hard to prove. In the end, they didn’t arrest him but they did decide to suspend him for a couple of days.

The media already loves a story where some poor kid gets harassed by an unfair, racist teacher or administration. I wouldn’t be surprised if his PR father saw an opportunity to make this into nationwide news. I would be curious to find out who was the first person to use the #IStandWithAhmed hashtag, if that’s something that’s even possible to trace. But I highly doubt anyone could have guessed this would lead to White House invites, Google internships, and as much free stuff as he got.

I know that I’m making some assumptions here, but based on the info we have, I don’t think I’m assuming any more than anyone else. And to me, this sounds like a completely reasonable thing that an 14 year old might do because, honestly, kids don’t always think about what the consequences of their actions might be. I don’t think he intended things to go this far and I don’t think he thought it would actually be considered as a bomb hoax and he might be arrested. I also don’t think the teachers necessarily overreacted. I would like to know what Ahmed actually said when he was showing off his clock, and what the other kids thought his was doing.

Right now, we only know what Ahmed says, we still don’t have the full story. It’s not a big surprise that the school isn’t talking because they rarely do in these kind of stories, probably for legal reasons. Plus, the media is way more interested in accusations then explanations or resolutions. The one thing that does surprise me a bit is that none of the other kids are talking. This is a middle school, I’m sure a lot of them are on twitter, facebook and Instagram, someone out there must have said something about it.

I do feel sorry for Ahmed, though. After all the attention, support, and free stuff, he has no choice but to keep up with the story even though it’s starting to fall apart. I don’t know if he originally claimed to have designed and put the clock together himself, but that’s what the media reported and what he has gone along with in statements and interviews. I can understand opening up a clock and thinking the insides look cool, but it’s clearly not an invention to do so and I wouldn’t consider it “homemade”. So his reply that “this wasn’t my first invention, and it won’t be my last” sounds a little odd to me. In the MSNBC interview, he even agreed with the interviewer who said he bought the parts and assembled it in his room, even though he did neither of those things.

96

What do you expect, he was white. EPTWW. Eating Pop Tarts While White.