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Kids Arrested For Burping, Spilling Milk, Etc.

rynner2 said:
FFS you two, get a room!! I'm pissed off with your pathetic squabbling!
It's like Punch and Judy, only not so funny. :mad:


EDIT: Myth is not part of 'you two'.
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But we will be the subject of Myth.

I think there is a sharp debate between Quake and myself because we are both strongly anti-Islamist and critics of unreformed Islam

Because of that, where we differ on the topics, the argument is likely to be all the more tempestuous.

If you are going to be a disparaging towards Political & Fundamentalist Islam then, imho, you have to be careful that you don't give your opponents grounds for accusing you of Islamophobia. (I know they'll do it anyway.)
 
CPL2J-dUEAAE8dz.jpg
 
Quake42 said:
being handcuffed when arrested seems to be standard practice in the US even for minor offences, and in any event I don't think it amounts to "torture".
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That reads like you see nothing problematical in the practice. Is that right? Even when it concerns minor offences and, indeed, minors? Is it not a tad heavy-handed?
 
Re: handcuffs - yes, it's a typical practice but not always done. Also, the police officers have leeway in how tightly the person being arrested is cuffed.

Also...well, I hate to be controversial, but the town where this incident happened already had a reputation for racism.
 
Krepostnoi said:
That reads like you see nothing problematical in the practice. Is that right? Even when it concerns minor offences and, indeed, minors? Is it not a tad heavy-handed?
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Yeah, I think it is. The US seems obsessed with chaining and handcuffing people and it seems odd to us in the UK and Europe. I don't much like it, although I don't think it amounts to "torture". My point was just that it isn't unusual there.

Returning to this specific case. Having read around a little more I agree that there's no evidence that the school or police believed it to be a real bomb or that anyone was at risk - the interviews with the cops involved refer repeatedly to a "hoax bomb". In the absence of any further context my guess would be that the school was for some reason pissed off with Ahmed and decided to play the "scare the naughty student" game by having him arrested.
 
How does an institution get pissed off? These almighty cock-ups come about when nobody is thinking straight but everybody thinks they have to do something or be blamed for inertia. Disquiet about anything must be reported to the designated person and the flow-charts of the designated person will reach a box that says something like "bomb? don't try to tackle this yourself!"

I'm drawing on experience of UK Safeguarding issues here but I suspect we have imported ours from the US. The climate of fear is more about keeping your job than terrorism but independent thinking of any kind will not be tolerated. The absurdity of this case is spectacularly evident but we are unlikely to get beyond the kind of blame culture which prevents a more nuanced and intelligent response. :(

Here's a case of a teenager charged with possession of naked pictures of himself! :banghead:
 
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JamesWhitehead said:
How does an institution get pissed off? These almighty cock-ups come about when nobody is thinking straight but everybody thinks they have to do something or be blamed for inertia. Disquiet about anything must be reported to the designated person and the flow-charts of the designated person will reach a box that says something like "bomb? don't try to tackle this yourself!"

I'm drawing on experience of UK Safeguarding issues here but I suspect we have imported ours from the US. The climate of fear is more about keeping your job than terrorism but independent thinking of any kind will not be tolerated. The absurdity of this case is spectacularly evident but we are unlikely to get beyond the kind of blame culture which prevents a more nuanced and intelligent response. :(

Here's a case of a teenager charged with possession of naked pictures of himself! :banghead:
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Yep - you may be right. There was a New York Post article which I can't find right now which listed a number of similar overreactions by schools, often to behaviour by quite young children - one involving a child who had bitten a pop tart into a gun shape and pretended to shoot other kids with it, and another involving a kid who had written a story about killing a dinosaur with a gun. Again - this is the media spin and there may be a history or context we're unaware of, but it does smack of automatons following procedure because to use common sense is no longer permitted.
 
Maajid Nawaz is having a good discussion on the Ahmed case on Twitter this evening.
 
Lenore Skenazy's Free Range Kids blog tracks the restrictions on childhood in the USA. Might be useful supplementary information to this thread.
 
dreeness said:
The real message of all this:

Hey kids! Are you Muslim? Want to visit the White House? Go to school with some terrifying-looking contraption!
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'Real' message suggest a kind of exclusivity of truth to me - and in this case that would ignore the fact that there are two distinct aspects to the story: the result, and the cause. The result may well be a ridiculous overreaction, but I think in many commentator's minds it has eclipsed examination of the cause.

It's an unbelievably sad sign of the times that behaviour which would have been praised and encouraged in my dad and grandad's generations can now result in such actions (and I have no reason to suspect that it would have been any different in a nation as inventive as the US). You could argue that, as a sign of the times, you can't heap all the blame on those who dealt with this in the first instance - but still...for fuck's sake people?
 
Spookdaddy said:
'Real' message suggest a kind of exclusivity of truth to me - and in this case that would ignore the fact that there are two distinct aspects to the story: the result, and the cause. The result may well be a ridiculous overreaction, but I think in many commentator's minds it has eclipsed examination of the cause.
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I think people are reacting to the reaction so to speak. Unfortunately, in the social media era it is all or nothing - either the kid is a junior Al Qaeda operative or he's a mechanical genius who should be put in charge of NASA and awarded a Nobel price immediately. There can be no middle ground even when the reality is rather more prosaic, ie an OTT reaction by authorities to an odd-looking engineering project.

In any event Richard Dawkins has now weighed in so I don't expect things will settle down any time soon.

http://www.theguardian.com/science/...wkins-questions-ahmed-mohamed-motive-backlash
 
I haven't read the links above and I'll refrain from suggesting any deeper message about the stories here - I just want to point out that there are places in the US (some in my home state) where, if you are non-white and non-Christian, you don't go after dark. It's not a myth. To my shame, I have relatives who live in some of these places who are quite open about what would happen to any non-white person they caught there. This isn't hyperbole, it's real live racial hatred, and it's ugly.

I know from the political correctness gone mad thread that liberal "politically correct" attitudes toward race and religion in the US appear to be strange and extreme. However, what it is, is an over-correction, attempting to counter the systemic racism that still underlies too much of society here. Even all these years after the Civil Rights Act, we have not reached a middle ground.

I could go on, but I won't. Suffice it to say that I'm deeply worried about the racial tension being ratcheted up by certain parties in the US right now.
 
Ulalume said:
I haven't read the links above and I'll refrain from suggesting any deeper message about the stories here - I just want to point out that there are places in the US (some in my home state) where, if you are non-white and non-Christian, you don't go after dark. It's not a myth. To my shame, I have relatives who live in some of these places who are quite open about what would happen to any non-white person they caught there. This isn't hyperbole, it's real live racial hatred, and it's ugly.
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Wow. I find it alarming that anybody calling themselves a Christian would even think of doing something bad to another person, regardless of what colour they are.
 
Mythopoeika said:
Wow. I find it alarming that anybody calling themselves a Christian would even think of doing something bad to another person, regardless of what colour they are.
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I agree, though I'm not sure how much it has to do with being Christian versus just hating Jews, Muslims, or any member of any other minority religion.

Some info on sundown towns here:
https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sundown_town
 
Ulalume said:
I agree, though I'm not sure how much it has to do with being Christian versus just hating Jews, Muslims, or any member of any other minority religion.

Some info on sundown towns here:
https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sundown_town
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No doubt you'll be told that you're not putting this hatred "in Context".

Its good to have someone who has real experience of the racism that exists in places like Irving.
 
Oh dear...

The Surprising Backstory Behind #IStandWithAhmed’s 2-Time Sudanese Presidential Candidate Father

(...)

Incidentally, Ahmed’s family is no stranger to media attention.

The ninth grader is the son of Mohamed Elhassan Mohamed, a Sudanese immigrant who has made headlines of his own over the years. A February 2015 profile in the North Dallas Gazette details the elder Mohamed’s activities.

(...)

Mohamed has also run for president of Sudan on two separate occasions. “When I went for the elections in 2010 they were rigid,” he told the North Dallas Gazette. “When I was there my country was worse than I had left it. I saw people starve, and babies, die, and women cry in Darfur. No peace. No justice. So I am back to save my Sudan, so help me God. I’m hope for my country to become great, and to reestablish good connections with America. My country is going through economic hardship because of the embargo, and I would like to lift it.”

(...)

He’d run again in 2015 on a National Reform Party ticket. An April 2015 Bloomberg report referred to the Texan as having “the most ambitious agenda” of the incumbent President Umar al-Bashir’s competitors. The article mentions that the would-be Sudanese president pledged that within 100 days of being elected he would negotiate the lifting of sanctions the U.S. imposed in the late 1990s because of alleged sponsorship of terrorism.

Neither Mohamed nor his party would end up appearing on the ballot.

(...)

Muslim leaders in Texas, meanwhile, doubted his claims to religious and scholarly leadership. “This so-called leader, we have never heard of this person,” Imam Zia ul Haque Sheikh, head of the Islamic Center of Irving, told the Seattle Times. “I believe the whole thing is made up.” In that same interview, Mohamed, who refers to himself as a sheikh, elaborated on his motivations for getting involved with Jones. “He said he agreed to serve as the defense attorney at Jones’ mock trial because the Quran teaches that Muslims should engage in peaceful dialogue with Christians,” the Seattle Times’ Annie Gowen wrote. “But there was also a more pragmatic reason. It was spring break and he wanted to take his wife and five kids to Disney World: to ‘kill two birds with one stone,’ as he put it.” He also claims he didn’t know the trial– in which the Quran was “found guilty” of “crimes against humanity”– would result in the Quran actually being set on fire. According to the Seattle Times, some of Mohamed’s small group of followers asked that he no longer lead prayers, while others refused to drive for his taxi company.

(...)

Whether or not the Mohamed family is living in a “free land” is up for debate. But this week, at least, they’re doing it on primetime TV.

http://www.okayafrica.com/news/istandwithahmed-mohamed-elhassan-mohamed-sudanese-father-backstory/
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What happens when a father is a publicity-addicted crackpot
who will do anything for media attention?
 
dreeness . said:
Oh dear...





What happens when a father is a publicity-addicted crackpot
who will do anything for media attention?
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Don't see anything that excuses the treatment of Ahmed when the teachers & cops knew it was a clock & not a bomb.

I reckon this case is down to racism & bigotry.
 
Hmm,
ramonmercado said:
Don't see anything that excuses the treatment of Ahmed when the teachers & cops knew it was a clock & not a bomb.

I reckon this case is down to racism & bigotry.
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Not necessarily mutually exclusive.

The kid's father appears to be an attention-seeker with delusions of grandeur and the family are basking in the media exposure. Parents such as this often push their kids into making statements of some sort.

The story as reported has changed somewhat. It turns out that the engineering teacher had expressed interest in rage device, but advised Ahmed not to show it around in case other teachers or students got the wrong idea. The problem arose not because he showed it to a teacher, as initially claimed, but because the alarm went off in a lesson.

The fact that teachers and police overreacted or reacted badly does not mean that it follows that there wasn't something else going on here, for example an attention seeking parent looking for more media coverage.

When I initially expressed scepticism at the story as reported, and asked for more context as to the events, it wasn't because I am a horrid racist or whatever else was being implied. It was because I have seen media feeding frenzies of this sort before, and there is inevitably something else going on and/or an angle which is not being reported.
 
Quake42 said:
Hmm,


Not necessarily mutually exclusive.

The kid's father appears to be an attention-seeker with delusions of grandeur and the family are basking in the media exposure. Parents such as this often push their kids into making statements of some sort.

The story as reported has changed somewhat. It turns out that the engineering teacher had expressed interest in rage device, but advised Ahmed not to show it around in case other teachers or students got the wrong idea. The problem arose not because he showed it to a teacher, as initially claimed, but because the alarm went off in a lesson.

The fact that teachers and police overreacted or reacted badly does not mean that it follows that there wasn't something else going on here, for example an attention seeking parent looking for more media coverage.

When I initially expressed scepticism at the story as reported, and asked for more context as to the events, it wasn't because I am a horrid racist or whatever else was being implied. It was because I have seen media feeding frenzies of this sort before, and there is inevitably something else going on and/or an angle which is not being reported.
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Yes. The teachers and police are changing their stories.

On the basis of no evidence you were damning the boy. Even the fact that he refused to speak to the police other than to say it was a clock was enough to make him guilty as far as you were concerned. His right to silence and that the police shouldn't have questioned him without a parent being present was irrelevant to you.

If the teacher just didn't want Ahmed to show yhe clock around then why did the school first claim they thought it was a bomb and then that they thought it was a bomb hoax?

Why did the teacher let the boy be detained, arrested and led away in handcuffs if she had only told him not to show it around?

The teachers and the police stories keep changing.

I don't think you are a racist but you seem to be determined to prove that Ahmed is the guilty party or that he was used by his father. There is no evidence to back that up.

The fact remains that both the school and police acted illegally. They now are at risk of having to pay out a large sum in compensation.

Hence all the spinning they are doing.

No need for you to spin on their behalf as well.
 
ramonmercado said:
Yes. The teachers and police are changing their stories.

On the basis of no evidence you were damning the boy. Even the fact that he refused to speak to the police other than to say it was a clock was enough to make him guilty as far as you were concerned. His right to silence and that the police shouldn't have questioned him without a parent being present was irrelevant to you.

If the teacher just didn't want Ahmed to show yhe clock around then why did the school first claim they thought it was a bomb and then that they thought it was a bomb hoax?

Why did the teacher let the boy be detained, arrested and led away in handcuffs if she had only told him not to show it around?
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There appear to have been at least two teachers involved - the engineering teacher, who told Ahmed not to show the clock to others as they may get the wrong idea, and the English teacher who was taking the class when the alarm went off and apparently kicked the whole thing off. The principal and school administration were also involved. It wasn't one teacher going off piste.

I am neither determined to blame the kid nor to absolve the school from any blame. My criticism from the start had been for the media - both traditional and social - for hyping up an incident to fit a particular narrative - in this case genius Muslim boy persecuted by white America for no reason whatsoever. The reality, as ever, seems somewhat messier. The fact that the child's father is a well-known local political and religious activist who appears to court media attention may not be coincidental and at the least raises eyebrows. We have seen these sort of pushy parents influencing their kids and creating dramas before in lots of different scenarios. My point then and now is simply that we should avoid jumping on the outraged bandwagon which accompanies stories of this sort and retain some scepticism.
 
Quake42 said:
There appear to have been at least two teachers involved - the engineering teacher, who told Ahmed not to show the clock to others as they may get the wrong idea, and the English teacher who was taking the class when the alarm went off and apparently kicked the whole thing off. The principal and school administration were also involved. It wasn't one teacher going off piste.

I am neither determined to blame the kid nor to absolve the school from any blame. My criticism from the start had been for the media - both traditional and social - for hyping up an incident to fit a particular narrative - in this case genius Muslim boy persecuted by white America for no reason whatsoever. The reality, as ever, seems somewhat messier. The fact that the child's father is a well-known local political and religious activist who appears to court media attention may not be coincidental and at the least raises eyebrows. We have seen these sort of pushy parents influencing their kids and creating dramas before in lots of different scenarios. My point then and now is simply that we should avoid jumping on the outraged bandwagon which accompanies stories of this sort and retain some scepticism.
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Still spinning on behalf of the school!

If you have any evidence to suggest that the father was involved in a conspiracy with his son then please produce it.

Otherwise you are engaging in flights of fancy and your posts deserve to be filed under Fantasy.

Maybe you should avoid jumping on bandwagons until you have some facts to present.

I never said it was just one teacher. In my posts above I referred to teachers, school and school board. Facts remain that teachers acted illegally and no amount of spinning on their part will change that.

No need for you to spin for them though.
 
CPnEePOW8AAUBT5.jpg


"suitcase bomb" - Google Image Search
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How he "invented" a clock:


Previously, his sister had been suspended from school for three days for threatening to blow up the school.

For many years, his father has tried very hard to be taken very seriously as a "sheikh", an Islamic scholar, and a Muslim Rights Activist. (With very little success.)
 
dreeness . said:
CPnEePOW8AAUBT5.jpg




How he "invented" a clock:


Previously, his sister had been suspended from school for three days for threatening to blow up the school.

For many years, his father has tried very hard to be taken very seriously as a "sheikh", an Islamic scholar, and a Muslim Rights Activist. (With very little success.)
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All of that has been discussed.

Claiming to have invented something is not a crime.

Any evidence of a conspiracy?

In the meantime the facts are that the teachers and police acted illegally. The school board and the police are at risk of serious compensation claims.

Hence their spinning.

I am opposed to Islamists but that doesn't mean I have to demonise a boy who has been maltreated by racists.
 
Don't worry, maybe the next schoolteacher (or hotel clerk, or flight attendant) will hesitate to report suspicious activity, out of fear of a handful of chuckleheads who shout "Racism!" incessantly.

[IMAGE REMOVED BY MOOKS]

The "racist" police officer involved was African-American.
"ahmed mohamed" handcuffs - Google Image Search

Claiming to have invented something is not a crime.
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Brandishing a suspect device in a crowded public area, on the other hand...

In the meantime the facts are that the teachers and police acted illegally.
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What law or laws are they alleged to have broken? And what law enforcement agency is currently investigating?

I am opposed to Islamists
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They would never guess.
 
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dreeness . said:
Don't worry, maybe the next schoolteacher (or hotel clerk, or flight attendant) will hesitate to report suspicious activity, out of fear of a handful of chuckleheads who shout "Racism!" incessantly.

[IMAGE REMOVED BY MOOKS]

The "racist" police officer involved was African-American.
"ahmed mohamed" handcuffs - Google Image Search


Brandishing a suspect device in a crowded public area, on the other hand...


What law or laws are they alleged to have broken? And what law enforcement agency is currently investigating?


They would never guess.
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A kid brings a clock into school and you post this picture? Have you any sense of proportion?

The device was a clock. The teachers and police never thought it was anything else.

Unlawful arrest, malicious arrest, questioning a juvenile without his parents present. Defamation. If the local police force isn't investigating this then don't worry, the FBI will.

Are you suggesting that a black cop can't be racist? There is quite a lot of Black on Arab/Asian racism & vice versa.

Racism isn't just a black and white situation.

Going on my posts in general any honest person would agree that I am anti-islamist.
 
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I'm sorry Quake but the "new" story is identical to the one I heard at the start of this sorry state. That you've just found it makes your original sources inadequate.
 
Monstrosa said:
I'm sorry Quake but the "new" story is identical to the one I heard at the start of this sorry state. That you've just found it makes your original sources inadequate.
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Not sure what "new" story you're referring to. There appears to have been some confusion over the sequence of events and number of teachers involved - such confusion was not limited to me as the discussion on this thread shows.

The background story re: Ahmed's father is new I think - or at least wasn't reported until a few days after the story broke.

To repeat: I'm not spinning for the school, or blaming the victim, or whatever else I'm being accused of on this thread. I'm simply expressing scepticism about the way this story has been handled by the media. That scepticism is based on the way similar shock horror stories involving race, religion (particularly Islam) or other "identity" type issues have been reported in the past. The "diet coke/Islamaphobic flight attendant" may be the most recent example but there have been plenty of others. The fact that the kid's father is a noted self-publicist who has courted the media with bizarre stunts in the past adds to my scepticism that all is not quite what it appears.

All I'm saying is: don't let critical faculties go out of the window because someone mentions the "r" word.
 
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