The Bishop and the Butterfly: Murder, Politics, and the End of the Jazz Age

    Clock Boy's Dad Fulfills Dream

    By NCD on Fri, 10/16/2015 - 12:17pm |

    Did Dad set up his 14 year old to game 'Islamophobia' and the media system about racial profiling of innocent Muslims using his son to create an incident?

    With a device that the super smart kid sets to alarm in English class, after the science teacher he showed it to said Ahmed, don't show anyone else?

    Ahmed said he brought the clock, which he had fashioned with a digital face in an inexpensive box, to school on Monday to show to an engineering teacher, who said it was “nice” but then told him that he should not show the invention to other teachers. link

    Then Good Ole Dad reportedly (below) asks the cops to re-handcuff his kid for a photo that went viral? And virtually everyone in America naively buys the innocence of all scenario?

    While Dad gets his dream come true soon after by invitations to the White House, opportunity to do some cow-towing at UN , and now perhaps the ultimate reward - meeting the wanted Muslim war criminal Sudanese President Omar al-Bashir, who took power there in a coup in 1989 and is accused of genocide of non-Arabs in the Darfur war, in which hundreds of thousands lost their lives..

    Dad, clock boy, Sudanese war criminal, from the BBC today:

    Dad, a long time resident of the US, who has run for President of Sudan numerous times, apparently while residing in Texas.

    Some notes on the case from late September:

    • There was no "school project" or science assignment to justify Mohamed bringing the device to school .

    • Just three weeks into his freshman year, Mohamed was no "science whiz well-known by high school teachers for tinkering."

    • The "clock" wasn't made from scratch but just the guts of a mass-manufactured digital clock, complete with AC cord and 9-volt backup battery connection.

    • With its exposed wires and lack of a face, the gutted clock looked like a bomb. It also sounded like a bomb: The alarm was set to go off during English class; the beeping startled the teacher who called police.

    • When police questioned Mohamed, he wasn't cooperative and was described as "disrespectful."

    • The police chief said the device was "intended to create a level of alarm; in other words, a hoax bomb."

    • Mohamed's Sudanese father — a Muslim political activist involved in previous Muslim grievances — reportedly asked the cops to re-handcuff his son — so his daughter could take the photo that went viral.

    • Mohamed tweeted: "Thank you fellow supporters. We can ban together to stop this racial inequality."

    • The family's spokesperson is the Council on American-Islamic Relations, a terror-tied group that in 2006 sued US Airways for kicking several Muslim activists off a flight for behaving suspiciously and rattling passengers — a stunt that looks eerily similar.

    Maybe the kid had no ill intent with the clock, just like he doesn't know the man he is embracing in the photo above is wanted for war crimes. So he is innocent.

    But what was going on at home, and how was the Dad involved in the creation of this drama?

    Texas Law on bomb hoaxes:

    Search TEX PE. CODE ANN. § 46.08 : Texas Statutes - Section 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.

    (b) An offense under this section is a Class A misdemeanor.

    Comments

    I haven't followed this as closely as you have but, based on your telling, if father and son joined forces to troll their local Islamophobics and won... I'm all for it?


    by Michael Maiello on Fri, 10/16/2015 - 8:52pm

    The son likely was played by Dad for his own personal interests, while also playing everyone who is naive enough to buy it all as originating solely with the kid.  Which not unexpectedly is most of America and American mainstream media. The naivete of which is as ubiquitous and unchanging as gravity.

    I don't anticipate US MSM reporting clock boy's hug of the Darfur genocide dictator.

    You have to go to British sources for the not so rosy follow-up stuff that doesn't jive so well with the initial vapid feel good reporting:

    The stories being: - nice: the kid is an unrecognized genius just really proud of his clock like any wunderkind would be, and we the politically correct would never suspect anything sneaky, especially from a Muslim family or kid, because we aren't Islamophobic.

    The not so nice: the kid was set up by a manipulative parent to create a 24 hour news sensation so the parent could perhaps hit it big, maybe meet the senior war criminal of Sudan, for whatever reasons of which, it is not so nice to contemplate.


    by NCD on Sat, 10/17/2015 - 1:05am

    I think it's fair to call the Washington Post mainstream, though their reporting is certainly less inflammatory.

    While there's undoubtedly an interesting story underneath the original headlines, there's no reason to make assumptions or accusations that are currently neither proven or warranted.


    by barefooted on Sat, 10/17/2015 - 1:10am

    Thanks for searching that out. Unlike BBC, WaPo has to editorialize away any suspicions about WTF is going on, and, unlike the BBC, explain the visit. hug, and photo, as just an every day perfectly natural homecoming trip w/Dad:

    At first glance, perhaps Ahmed's journey to Bashir's presidential compound isn't so strange. The teenager has met with a variety of big names over the past few weeks. Besides, his family are Sudanese immigrants...


    by NCD on Sat, 10/17/2015 - 11:21am

    I just found it funny that in the age of semiconductors, smartphones, miniaturization, wearable programmable bracelets and Raspberry Pi DIY kits, a primitive LED clock with wires sticking out is a clever science project. How 1980. Glad he wasn't building his own pressure cooker.

    by PeraclesPlease on Sat, 10/17/2015 - 1:58pm

    But really, isn't the point here, whether the kid intended this or not, whether the dad intended this or not, that this never should have worked in a civilized society?  The police never should have been called, the kid never should have been arrested, there shouldn't be an odd, anti-Islamist mayor... No matter what anyone intended, this never should have happened.


    by Michael Maiello on Sat, 10/17/2015 - 2:51pm

    When I was in high school, a classmate shoved a bunch of chemicals down the bathroom sinks hoping for some explosion. These days we've got a school shooting every what, 2 weeks? With Columbine sticking out as the start of the current meme (as highlighted by Michael Moore). Okay, so far Islamic bombings have been more prevalent in Istanbul, London and Madrid - Tim McVeigh's example & Iraqi IEDs fortunately so far haven't caught on as another approach for schools, only the Boston Marathon . But there are a lot of murderous shits out there.

    The principal is responsible for the safety of his school and students. Yes, a fake gun or something that looks like a bomb should be examined and precautions taken. Civilized precautions, sane and respectful dialogue, but still, decent serious security. If that means calling the police to be sure, fine. Seldom a need for handcuffs or irrational public displays - get the device & the kid out of the public space quick & quietly and work out the details.

    Obama invited the kid to bring his clock to the White House - should the Secret Service wave him & his kit through unexamined?  A good summary from CNN: [edit: CNN's COMMENTS]:

    It's not THAT factual. This poser didn't make a clock, he faked a clock. He removed an existing clock from its housing and placed it haphazardly in a pencil box which was designed to look like a small suitcase. He was warned by his engineering teacher not to show it to other teachers because it could be viewed as a bomb. He ignored that warning and set its alarm to go off later in his English class; for that, he had to plug it into a wall socket, which was a real hazard to other curious kids given its design and exposed transformer. 
     
    He wasn't detained by police for his device per se, but for being passive aggressively uncooperative when they asked him to explain the device and why he brought it to school. His sister claims she was suspended by the same school district in an earlier incident for threatening to blow up her school. That sister was heard coaching him on what to say next when he received a phone call from Mark Cuban. Their father has a history of pro-Islam publicity stunts and ties to CAIR and other Muslim Brotherhood offshoots. ...


    by PeraclesPlease on Sun, 10/18/2015 - 3:17am

    Excellent points. I heard that stuff too about Cuban.

    If any kid in any school anywhere USA is harmed by something a student brings in to school there can be hell to pay as to why 'they let him in with that'.

    Any parent with functioning brain tissue would not let a student take a suitcase device like this into school unless it was part of a project, and I have little doubt the paternal member of the clock boy family keeps close track on what everyone in the home is up to.

    The kid seems like a (coached) wind up doll, all he ever says is 'I hope to return to visit again with a new invention and success.” regardless of who he is meeting, if he even registers on who exactly he is meeting.  And of course Dad is always right there.

    The kid does have a great smile however.


    by NCD on Sat, 10/17/2015 - 4:12pm

    This is obviously some user-generated CNN content. I can't imagine edited copy would refer to the kid as a "poser" or casually reference associations with CAIR as pejorative. Smells of a right wing hit.


    by Michael Maiello on Sat, 10/17/2015 - 5:05pm

    I thought the same thing.  It reads more like a comment.  I'd like to see the original link.


    by Ramona on Sat, 10/17/2015 - 9:12pm

    Sorry, edited to note CNN COMMENT.


    by PeraclesPlease on Sun, 10/18/2015 - 3:17am

    I don't envy teachers, sometimes they can't win. i had to rush a student to the hospital after she zapped herself  with a 10,000 v. neon light transformer which was being used in a design class. It was a small item and low amps, but could have done a lot more damage than it did. So something like an exposed transformer, if true, could be a real concern.


    by Oxy Mora on Sat, 10/17/2015 - 9:28pm

    I went to the text that you sited and decided to take it with a grain of salt. It was the other head lines that turned me off on the site. 


    by trkingmomoe on Fri, 10/16/2015 - 10:20pm

    The same info was reported elsewhere. Did you take the photo session with the guy behind the Darfur genocide reported by the BBC with a grain of salt?


    by NCD on Fri, 10/16/2015 - 11:52pm