Sept. 21, 2015 - Freedomain Radio - Stefan Molyneux
16:37
3079 Ahmed Mohamed: Handcuffed for Making a Clock? | True News
On Monday 9/14, Ahmed Mohammed, a 14-year-old Texan kid, made the national headlines after he was suspended from school for bringing an alarm clock he had supposedly built himself. Later on Barack Obama tweeted "Cool clock, Ahmed. Want to bring it to the White House? We should inspire more kids like you to like science. It's what makes America great." As is to be expected, there is far more to this story!Sources: http://www.fdrurl.com/ahmed-mohamed
Ahmed Mohammed, a 14-year-old Texan kid, made national headlines after he was suspended from school for three days for bringing in an alarm clock that he had supposedly built himself.
The New York Times reported, quote, he, Ahmed, said he took it to school on Monday to show an engineering teacher who said it was nice but then told him he should not show the invention to other teachers.
Later, Ahmed's clock beeped during an English class and after he revealed the device to the teacher, school officials notified the police and Ahmed was interrogated by officers.
According to media reports, quote, officers said that Ahmed was being passive-aggressive in his answers to their questions and didn't have a reasonable answer as to what he was doing with the case.
Investigators said the student told them that it was just a clock that he was messing around with.
We attempted to question the juvenile about what it was, and he would simply only say it was a clock.
He didn't offer any explanation as to what it was for, why he created this device, why he brought it to school, said James McClellan of the Irving Police.
Ahmed was then suspended for three days for bringing a hoax bomb to school.
Ahmed claimed, I felt like I was a criminal.
I felt like I was a terrorist.
I felt like all the names I was called.
In middle school, I was called terrorist, called bomb maker just because of my race and religion.
All right.
So that's the mainstream narrative.
Let's have a look at what is actually going on in this situation.
First of all, it wasn't a school assignment.
He just basically had a hobby project.
And this young Muslim man brought in a suspicious-looking alarm clock that went off in the middle of a class on the first school day after 9-11.
Is that a coincidence?
Well, let's keep watching or listening to find out.
So first of all, Ahmed reveals that he was aware that his ethnicity might make the Alarm Cut project more suspicious.
He knew ahead of time that people would be worried about this.
Now, originally he said that he brought it in to impress or to show to his engineering teacher, but later he changed his story.
What he said later was, I built the clock to impress my teacher, but when I showed it to her, she thought that it was a threat to her.
It was really sad that she took the wrong impression of it, and I got arrested for it later that day.
The alarm clock was not meant to impress the English teacher.
She only found out about it after the alarm went off during her class.
He had already shown it to the engineering teacher.
Now, of course, when the alarm went off and people were naturally alarmed and had listened or watched the Homeland Security webpage, it says, if you see something, say something.
If there's anything unusual, anything out of the ordinary, be proactive, do the right thing, call the authorities.
So when the teachers did what they're trained to do, Ahmed could have said, oh, no, I already talked about this with the engineering teacher.
just ask him, you know, call him, bring him over, and everything could have been resolved right away.
Could have been resolved when the teacher noticed it, could have been resolved when the principal noticed it, could have been resolved when the cops came over, but no.
No.
He already had a teacher who would vouch for him, he didn't bring any of that up.
Now, Ahmed put his invention, let's say for the moment invention, in a pencil box.
You think of a pencil box, what do you think of?
Did it look like this one?
No, not really didn't look like that one at all.
Okay, what about this one?
No, actually didn't really look like that one at all.
No, it actually looks like this.
It's a little bit different.
And Ahmed's actual device looked like this.
All right.
A little bit more alarming.
So it basically looks like a miniature briefcase, like the ones every moustachioed smoking villain uses for bombs in Hollywood movies.
Now, this is not exactly the best housing for an electronics device, let alone a clock.
To see the time, you've got to open it, get exposed to its internals, including a power transformer that can shock you if you're careless.
A pencil box made of clear plastic would make a little bit more sense, but also looks far less threatening.
In an interview, Ahmed said, I closed it with a cable because I didn't want to lock it to make it seem like a threat, so I just used simple cable so it wouldn't look that much suspicious.
So, clearly he knows ahead of time that the device is going to look suspicious, yet brings it to school the school day after 9-11 anyway.
And despite knowing that it looks suspicious, he chooses to close it off with a cable.
So a box with a cable sticking out of it is much less suspicious looking than a pencil box using the built-in locking mechanism, which it already had.
Yeah, okay.
So rather than use a locking mechanism, you've got a cable sticking out of it.
This makes about as much sense as wrapping your car in duct tape instead of locking the doors.
And just think about this for a moment.
The clock requires a power source.
Now, in the photos released by the police, there's no battery attached to the external battery backup.
Now, maybe the cops removed it.
I doubt it, because they're probably not going to tamper with evidence.
But there's no battery attached.
What that means is that the clock had to be plugged in in order for the alarm to go off.
So after his engineering teacher says, okay, fine, please don't show it to anyone else.
This is not a good idea.
He goes from class to class, and at least in one class, the English class, he plugs it into the wall.
He plugs it into the wall.
Otherwise, there's no way that the alarm could have gone off.
Now, also, when you get an alarm clock...
The alarm is not set up.
So someone had to have set up that alarm to go off during the English class.
Since he's the inventor and the engineering genius, it had to be him.
So he had to plug it in and he had to have set an alarm to go off in the English class.
Come on!
Come on, people!
Media!
Do a little work!
This is not brain surgery!
Is he upset that a Muslim, young Muslim man with something that looks like a bomb the day after 9-11 has any trouble?
I don't know.
What if I show up in a white robe at school on Martin Luther King Day?
Do people say, oh, that's fine.
If I say, oh, no, you see, I'm dressed as a ghost, so don't be offended.
No, you'd get suspended, probably for impersonating a KKK member, and that would happen.
Now, Ahmed is garnering great praise for his intense creativity and engineering genius.
Google executives reserved him a spot at their weekend science fair.
Mark Zuckerberg invited him to visit Facebook's headquarters, and an MIT professor even invited him to go on a tour of the famed university.
During an interview, the professor told the boy, you are the kind of student we want at places like MIT and Harvard.
You are my ideal student.
A creative, independent thinker like you is the kind of person who should be coming a physicist.
The story even reached the White House, prompting President Barack Obama to tweet, Cool clock, Ahmed!
Want to bring her to the White House?
We should inspire more kids like you to like science!
It's what makes America great!
The boy accepted Obama's invitation and will be making an appearance at the White House.
So, is he a genius inventor?
Okay, let's say you do build your own alarm clock from scratch.
That's pretty impressive, especially if you're only 14.
So, a bunch of electronics enthusiasts decided to examine what Ahmed had built to, you know, bask and get a glow, maybe a face tan from the glow of his creative genius.
Upon seeing the picture of Ahmed's invention, one engineer concluded, quote, Ahmed Mohammed didn't invent his own alarm clock.
He didn't even build a clock!
When he saw the components, the engineer realized something was wrong.
The parts looked like they came from a 1980s consumer electronics piece.
His follow-up investigation determined that the parts Ahmed used came from a vintage alarm clock built by a Radio Shack subsidiary.
The final verdict was, quote, Ahmed Mohammed did not invent nor build a clock.
He took apart an old clock and shoved the guts into a pencil box and claimed it was his own creation.
Great!
Great!
Taking old stuff and putting it in stuff that makes no sense is not engineering genius.
Otherwise, I don't know, what can I do?
I can break up an old plow and make an elephant eat it, and I'm Steve Jobs.
Ahmed, who has publicly claimed that he likes to invent stuff and that he built the clock himself, I don't know, does he find it hard to distinguish between build and rip-off?
I don't know.
He already finds it hard to distinguish between an innocent hobby project and a bomb lookalike.
Makes no sense at all.
Just lazy.
Can you imagine Steve Jobs, you know, striding up in his black t-shirt and his jeans saying, No!
There won't be a new iPhone!
To hell with that new iPad!
We've got clock in a box!
Clock in a box!
You can't see the time!
And you've got to plug it in.
It's a clock in a box!
Wait, does this sound like something from Saturday Night Live?
I don't know.
You can change the spelling a little and Google it if you like.
So, was he targeted by overzealous...
Administrators in a school system because of his ethnicity.
Well, I don't know.
What about the six-year-old white guy who was suspended for kissing a girl on a dare and then accused of sexual harassment?
In Dyer County, Tennessee, Kendra Turner reports that she was suspended for saying, bless you, after a student sneezed and that her teacher told her she would have no godly speaking in class.
One of her school administrators said, oh no, no, no, it's not a religious issue, just an issue the teacher felt was kind of like a distraction in the class.
Ah, well, you see, school leadership offered no explanation for the photos posted by students that showed, bless you, on a list of expressions banned in the classroom.
I think she's still waiting for her call from President Obama, but, you know, keep looking at that phone, don't worry about the crick in your neck, I'm sure it's on its way.
Alex Stone, a 16-year-old white kid from Somerville, South Carolina, wrote a short story in which he imagined using a gun to kill a dinosaur.
For this, his locker was searched, and he was arrested, handcuffed, charged with disorderly conduct, and suspended from school for three days because raptor lives matter!
A seven-year-old Anne Arundel County boy was suspended recently for chewing his breakfast pastry into the shape of a gun and saying, bang, bang!
An offense that the school described as a threat to other students, according to his family.
This pastry gun is like a rectangular strawberry-filled bar akin to a Pop-Tart that the second grader had tried to nibble into the shape of a mountain, then found it looked more like a gun, according to his father.
So, uh...
That's not really dangerous, but you can get suspended for that.
A 13-year-old in America was suspended for doodling a gun.
Maybe he thought people would get paper cuts.
I don't know.
So, is he being unfairly targeted?
Is this just some weird, racist, cross-cultural, Islamophobic mistake?
I don't know.
Let's review.
The first school day after 9-11, a young Muslim man who claims others are afraid he's a bomb maker brings a bomb-looking device into school.
He shows it to his engineering teacher who tells him to keep it hidden because the engineering teacher is not an idiot.
Ahmed ignores that.
He goes to class after class with the device wrapped in a cable.
He most likely plugs it in.
Scary noises erupt during English class.
He does not call the engineering teacher to explain what happened.
He doesn't explain it to the principal.
The cops are called.
He doesn't explain himself either.
He refuses to answer questions, doesn't call the engineering teacher or say what's going on.
This is a rather hard-to-believe series of bad decisions for something that He didn't even invent.
His big science project is, here's something I ordered online and put in a box tied with a cable.
I guess that makes a pizza delivery guy a cordon bleu chef.
Further strengthening the suspicions of any rational or reasonably skeptical person, let's look at some of the facts of the background of Ahmed's father.
His father probably knew he's bringing this device to school.
I don't know.
Call me crazy.
I think a little cultural sensitivity, saying to your Muslim son, don't bring something that looks like a bomb to school the day after 9-11.
That's really not cool.
In 2011, the Washington Post wrote of Ahmed's father, El Hassan, a native of the Sudan who is now an American citizen, likes to call himself a sheik.
He wears a cleric's flowing white robes and claims hundreds of followers throughout Egypt, Sudan, and in the United States.
But he is unknown as a scholar or holy man in the state he has called home for two decades.
Religious leaders in Texas say they've never heard of al-Hassan, including the imam at the mosque where he worships.
So maybe the followers are in his own mind, hand puppets, it's hard to know.
It's not hugely surprising that Ahmed Mohammed's dad ran to the cameras at the first opportunity.
It's also no surprise that the Terra Connected Council on American-Islamic Relations arrived to help push the Islamophobia narrative immediately.
So...
Here's a quick quiz for you.
You know, if something is not dangerous, you can bring it on a plane.
Let me put it to you this way.
I can chew a...
I'm not saying do this.
I'm just saying theoretically you could.
Could you chew a Pop-Tart into the shape of something that vaguely looks like a gun and bring it on a plane?
Bet you could.
I'm not saying try this.
Mental exercise.
Imagine going to an airport...
Plunking down some cash and saying, I want a one-way ticket to Washington.
Putting Ahmed's device on the counter and saying, yeah, this is my only luggage.
Are you getting on the plane?
I don't think so.
So no, it's not crazy to be a little concerned about this.
It would be crazy not to be.
I tell you, I bet you guys...
I am just getting so bored and tired and weary of this false race-baiting narrative fatigue is setting in.
I just, like, I can't take it anymore.
Ah, the teachers are racist.
It's Islamophobia.
This poor kid just wanted to show all of the beauty he'd created in this bomb-looking thing.
And oh, my God, it's so boring.
So predictable.
Every single time you hear this stuff, it falls apart the moment you look at it with any light on.
You know, when I was a kid, back when you could do this, I was six years old and I flew to Africa from England.
Back in the day, you could even do this without parents.
I didn't have my parents on board.
And I remember really clearly, I was listening to the audio, right?
This is back long before Walkmans and all that.
But after Stone Tablets, you know, for my younger audience.
And I was listening to what became for a long time my favorite fairy tale, which was The Emperor's New Clothes.
You know, I'm sure you know the story, but it's when all of the nonsense that everyone is saying is revealed by somebody who says, Bullshit!
It's not true.
It's nonsense.
It's a lie.
There's no clothes.
The Emperor has no clothes.
And that became one of my favorite stories for a long time.
And this is sort of what it feels like.
I'm just reaching the culmination of exhaustion and boredom with all this race-baiting narratives about evil whiteys and racism and Islamophobia and blah-de-blah-de-blah.
My other favorite fairy tale, which I think is kind of applicable here, is The Boy Who Cried Wolf, right?
You know, the story of the kid who loves pranking everyone in the village by saying, there's a wolf about to eat the sheep!
There's a wolf about to eat the sheep!
And everyone rushes out with their pickaxes and their firebrands or whatever.
And there's no wolf.
Right?
Trolls, baby!
You got trolled, America!
And then one day there is actually a wolf that's eating all the sheep and the boy comes down.
Ah, the wolf's eating the sheep!
They're like, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah.
And this, I think this is where I am.
I think, frankly, this is where a lot of people are.
I just assume whenever there's one of these stereotypically racist incidents, I just assume that the media is lying through its teeth.
And seeing the degree to which this hysteria spreads to the very highest levels of power gives you just a sense of how rotten at the core...
The media political complex is in America.
It is vile, rotten to the core, late decadent, post-Roman, end of the century, nearly end of the civilization amount of falsehoods.
