Society's ChildS


Hearts

MIT surprises Ahmed Mohamed on live TV, offers him guided tour through school

Image
© Ben Torres/Getty ImagesAhmed Mohamed has been invited to go on a tour of MIT
The young boy who was arrested for taking a homemade clock into school was surprised during a live interview with an offer to tour Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT)

Ahmed Mohamed, 14, from Texas, was questioned by police after teachers thought the digital clock he had made looked like a bomb. His principal at MacArthur High School in Irving also suspended him.

Ahmed said he had only taken the clock into school to show his teachers.

His story has since garnered support from people around the world, with many impressed at his invention and engineering capability.

During a live interview on the All In with Chris Hayes show on MSNBC on Wednesday night, Chanda Prescod-Weinstein, an astrophysics professor at MIT, surprised the 14-year-old by inviting him to go on a tour of MIT and Harvard Univeristy.


Comment: See also: Hysterical police state USA: 14-year-old Muslim schoolboy arrested for taking homemade clock to school


Snakes in Suits

Clueless mayor defends school and police who arrested teen that brought homemade clock to school

Image
© AP
Irving, Texas Mayor Beth Van Duyne is defending law enforcement and school officials who were involved in the arrest and suspension of Ahmed Mohamed, a Muslim 14-year-old ninth-grader who brought a homemade clock to school that teachers mistook for a bomb.

"I do not fault the school or the police for looking into what they saw as a potential threat," Van Duyne wrote in a statement posted to her Facebook page Wednesday.

Van Duyne said school and law enforcement officials were simply following school protocols when a "possible threat" or "criminal act" is discovered.

"To the best of my knowledge, they followed protocol for investigating whether this was an attempt to bring a Hoax Bomb to a school campus," Van Duyne wrote. "I hope this incident does not serve as a deterrent against our police and school personnel from maintaining the safety and security of our schools."

Comment: See also: Hysterical police state USA: 14-year-old Muslim schoolboy arrested for taking homemade clock to school


Handcuffs

Police State: OWS lawsuit aims to stop NYPD from targeting peaceful protesters

Image
© Jessica Lehrman / GothamistA protester is arrested on September 16, 2012
A new lawsuit filed in federal court last week aims to challenge a reality evident to anyone who has attended a large political gathering in Lower Manhattan over the past decade: lawful behavior is no safeguard against being arrested.

The lawsuit centers on more than 200 arrests made around the first anniversary of Occupy Wall Street in September 2012, when the NYPD "should have known that members of its police force would encounter individuals engaged in expressive speech activity."

Instead, the NYPD continued to arrest and harass protesters for seemingly no reason other than that they were protesting.

The lawsuit asserts that this is part of a "pattern, policy, and practice of the NYPD misapplying the disorderly conduct statute to peaceful protesters in New York City."

"The City of New York has continually failed to appropriately police the many non-violent and lawful expressions of speech, resulting in the continual breach of individual rights, the waste of judicial and civic resources, and the need for appropriate training policies, methodologies, and systems to address individuals conducting peaceful and legal expressive speech as protected under the First Amendment," the suit states.

Magnify

Meet the 7 kids not named Mohamed who brought homemade clocks to school and didn't get arrested

Image
© h080/Flickr
Hoping to impress the teachers at his new school, an Irving, Texas, high school freshman named Ahmed Mohamed brought a homemade clock with him to MacArthur High Monday morning, which he'd assembled before bed the night before. When he showed it to those teachers, though, they were something other than impressed, and by Monday afternoon, Mohamed was being led out of school in handcuffs. Ahmed's English teacher believed the device was a bomb.

Why? Could it have something to do with Ahmed Mohamed's name, or the color of his skin? His father thinks so. "He just wants to invent good things for mankind," Mohamed Elhassan Mohamed told the Dallas Morning News. "But because his name is Mohamed and because of Sept. 11, I think my son got mistreated."

Mohamed's father might be right. Below are seven students, not named Mohamed, who got off scot-free for the heinous crime of DIY timekeeping, plus a bonus kid who brought an actual inert bomb to school and wasn't suspended. (Mohamed got three days.)

Comment: See also: Hysterical police state USA: 14-year-old Muslim schoolboy arrested for taking homemade clock to school


Black Magic

Muslim exorcist murdered at 'voodoo' healing center, East London

eery london
A Muslim exorcist was stabbed to death at a voodoo therapy center where he worked in East London on Monday. Although police and paramedics rushed to save him, his injuries were so serious he died at the scene. Zakariyya Islam, 46, was discovered with multiple stab wounds at the Ruqyah Therapy Centre in Greatorex Street on Monday evening. Police found a knife close to the scene of the murder.

A 43-year-old man was arrested shortly after the attack and police are not searching for any other suspects. The suspect had injuries to his hand for which he received hospital treatment and is now in custody.

Friends of Islam have suggested he may have been killed by a psychologically-disturbed patient who thought he or she was possessed by demonic spirits. Islam often dealt with those who believed they were possessed by evil spirits or 'Jinns' by reading passages of the Koran.

Comment: Update: Ashfav Choudry, age 43, of Watford was charged with the murder of Zakariyya Islam, father of three.


Health

Dr. Deborah Asnis, infectious disease specialist from New York, dies at 59

Image
Dr. Deborah Asnis reported puzzling symptoms in 1999.
Dr. Deborah Asnis, whose suspicions about two Queens hospital patients suffering from sudden paralysis led to the discovery of the first outbreak of West Nile virus in the Western Hemisphere, died on Saturday in Manhattan. She was 59.

The cause was breast cancer, her son, Joshua, said.

On Aug. 23, 1999, a Monday, Dr. Asnis, an infectious disease specialist, contacted Marcelle Layton, the chief epidemiologist at the New York City health department, reporting that two of her patients at Flushing Hospital Medical Center were displaying similar puzzling symptoms.

"Asnis did something other doctors might not have bothered to do," Elinor Levy and Mark Fischetti wrote in the 2003 book "The New Killer Diseases: How the Alarming Evolution of Germs Threatens Us All."

Comment: More info: Beneficial tobacco: Monoclonal antibodies derived from tobacco thwart West Nile virus


Alarm Clock

Small bastion of sanity: Millions tweet support for 9th grader detained for bringing homemade clock to school

CAIR clocks
© CAIR-Chicago / TwitterThe Chicago chapter of the Council on American-Islamic relations stands with Ahmed Mohamed by holding clocks
#IStandWithAhmed became the number one trending hashtag worldwide on Twitter after 14-year-old Ahmed Mohamed was handcuffed and arrested for taking a homemade clock to his Texas high school.

Ahmed, a ninth grader from Irving, Texas, was eager to impress his teachers with his newest creation - a clock that he invented in just 20 minutes, consisting of a circuit board and a power supply wired to a digital display. The clock and its wirings were all strapped inside a case.

However, his excitement turned to fear when he was pulled out of class by the principal and arrested after the clock's alarm went off during his English period.

"It looks like a bomb," his teacher told him. The boy was taken to a juvenile detention center and questioned by police before being released to his parents.

It was not until the next day that police announced they would not charge the teen for creating a "hoax bomb." Instead, they dropped the case.

Between Ahmed's arrest and the announcement that he would not face charges, social media exploded with tweets ranging from funny to supportive. All used the #IStandWithAhmed hashtag.

Many people took photos of themselves with clocks at work.


Comment: Some people can obviously see the utterly ridiculous nature of this hysterical reaction on the part of school officials and law enforcement. Why does it seem like the crazies are always the ones in these positions of power and influence? Probably because psychopaths and authoritarian followers tend to seek out and occupy such positions. Unfortunately that never leads to good results.

See also: Hysterical police state USA: 14-year-old Muslim schoolboy arrested for taking homemade clock to school


Blackbox

More hysteria? White House on lock down because of 'unattended package'

white house
© Kevin Lamarque / Reuters
The White House is on lockdown due to an unattended package found in a nearby park, according to the Secret Service.

The security procedure was triggered when a package was found across the street in Lafayette Park Secret Service spokeswoman Nicole Mainor told Reuters. Bomb technicians and the DC fire department were called to the scene.

President Obama was not at the White House at the time of the lockdown, Reuters said.

The lockdown was lifted shortly after the package was declared safe by the Secret Service.

Because President Obama had, only hours earlier, extended a White House invitation to a Muslim teen falsely accused of bringing a bomb to his school, many Twitter users joked that it may have been the clock that the student made.


Comment: Americans are getting more hysterical every day: Hysterical police state USA: 14-year-old Muslim schoolboy arrested for taking homemade clock to school Coincidentally, or not, Nature seems to be reacting in pace.


Passport

Surprised? Dutch journalist easily buys fake Syrian passport, claims terrorists can do it too

Image
© Joseph Eid / AFPA Syrian woman shows her passport as families wait to be registered by the UNHCR in Lebanon.
A journalist working for a Dutch magazine had a fake Syrian passport ready for him in less than two days - with the picture of the Prime Minister of the Netherlands printed on it.

Reporter Harald Doornbos who is currently based in Syria and works for the Dutch Nieuwe Revu magazine said anyone - including jihadists and Syrians who have committed crimes against humanity and are banned from entering Europe, can easily do the same.


Comment: What country can't you do this in?


Bullseye

Profound implications: Neighbor lawsuit seeks to declare autistic boy a "public nuisance"

autistic boy
© FoxNews
Hearing on discovery motions set for September 22, 2015 9am, San Jose


Dear Bay Area autism families,

We wanted to let you know about an extraordinary, unprecedented lawsuit against a local family that could have profound implications for all of us affected by autism.

In June 2014, two Sunnyvale couples, whose homes on Arlington Court flanked a home occupied by a nine year-old autistic boy and his parents, sued the autism family in Santa Clara County Superior Court, alleging a smattering of incidents that had occurred sporadically over the span of about six years. The incidents sound much like those that happen with many autistic children, and include, for example, that the boy had entered a neighbor's garage, had taken a neighbor's banana, had sought out neighbors' sweets, had kicked a car (no damage), had tossed some objects over a fence, had pulled a child's hair and had on occasion kicked at people (no injuries), and had tossed a bicycle helmet. The boy was between 3 and 9 years of age, and weighed less than 60 pounds, at the time of these alleged actions.

To us, as autism parents, caregivers, and professionals, the alleged incidents seemed relatively unremarkable, a series of minor impulsive acts of a small boy with a significant neurodevelopmental disability, resulting in little, if any, measurable damage. Indeed, no actual damages to property or person are alleged in the Complaint. Moreover, the alleged acts were not so different from those often seen in rough-and-tumble neurotypical boys his age.