Thursday, March 28, AD 2024 1:31pm

Ahmed Mohamed Hoax?

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By now most of America knows about Ahmed Mohamed, the 14 year old teenager arrested at his school:

 

Irving’s police chief announced Wednesday that charges won’t be filed against Ahmed Mohamed, the MacArthur High School freshman arrested Monday after he brought what school officials and police described as a “hoax bomb” on campus.

At a joint press conference with Irving ISD, Chief Larry Boyd said the device — confiscated by an English teacher despite the teen’s insistence that it was a clock — was “certainly suspicious in nature.”

School officers questioned Ahmed about the device and why Ahmed had brought it to school. Boyd said Ahmed was then handcuffed “for his safety and for the safety of the officers” and taken to a juvenile detention center. He was later released to his parents, Boyd said.

“The follow-up investigation revealed the device apparently was a homemade experiment, and there’s no evidence to support the perception he intended to create alarm,” Boyd said, describing the incident as a “naive accident.”

Asked if the teen’s religious beliefs factored into his arrest, Boyd said the reaction “would have been the same” under any circumstances.

“We live in an age where you can’t take things like that to school,” he said. “Of course we’ve seen across our country horrific things happen, so we have to err on the side of caution.”

 

Obama has invited the kid to the White House and he has become Exhibit A against American “Islamophobia”.

One problem with all this:  it is possible that the entire incident was staged by the boy and his father.

First, Anthony at Art Voice has taken a very close look at this clock allegedly “invented” by Ahmed:

I found the highest resolution photograph of the clock I could. Instantly, I was disappointed. Somewhere in all of this – there has indeed been a hoax. Ahmed Mohamed didn’t invent his own alarm clock. He didn’t even build a clock. Now, before I go on and get accused of attacking a 14 year old kid who’s already been through enough, let me explain my purpose. I don’t want to just dissect the clock. I want to dissect our reaction as a society to the situation. Part of that is the knee-jerk responses we’re all so quick to make without facts. So, before you scroll down and leave me angry comments, please continue to the end (or not – prove my point, and miss the point, entirely!)

For starters, one glance at the printed circuit board in the photo, and I knew we were looking at mid-to-late 1970s vintage electronics. Surely you’ve seen a modern circuit board, with metallic traces leading all over to the various components like an electronic spider’s web. You’ll notice right away the highly accurate spacing, straightness of the lines, consistency of the patterns. That’s because we design things on computers nowadays, and computers assist in routing these lines. Take a look at the board in Ahmed’s clock. It almost looks hand-drawn, right? That’s because it probably was. Computer aided design was in its infancy in the 70s. This is how simple, low cost items (like an alarm clock) were designed. Today, even a budding beginner is going to get some computer aided assistance – in fact they’ll probably start there, learning by simulating designs before building them. You can even simulate or lay out a board with free apps on your phone or tablet. A modern hobbyist usually wouldn’t be bothered with the outdated design techniques. There’s also silk screening on the board. An “M” logo, “C-94” (probably, a part number – C might even stand for “clock”), and what looks like an American flag. More about that in a minute. Point for now being, a hobbyist wouldn’t silk screen logos and part numbers on their home made creation. It’s pretty safe to say already we’re looking at ’70s tech, mass produced in a factory.

So I turned to eBay, searching for vintage alarm clocks. It only took a minute to locate Ahmed’s clock. See this eBay listing, up at the time of this writing. Amhed’s clock was invented, and built, by Micronta, a Radio Shack subsidary. Catalog number 63 756.

The shape and design is a dead give away. The large screen. The buttons on the front laid out horizontally would have been on a separate board – a large snooze button, four control buttons, and two switches to turn the alarm on and off, and choose two brightness levels. A second board inside would have contained the actual “brains” of the unit. The clock features a 9v battery back-up, and a switch on the rear allows the owner to choose between 12 and 24 hour time. (Features like a battery back-up, and a 24 hour time selection seems awful superfluous for a hobby project, don’t you think?) Oh, and about that “M” logo on the circuit board mentioned above? Micronta.

For one last bit of confirmation, I located the pencil box Ahmed used for his project. During this video interview he again claims it was his “invention” and that he “made” the device – but the important thing at the moment, at 1:13, we see him showing the pencil box on his computer screen. Here it is on Amazon, where it’s clearly labeled as being 8.25 inches wide. Our eBay seller also conveniently took a photo of the clock next to a ruler to show it’s scale – about 8 inches wide. The dimensions all line up perfectly.

So there you have it folks, Ahmed Mohamad did not invent, nor build a clock. He took apart an existing clock, and transplanted the guts into a pencil box, and claimed it was his own creation. It all seems really fishy to me.

If we accept the story about “inventing” an alarm clock is made up, as I think I’ve made a pretty good case for, it’s fair to wonder what other parts of the story might be made up, not reported factually by the media, or at least, exaggerated.

I refer back again to this YouTube video interview with Ahmed. He explains that he closed up the box with a piece of cord because he didn’t want it to look suspicious. I’m curious, why would “looking suspicious” have even crossed his mind before this whole event unfolded, if he was truly showing off a hobby project, something so innocuous as an alarm clock. Why did he choose a pencil box, one that looks like a miniature briefcase no less, as an enclosure for a clock? It’s awful hard to see the clock with the case closed. On the other hand, with the case open, it’s awful dangerous to have an exposed power transformer sitting near the snooze button (unless, perhaps his invention was to stop serial-snooze-button pressers by giving them a dangerous electrical shock!)

Go here to read the rest.  Why go through all this for a fake alleged invention?  Ahmed’s dad might be a clue:

 

And according to the cops, Ahmed was significantly more cooperative with friendly media than with the police who came to ask some simple questions.

That’s probably not a coincidence. Ahmed’s father, as Pamela Geller points out, is an anti-Islamophobia media gadfly. He routinely returns to Sudan to run for president; he has debated anti-Koran Florida pastor Terry Jones, partially in order to bring his children to Disneyworld. In 2011, the Washington Post wrote of him:

Elhassan, 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 have never heard of Elhassan, including the imam at the mosque where he worships.

It’s no surprise that Ahmed Mohammed’s dad ran to the cameras at the first opportunity. It’s also no surprise that the terror-connected Council on American-Islamic Relations arrived to push the Islamophobia narrative immediately.

Go here to Breitbart to read the rest.  Fake invention, fake Islamophobia, real publicity stunt?  You make the call.

 

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Philip
Philip
Friday, September 18, AD 2015 11:04pm

“Obama has invited the kid to the White House and he has become exhibit A against American ” islamophobia.”

Good! The the kid can meet a fake President.

In our happy “it takes a village,” how many children and adults have been senselessly murdered by children in school’s, university’s or movie theater’s? This village of ours is under siege, and by God, to rule on the side of caution is not a crime nor a exercise in racial profiling. Interesting back story on dad!

To me, the box looks suspicious.

Missy
Missy
Saturday, September 19, AD 2015 6:51am

I didn’t pay much attention to the story, but did find it odd that all the people who were anti-gun-shaped-pop-tarts, were pro-bomb-looking-clocks. The left is schizophrenic.

DonL
DonL
Saturday, September 19, AD 2015 6:52am

Gizmos with wires….pressure cookers? What a world.
I recall regularly walking to high school with my .22 cal. (rifle club) and also walking in the dark across the inner-city (to catch the 4 AM bus into the country), with my Mossberg.20 ga. shotgun to get an early hunt in.
Neither act caused even a minor glance from either; police, teachers, or nice little old lady passengers asking me what I hoped to catch.
We old geezers think back to a saner time with far more on our minds than mere nostalgia.

Penguins Fan
Penguins Fan
Saturday, September 19, AD 2015 6:56am

What is this kid’s’s crackpot father doing in the US anyway?

Oh, right. Democrats let these people in, and then Republicans do nothing to get them out.

DonL
DonL
Saturday, September 19, AD 2015 7:01am

“Democrats let these people in, and then Republicans do nothing to get them out….”
Yup, it seems that our government has become like those old phony tag team wrestling matches with pre-designed outcomes, while we rubes scream and yell in compliance.

Stephen E Dalton
Stephen E Dalton
Saturday, September 19, AD 2015 7:53am

I knew there was more to this story than what the mass media was telling us. Even before I read this post, I felt the school was justified in it’s actions. The mass murders that have occurred at American schools over the last few years and the violence that Muslims are capable of committing, was reason enough for the school to take the actions that it did. BTW, I think both the boy and his father ought to be shipped back to Sudan. They’re nothing but troublemakers.

Philip
Philip
Saturday, September 19, AD 2015 8:04am

DonL.

Phony tag team wrestling matches with pre-designed outcomes.. ( And on the far left corner, sporting YELLOW spandex is presidential hopeful HILL-Y the Grave maker..with her fresh flesh Blood RED high heels and crazed joker smile, she is ready to lie her way to a victory tonight Bob! Without a doubt Steve, She is anxious to jump in the ring and flaunt her deception without limitation. It’s going to be lying, cheating and utter chaos coming from the Secretary of Sleeze HILL-Y.)

WWF can’t touch the bs that Madame Secretary cover’s herself in. Laughing off the CNN reporter recently, regarding e-mailgate.

Foxfier
Admin
Saturday, September 19, AD 2015 1:30pm

Check the comments at Art Voice– one of them says that the kid showed it to his science teacher first, who checked it out and told him that he shouldn’t be taking it out.

Which he then did, until he GOT a reaction.

Yeah, he wanted a reaction.

Only question is if he was put up to it, or if he was being a twerp as a 14 year old boy sometimes will be.

Foxfier
Admin
Saturday, September 19, AD 2015 1:38pm

Let’s assume, for argument that the kid was 100% innocent.

Taking apart a digital clock and sticking it, inelegantly, in a new box is the kind of thing a nine year old does. At the very least, it’s an example of someone expecting high praise for managing to work a screwdriver without electrocuting himself.

If he’d used it to make one of those Raspberry Pi computers AND styled it to look like a bomb, it’d at least be kind of cool. But… taking apart a clock? That’s it?

And I thought building inaccurate forts out of sugar cubes at 14 for history class was lame.

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