It's West Virginia Republican Party Day at the state's Capitol and Republicans from all across the Mountain State have gathered in Charleston to promote their party's values. Vendors have set up tables throughout the Capitol Building, offering the finest in wingnut lit including this classic from die-hard Islamaphobe Robert Spencer. Read the rest
Even though the DoJ has expressly prohibited using the No-Fly list to gain leverage over potential informants, the FBI has continued its longstanding practice of blackmailing American citizens by putting them on the No-Fly list because they refused to work as informants. Read the rest
The adult son of Muhammad Ali, the late Muslim-American boxing star and civil rights hero, was detained for hours at a Florida airport by U.S. immigration officials, the Courier-Journal reports. Read the rest
A stunning new ad campaign from Nike “pays homage to Middle Eastern athletes and explores the challenges young Arab women aspiring to a professional sporting career may face,” per Vogue. Read the rest
The Intercept "obtained a copy" of the FBI's 48-question, 2015 "Indicators of Mobilization to Violence" protocol, a list of 48 questions that FBI investigators can use to determine if a subject is at risk for committing terrorist acts. Read the rest
Update, 330pm PT: Aaaaand it looks like the White House just issued statements that reverse everything they said a half hour ago.
White House changes earlier statement, says it may take fight over temporary halt of travel order to Supreme Court https://t.co/rkUjbpFFyG
— Washington Post (@washingtonpost) February 10, 2017
A tale of two news alerts that landed 30 minutes apart. pic.twitter.com/8mLH5DsB4q
— Sahil Kapur (@sahilkapur) February 10, 2017
Less than 24 hours after Donald Trump lost his #MuslimBan appeal in court and subsequently tweeted 'SEE YOU IN COURT!' to the courts, he flip-flopped. Like he does. Read the rest
The Department of Justice has announced that it has arrested three Kansas men who called themselves "Crusaders" and planned "a bloodbath" in an apartment complex where many Somali people lived, which was to including bombings followed by house-to-house shootings sparing no one, "not even babies." Read the rest
Elton Simpson is one of the two men who fired assault rifles at people gathered for a "Draw Muhammad" event in Garland, Texas before being shot to death by an off-duty police officer; in the weeks leading up to the attack, Simpson had corresponded with an undercover FBI agent who urged him to "Tear up Texas." Read the rest
If you spend enough time looking at Flightradar24's data about fly-overs of American cities, you can figure out where and when the feds are flying domestic spy-aircraft, watching for the tell-tale circling patterns and mapping the planes' owners to companies that investigative journalists have revealed to be fake cut-outs for the FBI. Read the rest
A leaked Vancouver internal police bulletin sent the city into a tizz when they learned that the cops were trying to locate three "Middle-Eastern" men who'd been taking a suspicious amount of photographs of a shopping mall. Read the rest
A British Muslim family was denied boarding at Gatwick Airport after the US government informed the airline that they would not be admitted to the USA. They were on their way to Disneyland. Read the rest
After bigots alerted Southwest Airlines ground crew that there were two people speaking Arabic in the boarding area, the airline's employees opted to harass a Palestinian-American pizza-parlor owner and his friend who were returning to Philadelphia from Chicago. Read the rest
A 14 year old London student was questioned by school officials about his possible involvement with Islamic State after he raised the subject of environmental activism in a classroom discussion. Read the rest
Zomg, the kid is charming. He reveals that he's switching high-schools, thanks his supporters, discussing his inventing and tinkering, and talks about his delight at being invited to the White House. Read the rest
Irving mayor Beth Van Duyne is a notorious racist and is also the sworn mayor of the townspeople of Irving, TX, where Ahmed Mohamed and his family live.
On hearing the news that her police chief had dropped criminal charges against Ahmed Mohamed, a boy who made a clock because he wanted to engage with the makers in his new high school, Mayor Van Duyne posted to Facebook, exonerating the police and asking townsfolk not to hold their grotesque abuse of authority and farcically bad judgment against them:
I do not fault the school or the police for looking into what they saw as a potential threat. They have procedures to run when a possible threat or criminal act is discovered. They follow these procedures in the sole interest of protecting our children and school personnel. 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. Following this investigation, Irving PD has stated no charges will be filed against the student. 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.
Later, she appended a little weak-kneed blurb about how it's nice that kids are creative to her initial victim-blaming, bad-cop-exonerating post.
Police Drop Case Against Kid Who Made Clock, While Mayor Worries About The Impact... On The Police [Mike Masnick/Techdirt]
Ahmed Mohamed is a gifted, driven maker-kid who's in the ninth grade at MacArthur High in Irving, Texas. When he showed the homemade clock he soldered and pieced together to his engineering teacher, he was told to keep it in his bag. But when the alarm went off in English class, his teacher accused him of bringing a bomb to school.
He told the teacher, and then the principal, and then the police offers who'd been summoned, that it was a digital clock he'd made and brought to school to show as evidence of the kinds of things he was making. He'd loved robotics club in middle school and was hoping to connect to a similar peer group in his new high school.
He was arrested, handcuffed, and paraded through the school with an officer on each arm, wearing his NASA shirt.
When he was brought before the school police, the officer who arrested him looked at him and said, "Yup. That’s who I thought it was." Ahmed Mohamed and his family (and the Council on Islamic American Relations) believe that the officer was referring to the color of his skin and his name.
Police spokesman James McLellan admits that Mohamed always maintained that the device was a clock, not a bomb, "but there was no broader explanation." When the Dallas Morning News asked him what "broader explanation" he was looking for, McLellan said, “It could reasonably be mistaken as a device if left in a bathroom or under a car. Read the rest
The spyware that Impero supplies to UK schools -- which searches kids' Internet use for "jihadi" terms -- uses "password" as its default password, and the company has threatened brutal legal reprisals against the researcher who repeatedly demonstrated their total security negligence. Read the rest
