May 13, 2007

"Dude, I just saw some really weird s-. I don't know what to do. Should I call someone or is that being racist?"

The teenaged Circuit City salesclerk who called the FBI on what the NY Post calls the Jersey "Jihad Jerks." Interesting that he worried about being "racist," considering what he witnessed:
[T]he two men approached the television section of the electronics store where videos could be transferred to DVD and copies could be made.

They handed the teenage clerk a mini-cassette tape from a camcorder and asked for a $20 transfer to be made to DVD. As they waited, the two men calmly walked around the store looking at televisions, video games and DVDs....

When the teen and another employee went into a back room and began the conversion of the tape, they saw a group of bearded men wearing "fundamentalist attire" and shooting "big, f-ing guns,"...

Throughout the 90-minute-long tape, above the booming gunfire at a Pennsylvania target range, the jihadists could be heard screaming "God is great!"

15 comments:

Tim said...

Thank you ACLU, and thank you, American Association for Justice, and thank you, The Council on American-Islamic Relations. Special thanks to Congressional Democrats, the New York Times, The Washington Post, the Los Angeles Times, ABC News, CBS News, CNN, NBC News, MSNBC, and Fox News.

Or is that being racist?

PeterP said...

"I...they saw a group of bearded men wearing 'fundamentalist attire' and shooting "big, f-ing guns,"...

Sounds like your average survivalist convention to me.

Details matter here. What precisely were these men wearing that so gave the game away?

Could be a really useful tip for the general public.

Cedarford said...

It gets even more problematic with groups like CAIR and the ACLU running around.

Besides racism, the store manager likely had concerns about "discrimination" and lawsuit exposure for "violating the customer privacy expectations regarding videotape DVD rentals and duplication services".

The manager might very well have chosen to "play it safe" and tell the store clerk to disregard the contents since no obvious evidence that those members of a minority group were engaged in any crime. If the Muslims hadn't done any terror planning, they could be outraged, angry, shocked!! at being "profiled" and their rights violated by Circuit City, and contacted a lawyer.

The clerk has other concerns.

The Post reported he has a quite rational fear that other Islamoids may target him.

Then when news broke on Tuesday that federal authorities had arrested six foreign-born Muslims in the terror plot, the frightened teen decided to lay low - not coming to work or going to school until the situation blew over, his pals said.

He was too terrified of reprisals to be interviewed by The Post yesterday.


Since 9/11 we have let radical Muslims, Lefties, ACLU-types put in place barriers to intimidate citizens from being a line of defense in counterterror:

1. Fear of being accused of being racist and losing your job for it if you are mistakem.
2. Fear of being sued by the ACLU or Muslim activists a la the "Flying Imams".
3. Fear of being killed by Muslim terrorists in reprisal if you are right and inform authorities.
4. Fear of violating policy that bars employees from violating customer expectation of privacy unless the employee has justifiable cause to believe a crime has been committed or is about to be. (One of the Flight schools the 9/11 hijackers attended was deeply troubled by them, but decided they had an obligation NOT to notify authorities because they had no suspicion of criminal activity).

Some lessons learned?

Think - hero in hiding, in fear of reprisals, condident though that the ACLU and Muslims are unlikely to sue him or seek his firing because he was right.

Wouldn't it have been far easier on the employee and manager if they had just decided "Not my job! Let someone else worry about it"

Twenty years ago, it would have been a non-issue because the Muslim population was nearly non-existent in the USA

Michael T said...

I would call the cops on these creeps if they were Christians or Jews or whatever else, so I wouldn't for a nanosecond worry that I was being "racist" if I called the cops after seeing that video.

Unknown said...

"Wouldn't it have been far easier on the employee and manager..."

You realize that, despite the big font, you're promoting a hypothetical. That the teen did what he knew to be correct, regardless of the CAIR and ACLU brainwashing. Maybe it's not taking as well as they would wish it.

Galvanized said...

I wonder if anyone else wonders if the extremists enjoy the paranoia in our society now, the fact that not only do we have to be suspicious and hypervigilant, but also fear seeming racist to report it. These people clearly benefit from their notoriety and, thereby, their influence could seem more than it is. This is what extremists want -- for the fear to inflate our perception of their influence. These men knew the subject of the tape would be reported, and they waited, probably hoped, for authorities to show, knowing that it would look like racial profiling and raise fears. Remember, this lends to their status in their extremist circles. It's pre-martyrdom. What's next -- running into stores with empty backpacks on to get more attention? To seem racist is not so bad as being negligent.

Unknown said...

I think it's entirely predictable that this clerk doubted himself, given the incessant indoctrination of multiculturalism and moral equivalence.

What's really interesting is that radical Muslims felt safe enough from racial profiling or scrutiny of any kind to allow civilians to see their tape!

What's also interesting is police guarding the defendants' mosque because of "fear of reprisal" by cretinous Americans (no matter that the actual threat has been proven to be negligible). Any word on whether the clerk has provided protection--or would that be racist?

Fen said...

Or is that being racist?

Yup. LittleGreenFootballs catches this daily. Telling the truth about Islam = racism

the incessant indoctrination of multiculturalism and moral equivalence.

And our teenage hero is still not named. That says alot.

Dust Bunny Queen said...

What the HELL happened to common sense and self preservation???

Are we so politically correct that we will go like lambs to the slaughter with throats bared to the knife to avoid any disturbance or annoyance to our butchers?

It seems so.

Anonymous said...

Several posters have made it abundantly clear they consider this a case of good hard common sense triumphing over political correctness.

But frankly, I'm glad the young man thought things through before acting. Civic-mindedness should not equal knee-jerk empty-headedness.

Daryl said...

The theme is: non-Muslim Americans just don't understand Islam, Arabs, and Middle Eastern cultures in general. So we're not allowed to have opinions.

If we do have opinions, we're dumb rednecks, out of our league, and racist for thinking we can understand the inscrutable Oriental other (we can thank Edward Said for that).

We're also exposed to a caustic Hollywood culture that says anyone who worries about terrorism is a racist and a bigot. If you think something is up, you're a paranoid amateur loser.

Pre-9/11, we were less aware of these attitudes, but they were there. CAIR and the NYT aren't trying to create some new, alien consciousness in Americans, they just want to revive pre-9/11 excessive caution. Looking back at the 9/11 hijackers, and their numerous bizarre encounters with people--including government employees--we see many missed opportunities where someone could have dropped a dime on them.

Dave said...

Anybody who would claim "God is great" deserves what they have coming to them.

Now what the hell does race have to do with this?

TMink said...

Dave asked: Now what the hell does race have to do with this?"

Race, or perhaps more accurately culture and appearance, are strong correlational variables, but not a causative variable in this matter. The task we have to protect ourselves is called "spot the terrorist."

The vast majority of the terrorist attacks in the world are perpetrated by middle eastern Muslims. Some are perpetrated by skin heads, some by nazis, some by asian folks, but the majority are committed by Muslims.

The majority of Muslims who committ terrorist attacks look similar. So, people who look like the other people who have murdered innocents SHOULD be scrutinized. That is the logical and efficacious application of the strong correlational data.

Making the mistake and treating it like a causative relationship would lead to horrid mistakes like internment camps, shooting people on sight, and will nilly suspension of law abiding citizen's Constitutional rights. We can agree, that would be bad.

In the Fort Dix matter, culture and language were the better predictor than race was. It is the culture, not the race. White guys (like me) shouting Jihadist slogans (whether shooting or not, but certainly while shooting)should be questioned by the authorities. In a road block for an escaped, male prisoner, I would certainly expect to be questioned if I looked like him.

Ignoring the correlational data would be foolish. Surely we can make the distinction and agree on that.

Trey

halojones-fan said...

You know...

I don't think his "is that racist?" reaction is the fault of CAIR or the ACLU.

It's the fault of people like those two dickheads who were skulking around major urban centers putting strange electronic devices on bridges and buildings. (the Mooninite thing.)

See, they do stuff like this. Then they get in trouble, and they start screaming about how it's just ironic humor, man, it was just a joke, geez, don't you get it? Oh, what, you want me to stop? Well, gee, did you ever hear of a little thing called the FIRST AMENDMENT? Says right there in the Constitution that I can say whatever the hell I feel like saying! So stop trying to oppress me!

"Ironic humor" has as much to do with this as anything else. Indeed, I'd say that a smart defense lawyer would have made that his first claim--that these guys were "just joking".

Jim Howard said...

This incident strikes me as very similar to the event that precipitated the Branch Davidian holocaust.

The ATF became interested in the Davidians after a UPS driver reported that he had delivered hand grenade simulators to their compound.

He was correct to report his observation, the ATF was correct to investigate.

Sadly the ATF tactic of staging a made-for-TV SWAT raid against a house full of kids was the wrong way to proceed.

Can you imagine Bush escaping impeachment if he had burned down these suspects dwellings?

Of course since the Davidians were Christians the UPS driver didn't need to worry about retribution.