I speak some Arabic. So it was obvious to me from the get go that Amin
was a victim of paranoia and his accent. He is lucky he didn't end up in
Guantanamo.
Semei Zake wrote:
Yesterday, September 13, 2006 the charges against Amin were dropped.
But Amin swears he is not going to be traveling with the pump any
more because it gives him a lot of trouble. Stated hereunder is how
Amin got into trouble with TSA – U.S. Transportation and Security
Administration. His attorney claimed that from "right from the
get-go, it made no sense that a guy who had worked as a translator
for the U.S. Army in Iraq wouldn't know the consquences of saying,
'I have a bomb'." Apparently the misunderstandings were brought
about by his accent coupled with the fact that he didn’t want to be
embarrassed in the presence of his mother by explaining what he was
actually carrying. Unwilling to openly say the words “penis pump”
while his mother stood nearby, Amin twice whispered something that,
according to Amin, the guard misinterpreted as ‘bomb'.
Semei
==================================
Bum Rap at O'Hare Security Check-In
Penis Pump or Bomb?
By Counter Punch News Service
Mardin Amin, an Iraqi arrested at O'Hare airport now faces serious
felony charges of disorderly conduct. He could get three years in
prison. A female security guard claims Amin uttered the word "bomb"
when she was examining a small black squeezable object she'd taken
from his bag.
For his part, Amin, on his way to Turkey with his mother and his
children, claims he was whispering to his mother that it was a "pump"
in fact a penis pump.
The judge believed the security guard and now Amin faces the felony
charges.
Counter Puncher and Arabic-speaker David Price clarifies the affair.
*"As an anthropologist and Arabic speaker," Price tells Counterpunch,"
let me call attention to a vital aspect of this story. Simply put,
Arabic has no 'Ps' and all native Arabic speakers voice their
bilabials as 'Bs', thus it is pretty obvious that any native Arabic
speaker with an accent would say the word 'pump' as the word 'bumb'
--which the poorly-trained and overly paranoid airport security worker
mis-heard as 'bomb.'
*
"As has happened here, with newspapers such as the Chicago Sun Times,
news pieces with the words 'penis pump' will generate guffaws from sea
to shinning sea, but by not stating what the obvious context of this
misunderstanding is, the Sun Times is adding to a dangerous climate of
American anti-Arab sentiment."
Professor Price urges the chortling scriveners and newsreaders of
Chicago's entertainment industry to do what they can to reduce climate
of hysteria by shedding some public light on what actually happened in
this case.
After Wednesday's hearing, Amin said airport security officials never
gave him an opportunity to explain the misunderstanding. And he said
he would never utter the word "bomb" while going through security
"Come on -- what do you think?" said Amin, who lives in Skokie and
works for a janitorial service.
Amin does not consider the pump unusual.
"It's normal," he said. "Half of America they use it."
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