One free trip to jail, that is:
Days after two Arab-American men from Dearborn were charged in Ohio with terrorism for buying numerous cell phones, three Palestinian men were arrested in Michigan’s Thumb area with about 1,000 such phones, authorities said.
Pardon me for being skeptical, but this was hardly the effort of a months-long sting investigation. Their latest purchase of 80 phones resulted in the following stroke of genius:
A Wal-Mart clerk who thought the purchases were suspicious alerted police.
Why would someone think buying 80 cell phones would be suspicious? Well, they’ve been used as detonators on some IEDs in Iraq, which apparently has raised the cell-phone purchase alert level to Orange (at Wal-Mart, anyway).
Of course, there’s also this possibility:
The men told police they were buying the phones, which cost about $20 and come with a charger, taking them out of their packaging and selling them for about $38 without the charger.
Fox News sock-puppets commented on the issue today and argued that even if they were just re-selling the phones, as long as the money went into terrorist pockets it was the same thing as terrorism. Apparently, all people of Arab descent are now assumed to be dialed into The First Bank of Osama bin Laden.
I have no idea whether or not these men had malicious plans for their cell phone surplus, but I strongly doubt that they were arrested for anything other than buying the phones. As we speak, the authorities are probably engaged in a cram session to see if they can uncover any actual reason to detain these guys.
Maybe they’ll find one, maybe they won’t. Either way, the lesson is this: Wal-Mart is watching.
Oh, please. Fox News has every right to be spastic about this — if Arabs are now getting on board the capitalist gravy train by cheating poor bastards with the underhanded reselling of cell phones, I mean, We Are Fucked. Fact is, the US just isn’t prepared to deal with that kind of capitalist onslaught.
I keep wondering, what f***ing charge got laid against these poor bastards? Buying cellphones in a suspicious manner? Loitering with mobile? Suspicion of nefarious hankypanky? How does this not turn into an illegal arrest suit?
[...] Oh, wait, no, I totally DID see that coming. [...]