Sept 2012: U.S. Ambassador in Libya and two others killed in attack of consulate

[DAA]

The US supports the Egyptian military to the tune of something like 2 billion.....this is gonna hurt Egypt.

Yes the US does, as a result of the "Camp David" accords....

Personally, I think the News reports about the attack on the US Embassy in Cairo are "muchly" overstated!  Not to mention that the UK Embassy is located right next door and the Canadian Embassy another block away.  Egyptian State Security has had the entire area locked down since 2004.

This is a matter of cultural differences.  You have to remember, that the "poor" of the muslim countries, DO NOT have access to the media resources that we do in the West and only know and react to, based on what comes from within their respective communities.

 

[George Wallace]

I disagree, anyone who intentionally acts in a manner which they expect to inflame masses of uneducated peasants to actions as this past week has lost my vote for sympathy or my willing to put my *** on the line for.  Especially when it costs the lives of my fellow countrymen and other innocents.

That would be my take on this asswit were he Canadian.

Interesting comment.

 

[jollyjacktar]

Interesting comment.

Each to his own.  Let's say it was a Bear this asswit was provoking with intent to piss it off greatly.  Let's say the Bear, only by virture of being a dumb animal, gets pissed and either attacks the idiot or some innocent bystander.  Would you still have sympathy for his plight and actions and would you be willing to put your butt on the line for him?  I wouldn't.  I'll stand by my lack of sympathy for these asswits, on both sides of the equation.  I would, however, be willing to put my ass on the line for the innocent bystander.

 

[GAP]

Producer Of Anti-Islam Film Was Fed Snitch
L.A. man began cooperating with prosecutors after 2009 fraud bust
Article Link

SEPTEMBER 14--In remarks stressing that the U.S. government had “absolutely nothing to do with” the anti-Islam film that has touched off violence in the Middle East, Secretary of State Hillary Clinton yesterday sought to quash Arab concerns that the “disgusting and reprehensible” movie was somehow produced or condoned by American officials.

However, Clinton’s attempt to distance the U.S. from “Innocence of Muslims”--and, by extension, its felonious producer--may be complicated by the revelation that Nakoula Basseley Nakoula became a government informant after his 2009 arrest for bank fraud, The Smoking Gun has learned.

Though many key documents from the U.S. District Court case remain sealed, a June 2010 sentencing transcript provides an account of Nakoula’s cooperation with federal investigators in Los Angeles (and how his prison sentence was reduced as a result).

Nakoula, 55, was arrested in June 2009 for his role in a check-kiting ring that stole nearly $800,000 from six financial institutions by using stolen Social Security numbers and identities.  Nakoula was named in a six-count felony indictment accusing him and unnamed “co-schemers” of perpetrating the bank fraud.

Denied bail, Nakoula, a married father of three, was locked up at the Metropolitan Detention Center in L.A. when he began cooperating with Justice Department lawyers and federal agents. During a series of debriefing sessions, Nakoula provided investigators with a detailed account of the fraud operation and fingered the man who allegedly headed the operation, according to comments made by his lawyer at sentencing.

Nakoula identified the ring’s leader as Eiad Salameh, a notorious fraudster who has been tracked for more than a decade by state and federal investigators. In his debriefings, Nakoula said he was recruited as a “runner” by Salameh, who pocketed the majority of money generated by the bank swindles, according to James Henderson, Nakoula’s attorney.
More on link

 

[OldSolduer]

I have heard/read somewhere that the producer/director (whatever) said that he made the film as political expression - a polemic, of sorts. If that's true then, it seems to me, that we must protect it, the "speech," per se, and him, the "speaker," no matter how we might feel about what he or his film says.

I quite agree Edward.

Why is it that we should not criticize Islam nor the Prophet? Why is it acceptable to criticize Jesus Christ and Christianity, but not Islam?

 

[a_majoor]

The right to free speech is not absolute in the cases of:

Libel and slander
Misrepresentation (to commit fraud)
Sedation
Incitement to commit violence
Treason


The film, bad as it may be, fall under none of these categories, and bad movies are not a reason to commit murder or mayhem. The film was only a useful excuse, and the fact that the attacks happened on 9/11 suggests that if the film had never been made there would still have been an attack, with some other excuse presented as the reason.

 

[Brad Sallows]

>We are very well aware of the violence we can create in the Middle East by offending their beliefs.

Tough sh!t.  Fu<k them.  I have no interest in playing their game of not-one-step-backward one-upmanship in which they demand religious supremacy and a respect they do not reciprocate toward others.  The ones rioting are misogynistic and chauvinistic medievalists. They need to catch up with the rest of the world and learn tolerance*.

*Tolerance means putting up with sh!t you don't like, not embracing and celebrating it.

 

[GAP]

Yeah, that about sums it up.....

 

[George Wallace]

Why is it that we should not criticize Islam nor the Prophet? Why is it acceptable to criticize Jesus Christ and Christianity, but not Islam?

Good question.

 

[tomahawk6]

As we have seen through the years it doesnt take much to get an arab mob to appear - all it takes is a cartoon. The current version of Islam is stuck in the middle ages and never went through a reformation. They live in the 21st century with an 11th century mindset.

 

[Fishbone Jones]

I disagree, anyone who intentionally acts in a manner which they expect to inflame masses of uneducated peasants to actions as this past week has lost my vote for sympathy or my willing to put my ass on the line for.  Especially when it costs the lives of my fellow countrymen and other innocents.

That would be my take on this asswit were he Canadian.

That could be applied to any political cartoonist in Canada, the US or the western world.

The only saving grace and difference is that we are more tolerant and civilized. Nor are we fervently and radically religious.

Otherwise, there but for the grace of God go we.

If ignorant savages and terrorists get inflammed over a cartoon to the point of killing people, they abdicate the right to live without looking over their shoulder, expecting to be killed themselves.

 

[Old Sweat]

Andrew Coyne attempts to inject a bit of reason into the argument over the attacks by stating at the end of this piece that the "Arab street" [my words] hates America simply because it is rich, powerful and successful and they are not. It is reproduced under the Fair Dealing provision of the Copyright Act.

Full Comment
Andrew Coyne: The real lesson from embassy attacks — U.S. will always have enemies
Sep 14, 2012 7:42 PM ET | Last Updated: Sep 14, 2012 11:27 PM ET

Violent protests outside American embassies, first in Egypt and Libya and now across the Muslim world, have provided a rare moment of agreement for partisans of the right and left: the right, for whom everything is President Obama’s fault, and the left, for whom everything is America’s fault.

The protests, both agree, are not merely expressions of whatever was on the minds of those who showed up on the day, but a broad indictment of American policy in the Middle East, notably in its support (temporizing as it sometimes was) for the so-called Arab Spring. While American indulgence of western-friendly dictators like Egypt’s Hosni Mubarak was once a bone of contention between the two sides, today there is an odd new entente in favour of letting sleeping Muslims lie.


This is what you get, the right says, for forsaking our allies: not western-style democrats, but implacably hostile Islamists, whether of the Muslim Brotherhood or al-Qaeda strain. Obama’s conciliatory gestures early in his term, they claim, communicated weakness; his passivity in the face of provocation confirmed it.

This is what you get, the left says, for meddling in other countries’ affairs. (Sample Guardian headline: “The west has once again started a fire it cannot extinguish.”) Unless it’s for not meddling soon enough. Or is it for meddling in the wrong way? No matter. Remember, whatever happens, it’s always America’s fault.

It strikes me as rather early days to be making such pronouncements, though you may recall it took scant minutes for commentators to discover the “root causes” of September 11 (whose anniversary the embassy attacks seem intended to celebrate). By an amazing coincidence, the terrorists’ grievances in every case turned out to be identical with those of whichever pundit was flapping his gums. To critics of American foreign policy, it was on account of American foreign policy. To those concerned with Third World poverty, it was about Third World poverty. And so on down the line: every time. It was uncanny.

Still, it was evident to all, even then, that 9/11 was a historic event, whose consequences would be felt for decades: whatever its meaning, its significance was indisputable. The same is not remotely true here. That a few hundred, or even a few thousand, hotheads gather to chant “Death to America,” on whatever pretext, does not mean their countrymen are all of the same mind; that nascent authorities, in societies lately emerged from dictatorship or civil war, have been unable to prevent the mobs from storming the embassies does not, by itself, demonstrate the failure of the experiment in Arab liberty.

Libya may not be the most stable place nowadays, but would its prospects be brighter if Gaddafi were still in power? Or Egypt’s, under Mubarak? As with post-Saddam Iraq or Afghanistan after the Taliban, we should not let their present difficulties blind us to how much better off these countries are now than under the previous regimes, and can hope to be in future.

What the last few days does show, as if we needed reminding, is that a lot of people in the Muslim world still hate America. Even if the proximate cause were, as reported, a crude anti-Muslim video that happened to have been produced in the United States, the crowds’ fury plainly has as much to do with where the film was made as what was in it. The protests have become, if they were not originally, arenas for the venting of rage at the U.S. in general — and at its president in particular. “Obama, Obama, we are all Osamas,” rioters in Tunis chanted. In Jalalabad, Afghanistan, they burned him in effigy.

If this seems a remarkable turn of events, it shouldn’t. The notion that the election of a president with Muslim roots, or the adoption of a more conciliatory tone in American foreign policy, would mollify America’s detractors in the Third World, was always a fantasy. If it is unlikely the protests were caused by Obama’s “weakness” — Mitt Romney’s campaign went so far as to claim they would not have taken place if he were president — then neither, it seems, has his presence in the White House done anything to prevent them. Perhaps there is less anti-Americanism abroad as a result of his presidency, but it certainly hasn’t been extinguished. Which is fine. Because there isn’t anything to be done about it, and no point in trying.

It is a mistake to suppose that hatred of America must have some rational cause, any more than other prejudices. It does not. It is a constant, unlikely to change no matter what propitiatory gestures the U.S. might offer. It has nothing to do with what foreign policy it pursues, or whether the president’s middle name is Hussein. It exists because America exists, and if America did not exist it would attach itself to something else.

Hatred of America is a form of self-hatred, the fruit of frustration and despair in the Muslim world at their relative decline. And not only in the Muslim world. Anti-Americanism will always be with us so long as people need a bogeyman on which to hang the evils of the world. It speaks to all that is small and envious and insecure in us, and unfortunately that, too, is a constant.

 

[Edward Campbell]

I agree with Andrew Coyne, it is as I said, earlier, an expression of some Muslims' "unreasoned, inchoate rage at a world which does not give them what they want." And Coyne suggests, correctly, that we can find that same rage, albeit expressed differently, amongst all those, including, for example, Canadian left wing intellectuals, who need some simple way to explain away their (relative) failure. One hundred to 150 years ago Britain was the target of that rage: envious Americans (mostly Irish Americans) - citizens of a "second place" country, were "twisting the lion's tail," including by abortive invasions of Canada.

 

[Edward Campbell]

The right to free speech is not absolute in the cases of:

Libel and slander
Misrepresentation (to commit fraud)
Sedation
Incitement to commit violence
Treason


The film, bad as it may be, fall under none of these categories, and bad movies are not a reason to commit murder or mayhem. The film was only a useful excuse, and the fact that the attacks happened on 9/11 suggests that if the film had never been made there would still have been an attack, with some other excuse presented as the reason.

:goodpost:  300 Milpoints sent your way

You are exactly right! As I said, earlier: "This film does, indeed, aim to denigrate Islam but that is not an incitement to violence (which is one of the very, very few grounds on which we ought to restrict "free speech") ... the film is just a convenient excuse for somewhat less that smart people to express their unreasoned, inchoate rage at a world which does not give them what they want. The film, unbelievably bad though it may be, is nothing about which anyone needs to apologize."

Focus on the real "root causes" which are to be found in North Africa, the Middle East and West Asias, not in America or Europe, and amongst the peoples of North Africa, the Middle East and West Asia, not amongst Australians and Canadians, and which can be solved only when those peoples sort themselves out in their own bloody ways.

 

[OldSolduer]

The film maker is cooperating with the FBI, and the video footage of him being escorted by police makes him look more like a child molester than a film maker.

 

[a_majoor]

And it keeps spreading: http://www.theatlanticwire.com/global/2012/09/map-muslim-protests-around-world/56865/

The Google map shows "protests" from the UK to Bangladesh, and as far south as Nigeria and Siri Lanka.

 

[winnipegoo7]

Otherwise, there but for the grace of God go we.

http://news.nationalpost.com/2011/06/16/photos-riots-fire-destruction-after-vancouvers-loss/

 

[GAP]

There may be no anti-Islamic movie at all
Article Link
By Dan Murphy, Staff writer / September 12, 2012

Some interesting and convincing points are made.

As I finished this post, I came across an interview with an actress who appears in some of the footage given to Gawker. It goes a long way to clearing up some of the mystery, though not entirely.

Cindy Lee Garcia tells the website that she was hired last summer for a small part in a movie she was told would be called "Desert Warriors," about life in Egypt 2,000 years ago (Islam is about 1,400 years old).

She told Gawker "It wasn't based on anything to do with religion, it was just on how things were run in Egypt. There wasn't anything about Muhammed or Muslims or anything and that, according to Gawker, "In the script and during the shooting, nothing indicated the controversial nature of the final product. Muhammed wasn't even called Muhammed; he was "Master George," Garcia said. The words Muhammed were dubbed over in post-production, as were essentially all other offensive references to Islam and Muhammed. Garcia said that there was a man who identified as "Bacile" on set, but that he was Egyptian and frequently spoke Arabic.

The online 14-minute clip of a purportedly anti-Islamic movie that sparked protests at the US embassy in Cairo and and the US consulate in Benghazi, Libya is now looking like it could have been ginned up by someone sitting a basement with cheap dubbing software.

Full credit goes to Sarah Abdurrahman at On the Media and Rosie Grey at Buzzfed who appear to be the first to highlight (there may be others, but they're the ones who caught my eye) the fact that almost every instance of language referring to Islam or Muhammad in the film has been dubbed in. That is, mouths are mouthing but the words you're hearing don't match.

There have already been a bunch of lies associated with the alleged film. A man named "Sam Bacile" was identified as being the writer and producer. He claimed to be an Israeli citizen. The Israelis say they have no record of him. He claimed to have spent $5 million on the movie. The clip online doesn't look like even $100,000 was spent. There is no record of a "Sam Bacile" living in California, and his strange insistence on the fact that he was Jewish and that he had exclusively Jewish funders for his film in an interview with the Associated Press now looks like something of a red flag.

The one verifiable person involved in this strange tale so far is Steve Klein, an evangelical Christian and anti-Islamic activist with ties to militia groups and a Coptic Christian satellite TV station based in California. Klein told Jeffrey Goldberg at The Atlantic earlier today that he was a consultant on the film, that "Sam Bacile," was a pseudonym, that the person behind the name probably isn't Jewish, and he didn't know the real name of the man. He doesn't know the name of someone he worked on a movie with? Yet another strange, credulity-stretching claim.

Now comes the part with the compelling case of no movie at all.

Abdurrahman writes:

    If you watch closely, you can see that when the actors are reading parts of the script that do not contain Islam-specific language, the audio from the sound stage is used (the audio that was recorded as the actors were simultaneously being filmed). But anytime the actors are referring to something specific to the religion (the Prophet Muhammed, the Quran, etc.) the audio recorded during filming is replaced with a poorly executed post-production dub. And if you look EVEN closer, you can see that the actors’ mouths are saying something other than what the dub is saying.

    For example, at 2:53, the voiceover says “His name is Muhammed. And we can call him The Father Unknown.” In this case, the whole line is dubbed, and it appears the actor is actually saying, “His name is George (?). And we can call him The Father Unknown.” I assume the filmmakers thought they were being slick, thinking that dubbing the whole line instead of just the name would make it more seamless and less noticeable to the viewer. But once you start to look for these dubs, it’s hard to see anything else.

And Grey writes:

    As the video above — cut from the YouTube video tied to a global controversy — shows, nearly all of the names in the movie's "trailer" — is a compilation of the most clumsily overdubbed moments from what is in reality an incoherent, haphazardly-edited set of scenes. Among the overdubbed words is "Mohammed," suggesting that the footage was taken from a film about something else entirely. The footage also suggests multiple video sources — there are obvious and jarring discrepancies among actors and locations... whoever made (it) may well have made use of little more than the standard editing software Final Cut Pro — far from a cast and crew of over 100 and millions of dollars.

Both make very, very convincing points (read their full posts) and if you watch the footage carefully, it's hard to escape their conclusions. In one scene a man is apparently teaching his daughter about the evils of Islam and writes on a blackboard that "Man + X = BT" as he explains to her that "Man + X = Islamic terrorist." Then he writes the equation in reverse, again intoning "Islamic terrorist" as he writes "BT."

If suspicions are right, the low-quality footage has been re-purposed from somewhere, and you'd expect someone to come forward and explain soon (since a lot of actors are involved).

What's really going on here? I have no idea.
end

 

[Brad Sallows]

Responsible behaviour is a thin veneer.  Increasingly I believe the underlying problem is people without enough to do; employed people, people with children (or other dependants), people with animals and property to look after, for the most part do not take up excuses to riot.

 

[Fishbone Jones]

http://news.nationalpost.com/2011/06/16/photos-riots-fire-destruction-after-vancouvers-loss/

The difference being, that these people aren't cutting the heads off others, because they don't agree with them.