Reuters: US ambassador to Libya dead

[Tamas]

NSFW.  At all.  Seriously.

http://www.theonion.com/articles/no-one-murdered-because-of-this-image,29553/

awesome  and they will be right. nobody will die because of it. Which of course DOES prove a point.

[Martinus]

This is Onion at its finest. Every once in a while they manage to hit the nail on its head with a surgical precision.

[Richard Hakluyt]

Great stuff from the Onion 

[Razgovory]

Ok, I'm at loss here.

Yeah, that's pretty clear.

[Viking]

Proof Positive that the best response to the abuse of free speech is the correct application of free speech.

http://www.thedailybeast.com/articles/2012/09/13/mohammed-movie-s-mystery-director.html

Anti-Muslim Movie Maker a Meth Cooker
by Christine Pelisek Sep 13, 2012 4:45 AM EDT
The man allegedly behind the film that sparked deadly protests in the Middle East has a sordid criminal past. By Christine Pelisek.

Update: The man behind the incendiary film, Innocence of Muslims, has a criminal record that includes a narcotics conviction. According to a source close to the Los Angeles County District Attorney's office, Nakoula Basseley Nakoula was arrested by the L.A. Country Sheriff's Department on March 27, 1997 and charged with intent to manufacture methamphetamine. He pleaded guilty and was sentenced on Nov. 3, 1997 to one year in county jail and three years probation. The D.A.'s office said he violated probation on April 8, 2002, and was re-sentenced to another year in county jail.

Nakoula had been registered to vote as a Democrat from 2002-2008, according to the L.A. County Registrar Recorder's office. In April of 2008, he changed his political affiliation to American Independent.

Nakoula's identity and involvement in the film was confirmed to the Associated Press by federal law-enforcement officials. Nakoula, who lives near Los Angeles, had claimed to numerous media outlets that the man who created and directed the film was an Israeli real estate developer named Sam Bacile. The Associated Press reported yesterday that Nakoula was a Coptic Christian convicted of federal bank fraud charges in 2010.

***

In late June, a Los Angeles law enforcement agency was tipped off that an anti-Muslim film called Innocence of Bin Laden was going to be shown at a theater in Hollywood. Law enforcement officers were sent to the Vine Theater on Hollywood Boulevard to make sure nothing went wrong. "Whenever you have something like that, people get riled up," said a law enforcement source who didn't want to be identified. "You don't know who your audience is going to be."

As it ultimately happened, the audience ended up being shocked Islamic extremists half a world away, who were sparked to violence in Egypt and Libya this week after a 13-minute preview of the amateurish movie, renamed Innocence of Muslims, was dubbed into Arabic and uploaded to YouTube.

When the film premiered this summer, it seemed more likely destined for the dust bin than infamy. The premiere was a bust, with less than a dozen people attending. Among them was the man who would later identify himself to news outlets as the film's maker, Sam Bacile.

The director didn't watch his creation the night of the premiere. Instead, he sat by himself at a nearby restaurant, staring intensely at the theater, the law enforcement source told The Daily Beast. What he didn't know was that he was being watched by officers. "You are monitoring the people in the area for behavioral characteristics, and he was displaying them. Normal people don't act like that. He was across the street, on the opposite side of the block, so he could view what was going on. He was sweating and focusing in on the entrance. He was watching what was going on around and who was going in," the source said.

The officers approached the man, who looked to be in his mid-40s or 50s, and he introduced himself as the director of the film.

This week, the director was busy introducing himself to various news outlets as Sam Bacile. He told The Wall Street Journal he was a 52-year-old Israeli real-estate developer in California, and that he had made the film with $5 million raised from 100 Jewish donors. He said he made the movie, which depicts the Prophet Muhammed as a womanizer, pedophile, and homosexual, because "Islam is a cancer."

The Associated Press, which spoke to Bacile by phone, reported that he went into hiding shortly after the violence erupted at the embassy in Libya. Bacile claimed he felt bad over the death of U.S. Ambassador Christopher Stevens, but blamed his death on poor security at the embassy. "I feel the security system [at the embassies] is no good," Bacile told the AP. "America should do something to change it."

Bacile described him as having a "voice thickly accented." But that doesn't jibe with what officers observed of the director at the premiere in Hollywood. "He sounded Western. He didn't have a heavy accent," the law enforcement source said. "These guys adopt different roles for different people."

In fact, as officials and journalists began digging for details about the director Wednesday, it quickly became apparent that "Sam Bacile" might not exist at all. Bacile could not be found on any database searches. The licensing board for the state of California has never heard of him—in fact the only Bacile listed in California is Michael S. Bacile, who is a Greek-American musician from Oakland.

Doubts about Bacile's identity began to surface after the film's consultant, Steve Klein, told another news organization that "Bacile" was a pseudonym and that he was not Jewish or Israeli. Klein, an insurance agent in Hemet, Calif., said the money used to finance the low-budget flop came from a mixed bag of donors, including Middle Easterners, Jewish people, Christians, and former Muslims.

Klein, who spent the majority of yesterday giving interviews to local television and print reporters, has a dubious background himself. The Southern Poverty Law Center, which wrote about Klein and his affiliation with a California extremist evangelical group called Church at Kaweah that is said to have roots in the militia movement, noted Klein once bragged about leading a "hunter killer" team as a marine in Vietnam.

According to the Law Center article, which appeared in the Intelligence Report in the spring of 2012, Klein stated that California is riddled with Muslim Brotherhood sleeper cells "who are awaiting the trigger date and will begin randomly killing as many of us as they can."

The article quoted Klein, who sued the California city of San Clemente for stopping him from placing fliers on cars opposing illegal immigration, as saying: "I know I'm getting prepared to shoot back." Klein, who calls Islam a "penis-driven religion," according to the article, became the leader of the California-based Concerned Citizens for the First Amendment in 2011. The organization led a campaign directed toward students and passed out fliers that portrayed the Prophet Muhammed as a deviant pedophile.

Klein is also linked to the Minuteman movement, the Christian Guardians, and the Utah-based Anti-Muslim group called Courageous Christians United. According to its website, the group exists to boldly and respectfully defend traditional Christianity against cults and other "false" religions and philosophies on all sorts of levels, and to equip the Body of Christ in facing these challenges. A recent posting on their message board states: "CCU involvement in the making of the 'The Innocence of Muslims' will soon become public. Your hateful ways will be exposed to the world."

Klein also set his sights on Los Angeles County Sheriff Lee Baca, who he claimed praised the Council on American Islamic Relations in a speech. "We are alarmed that Sheriff Baca, who has sworn to protect us from all enemies, foreign and domestic, is making public statements in support of The Muslim Brotherhood," said a statement that appeared on the website Jihad Watch. "We demand he be fired and that the L.A. Sheriff department make an unequivocal statement renouncing the work of the Muslim Brotherhood."

Klein told The Daily Mail in an interview that of the 15 people who made the film, three were tortured. "One of the directors was thrown in a cell that was just big enough to stand up in for 90 days, and they broke his legs. Another was tortured for six months, and he was one of the richest men in the country."

He added in the interview, "Sam is committed to this film, like the rest of us. I don't want to give too many details, but he was given an ultimatum that he had to leave his country or be tortured."

Klein said he allegedly warned Bacile that by making the movie "you're going to be the next Theo van Gogh." Dutch filmmaker Van Gogh was murdered by a Muslim extremist in 2004 after he made a film that allegedly insulted Islam.

By late Wednesday, the hunt for the "real" Sam Bacile was pointing in yet another direction. The Associated Press published another story, this time reporting that Bacile is most likely 55-year-old Nakoula Basseley Nakoula, a California Coptic Christian convicted of federal bank fraud charges. In 2010, he was ordered to pay more than $790,000 in restitution, and sentenced to 21 months in federal prison. Nakoula told the AP that he was involved in the film and said he knew Bacile.

After some of the actors in the film were located yesterday, the players issued a joint statement claiming they were duped by the man who called himself Sam Bacile. One actress who had a small role in the film, Cindy Lee Garcia, told Gawker that she thought she was appearing in another film about ancient Egyptians, supposedly titled Desert Warriors, and that the offensive anti-Muslim dialogue was dubbed during the post-production of the film. Garcia said the man who claimed to be Bacile told her he was from Egypt, and spoke Arabic to some of the "dark-skinned" cast members.

"The entire cast and crew are extremely upset and feel taken advantage of by the producer," read the statement from the actors. "We are 100 percent not behind this film and were grossly misled about its intent and purpose. We are shocked by the drastic rewrites of the script and lies that were told to all involved. We are deeply saddened by the tragedies that have occurred."

Like The Daily Beast on Facebook and follow us on Twitter for updates all day long.

Christine Pelisek is a staff reporter for The Daily Beast, covering crime. She was previously a reporter at the LA Weekly, where she covered crime for the last five years. In 2008 she won three Los Angeles Press Club awards, one for her investigative story on the Grim Sleeper.

For inquiries, please contact The Daily Beast at [email protected].

[Eddie Teach]

Proof Positive that the best response to the abuse of free speech is the correct application of free speech.

I don't follow.

[CountDeMoney]

NSFW.  At all.  Seriously.

http://www.theonion.com/articles/no-one-murdered-because-of-this-image,29553/

The only thing more disgusting than Buddha getting fisted by Ganesha was the coffee spewing out of my nose.

[Viking]

Proof Positive that the best response to the abuse of free speech is the correct application of free speech.

I don't follow.

banning shit makes people want to watch it, exposing the author as an incompetent bigoted version of Walter White makes people want to not watch it.

[Ed Anger]

You may now refer to me as "PJ Tobacco".

[Eddie Teach]

banning shit makes people want to watch it, exposing the author as an incompetent bigoted version of Walter White makes people want to not watch it.

Attacking embassies over it makes people really want to watch it. And I would love to see Walt go into film-making. 

[CountDeMoney]

When in doubt, play the Jimmy Carter card.

Romney team sharpens attack on Obama's foreign policy

Advisers to Mitt Romney on Thursday defended his sharp criticism of President Obama and said that the deadly protests sweeping the Middle East would not have happened if the Republican nominee were president.

"There's a pretty compelling story that if you had a President Romney, you'd be in a different situation," Richard Williamson, a top Romney foreign policy adviser, said in an interview. "For the first time since Jimmy Carter, we've had an American ambassador assassinated."

Williamson added, "In Egypt and Libya and Yemen, again demonstrations — the respect for America has gone down, there's not a sense of American resolve and we can't even protect sovereign American property."

The aggressive approach by Romney's campaign thrust the issue of foreign policy to the forefront of the presidential campaign a day after the Republican candidate was widely criticized for blasting Obama while U.S. embassies in Egypt and Libya were under attack.

Criticism from Republicans over their nominee's handling of the situation overseas quieted Thursday, with influential voices in the party's foreign policy establishment rallying to Romney's defense. And it was Obama who faced criticism for saying that he did not consider Egypt an ally — a comment that his administration struggled to explain.

"The president can't even keep track of who's our ally or not. This is amateur hour — it's amateur hour," said Williamson, a former assistant secretary of state and ambassador. He was among those who counseled Romney to respond aggressively on Tuesday night and was offered by the campaign to speak about the candidate's foreign policy.

Williamson was referring to Obama's interview Wednesday night with Telemundo in which the president said that the U.S. relationship with Egypt was a "work in progress."

"I don't think that we would consider them an ally, but we don't consider them an enemy," Obama told Telemundo. "They're a new government that is trying to find its way."

Administration officials tried throughout the day to parse Obama's statement on Egypt without appearing to contradict him.

Obama was right in "diplomatic and legal terms," White House spokesman Jay Carney said, because " 'ally' is a legal term of art" that refers to countries with which the United States has a mutual defense treaty such as the NATO alliance.

But the United States tried to work around just that problem in 1989, creating the designation of "major non-NATO ally" for countries on which it wanted to bestow approval, weapons sales and defense cooperation prohibited to non-treaty nations. Egypt — along with Israel, Australia, Japan and South Korea — was among the first countries to be so designated that year.

Pressed to explain why a "major non-NATO ally" is not an ally, State Department spokeswoman Victoria Nuland repeated the treaty argument, then referred reporters to the White House. Later asked whether the United States still considers Egypt a "major non-NATO ally," Nuland said "Yes."

At campaign stops in Nevada and Colorado, Obama avoided any mention of Romney as he paid tribute to those who lost their lives in Libya and again promised to track down their killers.

But his campaign responded by noting that the protests this week were triggered by the video, not by U.S. policy, and that the video likely would still have been produced if Romney had been president. And they noted that there have been attacks on Americans under every president in recent history, including Presidents Ronald Reagan and George W. Bush.

"It is astonishing that the Romney campaign continues to shamelessly politicize a sensitive international situation," Obama campaign spokesman Ben LaBolt said. "The fact is that any president of either party is going to be confronted by crises while in office, and Governor Romney continues to demonstrate that he is not at all prepared to manage them."

Romney himself struck a more measured tone and tried to refocus on his core economic argument on the campaign trail Thursday in Northern Virginia. He did not mention Obama by name, but suggested that the president was a weak commander in chief and unreliable guardian of American strength abroad.

"As we watch the world today, sometimes it seems that we're at the mercy of events instead of shaping events, and a strong America is essential to shape events," Romney said at a rally in Fairfax County.

The approach on foreign policy by the Romney campaign is a signal that it feels it can gain some advantage in an area that has so far it has found problematic.

In addition to the criticism Romney received on Wednesday, he came under fire two weeks ago for failing to mention the war in Afghanistan or acknowledge U.S. troops serving abroad in his acceptance speech at the Republican National Convention. In July, his tour through Europe and the Middle East was marred by missteps. And he has been ridiculed for his assertion that Russia is, "without question, our No. 1 geopolitical foe."

"We were ready for a major debate on this," Eliot A. Cohen, a former State Department official and foreign policy adviser to Romney, said in an interview. "It just happened to blow up now. It's there, and it's in some ways a clarifying moment."

In debating foreign policy with Obama, Romney is perceived to be at a disadvantage. The president consistently has outpolled Romney on the issue, and he earned high marks for the killing of al-Qaeda leader Osama bin Laden.

Stuart Stevens, Romney's chief political strategist, rejected the suggestion that voters may question Romney's temperament and commander-in-chief credentials because of his early and aggressive response to the attacks in Egypt and Libya.

"It's not an issue," Stevens said in an interview. "It was an issue with Barack Obama four years ago, given the fact that he was younger and had little experience, and given his answers in the debates. He had stumble after stumble with foreign policy. Mitt Romney hasn't. He's run for president twice now and it's not been his problem."

Romney's policy advisers laid out steps that a President Romney would have taken in the Middle East that they said Obama has not done.

"What would the governor do differently? It really starts with having a vision for the future of the Middle East, supporting those that have been shortchanged by the administration," Mitchell Reiss, a top Romney policy adviser, said in an interview. "There are things that we can do in terms of what we say, the constancy of what our vision is — pluralism, respect for law, human dignity — these are things that you don't hear from the administration, and the people in the region want to hear that."

Romney's campaign hopes to force a broader debate about America's role in the world and to argue that while Obama has been successful in fighting terrorism, his foreign policies have resulted in waning U.S. influence abroad.

"We've got Barack Obama with a risk-adverse, lead-from-behind approach, and how's that worked?" Williamson said. "We not only have the events in Egypt and Libya and now in Yemen, but we have in Syria 20,000-plus people killed, many by means of various atrocities by a regime, and the Obama administration is missing in action."

[Tamas]

[Razgovory]

Derspeiss eats this shit right up.

[DGuller]

NSFW.  At all.  Seriously.

http://www.theonion.com/articles/no-one-murdered-because-of-this-image,29553/

Why is Ganesha circumcised?

[Viking]

NSFW.  At all.  Seriously.

http://www.theonion.com/articles/no-one-murdered-because-of-this-image,29553/

Why is Ganesha circumcised?

I saw a bull elephant expose himself to my bus while on safari in south africa, I can tell you elephant penis looks nothing like that and is much much much bigger.