Sam Bacile, Innocence of Muslims and Steven Klein

Sam Bacile, "Innocence of Muslims" and Steven Klein

by Visualarts101      WED SEP 12, 2012 AT 12:22 PM PDT

So parts of the Islamic world flew into a rage on 911 over the sudden but year long revelation of an obscure film made a year ago.  The film, entitled "The Innocence of Muslims" was supposedly made by a Jewish/Israeli real estate mogul/developer in CA by the name of Sam Bacile.  "Sam" or a man claiming to be "Sam" gave an interview yesterday with the Wall Street Journal (WSJ) making a number of claims, claims which triggered my bullshit meter.   Naturally I had some questions and here they are with a few answers.

Please feel free to ask your own questions, encourage others to as well, and dig deeper for answers.

Claim:   There is someone named "Sam Bacile."

Answer:               There is a YouTube Video of with a clip from the movie that was uploaded by a user named "Sam Bacile."

Claim:   In an interview with WSJ and picked up by AP along with hundreds of other news outlets, "Sam Bacile" claims to be a CA real estate mogul/developer.

Answer:               Doing a google search, I can't find anyone by that name, CA or otherwise.  This might be because I am a bad searcher, someone else might find what I can't, but calling a few attorney friends I know who deal in real estate, etc, none knew of him off the bat.

Claim:   The movie was made with a budget of $5 million dollars and a production crew of 45 people.

Answer:               Internet Movie Database (IMDB) lists productions as well as credits.  There is no one named Sam Bacile in any capacity, no movie listed as "Innocence of Muslims."  If one is willing to risk losing brain cells, go to youtube and look at the clips from this movie and tell me if you think this was a $5 million dollar budget film.   My guess is that it was made for $5000 and a production crew of writer/director, a videographer/lighting person and editor.

Claim:   The movie was shown in a movie theatre in Hollywood last year.

Answer:               Really? Which one?  Was it a real theatre or was it a rented hall space with chairs set up.  If it was shown in a real movie house, which one was it? And how did someone without a distribution deal get it shown?  If they rented an independent theater for the night, who was it that put the money up, or negotiated the deal? 

Claim:   "Sam Bacile" during his several interviews with MainStream Media (MSM) yesterday claimed to be 52 and 56 years old, a Jewish American/Israeli Citizen.

Answer:               You would think someone knows how old they are, giving 2 different ages in separate interviews raises suspicions.  Who knows if this "Sam Bacile" is actually Jewish or not, but Israeli sources were quick to point out that they don't know of a "Sam Bacile" as an Israeli citizen.   http://www.timesofisrael.com/...

Claim:                   In his WSJ interview "Sam" claimed that his film was produced with the help of 100 Jewish donors.

Answer:               Hmmmm.  First off, anyone in Hollywood knows that getting backers to produce a film is hard.  100 people is a lot of people unless by donors "Sam" is meaning people who donated $20.   Finding out who these supposed Jewish donors are is going to be as successful as finding out all the shadow donors are to PACS after Citizens United or getting a hold of Mitt Romney's taxes, but isn't curious that all the donors identified were supposedly Jewish?   B.......t meter set to high.

So what we have SO FAR, is a man who is claiming to be a Jewish American Israeli citizen real estate mogul film maker who with the support of 100 Jewish donors and a $5 million dollar budget produces a crap film that shows on YouTube but was supposedly shown in a theatre as well.  Uh huh.

What we DO know is that there IS a "consultant" to the film by the name of Steven Klein.   Now Steven Klein, unlike Sam Bacile is actually traceable.   Here's a photo of the guy.

Steven Klein

Notice the copyright on the photo?  Courageous Christians United.  Steven Klein is listed as the CEO as well as founder for the group.  And what is the purpose of the group and who is Steven Klein?

Courageous Christians United can be found on the web and they apparently run anti-Islam, anti-Catholic as well as anti-Mormon sites. 

But there is more to Steven Klein.  He's been active in protesting the construction of mosques in the Southern CA area...http://www.nctimes.com/...

More than 100 Chaparral High School students received fliers Friday afternoon from a group opposed to plans for the construction of a mosque in Nicolas Valley, a rural community in the northeast corner of Temecula.

....

The other flier said students are being subjected to "serious brainwashing," and it urged students to "exercise your First Amendment rights to be well informed" and visit websites, including one that purported to show an Arab terrorist....

The group handing out the fliers included Steve Klein, a San Jacinto man who has staged similar events in Southern California; Jim Horn, a Menifee-based author, and Ernie White, a Temecula resident who has spoken out against the planned mosque at public meetings

Southern Poverty Law Center has a report in which Steven Klein is listed

In a 22-acre compound at the southern edge of Sequoia National Park in California, a secretive cohort of militant Christian fundamentalists is preparing for war. One of the men helping train the flock in the art of combat, a former Marine named Steve Klein, believes 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.”

“I know I’m getting prepared to shoot back,” Klein says.

At the head of the Church at Kaweah is Pastor Warren Mark Campbell, who sees yet another enemy on the horizon: the “New World Order,” that chimera of the conspiracists who populate the resurgent, antigovernment “Patriot” movement.

From this in depth report from the SPC there is some alarming information on Steven Klein:

Over the past year, Johnson and the church militia have developed a relationship with Steve Klein, a longtime religious-right activist who brags about having led a “hunter killer” team as a Marine in Vietnam. Klein, who calls Islam a “crazed religion” and thinks Los Angeles Sheriff Lee Baca is a Muslim Brotherhood patsy, is allied with Christian activist groups across California. In 2011, as head of the Concerned Citizens for the First Amendment, he worked with the Vista, Calif.-based Christian Anti-Defamation Commission on a campaign to “arm” students with the “truth about Islam and Muhammad” — mainly by leafleting high schools with literature depicting the Prophet Mohammed in an insulting manner.

Klein, based in Hemet, Calif., has been active in extremist movements for decades. In 1977, he founded Courageous Christians United, which now conducts “respectful confrontations” outside of abortion clinics, Mormon temples and mosques. Klein also has ties to the Minuteman movement. In 2007, he sued the city of San Clemente for ordering him to stop leafleting cars with pamphlets opposing illegal immigration.

In addition to working with Johnson and the Church at Kaweah’s militia, Klein conducts drills with the Christian Guardians, a San Francisco-based group headed by Andrew Saqib James, an American-born Pakistani Christian who calls Islam “a giant crime syndicate” and hopes his group will become “the most feared militia in the world.” For the past year, the Church at Kaweah’s website has advertised joint trainings with the Christian Guardians and other likeminded groups. Based at the church’s sprawling grounds, the series of trainings is described as a “unique system of learning how to survive the Muslim Brotherhood as we teach the Christian Morality of Biblical Warfare.”

So maybe who is really behind the "Innocence of Muslims" aren't Jewish donors, an Israeli citizen, but really a militant, Christian militia group looking to stir up violence in pursuit of their stated goals.  A holy war between Christians, Jews and Muslims.

Maybe in the interests of getting the story published first, the MSM and by that I mean the WSJ and AP got punked by these guys posing as "Sam Bacile."

There  are more questions, more coincidences that make my b......t meter go off as well.  How did this low budget English speaking production get translated into Arabic?

How did protests for this film  explode on 911?  What incited it? WHO incited it?

Hopefully, some investigative journalists start looking into these questions more deeply.

(http://www.dailykos.com)

Cast and crew of anti-Muslim movie: We were duped!

Cast and crew of anti-Muslim movie: We were duped!

Cast says inflammatory dialogue was subbed in after film was shot. The film ‘The Innocence of Muslims’ is being blamed for widespread unrest and protests.

BY ANTHONY BARTKEWICZ / NEW YORK DAILY NEWS

THURSDAY, SEPTEMBER 13, 2012, 9:11 AM

The film “The Innocence of Muslims,” which had hardly been heard of before Tuesday, was made by “Sam Bacile.” Bacile claimed to be a U.S.-based Israeli Jew, but people connected to the production say it’s a pseudonym.

Protests over a U.S. film depicting Muhammed, Islam’s holiest prophet, in an insulting manner provided the cover for an assault on the U.S. embassy in Libya.

The attack left four American diplomats dead, and now the cast and crew of the movie are speaking out.

As far as they knew, they were making a completely different movie.

The low-budget film is known by multiple titles, including “The Innocence of Muslims.” An excerpt, dubbed into Arabic, sparked outrage and protests when Arab media covered it.

But the casting call said actors would be in a "historical Arabian Desert adventure film" titled “Desert Warrior,” CNN reported.

The movie’s buffoonish Muhammed was called “Master George” in the script, and references to the prophet — and Islam in general — were dubbed in after it was shot.

"The entire cast and crew are extremely upset and feel taken advantage of by the producer," said a joint statement from 80 people who worked on the movie. “We are 100% 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.”

Actress Cindy Lee Garcia told KERO-TV she wouldn’t knowingly be a part of anti-Islam propaganda.

“I would never hurt anybody no matter what religion they are,” she said.

After the American diplomats were killed, she called producer-director Sam Bacile, who told her he was “tired of the radical Muslims running around killing everyone.”

But Bacile’s deception didn’t end with his cast and crew: He isn’t even Sam Bacile.

He claimed to be an Israeli Jew living in California, but Israel has no record of his citizenship.

Photo: STEVE KLEIN, the Man behind the Whole Affair

Steve Klein, an anti-Islamic activist who served as a consultant on the movie, told The Atlantic that “Sam Bacile” is a pseudonym, and the filmmaker isn’t Israeli or Jewish.

“I would suspect this is a disinformation campaign," Klein said.

The Associated Press spoke to Nakoula Basseley Nakoula, a Coptic Christian who said he knew Bacile but denied being the director.

But the cell phone number AP used to contact Bacile — who was purportedly in hiding — traced back to Nakoula’s address, and court records from a 2010 bank fraud case against him showed that his false identities included “Nicola Bacily.”

abartkewicz@nydailynews.com

Why is Iraq now immune from criticism over appalling human rights record?

Despite at least 96 executions in Iraq this year and well-documented human rights abuses, the world remains silent

Haifa Zangana

guardian.co.uk, Monday 3 September 2012

Three women were among the 21 people executed within one day in Iraq, last Monday. It was followed, two days later, by the reported execution of five more people. The number of people executed since the start of this year is now at least 96 and they are not the only ones. The UN special rapporteur on extrajudicial, summary or arbitrary executions, Christof Heyns, said: "I am appalled about the level of executions in Iraq. I deeply deplore the executions carried out this week, and am particularly alarmed about continuing reports of individuals who remain at risk of execution."

There is also news of another 196 people on death row. According to Iraqi officials, they have all been convicted on charges "related to terrorism," but there is little information about their names, what crimes they committed or whether they have access to lawyers or not. Amnesty International and Human Rights Watch have previously documented the prevalence of unfair trials and torture in detention in Iraq. Confessions under torture are often the only evidence against a person who has been arrested following a secret informant's report. Parading the accused with their tortured, empty looks on Al Iraqiya, the official TV channel, is the norm. It took a court in Baghdad only 15 minutes to sentence Ramze Shihab Ahmed, a dual Iraqi-UK national, to 15 years' imprisonment after being found guilty of "funding terrorist groups".

Amnesty has obtained and examined court documents and said it believes the trial proceedings were "grossly unfair". Ahmed was held in a secret prison near Baghdad, during which time his whereabouts were completely unknown to his family. During this period Ahmed alleges he was tortured – with electric shocks to his genitals and suffocation by plastic bags – into making a false "confession" to terrorist offences.

So what kind of human rights are observed in the "new Iraq"? Hardly any. The list of abuses is long and the tip of the iceberg is waves of arbitrary arrests (over 1,000 monthly), torture and executions. All are barely noticed by the world media and the US and British official silence is rather convenient to cover up the crimes and chaos they created. From time to time, they break their silence but only to justify their act of aggression. Recently, when Archbishop Desmond Tutu pulled out of a seminar in protest over the presence of Tony Blair, a statement was issued by Blair's office to justify the morality of his decision to support the United States' military invasion of Iraq.

The statement reiterated the plight of Iraqis under Saddam's regime with no mention whatsoever of the hundreds of thousands of victims of the war and endemic abuses of human rights since 2003.

The Nouri al-Maliki government in Iraq with its human rights outfits is following the same path. Its human rights concerns remain focused on the crimes of the previous regime. So do most of the intellectuals and politicians involved in the scramble for seats and favours in Baghdad. People who for years before the invasion of 2003 were highlighting human rights abuses as a reason to invoke war as a prelude to democracy and transparency are now either totally silent or actively covering up the current abuses, despite glaring evidence from international human rights organisations.

The so-called "war on terror" reformulated many aspects of world politics and state accountability has become the first victim of that war. It has acquired variable meanings with highly selective application. Therefore, some governments have "enjoyed" immunity, no matter how brutally they have behaved against their own or other people. The Iraqi regime is one of them.

(guardian.co.uk)

Mubarak's 300,000-strong army of thugs remains in business despite elections

The Long View: The military has played a shrewd game – insisting Mubarak go on trial while realigning supporters to preserve their privileges

By Robert Fisk:

June 18, 2012 "The Independent" -- As millions of Egyptians turn their backs on the brave young revolutionaries of Tahrir Square, today is the day to remember old General Mohammed Neguib, who kicked off Egypt's first post-war revolution by plotting the overthrow of King Farouk almost exactly 60 years ago. He and his fellow Egyptian army officers had been debating whether to execute the obese Farouk or send him into exile. Nasser opted to shoot the monarch. Neguib asked for a vote. In the early hours, Nasser wrote a note to Neguib: "The Liberation Movement should get rid of Faruk [sic] as quickly as possible in order to deal with what is more important – namely, the need to purge the country of the corruption that Faruk will leave behind him. We must pave the way towards a new era in which the people will enjoy their sovereign rights and live in dignity. Justice is one of our objectives. We cannot execute Faruk without a trial. Neither can we afford to keep him in jail and preoccupy ourselves with the rights and wrongs of his case at the risk of neglecting the other purposes of the revolution. Let us spare Faruk and send him into exile. History will sentence him to death."

The association of corruption with the ancien regime has been a staple of all revolutions. Justice sounds good. And today's Egyptians still demand dignity. But surely Nasser got it right; better to chuck the old boy out of the country than to stage a distracting and time-consuming trial when the future of Egypt, the "other purposes of the revolution", should be debated. Today's military played an equally shrewd but different game: they insisted Mubarak go on trial – bread and circuses for the masses, dramatic sentences to keep their minds off the future – while realigning the old Mubarakites to preserve their own privileges.

The ex-elected head of the judges' club in Egypt, Zakaria Abdul-Aziz, has rightly pointed out that even if Mubarak was put on trial, the January-February 2011 killing went on for days, "and they [the generals] did not order anyone to stop it. The Ministry of Interior is not the only place that should be cleansed. The judiciary needs that."

It was Mubarak's senior judges who permitted the deposed dictator's last Prime Minister, Ahmed Shafik, to stand in this weekend's run-off for President. As Omar Ashour, an academic in both Exeter and Doha, has observed, "when protesters stormed the State Security Investigations [SSI] headquarters and other governorates in March 2011, torture rooms and equipment were found in every building".

And what happened to the lads who ran these vicious institutions for Mubarak, clad alternatively in French-designed suits or uniforms dripping with epaulettes? They got off scot-free. Here are some names for The Independent's readers to stick in their files: Hassan Abdul-Rahman, head of the SSI; Ahmed Ramzi, head of Central Security Forces (CSF); Adly Fayyed, head of "Public Security"; Ossama Youssef, head of the Giza Security Directorate; Ismail al-Shaer, boss of the Cairo Security Directorate – "shaer", by the way, means "poet" – and Omar Faramawy, who ran the 6 October Security Directorate.

I will not use the words "culture of impunity" – as Omar Ashour does without irony – but the acquittal of the above gentlemen means that Mubarak's 300,000-strong SSI and CSF thugs are still in business. It is impossible to believe the Supreme Council of the Armed Forces – still running Egypt and commanded by Mubarak's old mate Field Marshal Tantawi – was unaware of the implications of this extraordinary state of affairs. If Mubarak represented Faruk, and his sons Gamal and Alaa the future leaders of the royal family, then the 2011 Egyptian revolution represented 1952 without the king's exile and with a shadow monarchy still in power.

The belief among journalists and academics that Tahrir Square would fill once again with the young of last year's rebellion, that a new protest movement in its millions would end this state of affairs, has – so far – proved unrealistic. Over the weekend, Egyptians wanted to vote rather than demonstrate – even if the country's security apparatus would end up running the show as usual – and if this is democracy, then it's going to be of the Algerian rather than the Tunisian variety. Maybe I just don't like armies, while Egyptians do.

But let's go back to Neguib. He went aboard the royal yacht in July 1952 to say goodbye to the king he was deposing. "I hope you'll take good care of the army," Farouk told him. "My grandfather, you know, created it." Neguib replied: "The Egyptian army is in good hands." And Farouk's last words to the general? "Your task will be difficult. It isn't easy, you know, to govern Egypt..."

Neguib concluded that governing would be easier for the military because "we were at one with the Egyptian people". Indeed. Then Nasser kicked out Neguib, prisons reopened and torturers were installed. Then came General Sadat and General Mubarak. And now?
 

Copyright The Independent

EXTRAORDINARY RENDITION: A STORY OF TORTURE AND PERVERTED COLLUSION

Just when Fatima Bouchar thought it couldn't get any worse, the Americans forced her to lie on a stretcher and began wrapping tape around her feet. They moved upwards, she says, along her legs, winding the tape around and around, binding her to the stretcher. They taped her stomach, her arms and then her chest. She was bound tight, unable to move.

Bouchar says there were three Americans: two tall, thin men and an equally tall woman. Mostly they were silent. She never saw their faces: they dressed in black and always wore black balaclavas. Bouchar was terrified. They didn't stop at her chest – she says they also wound the tape around her head, covering her eyes. Then they put a hood and earmuffs on her. She was unable to move, to hear or to see. "My left eye was closed when the tape was applied," she says, speaking about her ordeal for the first time. "But my right eye was open, and it stayed open throughout the journey. It was agony." The journey would last around 17 hours. ...

Belhaj says he was blindfolded, hooded, forced to wear ear defenders, and hung from hooks in his cell wall for what seemed to be hours. He says he was severely beaten. The ear defenders were removed only for him to be blasted with loud music, he says, or when he was interrogated by his US captors.

Bouchar says that when she was dragged away from her husband she feared he was going to be killed. "I thought: 'This is it.' I thought I would never see my husband again ... They took me into a cell, and they chained my left wrist to the wall and both my ankles to the floor. I could sit down but I couldn't move. There was a camera in the room, and every time I tried to move they rushed in. But there was no real communication. I wasn't questioned." Bouchar found it difficult to comprehend how she could be treated in this way: she was four-and-a-half months pregnant. "They knew I was pregnant," she says. "It was obvious." She says she was given water while chained up, but no food whatsoever. She was chained to the wall for five days. At the end of this period she was taped to the stretcher and put aboard the aircraft, unaware of where she was going or whether her husband was on board. At one point the aircraft landed, remained on the ground for a short period and then took off again. Only when it landed a second time did she hear a man grunting with pain, and realise her husband was nearby. ...

Two weeks after the couple were rendered to Libya, Tony Blair paid his first visit to the country, embracing Gaddafi and declaring that Libya had recognised "a common cause, with us, in the fight against al-Qaida extremism and terrorism". At the same time, in London, the Anglo-Dutch oil giant Shell announced that it had signed a £110 million deal for gas exploration rights off the Libyan coast. ...

The ordeal of Fatima Bouchar, detailed by Ian Cobain in the Guardian, exemplifies the vile essence of the 'Terror War' being conducted by United States and its abject satellite, Great Britain. It is a case of brutal torture against an innocent, defenseless pregnant woman, whose only "crime" was to be married to a man who belonged to an organization which had long been supported by the US and UK -- until the geopolitics of oil made the group expendable. It is a tale of cowardice and cruelty, of hypocrisy and corruption, of deliberate atrocity that exacerbates the extremism it purports to combat. It is the emblem of an evil system ordered, countenanced, championed and protected at the very highest levels of the two governments -- a system that is very much still in operation today.

Bouchar was married to Abdel Hakim Belhaj, a member of a group seeking to overthrow Moamar Gadafy in Libya. For 10 years, members of the group had been given asylum in Britain and other countries. According to credible reports, they were being supported by British intelligence in their efforts to oust the Libyan dictator. Then Gadafy began negotiating his deal with George W. Bush and Tony Blair to open up Libyan oil fields to the West. Suddenly, his enemies became enemies of the West; as in Afghanistan, stalwart "freedom fighters" were transformed into "terrorists" overnight, when the agenda of the West's corporate overlords demanded it.

(Guardian and Information Clearing House)

DUBAI'S fear of Freedom

Dubai' police chief Dahi Khalfan's row with the Muslim Brotherhood broke out after the UAE decided not to renew residence permits of Syrians who had taken part in protests in Dubai against the rule of Syrian President Bashar al-Assad. The move was criticised by an Professor Qaradawi in Qatar, who also denounced the move to pull citizenship from Emirati Islamists.

Khalfan lashed out at Qaradawi, threatening to arrest him if he set foot in Dubai, and on Tuesday said the Brotherhood was plotting to seize power in Gulf countries. "Western intelligence services leaked to me a piece of information that says that between 2012 and 2016 the (Muslim Brotherhood) aims at creating governments in the Gulf that pay allegiance to them," he told reporters. He said those who compare the UAE government to Egypt and Tunisia under autocratic rule should be prosecuted.

"They demand the ruler should be from amongst the people. Did we bring ours from Mars?" he said.

 (Reuters)

US Book Burning in the 21st Century

1,652 books were stacked on the floor and tables for removal, including some Korans, many other religious or scholarly texts, and a number of secular works, including novels and poetry.

“So the decision is ‘We are going to burn these books,’ ”a US military officer said.

When the work detail began to heave the books into the flames, an Afghan laborer standing nearby drew close nad he realized what was happening and began to scream. For him and others it was a nightmare come to life. “One of my friends called to me, ‘The Americans are burning our holy books,’ and we rushed over there,” said Mohammed Zafar, 24, who has worked for five years as a laborer near the gate.

As the Afghan laborers tried to extinguish the flames with their water bottles, at least one laborer plunged into the smoldering ashes to retrieve the books.  (New York Times)