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)