Read this article, which is similar to several others I’ve read today. His name is Sam Bacile, and in the fifth paragraph he identifies himself as an Israeli Jew. The claim that it was Egyptian Christians was most likely dreamed up by Muslim radicals in order to provide an excuse to persecute said Egyptian Christians.
What a tragedy and what a bizarre story. The whole thing just sort of popped up out of nowhere yesterday, too, no doubt on the prompting of one religious zealot or another. I’m very sorry for the families. There have been conflicting reports about how Ambassador Stevens died- he may have died from an RPG explosion or smoke inhalation or he may have just been dragged into a crowd and beaten to death. You almost have to hope it’s one of the first two.
Actually it that’s not where the claim comes from and it looks plausible at this point. Israel says it has never heard of Bacile and a consultant on the movie said the name and identity are both fake and that the movie was funded by Christians and Copts. All of which could be bullshit, but crazy Muslims didn’t concoct it.
This is getting interesting. This article from the NY Times also reports that “Sam Bacile” appears to be fake. It says that Morris Sadek, the Egyptian Coptic Christian in question, “promoted” the film. It doesn’t say he created it. It says,
It seems to be something of a mystery as to where the film actually came from. I’m starting to wonder if the beginning of the movie (which shows Egyptian police standing around doing nothing as Muslim pilgrims burn the homes of Coptic Christians) was created by Coptic Christians to highlight discrimination, while the latter part (making fun of Islam) was added by some latter entity (a-Qaida?) specifically to promote violence. I have a hard time imagining that Coptic Christians, who are constantly persecuted and typically quite wary of pissing off Muslims, would deliberately create such a video, knowing full-well that it would likely lead to violence. OTOH, it looks increasingly like some radical group was planning all along to use the protests as cover for an attack, so we would be foolish if we didn’t consider the possability that this video is a false flag attack.
Here’s a profile of Stevens. Maybe there are lots of guys in foreign service who are like this, but he sounds like he could’ve been Secretary of State one day.
I saw a brief item on the news this morning. Supposedly, they’ve located the actors who made the part of the film that mocks Islam. They insist that the offensive dialogue was dubbed in later by someone else, and they didn’t know what the movie was being made for.
It’s seriously starting to look like al Qaida or some other radical group made the video for the specific purpose of causing outrage in the Muslim world.
Yeah, I’m expecting we’ll eventually learn more about the film. And, without meaning to come off as critical (we’re all just relating what we’ve read), I have to say the idea that radical Muslims would have in their hands something offensive made by Jews and think, “Now, who can we blame this on? Copts, maybe?” seemed darkly comical.
On a less funny note, if I understand what I read today in the Washington Post, it looks like the ambassador had specifically gone to the consulate to organize the evacuation when he was killed.
That puts a downright heroic light on his actions.
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YMMV, of course, but it’s becoming increasingly clear that the video was heavily edited from whatever it originally was. Plus, the fact that this appeared just in time to start a protest that could cover an obviously pre-planned assassination (who brings RPG’s to a peaceful protest? :dubious:) on the anniversery of the 9/11 attacks is quite a coincidence. Occam’s Razor falls on the side of this whole thing being a scheme to incite violence.
I think that’s probably going too far. They planned or took advantage of the protest to attack the building, but I don’t think the rest of it is cover. It’s sort of hard to imagine a terrorist group making a blasphemous movie just so they can use protests of the movie as cover to fire off a couple of grenades. It takes too long, costs too much, and there isn’t enough of a payoff. And at the moment the government doesn’t think Stevens was targeted specifically. They wanted to attack the consulate and he happened to be there.
Perhaps it is intended to cause more strife.
I’m sure this is one of the intended effects.
The man behind the Bacile alias has been identified: he’s a Coptic Christian named Nakoula Bassely Nakoula. He was already known to have been involved with the movie but had denied being the guy behind it. He also has a fraud conviction. So he’s a real prize specimen all the way around. As a hypothetical, I have trouble imagining fanatical Muslims would blasphere their own religion just to upset other Muslims in the hope they’d blame the wrong people. That would be even more incoherent than the religious terrorist thing.
Meanwhile, there’s going to be a protest by “several hundred people” in front of the US Embassy in Bangkok tomorrow afternoon (Tuesday afternoon). I received a notice from the embassy saying they would be closed for the afternoon and warning of traffic disruptions in the area. The notice didn’t say what the protest is about, but judging from the size, it must be about this. There are Thai Muslims. Hope things don’t get get dicey.
The protest passed without incident. An American journalist of my acquaintance covered it. He pegged the crowd at 150-200, other sources have said 300. He said there must have been twice as many Thai police as protesters. They weren’t taking any chances after what happened in Libya. My friend said just as it started about 2pm, the heavens opened up and poured down a deluge of biblical proportions. But that failed to dampen the protesters’ spirit. He said all the usual chants were made – “Death to America!” “Death to Israel!” “Death to Zionism!” – for an hour or so, then everyone left. Thais usually protest pretty peacefully – unless they’re trying to kill each other, in which case all hell breaks loose.
Anyone see this, from an actress in the movie?
http://journal.neilgaiman.com/2012/09/a-letter-from-scared-actress.html
Today (Wednesday), About 30 Muslims protested in front of the US Consulate up in the northern capital of Chiang Mai. A statement was read out and handed to a representative of the consul. All very peaceful. About 20 cops were on hand.