Politics

Anti-Muslim Film That Led To US Embassy Attacks May Be a Hoax: Director Sam Bacile Doesn't Exist!

Monday, 20 May 2013 01:16

Is Mitt Romney Unwittingly Defending The Perpetrators of an Internet Hoax Designed To Inflame Tensions in the Middle East?

Sam Bacile (a name which suspiciously sounds like imbecile) the film director of the anti-Islamic movie that has led to riots in Egypt and Libya and the death of US Ambassador J. Christopher Stevens and 3 others, does not even exist!

The Israeli government has just confirmed he is not an Israeli citizen as he claims, and this may be part of an elaborate Internet hoax gone terribly wrong.

Israel says filmmaker behind anti-Muhammad movie is not a citizen
Consultant on film says producer uses fake name and identity as part of disinformation campaign --Times of Israel

Israeli officials said Wednesday they had no record of Israeli citizenship for the filmmaker responsible for an anti-Islam film that sparked deadly riots in Egypt and Libya.

The officials, speaking on condition of anonymity, said they had not heard of Sam Bacile and there was no record of him being a citizen.

Bacile, a 56-year-old California real-estate developer, wrote, directed and produced a film depicting the Muslim prophet Muhammad as a womanizer, fraud and madman. He told the Associated Press he is a Jewish Israeli-American.

On Wednesday, Atlantic correspondent Jeffrey Goldberg reported that Bacile was a fake name and the filmmaker was likely not even Jewish.

Goldberg said he spoke to Steve Klein, who worked with Bacile on the film, and that he confirmed Bacile had no connection to Israel.

“I don’t know that much about him. I met him, I spoke to him for an hour. He’s not Israeli, no. I can tell you this for sure, the State of Israel is not involved … His name is a pseudonym. All these Middle Eastern folks I work with have pseudonyms. I doubt he’s Jewish. I would suspect this is a disinformation campaign,” Klein said.

Hollywood insiders have no idea who the film director is. And so far only scant details are known about the movie's shadowy writer/director who calls himself Sam Bacile. The only interviews with him have been done by phone, and what little information he has revealed raises more than a few red flags. via International Business Times:

In an interview with the Wall Street Journal, Bacile identified himself as an Israeli-American real estate developer based in California. But Internet searches reveal no trace of a real estate developer doing business under that name. His age is in question as well. The Wall Street Journal said he was 52 while AP reported his age at 56.

Bacile has reportedly gone into hiding following the protests. Speaking by phone to the Times of Israel, he said he was not anticipating the violent reaction provoked by the film. "I feel sorry for the embassy. I am mad," he said.

But according to Steve Klein, who claims to have worked as a consultant on the film, Bacile knew it would ignite violence. Speaking to the Associated Press on Wednesday, Klein claimed to be reluctant to help Bacile with the movie, telling him, "You're going to be the next Theo van Gogh." The comment was a reference to the Dutch filmmaker who in 2004 was gunned down by an Islamic extremist after he made a movie that criticized Muslim societies' treatment of women.

In fact, Klein himself is a shadowy figure. He apparently authored a self-published book on Islam (with a poorly designed cover), but aside from that, he has not left many tracks. In a phone interview with the Atlantic on Wednesday, Klein said he believes Bacile is not Israeli and, most likely, not Jewish. He also said that Bacile was a pseudonym and that he did not know his real name.

Mitt Romney may in fact be defending the perpetrators of an Intenet hoax which has now led to the death of a US Ambassador.

Sam Bacile And His Low-Budget Anti-Muslim Movie: Is It All A Hoax? International Business Times

Details -- however minimal -- have begun to surface about the amateur filmmaker whose movie ridiculing the Islamic prophet Muhammad sparked deadly protests in Egypt and Libya.

Four Americans have been killed in the demonstrations, including the U.S. ambassador to Libya. In Cairo, protesters climbed the walls of the U.S. Embassy compound and tore down the American flag. "There is no god but Allah and Muhammad is his messenger," they chanted.

All this over a few movie clips that look like they were produced by a group of high schoolers in a Video 101 class. Reminiscent of low-budget, unfunny comedy sketches, the clips -- supposedly from a movie called "Innocence of Muslims" -- depict Muhammad as a freewheeling, womanizing shyster who promoted child abuse. It sparked violent protests on Tuesday after clips of the film surfaced on YouTube, some of which were later dubbed in Arabic.

But so far only scant details are known about the movie's shadowy writer/director who calls himself Sam Bacile. The only interviews with him have been done by phone, and what little information he has revealed raises more than a few red flags.

So is there a Sam Bacile, and does "Innocence of Muslims" even exist?

In fact, Klein himself is a shadowy figure. He apparently authored a self-publishedbook on Islam (with a poorly designed cover), but aside from that, he has not left many tracks. In a phone interview with the Atlantic on Wednesday, Klein said he believes Bacile is not Israeli and, most likely, not Jewish. He also said that Bacile was a pseudonym and that he did not know his real name.

Update: According to the Times of Israel, officials for that country confirmed that they have no record of Israeli citizenship for a Sam Bacile.

Bacile claims to have made "Innocence of Muslims" on a budget of $5 million with the help of 100 Jewish donors, but one look at the film clips on YouTube will call that claim into question. The movie appears to have been shot using a consumer-grade DV camcorder with amateur actors, fake backgrounds and cheap sets. The lighting and sound are of equally low quality. In Hollywood dollars, $5 million may be considered low-budget, but if the filmmaker really spent that much money on this shoddy work, it's his donors who should be doing the protesting.

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Lyin' Ryan: VP Candidate Paul Ryan's Lies Catching Up With Him

Monday, 20 May 2013 01:16

Sorry Paul Ryan, President Obama Didn't Let That GM Plant Close, President Bush Did

Paul Ryan's lies, fabrications and urban myths are becoming so numerous that we may have to start an entire website dedicated to debunking them. One of Paul Ryan's biggest lies was told at the Republican Convention last week, even after it had been debunked. This lie is about the GM plant in Janeseville, Wisconsiin that Ryan claims Obama promosed to keep open, even though Obama wasnt the president, and never said he would do.

Now the media and hos lies are finally catching up with him, and he's doing what all liar do when they are caught, he;'s changing his story. Via the Huffungton Post: Paul Ryan Lies

Vice-presidential nominee Rep. Paul Ryan (R-Wis.) backpedaled Monday from a claim in his Republican National Convention speech that President Barack Obama was responsible for the closure of a General Motors plant that in fact closed during the presidency of George W. Bush.

"What they are trying to suggest is that I said Barack Obama was responsible for the plant shutdown in Janesville. That is not what I was saying, read the speech," he told NBC's "Today." "What I was saying is the president ought to be held to account for his broken promises. After the plant was shut down he said he would lead efforts to restore the plant. It’s still idle."

Obama did not promise to keep the plant open. He said that with government help, the plant could remain open. The plant effectively shut down on December 23, 2008 -- almost a month before Obama took office.

And Paul Ryan has onother problem, the workers at the plant that shut down and who were there when then Senator Obama visited them say that Paul Ryan is lyin':

Brad Dutcher, Former Janesville GM Plant Employee, Says Paul Ryan 'Should Be Ashamed Of Himself' For Misleading Claim

Brad Dutcher, the former GM employee, told MSNBC's Ed Schultz on Friday that he was at the Janesville plant during Obama's visit and that Ryan had told an "outright lie" by implying that Obama had been responsible for the plant's closure.

Dutcher said that Obama "had nothing to do with the decision to close our factory." He added that "there was never a promise made...to keep our plant open. That is completely false."

Dutcher's comments come on the heels of widespread criticism from Democrats and the media. A progressive Fox News columnist called the speech "apparent attempt to set the world record for the greatest number of blatant lies and misrepresentations slipped into a single political speech." The Washington Post called it "breathtakingly dishonest." Stephanie Cutter, Obama's deputy campaign manager, told the LA Times that "Paul Ryan lied."

As Schultz pointed out, the plant shut down in December 2008, when George W. Bush was still in office. The plant's shutdown had been announced months earlier.

The Verdict: Paul Ryan, you are lyin! See our special Lyin Paul Ryan section for the latest Paul Ryan lies, fabrications, mistruths and false statements.

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Newsweek Obama Cover: We Don't Even Fact Check Our Cover Stories

Monday, 20 May 2013 01:16

Newsweek Admits It Doesn't Even Fact Check The News!

Newsweek is under fire after publishing its shameless hit-piece cover story about President Obama entitled Hit The Road Barack. Written by Harvard history professor Niall Ferguson, the piece has been shredded to pieces by the NY Times Paul Krugman and other economists for it's many inaccuracies.

We wont bother to rehash the entire Newsweek article, you can read it here. Basically Ferguson blames everything bad that has happened to America over the past four years on President Obama. Everything except the Kardashians.

So is the Newsweek story true? The truth is NiallFerguson's article is so full of inaccuracies that even Newsweek had to admit they never fact-checked it!

Instead, they rely on their reporters to do all the fact checking since they dont even have a fact-checking department!

via Media Matters

Newsweek, Niall Ferguson, And The Conservative Echo Chamber

Niall Ferguson's Newsweek cover story on President Obama exemplifies a deficiency in today's media. As criticism of Ferguson's shoddy work mounted -- both from outside and inside of Newsweek/The Daily Beast -- Newsweek explained to Politico's Dylan Byers that Newsweek "relies on our writers to submit factually accurate material." Indeed, Byers also noted that Newsweek does not even have a fact-checking department.

This admission is disturbing on face. Newsweek wants to sell you stories and news about the world but can't even be bothered to check the claims it publishes. Even worse, they didn't seem all that uncomfortable with the admission. Newsweek's defense is that others are this lackadaisical at journalism, which is to say Newsweek has no defense. In a media environment without fact-checkers, it's no wonder we have fabulists and problems with facts and the media. But there's a more pernicious ramification of Newsweek's abdication of journalistic practices: This is what the predatory conservative echo-chamber and Fox News count on.

The Atlantic offers A Full Fact-Check of Niall Ferguson's Very Bad Argument Against Obama and basically rops him a new one, which he evidently needs since he is so very full of right-wing crap.

Paul Krugman says that Newsweek needs to issue a correction for columnist Niall Ferguson's new cover story on why President Obama does not deserve reelection., via Huffington Post:

Paul Krugman, the Nobel Prize-winning Princeton economics professor, wrote in a Sunday New York Times blog post titled "Unethical Commentary" that Ferguson misrepresented the costs of health care reform. Krugman wrote:

There are multiple errors and misrepresentations in Niall Ferguson’s cover story in Newsweek — I guess they don’t do fact-checking — but this is the one that jumped out at me. Ferguson says:
"The president pledged that health-care reform would not add a cent to the deficit. But the CBO and the Joint Committee on Taxation now estimate that the insurance-coverage provisions of the ACA will have a net cost of close to $1.2 trillion over the 2012–22 period."

Readers are no doubt meant to interpret this as saying that CBO found that the Act will increase the deficit. But anyone who actually read, or even skimmed, the CBO report (pdf) knows that it found that the ACA would reduce, not increase, the deficit — because the insurance subsidies were fully paid for.

Newsweek, Where Fact Checking Is Evidently Optional

The truth is Niall Ferguson's article is so full of inaccuracies that even Newsweek had to admit they never fact-checked it! Newsweek/Daily Beast Editor "Downtown" Tina Brown evidently only wrote the cover title "Hit The Road Barack" (or at least signed off on it) which is another indicator that we really do now need a bunch of foreign journalists and editors interfering with our elections. Is it too late to put a "Deport All Brits" provision into the GOP platform since they want to deport everyone else?

via Huffington Post:

One noted economist has blasted Niall Ferguson for his cover story, this time going further than Krugman by calling for Ferguson to get fired. Brad DeLong, economics professor at the University of California at Berkeley ,wrote in a blog post on Monday:

Fire his ass. Fire his ass from Newsweek, and the Daily Beast. Convene a committee at Harvard to examine whether he has the moral character to teach at a university. There is a limit, somewhere. And Ferguson has just gone beyond it.

Niall Ferguson's ridiculous defense in Politico sums it up:

Niall Ferguson, author of this week's Newsweek cover story calling for Obama's ousting, has returned fire on Paul Krugman -- albeit in a ridiculous, misleading, ethically questionable way that completely misses the mark. The Oxford-trained, Harvard-employed, Newsweek contributor Niall Ferguson just edited the CBO report to change its meaning. With all due lack of respect: What are you thinking?

Great question, what was Newsweek thinking? Maybe trying to sell a few more subscriptions to the right-wing crow before the GOP convention worked, but the price the magazine will pay from losing Democratic readers will likely be very, very high indeed.

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This "Chilling Letter" to Obama is not from Procter & Gamble's former CEO

Monday, 20 May 2013 01:16

Subject: Lou Pritchett's Open Letter to President Obama

The author of an e-mail purporting to be from the former CEO of Procter & Gamble is actually from a former VP of Sales. Lou Pritchett, who wrote the letter, retired 20 years ago after a 36-year career as the VP World Sales for Proctor and Gamble. And for some strange reason this old white man is very afraid of President Obama, our first black President.

This letter has been incorrectly forwarded as an e-mail from the former CEO of Procter & Gamble, but Lou was just a senior soap salesman at P&G and NOT the CEO.

Lou tried (unsuccessfully) to have the NY Times publish his letter, which was rejected, then picked up by anti-Obama types for recirculation. Now he mostly goes on Fox News to rant about why he is so scared of Obama.

Note how every sentence contains the phrase "you scare me." Judging from the Zombie-like picture of Lou and the repetitive sentence structure, this looks more like letter from someone who needs to take their meds, badly. Here it is, with our commentary in red.

AN OPEN LETTER TO PRESIDENT OBAMA

Dear President Obama:

You are the thirteenth President under whom I have lived and unlike any of the others, you truly scare me.

(Under President Obama, we have never been attacked by the enemy, unlike President Bush, who was President when we were actually attacked by Al Queda.)

You scare me because after months of exposure, I know nothing about you.

(Maybe you should try reading Obama's TWO autobiographies, both published BEFORE he was President?)

You scare me because I do not know how you paid for your expensive Ivy League education and your upscale lifestyle and housing with no visible signs of support.

(This is beyond insulting. Sounds like someone saying "Get off my lawn you uppity you-know-whats." Haven't you ever heard of student loans? President Obama is always talking about how long it took to pay them off. And Obama's only upscale home is called the White House. On the other hand, Mitt Romney (and John McCain before him) have so many McMansions they cant even remember how many of them they own.)

You scare me because you did not spend the formative years of youth growing up in America and culturally you are not an American.

(Between 1961, when he was born in Hawaii, and 1979, when he moved to Los Angeles, Barack Obama spent all but 4 years growing up in Hawaii (he lived in Jakarta, indonesia from 1967-1971, when ha was only 6-10 years old). For the other 14 years of his life before college, Obama grew up in Hawaii, which has been part uf the US since August 21, 1959. So Lou, which formative years are you talking about? Sounds like you have been hanging around with those unpatriotic birthers a bit too much.)

You scare me because you have never run a company or met a payroll.

(Unlike Mitt Romney, who has run companies into the ground then laid everyone off.)

You scare me because you have never had military experience, thus don't understand it at its core.

(As Commander in Chief, that one is a bit off base. And Mitt Romney was the one who avoided the draift by going to France on a student deferment.)

You scare me because you lack humility and 'class', always blaming others.

(No, just blaming President Bush for the mess he left Obama to clean up.)

You scare me because for over half your life you have aligned yourself with radical extremists who hate America and you refuse to publicly denounce these radicals who wish to see America fail.

(President Obama went to Columbia University and Harvard, graduated at the top of his class, served in both the Illinois and US Senate, before becoming President. If that resume scares you then you are the one who is pretty scary.)

You scare me because you are a cheerleader for the 'blame America' crowd and deliver this message abroad.

(Obama delivers drone strikes abroad Next.)

You scare me because you want to change America to a European style country where the government sector dominates instead of the private sector.

(Mitt Romney is the one wholived in France and is fluent in French, and who also has had a Swiss bank account, not Barack Obama.)

You scare me because you want to replace our health care system with a government controlled one.

(Wrong again, Obamacare is actually a great big payday for the insurance companies and eliminates the free rider (freeloader ) problem which drives up health care costs. But P&G paid for all your health care, so what do you care anyway?)

You scare me because you prefer 'wind mills' to responsibly capitalizing on our own vast oil, coal and shale reserves.

(Lou, Lou, Lou, coal is so 18th century. In case you hadn't noticed, in this century people prefer breathing clean air and all the oil is running out. Sounds like you are the one blowing the most hot air.)

You scare me because you want to kill the American capitalist goose that lays the golden egg which provides the highest standard of living in the world.

(Yes, Obama killed capitalism by baling out both Wall Street and the auto industry. Next!)

You scare me because you have begun to use 'extortion' tactics against certain banks and corporations.

(By extortion do you mean closing loopholes that they use to avoid paying US taxes like Haliburton? If that's what you mean then you are correct. Obama is extorting corporations and billionaires by making them pay their taxes)

You scare me because your own political party shrinks from challenging you on your wild and irresponsible spending proposals.

(But your GOP has blocked everything he has tried to do, so I really wouldn't be too worried about this one.)

You scare me because you will not openly listen to or even consider opposing points of view from intelligent people.

(By intelligent you certainly don't mean John McCain, or Mitch McConnell or Sarah Palin, or Fox News, right? Right?)

You scare me because you falsely believe that you are both omnipotent and omniscient.

(No, only you are both of these things. Obama is only omniscient, but he's working really hard on developing his superhero powers so you better watch out, he's coming for you next!)

You scare me because the media gives you a free pass on everything you do.

(That's a good one. Next!)

You scare me because you demonize and want to silence the Limbaughs, Hannitys, O'Relllys and Becks who offer opposing, conservative points of view.

(Have you noticed how quiet Limbaughs, Hannitys, O'Relllys and Becks have been lately, because I haven't.)

You scare me because you prefer controlling over governing.

(Not sure we follow you here. Wait, look, is that the Mother Ship coming down from the sky to get you?)

Finally, you scare me because if you serve a second term I will probably not feel safe in writing a similar letter in 8 years.

(Lou you really are a drama queen, now go back to the TV set and keep yelling at Rachel Maddow. And please take your meds. After all , Obamacare is helping you to pay for them.)

Lou Pritchett

Not the former CEO of Procter & Gamble, just a former soap salesman.

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KONY 2012: How You Can Help Capture A Warlord

Monday, 20 May 2013 01:16

kony-2010

KONY 2012 from INVISIBLE CHILDREN on Vimeo.

KONY 2012 is a film and campaign by Invisible Children that aims to make Joseph Kony famous, not to celebrate him, but to raise support for his arrest and set a precedent for international justice.

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