The cause of the the lethal Libyan and Egyptian riots against the American embassies is now known as a promoted video, The Innocence of Muslims, made by someone named “Sam Bacile,” a pseudonym.
No links, as it’s now unavoidable.
However, reading of it today I had the uneasy feeling it was a bit familiar.
At the end of August, this blog — and many others around the web — was sent spam mail about a book called How Fatima Started Islam: Mohammad’s Daughter Tells It All by one Noor Barack, a pseudonym.
The spam blurb:
Did you know that Mohammad was a drunken, child molesting, cowardly pimp? The Ayatollahs and Terrorists do not want you to know the truth about Islam and promise to harm you if you tell anyone. Fight back and read this well written, totally funny, parody on the founding of the so-called religion …
See sample Chapters, the back cover showing Mohammad depicted after a 5 day bender (the terrorists hate this picture), read about the never sober Mohammad having sex with camels, pre-adolescent girls and boys, the terror, sneak attacks, killings, rapes, assassinations, mutilations, back stabbing and mental illness. No other book in the world is at all like this one. Strike a blow for American Freedom by reading it.
I looked at the Amazon page, noted it was a piece of hate literature and promptly forgot the thing.
But today the news about Sam Bacile and the alleged nature of “The
Innocence of Muslims” trailer hinted at something I’d seen recently. It had the same peculiar and hateful idiosyncrasies as the Fatima book.
How Fatima Stated Islam was published first in 2009. And it was in English, a vanity publication by “Camel Flea Press,” vended on Amazon.
Since it was in English one would not expect the insult of it, and
believe me, that’s what it’s loaded with, to have made any impression in
the Muslim world.
However, “The Innocence of Muslims” is visual and, according to the
news, was subtitled/translated in Arabic.
The new spam promotion for the Fatima book came at the end of August.
“The Innocence of Muslims” was made in 2011, allegedly shown once in Hollywood to a near empty theater, but was heavily promoted yesterday in a live Internet stream from hate-pastor Terry Jones’ church.
Are these two things from the same people? The push on them is similar, solely through the web, the only place where they could be marketed. And everyone, from mailers to authors, uses obvious pseudonyms. So maybe.
It’s worth looking into.
Like “The Innocence of Muslims,” it portrays Mohammed as a buffoon and a criminal. From front to back, it is a merciless parade of juvenile, odious slurs and fabrications, passed off as humor, on everything associated with Islam.
Excerpts (warning: very offensive), from How Fatima Started Islam: Mohammad’s Daughter Tells It All:
Fatima: So on the eve of my twelfth birthday, with little fanfare and very matter-of-factly, I was turned out as a whore … The local yokels and camel jockeys who were the bulk of the customers generally would screw one of [us] chippies anywhere and everywhere.
The four pillars of Islam, the founding supports that were needed in order that the religion could flourish and grow, and conquer, were the
essentials. The first three were the camel, alcoholism and prostitution. The fourth and last pillar, the final original building block needed to complete the quartet that enshrined Islam, was the pillar of mental illness.
I was very afraid of someone … seeing [the Prophet] wearing a linen with an obvious yellow-brown stain on the backside.
It’s worth noting the extremist American purveyors of such things want publicity in Islamic nations. Video of riots are vindication, getting them off.
The United States has its own riotous history connected to relatively recent religious offense.
Because it would be so unusual after a revolution and the total breakdown of the country for lots and lots of young men in Libya to have automatic weapons, rockets and grenades.
“The fact that some of the attackers were armed with rockets and grenades is one of the factors leading to that initial conclusion,” reads the piece.
Honestly, where do they come up with the people who anonymously tell reporters such things?
It’s OK to stop refilling the prescription of stupid pills, guys. You’ve had enough.
Remember, there’s always a self-serving ‘think tank’ you’ve never heard of, with right-wing counter-terror experts consisting of old refugees (in London, or Los Angeles, New York, or DC) from any country you care to name, ready to give the inside poop on what’s really happened.
Today is no exception, from CNN:
According to our own sources at Quilliam Foundation, the attack was the work of roughly 20 militants, prepared for a military assault. It is rare, for example, that an RPG7 — an anti-tank rocket-propelled grenade launcher — would be present at a civilian protest. The attack against the consulate had two waves. The first attack led to U.S. officials being evacuated from the consulate by Libyan security forces, only for the second wave to be launched against U.S. officials after they were kept at a secure location.
[A] former leader of the Libyan Islamic Fighting Group, a jihadist organization that fought against Muammar Qaddafi’s regime in the 1990s. After resigning from L.I.F.G. in 2002, he became a prominent critic of jihadist and Islamist violence.
Ten to twenty years ago. What’s a decade or two and an entire revolution out of the loop, huh?
Update: The al Qaeda’s behind it all theory, laughed out of town by spreading violence and closer-to-the-scene accounts.
On 9/11, it would also be good to remember what the catastrophe brought on.
Share it.
Lethal trivia: One week after, we were treated to anthraxer Bruce Ivins from the heart of the US biodefense industry. That’s him in the video and the white label pressing of his home-made country 45.
Just think about that for a minute. Bruce Ivins, a man at the very center of one of the more famous defense science installations, used 9/11 as cover to kill, sicken and spread fear in more Americans.
Fort Detrick, the place where Ivins made the anthrax, has never apologized.
One of the great advantages of Facebook’s automatic hiding of comment threads: Celebrity death hoaxes flourish.
Think of it this way. You’re a bona fide prick and determined to show something no one else has, ever — that it’s easy to trick people on the web! And what better way to do it than to launch a hoax: Beloved actor Morgan Freeman has passed away!
Make a short obit that only sorta looks like it came from someplace concerned and authoritative, like a newspaper, with picture, and share on Facebook!
Watch an army of idiots spread it.
Don’t worry about those who show up to post coments like, “Look people, Morgan Freeman is not dead!” Facebook will quickly hide them and the only thing most will see in their newsfeeds is the announcement that the poor man croaked suddenly, along with a huge number of likes, share and comments.
And there will be lots of comments, by people vainly posting that Morgan’s not dead. Heck, Mr. Freeman could show up himself! All of it to be ignored, hidden away, because that’s how Facebook works.
The large numbers displayed will convince people there’s been an outpour of regret because ‘Mericans stupid people believe such figures on social networks mean important news and shit is brewing. It’s the wisdom of crowd-sourcing, boiled down to one or two simple and infallible metrics.
So quick, go and post your thing about Morgan Freeman, or anyone else — as long as they’re famous, dying.
Or post an obit of someone who died seven years ago, like Bob Denver, and watch the users rush to share it while Facebook hides all the attempts at rectification: “Hey people, I liked Gilligan, too, and was sad when he passed but that was …”
Or post spam, with a picture, of some poor animal that was tortured to death or mistreated somewhere in Jugoslavia or Trans Dniester …
From Mark Smollin, DD band drummer at Saturday rehearsal, after a few rounds of it on early-Seventies style hard rock. It’s a Holowon Static Egg, now ten years old, I think, dating back to when a niche US industry for handmade guitar effects, usually copies of old classic circuits, emerged. Think — not made in China — where the major manufacturers shipped all their production and tooling.
The Static Egg is a fuzz tone and they’re basic equipment for copping the feel of Sixties and early Seventies blues rock. A good one, and this is, enables a great woolly distortion, static-y shrill squealing noise, horn-like bleats, and just about everything in between.
When it’s on, it sounds righteous, from slightly compressed and clean to heavy and crushing with a twist of the guitar’s volume knob. And it tears its own hole in any mix. (It’s not necessary to explain the knob functions. You just twiddle until it sounds right. There’s nothing to it.)
For example, if you have a Stratocaster and you want to do something ala Jimi Hendrix, a certain kind of fuzz tone — called a Fuzz Face, helps a lot. The Static Egg isn’t a Fuzz Face but it will still do the job.
This tune shows it off well. It gives a bit of sustain to the clean guitar parts, makes the jangly and twangy stuff more penetrating, furnishes the crunch on power chords, and does the bleats and stereotypical Sixties fuzz sounds, too
Strat and Static Egg fuzz (plus an octave-up fuzz on the outro.)
C’mon, this is a great spoof with a nice grifted image of LiLo, too.
After I bought mine, the production of Static Eggs seemed to stop for many years. More recently, a newer model has been spotted, one with four knobs and a bit more of a conventional look. But I’ll always have mine, it looks fine now with ten years of wear and the Letraset transfer lettering still very legible. Fuzz tones are close to being bulletproof.
The Static Egg also is the primary sound for Carla Sandwich, which accentuates what you can do for the sake of trash rock.
YouTube rewards users who upload demos of equipment. like fuzz tones, where the player sits around, plays a few riffs from favorite songs and twists knobs by himself. A more valid demonstration is to show it in a recording. But that’s harder, YouTube doesn’t reward the practice, and it makes tyros and amateurs whine they can’t hear the guitar and box by themselves.
In the real word, not Google/YouTube’s universe of dull copycats, guitar players use effects and tone in the context of tunes.
Fuzz tone effects didn’t capture the imagination because they were popularized by random nerds humorlessly copying fragments of someone else’s famous riffs. They were in radio cuts by the Rolling Stones, Jimi Hendrix, Iron Butterfly and Led Zeppelin.
The quote most deserving of today’s horselaugh (believe me, there’s always a lot to choose from):
“Some of today’s national cyber actors don’t seem to be bound by any sense of restraint” — Debora Plunkett, head of the NSA’s Information Assurance Directorate
[Plunkett] told a university audience that “we’re starting to see nation-state resources and expertise employed in what we would characterize as reckless and disruptive, destructive behaviors.”
Sort of like being scolded to stop smoking by someone with a lit cigarette in the mouth who’s absent-mindedly reaching for still another pack.
“U.S. standing to complain about other nations’ cyber attacks has been undermined, however, by disclosures that Washington, along with Israel, launched sophisticated offensive cyber operations of its own against Iran …” reads the piece.
Today’s young Americans have nothing in common with the counterculture generation of young Americans who marched, protested and brawled with Chicago’s finest at the Democratic National Convention in 1968 …
These intellectually shallow socialists think that by stripping the wealthy of their hard-earned wealth, somehow, maybe magically, fairness will spread across the land, more free stuff will appear, and the Age of Aquarius finally will be ushered in on a peaceful wave of socialism.
What dopes. These unsophisticated lambs are being led to the slaughter — not by the “nasty and greedy??? Wall Street bankers but by their hero, President Obama, and his gang of Cloward-Piven America-haters.
“Our wayward young socialists should be reminded that businessmen will create opportunities for today’s young people …” adds Nugent.
If there was any socialism on display when Barack Obama took the stage last night, I missed it. There was a big middle section in the speech, all boilerplate about mining for more fossil fuel, and a mention of “entrepreneurs” at least once. But perhaps I imagined the latter. (No, didn’t dream it.)
The Cloward-Piven America Haters. Sounds like a good name for an underground band.
John Sinclair, manager of the MC5, and one of the original “stinky hippies,” according to Nugent, describing the scene around the Grande Ballroom in Detroit in the Sixties:
JOHN SINCLAIR: That’s what it was like back then … everybody smoked, nobody snitched, everyone was cool — except for Ted Nugent. He was not cool, always an asshole, everybody hated him (laughs).
Krugman graphs the state of unemployment in this country …
“A plunge and a stabilization at a depressed level, which has now gone on for almost three years,” he says.
The unemployment rate fell only because people have either stopped looking for work or are leaving the workforce for retirement.
The message is out: Getting a job is much like playing the daily lottery. The odds are bad and if you, by chance, win something, the payoff’s not very good because almost all the prizes are lousy.
ENTERTAINMENT WEEKLY: Did you watch Star Trek growing up?
RYAN GERMICK: I did, yes. I’m early 30s and I grew up watching the original series with my dad, and I kind of realized, the guys on the Enterprise were like family friends to me …
If he’s actually in his early thirties:
(31,32 or 33) – 46 = negative number in teens
I watched the original series, not reruns. I was ten when it started.
Google did not invent the world, or the vaccines for smallpox or polio, but we’re stuck with how they order it for the time being.
There is a thing Google android Ryan Germick got right, and it’s the most obvious:
[It] was a vision for the future. I think it was also that it was multicultural, pro-science, and full of curiosity and passion. I think like a lot of good science-fiction, it sort of says a lot about its present era. We can really appreciate what Star Trek did in its time. As an adult, you can appreciate how progressive it was. You learned to be compassionate towards all kinds of people — even alien creatures …
Originally, androids were instruments of villains, primarily the Leader, in Marvel Comics.
Not something made by Google, which allowed me to find this copy of the cover.
This particular Marvel Comic was published in 1964, two years before the debut of the original Star Trek.
I had a copy. Today it’s worth 59 bucks on eBay. My mom threw it out along with all my Marvels, one day when I was away in college.
Eventually, she threw out everything. She had issues.
Above photo, nabbed from standard rot on “DARPA” wanting to make cyberwar and planning for it “routine” with “X” at Wired. (No link.)
The pic, unintentionally hilarious as an inside joke, shows NSA director, Keith Alexander, in Afghanistan. Where everyone knows the Taliban is just loaded with cyberwarriors. Why, the Iranians and al Qaeda in Pakistan are probably attacking, too.
American special operations forces have suspended the training of new recruits to an Afghan village militia until the entire 16,000-member force can be rescreened for possible links to the insurgency, U.S. officials said Sunday.
The move is the latest repercussion from a series of “insider” shootings carried out by members of the Afghan police and army against Western troops. Forty-five NATO service members have been killed in such attacks this year, and the U.S. toll in August alone was 12 dead.
“[Plan X] means building tools to help warplanners assemble and launch online strikes in a hurry,” informs Wired’s DangerRoom.
If you’re in Pasadena near Colorado and just west of Old Town on Saturday afternoon and have nothing better to do, come by and see an open rehearsal of DD and company doing the tunes posted on the blog.
We go from 2 to between 5 and 6, depending on the temperature. And we take breaks.
Come by, say hello and introduce yourself, chat only if you want, leave when you get sick of it. It might will get loud. If the house is rockin’, don’t bother knockin.’ Just come in.
