New Wave of Anti-American Protests in the Middle East and North Africa

[Binn Beal]

That Irish Times editorial and the observations of Richard B above state the position for me and for anyone who values our hard-one liberties. And before anyone says: 'What liberties? How come I can't go on TV?' Yes, I mean the liberties we do have and that were hard one by the French revolutionaries, the English trade unionists and the masses of people in Europe over the past 200 or so years.

Charlie Whatsit magazine - like it or loath it - has defended one of our basic and hard-one rights by calling the bluff of the Islamic mob. Even with the government of Pakistan sponsoring a 'Day of Love for Mohammad' (a day off work to attack Western institutions), it has been a damp squib. And the next cartoon, novel, film that is critical of Islamic nonsense will be even damper and so on until it is accepted that we have a right to express opinions that others may find hurtful.

Fluffy's reasoning that "I have no beef with Islam as Islam has done nothing to me" is baffling. I have never been forced into a marriage/whipped/sexually mutilated/made to stay silent/beaten but I, and I'm sure Fluffy, oppose those who do do such evil.

[fluffybiscuits]

That Irish Times editorial and the observations of Richard B above state the position for me and for anyone who values our hard-one liberties. And before anyone says: 'What liberties? How come I can't go on TV?' Yes, I mean the liberties we do have and that were hard one by the French revolutionaries, the English trade unionists and the masses of people in Europe over the past 200 or so years.

Charlie Whatsit magazine - like it or loath it - has defended one of our basic and hard-one rights by calling the bluff of the Islamic mob. Even with the government of Pakistan sponsoring a 'Day of Love for Mohammad' (a day off work to attack Western institutions), it has been a damp squib. And the next cartoon, novel, film that is critical of Islamic nonsense will be even damper and so on until it is accepted that we have a right to express opinions that others may find hurtful.

Fluffy's reasoning that "I have no beef with Islam as Islam has done nothing to me" is baffling. I have never been forced into a marriage/whipped/sexually mutilated/made to stay silent/beaten but I, and I'm sure Fluffy, oppose those who do do such evil.

Im against the people who seem to act vicariously in the name of these religions, these religions are not giving me any grief. All the men who act in the name of religion do so as they believe in some interpretation of a fairytale (which is utter tosh). So by your reasoning we should give a voice to idiots like the KKK and these other twats like Westboro Baptist church? This would then mean we should scrap the incitement to hatred legislation? Inciting violence for an agenda suits a lot of people in this world and if the legislation was changed to reflect where we could say anything it would get worse...

[Dr. FIVE]

http://www.counterpunch.org/2012/09/...eft-and-right/

[Sam Lord]

http://www.counterpunch.org/2012/09/...eft-and-right/

Very good article. Thanks.

The point that everyone has been missing:

But no serious historian today takes such apologetics seriously. Only the most determined ignoramus would discuss 1857 in isolation from the broader context of British occupation. In form, the struggle might have been religious; in content, it embodied a long-simmering opposition to colonial rule.

That’s why those who pretend the protests against The Innocence of Muslims came from nowhere merely reveal their own foolishness.

[Dr. FIVE]

Yeah spot on, along with people are reacting to provocation. Not cartoons lol or whatever

[C. Flower]

Very good article. Thanks.

The point that everyone has been missing:

There is a point well made. Islamophobia is being whipped up globally, much in the way that antisemitism was pre-World War 2.

http://www.counterpunch.org/2012/09/...eft-and-right/

But it is very far from being simply the case that all forms of militant Islam are politically progressive.

The protests in Egypt and elsewhere have been divided between unarmed mass protests by people who are just sick to death of being insulted and abused because of their religion, and provocative and shadowy right-wing elements who have played directly to the gallery set up by the fake "film trailer." These are highly reactionary people who are not anti-Imperialist, who don't represent the masses, who appear in some cases to be 'bussed in' and who carry out bombings and murders of local people - who hate them.

[Count Bobulescu]

I don’t agree with the assertion in Counter Punch which also happened to be quoted by Sam Lord that there is a problem because some people, many people, too many people, believe that these protests came out of nowhere.

I think many westerners almost expect such protests as a matter of course. Witness the French Govt. closing 20 embassies after the Charlie Hebdo publication. The Innocence video has been on YT apparently unnoticed since July. It was only when the Saudi/Salafi affiliated TV channel Al Nas in Cairo started “promoting” it did protests erupt.

I found the article disjointed and almost incoherent. At the outset the writer says:

Well, we’ve certainly seen ignorance paraded over the last few days but it’s as much by smug progressives as anyone else.

leading the reader to believe we were going to find an analysis of the “smug progessives” position.

Instead, we hear no more about the “smug progressives” beyond conjecture about what Victorian Era progressives in London might have said, which isn't very helpful. The writer turns his attention to repeatedly attacking the views of not just the “right” but an even smaller subset the “far right”.
It’s fine in my book to attack the far right, but don’t try to dress it up as some sort analysis of the left. Just call it or what it is. The headline is misleading. He doesn’t cite failings of the modern left.

I posted this piece about Al Nas back at #107.

http://www.theatlantic.com/internati...-movie/262567/

[riposte]

I basically agree with this:

http://www.irishtimes.com/newspaper/...324230582.html

Does anyone not agree, and if not why not?

I totally disagree .... I don't think people should be abused or insulted because they are Mohammedans, Jews, Towelheads, Yids, Taigs, Próds, Niggers, Wetbacks, Knackers or Spics.

I think there should be limits on free speech and certain terms should not be allowed.

[C. Flower]

I don’t agree with the assertion in Counter Punch which also happened to be quoted by Sam Lord that there is a problem because some people, many people, too many people, believe that these protests came out of nowhere.

I think many westerners almost expect such protests as a matter of course. Witness the French Govt. closing 20 embassies after the Charlie Hebdo publication. The Innocence video has been on YT apparently unnoticed since July. It was only when the Saudi/Salafi affiliated TV channel Al Nas in Cairo started “promoting” it did protests erupt.

I found the article disjointed and almost incoherent. At the outset the writer says:

leading the reader to believe we were going to find an analysis of the “smug progessives” position.

Instead, we hear no more about the “smug progressives” beyond conjecture about what Victorian Era progressives in London might have said, which isn't very helpful. The writer turns his attention to repeatedly attacking the views of not just the “right” but an even smaller subset the “far right”.
It’s fine in my book to attack the far right, but don’t try to dress it up as some sort analysis of the left. Just call it or what it is. The headline is misleading. He doesn’t cite failings of the modern left.

I posted this piece about Al Nas back at #107.

http://www.theatlantic.com/internati...-movie/262567/

Ha! Damned if they do, and damned if they don't, show the video.

I note the station is Salafist and Saudi backed - one of the US's ally's.

the latest slight to Islam that has prompted widespread violence.

Seems to be an exaggeration by the Atlantic.

In spite of all the efforts to whip up mayhem, apart from some mass protests that seem to have come and gone, it was only the attack on the Libyan Embassy that would fall under that kind of heading - and the US suggested that the small number of fighters who fired on the US Embassy had pre-planned it to coincide with 9/11.

[Count Bobulescu]

Nakoula was arrested yesterday and held without bail for probation violations relating to earlier federal charges. He was prohibited from using a computer/internet.

Movie was made by an outfit called Media for Christ that produces product for viewing in the Islamic world. Movie had a $250K budget.


http://online.wsj.com/article/SB1000...359653378.html

[Count Bobulescu]

LOS ANGELES — Fuming for two months in a jail cell here, Nakoula Basseley Nakoula has had plenty of time to reconsider the wisdom of making “Innocence of Muslims,” his crude YouTube movie trailer depicting the Prophet Muhammad as a bloodthirsty, philandering thug.

Does Mr. Nakoula now regret the footage? After all, it fueled deadly protests across the Islamic world and led the unlikely filmmaker to his own arrest for violating his supervised release on a fraud conviction.

Not at all. In his first public comments since his incarceration soon after the video gained international attention in September, Mr. Nakoula told The New York Times that he would go to great lengths to convey what he called “the actual truth” about Muhammad. “I thought, before I wrote this script,” he said, “that I should burn myself in a public square to let the American people and the people of the world know this message that I believe in.”

http://www.nytimes.com/2012/11/26/us...pagewanted=all

[Count Bobulescu]

This will warm CF's heart.

U.S. DIPLOMAT: SPECIAL FORCES UNIT ORDERED NOT TO INTERVENE IN BENGHAZI. Gregory Hicks, the former deputy to Chris Stevens, the slain U.S. ambassador to Libya, told investigators from a House committee that American military forces were barred from intervening during the Benghazi attack last year, CBS News reports. In an interview prior to his testimony at a hearing Wednesday, Hicks said a Special Forces unit was prepared to fly from Tripoli to Benghazi to render aid when it was ordered to stand down by U.S. Special Operations Command South Africa. “I believe if we had been able to scramble a fighter or aircraft or two over Benghazi as quickly as possible after the attack commenced, I believe there would not have been a mortar attack on the annex in the morning because I believe the Libyans would have split,” Hicks said. “They would have been scared to death that we would have gotten a laser on them and killed them.” Read more


WHAT TO EXPECT AT WEDNESDAY’S BENGHAZI HEARING. The Obama administration's handling of the Sept. 11, 2012, attack on the U.S. Consulate in Benghazi, which left Ambassador Chris Stevens and three other Americans dead, will come under scrutiny again on Wednesday during a House Oversight Committee hearing. Testimony by three self-described whistleblowers could contradict portions of the narrative of the attacks and drag former Secretary of State Hillary Rodham Clinton back into the spotlight for her involvement in the crisis. Committee Chairman Darrell Issa revealed portions of the testimony Sunday on CBS’s Face The Nation. Read more

[C. Flower]

This will warm CF's heart.

U.S. DIPLOMAT: SPECIAL FORCES UNIT ORDERED NOT TO INTERVENE IN BENGHAZI. Gregory Hicks, the former deputy to Chris Stevens, the slain U.S. ambassador to Libya, told investigators from a House committee that American military forces were barred from intervening during the Benghazi attack last year, CBS News reports. In an interview prior to his testimony at a hearing Wednesday, Hicks said a Special Forces unit was prepared to fly from Tripoli to Benghazi to render aid when it was ordered to stand down by U.S. Special Operations Command South Africa. “I believe if we had been able to scramble a fighter or aircraft or two over Benghazi as quickly as possible after the attack commenced, I believe there would not have been a mortar attack on the annex in the morning because I believe the Libyans would have split,” Hicks said. “They would have been scared to death that we would have gotten a laser on them and killed them.” Read more


WHAT TO EXPECT AT WEDNESDAY’S BENGHAZI HEARING. The Obama administration's handling of the Sept. 11, 2012, attack on the U.S. Consulate in Benghazi, which left Ambassador Chris Stevens and three other Americans dead, will come under scrutiny again on Wednesday during a House Oversight Committee hearing. Testimony by three self-described whistleblowers could contradict portions of the narrative of the attacks and drag former Secretary of State Hillary Rodham Clinton back into the spotlight for her involvement in the crisis. Committee Chairman Darrell Issa revealed portions of the testimony Sunday on CBS’s Face The Nation. Read more

This is going to be interesting. What in particular is meant to be heart-warming ?

[C. Flower]

Q: I just wanted to ask, you mentioned permission from the Libyans. Why is that important? What did you mean by that?
A: Well, it's their country.

...

[Count Bobulescu]

This is going to be interesting. What in particular is meant to be heart-warming ?

At the time of the events you were making claims of a cover up which I disputed. So, you should be pleased that the matter has not died.