Monday, November 26, 2012

Long New York Times Article Perpetuates Legend That Anti-Muslim Video Caused Benghazi Deaths

With a prime, central spot on the New York Times homepage, Serge Kovaleski and Brooks Barnes print a long story (I almost wrote an in-depth story) in the newspaper of reference that perpetuates the legend that the four deaths in Benghazi were caused by a video on YouTube — suggesting in the process that Nakoula, besides living "a life in shambles", is a heartless person without any tolerance for people and things Muslim, one who, if he were truly a generous (read: a leftist) soul, would confess to his erroneous ways, make apologies, and try to atone for said errors.
 Fuming for two months in a [Los Angeles jail cell], 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.” 

In explaining his reasons for the film, Mr. Nakoula, 55, a Coptic Christian born in Egypt, cited the 2009 massacre at Fort Hood, Tex., as a prime example of the violence committed “under the sign of Allah.”