The filmmaker of “Innocence of Muslims,” the anti-Mohammad video that sparked the recent protests and deaths around the world, has been arrested by federal authorities for allegedly violating the condition for his probation on a 2010 conviction for bank fraud — violations that could land him in jail for three years. Given the calls for his arrest and even execution by Muslim allies, the arrest raises obvious concerns that the Administration is again defending free speech while quietly moving to punish those who cause religious strife.
From my experience as a criminal defense attorney, the violations described in a case of his kind rarely warrant the 4-month term demanded for Nakoula Basseley Nakoula. In addition, the federal authorities insisted on his being jailed as a flight risk, though it is unclear why that is the case and why he could not be given an electronic bracelet.
Magistrate Judge Suzanne H. Segal found that Nakoula exhibited a “lengthy pattern of deception” and posed “some danger to the community.” I can see the basis for the first conclusion but not the evidence of a danger to the community. My concern is that the response to his film — which is a protected act of free speech — was weighed in the balance of such a decision. Nakoula is accused of eight charges of probation violation including making false statements to authorities about the film. He reportedly admitted that he wrote the film but authorities insist that he did not fully explain his role.
The U.S. Attorney suggested that he might charge Nakoula with making false statements about the film — charges that would seem an obvious act of retaliation by the Administration.
The distrust shown by many free speech advocates, including myself, is that the Administration has a checkered history of claiming to support free speech while supporting the creation of an international blasphemy standard. The federal agents quickly moved against the filmmaker after the controversy. Probation rules are written in a way that make it relatively easy to find violations. The immediate scrutiny left many with the impression that the Obama Administration wanted to show Arab allies that the filmmaker was under arrest while professing a commitment to free speech.
Source: LA Times
“The innocence of…” Dr. Shakir Hamoodi:
http://www.guardian.co.uk/commentisfree/2012/sep/28/iraq-us-constitution-and-civil-liberties
“Iraqi-American is imprisoned by US for saving his family from US sanctions
“A harrowing case of a Missouri engineer highlights the travesties routinely imposed on Muslim Americans”
“But US-imposed sanctions after the First Gulf War had decimated the value of Iraqi currency and were causing extreme hardship for his large family who remained in Iraq. That sanctions regime caused the death of at least hundreds of thousands of Iraqis, including 500,000 Iraqi children. In 1991, the writer Chuck Sudetic visited Iraq, wrote in Mother Jones about the pervasive suffering, starvation and mass death he witnessed first-hand, and noted that the US-led sanctions regime “killed more civilians than all the chemical, biological, or nuclear weapons used in human history”. by Glenn Greenwald
Internet Freud — “It’s remarkable how folks like Swarthmore mom–a name that’s about as irritating as going around with your Harvard shirt (note: she or her child did not get into Harvard, or Yale, or Brown, or Dartmouth, etc.)”
When all else fails go for the personal. Proof of a weak argument.
Now quickly everybody click on Internet Freud’s link and up his/her blog count.
Amateur.
You’d realize, quickly, that it points to a blog that was long inactive, but why let that get in the way of your failure to make a single, substantive point. Are you too “professional”?
Wait a minute, wait a minute — I’ve GOT IT! “The innocence of…”
Great schtick!
See ya in a while, guys, I’m at work: “The innocence of…Gil Davis” HA HA HA HA HA “The innocence of… [fill in the blank]”
Holiday! (slong as I’m not on probation, of course)
Floyd Abrams on request to have it removed from U Tube
http://www.thedailybeast.com/articles/2012/09/20/should-youtube-have-taken-down-incendiary-anti-muslim-video.html
It’s remarkable how folks like Swarthmore mom–a name that’s about as irritating as going around with your Harvard shirt (note: she or her child did not get into Harvard, or Yale, or Brown, or Dartmouth, etc.)–are willing to shred common sense and the First Amendment to blame the other team. It is really not for believing.
Freud, I even gave Obama money, the first and LAST time I will ever give my hard earned money to a pol.
That is a reprint from my blog. (Directed at a another columnist.)
SWM, I can only speak for myself. You are missing the point. I don’t consider this guy a hero in the least. Must one be a “hero” to have constitutional rights..of course not. Enjoy your lunch and remember to tip your waitress.
Freud, Interesting study, thanks.
If you guys want to waste your time trying to turn this Nakoula or whatever his name is at the moment into a hero, go for it. I have a lunch appointment.
Turning Nakoula into a hero? Hardly.
It was bad enough that this Administration “asked” Google if it could find a way to remove this video. That, alone, is an egregious act worthy of a unified response from both of our major parties. We are fortunate that Google didn’t cave. (Google did block the video from airing in Egypt and Libya.) What if Google had capitulated? What if the Administration targeted a smaller company, or one sympathetic to the Administration’s brand of “soft” censorship? Yet, we are so far into the team sports approach to politics that a matter of plain vanilla First Amendment law gets forgotten (and trampled) in the process.
That the filmmaker suddenly gets investigated in the wake of Google’s polite refusal to abandon the First Amendment smacks of the tactics of a police state. Yes, he committed parole violations. But, it appears obvious that the only reason he was investigated was the content of his lawful speech, which he happened to put on the Internet (perhaps in violation of a restriction on computer access). One can reach no other reasonable conclusion than that this arrest was an appeasement, an attempt to punish speech indirectly and bend to the will of the crazy Islamist mobs who kill people over cartoons.
But, the icing on the cake, so to speak, is that it turns out that this film wasn’t the spark that lit the Middle East. What lit the Middle East were drone strikes that killed terrorist leaders, which the Administration now admits it knew immediately. Despite this, the Administration promptly pointed the finger at this film, which had very few viewings in the Middle East which occurred months earlier. By connecting the film to the Libyan attack which had no relationship at all to the film, the Administration poured gasoline on an already volatile situation. It continued to do so for days and days.
And so, the question is why?
Let me offer a suggestion. First, our drone policy is killing terrorists, but inflaming anti-Americanism across the region. The region lives under fear of these attacks, which not only kill “suspects” (who, by the way, are selected based upon suspicion alone), but innocent children as well. In other words, they undercut dramatically the Administration’s narrative of wanting to build bridges with states that harbor terrorists and with the Arab street. Why wouldn’t the Administration want a smokescreen to cover the fact that it new in advance of the Libyan attack that the attack was coming and that it was because of the drone killing of an Al Qaeda leader in Libya? Second, what the film furor also obscured was the fact that the United State had repeated, specific notice of the threat to its embassy in Libya and the reason for it (the drone killing), yet did nothing.
It’s called the “Pope In the Pool” technique by screenwriters. If you want your audience to miss something in a particular scene, throw the Pope into a swimming pool at the same time. Shame on the government, and shame on partisan columnists like this one for building a superstructure to support the misconduct, lies, and misdirection.
And, yes, I voted for the President in 2008.
There is an inherent right to criticize any religion, because religious beliefs deserve no more respect than non-religious beliefs. As an atheist, I relish the opportunity to defend why I don’t believe in a god. This man had a right to make this video but if he violated his probation while doing so, that is a different matter.
SWM, agreed
SWM, The phrase, “Even a broken clock is correct twice daily” may apply here. I have applied that to you @ times. In case you haven’t noticed there’s an election going on here so certainly idealogues play the card that helps.That doesn’t make them wrong on substance, and in this case, they’re correct. It’s sad you can’t see that.
nick spinelli, Whatever…. The republicans not I made Nakoula their hero at the Value Voters gathering. Do you think it is mere coincidence that nearly every right wing republican website is defending him? If a non celebrity had multiple identities and parole violations, he or she would be spending some time in jail too. The arrest has nothing to do with his civil liberties being violated.
Swarthmore mom:
“Once partisans had come to completely biased conclusions — essentially finding ways to ignore information that could not be rationally discounted — not only did circuits that mediate negative emotions like sadness and disgust turn off, but subjects got a blast of activation in circuits involved in reward — similar to what addicts receive when they get their fix, Westen explains.”
Of course, this may not apply to you, being that you either went to Swarthmore, have a child at Swarthmore, or gave birth to a Swarthmore.
http://www.emory.edu/news/Releases/PoliticalBrain1138113163.html
Internet Freud, And some of these people are alleged attorneys.
SWM, If you were to come out of your myopic world you would realize there are civil libertarians on the right and left. Folks w/ your mindset are the most scary, as Freud just said perfectly it’s, “Our team..right or wrong.”
From the article:You’d think this would be enough of a hook for conservatives to attack Obama. But no. Obama’s got to be Hitler and Nakoula has to be a martyr to his thuggish politics. This, ladies and gentlemen, is the modern conservative movement at work.
It is remarkable how some people can deflect a frontal assault on the First Amendment into a crass and boorish political argument favoring their “team.”
http://www.motherjones.com/kevin-drum/2012/09/remarkable-martyrization-nakoula-basseley-nakoula
In my opinion its extremely wrong to have arrested him, as this is giving extremists a message that more violent protests they do the more US will do what makes them happy
rafflaw, You convinced me, it was not only correct to lock him up; it was noble, heroic, and honorable. Sometimes you “must burn the village to save it”, right yes man!!
When you have a president whose father was a Muslim you can discrase any religon except islam.