Behind It All

I was in Brooklyn the LOS ANGELES (AP) -- A Southern California filmmaker linked to an anti-Islamic movie inflaming protests across the Middle East was interviewed by federal probation officers at a Los Angeles sheriff's station but was not arrested or detained, authorities said early Saturday. Nakoula Basseley Nakoula, 55, was interviewed at the station in his hometown of Cerritos, Calif., Los Angeles County Sheriff's Deputy Don Walker said. Federal officials are investigating whether Nakoula, who has been convicted of financial crimes, has violated the terms of his five-year probation. If so, a judge could send him back to prison. Nakoula went voluntarily to the station early Saturday morning, wearing a coat, hat, scarf and glasses that concealed his appearance. It is unclear whether he returned to his home, which has been besieged by media for several days. The probation department is reviewing the case of Nakoula, who pleaded no contest to bank fraud charges in 2010 and was banned from using computers or the Internet or using false identities as part of his sentence. Federal authorities have identified Nakoula, a self-described Coptic Christian, as the key figure behind "Innocence of Muslims," a film denigrating Islam and the Prophet Muhammad that ignited mob violence against U.S. embassies across the Middle East. Much of the film was shot inside the offices of Media for Christ, a nonprofit based in the Los Angeles-area city of Duarte. The charity raised more than $1 million last year "to glow Jesus' light" to the world. The Riverside County man who was a script advisor to the film and who has a long history of anti-Islamic activism told the Press-Enterprise newspaper that he has received multiple death threats. "I'm really tired," Steven Klein said when he answered the door of his home in Hemet, Calif., Friday with a pistol in his hand and clad only in a pair of white shorts stained with what appeared to be ink spots. The newspaper said Klein, a Vietnam veteran, appeared agitated. While waving the gun, he told the newspaper he was standing up for his First Amendment rights in helping with the film and said he is prepared to die for those rights. A federal law enforcement official said authorities had connected Nakoula to a man using the pseudonym of Sam Bacile who claimed earlier to be writer and director of the film. Violent protests set off by the film in Libya played a role in mob attacks in Benghazi that killed U.S. Ambassador Chris Stevens and three other American officials. Demonstrations against American missions have since spread to several other countries.

Zombie Zictims

"Zombies, zombies, zombies." Last week headlines across America screamed the warning of a zombie attack in Miami after a crazed naked man at a derelict's face in public followed by a mother eating her newborn's toes as well as a Maryland college student confessing the crime of cannibalism to local police and a man mutilating himself with a knife. Zombies on the loose have seized the imagination of the country and last year the Centers for Disease Control lured teenagers to their emergency preparedness blog by adding zombie apocalypse. This week the CDC stated without any reservation that the organization knows on no virus or condition that would reanimate the dead. The zombie mania had legs and a zombie video went viral on the internet. Newspapers were quick to report that the zombie attack was probably caused by the attacker's drug overdose on 'baht salts'. The stellar quality of this spastic journalism was brought to earth by calmer minds discovering that the video had been faked by a group of young men seeking to challenge people's racial prejudices. Most viewers found the video funny, but one RESIDENT EVIL fan said according to rt.com, “They are idiots. Luckily for them, arms are banned in Miami. Should it happen in Texas, I would’ve shot him down without even thinking.” Arms are banned in Miami? Gun owners are allowed by allowed by law to strap on firearms, so the pranksters were lucky that they only scared teenagers. The debunking of this report did not reap a harvest of recantations from the media such as ABC News, which stood by its coverage of the drug-induced zombie craze by printing the testimony of a 'bath salt addict, "It felt so evil. It felt like the darkest, evilest thing imaginable." Bad thoughts lead to bad deeds, but there are no zombies on earth. Not yet, but if there are I hope that they are the slow-moving zombies of NIGHT OF THE LIVING DEAD instead of the fast one from RESIDENT EVIL. The first to satisfy the hunger of the fast-moving zombies will be fat slow-moving zictims. Rule # 1 - always keep a few fat people around to scream in terror. Zombies love screaming zictims. ps I understand about the toes of little babies. They look delicious.