Over a film? Really? …mostly its about being fed-up with America’s ‘power projecting’ disrespect of humanity

Anti-American Protests Over Film Expand to Nearly 20 Countries
By DAVID D. KIRKPATRICK, ALAN COWELL and RICK GLADSTONE – 14 September, 2012 – NYT

The broadening of the protests reflected what appeared to be a catharsis of rage at the Western powers and was unabated despite calls for restraint from world leaders including the new Islamist president of Egypt, where the demonstrations first erupted four days ago on the anniversary of the Sept. 11, 2001, attacks.

In Washington, the Pentagon announced that it was dispatching 50 Marines to Sana, Yemen, to secure the American diplomatic compound, which was partly defiled by enraged protesters on Thursday. At a bazaar about 30 miles east of Jalalabad, Afghanistan, protesters burned an effigy of President Obama.

The breaching of the American Embassy in Tunis, the birthplace of the Arab Spring revolutions, was at least the fourth time that an American diplomatic facility in the Middle East had been violated since the protests began. The Tunisian police said at least three protesters were killed and 28 people were wounded.

All of the embassy staff members had been safely evacuated beforehand, officials there said, but part of the compound was burned and looted.

The American Cooperative School of Tunis, which caters to expatriate families and is located across the street from the embassy, was burned and completely plundered by protesters, who carried away a range of items including hundreds of laptop computers, children’s toys and musical instruments, the director of the school and members of his staff said. All of the students and faculty members had been evacuated hours before the embassy protest.

“It’s ransacked,” the director, Allan Bredy, said in a telephone interview. “We were thinking it was something the Tunisia government would keep under control. We had no idea they would allow things to go as wildly as they did.”

Germany’s foreign minister, Guido Westerwelle, told reporters at the Foreign Ministry in Berlin that the country’s embassy in Khartoum, Sudan, had been “stormed and in part set aflame” in an attack by “demonstrators capable of violence.” According to Mr. Westerwelle, embassy employees were safe. German missions in Muslim countries had already strengthened security measures because of the unrest. The Associated Press reported that the attack followed a call by a prominent sheik on state radio urging protesters to storm the embassy over what he called anti-Muslim graffiti on mosques in Berlin.

The police fired tear gas to drive off the attacks in Khartoum, where about 5,000 demonstrators massed on the German and British Embassies, a witness told the Reuters news agency. The crowd later moved onto the United States Embassy on the outskirts of Khartoum. The police opened fire but it was unclear whether the embassy had been breached, The A.P. reported.

Thousands of Palestinians joined demonstrations after Friday Prayer in the Gaza Strip. Since there is no American diplomatic representation in Gaza, the main gathering took place in Gaza City, outside the Parliament building, where American and Israeli flags were placed on the ground for the crowds to stomp. Some demonstrators chanted, “Death to America and to Israel!” Palestinians also clashed with Israeli security forces in Jerusalem and held protests in the West Bank.

Witnesses in Cairo said protests that first flared on Tuesday — the day J. Christopher Stevens, the American ambassador in Libya, was killed in an attack in neighboring Libya — continued sporadically Friday, with protesters throwing rocks and gasoline bombs near the American Embassy and the police firing tear gas. The bodies of Mr. Stevens and three other Americans killed in the Libya attack were returned to the United States on Friday.

In Lebanon, one person was killed and 25 injured as protesters attacked restaurants. There was also turmoil in Yemen, Bangladesh, Qatar, Kuwait, Bahrain, India, Pakistan and Iraq, and demonstrations in Malaysia. In Nigeria, troops fired into the air to disperse protesters marching on the city of Jos, Reuters reported. In Syria, about 200 protesters chanted anti-American slogans outside the long-closed American Embassy in Damascus, news reports said.

State media in Egypt said more than 220 people had been injured in the clashes since Tuesday. In the Egyptian Sinai, a group of Bedouins stormed an international peacekeepers’ camp and set fire to an observation tower, according to Al Ahram Online, a state-owned, English-language Web site.. Three people, two Colombians and one Egyptian, were injured in the ensuing clashes.
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