December 5, 2012
Obama
Administration cooperates with the OIC’s assault on free speech!
|
|
Sec. of State
Hillary Clinton delivers remarks at the December, 2011 meeting of the Istanbul
Process |
Dear Nelson,
If you
cherish our First Amendment right of free speech, we urge you, as strongly as we
can, to read the article below by Nina Shea about the Istanbul Process
(highlights added), which was recently posted on National Review
Online.
For over 18 months now, the
Obama administration has been working with the Organization of Islamic
Cooperation (OIC) on what is known as the Istanbul Process.
The Istanbul
Process has evolved into an assault on our free speech so serious that next year
ACT! for America will launch a national campaign to expose what is happening and
fight back against it.
It’s simply not possible to overstate how serious
a threat this is to our First
Amendment. |
You can help us prepare now for
next year’s national campaign, by making a year-end contribution to ACT! for
America’s 5th anniversary appeal, which we
announced in September.
|
Simply
go online here, make a $5 or more monthly commitment to ACT! for America’s
Patriot Partner program, or a $30 or more single gift. When you do, you’ll be
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You can
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contribution. |
We urge you, please, read the
article below and help us prepare for next year’s campaign to protect free
speech with your most generous
contribution.
Because even if America succeeds in preventing every
future terrorist attack, if we lose our freedom to speak out against radical
Islam, a central tenet of sharia law will prevail in America and put a dagger in
the heart of the First Amendment.
Here’s just one quote from the column
below:
|
Judging from the 2011 session I was partially able to
observe as a commissioner on the official U.S. Commission on International
Religious Freedom, the point of the Istanbul
Process is for the governments of the developed West [to] give an accounting to
the governments of Saudi Arabia, Egypt, Pakistan, Qatar, and other key Muslim
states on measures taken to stop American and other Western citizens from
disparaging Islam. |
America
Again Submits to the Istanbul Process
By Nina Shea.
http://www.nationalreview.com/corner/334647/america-again-submits-istanbul-process-nina-shea
Round three of the “Istanbul Process”
opens today, December 3, and runs through Wednesday, at Canada House, in London,
hosted by the U.K. and Canada. The Istanbul
Process is Secretary of State Hillary Clinton’s major transnational law
initiative, undertaken in partnership with the Organization of Islamic
Cooperation (OIC). It was established last year to “implement” measures against
speech and expression that negatively “stereotype[s]” Islam and Muslims, with a
particular emphasis on enacting them in the West.
This initiative
was started as an inexplicable, gratuitous gift to the Muslim world following
the March 2011 adoption of a non-binding U.N. Human Rights Council
resolution (16/18) on the same theme. While the
Obama administration claims that it doesn’t intend for the process to adopt
regulations beyond the American free-speech standard, our partner, the OIC, is
only too eager to do just that.
For over a decade within the
U.N., the OIC has relentlessly pushed for a universal law to punish blasphemy,
or “defamation,” of Islam. This 56-member-state organization, an essentially
religious body, is in fact chartered to “combat defamation of Islam.” It issues
fatwas and other directives to punish public expression of apostasy from Islam.
Its current action plan calls for “deterrent
punishments” in all states for “Islamophobia,” a term that encompasses a broad
range of constitutionally protected speech, judging from the
OIC website’s black list of Americans and other perpetrators of
“Islamophobia.” The OIC’s stated understanding of the Istanbul Process is that
it will “help in enacting domestic laws for the countries involved in the issue,
as well as formulating international laws preventing inciting hatred resulting
from the continued defamation of religions.”
Corner readers will
remember that the Istanbul Process’s first conference was
co-chaired by Clinton and the OIC secretary general in July 2011, in
Istanbul, with the foreign ministers of the Muslim countries in attendance. The
second was held
over three days of closed-door meetings last December, at the offices of the
U.S. Department of State in Washington. That meeting drew enough controversy
within free-speech circles to raise questions about whether the process would
continue. But thanks to a leak last week by
OIC head Ekmeleddin Ihsanoglu, we now know the event will go ahead, even if its
agenda is still being treated like it’s “classified.”
Judging from the 2011 session I was partially able to
observe as a commissioner on the official U.S. Commission on International
Religious Freedom, the point of the Istanbul Process is for the governments of
the developed West give an accounting to the governments of Saudi Arabia, Egypt,
Pakistan, Qatar, and other key Muslim states on measures taken to stop American
and other Western citizens from disparaging Islam. This puts our
diplomats in a tight spot: Unlike virtually every other country represented in
the conference hall, America does not protect any religion or any other body of
ideas from criticism and ridicule. However, when we’re in the dock this time
around, the U.S., represented by Dr.
Suzan Johnson Cook, the administration’s severely marginalized
ambassador-at-large for religious freedom, will have some measure of “progress”
to report.
For example, the U.S.’s top intelligence official and its top
commander in Afghanistan were again deployed to suppress blasphemy against Islam
in Florida and, this time around, they succeeded. Last year, the efforts of our
top authorities to stop Florida micro-church pastor Terry Jones from desecrating
a Koran ended in failure. But this year, their resort to the “good offices” of
Tampa socialite Jill Kelley proved an effective strategy. Her persuasive emails
resulted in Florida talk-show host Bubba the Love Sponge’s standing down from
deep frying a Koran, something he had threatened to do on-air. The OIC’s
Ihsanoglu would likely rule Bubba was about to “abuse” freedom of expression by
not being able (incontrovertibly, I should note) to pass a “responsible use”
test.
That leads to our next plea: The
administration has also adopted the OIC’s own standard of condemning the “abuse
of free expression.” Or at least that is what it appeared to do on the website of the
pivotal U.S. embassy to Egypt on September 11 this year. Our embassy declared on
its homepage: “We firmly reject the actions by those who abuse the universal
right of free speech to hurt the religious beliefs of others.”
But perhaps, the best evidence of America’s “implementation” in response
to the Istanbul Process is the Justice Department’s dispatching the FBI a couple
months ago to investigate Mark Basseley Youssef (a.k.a. Nakoula Basseley
Nakoula, or Sam Bacile), the California Coptic filmmaker of “Innocence of
Muslims,” the YouTube trailer that blasphemed the Muslim prophet. As Ambassador
Cook can point out, this investigation has resulted in a creative criminal
conviction of Youssef, and his being sentenced by a federal court to a year in
prison. All the better for the U.S.’s reputation as implementers is that it will
be lost on the conferees that Youssef has been imprisoned on a probation
offense, Ã la Al Capone — though, unlike Capone, his underlying offense, without
which he would not have been investigated, was making a crude, insulting video,
which is hardly equivalent in American law to gangland massacres or
racketeering. It, in fact, is not a crime at all. Thus, most important, the
OIC’s take-away will be that in defense of Islam the U.S. government can and
will regulate speech.
Nevertheless, none of this is likely to impress
the Istanbul Process gathering. On its opening day last December, Saudi Arabia —
headquarters to and godfather of the OIC — beheaded a Sudanese woman for
“sorcery.” Last week, Egypt sentenced to death Youssef, Terry Jones, and six
other Americans implicated in the blasphemous YouTube trailer. For the Istanbul
Process that’s “best practices” for “implementation.” Thus, again, America will
be judged to have fallen short, indignation will rise, and the Istanbul Process
will need to ramp up its pressure.
— Nina Shea is director of
the Hudson Institute’s Center for Religious Freedom and co-author with Paul
Marshall of Silenced:
How Apostasy and Blasphemy Codes Are Choking Freedom Worldwide.
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Just one month ago, Barack Obama swept up the swing-state
popular vote and will seize another four years in power unless the Electoral
Vote confirming his "win" is stopped until our uniformed men and women are given
the opportunity to make their votes count! 
If Philadelphia and Cleveland voting results weren't big red flags in
and of themselves, in one battleground Ohio County (considered by some as
"ground zero" for this election) Barack Obama received an impossible 108 percent
of the vote!
Mitt 
By no means is Mitt Romney the perfect conservative
candidate, but he is NOT Barack Obama, WHO WAS NOT THE CHOICE OF OUR MILITARY
MEN AND WOMEN – and you can bet he would be a better Commander-in-Chief than
what we have now. 
