A perverse ‘Process’

Hillary’s free-speech follies- By NINA SHEA

The OIC’s purpose is to criminalize “incitement to hatred and violence on religious grounds.” 

Clinton: With this week’s conference, foolishly encouraged Muslim-world push to treat dissent from Islam as hate speech or worse.

“Test of consequences” means if you draw a Muhammad cartoon, do or say anything that enrages Muslims, (there are a million things that enrage Muslims, including your infidel existence) however, if you don’t submit to muselmanic mores its your fault because you are making the Muslim run amok, blow stuff up or fly jets into buildings, got it?

Resolution 16/18 was hailed as a victory by Clinton, because it calls on countries to combat “intolerance, negative stereotyping and stigmatization” based on religion without criminalizing free speech — except in cases of “incitement to imminent violence.”  But if the criterion for determining “incitement to imminent violence” is a new “test of consequences,” then this is nothing but an invitation to stage Muslim “Days of Rage” following the slightest perceived offense by a Western blogger, instructor, or radio show guest, all of whom will be held legally liable for “causing” the destruction, possibly even if what they’ve said is merely a statement of fact.  The implications of such prior restraint on free speech would be chilling (which is precisely the point).

In fact, the “test of consequences” is already being applied rigorously in European media and courts, where any act or threat of violence — whether by a jihadist, insane person, or counter-jihadist — is defined as a “consequence” of statements that are critical of some aspect of Islam and, therefore, to be criminalized.  Recent trials of Dutch political leader Geert Wilders, Austrian free speech champion Elizabeth Sabaditsch-Wolff, and Danish Islamic expert Lars Hedegaard (as well as the witch hunt for “instigators” that followed the murderous attacks by Norwegian blogger Anders Behring Brevik) all attest to the extent of these “hate speech” laws’ oppressive pall over what is left of the European Enlightenment.  Now, if the OIC and the Obama administration have their way, it’s America’s turn.

Secretary of State Hillary Clinton on Wednesday ended the “Istanbul Process,” a three-day, closed-door international conference hosted by the State Department on measures to combat religious “intolerance, negative stereotyping and stigmatization.”

Related:

• Emulating their Sharia Partner, the OIC, State Department Detains Andrea Lafferty as “Threat,” “The very restriction on free speech the UN Resolution was pushing is exactly what they used against me”
• “Peer pressure and shaming.”--Willary Clitman sucks and swallows OIC agenda whole

The conference was intended to “implement” last March’s UN Human Rights Council Resolution 16/18, on the same subject. Notwithstanding Clinton’s final speech defending freedoms of religion and speech, the gathering was folly.

Resolution 16/18 was adopted in the place of one that endorsed the dangerous idea that “defamation of religion” should be punished criminally worldwide. That call for a universal blasphemy law had been pushed relentlessly for 12 years by the Saudi-based Organization of Islamic Cooperation, an essentially religious body chartered to “combat defamation of Islam.” It issues fatwas and other directives to punish public expression of apostasy from Islam and “Islamophobia.”

 Continued below the fold>>>

Shrillary to Debate Blasphemy Laws Behind Closed Doors

Related: A Man With a Plan

Even Libs Horrified as Obama Allows Indefinite Detention of US Citizens

Hopey Change is scaring even moonbats, now that the Anointed One will sign into law the indefinite detention without charge of American citizens. As Salon reports it: Moonbattery

Continued:

Shrillary’s Free Speech Follies

Leading OIC states behind this campaign — Saudi Arabia, Iran, Egypt and Pakistan — imprison and/or sentence to death “blasphemers.”

Resolution 16/18 deplores religious intolerance but doesn’t limit speech — the result of a deft State Department maneuver. The administration should have let matters rest there.

Instead, while co-chairing an OIC “High Level Meeting” addressing Islamophobia last July in Istanbul, Clinton invited the OIC to Washington to discuss how to “implement” resolution 16/18.

While the Washington conference ended inconclusively, it should not have been held because:

* It offered a transnational venue for the OIC to reintroduce its anti-defamation push, just as the issue had been laid to rest at the United Nations. The administration erred in viewing resolution 16/18 as a meeting of minds between the OIC and America on freedoms of religion and speech.

In Istanbul, Clinton asserted that the United States does not want to see speech restrictions — but her conference announcement immediately reignited OIC demands for the West to punish anti-Islamic speech.

As the OIC reported it: “The upcoming [Washington] meetings . . . [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.”

New York Post

 

Islamic World Tells Clinton: Defamation of Islam Must be Prevented — in America

By Clare M. Lopez/American Thinker

As Secretary of State Hillary Clinton welcomes Secretary General of the Organization of Islamic Cooperation (OIC) Ekmeleddin Ihsanoglu to Washington this week, it is critical that Americans pay attention to what these two leaders intend to do.  From 12 to 14 December 2011, working teams from the Department of State (DoS) and the OIC are going to discuss implementation mechanisms that could impose limits on freedom of speech and expression.

 

The OIC’s purpose, as stated explicitly in its April 2011 4^th Annual Report on Islamophobia, is to criminalize “incitement to hatred and violence on religious grounds.”  Incitement is to be defined by applying the “test of consequences” to speech.  Under this twisted perversion of falsely “yelling ‘fire’ in a crowded theater,” it doesn’t matter what someone actually says — or even whether it is true or not; if someone else commits violence and says it’s because of something that person said, the speaker will be held criminally liable.

 

The OIC is taking direct aim at free speech and expression about Islam.  Neither Christianity nor Judaism is named in the OIC’s official documents, whose only concern is to make the world safe from “defamation” of Islam — a charge that includes speaking truthfully about the national security implications of the Islamic doctrine of jihad.

 

Incitement to hatred under the OIC definition includes artistic expression like the Danish cartoons, literary expression like Salman Rushdie’s The Satanic Verses, or Pastor Terry Jones’ burning of his personally owned copy of the Qur’an.  According to the “test of consequences,” if Muslims feel compelled to burn, loot, riot, and kill in response to such exercises of free expression, under the laws the OIC wants the U.S. to enact, it would be the editor and cartoonist of the Jyllands-Posten newspaper, Salman Rushdie, and Terry Jones who would be held criminally responsible for any damage or deaths that ensue.

Last March, the State Department and Secretary Clinton insisted that “combating intolerance based on religion” can be accomplished without compromising Americans’ treasured First Amendment rights.  But if that were so, there would be no possible excuse for engaging at this level with an organization like the OIC that is openly dedicated to implementing Islamic law globally.  This is why it is so important to pay attention not only to the present agenda, but to a series of documents leading up to it, issued by both the U.S. and the OIC.  From 12 to 14 December 2011, the DoS and OIC working teams will focus on implementation mechanisms for “Resolution 16/18,” a declaration that was adopted by the U.N. Human Rights Council in April 2011.

Resolution 16/18 was hailed as a victory by Clinton, because it calls on countries to combat “intolerance, negative stereotyping and stigmatization” based on religion without criminalizing free speech — except in cases of “incitement to imminent violence.”  But if the criterion for determining “incitement to imminent violence” is a new “test of consequences,” then this is nothing but an invitation to stage Muslim “Days of Rage” following the slightest perceived offense by a Western blogger, instructor, or radio show guest, all of whom will be held legally liable for “causing” the destruction, possibly even if what they’ve said is merely a statement of fact.  The implications of such prior restraint on free speech would be chilling (which is precisely the point).

In fact, the “test of consequences” is already being applied rigorously in European media and courts, where any act or threat of violence — whether by a jihadist, insane person, or counter-jihadist — is defined as a “consequence” of statements that are critical of some aspect of Islam and, therefore, to be criminalized.  Recent trials of Dutch political leader Geert Wilders, Austrian free speech champion Elizabeth Sabaditsch-Wolff, and Danish Islamic expert Lars Hedegaard (as well as the witch hunt for “instigators” that followed the murderous attacks by Norwegian blogger Anders Behring Brevik) all attest to the extent of these “hate speech” laws’ oppressive pall over what is left of the European Enlightenment.  Now, if the OIC and the Obama administration have their way, it’s America’s turn.

 

Once it’s understood that under Islamic law, “slander” is defined as saying “anything concerning a person [a Muslim] that he would dislike,” the scope of potential proximate causes of Muslim rage becomes obvious.  For instance, in the Preamble to the Resolutions on Legal Affairs Adopted by the 38^th Session of the Council of Foreign Ministers of the OIC in Astana, Kazakhstan in June 2011, under paragraph 9, the OIC:

 

Denounces media campaigns and fabrications made by some quarters in non-Member States [i.e., the Dar al-Harb or West] regarding the mistreatment of non-Muslim minorities and communities in the OIC Member States under the slogan of religious freedom and so on.

 

Consider what is likely to be a bloodbath for Coptic Christians that will occur as soon as the Muslim Brotherhood and its Salafist allies are firmly in control of Egypt.  This provision means that any Western media that accurately report that coming massacre could be legally charged with “incitement to imminent violence” under the test of consequences, in effect blaming those who raise the alarm instead of those who perpetrate the violence.

 

Clearly, the OIC feels some sense of urgency to get the rest of the non-Muslim world, and especially the U.S., on board with these objectives as Paragraph 10:

 

Expresses the need to pursue as a matter of priority, a common policy aimed at preventing defamation of Islam perpetrated under the pretext and justification of the freedom of expression in particular through media and Internet.

 

In this same document is the OIC Council of Foreign Ministers’ “Resolution No. 1/38-LEG On Follow Up and Coordination of Work on Human Rights,” which makes reference to the OIC’s new “Independent Permanent Commission on Human Rights” and stipulates that it “shall promote the civil, political, social, and economic rights enshrined in the Organization’s covenants and declarations and in universally agreed human rights instruments, in conformity with Islamic values.”  [Emphasis added.]  This wording alone should set off alarm bells in view of the OIC’s 1990 Cairo Declaration on Human Rights in Islam (CDHRI), which explicitly declared that when the Muslim ummah (as represented by the OIC) uses the term “human rights,” what is meant is Islamic law (sharia).  ”Universally agreed” or not, the CDHRI was served as an official document to the U.N. Commission on Human Rights in 1993, thereby creating an established instrument of reference on the Islamic definition of “human rights.”

 

The foundational documents upon which the Muslim ummah – the OIC — now relies to undergird its sharia agenda were drafted years ago.  The 1966 U.N. Commission for Human Rights International Covenant on Civil and Political Rights (ICCPR), which entered into force in 1976, was based firmly on the Universal Declaration of Human Rights and preceded the 1969 creation of the OIC by just a few years.  The ICCPR’s Articles 19 (3) and 20 nevertheless foreshadow sharia Islam’s demand for restrictions on free speech in an explicit and chilling way — and, as will be seen, in a way the OIC is trying to exploit:

 

Article 19

1. Everyone shall have the right to hold opinions without interference

2. Everyone shall have the right to freedom of expression: this right shall include freedom to seek, receive, and impart information and ideas of all kinds, regardless of frontiers, either orally, in writing or in print, in the form of art, or through any other media of this choice

3. The exercise of the rights provided for in paragraph 2 of this article carries with it special duties and responsibilities. It may therefore be subject to certain restrictions, but these shall only be such as provided by law and are necessary.

(a) For respect of the rights or reputations of others;

(b) For the protection of national security or of public order (ordre public), or of public health or morals.

Article 20

1. Any propaganda for war shall be prohibited by law

2. Any advocacy of national, racial or religious hatred that constitutes incitement to discrimination, hostility or violence shall be prohibited by law.

 

Clearly, the OIC is trying to exploit these international standards, as shown in its April 2011 4^th Annual Report on Islamophobia posted at its online Islamophobia Observatory.  Given the ICCPR’s assertions above, the OIC’s objective has long since been entered into official U.N. language.  It required only a narrowing of the focus from the generality of the ICCPR down to the OIC’s exclusive interest in protecting Islam from discrimination.  It also required bringing the U.S. on board with the program to enforce Islamic law on slander.  With the willing participation of the Obama administration, the OIC has tackled both of these challenges.  In Section 6 of the Islamophobia Report, “Conclusions and Recommendations,” the language references the OIC goal of “removing the gaps in international legal instruments” to force the non-Muslim world to comply with its plan to criminalize “slander” of Islam (emphasis added):

 

d. Ensuring swift and effective implementation of the new approach signified by the consensual adoption of HRC Resolution 16/18, entitled ‘combating intolerance, negative stereotyping and stigmatization of, and discrimination, incitement to violence, and violence against persons based on religion or belief’, by inter alia,removing the gaps in implementation and interpretation of international legal instruments and criminalizing acts of incitement to hatred and violence…

e. Constructively engaging to bridge divergent views on the limits to the right to freedom of opinion and expression, in a structured multilateral framework…geared toward filling the ‘interpretation void’ with regard to the interface between articles 19(3) and 20 of the ICCPR based on emerging approaches like applying the ‘test of consequences.’

 

Those “gaps in implementation and interpretation” refer to U.S. objections to criminalizing free speech (in violation of the First Amendment), and the “structured multilateral framework” would appear to be the agenda in Washington, D.C. from December 12 to 14 at the meeting between Clinton and OIC Secretary General Ihsanoglu.  It would not be overreaching to conclude that the purpose of this meeting, at least from the OIC perspective, is to convince the Obama administration that free speech that rouses Muslim masses to fury — as defined by the “test of consequences” — must be restricted under U.S. law to bring it into compliance with sharia law’s dictates on slander.

 

Clinton’s own statements reflect the OIC language on the “gap” (emphasis added):

… together we have begun to overcome the false divide that pits religious sensitivities against freedom of expression, and we are pursuing a new approach based on concrete steps … to use some old-fashioned techniques of peer pressure and shaming, so that people don’t feel that they have the support to do what we abhor.

Despite disingenuous protestations by Clinton, another OIC document likely to be on the table at the Department of State/OIC working sessions abandons all pretense that any other religion besides Islam is the point of discussion.  The Resolutions on Political Affairs Adopted by the Thirty-Eighth Session of the Council of Foreign Ministers at the June 2011 OIC Council of Foreign Ministers in Kazakhstan (emphasis added):

 

5. Affirms that freedoms have to be exercised with responsibility and with due regard for the fundamental rights of others and, in this context, condemns in the strongest possible terms, all blasphemous acts against Islamic principles, symbols and sacred personalities, in particular, the despicable act of burning of the Holy Quran in Florida, USA on 20 March 2011, publication of offensive caricatures of Prophet Mohammad (PBUH), all abhorrent and irresponsible statements about Islam and its sacred personalities, and screening of defamatory documentary about the Holy Quran [Wilders' Fitna] and dissemination of this hate material under the pretext of freedom of expression and opinion[.]

 

Subsequent sections in the same document stress “the need to prevent the abuse of freedom of expression and press for insulting Islam and other divine religions” and to reaffirm “that terrorism cannot and should not be associated with any religion, nationality, civilization or group.” It furthermore:

 

[c]alls upon all States to prevent any advocacy of religious discrimination, hostility or violence and defamation of Islam by incorporating legal and administrative measures which render defamation illegal and punishable by law, and also urges all Member States to adopt specific and relevant educational measures at all levels[.]

 

It may be recalled that the Obama administration claimed, obviously incorrectly, that defamation was no longer part of these agreements.  The language of these resolutions instead stresses “the importance of expediting the implementation process of its decision on developing a legally binding international instrument to prevent intolerance, discrimination, prejudice and hatred on the grounds of religion, and defamation of religions[.]”

 

The Department of State is not the only U.S. government agency committed to achieving compliance with the OIC’s “Islamophobia” censorship agenda.  The Departments of Justice and Homeland Security both have committed publicly to an overhaul of their training materials to ensure that nothing in the curriculum gives “offense” to Muslim Brotherhood affiliates such as the Islamic Society of North America (ISNA) or the Muslim Public Affairs Council (MPAC), with which both departments maintain close relationships.  Instructors who previously taught the intrinsic connection among Islamic doctrine, law, and scripture and Islamic terrorism henceforth will be blacklisted by the U.S. government.  As documented by the intrepid columnist and author Diana West, the Department of Defense also has made its obeisance to Islam, with troop instructions on how to handle the Qur’an and avoid spitting, urinating, or sleeping with feet pointed in the direction of Mecca.

 

Capping the administration’s campaign to align U.S. national security policy within the parameters of Islamic law, the White House published “Strategic Implementation Plan for Empowering Local Partners to Prevent Violent Extremism in the United States” in December 2011.  The plan makes clear that “violent extremism,” not Islamic terrorism, is the primary national security threat to the homeland.  According to this “strategy,” the solution is partnership with “local communities” — the term used for the administration’s favored Muslim Brotherhood front groups, which already are using such relationships to silence their critics, both inside and outside government.  These new rules of censorship state that the term “violent extremism” can no longer be used in combination with terms like “jihad,” “Islam,” “Islamist,” or “sharia.”  And these new rules are already being taught to U.S. law enforcement, homeland security offices, and the military nationwide.

 

The agenda of this week’s Department of State/OIC meetings may mark an important “milestone,” as Sayyed Qutb might put it, on the pathway to sharia in America.  If — under the “test of consequences” — those who speak truth about Islam, sharia, and jihad may be held criminally responsible for the violent actions of those who say they find such truth “offensive,” then, in the future, “violent extremists” could be just about anyone…anyone the government, in obedience to the sharia dictates of the OIC, decides they are.

 

Further, if the rubric is to be based on this “test of consequence,” then it creates a real temptation to any administration so inclined to “create” consequences that will justify a change in America’s free speech rights.  By way of example, analysts have suggested that the motive for the Department of Justice’s “Fast and Furious” scandal, now under congressional investigation, may have been to create a “crisis” — a “consequence” — caused by U.S. guns shipped across the border to Mexican drug-dealers (and used in multiple homicides, including an American Border Protection officer) to “nudge” public consensus to expand gun control laws.

Even if Obama’s State Department seems fully enamored with a “test of consequences” on speech critical of Islam, most Americans across the political spectrum will realize that this perverts the traditional understanding of the First Amendment.  It is to be hoped that dedication to the Constitution — rather than to the OIC’s definition of “slander” of Islam or the “test of consequences” — will prevail among the ranks of our national leadership.  Regardless of what’s going on behind closed doors at the State Department this week, Americans should be aware — and outraged.  An informed citizenry, as always, remains the final defense of the Republic.

 

Clare M. Lopez is a senior fellow at the Center for Security Policy and also at The Clarion Fund.

A Dangerous Development.

Pamela Geller, WND Column: Does Obama want a universal caliphate? (Pamela Geller)

An update from this:

State Department meeting with OIC to discuss free speech restrictions

Shameful indeed: the Obama State Department is meeting today with the Organization of Islamic Cooperation to discuss ways to sweep away our fundamental protection against tyranny: the freedom of speech. More on this story. “A Shameful State Department Initiative,” by Pamela Geller in the American Thinker, December 12:   (More on State Colluding with OIC on free speech restrictions)

The Legal Project recently reported that the Obama Administration would be holding meetings this week in Washington on “implementing” UN Human Rights Council Resolution 16/18. (See Why is the Obama Administration Giving the OIC a Say in Our Right to Free Speech?) On December 13^th, Nina Shea, Director of Hudson Institute’s Center for Religious Freedom, reported on the first session of the three-day, closed-to-the-public conference called “The Istanbul Process.”

According to Shea, her ability to report on the details is limited by the fact she has only been invited to attend the opening and closing sessions, and attendees were asked to follow “Chatham House Rules,” which “forbid releasing anything about a specific delegation or quoting for attribution.” So much for the transparency Obama promised! These sessions should not be happening at all, but as they proceed they should be open to the public.

Readers can view Shea’s account here. At least some of the initial remarks from the conference were released and are available for viewing here.

US Ambassador at Large for International Religious Freedom, Suzan Johnson Cook, stated this weekend:

We expect this meeting will be the first in a series of such “Istanbul Process” meetings that will help direct efforts and resources toward finding real and effective measures against intolerance, discrimination, and violence based on religion or belief, as delineated in Resolution 16/18, which are fully consistent with freedom of expression.” (emphasis added)

Freedom of expression by whose definition? The Obama Administration should end “The Istanbul Process” now.

Related:

• Spencer: For the Obama camp, jihad is now a behavioral disorder that has nothing to do with Islam

Slick Willie’s  coming out

•  Update: Willie blames Nethanyahu for ‘killing the peace process’– (not that there ever was one. He’s just pissed off that the Jews won’t commit collective suicide….)

He’s now openly siding with the Arabs against Israel, and to show his economic expertise, he tells American companies to invest, or else….

Hiking Lefty Loons:

Don’t say I told you so: the captured  hikers come hostages are incurable Berkeley Moonbats. In this CBS vid they call for the “release of all political prisoners in America & Iran”

Meanwhile, the Iranian Despot-in-Chief gets the red carpet treatment at leftist U.S. universities:

Iranian president to US university students: US should “stop supporting the Zionist regime,” dialogue with Israel won’t solve problems.

 Ahmadinejad also addressed the American hikers who were subsequently released from Iranian prison.Asked about the case, Ahmadinejad said that he “would like to see all prisoners released,” especially political prisoners.

Questioned whether that statement applies to political prisoners in Iran, he denied that the Islamic Republic has any political prisoners, saying the state’s law doesn’t allow for it. (J-Post)

Iran also doesn’t have any homosexuals. There are no homosexuals in Iran.

 No hypocrisy to see here:

•  Pali “ambassador” who called for a “Jew-free Palestine” calls Perry a racist.  Exactly a week ago, Pal ‘Ambassador to the United States’ Maen Rashid Areikat reiterated his call to create a Jew-free Pali state.Today, he called Rick Perry a racist for saying that there shouldn’t be moral equivalence between Israelis and Palestinians.You just can’t make this stuff up.

 More on Slick Willies incomprehension:

“For reasons that even after all these years I still don’t know for sure, Arafat turned down the deal I put together that Barak accepted,” he said. “But they also had an Israeli government that was willing to give them East Jerusalem as the capital of the new state of Palestine.” 

White House Position Vacant: Everyone in Charge But No One Responsible

For real. Your federal government leaps into action to minimize the damaging Wikileaks release of US government classified documents by ordering the US government not to read them. What a freaking joke.

(NY Times) — In a classic case of shutting the barn door after the horse has left, the Obama administration and the Department of Defense have ordered the hundreds of thousands of federal employees and contractors not to read the secret cables and other classified documents published by Wikileaks and news organizations around the world unless the workers have the required security clearance or authorization. (Weasel Zippers)

Al Reuters:

Clinton charm falls flat with Iranian minister

“I said ‘Hello, minister.’ He just turned away.”

Secretary of State Hillary Rodham Clinton was snubbed by Iran’s top diplomat, Foreign Minister Manouchehr Mottaki, during a rare encounter at a Bahrain security conference Friday.  “I got up to leave and he was sitting a couple of seats down from me and shaking people’s hands and he saw me and he stopped and began to turn away,” Clinton told reporters on her plane returning to Washington on Saturday, according to Reuters.  (Only al Reuters could attribute “charm” to this delirious nutcase)

“I said ‘Hello, minister.’ He just turned away.”

More of the same with other peoples money:

MANAMA, Bahrain (AP) — Hillary Rodham Clinton says her work as U.S. secretary of state will be her final public position. She expects to return to private life as an advocate for women and children around the globe. (The Blaze)

Hillary in Kyrgyzstan: Corruption and Double-Speak

Willary Clitman was in Kyrgyzstan (oh, to be in Bishnek now that December is here) yesterday for five (5) hours to pay protection money, I mean, sign a deal to give Kyrgyzzies “a share of lucrative fuel contracts for a critical transit hub here for troops headed to Afghanistan,” as the Washington Post reports.

While here, Clinton lauded Kyrgyzstan for taking the initial steps toward democracy, saying the people were “pioneers” among the former Soviet republics in the region. “Parliamentary democracy can help ease tensions between different regions and different groups of people,” she said at the town hall meeting. ” ‘Compromise’ is not a dirty word in a democracy,” she said.   (Diana West/Big Peace)

This is the most disgusting, arrogant, corrupt and deluded moonbat administration in history. If we continue down that road we will be history:

Shrillary demands religious freedom (for Muslims)

She declared  she wants to see Turkey in the EU, slammed France Over Ban on Burqas, Switzerland for Banning Construction of New Minarets… and “Israel Violates Muslims Religious Rights“

There are people in the US who believe this ridiculous female is presidential material…. (spit)

WASHINGTON (AFP) – US Secretary of State Hillary Clinton criticized Wednesday the state of religious freedom in Europe, as Washington highlighted policies and attitudes toward Muslim veils and Islam as a whole.

Look what bothers this demented creature:

“Other issues of contention included Israel’s unwillingness to recognize conversions performed in the country which do not meet criteria under Torah law, identification cards (Teudot Zehut) that differentiate between Jews and non-Jews, and the authority over marriages and burials exercised by the Chief Rabbinate, which is Orthodox.”

WTF – Since when do Shrillary and the State Dept. get to determine Jewish law on conversion? What incredible chutzpa!

“Several European countries have placed harsh restrictions on religious expression,” Clinton said, without elaborating as she unveiled the State Department’s report on international religious freedom for the last year.

Her assistant secretary for human rights, Michael Posner, cited France’s ban on wearing the niqab and other face coverings in public places and a Swiss motion passed last year that bans building new minarets.

Both measures have been criticized as intolerant moves stigmatizing Europe’s growing Muslim population.

Posner acknowledged “growing sensitivity and tension in Europe” over Islam.

“What we are urging our European friends to do is to take every measure to try to alleviate that tension,” he added.

The different attitudes toward Muslims in Europe and the United States are the source of frequent tensions and misunderstandings between both sides of the Atlantic.

“We have gone to court in the United States to enforce the right of Muslim women and girls to wear a burqa, and on the streets, in schools, et cetera,” said Posner.

“That’s our position. It’s a position we articulate when we talk to our European friends.”

France’s law banning veils — passed last month — was considered an especially controversial move in a country with Europe’s biggest Muslim population, estimated at nearly six million. The Netherlands is expected to follow suit.

Clinton defined religious freedom as the ability for people to freely practice their faith, raise their children within those traditions, publish religious texts without censorship and to be able to either change religion or practice none.

She noted strong US opposition to any legislation condemning religious libel because of freedom of expression concerns.

The State Department’s annual report — covering a period from July 1, 2009 to June 30, 2010 — found that respect for religious freedom deteriorated in Afghanistan and Iran while China and Indonesia earned mixed scorecards.

This is the most insane, disgusting horror cabinet in history.

• How Clinton Sold  Our Children to Islam

The Klintoons have done enough damage to America. Enough is enough!

Empty suits co$t money:

KRudd meets US Secretary of State Hillary Clinton in Washington. Mrs Clinton confirmed she will visit Australia in November.
He and Mrs Clinton had discussed the flood crisis in Pakistan after he had visited the country’s stricken areas on his way to Washington, and offered $40 million in Australian relief aid.

KRudd promises Clinton ‘a really good time’

Mrs Clinton met Mr Rudd after her return from Middle East peace talks.

KRudd will attend UN meetings over the next week on global sustainability, climate change, nuclear non-proliferation and nuclear test bans. (The Australian)

Update: White House: Global Warming Out, ‘Global Climate Disruption’ In

thanks to eye on the world

Looks like Kevni is a little behind the times: John Holdren, one of Obama’s czars,  has  determined that ‘global warming’ and ‘climate change’ are now superseded by “global climate disruption”, no s#*t!

(FOX News) From the administration that brought you “man-caused disaster” and “overseas contingency operation,” another terminology change is in the pipeline.

The White House wants the public to start using the term “global climate disruption” in place of “global warming” — fearing the latter term oversimplifies the problem and makes it sound less dangerous than it really is.

White House science adviser John Holdren urged people to start using the phrase during a speech last week in Oslo, echoing a plea he made three years earlier. Holdren said global warming is a “dangerous misnomer” for a problem far more complicated than a rise in temperature. More…

Clinton: Netanyahu, Abbas trying to reach “common ground” (in Jordan)

The Klintoons: Peace theater of the absurd (J’Post)

By ASSOCIATED PRESS/J’Post (H/T Tundra Tabloids)

US Secretary of State Hillary Clinton on Thursday said she is convinced that Prime Minister Binyamin Netanyahu and Palestinian Authority President Mahmoud Abbas are trying to seek common ground in peace negotiations between Israel and the Palestinians. Clinton spoke from Amman, Jordan where she was meeting with Jordanian King Abdullah.

“They are committed and they have begun to grapple with the hard but necessary questions,” she said, shortly before leaving for the US “I am convinced that this is the time and these are the leaders to achieve the result we all seek.”

While in Jordan, Obama’s trusted envoy  ensures that the plucky little king is paid:

While in Jordan, Clinton also announced that the US will be giving the Hashemite Kingdom $275 million in additional economic aid (jiziya)  over three years to rehabilitate the water sector in arid Jordan.

Hussein Obama: Property Rights for Muslims, but NOT for Jews

At the U.N. Obama Promotes Human Wrongs Against Israel Instead of Human Rights

The mask is coming off:

Wednesday in Geneva during the current session of the U.N. Human Rights Council, the Obama administration became a willing participant in the U.N.’s imposition of an apartheid-style ban on representatives of the state of Israel. Despite the promises made by the administrationthat by joining the Council the United States would not become part of the problem, U.S. Ambassador to the Council Eileen Donahoe chose to attend and fully participate in a meeting that deliberately excluded anyone representing the Jewish state. (FoxNews)

Good that Israel has nukes……

Caroline Glick:

Mosque good, Jewish buildings bad:

OBAMA IS so firm in his belief that Jews should be denied civil rights in Israel’s capital and in the heartland of Jewish history that he has provoked multiple crises in his relations with Israel to advance this bigoted view. Almost from his first day in office Obama has struck out a radical position in which he has insisted that Jews must be prohibited from building anything – synagogues, homes, nurseries, schools – in Judea, Jerusalem and Samaria on land they own. Jews – Israeli and non-Israeli – should be barred from exercising their property rights even if their construction plans have already been approved “in accordance with local laws and ordinances.”

At the same time, Obama has insisted that Israel take no action to enforce its “local laws and ordinances” against illegal structures built by Arabs in Jerusalem, Judea, or Samaria.  (Yep. There are still people who believe Obama is NOT a Muslim. And there are  (still) Jews who would vote for him….. (Read it all)

Israel’s “partners for peace” say one thing in English, another in Arabic

Surprised? Really? War Is Deceit Update: “Israel’s Partners for Peace: What They Say in English vs. What They Say in Arabic,” by Khaled Abu Toameh for Hudson NY, September 13 (thanks to JW)

A number of senior Palestinian officials who do not have much credibility among their own people are now trying to sell themselves to Israelis as “partners for peace.”This is the same group of Palestinians who in the past advised Yasser Arafat to reject then-Prime Minister Ehud Barak’s offer during the botched Camp David summit in 2000. They were among Arafat’s inner circle when he walked out of the Camp David summit and initiated the “Second Intifada.”

These are also the same officials who, back then, justified the eruption of the intifada as a “natural response” to Israel’s refusal to comply with 100% of the Palestinians’ demands.

Saeb Erekat, Jibril Rajoub and Yasser Abed Rabbo are now trying to persuade the Israeli public that Israel does have partners for peace on the Palestinian side. And who are the new-old partners? Erekat, Rajoub and Abed Rabbo, of course.

With the help of US taxpayers’ dollars, the three, together with other Palestinian officials, are sending their “peace” messages to the Israelis in English. The campaign, according to Palestinians, is being funded by the US Agency for International Development [USAID].

The campaign targets only the Israeli public. No similar messages are being sent to the Palestinians despite promises that they would….

Defend your freedom of speech against the Islamofascists and the sellouts from the UN:

Ekmeleddin Ihsanoglu:

“… any laxity in this connection would mean the loss of a political and legal mainstay in the defense of our faith, our values and our sanctities.”
Clueless in Arabia: Willie Clitman’s wife (grinning stupidly)  with OIC head Ekmeleddin Ihsanoglu, (left)  and Rashad Hussainin (right),  Obama’s specially appointed Muslim brother, at a conference in Jeddah, Saudi Arabia.(CNSNews.com) –

As its annual “defamation of religion” resolution loses ground at the United Nations after a decade of successes, the Organization of the Islamic Conference (OIC) is urging its members to close ranks on an issue, which it calls vital for the defense of Islam.

CNSNews.com – OIC Fulfills Function of Caliphate….

Foreign ministers from the 56 mostly Muslim-majority countries that make up the OIC plan to discuss the issue when they hold their 2010 session in the Tajikistan capital of Dushanbe next month.

In the Saudi city of Jeddah this week, the Islamic bloc’s powerful secretary-general, Ekmeleddin Ihsanoglu, told senior officials preparing for the Dushanbe meeting that he hoped OIC member states would “lend particular attention” to the religious defamation issue.

He voiced dismay about the declining support for the resolutions, and the fact that some countries, which he did not identify, were “thinking of reconsidering the subject.”

“I wish to affirm that the member states’ commitment to support the OIC’s stand vis-a-vis this vote is of vital weight and should not be downplayed,” Ihsanoglu said. “For any laxity in this connection would mean the loss of a political and legal mainstay in the defense of our faith, our values and our sanctities.”

Ihsanoglu’s comments came after the U.N. Human Rights Council in Geneva late last month once again passed the OIC-drafted resolution on “combating defamation of religions,” but by a relatively slim margin.

Only 20 members of the 47-nation HRC voted in favor, while 17 opposed the measure and eight abstained. (Two were absent.)

It was the worst showing for the annual resolution since the OIC first introduced it at the HRC’s predecessor, the U.N. Commission on Human Rights, in 1999.

Apart from the first two years, when the measure was adopted without a vote, the resolution has always passed easily, in a vote that showed a clear split between the Islamic bloc and its allies in the developing world on one hand, and mostly Western democracies on the other (see graphshowing annual vote results since 2001).

Since the HRC began operating in 2006, its composition has also been a factor – more than half the 47 seats are reserved for African and Asian nations, and OIC members have held around one-third of the total. Supported by perennial allies like China, Russia, Cuba and South Africa, the OIC has therefore had no difficulty getting the measures passed.

A religious defamation resolution has also been adopted by the full membership of the world body, the U.N. General Assembly in New York, each year since 2005.

In both Geneva and New York, however, the OIC has seen its sizeable majority decline in recent years, coinciding with stepped-up opposition by Western governments and energetic lobbying by legal, religious freedom, freedom of expression and humanist advocacy groups.

The most visible trend has been countries in Latin America, Africa and the Pacific moving from supporting the resolutions to abstaining, and in some cases – mostly in Latin America – moving from abstaining to opposing the measures.

Of particular interest has been a small number of African OIC members – Cameroon, Burkina Faso and Benin – which have gone against their own organization’s initiative, abstaining rather than voting for the resolution.

Also noteworthy was Zambia’s decision to vote against the resolution at the HRC last month. It is believed to be the first time an African country has done so.

‘Deep concern over future of relations with West’

Opponents argue that the concept of defamation applies to individuals, not the religions to which they may adhere. They claim the resolutions, although non-binding, are designed to shield Islam from criticism, with the effect of undermining freedom of expression and jeopardizing the rights of religious minorities and of Muslims wishing to convert to other faiths.

The OIC asserts that the resolutions are needed to combat “Islamophobia,” a phenomenon it says has worsened since Islamic terrorists attacked the U.S. in 2001.

Defamation of religion resolutions typically cite counter-terrorism policies such as the profiling of Muslims, media allegations of links between Islam and terrorism, and the targeting of religious symbols – a reference, inter alia, to a Danish newspaper’s publication in 2005 of cartoons satirizing Mohammed.

The OIC has also highlighted last November’s Swiss referendum banning the building of minarets in that country as a fresh manifestation of the Islamophobia underlining the need for the resolutions.

In his address to the OIC officials in Jeddah, Ihsanoglu said the Swiss decision showed that Islamophobia has “now moved up from the level of individual practice or articles in the press to that of legislations and constitutions.”

As such, it prompted “deep concern over the future of Islamic relations with the West,” he added.

The OIC draws together 56 countries, most but not all with Muslim majorities, predominantly in the Middle East, Africa and Asia.

Although 40 years old, the bloc has become more visible and active at the U.N. in recent years. A 1995 “ten-year program of action” called on member states to coordinate positions, and accordingly they invariably vote as a bloc. Members also generally support each other in votes for leadership positions in international bodies.

Related links:

• Islamic Bloc Calls Emergency Meeting After Slow Response to Pakistan Crisis by Islamic States
• Record Number of Islamic Nations, Fewer ‘Free’ Countries, Coming to U.N. Human Rights Council
• US Tries to Break ‘Religious Defamation’ vs. Free Speech Deadlock at UN
• Islamic States Mark a Decade of ‘Defamation of Religion’ Measures With Another Success
• NGOs Take Aim at ‘Religious Defamation,’ Urge Competitive U.N. Council Elections
• U.S. Expected to Reverse Course on United Nations
• Islamic Nations’ Push to Outlaw Religious Defamation Faces Hurdles
• UN Urged to Stop ‘Defamation of Islam’ Campaign
• U.N. Data Refutes Claim That Muslim Nations Have Pledged Nearly $1 Billion for Pakistan Crisis
• ‘Burn the Quran Day’ Plan Prompts Warnings of Anger, Unrest

Willary Clitman: Saving the (Islamic) world with other peoples money: your $$$$$$

Paki Muslims complain USA isn’t giving enough aid

• Christians in Pakistan missing out on flood aid, bishop warns
• Pakistan: Flood aid withheld from “non-Muslim” Ahmadis as country depends on aid from… non-Muslims
• Pakistan relents, accepts flood aid from India

Always on the wrong side of the tracks, always generous with other peoples money, Willie Clitman’s wife Shrillary, who generously donated $ 10 dollars for the Paki flood victims (after spending 3 million on her daughters wedding) is trying to warm up the long debunked “Climate Change” hysteria in order  to  transfer wealth from your pocket to her favorite despots in the third world.

Clinton Invokes Climate Change Debate to Explain Pakistan Floods

FoxNews

Secretary of State Hillary Clinton and other officials are pointing to the devastating floods in Pakistan and other extreme weather events as signs that climate change is getting worse.

Clinton, in an interview with Pakistan’s Dawn TV, said “there is a linkage” between the recent spate of deadly natural disasters and climate change.

“You can’t point to any particular disaster and say, ‘it was caused by,’ but we are changing the climate of the world,” she said.

I think we have to change the government instead!

FoxNews has more!

In other news:

• Obamas Hit the Beach in Martha’s Vineyard (his sixth holiday this year!)
• Obama Faces Middle East ‘Train Wreck’ as Iran Builds Nuclear Program
• 73 Days to Decide: Will Religion Decide November?
• Why Some Americans Question Obama’s Christianity

Blah blah on Fox: Why Some Americans Question Obama’s Christianity