As previously reported here, Secretary of State Hillary Clinton is having meetings with the 57-member nation Organization of Islamic Cooperation, first in Istanbul, now last week in Washington. Steve Emerson's Investigative Project on Terrorism has a report. It highlights the weakness of our current administration in standing up for free speech.
http://www.investigativeproject.org/3355/state-department-panders-to-islamists-on-free
There isn't much I can add to this except to say that Hillary Clinton is hoping by her passing references to free speech that the OIC will get the hint and go away. They will not. Therefore, it is time for blunt talk to the OIC. They must be told that the US will not limit our right of free speech-period. We believe in religious tolerance, and we have done a good job in our treatment of Muslims or anyone else in the face of the Islamic terror threat. We don't need to apologize to anybody, and their statements about the West being the problem when it comes to intolerance is just ridiculous.
Secondly, it needs to be pointed out to the OIC that it is they, not us, who are the worst practitioners of religious bigotry within their own countries. The examples, country by country, are too long to list here since I have already mentioned them before. I have just posted a piece on the notorious Saudi textbooks that they are assigning to their own kids. I also note that the head of this group negotiating with Clinton has a Turkish name. Perhaps, he should be reminded of the Armenians in 1915.
Let me paint a scenario for you. Let us assume the UN passed this resolution and somehow, it became an international law. Keep in mind that there are already European countries like Belgium and the UK where courts have tried to bring charges against foreign nationals for acts committed in other lands. Israel is an example. I know from my personal experience in Italy that European magistrates and judges wield enormous power. In many cases, they initiate their own investigations and issue arrest warrants that become international arrest warrants that go through Interpol. ("political" crimes are supposedly excluded.) Don't forget that a judge in Syria tried to issue an arrest warrant for Geert Wilders of the Netherlands. Let's imagine that some European judge gets a hair up his ass and issues a warrant for say, Robert Spencer or Pam Geller for "Defamation of religion". Let us presume that our courts would uphold the right of free speech of an American who got caught up in this "Defamation" law. I say "presume" because under our current administration and the judges that Obama is selecting, who knows what kind of ruling could come out of such a case. Nevertheless, let's assume that any court in the land would throw out such a charge. Why should any American have to be subjected to any such legal process in the first place?
Secondly, let's say that some foreign court issues an arrest warrant for a Spencer or Geller-one that will not be enforced in the US because of our constitution. It would still mean that such individual would not be able to travel freely internationally. Someone who is the subject of an
international arrest warrant could be stopped and arrested when passing through Customs in Europe or another part of the world. Even if they passed through that, they are at risk when they check into a European hotel-whose registration records are collected daily by the police who check for warrants. I have seen more than one person subject to an international arrest warrant on drug charges captured this way in Europe.
Now I know that someone like my friend, Siarlys, will scoff and call me an alarmist. He or she may even research my points and find I made a slight error in what I stated in the above two paragraphs above because I am going from my personal experience and memory. Nevertheless, the scenario I gave above could, conceivably, come to pass. It should be rejected by any country that values freedom and the right to engage in free speech.
It is clear that this administration and this secretary of state will not stand up to the OIC. They should have been shown the door. Better yet, no such meetings should have included the US unless we are prepared to stand up to these thugs trying to push their so-called "Defamation of Religions" laws down the throats of the rest of the world. In fact, they are concerned with one religion being protected and no other. What a hypocritical farce.
What we need is someone like John Bolton as secretary of state. Naturally, that will require a change of administrations come next November.
Finally, don't think that all American Muslims are in favor of this move. The American-Islamic Leadership Coalition (linked on this site), is not afraid to speak out against those that would push this Islamist agenda in America.
http://americanislamicleadership.org/post/14259631357/american-muslim-leaders-express-dismay-at-secretary
It is important that we recognize and support true Muslim moderates like the above. Instead, our government continues to select the worst representatives to work with.
The notion that an American court would honor such an arrest warrant, and that the relevant federal appellate circuit would uphold it, is absurd.
ReplyDeleteThe possibility that a foreign court would issue a warrant which would impose some practical restrictions on foreign travel by the person named is a natural consequence of national sovereignty. Of course you can't travel to a country that honors a warrant issued by a country where your action is defined as criminal.
What do you want, a World Court that could quash such warrants, regardless of the sovereignty that issued them?
Your petty and vague insinuations about the judges President Obama has appointed are beneath contempt. You have zero evidence to back up your innuendo, just that you infer anyone appointed by someone you don't want in office must be capable of performing any act you wouldn't approve of.
There are some things you don't approve of that Barack Obama wouldn't approve of either. And what happens in America IS constrained by our own constitution.
UN resolutions are not binding, and if the OIC could get a UN resolution passed in the teeth of American opposition, they would have done it already.
"What we need is someone like John Bolton as secretary of state. Naturally, that will require a change of administrations come next November"
ReplyDeleteFor this single item within many foreign policy issues as well as a host of ruinous domestic economic policies, the election/ejection can't come soon enough.
This has been on the job training for the least prepared president ever, who is an ideologue on top of everything else. It is his statist ideology that drives an incompetent, bloated, administration on projects that don't work because of both conception and ineptitude result in Solyndra, Fast and Furious, high unemployment, more poverty, more food stamps, more uncertainty, etc., etc.
Just wait and see what a disaster it will be if ObamaCare kicks in. I see that it was cost justified at the time because the doctors were supposeed to have their Medicare fees cut by 27%. Of course, now we see that is not going to happen. So it was all based on a lie to beging with.
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I'm just waiting for the health reform act to kick in. I haven't had medical coverage since the end of July 2009. If my income in 2014 is the same as it is now, I will have to stretch to cover my share of cost, but I can manage it. If my income improves, of course I will pay more. That is as it should be. Hopefully I will have the choice to opt for a high-deductible, low-premium policy, which will cost less for all concerned, but suits my situation well.
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