NoisyRoom.net

By: Cliff Kincaid
Accuracy in Media

On the Letterman show, President Barack Obama once again blamed Middle East violence on a movie, adding that he was concerned about the “shadowy character” behind it. That “shadowy character” was picked up by the police, acting on behalf of the federal government, in order to begin the process of appeasing Islamic censors around the world who want to destroy our First Amendment rights.

Blaming a movie shifts the attention away from the fact that al-Qaeda is behind the violence and that Osama bin-Laden’s death hasn’t affected the global terrorist war against America. Indeed, as we have reported, the murders in Libya demonstrate that the Obama policy, backed by Senator John McCain, has emboldened al-Qaeda in an important Arab/Muslim country. Since the U.S. military intervention in Libya was illegal and unconstitutional, the shocking emergence of al-Qaeda in Libya is one scandal on top of another. It has been argued that the Libya intervention is an impeachable offense.

Politically, Obama has been beating his breasts about bin Laden’s death, in order to prove he can manage foreign policy. Since the economy is in the tank, this has been Obama’s only real hope of winning a second term. Polls have given him a significant edge over Romney in foreign policy expertise. All of this is now at risk.

The “shadowy character” behind the film apparently has legal problems and makes for a good villain. The propaganda that the film led to the “spontaneous” violence has also served to demonize Coptic Christians in Egypt, the U.S. and elsewhere, way beyond the few who may have had some role in producing the film. Some of them are going into hiding and facing death threats.

There are other explanations for the behavior of the Obama Administration as well.

Acknowledging the truth undermines the Obama policy of cooperating with the Muslim Brotherhood in Egypt. The truth that the Muslim Brotherhood is a violence-prone group that continues to sponsor or promote anti-American terrorism cannot be conceded by this administration because it has a policy of “engaging” with them and providing them foreign aid.

Acknowledging the truth also risks exposing the fact that the Muslim Brotherhood has significant influence over the Obama Administration, and that Rep. Michele Bachmann and others were correct to ask for a probe into the extent and nature of this influence. In this context, we may be dealing with top officials who have sold out American interests in a case that could rival that of Alger Hiss, the State Department official who spied for the old Soviet Union.

Who else benefits from the false narrative about the violence in the Middle East?

The most immediate beneficiaries are Iran, Russia and al-Qaeda, which is dominating the “new” Libya and engineered the violent attack and murder of four Americans in Libya on 9/11. It is significant that Egypt’s Muslim Brotherhood president Mohamed Morsi was in Iran before the Middle East crisis unfolded. On Tuesday, Morsi held talks with Iranian Foreign Minister Ali Akbar Salehi and said, “There exists no problem between Iran and Egypt.”

Ayman al-Zawahiri, an Egyptian, is the current leader of al-Qaeda, and an identified former Soviet KGB agent. Russian President Vladimir Putin, a former KGB officer, has to have knowledge of this.

Al-Zawahiri’s KGB connection was documented by former KGB officers Alexander Litvinenko and Konstantin Preobrazhensky. Litvinenko was poisoned in London and killed after he wrote a book, Blowing up Russia, on how Russian agents are behind certain acts of alleged Islamic terrorism. Preobrazhensky has written about how the Russians, since the days of Lenin, have used Muslims as cannon fodder for the world revolution.

The Ayatollah of Iran, Ali Khamenei, was “educated” at the KGB’s Patrice Lumumba University in Moscow, along with the international terrorist “Carlos,” a convert to Islam and the cause of al-Qaeda who is now in in prison in France for terrorist crimes.

The fact that the Obama Administration is playing along with this strategy is shocking. It suggests that Obama wants America’s enemies to benefit from these developments. In addition to the obvious threat of terrorism, however, we also face the danger of losing our First Amendment rights in order to appease the terrorists determined to kill us.

In response to the orchestrated controversy over the film, the “Independent Permanent Human Rights Commission” of the 57-member Organization of Islamic Cooperation has released a statement urging states “to fully implement the steps identified in the consensual Human Rights Council resolution 16/18 and United Nations General Assembly resolution 66/167.” These are U.N. attempts to silence criticism of Islam.

The OIC statement goes on, “There is a parallel necessity to reinvigorate the efforts to articulate an international code of conduct for media and social media to disallow the dissemination of incitement material…”

This is an obvious call for eliminating our First Amendment rights.

At the 9/11 conference sponsored by Pamela Geller and Robert Spencer, David Yerushalmi of the American Freedom Law Center spoke about this international effort and how it has already been seen on U.S. soil in the physical attacks that included rocks, cans, and water bottles thrown against Christians in Dearborn, Michigan, during an Arab-American festival in June. The bloodied Christians were preaching and protesting on a public street and acting lawfully but were nevertheless threatened with being arrested by the police if they did not leave the area.

He told the conference that the OIC is attempting to impose “their version of free speech—you can talk freely, you just cannot insult Islam or Muhammad.” He added, “They are pushing that through the U.N. through treaties. If the U.S. were to adopt that, and the State Department is getting dangerously close, the next question for the U.S. Supreme Court is…does the First Amendment trump a treaty? Well, it says in the United States Constitution that a treaty has the force of supreme law of the land. And that question hasn’t been fully adjudicated in our jurisprudence…It will be the next great battle space in this area of free speech.”

When Mitt Romney objected to the Obama Administration going down this road, calling its statement about the attacks an apology, he himself came under savage attack.

Romney was concerned about a statement that came out of the Embassy of the United States in Cairo which said the U.S. “condemns the continuing efforts by misguided individuals to hurt the religious feelings of Muslims—as we condemn efforts to offend believers of all religions.”

The embassy statement also said, “Respect for religious beliefs is a cornerstone of American democracy. We firmly reject the actions by those who abuse the universal right of free speech to hurt the religious beliefs of others.”

In fact, religious freedom and freedom of speech are the cornerstones of the American constitutional republic. There is no prohibition on “hurting the religious feelings of Muslims.” There is no “universal right of free speech” but rather an American First Amendment that is unique in the world but which is now under global assault by those who stormed the embassy and then killed four Americans in Libya.

Citing the Cairo embassy statement and what happened in Dearborn, Yerushalmi said freedom of speech will not be preserved “as long as Dearborn, Michigan can engage in that kind of behavior, as long as the State Department can issue statements of this sort.”

He is currently defending Pamela Geller and Robert Spencer in their efforts to place anti-Jihad ads on public transportation vehicles or facilities in New York City and Washington, D.C. The ad says, “In Any War Between the Civilized Man and the Savage, Support the Civilized Man. Support Israel. Defeat Jihad.”

In response to a lawsuit filed by the American Freedom Law Center, a federal judge has ordered the Metropolitan Transportation Authority (MTA) of New York to display the advertisements. The MTA had initially rejected the ads as “demeaning” to Islam.

Cliff Kincaid is the Director of the AIM Center for Investigative Journalism and can be contacted at cliff.kincaid@aim.org.