07/10/15
Tag Archives: Jeb Bush
07/8/15
Conservative Revolt Brewing Against Scott Walker Over Staffer Hired By His PAC
By: John Hawkins
Right Wing News
Last week, Right Wing News did an article about Scott Walker’s PAC hiring Brad Dayspring. If you don’t know who Brad Dayspring is, here’s an introduction from one of the conservative candidates he slimed during the GOP primaries.
“Brad Dayspring is well known as a despicable establishment operative who specializes in slander and character assassination against conservative candidates,” Mississippi state Sen. Chris McDaniel—one such conservative Dayspring personally frequently attacked—told Breitbart News exclusively on Wednesday. “He is the perfect example of why conservatives no longer trust the GOP. He’s little more than a paid attack dog, without principle and honor, the personification of everything wrong with our present political system.”
McDaniel added:
“Scott Walker appears to be a good man with solid conservative instincts. But his hiring of the unstable Dayspring is an insult to honorable political discourse. If Dayspring is aligned with Walker, then conservatives should be warned to look elsewhere for leadership.”
Right Wing News has contacts with Scott Walker’s campaign and with his PAC. We reached out to both and asked for them to go on the record about Brad Dayspring. Unfortunately, nobody was willing to go on the record defending him — which should tell you a lot.
If Brad Dayspring is indefensible, why did Scott Walker’s team hire him? Well, you hire a guy like this either to stab conservatives in the back or to let your backers in the establishment know that you intend to do exactly that despite the rhetoric you’re using to trick the “bubbas” into voting for you.
Why else would they go to the mat for a new staffer after the reaction Dayspring received?
Breitbart has written a negative article about the hire and so has the Daily Caller (Where it was noted Dayspring had been telling people he was going to work for Jeb Bush). Over at Redstate, where Walker wrote a July 4th guest diary, the Wisconsin governor has been compared to Thad Cochran over this. Brent Bozell, the head of the Media Research Center, wants Dayspring gone. Mark Levin, who has roughly 7 million listeners, has been smeared by Dayspring before and retweeted the Right Wing News article we put out about him.
Since the article came out, we spoke to another one of the grassroots conservative candidates that Dayspring vilified, Dr. Milton Wolf, who primaried Republican Senator Pat Roberts in Kansas. Here’s what he had to say about Scott Walker’s team hiring Brad Dayspring.
“It’s baffling that a principled conservative like Scott Walker would hire Brad Dayspring. Dayspring is an attack dog for hire who specializes in slandering and maligning conservatives in order to protect the failed insiders who have abandoned conservative principles and are destroying our Republican Party.”
Here are just a few of the tweets from dismayed conservatives that flooded Twitter since the Right Wing News article came out.
I agree 100% with that last tweet.
Maybe Scott Walker’s team didn’t do its due diligence before it hired Dayspring. That would be a mistake, but forgivable. On the other hand, if Walker’s team hangs onto Dayspring, it might as well be flat-out telling you to leave a spot open on your back so a knife can be slammed in there down the road. A veterans’ group wouldn’t bring in Jane Fonda and no conservative you can trust is going to keep Brad Dayspring on his team.
07/8/15
The Media vs. Trump’s Patriotic Appeal
By: Cliff Kincaid
Accuracy in Media
Donald Trump may be the most politically incorrect candidate on the Republican side. He openly mocks the news media and addresses the problem of illegal immigration. But even more importantly, he attacks the trade policies that benefit our enemies and adversaries. By doing so, he challenges what radio talk show host Jeffrey T. Kuhner calls the bipartisan “ruling establishment,” whose dominance “is based on the complicity of the mainstream media.”
With regard to the media, Trump’s attack on NBC after the network cut ties with him demonstrates his understanding of what appeals to the conservatives who vote in the Republican Party.
“If NBC is so weak and so foolish to not understand the serious illegal immigration problem in the United States, coupled with the horrendous and unfair trade deals we are making with Mexico, then their contract-violating closure of Miss Universe/Miss USA will be determined in court,” he said. “Furthermore, they will stand behind lying Brian Williams, but won’t stand behind people that tell it like it is, as unpleasant as that may be.”
Williams is the serial liar who, despite being exposed for numerous fraudulent claims about his own career, has been kept on the payroll of NBC News.
The response to Trump, who is rising in the polls, demonstrates that conservatives like a candidate who exposes the liberals in the media as the hypocrites they are.
But it’s not just standing up to the media—or his criticism of criminals coming into the country through Mexico—that has made him into a hero. As analyst Nevin Gussack notes, “Trump’s economics and aspects of his national security strategy challenge the Washington Consensus of globalism, free trade, and other internationalist policies.” This may be the sleeper issue of the 2016 presidential campaign.
Gussack is the author of the book, Sowing the Seeds of Our Destruction: Useful Idiots on the ‘Right,’ which contends that trade policies under both Democrats and Republicans have served the interests of countries hostile to the United States, most especially China.
In his voluminous writings on the topic, Gussack is particularly critical of current and former Republican governors, some of them running for president, noting that they have “colluded to hasten Red Chinese economic colonization of the United States under the guise of foreign investment.” He faults them for traveling “hat in hand” to the Chinese “to negotiate for the outright takeover of U.S.-owned assets.”
He cites the case of 25 wealthy Communist Chinese investors visiting Orlando, Florida for a “US-China Investment Week” in 2012 that was attended by Florida Governor Rick Scott, then-Texas Governor Rick Perry, and Wisconsin Governor Scott Walker.
In 2010, Gussack notes, Governor Rick Perry helped the Chinese telecommunications firm Huawei Technologies open a headquarters in Plano, Texas. A 2012 report from the House Intelligence Committee called Huawei a threat to U.S. national security interests because of its connections to the Chinese government, including the People’s Liberation Army.
Accuracy in Media disclosed in a 2014 investigative report that the firm had been linked to the murder of an American citizen, Dr. Shane Truman Todd, who had been working on a project in Singapore involving Huawei.
Governor Walker opened something called the Wisconsin Center China in Madison, Wisconsin, to facilitate trade with the communist regime. At the time, Walker said, “This trade center strengthens our relationship with China and provides Wisconsin businesses the resources and assistance to pursue export opportunities in this growing market. Through the years, Wisconsin has built a strong trade relationship with China, and the opening of the Wisconsin Center China will help Wisconsin businesses continue to strengthen our trade relationships and grow export opportunities.”
Walker embarked on a trade mission to Red China in 2013, Gussack points out, where he met Communist Party officials and Chinese President/General Secretary Xi Jinping. The Communists then hosted a reception for Governor Walker and his delegation, which was made up of 300 Wisconsin businessmen and officials.
“Tragically,” Gussack goes on, “it appeared that Governor Walker and a majority of state Republicans sought to liberalize foreign ownership laws over Wisconsin land. Specifically, Governor Walker sought to overturn the law that prohibited the foreign ownership of more than 640 acres of land in Wisconsin.” Republican State Senator Dale Schultz acknowledged that repeal “would allow the Chinese government to buy a big chunk of land in northwest Wisconsin if it wanted to.”
However, outrage over the provision caused Walker to drop it from a budget plan.
In 2011, former Florida Governor Jeb Bush visited the Chinese province of Hainan, where he talked about stronger economic ties, and in January 2012 met with the former Chinese Vice President Xi Jinping, now the President of China. Xi Jinping said the Bush family had made great contributions to promoting relations between China and the United States, “which the two nations and the two peoples will not forget.”
Gussack comments, “Naturally, Bush was following in his father’s and brother’s footsteps in the promotion of the economic and political interests of a communist enemy of the United States. The Bush family was another case of a family rooted in transnational capital which promoted Beijing’s interests, rather than solely the advancement of American national interests.”
In a piece entitled, “Is the U.S. Being Colonized By Red China?,” Tom Deweese, president of the American Policy Center, wrote that “The genius of the Chinese system is that they are using its growing industrial might to create wealth the Soviets could never have dreamed of possessing. China is using its vast wealth (trillions of dollars) compiled from the glut of Chinese goods sold in American stores, to buy its power. It’s buying American debt and wielding heavy influence on the American economy.”
DeWeese argued that through the so-called Immigrant Investor Regional Centers of the U.S. Citizen and Immigration Service, countries like China are investing in American communities with federal help. “While the program is open to immigrants from around world, the main interest appears to be from Communist China,” he said, adding that “the waning American economy and a U.S. government that no longer sees communism as a threat, makes us vulnerable to a power that knows exactly what it seeks.”
Trump has challenged this kind of pandering to Beijing and other foreign interests, leading radio talk show host Jeffrey T. Kuhner to comment that Trump “is a Teddy Roosevelt-style nationalist, who seeks to break the stranglehold of Big Business, Big Media and Big Government. Moreover, his vast wealth means that he cannot be bought and paid for.”
Kuhner added, “Economic nationalism has been a cardinal principle of conservatism dating back to our Founding Fathers. George Washington, Alexander Hamilton and John Adams—all supported protective tariffs and a trade policy that guaranteed America’s economic independence.”
While his comments on criminal aliens have garnered the attention, Trump’s criticism of the trade practices of foreign countries may be what ultimately sets him apart from the other Republican contenders. It could be his path to the Republican nomination and victory in 2016.
06/29/15
Forum: Is it Time To Replace The GOP? Would You Support A New Party?
Every week on Monday morning, the Council and our invited guests weigh in at the Watcher’s Forum with short takes on a major issue of the day, the culture or daily living. This week’s question: Is it Time To Replace The GOP? Would You Support A New Party?
The Noisy Room: I am very close to that pivot shift. The tipping point for me will be the nomination for 2016. If a true conservative does not clinch the nomination due to RINO machinations, then I will swing to a Third Party, consequences be damned. There will be those who say, if you do that, Hillary Clinton is assured the ascendency. My reply to that is if someone such as Jeb Bush is nominated, Hillary Clinton or the likes of Bernie Sanders will win anyway and we have nothing to lose anymore. I truly believe if a candidate such as Ted Cruz is forced to run on a Third Party ticket, he stands an excellent chance of winning – barring voter fraud and being assassinated by the powers-that-be.
I believe a new Civil Rights movement has just been born out of this week’s Supreme Court rulings. The end of our Constitutional government is upon us with lawless rulings from the bench and the dissolution of the three branches of government into one monstrously corrupt executive behemoth. Leaders will now rise in that movement and Ted Cruz will almost certainly be one of them. He is one of the few with the stones to stand and tell it like it is. He is also a master debater and won’t be silenced. I am joining with other Constitutionalists out there such as Trevor Loudon, James Simpson, Cliff Kincaid, Wild Bill, the Black Robe Regiment and many, many others calling for civil resistance. We will not comply. A third party could very well be at the forefront of the resistance. As Daniel Greenfield of Sultan Knish penned it, be the best saboteur you can be.
The Independent Sentinel: I always said that I would wait until 2016 to give up on Republicans and I would prefer to do that. They are our only hope and they haven’t had the majority they need to overrule Barack Obama on anything except those bills that liberals like.
Oddly, when the Democrats held power, they got what they wanted and now that they don’t hold power, they get what they want. The establishment refuses to use the power of the purse. It appears that the Republican establishment is too weak-willed to fight back, think keeping their jobs is the prime objective, or maybe they are just as liberal as the Democrats.
The establishment is now punishing Conservatives who do what their constituents want over their demands. We see Mitch McConnell ripping into the Confederate flag instead of telling people that flag was a creation of the Democratic party. The list of unappealing Republican establishment responses is endless.
If they don’t cut it out and if they shove a RINO down our throats, then I will join any reasonable movement to start a third party.
JoshuaPundit: I’ve done a lot of thinking about this one, especially as I saw the reaction from all sides to this weeks’ events.
I am by no means a die hard Republican, but I am loyal to certain principles they supposedly represent. I actually hoped that after they won control of congress, we would finally see them do as they promised and uphold those principles again. But we were simply lied to.
I no longer feel it is possible to hijack or take control of the GOP. My own feeling is that this Regime’s unprecedented NSA spying and secret data collection unearthed things certain congressmen, government figures and even perhaps a Supreme Court Justice or two desperately want hidden. After all, this president has used these tactics before, and that kind of leverage would certainly account for his aggressive attitude since the midterms. Whether it’s that or simple cowardice or avarice, it doesn’t matter.
I also no longer see waiting around until 2016 as an option. The time to organize is now, a year and a half before the elections so that cohesive principles can be agreed on, strategy plotted out and lines of communication opened. We need to act to secure the liberty of ourselves and our prosperity, rather than once again depending on the Republican Party (or the Democrats, for that matter) to do it for us.
Doing so gives us a much larger, united seat at the table. And it provides a framework for something new and badly, badly needed.
And another thing to consider… we may need that unity and that structure before 2016. These recent decisions have quite a bit of teeth in them and the way they’re certain to be enforced by the Obama Administration is pretty clear, at least to me.
Laura Rambeau Lee, Right Reason: Those of us who actually care enough about our country to follow politics have come to the realization that both the Democrat and Republican Party no longer represent the American people. Unfortunately, while we grew up, went to work, raised our families, and pursued our personal version of the American Dream, the “trusted servants” we elected to protect our rights and interests were pursuing their own agendas. When we finally realized what was happening we got involved and worked very hard to get professed “conservative” Republicans elected, only to be bitterly disappointed once they took office.
We now know that no one, or very few, of our elected officials are working and looking out for our interests. The Democrat Party has been infiltrated with progressives bent on destroying everything that has made America great, in particular the middle class. The Republicans are no better, beholden to big corporations and bankers, also at the expense of the middle class. The government has become a massive wealth redistribution machine through the confiscatory theft of our hard earned wages via numerous tax and regulatory policies.
After last week’s Supreme Court decisions, it has become even more apparent that activist judges allow their political leanings to color their decisions instead of considering the cases before them with strict scrutiny and interpretation of the Constitution. We are no longer a nation that follows the rule of law or respects the will of the people or state’s rights.
We do need a third party and I would support one. The question is do we have enough time to turn everything around, and who would stand for us and be our voice.
Bookworm Room: To put it bluntly, I think that the Republican Party sucks eggs. It does not represent conservatives. Instead, as James Taranto long-ago said, it represents Leftists who have a slight edge on Democrats when it comes to fiscal conservativism. The GOPers are on board with every single Progressive idea — they just think that we ought to be a little more responsible about paying as we travel down The Road to Serfdom.
Having said that, I think true conservatives lack the critical mass to create a meaningful third party, especially with a pivotal election less than a year and a half away. Moreover, in this technologically driven age, the Republican Party has the infrastructure, and that’s something that can’t quickly be replicated either.
What I’d like to see is a coup without the Republican Party. Not having previously been of a revolutionary frame of mind, I’m not quite sure how to go about doing this, but I would certainly begin with fighting vigorously in the Republican primaries to destroy every RINO, starting with Boehner and McConnell.
Interestingly, an idea that has been picking up more and more traction in the comments section at my own blog is the feeling that, true to his Chicago roots, Obama has been blackmailing people like Boehner, Roberts, and McConnell. Indeed, my readers feel that the prosecution against Hastert was a little warning to all three of them to toe the Obama line with both the trade deal and the Obamacare ruling.
I have to admit that this idea, crazy though it is, seems more and more feasible lately. It certainly explains a lot of the insanity going on at the highest level of Republican governance, including Trey Gowdy’s peculiar inept and slow Benghazi investigation.
It was Sherlock Holmes who said when you have eliminated the impossible, whatever remains, however improbable, must be the truth. Either that, or I’m getting even more crazy than the Leftists.
The Glittering Eye: In political science there’s something called “Duverger’s law”. That’s the observed tendency of all non-proportional representation, “first past the post” representative democracies to become two party systems. The implication is that any third party is strictly a temporary phenomenon–it won’t be able to stay around long enough to gain any real influence. Add to that the reality that when the electorate is closely divided between the two surviving parties a third party tends to throw elections towards the party it is least like and you’ve got a pretty substantial argument against a third party.
Forty-five years ago I read a very interesting history of the New York State Conservative Party that outlined the circumstances peculiar to New York that made its creation a sensible move and articulated the party’s role: to nudge the Republican Party, in New York at the time very much more liberal than it is now (remember John Lindsay?), in a direction more to its liking. Unless and until we go to a proportional representation system that’s the role I’d see for any third party and I think the Tea Party is filling that role pretty effectively for the Republicans.
Don Surber: Meh.
Ask Marion: It is absolutely time for the GOP to go, as did the Whig party, whom they replaced!
The GOP leadership has stabbed their base, as well as the American people in general, in the back and has sold out to the ruling elite, as have the Democrats. For anyone who doubts that or does not keep up with the day to day treachery in Washington, D.C. please read: The Time For Changing Is Now. The time for change ”is” now, and in order to save America and what freedoms we have left, the change must take place swiftly in the form of not a 3rd party but rather a new replacement party, nullifying the GOP.
The creation of a 3rd party while leaving the GOP in place would just weaken the ability of average Americans to fight for and win back what the Constitution gives us. A new party must replace the Republican party. It is something I have fought supporting for a long time, but the past couple of weeks have proven that we cannot wait any longer.
As Sarah Palin said when she was asked this same question. “;I do not wish to leave the Republican Party, but if they leave me…?!?” Well their leadership seems to be leaving all of us, leaving me no choice but to support a new party to replace them!
Wolf Howling: It is time for a lot of things. One is a complete restructuring of our completely out of control courts. Two is a requirement that no regulation pass into effect until voted on by our elected representatives As to time for a third party, under normal circumstance, the answer would be a resounding yes. The Republican hierarchy are leading the way in enacting Obama’s second term agenda. Having voted Republicans into office in what was a historic wave election, they promptly rolled over and played dead. It is long past time for a third party. Our current crop of Republican congresscritters, as currently constituted, are a fifth column.
That said, we are on the knife’s edge of being so far transformed by Obama and the left, that to support a third party now would be to kiss America – the America envisioned by our Founders and written into our Constitution – goodbye forever. We need to vote for the most conservative candidate – and that appears to me to be either Ted Cruz or Carly Fiorina. We then have to hope against hope that it actually makes a difference in the direction our country is headed.
Well, there you have it.
Make sure to tune in every Monday for the Watcher’s Forum. And remember, every Wednesday, the Council has its weekly contest with the members nominating two posts each, one written by themselves and one written by someone from outside the group for consideration by the whole Council. The votes are cast by the Council and the results are posted on Friday morning.
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06/20/15
06/17/15
Study Marxism to Understand Hillary
By: Cliff Kincaid
Accuracy in Media
Former Florida Governor Jeb Bush’s speech that launched his presidential campaign on Monday noted that Hillary Clinton’s “progressive agenda” includes the admonition that traditional religious beliefs “have to be changed.” Mrs. Clinton’s entire quote, in talking about opposition to her version of feminism and demands for abortion, was that “…deep-seated cultural codes, religious beliefs and structural biases have to be changed.”
Bush also said of the Democrats, “They have offered a progressive agenda that includes everything but progress.”
But it’s never been the case that the progressive agenda offers real progress, as ordinary people understand the term. Instead, the “progressives” offer what Professor Paul Kengor calls cultural Marxism. This is the planned disintegration of the traditional family structure that has been the basis of Western civilization. Kengor, author of the new book, Takedown: From Communists to Progressives, How the Left Has Sabotaged Family and Marriage, told me in an interview that the progressives are guided by the belief that “new rights are coming all the time and that everything is in a state of evolution.” He added, “There are no absolutes for them.” Hence, the gay rights movement has now morphed into rights for so-called transgenders, as we see in the relentless media propaganda that is designed to convince the public that men can, and perhaps should, become women. Kengor says the next step is for “progress” or “evolution” to a new level that includes such concepts and arrangements as multiple wives, group marriages, sibling marriages, fathers and stepfathers marrying daughters and stepdaughters, and uncles marrying nieces.
It’s no secret that Bill and Hillary Clinton’s family structure exists in name only. Bill, the disgraced former president impeached by the House, betrayed Hillary and had sex with a White House intern. He is a serial adulterer. But the Clintons have stayed together for political reasons, so that Hillary can pursue her political career. Together, along with daughter Chelsea, this arrangement has generated nearly $2 billion in donations to a family foundation that now finds itself embroiled in financial scandals over where the money went, and what it paid for.
Looking back on Mrs. Clinton’s career, I continue to be struck by the wisdom of Barbara Olson, the author of the 1999 book Hell to Pay: The Unfolding Story of Hillary Rodham Clinton. Olson was the lawyer and conservative commentator who was murdered by Islamic terrorists when the aircraft she was on, American Airlines Flight 77, was hijacked and flown into the Pentagon in the September 11, 2001, attacks. The crash killed 125 people on the ground and another 64 passengers and crew.
I interviewed Olson on December 8, 2000, when I hosted a radio show in the Washington, D.C. area. What follows is an edited transcript of that interview.
Q: Do you believe that Hillary Rodham Clinton is a Marxist?
A: I believe she has a political ideology that has its roots in Marxism. In her formative years, Marxism was a very important part of her ideology…But when you look at her ideas on health and education, you see more government and less individual control. You see very little regard for families…
Q: Do you see Hillary as in favor of Socialist-style thinking at the global level?
A: We saw that with her activities as First Lady. She traveled more than any other First Lady. She had a global view. She spoke at the Beijing conference on women. She was very active in organizations and conferences that seem to be concerned about human rights but which are also directed toward a centralized governmental view. That is, one world. I looked at her travels and saw what she was doing. I always assumed Hillary was going to run for president. And I assumed that these international travels and her work with the Beijing women’s conference and the U.N. were going to be her way into the White House; that she was going to have a foreign policy platform that not many women have…
Q: So you do believe that she will run for president?
A: I do. She believes her ideology to the core. She’s worked for it behind Bill Clinton for years. I have thought that Hillary was going to run for the White House since 1993 when I started investigating the Clintons. She doesn’t compromise. She doesn’t come to the center. She believes in a true leftist, Socialist kind of government.
Q: She portrays her causes such as children’s rights and women’s rights in such an attractive manner. She has put conservatives on the defensive once again.
A: She has. That’s the central focus of her public relations campaign…But her ideas about health care and education have very little to do with women and children. They are the lever she uses to bring the government into the family.
Q: She’s been pushing treaties such as the Convention on the Rights of the Child and the Convention on the Elimination of All Forms of Discrimination against Women. Isn’t she promoting global government?
A: Yes. We all know about her book, It Takes a Village. She says the future is not family but the larger village of teachers, pediatricians and social workers. She talks about raising children as less of a parental task than a social one…You have the destruction of the family unit. That’s very basic when you study socialism and Marxism.
Mrs. Clinton’s speech to the Women in the World Summit, where she spoke on how religious beliefs have to be changed, was significant for several reasons. The event was sponsored by Tina Brown, who launched The Daily Beast and later became editor-in-chief of Newsweek. The event was conducted in association with The New York Times, and included actress Meryl Streep and comedian Jon Stewart. These were the elites of the progressive media and Hollywood.
Typically, Mrs. Clinton talked about families at the event. “We know that when women are strong, families are strong,” she said. “When families are strong, countries are strong.” It’s important to understand this comment in light of her own failed marriage, which she has held together for political purposes, and how she has adopted the entire progressive agenda regarding how traditional families have to be changed to accommodate new sexual rights and new “family” structures. Olson’s book is still important in order to understand what Mrs. Clinton means by families, and how Marxists use family-friendly jargon to confuse and mislead. Kengor’s book is absolutely essential to understand how the progressive agenda would continue to transform the nation under a President Hillary Clinton.
Jeb Bush’s presidential campaign announcement demonstrated that he is aware of the political and semantic games that the modern-day progressives are playing on the American people. If he focuses on this Marxist strain in the Democratic Party in order to identify the forces that are rotting America to the core, he will find many conservatives receptive to his message. At the same time, if he pursues this course, the progressives in the media who gathered around Hillary Clinton during that April feminist summit will come down on the former Florida governor like a ton of bricks.
Will Bush follow up with a full frontal assault on the progressive forces destroying America? Or will he wilt under pressure and make nice with those prepared to destroy the country he wants to lead?
05/18/15
Did Hillary Clinton support UN policy that would have criminalized Pamela Geller’s ‘Draw Muhammad’ contest?
By: Benjamin Weingarten
TheBlaze
Presumed Republican presidential candidate Jeb Bush was recently asked about the “Draw Muhammad” contest in Garland, TX that was attacked by two jihadists, and what Mr. Bush thought of event organizer and ardent counterjihadist Pamela Geller.
Democratic presidential candidate Hillary Clinton was not, but a new book gives insight into how she might think about the issue given her support as Secretary of State of a policy put forth by the Organization of Islamic Cooperation (OIC) at the UN that comes into direct conflict with the First Amendment.
NEW YORK – SEPTEMBER 26: U.S. Secretary of State Hillary Clinton (C), talks with Laurent Fabius (R), Minister for Foreign Affairs of France, before a United Nations Security Council meeting on peace and security in Middle East on September 26, 2012 in New York City. (Credit: Getty Images)
As Maj. Stephen Coughlin (Ret.) writes in his “Catastrophic Failure: Blindfolding America in the Face of Jihad,” which we discussed at length here, the OIC put forth a “Ten-Year Programme of Action to Meet Challenges Facing the Muslim Ummah in the 21st Century” approved in December 2005, one section of which dealt with “Combatting Islamophobia.”
In this area, the goal of the OIC — which some argue serves as something of a caliphate representing 56 Islamic states and the Palestinian Authority — specifically was to:
Emphasize the responsibility of the international community, including all governments, to ensure respect for all religions and combat their defamation.
Endeavor to have the United Nations adopt an international resolution to counter Islamophobia and to call upon all states to enact laws to counter it, including deterrent punishment. [Emphasis Coughlin’s]
This goal was codified in UN Human Rights Commission (HRC) Resolution 16/18. The resolution entails
Combating intolerance, negative stereotyping and stigmatization of, and discrimination, incitement to violence, and violence against persons based on religion or belief…
According to Coughlin — who in addition to being a leading advisor to the Pentagon on Islamic law is a practicing lawyer specializing in international jurisprudence — key to HRC Resolution 16/18 in the eyes of the OIC is the notion of criminalizing “incitement to violence,” as a means of “deterrent punishment.” The OIC desires that:
the United Nations, the European Union, the United States and all other non-Muslim countries pass laws criminalizing Islamophobia. This is a direct extraterritorial demand that non-Muslim jurisdictions submit to Islamic law and implement shariah-based punishment over time. In other words, the OIC is set on making it an enforceable crime for non-Muslim people anywhere in the world—including the United States—to say anything about Islam that Islam does not permit.
The crux of Coughlin’s argument is the language contained in an interlocking web of documents including the UN’s International Covenant on Civil and Political Rights (ICCPR) and the Cairo Declaration on Human Rights in Islam.
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Three particular portions of the ICCPR are critical:
- Article 18: (1) Everyone shall have the right to freedom of thought, conscience and religion. This right shall include freedom to have or to adopt a religion or belief of his choice, and freedom, either individually or in community with others and in public or private, to manifest his religion or belief in worship, observance, practice and teaching. (2) No one shall be subject to coercion which would impair his freedom to have or to adopt a religion or belief of his choice. (3) Freedom to manifest one’s religion or beliefs may be subject only to such limitations as are prescribed by law and are necessary to protect public safety, order, health, or morals or the fundamental rights and freedoms of others. (4) The States Parties to the present Covenant undertake to have respect for the liberty of parents and, when applicable, legal guardians to ensure the religious and moral education of their children in conformity with their own convictions.
- Article 19(2/3): (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 his 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 are 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(2): Any advocacy of national, racial or religious hatred that constitutes incitement to discrimination, hostility or violence shall be prohibited by law.
Coughlin notes that the UN’s “Rabat Plan of Action on the Prohibition of Advocacy of National, Racial or Religious Hatred that Constitutes Incitement to Discrimination, Hostility or Violence: Conclusions and Recommendations Emanating from the Four Regional Expert Workshops Organised [sic] by OHCHR, in 2011, and adopted by experts in Rabat, Morocco on 5 October 2012” incorporates Article 20(2) explicitly by way of a footnote on the very title of the plan of action itself.
In other words, the UN Human Rights Council defines incitement according to ICCPR standards.
The action plan further states that HRC Resolution 16/18 “requires implementation and constant follow-up by States at the national level, including through the “Rabat Plan of Action” which contributes to its fulfilment [sic].”
The plan therefore would appear to serve the ends sought by the OIC in its “Ten-Year Programme of Action.”
Perhaps not surprisingly then, Coughlin reveals that during a 2012 interview, OIC Secretary General Ekmeleddin İhsanoğlu argued that the strictures of the ICCPR could be applied via HRC Resolution 16/18:
At this moment we have the Resolution 16/18 which was issued last year at the UN which forms a legal groundwork for criminalizing such actions that could lead to violence … there is in the International Agreement for Civil and Political Rights (Year 1966 Paragraph 18), a provision that would allow us to put limits on the misuse of the freedom of speech including misuse of freedom of press, freedom of thought, the misuse of these freedoms towards others, in a sense that it would encourage to violence and to hatred based on religious belief. [Bold emphasis Coughlin’s, italics ours]
But while the UN in general and OIC in particular make clear their intent to apply the ICCPR as a means of criminalizing acts of “incitement” in context of Islamophobia, the parallelism of ICCPR Articles 19 and 20 to the OIC’s Cairo Declaration is perhaps most telling.
Article 22 of the Cairo Declaration — which defines human rights according to Shariah law — reads:
(a) Everyone shall have the right to express his opinion freely in such manner as would not be contrary to the principles of the Shari’ah. (1) Everyone shall have the right to advocate what is right, and propagate what is good, and warn against what is wrong and evil according to the norms of Islamic Shari’ah. … (c) Information is a vital necessity to society. It may not be exploited or misused in such a way as may violate sanctities and the dignity of Prophets, undermine moral and ethical Values or disintegrate, corrupt or harm society or weaken its faith. (d) It is not permitted to excite nationalistic or doctrinal hatred or to do anything that may be an incitement to any form or racial discrimination.
Coughlin argues that this language is fully consistent with the ICCPR, again leading to the repurposing of the word “incitement” as a means to enforce Shariah compliance. He states:
It is in this context that the OIC’s “test of consequences” narrative is used to turn the meaning of incitement in Article 20 Section 2 [of the ICCPR] on its head by converting it to a legal standard designed to facilitate the “shut up before I hit you again” standard associated with the battered wife syndrome. The OIC’s Fourth Observatory Report on Islamophobia [link ours], released in June 2011, calls for:
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 on religious grounds with a view to curbing the double standards and racial profiling that continue to feed religious strife detrimental to peace, security and stability.
e. Constructively engaging to bridge divergent views on the limits to the right to freedom of opinion and expression, in a structured multilateral framework, and in the light of events like the burning of Quran geared towards 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.’ [Emphasis Coughlin’s]
Under the OIC’s redefinition of incitement, the “test of consequences” allows a third party to use an utterance as a provocation to violence, which then becomes sanctioned precisely because the third party acted out violently. Moreover, what criminalizes the utterance is the third party’s decision to respond violently. The “test of consequences” institutionalizes the calculated suppression of protected speech by naked use of force. This is institutionalized terrorism comfortably nested in facially neutral language.
What does a UN HRC resolution and the OIC’s interpretation of said resolution have to do with Hillary Clinton?
On July 15, 2011, then-Secretary of State Clinton offered America’s backing to OIC Secretary General İhsanoğlu to garner support for the implementation and ratification of HRC Resolution 16/18. Secretary Clinton stated:
I want to applaud the Organization of Islamic Conference and the European Union for helping pass Resolution 16/18 at the Human Rights Council. I was complimenting the Secretary General on the OIC team in Geneva. I had a great team there as well. So many of you were part of that effort. And 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 fight intolerance wherever it occurs. Under this resolution, the international community is taking a strong stand for freedom of expression and worship, and against discrimination and violence based upon religion or belief. [Emphasis Coughlin’s]
Clinton continued:
The resolution calls upon states to protect freedom of religion, to counter offensive expression through education, interfaith dialogue, and public debate, and to prohibit discrimination, profiling, and hate crimes, but not to criminalize speech unless there is an incitement to imminent violence. We will be looking to all countries to hold themselves accountable and to join us in reporting to the UN’s Office of the High Commissioner of Human Rights on their progress in taking these steps.
America apparently would be subject to this resolution, as Clinton noted that she had asked:
Ambassador-at-Large for Religious Freedom, Suzan Johnson Cook, to spearhead our implementation efforts. And to build on the momentum from today’s meeting, later this year the United States intends to invite relevant experts from around the world to the first of what we hope will be a series of meetings to discuss best practices, exchange ideas, and keep us moving forward beyond the polarizing debates of the past; to build those muscles of respect and empathy and tolerance that the secretary general referenced. It is essential that we advance this new consensus and strengthen it, both at the United Nations and beyond, in order to avoid a return to the old patterns of division.
To be fair to Secretary of State Clinton, Coughlin asserts that “it is not clear that the Secretary knows OIC concepts of tolerance and human rights are based on shariah.”
But, Coughlin continues, “she nonetheless committed to the underlying logic of Resolution 16/18.”
Moreover, Coughlin believes that Clinton tacitly recognizes the conflict between the policy she supported at the UN and Constitutionally protected free speech, with Clinton continuing in her 2011 statement:
In the United States, I will admit, there are people who still feel vulnerable or marginalized as a result of their religious beliefs. And we have seen how the incendiary actions of just a very few people, a handful in a country of nearly 300 million, can create wide ripples of intolerance. We also understand that, for 235 years, freedom of expression has been a universal right at the core of our democracy. So we are focused on promoting interfaith education and collaboration, enforcing antidiscrimination laws, protecting the rights of all people to worship as they choose, and 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. [Emphasis Coughlin’s]
These sentiments might help to explain why Secretary of State Clinton along with President Obama felt compelled to send a message to the Muslim world in the aftermath of the Sept. 11, 2012 attacks in Benghazi disavowing any link between the U.S. government and the infamous “Innocence of Muslims” YouTube video.
Given what we know, one wonders what Secretary of State Clinton might say about Pamela Geller’s “Draw Muhammad” event.
Note: The links to the book in this post will give you an option to elect to donate a percentage of the proceeds from the sale to a charity of your choice. Mercury One, the charity founded by TheBlaze’s Glenn Beck, is one of the options. Donations to Mercury One go towards efforts such as disaster relief, support for education, support for Israel and support for veterans and our military. You can read more about Amazon Smile and Mercury One here.
05/16/15
05/15/15
Only one presidential candidate besides Hillary Clinton appears in the bombshell ‘Clinton Cash’ — in a very sordid episode
By: Benjamin Weingartin
TheBlaze
Peter Schweizer’s “Clinton Cash” links Bill and Hillary Clinton through their work at the Clinton Foundation and State Department to all manner of unsavory characters, including authoritarian leaders, African warlords and businessmen with dubious backgrounds, in addition to more respectable Clinton political operatives and supporters who in Schweizer’s writing paid the Clintons and enriched themselves by way of projects supported by the Clintons.
One Clinton-linked transaction however implicates another figure: presumed 2016 GOP presidential candidate Jeb Bush.
In a chapter titled “Disaster Capitalism,” Schweizer explores the dealings of the Clinton Foundation — in league with Secretary of State Hillary Clinton — in Haiti following the devastating January 2010 earthquake that claimed the lives of approximately 230,000 people.
In the wake of the disaster, the Clintons immersed themselves in the relief effort, helping procure and allocate funds towards activities such as cleaning debris, fixing roads, and arranging deals for things like building telecommunications infrastructure and constructing homes, with varying degrees of success but almost universal financial rewards for those connected in one way or another with the Clintons.
It is in the area of home construction where former Florida Governor Jeb Bush appears.
Clinton supporter and former Democratic presidential candidate General Wesley Clark traveled to Port-au-Prince Haiti in the wake of the earthquake to lobby Haitian president René Préval for a home-building contract for a south Florida company in which Clark was a board member called Innovida.
One of Clark’s colleagues on the Innovida board was Jeb Bush.
What would happen to Innovida serves as a microcosm of what Schweizer dubs the “Clinton Blur” between philanthropy, politics and business.
As Schweizer tells it:
[Wesley] Clark was a big cheerleader for the company [Innovida]. “It can do more for housing in Haiti, better and faster, than any other technology out there,” he said. Innovida’s ties to the Clintons ran even deeper than Clark. According to the South Florida Business Journal, Innovida’s CEO Claudio Osorio was a “big fundraiser” for the Hillary 2008 campaign and had contributed to CGI.
Innovida had little track record of actually building homes. Yet the company saw its project fast-tracked by the Haitain government and the State Department. Innovida received a $10 million loan from the US government to build five hundred houses in Haiti.
Sadly, the houses were never built. In 2012 Osorio was indicted and convicted of financial fraud. Prosecutors would later accuse Osorio, who drove a Maserati and lived in a Miami Beach mansion, of using the money intended for relief victims to “repay investors and for his and his co-conspirators personal benefit and to further the fraud scheme.” He was ultimately sentenced to twelve years in jail. Innovida collapsed.
Of Bush’s involvement with Innovida, Jim Geraghty at National Review wrote in a January 2015 post:
The Washington Post put an article about Jeb Bush’s ties to InnoVida on page A1 on Monday. The article was careful to state that “there is no evidence that Bush had any knowledge of the fraud.” The law-enforcement cases against the company mentioned Bush only in passing, describing him as out of the loop, basically a prop used to enhance the company’s stature. A 2012 Securities and Exchange Commission lawsuit against the company, Osorio, and company CFO Craig Toll said that “to add an air of legitimacy to InnoVida, Osorio recruited a high-profile board of directors for InnoVida that included a former governor of Florida.”
Osorio’s lawyer, Humberto Dominguez, told the Post that “Bush had nothing to do with the scheme” and that Bush had been brought in only for his business connections. One of the company’s investors, Christopher Korge, told the paper that he was “impressed with Bush’s response” once serious questions of Osorio’s dishonesty were brought to his attention. According to a legal statement in U.S. bankruptcy court, Bush, on September 19, 2010, “severed all ties” to InnoVida, “expressing concerns over Debtors’ governance and urging the Debtors to adopt more professional transparent business practices, including obtaining audits by a national accounting firm.” This was about nine months after the company received the OPIC loan [a $3.3 million U.S. government loan to build and operate a panel-manufacturing facility in Haiti].
Geraghty continues:
Still, Bush’s relationship with the company was relatively long and lucrative. According to the bankruptcy-court filing, from December 5, 2007, to September 16, 2010, InnoVida and Miami Worldwide Partners, an entity affiliated with the Osorios, collectively disbursed $468,901.71 in payments and expenses to Jeb Bush & Associates, the former governor’s consulting firm. In March 2013, Jeb Bush & Associates paid $270,000.00 to Soneet R. Kapila, the trustee attempting to return money to InnoVida investors who were defrauded. Bush’s firm admitted no wrongdoing, and asserted that it merely “provided services in good faith for reasonably equivalent value.”
… The legal documents paint a picture of Bush remaining out of the loop on all of the fraudulent activities of Osorio and the company, asking questions about the lack of audited financial documents, and then cutting ties when his questions weren’t answered adequately and investors raised questions about Osorio’s honesty.
But obliviousness to a business partner’s crimes isn’t a great look for an aspiring president. And it’s painfully easy to picture a future Republican rival, the DNC, or American Bridge PAC running an attack ad against Bush with the entirely accurate statement that “Jeb Bush spent years on the corporate board of a company that took government money and promised to help Haitian earthquake victims . . . and then turned around and spent it on themselves.”
Particularly relevant in context of “Clinton Cash” is how Geraghty concludes his post:
… [T]he idea of Osorio causing headaches for a potential GOP presidential candidate is ironic, in light of the fact that he and his wife were high-level Democratic-party fundraisers. The pair had hosted fundraisers for both Clintons and both Obamas, and in fact lamented to the Wall Street Journal that they had a bad experience at the 2008 Democratic National Convention:
Amarilis Osorio and her husband, Claudio, a Miami Beach, Fla., entrepreneur, decided at the last minute to attend the convention. The couple held a fund-raiser at their house earlier this month with Sen. Obama’s wife, Michelle, and raised $400,000. “We had to fly commercial — a private jet was too expensive,” said Ms. Osorio. “And our hotel room is dreadful.”
In 2013, the Clinton Foundation returned a $22,000 donation from Osorio.
Worthy of note is the fact that the Clintons and Bushes have developed a close rapport since Bill Clinton left office, as detailed in Daniel Halper’s “Clinton Inc.”
Peter Schweizer has indicated that he is currently probing Jeb Bush’s finances as part of his next project.
Note: The links to the books in this post will give you an option to elect to donate a percentage of the proceeds from the sale to a charity of your choice. Mercury One, the charity founded by TheBlaze’s Glenn Beck, is one of the options. Donations to Mercury One go towards efforts such as disaster relief, support for education, support for Israel and support for veterans and our military. You can read more about Amazon Smile and Mercury One here.
05/13/15
In Memoriam
Available at Amazon.com 
