The End of Religious Freedom
Time has run out for the cause of worldwide religious freedom. On November 18, 2011, America chose not to extend any further lifeline to persecuted religious minorities around the planet. On that day, the U.S. government shut down the work of an important and unique American effort: the U.S. Commission on International Religious Freedom (USCIRF).
Oddly enough, the mainstream media does not seem to have covered this story. I certainly did not know about it. Did you? The only article about this appeared at CNS News.
In 1998, the U.S. government passed the Religious Freedom Act and this commission was one of the results. Since then, it has sent delegations abroad to meet with minority religious leaders in Africa, the Middle East, and central Asia, and released reports about their work. In 2011, their Annual Report covered countries such as Afghanistan, Belarus, Burma, China, Cuba, Egypt, Eritrea, India, Indonesia, and Iran.
In 2011, Nina Shea, the head commissioner, presented testimony before members of Congress about Christian minorities under attack in Iraq and Egypt. In this hearing, Shea reported:
USCIRF has found serious, widespread, and longstanding human rights violations against religious minorities as well as disfavored Muslims. Confronted by these violations, the Egyptian government has failed to take the necessary steps to halt the discrimination and repression against Christians and other minorities. Too often, it has failed to punish the violators.
Shea discussed the New Year’s Day bombing in Alexandria, which led to the worst attack targeting Christians in a decade. Carefully, without saying that Muslims or the Egyptian Muslim police were the perpetrators, she refered to the “Coptic Christmas shooting that killed six innocent Christians in Naga Hammadi.” Over the last two years, the Egyptian government, media, and network of mosques have systematically engaged in violence and in the coverup of that violence against Christians.
In an interview with PJ Media, Shea said,
With the onslaught of the Arab Winter and the threat of newly politically empowered Islamists suppressing the freedoms of religious minorities and even carrying out religious cleansing campaigns against them, USCIRF is needed more than ever. Its voice carries official weight and it has vigorously and consistently raised it within and outside the government on behalf of a broad array of persecuted minorities and individuals around the world. At this time, USCIRF is winding down its work, as it is legally bound to do, since its authorization ends on December 16. As reported in the Congressional Quarterly, Senator Durbin of Illinois has blocked the USCIRF reauthorization for several months, reportedly in order to get an earmark to fund a prison in his state. He has been intractable. President Obama — who served with Mr. Durbin in the Senate before becoming president and who has expressed an interest in using the prison at issue for holding detainees from Guantanamo Bay – must speak up, if USCIRF is to continue. President Obama can make this happen and I appeal to him to do so.
Why would the American government shut down USCIRF now? Some might say that we are in an economic recession and must care fo our own before we can help others. Some secular Americans might simply want freedom from religion rather than of religion. They may not care about the choice to practice one’s religion or whether or not people are being persecuted for doing so. And some Americans may agree with the UN view that Muslims and Islam are not to be criticized and that any accurate portrayal of Muslim behavior may be treated as a crime.
Next: The USCIRF’s opponent still pursues its totalitarian aims with the blessing of the global community…
America is not the Ten Commandments with arms nor is it a refugee center. As much as I sympathize with the ills of the world, I am tired of having a World Police helmet nailed onto my head. The money for this and a million other causes doesn’t come from nowhere but from my gov’t and it has debased my currency and taken money from Americans.
Oh what a beautiful thing. Instead of showing interest in aiding people with similar beliefs to the majority of Americans you decide to plummet us into isolation. Nothing ventured nothing gained is a truism and isolationists get no benefits from a globalized world unless they participate. The USA is part of a global economy now and any good will does us good.
By your foolish statement you’d condemn us all to hiding in our cellars hoping no one asks for assistance. America may not be “the Ten Commandments with arms” but we are a society built on Judeo/Christian norms. The money that you whine so pathetically about instead gets poured into wonderful acts like LGBT tolerance initiatives in other countries. Not in this country, but others. Nice choice.
You and I are both perfectly free to pursue private charity work to our heart’s content. Trying to force other people to do so by getting gov’t overly involved is depraved. I may have other plans than yourself. This is not foolishness but freedom.
At this point isolationism of any kind or degree is exactly the same thing as sticking your head in the sand while people who really want you dead and gone strengthen and consolidate. They will come to get you if allowed to continue, and the longer you ignore them the worse it becomes.
The result for your wish will be abject slavery. I sincerely hope you do not get to suffer this.
Yeaaaa..trying to force a country that is 90% Christian to worship gay sex is absolutely despicable!
I am 100% certain that nothing even remotely close to that has ever been considered anywhere ever, let alone actually happened.
On a note unrelated to what you said but most likely related to what you intended me to hear, don’t blame your religion for your faults. Furthermore, even if bigotry was a requirement to follow the teachings of a Christ who would have actually been rather opposed to the concept, imposing the views of one particular religious sect, even if that view were shared by 90% of the population, on the rest of the population would be a gross *VIOLATION* of religious freedom.
Religious freedom means that everybody gets their own beliefs and you can’t use yours to harm them, not that you can do whatever you want–hurt whoever you dislike–and excuse it be calling it an expression of religious freedom.
Other people get it, too. That’s what makes it freedom.
And please, I’m a Christian, and you’re implying that I’m a bigot. I think I’m more offended by that than by which of God’s children you call worthless.
Well, if you live in DC or NYC you may get nuked by our enemies. But that will be the result that you wanted, right?
So, by connection, we shouldn’t have bothered getting inro WWII? I mean, after all, why spend the same sort of money and give half-a-million lives besides for what was essentially “someone else’s problem?” P.S. — you picked a hell of a day to remove your pointed cap and expose the pointed head underneith.
What a disingenuous comment. You want to talk about WW II, let’s talk about WW II. You want to talk about NGO’s and American foreign aid that has nothing to do with the military or heavily armed empires and is diabolically stupid, then let’s talk about that.
One has nothing to do with the other and comparing them is wrong.
Apparently the funds will go to a better cause, upholding the rights of the LGBTS (?) crowd. The man-child is making funds available from Mary Gerund et al, for this far nobler cause.
I wonder what kind of political leaning favors one for such a new world enterprise. The movers and shakers who instigated, and will run that new outreach, how do they and their friends vote? How would the politics of the new organization compare to that of the outgoing crowd? And what level of funding is involved?
Dick Durbin, the jihadist’s friend.
Yeah, and since when have women’s studies professors been genuinely keen on religious freedom?
Dick Durbin has been a shill for Obama and for our Muslim enemies from the get-go. See: [LINK] for but one example.
The reason he wants the jihadis imprisoned in Illinois rather than Gitmo is so that he can make sure that they are properly coddled.
Hey, I don’t like Gitmo either – these are illegal combatants who are entitled to the protection of no law and who should have been shot or hanged a long time ago. As long as any of them are alive, our enemies will use them against us in one way or another. They all freely CHOSE, as individuals, to make unprovoked war upon the US.
Some Gitmo prisoners have been released and have resumed fighting against the US. The rest of them are living at taxpayer expense. At the very least, we have no business allowing them to read about, discuss, or practice Islam in prison, just as we did not let Nazi war criminals continue with Nazism in prison.
America need not be “the world’s policeman” or the world’s “refugee center” in order to speak out against injustice, whether in freedom of religion, or freedom itself; nor does it need to spend copious amounts of money to do so. But this is just what America has ceased to do under the Obama regime. We no longer even stand up for our principles just by speaking out.
Our gov’t spent 25 million dollars on an election campaign in Kenya. Extrapolate that out times billions of dollars.
The US government also spent $200 million on the election campaigns in Egypt, in the hopes of bringing the more tolerant political parties to prominence. Alas, %65 percent of the votes went to Islamist parties ( http://www.israelnationalnews.com/News/News.aspx/150501#.TuBjZbJmJ9s ), and thus all that money was wasted.
Isn’t America trillions of dollars in debt?
What utter nonsense: Egypt just finished its own internal audit and found that liberal political parties received squat from the West. They further found that by far the largest monies came from Kuwait, 114 million, and Qatar, 35 million. One Egyptian active in politics even publicly apologized for accusing secular parties in Egypt of receiving Western funding.
So the far right wants to off the NEA arguing that the arts will somehow live without federal funding, yet somehow this program is different. Sounds to me like the far right and the left aren’t arguing over principles after all, but how the taxpayer spoils are divided.
See: road to hell, intentions.
Are religious fanatics blowing up art museums in the US, raping and cutting the throats of artists? The arts, like religion, is a private affair, except that fanatics (mostly Muslims) threaten those that don’t follow their ‘truth’.
There is a huge difference between funding the NEA in order to pay for ‘art’ of dubious merit and funding an organization to promote freedom of expression. If the main purpose of the NEA were to fight for artistic freedom in places where it is trampled down, then your concerns/attacks would have some merit. The issue many have with the NEA is that it pays for a product that, in this country anyway, the market should decide on the merits rather than the taxpayers.
There is a huge difference between funding the NEA in order to pay for ‘art’ of dubious merit and funding an organization to promote freedom of expression.
No difference. The NEA is funded specifically to promote freedom of expression. Do you think I chose this example at random? (Don’t answer. You’re a vapid pinhead, and of course you do.)
You sir, are an ass. Freedom of expression in art is a little different than freedom of existing! I might steal your stupid painting or your stupid poem and you would be very upset. But if I stole your life you would be dead. Or If I stole your wife or child’s life you would be devastated. Don’t play the intellectual with other people’s lives. God, people like you are the reason liberals are so hated. Just like your stupid president who claims that water boarding is torture but shooting someone in the head who is unarmed is not. Water boarding leads to nothing more than a raw nostril. Ask Osama how his head feels.
inspector — I see that rather than address the point that the right feels free to spend on federal programs just as the left does results in you calling me names and accusing me of being a liberal. Nice.
Address the point if you can. The “conservatives” want to kill fed programs because they claim they’re not constitutional. But not this one. Hmmm. This says that “conservatives” aren’t *really* interested in the constitution, they’re interested in christian issues. And everybody gets to pay.
No different than the left, just squabbling over *which* programs and who gets to rule the proles. If this were a case of simple intellectual dishonesty you’d be a hypocrite and trying to disguise it by wrapping yourself in a bible. But you’re not quite smart enough to be a hypocrite, are you?
So says the man who called someone who disagreed with him a “vapid pinhead.”
If you are proposing to defund both the NEA and USCRIF, I would support you. But if I had to choose between one and the other I would choose USCRIF. Preventing people from being murdered for their religion is more important than funding crappy leftist art. Until the left is also willing to defund their sacred cows as well as the rights, I see no reason why the right should not continue to fight for programs like this.
Like your trying to enforce your ‘truth’ right now?
I piss on you… artistically arranged of course.
I would like to ‘off’ the NEA and PBS because state run media and state run arts (and don’t tell me that people applying for NEA money know who they have to please and how) restricts and coerces free expression by in effect enforcing a single arbiter of taste and a single point of view.
I think thats bad.
Yes the NEA. As well as the TSA, NIH, FDA, FAA, USDA, FDC, NIH, SBA, OEA, DOE, DOC, USAID, DOL, FAA, EPA, FEMA, and every other federal alphabet soup agency that is not directly authorized by the U S Constitution.
Amen. As to religious freedom? Isn’t that what missionaries are for?
What is the purpose of the United States of America? Isn’t one of the purposes a calling to provide freedom to people wherever they may reside? To help provide people of any or no religious persuasion to live peaceably in their own countries directly affects the freedom and welfare of its own citizens.
No that’s not one of the purposes of the U.S. Given this difference in opinion, I give you private action. Leave me out of it. I have my own fish to fry and there is not enough tax payer money to fry them all.
Seals, Copts, Somalians, abused Guatemalan women, Iraqi asylum seekers, Nepalese UNESCO sites, women’s rights in Nigeria, you could draw up a list that is nearly endless. I have a life and it does not consist of righting all that is wrong on the entire globe.
Don’t forget teaching the prostitutes in China how to drink booze responsibly. One thing that really sucks, though, now that it’s been mentioned, is the fact that the liberals are all willing to bring in boatloads of Muslim refugees and plunk them down to live comfortably off taxpayers everywhere across the U.S. (lots here in Minneapolis), even though it’s Muslims of a different cult that are trying to kill them. Meanwhile, both of these types of Muslims are hunting down Christians to rape, dismember, torture, mame, and murder them, but we provide no pathway for Christian refugees to flee the Muslims. That sucks big time! If we can’t take in Christians, then by God, we can’t take in Muslims!!!!
They should change the date of next summer’s Gay Pride Parade in Minneapolis to July 4th and then run it past a mosque so everyone can have free fireworks.
When there’s enough Muslims, they’ll be lined up protesting the parade because “Islam” is Arabic for “bitch-fest.”
Yea I’m sure it consists of more noble things like cheap sex, addiction, hypocrisy, and love of self and I’m sure you’re less libertarian when it comes to teaching children pervert sex stories and calling it sex ed or some man sticking his hands in a hundred thousand wombs to smash a hundred thousand baby skulls.
I’m sorry you live in your miserable little world, but I dont want MY AMERICA to be your pathetic little wimpy isolationist culture of death version!
While being very sympathetic with the spirit of your comment, the sadness must be emphasized that the reality of generous American cash liberally applied inside the likes of Egypt, Afghanistan, Iraq, Pakistan speaks for itself…murky, cloudy, scant results are visible; and, these countries having spoken over and over again to our apparently deaf ears that we Americans are being played as violins.
Our untethered cash is eagerly grasped, while we ourselves are unwelcome and are tolerated merely by being “useful idiots” via a dark variety of subleties we don’t have the wit to see through.
Realism (…realpolitik…)should not be knee-jerkily associated with isolationism.
So, how exactly is this Dick Dirtbag holding up this funding? Is there no way to go around him? I find it hard to believe one man has the power to stop this funding.
Sen. Durbin (D – Ill) is using his senatorial filibustering privelege in its convenient, modern form.
The United States is going BANKRUPT because it’s SPENDING is out of control. Every “pet cause” currently funded by the United States will be going under the bus along with everything else.
This is just getting started people.
RB, not spending this money may have a cost benefit to the US but that ain’t why Turbin Durbin did it. He just wants to grease the palms of some of his taxpayer ripoff crowd in Il. The man never had a thought that he did not calculate the benefit to HIM first before deciding to go or no go.
Those of you arguing in favor of cutting the funding in the name of fiscal responsibility in these hard economic times are missing the point of the article, imo. If it was Jim DeMint who was holding up the funding then I might buy the idea that it was for fiscal reasons. But we know that Durbin doesn’t share our views on fiscal responsibility. He’s happy to spend, spend, spend! So the issue here is: what is Durbin’s motive?
I don’t care what his motive is. I want them to STOP spending money!
His motive is to threaten any and all Liberal organizations and committees with defunding and funding cuts to cast blame on the Republican thrift initiatives.
Purely to inflame one constituency against the other, and it gets him cash to play with in his district. That galvanizes the unions, government employees, and other sections of his voting base.
Actually, this is the Democrat agenda since the TEA Party House members have threatened to cut spending so drastically.
I wouldn’t worry about the center for religious freedom. It’d mostly only go to protecting those Christianists, and a lot of the protected people would be against abortion and gay marriage. So really, why spend any tax dollars to protect them?
Oh yes, let’s kill as many babies as we want, and while we’re at it, let’s not make any babies at all! Let’s just boink with the same sex. With any luck, we can annihlate our own civilization. Let the savages have the babies. You, sir, are compromised in a big way. Freedom is maintained with intelligence, morality, and responsibility, but I don’t think you really understand, and may never…but one can always hope. People with thinking like yours is what is contributing to the decline of American greatness.
Now, I just realized that you may have been using sarcasm. If that is the case, then I direct my comment to others who really do think as you described.
All this bad #&^@ was happening with the commission in existence. And what was the commission doing? Holding meetings. Writing reports. Raising consciousness. A.k.a., squat. We can’t afford everything. And as we conservatives like to remind liberals: good intentions aren’t enough. The work of protecting religious freedom around the world is hugely important. I’m failing to see how this line item in the budget did diddly to protect it. Two cheers for Dick Durbin finding an acorn when the clock was stopped twice a day.
I also agree with private action instead of using the government to force taxpayers to fund an endless list of pet causes.
Government is an entity that has the legal power to enforce a certain set of principles inside a limited geographic area, the jurisdiction. Outside the jurisdictional area (its sovereign territory), any enforcing is de facto no matter how well intentioned. Wars, for instance, are not legal, they can be done for a just cause, but is still de facto action.
So, it’s important to limit the power of governments to make these interventions out of their territories. Cover wars, wars, sabotage, espionage, etc; has to be done under certain legitimate conditions, which is usual the self preservation, or defense. Because all these actions cost a lot of money, time, lives, etc. While war or espionage can be justified to preserve the freedom of the US citizens (for Freedom is a major value in the USA), not so the religious freedom of other countries (that may not value freedom at all). Copts hate jews and are hated by muslims, so let them drink their own poison. Private citizens can take private action together with other people who share their values and goals, but using the government to force everyone to collaborate is not good. Government, as an entity, has to care about the survival of the state primarily.
Joe Blow do you think that the people oppressing the christians are in favor of abortion and gay marriage? If so I suggest that you think again. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/LGBT_rights_in_Egypt
If you think for one minute Christian Copts in Egypt would put up with a gay pride parade in Tahrir Square you are mistaken. Culture in Egypt is being too broadly painted as emanating from Islam only and in fact much of it is simply naked conservatism in which the Copts whole-heartedly share.
Remember, Muslims are not the only ones to ever practice gender segregation: Catholics churches in Central Minnesota in 1965 had women on one side and men on the other and would laugh when the city boy made a mistake and sat in the wrong side and gender segregation is an ongoing problem in Israel today.
Joe Blow, I’m a bit perplexed? What is a “Christianist” and is it equivalent to an Islamist? if so, how?
What? Seriously, you don’t remember when Christianist terrorists hijacked those planes and flew them into OPEC towers in Saudi Arabia, killing thousands? Or the Christianist suicide bombers who’ve blown up crowds on city buses, commuter trains, pizza parlors, and shopping malls? Shot up the Turkish Airlines ticket counter at the Dallas-Fort Worth airport? Or when Christianists put out a death warrant on Da Vinci Code author Dan Brown, calling his book blasphemous and driving him into hiding for a decade?
People forget so much these days. They just don’t remember stuff. Like, I bet no one here even remembers when the Earth blew up…
Oh, I get it, Dick Durbin the Turban of US soldiers are behaving like nazis in Iraq. See, if you want a US commission on religious freedom documenting religious freedom’s reality or unreality in the world, then apparently we have to let those Muslims on jihad indefinitely imprisoned on a US military reservation in Cuba into the United States so they can practice their religion freely, proselytize, and have full access to those due process rights normally not allowed to unlawful combatants, much less not allowed by their own cultural practices. In their own culture they would have already been executed for their acts. Of course, we can’t call them Muslims on Jihad, rag heads, camel jockeys, or otherwise hurt their feelings, but if your a soldier humping the Tora Bora you still have shoot them. There’s nothing like a politically correct police action for fat politicians who have never done it.
Talking Mouse, Alex Bensky: Did your sarcasm detector blow a fuse?
What makes you think that
the assholeJoe Blow was being sarcastic? And if he was being sarcastic then my advice would be for him to try something else. He doesn’t have the skills…While I am concerned about the Islamist persecution of Coptic Christians in Egypt, and while I am even more concerned about the on-going persecution of the Baha’is in Egypt, where they are prevented from even having government ID’s unless they are prepared to lie about their religion. Government ID’s have the options only of Moslem, Jew or Christian. Baha’is, Buddhists, Hindu’s, Jain, Sikh and atheists need not apply.
But as many other posters have pointed out, it’s not our job. I will individually support the Egyptian Baha’is, but I don’t expect my government to do so. It’s an entirely appropriate place for independent non-governmental organizations.
It is interesting that while shutting down USCIRF, the United States has said it will not aid nations that outlaw homosexuality.
http://www.nytimes.com/2011/12/07/world/united-states-to-use-aid-to-promote-gay-rights-abroad.html?pagewanted=1&comments
This may irritate Saudi Arabia and maybe even Turkey.
…not to mention the Palestinians. Or perhaps the great o, for the purpose of circumnavigating this provision, will deem them not to be a “nation” and continue on with his merry funding.
This is one of those cases of “if not the US, who then will save the copts?”.
There is nobody else. The rest of the “world” will just issue condemnations. How did that work out in Darfur-suudan etc…
This is where laser guided bombs come in handy, and our CIA and Special Ops guys. Make the Brotherhood an offer they can not refuse. Leave the copts alone or we start targeting individual Mullah’s. No Apologies, no negotiating. Maybe even target the big-ole-museum in Cairo, that will get their attention.
“This is one of those cases of “if not the US, who then will save the copts?”.”
Why should we Americans save the Copts? Why is it up to us to save a bunch of Arabs whose fanatic Jew-hatred rivals that of their Muslim persecutors? As a Jew, I do not need to import any more people – Christian or Muslim – who want me dead.
Let them be saved by Europe. Europe needs Christians, and Europe is already so poisoned with fanatic Jew-hatred that the Copts will make no difference. We can use the USAF to airlift them across the Mediterranean, but that’s about it.
We Christians started our existence with your people trying to exterminate our people (in case you need clarification, I am specifically charging the Jewish communities of the day with attempting to wipe out the Church, not calling your people “Christ killers”). Yet that did not stop American Christians from allowing your people, who have never at any level of leadership repented of their hostility toward us, from fleeing from pogroms in Eastern Europe.
Mike,
You are right, America – a nation founded by secularist Christians who declared in their Constitution the separation of state from religion – has been incredibly generous and hospitable to its Jewish citizenry. And that is why Jewish people here as in any country which they reside pray for the well-being of the government and its leaders.
According to sources, your perspective on early Jewish persecution of Christians is overstated. On the other hand, while acknowledging the many righteous Christian individuals and leaders who have shown great tolerance and kindness to Jews and Judaism, the counterpoint of Christian persecution of Jews is sadly extensive.
Jewish persecution of Christians:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Persecution_of_Christians
Christian persecution of Jews:
http://www.ushmm.org/research/center/church/persecution/
To Mike T
You state: “We Christians started our existence with your people trying to exterminate our people (in case you need clarification, I am specifically charging the Jewish communities of the day with attempting to wipe out the Church,”
Wrong, Mike T ! The Bible states it was Gentiles – Roman soldiers who crucified Jesus!
It is incorrect and insane for you to “charge Jewish communities of the day with attempting to wipe out the Church.” Have you NEVER read the Bible? Jesus disciples were all Jews. The Jews wrote the Christian Bible and JEWS started the church! You should be thanking Jews, not condemning them!
Be careful what you say about Jews. Jesus was a JEW.
The Egyptian Christian Copts in New York City and New Jersey are NOT Jew-haters! Several months ago in New York City, I attended an Egyptian Christian Copt demonstration against the persecution and murders of Christians in Egypt. I held a large sign saying: Stop Jihad Against Egypt’s Christians and Israel’s Jews. The Egyptian Christians were very happy I attended their protest. A number of them thanked me and they were so pleased with my sign, which included Israel’s Jews, that they interviewed me on their media.
Very enlightening (again) albeit depressing Phyllis. The reactions to this really boggle my mind.
Well maybe USCRIF can be restarted. I sincerely hope and pray that this will be the case.
This is incannily like a 1961 blunder by JFK at the insistence of Robert McNamara.
When the French left Indochina in 54, Ike Eisenhower and Matt Ridgway knew that had a problem looming. So they carefully inserted a single regiment of Marines into Northeast Thailand. This interdicted the Ho Chi Minh Trail AND
served as reinforcement to any across-the-DMZ conventional invasion attempt. Had this single regiment remained in place, the war we knew could not have happened. Enemy capabilities were effectively reduced to assasinations and the like.
USCRIF has served the same type of purpose. Freedom of Religion is to jihadists what H2O was to the wicked witch. Their theo-cultural pathology cannot withstand it and USCRIF was clearing the way for Freedom of Religion.
Without it the Bad Guys have a privileged sanctuary.
If USCRIF is not reinstated, we are going to pay a very steep price.
Thank You Ms Chesler for this information. I never learned about that regiment of Marines until it way way too late. Knowing about this debacle will get me to try to round up some help in reinstateing a vital element.
The US never spelled out fairness or equality (except on paper). It is about control and a reason to insert themselves – and give refuge to spooks, I think. As far as the Muslims…let them kill each other, and save the rest of the world the trouble.
The current situation in the US, including this and similar, it all right now comes down to Obama.
As the Donald properly stated, if we allow another 4 years of this looney tunes, it will be very difficult to rescue the country back. Granted, first time around he confused many ignoramuses (a common species in the US lately, unfortunately), others fell for the panacea of “change” for its sake, white guilt was paramount and was played masterfully in a suave Alinskian fashion, and Obama promised union, and delivered class warfare. Finally, if he is “African American”, I am Chinese. Hope this time around, and before it is too late with the ongoing Mexicanization of the country, we boot this derelict from the White House.
Please check this recent book by Dinesh D’Souza: “The Roots of Obama’s Rage” http://www.amazon.com/Roots-Obamas-Rage-Dinesh-DSouza/dp/1596986255
Stop Indefinite Detention of U.S. Citizens Without Due Process
UPDATE, December 2, 2011: The NDAA bill, S. 1867, was passed by the Senate yesterday. Several amendments regarding detainee detention were voted on. Rand Paul’s amendment to simply strike Section 1031 was not voted on; however, a compromise amendment by Senator Feinstein to clarify the meaning of Section 1031 was approved by a vote of 99-1. Rand Paul voted for this compromise amendment. The Senate and House versions of H.R. 1867 will now go to a joint Senate-House conference committee where differences in the two versions will be reconciled. The resulting conference report bill will then go back to both houses for a final vote. President Obama has said all along that he might veto H.R. 1867 over the detainee provisions. So this drama over the detainee provisions of Section 1031 and 1032 is far from over; however, Congress will be working at a fast pace in order to be able to go home for Christmas by December 16.
Cuz everybody knows, Joe Blow, that Moslems are the world’s biggest supporters of abortion, gay rights, trannies, etc.! (Okay, sarc. off.)
(as for Mary Gerund—I suspect she doesn’t bat an eye at all the aid we give to the Islamic world, or the fact that we’re re-settling vast portions of the Moslem world, such as the Somalis, into our country. But can’t have those awful, Christians! They don’t approve of abortion! Instead, we should all be supporting the wonderful, tolerant, gay-lovin’, feminist, tranny supporting Arab spring! Just ask Joe. /Sarc. off again.)
I don’t know her, but I took from her comment that she wants ALL such aid to stop. I tend to agree.
You’re wrong: I’m in favor of zero aid to Muslim countries and hate the idea of a giant Somali community in Minnesota – I am not an airport or refugee center and this is my point, which you bewilderingly agree with/don’t agree with. 90% of the taxi drivers in MPLS are Somalis or Ethiopians – they can’t build a taxi or the radio or do the metallurgy.
You’ll have to polish up your irony cuz I have no idea what the sarcasm off meant.
Those of you who want to cut everything in gov, including the endlist list of leftist agencies, have some standing in supporting cuts in USCRIF. But Dick Durbans position, cutting USCRIF so he can fund some pork in his state, is completely indefensible. But if looking for cuts, I would be inclined to cut foreign aid to some of these countries first, or perhaps cut support for some more leftist orientated international agencies, and keep USCRIF until most of the leftist waste is gone. If the left only supports cuts to non-leftist agencies, then the right is sort of unilaterally disarming if they only cut what the left will accept.
There is a factor to USCIRF that has been missing in this discussion. If one believes that “radical” Islam is at war with the West (and the US, specifically), then the goal of eliminating “radical” Islam’s ability to do us harm is an important and Constitutionally legitimate aim. Both theory and practice indicate that it is significantly more difficult for “radical” Islam to matasticize within the populace and enjoy support of the government in nations that have a healthy respect for minority (i.e. non-Muslim) religious freedoms. If we can spend a few millions to reduce the motive and material capabilities of our enemies, then I’d say it’s a good deal.
Really, folks? Just b/c the names are exotic to your ears?
America has a responsibility mostly b/c America is a majority Christian nation. Right now, it’s the “reserve currency” for Christianity around the globe. Don’t you see that? Christians around the world are the oppressed, enslaved, brutalized, suffering masses. We’re the shining city on the hill. We’re the safe place, the country they’d like to turn their countries into.
South Korea is Christianized, b/c we spent missionaries’ lives there. Nigeria, Ethiopia….Europe itself, is collapsing due to secularism, and being repopulated with Muslims. China- they kill Christians. Although, Christianity is growing the usual way- martyrs, fasting and prayer. Those second children getting aborted? Usually christian parents. The Phillippines: christian, with running wars on muslim and communist enclaves. Russia? Killed 96% of their orthodox christian brethren, post 1917.
Right now, we’re the biggest church-safe place on the whole cell-block.
When Cardinal Ratzinger was elected Pope, and Time Magazine (I think) wrote about him, there were words about St. Benedict.
He opened a school at about the same time as Plato’s Academy, or Aristotle’s Lyceum, closed.
Expecting the US to continue to lead the way to comfort the afflicted wherever there are dissidents, is looking like trying to herd cats.
What I want to know is where is the outrage in the Church, the body of Christ? Same as always, working on establishing a dialog with the devil who has rendered the birthplace of Christianity devoid of Christians.
Some of the aforementioned posts are a good illustration of the reason why any political affiliation today seems like such a joke.
Suffice it to say–from this classical liberal–Dick Durban represents a real dubious iliberalism, if you will. Just look at his intransigence around the right to take dietary supplements; are Americans aware that he has been introducing legislation to outlaw dietary supplements by empowering the FDA to give carte blanche to Big Pharma?
USCIRF has been a front for advancing the freedom to convert to Christianity from other religions so it is a good riddance. They have not really cared about other religious freedoms. The evangelical community lobbied for 2 decades to get this going. The’ll get it back up and running. Don’t worry. Spending tax payer dollars for their benefit is what the Evangelical community is rather good at.
Thanks for This Ms. Chesler, as usual, you are the voice of those who are voiceless!
Trust me, Christians have a far bigger voice in Egypt than gays. Most Christian demonstrations in Egypt have not been attacked though many have.
A gay demonstration would have few survivors.
Enough bickering. That’s what the Obamites want, internal divisions among the people who actually believe in freedom and human rights, us. The USCIRF is a necessary organization considering what we face in the UN’s own cesspool of Commissions, agencies, and NGOs.
The Communists tried, often by murder attempts, to close down VOA and Radio Liberty, because they were strong voices for freedom that penetrated into the hintermost regions of the communist gulags, Siberian prison cities and thru the Bamboo Curtains of Asia.
However, the issue is Sen. Dick Durbin (D-Ill), who compared our soldiers to Nazis. This man is a sick son of a bitch, but a typical Democrat. That is the lesson to be learned here, once and for all.
This typical Democrat Party leader has put Pork Barrel Politics above giving people hope for freedom. He, like the Democrat Party and Obama Regime of today, has no morals, no morality, no ethics, no real care for the suffering of others (Obama’s silence on the Iranian Spring, the slaughter of Christians in Iraq; the driving of Christians out of Palestinian-occupied cities on the West Bank/Samaria-Judea; the persecution/murder of Christians in Vietnam, Red China (esp. the Falung Gong, North Korea and Nigeria), etc.
I could go on for years. Durbin is the “sore” that you see when you have skin cancer, or the “lump” of breast cancer, but he is only the visible symbol of what the Democrats have become and done to America, and the world.
The Democrats are the cancer that is killing America, pure and simple. No excuses can be found for their behavior. It is openly marxist, anti-capitalist, Pork Barrel politics, cronyism, ethically impaired, and suicidal for our country and what is left of a steadily shrinking “Free World” (The Arab Spring is slowly becoming a Nuclear Winter for those people).
Our economy is nearly in ruins; our military is weak, being further emasculated, feminized, and caponed in every area of what was once a respected force for freedom and out defense (Red China has now openly threatened war against all of their neighbors, including the US Pacific Fleet), and the head of Walter Reed Medical Center had forbidden families of the wounded from bringing bibles into the facility. It only gets worse (FDA, US Dept. of Agric., DHS – a total farce; the EPA destroying our car and truck industries, with diesel trains now in their sights); etc.
I see new internal attacks on America everyday on the internet, where patriots are finding and exposing the latest machinations of Obama and his power-made Marxists and one-worlders (See Susan Rice’s comments at the U.N. site).
And to top it all off, Obama is going to take another vacation, this time for 17 days, and he doesn’t want to do any work during that period of time.
I haven’t had 17 days of vacation in the past 10 years unless you count dying/spending 6 days in a couple comas, and then later a total of 5 days at the beach (over the past 2 years).
This man has no respect for the office of the President, for the American people, or for the basic principles which have guided our country until 2008.
His betrayals of America run deep, and are runner deeper every day, while his betrayal of Israel is now running on Premium gas.
Durbin is only a symptom of the marxist rot that, like a cancer, is destroying the structure of America from the inside. He is like the mindset, 70 years ago today, that allowed Pearl Harbor to happen, or 10 years ago, to let 9/11 to happen.
The third time for this kind of unpreparedness, due to the Democrats unprincipled behavior, power greediness, political selfishness, and arrogance, will lead to the fall of America, be it by military blackmail from an united Red China-Russia alliance, an united Islamic world led by Jihadists, or both.
USCIRF is only one sympton of this decline. If we don’t recognize it for what it really “is” (means), then America, and by extension, Israel, is doomed, along with many other small countries, to another “Dark Ages” of extermination and slavery.
Well said.
With any luck we’ll accomplish their goals and turn everyone into homos so we all die.
Then rich people will outlaw homosexuality amongst the ten million or so of them left! (It’s all according to Lord Bill Gates’ master plan!)
It is immoral to finance the U.N. The Muslim/Leftist controlled U.N. spits on the human rights of ALL non-Muslims. The OIC (Organization of Islamic Conference) want to make defamation of Islam a crime. Obama and Clinton are determined to make that a law. The U.S. government want to destroy our freedom and human rights and impose Islamic sharia law on America. It is TREASON.
Ruling elites don’t want the U.S. Commission on International Religious Freedom (USCIRF)financed because they want Muslims to have total FREEDOM to persecute and murder Christians, Jews, Hindus, Buddhists, Sikhs and other non-Muslims.
Why would there be no money for USCIRF? It’s because America gives away many billions of dollars every year, especially to Muslim countries and organizations including the PLO/PA/Hamas, who build mansions, fill their war chests and laugh all the way to the bank with FREE infidel money.
The persecution of Christians, Hindus and other non-Muslims is horrific in Egypt, Pakistan and Bangladesh. Don’t think it can’t happen here. Via Obama and Clinton’s determination to make defamation of Islam a crime, it is already being set up.
And to all of you who don’t care about the horrible persecution and extreme suffering of your fellow human beings,perpetrated by Muslims:
“First They Came for the Jews”
By Pastor Niemoller
First they came for the Jews and I did not speak out because I was not a Jew.
Then they came for the Communists and I did not speak out because I was not a Communist.
Then they came for the trade unionists and I did not speak out because I was not a trade unionist.
Then they came for me and there was no one left to speak out for me.
While I believe in compassion for all and I do not endorse the persecution of anybody, it is time to look squarely at the root causes of Muslim hostility toward Christians. The corporate droog Bush continually invoked the name of Jesus in his genocidal slaughter of Muslims in Iraq. Many of the Christians who supported the Bush genocide also cheer for genocidal, Zionazi Israel that has made the West Bank and Gaza strip the Auschwitz and Dachau of our time. Angry,impoversihed Muslims lying prostrate before genocial corporate powers and betrayed by their own governments will lash out at the first thing that reminds themof their oppression–and often that thing is a Christian Church.
In a massive victory for Islam, against their will, Arab Christians were cruelly placed under BRUTAL occupation of PLO/Palestinian Authority Occupation Forces.
In the filthy Islamic Invasion of Church of Nativity in Bethlehem, Judea, MUSLIMS TORE UP BIBLES FOR TOILET PAPER. Christian majority towns, Bethlehem & Nazareth are now majority Muslim – terrified Christians were driven out by cruel Islamic persecution. Many Bethlehem Christians’ homes and land were STOLEN by Muslims. The Christians who remain, live in constant fear.
The UN is silent about the suffering and terrible persecution of Jews, Christians, Hindus, Sikhs, Buddhists and other non-Muslims, by Islam.
Islamic terrorists have carried out more than 18,110 deadly terrorist attacks since 9/11. http://www.thereligionofpeace.com/
Terror attacks by all other religions: NONE.
Besides constantly murdering hated non-Muslim infidels, Muslims CONSTANTLY murder other Muslims because the Muslims are a different sect of Islam.
The photo of the Muslim girl standing screaming in the aftermath of a
terror attack by a Sunni bomber at a Shiite shrine in Kabul on Tuesday is heartrending. The Muslim girl’s agony and the murdered innocent victims is painful to witness.
Your description of Judea, Samaria and Gaza is obscene. Daily, hourly, Muslim killers seek to enter Israeli cities in order to carry out religious terror attacks against hated Jewish infidels. Israel MUST have checkpoints and an anti terror fence!
There are 8 to 10 million Christian Copts in Egypt (and they are not ‘Arabs’, they are the remnant of the indigenous people of Egypt, the remnant that has preserved cultural and historic continuity with the people who inhabited Egypt before the Muslim invasions and occupations). Many who think they are Egyptian Arab Muslims, in Egypt, would prove to be descendants of Copts, if one looked at their dna; but they have lost their memory, so to speak, and learned to despise their pre-Islamic forebears; they identify totally with their conquerors and subscribe fanatically to the Arab Imperial Religion.
I would ask all those here who are indifferent or hostile toward the Copts to ask themselves: am I prepared to sit by and coolly watch or even openly applaud as the ancient Christian remnant of Egypt, TEN MILLION PEOPLE, being butchered in broad daylight, right on the doorstep of Europe, by howling Muslim mobs?
A repeat of the Armenian Genocide – only with five times as many victims. Bigger than what Pol Pot did in Cambodia. Bigger than Rwanda. bigger even than the total of insufficiently-Islamic black Muslims and hated kuffar Christians and animists butchered by Muslims in Sudan over the past fifty years. Bodies floating down the Nile. Ancient churches going up in flames.
All the classic indicators of an incipient genocide are visible in Egypt today. The Copts are looking down the barrel of a genocide: and you want America, the only non-Muslim country with enough clout to actually do anything to prevent or limit this, to STAND BY AND DO NOTHING? Do you hate Christians, and Christianity, of any stripe whatsoever, so much that you can contemplate with equanimity or worse, perhaps even with open pleasure, the rape, torture and mass murder, by Muslims, of some ten million people…and merely remark, with satisfaction, that that is ten million fewer nasty horrible Christians in the world???