Smith Skewers Clinton

Congressman Chris Smith of New Jersey condemns Margaret Sanger and questions Clinton's awe and respect for Sanger during a House Foreign Affairs Committee hearing on the Sanger award.

Following is a video of Smith calling Clinton out for her tremendous admiration for a woman who promoted eugenics and founded Planned Parenthood to implement this cruel goal.

In receiving Planned Parenthood founder Margaret Sanger's award in Houston on March 27th, you said that you were in "awe" of Margaret Sanger; you said that Sanger's "life and leadership" was "one of the most transformational in the entire history of the human race" and that Sanger's work both here and abroad was "not done". With all due respect, Madam Secretary, transformational yes; but not for the better if one happens to be poor, disenfranchised, weak, disabled, a person of color, an unborn child, or among the many so-called undesirables Sanger would exclude and exterminate from the human race. Sanger's prolific writings drip with contempt for those she considers to be unfit to live....

I've actually read many of Sanger's articles and books. Sanger was an unapologetic eugenicist and racist who said "the most merciful thing a family does for one of its infant members is to kill it." And said on another occasion, "eugenics is the most adequate and thorough avenue to the solution of racial, political and social problems."

In her book, Pivot of Civilization, Sanger devoted an entire chapter, which she entitled the "Cruelty of Charity," to explaining a shockingly inhumane case for systematic denial of prenatal and maternal health care for poor, pregnant women.

"Such benevolence is not merely superficial and near-sighted" Sanger wrote "it conceals a stupid cruelty" and leads to a "deterioration in the human stock" and "the perpetuation of defectives, delinquents and dependents."

So it is extraordinarily difficult how anyone especially a Secretary of State could be in "awe" of Margaret Sanger, a person who made no secret whatsoever of views that were antithetical to protecting human rights and that suggest that "her work" remains undone here and around the world.

In 2007 alone PP killed over 305k children by abortion in the United States and millions more worldwide.

As part of "Sanger's work" that remains undone, is the Obama Administration seeking to weaken or overturn pro-life laws and policies in African and Latin America countries either directly or through multilateral organizations including and especially the UN, African Union, or the OAS, or by way of funding NGOs like PP?

And so we have total transparency, does the United States' definition of the term 1) "reproductive health" or 2) "reproductive services" or 3) "reproductive rights" include abortion?

Congressman, I deeply respect your passionate concerns and views, which you have championed and advocated for over the course of your public career. We obviously have a profound disagreement. When I think about the suffering that I have seen of women around the world - I've been in hospitals in Brazil where half the women were enthusiastically and joyfully greeting new babies and the other half were fighting for their lives against botched abortions. I've been in African countries where 12- and 13 year-old-girls are bearing children. I have been in Asian countries where the denial of family planning consigns women to lives of oppression and hardship. So we have a very fundamental disagreement. And it is my strongly held view that you are entitled to advocate and everyone who agrees with you should be free to do so anywhere in the world, and so are we.

We happen to think that family planning is an important part of women's health. And reproductive health includes access to abortion that I believe should be safe, legal, and rare. I spent a lot of my time trying to bring down the rate of abortions and it has been my experience that good family planning and good medical care brings down the rate of abortion. Keeping women and men in ignorance and denied access to services actually increases the rate of abortion.

During my time as First Lady I helped to create the Campaign Against Teenage Pregnancy, and while we were working to provide good information, access to contraception, and decision-making that would enable young women to protect themselves and say no, the rate of teen pregnancy went down. I'm sad to report that after an administration of 8 years that undid so much of the good work, the rate of teenage pregnancy is going up.

So, we disagree. And we are now an Administration that will protect the rights of women, including their rights to reproductive health care.

Ethiopian Gov Uses US Aid for Lobbying

Posted in August 28th, 2009
By Editor

In June 2006, the Ethiopia Freedom, Democracy and Human Rights Advancement Act was introduced by Rep. Christopher Smith (Republican, New Jersey) proposing to put limits on military aid to Ethiopia — with the exception of peacekeeping and anti-terrorism programs — until the government released all political prisoners and provided fair and speedy trials to other prisoners held without charges. Most of these political prisoners had been arrested during the 2005 post election protests following the re-election of Prime Minister Meles Zenawi, which also left more than 500 people dead.

The bill swiftly passed the House International Relations Committee with bipartisan support with the Ethiopian diaspora in America launching letter and e-mail campaigns to push the legislation in Congress. To counter this effort, the Ethiopian government hired a well-established law and lobbying firm, DLA Piper, to protect its interests in Washington at a cost of $2.3million.

The lobby shop in a memo argued that the bill compromised “the national security interests of both the United States and Ethiopia.” They also raised concerns about Somalia that Addis Ababa and the United States shared. Through numerous meetings and lobbying, eventually the bill never made it to the House floor. It has been argued that lobbying is undesirable because it allows people with particular interests and who represent a minority to gain special access to law-makers and through contributions and favours have controversial relationships with representatives. This is a danger to Africa’s democracy including settling its internal conflicts.

Global Online Freedom Act

Reporters Without Borders welcomes todays decision by the House of Representatives Foreign Affairs Committee to approve the proposed Global Online Freedom Act (GOFA). Drafted in February 2006 by Republican Representative of New Jersey, Christopher Smith, this bipartisan bill would prevent US Internet sector companies from collaborating with repressive governments. It will now go before the House Committee on Energy and Commerce.

This is a wonderful advance for online free expression, the press freedom organisation said. At least four cyber-dissidents, including Wang Xianing and Shi Tao, have been convicted and jailed because of information supplied by the US company Yahoo! to the Chinese authorities. Cooperation with repressive government by American Internet companies runs counter to the very nature of the Internet and facilitates the work of the censors.

Reporters Without Borders added: We hope the House committee on energy and commerce will now in turn quickly recognise this bill's importance so that it can it can be submitted to a floor vote as soon as possible.

The Global Online Freedom Act would prevent repressive governments – those that punish dissidents and human rights activists who use their right to online free expression – from having access to personal data by banning US companies from locating the servers containing this data in the territories controlled by such governments.

The bill would also ban US companies from providing information enabling users to be identified, except in cases in which the law is being legitimately applied. This, however, would be decided by the US justice department and not the companies.

The US companies concerned would also have to act transparently and transmit information about the type of censorship they apply to an interagency-staffed Office of Global Internet Freedom, which would have the job of defining US government policy for the promotion of the free flow of information online and monitoring violations. The office would also have the job of encouraging US companies, NGOs and academics to draft a voluntary code of conduct.

Companies that do not respect the GOFA's provisions would be sanctioned. The GOFA would also establish a feasibility study for controlling the export of equipment, software and applications sold by US Internet sector companies to countries designated as repressive by the White House.

US companies Yahoo!, Google and Microsoft have been repeatedly criticised for agreeing to censor themselves in China. Cisco Systems is accused of providing China with online censorship technology. A Yahoo! representative will appear before the House Foreign Affairs Committee on November 6th in connection with his apparently untruthful claims to Congress on February 2006. He claimed that the company knew nothing about the content of the investigation into Shi Tao as a document published by the Dui Hua Foundation seems to prove the contrary.