Behind all the hullaballoo over Bush's Supreme Court picks,
Concerned Women for America, Beverly LaHaye's partisan religious activist group with no discernible prior interest or experience in other countries, has quietly become a taxpayer-funded NGO (
via Condi's State Department) working on sex trafficking in Mexico:
CWA Awarded Anti-Trafficking Grant 9/29/2005
Washington, D.C. - Concerned Women for America (CWA) received a $200,000 State Department grant on Tuesday to work with five Mexican organizations to combat sex trafficking. The specific project is the second phase of CWA's Bridge Project, a week-long training session for Mexican leaders that took place in April.
Five Mexican organizations with proven track records received grants. Projects include establishing a safe shelter for child and woman victims of sex trafficking in the heart of Mexico City's "red light" district, establishing training programs for citizen involvement and leadership on the problem, producing a white paper to influence public opinion and shape legislation, preparing a database of information about victims, conducting a training workshop for law enforcement officers and workshops for citizens in four targeted cities, and developing public service announcements. (emphasis added, more text
here)
It's a good thing for victims of human trafficking that the Mexican groups have proven track records, because CWA is a domestic religio-political activist group -- they don't do foreign:
CWA works in six core areas of America's modern cultural turmoil: sanctity of life, definition of the family, the fight against pornography, education, religious liberty and national sovereignty.
Translation: no abortions even for the health of the mother, gays are disgusting subhumans, Janet Jackson's tit, creationism and "under god," Dominionism all the way, and the UN can go Cheney itself. Note the phrase, "six core areas of America's modern cultural turmoil." I repeat: CWA doesn't do foreign.
Anyway, we have to take CWA's word about that grant because there are only 4 mentions of CWA on the entire state.gov domain, one of which is a duplicate and none of which mention this. The trick is, this isn't the first time CWA and its ilk have been involved in foreign policy. It's remarkable enough for a partisan religio-political activist group to be mentioned on the official website of America's international diplomacy at all, but for two of them to be mentioned in 2001 as officially US-advocated consultants to the UN Economic and Social Council is startling. Why? Check out CWA's full take on the UN, #6 from its list of core issues:
CWA believes that neither the United Nations nor any other international organization should have authority over the United States in any area, including economics, social policy, military, and land ownership.
The finer points of that statement can be debated and analyzed till the cows come home, but the basic thrust is pretty clear -- CWA is anti-UN. While isolationism in general and UN-bashing in particular are fairly common on the right wing, what is not common is for rightist groups to involve themselves in the UN's activities. I have to wonder how much money was involved in the gig. Since CWA's position seems to be that the UN has too much "authority" over economic and social matters, this looks like a Bush-league trial run of the let's-sabotage-the-UN agenda.
"I know something you don't know" Dobson's virulently anti-gay Family Research Council also got a piece of the UN action. Its website even has a section entitled "How to take over the UN," (scroll down) which is of course targeted at the habitual "liberals" bugaboo. I think this 2001 UN gig was the thin end of the wedge toward establishing these jokers as semi-official NGO's in order to funnel tax dollars to them in an unobtrusive (and uninteresting to the media) way. Stiffing the UN was just a bonus.
We knew up-front that Bush wanted to get more religious groups involved in government (or at least bellied up to the trough), and his foreign policy has been jokingly referred to as "faith-based" by many of us in the reality-based community. Apparently, it's no joke. Condi's State Department is actively handing out cash to a partisan religio-political activist group to do something they don't do in a place they don't operate. Shades of "Brownie, you're doing a heck of a job," no?
Religious groups in and of themselves aren't necessarily bad, but one must consider the nature of the groups (and their principals) in question. Beverly LaHaye is married to Tim LaHaye, evangelical author of the apocalyptic "Left Behind" series of Christian fiction; both are believers in the ludicrous doctrine of the rapture, a belief prevalent only in this country. Mrs. LaHaye is a member on the board of Liberty University; Mr. LaHaye's official bio says that he has a Doctor of Literature degree from...guess where? Liberty University.
There's that name twice; what's that about? Why, Liberty University is the school founded and operated by Jerry Falwell. Falwell's political agenda ("to reclaim America for God") is indistiguishable from the LaHayes', and seems to involve repeatedly running afoul of campaign finance law. As founder of the Moral Majority (Mr. LaHaye is board chairman), Falwell seems to be the political influence go-to guy for these groups. Speaking of Falwell and Liberty U., Falwell went hat in hand to none other than self-proclaimed messiah and Jesus' replacement, Sun Myung Moon, in order to save it from bankruptcy. In fact, most of the big names on the religious right (including the LaHayes) have had Moon as a paymaster at least once. Not to be outdone on the international scene, Moon's Unification Church/Family Federation is evidently playing a middleman role in the six-party talks with North Korea.
LaHaye and Dobson "consulting" for the UN at the behest of the US government. LaHaye being handed taxpayer dollars, gratis, by Condi's State Department. Moonies acting as quasi-official American emissaries to the xenophobic North Korean government.
All are happening behind the scenes, and all are unacceptable.