The Jihad Watch writer assumes the deplatforming was the
result of the government of the Islamic Republic of Pakistan complaining. At
the very least pointing to Pakistan is a good guess. On my NCCR blog I have received the same Automattic
notification.
My experience though was informing me my particular blog
would no longer be available in Pakistan due to the legal system’s Blasphemy
Law. BUT the Automattic notification also included info for how Pakistani
readers could circumvent the Pakistan banning by finding a good VPN service
that hides Internet surfing. Here is that NCCR post with the notification and advice.
So I am a bit surprised Automattic deplatformed Creeping
Sharia and Muslim Statistics over Pakistan’s Free Speech robbing Blasphemy
Laws. On the other hand, what in the world could those two expose Islam blogs
have done to annoy the powers that be at Automattic?
WordPress.com has deplatormed those critical of Islam. I am
very disappointed having been a contributor to the WordPress code in the
distant past, and I have assisted in responsible disclosure of security
vulnerabilities to them on a voluntary basis in the recent past. I did see it
coming though.
While it would not be possible to restrict use of the WordPress source code which is publicly available and
built by volunteers, and distributed at wordpress.org, its [sic] is
“open source”. wordpress.com is very different. It is a
commercial enterprise which has some free options, the codebase being very
similar, but proprietary; and includes the hosting aspect as part of the
package.
I am aware of 2 sites so far that have been taken down, with
no warning Creeping Sharia and Muslim StatisticsThey
were first brought to my attention in a tweet:
After 11 years, thousands of posts and countless death
threats, it was the cowards at @wordpressdotcom
and @automattic
who shut us down and banned us from freely sharing information. They'd
rather submit to the #sharia
than uphold the values of freedom of expression and speech. pic.twitter.com/4aG6tEElAf
We do not have any control over
those websites and are not responsible for their contents or their use.
You can always reach out to Automattic to
express your disappointment politely on twitter at @automattic at their arbitrary deplatforming of anyone
without providing clear reasoning, especially from a platform built mostly by
volunteers.
I would suggest anyone using wordpress.com (not .org) or for
that matter blogger, dump them immediately, and migrate to a non-managed host
using the open source version at wordpress.com, I say non-managed host, as
managed hosting services seem to be far more likely to be pressured by hate
groups such as SPLC into removing services. Non-managed hosting services would
include AWS, Linode and my favorite at the moment DigitalOcean (includes
referral link).
You will also need to use your own domain name, as there is
no mysite.wordpress.org as there is with the .com. there are many domain
registrars to choose from, you can find a list here at a very useful site
for wordpress users.
It’s fairly easy to manage your own WordPress blog, these
sites all have extensive help documents, and surprisingly un-managed hosting
services seem to have far less technical troubles than managed ones do.
The WordPress open source community is
vibrant. It might be helpful not to interact using politically sensitive
profile names. I mention this as someone I sent there to get help came back
telling me they were unhelpful and ignored him. When I checked, I was not
surprised.
You can import content from your wordpress.com and
blogger.com sites into open source wordpress. While I can’t get too
involved in helping you out, if you have any issues, comment here, and I’ll
point you in the right direction.
Golden rule when managing your own sites and blogs: keep it
simple (20 plugins is not OK and use their default themes unless you have
programming skills), keep regular backups, and put them somewhere safe.
Unless you’ve been living under a rock you are probably
aware the wicked Left has been trying to mute Conservatives and
Counterjihadists for some time via censorship and cutting off revenue streams.
I have posted on this effort to mute Conservatives several
times. Here are some of the most recent titles:
Mastercard has reportedly forced
funding platform Patreon to kick conservative author and “Jihad Watch”
owner Robert Spencer off its site.
“My name is April and I’m on the
Trust & Safety team here at Patreon. I’ve been notified by Mastercard that
we must remove your account from Patreon, effective immediately,” wrote Patreon in an email to Spencer.
“Mastercard has a stricter set of rules and regulations than Patreon, and they
reserve the right to not offer their services to accounts of their choosing.
This is in line with their terms of service, which means it’s something we have
to comply by.”
After Patreon banned me without explanation, I set up a
GoFundMe account, with the same goal in view of constructing a studio for Jihad
Watch videos, and quickly raised over $3,000. …
…
But today, I got this:
Hi Robert,
We’re sorry, but we have
canceled your 08/21 withdrawal of $3,299.42 from WePay Payments.
The funds from this withdrawal
have been added back to your balance.
…
I also got multiple notices from
GoFundMe; each informed me that a particular donation to me from a particular
person had been refunded.
When I asked for a reason why they
had canceled my withdrawal and were refunding all the donations to me, they did
not, of course, answer.
We’re under attack by the Southern
Poverty Law Center (SPLC)…
For years, the SPLC has labeled the
Freedom Center a hate group and tried to get organizations like Amazon,
Facebook and Twitter to ban us and silence our message.
Yesterday, SPLC finally
convinced MasterCard and Visa to cut us off. Now we can’t process donations
from any major credit card companies.
In fact, if you received Robert
Spencer’s e-mail last night, you may have noticed your donation was DENIED.
The pattern is quite obvious. If the Left can’t outright
censor Conservatives and Counterjihadist websites, the plan is to starve the
finances until there is no resource to operate.
THIS MUST CEASE!
Below is the Spencer email flowed by a Jihad Watch article
on the situation by Christine Douglas-Williams.
The fascism is coming down fast. I’ve now been banned
from Patreon and GoFundMe.
MasterCard and Visa have stopped
processing donations for the David Horowitz Freedom Center.
Why? Because David Horowitz and I are defamed as “hate group leaders” by the
Southern Poverty Law Center (SPLC), which is now strong-arming businesses to
deny service to us. The SPLC has been discredited as a dishonest, far-Left
propaganda outfit determined to destroy all those who dissent from its Leftist
agenda, but that doesn’t matter: these companies are allowing no appeal, no
discussion, no right to reply.
This will by no means end with David Horowitz and me. The authoritarian Left is
working energetically now to ban all dissenting voices in the run-up to the
2018 elections.
If this keeps up, only Leftists will be allowed any kind of platform anywhere.
It’s clear that I am one of the principal people in the Left’s crosshairs.
Muslim Brotherhood-linked Congressman Keith Ellison has already demanded that
Amazon stop stocking books by people who are blacklisted by the Southern
Poverty Law Center.
I wrote The
History of Jihad From Muhammad to ISIS as a challenge to
the elites’ narrative about jihad and Islam. And it’s clearer every day now
that the elites are brooking no challenges to their narrative, and are moving
as fast as they can to muzzle the people who refute their lies and distortions.
Given that initiative, and Ellison’s specific demand to
Amazon, I don’t know how long The
History of Jihad will be available, although I’ll
circulate it in mimeographed form if I have to.
The book is listed as out of stock right now at Amazon: the publisher and
distributors were caught off guard by demand much greater than they expected.
But if you order it now, you should receive it soon -- as long as the book
burners don’t shut the whole enterprise down. They’re on the horizon. Click
here to order The History of Jihad From Muhammad to
ISIS now.
And please – again, while you still can – make a tax-deductible donation to
Jihad Watch here.
++++++++++++++++
Citizens beware: MasterCard and Visa cross the line into
totalitarian thought control
Like many people, my inbox has been flooded by concerned
citizens aboutDavid
HorowitzandRobert
Spencerover MasterCard and Visa, blocking their flow of revenue
needed for daily operations. Spencer stated:
This is getting very serious. It
won’t stop with David Horowitz or me. The Left is moving quickly to silence all
dissenting voices in the run-up to the 2018 elections. The freedom of speech is
the foundation of a free society, and it is rapidly being destroyed in the
United States.
To add to the heartfelt concerns of those who respect the
work of these stalwart defenders of freedom and human rights, all citizens
would do well to recognize that the actions of MasterCard and Visa are also a
slap in the face to their customers. These companies have infringed upon the
rights of anyone who supports the cause of freedom and the efforts of Horowitz
and Spencer. Customers who choose to donate to these necessary initiatives have
been told that they are financing “hate” and therefore are stripped of their
right to donate. They have been dictated to by MasterCard and Visa, who are
acting as if they do not have the right to think for themselves as long as they
want to use the services of MasterCard and Visa.
As totalitarianism overshadows America, no one can say that
they were not forewarned. Both Horowitz and Spencer have been sounding the
alarm for years; the Muslim Brotherhood plan for North America has been public
knowledge for years. Its Explanatory
Memorandum is expansive and detailed in describing its
mission:
“The process of settlement is a
‘Civilization-Jihadist Process’ with all the word means. The Ikhwan [Muslim
Brotherhood] must understand that their work in America is a kind of grand
jihad in eliminating and destroying the Western civilization from within and
“sabotaging” its miserable house by their hands and the hands of the believers
so that it is eliminated and God’s religion is made victorious over all other
religions.”
“We will win because Americans
don’t realize ...we do not need to defeat
you militarily; we only need to fight long enough for you to defeat yourself by
quitting.”
Mohammed was correct. Far too many citizens of the West have
quit — they take their freedoms of granted and are in denial, having not
learned the lesson of history that fascism is insidious and does not take
control of societies suddenly, as many seem to think. Its invasion is
methodical and gradual.
Some examples of how businesses have joined the totalitarian
initiative:
Kellogg Co. announced
on November 2016 its decision to pull ads from
Breitbart “because its 45,000,000 monthly conservative readers are not
‘aligned with our values as a company.’” Here we see Kellogg’s attempting to
control the thoughts of citizens and impose its values on consumers. Fortunately,
Breitbart “launched a #DumpKelloggs petition and called for a boycott of the
ubiquitous food manufacturer, which
lead to plummeting stock and reported $53 million loss in the
fourth quarter.” The arrogance of Kellogg Co. was astounding, with
CEO John Bryant claiming that the company’s massive losses were just a
“coincidence” and not due to the boycott.
In the three months following Kellogg’s war against
Breitbart:
Last August, Paypal decided
that it, too, wanted to interfere with freedom of speech and thought. The
company cancelled Jihad Watch’s account, but it was reinstated not long
afterward after public
outrage. Meanwhile, the Islamic State used
PayPal to send money to jihadis inside the U.S., but that
revelation wasn’t enough to stop Paypal from pontificating in its letter
announcing its reinstatement of the Jihad Watch account:
PayPal’s Acceptable Use Policy
in our User Agreement prohibits individuals and groups from using PayPal for
activities that promote hate, violence, or racial intolerance.
This is a key statement, as Jihad Watch is not a hate site.
It is a news aggregate and commentary site dedicated to exposing the broad
range of human rights abuses committed in the name of Islam, and reports from a
range of news sites are referenced. Take, for example, a few recent Jihad Watch
headlines:
These are but a mere few examples, but they go on and on.
What normal citizen can point out the “hate” in exposing such news? Every
single day, reports emerge from the four corners of the earth about human
rights abuses committed in the name of Islam, Islamic supremacist incursions
into once-peaceful countries, the slaughter and injury of innocent people
committed in the name of Islam, and jihad attacks. If reporting and discussing
these facts are an offense to Muslims and deemed to be “hateful” and “racist,”
then we need to have serious open discussions about why and how this is so. But
there is a strenuous effort to shut down all discussion of these matters.
Meanwhile, who remembers or cares about the victims? Jihad
Watch, the Horowitz Center and others that are unashamed to stand for human
rights and who are grateful to those who died in the cause of freedom. Fierce
battles have been waged against fascism, and if history has taught us anything,
we should know that fascist regimes endeavor to control the thoughts and words
of their people, as does the Southern Poverty Law Center today. The SPLC has
mutated into a hate group itself. In the words of its former spokesman Mark
Potok, who spent 20 years as an SPLC senior fellow (according to LinkedIn):
Sometimes the press will
describe us as monitoring hate groups, I want to say plainly that our aim in
life is to destroy these groups, completely destroy them.
As reported by Breitbart:
The David Horowitz Freedom Center
has had their donation processing system blocked by Visa and Mastercard
allegedly following a campaign by the Southern Poverty Law Center. Visa has
since contacted Breitbart News to deny involvement in the blacklisting of the
Freedom Center.
It is by degrees that totalitarians manage to seize control.
The establishment media becomes a mouthpieces of the people in power, and soon,
the population becomes enslaved to their ideologies, as we see with
Islamofascism. It is abusive, oppressive and aims to silence all dissent as it
marches against the House of War in order to subvert it and bring it into the
House of Islam. This 1,400-year-old doctrine has infiltrated the West in the
private and public sectors, and the Muslim Brotherhood, in accordance with its
memorandum, has managed to redefine “hate” to mean any criticism of Islam.
Now Horowitz and Spencer stand accused of “hate,” without
any semblance of justice or due process. MasterCard and Visa have bowed to the
totalitarian impulse, and in so doing have also indicted their customers. This
will continue, if there is no resistance. Let’s hope that boycotts and class
action suits will soon be in the offing, prompted by both consumers and the
leaders of conservative organizations.
ROBERT SPENCER is the
director of Jihad Watch and a Shillman Fellow at the David Horowitz Freedom
Center. He is the author of eighteen books, including the New York Times
bestsellers The Politically Incorrect Guide to Islam (and the Crusades)
(Regnery Publishing) and The Truth About Muhammad (Regnery Publishing). His
latest book is The History of Jihad From Muhammad to ISIS (Bombardier Books).
Spencer has led seminars on
Islam and jihad for the FBI, the United States Central Command, United States
Army Command and General Staff College, the U.S. Army’s Asymmetric Warfare
Group, the Joint Terrorism Task Force (JTTF), the Justice Department’s
Anti-Terrorism Advisory Council and the U.S. intelligence community. He has
discussed jihad, Islam, and terrorism at a workshop sponsored by the U.S. State
Department and the German Foreign Ministry. He is a consultant with the Center
for Security Policy.
Spencer is a weekly columnist
for PJ Media and FrontPage Magazine, and has written many hundreds of articles
about jihad and Islamic terrorism. His articles on Islam and other topics have
appeared in …READ THE REST
I don’t know if you have noticed the American Left has been
trying to shut up Conservative and Counterjihad outlets by attack their
pocketbooks based on the Marxist oriented SPLC hate list. The SPLC hate list
places non-violent, Conservative/Biblically Christian values organizations as
well as those that expose the violent nature inherent in Islamic revered
writings on the same list as the violent KKK and the various Neo-Nazi
organizations. Ironically the SPLC does not have violent ideologies like
Antifa, Black Lives Matter, the New Black Panthers, Marxist-Racist Black
Liberation Theology and the ilk on a Hate List.
If you are on the SPLC Hate List, financial organizations
such as PayPal will terminate your account making it difficult to receive
online donations from supporters of non-violent Patriot organizations,
Christian Organizations, Counterjihadists, expose the Homosexual Agenda
organizations and so on of non-violent charitable or non-profit organizations.
You could probably win a bet in saying the Leftist
Mainstream Media (MSM) has not reported or extremely under-reported the Leftist
attack on the financial situation of these organizations. This is the reason
behind me wondering if you were aware of the financial attack.
Jihad Watch (Robert Spencer) and Pamela Geller were
suspended. Then a few days later were reinstated (Jihad Watch & Geller) to PayPal. I suspect
their following made such a big deal that PayPal felt compelled to reinstate
them.
I use PayPal on my blogs. According to the SPLC I would be a
propagator of hate because I would be categorized as a homophobe (Supportive
Biblical Values), Pro-Life/anti-abortion thus categorized anti-women’s Rights,
Islamophobic (Exposing violence in Islamic revered writings and correlating to
today’s Muslim terrorism), Pro-Christian in government yet anti-government in
Faith and probably lesser SPLC Marxist violations I can’t think of now at this
moment.
If a Leftie complains to PayPal they would probably suspend
my account. I don’t have a huge Spencer/Geller support base. I would be forced
to look elsewhere for online support. Can any of you fellow small potatoes
bloggers relate?
Bare Naked Islam (BNI) has
a story on SPLC-hate related influence, listing other Leftist and
Islamic-apologist websites creating their hate lists pushing financial
institutions to dump ethical organizations that expose the Left and
Pro-Islamist interests. For sure BNI does rub some folks the wrong way with
their brusque literary style, but the info is valid.
I have found myself in Social Media jail with both Facebook
and Google in the past. I always found the jail an interesting plight since I do
not use profanity nor do I advocate any kind of violence especially
murder, of those I highly disagree with. So, I was in Social Media jail for
either being a Biblical Christian, the Leftist epithet of being a homophobe,
the Islamic Apologist epithet of Islamophobe or whatever Conservative value
upset a whiner who complained.
The pseudonymous Counterjihadist Bill Warner discovered
Social Media jail recently and he has a much larger following than I. And CBN.com
has a story on the effects of SPLC Christian-bashing. I am cross posting the
Warner email and the CBN.com story.
Twitter put me on a 12-hour ban for mentioning Islamic
doctrine (see "offensive" tweet below) and Germany banned my
account for good with no explanation as to why.
Twitter
Censorship of Political Islam
Google, Facebook, YouTube, and Twitter are no longer
“friendly” to our message. Political correctness reigns on our major social
media platforms and is suppressing free speech across the right and left
spectrum of religion and politics. The Islamo-Left is adhering to the Sharia.
There is a distinct possibility that eventually I will be totally censored from
these major social media platforms. We need to prepare for that day. The only
method of communication that is entirely safe is newsletters. It is for this
reason I ask you to forward my newsletters to others and urge them to sign up so
the facts about political Islam can be known. I wish to thank those of you who
do this now. We must be creative and stand firm for our rights of free speech
and expression.
The true story of the Islamic
Supremacist war on free speech as told by those on the front lines fighting for
our First Amendment rights, including Mark Steyn, Ayaan Hirsi Ali, Geert
Wilders, Douglas Murray, Raheem Kassam, Pamela Geller, Robert Spencer, Ezra
Levant, Paul Weston, Milo Yiannopolous and cartoonists living under death
threat Lars Vilks and Bosch Fawstin.
[Blog Editor: The rest of the Warner email is further
resource and product promotion which I will not post. Except the promotional
for a teaching video entitled, “The Half Truth of the Islamic Golden Age of
Spain”.]
Once upon a time, the
Southern Poverty Law Center served as a champion in the civil rights struggle.
It's said that the SPLC helped put the Ku Klux Klan out of business. Klan
membership used to be in the millions. Today it's only a few thousand.
But when you glance at the
SPLC's map of hate groups in America today, there are so many that one might
think America is consumed with hate.
But is it?
Changing the Definition of
'Hate'
When you've put the Klan out
of business and won all your battles, but you're not ready to close your doors,
you've got to find new enemies to fight.
One of those new enemies is
former Vanderbilt history professor Dr. Carol Swain. Swain grew up in the old
South and fought poverty and racism to become a university professor. She's an
expert on white nationalism. But she has publicly attacked the SPLC, and Swain,
a conservative Christian, found herself on the SPLC's hate list as a supposed
"apologist for white supremacists."
Other SPLC targets have
included Dr. Ben Carson – who was later removed from its hate list – female
genital mutilation victim Hirsi Ali, and even small charities like the Ruth
Institute, whose mission is to help families and children. The Ruth Institute
said, "If this makes us a 'hate group,' so be it."
The SPLC: A 'Money-Making
Machine'
Among the list of Christian
groups on the SPLC's Hate Map are many local churches. It's usually because
they oppose the gay agenda.
The list includes the Family
Research Council. FRC Executive Vice President General Jerry Boykin doesn't
pull any punches, telling CBN News, "First of all, the SPLC, you have to
understand, is probably one of the most evil groups in America. They've become
a money-making machine and they've become an absolute Marxist, anarchist
organization."
Alliance Defending Freedom, a
Christian legal group, is also on the list. Kerri Kupec, ADF legal counsel and
communications director said, the Southern Poverty Law Center once did good
work, "but the SPLC lost its way a long time ago."
Nothing 'Poor' About
the Southern Poverty Law Center
Kupec dismisses the SPLC as a
"direct mail scam," but marvels at the SPLC's revenues, with assets
listed at $315 million.
"I have never heard of a
group with 'poverty' in its name that has so much money," Kupec said.
Apple, JP Morgan, and actor
George Clooney are just a few who have given millions to the SPLC; there's so
much money coming in that some of it is going into offshore investments, a red
flag for some, but offshore investing among charities is not uncommon.
The Link to Violence
What is more disturbing is
what the SPLC's opponents call a link to deadly violence against Christians and
conservatives.
On August 15, 2012, Floyd Lee
Corkins stormed into the Family Research Council's Washington offices intending
to kill. He wounded the building manager before he was stopped. A bullet
hole still remains in a console in the lobby.
After his arrest, Corkins
told the FBI where he heard about the Family Research Council's Washington
offices. On FBI video of his interrogation, Corkins says, "Southern
Poverty Law lists anti-gay groups. I found them online, did a little bit of
research, went to the website, stuff like that."
Boykin adds, "Our people
know coming here, based on reality and based on what happened here, they're
taking a risk."
James T Hodgkinson, who shot
House Majority Whip Steve Scalise and injured several others at a congressional
softball practice this year, had "liked" the Southern Poverty Law
Center's Facebook page.
The SPLC later admitted,
"We're aware that the SPLC was among hundreds of groups that the man
identified as the shooter 'liked' on Facebook. I want to be as clear as I can
possibly be: The SPLC condemns all forms of violence."
Is the SPLC Spreading
Hate?
But after these attacks, some
are asking the obvious: Does the Southern Poverty Law Center spread hate?
The SPLC did not respond to
our invitation to be a part of this story and refute the claims made against
it, but publicly remains unapologetic. The SPLC has stated repeatedly that
their listing of Christian groups who oppose the LGBT agenda "is
completely unrelated to religion, Christianity or the Bible. These groups are
listed because they repeatedly lie in an effort to defame LGBT people."
In 2007 former SPLC spokeman
Mark Potok told a conference in Michigan, "I want to say plainly that our
aim in life is to destroy these groups, to completely destroy them."
D. James Kennedy Ministries,
also on the hate list, is suing the SPLC, and the charitable arm of Amazon,
AmazonSmile, for dropping the ministry from their lists of eligible religious
charities.
The news media has begun
using the SPLC's hate map in stories about racism and bigotry, giving the map
even more clout and credibility.
Forty-seven conservative
groups and Sen. James Lankford have written the media demanding that it stop
using the SPLC hate map as a source.
Boykin said, "The SPLC
has no authority, except the authority they've given themselves, to build a
hate map or to list people or organizations as haters."
But there is no sign the
Southern Poverty Law Center is changing course when the Left supports it so
strongly, the news media relies it, and the donations keep rolling in.
_______________
Left’s Free Speech War
Waged with Financial Institutions and Social Media
You are receiving this, as you are a member of the CSPI Community or a friend
of Dr. Bill Warner, PhD. We ask that you share this with a friend or colleague.
Please visit us at www.politicalislam.com.
Our mailing address is:
CSPI Publishing
PO Box 90806
Nashville, Tn 37209
______________
The Hate Machine: How the Southern Poverty Law Center Is Cashing in
by Bashing Christians
A U.S, Appellate Court says American victims of PLO/PA
Islamic terrorism cannot sue because they have no standing. What in the devil
is wrong with these judicial idiots?
The U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals
in Manhattan has overturned a landmark $655 millionverdictmade in February 2016 against the Palestinian Authority and
Palestine Liberation Organization, in favor of victims of terror and their
loved ones.
The federal appeals court reversed
the decision this Wednesday (August 31, 2016), finding that United States
courts had no jurisdiction in the case in the first place due to the limited
contacts of the PA/PLO groups with the U.S. and Supreme Court. READ
THEREST (US 2nd Circuit Appeals Court Reverses
Anti-Terror Verdict Against Palestinian Authority, PLO; By Hana Levi Julian; JewishPress.com;
8/31/16)
America's Leftist activist judges strike again by not
holding PLO terrorists accountable for American deaths. A Federal Court
originally made the civil award and 2nd Appellate denies the award. Crazy Injustices!
“The United States government had said last year that the
case threatened to financially destabilize the Palestinian government and harm
the region.” Oh my, we can’t have a “destabilized” “Palestinian” government. It
might start lobbing rockets at Israeli civilians and calling for genocide on
its TV channel!
“‘Free Pass for Terrorists’ as US Court Cancels $654 Million
Verdict Against PLO,” Associated Press,
September 1, 2016:
The decision to cancel the verdict
against the PLO provides “a free pass for terrorists” to kill Americans
overseas, said an attorney for families of victims.
A U.S. appeals court on Wednesday
tossed out a $654 million jury verdict against the Palestine Liberation
Organization for terrorist attacks in the early 2000s in Israel that killed or
wounded Americans, saying the U.S. courts lack jurisdiction because the attacks
were random and not aimed at the United States.
The United States government had
said last year that the case threatened to financially destabilize the
Palestinian government and harm the region.
Wednesday’s written decision by the
2nd U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals in Manhattan said the attacks in 2002 and
2004 that killed 33 people and wounded hundreds more were “unquestionably
horrific.” But the three-judge panel said they were fortuitous and “not
expressly aimed at the United States.”
The decision, written by U.S.
District Judge John G. Koeltl, who was sitting on the court temporarily, said
offices maintained by the PLO and Palestinian Authority in Washington were used
to promote the Palestinian cause in speeches and media appearances and to
retain a lobbying firm. It said those purposes were insufficient to give U.S.
courts jurisdiction over the groups for random attacks abroad.
“It’s a very surprising ruling,”
said Robert Tolchin, an attorney for families of Americans killed or injured in
the attacks.
He said the decision provides “a
free pass for terrorists” to kill Americans overseas. Lawyers, he added, were
considering appeals options.
Gassan A. Baloul, an attorney for
the Palestinian Authority and the Palestine Liberation Organization, said: “We
are very gratified that the court fully accepted our clients’ consistent
position that the PA and the PLO are not subject to the jurisdiction of the
United States courts in these matters.”
The ruling pertained to a February
2015 jury award of $218 million to Americans in a case that relied on the
Anti-Terrorism Act, which allows victims of U.S.-designated foreign terrorist
organizations to seek compensation for pain and suffering, loss of earnings and
other hardship. The award was automatically tripled under the law….
___________________
JihadWatch® is a registered trademark of Robert Spencer. in the
United States and/or other countries - Site Developed and Managed by Free
SpeechDefense
Content copyright Jihad Watch
Why Jihad Watch?
Why Jihad Watch? Because non-Muslims in the West, as well
as in India, China, Russia, and the world over, are facing a concerted effort
by Islamic jihadists, the motives and goals of whom are largely ignored by the
Western media, to destroy their societies and impose Islamic law upon them —
and to commit violence to that end even while their overall goal remains out of
reach. That effort goes under the general rubric of jihad.
Jihad (Arabic for “struggle”) is a central duty of every
Muslim. Muslim theologians have spoken of many things as jihads: the struggle
within the soul, defending the faith from critics, supporting its growth and
defense financially, even migrating to non-Muslim lands for the purpose of
spreading Islam. But violent jihad is a constant of Islamic history and a
central element of Islamic theology. Many passages of the Qur’an and sayings of
the Islamic prophet Muhammad are used by jihad warriors today to justify their
actions and gain new recruits. No major Muslim group has ever repudiated the
doctrines of armed jihad. The theology of jihad, which denies unbelievers equality
of human rights and dignity, is available today for anyone with the will and
means to bring it to life.
In Islamic history and doctrine violent jihad is founded
on numerous verses of the Qur’an — most notably, one known in Islamic theology
as the “Verse of the Sword”: “Then, when …READ THEREST
About Robert
Spencer
ROBERT SPENCER is the director of Jihad Watch, a program
of the David Horowitz Freedom Center, and the author of fifteen books,
including the New York Times
bestsellers The Truth About Muhammad and The Politically Incorrect
Guide to Islam (and the Crusades) (both Regnery). His latest book is
The
Complete Infidel’s Guide to Iran(Regnery).
Spencer has led seminars on Islam and jihad for the FBI,
the United States Central Command, United States Army Command and General Staff
College, the U.S. Army’s Asymmetric Warfare Group, the Joint Terrorism Task
Force (JTTF), and the U.S. intelligence community. He has discussed jihad,
Islam, and terrorism at a workshop sponsored by the U.S. State Department and
the German Foreign Ministry. He is a consultant with the Center for Security
Policy and vice president of the American Freedom Defense Initiative, and has
also served as a contributing writer to Steven Emerson’s Investigative Project
on Terrorism and as an Adjunct Fellow with the Free Congress Foundation.
Spencer is a weekly columnist for PJ Media and FrontPage Magazine, and has written
many hundreds of articles about jihad and Islamic terrorism. His articles on
Islam and other topics have appeared in …READ THE REST
