Check this out –

http://www.e-paa.org/

It is the newly launched website of Pakistani Atheists and Agnostics.

They are brave to come out into the open in an Islamic state.

They deserve our encouragement.

It seems that the popular insurrection in Syria is over.

The dictator’s soldiers have been breaking into homes and slaughtering whole families in cold blood.

DebkaFile reports

Since military massacres city by city were not enough to wipe out dissent, Assad mobilized his 300,000 strong army and called up 50,000 reservists for a coordinated, systematic cleanup of all protest centers. The operation, dubbed “Biraq Assad” – Assad’s flag – aims to raise the dictator’s flag once more over every Syrian town, village and building.

The uniformed killers are given lists of addresses of protesters and deserters from the army. They shoot as they burst into homes, leaving no survivors from their “visits,” whether men, women, children or elderly. Whole families are massacred, one by one. …

The army is also giving special attention to the Jabal al-Zawiya region of northeast Syria not far from the Turkish border. Thousands of Syrian soldiers on foot comb through caves, dense brush and every possible place of concealment to flush out and kill on the spot the many Syrian army deserters who refused to fire on civilians.

So the tyrant, Bashar Assad, wins and stays in power.

At least for the present.

The physicist Ivar Giaever, Nobel laureate, has resigned from the American Physical Society because of its position on “man-made global warming”.

For doing that he deserves more laurels.

Here is his letter of resignation in full. In it he quotes an APS statement [italicized by us] that makes its position plain. No true scientist could live with it.

Dear Ms. Kirby

Thank you for your letter inquiring about my membership. I did not renew it because I can not live with the statement below:

Emissions of greenhouse gases from human activities are changing the atmosphere in ways that affect the Earth’s climate. Greenhouse gases include carbon dioxide as well as methane, nitrous oxide and other gases. They are emitted from fossil fuel combustion and a range of industrial and agricultural processes.
The evidence is incontrovertible: Global warming is occurring.
If no mitigating actions are taken, significant disruptions in the Earth’s physical and ecological systems, social systems, security and human health are likely to occur. We must reduce emissions of greenhouse gases beginning now.

In the APS it is ok to discuss whether the mass of the proton changes over time and how a multi-universe behaves, but the evidence of global warming is incontrovertible? The claim (how can you measure the average temperature of the whole earth for a whole year?) is that the temperature has changed from ~288.0 to ~288.8 degree Kelvin in about 150 years, which (if true) means to me that the temperature has been amazingly stable, and both human health and happiness have definitely improved in this ‘warming’ period.

Best regards,

Ivar Giaever

Nobel Laureate 1973

Whenever we have to think of Saudi Arabia, we remember how its Morality Police would not let schoolgirls escape from a burning building because they were not covered and veiled as Muhammad-aka-Allah deemed they must be. The event is symptomatic of the double hell stoked by Islam and Arab culture.

Any news that the Saudi Arabian despots are at the receiving end of a figurative punch on the nose is good news to us. Best of all would be a death blow, but a defeat for them in the lawcourts is to be resoundingly cheered by all decent persons.

To add to the good news we posted yesterday about “lawfare” successes, here’s a report about a British insurance group suing Saudi Arabia to recover damages paid out to 9/11 victims:

A U.K.-based insurance syndicate is suing the Saudi government to recover more than $215 million it paid out to victims of the 9/11 attacks.

The amount is chump change to those oil-rich despots, but their political loss of face if the verdict goes against them will be historic. We have often advocated humiliation as a suitable punishment for “honor” obsessed Muslims who commit or co-author acts of terrorism.

In a complaint filed Thursday in a Johnstown, Penn. district court, Lloyd’s Syndicate alleges that the government of Saudi Arabia provided direct operational and financial support to al-Qaida and its affiliates in the years leading up to the September 11 attacks.

“Absent the sponsorship of al Qaeda’s material sponsors and supporters, including the defendants named herein,” the suit claims, “al Qaeda would not have possessed the capacity to conceive, plan and execute the September 11 attacks.”

The complaint extensively quotes counter-terrorism officials affirming that financial resources are crucial to al-Qaida’s ability to launch attacks. It also gives specific examples linking the Saudi government to al-Qaida financing. 

Saudi-funded charities, such as the Muslim World League (MWL), World Assembly of Muslim Youth (WAMY), International Islamic Relief Organization (IIRO) and the al Haramain Islamic Foundation, have allowed al-Qaida to sustain its global network, it says …

The groups, in addition to providing funding, organized recruitment of al-Qaida fighters, training camps, reconnaissance missions and weapons delivery. …

The Saudi regime was aware of Osama bin Laden’s jihadist efforts from the very beginning, it says. “More fundamentally, the jihadist worldview bin Laden was promoting was firmly grounded in Wahhabi ideology and the Western Cultural Attack narrative, as promoted by the Saudi regime itself over a period of many years.”

It is not a message the US government wants to hear. Saudi Arabia is a “valued ally” and – ahem! – oil-supplier.

Filed on behalf of Lloyd’s Syndicate by Cozen O’Connor law firm, the suit is not the first to blame the Saudi government for aiding terrorists. A federal appeals court previously dismissed the Saudi government as a defendant in a similar case, but ruled that other organizations affiliated with the Saudi government could remain defendants.

In 2009, the Supreme Court chose not to hear the case. The government said that the Saudi government’s funding of the Islamic charities was not clearly linked to terrorist groups.

This time we hope the link will be so brilliantly clear that it will hurt the eyes of those who would rather not see it.

International banks that facilitate the financing of terrorism are being sued with satisfying results, according to this heartening report:

In a recent ruling that sent shockwaves through the Western financial world, the New York District Court revealed that Clearstream, a Luxembourg subsidiary of Deutsche Borse bank, is being sued by 1,000 victims of international terror attacks as part of a larger lawsuit against Iran.

Plaintiffs in the suit, known as Peterson vs. Iran, are suing Tehran over its alleged funding of Islamic Jihad, the Hezbollah paramilitary wing that perpetrated the 1983 US Marine Barracks bombing in Beirut. They allege that Clearstream, one of the world’s largest international securities depositories settling cross-border transactions, helped Iran move millions of dollars in frozen assets out of the US banking system. …

The lawsuit, brought under US anti-terror legislation, is one of a string of ongoing actions that legal experts say are exposing the role played by international banks in helping finance terror.

One of the largest and most influential of the antiterror funding suits is Almog vs. Arab Bank, filed by survivors and family members of victims of attacks by groups including Hamas, Palestinian Islamic Jihad and the Popular Front for the Liberation of Palestine.

While usually only US citizens can file complaints in US courts, in the case of Arab Bank the judge has allowed other nationals – including citizens from Israel, Russia, Ukraine and France – to join.

Arab Bank, which is headquartered in Amman, is accused of aiding and abetting terrorist acts by providing extensive banking services for several organizations that gave money to suicide bombers’ families.

Among those organizations is the Saudi Committee, which is alleged to have routed over $100 million raised in a Saudi-government-supported campaign to Palestinian terror groups.

According to Prof. Reuven Paz, an Israeli expert on Islamic movements who has been involved in 18 of the terror-funding lawsuits, Arab Bank acted as a “pipeline” that channeled funds to Gaza bank accounts. … [and] set up an administrative process whereby the relatives of suicide bombers had to receive official certification of their deceased family member’s “martyr” status before receiving funds.

According to attorney Richard D. Heideman – whose Washington firm Heideman Nudelman and Kalik, PC, represents American terror victims in several civil actions – although Arab Bank filed a motion to dismiss the suit in the US District Court of New York, the judge overruled that in a published opinion and has allowed the case to proceed. It is expected to go to trial.

And also according to Heideman, the German Commerzbank is being sued for “providing financial services to Hezbollah through various front organizations”. That case too is expected to go to trial.

Whatever the final outcome of these civil suits in terms of damages settlements for terror victims and their families, lawyers and regional experts agree they are raising public awareness about the global reach of terror funding, as well as making it increasingly harder for Hamas and Hezbollah to route funding through international banks.

Attorney Nitsana Darshan-Leitner of Tel Aviv-based NGO the Israel Law Center, who is involved in a number of civil cases against terror sponsors in the US courts, agrees with Heideman that “terror funding” lawsuits are effective. … She also pointed to several UK banks, including Barclays and Lloyds TSB, which had provided accounts to charities that were giving money to terror groups.

“Those accounts were closed,” Darshan-Leitner said. “As a result of the lawsuits, banks stopped providing financial services to areas where terror groups work, like Gaza. So the suits have also affected Hamas’s government operations there because Hamas now can’t get money for its activities.”

Paz believes the Arab Bank action is so far the most effective of the civil lawsuits, in terms of its impact on terror funding. “One of the most successful fights against global Jihad has definitely been in the world of finance,” he said. “And one of the results is that terror groups have become more cautious about their financial activity… Arab Bank is in a panic… It is a very large private bank in the Arab world, and it is a very important basis of the Jordanian economy. … If Arab Bank collapses, it will hurt Jordan and the West Bank.”

The lawsuit against Arab Bank has forced it to freeze the accounts of the Saudi Committee, and is frustrating other Gulf states’ efforts to fund and reward terrorist activity.

It tried moving its “Hamas financial operations” to China, “where Hamas is not considered a terror group”, but “China’s policy on Hamas does not prevent the Bank of China being sued in the US courts under US antiterror legislation” and –

A  judge in the Supreme Court of the State of New York recently gave the green light to a lawsuit against the Bank of China by 84 victims of Hamas rocket attacks.

Because it has a branch in New York, the Bank of China must act according to US rules on terror funding.  And so  –

China has closed Hamas’s account. 

Nitsana Darshan-Leitner’s firm, Shurat HaDin, is also suing insurance companies:

Shurat HaDin aims to prevent blockade breach by bringing lawsuits in the US against companies offering services to participating ships. …

In letters to maritime insurance firms and satellite communications companies, Shurat HaDin … has warned that any companies that provide services that assist in the breach of the Israeli blockade on Gaza will be sued in the United States for aiding the Hamas terrorist organization.

Their warnings to insurance companies kept ships from participating in the last flotilla that was planned to break Israel’s blockade of Gaza.

The group has also sent letters to 30 of the top maritime insurance companies in the world announcing their intent to sue if they provide insurance to ships participating in the flotilla. “Every boat that travels from any country’s seaports or marinas needs to have maritime insurance,” explained Darshan-Leitner. “Without insurance, a ship is not permitted to set sail. Yet, the maritime insurance companies insuring the boats utilized by the Gaza Flotilla surely have no idea that the passenger boats that they are indemnifying are being used by the organizers to run the coastal blockade, violently challenge the IDF and smuggle weapons into Gaza. No legitimate insurance company nor its shareholders would reasonably agree to insure an expedition like that. We have begun to send letters placing the maritime insurance companies on notice concerning the Gaza Flotilla, and warning them that if they provide insurance … they themselves will be legally liable for any future terrorist attacks perpetrated by Hamas.”

And they are thinking of more ways to hamper sea-borne support for terrorists by using the law:

Shurat HaDin … recently approached mobile satellite services company Inmarsat– the only company that provides communications and navigations services to ships that sail in the region – requesting that they refuse to provide their services to ships participating in the flotilla. “We informed them that if they do so, they will be in violation of the American Neutrality Act, which prohibits aiding a group in their struggle against the military of an ally country,” said Darshan-Leitner. “Since Imarsat has offices in the US, the law binds them.The group has already received assurances from the world’s largest maritime insurance company, Lloyd’s, that they would not insure ships participating in the flotilla, as well as an agreement from the International Union of Marine Insurance that they would send their requests to all their members.

*

Spurred by success, Shurat HaDin are now threatening to sue Columbia University if they host Iran’s nasty President Ahmadinejad, according to this report in Commentary-contentions:

Columbia University has hosted Iranian President Ahmadinejad in years past, but the upcoming banquet it’s reportedly planning for the universally-loathed leader might not go as smoothly this time around.

An Israeli law center is vowing to hit Columbia University with massive lawsuits if it goes ahead with the banquet, according to a letter the legal group sent to university president Lee Bollinger …

The letter (read it here in full) declared and warned that –

Hosting Ahmadinejad at a banquet is not merely morally repulsive: it is illegal and will expose Columbia University and its officers to both criminal prosecution and civil liability to American citizens and others victimized by Iranian-sponsored terrorism.

Iran is officially designated under U.S. law as a state-sponsor of terrorism, as a proliferator of weapons of mass destruction and as a perpetrator of human rights abuses. Ahmadinejad is Iran’s chief executive and personally directs Iran’s terrorist and nuclear proliferation activities and human rights abuse. …

The planned Columbia University event for Ahmadinejad would constitute the type of seemingly innocuous material support that would render both Columbia University and you personally criminally and civilly liable notwithstanding any putative First Amendment claims.

Shurat HaDin demanded that the University cancel the event. “Otherwise, the group says it will ‘feel a moral obligation to take all measures permitted to ensure that the laws are enforced’.”

We wait to know if the event will be cancelled, and if it isn’t what will follow. We believe Shurat HaDin will carry out its threat, and we raise a brimming glass to everyone in that enterprising firm.

A Muslim, Hasan Mahmud, criticizes another Muslim, John Esposito, for his Deceptions on ‘Islamophobia’:

I am a Muslim. I believe that accepting our (Muslims’) share in creating “Islamophobia” in the West will help eliminate it.

Is there any significant Islamophobia in the West? Not much if the word means “irrational” fear of Islam. But Islam has done its damnedest to make the West afraid of it, and considering that 0ver 17,700 deadly terrorist attacks have been carried out world-wide in the name of Islam since 9/11 (see the figure in our margin), it is rational to fear this murderous cult, this Religion of War.  Muslims do not merely “have a share” in creating fear and hatred of Islam, they are totally responsible for it.

But let’s read more of what Hasan Mahmud has to say. It is worth reading.

Dr. John Esposito’s recent article in the Huffington Post, “Islamophobia: A threat to American Values?” puts the entire blame on Western “media commentators, hard-line Christian Zionists and politicians.” He even neglects to mention the huge contribution Muslim societies have had on the issue. Esposito ignores that in our global village the West is regularly flooded by violence coming from Muslim societies; violence which is perpetrated in the name of Islam while citing Quranic verses and the Prophet’s examples. The list is long. Here are some examples:

1. A Sharia court stoned to death a gang-raped girl, who was a minor at the time.

2. A Sharia court flogged another girl to death for having an affair.

3. Punishing raped girls/women by Sharia courts is continuing.

4. Wife-beating is openly preached.

5. Child-marriage is openly preached.

6. “No rape in marriage” is openly preached.

7. Female genital mutilation (FGM) is supported by many clergics including some of Al Azhar University.

8. Women are instantly divorced – there is no maintenance in such cases.

9. A woman appealed to a Sharia court to order her husband to beat her not every day but once a week.

10. Sharia-police (Hisba) are invading people’s lives.

11. The persecution of Muslims with different ideas is reaching a frightening level.

12. Non-Muslims are arrested for carrying their holy books.

13. The persecution of non-Muslims is continuous and reaching a disturbing level.

14. Hate preaching against non-Muslims in media is common.

15. Indoctrination of children with such hate is open and alarming.

16. School syllabi are full of hatred directed at “The Other.”

17. Non-Muslim places of worship are destroyed regularly.

18. Lying and deceiving are supported.

19. Civil rights are violently suppressed by “Islamic” governments — often by hanging.

With such phenomena and experience, what else does Dr. Esposito expect from the West except “Islamophobia”? He also blames the West for resisting the Ground Zero Mosque.

Now comes something we find surprising:

I wish he knew how many Muslims around the world are opposed to the proposed Islamic center, not because we don’t want mosques, but because before its construction, the notion of the center created “fitna” (division) and violently divided the whole nation.

The issue has “violently divided the whole nation”? He must mean the American nation. (Islam is not a nation.) But did it divide “the whole nation”?  And has there been violence because of it? Not that we know of.

But then Mahmud goes on to condemn Esposito’s indulgence in just such exaggeration, and praises the concessions the West makes to Islam – which we believe are made out of fear:

Esposito is also utterly wrong to state: “Today, opposition to mosque construction with claims that all mosques are ‘monuments to terrorism’ and ‘house embedded cells’ in locations from NYC and Staten Island, to Tennessee and California, has become not just a local but a national political issue.” I wish he knew that only last month a new mosque, Baitul Gaffar, was constructed in New York without a shadow of resistance, or how many euros European governments are pouring into the construct of new mosques.

That, Mr Mahmud, is very bad news.

Mr Mahnud, what is your view of Islam? We can’t make it out. You say next, in what presumably is a spirit of disapproval:

By the way, women were barred from attending the opening ceremony of Baitul Gaffar (House of Creator) in New York.

Do you like Islam with its inbuilt uncompromising contempt for women, or not?

Despite overwhelming support for Muslims among politicians, [Esposito] cites a few bad apples. For instance, Esposito says, “Politicians use fear of Islam as a political football.”…

If politicians who do not “support Muslims” are “bad apples”, then you are …. for sharia? It’s difficult to know. You say:

Aren’t there Islamists trying to establish Sharia courts in the USA? Yes, the blueprint of American Sharia courts was created as early as 1993 by TAM, The American Muslims.

And the sharia courts, you say, with apparent disapproval, are being established with Saudi money. Next, you say of Islamic terrorism:

Who is breeding the home grown terrorists? Are they Western media commentators, hard-line Christian Zionists and politicians?

No. The breeders are Muslims. And you seem to wish they wouldn’t do it.

You also come out strongly against Muslim hatred of Jews and the West as a whole:

I wish Esposito mentioned the hate-sunami against Jews and the West that roars in the media and throughout the pulpits of the Muslim world, constantly in Himalayan magnitude. One cartoon against our Prophet (SA) caused chaos to break loose, but during my long years in the Middle East, I saw many dozens of worse cartoons in the media about Jews and their holy book. No government contained that, nor was there a sane Muslim voice against these cartoons.

There wouldn’t be, would there, considering what Muhammad/Allah had to say about Jews and infidels generally?

Esposito also states that “all Muslims have been reduced to stereotypes of Islam against the West, Islam’s war with modernity, and Muslim rage, extremism, fanaticism, and terrorism” and “all leaders of that [American] society look at all Muslims with suspicion and prejudice.” These are hyperbolic overstatements. I am a Muslim; I live in Canada and often travel to the US – there is a general sense of concern, but in general, Muslims are doing well, living well and are treated well. The overwhelming support and protection of Muslims by common North Americans and churches after 9/11 is on record, but is sadly overlooked. …

The West is continuously bombarded by the news of serious violence from the Muslim world against women, non-Muslims and Muslims of different Islamic ideas, in the name of Islam.

This is the main reason for “Islamophobia” — and a logical one.

Yes. Right.

But please show us where your holy script is against this violence. Show us an Islam that does not insist on war, conquest, enslavement, and the subjugation of women and non-Muslims.

Can you?

We enjoy Andrew Klavan’s writing. We like the way he thinks, we like his humor.

How does a man of such engaging intelligence bring himself to believe in a god, and (adding a riddle to a nonsense) that “God is three persons, Father, Son and Holy Spirit”, we wonder.

Here are parts of a column of his at PajamasMedia, in which he argues that the present war is a Holy War, between Islam and other religions, chiefly Christianity:

What has been fatuously called “The War on Terror,” this ongoing struggle between Islamism and the rest of the world (including some of the Islamic world) is, in fact, a holy war: a violent argument over the nature of our Creator.

Americans right and left hate this fact. Many can barely face it. Almost no one in authority or the media ever dares mention it at all…  In principle, through tradition, by law and nature, most of us are repelled by the idea of killing over religion. Freedom in these matters is our watchword. I say Jesus; you say Allah; let’s call the whole thing God.

This is not to indulge in any mealy-mouthed moral equivalence or dribble out some balderdash about how all religions are one and faith is a mountain that can be climbed from any side. Not likely. If there is a God — whether or not there is, in fact — there will be things you can say about Him that are true [how will you know they are? – JB] and things that are not true and some religions will surely contain more of the truth than others. …

None will. But on we go:

Over hard history, we have learned that there are some struggles in which the evil of the fight itself supersedes the good of any potential victory. Faith is not knowledge …

Right, Klavan!

We should approach the super-natural with humility in our beliefs and forbearance towards the beliefs of others. And anyway, many cherished doctrines, no matter how deep or meaningful, don’t have much immediate effect on our lives. I believe that God is three persons, Father, Son and Holy Spirit — but if it turns out He’s five guys named Moe, I’m not going to change my weekend plans.

That’s quite funny. He goes on:

So we hate the idea of fighting a holy war. But we have no choice.

We have no choice but to fight the war, and certainly the other side believes it is a holy war (that’s what “jihad” means), but is it? He hasn’t established that yet.

No matter what moral knots some self-loathing westerners tie the facts into, the truth remains, the other bastards started it and now it’s on. Doesn’t matter how tolerant you think you are. Doesn’t matter how many “Coexist” bumper stickers you own. If a man with a gun kicks your door down and starts telling you how to pray, there are only two possible outcomes: victory or surrender.

In order to secure victory in a holy war [or any war – JB], however, you have to know what you’re fighting for. It’s not enough to kill the jihadis who want to kill us, or to dismantle the no-go Sharia enclaves being purposely created in cities throughout the west. A holy war is a violent argument about the nature of our Creator …

This one isn’t. And a war is instead of an argument. But yes, we do need, in the long run, to win our argument against Islam. How? By opposing one irrationality with another irrationality? That is Klavan’s belief:

So in order to win, we have to know what Creator we’re trying to defend.

He recognizes a difference between Islam’s allah and the Christian three-in-one godhead. But if either of those absurd fictions were to “win”, war would be just beginning for us. Fortunately –

This isn’t easy in a nation committed to religious liberty — a commitment that could not survive a kill-or-be-killed smackdown between your prophet and mine.

There are those, of course, who believe the problem is religion itself: remove the subject of the argument, they say, and the argument would end.

Right, right.

But he then goes on ridiculously as the gullible-of-the-gods often do:

The murder and oppression that defined the atheist empires in communist Russia and China – not to mention the slow, insidious death currently claiming “post-Christian” Europe — strongly suggest otherwise. Culturally, atheism is a disaster— although atheists are entitled to express their opinion right up until the moment the Islamists [or any sole-possessor of religious “truth”] kill them.

It wasn’t the atheism of the Communists that made them murder and oppress: it was their Communism. It isn’t their atheism that is making European nations commit suicide, its their Socialism.

For the rest of us — including those atheists who have the wherewithal to think it through …

Nice being patronized by a Christian, isn’t it?

… we must be willing to stand in open argument…

Agreed!

… and, if it’s our calling, in bloody battle for the God our founding principles, in fact, imply. …

So he plants his riddle-of-a-God more firmly in the Constitution than the Founders themselves cared to.

Sure, if we had to choose between living under modern Christianity, it being a flaccid religion except among the very few who will kill for it, or under  intensely oppressive and cruel Islam, for which all Muslims are instructed by their holy writ to kill, we’d have to choose the former.

But we don’t have to choose between them. The fight – or, as the man says, the argument –  is not between the Cross and the Crescent. It is not between God and Allah. It is between Western civilization and Islam. Reason is on one side only (impeded somewhat by the religious with their unreasonable declamations), and that’s why guns and drones and bombers are in operation.

Reason will win eventually. The little grey cells are mightier than the  sword and the scimitar, the drone and the suicide bomber. But it might take a weary long time.

From The Religion of Peace

Picture of the Week The progeny of Muslim asylum seekers mar a moment of silence at a London memorial for 9/11 victims by burning an American flag. Most of the men in this photo actually live on public benefits.

At the request of our reader Frank, we post this video of Pat Condell speaking (inter alia) against Rick Perry because Perry believes in God and wants creationism taught in schools.

He is right that every politician in America has to be or seem to be religious. But since that is the case, should an atheist never vote at all, even if he likes everything else a candidate stands for?

We often agree with Pat Condell, but in this monologue we detect a whiff of the anti-Americanism which permeates Europe like a bad smell. We’d rather America was religious and free than atheist and collectivist – if that is the choice.

You cannot be a freethinker in an unfree land – or only in silence and fear.