90 Miles From Tyranny

Wednesday, January 3, 2018

Drexel Professor Who Called For “White Genocide” Hired By New York University

We have previously discussed the controversial writings of George Ciccariello-Maher, a former Drexel University professor who was pushed to resign after a national outcry. Ciccariello-Maher has blamed the Las Vegas massacre on “Trumpism” and declared that “All I want for Christmas is white genocide.” He has insisted that some of his prior tweets have been”satirical,” though he appears to court controversy on social media. He has now announced to have been hired as a visiting scholar by New York University’s Hemispheric Institute of Performance and Politics.

related: Drexel Professor Who Blamed Las Vegas, Texas Church Shootings on Trump and ‘Whiteness’ Resigns

Last year, he tweeted, “Some guy gave up his first class seat for a uniformed soldier. People are thanking him. I’m trying not to vomit or yell about Mosul.” Likewise, after the mass shooting in Las Vegas, he posted, “It’s the white supremacist patriarchy, stupid,” arguing the tragedy was caused by an overarching “narrative of white victimization.”

related: The Far-Left Ideas that Motivate ‘White Genocide’ Professor

Despite a long history of writing highly offensive and prejudicial statements, I continued to question the effort to fire Ciccariello-Maher in exercising his free speech rights on social media. My concern was heightened by the demand of wealthy donors that the Ciccariello-Maher be fired. Thousands of university professors (including this one) engage in blogs and social media to express political, social, and academic viewpoints. Inevitably, there will be those who view many statements to be offensive or insulting. However, these academics retain not simply their rights of free speech but have historically been protected by the principles of academic freedom. If schools like Drexel destroy that tradition, any professor could be dismissed after some wealthy donor complains to a university president. University administrators are notorious for putting the bottomline ahead of principle in such controversies. The answer to Ciccariello-Maher is readily apparent: response with your own postings and arguments. That is the beauty of free speech. Bad speech can be countered by good speech.

related: Antifa Professor at Drexel Wants to Vomit When 1st Class Passenger Gives His Seat to a Soldier

There is however a countervailing concern. As we have previously discussed (including the recent story involving an Oregon professor), there remains an uncertain line in what language is protected for teachers in their private lives. The incident also raises what some faculty have complained is a double or at least uncertain standard. We have previously discussed....

It's Me, It's Me, I'm A Democrat Senator's Son!

Tim Kaine's Son Sentenced to Only Probation Over Post-Trump Rally Arrest

NBC, ABC Downplay the Size of Iranian Protests, CBS Questions Murders

The network coverage of the Iranian protests since their beginning nearly a week ago has been utterly abysmal. From ignoring them all together to downplaying the murder of protesters, the three major network news outlets have had to be dragged kicking and screaming to cover the spontaneous uprising. Tuesday was no different with ABC’s World News Tonight and NBC Nightly News downplaying the size and expansiveness of the demonstrations. CBS Evening News went off the deep end and started openly questioning who was actually killing the protesters.

In one of the most outrageous examples of the liberal media downplaying the Iranian protests, NBC’s Chief Foreign Affairs Correspondent Andrea Mitchell (who has a long history of kissing up to brutal foreign regimes) claimed the protests were only 10 percent of their actual scope.

“Unlike Iran’s last major protest over disputed elections in 2009, these were sparked by frustration over a weak economy. Starting in the city of Mashhad, smaller but for the first time spreading nationwide,” Mitchell asserted. And as she said that the current protests were “smaller,” she flashed a map on the screen that highlighted only four cities. That map was an outright fabrication of the truth.

Mitchell’s map claiming that there were protests in only four cities was a blatant lie easily proven false by a map tweeted out by the Associated Press that puts the city count at over three dozen, 37 to be precise. But prior to her report, while anchor Lester Holt was still delivering the introduction to the segment, the network flashed yet another map showing only 21 cities having protests. It did show more cities but it was still less than two-thirds of what it really was.

The NBC reporter was also worried about the negative effects President Trump would have with his tweets of support. “President Trump supporting the protests, tweeting: “The people of Iran are finally acting against the brutal and corrupt Iranian regime… the U.S. is watching,” she noted while failing to mention that what the U.S. was watching for was signs of human rights violations. “But could the Trump tweets backfire? Sparking a crackdown?”

Feigning concern about a crackdown against the protesters was a disturbing narrative from the liberal media to try to shut up...

Several reports out of the China-North Korean border area indicate that Beijing is massing People’s Liberation Army troops on the frontier and has told them to prepare for war.

“Columns of (People’s Liberation Army) trucks have been pictured on the move near Yanji City which is close to the triple border between China, Russia and North Korea,” the U.K. Star reported Tuesday.

According to a computer translation of the Korean-language Daily NK, military trucks have been moving into position at night so as not to attract the attention of locals.

“There were so many soldiers in (vehicles) that there was a traffic jam,” a source reportedly said on Dec. 30. “We have not seen so many soldiers trucking to Yanji so far.”

Sources in the Chinese media have said that the PLA is “preparing for war on the Korean Peninsula” and that army commanders have participated in a “war ceremony” urging their troops to be ready for war.

Pictures of the ceremony, shot last month, show massive gatherings of Chinese troops, all of whom were purportedly swearing oaths only given during wartime.

Meanwhile, residents of the area have apparently been told that “Trump (is) to hit North Korea in the New Year, we are preparing for war on the peninsula,” a source said.

China’s move comes as North Korean dictator Kim Jong Un warned in his New Year’s Day address that he has a “nuclear button” on his desk and that North Korea would continue its development of atomic weapons in 2018.

“The entire United States is within range of our nuclear weapons, a nuclear button is always on my desk. This is reality, not a threat,” Kim said, according to...

Republicans on key congressional committees say they have uncovered new irregularities and contradictions inside the FBI’s probe of Hillary Clinton’s email server.

For the first time, investigators say they have secured written evidence that the FBI believed there was evidence that some laws were broken when the former secretary of State and her top aides transmitted classified information through her insecure private email server, lawmakers and investigators told The Hill.

That evidence includes passages in FBI documents stating the “sheer volume” of classified information that flowed through Clinton’s insecure emails was proof of criminality as well as an admission of false statements by one key witness in the case, the investigators said.

The name of the witness is redacted from the FBI documents but lawmakers said he was an employee of a computer firm that helped maintain her personal server after she left office as America’s top diplomat and who belatedly admitted he had permanently erased an archive of her messages in 2015 after they had been subpoenaed by Congress.

The investigators also confirmed that the FBI began drafting a statement exonerating Clinton of any crimes while evidence responsive to subpoenas was still outstanding and before agents had interviewed more than a dozen key witnesses.

Those witnesses included Clinton and the computer firm employee who permanently erased her email archives just days after the emails were subpoenaed by Congress, the investigators said.

Lawmakers on the House Judiciary Committee who attended a Dec. 21 closed-door briefing by FBI Deputy Director Andrew McCabe say the bureau official confirmed that the investigation and charging decisions were controlled by a small group in Washington headquarters rather the normal process of allowing field offices to investigate possible criminality in their localities. The Clinton email server in question was based in New York.

In normal FBI cases, field offices where crimes are believed to have been committed investigate the evidence and then recommend to bureau hierarchy whether to pursue charges with prosecutors. In this case, the bureau hierarchy controlled both the investigation and the charging decision from Washington, a scenario known in FBI parlance as a “special,” the lawmakers said.

The FBI declined comment on McCabe’s closed-door testimony and the evidence being shared with Congress.

Some Republicans on the committee say the findings and revelations have left them more convinced than ever that FBI leadership rigged the outcome to clear Clinton.

“This was an effort to pre-bake the cake, pre-bake the outcome,” said Rep. Matt Gaetz (R-Fla.), a House Judiciary Committee member who attended the McCabe briefing before the holidays. “Hillary Clinton obviously benefited from people taking actions to ensure she wasn’t held accountable.”

Gaetz said he could not divulge the specifics of what McCabe told lawmakers, but that he left the Dec. 21 session believing the FBI had deviated from its “normal objective practices” while investigating Clinton.

The top Democrat on the panel acknowledged the FBI’s handling of the case was unique, but argued Republicans are politicizing their own panel’s work.

“To the extent that the Assistant Director of the FBI was involved in that investigation, and recognizing that the investigation itself presented a unique set of circumstances, his testimony did not raise any concerns that would justify the Republicans’ outsized obsession with Hillary Clinton’s emails two years after the fact,” said Rep. Jerrold Nadler (D-N.Y) who recently took over as the top Democrat on House Judiciary after former Rep. John Conyers Jr. (D-Mich.) stepped aside after sexual misconduct allegations were made against him.

Gaetz said he has growing questions about the role the Obama Justice Department played in the case.

Former FBI Director James Comey has testified he made the decision not to seek criminal charges against Clinton — with no Justice Department input — because he feared any involvement from the department might ...