90 Miles From Tyranny

Thursday, November 3, 2022

Amazon Fascists Ban Another Book That Leftists Hate

The choking grip on freedom of speech tightens.

The battle for the freedom of speech is heating up this week, with Elon Musk chasing out the Twitter fascists and beginning to open up the platform for free discussion and dissent (amid howls of rage from the Left), but the other social media giants are showing no signs of retreating from their fascism. New English Review Press announced Sunday that a book it published back in 2017, The Islam in Islamic Terrorism: The Importance of Beliefs, Ideas, and Ideology by the renowned ex-Muslim scholar Ibn Warraq, has been pulled for sale from Amazon without explanation or the possibility of appeal.

It’s a strange move. I have the privilege and honor of having known Ibn Warraq for many years and calling him my friend. I’ve also read The Islam in Islamic Terrorism. Before I met him, his groundbreaking and courageous work Why I Am Not A Muslim was a powerful influence on me in the 1990s and had a great deal to do with my beginning to write about jihad violence and Sharia oppression of women myself. Ibn Warraq is a gentle soul, a careful scholar, a superb writer, and a profound and original thinker. The Islam in Islamic Terrorism is not some flame-throwing hate screed but a carefully documented exploration of the elements of Islam that jihad terrorists use in order to justify violence and make recruits among peaceful Muslims.

Amazon, however, is run by Leftists, and for Leftists, any criticism of Islam, including any hint that it may have some connection to Islamic terrorism, is “Islamophobic” and thus to be rejected out of hand without any discussion of the actual evidence. For years now, the notorious far-Left smear machine, the Southern Poverty Law Center (SPLC), has defamed opponents of jihad violence and Sharia oppression as “hate group leaders,” and Amazon has banned counter-jihad 501c3 charitable organizations from its Amazon Smile charity program on the basis of the SPLC’s “hate” listings.

Amazon has also shown a readiness to ban books that counter the Left’s nonsense. A few years back, the Leftist behemoth banned Ryan Anderson’s When Harry Became Sally: Responding to the Transgender Moment. It has also banned other books that jihadis and their allies would find offensive, such as Peter McLoughlin’s Easy Meat: Inside Britain’s Grooming Gang Scandal, and Mohammed’s Koran by McLoughlin and British activist Tommy Robinson.

Leftists will say, as they always say to criticism of the social media giants, that Amazon is a private company that can do what it wants and that if patriots don’t like it, they can start their own bookstore. Remember bookstores? There used to be many in every American city. They all had different selections, based on the owners’ perspectives and interests. But now they are almost all gone. Amazon dominates the book market, and...

A dark money group that wants to defund police and abolish federal immigration agencies has poured hundreds of thousands of dollars into the Arizona Senate race, providing a last-minute boost for Democratic senator Mark Kelly, whose once-sizable lead has evaporated ahead of Election Day.

Living United for Change in Arizona has spent nearly $350,000 since Oct. 21 to help the Kelly campaign, according to Federal Election Commission records. The expenditures have gone to pay wages for canvassers to knock on doors in the Grand Canyon State to turn out the vote for Kelly.

The donations create an uneasy alliance for Kelly, who fashions himself a moderate criminal justice reformer. Living United, which has received funding from left-wing billionaire George Soros, has called for defunding the Phoenix Police Department, saying, "The police do not protect or serve us." The group, which has held protests outside Immigration and Customs Enforcement facilities, made national headlines in October 2021 after its members filmed Sen. Kyrsten Sinema (D., Ariz.) in a bathroom on the campus of Arizona State University and grilled her over her opposition to ending the filibuster to pass a voting bill.

The group's support comes at a pivotal moment for Kelly, whose double-digit lead over Republican Blake Masters has disappeared amid growing concerns about crime and the economy. A recent poll from the progressive Data for Progress found Kelly tied with Masters. The poll also found that Latino voters favored Kelly by a 58-37 margin, down considerably from Kelly's support among the group in the 2020 special election.

While the Kelly campaign does not directly work with Living United on the canvassing effort, Living United has paid $210,000 to FieldCorps, a consulting firm with links to Kelly. Francisco Heredia, a Mesa city councilman who owns FieldCorps, has campaigned this year for Kelly. The Kelly campaign lists Heredia as a member of its "Latinos for Kelly Coalition." Living United paid another $138,546 to ADP Payroll to cover wages for canvassers, according to campaign finance disclosures.

Living United's political action committee received around $1 million in funding in the 2020 cycle from the left-wing voter mobilization groups Civic Participation Action Fund and the Movement Voter Project. The group's activist arm, which organizes anti-police and anti-ICE rallies, has been funded by numerous dark money...

Visage à trois #570

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Quick Hits Of Wisdom, Knowledge And Snark #749

Scandal-Ridden San Francisco FBI Field Office Involved in Pelosi Investigation

Given the highly partisan nature of the FBI, and the San Francisco field office in particular, there is no reason to believe FBI brass will do anything more than run cover for the Pelosis.

No one should accept at face value the strange account of what happened to Paul Pelosi, husband of House Speaker Nancy Pelosi (D-Calif.), at their California home last week.

Plenty of factors—a wholly dishonest news media, unsubstantiated claims the attacker was a foiled assassin who planned to kill the speaker of the House, and Mr. Pelosi’s recent legal troubles, to name a few—feed justified skepticism surrounding the alleged break-in and hammer attack that occurred in the wee hours of October 28. Details continue to change while leading Democrats including Hillary Clinton blame the incident, without evidence, on Republicans and Donald Trump.

This situation is yet another example of how the public’s complete lack of faith in major institutions is fueling doubt and suspicion. Unfortunately, that level of distrust extends to the Federal Bureau of Investigation, a once-revered agency that has blown its reputation in service to the Democratic Party. And news that the San Francisco FBI field office is taking a lead role in the Pelosi investigation offers little comfort that the American people will ever find out the truth of the matter.

The San Francisco field office, like the bureau’s Washington, D.C. headquarters and many other offices across the country, is mired in scandal. It’s particularly true as it relates to the FBI’s cozy ties to Big Tech—and the San Francisco FBI office is ground zero for that quid pro quo relationship. Rather than investigate the nearly 300 Big Tech companies within its Silicon Valley jurisdiction for various offenses such as election interference, the San Francisco FBI office appears instead to be in cahoots with these powerful corporate interests to do the Democratic Party’s dirty work.

Few people benefit more than Nancy Pelosi, who of course happens to live in San Francisco. Democratic candidates and lawmakers are flush with campaign donations from Big Tech; in 2020 alone, Facebook and Twitter—the latter located in Pelosi’s congressional district and the former located just outside its boundaries—donated at least $5.5 million to Democrats and only a paltry $435,000 to Republicans, a 12-1 ratio in favor of Pelosi’s party. Conversely, threats made by leading Democrats to break up Big Tech or hold congressional hearings into alleged malfeasance have been slow-walked since Pelosi reclaimed the speaker’s gavel.

Fortunately, a lawsuit recently filed by Missouri Attorney General Eric Schmitt laid bare how this lucrative back-scratching operation works. Elvis Chan, a top cyber FBI agent working in the San Francisco office, was in routine communication with Big Tech giants prior to the 2020 election to warn companies of “foreign disinformation” spread on their platforms—and the discussions just happened to coincide with the release of explosive materials found on Hunter Biden’s laptop. Chan is named as a co-defendant in Schmitt’s sweeping civil suit seeking to hold accountable government officials working behind-the-scenes with Big Tech to censor information considered hostile to...