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David Horowitz: Visa, Mastercard Cut Off Payments to My Think Tank Based on SPLC ‘Hate Group’ Label

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.

The David Horowitz Freedom Center stated in a recent email that its ability to accept donations by credit card has been disabled by both Visa and Mastercard following a campaign by the SPLC to label the Freedom Center as a hate group. This situation comes shortly after Robert Spencer of Jihad Watch was forced off the funding platform Patreon following pressure from Mastercard.

The Freedom Center is the next target of the SPLC, and they are using Mastercard and Visa again in their attempt to shut down conservative voices. In an email sent to supporters, Horowitz outlined how the SPLC had convinced Mastercard and Visa to block the Freedom Center from receiving payments and donations via credit card. In the email, Horowitz requested that supporters send donations via check to a P.O. Box.

In the email to supporters, the Freedom Center lashed out at the move by Mastercard and Visa, saying: “this blow could be the end of the Freedom Center. Decades of work, down the drain because the hateful Left wants to squash free speech and silence an organization that dares to question them.

Breitbart News reached out to David Horowitz who provided the following comment:

We have been attacked by the left wing hate machine whose goal is to suppress and silence conservative voices. This is the work of a Soros funded Media Matters and Southern Poverty Law Center operation. It’s cynical, calculated and supported by the Democratic Party. The reason Mastercard and Visa gave us for cutting us off and thus sabotaging our online fund-raising operation is that the SPLC told them that we were a hate group. It is wrong to focus on the Tech heads as the culprits because as businessmen they have a vested interest in keeping their platforms politically neutral. They have been threatened by Senator Mark Warner and other Democrats if they don’t censor conservatives. The fact that Mastercard and Visa are now part of this juggernaut indicates how dangerous this has become.

Breitbart News reached out to both Visa and Mastercard for comment on the issue but has yet to receive a reply.

Lucas Nolan is a reporter for Breitbart News covering issues of free speech and online censorship. Follow him on Twitter @LucasNolan_ or email him at lnolan@breitbart.com

via Breitbart News

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Amazon Bans Gun Book

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BY:

Amazon banned the sale of a gun book on Wednesday night for an unexplained violation of the company’s rules.

The listing for The Liberator Code Book: An Exercise in Freedom of Speech, which had been available on Amazon since Aug. 1, was removed from Amazon’s website. The web address where the book had previously been listed now redirects to an error page. The web address where a Kindle book titled The Liberator: An .STL File Published as a Book also now redirects to an error page.

Both books had been published through Amazon’s self-publication services. Amazon told the Washington Free Beacon it was banning publication of the books and their sale through their website.

“This book was removed for violating our content guidelines,” Jack Evans, an Amazon spokesperson, told the Free Beacon.

Evans directed the Free Beacon to the Kindle Direct Publishing content guidelines, which ban the publication of pornography, offensive content, illegal and infringing content, public domain and other non-exclusive content, and books that result in a “poor customer experience.” Amazon refused to elaborate on how the books violated their guidelines.

“Don’t have any additional comment beyond what I’ve shared,” Evans told the Free Beacon when asked which guideline Amazon believes the books violate. “Link I provided states that books must adhere to our guidelines.”

Amazon has long sold a wide range of the world’s most controversial books. Hitler’s autobiography Mein Kampf is available through multiple listings on the site. Marx and Engles’s Communist Manifesto is also available through multiple listings. Hunter by Andrew Macdonald—the white supremacist manifesto that helped inspire Timothy McVeigh to commit the Oklahoma City bombing—is for sale on the site. The Protocols of the Learned Elders of Zion, the world’s most famous anti-Semitic diatribe, is featured for sale in multiple listings.

Amazon has also long sold a wide range of instruction manuals detailing how to construct improvised weapons. The Anarchist Cookbook is available for sale on the site. The U.S. Army Improvised Munitions Handbook is available for sale. The U.S. Army Special Forces Guide to Unconventional Warfare: Devices and Techniques for Incendiaries is listed for purchase. The U.S. Department of the Army Field Manual on Boobytraps is available on the site as well.

The company even sells The Los Alamos Primer: The First Lectures on How To Build an Atomic Bomb, which is a collection of previously classified documents detailing how scientists who worked on the first nuclear bomb went about building it.

A copy of The Liberator Code Book: An Exercise in Freedom of Speech obtained by the Free Beacon reveals that the bulk of its 425 pages are dedicated to reprinting the raw code of a computer file containing the specifications of Cody Wilson’s single-shot 3D-printed gun design known as the Liberator. Along with a two-page instruction guide on how to assemble a Liberator, the book includes a notice that it was not “created, authorized, or directed” by Cody Wilson’s Defense Distributed group, and a one-page editor’s note.

“The purpose of this exercise is to give a physical analogy between computer code and books,” the note begins. “Preventing the publishing of code online is no different than banning a book from circulation and pulling it from the shelves of a library.”

via Washington Free Beacon

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Professor’s contract with students: ‘Drop the class immediately if you are triggered by free speech’

A professor has taken a novel approach when it comes to dealing with the increasing number of students railing against and even shutting down academic ideas they don’t agree with: a contract.

James “Duke” Pesta, an associate professor of English at the University of Wisconsin Oshkosh, presents a two-page contract to his students on the first day of class that asks them to drop the course if they are “triggered” or offended by certain ideas or beliefs.

What does the contract say?

“In this course, we study literature from cultures that existed before you were born. Their world is not our world. Their beliefs may not be our beliefs. No one asks you to believe or endorse any premise, attitude, precept, theology, political system, or ideology contained in these books or expressed in class. Nor will you ever lose points or be docked grades because of your opinion (written, oral, or otherwise),” the contract’s Statement of Purpose reads, the College Fix said.

“We will not malign or trivialize these texts because they do not always parrot our values. We will not assume these books are racist, sexist, or homophobic because of the period in which they were written, or because of the race, class, gender, or religion of the authors,” the contract also says, the outlet reported. “People who approach alien cultures with such preconceived notions are bigots masquerading as critically sophisticated advocates, often in the name of ‘social justice.’ Persons who so diminish the past are neither social nor just, especially when they compel students to adopt their biases.”

The College Fix noted that the contract also offers the following instructions:

  • Please drop the class immediately if you are triggered by free speech, the free exchange of ideas, or people who express and defend ideas or opinions that differ from your own.
  • Please drop the class immediately if you are triggered by open, direct, and adult discussion of issues, including but not limited to issues of faith, war, violence, race, gender, and sexuality.
  • Please drop the class immediately if you are triggered by recurring encounters with heterosexuality, traditional gender identities, sympathetic representations of Christianity (or religion in general), positive examples of free markets or capitalism, or unapologetic encounters with patriotism, hierarchies, or meritocracy-based institutions or attitudes.
  • Please drop the class immediately if you feel entitled to censor the thoughts or words of others or insist they tailor their language or attitudes to your preferences.

Pesta — a conservative — told the outlet in an interview that he’s used his contract for three semesters and a less-specific version for about eight years.

“I have learned through personal experience that university administrators and equity officers are often not willing to defend classroom speech, even if that speech is taken directly from books or used to explain them,” he told the College Fix.

‘Intrusive investigatory process just by complaining’

“Students are now keenly aware that they can put professors through an intrusive investigatory process just by complaining, even without any corroborating evidence. I have even had department heads who allow students to substitute required classes for other courses just because students complain about what they have ‘heard’ a professor’s classes are like,” Pesta added to the outlet. “My contract is an attempt to make it harder for these kangaroo court investigations to be launched in the first place.”

What does Pesta have to say about trigger warnings?

Pesta told the College Fix he finds trigger warnings — which inform students in advance that subject matter might offend them — “appalling from an educational standpoint.”

“But I have come to realize that they may have more utility for professors than students,” he added to the outlet. “It’s one more way to try and indemnify yourself from malicious and unfounded complaints by driving away at the outset students who only want their own preconceived ideas validated.”

How have students reacted to the contract?

Pesta told the College Fix that students so far have been willing to sign his contract.

“I’ve not encountered a student yet who would not sign,” he added to the outlet. “I do tell them, when I pass it out the first day, that if they refuse to sign they will have to meet with me sometime during the first week of classes to discuss the contract and make sure we’re on the same page.”

Here’s Pesta discussing “Back to School in the Age of Trump” for FreedomProject:

via TheBlaze.com – Stories

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Good Guy With A Gun Stops Man Stabbing And Beating His 16-Month-Old Son

Alas, he was too late to save the child.

Via Dallas News:

A man is accused of fatally stabbing and beating his 16-month-old son before a neighbor at his Lewisville apartment complex attempted to stop the attack by shooting him in the leg, police said Sunday.

Witnesses reported that a man was stabbing or beating a child about 12:40 p.m. in a courtyard at the Oak Forest Apartments on South State Highway 121 Business near Bellaire Boulevard.

A neighbor heard screaming, grabbed a gun and fired three shots, striking the father once in the leg and “effectively ending the assault on the child,” police Captain Jesse Hunter said. […]

The father, a man who police have not identified but said was in his late 20s or early 30s, was placed under arrest and taken to a hospital, where he was to be treated for the gunshot wound.

He was expected to be booked into the Lewisville city jail Monday afternoon, but it was not immediately clear what charges he may face. Toxicology results are pending.

Neighbor Eduardo Carranza said he rushed out of his apartment when he heard the gunshots.

“He was talking nonsense,” Carranza said of the suspect.

Carranza shot the video of Lewisville police dragging the injured man away as he’s yelling. “I just want to see my mom,” the man can be heard saying.

The neighbor who stopped the attack has not been identified. He will not face criminal charges, police said.

Keep reading…

HT: Wirecutter

via Weasel Zippers

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Former FEC Chairman To Mark Levin: No, Even If What Cohen Said Were True, It’s Not A Campaign Violation For Trump

But their purpose isn’t to use it to prosecute, their purpose is to use it as a club to bash Trump for the midterms, with Kavanaugh and to use for impeachment if they win back Congress.

Via Conservative Review:

Tuesday night on Fox News, LevinTV host Mark Levin appeared on “Hannity” to discuss the guilty plea of former Trump attorney Michael Cohen.

Cohen pled guilty Tuesday to charges of campaign finance violations, tax evasion, and false statements to a financial institution. He alleges that candidate Trump directed him to make hush payments to women whom Trump had affairs with to buy their silence during the presidential election. Levin argued that these payments don’t qualify as campaign finance violations and that Cohen’s lawyer, Lanny Davis, convinced his client to plead guilty to criminal offenses that aren’t criminal.

“I wanna help the law professors, the constitutional experts, the criminal defense lawyers, the former prosecutors, and of course the professors, I wanna help them understand what the law is,” Levin said. “The general counsel for the Clinton mob family, Lanny Davis, he had his client plead to two counts of criminality that don’t exist.”

Keep reading…

And you can hear what former FEC Chairman Bradley Smith says here at the Right Scoop.

via Weasel Zippers

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Study: U.S. Leads World In Reducing CO2 Emissions, While Paris Accord Nations Break Promises

Despite obviously hating the environment and doing everything we can to bring about its fiery destruction, including pulling out of the Paris Agreement on climate change last year, the United States has miraculously managed to do pretty well in curbing CO2. In fact, the anti-environment USA is doing better than any other country that signed the accord, including all of Europe and our neighbor to the north.

via Daily Wire

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WATCH: Steven Crowder confronts anti-ICE leftist who’s ‘wanted a piece of Crowder for a long time’

Conservative comedian Steven Crowder recently took aim at a leftist activist whose social media posts included approval of punching Nazis and a rallying cry to “kill every member of ICE.”

Image source: YouTube screenshot

He also issued a threat against Crowder himself, declaring he’s “wanted a piece of Crowder for a long time.”

Image source: YouTube screenshot

Well, Crowder — who’s confronted others on video over the “crap” they’ve spewed on previous occasions — wasn’t going to let this guy just slide on by.

What did Crowder do?

The comedian tracked down the unnamed fellow, who posted on Facebook that he was attending an Aug. 18 rally in Dallas against “white supremacy.”

Crowder got his private phone number from a photo of a petition the guy started (which, Crowder said, “no one signed”).

On the day of the protest — which the leftist cancelled over rainy conditions — Crowder and his video crew showed up, got the guy on the phone posing as a fellow left-wing activist, and arranged a meet-up at a beer garden.

Let the fireworks begin

As video rolled, Crowder strode into the restaurant dressed in an “Aladdin”-like costume and headed over to the leftist who’s “wanted a piece of Crowder for a long time.”

“Your wish is my command, sir, how are you?” Crowder said, standing in front of the fellow.

“Is this Steven Crowder?” he asked, seemingly cracking a smile at the audaciousness of the moment before quickly coming to his senses.

Image source: YouTube screenshot

“Aw, s**t!” he said before dousing Crowder with beer and walking away. “Go f*** yourself you piece of s**t.”

Image source: YouTube screenshot

But Crowder followed him.

“C’mon, man, you’ve been wanting a piece of me for a long time,” Crowder told the guy. “Is that all you’re gonna do is throw some Pilsner?”

Crowder also repeated the leftist’s threats on social media — and even came prepared with a board emblazoned with enlarged shots of the guy’s posts, which Crowder showed him as they walked on the street.

Image source: YouTube screenshot

During the tense walk-and-talk, the leftist surprisingly enough had little of interest to say — and he wasn’t game apparently for taking “a piece of Crowder” on this evening for some reason.

Crowder told him he’d forget about the whole thing if he agreed to take down his posts, but if the guy didn’t agree, Crowder would report him to police — which is apparently what happened afterward.

Crowder signed off with this warning: “As always our first choice is civil discourse on this channel. But if you cross the line into violence, or if you call for the physical harm of others, I will find you, I will report you, I will confront you, and I will shame you.”

via TheBlaze.com – Stories

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