Democrat 2020 presidential candidate Rep Tulsi Gabbard on Thursday forcefully condemned the arrest of Wikileaks publisher Julian Assange saying it was “meant to send a message” to Americans to “be quiet, behave [and] toe the line” or “you will pay the price.”
“The arrest of #JulianAssange is meant to send a message to all Americans and journalists: be quiet, behave, toe the line. Or you will pay the price,” Gabbard said on Twitter.
“The purpose of arresting #JulianAssange is to send a message to the people, especially journalists, to be quiet and don’t get out of line. If we, the people, allow the government to control us through fear, we are no longer free, we are no longer America,” Gabbard said in a follow-up tweet, sharing video of her appearance on CNN Thursday afternoon.
The purpose of arresting #JulianAssange is to send a message to the people, especially journalists, to be quiet and don’t get out of line. If we, the people, allow the government to control us through fear, we are no longer free, we are no longer America. pic.twitter.com/2sedynREP9
On Tuesday, Gabbard released a video saying, “Netenyahu and Saudi Arabia want to drag the United States into war against Iran and Trump is submitting to their wishes.”
“The cost in lives and money will be beyond our imagination.”
Netanyahu and Saudi Arabia want to drag the United States into war with Iran, and Trump is submitting to their wishes. The cost in money and lives will be catastrophic. pic.twitter.com/7GbO92sE3h
Tulsi Gabbard successfully qualified for the Democratic debates on Wednesday after getting over 65,000 individual donors for her campaign.
Thank you! I’m extremely grateful that over 65,000 of you have now donated to our campaign, ensuring our voice will be heard in the upcoming debates. For a small campaign that doesn’t accept PAC money, I knew we had to rely fully on the power of the people. Aloha & Mahalo! pic.twitter.com/Uw303e2JUh
PragerU announced on Wednesday that YouTube has placed another of its videos in “restricted mode,” meaning that not everyone who visits the video-sharing website will be able to watch it. The restricted video is of Candace Owens’ powerful testimony before the House Judiciary Committee hearing on Tuesday.
YouTube has placed yet another PragerU video in “restricted mode,” according to the organization.
This time, the restricted video is of Candace Owens’ testimony before the House Judiciary Committee hearing on Tuesday, which had created several viral moments, one of which has also recently become the most watched C-SPAN video of a House hearing on Twitter.
When YouTube puts a video in “restricted mode,” it means that the video is censored from all users that have enabled the website’s restricted mode feature, which typically include libraries, schools, public institutions, or in any setting where viewers may belong to a younger demographic.
The restricted mode feature is used in order to block videos that have been deemed inappropriate, such as pornography or violence.
RESTRICTED:@Youtube has placed our video of @RealCandaceO's testimony before the House Judiciary Committee in restricted mode.
Why is Youtube trying to prevent people from hearing Candace's words? #RT to share this video! https://t.co/oJZ2T2qCi6
“RESTRICTED: @Youtube has placed our video of @RealCandaceO’s testimony before the House Judiciary Committee in restricted mode,”tweeted PragerU on Wednesday, “Why is Youtube trying to prevent people from hearing Candace’s words?”
“@YouTube clearly has a political bias against conservatives,” continued PragerU in a second tweet, “It just placed our video of @RealCandaceO in restricted mode.”
This is not the first of PragerU’s videos to have ended up on YouTube’s restriction list. According to the organization’s founder, Dennis Prager, 80 of their 400 videos are on a restricted list, meaning that the videos are “lumped with pornography and violence, so that kids in libraries and schools can’t see them,” said Prager.
“If you are not on the left, you are to be shut down,” said Prager to Breitbart News in an interview on SiriusXM’s Breitbart News Daily last February, “We have never, ever had anything like this in American history.”
“We are in a dark age because of the left’s control of Silicon Valley, academia, and media,” added Prager, “It’s a dark age that we are living in right now, and it is entirely left-wing induced.”
The so-called “liberal” media is ecstatic over the arrest and potential extradition of Wikileaks publisher Julian Assange.
Here’s MSNBC‘s resident deep state agent Malcolm Nance:
The security state agents for NBC/MSNBC cheering the Trump administration for arresting Assange because they're aut… twitter.com/i/web/status/1…— Glenn Greenwald (@ggreenwald) April 11, 2019
NBC News made the decision to hire a team of former military & intelligence officials to "report" & "analyze" the n… twitter.com/i/web/status/1…— Glenn Greenwald (@ggreenwald) April 11, 2019
WikiLeaks founder Julian Assange has been taken to Westminster Magistrates Court after his arrest at the Ecuadorian Embassy in London. Photos of the whistleblower defiantly gesturing in a police van have emerged in the media.
Journalist flocked to the white police van carrying the whistleblower into the courthouse. With his hair tied back and sporting a full-length white beard, Assange offered cameras a hardy thumbs up with a wink.
Assange stepped into the courtroom wearing a dark polo shirt and quietly read his Gore Vidal book while he waited for his lawyers to arrive.
Earlier, Metropolitan Police said in a statement that they arrested Assange on a warrant issued by the Westminster Magistrates’ Court in June 2012, for failing to surrender to the court. The police were“invited into the embassy by the Ambassador,” it said.
Julian Assange is a pioneering whistleblower in the digital-age, speaking truth to power like no one before him managed on such a significant scale. As he sits in a London jail cell, here’s why we should be grateful for his work.
By setting up the international non-profit organization WikiLeaksin Iceland in 2006, Assange irrevocably shifted the balance of power in the online era.
From humble beginnings as a master coder and hacker, caught by Australian authorities in 1995 but escaping a prison term, to the foremost publisher of sensitive, embarrassing and potentially dangerous material for the world to see, Assange’s storied career as a publisher and whistleblower has captured headlines, and the global public’s attention for years.
RT takes a look back at the key moments in Assange’s career that remind us why the world owes him such a debt of gratitude.
In 2007, WikiLeaks published emails exposing the manuals for Camp Delta, a controversial US detention center in Guantanamo Bay, Cuba which was the focal point for the US war on terror and the final destination for those captured as part of its extraordinary rendition campaign.
The following year the whistleblowing site posted emails from vice presidential candidate Sarah Palin’s private Yahoo email account, again exposing the newfound weakness of the political class in the digital age.
‘Collateral murder’
In a move that would reverberate online and across the world for years, in April 2010 WikiLeaks published footage of US forces summarily executing 18 civilians from an Apache attack helicopter in Iraq. It was an almost unheard of revelation of the brutality of war and the low price of human life in modern conflict.
2010 was a very busy year for Assange as in July WikiLeaks published more than 90,000 classified documents and diplomatic cables relating to the Afghanistan war.
Later, in October 2010, the organization published a raft of classified documents from the Iraq War. The logs were referred to as “the largest leak of classified documents in its history” by the US Department of Defense, according to the BBC. WikiLeaks followed that up in November by publishing diplomatic cables from US embassies around the world.
The Guantánamo Files and Spy Files
In April 2011, WikiLeaks published classified US military documents detailing the behavior and treatment of detainees held at Guantanamo Bay. This leak would be followed, once again, by a vast trove (250 million) of US diplomatic cables.
Throughout this sequence of widely-praised leaks, Assange invited a global audience behind the curtain of international diplomacy and warfare to expose the hidden truths of global power dynamics in a way which would forever change the power structure and landscape, affording a platform to analysts like Chelsea Manning to expose potential war crimes and misdeeds by the US military at large.
Assange and WikiLeaks would also help fellow whistleblowers like Edward Snowden to seek refuge from predatory US authorities, providing aid and comfort to those who risked everything in the pursuit of truth, exposing some of the most egregious mass surveillance programs the world has ever known.
DNC leak
As the 2016 US presidential election loomed, WikiLeaks published nearly 20,000 emails from the Democratic National Committee, which exposed the preferential treatment shown to then-candidate for president Hillary Clinton over her competitor Bernie Sandersin the Democratic primary. Assange boldly informed CNN’s Anderson Cooper that the release was indeed timed to coincide with the Democratic National Convention.
In October that same year, WikiLeaks began publishing emails from Clinton’s campaign manager John Podesta, which shed light on the inner workings of the Democratic nominee’s political machine.
These included excerpts from Clinton’s speeches to Wall Street, politically-motivated payments made to the Clinton Foundation, her consideration of choosing Microsoft co-founder Bill Gates or his wife as a potential running mate, her desire to covertly intervene in Syria, her intention to ring-fence China with missile defense batteries if it did not curtail North Korea’s nuclear ambitions.
Legacy
Following his arrest on the morning of April 11, 2019, Assange’s future remains unclear. He likely faces extradition to the US where it was inadvertently revealed that he has been charged under seal in a US federal court. Former Assange collaborator Chelsea Manning has been imprisoned for refusing to cooperate with the court in relation to the case.
Assange’s legal battle is only just beginning, it seems, but the international following he has forged will undoubtedly grant him a place in the pantheon of history’s champions of truth.
He remains a true digital pioneer, paving the way for so many to follow in his footsteps and expose the untold misdeeds of the powerful, be they political figures or entire militaries. Assange has defiantly shown what a powerful tool digital technology can be and how easily the dynamics of power can be shifted in the 21st century by those brave enough. Unfortunately, he also showed the consequences of wielding such power in the face of such overwhelming international and political opposition.
While Facebook claims to have deleted thousands of pages to prevent meddling in the Indian elections, the American company’s selective deletions have led at least one man to ask: Who is watching the election watchers?
A little over a week ahead of the beginning of elections in India this Thursday, Facebook raised some eyebrows when it announced that it had removed a number of politically oriented pages as a part of its “election integrity” efforts.
The social media giant removed 138 pro-opposition pages that had over 200,000 followers for “coordinated inauthentic behavior.”While they only removed 15 pro-government pages, as it turned out, those pages had a far wider reach with millions of likes.
Given the apparent imbalance, it is all the more concerning that the purge was conducted with assistance from the US-based Atlantic Council, a think tank that receives millions of dollars in funding from the US State Department and NATO allies.
Indian defense analyst and security expert Abhijit Iyer-Mitra is one of the people extremely concerned with the impact the American private company could have on India’s elections. He has even filed a criminal complaint with police in New Delhi, describing Facebook’s actions as an act of war, and an attack on the country’s sovereignty.
Speaking to RT, Iyer-Mitra blasted the social network for their glaring double standards: while making extensive efforts to protect American elections from foreign actors in the wake of the alleged “Russian meddling” scandal, the company seemingly had no qualms about letting a state-department-linked think tank act in place of Indian election officials.
“The point is they are an American company, this is an Indian election,” said Iyer-Mitra. “We are not willing to cede our sovereignty to other countries like this. I think they are making a big mistake and I intend to pursue this to the end.”
The Democratic lawyer failed to register as a foreign agent of Ukraine.
By Richard Moorhead
Attorneys for former Obama White House Counsel Greg Craig revealed Wednesday that the longtime Democratic lawyer expects to be indicted by federal prosecutors on charges related to his work with the Ukrainian government in 2012.
Findings discovered in Special Counsel Robert Mueller’s investigation into supposed Russian meddling in American politics may have contributed towards the upcoming charges against Craig. Craig performed work for Ukraine’s Ministry of Justice, and was apparently connected with the Ukrainians through Paul Manafort, the Republican operative indicted by Mueller for overseas political activity.
Craig was originally investigated by the Justice Department for failing to register as a foreign agent while working for the Ukrainian government. However, it seems statues of limitation have since expired for that crime, and his attorneys expect him to be indicted for making false statements to DOJ investigators instead.
Craig was President Obama’s White House Counsel from 2009 to 2010. He also has been a political advisor to liberal bigwigs Ted Kennedy and former Secretary of State Madeleine Albright.
An associate of Hillary and Bill Clinton for decades, the high-society lawyer even rented an apartment to the Clintons as a Yale Law Student in the 1970’s. He would go on to lead the legal team representing President Bill Clinton in impeachment proceedings in the 1990’s.
Craig possibly represents the most high-profile elite Democrat to be indicted for foreign political activities in the past few years. Democratic kingpin Tony Podesta was investigated by Robert Mueller’s team for similarly suspect political activities in Ukraine, which may have involved lavish compensation that went unreported to the American government from pro-Russia political parties. After being investigated, Podesta ultimately wasn’t charged by the government, although the political consulting firm known as the Podesta Group he led with his brother John shut down.
An Islamic cleric who advises the British government in an official capacity supported Asia Bibi’s death by hanging for “blasphemy” against the Prophet Muhammad.
An investigation by The Daily Mail found that an Islamic Imam who serves as the British government’s “Islamophobia adviser” supported the death penalty for a woman convicted of breaking Islamic blasphemy laws.
“Qari Asim, who is part of an 11-strong panel assembled by the Communities Department, supported preacher Khadim Rizvi, who demanded the death penalty for Asia Bibi, who was falsely accused of insulting the Prophet Muhammad,” according to the report.
Bibi spent nine years on death row in Pakistan before being acquitted in October. A group run by the Islamic preacher Rizvi called Tehreek-e-Labbaik reportedly whipped up nationwide protests against Bibi, demanding that she be hanged for her alleged crimes.
“Rizvi also endorsed the actions of Tanveer Ahmed, a British extremist who killed a shopkeeper in Glasgow, Asad Shah, because he belonged to a ‘heretical’ Muslim sect known as the Ahmadis,” the report said. “After the murder in 2016, Rizvi praised Ahmed in his preachings, hailing him as a ‘ghazi’, or ‘warrior.’”
All of this brutality is openly supported by Asim, who advises the British government in an official capacity against “Islamaphobia.”
He reportedly “issued a statement on his Facebook page in November 2017 in solidarity with [Rizvi],” when the preacher was campaigning to have Bibi hanged for her alleged blasphemy.
According to Pamela Geller and The Geller Report, the British government has refused to offer Bibi asylum.
The Eleventh Circuit U.S. Court of Appeals ruled that colleges in Georgia are not required to admit illegal immigrant students.
The decision further sparkeda national conversation about the rights of Dreamers, as well as the legality of offering them in-state tuition benefits, which usually allow students attending college in their home states to pay far less than their peers from different states.
Citing US Code 1623, which states thatanyone who is not legally a citizen cannot be entitled to any benefit that is denied to a citizen of the United States, some have questioned whether those here illegally should be offered in-state tuition rates that aren’t available to other students who are citizens. Currently, 18 states, offer some form of a pathway for in-state tuition to those living here illegally.
According to theNational Conference of State Legislatures, 18 states — California, Colorado, Connecticut, Florida, Illinois, Kansas, Maryland, Minnesota, Nebraska, New Jersey, New Mexico, New York, Oregon, Texas, Utah, and Washington — offer in-state tuition to illegal immigrant students. Two more states — Oklahoma and Rhode Island — offer in-state tuition to illegal immigrant students, pending approval from the Board of Regents.
So, what do college students think?
Is it fair for those who are here illegally to have access to in-state tuition? Campus Reform spoke to students all day at the University of Nevada- Las Vegas, and not one student said that doesn’t seem right.
“Why do they get to pay less when I’ve got to pay more?” one student said…
…while another added,“What do you get for living here all your life legally instead of coming here illegally? I just don’t think that’s fair.”
Another student echoed that sentiment, saying, “that’s disappointing because I did quite a bit to earn my college.”
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