The US House of Representatives will vote today on a measure broadly condemning hate, Democratic leaders have said, as the party tries to move past a controversy over allegedly anti-Semitic comments from freshman Rep. Ilhan Omar (D-MN). I see this as much ado about nothing. America elected a president who ran on anti-Muslim, anti-Latinx immigrant and xenophobic rhetoric. According to the Southern Poverty Law Center, white supremacy is flourishing amid fears of immigration and the nation's shifting demographics. In fact, last year saw a new high in the number of hate groups counted. Among all this chatter about language, where's their ire towards action?
Chelsea Manning, the former US Army intelligence analyst convicted in 2013 of leaking archives of secret military and diplomatic documents to WikiLeaks, revealed in an interview that she had been subpoenaed to testify before a grand jury targeting WikiLeaks founder and former publisher Julian Assange — and vowed to fight it. As Ms. Manning engages in that fight, Whitney Webb in MintPress News is reporting that Ecuador has, by all indications, agreed to rescind Assange's asylum so that he may be extradited to the United States. As a consequence, the US is moving forward with its case against Assange and WikiLeaks — which began nearly a decade ago in 2010 — now that it has received assurances that Assange's extradition is a matter of when, not if. What does this mean going forward?
NBC 7 Investigates has uncovered documents that show the US government created a secret database of activists, journalists and social media influencers tied to the migrant caravan and in some cases placed alerts on their passports. The documents detail an intelligence-gathering effort by United States and Mexican authorities targeting more than 50 people, including journalists, an attorney and immigration advocates. According to the investigation, "At the end of 2018, roughly 5,000 immigrants from Central America made their way north through Mexico to the United States southern border…. As the migrant caravan reached the San Ysidro Port of Entry in south San Diego County, so did journalists, attorneys and advocates who were there to work and witness the events unfolding. But in the months that followed, journalists who covered the caravan, as well as those who offered assistance to caravan members, said they felt they had become targets of intense inspections and scrutiny by border officials." What's going on here?
GUESTS:
Bob Schlehuber and Sean Blackmon — Co-hosts of By Any Means Necessary on Sputnik News.
Ray McGovern - Former CIA analyst and co-founder of Veteran Intelligence Professionals for Peace.
Daniel Lazare — Journalist and author of three books: "The Frozen Republic," "The Velvet Coup" and "America's Undeclared War."
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