If you're tired of censorship and dystopian threats against civil liberties, subscribe to Reclaim The Net. Julian Assange, now a free man, reflected on his long struggle for justice, describing his choice as one between freedom and “unrealizable justice.” In a plea to European lawmakers, Assange called for stronger protection of freedom of expression amidst increasing “impunity, secrecy, and retaliation for telling the truth.” This marked his first public statement since a June plea deal ended nearly 14 years of imprisonment, confinement at an embassy, and house arrest in the UK. Assange’s message highlighted his disillusionment with the legal safeguards for journalists and whistleblowers, which he argued “only existed on paper” or failed to provide meaningful recourse. “I eventually chose freedom over unrealizable justice, after being detained for years and facing a 175-year sentence with no effective remedy,” he told the Council of Europe in Strasbourg today. He continued, “I am not free today because the system worked. I am free today after years of incarceration because I pled guilty to journalism.” Assange was clear in his warning to European legislators that journalistic rights were under severe threat, saying, “The criminalization of news-gathering activities is a threat to investigative journalism everywhere.” Related: Assange’s Plea: A Controversial End to a 14-Year Legal Struggle and the Impact on Free Speech Assange became a figure of worldwide renown in 2010 after WikiLeaks published leaks from former soldier Chelsea Manning, revealing that US forces in Iraq had killed unarmed civilians, including Reuters employees. No one faced justice for these acts. Months later, Assange angered US authorities further by releasing 250,000 diplomatic cables, causing a diplomatic firestorm. After years of legal battles, Assange walked free from a US district court in Saipan in June, following a plea deal where he admitted guilt to conspiring to obtain and release classified national defense documents. He received a 62-month sentence, effectively covered by his time served at London’s Belmarsh Prison. The WikiLeaks founder spent five years in Belmarsh, preceded by seven years of refuge in the Ecuadorian embassy and more than a year under house arrest. British authorities arrested him in 2019 after Ecuador revoked his asylum, ending his nearly seven-year stay in their London embassy. Assange had initially taken refuge there in 2012, fearing extradition to the US via Sweden, where he faced allegations of sexual assault. Though Swedish prosecutors dropped the investigation in 2017, Assange remained in the embassy for two more years, worried about US extradition. Speaking to the committee, Assange pointed to a pivotal shift in his ordeal in February 2017, coinciding with Donald Trump’s administration. He described the appointment of Mike Pompeo and William Barr, labeling them “two wolves in MAGA hats,” as intensifying the US government’s hostility towards WikiLeaks while pretending to be populist. He also disclosed that his wife, Stella, and their then-infant son had suffered from US surveillance, including an alleged attempt to collect DNA from his baby’s diaper. Throughout the 90-minute address, seated beside his wife, Assange responded with composure, though he ultimately declined to answer a final question, citing exhaustion. Reflecting on his experience, Assange described it as “profound and surreal” to transition from a cell in Belmarsh to appearing before European lawmakers. He struggled to convey the harshness of his isolation, remarking, “The experience of isolation for years in a small cell is difficult to convey. It strips away one’s sense of self, leaving only the raw essence of existence.” The following day, European lawmakers were set to debate a draft resolution condemning the US’s actions. Drafted by Thórhildur Sunna Ӕvarsdóttir, an Icelandic MP with the Pirate Party, the resolution sharply criticized the misuse of the US Espionage Act, noting its “dangerous chilling effect” on publishers, journalists, and whistleblowers reporting governmental misconduct. It also criticized the UK for failing to defend Assange’s right to free expression. However, dissenting views arose, notably from British conservative peer Richard Keen. He argued that describing Assange as a political prisoner was “overly polemic” and imprecise, pointing out that Assange had been lawfully detained for violating bail conditions and posed a flight risk. Keen claimed that calling Assange a political prisoner “belittled the fate of true political prisoners” and added that while the proceedings took an exceptionally long time, Assange himself contributed to the delays. Assange’s case, entangled in legal and political disputes for years, remains a powerful symbol in the global struggle for press freedom and the rights of those who expose uncomfortable truths. If you're tired of censorship and dystopian threats against civil liberties, subscribe to Reclaim The Net. The post After 14 Years of Confinement, Journalist Julian Assange Calls on Europe to Defend Freedom of Expression appeared first on Reclaim The Net.

Trans Activist Who Attacked JK Rowling for Demanding Female Only Spaces Sentenced to Six Years for Rape

Online personality Taylor Lorenz faced brutal online mockery after announcing that she would be leaving the Washington Post in order to strike out on her own. The technology columnist was under investigation for an Instagram story in which she called President Joe Biden a "war criminal," ostensibly for supporting Israel in its military action against the Hamas terrorist group. On Tuesday, she announced her exit from the Post. "I'm going independent and launching my own media outlet on Substack called User Mag," she wrote. "Please consider buying a yearly subscription to help me continue my work." Ironically, Lorenz had previously criticized Substack as being a haven for "Nazis." “I just wanted to get out of legacy media. I feel like it’s just really, really difficult to do the kind of reporting that I want to do on the internet within these kind of older institutions as a primary job,” said Lorenz to the Hollywood Reporter. How are folks reacting?Many on social media mocked and ridiculed Lorenz over her unceremonious departure and demotion. "So Taylor Lorenz 'left' WaPo to start a Substack? Sure, because that doesn’t scream ‘got fired but make it sound trendy’ at all," replied Ariadna Jacob, who says in her X profile that she "survived a ... Taylor Lorenz hit job.""Taylor Lorenz's WaPo reporting served as a conduit for radical leftwing ideology rather than as a beacon of good journalism. Her bias colored her choice of subjects and the angle of her stories with a presentation designed to influence public opinion rather than to inform," said one detractor. "I’m sure it’ll do great, she’ll have literally dozens of readers," read another response. "Good riddance to bad rubbish. Let this Leftist propagandist banshee shrill scream into the void of her echo chamber (while triple masked, of course)," said another critic. Who is this person exactly?Lorenz is known for waging a rhetorical war against many on the right, most notably the "Libs of TikTok" account, which Lorenz has accused of inciting violence and terrorism. She has called on social media platforms to cancel many accounts on the right for refusing to parrot the politically correct narratives endorsed by the far left. She also continued to support coronavirus lockdown measures long after the end of the pandemic, including the wearing of face masks, even in the outdoors. "They are going to save a fortune on masks," joked one account after her exit from WaPo. Like Blaze News? Bypass the censors, sign up for our newsletters, and get stories like this direct to your inbox. Sign up here!

A heartbroken mother refused to accept the initial ruling that her daughter's death was a suicide because she believed it was something far more sinister. April Holt — a 29-year-old mother of two — was found by police almost lifeless at her apartment in Antioch, Tennessee, on July 31, 2023. Officers with the Metro Nashville Police Department said they found Holt in the bathroom with a plastic bag duct-taped tightly around her neck. 'And I'm curled up in a ball on a bench next to him, just hysterically crying and just calling out to God to save my child. Even though I knew in my gut that she was gone.' Holt left behind a 12-year-old daughter, an 8-year-old son, and her husband – 33-year-old Donovan Holt.The case was later closed after an autopsy officially ruled Holt’s death a suicide. However, Holt's mother believed her daughter's death was not by her own doing. Jamie Dickerson, Holt's mother, said April embodied positivity, and it was apparent in her TikTok with 200,000 followers. April previously had taught middle schoolers at Believers Faith Fellowship and recently had opened her own lash studio in Nashville.Dickerson recalled how she invited her daughter to the movies just before her death.“We were going to go see the Barbie movie,” Dickerson told WSMV-TV. “She said, ‘Donovan has to work, I can’t go to the movie, but I’ll meet you at church at the Blast classroom tomorrow.’”Dickerson never got a chance to respond to her daughter. The next day, she received the call that would wreck her world. “The phone rang, and it was Donovan, and he was upset — kind of like a panic upset,” Dickerson explained. “He was like, ‘We found April. She wasn’t breathing, and she’s in the ambulance on the way to the hospital.’”Dickerson told Fox News, "So I jumped in my car, but even right when I got the first phone call, I was like, 'Something's not right. April's in perfectly good health.' An hour and a half ago or so, she texted me perfectly fine. So something's not right. Like I thought maybe she had passed out. Maybe she hit her head because she passed out. I didn't know. I mean, like, why would she just not be breathing? I didn't know anything about it.""From that second on, when I got into the room at the hospital, he was just like rocking, like pacing," Dickerson continued. "And I'm curled up in a ball on a bench next to him, just hysterically crying and just calling out to God to save my child. Even though I knew in my gut that she was gone."April Holt died at the Southern Hills Hospital that same day.Once authorities ruled Holt's death a suicide, Dickerson launched her own investigation.“They closed April’s case. DA and everyone agreed to close it," Dickerson said. "I got up, marched out of that room and said, ‘I’m not done, I’m going to keep investigating.’”Dickerson would spend hours each day trying to determine who killed her daughter, but she had one suspect in mind. Dickerson recalled that April said two weeks before her death, "I'm getting a divorce."The mother said of her son-in-law, "He had an obsession with April. So the weird part is, is like you see these movies, and they love somebody so much that they're willing to do literally anything. I think that was him because she'd left him before, and he would sleep outside of her apartment. He would sleep in her car if it was unlocked." "And it's heartbreaking. It's absolutely heartbreaking. And so I'm just, I'm not shocked," she said. "I think that when she said that this time she was very serious."A few weeks after her daughter's death, Dickerson's grandson told her he witnessed a fight between his parents on the same day April died, according to the Independent. The outlet also reported that Donovan pawned his wedding ring the week prior to his wife's death. Dickerson told WZTV, "She had bruises on her wrists, her neck, her ankles, her thighs, and none of it was taken as evidence."The mother filed complaints and eventually convinced the Metropolitan Nashville Police Department to investigate their own investigation. In the 47-page report, detectives said there were “two hits” of Donovan Holt’s fingerprints on the duct tape roll.Despite the new evidence, Dickerson claimed police told her, "They said they still didn't have enough evidence to convict him."Dickerson said when she saw that key piece of evidence, she confronted Donovan Holt. “I told him he had a choice,” she said. “He could tell me what happened, or I was going to go to the cold case department.”Dickerson said Donovan admitted that he strangled April, dragged her into the shower, and taped a bag over her face to make it appear that she had committed suicide. Dickerson reportedly recorded the conversation — and then she notified police.Last month, Donovan was arrested in San Antonio, Texas.Nashville Police said in a news release that Donovan confessed to detectives with the MNPD's Cold Case Unit in July that he had strangled his wife.On Sept. 19, a grand jury indicted Donovan Holt for reckless homicide, evidence tampering, and false reporting.Holt was extradited back to Nashville where he is being held on $75,000 bond in Davidson County Jail awaiting his Oct. 23 arraignment."The person you were supposed to love, you killed, and then you put a trash bag over her head and ate lunch? Like she wasn't in the other room dead? And then you sent your son in there to be traumatized for the rest of his life. It's just bizarre," Dickerson said.Despite her daughter's murder, Dickerson is praying that Donovon Holt's "heart gets right.""As a Christian woman, I pray that his heart gets right. That's what I would want for him. I know it's what April would want. And even after killing my daughter, that is what I'd want for him," Dickerson said. "And I would want anybody to be able to have everlasting life."Like Blaze News? Circumvent the censors, sign up for our newsletters, and get stories like this direct to your inbox. Sign up here!

YouTuber turned boxer Jake Paul will compete in mixed martial arts following his super fight against boxing legend Mike Tyson.Paul and Tyson are set to box in November at AT&T Stadium in Arlington, Texas, on Netflix. Likely in 2025, Paul will get into a cage for the Professional Fighters League in his first pro MMA fight.PFL CEO Peter Murray insists that Paul is ready to make the jump and will take on a legitimate opponent:"We have a partnership with Jake and we're looking forward to supporting him in MMA. We're going to stage that mega event next year and more to come on that too, that will happen. There's a number of opponents who continue to line up.""Conceptually this event continues to getting bigger and bigger. Jake has committed to take on a for real, legitimate fighter. So it'll be a spectacle," Murray said, per Bloody Elbow.A weight class and opponent are still yet to be determined, however when Paul signed with PFL in January 2023, it was reported that he would fight in a newly-created Super Fight division."This is about changing MMA, disrupting, innovating, and creating the next big league," Paul said, according to MMA Junkie. "I've already disrupted boxing, and now it's time to disrupt MMA."'It would be very, very serious. I would probably start working with either Sean O’Malley's team.'During a press scrum in August, Paul told the media that while he doesn't want an easy fight, he is still managing his expectations."It has to be a fight where it's, like, this is my first MMA fight. So I think I can beat Nate Diaz in my first MMA fight, it would be tough of course. It's a 50/50 fight but I don't want to go into something where I'm going to be outclassed like fighting Khabib Nurmagomedov in my first fight."Nurmagomedov is widely considered one of the greatest MMA fighters ever, having retired undefeated at 29-0.Diaz, on the other hand, is more than 10 years older than Paul but still active in MMA with a record of 23-13. Diaz last fought in 2022 when he beat UFC legend Tony Ferguson.Paul defeated Diaz in boxing in early August in what was a clear defeat but not a dominating performance. Both fighters immediately discussed the possibility of an MMA match following the fight."It’s just about finding the name," Paul told media. With the money available, Paul said his team is "ready to make offers" but his opponent needs to have shown that they can draw sales.As for his MMA training, Paul said, "It would be very, very serious. I would probably start working with either Sean O’Malley's team or maybe Javier Mendez over in California. I would take it very, very seriously, I wouldn't want to lose and I take everything I do seriously, so I would definitely go hard as f***."Like Blaze News? Bypass the censors, sign up for our newsletters, and get stories like this direct to your inbox. Sign up here!

California's Democratic Attorney General Rob Bonta continued his crusade against pro-life institutions Monday, filing a lawsuit against a Catholic hospital, Providence St. Joseph of Eureka, for not promptly aborting a mother's twins. "With today's lawsuit, I want to make this clear for all Californians: Abortion care is health care. You have the right to access timely and safe abortion services," said Bonta. "At the California Department of Justice, we will use the full force of this office to hold accountable those who, like Providence, are breaking the law." According to the complaint, Anna Nusslock visited Providence after her water prematurely broke and she began bleeding. A doctor allegedly diagnosed Nusslock, then 15 weeks pregnant, with previable premature pre-labor rupture of membranes and told the mother that while both twins had heart tones, one of them was sure to perish and the fate of the other baby was uncertain. Another doctor at University of California San Francisco Medical Center told Nusslock over the phone that there was only a remote chance that the second twin might survive. 'We have a hospital implementing a policy that's reminiscent of heartbeat laws in extremist red states.' The hospital, which recently saved the life of a baby boy born 96 days early, allegedly informed Nusslock that policy precluded medical professionals there from providing an an "emergency" abortion as long as one of the babies had a "detectable heartbeat" or unless there was an immediate risk to Nusslock's life. "It is damning that here in California, where abortion care is a constitutional right, we have a hospital implementing a policy that's reminiscent of heartbeat laws in extremist red states," Bonta said of the apparent policy against elective abortions. The complaint noted that the hospital initially recommended that Nusslock be helicoptered to the University of California San Francisco Medical Center, but she declined, unwilling to be separated from her husband and convinced that her insurance would not cover the cost. The hospital then allegedly discharged Nusslock with free towels and instructions to drive to Mad River Community Hospital, roughly 20 minutes away. The lawsuit accuses the hospital of violating the Unruh Civil Rights Act, violating the health code's nonmedical transfer provision, and violating the state's Emergency Services Law, which requires hospitals to provide care "necessary to relieve or eliminate the emergency medical condition." A spokesman for the hospital said in a statement to ABC News that "Providence is deeply committed to the health and wellness of women and pregnant patients and provides emergency services to all who walk through our doors in accordance with state and federal law. We are heartbroken over Dr. Nusslock's experience earlier this year." "This morning was the first Providence had heard of the California attorney general's lawsuit, and we are currently reviewing the filings to understand what is being alleged," continued the spokesman. "Because this case is in active litigation and due to patient confidentiality, we cannot comment on the matter," the spokesperson added. In his remarks, Bonta bemoaned the U.S. Supreme Court's recent refusal to qualify abortion as among the varieties of "stabilizing care" required of every hospital with an emergency department participating in Medicare under the Emergency Medical Treatment and Labor Act. Without such a federal mandate conflating stability with the termination of human life, Bonta indicated that "states like California have to rely on their own state laws to protect pregnant patients." Bonta has not only worked to combat policies ostensibly designed to protect life in his state but in other states as well. Last year, he joined New York Attorney General Letitia James in leading a coalition to back the Biden-Harris administration's challenge to Idaho's popular and democratically passed pro-life law. They failed. Bonta also sued Heartbeat International last year and a chain of crisis pregnancy centers over their promotion of medical abortion reversal. That case has yet to be decided. Like Blaze News? Bypass the censors, sign up for our newsletters, and get stories like this direct to your inbox. Sign up here!

It's CLEAR! Oilfield Rando Just Has to Compare 2 Tweets to Make Kamala's Helene Response Look Even Worse

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