national

Former Vice President Joe Biden launched his candidacy for the American presidency on Thursday morning with the release of his first campaign video, ‘’America Is An Idea.’ The first word from the candidate’s mouth — “Charlottesville,” a town now synonymous with neo-Nazi hate in the U.S. — is the overwhelming focus of the ad, which attacks Trump for his widely criticized “moral equivalence” between neo-Nazis and anti-fascists.

The U.S. government-social media nexus appears to be tightening. Earlier this week, President Donald Trump held a closed-door meeting with Twitter CEO Jack Dorsey. Just days prior, the other top social-media network, Facebook, hired Jennifer Newstead, a former legal adviser to Trump’s state department who had previously co-authored the controversial Patriot Act, known for its role in eroding American civil liberties following the September 11 attacks.

An extraordinary chapter in the ongoing saga of Venezuela has been taking place, virtually unnoticed, at the Venezuela Embassy that lies in the heart of swanky Georgetown in Washington DC.
A group of us, all activists opposed to the prospect of the Venezuelan opposition taking over the Embassy, have been living inside the building for the past two weeks, working side-by-side with the skeletal Venezuela diplomatic staff that has been told by the State Department that they must leave by April 24.

POLAND SPRING, MAINE — Nestlé is facing a class-action lawsuit from consumers in eight states in New England, based on claims that the Poland Spring brand is “100% Natural Spring Water.” The plaintiffs, from Maine to Pennsylvania, are alleging deceptive labeling.

Wikileaks publisher Julian Assange has finally been imprisoned, an objective long sought by powerful parties he helped to expose over the past dozen years.
Assange’s “crime” was revealing deep, embarrassing, sometimes deadly, malfeasance by numerous actors, including the U.S. government, the media, the Democratic Party-Clinton machine, and Israel.


Whitney Webb and Alan MacLeod discuss this week’s headlines, including Venezuela leaving the OAS, Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s re-election in Israel on the anniversary of the Deir Yassin Massacre and Lenin Moreno’s move towards authoritarianism in Ecuador.
The post MintCast Episode 1: Venezuela, Ecuador and Netanyahu appeared first on MintPress News.

I don’t know if I’d have the nerve to be a whistleblower. I’d like to think I would. We all like to think we would, just like we all like to think we could catch the game-winning touchdown, triumph on “America’s Got Talent,” and fold a fitted sheet quickly and without cursing.

U.S. Army top brass recently announced that they are briefing “top military commanders” about the construction of new weapons that would better prepare them in an all-out war — or, in their words, a “high-intensity conflict” — against Russia and China.
Army officials have already briefed Admiral Philip Davidson, who oversees all military personnel in the Asia-Pacific theater.
“We want to talk to [U.S. European Command] as well,” Army Secretary Mark Esper said, according to Defense One.

Reviewing AIPAC’s history since its 1963 creation reveals a consistently well-organized campaign of manipulation and evasion of the US election law as one necessary ingredient to its invincible image on Capitol Hill. The American Israel Political Affairs Committee has long claimed it is not a political action committee, that they do not endorse candidates nor provide financial donations to political campaigns. As with all things involving AIPAC, there is another side to the story.

The United States Justice Department dramatically escalated its political prosecution of WikiLeaks editor-in-chief Julian Assange. Their efforts are aimed at criminalizing a journalist—and more broadly, a media organization—for allegedly aiding and abetting the disclosure of classified information and publishing that information on the internet.