Israel has the full arsenal needed to take on Hezbollah in Lebanon and eliminate the Iranian threat in Syria, the outgoing IDF Northern Command chief boasted, warning Damascus against using S-300s to protect its sovereignty. Read Full Article at RT.com

Indian intelligence agencies have reportedly raised the alarm level in Jammu and Kashmir warning that suicide bombers could use motorcycles to stage attacks in the Indian state during the ongoing general election. Read Full Article at RT.com

Washington is poised to become the first US state to legalize the “natural organic reduction” of corpses, a.k.a. human composting, meaning an eco-friendly lifestyle need no longer stop at death. Read Full Article at RT.com

Mallika Khanna at Common Dreams writes—This Earth Day, Beware of Greenwashing. Big polluters may not care much about the environment, but they’ll still try to fool customers who do:  This Earth Day [which is Monday, April 22], I’d like to warn you about “greenwashing.” That’s the practice of corporations branding their products “eco-friendly,” even when they actually pollute, to deceive environmentally concerned customers. Even if you’ve heard nothing about greenwashing, you’ve probably read about the Volkswagen emissions scandal, “Dieselgate.” A few years ago, the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) found that many Volkswagen cars being sold in America had been outfitted with software that enabled their diesel engines to detect when they were being tested. This allowed the engines to improve emissions performance under controlled laboratory conditions. But out on the road, the engines were emitting 40 times above the nitrogen oxide pollutant levels allowed in the United States. The software was simply covering that up. [...] Unfortunately, Volkswagen is nowhere close to alone. Greenwashing has a deep history dating back to the start of the modern environmental movement in the 1960s. Since then, no industry has been immune to greenwashing. In 2019, you can find this unethical business practice flourishing in the fashion, electronics, fuel, food and agriculture, and plastics industries (among others). While you can help in small ways through individual action, the biggest impact you can have is by supporting policies like the Green New Deal. When our tax dollars support sustainability on a massive scale, we’ll see a much bigger impact than what we can achieve in a store aisle. Indivisible’s list of Resistance Events & Groups TOP COMMENTS • HIGH IMPACT STORIES QUOTATION “I've lived long enough to see the triumph of zealots and absolutists, to watch money swallow politics, to witness the rise of the corporate state. See the party of working and poor people become a sycophant of crony capitalism. Watch the union of church and state become fashionable again. Witness the coupling of news and entertainment. See everyday people cast overboard as the pirates and predators of Wall Street seized the ship of state. I didn't drift; I moved left just by standing still.”            ~~Bill Moyers, Interview at The Progressive, 2014 TWEET OF THE DAY xFeminist graffiti/Fiat billboard (1979), iconic feminist photograph by Jill Posner #womensart pic.twitter.com/HmwwgDaM62— #WOMENSART (@womensart1) April 19, 2019 BLAST FROM THE PAST On this date at Daily Kos in 2003—Massive protests against US: The US has occupied Iraq all of 37 minutes, and already is facing mass protests. In the first Friday prayers since U.S. tanks drove to the heart of Baghdad last week, a Muslim preacher said the United States had invaded to defend Israel and denied Iraq possessed weapons of mass destruction, a key justification Washington offered for the war. No prayers were held last Friday. Followers of the preacher, Ahmed al-Kubaisi, carried Korans and waved banners that read «No to America. No to Secular State. Yes to Islamic State.» «Leave our country, we want peace,» one banner read. «This is not the America we know. The America we know respects international law, respects the right of people,» Kubaisi said. What is worrisome to me is not the protests against the US -- this was to be expected. It's the way the U.S. invasion and nacent occupation is strengthening the hand of Islamists. Say what you will about Saddam, but he kept the hard-core fundamentalists under control (the reason Hussein and Osama Bin Laden hated each other). They have now been let loose, and it does not portend good things, either for the U.S. occupation or for the region's future. On today’s Kagro in the Morning show: More on the Barr Report II. Armando asks what Dems do next, as we review choice bits of the report. Prince & Bannon planned Seychelles meet, destroyed evidence. Michelle Wolf vindicated. 12 live investigations still out there. And it all comes back to FIFA! x Embedded Content RadioPublic|LibSyn|YouTube|Patreon|Square Cash (Share code: Send $5, get $5!) LINK TO DAILY KOS STORE

Striking grocery workers in New England are getting a boost from politicians like former Vice President Joe Biden—and from religious leaders as they head into Passover and Easter. Biden spoke at a rally Thursday, telling the workers that “This is morally wrong, what’s going on around this country, and I’ve had enough of it, I’m sick of it and so are you.” ”How can they make that money, buy back all that stock and tell you they’re gonna cut your wages?” Biden said, specifically addressing a key issue in the strike, in which Stop & Shop workers are being pressed to take pension and healthcare cuts, as well as cuts to Sunday and holiday overtime pay for part-time workers, even as Ahold Delhaize, the chain’s parent company, has gotten a big tax cut from Republicans and is putting billions of dollars into stock buybacks. Boston Mayor Marty Walsh and state Treasurer Deb Goldberg, whose family founded Stop & Shop and ran it until the 1980s, also spoke at Thursday’s rally. Sen. Ed Markey attended the rally, having spoken at another rally last week; Sen. Elizabeth Warren spoke to striking workers last week as well. Rabbis around New England have also boosted the strikers by telling their congregations that food bought by crossing a picket line is not kosher for Passover. “The food that you’re buying is the product of oppressed labor and that’s not kosher,” according to Boston Temple Hillel B’nai Torah Rabbi Barbara Penzner. ‘‘Especially during Passover, when we’re celebrating freedom from slavery, that’s particularly egregious.”

Thanks to votes in state House and Senate committees this week, Michigan may be on its way to finally joining the 46 other states that have stopped locking up 17-year-old children in adult jails. “This is an initiative whose time has come,” said Democratic state Rep. David LaGrand, one of the co-sponsors of the package of “Raise the Age” bills in the state. He said it’s “really urgent that we move this legislation forward and get to a successful change, because I think this is a deeply moral issue.” Under current Michigan law, 17-year-olds aren’t allowed to vote. The law limits their ability to make their own medical decisions, and restricts the kinds of contracts they can enter into without the consent of a parent or guardian. But if 17-year-olds break the law, they are automatically treated as an adult and face adult consequences—consequences that include years in an adult jail and criminal records that stay with them for the rest of their lives. Or, as Briana Moore asked the state legislature in 2018, “At what point does the punishment end? Will I always be paying for the mistakes I made as a child?” According to a report in the Detroit News about Moore’s testimony, she was 17 when she got into a fight at a local mall and was charged with, and then convicted on, an adult misdemeanor. Michigan was among the majority of states that began charging children as adults during the “tough on crime” orgy of punitive legislation that marked the period from the 1970s to the 1990s. Today, it’s one of only four states that still do so, even though the consequences of charging and treating children as adults have become starkly apparent. Youth in adult jails are more likely to be sexually assaulted and thrown in solitary confinement, and face suicide rates 36 times higher than young people held in juvenile facilities, according to a report in the winter 2018 edition of the American Bar Association magazine Criminal Justice. They also lose their chance at an education, because “formal high school classes are virtually absent from adult jails and prisons,” according to the report. Further, surrounding impressionable teens with adult criminals makes them more, not less, likely to commit crimes when the adult criminal justice system finally sets them free.

Dave «Stretch» Tuemmler of North Yarmouth, Maine, owns the Stretch Studio in Portland and is a member of the Maine Small Business Coalition. He also has myxofibrosarcoma, a rare cancer that forms in connective tissue, and a son who has another disease, gastroparesis. He's got a message for his Republican senator, Susan Collins: «I am still alive because of Obamacare.» To date, I’ve had nine surgeries and 55 radiation treatments. That’s impossibly expensive care to receive in our county. But because of the Affordable Care Act, there’s a chance my legacy will not be bankruptcy. […] I had to roll my eyes when I saw Sen. Susan Collins’ April 1 letter to Attorney General William Barr chastising the Justice Department for not defending the ACA. Barr’s announcement would not be a threat if Collins had not voted to pack the Supreme Court with justices hostile to the ACA. When Collins voted to confirm Neil Gorsuch and Brett Kavanaugh, she did so knowing that they’d likely join the other powerful individuals and corporations working to chip away at the progress we’ve made on health care. Collins’ chastising Barr for doing exactly what she empowered him to do is, in my eyes, a cynical pre-election ploy to protect herself from the blowback for her own votes that threaten the lives of Mainers like me. It’s like throwing your child into the lion’s den and then yelling at the lion for eating him. That's the best analogy for Collins' cowardice and crass politics I've seen yet. Collins has taken one tough vote since Trump got installed in the White House, against Trumpcare. Yet every single other vote she's taken has either bolstered Trump or been a meaningless vote against him, when her defection would make no difference. Her sternly worded letter to Attorney General William Barr—after voting for his confirmation, along with virtually every other critical judicial nominee—is just insulting to her constituents.

Responding to the State Department “applauding” countries that sided with Washington’s regime-change efforts in Venezuela, the Russian Foreign Ministry said clapping is at least harmless and keeps the trigger-happy US hands busy. Read Full Article at RT.com

US authorities are warning wannabe vigilantes against taking the law into their own hands after an armed militia group detained over 300 migrants earlier this week at the Mexican border in what they claimed was a citizen’s arrest. Read Full Article at RT.com

Ukraine’s incumbent president Petro Poroshenko and hard-hitting frontrunner Volodymyr Zelensky faced off in a much-hyped big stadium debate, exchanging harsh accusations yet revealing little of their plans for the country. Read Full Article at RT.com

Vietnam is again seeking justice for the victims of Agent Orange, inspired by the multimillion-dollar verdicts against Monsanto in California. The biotech firm had supplied the US military with the chemical during the Vietnam War. Read Full Article at RT.com

Campaign Action It’s approaching a year since 8-year-old Byron was kidnapped by the Trump administration, and, under court order, returned to his mom, Maria Gloria. Yet, he’s no closer to being the child he used to be. “The little boy wakes up crying,” she told NBC News, “sometimes saying things like ‘let me go’ in his sleep.” Byron and his older brother, 11-year-old Franklin, were separated from their mom for nearly two months. The asylum-seekers represent just one family from the thousands that were ripped apart at the southern border under the barbaric “zero tolerance” policy. Following a June court decision ordering reunifications, Maria Gloria traveled to New York to reunite with her boys. From there, they traveled upstate to Kingston to start new lives. With the help of Catholic Charities, Maria was connected with English classes, a food pantry, even sports activities for the boys.  Their freedom hasn’t meant freedom from trauma, though. There’s been much focus on the trauma that separation and deportation inflicts on children, but parents are also affected. “Even after their reunion in July,” NBC News continued, “Maria Gloria fell into a deep depression, barely slept and lost a significant amount of weight because of the separation, she said.”  Coupled with watching an asylum claim play out under an administration that also sneers at them, Maria Gloria is constantly worried. “I was spending so many days so sad, crying, when my children would ask me things all I could do was cry,” she said. Like many other asylum-seekers, she fled her home country of Honduras after she got death threats. Those threats still haunt Byron. “’[He] has dreamed many times’ that those threatening their lives in Honduras ‘have killed me,’ she said.” The same judge who ordered their reunification also appeared to scoff at the Trump administration’s claim that it could take up to two years to identify the unknown number of other families that were separated before the official implementation of the policy, though he also did not set a timeline. The American Civil Liberties Union has said the U.S. has the resources and capability to do this in three months, and the group is right. These kids can’t wait. Family separation remains a crisis.

Just when you think Mitch McConnell couldn't get any more shameless, he sends out his minions to write this: «Mueller's report looks bad for Obama.» The minion in this case is his campaign adviser Scott Jennings, also a CNN contributer (and by the way, CNN, what the fuck?), who writes, «Former President Barack Obama looks just plain bad. On his watch, the Russians meddled in our democracy while his administration did nothing about it.» What is of course missing from his turgid analysis («A legitimate question Republicans are asking is whether the potential 'collusion' narrative was invented to cover up the Obama administration's failures») is any mention at all of McConnell and his very well-documented refusal to allow the Obama administration to tell the nation that Russia was interfering in the election and working to elect Trump. The alternative history McConnell is pushing out with this surrogate is that Obama wanted to save his nuclear agreement with Iran and needed Putin on board, so he refused to stand up to him on election interference. But we know from extensive reporting that McConnell was the sole hold-out among the Gang of Eight—members of congressional leadership and leaders of the intelligence committees—on the Obama administration's effort to send a strong bipartisan statement to the American people about Russian interference. McConnell's excuse was that he doubted the intelligence. His method was to tell the administration that if it went around him and issued the statement anyway, he'd poison the election. The administration, believing that Hillary Clinton would win, decided not to put that to the test. Should it have? Possibly, but it was clear even then how toxic Republicans were willing to be, and it didn't want to test that limit. Back to the op-ed: What's even more shameless in it is that McConnell's guy then goes on to criticize the economic sanctions Obama imposed on Russia after the election as a «toothless response to a serious incursion.» Those would be the sanctions that Trump lifted and that the Senate—with Mitch McConnell leading it—refused to reimpose. We can't leave out the part where one of the companies that had sanctions lifted by Trump and McConnell just announced it was investing in a new $200 million aluminum plant in McConnell's home state. The owners of that company, Rusal, are Paul Manafort's buddy and rat-fucking pal Oleg Deripaska, the oligarch and friend of Putin, and Leonard (Len) Blavatnik, who donated $2.5 million to McConnell's GOP Senate Leadership Fund through two of his holding companies during the 2016 campaign and a further $1 million in 2017. This desperate «It's all Obama's fault» smoke screen does tell us one thing: McConnell is worried about his own exposure here as he kicks off his next re-election campaign. It also confirms what a deeply corrupted and compromised politician he is.

In August 2018, White House speechwriter and policy advisor Darren Beattie left the Trump administration after CNN’s Andrew Kaczynski reported Beattie had been a featured speaker at the 2016 H.L. Mencken Club Conference, a conference well-known for attracting white nationalists. Kaczynski provided details of other attendees: The Mencken Club, which is named for the early 20th century journalist and satirist whose posthumously published diaries revealed racist views, is a small annual conference started in 2008 and regularly attended by well-known white nationalists such as Richard Spencer. The schedule for the 2016 conference listed panels and speeches by white nationalist Peter Brimelow and two writers, John Derbyshire and Robert Weissberg, who were both fired in 2012 from the conservative magazine National Review for espousing racist views. Other speakers from the 2016 conference are regular contributors to the white nationalist website VDare. Jared Taylor, another leading white nationalist, can be heard at the conference in 2016 on Derbyshire's radio show along with Brimelow. In fact, Beattie appeared on a panel with Brimelow.

Responding to the State Department “applauding” countries that sided with Washington’s regime-change efforts in Venezuela, the Russian Foreign Ministry said that clapping at least kept the US finger off the trigger. Read Full Article at RT.com

A professor alleges students were required to use a $120 program just to turn in their assignments

Beyoncé makes black feminism accessible in her Coachella film, building on the education she's delivered for years

The Congressional Budget Office released what would have been a bombshell report Thursday, had not the Mueller report eclipsed it. According to that report, there are 1.4 million more uninsured people now than in 2016, the last year of President Obama's second term. It estimates that there are now 28.9 million uninsured people in the U.S., up from 27.5 million in 2016. The report attributes much of that increase to the loss of coverage through Medicaid, where the Trump administration has made it much more difficult in many states to enroll and maintain coverage thanks to new rules like work requirements. Another portion of those now uninsured might have moved out of exchange coverage and into the junk insurance plans the Trump administration has made more available. Those are not included in CBO's counts, because those plans don't meet CBO's definition of coverage, which is «plans that must comply with the regulations governing the nongroup market as well as coverage that is exempt from some of the regulations but that nonetheless provides comprehensive major medical coverage.» CBO isn't the only tracker that’s found this loss of coverage. Its results correspond with an increase in the uninsured population tracked by Gallup. In January, it measured the highest rate of uninsurance in four years of collecting data. Gallup's numbers are higher than CBO's, but together they define a trend. We're moving backward under Trump, in so many ways.

When border militias start getting involved with people crossing the U.S.-Mexico border, it’s always a nightmare waiting to happen—or rather, to happen again. When they start targeting asylum-seekers, as they appear to be doing in New Mexico, it’s a recipe for disaster. An outfit calling itself United Constitutional Patriots has been prowling the borderlands in New Mexico’s Sunland Park area and rounding up asylum-seekers whom they encounter, turning them over to authorities with U.S. Border Patrol. What’s clear is that the militiamen are presenting themselves to the refugees—most of whom, their own interviews reveal, appear to be arriving from Central America seeking asylum on a variety of grounds—as official federal patrolmen.

In Louisiana, reports Samantha Michaels at Mother Jones, Democratic State Sen. J.P. Morrell has introduced SB 146, a bill that would prohibit the use of a “material witness warrant” to temporarily lock up victims of sexual assault and domestic violence to ensure they testify in court. This may not happen often in New Orleans or elsewhere, but when it does the damage can be awful well beyond the psychological impact of rape and abuse victims being incarcerated for days, weeks, or months, sometimes in the same jail as the person charged with those crimes, sometimes while the accused is free on bail. Joel Gunter writes: «Even a couple of days in jail can destroy someone's life,» said Colleen Kane Gielskie, a spokeswoman for the American Civil Liberties Union in New Orleans. «It sets off a cascading effect, you can lose a job, lose custody of children, all kinds of things that can have lasting consequences.» Gielskie was referencing the case of an attempted gang murder, which is a more common situation for when material witness warrants are issued, as has been done in jurisdictions across the nation. But the effects of jailing in instances of abuse and sexual assault are even more damaging. Witnesses held under these warrants aren’t protected by constitutional guarantees, including Miranda rights or access to a public defender. Typically a judge issues the warrant on the word of a district attorney without ever hearing from the crime victim. Indeed, getting a prompt appearance before a judge is another right the witness isn’t accorded, thus being victimized twice, once by the perpetrator and then by the system that is supposed to deliver justice.    Michaels cites the case of New Orleans accountant Renata Singleton. In 2015, after being held five days in jail in lieu of $100,000 bail, she showed up in court in an orange jumpsuit to testify in the case of her ex-boyfriend who was facing charges of abusing her. He, on the other hand, came to court in his street clothes, pleaded guilty, and spent zero time in the slam. 

Actress Charlize Theron has made headlines by announcing she has been raising her older, adopted child as a girl. The kid, she said, told her mother herself that she is “not a boy.” Read Full Article at RT.com

Stop & Shop is a massive corporation that is probably second only to Dunkin’ Donuts in ubiquity here in New England. Often there’s a Dunkin’ inside the Stop & Shops. What makes those brands stand-ins for our region isn’t their corporate boards and the profits they shovel to shareholders, it’s their employees. They deserve everything and more than what their asking for. Their strike is now entering its second week and in addition to not crossing picket lines, the employees can use all the support they can get. Follow me on Twitter, Facebook, or Patreon.

Baron Vaughn and Open Mike Eagle discuss bringing their live stand-up show to TV, wokeness as a weapon and more

Sen. Elizabeth Warren has released a statement via Twitter calling on Congress to exercise its constitutional authority and begin impeachment hearings against Donald Trump right away.  xMueller put the next step in the hands of Congress: “Congress has authority to prohibit a President’s corrupt use of his authority in order to protect the integrity of the administration of justice.” The correct process for exercising that authority is impeachment.— Elizabeth Warren (@ewarren) April 19, 2019 xThe severity of this misconduct demands that elected officials in both parties set aside political considerations and do their constitutional duty. That means the House should initiate impeachment proceedings against the President of the United States.— Elizabeth Warren (@ewarren) April 19, 2019 Friday, Apr 19, 2019 · 9:27:19 PM +00:00 · Jen Hayden Update: Former Housing and Urban Development Secretary Julián Castro also called for Congress to being impeachment proceedings.  xSecretary Castro says on two major cable shows that he supports Congress opening impeachment proceedings, and another frontrunner gets credit for being first two hours later 🤷‍♂️ pic.twitter.com/ZjRBaGweHu— Sawyer Hackett (@SawyerHackett) April 19, 2019

A Florida man has been arrested for death threats against Democratic members of Congress. John Kless, of Broward County, left threatening voicemails at the offices of Reps. Rashida Tlaib and Eric Swalwell and Sen. Cory Booker, including ranting about Rep. Ilhan Omar and littered with racist and sexist slurs, most of which we’re not going to quote here—but if you can think of it, he probably said it. Kless appeared especially obsessed with Omar, targeting Tlaib as another Muslim-American woman in Congress with messages for Omar, such as “It was your Taliban bitch, the one who opened up her fucking towel head mouth about how 'some people did it.’” In other words, going exactly in the direction Donald Trump has been leading his followers with his efforts to tie Omar to 9/11 and his description of her as a “sick monster.” That wasn’t all. To Swalwell: “The day you come after our guns motherfucker is the day you'll be dead.” To Booker: “We need to kill all you motherfuckers man, every fucking one of you, man.” He has previously left “profane/harassing” messages for House Speaker Nancy Pelosi. Kless also expressed pro-Trump sentiments and commanded two of the Democrats to stop criticizing him—so, yeah, this is about Trump, not just some random racist operating completely on his own. This comes just months after the spate of pipe bombs targeting media organizations and people on Donald Trump’s informal enemies list, something that has dropped out of memory remarkably fast. This is what Trump’s America looks like.