“Barack Obama has said congresswoman Ilhan Omar is under federal criminal investigation simply because she’s an outspoken critic of the President Donald Trump. ‘The full weight of the federal government is being brought down on a law-abiding elected official because she has dared to criticize the president,’ the former US president wrote on X, calling the probe ‘so appalling’. The White House defended the inquiry, saying the justice department was ‘focused on restoring law and order’. Last week, homeland security agents searched the Minnesota Democrat’s Washington DC home as part of an investigation into her immigration status. Born in Somalia, Omar moved to the US with her family as a child. US media outlets have reported that the probe is tied to her American citizenship and whether she lied about her age when she arrived in the US in 1995.” (10/19/26)
“A visitor from Canada maliciously harmed a flamingo at an iconic Las Vegas hotel by removing the bird from its enclosure and taking it to his room earlier this year, prosecutors said Monday at the man’s trial. His attorney said it was a drunken act and no harm was intended. Mitchell Fairbarn of Ontario is charged with two counts of felony animal cruelty in Nevada district court. Authorities allege that on March 3, he entered the flamingo habitat at the Flamingo Las Vegas Hotel and Casino and took a bird named Peachy. Video played at the trial showed Fairbarn holding the flamingo in an elevator and carrying it down a hotel hallway. Fairbarn faces up to five years in prison on each count if convicted of felony animal cruelty.” (10/19/26)
“Donald Trump first came to Americans’ attention more than 20 years ago for gleefully firing all manner of people on his show The Apprentice. Today, even as every poll indicates that if there’s one person Americans most want fired, it’s Trump himself, Trump’s own orgy of discharges continues apace. In the past week, both our ambassador to Greece, Kimberly Guilfoyle, and Trump’s blink-and-you-miss-her press secretary, Katie Zacharia, have been exited out. (Enterprising news producers might want to accompany the story of Zacharia’s in-and-out tenure with clips of Groucho Marx’s entrance song in Animal Crackers: ‘Hello, I Must Be Going.’) The well-earned departure of these two Trump loyalists has also prompted stories on Trump’s proclivity for firing his female appointees when he thinks they’ve betrayed him or otherwise let him down, while leaving in place his even more dubious male appointees.” (10/19/26)
“Failing to prosecute politically connected wrongdoers promptly and with the same severity applied to ordinary citizens emboldens further and more brazen misconduct by the individuals who escape consequence. Furthermore, non-enforcement itself functions as an incentive structure to others contemplating corrupt actions. And a justice system that appears, case after case, to apply one set of rules to the politically connected and another to everyone else breeds cynicism and corrodes public trust in the institutions responsible for enforcing the law. The purpose of this article is to test that well-established pattern against four decades-long case studies plus three additional cases that have matured substantially in the years since the political events that first drew scrutiny. Part I covered Edward Kennedy and the Clintons; this part examines John Kerry, John Brennan, James Comey, Hunter Biden, and the Uranium One case.” (10/16/26)
Source: Caitlin Johnstone, Rogue Journalist
by Caitlin Johnstone
“People are manipulated into believing the story that Israel’s existence must be preserved at all cost because of this religious belief or that political ideology. People are manipulated into believing the story that western elections are real and that voting in the two-party system is the only path toward beneficial policies. People are manipulated into believing the story that capitalism is the best possible system, and that socialism always fails (organically, all by itself) because its tenets go against human nature. People are manipulated into believing the story that the US-led liberal world order, while perhaps flawed, is still our best shot at a just and stable world. People are manipulated into believing the story that the mass media are telling us the truth about our society and the world, and that everything works pretty much the way we were taught in school.” (10/18/26)
“With Democrats poised to regain much of their Washington muscle, it’s ever more urgent to notice how they abused that power so recently. Consider Wednesday’s blockbuster report from the Office of the Comptroller of the Currency outlining how nine big banks, including JPMorgan Chase and Bank of America, used purely political criteria to deny services to perfectly lawful consumers — when getting ‘debanked’ is often a financial death sentence. And the debankers regularly relied on the hatemongering-for-profit Southern Poverty Law Center as an authority for who to ban. This was no small abuse: The OCC investigation covered more than 100,000 consumer complaints and 50,000 internal bank documents. A JPMorgan payment platform booted merchants with ‘MAGA’ and ‘America First’ in their profiles — and another for working with a group whose ‘crime’ was that a member accurately described the Black Lives Matter movement as Marxist.” (10/17/26)
“I happen to live in a state where MAGA enthusiasms are relatively subdued, and where Republicans skew toward old-school conservatism rather than Q-Anon crazy. The old Prescott Bush world of Connecticut. The state’s senators and the representative of my congressional district do an ‘admirable enough’ job representing my interests and advocating for good causes, giving me just enough to complain about, but not too much. Given the times we live in, and with the midterms looming large, I rather wish I could cast a ballot in a state that where my vote might make a bigger difference; a state where senators and congressional representatives have gotten away with far too much, often for far too long. Mind you, I don’t want to live in such a place, I just want to vote there.” (10/17/26)
“‘Who Gets to Tell the Story?’ That question was supposed to be the theme of a ‘press freedom’ event this week at Columbia University, home to one of the world’s leading journalism schools. However, as first reported by the Columbia Spectator, the event was canceled after student journalists had the audacity of offering their own views on the coverage of the alleged Cornell rape case. After the independent student newspaper The Sundial ran a column by deputy editor Nikos Mohammadi and writer Christina Ma criticizing the one-sided coverage of the allegations, the Columbia students went into a familiar groupthink, cancel mode. The students were shocked that Mohammadi and Ma took the invitation to ‘tell the story’ literally by offering a different perspective on the still developing case.” (10/17/26)
“Thousands of young Albanians gathered outside the Education Ministry in the center of the capital Tirana on Saturday on the fifth day of a growing student-led movement to force Prime Minister Edi Rama to resign. The protest turned violent when a group of young people wearing masks hurled rocks at riot police, who responded with stun grenades, tear gas and a water cannon. Demonstrations over corruption and a lack of jobs have begun spreading throughout Albania. In Tirana this week, protesters smashed windows, set alight government buildings and clashed with police.” (10/17/26)
“An 80m (263ft) luxury vessel has been repeatedly spotted in satellite images off North Korea’s Wonsan coast from July to mid-October this year. What stands out is the 50m swimming pool along the deck, with a cluster of waterslides at one end. After sitting idle for months at a maintenance facility, it relocated in early July to waters off a strip of coastline known as the Kalma Peninsula. This is close to Wonsan, a seaside resort with a sprawling villa used by North Korean leader Kim Jong Un and his family. It was not the only large vessel on the move. A handful of others were also repeatedly seen near Kim’s villa, in satellite images analysed by the BBC. The vessels are widely believed to be used by Kim and his family.” (10/17/26)
