“Barack Obama’s tacky, hyperpartisan post-presidency is welcome insofar as it serves to remind the public of his tacky, hyperpartisan leadership style. ‘Although we don’t yet have the details about the motives behind last night’s shooting at the White House Correspondents’ Dinner …’ began Obama’s Sunday evening statement about the gunman who showed up in Washington the night before. Except by the time Obama got around to acknowledging the attack, the entire world knew why Cole Tomas Allen had attempted to storm the ballroom where President Trump and much of his administration were breaking bread with their ancestral enemies in the Fourth Estate.” [editor’s note: The entire world still doesn’t know that — it just knows what the regime has claimed about it. There’s a difference – TLK](04/28/26)
Source: Caitlin Johnstone, Rogue Journalist
by Caitlin Johnstone
“Sure plutocrats are killing our biosphere, but hey, at least they’re creating technology that lets you avoid the cognitive discomfort of writing your own words and thinking your own thoughts. Sure the empire is butchering human beings at horrifying scale around the world, but on the bright side it’s creating refugees who will move to your country and bring you treats that you can order from an app on your phone. Sure imperialist extraction is robbing the resources and exploiting the workers of the global south at extortionate fees, but on the other hand you get to wear a new outfit every day because the clothes you ordered online are dirt cheap thanks to transcontinental slave labor.” (04/30/26)
“A federal grand jury handed down indictments for two individuals connected to the assault on Turning Point USA reporter Savanah Hernandez at a U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement protest in Minneapolis earlier this month, Fox News Digital has learned. The suspects were indicted on Tuesday, federal sources told Fox News Digital, though their names have yet to be released. The sources said the indictment is expected to be unsealed later Wednesday. The incident happened on April 11 outside the Whipple Federal Building, where a protest was taking place over a local ICE field office that also serves as a detention facility. Video shows protesters swarming Hernandez, blowing horns in front of her face, yelling obscenities and waving adult novelty products in front of her, as she tries to cover herself and run away.” [editor’s note: Does any video show the alleged assault? – TLK] (04/29/26)
“Kim Jong Un has praised North Korean soldiers who killed themselves by detonating their grenades while fighting for Russia against Ukraine, confirming a long-suspected battlefield policy. In a speech this week, the North Korean leader said those who ‘unhesitatingly opted for self-blasting, suicide attack, in order to defend the great honour’ were ‘heroes.’ South Korea estimates at least 15,000 North Koreans have been sent to help Russia recapture parts of western Kursk, and more than 6,000 have been killed so far. Neither Pyongyang nor Moscow have confirmed the numbers. Intelligence agencies and defectors have said the soldiers were under Pyongyang’s orders to kill themselves rather than be taken prisoner by Ukraine.” (04/29/26)
“Karl Marx and Friedrich Engels taught us that capitalism is a system primarily characterized by private control over the means of production. In other words: Factories and banks are privately owned. Business decisions are guided by whether they generate surplus value that can be appropriated as profit by the owners. Workers become a commodity, one that must, however, market itself and generate exchange value. In this context, the state’s primary role is to safeguard these relations of production and balance the interests of the various factions of capital. In doing so, the construction of neoliberal ideologies sought to minimize state benefits for the poorer strata of society, destroy the protective mechanisms of poorer societies, and simultaneously transfer state resources to capitalist oligarchies. Those who demanded the elimination of subsidies were, in fact, the very ones who benefited from them.” (04/29/26)
“The Supreme Court unanimously sided with a group of faith-based pregnancy centers on Wednesday that challenged the New Jersey attorney general’s investigation into whether the centers misled donors and the public about steering women away from having abortions. The case was brought by First Choice Women’s Resource Centers, a group of five Christian-based facilities in New Jersey that provide various pre-natal services to women facing unplanned pregnancies. The Supreme Court found the centers’ First Amendment rights were violated, handing a victory to the pro-life movement, which had argued the state investigation rattled the centers’ donors. The opinion was narrow, finding that First Choice is now able to fight the state investigation in federal court, rather than state court.” (04/29/26)
“The United Arab Emirates (UAE) shocked the world on Tuesday when it announced that it’d be leaving the world’s largest oil cartel this week. While there’s no immediate impact for the US, in the long run it’ll mean lower gasoline prices and much-needed relief for American consumers. For decades, the UAE has been part of the Organization of Petroleum Exporting Countries (OPEC), which has artificially limited global oil supplies and thereby put upward pressure on prices. … The idea behind the cartel was simple: gather all the major oil-producing countries into a room and agree to act like a monopoly, thereby maximizing profits at the expense of the rest of the world. But as other nations began discovering and pumping more oil of their own, it became increasingly difficult for a dozen or so countries to control global prices.” (04/29/26)
“A man in eastern India has said he was forced to carry his sister’s skeletal remains to a bank to prove her death after failing to withdraw her savings. A video from Odisha state of Jitu Munda, 52, taking the remains to the bank went viral this week, sparking outrage. He said he acted in frustration after repeated attempts to access the money without being able to show official proof of death. Police said he exhumed the woman’s remains to bring them to the bank. The bank denied asking for this, saying they only demanded legally required documents. It added that the incident appeared to stem from a lack of awareness of procedures, and that the money has since been handed over to the legal heirs.” (04/29/26)
“The Supreme Court will weigh arguments Wednesday over the Trump administration’s push to end legal protections for Haitians and Syrians as migrants fleeing war and natural disaster. Haitians and Syrians were among those from 17 countries with Temporary Protected Status, which allows migrants already in the U.S. to stay with work permits in 18-month increments, so long as the Secretary of the Department of Homeland Security deems their country of origin unsafe for return. Since President Donald Trump ’s second term began, Homeland Security has ended the protections for 13 countries, exposing their migrants to potential deportation. The case focuses on whether the administration properly weighed conditions in Haiti and Syria when it ended TPS and if it prejudiced non-white immigrants.” (04/29/26)
“German Chancellor Friedrich Merz recently said that America is being ‘humiliated’ by Iran: ‘The Iranians are obviously very skilled at negotiating, or rather, very skillful at not negotiating, letting the Americans travel to Islamabad and then leave again without any result,’ he said. The only issue with this argument is that Donald Trump is such an erratic lunatic that arguably no real negotiation has ever taken place and may not actually be possible. Principally what Trump has done is post random nonsense online. Among Tuesday’s posts was one in which he claimed that ‘Iran has just informed us that they are in a ‘State of Collapse.’ They want us to ‘Open the Hormuz Strait,’ as soon as possible.’ This did not happen. It is what it is, and it’s not going to get better so long as Trump remains president.” (04/29/26)
