“Italy’s highest court has ruled a five-star Dolomites hotel was acting lawfully when it refused to provide tap water to a tourist. The woman from Rome unsuccessfully argued that ‘water is a natural resource and a universal human right’ after a waiter only offered her €7 (£6) bottled mineral water at the restaurant of the five-star Hotel Sassongher in Corvara during the 2019 ski season. The Italian Supreme Court denied her request for €2,700 to compensate her for emotional distress and economic damage, Italian media reports. Silvio Belardi, the lawyer representing the hotel, told the Corriere Alto Adige newspaper that the court held that ‘there is no obligation to supply tap water.’ The lawyer later told the BBC the case had been rejected first by a court in Rome, then by an appeals court and now the Court of Cassation, where the judges ruled in the hotel’s favour.” (05/27/26)
Source: Caitlin Johnstone, Rogue Journalist
by Caitlin Johnstone
“They are building a UFC arena on the White House lawn, / because the world has gone insane, / and there are chatbots in our skulls, / and our eyes have been crossed out with black ink. / They are building a UFC arena on the White House lawn / so the president can watch men fight in a cage / while the Paramount Plus audience watches military recruitment ads that are marketed to teenagers / and a podcast plutocrat interviews men with bloody hands / as shame-soaked survivors sleep on the sidewalk in Washington DC, / as Cuban parents light a candle and skip another meal, / as Lebanese medics die in double-tap airstrikes, / as billionaires cackle about stripping all human knowledge / and selling it back to us as a subscription service, / as we shovel fistfuls of mood stabilizers down our gullets / to keep us functional enough to turn the gears of industry …” (05/27/26)
“Puerto Rico’s governor announced a state of emergency Wednesday to fight a surge in coastal erosion along the U.S. territory ’s north coast. Gov. Jenniffer González said the executive order would allow her administration to accelerate projects to protect natural resources and vulnerable coastal communities. The government said in a statement that rising sea levels, storm surges and other factors have intensified coastal erosion in Puerto Rico. González pledged to help northern towns including Loiza, where people have been evacuated and chunks of asphalt from coastal roads have tumbled into the ocean following heavy swells. The order was signed just days before the start of the Atlantic hurricane season, which runs from June 1 to Nov. 30. The cost of the projects has not yet been determined.” (05/27/26)
“The Justice Department’s $1.776 billion ‘anti-weaponization’ fund, which would pay out public money in compensation for alleged overreach in federal prosecutions, including for the insurrectionists who stormed the Capitol on January 6, 2021, has been accurately described as one of the most nakedly corrupt actions in American history. It would give a tacit endorsement from every American taxpayer to the notion that the Capitol Riot’s only transgression, for example, came from those who tried to punish its perpetrators for attempting to halt the outcome of an election. News of the fund has triggered massive political backlash and at least temporarily derailed a party-line reconciliation bill funding immigration enforcement operations for the next three years. Senate Republicans didn’t want to go on the record siding with Donald Trump’s crony slush fund, and left Washington rather than being confronted with such a question in a reconciliation ‘vote-a-rama.'” (05/27/26)
“Since October 7, we have been lectured nonstop about the supposedly singular sins of Israel. The campuses, the left-wing media, and the new Democratic Socialist officials, both federal and state, following the cue of student activists and professors from the Middle East, have painted Israel and their Jewish supporters as Nazis, fascists, and among the worst murderers in today’s bloody world. This is nonsensical. The medieval-style massacre of 1,200 Jews in their homes on October 7, during a time of peace, should have increased awareness of the existential dangers Israel faced. Instead, it spawned a gathering storm of antisemitism.” (05/26/26)
“When Chinese leaders claim that the American empire is in decline, I immediately assume their analysts are decoding dispatches from ESPN, The Athletic, and columnist Shams Charania. After all, it’s in sportswriting, I’ve come to think, that the songs of the canary in the all-American coal mine couldn’t be clearer. If the games we play and watch reflect our past and present lives, then the coverage and commentary about them may help predict our future. American sportswriters have been cheerleaders for empire since the early twentieth century, when Bat Masterson decided that shooting people in Dodge City wasn’t fulfilling enough for a man of his talent and ambition. Yes, that Bat Masterson. He came East and, as a boxing columnist for the New York Morning Telegraph, became a new sheriff in the emerging industry I’ve come to call SportsWorld.” (05/26/26)
“When the accusation is sexual assault or rape, the rights of the accused go out the window. President Trump knows that firsthand — and he’s asking the US Supreme Court to remedy it. Prosecutors and plaintiffs’ lawyers can drag in character assassins who know nothing about the alleged assault, but instead make their own claims — without proof — that they too were victims of the accused, often years or even decades earlier. That’s what happened to Trump in the E. Jean Carroll case, and why he’s appealing the jury’s decision. Last week, the justices delayed for the 11th time answering whether they will take up E. Jean Carroll v. Trump.” (05/26/26)
Source: Caitlin Johnstone, Rogue Journalist
by Caitlin Johnstone
“Polly on Twitter asks, ‘Is there a pejorative term for military like what pig is for cops?’ Dear Polly, No, but there should be. We need to start stigmatizing that shit. It is not okay to be a stormtrooper for the western empire. It is not honorable. It is not worthy of respect. If you are a westerner who is considering joining the military, you should choose a different career path instead. Don’t thank soldiers for their ‘service.’ Don’t play along with the lie that your nation’s soldiers fight for your rights or your freedom. It only encourages more people to join the military when you do that. It’s irresponsible and unethical.” (05/26/26)
Source: Fox News
by Carlos Trujillo & Alberto Martinez
“On May 20, 1902, the Cuban flag flew for the first time over an independent country. One hundred and twenty-four years later, the Cuban people are still not free. Every president before Donald Trump either did nothing about Cuba, did too little, or did too much for the regime. Trump is the first to recognize that the regime is a threat to America itself and to resolve to confront it once and for all. That his predecessors failed to do so is not only the Cuban people’s tragedy. It is ours. Cuba’s communist regime is a designated State Sponsor of Terrorism. It ran two of the most damaging espionage operations against the United States in modern memory. It was the intelligence backbone of the Maduro narco-state. It has served as a coordinating hub for the migration flows and drug routes flooding American communities. The suffering Havana exports has cost American lives.” (05/26/26)
“Rescuers are racing against time to free seven people who have been trapped for nearly a week in a flooded cave in Laos. The seven were part of a group of villagers from the central province of Xaysomboun who had gone into the cave on Wednesday in search of gold and wildlife, but could not get out as rain and landslides blocked the cave’s entrance. Footage shared by the rescue groups show the cave divers crawling into the cave through narrow, muddy passageways that are almost completely flooded. Several experts involved in the dramatic rescue of a team of teenage footballers trapped deep inside a Thai cave back in 2018 are among those helping with the current rescue effort. A survivor who had managed to escape alerted the authorities about those still trapped, according to reports.” (05/26/26)
