Source: Caitlin Johnstone, Rogue Journalist
by Caitlin Johnstone
“The blue whales have stopped singing / because the krill are vanishing / because the oceans are warming / because we are ruled by long-toothed liars / whose insides are full of dead leaves. / The great whales have gone silent / and my bird has gone blind / and there are chatbots in the basement / and corpses in the corn. / Under the overpass it is dry and still. / You would never know that everything is dying. / You should come and visit me. / Meet me over there under the sepia streetlights / with the strangleporn perverts and fentanyl fallen, / all the stillborn scar tissue extractions / from the wreckage of a banished womb, / the NAFTA-noosed factory towns full of deserted buildings / and the window-snarling meth towns full of deserted people, / where the cries of orphaned Palestinians mingle / with the cries of the last baby orangutan / ever born in the wild …” (12/08/25)
“U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) is warning that Illinois officials are releasing violent criminal illegal [sic] aliens despite active immigration detainers, a move the agency says is putting the public at risk. In the letter shared with Fox News Digital, Todd Lyons, ICE’s senior official performing the duties of director, said Illinois has ‘tens of thousands of criminal illegal [sic] aliens’ in custody – individuals who, he noted, have committed crimes ranging from murder and rape to child pornography and armed robbery. Lyons said these offenders ‘should be swiftly removed from the United States … and not be returned to our streets to wreak havoc on law-abiding citizens’. According to data provided by ICE, Illinois has released 1,768 criminal aliens with active detainers since January 2025. ICE said the crimes tied to those offenders include homicides, assaults, burglaries, weapons offenses and sexual-predatory crimes.” (12/08/25)
“About 100 children who were abducted from a Catholic school in central Nigeria last month have been freed. They arrived in the Niger state capital, Minna, in a fleet of minibuses escorted by military vans and armoured vehicles, and were received by Governor Umar Bago. Details about their release remain unclear, including whether it was secured through negotiation or by force, and whether any ransoms were paid.” (12/08/25)
“A major theme of American politics over the past few decades is Democrats repeatedly bailing Republicans out from the political consequences of their own actions, particularly with health care. During the Obama years, House Republicans voted dozens of times to repeal Obamacare, which Democrats blocked every time. During Trump’s first term, the GOP came within one vote of actually repealing it. Now, with the One Big Beautiful Bill Act (OBBBA), Republicans have finally gotten what they wanted: namely, taking a trillion-dollar bite out of Medicaid, and allowing Biden-era Obamacare subsidies to lapse, meaning premiums on the exchanges are going to more than double. Except, whoops, it turns out that people don’t like this at all, and even the more dim-witted congressional Republicans are starting to fear this might blow up in their faces.” (12/08/25)
“The apparent leader of a failed coup in Benin remained on the run and the fate of hostages remained unclear on Monday, a day after a group of soldiers attempted to overthrow the government of the West African nation. The soldiers, calling themselves the Committee for Refoundation, stormed the national television station on Sunday morning. Led by Lt. Col. Pascal Tigri, eight soldiers appeared in a broadcast announcing the removal of President Patrice Talon, dissolution of the government and suspension of state institutions. Before the coup, Tigri was a member of Talon’s protection detail. As an artillery officer, he commanded a National Guard battalion between 2023 and 2025. By Sunday afternoon, the coup was foiled by Benin’s military, supported by Nigerian air and ground forces, which launched attacks against fleeing mutineers. At least a dozen soldiers were arrested, while others remained at large. Tigri’s whereabouts weren’t known.” (12/08/25)
“For years, Democrats assured us that expanding government programs was an act of moral heroism — that the only thing standing between America and utopia was more taxpayer money flowing through more ‘community-based’ nonprofits embracing ‘equity-centered’ missions. Then Minnesota happened, exposing a truth the radical left will never admit: The system isn’t broken. This is exactly how it’s designed to work. Over 70 people connected to the Minnesota nonprofit Feeding Our Future face federal charges in the country’s largest COVID pandemic fraud scandal. It was primarily Somali American defendants who allegedly stole funds meant for low-income children by submitting falsified invoices, fake meal counts and fabricated rosters. The organizations billed the government for tens of millions of unserved meals, using the stolen money for luxury cars, beachfront property and homes. It’s jaw-dropping — but it’s not surprising. And it happened because Democrats built a system practically engineered for abuse by the nonprofit industrial complex.” (12/08/25)
“Environmental and economic justice advocates alike have been sounding the alarm for months regarding the Trump administration’s push to built massive data centers to support artificial intelligence and cryptocurrency in communities across the United States (regardless of local opposition) and on Monday Congress heard from a coalition of more than 200 groups demanding action to stop what they called ‘one of the biggest environmental and social threats of our generation’. Led by Food and Water Watch (FWW), which originally demanded a moratorium on new AI data centers in October, more than 230 organizations have signed a letter warning that thus far, Congress has failed to take action to stop the rapid expansion despite the fact that ‘the harms of data center growth are increasingly well-established, and they are massive.'” (12/08/25)
“Twelve former FBI agents fired after kneeling during a 2020 racial justice protest in Washington sued Monday to get their jobs back, saying their action had been intended to de-escalate a volatile situation and was not meant as a political gesture. The agents say in their lawsuit that they were fired in September by Director Kash Patel because they were perceived as not being politically affiliated with President Donald Trump. But they say their decision to take a knee on June 4, 2020, days after the death of George Floyd at the hands of Minneapolis police, has been misinterpreted as political expression. The lawsuit says the agents … became outnumbered by hostile crowds they encountered and decided to kneel to the ground in hopes of defusing the tension, the lawsuit said.” (12/08/25)
“Angelique Estes knew her stay would be rough as soon as she arrived at her new home in Arlington, Texas, in early December 2023. At 53 years old, Estes had learned to read her environment quickly. She’s lived with cerebral palsy all her life, and her health quickly deteriorated after her husband of nearly 30 years died two years prior …. [she] turned to group homes as a low-cost alternative to the nursing home she couldn’t afford. By the time she arrived at 1210 Woodbrook Street, a squat, three-bedroom brick house in a quiet suburban neighborhood, she had already cycled through five such boarding homes, none of which had been good. As she took in the tight hallways — so narrow that her ambulance gurney couldn’t fit through — she sensed this time was no better.” (12/08/25)
“America’s kids are paying a steep price for lower standards and less testing in schools — and there’s no obvious sign of a turnaround. It’s particularly troubling for New York kids, especially as state ‘leaders’ have decided to stop requiring passing scores on Regents exams to graduate high school starting in the 2027-’28 school year. How crucial are hard standards? Well, after colleges (in the benighted name of ‘equity’) stopped requiring SAT or ACT scores as part of the admissions process a few years back, a host of high schools evidently stopped teaching the skills needed to do well on such tests — even though such skills are vital to getting through college, and life. Kids who are unprepared don’t face consequences until it’s too late — i.e., when they’re already in college and struggling to do the work expected of them.” (12/06/25)
