“Police in South Africa have launched a manhunt after 12 people were killed in a mass shooting at an informal settlement in Johannesburg. At least 10 suspects, heavily armed with rifles, entered the Jumpers Informal Settlement in the suburb of Cleveland late on Tuesday night and opened fire before fleeing in a white vehicle, police said. The motive for what police called a ‘heartless’ and ‘barbaric’ attack, in which another nine people were injured, is still being investigated. Members of the Jumper’s community believe the shooting may be linked to a turf war between groups of illegal miners living in the area. Illegal mining has been on the increase in South Africa, which has one of the highest murder rates in the world.” (06/10/26)
“Bill de Blasio appeared on NewsNation on June 2 and was asked to comment on Spencer Pratt’s campaign. De Blasio smugly described Pratt’s ads as ‘inappropriate’ and wondered, ‘Who is behind them?’ If de Blasio hadn’t actively participated in the decline of New York City during his disastrous eight years as its mayor, his arrogance might just be dismissed as unwarranted and clueless. But de Blasio is part of a machine that profits from urban decline. Behind his arrogance is a grasping, cynical hypocrite delighted that the machine on the West Coast is as potent as the one that elevated his own mayoral tenure and now supports Zohran Mamdani. And so way out west, the machine has struck again.” (06/10/26)
“While teaching and conducting research can be wonderful experiences, working conditions in higher education have become increasingly horrible. In the United States, massive state disinvestment coinciding with 50 years of neoliberalism has resulted in both soaring tuition costs for students and large-scale budget cuts to universities. As a result, faculty teaching loads have increased while wages have stagnated. Meanwhile, university administrators across the country have replaced full-time and permanent faculty with insecure, part-time positions, and rarely replaced faculty who retired or moved. Whereas in the 1970s, more than half of U.S. faculty were tenured or on the tenure-track, today that figure stands at just over one quarter. Students suffer because their professors have far less availability and are far more stressed. Faculty are forced to hustle, often taking on additional jobs, and are left with less time for teaching and research, thereby undermining the mission of universities.” (06/09/26)
“This week, the nation watched as California grappled again with the ordinarily straightforward task of counting votes in an election. While large states such as Florida declare election winners within 24 hours, California may take up to two weeks to count all the votes. Even Los Angeles cannot count its votes in the time of large states despite giving the Clerk an annual budget of $336 million and a $448,179 a year salary with the help of 1,100 budgeted positions. In most states, voters would be outraged by the incompetence, waste and inefficiency. However, in the Golden State, voters shrug, as if they can demand no more from their elected officials than subpar performance. Call it the Politics of Low Expectations, and California is the model for the nation.” (06/09/26)
“Though smaller than most U.S. states, the landlocked nation of Armenia plays a key geopolitical role at the continental crossroads of Eurasia. With few natural resources, it is aiming to recalibrate regional and global relations and become a hub for international tech, finance, and transport services. So, its parliamentary elections Sunday have been of interest not just to next-door Azerbaijan and Turkey, but also to Iran, Russia, Europe, and the distant United States. The ruling Civil Contract party garnered 49.8% of the vote, Reuters reported, while the two main opposition parties together took in 33.1%. The degree to which both sides can find some common ground will determine how fast and how far this former Soviet republic can move out of history’s long shadow of ethnic conflict and external interference into an era of regional cooperation and progress.” (06/08/26)
“Nearly 1,200 people registered to vote at a homeless shelter on Skid Row with 132 beds. 185 people registered at a homeless drop-in center — with no beds at all. That is likely illegal, and it is likely a key to the story of how socialist City Councilmember Nithya Raman overtook Palisades Fire victim Spencer Pratt for second place in the LA mayoral race. Under California law, homeless people can register to vote, even though they do not have a fixed residence. They can use their last fixed address as their voting domicile; they can even specify a geographic location, as long as it is where they live, or where they intend to return. If they do not return there within a year, it is no longer their voting domicile.” (06/09/26)
Source: Caitlin Johnstone, Rogue Journalist
by Caitlin Johnstone
“Today the Twitter algorithm served me up a bunch of Zionist tweets from accounts I’ve never followed, right at the top of my ‘For You’ feed. Elon and company decided on my behalf that this is the kind of information I need to be consuming, so they’ve taken it upon themselves to shove it down my throat without my permission. As Silicon Valley algorithm manipulation gets more and more aggressive in force-feeding us the official narrative of the day, we have to get a bit clever in making sure we see the information our rulers don’t want us to see. I like to use Twitter Lists for this, because for all its flaws Twitter is still where the journalists hang out and remains a great place for staying on top of the news if you can figure out how to cut through all the bullshit.” (06/09/26)
“Last week’s blockbuster jobs report, with more than 265,000 jobs added when including upward employment revisions, was very welcome news to almost all Americans. The exception would be the economists of the Left who throughout Donald Trump’s now-five-and-a-half years in the White House keep getting the economy dead wrong. Just a few months ago a gaggle of economists on the Left, led by Nobel Prize winner Paul Krugman, started warning of ‘stagflation,’ a witch’s brew of high inflation and high unemployment at the same time. He wrote that ‘any statement that things aren’t as bad as they were in the 1970s should come with the caveat ‘so far.” … These are the same false claims made during Trump’s first term, when some critics warned his policies would cause ‘a second Great Depression.'” (06/09/26)
“Shops and businesses shut down, and public transport halted across Pakistan-administered Kashmir on Tuesday after a call for a strike by a recently banned group, known for violent protests. The Joint Awami Action Committee ‘s call follows clashes on Sunday in the city of Rawalakot between the group’s supporters and security personnel that left seven dead. The violence erupted after the Supreme Court of Pakistan-administered Kashmir ruled that 12 legislative seats reserved for Kashmiri refugees living in Pakistan are constitutionally protected and cannot be abolished without a constitutional amendment. The JAAC, formed in 2003, demands greater political rights for the people of Kashmir and the abolition of the refugee seats. Residents of the regional capital, Muzaffarabad, and other towns told The Associated Press markets were largely empty and bus terminals deserted on Tuesday.” (06/09/26)
“The Republican revolt against President Donald Trump began over an issue that was never supposed to become a crisis: another war in the Middle East. In recent weeks, a group of Republican members of Congress has openly challenged the White House — not over taxes, immigration, or even the budget, but over the most fundamental power of any president: the authority to lead the country into war. When several Republicans chose to stand alongside Democrats and support efforts to limit the president’s war powers, something greater than a routine legislative vote took place. This was not merely a legal disagreement over the interpretation of the Constitution; it was a sign of a deeper fracture emerging at the core of a movement that was once united around Trump’s leadership.” (06/09/26)
