When the lights go out, it's becoming clear who will be blamed

The media is not your friend.

That may sound like an overly simplistic statement, and yet look how many Americans marched in lockstep to the advice of the media over the last two-plus years when it came to taking a deadly toxic, spike-protein laced injection. I personally know many who wish they had not succumbed and taken those shots. Some will admit it openly. Others not so much. But you can see the distress in their eyes whenever the topic comes up.

The corporate media has become so corrupt and its messaging so indistinguishable from the government in Washington that they will literally say anything, read any script, write any fake story, that their mockingbird handlers order them to relay to the public. To do otherwise means instant termination and isolation. The pattern is now there for all to see. We have a plethora of national journalists who have either quit or been fired by their corporate-media bosses because they asked too many questions, or insisted on reporting on forbidden topics. Sharyl Attkisson, Lara Logan, Tucker Carlson, just to name a few. Others like Gary Webb and Michael Hastings died under mysterious circumstances.

So it is with great dread that I must alert you to the alerts coming out of the mainstream media over the weekend while many of us were enjoying family barbecues, going to the beach, or sitting on a fishing boat. The evil ones never rest. Not when they believe they are in their final end-game scenario of America's long-awaited destruction. All of the major corporate media outlets, working in collusion with the federal government, put out an alert about the potential for "right-wing" attacks on the U.S. power grid.

Fifty years ago I left the Soviet Union for one reason: My desire for freedom. I was disgusted by the one-sided world view fostered by the banning of foreign publications and the jamming of Western radio stations. The obedient media, toeing the party line, repulsed me and made me laugh.

Fear of the authorities (even if they were far more "vegetarian" than in Stalinist times) restricted open discussion of politics to the "kitchen cabinet," with a small circle of trusted friends.

I left behind my hometown (then Leningrad, now St Petersburg), my friends, my brother and the graves of my parents and grandparents. Applying to emigrate meant taking a risk, because you almost always risked losing your job, many friends and even relatives, with no guarantee that you would even be granted an exit visa.

I was lucky. Just a few months later, my Soviet citizenship was revoked and I was able to buy a one-way train ticket to Vienna. My dream of freedom had come true. Although I was only allowed to take $140 out of the Soviet Union, the first thing I bought in Austria was a copy of the International Herald Tribune newspaper.

The former Observer columnist Nick Cohen, who attacked me numerous times during the pandemic for being a lockdown sceptic, has left the newspaper with a financial settlement following complaints of sexual harassment that spanned a period of 17 years. When he departed, he was praised by his bosses for his "incisive" and "brilliant" journalist - such as this piece entitled 'It is only a matter of time before we turn on the unvaccinated' - with no mention of the seven women who claimed they were harassed by him both inside and outside the workplace. Guardian News and Media (GNM), which owns the Observer and the Guardian, has now been accused of a cover-up by the New York Times. The Telegraph has more.

Some of his alleged victims have accused GNM of failing to act on complaints they made to managers over a period of years.

For his part, Mr. Cohen has claimed that his downfall was the result of a bitter internal row over transgender rights that has opened a schism at the centre of The Guardian.

The fallout from the Cohen affair has also prompted recriminations at the Financial Times (FT), where an investigation by a prominent journalist into the goings-on at the Guardian was spiked by the business newspaper's editor.

The claim has been made by the New York Times (NYT), which reported that Madison Marriage, an FT journalist, had investigated the Cohen affair and had on the record interviews with two named women and documentary evidence on others, but Roula Khalaf, the FT's editor, chose not to publish it.

The Memorial Day weekend in Chicago was the most violent in seven years.

By early Tuesday morning, at least 12 people had been killed and another 48 wounded since early Friday evening. The level of gun violence was the worst since 71 people were shot over the 2016 holiday weekend.

The Harrison police district on the West Side recorded the most people shot, at least eight. The Ogden district on the Near West Side and the Gresham district on the South Side each had seven, according to police data.

Two of the homicides occurred in the Harrison district and two in the Gresham district.

The violence came close to Mayor Brandon Johnson's doorstep when a woman was found stabbed to death less than two blocks from the mayor's West Side home in Austin.

Extra police officers had been scheduled to work over the weekend, as Johnson and interim Chicago Police Supt. Fred Waller continued the controversial practice of canceling officers' days off to boost staffing over violent weekends.

Dozens of "peacekeepers" also hit the streets to quell violence in hot spots on the South and West sides. And hundreds marched against violence Saturday in the Grand Crossing neighborhood.

The weekend's first homicides happened within a few hours of each other.

Bud Light enlists a trans ladyface minstrel to sell beer. Target hires a trans Satanist to design LGBT clothes for kids and starts selling "binding" and "tucking" swimwear. North Face launches a marketing campaign featuring a creepy drag performer hocking LGBT gear to children ages 2 to 7. The Los Angeles Dodgers gives an award to a demonic hate group whose sole purpose is to blaspheme and profane the Catholic faith.

All this, and June "pride month" hasn't even begun.

What's happening? Why did so many major corporate brands decide to go all-in on promoting an aggressive, radical LGBT agenda that just a few years ago would have been considered totally unacceptable in civil society? Is this a psy-op? Is it real? What happens next?

The short answer to these questions is that we've entered a new phase of the culture war, and in some ways have transcended "the culture war" completely. What we're in now is better described as a religious war — one that's been launched by corporate America against all of us, and therefore demands we all choose sides.

Choosing sides in a religious war means you have to choose your religion. And in this particular religious war, there are only two sides. On one side is what C.S. Lewis called the Tao, which was his ecumenical shorthand for objective moral truth. "The Tao, which others may call Natural Law or Traditional Morality or the First Principles of Practical Reason or the First Platitudes, is not one among a series of possible systems of value," Lewis wrote in The Abolition of Man. "It is the sole source of all value judgments. If it is rejected, all value is rejected. If any value is retained, it is retained."

In what's now becoming an alarming pattern of cross-border escalation, multiple civilians were injured in Russia's Belgorod region, just kilometers from Ukraine, due to large-scale shelling on Wednesday, presumably from Ukrainian forces.

Local governor Vyacheslav Gladkov said at least four people had been injured. He described that situation in the border town of Shebekino has been "deteriorating" due to the "massive strike" from Ukrainian forces.

One among the casualties was described as being in "serious" condition after being hit by shrapnel. A school as well as some dozen buildings had minor damage from the attack. The governor said the cross-border attack was from Soviet-era Grad multiple rocket launcher systems. "Nobody, thank God, died," Gladkov said.

Passengers aboard the Carnival Sunshine had a nightmarish experience as the cruiseliner attempted to return to its home port in Charleston on Friday. The cruise ship was battered by rough seas and powerful winds, flooding the lower decks. The situation worsened late Friday night into early Saturday when passengers saw crew members putting on life jackets.

Bloomberg ship tracking data shows the vessel zig-zagged off the coast of Charleston while a low-pressure storm slammed the ship with monster waves and 80 mph winds.

Passenger Daniel Taylor shared his terrifying experience between Friday evening and mid-day Saturday with Daily Mail:

But at around 4.30pm on Friday, the trip took a turn for the worse as the ship approached choppy waters. Just 15 minutes later, Taylor said, the captain made an announcement that due to the adverse weather conditions, the Sunshine may arrive back in Charleston later than it was scheduled to. 'He said that the staff would do everything they could to minimize discomfort,' Taylor recounted, noting that shortly thereafter vomit bags were put out on all the elevators. By 7pm, he said, the ship started hitting large swells of water.

"I went to a show in the Liquid Lounge at the front of the ship at that time. The sound of us crashing into the swells could be heard over the music playing." Stage lights mounted on the ceiling began to shake, the disco ball started swinging and the LED wall on the stage, which he said was probably about 20 to 30 feet tall and wide, began rolling side by side on its own.

Karl Lauterbach is having a dramatic fall from grace...

Outside of Germany, few people have heard of Karl Lauterbach, Germany's Minister for Health. But he's one of the key figures in the Western Covid response. Once hailed as a hero, he's now engulfed in the biggest vaccine-injury scandal to have emerged since the pandemic.

Lauterbach has served in the role since December 2021, under the traffic light coalition led by Olaf Scholz. Often described as "Germany's Fauci", Lauterbach — a professor of health economics and epidemiology and long-time member of the SPD — rose to national prominence early on into the pandemic as a Covid hardliner.

In his role as an advisor to Angela Merkel and prominent TV and Twitter commentator, and then as the country's health minister, Lauterbach adopted an aggressively pro-lockdown and pro-vaccination stance, claiming that his aim was to vaccinate every single German — through the imposition of mandates, if necessary — in order to achieve so-called "herd immunity".

It's a cult. Believers in the climate religion can't persuade the rest of the population through polite conversation, so a few are resorting to vandalism-for-the-planet because they know more than you do about atmospheric physics, right? After a spate last year, the call has gone out for activists to sneak around again after dark, being the deceptive cowards they are, and let down the tyres of SUVs to punish owners for not joining their pagan religion. Judging by their twitter thread, it doesn't seem like a mass movement.

Philosophically, it's just bully-badger-and-harass people for the climate kind of thing. According to "Tyre Extinguishers" you too can change the weather 100 years from now by dressing like a bank robber, and prancing around in the dark making other people's lives more difficult. "Bravo" eh?

The same evangelists don't seem to be concerned with even heavier EV's made with child labor, the solar panels made by slaves, or the landfill toxic waste, destruction of forest, birds and bats by renewables. It's just a tribal performance art to impress their friends and fill the spiritual vacuum in their lives.

When will the grown-ups in the environmental movement condemn vandalism? It's time the Greens were asked if they support this.

Radical climate activists pushing to 'inconvenience SUV owners' by deflating 4×4 tyres in major cities

By Alex Blair, News.com

A radical movement purporting to save the world from climate change has declared war on SUV owners, encouraging the public to actively sabotage cars in the street.

The Tyre Extinguishers is a guarded organisation that has built a global following in recent months, attracting what some have described as "extremist" activists who want to rid the roads of these "massive and unnecessary" vehicles.

© joannenova.com.au/Just making the world a nastier place to live…

An American citizen has been detained by Ukrainian authorities after expressing support for Russian actions and criticizing Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky.

Gonzalo Lira, a prominent YouTuber and columnist, has gained recognition for his financial articles featured in renowned platforms such as Business Insider and ZeroHedge. Lira has notably emerged as a vocal critic of Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky.

(Full disclosure: The author has participated in roundtable podcasts with Gonzalo Lira alongside other political commentators and journalists)

According to an official press release, Gonzalo Lira was detained by the Ukrainian Security Service of Ukraine (SBU) in early May for publicly justifying the Russian invasion.

"The security service gathered an evidence base on a foreign blogger who publicly justified the armed aggression of the RF [Russian Federation] and spread fakes about the war in Ukraine," the Ukrainian SBU stated. "The figure is a citizen of one of the Latin American countries, but has lived in Kharkiv for several years."