Jon Stewart gives updates on the one-month anniversary of the Iran war, including the Strait of Hormuz's continued closure and the global shortages affecting everything from grain to pickleballs.

Desi Lydic weighs in on Kristi Noem's husband cross-dressing, Pete Hegseth waxing poetic about the war in Iran, and Lindsey Graham's trip to Disney World. Plus, Desi comments on Trump's attempt to end birthright citizenship for "billionaires," and a federal judge blocking the construction of the president's ballroom.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=gRt5uVV0KEg

MEANWHILE: 

According to a Friday report from HuffPost, Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth’s Pentagon held a Protestant-only Good Friday service at its in-house chapel, with no Catholic Mass scheduled for one of Christianity’s holiest days.

The setup, which excludes a Catholic service for the first time, drew frustration from at least one Pentagon employee after an internal email made the arrangement explicit.

“Just a friendly reminder: There will be a Protestant Service (No Catholic Mass) for Good Friday today at the Pentagon Chapel,” read a Friday email sent by Air Force leadership, according to a copy shared with HuffPost’s Jennifer Bendery.

At his March 26 Cabinet meeting, Donald Trump left everyone confused when he rambled about Sharpies and pens in a nonsensical rant. Unsurprisingly, Trump has already gotten plenty of flak online for going off on the perplexing tangent. Now, things are getting even weirder. Not only was it odd that Trump spent so much time telling a story about how he ended up getting personalized Sharpies for $5, but apparently, he may have made the whole story up. 

Donald Trump's Weird Sharpie Story Comes Crashing Down After Embarrassing Update

By Lauren Waters

On the same day the Pentagon declared air superiority over Iran achieved, Iran shot down an F-35, an F-15, and a Black Hawk helicopter. Three American aircraft. One day. Then came the B-52s.

The United States has deployed B-52 Stratofortress strategic bombers — nuclear-capable aircraft that have been in service since 1955 — on overflights of Iranian territory. Confirmed by the Chairman of the Joint Chiefs. Reported by Defense Industry Europe, Western outlets, and multiple military sources.

The B-52 carries GBU-72 bunker-busting bombs weighing over two tons each. It also carries — or can carry — nuclear-armed cruise missiles and gravity bombs. The Pentagon will not say what is on board. That ambiguity is the message. This is not a continuation of the same conflict.

The Barnaby Joyce and Angus Taylor water scandal is back in focus, seven years after Michael West Media helped expose the $80 million water buyback linked to a Cayman Islands company. The deal, signed off under Barnaby Joyce, involved water rights sold at a record price through a company connected to Angus Taylor, with questions still unresolved about who ultimately benefited and why taxpayers paid so much for assets critics argued were of little environmental value. 

As the issue makes a brief mention in parliament, so do the unanswered questions about secrecy, political protection, and why no serious investigation has followed.

Happy 7 year anniversary of the story

They Got away with Australia’s own Watergate | The West Report

by Michael West

When Syria’s “interim” leader Ahmed al-Sharaa touched down in London on March 31, he was given a much warmer welcome than many once thought possible. As the longtime leader of Syria’s Al-Qaeda branch, the US had been offering a $10 million bounty for information on his location just 15 months prior. Yet here was Al-Sharaa, proudly posing for photo ops with King Charles and Prime Minister Keir Starmer.

His Majesty’s head-chopper: Syria’s MI6-backed president bows to King Charles

BY KIT KLARENBERG

The administration of US President Donald Trump has requested $152 million from Congress to restore the Alcatraz prison. Democrats have slammed the plans as “lunacy” and vowed to block their implementation.

Originally a fortress sitting on the eponymous island in the San Francisco Bay, the correctional facility housed inmates from 1934 until 1963, when it was closed due to high operating costs. Among those held at Alcatraz were such notorious ​criminals as ⁠mobster Al Capone and George “Machine Gun”Kelly. The prison was considered one of the country’s most secure facilities, with no ⁠successful escapes officially recorded.

Presently, Alcatraz is a major tourist attraction in the region, run by the National Park Service.

From 250 to 700 dollars per article: How Russia influenced West African media content
A leak of confidential documents from a network of Russian agents operating on the African continent reveals how Russia managed to place hundreds of articles in 35 different West African French-language media outlets – sometimes without their knowledge. The FRANCE 24 Observers team worked with an international media consortium coordinated by Forbidden Stories to analyse these leaked documents, which show just how susceptible these media outlets are to foreign interference.

The list of articles included in these confidential documents is nearly 80 pages long. The spreadsheets, written in Russian, catalogue dozens of media outlets based across Africa.

As the United States is clearly lying about the number of the US military casualties in the current war with Iran, the veracity of other claims made by the US is dubious, former US Department of Defense officer David T. Pyne tells Sputnik.

Properly assessing Iran’s losses is also difficult due to the fact that it is unclear whether US claims of destroyed Iranian missile launchers take into account the decoys and dummy targets, he points out.

US Boasts of Destroyed Iranian Launchers Lack Credibility – Ex-DoD Official

“I believe that US estimates of the total number of Iranian ballistic missiles are likely much lower than is actually the case as I believe Iran may have tens of thousands of missiles in its stockpile,” Pyne adds.

Two more US military aircraft were downed in the Middle East on Friday, in addition to an F-15E Strike Eagle that crashed earlier. 

An A-10 Warthog reportedly went down contemporaneously with the crash of the F-15, according to the New York Times.

Officials have not stated the cause of the crash or the country where it occurred, but it reportedly occurred near the Strait of Hormuz.

The pilot was safely rescued.

As the criminal Zionist-American war on Iran enters its second month, the conflict has proven so ruinous for the aggressors that dire alarm is being widely sounded. Embarrassing failure to subdue the Islamic Republic from the air has raised the prospect of a US ground operation of some kind, widely perceived as a suicide mission. Washington has also burned through over 850 Tomahawk missiles and 1,000 air-defense interceptors, at a rate the Pentagon finds “alarming”. In the process, Israel is rapidly approaching total disarmament.

As violence spreads from the Caribbean to Western Asia, the United States and Israel’s war of aggression against Iran is paralysing the global economy. 

Its consequences were predictable: it was known that if the United States and Israel attacked Iran, the Strait of Hormuz – through which a quarter of global seaborne oil trade passes – would become a chokepoint. 

Vijay Prashad: US Aggression Across the World

In its latest statement, No Cold War takes stock of the long history of U.S. aggression across the world and the need to reject a future of wars without end.

One of Germany’s biggest and most iconic car manufacturers, Volkswagen (VW) and one of Israel’s most well-known arms manufacturers, Rafael Advanced Defense Systems, part of the global Rafael Group, are planning to collaborate. If the project is realized, VW will convert one of its German factories in the historic city of Osnabrueck from making automobiles to producing components of Israel’s Iron Dome missile defense system.

This company used to make weapons for the Nazis. Now it will do the same for Israel

This is a grave case of political punishment without due process. I speak with journalist Hüseyin Doğru, who says EU sanctions turned him into a non-person inside Germany. The discussion covers the lack of trial or hearing, the struggle to challenge sanctions in court, frozen bank access, the seizure of his wife’s accounts, and the danger this creates for his children. They also discuss the silence of major media and unions, the wider use of sanctions and debanking against dissent, and the need for public protest and political pressure.

Links:
Hüseyin Doğru on X: https://x.com/hussedogru

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