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The day's news roundup + tonight's musical feature: Halloween music

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Hey! Good Evening!

This evening's music features Halloween music. Enjoy!

^{Cab Calloway - The Ghost of Smokey Joe}

"A reform is a correction of abuses; a revolution is a transfer of power."

-- Edward Bulwer-Lytton, 1st Baron Lytton

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News and Opinion

Chris Hedges: Genocidal Scorecard

A United Nations report, published on Monday, lays out in chilling detail the advances made by Israel in Gaza as it seeks to eradicate “the very existence of the Palestinian people in Palestine.” This genocidal project, the report ominously warns, “is now metastasizing to the West Bank, including East Jerusalem.” The Nakba or “catastrophe,” which in 1948 saw Zionist militias drive 750,000 Palestinians from their homes, carry out more than 70 massacres and seize 78 percent of historic Palestine, has returned on steroids. It is the next and, perhaps, final chapter in “a long-term intentional, systematic, State-organized forced displacement and replacement of the Palestinians.”

Francesca Albanese, the U.N. Special Rapporteur on the situation of human rights in the Palestinian territories occupied since 1967, who issued the report, titled “Genocide as colonial erasure,” makes an urgent appeal to the international community to impose a full arms embargo and sanctions on Israel until the genocide of Palestinians is halted. She calls on Israel to accept a permanent ceasefire. She demands that Israel, as required by international law and U.N. resolutions, withdraw its military and colonists from Gaza and the West Bank, including East Jerusalem. At the very least, Israel, unchecked, should be formally recognized as an apartheid state and persistent violator of international law, Albanese states. The U.N. should reactivate the Special Committee Against Apartheid to address the situation in Palestine, and Israel’s membership in the U.N. should be suspended. Short of these interventions, Israel’s goal, Albanese warns, will likely come into fruition. ...

Albanese writes that Israel is replicating the patterns of past genocides. It creates through its rhetoric a “vengeful atmosphere” that conditions soldiers to be “willing executioners.” It claims it is acting in self-defense while targeting a civilian population. It is obliterating the infrastructure that sustains life, a process of “genocide by attrition.” It uses starvation as a weapon. It is attempting to hide its crimes by killing Palestinian journalists and U.N. workers and blocking international agencies and the international media from Gaza.

We have seen genocide before. We have also seen the complicity or silence of nations that have the power to intervene. History doesn’t repeat itself, but too often it rhymes.

Genocide as Colonial Erasure (w/ Francesca Albanese) | The Chris Hedges Report

'If It Looks Like Ethnic Cleansing, It Probably Is,' Says Israeli Newspaper of North Gaza Siege

The editors of Israel's oldest newspaper on Wednesday published an editorial decrying the ethnic cleansing of Palestinians from northern Gaza amid a ferocious Israeli offensive there that's killed more than 1,000 people over the past three weeks.

"For three and a half weeks, Israeli forces have been besieging the northern Gaza Strip," the editors of the left-wing newspaper Haaretz wrote in Wednesday's lead editorial. "Israel has almost completely blocked the entry of humanitarian aid, thereby starving the hundreds of thousands of people who live there. Information emerging from the besieged area is only partial, because ever since the war began, Israel has barred journalists from entering Gaza."

"Israel says it told the residents that they needed to leave northern Gaza, and even now, they can still move southward on routes the army has designated for this purpose," the editors noted. "Thus the residents, many of whom have already been uprooted two or three times or even more from the places to which they have fled the terrors of war, are now being asked to move again. Yet Israel has refrained from giving the displaced any guarantee that they will be able to return once the war ends."

"Given this," they added, "it's no wonder that grave suspicions have arisen that Israel is effectively perpetrating ethnic cleansing in northern Gaza and that this operation is intended to permanently empty this area of Palestinians."

Haaretz editorial board understands what everyone in the Biden White House, Congress, the Security Council and half the western world refuses to see.

If It Looks Like Ethnic Cleansing, It Probably Is https://t.co/9ULxCIsqym

— Khaled Elgindy (@elgindy_) October 30, 2024

"This suspicion fits with both the principles of the 'Generals' Plan' being pushed by Maj. Gen. (Res.) Giora Eiland—a plan Defense Minister Yoav Gallant has denied implementing—and the demands of the Jewish supremacist parties in the governing coalition that are openly pursuing a policy of mass expulsions and the renewal of Jewish settlement in northern Gaza," the editorial states.

Last week, senior Israeli officials including members of Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu's Cabinet and far-right Knesset lawmakers gathered near the Gaza border for a conference dedicated to the ethnic cleansing of Arabs and Jewish recolonization in the embattled Palestinian enclave.

"We came here with one clear purpose: to settle the entire Gaza Strip... Every inch from north to south," settler leader Daniella Weiss told attendees of the rally, which was backed by Netanyahu's Likud party. "Each of you will witness how Jews go to Gaza and Arabs will disappear from Gaza."

Live-streamed ethnic cleansing: Israeli occupation forces are forcing residents of northern #Gaza Strip to leave their homes and shelters and is carrying out mass arrests of Palestinian civilians.

We have been for weeks warning of Israel’s Generals’ Plan, which is being… pic.twitter.com/Pby4ARSAhI

— Palestinian Centre for Human Rights - PCHR (@pchrgaza) October 20, 2024

As the Haaretz editors noted:

Ethnic cleansing is both a moral crime and a legal one. Criminal law treats mass expulsions as both a war crime and a crime against humanity. Horrifyingly, some members of Benjamin Netanyahu's government want to commit these crimes. As soon as the war began, they began calling for "erasing Gaza" and for perpetrating a "second Nakba." But many Israelis made light of such statements, and the law enforcement system, headed by Attorney General Gali Baharav-Miara, refrained from dealing with this incitement to commit crimes.

Now, we can see the results: Israel is sliding into ethnic cleansing; its soldiers are carrying out the criminal policies of the messianic, Kahanist right; and even the opposition on the center and center-left isn't making a peep. This consensus behind ethnic cleansing is shameful, and every public leader who doesn't demand an end to the de facto expulsion is supporting this crime and has become a party to it.

"If this process doesn't stop immediately," the editors stressed, "hundreds of thousands of people will become refugees, entire communities will be destroyed and the moral and legal stain of this crime will cling to and pursue every Israeli."

Israel was founded in 1948, largely through the ethnic cleansing of more than 750,000 Arabs from Palestine during the Nakba, or "catastrophe." Zionist militias—the two most violent of which were led by future Israeli prime ministers—utilized terror tactics including massacres and a death march to force the Indigenous Arabs from their homeland.

Israeli ethnic cleansing continued over the following eight decades and, according to critics, currently involves home demolitions and expulsions in the illegally occupied West Bank and East Jerusalem, systematic land theft, and pogroms and other violent attacks by Jewish settler colonists backed—and sometimes joined—by Israel Defense Forces troops.

United Nations officials and international human rights groups said this week's Knesset vote to ban the life-saving U.N. Relief and Works Agency for Palestine Refugees in the Near East (UNRWA) will exacerbate Israeli crimes in Gaza, including ethnic cleansing.

"Efforts to eliminate UNRWA are illegal under international law and will only amplify the genocide and ethnic cleansing Israel is enacting in Gaza while also undermining long-term prospects for peace," the American Friends Service Committee, a Quaker group, said Tuesday. "The Israeli government is not only deliberately blocking humanitarian and medical aid to people who are starving and dying, it is undermining support for Palestine refugees and the international legal framework protecting their rights."

On Monday, Francesca Albanese, the U.N.'s special rapporteur on Palestine, published a report "contextualizing the situation within
a decadeslong process of territorial expansion and ethnic cleansing aimed at liquidating the Palestinian presence in Palestine."

Albanese's report was released a day after Israeli Finance Minister Bezalel Smotrich—who supports the "total annihilation" of Gaza and said that killing 2 million Palestinians would be "justified and moral"—reiterated his call for Israeli annexation of the entire West Bank and the expulsion of the occupied territory's Palestinians.

Israel's policies and practices in Gaza—where more than 150,000 Palestinians have been killed or wounded by Israeli forces since the Hamas-led attack on Israel on October 7, 2023—are the subject of an ongoing South Africa-led genocide case before the International Court of Justice in The Hague.

AMB Chas Freeman : Will Israel Self-Destruct ?

Israel massacres 93 in Northern Gaza airstrike, bans UN humanitarian organization

In the worst single massacre since Israel launched its campaign to ethnically cleanse Northern Gaza this month, the Israel Defense Forces (IDF) bombed a five-story residential building in the town of Beit Lahia Tuesday, killing 93 people, including 25 children. That day, at least 143 people were killed in Israeli airstrikes throughout Gaza, with the vast majority—132—killed in Northern Gaza, Al Jazeera reported.

With the Palestinian civil defense almost entirely out of commission due to targeting by Israeli troops, dozens of people remained buried under the rubble, where they will most likely die awaiting rescue. “A number of victims are still under the rubble and on the roads, and ambulance and civil defense crews cannot reach them,” Gaza’s health ministry said in a statement. Mahmoud Basal, a spokesman for the Palestinian civil defense agency, said “There are appeals and stress calls for Civil Defense teams to save the wounded,” but civil defense forces have been either arrested by Israeli troops or “forcibly displaced due to the Israeli aggression in North Gaza.” ...

With consummate hypocrisy, US State Department spokesman Matthew Miller called the bombing a “horrifying incident with a horrifying result.” In reality, the massacre is completely in keeping with US policy. The Biden administration has provided Israel with more than 14,000 2,000-pound bombs, which have been used to systematically target populated areas with the deliberate aim of killing as many people as possible. Last week, US Secretary of State Antony Blinken met with Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu to discuss the so-called “General’s Plan” to ethnically cleanse Northern Gaza. Despite Netanyahu’s refusal to publicly disavow the plan, Blinken emerged from the meeting to give a blanket statement of support for Israel’s “right to defend itself.”

Tuesday’s massacre followed the passage by Israel’s parliament of a law banning the UN relief agency UNRWA from operating inside Gaza, further dismantling any remaining humanitarian operations in the region. UNRWA head Philippe Lazzarini described the move as “nothing less than collective punishment,” declaring that the move violates the UN Charter and violates the State of Israel’s obligations under international law. ...

Meanwhile, Israeli forces continued to push further north into Lebanon, with 77 people killed in strikes throughout the country. In a first-hand report, Al Jazeera wrote, “On Monday, the Israeli army set about maniacally bombarding the southern Lebanese coastal city of Tyre, striking residential buildings and converting the scene into a typical Israeli-induced horrorscape. Israel does its best to bomb the life out of Tyre.” The city is one of humanity’s oldest continuously-inhabited urban areas and is a UNESCO World Heritage Site. On Tuesday, Israeli officials threatened further strikes on Iran following a bombardment of military facilities over the weekend. “We will once again know how to reach Iran, with capabilities that we did not even use this time,” said Herzi Halevi, chief of the Israeli military’s general staff.

Israel HUMILIATES The U.S. Again

Spain cancels arms deal with Israeli company worth billions

The Spanish government has canceled a contract to buy ammunition for its Civil Guard police force from an Israeli defense company, Madrid announced in a statement on 29 October.

“The Spanish government maintains the commitment not to sell weapons to the Israeli state since the armed conflict broke out in the territory of Gaza,” Spain’s Interior Ministry announced.

“Although in this case it is an acquisition of ammunition, the Interior Ministry has initiated the administrative procedure to cancel the purchase,” it added. It also said Israeli firms will be excluded from any outstanding tenders. ...

The announcement comes the week after the Spanish Defense Ministry told local media that it had halted the purchase of weapons from Israel. The European country had said it would stop arms sales to Israel after the start of the war on 7 October 2023. This decision marks the first signal that the Spanish pledge will include purchases from Israel and not just sales.

Spain has been vocal about Israel’s genocide and continuous war crimes in the Gaza Strip, as well as in Lebanon.

Aaron Maté : Liberals and Free Speech

Iran Says It Will Exercise Right of ‘Self-Defense’ at ‘Right Time and Place’

Amid speculation over whether Iran will respond to Israel’s recent airstrikes on Iranian territory, a spokeswoman for the Iranian government said Tuesday that Iran has a “legitimate right” to self-defense and warned it will exercise that right at the “appropriate time and place.”

A day earlier, Ali Akbar Velayati, an advisor to Iranian Supreme Leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei, downplayed the Israeli attack on Iran, saying it was “much ado about nothing.” He said Israel was trying to start a regional war, saying it “has the potential to set the volatile Middle East region on fire and to create the spark that would set the regional powder keg alight.”

The Israeli strikes on Iran were launched early Saturday morning and killed four Iranian soldiers and one civilian. Iran has downplayed the damage that was done to its air defenses, saying everything has already been repaired, while Western media reports say some air defense systems were completely destroyed.

Ukraine military slow motion disaster

Russia Launches New Nuclear Drills Simulating Retaliatory Strikes

Russian President Vladimir Putin announced on Tuesday that Russia was conducting nuclear deterrence drills that involved the firing of missiles from the air, land, and sea.

“Today, we are conducting a regular training exercise for our strategic deterrence forces,” Putin said, according to the Kremlin’s website. “This exercise will involve practicing the procedures for officials in managing the use of nuclear weapons, including practical launches of ballistic and cruise missiles.”

Russian Defense Minister Andrei Belousov said the drills simulated the “strategic offensive forces launching a massive nuclear strike in response to a nuclear strike by the enemy.”

Putin said it was important for Russia’s strategic forces to be in a state of “constant combat readiness” in light of “escalating geopolitical tensions and the emergence of new external threats and risks.”

'Two Genocidaires v. the World': US, Israel Oppose Lifting Cuba Blockade

The United Nations General Assembly on Wednesday once again overwhelmingly urged the U.S. government to end its decadeslong blockade on Cuba, with just the United States and Israel voting against the measure and Moldova abstaining.

The UNGA's other 187 members present voted to adopt the nonbinding resolution on "the necessity of ending the economic, commercial, and financial embargo imposed by the United States" against the Caribbean island.

This is the 32nd straight year that the U.N. body has approved a resolution against the embargo that began in 1962.

"The U.S. and Israel stand isolated as the only two votes against," Democratic Socialists of America's International Committee said after the Wednesday vote. "The world has spoken—it's time for the U.S. to listen and lift the blockade."

Though a few other nations have opposed the resolution over the years, Michael Galant of Progressive International and the Center for Economic and Policy Research noted that this vote was "two genocidaires v. the world."

There it is. Two genocidaires vs. the world. For the 32nd year, the UN General Assembly nearly unanimously condemns the blockade on Cuba pic.twitter.com/TEKeZT5eFZ

— Michael Galant (@michael_galant) October 30, 2024

CodePink's Medea Benjamin responded to the Wednesday vote with a video shared on social media, saying that Israel "loves blockades, because it's doing its own blockade of Gaza," and "is dependent on the United States to carry out its genocide."

"Now this is not just some idle vote," she said of the approved resolution. "This blockade that the U.S. maintains is a form of economic warfare. It's no exaggeration to say that now, when there is an economic crisis in Cuba, the U.S. blockade, which keeps Cuba from using the financial markets, from having normal trade with countries all over the world, is actually leading to deaths, leading to people going hungry, leading to people lacking food and medicine that are essential for their lives."

"And that's why the United States must be condemned for this ongoing horrific, inhumane, and illegal blockade," Benjamin added.

Ex NY Gov Cuomo ACCUSED Of LYING To Congress About COVID Nursing Home Scandal

Texas woman died after being denied miscarriage care due to abortion ban, report finds

Just days after Texas banned abortion past six weeks of pregnancy, a woman died after doctors in the state delayed treating her miscarriage for 40 hours, ProPublica reported on Wednesday. Experts told ProPublica that the September 2021 death of Josseli Barnica, a 28-year-old mother, was “preventable”. Barnica is the third woman reported by ProPublica to have died in recent years after being unable to access abortion legally or having her medical care delayed.

Although US abortion bans – which more than a dozen states have enacted in the two years since the supreme court overturned Roe v Wade – technically permit the procedure in medical emergencies, doctors across the country have said that the laws are worded so vaguely that they don’t know when they can legally intervene. Instead, many physicians say they have been forced to wait until a patient is on the brink of death – then attempt to pull them back.

Barnica went to the hospital with cramps when she was just over 17 weeks pregnant on 2 September 2021, the day after the Texas six-week abortion ban took effect, according to ProPublica. (Texas enacted the ban almost a year before Roe was overturned; it now bans abortion from conception.) When her bleeding worsened the following day, Barnica returned to the hospital, where a doctor concluded that a miscarriage was “in progress”. Another soon concluded that a miscarriage was “inevitable”.

Barnica’s cervix was dilated at nearly 9cm, a condition that left her vulnerable to fast-acting infections, ProPublica reported. Normally, in cases like Barnica’s doctors will offer medication to speed up labor or perform a procedure to empty the uterus. But Barnica’s fetus still had a heartbeat. And under the Texas ban, doctors could not intervene unless a “medical emergency” – a term that was not defined in the law – developed.

About 40 hours after Barnica’s second arrival at the hospital, doctors stopped being able to detect a fetal heartbeat, according to the report. A doctor expedited her labor using medications and delivered Barnica’s fetus. But after she returned home, Barnica’s bleeding continued and worsened. Within days, she was back at the hospital, where she died of sepsis involving “products of conception”, according to her autopsy report. Her widowed husband is now raising their four-year-old daughter, ProPublica reported.

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Biden's "GARBAGE" Comment Steals Kamala's Spotlight Days Before Election

Abandon Harris Movement Punishes Kamala! w/ Kshama Sawant

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The world needs $700bn a year to restore nature. But where is the money coming from?

Experts agree that the world needs $700bn (£539bn) a year to restore nature – but no one knows where the money is going to come from, and anger is building about rich countries failing to pay their share. With representatives of nearly 200 countries gathered in Colombia for the UN Cop16 biodiversity summit, the question of who will fund conservation and how those funds will be distributed is a key battleground – and as negotiations push into their second week, frustration is growing at the lack of movement. ...

The headline figure agreed on by countries at Cop15 in 2022 was to generate $700bn a year in finance for nature, beginning with $200bn a year by 2030. Scientists estimated that $700bn is the amount required to sustainably manage biodiversity and halt the destruction of ecosystems and species. That figure includes all financing – including from the private sector, non-profits, NGOs, and governments. Within it, richer countries have promised to contribute $20bn a year of public funds to poorer countries by 2025.

But those funds have proven slow to materialise. On Monday, dubbed “finance day” at the talks, eight countries, including the UK, Germany, France and Norway, announced $163m in new pledges. Alice Jay, director of international relations at Campaign for Nature, said that while they welcomed these new commitments, closing the finance gap “would require them to announce $300m each month from now to 2025, and then keep that up each year until 2030.” ...

So far, the majority of rich countries appear to be contributing less than half of their “fair share” of biodiversity finance, according to a report released ahead of the UN meeting. As of 2022 (the latest year for which data is available and before the Cop15 deal was signed) wealthy countries which signed the agreement provided $10.95bn in biodiversity funding, according to the report by the Overseas Development Institute (ODI) and Campaign for Nature. ...

A large chunk of the $700bn was expected to come from rewiring $500bn of environmentally damaging subsidies. Collectively, countries spend $1.25tn on subsidies for agriculture, fossil fuel development, and other industries that destroy biodiversity, according to a 2023 report by the World Bank. All countries were meant to identify harmful subsidies in their public spending by 2025, but so far only 36 have released information. “This is a point on which almost no progress has been made,” said Oscar Soria, director of thinktank The Common Initiative.

An Independent Expert Group report released in October shows countries most exposed to climate change and nature loss are increasingly having to borrow to fund disaster response and adaptation. Debts are rising and becoming more expensive, meaning countries are less able to invest in nature conservation and climate resilience.

At least 95 people dead in Spain’s worst floods in three decades

At least 95 people have died in eastern, central and southern Spain after torrential rains triggered the country’s deadliest floods in three decades, unleashing torrents of muddy water that surged through cities, towns and villages, trapping people in their homes, bringing down trees, and cutting off roads and railway lines. ...

Tuesday’s floods were Spain’s worst since 1996, when 87 people died after torrential rain hit a campsite in the Pyrenees mountains. Europe’s most recent catastrophic floods came in July 2021, killing 243 people in Germany, Belgium, Romania, Italy and Austria.

The intense rain has been attributed to a phenomenon known as the gota fría, or “cold drop”, which occurs when cold air moves over the warm waters of the Mediterranean. This creates atmospheric instability, causing warm, saturated air to rise rapidly, leading to heavy rain and thunderstorms.

Scientists say extreme weather events such as heatwaves and storms are becoming more intense because of the climate crisis. Warmer air can hold more water vapour. ...

By 10am on Wednesday, the rains in Valencia had subsided. But Spain’s national weather service forecast more storms on Thursday, with the rains moving to the north-east of the Iberian peninsula.

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Also of Interest

Here are some articles of interest, some which defied fair-use abstraction.

No Foreign Warplanes Have Entered The Skies Over Tehran

Ukraine SitRep: Kurakhove Cauldron, Broken Deals

No Gods, No Demons, No Superpowers

Rio courtroom may see belated measure of justice for murdered Marielle Franco

Ghost jobs: why do 40% of companies advertise positions that don’t exist?

Statue of Donald Trump leering at naked sculpture removed from park on Ben Franklin Parkway

"Genocide as Colonial Erasure": U.N. Expert Francesca Albanese on Israel's "Intent to Destroy" Gaza

Last-Ditch INSANE Russiagating From Maddow & Nuland!

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A Little Night Music

Rockin' Tabby Thomas - Hoodoo Party

Big Jay McNeely - Psycho Serenade

Howlin' Wolf - Moaning at Midnight

LaVern Baker - Voodoo Voodoo

Otis Spann - Must Have Been The Devil

Round Robin - I'm The Wolf Man

Jackie Morningstar - Rockin' In The Graveyard

Screamin' Jay Hawkins - Little Demon

Elvis Presley - Devil in Disguise

The Duponts - Screamin' Ball (At Dracula Hall)

Dusty Springfield - Spooky

The Zombies – She's Not There

It's A Beautiful Day – Girl With No Eyes

James Harman - Lonesome Moon Trance

Blue Oyster Cult - Don't Fear the Reaper

The Moontrekkers - Night of the Vampire

Billy Riley - Flying Saucer Rock and Roll

Charles Sheffield - It's Your Voodoo Workin'

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