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The day's news roundup + tonight's musical feature: Allen Toussaint

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Hey! Good Evening!

This evening's music features New Orleans songwriter and piano player Allen Toussaint. Enjoy!

^{Allen Toussaint - On Your Way Down}

"The worst worst war sluts of the US empire have issued statements expressing their condolences for Dick Cheney, including Democrats like Joe Biden, Kamala Harris, Bill Clinton, and Nancy Pelosi. Because if there’s one thing that can bring Democrats and Republicans together, it’s war crimes and the slaughter of millions of middle easterners."

-- Caitlin Johnstone

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News and Opinion

Israel Is Still Starving Gaza

Israel is still blocking humanitarian groups from delivering the aid necessary to alleviate the suffering of Palestinians in Gaza.

In an article titled “Not enough tents, food reaching Gaza as winter comes, aid agencies say,” Reuters reports that “Far too little aid is reaching Gaza nearly four weeks after a ceasefire” due to Israeli restrictions preventing aid trucks from getting to their destinations, and that according to an OSHA report last week “a tenth of children screened in Gaza were still acutely malnourished.”

A report from the UK’s Channel 4 News shows warehouses full of food that aid groups say isn’t being allowed into Gaza nearly as rapidly as needed.

In an article titled “‘Under the Guise of Bureaucracy’ — Israel Blocks Humanitarian Groups From Delivering Essential Aid Despite Calm in Gaza,” Israeli outlet Haaretz reports that “Israel has implemented a new procedure requiring all humanitarian organizations operating in Gaza and the West Bank to reapply for official approval, with many denied, despite the relative calm in Gaza following the cease-fire.”

Channel 4 News is inside one of many warehouses filled with tonnes of aid that the Israeli authorities are not letting through to Gaza.

It's estimated that there is enough aid for 150 trucks per day, five days per week for three months to help Palestinians.

We have reached… pic.twitter.com/MoxAab5yEa

— Channel 4 News (@Channel4News) November 3, 2025

They’re using bureaucratic red tape and arbitrary restrictions to put as much inertia on the effort to rush aid into Gaza as possible. As Electronic Intifada’s Ali Abunimah put it, Israel has “successfully rebranded its genocide as a ‘ceasefire.’”

Prof. John Mearsheimer : Israel’s Nightmare

Max Blumenthal : Netanyahu Defends Prison Rape

YouTube Removed Hundreds of Videos of Israeli Human Rights Violations to Comply With Trump Sanctions

In compliance with a Trump administration effort to punish critics of Israel's genocide in Gaza, YouTube has deleted the accounts of three prominent Palestinian rights groups, wiping several hundred videos documenting Israeli human rights violations in the process.

According to The Intercept, the video hosting website, owned by Google, quietly removed the accounts of three groups, Al-Haq, the Al Mezan Center for Human Rights, and the Palestinian Center for Human Rights, in October.

These are the same three groups that the State Department hit with sanctions in September because they helped to bring evidence before the International Criminal Court (ICC) against Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu and former Defense Minister Yoav Gallant for war crimes, crimes against humanity, and genocide. The court would issue arrest warrants for the pair in 2024.

Secretary of State Marco Rubio said explicitly that the groups were sanctioned because they "directly engaged in efforts by the International Criminal Court to investigate, arrest, detain, or prosecute Israeli nationals, without Israel’s consent.”

YouTube deleted the groups' channels, as well as their entire archives, which contained over 700 videos that documented acts of brutality by the Israeli military against Palestinians.

We are being silenced.

Last month, @YouTube suspended the accounts of Al Mezan, @alhaq_org and @pchrgaza and deleted hours of footage documenting Israeli violations of Int. law in a shameful act of censorship.

Read more about it in @theintercepthttps://t.co/VhMMccRxUQ

— Al-Mezan الميزان (@AlMezanCenter) November 5, 2025

According to The Intercept, these included an investigative report about the killing of the Palestinian-American journalist Shireen Abu Akleh by Israeli troops, the military's destruction of Palestinians' homes in the West Bank, and a documentary about mothers who'd survived Israel's genocide in Gaza.

Google confirmed to The Intercept that it deleted the videos to comply with the State Department sanctions.

“Google is committed to compliance with applicable sanctions and trade compliance laws,” YouTube spokesperson Boot Bullwinkle said in a statement.

Katherine Gallagher, a senior staff attorney at the Center for Constitutional Rights, said it was "outrageous that YouTube is furthering the Trump administration’s agenda to remove evidence of human rights violations and war crimes from public view."

YouTube's censorship of content deemed too supportive of Palestinians predates President Donald Trump's return to power. In 2024, officials at YouTube and other social media companies were found to have cooperated through secretive back channels with a group of volunteers from Israel's tech sector to remove content critical of Israel.

Following news of the three human rights groups losing their channels, documentarian and journalist Robert Inlakesh wrote on social media that in 2024, YouTube removed his channel without warning, deleting all his content, including several documentaries he'd produced in the occupied territories.

"YouTube deleted all my coverage of Israeli soldiers shooting civilians, including children targeted on a live stream, along with my entire account," he said. "No community guidelines were violated, and three separate excuses were given to me. Then Google deleted my email and won’t respond to appeals."

Groups sanctioned by the US for supporting the ICC have previously received preliminary injunctions in two cases, in which courts said the State Department violated their First Amendment rights.

But even with the sanctions in place, Sarah Leah Whitson, the executive director of Democracy for the Arab World Now, said there was little legal reason for YouTube to capitulate.

"It’s really hard to imagine any serious argument that sharing information from these Palestinian human rights organizations would somehow violate sanctions," she said. "Succumbing to this arbitrary designation of these Palestinian organizations, to now censor them, is disappointing and pretty surprising.”

Basel al-Sourani, an international advocacy officer and legal advisor for the Palestinian Center for Human Rights said that YouTube has not made it clear what policies his group's channel violated.

“YouTube said that we were not following their policy on Community Guidelines, when all our work was basically presenting factual and evidence-based reporting on the crimes committed against the Palestinian people, especially since the start of the ongoing genocide on October 7," he said.

"By doing this," he added, "YouTube is being complicit in silencing the voices of Palestinian victims."

COL. Douglas Macgregor : Trump And His Wars

Hamas Hands Over Another Israeli Body as IDF Continues To Launch Attacks in Gaza

Hamas on Tuesday handed over another body of a deceased Israeli soldier to the Red Cross, which transferred the remains to Israel, as the IDF continues to launch attacks in Gaza despite the ceasefire deal.

The body was confirmed to be Itay Chay, an IDF soldier with Israeli and US citizenship who was killed when his tank unit was attacked on October 7, 2023, and was taken into Gaza.

The Israeli government initially tried to blow up the ceasefire deal after Hamas didn’t release all the remains at once, but before the agreement was signed, it was clear it would take time to find all of the bodies, and the deal included a mechanism to retrieve them.

Unrwa reports 75,000 displaced in ruined Gaza shelters as ceasefire violations mount

Unrwa on Tuesday said that around 75,000 displaced people are sheltering in more than 100 agency buildings in Gaza, most of which are damaged and overcrowded.

“For many displaced women and girls, daily life means coping without dignity, safety, or adequate hygiene. Limited access to healthcare and basic hygiene supplies makes each day a struggle,” the agency said in a social media post.

The comments come as the UN secretary general’s deputy spokesperson confirmed that 81 percent of the enclave’s structures have suffered destruction, underscoring the catastrophic scale of Israel’s assault on the enclave, which has been recognised as a genocide by the UN.

Democracy my ass:

Israeli Knesset advances bill to expand state control over media

The Israeli Knesset (parliament) approved a bill in preliminary reading on Tuesday that would grant the government greater control over the country’s media sector. ...

The Israeli public broadcaster KAN, citing analysts, warned that although the bill is presented as a step toward liberalizing the media sector, it may grant the government increased influence over news content, posing a long-term political and legal challenge to media independence.

Israel is among the countries with the strictest controls over the press, enforced through a system known as “military censorship” — a set of laws and regulations allowing the army and security services to block publication of any material deemed harmful to national security or revealing of sensitive information.

Biden Whistleblower: U.S. Covered Up Israel’s Killing of Shireen Abu Akleh

Israeli minister urges Jews to flee 'Hamas supporter' Mamdani after New York mayoral win

An Israeli minister has called on Jewish Americans in New York to consider emigrating to Israel following the election of Democratic Socialist Zohran Mamdani as mayor.

Amichai Chikli, Israel’s minister for diaspora affairs, described Mamdani’s victory as “a critical turning point for the city of New York” that “shakes the very foundations of the place that offered freedom and opportunity to countless Jewish refugees”.

Chikli - who has previously voiced support for ethnic cleansing and occupation in southern Lebanon and for settlements in Gaza - labelled Mamdani a “Hamas supporter”.

He claimed that the 34-year-old Muslim politician’s views were “not far from those of the jihadist fanatics who, 25 years ago, murdered 3,000 of their own people,” referring to the 9/11 attacks.

National Security Minister Itamar Ben Gvir described the result as “antisemitism’s triumph over common sense”.

Russia’s Warships Are in Venezuela... and Washington Is Panicking | Yanis Varoufakis

Trump Weighs Options for Launching a War With Venezuela

The Trump administration has developed a series of options for launching attacks on Venezuela, The New York Times reported on Tuesday, as the US continues its military buildup in the region.

The report said that one option would involve bombing Venezuelan military facilities with the goal of collapsing military support for Maduro in hopes that it would get the Venezuelan leader to flee. But critics of the approach argue that it would likely have the opposite effect, rallying the military around its embattled leader.

The second option would be to send special operations forces, such as Navy SEALs or the Army’s Delta Force, into Venezuela to kill or capture Maduro. Such an operation would put the US troops involved in the attack at serious risk since Maduro has the support of his military and a civilian militia that the Venezuelan government says has millions of members.

The third option would involve sending a much larger force into Venezuela to capture airfields and some of Venezuela’s infrastructure and oil fields. The Washington Examiner has reported that US military planners believe the forces in the region are now sufficient to seize and hold key strategic facilities such as ports and airfields on Venezuelan territory.

The Times report said that President Trump is reluctant to back an operation that would put US troops at risk or come with the chance of failure, and for that reason, other plans are being developed that would involve naval drones and long-range weapons. A decision isn’t expected until the aircraft carrier USS Gerald Ford, which just left the Mediterranean, arrives near Venezuela.

Russia Capturing Pokrovsk /Larry Johnson & Lt Col Daniel Davis

Did Ukraine Just Quietly Attack Two European Countries?

Akey plank in the Western strategy to avoid negotiations with Russia and to continue financing and arming Ukraine has been the alarming insistence that Putin is bent on going beyond Ukraine and into Europe, not stopping until he has reestablished the Soviet empire. But simultaneous explosions of two oil refineries in Hungary and Romania raise the question of whether it is not Russia, but Ukraine, that is going beyond its borders and expanding the war to Europe. ...

On the morning of October 20, there was an explosion at Romania’s Petrotel-Lukoil refinery. In the evening of the same day, there was an explosion at the Danube Refinery, Hungary’s largest oil refinery. Neither the date nor the targeted refineries appear to be random. That same day, European Union energy ministers advanced an EU proposal to ban new contracts for importing Russian gas by 2026 and all contracts by 2028. Hungary and Romania both still import Russian oil. Both refineries process Russian crude oil. The Petrotel-Lukoil refinery in Romania is owned by a subsidiary of Lukoil, one of the large Russian oil companies that was just sanctioned by the Trump administration. The Danube refinery in Hungary receives oil from Russia through the Druzba pipeline and also supplies oil to Slovakia.

Assuming that unexplained explosions at two European oil refineries that receive and process Russian oil occurred within a few hours on the very day that the EU moved to ban imports of Russian oil is not a coincidence, the questions of whether it was sabotage and who perpetrated the sabotage arise. Certainly, Russia has no motive to blow up its own oil customers at a time when its oil companies are being sanctioned and its own oil refineries are being targeted by long-range Ukrainian missiles and drones.

The Hungarian media has speculated that it is Ukraine that attacked the two European countries. And there is a broad consensus among analysts that Ukraine is the likely source of the attacks. There is also suspicion that Ukraine could not have executed the strikes without American, British, or European assistance.Ukraine has offered no comment on the explosions. ... The Danube refinery in Hungary receives its Russian oil via Russia’s Druzba pipeline, which has, itself, been the target of repeated Ukrainian strikes, to the great anger of Hungary.

It has not been proven that it is Ukraine who attacked the oil refineries in Hungary and Romania. But the circumstances force the question of whether it is not the false threat of Russia attacking other European countries that is pushed by the Western media that threatens expanding the war to Europe, but the threat of a desperate Ukraine attacking other European countries that is completely ignored by the Western media.

Candace Discovers The Kirk Assassination Scene Was CRAWLING With Israelis!

6 Million Who Rely on Federal Heating Aid Poised to Suffer As Temps Drop and Trump Shutdown Drags On

As more than 40 million households that rely on federal food aid are forced to stretch their budgets even further than usual due to the Trump administration only partially funding the Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program under a court order, many of those families are facing another crisis brought on by the government shutdown: a loss of heating support that serves nearly 6 million people.

President Donald Trump has sought to eliminate the $4 billion Low Income Home Energy Assistance Program (LIHEAP), proposing zero funding for it in his budget earlier this year and firing the team that administers the aid.

Though Congress was expected to fund the program in the spending bill that was supposed to pass by October 1, Democrats refused to join the Republican Party in approving government funding that would have allowed healthcare subsidies to expire and raised premiums for millions of families, and Trump and congressional Republicans have refused to negotiate to ensure Americans can afford healthcare.

The government shutdown is now the longest in US history due to the standoff, and energy assistance officials have joined Democratic lawmakers in warning that the freezing of LIHEAP funds could have dire consequences for households across the country as temperatures drop.

Mark Wolfe, executive director of the National Energy Assistance Directors Association (NEADA), told the Washington Post on Wednesday that even if the shutdown ended this week, funding would not reach states until early December—and more families will fall behind on their utility bills if lawmakers don't negotiate a plan to open the government soon.

"People will fall through the cracks,” Wolfe told the Post. “Pipes will freeze, people will die.”

With heating costs rising faster than inflation, 1 in 6 households are behind on their energy bills, and 5.9 million rely on assistance through LIHEAP.

The Department of Health and Human Services generally released LIHEAP funds to states in the beginning of November, but energy assistance offices in states where the weather has already gotten colder have had to tell worried residents that there are no heating funds.

Officials in states including Vermont and Maine have said they can cover heating needs for families who rely on LIHEAP for a short period of time, and some nonprofit groups, like Aroostook County Action Program in northern Maine, have raised money to distribute to households.

But states and charities can't fill the need that LIHEAP has in past years. Minnesota's Energy Assistance Program received $125 million from the federal government last year that allowed 120,000 families to heat their homes.

Aroostook County Action Program has provided help to about 200 households in past years, while LIHEAP serves about 7,500 Maine families.

The state has already received 50,000 applications for heating aid and would be preparing to send $30 million in assistance in a normal year.

“You can imagine in a state like Minnesota, it can get awfully cold in December,” Michael Schmitz, director of the program, told the Post. “We’re all just kind of waiting, holding our breath.”

NEADA told state energy assistance officials late last month to plan on suspending service disconnections until federal LIHEAP funds are released, and US Rep. Don Beyer (D-Va.) led more than four dozen lawmakers in urging utilities to suspend late penalties and shutoffs for federal workers who have been furloughed due to the shutdown.

States reported that they'd begun receiving calls from people who rely on LIHEAP as Americans across the country went to the polls on Tuesday and delivered Democratic victories in numerous state and local races.

The president himself said the shutdown played a "big role" in voters' clear dissatisfaction with the current state of the country.

DC sandwich thrower says 'justice prevails' after found not guilty by jury

US government shutdown enters 36th day to become longest in history

The US federal government shutdown became the longest in history on Wednesday, as top Democrats argued the party’s sweeping victories in last night’s elections vindicated their strategy in the fight over spending. The shutdown crossed the 36-day mark, beating the previous, 35-day record set in December 2018 and January 2019 during Donald Trump’s first term, when government funding legislation was held up over his insistence on including money to build a wall along the border with Mexico.

The standoff began on the first day of October, after Democratic senators refused to vote for a government funding bill unless it included an extension of Joe Biden-era tax credits that lower costs for health plans purchased through Affordable Care Act (ACA) exchanges. Tens of millions of Americans are expected to be unable to afford insurance once the credits expire at the end of 2025.

“Americans realize Republicans are responsible for this awful shutdown, now the longest, officially, in history. What a shameless milestone,” said Chuck Schumer, the Senate’s top Democrat. Senator Chris Murphy said: “Last night was a referendum on Trump’s corruption, cruelty and chaos. But it’s also not a coincidence these big wins came at the exact moment when Democrats are using our power to stand for something and be strong.” He added that it would be “a huge risk to not learn that lesson”.

In a breakfast meeting with Republican senators at the White House, Trump said that “the shutdown was a big factor” in the GOP’s poor election performance. He called for his party to change the Senate’s filibuster rule, which requires most legislation to receive at least 60 votes to advance through the chamber.

“It’s time for Republicans to do what they have to do, and that’s terminate the filibuster. It’s the only way you can do it,” he said, predicting that, if Republicans do not, “we won’t pass any legislation”.

SCOTUS Poised To KILL Trump Tariffs

US to cut airline traffic by 10% due to shutdown, Trump transport chief says

The transportation secretary, Sean Duffy, and the FAA administrator, Bryan Bedford, said on Wednesday the federal government would be reducing airline traffic by 10% at 40 “high volume markets” beginning on Friday if the government shutdown does not end by then.

The announcement did not specify which 40 airports would see the reduction and said that a complete list would be announced on Thursday. The reduction will affect cargo, private and passenger traffic. Reuters reported that the cuts would begin at 4% on Friday, escalate to 5% Saturday and 6% at Sunday, before reaching 10% next week, and that international flights were to be exempted from the initial cuts.

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How Zohran CRUSHED AIPAC w Summer Lee

What does Prop 50’s passage mean for California, Gavin Newsom and the US?

Californians overwhelmingly backed Proposition 50, the crucial redistricting measure that Democrats have said is essential to safeguarding democracy and pushing back against the Trump administration. ... The effort was a direct attempt to counteract Texas’s partisan gerrymander, undertaken at Trump’s behest, to create several new safely Republican districts. ...

As of Wednesday morning, results showed that some 63.8% of voters approved the proposition with just 36.2% voting against the measure in what the Associated Press described as a “swift and decisive victory”. More than 8 million people voted in Tuesday’s election and the measure won the majority of votes along much of the coast and in southern California. It was largely unpopular in the northern and inland regions that will be most affected by redistricting.

These Republicans are at risk under California’s new congressional map: Darrell Issa, whose district covers east San Diego county; Doug LaMalfa, who has represented a large swath of rural northern California for more than a decade; Ken Calvert, a Riverside county representative who has served in the US House since 1993; David Valadao, who represents the southern San Joaquin valley; and Kevin Kiley, the representative for much of eastern California. Kiley introduced a bill to ban mid-decade redistricting nationwide, but his proposal did not advance. ...

The measure is expected to have a major effect on the outcome of the 2026 midterms. Past elections have shown that the president’s party typically loses ground in midterm elections, and Democrats argued Prop 50 will help ensure Republicans do not retain full control of the federal government. “The passage of this new map – which is designed to protect a slew of vulnerable Democrats and will cost Republicans three to five seats in 2026 – is the most consequential development to date in the mid-decade redistricting wars due to the sheer number of seats that it impacts,” Erin Covey, with the Cook Political Report, said in a statement.

The decisive victory of Prop 50 is a major win for the proposal’s biggest champion, Gavin Newsom. The California governor has been one of Trump’s most high-profile opponents and helped rally massive support for the proposal. Newsom is widely expected to seek the White House in 2028 and the win has further raised his profile nationally and elevated his status as a Democratic leader.

"You're a Sick F**k" - Tucker Slams Lindsey Graham for Celebrating Death (Again)

Judge orders prosecutors to turn over evidence in case against James Comey

A federal judge on Wednesday ordered prosecutors in the criminal case of the former FBI director James Comey to produce a trove of materials from the investigation, saying he was concerned that the justice department’s position had been to “indict first and investigate later”.

Magistrate judge William Fitzpatrick instructed prosecutors to produce by the end of the day on Thursday grand jury materials as well as other evidence that investigators seized during the investigation. The order followed arguments in which Comey’s attorneys said they were at a disadvantage because they had not been able to review materials that were gathered years ago.

Comey is charged with lying to Congress in 2020 in a case filed days after Donald Trump appeared to urge his attorney general to prosecute the former FBI director and other perceived political enemies. He has pleaded not guilty, and his lawyers have argued that it is a vindictive prosecution brought at the direction of the Republican president and must be dismissed.

90 POINT SWING: Economy Destroys Republicans With Voters

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Still a chance to return to 1.5C climate goal, researchers say

There is still a chance for the world to avoid the worst ravages of climate breakdown and return to the goal of 1.5C if governments take concerted action on greenhouse gas emissions, a new assessment argues. The Climate Analytics report says governments’ goals are inadequate and need to be rapidly revised, and calls for the rapid scaling-up of the use of renewable energy and electrification of key sectors including transport, heating and industry.

World leaders are meeting in Belém, a small city near the mouth of the Amazon in Brazil, on Thursday and Friday to discuss the climate crisis before the Cop30 UN climate summit begins on Monday. Temperatures have already, for two years, exceeded the limit of 1.5C of global heating above preindustrial levels that was set out in the 2015 Paris agreement.

A UN Environment Programme (Unep) report published this week said current plans published by national governments would lead to heating of about 2.3C to 2.5C, a level that scientists have said would lead to a massive increase in extreme weather and devastating damage to some of the world’s key natural systems.

The Climate Analytics group of researchers say their roadmap could ensure warming peaks at 1.7C before 2050. They say that could be brought down to 1.5C by the end of the century by phasing out fossil fuels and using carbon removal technologies to suck carbon dioxide from the atmosphere. This will not erase the danger of exceeding 1.5C, however. Scientists are aware of several key tipping points – such as the melting of the Greenland ice sheet, and the potential for the Amazon rainforest to turn from a carbon sink to a source of carbon release into the atmosphere – that could be triggered as Earth warms further.

Experts call for new taxes on worst polluters to help poorer nations with climate crisis

New taxes on the super-rich, fossil fuels, financial transactions and highly polluting and carbon-intensive activities should be explored as key ways of raising the finance needed to help poor countries, governments have been told in an influential report.

The proposal is one of the top recommendations of a new blueprint for global climate finance, the Baku to Belém roadmap, drawn up by the governments of Brazil and Azerbaijan, the current and the previous president of the UN climate Cop process.

In a surprisingly strong intervention, they call for “strengthened international cooperation on taxation, and experiments with voluntary partnerships between countries on, for example, sector-based contributions, highly polluting and greenhouse gas intensive activities, financial transactions and ultra high net worth individuals”. They add the caveat that countries should “carefully consider potential negative impacts on development priorities and trade and redistribution mechanisms”.

Campaigners welcomed the call. Rebecca Newsom, the global political expert for Greenpeace International, said: “It’s notable that the roadmap recognises new taxes and levies as key to unlocking public climate finance. Given reported profits from just five international oil and gas giants over the last decade reached almost $800bn, taxing fossil fuel corporations is clearly a huge opportunity to overcome national fiscal constraints."

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Also of Interest

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

Cheney Should Have Died Alone In A Cage

Archaeologists discover how oldest American civilisation survived a climate catastrophe

Mamdani Represents A New Era Of Political Conflict

Zohran Mamdani Wins New York City Mayor’s Election

(Cartoon) How Mamdani broke the Democrat machine

'The anti-Mamdani Zionist plot': explained by Simone Zimmerman and Katie Halper

Millions DEAD for One Man's GREED: Col. Larry Wilkerson on Dick Cheney's Legacy

Richard D. Wolff & Michael Hudson: Trump’s Gamble Could Blow Up EVERYTHING

Trump PANICS On Shutdown As Dems Hold Firm

Morning Joe LOSES IT on ADL's Greenblatt Over Zohran Hysteria

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A Little Night Music

Allen Toussaint & the Funky Meters - Ride Your Pony

Allen Toussaint - Sneaking Sally Through The Alley

Allen Toussaint - Last Train

Allen Toussaint and Bonnie Raitt - What Is Success

Tousan (Allen Toussaint) - Up the Creek

Allen Toussaint - Working in the Coalmine

Allen Toussaint - Yes We Can Can

Allen Toussaint plays Prof Longhair

Allen Toussaint, Elvis Costello, Nick Lowe, Richard Thompson, Levon Helm - A Certain Girl

Etta James, Dr. John and Allen Toussaint- Groove Me

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