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The day's news roundup + tonight's musical feature: The Falcons

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Hey! Good Evening!

This evening's music features doo-wop group The Falcons. Enjoy!

^{The Falcons w/Joe Stubbs - Swim}

"Sometimes I feel as if we are all trapped in a movie. We know our lines, where to walk, how to act, only there is no camera. Yet, we can't break out of the movie. And it's a bad one."

-- Charles Bukowski

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News and Opinion

The Most Under-Discussed Political Reality Of Our Time

The most significant political reality of our time is also the most under-discussed political reality, and it can be summed up as follows:

There are a whole lot more of us than there are of them, and we can force revolutionary change whenever we want.

That’s it. There are a whole lot more ordinary people suffering under the status quo system of capitalism, imperialism, militarism and authoritarianism than there are people benefiting from it, and we can use the power of our numbers to overthrow that system whenever we decide to.

It’s self-evident, and so simple that you can sum it up in a single sentence. But because our society is so deeply indoctrinated and mind-controlled, it simply doesn’t show up in the normal every day conversations people have about politics and the problems we face as a society today.

We are encouraged to discuss elections and party politics with great vigor. We are rewarded with amplification on large plutocrat-owned platforms if we fan the flames of divisive culture war wedge issues or mainstream partisan punditry. But what we are absolutely never rewarded for and never encouraged to discuss is the fact that the oligarchs and empire managers who rule our society would be completely powerless to stop a people’s revolution of sufficient scale.

We could all stop working and paying for things. We could barricade all the roads, railroads and infrastructure. We could demolish every bank, police station and government building. We could literally eat all the billionaires.

Just, you know, hypothetically.

We could do anything we wanted to do. No one could stop us.

All mainstream politics, media, and schooling is designed to direct our attention away from this political reality, while the people who rule over us never stop thinking about it. It haunts them. It consumes them. It keeps them up at night. They obsess over it.

That’s why they’re rushing to implement militarized robots, autonomous drones, and AI-driven mass surveillance.

That’s why they’re pushing for easily controlled digital currencies and digital IDs.

That’s why they’re working to re-centralize control of information to reverse the large-scale decentralization brought on by the internet.

That’s why they’ve been hammering us with mass media propaganda for generations, and have been developing increasingly sophisticated mass-scale psyops in the age of AI and smartphones.

That’s why we are actively herded into two mainstream political parties deadlocked in a perpetual tug-of-war to give us the illusion that we are engaging in meaningful political action.

That’s why we are trained from when we are schoolchildren to believe we live in free democracies where people control the actions of their government using their votes.

It’s because the rich and powerful are at all times acutely aware that the masses could turn on them at any instant, and must be kept in a perpetual state of manipulation and distraction in order to prevent this from happening.

I dunno, man. Sounds kinda unsustainable if you ask me. Especially given how discontented people are becoming as the capitalist empire stumbles over its own contradictions and runs out of arguments for its continued existence.

We’re standing in a cage that isn’t even locked. The door’s not even closed. The only thing keeping us here is the recorded voice of the prison warden telling us “THERE IS NO ESCAPE” over and over again on repeat.

One day our gaze is going to turn to that door. And we will step out of it. And we will be free.

Chas Freeman: Political Crisis & Trump's Nuclear Gamble Against Iran

Under pressure from Israeli prime minister Benjamin Netanyahu, the Trump administration may be within days of launching a nuclear strike on Iran. The target would be Pickax Mountain in central Iran, where Israeli intelligence claims the Iranian government has restarted its nuclear enrichment program. No conventional weapon in the American arsenal can penetrate 300 feet of solid granite to destroy the tunnels where enrichment is supposedly taking place. The only military option is a nuclear strike. Netanyahu has been pushing hard for one. “Bibi calls Trump about it every day,” says an informed observer.

Netanyahu is cornered and desperate. After last week’s election results, he can’t form a government unless Trump intervenes directly in Israeli politics and brokers a deal with other parties that gives Netanyahu 61 seats in the Knesset. Otherwise, he is out as prime minister and on his way to ignominy, investigations and possibly jail. Netanyahu must stay close to Trump. He needs this war.

To that end, he’s applied maximum pressure to his closest allies in the administration, including Secretary of Defense Pete Hegseth and CENTCOM commander Brad Cooper. Both oppose a negotiated settlement to the war they’ve so grievously mismanaged; both are pushing to restart major combat operations. Secretary of State Marco Rubio and CIA director John Ratcliffe are also following Netanyahu’s lead, as are leaders of the Democratic Party. In a recent meeting on the subject, former president Barack Obama said he opposes the current Iran peace deal being drafted in Doha.

The rest of America’s longtime allies in the Middle East are terrified by the prospect of more war. On September 27th, Netanyahu flew secretly to Abu Dhabi to enlist the UAE in his lobbying effort for a final attack on Iran. The Emiratis refused. After eight months of conflict, Gulf economies are teetering. So are global energy and fertilizer markets. They won’t recover soon. Globally, there are a total of about 850 supertankers used to transport oil from producers to the rest of the world. In October alone, 11 of them were badly damaged in Hormuz. At this pace, a global depression is imminent. A nuclear strike would radically accelerate the destruction. Fallout from a ground explosion at Pickax Mountain would contaminate the Persian Gulf, poisoning the water supply for 100 million people.

And those are just some of the immediate consequences for the region. The rest of the world is every bit as exposed. No country other than the United States has ever used a nuclear weapon in war. Some would like to. An American nuclear attack on Iran would set a new precedent. The Russians have already told at least two other governments that an American nuclear strike on Iran would free them to use nuclear weapons against Ukraine. Pakistan and India would be tempted to do the same against each other, as would North Korea against Seoul. After the first nuclear strike, World War Three is inevitable. That war would be short and final.

We’ve been sleepwalking toward this moment for months. Since February, the administration has quietly rewritten America’s nuclear doctrine to make first use of so-called “battlefield nukes” easier and therefore more likely. No one in Washington in either party seems bothered by this. Now we’re on the brink of it.

Close observers say Trump is likely to decide by next weekend whether or not to use nuclear weapons. That would be November 7, six days from now. To his credit, he’s hesitating. At the moment, Trump is listening to his vice president, JD Vance, and to his envoy and friend Steve Witkoff, both of whom argue a deal with Iran can be made.

They’re right, though it won’t be simple. The Iranians are famously frustrating to negotiate with under any circumstances, and elements of that government have become more radical since Ayatollah Ali Khamenei and his family were killed in February. After decades of isolation, even relatively moderate Iranian leaders seem confused by how decisions are made in the West. (There is a widespread belief in Tehran, for example, that the United States government controls Israel.) But overall, people who have spoken to decision-makers in Iran say there is consensus there that more war is bad for everyone and a deal is worth making.

One group that hasn’t been consulted so far is the global population — the hundreds of millions of people who will be killed along with their children if Trump is pushed by Netanyahu into launching a nuclear strike next week. Now would be the time for them to speak up.

— Tucker Carlson (@TuckerCarlson) November 2, 2026

Trump Called to ‘Unequivocally Rule Out’ Nuclear Attack on Iran

US President Donald Trump, who has long sought the Nobel Peace Prize while bombing various countries, is under pressure to rule out launching a nuclear attack on Iran after former Fox News host Tucker Carlson reported Sunday night that Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu is pushing for one.

“The target would be Pickaxe Mountain in central Iran, where Israeli intelligence claims the Iranian government has restarted its nuclear enrichment program,” Carlson wrote on social media. “No conventional weapon in the American arsenal can penetrate 300 feet of solid granite to destroy the tunnels where enrichment is supposedly taking place. The only military option is a nuclear strike.”

The US midterm election is on Tuesday, and according to Carlson, “close observers say Trump is likely to decide by next weekend whether or not to use nuclear weapons. That would be November 7... To his credit, he’s hesitating. At the moment, Trump is listening to his vice president, JD Vance, and to his envoy and friend Steve Witkoff, both of whom argue a deal with Iran can be made.”

However, Netanyahu “is cornered and desperate,” Carlson noted. “After last week’s election results, he can’t form a government unless Trump intervenes directly in Israeli politics and brokers a deal with other parties that gives Netanyahu 61 seats in the Knesset. Otherwise, he is out as prime minister and on his way to ignominy, investigations, and possibly jail. Netanyahu must stay close to Trump. He needs this war.”

Responding to Carlson’s post, the National Iranian American Council (NIAC) said that “whether these allegations reflect serious military planning or reckless posturing, the very possibility of a US nuclear attack on Iran is an unconscionable horror. After eight months of devastating war, Iranian Americans are once again being forced to wait in terror as the Trump administration reportedly weighs another catastrophic escalation at the urging of Benjamin Netanyahu.”

“NIAC demands that President Trump immediately and unequivocally rule out any use of nuclear weapons against Iran,” the group asserted. “Congress must urgently intervene to prevent further escalation and bring an end to this devastating war before an already horrific conflict becomes an irreversible catastrophe.”

The group’s policy director, Ryan Costello, stressed that such an attack “would be an unimaginable catastrophe in its own right, and the radioactive plume of a blast could extend hundreds of miles and reach major population centers, depending on yield and wind direction. Isfahan province alone, where Pickaxe is, is home to more than 5 million Iranians.”

“The Trump administration would also have to consider the ramifications of breaking the nuclear taboo in a war of aggression,” he continued, suggesting that the US and Israel using such weapons could spur similar action by the other nuclear-armed nations: China, France, India, North Korea, Pakistan, Russia and the United Kingdom.

Would Russian President Vladimir “abstain from using nuclear weapons in Ukraine if Trump had dropped a nuclear weapon in Iran?” Costello wondered. “It would be a new, far more dangerous world.”

So, Israel (a nuclear-armed state) is pushing the U.S. (a nuclear-armed state) to nuke Iran (not a nuclear-armed state) because Iran is a “nuclear threat.”

It’s the same logic that tells you genocide is “self-defense.”

— Assal Rad (@AssalRad) November 2, 2026

While people across the ideological spectrum expressed alarm, some dismissed Carlson’s lengthy post.

However, Drop Site News co-founder Ryan Grim highlighted that “Tucker is extremely well sourced in the Trump administration and shouldn’t be ignored if this is what he’s being told,” and fellow journalist Pablo Manríquez agreed.

Pushing back against one skeptic, Andrew Day, senior editor at The American Conservative, pointed out that recently “Trump threatened to ‘annihilate’ Iranian civilization and unleash ‘military terror’ not seen since World War II. Those statements are plausibly implicit nuclear threats. Now Trump is finding that conventional weapons don’t force Iran’s capitulation. Concern is warranted.”

Terrifying rumors are swirling about Israel pressuring Trump to launch a nuclear strike on Iran immediately after the midterms or some other major escalation. I wish I was sure that this was too unhinged to take seriously, but we do not live in sane times where these kinds of dismissals are possible. Instead, we live amidst the rise of end times fascism, where dangerous accelerationists hold enormous sway in both the Israeli and U.S. governments.

The hardcore religious end timers have partnered with criminals like Trump, Netanyahu, and several tech oligarchs whose only path to avoiding legal accountability for their many crimes is dramatic (and distracting) escalation. I desperately hope the rumors are exaggerated, but we need to be ready in case they are not.

That's why we are releasing this video today on the eve of the U.S. midterms. We can defeat these maniacs, but only if we know what we are up against.

https://t.co/MEat6s5UkY

— Naomi Klein (@NaomiAKlein) November 2, 2026

Iran’s government was already preparing its people for a possible US nuclear attack, and last Friday, more than 200 global civil society groups implored Congress to stop Trump from using such weapons in a bid to end the illegal war that he and Netanyahu launched at the end of February.

“In recent weeks, President Trump has threatened to ‘hit Iran hard’ after the US midterm elections next week,” wrote members of the Back From the Brink Coalition. “On October 15, President Trump stated that he would not use nuclear weapons against Iran. But frequent, abrupt changes of policy have become a staple feature of his presidency, and the single statement that he will not use nuclear weapons stands against a string of threats to do just that.”

Even if Trump opts not to use nuclear weapons, there are mounting global concerns about his next steps. After being briefed on the administration’s military schemes behind closed doors, US Sen. Chris Murphy (D-Conn.) declared last week that “their plan is insane.”

The Wall Street Journal reported Monday that “America’s Gulf allies are steeling themselves for a heavy US bombardment of Iran that they expect to trigger a vicious cycle of retaliation against their own economic and civilian infrastructure as early as this week.”

IRAN LAUNCHES NEW WAR DOCTRINE AFTER ISRAEL'S CHEMICAL ATTACK WARNING– w/ Trita Parsi

US Strikes Iran’s Qeshm Island

The US bombed Iran’s Qeshm Island on Monday, The Wall Street Journal has reported, an attack that came as President Trump was downplaying the prospects of renewed full-scale war with the Islamic Republic ahead of the US midterm elections.

Iranian media reported earlier in the day that five explosions were heard in Qeshm and that residents saw two aircraft flying overhead. The blasts came after Iran’s Islamic Revolutionary Guards Corps (IRGC) said that its forces brought down two US MQM-170 drones south of Qeshm using electronic warfare.

Israel’s Channel 12 also reported the blasts as US strikes, while Trita Parsi, the Executive Vice President of the Quincy Institute, said on his Substack that Iranian sources believed Israel was behind the strikes and that a US source told him the US wasn’t responsible.

Iran has so far not commented publicly about the reported US strikes on Qeshm, which comes as President Trump and Vice President JD Vance have been signaling progress in negotiations, though the US and Israel have launched major escalations against Iran in the past while the US and Iran were engaged in talks.

Pepe Escobar: BREAKING: Iran Rejects Trump's Response, Demands 7 Conditions Be Met

‘Kafkaesque’: London Cops Allow ‘I Support Genocide’ Sign, Arrest 320 Palestine Action Protesters

British police on Saturday arrested 325 people outside the US Embassy in London—almost all of them supporters of the banned peace group Palestine Action—while allowing at least one demonstrator to hold a sign reading “I support genocide.”

Metropolitan Police said 320 of the people arrested at the demonstration organized by the group Defend Our Juries were apprehended for showing support for a proscribed group under the Terrorism Act. Many of those taken into custody were holding placards reading, “I oppose genocide, I support Palestine Action.”

Meanwhile, video posted to social media showed a Met officer allowing a woman to hold a sign with the deliberately provocative message, “I support genocide, I oppose Palestine Action.”

London, a woman holds a sign saying 'I support genocide. I oppose Palestine Action.' Police leave her alone.

But if you hold a sign that says 'I oppose genocide and I support Palestine Action, you get arrested.

You can't make this up. In UK, You can openly cheer for mass murder, but you can't protest against it. https://t.co/BGqQOgHrNx

— Ounka (@OunkaOnX) November 2, 2026

It was the largest mass arrest of Palestine Action supporters since Prime Minister Andy Burnham took office following the resignation of former Prime Minister Keir Starmer—both members of the Labour Party.

“The Kafkaesque UK laws adopted under the Starmer [government] to appease Israel are such that you’ll get arrested for terrorism if you hold a sign saying, ‘I support Palestine Action.’ But if you hold a sign saying ‘I support genocide, I oppose Palestine Action,’ then you’ll be fine,” said Trita Parsi, the executive vice president of the US-based Quincy Institute for Responsible Statecraft.

The arrested protesters are charged under Section 13 of the Terrorism Act 2000, which carries a punishment of six months’ imprisonment for carrying the signs.

Among those arrested Saturday were 94-year-old human rights lawyer Margaret Owen, who was also apprehended outside September’s Labour Party conference in Liverpool for holding a sign supporting Palestine Action. According to reporting, Owen is Jewish.

BREAKING: OVER 4,000 TOTAL TERRORISM ARRESTS AS 94 YEAR OLD MARGARET OWEN ARRESTED AGAIN

Today's arrests outside the US Embassy in London bring the total number of arrests under the Terrorism Act in the UK for defying the ban on Palestine Action to over 4,000. https://t.co/IbjWe3RLYB

— Defend Our Juries (@DefendOurJuries) October 31, 2026

“This is truly dystopian,” UK Green Party Leader Zack Polanski said in response to Owen’s arrest Saturday. “Not in our name.”

“Israel killed eight people, including a child, in Gaza this weekend as they continue their genocide,” Polanski noted in a separate social media post on Monday. “After a weekend of arresting pensioners for protesting against this horror, Labour has [put] Israel far above serving our local communities.”

More than 250,000 Palestinians have been killed or wounded by Israeli forces since the Hamas-led attack of October 2023. That figure includes over 74,000 Palestinians killed, including upward of 21,500 children.

Undaunted, Owen was reportedly arrested again on Monday along with other members and supporters of the peace group No More Bloody Wars, who blocked an entrance to Royal Air Force-Lakenheath, a military base used by the US Air Force.

Rev. Bill White, 72—who also held a sign at Saturday’s protest reading, “I oppose genocide, I support Palestine Action”—told The Guardian that he had “hoped for better” from Burnham’s government.

“This is the right thing to do,” White said of the protest. “There’s a bad law, and it is wrong to criminalize people that are trying to prevent genocide,” he added. “How can I not be here?”

A spokesperson for Defend Our Juries said Saturday that the “overzealous response outside the US Embassy today only serves to further expose how far authorities in the UK will go to appease American interests.”

“Israel’s war crimes that have caused death and injury to thousands could not happen without the US’ approval,” the spokesperson added.

Saturday’s crackdown came as Palestine Action co-founder Huda Ammori prepared to challenge the ban before the UK Supreme Court starting on Wednesday. The lower High Court found the proscription unlawful in February, finding violations involving the government’s own policy and free expression protections. The Court of Appeal overturned that decision in June, prompting Ammori’s appeal.

The Palestine Action ban took effect in July 2025 after members of the group damaged warplanes on the Royal Air Force base at Brize Norton.

On Monday, members of another UK direct action group, People Against Genocide, broke into a factory in Tring, Hertfordshire owned by the Texas-based arms manufacturer Ultra Intelligence and Communications—which reportedly supplies UAV Tactical Systems, a subsidiary of Israeli weapons-maker Elbit Systems—and smashed equipment with hammers. Three people were reportedly arrested.

According to Novara Media, Monday’s action “was timed to coincide with the 109th anniversary of the Balfour Declaration, a statement issued by the British government in 1917 that is widely seen as laying the foundation for the colonization and ethnic cleansing of Palestine.”

Max Blumenthal: The Wars Come Home: Election Blowback from Iran to Ukraine

6 in 7 Journalist Murders Worldwide Go Unpunished as ‘Press Freedom Predators’ Run Rampant

The vast majority of journalist killings around the world go unpunished, according to a United Nations analysis published Monday, the same day that the advocacy group Reporters Without Borders released a report naming dozens of powerful actors—including US President Donald Trump—as “press freedom predators” who are repressing independent journalism.

In a report published on International Day to End Impunity for Crimes Against Journalists, the United Nations Educational, Scientific, and Cultural Organization (UNESCO) noted that 189 journalists were killed in 2024 and 2025, a 20% increase over the previous two-year period. In 6 out of every 7 of those killings, the perpetrators were not brought to justice.

“Journalists are increasingly paying with their lives for reporting from the frontlines of war, and far too often those responsible for their killings are not held accountable,” UNESCO Director-General Khaled El-Enany said, calling on governments to respect a 2015 UN Security Council resolution affirming that journalists and other media workers must be protected as civilians during armed conflicts.

Six out of seven journalist killings worldwide are not brought to justice.

According to @UNESCO's latest report, the global impunity rate increased by one percentage point to 86% in 2026, interrupting a long-term decline from 95% in 2012, largely due to escalating conflicts.

Ending impunity is essential to protecting journalists, safeguarding #PressFreedom and ensuring the public's right to information.

https://t.co/4s17W4cO4e

#ProtectJournalists #EndImpunity

— UNESCO (@UNESCO) November 2, 2026

To mark the day, UN Secretary-General António Guterres acknowledged that “across the world, journalists continue to pay an outrageous price for telling the truth.”

“Over the past year, at least 34 journalists paid the ultimate price,” he continued, adding that in conflict zones, the impunity rate is “close to 100%.”

“This is a heinous affront to the victims and their loved ones, as well as all of us who depend on journalists to remain informed and engaged,” Guterres asserted. “This scandal must end.”

As UNESCO noted:

Killings were recorded across all regions of the world during the 2024-25 biennium, representing “a global scourge,” the report said.

The highest number of verified cases were in the Arab states (97), followed by Latin America and the Caribbean (37), Asia-Pacific (34), Central and Eastern Europe (14), Africa (6), and Western Europe and North America (1).

The state of Palestine had the highest number of killings in both years, at 30 and 32, respectively.

The journalists killed in Palestine were almost all slain by Israeli forces.

UNESCO’s findings underscore concerns raised by the Committee to Protect Journalists (CPJ), which documented a record 129 journalists and media workers killed worldwide in 2025 alone. Israel was responsible for approximately two-thirds of those deaths, according to the organization, with the vast majority of those killed by Israeli forces being Palestinians in Gaza. Israel’s genocidal assault on Gaza has become the deadliest conflict for journalists in CPJ’s records.

The Paris-based group Reporters Without Borders (RSF) observed International Day to End Impunity for Crimes Against Journalists by publishing its 2026 Press Freedom Predators List, an annual review of powerful actors it says are working to silence critical reporting.

RSF described methods ranging from assassination and imprisonment to employing internet trolls and bots, “to silence independent voices and trample on the right to information.”

Trump made his first appearance on RSF’s list after narrowly avoiding inclusion last year. The group cited what it called his “appalling record of attacks on the press” during his second term, accusing his administration of attempting to reduce journalism to political propaganda and physically restrict reporters.

To mark the International Day to End Impunity for Crimes against Journalists on 2 November, we've released our 2026 Press Freedom Predators List. Building on the World Press Freedom Index, the list highlights the actors responsible for the decline in press freedom. Behind the worrying statistics, setbacks and obstacles are people who need to be held to account.
https://t.co/OkHQQQDVZs

— RSF (@RSF_inter) November 2, 2026

The United States currently ranks 64th on RSF’s World Press Freedom Index. It ranked 17th the first time the group published the index in 2002, but plummeted to 33rd the following year amid the George W. Bush administration’s War on Terror crackdown, and 53rd in 2006. The country climbed to 20th during the early years of the Obama administration but fell back down to 49th in 2015 amid then-President Barack Obama’s war on whistleblowers.

The US never ranked as poorly as it did under Obama during Trump’s first term, and fell as low as 55th during the Biden administration’s attempts to quash reporting on the Gaza genocide. But the country has never sunk as low in the rankings as it has during Trump’s second tenure.

Other prominent press freedom predators, according to RSF, include Russian President Vladimir Putin, Saudi Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman, Egyptian President Abdel Fattah el-Sisi, Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdoğan, tech giants Alphabet and Meta, tech titan Elon Musk, the Israel Defense Forces, Chinese Communist Party, and Mexican drug cartels.

“The Press Freedom Predators List builds on RSF’s World Press Freedom Index—which highlights how press freedom has evolved in every country each year—and turns the spotlight around to identify the actors responsible for declining press freedom,” RSF director-general Thibaut Bruttin said in a statement.

“Behind the statistics, the setbacks, and the obstacles lie clear lines of responsibility. Whether they resort to physical or verbal violence, legal abuses, intimidation, digital manipulation of the facts, or economic pressure, these predators share the same goal: to prevent journalists from doing their jobs and deprive citizens of information from independent sources,” he continued.

“RSF makes nothing up—each predator has their own profile, presented as a sort of hall of shame, that shows their background, rhetoric, and weapon of choice,” Bruttin added. “Identifying press freedom predators, exposing their methods, and documenting their abuses means refusing to let their attacks become normalized. In the face of those who seek to impose silence, RSF will continue to name those who kill journalism.”

Iran War: No Deal in Sight. Diplomacy is Dead /Col Lawrence Wilkerson

Oil price falls amid hope of a breakthrough to end Iran war

The oil price has fallen to its lowest level in more two weeks amid new hopes of a breakthrough to end the Iran war. Brent crude, the international benchmark, dropped by more than 6.5% to as low as $105.55 a barrel on Monday, the lowest since 16 October, sending shares in airline companies higher and pushing down government borrowing costs. Oil prices fell after Tehran revealed that contacts between Iran and the US to end their eight-month war were continuing.

“Consultations through mediators are very ⁠intensive. We have presented our conditions and ⁠proposals and everything depends on the political ​rationality of Washington,” the Iranian foreign minister, Abbas Araghchi, said, according to the state media outlet IRNA. Over the weekend, Qatari officials tried to negotiate the release of more than $6bn (£4.5bn) in Iranian assets, so that Tehran might allow the strait of Hormuz to reopen.

On Monday, US vice-president JD Vance reported that there had been “a number of good conversations with the Iranians” and that he was feeling good about the prospects of a “negotiated settlement”. Vance sent a letter to Iran’s security chief, Mohsen Rezaei, last week but the White House has offered few details about the contents of that correspondence.

Chris Beauchamp, the chief market analyst at the investing and trading platform IG, said: “The news is manna from heaven for stock markets, which have felt increasingly pressured by oil’s rise, but of course there is still a risk that Trump will try one last throw of the iron dice after the midterms.”

Europe is repeating 1968. This time it's worse - Varoufakis & Munchau | The Econoclasts

French pupils resume school blockades as country braces for more protests

Dozens of high schools across France were blockaded again on Monday as the government braced for another tense week of protests over school conditions and the high cost of living. The protests come amid warnings that weeks without lessons are putting some pupils’ school year and final exams at risk.

As children returned after the two-week school holiday, students’ unions ignored Emmanuel Macron’s call to end the lycée blockades, which have been running since September and have prompted one of the biggest protest movements and social crises of his presidency.

From early morning in Paris and its suburbs, as well as in cities including Lille, Toulouse and Marseille, schoolchildren demanding more replacement teachers and repairs to buildings barricaded school entrances with wheelie bins. Police officers outside some schools attempted to drag the bins away and made arrests.

Nathanaël Combary from the school students’ union Renouveau Lycéen, who is also a member of Macron’s centrist party Renaissance, said schoolchildren must keep going in their “battle of strength” with the government to push for more funding, better access to higher education and repairs to decrepit schools.

He said measures offered by the government last week to cap some class sizes and review the university applications platform were inadequate. Combary told BFMTV that protests were the only way for schoolchildren to push a government response. He said: “Democratically speaking it’s a bit scandalous that we have to reach this type of situation to be heard but it’s the only solution we have.”

Who are all those AI data centers for?

ICE rapidly re-arresting immigrants released after winning court petitions

Immigrants who have been granted release from detention after winning habeas corpus petitions in court are being re-arrested by US Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE). The Guardian has identified at least 20 cases nationwide relating to people who were detained after being released on habeas corpus petition in the last year, according to court records, attorneys and media reports. Increasing arrests and detentions have led to immigrants filing more than 91,000 habeas petitions as they seek to challenge their detentions, according to research by ProPublica. More petitions have been filed since 25 January than during the past three presidential administrations, including Trump’s first term, combined, the outlet found.

A petition of habeas corpus – Latin for “you shall have a body” – challenges in a federal court the government’s right to hold someone in custody while their main legal case is proceeding. But in a new development, people are winning their release only to find themselves quickly detained again. “We’ve seen a very, very sharp increase in people who are released on habeas petitions, only to be very rapidly re-detained, often in violation of the federal court’s order,” said Bridget Pranzatelli, an attorney with the National Immigration Project. One of her clients, Akram Mahmoud Omar, a 77-year-old Palestinian man who suffered a heart attack while detained in “Camp 57”, the ICE detention facility within Louisiana’s notorious state prison in Angola, was arrested again by ICE within 10 days of being released following a habeas petition, as first reported by the Intercept.

And in Minnesota, seven immigrants were re-detained before even exiting the Whipple federal building detention facility on the outskirts of Minneapolis, as first reported by MPR. “I don’t think being taken out of a building and directly into the arms of four or more officers complies with the court’s order,” Daniel Suitor, attorney to two of the men, said in a phone interview .

Courts are taking notice. In an October ruling, the 10th US circuit court of appeals in Colorado denied the government’s attempt to dismiss a habeas petition on the grounds that they had the power to re-detain the petitioner. The government had a previous “demonstrated pattern of re-detaining” non-citizens who had been granted habeas relief, according to the court. In Louisiana, in the case of another client of Pranzatelli, a federal judge held a senior federal immigration official in contempt of court for violating orders, demanding Ibrahim Mohammed’s release after he had been re-arrested three times by ICE, as first reported by the Banner. Two other federal judges, in Pennsylvania and Minnesota, have also held federal immigration authorities in contempt or threatened to do so.

Ex-FBI chief in Chicago sues DoJ, claiming he was pressured to investigate Trump’s foes

The former head of the FBI in Chicago has accused the Trump administration of pressuring him to investigate the president’s political opponents and making him a “scapegoat” after a major federal case against anti-ICE protesters fell apart. Douglas DePodesta, who served as FBI special agent in charge from 2024 until July 2026, alleged in a federal lawsuit filed on Monday that the Department of Justice (DoJ) had engaged in “misconduct” and “malfeasance” in its pursuit of unjust prosecutions – and that he was wrongly blamed for the DoJ’s missteps and unlawfully forced out of his job.

The suit names Kash Patel, the FBI director; Todd Blanche, the attorney general; and Andrew Boutros, the US attorney who leads the DoJ’s Chicago office. DePodesta’s complaint alleges that Boutros pursued “politically motivated prosecutions” of protesters that turned into an “unprecedented disaster” for the DoJ and accuses the US attorney of making “intentionally” false statements to a judge.

DePodesta’s lawsuit provides a rare first-hand account from a senior FBI official of the fallout from the Trump administration’s aggressive efforts to criminally charge leftwing activists even when the charges are opposed by law enforcement officials. During Operation Midway Blitz, ICE’s intense crackdown on Chicago last year, Boutros repeatedly pressured DePodesta to launch investigations that were “politically motivated”, the suit alleges.

On one occasion, Boutros was “openly hostile” when the FBI refused to write an affidavit saying a protester had “assaulted” an officer after the FBI reviewed video, which showed there was only “incidental touching as a result of the federal immigration agent’s tackling of the protester”, the complaint says. “On other occasions, Boutros sent DePodesta emails demanding that DePodesta open FBI investigations into individuals with political views or affiliations in opposition to the Trump administration,” the complaint continues.

The suit centers on the spectacular collapse of the DoJ’s criminal case against six activists who were protesting against an Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) facility in the Broadview suburb of Chicago in September of 2025. The activists, who became known as the Broadview Six, were charged with conspiracy to impede an ICE officer, and the case dragged on for months before prosecutors were forced to dismiss the case after a series of missteps. A judge later found that prosecutors had engaged in misconduct in the grand jury proceedings. Boutros told the court at the time that he was “completely unaware” of the problems, but DePodesta’s suit says the US attorney did know about the misconduct and that his remarks to the judge were “intentionally false”.

Trump unveils results of $14m reflecting pool makeover in final appeal before midterms

Donald Trump unveiled the delayed results of his $14m renovation of Washington DC’s Lincoln Memorial reflecting pool in what is expected to be his final press conference before voters head to the polls for the midterm elections. On the eve of a consequential election day, with polls indicating that most voters feel the US president has grown too focused on building projects in the nation’s capital, he stood in front of the newly opened reflecting pool to discuss – in detail – changes to the pool’s pipe, the grass surrounding the area and granite.

“This project should be a project that unites all Americans,” Trump told reporters on Monday afternoon. It has proven anything but. After Trump’s first revealed his “beautiful” makeover of the reflecting pool in June, a massive algae bloom turned it green (instead of the promised “American flag blue”) and the coating started to peel away.

Roughly 20 minutes into his remarks on the reflecting pool, less than 24 hours before Americans head to the polls, Trump pivoted to acknowledge Tuesday’s midterm elections, which he declared to be crucial. The party of a sitting president often loses seats during the midterms, he noted. “We gave this a very strong shot,” Trump said.

Supreme court rules against Trump over bid to force California to set aside ballots

The supreme court on Monday ruled against the Trump administration and its attempts to force California election officials to segregate and not count ballots from people that the justice department claims are non-citizens. The ruling follows several lower courts siding with California officials, who argued the federal government was seeking to interfere in state elections. The court did not issue an explanation for its ruling, which is customary in cases that come to it on an emergency basis. There were no noted dissents from the justices.

California and the Trump administration have been in a legal standoff over the past few weeks following the justice department’s claim that 20,000 non-citizens were on the state’s voter rolls. The DoJ delivered a USB drive to Los Angeles and Sacramento election officials in mid-October with the names, giving only 48 hours for officials to review the list and threatening to sue if the ballots were not sequestered until those listed could verify their citizenship. Election officials refused, leading to a series of courtroom battles.

The justice department’s claims faced immediate pushback from state officials and voting rights groups, who questioned how the agency compiled the list and accused the Trump administration of a ploy to cast doubt over midterm elections. The justice department refused to provide details on its methodology and analysis from election officials found numerous suggestions the list contained inaccuracies.

The justice department had threatened to prosecute election officials in California who counted ballots from those on the list, leading to widespread rebuke. A federal judge on Friday blocked the government from threatening such officials.

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How Israel is at the heart of Haley Stevens’s extraordinary reversal

For Haley Stevens, the road from Democratic Senate candidate to campaigning alongside a Republican she once called a rubber stamp for Donald Trump has been remarkably short – and the issue running through almost every twist and turn has been Israel. Having failed to stop Abdul El-Sayed in the primary, Stevens chose to back Republican Mike Rogers on Sunday, a candidate who she previously warned would enable Trump’s agenda – apparently because the Democrat who won refuses to share her position on Israel.

Stevens’s extraordinary reversal is about more than a personal feud or a bruised political ego. It is the culmination of a fight over Israel that has come to define the congresswoman’s political persona, seemingly eclipsing her commitment to the Democratic party and its opposition to Donald Trump.

Earlier this year, Aipac and its affiliated groups poured about $30m into trying to secure Stevens’s Democratic primary victory, their largest ever investment in a single race, in their attempt to stop El-Sayed by any means necessary. She lost anyway, but continued the fight over Israel, demanding that El-Sayed distance himself from an outside group’s advertisement blaming rising grocery costs to American support for Israel just days before the election. The advertisement was not produced by his campaign, and El-Sayed explicitly rejected its contents. That was apparently not enough.

Stevens had been scheduled to appear alongside El-Sayed and the veteran congressman Jim Clyburn at a predominantly Black Detroit church on Sunday, an attempt to demonstrate Democratic unity before election day. Instead, she released a lengthy statement attacking El-Sayed over alleged antisemitism and his associations, and was told she was no longer welcome at campaign events, which she then took personally.

What is clear is that by supporting the Rogers campaign, Stevens is tying herself ever more closely to Israel. The Republican was apparently skeptical of Aipac’s support of his campaign, but the group reportedly spent $9m to support him after Stevens lost to El-Sayed. Over the weekend, Drop Site News reported a number of ties between his campaign and the Israeli government.

Black Voter Turnout Quietly SURGING in SOUTHERN STATES

Two Registered Agents of Israel Are Working for Mike Rogers’ Senate Campaign

When Democratic US Rep. Haley Stevens announced her stunning flip to endorse Republican Senate candidate Mike Rogers on Sunday, she did so with two registered agents of the Israeli government standing behind her, according to a report from Drop Site News.

The person who opened the press conference outside a Detroit church was Abigail Ronson, a spokesperson for the Rogers campaign, whom Drop Site found had registered as an agent working on behalf of the Israeli government under the Foreign Agents Registration Act (FARA) on May 18, 2026.

The registration lists Ronson as a part-time contractor for Clock Tower X, a communications company owned by Brad Parscale, a former campaign manager for President Donald Trump.

In May, Responsible Statecraft and The Intercept reported that through Clock Tower X, Parscale has run a multimillion-dollar operation funded by the Israeli government aimed at influencing American public opinion, which has turned dramatically against Israel amid its genocidal assault on Gaza and systematic ethnic cleansing of Palestinians in the West Bank.

This campaign reportedly involves producing and distributing pro-Israel content aimed at younger Americans, particularly conservatives and evangelical Christians, creating articles meant to influence artificial intelligence chatbots like ChatGPT and Claude to give answers favorable to Israeli narratives, and conducting text messaging campaigns to direct Americans toward pro-Israel content.

The Rogers spokesperson you see starting this press conference is Abby Ronson. She is currently registered as a foreign agent for the state of Israel, according to @DropSiteNews reporting today https://t.co/cspatQJeTt

— Ryan Grim (@ryangrim) November 1, 2026

Ronson, who works for the Republican consulting firm Convergence Media, was one of 14 employees at the firm working on Parscale’s pro-Israel influence operation. Convergence’s chief of staff, Jesse Stokes—who registered as an agent of Israel in October 2025—is also part of the Rogers campaign. The campaign has separately paid millions of dollars to Convergence.

Both Ronson and Stokes have been involved in campaign activities. Ronson helped organize the launch of the astroturfed “Democrats for Mike Rogers” campaign, an alleged “grassroots” coalition of Democratic voters who said they supported Rogers over his Democratic opponent, Abdul El-Sayed. The funding for the initiative overwhelmingly came from Republican-aligned sources, as well as Rogers’ own campaign, and many of the supposed “Democrats” had long-standing GOP ties, according to a previous Drop Site investigation.

Stokes has no official title with the Rogers campaign. But metadata reviewed by Drop Site shows that he wrote the email launching Rogers’ Senate campaign in March 2025, about seven months before he registered as an Israeli agent. Since then, he is shown to have written numerous other press releases for the campaign.

HAPPY BIRTHDAY to Michigan’s next Senator, @MikeRogersForMI !!! LET’S GET TO WORK https://t.co/41caprGBNy

— Abby Ronson (@abbyronson) June 2, 2026

In June, after Ronson posted an AI-generated image of a “buff” Mike Rogers on social media, the campaign denied that she was a staffer. But she’s since acted as an official voice of the campaign in comments to several media outlets, including Reuters, Fox News, and The New York Times. In those comments, she defended Rogers’ attacks on El-Sayed’s Muslim background and accused the Democrat of fueling “anti-Israel hate.”

On Sunday, before Stevens (D-Mich.) suddenly abandoned her months of support for El-Sayed to back Rogers, Ronson told NBC News that “Mike welcomes her.”

Questions about the influence of the Israeli government and pro-Israel donors have hung over Michigan’s Senate race since it began. The American Israel Public Affairs Committee (AIPAC) spent an unprecedented $30 million in a failed effort to help Stevens defeat El-Sayed in August’s Democratic primary, the pro-Israel lobbying group’s single largest expenditure ever in a congressional race.

Israel was also at the center of Stevens’ widely reviled decision to flip against El-Sayed less than 48 hours before Election Day. After months of expressing support for her primary rival, Stevens called on El-Sayed to denounce an advertisement by an outside political action committee that blamed rising grocery prices on US support for Israel, which helped to push Trump toward launching a war with Iran. She also called on him to take back other critical statements he’d made about Israel.

Stevens’ fiancé, Jason Turkish, an outspoken pro-Israel Democrat, announced last week that he’d be supporting Rogers and appeared at a Republican Jewish Coalition event with Rogers and Sen. Ted Cruz (R-Texas). He also accused El-Sayed of fueling “death threats” against Jewish Americans by describing Israel’s conduct in Gaza as a “genocide,” a description that has been used by United Nations experts and leading human rights organizations.

After days of giving behind-the-scenes assurances that she’d continue to support the Democratic nominee, Stevens abruptly shifted her support on Sunday, appearing with Rogers. She said she made the decision after being disinvited to a campaign event with El-Sayed and because of El-Sayed’s association with the pro-Palestine left-wing streamer Hasan Piker, who she said was fomenting “hate.”

In a CNN appearance that night, she struggled to explain her decision to endorse Rogers, who has routinely trafficked in explicitly Islamophobic rhetoric during the campaign and whom she’d described months earlier as a “rubber stamp for Donald Trump’s dangerous agenda.”

According to a friend of Stevens’ who spoke to The Washington Post, the congresswoman’s decision came after Turkish had spent days “working her over” to abandon El-Sayed and back Rogers and telling her that she’d “betrayed” Jewish supporters by standing by the progressive Democrat.

Stevens’ romantic relationship with Turkish reportedly began during the Democratic primary, and the two became engaged in May, though the engagement was not announced until after Stevens’ primary loss. One former Stevens staffer told CNN that the congresswoman became increasingly defensive of Israel and AIPAC in May, after her engagement to Turkish, at the expense of other issues such as Michigan’s economy and manufacturing. This was despite AIPAC growing increasingly toxic among Democratic voters and becoming a target of attacks from El-Sayed.

Morning Joe on Haley Stevens and Mike Rogers ties to Israel

Guest: Mike Rogers' staffers registered foreign agent for Israel... This is one of the questions around corruption.

It's not new that you would have someone with main character syndrome who reveals herself at the end to be in it for her. That is an ancient political dynamic.

...Whose country are we actually prioritizing and whether or not there is a 'there, there' around following the money into foreign interests.

— Clipping Wings (@ClippingWings) November 2, 2026

Rep. Jamie Raskin (D-Md.), whom Stevens had reassured on Saturday night that she had no intention of flipping to Rogers, said he was “dumbfounded” by her decision the following day.

“Something doesn’t compute about this whole sequence of events,” he said.

On MS NOW’s “Morning Joe” Monday, journalist Pablo Torre brought up the reporting on Rogers’ ties to Israel as a possible factor worth investigating when trying to make sense of Stevens’ reversal.

“This is one of the questions around corruption,” Torre said, noting that Stevens’ own pinned post on X spoke about the importance of “defeating Mike Rogers” at the time she endorsed him.

Torre said it was worth asking “whose country are we actually prioritizing” and examining “whether or not there’s a there there around following the money into foreign interests.”

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Cryosphere faces permanent damage when world overshoots 1.5C

Earth’s icy regions face such dangerous melting that global heating should be brought back below 1C after an inevitable period of overshooting global temperature targets, a UN report has found. Permanent and widespread losses of snow and ice expose a “persistent myth” that overshooting the 1.5C target of the Paris climate agreement – to 2C or 3C – could be manageable or even preferable to urgent cuts to emissions, the report found.

The planet has heated by 1.3C since pre-industrial times and failures to curb greenhouse gas emissions and protect nature have led scientists to conclude that some level of overshoot is inevitable as they fight to keep end-of-century warming to 1.5C. But extreme effects on the cryosphere – Earth’s water in a solid state, including all its ice and snow – mean temperatures must rise above that threshold for as short a period as possible, the scientists urged. Added to this, enough planet-heating carbon should be removed from the atmosphere to bring long-term warming down much further, ideally below 1C by 2150.

The high overshoot expected under current policies – with peak temperatures of about 3C – would thaw nearly all near-surface permafrost, make “severe and possibly abrupt” disruption to ocean circulation likely, and lead to widespread acidification, the report found. The latest scientific research suggests sea ice recovers more slowly than previously thought. The report, written by 80 scientists brought together by the International Cryosphere Climate Initiative (ICCI) and the UN Environment Programme (UNEP), found much of the damage would be permanent even if global temperatures were brought back down to 1.5C, such as glacier melt raising sea levels and threatening water security.

James Kirkham, a glaciologist at ICCI and the lead author of the report, said the cryosphere is “one of the most sensitive components of the climate system”, and the consequences of its loss affect the whole planet. “This year, we’ve already seen one of the largest and most deadly ice rock avalanches ever recorded, on the Nepal-China border – it killed thousands of people and left damage equivalent to 10% of Nepal’s GDP in a single event,” said Kirkham. “Switzerland has lost 20% of its glacier ice in the last five years, and thousands of glaciers worldwide are expected to become extinct in the coming decade, every single year.”

Greenpeace activists create ‘boulder barrier’ in North Sea to deter industrial fishing

Greenpeace activists have dropped boulders in the North Sea to snag the dragnets of industrial trawlers fishing in a marine protected area. Activists onboard the Greenpeace ship Arctic Sunrise dropped the giant stones to form an underwater barrier around the Southern North Sea marine protected area (MPA) – the UK’s most bottom-trawled MPA.

The Southern North Sea is an area of importance for harbour porpoises, supporting nearly 20% of the UK North Sea population. But despite its MPA status, there are no restrictions on fishing in most of it. Bottom trawlers, dredgers and other industrial fishing vessels scour it daily. Bottom trawlers logged more than 37,200 fishing hours in the protected zone in 2025, an act akin to “a bulldozer tearing through a treasured national park”, Greenpeace UK said.

“Hulking great ships prowl the sea day after day, stripping it of fish and killing precious wildlife like porpoises, sharks and sea birds,” said Will McCallum, the campaign organisation’s co-executive director. “With our ship and a movement behind us, we’re doing what the government isn’t: protecting our seas.”

The “boulder barrier” had effectively closed 116 sq km (about 45 sq miles) of the Southern North Sea MPA to bottom trawling, Greenpeace UK said. Over the coming days, the Arctic Sunrise will patrol the area to deter any other kinds of industrial fishing. The activists have declared the zone an “ocean park”, in the spirit of Britain’s national parks.

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Also of Interest

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

War On Iran: – Iran Hints At New Target Bank

US Elections & The Iran War

Ukraine, Russia set for peace talks in Abu Dhabi with US mediation Nov. 10, 11

Spoiler candidates are nothing new in US politics. It’s clear why Trump is targeting Peltola

Fossilised red blood cells found in 115m-year-old dinosaur’s bone, say scientists

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A Little Night Music

The Falcons w/Eddie Floyd - Darling

Falcons - I Got A Feeling

Falcons - Sent Up

The Falcons - Girl Of My Dreams

The Falcons - Billy the Kid

The Falcons w/Eddie Floyd - This Heart Of Mine

The Falcons - The Teacher

The Falcons - Lonely Nights ./ Has It Happened To You Yet

The Falcons w/Wilson Pickett - I Found A Love

The Falcons w/Joe Stubbs – You're So Fine

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