Sunday Mourning Doomscroll
Where Good Vibes Go to Die
The Instigators. Dine Upon the Dead. To commemorate World Vegan Day.
Living with Precarity. Birds with Ears. We Smell Fear.
How Israel Uses Sex To Sell Zionism
For a long time, Israel has used sex to sell zionism. There are 3 reasons why: they involve the settler-colony’s past, present, and survival for the future.
Happy Tuesday.
Netflix users are saying that the film Incantation is so scary that they couldn’t even finish it. That’s why we stick with Curious George: A Halloween Boo Fest movie in this house!
In Case You Missed It.
🚨 Former Trump adviser Steve Bannon has been released from prison after serving four months for failing to comply with a congressional subpoena.
🎙️ Joe Rogan says that Kamala Harris now wants to be on his podcast due to the success of his episode with Donald Trump but only for one hour and not in his studio and he does not want to do it on those terms.
🇹🇼 Taiwan and the US have negotiated a deal that would allow Taiwan to buy up to 1,000 U.S.-made attack drones.
🇷🇺 Russia says that it has gained control over three new communities in the Donetsk People’s Republic (DPR) over the past day.
🇨🇳 China has proposed a “childbirth subsidy system and offer further tax cuts for parents in an effort to build a ‘birth-friendly society’ amid a looming demographic crisis.”
🚨 Hezbollah has replaced its leadership after the death of Hassan Nasrallah. The new leader is Naim Qassem.
🇮🇷 Iran says that it will increase its military budget by 200%.
📺 Join Redacted live today at 4 PM EST.
Lead: Israel Blocks Aid To Gaza
Photo credit: x
Israel voted to ban the UN Agency for Palestinian Refugees (UNRWA) from operating in Israel, which will mean that the organization will not be able to send much-needed aid to civilians in Gaza.
In May, the Israeli government proposed legislation that would label UNRWA as a terrorist organization. This is a familiar tactic used by the Israeli government. They also recently labeled members of the press as terrorists in advance of a weekend in which at least five journalists were killed.
How do we know whether the victims are terrorists or not?
This is a familiar tactic used during the Obama administration when civilians who were killed were categorized as combatants as long as they were military-age males.
The head of UNRWA, Commissioner General Philippe Lazzarini, said this about this vote:
“These bills will only deepen the suffering of Palestinians, especially in #Gaza where people have been going through more than a year of sheer hell. It will deprive over 650,000 girls & boys there from education, putting at risk an entire generation of children. These bills increase the suffering of the Palestinians & are nothing less than collective punishment. Putting an end to UNRWA & its services will not strip the Palestinians from their refugee status. That status is protected by another UN General Assembly resolution until a fair and lasting solution is found to the plight of the Palestinians. Failing to push back these bills will weaken our common multilateral mechanism established after World War 2. This should be a concern to all.”
Tim Walz’s China Romance
jenna wang and time walz Photo credit: dailymail
A Chinese woman claims she had a romance with Tim Walz while he was in China in 1989. I wouldn’t call this a bombshell exactly. It was consensual, even by her account.
Jenna Wang, 59, was the daughter of “a high-ranking Communist official during his 1989 teaching stint in China.” She says that they had a “secret fling,” but they could not be public about it because her family would not allow her to be with a “Westerner.”
Wang says that Walz left her heartbroken when she had hoped for a marriage proposal.
This is not an October surprise. Lots of people — politicians and non-politicians — have left broken hearts in their wake.
Liberal Newspapers Decline to Endorse Kamala Harris
Photo credit: x
Three national newspapers have declined to endorse a presidential candidate: The Los Angeles Times, The Washington Post and now USA Today.
Jeff Bezos, owner of Amazon and The Washington Post, explained this decision in this post, saying that an endorsement hurts the press more than it helps Americans. He referred to a recent Gallup poll showing that Americans’ trust in the media is at all-time lows. He doesn’t apologize for the many valid reasons for this, he just says that the press “must work harder to control what we can control to increase our credibility.”
“What presidential endorsements actually do is create a perception of bias,” he wrote. “A perception of non-independence. Ending them is a principled decision, and it’s the right one.”
He says that he intends to to win the fight for journalism and make “some changes.” What do you think that means? Some reports say that he intends to add some conservative voices to The Washington Post opinion pages.
Several reporters have resigned because of these papers’ failures to endorse a candidate, one of them a winner of the Pulitzer Prize.
News By The Numbers
Photo credit: newsflash
38 pounds. That is how much the world’s fattest cat weighed. Kroshik, which is Russian for Crumbs, was rescued from a hospital basement where it ate everything it found, before it was sent to a weight loss center for animals. Kroshik died last weekend after having lost 7 pounds.
300 kilometers (186 mph) per hour. That is how fast the planned high-speed rail between Quebec City and Toronto is supposed to be when it is built. If it is built. The project was announced in 2021 and is reportedly greenlit again this week.
32. That is how many Palestinian films were supposed to be on the Netflix Palestinian Stories collection, which was announced in 2021. As of today, all but one have been deleted from the platform.
What’s Trending?
Photo credit: lizzobeeating
Lizzo is trending for dressing like an Ozempic knock-off for Halloween. I think what she is trying to say is that you can have healthy habits and a healthy outlook about your body without Ozempic but I’m not sure. Do you get it?
Gisele Bundchen is trending because she is expecting her third child with her boyfriend Joaquim Valente.
Ballon d’Or is trending because the football/soccer awards ceremony happened on Monday. Rodrigo Hernández Cascante, who goes by Rodri, took home the trophy.
A New Covid “Emergency”?
Photo credit: abcnews
The CDC is recommending that people over 65 get a second dose of the 2024–2025 COVID-19 vaccine. This is the same vaccine that was not clinically trialed.
The FDA issued an emergency use authorization for this vaccine in August to address the Omicron variant KP.2 strain of SARS-CoV-2. That variant is currently responsible for only 1% of Covid cases.
The FDA approval was based on testing in animals which, they said, showed the animals triggering trigger neutralizing antibodies. They do NOT say that the animals did or did not contract Covid or show Covid symptoms. Just the antibodies.
So why does the CDC think a first OR second dose of this vaccine will do anything? They don’t say. They say that data “continues to confirm the importance of vaccination” but they don’t say that it prevents Covid or severe Covid because they don’t know that. They just think it’s important.
Wednesday on Antiwar.com
Today’s daily podcast with news editor Dave DeCamp summarizing today’s news at Antiwar.com.
News
- 115 Palestinians Killed by Israeli Strikes on Gaza
- The US Is Funding 70% of Israel’s Wars
- Israel Kills 10 Civilians Lebanese Coastal Town
- Hezbollah Appoints Its Former Deputy as New Leader
- Israel Kills at Least 67 in Attacks Across East Lebanon
- Report: US Envoy Promotes ‘Internal Uprising’ in Lebanon
- Russia Launches New Nuclear Drills
- Kremlin: German Arms Factory in Ukraine Is a Legitimate Target
- Iran Says It Will Exercise Right of ‘Self-Defense’
- Taiwan Signs Deal With US To Buy 1,000 Drones
- Comey Had FBI Spies Infiltrate Trump 2016 Campaign
- and much more!
Viewpoints
- Adnrew P. Napolitano on War and the Constitution
- Casey Carlisle on Patriots, Parasites, and the Regime
- Kelley Beaucar Vlahos on War and the Cost of Groceries
- Dan McKnight on The Specter of ‘Defense Secretary Cheney’
- Bruce Fein asks Does Foreign Interventionism Make America Safer?
- Daniel Larison on The Worsening Humanitarian Catastrophe in Gaza
- Conflicts of Interest Podcast: Biden Approves Arms Deal to Saudi Arabia
- Open Letter From 2,000 Israelis: Call for Global Pressure on Israel To Force an Immediate Ceasefire
- Antiwar.com needs your help to keep going. Please make your tax-deductible contribution at:
http://www.antiwar.com/donate.html
Democracy Now! Daily Digest
A Daily Independent Global News Hour with Amy Goodman & Juan González Tuesday, October 29, 2024 democracynow.org
Israeli Attack on Beit Lahia Kills at Least 93 Palestinians as Siege of Northern Gaza Continues
Israeli Lawmakers Ban U.N. Aid Agency for Palestinian Refugees
Israeli Attacks on Lebanon Flatten Homes in Tyre and Kill at Least 60 in Beqaa Valley
South Africa Files Documents with ICJ Providing Evidence of Israel’s Genocide in Gaza
Israelis Protest Outside Knesset to Call for Hostage Deal
1,000+ Writers Sign On to Israeli Boycott Pledge over Gaza Genocide, Occupation of Palestine
Trump to Rally in Majority-Latinx Allentown Amid Fallout over Comic’s Racist Puerto Rico “Jokes”
CNN Bans Right-Wing Pundit After He Tells Mehdi Hasan “I Hope Your Beeper Doesn’t Go Off”
Philadelphia DA Larry Krasner Sues Elon Musk over $1M Swing State Giveaway
FBI Investigating Arson Attacks on Ballot Boxes in Washington and Portland
World Meteorological Association Warns Humans Running Out of Time on Climate
Stories
Puerto Rico Is an “Island of Garbage”: Outrage Grows over Trump’s Racist & Xenophobic NYC Rally
In the final week ahead of the presidential election, Republican Donald Trump’s campaign is facing widespread backlash after his rally Sunday at Madison … Read More →
Ruth Ben-Ghiat: Trump’s Dehumanizing Rhetoric Is Adopting Franco’s Language of Fascism and Violence
We speak with Ruth Ben-Ghiat, an expert on fascism and authoritarianism, who argues that Trump’s use of the hallmarks of “fascism and violence,” including … Read More →
Trump’s Night at the Garden: Racist Campaign Rally Evokes Infamous 1939 Nazi Gathering in NYC
We take a close look at Donald Trump’s campaign and racist rally at Madison Square Garden with filmmaker Marshall Curry, who attended the rally and also directed … Read More →
The Los Angeles Times and The Washington Post announced that they would not be endorsing anyone in the U.S. presidential election this year, breaking decades … Read More →
RYAN GRIM
Washington Post Brass Spiked A Story Linking Labor Leaders To DNC Assault
The Post article planned to identify three top labor officials involved in an altercation with pro-Palestine protesters at the Democratic National Convention
The Perils of the Good-Enough Candidate
Despite Kamala Harris’s strong start, the race is now a tossup. Whatever happens, a sober reckoning with the limitations of her campaign is essential for Democrats going forward.
November 1, 2024
“What will this version of the Democratic Party deliver to those same loyal voters when Trump is no longer on the other side of the ballot? This uncertain future is why it’s important to be as honest as we can about Harris being a pretty bad candidate. These voters deserve an actual vision for this country that goes beyond simply pointing out that the other guy is much worse.”
The human-perpetrated evil has become normalized in Gaza not because these evil atrocities are committed by young, ordinary. smiling and dancing jubilant men and women from Israel (sic) who are the epitome of Arendt’s “terribly and terrifyingly normal”, but because they have been allowed to commit such evil by their Western allies. Our Western leaders have each become an Adolf Eichmann.
Have we forgotten our history of revolution? Forget the ballot box. That is allowing another genocide to take place and cleanse Palestine completely of its indigenous people — the Palestinians — with the support of the liberal democracies of the Western world. This is not progress unless you are a bigoted white supremacist, supporter of an atavistic colonial expansionist State of Israel, and dedicated Islamophobe.
A Palestinian Case for Voting for Jill Stein
Project 2025 Creators Have a Plan to ‘Dismantle’ Pro-Palestine Movement
If Donald Trump wins next week, the Heritage Foundation has prepared a roadmap for him to crush dissent
AND
OCT 29, 2024
Genocide as Colonial Erasure (w/ Francesca Albanese) | The Chris Hedges Report
OCT 29, 2024
“The crime of all crimes.” That is how the International Criminal Tribunal for Rwanda declared genocide in the final judgment of Prosecutor v. Akayesu, the case against the mayor of Taba, Rwanda for crimes against humanity. Today, that crime repeats itself as UN Special Rapporteur on the Occupied Palestinian Territories Francesca Albanese painfully details in her latest report.
Albanese joins host Chris Hedges on this episode of The Chris Hedges Report to break down her report and present the indisputable evidence that Israel is actively committing a genocide of the Palestinian people.
“The acts of killing, the mass killing, the infliction of psychological and physical torture, the devastation, the creation of conditions of life that would not allow the people in Gaza to live, from the destruction of hospitals, the mass force displacement and the mass homelessness while people were being bombed daily, and the starvation — how can we read these acts in isolation?” Albanese asks.
The UN Special Rapporteur clearly outlines the steps and conditions required to meet the classification of genocide, and in the case of Gaza, it’s undeniable. Albanese tells Hedges, “What is relevant in order to establish that there is genocide is not just the intent behind these crimes, enunciated in Article II of the Genocide Convention; it’s the overall intent, specific intent, to destroy the people — the group as a whole, or in part, as such. And what is the group here? It’s the Palestinians.”
Throughout the rest of her report, Albanese details the harrowing death and destruction Palestinians endure on a daily basis in countless forms, alongside the horror suffered by non-Palestinians in Gaza. Albanese documents record-breaking numbers: The highest number of journalists killed, the highest number of UN officials killed, the highest number of hospitals targeted, the destruction of all universities, the fastest rate of population starvation. It’s clear, according to Albanese, the scale of devastation the Israelis are inflicting is one of scorched-earth catastrophe.
