Israeli election mess, African summit in Moscow, Latest Iran news

• Ahmed Eldin: Whoever governs Israel after Tuesday’s election, Palestinians will live under the same occupation, the same siege and the same settlements. The two blocs fighting over the Knesset agree on all three. They fight about Netanyahu, about drafting ultra-Orthodox men and about the power of the courts. On the question that decides whether millions of people live free, Israeli politics settled its answer long ago, and the answer is no. Diana Buttu said it plainly in Al Jazeera two days before the vote: the election may change “the face of the government, not the policy.” The exit polls promised a close race, and the count delivered a stalemate. With 84 percent of ballots counted on Wednesday afternoon, the Central Elections Committee gave Netanyahu’s bloc 54 seats, Gadi Eisenkot’s opposition bloc 49 and the Arab parties 17. Neither bloc comes close to the 61 needed to govern. Turnout reached 77.7 percent, the highest since 1999. Saul Sadka saw only two paths: a unity government of Netanyahu and Eisenkot, or Netanyahu as caretaker until another election in the spring. On election day, Muhammad Shehada reported what he saw: incitement from the top of government, Ben Gvir’s police at Arab polling stations, election workers obstructing Arab voters, Hebrew-only ballots, and Likud activists sent to film and intimidate. 

• Sovereignista: Flàvio Bolsonaro fled Brasil to the US with his wife and daughters after his presidential election defeat, CNN Brasil reports, amid fears of arrest after a court ordered his passport seized. US officials confirm Bolsonaro landed in Miami. He reportedly crossed the Argentinian border on foot and then flew to Ecuador and then Miami. He was granted a visa to enter the US. Bolsonaro flew with his Italian passport. This has been described as a classic CIA extraction operation planned well in advance. 

• Islander Reports: Russian Foreign Minister Sergey Lavrov this week told a room of African editors what the Western client media spends its life tiptoeing around... political independence came with the 1960s wave of decolonisation, but Africa's "second awakening" will be economic, with its richest resources used "in Africa itself so that added value is created there, rather than in the former colonial powers." The UN's own trade body backs him up, with UNCTAD counting 46 of Africa's 54 countries as commodity dependent. And today 48 of those 54 states turned up in Moscow for the 3rd Russia-Africa summit, 22 of them at head of state level (up from 17 in 2023). He told them a story that says it all. More than once, in a "friendly" country, he couldn't get his own plane refuelled because the oil facilities belonged to Western companies that had decided Russia was "behaving badly". Today Putin went further, quoting Thomas Sankara on debt as "neocolonialism" and accusing the West of trying to drive Africans back into "debt bondage" on predatory terms. 

• “That sounds INSANE to me”. Mehdi talks to Palestinian human rights lawyer Noura Erakat about her arrest and attorney Lydia Ghuman about the billion dollars worth of Israel bonds that Palm Beach County in Florida bought to fund the genocide that she was protesting.  

• PressTV: Francesca Albanese put under the US gun at the UN again.  A US envoy to the UN has called for the removal of UN special rapporteur on the situation of human rights in Palestine, Francesca Albanese, calling her a “moral fugitive” and a “lunatic.”   US Representative for UN Management and Reform Jeff Bartos accused Albanese of harboring hatred toward the US, the West, Israel, and the Jewish people.  “[The UN] allows a charlatan to soil the UN uniform—even as she stokes the very conflicts this body was created to end—and even as her words are found in terrorists’ chants,” he said.  He claimed that UN colleagues have privately expressed similar views, characterizing Albanese and others like her as “institutional poison” and “good for no one.” 
• Trump framed the recent talks initiated by Vice-President Vance through Qatar as “to deliver humanitarian/aid supplies to Iran.” This statement below is obviously aimed at American voters in hopes to make Trump appear 'peaceful and compassionate'. The US list of demands that was given to Iran, via Qatar, reportedly insisted Iran include 'nuclear concessions' as part of a deal ahead of the elections. Tehran did not accept this “demand.” Iran continues to insist on its seven long-standing conditions.  

• Chairman of Iran’s National Security Committee Arya Yadegaar: Iran’s Parliament's plan for withdrawing from the NPT is ready. The chairman says: “MPs have prepared bills for an exit strategy from the NPT, based on national interests, political and military doctrine.” Exiting the NPT has been a topic of discussion for a few days now in Iran. A very probable solution that was discussed is a 3-month plan to exit the NPT, in case the US & Israel attack Iran again. Right now, one of the main obstacles for Iran to exit the NPT is China & Russia. But this can be solved by not allowing IAEA inspectors, but allow Russian and Chinese inspectors in Iran. In this plan, Iran would agree to temporarily freeze its enriched materials, but on the condition that China and Russia guarantee that if the US attacks again, they will support Iran's withdrawal from the NPT and Iran's development of nuclear weapons. However this is only discussed and not actually official (yet). 
• Elijah J. Magnier: The Israeli elections between the right and the right parties: very fair and with multiple choices. (ha, ha) The right was not expected to win the majority over the right. Therefore, the two right camps will have to renew the elections or one right goes to war to force the other right to form one right government. Clear?

• Craig Murray: The social democratic compact that underlay western democracy is fatally fractured. Public provision is despised, and eked out grudgingly where the politicians whom the billionaires control see it as absolutely unavoidable to keep the helots quiet. The wars in Ukraine and Iran are directly responsible for much of the inflation. They are, however, a consequence of the concentration of wealth, not a separate factor. Billionaires make money from war. They make money from weapons and from lending to governments. They make money from military and security contracts. They make money from high hydrocarbon prices. They make money from asset value fluctuations between hot war and negotiation. Billionaires drive war. 

• Larry Johnson: If you want to understand what Washington’s war with Iran is costing ordinary people, forget the think-tank reports. Go to Sihanoukville, Cambodia, where a few hundred mostly American retirees spent Wednesday packing their lives into suitcases on a few hours’ notice. They had bought a home on the sea. The sea, it turns out, runs on diesel. The MV Odyssey, operated by Florida-based Villa Vie Residences, set sail in October 2024 on what was billed as a continuous, never-ending voyage around the world. The pitch was irresistible to a certain kind of American retiree: sell the house, buy a cabin for several hundred thousand dollars, and live at sea, wandering from port to port, with a promised minimum residency of 15 years. Some passengers did exactly that. They sold their homes. They gave away the furniture. They traded the HOA meetings for the Mekong Delta. The brochure, unfortunately, did not include a section on the Strait of Hormuz. Here is what happened, according to the company’s own numbers as reported by CBS News. Before the war began in late February, the ship’s fuel cost about $700 a ton. It now costs between $2,000 and $3,000 a ton. The Odyssey burns 700 to 800 tons a month. Its monthly fuel bill went from about $400,000 to roughly $2 million. Per cabin, fuel went from about $1,800 a month to between $6,000 and $8,000. The company did what any responsible business would do when its biggest variable cost tripled or worse. It slowed down. It spent five or six days in each port, waiting for the Middle East to calm down. Let me repeat that, because it is the most poignant business strategy of 2026: a cruise company decided to wait out an American war with Iran. Many of us have been waiting since 1979. It didn’t work. On Tuesday, October 27, the company suspended operations in Cambodia. 

Interview with Fra Hughes from Ireland - arrested by Israel

Ken Jones of Witness Against Empire interviews Fra Hughes from Belfast, Ireland about the current Israeli extermination of the Palestinian people.

Fra has been a long-time supporter of Palestine and over the years attempted to bring aid to the people there by land convoys thru Europe.

He was on the last two flotillas to Gaza and on the 2026 version he was arrested and jailed by the IOF.

Fra currently coordinates a Palestinian aid program in Belfast where they raise funds and send the money for human aid supplies to Gaza. 

Operation 'Just Cause' and Pete Williams

 This is a chapter from my book entitled 'Come Together Right Now: Organizing Stories from a Fading Empire'. At the time of this I was working for the Florida Coalition for Peace & Justice.

“From Mexico to Argentina, Latin American governments today roundly condemn the use of force by the United States against General Manuel Antonio Noriega of Panama.”

—New York Times, Dec. 21, 1989, p. 24

“I appreciate the support that we’ve received, strong support from the United States Congress, and from our Latin American neighbors.”

—George Bush, Dec. 21, 1989, reported in New York Times, Dec. 22, 1989, p. 16

On December 20, 1989, in the dead of night, George H. W. Bush (King George I) invaded the country of Panama ostensibly to go after one bad apple by the name of Manuel Noriega. It was called Operation Just Cause, but the cause was not just. Manuel Noriega had been on the CIA’s payroll since the 1950s when he became an informant, paid over $200,000 a year by the U.S., to spy on his fellow classmates at a military academy. Over the years, this corrupt man had been a CIA operative during at least six U.S. presidential administrations, going back to the first years Nixon was in office.

The invasion of Panama was done, in part, to re-establish U.S. control over the Canal Zone, but also to help justify the existence of the military-industrial complex. All signs pointed to the collapse of the Soviet Union just two years later. We were about to lose our big enemy and had no good “enemy” prospects lined up. What was a war monger to do? Go bomb someone who could not retaliate of course. Another reason for the invasion was to field test new high tech weapons systems like the Stealth bomber. It was used to drop bombs that “liberated” the Panamanian people from our bad boy, Noriega.

El Chorrillo, a poor neighborhood, was bombed, shelled with heavy artillery, strafed, and finally burned to the ground by U.S. troops. One resident, a young mother, told investigators after the invasion that “helicopters were firing all kinds of weapons because you could hear the bursts, and explosions were of different intensities...The lights in the neighborhood went out and houses began to burn. It was chaos. People tried to leave their burning homes but found themselves between two fires...tanks, and armored cars, and U.S. soldiers on foot advancing, firing. We could hardly believe it.” Another resident reported that a group of U.S. soldiers came down his street and “entered each house. We saw the people—the residents—coming out, followed by soldiers, and then we saw the houses, one by one, go up in smoke. The U.S. soldiers were burning the houses.”

In order to hide the dead, the U.S. military dug mass graves and bulldozed bodies into them. Cremating bodies was another method used to destroy the evidence of the massacre. A report from the Panamanian National Human Rights Commission claimed that in Cocle province “hundreds of bodies were cremated” by U.S. troops using flamethrowers.

Some speculated that another reason for the invasion was that Noriega had not followed U.S. orders to assist in the illegal U.S. war on Nicaragua in 1986. This was punishment for his “betrayal” of his bosses in Washington.

For me, it was painful to watch the U.S. media grovel and promote the invasion as something patriotic, when in fact it was a sad and despicable moment in American history. The main Pentagon spokesman during the invasion was a guy named Pete Williams who, today, works as a reporter for NBC-TV. Now imagine that today you are watching your TV evening news wanting to believe that you are getting the best fair, balanced, honest reporting possible and then Pete Williams comes on the screen. My first reaction is to feel sick to my stomach. I remember that he was the Pentagon spokesman during Operation Just Cause and that he lied through his teeth about the reason for the invasion and insisted that we were not killing innocent civilians.

Pete Williams has no credibility. He is not a journalist. He is a Pentagon operative who has been placed inside the mainstream media to pose as a reporter. His job is to gain the confidence of the American people and to lie to us every chance he gets. And because very few people will remember all the way back to December, 1989, they will believe Pete Williams at NBC. But I won’t. I will always remember that Pete Williams at NBC is really Pete Williams at the Pentagon. The same tall man with glasses—he lied to each of us about how the U.S. never killed innocent people in Operation Just Cause. It was an action to liberate the Panamanian people. Pete Williams said so......

But I won’t forget..........Pete Williams at NBC/Pentagon/NBCentagon......

Bruce 

Tucker Carlson: 'The U.S. is at war with Russia'

By providing targeting information and weaponry to Ukraine the US keep the war going.

It's very dark and sick and corrosive of American interests, Tucker adds. 

The same people who pushed Trump into the war in Iran are the same ones who are preventing him settling the Ukraine war. 

Could a Bitcoin Crash wipe out your savings?

Crypto companies have already spent $200 million to rig the midterms.

If they get their way, crypto scammers will keep ripping off Americans and endangering your life savings.

It’s a giant wealth transfer machine, and the Trump family is making billions off it. 

Indigenous Islanders Fight U.S. Military Presence

 

Local leaders in Palau are fighting back against U.S. plans to destroy local habitats with military projects, as the U.S. continues its military expansion on islands across the Pacific.

All of this is aimed at the U.S.-NATO planned war on China. 

Young people in Palau are now organizing to stop the destruction of their native environment by the US military and its corporate agents.

Lula wins, National strike in Italy, Growing anti-militarism climate sweeping the world

• Ben Norton: Huge news for Latin America, and the world. Lula da Silva has won reelection in Brazil, despite blatant electoral meddling by the US. Brazil is the biggest country in Latin America, a major geopolitical power, and a founding member of BRICS. The US empire wanted to put back in power the corrupt, far-right Bolsonaro dynasty, which is extremely pro-US and pro-Israel. The Bolsonaros vowed to minimize Brazil’s role in BRICS, serve the interests of Brazilian oligarchs and big landlords at the expense of the working class, uphold the global US dollar system, and let US corporations plunder Brazil’s natural resources — especially its rare earths and critical minerals, which the US wants to reduce its reliance on China. In contrast, Lula comes from a poor family and has always put the interests of the working class first. He has a non-aligned foreign policy, 100% supports Palestine, strongly believes in the importance of Global South integration and cooperation, and was a co-founder of BRICS. Lula will deepen Brazil’s partnership with China and the rest of the Global South. He will also continue to push for the transformation of the international financial system and will challenge the global dominance of the US dollar, which infuriates Washington.
•  Albanian students began removing and throwing cobblestones, to fend off attacks by police. The government’s response? Use an excavator to rip out the streets.

• Naked Capitalism: The US Is Quietly Ramping Up Its Troop Presence and Drone Capabilities in Latin America. With all that is going on in the world’s two main theatres of war, Ukraine and West Asia, both triggered principally by the US (alongside Israel in the latter case), it’s easy to forget that the US is also starting lots of new fires in its own “backyard”. Last week, the Trump administration announced the mobilisation of hundreds of Army soldiers to train local forces in the region as part of the Pentagon’s ostensible campaign to combat drug trafficking. Washington’s ramping up of its war on Latin America’s drug cartels — which began under the Biden administration but has intensified massively under Trump 2.0 — has precious little to do with stemming the flow of drugs into the US, or tackling the escalating violence of drug cartels across Latin America. No, this is primarily about what the US war on drugs has always been about: pursuing geopolitical and geostrategic dominance in key regions of the world while controlling and imprisoning for serious sums of money the restive populace at home. 

• Saudi Arabia, Pakistan, and Turkiye delegations arrived Monday in Tehran for talks with Iranian officials. The talks likely included a selection of topics including the KSA-Yemen war and upcoming US/Israeli war. Iran agreed to the meeting initiative strictly as the “Tehran Meeting,” not under the Mecca Pact framework. Iran discussed ending the war and reducing tensions, but Iran’s stance toward the US and its 7 conditions remained unchanged. Iran is willing to mediate, but AnsarAllah will continue fighting until Saudi Arabia accepts its conditions. Of course, there is no certainty that these negotiations will result in a positive outcome, but at least this message conveys that Iran is one of the main players in the region, and the project to push Iran aside and eliminate it with a full-scale Israeli hegemony has failed.

• Fars News: In response to Germany's escalating anti-Iran efforts, Iran has warned that if Berlin openly enters a military conflict against Iran, all German bases and related centers throughout the region will become legitimate and defensive targets of Iran.
• Yemen military: If Europe wants to stay warm this winter, it must remain silent and not provide any support to the Saudi Al Saud Zionists.

• On October 28, the world will vote to end the US blockade on Cuba for the 34th time. For 33 years, the UN General Assembly has declared that blockade a violation of international law by overwhelming margins, most recently 165 to 7 in 2025. The US has ignored every one of those votes. Now the blockade has intensified into something far worse. In January 2026, the US imposed a total energy blockade on Cuba, threatening any country that supplied the island with oil. Nine months later, doctors are performing surgery by cellphone light, neonatal incubators are failing during blackouts, and over 100,000 patients are waiting for surgery, 12,000 of them children. More than 70 people are dying of cancer every day. Infant mortality has risen 148% since 2018. Three hundred of Cuba’s 395 essential medicines are in shortage. From October 24 to 31, as part of the global #NoWarOnCuba campaign, we call on all friends of Cuba, and social justice organizations and movements worldwide to organize, mobilize, raise our voices, and show that the majority of the world is with Cuba. 

• Ecuador Arrests Left-Wing Opposition Leader Luisa González, President Noboa’s Former Rival Latin America’s shift toward the Donroe Doctrine’s right-wing authoritarianism is on full display in Ecuador. Under Washington-backed President Daniel Noboa,  leftist opposition leader Luisa González was barred from running and is now imprisoned under dubious, politically motivated charges. Amid growing anger over austerity and repression, Noboa’s government appears to turn toward dictatorship, weaponizing the justice system against political opponents. 

• Gulf News: British fighter planes will be deployed to help Saudi Arabia defend itself against increasing attacks from Yemen's Houthi rebels, the UK government announced. "The UK will fly defensive counter air missions to support the protection of Saudi cities and critical national infrastructure against aerial attack, using RAF Typhoon fighter jets," the Ministry of Defence (MoD) said in a statement. Britain will also deploy a military transport aircraft "to support the movement of defence material within Saudi Arabia alongside UK military advisers to support Saudi staff officers", the statement added. The Saudi capital's international airport has been targeted by strikes 20 times since the beginning of the month. The Houthis have imposed a naval blockade on Saudi Arabia, hitting its tankers, seizing swathes of Yemen's Red Sea coast vital for oil exports and causing energy prices to jump, while also raining missiles on the kingdom. [This announcement comes as no real surprise considering it was the UK that created Saudi Arabia and supported the Saudi 12-year war on Yemen.]

• The Unione Sindacale di Base has called a general strike for all categories of public and private workers for Friday, October 30th, and is calling for a major day of protest across Italy. At stake is the soaring prices, especially fuel prices, which are weighing heavily on the meager wages of millions of workers, who can no longer even catch up with inflation. On the other hand, the inconsistency of the measures adopted by the Meloni government, which has openly sided with the oil companies and banks, is at stake. But the Meloni government has decided to allow the country to become poorer, enabling large corporations and banks to continue to speculate on our lives. Protests are raging across Europe, from Spain to France to Germany. Youth movements and trade unions are promoting large-scale demonstrations to demand social rights and defend living and working conditions. In Italy, the major trade unions are standing by and watching, even choosing to try to reach an agreement with employers' organizations on representation and wages when protests are needed. Several dockworker unions have launched an international strike for October 30th against arms trafficking, rearmament policies, and the militarization of ports. This historic event is gradually involving workers from more and more countries, extending beyond the Mediterranean to Northern Europe, India, Mexico, South Africa, and the US. Dockworkers are calling for mobilization against the war and the policies of aggression against peoples waged by the US and Israel, and against the complicity of European Union countries. The Unione Sindacale di Base (USB) considers the fight against high living costs and wage moderation to be closely linked to the fight against rearmament. The enormous public spending dedicated to the purchase and construction of new weapons, with a leap of tens of billions of euros in the state defense budget, clashes with the unwillingness to defend our wages and pensions. And instead of considering a real industrial policy for Italy, the government is dismantling what remains and focusing everything on armaments. In this situation, no one can think of saving themselves alone. We need to unite by the protests and build a general mobilization that unites all social and labor sectors to demand price controls, a boost to wages and pensions, and public spending directed toward social services and not weapons. Last year, a wave of protests shook the peninsula, protesting the Meloni government's complicity with the terrorist state of Israel. The government responded to those protests with security decrees and now with a law aimed at preventing criticism of the Palestinian genocide. 

Past campaigns: Catch the cruise missile

This is a chapter from my book entitled 'Come Together Right Now: Organizing Stories from a Fading Empire'. At the time of this I was working for the Florida Coalition for Peace & Justice.

By 1986, the nuclear testing issue was hot in the peace movement and many activists would head out to the Nevada test site to protest the testing program. I was always looking for ways to make these same issues relevant in Florida.

We learned from the media that the Tomahawk nuclear-capable cruise missile was going to be flight-tested over the northwest Florida Panhandle. I remembered that Canada Greenpeace had organized a campaign to resist cruise missile testing in western Canada, and contacted them about a huge net they had used to try to “catch” the cruise. They sent me the 100 foot long net along with a “cruise catcher instructional video” that showed the net being hoisted by weather balloons. On the fifty-foot high net were large letters spelling out the words “Stop Nuclear Testing Now.”

When I got the net, I took it outside my Orlando office and stretched it out on the grass by the street to have a good look at it. A TV news reporter I knew drove by and stopped to ask what I was doing. I told him we were going to try to catch the cruise missile when it was tested over the Florida panhandle. I explained about the video. He asked me if I’d give him the exclusive on the story, and I said I would if he made me a number of copies of the video. We had a deal. He ran the story first, and it created a media circus.

Next, I took the net, all rolled up, to a well-attended news conference in Fort Walton Beach, my old high school stomping grounds near Eglin AFB. The cruise would be launched from ships in the Gulf of Mexico, would fly over the Panhandle into southern Alabama, circle around and then crash land on the Eglin bombing range. My plan was to say we’d catch the missile as it flew over the beach in Fort Walton. I handed out copies of the video to the TV stations.

The media loved the video which showed Greenpeace launching the net in the snows of Canada. Even though we never raised the net off the ground, the very TV image of the net being lofted with balloons somehow made people think that we were serious about the effort. Local Panhandle media ran the video footage on several TV news stations and the New York Times picked up the story. The media asked what I’d do with the cruise if we caught one and I responded that we’d split its belly open, clean out the insides, fill it with charcoal and have a fish fry on the beach. That statement made it into the press as well.

On October 19, 1986 we in the Florida Coalition organized a one day event in Fort Walton Beach called “First Strike! Gulf Coast Symposium on Preventing Nuclear War.” Our guest speakers were Dr. Michio Kaku, professor of Physics at the City University of New York, and the Rev. George Zabelka, the Catholic chaplain assigned to the 509th bomber group that delivered the nuclear death blow in Hiroshima. We met at a hotel in Fort Walton and began with a news conference. This was my first interaction with Michio Kaku, who would later become one of the founding members of the Global Network Against Weapons & Nuclear Power in Space. At the news conference, I was awed by how Michio held the local reporters’ rapt attention as he recounted his own story about relatives in Hiroshima at the time of the U.S. nuclear attack. 

As Michio began to speak to the public at the conference, an old man from the local community approached him and yelled, “Give me liberty or give me death,” while hurling eggs at him. Luckily Michio was not hit. I escorted the would-be assailant out of the event.

Rev. Zabelka told the crowd of one hundred that, “In 1945 my change of heart began. I saw real war...and I want to expose the lie of all war—the absolute contradiction to everything our religion has taught us.”

Following the symposium, the assembled crowd moved outside for a four-mile march through the heart of Fort Walton’s “Miracle Strip,” past shops and restaurants and across the bridge over the Intra-Coastal waterway. We were led that day by Renee Williams of Fort Walton, whose husband was a colonel in the Air Force and assigned to Eglin. She was followed by a courtesy car carrying older activists who had less tolerance for the sweltering mid-day sun. It was topped with a mock cruise missile.

As we marched in one lane of traffic, a camouflaged convoy of troops passed us heading in the opposite direction. They were on maneuvers, practicing invasions on the local beach as part of a 12,000-strong “Operation Bold Eagle” exercise. Many of them waved and flashed peace signs to us as we passed so closely by each other in this military town where I had once lived. You don’t often get that kind of interaction in a peace march.

Earlier that day one of our speakers Shafea M’Balih, from the American Friends Service Committee in Atlanta, told us, “We need to talk with the unconvinced...we must go in the places where we are afraid.”   

Bruce