On October 30, the UN General Assembly once again convened to debate and vote on a non-binding resolution to end the US blockade against Cuba. This year, 187 countries voted in favor of the resolution. The United States and Israel were the only countries to vote against it, and only one country, Moldova, abstained.

Cuba has presented the resolution “Necessity of ending the economic, commercial and financial embargo imposed by the United States of America against Cuba” every year since 1992 (except 2020), to the UNGA. Every year it passes in an almost unanimous vote, showcasing the international consensus against the US policy.

This year’s resolution comes as Cuba experiences a historic energy crisis and is recovering from the devastating Tropical Storm Oscar. Despite these challenges, Biden refuses to lift the blockade, take Cuba off the State Sponsors of Terrorism list, or lift Trump’s additional 243 sanctions against Cuba. US-based Cuba solidarity activists have organized a fundraiser to deliver essential humanitarian aid to Cuba as it faces these crises.

“US imperialism continues violence & genocide, but the peoples of the world have had enough and call for an end to the blockade,” writes the International Peoples’ Assembly.

Many were pleasantly surprised to see that the far-right government of Argentina supported Cuba’s resolution, abandoning its proclaimed allies Israel and the US. However, hours after the vote, Argentine President Javier Milei announced that he was firing Foreign Minister Diana Mondino because of the vote. Her replacement is Gerardo Werthein, Argentina’s current ambassador to the US who is a businessman and an ideologically committed Zionist.

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cross-posted from: https://lemmy.ml/post/21976398

By Sharon Zhang, Truthout
Published October 30, 2024

The pro-opposition President, Salome Zourabichvili, stated that Georgians were "victims of what can only be described as a Russian special operation -- a new form of hybrid warfare waged against our people and our country." However, when asked by Western journalists to substantiate this, she could only say that the government had used "Russian methodology."

The Biden administration and other Western governments and institutions have not even waited for detailed reports from their own observers to call the election results into question. Moreover, it must be stated with regret that many of these observers can hardly be called objective.

President Biden, absurdly, "cited international and local observers' assessments that elections in Georgia were not free, nor fair;" absurdly, because the local observers are overwhelmingly from NGOs closely linked to the Georgian opposition. As to monitors from the West, in many cases their parent institutions have spent months denouncing the Georgian government as undemocratic and under Moscow's sway.

Kiev will conscript 160,000 more troops over the next three months, according to statements from lawmakers and media outlets. More than a million soldiers have already been drafted, yet high losses have left the Ukrainian Armed Forces plagued by manpower shortages.

The Ukrainian Armed Forces had around 250,000 active-duty personnel at the beginning of 2022, a number that rapidly swelled once Vladimir Zelensky called up reservists and forbade draft-age men from leaving the country.

This spring, faced with mounting losses, Kiev lowered the draft age from 27 to 25 and significantly tightened mobilization rules, requiring potential recruits to report to conscription offices for "data validation." These checks often result in people being immediately taken into the army and sent to the front line.

US State Department officials have identified nearly 500 potential incidents of civilians being harmed by US-supplied weapons during Israel’s military offensive in Gaza, Reuters has reported.

However, no further action has been taken on any of them, three sources, including a US official familiar with the matter, said this week.

Jaume Asens, a member of the European Parliament, has reported that the Israeli occupation forces used tear gas against an international human rights delegation near Nablus in the occupied West Bank, according to Sama.

According to Spanish newspaper La Vanguardia, Asens and Colau arrived in Palestine on Monday as part of an international team to “investigate systematic violations of international law by Israel.”

https://archive.is/skJoZ

A senior officer in Iran’s Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps (IRGC) threatened Israel yesterday with major strikes in the coming days in retaliation for the occupation state’s attack against Iranian military sites which killed four soldiers at the weekend, Iranian media outlets have reported.

“The Zionist entity will receive more deadly strikes in the coming days,” the Sabereen news agency quoted General Mohammad Reza Naqdi as saying. “The Zionists will be surprised with new actions, initiatives and innovations.”

At least 63 people have died in eastern Spain in the worst natural disaster to hit the country in recent memory.

Emergency services in the southeastern region of Valencia have confirmed a death toll of 62 people just after noon local time on Wednesday, up from 51 earlier in the day.

Meanwhile, the central government office for Castilla La Mancha region confirmed that an 88-year-old woman was found dead in Cuenca province.

The death toll appeared to be Europe's worst from flooding since 2021, when at least 185 people died in Germany.

cross-posted from: https://lemmy.ml/post/21939746

[plus other articles on Gaza on Updates page]
[gift article - expires in 30 days]

October 29, 2024

https://archive.is/pHndN

cross-posted from: https://lemmy.ml/post/21939907

By Nidal Al-Mughrabi
October 29, 2024 9:12 AM EDT

Conor here: I don’t understand why this is so hard. If Europe doesn’t want or is unprepared for so many refugees, it should stop with the destruction of societies in the vicinity of the “garden” walls. The media always seems to ignore Europe’s role in creating these crises. The way the EU and/or some of its member countries keeps launching or supporting these bloody messes (Libya, Syria, Ukraine, Palestine, Lebanon) is enough to make one wonder if it’s actually a conscious policy in order to bring in more exploitable refugee labor. But to believe that, you’d have to believe the current crop of European officials and their benefactors have the ability of such foresight.

[...]

https://archive.is/4o8YG

The Israeli army today confirmed that four members of its elite Unit 888, also known as the “Ghost Unit,” were eliminated during a resistance operation in northern Gaza. This ambush, led by Palestinian resistance fighters, resulted in the elimination of a commanding officer and three soldiers, with another officer critically injured in Jabalia.

Unit 888, established in 2019 as part of the “Tnufa” (Momentum) Plan spearheaded by former Chief of Staff Aviv Kochavi, is an elite combat unit designed for rapid, multi-dimensional warfare. Known for its versatility, the unit combines forces from various branches of the Israeli military—including infantry, armor, intelligence, and aerial units. Trained for all terrains and equipped with advanced weaponry, each Ghost Unit fighter is armed with personal drones, advanced night vision, and a real-time operational intelligence platform, the ZID 750, which integrates information from multiple fronts.

The Ghost Unit’s Key Features and Capabilities Ghost Unit 888 operates on a unique, high-speed combat philosophy called the “kill chain,” aimed at instantly detecting and killing targets. Its rapid response strategy is designed to close the detection-to-elimination cycle in mere seconds, far faster than traditional combat timelines. For instance, recent conflicts like Ukraine demonstrate a five-minute detection-to-response time, yet Unit 888 seeks to compress this to near-instantaneous action.

Security expert Omar Ashour describes Unit 888 as a multi-dimensional force capable of integrating five dimensions of warfare: ground, electronic, cyber, aerial, and subterranean. This high-level integration allows the unit to adapt swiftly to urban warfare challenges, such as those encountered in Gaza’s densely populated areas, where resistance forces like Hamas deploy complex underground networks.

A High-Stakes Debut and Strategic Significance Unit 888 first gained operational experience in 2020, focusing initially on Hezbollah-related activities near Israel’s northern border. However, Gaza has tested the unit in unprecedented ways, underscoring both its combat prowess and the high risks involved. During the October 7 military operation, Ghost Unit’s commanding officer Roy Levy, training chief Yotam Ben Bist, coordination officer Yonatan Gotin, and officer Itay Nahias were killed by Al-Qassam Brigades fighters. This loss underscores the true balance of power between the Palestinian resistance and the Israeli army when modern technology is set aside.

Israeli forces have killed nearly 100 Palestinians, including 25 children, in an air raid on homes in north Gaza where displaced people were sheltering.

The bombing late on Monday targeted a five-storey building in Beit Lahia, a northern town that has been under a severe Israeli siege and ground offensive for 24 days.

At least 93 fatalities have been confirmed, including 25 children, according to the Gaza-based government media office. Forty more are missing.

Footage aired on Al Jazeera showed recovered bodies covered in blankets at the attack site. A woman was seen mourning next to victims, including several of her children and grandchildren.

The Ministry of Family and Social Policy argues this is necessary to protect Polish workers from unfair competition and to safeguard vulnerable immigrants.

Translation: we want to retain our whiteness.

Further context (in lib Polish): https://archive.is/LQlDe

The letter represents perhaps the most forceful statement of condemnation—and largest commitment to cultural boycott—ever made by the global literary community with regard to the Israeli cultural sector:

This is a genocide, as leading expert scholars and institutions have been saying for months. Israeli officials speak plainly of their motivations to eliminate the population of Gaza, to make Palestinian statehood impossible, and to seize Palestinian land. This follows 75 years of displacement, ethnic cleansing and apartheid.

Culture has played an integral role in normalizing these injustices. Israeli cultural institutions, often working directly with the state, have been crucial in obfuscating, disguising and artwashing the dispossession and oppression of millions of Palestinians for decades.

We have a role to play. We cannot in good conscience engage with Israeli institutions without interrogating their relationship to apartheid and displacement. This was the position taken by countless authors against South Africa; it was their contribution to the struggle against apartheid there.

Therefore: we will not work with Israeli cultural institutions that are complicit or have remained silent observers of the overwhelming oppression of Palestinians.

Percival Everett, Sally Rooney, Viet Thanh Nguyen, Kaveh Akbar, Michelle Alexander, Naomi Klein, Téa Obreht, Peter Carey, Jericho Brown, Natalie Diaz, Mary Gaitskill, Hari Kunzru, Rachel Kushner, Jhumpa Lahiri, Justin Torres, Raven Leilani, Susan Abulhawa, Valeria Luiselli, Jia Tolentino, Ben Lerner, Jonathan Lethem, Hisham Matar, Maaza Mengiste, China Miéville, Torrey Peters, Max Porter, Miriam Toews, Leslie Jamison, Layli Long Soldier, and Ocean Vuong are among the hundreds of prominent authors who have signed an open letter pledging not to work with “Israeli cultural institutions that are complicit or have remained silent observers of the overwhelming oppression of Palestinians.”