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.

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.

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.

No foreign warplanes entered the skies over Tehran.

Israeli pilots will not dare to enter a well defended Iranian airspace.

They attacked Iran from the U.S. controlled air spaces of Syria, Iraq and Jordan with long range air-launched missiles.

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://youtube.com/watch?v=RJszN837hA0

Major General Serhiy Krivonos - 'we seem to be indifferent to the extreme. In 2022, the Russians established over 50 training departments and centers based in civilian higher education institutions. We have almost none'

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.

Read the article, not only the headline:

While Hamas and other Palestinian armed movements may have been used as Israel’s rationale for its hardline stance, it was not a primary factor in the failure of the Oslo Peace Process. The roots of that failure lie in multiple variables: Israel’s strategic decisions, its ongoing occupation, unconditional U.S. support for Israel, and the broader dynamics of Palestinian resistance. Suppose Hamas were truly the core issue in the failure of Oslo. Why would Israel continue to expand settlements, target civilians, and tighten its control over the West Bank—a region where, unlike in Gaza, the Palestinian Authority promotes non-violence and actively suppresses those who resist occupation by force?

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

[plus other articles on Gaza on Updates page]
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October 29, 2024

https://archive.is/pHndN

Chinese Ambassador to Iran Cong Peiwu reaffirmed China’s commitment to strengthening trade relations with Iran across all sectors.