DUBAI/RIYADH, Oct 11 (Reuters) - Yemen’s Houthis warned airlines, travellers and airport workers on Sunday to stay away ‌from Saudi airports, a day after an attack on Riyadh’s international airport killed 12 people and wounded more than 300 others.

It was the deadliest such attack in the kingdom in more than a decade and comes amid an escalation of fighting between the Iran-backed Houthis and Saudi-backed Yemeni government forces.

“We renew our warning to all airlines, experts, employees, workers and ​travellers against using Saudi airports and airspace, as they are vulnerable to attack and have become a theatre of operations for our ​forces, with the exception of the airports in (the holy cities of) Mecca and Medina,” the Houthis said in a ⁠post on X.

cross-posted from: https://news.abolish.capital/post/85055

By Vijay Prashad  –  Oct 8, 2026

The U.S. wants to reorganise the mineral wealth of the Western Hemisphere around its own industrial and military needs while keeping China at arm’s length.

The map of the new war over minerals stretches from the lithium flats of South America to the rare-earth deposits of Greenland. Its vocabulary is familiar: supply-chain resilience, national security, diversification and partnership.

Beneath these neutral phrases lies an older project.

The United States wants to reorganize the mineral wealth of the Western Hemisphere around its own industrial and military needs while keeping China at arm’s length. The latest name for this ambition is President Donald Trump’s Corollary to the Monroe Doctrine of 1823 — crudely nicknamed the “Donroe Doctrine.” The joke is crude, but the politics are not.

Critical minerals are not inherently critical. Copper, lithium, graphite, cobalt, nickel and rare earths become critical within a particular system of production that increasingly requires electrical grids, batteries, data centers, semiconductors, satellites and fighter aircraft.

The International Energy Agency expects demand for these minerals to almost double by 2040 under stated policies, with lithium demand more than tripling. The decisive bottleneck is not geology but the command of metallurgy, patents, finance, separating, refining and markets. China refines more than 90 percent of global gallium, graphite, manganese and several key categories of rare earths. This is the industrial fact that Washington’s security documents translate into the language of “threat.”

Marjorie Arnfield, England, Breaking the Coal, c. 1920. (Via Tricontinental Institute)

In April 2025, the White House ordered a Section 232 investigation into processed critical minerals and their derivative products, treating import dependence as a possible threat to national security.

In January 2026, after the investigation concluded that such imports did threaten US security, Trump directed negotiations with trading partners and proposed price floors and other trade restrictions.

In July, he invoked the Defense Production Act for the recovery of critical minerals from scrap and used goods. Taken together, these measures by the United States government describe a belligerent industrial policy that is backed by tariffs and military threats.

US critical minerals policy is designed not only to seek mines abroad but also to enforce political authority over where these minerals may be sold, whose technology may process them and which banks may finance the chain.

The 2025 Trump executive order on seabed minerals stated its objective with unusual clarity: the United States will strengthen “partnerships with allies and industry to counter China’s growing influence over seabed mineral resources.”

The Trump Corollary extends that logic across the hemisphere, treating Latin America and the Caribbean not as a region of sovereign development projects but as the near abroad of the United States: a protected reservoir of agricultural commodities, metals, minerals, ports and sea-lanes.

In his monumental book Open Veins of Latin America (1971), Eduardo Galeano wrote of the “mortality of wealth” — how the region’s natural abundance brought sorrow to its peoples. This ugly contradiction between wealth and exploitation continues.

Aage Gitz-Johansen, Denmark, Eskimoen dør / The Eskimo Dies, 1958. (Via Tricontinental Institute)

Greenland reveals the Trump Corollary in its most naked form. Far from an empty white space as it is often portrayed, this Inuit society of roughly 57,000 people has a long history of Danish colonial rule and an unfinished struggle for self-determination. Its position between North America and Europe, the US military base at Pituffik, the opening Arctic sea routes and deposits that include rare-earth minerals have made it an object of renewed attention.

Trump’s repeated desire to acquire Greenland reduces the Inuit people’s homeland to real estate and military strategy. Trump claims that he has now taken Greenland from Denmark, but the details of the security agreement are far more ambiguous than his social media posts.

The pressure on Greenland and on Latin America is part of the same imperial imagination. The US sees the former as its northern shield and the latter as its southern storehouse.

In both, the stated aim is to prevent Chinese capital, infrastructure and technology from gaining a durable position. Yet what is at stake is not the freedom of Chinese investment but the sovereignty of countries to chart their own independent foreign and economic policy. The issue is that Washington claims the authority to decide which relationships are permissible. The promise of sovereignty becomes conditional on alignment with US imperial ambitions.

Rosemary Namuli Karuga, Kenya, Three Women Walking, 2001. (Via Tricontinental Institute)

Latin America has lived through this story. Galeano’s book details the journey of silver from Bolivia, guano from Peru, nitrates from Chile, copper from Chile and Peru, iron ore from Brazil and oil from Venezuela to successive centers of capitalist accumulation.

The commodity changes from country to country but the structure endures: extraction at the periphery, technology and finance elsewhere and socialized damage at the pithead. The so-called green transition can repaint this structure without overturning it.

Venezuela in a Time of Geopolitical Climate Change

The figures reveal both the opportunity and the danger. The International Energy Agency reports that, excluding lithium, Latin American countries refined on average only 20 percent of the key energy minerals they extracted in 2025. Under the existing project pipeline, the region could capture about $185 billion in economic value by 2035, but only one-fifth would come from refining. Greater local refining could raise that value to roughly $220 billion.

The UN Conference on Trade and Development argues for a regional industrial policy with greater public investment in infrastructure and education, clear rules for locally sourced goods and labor (local-content rules) and technology transfer and control over the pace and terms of extraction. The question is whether these tools will serve public planning or merely subsidize foreign corporations.

Sebastiao Salgado, Brazil, Serra Pelada Gold Mine, Brazil, 1986. (Via Tricontinental Institute)

The epicenter of this debate is Brazil, which holds about 23 percent of known rare-earth reserves but produces roughly 1 percent of global output and lacks an integrated processing chain that runs from separation through metal and alloy production to permanent magnet manufacturing.

At the Pela Ema mine in Goiás, the Serra Verde Group produces a mixed rare-earth carbonate. The difficult and profitable stages take place abroad. Brazil keeps the excavation, some jobs and taxes and the environmental liabilities while higher-value production, patents and strategic control leave the country.

This is why the proposed acquisition of Serra Verde by US-backed USA Rare Earth matters. The deposit contains dysprosium and terbium, indispensable for high-performance magnets used in electric motors and military systems. US financing and purchase commitments turn the acquisition into more than a private transaction: it is part of a state-directed attempt to construct a supply chain that excludes China. Around the mine, rural and quilombola communities face polluted streams, threats to their land and mining claims that menace agrarian-reform settlements. A mineral cannot be called “green” when its costs are transferred to the people who live above it.

Brazil’s answer cannot be a simple change of customer. Cooperation with China, the United States, or Europe should be judged by what knowledge and capacity remain in Brazil, not by the nationality of the buyer. Certain basic rules must apply:

• Public control over geological information and strategic deposits.
• Public finance through the Brazilian Development Bank (BNDES).
• Public investigation of the ecological impact, including environmental licensing to examine cumulative watershed impacts.
• Indigenous, quilombola and local agrarian communities must have enforceable rights to free, prior, and informed consultation.
• Scrutiny of foreign takeovers of mines.
• Technology transfer requirements written into contracts.
• Research led by Brazilian universities and public research institutes.
• Mandatory domestic separation and refining of the ore.
• Regional cooperation to build scale in batteries, chemicals, machinery, magnets and recycling.

Tom McGuinness, Britain, Belt Fitters, 1963. (Via Tricontinental Institute)

The countries of the South must reject the false choice between serving a Chinese-centered chain and entering a US-controlled one. Social movements must fight for popular sovereignty, which would require that these arrangements be made with public companies, through public institutions, with transparent mandates, common environmental standards, and shared research. The extraction of metals and minerals must be planned for socially necessary uses and not by the dictates of luxury consumption and permanent war.

The deepest vulnerability exposed by the mineral contest is not dependence on one country. It is the subordination of life to supply chains governed elsewhere.

The Trump Corollary promises to secure the hemisphere and its wealth for the United States. A people’s doctrine would secure natural resources for the benefit of those who live on the land, prioritizing electricity before exports, water before waste, knowledge before royalties, and sovereignty before alignment.

The wealth beneath the soil must become visible in schools, hospitals, research centers, laboratories, restored ecosystems, and dignified lives — a future that cannot be shipped away in sacks of concentrate.

Lena Hugo, South Africa, Miner I, 2008. (Via Tricontinental Institute)

In 1904, the Nicaraguan poet Rubén Darío wrote “A Roosevelt (To Roosevelt).” Addressed to US President Theodore Roosevelt, the poem is a powerful indictment of imperialismo yanqui (Yankee imperialism). The stanzas below allude to Victor Hugo’s 1872 “Le Message de Grant” (Grant’s Message), in which Hugo writes to US President Ulysses S. Grant that the US flag, “sown with stars,” is “obscured” with a “stain of mud” (tache de boue):

Los Estados Unidos son potentes y grandes.

Cuando ellos se estremecen hay un hondo temblor

que pasa por las vértebras enormes de los Andes.

Si clamáis, se oye como el rugir del león.

Ya Hugo a Grant le dijo: “Las estrellas son vuestras”.

(Apenas brilla, alzándose, el argentino sol

y la estrella chilena se levanta…) Sois ricos.

Juntáis al culto de Hércules el culto de Mammón;

y alumbrando el camino de la fácil conquista,

la Libertad levanta su antorcha en Nueva York.

The United States is powerful and great.

When it shudders, a deep tremor

runs through the enormous vertebrae of the Andes.

If you cry out, it sounds like a lion’s roar.

Hugo already told Grant: ‘The stars are yours’.

(The Argentine sun, now dawning, has hardly begun to shine,

and the Chilean star now rises…) You are rich.

You worship Hercules and Mammon alike;

and lighting the path of easy conquest,

Liberty raises her torch in New York.

(Consortium News)

From Orinoco Tribune via This RSS Feed.

Tim Kennedy a former UFC fighter and now a mercenary working for US tied company “blackwater” was ambushed with his unit in Congo, unfortunately he was not dead but severely wounded with three bullets in his leg.

Dana Joudeh was in shackles when she found out she was pregnant.

The 35-year-old from the West Bank city of Nablus was newly married and had just spent her first night in an Israeli prison. Israeli forces had ~~arrested her without charges and put her under administrative detention, an arbitrary condition for holding Palestinians hostage~~ abducted her.

She lost consciousness in front of Israeli soldiers at Sharon Prison, a ~~temporary detention facility~~ torture dungeon in the city of Netanya, and they took her to a hospital blindfolded. There, with her hands and feet bound in chains, she was given a pregnancy test that came back positive.

Israeli forces used sound grenades inside the prison, according to Joudeh’s family and her lawyer, Hassan Abbadi, who provides volunteer legal support for detained Palestinians. They said soldiers would force the women to lie face down on the floor.

On September 12, Joudeh gave birth by C-section under local anesthesia, watching the operation as it was happening. Maram said that Joudeh’s hands and feet were shackled while she was cut open, and female Israeli soldiers surrounded her with guns in the operating room, standing guard.

Joudeh’s doctor was Israeli, and she recalled him speaking to her in cruel, degrading terms, according to Maram. “The terrorist has arrived,” she remembered him saying about the fragile newborn. Joudeh named her Lia.

cross-posted from: https://lemmy.ml/post/53827351

Duration - 5:21 [a video on Peertube about Cuba from the news collective Belly Of The Beast]

When Massachusetts-based musician and activist Ben Grosscup (@BenGrosscup) learned his mother had Alzheimer’s, he turned to Cuba for help.

He traveled to Havana to obtain NeuralCIM, a groundbreaking Cuban medication that has had remarkable results in slowing the progression of Alzheimer's.

The treatment was developed by Cuban scientist Dr. Teresita Rodríguez, whose work Belly of the Beast documented in Teresita’s Dream: https://peertube.world/w/12Ys6gA19mfGA8Li574VY5

Grosscup has long opposed his government’s economic war on Cuba. But as intensified sanctions and an oil blockade limit the island’s ability to produce medicines like NeuralCIM, U.S. policy became more personal.

“The blockade is harming my own family,” he says.

The fastest-growing branch of Al Qaeda today is in West Africa. Earlier this week, former rock star Iyad Ag Ghali and his followers, known as JNIM, launched a massive uprising in the African nation of Mali, capturing several cities, killing Defense Minister Sadio Camara, and threatening Bamako, the capital. This lightning offensive by Al Qaeda had an unlikely source of support: Ukrainian-trained drone pilots.

Technically, Ukraine was not and is not directly supporting Al Qaeda. The movement for an independent Azawad, which is older than JNIM, has actually fought against the Islamist organization. But right now, Ukraine's Tuareg proxies are helping Al Qaeda capture and hold territory in Africa, using the same tactics that Ukraine had honed fighting Russia. It is a strange, unexpected case of foreign policy blowback.

The dilemma over Ukrainian support for Azawad echoes some other uncomfortable moments in U.S. foreign policy. In the 1980s, the U.S. supported Cambodian anticommunists led by former Prince Norodom Sihanouk and former Prime Minister Son Sann—who happened to be allied with the recently overthrown Khmer Rouge. Although the U.S. government "scrupulously avoided" contact with the Khmer Rouge itself, Sihanouk laughed to journalists that "the devils, they are there with Sihanouk and Son Sann."

cross-posted from: https://expressional.social/users/Peter_Link/statuses/117412995120379379

Edward Said, and the Palestine that was never an empty desert

[from FB post by We Stand With Francesca Albanese]

#EdwardSaid was born on November 1, 1935, in Jerusalem, Palestine.

He dedicated his work to dismantling the false historiography used to justify the founding of the State of Israel.

Before the first Aliyot, Jews made up barely 3% of the population.

#Palestine was not an empty desert. It was a prosperous territory of the Ottoman Empire, with banks, industry, and agricultural exports that rivaled those of Italy.

Its population grew endogenously precisely because it was a thriving place.

Much of the population living today in #Gaza and the #WestBank descends from the families expelled from the lands that now make up #Israel.

#FreePalestine #SanctionIsrael
#AntiZionismIsNotAntisemitism #BDS #DivestFromIsrael #SolidarityWithPalestineIsNotAntisemitism #EqualRightsForAllFromTheRiverToTheSeaIsNotAntisemitic
#JewHatredHurtsPalestine
#news #politics
@palestine

cross-posted from: https://hexbear.net/post/9750154

The international reputation of the Nobel Peace Prize, which has suffered in progressive and human rights circles over recent years, may be on the path to improvement after Friday's announcement that this year's award has been given to Navi Pillay, a person of "exceptional courage" who has been at the forefront of accountability efforts for apartheid, prosecuting war crimes, and upholding international law for decades.

In its statement, The Norwegian Nobel Committee said Pillay—who during her career served as a judge on the High Court in South Africa, her native country, and later the International Criminal Tribunal for Rwanda and the International Criminal Court (ICC)—"has been instrumental in ensuring that war crimes, crimes against humanity and genocide are prosecuted."

Pillay also served for six years as the United Nations High Commissioner for Human Rights, from 2008 to 2014, and more recently chaired the UN Independent International Commission of Inquiry on the Occupied Palestinian Territory, which generated a 2025 report concluding that the Israeli government had committed genocide in Gaza.

"The last thing I did is the report on Gaza naming what is happening there as genocide. One of the main reactions to that report [was] paying tribute to me for my courage.. why would you need courage to speak the truth?" Navi Pillay upon winning the 2026 Nobel peace prize https://t.co/hYPA94eFLe
— Saul Staniforth (@SaulStaniforth) October 9, 2026

"The last thing I did is the report on Gaza naming what is happening there as genocide," Pillay said Friday. "One of the main reactions to that report is paying tribute to me for my 'courage.' And you can imagine our surprise—why would you need courage to speak the truth?"

"Is it true?" asked Pillay when first notified of the award, fittingly while at the Nuremburg Court where Nazi's were tried for their atrocities of last century.

In a moment of levity, surrounded by colleagues applauding her achievement, Pillay said, "Thank you so much. If you clap a little bit more, I may share this prize with [US President Donald] Trump."

Trump, accused of war crimes himself, has notoriously said he deserves the Nobel Peace Prize despite his record of violating international laws, kidnapping or assassinating foreign heads of state, initiating wars of aggression, and carrying out a lawless campaign of lethal attacks in the Pacific Ocean and Caribbean which human rights experts have denounced as "murder spree."

Agnes Callamard, secretary general of Amnesty International, called Pillay's selection an "amazing moment" for human rights.

"We are at the Nuremberg Court; I cannot think of a stronger symbol for her Nobel prize," said Callamard. "We are all so thrilled!"

Amazing moment. Navi Pillay has received the Nobel Peace Prize ! https://t.co/HL3r1PJzLOWe are at the Nuremberg Court; I cannot think of a stronger symbol for her Nobel prize. We are all so thrilled! This is her first reactions upon hearing the news: https://t.co/Crbj6XdiyQ
— Agnes Callamard (@AgnesCallamard) October 9, 2026

"At a time of existential challenges—including more wars and conflicts than the world has seen in a long time—international law is no longer just a supplement to peace and security. It is an absolute necessity," the Nobel Committee said in its announcement.

Warning that "the system of international law is under tremendous pressure, and its institutions are under attack," the committee said "a shift towards power politics at the expense of legal frameworks and global respect for law and justice" threatens peace and stability worldwide, a veiled but clear reference to the antagonism the US government under Trump has shown to the ICC, the United Nations, and other legal institutions and frameworks.

"Whenever might overtakes right, it undermines stability, trust and peaceful co-existence," the statement said. And continued:

History has shown that a world operating without the rule of law is unjust, unwise and inhumane. The judges – those who guard the thin red line between order and chaos—are therefore highly deserving of our praise. But today, as these same judges are sanctioned, and their institutions are attacked, we need people of courage, vision and determination—qualities that Navi Pillay demonstrates in her work on the bench.

Pillay, it concluded, "is one of the great defenders of international legal principles in our time. Her distinguished career reminds us of the need to support, fortify and expand the global rule of law. Navi Pillay’s commitment to justice and human dignity is a source of hope and inspiration to all who seek to bring about a more peaceful world."

From Common Dreams via This RSS Feed.

cross-posted from: https://lemmy.ml/post/53804936

The film shatters ‘respectable’ Israelis’ illusion of moral superiority: The most prestigious, highly educated soldiers are the primary culprits of genocide.

from +972’s Sunday Recap
+972 Magazine [published in Israel]
Oct. 4, 2026

Also:

• ‘The Gaza Holocaust won’t be forgotten’: An Israeli musician screams into the void
• On Israeli campuses, Palestinian students are guilty until proven innocent
• ‘I’d rather die than go back’: A Palestinian teen’s 10-month nightmare in Israeli jail
• Palestinian MKs in Israel have long faced election bans. This time is different

The Nobel peace prize has been awarded to Navi Pillay, the South African former UN human rights chief who chaired the UN commission that concluded Israel was guilty of genocide in Gaza.

That commission concluded last year that the state of Israel was guilty of genocidal acts in Gaza “with the specific intent to destroy Palestinians in Gaza”, and said the country’s prime minister, Benjamin Netanyahu, its president, Isaac Herzog, and its former defence minister Yoav Gallant had “incited the commission of genocide”.

Israel refused to cooperate with the commission, arguing it was biased, and rejected its report as “scandalous”. The Israeli foreign ministry reacted furiously to news of Pillay’s award on Friday.

“If there were an award for lies, hatred, and blood libels, Navi Pillay wouldn’t just be a contender. She’d be a frontrunner,” the ministry said on X, adding: “Awarding Pillay the Nobel Peace Prize isn’t a recognition of justice. It’s the grotesque weaponization of an award to legitimize anti-Israel hatred and prejudice.

“Now that the Nobel commission has rewarded the biggest lie of the 21st century, Joseph Goebbels is certainly applauding from hell.”

source

International Court of Colonialism doing colonialism, who'da thunk LMBO

October 7, 2026

A NEW FREEDOM FLOTILLA, led by the aptly named Tenacity, set sail from Bristol, UK in September and headed for Gaza in yet another attempt to break Israel’s siege and blockade of Gaza.

A significant percentage of the ship’s passengers and crew—whose countries of origin include Denmark, Norway, Spain, Ireland, France, the United Kingdom, the United States and Palestine (currently residing in Sweden)—have been kidnapped, detained and tortured by Israeli soldiers on previous Gaza-bound solidarity missions. Nevertheless, they are determined to challenge Gaza’s isolation.

Captain Tomás Alberto Moraté Serna, who hails from Spain, is the captain of the Tenacity. He was kidnapped, brutalized, tortured and deported by Israel in April 2026. He explained that he is back for the same reasons he joined the Gaza mission in the first place: “I am not happy with what I see in the world, and I need to do my part” to transform it.