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China’s exports fall in October as trade war takes toll
(www.scmp.com)
1
Peruvian parliament declares Mexico’s president “persona non grata”
(www.telesurenglish.net)
Less than half of Peru’s 130 congressmen approved a motion by right-wing congressmen declaring Mexican President Claudia Sheinbaum “persona non grata” after giving asylum to opposition leader Betssy Chavez. In a session that culminated in a vote of 63 members of the right-wing benches in favor of the motion, 34 against left-wing and center benches […]
From teleSUR English via This RSS Feed.
2
TeleSUR and Brasil 247 sign institutional cooperation agreement
(www.telesurenglish.net)
"This agreement comes at a crucial time, when Latin America is facing military threats stemming from disinformation," emphasized Leonardo Attuch, president of Brasil 247.
From teleSUR English via This RSS Feed.
2
Monroe Doctrine Revival? Senate Keeps Trump’s Latitude on Venezuela
(www.telesurenglish.net)
The decision preserves presidential authority for unilateral military action amid the ongoing deployment of warships near the South American nation’s coast. The United States Senate on Thursday rejected a bipartisan resolution that sought to prevent President Donald Trump from ordering a military attack against Venezuela without prior congressional authorization. Related: U.S. Senate to Vote on […]
From teleSUR English via This RSS Feed.
6
10,000+ Palestinians Buried Beneath Gaza Rubble in 'World's Largest Mass Grave'
(www.commondreams.org)
A civil society group in Gaza on Thursday appealed for international assistance to help recover the bodies of more than 10,000 Palestinians killed by Israeli forces who remain buried beneath the rubble of the flattened strip.
Referring to Gaza as "the world's largest mass grave," Aladdin Al-Aklouk, a spokesperson for the National Committee for Missing Persons in the Genocide Against Gaza, said that "these martyrs were buried under the rubble of their homes, which have turned into mass graves, without their final dignity being preserved or their bodies being retrieved."
"We express our shock and strong condemnation of the absence of an effective role by international organizations and humanitarian bodies, especially those concerned with the issue of missing persons, in light of the ongoing escalating humanitarian disaster," Al-Aklouk continued.
"The remnants are ticking time bombs and pose a danger to the population in the Gaza Strip. We need specialists alongside the teams working in the sector," he added. "We call on the world to send international teams to recover the bodies of the missing. We call on the world to provide the necessary equipment to recover the bodies."
"The remnants are ticking time bombs and pose a danger to the population in the Gaza Strip."
According to the Gaza Health Ministry—whose casualty figures have been deemed accurate by Israeli military officials and a likely undercount by multiple peer-reviewed studies—at least 68,875 Palestinians have been killed by Israeli forces since October 7, 2023. Although a US-brokered ceasefire technically remains in effect, Gaza officials have documented over 200 Israeli violations in which more than 240 Palestinians have been killed and over 600 others injured.
More than 170,600 other Gazans have been wounded in a war which is the subject of an ongoing International Court of Justice genocide case and for which Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu and former Defense Minister Yoav Gallant are wanted by the International Criminal Court for alleged crimes against humanity and war crimes, including murder and forced starvation.
Palestinians are struggling to dig through more than 60 million tons of debris after over 80% of all structures in Gaza were destroyed or damaged by two years of Israeli bombardment. That's more than 200,000 buildings and other structures.
United Nations experts estimate it will take seven years for 100 trucks to remove all debris across Gaza, where more than three-quarters of roads are damaged and unexploded ordnance and Israeli booby traps beneath the debris continue to pose deadly threats to recovery workers and survivors in general.
Israel's destruction and denial of the heavy equipment needed for such a monumental recovery operation has left Palestinians reliant upon rudimentary tools such as shovels, pickaxes, wheelbarrows, rakes, hoes, and even their bare hands. They dig amid the stench of death and decomposition that lingers in the air.
The Abu Naser family lost more than 130 members in an October 29, 2024 strike on their five-story home in Beit Lahia, where over 200 people were sheltering when it was bombed. Mohammed Nabil Abu Naser, who survived the bombing, immediately started digging through the rubble, first in search of survivors and later, for bodies.
“It was all bodies and body parts," he explained. More than a year later, many of the victims have yet to be recovered.
"About 50 of them are still under the rubble to this day, a full year later," Abu Naser told The Guardian on Monday.
Often, Gazans survived initial bombings only to die slowly trapped beneath rubble. Two American volunteer surgeons, Drs. Mark Perlmutter and Feroze Sidhwa, last year described how wounded survivors suffered “unimaginably cruel deaths from dehydration and sepsis while trapped alone in a pitch-black tomb that alternates as an oven during the day and a freezer at night."
“One shudders to think how many children have died this way in Gaza," they added.
From Common Dreams via This RSS Feed.
6
Supreme Court Allows Trump to Impose Anti-Trans Passport Policy
(www.commondreams.org)
The US Supreme Court issued an emergency order Thursday upholding President Donald Trump's discriminatory policy barring transgender and nonbinary Americans from changing the gender listed on their passports from the gender assigned to them at birth.
Reversing a lower court decision blocking the policy in June, the six conservative justices assessed in an unsigned majority opinion that by requiring passports to reflect a person's sex at birth, the State Department "is merely attesting to a historical fact without subjecting anyone to differential treatment."
Justice Ketanji Brown Jackson wrote the dissent, which was joined by the two other liberals, Justices Elena Kagan and Sonya Sotomayor. Lamenting the Trump administration's "routine" reliance on the court to issue emergency rulings, Brown wrote that she would have denied the request, because “the documented real-world harms to these plaintiffs obviously outweigh the government’s unexplained (and inexplicable) interest in immediate implementation of the passport policy.”
Last month, a group of transgender and nonbinary plaintiffs, represented by the ACLU, requested that the court reject the Trump administration's petition for a stay on the lower court's ruling blocking the policy. That ruling had come after transgender and nonbinary plaintiffs testified that they were afraid to submit passport applications to the government as a result of the policy.
"Forcing transgender people to carry passports that out them against their will increases the risk that they will face harassment and violence and adds to the considerable barriers they already face in securing freedom, safety, and acceptance," said Jon Davidson, senior counsel for the ACLU’s LGBTQ & HIV Project.
The attorneys argued last month before the Supreme Court that the policy "irrationally undermines the very purpose of passports—identifying a US citizen when they travel” and also is “motivated by anti-transgender animus.”
That animus has been on display since Trump's first day in office this term, when he signed an executive order declaring that his administration would only recognize “two sexes, male and female," based on one's “biological classification” at birth.
The passport policy has already led to confusion, which the actress Hunter Schafer—a transgender woman—put on display in February, when she was issued a passport that identified her as male in conflict with both her appearance and other legal documents like her driver's license.
— (@)
“This decision will cause immediate, widespread, and irreparable harm to all those who are being denied accurate identity documents,” said Jessie Rossman, legal director of the ACLU of Massachusetts, following the Supreme Court's ruling Thursday. “The Trump administration's policy is an unlawful attempt to dehumanize, humiliate, and endanger transgender, nonbinary, and intersex Americans, and we will continue to seek its ultimate reversal in the courts.”
From Common Dreams via This RSS Feed.
8
Despite Costs Soaring Under His Watch, Trump Tries to Jack Mamdani's 'Affordability' Message
(www.commondreams.org)
In the wake of a top-to-bottom shellacking of Republicans across the country in Tuesday's elections, President Donald Trump is making a concerted effort to co-opt the "affordability"-focused messaging that catapulted the once-obscure democratic socialist Zohran Mamdani to become New York City's next mayor.
MSNBC columnist Steve Benen notes that before Election Day, Trump had never once uttered the word "affordability" in his more than a decade using Twitter/X. But since Tuesday, it's been all he can talk about.
After Democrats romped in virtually every important race from Virginia to California to New Jersey, the president explained that it was because "they have this new word called affordability" and Republicans "don't talk about it enough."
He followed it by claiming that “2025 Thanksgiving dinner under Trump is 25% lower than 2024 Thanksgiving dinner under [former President Joe] Biden, according to Walmart. My cost are lower than the Democrats on everything, especially oil and gas! So the Democrats ‘affordability’ issue is DEAD! STOP LYING!!!”
He later claimed, completely falsely, that America was nearing "almost $2 for gasoline," and that Republicans "are the ones who've done a great job on affordability... they said we lost an election on affordability. It’s a con job."
Focusing aggressively on the cost of living and blaming his opponents for it being out of control has worked for Trump in the past. Polls from his 2024 reelection showed that inflation and the cost of living were the leading issues under Biden that drove voters away from Democrats and into Trump's camp.
But Mamdani will enter office with the status of an outsider and a slew of untested policy proposals meant to concretely address New York's untenable cost of living, like a freeze on rent hikes, free public transit, and the opening of public grocery stores.
Trump, on the other hand, is nearly a year into his second presidential term, during which he has often downplayed voters' concerns about rising costs, even telling them they'd need to endure "some pain" in order to reap the benefits of his agenda.
Under his watch, and often directly due to his own policy decisions, the crisis of affordability that drove him to the White House has only accelerated, with 2.9% yearly inflation in August, the last month for which there is data due to the government shutdown.
His claims about both grocery and energy prices are both untrue. Energy prices have actually increased by 10% since Trump took office, and the average regular gas price was not nearing $2 per gallon, as Trump claimed, but more than $3 as of Monday.
While high energy costs can be attributed to external factors like increased power demand from artificial intelligence data centers and energy bottlenecks resulting from the war in Ukraine, the New York Times editorial board noted last month that "Trump energy policies are not helping—and will soon make matters worse."
The foremost culprit is his slashing of hundreds of billions of dollars worth of tax credits and investments into renewable energy sources like wind and solar, as well as electric vehicles. As the board explained:
Energy prices are likely to rise the most in states that have not prioritized clean energy, including Kentucky, Missouri, and Oklahoma, experts say. The repeal of the tax credits alone may push electricity prices almost 10% higher than they would be otherwise by 2029, according to National Economic Research Associates, a consulting firm. Gas prices will also increase over the next decade, according to Rhodium Group, a think tank, as consumers who would otherwise have driven electric cars continue using vehicles that burn fossil fuels.
Grocery prices have also spiked by 2.7% since last year, increasing each month except one since he took office. Some of the products that have seen the most dramatic increases are those impacted by Trump's aggressive tariff regime, both because they are frequently imported like coffee or bananas, or commonly exported like beef, and subject to the retaliatory tariffs of countries against which Trump has waged his trade war.
His "mass deportation" agenda, meanwhile, has gutted the nation's agricultural labor force, which is 80% foreign-born, causing supply shortages and, as a result, higher prices for domestic goods.
On the other major plank of Mamdani's affordability agenda, the uncontrolled cost of housing has also been supercharged by Trump's policies. His tariffs have caused the cost of building materials to spike, slowing the rate of housing construction.
And as a record high 22 million renters are considered cost-burdened, meaning they spend over 30% of their income on housing, Trump's 2026 fiscal year budget proposed to slash rental assistance by nearly 43%. In September, ProPublica also obtained two plans from the Department of Housing and Urban Development (HUD) expected to place burdensome new work requirements and time limits on those living in public housing, which could jeopardize assistance for 4 million people.
While Trump has made a sharp pivot toward "affordability" rhetoric, his actions amid the ongoing government shutdown, which has become the longest in US history, have belied that commitment.
Though Trump acknowledged that Tuesday's Election Night drubbing suggested Republicans were "losing" the shutdown, Republicans have insisted they won't come to the table to negotiate to extend the Affordable Care Act tax credits that caused the impasse in the first place.
As a result, Americans are already beginning to see their health insurance premiums skyrocket as the enrollment period for next year begins. And if the GOP refuses to extend the credits, over 22 million Americans are expected to see their premiums more than double on average in 2026, according to KFF.
And contrary to fighting the rising prices of food, the Trump administration has used the shutdown to choke off food assistance to 42 million Americans eligible for the Supplemental Nutritional Assistance Program (SNAP) in defiance of orders from two federal judges.
Under a proposed plan to only partially fund the program, the average SNAP recipient would have their benefits cut by 61%, while millions will lose their benefits for November entirely, according to an analysis by the Center on Budget and Policy Priorities.
According to The Economist,Trump's approval rating has tanked to just 39%, while disapproval is at 58%. It's an all-time low over both his terms as president. By far the sharpest decrease in his approval rating has come on prices and inflation. Where he enjoyed a net +5 rating on the issue at the start of his term, it had utterly collapsed to -33 as of November 2.
"Trump could theoretically fix his political problems if he readjusts his policy framework and focuses on affordability, corporate power, and working with Democrats instead of the establishment GOP," said economic journalist Matt Stoller in a post on social media. "But there's zero chance he does that. He can't. He's George W. Trump."
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