“The two participants who were detained were volunteering with Rabbis for Human Rights’ long-standing olive harvest initiative—an act of nonviolent solidarity that supports Palestinian farmers facing settler/military violence and access restrictions to their own lands. They joined the harvest as part of their regular volunteer placements through Achvat,” says Oltersdorf.

The charges? “Violating IDF Orders,” according to the Israeli Population and Immigration Authority.

The principles and actions of these […] groups might seem soft compared to the ardent anti-Zionist Jewish groups popping up around the world. They were not arrested engaging in insurgent direct action, did not call for an end to Israel, they simply went to go pick olives.

Yet the targeting of these interfaith groups calling for co-existence in Israel/Palestine shows a troubling trend for International solidarity activists seeking to engage in front line activities in Palestine. While groups like International Solidarity Movement, who bring people of all faiths and backgrounds to Palestine have been consistently targeted by Israel for arrest and deportation, the same has rarely applied to Jewish, faith-based groups. The Jewish supremacy that once protected International Jews with Israeli organizations is slowly fading.

Avi Dabush, CEO of Rabbis for Human Rights says: “We are disappointed and outraged by the expulsion of Jewish women from Israel and the delay of volunteers. This is selective enforcement of the most blatant and dangerous kind. We are only two weeks into the harvest season and we have already been given 9 orders declaring the harvest areas a closed military area prohibiting us from entering, but on the other hand, the violent settlers have not been detained or arrested so far in all the attacks that have been recorded. We operate without violence and according to the law, and it is a shame that the police and the army wasted an entire day turning away people who came to stand by people under attack.”

But with this rise in retaliation from Israel against insurgent Jews within their borders, the narrative that Zionism and Israel has been pushing also begins to crack. When Jews become unsafe and unwelcome in Israel because of the Israeli government itself, the hypocrisy of Israel as a means for Jewish safety becomes further exposed. As Israel seeks to determine what Jews are politically aligned enough to engage in apartheid and Jewish supremacy, the world must take note that Jewish safety is not helped by Israel. Indeed at the two activists can attest, Israel makes the world more dangerous for Jews.

Israel deports 32 activists aiding Palestinian olive farmers amid attacks

Israeli army and settlers have carried out 158 attacks against olive pickers since the start of the current season

^{Federica Marsi (Al Jazeera)}

Hours before the first major elections since Donald Trump’s win last November, Sen. Bernie Sanders offered a stern warning for Democrats about the party’s closed-door talks to end the shutdown.

Inside a tense, three-hour meeting at the Capitol on Tuesday, a fiery Sanders urged Democrats not to yield to Republicans without a real victory on health care. The Vermont independent was armed with fresh polling from a Democratic-aligned firm that showed voters would punish the party for giving up with nothing in return, according to a person familiar with his remarks.

By Wednesday morning, Sanders and his colleagues in Congress pointed to Democrats’ blow-out victories — including in Virginia, a state with thousands of furloughed federal workers — as the most powerful evidence yet they needed to keep fighting.

https://www.cnn.com/2025/11/05/politics/democrats-shutdown-deal-elections

https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2025-11-06/china-climate-experts-see-top-polluter-beating-emissions-goal?accessToken=eyJhbGciOiJIUzI1NiIsInR5cCI6IkpXVCJ9.eyJzb3VyY2UiOiJTdWJzY3JpYmVyR2lmdGVkQXJ0aWNsZSIsImlhdCI6MTc2MjQwMTc5NCwiZXhwIjoxNzYzMDA2NTk0LCJhcnRpY2xlSWQiOiJUNUEzMzJHUDlWQ1gwMCIsImJjb25uZWN0SWQiOiJDMkYxNDM5NTYzRjg0QTBFOEIxNzA5MzY0RjMyQ0JFOCJ9.QF3AMXTLAIpJVV7fsf7URk9SwZuIYUsw4ucIvaRe3U4

https://www.forbes.com/sites/kellyphillipserb/2025/11/05/irs-kills-off--popular-free-direct-file-option-for-the-2026-tax-filing-season/

https://www.reuters.com/world/asia-pacific/nvidias-jensen-huang-says-china-will-win-ai-race-with-us-ft-reports-2025-11-05/

Voters’ frustration with high power bills helped propel Democrats to victory in New Jersey, Virginia and Georgia. Climate advocates stressed how Trump’s rollbacks of clean energy add to the pain.

Green Groups’ Election Takeaway: Focus on Trump Energy Agenda Costs - Inside Climate News

^{Inside Climate News}

https://www.reuters.com/world/asia-pacific/nvidias-jensen-huang-says-china-will-win-ai-race-with-us-ft-reports-2025-11-05/

https://www.reuters.com/sustainability/cop/eu-eyes-weaker-climate-goal-scramble-deal-by-cop30-sources-say-2025-11-05/

La Paz (AFP) – Bolivia's Supreme Court on Wednesday overturned the 10-year prison sentence handed to former right-wing president Jeanine Anez in 2022 over an alleged plot to oust her predecessor Evo Morales.

"The sentence against her... has been annulled," Supreme Court President Romer Saucedo told local media, adding that Anez would be released during the day.

Anez, a former senator, served as interim leader in 2019 after Morales fled the country following mass protests over alleged election fraud during his controversial bid for a fourth term.

Morales, Bolivia's first Indigenous president, claimed he was the victim of a coup after the military called for him to step down following weeks of unrest.

His coup claim was dismissed as fictional by many in Bolivia and abroad given that the army never took power.

Anez was arrested in 2021 after Morales' socialist party returned to power in 2020.

She was convicted of illegally assuming the presidency.

Saucedo said Anez should have been tried by a special court in charge of trying crimes by lawmakers in the course of their duties and not by the criminal justice system.

He said that Anez's rights had been violated.

Anez, 58, did not immediately react on social media but on Tuesday had posted on the X that she would "never regret having served my country when it needed me."

Bolivia Supreme Court orders release of jailed ex-president Jeanine Anez

^RFI

Port Sudan (Sudan) (AFP) – An attack on a funeral in the strategic city of El-Obeid in Sudan's central Kordofan region killed 40 people, the UN said Wednesday, as paramilitaries looked poised to launch an offensive there.

The United Nations' humanitarian office did not specify when the attack took place or who was behind it, but said that the situation in Kordofan was worsening.

The war in Sudan has killed tens of thousands of people and displaced millions more, with the fighting spreading to new areas in recent days, sparking fears of an even greater humanitarian catastrophe.

The paramilitary Rapid Support Forces (RSF), at war with the military since 2023, appears to have shifted its focus to Kordofan after capturing El-Fasher, the last army stronghold in the vast western Darfur region.

"Local sources report that at least 40 civilians were killed and dozens injured yesterday in an attack on a funeral gathering in El Obeid, the capital of North Kordofan State," the UN humanitarian agency OCHA said.

"Once again, OCHA calls for an immediate cessation of hostilities and for all parties to protect civilians and respect international humanitarian law."

El-Obeid is a logistics and command hub that links Darfur to the Sudanese capital Khartoum.

The RSF claimed control of Bara, a city north of El-Obeid, last week.

People forced to flee El-Fasher have described horrific abuse, including rape, at the hands of the RSF.

"The rapes were gang rapes. Mass rape in public, rape in front of everyone and no one could stop it," mother of four Amira said from a makeshift shelter in Tawila, some 70 kilometres (43 miles) west of El-Fasher.

"You'd be asleep and they'd come and rape you," she said, using a pseudonym while speaking during a webinar organised by campaign group Avaaz.

"I saw with my own eyes people who couldn't afford to pay (for safe passage) and the fighters took their daughters instead."

Yale University's Humanitarian Research Lab released close-up satellite images showing evidence of atrocities committed during the RSF's takeover of El-Fasher.

The lab's executive director, Nathaniel Raymond, told AFP in an interview that the images were "a spark plug for public outrage".

Both sides in the war have been accused of committing atrocities.

The fall of El-Fasher gave paramilitaries control over all five state capitals in Darfur, raising fears that Sudan would effectively be partitioned along an east-west axis.

The RSF now dominates Darfur and parts of the south, while the army holds the north, east and central regions along the Nile and Red Sea.

The UAE is accused by the UN of supplying arms to the RSF -- allegations it has repeatedly denied.

Abu Dhabi on Wednesday voiced its support for a ceasefire and its "deep denunciation of the ongoing human rights violations and horrific crimes being committed against civilians in various parts of Sudan", including El-Fasher.

The Sudanese army, meanwhile, has received support from Egypt, Saudi Arabia, Turkey and Iran, according to observers.

Sudan's army-backed defence minister on Tuesday said the military would press on with its fight against the RSF after an internal meeting to discuss a US proposal for a ceasefire.

"We thank the Trump administration for its efforts and proposals to achieve peace," Hassan Kabroun said in a speech broadcast on state television, but added that "preparations for the Sudanese people's battle are ongoing".

No details of the US truce proposal have been made public.

White House Press Secretary Karoline Leavitt told reporters on Tuesday that Washington wanted "to see this conflict come to a peaceful end", but added "it's a very complicated situation on the ground right now".

She said the United States was "actively engaged" in seeking a peace deal alongside Egypt, Saudi Arabia and the UAE.

The army-aligned authorities had rejected an earlier truce proposal from the four countries -- referred to as the Quad -- under which both the army and the RSF would be excluded from a transitional political process.

Speaking at a forum in Qatar on Tuesday, UN Secretary-General Antonio Guterres called on the warring parties to "come to the negotiating table, bring an end to this nightmare of violence -- now".

Attack on funeral in Sudan's Kordofan region kills 40: UN

^RFI

An ongoing fuel blockade initiated by the JNIM jihadist group in Mali has brought the landlocked Sahel nation’s economy to a near standstill. In an effort to isolate the capital, Bamako, and exert pressure on the ruling junta, the militants have intensified their attacks on fuel tankers, prompting Western governments to urge their citizens to leave the country.

Since back-to-back coups in 2020 and 2021, Mali has been ruled by a military junta that is struggling to counter various armed groups, particularly the Al-Qaeda-linked Group for the Support of Islam and Muslims (JNIM), which is carrying out the blockade.

Since September, the JNIM has targeted fuel tankers, particularly those coming from Senegal and Côte d'Ivoire, through which the majority of Mali's imported goods transit.

JNIM is retaliating against the authorities' ban on the sale of fuel at locations other than service stations in rural areas, a move meant to dry up the jihadists' fuel supply lines, according to Malian authorities.

Mali's fuel shortage is exacerbating severe and recurrent power outages that have crippled the economy for the past five years.

The junta announced late Sunday that class was cancelled at schools and universities for two weeks due to the shortages.

In the middle of harvest season, some agricultural machinery has been rendered inoperable without fuel, with the shortages having struck daily life outside the capital several weeks earlier.

Tankers have been set on fire daily for the past two months, while drivers and soldiers have been killed or kidnapped in jihadist ambushes.

Talks between Malian intermediaries and the jihadists have so far failed to alleviate the problem.

Last Thursday, several embassies in Mali urged citizens to depart the country immediately while the United States and United Kingdom withdrew non-essential staff, amid fears of growing insecurity.

Citing the "unpredictability of Bamako's security situation" and "ongoing armed conflict" around the capital, the US embassy later urged all citizens to "depart immediately" on commercial aircraft.

Italy, Germany, Canada and a handful of other countries have also told their nationals to depart Mali as swiftly as possible.

The various embassies' recent actions "reveal a critical and rapid deterioration of security, even around Bamako, which until now had been relatively spared", says Bakary Sambe, director of the Timbuktu Institute, a Dakar-based think tank.

He told RFI that the jihadists do not appear to be preparing a military assault against the Malian capital, but rather working towards economic exhaustion intended to weaken the transitional regime in place.

"Several aspects lead me to be cautious about the imminence of a frontal assault on Bamako, which is neither in their doctrine nor within the current capabilities of JNIM. It is not their objective," he explains.

"The group has had to learn from past experiences [notably the occupation and administration of the northern regions of Mali for ten months in 2012, editor's note] and has made the strategic choice of gradual suffocation: a war of economic and political attrition, which delegitimises the regime without ever exposing itself to a conventional battle that would be lost in advance."

Since July, Mali has seen an increase in attacks targeting industrial and mining sites, particularly in the Kayes region, which accounts for 80 percent of Mali's gold production, its main source of wealth.

Examples include the Diamond Cement Factory in Kayes – where three Indian engineers were kidnapped – and several mines in the Kayes region, where about ten Chinese employees were abducted.

The Bougouni lithium mine, operated by the British company Kodal Minerals, has also been subjected to several raids.

According to information confirmed by RFI and France 24 on Monday, JNIM released three hostages in exchange for a large ransom.

Two Emiratis and an Iranian, who were captured outside Bamako on 23 September were released on 29 October under the auspices of the Malian intelligence services for a sum between 50 and 70 million euros.

Several tons of military equipment – ​​vehicles and weapons – were also delivered to the jihadist group. According to several sources, a prisoner exchange also took place.

For Sambe, these fall into a range of tactics used by JNIM to "project an image of resounding failure".

From falling export revenues, to scaring off direct investment and fomenting popular discontent, especially since the regime had promised security and sovereignty with support from Moscow.

"It's a war of suffocation, but also a strategy of discrediting the regime, demonstrating daily its inability to ensure the safety of the population."

In a statement released Monday, the Malian army claimed to have targeted "a major terrorist base" near Sirakoro, in the Bougouni region of central Mali.

According to the army headquarters, the site was used "to plan attacks against fuel tanker convoys."

The Malian army claims to have neutralised "more than a dozen terrorists" and destroyed or recovered equipment.

Mali’s economy near standstill amid JNIM fuel attacks

^RFI

Two new maps available on our server "A.E.S."!

📦 Neden 2 - a Block League map as a tribute to the map with the same name from S4 League

🌻 Flowers - a Colour Jump map made by fnetX

Come try them out! 👇
aes.land/

https://www.reuters.com/world/china/china-bans-foreign-ai-chips-state-funded-data-centres-sources-say-2025-11-05/

The Common Crawl Foundation is little known outside of Silicon Valley. For more than a decade, the nonprofit has been scraping billions of webpages to build a massive archive of the internet. This database—large enough to be measured in petabytes—is made freely available for research. In recent years, however, this archive has been put to a controversial purpose: AI companies including OpenAI, Google, Anthropic, Nvidia, Meta, and Amazon have used it to train large language models. In the process, my reporting has found, Common Crawl has opened a back door for AI companies to train their models with paywalled articles from major news websites. And the foundation appears to be lying to publishers about this—as well as masking the actual contents of its archives.

Common Crawl has not said much publicly about its support of LLM development. Since the early 2010s, researchers have used Common Crawl’s collections for a variety of purposes: to build machine-translation systems, to track unconventional uses of medicines by analyzing discussions in online forums, and to study book banning in various countries, among other things. In a 2012 interview, Gil Elbaz, the founder of Common Crawl, said of its archive that “we just have to make sure that people use it in the right way. Fair use says you can do certain things with the world’s data, and as long as people honor that and respect the copyright of this data, then everything’s great.”

Common Crawl’s website states that it scrapes the internet for “freely available content” without “going behind any ‘paywalls.’” Yet the organization has taken articles from major news websites that people normally have to pay for—allowing AI companies to train their LLMs on high-quality journalism for free. Meanwhile, Common Crawl’s executive director, Rich Skrenta, has publicly made the case that AI models should be able to access anything on the internet. “The robots are people too,” he told me, and should therefore be allowed to “read the books” for free. Multiple news publishers have requested that Common Crawl remove their articles to prevent exactly this use. Common Crawl says it complies with these requests. But my research shows that it does not.

The Nonprofit Feeding the Entire Internet to AI Companies

Common Crawl claims to provide a public benefit, but it lies to publishers about its activities.

^{Alex Reisner (The Atlantic)}

Since its founding, Facebook has described itself as a kind of public service that fosters relationships. In 2005, not long after the site’s launch, its co-founder Mark Zuckerberg described the network as an “icebreaker” that would help you make friends. Facebook has since become Meta, with more grandiose ambitions, but its current mission statement is broadly similar: “Build the future of human connection and the technology that makes it possible.”

More than 3 billion people use Meta products such as Facebook and Instagram every day, and more still use rival platforms that likewise promise connection and community. But a new era of deeper, better human fellowship has yet to arrive. Just ask Zuckerberg himself. “There’s a stat that I always think is crazy,” he said in April, during an interview with the podcaster Dwarkesh Patel. “The average American, I think, has fewer than three friends. And the average person has demand for meaningfully more; I think it’s like 15 friends or something, right?”

Zuckerberg was wrong about the details—the majority of American adults say they have at least three close friends, according to recent surveys—but he was getting at something real. There’s no question that we are becoming less and less social. People have sunk into their phones, enticed into endless, mindless “engagement” on social media. Over the past 15 years, face-to-face socialization has declined precipitously. The 921 friends I’ve accumulated on Facebook, I’ve always known, are not really friends at all; now the man who put this little scorecard in my life was essentially agreeing.

Zuckerberg, however, was not admitting a failure. He was pointing toward a new opportunity. In Marc Andreessen’s influential 2023 treatise, “The Techno-Optimist Manifesto,” the venture capitalist wrote, “We believe that there is no material problem—whether created by nature or by technology—that cannot be solved with more technology.” In this same spirit, Zuckerberg began to suggest the idea that AI chatbots could fill in some of the socialization that people are missing.

AI Is Not Your Friend

The social-media era is over. What’s coming will be much worse.

^{Damon Beres (The Atlantic)}

Labour are set to abandon the term 'Islamophobia' in favour of 'anti-Muslim hate' - a disgraceful watering down of horrific racism

Starmer further entrenches Islamophobia in Labour

^{Joe Glenton (The Canary)}

A 2019 statute signed into law by Trump himself requires furloughed workers to be compensated when shutdowns end.

Trump Admin Signals It May Not Pay Furloughed Workers After Shutdown Ends

^{Chris Walker (Truthout)}

Maine voters rejected a GOP voter suppression bill, protecting absentee voting rights—a development cheered by Democratic US Senate candidate Graham Platner, who campaigned against it.

Backed by Platner Campaign, Maine Voters Reject GOP-Led Attack on Absentee Voting

"This victory belongs to the thousands of volunteers, many of them with our campaign, who left it all on the field to save absentee voting in Maine," said the US Senate candidate.

^{jessica-corbett (Common Dreams)}

ICE thugs have killed, kidnapped, and terrorised — Now even the FBI admits the America’s fascist stormtroopers are out of control

ICE: America’s favourite death cult with a badge

^{Joe Glenton (The Canary)}

i don't usually, but i did just now cough up a lengthier comment with a nugget of inside perspective.

i rarely see nordic perspectives written out in english speaking spaces (only american, english, sometimes australian) so i thought to make this post pointing to it. i would look forward to any motivation that others wanting to know more brings to my writing and compiling nordic sources - alot of misrepresentation of our politics abroad

blorpblorp.xyz/inbox/c/showert…

please don't be inflammatory with me, idc for drama and fingerpointing.

A Spanish-language immersion daycare in a leafy residential neighborhood on the North Side of Chicago was raided by federal immigration agents on Wednesday and a teacher was taken away, panicking school administrators and parents of infants, toddlers and pre-kindergarten children at the center, a staff worker at the daycare told Reuters.

Footage obtained by local WGN-TV showed two men, one in a balaclava, dragging a woman out of the colorfully decorated front doors of Rayito de Sol daycare center as she screamed. The men wore vests that said "Police" but no other agency markings were visible.

https://www.reuters.com/world/us/chicago-immigration-crackdown-agents-raid-daycare-senior-living-center-2025-11-05/

https://www.reuters.com/world/china/china-bans-foreign-ai-chips-state-funded-data-centres-sources-say-2025-11-05/

But, but, but ... that's my ball. You can't play with my ball!

Republicans in California on Wednesday filed a federal lawsuit challenging a high-stakes redistricting measure that could help flip up to five congressional seats for Democrats.

The suit, filed by David Tangipa, a Republican assembly member, 18 California voters and the state Republican party in the US district court for the central district of California, argues that the new maps are unconstitutional because they were drawn to increase the voting power of a particular racial group. It asks the court to block the new maps from taking effect, at least temporarily.

The measure, Proposition 50, was approved by voters on Tuesday evening, in a decisive victory for Democrats. The plan temporarily gives the power to draw congressional districts to the California legislature, allowing it to adopt maps that will help Democrats pick up five seats in the US House of Representatives.

Obviously, if you represent the people, you can't let them vote on anything themselves.

Republicans file lawsuit challenging California’s redistricting measure

Prop 50, passed by voters yesterday, allows legislature to redraw congressional maps to benefit Democrats in House

^{Lauren Gambino (The Guardian)}