The US election really is wild. Going off polling data it looks like Kamala wins with a close electoral victory if the Dems over perform again like they did for the midterms. If it goes exactly like the polls then Trump wins with a healthy lead.

least racist American soldier

Source

(Week-old news) AP: One of 3 judges weighing request for ICC arrest warrants against Netanyahu and others is replaced

The decision is likely to further delay a decision on the request by the court’s chief prosecutor, Karim Khan.

I saw the sexual misconduct allegations against Khan, but somehow I missed this story.

Anyway, it's now 164 days since Karim Khan requested arrest warrants for Netanyahu and Gallant. Reminder that it took just 23 days to issue Putin's warrant (for putting injured kids in hospitals).

Jesus christ, bill Clinton gave an incredibly pro genocide speech

Edit:

How many civilians should Israel kill? “I am sorry but we are not keeping score that way.”

He literally did the Hexbear post

Eight of the eleven justices of Mexico's Supreme Court of Justice have resigned from their posts on the body. The decision comes after the approval of the Judicial Reform Law, which established direct elections for the country's judiciary. The information was confirmed by the country's Senate.

If France attempted to attack Algeria, who would they attempt to set up as puppet rulers? There will be consequences for Western Sahara being thrown under the bus.

Some news from the Donbass.

Russian forces liberated Kurakhovka, a Donetsk People’s Republic town south of Gornyak: https://s5.cdnstatic.space/wp-content/uploads/2024/10/kurakhovka.mp4?_=4

Russian forces liberated Novoukrainka, a DPR settlement northwest of Ugledar: https://s5.cdnstatic.space/wp-content/uploads/2024/10/Novoukrainka.mp4?_=2

Russian forces captured an undamaged, US-built M1A1 “Abrams” tank in the DPR: https://news-pravda.com/world/2024/10/31/818544.html

Anti-fascist partisans burned a Kiev regime Mi-2 helicopter: https://odysee.com/@Support4Z:b/%F0%9F%93%BD%EF%B8%8F-A-%F0%9F%87%AC%F0%9F%87%A7-%F0%9F%87%AB%F0%9F%87%B7,-Our-Partisan-Brothers-in-Ukraine-move-on-to-helicopters!:3

footnote situation in "Report of the Special Rapporteur on the situation of human rights in the Palestinian territories occupied since 1967, Francesca Albanese - Genocide as colonial erasure"

purple is footnotes in the image

307 footnotes in a 32 page document

from: Francesca Albanese, UN Special Rapporteur on the Occupied Palestinian Territory, meets the press

https://xcancel.com/DurrutiRiot/status/1852088701049872713

video showing clashes of striking greek firefighters and piggies.

Algerian Presidency: The Head of State of the Democratic People's Republic of Korea, Mr. Kim Jong-un, sent his congratulations to the President of the Republic, Mr. Abdelmadjid Tebboune, on the occasion of the seventieth anniversary of the outbreak of the liberation revolution, expressing on the same occasion his full conviction of further growth and development of the friendly and cooperative relations between the two countries.

The National Archives museum has removed references to Martin Luther King, sharecropping, Japanese internment, Native Americans, union organizers, and birth control.

Electoral politics meets rocket test flights!

Two years ago, NASA launched it's Lockheed-Martin built Orion spacecraft in an uncrewed test flight around the Moon and back to Earth on the mission named Artemis I launched on the first SLS rocket flight. SLS's prime contractor is Boeing. SLS was designed to re-use as much Space Shuttle technology as possible so that the defence contractors involved could pad their profit margins and not have to spend much on R&D of new technology.

The Orion heat shield uses an Apollo-era technology called AVCOAT. NASA thought it was a safe choice because it worked fine for all the Apollo missions despite a newer, better material called PICA being available. PICA has been used for almost 20 years on some of the most demanding missions with the highest re-entry speeds. Basically if you want to get back to Earth safely and you have your choice of heat shield material, you want a variant of PICA. It's as safe and proven as space technology can get.

Well, it turns out that the AVCOAT heat shield didn't burn away evenly and cleanly like on Apollo, because while the chemistry is the same, they applied it in a different way. The first test flight's capsule had great big chunks missing from the heat shield. That Orion capsule did splash down intact out of pure dumb luck, but those missing chunks sparked an independent review because they are a potential crew-killer. Missing chunks out of a heat shield killed the space shuttle Columbia's crew.

So here's where the politics comes in!

NASA has announced that they know what the problem is, but they're not going to announce what the problem is before the end of the year. And the person who made that decision is Administrator Bill Nelson, a career politician and loyal lifelong ally to Joe Biden.

Orion is an overweight pig of a ship, deliberately so. Right now the only production rocket can that lift it around the moon is Boeing's massively expensive SLS. SLS works but it's ridiculously expensive at an estimated $4 billion per flight. NASA claims less, but independent government audits put it at about $4 billion factoring in all ground support costs and averaging the R&D costs on top of direct hardware costs. There's about an 18-month production time per rocket minimum. And SLS only exists to lift Orion. Cancel one and you cancel the other. They were designed in lockstep with each other so that the US senate could spend as much as possible on local subcontractors for personal political gain.

Artemis II is to be the first crewed Artemis flight, doing orbits around the Moon and testing systems and procedures before coming back, like Apollo 8. Artemis III is to be the first crewed landing using a variant of SpaceX's Starship called HLS. Artemis III's HLS landing vehicle is to launch uncrewed, with an Orion capsule acting as the taxi to get astronauts to it and as their return vehicle to come back to Earth. Artemis II's hardware is nearly ready to fly, including that AVCOAT heat shield. But the heat shield debacle has put it all on hold.

Even though NASA knows the fix, they'll have to test that fix. Which means another test flight of SLS. Which means building another SLS rocket, and building another Orion capsule. That could put the additional test flight cost over $5 billion minimum. Plus years of delays for the first crewed mission as they need to build another rocket and capsule. So the scuttlebutt is that Bill Nelson, as a personal favour to Biden, is deliberately withholding the expensive bad news from public release until after the election.

More fun facts! The Orion program has cost, in 2024 inflation-adjusted dollars, about $30 billion without a single successful test flight, let alone any crew flights. And SLS has cost about $26 billion with a single successful test flight. And this is all because the US senate, who keep an iron grip on NASA pursestrings, wanted both programs to be as expensive as possible so that they're as profitable as possible for their defence contractor friends.

depersonalizing while staring at the "KAMALA HARRIS FOR THE PEOPLE" bumper sticker on the Tesla in front of me

more like KAMALA HARRIS FOR KEEPING INNOCENT PEOPLE IN PRISON TO EXPLOIT THEIR LABOR LEFTIST MEME DOT JPEG

Ansarallah says do not vote for Trump or Harris:
https://xcancel.com/Seamus_Malek/status/1851871758200246345

"Trump's danger is not limited to the outside world, but also to America itself, and he may be the cause of its destruction, but it is not appropriate for the Muslims of America to embrace his election so that they are not the deciding vote for his victory. It is preferable for them to abstain from voting for either candidate because both of them are linked to destructive projects for humanity, whether they are bloody or contrary to nature."