The judge who laid down the legal architecture needed to establish Israel's settlements has just died. But his legacy has inspired a fresh generation of jurists to create new mechanisms for dispossessing the Palestinians.

The United Nations' independent expert on human rights in the Palestinian territories issued a damning verdict last week on what he termed "the longest belligerent occupation in the modern world". Michael Lynk, a Canadian law professor, told the UN's human rights council that only urgent international action could prevent Israel's 52-year occupation of the West Bank transforming into de facto annexation.

He warned of a recent surge in violence against Palestinians from settlers, assisted by the Israeli army, and a record number of demolitions this year of Palestinian homes in East Jerusalem - evidence of the ways Israel is further pressuring Palestinians to leave their lands.

He urged an international boycott of all settlement products as a necessary step to put pressure on Israel to change course. He also called on the UN itself to finally publish - as long promised - a database that it has been compiling since 2016 of Israeli and international companies doing business in the illegal settlements and normalising the occupation.

On October 3rd, countless tens of thousands of Ecuadorian citizens began a general strike and occupation of public spaces, throughout the country but targeting the capital of Quito. President Lenin Moreno has made himself one of the most hated men in the history of the country in the course of his rule, and was forced to flee as a consequence, and re-establish the capital in Guayaquil. In addition, facing a larger and wider revolution all together, Moreno was forced to rescind Decree 883 - the new law which appears to have been the straw that broke the camel's back in Ecuador.

But this is far from over, and Moreno's continued existence as head of government threatens to see the expansion of this newly awakened movement. Internationally too - for it is Moreno who also betrayed Julian Assange, after Raphael Correa offered him protection.

The formerly US-backed militia previously struck a deal with Damascus, handing control over several cities to the Syrian Arab Army, but Ankara insisted that they could not remain near the Turkish border.

Russian military police will assist in the withdrawal of the Kurdish militia from the Syrian-Turkish border, the Russian Reconciliation Centre for Syria stated on Monday, adding that the militants are also expected to leave Manbij and Tell Rifaat. The pullout is expected to end at 18:00 on Tuesday.

According to Moscow, Russian and Turkish forces will start patrolling the border after the end of the operation.

If Israeli farmers go, Jordanians 'will feel the thirst'

The son of former Israeli prime minister Ariel Sharon says Jordanians will go thirsty if King Abdullah II and the Jordanian government go ahead with their decision to stop leasing two fertile areas to Israel after 25 years.

Writing in an opinion piece for Ynet, Gilad Sharon said: "Diplomacy is a delicate matter, so the Jordanian king should be told very gently: If you push Israeli farmers out of Naharayim and Tzofar, you will remain thirsty.

"You see them on the street. You watch them on TV. You might even vote for one this fall. You think they're people just like you. You're wrong. Dead wrong." — They Live

We're living in two worlds, you and I.

There's the world we see (or are made to see) and then there's the one we sense (and occasionally catch a glimpse of), the latter of which is a far cry from the propaganda-driven reality manufactured by the government and its corporate sponsors, including the media.

Indeed, what most Americans perceive as life in America — privileged, progressive and free — is a far cry from reality, where economic inequality is growing, real agendas and real power are buried beneath layers of Orwellian doublespeak and corporate obfuscation, and "freedom," such that it is, is meted out in small, legalistic doses by militarized police armed to the teeth.

All is not as it seems.

This is the premise of John Carpenter's film They Live, which was released more than 30 years ago, and remains unnervingly, chillingly appropriate for our modern age.

Best known for his horror film Halloween, which assumes that there is a form of evil so dark that it can't be killed, Carpenter's larger body of work is infused with a strong anti-authoritarian, anti-establishment, laconic bent that speaks to the filmmaker's concerns about the unraveling of our society, particularly our government.

Time and again, Carpenter portrays the government working against its own citizens, a populace out of touch with reality, technology run amok, and a future more horrific than any horror film.

In Escape from New York, Carpenter presents fascism as the future of America.

In The Thing, a remake of the 1951 sci-fi classic of the same name, Carpenter presupposes that increasingly we are all becoming dehumanized.

In Christine, the film adaptation of Stephen King's novel about a demon-possessed car, technology exhibits a will and consciousness of its own and goes on a murderous rampage.

In In the Mouth of Madness, Carpenter notes that evil grows when people lose "the ability to know the difference between reality and fantasy."

And then there is Carpenter's They Live, in which two migrant workers discover that the world is not as it seems. In fact, the population is actually being controlled and exploited by aliens working in partnership with an oligarchic elite. All the while, the populace — blissfully unaware of the real agenda at work in their lives — has been lulled into complacency, indoctrinated into compliance, bombarded with media distractions, and hypnotized by subliminal messages beamed out of television and various electronic devices, billboards and the like.

President Trump says the first phase of a trade deal with China looks to be ahead of schedule.

"We are looking probably to be ahead of schedule to sign a very big portion of the China deal, we'll call it Phase One but it's a very big portion,'' he told reporters before leaving for Chicago. "That would take care of the farmers. It would take care of some of the other things. It'll also take care of a lot of the banking needs."

The president's comments come after Beijing said on Saturday that phase one was "basically complete." Trade representatives from the two countries held a phone call on Friday as they continued to iron out a deal.

The tentative U.S.-China deal is said to include Beijing making concessions on intellectual property, financial services and agriculture. In return, the U.S. agreed not to implement new tariffs on Chinese goods on Oct. 15. A decision has not yet been made about the new tariffs that are scheduled to hit goods made in China beginning Dec. 15.

A talk with Oleg Tsarev reveals the alleged identity of the "Trump/Ukraine Whistleblower"

Top Dems are involved in the plundering of the Ukraine: new names, mind-boggling accounts. The mysterious 'whistleblower' whose report had unleashed the impeachment is named in the exclusive interview given to the Unz Review by a prominent Ukrainian politician, an ex-Member of Parliament of four terms, a candidate for Ukraine's presidency, Oleg Tsarev.

Mr Tsarev, a tall, agile and graceful man, a good speaker and a prolific writer, had been a leading and popular Ukrainian politician before the 2014 putsch; he stayed in the Ukraine after President Yanukovych's flight; ran for the Presidency against Mr Poroshenko, and eventually had to go to exile due to multiple threats to his life. During the failed attempt to secede, he was elected the speaker of the Parliament of Novorossia (South-Eastern Ukraine). I spoke to him in Crimea, where he lives in the pleasant seaside town of Yalta. Tsarev still has many supporters in the Ukraine, and is a leader of the opposition to the Kiev regime.

Former adviser to President Clinton Dick Morris said Sunday that Hillary Clinton most likely wants to get into the 2020 presidential race because she thinks "God put her on the Earth" to be president.

Morris told John Catsimatidis on his radio show that the major question revolving around the 2020 election is whether "the ghost of Hillary Clinton" will enter the election.

"My feeling is that she wants to," Morris said. "She feels entitled to do it. She feels compelled to do it. She feels that God put her on the Earth to do it. But she's hesitant because she realizes the timing is bad."

The former adviser said he thinks Hillary Clinton is waiting for an opportunity to jump into the race and particularly for former Vice President Joe Biden to drop out.

Members of the BRICS trade bloc Russia, India, and China have decided to connect their financial messaging systems to bypass the SWIFT international money transfer network.

Russia's financial messaging system SPFS will be linked with the Chinese cross-border interbank payment system CIPS. While India does not have a domestic financial messaging system yet, it plans to combine the Central Bank of Russia's platform with a domestic service that is in development.

The new system is expected to work as a "gateway" model when messages on payments are transcoded in accordance with a certain financial system.

The following is an excerpt from Lee Smith's forthcoming book, The Plot Against the President: The True Story of How Congressman Devin Nunes Uncovered the Biggest Political Scandal in U.S. History, which will be released October 29.

In mid-March 2017, California congressman Devin Nunes, then Chairman of the House Permanent Select Committee on Intelligence (HPSCI), found out the FBI had obtained a warrant to spy on Donald Trump campaign adviser Carter Page. And they'd used the Steele dossier, opposition research paid for by the Clinton campaign, as evidence.

But Nunes and his committee couldn't say anything, not to the U.S. public, not even to fellow members of Congress. The FBI and DOJ had buried the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act (FISA) warrant, like so much of the anti-Trump operation, under the heading of classified intelligence.

It marked a low point for Nunes' team. Shortly after, former DOJ prosecutor Kashyap Patel joined them. At first Patel's new colleagues didn't know what to make of him. As a New Yorker, Patel's style sometimes clashed with those of the easygoing Californians, southerners, and midwesterners who made up the HPSCI staff.