Is the Supreme Court still legit­i­mate? In this thought-pro­vok­ing video, Mike points out the crit­i­cal issues sur­round­ing the legit­i­ma­cy of the cur­rent Supreme Court. He delves into how the Court’s pow­er, derived from the peo­ple’s belief in its fair­ness, is now under scrutiny. 
Mike ques­tions whether the recent actions of the Supreme Court, influ­enced by polit­i­cal con­sid­er­a­tions, set a dan­ger­ous prece­dent. He responds to the actions tak­en that have stripped away near­ly 50 years of rights from Americans, high­light­ing instances of alleged cor­rup­tion and bias among justices. 
Mike fur­ther dis­cuss­es the impli­ca­tions of a Supreme Court Justice receiv­ing over $4 mil­lion from wealthy bene­fac­tors and the con­tro­ver­sial dis­play of a white Christian nation­al­ist flag at a jus­tice’s property. 
He ques­tions the integri­ty of a court that, while favor­ing per­son­al ties, under­mines the rights of mil­lions. In this detailed polit­i­cal analy­sis, Mike pro­vides a com­pelling argu­ment on the court’s cur­rent state and its impact on the American public. 

Imagine a coun­try that is sup­posed to be the old­est democracy[sic]; in that coun­try, the high­est court is the Supreme Court. Merriam-Webster defines SUPREME this way: high­est in rank or author­i­ty, espe­cial­ly in a posi­tion of unques­tioned author­i­ty, dom­i­nance, or influ­ence). So, there is no won­der that the right-wing MAGA plants on that court believe the law does not apply to them; they accept mil­lions in lux­u­ry gifts and fly insur­rec­tion­ist flags at their prop­er­ty with­out a care that they should be ques­tioned, take away the con­sti­tu­tion­al and fun­da­men­tal rights of tens of mil­lions of cit­i­zens at their whim and decree.
The chief of those supreme crea­tures even refus­es to meet with US Senators to dis­cuss the burn­ing ethics ques­tions; he claims that in the inter­est of sep­a­ra­tion of pow­ers, the court should not have to answer Congress because it is a co-equal branch of gov­ern­ment. (Hahaha) They were actu­al­ly placed in posi­tions of pow­er by the same US Senators.

The sto­ry goes that George Washington, a slave­hold­er, hero of the War of Independence, and the Republic’s first pres­i­dent, had to push hard against being made King. The sad irony is that the set­tlers who arrived in America and even­tu­al­ly warred against Britain and King George’s tyran­ny and even­tu­al­ly won, result­ing in the repub­lic’s cre­ation, were fight­ing against the idea of a monarch rul­ing over them.
One would think that those sup­posed bril­liant supe­ri­or beings, [sic] hav­ing just defeat­ed the British Monarchy, would not want to cre­ate a monar­chy in the new nation they had just estab­lished. Conventional wis­dom would mil­i­tate against that, and ulti­mate­ly it did.
But did it?
If five indi­vid­u­als on the [Supreme Court] can reverse the rights enjoyed by peo­ple for 49 years, see Roe v Wade. And if they can destroy the val­i­da­tion of basic rights once denied to a seg­ment of the pop­u­la­tion for an even longer peri­od. And if no one has the author­i­ty even to ques­tion them, how is that nation a democ­ra­cy? How is that coun­try, not a monarchy?

So for those peo­ple pay­ing atten­tion, when Donald Trump asked the court to rule that he has the supreme right to break the laws, includ­ing killing his polit­i­cal oppo­nents, and the court takes the case, which it is not oblig­at­ed to do, and when it fails to make a sim­ple rul­ing of, ‘hell fuck­ing no, you are not allowed to break the laws with­out con­se­quence,’ you are con­strained by the laws like every­one else, that court has lost all legit­i­ma­cy. The Supreme Court knows that the longer it takes to say no, you are not allowed to com­mit felonies with­out con­se­quence, the clos­er it gets to the pres­i­den­tial elec­tions hop­ing that Trump wins. The Federal crim­i­nal charges against him go away because Trump would make them disappear.
In delay­ing a deci­sion, the court has placed its fin­gers on the scale in favor of Donald Trump, much like the unqual­i­fied fed­er­al judge Eileen Cannon in Florida, who has used her posi­tion as a fed­er­al judge as a free law firm for Donald Trump. Even if the deci­sion is what it must be, you do not have the right to break the laws; the delay has already been a win for Donald Trump’s strat­e­gy of run­ning out the clock, hop­ing he will be elect­ed president.

The Supreme Court as an insti­tu­tion is so bad­ly dam­aged that it is impos­si­ble to see how this court can be viewed with any legit­i­ma­cy going forward.
In 2016, the Republican Party real­ized its decades-long goal of putting an amoral, immoral, emp­ty suit into the White House.
It had been a dream of the par­ty guid­ed by the burn­ing need to pro­tect white suprema­cy in America. With stag­nant white birthrates and con­tin­ued migra­tion of peo­ple of col­or into the coun­try, the par­ty embarked on a scorched earth pol­i­cy to pro­tect con­trol using every tool at its dis­pos­al, even if it meant ditch­ing the gov­ern­ing prin­ci­ple of democ­ra­cy it feigned cham­pi­oning decades ago.
Reversing the Dobbs deci­sion and demo­niz­ing immi­grants at the state and fed­er­al lev­els has been a bi-fold strat­e­gy to lim­it the brown­ing and increase the whitening.
If those goals can­not be attained with the alacrity and def­i­n­i­tion they desire, then they are will­ing to resort to turn­ing the coun­try into an auto­crat­ic state gov­erned by a mind­less, deranged autocrat.

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Mike Beckles is a for­mer Police Detective, busi­ness­man, free­lance writer, black achiev­er hon­oree, and cre­ator of the blog mike​beck​les​.com.

The found­ing fathers, often hailed as genius­es, may have over­looked a crit­i­cal aspect of judi­cial over­sight. The Supreme Court, with its heav­i­ly slant­ed polit­i­cal deci­sions, sets a dan­ger­ous prece­dent for American democ­ra­cy. Mike responds to the action tak­en by jus­tices like Clarence Thomas and Samuel Alito, who have been accused of uneth­i­cal prac­tices and accept­ing lav­ish gifts from wealthy benefactors.

These actions under­mine the court’s integri­ty and ques­tion the founders’ inten­tions. Mike also delves into the impact of the Supreme Court’s recent con­tro­ver­sial deci­sions, such as the destruc­tion of the 1965 Voting Rights Act and the over­turn­ing of Roe vs. Wade. These rul­ings strip away rights that gen­er­a­tions of Americans have tak­en for grant­ed, rais­ing seri­ous con­cerns about the court’s role in expand­ing or restrict­ing cit­i­zens’ rights.

Republicans, who con­trol the major­i­ty in the US House of Representatives, have passed a bill with Democrat sup­port that would impose puni­tive sanc­tions against the International Criminal Court because the court decid­ed to indict geno­ci­dal psy­chopath Benjamin Netanyahu and his defense min­is­ter Yoav Galant of Israel.
The United States was instru­men­tal in estab­lish­ing the ICC, how­ev­er, ICC pros­e­cu­tor Karim Khan told CNN that a senior leader of the court told him“This court is built for Africa and thugs like Putin.”
This writer has pre­vi­ous­ly writ­ten that African lead­ers should extri­cate them­selves as sig­na­to­ries to this court, even as they are respon­si­ble for abid­ing by inter­na­tion­al laws.
It is impor­tant to remem­ber that though the United States was a major rea­son for the court’s estab­lish­ment, the United States ensured that it was not a sig­na­to­ry to the ICC; there­fore, it is not sub­ject to the rul­ings of the court, and nei­ther is the ille­git­i­mate Apartheid, State of Israel.

The United States cheered the court when it filed arrest war­rants for Russian President Vladimir Putin; the court also bent over back­ward to issue arrest war­rants for the alleged leader of Hamas, a man by the name of Yahya Sinwar.
But when it’s time for account­abil­i­ty for the geno­ci­dal Netanyahu, the President of the United States, many Democrats, and the entire Republican par­ty- all tools of the Israeli lob­by AIPAC, balked and wants to destroy the court.
There are more than enough rea­sons that the legit­i­ma­cy of the court should be ques­tioned based on its his­to­ry of rul­ings, the state­ments Khan made to CNN, and more. However, Biden’s com­ments after the court deci­sions, “Let me be clear: we reject the ICC’s appli­ca­tion for arrest war­rants against Israeli lead­ers,” is a clear indi­ca­tion that the United States Government is pre­pared to squan­der the nation’s cred­i­bil­i­ty and respect on the world stage to pro­tect an indict­ed war crim­i­nal who isn’t even an American.
It is anoth­er exam­ple of how the rules-based order the United States cre­at­ed after the Second World War is now dead.
All great Empires even­tu­al­ly end­ed, and the American Empire will be no dif­fer­ent. All great Empires’ demise occurred from with­in. Division, hatred, graft, and oth­er vices con­tributed to their down­fall. More than any­thing else, racial hatred with­in the United States has been the dri­ving force of the fis­sures and cracks that have begun to emerge in America’s hege­mon­ic con­trol of our world.

https://​mike​beck​les​.com/​t​w​o​-​t​i​e​r​e​d​-​j​u​s​t​i​c​e​-​s​y​s​t​em/

Racial con­sid­er­a­tions have been at the heart of most major pol­i­cy deci­sions and laws in the US because far too many white peo­ple do not believe that Blacks, in par­tic­u­lar, and oth­er races should be enti­tled to the same rights and priv­i­leges they enjoy.
The Supreme Court, the high­est body that is sup­posed to call balls and strikes, has itself become mired in alle­ga­tions of gross eth­i­cal vio­la­tions and, worse, a tool of the far right.
The very idea of the United States as a lead­ing democ­ra­cy is under­go­ing a severe stress test. The Republican par­ty has all but aban­doned democ­ra­cy as a gov­ern­ing prin­ci­ple (again, this deci­sion is root­ed in the increase of peo­ple of col­or in the US and the stag­na­tion of the white birthrate).
Republican war against Immigration and its five-decade assault on Roe V Wade over­turned by the reac­tionary right-wing Supreme Court are all intend­ed to halt the brown­ing of America and increase the white population.
The very legit­i­ma­cy of the High Court is now in ques­tion after it took away rights Americans enjoyed for almost five decades. In a Democracy, the courts [do not] restrict rights; they expand them. The Roberts court has the dubi­ous hon­or of restrict­ing and sup­press­ing the rights of the people.

No coun­try can claim to be a democ­ra­cy if the elect­ed rep­re­sen­ta­tives of the peo­ple appoint bureau­crats to life­time posi­tions over which they there­after have no oversight.
The idea of a Supreme Court pop­u­lat­ed with bureau­crats who the peo­ple did not elect and answer only to them­selves runs counter to the very notion of democracy.
A Supreme Court that no one has the pow­er to police is a court with no account­abil­i­ty. A court that refus­es to respond to alle­ga­tions of gross eth­i­cal mis­con­duct among some of its mem­bers, which refus­es to appear before the peo­ple’s rep­re­sen­ta­tives to answer ques­tions about its con­duct, the very body that put them in place, has become a Monarchy.
But eth­i­cal impro­pri­ety is the least of the court’s chal­lenges as Associate Justice Samuel Alito has been accused of fly­ing a white suprema­cist flag on his prop­er­ty as well as fly­ing the American Flag upside down, a sig­nal that the fly­er believes the 2020 elec­tions were stolen from Donald Trump.
It was report­ed that Samuel Alito accept­ed extrav­a­gant gifts from major con­ser­v­a­tive donors, includ­ing Paul Singer, a hedge fund bil­lion­aire who has repeat­ed­ly asked the Court to rule on his busi­ness deal­ings. The alle­ga­tions that Justice Alito accept­ed a paid-for vaca­tion total­ing hun­dreds of thou­sands of dol­lars from Leonard Leo, who had recent­ly played a sig­nif­i­cant role in his con­fir­ma­tion process, fur­ther under­mine the court’s legitimacy.

Clarence Thomas’ wife is accused of being one of the archi­tects of the assault on the Capitol on January 6^th, 2021. Associate Justice Clarence Thomas report­ed­ly accept­ed gifts and lux­u­ry trav­el from GOP megadonor Harlan Crow for years with­out dis­clos­ing them as fed­er­al law requires.
The alle­ga­tions of impro­pri­ety inside the high­est court have become so pro­nounced that one Democratic Representative, Mikey Sherrill, a Navy vet­er­an, and for­mer Assistant US attor­ney, intro­duced leg­is­la­tion that would estab­lish over­sight of the court, some­thing the court rig­or­ous­ly objects to, argu­ing that Congressional over­sight is a breach of the sep­a­ra­tion of pow­ers under the constitution.
See Sherril’s leg­is­la­tion here: https://​sher​rill​.house​.gov/​m​e​d​i​a​/​p​r​e​s​s​-​r​e​l​e​a​s​e​s​/​s​h​e​r​r​i​l​l​-​s​t​e​p​s​-​u​p​-​t​o​-​h​o​l​d​-​s​u​p​r​e​m​e​-​c​o​u​r​t​-​j​u​s​t​i​c​e​s​-​a​c​c​o​u​n​t​a​b​l​e​-​a​n​d​-​r​e​s​t​o​r​e​-​t​r​u​s​t​-​i​n​-​t​h​e​-​h​i​g​h​-​c​o​urt.

The United States is under­go­ing a seis­mic change, one that will deter­mine whether the nation as it exist­ed con­tin­ues or reverts to the dark, dystopi­an night­mare it was for mil­lions, a sce­nario half the nation seems to crave…
The cliché, this is the most impor­tant elec­tion ever, will no longer be a cliché come November; it will actu­al­ly be the most sig­nif­i­cant elec­tion in this nation’s history.
Regardless of who wins in November, cor­rect­ing the course may already be too late. Republicans and Democrats are unit­ed in bring­ing a geno­ci­dal sociopath, Benjamin Netanyahu, to address Congress, some­thing Republicans did dur­ing the Obama pres­i­den­cy as a fuck you to Obama.….. Democrats sat in on it and cheered Netanyahu.
This time Republicans and Democrats will once again stand and clap as the socio­path­ic mur­der­er Benjamin Netanyahu who is under indict­ment from the ICC and will be an indict­ed felon in his own coun­try once he leaves office, lec­tures the world on Israel’s right­eous­ness, a fuck you to the ICC and the rest of the world.

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Mike Beckles is a for­mer Police Detective, busi­ness­man, free­lance writer, black achiev­er hon­oree, and cre­ator of the blog mike​beck​les​.com.

The nation of South Africa vot­ed in Parliamentary elec­tions on May 29^th; the par­ty that gains more than 50% of the vote elects the next pres­i­dent. The African National Congress (ANC), the par­ty of for­mer President Nelson Mandela, has ruled South Africa for three decades since the end of white minor­i­ty rule and seems set to lose its major­i­ty for the first time.
After 30 years, the ANC may have fall­en vic­tim to the mal­adies of many pre­vi­ous polit­i­cal par­ties that evolved from colo­nial strug­gles. The ANC has been wracked with accu­sa­tions of cor­rup­tion scan­dals, poor man­age­ment, and the inabil­i­ty to deliv­er on much of its promis­es to the nation’s large­ly black community.

As a con­se­quence, many peo­ple have become frus­trat­ed with the par­ty that formed the first demo­c­ra­t­ic gov­ern­ment after the demise of the apartheid régime minor­i­ty rule was overturned.
Before I go fur­ther, I must remind you, my read­ers, that the Western Powers, the United States, England, France, and most oth­er European Nations sup­port­ed white minor­i­ty rule all across Africa where it exist­ed, not just in South Africa.
They also brand­ed Nelson Mandela and the ANC a ter­ror­ist and ter­ror­ist orga­ni­za­tion, respectively.

The ANC will most like­ly receive the largest share of the votes, allow­ing it to remain the most pow­er­ful polit­i­cal force in the coun­try. Consequently, it will still be able to form a coali­tion gov­ern­ment in which President Cyril Ramaphosa will retain the presidency.
According to Reuters, after 42% of the votes have been tab­u­lat­ed, the ANC has received 42.7%, while the Democratic Alliance (DA) is in sec­ond place with 23.6%. uMkhonto we Sizwe (MK), a new par­ty led by for­mer pres­i­dent Jacob Zuma, was at 10% and eat­ing into ANC sup­port, par­tic­u­lar­ly in KwaZulu-Natal, his home province and a tra­di­tion­al strong­hold of the rul­ing party.
MK had also over­tak­en the left-lean­ing Economic Freedom Fighters (EFF) led by Julius Malema, cur­rent­ly the third biggest par­ty in par­lia­ment, at 9.5%.

The Democratic Alliance, the par­ty that is the sec­ond most pow­er­ful to date, is the par­ty large­ly of the white upper mid­dle class who ben­e­fit­ted under apartheid rule; it has sig­nif­i­cant sup­port from Indians with­in the country.
It behooves the ANC [not] to ally with the Democratic Alliance to retain pow­er, as it would rep­re­sent a slap in the face of all the free­dom fight­ers who have sac­ri­ficed to see the end of apartheid rule in South Africa.
The worst thing Cyril Ramaphosa could do to keep pow­er is to ally him­self with the Democratic Alliance, a par­ty some of whose sup­port­ers long for a civ­il war to return the nation to the dark days of minor­i­ty rule just three decades past.
The Economic Freedom Fighters (EFF) have sol­id plans, not just for South Africa but for the reuni­fi­ca­tion of the entire African con­ti­nent to become one nation again. This has caused Western nations to car­i­ca­ture him as a clown unwor­thy of attention.
The real clown is not only the Western pow­ers but the black Africans who would cast a vote for the cor­rupt ANC or, worse, elect the Lilly-white Democratic Alliance to return them to white rule.
Melema advo­cates for nation­al­iz­ing South African mines and Banks, as well as lands sup­pos­ed­ly owned by white South Africans.
These ideas could lead to eco­nom­ic dis­as­ter if not approached cor­rect­ly. Governments should not be in the busi­ness of own­ing banks but should heav­i­ly reg­u­late them on behalf of all the peo­ple. The mines should be nation­al­ized and returned to the South African peo­ple. The Government should appro­pri­ate the land, and the white set­tlers should be giv­en the right to use it and con­tin­ue what­ev­er they have going on with them.
Malema and the EFF are wor­thy of the atten­tion of the South African people.

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Mike Beckles is a for­mer Police Detective, busi­ness­man, free­lance writer, black achiev­er hon­oree, and cre­ator of the blog mike​beck​les​.com.

The Leahy Amendment allows the United States to main­tain tight con­trol over nations it loans mon­ey to or extends its largess to — – except the geno­ci­dal socio­path­ic pari­ah state of Israel.
The Law bears the name of Vermont’s Democratic US Senator, Patrick Leahy, who served from 1975 to 2023. 
A brief Google search for the Leahy Amendment turns up the fol­low­ing: The “Leahy Laws” pro­hib­it U.S. assis­tance to for­eign secu­ri­ty force units when cred­i­ble infor­ma­tion exists that the unit has com­mit­ted a “gross vio­la­tion of human rights” (GVHR). Pursuant to the laws, the U.S. gov­ern­ment vets poten­tial recip­i­ents for infor­ma­tion about GVHR involve­ment before pro­vid­ing assistance.

The term “Leahy law” refers to two statu­to­ry pro­vi­sions pro­hibit­ing the U.S. Government from using funds for assis­tance to units of for­eign secu­ri­ty forces where there is cred­i­ble infor­ma­tion impli­cat­ing that unit in the com­mis­sion of gross human rights vio­la­tions (GVHR). One statu­to­ry pro­vi­sion applies to the State Department, and the oth­er applies to the Department of Defense. The State Department Leahy law was made per­ma­nent under sec­tion 620M of the Foreign Assistance Act of 1961, 22 U.S.C. 2378^d. The U.S. gov­ern­ment con­sid­ers tor­ture, extra­ju­di­cial killing, enforced dis­ap­pear­ance, and rape under col­or of law as GVHRs when imple­ment­ing the Leahy law. Incidents are exam­ined on a fact-spe­cif­ic basis. The State Department Leahy law includes an excep­tion per­mit­ting the resump­tion of assis­tance to a unit if the Secretary of State deter­mines and reports to Congress that the gov­ern­ment of the coun­try is tak­ing effec­tive steps to bring the respon­si­ble mem­bers of the secu­ri­ty forces unit to jus­tice. (US Department of State.

There is no ques­tion about the clar­i­ty of the law, as it relates to how American tax dol­lars can be used to aid for­eign Governments- yet the law, for some rea­son, does not apply to the apartheid geno­ci­dal state of Israel in its con­tin­ued slaugh­ter of inno­cent men women and chil­dren in Gaza Palestine…
It is time for the American pub­lic to devel­op a sense of right and wrong and move away from the old dis­cred­it­ed idea that they are supe­ri­or, excep­tion­al, or oth­er­wise bet­ter than any oth­er peo­ple on our planet.
The con­tin­ued embrac­ing of the afore­men­tioned pro­pa­gan­dis­tic ideals is a clear indi­ca­tion of brain­wash­ing and, worse, a sense that those who hold such views are indeed ignoramuses.
It is past time that the American pub­lic real­izes that main­tain­ing the hypocrisy that allows Israel to manip­u­late them into doing injus­tice to oth­er peo­ple means it is on a con­tin­ued path to ille­git­i­ma­cy as a nation, much the same way Israel has become a world­wide pari­ah iso­lat­ed in a cacoon of its own twist­ed sense of legitimacy.
Please remem­ber that in 1947, when American President Harry Truman autho­rized the peo­ple flee­ing Adolph Hitler to set­tle on Palestinian land, the peo­ple of Palestine wel­comed them with cheers and open arms.
This was a fatal mis­take on the part of the Palestinian people.
Their acts of kind­ness cost them their homes, land, free­dom, and lives. Their kind­ness was syn­ony­mous with fool­ish­ly pick­ing up a poi­so­nous snake and embrac­ing it.
In the end, a snake is a snake; it will sting because that’s what snakes do.

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Mike Beckles is a for­mer Police Detective, busi­ness­man, free­lance writer, black achiev­er hon­oree, and cre­ator of the blog mike​beck​les​.com.

When it comes to America con­tin­ued desire to be a war­ring nation, there is lit­tle dis­tinc­tion between the two polit­i­cal par­ties. Both the Democratic and Republican Party are heav­i­ly invest­ed in the con­cept of war as a means of main­tain­ing America’s hege­mon­ic con­trol over oth­er nations on our planet.(mb)

Let Ukraine use Western weapons to strike tar­gets inside Russia.

That mes­sage, long a pri­or­i­ty for Kyiv and its fiercest back­ers, is now being voiced by a grow­ing num­ber of Western lead­ers. The United States has so far remained unmoved by this pres­sure, putting it at odds with allies — and in the com­pa­ny of the Kremlin, which has warned against such a move.

But there are signs this could soon change.

The debate inside the Biden admin­is­tra­tion over the issue is ongo­ing, and some top offi­cials back lift­ing the restric­tions on how Ukraine uses weapons pro­vid­ed by Washington, two sources with knowl­edge of the mat­ter told NBC News.

That debate has gained urgency since Russia launched a new cross-bor­der offen­sive in Ukraine’s north­east­ern Kharkiv region ear­li­er this month, and Kyiv has warned that it could also be mass­ing troops for anoth­er incur­sion in neigh­bor­ing Sumy.

Ukraine feels it has been left hand­i­capped, argu­ing that the restric­tions on its use of Western-sup­plied weapons have giv­en Moscow an unfair advantage.

Russia “can use the mil­i­tary infra­struc­ture on its ter­ri­to­ry for the war against Ukraine with­out any obsta­cles,” said Mykola Bielieskov, a research fel­low at Ukraine’s National Institute for Strategic Studies, a gov­ern­ment research group.

“As a result, there is a pow­er­ful asym­me­try,” Bielieskov, based in Kyiv, told NBC News on Wednesday. “This has been talked about for a long time. It’s just that the Russian offen­sive in the Kharkiv region clear­ly showed this.”

The new urgency from Kyiv, which is still wait­ing for cru­cial U.S. mil­i­tary aid, has prompt­ed a grow­ing list of Western offi­cials to back the idea of remov­ing the restric­tions on hit­ting tar­gets inside Russia.

For much of the war, Kyiv’s part­ners have drawn a sol­id red line at let­ting Ukraine use the weapons they sup­ply inside Russian ter­ri­to­ry, fear­ing an esca­la­tion from the Kremlin that could turn the con­flict into a World War III.

The Biden admin­is­tra­tion has been con­sis­tent in this stance, per­haps wor­ried that Russian President Vladimir Putin could retal­i­ate using nuclear weapons — which he has reg­u­lar­ly threat­ened through­out the conflict.

But with Ukraine out­num­bered, out­gunned and on the back foot, Kyiv has been mak­ing a pub­lic case for its allies to loosen their restrictions.

And it seems to be working.

French President Emmanuel Macron became the lat­est high-pro­file backer of the idea Tuesday. He sug­gest­ed Ukraine should be allowed to hit mil­i­tary tar­gets inside Russia from which mis­siles were being fired at Ukrainian ter­ri­to­ry, an appar­ent com­pro­mise position.

He was joined by German leader Olaf Scholz, who had resist­ed the idea but agreed to the con­cept Tuesday.

It comes on the back of NATO chief Jens Stoltenberg’s repeat­ed pleas to let Ukraine use Western-sup­plied weapons to hit tar­gets inside Russia, say­ing that not doing so ham­pers Kyiv’s abil­i­ty “to defend them­selves.” It’s a view shared by a num­ber of European mem­bers of the alliance, includ­ing the United Kingdom, Sweden and Poland.

In pre­vi­ous debates inside the Biden admin­is­tra­tion over how far to go in arm­ing Ukraine, Secretary of State Antony Blinken and CIA Director William Burns have staked out a bold­er stance, sup­port­ing the pro­vi­sion of longer-range mis­siles and oth­er weapons — and have often pre­vailed fol­low­ing appeals from law­mak­ers and European governments.

And on Wednesday, Blinken appeared to leave room for a shift on this issue, too.

“We haven’t encour­aged or enabled strikes out­side of Ukraine. Ukraine, as I’ve said before, has to make its own deci­sions about the best way to effec­tive­ly defend itself,” he said dur­ing a trip to Europe that will include a NATO meet­ing Thursday. A “hall­mark” of U.S. sup­port for Ukraine, he said, “has been to adapt.”

“As the con­di­tions have changed, as the bat­tle­field has changed, as what Russia does has changed,” he added. “We’ve adapt­ed and adjust­ed too and I’m con­fi­dent we’ll con­tin­ue to do that.”

The Kremlin has sought to ward off the move, with Putin warn­ing European NATO states Tuesday that they were play­ing with fire and risk­ing “glob­al conflict.”

Moscow recent­ly staged exer­cis­es to sim­u­late the use of tac­ti­cal nuclear weapons, in a like­ly sig­nal to the West against deep­er involve­ment in Ukraine.

The risk of esca­la­tion seems to be exact­ly what’s kept Biden reluc­tant to allow the use of American weapons on Russian soil, said Christopher Tuck, an expert in con­flict and secu­ri­ty at King’s College London.

“Putin’s com­ments should be seen in this light: he is attempt­ing to feed the fears of those who believe that cross­ing this U.S. red line would move NATO’s rela­tion­ship with Russia into a new and dan­ger­ous phase,” he said.

It’s clear from frus­tra­tion build­ing in Ukraine that it will not vio­late the ban unless the U.S. soft­ens its position.

“We can­not, and this is a fact, risk the sup­port of part­ners,” Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy said Tuesday. “Therefore, we do not use the weapons of our part­ners on the ter­ri­to­ry of the Russian Federation. And we appeal: give us the oppor­tu­ni­ty to retal­i­ate against their mil­i­tary forces.”

His com­ments came after a group of law­mak­ers from both par­ties last week pub­licly urged the White House to give Kyiv the green light.

“Ukrainians have been unable to defend them­selves due to the Administration’s cur­rent pol­i­cy. It is essen­tial the Biden Administration allows Ukraine’s mil­i­tary lead­ers an abil­i­ty to con­duct a full spec­trum of oper­a­tions nec­es­sary to respond to Russia’s unpro­voked attack on their sov­er­eign land,” the law­mak­ers wrote in a let­ter to Defense Secretary Lloyd Austin.

But the Biden administration’s fears might be exac­er­bat­ed by Ukraine’s increas­ing­ly dar­ing use of its own weapons, most­ly drones, to strike strate­gic tar­gets deep inside Russia such as oil refineries.

A Ukrainian drone tar­get­ed a long-range radar deep inside Russia that forms part of the country’s bal­lis­tic mis­sile ear­ly warn­ing sys­tem Sunday, a Ukrainian intel­li­gence offi­cial told NBC News. The offi­cial want­ed to remain anony­mous because they are not autho­rized to dis­close details of the strike, which appeared to be the sec­ond in a week against infra­struc­ture used by Moscow to mon­i­tor Ukraine’s mil­i­tary activities.

Although the U.S. is like­ly to remove the restric­tions on the use of its weapons inside Russia even­tu­al­ly, Tuck said, Ukraine would have to be care­ful about the sorts of tar­gets that it attacks and would need to avoid inflict­ing civil­ian casualties.

It’s also impor­tant to put any U.S. deci­sion into per­spec­tive, he added.

“Russian forces have made slow progress in Kharkiv oblast, so it is like­ly that a U.S. deci­sion would be in time to make a mil­i­tar­i­ly use­ful con­tri­bu­tion to the fight there,” Tuck said. “But it isn’t a deci­sion that is going to change the course of the war.”

This arti­cle was orig­i­nal­ly pub­lished on NBCNews​.com

All my adult life, I have been an enthu­si­as­tic admir­er of the ‘International Rules-based Order.’ The rules-based inter­na­tion­al sys­tem is found­ed on rela­tion­ships between states through inter­na­tion­al insti­tu­tions and frame­works, with shared rules and agree­ments on behavior.
The rules-based sys­tem was devel­oped after World War II. The rules-based inter­na­tion­al sys­tem, led by like-mind­ed allies and part­ners, has pro­duced peace, pros­per­i­ty, and free­dom, depend­ing on who you ask.….…..
If you live in Western Europe or North America, you may have been con­vinced that the inter­na­tion­al rules-based order has pro­duced immense wealth, peace, and free­dom for many, depend­ing on who you ask.
Over the years, my sin­gu­lar focus on this sys­tem has been that it has kept the world out of a third world war thus far to the exclu­sion of every­thing else.
I have repeat­ed­ly point­ed to the num­ber of years between World Wars I and two in pre­vi­ous arti­cles. World War I began in 1914 and end­ed in 1918. A mere 25 years lat­er, in 1939, the world was again embroiled in anoth­er vio­lent conflagration.
The rules-based inter­na­tion­al sys­tem was con­struct­ed most­ly by lead­ing demo­c­ra­t­ic allies at the end of World War II, main­ly the United States and England. The sys­tem was put under the aus­pices of the United Nations. The UN is a con­struct of the new rules-based system.
Arguably, the International Rules-based Order, estab­lished 79 years after its incep­tion, has helped to avert a third world war.
If your inter­pre­ta­tion of the International Rules-based order has been as myopic as mine has been, like me, you would have missed all that I missed, includ­ing that I was eval­u­at­ing the sys­tem through the eyes of Western propaganda.

Many are now argu­ing that the Rules-based Order may be reach­ing the end of its teth­er in light of what is occur­ring in Palestine and oth­er parts of the world.
Why is there a ques­tion now when there have been numer­ous con­flicts since the end of the Second World War?
Before we exam­ine the why, let us first agree that when there are rules and laws, there is gen­er­al­ly a need for some­one or some­thing to enforce them.
Additionally, the sys­tem needs legal sanc­tions, courts, pros­e­cu­tors, defense attor­neys, judges, and law enforcers to work.
It is impor­tant to rec­on­cile that for a sys­tem to work, every­one [must] be treat­ed equal­ly so that there is buy-in from stakeholders.
At the end of the Second World War, the four major Allied pow­ers—France, the Soviet Union, the United Kingdom, and the United States—set up the International Military Tribunal (IMT) in Nuremberg, Germany, to pros­e­cute and pun­ish “the major war crim­i­nals of the European Axis.” The IMT presided over a com­bined tri­al of senior Nazi polit­i­cal and military …
The International Court of Justice was estab­lished in the Hague, Netherlands; it is the only arm of the United Nations not based in the United States. Article 93 of the UN Charter states that all 193 UN mem­bers are auto­mat­i­cal­ly par­ties to the court’s statute.
Not a sin­gle Western nation nor Israel has been hauled before the court for breach­es of International laws.
In fact, the United States has lit­er­al­ly made itself and Israel above the pow­ers of the International Court of Justice.
Despite American wars of aggres­sion since the court was estab­lished, no nation has moved to have America held accountable.

The United Nations, based in New York City, and oth­ers were cre­at­ed by the Western vic­tors, the United States, England, and France, who had just defeat­ed German and Italian Fascism, or so we are social­ized to believe. 
Ironically, with­in the US, British, and French Military struc­tures were Fascists, as is evi­denced by the rise of white right-wing Fascism in England, France, and, more so, the United States over the last sev­er­al decades.
The American Civil War was waged between white men and lat­er freed African Americans, sup­pos­ed­ly to free the enslaved African Americans. At the end of the war, near­ly a mil­lion trai­tors who seced­ed from the Union, Union sol­diers, and Blacks lay dead.
The Nation recon­sti­tut­ed quick­ly, arguably more mind-numb­ing­ly racist than before it went to war.
There was no penal­ty for the Southern Traitors; mon­u­ments were erect­ed across the Country in their hon­or, even in north­ern states.
I digressed!!!

The Americans and the British saw them­selves as the New Police Force in the new par­a­digm; how­ev­er, as the pow­er dynam­ic between Colonist Britain and its for­mer Colony England flipped, England became a tiny, wet, cold, insignif­i­cant island that nobody cared about.
America was now in full hege­mon­ic con­trol of our plan­et with the fall of the Soviet Union. The rules were what America said they were. I can hear you say­ing, but the rules are enshrined in UN Charters.” Who deter­mines what the rules are? 
Power cor­rupts, and absolute pow­er cor­rupts absolute­ly; cliché, yes, but appropriate. 
Emerging from the Second World War vic­to­ri­ous­ly, the West began to carve up the world into enclaves; what they nev­er both­ered explain­ing to their cit­i­zens was the tremen­dous­ly impor­tant role the Soviets played in end­ing the War.
The Cold War peri­od began imme­di­ate­ly between the West and the Soviets. This peri­od was fright­en­ing on many lev­els for our plan­et as most believed that the two fac­tions would bring about nuclear armageddon.
Perhaps the clos­est the world came to that grim real­i­ty was in 1962 when the two pow­ers brought the world to the brink of nuclear war over Soviet mis­siles on the Island of Cuba.
The dis­as­ter was avert­ed, how­ev­er, when the Soviets agreed to remove the mis­siles so long as the Americans removed their bal­lis­tic mis­siles from the nation of Turkey.
Americans cel­e­brat­ed the end of the cri­sis as a win for their new President, John F. Kennedy. Still today, Americans believe that Kennedy pulled off some brava­do that forced Soviet Premier Nikita Khrushchev to capit­u­late in fear.
The real­i­ty of what occurred is that Khrushchev was strate­gic in his Cuban gam­bit. He want­ed the American bal­lis­tic mis­siles in Turkey gone. At the end of the stand­off, they were gone.
That was a strate­gic loss the Soviet Premier could afford to take all day.

After the Soviet Union’s eco­nom­ic col­lapse, America had a free hand to do as it pleased. As the new­ly self-appoint­ed world cop, it was already aggra­vat­ing, start­ing, and cre­at­ing glob­al wars in Korea, Vietnam, Africa, Latin America, and even the tiny Caribbean region.
The United States was now the law; every­one did as they want­ed, or American troops were deployed. The new argu­ment for American expan­sion­ist men­tal­i­ty was restor­ing or cre­at­ing ‘Democracy”. Afghanistan, Iraq, Lybia, Syria. There was no end to America tak­ing mil­i­tary action to exert its will covert­ly or overt­ly, except the newest Colonial set­tler nation, Israel.
The United States and Britain cre­at­ed Israel in Palestine in 1947. A year lat­er, in 1948, the United States rec­og­nized the infil­tra­tor state as legit­i­mate, the first nation to do so. Thereafter, it used its eco­nom­ic pow­er to twist the arms of oth­er nations to rec­og­nize the ille­git­i­mate state as a duly con­sti­tut­ed state.
But that has only been the begin­ning, as America would sup­port the ille­gal occu­pa­tion of Palestine, send untold bil­lions to arm the pari­ah state, allow it to have nuclear weapons while attack­ing oth­er nations under the guise they pos­sess such weapons, block its account­abil­i­ty in the UN and International Court Of Justice, threat­en and try to intim­i­date those who spoke out against Israel’s atroc­i­ties and war crimes, all because the United States of America was estab­lished on the very same lie that Israel was cre­at­ed on.
Israel is a Colonial set­tler state, end of sto­ry; when a con­ver­sa­tion about Israel begins, it must always be premised on the fact that it is ille­gal, it is ille­git­i­mate, it is based on a lie, and it should not be made to stand.

Mike Beckles is a for­mer Police Detective, busi­ness­man, free­lance writer, black achiev­er hon­oree, and cre­ator of the blog mike​beck​les​.com.

Not much cash, if any, from the mas­sive $95 bil­lion war fund­ing pack­age passed by the US House will go to Ukraine. Already, there is much talk that much of the aid in weapon­ry that has gone to that war effort has gone to the black mar­ket, arms deal­ers, and ter­ror groups. The bill passed with over­whelm­ing bipar­ti­san sup­port, some­thing not seen in Washington these days except for sup­port for Israel, will now go to the Senate for final approval. After that, it is on to Joe Biden’s desk, where he anx­ious­ly awaits to attach his sig­na­ture, mak­ing it law.
The mon­ey allo­cat­ed for Ukraine will go toward prop­ping up that effort, if for noth­ing else, to try to poke a fin­ger into Russia’s eye. Many experts have argued that the war in Ukraine is already lost. Nevertheless, American arma­ments will flow from its stor­age facil­i­ties to Ukraine. At the same time, your tax dol­lars go toward fund­ing the mil­i­tary-indus­tri­al com­plex build­ing of new tanks, anti­air­craft guns, air defens­es, bul­lets, etc. The fat cats in America will get even fat­ter while the slaugh­ter continues.

According to Reuters:

Specifically, the allo­ca­tion will see:

• $5.2bn go to replen­ish­ing and expand­ing Israel’s mis­sile and rock­et defense system;
• $3.5bn for buy­ing advanced weapons sys­tems and $1bn to enhance weapons production;
• $4.4bn for oth­er sup­plies and ser­vices to Israel and
• $9.2bn for human­i­tar­i­an pur­pos­es, includ­ing in the Gaza Strip and the occu­pied West Bank.It seems that Israel is not just a state of the United States; it is the num­ber one state in the Union. Shockingly, while all this give­away is going on, every­thing is falling apart in the oth­er fifty states in America. Pervasive home­less­ness, pover­ty, decrepit infra­struc­ture, sui­cides, depres­sion, stu­dent loan death, the list is long. Still, nobody cares about the tax­pay­ing peo­ple of the United States who work, play by the rules, and pay their tax­es. They get noth­ing for being good citizens.
  The American Israel Public Affairs Committee AIPAC uses a bril­liant strat­e­gy. It allows nine mil­lion eight hun­dred and forty peo­ple (9,840,00) to con­trol three hun­dred and thir­ty-two mil­lion, two hun­dred and sev­en­ty-eight thou­sand, and two hun­dred oth­ers, 332,278,200.(A)Here’s how it works: AIPAC lob­bies Congress to make sure that any crit­i­cism of what Israel does is deemed antisemitic.
  Antisemitism, in a nut­shell, is seen as hos­til­i­ty or prej­u­dice against Jews. Its broad inter­pre­ta­tion allows Israel and its back­ers to label any­one who speaks out against its war crimes and atroc­i­ties as antisemites.
  The char­ac­ter­i­za­tion is so broad and base­less that only the most blink­ered Israeli syco­phants believe it anymore.
  That, of course, includes the American President Joe Biden, who just yes­ter­day labeled College kids at Columbia University and oth­ers protest­ing Israel’s geno­cide in Palestine antisemitic.
  (B) AIPAC pours huge amounts of dol­lars into the cam­paign cof­fers of most of the 435 US House of Representatives mem­bers. It does the same for most, if not all, of the 100 US Senators. Pouring huge sums of cash into the cof­fers of most of the 535 mem­bers of both hous­es of Congress, Republicans, and Democrats, ensures that Israel gets its mon­ey regard­less of which par­ty is in power.
  We do not have exact fig­ures of AIPAC’s expen­di­tures on elect­ing the peo­ple they want in pow­er in Washington, D.C.; still, $26.38bn for Israel is a huge return on investment. 
  © According to many inde­pen­dent reports, AIPAC not only works assid­u­ous­ly to deter­mine who gets elect­ed to the US House and Senate, but it also works to remove the few mem­bers who do not tow the Israeli line of lies and deception.
  Slate report­ed AIPAC is spend­ing up to One hun­dred mil­lion dol­lars M$100 in the upcom­ing Democratic Primaries. This huge infu­sion of mon­ey will go toward remov­ing mem­bers of the squad-Black and Brown mem­bers who have not tak­en AIPAC’s mon­ey to do Israel’s bidding.

• 

• Congress mem­bers who were more sup­port­ive of Israel at the start of the Gaza war received over $100,000 more on aver­age from pro-Israel donors dur­ing their last elec­tion than those who most sup­port­ed Palestine, a Guardian analy­sis of cam­paign data shows. Those who took more mon­ey most often called for US mil­i­tary sup­port and backed Israel’s response, even as Gaza’s civil­ian death toll mount­ed, the find­ings show. The analy­sis, which looks at posi­tions tak­en dur­ing the war’s first six weeks, does not prove any par­tic­u­lar mem­ber changed their posi­tion because they received pro-Israel cam­paign dona­tions. However, some cam­paign finance experts who viewed the data argue that donor spend­ing helped fuel Congress’s over­whelm­ing sup­port for Israel. About 82% of Congress mem­bers were more sup­port­ive of Israel, and just 9% were more sup­port­ive of Palestine dur­ing this peri­od. The remain­der had “mixed” views. Legislators cat­e­go­rized as sup­port­ive of Israel received about $125,000 on aver­age dur­ing their last elec­tion, while those sup­port­ive of Palestine on aver­age took about $18,000. The vol­ume and breadth of the donors’ spend­ing is con­sid­er­able: over $58m went to cur­rent Congress mem­bers, and all but 33 received dona­tions. (The Guardian).

AIPAC’s mon­ey and influ­ence in American pol­i­tics also cen­sured Representative Rashida Tlaib, the only Palestinian in the Congress, for dar­ing to speak out against Israeli geno­cide in Palestine. Georgia Republican Rich McCormick and AIPAC stoolie intro­duced that cen­sure motion.
AIPAC is not sat­is­fied with its stran­gle­hold on the US Congress. In 2021, it cre­at­ed a polit­i­cal action com­mit­tee, enabling the orga­ni­za­tion to con­tribute direct­ly to polit­i­cal cam­paigns. Where else is this kind of thing allowed? This is not a sit­u­a­tion as guar­an­teed by the con­sti­tu­tion for cit­i­zens to lob­by their gov­ern­ment. This is a for­eign enti­ty lob­by­ing the gov­ern­ment, choos­ing who gets elect­ed and even who gets cen­sured on behalf of a for­eign gov­ern­ment. Talk about a for­eign pow­er inter­fer­ing in our elec­tions- Israel does it in broad day­light and with the full coöper­a­tion of both polit­i­cal parties.
When will the American peo­ple wake up from their racist slum­ber and see what is going on?

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Mike Beckles is a for­mer Police Detective, busi­ness­man, free­lance writer, black achiev­er hon­oree, and cre­ator of the blog mike​beck​les​.com.

The UN human rights chief, Volker Türk, has said he was “hor­ri­fied” by reports of mass graves con­tain­ing hun­dreds of bod­ies at two of Gaza’s largest hospitals. 
Palestinian civ­il defense teams began exhum­ing bod­ies from a mass grave out­side the Nasser hos­pi­tal com­plex in Khan Younis last week after Israeli troops with­drew. A total of 310 bod­ies have been found in the last week, includ­ing 35 in the past day, Palestinian offi­cials have said.
“We feel the need to raise the alarm because clear­ly there have been mul­ti­ple bod­ies dis­cov­ered,” said Ravina Shamdasani, spokesper­son for the UN high com­mis­sion­er for human rights.
She described bod­ies “buried deep in the ground and cov­ered with waste,” adding that “among the deceased were alleged­ly old­er peo­ple, women and wound­ed,” includ­ing some bound and stripped of their clothes.

The US House passed a bill that includ­ed more than $26 bil­lion in fund­ing for the geno­ci­dal Israeli war against the oppressed Palestinian people.
The Funding for Israel’s war is part of a much larg­er war fund­ing, 95 bil­lion dol­lars to be exact, the bal­ance of which will go toward Ukraine’s war effort against Russia.
Ninety-five bil­lion American dol­lars aimed at prop­ping up Ukraine’s flail­ing war effort against Russia because Russia object­ed to that nation becom­ing a mem­ber of NATO, which would effec­tive­ly put NATO on Russia’s border.
Worse yet, it would mean that Ukraine on Russia’s bor­der would be sub­ject­ed to America’s nuclear umbrel­la protection.
The United States would not allow Mexico to have Russian forces on its south­ern border. 
This point of view is not spec­u­la­tion; there is prece­dent to prove it. 

On October 16^th, 1962, the United States and the Soviet Union came dan­ger­ous­ly close to bring­ing the world to nuclear anni­hi­la­tion because of Soviet mis­siles on the Island of Cuba. Cuba is about 90 miles from the souther­ly­most tip of Florida. It does not share a land bor­der with the United States. Ukraine shares a land bor­der with Russia.
In the end, Nikita Khrushchev, the Soviet President, relent­ed and agreed to remove the mis­siles. From then on, Americans cel­e­brat­ed the his­toric win by the then-new­ly mint­ed John F. Kennedy.
Those who both­er to pay atten­tion to his­to­ry and are vest­ed in facts know that the United States also removed its own mis­siles from Turkish soil, which was the rea­son Khruschev engaged in the Cuban gam­bit in the first instance.
The his­tor­i­cal­ly cor­rect ver­sion of that event is that Nikita Khrushchev won that chess move.

We could go on about his­to­ry if the present weren’t so press­ing. There is hope­less­ness, pover­ty, home­less­ness, lack of mon­ey for the edu­ca­tion of American chil­dren, stu­dent loan debt, fail­ing busi­ness­es, depres­sion, and a host of issues that could be addressed with 95 bil­lion dol­lars. Still, Congress and Joe Biden believe it is more impor­tant to spend 95 bil­lion dol­lars to defend Ukraine and to help Israel kill unarmed Palestinians.
But you are mis­tak­en if you think this fund­ing pack­age was the only issue. Attached to the his­toric war-fund­ing give­away is leg­is­la­tion that will effec­tive­ly ban the Application of TikTok from the United States.
The real rea­son the US Government is doing this is that the Application allows Americans to see the geno­cide in Palestine paid for with their tax dol­lars. No American media house run by the Zionist inter­est thinks it nec­es­sary for Americans to see these atrocities.
The rea­son the American politi­cians give the American pub­lic for their actions is that this Application is a nation­al secu­ri­ty threat because China par­tial­ly owns it.
Almost every­thing we use in America is made in China, so maybe we should be more con­cerned about that than an app.
The Bill passed the House with heavy Democratic sup­port, and it is now up to the Senate to pass it. Biden says he will sign it.
It will effec­tive­ly mean that Republicans and Democrats have come togeth­er to take away the rights of 172 mil­lion peo­ple and 7 mil­lion busi­ness­es that ben­e­fit from the application. 

It will also strip away 54 bil­lion dol­lars of rev­enue from the American economy.
This is par­tic­u­lar­ly egre­gious as the United States Constitution clear­ly states that Congress shall make no law respect­ing an estab­lish­ment of reli­gion, or pro­hibit­ing the free exer­cise there­of, or abridg­ing the free­dom of speech or of the press, or the right of the peo­ple peace­ably to assem­ble, and to peti­tion the Government for a redress of griev­ances.
If you think that the Supreme Court will stop this for one minute, you are dead wrong.

The Supreme Court announced on Monday that it will not hear Mckesson v. Doe. The deci­sion not to hear Mckesson left in place a low­er court deci­sion that effec­tive­ly elim­i­nat­ed the right to orga­nize a mass protest in the states of Louisiana, Mississippi, and Texas. 
Under that low­er court deci­sion, a protest orga­niz­er faces poten­tial­ly ruinous finan­cial con­se­quences if a sin­gle attendee at a mass protest com­mits an ille­gal act. (Vox​.com)
Neither the Executive nor the Legislative branch of Government respects the Constitution. The Judicial branch that is sup­posed to ensure that Constitutional rights are guar­an­teed just hap­pens to be the worst offend­er of those rights.
So, it’s more wars and geno­cide with our dol­lars, and we dare not speak out against this because they will soon begin to throw us in prison for dar­ing to speak out.

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Mike Beckles is a for­mer Police Detective, busi­ness­man, free­lance writer, black achiev­er hon­oree, and cre­ator of the blog mike​beck​les​.com.

If you both­ered to pay atten­tion to the con­se­quen­tial events last Saturday in which the Islamic Republic of Iran retal­i­at­ed against the pari­ah zion­ist state of Israel, you prob­a­bly were con­vinced that the mighty Israeli army destroyed the drones and mis­siles fired at it.
From time to time, you have heard peo­ple from all sides of every debate talk about the way America’s cor­po­rate media cov­ers up and dis­torts facts to suit American and Western polit­i­cal inter­ests. You may even have seen me talk about the zion­ist press and the way the Israeli zion­ist lob­by in America (AIPAC), the American Israeli Public Affairs Committee, and the Western world have man­aged to sti­fle dis­sent against the occu­pa­tion by the ille­gal zion­ist régime of Palestine. “Anti-semi­tism” is the scar­let let­ter they use to silence moral critique. 
But it goes far beyond the Zionist Lobby AIPAC, or the intel­li­gence gath­er­ing (ADL) Anti Defamation League that parades as a legit­i­mate Civil Rights Organization. It’s even more pro­found than the fact that the US Congress is whol­ly owned by the State of Israel and the Zionist lob­by AIPAC.
It is also the pro­pa­gan­da that the cor­po­rate media feeds the American peo­ple much the same way it feeds cit­i­zens in Britain, Canada, France, and oth­er Western nations.
The fact is that Western cit­i­zens are cut off from fac­tu­al report­ing because the zion­ists them­selves own the media houses.
That is the rea­son we have all been fooled into think­ing Israel’s so-called iron dome defens­es, in a supe­ri­or mil­i­tary fash­ion, shot down all of the drones and mis­siles Iran fired at them.

Because we have been social­ized to believe the garbage the Zionist media feeds us, we nev­er both­ered to ask the per­ti­nent questions.
(1) Why did Iran warn Israel and the United States that the attack was com­ing up to five hours before launch­ing the drones and missiles?
(2) Why did we not see the high­ly dis­ci­plined pre­ci­sion attack Iran car­ried out against the arro­gant Zionist state that believes it can do what­ev­er it wants with America’s backing?
(3) Why did we swal­low the lies instead of see­ing the bril­liance of the Iranian strat­e­gy in ensur­ing that Israel, America, England, and France would leap to defend the zion­ist against any attack?
(4) How could we have missed the fact that the drones and cruise mis­siles were sent to be shot down while the sev­en real mis­siles tar­get­ed at the sites from which the coör­di­na­tion of the Iranian Consular attack emanat­ed were actu­al­ly hit?
(5) Well, to begin with, the American Government and media put out its pro­pa­gan­da about the glo­ri­ous vic­to­ry in defen­sive deter­rent Israel had scored.
If Israel was that impreg­nable, why did it require America, France, and England to sup­ply vast amounts of resources and to join in the aer­i­al defense of the zion­ist state?
You see, we have been so used to the garbage fed to us by CNN, NBC, MSNBC, CBS, ABC, BBC, FOX, and all of the oth­er instru­ments of Western pro­pa­gan­da that we have long ceased to think crit­i­cal­ly. Every sin­gle media enti­ty begins with a severe pro-Israel slant, so there is no fac­tu­al report­ing of events; we are fed what Benjamin Netanyahu wants us to believe.
The same crim­i­nal who com­mits crimes against his own peo­ple and is will­ing to plunge the world into a third world war to save his cow­ard­ly ass.

What Iran accom­plished last Saturday was the mar­vel of mod­ern war­fare. It demon­strat­ed to the arro­gant Zionist bul­ly who has been assas­si­nat­ing Iranian sci­en­tists and sol­diers for decades that enough is enough.
The Israeli mur­der of sev­en top Iranian offi­cials in their Damascus Consulate was a bridge too far. Despite the ille­gal­i­ty of the bar­bar­ic and crim­i­nal act, and even though Iran appealed to the United Nations to con­demn It, nei­ther the UN, America, nor any of the oth­er Western spon­sors of Zionist geno­cide said a sin­gle word in condemnation.
Yet Iran respond­ed with incred­i­ble restraint instead of real­ly rain­ing down mis­siles on Israeli cities as the apartheid régime has been doing in Gaza thus far, killing over 35,000 Palestinians.
Even so, it was too much for the pro­pa­gan­dists with­in the American and Western cap­i­tals to con­cede that the much-vaunt­ed Israeli Iron Dome defense that was sup­pos­ed­ly impen­e­tra­ble was hard­ly such even with the help of American, British, French, and who knows who else.
Why have Israel and America con­tin­ued to lie that they destroyed 99% of the muni­tions fired by Iran? Why did they con­tin­ue with the duplic­i­ty while rapid­ly rebuild­ing and repair­ing the dam­age done to the mil­i­tary bases struck by five of sev­en Iranian rockets?
England and lat­er the United States set up the ille­git­i­mate state of Israel in Palestine as an out­post of white Colonial expan­sion in Asia; it was about oil and con­trol. The Zionists, who posed as Jews, claimed that God promised them the land of Palestine to set up their Jewish ethno-state.
England and America need­ed a well-armed arm of them­selves in Asia, and the idea of a Jewish home­land in a sov­er­eign nation suit­ed them just fine as long as it fur­thered their inter­ests. For their part, the Zionists need­ed a pow­er­ful spon­sor that would sup­ply them with mon­ey and arma­ments and pro­vide them cov­er when they com­mit­ted atrocities.
England and the United States have done just that.

The United States took over spon­sor­ship, large­ly sup­ply­ing untold bil­lions of tax­pay­er’s dol­lars to the zion­ist state each year. 
Due to American largess, the small nation of just over eight mil­lion has one of the world’s most for­mi­da­ble mil­i­taries — a mil­i­tary they use to com­mit geno­cide with­out consequence.
Western sup­port for the Zionist state tran­scends mon­ey and arma­ments; it includes votes in the United Nations by per­ma­nent mem­bers of the Security Council, the United States, England, and France, shields Israel from account­abil­i­ty regard­less of the crimes it com­mits against oth­er nations.
Israel has not been guid­ed by care or recog­ni­tion of inter­na­tion­al laws by which oth­er nations are bound.
The Zionists claimed they fled Hitler’s geno­cide. Today, they are engaged in geno­cide and eth­nic cleans­ing in Gaza. Israel is, for all intents and pur­pos­es, engaged in mur­der­ing inno­cent babies, women, men, Journalists, doc­tors, nurs­es, and medics. No one in Gaza is safe from the inces­sant aer­i­al bom­bard­ment which is being car­ried out against civil­ian neighborhoods.
Israel then lies that Hamas hides in hos­pi­tals, schools, and oth­er civil­ian struc­tures; that lie has been turned on its head time and again.

Whatever the rea­son Iran telegraphed it’s attack against Israel in retal­i­a­tion for the zion­ist attack on its con­sulate in Syria which killed senior mil­i­tary offi­cials is yet to be determined.
It seemed to me that Iran want­ed to respond to Israel’s repeat­ed aggres­sion with a show of force with­out actu­al­ly doing any dam­age in the apartheid state. This seemed to be sole­ly done to appease Iran’s domes­tic population.
On April 1^st, Zionist Israel launched airstrikes on the Iranian con­sulate in Damascus, Syria. It is essen­tial to under­stand that con­sulates and diplo­mat­ic mis­sions are places of diplo­ma­cy that should not be sub­ject­ed to mil­i­tary action.
Additionally, the Zionist attack was launched ille­gal­ly in the sov­er­eign nation of Syria. The Americans, the largest and most potent spon­sor of Israel’s war crimes and its G7 affil­i­ates, uttered not a sin­gle word of con­dem­na­tion against the brazen and bar­bar­ic attack of rogue Israel against a sov­er­eign nation’s con­sulate on the ter­ri­to­ry of anoth­er sov­er­eign nation.
The attack killed Iran’s top sol­dier, Brigadier General Mohammad Reza Zahedi, among oth­er Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps (IRGC) commanders.
This was a clear sign that the Zionist régime’s endgame was to use tar­get­ed assas­si­na­tions against Iran’s top mil­i­tary and polit­i­cal leadership.
Predictably, as soon as Iran respond­ed to the attack, the Biden admin­is­tra­tion sig­naled his and his European prox­ies’ inten­tion to sup­port the rogue régime in Tel A. viv.
And sup­port they did. The Biden admin­is­tra­tion was quick to point to the US mil­i­tary help in shoot­ing down what it char­ac­ter­ized as 99% of the Iranian drones and mis­siles deployed against the Zionist state.

Joe Biden bragged that American forces helped Israel down “near­ly all” of the drones and mis­siles fired by Iran and vowed to coör­di­nate a glob­al response to Tehran’s unprece­dent­ed attack. 
For its part, the Pentagon said U.S. forces inter­cept­ed “dozens of mis­siles” and drones launched from Iran, Iraq, Syria, and Yemen that were head­ed toward Israel, accord­ing to the Associated Press.
By now, it must be clear that not only will America and Western Europe not do any­thing to stop Israel’s ille­gal aggres­sion against oth­er sov­er­eign nations, but the insti­tu­tions that are sup­posed to ref­er­ee balls and strikes will only work against those who stand up to the zion­ist state.
The United Nations and the World Court in the Hague have demon­strat­ed that they will do noth­ing to hold the zion­ist régime to account, as we have seen in the World Court’s response to the charges South Africa brought against Israel for its geno­ci­dal actions in Gaza.
This writer has long argued that African states should dis­en­tan­gle them­selves from the United Nations and the World Court sys­tem as they are the only nations held account­able by these American-led institutions.
Even as American mil­i­tary tech­nol­o­gy was once again used to pro­tect the zion­ist state, Biden was once again telling the Zionists they should take the win and not respond. Biden also told them that the United States would not par­tic­i­pate in any attack on Iran. Of course, every­one knows that as soon as the first shot is fired, American tax­pay­er’s dol­lars will be on the burn in defense of Israel and in attacks on Iran.

Listen to Naftali Bennet talk to MSNBC’s Alex Witt.

While Biden and his sur­ro­gates were talk­ing out of both sides of their mouths, Naftali Bennet, for­mer Prime Minister, mil­i­tary com­man­der, and for­mer leader of Israel’s set­tler coun­cil, was on American tele­vi­sion telling the world that Israel would respond as America would if Cuba had fired mis­siles at Florida. Yah!!!!
The impli­ca­tions for the world should be spelled out in no uncer­tain terms; Iran may be a brag­gart that telegraphs its inten­tions for rea­sons that we do not under­stand, but it nonethe­less has the means to deliv­er far more pun­ish­ment to Israel, than the tiny apartheid state bar­gains for.
Sure, Israel has cut­ting-edge weapons of war sup­plied by America and Germany. Nevertheless, unless America, Britain, France, Germany, and oth­er Western sup­port­ers of geno­ci­dal Israel are pre­pared to go to war with Iran, they should ensure that their lit­tle pup­py stays on its leash.
If America and England had not inter­vened to help neu­tral­ize the Iranian mis­sile onslaught on Saturday, the out­come would have been expo­nen­tial­ly dif­fer­ent from that which we are talk­ing about today.
The aggres­sive Zionist state oper­at­ing as a super­pow­er in the Middle East is a small nation of 9.558 mil­lion packed in 8,550 square miles. 
Conversely, the Islamic State of Iran is a nation of 88.55 mil­lion peo­ple on a land­mass of 636,400 square miles.
Separate and apart from the size, Iran has prox­ies in Lebanon, Iraq, the Yemen, Gaza , Syria, and even Russia.
That is not to say that Russia would step into a wider Middle East con­flict, but Russia is report­ed to have strong mil­i­tary ties to Iran.
Any move to attack Iran on behalf of Israel will ignite a pow­der key in the Middle East. Iran would imme­di­ate­ly close the Strait of Hormuz, effec­tive­ly affect­ing world­wide com­merce. The unin­tend­ed con­se­quences of an attack on Iran will be enor­mous, send­ing mar­kets plum­met­ing, prices soar­ing, and sup­plies lim­it­ed across the globe.
Additionally, an un-telegraphed attack, even of the nature of that on Saturday, would have a far more con­se­quen­tial impact on the civil­ian pop­u­la­tion in the apartheid state.
American, British, German, French, and oth­er European nation’s sup­port for Israel has embold­ened the zion­ist régime to con­tin­ue to act out­side inter­na­tion­al laws. Israel’s Defense Force has been able to do as it pleas­es in the region with­out consequence.
As I pre­pared this arti­cle, the United Nations is in a spe­cial ses­sion at the request of Apartheid Israel aimed at con­demn­ing Iran.
Where was the spe­cial ses­sion of the UN Security Council when the Zionists attacked a diplo­mat­ic con­sulate in sov­er­eign Syria?
Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu is inter­est­ed in a wider region­al con­flict to save him­self from prison for crimes com­mit­ted against his own people.
America and Europe will aid in this expan­sion to save a sin­gle criminal.

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Mike Beckles is a for­mer Police Detective, busi­ness­man, free­lance writer, black achiev­er hon­oree, and cre­ator of the blog mike​beck​les​.com.

Why did Mark Golding not oppose the ascen­sion of Juilette Holness to the Speakership of the par­lia­ment at the time the posi­tion was open? The fact that he attacked her ele­va­tion on Tuesday speaks to the vin­dic­tive, cor­ro­sive, insid­i­ous men­tal­i­ty of Golding and his PNP associates.
Posturing out­side the house to fin­ish his speech because he lacked a corum in the House after the walk­out fur­ther demon­strates to the nation this dan­ger­ous and rapa­cious man’s desire for power.
It should nev­er be giv­en to him. Jamaica should not go back to ¹⁸¹⁄₂ ears of PNP rule with noth­ing to show for it in our nation’s development.
I am no Feminist, and damn sure isn’t afraid to be brand­ed a par­ti­san. I will for­ev­er speak out on top­i­cal issues, con­ced­ing, of course, to my per­son­al bias­es as I’m enti­tled to as every oth­er Jamaican.
It should not take Minister Babsy Grange to blast Massa Mark Golding for his inap­pro­pri­ate attack on the duly elect­ed Speaker of the House, Juliette Holness, who also hap­pens to be the wife of Prime Minister Andrew Holness.
The Prime min­is­ter appro­pri­ate­ly walked out of the sit­ting of Parliament on Tuesday after the attack on his wife, fol­lowed by mem­bers of his cabinet.
I com­mend the Prime Minister for walk­ing out even though I do not sup­port walk­outs per se on every disagreement.
I com­mend the Prime Minister for sim­ply walk­ing out; if my wife were attacked in that way, my response would cer­tain­ly not be as dig­ni­fied as sim­ply walk­ing out.

Massa Mark Golding’s attack occurred on Tuesday dur­ing his ²⁰²⁴⁄₂₅ bud­get pre­sen­ta­tion in the House.
“The move to replace her with the wife of the prime min­is­ter so that the head of Parliament is now the spouse of the head of Government real­ly does not sit well with the tra­di­tion that the Speaker must act inde­pen­dent­ly of the Government of the day,” Massa Mark thun­dered on the House floor.
Mr’s Holness, a mem­ber of Parliament, was elect­ed to the post of Speaker of the House, and as I asked a friend this morn­ing who is of the orange per­sua­sion, ‘When has the speak­er of the house nev­er been a mem­ber of the rul­ing party? ’
And if the answer is as it should be, never!!!
Then what was behind this attack on the PM’s wife with­out evi­den­tiary back­ing of wrong­do­ing or malfeasance?
If there is no law bar­ring the spouse of the Prime Minister from the post of House speak­er, why is Massa Mark attack­ing the wife of the Prime Minister?
If Massa Mark Golding meant Jamaica any good and was an effec­tive par­lia­men­tar­i­an, let alone the leader of a worth­while polit­i­cal par­ty, he would pro­pose leg­is­la­tion plug­ging that loop­hole to the extent it could be so perceived.

But the unwar­rant­ed attack on the Speaker of the House can­not only be seen as a misog­y­nis­tic attack but a broad­er cam­paign of smear and tear by Golding in his quest for ulti­mate polit­i­cal power.
Even before the recent local gov­ern­ment elec­tions and buoyed by mar­gin­al gains after the elec­tions, Mark Golding’s rhetoric had become more incen­di­ary and stri­dent and even seemed to threat­en polit­i­cal violence.
Of the 63 seats in the nation’s par­lia­ment, the rul­ing JLP holds 48, and the PNPs 15. Imagine if Massa Mark, with all of this grand­stand­ing and pos­tur­ing, com­mand­ed a polit­i­cal oppo­si­tion stronger than a mere 15 seats?
Lacking a Quorum, Massa Mark went out­side the par­lia­ment to grand­stand on the street corner.
As I point­ed out in the Commentary linked above, we have had peo­ple come close to not con­ced­ing elec­tions lost, e.g., Portia Simpson Miller. Still, the kind of rhetoric we are wit­ness­ing from Mark Golding seems to harken back to dark­er days of polit­i­cal vio­lence that the Jamaican peo­ple have right­ly moved away from.
It is impor­tant that vot­ers, includ­ing those run­ning behind this rapa­cious, pow­er-hun­gry per­son, real­ize that he will not be in har­m’s way if things head south. 
They nev­er are. 
It will con­tin­ue to be the poor and dis­pos­sessed who pay the price for Golding’s reck­less posturing.

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Mike Beckles is a for­mer Police Detective, busi­ness­man, free­lance writer, black achiev­er hon­oree, and cre­ator of the blog mike​beck​les​.com.

In this com­men­tary, I repeat­ed­ly said nei­ther polit­i­cal par­ty has ever refused to con­cede. I was cor­rect­ed by a view­er who remind­ed me that when Bruce Golding defeat­ed Portia Simpson Miller, she threat­ened to be a ter­ror to the then-JLP government.
I am uncon­vinced that a threat to be a ter­ror is the same as refus­ing to con­cede defeat. I do recall the inci­dent, but I also do not remem­ber the full con­text in which for­mer Prime Minister Portia Simpson Miller made those unfor­tu­nate comments.
Without try­ing to get into the mind of the inart­ful Portia, I believe that she meant that she would be vig­i­lant in oppo­si­tion, par­tic­u­lar­ly because of the slim mar­gin by which the JLP had secured the victory.