Both Political Parties have been guilty of enhanc­ing crim­i­nal­i­ty in our coun­try. Outside of the deep divi­sions that emanat­ed dur­ing the late six­ties through the sev­en­ties that result­ed in thou­sands of deaths polit­i­cal­ly, politi­cians at var­i­ous lev­els have them­selves engaged in felo­nious activ­i­ties that would land them in prison for decades in a true nation of laws.
As a for­mer Police offi­cer, I look at both polit­i­cal par­ties with near­ly the same sense of mis­giv­ing. Neither Party has done near­ly enough to ensure that mem­bers at all lev­els of their orga­ni­za­tion oper­ate with hon­esty and dig­ni­ty and as good stew­ards of the pub­lic’s trust.
The refusal of both polit­i­cal par­ties to adopt strin­gent trans­paren­cy laws that hold them­selves account­able to us, the peo­ple, is a clear indi­ca­tion that many on both sides still have a long way to go to earn the pub­lic’s trust and confidence.

Over the years, the Jamaican peo­ple have made it clear that they are no longer will­ing to tol­er­ate politi­cians oper­at­ing unac­count­able to them. Consequently, var­i­ous watch­dog orga­ni­za­tions have emerged to keep an eye on the pub­lic’s purse, with mixed results. Still today, some mem­bers of both polit­i­cal clans refuse to abide by the rules of transparency.
Having said that, there are signs across the polit­i­cal spec­trum that as Jamaica is being trans­formed Infrastructurally, so is the coun­try evolv­ing polit­i­cal­ly. It is refresh­ing to see peo­ple of the two par­ties hav­ing a good time togeth­er while wear­ing their par­ty col­ors. It is a true sign that we are at last emerg­ing from some of the dark­est days of polit­i­cal trib­al­ism that has plagued our young nation as it clawed its way out of Colonial control.
Personally, I would pre­fer to see both polit­i­cal par­ties shed and eschew their par­ty col­ors and allow the Jamaican peo­ple to come togeth­er as one nation.
Symbolically, the col­ors are still a sign of divi­sion, a sign of demar­ca­tion that we need to elim­i­nate. No Jamaican was born PNP or JLP. 

It is impor­tant that as our coun­try evolves, our tone should also evolve, but it seems that some have decid­ed to con­tin­ue the gut­ter pol­i­tics. Because of this, I am par­tic­u­lar­ly opposed to the People’s National Party and its con­tin­ued insis­tence on ele­vat­ing some of the worst actors to posi­tions of pow­er and visibility. 
The coarse­ness is almost across the board: Angella Burke, Damion Crawford, Isat Buchanan, Dennis Meadows, and others.
These indi­vid­u­als want to lead polit­i­cal­ly, peo­ple our young peo­ple would look up to as role mod­els to emulate.
Who would want their child to emu­late these misfits?
Our coun­try is awash in vio­lence, vio­lence that comes from lax laws, too many guns, and guns brought into our coun­try through the pro­ceeds of lot­to scamming. 
Yet the mind­set of some is that this is okay, and it is because we were scammed dur­ing slav­ery. I mean, are you kid­ding me?
While speak­ing on the cam­paign trail recent­ly, the PNP’s Dennis Meadows stat­ed, “I have no prob­lem with a man if he wants to chop because they chop us dur­ing slav­ery.” To chop is to scam peo­ple out of their hard-earned mon­ey. Here is a senior mem­ber of the People’s National Party encour­ag­ing Jamaicans to engage in lot­to scam­ming, which is a seri­ous crime but, beyond that, a prac­tice that is fuelling the esca­lat­ing mur­der sta­tis­tics in our country.

These are the mon­grels that are vying for polit­i­cal pow­er. Who remem­bers ‘run wid it’ and ‘any­thing and any­thing’?
After a vicious back­lash from the pub­lic, Meadows apol­o­gized, and the Party is now engaged in full dam­age con­trol mode. However, this is not an iso­lat­ed inci­dent. It is and has always been the mind­set of the PNP as a polit­i­cal movement.
It is a polit­i­cal par­ty that has con­tin­ued to den­i­grate the police à la Isat Buchanan. The par­ty has opposed all major leg­is­la­tion aimed at curb­ing vio­lent crime on the Island. 
This has always been the modus operan­di of the PNP, and it has secured the votes of large swaths of the elec­torate, par­tic­u­lar­ly in major urban slums.
Imagine the PNP being allowed to regain state con­trol; this is what the nation gets as lead­ers, peo­ple who active­ly encour­age the pop­u­la­tion to go out and engage in felo­nious activity.
No amount of mea cul­pa can right this shit.… this guy needs to go forth­with. If he is not sent pack­ing, it will be anoth­er clear indi­ca­tion that the PNP can­not be entrust­ed with state pow­er.
Every year, well over a thou­sand Jamaicans are sum­mar­i­ly slaugh­tered using illic­it guns pur­chased with mon­ey derived main­ly from the lot­to scam. It is a bridge too far to accept this guy’s I’m sor­ry. Men, women, and inno­cent chil­dren die each year, not to men­tion our police officers. 
That any per­son seek­ing pub­lic office could be so men­tal­ly bank­rupt is astound­ing. He must be let go.

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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 People National Party has always oper­at­ed like a cult and still does today. Those old enough to remem­ber will recall that they had the audac­i­ty to argue that Jamaica was a PNP country.
The old par­ty of the 70s still exists, albeit under a new coat of orange paint. The Party con­tin­ues to dis­sem­i­nate lies and obfus­ca­tion as facts to fool the very peo­ple it cares about: peo­ple expe­ri­enc­ing pover­ty. They claim to love the poor, and it shows because they lie to them even when the truth is in the open. 
Take, for instance, the local gov­ern­ment elec­tions held on Monday; even as the final count was still under­way by the Electoral Office of Jamaica EOJ, Massa Mark Golding was busy telling the crowd of PNP sup­port­ers gath­ered at their Head Quarters that the PNP had won the election.
This is a kind of déjà vu for me because it is eeri­ly rem­i­nis­cent of Donald Trump claim­ing he won an elec­tion he lost and one that was­n’t even close at that.
“We can go for­ward with con­fi­dence that we have pulled off a great vic­to­ry here today. The peo­ple have spo­ken. The PNP is alive and well,”. “We are ded­i­cat­ing “this vic­to­ry” to for­mer prime min­is­ter and retired PNP President Portia Simpson Miller.”
Okay, haha, “A look like a los­er to yu?” Alright, I’ll stop. 
Why would Massa Mark tell his sup­port­ers that they had won the elec­tion when it was abun­dant­ly clear that they were actu­al­ly behind in the divi­sions decid­ed, were at best tied in oth­ers, and the process was still underway?
Is this the best Michael Manley’s par­ty has to offer?
I did not agree with many of Michael Manley’s poli­cies, but I damn sure respect­ed the hell out of the man.

Holding elec­tive office has always had one mean­ing for the PNP regard­less of who is at the help of that rab­ble-rous­ing par­ty. That goal is to hold office to see what they can rip and run. Don’t believe me, Massa Mark all but said it last night.
“Comrades, we will con­tin­ue the work. We will con­tin­ue to build our momen­tum”. “We will con­tin­ue what we have been doing; the peo­ple want to see a PNP Government, and the peo­ple want to see I man, Mark Jefferson Golding, in Jamaica House.”
So, the idea for them is not to work to con­tin­ue the great infra­struc­ture devel­op­ment under the JLP. It is not to fur­ther the tremen­dous work that Ed Bartlett has done in tourism or what Tufton is doing in the health ser­vices and Nigel Clarke’s great job with the econ­o­my. His focus is to be sit­ting in Jamaica House, case closed. 
They want to con­trol the nation­al purse strings so that they can dole out scarce resources to the cheap ide­olo­gies who fol­low behind them, look­ing for hand­outs for their votes.
It has always been that way: the least edu­cat­ed, most bois­ter­ous fol­low behind the PNP. Many do not want to say it, but to hell with it, I said it. Most of these peo­ple would not know progress if it hits them in the face. Give them a plate of food, and they will turn back tremen­dous progress for this clown polit­i­cal par­ty called the PNP.

For its part, this is a wake-up call for the Jamaica Labor Party. Yes, some peo­ple have always clam­ored for the PNP because of the promis­es of free­ness. It is dif­fi­cult to extrap­o­late whether they are the ones who some­times switch and vote JLP. There is also the say­ing in our coun­try that the elec­torate does­n’t elect a new gov­ern­ment; it votes out the one they have. Be that as it may, there is enough in the data to show a dis­qui­et with the JLP admin­is­tra­tion that is worth dig­ging into.
Whether the dis­qui­et is about the deliv­ery of reg­u­lar ser­vices like garbage pick­up, bad roads, or the ele­phant in the room, the crime mon­ster, the admin­is­tra­tion must rec­og­nize that the peo­ple are get­ting fed up.
And when the Jamaican elec­torate is fed up, it sum­mar­i­ly dumps the rul­ing par­ty by default, elect­ing the oppo­si­tion by large margins.
We saw it begin­ning in 1980 when Michael Manley was dumped from office,… The JLP was dumped sim­i­lar­ly in 88. Andrew Holness dec­i­mat­ed Portia in the lat­est iter­a­tion of that prac­tice in 2020…
The JLP admin­is­tra­tion has been in office for sev­en con­sec­u­tive years. It must under­stand that its pri­ma­ry respon­si­bil­i­ty is the secu­ri­ty of the Jamaican People. Yet despite that tremen­dous respon­si­bil­i­ty, the Holness-led JLP wast­ed years run­ning down ZOSO and SOE Rabbit holes that led to nowhere because, as we all know, Rabbits do not have one way in and one way out.
The prime min­is­ter demon­strat­ed scant regard for the police depart­ment by plac­ing for­mer sol­dier Antony Anderson over the police as he had done with oth­er agen­cies. The prime min­is­ter fol­lowed up by telling the nation that Anderson was mod­ern­iz­ing the JCF, a slap in the face of peo­ple’s intel­li­gence as if mod­ern­iz­ing the force had to be done at the expense of crime reduc­tion. As mur­ders esca­lat­ed and peo­ple grew more and more fear­ful, his National Security Minister Horace Chang remarked that, ‘we must give Tony a chance’.
What utter rub­bish. No oth­er Police Commissioner who came up through the ranks was giv­en that much grace or lever­age, not to men­tion the salary and perks. Worse yet, the Prime Minister refus­es to lis­ten to law enforce­ment pro­fes­sion­als, past and present, on how to tack­le crime, and if he’s not care­ful, he’ll have a long time to con­tem­plate the fol­ly of his ways.
Some peo­ple may be stu­pid, but not every­one is. The JLP admin­is­tra­tion under Andrew Holness has done tremen­dous work for Jamaica, and it should be com­mend­ed for the progress made after the ²²¹⁄₂ years débâ­cle of PNP gov­er­nance that will con­tin­ue to be a stain on Jamaica, rivaled only by the dan­ger­ous dal­liances of the 70s.
This gov­ern­ment will be judged on crime regard­less of what the Prime Minister or oth­ers like Ed Bartlett, Nigel Clarke, Chris Tufton, and oth­ers do. If peo­ple are afraid, they will look for safe­ty else­where, even if it means being worse off.

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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.

An active-duty mem­ber of the U.S. Air Force was crit­i­cal­ly injured Sunday after set­ting him­self ablaze out­side the Israeli Embassy in Washington, D.C., while declar­ing that he “will no longer be com­plic­it in geno­cide,” a per­son famil­iar with the mat­ter told The Associated Press.The man, whose name wasn’t imme­di­ate­ly released, walked up to the embassy short­ly before 1 p.m. and began livestream­ing on the video stream­ing plat­form Twitch, the per­son said. Law enforce­ment offi­cials believe the man start­ed a livestream, set his phone down and then doused him­self in accel­er­ant and ignit­ed the flames. At one point, he said he “will no longer be com­plic­it in geno­cide,” the per­son said. The video was lat­er removed from the plat­form, but law enforce­ment offi­cials have obtained and reviewed a copy.
The per­son was not autho­rized to dis­cuss details of the ongo­ing inves­ti­ga­tion pub­licly and spoke to the AP on con­di­tion of anonymity.

Police did not imme­di­ate­ly pro­vide any addi­tion­al details about the inci­dent. The inci­dent hap­pened as Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu is seek­ing the cab­i­net approval for a mil­i­tary oper­a­tion in the south­ern Gazan city of Rafah while a tem­po­rary cease-fire deal is being nego­ti­at­ed. Israel’s mil­i­tary offen­sive in Gaza, how­ev­er, has drawn crit­i­cisms, includ­ing geno­cide claims against the Palestinians. Israel has adamant­ly denied the geno­cide alle­ga­tions and says it is car­ry­ing out oper­a­tions in accor­dance with inter­na­tion­al law in the Israel-Hamas war. In December, a per­son self-immo­lat­ed out­side the Israeli con­sulate in Atlanta and used gaso­line as an accel­er­ant, accord­ing to Atlanta’s fire author­i­ties. A Palestinian flag was found at the scene, and the act was believed to be one of “extreme polit­i­cal protest.” In a state­ment, the Metropolitan Police Department in Washington said its offi­cers had respond­ed to the scene out­side the Israeli Embassy to assist U.S. Secret Service offi­cers and that its bomb squad had also been called to exam­ine a sus­pi­cious vehi­cle. Police said no haz­ardous mate­ri­als were found in the vehicle.(AP)

A for­mer FBI infor­mant who claims to have links to Russian intel­li­gence and is charged with lying about a mul­ti­mil­lion-dol­lar bribery scheme involv­ing President Joe Biden’s fam­i­ly was again tak­en into cus­tody Thursday in Las Vegas, two days after a judge released him, his attor­neys said.

Alexander Smirnov was arrest­ed dur­ing a meet­ing Thursday morn­ing at his lawyers’ law offices in down­town Las Vegas. The arrest came after pros­e­cu­tors appealed the judge’s rul­ing allow­ing 43-year-old Smirnov, who holds dual U.S.-Israeli cit­i­zen­ship, to be released with a GPS mon­i­tor ahead of tri­al. He is charged with mak­ing a false state­ment and cre­at­ing a false and fic­ti­tious record.

Attorneys David Chesnoff and Richard Schonfeld said in a state­ment that they have request­ed an imme­di­ate hear­ing on his deten­tion and will again push for his release. They said Smirnov was tak­en into cus­tody on a war­rant issued in California for the same charges.

The case against Smirnov was orig­i­nal­ly filed in California, where he used to live. Several sealed entries were list­ed in the court dock­et, but no addi­tion­al details about his return to cus­tody were imme­di­ate­ly available.

A spokesman for Justice Department spe­cial coun­sel David Weiss, who is pros­e­cut­ing Smirnov, con­firmed that Smirnov had been arrest­ed again, but did not have addi­tion­al com­ment. He is in the cus­tody of U.S. Marshals in Nevada, said Gary Schofield, the chief mar­shal in Las Vegas.

Smirnov was first arrest­ed last week in Las Vegas, where he now lives, while return­ing from overseas.

Prosecutors say Smirnov false­ly told his FBI han­dler that exec­u­tives from the Ukrainian ener­gy com­pa­ny Burisma paid President Biden and Hunter Biden $5 mil­lion each around 2015. The claim became cen­tral to the Republican impeach­ment inquiry of President Biden in Congress.

Smirnov has not entered a plea to the charges, but his lawyers have said their client is pre­sumed inno­cent and they look for­ward to defend­ing him at trial.

As part of their push to keep him in cus­tody, pros­e­cu­tors said Smirnov told inves­ti­ga­tors after his arrest last week that “offi­cials asso­ci­at­ed with Russian intel­li­gence were involved in pass­ing a sto­ry” about Hunter Biden. They said Smirnov’s self-report­ed con­tact with Russian offi­cials was recent and exten­sive, and said he had planned to meet with for­eign intel­li­gence con­tacts dur­ing an upcom­ing trip abroad.

U.S. Magistrate Judge Daniel Albregts on Tuesday had said he was con­cerned about Smirnov’s access to mon­ey pros­e­cu­tors esti­mat­ed at $6 mil­lion but not­ed that fed­er­al guide­lines required him to fash­ion “the least restric­tive con­di­tions” ahead of tri­al. Smirnov was also ordered to stay in the area and sur­ren­der his passports.

“Do not make a mock­ery out of me,” Albregts said to Smirnov, warn­ing that he’d be placed back into the fed­er­al government’s cus­tody if he vio­lat­ed any of his con­di­tions. His lawyers say he had been “ful­ly com­pli­ant” with his release conditions.

Prosecutors quick­ly appealed to U.S. District Judge Otis D. Wright in California.

“The cir­cum­stances of the offens­es charged — that Smirnov lied to his FBI han­dler after a 10-year rela­tion­ship where the two spoke near­ly every day — means that Smirnov can­not be trust­ed to pro­vide truth­ful infor­ma­tion to pre­tri­al ser­vices,” pros­e­cu­tors wrote in court doc­u­ments. “The effects of Smirnov’s false state­ments and fab­ri­cat­ed infor­ma­tion con­tin­ue to be felt to this day. Now the per­son­al stakes for Smirnov are even high­er. His free­dom is on the line.”

Smirnov had been an infor­mant for more than a decade when he made the explo­sive alle­ga­tions about the Bidens in June 2020, after “express­ing bias” about Joe Biden as a pres­i­den­tial can­di­date, pros­e­cu­tors said.

But Smirnov had only rou­tine busi­ness deal­ings with Burisma start­ing in 2017, accord­ing to court doc­u­ments. No evi­dence has emerged that Joe Biden act­ed cor­rupt­ly or accept­ed bribes in his cur­rent role or pre­vi­ous office as vice president.

While his iden­ti­ty wasn’t pub­licly known before the indict­ment, Smirnov’s claims have played a major part in the Republican effort in Congress to inves­ti­gate the pres­i­dent and his fam­i­ly, and helped spark what is now a House impeach­ment inquiry into Biden. Republicans pur­su­ing inves­ti­ga­tions of the Bidens demand­ed the FBI release the unredact­ed form doc­u­ment­ing the unver­i­fied alle­ga­tions, though they acknowl­edged they couldn’t con­firm if they were true.

Democrats called for an end to the probe after the Smirnov indict­ment came down last week, while Republicans dis­tanced the inquiry from his claims and said they would con­tin­ue to “fol­low the facts.”

Smirnov’s lawyers say he has been liv­ing in Las Vegas for two years with his long­time girl­friend and requires ongo­ing treat­ment and dai­ly med­ica­tions for “sig­nif­i­cant med­ical issues relat­ed to his eyes.” He lived in California for 16 years pri­or to mov­ing to Nevada.

Those of you old enough will recall when the Borguise uptown peo­ple looked down on ordi­nary Jamaicans because we spoke the patios dialect? Many still today speak with an accent we poor coun­try folk can­not iden­ti­fy. Many of them attend­ed the intel­lec­tu­al ghet­to, some nev­er set foot in a col­lege, but they inher­it­ed light skin and a lit­tle mon­ey .…. residue of the colo­nial era. Sadly, some of the dark-skinned ones who man­aged to get a col­lege degree have also been fol­low­ing in the foot­steps of the old slave mas­ters. If I laugh, I die. I attend­ed a small par­ty here in New York a few weeks ago where a bunch of them were in atten­dance, and I could hard­ly tell they were Jamaicans. Hahahhha.

Surprisingly, today, the same peo­ple are all over the patios, our dialect; they even want to make it our nation­al lan­guage. I’ve been told they even cre­at­ed a Bible out of it, but qu ya.
Sadly, they still feel priv­i­leged to tell us what is appro­pri­ate or good for us.
But talk­ing about that, many of us are old enough to recall how they treat­ed Bob Marley even when he attempt­ed to move uptown on Hope Road, where his muse­um is today.

Fast for­ward to the Bob Marley movie that every­one is talk­ing about.…(hyperbole), not every­one is talk­ing about it. Nevertheless, a long over­due movie was made about Bob, and truth­ful­ly, this writer has [not] seen the film, and it may be a long time before I see it. Not because I do not respect the body of work the man did in his very brief 36 years but because I fun­da­men­tal­ly believe that (a) Bob Marley belonged to his fam­i­ly, but he was also larg­er than one fam­i­ly. He belonged to the aver­age Jamaican. Now, many argue Bob belonged to the world; I do not quar­rel with that either…

(b) I believe that because of the fore­gone, Bob should have been played by a Jamaican. © Probably most impor­tant­ly, a movie about a man as icon­ic as Bob Marley should include every aspect of his life, good and bad, and no one should be left out of the sto­ry. Whitewashing and san­i­tiz­ing a sub­jec­t’s image dis­torts his­to­ry and is not in any­one’s best interest.

I must con­fess that I was nev­er keen on hero-wor­ship­ing any­one. I admire peo­ple who have con­tributed to human­i­ty, but that’s as far as it goes for me. I also believe that the deci­sion-mak­ers made a mis­take by not includ­ing every aspect of Bob Marley’s life in this biopic. Bob lived a fas­ci­nat­ing life, we are told; the world must under­stand who the man real­ly was. Opportunity missed? I believe so. At the end of the day, leav­ing out huge chunks of his life paints a pic­ture of a per­fect man. There are no per­fect humans. Documenting all aspects of his life would have been a greater ser­vice to Bob and the peo­ple who love him.

Leaving chunks of his life out of the film serves the nar­row inter­ests of deci­sion-mak­ers. It con­tin­ues the mis­guid­ed attempt to make the man a God.….. he was a man. Those who were inte­gral parts of his life, includ­ing the women he loved and any of his off­spring not includ­ed, have every right to be angry. This does noth­ing to final­ly put to rest the dis­qui­et that exist­ed since Bob tran­si­tioned in 81.
It is bad for his lega­cy, It isn’t good for posterity

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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 ques­tion of cor­rupt African lead­ers is a well-talked-about phe­nom­e­non. In fair­ness to the cor­rupt pub­lic offi­cials in African Nations, cor­rup­tion is not a Black prob­lem but a prob­lem where peo­ple are left to han­dle mon­ey and pow­er with­out prop­er checks and balances.
Even in the places that brag about checks and bal­ances, cor­rup­tion in gov­ern­ment is wide­spread. Though noth­ing to be proud of, Africans can take small com­fort in the fact that pub­lic offi­cials across the globe have engaged in cor­rup­tion of some kind.
Corruption is crim­i­nal and must be pun­ished wher­ev­er it rears its ugly head. Having gone through European col­o­niza­tion, many nations across all con­ti­nents have seen mas­sive cor­rup­tion in their gov­ern­ments, many of which have waged exis­ten­tial strug­gles for inde­pen­dence. To many free­dom fight­ers who went on to become elect­ed lead­ers in their coun­tries, the trap­pings of pow­er become too much to relin­quish. They see them­selves deserv­ing of their titles based on their sac­ri­fices in the strug­gle.…. Not all free­dom fight­ers became despots; how­ev­er, Nelson Mandela, for exam­ple, chose to lead and then leave.
Having out­lined the fore­gone, it is essen­tial to note that cor­rup­tion takes var­i­ous forms. 

As one expert puts it, cor­rup­tion can be a cop on the beat accept­ing a cup of cof­fee or a judge allow­ing his per­son­al feel­ings to influ­ence the judg­ment he hands down.
Even advanced nations like the United States have had their share of cor­rup­tion in gov­ern­ment; many peo­ple in Congress have been indict­ed, con­vict­ed, and even impris­oned. So, too, have Governors been indict­ed and imprisoned.
Richard Millhouse Nixon, the 37^th President of the United States, left office pre­ma­ture­ly in the face of cer­tain impeach­ment and poten­tial crim­i­nal indict­ments. Before depart­ing, Nixon cut a deal with his Vice President Gerald Ford that saw Ford ascend to the pres­i­den­cy, then par­don­ing the crook Nixon so that he could not be crim­i­nal­ly indict­ed for his alleged crimes.
Ford argued his par­don of Nixon was to heal the Nation. More informed observers saw Ford’s actions as anoth­er iter­a­tion of Governmental corruption.
Geral Ford became the 38^th President of the United States, the only per­son to attain the office of Vice President and President with­out being elect­ed by the American vot­ers. Ford was appoint­ed vice pres­i­dent to Richard Nixon when Nixon’s vice pres­i­dent, Spiro Agnew, was indict­ed for corruption.
Fast for­ward to the present day, and the sin­gle-term, twice-impeached 45^th pres­i­dent, Donald Trump, is run­ning to become the 47^th President should he be elect­ed in November.
Trump is all but set to romp through his par­ty’s nom­i­nat­ing process even though he is fac­ing 91 felony counts in sev­er­al juris­dic­tions and has been con­vict­ed in sev­er­al civ­il cases.

Realistically, no nation can claim the high ground on this issue; they can claim to put checks and bal­ances in place, but they have no con­trol over peo­ple’s actions, even with those checks and bal­ances in place.
So, African lead­ers should wake the hell up after hear­ing American mer­ce­nary for­mer navy seal and leader of the mer­ce­nary firm Blackwater Erik Prince argue for the re-col­o­niza­tion of the African con­ti­nent. Erik Prince is the broth­er of Betsy Devos, the for­mer Trump Education secretary.
If ever there was a time for African uni­ty, at least mil­i­tar­i­ly, it is now. There are rea­sons that Western nations do not want a unit­ed Africa out­side the obvi­ous rapa­cious desire to con­trol the con­ti­nen­t’s pre­cious resources. A unit­ed Africa, eco­nom­i­cal­ly and mil­i­tar­i­ly, would be a force to be reck­oned with. It is time that African lead­ers force the nations with bases on the con­ti­nent to leave and ensure pri­vate armies like the one Erik Prince led nev­er set foot on the continent.
Joe Biden may not be think­ing of attack­ing African nations, but if Trump is reelect­ed, there is no telling what that crim­i­nal enter­prise will do.
Africa must unite or perish.….…

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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.

ERIK PRINCE HAS been many things in his 54 years on Earth: the wealthy heir to an auto sup­ply com­pa­ny; a Navy SEAL; the founder of the mer­ce­nary firm Blackwater, which con­duct­ed a noto­ri­ous 2007 mas­sacre in the mid­dle of Baghdad; the broth­er of Betsy DeVos, Donald Trump’s sec­re­tary of edu­ca­tion; a shad­ow advis­er to Trump; and the plain­tiff in a law­suit against The Intercept. 
Last November, Prince start­ed a pod­cast called “Off Leash ” which in its pro­mo­tion­al copy says he “brings a unique and invalu­able per­spec­tive to today’s increas­ing­ly volatile world.” On an episode last Tuesday, his unique and invalu­able per­spec­tive turned out to be that the U.S. should “put the impe­r­i­al hat back on” and take over and direct­ly run huge swaths of the globe.

Here’s are Prince’s exact words:

If so many of these coun­tries around the world are inca­pable of gov­ern­ing them­selves, it’s time for us to just put the impe­r­i­al hat back on, to say, we’re going to gov­ern those coun­tries … ’cause enough is enough, we’re done being invaded. …

You can say that about pret­ty much all of Africa, they’re inca­pable of gov­ern­ing themselves.

Prince’s co-host Mark Serrano then warned him that lis­ten­ers might hear his words and believe he means them: “People on the left are going to watch this,” said Serrano, “and they’re going to say, wait a minute, Erik Prince is talk­ing about being a colo­nial­ist again.” Prince respond­ed: “Absolutely, yes.” He then added that he thought this was a great con­cept not just for Africa but also for Latin America.
Prince and Serrano either do not know or do not care that pre­vi­ous bouts of the European fla­vor of colo­nial­ism led to the deaths of tens of mil­lions of peo­ple around the world. Then in the 20^th cen­tu­ry, the ide­ol­o­gy of colo­nial­ism gave birth to Nazism.
Like the pre­vi­ous enthu­si­asts of impe­ri­al­ism, Prince is com­plete­ly blind to his own moti­va­tions and where they inevitably lead. He doesn’t want to do this for America’s ben­e­fit, you see. No, it’s because “if you go to these coun­tries and you see how they suf­fer, under absolute­ly cor­rupt gov­ern­ments that are just crim­i­nal syn­di­cates, a lot of them deserve better.”

This was the ratio­nale for Britain’s white man’s bur­den, France’s mis­sion civil­isatrice, Spain’s mis­ión civ­i­lizado­ra, Portugal’s mis­são civ­i­lizado­ra, and even impe­r­i­al Japan’s Greater East Asia Co-Prosperity Sphere, which aimed to con­quer every near­by coun­try for the ben­e­fit of allOpens in a new tab. Imperialists have always told them­selves that they are sub­du­ing oth­er lands to help their benight­ed inhab­i­tants. This benef­i­cence some­how always leads to mass death.

This curi­ous psy­cho­log­i­cal phe­nom­e­non is famous­ly por­trayed in “Heart of Darkness,” the 1899 nov­el by Joseph Conrad. The book’s nar­ra­tor, Charles Marlow, describes his voy­age up a riv­er into the inte­ri­or of an unnamed African coun­try that is obvi­ous­ly Congo in the process of being col­o­nized by Belgium.

Marlow explains:

It was just rob­bery with vio­lence, aggra­vat­ed mur­der on a great scale … the con­quest of the earth, which most­ly means the tak­ing it away from those who have a dif­fer­ent com­plex­ion or slight­ly flat­ter noses than our­selves, is not a pret­ty thing when you look into it too much. What redeems it is the idea only. An idea at the back of it; not a sen­ti­men­tal pre­tense but an idea; and an unselfish belief in the idea — some­thing you can set up, and bow down before, and offer a sac­ri­fice to.

Marlow attempts to find out what hap­pened to Mr. Kurtz, an upriv­er colo­nial agent. When he arrives, he finds Kurtz is liv­ing in a vil­la sur­round­ed by heads stuck on spikes. Marlow learns that Kurtz has writ­ten a report for the “International Society for the Suppression of Savage Customs.” It begins with Kurtz declar­ing, “By the sim­ple exer­cise of our will we can exert a pow­er for good prac­ti­cal­ly unbound­ed.” Before long it degen­er­ates into an exhor­ta­tion to “exter­mi­nate all the brutes!” That’s in fic­tion. In real­i­ty, Belgium’s well-mean­ing impe­ri­al­ism killed per­haps 10 mil­lion Congolese. It always seems to work this way. For instance, here are a series of 2003 quotes about the Iraq War from Mississippi’s Trent Lott, then the GOP’s Senate minor­i­ty leader: March 27: “I ask Mississippians of all faiths to pray for all our coali­tion forces and the Iraqi peo­ple as they engage in an intense but noble bat­tle against what is noth­ing but sheer evil.”

April 15: “We went in there to free those peo­ple.” October 28: “If we have to, we just mow the whole place down, see what happens.”

Serrano at least is more in touch with the grimy real­i­ty of what they’re talk­ing about, and he excit­ed­ly men­tions how America could bring less­er nations “the pro­fes­sion­al­ism they need to cap­i­tal­ize on their nat­ur­al resources. In any case, Prince’s words illus­trate that we are liv­ing in a time in which many of humanity’s worst ideas, ones we thought were long dead and buried, have risen from the grave and are now stag­ger­ing about again. Fascism? Maybe things went off the rails last time, but let’s not throw the baby out with the bath­wa­ter. A pea-brained fear of vac­cines? Sure, why not? A con­vic­tion that the old lady who lives in the for­est is steal­ing our chil­dren and vivi­sect­ing them to con­sume their adrenochrome? That makes per­fect sense.
Later in the show Prince also res­ur­rects anoth­er old pop­u­lar favorite, The Enemy Within Is in League With the Enemy Without. “You get the BLM and the Hamas mili­tias of the Democrat Party, very active in the United States this sum­mer,” he says. “When that BLM or Hamas mili­tia shows up to start wreck­ing things, you show them what law and order looks like, imme­di­ate­ly.” So that’s where we are in today’s America. Maybe we could return to med­i­cine based on the four humors, in which all human afflic­tions are due to imbal­ances in your phlegm, blood, and yel­low and black bile. And why not give chat­tel slav­ery anoth­er shot? If we’re going to do impe­ri­al­ism again, real­ly, the sky’s the limit.

If you know me, you know I talk about crime regard­less of who occu­pies Jamaica House. My dis­dain for crim­i­nal­i­ty may be traced to when I became a police offi­cer. Still, today, I have scant regard for crim­i­nals or even those who would offer sup­port for them.
I have observed over the decade and a half that I have engaged in writ­ing on crime; read­ers’ respons­es have been based on what I say about the two polit­i­cal par­ties that run our country.
It indi­cates that even on this most impor­tant and exis­ten­tial sub­ject, peo­ple’s respons­es are based on their polit­i­cal affil­i­a­tions and beliefs.….…. Sadly, this includes past and present mem­bers of the Jamaica Constabulary Force.
Surely, we all have our polit­i­cal lean­ings; there is absolute­ly noth­ing wrong with doing so. Our inabil­i­ty to deal with impor­tant issues from objec­tive, non-polit­i­cal lens­es is prob­lem­at­ic. My expe­ri­ences have been that even when we claim to be objec­tive, our argu­ments are polit­i­cal instead of focused on the top­ic under discussion.

Now, let’s talk about crime in Jamaica. 
My posi­tion on the sub­ject is well known: I hate crim­i­nals; I spent a decade fight­ing them, I was shot doing it, and if it were up to me, they would all be in jail. Period.
Both polit­i­cal par­ties have large­ly con­tributed to crime through omis­sion and com­mis­sion: com­plic­i­ty, acqui­es­cence, incom­pe­tence, and polit­i­cal expediency.
Political par­ti­sans from both camps will have you believe that their side is more seri­ous about crime reduc­tion in our coun­try, but in essence, when it comes to pro­duc­ing tan­gi­ble evi­dence to back up their claims, they fall short. As I have said, even some police offi­cers believe their for­tunes are tied to their par­ty’s for­tunes at the polls.
The long and short of the mat­ter is that nei­ther polit­i­cal par­ty has been res­olute in lay­ing down the law on crim­i­nal­i­ty. Consequently, our coun­try devel­oped a pop cul­ture that is lais­sez-faire, or should I say on this issue, it’s almost hands-off by both polit­i­cal parties.
Instead of mak­ing it clear that crime will not be tol­er­at­ed in our coun­try, we have cre­at­ed a cot­tage indus­try around how to ben­e­fit from it since it is a way of life. This includes bands, funer­al par­lors, all the way to vending.
It is log­i­cal to argue that nei­ther polit­i­cal par­ty has tak­en the nec­es­sary steps to alle­vi­ate this bur­geon­ing crisis.
I have laid out a series of steps that begin with leg­is­la­tion and con­tin­ue with an effi­cient, well-trained police force and a court sys­tem bound by law to send crim­i­nals to prison. All of that must be encap­su­lat­ed in a nation­al mind­set that is not cen­tered on the rights of crim­i­nals but on the rights of crime vic­tims and their families.

Having said the fore­gone, I have also laid out why the gov­ern­ment [must] dis­as­so­ci­ate itself from crime pro­duc­ers and pass leg­is­la­tion that makes it clear Jamaica is no haven for crim­i­nals. Our small econ­o­my is eas­i­ly dis­turbed by out­side forces that would do us harm. We must do our best to ensure we have clean hands on this issue. I have spo­ken to the help the so-called human rights groups in our coun­try have got­ten from out­side donors while our crime-fight­ing efforts have come under scruti­ny, ridicule, and puni­tive back­lash… all from out­side Jamaica.
Guns con­tin­ue to flood the Island, most of which are report­ed to come from the United States, despite its enor­mous and numer­ous law enforce­ment bud­gets and resources.
It is incon­ceiv­able to me that the most pow­er­ful nation in the world can­not stop the flow of guns into a small coun­try with min­i­mal resources.
It is easy for a pow­er­ful nation to destroy a small nation’s econ­o­my using slan­der and lies if that nation seems to be doing things right. It has hap­pened before it can hap­pen again.
Every time that Jamaica, a major­i­ty Black nation, sets itself on a course to becom­ing self-suf­fi­cient and eco­nom­i­cal­ly viable, out­side forces align against our coun­try, and the polit­i­cal oppo­si­tion all of a sud­den gains trac­tion, effec­tive­ly turn­ing back the gains recorded.

A few weeks ago, the influ­en­tial Financial Times wrote glow­ing­ly about the Jamaican econ­o­my, call­ing it ‘arguably one of the most remark­able and rad­i­cal but under­ap­pre­ci­at­ed turn­around sto­ries in eco­nom­ic his­to­ry.”The Times Journalist Arnie Weissmann tout­ed Jamaica’s eco­nom­ic turn­around as ‘the envy of devel­op­ing coun­tries’.
Not sur­pris­ing­ly to any sane, ratio­nal per­son, the United States State Department quick­ly issued addi­tion­al trav­el advi­sories to Americans about trav­el­ing to Jamaica.
The State Department’s advi­so­ry warned that vio­lent crimes are ‘com­mon’ and sex­u­al assaults occur ‘fre­quent­ly, includ­ing at all-inclu­sive resorts.’.….. Wait, what? I was in Jamaica with my fam­i­ly in January of 2024. I would cer­tain­ly not expose my fam­i­ly to this kind of dan­ger. So, the State Department must be talk­ing about Jamaica Queens.
Prime Minister Andrew Holness and Sandals International Chairman Adam Stewart have both pushed back against the slan­der­ous alle­ga­tions against Jamaica.…. Social media is rife with American tourists mock­ing the State Department’s advi­so­ry. Many have done so while book­ing their flights to Jamaica.

It is counter-pro­duc­tive at this point to talk about the hypocrisy of the American State Department’s advi­so­ry, not to men­tion the tim­ing of it. Coincedencital or strate­gic, you are the judge.
As I men­tioned pre­vi­ous­ly, Jamaica is a pre­dom­i­nant­ly black coun­try. The Island has main­tained close ties to the United States for decades after emerg­ing from British Colonial rule…
Despite this so-called friend­ship, the Island has pre­cious lit­tle to show for that bilat­er­al rela­tion­ship. There are a few hand­outs here and there, but hard­ly any­thing tan­gi­ble to point to. Before the Chinese advent onto the island, the coun­try’s infra­struc­ture was decrepit, rel­e­gat­ed to the wind­ing roads that have exist­ed since the colo­nial era, and bridges and oth­er major infra­struc­ture were hard­ly any more devel­oped than the roads.
Nevertheless, with new Chinese-spon­sored high­ways, the key to the nation’s devel­op­ment, the American Ambassador under Donald Trump had the temer­i­ty and the gall to cau­tion Jamaica about accept­ing the Chinese largest as if Jamaica was answer­able to the American government.

The real­i­ty is that with American guns flood­ing the Island unabat­ed and the secu­ri­ty forces con­strained from going after the mur­der­ers out of fear of the American, Canadian, and British-fund­ed Human Rights agen­cies and crim­i­nals being deport­ed in large num­bers, the strat­e­gy is for the Island to fail.
If Jamaica can­not keep its crime rate down, invest­ment poten­tial becomes nil. Tourists are scared away by the American State Department. The Jamaican econ­o­my, heav­i­ly depen­dent on tourism, returns to the days of( ‘any­thing a any­thing’).
Major lend­ing insti­tu­tions, such as the Inter-American Development Bank, the International Monetary Fund, the World Bank, and the Paris Club, depend on poor nations to bor­row from them.
Now, do you see why it is impor­tant to trash Jamaica?
According to some reports, the Prime Minister is per­plexed at the tim­ing of the American advi­so­ry. This writer is not, and truth­ful­ly, I know the PM is ful­ly con­ver­sant with what’s happening.
Hey, in the mean­time, real Jamaicans must look at the sources fund­ing the large oppo­si­tion motor­cades and meet­ings. We should nev­er allow our coun­try to slide back into the dol­drums of the 90s.

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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.

I had a con­ver­sa­tion with a young friend yes­ter­day; he want­ed my opin­ion on what was hap­pen­ing in Israel. I told him I had no idea what was hap­pen­ing in Israel because I did not know of a coun­try named Israel. I am aware, how­ev­er, of a nation called Palestine. He then asked don’t you believe in a two-state solu­tion? I respond­ed no!!! Shocked, he asked don’t you believe Palestinians deserve a state? I respond­ed, of course, that is the only state I believe in. He replied I want peace, so I think two states will resolve the sit­u­a­tion. I asked him how that could be when Israel was built on a lie. How can there be peace with­out justice?
Anything resem­bling peace in Palestine, even if there were to be a two-state exper­i­ment, would amount to a smol­der­ing caul­dron that would explode at any time.
Nobody wants to say out loud what needs to be said. Everyone is either afraid or in cahoots with the Zionist Lobby AIPAC, The American Israel Public Affairs Committee. Even those opposed are pet­ri­fied of the Zionists and their allies com­ing after them.
In the video I did above, one of my dear friends, a man I great­ly respect, told me he would con­sid­er whether it was wise of him even to share the video.
My friend was con­cerned for my safe­ty but feared that mere­ly shar­ing a video about the sub­ject would endan­ger him as well. Such is the pal­pa­bil­i­ty of the fear the Zionists have imposed on ordi­nary Americans and their abil­i­ty to speak out on this trav­es­ty in Palestine.

What the world is forced to con­tend with is an ille­git­i­mate state cre­at­ed and enhanced by the Americans in 1947 and rec­og­nized first them­selves a year lat­er in 1948. This ille­git­i­mate state is no dif­fer­ent than that which the Dutch cre­at­ed in South Africa, the British in Australia, or even the Americans cre­at­ed almost three hun­dred years ago.
Truthfully, the world has always been one in which the strong take what they want, and the weak suf­fer. However, after the Second World War, the world was told that there was a new inter­na­tion­al order in which nations were oblig­at­ed to oper­ate like good cit­i­zens in a coun­try of laws.
This new order meant that nations could not invade oth­er coun­tries, plun­der their resources, and take their land. An inter­na­tion­al court was also set up in the Hague, Netherlands, to hear cas­es against errant nations.
This was doomed to fail from the start, as the pow­er­ful nation that was instru­men­tal in estab­lish­ing the court, the United States, removed itself from its authority.
Some argue that the new order has worked. They point out that since the Second World War end­ed in 1945, there has not been anoth­er world­wide con­fla­gra­tion. Truthfully, it was a mere 21 years after World War I end­ed before the start of the second.
It is now 79 years since World War Two came to an end.
On the face of it, it appears that this inter­na­tion­al order has kept the peace.…..except that the world was thrust into an exis­ten­tial stale­mate between the United States and the Soviet Union, two nuclear-armed pow­ers com­pet­ing for world domination.

After the Soviet Union col­lapsed, the world faced the United States, the sole nuclear Superpower, hav­ing total hege­mon­ic auton­o­my over our planet.
From that emerged America push­ing its weight around in nations as small as Grenada and Panama to oth­ers as large and remote as Iraq and Afghanistan. No coun­try was spared America’s hege­mon­ic reach, overt and covert.
So no, there has not been anoth­er world war, but we have had many wars all start­ed by the United States.
Part of the immense pow­er wield­ed by the United States includ­ed, though not con­fined to, the desta­bi­liza­tion of Libya and oth­er coun­tries while nuclear arm­ing and pro­tect­ing the Zionist state of Israel in the United Nations Security Council.
As a con­se­quence, Israel has thumbed its nose at the inter­na­tion­al com­mu­ni­ty as it goes about com­mit­ting atroc­i­ties and war crimes against the Palestinian peo­ple with zero consequence…
In the mean­time, the pow­er­ful zion­ist lob­by man­ages to cow any­one who dares speak out against Israel’s war crimes by label­ing them anti­se­mit­ic in the American main­stream media.
Even elect­ed offi­cials are afraid to vote against send­ing American tax dol­lars and bombs to kill Palestinians. That is the pow­er of the wealthy and pow­er­ful Zionists oper­at­ing from America’s soil…

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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.

Politics sure makes strange bed­fel­lows, they used to say. I’m unsure if the term strange can describe those bed­fel­lows anymore. 
Take Tim Scott the junior US Senator from South Carolina; Scott served as a Charleston city coun­cilor, a state rep­re­sen­ta­tive, and a U.S. Representative. Before enter­ing pol­i­tics, it was report­ed that Scott worked in the finan­cial ser­vices sector.
In 2013, then Governor of South Carolina Nimarata Nikki Randhawa (o/​c Nikki Haley) appoint­ed Tim to fill a vacant US Senate seat. Scott was elect­ed to a full six-year term in 2014 and was reelect­ed to anoth­er in 2022.

Running for pres­i­dent is a thing a can­di­date feels, I would imag­ine; I was­n’t born in America, so I can’t say for sure as I do not sat­is­fy the Constitutional require­ments to run for president.……Oh, wait, Raphael Cruz was born in Canada, and he ran for President. So too did John McCain, born in the Panama Canal Zone. Anyway, I digress.
My ini­tial point was that though Nimarata Nikki Randhawa is from South Carolina, and so is Scott, no one can argue that one should have wait­ed for the oth­er or not run because the oth­er was run­ning. Even though, if I were in Scott’s shoes, which I’m not, thank God, I would have con­sid­ered what Nimarata Nikki Randhawa did for me, but that’s just me. I’m queasy like that when some­one does some­thing for me.

So Tim Scott and Nimarata Nikki Randhawa decid­ed to run for pres­i­dent on the Republican tick­et this pres­i­den­tial cycle. Tim Scott is as Black as they come, and Nimarata Nikki Randhawa is dark-skinned. Both grew up in the American South, which has been and remains the breed­ing ground of the most caus­tic and degen­er­a­tive form of racism. Yet both Clowns decid­ed that say­ing there is no racism in America was the way to be accept­ed by the vir­u­lent racists that dwell with­in the Republican par­ty and rep­re­sent the bulk of Republican voters.
Vivek Ramaswamy, anoth­er Indian-American run­ning for pres­i­dent this cycle, adopt­ed the same approach. Teeth grin­ning, glib, fast-talk­ing, and argu­men­ta­tive, he believed that if he kissed enough white ass­es and spoke about how great America is, they would ignore his Black skin.….hahaha. It did not work. There is no racism in America(sic). Still, those Republican pri­ma­ry vot­ers were not about to put a guy named Vivek Ramaswamy in the White House in the same way they would not put a woman named Nimarata Nikki Randhawa.

It is prob­a­bly a good thing to be who you are. Barack Hussien Obama stayed true to his Muslim-sound­ing name and won twice. Oh, dif­fer­ent polit­i­cal par­ty? Yes, a coali­tion of pro­gres­sives elect­ed him, not a mono­lith of back­ward racists.
And even though there is no racism in America [sic], the brown-skinned peo­ple run­ning for high office always ask the repub­li­can vot­ers they are court­ing to look through them like glass and not focus on their dark skin.
Vivek could not change his name, but he raised hell and high water to con­vince every­one that America has no racism. Nimarata, well, she not only changed her name to Nikki and adopt­ed her mar­ried name, Haley, but she went full-throt­tle into the no-racism American screed she con­vinced her­self of. Tim Scott, his white-sound­ing name was not enough to get white Republican pri­ma­ry vot­ers to ignore his black skin, and no amount of grin­ning and pre­tend­ing would either.
Oh, Uncle Raphael isn’t run­ning this cycle, but he nev­er men­tions that his name is Raphael; he is sim­ply Ted.

Here is the ques­tion: why would Tim Scott not endorse Nimarata Nikki Randhawa, who in 2013 sent him to the US Senate? Nikki Haley is as fake as they come; the entire slate of can­di­dates on the Republica tick­et was like deceased rats. The ques­tion was which one had the most dis­ease. When those opposed to Donald Trump held their breath that Chris Christie would gath­er some trac­tion, you know the field was trash. If Chris Bridgegae, arro­gant, pompous, nar­cis­sis­tic Christie, was the sav­ior they sought, it indi­cat­ed that we are all roy­al­ly flushed.
Nevertheless, Tim grin­ning-teeth Scott owed Nimarata. Whoever she appoint­ed to the US Senate would most like­ly have won a full term and been elect­ed like Tim Scott was. South Carolina is a white Southern State that votes Republican monolithically.
Nimarata could have cho­sen any white man or woman, but she chose Scott. At the very least, Scott owed it to her to sup­port her cam­paign after he fold­ed his, even if he thought she would even­tu­al­ly lose.
But there is no hon­or among thieves, so Tim Scott endorsed the 91-felony count indict­ed, twice impeached, sin­gle-term insur­rec­tion­ist who is again run­ning for pres­i­dent to save him­self from fed­er­al prison.
Not only did the c*****g Tim Scott endorse Donald Trump, but he also went out of his way to be extra in deliv­er­ing his address. Many FOX News Republican view­ers said they were embar­rassed for him. The look on his dear lead­er’s face sums it up succinctly.
Who is this n****r?

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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.

By Jeremy Scahill

Israel’s rebut­tal against charges of geno­cide was as weak in offer­ing doc­u­ment­ed facts as South Africa’s case was powerful.

A TEAM OF Israeli lawyers and offi­cials pre­sent­ed their defense at The Hague on Friday in the sec­ond day of the geno­cide case brought before the International Court of Justice by the gov­ern­ment of South Africa. The lawyers por­trayed Israel as the actu­al vic­tim of geno­cide, not Gaza, accused South Africa of sup­port­ing Hamas, and paint­ed South Africa’s gov­ern­ment as func­tion­ing as the legal arm of the Palestinian mil­i­tants who led the dead­ly raids into Israel on October 7.

Israel ben­e­fit­ted great­ly from the fact that there was no cross-exam­i­na­tion per­mit­ted or debate allowed dur­ing these pro­ceed­ings. It embarked on a bold mis­sion to do in a court of inter­na­tion­al law what its mil­i­tary and polit­i­cal offi­cials have done day and night through­out the course of this war against Gaza: unleash a del­uge of what was known with­in the Trump admin­is­tra­tion as “alter­na­tive facts.”

Israel’s defense was the inverse of South Africa’s case yes­ter­day, and as weak in offer­ing doc­u­ment­ed facts as South Africa’s was pow­er­ful. History began on October 7, the Israelis seemed to say, South Africa is Hamas, South Africa did not give Israel a chance to meet up and chat about Gaza before suing for geno­cide, and actu­al­ly the Israel Defense Forces is the most moral enti­ty on Earth. As for the volu­mi­nous pub­lic state­ments by senior Israeli offi­cials indi­cat­ing geno­ci­dal intent, those were just “ran­dom asser­tions” by some irrel­e­vant under­lings. Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s state­ments invok­ing a mur­der­ous sto­ry from the Bible about killing the women, infants, and cat­tle of your ene­mies? The South Africans just don’t under­stand the­ol­o­gy and pre­sent­ed Netanyahu’s words out of context.

While Israel’s lawyers made legal argu­ments that the geno­cide charges lev­eled against it are invalid, their pri­ma­ry strat­e­gy was to appeal to the court on juris­dic­tion­al and pro­ce­dur­al mat­ters, hop­ing that they could form the basis for the pan­el of inter­na­tion­al judges to dis­miss South Africa’s case. Aware of the glob­al audi­ence, Israel also sought to rein­force its claims of right­eous­ness and self-defense in fight­ing the war in Gaza.

Israel’s rep­re­sen­ta­tive Tal Becker opened his government’s rebut­tal by telling the judges at the ICJ that South Africa’s case “pro­found­ly dis­tort­ed the fac­tu­al and legal pic­ture,” claim­ing it sought to erase Jewish his­to­ry. He charged that the legal argu­ments made by South Africa’s team were “bare­ly dis­tin­guish­able” from Hamas’s rhetoric and accused them of “weaponiz­ing” the term “geno­cide.”

Becker called October 7 “the largest cal­cu­lat­ed mass mur­der of Jews since the Holocaust” and plead­ed with the court to fac­tor in the “bru­tal­i­ty and law­less­ness” of the ene­my Israel says it is fight­ing in Gaza. Israel, he said, has a law­ful right to use all avail­able means to respond “to the slaugh­ter of October 7 which Hamas has vowed to repeat.”

He repeat­ed­ly attacked the South African gov­ern­ment, accus­ing it of doing Hamas’s bid­ding and alleg­ing that its true agen­da was to “thwart” Israel’s right to defend itself. “South Africa enjoys close rela­tions with Hamas,” Becker said. “These rela­tions have con­tin­ued unabat­ed even after the October 7 atroc­i­ties.” He said that South Africa, not Israel, should be sub­ject­ed to pro­vi­sion­al mea­sures by the ICJ for its alleged sup­port of Hamas. Becker neglect­ed to men­tion the fact that Netanyahu him­self long advo­cat­edOpens in a new tab for Hamas to retain pow­er in Gaza and worked to ensure the flow of mon­ey to the group from Qatar con­tin­ued over the years, believ­ing it to be the best strat­e­gy to pre­vent the estab­lish­ment of a Palestinian state. 

Becker reject­ed South Africa’s char­ac­ter­i­za­tion of the his­tor­i­cal scale of civil­ian destruc­tion in Gaza — which has now killed over 10,000 chil­dren — argu­ing that what is actu­al­ly “unpar­al­leled and unprece­dent­ed” in this war is Hamas “embed­ding its mil­i­tary oper­a­tions through­out Gaza with­in and beneath” dense­ly pop­u­lat­ed areas. Becker spoke as though many of Israel’s most out­landish claims about Hamas’s under­ground oper­a­tions have not been proven false or shown to be great­ly exag­ger­at­ed, such as the Israeli claim that there was essen­tial­ly a Hamas Pentagon under al-Shifa Hospital. 

While Israel’s lawyers made legal argu­ments that the geno­cide charges lev­eled against it are invalid, their pri­ma­ry strat­e­gy was to appeal to the court on juris­dic­tion­al and pro­ce­dur­al matters.

Becker also alleged that South Africa’s lawyers had failed to men­tion how many of the build­ings blown up and destroyed in Gaza over the past three months of sus­tained Israeli bomb­ing were actu­al­ly “booby­trapped” by Hamas rather than destroyed by Israel. It was a ris­i­ble claim giv­en not only the scale of the Israeli bom­bard­ment of entire neigh­bor­hoods, but also because Israeli sol­diers have post­ed videosOpens in a new tab of them­selves glee­ful­ly hit­ting the det­o­nate but­tonOpens in a new tab to oblit­er­ate whole neigh­bor­hoods. He dis­missed civil­ian death and injury fig­ures pro­vid­ed by Gaza health author­i­ties, say­ing that South Africa’s lawyers had failed to men­tion how many of the dead Palestinians were actu­al­ly Hamas oper­a­tives. It was a strik­ing point giv­en that Israeli offi­cials have open­ly and repeat­ed­ly said that there are no inno­cents in Gaza, and that United Nations work­ers and jour­nal­ists killed by Israel are actu­al­ly secret Hamas agents. 

“The night­mar­ish envi­ron­ment cre­at­ed by Hamas has been con­cealed by” South Africa, Becker charged. “Israel is com­mit­ted to com­ply with the law, but it does so in the face of Hamas’s utter con­tempt for the law.” Becker did not both­er to address any of the scores of U.N. res­o­lu­tionsOpens in a new tab over the decades con­demn­ing the ille­gal­i­ty of Israel’s apartheid régime and its ille­gal occu­pa­tions, not to men­tion its own well-doc­u­ment­ed use of Palestinian chil­dren as civil­ian shieldsOpens in a new tab and the inten­tion­al killing and maim­ingOpens in a new tab of non­vi­o­lent protesters. 

Becker also claimed that Israel was com­ply­ing with inter­na­tion­al law in all of its oper­a­tions in Gaza. “Israel does not seek to destroy a peo­ple, but to pro­tect a peo­ple — its [own] peo­ple,” he said, adding that Israel is engaged in a “war of defense against Hamas, not the Palestinian peo­ple.” There could “hard­ly be a charge more false and more malev­o­lent than the charge of geno­cide.” He accused South Africa of abus­ing the world court and turn­ing it into an “aggressor’s charter.”

Shaw then addressed the volu­mi­nous state­ments made by Israeli offi­cials intro­duced in court by South Africa as evi­dence of “geno­ci­dal intent.” Shaw dis­missed these state­ments as “ran­dom asser­tions” that failed “to demon­strate that Israel has or has had the intent to destroy” the Palestinian peo­ple. He con­tend­ed that none of those state­ments con­sti­tut­ed an offi­cial pol­i­cy of the Israeli gov­ern­ment and said the only rel­e­vant fac­tor for the court to con­sid­er is whether such state­ments reflect­ed offi­cial deci­sions or direc­tives made by the Israeli lead­ers and its war Cabinet. Shaw declared they did not, cit­ing sev­er­al offi­cial Israeli state­ments direct­ing armed forces to com­ply with inter­na­tion­al laws and to make efforts to pro­tect civil­ians from harm or death. He neglect­ed to respond to the direct con­nec­tions drawn, includ­ing through video evi­dence, by South Africa’s legal team show­ing how Israeli forces on the ground echoed Israeli offi­cials’ state­ments about destroy­ing Gaza as they laid siege to the strip. 

The British lawyer direct­ly addressed Netanyahu’s invo­ca­tion of the bib­li­cal sto­ry of the destruc­tion of Amalek, in which God ordered the Israelites to “attack the Amalekites and total­ly destroy all that belongs to them. Do not spare them; put to death men and women, chil­dren and infants, cat­tle and sheep, camels and don­keys.” Shaw argued there was “no need here for a the­o­log­i­cal dis­cus­sion.” South Africa, he charged, took Netanyahu’s words out of con­text and failed to include the por­tion of his state­ment where he empha­sized that the IDF was the “most moral army in the world” and “does every­thing to avoid harm­ing the unin­volved.” The impli­ca­tion of Shaw’s argu­ment is that Netanyahu’s plat­i­tudes about the nobil­i­ty of the IDF some­how nul­li­fied the sig­nif­i­cance of invok­ing a vio­lent bib­li­cal edict to describe a mil­i­tary oper­a­tion against peo­ple Israeli Defense Minister Yoav Gallant described as “human animals.”

After offer­ing a litany of pub­lic Israeli state­ments about pro­tect­ing civil­ians and offer­ing human­i­tar­i­an aid to the Palestinians, Shaw quipped, “Genocidal intent?” as though these words and claims some­how erase the actu­al actions the entire world has watched dai­ly for more than three months. With no sense of shame, Shaw char­ac­ter­ized Israel’s state­ments direct­ing Palestinians in Gaza to imme­di­ate­ly evac­u­ate their homes as a human­i­tar­i­an ges­ture. Yesterday, South Africa called the evac­u­a­tion order for over a mil­lion peo­ple on short notice an act of geno­cide in and of itself. 

In a moment of supreme gaslight­ing, Shaw con­clud­ed his pre­sen­ta­tion by accus­ing the gov­ern­ment of South Africa of “com­plic­i­ty in geno­cide” and fail­ing in its “duty to pre­vent geno­cide.” He charged, “South Africa has giv­en suc­cor and sup­port to Hamas at the least.” He said the alle­ga­tions against Israel “verge on the out­ra­geous” and argued that Hamas’s con­duct, not Israel’s, meets the “statu­to­ry def­i­n­i­tion of geno­cide.” Unlike Hamas, he con­tin­ued, Israel has made “unprece­dent­ed efforts at mit­i­gat­ing civil­ian harm … as well as alle­vi­at­ing hard­ship and suf­fer­ing” to its own detriment. 

GALIT RAJUAN, ANOTHER Israeli lawyer, argued that Israel was oper­at­ing with­in the rules of law in its attacks on Gaza. She spent con­sid­er­able time accus­ing Hamas of using hos­pi­tals and oth­er civil­ian sites to oper­ate mil­i­tar­i­ly and to hold Israeli hostages. South Africa, she said, pre­tend­ed “as if Israel is oper­at­ing in Gaza against no armed adver­sary” and said the civil­ian deaths and destruc­tion caused by Israel’s oper­a­tions is “the desired out­come” Hamas wants. “Many civil­ian deaths are caused by Hamas,” she alleged.

She repeat­ed claims that have been debunked about Hamas using hos­pi­tals for mil­i­tary oper­a­tions and hold­ing hostages, claim­ing that any dam­age Israel had done to hos­pi­tals in Gaza was “always as a direct result of Hamas’s abhor­rent method of warfare.”

Responding to South Africa’s asser­tion that Palestinians were giv­en just 24 hours to flee their homes and hos­pi­tals, Rajuan claimed Israel had giv­en the warn­ings weeks in advance through leaflets, online maps, and social media accounts. She did not men­tion that Israel has fre­quent­ly shut down the inter­net in areas of Gaza and has repeat­ed­ly struck areas to which it told peo­ple to flee.

After describ­ing what she char­ac­ter­ized as Israel’s exten­sive efforts to deliv­er aid to the peo­ple of Gaza, Rajuan said it was evi­dence that the charge of geno­cide is “frankly unten­able.” She said she had only told the court of a “mere frac­tion” of the efforts Israel had made to warn civil­ians to leave their homes and to deliv­er aid but that it “is enough to demon­strate … that the alle­ga­tion of the intent to com­mit geno­cide is base­less.” Her por­tray­al of Israel as a benef­i­cent human­i­tar­i­an mov­ing moun­tains to alle­vi­ate the suf­fer­ing Palestinians would be laugh­able if it wasn’t so dead­ly. But such state­ments are easy to offer when your offi­cial pol­i­cy is to por­tray aid orga­ni­za­tions and U.N. work­ers as Hamas operatives.

For monthsOpens in a new tab, inter­na­tion­al aid orga­ni­za­tions have con­demned Israel, which func­tions as the over­lord of what goes in and out of Gaza, for obstruct­ing human­i­tar­i­an aid deliv­er­ies into Gaza. Just this week, U.N. offi­cials saidOpens in a new tab that Israel is block­ing it from get­ting aid to north­ern Gaza, while the World Health Organization saidOpens in a new tab it is fac­ing “insur­mount­able” chal­lenges in deliv­er­ing aid. Nonetheless, Omri Sender, anoth­er lawyer for Israel, claimed that Israel is deliv­er­ing large quan­ti­ties of aid dai­ly to Gaza, despite “Hamas con­stant­ly steal­ing it.” He told the judges that “Israel no doubt meets the legal test of con­crete mea­sures aimed specif­i­cal­ly … at ensur­ing the rights of the Palestinians in Gaza to exist.”

CHRISTOPHER STAKER CLOSED Israel’s legal argu­ments by charg­ing that South Africa was try­ing to force a uni­lat­er­al cease­fire by Israel and that this would allow Hamas to be “free to con­tin­ue attacks, which it has a stat­ed [intent] to do.” He said that the civil­ian car­nage and destruc­tion in Gaza cit­ed by South Africa do not inher­ent­ly con­sti­tute geno­cide and that it is “not with­in the court’s pow­er” to order pro­vi­sion­al mea­sures direct­ing Israel to cease all mil­i­tary oper­a­tions under the Genocide Convention. He con­tend­ed that Israel has a legit­i­mate right to engage in mil­i­tary con­duct in Gaza that South Africa is seek­ing to restrain, and that an ICJ order to cease all oper­a­tions would cause “irrepara­ble prej­u­dice” to the rights of Israel. South Africa, in its argu­ment on Thursday, con­tend­ed that by refus­ing to cease its oper­a­tions, Israel was ensur­ing that the pile of Palestinian corpses would con­tin­ue to grow along­side the ampu­ta­tions of limbs with­out anes­the­sia and babies dying of treat­able illnesses. 

Staker took a page from Netanyahu’s well-worn pro­pa­gan­da play­book and com­pared the Gaza war to World War II, say­ing an inter­na­tion­al court order­ing Israel to cease oper­a­tions in Gaza would be akin to a court in the 1940s forc­ing the Allies in World War II to sur­ren­der to the Axis pow­ers in Europe. He said a sus­pen­sion of mil­i­tary oper­a­tions would “deprive Israel of the abil­i­ty to con­tend with the secu­ri­ty threat against it” and allow Hamas to com­mit fur­ther atroc­i­ties. Such mea­sures by the ICJ, he alleged, would assist Hamas. He also said the orders request­ed by South Africa were too broad­ly framed and, if enforced by the world court, would inca­pac­i­tate Israeli oper­a­tions in Palestinian ter­ri­to­ries oth­er than Gaza. He said this as though Israel is pro­tect­ing a coun­try club in the West Bank from rob­bers and van­dals rather than pre­sid­ing over an ille­gal apartheid régime where Palestinians are sub­ject­ed to con­di­tions not unlike those found in South Africa decades ago.

Staker also said that South Africa’s request that the court order Israel to pre­serve evi­dence of poten­tial crimes had no basis in fact and that no proof was offered that Israel was destroy­ing evi­dence in Gaza. He said such an order would be an “unprin­ci­pled and unnec­es­sary tar­nish­ing of [Israel’s] rep­u­ta­tion.” Staker may want to peruse the list of Palestinian libraries, archives, cul­tur­al sites, mon­u­ments, his­toric church­es, and mosques that Israel has destroyed. Not to men­tion the aca­d­e­mics, poets, sto­ry­tellers, and his­to­ri­ans its forces have erased from the earth.

Israel’s rep­re­sen­ta­tive Gilad Noam closed his government’s defense by claim­ing that South Africa por­trayed Israel as a “law­less state that regards itself as beyond and above the law. … in which the entire soci­ety” has “become con­sumed with destroy­ing an entire pop­u­la­tion.” This was remark­able in that it rep­re­sent­ed an accu­rate char­ac­ter­i­za­tion of pre­cise­ly what South Africa argued in its pre­sen­ta­tion. Of course, Noam assured the court that this char­ac­ter­i­za­tion was “patent­ly false.” 

South Africa, Noam said, “defames not only the Israeli lead­er­ship but also [Israeli] soci­ety.” Returning to the state­ments made by Israeli offi­cials that South Africa’s lawyers said con­sti­tut­ed proof of geno­ci­dal intent, Noam claimed that some of these “harsh” state­ments by Israel’s lead­ers were in response to the “destruc­tion of Jews and Israelis.” He said that Israel’s courts take incite­ment seri­ous­ly and are cur­rent­ly inves­ti­gat­ing such cases. 

Noam accused South Africa of engag­ing in a “con­cert­ed and cyn­i­cal effort to per­vert the term ‘geno­cide’ itself.” He asked the judges to reject the requests to order a halt­ing of Israeli mil­i­tary oper­a­tions in Gaza and to dis­miss South Africa’s case in full. The pres­i­dent of the court, U.S. Judge Joan Donoghue, adjourned the hear­ing, say­ing the judges would rule as soon as possible.

During its pre­sen­ta­tion before the court, Israel made no argu­ments to defend its con­duct in Gaza that it — and its back­ers in the Biden admin­is­tra­tion for that mat­ter — has not made repeat­ed­ly in the media over the past three months as part of its pro­pa­gan­da cam­paign to jus­ti­fy the unjus­ti­fi­able. Each day that pass­es, more Palestinians will die at the hands of U.S. muni­tions fired by Israeli forces and the already dire human­i­tar­i­an sit­u­a­tion will dete­ri­o­rate fur­ther. Should the court take Israel’s side and dis­miss South Africa’s claims, Israel will point to that as evi­dence of the just­ness of its cause. If the judges approve South Africa’s request for an order to halt Israel’s mil­i­tary attacks, the ques­tion will be called on whether Israel and its spon­sors in Washington, D.C., will respect inter­na­tion­al law. If his­to­ry offers any insight on that mat­ter, the future remains grim for the Palestinians of Gaza.

“Palestinian peo­ple are racist toward Black peo­ple, so we should not speak out against the geno­cide being waged by the Zionist Israelis in Palestine.” So, says some black peo­ple as they strut out alleged instances of Palestinians being racist toward black people. 
We heard the very same argu­ments at the time Russia invad­ed Ukraine. Ukrainians are racist toward blacks. True or not, we can­not allow oth­er peo­ple’s hatred to change who we are. As a peo­ple, we are, by nature, lov­ing peo­ple. We can­not afford to allow our ene­mies to change us into becom­ing them.
It is chal­leng­ing to find any race of peo­ple not prej­u­diced or biased against Black peo­ple. It is impos­si­ble to find any race not inher­ent­ly biased toward their own race. Racial prej­u­dice has always been in the world it will always be here. Must we ignore atroc­i­ties because the vic­tims are not our friends or because they would treat us badly?
Are we to remain silent in the face of bla­tant atroc­i­ties because the vic­tims aren’t exact­ly our friends?
If we care only about our­selves or those who show us love, we are say­ing that injus­tice is fine as long as it is not direct­ed at us or those who sup­port us.
Using that log­ic, it’s only a mat­ter of time before our turn comes around. Who will stand up for us then? Some argue no one stands up for us. That’s not true; many peo­ple of vary­ing races have stood up in defense of us as a peo­ple. Many have paid the ulti­mate price for doing so. 
We do not stand up for rights and jus­tice because it is con­ve­nient to do so or because there is no pos­si­bil­i­ty of harm com­ing to us. We stand up for jus­tice because it is the right thing to do. Not because it’s easy but because it’s nec­es­sary. When we remain silent in the face of out­ra­geous injus­tice and wrong, we are, by default, empow­er­ing the oppressors.
Eventually, no one is safe.

First, they came for the social­ists, and I did not speak out — because I was not a socialist.

Then they came for the trade union­ists, and I did not speak out — because I was not a trade unionist.

Then they came for the Jews, and I did not speak out — because I was not a Jew.

Then they came for me — and there was no one left to speak for me.

—Martin Niemöller

It is Christmas time, and those of us who pro­fess to be chil­dren of the high­est God must remem­ber that we claim to be Christians because of Christ. Let us say a prayer for the inno­cent men, women and chil­dren in Palestine who are suf­fer­ing at the hands of the pow­er­ful oppres­sors with their fight­er jets, bombers, tanks, poi­son gasses and oth­er weapons of human destruction.
Let us stop for one minute and pray for the down­trod­den peo­ple of Palestine.
As Jamaicans, our lead­ers did not shirk from stand­ing up to the evils of Apartheid in South Africa and oth­er places on the con­ti­nent. Let us hon­or their brav­ery and con­vic­tion by speak­ing out against the Apartheid in Palestine.

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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.

Polls are a snap­shot of peo­ple’s opin­ions at a par­tic­u­lar time; the respons­es poll­sters get depend on who they ques­tion, what ques­tions they ask, and whether those being polled care to answer truthfully.
The results of polls sub­se­quent­ly depend on both the verac­i­ty of those polled and the char­ac­ter and intent of the poll­sters. Three hun­dred thir­ty mil­lion peo­ple are liv­ing in the United States. Each year, hun­dreds of orga­ni­za­tions con­duct thou­sands of polls on var­i­ous issues. Organizations pump out poll results each pres­i­den­tial cycle hop­ing to con­vince us who will win elec­tions and who will lose.
After thir­ty-two years of liv­ing in the United States, I have nev­er once been con­tact­ed by a sin­gle polling orga­ni­za­tion; it begs the ques­tion,’ Who are they polling? ’

From the begin­ning of Joe Biden’s pres­i­den­cy, poll­sters have done their best to con­vince the American pub­lic that they do not like the pres­i­dent they had just elect­ed. Almost three years into his term and despite much suc­cess as a pres­i­dent, poll­sters con­tin­ue to tell the American peo­ple that they do not like Joe Biden.
It is bad enough that poll­sters con­tin­ue to talk Joe Biden into the polls dump; they have done every­thing in their pow­er, along with the media, to talk the econ­o­my into a recession.
Of course, infla­tion has been through the roof, but we have gone through a major pan­dem­ic. Major infu­sions of cash into the econ­o­my dur­ing the pan­dem­ic were sure to fuel the fire of infla­tion, and it did. As a con­se­quence, inter­est rates had to be raised to cool down the economy.….…Biden’s Infrastructure bill has been a major vic­to­ry for the pres­i­dent and the country.
Literally, every Republican who vot­ed against it has lined up to take cred­it for it in their states and districts.

The Biden-Harris admin­is­tra­tion has yield­ed much for the American people.

• Lowering Costs of Families’ Everyday Expenses
• More People Are Working Than At Any Point in American History
• Making More in America
• Rescued the Economy and Changed the Course of the Pandemic
• Rebuilding our Infrastructure
• Historic Expansion of Benefits and Services for Toxic Exposed Veterans
• The First Meaningful Gun Violence Reduction Legislation in 30 Years
• Protected Marriage for LGBTQI+ and Interracial Couples
• Historic Confirmation of Supreme Court Justice Ketanji Brown Jackson and Federal Judges of Diverse Backgrounds
• Rallied the World to Support Ukraine in Response to Putin’s Aggression
• Strengthened Alliances and Partnerships to Deliver for the American People
• Successful Counterterrorism Missions Against the Leaders of Al Qaeda and ISIS
• Executive Orders Protecting Reproductive Rights
• Historic Student Debt Relief for Middle- and Working-Class Families
• Ending our Failed Approach to Marijuana
• Advancing Equity and Racial Justice, Including Historic Criminal Justice Reform
• Delivering on the Most Aggressive Climate and Environmental Justice Agenda in American History
• More People with Health Insurance Than Ever Before.

Pollsters con­tin­ue to ped­dle the idea that Joe Biden’s num­bers are so in the tank that he will lose to a pussy-grab­bing, trai­tor who incit­ed a Neanderthal horde to attack the Capitol build­ing. The sin­gle-term twice-impeached trai­tor, fac­ing 91 felony counts, who saw his fake uni­ver­si­ty and char­i­ty closed down, is sup­pos­ed­ly lead­ing in the polls and could be the next pres­i­dent of the United States.
If what the poll­sters are try­ing to brain­wash the pub­lic into believ­ing is true, that the major­i­ty of the vot­ing pub­lic is will­ing to over­look Joe Biden’s suc­cess­es and put Donald Trump back in the White House, then all hope is lost for America.
I do not believe it, and nei­ther should you.
Joe Biden has been far from per­fect. His sup­port for the Zionist régime in Palestine and his sup­port for crooked crim­i­nal Benjamin Netanyahu will give pause to many vot­ers. However, those vot­ers must know and under­stand that if the twice impeached pussy-grab­bing felon were the pres­i­dent, the sup­port for the geno­cide of the Palestinian peo­ple would have been ten times greater.

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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 whole idea of hold­ing nations respon­si­ble for com­mit­ting war crimes is now a joke and, there­fore, can­not be enforced in light of Israel’s con­tin­ued abro­ga­tion of inter­na­tion­al law and order. (MB)

Three Israeli hostages who were mis­tak­en­ly shot by Israeli troops in the Gaza Strip had been wav­ing a white flag and were shirt­less when they were killed, an Israeli mil­i­tary offi­cial said Saturday.

Anger over the mis­tak­en killings is like­ly to increase pres­sure on the Israeli gov­ern­ment to renew Qatar-medi­at­ed nego­ti­a­tions with Hamas over swap­ping more cap­tives for Palestinians impris­oned in Israel. Hamas has con­di­tioned fur­ther releas­es on Israel halt­ing its pun­ish­ing air and ground cam­paign in Gaza, now in its 11^th week.

The account of how the hostages died also raised ques­tions about the con­duct of Israeli ground troops. Palestinians, on sev­er­al occa­sions, report­ed that Israeli sol­diers opened fire as civil­ians tried to flee to safety.

The mil­i­tary offi­cial, who spoke on con­di­tion of anonymi­ty to brief reporters in line with mil­i­tary reg­u­la­tions, said it was like­ly that the hostages had been aban­doned by their mil­i­tant cap­tors or had escaped. The sol­diers’ behav­ior was “against our rules of engage­ment,” the offi­cial said, and was being inves­ti­gat­ed at the high­est level.

The three, all young men in their 20s, were killed Friday in the Gaza City area of Shijaiyah, where troops have engaged in fierce fight­ing with Hamas mil­i­tants in recent days. They had been among more than 240 peo­ple tak­en hostage dur­ing an unprece­dent­ed raid by Hamas into Israel on Oct. 7 in which around 1,200 peo­ple were killed, most­ly civil­ians. The attack sparked the war.

Hundreds of pro­test­ers blocked Tel Aviv’s main high­way late Friday in a spon­ta­neous demon­stra­tion call­ing for the hostages’ return. The hostages’ plight has dom­i­nat­ed pub­lic dis­course in Israel since the Oct. 7 attack. Their fam­i­lies have led a pow­er­ful pub­lic cam­paign call­ing on the gov­ern­ment to do more to bring them home.

Hadas Kalderon, whose for­mer part­ner is still held hostage after their two teenage chil­dren were released in November, said the Israeli gov­ern­ment must pay any price to free all hostages. “To make a deal, now, that’s what I’m say­ing. Yesterday, not now,” said.

The mil­i­tary offi­cial said the three hostages had emerged from a build­ing close to Israeli sol­diers’ posi­tions. They were wav­ing a white flag and were shirt­less, pos­si­bly in an effort to sig­nal they posed no threat.

Two were killed imme­di­ate­ly, and the third ran back into the build­ing scream­ing for help in Hebrew. The com­man­der issued an order to cease fire, but anoth­er burst of gun­fire killed the third man, the offi­cial said.

Israeli media gave a more detailed account. The mass cir­cu­la­tion dai­ly Yediot Ahronot said Saturday that accord­ing to an inves­ti­ga­tion into the inci­dent, a sniper iden­ti­fied the three hostages as sus­pects when they emerged from the build­ing, despite them not being armed, and shot two of the three.

Soldiers fol­lowed the third when he ran into the build­ing and hid, shout­ing at him to come out and at least one sol­dier shot him when he emerged from a stair­case, Yediot Ahronot said.

The Israeli news­pa­per Haaretz gave a sim­i­lar account based on a pre­lim­i­nary inves­ti­ga­tion, say­ing the sol­diers who fol­lowed the third hostage into the build­ing believed he was a Hamas mem­ber try­ing to pull them into a trap.

Hamas released over 100 hostages for Palestinian pris­on­ers dur­ing a brief cease-fire in November. Nearly all those freed on both sides were women and minors. Talks on fur­ther swaps broke down, with Hamas seek­ing the release of more vet­er­an pris­on­ers for female sol­diers it is holding.

Israeli polit­i­cal and mil­i­tary lead­ers often say free­ing all the hostages is their top aim in the war along­side destroy­ing Hamas. However, they argue that their release can only be achieved through mil­i­tary pres­sure on Hamas, a claim that has sharply divid­ed Israeli pub­lic opinion.

After nego­ti­a­tions broke down, Hamas said it will only free the remain­ing hostages, believed to num­ber more than 130, if Israel ends the war and releas­es all Palestinian pris­on­ers. As of late November, Israel held near­ly 7,000 Palestinians accused or con­vict­ed of secu­ri­ty offens­es, includ­ing hun­dreds round­ed up since the start of the war.

The offen­sive has killed more than 18,700 Palestinians, the Health Ministry in Hamas-run Gaza said Thursday before a com­mu­ni­ca­tions black­out that has ham­pered tele­phone and inter­net ser­vices in the Gaza Strip. Thousands more are miss­ing and feared dead beneath the rubble.

The min­istry does not dif­fer­en­ti­ate between civil­ian and com­bat­ant deaths. Its lat­est count did not spec­i­fy how many were women and minors, but they have con­sis­tent­ly made up around two-thirds of the dead in pre­vi­ous tallies.

Dozens of mourn­ers held funer­al prayers Saturday for Samer Abu Daqqa, a Palestinian jour­nal­ist work­ing for the Al Jazeera net­work who was killed Fridayin an Israeli strike in the south­ern city of Khan Younis. According to the Committee to Protect Journalists, the cam­era­man was the 64^th jour­nal­ist to be killed since the con­flict erupt­ed: 57 Palestinians, four Israelis and three Lebanese.

The war has flat­tened much of north­ern Gaza and dri­ven 85% of the ter­ri­to­ry’s pop­u­la­tion of 2.3 mil­lion from their homes. Displaced peo­ple have squeezed into shel­ters main­ly in the south in a spi­ral­ing human­i­tar­i­an cri­sis. Only a trick­le of aid has been able to enter Gaza and dis­tri­b­u­tion is dis­rupt­ed by fighting.

Residents in north­ern Gaza mean­while report­ed heavy bomb­ing and the sounds of gun­bat­tles overnight and into Saturday in dev­as­tat­ed Gaza City and the near­by urban refugee camp of Jabaliya.

“It was a vio­lent bom­bard­ment,” Assad Abu Taha said by phone from the Shijaiyah neigh­bor­hood. Another res­i­dent, Hamza Abu Seada, report­ed heavy airstrikes in Jabaliya, with non-stop sounds of explo­sions and gunfire.

An Associated Press jour­nal­ist in south­ern Gaza also report­ed airstrikes and tank shelling overnight in the cities of Khan Younis and Rafah.

The United States, Israel’s clos­est ally, has expressed unease over Israel’s fail­ure to reduce civil­ian casu­al­ties and its plans for the future of Gaza, but the White House con­tin­ues to offer whole­heart­ed sup­port with weapons ship­ments and diplo­mat­ic backing.

In meet­ings with Israeli lead­ers on Thursday and Friday, United States nation­al secu­ri­ty advis­er Jake Sullivan dis­cussed a timetable for wind­ing down the intense com­bat phase of the war. U.S. Secretary of Defense Lloyd Austin was also expect­ed to vis­it Israel soon to dis­cuss the issue.

The U.S. has pushed Israel to allow more aid into Gaza, and the gov­ern­ment said it would open a sec­ond entry point to speed up deliveries.

RAMALLAH, West Bank (Reuters) ‑Israeli troops killed a youth at a hos­pi­tal and read out Jewish prayers at a mosque in the occu­pied West Bank city of Jenin dur­ing raids that Palestinian author­i­ties said on Thursday killed 12 and that Israel said helped cap­ture dozens of militants.

The Palestinian gov­ern­ment crit­i­cised the oper­a­tion inside Jenin as a “dan­ger­ous esca­la­tion” and in a state­ment said the des­e­cra­tion of the mosque by some Israeli troops fanned reli­gious ten­sion. Israel’s army said it would dis­ci­pline the soldiers.

Palestinians see the West Bank as cen­tral to a future inde­pen­dent state. Allies of Israel back­ing its war against Hamas mil­i­tants in Israeli-occu­pied Gaza have urged restraint, includ­ing pun­ish­ing Israeli set­tlers in the West Bank accused of armed attacks on Palestinians.

In recent years Israel has great­ly expand­ed set­tle­ments in the West Bank, leav­ing less ter­ri­to­ry for a viable Palestinian state.

Deadly blood­shed had been wors­en­ing in the West Bank even before the Oct. 7 Hamas assault on Israel from Gaza that killed 1,200 Israelis and led to an Israeli offen­sive that has killed near­ly 19,000 Palestinians in Gaza. In the two months since, Israelis have killed at least 287 West Bank Palestinians.

The Israeli mil­i­tary, which says it has been step­ping up oper­a­tions against Palestinian mil­i­tant groups in the West Bank, con­firmed killing “more than 10” peo­ple it called ter­ror­ists in the Jenin raids.

In a state­ment, the mil­i­tary said Israeli air­craft killed sev­er­al of the peo­ple after they attacked secu­ri­ty forces. It said on Thursday evening that the oper­a­tion had concluded.

Witnesses in Jenin described gun­men exchang­ing fire with the sol­diers and det­o­nat­ing home­made explo­sive devices. Army bull­doz­ers dam­aged streets and water pipes, res­i­dents said.

A mil­i­tary state­ment said sol­diers dis­man­tled bomb lab­o­ra­to­ries and under­ground tun­nel shafts search­es in a counter-ter­ror­ism oper­a­tion that began on Dec. 12 in Jenin, a strong­hold of Palestinian militants.

Controlled explo­sions and gun­fire from Israel’s own forces slight­ly injured four sol­diers, the state­ment said.

Images cir­cu­lat­ing on social media and ver­i­fied by Reuters showed sol­diers inside the mosque in Jenin using a micro­phone to read a Jewish prayer in the style of an Islamic call to prayer.

The Palestinian for­eign min­istry con­demned what it said was a mock­ery of the reli­gious sanc­tum. Asked about the events, the Israeli army told reporters the sol­diers were imme­di­ate­ly removed from oper­a­tional activity.

“The behav­iour of the sol­diers in the videos is seri­ous and stands in com­plete oppo­si­tion to the val­ues of the IDF. The sol­diers will be dis­ci­plined accord­ing­ly,” the mil­i­tary said.

HOSPITAL SHOOTING

Soldiers oper­at­ing inside the Khalil Suleiman hos­pi­tal com­pound just out­side Jenin’s built-up refugee camp killed an unarmed teenag­er there, accord­ing to med­ical char­i­ty Doctors Without Borders (MSF). Soldiers shot the 17-year-old in the chest, the Palestinian health min­istry said.

During the raid Israel blocked ambu­lances from enter­ing the camp to trans­port seri­ous­ly ill patients, Mahmoud Al-Saadi, direc­tor of the Palestinian Red Crescent in the north­ern West Bank city, told Reuters.

“The army did not allow us to enter,” despite attempts to coör­di­nate with the International Red Cross and the U.N. Palestinian relief agency, he said, adding sol­diers were also sta­tioned out­side the hospital.

The mil­i­tary did not respond to a request for com­ment about the shoot­ing reports of sol­diers stop­ping ambu­lances reach­ing the sick.

‘LEAVE THE WEST BANK’

Alaa Al Sadi, who lives in the Jenin camp, said sol­diers who came to his home search­ing for guns smashed his tele­vi­sion before tak­ing him blind­fold­ed into deten­tion at an army com­pound out­side the city for about 14 hours, along with hun­dreds of oth­er people.

The sol­diers found no guns but demol­ished his fam­i­ly home and accused him of being a mem­ber of Hamas, telling him he should leave the West Bank and move to Lebanon or Syria, Al Sadi, 44, said in an inter­view. He denied any links to the Gaza-based Islamist mil­i­tant group.

The Israeli mil­i­tary did not respond to a request for com­ment about Alaa Al Sadi’s account.

The major­i­ty of the peo­ple tak­en into deten­tion ear­li­er in the raid have since been released, the Palestinian Prisoner’s Club, an advo­ca­cy group, said in a state­ment. The Israeli army said 60 want­ed sus­pects were trans­ferred to secu­ri­ty forces for fur­ther questioning.

Most coun­tries deem Jewish set­tle­ments built on land Israel occu­pied in a 1967 Middle East war as ille­gal, and their con­tin­ued expan­sion has for decades been among the most con­tentious issues between Israel, the Palestinians and the inter­na­tion­al com­mu­ni­ty. (Reuters)

NBA referees are ancillary to the games they officiate. In actuality, no one cares who officiates any given game. Fans of the games are there to see their favorite players and teams play, not to see referees make the game about themselves. Weak white men who cannot play the game become referees, so they act out police tendencies.…… It is time that Scott Foster be sent packing.

Sports is a sub­ject that I sel­dom ever write on, even though I remain an avid sports fan. Major sports in the United States have been phe­nom­e­nal in lift­ing tal­ent­ed young African Americans out of pover­ty for decades. One major star, Michael Jordon, has even moved on to join the cov­et­ed bil­lion­aires club. Unfortunately and maybe even pre­dictably, some have squan­dered their wealth and have returned to abject pover­ty, and, in some cas­es, even end­ed up in prison.
Having said that, the team sports that have dom­i­nat­ed American and world­wide atten­tion have been sports dom­i­nat­ed by Black athletes. 
Basketball, American foot­ball, Boxing, and now even soc­cer, which America stub­born­ly refused to par­tic­i­pate in at the nation­al lev­el until it real­ized that the entire world played the game, which is the most pop­u­lar game in the world.
Having been kept out of Baseball until Jackie Robinson broke that bar­ri­er, black play­ers entered and dom­i­nat­ed the game, then basi­cal­ly left the game up to for­eign play­ers of col­or. Some of the great­est to ever play the game have been black men. Many of those men are still alive today.

It is no secret, then, that black peo­ple dom­i­nate what­ev­er field they are allowed to par­tic­i­pate in. It is also no sur­prise that those who hold pow­er would do every­thing in their pow­er to keep blacks away from com­pet­ing with whites on the play­ing fields and in the board rooms. In the instances where they have been allowed, they are forced to play to dif­fer­ent rules than their white counterparts.
Having watched the National Basketball Association and hav­ing been an avid fan of the game for decades, I must con­fess that I stopped watch­ing the games for years now.
Not because of the play­ers who have got­ten more tal­ent­ed and fun to watch but because of the lever­age giv­en to game offi­cials by the (NBA) to treat play­ers like sec­ond-class cit­i­zens in a sport they dominate.
I stopped watch­ing the National Football League as well because of the way Colin Kaepernick was treat­ed like a slave on a plan­ta­tion by wealthy white racist bil­lion­aires who own the teams at the behest of an amoral, immoral, despi­ca­ble, poor excuse for a mem­ber of the human species.https://​www​.gwin​nettdai​ly​post​.com/​a​r​e​n​a​/​s​p​o​r​t​s​_​i​l​l​u​s​t​r​a​t​e​d​/​a​d​a​m​-​s​i​l​v​e​r​-​a​d​d​r​e​s​s​e​s​-​c​h​r​i​s​-​p​a​u​l​-​s​c​o​t​t​-​f​o​s​t​e​r​-​b​e​e​f​-​a​f​t​e​r​-​r​e​c​e​n​t​-​r​u​n​-​i​n​/​a​r​t​i​c​l​e​_​9​4​e​d​c​d​e​0​-​f​e​8​b​-​5​d​8​3​-​9​1​f​9​-​4​2​f​3​4​3​7​4​4​a​b​f​.​h​tml

The sto­ry of Isat Buchanan’s two-year sus­pen­sion and fines should be no sur­prise to any­one pay­ing atten­tion to his behav­ior. The General Legal Council can­not save face with this sus­pen­sion and pal­try fines. It was the GLC that made Isat Buchanan a lawyer. It was the GLC that ignored the rules and allowed a twice-con­vict­ed felon to become a lawyer. 
The GLC con­duct in the Isat Buchanan saga was a text­book exam­ple of corruption.
Corruption of ignor­ing the rules and giv­ing spe­cial con­sid­er­a­tion to an indi­vid­ual who was unde­serv­ing based on his past conduct.
This is the cor­rup­tion that has become a can­cer in our coun­try; it has sti­fled its growth and has our nation floun­der­ing like a ship with­out a rudder.
There is not a sin­gle Jamaican (yaad or abraad) who has nev­er heard the term, ‘when dish claat tun table cover’…
That old Jamaican say­ing is the per­fect for for describ­ing the twice-con­vict­ed drug mule turned attor­ney and uni­ver­si­ty lec­tur­er Isat Buchanan. 
Isat Buchanan had all of the tal­ents many young Jamaican men have been blessed with.

Smarts and intel­lect. He may have even been bet­ter off than many of his peers finan­cial­ly grow­ing up, being the son of one of the Island’s most revered DJs, Manley Augustus Buchanan, bet­ter known as ‘Big Youth’.
But rather than walk the straight and nar­row, Isat Buchanan chose a life of crime. And so he was con­vict­ed of a drug crime in Jamaica. However, cor­rup­tion and mon­ey allowed Isat Buchanan to avoid prison time and was allowed to trav­el to the United States after cor­rupt Jamaican offi­cials expunged his felony crim­i­nal record. Those are the cor­rup­tion com­po­nents that earn nations’ failed state des­ig­na­tions on the world stage.
But Jamaican pub­lic offi­cials are some of the most shame­less currs in the world, so they care only about cur­ry­ing favor and stuff­ing their pockets.
Isat Buchanan did not learn any­thing from his first drug couri­er con­vic­tion. He con­tin­ued that path in the United States, where he dis­cov­ered that America and Jamaica are two dif­fer­ent ket­tles of fish.
He was con­vict­ed on drug couri­er charges. On that occa­sion, he found out that his dad­dy’s name and a lit­tle cash were not going to save his ass when he received a lengthy prison term.
See the Observer Article here.https://www.jamaicaobserver.com/news/suspended‑6/

After serv­ing the greater part of his sen­tence, he was deport­ed to Jamaica, where he had a sup­posed come-to-Jesus intro­spec­tion and decid­ed to change his ways. One of the most notable char­ac­ter flaws Isat Buchanan dis­played after his two con­vic­tions was his con­tin­ued lie that he was inno­cent of the crimes he was con­vict­ed of in two dif­fer­ent countries.
The rest is his­to­ry; he attend­ed school and earned a law degree at the intel­lec­tu­al ghetto.
Commendable right?
To become a lawyer in Jamaica, a per­son has to qual­i­fy aca­d­e­m­i­cal­ly in col­lege and then sit the bar exams to be admit­ted to the bar to prac­tice as a lawyer. There is one oth­er small issue: the appli­cant must be of impec­ca­ble char­ac­ter to be admit­ted to prac­tice law (become an offi­cer of the court). Isat Buchanan was a twice-con­vict­ed crim­i­nal. So he could teach law but not be admit­ted to the Bar, right?
Nah, we are talk­ing about Jamaica, where cor­rup­tion and lack of account­abil­i­ty by those with pow­er is the rule, not the exception.
After much pre­tense at adju­di­ca­tion, the General Legal Council ignored the rules and admit­ted Isat Buchan to prac­tice law.
I do not have time nor incli­na­tion to see the shit this crim­i­nal has got­ten him­self into since this act of cor­rup­tion by the (GLC). A Google search of his name will suffice.

This writer has writ­ten on this issue sev­er­al times, includ­ing an arti­cle that went viral. I will include that arti­cle below, and I will include links to oth­ers as well. Needless to say the chick­ens have come home to roost, and Isat Buchana has been sus­pend­ed for con­duct unbe­com­ing. I have pro­vid­ed a link to that sto­ry in one of the Jamaican dai­ly publications.
Here is that article.

One notable char­ac­ter­is­tic about us Jamaicans is our belief in our own smart­ness. And please do not tell us any­thing if we man­aged to earn a lib­er­al arts degree because then we become an author­i­ty on all things, and we will let any­one for­get that we have one. Unfortunately, for the mass­es who nev­er man­aged to earn one of these degrees that the intel­lec­tu­al ghet­to hands out each year; they look up to those who have one as the ‘big­ger heads’, laugh. My idea of many of them is clos­er to ‘log­ger heads’ but I digress.…Much of our claim to being smart are as cred­i­ble as a snow­bal­l’s claim to hav­ing sur­vived a rag­ing fire.
We have very short atten­tion spans. Or as my grand dad­dy used to say, we are like cream soda, we raise up and die down. No continuation.
How can a coun­try pay mem­bers of par­lia­ment who do not show up for the work for which they are being paid? Why are the peo­ple not demand­ing accountability?
Can an ordi­nary work­ing Jamaican be absent from work up to 80% of the time and still be employed if their job isn’t of polit­i­cal patronage?
PNP’s Hugh Graham has been absent from more than 60% of House sit­tings since the start of this year. He is a first-term MP who has sig­naled that he will not seek a sec­ond term after his term expires in 2025. Graham has also resigned from the PNP’s shad­ow cab­i­net. He should also step aside or be boot­ed from the House. There are rules that allow for this scalawag to be boot­ed from the house; why is he still there.
Peter Phillips, for­mer leader of the PNP, and Mike Henry, long­time JLP dinosaurs, are also most­ly absent from their jobs while still being paid accord­ing to one local reporting.
The word is that they are sick. But for the police offi­cers, nurs­es, teach­ers, and oth­er pub­lic sec­tor work­ers, there is a strict time­line as to when they [must] return to work.
Many police offi­cers who have been shot or oth­er­wise seri­ous­ly wound­ed on the job have been forced out of their jobs. These offcers are not peo­ple who are old and sick, but peo­ple who are shot on the job.
Why are the rules dif­fer­ent for these polit­i­cal par­a­sites who suck the blood of the people?

Jamaica is a coun­try with­out lead­er­ship­it seem. The coun­try has­n’t seen effec­tive lead­er­ship since Hugh Shearer. On for­eign and domes­tic mat­ters, Hugh Lawson Shearer stood head and shoul­ders above every sin­gle one who suc­ced­ed him.
He makes them seem small­er than junior varsity.
As the coun­try con­tin­ue to drown in its own blood the lead­er­ship refus­es to pass strong laws to pro­tect the coun­try. As I have said repeat­ed­ly over the years, a gov­ern­men­t’s first and most sacred duty is to pro­tect the peo­ple. I have also said it is the rea­son that even as far back as the dark ages rulers built high walls, moats and oth­er for­ti­fi­ca­tions around their cities,yet Jamaican politi­cians do not under­stand these sim­ple con­cepts today.
The peo­ple in the gov­ern­ment rep­re­sents the best and bright­est the nation has to offer I believe. If I am corect Jamaica is in deep shit.

The Andrew Holness led JLP Government bet­ter not think that it will be see­ing pow­er again any­time soon when it is boot­ed from office. No one will be inter­est­ed in hear­ing from them on the sem­i­nal issue of crime.
They have the num­bers to ram through leg­is­la­tion that will make the changes need­ed to secure the nation.
Rather than act as a true government,the Holness admin­is­tra­tion has done noth­ing to stop the bunch of morons the intel­lec­tu­al ghet­to releas­es on the nation who parade as judges. -Theyse judges con­tribute heav­i­ly to the car­nage and blood­shed by releas­ing onto the streets repeat mur­der­ers and oth­er vio­lent offenders.
When will this mad­ness of releas­ing mur­der-accused on bail stop? When will the nation decide that the tak­ing of life is sig­nif­i­cant enough to war­rant removal from society?
Despite clear evi­dence that most of the mur­ders being com­mit­ted in our coun­try are being com­mit­ted by peo­ple who have killed before and did short stints in prison, or are out on bail await­ing tri­al, the Holness Government has done noth­ing to put an end to this.
This Government along with the worth­less PNP Opposition has betrayed the will of the peo­ple and allowed this das­tard­ly blood­let­ting to continue.

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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.