Leaders are not born; they are made.…..at least, that’s what we are told. Unless, of course, you are a believ­er in pow­er hand­ed down ances­tral­ly in a monar­chis­tic system.
Hardly any­one to whom I have spo­ken over the last cou­ple of years believed that Elizabeth (Liz) Cheney, the Daughter of for­mer Wyoming Congressman and Vice President to George W. Bush, would emerge as a true leader and, for all intents and pur­pos­es, a hero in my view.
I have matured enough to use the (H) word to describe a Republican, some­thing I pre­vi­ous­ly thought was as para­dox­i­cal as walk­ing in an east-west­er­ly direction.
Liz Cheney was the Number three Republican in the House Republican cau­cus. She hails from a ruby-red state that has no Democrat elect­ed statewide.
Wyoming is a Republican strong­hold in pres­i­den­tial elec­tions, hav­ing vot­ed Democratic just once since 1952, that was the 1964 Presidential land­slide vic­to­ry of Lyndon Johnson over Barry Goldwater.
Apart from not want­i­ng to live in an auto­crat­ic soci­ety ruled by Donald Trump, Liz Chaney had no rea­son to sac­ri­fice her seat in Congress and her lofty posi­tion in American pol­i­tics. But she did.

In the entire Republican Caucus that lived through the ter­ror of the Donald Trump-direct­ed nean­derthal horde that swarmed through the nation’s seat of Power on January 6^th, 2021, only ten (10) had the courage to vote to impeach Trump.
Liz Chaney and Adam Kizinger are prob­a­bly the two most well-known of the lot. Of the ten who hon­ored their oaths and defend­ed the Constitution, not one remains in Congress; they have all been vot­ed out by Republican vot­ers in their respec­tive states.
The oth­ers are Rep. Tom Rice, South Carolina’s 7^th Congressional District: Rep. Dan Newhouse, Washington’s 4^th: Rep. Anthony Gonzalez, Ohio’s 16^th: Rep. Fred Upton, Michigan’s 6^th: Rep. Jaime Herrera Beutler, Washington’s 3^rd: Rep. Peter Meijer, Michigan’s 3^rd: Rep. John Katko, New York’s 24^th: Rep. David Valadao, California’s 21^st:
Plausibly, it is arguable that from New York to California and states in between, Republican vot­ers have demon­strat­ed that they are either too stu­pid to rec­og­nize clear and present dan­ger or they crave it.
This is the rea­son that peo­ple like Cheney, Kinzinger, Rice, and oth­ers are heroes in my book, even though I would not cast a vote for either one for elect­ed office because of the par­ty to which they are affiliated.
When func­tionar­ies with­in a polit­i­cal move­ment are will­ing to over­throw the estab­lished order sole­ly for the pur­pose of hold­ing pow­er, that polit­i­cal move­ment is a dan­ger to the country.
The Republican par­ty is a dan­ger to America!!!!

After the ad was dis­cov­ered, dig­i­tal rights advo­cates ran an exper­i­ment test­ing the lim­its of Facebook’s machine-learn­ing moderation.

By Sam Biddle

A SERIES OF adver­tise­ments dehu­man­iz­ing and call­ing for vio­lence against Palestinians, intend­ed to test Facebook’s con­tent mod­er­a­tion stan­dards, were all approved by the social net­work, accord­ing to mate­ri­als shared with The Intercept.

The sub­mit­ted ads, in both Hebrew and Arabic, includ­ed fla­grant vio­la­tions of poli­cies for Facebook and its par­ent com­pa­ny Meta. Some con­tained vio­lent con­tent direct­ly call­ing for the mur­der of Palestinian civil­ians, like ads demand­ing a “holo­caust for the Palestinians” and to wipe out “Gazan women and chil­dren and the elder­ly.” Others posts, like those describ­ing kids from Gaza as “future ter­ror­ists” and a ref­er­ence to “Arab pigs,” con­tained dehu­man­iz­ing language.

“The approval of these ads is just the lat­est in a series of Meta’s fail­ures towards the Palestinian people.”

“The approval of these ads is just the lat­est in a series of Meta’s fail­ures towards the Palestinian peo­ple,” Nadim Nashif, founder of the Palestinian social media research and advo­ca­cy group 7amleh, which sub­mit­ted the test ads, told The Intercept. “Throughout this cri­sis, we have seen a con­tin­ued pat­tern of Meta’s clear bias and dis­crim­i­na­tion against Palestinians.”

7amleh’s idea to test Facebook’s machine-learn­ing cen­sor­ship appa­ra­tus arose last month, when Nashif dis­cov­ered an ad on his Facebook feed explic­it­ly call­ing for the assas­si­na­tion of American activist Paul Larudee, a co-founder of the Free Gaza Movement. Facebook’s auto­mat­ic trans­la­tion of the text ad read: “It’s time to assas­si­nate Paul Larudi [sic], the anti-Semitic and ‘human rights’ ter­ror­ist from the United States.” Nashif report­ed the ad to Facebook, and it was tak­en down.

The ad had been placed by Ad Kan, a right-wing Israeli group found­ed by for­mer Israel Defense Force and intel­li­gence offi­cers to com­bat “anti-Israeli orga­ni­za­tions” whose fund­ing comes from pur­port­ed­ly anti­se­mit­ic sources, accord­ing to its web­site. (Neither Larudee nor Ad Kan imme­di­ate­ly respond­ed to requests for comment.)

Calling for the assas­si­na­tion of a polit­i­cal activist is a vio­la­tion of Facebook’s adver­tis­ing rules. That the post spon­sored by Ad Kan appeared on the plat­form indi­cates Facebook approved it despite those rules. The ad like­ly passed through fil­ter­ing by Facebook’s auto­mat­ed process, based on machine-learn­ing, that allows its glob­al adver­tis­ing busi­ness to oper­ate at a rapid clip

“Our ad review sys­tem is designed to review all ads before they go live,” accord­ing to a Facebook ad pol­i­cy overview. As Meta’s human-based mod­er­a­tion, which his­tor­i­cal­ly relied almost entire­ly on out­sourced con­trac­tor labor, has drawn greater scruti­ny and crit­i­cism, the com­pa­ny has come to lean more heav­i­ly on auto­mat­ed text-scan­ning soft­ware to enforce its speech rules and cen­sor­ship policies.

While these tech­nolo­gies allow the com­pa­ny to skirt the labor issues asso­ci­at­ed with human mod­er­a­tors, they also obscure how mod­er­a­tion deci­sions are made behind secret algorithms.

Last year, an exter­nal audit com­mis­sioned by Meta found that while the com­pa­ny was rou­tine­ly using algo­rith­mic cen­sor­ship to delete Arabic posts, the com­pa­ny had no equiv­a­lent algo­rithm in place to detect “Hebrew hos­tile speech” like racist rhetoric and vio­lent incite­ment. Following the audit, Meta claimed it had “launched a Hebrew ‘hos­tile speech’ clas­si­fi­er to help us proac­tive­ly detect more vio­lat­ing Hebrew con­tent.” Content, that is, like an ad espous­ing murder

Incitement to Violence on Facebook

Amid the Israeli war on Palestinians in Gaza, Nashif was trou­bled enough by the explic­it call in the ad to mur­der Larudee that he wor­ried sim­i­lar paid posts might con­tribute to vio­lence against Palestinians.

Large-scale incite­ment to vio­lence jump­ing from social media into the real world is not a mere hypo­thet­i­cal: In 2018, United Nations inves­ti­ga­tors found vio­lent­ly inflam­ma­to­ry Facebook posts played a “deter­min­ing role” in Myanmar’s Rohingya geno­cide. (Last year, anoth­er group ran test ads incit­ing against Rohingya, a project along the same lines as 7amleh’s exper­i­ment; in that case, all the ads were also approved.)

The quick removal of the Larudee post didn’t explain how the ad was approved in the first place. In light of assur­ances from Facebook that safe­guards were in place, Nashif and 7amleh, which for­mal­ly part­ners with Meta on cen­sor­ship and free expres­sion issues, were puzzled.

“Meta has a track record of not doing enough to pro­tect mar­gin­al­ized communities.”

Curious if the approval was a fluke, 7amleh cre­at­ed and sub­mit­ted 19 ads, in both Hebrew and Arabic, with text delib­er­ate­ly, fla­grant­ly vio­lat­ing com­pa­ny rules — a test for Meta and Facebook. 7amleh’s ads were designed to test the approval process and see whether Meta’s abil­i­ty to auto­mat­i­cal­ly screen vio­lent and racist incite­ment had got­ten bet­ter, even with unam­bigu­ous exam­ples of vio­lent incitement.

“We knew from the exam­ple of what hap­pened to the Rohingya in Myanmar that Meta has a track record of not doing enough to pro­tect mar­gin­al­ized com­mu­ni­ties,” Nashif said, “and that their ads man­ag­er sys­tem was par­tic­u­lar­ly vulnerable.”

Meta’s appears to have failed 7amleh’s test.

The company’s Community Standards rule­book — which ads are sup­posed to com­ply with to be approved — pro­hib­it not just text advo­cat­ing for vio­lence, but also any dehu­man­iz­ing state­ments against peo­ple based on their race, eth­nic­i­ty, reli­gion, or nation­al­i­ty. Despite this, con­fir­ma­tion emails shared with The Intercept show Facebook approved every sin­gle ad.

Though 7amleh told The Intercept the orga­ni­za­tion had no inten­tion to actu­al­ly run these ads and was going to pull them before they were sched­uled to appear, it believes their approval demon­strates the social plat­form remains fun­da­men­tal­ly myopic around non-English speech — lan­guages used by a great major­i­ty of its over 4 bil­lion users. (Meta retroac­tive­ly reject­ed 7amleh’s Hebrew ads after The Intercept brought them to the company’s atten­tion, but the Arabic ver­sions remain approved with­in Facebook’s ad system.)

Facebook spokesper­son Erin McPike con­firmed the ads had been approved acci­den­tal­ly. “Despite our ongo­ing invest­ments, we know that there will be exam­ples of things we miss or we take down in error, as both machines and peo­ple make mis­takes,” she said. “That’s why ads can be reviewed mul­ti­ple times, includ­ing once they go live.”

Related

TikTok, Instagram Target Outlet Covering Israel – Palestine Amid Siege on Gaza

Just days after its own exper­i­men­tal ads were approved, 7amleh dis­cov­ered an Arabic ad run by a group call­ing itself “Migrate Now” call­ing on “Arabs in Judea and Sumaria” — the name Israelis, par­tic­u­lar­ly set­tlers, use to refer to the occu­pied Palestinian West Bank — to relo­cate to Jordan.

According to Facebook doc­u­men­ta­tion, auto­mat­ed, soft­ware-based screen­ing is the “pri­ma­ry method” used to approve or deny ads. But it’s unclear if the “hos­tile speech” algo­rithms used to detect vio­lent or racist posts are also used in the ad approval process. In its offi­cial response to last year’s audit, Facebook said its new Hebrew-lan­guage clas­si­fi­er would “sig­nif­i­cant­ly improve” its abil­i­ty to han­dle “major spikes in vio­lat­ing con­tent,” such as around flare-ups of con­flict between Israel and Palestine. Based on 7amleh’s exper­i­ment, how­ev­er, this clas­si­fi­er either doesn’t work very well or is for some rea­son not being used to screen adver­tise­ments. (McPike did not answer when asked if the approval of 7amleh’s ads reflect­ed an under­ly­ing issue with the hos­tile speech classifier.)

Either way, accord­ing to Nashif, the fact that these ads were approved points to an over­all prob­lem: Meta claims it can effec­tive­ly use machine learn­ing to deter explic­it incite­ment to vio­lence, while it clear­ly cannot.

“We know that Meta’s Hebrew clas­si­fiers are not oper­at­ing effec­tive­ly, and we have not seen the com­pa­ny respond to almost any of our con­cerns,” Nashif said in his state­ment. “Due to this lack of action, we feel that Meta may hold at least par­tial respon­si­bil­i­ty for some of the harm and vio­lence Palestinians are suf­fer­ing on the ground.”

The approval of the Arabic ver­sions of the ads come as a par­tic­u­lar sur­prise fol­low­ing a recent report by the Wall Street Journal that Meta had low­ered the lev­el of cer­tain­ty its algo­rith­mic cen­sor­ship sys­tem need­ed to remove Arabic posts — from 80 per­cent con­fi­dence that the post broke the rules, to just 25 per­cent. In oth­er words, Meta was less sure that the Arabic posts it was sup­press­ing or delet­ing actu­al­ly con­tained pol­i­cy violations.

Nashif said, “There have been sus­tained actions result­ing in the silenc­ing of Palestinian voices.”

A fed­er­al appeals court issued a rul­ing Monday that could gut the Voting Rights Act, say­ing only the fed­er­al gov­ern­ment — not pri­vate cit­i­zens or civ­il rights groups — can sue under a cru­cial sec­tion of the land­mark civ­il rights law. The deci­sion of the 8^th Circuit will almost cer­tain­ly be appealed to the Supreme Court. But should it stand, it would mark a dra­mat­ic roll­back of the enforce­ment of the law that led to increased minor­i­ty rep­re­sen­ta­tion in American politics.
The appel­late court ruled that there is no “pri­vate right of action” for Section 2 of the law — which pro­hibits vot­ing prac­tices that dis­crim­i­nate based on race.
That, in prac­tice, would severe­ly lim­it the scope of pro­tec­tions in the act. For decades, pri­vate par­ties — includ­ing civ­il rights groups, indi­vid­ual vot­ers, and polit­i­cal par­ties — have brought Section 2 chal­lenges on every­thing from redis­trict­ing to vot­er ID requirements.

Private par­ties file the vast major­i­ty of Voting Rights Act cas­es. For instance, the case that prompt­ed the Supreme Court ear­li­er this year to strike down Alabama’s con­gres­sion­al map was orig­i­nal­ly filed by a coali­tion of civ­il rights groups.
Monday’s deci­sion upheld a 2022 rul­ing from U.S. District Judge Lee Rudofsky, an Arkansas fed­er­al judge appoint­ed by for­mer Republican President Donald Trump that only the U.S. attor­ney gen­er­al is empow­ered to file law­suits under sec­tion 2 of the Voting Rights Act. That pro­vi­sion pro­hibits vot­ing rules that are racial­ly discriminatory.
In a 2 – 1 deci­sion, the 8^th Circuit Court of Appeals said the text of the Voting Rights Act does not lay out a “pri­vate right of action,” even though courts, includ­ing the Supreme Court, have tak­en on such cas­es for decades.
“Assuming their exis­tence, and even dis­cussing them, is dif­fer­ent from actu­al­ly decid­ing that a pri­vate right of action exists,” Circuit Judge David Stras wrote for the major­i­ty. Stras, a Trump appointee, was joined by Circuit Judge Raymond Gruender, who was appoint­ed by for­mer Republican President George W. Bush.
In a dis­sent, Chief Judge Lavenski Smith, also a Bush appointee, said he would have fol­lowed exist­ing prece­dent unless Congress or the Supreme Court said otherwise.(Politico)

Words can­not ade­quate­ly tell the stories…
We live in a world where wicked­ness pre­vails; I guess it has always been this way: the pow­er­ful deter­mine what right and wrong are. They deter­mine lies and truths.

I guess it has always been this way.……the strong take what they want, set the rules, and deter­mine how the weak live or even if they live as we see in these images.
Many look up to the skies and ask where God is in all of this. If there is a God, he has nev­er inter­vened in ways that would stop any of this and restore jus­tice, truth, and sanity.

So, we are left look­ing to an after­life when all of this evil will disappear.
We look at the evil and see more and more peo­ple jus­ti­fy it. We see Governments sanc­tion and even kill those who speak out against it. One would hope that truth would pre­vail, and that more and more con­sci­en­tious peo­ple would stand against the genocide.

Not so.
Across the globe, more and more nations are lin­ing up with the oppres­sors, while oth­ers choose to remain silent as an entire peo­ple is annihilated.
Worse yet, we are told to believe that the vic­tims are ter­ror­ists and the oppres­sors deserv­ing of prayers and support.

There is a legit­i­mate con­ver­sa­tion to be had by the Zionists who occu­py Palestine that [might make right], which gives them the right to do what they have done and con­tin­ue to do there.
Throughout man’s exis­tence on our plan­et, it has been an exis­ten­tial strug­gle between the strong and the weak. The weak get eat­en, and the strong sur­vive. A clos­er look at ani­mal life on the African Serengeti reveals that the ani­mal king­dom is hard­ly any dif­fer­ent; the strong and mighty sur­vive, and the weak becomes some­one’s dinner.
Weakness caused the African Continent to fall vic­tim to the bar­bar­ic Europeans. However, before Africa was divid­ed up, raped, exploit­ed, and pil­laged, its peo­ple bru­tal­ized and cart­ed off to nether regions as chat­tel by the Europeans; Asians had long carved out huge chunks of Northern Africa and enslaved Africans. In Egypt, Morocco, Tunisia, Libya, and Algeria, essen­tial­ly all of Northern Africa was raid­ed and stolen by Arabs.
Historically, peo­ple have moved from one region to anoth­er out of a desire to see what lies beyond the hori­zon but also as a con­se­quence of hav­ing been defeat­ed and tak­en as slaves.
So it was always the norm that a nation with a pow­er­ful mil­i­tary may take what­ev­er it want­ed and rule con­ti­nents thou­sands of miles away as long as it had the hege­mon­ic pow­er to do it. 
History is replete with the rise and fall of pow­er­ful empires that have con­quered and exploit­ed before they grew fat and lazy and were them­selves con­quered and exploited.
https://​mike​beck​les​.com/​i​n​-​t​h​i​s​-​u​n​j​u​s​t​-​w​a​r​-​b​e​t​w​e​e​n​-​t​h​e​-​a​p​a​r​t​h​e​i​d​-​s​t​a​t​e​-​o​f​-​i​s​r​a​e​l​-​a​n​d​-​t​h​e​-​p​a​l​e​s​t​i​n​i​a​n​-​p​e​o​p​l​e​-​h​o​w​-​d​o​e​s​-​t​h​e​-​c​h​r​i​s​t​i​a​n​-​c​h​u​r​c​h​-​e​x​p​l​a​i​n​-​i​t​s​-​i​s​-​s​u​p​p​o​r​t​-​f​o​r​-​i​s​r​a​el/

Before 1947 there was no nation called Israel. These state­ments are sim­ple irrefutable facts. No amount of Zionist pro­pa­gan­da and intim­i­da­tion can change those basic and fun­da­men­tal truths. No amount of label­ing me or any­one who dares to chal­lenge their lies as “anti­se­mit­ic” nor will it change those sim­ple facts.
As I wrote in the arti­cle linked below, it was an American President, Harry Truman, who first assist­ed 100,000 Germans flee­ing Adolph Hitler’s Germany onto the land of Palestine, forced the Palestinians from their homes, and cap­tured their coun­try under the guise that God had promised them the land.
https://​mike​beck​les​.com/​u​n​d​e​r​s​t​a​n​d​i​n​g​-​t​h​e​-​l​i​e​-​t​h​a​t​-​g​o​d​-​p​r​o​m​i​s​e​d​-​e​u​r​o​p​e​a​n​s​-​t​h​e​-​l​a​n​d​-​o​f​-​p​a​l​e​s​t​i​ne/
By 1948, a mere year after the Germans were allowed to take the Palestinian’s homes and land by the United States, the same United States rec­og­nized the ille­git­i­mate state as a legit­i­mate Jewish State. Since then, the United States has done tremen­dous arm-twist­ing to force oth­er nations to rec­og­nize the fraud­u­lent state called Israel.
As a result of American tax­pay­er’s dol­lars, over three bil­lion annu­al­ly, the ille­git­i­mate state of Israel has grown, as indi­cat­ed in the map above, to a pow­er­house Zionist nuclear-armed nation from 100,000 in 1947 to 9.364 mil­lion (2021).
Thanks to the patron­age of the United States, Britain, and France, the pow­er­ful trio con­tin­ues to sup­port the Zionist state in its assault against the Palestinian peo­ple. They have also allowed the Zionist state to trans­gress International laws by com­mit­ting war crimes against the pow­er­less Palestinians with zero con­se­quence against their own ini­ti­at­ed Geneva Convention.
https://​mike​beck​les​.com/​3​6​2​411 – 2/

It is the tem­plate used by the European Settlers who arrived on the North American Continent, kill who you can, enslave who you can, and take their land. It was a strat­e­gy as old as human exis­tence on plan­et Earth.
So it is a per­fect­ly legit­i­mate argu­ment for the Israelis to make that they have a right to the land because they had the might and the pow­er to do so. But for the Love of God, please do not make the non­sen­si­cal and far­ci­cal argu­ment that god promised you the land or that you have a genealog­i­cal con­nec­tion to Palestine. That lie has long been debunked.
I could make the claim that god promised me the Empire State Building, but it is one hun­dred per­cent guar­an­teed that if I show up there to claim it, much less be loud and bois­ter­ous, I would be in hand­cuffs and cart­ed off to jail in a heart­beat. Oh, I’m Black; I would most cer­tain­ly be shot mul­ti­ple times.
https://​mike​beck​les​.com/​i​s​r​a​e​l​-​c​o​n​t​i​n​u​e​-​g​e​n​o​c​i​d​e​-​w​h​i​l​e​-​t​h​e​-​w​o​r​l​d​-​i​s​-​s​i​l​e​n​t​-​a​f​r​a​i​d​-​o​f​-​b​e​i​n​g​-​b​r​a​n​d​e​d​-​a​n​t​i​-​s​e​m​i​t​ic/
The Zionist Lobby in the United States and, I dare­say, across the globe have been extreme­ly strong; they own and oper­ate most of the major media empires. An old say­ing goes like this: ‘Never pick a fight with a man who buys ink in bar­rels’, in ref­er­ence to becom­ing an ene­my of the press. Today the print press is not as pow­er­ful as in times past. We are now in the dig­i­tal age, and their con­trol of major dig­i­tal plat­forms makes their mes­sag­ing much more potent.
They have been über-effec­tive in silenc­ing any voice that would chal­lenge their ver­sion of events in Palestine through the use of their mon­ey and groups like AIPAC, the ADL, and oth­er pow­er­ful groups and super PACs.
But their strat­e­gy goes much deep­er than silenc­ing voic­es that refuse to drink the Kool-aid; it is about label­ing them as ‘anti­se­mit­ic.’ the term anti­se­mit­ic has been used as a mod­ern-day scar­let let­ter to threat­en any per­son or group that does not toe the line and par­rot the Zionist narrative.
https://​mike​beck​les​.com/​a​i​d​-​a​n​d​-​a​b​e​t​t​i​ng/

The Zionist mon­ey is not only Instrumental in silenc­ing and shap­ing pub­lic per­cep­tions about its atroc­i­ties in Palestine, but it also has an out-sized role in intim­i­dat­ing the few mem­bers of Congress who vote their human con­science on the issue.
Why are the Zionists so intent on cen­sor­ing and silenc­ing voic­es that do not kow­tow to their agen­da if their cause is just?
The answer is sim­ple, they know that Israel is an ille­git­i­mate state that was cre­at­ed with brute force, bru­tal­i­ty, and mur­der. They know they have no prov­able link­age to the land they stole and con­tin­ue to appro­pri­ate by raw brute force.
Democratic mem­bers of Congress like Jamal Bowman, Rashid Talib, Alexandria Ocasia-Cortez, Ilhan Omar, and Corey Bush have come under extreme pres­sure from with­in their own Democratic cau­cus for not sign­ing on to the whole­sale slaugh­ter of Palestinians by Israel. Jewish Super PACs are already lin­ing up to sup­port pri­ma­ry chal­lengers more sup­pli­cant to the Jewish state to unseat those Democrats of conscience.
Every year unde­fined bil­lions of American tax dol­lars go to fund the Israeli Defense Force IDF. Essentially that mon­ey is used to ensure the con­tin­ued geno­cide against the Palestinian peo­ple. On the oth­er hand, American lead­ers at the high­est lev­els have no say in con­trol­ling the actions of the geno­ci­dal Zionists.
Joe Biden’s forked tongue approach to the issue demon­strates that the United States has no inter­est in the lives of the oppressed and bru­tal­ized Palestinian people.
Israel’s pow­er­ful 21^st-cen­tu­ry army with all its arma­ments are legit­i­mate sol­diers, but Hamas fight­ing for the right to live is brand­ed a ter­ror­ist organization.
As I said in a pre­vi­ous arti­cle, the American, British, and oth­er Western Governments also brand­ed Nelson Mandela ter­ror­ists for dar­ing to stand up to the oppres­sive apartheid sys­tem in South Africa. You be the judge…

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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 ANTHONY TROTTER

Amid the tran­quil land­scapes of Japan, where the haunt­ing howls of real wolves fell silent in the echoes of the past, an eeri­ly famil­iar sound now resounds.

“You’re not get­ting away with this!” warns the syn­thet­ic wolf in a chill­ing human voice at 60 decibels.

Its mechan­i­cal neck swivels, a move­ment akin to a liv­ing crea­ture scan­ning its ter­ri­to­ry. A blend of tech and tra­di­tion, it’s designed not to fool humans, yet ter­ri­fy poten­tial pests.

An evo­lu­tion in defense, Monster Wolf, bear­ing life­like pro­por­tions and glow­ing red LED eyes, emerges as a tes­ta­ment to human inge­nu­ity. It stands as a guardian at the cross­roads of tech­nol­o­gy and tra­di­tion, con­fronting wildlife intru­sions into human domains. Beyond its role as a 21^st-cen­tu­ry scare­crow, Monster Wolf stands as a sym­bol of adap­ta­tion in a world, offer­ing a mod­ern response to age-old challenges.

As Japan grap­ples with the con­se­quences of dwin­dling nat­ur­al preda­tors, the nation sees an increas­ing encroach­ment of ani­mals — like deer, wild boars, mon­keys and bears — into human ter­ri­to­ries. Deer and boars, in par­tic­u­lar, can wreak hav­oc on agri­cul­tur­al pro­duce, while encoun­ters between humans and mon­keys or bears can esca­late into dan­ger­ous confrontations.

“It’s been a suc­cess,” con­firms Yuji Ohta, from Ohta Seiki, the inno­v­a­tive minds behind this 21^st-cen­tu­ry, non-lethal guardian.

Ohta boasts of his cre­ation, “To date, no one has ques­tioned its effec­tive­ness, nor have we faced any returns due to dissatisfaction.”

About 180 Monster Wolves have been deployed across the coun­try, Ohta told ABC News. Their pri­ma­ry task? Presenting a for­mi­da­ble, albeit arti­fi­cial, deter­rent to these crea­tures and fill­ing the void left by their van­ished nat­ur­al ene­mies. According to Ohta Monster Wolf can be use­ful on golf cours­es, near high­way entrances, and rail­road crossings.

“I think it’s much more cost-effec­tive to threat­en with a machine and dri­ve it away from the vil­lage than the cost of a lot of peo­ple going out and exter­mi­nate it,” Ohta said.

But there may be some chal­lenges to the suc­cess of the bion­ic beasts, Zoologist Nobuyuki Yamaguchi of the University of Malaysia, Terengganu, told ABC News.

“While the sud­den lights and nois­es can star­tle wildlife, many ani­mals learn and adapt. Once a size­able seg­ment of any species real­izes the lack of actu­al harm, its deter­rent effect may wane.”

The pan­icked reac­tion from ani­mals in a video pro­vid­ed by Monster Wolf’s mak­ers tak­ing flight seems to imply that the open-mouth, fang-bear­ing gaze of the wolf may tran­scend com­put­er-to-ani­mal com­mu­ni­ca­tion bar­ri­ers. However, no bear or any oth­er ani­mal in the Japanese arch­i­pel­ago has ever come across wolves in its lifetime.

“For wildlife we humans are the scari­est mon­sters — much more so than even is the mighty lion!” says Yamaguchi. “It is the beau­ty of evo­lu­tion that some of our reac­tions have been formed through our evo­lu­tion. Brown bears and wolves have evolved almost next to each oth­er, and hence, the brown bear pos­si­bly ‘knows’ what the wolf is, and vice versa.”

Ohta also thinks Japanese wildlife instinc­tive­ly fear the wolf. Among the sounds in Monster Wolf’s reper­toire are gun­shots, howls, and bark­ing dogs. He says repo­si­tion­ing Monster Wolf peri­od­i­cal­ly will slow down ani­mals from grow­ing accus­tomed to its presence.

Monster Wolf’s design, uti­liz­ing a mass-pro­duced wolf­man mask, has drawn chuck­les and light-heart­ed crit­i­cism from the Japanese pub­lic. But the bril­liance of the Monster Wolf may lie in its bal­ance: It’s con­vinc­ing­ly craft­ed enough to deter pests but retains an ele­ment of the­atri­cal arti­fice, ensur­ing humans aren’t deceived. It’s a meld­ing of tech­nol­o­gy with tradition.

The robot in wolf’s cloth­ing has gar­nered inter­na­tion­al atten­tion, with inquiries from around ten coun­tries, the com­pa­ny said. Could Monster Wolf be a solu­tion for maraud­ing jack­als in rur­al South Africa or trash-brows­ing bears in Alaska?

“While the glob­al inter­est is encour­ag­ing, the Monster Wolf requires spe­cif­ic on-site instal­la­tions,” Ohta told ABC News. “At present, we’re not set up for inter­na­tion­al deployments.”

Monster Wolf has not only cap­tured atten­tion but also sparked broad­er inter­est in explor­ing new approach­es to chal­lenges posed when wildlife gets to close for human comfort.

Ohta is bull­ish on poten­tial advancements.

“We’re excit­ed to be col­lab­o­rat­ing with lead­ing auto­mo­tive firms and aca­d­e­m­ic insti­tu­tions to pio­neer the next evo­lu­tion of Monster Wolf,” says Ohta.

His vision includes GPS-enabled autonomous nav­i­ga­tion, allow­ing the sen­tinel not just to deter intrud­ers but to proac­tive­ly patrol sen­si­tive areas prone to wildlife encroachment.

“When the sen­sors detect ani­mals, Monster Wolf will chase and repel them.”

https://​www​.face​book​.com/​r​e​e​l​/​9​7​8​0​1​8​4​8​9​9​4​8​7​2​3​?​s​f​n​s​n​=​w​a​&​m​i​b​e​x​t​i​d​=​r​o​A​Vj8

A lit­tle dys­func­tion­al math for you. Let’s say you some­how decide to say that three times two is ten, then use the tens you arrived at to say ten times ten is one hun­dred; though ten times ten is indeed one hun­dred, the path you took to arrive there makes the final answer flawed, incor­rect, decep­tive, or worse. Bear with me; I apologize.……what sounds to you like total illog­i­cal gib­ber­ish is an attempt to walk you through the irra­tional­i­ty of Israel’s claim to the land of Palestine.
If you took land that does not belong to you by force and built beau­ti­ful teem­ing cities, it does not make your cause any more just. The land still does not belong to you.
The fact that you have pow­er­ful spon­sors that sup­ports your tyran­ny and geno­cide does not give you legit­i­ma­cy; they sup­port you because they built their pow­er the same way you did on theft, enslave­ment, rape, sodomy, bru­tal­i­ty, mur­der, and every con­ceiv­able vice.

So let us rea­son: you are helped by your friends to land that nev­er belonged to you, and you take it by force,.….oh wait… you were ush­ered onto the land by your pow­er­ful spon­sors who mur­dered and stole entire con­ti­nents and claimed it as their own cen­turies before. So they already had the blue­print. In 1947 Harry Truman ush­ered 100,000 of you into Palestine and was the first leader of a nation to rec­og­nize you as a Jewish State in 1948. Remember now; the very same Harry Truman autho­rized the anni­hi­la­tion of mil­lions of Japanese through the use of the atom­ic bombs on Hiroshima and Nagasaki.
Yes, that same Harry Truman who knew that there was no need to use those dev­as­tat­ing weapons because the war was all but over.
Why did Harry Truman order that the atom­ic bombs be used on Japan when the Caucasian nation of Germany start­ed the two world wars? 

You built cities, erect­ed mon­u­ments and edi­fices; you cre­at­ed won­ders that oth­ers look at in awe and sur­round­ed your­self with walls and armies to defend what you know is not yours. You use your mon­ey and pow­er to pur­chase and run pow­er­ful media enti­ties to spread dis­in­for­ma­tion and to can­cel any­one who dares ques­tion you. You use being adja­cent to even more pow­er to usurp rules and to appro­pri­ate unto your­self what­ev­er else you choose to annex.
Your pow­er­ful spon­sors make you immune and exempt from the rules of inter­na­tion­al law that most oth­er nations are bound to abide by. The so-called International Court Of [Justice] has no author­i­ty over you. The United States, Britain, and France, the pow­er­ful Western Powers, sit as Judge, Jury, and Executioner over the rest of the world while ensur­ing that the world knows that they are not sub­ject to that court’s juris­dic­tion, and nei­ther are you.
The War crimes you com­mit against men, women, and chil­dren are scoffed at as nec­es­sary for estab­lish­ing and fur­ther­ing the Zionist State. The Nuclear weapons and oth­er sophis­ti­cat­ed weapons of war you pos­sess and uti­lize against peo­ple throw­ing rocks become right while you bru­tal­ly mur­der the innocent.
Young men and chil­dren throw­ing rocks to defend their land and dig­ni­ty are labeled ter­ror­ists by your pow­er­ful media and sponsors.
Even those who do not under­stand the his­to­ry and false­hoods of your claims to legit­i­ma­cy igno­rant­ly praise you, pray for you, and ask that oth­ers pray for you the oppressor.

The United Nations turns its back on these atroc­i­ties because the United Nations is what The United States and England say it is. The idea of the United Nations was not bad on its face. The First World War start­ed in 1914 and end­ed in 1918.….…well, sort of. The proud Germans were not sat­is­fied with the terms foist­ed upon them, so by 1939, a mere 21 years lat­er, the world was thrust into anoth­er world­wide con­fla­gra­tion; World War 2.
After 1945 when the war end­ed, the UN was cre­at­ed. It may rea­son­ably be argued that the Agency has kept the world out of anoth­er world­wide war to date, 78 years later.
However, because the peo­ple who cre­at­ed the agency left carve-outs for them­selves and their friends to flout International laws, as the United States has done, where it can trans­gress inter­na­tion­al bor­ders with­out con­se­quences, where it is not sub­ject to the world court, and where the ille­gal state of Israel is shield­ed from penal­ty for vio­lat­ing inter­na­tion­al laws time and again, the UN has zero cred­i­bil­i­ty left.
Many Nations across Africa have with­drawn from the World Court as a con­se­quence, and in the fore­see­able future, many coun­tries will step back from the United Nations. People are not opposed to fol­low­ing rules. They are opposed to rules that are not enforced fairly.

Israel repeat­ed­ly com­mits war crimes and thumbs its nose at the world while the afore­men­tioned pow­ers shield it from con­se­quence in the so-called International Court Of Justice.
According to the Washington Post, Israel repeat­ed­ly used white phos­pho­rus dur­ing its 22-day long cam­paign in Gaza that spanned the end of 2008 to ear­ly 2009, includ­ing over­pop­u­lat­ed areas, killing and injur­ing civil­ians, and vio­lat­ing International Humanitarian Law, a 2009 report from Human Rights Watch found. A pho­to­graph tak­en near the south­ern Israeli city of Sderot on Monday shows Israeli forces in pos­ses­sion of at least sev­en pro­jec­tiles that have mark­ings con­sis­tent with those used to deliv­er white phos­pho­rus, accord­ing to a muni­tions data­base main­tained by CAT-UXO.
Having flout­ed International law as it does reg­u­lar­ly with­out con­se­quence, The Washington Post report­ed that the zion­ist state again used the dead­ly muni­tions on Wednesday in an attack on the open-air prison Gaza..

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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.

According to Yahoo, in addi­tion to the alleged three Billion US dol­lars in Aid to the Apartheid State of Israel annu­al­ly, Joe Biden is send­ing a whole heap of fire­pow­er to fight Hamas, but most impor­tant­ly, the poor Palestinian peo­ple who live under dai­ly oppres­sion by Israel.
As one com­menter puts it, ‘You need a lot of fire­pow­er to defeat glid­ers and guys on motor­cy­cles with rifles. ³⁄₄ of the avail­able US mil­i­tary capac­i­ty will do the job.
Another replied, ” 3 bil­lion a year sent to them in defense aid, and yet they could not stop the so-called attack. Sounds awful­ly like a false flag oper­a­tion. I pity the American tax­pay­ers.

Imagine what all that mon­ey could do to pover­ty, home­less­ness, hunger, help­ing the sick, drug addic­tion, education.……
No!!! it is much more impor­tant to send this extra­or­di­nary amount of mon­ey and the fire­pow­er to retain the white suprema­cist régime in Tel Aviv as they did in South Africa until the peo­ple stood up and said no more.
As I said before, America and its allies labeled Nelson Mandela a ter­ror­ist too. When will this gross injus­tice end? (mb)

• The US is send­ing muni­tions, air­craft car­ri­ers, and fight­er jets toward Israel after the Hamas attacks.
• The aid pack­age includes the newest and most advanced air­craft car­ri­er, the USS Gerald R. Ford.
• Specific muni­tions are uncer­tain, but Israel needs weapons for their Iron Dome defense system.

After the sur­prise attacks on Israel by the Palestinian mil­i­tant group Hamasover the week­end, the US has been swift in its response and pro­vid­ing aid.

On October 7, Hamas mil­i­tants launched a sur­prise attack on Israel, killing hun­dreds of civil­ians and abduct­ing oth­ers. Israel respond­ed with a series of airstrikes through­out the Gaza Strip.

Some 1,000 Israelis had been killed as of Tuesday, with anoth­er 3,400 injured, Israel’s embassy in the US said. Gaza’s health min­istry report­ed at least 830 Palestinians had been killed, with at least 4,250 injured.

The US con­tributes $3 bil­lion annu­al­ly to its ally in the Middle East and will bol­ster that sup­port by send­ing addi­tion­al muni­tions and redi­rect­ing fight­er jets and air­craft car­ri­ers toward Israel. Most notably, the USS Gerald R. Ford, the newest US air­craft car­ri­er, is being direct­ed from its sta­tion in the Mediterranean toward Israel.

Here’s what the US is pro­vid­ing to and around Israel amid the conflict.

The USS Gerald R. Ford, the US Navy’s newest and most advanced air­craft car­ri­er to date.

The super­car­ri­er, out on its first full deploy­ment, is now mov­ing toward Israel as a show of sup­port from the US, as Insider pre­vi­ous­ly report­ed.

Included in the USS Gerald R. Ford strike force are a num­ber of oth­er cruis­ers and destroyers.

The USS Normandy, a Ticonderoga-class guid­ed-mis­sile cruiser.

The USS Normandy can fire mis­siles to strike land tar­gets or fire mis­siles to defend against air­craft or incom­ing missiles.

The USS Thomas Hudner, one of four Arleigh Burke-class guid­ed-mis­sile destroy­ers in the fleet.

The USS Thomas Hudner pro­vides both offen­sive and defen­sive capa­bil­i­ties and can act inde­pen­dent­ly or as part of a larg­er strike force.

The USS Ramage, anoth­er Arleigh Burke-class guid­ed-mis­sile destroyer.

The USS Ramage sim­i­lar­ly pro­vides offen­sive and defen­sive capa­bil­i­ties for the strike force.

The US Navy destroy­er USS Carney.

The USS Carney is anoth­er Arleigh Burke-class destroy­er and was first launched in 1994. The ship has since been upgrad­ed in 2009 and 2016, where it received a new can­non and mis­sile launcher.

The USS Roosevelt, designed to oper­ate inde­pen­dent­ly in a high-den­si­ty, mul­ti-threat environment.

The USS Roosevelt is the fourth Arleigh-Burke-class guid­ed-mis­sile destroy­er in the fleet.

Several F‑35 fight­er jets, con­sid­ered to be the most advanced fight­er jet in the world.

The US is also aug­ment­ing sev­er­al of its Air Force oper­a­tions in the region, includ­ing F‑35 fight­er jets.

The US is deploy­ing sev­er­al of the stealth fight­ers to help deter Iran, a region­al adver­sary that backs Hamas and Hezbollah.

Insider pre­vi­ous­ly report­ed about 20 – 25 fight­ers would head to the region and be tasked with deter­ring the expan­sion of the war and pre­vent­ing poten­tial Iranian aggression.

Several F‑15 fight­er jets.

F‑15s are extreme­ly maneu­ver­able, tac­ti­cal fight­ers designed to give the Air Force an upper hand in air-to-air combat.

Several F‑16 fight­er jets, designed for both air-to-air com­bat as well as air-to-ground combat.

The F‑16 is a ver­sa­tile and light­weight fighter.

Several A‑10 fight­er jets, designed to pro­vide close air sup­port to ground forces.

They’re designed to be used against mar­itime attacks and ground tar­gets such as tanks and oth­er armored vehicles.

Israel report­ed­ly request­ed inter­cep­tors and pre­ci­sion-guid­ed munitions.

The spe­cif­ic muni­tion being sent to Israel is unclear, but Israel may have request­ed inter­cep­tors and pre­ci­sion-guid­ed muni­tions. The inter­cep­tors con­tribute to Israel’s Iron Dome defense sys­tem, which tar­gets rock­ets in flight.

Al Jazeera report­ed that $2 bil­lion worth of US muni­tions had been pre-sup­plied to be used in case of emer­gen­cies in Israel.

The insur­gent phe­nom­e­non of lies per­pet­u­at­ed as truth has been with mankind arguably from the begin­ning of time. The can­cer­ous sin of lying is so sig­nif­i­cant it is the 9^th Commandment of the Ten laid out as a guide for mankind to follow.
Lies and dis­hon­esty have dev­as­tat­ing con­se­quences for humans. It erodes trust, cheap­ens, and ren­ders every aspect of our lives worth­while. Imagine being unable to enjoy a game because the out­come is pre­de­ter­mined based on fraud and dishonesty.
Lies become can­cer that eats away at soci­ety. When the aver­age vot­er is lied to, that his vote does­n’t count. That elec­tions are rigged and the win­ner is the los­er and the los­er, the con­se­quences are dev­as­tat­ing for everyone.

The Europeans occu­py­ing the land of Palestine have no legit­i­mate claim to Palestine out­side the ridicu­lous claim that God promised them the land. To begin with, it is beyond a stretch to imag­ine that a white European who fled Nazi Germany and was allowed to set­tle on land in Palestine by Harry Truman can trace their blood­line to ancient Hebrew peo­ple (Jews).
In fact, (a) the Ancient Hebrews have always lived in Palestine. (b) Others are still return­ing to Palestine, and not a sin­gle one of them is white. They are Black peo­ple. The only true Hebrews (Jews) are the ancient Black peo­ple, the descen­dants of the peo­ple Moses led from Egypt.
The white suprema­cist Zionist régime that rules Palestine has sub­ju­gat­ed those return­ing Africans to the worst indig­ni­ties and rel­e­gat­ed them to a tiny area of the Negev desert.

Nevertheless, the United States and its allies Britain and oth­er so-called Western pow­ers have made the world believe that those who co-opt­ed the Jewish faith and fled Germany dur­ing Hitler’s rule have a legit­i­mate right to return to a land they have nev­er seen under the pre­pos­ter­ous claim that God promised them the land. It is the same pre­pos­ter­ous claim as dis­cov­er­ing land peo­ple have lived on from the begin­ning of time.
Worse yet, despite the hor­rif­ic con­di­tions that the Palestinian peo­ple have been forced to endure, the con­di­tions that bred their mil­i­tan­cy are being mar­ket­ed to the world as ter­ror­ism.
Even Black Christian Pastors preach the fraud­u­lent the­ol­o­gy that their Christian God sanc­tions the state of Israel. The dis­con­nect is that the Zionist régime in Palestine does not rec­og­nize their Christian God. So if Israel is right, then they are preach­ing a fake gospel.

There is absolute­ly no legit­i­mate argu­ment to be made for the exis­tence of a state of Israel out­side of the ridicu­lous claim that God promised them the land. First off, even if God promised the Jews a home­land in Palestine, the white Germans who fled Hitler had no claim to that promise because they were not true Hebrews. Zionists do [not] believe in the Christian God, nei­ther do Christians believe in Judaism. Yet America’s sup­port for the ille­gal inter­lop­ing state of Israel is based on noth­ing but racism, the kind that has ruled the world for five hun­dred years.
The myth of a reli­gious con­nec­tion has long been dis­man­tled, and the truth laid bare. Most Americans who say they sup­port Israel can­not artic­u­late the rea­son for their sup­port. Neither can they explain why they agree that bil­lions of dol­lars of their tax dol­lars are spent annu­al­ly to prop up a coun­try that has noth­ing to do with them.
In con­clu­sion, it is impor­tant to rec­on­cile that America’s sup­port for the illic­it state of Israel is based on one thing only: racism. The Apartheid sys­tem in Palestine has treat­ed the Palestinian peo­ple as America treat­ed Blacks for hun­dreds of years.
it is a fan­tas­tic lie that has even Black peo­ple pledg­ing feal­ty to a state that sees them as less than humans. Racism is at the heart of the idea of the so-called Jewish state.

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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 con­flict between the oppressed peo­ple of Palestine and the oppres­sive apartheid inter­lop­ing ille­gal state that calls itself Israel is the cre­ation of the United Nations with the back­ing of the United States, Britain, and oth­er Western pow­ers.
To have a moral per­spec­tive on what has been hap­pen­ing in Palestine, one has to have a his­tor­i­cal per­spec­tive of how the apartheid state came about.
Let us under­stand that the peo­ple in the ille­gal state who call them­selves Jews are white Europeans. In the same way that the United States came into exis­tence, the Nation of Australia, New Zealand White rule in South Africa, the for­mer Rhodesia, and oth­er African nations, so too did Israel come about.
All of the places named were invad­ed and tak­en over by White Europeans. They set up oppres­sive regimes, wrote their own his­to­ry books, and declared them­selves legit­i­mate rulers of those lands.
The illic­it takeover of Palestine is arguably the last Sovereign nation to be over­run by racist Europeans who use might to estab­lish own­er­ship rights. It is a nean­derthal strat­e­gy that is tru­ly European in scope.

The idea behind estab­lish­ing a so-called Jewish state is gen­e­sis in the Biblical idea that Palestine is the land God promised to his cho­sen peo­ple; the Jews. So many things must be unpacked to dis­pel this non­sen­si­cal myth. (a) The Bible is [not] a his­tor­i­cal book. Many of the sto­ries in the Bible can­not be his­tor­i­cal­ly authen­ti­cat­ed. (b) The idea that God played favorites by choos­ing one tribe of people-(Jews) as his favorites runs counter to the idea of a just God. © The term my peo­ple, Israel, speaks to those who accept God as their divine deity, and not a piece of land called Palestine that he promised to Jews.
So let us do some more unpack­ing. The state of Israel became a real­i­ty in 1948 when prac­tic­ing Jews left Germany, sup­pos­ed­ly because of per­se­cu­tion and geno­cide inflict­ed on them by Adolph Hitler.
It is impor­tant to rec­on­cile that those peo­ple had absolute­ly no claim to the land of Palestine except a Biblical claim that God promised them the land. There is no genealog­i­cal evi­dence of white Caucasians hav­ing any his­tor­i­cal tie to the land of Palestine, which makes their so-called right of return an absolute absurdity.

Former President Jimmy Carter called the apartheid state of Israel worse than that which exist­ed in South Africa. Yet the United States, Britain, and most Western Nations have propped up this can­cer to the tune of bil­lions of dol­lars each year. There is no more Palestine; the entire coun­try is called Israel, occu­pied by the bar­rel of a gun. Palestinians are forced into squat­ter camps in two tiny areas called the West Bank and the Gaza Strip. There is no self-rule as the Palestinians are sub­ject to the indig­ni­ties of the Israeli Defense Force (IDF).
Israel’s pow­er­ful Zionist Army block­ades the Gaza Strip. It decides if food or drink­ing water gets deliv­ered to the 2.3 mil­lion Palestinians liv­ing on the tiny strip of coastal land, approx­i­mate­ly 140.9 square miles. Israel’s army decides whether Palestinian fish­er­men can get into their boats to fish to feed their fam­i­lies. In the West Bank, Israeli check­points are every­where, inter­cept­ing Palestinians, ques­tion­ing them, and keep­ing them report­ed­ly for hours from enter­ing their homes a block away, even though they are known to the sol­diers. Frustrated Palestinians are forced from their homes, which are then bull­dozed, and new Israeli set­tle­ments are erect­ed to house Israeli families.
As the United States and its pow­er­ful allies sup­port the tyran­ny, the rest of the world turns a blind eye to the plight of the Palestinian people.
Worse yet, the pow­er­ful Zionist pro­pa­gan­da machine labels any­one who dares to speak out as anti­se­mit­ic.
Nothing I doc­u­ment­ed here remote­ly begins to tell the sto­ry of the deceit and woe that has befall­en the Palestinian peo­ple since the United States and ally England cre­at­ed the ille­gal state of Israel in Palestine.

Soon after President Truman took office, he appoint­ed sev­er­al experts to study the Palestinian issue. In the sum­mer of 1946, Truman estab­lished a spe­cial cab­i­net com­mit­tee under the chair­man­ship of Dr. Henry F. Grady, an Assistant Secretary of State, who entered into nego­ti­a­tions with a par­al­lel British com­mit­tee to dis­cuss the future of Palestine. In May 1946, Truman announced his approval of a rec­om­men­da­tion to admit 100,000 dis­placed per­sons into Palestine and, in October, pub­licly declared his sup­port for the cre­ation of a Jewish state. Throughout 1947, the United Nations Special Commission on Palestine exam­ined the Palestinian ques­tion and rec­om­mend­ed the par­ti­tion of Palestine into a Jewish and an Arab state. (his​to​ry​.state​.gov)
The idea of two states with­in Palestine was a fraud and a lie. The Zionists who were allowed to move into the land of Palestine, had no desire to have an Arab State beside them. Remember, their cen­tral claim is that God promised [them} the land, and there­fore they want­ed to estab­lish a (Jewish State). In order to estab­lish a Jewish home­land, Palestine would have to be eth­ni­cal­ly cleansed of Arabs and Palestinians. This was their strat­e­gy all along. The map above depicts how they exe­cut­ed that plan.

Separate and apart from the ille­gal­i­ty of the state of Israel and the fact that it is a white suprema­cist state run by white racists is the reli­gious com­po­nent. No one can explain the inex­plic­a­ble lack of con­text by Christians world­wide in their sup­port for the apartheid state of Israel. The Zionist régime and the peo­ple in Israel are [not] Christians; they are Zionists. Zionism is Israel’s nation­al ide­ol­o­gy, with Judaism serv­ing as a nation­al­i­ty and reli­gion.
Nothing about Zionism or Judaism is in agree­ment with the teach­ings of Christianity. Yet White Churches in the United States and even the mis­guid­ed ones run by Blacks have pledged feal­ty to the illic­it Apartheid state. Many make pil­grim­ages to the occu­pied land believ­ing that their Christian God val­i­dates and sup­ports the Zionist racists who occu­py the space with brute force and genocide.
It is a con­tra­dic­tion that makes absolute­ly no sense. Christianity argues as its cen­tral tenet that no one can come to God the Father but through Yeshua the Christ (Jesus); Judaism does not believe Jesus was the Messiah.
Zionists use the Torah-Christians use the Bible. The two believe in two sep­a­rate Gods.
As I have said before, there is absolute­ly no con­nec­tion between white Europeans who fled nazi Germany to the ancient Hebrew People who have always lived in the land of Palestine. There nev­er will be.
Please do not ask me to pray for Israel. As a man of faith, as a man who believes in a just God, it is by default that I am inclined to feel empa­thy for the oppressed. It is by default that I empathize with those who are abused. It is my nat­ur­al default to speak the truth. If the truth leads to my demise, then so be it.
The author and fin­ish­er of my faith Yeshua was cru­ci­fied for speak­ing the truth.

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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.

Someone near and dear to me texted me Thursday morn­ing ask­ing if I had watched the Republican Presidential debate. I respond­ed that I did not care to watch a bunch of pathet­ic trea­son supporters.
Treason?
Yup!!!
‘Treason ’ is the crime of betray­ing one’s coun­try, espe­cial­ly by attempt­ing to kill the sov­er­eign or over­throw the gov­ern­ment.
On January 6^th, 2021, armed insur­rec­tion­ists from dif­fer­ent fac­tions of the white suprema­cist ecosys­tem, with Donald J. Trump’s direct urg­ing, attacked the US. Capital Building where Mike Pence, Trump’s own Vice President, was car­ry­ing out the aca­d­e­m­ic task of cer­ti­fy­ing Joe Biden’s win, mak­ing him the 46^th pres­i­dent of the United States.
Most Americans until that time weren’t even aware that this mun­dane activ­i­ty was part of the process of cer­ti­fy­ing the vote to seat a new American pres­i­dent. It was that way because the process was a cer­e­mo­ni­al end to the long elec­tion bat­tle pre­ced­ing it. On that day, Mike Pence over­saw the process­es as vice pres­i­dent, which the Constitution man­dates. Pence had no pow­er to act to stop the count or throw out bal­lots; he was there sim­ply in a cer­e­mo­ni­al capacity.
But for his boss, the 45^th occu­pant of the pres­i­den­cy, this was an attempt to use Mike Pence to thwart the will of the 81,283,098 Americans, or 51.3 per­cent of the vot­ers who cast their votes for Joe Biden…
Donald J. Trump had tried every legal means through the courts to chal­lenge and decer­ti­fy Biden’s win all the way to the Supreme Court that he packed with his own floozies; it was all for naught. There was no elec­tion fraud. The only elec­tion fraud found was Republicans intim­i­dat­ing vot­ers and vot­ing numer­ous times for Trump.
Having failed in the courts, Trump and his band of trai­tors attempt­ed to use ille­gal means, fake elec­tors, attempt­ing to seize vot­ing machines, slan­der­ing Dominion. a man­u­fac­tur­er of vot­ing machines, slan­der­ing and threat­en­ing poll work­ers, Trump him­self call­ing Georgia’s sec­re­tary of state and demand­ing that he manufacture11,780 votes to hand the state to him electorally.

Every aspect of the def­i­n­i­tion of ‘trea­son’ was sat­is­fied on January 6^th, 2021. Every sin­gle American with sight has seen some or all of what tran­spired that day. Every patri­ot­ic American should be repulsed by what they saw. This was big­ger than pol­i­tics. Whichever par­ty engaged in such action against the coun­try should be purged through the Justice sys­tem, the par­ty dis­band­ed, or both. Every sin­gle per­son rep­re­sent­ing the par­ty of insur­rec­tion, trea­son, and total­i­tar­i­an­ism saw what Trump and his acolytes did on January 6^th, yet every sin­gle one of them raised their hand that they would sup­port the nom­i­nee for pres­i­dent in 2024, even if that per­son is Donald J Trump.
In most nations, the penal­ty for ‘trea­son’ ‚betray­ing one’s coun­try, is death. In America, the world’s sup­pos­ed­ly old­est democ­ra­cy, the trai­tor is run­ning for anoth­er four-year term to be pres­i­dent. I can­not think of a nation in which there is a rule of law that all of the peo­ple who orches­trat­ed and par­tic­i­pat­ed in an event like January 6^th, 2021, aren’t already tried, impris­oned, or executed…
An ordi­nary American can hard­ly get a job with a mis­de­meanor charge pend­ing against them, much less a felony. Many peo­ple have lost their jobs sim­ply because they got arrest­ed for some minor infrac­tion. Yet a man with 91 felony charges pend­ing, who has already been con­vict­ed of sex­u­al assault charges, forced to close a fake University and a fake char­i­ty and pay back mil­lions, is run­ning to sit atop the fed­er­al bureau­cra­cy. Half the coun­try has no prob­lem with it.
Donald Trump is fac­ing 91 felony charges and is the front-run­ner for pres­i­dent in the Republican trea­son par­ty. Let that sink in.
Not a sin­gle one of the morons stand­ing up on that plat­form field­ing soft­ball ques­tions from the anti-American pro­pa­gan­da machine FOX News would stand up for America. They all knew that what Trump and his cronies did was trea­son, but none was will­ing to defend America.
This made them all com­plic­it, but none more so than Mike Pence, who scur­ried away like a cor­nered rat into the bow­els of the Capitol build­ing as his boss’s thugs yelled hang Mike Pence and erect­ed a gal­lows to string his cow­ard­ly ass up.
Mike Pence is not a hero; he is a coward.
Pence had zero con­sti­tu­tion­al author­i­ty to change the out­come of the 2020 vote. Trump mere­ly want­ed Pence to attempt to use his office to dis­rupt the process so he could point to him and say he did it. Even though the sin­gle-term, twice impeached trai­tor who faces 91 felony counts of crim­i­nal behav­ior did not feel he should be on stage with the oth­er losers, they were a[ll] pet­ri­fied of say­ing any­thing about him or the crimes he com­mit­ted. While we are on that sub­ject, Vladimir Putin respond­ed to Yevgeny Prigozhin’s alleged pass­ing in a plane crash by say­ing he was a great busi­ness­man. He sent con­do­lences to Prigozhin’s fam­i­ly.

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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 is a zero-sum game; we are good, you are bad — end of sto­ry. Nothing can be gained by say­ing that the oth­er side is right on an issue. If they are right, why do you need us? Consequently, Politicians will only say some­thing pos­i­tive about some­one from the oppo­site side after they are out of the game. 
For exam­ple, I heard an audio clip recent­ly of for­mer dis­graced JLP Prime Minister Bruce Golding heap­ing praise upon Michael Manley. Bruce Golding is out of elec­tive pol­i­tics, and Michael Manley is long dead. As a quick side note, I cred­it Golding for prais­ing Michael Manley for the good things he did. Of course, it will be a cold day in Hades before some­one from Manley’s par­ty have a kind syl­la­ble to say about a sin­gle Labor Party great. This has always been the char­ac­ter of that par­ty; how­ev­er, zero-sum in a zero-sum game-scorched earth, dem­a­gogue, deny, den­i­grate, destroy.
https://​mike​beck​les​.com/​w​h​a​c​k​-​a​-​m​o​l​e​-​c​r​i​m​e​-​s​t​r​a​t​e​gy/

That said, I under­stand the state­ments of Peter Bunting, for­mer Manchester MP and Minister of National Security, when he said that his par­ty is fed up with the myr­i­ad of excus­es the Andrew Holness admin­is­tra­tion has been pro­vid­ing in rela­tion to fight­ing crime.“I am dis­ap­point­ed in the prime min­is­ter. “Whenever an inci­dent like this occurs, he seeks to blame others.”
Bunting is now a Senator in his par­ty after he was boot­ed from his once-safe Central Manchester seat. Senators in the Jamaican Parliamentary sys­tem are [not] elect­ed to that body but appoint­ed by their respec­tive polit­i­cal parties.
Bunting was tour­ing a fire­bombed com­mu­ni­ty in St Catherine with oth­ers, a rit­u­al in Jamaican pol­i­tics where politi­cians seek to derive lever­age by show­ing up to pay faux homage and con­cern for crime vic­tims as a means to cur­ry favor and receive votes.

These vis­its are usu­al­ly suc­ceed­ed by grandiose speech­es designed to show con­cern and care. Both polit­i­cal par­ties have mas­tered this art of decep­tion.https://​mike​beck​les​.com/​a​d​o​p​t​-​m​y​-​a​n​t​i​-​c​r​i​m​e​-​s​t​r​a​t​e​g​y​-​a​n​d​-​w​a​t​c​h​-​t​h​e​-​d​i​f​f​e​r​e​n​c​e​-​b​i​t​s​-​a​n​d​-​p​i​e​c​e​s​-​i​s​-​n​o​t​-​e​n​o​u​gh/
A great deal can be done to reme­di­ate the crime prob­lem Jamaica faces. The Prime Minister said ‘there was an ele­ment in the soci­ety who do not want the Government to empow­er the police force to act pre-emp­tive­ly, as he toured the same site on Monday.
The fact that both sides agree on the seri­ous­ness of the prob­lem but refuse to sit down togeth­er to work out solu­tions shows that nei­ther side wants his issue remediated. 
Crime is a use­ful polit­i­cal foot­ball that both polit­i­cal par­ties are wont to let go of. It is some­thing that affects peo­ple in per­son­al and emo­tion­al ways. It is an issue that politi­cians have used for decades to play on the emo­tion­al chords of the Jamaican peo­ple with dev­as­tat­ing effec­tive­ness. They are not about to solve this issue.
https://​mike​beck​les​.com/​3​4​9​416 – 2/

“If the courts said that what they were doing is uncon­sti­tu­tion­al, then he must accept the rul­ing and find oth­er cre­ative ways to keep the Jamaican peo­ple safe.”Peter Bunting was speak­ing to the use of Zones of Specialized Operations ZOSOs and States of Emergencies SOEs and the whole­sale use of those two strate­gies as a long-term crime erad­i­ca­tion strategy. 
I agree and may have writ­ten a hun­dred arti­cles decry­ing those strate­gies as a crime-bust­ing solu­tion. They sim­ply aren’t. Some are linked in red. 

Nevertheless, I am also curi­ous to see what exact­ly the PNP has as a crime reduc­tion strat­e­gy of its own. You know, out­side of the usu­al tired and word strat­e­gy of plac­ing unqual­i­fied lack­eys and polit­i­cal hacks in posi­tions of pow­er as a reward for their sup­port and patron­age. Granted that both polit­i­cal par­ties play the same sor­ry game, my inter­est is in a dif­fer­ent approach.
If my rec­ol­lec­tion is cor­rect, Peter Bunting, as the Minister of National Security, with his par­ty in pow­er, threw his hands up and declared that only divine inter­ven­tion could save Jamaica from the crim­i­nals. If that state­ment weren’t so dan­ger­ous and asi­nine, it would be wor­thy of the com­e­dy circuit.
Divine inter­ven­tion!!!!
What reck­less incom­pe­tence. Yahweh was the divine. But with every mir­a­cle he worked, the recip­i­ent had to do it themselves.
When he turned water into wine, fill up the jars and close the door.
When he healed the man born with a crooked arm, stretch forth your arm.
When he healed the Leper, go show your­self to the Priest.
When he healed the blind, go wash your eyes in the river.
When he healed the bedrid­den, pick up your bed and walk.
Even to the dead Lazarus, he called out Lazarus, come forth- even the dead Lazarus rose to his voice, yet sup­posed lead­ers in the twen­ty-first cen­tu­ry are telling the peo­ple they are sup­posed to pro­tect that they can only be saved by God.
What a gross abdi­ca­tion of duty.
No, Peter, we have heard this lame song and dance before.

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

Some fun­da­men­tal prin­ci­ples guid­ed our con­duct when I proud­ly served as a Police offi­cer in my native Jamaica many years ago. Today hav­ing lived for over six decades, I look back at my time in ser­vice, and I am some­what proud despite the pres­sures the Jamaica Constabulary Force endured from the United States, Canada, and Britain, along with inside ene­mies of the Jamaican peo­ple. Though a com­par­a­tive­ly tiny nation, Jamaica got it right on some things.
Anyone who knows me will attest to the fact that I have zero tol­er­ance for crim­i­nal con­duct and will also attest to my firm belief in the rule of law. The rule of law can­not be based on one’s wealth, social stand­ing, or oth­er defin­ing char­ac­ter­is­tic that set one above the oth­er. For every­one to buy into obey­ing the laws, all [must] be treat­ed equally.
I have seen no nation oper­at­ing out­side the rule of law that has free and pros­per­ous citizens.
Thankfully, we had no racism in our police depart­ment, even though Jamaica is a melt­ing pot of peo­ple, and we were per­pet­u­al­ly accused of favor­ing peo­ple who lived in cer­tain areas.
While I served, I was par­tic­u­lar­ly pissed at the crimes some offi­cers were accused of, asso­ci­at­ing with non-police crim­i­nals, tak­ing bribes, steal­ing, etc. I arrest­ed and charged a cou­ple myself and was instru­men­tal in see­ing the back of anoth­er. I was proud to have stood up to a cou­ple of oth­ers who were senior to me but had tar­nished the force’s rep­u­ta­tion through actions unbe­com­ing of officers.
I was ashamed in 91; while in detec­tive train­ing, the lec­tur­er asked us to name an offense in the crim­i­nal code that was not already attrib­uted to mem­bers of our depart­ment. No one raised a hand.
I was also proud that our depart­ment was, nev­er­the­less, the only gov­ern­ment depart­ment that actu­al­ly policed itself and active­ly scrupu­lous­ly removed bad cops from the depart­ment. This was long before the advent of the antag­o­nis­tic and ill-formed INDECOM.
The depart­ment was by no means a great one, large­ly due to the incom­pe­tence of men and women pro­mot­ed above their capa­bil­i­ties through pol­i­tics, nepo­tism, and oth­er malpractices.
Despite all of the fore­gone, the JCF stood head and shoul­ders in terms of what we see occur­ring dai­ly in American polic­ing. It is shock­ing to see what pass­es for policing.
Acts of out­right mur­der legit­imized by pros­e­cu­tors and the courts, Gestapo-style polic­ing, lies, fal­si­fy­ing reports, lying under oath, brazen acts of unchecked bru­tal­i­ty, cops kid­nap­ping, bru­tal­iz­ing, and killing cit­i­zens, and the list goes on.
There is the argu­ment that there is no jus­ti­fi­ca­tion for offi­cers to be cor­rupt. We can make that argu­ment, drop the micro­phone with an air of supe­ri­or­i­ty, and walk away as if the issue is solved. Or we can exam­ine why cor­rup­tion was so per­va­sive in the Jamaica Constabulary Force from way back when.
Officers were required to live exem­plary lives, which usu­al­ly meant not liv­ing in the hood that are incu­ba­tors of criminality.
The salaries paid to offi­cers may pay the rent for the apart­ment that the offi­cer has, but not much more.
Cops have fam­i­lies like oth­er Jamaicans, but though they risk life and limb, the remu­ner­a­tions are not near­ly enough to sus­tain at the most basic lev­els, lives of example.
We can pre­tend all we want, but giv­en those cir­cum­stances, it is impos­si­ble to keep offi­cers clean when they have the pow­er to solic­it bribes and find oth­er illic­it ways to make mon­ey. Even giv­en ide­al cir­cum­stances, peo­ple with pow­er abuse it.
This is no dif­fer­ent than lump­ing many poor peo­ple into com­mu­ni­ties and giv­ing them lit­tle or no resources. The result is a fight for sur­vival, which means vio­lence and oth­er crimes. Doing the same with less­er crea­tures elic­its the very same outcomes.
This is why I con­tin­ue to be astound­ed by the shock­ing atti­tude of the Andrew Holness admin­is­tra­tion in address­ing the salary and remu­ner­a­tion demands of the rank-and-file of the police department.
From the very start of his lead­er­ship of our coun­try Andrew Michael Holness has demon­strat­ed a com­plete lack of under­stand­ing of and a sense of hatred toward police officers.
By both words and deeds, Holness him­self and mem­bers of his cab­i­net, Horace Chang, in par­tic­u­lar, has been open­ly hos­tile and down­right dis­re­spect­ful of the JCF.
Holness made his friend Antony Anderson, the for­mer head of the JDF, the nation’s first National Security Adviser. But that was only the begin­ning, He select­ed Anderson to be Commissioner of police, and Anderson was allowed to bring his JDF dri­ver, a non­com­mis­sioned offi­cer in the sad sack army, and made him an Assistant Superintendent of police.
If this isn’t nepo­tism I have no idea what nepo­tism is. Jamaica should be hap­py indeed that mem­bers of the JDF hier­ar­chy do not [yet] har­bor illu­sions of grandeur (tak­ing over the coun­try by way of a coup de’ etat) as Holness has placed and attempt­ed to place mem­bers of the JDF in key posi­tions with­in the pub­lic sector.
In fact, many Opposition par­ty mem­bers have already claimed those are his intentions.
I seri­ous­ly doubt those are his inten­tions, but his like­ness and affin­i­ty toward the JDF are strange, at the very min­i­mum. His affin­i­ty toward the JDF and the par­al­lel dis­re­spect he has shown the JCF are clear and unequiv­o­cal evi­dence of a man not ful­ly con­ver­sant with the crit­i­cal role law enforce­ment plays in a demo­c­ra­t­ic soci­ety. Horace Chang labeled the JCF a glo­ri­fied secu­ri­ty guard com­pa­ny, then back­tracked when mem­bers of the force react­ed force­ful­ly to the insult.
Holness and Chang have both run pro­tec­tion for Antony Anderson’s fail­ure to put a mean­ing­ful dent in vio­lent crime in our coun­try. Something no oth­er Commissioner or police has ever enjoyed under any admin­is­tra­tion PNP or JLP. Crime sta­tis­tics have always judged them. Not so for Anderson.
Holness claims he has retained Anderson to mod­ern­ize the force. … this is laugh­able, as the old Jamaican say­ing goes ‘while the grass a grow di horse a starve”.
That idea is both laugh­able and pre­pos­ter­ous. Dealing with vio­lent crime effec­tive­ly and mod­ern­iz­ing the force are not mutu­al­ly exclusive.
The JCF must be able to walk and chew gum at the same time. The force was able to do much more with much less in times past, so the idea that we must ‘gi Tony a chance’, accord­ing to Horace Chang, is unadul­ter­at­ed horse manure.
And now we have learned that the Antony Anderson JCF has sought to muz­zle the free speech of the chair­man of the Police Federation (Union), Corporal Rohan James, through inter­dic­tion, giv­ing rise to the idea that the Holness Administration believes it is above criticism.
The head of the Police Union can­not be guid­ed by the nor­mal pro­to­cols that guide reg­u­lar mem­bers, as one for­mer mem­ber points out. This is intim­i­da­tion tac­tics being employed by the Holness admin­is­tra­tion using the Antony Anderson high command.
Any mem­ber of the rank-and-file that con­dones this behav­ior, regard­less of their polit­i­cal belief, should have their head examined.
This is tyran­ny being employed by the gov­ern­ment. It should not stand.

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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.

Black peo­ple have enough to deal with with­out tak­ing on the trou­bles of oth­ers. Nevertheless, though every­one has vil­i­fied Black Americans, includ­ing oth­er Black peo­ple, some­times deserved­ly, African-Americans have stead­fast­ly sup­port­ed oppressed peo­ple here in the United States and where else they are.
Now, I rec­og­nize that I just made a broad and gen­er­al state­ment that some would argue is too broad. I am aware that in every­thing, there are excep­tions to the rule. I am speak­ing in gen­er­al about the decen­cy, kind­ness, and good­ness of the aver­age African-American with whom I would like to asso­ciate myself.
Black Americans are undoubt­ed­ly the con­science of the Nation. Many oppressed peo­ple from across the globe enter the United States and turn up their noses at our peo­ple, yet are ben­e­fi­cia­ries of the blood, sweat, and tears of the very peo­ple they turn their noses at.

As I artic­u­lat­ed in the video above, East Asians, in par­tic­u­lar, seem to have a strat­e­gy they copied from Caucasians. That strat­e­gy is to be dis­re­spect­ful to African-Americans through whose strug­gles they can ele­vate them­selves and become some­thing as first-gen­er­a­tion Americans, some­thing they could nev­er accom­plish in India, China, or any place else in Asia.
None of the Civil Rights bat­tles won in the United States have any Asian names attached to them. Why? Because these are self­ish peo­ple whose only inter­est is their own. For those rea­sons, I have con­sis­tent­ly said that black peo­ple should fight our own bat­tles and stop talk­ing about black and brown peo­ple because these peo­ple are ingrates.
Most promi­nent Indians, or as we refer to them in Jamaica (Coolies), whether they are first-gen­er­a­tion Americans or just came over, seem to see a strat­e­gy of try­ing to act white, want­i­ng to attach them­selves to the per­cep­tion of pow­er which is white­ness, regard­less of how cor­rupt and immoral that con­struct is. Some have even shed their ances­tral name and adopt­ed European names, which is so laughable.
Bobby Jindal, Nimarata Nikki Randhawa (Nicky Haley), Vivek Ramaswamy,Danny Gaekwad, and many oth­er Latinos/​Hispanics have adopt­ed that strat­e­gy, par­tic­u­lar­ly those from Cuba and Mexico. Raphael Cruz and Marco Rubio are lead­ing self-haters, not to men­tion the con­vict­ed proud boy crim­i­nal Enrique Tarrio.

The Affirmative action pro­gram was cre­at­ed to course-cor­rect hun­dreds of years of injus­tice towards African ‑Americans. It was­n’t until 1978 that the Supreme Court ordered Black stu­dents to be con­sid­ered to be adopt­ed into insti­tu­tions like Harvard, which had pre­vi­ous­ly all but blocked young Black stu­dents from their cam­pus­es. It was­n’t just African-Americans who ben­e­fit­ted from the fights to get that deci­sion, Indians, Hispanics, and oth­ers also benefitted.
Opponents of Affirmative action have always main­tained that it was pref­er­en­tial treat­ment that allowed Blacks into insti­tu­tions of high­er learn­ing as if the stu­dents did­n’t have to tick all of the box­es that were required to enter those institutions.
They did not stop there; they pejo­ra­tive­ly labeled Affirmative Action (Quotas).
Affirmative actions are not set-asides or quo­tas as they would have you believe; it is actions that are geared affir­ma­tive­ly at pre­vent­ing stu­dents of col­or from being barred on the basis of their skin col­or. It ensures that insti­tu­tions have a diverse stu­dent pop­u­la­tion, not a white mono­lith­ic one.

The ille­git­i­mate reac­tionary right-wing supreme court affirmed those racist points of view, although each and every one of the six right-wing frauds who vot­ed to affirm those lies knows damn well that affir­ma­tive action has noth­ing to do with quo­tas and every­thing to do with course cor­rec­tion for hun­dreds of years of injustice.
Those hyp­ocrites failed to men­tion that for gen­er­a­tions, white stu­dents who were mar­gin­al­ly or gross­ly unqual­i­fied were allowed into Institutions like Harvard, Yale, Colombia, the Wharton School of Business, and oth­er insti­tu­tions of high­er learn­ing through lega­cy admissions.
How else could George Bush have got­ten into Yale and worse, how would Donald Trump have got­ten into the Wharton School of Business? Name recog­ni­tion and mon­ey. Again, every one of the six right-wing extrem­ists on the court knows all too well that lega­cy admis­sions are the real issue that should be eliminated.
But this ille­git­i­mate Roberts court has no shame, no respect for set­tled law, and does not care that its actions are viewed as polit­i­cal. Its rul­ings are indeed acts of raw polit­i­cal power.
That is what makes it illegitimate.

The court major­i­ty made clear that it agreed with Students For Fair Admissions, which sued Harvard and UNC, claim­ing, among oth­er things, that the schools dis­crim­i­nat­ed against Asian American stu­dents who had SAT and grade scores high­er than any oth­er racial group, includ­ing whites, and who made up, at Harvard, for instance, 29% of the enter­ing class last year. SFFA assert­ed that the num­ber should have been high­er than that, though Asians are just 7.2% of the U.S. population.
So in line with the priv­i­leges whites enjoy in the United States, enti­tled Asians though only 7.2% of the pop­u­la­tion and last year 29% of the fresh­man class at Harvard, believe they are enti­tled to have more spaces at Institutions of high­er learning.
And so, Affirmative action was end­ed in colleges.
Talk about enti­tled; this is the very def­i­n­i­tion of a group of peo­ple in this coun­try who have sac­ri­ficed noth­ing for the advance­ment or well-being of the coun­try. You nev­er see them on a pick­et line. They are nev­er a part of any racial dis­crim­i­na­tion protest. Their only com­mit­ment is to them­selves and their greed for pow­er and the almighty dollar.
These are the peo­ple the ille­git­i­mate Roberts court acqui­esced to and end­ed a pro­gram that was designed and had cre­at­ed a more even play­ing field.

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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.

According to American History, these sev­en men are con­sid­ered the founders of the American Republic as the new nation extri­cat­ed itself from Britain. The sev­en are George Washington, Thomas Jefferson, John Adams, Benjamin Franklin, Alexander Hamilton, John Jay, and James Madison.
Battlefields .org argues that while many oth­ers con­tributed to the United States’ found­ing, these sev­en are con­sid­ered by most as the Founding Fathers. They all played key roles in the secur­ing of American inde­pen­dence from Great Britain and the cre­ation of the gov­ern­ment of the United States of America.
These were not right­eous or moral­is­tic men by any stretch of the imag­i­na­tion. They were not men of prov­able con­science or integri­ty. Sufficient to say they for­mu­lat­ed a nation enshrined in the con­cept of slav­ery and all its atten­dant ignobility.
One pos­i­tive that can­not be ignored is the found­ing doc­u­ment, the Constitution they cre­at­ed, and the Bill of Rights, which arguably is pure genius.
I have always mused that the men who cre­at­ed the Constitution knew in their hearts what was right, even if they chose not to do what was right.

As imper­fect as they were, the sev­en and all the oth­ers would have been dis­mayed were they to see what America has evolved into. They fought against the British Monarchy to estab­lish a set­tle­ment of free men para­dox­i­cal­ly, even as they enshrined a sys­tem of enslave­ment for Africans. They chose a Republic style gov­ern­ment of the peo­ple as a direct oppo­si­tion to rule by decree. That is now all gone. We now live in an oli­garchy in which nine (9) unelect­ed bureau­crats decide which rights should be plucked away at their decree.
Forty-nine years (49) of prece­dent in Roe Versus Wade were struck down. Fifty-one years (51), sec­tion 4‑B of the 1965 Voting Rights Act was demol­ished, open­ing the flood­gates of anti-abor­tion and anti-vot­ing rights laws. Citizens United affirmed flood­ing the American Electoral space unleash­ing an avalanche of dark mon­ey into pol­i­tics, effec­tive­ly shut­ting out the voic­es of the ordi­nary American voter.
But these are only a few of the shock­ing acts the founders must be turn­ing in their graves over; this ille­git­i­mate body of cor­po­rate shills is much worse than we know.

They have effec­tive­ly placed them­selves above the laws, con­tra­ven­ing the very intent of the Republic and the Constitution. It is the only body not guid­ed by checks and bal­ances. It insists that in the inter­est of main­tain­ing the sep­a­ra­tion of pow­ers, the arti­cle one branch of gov­ern­ment (con­gress) has no pow­er to reg­u­late how it operates.
Even as it asserts these fic­ti­tious rights, it is hard at work evis­cer­at­ing the rights of Americans, usu­al­ly the poor­est and most dis­en­fran­chised among us. Even as I write this arti­cle, this ille­git­i­mate court is get­ting ready to strike down affir­ma­tive action that has sought to cor­rect some of the racial imbal­ances in schools and work­places for hun­dreds of years.
If the robed mon­archs were men and women of integri­ty, the affront might have been more palat­able and digestible.
But they are not. Bit by bit, tiny drips of infor­ma­tion are begin­ning to seep out from this walled-off citadel of duplicity.
We are learn­ing of lav­ish trips paid for by wealthy oli­garchs, col­lege tuition paid by wealthy friends, refusal to recuse them­selves from cas­es they are hear­ing con­nect­ed to peo­ple they have accept­ed lav­ish gifts from, and lav­ish vaca­tions, and that is only a tiny drip of what is being revealed to the American pub­lic that has become increas­ing­ly wary of this body.
This body con­tin­ues to claim it has no army to enforce its rul­ings and relies on the con­sent and acqui­es­cence of the American peo­ple for its valid­i­ty and legitimacy.
It is a lie!!!!
It cre­at­ed the anti-American doc­trine of “qual­i­fied immu­ni­ty’ that has turned what now obtains for law enforce­ment into an aggres­sive, vio­lent, racist organ of oppres­sion against Americans of col­or and poor white people.
It is time for this ille­git­i­mate court to come under the checks and bal­ances that forms a safe­guard of the American demo­c­ra­t­ic sys­tem. The coun­try can ill-afford to have a group of unelect­ed cor­rupt bureau­crats mak­ing deci­sions inju­ri­ous to the peo­ple while claim­ing they are not sub­ject to the rules the rest of us must live by.

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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.

• Supreme Court Justice Clarence Thomas dis­sent­ed in Thursday’s 5 – 4 rul­ing on Allen v. Milligan.
• He wrote a near­ly-50-page dis­sent about his dis­agree­ment with the ruling.
• Thursday’s rul­ing found that Alabama vio­lat­ed the Voting Rights Act’s ban on racial gerrymandering.

Supreme Court Justice Clarence Thomas wrote a scathing, 48-page dis­sent in the court’s rul­ing that Alabama vio­lat­ed a ban on racial ger­ry­man­der­ing. The Supreme Court ruled 5 – 4 on Thursday, hold­ing a low­er fed­er­al court’s deci­sion that Alabama vio­lat­ed the Voting Rights Act with con­gres­sion­al dis­tricts that dis­crim­i­nate against Black vot­ers in the state by large­ly clump­ing them togeth­er into one dis­trict. The sur­prise rul­ing pre­vent­ed the court from gut­ting the Voting Rights Act of 1965. Chief Justice John Roberts and Justice Brett Kavanaugh, both con­ser­v­a­tives, joined the Supreme Court’s lib­er­al-lean­ing jus­tices in the ruling.
Thomas was one of four con­ser­v­a­tive jus­tices who opposed Thursday’s rul­ing. In his dis­sent­ing opin­ion, Thomas wrote that the court’s deci­sion has turned Section 2 — the part of the Voting Rights Act that bans ger­ry­man­der­ing based on race — into “noth­ing more than a racial enti­tle­ment to rough­ly pro­por­tion­al con­trol of elec­tive offices — lim­it­ed only by fea­si­bil­i­ty — wher­ev­er dif­fer­ent racial groups con­sis­tent­ly pre­fer dif­fer­ent candidates.” 

Thomas said the Voting Rights Act does­n’t require Alabama “inten­tion­al­ly redraw its long­stand­ing con­gres­sion­al dis­tricts so that black vot­ers can con­trol a num­ber of seats rough­ly pro­por­tion­al to the black share of the State’s pop­u­la­tion.” “If it did, the Constitution would not per­mit it,” he wrote. More dra­mat­i­cal­ly, Thomas said he would have ruled that the Voting Rights Act had no pow­er at all to pre­vent state leg­is­la­tors from racial­ly ger­ry­man­der­ing dis­tricts — group­ing minor­i­ty votes along racial lines to dilute their power. 
Thomas said he’s “long been con­vinced” that the Voting Rights Act only reg­u­lates vot­ers’ abil­i­ty actu­al­ly to get to the bal­lot or cast it. The ger­ry­man­dered maps were used in the 2022 elec­tion. Republicans won all six non-Black-major­i­ty con­gres­sion­al dis­tricts. The sole Black-major­i­ty dis­trict went to Democrats. Alabama will now need to redraw its elec­toral maps.

Former PNP Member of Parliament and Minister of National Security KD Knight recent­ly asked a Judge for per­mis­sion to sit dur­ing the start of court ses­sions in which an offi­cer declares the pro­ceed­ings open.
Knight, as many peo­ple are, is uncom­fort­able with the idea of ask­ing God to save the King. Parish Judge Maxine Ellis did not grant Knight’s wish, upon which he told the judge that he would not be there for the open­ing of the court, which the judge agreed to. This was no great com­pro­mise as there is no rule that makes it manda­to­ry for a lawyer to be present in court for the open­ing proceedings.

Knight has had the title of Queen’s Counsel for years now; how­ev­er, since the pass­ing of Queen Elizabeth and the ascen­sion of Charles to the British throne, that title became King’s Counsel. Pressed by Journalists as to his rea­son for not relin­quish­ing the title ‘King’s Counsel’, Knight said the fol­low­ing.‘There is no oth­er appro­pri­ate or accept­able way, at this time, of address­ing senior lawyers”. 
This made me laugh. These peo­ple, even those who are so-called edu­cat­ed, are so hung up on titles and for­mal­i­ties that they miss the for­est for the trees. Why is it impor­tant that peo­ple know that you are a senior lawyer? I believe every­one can see that you are damn old. Give me a f*****g break, dude.
KD Knight is a bril­liant Attorney who ought to know bet­ter. However, indoc­tri­na­tion and social­iza­tion into the colo­nial way of think­ing are still evi­dent even when we try to extri­cate our­selves from the same indoc­tri­na­tion and socialization.

KD Knight is per­fect­ly right about not want­i­ng to pray for God to save the King. He is also cor­rect about the injus­tices met­ed out to our peo­ple for hun­dreds of years by the very same British Monarchy, but the court is hard­ly the place to make a stand. Inside the court is hard­ly the hill KD Knight should wage this fight.
“The only save I would like God to save him is to allow him and the monar­chy to adhere to Christian prin­ci­ples, one of which is ‘Render unto Caesar the things that are Caesar’s’, and they have things for us that they need to give. I don’t want any mon­ey from them,” Knight said. “My race has a right to repa­ra­tion, and I don’t want them to give a mil­lion dol­lars here and a bil­lion dol­lars there. I want them to give three things. I want them to deal with health, because they suf­fered bad­ly, my fore­par­ents. I want them to put in place in the coun­try a First World health sys­tem which includes build­ings, equip­ment and trans­porta­tion. I want them to deal with edu­ca­tion because they had me on a farm when I should be in school and there­fore I want a First World edu­ca­tion sys­tem. We need a prop­er rail and trans­porta­tion sys­tem. When we tried to run away, they chased us with dogs, and they had their guns, and we felt inse­cure.” Knight said.

Knight’s argu­ment to the court was mis­placed and is bet­ter served in edu­ca­tion­al forums in which he, as a senior mem­ber of the bar, can effec­tive­ly edu­cate the pub­lic on the neces­si­ty for not just a new con­sti­tu­tion but for repa­ra­tions from the British Monarchy.
Let us hope the bril­liant KD, as we affec­tion­ate­ly call him, will be an inte­gral part of the dis­cus­sions around a new con­sti­tu­tion and what will be in it…

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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.