Saint-Denis Mayor Bally Bagayoko said National Rally politicians should be banned from speaking in public over supposed racist rhetoric.
The post Far-Left Mayor Bagayoko Calls for Censorship of Marine Le Pen’s National Rally appeared first on Breitbart.
It’s the elephant in the international living room
By Kevin Barrett | October 28, 2026
On February 28, the US and Israel launched an unprovoked attack on Iran, killing its Supreme Leader alongside many other officials—and around 160 civilians, mostly schoolgirls, at Minab. The attack was an extreme case of the supreme war crime: aggression. Attacks on civilian targets are, of course, also highly illegal. The US and Israel routinely target civilians and civilian infrastructure, and Trump even brags about it.
Western media, dominated by co-ethnics of the genocidal pariah state of Israel, paints black as white, up as down, freedom as slavery, ignorance as strength, and victims as perpetrators. Though the media won’t say it plainly, Israel is the world’s worst outlaw nation in every possible way, including its de facto national mission of the genocide of Palestine and invasion of neighboring states, its outrageous terrorism and torture, its hundreds of ongoing violations of UN resolutions and international law, notably its flaunting of the Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty (NPT) and its threatening the whole world, including ostensible allies, with the nuclear “Samson option”—while whining about Iran’s NPT-compliant civilian program.
The US, too, is a serial international outlaw, kidnapping and murdering leaders of sovereign nations, shredding the Geneva Convention and the UN Convention Against Torture at Guantanamo Bay and elsewhere, refusing to recognize ICC jurisdiction, repeatedly threatening dozens of nations with aggression, refusing to allow delegations access to the UN, and on and on.
By contrast, Iran is one of the most law-abiding states in the world. It hasn’t attacked another nation in centuries. It signed and complies with the NPT, despite being repeatedly attacked, and threatened with nuclear weapons, by the US and Israel.
But Iran insists on the equal application of international law. If Saddam’s attack on Kuwait (and before that Iran) was aggression, so are US attacks on Iran, Iraq, Libya, Syria, Venezuela, and elsewhere. If Iran must abide by the NPT, so too must Israel. If Turkey can charge service fees at the Bosporus and Dardanelles, Iran and Oman can charge similar fees at the Strait of Hormuz. If apartheid was unacceptable in South Africa, its vastly worse equivalent is unacceptable in Occupied Palestine. And if “Responsibility to Protect” law enforcement interventions are necessary, obviously the first group on Earth that needs one is the Palestinians.
In a recent seminar I argued that Iran should do its best to highlight the fact that it supports and abides by international law, while the US and Israel do not. It’s a true, powerful message, and it isn’t getting through the deaf ears of Western mainstream media. But if Iran repeats this talking point often enough and loudly enough, some of it will penetrate the world’s consciousness through social media and other alternative channels.
What follows is an extract from a seminar I recently joined on this topic.
-KB
ODVV.org
On Monday, 19 October 2026, the Organization for Defending Victims of Violence (ODVV) held an online webinar titled “War, U.S. Sanctions, and Human Rights: The Humanitarian Impact on Iran.” The discussion examined the humanitarian consequences of U.S. sanctions and military attacks against Iran, the question of international accountability, possible avenues for legal action, and the role of media narratives in shaping public understanding of war.
Dr. Kevin Barrett, an American writer, journalist, and political commentator, holds a Ph.D. in Arabic and Islamic Studies from the University of Wisconsin–Madison. His work has addressed the Middle East, international politics, media narratives, and the political and humanitarian consequences of war.
Professor Alfred-Maurice de Zayas is an international lawyer and Professor of International Law and History at the Geneva School of Diplomacy. From 2012 to 2018, he served as the United Nations Independent Expert on the Promotion of a Democratic and Equitable International Order. He previously held senior positions at the Office of the UN High Commissioner for Human Rights and served as Secretary of the UN Human Rights Committee and Chief of its Petitions Department. His contribution to the webinar focused on the legal status of unilateral coercive measures, their humanitarian consequences, and possible avenues for accountability.
The views expressed by the speakers are their own and do not necessarily reflect the official position of the Organization for Defending Victims of Violence.
Kevin Barrett: Sanctions, Civilian Harm, and the Definition of Terrorism
Barrett began by discussing the definition of terrorism. He described it as violence against civilians intended to create fear and achieve political or ideological objectives. Applying this definition to the issues under discussion, he argued that U.S. sanctions and military attacks on civilian targets should be examined in terms of the harm they inflict on ordinary people. He maintained that restrictions affecting access to medicine, medical equipment, and food place pressure directly on the civilian population. Barrett said he viewed these measures as an effort to make life increasingly difficult for Iranians and to pressure them into accepting political change.
Addressing the 40-day war against Iran, Barrett referred to the attack on the Minab school and the deaths of schoolchildren, as well as reported attacks on residential buildings, bridges, railway stations, communications towers, desalination and water facilities, wheat storage facilities, healthcare sites, and energy infrastructure. He characterized these as attacks on civilian infrastructure. He also described public threats by Donald Trump against Iran’s bridges, electricity grid, water facilities, and energy infrastructure as threats to commit war crimes.
During the question-and-answer session, Barrett was asked whether international courts could provide a meaningful path to justice when powerful states refuse to comply with international law. He criticized the practical limitations of the International Criminal Court and the International Court of Justice in compelling the United States to accept adverse decisions. However, he clarified that this did not mean the courts should be abandoned. In his view, submitting evidence and pursuing legal cases remain important because they document alleged violations and bring them to the attention of global public opinion.
Barrett also emphasized the importance of presenting Iran consistently as a party seeking the equal application of international law. He argued that documented accounts of civilian harm, supported by independent reporting and public advocacy, could help challenge selective media narratives and strengthen demands for accountability…
Read the whole post at ODVV.org
Al Mayadeen | October 27, 2026
Palestinian National Initiative Secretary-General Mustafa Barghouti told Al Mayadeen after “Israel’s” election that “Netanyahu has fallen” and that “the era of Smotrich and Ben-Gvir is over.”
He hailed the Arab electorate for its stand “against fascism,” and said divisions within the right-wing camp had weakened Netanyahu’s bloc, leaving the remaining parties to determine the next political steps.
Warnings on the road ahead
Barghouti warned that if former military chief Gadi Eisenkot fails to ally with Arab parties, “Israel” could face another election or a zionist unity government. He said that regardless of who leads the next Israeli government, Palestinian statehood remains off the table, and that the most dangerous scenario would be Netanyahu’s government continuing as a caretaker administration.
On Gaza, he said US President Donald Trump’s Board of Peace has failed to bring peace to the besieged territory, and that the election result would have repercussions there. He expressed distrust of Trump and said that if the US president loses his congressional majority, it would be a “positive development” for Palestinians.
What the exit polls show
Exit polls after Tuesday’s vote showed Netanyahu’s right-wing and religious bloc at about 50 seats, down from the 64 it won in 2022. Eisenkot’s opposition bloc was at 51 to 53 seats, and both fall short of the 61 needed for a majority.
Likud was projected as the largest single party, with 24 to 25 seats against 21 to 23 for Eisenkot’s Yashar party, though a pro-Netanyahu channel, Channel 14, gave the prime minister’s camp 60 seats.
Arab parties, the Joint List and Ra’am, were projected to win a record 16 to 18 seats, nearly double their 10 in the outgoing Knesset, on turnout that reached a three-decade high.
Eisenkot said the exit polls reflect “a complete lack of confidence” in Netanyahu, but he has ruled out a government that depends on Arab parties, and other opposition leaders have said the same.
Finance Minister Bezalel Smotrich said his party “won’t let” Arab voters celebrate, and National Security Minister Itamar Ben-Gvir warned Netanyahu against a unity government with Eisenkot.
Gaza and the Board of Peace
The Gaza ceasefire took effect on October 10 last year, but more than 100 aid and rights groups said earlier this month that it is a ceasefire “in name only.”
Gaza’s Health Ministry has said at least 1,471 people were killed between the ceasefire and early October. In August, Netanyahu rejected the Board of Peace’s 15-point roadmap, which Hamas had accepted, effectively bringing the initiative to a standstill.
When the final results are in, Israeli President Isaac Herzog will consult representatives of all the parties in the Knesset and then task whoever he thinks is best placed with forming a government.
Marine Le Pen blasted French newspaper that published a false claim that an alleged terrorist had party flyers in his car.
The post ‘Blatant Disinformation’: French Newspaper Falsely Reported ‘Terror Gunman’ Had Le Pen Leaflets appeared first on Breitbart.
An independent review into Henry Nowak’s murder announced by Home Secretary Shabana Mahmood will investigate whether police failed to act on his Sikh killer's obsession with religious knives over racism fears.
The post Review into Murder of Henry Nowak to Examine if Racism Fears Played Part in Police Conduct appeared first on The Daily Sceptic.
By Arman Shariati | Press TV | October 26, 2026
Israeli regime’s airspace – the airspace over the occupied territories – is widely regarded as among the most heavily defended in the world.
Yet the scale of its protection cannot be explained by Israeli military technology alone. Russia, China and even the United States do not benefit from an equivalent network of allied support dedicated to intercepting threats before they reach their territory.
Israel’s own defenses are indeed formidable. Arrow 3 is designed to intercept ballistic missiles outside the atmosphere, while Arrow 2 targets ballistic missile threats within it. David’s Sling is built to counter medium-range threats, and Iron Dome intercepts rockets and other short-range projectiles.
These systems are backed by fighter jets and an extensive radar network, creating multiple layers of protection against incoming attacks.
But Israel’s air defense shield extends well beyond its own arsenal. From October 2023 through Iran’s retaliatory missile and drone operations in 2024, 2025 and 2026, a group of allied states has played an active role in protecting the regime.
They have provided interceptors, radar capabilities, fighter aircraft, military bases and personnel, helping the Tel Aviv regime detect, track and counter incoming threats.
What emerges is not simply a domestic air-defense network, but a wider umbrella sustained by the resources and involvement of powerful allies – from the US to Europe to Arab countries.
This ironclad commitment of regional and extra-regional countries to Israel’s protection has come at a considerable cost.
The price goes well beyond dollars and shekels. It includes depleted weapons stockpiles that could take years to replenish, damaged radars and military bases, soldiers killed or wounded, and governments facing domestic political backlash for a costly partnership that much of their own public fiercely opposes and protests against.
The burden, however, is not shared equally. The United States has shouldered the largest financial and military inventory costs. The Persian Gulf monarchies and Jordan have faced intense operational demands and direct security risks. European states have incurred more limited but still significant costs, particularly in munitions and the political fallout from a war that has driven up energy prices and compounded the cost-of-living pressures facing their populations.
The Israeli bill
The Israeli regime’s direct costs are the easiest to track because they fall on its own treasury. In April 2024, after Iran launched a large number of drones and missiles at the occupied territories, Brig. Gen. Reem Aminoach, an economic adviser to a former Israeli military chief of staff, estimated in an interview with Ynet that defending against the attack that night had cost 4-5 billion shekels, or roughly $1.1–$1.35 billion at the exchange rate at the time.
Haaretz later put the total cost of defending against the same retaliatory attack at around $1.5 billion. That was just one night. Many more retaliatory strikes have hit the occupied territories since then.
The cost structure follows a clear logic. Iran uses inexpensive drones and mass-produced missiles, while Israel relies on some of the world’s most expensive interceptors to defend against them.
This disparity lies at the heart of the war’s financial burden. Israel’s broader budget picture adds another dimension. Sustained, high-intensity defensive operations have forced the regime to spend far more than it did previously.
With a net budget of about 60 billion shekels in 2023, the Israeli military could not sustain repeated nights of interceptions without substantial increases in funding and continued US support.
Israel has been able to sustain this costly imbalance largely because of extensive financial backing from American taxpayers. Much of its interceptor production is funded or co-developed through US programs, and the Arrow missile defense system is produced with American participation.
US Congress has also repeatedly approved emergency supplemental funding for Israeli missile defense. These ties mean that Israel’s financial burden and America’s are deeply interconnected and difficult to separate, which explains the public anger in the US.
The American inventory crisis
No country has spent more on Israel’s defense than the United States, and no factor is more consequential than the state of its interceptor stockpiles. Washington may be willing to spend the tens of billions of dollars required to protect their genocidal ally, but willingness alone cannot resolve the US military’s primary challenge: replenishing its dwindling missile interceptors.
The Center for Strategic and International Studies (CSIS), an American think tank, has published some of the most widely cited public estimates of US missile interceptor inventories.
Its analysis, updated following the 40-day war against Iran, found that American Patriot and THAAD inventories had declined dramatically.
According to CSIS estimates, the US inventory of Patriot interceptors fell from approximately 2,330 before the war began on February 27, 2026, to between 759 and 827 by July 27, 2026, marking a decline of roughly two-thirds.
The THAAD inventory also dropped sharply, falling from an estimated 452 interceptors before the war to between 239 and 257 by July 27, representing a decline of approximately 43 to 47 percent.
Many military experts believe CSIS’s estimates are overly optimistic. Some, for instance, argue that the United States may have fired as many as 290 of its roughly 360 THAAD interceptors during the early phase of the war. That would amount to more than 80 percent of its pre-war stockpile.
Whatever the exact figures, Washington’s decision to prioritize Israel’s defense has left the US military dangerously underprepared and more vulnerable to another round of war if it breaks out.
The cost of replenishing stockpiles
The US Army’s FY2027 figures put the unit cost of a PAC-3 MSE interceptor at roughly $5 million and that of a THAAD interceptor at nearly $12 million.
Based on these figures, replacing the Patriot and THAAD interceptors expended would cost an estimated $10 billion. The Congressional Budget Office has offered a higher estimate, putting the cost of replacing the depleted interceptors at approximately $13.1 billion.
Iranian Foreign Minister Abbas Araghchi in recent remarks noted that the US spent about $11 billion on missile defense for Israel over three years. In a post on X, quoting a tweet of a former Obama administration official, he said US forces had fired 609 interceptors in defense of the Israeli regime between October 2023 and June 2026, including SM-2, SM-3, SM-6, Patriot, and THAAD missiles.
The naval picture
The US Navy’s missile interceptor inventories are also under severe strain. The SM-3 and SM-6 are among the principal naval weapons used to counter ballistic missiles and other high-speed threats.
Public estimates vary widely, with some reports placing combined naval inventories in the low hundreds. A figure of 150–200 for the two interceptor types combined is plausible as a rough order of magnitude, but no precise public count is available.
The broader concern is that naval interceptors are expensive and slow to manufacture, while the Navy must preserve sufficient stocks to address other potential threats, including those posed by China and Russia. Every interceptor expended in the defense of Israel is therefore one fewer available for other contingencies until it can be replaced.
Not all US and allied defenses against Iran relied on ground-based or naval interceptors. Fighter jets also engaged Iranian drones using air-to-air missiles, including the AIM-9X and AIM-120. The AIM-9X reportedly costs several hundred thousand dollars per missile, while the AIM-120 AMRAAM costs more than $1 million.
Using such expensive weapons to destroy drones that cost only thousands of dollars compounds the economic imbalance, even when the immediate tactical objective is achieved.
The trade-off
By the final phase of the 40-day imposed war, following the initial ceasefire, it had become clear that US commanders were holding back dedicated SM-3 and THAAD interceptors rather than expending them to protect American bases in Jordan and elsewhere.
Footage of nighttime defensive missile launches appeared to show almost exclusively Patriot interceptors, with only one exception. The implication was stark: stocks had dwindled to the point where US commanders could no longer afford to use these missiles freely.
The apparent logic was to preserve the remaining interceptors for a larger war, prioritizing the future defense of Israel over the immediate protection of American service members.
That decision carried its own cost. Aircraft on the ground were hit, and US personnel were killed in some of the retaliatory attacks. This matters because it illustrates the full price of managing depleted stockpiles. A shortage of interceptors weakened the US military’s defensive capacity across multiple theaters, leaving American personnel exposed to attacks that more robust defenses might have helped repel – all in the effort to protect the Israeli regime.
Cost, however, is only part of the problem. Production capacity is the more consequential constraint in a prolonged campaign.
Patriot and THAAD interceptors are manufactured in limited quantities, and expanding output takes time.
CSIS estimates that restoring Patriot and THAAD inventories to their pre-war levels will take at least three years. Interceptors ordered in fiscal year 2027 are not expected to arrive until 2029, leaving a prolonged gap between expenditure and replenishment.
The China and Asia-Pacific dimension
The most serious long-term cost to the United States may emerge far from the West Asia region. As US interceptor stocks are depleted in the region, the Pacific is left more exposed.
The Indo-Pacific is where Washington faces its most formidable strategic competitor. Taiwan’s defense depends in part on US air and missile defenses, while Pentagon war plans for a potential war with China assume that American forces can withstand and respond to large-scale missile attacks.
If SM-3, SM-6, and Patriot inventories fall to a fraction of their previous levels, the margin for absorbing such an attack narrows considerably. A few hundred interceptors would be insufficient to sustain even several days of high-intensity combat in East Asia.
The extent to which US military capabilities in the South China Sea and across East Asia have been weakened cannot yet be quantified.
Nevertheless, the underlying concern is widely recognized among defense analysts: a shortage of interceptors in one theater affects the military’s ability to respond in every theater, and the Pacific is particularly difficult to reinforce quickly.
Persian Gulf states and early-warning network
The Persian Gulf monarchies and Jordan contributed to Israel’s defense in a different but equally consequential way.
Their role was not primarily to supply interceptors, but to provide sensors, airspace access, military bases, and the political authorization needed to put these assets to use.
Missile defense depends on early warning. A THAAD battery cannot intercept a missile it has not detected, and detection depends on radars capable of identifying and tracking threats at sufficient range and speed. The AN/TPY-2 radar used by THAAD is a large, transportable system. The US Missile Defense Agency’s 2025 budget puts the cost of each unit at approximately half a billion dollars.
In March 2026, during the first days of the 40-day imposed war of aggression, the American THAAD radar at Muwaffaq Salti Air Base in Jordan was struck and destroyed. Imagery showed craters around the site, suggesting that multiple strikes may have been involved.
Buildings housing similar radar systems were also hit at two locations in the United Arab Emirates. Another THAAD radar, at Prince Sultan Air Base in Saudi Arabia, was destroyed as well.
Iran also targeted and struck the AN/FPS-132 early-warning radar in Qatar, which was used to track Iranian missile launches.
Taken together, these incidents point to a broader pattern of Iranian retaliatory attacks on US-aligned early-warning radars and THAAD sites across the region.
This interpretation is consistent with the available satellite imagery, which indicates that the campaign extended beyond individual military installations to the sensor network underpinning regional missile defense that has been at the service of the US and the Israeli regime.
Such radars are expensive and exceptionally difficult to replace. Their value lies not only in the hardware itself, but also in their integration with interceptor batteries and the data links connecting them to other sensors.
Destroying a single radar can compromise an entire interceptor network’s ability to detect and track threats approaching from a particular direction. Replacing these systems can take months or even years, and rebuilding them does not necessarily restore the coverage they previously provided.
Radar losses therefore carry a strategic cost as well as a financial one. Once a radar is destroyed, the states that depend on it must decide whether to rebuild it at an exposed location, relocate it, or accept a gap in their defensive coverage.
By providing Israel and the United States with tracking data on Iranian projectiles, Arab monarchies exposed themselves to Iranian retaliation and risked becoming direct targets in a war they had helped shape.
These losses also raised questions about Saudi Arabia’s vulnerability as the wider regional confrontation extended to other fronts.
Yemen is a prominent example. Damage to radar and air defense assets across the Persian Gulf may have further complicated Saudi Arabia’s position in its prolonged war against Yemen.
Although the Ansarullah-led Yemeni military possesses independent capabilities, and Saudi Arabia’s difficulties in Yemen stem from numerous military, political, and strategic factors, the decision to contribute to Israel’s defense added another layer of risk for the Persian Gulf monarchies.
Their involvement exposed critical military infrastructure to retaliation and potentially weakened their ability to respond to threats beyond the immediate confrontation with Iran.
Jordan’s exposed position
Jordan’s case is perhaps the most striking because of its small military and fragile economy. The country hosts US occupation forces, including a THAAD battery at Muwaffaq Salti Air Base, and lies along the flight paths of missiles and drones traveling between Iran and the Israeli-occupied territories.
During Iran’s 2024 retaliatory strikes, Jordan’s air force was reported to have intercepted many of Iranian drones and missiles crossing its airspace. The Jordanian government defended these actions as necessary to protect its territory and citizens – a lame justification.
For a country with limited military resources, however, the cost was significant: every interceptor fired and every fighter jet scrambled placed additional demands on an already constrained defense budget.
The political cost was even greater. Jordan has a large population of Palestinian origin, and public opinion is strongly sympathetic to Palestinians in Gaza and the occupied West Bank as well as the Axis of Resistance.
Jordan’s decision to intercept Iranian projectiles launched in retaliation for Israeli strikes proved controversial domestically, with Jordanians slamming their government for helping protect the Israeli regime.
Jordan made this choice despite facing its own concerns about Israel’s regional ambitions. Members of Israel’s ruling regime have openly advocated annexing the occupied West Bank, while some have promoted proposals that would displace Palestinians into Jordan.
This context makes Amman’s involvement in regional missile defense particularly sensitive. The country faces the dual risk of Iranian retaliation against US military assets on its soil and growing domestic anger over its role in protecting Israel.
Jordan’s economic vulnerabilities compound these pressures. Public debt, energy costs, and the burden of hosting refugees already strain its finances. Against this backdrop, even a relatively modest additional military expenditure can have significant consequences.
Jordan’s experience illustrates how participation in regional missile defense can impose not only military and financial costs, but also serious domestic political risks.
Europe’s price
European states paid in a different currency. Most did not expend large numbers of interceptors against Iranian drones, but their involvement carried costs across three main areas: munitions, military operations, and the economic shock of the war imposed on Iran.
France deployed air assets to the region to intercept drones and missiles over the Eastern Mediterranean and the Levant. Some reports suggested that French stocks of air-to-air missiles, including the MICA, came under strain.
Such shortages would be significant, given France’s other military commitments. Its air force and weapons inventories are already stretched across support for Ukraine, operations in the Sahel, and the maintenance of its own strategic deterrent. Each additional deployment reduces the resources available for other missions.
Britain used its bases in Cyprus, including RAF Akrotiri, as well as its military presence in the Persian Gulf, to support operations against Iran. Reports indicated that RAF aircraft intercepted drones and missiles. The British armed forces are considerably smaller than they were at the height of the country’s military power, and sustained operations of this kind consume substantial flying hours, spare parts, and personnel capacity.
Europe’s greatest burden, however, has been economic and political. Closure of the Strait of Hormuz and the collapse of Persian Gulf energy exports drove up oil, gas, and diesel prices.
Europe’s dependence on imported energy meant that the shock quickly fed into household bills, transport costs, and food prices. Many European governments were already grappling with public dissatisfaction over the cost of living before the 40-day war. The war intensified those pressures as is evident now with protests raging across European countries.
European governments that committed military resources to Israel’s defense and offensive operations now face a difficult question: will their own citizens view that commitment as a principled security measure or as complicity in policies that have contributed to worsening economic conditions?
There is no straightforward answer, but the issue has become part of Europe’s domestic political debate. The costs of defending Israel have reached far beyond the battlefield, affecting budgets, energy security, and public confidence in government policy.
Defending the indefensible
The costs of protecting Israel have been substantial, although they have fallen unevenly across the countries involved.
The United States has spent billions of dollars and depleted significant portions of its advanced interceptor stockpiles, with replenishment expected to take years. The Persian Gulf states and Jordan have suffered damage to radar and air defense assets while assuming additional security risks.
European countries have borne the costs of munitions and military operations, alongside an energy shock that has intensified public anger over the cost of living.
Yet the financial figures tell only part of the story. The more fundamental question is whether the policies driving these expenditures serve the interests of the governments and populations bearing the costs.
The costs are real and continue to mount: public expenditure, depleted interceptor stockpiles, damaged radars and military bases, and the heightened risk of retaliation against countries drawn into a war beyond their borders. Meanwhile, rising fuel, food, and housing costs have placed additional pressure on ordinary households, deepening public frustration with government decisions.
Israel’s regional military campaign has drawn its partners further into a confrontation whose consequences extend well beyond the immediate battlefield. For these governments, the challenge is no longer simply how to sustain their support for Israel, but how to justify its mounting costs to their own populations.
The question is how much more they are willing to spend, how much additional risk they are prepared to accept, and how long their citizens will continue to support a policy whose burdens are becoming increasingly difficult to ignore.
corbettreport | October 23, 2026
This week on Sunday(?) Update: RFK Jr. spars with his arch-nemesis RFK Jr. on vaccines; Bibi unveils his latest map; and Seinfeld is a racist!
By Robert Inlakesh | Palestine Chronicle | October 25, 2026
Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu has declared a new military operation in the occupied West Bank to collectively punish the people of al-Khalil, all in the lead-up to the scheduled national elections early next week. Is the Premier playing with fire?
Following years of ever-escalating settler violence and the intensification of Israel’s military occupation across the occupied West Bank, two Palestinian men in their twenties – Hamouda and Firas al-Ja’ba – decided to carry out a resistance operation against an Israeli army guard post.
The two resistance fighters carried out their attack, injuring four Israeli soldiers and killing two, using pistols and a rifle near the Farsh al-Hawa checkpoint in al-Khalil. The Israeli army called in backup, leading to an armed clash in which both of the Palestinians were killed during a 20-minute clash.
From the CCTV footage of the clash, it appears as if the two Palestinians were not professionally trained and acted alone. No Palestinian movement claimed the attack, although it was widely praised. Israel was quick to blame Hamas and then launch a new military campaign targeting the entire city of al-Khalil.
There are a number of reasons that the attack, which, although the most significant carried out in the West Bank in over a year, is not exactly unusual, has been reacted to in the way we see today.
One reason for this enormous overreaction is that Netanyahu is looking for a boost in the polls. He evidently believes that by launching a brutal crackdown in the West Bank, his population will respond positively and he may win some more votes come Tuesday.
This is why the Israeli Prime Minister claimed that the planned campaign against al-Khalil will be an operation “unlike any seen since the Six-Day War”. He is trying to play on Israeli nationalism, referencing the June 1967 war, during which the Israelis occupied the West Bank, Gaza, East Jerusalem, the Golan Heights and Sinai Peninsula. Evidently, this is hyperbole, but it doesn’t mean that the campaign will not be brutal.
Another reason why the attack has been transformed into such a major issue is that it is massively embarrassing to both the Israeli army and Netanyahu personally. Although the two Palestinian fighters do not appear to have had any professional training and did not act on behalf of any resistance group, the Israeli media, military, and government are saying the opposite.
The Israelis are claiming that Hamas was involved; they are also spinning a hero story that by calling in backup they managed to thwart a much larger attack that was planned on Israeli settlers and that what happened was actually a success story of sorts.
This is because the truth exposes the unprofessionalism and cowardice of the Israeli occupation soldiers. Two untrained individuals managed to kill a Staff Sergeant and a Sergeant, injured four others, while all the female soldiers on scene hid from the attackers. In addition to this, it took 20 minutes for them to take care of the threat posed to their forces; they also needed to call in backup despite clearly outnumbering the two gunmen already. Accepting the reality would mean accepting that the army is pretty incompetent, and the Israeli public will believe any narrative that allows them to ignore this truth.
Another element of this is that if you tell the public that the Israeli army managed to thwart a major attack, it shows that under Netanyahu’s leadership, he has learned the lesson from October 7, 2023. The narrative being sold to Israelis is that now the army is acting pre-emptively; it is launching a major campaign to prevent another major attack like the one that happened on October 7. Israelis also simply enjoy watching Palestinians suffer.
However, by launching such a collective punishment campaign, there is a chance that the Israelis could end up getting burned, even if not immediately. West Bank Palestinians have been placed under tremendous pressure; by launching an intensive campaign of this nature, it could end up pushing some people over the edge.
Although the rhetoric surrounding the campaign suggests that the Israeli military is seeking to turn the largest populated city in the occupied West Bank into Gaza, this is unlikely to be what they will do. Instead, they will carry out raids, make life an inconvenience, even more than before, likely killing some innocent people while kidnapping random Palestinians while going through their neighborhoods.
The most intensity will be focused on a few specific neighborhoods that will get the worst treatment. But escalating too hard, too fast, could end up triggering a unifying event, especially due to the Israeli soldiers being psychotic and not even following their own rules. Ultimately, it is because of the checkpoints, killings, torture, and daily harassment that Palestinians carry out resistance attacks like the one we saw this Friday morning.
It is only a matter of time until the pressure being placed upon the people of the West Bank will explode. What makes this predicament starkly different from that of Gaza is that when the situation deteriorates, the Israelis have already entrenched themselves so deeply within that territory that they are extremely exposed.
Netanyahu loves to pledge his intentions to collapse the Palestinian Authority (PA) and annex the West Bank, but this is just posturing for gullible Israeli fanatics who don’t understand how everything works. If the PA does collapse and there is a push to annex the territory officially, then the settlements will be indefensible.
Just as the Israeli public truly believes that they have “the most moral army on earth”, they also believe that they are physically superior too. The former is about as accurate as the latter.
During the Gaza Genocide, the West Bank strategy has been to subdue the Palestinians through brute force and to collaborate with the PA in order to ensure there is no major uprising. It has, until now, worked. However, that strategy of constant torment and increasing pressure also “worked” until October 7, 2023.
People will not live under such horrendous conditions forever; it is only a matter of time before the situation there dramatically changes. Such a shift could occur over something relatively small. When you constantly play with fire, you get burnt.
If the West Bank’s population were to enter a sustained popular uprising, the Israeli military would struggle to subdue it. In the event that other fronts of its regional war were to open, this could be a major strategic catastrophe.
– Robert Inlakesh is a journalist, writer, and documentary filmmaker. He focuses on the Middle East, specializing in Palestine.
Press TV – October 25, 2026
Iranian Parliament Speaker Mohammad Baqer Qalibaf says a United Arab Emirates diplomat’s bid to become the next United Nations secretary-general aims to clear the diplomatic runway for Israel’s expansionist and aggressive ambitions under the so-called “Greater Israel” scheme.
Qalibaf made the remarks in a post on X on Sunday, saying UAE Minister of State Lana Nusseibeh’s candidacy for the UN’s top job also aims to whitewash Israel’s “systematic genocide” against Palestinians in the Gaza Strip.
He added that defending the Gaza tragedy had become a résumé for the UAE’s decision to seek the UN post, drawing a comparison between the country’s pursuit of the position and a fox seeking a job guarding a henhouse.
“Defending the Gaza tragedy is the résumé; the fox is updating the LinkedIn profile to apply for the henhouse guard job,” the top Iranian parliamentarian wrote.
Qalibaf’s post came after Nusseibeh announced her candidacy for the post of United Nations secretary-general on Wednesday, becoming the first woman to seek to lead the world body in its 80-year history.
Nusseibeh, a former UAE ambassador to the UN for more than a decade, brings Palestinian roots and defense of her country’s historic relations with Israel to her candidacy.
She has also faced sharp criticism over the UAE’s alleged role in backing paramilitary fighters who have killed thousands in Sudan’s civil war. The UAE has denied the claims.
In a post on her X, Nusseibeh said she is entering the race because the UN needs to act more urgently, bring people together, and drive the work forward until it produces concrete results.
“That is how we rebuild trust in the United Nations and ensure it delivers meaningful change for the people it exists to serve,” she wrote.
More than 74,000 Palestinians, mostly women and children, have been killed in Gaza since October 7, 2023, when the Israeli regime launched its genocidal war on the beseiged territory.
The Premier League has declared that matches will be stopped if racist taunts are heard from fans. When did grown men become so sensitive to hurty words at football games, asks Steven Tucker.
The post Let’s Kick Anti-Racism Out of Football appeared first on The Daily Sceptic.
By Wyatt Reed | The Grayzone | October 23, 2026
Israeli soldiers have looted and demolished the family home of Radwan Mortada, a prominent Lebanese investigative journalist who directed the recent viral Al Jazeera 360 documentary “The Trap.” The film exposes the surreptitious network and planning behind Israel’s notorious pager attack, which left hundreds of Lebanese citizens wounded and maimed, and has become one of the channel’s most-watched in recent history.
Israel’s destruction of Mortada family home on October 17 has drawn condemnation from at least one international press freedom group, the Committee to Protect Journalists. On October 21, the organization issued a statement declaring that it “strongly condemns the Israeli military’s demolition of journalist Radwan Mortada’s family home in southern Lebanon. Just three weeks earlier, Mortada released an Al Jazeera documentary on the Israeli 2024 pager attack. In the days leading up to the demolition, Israeli soldiers launched a sound bomb, a tank tore down the entrance, and soldiers looted personal belongings. CPJ fears this destruction is in retaliation for Mortada’s work, marking another dangerous violation of international law and disregard for the press.”
Lebanese journalist Radwan Mortada's investigation into Israel’s pager attacks is one of Al Jazeera most-watched documentaries
Mortada tells The Grayzone's @wyattreed13 how he tracked key players in the attack and got a hold of an unexploded pager
Watch our full interview
— The Grayzone (@TheGrayzoneNews) October 14, 2026
Speaking to The Grayzone, Mortada recalled how he learned that Israel’s military forces destroyed the estate he and his family had painstakingly constructed over almost a decade.
Pillaged and burned
“The story began on Friday, when someone sent me a photo of an Israeli Merkava tank parked right next to my house. A few days earlier, Israeli soldiers had arrived in a pickup truck and looted the contents of the house. And they destroyed the entrance” to the building as well, Mortada recounted.
“It never crossed my mind that they would plant explosives inside and blow it up, especially since my house is not in the Israeli-occupied area, there are no military positions nearby, and it is not a combat zone.”
Nevertheless, “at around 4 am on Saturday, they blew it up. I woke up to phone calls from neighbors in the village telling me, ‘The Israelis have blown up your house.’” Cell phone photos and footage confirmed the distressing news, he says.
“My village, Aita al-Jabal, is not under Israeli occupation, and my house is not within the so-called yellow line,” Mortada explains. There were no clashes or military activities in the area, he notes, and no military facilities or positions anywhere nearby. It is, he says, “a purely residential area.”
“Most importantly, the house was not destroyed by an airstrike or during any military confrontation,” he continues. “Israeli soldiers physically entered the property, planted explosives inside the house, and deliberately blew it up.”
While Mortada acknowledges he has no “concrete evidence” that Israel destroyed his family home in retaliation for the success of his documentary, he tells The Grayzone, “I do have suspicions, mainly because of the way the house was destroyed.”
Unlike other houses in the area that were damaged by airstrikes or shelling, Mortada notes, his house was deliberately blown up with explosives planted inside it. Israeli soldiers had occupied the house for several days before looting it and destroying it, video reviewed by The Grayzone shows.
“What makes this particularly suspicious is that my house is not in an Israeli-occupied area, nor is it within the so-called yellow line,” he says. “It is nowhere near a frontline or an active combat zone.”
He lamented, “Israeli hatred and vindictiveness seem to know no bounds.”
Mortada’s home in Aita al-Jabal was located approximately 4 kilometers outside of the so-called “Yellow Line,” a supposed buffer zone Israel unilaterally declared in Lebanese territory which it claims to be clearing of Hezbollah. If Israel’s soldiers didn’t simply rob and demolish the estate out of spite, it could signal an expansion of the areas Israel is targeting.
The first sign of trouble came when Israeli occupation forces assaulted a caretaker who had been living at the house with his family, looking after the garden, Mortada noted. “Israeli soldiers launched a stun grenade at him to force him and his family to leave the property.”
The grenade “was essentially a warning to the caretaker to leave the property with his family. Around the same time, Israeli forces also targeted a water tanker that was delivering water to the house. These incidents made it clear that they wanted him and his family to leave,” he says.
It’s a familiar feeling for hundreds of thousands of Lebanese civilians who’ve been forced to flee the region. Meanwhile, senior Israeli officials have spent months openly boasting of their efforts to destroy every Lebanese home south of the Litani River, and compare the campaign favorably to their systematic annihilation of Gaza. “All houses in villages near the Lebanese border will be destroyed, in accordance with the model used in Rafah and Beit Hanoun in Gaza,” Israeli defense minister Israel Katz declared in March.
In August, Katz deemed his mass displacement project – dubbed “Operation Silver Plow” – a success, crowing that residents of 24 villages in southern Lebanon now “have nowhere to return to; everything there has been destroyed.”
Now, the boasts have grown even bolder. With blue-and-white flags continuing to appear throughout swathes of occupied southern Lebanon, Israel’s leaders have eagerly provided live commentary of the slow-motion genocide. As an adoring audience cheered inside Israel’s Channel 14 studios on October 17, 2026, Katz declared that the number of villages annihilated by his forces had grown to 60. “Every single village — we’re talking about 23,000 homes — is in ruins.”
For Mortada, Israel’s aggression speaks for itself. “I believe Israel is undoubtedly carrying out a campaign of ethnic cleansing in southern Lebanon,” he says. “The objective, in my view, is clear: to prevent the people of southern Lebanon from returning to their villages and their land.”
In the past, “Israel at least attempted to justify its actions by claiming that it was targeting Hezbollah fighters or military positions. Today, however, it has become utterly brazen. Israeli officials openly speak about displacing the population, while their forces systematically destroy homes, infrastructure, and even bulldoze roads.”
“This is not simply about military operations. I believe it is a deliberate attempt to make entire villages uninhabitable and force their residents off their land permanently.”
“Perhaps, ultimately, this is also part of a broader ambition to realize the ideological vision of a so-called ‘Greater Israel,’” Mortada adds.
‘More than a home’
Combined with his testimony, photos of the now-destroyed home give a small glimpse of the loss incurred by the Mortada family when occupying Israeli soldiers seized everything of value and carried out a controlled demolition of the building.
“This house was much more than a home to us. It was a place where three generations of our family’s memories came together.”
When Mortada’s father, Nizar, returned to Lebanon after two decades spent working in Libya, “his dream was to build a peaceful home where he and my mother could grow old together, surrounded by family and the land he had always loved.”
“He chose that particular spot for a very personal reason: There were several olive trees he had planted with his father, my grandfather, when he was just a little boy.”
With his golden years approaching, Mortada’s father expressed a desire to build his home beside those same trees. “For him, it was a way of returning to his childhood, his roots, and the memory of his own father,” he explains.
Mortada explained that the home also “carries the memory of my brother Ali,” who died in 2016 at age 29. Ali suffered medical malpractice after having contracted a bacterial infection during Beirut’s garbage crisis, a tragedy which Mortada says “reflected the corruption and failure of Lebanon’s political system.”
When Mortada family buried Ali in the village of Aita al-Jabal, the family resolved to build a home that would keep his memory alive, and bring them together in their time of grief. “Until then, my siblings, Jawad and Nada, and I had never felt such a deep connection to the village,” Mortada said. “Losing Ali changed that. We wanted to be close to him, and building the house became our way of keeping that connection alive.”
The family broke ground on the house in March 2016, shortly after his death.
Having “always loved traditional Lebanese architecture,” Mortada wanted the house to preserve as much as possible of the country’s rapidly-disappearing aesthetic traditions. “At a time when beautiful old houses were being demolished to make way for concrete buildings, we did the opposite,” he says. “We collected stones and architectural elements from ruined heritage homes and used them to create something beautiful again.”
The family spent nearly eight years working on it, carefully considering every detail.
“I approached the process as though I were painting a picture,” Mortada recalls. “It was a labor of love, and we poured so much of ourselves into it.”
His wife, Nahod, recalled her husband’s excitement in a social media post explaining the significance of the home that Israel demolished later that day: “When I told my husband that I was pregnant with my first child, he was silent for a few seconds. His pupils were shrinking, he seemed to be doing a precise calculation. “When you give birth, the house will be finished,” he said with an enthusiasm I had never heard before.”
“He meticulously attended to every detail, carefully selected the furniture, altered some of the rooms to suit his unborn child, and even built a chicken coop “so my children can experience village life.””
In addition to paying tribute to the memory of his brother, the lovingly-constructed house was also the culmination of a lifetime of hopes and dreams of the entire family, Radwan Mortada tells The Grayzone.
“For my father, the house represented the peaceful retirement he had worked so hard for. For my mother, it was a family home filled with love. And for my siblings and me, it was a place where we could feel close to Ali,” he says.
“That is what the Israeli soldiers destroyed. Not simply walls and furniture, but a home built around the memories of people we loved, including those who are no longer with us.”
Compounding the pain of the loss of the family home, Mortada says, is “the feeling of abandonment” by the country’s leaders, who were imposed on Lebanon’s populace by the United States and Saudi Arabia in an effort to force Beirut to normalize relations with Israel. He names Lebanese President Joseph Aoun and Lebanese Prime Minister Nawaf Salam as among those principally responsible for the impunity enjoyed by Israel as it bulldozes dozens of villages in the South.
“The Lebanese government has done virtually nothing to protect the people of southern Lebanon or provide meaningful support to those who have lost their homes. People feel they have been left entirely on their own. We have seen no serious action capable of stopping the destruction, nor an adequate diplomatic or legal response, even at the level of the UN Security Council.”
“I believe what is happening in southern Lebanon amounts to ethnic cleansing. Homes are being destroyed, villages are being emptied, and people are being prevented from returning to their land, while the international community remains largely silent.”
“We can rebuild a house. We have done it before, and I hope we will do it again. But how do you replace the years, the memories, and the love that went into creating it?”
“My father wanted to spend his final years beside the olive trees he planted with his father as a child. My siblings and I wanted to have a home near the grave of my brother, and I wanted my children, Faya and Azer, to grow up there, surrounded by our family’s memories. Is that too much to ask?”
Question power. Follow the evidence. Challenge the machinery of empire. The Grayzone, founded by Max Blumenthal, delivers independent investigations and sharp analysis of politics, war, and empire—subscribe, share its reporting, and support its work.
The Cradle | October 23, 2026
Cyprus hosted the leadership of the pro-Israel US lobbying group, the American Israel Public Affairs Committee (AIPAC), in Nicosia on 21 October, pledging to deepen the island’s ties with Israel and the US.
Outgoing AIPAC president Bernard Kaminetsky and his successor, Yehuda Neuberger, led the delegation to the presidential palace for talks with Cypriot President Nikos Christodoulides.
The talks focused on accelerating the 3+1 Mechanism, a partnership binding Cyprus, Greece, Israel, and the US to coordinate on energy, security, and infrastructure.
AIPAC, in return, pledged to keep championing Cypriot interests in Washington.
Meanwhile, pro-Israel lobbies have been embedding themselves inside the Cypriot and Greek parliaments, with Israel Allies Foundation (IAF) launching caucuses in both legislatures to bring lawmakers into line with Israel’s regional agenda.
IAF president Josh Reinstein unveiled the Cypriot caucus on 14 October after meeting Christodoulides, explicitly pitting the initiative against Ankara by branding Turkiye a “common enemy” of Israel and Cyprus.
Cyprus’s main left-wing opposition party condemned the MPs for turning parliament into a lobby for Israel amid its ongoing genocide in Gaza, while in Greece, one left-wing party warned that it would turn parliament into a tool for whitewashing war crimes.
Israel’s deepening ties with Greece and Cyprus have developed over the past decade into a strategic alignment that combines energy cooperation, military coordination, and shared opposition to Turkish maritime claims in the Eastern Mediterranean.
The US has encouraged the relationship through the 3+1 format, which brings Washington into the Israel–Greece–Cyprus trilateral partnership and frames it as a vehicle for regional stability, energy security, and cooperation among “like-minded” partners.
Through the arrangement, Israel gains a gateway to European markets through Greece and Cyprus, along with diplomatic backing in disputes over offshore gas fields.
Athens and Nicosia, in turn, receive Israeli military technology and a partner against Turkiye’s assertive stance on maritime zones, airspace, and the divided island of Cyprus.
Washington, meanwhile, sees the axis as part of a broader effort to anchor energy routes and security cooperation in the Eastern Mediterranean while reducing reliance on rival powers, even as the US courts Ankara with offers of F-35 sales and sanctions relief.
Israeli hostility toward Ankara, and its efforts to curb Turkish power, stem from fear that Washington’s growing dependence on Turkiye will erode Israel’s regional dominance.
Despite the friction, Turkiye continued to serve as a conduit for Azerbaijani crude to Israel through the Baku–Tbilisi–Ceyhan Pipeline (BTC) and Ceyhan Port, even after cutting direct trade in May 2024 and throughout Israel’s genocide of the Palestinians in Gaza.
Oxfam pays white staff 33% less on average than ethnic minority colleagues while Cancer Research UK and the British Red Cross aren't far behind, despite commitments to equality and fairness.
The post Oxfam Pays White Staff 33% Less appeared first on The Daily Sceptic.
By Philip Giraldi • Unz Review • October 21, 2026
If one were seeking to create something like a modern-day folk tale based on current realities and having the theme of “good versus evil” there are any number of real-life narratives available that could be exploited to invite speculation on actual environments that might have served as models for the fiction. I have found much of the bizarre and blood-soaked evil relationship between the United States and Israel, which serves no US interest at all, to be one such arrangement in which two countries have through their own behavior become the most hated in the world. They have successfully established an odd partnership based largely on a common view of which other nations they hate and would like to destroy.
One must consider the monstrous joined-at-the-hip relationship between Washington and Tel Aviv, which is likely soon to become a true military and policy partnership by act of Congress. It will leverage the already existing ability of tiny Israel to manipulate and dominate the large and powerful United States. And there is also something else that should be reckoned with in the arrangement, and that is melding of the desire of the two countries to dominate not only their neighbors but also far beyond that. One can cite the aberrations in behavior that reveal how neither government wants to get along with other nations except in those rare cases where America and the Jewish state are accepted and even honored in spite of not being bound by any rules, decency or even democratic norms.
A prime example of how the completely murderous pathology that guides both President Donald Trump and Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu that has come to dominate the relationship surfaced last week when Trump endorsed Netanyahu in the upcoming Israeli election. It was a case of two completely evil men finding common ground to congratulate themselves and advance their respective careers, which nearly all of the rest of the world would like to terminate!
Both men are in trouble with their respective electorates in large part because their obsession with endlessly killing anyone annoying be it in the Caribbean or Gaza, has become suspect, largely because the killing is without any actual objective and no real good comes out of the process. This is particularly true for voters in the US who have suffered the bullying by Israel and its domestic Lobby and also bear the tax burden and shortages that are the only fruit that falls from the trees of the conflicts. In Israel the equation is somewhat different as 90% of the Jewish voters want to eradicate even more Muslims and Christians and fully support a new Prime Minister who will kill even more of the vermin.
Observe what a brain dead Trump has to say about his good buddy Netanyahu in a shared phone call in which they first exchanged pledges that they would soon “finish the job,” the “job” in question being the “extermination” of Iran and most particularly its government. Bibi told Trump “Donald, we have a job to finish. You said it, and we’ll finish it together. We’ll finish it, and no one else will do it.” Bibi explained later how “I have spoken about this with President Trump more than once, including the day before yesterday… Finishing the job means bringing down the terrorist regime in Iran. It is the head of this poisonous octopus. You cut it off, and it will fall. We will also have peace with Lebanon. We must complete the elimination of the Iranian regime — that is the primary objective.”
Trump then responded in kind, telling Netanyahu that “You’re a warrior, and you’ve been treated unfairly by your country and from some others … but you’re a great warrior, and we will prove that. We will prove that very soon. I think you’re terrific, Bibi … You’re the man I want by my side, Bibi.” On Truth Social Trump later elaborated how “Bibi Netanyahu has been a Great Warrior Prime Minister and an even greater Partner for Peace in combatting the Islamic Republic of Iran.” He is “Strong, Brave, and Brilliant, the kind of Partner that the United States of America is demanding of Israel, a Country for which it has done so much.”
Clearly Netanyahu wants to get reelected to stay out of jail for corruption, apart from anything else, and he knows that unconditional support from the United States is essential to achieve that end and keep the wars in Lebanon, Syria and Iran going. What the two monsters were pledging was the total destruction of a nation of 90 million people that prior to the war initiated by Israel and the US had not threatened in any way either nation. That means it was per the Geneva Convention a war crime and besides which it is a violation of the War Powers Act and the US Constitution that Trump had sworn to support. Israel was admittedly the driving force behind the war against Iran, which has done huge damage to the world economy, because it saw the country as a political-military competitor in the Middle East region and Netanyahu was able to convince a stupid and willfully ignorant Trump that the war would be over in a week or two, a walk-over.
In a move that is being interpreted as an additional American support for Netanyahu in the upcoming election, US Secretary of War Pete Hegseth made an unannounced visit to Israel on Monday and met with the Prime Minister. The talks reportedly took place at the Ovda Air Base in southern Israel, where US refueling planes and fighter jets are deployed. Hegseth also met with some US troops. As Netanyahu and President Trump have discussed the possibility of restarting the full-scale bombing campaign against Iran the appearance and timing of the Hegseth visit, as he is the strongest supporter of resuming strikes on Iran within the administration, suggests that the war will soon be resuming.
Beyond the depressing likelihood that the war against Iran will soon start up again, there is the language employed by Trump, which as usual is inane. So Bibi is a “great warrior”? That comes from a draft dodger who avoided US military service in 1968 not for any moral reason but because it was inconvenient for him so his father arranged for a Jewish doctor to fake the records for a medical deferment. Trump had “bone spurs,” a condition largely unheard of in the real world before Trump came up with it on paper. And now the draft dodger is praising a “great warrior” who sends his men and women out to shoot three year olds as part of a regime that has been killing children systematically and without any consequences since the conflict with Gaza began.
And, unfortunately, the bad news is still coming. There is no doubt Trump has been the most servile president in US history when it comes to his constant supporting Israel even when it carries out genocide and kills American citizens. Trump has never failed to obey Netanyahu, but, it must be observed, he has only done slightly more so than Biden and the Democrats did when they preceded him in office. So one should have doubts that a possible change-over in the US Congress and Senate, where Israeli flags can be seen flying in some of the offices, is going to make much difference when it comes to the United States “standing with our best friend and closest ally Israel.”
Philip M. Giraldi, Ph.D., is Executive Director of the Council for the National Interest, a 501(c)3 tax deductible educational foundation (Federal ID Number #52-1739023) that seeks a more interests-based U.S. foreign policy in the Middle East. Website is https://councilforthenationalinterest.org address is P.O. Box 2157, Purcellville VA 20134 and its email is inform@cnionline.org.
Boomer and Gen X 'progressives' have been conditioned to view mass immigration through the outdated lens of 1980s race politics and much smaller 20th century flows, preventing constructive debate, says Andrew Devine.
The post Gen X and Boomer ‘Progressives’ Are Conditioned to Support Open Borders appeared first on The Daily Sceptic.
Meet Shareefa Energy, the partly taxpayer funded poet who kicked Reform's Rupert Matthews out of an anti-racism workshop allegedly because he was white. Though on this evidence, 'poet' is stretching it, says Steven Tucker.
The post She’s Not a Poet and She Doesn’t Even Know It appeared first on The Daily Sceptic.
Mississippi just said a cop was justified in killing 1-year-old Kohen Wiley, and that no one will be held accountable in the suspicious death of 18-year-old Nolan Wells.
Prince Williams, an organizer with the Party for Socialism and Liberation in North Carolina, and Jaden Foy, a student organizer at NC State, join Zoe Alexandra and Rania Khalek to explain why hundreds of HBCU students across five Southern states walked out of classes on the 60th anniversary of the founding of the Black Panther Party to demand justice for Nolan, Kohen, and all the Black youth robbed of their futures by militarized police. Williams and Foy react to Monday’s ruling that the Senatobia police officer was “justified” in firing into the car where Kohen Wiley sat on his mother’s lap, while responding to a call over the suspected shoplifting of diapers at Walmart.
They draw a line from these deaths to Emmett Till and Mississippi’s long history of racist killings covered up as “accidents.” And they make the case for why the South needs a third reconstruction built by organizing – not just voting.
“Those in power are telling us that the murder of a 1-year-old isn’t criminal… What is criminal conduct in this country?” Watch full episodes of BT Live, join breakthroughnews.org as a member today! #breakthroughnews
On Monday, Mississippi Attorney General Lynn Fitch ruled that the police shooting of 1-year-old boy Kohen Wiley was a "justified" use of force. Kohen was fatally shot in June, outside of a Walmart, as cops investigated his mother and her friend for stealing diapers. Fitch didn't explain the reasoning behind the decision or what evidence was considered in a case that has sparked national backlash.
According to a June 14 statement from the Mississippi Bureau of Investigation (MBI), officers from the Senatobia Police Department (SPD) and Tate County Sheriff's Office were responding to a shoplifting call when "officers encountered two subjects and a juvenile child fleeing from the store into a vehicle." They "attempted to stop the vehicle, but the driver drove in the direction of the officers, almost striking one," and the officer then "discharged their weapon and the vehicle fled the scene." The family went to a local hospital, where 1-year-old Kohen Wiley was pronounced dead.
Kohen's mother, Vellesiya Wiley, has a different version of events, which she outlined in a video on X following the tragedy. She said that after police tried to stop her friend (the driver) outside the Walmart, Wiley continued to go to her car, saying the interaction had "nothing to do" with her. Once she got into the car, her friend arrived and began to back out of the parking spot. Then officers came over to the car, drawing their guns. She says that after she raised Kohen to show him to the officers and try to defuse the situation, they opened fire. "[The police] tried to say that [my friend] forcefully was trying to drive and hit them, but they was all on the right side, and she was driving towards the left….They personally just shot at the car," she said. In the months since the incident, the family held several rallies, demanding justice for Kohen's death.
The tragedy of the shooting has been compounded by a lack of transparency from the SPD, as well as alleged expert analysis that counteracts the MBI's statement. According to reporting from Mississippi Today, Ben Crump, a civil rights attorney who is representing the Wiley family, claims that an independent autopsy conducted by forensic pathologist Robert Mitchell indicates that the bullets entered through the front passenger door, rather than the windshield, suggesting that the officer wasn't in the vehicle's path when he discharged his gun.
In response to Fitch's announcement on Monday, Crump released a statement asking, "How can anyone accept that conclusion when Kohen's family and the public still have not been allowed to see the body-camera footage?"
"If the footage supports the state's decision, release it. We will not stop fighting until this family gets the truth," he added. To this point, the SPD has declined to release the footage, saying it's standard procedure during an ongoing investigation.
Crump was also keen to point out complaints of racism in the SPD: "This is a department whose chief was fired after reports of racial slurs in his text messages, and whose officer faced a complaint alleging a racially offensive remark two days before he shot Kohen."
The SPD's chief at the time, Harold Vanderford, was unceremoniously fired after journalists from Mississippi Today, The New York Times, and Verite News revealed a slew of racist text messages he sent. According to reporting from Verite News, in one of the messages he said he "almost beat a nigger and white woman's ass a few minutes ago." Senatobia's Board of Aldermen rejected his attempted resignation and voted to fire him instead on September 1.
Crump also cited a complaint filed by Officer Dexter Smith, who claimed that Sergeant Hunter Foster, the officer who shot Kohen referred to him as "a black motherfucker" on June 12, just two days before the incident. According to reporting from Mississippi Today, Smith's complaint states that he was filling out paperwork in the booking room when he heard Foster say, "Who is this Black motherfucker back there?" to his colleagues. Smith claims to have had almost no relationship with Foster prior to the encounter.
It's hard not to feel outraged considering that this little boy lost his life over something as trivial as shoplifting—a misdemeanor in Mississippi that does not justify use of lethal force, as Reason's Joe Lancaster wrote in June—and for diapers no less. With the bodycam footage yet to be released, all the public is left with is the state's word that the investigation found no wrongdoing. Given the multiple instances of racism within the department, it shouldn't come as a surprise if the public isn't content to take them at their word.
The post Mississippi A.G. Says Killing of 1-Year-Old Boy Over Stolen Diapers Was 'Justified' appeared first on Reason Magazine.
By Larry C. Johnson – SONAR21 – October 20, 2026
Washington and Israel are talking again about “finishing the job” in Iran. Before they do, someone should take a hard look at the bill for the jobs already done. My friend Karl Miller, who has called this region correctly more often than most of the people paid to do it, sent me his latest assessment on Monday. His conclusion is blunt: on the current course, another round of escalation is coming, and the countries paying for it will be the ones that never got a vote.
The Gulf is being bled dry
Start with the people who are supposed to be America’s partners. The IMF’s October outlook reads like a casualty report. Kuwait’s economy is forecast to shrink 16.7 percent this year. Qatar’s will shrink 15.6 percent, and Bahrain’s 11.3 percent. The UAE, long sold as the region’s safe haven, is now expected to contract 3.9 percent, a seven-point swing from the IMF’s April forecast. Saudi Arabia is forecast to shrink 3.3 percent. The only Gulf economy still growing is Oman, and that is because its ports sit outside the Strait of Hormuz.
These are not paper losses. Qatar lost two LNG trains at Ras Laffan in March, about 17 percent of its export capacity. QatarEnergy says the repairs will take three to five years and will cost it roughly $20 billion a year in revenue. Saudi Arabia’s escape route around Hormuz, the East-West Pipeline to Yanbu, is crippled. My sources tell me four of its 11 pumping stations are severely damaged and out of service. Riyadh now projects a deficit of 4.9 percent of GDP, is borrowing to cover it, and has frozen non-essential spending.
Miller explains why this is worse than the headline oil price suggests. A damaged plant produces nothing to sell, but the payroll, the debt payments and the repair bills keep coming. A plant that is still standing but cannot get parts in or cargo out is in almost the same position. A $108 barrel of oil is worth nothing if you cannot ship it. And the cash the Gulf states used to invest at home and abroad is vanishing fast. If a government takes in 100 and must spend 70, it has 30 left over. Cut income to 80 and that cushion drops to 10. A 20 percent hit to revenue wipes out two-thirds of the money for everything else.
The Gulf states bought American protection to safeguard exactly this wealth. Instead, as Miller puts it, they have ended up paying for the costs of American strategy. That is a bargain they will not keep making forever.
A new round means a deeper shortage
Now consider what another round of American and Israeli strikes would do to a world that is already short of energy. Oil flows through Hormuz are running around 11.6 to 11.9 million barrels a day, against a pre-war level of about 17 million. Middle Eastern fuel exports are below half of what they were before the war. The International Energy Agency says diesel will stay tight well into 2027, and that the diesel stocks already burned will not be rebuilt before the second half of that year. Brent is around $108, up more than 75 percent from a year ago.
Every escalation so far has followed the same pattern. Iran answers by tightening its grip on Hormuz. Its allies in Yemen widen their target list. Gulf facilities that were patched together get hit again before they earn back the cost of repairing them. That is the cruelest part of Miller’s analysis: repeated attacks make repairs pointless, because nobody will spend billions restoring a plant that may be destroyed again next month. A new campaign will not reopen the Strait. It will close it further, take more Gulf capacity offline, and push diesel back toward September’s record of more than $200 a barrel, just as Europe heads into winter. France and Italy are already rioting over the cost of living. Imagine them in February.
Israel’s dark future
Miller’s harshest judgment is reserved for Israel, and it deserves a full hearing. He believes Israel will never recover from what it has done in Gaza, which a UN commission of inquiry concluded last year was genocide. In his words, the state is “done economically. It is done politically. It is done morally.” That is strong language, but the argument behind it is not hysteria. It is about how a state wears itself out.
His reasoning runs like this. Israel’s leadership has bet everything on military domination: hit every opponent hard enough that no one dares resist. Force can win battles, but it cannot make anyone accept the result. Every campaign therefore creates the need for the next one. Opponents rebuild, resentment grows, and the circle of countries willing to stand with Israel gets smaller. So the government doubles down with more force, because the alternative, accepting real limits on occupation and on its treatment of the Palestinians, threatens the political project it is defending. War becomes a way to postpone the reckoning, not avoid it.
The cost is already showing. The IMF says Israel’s economy is about 9 percent smaller than it would have been without the war. The budget deficit is heading to 6.2 percent of GDP, and public debt is on track to reach about 74 percent of GDP by 2031. Reservists are pulled from their jobs again and again. Israelis are already fighting over who carries the burden, with ultra-Orthodox men still far less likely to work or serve than everyone else. Foreign investors and partners grow more cautious with each campaign. Miller’s warning is that Israel’s project could become unsustainable long before its military power runs out. A country can keep its tanks and jets and still lose the economy, the alliances and the legitimacy it needs to survive. That is the dark and uncertain future he sees, and I find it hard to argue with.
Trump says Russia is doing nothing. Lavrov says otherwise.
Which brings me to the President’s latest reassurance. On October 13, Donald Trump said he does not believe either Russia or China is helping Iran. On Sunday he went further on social media, insisting that “Russia is doing very little to help the Islamic Republic of Iran, compared with what it could be doing,” if it is doing anything at all, and that he wants it to stay that way “unless some stupid people get in the way.”
Less than a day later, Russian Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov stood next to Iran’s Foreign Minister Abbas Araghchi in Tehran and said the opposite. “I am confident that Iran’s cause, like Russia’s, is a just cause,” Lavrov declared. He said Russia “has no intention of abandoning the implementation of agreements with Iran in the economic and investment spheres,” and recommitted Moscow to the 20-year strategic partnership that formally took effect on October 2. He announced that Russian specialists will return to the Bushehr nuclear plant. He called for Hormuz to return to pre-war conditions, and tied that to protecting Iran from renewed attacks. Before landing in Tehran, he called Trump’s approach “wrong.”
To be fair to the President, Russia has not gone to war for Iran, and the partnership treaty does not require it to. There is no mutual-defense clause. But that is a lawyer’s distinction. Russia’s foreign minister does not fly into a capital under threat of attack to call its cause just by accident. Add the reported Russian satellite data reaching Iran’s allies and the steady improvement in the accuracy of Iranian and Houthi missiles, and the picture is of a partner that is careful, deniable and very much engaged. Moscow does not need to fire a shot. It only needs to keep Iran standing while America bleeds its Gulf allies and Europe’s economy.
The bill comes due
If Washington and Israel launch another round, they will be betting that this time force produces a settlement. Three years of evidence says it will not. What it will produce is deeper Gulf recessions, a longer energy shortage, more anger in Europe’s streets, and a bigger bill for an Israel that is already running out of room. Miller’s forecast is that the next round is coming anyway. I hope he is wrong this time. I doubt it.
Login