They Cannot Compete With Us"

 🇹🇷Turkish General’s Bold Message on !srael: “They Cannot Compete With Us — We Are Not Like Other Countries”

Retired Turkish Lt. Gen. Zekai Aksakallı, former commander of Türkiye’s Special Forces, has delivered a strong assessment of Türkiye’s military capabilities in relation to Israel.

Speaking during a CNN Türk broadcast at the TEKNOFEST Mavi Vatan event, Aksakallı said: “Israel does not have the capacity to compete with us. We are not like other countries.” Turkish media reported that he was discussing Türkiye’s growing military capabilities and transformation of its domestic defence industry.

Aksakallı also highlighted Türkiye’s transformation over his roughly 26 years of experience in conflict and crisis environments, recalling that Turkish forces had significantly fewer capabilities when he began his career. He contrasted that period with Türkiye’s current defence-industrial capabilities and technological development.

The remarks represent Aksakallı’s personal assessment rather than an independently verified comparison of the overall military capabilities of Türkiye and Israel.

Source: Yeni Şafak, reporting on Aksakallı’s CNN Türk remarks; TRT World for his military background.

ICC gets Sanctioned

The US Treasury sanctioned International Criminal Court President Tomoko Akane on Tuesday.

Any assets she holds in the United States are now frozen, and she’s largely cut off from the American financial system. Senior ICC trial lawyer Abdoulaye Seye got hit with the same penalties.

Secretary of State Marco Rubio broke the news on social media, saying the administration was sanctioning Akane and Seye “in our unwavering mission to protect Americans from this sham of a court.” Akane, a Japanese judge who has led the ICC since March 2024, and Seye, a Senegalese trial lawyer, will be barred from transactions with any US person or entity starting September 17. In practice the reach goes further than the legal text. Banks tend to treat sanctioned officials as untouchable, severing ties well beyond what’s technically required to avoid getting caught up in US penalties themselves. This is the latest move in a campaign the Trump administration has run against the court since February 2025, when it first sanctioned ICC officials over the arrest warrants for Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu and former Defense Minister Yoav Gallant. Those warrants, issued in November 2024, accused the two of war crimes and crimes against humanity in Gaza. More than a dozen ICC judges and prosecutors have now been sanctioned. Rubio called the court “a corrupt and fatally politicized supranational court that has maliciously abused its authority and exceeded its mandate.” The ICC answered the same day, saying the sanctions “undermine the rule of law” and warning that threatening judges for applying the law puts the entire international legal order at risk. REMEMBER: the US signed the Rome Statute that created the ICC back in 2002 but never ratified it, so it was never bound by the court’s jurisdiction to begin with. Israel isn’t a member either. Neither is Russia, which didn’t stop the ICC from issuing a warrant for Vladimir Putin in 2023 over the war in Ukraine. Washington had no objection to that one tho. The sanctions are drawing legal challenges on multiple fronts. In June, three ICC judges sued the Trump administration, calling the measures “arbitrary and capricious.” Last week, four human rights groups filed a separate suit in a New York court, arguing the sanctions block victims of war crimes from pursuing justice through the court at all. Akane addressed the earlier round of sanctions back in February 2025, saying she regretted an order that would harm the court’s independence and “deprive millions of innocent victims of atrocities of justice and hope.” The institution she leads was built as the legal answer to the world wars and the Holocaust. Now its own president can’t hold a bank account in the country that helped write the treaty that created it.

Imran khan

Imran Khan, the former Pakistan prime minister and legendary cricket captain, will be moved from his “death cell” in prison to hospital amid concerns about his health.

The Supreme Court of Pakistan ordered on Tuesday that Khan, 73, should be moved to hospital, having been in jail for the last three years for a string of cases following his ousting as prime minister in 2022⤵️

https://www.telegraph.co.uk/cricket/2026/08/18/imran-khan-to-leave-death-cell/?WT.mc_id=tmgoff_fb_photo_khan-to-leave-death-cell/

Burnham is not the change. He is the adjustment.

 #Burnham is not the change. He is the adjustment.

This is the necessary interval in which the public is taught to forget how power changed hands. First there is confusion, then repetition, then acceptance. 

The questions become tiresome: how did he become Prime Minister, who chose him, when did the country consent? Eventually the machinery of politics depends on one thing above all, that nobody asks anymore.

“Yesterday it was extraordinary. Today it is explained. Tomorrow it will be remembered as inevitable. Then Parliament will reconvene, the benches will fill, the rituals will resume, and we will all go along as before.”

That is how managed democracy hardens into obedience. Not with jackboots at the door, but with a new face on the screen and a population encouraged to move on.

Tony Benn understood that the management team could change while the system remained untouched.

Paul Knaggs, The Heartlands Tribune

Manchester with massive support from the streets

Today in Manchester with massive support from the streets. Israel is now exposed. Noone can deny Israel's genocide of the Palestinians in Gaza and Israel's 78 year ethnic-cleansing of all of Palestine. For the British establishment to still support Israel as a psychopathic mass murderous 'ally' - an outpost to watch over the Middle East's oil and gas is an ugly complicit disgrace. Now even moreso given Israel's succession of attempts to drag the US and Britain into forever wars that kill millions and end in destruction, failure and everyone's living costs going through the roof. The only money being made is fo

r Oil barons and weapons profiteers while everyone else suffers. The 21000 children murdered in Israel's live-streamed genocide in Gaza should be enough for the world to have enough of Israel and all the horrors they've brought about for decades. The peoples of the world have woken up to Israel's undeniable crimes and it won't be long until everyone cuts and runs from the genocidal Israeli regime.

Palestine

 Im drawing a line on accepting certain connection requests now. I will not tolerate the idol worship 🇸🇦🇦🇪🇶🇦🇲🇦🇵🇰 of those complicit in the occupation, ethnic cleansing, & genocide of Palestine 🇵🇸 on my feed, this includes all those still silent while posting about their lives as if the world is normal.

After three years of horror and a century of pure evil, I am disgusted by what I am seeing everyday, and that so few are calling it out. To see "Muslims" remain silent on Palestine 🇵🇸, while proudly flaunting their admiration for #hypocrites—dazzled by the materialism & greed 🤑 of this Dunya—is physically nauseating 🤢, even non-Muslims are ashamed of you!!! As Allah SWT warns us in the Qur'an: 📖 "And whoever is an ally to them among you – then indeed, he is [one] of them." (Surah Al-Ma'idah, 5:51). Feel free to unfollow or disconnect, I will not be your ally in hell🔥!