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Pompeo warns ICC of 'consequences' for potential war crimes probe of Israel


The Times of Israel
Sat, 16 May 2020 18:54 UTC
pompeo
© Kevin Lamarque/Pool Photo via AP
US Secretary of State Mike Pompeo on Friday warned the International Criminal Court against asserting jurisdiction over Israel, saying the United States will "exact consequences" for any "illegitimate" investigations.

The ICC's prosecutor's recent decision to accept "Palestine" as a state with the status to file a complaint could lead to a potential investigation into alleged war crimes by Israel in the West Bank and Gaza Strip.

"The International Criminal Court is a political body, not a judicial institution. This unfortunate reality has been confirmed yet again by the ICC Prosecutor's attempt to assert jurisdiction over Israel, which like the United States, is not a party to the Rome Statute that created the Court," read Pompeo's statement.
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Question

Why do people plead guilty to imaginary crimes?

TheDarkMan
The Duran
Sun, 17 May 2020 17:07 UTC
Brian Banks
© Brittany Murray / Staff Photographer The Duran
Brian Banks is an innocent man as he walks out of the courthouse flanked by his parents, Jonathon Banks and Leomia Meyers. Judge Mark C. Kim of the Long Beach Superior Court exonerated Brian Banks, 26, who was wrongly convicted of the rape and kidnapping of a high school acquaintance following a consensual encounter on the campus of Long Beach Polytechnic High School in 2002. For the last five years Banks has been wearing a ankle bracelet GPS tracker and had to register as a sex offender. Now Banks hopes to make up for lost time and possibly join the NFL.
There have been countless cases of people confessing to crimes they didn't commit, including under torture or simply intense psychological pressure. Sometimes the psychological pressure isn't that intense. History offers many examples. The witchcraft trials of the 1600s saw people, mostly women, confessing to crimes they had not only not committed but were clearly imaginary.

In England, the Pendle Witch Trials of 1612 saw women confessing to impossible crimes, while the 1682 case in Scotland of Issobell Gowdie and her accomplice Janet Breadheid saw a four day long confession by the former to renouncing her baptism to the Devil, being baptised in his name, and even having sex with him, his being "abler for them sexually than any man could be. His members were exceeding great and long, but he was as heavy as a sack of malt and as cold as ice."

The above quote is taken from the 1975 book Why Men Confess by O. John Rogge.

The same author covers the Moscow purge trials of 1936-8; there were 16, 17 & 21 defendants respectively, including former members of Lenin's Politburo. They all confessed, one even explained that he hadn't been drugged or hypnotised. He said that if he had to be executed he would rather die a good Bolshevik.
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Eye 1

H.R. 6666: The $100b contact tracing bill is really about controlling/tracking the population

Ben Swann
Truth In Media Project
Tue, 12 May 2020 16:59 UTC
Ben Swann
© Truth in Media/YouTube
Ben Swann, director of the Truth in Media Project
A House resolution from Illinois Democrat Rep. Bobby Rush that would put Big Government in charge of tracking citizens' movements as they relate to COVID-19 mitigation efforts — even sending health bureaucrats to "individuals' residences," "as necessary," as the legislation states

Ben Swann comments:


Comment: Big Brother/Fascism has formally arrived, wrapped in 'concern' for your health.Trampling your rights is just an unfortunate side effect. Welcome to the world of government-approved, government-paid snitches. The East German Stasi of old would be green with envy.

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Bad Guys

Afghan President Ghani, political rival Abdullah agree on power-sharing deal


RFE/RL
Sun, 17 May 2020 16:23 UTC
ghani abdullah
© AFP
Afghan President Ashraf Ghani (right) and his political rival, Abdullah Abdullah, seem to have resolved a longstanding dispute.
Afghan President Ashraf Ghani and his political rival Abdullah Abdullah, both of whom claimed to have won Afghanistan's presidential election in September, have reached a power-sharing agreement under which Abdullah will lead the government's efforts to reach a peace deal with the Taliban.

The deal also installs a controversial former vice president, who has been accused of human rights abuses, in senior military and government positions.

Presidential spokesman Sediq Sediqqi tweeted an image of the Ghani and Abdullah signing off on the agreement in Kabul on May 17.


Sediqqi wrote that Abdullah will lead the newly formed National Reconciliation High Council and that members of his team would be included in the government.
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Rocket

Pentagon reluctantly comments on hypersonic weapons after Trump brags about new 'super duper missile'

Tom Embury-Dennis
Independent, UK
Sat, 16 May 2020 16:03 UTC
rogozin trump
© Sputnik / Sergey Mamontov; Reuters / Kevin Lamarque
Roscosmos head Dmitry Rogozin (L) and US President Donald Trump (R)
The Pentagon has reluctantly commented about its development of hypersonic weapons after Donald Trump bragged about the existence of a new "super duper missile".

Mr Trump's comments came during a Friday presentation at the White House in which Defense Department officials presented the US president with the Space Force flag.

"We're building right now, incredible military equipment, at a level that nobody's ever seen before, we have no choice we have to do it, with the adversaries we have out there," Mr Trump told reporters in the Oval Office.

"We have, I call it the 'super duper missile', and I heard the other night 17 times faster that what they have right now. Then you take the fastest missile we have right now. You heard Russia has five times, and China is working on five or six times, we have one 17 times, and it's just gotten the go-ahead."


The Department of Defence initially declined to comment, referring enquiries to the White House, which in turn referred reporters back to the Pentagon.

Comment: Roscosmos chief Rogozin responded: "Well, we can do nothing against the super-duper missile. We surrender!" It's nice to see everyone seems to have a sense of humor.

For some more laughs:





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Bad Guys

US 'would lose any war' fought in the Pacific with China

Michael Evans
The Sunday Times
Sat, 16 May 2020 12:00 UTC
A nuclear-powered Chinese submarine
© AFP/GETTY IMAGES
A nuclear-powered Chinese submarine: Beijing has stepped up its military activities in the South and East China Seas
America would be defeated in a sea war with China and would struggle to stop an invasion of Taiwan, according to a series of 'eye-opening' war games carried out by the Pentagon.

American defence sources have told The Times that several simulated conflicts conducted by the US resulted in the conclusion that their forces would be overwhelmed by the Chinese. One simulated war game focused on the year 2030, by which time a modernised Chinese navy would operate an array of new attack submarines, aircraft carriers and destroyers.

The analysis also found that Beijing's accumulation of medium-range ballistic missiles has already made every US base and any American carrier battle group operating in the Indo-Pacific Command region vulnerable to overwhelming strikes. The Pacific island of Guam, a base for American strategic bombers such as the B-2 and B-52, is now considered to be wholly at risk.

"China has long-range anti-ship ballistic missiles and hypersonic [more than five times the speed of sound] missiles," a US defence source said, meaning that US carrier groups could not oppose their Chinese counterparts in battle "without suffering capital losses".

Comment: See also: John Pilger's documentary: 'The Coming War on China' - breaking the silence with startling facts

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Question

Justin who? Citing coronavirus, Justin Amash announces he won't run for president

Sam Dorman
Fox News
Sun, 17 May 2020 15:45 UTC
justin amash
© NBC News
Rep. Justin Amash, I-Mich
Rep. Justin Amash, I-Mich., announced Saturday that he will not run in the 2020 presidential election due to challenges posed by the coronavirus during the campaign season.

"I've spent nearly three weeks assessing the race, appearing in media, talking to delegates and donors, watching the Libertarian Party's convention plan unfold, and gathering feedback from family, friends, and other advisers," Amash tweeted.

"After much reflection, I've concluded that circumstances don't lend themselves to my success as a candidate for president this year, and therefore I will not be a candidate."

Comment: Probably a good idea. Instead, he should be dealing with the lunatic tyrant governing his state.

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Bad Guys

'My job is to make Syria a quagmire for the Russians' - US envoy to Syria confirms CIA doctrine is official policy

Tyler Durden
Zero Hedge
Wed, 13 May 2020 20:05 UTC
Russian soldiers
© Reuters
At least 100 Russian soldiers have been killed in Syria since September 2015.
Like with the disastrous Iraq quagmire years before the US war machine came to Syria under Obama, Washington's rationale and justification for occupying the Syrian Arab Republic has shifted and changed drastically multiple times over.

When ultimately what started as US covert regime change efforts targeting Assad failed (based ostensibly in "protecting civilians"), the official mission then conveniently switched to 'defeating terrorism' — though of course this meant turning on the very jihadists the US armed and trained in the first place. Then the Kurds became the proxy flavor of the month, which also happened to have control of all the major oil and gas fields in the country's east ("secure the oil!" - Trump has repeatedly echoed of late).

When the Islamic State collapsed and became just another underground insurgency like its al Qaeda cousin, the ever-hawkish national security state establishment argued that Trump must not pull troops out because of 'Iranian expansion'.

Comment: See also:

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Black Magic

UK Chief Medic confirms (again) covid19 harmless to vast majority

Catte Black
Off Guardian
Fri, 15 May 2020 12:00 UTC
Chris Whitty
© Youtube
Screenshot: UK Chief Medic Chris Whitty
From the beginning of this crisis we have been pointing out that there are two mutually contradictory messages at the heart of the covid19 rollout, and, just as Orwell describes in 1984, a major point of the exercise seems to be to get people to believe both at the same time.


Comment: Also known as cognitive dissonance.


1. 'Be Afraid...'

The first message is that covid19 is terrifying, unique, an existential threat to the human race.

This message is never sourced to much fact, because the facts about the virus don't really support it. If it cites anything solid it's the appallingly sloppy and discredited Imperial computer model, or some generic research into the pathology of severe infections or rare viral syndromes, which it tries to spin as being unique to covid19, even though it is not. But mostly it doesn't cite anything at all. Or really claim anything at all.

It just tells people to be afraid. Very afraid. Of death, of uncertainty, of the 'virus', of other people, of 'fake news'.

Comment: For an idea of what those running things are able to do when they put the public in a state of cognitive dissonance, we only need to observe their actions over the weeks since the beginning of the contrived coronavirus crisis:

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Cardboard Box

From RussiaGate to ObamaGate and a fight to the political death

Mike Luongo
Gold, Goats 'N Guns
Tue, 12 May 2020 00:00 UTC
Trump Obama
From the beginning of the story RussiaGate was always about Barack Obama. I didn't always see it that way, certainly. My seething hatred for all things Hillary Clinton is a powerful blind spot I admit to freely.

But, it's clear that Obama was always the vector through which the entire investigation into Donald Trump pointed. He's the only one with the power to have marshaled the forces arrayed against Trump for the past four years.

We've known this for a couple of years now but there were a seemingly endless series of distractions put in place to obfuscate the truth.

Donald Trump was not a Russian agent.

What's clear now is the President Obama's administration was regularly engaged in illegally using NSA database access to spy on Americans and political opponents. This operation pre-dates Trump by a few years.

It was de rigeur by the time the election cycle ramped up in 2016. The timing of events is during that time period paints a very damning picture. This article from Zerohedge by way of Conservative Treehouse lays out the timing, the activities and the shifts in the narrative that implicate Obama beyond any doubt.
On April 18, 2016, following the preliminary audit results, Director Rogers shut down all FBI contractor access to the database after he learned FISA-702 "about"(17) and "to/from"(16) search queries were being done without authorization. Thus begins the first discovery of a much bigger background story.
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