Watchman: Update: Satan International Criminal Court (ICC) in the Hague — Has Reared Its Ungodly Head, Biden AG Has Appoint a Special Counsel to Investigate Trump, Satan Soldier, One World Government Hopeful John L. Smith

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HNewsWire:

Former President Donald Trump stated on Tuesday that he has been informed that he is a target of the criminal investigation launched on January 6 by special counsel Jack Smith.

Trump is the leading candidate for the Republican nomination for president in 2024. Smith has already filed criminal charges against Trump for retaining classified documents following his departure from the White House.

Trump also suggested he may soon be indicted for the Jan. 6 investigation, which focuses on his efforts to reverse his 2020 election loss to President Joe Biden. Trump published his statement on his Truth Social page.

Two sources with direct knowledge of the investigation confirmed to NBC News that Smith sent a target letter to Trump in connection with the case.

After determining that there is substantial evidence linking a person to a crime, the Department of Justice sends such letters to give individuals the chance to testify before a grand jury.

Trump wrote that his lawyers gave him what he termed "horrifying news" on Sunday evening.

Smith's spokesperson declined to comment.

“Deranged Jack Smith, the prosecutor with Joe Biden’s DOJ, sent a letter (again, it was Sunday night!) stating that I am a TARGET of the January 6th Grand Jury investigation, and giving me a very short 4 days to report to the Grand Jury, which almost always means an Arrest and Indictment,” Trump wrote on his Truth Social site.

Trump wrote that he was given what he called the “horrifying news” on Sunday evening by his lawyers. READ MORE

 

The federal indictment against ex-President Donald Trump has been unsealed by the Department of Justice. According to Reuters, the indictment lists 37 separate criminal counts related to Bush senior's retention of classified documents following his departure from office.

The indictment states, "Trump kept classified documents in his boxes, including information about U.S. and foreign defense and weapons capabilities, U.S. nuclear programs, potential vulnerabilities of the U.S. and its allies to military attack, and plans for possible retaliation in response to foreign attack."

The United States' national security, foreign relations, military personnel, human sources, and the viability of sensitive intelligence collection methods are all at risk if these classified documents are leaked.

The indictment itself references CNN's explosive reporting that Trump was caught on tape discussing classified documents that he still possessed.

While meeting with a writer, a publisher, and two members of his staff in July 2021 at Trump National Golf Club in Bedminster, New Jersey ("The Bedminster Club"), none of whom had a security clearance, TRUMP displayed and described a "plan of attack" that TRUMP claimed the Department of Defense and a senior military official had prepared for him. Donald Trump assured the people involved that their plan was "highly confidential" and "secret." Furthermore, Trump stated, "As president, I could have declassified it," and, "Now I can't, you know, but this is still a secret."

According to the indictment, Trump "in August or September 2021 at The Bedminster Club showed a representative of his political action committee who possessed no security clearance a classified map related to a military operation and told the representative that he should not be showing it to the representative and that the representative should not get too close."

After publicly defending Trump after the indictment was announced, Trump's legal team resigned today, and he was replaced by Todd Blanche. Despite the overwhelming evidence presented in the indictment, Trump has vowed to enter a "not guilty" plea.

Since CNN released an audio recording of Trump discussing documents he kept after leaving the White House and a suspicious flood in the server room at Mar-a-Lago where possibly sensitive information was kept, the walls have been closing in as speculation about the indictment increased. Back in March, however, special counsel Jack Smith hinted that Trump had "knowingly and deliberately" misled his attorneys about the documents.

Download the complete indictment here.

Source: mediaite

Former President Donald Trump’s Attorney General, Bill Barr, believes his old boss is in very serious trouble — if “even half” of what is laid out in the 37-count federal indictment against him is true.

In a stunning analysis of the former president’s legal peril on Fox News Sunday, Barr cited and concurred with the assessment of Fox News legal contributor Andy McCarthy.’

HNewsWire:

One of the most incomprehensible aspects of the media's relentless promotion of the infuriatingly partisan Department of Justice and FBI case over the past year becomes clear once you learn how it works.

The indictment claims that President Trump concealed documents that had "classified markings," using deliberately vague language to imply wrongdoing where none existed. It is not out of the question for anyone, especially a news junkie, to be in possession of documents with "classified markings."

Classified documents differ significantly from those simply marked as such. For instance, anyone who looked at the FISA application for Carter Page that was released to the public in July 2018 has seen "classified markings." The markings on a document are left intact even after it has been declassified.

The phrase "documents with classification markings" is not being used for the first time here. The entire DOJ/FBI structure that led up to the raid at Mar-a-Lago rests on this phrasing. No one from President Trump's team was asked to return any classified materials by NARA or the Department of Justice's National Security Division. The biased Justice Department asked for the return of any paperwork marked with "classified markings."

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New Trump Special Prosecutor Overturned by Supreme Court, Tied to IRS Scandal

The special counsel appointed by the Biden administration to look into Trump's conduct led a Justice Department unit that was criticized by the Supreme Court for its prosecution of a prominent Republican and was tied by Congress to the IRS scandal that targeted conservative organizations.

On Friday, Attorney General Merrick Garland appointed Jack Smith, a former head of the Department of Justice's public integrity section and current war crimes prosecutor in The Hague, to lead two separate investigations into Trump's actions on January 6 and the discovery of classified documents at Mar-a-Lago.

Former DOJ official Smith was blamed in 2014 by the House Oversight Committee for setting up the meeting between the DOJ and IRS employee Lois Lerner that led to the scandalous targeting of conservative charities that became a hallmark of the Obama administration.

After the landmark Citizens United free speech Supreme Court case, the Oversight Committee obtained testimony from a DOJ official named Richard Pilger in 2014 showing that Smith arranged a meeting with Lerner to discuss more aggressive enforcement of regulations prohibiting tax-exempt groups from engaging in politics.

The committee said in a letter to DOJ in 2014, "According to Mr. Pilger, the Justice Department scheduled a meeting with former IRS officer Lois Lerner in October 2010 to examine how the IRS may help in the criminal enforcement of campaign-finance laws against politically engaged NGOs." It was Public Integrity Section Chief Jack Smith who ordered this meeting to be set up.

According to the letter's final paragraph, "it is apparent that the Department's leadership, including Public Integrity Section Chief Jack Smith, was closely involved in engaging with the IRS in the wake of Citizens United and political pressure from prominent Democrats to address perceived problems with the decision."

Former Committee Chairman Darrell Issa (R-Calif.) and future House Judiciary Committee chairman Jim Jordan (R-Ohio) wrote to Smith requesting a transcript of their interview with Smith.

In the end, the Inspector General of the Treasury Department decided that the IRS's subsequent targeting of conservative groups was unwarranted.

According to the findings of the investigation, "the IRS utilized incorrect criteria that selected for examination Tea Party and other groups requesting for tax-exempt status based upon their names or ideological stances rather than indicators of possible political campaign participation."

Emails uncovered by congressional investigators reveal that following the Citizens United verdict, Smith explored the possibility of using the FBI and the Internal Revenue Service to pursue criminal prosecutions against conservative charities in an effort to prevent them from participating in politics.

In a September 2010 email to DOJ colleague Raymond Hulser, Smith referred to a New York Times piece on conservative tax-exempt organisations and said, "This looks terrible to me." As stated, "Could we ever prosecute a conspiracy to violate laws of the USA for abuse of such non profits [sic] to get past current political financing regulations + limits?" I'm aware that 501(c)(3)s are permissible under the law, but if they're intentionally going above and beyond what the law allows, we have grounds for legal action.

There was further drama surrounding Smith's time at the DOJ. Following the disclosure of prosecutorial misconduct in the corruption case against Republican Senator Ted Stevens, he assumed control of the Public Integrity Section and chose to abandon many other outstanding corruption charges.

His division, however, persisted with the prosecution of then-Virginia Governor Bob McDonnell, and they were successful in having him convicted on 11 felony counts on charges that members of the governor's family had taken gifts in exchange for official public actions.

Unfortunately for DOJ, the Supreme Court overturned the conviction, finding that Smith's team had illegally stretched the concept of "public conduct" beyond what was allowed under the bribery provisions.

It's "undeniable that this case is unpalatable; it may be worse than that," Chief Justice John Roberts said in the majority decision. But we're not interested in sleazy stories about flashy cars and fancy watches. Instead, it has to do with the government's expansive interpretation of the federal bribery act and its far-reaching legal consequences.

A narrower reading of the word "official act" is consistent with the statute's language and this Court's practice, and it allows plenty of opportunity for punishing corruption.

According to the ruling, "the decision of the Court of Appeals is vacated, and the matter is remanded for additional proceedings consistent with this conclusion."

Smith did not attend Garland's press announcement announcing him as special prosecutor on Friday, but he did declare that he was leaving from his position at The Hague effective immediately. He made a public speech promising to investigate Trump in a fair and vigorous manner.

He said, "I intend to execute the assigned investigations independently and in the finest traditions of the Department of Justice, and any prosecutions that may follow from them." No time will be wasted or slowed down in the course of the investigations while I am in charge. I will make my own decisions and push these probes ahead quickly and completely to whatever conclusion the facts and the law require.

Presumably This Probe Will Take Just Under Two Years, Leaking Regular Updates of “Now We’ve Got Him” Soundbites, Until the Findings Are Released Just Before the Election Showing That There’s No There, There

Garland named John L. Smith, known as Jack Smith, a war crimes prosecutor at The Hague and a former federal prosecutor, to begin serving as special counsel immediately.

Smith was previously the chief of the Justice Department’s Public Integrity Section, where he oversaw public corruption and elections-related investigations.

"Based on recent developments, including the former president's announcement that he's a candidate for president in the next election ... I have concluded that it's in the public interest to appoint a special counsel."

Garland noted that the special counsel's investigation will be two-fold: the Jan. 6 investigation and the Mar-a-Lago matter.

Presumably this probe will take just under two years, leaking regular updates of "now we've got him" soundbites, until the findings are released just before the election showing that there's no there, there.

*  *  *

Just a few short days after Trump said during his 2024 campaign launch:

"Nothing is greater than the weaponization from the system, the FBI or the DOJ. We must conduct a top to bottom overhaul to clean out the festering rods and corruption of Washington, D.C."

The follow breaking news from the Wall Street Journal just hit:

“Attorney General Merrick Garland will appoint a special counsel to determine whether former President Donald Trump should face charges stemming from Justice Department probes, according to a person familiar with the matter.”

It seems Trump's warning from earlier in the week is about to come true:

"The journey ahead of us will not be easy," he continued.

"Anyone who truly seeks to take on this rigged and corrupt system will be faced with a storm of fire that only a few could understand."

As Techno Fog details via The Reactionary SubstackWSJ reports that the announcement is to come sometime Friday afternoon. The identity of the special counsel is yet to be announced.

We expect the scope of the special counsel’s investigation to cover the Biden DOJ’s current prosecutorial efforts relating to the raid at Mar-a-Lago, which includes an investigation into mishandling of classified documents/national security documents, obstruction of justice, and the destruction of government records.

For the Biden DOJ, this step is no surprise. They would have planned for it to take place once Trump announced his candidacy. And sure enough, here we are. While the special counsel is quasi-independent, allegedly, it will still be subject to the control of Attorney General Garland.

Of course, this news came after federal officials decided to wait until after the midterms to leak information beneficial to Trump regarding the Mar-a-Lago raid.

The Washington Post reports on the review of the documents – purported by the Biden DOJ to be classified – by federal authorities:

That review has not found any apparent business advantage to the types of classified information in Trump’s possession, these people said. FBI interviews with witnesses so far, they said, also do not point to any nefarious effort by Trump to leverage, sell or use the government secrets. Instead, the former president seemed motivated by a more basic desire not to give up what he believed was his property, these people said.

Motive matters in this context, and it is especially important that Trump had no type of nefarious intent with respect to the records. But will it matter enough to prevent the Biden DOJ – now the upcoming special counsel – from charging relating to the potential crimes it is investigating: “mishandling of national security secrets, obstruction, and destruction of government records”? Source: ZeroHedge

Here we have another Satan Soldier, another communist thug from Obama's Department of Justice.

The US, like Israel, does not recognize the court’s jurisdiction. At the time, then-secretary of state Mike Pompeo said the sanctions were meant as retribution for investigations into the United States and its allies, a reference to Israel. The Biden administration (Satan's Soldiers) has said it will review those sanctions.

Pay close attention to the United Nations and the ICC next move on the world stage. They are the enemy of humanity and GOD.

International Criminal Court has jurisdiction to probe Israel, Hamas for war crimes, pretrial judges rule

File: The Pre-Trial Chamber of the International Criminal Court (ICC), composed of Judge Péter Kovács, Presiding Judge, Judge Marc Perrin de Brichambaut and Judge Reine Alapini-Gansou (courtesy ICC)

In 2-1 decision, judges determine Palestine is a state, and The Hague can thus investigate there; probe likely to cover 2014 Gaza war, settlement policy, IDF actions on Gaza border.

In a major decision released Friday, a pretrial chamber of the International Criminal Court determined that The Hague has jurisdiction to open a criminal investigation against Israel and the Palestinians for war crimes alleged to have taken place in the West Bank, Gaza Strip and East Jerusalem.

ICC chief prosecutor Fatouh Bensouda indicated in 2019 that a criminal investigation, if approved, would focus on the 2014 Israel-Hamas conflict (Operation Protective Edge), on Israeli settlement policy and on the Israeli response to protests at the Gaza border.

The ICC doesn’t try countries, but rather individuals. Israeli officials said Friday they do not currently anticipate any immediate threats to senior Israeli political or military figures.

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Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu condemned Friday’s ruling: “Today the ICC proved once again that it is a political body and not a judicial institution,” he said. “The ICC ignores the real war crimes and instead pursues the State of Israel, a state with a strong democratic government that sanctifies the rule of law, and is not a member of the ICC.

“In this decision,” Netanyahu added, “the ICC violated the right of democracies to defend themselves against terrorism, and played into the hands of those who undermine efforts to expand the circle of peace. We will continue to protect our citizens and soldiers in every way from legal persecution.”Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu (Yonatan Sindel/Pool Photo via AP, File)

Foreign Minister Gabi Ashkenazi said the chamber’s decision “rewards Palestinian terrorism and the PA’s refusal to return to direct negotiations with Israel, effectively contributing to further polarization between the parties.”

“We call on all states that see the importance in the international legal system and oppose its political exploitation, to respect the sovereign right of states to choose not to agree to the jurisdiction of the tribunal,” he added.

Palestinian Authority Prime Minister Mohammed Shtayyeh on Friday praised the decision, calling it “a victory for justice and humanity, for the values of truth, fairness and freedom, and for the blood of the victims and their families,” according to the official Wafa news agency.

The move is a “message to perpetrators” who “will not go unpunished,” Shtayyeh added.

PA Civil Affairs Minister Hussein al-Sheikh called the decision “a victory for truth, justice, freedom and moral values in the world.”

In the US, State Department spokesman Ned Price said his office was still reviewing the decision. However, he clarified that the Biden administration has “serious concerns about the ICC’s attempts to exercise its jurisdiction over Israeli personnel.”

“We have always taken a position that the court’s jurisdiction should be reserved for countries that consent to or that are referred to by the UN Security Council,” Price added, hinting at US opposition to the decision, given that Israel is not a member of the ICC. The US is also not a member. The Palestinians joined the court in 2015.

The ICC is meant to serve as a court of last resort when countries’ own judicial systems are unable or unwilling to investigate and prosecute war crimes. Israel’s military has mechanisms to investigate alleged wrongdoing by its troops, and despite criticism that the system is insufficient, experts say it has a good chance of fending off ICC investigation into its wartime practices. When it comes to settlements, however, some experts say Israel could have a difficult time contesting international law forbidding the transfer of a civilian population into occupied territory.

If Israel and/or Hamas are ultimately convicted of war crimes, and if senior officials are named in such a verdict, they could be subject to international arrest warrants upon travel abroad. This could lead to a situation where certain member states would recommend that officials specified in the ruling avoid visits in order to not risk being detained.

Illustrative: A barrage of rockets being fired from the Hamas-run Gaza into Israel on May 5, 2019. (Jack Guez/AFP)

The three-judge panel was ordered to reach a conclusion on the ICC’s right to exercise jurisdiction in December 2019, after Bensouda determined at the end of her own five-year probe into the “situation in Palestine,” that there was “reasonable basis to believe that war crimes were committed” in the West Bank, Gaza Strip and East Jerusalem regions by both the IDF and terrorist group Hamas, as well as other “Palestinian armed groups.”

At the time, Bensouda said that she believed the court indeed has jurisdiction, under the terms of the Rome Statute which established the ICC, to investigate possible war crimes in the area. But due to the controversial nature of the case, she asked for a definitive ruling from the pre-trial chamber. Member states and independent experts were invited to weigh in on the matter as well. Israel, rejecting the court’s jurisdiction in the matter, chose not to do so.

In the 60-page, two-to-one decision released Friday, the court ruled that “Palestine qualifies as ‘the State on the territory of which the conduct in question occurred,'” and that “the Court’s territorial jurisdiction in the Situation in Palestine extends to the territories occupied by Israel since 1967, namely Gaza and the West Bank, including East Jerusalem.”

“The Chamber,” it continued, was “not persuaded by the argument that ‘[r]ulings on territorial jurisdiction necessarily impair a suspect/accused’s right to challenge’ jurisdiction under” the Rome Statute.

Chief prosecutor of the International Criminal Court Fatou Bensouda at the opening of the court’s judicial year with a Special Session at the seat of the court in The Hague, January 23, 2020. (courtesy ICC)

The case now returns to Bensouda, to decide whether she will move forward with a criminal investigation. Based on her 2019 ruling, she is expected to do so. Still, her term as prosecutor is set to expire in June and some Israeli officials believe that her as yet unelected successor could take a different path.

“There is a reasonable basis to believe that war crimes were committed in the context of the 2014 hostilities in Gaza” by the Israel Defense Forces, for allegedly launching disproportionate attacks and “wilful killing and wilfully causing serious injury to body or health… and intentionally directing an attack against objects or persons using the distinctive emblems of the Geneva Conventions,” she stated in 2019.

She also found a “reasonable basis to believe that members of Hamas and Palestinian armed groups committed… war crimes” by targeting civilians and torturing individuals.

Bensouda said Israel’s settlement policy in the West Bank could also constitute a war crime, as could its response to weekly protests along Gaza’s border with Israel held since March 2018.Judge Péter Kovács (Courtesy ICC-CPI/Max Koot)

Despite demarcating the State of Palestine to include those three exact areas, the chamber ruled that it was “neither adjudicating a border dispute under international law nor prejudging the question of any future borders.”

In Friday’s ruling, Marc Perrin de Brichambaut of France and Reine Adélaïde Sophie Alapini-Gansou of Benin represented the majority opinion of the pretrial chamber, while Péter Kovács of Hungary wrote the dissenting opinion.

Israel had the option of submitting its position on the matter to the ICC but chose not to, “out of a fundamental view that the court has no authority to carry out the investigation,” a diplomatic official told Hebrew media last year.

As such, Israel cannot appeal this ruling.

Israeli officials will meet in the coming days to discuss strategy moving forward, including the possibility of a shift away from the current path of refusing to cooperate with the ICC, Foreign Ministry officials said.Judge Marc Perrin de Brichambaut at the ICC, 2019 (courtesy ICC)

Israel has long argued that the ICC has no jurisdiction, as there is no sovereign Palestinian state that could delegate to the court criminal jurisdiction over its territory and nationals.

Attorney General Avichai Mandelblit published a 34-page-long legal opinion ahead of Bensouda’s statement in 2019, detailing why Israel did not believe the court had the right to intervene. “The principled legal position of the State of Israel, which is not a party to the ICC, is that the Court lacks jurisdiction in relation to Israel and that any Palestinian actions with respect to the Court are legally invalid,” Mandelblit wrote in the report, which is available on the Foreign Ministry website.Reine Adélaïde Sophie Alapini-Gansou (Courtesy: ICC-CPI)

Mandelblit noted that only sovereign states can delegate criminal jurisdiction to the court, claiming that the Palestinian Authority did not meet the criteria; asserted that Israel too had “valid legal claims” over the territory in question; and added that the sides had agreed in the past “to resolve their dispute over the future status of this territory in the framework of negotiations.”

He said that by turning to the ICC, the Palestinians were “seeking to breach the framework agreed to by the parties and to push the Court to determine political issues that should be resolved by negotiations, and not by criminal proceedings.”

But the Friday ruling stated that “in the view of the Chamber, Palestine acceded to the [Rome] Statute…[and] thus [has] the right to exercise its prerogatives under the Statute and be treated as any other State Party would.”

In February, the “State of Palestine” and seven other countries, as well as 33 international organizations and independent scholars of international law, submitted so-called amicus curiae (friend of the court) documents, offering their views on whether Palestine is a state that can transfer criminal jurisdiction over its territory to The Hague.Attorney General Avichai Mandelblit (Olivier Fitoussi/Flash90)

Germany, Australia, Austria, Brazil, the Czech Republic, Hungary and Uganda all posited that Palestine cannot transfer criminal jurisdiction over its territory to The Hague.

Even those countries that have formally recognized the “State of Palestine” along the pre-1967 lines argued that Palestine cannot necessarily be considered to have validly granted the ICC jurisdiction to probe war crimes allegedly committed in its territory.

Responding to those countries in its Friday ruling, the pretrial chamber noted that none of them raised an objection when the Palestinians applied for membership at the ICC or anytime after. “Regardless of Palestine’s status under general international law, its accession to the [Rome] Statute followed the correct and ordinary procedure,” the chamber ruled.

In the first part of their decision, the panel asked whether the issue at hand was merely political and therefore not something that they could adjudicate. To this, the chamber stated that it “shall only assess the question of the Court’s jurisdiction over the Situation in Palestine and its extent. Potential consequences that might arise from the present decision are outside the scope of the Chamber’s mandate.”

While most of the international community does not recognize Palestine as a state, it is still a member of the ICC, whose members are not determined based on whether they “fulfill the prerequisites of statehood under general international,” the chamber ruled.

Related: These three judges could send Israel to the dock at The Hague

Netanyahu has repeatedly denounced the ICC and last May declared thwarting a possible war crimes probe to be one of the government’s top priorities.

The Foreign Ministry’s legal advisor, Tal Becker, argued in 2019 that only sovereign states can delegate to The Hague criminal jurisdiction over their territory, but that “Palestine” cannot be considered a sovereign state because, among other reasons, it does not control the territory it claims.

“If the prosecutor decides to indeed open an investigation, it will prove that her office is driven by political motivations and not purely legal ones,” Becker said.

Demonstrators carry banners and Palestinian flags outside the International Criminal Court, ICC, urging the court to prosecute Israel’s army for war crimes in The Hague, Netherlands, November 29, 2019. (AP Photo/Peter Dejong)

“At the end of the day, the ICC was established as a court of last resort, and the effort to drag the Israeli-Palestinian conflict into the court would reveal the politicized nature of the court,” he went on.

Avigdor Liberman, a former foreign minister who chairs the secular, right-wing Yisrael Beytenu party, tweeted his disappointment at Friday’s decision: “While the entire world is dealing with the coronavirus, the ICC has chosen to launch its own campaign aimed at trying to damage Israel’s right to defend itself against terrorism. This is a delusional and scandalous decision.”

Last year, the Trump administration imposed sanctions against ICC officials, including revoking Bensouda’s entry visa, in response to the court’s attempts to prosecute American troops for actions in Afghanistan.

The US, like Israel, does not recognize the court’s jurisdiction. At the time, then-secretary of state Mike Pompeo said the sanctions were meant as retribution for investigations into the United States and its allies, a reference to Israel. The Biden administration has said it will review those sanctions. Source: timesofisrael

Tal Schneider and Agencies contributed to this report.

At long last, Fatou Bensouda, the Chief Prosecutor of the International Criminal Court (ICC) has uttered the long-anticipated conclusion that “all the statutory criteria under the Rome statute for the opening of an investigation (into alleged war crimes in the Occupied Palestinian Territories) have been met”.

Bensouda’s verdict has been in the making for a long time and should, frankly, have arrived much earlier. The ICC preliminary investigations into Israeli war crimes began back in 2015. Since then, many more such war crimes have been committed, while the international community persisted in its moral inertia.

The ICC statement, issued on December 20, asserted that the court saw “no substantial reasons to believe that an investigation would not serve the interests of justice”. 

But can the “interest of justice” be served while the United States government continues to wield a massive stick, using its diplomatic, political and financial clout to ensure Israel emerges unscathed from its latest legal scuffle?

There is little doubt that Michael Lynk, the United Nations Special Rapporteur for the situation of human rights in the Palestinian territory, is absolutely right: A formal ICC criminal investigation into war crimes in Palestine is a “momentous step forward in the quest for accountability”.

He is also correct in his assessment, published in the United Nations Human Rights Officer of the High Commissioner website, that “accountability has, until now, been largely missing in action throughout the 52-year-old occupation.”

I would go even further and expand the timeline of the missing accountability to include the two decades prior to the Israeli occupation of East Jerusalem, the West Bank, and the Gaza Strip. Otherwise, how is one to account for the ethnic cleansing of Palestine in 1947-48, the numerous massacres and other wanton killings that accompanied and followed those defining years, or the fact that Israel was never held accountable for its violations of international and humanitarian laws between 1948 and 1967?

That issue notwithstanding, the Palestinian Authority and all political parties in Palestine should exploit this unprecedented opportunity of holding Israel accountable.

As soon as the ICC issued its statement, news reports surfaced conveying a sense of “panic” in Israel. The Times of Israel reported that an Israeli government meeting to discuss the ICC decision was held shortly after, with the aim of considering a proper response, including the possibility of preventing ICC investigators from reaching Israel. 

This is eerily familiar. Israel has denied entry to – or refused to cooperate with – international investigators and observers on many occasions in the past. 

Following a UN planned investigation into alleged Israeli war crimes in the Palestinian refugee camp of Jenin in 2002, the Israeli government quickly moved, and, sadly, succeeded in blocking the investigation altogether. 

It has done so time and again, often demonizing the very individuals entrusted with the mission of examining the illegality of Israel’s behavior in the context of international law. Well-respected judges and international law experts, such as Richard Goldstone, Richard Falk, and John Dugard, were vehemently attacked by Israeli officials and media and, by extension, by the US government and media as well.

Israel ICC Invesitgation

UN investigator Richard Goldstone visits a family home destroyed by Israeli artillery in Gaza, June 3, 2009. Ashraf Amra | AP

Israel has managed to survive dozens of United Nations Resolutions and countless legal reports and indictments by the UN and all UN-affiliated organizations, largely because of blind and unequivocal American support, which has shielded Israeli war criminals from ever answering to their horrific actions in Palestine.

“Remember, it was (then-Secretary of State) Hillary Clinton who took pride in the fact that she personally killed the Goldstone Report,” said US author, Norman Finkelstein, in a recent interview with the news website ‘Mondoweiss’. 

The Goldstone report was issued in the wake of the Israeli war on Gaza in 2009, dubbed ‘Operation Cast Lead’. The campaign of intimidation and pressure on Goldstone, personally, forced the once-respected judge to retract his accusations of Israeli war crimes and the deliberate targeting of civilians.

While Clinton did her part in torpedoing the Goldstone Report, former US President, Barack Obama, according to Finkelstein, went to great lengths to “neutralize international law against settlements and other Israeli crimes in the occupied territories”.

Worse still, on September 14, 2016, Obama handed Israeli Prime Minister, Benjamin Netanyahu, himself accused of carrying out numerous war crimes against Palestinians, the largest US aid package to a foreign country in modern history, a whopping $38 billion over the course of ten years. 

This is not a new phenomenon, where the US enables Israeli crimes and simultaneously shields Tel Aviv from any accountability for these crimes before the international community. All US administrations, whether Republican or Democrat, have honored the same sinister maxim, thus ensuring Israel, literally, gets away with murder.

A particular case in point was in 2001, when 28 Palestinian and Lebanese survivors of the 1982 Sabra and Shatila massacre attempted to try, in a Belgian court, late Israeli leader and accused war criminal, Ariel Sharon. Intense American pressures and a brazen intimidation campaign, targeting the Belgian government and the judicial system, resulted in the dismissal of the case in 2003. To deny Israel’s victims the opportunity to seek justice everywhere in the country, Belgium revised its very law, to the satisfaction of Israel and the United States. 

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The high level of the ICC investigations places the legal push against Israel at a whole new level. This is uncharted territory for Israel, the United States, Palestine, the ICC and the international community as a whole. There is little doubt that some joint Israeli-American effort is already underway to develop strategies aimed at countering if not altogether dismissing, the ICC investigation.

It is clear that justice for Palestinians in the face of Israeli aggression, itself fueled by unconditional American support, is not at all possible if it is not accompanied by regional and international unity, and a clear and decisive decision by all parties concerned that Israel, once and for all, must pay for its military occupation, racist apartheid laws, protracted siege on Gaza, and the many massacres in between. 

Without this kind of international will, the ICC investigation could become another sad case of justice denied, a non-acceptable option for any justice-seeking individual, organization, and government anywhere in the world. Pool via AP Source

When prophets talk about the future, it is usually to show where we are headed if things don’t change. Prophets use predictions as rhetorical devices to drive home their point to the ruling class and to mobilize a passive public.

The fundamental conflict in our culture and in our politics right now is a simple one. It is a conflict between those who love the truth and speak the truth and those who hate the truth and want it repressed.

The prophet Isaiah wrote: “Your princes are rebels and companions of thieves. Everyone loves a bribe and runs after gifts. They do not defend the orphan, and the widow’s cause does not come before them.” Prophets are truth-tellers.

On October 3, the Court of Justice of the European Union (CJEU) ruled in a judgment that Facebook can be ordered by national courts of EU member states to remove defamatory material worldwide:

“EU law does not preclude a host provider such as Facebook from being ordered to remove identical and, in certain circumstances, equivalent comments previously declared to be illegal. In addition, EU law does not preclude such an injunction from producing effects worldwide, within the framework of the relevant international law which it is for Member States to take into account.”

The ruling came after the Austrian politician Eva Glawischnig-Piesczek, chairman of Die Grünen (The Greens) party, sued Facebook Ireland in the Austrian courts. According to the Court of Justice of the European Union:

“She [Glawischnig-Piesczek] is seeking an order that Facebook Ireland remove a comment published by a user on that social network harmful to her reputation, and allegations which were identical and/or of an equivalent content.

“The Facebook user in question had shared on that user’s personal page an article from the Austrian online news magazine oe24.at entitled ‘Greens: Minimum income for refugees should stay’. That had the effect of generating on that page a ‘thumbnail’ of the original site, containing the title and a brief summary of the article, and a photograph of Ms Glawischnig-Piesczek. That user also published, in connection with that article, a comment which the Austrian courts found to be harmful to the reputation of Ms Glawischnig-Piesczek, and which insulted and defamed her. This post could be accessed by any Facebook user.”

HNewsWire called the UN resolution’s list of sponsors “a rogue’s gallery of some of the earth’s most evil governments.”

“If the plan is to develop a convention that gives countries legal cover for internet blackouts and censorship while creating the potential for criminalizing free speech, then it’s a bad idea.

(AFP) — The United Nations on Friday approved a Russian-led bid that aims to create a new convention on cybercrime, alarming rights groups and Western powers that fear a bid to restrict online freedom.

United Nations Secretary-General Antonio Guterres, left, shakes hands with Chinese President Xi Jinping before their bilateral meeting at the Great Hall of the People in Beijing, Sunday, Sept. 2, 2018. (AP Photo/Andy Wong, Pool)
AP Photo/Andy Wong, Pool

The General Assembly approved the resolution sponsored by Russia and backed by China, which would set up a committee of international experts in 2020.

The panel will work to set up “a comprehensive international convention on countering the use of information and communications technologies for criminal purposes,” the resolution said.

The United States, European powers and rights groups fear that the language is code for legitimizing crackdowns on expression, with numerous countries defining criticism of the government as “criminal.”

China heavily restricts internet searches to avoid topics sensitive to its communist leadership, as well as news sites with critical coverage.

A number of countries have increasingly tried to turn off the internet, with India cutting off access in Kashmir in August after it stripped autonomy to the Muslim-majority region and Iran taking much of the country offline as it cracked down on protests in November.

“It is precisely our fear that (a new convention) would allow the codification at an international and global level of these types of controls that are driving our opposition and our concerns about this resolution,” a US official said.

Any new UN treaty that spells out internet controls would be “inimical to the United States’ interests because that doesn’t tally with the fundamental freedoms we see as necessary across the globe,” he said.

“If the plan is to develop a convention that gives countries legal cover for internet blackouts and censorship while creating the potential for criminalizing free speech, then it’s a bad idea,” said Human Rights Watch’s Louis Charbonneau.

The United States argues that the world should instead expand its sole existing accord on cybercrime, the 2001 Budapest Convention, which spells out international cooperation to curb copyright violations, fraud and child pornography.

Russia has opposed the Budapest Convention, arguing that giving investigators access to computer data across borders violates national sovereignty.

The Budapest Convention was drafted by the Council of Europe, but other countries have joined, including the United States and Japan.

A new UN treaty on cybercrime could render the Budapest Convention obsolete, further alarming rights groups. Source

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DoorStep Tribulation, What Mark Zuckerberg’s Cryptocurrency Testimony Shows About Facebook’s Libra Strategy….

Mark Zuckerberg
Facebook CEO Mark Zuckerberg makes rounds of meeting with senators in ..CQ-ROLL CALL, INC VIA GETTY IMAGES

At 10 a.m. ET this morning, Facebook CEO Mark Zuckerberg was the sole witness to testify in front of the United States House of Representatives Committee on Financial Services about his role in developing libra, a cryptocurrency backed by a basket of stable international assets and designed to be spendable anywhere in the world. But as is typical of such hearings, an unabridged written testimony was submitted in advance so members of Congress and others could prepare their lines of questioning.

As governments and central banks grapple with what it would mean to have a global currency backed by their own assets, in some ways Zuckerberg’s comments were disappointingly predictable. But as three new bills introduced to Congress in the days leading up to the testimony could spell doom for Facebook’s plans, a closer analysis of Zuckerberg’s comments shines a light on the social media giant’s bigger strategy.

Many speculate that there is an ongoing effort behind-the-scenes to bring a New World Order, a global government, to the forefront. The work to bring a New World Order is a topic that I do not write about often. In this article, I will primarily focus on whether we can use the Bible to support the notion that there’s an ongoing effort to bring a New World Order to the forefront.

The Bible suggests that the Antichrist will someday have an empire whose influence will dominate the earth:

(23) Thus he said, The fourth beast shall be the fourth kingdom upon earth, which shall be diverse from all kingdoms, and shall devour the whole earth, and shall tread it down, and break it in pieces. (24) And the ten horns out of this kingdom are ten kings that shall arise: and another shall rise after them; and he shall be diverse from the first, and he shall subdue three kings. (25) And he shall speak great words against the most High, and shall wear out the saints of the most High, and think to change times and laws: and they shall be given into his hand until a time and times and the dividing of time.” (Daniel 7:23-25)

The Bible also suggests that this empire is likely going to form as a result of Antichrist conquering many countries and from leaders surrendering their power to Antichrist:

“(36) And the king shall do according to his will; and he shall exalt himself, and magnify himself above every god, and shall speak marvellous things against the God of gods, and shall prosper till the indignation be accomplished: for that that is determined shall be done. (37) Neither shall he regard the God of his fathers, nor the desire of women, nor regard any god: for he shall magnify himself above all. (38) But in his estate shall he honour the God of forces: and a god whom his fathers knew not shall he honour with gold, and silver, and with precious stones, and pleasant things. (39) Thus shall he do in the most strong holds with a strange god, whom he shall acknowledge and increase with glory: and he shall cause them to rule over many, and shall divide the land for gain.” (Daniel 11:36-39)

Source: HNewsWire

PLEASE DO NOT POST HNEWSWIRE ARTICLES ON PARLER, FACE BOOK, REDDIT OR TWATTER SOCIAL MEDIA PLATFORM, WE ARE NOT COMFORTABLE WITH THEIR ANTI-CHRISTIAN — ANTI-AMERICAN NAZI PHILOSOPHY…STEVIERAY HANSEN

StevieRay Hansen
Editor, HNewsWire.com

[email protected]

Watchmen does not confuse truth with consensus The Watchmen does not confuse God’s word with the word of those in power…

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StevieRay Hansen

In his riveting memoir, "A Long Journey Home", StevieRay Hansen will lead you through his incredible journey from homeless kid to multimillionaire oilman willing to give a helping hand to other throwaway kids. Available on Amazon.

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