Aletho News

ΑΛΗΘΩΣ

ICC to Investigate Israeli War Crimes

United States will punish ICC

By PHILIP GIRALDI •  UNZ REVIEW • FEBRUARY 16, 2021

Well, as usual, there is good news and bad news. The good news is that the International Criminal Court (ICC) in The Hague has finally received authorization to proceed with the investigation of possible war crimes and crimes against humanity in Israel-Palestine, to include both the Israel Defense Force (IDF) and also Hamas in Gaza. On February 5th ICC Prosecutor Fatou Bensouda announced that her office is now studying the decision made to confirm ICC’s jurisdiction and would be “guided strictly by its independent and impartial mandate” to investigate and prosecute war crimes and crimes against humanity. The ICC has already ruled in December 2019 that “war crimes have been or are being committed in the West Bank, including East Jerusalem, and the Gaza Strip” but was waiting for confirmation that it had jurisdiction to proceed. Both the Israeli Defense Force (IDF) and armed groups including Hamas were named as possible perpetrators.

The bad news is that Bensouda has been replaced as the United States is already intervening in support of its best friend and closest ally in the whole world and will inevitably do all sorts of stupid things that do not serve its own interests when the Israeli tail starts wagging the American dog. Count on it. That has apparently already included pressure exerted both by Washington and Jerusalem behind closed doors to make Bensouda go. She was replaced last Friday by British human rights lawyer Karim Asad Ahmad Khan, who is expected to be more accommodating to Israel and might even decide not to proceed with the investigation.

There has also been some speculation that the ICC was waiting for Donald Trump to be gone as Trump and his Secretary of State Mike Pompeo had already more-or-less declared war on the ICC back in June 2020. The Trump White House had sanctioned key members of the court and had also blocked the travel to the U.S. by investigators associated with it. It threatened to arrest anyone who cooperated with the investigation. Washington also warned in the strongest terms that there would be “consequences” for any attempt by the court to investigate or punish Israel.

The Joe Biden White House clearly is on the same page on the issue, releasing the following State Department press statement on February 5th, immediately after the ICC decision became public: “Today, the International Criminal Court (ICC) issued a decision claiming jurisdiction in the West Bank, East Jerusalem, and Gaza, while expressly recognizing the serious legal and factual questions that surround its ability to do so. As we made clear when the Palestinians purported to join the Rome Statute in 2015, we do not believe the Palestinians qualify as a sovereign state, and therefore are not qualified to obtain membership as a state, or participate as a state in international organizations, entities, or conferences, including the ICC. We have serious concerns about the ICC’s attempts to exercise its jurisdiction over Israeli personnel. The United States has always taken the position that the court’s jurisdiction should be reserved for countries that consent to it, or that are referred by the UN Security Council.”

State Department Spokesman Ned Price provided additional commentary on the press release, saying “We will continue to uphold President Biden’s strong commitment to Israel and its security, including opposing actions that seek to target Israel unfairly.” Neither the U.S. nor Israel is a signatory to the Rome Statute that created the ICC. The argument Washington is using is essentially a legal one, at least at this point, that Palestine is not a “sovereign state” and that the ICC does not have jurisdiction over any county that is not a signatory. Both are, of course, debatable. Israel has also taken steps to prevent any investigation by the court on its soil, to include the occupied territories and it is not clear if Egypt will allow ICC investigators to enter Gaza from Sinai.

The initial issue that turned Washington against the court in 2018 was the concern that it would begin inquiries into possible U.S. war crimes in Afghanistan since 2003, where both avoidable deaths and torture have been well documented. The U.S. used at the time the argument that it was not a signatory to the ICC but, as Prosecutor Bensouda observed, one does not have to be a signatory to be investigated as the court was specifically set up by the Rome Statute in 2002 to inquire into atrocities where there had been no accountability, either because the local government had no ability to do so or chose not to investigate itself.

So, it is all a bit of a non-starter since Israel and friends are non-signatories and will not cooperate while the United States will be using all its resources to stop the process stillborn. But that is not exactly the way it might play out. If the court holds the Israeli government accountable for war and human rights crimes those countries in Europe and elsewhere that are signatories to the ICC might consider themselves obliged to honor arrest warrants naming senior Israeli government officials whenever they are traveling. Israel is predictably reported to be already seeking to make arrangements whereby it will be warned by “friends” in foreign chanceries whenever such warrants are issued.

And then there is the matter of Israel’s approval rating vis-à-vis the rest of the world, which is already low, hovering down at the bottom of the list together with the United States. To be sure, Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu understands all that and has reacted sharply to the ICC decision to proceed. He said: “When the ICC investigates Israel for fake war crimes, this is pure anti-Semitism. The court established to prevent atrocities like the Nazi Holocaust against the Jewish people is now targeting the one state of the Jewish people. First, it outrageously claims that when Jews live in our homeland, this is a war crime. Second, it claims that when democratic Israel defend itself against terrorists who murder our children, rocket our cities, we’re committing another war crime. Yet the ICC refuses to investigate brutal dictatorships like Iran and Syria who commit horrific atrocities almost daily. As Prime Minister of Israel, I assure you, we will fight this perversion of justice with all our might.”

Israel’s security cabinet subsequently endorsed Netanyahu’s criticisms, describing the “outrageous” decision as one that “exposes the court as a political body, standing in one line with international organizations driven by antisemitic principles.” The Netanyahu government’s response is, of course, typical boilerplate that seeks to cast the Jewish state as a perpetual victim surrounded by a sea of anti-Semites. The only thing Netanyahu’s statement left out is the claim that Iran will have a nuclear weapon in weeks, but the Biden Administration’s Secretary of State Tony Blinken has already said that for him. The drum roll includes “fake war crimes,” “Nazi Holocaust,” “pure anti-Semitism,” “defend itself against terrorists who murder our children,” and “brutal dictatorships like Iran and Syria who commit horrific atrocities almost daily.” The reality is quite the reverse with the Israelis committing real war crimes by attacking its neighbors almost daily to include frequently killing Palestinian children. The horrific atrocities are being committed by the Israeli Army and the armed monstrous settlers against helpless Palestinians on both the West Bank and in Gaza. One might add the theft of Arab land, the destruction of their houses and livelihoods, and the lack of any due process for those who live and die under the brutal occupation. The numbers tell the tale. According to United Nations records, 3,601 Palestinians have been killed and over 100,000 injured by Israel between 2010 and 2019, versus 203 Israelis killed and 4,700 injured in the same time period.

And now, when there at last might be some real accountability for Israel’s crimes, the United States, under Netanyahu’s thumb, is yet again on the wrong side of the argument.

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

February 16, 2021 Posted by | Ethnic Cleansing, Racism, Zionism, Timeless or most popular, War Crimes | , , , , | 6 Comments

Students Told To Take Unconscious Bias Test AND Get 100 Per Cent Mark!

By Richie Allen | February 16, 2021

Students of Somerville College Oxford have been told to complete an online unconscious bias test by this Friday and receive a 100 per cent mark in the subsequent test. Every student at the college has been ordered to participate in the course to root out racism, homophobia and transphobia. Apparently, the students might not be aware of their hatred and fear of Blacks, Asians Gays and Trannies. Tranny is considered to be an offensive noun by the way, but sod it, I’m very conscious of my bias.

I’m not really biased against anyone of course. Baroness Royall of Blaisdon is the principal of Somerville College. She’s demanded the students pass with full marks. You receive a score of 99 per cent? You’re a hateful racist bastard. Report for re-education classes in Room 5B on Monday.

The UK government has recommended that unconscious bias courses be phased out. According to The Times newspaper this week, Boris Johnson will appointment a “free speech champion” to monitor universities that engage in the de-platforming of speakers and other measures which stifle free speech. Oh the irony! This is the same government that is working with Facebook and Twitter to ban anyone who dares question the safety of the coronavirus vaccines right?

The Daily Mail newspaper has seen the Somerville College Unconscious Bias Test and it’s ridiculous and also just a bit scary.

The Mail says:

During the test used by Somerville College, seen by the Daily Mail, students must admit that they are ‘susceptible to bias’ and need to ‘accept responsibility for monitoring our own behaviours’. They are also forced to admit to suffering from the bizarrely-named ‘mini-me syndrome’, because they ‘automatically favour’ people like themselves. In one section, students must concede that a black lecturer would be more likely to be disliked by students than her white colleagues. In another section, they are also told that thinking their tutor ‘doesn’t look smart’ and is ‘a bit unprofessional’ may not be appropriate.

Forcing students to admit that they “suffer from the so called “mini-me syndrome” is barking. It’s preposterous and dangerous. As is demanding that they accept as a fact that black lecturers are more likely to be disliked by students. The Free Speech Union has condemned it. It has advised Baroness Blaisdon that her orders could be a breach of both the Human Rights Act and the Equality Act.

She has backed down somewhat, saying that she should have ‘thought further’ about her order that all students must score 100 per cent. She wrote in reply to the FSU: ‘On reflection, it has been agreed that completing the test with less than 100 per cent will be seen as the opportunity for a chat about the issues involved, nothing more.’

No you cloth-eared bint, scrap the test and stop gaslighting the young men and women you are supposed to be educating. Telling people that unknown to themselves, they are racist and biased and fearful and not inclusive enough is a form of psychological abuse. Enough already.

February 16, 2021 Posted by | Aletho News | | Leave a comment

Email Reveals FBI Chief Comey Approved Trump Surveillance Despite Inability to Verify Russia Claims

By Ilya Tsukanov – Sputnik – 16.02.2021

US officials spent over three years and tens of millions of dollars investigating alleged collusion between the Trump campaign and the Kremlin during the 2016 election. At the heart of it all was the so-called ‘Steele Dossier’, the since-discredited report which made fantastical allegations on the extent of Donald Trump’s alleged ties to Russia.

In January 2017, Obama-era FBI director James Comey emailed then-Director of National intelligence James Clapper to inform him that his agency could not “sufficiently corroborate the reporting” of the Steele Dossier, before signing off on a Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act (FISA) warrant to spy on the business mogul’s campaign the very same day, a newly released email obtained by Just the News shows.

“Jim, I just had a chance to review the proposed talking points on this for today. Perhaps it is a nit, but I worry that it may not be best to say ‘The [Intelligence Community] has not made any judgement that the information in the document is reliable.’ I say that because we HAVE concluded that the source is reliable and has a track record with us of reporting reliable information; we have some visibility into his source network… and much of what he reports in the current document is consistent with and corroborative of other reporting included in the body of the IC report. That said, we are not able to sufficiently corroborate the reporting to include it in the body of the report,” Comey wrote.

The email is dated 12 January 2017, just over a week before Trump’s inauguration, and the same day that Comey signed a FISA warrant to renew surveillance of Carter Page, a former foreign policy advisor to the Trump campaign. By the end of that month, in addition to the FBI, Page was being probed by the CIA, the NSA, the Clapper’s office and the Financial Crimes Enforcement Network, despite not being accused of any specific crime. The advisor was cleared of any wrongdoing following the April 2019 release of the Mueller Report.

Speaking to Fox News about the newly unearthed email, Republican Representative Matt Gaetz accused Comey and the FBI of engaging in a “premeditated effort to dislodge the duly-elected president of the United States.”

“Not only did our Justice Department set up the president on the Russia hoax, they did it with rotten information and they knew the information was rotten when they did it,” the lawmaker suggested. The Florida politician suggested that he doesn’t expect the new information to lead to any “accountability” in the Trump-Russia saga, “because none of the career people there think the way to move up in the Biden Justice Department is to expose the Russia hoax.”

Russiagate

The FBI first launched a counterintelligence investigation into (then candidate) Trump in July 2016. The so-called ‘Steele Dossier’ was created by former MI6 agent-turned private investigator Christopher Steele, who was asked to probe the Trump campaign on behalf of the Democratic National Committee and the Hillary Clinton presidential campaign by Fusion GPS, a commercial intelligence firm. The dossier was then passed on to the FBI, which used it in their own probe, known as Crossfire Hurricane.

The Steele Dossier’s claims ranged from allegations of contacts between Trump’s team and Russian nationals, to alleged attempts by the Kremlin to meddle in the campaign, to the now infamous supposition that the business mogul was compromised in a Moscow hotel in 2013 by watching prostitutes urinate on a bed. The allegations have been almost completely discredited, but did lasting damage to Trump, distracting his administration for much of its four years in office to respond to claims that he was a ‘Russian agent’.

The Steele Dossier featured prominently in an 1800+ page haul of declassified transcripts of closed-door interviews of FBI agents released by Senate Judiciary Committee chairman Lindsey Graham last month. The records of the conversations showed that many agents expressed concerns about the lack of verification of the Trump-Russia claims, or felt that the probe was clearly “political” in nature.

In spite of the revelations, no one from the Obama administration or the US intelligence community have been charged with any crimes related to their involvement in starting Russiagate.

February 16, 2021 Posted by | Civil Liberties, Deception | , | Leave a comment

NY Times’s Klein Ponders Having to ‘Dim the Sun’ to Fight Climate Change

By Joseph Vazquez | NewsBusters | February 10th, 2021

The New York Times has taken eco-nuttiness to a new level by publishing a podcast speculating whether the solution to fighting climate change will include — wait for it —  dimming the sun.

Times opinion columnist Ezra Klein took his new interview podcast of global warming fearmonger Elizabeth Kolbert and turned it into an op-ed. Klein began his piece with a creepy quote from environmentalist Stewart Brand, “‘We are as gods and might as well get good at it.’” He later spewed that one solution he was obsessed with for fighting climate change was “solar geoengineering … Are we really going to dim the sun?” [Emphasis added.]

Klein’s predominant disagreement with Brand was that he was “overly optimistic. We did not get good at [being gods]. We are terrible at it, and the consequences surround us.” In effect, according to Klein, we should consider that we may end up having no other choice than to be “gods” and “dim the sun.”

“Dim[ming] the sun” sounds about as realistic as when climate change extremists were advocating for “melting the arctic ice cap by covering it with black soot” to stave off global cooling in the 1970s. The idea is also just as crazy as when George Soros-funded economist Mariana Mazzucato raised the possibility of a global “climate lockdown” if the world didn’t undergo a “green economic transformation.”

Klein had to quickly defend his position on the possibility of dimming out the thing that makes life possible on Earth by scolding people who only want comfortable solutions:

[A]ny reasonable analysis of the mismatch between our glacial politics and our rapidly warming planet demands that we deny ourselves the luxury of only contemplating the solutions we would prefer. With every subsequent day that our politics fails, the choices that we will need to make in the future become worse.

The transcript of Klein’s interview with Kolbert was just downright scary:

Ezra Klein: You have a wonderful quote in the geoengineering chapter of your book from Andy Parker, who is a project director for the Solar Radiation Management Governance Initiative. He says, ‘We live in a world where deliberately dimming the [expletive] sun might be less risky than not doing it.’ That feels like quite an indictment of the human race and where we’ve gotten ourselves to with all our knowledge and all our power.

Elizabeth Kolbert: I think that does sort of sum things up. We are in this very deep — there are only wrong answers, only hard choices at this point. Nothing easy from here on in.

Ezra Klein: What do you think of geoengineering?

Elizabeth Kolbert: I very consciously avoided coming down very clearly on that. But some very, very smart people are thinking about it and are very worried that it may be our best option at a certain point. And I think they may, unfortunately, be right — but wow, it’s dimming the [expletive] sun, you know?

February 16, 2021 Posted by | Malthusian Ideology, Phony Scarcity, Science and Pseudo-Science, Timeless or most popular | | 2 Comments

Washington’s Energetic Generals and the Emphasis on Preparation for Nuclear War

By Brian Cloughley | Strategic Culture Foundation | February 16, 2021

Some senior generals and admirals in and around Washington have been very busy recently, and their activities, while aggressive, have not been associated with directing current combat operations. Rather, they have been directed at attempting to influence the Administration of newly-elected President Joe Biden to restructure military forces, expand the nuclear arsenal and magnify specific warfighting capabilities. All of this is what might be expected of those whose business and dispositions are aimed at organising destruction and death, but the manner in which their aspirations are expressed are not consistent with what is expected of military personnel in a democracy.

The U.S. Department of Defence is now headed by a Biden-appointed retired general who has not voided the directive concerning “Political Activities by Members of the Armed Forces” which notes that “members on active duty should not engage in partisan political activity.”

This long-standing instruction was last reiterated in 2008 but it cannot be said that generals and admirals have followed its letter or spirit, and the present echelons of senior officers appear determined to flout it by wide publication of their personal points of view concerning the military posture of their country. This, by any interpretation, is “partisan political activity.” No government should tolerate meddling by the military.

On February 2 the chief of staff of the U.S. Air Force, General Charles Q Brown, and the Commandant of the Marines Corps, General David H Berger, had an opinion piece published in the Washington Post in which they expressed overall support for the 2018 National Defense Strategy but complained that “it has not changed defence investment priorities at the scale or scope necessary to prepare the U.S. military for great power competition.” In other words, they consider their enormous armed forces, on which some 740 billion dollars are to be spent this year, are not ready for war in spite of that allocation of taxpayers’ money being 11 times that of Russia and three times that of China.

Not to be outdone in public pronouncements, the following day the commander of U.S. Army forces in Europe and Africa, General Christopher Cavoli gave a speech in which he said that “the U.S. military needs more long-range artillery and other advanced weaponry in Europe to be able to take on enemy forces . . .”, and it is reasonable to ask if this sort of policy indicator is approved by the new President.

Then the head of Strategic Command, the element responsible, among other things, for “strategic deterrence; nuclear operations and space operations”, Admiral Charles Richard, published his personal take on the future use of nuclear weapons. In the February edition of the Naval Institute’s magazine Admiral Richard wrote that Russia and China “have begun to aggressively challenge international norms and global peace using instruments of power and threats of force in ways not seen since the height of the Cold War.” This person accountable for employment of nuclear weapons holds that “There is a real possibility that a regional crisis with Russia or China could escalate quickly to a conflict involving nuclear weapons, if they perceived a conventional loss would threaten the regime or state…”

It could hardly have been a coincidence that in early February the Pentagon ordered two U.S. carrier strike groups, led by the USS Theodore Roosevelt and the USS Nimitz, to conduct manoeuvres in the South China Sea.

Navy Times reported that “the Roosevelt’s carrier strike group includes Carrier Air Wing 11, guided-missile cruiser Bunker Hill, Destroyer Squadron 23 [six ships], and guided-missile destroyers Russell and John Finn. The Nimitz’s carrier strike group includes Carrier Air Wing 17, guided-missile cruiser Princeton, guided-missile destroyer Sterett, and staff from Destroyer Squadron 9 and Carrier Strike Group 11.”

The mission of this enormous force (which has a total of 120 attack aircraft), according to Admiral James Kirk, commanding the Nimitz Strike Group, was to ensure “the lawful use of the sea that all nations enjoy under international law,” and he was echoed by his colleague, Admiral Douglas Verissimo of the Roosevelt Strike Group, saying “we are committed to promoting a free and open Indo-Pacific.” Obviously neither of them is aware that the United States refuses to ratify the United Nations Convention on the Law of the Sea which is considered “the ‘constitution of the oceans’ and represents the result of an unprecedented, and so far never replicated, effort at codification and progressive development of international law.” But this does not prevent Strike Group admirals holding forth about their missions of provocation in the South China Sea that appear intended to push China to react.

In this context it is disturbing that the head of U.S. Strategic Command declared “There is a real possibility that a regional crisis with Russia or China could escalate quickly to a conflict involving nuclear weapons, if they perceived a conventional loss would threaten the regime or state…”

U.S. forces are threatening China in the South China Sea and confronting Russia all round its borders — and most recently in the Black Sea where the U.S. Navy deployed two guided missile destroyers in January. According to U.S. European Command, these ships are from the Sixth Fleet which is based in the Mediterranean “in order to advance U.S. national interests and security and stability in Europe and Africa.” These same interests are being furthered by the Pentagon’s “China Task Force” whose establishment President Biden announced on 10 February. The mission of this war-planning body is to conduct a review of U.S. “strategy and operational concepts, technology, and force posture” in line with Biden’s declaration that “That’s how we’ll meet the China challenge and ensure the American people win the competition of the future.”

So Uncle Joe has apparently joined the generals in their never-ending pursuit of global military ascendancy. Further, it seems he has accepted the new “Ground-Based Strategic Deterrent” or GBSD, which the Bulletin of the Atomic Scientists described on 8 February as “a new weapon of mass destruction, a nuclear missile the length of a bowling lane. It will be able to travel some 6,000 miles, carrying a warhead more than 20 times more powerful than the atomic bomb dropped on Hiroshima. It will be able to kill hundreds of thousands of people in a single shot. The U.S. Air Force plans to order more than 600 of them.”

This imminent leap towards global catastrophe is consistent with the declaration of Strategic Command’s Admiral Richard that “the U.S. military must shift its principal assumption from ‘nuclear employment is not possible’ to ‘nuclear employment is a very real possibility,’ and act to meet and deter that reality.”

The country’s senior military officers are preparing citizens for a terminal nuclear holocaust — for there can be no such thing as a limited nuclear war — and Uncle Joe Biden is permitting them to convey their personal policies directly to the people. This is endorsement of “partisan political activity”, because there are many millions of Americans who, for example, disagree with the GBSD programme and, indeed, a very large number who support their elimination of all nuclear weapons.

The Pentagon’s energetic generals are beating their war drums and the President has as yet done nothing to rein them in. Will he take action to stop this relentless drive towards nuclear war?

February 16, 2021 Posted by | Militarism, Russophobia | | 2 Comments

How the Gates Foundation seeded America’s COVID-19 policy catastrophes

By Jordan Schachtel | The Dossier | February 16, 2021

New York Governor Andrew Cuomo is finally facing the heat for his botched and criminally negligent coronavirus response policies, yet no one seems to be asking why Cuomo and select governors made the fateful decisions that led to the excess deaths — and the coverup campaigns — of tens of thousands of senior citizens in New York and elsewhere across the United States.

After being awarded an Emmy and writing a book on his supposedly heroic response to the pandemic, Cuomo is finally receiving the very necessary inquiries into his handling of the crisis. Cuomo is perhaps the most egregious example of abuse and neglect (given his refusal to use the Javits Center or a Navy hospital ship), he is far from the only governor who executed the “nursing home death warrants.” Governor Cuomo was accompanied by the governors of California, New Jersey, Pennsylvania, Michigan, and elsewhere.

The common thread seen in the United States is the delegation of state policy to prediction modeling forecasts from the Institute for Health Metrics and Evaluation (IHME), a Washington State-based institution that is wholly controlled and funded (to the tune of hundreds of millions of dollars) by The Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation.

In March and early April, politicians were informed by the modeling “experts” at Gates-funded IHME that their hospitals were about to be completely overrun by coronavirus patients. Modelers from IHME claimed this massive surge would cause hospitals to run out of lifesaving equipment in a matter of days, not weeks or months. Time was of the essence, and now was the time for rapid decision making, the modelers claimed.

On two separate April 1 and April 2 press conferences, Cuomo made clear that his policy decisions were based off of the IHME model.

“There is a group that is funded by the Gates Foundation. Thank you very much Bill Gates,” Cuomo said on April 1 in discussing ICU needs and how he was using Gates models to make other healthcare policy decisions.

MSNBC @MSNBC


According to the Gates Foundation-funded IHME model, 16,000 New Yorkers are expected to die from coronavirus. Gov. Cuomo: “That would mean that NY is only 16% roughly of the number of deaths … What that does say to the rest of the nation is – this is not just New York.”

“There’s only one model that we look at that has the number of projected deaths which is the IHME model which is funded by the Gates Foundation,” Cuomo said on April 2, adding, “and we thank the Gates Foundation for the national service that they’ve done.”

In an April 9 briefing, Michigan Governor Gretchen Whitmer referred to the IHME model in order to project deaths and the PPE resources needed for the supposed surge.

It was the same story with the government of Pennsylvania. The PA Health Department exclusively uses IHME models to forecast coronavirus outcomes.

Governor Phil Murphy, another nursing home death warrant participant, used IHME models to navigate the state’s policy response.

It wasn’t just state governors relying on this data, federal bureaucrats Dr. Anthony Fauci and Dr. Deborah Birx, both of whom have substantial ties to the Gates network, used the IHME COVID-19 forecasting models (which Birx endorsed specifically as the best prediction modeling outfit) to make policy recommendations to states. In her White House briefings, Birx, who simultaneously had a seat on the board of a Gates-funded institution, almost exclusively relied on IHME models to project outcomes.

These models, and the policy decisions that were made by relying on them, set off a chain of events that led to indefinite lockdowns, complete business closures, statewide curfews, and most infamously, the nursing home death warrants.

States across the nation went to extremes, resorting to full bunker mode while waiting for bodies to start dropping in the streets, but the IHME modeling never panned out. Hospital capacity was never threatened. Most states that had created “surge capacity” pop-up health care centers never even used these facilities. IHME, for its part, regularly “adjusts” its models, and has never acknowledged their routine failures to forecast outcomes.

Bill Gates has never discussed the catastrophic failures of his prized “health metrics” forecasting organization, and how it has contributed to the suffering of millions of Americans. Instead, he has seamlessly washed his hands of COVID mania, and has moved on to demanding that the western world sacrifice itself in the name of the latest “crisis” that is climate change.

In December, however, Melinda Gates acknowledged that “we hadn’t really thought through the economic impacts “ of demanding that people stay locked in their houses indefinitely, among other policy requests demanded by Gates Inc.

The IHME models that demanded lockdowns and other insane restrictions relied entirely on sketchy COVID-19 data coming from the city of Wuhan, China. The early statistics concerning deaths, hospitalizations, and overall age stratification have not come close to matching the actual data on the virus. For example, IHME used a 3+% death rate when the real number *from* COVID-19 is only around 0.1%. IHME’s risk projections, which they presented as sound science, were all incredibly overinflated.

The buck does indeed stop with the elected leaders who made the fateful decisions to send sick COVID patients into nursing homes, lock down their states, and mask up their citizens in perpetuity, but that’s only half of the story. The bad data they used almost exclusively came from the Gates network, which has trafficked in pseudoscience and has demonstrated complete incompetence and reckless forecasting since the beginning of last year.

February 16, 2021 Posted by | Civil Liberties, Science and Pseudo-Science | , , , | Leave a comment

The Hague court sides with activists, tells Dutch government to IMMEDIATELY lift ‘illegitimate’ curfew

RT | February 16, 2021

The Dutch government has been told by the court to reverse its coronavirus pandemic curfew after The Hague ruled there was no legal basis for it and called it an infringement on people’s rights.

In a statement, The Hague declared that the government’s use of the Extraordinary Powers of Civil Authority Act – an emergency act which allows the state to bypass the legislative process to impose a curfew in “very urgent and exceptional circumstance” – was not justified in this case during the Covid-19 crisis.

“The Preliminary Relief Judge ruled that the introduction of the curfew did not involve the special urgency required to be able to make use of the [act],” the Hague continued, noting that the government had had time to discuss such a curfew beforehand, before ruling that “the use of this law to impose curfew is not legitimate.”

“The curfew is a far-reaching violation of the right to freedom of movement and privacy and (indirectly) limits, among other things, the right to freedom of assembly and demonstration.”

The country’s Justice Ministry says it is now studying the ruling.

After the Dutch government imposed the curfew on January 23, citizens were legally required to stay home between the hours of 9pm and 4:30am unless they had a valid excuse, and they were warned that they could face fines if they refused to do so.

Valid excuses to go outside during the curfew included emergencies, essential work, to seek medical assistance, and to walk a dog on a lead.

The Hague’s decision was made after a group known as the Virus Truth Foundation filed a lawsuit arguing that the curfew was an infringement on human rights and the Dutch constitution.

The Netherlands experienced several nights of rioting over the curfew, which resulted in burnt cars, looted business, clashes with police, and hundreds of arrests.

February 16, 2021 Posted by | Civil Liberties, Science and Pseudo-Science, Solidarity and Activism | , | 1 Comment

UC Berkeley Reverses Its Absurd Ban On Outdoor Exercise

By Thomas Lifson | AmericanThinker | February 15, 2021

Five days after instituting an embarrassing ban on students exercising outdoors, the University of California, Berkeley, reversed itself and reinstated the ability of 2000 students isolated in dorm rooms to leave them for the purpose of exercise. Angela Ruggiero of the San Jose Mercury-News reported Friday, Feb. 12:

UC Berkeley has reversed a ban on students exercising outdoors that was imposed earlier this week after a rise in coronavirus cases on campus.

About 2,000 students isolated in their dorm rooms will now be allowed to exercise outside again, Cal announced on Friday afternoon. However, students are still under a strict lockdown imposed Feb. 1 that is in effect until Monday. The exercise ban went into effect this week, along with stricter restrictions as the university saw a rise in daily coronavirus cases.

“New positive COVID-19 cases have slowed and as a result we are permitting some limited additional activities for students who are in self-sequester,” read an email sent out to students Friday.

Only those that are not under isolation or quarantine may leave their door rooms to exercise outside during daylight hours, from 7 a.m. to 6 p.m. Student athletes also may now leave to practice as directed and monitored by Cal Athletics.

The exercise ban had followed on and strengthened an earlier ban on leaving dorm rooms had been imposed Feb 1, and extended on Feb 8.

The exercise ban made national and international headlines, and elicited surprise, laughter and even scorn.

“‘Even prisoners get to exercise!’ UC Berkeley bans solo outdoor exercise for dorm-bound students,” headlined RT.

Campus authorities may have been embarrassed when The University of Pittsburgh published a report the day before the ban was reversed that headlined,

“COVID-Related Depression Linked to Reduced Physical Activity”

New research from the University of Pittsburgh, Carnegie Mellon University and University of California, San Diego, found that 61% of surveyed university students were at risk of clinical depression, a value twice the rate prior to the pandemic. This rise in depression came alongside dramatic shifts in lifestyle habits.

“Our findings indicate the pandemic has led to a dramatic increase in the rate of anxiety and depression among young adults, especially among college students. It’s disheartening to see, since it’s been well-documented, even before the pandemic, that university-age young adults are reported as experiencing more mental health issues than previous generations,” said Osea Giuntella, assistant professor of economics at Pitt and research co-author.

There is no Hippocratic Oath for campus bureaucrats, but if there were, the injunction “First, do no harm” would certainly apply to the exercise ban. The survival rate for people in their 20s, which would include nearly all students living on dormitories, is in the upper reaches of the 99th percentile, while, the effects of depression, including suicide, are severe.

The University claimed its initial ban and subsequent strengthening, and then 5 days later loosening of it, were based on a “spike” in on-campus cases:

UC Berkeley saw a spike of 164 cases the week of Jan. 31, including 154 undergraduate students, according to the university’s coronavirus dashboard. The number of cases has dropped to 84 this week, as of the latest data on Thursday, when 19 more people tested positive on campus. From Sept. 10 to Thursday of this week, the university has seen a total of 757 positive cases.

But an examination of the dashboard reveals that it counts any positive test result as a case:

The dashboard shows the number of positive cases for tests performed at UHS. It does not include saliva tests that were performed through the Innovative Genomics Institute’s FAST Study.

This appears to go against the WHO’s change in its definition of a case that was announced one hour after President Biden was inaugurated:

The guidance warned against diagnosing someone as having the virus just because he tests positive if he does not present with symptoms of COVID-19. It also warned about the high risk of false positives: “The cycle threshold (Ct) needed to detect virus is inversely proportional to the patient’s viral load. Where test results do not correspond with the clinical presentation, a new specimen should be taken and retested using the same or different NAT technology.”

“As disease prevalence decreases, the risk of false positive increases. The probability that a person who has a positive result (SARS-CoV-2 detected) is truly infected with SARS-CoV-2 decreases as prevalence decreases, irrespective of the claimed specificity,” the WHO continued.

The University’s own dashboard reveals that the rate of positive tests on campus is lower than in the surrounding City of Berkeley, where people freely shop and move about.

(source)

There doesn’t appear to be a lot of science behind the drastic restrictions on students at Cal Berkeley, as locals call it. Did the campus bureaucrats panic?

The University of California, Berkeley has a solid claim to worldwide standing as one of the leading producers of scientific research in the world. No fewer than ten Nobel laureates (all in the hard sciences and economics) currently teach on its faculty, including two 2020 laureatesBut the University’s draconian reaction to the Covid has embarrassed it and diminished its luster.

February 16, 2021 Posted by | Science and Pseudo-Science | , , , | 2 Comments

Biden Attacks Farms – Comprehensive War on Global Food Supply – Engineered Famine

Ice Age Farmer | January 29, 2021

The Biden admin’s executive actions in the last 48 hours are attacking farms and implementing the technocratic takeover of food, accelerating a global collapse in food production by paying farmers NOT to grow food, cutting their financial support, tasking Tom Vilsack’s USDA with a Net-Zero goal, changing COVID guidance on grocery stores, restaurants, and meatpacking plants. Meanwhile, the media is finally acknowledging the soybean shortage, and the US is now also experiencing a fertilizer shortage, which will further increase costs and cause yields will collapse. As other countries stop exporting to protect domestic supplies, the US has been wholly sold out. This confluence of issues and cascading failures merits our attention urgently — start growing food today.

Download (mp3):

 

 

FULL SHOW NOTES:

SUBSCRIBE on bitchute: https://bitchute.com/iceagefarmer
On Lbry.tv: https://lbry.tv/@iceagefarmer

THANK YOU FOR YOUR SUPPORT:
https://patreon.com/iceagefarmer
– other methods/PO box: https://iceagefarmer.com/support

Ice Age Farmer Guilded (chat) group:
http://iceagefarmer.com/guilded

The Victory Seed — easy pamphlet to share:
http://thevictoryseed.org

IAF RESOURCES:
⇒ GDD: Growing Degree Days tool: how much colder has 2019 been for you?
http://iceagefarmer.com/gdd

⇒ IAF Wiki – read history, understand cycles, know what’s coming:
http://wiki.iceagefarmer.com/wiki/History
⇒ Maps from previous cycles:
http://wiki.iceagefarmer.com/wiki/Strategic_Relocation:_Maps

⇒ Crop Loss Map
http://map.iceagefarmer.com

⇒ Join the email list – stay connected:
http://iceagefarmer.com/mail

*** SUPPORTERS – I recommend (because I use personally) ***

STORED FOOD (+ more) @ MyPatriotSupply:
https://iceagefarmer.com/prep

FREEZE DRY YOUR OWN FOOD (like printing money, but food):
https://iceagefarmer.com/harvestright

BUY SEEDS @ TRUE LEAF MARKET:
https://iceagefarmer.com/trueleaf

EMP-proof Solar: mention IAF save $250
https://Sol-ark.com

BEST CBD:
https://bignuggetfarm.com 10% code: IAF2018

⇒ More books: http://amazon.com/shop/iceagefarmer

⇒ Stored food: http://iceagefarmer.com/prep

___

LINKS: (see FULL SHOW NOTES above!)

https://www.cleveland.com/politics/2021/01/biden-signs-orders-strengthening-efforts-to-battle-climate-change.html
https://www.agriculture.com/news/business/biden-vows-to-pay-farmers-to-plant-cover-crops-and-put-land-in-conservation
https://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/2020/09/27/boris-johnson-commits-restoring-nature-30-per-cent-britain-2030/

Biden administration suspends CFAP payments


https://www.agriculture.com/news/business/ag-role-in-climate-mitigation-net-zero-emissions
https://returntonow.net/2020/12/29/biden-picks-mr-monsanto-tom-vislack-to-head-the-usda/
https://www.agweb.com/news/policy/politics/government-cameras-hidden-private-property-welcome-open-fields

Kamala: yes, we should eat less meat:

https://news.yahoo.com/snap-expansion-worker-safety-bidens-175300671.html
https://www.lonesomelands.com/new-blog/2021/1/24/americas-family-owned-farms-now-face-the-greatest-threat-to-their-existance
https://www.usda.gov/media/blog/2021/01/27/family-farms-continue-power-us-agriculture

Josh Linville (Fertilizer)

https://www.agriculture.com/markets/newswire/us-soybean-crushers-buy-up-extra-beans-as-supply-scramble-looms
https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2021-01-27/china-is-so-thirsty-for-soy-that-america-could-soon-be-importing

https://www.reuters.com/article/us-usa-china-ethanol-idUSKBN29V282

https://en.mercopress.com/2021/01/28/argentine-traders-and-millers-discussing-options-to-avoid-a-ban-on-wheat-exports

https://www.spokesman.com/stories/2020/dec/15/food-giants-seek-to-ban-soybeans-from-deforested-b/

https://www.cnbc.com/2021/01/22/shipping-container-shortage-is-causing-shipping-costs-to-rise.html

https://gcaptain.com/sea-ice-slows-ships-in-north-china-ports/

https://www.scmp.com/economy/china-economy/article/3116798/chinas-food-security-requires-local-communist-party-members
https://www.scmp.com/economy/global-economy/article/3115004/china-food-security-beijing-calls-biotech-breakthrough
https://sg.news.yahoo.com/china-vegetable-prices-hit-record-104350266.html

UK:
https://www.independent.ie/business/farming/news/farming-news/key-uk-port-warns-importation-of-breeding-livestock-could-halt-unless-essential-funding-provided-40009164.html

Ireland seeds:
https://www.newsletter.co.uk/news/politics/ni-gardeners-lose-hundreds-seed-varieties-major-company-suttons-withdraws-fruit-and-veg-seeds-due-irish-sea-border-3115211

February 16, 2021 Posted by | Economics, Malthusian Ideology, Phony Scarcity, Video | , | 4 Comments

Rapid Covid Tests Could Be Route Back To Socialising – Boris Johnson

By Richie Allen | February 16, 2021

UK Prime Minister Boris Johnson is refusing to rule out the introduction of Domestic Vaccine Passports. “We’re looking at everything” he told the press at yesterday’s Downing Street briefing. He went on to say:

“What we are thinking of at the moment is more of a route that relies on mass vaccination… we intend to vaccinate all the adults in the country by the autumn… plus lateral flow testing, rapid testing.

I think that will be the route that we go down and that businesses will go down. You are already seeing lots of businesses using the potential of rapid, on-the-day testing as well. I think that, in combination with vaccination, will probably be the route forward.”

Imagine a world, where you must stock up on testing kits (similar to pregnancy tests), that you will be expected to self-administer and pass, before being admitted to your workplace, or the shops, or even the theatre? Welcome to that world. Boris Johnson wants rapid testing to become part of everyday life. That’s what Operation Moonshot proposed.

It’s lunacy. He wants to routinely test people who don’t have so much as a runny nose or a fever, people who are perfectly healthy, to see if they’re carrying a virus. Let’s not forget that the man running the US coronavirus response, Dr. Anthony Fauci, said last year that asymptomatic people do not spread the virus.

And as for domestic vaccine passports, The Telegraph newspaper reported today that UK cinemas are keen to implement them, if it means they can get bums back on seats as soon as possible. According to the paper:

David Chadwick of Verifiable Credentials, which has received government funding to develop vaccine passports, said he had already agreed a tie-up with one UK theatre and cinema complex to trial the technology. Under the scheme, Verifiable Credentials would create electronic certificates for people to show they have been vaccinated. These certificates would be verified by the NHS and stored in a digital wallet on users’ smartphone.

When users buy a film ticket from a participating cinema, that ticket would be combined with the digital vaccine passport to generate a QR Code that would provide them with access to the theatre. Mr Chadwick said the trial was currently assessing the technical feasibility of the system rather than whether it was commercially or legally viable.

Do not believe government ministers, when they say that there are no plans for domestic vaccine passports. The government itself has funded the scheme. Pubs and restaurants will quickly follow cinemas lead. In the future, if ministers are ever challenged on the sheer tyranny of it, they will say, “Don’t look at us. We are liberal Conservatives. We can’t tell private business who they should and shouldn’t let in.” How utterly predictable this is becoming.

February 16, 2021 Posted by | Civil Liberties, Science and Pseudo-Science | , , | Leave a comment