Elon Musk just explained the one breakthrough changing everything about space access. The number sounds impossible but it’s not.

Musk: “It drops the cost of space travel by literally 10,000%. Like, no exaggeration.”

Ten thousand percent. Not incremental improvement. Not a… pic.twitter.com/4QU2knJzKq
— Dustin (@r0ck3t23) February 20, 2026

Big difference between Grok and WokeGPT https://t.co/qjjZpVEONi
— Elon Musk (@elonmusk) February 19, 2026

https://twitter.com/CraigBrockie/status/2024513876197581112?s=20 Eric Schmidt

Ex-Google CEO's BANNED Interview LEAKED: "You Have No Idea What's Coming"

Ex-Google CEO Eric Schmidt recently made headlines with some controversial comments about AI during an interview conduced at Stanford University. This interview was taken down at his request after he… pic.twitter.com/0CrcSPPv6T
— conspiracybot (@conspiracyb0t) February 19, 2026

SpaceX https://twitter.com/iam_smx/status/2024621134159708319?s=20

This is very far from over. I was wondering what the exact legal difference is between Trump and the pre-Fed (1913?) tariffs.

• Supreme Court Strikes Down Trump Tariffs – But He Has ‘Backup Plan’ (ZH)

The Supreme Court on Friday struck down Trump’s tariffs. In a 6-3 decision (170-pages), the court ruled that Trump’s use of the 1977 International Emergency Economic Powers Act (IEEPA) – which constitute about half of the tariffs we’ve seen under Trump – was not lawful. Kavanaugh, Thomas and Alito dissented. “IEEPA does not authorize the President to impose tariffs,” wrote the court.

The ruling stems from a consolidated challenge brought by small businesses and multiple states, including Costco, who argued that the statute – originally intended to authorize sanctions and asset freezes during national emergencies – does not grant the executive branch the power to levy taxes on imports. The Court reasoned that the Constitution vests the authority to impose duties and tariffs with Congress alone, and found that IEEPA’s authorization to “regulate … importation” cannot be interpreted to include the distinct taxing power required to enact broad-based tariffs. The ruling affirms lower-court decisions blocking the challenged measures, concluding that the administration’s emergency-based tariff framework exceeded the limits of the statute.
Trump invoked IEEPA to impose his ‘reciprocal’ tariffs on nearly every foreign trade partner to address what he called a national emergency over US trade deficits. He invoked it again to impose tariffs on China, Canada and Mexico over fentanyl trafficking into the United States.

BREAKING: The U.S. Supreme Court just STRUCK DOWN President Trump’s tariffs.

In a 6-3 ruling, the court invalidated the tariffs.

NEWSNATION: “This is the exact wording from the ruling as we have it now, IEEPA, that International Economic Emergency Powers Act does not authorize… https://t.co/qYcFhUOkbe pic.twitter.com/AmUgZ2owIc
— Overton (@overton_news) February 20, 2026
Friday’s decision rests on the notion that tariffs are not merely a tool for regulating trade, but also a a form of taxation that the Constitution reserves to Congress. Citing Article I, Section 8, the majority stressed that the power to impose tariffs is “very clear[ly] … a branch of the taxing power,” and that the Framers gave Congress “alone … access to the pockets of the people.” The administration had argued that IEEPA’s grant of authority to “regulate … importation” permitted the President to impose tariffs in response to declared national emergencies. The Court rejected that interpretation, noting that while “taxes may accomplish regulatory ends, it does not follow that the power to regulate includes the power to tax as a means of regulation.”

The majority also pointed to the statute’s text, emphasizing that IEEPA authorizes the President to “investigate, block … regulate, direct and compel, nullify, void, prevent or prohibit” certain transactions – yet makes no mention of tariffs or duties. “Had Congress intended to convey the distinct and extraordinary power to impose tariffs,” the opinion states, “it would have done so expressly, as it consistently has in other tariff statutes.”
The Court further highlighted a lack of historical precedent – noting that that in the nearly 50 years since IEEPA’s enactment, “no President has invoked the statute to impose any tariffs,” and that combined with the sweeping economic impact of the measures at issue – it was a “telling indication” that the asserted authority falls outside the President’s legitimate reach.Applying what it characterized as the “major questions” framework, the Court reasoned that Congress would not delegate such sweeping control over trade policy through vague language. The President’s claim that two words – “regulate” and “importation” – authorize tariffs “of unlimited amount and duration, on any product from any country,” the majority wrote, would represent a “transformative expansion” of executive authority over tariff policy and the broader economy.
Tariff Refunds?
Notably, the Court’s ruling does not address what happens to the billions of dollars in tariff revenue already collected under the now-invalidated IEEPA framework, leaving open the possibility of a wave of refund litigation in the months ahead. There are currently hundreds of tariff refund lawsuits pending in US trade court.
While the majority opinion strikes down Trump’s use of IEEPA, it offers no guidance on restitution, repayment, or whether importers may be entitled to recover duties paid pursuant to tariffs the Court has now deemed unlawful. That omission is likely to shift the next phase of the dispute into the U.S. Court of International Trade, where importers may seek retroactive relief through administrative protests or refund actions. Justice Kavanaugh’s dissent notes that the process is likely to be a “mess,” warning that “the Court’s decision is likely to generate other serious practical consequences in the near term,” adding “One issue will be refunds.”
Trump’s administration has not provided tariffs collection data since December 14. But Penn-Wharton Budget Model economists estimated on Friday that the amount collected in Trump’s tariffs based on IEEPA stood at more than $175 billion. And that amount likely would need to be refunded with a Supreme Court ruling against the IEEPA-based tariffs. -Reuters
Any such claims could involve complex questions of sovereign immunity, administrative exhaustion, and the availability of equitable relief – particularly where duties were paid without timely protest. Whether courts ultimately require repayment of unlawfully imposed tariffs may depend not just on the validity of the underlying statute, but on the procedural posture of individual importers and the statutory refund mechanisms available under U.S. customs law.
During arguments on Nov. 5, the court seemed skeptical over Trump’s authority to use IEEPA, leading most observers observers, including betting markets, to conclude a high probability they’re struck down at least in part. The Trump administration is appealing lower court rulings that he overstepped his authority, while Trump himself said a Supreme Court ruling against the tariffs would be a “terrible blow” to the United States.

Trump outsmarted Russsia, China and India in one go? I doubt it.

• The Shocking Story Behind the Diplomatic Coup of the Century (Pinsker)

[..] Shortly thereafter, India seized three shadow fleet oil tankers from Iran. Here’s Peter Zeihan to explain the significance: “Once another country joins the United States and targeting the shadow fleet, it’s probably only a matter of days to weeks before many, many other countries do it. There are a lot of countries that don’t like Venezuela or Iran or Russia — especially the Europeans. And now that India, of all countries, is joining in, we should expect a couple dozen of other countries to do so as well, which would completely remove the shadow fleet from functioning in less than a few months. […] The Russians have been exporting somewhere between 3 and 4 million barrels a day [via the shadow fleet] for four years. And it is their primary source of income now. And if this is about to go away, then we’re going to see some very dramatic changes in a number of things in the Eastern hemisphere.

Number one, the Ukraine War: If the Russians have lost their single largest source of income, that will manifest on the battlefield. The Chinese may be supplying the Russians with all the gear that they can pay for, but the key thing there is: pay for. And if the Russians can’t [pay], then a drone war where the Russians can’t get enough drones is one where the Russians start losing territory. And in a stunning coincidence, Fox News just reported, “Ukraine makes fastest gains in years as Russia talks stall, exploiting cracks in Kremlin command.” Ukrainian forces retook about 78 square miles over five days, according to a report by Agence France-Presse based on an analysis of the Institute for the Study of War battlefield mapping. The gains represent Kyiv’s most rapid territorial advances since its 2023 counteroffensive in the Donetsk and Zaporizhzhia regions.
Not only Russia is reeling. Peter Zeihan predicts China will feel the squeeze, too: If the Indians are stopping crude from Russia getting to India, you can bet your pretty [censored] that they’re going to stop it from getting to China, because now China is the only country that is still taking Russian crude in volume. And now, all of a sudden, we’re talking about the entirety of the 3 to 4 million barrels of the shadow fleet being gouged out of the Chinese economy. All in all, it represents one of the most remarkable under-the-radar diplomatic achievements in recent history. When President Trump’s Russia-Ukraine peace plan reached a dead end, he turned around, cut a deal with India, and strangled the Russian economy overnight.
Along with the economy of Russia’s petro-partner, Iran, which is trapped in gunboat diplomacy. (Venezuela, of course, was already dealt with.) And now China — ludicrously heralded by the BBC as a “Green Superpower”(!) despite Chinese greenhouse emissions exceeding all developed nations combined — will now eat the higher cost, too. All of America’s strategic rivals were caught flatfooted. It didn’t receive the recognition it deserved, but that’s the epitome of 4-D chess. Potentially, this was the week when Russia finally lost the Ukraine war. Putin can’t win a war of attrition if he runs out of money before Ukraine does. And now, for the very first time, Russia is truly, completely isolated. We still need to see how it all plays out, but President Trump just might’ve engineered the diplomatic coup of the century.

“We’re either gonna get a deal or it’s gonna be unfortunate for them.” — POTUS Donald Trump

• Does It Smell Like Victory? (James Howard Kunstler)

The message seems to be something like the USA isn’t messing around with all those strike forces in the waters around Iran. The Islamic Republic suddenly looks like Rock-and-Hard-Place-Land. Everybody and his uncle are trying to figure out the calculus in play, World War Three or a happy ending?You’re seeing the most significant US military build-up over there in memory. Smells a little bit like first Gulf War, 1991 — minus all those allies we roped in then. Mr. Trump (via Marco Rubio) has read Euroland out on this one. We are in a cold war with those birds, in case you haven’t noticed. The UK, France, Germany & Co.? They are as crazy as the ladies of The View and their millions of Cluster-B followers.

Euroland is yet in thrall to the climate nutters, the farm-and-industry-destroyers, the one-worlders, the Jihad-migrationists, the floundering banksters, and the Klaus Schwab wannabes. Euroland seeks to throttle free speech throughout Western Civ and meddle in everyone’s elections. Euroland keeps mouthing off about a war with Russia despite having no military mojo and going broke-ass broke faster than you can say Götterdämmerung. Bottom line: the US is going solo on this one. What is the objective? Ostensibly “a deal” over Iran’s nuclear weapons program. Like, just cut it out, will you, please? By the way, did you know that Supreme Leader Ayatollah Khamenei issued a fatwa in 2005 saying production, stockpiling, and use of nuclear weapons was forbidden under Islam.
But then deception is allowed in Islam under the doctrine of taqiyya, against the threat of attack from hostile forces, I’m sure you remember Operation Midnight Hammer in June last year when we attacked and supposedly “obliterated” Iran’s nuclear research and development bunkers at Fordow, Natanz, and Isfahan? They got pretty banged-up, you may be sure, and nobody in Iran denied there was something nukey going on in those installations. Is there a will there to rebuild the whole darn infrastructure of uranium enrichment and so forth?
The mullahs are not saying, which means: of course, they intend to continue developing nuclear weapons — and even if that’s a stupid and futile gambit, given recent history, they still have factories churning out plain old long-range ballistic missiles and new drones by the thousands. Let’s face it: the mullahs are hardcore for Jihad and martyrdom. Since being elevated to Supreme Leader in 1989, Ayatollah Khamenei has sought relentlessly to transform the traditional Islamic concept of Jihad and establish it as the central pillar of the regime’s ideology.
Are we doing Israel’s bidding there? (Cue: roar of affirmation.) But then, Israel has a point. Iran has been cuckoo for going on forty years. If Israel wasn’t a target of the mullahs’ eternal Shia wrath, there are their other enemies, the Sunni, on the west side of the Persian Gulf (and next door in Iraq). And consider, too, Iran’s obdurate sponsorship of Jihad, wherever possible, both within and outside the Ummah — including especially Western Civ, where low-grade Jihad has been going on for over a decade. . . mass murders, rape gangs, beheadings, trucks through the Christmas markets. . .

https://twitter.com/BryceMLipscomb/status/2024519176556044357?s=20 Read more …

“.. he was fatally beaten by a mob of far-left militants in Lyon, France…”

• Just When You Thought The BBC Couldn’t Get Any More Repugnant… (MN)

The BBC is under fire for a headline that branded 23-year-old conservative student Quentin Deranque as a “far-right student” after he was fatally beaten by a mob of far-left militants in Lyon, France. Critics are calling it blatant bias, turning the victim into the villain while downplaying the attackers’ extremism. This isn’t just sloppy journalism—it’s narrative warfare, shielding violent leftists and ignoring the real threat of Antifa-style thugs running rampant in Europe. Authorities charged nine far-left militants with the fatal beating during a protest. The suspects are linked to the militant group La Jeune Garde (Young Guard), including a parliamentary assistant from the far-left France Unbowed (LFI) party.

The attack stemmed from Deranque providing security for the anti-mass migration feminist group Collectif Némésis, who were protesting a conference featuring MEP Rima Hassan. Tensions escalated when far-left groups confronted the demonstrators, leading to chaotic clashes. Videos shared online captured the violence, including attempts to seize banners and at least one woman being knocked to the ground. Deranque was isolated, viciously set upon by masked attackers, and left for dead after repeated blows to the head. According to Collectif Némésis leader Alice Cordier, “A member of our security…was lynched by the Jeune Garde Antifa.” The group added, “His attackers were masked, armed with reinforced gloves and tear gas, leaving little doubt about the premeditated nature of their attack.”
Deranque, a pious Catholic mathematics student, suffered severe brain injuries consistent with a cerebral hemorrhage. He was rushed to Édouard-Herriot Hospital but was later declared brain-dead. The BBC’s disgusting headline, “Nine arrested in France over death of far-right student,” ignited backlash from conservatives. It framed Deranque as “far-right” and didn’t even mention that he was brutally murdered, just that he died, nor that the mob that set upon him and ended his life were far left militants.
https://twitter.com/TRobinsonNewEra/status/2023872774687924243
The attack also involved a parliamentary collaborator of MP Raphael Arnault, Jeune Garde’s founder. Arnault received support from Jean-Luc Mélenchon’s party, with Mélenchon responding by claiming his side were the real victims.Far-left lawmakers had recently opposed dissolving Jeune Garde, claiming it prevents “neo-Nazi groups increasingly violent in France.”
https://twitter.com/RMXnews/status/2023485636070830243
In Paris, far-left activists tore down posters tributing Deranque, while President Emmanuel Macron condemned the killing but urged calm. Anthropologist Florence Bergaud-Blackler warned, “The circumstances of Quentin’s death as he came to protect the women of Collectif Némésis are a foreshadowing of the civil war that is looming. The petty servile foot soldiers of anti-fascism are the cannon fodder of Islamism which seeks to overthrow our liberal and egalitarian social order and lock women away. Young Quentin is a hero.” The media’s spin, like the BBC’s “Student death puts French far-left under pressure,” minimizes the murder as “just a death,” ignoring the blatant political lynching.
The British state funded broadcaster is already under intense scrutiny owing to President Trump’s $10 billion defamation lawsuit concerning deceptive editing of his January 6, 2021, speech. The suit accuses the BBC of splicing footage to falsely imply Trump incited violence at the Capitol, omitting his calls for peaceful protest. District Judge Roy Altman rejected the BBC’s bid to delay discovery, paving the way for a two-week trial in Miami. Trump’s team blasts the edit as “false, defamatory, disparaging, and inflammatory,” while a BBC spokesman said, “As we have made clear previously, we will be defending this case. We are not going to make further comment on ongoing legal proceedings.” This follows internal turmoil at the BBC, with top executives resigning amid the fallout, and an FCC probe into potential “news distortion.” Leaked memos condemned the edit as “completely misleading.”

Trial Date SET For Trump’s $10 BILLION BBC Lawsuit Over Fake News Editing SCANDAL

As Europe grapples with unchecked far-left extremism, shielded by biased media and complicit politicians, incidents like this expose the real dangers to freedom and safety. Quentin Deranque stood for protecting women against threats—his sacrifice demands accountability, not smears. Meanwhile, the BBC’s globalist propaganda faces its own reckoning in court.

EU decides electioms, not voters.

• Inside the EU’s War On Democracy (RT)

Romania’s 2024 presidential election was already one of the most controversial political episodes in the European Union in recent years. A candidate who won the first round was prevented from contesting the second. The vote was annulled. Claims of Russian interference were advanced without public evidence. At the time, the affair raised urgent questions about democratic standards inside the EU. A congressional investigation reviewed by RT raises even more question. They indicate that the annulment of the Romanian election was accompanied by sustained efforts to pressure social media platforms into suppressing political speech – efforts coordinated through mechanisms established under the EU’s Digital Services Act. What appeared to be a national political crisis now looks increasingly like a test case for how far EU institutions are willing to go in intervening in the political processes of member states.

The Russian narrative. Again.
On February 3, the US House Judiciary Committee published a 160-page investigation into how the EU systematically pressures social media companies to alter internal guidelines and suppress content. It found Brussels orchestrated a “decade-long campaign” to censor political speech across the bloc. In many cases, this amounted to direct meddling in political processes and elections of members, often using EU-endorsed civil society organizations. The report features several case studies of this “campaign” in action in EU member states, the gravest example being Romania. It was around the November 2024 Romanian presidential election, the committee found, that the European Commission“took its most aggressive censorship steps.” In the first round, anti-establishment outsider Calin Georgescu comfortably prevailed, and polls indicated he was en route to win the second by landslide. However, on December 6, Bucharest’s constitutional court overturned the results. While a court-ordered recount found no irregularities in the process, a new election was called, in which Georgescu was banned from running.
By contrast, Romania’s security service alleged Georgescu’s victory was attributable to a Russian-orchestrated TikTok campaign. The allegation was unsupported by any evidence whatsoever. Romanian President Klaus Iohannis went to the extent of claiming this deficit was inversely proof of Moscow’s culpability, as the Russians supposedly “hide perfectly in cyber space.” Despite the BBC reporting that even Romanians “who feared a president Georgescu” worried about the precedent set for their democracy by the move, that narrative has been endlessly reiterated ever since.
The US House Judiciary Committee report comprehensively disproves the charge of Russian meddling in the Romanian election. Documents and emails provided by TikTok expose how the platform not only consistently assessed Moscow “did not conduct a coordinated influence operation to boost Georgescu’s campaign,” but repeatedly shared these findings with the European Commission and Romanian authorities. This information was never shared by either party. But the contempt of Brussels and Bucharest for democracy and free speech went much further.
Digital Services Act in action
The committee found Romanian officials egregiously abused the EU’s controversial Digital Services Act before the 2024 election “to silence content supporting populist and nationalist candidates.” Bucharest also repeatedly lodged content takedown requests outside of the formal DSA process, using what committee investigators call “expansive interpretations of their own power to mandate removals of political content.” This amounted to a “global takedown order,” with authorities perversely arguing court demands to block certain content for local audiences were “mandatory not only in Romania.”
This was no doubt a ploy to prevent outsiders, in particular the country’s sizable diaspora, from accessing content featuring Georgescu. His “Romania First” agenda proved quite popular with emigres, numbering many millions due to mass depopulation since 1989. Perhaps not coincidentally, his diaspora supporters have been widely maligned by Western media as fascist enablers. Still, even critical mainstream reports admit they and the domestic population have legitimate grievances, due to Romania’s crushing economic decline in the same period.

Europe must defend itself from invaders invited in by Europeans.

• Europe’s Civilizational War Will Be Bloody (AT)

It seems as if every month a new story comes out of Britain warning about the likelihood of future civil war. Retired colonel Richard Kemp recently gave a television interview during which he warned that the “Islamification” of the United Kingdom would lead to “inevitable conflict.” Several British academics specializing in the preconditions for civil conflict, including professors David Betz and Michael Rainsborough, have argued the same point.

Kemp’s point of view carries the added weight of someone who has witnessed insurgent fighting firsthand. A former commander who carried out counter-insurgency operations in Northern Ireland, led British forces in Afghanistan, and held intelligence roles in Westminster, Kemp says Islamic immigrants’ refusal to integrate into British society means that things in the U.K. are “getting bad” and about to “get worse.” Among other provocative comments that will no doubt ruffle the feathers of Britain’s “ruling class,” Kemp notes, “There were more British Muslims with the Taliban than in the British Army.”
The combat veteran argues that Britain’s political class has failed citizens by putting them in harm’s way and is simultaneously incapable of mitigating its failures due to suffocating concerns for what can be said out loud. “No government,” Kemp argues, “has the guts to stop…the Islamification of the U.K.” Consequently, ordinary Brits now need to prepare for the likelihood of “civil war in Europe.” Describing the looming conflict in the U.K. as a far more serious and deadly situation than what gripped Northern Ireland for decades, Kemp predicts that the coming civil war will involve “indigenous British and some of the immigrant population and the British government all on three different sides fighting against each other.”
Drawing on his experience with insurgent forces, the retired colonel blames disenfranchisement in Britain for the future violence: “The big problem that British people have is they don’t have political choice. We don’t really live in a democracy….Whatever party you vote for, you get the same policies. That applies also to immigration and to the way in which the Islamic population is allowed to grow in numbers and dominance.” As academics Betz and Rainsborough have also argued, Kemp sees the unwillingness of the U.K.’s political class to respect the will of voters with regards to immigration, Brexit, and the preservation of traditional culture as the proximate cause of the civil war to come.
Democratic institutions provide citizen-voters with a “release valve” through which they can express pent-up frustration without resorting to violence. The problem is that a political “uniparty” operates in the U.K., as it does throughout most of the West. It doesn’t matter whether Brits hand power to a Labour or Tory prime minister; they get non-stop Islamic immigration regardless. When native Brits publicly protest the “Islamification” of the U.K., both Labour and Tory members of parliament call them “racist” and prosecute them for “hate.” When native Brits march through downtown cities to condemn Islamic rape gangs and Islamic terrorism, both Labour and Tory members of parliament call them “racist” and prosecute them for “hate.”
When native Brits rally to prevent the construction of super-mosques in rural parts of Britain, both Labour and Tory members of parliament call them “racist” and prosecute them for “hate.” Therefore, citizens in the U.K. have learned that voting accomplishes nothing and that their so-called political “leaders” are incapable of defending British lives or British ways of life. The British pot is boiling, and Kemp adds his voice to a growing chorus of professionals with expertise in violent civil conflicts who predict a war-ravaged kingdom in the near future. “I think the people will feel they have no option than to take action into their own hand rather than rely on political leaders who are doing nothing,” Kemp stated in another interview. “I think there is every likelihood” of “civil war in the U.K. in the coming years.”

“Brennan’s last known testimony contacts with the Senate date to June 23, 2017 and May 16, 2018, two dates that extend outside the usual five-year statute of limitations.”

• Prosecutors Zero In On CIA’s Brennan (JTN)

Federal prosecutors who are probing the weaponization of intelligence and law enforcement against President Donald Trump and his allies have sent a secret and rare request for evidence from the U.S. Senate regarding former CIA Director John Brennan, signaling that they are zeroing in on his questionable testimony going back nearly a decade on his now-debunked efforts to tie Trump’s 2016 campaign to collusion with Russia. The overtures to the U.S. Senate and its intelligence committee from U.S. Attorney Jason A. Reding Quiñones’ team in Miami began over the last month and were formalized in a written request for documents, transcripts and testimony last Friday, according to multiple people directly familiar with the conversations.

Senate lawyers and prosecutors are negotiating the best way to transfer the evidence, including a possible visit by the prosecution team to Washington in the coming days. The efforts are complicated in part because much of what Brennan discussed in briefings dating to 2016 about alleged Russian interference efforts and now-debunked allegations of Trump collusion are classified, stored in secure briefing rooms and include evidence controlled by the nation’s chief spy agency, the CIA, the sources said.
The House Judiciary Committee last year formally referred Brennan, who oversaw the Obama-era CIA, for prosecution, alleging he gave false testimony in 2023 about his role in trying to bring the discredited Steele Dossier into an intelligence assessment that suggested Russia tried to help Trump beat Hillary Clinton. That testimony is still covered by the five-year statute of limitations for prosecuting false testimony to Congress. The request to the Senate signals a possible longer-term conspiracy case, seeking contacts with the Senate that stretches back nearly a decade. Brennan’s last known testimony contacts with the Senate date to June 23, 2017 and May 16, 2018, two dates that extend outside the usual five-year statute of limitations.
Just the News has reported previously that FBI Director Kash Patel drafted a memo last year recommending that a decades-long string of weaponized intelligence and law enforcement statements and alleged intel against Trump and his allies that stretched from the 2016 Russia collusion probe — codenamed “Crossfire Hurricane” — to Special Counsel Jack Smith’s indictments against Trump a decade later should be viewed as an ongoing criminal conspiracy to deprive American citizens of their civil rights, allowing prosecutors to charge crimes outside the statute of limitations as overt acts of an ongoing conspiracy.
Attorney General Pam Bondi assigned the task of reviewing the decades’ long trail of evidence for possible crimes and conspiracy to Quiñones, whose team began collecting evidence in front of a federal grand jury in Fort Pierce, Fla., the same courthouse where Smith brought his now-dismissed prosecution for mishandling of classified documents against Trump. Brennan, the CIA director under President Barack Obama, and now a senior national security and intelligence analyst for NBC News and MSNBC, is one of the targets of that probe for his involvement in the 2017 Intelligence Community Assessment (ICA) regarding Russia’s influence in the 2016 election.
That assessment, published in the final days of the Obama administration, concluded that Russia developed a “clear preference” for Trump in that election and that Russian President Vladimir Putin ordered an influence campaign to “undermine public faith in the U.S. democratic process, denigrate former Secretary of State [Hillary] Clinton, and harm her electability and potential presidency.”

“Dumping tons of stuff out without any context tends to have a lot of unintended consequences,” he said. The result has been politically damaging across the board.”

• Matt Taibbi: Epstein Files Uniquely Destructive To Both Parties (QTR)

This week I interviewed Matt Taibbi at a moment when, as he put it, “this is a pretty weird time.” He had just learned that his outlet, Racket News, had been investigated by the British government using what he described as “human intelligence sources and all kinds of crazy stuff.” “It’s been pretty weird,” he told me. What struck him most was how normalized this kind of pressure has become. Governments, he said, now routinely “hire out private intelligence firms and private PR firms to devise strategies to undermine negative press.” If you’re doing adversarial reporting, he added, “you’ll get swept up in this. So you probably have been, you just don’t know it.”

From there, we moved into the Epstein story, which has become a political third rail. I asked him whether bipartisan silence around certain issues should worry people. Taibbi said most of what happens in Washington is already bipartisan; the public just doesn’t see it. “The thing that we call the news,” he said, is “a sliver of disagreement” between parties. The rest—“98% of the business that’s done there”—happens with quiet agreement. On the Epstein files, he argued that both parties miscalculated. The Trump camp, he said, built expectations around full transparency and then stumbled. “Dumping tons of stuff out without any context tends to have a lot of unintended consequences,” he said. The result has been politically damaging across the board.
He also pushed back on some of the public narrative. The fascination with Epstein, he said, rests on three assumptions: that Epstein worked for intelligence, that he ran a vast trafficking ring, and that the two were connected through political blackmail. “There’s an abundance of evidence” of serious sexual crimes, he acknowledged. But on the intelligence-blackmail theory, “there’s nothing that puts it all together and says that’s what was happening. It could, but it’s just not there yet.” What he does see is a slow-burn release strategy. “You’ll notice that they never fully release everything,” he told me. “It’s like Zeno’s paradox. We’re never going to get all the way to the wall with this.” Each new tranche fuels public demand and media frenzy, with the promise that the next batch might contain the “kill shot” that takes down someone powerful.
We then shifted to New York politics and the rise of Zohran Mamdani. Taibbi sees his early proposals—like raising property taxes—as predictable. If state-level backing doesn’t materialize, he suggested, the Democratic Party may distance itself. “The Democratic Party has decided not to back this horse,” he said. In his view, the party faces a structural dilemma: a base that is moving left out of economic frustration, and a national electoral map that may not tolerate that shift. He connected that frustration to student debt and monetary policy. When I brought up inflation and deficit spending, he traced the arc back to post-2008 policies and the explosion of quantitative easing. “All you’re doing is accelerating inequality on the one hand,” he said, “and you’re raising the debt burden for everybody else.” The result, he argued, is a generation that feels locked out of homeownership and upward mobility.
On immigration and recent ICE enforcement actions, Taibbi resisted simple partisanship. He said he found neighborhood sweeps and masked agents “scary,” comparing aspects of the approach to “an enhanced federal version of stop and frisk.” At the same time, he criticized the ideological shift that made even basic border enforcement seem taboo. “It’s not like having borders is inherently xenophobic,” he said. “It’s just a part of governance. Part of being a nation.” At the end of the conversation, Taibbi outlined changes at Racket News. He said he had “basically fired” himself as editor-in-chief and brought in new leadership to refocus on document-based investigations. The site, he told me, is doubling down on FOIA-driven reporting and digging into stories like expansive FBI investigations and the British controversy now touching his own outlet.

Germany has killed itself, step by step.

Crucial: when Merkel banned nuclear power in the country.

• VW’s 20% Cost-Cutting Plan Exposes Germany’s Industrial Crisis (ZH)

For too long, Germany’s economy has watched political developments from the sidelines – perhaps far too long. The cost pressures triggered by the energy transition and Brussels’ extensive regulatory policies are now reflected in business results. Following Stellantis and Opel, Volkswagen on Monday announced sweeping measures to confront the existential economic crisis. CEO Oliver Blume presented a cost-saving program that, according to Manager Magazin, is expected to reduce global company costs by one-fifth by the end of 2028. The internal overhaul was presented in mid-January by Blume and CFO Arno Antlitz. A concrete statement from the company on its strategy has not yet been issued. Plant closures in Germany are reportedly also under discussion.

Collapse in Earnings
Pressure to act is immense. The final results for last year are not yet available, but after three quarters, an operating profit (EBIT) drop of roughly 48 percent year-on-year to around €9.9 billion is emerging. The EBIT margin, a key measure of profitability, fell to 3.05 percent from 5.87 percent. Revenue stagnated at around €324 billion, with vehicle sales of roughly nine million units, down 0.5 percent. The fourth quarter in particular saw a 4.9 percent decline, with China and North America suffering the largest losses. European sales remained relatively stable with modest gains, though the negative trend accelerated toward year-end. This may have been the trigger prompting management to implement drastic cost-saving measures.
Free cash flow also collapsed by 90 percent to €514 million, further limiting the company’s ability to invest in R&D and plant development. Fundamentally, cost consolidation remains the only lever to create breathing room amid fierce global competition – particularly with China and increasingly with the United States.
Germany’s Industrial Base Bleeds
By 2030, 35,000 jobs are set to be cut in Germany alone. VW’s core brand currently employs around 130,000 workers. The reduction will be carried out without layoffs, using severance packages and partial retirement plans. Fewer young specialists, less dynamism, fewer jobs – the visible consequence of Germany’s energy-policy isolation and the EU’s climate-policy path.The plants in Wolfsburg and Zwickau are under particular efficiency pressure. Structural production relocations to cheaper locations such as Hungary, as well as further consolidation in China and possibly the U.S., are underway. Germany’s aggressive climate regulations are forcing companies like Volkswagen to recalibrate their global strategy.
Most investments now flow to China, followed by Mexico, Brazil, and the U.S. In Chattanooga, Tennessee, the plant currently produces SUVs like the Atlas and Passat, as well as the electric ID.4. Significant production expansion in Germany is no longer on the agenda. Volkswagen is also pushing suppliers to cut costs, heavily affecting Germany’s SME sector. The VW crisis is thus also a crisis for the German Mittelstand, where a large portion of pre-production value is generated for the country’s industrial core.

Sickening. And then you refuse to look into it. Fire the man,

• London Mayor Sadiq Khan Faces Backlash As BBC Investigates Grooming Gangs (RMX)

London Mayor Sadiq Khan is facing renewed criticism after a major BBC investigation found that vulnerable girls as young as 14 are being lured into forced sex by gangs operating across the capital. The investigation, based on weeks of reporting and interviews with dozens of people, including five survivors of gang-based violence, concluded that exploitation by organised groups is rife in parts of London. Some victims told the BBC they were raped by multiple men as “payment” for unpaid drug debts run up by gangs that controlled them. Others said they had been groomed solely for sex. The investigation also found that girls were often drawn into criminal activity such as drug dealing, weapons trading, and phone theft before being sexually exploited.

One Metropolitan Police officer described young girls and women as the “lowest rung” within gang hierarchies, saying they were groomed and exploited “for everything.” Public debate over grooming gangs in the U.K. has often focused on northern towns such as Rotherham and Rochdale. A government-commissioned report last year found that in Greater Manchester, South Yorkshire, and West Yorkshire, there was evidence of “disproportionate numbers of men from Asian ethnic backgrounds amongst suspects for group-based child sexual exploitation.” Further investigations have found the same in other towns and cities, including Telford, Oxford, Derby, Birmingham, Halifax, Peterborough, and countless others.
Last year, Khan said there was no “indication of […] grooming gangs” of the type seen in Rotherham operating in London. Following the BBC findings, a spokesperson for the mayor said he wanted to support police to tackle “all child sexual exploitation in the capital, including grooming gangs.” Survivors told the broadcaster how exploitation often targeted girls from broken homes or troubled backgrounds. “I didn’t feel like I was groomed or exploited. I didn’t think I was a victim. It’s taken me a while to realise I was used and manipulated,” one victim told the BBC. Another survivor, Milly, said she was 15 when she was passed between different men.
“I was getting passed around different men every night – sometimes 10 or 15 a month,” she said, describing how she was plied with drink and drugs before being taken into bedrooms by different men.“I don’t remember their names really. It sounds horrible, but I just know they were Asian. Sometimes they just said, ‘Oh, you’re a nice, young White girl,’” she added. A third victim, Ruth, said: “They didn’t want anything but sex. I was low and they gave me expensive things so I felt wanted and then slept with them. It felt like I had multiple boyfriends giving me attention.”
Detective Sergeant John Knox, head of the Metropolitan Police child exploitation team in Lambeth and Southwark, said girls inside gangs “cannot say no to sex.” “Within that gang world, the girls are at the lowest rung and they have to do as they’re told. And that includes sexually,” he said, adding that if a girl cannot refuse, “she’s being raped and that’s how we look at it as the police.” Knox estimates at least 60 children in his south London area are currently being exploited by gangs, some as young as 13.The BBC findings prompted sharp criticism from political opponents. https://twitter.com/Daily_Express/status/2016846411778723970

Everything is AI-generated. Including the ‘actress’.

• $200 Million Movie in a Day? Welcome to the End of Hollywood (Stephen Green)

Prepare to be blown away by the Hollywood-quality video AI now generates, and if you work in or even near Hollywood, prepare for a vicious case of the night-sweats. The Dor Brothers, who bill themselves as “pioneers in AI video production,” earlier this week claimed they “just made a $200,000,000 AI movie in just one day.” Well, no. But they did release a three-minute trailer for what looks like it could be a $200 million Hollywood production. In many ways, that isn’t a complement. But in the ways that matter to the bloated movie studios, what the Dor Brothers have done might just represent the future of filmmaking, for better or worse. Before we get into any of that, please take three minutes to watch the “100% AI” trailer for Apex.

There are plenty of nits to pick — palm trees in NYC, really? — but overall, the special effects* are probably at least as good as anything from whatever the hell the most recent Marvel superhero movie was. The asterisk after “special effects” is because there are no special effects. There aren’t any actors, either. If you still watch SFX spectaculars like the big studios spew out several times each year, take a look at the credits and you’ll see a massive list of computer animators responsible for all the CGI. But for Apex, there was no big team of well-paid CGI artists. There were only prompts fed into an LLM server farm, and a big team of Nvidia graphics cards doing the work for “free.”
And while the “actress” is no Oscar contender, she’s probably good enough for Netflix “second screen” streaming slop. And even with all those pricey Nvidia cards behind her, the AI heroine is a lot less expensive than hiring Zendaya for the same role in a “real” movie. Probably more expressive, too. We’re barely into 2026, and the state-of-the-art (or perhaps only nearly so) in AI video generation might have have been Runway Gen-2 or one of its competitors. Compare and contrast what Runway could do then with what the Dor Brothers did on Monday.
In 2024, AI-generated video struggled not to suck, and failed at clearing even that low bar. In February, 2026, we’re complaining that those real-looking trees in the fast-moving action clip don’t belong in New York City. “You’ve come a long way, baby,” the cigarette ads used to boast. “And in such a short time, too,” I’d add.So if we’ve gone from “not even real” to “we’re picking at nits” in two years, does that mean we’re just another year or two away from reaching the Singularity — when AI gets smart enough to reprogram itself faster than we can keep up. And then politely asks if we’d like fries with our obsolescence. That’s where things get complicated.

“You can’t say such things” “It’s how I make a living!”

Would Monty Python be banned today?

• John Cleese; “I’m Afraid They are Going to Have to Arrest Me.” (Turley)

In the classic movie comedy, A Fish Called Wanda, John Cleese lamented, “do you have any idea what it’s like being English? Being so correct all the time, being so stifled by this dread of, of doing the wrong thing.” Now 86, Cleese has a more pressing concern about being English: whether his exercise of free speech will make him a criminal in his own country. In a recent interview, Cleese observed that the government’s new speech standards would classify many citizens, including himself, as presumptive criminals for criticizing certain policies. He observed that”As I am an Islamosceptic, I’m now worried that the Labour government may categorise me as a terrorist…”

The government of Prime Minister Keir Starmer has continued its headlong plunge into the criminalization of speech. The guidelines include a section on cultural nationalism, stating that such views are now the subject of government crackdowns. To even argue that Western culture is under threat from mass migration or a lack of integration by certain groups is being treated as a dangerous ideology. Cleese responded by saying, “I’m clearly a terrorist, so I’m afraid they are going to have to arrest me.”
The tragedy is that this is no wicked Monty Python joke. Cleese has every reason to be concerned. As discuss in Rage and the Republic, the United Kingdom has eviscerated free speech in the name of social cohesion and order. For years, I have been writing about the decline of free speech in the United Kingdom and the steady stream of arrests. A man was convicted of sending a tweet while drunk, referring to dead soldiers. Another was arrested for an anti-police t-shirt. Another was arrested for calling the Irish boyfriend of his ex-girlfriend a “leprechaun.” Yet another was arrested for singing “Kung Fu Fighting.” A teenager was arrested for protesting outside of a Scientology center with a sign calling the religion a “cult.”
Last year, Nicholas Brock, 52, was convicted of a thought crime in Maidenhead, Berkshire. The neo-Nazi was given a four-year sentence for what the court called his “toxic ideology” based on the contents of the home he shared with his mother in Maidenhead, Berkshire. While most of us find Brock’s views repellent and hateful, they were confined to his head and his room. Yet, Judge Peter Lodder QC dismissed free speech or free thought concerns with a truly Orwellian statement: “I do not sentence you for your political views, but the extremity of those views informs the assessment of dangerousness.” Lodder lambasted Brock for holding Nazi and other hateful values:
“[i]t is clear that you are a right-wing extremist, your enthusiasm for this repulsive and toxic ideology is demonstrated by the graphic and racist iconography which you have studied and appeared to share with others…” Even though Lodder agreed that the defendant was older, had limited mobility, and “there was no evidence of disseminating to others,” he still sent him to prison for holding extremist views.After the sentencing, Detective Chief Superintendent Kath Barnes, Head of Counter Terrorism Policing South East (CTPSE), warned others that he was going to prison because he “showed a clear right-wing ideology with the evidence seized from his possessions during the investigation….We are committed to tackling all forms of toxic ideology which has the potential to threaten public safety and security.”
“Toxic ideology” also appears to be the target of Ireland’s proposed Criminal Justice (Incitement to Violence or Hatred and Hate Offences) law. It covers the possession of material deemed hateful. The law is a free speech nightmare. The law makes it a crime to possess “harmful material” as well as “condoning, denying or grossly trivialising genocide, war crimes, crimes against humanity and crimes against peace.” The law expressly states the intent to combat “forms and expressions of racism and xenophobia by means of criminal law.”
The Brock case proved, as feared, a harbinger of what was to come. Two years ago, the home secretary, Yvette Cooper, vowed to crack down on people “pushing harmful and hateful beliefs.” That includes what she calls extreme misogyny. Now the UK’s most famous writers and comedians believe that they can be arrested under the country’s draconian speech laws from JK Rowling to John Cleese. That leaves free speech much like Cleese’s famous parrot. The British government and its supporters can claim evidence of life or just “resting, but it is in fact “bleedin’ demised…passed on! … no more! … ceased to be! … expired and gone to meet ‘is maker!”

“The aftermath of fire is growth..”

“The fire horse is also a sprinting animal, which indicates that 2026 is a year in which events will unfold rapidly. “

• The Year of the Fire Horse is Back—for The First Time in 60 years (NatGeo)

As Lunar New Year celebrations begin around the world, 2026 ushers in the Year of the Horse—a symbol of forward movement, independence, and endurance. This year ushers in the Year of the Fire Horse—a rare, blazing return that only comes once every 60 years. Lunar New Year, also known as Chinese New Year, falls between late-January and mid-February, with its date set by China’s ancient lunisolar calendar. Since at least the second century B.C., each new year has been named for one of the 12 animals of the Chinese zodiac, which repeat in a 12-year cycle. In Chinese astrology, each of the zodiac animals are believed to have distinct traits which are supposedly reflected in people born in that corresponding year.

For this year’s celebrations, fire horse symbols will be omnipresent, adorning festival decorations, as well as envelopes, cards, and wrapping paper that accompany Lunar New Year gifts. Here’s what the Year of the Fire Horse signals as Lunar New Year unfolds.
What the Year of the Horse means
The horse is revered in Chinese culture due to its long-standing roles in agriculture, transport, and warfare, says Jonathan H. X. Lee, Asian studies professor at San Francisco State University. However, in the Chinese zodiac, this galloping animal symbolizes strength, grace, endurance, loyalty, freedom, and success. Its strength, Lee explains, represents possibilities for personal growth and success. According to Lee, this is exemplified by the Chinese idiom: When the horse arrives, success arrives. “The horse’s energy is associated with yang energy, which is active, dynamic, and life-generating, and speaks to ambition and vitality.” In Chinese astrology, Horse years favor decisive action and independence, while also warning against impulsiveness.
Why the fire horse is so rare
While it’s only been 12 years since the last Year of the Horse, 60 years have passed since the most recent Year of the Fire Horse. = In addition to cycling through 12 animals each year, the Chinese lunar calendar also rotates between the five traditional Chinese elements—earth, wood, fire, metal and water. While the animal rotates each year, the element only rotates every two years. That is why 2024 was the year of the Wood Dragon, and 2025 was the Year of the Wood Snake. Now, 2026 will celebrate the Fire Horse, before 2027 marks the Year of the Fire Goat. This assortment of 12 animals and five elements means that each distinct animal-element combination only occurs once every 60 years. The Year of the Horse was last featured in 2014, when it was paired with the element of wood.
Traits of the Year of the Fire Horse
The Fire Horse shares the horse’s traits: power, stamina, independence, loyalty, and prosperity, Lee explains. But each trait is amplified by its combination with fire, the most volatile of the five traditional Chinese elements. “The aftermath of fire is growth,” he says. “This means that there will be many opportunities for growth, so individuals are encouraged to push forward with personal goals, embrace change, and endure the process for ultimate reward.”
The fire horse is also a sprinting animal, which indicates that 2026 is a year in which events will unfold rapidly. Experts say the Year of the Horse will demand “bold action and risk taking,” in stark contrast to 2025’s Year of the Wood Snake, which was viewed as a time for cautious progress.
Fire horse years, also called Bing-Wu years, historically “disrupt the existing order” of our societies, according to Xiaohuan Zhao, sinology professor at the University of Sydney. “(There) is a long-standing association between Bing-wu years and periods of social or political instability in historical tradition,” he explains. The last Year of the Fire Horse was 1966, a year marked by the start of China’s Cultural Revolution, the Aberfan disaster in Wales, and the escalation of the Vietnam War.

GLOBAL MARKET COLLAPSE STARTS NEXT WEEK

98% of people will get fucked badly before they even realize what hit them

Fed just dropped new macro data. It's way worse than anyone expected. And if you're holding stocks or crypto right now, what comes next is gonna hurt

What's… https://t.co/iKTOp0hAs4 pic.twitter.com/rWqnZIeaym
— Leshka.eth ⛩ (@leshka_eth) February 19, 2026

Rubio https://twitter.com/EricLDaugh/status/2024508632679780419?s=20 Fed

A former World Bank president has sounded the alarm, revealing that the Federal Reserve has lost over a trillion dollars—and counting—turning it into nothing more than a massive hedge fund for the rich and powerful.

He claims the Fed is borrowing money from banks at 5.4%… pic.twitter.com/ARFs7vsT5A
— conspiracybot (@conspiracyb0t) February 19, 2026

https://twitter.com/StellarNews007/status/2024536448255336775?s=20

The First and Only documentary in English on the Russia-Iran-India corridor (linking 3 BRICS), filmed last May in Iran, from the Caspian to the Persian Gulf and the Sea of Oman.

The Empire of Chaos simply cannot allow the corridor to go through.https://t.co/zebRl7kEVT
— Pepe Escobar (@RealPepeEscobar) February 20, 2026

Support the Automatic Earth in wartime with Paypal, Bitcoin and Patreon.

This topic has 56 replies, 13 voices, and was last updated 1 month, 1 week ago by John Day.

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February 21, 2026 at 11:12 pm #231460

Michael Reid
Participant

February 21, 2026 at 11:19 pm #231461

Celticbiker
Participant

Epstein and Lutnick’s mansions in NYC were next door to each other. The addresses are 9 and 11. Pure cohencidence, like Lutnick not showing up for work that day.

February 21, 2026 at 11:49 pm #231462

John Day
Participant

Jim Snow 2.0: Mamdani Requires Snow-Shovel Volunteers Show Two Forms Of ID, Social Security Card https://www.zerohedge.com/political/jim-snow-20-mamdani-requires-snow-shovel-volunteers-show-two-forms-id-and-social-security

February 22, 2026 at 12:01 am #231463

Michael Reid
Participant

February 22, 2026 at 12:16 am #231464

John Day
Participant

Celticbiker wrote: “Epstein and Lutnick’s mansions in NYC were next door to each other. The addresses are 9 and 11. Pure cohencidence, like Lutnick not showing up for work that day.”
(I did not fact check the address thing, though. It was also the day in 1973 that Salvador Allende was assassinated.)

February 22, 2026 at 12:23 am #231465

kultsommer
Participant

Deebson

Why don’t we just see which one of us can pee the farthest.

Posting on TAE, for me, was NEVER about that.
However, I noticed that most of your posts are all about that. Projection?
I never called anybody ignorant or stupid. I post my, I admit, sometimes unorthodox opinions for Am-audience just to find out that all hell may broke loose but never the clear reply as where I may be wrong as they see it.
Trump is, by far, the most popular president among the J-voters in the USA. You claim that some (great?) percentage of them are not even a J-s. I think that the most obvious question, given the overwhelming influence that “they”sway and that may lead us to the WWIII, is what number of “them” we are talking about? TAE audience is (strategically?) quiet, so they may know the answer but I don’t.
Why you see that question as a pissing contest?
I could go on but now, without further ado, can you please answer my three simple fucking questions.

February 22, 2026 at 12:33 am #231466

kultsommer
Participant

John Day

……It was also the day in 1973 that Salvador Allende was assassinated.

On my trip to Chile last summer, all taxi/uber drivers and my wife’s distant family that emigrated there, stayed clear, to my surprise, of anything related to that event. My inquires about the what, where,the museum were met with the cold silence.

February 22, 2026 at 12:37 am #231467

John Day
Participant

@Kultsommer: Did you get any feeling for why that was, the cold silence about Allende’s CIA-induced assassination under Kissinger/Nixon?

February 22, 2026 at 12:51 am #231468

John Day
Participant

“Satanic, Awful, Sacrificial”: Boebert And Maher Discuss Pizzagate, Epstein, And Baby Cannibalism https://www.zerohedge.com/political/satanic-awful-sacrificial-boebert-and-maher-discuss-pizzagate-epstein-and-baby

Maher started out appearing to apologize to QAnon followers for being “righter than me” when it came to Epstein, adding “Now they also believe a lot of real batsh*t nonsense. But when it comes to-”

“I know you think it is,” Boebert shot back.

“They don’t eat babies. Democrats don’t need babies. You think they eat babies?” Maher replied.

“There is a lot of consumption talk in the stuff that, no, are there babies? I don’t know. No, you can laugh all you want. But I mean, there is some sick stuff in here that is implying,” Boebert answered.

“But that’s not eating babies. It’s — oh c’mon,” Maher said back.

“I’m not saying they’re eating babies. I’m saying there is talk of consumption and it ain’t pizza,” she replied. “And And I’m, not saying that I am QAnon by any means but this is deep dark satanic awful Sacrificial. And this stuff is gross.”

“See, this is what I’m saying. Here I am, sacrificing myself, saying, you know what? I was wrong, QAnon, and then you don’t meet me halfway! You insist they might be eating babies!” Maher shot back.

February 22, 2026 at 2:24 am #231474

D Benton Smith
Participant

@JohnDay

[in regard to] Boebert And Maher Discuss Pizzagate, Epstein, And Baby Cannibalism

Since I can presently only experience the material reality that occurs within range of my senses I am limited in what I can attest as true by my own personal direct observation and say it with 100% certainty. BUT, having said that, I can report with 100% personal certainty that a vast preponderance of second-hand evidence from hundreds of obsessively checked, cross-checked and externally verified sources ….over the course of my long lifetime on the fringes of both secret and non-secret intelligence/governance and military activities supports the conclusion that the evil Cabal that runs this planet DOES eat babies, ingest adrenochrome, and wantonly murder, while maintaining astoundingly complete control over the storage and communication of almost all material based information.

The seriousness of our situation cannot be overstated. It is dire.

The following video comes pretty damn close to my own assessment. I couldn’t find anything in it that I could specifically disagree with (although I reserve full endorsement until I’ve mulled it over more deeply.) Dr. Julia McCoy gets very very close to describing both our predicament, and it’s resolution. I present it for your careful consideration: https://youtu.be/u3IX-UtZg1g?si=BV7AkO979a-kIQpV

February 22, 2026 at 2:31 am #231475

those darned kids
Participant

i tried to watch the video about my quantum light soul, but the ai ad for “women seeking mature partners” next to the video kept distracting me too much..

February 22, 2026 at 2:36 am #231476

D Benton Smith
Participant

@Kultsommer

I could go on but now, without further ado, can you please answer my three simple fucking questions.

Sure. For clarity please restate questions 1,2 and 3 succinctly and fuckingly, and I will answer them as simply as I can.

February 22, 2026 at 2:52 am #231477

D Benton Smith
Participant

@ThoseDarnedKids

I don’t get ads like that because the algo’s limit for maximum allowable “maturity” is about 20 years under the bracket I’m in. All I get is stuff for Assisted Living and Final Arrangements planning.

February 22, 2026 at 3:38 am #231478

John Day
Participant

@DBS: I’m still at a silent retreat, so I clicked through thetext that shows on the screen, which came under this heading: The Quantum-AI-Human Convergence: Why You’re More Than Any Machine Will Ever Be

It seems pretty straightforward that way.
A premise I like a LOT in recent years is that Consciousness is primary, and contains all physical reality within.
Elon Musk’s version is that we all exist in a really advanced simulation, like a computer simulation. In Buddhism it is Cittamatra, the “Mind Only” school of thought.

There is something called “loosh”, which is the energy eminated by anguished sentient beings. There are reports that soulles automatic conscious entities, “Archons”, which might also be called “demons” feed off this loosh, and whisper things in the ears of humans who help them get loosh…

There are reports that some ancient human apex-predator families cultivate these relationships, which may contribute to their role in the world, of keeping human populations from outgrowing available resources.

You have been reluctant to state clearly your beliefs and experiences over the years, which I can understand. You once said that I “knew enough”, or something to that effect.

I do think that this getting out in fairly mainstream conversation, like Bill Maher, puts society at a point of “having been told”, in the different sort of “morality” these elite human apex predators are purported to follow.

February 22, 2026 at 4:10 am #231479

those darned kids
Participant

hahaha, i actually did watch the video. i have adblock for everything [sorry, raúl..], but some stuff does get through.

i think dogs (amongst others, i imagine) can see the light we emit. i think some of us emit more than others.

i think some of us used to be able to see those of us who emit more light than others, kinda like them angels and such in weird old tapestries and such.

“Abstract
In measuring the output of light from the human skin, we estimated the total photon rates to be of the order of 170-600 photons/s/cm2, depending on anatomical location. The light was strongest at the red end of the spectrum, but fell below detectable levels in the ultraviolet. Significant variations were observed between individuals in both photon rate and spectral profile. The photon rate also varied significantly with time for a single individual. The possible source of this light and its significance are discussed.”

https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/1978506/

February 22, 2026 at 7:08 am #231480

D Benton Smith
Participant

@JohnDay

You have been reluctant to state clearly your beliefs and experiences over the years, which I can understand. You once said that I “knew enough”, or something to that effect.

That’s a very enticing invitation and I’ll try to answer up with enough-but-not-too-much information, which is unusually difficult in my particular case because the circumstances and experiences of this peculiar life are so improbable and astoundingly “coincidental” (for lack of better terms) that if it weren’t for close family no one else would know of or believe any of it.

I’m relating these biographical bullet points only because they bear directly upon the even stranger stuff that comes later. So far everyone else that I’ve tried to tell just goes blank, incredulous, or hostile making further conveyance of information difficult if not impossible. It’s hard to give the truth to people who won’t receive it, especially when the “coincidences” involve the biggest and most pivotal events that have reshaped the world over the last century and a half or so.

To describe these things as impossibly improbable and “coincidental” is an absurdly understated understatement, and consequently my life since the age of 4 years has been the intensely focused effort to discover the explanation, figure it out, or die trying.

I knew from the start that it was impossible, but in a very real sense that very hopelessness took most of the heat off. It meant that I needn’t waste any time worrying about failure, recognition, wealth, power, prestige, or meeting the expectations of others. Of course I would fail, and consequently I could just concentrate on the work without those distractions.

I reckoned (accurately, as it turns out) that since there were many billions of more or less normal people busying themselves with the necessarily important things in life, that no one was going to bother with one guy wasting his life nor miss him much when he died. Anonymity has its perks. Freedom is one of them.

I had four things going for me. 1) Very high IQ (which is a highly overrated asset, by the way, and as much a hinderance as it is help), 2) savant syndrome (a highly underrated</em, time saver) in my case consisting of instantaneous (but maddeningly unpredictable, involuntary and sporadic) deep comprehension of “causal chain relationships” of extremely complex phenomena. 3) Born into a “unique” family that has had (and still has) closely trusted but historically anonymous relationships with more than a dozen historical figures who changed the world …. some of them nice but many as notorious as they were noteworthy …. including Lincoln, Grant, LeMay, Oppenheimer, Roosevelt, Stevenson, Hubbard, and many more), and 4) most importantly, strong but intermittent mental telepathy, which has also run in the family for centuries, and is almost certainly not “mine” per se but a gift from God for His purposes, not mine alone.

To make a long intro short, not a normal skill set or biography by any stretch of even the most fertile imagination. What a weirdo.

My religious beliefs are very much like those described in Christopher Langan’s Cognitive Theoretic Model of the Universe, with the main difference being that his approach was math, physics and logic based I arrived at the virtually identical destination via an ethics of human behavior approach and that quirky savant phenomenon. I reverse engineered the complex system of human ethics, behavior and language that came to mind in stages in which each stage came to mind as an instantaneously complete comprehension of basic principles, like a blue flash arc of electrical plasma. Bap! I know that God exists and creates the Universe (as a consciously intended and purposefully aware gift of pure love) same way with the same certainty that I know of my own conscious existence. The early Christians got it right, but much has been lost (or obfuscated) in transcription.

The only part of your prompt that threw me a bit is the part where you wrote, ” You once said that I “knew enough”, or something to that effect”, because I doubt if I’ll ever feel that way about knowledge. I don’t think that I will ever know enough. I sure hope not.

February 22, 2026 at 12:08 pm #231492

John Day
Participant

@DBS: I felt that your saying that I “knew enough, or something to that effect”, was in the context of our discussion at the time of ritual-abuse/MK-Ultra information.

I actually just referred a friend to Langhan’s Cognitive Theoretic Model of the universe a few days ago, because he is chasing something similar with time, space, matter & energy. I drilled down into it pretty well over some months last year, and there is an elegant internal consistency to it. I like that he was working as a bouncer at a bar when he composed it, too.

My paternal family has some pilgrim roots, and includes Joh & John Quincy Adams, and Quakers who sheltered runaway slaves in Ohio, the house where my great grandmother grew up, as she and my grandmother explained to me when I asked (4 y/o) why some people were really dark, “almost black”.

My IQ is nothing to write home about, and I have no savant characteristics, but I do seem to have at least some of each of the human capabilities, so I am fairly empathic and sicerning, and have some premonitions and intuitions of varying clarity, coming when they will.

I do really want to understand things. I have always been that way. It’s a setting since birth. I know I have to review my assumptions a lot, which takes time and effort, but it is so embarrasing to just misunderstand something from wrong assumptions, and they are everywhere, always.

I seek, and try to follow Divine Gidance. It feels like wisdom and compassion, and sometimes comes in epiphanies, but only sometimes. Sometimes it is just one foot in front of the other.

I seem to have had a lot of connections to the JFK assassination in my life, and remember the day well. I worked with Oswald’s younger daughter for years (L&D RN), never knowing who she was, until her OB/GYN husband was talking about her mom, Marina one day, assuming I already knew. He told me. Her face and that of Lee Oswald flashed in my mind, ovelraid, The Same Face… I still never spoke to her of it. The last time I saw her, a few years ago, she said I was “one of her favorite people ever”. I hold that fondly.
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