[John Day]

COMMENT: Cuba’s friends have plenty to say and nothing to give​ https://www.intellinews.com/comment-cuba-s-friends-have-plenty-to-say-and-nothing-to-give-427125/

China Buys Russian Oil That India Refused​ https://en.topcor.ru/68889-kitaj-skupaet-rossijskuju-neft-ot-kotoroj-otkazalas-indija.html

Who will repay the $170 billion in tariffs after they are lifted? – Politico​ https://en.topcor.ru/68892-kto-vernet-170-milliardov-dollarov-tarifov-posle-ih-otmeny-politico.html

Trump Hikes Global Tariffs To 15%, Blasts “Ridiculous, Anti-American” SCOTUS Ruling​ https://www.zerohedge.com/political/trump-hike-global-tariffs-15-blasts-ridiculous-anti-american-scotus-ruling

Epstein’s old neighbor, Lutnik: Firm of Trump official’s family denies report it stands to make fortune from tariff ruling
​That top Trump official is Commerce Secretary Howard Lutnick, who for 30 years led the financial services firm Cantor Fitzgerald as its CEO, handing off control of the firm to his sons after joining the Trump administration last year. Lutnick has championed Trump’s tariffs in public, but Wired reported in July that the firm was “taking bets against them.”​ https://www.rawstory.com/amp/howard-lutnick-2675289149-2675289149

[John Day]

​ Five Countries Commit 20,000 Troops for Gaza International Stabilization Mission; $17 Billion Initial Funding Announced​
Indonesia, Morocco, Kazakhstan, Kosovo, and Albania confirmed participation in the force, which is designed to provide security support during the early stages of reconstruction in Gaza. https://www.thedefensenews.com/news-details/Five-Countries-Commit-20000-Troops-for-Gaza-International-Stabilization-Mission-17-Billion-Initial-Funding-Announced/

​ US wants organised crime gangs to form Gaza police force
Western allies and US commanders express concern over Trump plan to hire Israeli-armed militias​ https://archive.is/Vxm2F#selection-2269.4-2273.99

​ Trump officials plan to build 5,000-person military base in Gaza, files show
Exclusive: approximately 350-acre compound planned as base for multinational force, according to records reviewed by the Guardian​ https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/2026/feb/19/trump-gaza-military-plan

​ US envoy suggests it would be ‘fine’ if Israel expands across Middle East
‘It would be fine if they took it all,’ Mike Huckabee says when asked about expanding Israel from the Nile to the Euphrates.​ https://www.aljazeera.com/news/2026/2/20/us-envoy-suggests-it-would-be-fine-if-israel-expands-across-middle-east

​ John Helmer says there will be no Russian blockade-running: THE PUTIN PLAN FOR CUBA AND THE CASTRO FAMILY – MORE GORBACHEV, DEFINITELY NOT KHRUSHCHEV https://johnhelmer.net/the-putin-plan-for-cuba-and-the-castro-family-more-gorbachev-definitely-not-khrushchev/#more-93453

[John Day]

6,000 Amputees in Gaza Face Impossible Recovery amid Israeli War Ultimatum​ https://israelpalestinenews.org/gaza-child-amputee/

Intentional lync​hing-murder: Israeli Settlers Kill American Teen
On February 18, the Palestinian Red Crescent reported that settlers raided the village of Mukhmas, shooting three Palestinians, including a 19-year-old US citizen. After shooting him, the settlers crowded around him and hit him with clubs and stones​ https://israelpalestinenews.org/palestinian-american-teenager-shot-by-israeli-settlers/

Complete disarmamant, then Israeli-style “reconstruction”? Israel’s Netanyahu Says No Reconstruction of Gaza before Demilitarization​ https://english.aawsat.com/arab-world/5242645-israels-netanyahu-says-no-reconstruction-gaza-demilitarization

‘We returned from hell’: Palestinian journalists recount torture in Israeli prisons​ https://israelpalestinenews.org/committee-to-protect-journalists/

​ Trump Says ‘War Is Over’ in Gaza Despite Israel Killing Over 600 Palestinians Since Ceasefire Deal Was Signed
At least two Palestinians were killed by Israeli forces over the past day, according to Gaza’s Health Ministry​ https://news.antiwar.com/2026/02/19/trump-says-war-is-over-in-gaza-despite-israel-killing-over-600-palestinians-since-ceasefire-deal-was-signed/

[John Day]

Russia Sends “Doomsday” Plane To Tehran as U.S. Gives Iran 10 Day Ultimatum​ https://halturnerradioshow.com/index.php/component/content/article/russia-sends-doomsday-plane-to-tehran-as-u-s-gives-iran-10-day-ultimatum

​ Iran’s Shadow Over the Gulf: Tehran’s “Open Secret” Plan to Strike US AN/TPY-2 Radars in UAE, Qatar, Saudi Arabia and Turkey Amid Trump Escalation
​ Tehran’s warnings to UAE, Qatar, Saudi Arabia and Turkey signal potential targeting of US-operated AN/TPY-2 X-band radar systems that underpin THAAD and Patriot missile defense architecture across the Middle East.​ https://defencesecurityasia.com/en/iran-an-tpy2-radar-threat-gulf-trump-missile-defense-thaad-patriot/

​ Non-Acoustic Submarine Detection
Non-acoustic submarine detection technologies are those that do not rely on the collection of soundwaves emitted or reflected by a submerged vehicle for location. Significant improvements have taken place with light-based imaging and magnetic anomaly detection (MAD).3 Modern light-based imaging relies on Light Detection and Ranging (LIDAR) technology. LIDAR works by emitting laser (or LED) pulses and measuring the return time and strength of the reflected light. When deployed on space, aeronautic, or naval platforms, LIDAR can track a submarine’s disturbance to the ocean surface or directly image a vehicle. LIDAR is presently limited to sensing depths up to 200 m—projected by some to reach 500 m.
​ ​MAD instruments closely monitor magnetic fields. When flown over the ocean, a MAD instrument can locate the disturbance to Earth’s natural magnetic fields caused by a submarine’s metal hull or salt-ion wake. These detection methods function differently: LIDAR can scan broader areas from a greater distance, whereas MAD equipment must be flown at low altitude or submerged.​ https://ontheradar.csis.org/issue-briefs/non-acoustic-submarine-detection/

Israel Issues ALERT Nationwide; Opening Bomb Shelters​ https://halturnerradioshow.com/index.php/component/content/article/israel-issues-alert-nationwide-opening-bomb-shelters

​UNRWA keeps the records of where Palestinian family homes were in 1948, before the Zionist Nakba. Why the Palestinian Right of Return Is Still the Issue https://www.globalresearch.ca/palestinian-right-return-issue/5916423

[John Day]

Persia Invented Chess https://drjohnsblog.substack.com/p/persia-invented-chess

Trump wants to win everything and be popular, but Israel needs the US to lay waste to Iran, while Trump needs to avoid military losses and support Republicans in midterm elections, while supporting the $US as global reserve currency, which supports the Federal budget financially, and US military in particular.
Isreal/Mossad/Zionism have a level of influence over Trump that leaves him little room for independent maneuver. The reasons for this are subject to much speculation.
Iran has had enough of rolling over to be kicked on the ground, and has declared that any attack will be answered immediately. All US and Israeli regional assets are targets.
Trump wants to try limited strikes “to pressure Iran” to accept the Israeli ultimatum he has conveyd to them. “No long range missiles and no nuclear enrichment”. It is unaceptable to Iran and would mean removing Iran’s only military deterrent against Israel, it’s long range offensive missiles.
If Trump does try limited strikes, the moment is waning this month, as the moon brightens, and US pilots become night-mission averse. Friday night was an expected strike-window, which has passed. The (19%) moon will set over Tehran at 10:13 PM tonight.
Russia and China now have assets in theater, which any “limited” US strike will have to avoid threatening, because Russia and China can be expected to defend their sensitive military surevillance planes from approaching fighter jets at a pretty long distance.
Those military surveillance planes will be tracking Israeli submarines to a depth of at least 200 meters. Israeli submarines carry cruise missiles, assumed to be nuclear-armed. Those subs can launch from about 50 meters depth. If an Israeli sub launches nuclear cruise missiles on Tehran during a US limited attack, the false-flag attack draws the US into nuclear war.
Will Israel be able to jam or shoot down the Chinese and Russian military surveillance planes, in the event that Israeli subs are to launch nuclear missiles against Iran, or might Israel just sacrifice any submarine which would make this move?
In any event, Russians, Chinese and Iranians will know the Israeli actions.
The US has AN/TPY-2 Radars in UAE, Qatar, Saudi Arabia and Turkey, which allow the THAAD anti missile system to operate at high altitude against ballistic missiles, including hypersonic ballistic missiles, to some extent. These would be immediately targeted by Iran, just as Iranian defensive radars will have been immediately targeted by the US.
Destruction of the AN/TPY-2 radars opens Israel to Iranian attacks from accurate ballistic missiles.
Iran can launch radar-seeking missiles against these AN/TPY-2 radars at the same time that it launches ballistic missiles against Israeli and US regional targets, daring the radars to light-up and be hit. The radars would have to track the ballistic missiles. It’s their function. They would be hit if the anti-radar missiles got in.
There are a lot of interlaced trip-wires in place, and pressure for the US to strike soon, well ahead of meetings between Trump and Xi, at the end of March.
There is only one player, Israel, interested in maximal escalation of war between the US and Iran. All other players would have their interests harmed by a maximal war between the US and Iran. Russia and China stand to lose investment assets in Iran, and to see a working partner destroyed, possibly to lose Iran as a partner after the war. china would lose 13% of her oil. Persian Gulf countries would lose all revenues from oil passing through the Strait of Hormuz, due to mining, for an uncertain number of months. All regional shipping would halt for the duration of the war.
Uncertainty about the future is bad bad for all regional players, except Israel, which already faces an uncertain future, and wants Iran removed as a rival.
Your Move, Donald…

​ Trump mulling limited strike to pressure Iran into accepting new nuclear deal: Report
US president reviewing options ranging from targeted strikes to broader campaign amid warnings of regional escalation, officials say​ https://www.aa.com.tr/en/americas/trump-mulling-limited-strike-to-pressure-iran-into-accepting-new-nuclear-deal-report/3835273

​ Larry Johnson, White House Drama Re Pending Decision to Attack Iran
The massive deployment of US combat air assets to the Middle East, accompanied by two carrier strike groups, is not a negotiating ploy. The USCENTCOM chain of command, along with the supporting military assets (e.g., AFSOC, JSOC, EUCOM), fully expected the launch order to be issued for a Friday night strike. But the order has not been issued… At least not yet, as of 2200 hours eastern time on Friday. What is going on?
​ For starters, there are two senior members of the Trump administration who are warning the President that the attack would be political suicide. They reportedly buttressed their argument against attacking Iran by providing the President with the results of a recent opinion poll…
​..A second factor that makes an attack less likely this weekend is Tuesday’s State of the Nation address by Trump. Chief of Staff Susie Wiles may be a corrupt, Zionist tool, but she is not politically obtuse. Starting a war with Iran, especially after Trump’s tariff deal was slapped down by the US Supreme Court, would likely set off a firestorm among the Democrats, Independents and the media. Instead of Trump being able to tout all of his massive achievements during his first year of his second term, the public attention would be clamoring for info about the war. JCS Chairman Caine and Admiral Brad Cooper, Commander of CENTCOM, have warned the President that there is a high likelihood that there would be US casualties when the US attacks.
​ But this does not mean that Trump will back down. He is getting enormous pressure from the Zionist crowd — Christians and Israelis — to launch. One critical factor creating pressure to launch this weekend is the moon phase. As you can see from the following image, the next 24 hours marks the end of the New Moon, i.e., darkness. The Air Force and Navy aviators are not keen on flying attack missions when the moon is shining and can illuminate aircraft. The next period of darkness is mid-March… Trump either launches by Sunday or will likely have to wait until mid-March to do the deed.​ https://larrycjohnson.substack.com/p/white-house-drama-re-pending-decision

Contradictory Reports Of US Evacuating Troops From Exposed Qatar, Bahrain Bases​ https://www.zerohedge.com/markets/us-evacuates-troops-exposed-qatar-bahrain-bases-weekend-strike-coming

Details: Iran Builds Layered Missile and Mine Shield Against U.S. Carriers in Strait of Hormuz​ https://www.armyrecognition.com/news/army-news/2026/iran-builds-layered-missile-and-mine-shield-against-u-s-carriers-in-strait-of-hormuz

[John Day]

Andrew: The Mountbatten-Windsor previously known as “Prince”…

[John Day]

Supreme Court Strikes Down Trump Tariffs https://www.zerohedge.com/political/supreme-court-rules-tariffs

[John Day]

​ Aliens are ‘real’ – Obama
No extraterrestrial specimens are kept at Area 51, a secretive military base, though, according to the former US president​ https://web.archive.org/web/20260215231809/https://www.rt.com/news/632552-aliens-are-real-obama/

​ (“to begin the process”) Trump Orders Release Of All Files Related To UFOs & Aliens
“Based on the tremendous interest shown, I will be directing the Secretary of War, and other relevant Departments and Agencies, to begin the process of identifying and releasing Government files related to alien and extraterrestrial life, unidentified aerial phenomena (UAP), and unidentified flying objects (UFOs), and any and all other information connected to these highly complex, but extremely interesting and important, matters.​ GOD BLESS AMERICA!​ https://www.zerohedge.com/political/trump-has-ufo-speech-ready-deliver

[John Day]

​ Cynical prostitute or 3D chessmaster? BREAKING: Trump Invokes Defense Production Act to Protect Glyphosate
This executive order gives legal protection, protects corporate viability, and elevates glyphosate production to a national defense priority.​ https://www.thefocalpoints.com/p/breaking-trump-invokes-defense-production

​ Meryl Nass MD: President Trump Makes a Mockery of MAHA, issues Executive Order to give domestic production of Glyphosate special rights
Destroying soybean sales to China wasn’t enough. Epstein files weren’t enough. Kidnapping Maduro wasn’t enough. MTG, Massie… Now Trump puts glyphosate on a pedestal. What did that cost Bayer?​ https://merylnass.substack.com/p/president-trump-makes-a-mockery-of

​ (About 0.25% of Canadians) 100,000 Dead. Canada Ignored the World, and It Shows
Canada is about to kill its 100,000th citizen through Medical Assistance in Dying (MAiD) this spring.​ https://dailynewsfromaolf.substack.com/p/100000-dead-canada-ignored-the-world

​A Midwestern Doctor and I would both prefer to die at home. How Modern Medicine Hijacked Death and How to Reclaim a Better Way to Die
Timeless perspectives for navigating the most challenging moment of our Lives​ https://www.midwesterndoctor.com/p/how-modern-medicine-hijacked-death

[John Day]

​ Painted into a corner: BREAKING STUDY: MMR and MMRV Vaccines Linked to 2,657% More U.S. Deaths Than Measles Infection Since 1995
We found an alarming number of deaths among infants and toddlers shortly after MMR/MMRV vaccination in VAERS — often involving SIDS, seizures, and cardiac arrest.​ https://www.thefocalpoints.com/p/breaking-study-mmr-and-mmrv-vaccines

​ BREAKING: 98% of Excess Deaths in Highly Vaccinated Australian Regions Were NOT From COVID-19
Study finds four Australian regions with little COVID and brief lockdowns saw excess deaths surge after 90%+ COVID “vaccine” uptake in 2021.​ https://www.thefocalpoints.com/p/breaking-98-of-excess-deaths-in-highly

​ Sasha Latypova (Things can happen during the delay): I told you so: Prasad-Moderna standoff lasted less than a week. FDA folded. Moderna’s mRNA flu poison will be rubber stamped later this year. https://sashalatypova.substack.com/p/i-told-you-so-prasad-moderna-standoff

Meryl Nass MD, Bayer offers to pay off tens of thousands of plaintiffs with non-Hodgkin lymphoma who have already filed cases, but to dribble out the payments over 21 years, inflating away their value
​ While identifying the specific disease for which it will pay compensation, Bayer acknowledges no liability, no wrongdoing​ https://merylnass.substack.com/p/bayer-offers-to-pay-off-tens-of-thousands

​ Meryl Nass MD, More interesting info on the Bayer proposal to settle with claimants
Small payouts are being offered, but Bayer’s share price jumped 7% with the news​ https://merylnass.substack.com/p/more-interesting-info-on-the-bayer

[John Day]

​ Caitlin Johnstone on Lindsey Graham and Marco Rubio: More Shockingly Honest Confessions From The Empire Managers
US empire managers have been making some surprisingly honest admissions in recent days, with Senator Lindsey Graham saying the wars of the future are being planned in Israel and Secretary of State Marco Rubio calling for a return to old-school western colonialism.
​ During a Monday press conference in Tel Aviv after a meeting with Benjamin Netanyahu, Graham said that “I’ve been coming here every two weeks whether I need to or not.”
​ Why is a South Carolina senator traveling to Israel every two weeks, rain or shine? The bloodthirsty warmonger answers this question in short order.
​ “The wars of the future are being planned here in Israel,” Graham said. “Because if you’re not one step ahead of the enemy, you suffer. The most clever, creative military forces on the planet are here in Israel.”​ https://www.caitlinjohnst.one/p/more-shockingly-honest-confessions

​ Kim Dotcom is not always right. Breaking: Palantir was allegedly hacked.
An AI agent was used to gain super-user access and here’s what the hackers allegedly found:
Peter Thiel and Alex Karp commit mass surveillance of world leaders and titans of industry on a massive scale.
They have thousands of hours of transcribed and searchable conversations of Donald Trump, JD Vance and Elon Musk.
They have backdoored the devices, cars and jets of world leaders and accumulated the biggest archive of blackmail material.
Palantir is creating nuclear and bio weapon capabilities for Ukraine and is working closely with the CIA to defeat Russia. They believe they are one year away. They plan to achieve this by keeping Russia busy with meaningless peace negotiations.
Palantir is responsible of the majority of Palestinian deaths in Gaza. They have developed the AI targeting for Israel.
Palantir is an arm of the CIA and all data from international clients is copied into a CIA spy cloud.
Palantir has become the most dangerous company in the world. If you work there you have the right to know that this is what Palentir AI is used for, without your knowledge.
The Palentir data the hackers allegedly gathered will be given to Russia and/or China. I was chosen as a trusted partner for this publication. I’m not involved in the Palentir hack and I don’t know the hackers. But I do know that the hack happened. https://x.com/KimDotcom/status/2023165849721536672

Not without electricity… The AI Arms Race to Armageddon: Alex Karp’s Palantir
While AI becomes more powerful, humans are becoming more docile, like a vocalist whose octave range diminishes from three to two to one. Despite AI companies extolling the grand benefits of AI for humanity, the largess polluter of this power is the Pentagon. The mindset? WAR. The light in their eye? Death.
​ The ultimate outcome will be AI ruling the people on behalf of the elite. AI will be our landlords, our police, our punisher for less than perfect labor, they will report to their bosses and execute orders. And all the worst Hollywood D movies will come true because this vision has been in the minds of man for a millennium. ​ They warned us. They showed us what would happen. We called it science fiction.
Anthropic is an AI company co-founded by five individuals who attempted to assert caveats in its use by the Pentagon. As a result, the Pentagon is seeking AI companies that have no scruples, ethics, or morality. The reasoning? China is ahead. Everything, literally everything, is a race to be better, more powerful, more deadly. And the Zionists running the Pentagon don’t give a hoot how many die during their testing phases of weapon development.
​ Despite making this statement publicly, privately, in November 2024, Anthropic partnered with Palantir and Amazon Web Services to provide their “Claude model” to U.S. intelligence and defense agencies.​ https://www.globalresearch.ca/ai-arms-race-armageddon-alex-karp-palantir/5915964

​Threat escalation to enable spying and killing tasks: US Pentagon Moves to Blacklist Anthropic AI For Refusing to Spy on Americans https://expose-news.com/2026/02/18/pentagon-to-blacklist-anthropic-ai-for-refusing-to-spy-on-americans/

A religion to die for: A Midwestern Doctor, Dissecting the Religion of Vaccines – How vaccines became the holy water of Western civilization https://www.midwesterndoctor.com/p/dissecting-the-religion-of-vaccines

[John Day]

​Asking nicely first: Waste Piles Up In Cuba, Blackouts Worsen, As Lavrov Pleads To US For ‘Brotherly Nation’ https://www.zerohedge.com/geopolitical/waste-piles-cuba-blackouts-worsen-lavrov-pleads-us-brotherly-nation

A “journey”? Cuba Launches Journey Against U.S. Military Presence in Guantanamo
Running from February 16 to 23, 2026, this initiative aims to denounce the illegality of the U.S. naval base in Guantanamo and the severe Human Rights violations occurring within its detention center, while also highlighting the detrimental impact of foreign military bases globally.​..
​..The initiative proposes a comprehensive effort to expose the enduring illegality of the U.S. naval base situated on Cuban territory in Guantanamo, which occupation -dating back over a century- remains a contentious issue in Cuba-U.S. relations, seen as a direct affront to its national sovereignty and international law.​..
​..The initiative aims to build a global coalition that collectively challenges the rationale and impact of extensive military deployments across borders, advocating instead for peaceful coexistence and respect for international law, under the principles of self-determination and non-interference in internal affairs.​ https://www.telesurenglish.net/cuba-journey-u-s-presence-guantanamo/

​ Mike Mihajlovik explains Russia’s conception of military strategy: The Calculus of Conflict: How Russia’s Military Doctrine is Reshaping Modern Warfare
Oreshnik, doctrine, the art of war, and how the West got it wrong…​ https://bmanalysis.substack.com/p/the-calculus-of-conflict-how-russias

​It’s closer to 2 million total: One and a half million dead Ukrainian Armed Forces fighters have been identified in Ukraine. https://en.topcor.ru/68812-na-ukraine-opoznali-poltora-milliona-pogibshih-boevikov-vsu.html

Doubling down on a lost hand: Kyiv received financial guarantees from Britain to continue the war against Russia.​ https://en.topcor.ru/68769-kiev-poluchil-ot-britanii-finansovye-garantii-dlja-prodolzhenija-vojny-protiv-rf.html

[John Day]

Palestinian families displaced from Jordan​ Valley following escalating settler crimes​ https://english.palinfo.com/news/2026/02/17/358055/

​ Trump ‘very serious’ about annexing Greenland – Danish PM
Mette Frederiksen has warned that US threats to take over the Arctic island are far from over, calling the pressure “unacceptable”​ https://web.archive.org/web/20260215112125/https://www.rt.com/news/632545-trump-greenland-pressure-unacceptable/

Trump Boasts About Ramped Up Embargo on Cuba: ‘There’s No Oil, No Money, No Anything’​ https://news.antiwar.com/2026/02/17/trump-boasts-about-ramped-up-embargo-on-cuba-theres-no-oil-no-money-no-anything/

​ Russia does not accept sanctions against Cuba: Putin
Russian president says Moscow voiced this position ‘openly, clearly, and unambiguously’ through its Foreign Ministry​ https://www.aa.com.tr/en/world/russia-does-not-accept-sanctions-against-cuba-putin/3834120

[John Day]

Netanyahu’s plan to “end” US aid to Israel is to give even more money under a different name​ https://israelpalestinenews.org/is-nixing-aid-to-israel-a-poison-chalice/

​ Smotrich announces intention to abolish Oslo Accords, dismantle PA during next term
Smotritch suggested the dismantling of the PA in favor of creating a new military administration to govern the area, with the ultimate aim of applying full Israeli sovereignty over the region.​ https://www.jpost.com/israel-news/politics-and-diplomacy/article-887016

Gaza is not a natural disaster. It is the victim of genocide enabled by global inaction​ https://israelpalestinenews.org/global-inaction-gaza-genocide/

​Not a Palestinian mine… Palestinian Child Dies After Stepping on Mine in West Bank https://english.aawsat.com/arab-world/5241936-palestinian-child-dies-after-stepping-mine-west-bank

Israeli demolition campaign expands across Jenin, Nablus, and Jerusalem​ https://english.palinfo.com/news/2026/02/17/358039/

[John Day]

Israel’s “Yellow Line” Is a Death Trap for Palestinians. We Drove Into It.​ – The ever-changing “Yellow Line” is a slow-moving takeover of Gaza’s territory.​ https://israelpalestinenews.org/israels-yellow-line-is-a-death-trap-for-palestinians-we-drove-into-it/

Over 80 UN members condemn Israeli acts to expand ‘unlawful presence’ in occupied West Bank​ https://www.aa.com.tr/en/middle-east/over-80-un-members-condemn-israeli-acts-to-expand-unlawful-presence-in-occupied-west-bank/3832867

Israeli Settlers Shot Three Palestinians in the West Bank​ https://www.telesurenglish.net/israeli-settlers-shot-three-palestinians-in-the-west-bank/

​ The Increasing Attacks on Francesca Albanese Presage a New Dark Age
By making Francesca, who receives frequent death threats, the lightening rod, these governments seek to deflect attention from the ongoing slaughter and humanitarian disaster in Gaza. They seek to mask Israel’s system of apartheid and unlawful occupation of historic Palestine. They seek to hide, most of all, their complicity with their continuing weapons shipments that fuel Israel’s genocide.
​ The pace of the genocide has slowed, but it has not stopped. Israel has seized 60 percent of Gaza and blocks most humanitarian aid, including fuel, food and medicine. At the same time, Israel is accelerating its seizure of the occupied West Bank, where more than 1,100 Palestinians have been killed and tens of thousands have been displaced from their homes since October 2023.​ https://scheerpost.com/2026/02/17/the-increasing-attacks-on-francesca-albanese-presage-a-new-dark-age/

​ Israel will not withdraw ‘one millimeter’ from Gaza, defense minister says​ – Israel Katz hails US as ‘great ally’ that helped Tel Aviv during ‘multi-front conflict’​ https://www.aa.com.tr/en/middle-east/israel-will-not-withdraw-one-millimeter-from-gaza-defense-minister-says/3832514

[John Day]

​ Professor Ugo Bardi looks for the global real economy inflection point with rigor. A New Calculation of Global Trends. Are we Close to Collapse?
An update of the Limits to Growth model.​
​ Looking at Figure 1, which is based on the Nebel Group’s report, there should have been a significant slump in the global economy in 2025 or earlier. However, this slump did not occur. The global economy is in trouble, but there has been no slump in car sales, for example. The German economy has many problems, but life in Germany has so far been little affected by them.
​ I used “PyWorld3-3” to try to find out why this slump did not occur. And I discovered one thing: the more you search for an explanation, the deeper you have to delve into the program, and the more complex the topic becomes.​ https://senecaeffect.substack.com/p/a-new-calculation-of-global-trends
​image.png

​ The Year of the Fire Horse is back, for the first time in 60 Years
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.​ https://www.nationalgeographic.com/culture/article/year-of-fire-horse-lunar-chinese-new-year

Thanks Eleni. I’m not sure… The Reorganization of the World​, by Thierry Meyssan
The world is changing very quickly. The year 2026 should be marked by the return of spheres of influence and the end of colonial empires. Above all, it will see the return of international law to the rules we have known until now. Only those who are able to understand these developments and adapt to them quickly will continue to thrive.​
​ It is now clear that Presidents Donald Trump and Vladimir Putin divided the world between them in Alaska. The validation of this arrangement will take place at the next Trump-Xi summit. https://www.voltairenet.org/article223573.html

‘Maximum alert’: Netanyahu orders Home Front Command to prepare for potential war with Iran​ https://www.aa.com.tr/en/middle-east/maximum-alert-netanyahu-orders-home-front-command-to-prepare-for-potential-war-with-iran/3834081

Tucker Carlson ‘DETAINED’ in Israel: Journalist ‘dragged into interrogation room’ as explosive interview sparks diplomatic firestorm
The former Fox News host flew into Tel Aviv for a sit-down with Mike Huckabee, who challenged Carlson to speak to him directly following an online spat about the country’s treatment of Christians.​ https://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-15571619/Tucker-Carlson-DETAINED-Israel-interrogation.html

[John Day]

Fire Horse Year https://drjohnsblog.substack.com/p/fire-horse-year

Gold & Geopolitics, [Iran] Operation: Trust Me Bro​ – The longest “Any Day Now” in history
​ Well, it’s been a month without any meaningful update on Iran from my side. But don’t worry, I’ve been following that quite closely, and no, it’s still building up, but it’s reaching a kind of fever pitch that makes everyone think something imminent is going to happen.​ But this time, unlike January, the military hardware to back that up is actually there…
​..The realist: Actual war. And here I think this will be an unmitigated disaster for the United States. Not because American soldiers aren’t capable. Not because I think the missiles can’t fly. But simply because the logistics don’t support a sustained campaign, the AD systems can’t stop what Iran will throw at them, the element of surprise is completely gone (China is watching every move and relaying it), and the political will to absorb serious losses simply does not exist in Washington. They’ve never faced a real peer (or even near peer) adversary since 1945. Iran in 2026, with Russian AD integration and Chinese ISR, is not the Iran of June 2025. And June 2025 was already a war that the US/Israel essentially lost, dressed up as a draw.
The difference between now and January is that the force is there.​ https://no01.substack.com/p/iran-operation-trust-me-bro

​ Moon of Alabama, U.S. – Israel Ready To Strike At Iran
U.S. President Donald Trump has managed to maneuver himself into a position that makes a long war on Iran all but inevitable.
With the forces deployed and ready to strike Trump is no longer in a position to avoid a war if Israel wants one. If Netanyahoo were to strike Iran the U.S. would immediately have to intervene to lower the consequences of Iran’s inevitable retaliation. ​ The deployment of refueling tankers in the Middle East points to the necessity for the U.S. to avoid stationing planes within the reach of Iran’s short range missile forces. Fighters and bombers will have launch from further away, tank up, run their turn on Iran, tank up again and land to reload. The number of sorties that can generated by this will be only half of what a ‘normal’ air campaign would look like. Any attack will likely start with the firing of one or two hundred cruise missiles. They will be followed by stealth bombers which will try to destroy Iranian air defenses. After that is more or less achieved, waves of strike planes will launch missiles from safe distances to strike at Iranian military and civilian command elements as well as infrastructure in Iran.
​ Iran will retaliate with waves of drones and older missiles. The aim will be to exhaust U.S. missile defenses. During last years 12-day war it took Iran about eight days to achieve that. Thereafter it used newer missiles which were able to hit their targets in Israel will unexpected precision.
​ Iran will also use its shorter range missiles to destroy any U.S. element, be it on ground, air or sea, that is within its reach. Irregular forces aligned with Iran in Lebanon, Iraq and Yemen may join the campaign.
​ Iran is expected to be be helped by Chinese and Russian intelligence. During the war in Ukraine the U.S. established the norm that the supply of intelligence to one party of a war is insufficient to make oneself a combatant. Chinese satellite intelligence will allow Iran to have at all times a clear picture of its enemies disposals. https://www.moonofalabama.org/2026/02/u-s-israel-ready-to-strike-at-iran.html

​ Trump Close To a Major Attack on Iran That Will Be Bigger Than 12-Day War
A Trump advisor told Axios that there’s a 90% chance the US launches an attack in the coming weeks, while Israeli sources say it could happen within days​ https://news.antiwar.com/2026/02/18/report-trump-close-to-a-major-attack-on-iran-that-will-be-bigger-than-12-day-war/

​ Rep. Ro Khanna To Force a Vote on Iran War Powers Resolution Next Week – Contact your House representative and tell them to support H.Con.Res.38 ​ https://news.antiwar.com/2026/02/18/rep-ro-khanna-to-force-a-vote-next-week-on-iran-war-powers-resolution/

[John Day]

Armageddon Weekend https://drjohnsblog.substack.com/p/armageddon-weekend

A little after 5 AM this morning, on my meditation retreat, I was practicing compassion-meditation for a friend, when my awareness was interrupted bya big dark blog ob negative force in the world.
I looked into the news. The dominant rumor is that USrael will attack Iran Saturday, give or take a little. The aircraft carrier task force Bush is steaming over to meet the Lincoln and Fod task forces in the region. US bases have been stocked up with air defense missiles. US military have been given prepare-to-deploy orders.

All analysis is that if there is a strike on Iran that it will be completely serious, intended to change the regime by force, which will be an extended destructive process.

Iran, backed by Russia and China to an uncertain degree, but certainly with targeting help, will strike back against USrael with drones, missiles and hypersonic missiles. A big first wave attack is expected, but what willbe targeted first?
The initial targeting will bear certain messages. If US carriers are only attacked with drones and slow missiles, the message will be a warning.
What Israeli assets are targeted will be the most interesting message, I think. Israeli Dolphin Class submarines now number 6, and are rumored to carry nuclear armed cruise missiles. They are bound to be closely watched by Iran, Russia and China. Can they be effectively targeted? What if they are deep underwater. How deep does the shockwave from a hypersonic kinetic warhead go before it becomes ineffective? Would direct targeting of a deep submarine be enough of a “message”? Nobody needs to talk about this kind of instant-messaging, not Russia, China, Iran, Israel or the US…

See this overview: Daily digest: 2026-02-18 Get up to speed https://no1sdailydigest.substack.com/p/daily-digest-2026-02-18-4e5

[John Day]

​Dr. Nass, The proposed Farm Bill has been released today. Here is the important information about the pesticide protection provision (PPP) and what you can do! More on the rest of the bill later
​ It says that no state or locality (no subdivision of a state) can impose “any requirement relating to the sale, distribution, labeling, application, or use of any pesticide or device that is subject to regulation” by the EPA Administrator.
​ The EPA Administrator currently is Lee Zeldin. I thought he was a Secretary, but he is not. He is the Administrator. In this bill, the buck stops at his feet.
​ The bill also says that FIFRA, the law that specifies how pesticides are regulated, “shall be applied to require uniformity of pesticide labeling nationally…” No state, subdivision of a state, or a court can, directly or indirectly, hold any entity liable for requirements that differ from the EPA label requirements.
​ Let me remind everyone that the term pesticide here refers to tens of thousands of chemicals and chemical mixtures that are registered by EPA, and whose manufacturers pay EPA yearly for this registration. These include fungicides, insecticides, rodenticides, virucides, herbicides and other pesticides. Antibiotics (bactericides) are included in some of the mixtures.
​ These products are regulated as single agents, a.k.a. active ingredients, and are not studied by the EPA as final formulations of (mostly) mixtures. This alone ought to negate the value of EPA review and registration.​ https://merylnass.substack.com/p/the-proposed-farm-bill-has-been-released

​ Meryl Nass MD, Pesticide Protection Provision: Beating back the pesticide industry’s false narratives
Since even the Members (R) were fed a bill of goods when the liability shield was being considered by the Appropriations cttee, we must anticipate and demolish the myths they will create about this.​ https://merylnass.substack.com/p/pesticide-protection-provision-beating

​ Marian Laderoute Ph.D. explains that shedding of mRNA lipid nanoparticles can lead to their transfection of un-“vaccinated” persons and intergration into their DNA. New Early Data Implies Shedding by the Pfizer-BioNTech GENE Therapy Product May Promote Integration of Spike mRNA/cDNA Sequences
​ Higher Risk Than What is Currently Thought for Genetic Modification of the Host Regardless of Vaccine Status​ https://hervk102.substack.com/p/new-early-data-implies-shedding-by

​ 80% of transgender in teens will sort it out by age 26 without intrvention: UK’s Insane New Trans Guidance Says School Kids As Young As Four Can ‘Change Gender’ https://www.zerohedge.com/political/uks-insane-new-trans-guidance-says-school-kids-young-four-can-change-gender

​ High-Dose Vitamin C Cuts Death Risk from Stage IV Pancreatic Cancer by 54% and Doubles Survival Time
A randomized controlled trial found that adding 75g IV vitamin C to chemotherapy doubled median survival compared with chemotherapy alone — in one of the deadliest cancers known. https://www.thefocalpoints.com/p/high-dose-vitamin-c-cuts-death-risk

[John Day]

​ Big Business Has Pam Bondi Fire Trump’s Antitrust Chief
​Trump Antitrust chief Gail Slater was mostly a failure, though kept some antitrust cases alive. Despite attempts to mollify corporate lobbyists, Pam Bondi fired her anyway. What happens now?​ https://www.thebignewsletter.com/p/trump-antitrust-chief-ousted-by-ticketmaster

​ Ellison Scalp? DOJ Antitrust Head Departs, Possibly Fired
Gail Slater was in charge of the antitrust division and a hawk on the mergers and acquisitions of Big Tech and Big Corporate media. As head of the DOJ Antitrust Division, Slater’s view on competition was against the interests of the major Big Tech billionaires and corporate media conglomerates who intersect with them.
​ Slater was in a position to influence the Warner Brothers-Discovery’s deal to sell the Warner Bros. studio and HBO to Netflix, which Paramount (David Ellison) is trying to stop.
​ If you have followed the influence of Larry Ellison (Oracle, TikTok) and his son David Ellison (Paramount, CBS) in/around the Trump administration as it relates to Elon Musk (a beneficiary of Ellison), then the timing of Gail Slater’s removal doesn’t look good at all.
​ Gail Slater came into the administration as a part of the JD Vance network (Peter Thiel, Palantir, etc.), and it looks like that same Vance network stood aside and watched Larry Ellison leverage his position to see her removed.​ https://theconservativetreehouse.com/blog/2026/02/12/ellison-scalp-doj-antitrust-head-departs-possibly-fired/

​ The Las Vegas real estate market has languished in recent years. California Exodus Takes a Huge Leap Forward as Citizens Flock to Las Vegas to Avoid New Tax Hike https://www.westernjournal.com/california-exodus-takes-huge-leap-forward-citizens-flock-las-vegas-avoid-new-tax-hike/

Make electricity from cheap fuel and sell the more expensive fuels. ​Trump Orders Pentagon to Buy Coal. It’s an Energy Emergency
President Donald Trump ordered the Pentagon to purchase more coal-based electricity, drawing the U.S. military into his campaign to subsidize a heavily polluting fossil fuel that is struggling to compete in the marketplace.
​ Trump announced the move at a White House event Wednesday where he also said his administration would spend taxpayer money to upgrade coal plants in four states.​ https://mishtalk.com/economics/trump-orders-pentagon-to-buy-coal-its-an-energy-emergency/

​ Meryl Nass MD, Rand Paul does have a bill that would get rid of the vaccine liability shield
But there is only one cosponsor so far and no bill text yet​ https://merylnass.substack.com/p/rand-paul-does-have-a-bill-that-would

[John Day]

​ Zelensky’s escape hatch: An emergency election could be his only option​ – The Ukrainian leader is apparently gauging support for a vote that he swore he’d never hold​ https://web.archive.org/web/20260213005050/https://www.rt.com/russia/632373-zelensky-election-referendum-plan/

​ In Latest Blow To Free Speech, German Courts Could Issue “Speaking Ban” Against Top AfD Politician​
German courts are currently deliberating whether leading Alternative for Germany (AfD) politician Björn Höcke could be hit with a “speaking ban” during a campaign event in the city of Lindenberg im Allgäu.​ https://www.zerohedge.com/political/latest-blow-free-speech-german-courts-could-issue-speaking-ban-against-top-afd-politician

​ U.S. House Judiciary Committee confirm that the EU interfered in 8 European elections. Slovakia (2023) The Netherlands (2023&2025) France (2024) Romania (2024) Moldova (2024 Ireland (2024&2025) Th​ese people talk about democracy 24/7.​ https://x.com/MarioNawfal/status/2019025650099855464

​ Maybe an ECB digital currency could be invented… EU Bankers Call for Visa and Mastercard Alternatives
According to ECB data cited by the Financial Times, American firms Visa and Mastercard now account for nearly two-thirds of all card transactions in the eurozone, while 13 EU countries have no national card schemes.
​ Now, EU officials have issued a warning that an alternative medium must be deployed to counter US interference.​ As cash usage continues to decline, EU officials are suddenly alarmed that payment systems could be “weaponized” during a geopolitical conflict.​ https://www.armstrongeconomics.com/international-news/europes-current-economy/eu-bankers-calls-for-visa-and-mastercard-alternatives/

[John Day]

Surplus Energy Economics fundamentally disagrees with Elon. The end of growth
There are times when the most important facts, though straightforward in principle, are simply too big, or too unpalatable, for general recognition​.
​ This is one of those times. The Big Fact informing all of the sub-narratives of our age is that the global economy has stopped growing, and is starting to shrink.
​ We should swiftly dismiss all official or orthodox statistical claims to the contrary. GDP isn’t a measure of material value created in the economy, but of the transactional exchange of money in the system. Money routinely changes hands without value being added, and never more so than when most of the money in question has been conjured out of thin air as credit.
​ In reality, no form of money has any intrinsic worth. Obviously enough, we can’t eat fiat currencies, power our cars with cryptos, or sow our fields with precious metals. Rather, money is token, not substance – it commands value only as an exercisable claim on those physical products and services for which it can be exchanged.​..
​..The authors of The Limits to Growth, published back in 1972, used the then-new technique of system dynamics to see this coming, and even gave us a pretty good steer on its probable timing.
​ None of this is palatable, of course, to a world so obsessed with “growth” that it disregards the obvious truth of Kenneth Boulding’s observation that only “a madman or an economist” could believe in the promise of infinite, exponential economic growth on a finite planet.
​ Over the past twenty years, material economic prosperity has increased by 25%, but huge rises in the stock of monetary claims have enabled statisticians to assert that the flow of economic activity measured as “real GDP” has more or less doubled (+96%, 2004-2024)…
​..Since the real costs of energy-intensive necessities are rising, just as top-line prosperity inflects into contraction, the supposed “cost of living crisis” isn’t a temporary “crisis” but the emergence of a wholly predictable trend. This goes a long way towards an explanation of worsening internal political and social instability.
​ Washington, meanwhile, has awakened, belatedly, to the reality and consequences of material resource finality, an understanding that, we can reasonably infer, has long been grasped in Beijing and Moscow.
​ The breakdown of international trade – and its balkanisation into trading blocs and exclusion zones – becomes readily explicable if we once recognise the ultimate finality of the material, the impotence of the monetary and the technological, and the resultant intensification of competition for scarce and dwindling resources.​ https://surplusenergyeconomics.wordpress.com/2026/02/13/319-the-end-of-growth/

Andrew Korybko on the strategy to peel India away from Russia, China and Iran: India Might Soon Replace Russian Oil With Venezuelan At Scale After All https://korybko.substack.com/p/india-might-soon-replace-russian

​ Simplicius, Munich Security Conference Evangelizes European War
The Brussels nomenklatura and its attendant apparatchiks and media flacks are pushing war hysteria. The purpose of this is to make the Ukrainian conflict feel existential to Europeans to jawbone them into parting with their dwindling eurobucks for the sake of bleeding Russia as much as possible.​ https://simplicius76.substack.com/p/munich-security-conference-evangelizes

It’s not like this could be foreseen for 30 years… ‘No Prospect’ Of European Governments Preventing Civil War, Warns British Army Colonel
Retired Colonel Richard Kemp, a former commander of British forces in Afghanistan, has issued a stark warning about the trajectory of social cohesion in Europe and Britain…
..Kemp, who also served in counter-insurgency operations in Northern Ireland and held intelligence roles in Westminster and the Cabinet Office, emphasized the lack of political will to address what he termed the “Islamification” of the UK.
“No government, the government now or any prospective government of the UK, has the guts to stop it,” he said. “If they want to take strong action to prevent the Islamification of the UK, it’s going to mean big trouble for them. They don’t want trouble, they look four years ahead, they will kick the can down the road to someone else.”
​ This political shortsightedness, according to Kemp, is fueling the risk of “civil war in Europe.” He described a potential scenario resembling Northern Ireland but on a far more intense scale, where “you have the indigenous British and some of the immigrant population and the British government all on three different sides fighting against each other.”​ https://www.zerohedge.com/political/no-prospect-european-governments-preventing-civil-war-warns-british-army-colonel

Germany, France Hold Secret Talks On Continental Nuclear Shield In Pivot From US​ https://www.zerohedge.com/geopolitical/germany-france-hold-secret-talks-continental-nuclear-shield-pivot-us

[John Day]

The British Museum removes the name “Palestine” from its maps following pressure from pro-Israel groups​ https://english.palinfo.com/news/2026/02/15/357934/

​ Apple buys Israeli ‘pre-speech’ tech firm implicated in Gaza genocide
The world’s second-largest tech company just acquired a military-linked Israeli startup that uses “facial skin micromovements” to anticipate what users will say before they speak.​ https://thegrayzone.com/2026/02/15/apple-buys-israeli-pre-speech-firm/

White House pressures Utah lawmaker to kill AI transparency bill​ https://endtimeheadlines.org/2026/02/white-house-pressures-utah-lawmaker-to-kill-ai-transparency-bill/

​ Dario Amodei just said the thing no one in tech wants to accept as true. The story everyone clings to about permanent human-AI partnership? It’s fiction. Comforting fiction we tell ourselves while the actual future takes shape around us. Amodei: “The ‘Centaur’ window could be very short.” Developer demand is exploding right now. Salaries competitive. Companies desperate for anyone who can harness AI effectively. Every visible metric suggesting the jobs adapted and survived. Every metric is wrong. This isn’t adaptation. This is the last breath before drowning.​ https://x.com/r0ck3t23/status/2022118457710719340

​ Silver, rare-earths, diesel and clean water are already in shortage. Is he missing something? Elon Musk just said what no economist will: the entire system is about to break and nothing can stop it.
AI and robotics aren’t generating growth. They’re destroying the scarcity framework economics depends on. Musk: “It will hit us like a supersonic tsunami.” Production compounds exponentially. Money supply grows linearly. Productivity sustaining permanent double-digit expansion. Numbers that sound impossible becoming baseline. Not evolution. Replacement. Musk: “Prices collapse hard.” Not decline. Implosion. AI strips out labor costs, eliminates production errors, removes every inefficiency keeping goods expensive.
Manufacturing anything approaches zero marginal cost while quality accelerates. Governments will react on instinct. Print money. Inject stimulus. Playbook designed for scarcity economies colliding with abundance they have no framework to understand. Musk: “GDP metrics are already meaningless.” Every economic model assumes constrained labor, limited output, gradual improvement. AI doesn’t work within those boundaries. It deletes them as variables. Production explodes. Central banks flood liquidity. Prices collapse regardless because physical abundance scales faster than any monetary intervention can match. https://x.com/r0ck3t23/status/2022112266988949516

[John Day]

​ Israel’s West Bank annexation moves raise security alarm in Jordan
Amman fears a ‘soft transfer’ of Palestinians from the occupied territory, with experts warning it could trigger a ‘regional earthquake’​ https://www.middleeasteye.net/news/why-jordan-fears-soft-transfer-west-bank-after-israeli-annexation-steps

​ Türkiye condemns Israel’s land registration move in West Bank
Ankara says Israel has no sovereignty over occupied Palestinian territories, calling decision ‘null and void’​ https://www.aa.com.tr/en/middle-east/turkiye-condemns-israels-land-registration-move-in-west-bank/3830810

​ Israeli Attacks Kill at Least 12 Palestinians in Gaza
According to Gaza’s Health Ministry, since the ‘ceasefire’ deal was signed, the IDF has killed 601 Palestinians in Gaza

Israeli Attacks Kill at Least 12 Palestinians in Gaza

​ Israel continues to block Gaza technocrats from entering strip as killings continue unabated
The High Representative of Trump’s Board of Peace claims the committee appointed to administer Gaza cannot begin its work until Israel’s ceasefire violations end​ https://thecradle.co/articles-id/35968

Indonesia readies up to 8,000 troops in first firm commitment to Gaza peacekeeping force​ https://apnews.com/article/indonesia-trump-prabowo-gaza-israel-peacekeeping-22185f61dd39e6f0c04f22bb541944da

[John Day]

​ NO1​ Daily digest: 2026-02-16
​ Iran war preparations at fever pitch. IRGC launched “Smart Control Exercise of the Strait of Hormuz” with live firing warnings. US has deployed 1/3 of its entire Navy near Iran including 2 carrier strike groups, 15 destroyers, ~600+ Tomahawk missiles. 163+ cargo flights from US to Middle East bases since Jan 15. F-35s and KC-135 tankers deploying from RAF Lakenheath today through France.
​ Russia delivering Mi-28 attack helicopters to Iran in consecutive Il-76 cargo flights. Iran FM Araghchi heading to Geneva for IAEA talks Monday, US talks Tuesday. Iran says “submission before threats” not on the table. Trump told Netanyahu he’d support Israeli strikes on Iran’s missile program if no deal.​ https://no1sdailydigest.substack.com/p/daily-digest-2026-02-16

“We treat the Goyim like dogs, we don’t let them sleep” says Israeli minister Ben Gvir as he throws a grenade into a room of Palestinian hostages.​ https://x.com/Partisangirl/status/2022828616883802268

​ Israeli soldier admits to killing and rape in Gaza during livestream with US YouTuber
In a live TikTok session with American YouTuber Jeff Davidson, the soldier said, “We don’t just kill, we also rape,” referring to actions carried out by Israeli forces against Palestinian children and women in Gaza.
​ In the livestream conversation, which took place during the war in Gaza but was only released recently, Davidson initially questioned the soldier about his identity and military affiliation. The man stated that he was a member of the Israeli army and broadcasting from within Gaza.​ https://english.palinfo.com/news/2026/02/15/357913/

No details disclosed: Israeli army closes dozens of cases involving killing of Palestinians inside torture camps
Tel Aviv delayed revealing news of the closed cases as it would open up soldiers to charges of war crimes in international courts​ https://thecradle.co/articles-id/35952

​ Israeli government approves proposal to register West Bank lands as ‘state property’ for 1st time since 1967
Proposal submitted by far-right Finance Minister Bezalel Smotrich, Justice Minister Yariv Levin, and Defense Minister Israel Katz​ https://www.aa.com.tr/en/middle-east/israeli-government-approves-proposal-to-register-west-bank-lands-as-state-property-for-1st-time-since-1967/3830654

[John Day]

Danish PM says more Greenland talks due after meeting US’s Marco Rubio​ https://www.aljazeera.com/news/2026/2/14/danish-pm-says-more-greenland-talks-due-after-meeting-uss-marco-rubio

U.S. Air Force Keeps Small B-2 Stealth Bomber Fleet at Abnormally High Readiness Levels For Strikes Against Iran​ https://militarywatchmagazine.com/article/usaf-b2-stealth-high-readiness-strikes-iran#google_vignette

Iran’s top general warns Trump new war would be ‘lesson’​ – Next round of US-Iran nuclear talks is scheduled for Tuesday in Geneva.​ https://www.trtworld.com/article/a494eeceb1a9

Amid Saber-Rattling, Iran Touts Economic Benefits To West If Nuclear Deal Reached​ https://www.zerohedge.com/geopolitical/amid-saber-rattling-iran-touts-economic-benefits-west-if-nuclear-deal-reached

​ Iran’s Deputy Foreign Minister Says Ball Is in US Court To Reach a Deal​ – Another Iranian official said a deal with the US could include economic cooperation​ https://news.antiwar.com/2026/02/15/irans-deputy-foreign-minister-says-ball-is-in-us-court-to-reach-a-deal/

[John Day]

World War Or Techno Utopia https://drjohnsblog.substack.com/p/world-war-or-techno-utopia

I will enter a silent meditation retreat tomorrow, until next Sunday, so this blog will be dormant, and I’ll have some catching up to do afterwards.

Today the global economic restructuring to a world of less-stuff continues, and AI may help by relieving a lot of managers of their responsibilities this year.
We will all live lives of luxury and plenty, predicts Elon Musk, who must know better, but can’t say.
Wars are the usual way to manage these systemic economic transitions, and wars are being nurtered and brought up to speed, but not yet with total commitment, as CBDCs run by AI and complete management of all social media and information flows by AI might do the trick by keeping people isolated and controlled for the long, progressive population reduction.
This is a work in progress in uncharted waters, so we can see things happening, but not know what might happen next.
Donald Trump is still attracting attention, serving his Zionist masters with carrots and sticks, while trying to fall short of losing 1/3 of the US fleet to Iranian missiles before midterm elections. He’s trying to outpace the Red Queen as the pace of frantic change accellerates.
Each of us should look to meeting our own needs and those of family as we proceed into a period of global war, not yet certain what its form will be, but that our civilian needs will tend to come last.

Thanks for this, Eleni: Our unelected overlord: How Jared Kushner turned the White House into Israel’s backroom deal den
​ Trump did not walk into the White House alone. He stormed in with a promise to “drain the swamp,” but trailing in his shadow was Jared Kushner, carrying a tangled web of private financial networks, offshore holdings, and foreign capital so deeply embedded it functioned like a quiet engine at the heart of the presidency.
​ Years later, FBI documents released alongside the Epstein files crystallised the danger, with a Confidential Human Source (CHS) alleging that Trump had been compromised by Israel, and that Kushner was the true centre of gravity, orchestrating both the Trump Organisation and the White House from within…
..Viewed closely, a pattern emerges, pointing to a presidency where private capital, foreign networks, and personal access converge to shape outcomes that consistently serve Israeli interests, and not Americans. The decisions emanating from the Trump 2:0 administration appear to be dictated from within rather than guided by democratic oversight…
​..Before Jared Kushner ever stepped inside the West Wing, his family’s business was deeply enmeshed in a web of international capital and offshore entities. Kushner Companies, the real estate firm founded by his father, Charles Kushner, was burdened with debt following aggressive expansion into Manhattan in the late 2000s and early 2010s. To stay solvent, the business increasingly turned to unusual, opaque sources of capital.
​ Documents and reporting reveal that Israeli‑linked capital flowed into Kushner‑controlled deals through vehicles like Gaia Investments Corp, headquartered outside of Tel Aviv, Israel, and its U.S. affiliates, such as 65 Bay LLC (+ venture with KABR), originally known as GAIA JC LLC, and whose names would later appear in federal ethics disclosures in ways that triggered concerns about transparency. These investment vehicles were nominally distinct, but were tied through corporate filings and insider networks to Raz Steinmetz, a member of one of Israel’s wealthiest families, “The Steinmetzes”, whose global interests span diamonds, mining, real estate, and infrastructure. The Kushner Companies seem to have conducted a public “scrubbing” of their connections to Steinmetz. In late 2014, the Gaia name and logo vanished from the list of partners on the Kushner website, where it had been featured since early 2013.​..
​..When Jared Kushner assumed senior advisory roles in the White House, overseeing Middle East policy, diplomacy, and national security advice, he brought with him not only his ideology but a network of corporate and financial dependencies that would remain active, albeit obscured, during his tenure.
​ Jared became senior advisor to Trump in 2017 and held the position until Trump left office in 2021. He was the primary Trump administration participant for the Middle East Peace Process, authoring the Trump peace plan and facilitating the talks that led to the signing of the Abraham Accords and other normalisation agreements between Israel and various Arab states in 2020. He founded Affinity Partners, a private equity firm that derives most of its funds from the Saudi government’s sovereign wealth fund. In 2025, Kushner returned to an informal advisory role in the second Trump administration, serving, along with Steve Witkoff, as a key intermediary in diplomatic negotiations regarding the Israel-Hamas war and the war in Ukraine.
​ Nowadays, in the dim underbelly of global power plays, Jared Kushner’s shadow stretches long, weaving a tangled web around Trump’s so-called “Board of Peace”, a cabal of insiders poised to carve up Gaza’s ruins…
..The deepest failure here is not legal; it is democratic. Americans did not vote for a presidency conducted through family backchannels and international capital circuits. They did not consent to an arrangement in which an adviser’s private financial exposure intersected with public power in ways that shaped foreign policies, geopolitical outcomes, and economic trajectories.
​ Sovereignty is not merely a slogan. It is about who gets to define interests, set agendas, and negotiate outcomes without public oversight. When an adviser’s financial dependencies span borders, involve shell entities and opaque partnerships, and when regulatory protections are overridden politically, the line between personal benefit and public duty becomes indistinct.
​ “America First” ceased to function as a safeguard. It became rhetoric cloaking alignment — relational, structural, and invisible to the ordinary voter.
​The pattern we observe, of capital moving through opaque channels into private gain while shaping foreign policy, demands scrutiny, not speculation. Democracy does not fail only when ballots are stolen; it fails when consent is manufactured under premises the public never knew they were endorsing.
​ If foreign alignment now travels through family ties, private equity, and offshore networks, the urgent question is not whether influence exists. It is whether democratic institutions still possess the tools, transparency, and will to recognise and constrain it
https://www.sott.net/article/504631-Our-unelected-overlord-How-Jared-Kushner-turned-the-White-House-into-Israels-backroom-deal-den

Escape Key looks at a couple of centuries of recent history: Agents for the Rothschilds
In 2016, the publisher De Gruyter released an essay by Rainer Liedtke titled Agents for the Rothschilds: A Nineteenth-Century Information Network.
Drawing on the Rothschild Archive London — correspondence from over one hundred business agents working for the various Rothschild houses — Liedtke documented a recruitment and intelligence operation that spanned the European continent and reached into Latin America for most of the nineteenth century.
The paper describes a system in which agents were placed in locations where the Rothschild banks did not maintain a permanent presence. These agents carried out business transactions, gathered political and economic intelligence, and forwarded information that enabled the family to make decisions ahead of competitors and, frequently, ahead of even governments.
Liedtke notes that what we now would consider insider trading ‘was commonplace in nineteenth-century finance and part of the salary package of employees of financial institutions’. The agents were not merely tolerated in this practice — they were compensated through it.
The recruitment criteria tell their own story. Trust was paramount, and two principal routes existed for earning it: being a relation of the family, or having worked within one of the houses for a considerable period. Marriage was the preferred option, and these marriages ensured that important business locations were ‘covered in the long run by trustworthy representatives’.
Liedtke is explicit about one boundary:
… such men never gained access to the decision-making circle of the family but instead maintained their own business interests separately, albeit profiting significantly from contacts to the Rothschild network.
The agents were operationally essential, but they remained permanently outside the core. Only born Rothschilds were fully trusted. The ‘quintessential criterion’ for whether a Rothschild bank existed in a given city was whether a Rothschild was willing to move there.
He also documents a deliberate policy of heterogeneity. Despite being Jewish, the Rothschilds employed non-Jewish agents as a matter of strategy. A homogeneous network, Liedtke explains, would be ‘self-referential’ — limited to the social circles its members already moved in…
..Liedtke records a shift over time in what the principals expected. In the early decades, the network’s value lay in raw market data — commodity prices, exchange rates, shipping movements. After the telegraph commoditised this kind of information in the mid-nineteenth century, the agents’ importance shifted towards strategic political assessment: who was likely to form a government, which minister could be cultivated, what policy was being contemplated before it was announced…
..Fritz Stern’s Gold and Iron (1977) provides the most detailed case study of the template in action. Gerson von Bleichröder — whose family bank functioned as a ‘branch office in Berlin of the Rothschild banking house’ — became Bismarck’s personal financial agent, managed his portfolio, bribed officials on his behalf, financed wars while bypassing parliamentary opposition, and served as intermediary between European finance and the Prussian state. Bleichröder’s ‘remarkable and long-running relationship with the Rothschilds made his services doubly worthwhile to both Bismarck and Germany’.
Yet Bleichröder was never admitted to the inner circle of power. After Bismarck’s death, he ‘dropped out of German historiography like a stone in water’…
..The humiliation of the 1871 terms drove France’s demands at the Paris Peace Conference of 1919, which opened on the 18th of January — the anniversary of Wilhelm I’s proclamation at Versailles in 1871. Clemenceau sought explicit revenge. The resulting reparations of 132 billion gold marks wrecked the German economy, and it was those reparations that created the institutional justification for the Bank for International Settlements, established in 1930 to administer the payment schedule.
The BIS (Bank for International Settlements), however, was modelled on more than the reparations problem. At the Brussels International Monetary Conference of 1892, Julius Wolf, a professor at the University of Breslau, had submitted a project for internationally issued, gold-backed clearing certificates administered by a joint institution in a neutral country — in effect, a globalisation of the clearing house architecture.
At the same conference, Alfred de Rothschild, a former Director of the Bank of England, presented his own paper advocating the London Bankers’ Clearing House as a system approaching ‘perfection’ and arguing against a physical coinage solution in favour of paper certificates representing quantities of metal…
..The function the BIS was designed to perform — clearing sovereign obligations between states, intermediating capital flows across borders — had previously been performed by multinational merchant banks, the Rothschilds foremost among them. Bleichröder processing reparation payments on the German side while Alphonse de Rothschild raised the bonds on the French side was the BIS function carried out by private agents.
When the institution was constituted in 1930, its founding governance reflected this lineage. The entire American share subscription went not to the Federal Reserve but to a consortium of private banks led by JP Morgan… An internal Federal Reserve Bank of New York memo from 1929 warned that the bankers’ plan ‘suggests too great of power conferred on private stockholders’ and that private ownership ‘introduces the pressure of profits as opposed to the motive of public service’. The US government did not ratify Federal Reserve board membership until 1994; private shareholders were not bought out until 2001–2005, and only after an arbitration fight…
..The agent network did not disappear, but its function changed. Where the nineteenth-century agents had managed the family’s direct business, the twentieth-century successors would manage the institutional architecture that replaced it — operating not within the Rothschild banks but within the sovereign and multilateral bodies that now performed the Rothschild banks’ historical role at a vastly larger scale.
The family’s reach extended into state intelligence as well.
Victor Rothschild served in MI5 during the Second World War, and his London flat functioned as a gathering point for fellow members of the Cambridge Apostles — a secretive Cambridge society whose membership in the early 1930s, according to MI5’s own files, was ‘nearly all’ communist. Several of those who frequented the flat, including Anthony Blunt and Guy Burgess, were later exposed as Soviet agents.
Woolf and Keynes were also Apostles — as documented in declassified MI5 records and published accounts by former intelligence officers…
..Niall Ferguson’s two-volume The House of Rothschild4 (1998–1999), written with unprecedented access to the family archives, documents the broader pattern: a transnational business partnership ‘preserved over five generations through family loyalty, written agreements, and intrafamily marriage’. Between 1824 and 1877, fifteen of twenty-one Rothschild marriages were between direct descendants.
Adam Kuper — who analysed Ferguson’s archive material in a 2001 paper for Social Anthropology — arrived at a similar figure: more than 70 percent of marriages in this period were with a father’s brother’s daughter or father’s brother’s son’s daughter, arranged specifically to sustain the partnership between branches. Kuper concluded that the Rothschilds were likely ‘the only banking family who had such an explicit strategy of endogamy’…
..Thus, across four independent academic studies the method is clear: agents placed where the family requires presence but does not wish to reside, recruited through marriage or long service, compensated through access rather than salary, deliberately heterogeneous, publicly visible and socially prestigious by association, but permanently excluded from the family’s decision-making core.
What these sources collectively describe is a private intelligence operation — one that enabled the family to act ahead of competitors and governments for the better part of a century.​ https://escapekey.substack.com/p/agents-for-the-rothschilds

​ Simplicius, Reports Claim US Readying ‘Long-Term’ Attrition Op Against Iran
This news comes as Trump sends a second aircraft carrier to the region. Recall that during Desert Storm and the 2003 Iraq War, the US had six carrier strike groups (CSGs) operating in the region.​..
..In a new interview, Colonel Daniel Davis claims that Larry Johnson’s naval sources told him that a serious “classified problem” has already stopped the USS George HW Bush from being able to transit the Atlantic, causing it to be replaced by the Gerald R Ford at the last minute​…
..More concerning is the fact that Trump has allegedly been weighing sending “commando teams”—or, in other words, ground troops—into Iran, presumably to attempt another snatch-and-grab-style raid as seen in Venezuela…
​..The options U.S. President Donald Trump has been weighing include military action targeting Iran’s nuclear program and ability to launch ballistic missiles, with U.S. officials saying he is also considering options that would include sending American commandos to go after certain Iranian military targets. – NYT
​ If you’re still wondering, what exactly would be the objective of such an operation? Well, Trump himself doesn’t seem to know. In a must-watch video, a reporter finally tasked him with the central question: what’s the purpose of striking Iran if the US had already allegedly taken out its nuclear program in the “Operation Midnight Hammer” strikes on Fordow?​ …
..As per his usual M.O. Trump has no principled answers—he sticks to his tactic of playing both sides, wanting his cake and eating it too. He seeks our belief in his ‘miraculously’ executed Fordow strikes, yet at the same time wants us to accept the inanely contradictory notion that Iran still needs to be further bombed to reduce its nuclear potential.
​ In reality, we all know what the strikes would really be all about: simply creating chaos to destabilize the Iranian government, foment more unrest, and attempt to create a ‘critical mass’-like situation of social panic that can be further exploited by co-conspirators like Israel.
​ The good news is that this could be one of Trump’s threatening ruses with the purpose of leveraging Iran into negotiations concessions. As of this writing, there are new reports that Iran is willing to play ball to an extent, and could be willing to open up certain cooperative oil and gas development projects inside Iran to US companies…
​..Though unsourced, one pro-Iranian account claimed:
Iran will open certain economic sectors to US companies as part of an upcoming deal
​ The Deputy Foreign Minister has stated that Iranian oil and gas fields and mining investments will be open to US companies
Tehran also plans to purchase more than 100 passenger airplanes
​ Total economic activity could exceed $500 billion​…
​..This deal-making appeared to be supported by recent statements by top DC energy consultant Bob Mcnally who was virtually salivating in a recent speech over the potential of the US anarcho-extortion vulture capitalism bandwagon alighting in Iran, whose oil and gas fields he believes hold far more plunder potential than those of Venezuela…
..His colonialist-colored speech circumscribes the new American doctrine and paradigm-in-one, which Rubio likewise elaborated on during the Munich Security Conference. Rubio’s speech made new waves due to what appeared to be a call for the US-European ‘civilization’ to take back the reins of global dominion…
..What Rubio appears to be doing is shoe-horning the West’s cultural decline due to globalism and its spawn of mass-migration into some kind of new ideological call-to-action meant to justify the US’s erratic abrogation of MAGA’s promises and to continue the neocon plunder of the Global South…
​..As Prof. Joe Siracusa told Sputnik:
​ While the White House started off declaring its intentions to “avoid long-term conflicts,” its “shift from being risk-averse to highly unpredictable suggests a more dangerous and erratic direction for global stability,” Siracusa said, noting that Rubio’s job is to now try “to rationalize a worldview that does not truly exist.”
​ Another way of simplifying it: the Trump administration campaigned on being non-interventionist and ‘America-first’, but then something happened. That something seems clear: Trump had a “talking to” by Miriam Adelson on behalf of Israel, and here we are. Now, Trump’s gophers like Rubio are forced to whip-up sloppy post hoc rationalizations to make it sound like this new “doctrine” was the plan all along; it wasn’t. Trump was merely “turned” by Israel​…
..He cannot come up with a valid reason because one doesn’t exist: he’s simply following orders.​ “Iran must be destroyed, tell your cattle citizens whatever you must—we don’t care what reasons you make up. Just make it sound somewhat convincing.”​ …
..This all as the US seized another two tankers—Veronica III and Aquila II—all the way in the Indian ocean, reportedly again related to Venezuelan oil. It’s clear that the Western order is plotting to escalate its piracy as a last resort to shut down the Global South’s economic life lines because there is no other way for the West to compete…​ China, Russia, and Iran will slowly be pushed into closer naval alliances to safeguard global economic arteries​…
..Now, the latest word is that Israel may go it alone against Iran, and that Trump has given them his ‘greenlight’. This obviously leaves Iran in a bind because even if the US were not to directly strike Iran itself, it will certainly aid Israel in the capacities of refueling, armaments, anti-air defense to block Iranian retaliations, etc. That gives Iran a clear incentive to attack US assets anyway as a deterrence measure, to degrade the overall capabilities of the ‘coalition’ launching the hostile strikes.
​ This would essentially be Israel’s trick to lure the US into open conflict: simply attack Iran unilaterally, and when the American vassal is forced to assist, it is brought directly into the conflict against its will.​.. We now wait to see if Trump’s appetite for risk leads him to truly open up “Pandora’s box” once and for all, giving Iran no choice but to go all out, or whether diplomacy prevails. But even if a compromise is reached, Israel holds the wildcard, and a desperate Netanyahu could attack Iran unilaterally, igniting another conflagration across the region.​ https://simplicius76.substack.com/p/reports-claim-us-readying-long-term

​ Moon of Alabama, U.S. Calls For New Colonial Era
In a speech held at the Munich Security Conference Secretary of State Marco Rubio called for a renewal of the colonial age
​..”This is what we did together once before, and this is what President Trump and the United States want to do again now, together with you.​”
​ Arnaud Bertrand summarizes:
​ The man literally laments the outcome of WW2 because it marked the end of the era during which “the West had been expanding”, a “path” he “hopes [the US and Europe] walk together again.”
​ And just to ensure you’re clear about what he means: he wants to restore the building of “vast empires extending across the globe” and blames “anti-colonial uprisings” for what they did to “the great Western empires.”
​ He also says that “we cannot continue” to allow “abstractions of international law” get in the way of US interests.
Basically the man is openly saying that the whole post-colonial order was a mistake and he’s calling on Europe to share the spoils of building a new one.
​ Some of the dimwits in the room did applaud that revisionist nonsense.
Bertrand cautiones:
​ What’s the thinking here? That Trump’s America – “America first” – would suddenly become magnanimous and share with Europe just out of sentiment? That’s not how imperialism works: the whole premise of it is that the strong dominate the weak.
​ When an imperial power is speaking to you of sentiments, of how much they like you and how they want to partner with you – the much weaker party – that’s cause for worry, not applause​. https://www.moonofalabama.org/2026/02/u-s-calls-for-new-colonial-era.html

[John Day]

@Tboc: You are welcome.

[John Day]

​ Peter McCullough MD, Measles Outbreaks and Availability of Childhood Vaccine Exemptions
Year 2026: 736 measles cases prompt nearly 40,000 press pieces, 75% promoting vaccination mainly in states with vaccine choice​ https://www.thefocalpoints.com/p/measles-outbreaks-and-availability

​ When you have brain fog from an all-nighter: A Single 20g Dose of Creatine Increases Cognitive Processing Speed by 24.5% Within 3.5 Hours
A double-blind, placebo-controlled trial found that creatine rapidly enhanced brain bioenergetics and improved cognitive performance during sleep deprivation, with effects lasting up to nine hours.​ https://www.thefocalpoints.com/p/a-single-20g-dose-of-creatine-increases

​Small farmers resist Monsanto with their lives: Farmers in India Reject the Seeds Act and the Corporate Enclosure of Seeds https://www.globalresearch.ca/farmers-india-reject-seeds-act-corporate-enclosure-seeds/5915483

Climate Physicist Anastassia Makarieva explains biotic pump mechanisms in detail: Biotic Pump Q&A #2: The Dual Role of Condensation
Why forests need both the precipitation mass sink and latent heat release to drive atmospheric moisture transport.​ https://bioticregulation.substack.com/p/biotic-pump-q-and-a-2-the-dual-role

[John Day]

Wait another year. “Everyone’s Grandma Is Selling The Silver Chandelier, Forks, Knives” As Scrap Volumes Overwhelm Refiners​ https://www.zerohedge.com/precious-metals/everyones-grandma-selling-silver-chandelier-forks-knives-scrap-volumes-overwhelm

House passes bill to OVERTURN Trump tariffs on Canada​ https://therightscoop.com/breaking-house-passes-bill-to-overturn-trump-tariffs-on-canada-and-here-are-the-republicans-who-voted-with-dems/

Senate Blocks DHS Bill As Shutdown Looming Intensifies​ https://www.zerohedge.com/political/house-passed-voter-id-save-act-set-die-senate-dhs-shutdown-looms

Supreme Court To Hear Roundup Maker’s Bid To Block Thousands Of Lawsuits In April​ https://www.zerohedge.com/political/supreme-court-hear-roundup-makers-bid-block-thousands-lawsuits-april

​ Steve Kirsch, It is unethical to mandate kids to get the COVID shot. It’s easy to show with math.
We have the data from the Czech Republic. It shows to prove safety, we’d need to enroll 7.5M young adults in a R​andom C​ontrolled T​rial and observe them for a year. Without that, recommending a vaccine is unethical.​ https://kirschsubstack.com/p/it-is-unethical-to-mandate-kids-to

[John Day]

​ Successful contrarian investor, Hugh Hendry: “Modern Money Only Works By Cheating”: If You’re Long Bitcoin (Or Not Long Bitcoin), Read This…
Bitcoin exists not to replace fiat money but as a provocative “hard object” in an elastic monetary world. Modern fiat succeeds by cheating – deferring pain, socializing losses, and bending rules to absorb crises (Weimar rigidity led to hyperinflation; 1929 rigidity was abandoned for elasticity in the 1930s; 2008 and COVID responses bent rules to survive). Fiat buys time during trauma but creates ratcheting inflation that disproportionately burdens the asset-poor, while rewarding mobile capital.
​ Bitcoin recreates gold’s key elusive trait: non-discretionary, issuer-risk-free scarcity in digital form. Unlike gold (which responds to price via new supply), Bitcoin’s 21-million cap is mechanically enforced by code and time, refusing incentives. This makes it an potential anchor beneath fiat – collateral for credit expansion – if it scales to gold-like market value (~$45T vs. Bitcoin’s ~$1T).
​ Yet the real risk lies not in math (256-bit cryptography remains robust against classical attacks) but in human coordination: governance, quantum threats requiring consensus upgrades, and holder temperament during violent drawdowns. Markets price Bitcoin’s gap to gold not from doubts about scarcity, but from uncertainty about whether humans can endure its rigid, psychologically demanding process without capitulating. Bitcoin tests endurance more than code – its value hinges on who holds it, and for how long.​ https://www.zerohedge.com/crypto/modern-money-only-works-cheating-if-youre-long-bitcoin-or-not-long-bitcoin-read

​ EU seeks to close Russia crypto loopholes in new sanctions
The EU plans to ban crypto transactions with Russia by shutting down all related channels, but analysts question whether the measure is fully enforceable.​ https://cointelegraph.com/news/russia-crypto-loophole-eu-20th-sanctions-package

About ​our $300 billion in Europe… Dollar Detente? Kremlin Memo Explores Rejoining US-Led Financial System​ https://www.zerohedge.com/geopolitical/dollar-detente-kremlin-memo-explores-rejoining-us-led-financial-system

China’s Central Bank Keeps Buying Gold… And Dumping US Debt​ https://www.zerohedge.com/precious-metals/chinas-central-bank-keeps-buying-gold-and-dumping-us-debt

​ Gold & Geopolitics: Daily digest: 2026-02-12 – Get up to speed
F-35s delivered without radars since June 2025 due to APG-85 delays linked to Chinese rare earth export restrictions on Gallium Nitride. Lockheed installing barbell counterweights as ballast. Will Schryver summary, widely confirmed by defense press.
​ Silver market structure nearing breaking point – SHFE’s new rules effectively end large-scale leveraged naked shorting on Shanghai’s exchange. Hedgers must now renew quotas monthly with no automatic rollover. Eric Yeung explains implications – SLV short interest jumped ~10M shares to 73.5M (12.8% of float), yet borrow cost barely moved – raising questions about phantom share creation – SHFE silver vaults at just 350t (down 89% from 3,091t in 2021). Shanghai silver trading at $94.27 vs COMEX ~$84 – a massive arbitrage gap – pmbug estimates LBMA has roughly one month’s supply of liquid free float, COMEX Registered has ~45 working days. By June, delivery defaults likely – Dario expects a “volatility event” triggered by the first naked short who “breaks ranks” and starts covering, timing linked to Mar26 settlement – CFTC’s Chicago office has lost its last enforcement lawyer – zero oversight on trading manipulation – China closed for CNY next week – games expected on COMEX but shortage may intensify if Chinese scramble to buy COMEX Feb futures for immediate delivery
​ Gold & precious metals bull market intact – Gold above $5,100, breaking through on third attempt. Silver surged +6% back above $85.​ https://no1sdailydigest.substack.com/p/daily-digest-2026-02-12

[John Day]

​ Public Trust In US Government Nears Historic Lows
The United States has fallen to its lowest-ever rank in Transparency International’s Corruption Perception Index (CPI), a leading global index that measures perception of corruption in the public sector among independent experts and business people.
​ In 2025, the U.S. fell down one spot to 29th place (out of 182) with a score of 64/100 on a 0 to 100 scale, where 0 means highly corrupt and 100 completely clean.​ https://www.zerohedge.com/political/public-trust-us-government-nears-historic-lows

​ As you likely know: EU Pressured Social Media Giants to Censor Americans’ Speech
A U.S. House of Representatives 160-page report accused EU government officials of forcing tech firms to apply EU speech laws, including the Digital Services Act.​ https://tdefender.substack.com/p/eu-pressured-social-media-giants-to-censor-americans-speech

Microsoft AI CEO Warns Most White Collar Jobs Fully Automated “Within Next 12-18 Months”; Anthropic Fears Potential For ‘Heinous Crimes’​ https://www.zerohedge.com/ai/microsoft-ai-ceo-warns-most-white-collar-jobs-will-be-fully-automated-within-next-12-18-months

US Consumer Debt Delinquencies Soar To Highest Since 2017 While Office Delinquencies Hit Record High​ https://www.zerohedge.com/markets/us-consumer-debt-delinquencies-soar-highest-2017-while-office-delinquencies-hit-record-high

​ More ​pervasive control over people​; Epstein’s extended project: Why governments insist on CBDCs or stablecoins when most people don’t want them
There will be two types of CBDCs: one to be used by populations and another to be used by states, banks, and large investment funds and corporations. The first kind is the “retail” CBDC, the one to be used by the population. It is essentially a control mechanism because currency ceases to have a nominal value and becomes a state-sanctioned token to be used when and how the state decides. It will also bring the end of anonymous payments and introduce automatic taxation, among other “liberating” features. From a state and central bank point of view, this is, of course, ideal.
​ The second type will be the “wholesale” CBDC, the one used by governments, banks, and transnational investment funds to settle their accounts. It will be built on the same blockchain foundation as retail CBDCs, but it will have certain features — like expiration dates and spending restrictions — turned off. It will function closer to current digital fiat currencies and, possibly, its strength will be based on the resources that determine its demand.
​ The result, essentially, will be two types of wealth: one held by elites — financial, military, technological, and political — who will end up controlling most assets, and one held by the population at large, which will be completely under elite control through military and surveillance technology.
​ CBDCs and stablecoins, however, will not, in a sense, create a new social dynamic, but rather crystallize the current trajectory. They will make it apparent that control of currency is power and that society is structured in a pyramidal form, with those who have access to currency creation at the top. Splitting money into two kinds only reaffirms this and creates a shield to ensure the continuation of elite rule over the population.
​ Elites in every field — financial, technological, military, or bureaucratic — will in effect become one, which, arguably, they already are. But what will determine relevance and status will be the ability to access non-fungible, non-programmable wealth. As this will create an almost total impossibility of upward mobility, these elites will become a close-knit network of wealth maintained through marriages (or reproductive agreements), inheritance, and mergers.
​ As financial technology demands growth, and monopolization is the logical path, the initially delimited areas where a digital currency is applicable will start merging into blocks. This is already happening. mBridge is a platform that is currently being developed by China, Thailand, the UAE, Saudi Arabia, and, not surprisingly, the Bank for International Settlements (BIS).
​ The BIS is a supranational organization based in Basel that was set up in the interwar period of the 1930s and was essential in establishing the foundations — the rails — of the current financial system, and in coordinating monetary policy between Western central banks. What its involvement in this project signifies is that the core of the financial system — the financial “deep state,” if you will — is involved in the transition to the CBDC paradigm. It shows that despite geopolitical conflicts over resources, eastern, western, northern, and southern financial elites are moving in coordination towards it.
​ This was, perhaps, the logical development of the marriage between government and banking that happened in 1694, which gave birth to the Bank of England and the modern financial state. In England, and for the first time, the debt of the Sovereign had the conditions to become what became known as the National Debt — a concept whereby the debt incurred by the Sovereign no longer belongs to him, but to the entire nation…
..What we are witnessing is the merger between the Modern Financial State and digital technologies.​ https://www.nakedcapitalism.com/2026/02/why-governments-insist-on-cbdcs-or-stablecoins-when-most-people-dont-want-them.html

[John Day]

U.S. Reports New Bombing of Alleged Drug-Trafficking Vessel in the Pacific​ https://www.telesurenglish.net/u-s-reports-bombing-vessel-pacific/

​Drug trafficking vessel look-alike: FAA Grounds Flights in El Paso After Military Laser Downs Party Balloon Mistaken for Drone https://www.thedefensenews.com/news-details/FAA-Grounds-Flights-in-El-Paso-After-Military-Laser-Downs-Party-Balloon-Mistaken-for-Drone/

​ The US Military Aided Mass Child Rape in Afghanistan. Now Its Soldiers Are Committing This Crime At Fort Bragg
​ Many of these soldiers served in Afghanistan, where it is now acknowledged that the U.S. military aided their local allies in “bacha bazi” (boy play): the practice of kidnapping and keeping boys as sex slaves, large numbers of whom were enslaved on U.S. military compounds.
​ Joshua Glardon – a first sergeant in the 4th Psychological Operations Group (Airborne) at Fort Bragg – was sentenced to 76 years in prison, followed by lifetime supervised release, for the distribution of child pornography across the internet. An unnamed woman – his accomplice – was sentenced to 30 years in prison after she “confessed to allowing him to rape” her child…​ https://scheerpost.com/2026/02/11/the-us-military-aided-mass-child-rape-in-afghanistan-now-its-soldiers-are-committing-this-crime-at-fort-bragg/

​ Homan Says Minnesota Immigration “Surge Operation” Is Over​
White House border czar Tom Homan said on Thursday that the Trump administration has made significant progress in Minnesota and will therefore end the immigration enforcement surge in the state.​ https://www.zerohedge.com/political/homan-says-minnesota-immigration-surge-operation-over

US Military Helping Trump to Build Massive Network of ‘Concentration Camps,’ Navy Contract Reveals​ https://scheerpost.com/2026/02/11/us-military-helping-trump-to-build-massive-network-of-concentration-camps-navy-contract-reveals/

[John Day]

President Orbán Calls Ukraine an ‘Enemy’ of Hungary​ – Ukrainian pressure to ban Russian energy has angered the Hungarian government.​ https://www.globalresearch.ca/orban-calls-ukraine-enemy-hungary/5915423

​ European Parliament approves $107B loan for Ukraine
EU leaders agreed in December to fund Kyiv via market borrowing after failing to agree on using frozen Russian assets
​ Of the total amount, €30 billion ($35.8 billion) will be provided as macroeconomic support, either via macro-financial assistance or through the Ukraine Facility, the EU’s dedicated instrument designed to deliver stable and predictable financial support to Kyiv.
​ The remaining €60 billion ($71.5 billion) will be used to bolster Ukraine’s defense industrial capacity and support the procurement of military equipment, providing Ukraine with timely access to defense products from both Ukrainian and EU defense industries.​ https://www.aa.com.tr/en/russia-ukraine-war/european-parliament-approves-107b-loan-for-ukraine/3826950

​ UN expresses concern over increasing fuel shortages in Cuba
‘The UN continues to monitor the situation in the country and is working with the Government to provide more support, including food, water and sanitation and health care,’ says spokesperson​ https://www.aa.com.tr/en/americas/un-expresses-concern-over-increasing-fuel-shortages-in-cuba/3825333

Russian Airlines Suspend Flights To Cuba, Begin Evacuation Of Citizens, Over Fuel Crisis​ https://www.zerohedge.com/geopolitical/russian-airlines-suspend-flights-cuba-begin-evacuation-citizens-over-fuel-crisis

​ Russia To Send Oil To Cuba Amid US-Imposed Blockade
The Russian Embassy in Havana told Izvestia that “as far as we know, Russia is expected to supply oil and petroleum products to Cuba as humanitarian aid in the near future” – amid the island’s worst energy crunch in years.​ https://www.zerohedge.com/geopolitical/russia-send-oil-cuba-amid-us-imposed-blockade

[John Day]

Body Organs of Over 15,000 Syrians Including Children Sold in Six Years: ISIL- Al Qaeda Involved in Abduction of Children. Syria Coroner’s Office
[First published by GR in November. 2016, this report is of utmost significance in relation to the release of the Epstein Files and crimes committed against children in the war theater.]
​Body Organs of Over 15,000 Syrians Including Children Sold in Six Years: ISIL- Al Qaeda Involved in Abduction of Children. Syria Coroner’s Office
​ “We have accurate information that over 25,000 surgical operations have been conducted in the refugee camps of the neighboring countries and in the terrorist-controlled areas in Syria since 2011 to take out the body organs of 15,000 Syrians and sell them in the international black markets,” Dr. Noufel said.​ https://www.globalresearch.ca/body-organs-of-over-15000-syrians-sold-in-six-years-coroners-office/5557626

​ Member of Trump’s ‘Religious Liberty Commission’ Removed After Questioning Claim That Anti-Zionism Is Antisemitic
Carrie Prejean Boller, a Catholic conservative activist and model, took issue with the International Holocaust Remembrance Alliance’s (IHRA) definition of antisemitism, which has been embraced by the Trump administration’s Department of Justice and conflates criticism of the modern state of Israel with antisemitism.
​ “Undoubtedly, anti-Zionism is antisemitism,” Rabbi Ari Berman, president of Yeshiva University in New York, told Boller during one exchange. Boller then pointed to her Catholic faith, which does not affirm the idea that the Jewish people have a divine right to historic Palestine.​ https://news.antiwar.com/2026/02/11/member-of-trumps-religious-liberty-commission-removed-after-questioning-claim-that-anti-zionism-is-antisemitic/

​ Massie Exposes Les Wexner As Epstein Co-Conspirator, Opening Door To Criminal Charges Against Kash Patel
While Wexner’s role in facilitating the crimes of Epstein has been well-established for years, the revelation that the FBI officially acknowledged him as a co-conspirator by 2019 dismantles the narrative woven by the Trump administration that it has not withheld the identities of any of the notorious pedophile’s accomplices. In September 2025, Patel ostensibly did just that when he testified before Congress regarding Epstein. During his testimony, Patel was asked “Who did Epstein traffic these young women to?” by Louisiana Senator John N. Kennedy. Patel responded, “Himself.” There is no credible information—none—that he trafficked to other individuals.” The revelation that the FBI had confirmed that Wexner was a co-conspirator of Epstein by 2019 suggests that Patel lied to Congress during his testimony.​ https://www.zerohedge.com/political/massie-exposes-les-wexner-epstein-co-conspirator-opening-door-criminal-charges-against

​ Federal Judge Blocks Hegseth’s Censure Of Sen. Mark Kelly​
“This Court has all it needs to conclude that Defendants have trampled on Senator Kelly’s First Amendment freedoms and threatened the constitutional liberties of millions of military retirees,” U.S. District Judge Richard Leon ruled on Feb. 12.
​ “To say the least, our retired veterans deserve more respect from their Government, and our Constitution demands they receive it!”​ https://www.zerohedge.com/political/federal-judge-blocks-hegseths-censure-sen-mark-kelly

[John Day]

​A very short video clip: The israelis kill rescue workers live on air, while not one single western media outlet has reported or broadcast this footage https://x.com/swilkinsonbc/status/2021475822209728710

​ The Israeli government recently took radical steps to change the legal status quo in the West Bank. Here’s what these changes mean and how they set the stage for annexation.​ https://mondoweiss.net/2026/02/israel-just-started-legalizing-its-annexation-of-the-west-bank-heres-what-that-means/

Israeli settlers displace 15 Palestinian families from al-Dyouk al-Tahta village near Jericho​ https://english.palinfo.com/news/2026/02/11/357664/

​ After they shot him: A 14-year-old Palestinian Bled to Death for 45 Minutes as Israeli Soldiers Stood Nearby
Videos show him abandoned as he pleaded for help, while his family watched helplessly from a distance.
​ Israel is now holding his body.
According to the IDF, “a terrorist* who posed an immediate threat was identified, the force fired at him and provided first aid”​ https://israelpalestinenews.org/israeli-war-crime-palestinian-child/

​ Labs and blood banks in Gaza warn of total shutdown as critical supplies run out​ https://english.palinfo.com/news/2026/02/09/357548/

[John Day]

​ UN reports continued Israeli shelling, airstrikes in Gaza, warns civilians at risk
‘Civilians and civilian infrastructure must always be protected during military operations,’ says spokesperson​ https://www.aa.com.tr/en/middle-east/un-reports-continued-israeli-shelling-airstrikes-in-gaza-warns-civilians-at-risk/3826187

​ Israeli Attacks Kill at Least Six Palestinians in Gaza as IDF Continues Ceasefire Violations
The Health Ministry said on Monday that the IDF has killed 581 Palestinians in Gaza since the ceasefire deal was signed​ https://news.antiwar.com/2026/02/09/israeli-attacks-kill-at-least-six-palestinians-in-gaza-as-idf-continues-ceasefire-violations/

Private jet owned by Trump friend used by ICE to deport Palestinians to West Bank​ https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/2026/feb/05/revealed-private-jet-owned-by-trump-friend-used-by-ice-to-deport-palestinians-to-west-bank

Israeli Drone Strike Kills 2 Cyclists in Gaza as Death Toll Mounts Despite Ceasefire​ https://english.aawsat.com/arab-world/5239361-israeli-drone-strike-kills-2-cyclists-gaza-death-toll-mounts-despite-ceasefire

​ Israeli prisons ‘begin preparations to apply death penalty’ for Palestinians
Channel 13 reports prison service building ‘Green Mile’ facility where executions set to take place​ https://www.middleeasteye.net/news/israel-begins-preparations-execution-palestinian-prisoners-report

[John Day]

As you know Iran blocked their use and traced their locations: Confirmed: US Covertly Sent Thousands Of Starlink Terminals Into Iran Amid Unrest​ https://www.zerohedge.com/geopolitical/confirmed-us-covertly-sent-thousands-starlink-terminals-iran-amid-unrest

​ Thanks Eleni, Thierry Meissan, Iran, on the verge of implosion
It was at this point that snipers, positioned on rooftops, began indiscriminately gunning down targets, both among the protesters and the security forces. This is the “dogfighting” strategy, tested in the 1990s and successfully replicated from Libya to Ukraine. The shooters are probably Israelis of Iranian origin (there are 250,000 of them in Israel), but I don’t know for sure. These killings turn all sides into enemies of one another. The security forces, terrified, become savages. In just a few days, the death toll rose from 1,200 to over 40,000. https://www.sott.net/article/504601-Iran-on-the-verge-of-implosion

​Everybody can lose, but can anybody win? China Deploys One of the World’s Most Powerful Destroyers Near Iran as Western Attack Looms ​ https://militarywatchmagazine.com/article/china-destroyer-near-iran-attack

Top Hamas Leader Rejects Trump’s Disarmament Demand, Vows No ‘Foreign Rule’ in Gaza​ https://www.breitbart.com/politics/2026/02/09/top-hamas-leader-rejects-trumps-disarmament-demand-vows-no-foreign-rule-gaza/

​ Türkiye, 7 other nations condemn Israel’s ‘unlawful’ measures in occupied West Bank
Foreign ministers of Türkiye, Egypt, Jordan, Indonesia, Pakistan, Qatar, Saudi Arabia, and UAE denounce Israel’s actions as ‘unlawful, null and void’​ https://www.aa.com.tr/en/middle-east/turkiye-7-other-nations-condemn-israel-s-unlawful-measures-in-occupied-west-bank/3824743

[John Day]

Annihilation Looms https://drjohnsblog.substack.com/p/annihilation-looms

Unconfirmed rumor: HIGH PRIORITY NUCLEAR CODES TRANSMITTED BY U.S. NUCLEAR FORCES THIS MORNING!! THESE ARE KNOWN AS “SKYMASTER” MESSAGES THEY ARE RIGHT BELOW THE EMERGENCY WAR ORDER OR ORDER TO LAUNCH!! https://x.com/nyprepper1/status/2021664929472745876

The United States continues an unprecedented buildup of forces and resources in the Middle East.​ https://en.topcor.ru/68611-ssha-prodolzhajut-besprecedentnoe-naraschivanie-sil-i-sredstv-na-blizhnem-vostoke.html

The Gerald Ford: 2nd US Aircraft Carrier Rerouted From Caribbean To Mideast As Iran In Crosshairs​ https://www.zerohedge.com/geopolitical/2nd-us-aircraft-carrier-rerouted-caribbean-mideast-iran-tensions-mount

​ A US-led regime-change operation in Iran would be tantamount to a declaration of war on China and here’s why
China gets nearly 20 percent of its oil from Iran, and US threats of military action against Iran just prompted China to instruct its banks to dump U.S. treasuries, dealing another blow to the dollar.
​ International geopolitics is ruthless and cunning and is carried out with zero regard for human life or basic morals. It’s all about projecting power and grabbing resources.
​ If China sees Washington’s actions against Iran as a backdoor method of starving it’s fuel-dependent industrial base of needed energy resources, that’s likely to be interpreted by Beijing as a U.S. declaration of war.
​ Washington is risking the very real prospect that China may no longer see it in its interests to continue standing down in the face of increased U.S. aggression against its allies. It could afford to walk away from Venezuela, but can it afford to cut ties with Iran?
​ The question in Trump’s mind has to be churning: Do we really want to choke off oil supplies to China and drive the dragon further into the arms of the Russian bear?
​ Russia already has its hands full with Ukraine, a war that would have been over in a few weeks if not for all the weapons and money funneled to Ukraine by the U.S. and NATO. The U.S. has been sanctioning countries that buy Russian oil and now it appears ready to make a play for the oil that goes from Iran to China.
​ Washington has already backed Russia into a corner. Is China next?
​ It’s not like China lacks leverage over the U.S. It has non-military options to counter the West and will likely play those cards before doing anything militarily. China could cut off rare-earth supplies to the U.S. It could cut off the processing of vital medications like antibiotics, the majority of which come into the U.S. from China.
​ China can up its game in the realm of economic warfare and there are signs that’s exactly what it is doing.
​ In the latest shock move, Xi has ordered Chinese banks to dump U.S. treasuries. Major Chinese banks have already been dumping treasuries quietly but now they are going to officially and massively de-dollarize. This is also why China has been buying gold at an unprecedented rate.
​ The U.S., meanwhile, in an attempt to compensate for the loss of China’s appetite to fund U.S. debt, has been printing money to buy its own debt.​..
..The bottom line is this: There’s a big fight going on for global currency supremacy and a race to see who can control the most gold, minerals and oil resources.​..
..Could there be a comeuppance in 2026 with Iran serving as the place where the U.S. pushed the envelope too far, not just against Iran but China? …​ ..Trump has really backed himself into a corner. He has assembled a massive naval armada in the Persian Gulf region for the sole purpose of attacking Iran and changing out their regime.
​ He may prefer a negotiated “deal” that allows Iran’s regime to stay in place in exchange for certain concessions with regard to Iran’s support for anti-Israeli proxies and its crackdown on the protests in its own country. But then he has the Israelis to contend with. They are dead set on regime change and counting on Trump to carry it out for them. The neocons at home in Washington also are pressuring Trump to pull the trigger on a full-scale invasion of Iran, if that’s what it takes to remove the Islamic government from power.​ https://leohohmann.substack.com/p/a-us-led-regime-change-operation

[John Day]

Sasha Latypova, Awkward moment: The FDA refuses to file Moderna’s mRNA flu shot biologics license application.
How long is this standoff going to last? I am not holding my breath for now.​ https://sashalatypova.substack.com/p/awkward-moment-the-fda-refuses-to

​ A Midwestrn Doctor on re-activating stress-dormant cells: Regenerative Medicine and The Cell Danger Response
How locally resolving the cell danger response allows chronically impaired tissues to heal and resume their normal function​ https://www.midwesterndoctor.com/p/regenerative-medicine-and-the-cell-6c5

​China, Korea, Japan, Iran… Average IQ by country (2025 update) https://web.archive.org/web/20250114060922/https:/international-iq-test.com/en/test/IQ_by_country

‘Walk for Peace’: Buddhist monks arrive in in Washington after 108-day journey​ https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=MTHyAde49eg

[Author]

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