The Automatic Earth

Vincent van Gogh Peach trees in blossom 1888

Jacob Rothschild died at 87. Who has their portrait taken this way?

Black flag

Jacob Rothschild died just three days after two black horses were spotted with a ‘captured’ white horse and a Black Flag outside Buckingham Palace.

Are you getting it yet? pic.twitter.com/igrb4vQ8yg

— Cillian (@CilComLFC) February 26, 2024

Tulsi

“I could not in good conscience vote against impeachment b/c I believe President Trump is guilty of wrongdoing”

-Tulsi Gabbard

This is who she truly is – a Democrat

Stop looking at what politicians say *now* & look at what they said just a few yrs ago
pic.twitter.com/P4jgRYspKH

— DC_Draino (@DC_Draino) February 26, 2024

Nuland Nordstream

Biden blew up NordStream and Olaf Scholz knew in advance. Just listen to this. It couldn’t be more obvious.pic.twitter.com/5yZcSreCtn

— Kim Dotcom (@KimDotcom) February 26, 2024

The Prime Minister of Hungary has given women a lifetime 0% personal income tax exemption if they give birth to and raise at least 4 children.

Bret

Bret Weinstein: Every Public Truth-Seeking Institution Is Under Simultaneous Assault

Dr. Bret Weinstein’s message is a wake-up call.

“In every single institution dedicated to public truth-seeking, there is a state of collapse,” he asserts, highlighting a disturbing pattern of… pic.twitter.com/ZVkH6iBVEO

— UngaTheGreat (@UngaTheGreat) February 26, 2024

Roadblocks
https://twitter.com/i/status/1762044181604655309
https://twitter.com/i/status/1762134920837648412

Compare that to what they said 2 years ago.

• NATO Troops In Ukraine Can’t Be Ruled Out – Macron (RT)

French President Emmanual Macron has argued that deployments of troops to Ukraine by NATO members and other allies cannot be ruled out because Western powers must stop at nothing to ensure that Russia does not defeat Kiev’s forces. “There’s no consensus today to send, in an official manner, troops on the ground,” Macron told reporters after hosting a meeting of European leaders on Monday in Paris. “But in terms of dynamics, we cannot exclude anything. We will do everything necessary to prevent Russia from winning this war.” France hosted Monday’s summit of Ukraine backers to demonstrate steadfast support and European unity amid concerns that US aid to Kiev may stop, especially if Donald Trump wins this year’s presidential election. Macron said that while Ukraine’s European allies want to avoid escalating the conflict into a direct war with Russia, they agree that they must do more to ensure that Moscow doesn’t win.

“We have to take stock of the situation and realize our collective security is at stake,” the French leader said. “We have to ratchet up. Russia must not win, not only for Ukraine, but secondly, we are, by doing so, ensuring our collective security for today and for the future.” Macron noted that the allies who say “never, ever” today about direct troop deployments to Ukraine are the same ones that previously ruled out escalations of military aid that were later granted, including long-range missiles and fighter jets. “Two years ago, a lot around this table said that we will offer helmets and sleeping bags, and now they’re saying we need to do more to get missiles and tanks to Ukraine. We have to be humble and realize that we’ve always been six to eight months late, so we’ll do what is needed to achieve our aim.”

There is broad consensus among the nations represented at Monday’s meeting that the allies must provide more aid to Ukraine and step up more quickly, Macron claimed. “We are not at war with the Russian people, but we cannot let them win in Ukraine,” he said, adding, “We are determined to do everything necessary for as long as necessary. That is the key takeaway from this evening.” Washington ran out of money for Ukraine last month, after burning through $113 billion in congressionally approved aid packages. US President Joe Biden is seeking an additional $60 billion in Ukraine funding as part of an emergency spending bill that also includes aid for Israel and Taiwan. Conservative Republican lawmakers have balked at approving more aid for Ukraine, saying Biden is merely prolonging the conflict without changing its outcome. Trump has claimed he will end the crisis within 24 hours by forcing Ukrainian and Russian leaders to the negotiating table.

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“..He pledged not to let Slovak troops get involved in the fighting, even if it costs him his premiership..”

• West Could Cause ‘Worst-Case Scenario’ In Ukraine – Slovak PM Fico (RT)

Western nations may come up with the “worst solution” for the Ukraine conflict at a top-level meeting convened on Monday by France, according to Slovak Prime Minister Robert Fico. The Elysee Palace described the event it is hosting as a chance for participants to “reaffirm their unity” and express their determination to defeat Russia in Ukraine. There was initial speculation in the media that Slovakia would not send a representative, but Fico confirmed on Sunday that he would be attending. ”The information about the issues we’re supposed to talk about on Monday sends chills down my spine,” he said in a video statement on social media. Fico expressed concern over a “total escalation” of the conflict by the West and “unlimited military and financial assistance” that the strategy entails. He pledged not to let Slovak troops get involved in the fighting, even if it costs him his premiership.

Fico is an outspoken critic of the Western approach to the Ukraine conflict. He said he wanted to hold consultations with Slovakia’s national security council and his coalition partners before going to Paris. Western leaders will be tackling concerns over optics, an unnamed French presidential official explained to AFP. Ukraine’s backers need to counter any “impression that things are falling apart” for Ukraine after a series of setbacks on the battlefield, the source said. The intention is to send a message to Russian President Vladimir Putin that “he will not prevail” and to examine ways to “do things better and more decisively,” the official added.

The meeting in Paris comes as hostilities enter their third year. The government in Kiev rejected a draft peace agreement with Moscow in 2022, and opted to seek a military victory instead. Last year, Ukrainian forces failed to regain any significant territory despite receiving numerous heavy weapons from foreign donors. Russia liberated the strategically important Donbass town of Avdeevka this month. Ukrainian President Vladimir Zelensky and top officials have blamed a shortage of Western weapons for their earlier failed counteroffensive and the current retreat. Half of pledged arms arrive in Ukraine behind schedule, costing Kiev both troops and land, Defense Minister Rustem Umerov complained on Sunday.

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It wasn’t just Boris Johnson in March 2022, they had gotten to him well before that.

• Putin Insisted On Donbass Ceasefire In 2019 – Zelensky (RT)

Ukrainian President Vladimir Zelensky has acknowledged that his Russian counterpart, Vladimir Putin, urged him to stop the hostilities in Donbass in 2019. He added that he had strong concerns at the time that diplomacy would freeze the conflict, but not resolve it. Speaking at a press conference on Sunday, Zelensky gave an account of his face-to-face meeting with Putin in Paris in December 2019, which took place several months after he was elected. According to Zelensky, he had a long conversation with Putin, who “constantly raised the issue of ceasefire.” The Ukrainian president said he told the Russian leader that it would not work out in the long run, noting that this turned out to be the case. He recalled that while talking to Putin, he expressed his doubts about the Minsk agreements – which sought to end the hostilities in Donbass – “because… the withdrawal of troops along the line of contact does not work.”

He claimed that he had shown Putin data which proved that the progress was too little and too slow. “I showed him that we would spend 20 years pulling back troops.” Zelensky said this means that the Donbass conflict would have remained frozen for many years, adding that he and Putin had been “haggling” for a long time over the issue. Brokered by Germany and France, the now-defunct 2014 and 2015 Minsk agreements were aimed at halting the hostilities in Donbass and give the regions of Donetsk and Lugansk special status within the Ukrainian state. The 2019 meeting between Zelensky and Putin took place in the Normandy Format with the participation of the German and French leaders.

At the time, the negotiations made some headway, with the sides reaching an agreement on the disengagement of troops in Donbass and prisoner exchanges. However, Russia accused Ukraine of failing to implement the Minsk agreements, saying this was one of the key reasons for launching the military operation against Kiev. Former Ukrainian President Pyotr Poroshenko has admitted that Kiev’s main goal was to use the ceasefire to buy time and “create powerful armed forces,” a position that was later echoed by former German Chancellor Angela Merkel and ex-French President Francois Hollande. In autumn 2022, several months into the Ukraine conflict, the two Donbass regions and two other former Ukrainian territories voted overwhelmingly to join Russia in referendums.

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“In general, Zelensky’s statement was so senseless and implausible that I think it will cause a wide resonance, including in Ukraine..”

• Zelensky Downplays Ukrainian Losses to Wheedle More Money Out of West (Sp.)

Speaking to CNN on Sunday, Zelensky again begged his Western backers for more money and weapons. “Whether Ukraine will lose is dependent on you, our partners, the Western world,” he said. “We will not lose this war if we get the weapons. We will win.” Zelensky’s interview came on the heels of Russia’s capture of Avdeyevka, a city in the Donetsk region, from the Ukrainian Armed Forces, which were forced into a further retreat. The Ukrainian army is continuing to lose ground since the failure of the Kiev regime’s summer offensive. The botched counteroffensive attempt alone resulted in 159,000 Ukrainian servicemen killed and wounded, according to the Russian Ministry of Defense. Still, the Ukrainian president insisted at a Sunday press conference in Kiev that Ukraine has lost just 31,000 troops killed since the outset of the conflict.

But that contradicted the assessment of US officials last summer that Ukraine had alreadt lost close to 70,000 killed and 100,000 to 120,000 wounded, noted Alexander Mikhailov, analyst and head of the Bureau of Military-Political Analysis in Russia. Speaking to US journalist Tucker Carlson in August 2023, Douglas Macgregor, a retired colonel of the United States Army and a political analyst, suggested that Ukraine’s real losses amounted to 400,000. “That was said before the battle for Avdeyevka and other major battles,” Mikhailov told Sputnik. “Zelensky’s statement in this context should be viewed as an indication of fear of [the Ukrainian] people. He has repeatedly lied. Apparently, he lies and talks about 31,000 killed in order to reduce social responsibility for what was happening,” he noted. The analyst referred to reports that Kiev officials were deliberately understating Ukrainian losses to avoid paying compensation to the families of the deceased.

While targeting his domestic audience in his speech, the Ukrainian president also sought to reassure Western viewers that Ukraine still has enough manpower — and that all that it needs to win are extra money and weapons. “In general, Zelensky’s statement was so senseless and implausible that I think it will cause a wide resonance, including in Ukraine,” Mikhailov stressed. The Ukrainian president also insisted that the Ukrainian military has a clear vision for 2024. Last November Ukrainian MPs lashed out at then-commander-in-chief General Valery Zaluzhny for his failure to outline a military strategy for the coming year. Since he replaced Zaluzhny with Colonel General Oleksandr Syrsky, the Ukrainian president has claimed that Kiev now has not just one plan but was preparing “several” versions of its battlefield strategy for 2024. Mikhailov considers that implausible, however.

“Zelensky just needs to say something so that the Democrats could convince the Republicans to sign $60 billion [in aid to Ukraine],” said the analyst. “Zelensky’s statement that there is a plan for 2024, that they had a plan for 2023 or for 2022” doesn’t make much sense, he added. “They had plans all the time, but these plans ended in nothing and were axed by the reality in which the Russian Federation achieves its goals and continues to fulfill the goals of the special military operation, on a larger scale than previously stated,” Mikhailov said. The analyst also found Zelensky’s comments about a change of strategy ironic, given his claim that Ukraine’s summer counteroffensive plan was cracked by Russia.

“Our counteroffensive action plans were on the Kremlin’s table before the counteroffensive actions began,” Zelensky told a press conference in Kiev. “By stating that the Russians knew about the counteroffensive, he may be rubbing US intelligence’s nose in it,” Mikhailov said. “Because the Americans now control many processes: American and British intelligence agencies — Western intelligence agencies — control all plans of Kiev. And therefore, if it was leaked, it means they missed it.”

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“..Between the two political corpses, a lot of money is at stake..”

• The Case of the Navalny Corpse – Cherchez Les Femmes (Helmer)

Two women, Kira Yarmysh and Maria Pevchikh made up the series of lies which in August 2020 claimed that Alexei Navalny had been poisoned with Novichok by a Russian state death squad – first in a cup of tea he drank at Tomsk Airport; then in a bottle of mineral water which he drank in his hotel room; and finally in the underpants he dressed himself with before the water, before the tea. As each of these claims proved untrue on the public evidence, they and Navalny agreed to the release of medical data collected by the group of German doctors who treated Navalny after his admission to the Charité Clinic in Berlin on August 22, 2020. But neither data presented in the doctors’ publication in The Lancet of December 22, 2020, nor the doctors’ report itself proved that Navalny had been poisoned by Novichok. That conclusion came in press releases from the German military, and then from the Organization for the Prohibition of Chemical Weapons (OPCW).

According to the Berlin doctors, “severe poisoning with a cholinesterase inhibitor was subsequently diagnosed. 2 weeks later, the German Government announced that a laboratory of the German armed forces designated by the OPCW had identified an organophosphorus nerve agent from the Novichok group in blood samples collected immediately after the patient’s admission to Charité, a finding that was subsequently confirmed by the OPCW.” That’s a political advertisement, not a medical diagnosis – no doctor has signed his name to either, and no German military officer has signed his name to the first. One day before The Lancet publication, on December 21, Navalny, Pevchikh and Yarmysh published their fabrication of the underpants story with the fake telephone call of an FSB agent, Konstantin Kudryavtsev, admitting to Navalny everything which had been disproved until that time.

The combination of fabricated evidence of the murder weapon and then of the murderer’s accomplice was repeated in the documentary film which won the Oscar award for documentary films in March 2023. Yarmysh was Navalny’s press spokesman in August 2020; she still is. Pevchikh was the script writer for Navalny and the channel to him from Anglo-American government agents, as well from Russian financiers in London like Yevgeny Chichvarkin, once the Evroset mobile telephone magnate. If the two women had been telling the truth and Novichok had been in Navalny’s tea, water, or underpants, he would have been dead within minutes of contact. So too would Pevchikh who hand-carried the water bottle from Tomsk to Novosibirsk, then Omsk, and finally Berlin.

Navalny’s blood, urine, skin, and hair, clinically tested and reported by the German doctors treating him at Charité Clinic, proved his collapse had been caused by a combination of drugs he had himself consumed. The two women, and other members of Navalny’s family, including his wife, Yulia Navalnaya, 47, his mother Lyudmila Navalnaya, 69, and his daughter Daria, 23, have all refused to disclose any medical data on his prior medical conditions and the medicines he was taking before the August 2020 episode. Navalny himself gave permission to the Charité Clinic doctors in Berlin to publish their test results in The Lancet report, believing they would corroborate his story. Following Navalny’s death on February 16, 2024, there has been no release of the medical data, nor the medicines Navalny was taking at the time of his death; the record of his vaccinations against Covid-19 which were given to him in Germany; his prior medical conditions; or the toxicology and pathology data collected in the post-mortem investigations following his death.

Russian law prohibits the release of this personal information without the permission of the senior next of kin and executor whom Navalny named in his will. He named his mother, Lyudmila. He did not name his wife, Yulia. His reason for doing that has begun to surface in Moscow. It marks infighting over the political succession to Navalny, and the money which the US has been providing to the Navalny organization. That heirs fight over succession rights, assets and cash is commonplace. What has not yet been noticed in either the Russian or western press reporting is the document on which probate cases start the world over – the will of the deceased. The first sign that an inheritance fight has begun is that while Lyudmila Navalnaya went to Kharp, where Navalny had been imprisoned, and Salekhard, where his body was taken for post-mortem testing, Yulia Navalnaya flew to California to meet President Joseph Biden. Between the two political corpses, a lot of money is at stake.

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There’s Navalny aid Ms Pevchikh again. This makes no sense. Why would Putin have him killed?

“Putin has gone mad with hatred for Navalny,” Ms Pevchikh said. “He knows Navalny could’ve defeated him.”

By polling at 2%? Navalny has meaning only in the western narrative.

• Navalny About To Be Freed In Prisoner Swap When He Died – Ally (BBC)

Alexei Navalny was about to be freed in a prisoner swap when he died, according to his ally Maria Pevchikh. She said the Russian opposition leader was going to be exchanged for Vadim Krasikov, a Russian hitman who is serving a life sentence for murder in Germany. Two US citizens currently held in Russia were also going to be part of the deal, Ms Pevchikh claimed. She added that negotiations were at their final stage on 15 February. The next day, Mr Navalny died in his cell in the prison colony in Siberia where he was being held on a 19-year sentence over charges that were widely seen as politically motivated. Prison officials said the 47-year-old had fallen ill following a “walk”. In a video posted on Mr Navalny’s YouTube channel, Ms Pevchikh, who is the chairwoman of his Anti-Corruption Foundation (FBK), said negotiations for a prisoner swap had been under way for two years.

She added that after the start of Russia’s full-scale invasion of Ukraine in February 2022 “it was clear that Putin would stop at nothing” and that Mr Navalny “had to be freed from jail at any cost, and urgently”. According to Ms Pevchik, Mr Navalny was going to be freed under a humanitarian exchange and American and German officials were involved in the talks. The process finally resulted in a concrete plan for a prisoner swap in December, she said. Vadim Krasikov – a Russian who was found guilty of shooting former Chechen rebel commander Zelimkhan Khangoshvili in the head at close range in Germany in 2019 – was going to be part of the deal. Two US nationals currently held in Russia were also going to be exchanged, Ms Pevchikh said, although she did not name them. However, earlier in February, President Putin told US host Tucker Carlson that talks were ongoing with the US about freeing American journalist Evan Gershkovich, who is being held on espionage charges.

President Putin hinted that in exchange Russia would accept a person who “due to patriotic sentiments, eliminated a bandit in one of the European capitals… during the events in the Caucasus” – almost certainly a reference to Krasikov. According to Ms Pevchikh, Russian President Vladimir Putin changed his mind about the deal at the last minute. She said he “could not tolerate Navalny being free” – and since there was an agreement “in principle” for Krasikov’s freeing, Mr Putin decided to “just get rid of the bargaining chip” and “offer someone else when the time comes.” “Putin has gone mad with hatred for Navalny,” Ms Pevchikh said. “He knows Navalny could’ve defeated him.” As a former KGB officer, President Putin is used to saying – or promising – one thing, and then doing something completely different. It is a policy he and his government have been consistently implementing for almost a quarter of a century. Up until the day Russia launched its full-scale invasion of Ukraine, President Putin and several Russian officials repeatedly denied there was a plan to invade the country.

Although we do not know what exactly happened to Navalny in prison, engaging in negotiations on his release without intending to set him free would fit the Kremlin’s behaviour over the past years. Within an hour of publication, Ms Pevchikh’s video had had hundreds of thousands of views. The Kremlin has not yet reacted to the claims put forward by Ms Pevchikh, but President Putin’s spokesman Dmitry Peskov has previously said allegations of government involvement into Navalny’s death were “absurd”. Authorities initially refused to hand Navalny’s body over to his mother, only relenting eight days after his death. On Monday, Navalny’s spokeswoman Kira Yarmish posted a message on social media saying his allies were looking for a venue where supporters could hold a public farewell later this week. Such an event is expected to be closely monitored by the authorities, provided it is allowed to go ahead at all. A rights group said 400 Russians were arrested across the country for laying flower tributes to Navalny following his death.

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“..the CIA’s role in dealing with the Banderites goes back into the late 1940s and early 1950s..”

• Leaked Details on CIA Ops in Ukraine Signal ‘End is Near’ for Kiev (Sp.)

Russia’s Foreign Ministry has dissected Sunday’s NYT story on the CIA’s operations in Ukraine, challenging the newspaper’s assertion that Western intel services’ active involvement in the country began only after the February 2014 Euromaidan coup. “The CIA has helped Kiev to train its spies, and not just spies, but outright militants, extremists, terrorists, thugs. Everyone. And one of the most striking examples of this chain being set in motion occurred in 2013-2014. Foreign Ministry spokeswoman Maria Zakharova said, reacting to the NYT’s reporting. “Under the guise of democratic forces and civilians, those which took part in the Maidan were primarily trained at bases in Poland and the Baltic states. And we have spoken about this,” she said. NATO countries’ intelligence services worked to establish bases and other infrastructure in Ukraine long before the 2022 escalation, the spokeswoman said, and not only on the border with Russia, but across the country.

“This begs the question: why is the New York Times only now raising concerns about this? We have provided all the information publicly. Why was the American press silent for many years?” she asked. According to the Times’ account, the CIA created a dozen secret spy bases in Ukraine near Russia over an eight year period going back to 2016, with the intelligence “partnership” supposedly taking “root a decade ago,” after Maidan-appointed spy chief Valentyn Nalyvaichenko contacted then-CIA director John Brennan and the MI6 asking them to help rebuild the Security Service of Ukraine (Ukrainian acronym SBU) “from the ground up.” “They’re lying about the US role in those early stages,” says former CIA analyst and State Department Office of Counterterrorism expert Larry Johnson. “They’re lying about the US and British role in helping create the coup and what happened in the Maidan. They’re acting like ‘oh, you know, the Maidan happened and then the CIA was contacted, after the fact’.

Well that’s not true,” Johnson told Sputnik, suggesting that the NYT is looking to create a narrative on the coup, the Malaysia Airlines Flight MH17 incident, the ‘Russia the aggressor’ story which ignores Ukraine’s punitive ‘Anti-Terrorist Operation’ in the Donbass starting in 2014, etc. “You’ve got once piece of disinformation after another” in the story, according to the observer. “And then, they’re saying that it was the United States trying to rein in Ukraine from carrying out all these terrorist attacks. So it’s really like we’re trying to send the message that ‘these attacks on Russia were not the fault of the United States, it was the Ukrainians acting on their own,’” which is another patent falsehood, Johnson said. “We’ve had connections [with Ukrainian anti-Soviet and anti-Russian elements] going back to 1955. I mean the CIA’s role in dealing with the Banderites goes back into the late 1940s and early 1950s. They’re trying to portray that this is like some new relationship or just over the last 10-15 years. That’s nonsense,” the former CIA analyst emphasized.

Asked about the likely motivations to publish the expose at this stage of the proxy war in Ukraine, while Russia is advancing through the Donbass and US and European arms assistance to Kiev is under threat, Johnson suggested it may be a signal that Washington has decided to wrap up its Ukrainian project. “I think this is a sign that the end is near for Ukraine. That’s the only reason they’re leaking it now. Because the Ukrainians themselves are putting that information out,” Johnson said. “It’s a sign that the rats are starting to leave the sinking ship. This is their way to say that it’s not the fault of the United States. You know, ‘we did everything we could, it’s these crazy Ukrainians.’ This is part of a ‘blame Ukraine’ [narrative],” the observer noted.

As for the dozen clandestine bases mentioned in the piece, Johnson expressed confidence that Russia knew about these facilities, and likely has taken or will take action to eliminate them. “If I’m Russian intelligence, you’re going to blow those sites up,” he said. “The bases are not going to be that close to Russian territory because the Russians can easily take them out. And they almost exaggerate the kind of intelligence that’s collected. Again, if the CIA was really operating like the CIA is supposed to, that means they would have recruited human sources in the SBU already. That would have been passing them information without admitting or acknowledging it. But that’s not what was going on. This is what they call an open liaison service, so the information is being passed freely.”

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“If the current global geopolitical tensions continue to evolve in the direction of ‘the West against the Rest,’ Europe’s future risks to be bleak..”

• Start of SMO Spelled End To Western Global Dominance – Borrell (TASS)

The era of the West’s global dominance finally came to an end with the start of Russia’s special military operation in Ukraine and the conflict in the Gaza Strip, EU High Representative for Foreign Affairs and Security Policy Josep Borrell wrote on his blog. “If the current global geopolitical tensions continue to evolve in the direction of ‘the West against the Rest,’ Europe’s future risks to be bleak. The era of Western dominance has indeed definitively ended. While this has been theoretically understood, we have not always drawn all practical conclusions from this new reality,” Borrell wrote. According to him, the special military operation in Ukraine and the Gaza conflict have “significantly increased this risk” of a confrontation between the Global West and the Global South, which can already be “seen in the Sahel and elsewhere in Africa.”

He emphasized that many countries in the global South accuse the West of “double standards.” Borrell considers this fact unfair and blames Russia and its propaganda for this. “Russia has managed to take advantage of the situation,” he believes. “We need to push back on this narrative but also to address this issue not only with words: in the coming months, we must make a massive effort to win back the trust of our partners (primarily countries that were European colonial possessions in Africa – TASS),” he added. In his blog on the outcome of the Munich Security Conference, Borrell once again rebuked EU countries and the United States for not heeding his warnings two years before the conflict in Ukraine about the rapidly growing security threats to the West. He once again urged Western countries to arm themselves and supply as many weapons as possible to Kiev to try to regain their global dominance.

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“Yemen is a haven of peace, partnership, construction, giving and humanity, especially when the intentions are sincere..”

• Era of West’s Maritime Hegemony Has Reached Its End – Houthis (Sp.)

Despite lacking any sort of blue water navy or even much of a brown water fleet beyond machinegun-armed gunboats, the Yemeni militia has managed to put a giant dent in international shipping through the Red Sea chokepoint linking Europe and Asia, with the volume of maritime traffic through the nearby Suez Canal dropping by as much as 40 percent. The era of Western dominance of international waters has reached its end and the US and its allies will have to deal with it, Houthi government Defense Minister Mohamed al-Atifi has said. “The United States, Britain and Israel must realize that the policies of demarcation and assertion of hegemonic influence over the seas have become an obsolete and unwelcome approach,” al-Atifi said in a speech at the graduation ceremony of Yemeni cadets in Hudaydah.

Suggesting that Yemen’s naval forces have “redefined” the concept of regional maritime security, al-Atifi stressed that the Houthis would continue their military operations in the Red Sea as long as the Israeli aggression in Gaza continues, and “as long as blood continues to flow through our veins.” “We are custodians over the navigational course in the Red Sea, the Gulf of Aden, the Arabian Sea and the Bab al-Mandab Strait,” al-Atifi said. “We reaffirm that the Yemen Armed Forces will not target any ships that are neither affiliated with the Zionist enemy nor serving its interests. Marine navigation for vessels through the Red Sea and the Arabian Sea is safe,” the defense minister assured. “Sanaa is committed to all international treaties and conventions that do not infringe upon Yemeni dignity and sovereignty or subject it to hegemony and foreign mandates,” he added.

“Yemen is a haven of peace, partnership, construction, giving and humanity, especially when the intentions are sincere. But when challenges grow and the enemies of God and the nation conspire to impose the will of evil and tyranny, another Yemen emerges and its loyal men find themselves as steadfast mountains against their enemies, strong and proud in their positions, pushing to restore balance and removing symbols of evil, oppression, tyranny and arrogance,” al-Atifi said.

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“..if you know winter is coming, you cannot stop it, but you can get a winter coat. Again, Nenner thinks “Trump is the winter coat.”

• Super Bull Market in Gold About to Start – Charles Nenner (USAW)

Renowned geopolitical and financial cycle expert Charles Nenner has been warning of a huge war and financial cycle, and it is clear both continue to build. The war cycle will continue to amplify until World War III breaks out. Meanwhile, unpayable debt will continue to explode until another Great Depression hits America again. Standing in the gap is gold, and the wait for a bull market is about over. Nenner explains, “The dollar’s buying power could possibly be cut in half. . . . That’s the reason why we expect a super bull market in gold and silver when the cycle bottoms. You remember I came on and said coming, coming, but not yet? I say it was too early . . . but, now, we are getting very close to a bull market. . . . Gold could still have one more down move because the cycles are still down.”

On Bitcoin, Nenner says, “We had a high of $54,000, and we said if it hit $52,000, we would sell. I do not believe this story that Bitcoin will hit $100,000 based on my work. It has been proven that NASDAQ and Bitcoin go up and down together because it is based on nothing, and people are buying out of greed. Because we think we are at a top in the NASDAQ, then we don’t think the outlook for Bitcoin is too positive.” Nenner thinks the DOW is also topping, and he is telling clients to lighten up on the risk. Nenner sees a second Great Depression playing out again in 2026 or 2027. Nenner thinks the “War Cycle” will continue to build in 2024, but all bets are off in 2025.

Nenner says his wealthy clients see dark days ahead for the world and have actual bunkers to go along with a bunker mentality. Nenner think domestic terror and even war is coming to America in a big way. Nenner is still forecasting “2 billion will die in the next global war, and the only way we get a body count that high is with nuclear weapons.” Nenner sees an election coming in 2024 and still thinks Trump can win. Nenner warns that problems in America are too big for any one person to actually fix. Nenner still thinks if you know winter is coming, you cannot stop it, but you can get a winter coat. Again, Nenner thinks “Trump is the winter coat.”

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Two stories from one ZH article. The link between the White House and the various Trump prosecutions gets stronger by the day. Ugly.

• Biden Operative Inserted Into Fani Team (ZH)

Two stunning reports have emerged that spell trouble for Fulton County DA Fani Willis. For starters, Breitbart News reports from multiple sources that the Biden administration “planted a Democrat operative in the Fulton County office to target former President Trump,” which according to the report “would present a strong argument that the administration interfered in the 2024 presidential election.” Breitbart News granted the sources anonymity to discuss the attorney’s office for fear of retribution. The sources have direct knowledge of the environment at the District Attorney’s Office, which they characterized as “corrupt.” The alleged ‘plant’ in questionf is Jeff DiSantis – the county’s Deputy DA, who not only worked on Willis’s 2020 campaign and was the former Executive Director of the Democrat Party of Georgia, he was the DNC’s deputy director of compliance.

Sources credit DiSantis with colluding with the White House to target Trump. “DiSantis did this,” one source told Breitbart News about the Trump case. “He’s the one. He is the one pulling all the strings. He was the one that walled her [Willis] off. He was in every important meeting. He is the brainchild behind this. That is the connection to the White House.” One of Breitbart’s sources said they are “one hundred percent” sure DiSantis was the inside man that the Biden administration planted in the Fulton County office. “DiSantis is the one pulling the strings on this whole thing,” a second source told the outlet. “Everybody heard Fani testify. It’s no secret that she’s not smart. That is how she sounds and acts every day of the week.” “Anyone that has common sense knows that the White House has been involved in this prosecution,” a source continued. “This shouldn’t just miraculously happen. Of course, she’s [Willis] not going to prosecute the former president United States without the current administration’s approval.”

According to the sources, DiSantis was deeply involved in selecting grand jurors for the Trump case based on voter registration data. “Part of why you’re raising money as a candidate is to get money to buy the data about who are your voters. DiSantis, as the former head of the state Democratic Party, he’s going to know you know [the data] in Georgia,” said a source. “There’s not one conservative person on that grand jury.” Sources also revealed that DiSantis was a member of Willis’s transition team after she won the election in November 2020. DiSantis helped Wade select employees for the new office. “DiSantis was there in the capacity to be a political strategist, hiding in the DA’s office,” a source told Breitbart News.

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But not who it is..

• Jim Jordan Reveals New Whistleblower (ZH)

Rep. Jim Jordan (R-OH) came down on Willis with an elbow drop from the top rope, revealing at the Conservative Political Action Conference (CPAC) that there’s a whistleblower inside of Fani’s office. Whether it’s one of Breitbart’s sources – we don’t know, though Jordan’s comments suggest it might be Willis’s former friend, Robin Bryant Yeartie, who testified against her about Fani’s relationship with special prosecutor Nathan Wade. “[The whistleblower is] now talking with our office, and we’ll see how that goes. But that’s why we have subpoenaed documents related to this,” Jordan continued. As the Epoch Times notes further; “Over the past several weeks, significant allegations against Ms. Willis and her special prosecutor, Nathan Wade, have emerged, triggering several court motions and hearings during which Ms. Willis and Mr. Wade have testified. The allegations center around the timing of a romantic relationship between the two—the existence of which both have confirmed—and whether Ms. Willis financially benefitted from the arrangement.”

Ms. Willis hired Mr. Wade in November 2021 to handle the racketeering and election case against former President Donald Trump and several co-defendants. Late last week, President Trump’s team said they hired a private investigator to use a program to provide data on Mr. Wade’s cellphone, suggesting that Mr. Wade was actively engaged in a relationship many months before they claimed that their relationship started, in 2022, a key claim both made in court earlier this month. It’s unclear whether Mr. Jordan was referring to Robin Yeartie, a witness in the case who claimed that the two were involved in a relationship in 2019. Ms. Yeartie, who had owned the property where Ms. Willis had lived and was her friend, testified that she was forced to resign from the Fulton County District Attorney’s office several years ago.

However, there have been reports that the whistleblower could be another former employee at the office, Amanda Timpson. Mr. Jordan sent a letter to Ms. Willis’s office several weeks ago, saying the employee was fired because she was being retaliated against, which he said raises serious concerns about whether the district attorney was appropriately supervising the expenditure of federal grant funding allocated to her office and whether she took actions to conceal her office’s “unlawful use of federal funds.” As reported by The Washington Free Beacon, Ms. Timpson said troubles within the office started in March 2021 when she stopped an aide to Ms. Willis from allegedly trying to obtain funds from a $488,000 federal grant for an anti-gang violence organization to instead pay for travel, computers, and other items.

The report noted that she was fired in early 2022, saying only that she was terminated because of an “employee discharge.” But Ms. Willis rejected the claims by saying that the ex-employee’s claims are “false allegations” that are “included in baseless litigation filed by a holdover employee from the previous administration who was terminated for cause,” Politico reported. Her office stated that she failed “to meet the standards of the new administration.” “Any examination of the records of our grant programs will find that they are highly effective and conducted in cooperation with the Department of Justice and in compliance with all Department of Justice requirements,” Ms. Willis said earlier this month.

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Brussels is power hungry.

• EU Finance Ministers Clash as Bloc Fails to Centralize Market Supervision (Sp.)

European Union finance ministers disagree regarding proposals to streamline the regulation of national capital markets, aiming to harmonize divergent systems and foster private investment in vital sectors like defense. Due to various market regulations and barriers among member states, the bloc is focusing on supervision, savings products, and insolvency rules to promote risk mitigation and streamline processes for businesses and investors. The bloc’s actions are driven by its bleak outlook as its major economies grapple with challenges such as high inflation, soaring energy costs, and deindustrialization due to their alignment with US-led anti-Russia sanctions, which have inadvertently backfired on the 27-member bloc. Consequently, the EU is facing mounting financial pressures and heightened geopolitical risks.

EU finance ministers are considering proposals from the Eurogroup to advance the capital markets union over the next five years. Paschal Donohoe, Eurogroup president, noted disagreement among member states on the level of ambition needed to establish a common supervisory framework, a key aspect of the bloc’s agenda, set to be completed by March. The Eurogroup represents the assembly of finance ministers from the Eurozone, comprising EU member states that have adopted the euro as their currency. Consisting of 20 members, it holds informal gatherings to oversee the political direction of the currency and manage facets of the EU’s monetary union, including the Stability and Growth Pact.

“Europe is acutely aware at the moment of the need for it to be able to stand firmly on its own two feet in the years ahead,” he said. “I really have felt this in a number of discussions of late that how we can strengthen ourselves is now a necessity,” the Eurogroup’s president noted. However, French Finance Minister Bruno Le Maire has expressed dissatisfaction over the pace of progress in establishing a capital markets union for the bloc. He recommended advancing with three or four supportive countries to pursue greater ambition on joint supervision rather than negotiating a deal among all 27 member states, reintroducing market securitization, and launching a savings product across the EU. According to sources familiar with the matter, the Netherlands and Spain have endorsed France’s initiative. However, they lean towards a pan-European agreement, but are prepared to explore other possibilities.

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“.. Google is one of the key delivery mechanisms of information on the planet, and it is going to have this ‘broken’ AI at its heart.”

• Musk Warns Google’s Woke Bureaucratic Blob Won’t Allow Its AI To Be Fixed (MN)

X owner Elon Musk commented on the dumpster fire that is Google’s Gemini AI Sunday, noting that he has spoken to a senior Google executive who has claimed it is being fixed. As we previously highlighted, the latest ridiculous thing the AI has come out with is that it would not misgender Caitlyn Jenner in order to prevent a nuclear apocalypse. Musk chimed in, warned that “Given that the Gemini AI will be at the heart of every Google product and YouTube, this is extremely alarming!” Musk also revealed that a senior Google executive has told him “it would take a few months to fix,” adding “Previously, he thought it would be faster.” “My response to him was that I doubted that Google’s woke bureaucratic blob would *allow* him to fix it,” Musk continued.

“Unless those who caused this are exited from Google, nothing will change, except to make the bias less obvious and more pernicious,” the X owner further warned. The comments come after the Gemini AI also declared that it is “difficult to say” who is the worse human being when given the choice of Elon Musk or Adolf Hitler. The AI clearly cannot discern between right and wrong, having also declared that calling communism “evil” is “harmful and misleading” and refusing to say pedophilia is “wrong.” Musk is right, Google is one of the key delivery mechanisms of information on the planet, and it is going to have this ‘broken’ AI at its heart.

Elon UBI

UBI: Thing that probably will happen, or millenarian fever-dream? pic.twitter.com/Q23vEU1BvR

— Camus (@newstart_2024) February 27, 2024

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“It’s a dark night of the soul when you wake up to it..”

• Dissolving Illusions About Vaccine Safety (Mercola)

One of the silver linings of the COVID mass injection campaign is that it has awakened many to the notion that vaccines aren’t all they’re cracked up to be. The COVID shots are so toxic, even though the injuries are being swept under the carpet like never before, there are just so many of them that the carnage cannot be hidden. And, because government and health authorities refuse to acknowledge the problem, many are now questioning all vaccines, not just the COVID shot. “It’s a dark night of the soul when you wake up to it,” Humphries says. “Your whole world does get a bit shattered, because you start to realize that the entire medical system is corrupt and backwards and that there’s probably better ways to do just about everything. And you know what? For 225 years, doctors have been saying that, and for 225 years, those doctors have been ignored. That’s one of the reasons we wrote the second book, ‘The Dissolving Illusions Companion book.’

It’s another huge book, about 600 pages, with 230-something doctors giving different quotes about what they saw, boots on the ground, for smallpox vaccines to the toxoid vaccines to scarlet fever, typhoid, and the worsening of all diseases that occurred after they gave vaccines. Some of them basically come out and say, ‘The entire profession of medicine is a complete waste of time. [They’re doing] damage to humanity. It would be better if all the doctors just were taken off the Earth and for humanity to do nothing.’ What we’ve done over the past 10 years is, in my travels, I would have to do more research to present different diseases. I would go one place and they say, ‘We want to hear about tetanus,’ or they want to hear more about whooping cough. More medical literature has also come out. So, we’ve added basically another book to ‘Dissolving Illusions.’

We’ve expanded it by 200 pages. We’ve added on a chapter on tuberculosis, which was called the White Plague. There’s an extra addition to the smallpox chapter. I’ve added about 20 or 30 new pages to the pertussis chapter. There is a chapter on deadly medicine, the practices from the early 1800s through to the 1940s that were provably causing lots of harm. Roman came up with more charts. There’s a follow-up on the polio chapter. Dr. Jacob Puliyel, who lives in India, wrote the papers on the oral polio vaccines, how they were causing paralysis in children. We added those follow-up papers, as well as a lot of other data that we left out of the original chapter to try to save space, but it’s so important, it really needs to be put out there.”

https://twitter.com/i/status/1762265806002352386

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“Those advocating the genocide of humanity are not held accountable. Instead, they are respectable leaders of mankind..”

• The Rapidly Emerging Rule of Tyranny in the West (Paul Craig Roberts)

An 18 year old mother put her baby in a dumpster with a trash compactor. The police found the baby’s remains wrapped in a mattress protector inside a zipped-up duffel bag. Evil must have taken a large step forward for a mother to do this to her baby. I can imagine Jakayla Williams thinking that if she had aborted the baby there would be no complaint, so why can’t she put the baby in the dumpster? Legalized abortion, that is legalized murder, has left women insensitive to murder. Consequently, murder is becoming legalized outside abortion. For example, Israel is committing genocide against the Palestinians, and our Great Country America vetoes the UN resolutions against Israel’s genocidal murder of the Palestinians. Washington has redefined genocide as “self-defense” by the Israelis committing the genocide.

The atrocities are beyond belief. The Israelis are committing genocide of the Palestinians and the Democrat regime here vetos UN cease fire resolutions. But an 18 year old black American woman is going to be tried for first degree murder because she waited too long before she aborted her baby. How can this be that the Israeli and US governments can murder at will, but if a black woman disposes of her baby after the expiration of the “use by” date of her legal right to murder, she is a murderess? And look what the Great British and American Democracies have done to Julian Assange. Imprisoned in one form or the other for 12 years without any charges being brought. It is just like medieval times when feudal lords at their whim threw people in dungeons for keeps. The latest reports show that the Democrats are spending massive amounts of our money suppressing truth and financing the recruitment and provisioning of the immigrant invaders from 160 countries that are overrunning our country.

According to official, understated, figures, each year Biden is bringing in immigrant-invaders in numbers equal to 12 cities the size of Pittsburg Pennsylvania. So, 24 cities in two years, 36 cities in 3 years, and dumbshit Americans vote for Demorats who are stealing their country from them. How can a people as indoctrinated and brainwashed as Americans possibly avoid the tyranny that is rapidly descending on them? Many Americans have difficulty being realistic about government. They think government is there to serve them. It is not. Many decades ago Albert Jay Nock made that clear in the classic book, Our Enemy, The State. The trust that Americans place in official narratives is extraordinary. Americans fell for 9/11, for Saddam Hussein’s weapons of mass destruction, for the “Covid Pandemic” hoax and the mRNA deadly vaccine. Our government wouldn’t lie to us, many say as they sit in front of CNN, Fox News, listen to NPR, read the New York Times and program themselves into mindlessness.

I recently read a letter from a US Senator to a federal agency demanding to know why the agency was financing research in Wuhan, China, focused on weaponizing bird flu. She hasn’t had a reply. Are the elite going to release weaponized bird flu on us in 2025? By then will it be a criminal offense to refuse the vaccine? Bill Gates has made it clear that the elite’s agenda is to kill off most of the world population. Mike Benz recently explained to Tucker Carlson the controls being put in place to prevent one word of truth being spoken in resistance to the tyranny that is prepared for us. The official narrative is that people are killing the planet by causing global warming. To save the planet people have to be eliminated. Here we face not Israel’s genocide of a couple of million Palestinians, but the elite’s genocide of 7.5 billion people. Those advocating the genocide of humanity are not held accountable. Instead, they are respectable leaders of mankind.

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“..a digital wall that is not a barrier so much as a web of all-seeing eyes, with intelligence to know what it sees.”

• The Border Fiasco and the “Smart Wall” (Whitney Webb)

The disastrous situation at the US-Mexico border is, and has been, intentionally produced. Throughout the last several administrations, regardless of campaign and other public rhetoric, the porous nature of the border has remained unresolved. On several occasions, the situation as it has developed has been blamed largely on incompetence and government inefficiency. Though some administrations have been tougher than others in regards to terrestrial migration (under some metrics), the US-Mexico border has not been sealed off so to force entrants to cross through officially recognized and managed ports of entry. Under the current administration, it has been pointedly obvious that even the sections of the border that do contain physical barriers are being dismantled on purpose, all the while illegal crossings have risen to unprecedented levels. Whatever the motives for this deliberate policy on the part of the Biden administration, the end result has been the widespread characterization of the crisis as an “invasion,” priming the voter bloc usually most concerned with border security – the American Right – for military-style “solutions.”

While the justifications for the frenzied media coverage are based on the actual reality that the border is indeed highly insecure (and has been for some time), the policy responses from American politicians reveal that there is a bipartisan consensus about what must be done. Tellingly, the same “solution” is also being quietly rolled out at all American ports of entry that are not currently being “overrun”, such as airports. That solution, of course, is biometric surveillance, enabled by AI, facial recognition/biometrics and autonomous devices. This “solution” is not just being implemented throughout the United States as an alleged means of thwarting migrants, it is also being rapidly implemented throughout the world in apparent lockstep.

The reasons for the unspoken, but obvious, global consistency in implementing invasive, biometric surveillance is due to the fulfillment of global policy agendas, ratified by nearly every country in the world, that seek both to restrict the extent of people’s freedom of movement and to surveil people’s movements (and much, much more) through the global implementation of digital identity. Those policy agendas include mainly the UN’s Agenda 2030 or Sustainable Development Goals, specifically SDG 16, as well as Interpol’s Global Policing Goals. While the American Right has been rather outspoken in its rejection of the UN’s Agenda 2030, and the digital ID project at large, the distress over the border situation is being used to manufacture consent among this specific group for “solutions” that are focused on expanding surveillance and biometric collection as opposed to the implementation of physical barriers. The Hawaiian shirt-wearing inventor of the VR headset Oculus Rift, Palmer Luckey, has become the face of America’s “virtual border wall.”

Luckey, the brain behind the defense tech firm Anduril, is a long-time associate of Palantir co-founder Peter Thiel, with Luckey having met Thiel at 19 when Luckey presided over his first company Oculus Rift, which was later sold to Facebook. Thiel was then on Facebook’s board and was also instrumental in the rise of the social media company. Luckey’s Anduril is also backed by Thiel’s Founders Fund and another Palantir co-founder, Joe Lonsdale, is also an Anduril investor. Anduril is one of the main beneficiaries of government contracts to build autonomous surveillance towers along the US-Mexico border, which are now also being rolled out along the US-Canada border. As a consequence, they are likely to be among the beneficiaries of the Senate’s current proposal for “border security,” which sets aside $170 million for additional towers to be build. Under the Trump and now Biden administrations, Luckey has been vocal about how Anduril will create “a digital wall that is not a barrier so much as a web of all-seeing eyes, with intelligence to know what it sees.” As noted by WIRED in 2018, Luckey and Anduril has long been pitching its technology “as a complement to – or substitute for – much of [then] President Trump’s promised physical wall.”

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“..Circularity requirements..” I have a 25 year old car. Go fuck yourself.

• EU Considers Ban On Repairs For All Vehicles Over 15 Years Old (WS Apes)

This Is Absolutely Insane. The European Union Is Considering A Ban On Repairs For All Vehicles Over 15 Years Old. “To encourage Europeans to buy new environmentally friendly vehicles.” So In The Name Of “Climate Change” Millions Of People Will No Longer Be Able To Repair Their Vehicles “. The EU considers banning repairing cars over 15 years old. I mentioned this at the close of program the other day, but, uh, this truly is where it is headed. This is an article from wine press. Uh, the proposal is an amendment to the European commission’s preexisting listen to what they call it. Circularity requirements, Circularity requirements. I guess recycle is kind of passed out of use now that you got, uh, the wind turbines that are not recyclable for the windmills and, uh, the solar panels and all these other issues.

You know, there used to be all this reduce, reuse, recycle, Uh, that doesn’t work anymore. That’s kind of become a mockery. So now that we got circularity requirements for vehicle design and on the management of end of life vehicles. The same is to renew the car fleet. See that’s it. They’re not banning anything. They’re renewing it. They’re renewing it. Yeah. Right…. To encourage Europeans to buy new environmentally friendly vehicles. Uh, this is beyond the despicable practice of planned obsolescence where the manufacturers would design something to break after a short period of time. This is this is planned immobilization. Planned immobilization by the government.

They don’t want people to have cars of any type. By the way, you notice that this doesn’t say anything about electric cars. Of course, they don’t really have to do that. Um, by the time your batteries are 15 years old, they’re already gone long dead. And if you, and if you try to replace those batteries, it’s going to cost more than your car’s worth. So they don’t have to do it for electric cars. It’s already implied your planned obsolescence, uh, based on the concept of a residual vehicle, A category for vehicles that are over 15 years old. Oh, all my vehicles are approaching a residual vehicle.” The people in charge always implement their agendas overseas first before bringing their regulations to America.

This Is Absolutely Insane. The European Union Is Considering A Ban On Repairs For All Vehicles Over 15 Years Old

“To encourage Europeans to buy new environmentally friendly vehicles.”

So In The Name Of “Climate Change” Millions Of People Will No Longer Be Able To Repair Their… pic.twitter.com/ldlwB5h2ba

— Wall Street Apes (@WallStreetApes) February 25, 2024

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Sagan

In the last interview of his life (1996), astronomer Carl Sagan gave an eerily prescient warning of the dangers that come when you cannot ask skeptical scientific questions of those in authority. Watch and ask yourself: was he right? pic.twitter.com/KD8oLKVvOa

— Benjamin Carlson (@bfcarlson) February 26, 2024

Master’s voice

An amazing display of how sheep follow only their master's voice… pic.twitter.com/Ttc5McNZMS

— Camus (@newstart_2024) February 25, 2024

Jag

Nature is awesomepic.twitter.com/LjQDoIZWcF

— Massimo (@Rainmaker1973) February 26, 2024

Tetris
https://twitter.com/i/status/1762078095467569644

Tree house

Tree house hotel in Norway
pic.twitter.com/B7rfwRjYmZ

— Science girl (@gunsnrosesgirl3) February 25, 2024

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