For literally decades, people scoffed-at "conspiracy theorists" talk about the US Dollar collapsing.  They laughed at "the tin foil hat crowd" when it screamed from the rooftops that rampant over-spending would kill our currency.  The responses to the conspiracy theorists and tin-foil-hat-crowd was simple: "The dollar is the world's reserve currency; the world can't do without it."  Turns out, the responses were wrong.

Within the past 24 hours, far left-wing CNN and far right-wing FOX NEWS have both begun airing stories about "De-Dollarization."   For both the far-left and the far-right main-stream-media to be airing such stories is no coincidence.  That the MSM is now airing this means the powers-that-be in the US know - as a matter of absolute fact - the world __is__ turning its back on the Dollar, and that means trouble is coming to the US.  Trouble on a scale that literally NONE of us has seen in our lifetimes.

The United States Embassy in Jerusalem has told Americans to "Leave Israel Immediately." The country of Israel is descending rapidly into what some have called "Civil War."

Unions have gone on strike.  The airports have all shut down.  Restaurants, banks, shopping malls, have all joined in a national strike against proposed changes to the government that would basically gut the Judiciary of Israel.

Members of the Israeli military are openly DESERTING after Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu FIRED the Defense Minister for opposing judicial reforms.

Former Prime Minister Ehud Barack says Netanyahu and his "gang" are "acting insane and bringing civil war to the country."

Israel's Counsel General in New York has resigned.

Russian fighters destroyed another stronghold of the Armed Forces of Ukraine on the front lines in the area of Avdeevka. The trenches of the Ukrainian Army became a mass grave for fighters from Poland and Georgia.

Another video shows more Georgian fighters still alive in Ukrainian trenches. Amid the intense shelling, they are forced to hide near the corps of their dead comrades:

Russia's diplomatic links to Europe continue to collapse at a moment nuclear rhetoric is increasing and growing more dangerous. Simple communication among governments also continues to grow worse, making conflict de-escalation among major powers all the more difficult.

Germany announced Saturday that it is planning to expel more than 30 Russian diplomats from Berlin. German Federal Minister for Foreign Affairs Annalena Baerbock indicated to local media plans for the new wave of expulsions Saturday.

Humza Yousaf, a left-separatist who has pioneered anti-free speech legislation and lobbied for fewer white people in high office, will be sworn in as the leader of  Scotland on Wednesday.

Yousaf has succeeded Nicola Sturgeon as leader of the Scottish National Party (SNP), which leads Scotland’s devolved government — roughly equivalent to a U.S. State government — in coalition with the even further left Scottish Greens.

He saw off Christian rival Kate Forbes, who was pressured over her private opposition to same-sex marriage during an internal leadership campaign, falling short in the first round by scraping over the halfway mark with 52.1 per cent of the vote after the votes of an eliminated third candidate were redistributed to him under a complex Single Transferable Vote system.

Right now, many of us vets are looking back on our years of service and wondering what the hell we did it all for. We used to know – for the USA. Yet you look at the disaster that is our country, our culture, and our beloved military, and you just want to go find a wall and pound your head against it. But a lot fewer folks are going to have this problem in the future because a lot fewer young people are joining our military. The Pentagon can't meet its recruiting goals, and, of course, the fault is our young people, our potential soldiers, for being unwilling to sacrifice their time, and sometimes their lives, in support of the bizarre social pathologies that our garbage ruling class embraces. 

Bending to a wave of mass protests, Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu delayed his contentious judicial overhaul plan Monday and said he wanted 'to avoid civil war' by making time to seek a compromise with political opponents.

The announcement appeared to calm some of the tensions that have fueled three tumultuous months of unrest. But it failed to address the underlying issues that have polarized the nation, and the antigovernmental protest movement vowed to intensify its efforts.

In his prime-time address, Netanyahu, who had previously rejected calls to delay the legislation, took a more conciliatory tone than in recent speeches. He acknowledged the deep divisions in the country and said he was hitting the pause button 'to prevent a rift in the nation.'

White House Press Secretary Karine Jean-Pierre responded to the mass shooting at a Nashville, Tennessee, elementary school by blaming Republicans for opposing gun control measures.

“We must do more, and he [Biden] wants Congress to act, because enough is enough. In his State of the Union, the President called on Congress to do something to stop the epidemic of gun violence tearing families apart, tearing communities apart,” Jean-Pierre said shortly after mourning the victims of the shooting.

Webmaster addition: Karine, mentally ill people (and this liberal 28 year old transgender appears to be one) do not obey gun laws!

But, that said: The Pope Coat Incident makes clear that AI can and will also be used for the equivalent of making hyper-realistic cartoons. For dreaming up fantasy fashion statements, combining any given celebrity with any given clothing ensemble like an infinite set of paper dolls. For creating the photographic equivalent of fanfic. It may have been one of the first true mass AI misinformation events, in other words, but the puffer-pope saga was also … pretty low-stakes.

Last week, as rumors that Trump might be arrested imminently swirled, the realistic-looking images of that still-hypothetical event — also created by Midjourney — began to flood social media. While most images, upon closer inspection, were clearly generated by AI, many experts saw their arrival and proliferation as a harbinger of AI’s power to intentionally mislead. On Thursday, Trump shared an image on his site, Truth Social, that depicted his likeness kneeling in prayer under dramatic lighting. It began making the rounds among his supporters but was revealed soon afterward to be a “deepfake,” hallmarked as such by the strange not-quite-lifelike presences in the background and certain telltale distortions of aspects of fake-Trump’s body.

The findings of an initial expert report were astonishing: One of the 20th century’s revered Catholic leaders, who built an international movement of community care for people with intellectual disabilities, perverted Catholic doctrine about Jesus and Mary to justify his own sexual compulsions and abuse women.

The findings of a second report were even worse: The movement he created had at its core a secret, mystical-sexual “sect,” and was founded for the precise purpose of hiding the sect’s deviant activities from church authorities.

The two rounds of revelations about Jean Vanier and the L’Arche federation he founded have rocked the group to its core, all the more because L’Arche itself commissioned independent scholars to investigate after receiving a first complaint from a victim a few years before Vanier died in 2019. It’s the latest case of a Catholic giant, considered a living saint by his admirers and eulogized as a “great” Christian by Pope Francis, falling to revelations that he abused his power to sexually exploit women under his spiritual sway.

In a federal court case over Starbucks’ alleged anti-union retaliation, the coffee giant is deploying a maneuver that labor experts say could have a chilling effect on workers’ organizing efforts and potentially set a disastrous precedent — hijacking the proceedings to dig up information on employees and intensify retaliation as part of its battle to crush a labor uprising in its stores.

That includes the Buffalo location where employees launched the Starbucks Workers United organizing campaign that has now spread nationwide — and where the company fired six workers in alleged retaliation for organizing.

Federal labor regulators are suing Starbucks on behalf of the union and workers over its conduct, but last October, a Trump-appointed judge in Buffalo, New York, ruled that as a defendant in the case, Starbucks is allowed to use subpoena power to obtain employee communications — even though the company can then use those communications to identify union sympathizers within its workforce.

Congresswoman Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez has recently come under fire for defending Chinese-owned social media platform TikTok following reports of its parent company ByteDance donating six-figure sums to the Congressional Hispanic Caucus Foundation and the Congressional Black Caucus Foundation in December.

According to Fox News, Shou Chew, the CEO of TikTok's parent company, testified before the Congressional House Energy and Commerce Committee Thursday on the degree to which the company puts users' personal data into the hands of the Chinese Communist Party. Ocasio-Cortez then took to her TikTok platform, where she has nearly 400,000 followers, to defend the social media giant.

As increasing evidence of the Biden family's financial ties to China comes to light, Americans are urging President Biden to address the "significant and important" connection.

On "Mornings with Maria" Monday, Maslansky + Partners President Lee Carter expressed her concern, noting that the President's relationship with Beijing poses a major threat to the nation. Her comments follow Senator Ron Johnson's recent revelation on "Sunday Morning Futures" that records from Cathay Bank – an American bank founded by Chinese Americans – matched those of U.S. regulators.

This bank, which operates offices in Beijing, Shanghai, and Taipei, appears to be linked to the House Oversight Committee's investigation into the Biden family's overseas business dealings.

Nashville police identified the shooter who opened fire on Monday morning at The Covenant School as 28-year-old Audrey Hale, a transgender former student at the private Presbyterian school. 

Three children and three adults were murdered in the shooting: Evelyn Dieckhaus, 9, Hallie Scruggs, 9, William Kinney, 9, Cynthia Peak, 61, Katherine Koonce, 60, and Mike Hill, 61.

Nashville police chief John Drake identified Hale as a transgender woman on Monday afternoon, but Hale listed "He/Him" pronouns on a LinkedIn profile. 

Schiff doesn’t just criticize the US’s state of economic affairs, just for the sake of racking up views and clicks.

The Euro Pacific Capital CEO has strong philosophical foundations. He’s a staunch proponent of the Austrian school of economics and is a firm believer of sound money and small government.

When he appears on mainstream financial shows, he’s generally the only voice of reason. But that has not stopped him from dropping uncomfortable truths. If anything, it further fuels his unquenchable desire to expose the ruling class’s economic machinations.

With mass inflation all around us and a new set of bank bailouts right around the corner, Schiff is sounding the alarms yet again on another financial collapse.

Ukrainian soldiers have been filmed alongside depleted uranium ammunition that Britain is supplying to their country for the fight against Russia.

The footage is contained in a documentary the UK Ministry of Defence (MoD) released Sunday as Ukrainian tank crews completed their training.

Britain is gifting 14 Challenger 2 tanks to Ukraine together with depleted uranium shells, which Declassified revealed last week.

Russia could demand compensation for damages over the sabotaged Nord Stream gas pipelines in the Baltic Sea, a senior Russian diplomat told Russian news agency RIA Novosti in an interview.

“We do not rule out raising the issue of compensation for damages as a result of the explosion of the Nord Stream gas pipelines,” Dmitry Birichevsky, Head of the Economic Cooperation Department at the Russian Foreign Ministry, was quoted as saying.    

The official did not specify with whom Russia would seek compensation.

Yousaf beat devout Christian Kate Forbes to become the next leader of the governing SNP party, despite being strongly disliked among the Scottish electorate...

Humza Yousaf has won the Scottish National Party leadership contest and will succeed the outgoing Nicola Sturgeon as First Minister of Scotland, despite being disliked by almost half of Scots, according to recent polling.

The Scottish health secretary will become the first Muslim to attain the role. He narrowly beat colleague and practicing Christian Kate Forbes by 52 to 48 percent once second preference votes were counted after outsider Ash Regan was eliminated in third place.

The 37-year-old is expected to be formally sworn in as Scotland’s sixth first minister at the Court of Session in Edinburgh on Wednesday, subject to a procedural parliamentary vote on Tuesday.

On Monday Der Spiegel reported that 18 Leopard 2 battle tanks have been received by the Ukrainian government, after the tanks were successfully delivered at the Ukrainian border.

Previously Defense Minister Boris Pistorius had promised that the the battle tanks would be in Ukrainian hands by the close of March. The German media report also noted that about 40 Marder infantry fighting vehicles were also delivered.

The Democrats say that Jan. 6 was the worst attack on American democracy since the Civil War. They call it an insurrection, but if it was indeed the worst since 1865, no one but a fool would dare claim it even remotely approached the scale of the bloody war between the states.

And if you weren’t a fool, you might conclude that Jan. 6 was nothing like an insurrection. It wasn’t violent in the sense of an armed rebellion. It wasn’t organized. And it didn’t seek to overthrow the government, but to protect the Constitution. In more ways than not, it was a defense of American democracy, not an attack on it.

In every particular, Jan. 6 was a pale shadow compared to the Civil War. To start with, it lasted less than six hours, whereas the Civil War lasted four long years. The war between the North and South cost the lives of 620,000 soldiers and another 50,000 civilians. The Jan. 6 incursion at the U.S. Capitol, on the other hand, claimed the lives of just two women protesters, Ashli Babbitt and Roseanne Boyland. Among the defenders of the Capitol, police officer Brian Sicknick died after suffering two strokes the next day, but without a direct known connection to the riot. Two other protesters died of natural causes during the siege, and four law officers died by suicide in the months following the attack. If you count all of those as legitimate casualties of Jan. 6, then the total comes to nine compared to a minimum of 670,000 in the Civil War.

It would be impossible to exaggerate the stark differences between Jan. 6 and the Civil War.

A Kansas meat packing company has recalled approximately 3,436 lbs of boneless beef chuck product due to potential contamination with E. coli, according to the US Department of Agriculture's Food Safety and Inspection Service (FSIS).

A routine FSIS inspection of a sample of ground beef made from the boneless beef chuck tested positive for this strain of E. coli, also known as STEC O103, after which the the Harper, Kansas-based outfit issued the recall.

The U.S. government has released the licensing agreement it hammered out with vaccine manufacturer Moderna but has refused to confirm many payment details.

Moderna agreed to pay the U.S. National Institutes of Health (NIH) to license spike protein technology the company included in its COVID-19 vaccine, the contract confirms.

Moderna resisted for years acknowledging the work by government researchers on the spike protein but relented in late 2021 and announced the contract during an earnings call on Feb. 23.

Moderna said it provided a “catch-up payment” of $400 million to the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases (NIAID), which is part of the NIH, under the agreement.

The newly disclosed contract says that Moderna would pay the NIH a “noncreditable, nonrefundable royalty in the amount of Four Hundred Million dollars.”

Portions that would confirm Moderna’s statement that the company would pay “low single digit royalties” on future sales of its COVID-19 vaccines are redacted.

The contract, running 34 pages, has key sections redacted as to future royalties.

Webmaster addition: So the NIH was getting a "piece of the action" which is why they keep pushing the shots despite the flood of reports of adverse reactions!

Documents the FBI recently released show that a lawyer for the agency expressed her reservations about a draft version of U.S. Attorney General Merrick Garland’s Oct. 4, 2021 memo that initiated a controversial federal effort to investigate alleged harassment at school board meetings around the country.

The documents, which the America First Legal Foundation (AFL) recently obtained through a Freedom of Information Act (FOIA) request, showed FBI attorney Miriam Coakley expressed her hope that Garland and the U.S. Department of Justice (DOJ) would reconsider their actions.

“Not sure if you’ve seen this/weighed in—it was just raised to my attention,” Coakley wrote in an Oct. 4, 2021 email to Corey Frazier Ellis. Ellis was serving at the time as chief of staff for FBI Director Christopher Wray before Garland appointed him in December of that year to serve as the Interim U.S. Attorney for the District of South Carolina.

“I hope DOJ reconsiders,” Coakley added in her email.

After Coakley contacted him, Ellis raised the issue to Norman Wong, the then director of the DOJ’s Executive Office for United States Attorneys (EOUSA), writing “we are asking that the memo be revised,” to which Wong replied: “It’s a little too late.”

The World Bank said in a new report that Ukraine’s reconstruction will cost at least $411 billion over the next ten years, a number that will rise as the war drags on.

The report said the $411 billion figure should be seen as a “minimum as needs will continue to rise as long as the war continues.”

World Bank Vice President Anna Bjerde previously estimated the reconstruction would cost between $525 billion-$630 billion, but the report issued Wednesday was more precise and was produced jointly with the US and Ukrainian governments.

After the new report came out, Bjerde said Ukraine’s reconstruction will take “several years” and will require public investments “complemented by significant private investment to increase the available financing for reconstruction.”

Earlier this month, a judge ruled that two different lawsuits against JPMorgan Chase over the bank’s ties to deceased “financier” and pedophile, Jeffrey Epstein, would be allowed to advance in U.S. Courts. One of these cases, brought against the bank by the U.S. Virgin Islands (USVI), has been a particular focus of independent media since the new year began, in part because the Attorney General of the USVI, Denise George, was fired from her post just days after she filed that case.

In a hearing in the USVI case against JPMorgan earlier this month, a USVI lawyer argued that the CEO of JPMorgan – Jamie Dimon – “knew in 2008 that his billionaire client [Jeffrey Epstein] was a sex trafficker.” The lawyer, Mimi Liu, also stated that former JPMorgan Jes Staley also knew this about Epstein at the time, but noted: “This case was not just Jes Staley … there will be numerous documents that go far beyond his office to the executive suite.” Liu also asserted that “Staley knew, Dimon knew, JPMorgan Chase knew” about Epstein’s criminal activities against minors.

While the bank has disputed that Dimon knew anything about Epstein’s accounts at the bank or what he was really up to at the time, this Unlimited Hangout investigation – a multi-part series – will reveal that Dimon’s rise to the top post at JPMorgan was intimately linked to the very same group of people who enabled Jeffrey Epstein’s sex trafficking activities as well as his extensive financial crimes.

The Department of Energy's reported conclusion that SARS-CoV-2 most likely leaked from a Chinese lab, affirming the FBI's assessment, is not the only recent evidence for the hypothesis still dismissed as a conspiracy theory by some establishment scientists.

Anthony Fauci discussed "the outbreak and chimeras" — fragments from different viruses stitched together into a new creation — with an American scientist collaborating with the Wuhan Institute of Virology (WIV) in February 2020, Freedom of Information Act documents suggest.

Previous FOIA disclosures imply that Fauci, then-director of the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases, played an unacknowledged role in a paper concluding that COVID-19 emerged naturally.

Walt Disney Company began 7,000 layoffs in a letter sent to employees Monday, as CEO Bob Iger works to save the company some $5.5 billion.

Several major divisions of the company - Disney Entertainment, Disney Parks, Experiences and Products, and corporate - will be impacted, according to a person familiar with the matter. The layoffs will also affect Disney workers across the globe, and not just in the United States. 

Iger had previously announced the layoffs throughout the company after he took back over as CEO in November. 

Still, OpenAI is keeping everything that happens within its search API separate from the rest of its infrastructure just to be sure. It can’t visit websites that aren’t available through Bing’s “safe mode,” and it won’t visit sites that request not to be crawled in their robots.txt files.

Secondly, it can now run the code it writes. OpenAI has given it a working Python interpreter, sitting in a “sandboxed, firewalled execution environment,” along with some disk space, which stays available for the duration of your chat session, or until it times out. It can also now upload and download files.

So if you ask it a question that requires some serious number crunching, it’s now capable of coding up a piece of software specifically for the task, and running that code to complete your task. You can supply it with data in certain file formats, and it’ll perform operations on that data and give you something back again, potentially in a different format if that’s what you ask for.

This is pretty bonkers stuff. It’ll take a spreadsheet and make annotated graphs for you. It’ll accept JPGs, tell you what they look like they are, and write and run code to resize those images or convert them to grayscale.