USA - Lawmakers are pushing for stronger stock trading rules for Supreme Court justices and federal judges as they weigh a stock trading ban for members of Congress. Advocates say that changes to the current system are long overdue, pointing to recent court cases where judges ruled in favor of companies that they owned stock in. Late last year, the House overwhelmingly passed a bill to subject the judiciary to the same stock trading reporting as lawmakers and executive branch officials. And last week, Speaker Nancy Pelosi (Democrat for California) indicated that any bill passed to regulate officials’ stock trading must include stricter transparency rules for Supreme Court justices. “It has to be governmentwide,” Pelosi told reporters. “The Supreme Court has no disclosure, it has no reporting of stock transactions. And yet it makes important decisions every day.”

USA - On one of the highest hilltops in Elbert County, Georgia stands a huge granite monument. Engraved in eight different languages on the four giant stones that support the common capstone are 10 Guides, or commandments. That monument is alternately referred to as The Georgia Guidestones, or the American Stonehenge. Though relatively unknown to most people, it is an important link to the Occult Hierarchy that dominates the world in which we live.

CANADA - “There is a level of admiration I actually have for China because their basic dictatorship is allowing them to actually turn their economy around on a dime and say we need to go green, we need to start, you know, investing in solar,” Justin Trudeau told the group of women. “There is a flexibility that I know [Prime Minister] Stephen Harper must dream about: having a dictatorship where you can do whatever you wanted, that I find quite interesting.” The comments drew fire, particularly from Canadians who noted China’s oppressive regime and documented human rights abuses. "It seems to be that he's not well-informed," a member of a round-table told the CBC.

USA - On Monday the White House announced that Kamala Harris will be sent to Germany to deal with the Ukrainian crisis. Biden’s [team] felt this was the best action to take at this time. “Vice President Kamala Harris will travel to Munich, Germany to attend the February 18-20 Munich Security Conference. Building on the Biden-Harris Administration’s intensive engagement with European allies and partners, the Vice President’s engagements in Munich will demonstrate our ironclad commitment to our NATO Allies, reaffirm our shared interest in upholding the principles that have underpinned European peace and security since World War II, and underscore our commitment to Ukraine’s sovereignty and territorial integrity.”

UKRAINE - Some airlines canceled flights to the Ukrainian capital and troops there unloaded fresh shipments of weapons from NATO members Sunday, as its president sought to project confidence in the face of US warnings of possible invasion within days by a growing number of Russian forces. President Volodymyr Zelenskyy spoke to President Joe Biden for about an hour, insisting that Ukrainians had the country under “safe and reliable protection” against feared attack by a far stronger Russian military, aides said afterward. The White House said both agreed to keep pushing both deterrence and diplomacy to try to stave off a feared Russian military offensive. The Biden administration has become increasingly outspoken about its concerns that Russia will stage an incident in the coming days that would create a false pretext for an invasion of Ukraine.

RUSSIA - As the military standoff between Russia and the West intensifies along Ukraine’s borders, a separate clash is unfolding on social media, where researchers say pro-Russian actors are flooding sites with messages portraying Western forces as aggressors. The approach marks a contrast to Russia’s messaging during its 2014 annexation of the Crimean Peninsula, when networks of bots and spam accounts focused on denying a military buildup. Now, Russian officials and state-run media are largely leading influence campaigns themselves, researchers said. These influence operations are designed to “deflect on the intent of the military buildup around Ukraine, and preemptively justify a military offensive,” Graham Brookie, senior director of the Atlantic Council’s Digital Forensic Research Lab, told me. The trend highlights how Russia’s messaging and tactics online have shifted as platforms have cracked down on more overt disinformation campaigns, and as the prevalence of social media has made it harder to mask the realities on the ground.

EUROPE - A Freedom Convoy of anti-mandate motorists is arriving in Brussels, the de facto capital of the European Union, despite authorities banning the demonstration. Some 1,300 vehicles are on the move into capital of the European Union Brussels Monday morning — despite a ban on such protests by city police — with 30 intercepted by officers so far. Brussels Police have warned motorists to avoid trying to drive into the city. Authorities in charge of other European cities, such as Paris and Vienna, have made similar attempts to ban demos styled on anti-mandatory vaccine protests in Canada, though all so far have been futile. According to a report by the Brussels Times, demonstrators planning on taking part in the convoy — which was banned by authorities last Thursday — had said that they were set on continuing with their plans, regardless of what local authorities say.

CANADA - Canadian Prime Minister Justin Trudeau said he plans to invoke the never-before-used Emergencies Act against the Freedom Convoy truckers, the CBC reports. Trudeau made the comments during a meeting with the Liberal caucus Monday morning, adding there are no current plans to use military force. He tweeted about convening an Incident Response Group meeting Sunday to explore “further actions the government can take to help end the blockades and occupations.”

GERMANY - German officials are set to end the majority of remaining government Covid restrictions in March, amid decreasing coronavirus infections, according to a draft plan reported by news agency AFP on Monday. “Broad restrictions of social, cultural, and economic life should be gradually lifted by the start of spring on March 20, 2022,” the draft document reportedly suggests. It is set to be formally approved by federal and state leaders on Wednesday. Chancellor Olaf Scholz indicated on Friday that Covid restrictions would begin to be relaxed when the government and federal states meet on February 16, as “the peak of the wave is in sight.” The EU Commissioner for Economy Paolo Gentiloni is claiming there’s no reason anymore for countries to introduce a general Covid vaccine mandate, due to a decrease in deaths and hospitalization across the EU.

UK - A school in the UK has decided to ban all meat options from its lunch menu over fears surrounding climate change. Barrowford Primary School in Lancashire revealed to parents in a recent letter that it had banned all meat options from its lunch menu, citing a desire to “stop climate change”. Parents have also been asked to refrain from including meat in lunches packed for their children. In the document, headmaster Rachel Tomlinson claimed that the aim of the measure was to “stop climate change”, and that she wanted those who gave their children packed lunches to follow suit. However, despite Tomlinson saying she was willing to discuss the measure with anyone who had misgivings, parents have not responded positively to her request. “It is a joke. I’m looking to move mine as I’ve had enough of that school,” one parent is reported as saying. “I think they forget that non-meat eaters and vegans have to take a lot of supplements.”

USA - 38 Lawmakers demand Biden undergo cognitive testing as soon as possible. In a letter, signed by 37 of his Republican colleagues in Congress, Texas Representative Dr Ronny Jackson warns that President Biden's "mental decline and forgetfulness have become more apparent over the past two years," and urges the 79-year-old to take a cognitive aptitude test (just as former President Trump did).

UK - The US Air Force deployed four B-52 Stratofortress nuclear bombers to the United Kingdom today. The B-52s will be stationed at RAF Fairford as part of a rotation where they will continue to integrate and train with partner and allied forces. This particular rotation of US strategic bombers comes as around 100,000 Russian troops have amassed on the Russian border with Ukraine for months, raising concerns about a potential invasion. While Ukraine is not a NATO ally, it has requested NATO membership and the US and other NATO-allied nations have begun transferring hundreds of tons of defensive weapons systems to Ukraine and have called for Russia to withdraw from the region.

NORWAY - The Svalbard Global Seed Vault, on Spitsbergen island halfway between mainland Norway and the North Pole, is only opened a few times a year to limit its seed banks' exposure to the outside world. The vault, which holds over 1.1 million seed samples of nearly 6,000 plant species from 89 seed banks globally, also serves as a backup for plant breeders to develop new crop varieties. The world used to cultivate over 6,000 different plants but UN experts say we now get about 40% of our calories from three main crops - maize, wheat and rice - making food supplies vulnerable if climate change causes harvests to fail. On Monday, gene banks from Sudan, Uganda, New Zealand, Germany and Lebanon will deposit seeds, including millet, sorghum and wheat, as back-ups to their own collections. The International Center for Agricultural Research in Dry Areas (ICARDA), which moved its headquarters to Beirut from Aleppo in 2012 because of the war in Syria, will deposit some 8,000 samples.

USA - The percentage of the world’s population living under some sort of democracy tumbled last year to 45.7% from 49.4% a year earlier according to the Economist Intelligence Unit’s Democracy Index 2021. Of the 167 territories surveyed, just 21 were deemed to be full democracies, representing 6.4% of the world’s population, while 53 fell into the “flawed democracies” category. Topping the list were Norway, New Zealand and Finland, while the UK ranked 18th. The US, which was given a flawed democracy classification, fell one spot to number 26. The EIU said the results continued to reflect the negative impact of the Covid-19 pandemic. Citing measures such as lockdowns and travel restrictions, the report said the pandemic had “resulted in an unprecedented withdrawal of civil liberties among developed democracies and authoritarian regimes alike.” It has led to the normalisation of emergency powers, which have tended to stay on the statute books, and accustomed citizens to a huge extension of state power over large areas of public and personal life,” the report added.

USA - Last week the “experts” admitted lockdowns did not reduce mortality rates — now they admit masking was mostly worthless. Last week Johns Hopkins revealed Dr Fauci’s “ill-founded” lockdowns were entirely ineffective in reducing US mortality rates by only 0.2%. Now, we find out the mask mandates didn’t make much of a difference during the pandemic. We already knew this. The Center for Infectious Disease Research and Policy (CIDRAP) at the University of Minnesota have laid out a more complex analysis: Given the current understanding that the virus is transmitted in fine aerosol particles, it’s likely an infectious dose could easily get through and around loose-fitting cloth or surgical masks.