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You cannot have two nodes publishing to the JointStates topic for the same set of joints at the same time. In your launch file you have

<node name="joint_state_publisher" pkg="joint_state_publisher" type="joint_state_publisher" />

and you start your own node, that also publishes joint states. So the robot_state_publisher now receives joint states telling it that the joints are at their default joint position (which is probably 0, published by the joint_state_publisher) and the ones your kinematics_animation node is publishing. As a result, it publishes transforms for the '0 position' and the other positions after each other in rapid succession, resulting in what you describe as a flicker.