Month: April 2024

Authored by Ron Paul via The Ron Paul Institute,

Last month, the US Senate passed a resolution saying the over 34 trillion dollars (and growing) national debt threatens national security.

A few days later, a bipartisan majority of the Senate voted for a 1.2 trillion dollars spending bill. In addition to the usual increases in war and welfare spending, the bill funds gender transitioning for minors without parental consent and red flag laws, which allow law enforcement to seize an individual’s firearms without due process.

Before passage of the latest spending bill, the Congressional Budget Orifice (CBO) released a report predicting that the national debt would exceed the prior record of 106.4 percent of gross domestic product (GDP) by 2028. Interest payments on the national debt are estimated to reach 870 billion dollars this year, more than the government will spend on the military. The CBO estimates that, unless Congress cuts spending (which is highly unlikely), by 2051 interest on the debt will exceed not just military spending but spending on the two biggest items in the federal budget — Social Security and Medicare.

As Eric Boehm of Reason magazine points out, the CBO report understates how much federal spending will grow in the next several decades since it cannot predict what “crises” future congresses and presidents will exploit to ramp up federal spending.

As Boehm suggests, someone projecting 30 years ago how much government would spend in the future would not have included the increase in spending due to 9/11, the subsequent creation of a homeland security-industrial complex, the “forever” wars in Afghanistan and Iraqi, the housing meltdown, or the covid lockdown.

The hypothetical budget projection would also not have predicted legislation like the Medicare prescription drug benefit or Obamacare.

The large and growing interest on the national debt puts pressure on the Federal Reserve to keep interest rates low. The Federal Reserve’s rate increases, though relatively small, are one reason national debt payments rose by 32 percent since last year. The need for the Federal Reserve to keep interest rates low will further erode the dollar’s purchasing power, subjecting more Americans to the insidious inflation tax. It will eventually cause a loss of the dollar’s world reserve currency status. This will result in a major economic meltdown that will likely lead to widespread civil unrest, the further growth of authoritarian movements on both the left and right, and new restrictions on liberty.

The only way out of this is for Congress to begin winding down the welfare-warfare state.

A good place to start is by cutting spending on militarism and forgoing interventionism. Savings from these cuts could be used to ensure those dependent on entitlement and welfare programs are not harmed as Congress winds down these programs. Responsibility for providing support for the truly needy should be returned to local and religious charitable institutions, while responsibility for education should be returned to local communities and parents. Congress should also pass legislation requiring any new spending to be offset by cuts in other federal spending and forbidding the Federal Reserve from purchasing federal debt instruments.

These steps will be opposed by the special interests that benefit from the current system, but they are the only way to ensure the blessings of liberty and prosperity to our posterity.

Salvage crews at the Port of Baltimore have opened up a temporary channel to keep commercial traffic flowing one week after the collapse of the 1.6-mile-long Francis Scott Key Bridge. 

Officials said the narrow channel is 11 feet deep, with a 264-foot horizontal clearance and a 95-foot vertical clearance. Small barges were seen passing through the new channel, as the main shipping channel remained clogged with the mangled steel bridge twisted around the container ship “Dali.”

The tug Crystal Cove with a fuel barge passed under the remaining northern side of the Key Bridge at Baltimore through the newly buoyed 11ft channel. pic.twitter.com/bVQFjccG04

— Sal Mercogliano (WGOW Shipping) 🚢⚓🐪🚒🏴‍☠️ (@mercoglianos) April 2, 2024

“This marks an important first step along the road to reopening the port of Baltimore,” US Coast Guard Captain David O’Connell, federal on-scene coordinator, said on Monday. 

O’Connell said, “By opening this alternate route, we will support the flow of marine traffic into Baltimore.”

New footage of the Key Bridge wreckage pic.twitter.com/9uUQdWGvlb

— The Baltimore Banner (@BaltimoreBanner) April 1, 2024

Secretary of Transportation Pete Buttigieg said Sunday on CBS’s “Face the Nation” that federal officials have no timeline for reopening the main shipping channel or rebuilding the bridge. 

“This is going to be a very complex process,” Buttigieg said, adding, “There are, even now, forces acting on that steel, so it takes a lot to make sure that it can be dismantled safely, to make sure that the vessel stays where it is supposed to be and doesn’t swing out into the channel.”

On Monday, the Department of Defense stated three massive cranes have arrived at the collapsed bridge:

“The Chesapeake, a 1,000-ton lift capacity derrick barge, the Ferrell, a 200-ton lift capacity revolving crane barge, and the Oyster Bay, a 150-ton lift capacity crane barge have arrived in Baltimore Harbor.”

The DoD added:

“An additional 400-ton lift capacity barge is on track to arrive early next week.”

On Monday evening, US Coast Guard Rear Admiral Shannon Gilreath told reporters that salvage operations underneath the water are even more complicated than initially imagined:

“These girders are essentially tangled together, intertwined, making it very difficult to figure out where you need to potentially cut so that we can make that into more manageable sizes to lift them from the water.” 

At the same press conference, Governor Wes Moore said: 

“We’re talking about something that is almost the size of the Statue of Liberty … and the scale of this project, to be clear, is enormous. And even the smallest (tasks) are huge.”

Even with a temporary channel reopened, activity at the Port of Baltimore has crashed and will remain paralyzed until the main shipping channel is reopened. 

CBS News’ Alex Glaze spoke with Scott Cowan, president of the local chapter of the International Longshoremen’s Association, who warned, “If there are no ships, there’s no cargo. If there’s no cargo, there is no work.” 

Cowan said thousands of unionized port workers could lose their jobs. 

ILA leaders have met with state and federal officials about the situation. 

Maryland Senate President Bill Ferguson introduced emergency legislation to the General Assembly to provide stimmy checks for ILA workers. 

“In the coming days, the General Assembly will pass the PORT Act which will support workers not covered by our unemployment insurance system, ensure impacted businesses can retain their workforce and incentivize companies to come back to the Port after it reopens,” Ferguson posted on X on Friday. 

The bridge collapse could have been avoided or at least not a total disaster if Maryland officials had not neglected to spend millions of dollars to install anti-ship strike barriers around critical bridge supports. Also, despite the federal government immediately coming out one week ago and saying the container ship strike was not terror-related, some users on X continue to float the idea this could’ve been “deliberate.” 

Authored by Catherine Yang via The Epoch Times,

Former President Donald Trump has posted $175 million in his New York civil fraud case, meeting the 10-day deadline given on March 25 and staying execution of judgment in the case.

The payment prevents any seizure of President Trump’s assets as his appeal of the case is heard.

“As promised, President Trump has posted bond. He looks forward to vindicating his rights on appeal and overturning this unjust verdict,” the president’s attorney Alina Habba said in a statement.

New York Attorney General Letitia James sued the 45th president in 2022, accusing him of inflating his net worth and defrauding insurers and banks, and therefore the public, in Trump Organization annual statements of financial condition.

Eric Trump, Donald Trump Jr., former Trump Organization CFO Allen Weisselberg and comptroller Jeffrey McConney, and several Trump Organization holding companies were named codefendants in the case presided over by New York Supreme Court Justice Arthur Engoron in a three-month bench trial.

The judge ultimately ordered $363 million disgorgement with 9 percent backdated interest, totaling $464 million, with the lion’s share to be paid by President Trump; as well as prohibiting the defendants from holding director positions in any business or legal entity in New York for a period of time, and a minimum three-year monitorship of Trump Organization after which there may be additional penalties.

The posting of the judgment amount was not required in order for President Trump to appeal the case, but had been a requirement to stay enforcement of the judgment in the meantime.

“I’ll fight this all the way up to the U.S. Supreme Court if necessary,” President Trump told Fox News days before the deadline. “They can’t take away your property before you’ve had a chance to appeal the decision of a Trump-hating, incompetent judge who has been overturned more than any judge in the state.”

Days before President Trump posted bond, he said on social media that he had nearly $500 million in cash but intended to use much of it on his presidential campaign. He accused his political opponents of trying to make him spend that cash fund on legal battles rather than on his campaign for president.

‘Impossible’ Bond Lowered

State law would have required President Trump to post the full judgment amount within 30 days in order to stay the execution of judgment, but the appellate court lowered the $454 million requirement to $175 million on the last day of the deadline. It gave him a 10-day window to post the new amount, and did not comment on the underlying reasons for the change.

President Trump said the appellate division’s ruling was further evidence that the original bond requirement was unreasonable.

“This is a confrontation between a Judge and those that rule above him – A very bad situation in which to place New York State and the Rule of Law!” President Trump stated of the appellate decision. “This is the 5th time in this case that he has been overturned, a record. His credibility, and that of Letitia James, has been shattered.”

Justice Engoron, who presided over the bench trial and issued the massive disgorgement figure. The attorney general had asked for $250 million in disgorgement before trial, and changed that number to $370 million near the end of the trial.

President Trump claimed in a press conference that the judge and attorney general had access to his finances because of the monitorship requirement, saw a figure close to $464 million cash, and decided that was what they were going to make him pay. He told reporters he did have the cash necessary to stay judgment, but wanted to use it to campaign and not satisfy who he described as “crooked” officials.

Putting all his cash into an escrow account where neither he nor the state could touch it for the duration of the appeal was one option to stay judgment.

A bond was another, and would not have required President Trump to move his cash reserves, but would have required him to have higher amounts of cash to serve as collateral—$577 million, by his attorneys’ estimates, after negotiations with 30-plus surety companies fell through.

For weeks, defense attorneys argued in the appellate division that securing a $464 million bond was “impossible.” Surety companies just don’t issue bonds that big, they argued.

A second problem was that for them to consider doing so they would have needed 120 percent in cash as collateral plus a high premium or two. This came out to be far more cash than Trump Organization had, as a real estate company.

Attorneys revealed that the only company even willing to consider real estate, or any hard asset, as collateral was Chubb, but after hours of negotiation into the last days of the deadline the company decided it could not accept real estate. After this negotiation failed, the lawyers attached a sworn affidavit from one of the four brokers who had been working on this for the defense to provide more context.

In the bond world, $100 million is large, he said. Only a handful of sureties are even authorized by the federal government to issue higher amounts. But most still have internal policies limiting bonds to $100 million, and when they do issue larger bonds it is only for big publicly traded conglomerates.

To underscore that fact, the attorney general had also listed several cases where bonds larger than President Trump’s were fully bonded on appeal, but they all involved large companies with billions in annual revenue, like Samsung and Apple.

Judge Expands Gag Order Against Trump in NY Hush Money Case

The judge overseeing the Manhattan district attorney’s “hush money” case against former President Donald Trump has approved a request to expand a recently imposed gag order on the president.

The decision came late Monday and gags President Trump from public discussion of family members of the court, the family members of Manhattan District Attorney Alvin Bragg, and all others named in the order, including jurors, potential jurors, witnesses, court staff, counsel, and their families.

The order does not bar comments about the judge himself or Mr. Bragg, an elected Democrat.

“This pattern of attacking family members of presiding jurists and attorneys assigned to his cases serves no legitimate purpose,” New York Supreme Court Justice Juan Merchan wrote in his 5-page ruling. “It merely injects fear in those assigned or called to participate in the proceedings that not only they, but their family members as well, are ‘fair game,’ for Defendant’s vitriol.”

While the judge noted that courts are “understandably concerned” about limiting defendants’ freedom of speech, particularly for public figures, “The circumstances of the instant matter, however, are different,” he wrote. “The conventional ‘David vs. Goliath’ roles are no longer in play as demonstrated by the singular power defendant’s words have on countless others.”

He cited in his ruling arguments from the prosecution that “multiple potential witnesses have already raised grave concerns […] about their own safety and that of their family members should they appear as witnesses against the defendant.” The judge wrote that those fears “undoubtedly interfere” with the proceedings.

“The average observer, must now, after hearing defendant’s recent attacks, draw the conclusion that if they become involved in these proceedings, even tangentially, they should worry not only for themselves, but for their loved ones as well,” he added.

Mr. Bragg had petitioned Justice Merchan earlier in the day to expand the gag order to prevent President Trump from referencing family members of individuals involved in the case. The attorney general’s office highlighted comments from President Trump referencing the judge’s daughter as evidence of why the order was needed.

“Defendant’s dangerous, violent, and reprehensible rhetoric fundamentally threatens the integrity of these proceedings and is intended to intimidate witnesses and trial participants alike—including this Court,” state prosecutor Matthew Colangelo wrote in the court filing.

President Trump had made posts mentioning Justice Merchan’s daughter, Loren Merchan, who owns a Democrat political consulting firm. He did not refer to Ms. Merchan by name.

The former president wrote in one post, “Judge Juan Merchan, a very distinguished looking man, is nevertheless a true and certified Trump Hater who suffers from a very serious case of Trump Derangement Syndrome.

“In other words, he hates me! His daughter is a senior executive at a Super Liberal Democrat firm that works for Adam ‘Shifty’ Schiff, the Democrat National Committee, Senate Majority PAC, and even Crooked Joe Biden.”

In another, he said, “Maybe the Judge is such a hater because his daughter makes money by working to ‘Get Trump.’”

Critics responded by complaining that his posts were attacks on Ms. Merchan and false accusations.

President Trump’s attorneys had pushed back against the request, saying that it would further violate the presumptive Republican nominee’s First Amendment rights. But Judge Merchan ultimately sided with the prosecution.

They are also continuing to seek the recusal of Justice Merchan, citing a conflict of interest, over his daughter’s business, which they say has profited heavily off the prosecution of their client.

Two major Democratic clients of Ms. Merchan raised at least $93 million in political donations in a campaign that mentioned President Trump’s case in their solicitation emails, according to The New York Post.

Justice Merchan declined to recuse himself from the case last August after the defense argued that he was biased for similar reasons, citing that his daughter headed a marketing agency that worked for Democrat candidates, including Vice President Kamala Harris.

The hush money trial is scheduled to start on April 15. It’s the first criminal trial involving the former president. He faces other cases in Washington, Florida, and Georgia.

President Trump faces 91 felony counts in all, and he has denied the allegations and pleaded not guilty to all of the charges. He has said that the cases are politically motivated attempts to harm his 2024 presidential campaign.

Several of the most dangerous countries in the world fall within a small radius in the Caribbean, a longstanding hotbed for organized crime.

These countries have homicide rates that are more than fourfold the rate of America, which stands at 6.4 per 100,000 people. Going further, the vast majority of killings are driven by criminal activity using illegal guns that are often smuggled in from the United States.

This graphic, via Visual Capitalist’s Niccolo Conte, shows the countries with the highest murder rates, based on data from UNODC.

Top 10 Countries With the Highest Homicide Rates

Here are the countries with the most killings per 100,000 people as of 2022:

Data for St. Kitts and Nevis as of 2021. Data for South Africa as of 2020.

With a murder rate that is almost 10 times higher than the global average, Jamaica ranks first.

In January alone, there were 65 killings across the country, leading the State Department to heighten travel warnings for Americans. Not only that, homicides are even becoming more common in all-inclusive resorts. Often, police action is lackluster in response to the ongoing deadly incidents, and prosecution is slow.

Along with Jamaica, island nations Trinidad and Tobago and the Bahamas fall on this list.

Ranking sixth globally is South Africa, with a homicide rate of 34 per 100,000 people. Last year, 75 people on average were killed each day, while robberies averaged 400 daily. One part of the problem is that the country is known to have widespread criminal activity across mining, construction, and taxi industries. Another major factor is that the country serves as a transit hub for illicit drugs that are transported from Afghanistan to Europe.

In South America, Ecuador ranks as the most dangerous country, driven by escalating gang violence. While the country had some of the lowest homicide rates in the region in 2019, drug gangs have increasingly gripped the country.

In January, gang members stormed a news station, detonated bombs through the streets, and kidnapped policemen when the president issued a state of emergency after a notorious cartel leader escaped from prison. More recently, an Ecuadoran mayor was found dead amid the country’s third month in emergency lockdowns.

Via ReMix News,

Poland, once a bastion of conservatism, is radically shifting gears under the new left-liberal government with a new “hate speech” law that could see offenders imprisoned for up to three years for “offensive” content against LGBT people.

The left had already been pushing for stricter speech controls before the coalition government formed, and since it won power, the left is now making good on its promises. On Wednesday, the Polish Ministry of Justice published a draft amendment to the penal code regarding hate speech on the website of the Government Legislation Center.

The new draft law is looking to expand classifications regarding hate speech to include age, disability, gender, sexual orientation and gender identity, according to Polish news outlet DoRzeczy.

Poland’s new government moves to crack down on ‘hate speech’

In a strong stand against government plans to penalize what it calls “hate speech,” Poland’s Confederation party asserts the need for free and unrestricted public discourse

“The introduction of the proposed solutions will ensure enhanced and full criminal law protection against the use of violence or unlawful threats, incitement to hatred, insults and violations of bodily integrity due to the disability, age, gender, sexual orientation or gender identity of the injured party,” reads the draft.

The draft also threatens up to five years in prison for “threats.”

However, even for “insults,” which are loosely defined, penalties could be extremely harsh under the new draft law.

Provisions regarding gender, sexual orientation and gender identity have been added to article 256, which covers incitement to hated and in article 257 regarding insults.

Now, under these new rules, “insults” against sexual orientation or gender identity will be punishable by up to three years in prison.

Warnings about new hate speech law

Opposition parties in Poland were already warning against proposals to change hate speech laws in January of this year when the new government first came to power. They argued that such changes would effectively end free speech in Poland and represent a grave threat to religious freedom, with Catholicism in particular critical of many aspects of LGBT.

“The ruling coalition, as part of its coalition agreement, has announced that they want to penalize so-called hate speech. The current left-wing Deputy Minister of Justice Krzysztof Śmiszek, from the New Left, has stated that his department is currently working on introducing these regulations, which limit freedom of speech and public debate in Poland. We, as the Confederation, strongly oppose this. The direct consequence of criminalizing certain words will, in fact, be the criminalization of conservative, religious, Christian views,” said Confederation MP Karina Bosak on Friday.

Dobromir Sośnierz, another party member, highlighted concerns about the subjective nature of defining hate speech.

“What the left understands by so-called hate speech, in practice, will mean speech hated by Minister Śmiszek, not necessarily speech that expresses hatred towards someone, but something that leftists dislike,” he remarked.

Read more here…

Each year, the Reuters Institute for the Study of Journalism publishes a report on digital news consumption.

The latest edition, based on surveys of more than 93,000 people in 46 countries, documents how overall trust in news has slid downwards by two percentage points in the past year. About four in ten people in the total sample say they trust most news most of the time. Among the countries surveyed, Finland remains the country with the highest level of trust (69 percent), while Greece (19 percent) has the lowest.

The share of citizens in all countries surveyed who are “very” or “extremely” interested in news and consume it regularly fell from 51 percent in 2022 to 48 percent in 2023. Many people are choosing to increasingly ration or limit their exposure to news, or at least to news of a certain kind. News that is overly repetitive or deemed “emotionally draining” is often passed over in favor of something more uplifting.

As Statista’s Anna Fleck reports, according to the report, with the abundance of channels now available, “it is not surprising that news consumers are increasingly feeling overwhelmed and confused, and many are turning away temporarily or permanently. Selective news avoidance and news fatigue have been exacerbated by the challenging times we live in.”

As the study reveals, social networks that rely more on videos such as TikTok, Instagram or YouTube are becoming increasingly important for news.

You will find more infographics at Statista

In this respect the writers add: “it is clear that most consumers are not looking for more news, but for the news that seems most relevant to them and helps them make sense of the complex issues we face. The new technological disruption of artificial intelligence is just around the corner, threatening to unleash a new wave of personalized, but potentially unreliable, content.”

It is important to note here that this data is based on citizens’ perceptions of the trustworthiness of media or news brands and that these scores are aggregates of subjective opinions. Analysts stress that this means that changes over time are often much influenced by “political and social factors as with the news itself.”

Authored by Marina Zhang via The Epoch Times (emphasis ours),

Spike protein could remain in immune cells for more than 245 days following vaccination, according to a recent preprint. The study evaluated 50 patients who developed long COVID-like symptoms after the COVID-19 vaccine; none had been infected with the virus.

The authors extracted immune cells from 14 post-vaccine patients and found that 13 had spike protein in their immune cells. Asymptomatic vaccinated people had no spike present.

Researchers from InCellDx, a research company that produces panels and protocols that test for and treat long COVID and post-vaccine syndrome, authored the paper.

Their previous study published in 2022 showed that unvaccinated long-COVID patients could have spike protein persist in their immune cells for 15 months.

In both papers, the spike proteins were detected in monocytes, immune cells that circulate the body.

These findings indicate that the persistence of these spike proteins was likely the driver for the symptoms of long COVID and post-vaccine syndrome, InCellDx founder and lead study author Dr. Bruce Patterson told The Epoch Times.

“These cells bind to the blood vessels. They cause endotheliitis (inflammation of endothelium) and vascular inflammation, which I think now has been corroborated by many as being probably one of the most important pathogenic mechanisms in long COVID,” Dr. Patterson said.

Spike Protein Reservoirs

“Monocytes are scavenger cells of the immune system,” Dr. Patterson said. Monocytes function similarly to how the video game character Pac-Man does: They roam the body and gobble up proteins they come across in their way.

In long COVID, monocytes gobble up spike protein, the virus’ viral debris. In post-vaccine syndrome, the monocytes engulf spike proteins, which the body makes from the COVID-19 vaccine.

These spike proteins are then stored inside the monocytes, which causes the cells to live longer than they should. The prolonged longevity can cause inflammation, leading to various long-lasting symptoms.

In the study, Dr. Patterson and his team observed that post-vaccine patients had significantly higher monocyte levels than those without post-vaccine symptoms. The symptomatic post-vaccine patients also had a clear elevation in inflammatory biomarkers, whereas the asymptomatic patients did not.

Dr. Patterson believes that at the time of the study, viral replication or spike protein production from vaccinations was no longer occurring. Instead, the spike proteins persisted for months because they were being stored.

He reasoned that once the monocytes engulfed the spike proteins, the spike hijacked the cells’ cell death program, turning off cell death “so they become long-lived cells.”

A similar phenomenon occurs with the HIV and hepatitis C viruses.

Monocyte cells can cause inflammation. Particularly, nonclassical monocytes, which traverse the blood vessels, can lead to blood vasculature inflammation and damage.

Several studies have identified inflamed and damaged vasculature as central features of long-COVID symptoms. These patients have a high level of inflammatory chemicals, which can promote fatigue, blood clotting, immune and nervous system dysregulation, and more.

Long COVID vs. ‘Long Vax’

The recent preprint also shows how long COVID and post-vaccine syndrome may be differentiated.

While the same thing—spike protein persistence—likely causes both conditions, the conditions have slightly differing chemical profiles, especially regarding the level of interleukin-8, or IL-8.

IL-8 is a type of cytokine that aids in attracting immune cells to areas of inflammation, Dr. Patterson explained.

He said that medication that blocks these different cytokines should resolve symptoms. For example, his team found that tumor necrosis factor-alpha (TNF-alpha) is a cytokine that, when elevated, induces fatigue. Therefore, reducing that cytokine can help diminish fatigue.

Other cytokines shared between long COVID and the condition dubbed “long vax” include sCD40L and CCR5, which drive vascular inflammation. Another cytokine, IL-6, signals systemic inflammation.

Dr. Patterson explained that the two conditions’ distinct chemical profiles may be due to their different delivery mechanisms: Viral infection causes long COVID, while inoculation causes post-vaccine syndrome.

Treatment Protocol

Dr. Patterson uses the same protocol for treating long COVID and post-vaccine syndrome. Both treatments entail curbing inflammation in the blood vessels and throughout the body.

His protocol includes using maraviroc, an HIV drug, and atorvastatin, a type of statin, to target vasculature inflammation.

Maraviroc blocks CCR5, a type of inflammatory cytokine that causes blood vessel inflammation, while statins can bind to the receptors inside the blood vessels, blocking them from binding to inflammatory monocytes.

Many doctors have found successes with ivermectin, N-acetylcysteine (NAC), and nattokinase, all of which are drugs and nutraceuticals that help break down outside spike protein. However, Dr. Patterson reported the opposite in his practice. He explained that the drugs cannot target the spike protein stored inside cells.

In February, the U.S. Food and Drug Administration (FDA) approved Dr. Patterson’s clinical trial to test a maraviroc and statin combination for treating long COVID.

Long Vax Masked as Long COVID

The study findings imply that some people diagnosed with long COVID may actually be suffering from post-vaccination symptoms.

“Evidence they blame vaccine injury on ’long covid’?,” Dr. Lynn Flynn, a virology and infectious disease expert, wrote on X, citing the preprint.

Dr. Patterson said that the symptoms being reported in these post-vaccine patients “were almost identical to the symptoms in long COVID,” with the predominant symptoms being fatigue, neuropathy, brain fog, and headache. Long-COVID patients in another cohort also reported these symptoms.

“[Long vax] has a very low prevalence, but because billions of [people] are vaccinated, there’s a great number of individuals who have long vax,” he added.

Apart from post-vaccine syndrome, Dr. Patterson said that patients with an exacerbation of Lyme disease and myalgic encephalomyelitis (chronic fatigue syndrome) have also been labeled as long-COVID patients due to a symptoms-based diagnosis.

The competition in China’s EV world continues to heat up, as the market becomes more and more saturated. 

The country’s automakers are aggressively trying to take advantage of Tesla’s recent price hikes by offering incentives, while at the same time gearing up to compete with the “disruptive” entry of Xiaomi into the market, Bloomberg reported this week. 

The report notes that on April 1, Shanghai-based Nio unveiled an incentive plan worth up to 1 billion yuan ($186.4 million) to encourage gasoline vehicle owners to switch, offering perks like battery swaps, extra driving function subscriptions, and a Nio smartphone. 

At the same time, Xpeng reduced prices on certain vehicles by up to 20,000 yuan, and Chery Automobile introduced free purchase tax on select models and improved trade-in values. 

The heavy promotions stand at odds with Tesla’s strategy in China, which saw the automaker increase its Model Y SUV price, a move previously hinted to boost pre-hike demand and sales. 

However, despite anticipation of the price rise, Tesla had to cut production at its Shanghai facility due to falling shipments in early 2024, highlighting the fierce competition in China’s vast car market.

Xiaomi has now also entered the competitive EV market, announcing its new SU7 model’s pricing and beginning to accept orders last week. The launch was met with enthusiasm, garnering over 88,898 pre-orders within the first 24 hours, as reported on Xiaomi’s social media.

Recall we wrote just days ago that Nissan is the latest manufacturer to aim to cut EV costs in order to keep up with an increasingly competitive and saturated landscape. The company is now seeking to compete with Chinese rivals by slashing costs by 30%, Financial Times reported last weekend.  

Similarly, we have noted that auto companies are slashing investment in EVs, as is the case with American auto manufacturers like Ford and GM. We wrote last month that Joe Biden’s vision for EVs across America is in “full collapse”. 

As we wrote then: “Meanwhile, the higher costs are driving automakers away from EVs. And as battery material requirements are set to double by 2027, fulfilling these mandates will be increasingly difficult, putting Biden’s ambitious EV strategy at risk.”

At least for now, however, it looks like Tesla and BYD will continue to lead the charge and, likely, command the pricing power that goes with it in China. 

Authored by Ahmed Adel via GlobalResearch.ca,

Turkey is set to become the United States’ largest supplier of artillery shells as NATO allies have exhausted their stocks and now struggle to ship ammunition to Ukraine. Turkey’s indirect support for Ukraine is also supplemented by direct support, such as producing drones and warships, yet Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan offers himself as a viable partner in searching for peace between Ukraine and Russia.

“Turkish supplies of trinitrotoluene, known as TNT, and nitroguanidine, which is used as a propellant, would be crucial in the production of Nato-standard 155mm calibre ammunition — potentially tripling production, according to officials familiar with the discussions,” a Bloomberg report said, adding: “Turkey is already on track to becoming the biggest seller of the artillery shells to the US as early as this year.”

The surge in demand has delayed global orders and has put pressure on defence supply chains, especially for components such as TNT.  According to the outlet, to help alleviate this issue, Turkish defence company Repkon’s production lines are expected to produce about 30% of all US-made 155mm artillery shells by 2025.

The Pentagon said in a statement about investment in Texas’ defence industry with Turkish counterparts that working with allies “is key to building a global defence industrial base.”

Additionally, Washington purchased 116,000 rounds of battle-ready ammunition from Turkish company Arca Defense, with delivery expected later this year and further purchases believed to be concluding soon to be ready for delivery in 2025.

As Bloomberg admitted,

“The US and European efforts are part of a race to catch up with Moscow, whose war machine has put it in a position to produce or procure – according to some estimates – 4 million rounds this year, including shipments from North Korea. By contrast, the European Union expects to triple its production of artillery shells this year to around 1.4 million units.”

It is unsurprising that Turkey has been awarded a lucrative contract, given the recent announcement that Erdogan will visit the White House on May 9, the first time since US President Joe Biden took office.

The agreement with Ankara also reveals a delicate balance between the NATO allies, whose relations have been strained by the Russian military operation in Ukraine and Turkey’s months-long block on Sweden’s membership in the Atlantic Alliance. However, with Turkey greenlighting Sweden’s accession and plans to contribute to Ukraine’s military-industrial complex, the country is now being rewarded with export contracts and approval to upgrade its aging F-16 fighter jet fleet.

The Turkish-made Bayraktar TB2 unmanned aerial vehicles (UAVs) have been used by the Ukrainian military against Russian forces. The drone maker, Baykar, has initiated the construction of a factory in Ukraine, and the company’s CEO said in February that they aim to complete the project within approximately 12 months and produce around 120 units a year.

At the same time, it is recalled that in February, France, Greece, and Cyprus blocked financing for the supply of Bayraktar drones and artillery shells for Ukraine, which were to be purchased with European funds. Turkey was set to be financed from EU funds for some time, but once the order was confirmed, the three countries swiftly blocked the financing.

Although the initiative failed, the US recognised Turkey’s rapprochement with the West and is now rewarding the country with imports and exports in the defence sector. This is despite the fact that the issue of the acquisition of the Russian-made S-400 is not resolved, which is the reason Turkey was booted from the F-35 fifth-generation fighter jet program to begin with.

Erdogan announced his offer to host a peace summit between Ukraine and Russia earlier this month following a meeting with his Ukrainian counterpart Volodymyr Zelensky.

“Since the beginning, we have contributed as much as we could toward ending the war through negotiations,” Erdogan said.

“We are also ready to host a peace summit in which Russia will also be included.”

Although Erdogan claims to have contributed as much as possible to ending the war through negotiations, his country has also contributed to prolonging it. It is also recalled that during Zelensky’s visit to Turkey, he visited the shipyard where the two corvettes are being built for the Ukrainian Navy. At the same time, Turkey is providing drones to the Ukrainian military and is now replenishing the US’ artillery stocks. This is even though Ukraine has no chance of winning the war, meaning Turkey is not an honest broker for peace.

Authored by Andrew Korybko via Substack,

For Russia to have successfully used a mobile directed energy weapon over 1,500 times, including against the US’ “top 5%, 10% performing officers across the Defense Intelligence Agency,” then it must have deeply penetrated the US Government in order to discover those elite targets’ identities and locations.

CBS News, The Insider, and Der Spiegel released the findings of their joint investigation on Sunday blaming Russia for “Havana Syndrome”, which refers to the mysterious ear and head pain that over 1,500 US Government (USG) staffers across the world claim to have experienced since 2016. It appeared timed to coincide with Congress’ plans to vote on Ukraine aid sometime later this month, with the intent obviously being to scare lawmakers into approving more funds for America’s proxy war on Russia.

It might have the opposite effect than intended, however, since those outlets’ dramatic claims paint a picture of deep Russian intelligence penetration of the US’ diplomatic and security services that can’t be remedied by simply sending more money to Ukraine. If what they wrote is true, then Russia has created a mobile directed energy weapon (DEW) that it’s already successfully used over 1,500 times, including against the US’ “top 5%, 10% performing officers across the Defense Intelligence Agency”.

This startling statistic comes from the recently retired Army lieutenant colonel who ran the Pentagon’s investigation into the matter. He claimed that this elite echelon of victims had all “worked against Russia, focused on Russia, and done extremely well” but were then “neutralized” after their injuries. His allegations contradict the Intelligence Community’s (IC) official review from last year that no DEWs nor foreign adversaries were responsible for these “anomalous health incidents”.

Those who take the IC’s official review at face value suspect that the prior hysteria about “Havana syndrome” was just a means of fearmongering about Russia, which they also naturally believe is the motive behind the latest joint investigation’s findings. Meanwhile, those who suspected that the IC’s official review was a cover-up take the latest joint investigation’s findings at face value, which means that they truly believe that Russia has deeply penetrated the US’ diplomatic and security services.

There’s no credible evidence to suggest that this is the case, especially since Russia would have presumably been much better prepared for responding to America’s diplomatic and military provocations throughout the course of their ongoing proxy war if it had moles within both. Nevertheless, the only way that one can believe that it’s systematically targeting members of those institutions who had all worked against it “extremely well” in the past is if it knew who they were and where they lived.

That in turn obliges one to believe that it must have deeply penetrated them in order to obtain this highly classified information, thus meaning that Russian spies are more highly placed than anyone had thought even after the witch hunt that followed the Russiagate hysteria. Once again, there’s no credible evidence that this is the case, and another argument against this theory is that Russia isn’t targeting any similarly prominent Ukrainian diplomats or security officials despite being at “war” with their country.

Russia may be behind the “Havana Syndrome” attacks against U.S. officials, investigation by 60 Minutes, Der Spiegel and The Insider claims.

Havana Syndrome may have its origin in the use of directed energy weapons wielded by the Russian GRU’s infamous Unit 29155. pic.twitter.com/n7X0MIx1mw

— Clash Report (@clashreport) April 1, 2024

Reflecting on the abovementioned insight, it’s much more likely that Russia has nothing to do with “Havana syndrome” and that the latest joint investigation’s findings are just a desperate attempt to scare lawmakers into approving more Ukraine aid ahead of their planned vote later this month. Any penetration of the IC at the level that this conspiracy theory implies would have led to the past two years unfolding in a very different way and Russia not being caught off guard by the proxy war that broke out.