Today’s News 24th March 2022

• Saudi Military Thwarts Houthi Attack On Oil Tankers In Red Sea
  Saudi Military Thwarts Houthi Attack On Oil Tankers In Red Sea

  Saudi Arabia and UAE media are reporting that Saudi forces thwarted an “imminent and hostile” attack that threatened oil tankers south of the Red Sea, in a coalition statement first reported in state-run SPA.

  The attempted attack reportedly involved a pair of booby-trapped boats being launched toward the tankers by Yemeni Houthi militants, from the direction of Hodeida port after the tankers crossed the Bab el-Mandeb Strait. The boats were intercepted and destroyed, according to the Saudi military.

  

  “The Houthi militia is escalating its hostile attacks to target energy sources and the vein of global economy,” the statement, also reported in Al-Arabiya, said.

  On Sunday multiple drone and missiles launched from Yemen targeted a Saudi liquefied natural gas (LNG) plant, as well as an oil facility, power station, and other key infrastructure. While there were no casualties reported from the wave of projectiles, a fire broke out at an Aramco facility in Jeddah. The “limited fire” was quickly brought under control.

  For years the Houthis – who are covertly backed by Iran and who control most of northern Yemen, including Hodeidah – have threatened Red Sea shipping, also as much of the country has been under a brutal blockade by the Saudi-UAE-US coalition, which has in turn triggered what the UN has called the “world’s worst humanitarian crisis”. 

  At a moment the Biden administration is desperate to tap more oil amid an aggressive Western sanctions regimen targeting Russia’s exports, Riyadh is urgently asking for more US weapons, particularly anti-air defense missile systems.

  

  At the start of this week, following Sunday’s Houthi attacks, The Wall Street Journal detailed that “The Biden administration has transferred a significant number of Patriot antimissile interceptors to Saudi Arabia within the past month, fulfilling Riyadh’s urgent request for a resupply amid sharp tensions in the relationship, senior U.S. officials said.”

  “The transfers sought to ensure that Saudi Arabia is adequately supplied with the defensive munitions it needs to fend off drone and missile attacks by the Iran-backed Houthi rebels in neighboring Yemen, one of the officials said,” the report said.

  Tyler Durden
  Thu, 03/24/2022 – 02:45

• Ukraine Says Forest Fires Near Chernobyl Have Sparked Radiation Concern
  Ukraine Says Forest Fires Near Chernobyl Have Sparked Radiation Concern

  Authored by Lorenz Duschamp s via The Epoch Times,

  Energoatom, a Ukrainian regulatory agency that operates nuclear power plants in the country, warned earlier this week that forest fires near Russian-held Chernobyl have raised radiation concerns.

  

  In a March 21 statement, the Ukrainian parliament said that at least seven different fires were spotted near the plant by satellite images of the European Space Agency’s (ESA) Sentinel-2 satellite.

  Though the now-defunct plant no longer produces nuclear power, the radiation at the site is consistently monitored, especially after a catastrophe in 1986 – when an explosion at the plant became one of the world’s worst nuclear accidents.

  Russian forces captured Chernobyl, which is located along the Ukraine–Belarus border and about 60 miles north of Kyiv, just days after Russian troops launched what Moscow calls “a special military operation” in Ukraine on Feb. 24.

  Early on Monday, management of the Chernobyl plant carried out a “partial rotation” of personnel who had been working non-stop at the nuclear plant since the Russian take-over, allowing about half of the previous shift to return home. Nearly 50 other workers have volunteered to replace them and perform their duties to ensure the functioning of the enterprise.

  Authorities said 64 people at the station were evacuated, including 50 Chernobyl shift personnel and nine members of the Ukrainian National Guard.

  “It will be recalled that the staff spent about 600 hours at work, heroically performing their professional duties and maintaining an adequate level of safety,” officials said.

  

  The Sarcophagus of the Chernobyl Nuclear Reactor number 4 in Chernobyl, Ukraine, on Jan. 25, 2006. (Daniel Berehulak/Getty Images)

  Ukraine has accused Russia of starting the fires and stressed that firefighters available in the region are unable to “perform their functions in full” to protect the forests tainted by decades of radioactivity due to the presence of Russian forces.

  “Probably the fire was caused by the armed aggression of the Russian Federation, namely the shelling or arson,” officials said.

  According to the statement, the criteria for fires in the exclusion zone should not exceed a volume of 0.02-0.08 square miles, but in the current state of the fire zone, these figures are ten times higher. This means the radiation risks increase within a radius of about 6 miles around the Chernobyl nuclear power plant.

  Energoatom said in a statement obtained by Reuters that the system monitoring radiation levels in the 19-mile so-called exclusion zone in the forests around the plant is currently not working,

  “There is no data on the current state of radiation pollution of the exclusion zone’s environment, which makes it impossible to adequately respond to threats,” it said. It added that seasonal forest fires pose a particular threat as the zone’s forest fire service was currently unable to work.

  “Radiation levels in the exclusion zone and beyond, including not only Ukraine, but also other countries, could significantly worsen,” the country’s regulatory agency warned.

  Tyler Durden
  Thu, 03/24/2022 – 02:00

• China's Belt-And-Road Comes To America's Heartland, Part 1: The Peculiar Story of Fufeng Group And Grand Forks
  China’s Belt-And-Road Comes To America’s Heartland, Part 1: The Peculiar Story of Fufeng Group And Grand Forks

  Authored by Fortis Analysis via Human Terrain,

  

  The onset of the global COVID-19 pandemic in 2019 has exposed numerous structural weaknesses in how the nations of the world provide food, energy, water, and consumer goods for their people. In the main, these supply chain disruptions are tightly correlated to the manufacturing and export capacity of a single nation – the People’s Republic of China. In the United States, this is especially true for amino acids, specifically of the type used in animal feed. Though little-known amongst the general population, synthetic amino acids such as lysine and threonine play a crucial role in managing animal health and growth. Relatedly, as the use of soybean meal for a primary protein source has increased in feed rations, amino acids become even more important.

  These products, generally produced from corn (though cassava root and sugarcane may also be used), require substantial investment into a complex manufacturing process built around fermentation of the corn’s starch. It is also energy intensive, requiring high heat to produce and dry the product. Given the constant attention paid to its food security, China leads the world in research, subsidies, and investment into manufacturing these critical components in the food supply chain, with control of up to 65% of global market share in lysine, perhaps the most widely-used and critical of the amino acid complex.

  As many in the feed industry are aware, the most recent bio-fermentation plant proposed in the US is to be built and controlled by Fufeng Group, one of China’s dominant players in the amino acid sector. In the recent past, Fufeng Group has looked at opening production facilities for their bio-fermented products (MSG, xanthan gum, lysine, threonine, tryptophan, valine, isoleucine) in Ukraine, India, and several other countries – as of yet, with no success. These countries are attractive for their generally low energy costs and abundance of starchy raw material. And given the exploding transportation costs for energy and grain commodities worldwide, the need is greater than ever for a manufacturer to locate close to supplies of both. After these failed attempts, it seems Fufeng has now found fertile soil in the city council of Grand Forks, North Dakota, and the state’s governor Doug Burgum.

  

  Initially reassured by positive signals received in 2020 from Governor Burgum – who has been featured in Chinese media outlet China Daily crowing about North Dakota’s egg exports to China in 2018, and who is rated as “Friendly” towards China as of November 2021 by the Chinese Communist Party’s (CCP) United Front propaganda arm – Fufeng hired an American by the name of Eric Chutorash in March of 2020 to assess the viability of opening a full-scale amino acid plant in the United States. In the intervening months, Fufeng has settled on Grand Forks, North Dakota to open their new plant.

  The new plant is estimated to consume 25,000,000 bushels of corn for less than one hundred jobs – 250,000 bushels (or 14,000,000 pounds) of American corn per year, per job. Moreover, the Grand Forks City Council and CCP-favorite Governor Burgum are promising to build and subsidize a $150 million natural gas pipeline, and will spend an additional tens of millions of dollars to subsidize construction of Fufeng’s new plant. Fufeng Group will also be offered a “temporary” tax break for years (or decades) to come. Rather than boosting the local economy, the plant will be leeching from it.

  One might wonder if Fufeng Group’s founder and chairman, Li Xuechun, shared with the North Dakota luminaries his intention to convert most of the plant’s production to export sales no later than 2025, only a few months after anticipated conclusion of the plant’s buildout? American-made amino acids being sent at the lowest profitable cost possible to feed the swine, beef, and poultry industries of Mexico, Canada, and Brazil, all of whom are much friendlier to China with regard to finished meat exports than the United States is. It’s a canny strategic maneuver, and as is unfortunately typical of our political leadership, the short-term promise of profits, fundraising, and (perhaps) future jobs is a leash with which Chinese companies manipulate their American running dogs.

  The bad news continues. Chinese Communist Party personnel overlap with management in Fufeng Group. Founder and Chairman of the Board, Li Xuechun, served as deputy to the Shandong Province 12th People’s Congress starting in 2003 (see page 80) while also being named as the “Model Labour” of the province in the same year. Fufeng itself further exists as a vector of CCP policy. In remarks delivered to the 16th People’s Congress of Qiqihar on 26 December 2017, Mayor Li Yugang emphasized the Party’s role in building and operationalizing Fufeng’s wet corn mill in less than a year, while reinforcing the Party’s commitment to “accelerate” Fufeng’s plans to expand production capacity of amino acids at the plant to consumer more than 3 million metric tons per year of corn. In his annual report issued on 7 January 2020, Mayor Li reiterated that Fufeng is a “national key leading enterprise” in ensuring food security for China.

  Also troubling is Fufeng’s plausible connections to the use of forced labor in Xinjiang Province. The primary arm of Fufeng in the province is Xinjiang Fufeng Biotechnologies Co. Ltd, with its manufacturing hub located just west of the Urumqi Export Zone. This site is responsible for a reported $21 million in vitamin and amino acid sales directly to the United States for the first six months of 2021, according to a disclosure filed by Fufeng Group on 28 December 2021 in response to President Biden signing the Uyghur Forced Labor Prevention Act on 23 December 2021.

  Curiously, Fufeng’s production facility in the Toutunhe District sits less than two miles from Toutunhe Facility #2, a Tier-4 detention, forced labor, and re-education camp focused on subjugating the Uyghur population in the area. The approximate location of Fufeng’s manufacturing plant is also very near to where a Ugyhur neighborhood was razed to the ground, including a mosque and other cultural sites. Given the $21 million haul in the first half of 2021, and how demand and prices both spiked throughout the second half of the year, it’s not unlikely that Fufeng likely generated in excess of $40 million in trade with the US from this site in 2021. Per Fufeng’s financial reports, the average profit margin for their products averaged 17% in 2020, or $6.8 million if the same margin held into 2021. However, with prices more than doubling for multiple months in the back half of 2021, it’s plausible that sales to the U.S. from the
  Xinjiang site exceeded $9 million in profit.

  

  Lastly, it must be a very curious coincidence indeed that Fufeng Group zeroed in so quickly on Grand Forks, ND. The nearby US Air Force installation, Grand Forks AFB, is a critical component in the USAF’s strategic basing network for ISR (Intelligence, Surveillance, Reconnaissance) assets. Further, the base is home to the 10th Space Warning Squadron, a major node in the U.S’ early warning and detection network for ballistic missile threats against North America. It’s also a key element in the USAF Space Surveillance Network, which is tasked with monitoring targets and potential threats in space. Such a short line of sight to the base from Fufeng’s proposed location on the northwest side of Grand Forks makes signal intercept a relatively simply task using low-observable technology mounted unobtrusively to the plant’s superstructure. Perhaps we could consider this a fluke, except another recent high-profile situation would argue that CCP-aligned assets intend to acquire land and infrastructure directly adjacent to important U.S. military installations for purposes potentially ranging from digital snooping to outright sabotage.

  It’s frankly astonishing that given the data laid out here, Governor Burgum and the Grand Forks City Council have continued to press ahead with bringing in a CCP-aligned entity to co-opt American resources and families in pursuit of China’s hegemonic goals.

  Here, then, is the new Chinese modus operandi: externalize their energy consumption into the US and exploit more readily-available raw materials for China’s benefit. Such a model drives the local prices of energy up long-term, another indirect subsidy paid by North Dakota’s taxpayers, while ensuring that China’s foreign partners have access to exported feed ingredients at the expense of the United States’ meat producers. Even more, the location of Fufeng’s intended site is at best an extremely worrisome coincidence, given many viable alternatives that make more sense from a supply chain standpoint. Taken together, this absolutely follows the playbook of China’s ongoing expansions of the Belt and Road Initiative, and perhaps for the first time, represents a stealth implementation of the project on the United States’ own soil.

  American corn.

  American energy.

  American labor.

  American subsidies.

  All the raw materials needed for repatriated Chinese profits and export of American food and national security.

  *  *  *

  Subscribe to Human Terrain

  Tyler Durden
  Wed, 03/23/2022 – 23:40

• Automated Trucks Could Displace Half Million US Jobs 
  Automated Trucks Could Displace Half Million US Jobs 

  Automation is flooding into the trucking industry as a nationwide shortage of drivers persists. Self-driving trucks are already on America’s highways, currently in the testing phase, as a new study warns up to a half-million jobs are at risk of being displaced by robots. 

  Researchers at the University of Michigan and Carnegie Mellon University published a new study, revealing the proliferation of automation in long-haul trucking could replace 94% of human truck drivers, the equivalent of approximately 500,000 jobs.  

  “Our results suggest that the impacts of automation may not happen all at once,” said study co-author Parth Vaishnav, assistant professor of sustainable systems at the University of Michigan. 

  “If automation is restricted to Sun Belt states (including Florida, Texas and Arizona)—because the technology may not initially work well in rough weather—about 10% of the operator hours will be affected,” Vaishnav said. 

  Researchers developed several automated trucking deployment scenarios, including deployment in southern states, deployment for journeys more than 500 miles, and widespread deployment across the country. 

  “Our study is the first to combine a geospatial analysis based on shipment data with an explicit consideration of the specific capabilities of automation and how those might evolve over time,” said lead author Aniruddh Mohan, a doctoral candidate in engineering and public policy at Carnegie Mellon.

  Depending on the scenario, they found the rollout of automation may have a 10% to 94% impact on long-haul operator-hours, equivalent to 30,000 to 500,000 jobs that could be displaced. 

  

   Researchers also interviewed trucking companies, logistical experts, and tractor-trailer operators to develop a roadmap of the automation rollout within the trucking industry. 

  “A key finding was just how economically attractive this technology would be and the fact that everyone, including truckers, agreed that the interstate part of the job could be automated,” Vaishnav said. 

  “Ultimately, societal and political choices can determine the mode of deployment of automated tracking capabilities, as well as the winners and losers of any shift to automation of long-haul trucking,” he said. 

  One of the most significant hurdles for automated trucks is infrastructure. Researchers created a schematic showing the future of trucking driving. The automation part will mainly be on highways. 

  

  The rollout of automated trucks could be a few years away as San Diego-based TuSimple tested the first class 8 vehicle (otherwise known as a trailer tractor) on a highway without human intervention. The test was conducted on Dec. 22 on an 80 mile stretch of road between Tucson, Arizona, and Phoenix. 

  

  Trucks move 70% of U.S. freight in weight, and labor and fuel costs pressure logistics companies’ margins, forcing them to raise shipping rates or face margin compression. 

  Today’s high inflationary environment (some say stagflation is imminent) could push more and more companies into eventually firing human truck drivers for robot ones to cut down on costs.  

  Tyler Durden
  Wed, 03/23/2022 – 23:20

• Frequent Interactions Between Clinicians And Big Pharma A Conflict Of Interest: Expert
  Frequent Interactions Between Clinicians And Big Pharma A Conflict Of Interest: Expert

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

  An expert in pharmaceutical policy has said that the frequent interactions between pharmaceutical companies and health professionals can pose a conflict of interest for clinicians.

  

  Prof. Barbara Mintzes told The Epoch Times that research has demonstrated that there was a corollary between health professionals receiving a low price meal while being promoted a drug and the rate of the professional then prescribing that medication compared to generic alternatives of similar quality.

  Mintzes said a common example is pharmaceutical companies sponsoring events to provide food and drinks for health professionals.

  “If you survey doctors, they will say, I can’t be bought for the price of a pizza or I can’t be bought for the price of a sandwich,” Mintzes said but she noted that research in the US found physicians that receive a meal promoting the drug of interest, averaging less than $US20 ($AU29), had a significantly higher rate of prescribing that medication compared to generic alternatives of similar quality.

  The study also found a dose-response where “the more meals provided; the more likely doctors are to prescribe the product.”

  Mintzes noted that while the decision may not be conscious, “we’re all human and there is a tendency to reciprocity whether we’re conscious of it or not.”

  “You would also expect that the companies are also looking at the returns on investment on their marketing activities and would not continue with marketing activities that were ineffective in terms of stimulating sales.”

  Prior to 2015, Medicines Australia required its member companies to publicise each event they had sponsored, including information of the event such as the number of health professionals and who had attended, how much money was spent and what was spent on with spending on food and drinks by far the most common.

  Additionally, from Medicines Australia’s data from 2011 to 2015, Mintzes’s team found that on average, corporate sponsored events for pharmaceuticals were being held at hospitals and universities over 600 times every week, averaging 30 attendees per event.

  However, since October 2015, Medicines Australia changed its codes of conduct from requiring food and drink payments being reported to have companies only listing clinicians they provided funding for.

  Whilst this enhanced transparency around the identification of individual health professionals, subsequent studies led by the University of Sydney also observed a 34.1 percent reduction in disclosed spending in 2016 and decreased expenditure reports in the year following.

  Underreporting of Conflicts of Interests in Pharmaceutical Studies

  Despite Medicines Australians change in 2015, Mintzes’s recent co-authored study on underreporting of conflicts of interests by health professionals has raised further questions about the limitations of a self-reported system.

  The team examined Medicines Australia’s public data and found that nearly half of pharmaceutical trials with Australian authors had omitted or incomplete conflicts of interest declarations when the research team received commercial funding.

  “It certainly seems that it’s not a situation where there are just like one or two bad apples, who are hiding their conflicts of interest, it seems more of a situation where it’s quite widespread,” she said.

  Mintzes suggested that there may be a lack in “understanding” of the importance of the full disclosure of conflicts of interests in the entire scientific and publication process” and encouraged more attention by authors and journal editors.

  “Now that we have these databases available publicly, where companies are reporting their payments, authors should also be systematically checking themselves in the database to make sure that they have fully reported,” she said.

  “This is just an important component of trust and integrity in science,” and reporting industry funding is a “standard throughout medical research.”

  Tyler Durden
  Wed, 03/23/2022 – 23:00

• People Are 3D-Printing What Appears To Be Fully-Functional RPG-Like Launchers
  People Are 3D-Printing What Appears To Be Fully-Functional RPG-Like Launchers

  In just a decade, 3D-printed guns have come a long way from the single-shot “The Liberator” pistol published online for the world to download in 2013 by Cody Wilson’s Defense Distributed to a fully functional 3D-printable semiautomatic pistol carbine entirely printed at home to what now appears to be a rocket launcher-like device. 

  Journalist Jake Hanrahan reports Deterrence Dispensed, an online group that promotes and distributes open-source 3D-printed firearm blueprints, has developed what appears to be a recoilless launcher. 

  

  Hanrahan said it’s a “66mm recoilless launcher with shoulder rest attachments, allowing it to convert to a mortar on the go.” 

  Deterrence Dispensed, the controversial 3D-printed weapons syndicate (co-founded by JStark), has recently released a new project.

  This is a 66mm recoilless launcher with shoulder rest attachments, allowing it to convert to a mortar on the go. pic.twitter.com/esdUxNJD7g

  — Jake Hanrahan (@Jake_Hanrahan) March 23, 2022

  https://platform.twitter.com/widgets.js

  Many of you were confused by the crater that appeared under the long range soda delivery cannon (Canzerfaust). This is what we call a recoilless. pic.twitter.com/7tpbRaAh0m

  — CTRLPew (@CtrlPew) March 24, 2022

  https://platform.twitter.com/widgets.js

  Hanrahan shows another video as the recoilless launcher is propped up on what appears to be a bipod serving as a mortar. 

  Deterrence Dispenses have dubbed it “The CANzerfaust”, claiming it’s only purpose is for launching drinks cans… pic.twitter.com/9Z8GMAM433

  — Jake Hanrahan (@Jake_Hanrahan) March 23, 2022

  https://platform.twitter.com/widgets.js

  He said Deterrence Dispensed called the device “The CANzerfaust.” They’re claiming the recoilless launcher only launches “drink cans…” 

  Last year, the online group of 3D-printed firearms enthusiasts developed a fully functional 3D-printable semiautomatic pistol caliber carbine for $350, including the printer’s cost. 

  YouTubers have taken 3D-printed firearms to the shooting ranges to test their durability. Surprisingly, these unserialized weapons worked pretty well. 

  One of the creators of Deterrence Dispensed, known as JStark, mysterious died of a heart attack after police raided his home in Germany last fall. 

  The Biden administration and the ATF are panicking about “ghost guns,” or in their eyes, 80% lower receivers. They’re likely to announce regulation on 80% lowers in the coming weeks, if not months. As for 3D-printing weapons at home, that’s going to be a challenge for the ATF to regulate. 

  Tyler Durden
  Wed, 03/23/2022 – 22:40

• Universities Follow The Politics, Not The Science
  Universities Follow The Politics, Not The Science

  Authored by Daniel Nuccio via The Brownstone Institute,

  At the start of 2022, both Rachel Fulton Brown, an associate professor of history at the University of Chicago, and Donald J. Boudreaux, an economics professor at George Mason University, fed up with the draconian dictats and bureaucratic overreach of their respective institutions, published letters openly calling out their universities for their intellectual and moral failures in how they responded to the Covid pandemic.

  

  Fulton Brown’s letter to UChicago president, Paul Alivisatos, and provost, Ka Yee C. Lee, lamented her school’s failure to lead the charge against fashionable Covid mitigation policies, while exhorting the institution to change course, celebrate those who exhibited the courage to “stand for SCIENTIFIC INQUIRY over POLITICAL GRANDSTANDING,” and acknowledge they have “students intelligent enough to see through the gaslighting and fear to the real questions we should be asking about what it means to be a great school.”

  Boudreaux’s memo to GMU president, Gregory Washington, highlighted the intellectual bankruptcy and logical inconsistencies of GMU’s then newly announced booster mandate, specifically addressing GMU’s failure to acknowledge natural immunity, the fact that Covid vaccination does not stop the spread of the virus, and that members of the GMU community still freely interacted with the unvaccinated and unboosted off-campus. 

  By the time Fulton Brown and Boudreaux released their respective letters, both the University of Chicago and George Mason University had been operating with the standard suite of online classes, social restrictions, mask mandates, and vaccine requirements for nearly two years. Both schools justified their policies as being guided by science.

  Teaching in the Pandemic Era: masked lectures under hot lights in empty auditoriums

  In separate phone interviews, Fulton Brown and Boudreaux related some of their personal experiences teaching under these policies, and how they sometimes found themselves butting heads with administrators at their respective institutions.

  At the University of Chicago, Fulton Brown, upon agreeing to teach in-person one semester, initially did so maskless. She was skeptical of the school’s mask policy to begin with. She found something cultish about the practice. She also found it difficult to effectively communicate in one when teaching in a “giant lecture hall” containing approximately eight people in an otherwise empty building. 

  Furthermore, students generally found it difficult to understand her when she lectured in a mask in that setting. 

  As one student, Declan Hurley, personally attested in an op-ed for one of UChicago’s student newspapers, The Chicago Thinker, this was especially true for those who were hearing-impaired.

  Fulton Brown saw nothing dangerous about what she was doing. For practical reasons, it also made sense. But, before long, Fulton Brown was reprimanded. “The University of Chicago has a policy that people could report infractions,” she explained. “Someone saw me from the hallway and reported me and I got emails from both the dean of my division and the college.” 

  Fulton Brown’s maskless attire got her called into the principal’s virtual office.

  At George Mason University, Boudreaux, who taught online from the start of the pandemic through the end of the 2020-2021 school year, returned to in-person teaching in the summer of 2021, at which time the school did not require him to wear a mask. 

  However, just before the start of the fall semester, GMU announced a mask mandate regardless of vaccination status. 

  Given that he teaches large auditorium classes at night under hot stage lights for three hours straight, Boudreaux said, “The thought of teaching with a mask on was just unbearable.” Given that he also has high blood pressure, Boudreaux’s physician also thought it would be ill-advised.

  Subsequently, Boudreax requested that GMU administrators let him take the risk as a fully vaccinated adult and teach without a mask. His request though was denied. 

  Once more, Boudreaux found himself teaching online.

  Navigating vaccine mandates and vaccine mandate backlash

  Like many universities, both UChicago and GMU issued vaccine mandates in 2021. 

  UChicago provost, Ka Yee C. Lee, and executive vice president, Katie Callow-Wright, claimed, “The University has determined based on expert guidance that widespread COVID-19 vaccination is the best way to contribute to greater immunity, reduce the likelihood of sudden clusters of COVID-19 on campus, minimize the risk imposed by new variants, and help protect members of our community who are at the highest risk of developing serious illness from the virus.”

  GMU president, Gregory Washington stated, “Because we will come together as COVID-19 continues to circulate, we have an obligation to maintain a safe environment in which to study, work, and live.”

  Both UChicago and GMU also weathered lawsuits over these decrees.

  The former was sued by Fulton Brown and another plaintiff with the help of the Health Freedom Defense Fund to secure religious exemptions. 

  As Jamie Green, a rep from the HFDF, explained in an email, “once we filed, the university was very open to discussions. The university backed down from enforcing the mandate on the plaintiffs.” 

  However, Green said, UChicago “required a signature to statements with which the plaintiffs did not agree. What was being required was, in essence, compelled speech in order to obtain a religious exemption.”

  Among other things, the statements pertained to the purported safety and effectiveness of the vaccines, and the dangers of Covid-19. 

  Ultimately though, Green stated, “[T]he university allowed the plaintiffs to edit the statement as they wished and sign that.”

  At the latter, GMU law professor Todd Zywicki and the New Civil Liberties Alliance successfully challenged GMU’s vaccine requirement, with the university settling before trial, granting him an exemption based on his personal medical history. The settlement, however, did not extend to anyone other than Todd Zywicki.

  Both universities also eventually came to issue booster mandates. 

  UChicago claimed, “[We] rely on consultation from experts from the University of Chicago Medicine, the City, and the Centers for Disease Control (CDC),” to justify their decision. 

  GMU assured, “Public health experts have advised that vaccines are still the most effective tools to combat COVID-19.” 

  Both ultimately incited even greater resistance.

  Before long, Fulton Brown and Boudreaux released their respective letters.

  The editorial team at The Chicago Thinker published a scathing op-ed which garnered national attention as it excoriated the university for forcing students to receive an “experimental vaccination” despite seemingly limited benefits and potential risks to students.

  Boudreaux at GMU found himself fed up, saying “I just basically lost it. I’m not boosted. I had no interest in getting boosted. I don’t want to get boosted as a condition for keeping my job.”

  Like Fulton Brown and his GMU colleague, Todd Zywicki, Boudreaux was ready to take his university to court. “I was all prepared to be a plaintiff to resist the booster mandate,” he said. 

  A lawyer with the NCLA had offered to represent him, Boudreaux stated. 

  However, before Boudreaux’s case could be brought to court, the issue became moot.

  A divergence in policy: GMU reluctantly inches closer to normal while UChicago stays the course

  The reason Boudreaux’s legal case became moot was because newly elected Virginia governor Glenn Youngkin signed an executive order prohibiting Covid vaccine requirements for state employees. 

  Shortly thereafter, Virginia attorney general, Jason S. Miyares, issued a non-binding opinion stating, “Public institutions of higher education in Virginia may not require vaccination against Covid-19 as a general condition of students’ enrollment or in-person attendance.” 

  Although nonbinding, it did effectively nullify the opinion of the previous attorney general, Mark R. Herring, which was supportive of such mandates. Hence it was sufficient to get several state universities in Virginia, including GMU, to rescind vaccine requirements for students.

  Whatever GMU officials actually believed about the science backing their mandates and vaccines being “the most effective tools to combat COVID-19”, it would appear the politics of state leadership superseded all else.

  UChicago, located in Illinois where Governor J. B. Pritzker issued an executive order in September 2021 requiring faculty and students at universities to be vaccinated for Covid or undergo weekly testing, still maintains its vaccine and booster mandates.

  Whether the continuation of the policy is on account of expert guidance or the executive order remains unknown. What UChicago will do if and when this order is dropped remains uncertain.

  In response to an email sent to President Paul Alivisatos of the University of Chicago regarding whether the school intended to maintain its vaccine and booster requirements into the Fall of 2022 and beyond, Gerald McSwiggan, the school’s associate director for public affairs, replied on March 8, “The University has made no announcements on COVID-19 policies for the 2022-23 academic year.”

  Whatever UChicago decides to do, its reputation as a university of contrarian free thinkers has definitely taken another hit. 

  As Hurley from The Chicago Thinker had previously declared with a headline, “In Ending Mandates, George Mason University Picks Up UChicago’s Forfeited Crown.”

  Universities follow the politics, not the science

  The imagery evoked by Hurley’s headline, although not without its appeal, may give too much credit to the administrators at GMU, however.

  The trajectories of Covid policies at the University of Chicago and George Mason University are more similar than they are different. Furthermore, the paths they followed seem all too representative of how most universities responded to Covid.

  They were quick to shut down. They imposed authoritarian policies on faculty and students when they reopened. They added additional restrictions when fashionable or mandated by local or state political leaders, with few exhibiting the courage to “stand for SCIENTIFIC INQUIRY over POLITICAL GRANDSTANDING,” or acknowledge they have “students intelligent enough to see through the gaslighting and fear to the real questions we should be asking.”

  When restrictions were lifted, it was often only because they were nudged (or required) to do so by politicians – or when said politicians lifted their own orders upon realizing their policies might be costing them politically, as was the case with masks at many schools, including UChicago and GMU.

  Throughout the pandemic, many universities claimed some moral or intellectual high ground as they wrapped their decrees and their actions in the language of science and safety.

  However, in reality, over the past two years many of these universities revealed themselves to be little more than political actors as intellectually bankrupt as they are morally corrupt.

  Tyler Durden
  Wed, 03/23/2022 – 22:20

• Goldman: How China's COVID Lockdowns Could Disrupt Global Supply Chains
  Goldman: How China’s COVID Lockdowns Could Disrupt Global Supply Chains

  As China continues to struggle with its worst COVID outbreak since the virus first emerged in Wuhan more than two years ago, one of the biggest questions on the minds of American companies (not to mention investors) is how badly the lockdowns ordered by the CCP will disrupt production in the country’s factories, which form a critical link in the global supply chain.

  

  Unsurprisingly, investment banks have been peppered with questions about the economic backlash stemming from China’s ‘zero tolerance’ approach to combating COVID (and this latest omicron-driven outbreak in particular). As COVID cases continue to climb (with Shanghai recording a record case tally this week that’s inspired a wave of panic buying), Goldman estimates that lockdowns have impacted population centers responsible for roughly 30% of China’s GDP.

  Overall, daily cases have declined slightly from their peak on March 20. But that doesn’t mean the outbreak is over.

  

  In its latest sell-side research report on the issue, a team of Goldman analysts “assess potential disruptions to China’s supply chains from intermediate goods, exports, final output and logistics perspectives, mainly through analyzing provincial level input-output tables.”

  Here’s what they found: the greatest impact from the lockdowns will be on China’s chemicals, transportation equipment and timber/wood product”.

  Furthermore, Goldman’s analysis suggests that “Jiangsu, Jilin, Guangdong, Shaanxi and Shanghai are more important among the virus-impacted provinces in terms of their roles in nationwide supply chains.”

  The Goldman team breaks down the potential impact of lockdowns on various industries across several of the worst-hit Chinese provinces and/or cities.

  

  The report also cites “anecdotal evidence” to suggest that regions with mid-to-high risk districts are indeed facing delivery delays or production suspensions to various degrees that could have a cascading impact.

  While CCP policymakers have taken steps to mitigate the impact of lockdowns on China’s economy (the most recent example would be the reopening of factories in Shenzhen, as well as its port), they have continued to stress a “people first, lives first” approach.

  Taken together, all of this suggests a couple of potential outcomes: Possible implications: “1) overall supply chain might be more resilient than before given the same outbreak severity, as policymakers are moving more swiftly to resume production once local Covid situation appears to be under control; 2) structural imbalances between large and smaller companies might further increase, as major production/investment projects, which are usually handled by large companies, might be given the “green light” and resume production ahead of other projects when policymakers relax restrictive policies.”

  Moving beyond the most heavily impacted industries, the Goldman team also analyzed the impact of supply chains on other critical industries like computer components, paper  and paper products (including the toilet paper that memorably disappeared from American supermarkets during the early days of the pandemic). The chart below reflects the current impact of lockdowns on these industries.

  

  Finally, Goldman also published an analysis examining the most vulnerable industries to Chinese lockdowns.

  

  Using the past as a guide, Goldman also charted the impact on deliveries via the ports.

  

  As the CCP switches from broad-based lockdowns to more “targeted” measures, Goldman expects the impact will be worse for smaller firms as opposed to larger enterprises with more flexible and robust supply chains.

  

  Goldman’s analysis concluded that should 30% of the Chinese economy experience a COVID shutdown lasting a month, it would reduce annual GDP growth by a whole percentage point.

  But the bigger question is: as these issues cascade throughout the global economy, what might the impact be for the US?

  Tyler Durden
  Wed, 03/23/2022 – 22:00

• Dr. Collins Caught Flat-Footed By First Questions On 'Takedown' Email
  Dr. Collins Caught Flat-Footed By First Questions On ‘Takedown’ Email

  Authored by Zachary Stieber via The Epoch Times (emphasis ours),

  Dr. Francis Collins, a top U.S. health official, was caught off-guard when he was asked for the first time about a report issued by members of Congress that revealed new information, including the email Collins sent urging a “takedown” of the Great Barrington Declaration, according to an email obtained by The Epoch Times.

  

  Collins, the head of the National Institutes of Health (NIH) until Dec. 19, 2021, called for a “quick and devastating published takedown” of the declaration, which called for a more balanced approach to combating the COVID-19 pandemic, in an email in October 2020.

  The email, sent just days after the document was authored by three epidemiologists, was made public by a congressional panel near the end of 2021.

  In an appearance on Fox News just hours after the panel’s report was released, Collins was confronted about the email for the first time. Host Neil Cavuto asked Collins about the report’s claims that the White House under President Donald Trump made attempts to “undermine the COVID response.”

  Collins, now a senior investigator at the NIH and a top adviser to President Joe Biden, said he was “trying to stay out of the political side of this” and declined to comment before Cavuto asked about the “takedown” email.

  “Well, OK, if it’s that specific,” Collins said.

  “Yes, there were people, particularly Dr. Scott Atlas, that said don’t worry about this business of putting on masks or asking people to isolate themselves or stay physically distanced, ‘just let it rip’ and let this virus run through the country until everybody has had it, and then we’ll have herd immunity,’” he added. “But the consequence of that would have been hundreds of thousands of additional deaths. That didn’t make sense to me.”

  Atlas was a top health adviser to Trump.

  The declaration doesn’t contain the words “let it rip,” two of its authors have noted. The document noted that lockdowns had a devastating impact on the United States and other countries and urged officials to implement more focused policies that protected the elderly and other people more vulnerable to COVID-19 while letting others live their lives.

  Collins wasn’t expecting to be questioned about the email he sent to Drs. Anthony Fauci, Clifford Lane, and Lawrence Tabak, according to the email obtained by The Epoch Times from a Freedom of Information Act request.

  “Apologies for the ambush,” Emma Wojtowicz, an NIH spokeswoman, told Collins in the missive.

  “The producer said the interview would focus on Omicron and your time as director,” she added.

  

  Wojtowicz sent a link to the congressional panel report and pasted the section relating to Collins.

  Renate Myles, another NIH spokeswoman, told The Epoch Times in an email that Collins was surprised during the interview.

  “His surprise was that the issue of the Great Barrington Declaration, which arose in 2020 and about which he has made his position clear on many occasions, was being raised in 2021 as if it were a new issue because of the release of a year-old email,” Myles said.

  Collins spoke out publicly against the declaration in October 2020. The NIH has previously said people who want to learn about why Collins has described the declaration as “dangerous” should read Wikipedia.

  Myles didn’t respond to a request by The Epoch Times for comment about whether Collins was aware his email had been made public before the interview.

  Fox News didn’t respond to requests for comment.

  Atlas, the former government adviser, meanwhile, said Collins’s comments during his appearance weren’t factually correct.

  “I never once advised the president or anyone else during my time in Washington to let the infection spread without mitigation,” Atlas told The Epoch Times in an email, adding that he advised in various settings “to increase protection, especially for high-risk individuals and settings, and I repeatedly stated in the media and in writing to follow recommended mitigations.”

  At the same time, the more targeted approach advocated for by Atlas and the declaration “would have saved a massive number of lives while avoiding the death and destruction that ensued,” he said.

  “The broad lockdowns advised by Collins, Fauci, and Birx were contrary to science, and they failed to stop the spread, they failed to protect the elderly from dying, and they killed and destroyed millions. It was the biggest failure of health policy in modern history.”

  Fauci heads the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases, which is part of the NIH. Dr. Deborah Birx was a top health adviser during the Trump administration. They and Collins have defended the support for harsh restrictions imposed during the pandemic, including the forced closure of schools and so-called non-essential businesses.

  Other emails obtained by The Epoch Times showed Collins writing to Fauci and Gregg Gonsalves, a professor at the Yale School of Public Health who has criticized the Great Barrington Declaration, or GBD.

  Gonsalves told Collins and Fauci that he was reading the congressional report and how some people were circulating it as “‘proof’ of a conspiracy against the Great Barrington Declaration.”

  “All I can say is thank you for your service, truly. The GBD has had a noxious effect on the American response to the pandemic and it doesn’t surprise me that you two were fighting back behind the scenes,” Gonsalves said.

  “It’s interesting that an effort to call out genuinely dangerous recommendations from the GBD is called a conspiracy,” Collins responded. “Truth itself seems to have become a conspiracy in many minds.”

  Tyler Durden
  Wed, 03/23/2022 – 21:40

• Shanghai Authorities Urge Calm Amid Surge In Panic-Buying Stoked By Lockdown Fears
  Shanghai Authorities Urge Calm Amid Surge In Panic-Buying Stoked By Lockdown Fears

  As we reported yesterday, the situation in Shanghai, China’s financial capital, is growing increasingly tense, as the local population has grown increasingly restive in the face of the city’s restrictions on movement, and its mass-testing requirements.

  And as millions fear the yoke of the city’s COVID restrictions may soon be further tightened, perhaps with another full-on lockdown like those that have been implemented in Jilin Province and elsewhere, Shanghaiers are swamping online grocery platforms with orders as citizens panic-buy stockpiles of food for fear that they may soon face a punishing lockdown that will confine them to their residential compounds for days, if not weeks, the AFP reports.

  

  Shanghai has seen record-high numbers of confirmed COVID cases over the past week, with 981 cases reported on Wednesday alone, a figure that’s substantially larger than any earlier daily tally. The figure marked the sixth straight daily increase of case numbers in the city.

  So far, the city has responded to the outbreak with “targeted” residential lockdowns where cases have been confirmed. Schools in the city have also been shuttered for the past two weeks. But as the case numbers grow, many fear that the CCP could soon move to impose a lockdown on the entire city of 25M (China’s largest city by population).

  Locals have taken to social media to voice their grievances about the local authorities’ response to the outbreak, complaining about vague government messaging and alarmist warnings about more required testing. Footage that circulated on social media yesterday showed restive locals pushing back against the mandatory testing measures, and the restrictions on movement in parts of the city.

  In response to this public outcry, authorities in the city have tried to smooth things over by denying rumours of a city-wide lockdown. But the fear of being locked inside a residential compound for days without sufficient food has led many to discount these reassurances, instead opting to plan for the worst-case scenario.

  Online shopping platforms have collapsed under the strain, prompting many to complain on social media about being unable to fill their orders.

  Chen Ying, a spokeswoman for online grocery platform Dingdong Maicai, acknowledged that the company was face serious pressure as online demand surged.

  As of March 22, mainland China had reported 137,231 cases with confirmed symptoms, including both local ones and those arriving from outside the mainland. There were no new deaths, leaving the death toll at 4,638.

  Tyler Durden
  Wed, 03/23/2022 – 21:20

• Navy Veteran, 66, Lives An 'American Horror Story' Since His Arrest On Jan. 6 Seditious-Conspiracy Charge
  Navy Veteran, 66, Lives An ‘American Horror Story’ Since His Arrest On Jan. 6 Seditious-Conspiracy Charge

  Authored by Joseph M. Hanneman via The Epoch Times,

  “Abba, Father! Please don’t let them murder my wife!”

  After more than two decades in the U.S. Navy and assignments around the world, Thomas E. Caldwell thought he knew the meaning of horror.

  

  That all changed in the predawn hours of Jan. 19, 2021.

  Minutes after being jostled awake, Caldwell found himself outside in the freezing cold in his undershorts and a T-shirt. In handcuffs attached to a belly chain, he was dragged across the lawn by FBI agents and thrown onto the hood of a government sedan.

  Caldwell looked back at the porch of his farmhouse and saw Sharon, his wife of 22 years, standing in her nightgown, with arms extended. She clutched a sock in each hand.

  

  Laser dots appeared on her face and chest, beamed from the carbine barrels of an FBI SWAT team. In an instant, Caldwell saw it all, just a finger twitch from unspeakable tragedy.

  “That was moral terror,” the white-haired 66-year-old Caldwell told The Epoch Times.

  “I would rather that they had shot me between the eyes than to threaten her like that.”

  “I will never forget that image, because she looked like an angel in a white nightshirt, standing in her bare feet on that cold concrete, with her arms extended to her side in compliance to them,” Caldwell recalled, choking back tears.

  “That was the moment I learned what real horror was,” he said. “Because I’m looking at that and I said, ‘Abba, Father! Please don’t let them murder my wife! Please don’t let them kill my wife!’ ”

  ‘The Lowest Point in My Life’

  Life over the past 14 months has been full of challenges, tragedy, and miracles for the retired Navy intelligence officer from Berryville, Va.

  His trip to Washington D.C. to see President Donald Trump on Jan. 6 morphed from a patriotic outing with his wife into an FBI raid, 53 days in jail, near bankruptcy, and a federal indictment accusing him of seditious conspiracy, conspiracy to obstruct an official proceeding, conspiracy to prevent an officer from discharging duties, and tampering with a document or proceeding—aiding and abetting.

  

  Prosecutors accuse him of working with members of the Oath Keepers to prevent Congress from certifying the Electoral College votes from the 2020 presidential election. Caldwell allegedly recommended a hotel for members of an Oath Keepers “Quick Reaction Force” that was to be stationed near Washington to aid other Oath Keepers attacking at the Capitol.

  Prosecutors said Caldwell asked his contacts for help securing boats that could be used to ferry men and weapons across the Potomac River.

  “Can’t believe I just thought of this: how many people either in the militia or not (who are still supportive of our efforts to save the Republic) have a boat on a trailer that coud (sic) handle a Potomac crossing?” Caldwell wrote in one message, according to the criminal complaint. “If we had someone standing by at a dock ramp (one near the Pentagon for sure) we could have our Quick Response Team with the heavy weapons standing by, quickly load them and ferry them across the river to our waiting arms…”

  Caldwell says federal prosecutors have gotten it badly wrong, mixing up or intentionally twisting bluster among retired military men into some kind of sinister conspiracy.

  “I have now reviewed mountains of messages, photos, etc. in the huge volume of discovery provided by the government in this case, and I have not seen one iota of evidence that anyone had a plan or an intention to invade the Capitol, or to stop the peaceful transition of the Presidency, or to do anything of an unlawful nature,” he said. “My personal intentions related to January 6 were to hear President Trump and enjoy a safe and peaceful day with my wife and other American citizens.”

  Caldwell plans to go to trial in search of exoneration and restoration of his reputation. His trial was scheduled to begin July 11 in U.S. District Court in Washington, but it now appears the date will be moved back to Sept. 26. Defense attorneys are working through terabytes of evidence, including more than 24,000 video files turned over by the Department of Justice.

  “A lot of the things that they’re saying are horrible and seditious are mocking and jibing and poking fun with friends—in private conversations—sometimes was one person in a text message, or two people,” he said. “In fact, some of these things are with guys that are 75 miles away in Virginia, who are at their farms, drunk as lords, as they say, watching stuff on TV.”

  

  A Farm for Freedom

  Caldwell’s legal fight has already come at a steep price. The Caldwells sold their farm equipment and animals to help pay legal bills. He worries his multi-generation Shenandoah Valley farm will soon be lost, and has turned to internet crowd-funding for help.

  Through it all, the physical and psychological assault on his family that brisk morning is what sticks with him. He has difficulty talking about seeing his wife literally in the crosshairs of the FBI.

  “I will never forget it. It is seared into my memory. In my nightmares, it plays again and again and again,” Caldwell said. “Not them kicking me; it’s that image. It is the lowest point in my life. And yet, it might be the greatest miracle of my life that she was spared.”

  As he stood on the windswept porch staring into a sea of what looked like klieg lights, he was dumbfounded at the combat-strength force arrayed against him and his wife.

  An armored vehicle with a battering ram stood ready to punch through the side of the house. Agents in full tactical gear lit Caldwell up like a Christmas tree with the piercing laser beams from their rifle sights. He figured they were fully automatic M4 carbines aimed at his head and center mass.

  After throwing him down on the car hood, Caldwell said, one of the agents kneed him hard in the small of the back, right where metal hardware remained from surgeries. Agents put him in the back of a car, where he sat wondering if Sharon was still alive.

  

  Agents used a handheld battering ram to smash their way into the stand-alone garage where Caldwell used to store his 1963 Ford Thunderbird convertible. The T-Bird is gone, sold to pay for his legal defense. Agents broke into the barn, ripped things off the walls, and then “ransacked the house,” Caldwell said.

  After a while, Caldwell was taken back into his home and questioned. He spent two and a half hours explaining his trip to the Capitol, how he was not now, nor had ever been, a member of the Oath Keepers. He said there were lots of assumptions behind the questions, but few facts.

  “I had asked them five separate times, ‘What am I being charged with? What am I being charged with?’ They finally said, ‘Trespassing.’ I said, ‘Are you out of your mind? You come here and point guns in my wife’s face for trespassing? Where am I supposed to have trespassed?’ They said, ‘Well, you went into the Capitol.’”

  As it turns out, Caldwell never went into the Capitol. After Trump’s speech at the Ellipse was finished, he and Sharon slowly made their way to the Capitol grounds. Trump told supporters to peacefully go to the Capitol, so the Caldwells thought perhaps Trump was going to make remarks there.

  They got as far as the Peace Monument before Caldwell had to sit. He said his legs and back were causing terrible pain. So they spent about an hour snapping photos, chatting with the crowd, and admiring the 44-foot-high Carrara marble monument set on a Maine blue granite base.

  ‘You Can’t Believe the View!’

  Reports started to trickle down the 300-some yards from the West Front of the Capitol, where the president-elect takes the oath of office every four years. “People were up there and they were taking selfies and folks were coming down (by the Peace Monument) saying, ‘You can’t believe the view!’” Caldwell said.

  The Caldwells wanted to see for themselves. They slowly made their way up the stairs, with Tom pressing his hip against the railing for support. They walked through the giant scaffolding set up for inauguration, up near the platform where so many famous speeches have been made.

  “We did go up on … the inauguration balcony and we took a selfie,” Caldwell said. “Again, no police saying, ‘Don’t do it.’ No sign saying, ‘Don’t do it.’ And a crush of people doing it. And so you might say, ‘Well, maybe you shouldn’t have done that.’ Well, maybe so, but it didn’t seem like there was any deterrent to it at all.”

  

  Caldwell said he did not notice any rioting or violence while at the West Front of the Capitol. After a while, the couple began the trek back down toward the Peace Monument. After a rest, they continued the walk up Constitution Avenue to their car. By then, reports were circulating that Washington Mayor Muriel Bowser declared a curfew for that night due to events at the Capitol, just as Caldwell was near his vehicle.

  Caldwell said despite the contention in federal charging documents, he is not a member of the Oath Keepers, was never recruited for the group, and had no plans to join. He knows veterans who are Oath Keepers. His private text messages with friends were twisted into something they were not, he said.

  He told the lead FBI agent that morning that his opinions and speech were the real targets.

  “I said, ‘Look, it looks like there’s people in the government who want to prosecute me for bombast with a friend and private text message or something like that. This is all about things I think, and things I say.’ And he said, ‘Nobody’s going to lock you up or prosecute you for words.’ And I said, ‘We’ll see.’ That’s on tape. So it looks like I was right.”

  ‘Hell on Earth’

  The next chapter in Caldwell’s Jan. 6 saga took place in the Central Virginia Regional Jail in Orange, Va. His experience there was similar to reports from other Jan. 6 detainees in facilities including the DC jail who said they were subjected to brutal beatings, denial of food, and banishment to solitary confinement, a practice condemned by Amnesty International as “cruel and all too usual.”

  Caldwell said he became convinced he would not live to see the outside world again. He said he spent 49 of his 53 days in solitary confinement. He was denied his prescription medications, which led to him having seizures on the concrete floor of his cell and soiling himself. The guards seemed to enjoy it, he said.“I’d have seizures on the concrete floor of my dungeon, and the guards looking through the little bulletproof glass laughing, laughing at me as I’m messing myself,” he said. “And I’m thinking, ‘I’m never getting out of here.’

  “This is hell on earth. It really is hell on earth, 24 hours a day, no visitors, no medicines, no exercise. And my entire world was reduced to a 7-by-12-foot concrete dungeon with a huge steel door on one end.”

  The inhumane treatment started upon arrival. Caldwell said he underwent some kind of full body scan. He was subjected to an anal probe before and after the scan. “I guess it’s just to show that they can dehumanize you,” he said.

  One day a guard struck him hard in the lower back where his surgery had been. With the double handcuffs attached to a belly chain, he had no way to break the fall.

  “So I did kind of a face plant, I turn my head sideways,” he recalled. “And then someone stepped between my ankles and kicked me in the groin. Repeatedly. …I can now win (at) Double Jeopardy. If the question is, ‘How many times can you be kicked in the groin before you pass out?’ So I know the answer that I hope no one else finds out. But I have the answer to that question.”

  What happened next sticks with Caldwell, seared permanently in his memory.

  “The guy that was the kicker said to me, he said, ‘Where’s your Sky Daddy? Where’s your Sky Daddy? Gonna come down here and help you?’ He was referring, of course to Jesus Christ. I never want to forget it. I never want to forget it.”

  Occasionally Caldwell was allowed to take a phone call from Sharon. The phone was stuck through a hole in the bars, so he had to kneel to use the receiver. They prayed together.

  “It was just like an angel speaking from heaven,” he said. “And she would remind me of the importance of presenting my prayers and petitions to God with thanksgiving. So it’s not just, ‘Here’s my Christmas wish list, God.’ It’s like, ‘Thank you for another day. Thank you for my lovely wife, thank you for the chance that maybe I’ll get out of here someday.’

  “One time I couldn’t come up with anything,” Caldwell said. “When I first started, I said:

  ‘Thank you, God, that I haven’t been beaten yet today. But the day isn’t over, Lord.”

  One day Caldwell saw a guard with a cart full of newspapers and other reading materials. He spotted a thick book that he suspected was a Holy Bible, and asked if he could have it. The guard said, “No man, I can’t give you anything.”

  “I felt embarrassed. And yet I believe that God put the words in my mouth. And I said, ‘Hey, it’s just a Bible, man.’ I was embarrassed because it’s the word of God. But it was the thing he needed to hear. He moved the newspapers and by golly, it was a tattered Bible.”

  Caldwell snatched the Bible when the guard placed it between the bars. He never felt so alone. He felt hated, despised. “Nobody knows what’s going on and nobody’s doing anything,” he thought. Then God spoke to him as the Bible opened to the Book of Psalms.

  “I sat down on the cold floor and I just opened the Bible,” he said. “I just held it in my hands and it flopped open to Psalm 109: ‘The mouth of the wicked and the mouth of the deceitful man is opened against me. They have spoken against me with deceitful tongues.’”

  “I said, ‘God knows what I’m going through! He knows. I’m not alone.’ And I thought, I told him many times, I said, ‘I just want to come home if this is all that’s here for me. I give up. I want to come home. I’ll come home to you right now. Let’s do it.’ And then I said, ‘But you know what, I’d love to see Sharon just one more time.’”

  Just a bit later in Psalm 109, it reads: “Help me, O Lord my God; save me according to Thy mercy. And let them know that this is Thy hand: and that Thou, O Lord, hast done it. They will curse and Thou will bless: let them that rise up against me be confounded: but Thy servant shall rejoice.”

  A few days later, Caldwell had a hearing before U.S. District Judge Amit P. Mehta. Attorney David Fischer argued convincingly that Caldwell needed to be released from incarceration.

  “Judge Mehta, I believe he saved my life,” Caldwell said. “Because I was broken physically. I had no self respect, no nothing. I was drained. The only thing I had was just just a shred of faith that Jesus was there with me.

  “You know what, I saw it. I saw the light,” he said. “Just a couple of days later, I fell into my wife’s arms in the dark in that parking lot, on March the 12th of last year.”

  

  Hand of Providence

  Caldwell said he saw the hand of divine providence many times during his ordeal. He believes Fischer was sent to him by God, to rescue him from prison and defend him from the criminal charges.

  “He drove down and talked to me through bulletproof glass for about a half-hour,” Caldwell said. “He finally said to me, ‘Mr. Caldwell, look, I defend a lot of people in the federal system. I have some people lie to me for a living. You’re innocent.’ I said, ‘Yeah, that’s what I’ve been trying to tell everybody.’”

  It took Caldwell weeks at home to stop shivering from the cold cell. One of his ankles was raw and swollen from the steel ankle restraints. He began to heal. First the physical wounds. The psychological damage is likely permanent.

  “It’s like, I am a human being. I am not a thing that you could put in a box and shove me away and lock me up. You know, I have worth and I’m a person,” he said. “And this is not right. And yet it happened, and is happening.

  “And I am just so fortunate, so fortunate that God brought me out, I don’t know why. I’m forever grateful. I feel like I was born again.”

  Caldwell said he worries about the other Jan. 6 defendants still in jail, held without bail for more than a year. He knows what they face, day after day.

  “They’re going to be emotionally scarred by post-traumatic stress disorder,” he said. “I would tell you I had PTSD before they threw me in there. Now I tell people I’ve just got stress disorder, because there ain’t no post. This is part of it. The pressure is on every single day.”

  ‘Evil All Around Me’

  Caldwell said he was not part of any Oath Keepers plan to do anything at the Capitol on Jan. 6. He and Oath Keepers founder Elmer Stewart Rhodes III met very briefly at a local Virginia political rally the weekend after the 2020 presidential election, Caldwell said. Caldwell had just stepped off a hay wagon after making some remarks.

  “I’m approached by this guy with an eyepatch, and this was Stewart Rhodes,” he said. “He introduced himself …’You’re a nice guy, love what you said.’ And that is how I met Stewart Rhodes.

  “I’ve told you before, I know but it really needs emphasis, because the government has consistently fibbed about this,” Caldwell said. “I am not a member of the Oath Keepers. He did not attempt to recruit me. Nobody rushed me like Tau Kappa Epsilon at the University of Louisville, none of that.”

  As he works with his wife and attorney on his defense, Caldwell has had time to reflect on the past 14 months. Even with the passage of time, he said, his experience is still unbelievable. He calls it his “American Horror Story.” It is not something he ever imagined taking place in America.

  “I love our country. I can’t see how this is happening here. This is, this is Nazi Germany in the 30s. This is Josef Stalin,” Caldwell said. “This is Venezuela. This is Cuba. You know, in a way, it’s a little bit like the way Ferdinand Marcos operated in the Philippines. This is Pol Pot. It’s absolute evil. There was evil all around me.”

  As he works to regain his health and his good name, Caldwell turns his attention to holding onto the family legacy.

  I hope we don’t end up losing our farm. It’s the last thing that we have of monetary value,” he said. “Sharon and I are not rich people who moved to the country and got a farm and a McMansion. This is property that I worked as a child beside my parents who are in heaven, and my widowed sister.”

  

  With stakes this high, Caldwell admits there have been times he was ready to throw in the towel, take a plea and save the family farm.

  “This is where our family memories live. This is where our heart lives. And they really don’t have the right to take this from us,” he said. “But as Sharon tells me, she says, ‘You’re not pleading anything.’ And I said, ‘Yes I am.’

  “She says, ‘You’re not taking a plea deal. I don’t care if we’re living in the back of a car. We’re gonna fight all the way.’

  “And what more could you ask for than a beautiful, soulful Christian woman who feels that way?”

   

  Tyler Durden
  Wed, 03/23/2022 – 21:00

• Newsom Wants To Give $400 Debit Cards To California Car Owners Because Putin Invaded Ukraine
  Newsom Wants To Give $400 Debit Cards To California Car Owners Because Putin Invaded Ukraine

  California Governor Gavin Newsom on Wednesday proposed an $11 billion package he says will help residents grapple with the most expensive gasoline in the country – which has soared to a statewide average of $5.98 per gallon.

  

  Included in the proposal would be a $400 tax refund in the form of a debit card – which would only apply to the registered owners of vehicles, and would be capped at a maximum of $800 per person for those who own more than one vehicle.

  For those who don’t own cars, Newsom would make rail and mass transit free for three months.

  In a Wednesday statement, Newsom blamed the Russian invasion of Ukraine for the soaring prices.

  “We’re taking immediate action to get money directly into the pockets of Californians who are facing higher gas prices as a direct result of Putin’s invasion of Ukraine,” said the governor, ignoring both basic economics and the fact that gasoline began climbing in price long before Putin invaded.

  

  NEW: we’re proposing $11 BILLION in relief, including a $9 billion tax refund for rising gas prices.

  – $400 per registered car
  – 3 months of free public transitpic.twitter.com/XsAn0kuokP

  — Gavin Newsom (@GavinNewsom) March 23, 2022

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  Newsom’s proposal would apply to all Californians regardless of income, which could (will) undoubtedly spark a fierce debate among state legislators – some of whom have called for capping the rebates to those with incomes below $250,000, according to the San Francisco Chronicle, which notes that the proposal comes roughly two weeks after Newsom said California needs to break free “once and for all from the grasp of petro-dictators,” whatever that means.

  Newsom needs lawmakers’ support to approve the rebate plan as part of the state budget, so the payments could start by July. But that prospective delay sparked sharp criticism from Republicans, who’ve demanded the state provide both a rebate and more immediate relief by suspending the 51 cent per gallon gas tax.

  “July? Seriously?” Assembly Republican Leader James Gallagher of Yuba City (Sutter County) said in a statement. “Californians are struggling and Capitol Democrats are dragging their feet. How could it possibly take that long?”

  In January, Newsom called for giving residents “a gas tax holiday” by freezing, for one year, the inflationary adjustment to the state’s gas tax, which was set to take effect July 1, saving drivers about $523 million total. -SF Chronicle

  Newsom’s Wednesday proposal includes $9 billion for tax refunds, as well as several additional areas of relief, including $750 million granted to rail and transit agencies to provide free transportation for Californians for 90 days.

  Not everyone’s so sure.

  I voted for you but this is just a no. It’s a waste of tax payer dollars. No one is going to use public transit, we don’t have time for that. Also $400 is a short term solution that helps briefly. We need a long term solution. Go back to the drawing board Governor.

  — Michael (@iAmSchuck) March 23, 2022

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  Tyler Durden
  Wed, 03/23/2022 – 20:40

• Pentagon Scrambles To Restock Weapons Sent To Ukraine As Arms-Makers Cash-In
  Pentagon Scrambles To Restock Weapons Sent To Ukraine As Arms-Makers Cash-In

  Authored by Dave DeCamp via AntiWar.com,

  The Pentagon is scrambling to replenish stocks of Javelin and Stinger missiles the US and its allies have sent to Ukraine as US defense contractors are cashing in on Washington’s support for Ukraine’s war against Russia.

  According to open-sourced data examined by Politico, it is estimated that the US has sent Ukraine 1,400 Stinger anti-aircraft missile systems and 4,600 Javelin anti-tank missiles since January. US allies such as Latvia, Lithuania, Estonia, and the Netherlands have also sent either Stingers or Javelins to Ukraine that the Pentagon is looking to replace.

  

  Javelin missiles are made through a partnership between Lockheed Martin and Raytheon Technologies. Stingers are produced solely by Raytheon, the former employer of Secretary of Defense Lloyd Austin, who served on the board of the weapons maker before taking his post at the Pentagon.

  Congress has already handed the Pentagon $3.5 billion to replenish its weapons stocks as part of the $1.5 trillion omnibus spending bill that President Biden recently signed. Sources told Politico that the Pentagon faces some hurdles in getting the missiles produced as quickly as they want and is considering invoking the Defense Production Act.

  The Defense Production Act would allow arms makers such as Raytheon and Lockheed to cut the line and receive necessary components ahead of other domestic manufacturers. Pentagon spokesperson Jessica Maxwell told Politico that the Pentagon hadn’t made a decision on invoking the law.

  For now, Javelins and Stingers are still being made, and a source told Politico that Lockheed and Raytheon will ramp up production once funding from the government comes through. Back in January, Raytheon CEO Greg Hayes said the company could benefit from the tensions in Eastern Europe and elsewhere around the world.

  #Ukraine: Rare footage of actual combat use of the FGM-148 Javelin anti-tank missile system by the Ukrainian army. pic.twitter.com/lGJGIG7bMi

  — 🇺🇦 Ukraine Weapons Tracker (@UAWeapons) March 19, 2022

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  “[W]e are seeing, I would say, opportunities for international sales. We just have to look to last week where we saw the drone attack in the UAE, which have attacked some of their other facilities. And of course, the tensions in Eastern Europe, the tensions in the South China Sea, all of those things are putting pressure on some of the defense spending over there. So I fully expect we’re going to see some benefit from it,” Hayes said.

  Tyler Durden
  Wed, 03/23/2022 – 20:20

• Eat Lentils? One-Third Of US Workers Make Less Than $15 An Hour 
  Eat Lentils? One-Third Of US Workers Make Less Than $15 An Hour 

  A new study reveals a shocking truth bomb that tens of millions of Americans are struggling to survive in Biden’s ‘Build Back Better’ economy as inflation tears apart working poor households.  

  Researchers from left-leaning Economic Policy Oxfam America, an anti-poverty advocacy group, published a study Tuesday titled “The crisis of low wages in the US” and found 31.9% of the US workforce, or about 51.9 million workers, are earning less than $15 an hour, equivalent to less than $31,200. 

  “It’s shameful that at a time when many US companies are boasting record profits, some of the hardest working people in this country — especially people who keep our economy and society functioning — are struggling to get by and falling behind,” Kaitlyn Henderson, the study’s author and senior research adviser at Oxfam America, told CNN. 

  Oxfam America points out soaring food, gasoline, and housing inflation has made it difficult for the working poor to survive on low wages. They advocate increasing the federal minimum wage to approximately $15 an hour, above the current $7.25 an hour, where it has been since 2009. 

  Even if Oxfam America were to get lawmakers on Capitol Hill on board with their plan to increase wages, today’s impact of the biggest energy supply shock since the 1970s has pushed nominal wages higher, though, on a real – or inflation-adjusted basis – earnings have failed to keep up with inflation. 

  

  The Biden administration and ‘friendly’ economists have certainly shifted the blame for these stagflationary conditions on Putin’s invasion of Ukraine. However, much of the inflation was already at a four-decade high before the attack in late February.

  Meanwhile, last week, the Marie Antoinettes at Bloomberg published an op-ed telling the vast majority of America’s working poor to give up driving and eat lentils to survive the inflation storm. 

  Tyler Durden
  Wed, 03/23/2022 – 20:00

• China Stands With Russia In Controversial UNSC Ukraine Resolution That Doesn't Reference "Invasion"
  China Stands With Russia In Controversial UNSC Ukraine Resolution That Doesn’t Reference “Invasion”

  On Wednesday there was another showdown at the UN Security Council, where a vote on a Russian-written resolution which sought to acknowledge the growing humanitarian crisis in Ukraine was overwhelmingly defeated, with 13 Abstentions and only 2 Yes votes.

  The resolution did not mention the Russian invasion as causing the crisis, and thus was easily shot down by Western powers – though most interesting is that China was Russia’s only other “yes” vote. 

  Russia’s UN ambassador, Vassily Nebenzia, had claimed that the proposed resolution represented a statement addressing the Ukraine conflict that “is not politicized”; however US Ambassador Linda Thomas-Greenfield rejected that assertion, charging that the resolution was all about Russia “attempting to use this council to provide cover for its brutal actions.”

  

  Here’s now the vote broke down according to The Washington Post:

  To be adopted, Russia needed a minimum of nine “yes” votes in the 15-member Security Council and no veto by one of the four other permanent members — the U.S., Britain, France and China. But Russia got support only from its ally China, with the 13 other council members abstaining, reflecting Moscow’s failure to get widespread backing for its war in Ukraine, which marks its one-month anniversary Thursday.

  Further, according to the Post, “Russia introduced its resolution on March 15. A day earlier, France and Mexico decided to move their proposed humanitarian resolution blaming the Russian invasion for the humanitarian crisis out of the Security Council, where it faced a Russian veto. The are no vetoes in the 193-member General Assembly.”

  So it’s at this point clear that as the UNSC attempts to draft a statement condemning the ongoing Russian assault on Ukraine, China is emerging as a major obstacle. 

  As Reuters notes, for it to pass a “Security Council resolution needs at least nine votes in favor and no vetoes by Russia, China, Britain, France or the United States to be adopted” – meaning that UNSC gridlock on Ukraine will inevitably remain for the foreseeable future.

  With Washington now calling out China for its alleged behind-the-scenes cooperation with Russia on possible weapons transfers and sanctions evasion (according to the Biden administration allegations), Beijing is likely only to dig in its heels deeper in quiet support of Moscow at the UNSC.

  Tyler Durden
  Wed, 03/23/2022 – 19:40

• Chicago Should Brace For A Cold Winter: City Counsil Bans Fossil-Fuel Investments
  Chicago Should Brace For A Cold Winter: City Counsil Bans Fossil-Fuel Investments

  With record commodity prices, rolling power shortages, widespread demand destruction and gas stations that are about to run out of diesel, Europe is learning the hard way why leaving your energy policy in the hands of a petulant Swedish teenager is a terrible idea. Now it’s the turn of that other liberal disaster zone: Chicago.

  On Wednesday, just as the world is realizing that picking ESG over fossil fuels is a great idea until the electricity bill arrives, the Chicago City Council voted to ban city investments in coal, oil and gas companies in an effort to combat climate change.

  The measure was of course supported by Chicago’s “well-endowed” mayor Lori Lightfoot…

  According to a lawsuit, Chicago mayor Lori Lightfoot often claims she has the biggest dick in Chicago. https://t.co/RDl5L5EoOA

  — Clay Travis (@ClayTravis) March 3, 2022

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  … and Treasurer Melissa Conyears-Ervin, who manages investments for the city as well as its pension funds and oversees $9 billion in assets. The city plans to create a list of companies that are coal, oil, and gas-reserve owners, ranked by potential carbon emissions. The treasurer won’t invest any city funds and will divest securities or other obligations of the companies on the list, according to the ordinance.

  While this may sound like a brilliant idea to clueless and woke liberal snowflakes, it is catastrophic over the long run because it is precisely the “evil” fossil fuel energy sector that is the only green sector in 2022 and will likely outperform the rest of the market in coming years as capital flows out of such ridiculous contraptions as ESG and into the only sector that keeps humanity warm and moving. In fact, even Bloomberg staffers are starting to make fun of the “green” virtue signaling that gripped Wall Street over the past 5 years, and which has now cost most fund managers bigly as they all underperform the energy sector.

  pic.twitter.com/x9BOJHGwx5

  — Athanasios Psarofagis (@tpsarofagis) March 22, 2022

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  Alas, logic and reason do not work well in liberal fecal zones best known for their record daily shootings among blacks (which the liberal media conveniently ignores because Black Lives Matter… except when it comes to Chicago), and so instead of thinking at least 2 moves ahead, the city council ordnance came up with the perfect example of opposite day, warning that “the consequences of climate change stand to make Chicago a less desirable place to live and work, negatively affecting the fiscal and social health of the city.” It said that divestment will take place “as soon as practicable or in accordance with the written investment policy.”

  The nation’s third-most populous city is the latest government to take steps to wield its investment policy to fight climate change. Thirty-eight U.S. cities have divested from fossil fuels companies, according to the ordinance. Maine last year enacted a law requiring divestment from fossil fuels, the first U.S. state to do so. In other words, instead of being invested in names like XOM or PXD which have soared in the past year, their retirees and public workers have their money invested in toxic garbage memes and “growth” stonks which have lost more than 50% in recent months.

  Of course, stupidity is not confined to Chicago – in October, New York City’s pension funds pledged to reach net-zero greenhouse gas emissions across investment portfolios by 2040. That followed the New York State Common Retirement Fund, which announced in late 2020 that it may divest from the riskiest oil and gas companies by 2025.

  And now we wonder how long until widespread energy rationing due to shortages of raw commodities – courtesy of the sanctions imposed on Russia – will force the “riskiest oil and gas companies” to retaliate and leave such beacons of liberal virtue signaling as Chicago and New York in the dark and cold.

  Tyler Durden
  Wed, 03/23/2022 – 19:20

• Pharmaceutical Companies Expanding mRNA Technology To Treat Influenza
  Pharmaceutical Companies Expanding mRNA Technology To Treat Influenza

  Authored by Meiling Lee via The Epoch Times (emphasis ours),

  Unlike other vaccines, influenza shots are administered yearly, yet offer generally lower protection than most routinely recommended vaccines, from as low as 10 percent to as high as 60 percent. This season’s flu jab was only 16 percent effective, according to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC).

  

  Scientists had hoped to develop a universal flu vaccine that could fight against many strains of the flu and be given every five or 10 years, eliminating the need for annual shots. They said it could take eight to 10 years for the universal flu vaccine to be available, but over a decade later, the research did not bear fruit.

  Now, major pharmaceuticals are hoping to change the shot’s underwhelming protection and the current flu manufacturing process with the messenger RNA (mRNA) technology platform.

  If the companies are able to succeed in this, the “new flu jabs could prove lucrative or help maintain standing in a global market projected to exceed US$10 billion by decade’s end,” according to an article published in Nature.

  Dr. Robert Malone, who helped invent the mRNA vaccine technology, said that flu shots are a “significant commercial market in the United States” that is annually recommended to “drive a market need so that the manufacturing plants can be kept running and certified” in the possibility that an outbreak similar to the 1918 influenza pandemic should occur.

  “The government wants to be able to ensure that they always have enough influenza capacity in case the bad thing happens,” Malone told The Epoch Times. “So the way they do that is they create market incentives for manufacturers to produce seasonal influenza vaccines, even though we don’t really need them.”

  

  Fortune Business Insights, offering market studies and consultation services, reported that the flu vaccines generated about $5.86 billion in 2020 and $6.59 billion globally in 2021, and is projected to grow to $10.73 billion in 2028 at a CAGR [compound annual growth rate] of 7.2 percent.

  “The coronavirus pandemic naturally impacted the routine immunization programs and campaigns conducted worldwide in developing and developed countries,” the company said in its report. “However, Flu vaccination rates have gone up considerably during the pandemic owing to factors such as push from health experts/health departments as well as extension/expansion of various government programs that provide free vaccination against the flu.”

  Seqirus, one of the largest manufacturers of flu shots in the world and owned by CSL Limited, experienced a sales growth of its vaccines despite the pandemic, with the company’s chief executive officer reporting (pdf) total revenue of “over $1.7 billion, up 30% at constant currency” for the fiscal year 2021 that was “driven by the very strong sales growth in seasonal influenza vaccines of some 41%.”

  Differentiating itself from its competitors, Seqirus is developing flu vaccine candidates based on the next generation of mRNA technology, self-amplifying messenger RNA (sa-mRNA).

  Like mRNA vaccines that instruct the cells in the body to make a protein that stimulates the immune response to build up immunity, sa-mRNA also “instructs the body to replicate mRNA, amplifying the amount of protein made.”

  “This could enable vaccine manufacturers to potentially develop more effective vaccines with a smaller dosage and with lower rates of reactogenicity, underscoring the application in both pandemic and seasonal settings,” the vaccine maker announced in a press release in August 2021.

  Seqirus said it would begin clinical trials of its seasonal and pandemic flu vaccine candidates in the second half of 2022.

  Pfizer, Moderna, and Sanofi began testing their mRNA flu vaccines in adults 18 and older in 2021, while Curevac announced last month it was conducting a small Phase 1 trial in Panama.

  Moderna released interim data for the Phase 1 trial of its quadrivalent (four-strain) seasonal flu vaccine candidate, mRNA-1010 in December 2021, and announced that its two-dose vaccine produced robust antibody titers with “no significant safety concerns” observed, even at the lowest dose of 50 micrograms.

  

  While Moderna’s vaccine candidate may have shown it produced antibodies after two doses, it was not as robust in the older patients who were given the available one-dose traditional flu vaccine from Sanofi, Fluzone. After a presentation of its data to investors, Moderna’s shares tumbled 10 percent after a sharp selloff of its shares that same day, according to Reuters.

  In addition to the inferior antibody productions, all three various doses of Moderna’s vaccine elicited more adverse events compared to placebo in both the 18 to 49 age group and those 50 and older.

  In the 100 microgram dose (which is the same dose used in its COVID-19 vaccine), Malone said that “90 percent of the people in this study developed adverse events compared to 30 percent in the control group. Of those adverse events, a large fraction of them was grade 3 out of 4, grade 4 being deaths or hospitalizations.”

  He added, “So what we learned was that the toxicity associated with the mRNA tech that’s being deployed globally right now, it’s not just due to the spike protein … but it’s also due to the underlying components.”

  A former Sanofi executive, Gary Nabel, told Nature that mRNA may be a “tool that offers some upside potential” but the “big stumbling block is safety.”

  The lipid nanoparticles (LNPs) that encapsulate mRNA so that it can successfully enter cells have been shown to be highly inflammatory in a study by researchers from Thomas Jefferson University and published on Cell Press (pdf).

  “Overall, the robust inflammatory milieu induced by LNPs, combined with presentation of the vaccine-derived peptides/protein outside of antigen-presenting cells, might cause tissue damage and exacerbate side effects,” the authors wrote. “Because self-antigen presentation in an inflammatory environment has been linked to autoimmune disease development, this merits further investigation.”

  Effectiveness

  The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) reported that this season’s flu vaccine offered very little protection against mild to moderate influenza illness.

  In a study of 3,636 children and adults in seven states from October 2021 to February 2022, the CDC said that the vaccine was only 16 percent effective, a rate that the health agency considers “not statistically significant.”

  The effectiveness of the flu shot has typically been around 40 percent to 60 percent since the CDC first began estimating and tracking it in 2004.

  Breaking it further down, however, we see that of the 18 seasons that the CDC has been tracking vaccine efficacy, only one season (2010–11) was 60 percent. Whereas in eight seasons, it was around 40 percent to 56 percent, and seven seasons saw lower than 40 percent effectiveness, with the lowest being 10 percent in 2004–05.

  The CDC did not publish a report for the 2008–09 season but claimed that the vaccine effectiveness was 41 percent, and for 2020–21, the federal agency said it did not estimate the effectiveness of the shot because there was “low flu virus circulation” during that season.

  This season’s flu shot has been updated to include four different virus components that are either inactivated or live-attenuated. Two of the components consist of subtypes of the influenza A virus, and the other two are lineages of the influenza B virus.

  Experts say that this season’s low vaccine efficacy stems from a mismatch between the vaccine virus components and the circulating viruses. Yet Moderna shows that even in “well-matched years (≥90% matching), efficacy for all subjects ranges from 38-60%” noting that lower efficacy values less than 40 percent may be due in part to egg-adaptations.

  

  Despite this, the CDC says that as long as the flu season is not over, people 6 months and older should still get vaccinated, except when contraindicated, because it may “prevent serious outcomes.”

  Flu season usually runs from October to May and peaks between December to March in the United States. There has been a slight uptick in flu activity across the country with at least 2.7 million illnesses, 26,000 hospitalizations, and 1,500 deaths reported thus far for this season but still below baseline, according to the CDC.

  Evolution of Flu Vaccines

  The flu vaccine was initially developed for American soldiers in the 1940s and upon its approval in 1945, it became available for the general public a year later. But it wasn’t until 1964 when the vaccine was specifically recommended by federal health authorities to individuals at high risk for flu complications. Flu shots were later expanded to include people in contact with high-risk patients in 1986.

  By 2010, the flu vaccine was recommended for every healthy American 6 months and older, a move that was claimed to be based on “expert and organizational opinion” rather than on solid clinical data, according to an in-depth 2012 report (pdf) by scientists at the Center for Infectious Disease Research and Policy at the University of Minnesota.

  “The movement toward a universal recommendation for vaccination did not occur primarily as a result of a preponderance of newly published evidence; rather, changes were made in part on the basis of expert and organizational opinion,” the authors wrote.

  “Furthermore, the ACIP [Advisory Committee on Immunization Practices] have not always accurately reflected the evidence used to support the recommendations and routinely have cited studies with suboptimal methodology (eg. that use serology as an endpoint for infection among [trivalent inactivated vaccine] recipients) as supportive,” they added.

  ACIP, established in 1964, is a committee within the CDC, consisting of experts from the medical and public health fields, that makes recommendations on how to use vaccines.

  The 2012 report was not the first study to comment on the shortcomings of the flu vaccine. A 2010 Cochrane review analyzing data that looked at the effects of administering healthy adults with the flu vaccine, found that “vaccination had a modest effect on time off work and had no effect on hospital admissions or complication rates.” In addition, it also found that “inactivated vaccines caused local harm and an estimated 1.6 additional cases of Guillain‐Barré Syndrome per million vaccinations. The harms evidence base is limited.”

  In an updated 2018 review, the Cochrane authors examined 52 studies of over 80,000 participants but only focused on data from 25 clinical trials after they were not able to “determine the impact of bias on about 70% of the included studies due to insufficient reporting of details.”

  The authors found that the flu vaccine probably had a “small protective effect against influenza and ILI [influenza-like illness] (moderate-certainty evidence), as 71 people would need to be vaccinated to avoid one influenza case, and 29 would need to be vaccinated to avoid one case of ILI.”

  They also added, “Vaccination may have little or no appreciable effect on hospitalizations (low-certainty evidence) or number of working days lost.”

  Tyler Durden
  Wed, 03/23/2022 – 19:00

• Watch: Beverly Hills Smash-And-Grab Robbers Steal "Millions" From Jewelry Shop 
  Watch: Beverly Hills Smash-And-Grab Robbers Steal “Millions” From Jewelry Shop 

  After a series of high-profile ‘smash and grabs’ by organized retail crime in San Francisco’s Union Square and wealthy suburbia Walnut Creek retailers last year, the latest was caught on video in Beverly Hills.

  On Tuesday afternoon, brazen smash and grab thieves hit a Beverly Hills jewelry store and stole a whopping “$3-5 million in stolen watches and necklaces,” tweeted NBC Los Angeles’ Robert Kovacik. Accompanying the tweet was a video of the robbers smashing the street-facing window of the Luxury Jewels of Beverly Hills shop.

  #BREAKING #BeverlyHills: Owner of Luxury Jewels of Beverly Hills tells me the smash and grabbers got away with 3 to 5 million in stolen watches and necklaces pic.twitter.com/3W4zsaVXjX

  — Robert Kovacik (@RobertNBCLA) March 22, 2022

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  The smash and grab occurred in the middle of the day. Local news KTLA said police received multiple calls about the robbery around 1345 local time. Bystanders watched in disbelief as five people used what appeared to be hammers to break the jewelry shop window. 

  Peter Sedghi, the store’s owner, said he was in his office when he heard the sound of smashing windows. 

  “It literally sounded like gunshots, so I told my staff, I yelled out, ‘everyone down on the floor,'” Sedghi said.

  The retail industry has been decimated by the wave of smash and grabs in the liberal state, where progressive lawmakers have downgraded retail theft from a felony to a misdemeanor (via Proposition 47). Even with tens of millions of dollars of retail thefts in the last year, state lawmakers still don’t have a plan to address the crime wave. 

  Earlier this month, state Republicans failed to repeal Proposition 47 after an hour of debate and testimony. It looks like the smash and grab wave will continue this year. 

  Tyler Durden
  Wed, 03/23/2022 – 18:40

• 'Just Trust Us': Politicians Of The World Unite!
  ‘Just Trust Us’: Politicians Of The World Unite!

  Authored by Jeffrey Tucker via The Brownstone Institute,

  Vladimir Putin has given an address to the Russian nation that urged his country to be patient with the current pain. He said he is working to restructure economic life to deal with the ongoing disaster in employment, goods access, productivity, technology, and inflation. It’s transitory, he explained, a result of the war sanctions, and all the fault of the West. 

  He has this totally under control, he says. Just trust the government. 

  Many people do. People in cities are skeptical but he remains widely popular in rural areas. Meanwhile the government works to silence dissent, punish those who protest, and control the media. 

  This story sounds strangely familiar, doesn’t it?

  

  Biden’s White House daily urges this country to be patient with the current pain.

  They are working on ways to address the ongoing mess with inflation, declining financials, goods shortages, supply-chain woes, mail that barely functions, and a medical system that is throttled, distorted, and wildly expensive. It’s all the fault of Putin for invading Ukraine, thus necessitating severe economic sanctions and driving up the cost of everything. 

  It’s the price we pay for freedom! All we are supposed to do is trust the government. Biden has this totally under control. People are skeptical but he remains popular in some circles, mostly in large blue-state cities. People are suffering but it’s another country’s fault. Meanwhile, the government works to silence dissent, punish those who protest, and control the media. All this control is getting worse. 

  It’s getting creepy how government policies are increasingly copying each other. It’s not unlike the final global equilibrium in Orwell’s 1984: three large states that are indistinguishable in despotic ambitions, constantly trading places to demonize the other and urge their citizens to do the same. There’s always a scapegoat. 

  After the end of the Second World War, we had a sense that governments of the world were competing over economic and social systems. Which had the most freedom? Which nations were rich vs. poor? What kinds of policies do nations have and which policies are best at promoting economic growth, human rights, and peace?

  There was of course the Cold War, which pitted the “free world” against captive nations and an evil empire. What an innocent time that was! It lasted 40 years, which in retrospect seemed like mostly pretty good years for the West. We had a sense of what we were and what we were not. We had a model of what we never wanted to become, and that was a tyrannical communist state. 

  The changes from 1989 and forward fundamentally altered that perception. Communism went away and even the remaining communist empire of China itself opened up its economy to trade, ownership, and enterprise. That binary world was blown apart. Our lizard brains that look for easy stories were challenged by new forms of what not to be. Terrorism fit the bill for some years but it couldn’t last. 

  As we now look at the large world alliances — dominated by Russia, China, and the US and their respective allies — it is increasingly difficult to distinguish their policies in principle. There is a push in the US/NATO for a China-style social credit system. Russia uses brutal tactics for suppressing dissent that it copied from China. China copies the US system of industrial subsidies and fiscal and monetary stimulus. The US copies China in its lockdown strategy for virus mitigation. 

  Each government aspires to the same: total political and social control, while allowing just enough freedom to keep the wealth machine running to provide the revenue. Each country has its political elites and its administrative apparatus.

  What burned this copycat system in place were the lockdowns of 2020. They began in China, expanded to Italy, and were quickly copied by the US. That was a devastating moment because it told the world: this is good science! If the Bill of Rights and the Constitution in the US was not enough to stop this from happening, surely this virus could kill us all! Very quickly after that, most states adopted that very system. 

  They also copied the wild spending, the monetary expansion, the police state tactics, the vaccine mandates, the surveillance, the travel restrictions, and the demonization of dissent. All governments in the world blew up in size and scope. They have stayed that way. Now we are left with the results of massive and ubiquitous authoritarianism plus rampant inflation and debt, along with slow economic growth and goods shortages. 

  All these nations too have kept media empires that reflect the prevailing line plus a small dissident press that is barely tolerated and often fighting for attention and even existence. 

  What states in the world resisted? There were only a few. Sweden. Tanzania. Nicaragua. Belarus. South Dakota. Later, the most open states in the world were in the US: Georgia, Florida, Texas, South Carolina, Wyoming. These are now the outliers in the world, actual places of freedom. Other quasi-rational places are Denmark, Norway, and The Netherlands. 

  So far as I know, ten years ago, there were zero predictions out there that these would be the new free lands in the whole planet Earth. 

  In Orwell’s book, there are three superstates that forever rule the world: Oceania, Eurasia and Eastasia. Is this our future? Maybe. I actually doubt it. What we actually see happening is a global awakening for freedom. It’s happening. Slowly, but it’s out there. A major factor here is just how poorly the elites have performed. Their plans have failed and they have only generated poverty and chaos. The orthodoxy of control has generated too many anomalies to maintain public credibility. 

  Biden, Putin, and the CCP all face the same problem: they preside over systems that are underperforming and generating enormous unrest at all levels. The leaders blame each other while the people in all countries are left to suffer. We are just at the beginning, but this strategy of deflection could end very badly for the arrogant political class that imagines no limit to their power. 

  The great hope that freedom lovers have is in the replacement of one set of political leaders with a different group. That is essential and will likely happen, but it is only the beginning of a solution. We’ve learned in the last two years that the real problem is much deeper. 

  The political leadership in these countries has become a veneer of a problem over which citizens have very little if any control: the administrative state that is unelected and deeply entrenched in its management of the well-funded bureaucratic state. This state mostly ignores the comings and goings of political leaders; in fact, it has disdain for them. It is this machinery that has taken full control in most countries of the world. Any political change worthy of focus needs to deal with this quickly and completely. 

  What’s more, this administrative state has figured out a fabulous trick for getting around the legal limits on state action: it has developed a close relationship with the biggest players in the private sector, which can justify any level of surveillance or censorship based on the technical truth that they are merely private actors and therefore not subject to the rules that restrict governments. 

  This new system is a dramatic challenge to the liberal cause, which is now surrounded by enemies on all sides. The key battle of our times is not only about limiting the power of government, which has metastasized in every direction all over the world, but also its allies in industry and media. The liberal cause has very little experience in this area. The solution likely rests with a dramatic change in public philosophy: the replacement of the lust for power with the love of liberty itself. 

  Tyler Durden
  Wed, 03/23/2022 – 18:20

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