Authored by Maurice Forgeng via The Epoch Times (emphasis ours),

More than 70,000 wind turbines operate across the United States, and the U.S. government continues to approve offshore wind projects as part of its transition toward clean energy.

When wind turbines rotate, however, they generate not only electricity but also infrasound.

For Dr. Ursula Bellut-Staeck, this development represents “a huge problem for all forms of organisms,” including humans. The medical doctor and scientific author has been studying the health effects of infrasound for several years. She has been looking into infrasound as a stressor on the cellular level since 2015 and published a paper in 2023 on how infrasound affects microcirculation and endothelial cells.

Inaudible but Impactful

Infrasound is defined as a sound wave with a frequency of less than 20 hertz (Hz). The lower the frequency of the sound, the greater its wavelength and the harder it is to shield from it. Infrasound can penetrate walls, people, and animals.

“With ever larger wind turbines, the frequencies are getting lower and lower. This makes infrasound more problematic and dangerous,” Dr. Bellut-Staeck told The Epoch Times.

Today’s wind turbines reach frequencies as low as 0.25 Hz. The wavelength of this frequency is just under 0.86 miles.

Infrasound has another special feature. Humans cannot usually hear frequencies below 16 Hz, which marks the so-called lower hearing threshold. In other words, we cannot hear many of the sounds emitted by wind turbines. However, we may feel them in our bodies as humming or rumbling, as with a loudspeaker. The lower the frequency, the higher the sound pressure level (i.e., the volume) must be to feel or hear it.

Nevertheless, the mechanical forces emanating from the inaudible sound frequencies can have an effect on the cell and membrane structures, Dr. Bellut-Staeck said.

Transmitted via the Air and Ground

Wind turbines generate infrasound when the rotor blade brushes past the mast. The rotor blade pushes large air masses in front of it, which is then interrupted at the mast. Infrasound is then transmitted not only through the air but also through the ground via the tower and can penetrate houses. Buildings, therefore, offer no protection. “On the contrary: Airborne and ground-borne infrasound can add up considerably indoors,” Dr. Bellut-Staeck said.

Impact on Endothelial Cells

Infrasound could also affect microcirculation, the blood circulation of the fine capillary network where oxygen and nutrients enter the surrounding tissues.

More precisely, it’s the endothelial cells located on the inner wall of the capillaries that react to infrasound, Dr. Ursula Bellut-Staeck said. She’s been studying microcirculation and endothelial cells since 2004. In addition to transporting proteins, these cells have many vital functions, such as inhibiting inflammation and controlling blood pressure. In a rat study examining the effects of infrasound, researchers noticed endothelial swelling and outer cell membrane damage within three hours of exposure to infrasound with a frequency of 8 Hz.

“Since around 2015, it has been noticed that people exposed to infrasound and vibration from technical emitters have shown symptoms that correspond to microcirculatory disorders,” Dr. Bellut-Staeck said. This effect was particularly noticeable after smaller wind turbines were replaced by larger ones.

Reported adverse effects of industrial wind turbines include weakness, dizziness, headaches, concentration and memory issues, ear pressure, cardiac arrhythmia, and sleep disorders, according to research cited in Canadian Family Physician.

Numerous animals have also reacted to wind turbines. It has been observed that they leave the vicinity of wind turbines. One study published in Scientific Reports showed that many bird and mammal species avoided wind farms and the surrounding areas, affecting distribution and migration patterns. Place-bound animals such as horses, cows, and pets are said to have shown changes in behavior, including signs of stress.

“The symptoms in animals cannot be [attributed to] a nocebo effect,” Dr. Bellut-Staeck noted, as official authorities sometimes suggest. In contrast to the placebo effect, the nocebo effect describes a negative health effect from expectations of negative consequences.

Dr. Bellut-Staeck pointed out that other technical systems also emit infrasound and could cause major problems. For example, in or near residences, this applies to heat pumps, biogas plants, and gas turbines. However, she expects large wind turbines to have the most far-reaching consequences for the environment and biodiversity—precisely because of their increasing number and size.

“Such chronic and impulsive low-frequency stressors can never be compared to natural infrasound pollution [like high surf and strong winds],” she said.

Are Whale Deaths Connected?

In 2023, official data revealed an increase in the stranding and death of whales along the U.S. East Coast. There was a temporal and geographical connection between this excess mortality and the geological surveying conducted for the expansion of offshore wind power. As a result, 30 New Jersey mayors signed a petition asking congressmen to help pause offshore wind power expansion activities until a full investigation could be conducted. The National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration has stated, “There are no known links between large whale deaths and ongoing offshore wind activities.”

But Dr. Bellut-Staeck remains concerned by the low-frequency sound and vibrations of ship noise and other sounds. In the ocean, sound travels at 0.91 miles per second—four times faster than in the air. The depth of the oceans, therefore, offers no protection against sound.

“It doesn’t just affect orientation, but also the regulation of vital bodily functions,” Dr. Bellut-Staeck said. “The consequences for the animals here are also lack of energy, chronic inflammation, disruption of reproduction, excess mortality, and population decline.”

Vibrational Stress

As all organisms react to infrasound, Dr. Bellut-Staeck emphasized that “we may have a huge, previously unrecognized threat to the entire biodiversity.”

Dr. Bellut-Staeck, who does her research in Germany, where wind power is the largest contributor to the power grid, proposes that deep sound and vibration can act as a vibrational stress factor on endothelial cells. As many vital functions require intact endothelial cells, endothelial damage can have serious consequences, including contributing to vascular aging and atherosclerosis.

The German Federal Environment Agency, however, told The Epoch Times that it has not found any evidence that infrasound from wind turbines causes adverse health effects and that “how infrasound emitted by wind turbines affects endothelial cells has not yet been scientifically proven.”

International Studies Show Harmful Effects

Dr. Bellut-Staeck said there are currently no studies to clearly illustrate or prove the risk of infrasound, as most studies focus on acoustic, or audible, sound.

However, initial studies on the effects of infrasound indicate possible serious health problems. One study published in Environmental Disease concluded there was a high probability that people living near industrial wind turbines would experience harmful health effects due to anxiety, stress, and loss of sleep resulting from exposure to infrasound and other emissions. A German study also identified the toxic effects of infrasound exposure at a cellular level. Another study, published in PLoS ONE, documented brain activity changes following exposure to infrasound stimulation.

These studies emphasize the need for further research and a better understanding of the impacts of infrasound.

The latest round of ceasefire talks between Israel and Hamas in Doha has collapsed and ended in anger and finger-pointing, with the the Israeli delegation reportedly packing up and leaving in haste. This point marks several rounds of failed talks.

A senior Israeli official has declared that efforts toward a truce are “at a dead end” due to unrealistic demands by Hamas. The official further accused Hamas’ Gaza leader Yahya Sinwar of sabotaging diplomatic efforts “as part of a wider effort to inflame this war over Ramadan,” according to Reuters. This brings to an end this latest round of ten days of talks.

Netanyahu’s office repeated its assertion on Tuesday that Hamas had made “delusional” demands, something which has continually stalled talks and prevented any progress. The Israeli statement vowed that it will not address “Hamas’s delusional demands” but will “pursue and achieve its just war objectives.”

Netanyahu also brought the US into it, lashing out in the following:

Hamas’s decision to reject a US-brokered compromise is “clear proof it is not interested in continuing talks, and a sad testament to the damage caused by the UN Security Council resolution,” referring to a call for a ceasefire passed Monday night that the US did not veto, thus enabling its passage.

Hamas has levelled a similar charge at Israel, saying the prime minister is only interested in prolonging the military operation in Gaza. Netanyahu has for weeks made his position clear that any Hamas condition of an Israeli troop withdrawal from Gaza which is made part of a hostage release deal remains a non-starter.

Tensions and finger-pointing between the Biden administration and Israel have been on the rise. According to Axios in the wake of the truce talks collapse, “The Israeli statement angered the White House, which sees it as an attempt by Netanyahu to continue the fight that started the day before between the U.S. and Israel over the UN Security Council resolution, two senior U.S. official said.”

The UNSC has just passed a formal resolution calling for immediate ceasefire, and its adoption was enabled by the US abstention, which infuriated Israel. Commenting on the Israeli statement and reaction, one US official state: “This statement is inaccurate in almost every respect and unfair to the hostages and their families.”

On Tuesday there are reports of Israeli airstrikes on Rafah city…

Rafah now 😭💔😭 pic.twitter.com/sPcONb29Dg

— Abdullah Omar🇵🇸 (@Abdullah_Om3r03) March 26, 2024

“Hamas’ response was prepared before the UN vote even took place. We will not play politics with this most important and difficult issue, and we will remain focused on a deal to free the remaining hostages,” the US official added.

As a result of the UN vote, Israel canceled a planned delegation to the White House, which was to discuss the Rafah situation. The White House has called this an “overreaction” on Israel’s part. Israeli leaders have continued to signal that a Rafah ground operation is imminent, even as the US and other allies have warned against it at least until civilians can be moved from harm’s way.

Authored by Tom Ozimek via The Epoch Times (emphasis ours),

A Chicago Board of Elections official said Sunday that he had “mistakenly” left out over 9,000 mail-in ballots from one of the races in last week’s Illinois state primary election, sparking renewed scrutiny around voting by mail in the run-up to the November presidential election.

“In adding up the total number of Vote By Mail ballots the Board had received back so far, I mistakenly left out additional ballots” that came in by mail on the evening of March 18, a day prior to Election Day, according to a March 23 statement by Max Bever, Director of Public Information at the Chicago Board of Elections.

The race in which the apparent tabulation error took place is between two Democrat candidates for state’s attorney in Chicago’s Cook County, Eileen O’Neill Burke and Clayton Harris III.

Ms. O’Neill Burke, a former appellate judge who trails by roughly 14,000 votes, is widely seen as the more tough-on-crime candidate of the two.

“We should be booming, and we’re not because of crime,” Ms. O’Neill Burke told The Associated Press. “This is something we can fix.”

Mr. Harris, a professor and former prosecutor who’s the more progressive candidate of the two, has said punishments should consider racial disparities.

The Chicago race is open because the current State’s Attorney Kim Foxx, who faced criticism for being soft on crime, declined to run a third time.

‘I Traded Speed for Accuracy’

One of the campaign issues in the Cook County state’s attorney race has been the future of Ms. Foxx’s controversial policy not to prosecute retail theft as a felony if the value of the stolen goods is below $1,000.

Ms. O’Neill Burke has been critical of the policy.

“It doesn’t deter crime, it promotes it,” she said.

By contrast, Mr. Harris has vowed to keep it in place, if elected.

“If someone came and took my cellphone, is that cellphone worth a felony on your record? I do not think so,” he told AP. “We look at recidivism. We charge everyone appropriately.”

The Cook County state’s attorney’s office is the second largest in the country, after Los Angeles.

Mr. Bever said in a March 24 update that the attorneys for both candidates met earlier that day and agreed that ballot counting and ballot signature verification would continue through Sunday, with poll watchers present.

He said that election judges would be processing and counting roughly 13,086 mail-in ballots that had already been reviewed for timeliness, signature verification, and voter histories, with the vast majority of these received back via drop box on Election Day (March 19).

Around 9,000 of these hadn’t been counted in the initial tally, with Mr. Bever providing an update on the fate of the initially missing ballots.

“I made an error in reporting the number of Vote By Mail ballots received back on Monday, March 18 before Election Day that should have been included in the ‘received by Election Day’ numbers,” Mr. Bever said in the March 24 update.

“Approximately 9,143 Vote By Mail additional ballots received back on Monday should have been included in this ‘received by Election Day’ number that would be processed and counted after Election Day, March 19,” he continued.

The elections official said that the missing ballots had been secured in a receiving cage until they could be processed by scanning machines for signature verification and to rule out possible double-voting.

He added that the missing ballots were inspected, processed, and counted by election judges between March 22 and March 23, and are already reflected in the unofficial results.

Preliminary results, as of 6 p.m. on March 24, show Mr. Harris in the lead with 164,371 votes (52.14 percent) and Ms. O’Neill Burke trailing with 150,900 votes (47.86 percent).

The final tally could still change as the counting period lasts through April 2, with official results to be announced on April 9.

‘Sounds Fishy’

The incident drew scrutiny and criticism on social media, where a report about it was shared by the End Wokeness account, which pointed out that many of the ballots were from dropboxes, where postmarks aren’t required.

“Sounds fishy,” Tesla CEO Elon Musk responded to the post.

“Mail in dropbox elections are a joke,” the KanekoaTheGreat account, which has over 750,000 followers, posted.

“Chicago keeps having more problems. There’s no way to have confidence in election results when ballots are ‘found’ later,” internet personality and former candidate for the U.S. Senate, Paul Szypula, said in a post on X.

“Drop boxes also are sketchy and just invite cheating and mistakes. Democrat-run elections are rife with fraud and we see it happening more and more,” he added.

Voting by mail has been the subject of increased scrutiny and criticism following the 2020 presidential election, which former President Donald Trump claims was marred by irregularities and fraud that he says cost him a win.

A recent study exploring the likely impact that fraudulent mail-in ballots had in the 2020 election found that the outcome would “almost certainly” have been different without the massive expansion of absentee ballots.

The study was based on data obtained from a Heartland/Rasmussen survey conducted in December 2023, which revealed that roughly one in five mail-in voters, or 20 percent, admitted to actions that could be potentially fraudulent in the presidential election.

After the researchers carried out additional analyses of the raw data, they concluded that there was a higher percentage of fraudulent mail-in ballots. They now believe that 28.2 percent of people who voted by mail in 2020 committed at least one type of behavior that is, “under most circumstances, illegal,” and so potentially amounts to voter fraud.

A Heartland Institute research editor and research fellow who was involved in the study explained to The Epoch Times that there are narrow exceptions where a surveyed behavior may be legal, like filling out a mail-in ballot on behalf of another voter if that person is blind, illiterate, or disabled, and needs assistance.

However, research fellow Jack McPherrin said such cases were within the margin of error and not statistically significant.

The new study found that, absent the huge expansion of mail-in ballots during the pandemic, President Trump would most likely have won.

The Israel Defense Forces (IDF) confirmed on Tuesday another rare strike conducted deep into Lebanese territory. The strikes targeted “a military compound used by Hezbollah’s aerial unit” in the Baalbek District which is in the northeast of the country.

This marks the deepest Israeli strike inside Lebanon since the war began in the wake of the Oct.7 Hamas terror attack, at more than 110km from Israel’s border.

The extent of casualties or damage remains unclear, but it follows a similar February strike on the Bekaa Valley some 100km from the Israeli border, which killed at least two people. There are growing fears that if such strikes become more regular, it will signify a bigger regional war could be opening up.

Hezbollah has lobbed several missiles against northern Israeli communities as well as the IDF base atop Mount Meron over the past days. The Mount Meron surveillance base is about 8km from the Lebanese border and has come under repeat attack over several months.

In the overnight and early morning hours there were also large-scale strikes against areas of eastern Syria. While Israel frequently attacks Syria, some Syrian government-affiliated sources laid blame on the United States. According to regional outlet The Cradle: 

Airstrikes targeted a number of areas in Syria’s eastern city of Deir Ezzor and its countryside on 26 March, resulting in numerous deaths and injuries. “At 1:49 AM, American aircraft carried out several simultaneous air strikes targeting a number of areas in the governorate and its countryside,” Syria’s government-affiliated National Defense Forces (NDF) said, according to Sputnik.

The strikes targeted the Salhiya area in Al-Bukamal near the Iraqi border and residential areas in the Al-Mayadin and Al-Qusour areas in Deir Ezzor. 

But Israeli media has identified the IDF air force as behind the eastern Syria attack, reportedly targeting ‘pro-Iran’ assets. According to details in The Times of Israel:

The Israeli Air Force carried out airstrikes in the predawn hours of Tuesday morning in eastern Syria, targeting Iranian assets and operatives involved in a recent plot to smuggle advanced arms to West Bank terrorists, The Times of Israel has learned.

More than 15 people were reportedly killed in the strikes in the Deir Ezzor and al-Bukamal areas, close to Syria’s border with Iraq.

The strikes targeted assets belonging to Iran’s Unit 4000, the Special Operations Division of the Islamic Revolutionary Guards Corps’ Intelligence Organization, and the special operations unit of the IRGC’s Quds Force in Syria, known as Unit 18840, according to Israeli defense sources.

Various international reports have cited different casualty figures, but what is clear is that there were a series of large airstrikes. Iranian media said a Revolutionary Guard member was killed in Syria overnight.

Below: Israeli strikes in northeast Lebanon…

غارة عنيفة على بوداي في #بعلبك pic.twitter.com/FM7WQptCze

— kataeb.org (@kataeb_Ar) March 26, 2024

According to The Associated Press, civilians were among the dead, including women, children, and a World Health Organization (WHO) official: 

Dama Post, a pro-government media outlet in Syria, said the strikes targeted the provincial capital of Deir el-Zour that carries the same name, and the towns of Mayadeen and Boukamal. It said 20 people, including women and children, were among the dead.

The World Health Organization said one of its team members, engineer Emad Shehab, was killed in one of the strikes that hit his building. It said Shehab, 42, served as a WHO focal point for water, sanitation, and hygiene in the province since 2022.

Iran-linked insurgent attacks against US bases in Iraq and Syria have mostly quieted down of late, compared to their frequency and weekly occurrence last year in the wake of Oct.7.

In the meantime, any potential scenario where Israel were to move ground troops into southern Lebanon would likely spark a bigger war with Hezbollah, which could engulf all of Lebanon.

Authored by Jack Phillips via The Epoch Times (emphasis ours),

After a New York court reduced former President Donald Trump’s bond to appeal his civil fraud case, several legal analysts weighed in on the decision.

On Monday, a state appeals court agreed to hold off collection of the former president’s more than $454 million civil fraud judgment if he puts up $175 million within 10 days. If he does, it will stop the clock on collection and prevent the state from seizing the presumptive Republican presidential nominee’s assets while he appeals.

Greg Germain, a law professor at Syracuse University in New York, said that President Trump may have a strong case to challenge Judge Arthur Engoron’s ruling in February that he must pay $455 million in his civil fraud case.

“I think the $175 million reduction … shows that the appellate division has serious concerns about the validity of Judge Engoron’s decision,” Mr. Germain told Newsweek.

While he believes the judgment was “seriously flawed,” the professor said that President Trump will have a difficult time overturning the judge’s “findings that his financial statement was grossly overstated.”

“The standard for the appeals court to review factual findings is ‘clearly erroneous,’ which means that there was no evidence in the record to support the judge’s findings. Engoron was very careful to cite to the record for his factual findings, which were very solid,” Mr. Germain said.

But the judge, he added, “made no attempt to determine what portion of the profit was solely due to the financial statement as opposed to other factors” before handing down his ruling.

The former president “has some strong legal arguments to make on appeal,” Mr. Germain added. “Unfortunately for him, I think he’s so focused on denying that he did anything wrong that the strong legal arguments may be lost in his unwinnable arguments on the facts.”

The former president has said he did nothing wrong, adding that he actually undervalued his net worth when communicating with banks and insurers at the center of the civil fraud lawsuit. He said that the case is politically motivated, and that both the New York attorney general and Judge Engoron are biased against him.

Meanwhile, a constitutional scholar said that the bond for an appeal should be been reduced to basically nothing.

“The Court of Appeals may have felt that they can’t prejudge the evidence, and so to reduce the bond further would have been heavy-handed,” George Washington University professor Jonathan Turley told Fox News on Monday. “I actually think they could have reduced this bond to virtually nothing, because the amount set by [Judge Arthur] Engoron was absurd.”

In a post on social media, Mr. Turley wrote that the New York appellate court may “restore a degree of objectivity and restraint missing on the trial level,” referring to the Engoron decision. “Both Engoron and [New York Attorney General Letitia] James would have gained greater credibility if they recognized the obvious unreasonableness of the original demand,” he continued.

A former federal prosecutor now in private practice said that “judgments of this size are rare,” referring to the penalties imposed against President Trump. “What makes this one unusual is someone who is subject to an enormous amount of money and has to come up with it himself,” Joshua Naftalis said.

President Trump hailed the ruling and said he would post a bond, securities, or cash to cover the $175 million sum in the civil case. Ms. James’s office, meanwhile, noted that the judgment still stands, even if collection is paused.

Previously, the former president’s lawyers pleaded for a state appeals court to halt collection, claiming it was “a practical impossibility” to get an underwriter to sign off on a bond for such a large sum, which grows daily because of interest. The Trump attorneys had earlier proposed a $100 million bond, but an appellate judge had said no late last month.

Monday’s ruling came from a five-judge panel in the state’s intermediate appeals court, called the Appellate Division, where President Trump is fighting to overturn Judge Engoron’s Feb. 16 decision. Trump attorneys Alina Habba and Christopher Kise characterized Monday’s ruling as a key first step.

“We won,” Ms. Habba told Fox News on Monday. “You know, no … we didn’t win. You know when we’ll win? When we get this all reversed, which is what’s gonna happen.”

The Trump attorney added that she was “so proud” of the appeals court’s decision because it gave her “a little bit of faith” in the U.S. justice system.

The Associated Press contributed to this report.

The Taiwanese armed forces on Tuesday conducted highly provocative anti-aircraft defense exercises in the face of Chinese military “intrusions” which have been occurring on a weekly basis. 

Importantly, the drills centered on deploying and operating US-made Patriot missiles and anti-aircraft artillery systems provided by Washington. 

A military statement said the drills are a response to “incursions by Chinese Communist Party aircraft and ships into the sea and airspace around Taiwan” and added that “the air force will continue to increase the intensity of drills.”

“The aim was to verify the command and control of joint air defense operations among the three branches of the military,” the armed forces described.

Taiwanese President Tsai Ing-wen has meanwhile ramped up defense spending, and attended a ceremony Tuesday for the handover of two domestically made warships at Suao port.

“Over the past few years, we have steadily implemented defense autonomy with Taiwan-made warships being named, launched, and commissioned one after another at an increasingly rapid pace,” Tsai announced at the event.

“These achievements repeatedly demonstrate Taiwan’s capacity for domestic shipbuilding and proves our determination to safeguard our democracy and freedom,” she added.

In the United States, lawmakers are taking steps to prepare for a potential future invasion by China’s military of the self-ruled island backed by the US.

“Fears of possible conflict across the Taiwan Strait are spurring state-level legislation aimed to identify and mitigate the potential local impact of hostilities,” Politico reported last weekend.

“Since the beginning of the year, lawmakers in Arizona, Nebraska and Illinois have introduced versions of the Pacific Conflict Stress Test Act — bills that impose checklists of potential local vulnerabilities in supply chains and infrastructure security if Beijing eventually uses force to ‘reunify’ with Taiwan,” the report said.

#Taiwan, M109A7 155 mm tracked self-propelled howitzers on the move and Patriot battery stations being set up. pic.twitter.com/KaovVd6m3X

— Globe Sentinel (@GlobeSentinels) March 18, 2024

The Chinese government, for its part, has long maintained that it desires the island to be reunited through peaceful, political means; however, at the same time frequent PLA military drills have projected the threat of force in regional waters.

Authored by Frank Miele via RealClear Politics,

I’m sure everyone has heard enough about President Biden’s recent State of the Union address, certainly enough to know that the mainstream media thought it was admirable of Biden to scream at the top of his lungs that Republicans are detestable worms.

You also probably heard enough from the media to be certain that Sen. Katie Britt, who delivered the response to Biden, is a lying, detestable Republican worm. But as humorist Will Rogers noted, if all you know is what you read in the newspapers (or in updated form, what you see on cable news), then you are woefully misinformed.

Take the media’s coverage of Biden’s extemporaneous remarks about the murder of Laken Riley that were prompted by a challenge from Rep. Marjorie Taylor Greene.

First of all, Biden got Riley’s name wrong, twice calling her “Lincoln” Riley. That was embarrassing and drew attention to the cognitive issues Biden has exhibited throughout his first term. But somehow, the mainstream media glossed over that and quickly focused on an entirely manufactured “news” story that seemed intended to reassure Democrats that Biden wasn’t channeling Trump’s border rhetoric.

As everyone knows by now, Biden referred to the man arrested for Riley’s murder as an “illegal,” which angered members of the radical left “Squad,” who insisted that Jose Antonio Ibarra should properly be referred to as “undocumented.” This was just a silly moment of political correctness, as both words mean the same thing: Ibarra had no immigration documents because he was in the country illegally.

Yet the mainstream media went to great trouble to explain that Biden “regretted” using the word illegal. Chances are most of the Democrat-leaning reporters who cover the White House sympathized with the Squad and were happy to see Biden essentially apologizing for the word he used to describe the alleged murderer.

Much more importantly, the media’s attention on the linguistic sideshow meant that virtually no news outlet covered Biden’s truly offensive reference to Laken Riley’s murder in the State of the Union. Here’s exactly what he said.

BIDEN: Lincoln – Lincoln  Riley, an innocent young woman who was killed.

GREENE: By an illegal!

BIDEN: By an illegal. That’s right. But how many of thousands of people are being killed by legals?

Do you see what he did there in that last line? He minimizes and devalues the murder of Riley by suggesting that her life is not important when compared to the “many… thousands” of murders committed by legal immigrants or other Americans. This is the latest, albeit incredibly awkward, manifestation of a Democratic Party talking point: The immigrants commit fewer crimes than native-born Americans. The social science on this is sketchy, and in any event, it begs the question of how many more violent crime victims exist because of the Democrats’ lenient criminal justice “reforms.”

Leaving that aside, Biden’s rejoinder was offensive for another reason. We simply don’t dismiss the brutal murder of one person by proclaiming that it is statistically irrelevant. Each precious human life has untold value to God, as it should to presidents, and Laken Riley, a vibrant nursing student beloved by her family and friends, would still be alive if Biden and his political party had not made it easy for Ibarra to be in the country illegally.

It was another story about the human toll of illegal immigration that caused outrage in the media about Britt’s response to the State of the Union.

If you were to listen to the talking heads, Britt’s speech was the worst act of political suicide since Alexander Hamilton agreed to a duel with Aaron Burr. It was certainly one in a long line of responses that brought humiliation on a well-intended speaker. Britt’s performance was cringeworthy as she tried to emote rather than orate her response, and she was effectively reduced to a caricature in a brilliant performance by Scarlett Johansson on “Saturday Night Live.”

If the media hacks had simply gone after Britt because of her awkward delivery of a speech that reads fine on paper, they would have met no opposition from me. But with their usual overreach and partisan slant, the finest minds in journalism instead attacked Britt for what they called her “misleading” anecdote of sexual abuse suffered by women who depend on the Mexican cartels to get them across the border.

The story itself is quite short:

“When I first took office… I traveled to the Del Rio sector of Texas, where I spoke to a woman who shared her story with me. She had been sex trafficked by the cartels starting at age 12. She told me not just that she was raped every day, but how many times a day she was raped. The cartels put her on a mattress in a shoebox of a room, and they sent men through that door, over and over again, for hours and hours on end. We wouldn’t be OK with this happening in a third-world country. This is the United States of America, and it’s past time we start acting like it.”

When the media discovered the identity of the victim who spoke to Britt, they claimed that Britt had tried to make it seem like President Biden’s policies were responsible for the woman’s abuse. But if any reporter could pass a simple reading comprehension test, he or she would see that Britt talked to a full-grown woman who revealed what had happened to her when she was 12. Since Britt talked to her sometime after her own election in 2023, and assuming that the woman was of the bare minimum adult age of 18, that would mean her abuse would have occurred no later than 2017, four years before Joe Biden took office.

In other words, there was no attempt by Britt to blame Biden for this woman’s plight. Instead, she was hoping to elicit heart-felt sympathy from her audience for the plight of young women who fall victim to sex trafficking as they make their way to the U.S. border.

Who could disagree with her? Only Democrats and media personalities who hate Republicans and Donald Trump. The fact that Trump was supposedly eyeing Britt as a potential vice presidential pick probably made her an irresistible target.

Now, to be clear, there was one implicit error in the story Britt told. The abuse that Britt recounted actually took place in Mexico, and Britt’s reference to a “third-world country” suggests she didn’t know that. If so, that’s on her. It should have been obvious that most, but not all, of the sex trafficking of women making their way north from Colombia takes place before they arrive in the United States. But that is no reason to try to deflect attention away from the truth of what Britt was saying about the dangers facing women who are enticed north by Biden’s open-border policy.

Instead of condemning the cartels, however, the legacy media went after Britt. When she responded by explaining that her anecdote was accurate, and that the timeline proved she never intended to claim Biden was responsible for the woman’s rapes, the media was ready with its all-purpose continuation of the smear. As NBC reported it, “Sen. Katie Britt attempts to clean up her misleading State of the Union response.” But it wasn’t misleading at all, and she wasn’t attempting to “clean up” anything; she was attempting to educate the Fake News Media. An impossible task.

So, if you want to know what the State of the Union is, you don’t have to look any further than the double standard the media used in reporting the speeches by Biden and Britt. As we enter the 2024 election season, we citizens must pledge to look beyond the biased headlines and treat the national media with the distrust they have richly earned. Remember, if all you know is what you read in the newspapers or saw on cable news, you are being played for a fool. Get the facts for yourself, and then make up your own mind.

US oil prices have recently jumped above the $80 a barrel mark – the highest level since late 2023, sending worrying signals to the Federal Reserve and overly anxious White House. 

The surge in WTI has pushed wholesales gasoline prices up…

And worse, pump prices are set to accelerate even higher in the coming months to an average of $4 a gallon, which would be the highest level since the summer of 2022, according to Bloomberg, citing new data from AAA Automobile Club. 

A combination of issues is pressuring futures and pump prices higher, including the transition to summer-grade gasoline and strained domestic refineries, as well as concerns about shrinking global crude product supplies while Ukraine attacks Russian refineries. 

As we explained in the note titled “Dominoes Falling As Biden Admin Deals With Twin Energy Crisis In Russia, Middle East,” traders have been spooked by refinery outages across Russia due to Ukranian drone attacks. In the Middle East, traders are increasingly worried that Iran-backed Houthis could be several steps away from targeting Saudi refineries.

And now it should make a whole lot of sense why the Biden administration pleaded with Ukrainians to stop drone attacks, along with the White House pushing Vice President Kamala Harris out on ABC News on Sunday to warn Israel publicly not to launch a counteroffensive against Hamas in Rafah – because increased chaos on that side of the world would stoke higher crude prices – and bad timing for the administration, just ahead of the US presidential election in November. 

Devin Gladden, a spokesperson for AAA, which tracks gasoline prices, warned higher pump prices will force the working poor to make “lifestyle changes and be a focus in November’s presidential election.” Higher pump prices will also make Americans realize how much Bidenomics has failed. 

Higher pump prices will also complicate the Fed’s fight against the inflation monster and likely delay rate cuts this summer, which would undoubtedly upset markets. 

This comes as the administration is trying to refill the nation’s Strategic Petroleum Reserves after releasing a record amount to control last year’s summertime gasoline price surge. 

Since the administration is busy refilling reserves, it has exhausted some of its war chest to control price spikes this spring and summer. 

“If pump prices keep rising, SPR refills will stop automatically. While one cannot rule out another SPR release, the real sleeper risk is the Biden administration would revive threats to restrain US gasoline and diesel exports, especially if a storm disrupted refining capacity. The market, policy, and geopolitical implications of restricting product exports would dwarf those of the LNG pause. Supersize it and add fries,” Scott Modell, CEO at Rapidan Energy Advisors, wrote in a statement. 

Authored by Kit Knightly via Off-Guardian.org,

Terror attacks in Moscow, ongoing genocide in Gaza, and cancer in the Royal family are dominating the headlines.

Meanwhile, on the financial back pages, all over the world the implementation of Central Bank Digital Currencies draws nearer.

China, whose digital Yuan was the major flagship CBDC, is in the middle of an immense trial covering over 25 million people. This week they released new guidelines for tourists using CBDCs for the first time.

A journalist for the crypto-focused DLNews wrote of her experience using it, and while functionality might seem limited right now we should note that she talks up the “de-dollarization” aspect of CBDCs, aligning digital currency with the “multilateral world” plan.

Hong Kong has its own CBDC program, the second trial stage of which launched last week. They are developing the ability to use “tokenised deposits” to add $160bn to their GDP.

In Europe, following late February’s Digital Euro Conference (DEC24), the European Central Bank has announced the development of the “digital euro rulebook”.

In Sweden, the Riksbank’s e-Krona program published its final report on its CBDC pilot a few days ago. Coin Telegraph reports they working on making its CBDC available offline.

The Central Bank of the UAE announced they are launching their own CBDC pilot a few days ago.

That’s just the technical developments, saying nothing of the ongoing propaganda campaign.

As I already said, in order to appeal to the anti-Imperialist left, we’re being told that CBDCs will help the world “de-dollarize”.

Another angle is that CBDCs will help developing nations prosper.

For example, BusinessMagnates.com reports that CBDCs will help “revive Latin American economies”.

All this is just from the past week. It goes on and on and on.

The only slight hold-out seems to be the US, where CBDCs remain somewhat contentious.

The e-dollar has stuttered along in progress compared to the rest of the world, with contradictory reports from officials emerging all the time.

This could be genuine opposition from US Imperialists due to the threat of de-dollarisation, it could be a natural response to a far more cash-based economy than most of the developed world, or it could be a deliberate propaganda campaign designed to promote CBDCs in anti-America quarters.

Of course, it’s an election year state-side, and Presidential candidates Donald Trump and Robert Kennedy Jr have both come out against CBDCs. While RFK jr is doubtless sincere, this would not be the first time the “deep state” has tried to discredit an opinion by having Trump endorse it.

But America or no America, the global CBDC roll-out is coming.

According to the Atlantic Council’s CBDC Tracker, 134 countries representing 98% of global GDP are currently working on their own digital currency.

While an Atlantic Council report from March 14th underlines the importance of “interoperability”:

Central banks and international financial institutions are realizing that uneven and dispersed technological advancements in digital currencies could actually create further fragmentation of the financial system, deepen digital divides, and create systemic risks. This would undercut the premise of digital currencies, which are supposed to create more efficiency in the existing system. Fortunately, there are some new models of interoperability across borders.

Interoperability isn’t just an important part of the CBDC plan, according to the Atlantic Council, it is the whole point.

Just yesterday, reported by Business Wire, SWIFT published their findings on “Seamless Introduction of CBDCs for Cross-Border Transactions”:

Interoperability is critical to Swift’s strategy for instant and frictionless transactions. The cooperative has focused its innovation agenda on interoperability between digital currencies and tokenised assets to overcome the potential risk of fragmentation, caused by the development of digital currencies on different technologies and with different standards and protocols. Swift’s solution has already been shown to enable cross-border transfers and connect CBDCs on different networks with each other, as well as with fiat currencies.

As we wrote in 2024: The Year Global Government Takes Shape, interoperability is the name of the game – there is no real practical difference between 195 interoperable digital currencies and one global currency.

Global currency is coming. It’s not on the front pages, but that’s hardly surprising.

‘Soft’ data slumped today: Consumer confidence crumbled and there was a regional Fed rout – Philly Fed Services was really ugly, Richmond Fed Manufacturing was ugly, and Texas Services was negative for the 22nd straight month…

…as ‘hard’ data improved with durable goods orders rebounding and home prices accelerated once again (but that is offset by a decline in core shipments, which will weigh on GDP)…

Source: Bloomberg

The STIRs market focused on the bad news and pushed rate-cut expectations modestly higher (dovish)…

Source: Bloomberg

The stock market initially loved it either way – bad was good and good was good – but the majors could not hold on to their overnight highs and late-day sell programs took all the majors red on the day…

That is the 3rd down day for the S&P 500 in a row.

There were two sell programs in the last 30 mins…

Source: Bloomberg

Another day, another opening short-squeeze faded…

Source: Bloomberg

Mag7 stocks were dumped late on spoiling the party…

Source: Bloomberg

The longer-end of the bond curve outperformed today (with the short-end modestly higher in yield) with 30Y -2bps on the day, helped by a strong 5Y (record size) auction. The stronger than expected durable goods orders print snapped yields to yesterday’s highs but the soft-date weakness (and the auction) wore yields lower as the day went on…

Source: Bloomberg

After yesterday’s big surge (on net zero ETF inflows), bitcoin held on to the $70,000 level today…

Source: Bloomberg

The dollar ended practically unchanged, rallying back from modest weakness overnight…

Source: Bloomberg

Spot gold prices surged up to $2200 intraday before giving a lot of the gains back to end marginally higher….

Source: Bloomberg

Oil prices dipped ahead of tonight’s API inventory data…

Source: Bloomberg

Finally, Trump Media & Technology Group (DJT) rocketed higher today… only to be dumped late on, erasing half of the day’s gains…

Source: Bloomberg

…with the company with barely any revenues now worth almost $10BN at its peak today, according to Bloomberg data…

Source: Bloomberg

…and Trump owns 69% of it (but is unable to sell… yet).