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Wednesday, April 22, 2026

'China's "National Team" Dumped ETFs In Q1 To Cool Overheating Market'

 For years, and especially after the local stock bubble burst in spectacular fashion a little over a decade ago, China's "National Team" - a polite euphemism for the country's Plunge Protection Team - could be relied upon to step in and provide a lending hand - or rather buying hand - to stabilize stocks in the nick of time. Well, it may be time to rename it to the Surge Protection Team

According to Bloomberg, China’s “national team” has stepped back from its dominant role in the country’s biggest stock ETFs, pointing to efforts to rein in an overheated rally earlier this year.

Central Huijin Investment Ltd - a core unit of China’s sovereign wealth fund that traditionally led a group of state-backed investors used to stabilize markets - cut its ownership in several key exchange‑traded funds to below the 20% disclosure threshold, according to first‑quarter filings. Its current stake is unclear and won't be reported until sometime in the summer. 

The disclosures, according to Bloomberg, offer the clearest confirmation yet that the national team cut a substantial portion of its ETF holdings in January, as turnover hit a record and the rally turned increasingly speculative, particularly in parts of the technology sector. They also indicate Beijing is no longer just propping up the market, but is willing to drain speculative excess — a break from past rescue playbooks.

Central Huijin and its asset management arm may have reduced their holdings by at least half in flagship products such as the 200 billion yuan ($29.3 billion) Huatai-PineBridge CSI 300 ETF. The two entities held 42.6% and 40% respectively as of the end of last year.

Even smaller funds such as the HuaAn SSE 180 ETF, previously 92% owned by the national team, reported no single shareholder above the 20% threshold, indicating the stakes were cut across the board. 

Quarterly ETF filings only require disclosure of investors with holdings of 20% or more, a threshold Central Huijin had consistently met until local stocks erupted higher in Q1.

While ownership levels can fluctuate as others trade, the sharp decline in total ETF units outstanding during the period suggests the market’s dominant buyer until recently played a decisive role in the outflows.

Remarkably, some of the National Team sales might have locked in gains of around 50%, based on the rise of the CSI 300 Index from early‑2024 lows, when the national team began aggressively buying ETFs to stem a market meltdown, through January this year, when the selling likely took place. The exact returns would depend on the specific ETFs and the timing of those purchases.

The scale of the stake reductions may become clearer with first-half filings due in the third quarter, when the identities and holdings of the top 10 investors are revealed.

Morgan Stanley estimates the national team sold about $80 billion of positions in January and February. Analysts including Laura Wang expect the money to be used for investing in longer-term, more “strategic and thematic” ETFs.

“The fact that they have relinquished this dominant position in ETFs implies that they have much more potential to create upside in the market going forward, sitting on cash, while their power to create downside is now diminished,” said Cheng Hao, fund manager at Zhejiang Feiluo Assets Management.

And now that the National Team is mostly in cash, local stocks can drop again and the government will be there to prop them up again. Rinse. Repeat. 

https://www.zerohedge.com/markets/chinas-national-team-dumped-etfs-q1-cool-overheating-market

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Flesh-eating bacteria found in Long Island ponds can leave victims with 20% chance of dying in 48 hours

 A vicious flesh-eating bacteria may be lurking in bodies of water across Long Island, as researchers warned its victims face a 20% chance of dying within 48 hours.

Stony Brook University professor Dr. Christopher Gobler, an ecologist within the School of Marine and Atmospheric Sciences, announced this week that his team has found evidence of vibrio vulnificus “hotspots” festering in several ponds.

“Bacteria known as vibrio vulnificus, also known by the [Centers for Disease Control and Prevention] as a flesh-eating bacteria, is present and a risk in our waters,” Gobler told reporters Tuesday.

Christopher Gobler, SUNY Distinguished Professor, wearing a blue plaid shirt.
Dr. Christopher Gobler, a professor and ecologist within the School of Marine and Atmospheric Sciences at Stony Brook University.Stony Brook University

“It’s a very, very serious infection, it gets into open wounds — people who are infected with this bacteria have a 20% chance of dying within just 48 hours.”

Researchers have studied the deadly bacteria originating in the Gulf of America since it was first detected in the Long Island Sound in 2023, when three people died from infections.

Gobler’s team announced Tuesday that the bacteria has now made its way to several more bodies of water, including Sagaponack Pond, Mecox Bay and Georgica Pond on the South Fork.

Gobler blamed the bacteria’s spread on a perfect toxic storm of nitrogen runoff, algae blooms and climate change.

Blue-green algae blooming on the surface of a body of water next to a wooden and concrete dock.
Nitrogen runoff from septic systems is causing harmful algae blooms.MediaNews Group via Getty Images

The doctor explained that nitrogen runoff from Suffolk County’s roughly 360,000 aging cesspools and septic systems are leaching directly into the region’s waterways, causing harmful algae blooms.

That nitrogen then continues to feed the blooms as it warms and depletes the oxygen levels in the water.

“If someone’s immunocompromised, or elderly and they have open wounds in summer, you may want to stay out of the water,” Gobbler warned.

The Stony Brook University logo is displayed on a building in Stony Brook, N.Y., with two smoke stacks emitting smoke against a cloudy sky.
Stony Brook University researchers found a deadly flesh-eating bacteria throughout several bodies of water across Long Island.AP

Gobler also warned that other areas including East Quogue, Southold, and the entire western half Shinnecock Bay are filled with algae that are pumping shellfish full of a poisonous neurotoxin that is 1,000 times more poisonous than cyanide, causing major losses in the oyster industry.

Dozens more bays and ponds across Long Island are also harboring toxins tied to harmful algae blooms across Suffolk County, Gobler explained.

“We’ve had here on Long Island, for example, dogs that have gotten sick and even died just from drinking lake water,” he said.

No deaths have been reported on Long Island since the three in 2023, but researchers warn the risk grows each summer as waters continue to warm.

https://nypost.com/2026/04/22/us-news/flesh-eating-bacteria-found-in-long-island-waters-leaves-victims-with-20-of-dying-in-48-hours/

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Iran’s Truly Evil Twelver Ideology

 I was on active duty in the Navy in 1979 when the mullahs replaced the Shah and started their special Islamic revolution. I never served in Vietnam but was stationed with a number of veterans of that war, and was surprised when so many of them started repeating what became almost a chant in our unit: “Nuke them, nuke them. Nuke them ‘til the sands turn to glass.” I was working in a big hospital, and the chanters were mainly doctors and corpsmen. They were, as we might say nowadays, kidding, not kidding.

I knew they were bitter about the outcome of the war in Southeast Asia, but I wondered why they instantly saw such strong parallels between the Islamists and the communists.

Forty-seven years later, I finally saw it. It wasn’t so much religion or politics—rather it was the master word that creates intention, that dictates behavior, the word that didn’t need to be spoken because they had lived it—fanaticism. What they saw in the mobs that stormed the US Embassy in Tehran, they had already seen in the Vietcong. Go online to the famous helicopter attack scene in Apocalypse Now, and 10 minutes in, you will see what the corpsmen and docs that I worked with saw just a few years earlier.

I don’t know why no previous president did what Trump is doing now, but I suspect that it has to do with his finally respecting the true nature of the mullahs. They are Twelvers, and with Twelvers who hold political power, there is only one solution: Obliterate them militarily and politically. Trump has the allies and resources to do just that.

In the last month, I have made it a point to ask several well-educated acquaintances in different age groups if they knew what a Twelver was, and not a one did—not my two children and son-in-law, or my genius nurse practitioner; not my brilliant RN niece, my really smart barber, or my own brother, a well-read attorney—all just had a blank look on their faces and shook their heads when I asked.

Here at American Thinker, you will find that word. Andrea Widburg has written at length about the apocalyptic threat from the Twelver cult, but it isn’t widely discussed, and I think I know why.

First, the mainstream media does not want to suggest that Islam is in any way responsible for the behavior of the Iranian government. Second, there is a darker, very uncomfortable reason: The moral dilemma created by recognizing the Twelvers for what they are.

The West never really faced up to the Holocaust while it was occurring. It ended only because the Nazis were defeated. The Holodomor in Ukraine was barely acknowledged by Western politicians until it was long gone, and even now is given short shrift.

The West remained paralyzed by the failure of Vietnam and watched the Khmer Rouge massacre a quarter of the Cambodian population. In one of those exquisite ironies of history, Cambodia was saved by the Vietnamese army just a few years after the US evacuation from Southeast Asia.

Twelvers are different from communists because many Twelvers really do want a fiery apocalypse now, and believe their Hidden Imam will not appear without an ongoing End Times event. This is their justification for the destruction of Jerusalem, along with the rest of Israel, and of course, nuclear war on us, the Great Satan. Please believe the mullahs: if they get nuclear weapons, they will use them, maybe right away.

I’m convinced that when Trump and his war council were told that Iran had stored enough 60% enriched uranium to make 10 or 11 bombs, it was all the information they needed to proceed with a preemptive attack. That material can be enriched to weapons-grade in a very short time.

Anyone with any common sense knows that the threat was indeed imminent. Every politician who argues otherwise is stupid, ignorant, or intellectually dishonest. If you are a United States Senator, you may be all three. If you are a mere Representative, it goes without saying.

I hear the politicians and commentators calling the mullahs fanatics, to little effect. The word doesn’t work anymore, not in today’s political climate, when every Republican is openly labeled as fascist or extremist by the left, and the conservatives know that all the progressives and their AWFLs are insane lunatics.

The behavior itself—fanaticism—needs a better descriptor than the word—fanatic. I think it’s important because the administration needs to find a way to make the public comfortable with extending a particular kind of status quo, the kind that I think President Trump would be a genius at.

The president plays as much golf as he can, so surely knows about taking a mulligan—being allowed to take an extra penalty-free shot after making a terrible one. When it comes to negotiations with the mullahs and the IRGC, I think he should “take a mullah-gan,” extending negotiations way beyond what most Americans expect.

The Iranians are famous for stretching out negotiations for months, even years. They negotiate for time, and unfortunately, they’ve gotten both time and money from feckless US negotiators eager for a deal, any deal.

We have an opening for the perfect stalemate: keep the Strait of Hormuz open with free passage to and from every non-Iranian port, while maintaining the current blockade on Iran in the Persian Gulf and the Gulf of Oman. Continue to negotiate a permanent cease-fire with Iran, but insist that the U.S. blockade must continue until Iran agrees to every single United States demand, in writing. I think our president can come up with an itemized list that can be discussed endlessly, one demand at a time. He can make it last months if he wants, but I don’t think he will need to.

With no oil income and no foreign banks to use, Iran will be bankrupt in weeks. But keep the pressure on, because President Trump really does want to take all power away from the Twelvers, even if he doesn’t say so. He knows that is the only way to solve the problem, not only for us but for our grandchildren and their grandchildren.

How do we get the average US citizen comfortable with this strategy? It would be a wonderful thing if we could convince them that Iran is actually the Great Satan of the world right now, as bad as the Nazis were in World War II.

Twelvers are different from Nazis in at least one way: Unlike the Nazis, who wanted to preside over the spoils, the Twelvers believe that their own deaths bring victory and transport them to Paradise, where they can resume raping those virgins that they hadn’t yet executed. Allah decreed that virgins cannot be executed, so they are routinely and often repeatedly raped before their execution.

Yes, you read that right. This is a practice that has gone on in Iran for decades. Just go to Google and ask its AI assistant for the details, and you will get page after page after page of documentation. The god of the mullahs is both vengeful and exacting. Its laws must be obeyed.

Is there a way to get these truths into the minds of the American public at large? Are there clever people who will create scary videos and grim memes for the TikTok and Instagram-addicted of this nation? I hope so. Do we have the will to do it, and keep it up?

We are really better than they are, and their ideology deserves to be annihilated.

Image created using AI.

DrA is a mostly retired physician who has practiced rheumatology for more than 50 years.

https://www.americanthinker.com/articles/2026/04/iran_s_truly_evil_twelver_ideology_must_be_destroyed.html

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Dems attack Hegseth to advance a coup against Trump

 by Andrea Widburg

On April 15, thirteen radical House Democrats introduced six articles of impeachment against Pete Hegseth, accusing him of “high crimes and misdemeanors.” The charges are spurious, alleging that he violated the War Powers Act (which didn’t apply), that he committed war crimes because Iran claimed that girls were in a building on an IRGC base that the U.S. struck, and managing the military in ways they disliked.

Those articles may have been the acts of radicals, but the fact is that the Democrats have relentlessly sought to undermine Pete Hegseth at every turn. Some of it is purely policy-driven: They want mentally ill people in the military, low recruitment, a focus on social justice, not winning wars, and the triumph of overt enemies.

However, DataRepublican has a more shocking contention. She says the continued efforts to destroy Pete Hegseth are the prelude to an actual coup. I particularly noted this because Democrats are engaged in a stealth revolution against our Constitution and the Founders’ vision. DataRepublican, however, a more kinetic coup, which requires disposing of Hegseth.

I’ve pasted DataRepublican’s full thread at the end of this post. This is a summary, with some added information:

Here’s the premise:

Here’s the key point that she develops:

They went after him because every color revolution manual ever written says the same thing: you cannot topple a government unless the security forces defect. And a loyal Secretary of Defense is the one person who makes sure they don't.

Whoa! But here’s the proof:

It begins with a study from Erica Chenoweth and Maria Stephan examining 323 regime-change campaigns. It says the obvious: If a leader’s security forces abandon him, he’s 46 times more vulnerable.

Armed with that information, Maria Stephan became the Chief Organizer of the Horizons Project. That organization’s mission is to “Strengthen connections and collective action among US pro-democracy movements and networks.” It is steeped in the language of leftism.

Last summer, Stephan created a training video explaining how to destroy existing institutions. Here’s the key quotation:

The third attribute of successful campaigns, they feature defections and loyalty shifts within key institutional pillars. ... Security forces refused to obey orders to repress protesters.

The same presentation explains that one of the ways to destroy the government is to destroy the loyalty that the military and police forces have to the administration:

Servants are responsible for executing policies and basically getting anything done. Security forces wield coercive power. These pillars and their social, political, and economic power ultimately prop up regimes. And when they crack and power within them shifts, the entire edifice can crumble.

Additionally, Gene Sharp’s message still resonates with this crew.

If you don’t know who Gene Sharp is (I didn’t), here’s the skinny: Sharp, who was a conscientious objector during the Korean War and died at 90 in 2018, created a handbook for non-violent resistance to government, which included 198 suggested methods. Because he allegedly worked with our government to help bring down other governments, the left attacked him—right up until Noam Chomsky and Howard Zinn vigorously defended him.

Hardy Merriman, who worked for Sharp and helped write the CANVAS regime-change handbook, created a domestic version that highlights that military members swear an oath to the Constitution, not the president. Keep that point in mind.

Two months after Trump’s November 2024 victory, the august Brookings Institution published its Democracy Playbook 2025. It discusses “dealing with security forces” and looks at color revolution case studies. In a footnote, the playbook explicitly points to an AP article entitled “Pete Hegseth had been flagged by fellow service member as possible ‘Insider Threat.’”

On November 11, 2025, the National Lawyers Guild, a hard-left institution, put together a guidebook for service members wanting to know the finer points of “refusing illegal orders.” One day later, the Guild called the U.S. action in Venezuela a war crime and called for officers to disobey orders.

Then, on November 18, 2025, Mark Kelly and five others published their infamous video telling service members to disobey Trump’s orders. These were not random politicians.

According to DataRepublican, those “five others” were all recruited through the New Politics Leadership Academy, a 501(c)(3) nonprofit that works to train military veterans, social workers, Peace Corps volunteers, and others to get into politics. The organization says it’s nonpartisan, but its “graduates” are overwhelmingly Democrat.

Just as the playbook predicted, the administration responded harshly to the video. Its efforts to punish them failed, with a grand jury declining to indict anyone. It was a cause célèbres.

Ironically, Democrats have ignored Daniel Driscoll, the Secretary of the Army, who has been more rigorous about disrupting the Biden status quo. DataRepublican posits that this is because Driscoll is chummy with many Democrats, or, at least, his wife is. (Leftist wives are often a problem; e.g., the wives of Paul Krugman, Joe Kent, Jake Tapper, Colin Kaepernick, etc.)

Driscoll is also embedded in professional networks, associations that make him vulnerable to defecting from the vision that Trump and Hegseth have for the military (a fighting machine, not a social justice experiment). Hegseth has no loyalty to these professional institutions. He’s loyal only to the military.

There are a few more details DataRepublican provides about organizers out to get Hegseth, but that’s the gist of it. The conclusion is that the key leftist institutions that Hegseth named in DataRepublican’s first tweet knew he was a threat, not to them specifically, but to their plans, and they instantly swung into action to put them into effect.

If getting Republicans on the same page is like herding cats (see, e.g., the failed SAVE America Act, which ~70% of all Americans support), Democrats are like the Borg: They have a single sensibility, and they can and will do whatever it takes to achieve their goal.

Image created using AI.

The tweets


https://www.americanthinker.com/blog/2026/04/dems_attack_hegseth_to_advance_a_coup_against_trump.html

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