Late last week, the CEO of Flexport – one of largest US supply-chain logistics operators – warned that “the biggest wild card in the presidential election that nobody’s talking about? The looming port strike that could shut down all East and Gulf Coast ports just 36 days before the election.”

The biggest wild card in the presidential election that nobody’s talking about? The looming port strike that could shut down all East and Gulf Coast ports just 36 days before the election. 🧵

— Ryan Petersen (@typesfast) September 18, 2024

With just over a week to go until D-Day, authorities are gearing up as a threatened strike by dockworkers at ports along the East Coast and Gulf Coast draws closer.

The Port Authority of New York and New Jersey is “coordinating with partners across the supply chain to prepare for any impacts” from a possible work stoppage by workers represented by the International Longshoremen’s Association as they negotiate with the United States Maritime Alliance (USMX), a Port Authority spokesperson told CBS MoneyWatch on Friday.

“We urge both sides to find common ground and keep the cargo flowing for the good of the national economy,” added the spokesperson, noting that $240 billion in goods move through the two ports each year and that such trade supports more than 600,000 local jobs.

According to the union, a strike would affect ports from Maine to Texas, and cripple supply-chains worse than the immediate aftermath of the covid shutdown. A stoppage – the first since 1977 – could involve up to 45,000 workers at ports that account for roughly 60% of U.S. shipping traffic, leading to a major disruption of shipments, Oxford Economics said in a report.

“Even a two-week strike could disrupt supply chains until 2025,” Grace Zwemmer, associate U.S. economist with Oxford, said in the report.

As Rabobank’s Michael Every adds, “US businesses could miss the key Black Friday/Cyber Monday peak sales period. Port trade is around $2.12trn, and 72% would grind to a halt, a one-day strike reportedly taking six days to recover from, a one-week strike in October creating bottlenecks until mid-November, not factoring in Red Sea disruptions caused by the not-terrorist Houthis.”

If goods are then forced to shift to the US West Coast ports, Rabobank speculates that Asia-US freight rates could leap to $20,000, far above the peak seen in the last supply-chain crisis. That would mean firms with low margins might opt not to import at all, creating empty shelves.

The ILA has threatened to strike if a new labor agreement with East Coast port terminal and shipping companies represented by the USMX is not reached by the time the current contract expires on October 1. Although the sides continue to negotiate, the odds of a rare strike that threatens to shut down some of the nation’s busiest ports are rising.

“There will be a shutdown, assuming that there’s is no intervention, at midnight on Monday the 30th,” Bethann Rooney, director of the Port Authority of New York and New Jersey, the nation’s second-busiest port, told a briefing earlier in the week.

Should that occur, all activity loading and unloading cargo containers and automobiles would come to a standstill, while cruise ships would continue to operate, Rooney said.

The Port Authority isn’t involved in the bargaining between the ILA and USMX, bur rather leases space at the ports to shipping companies. Terminal operators and ocean carriers are “working to bring in as many ships as possible” ahead of a potential walkout, said Rooney.

Those steps include “working with truckers and the rail carriers to get as much cargo out as humanly possible, as quickly as possible,” the port director said.

The two ports are currently unloading about 20 large container ships a week, and they expect 150,000 containers to be unloaded ahead of the strike deadline, Rooney said.

“At the same time, ocean carriers are beginning to put essentially embargoes on export cargo “so that it doesn’t come into East and Gulf coast ports and then wind up sitting there,” she said.

Container ships carrying imports bound for Newark and Elizabeth in New Jersey and Staten Island in New York City will end up moored at specified spots in New York Harbor or off the coast during the strike, or remain at sea until they can come in. The Coast Guard and U.S. customs and Border Protection would oversee arriving ships at the port facilities once a strike was over.

The ILA union walked away from the bargaining table in June, declaring that a type of automation introduced at the Port of Mobile in Alabama was in violation of the current contract.

Based in North Bergen, New Jersey, the ILA represents 85,000 workers across the East and Gulf Coasts. The union is demanding sizable wage increases for its members as well as protection from “job-killing” automation.

The USMX has said it has not been able to schedule new bargaining sessions with the union.

“It is disappointing that we have reached this point where the ILA is unwilling to reopen dialogue unless all of its demands are met,” USMX said Tuesday in an update. “The only way to resolve this impasse is to resume negotiations, which we are willing to do at any time.” 

While the Taft-Hartley Act gives the president the power to impose an 80-day cooling off period to delay a strike, Biden has said he doesn’t intend to use it here given the impact doing so could have on union votes; although with the Teamsters refusing to endorse Kamala despite the union’s traditional Democrat support (as the majority of its members polled back Trump) that may be a moot point.

On the other hand, Every warns that the kind of strike described above would likely cripple Harris’ chances come 5 November.

Back in May, Israel’s Knesset voted unanimously to ban the Al Jazeera broadcast network. The Israeli order effectively shut down all Al Jazeera broadcasts in Israel.

Authorities soon after raided its offices and confiscated equipment at the channel’s Jerusalem HQ inside the Ambassador Hotel. The Qatar-based news network has said it was unfairly targeted for the ‘crime’ of mere journalism, as it tends to given in-depth coverage to the plight of Palestinians. But West Bank offices remained open, until this weekend.

Israeli officials have long accused the channel of showing sympathies with and support for Hamas and Palestinian militants. Al Jazeera correspondents have remained among the few in the world to continue reporting from on the ground in war-ravaged Gaza, despite the extreme dangers. And some have been killed during their live coverage.

The Israel vs. Al Jazeera rivalry has continued as on Sunday the network confirmed that Israeli soldiers (IDF) raided its offices in the central West Bank city of Ramallah. 

The bureau chief Walid Omary and other staff members were reportedly briefly detained while live on air while a military court order was presented to them. The IDF action appears to be part of the ongoing enforcement of the Al Jazeera ban by Israel which began in May.

CNN writes, “During the video broadcast by Al Jazeera, a soldier can be heard informing Omar of a military order to close Al Jazeera’s office for 45 days.”

“Reading the military order given to him on air, Omary said staff members had only ten minutes to take their personal belongings and cameras and vacate the office,” the report continues.

The Ramallah office has been in operation for decades, and had since the spring become a focal point of Al Jazeera’s regional operations and coverage following the May closure of its Jerusalem HQ. Much equipment had also been moved there.

Al Jazeera has long had offices in the West Bank and Gaza, and has provided 24-hour news coverage in English and Arabic of the Gaza war going back to Oct.7. The network’s website also carries frequent, round-the-clock updates of regional developments. Its camera crews have also been capturing Israeli air raids on the Gaza Strip in real time, sometimes with buildings coming down in the very moments live shots are rolling.

Watch the moment Israeli soldiers enter AJ’s Ramallah newsroom while live on the air…

This is the moment when Israeli soldiers invaded Al Jazeera’s office in Ramallah, stealing our equipment and attempting to silence the truth. But our brave colleagues stood firm in the face of this aggression, defending the right to report. Journalism is not a crime! pic.twitter.com/NIBd8OUHgU

— Mohamed Moawad (@moawady) September 22, 2024

Almost two years ago, in May of 2022, a popular senior Al Jazeera journalist, Shireen Abu Akleh, was shot dead while reporting on the scene of an Israeli military raid in the West Bank town of Jenin. As a Palestinian Christian, she was given a church burial attended by thousands, but the procession with the coffin was later attacked by Israeli police, in an incident that garnered international media attention.

Abu Akleh also held American citizenship, and so her killing resulted in strong statements of condemnation from the White House. From there, tensions between Al Jazeera and the Israeli government have only gotten worse.

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

Acting Secret Service Director Ronald Rowe said Friday that some Secret Service agents who were involved in securing the July 13 rally site where former President Donald Trump survived an assassination attempt face discipline.

In a Friday news conference in Washington, Rowe did not go into details about the staff or possible punishments that could be meted out. He said, however, that he hasn’t “asked for anybody to retire,” adding that reports saying otherwise “are false.”

The “disciplinary process” will “be handled in accordance” with the Secret Service’s “table of penalties” and headed by its internal office of integrity, Rowe said, adding that he cannot comment publicly on specific details.

Rowe’s statements followed the Secret Service’s release of a report on Friday that details a series of “communications deficiencies” before the shooting by 20-year-old Thomas Matthew Crooks, who was shot by a Secret Service counter-sniper after firing eight rounds in Trump’s direction from the roof of a building less than 150 yards from where Trump was speaking.

A breakdown in security at the rally site was especially problematic for Trump’s protective detail, “who were not apprised of how focused state and local law enforcement were in the minutes leading up to the attack on locating the suspicious subject,” the report said. Had they known, the report says, they could have made the decision to relocate Trump while the search was in process.

The report makes clear that the Secret Service knew even before the shooting that the rally site posed a security challenge, Rowe said.

“While some members of the advance team were very diligent, there was complacency on the part of others that led to a breach of security protocols,” he said.

“[It’s] important that we hold ourselves accountable for the failures of July 13th, and that we use the lessons learned to make sure that we do not have another failure like this again,” Rowe said, calling it a “mission failure.”

In the midst of the July 13 shooting and an alleged assassination attempt targeting Trump earlier this week, the “threat environment” is elevated and “is not going to evaporate anytime soon,” Rowe said.

“We’re in the risk mitigation business,“ he said. “We are not in the risk elimination business. And so we have to be able to have the personnel, the assets, and be able to spread those out for an indefinite period of time” in case a similar situation emerges, he said.

The Secret Service’s own investigation is one of numerous inquiries, including by Congress and a watchdog probe by the Department of Homeland Security’s inspector general’s office.

Former Secret Service Director Kimberly Cheatle resigned in July after she faced criticism over the incident and an hours-long session in front of a congressional panel.

Rowe has said the July shooting and Sunday’s episode, in which 58-year-old Ryan Wesley Routh was arrested after Secret Service agents detected a rifle poking through shrubbery lining the West Palm Beach, Florida, golf course where Trump was playing, underscore the need for a paradigm shift in how the agency protects public officials.

The protective agency has started to increase its security around Trump, Rowe said on Friday, noting on multiple occasions that the former president is receiving the highest levels of Secret Service protection. Both Democrat and Republican lawmakers have called for more Secret Service resources.

The Associated Press contributed to this report.

In a surprise to no one, 741 ‘high-ranking national security officials’ have endorsed Kamala Harris’ bid for the White House – with some suggesting that former President Trump has a “scary authoritarian streak.’

“Vice President Harris has all the leadership qualities needed to be a strong commander in chief. She’s prepared. She’s strategic. She’s understands all sides of an issue,” Navy Rear Admiral Michael Smith told The Hill. “We saw as much during the debate.”

“As we’ve seen for nearly a decade, however, former President Trump has none of those qualities, and he has a scary authoritarian streak,” Smith continued.

741 former high-ranking national security officials (233 general and flag officers) signed letter endorsing Kamala Harris for president. 15 four-star generals, 10 former cabinet secretaries, 10 service secretaries, and Repub leaders who served under Trump. https://t.co/I0clmLZOAL

— Jennifer Griffin (@JenGriffinFNC) September 22, 2024

The Deep Staters join the likes of Dick Cheney and, more recently, an IRS-affilliated union in their support of the VP. They’re also in alighment with Iran – which offered ‘stolen, non-public’ Trump material to the (then) Biden-Harris campaign. Russian President Vladimir Putin recently joked that he’s thrown his support behind her as well.

“We do not agree on everything, but we all adhere to two fundamental principles,” reads the letter from the NatSec officials. “First, we believe America’s national security requires a serious and capable Commander-in-Chief. Second, we believe American democracy is invaluable.”

“Each generation has a responsibility to defend it,” the letter continues. “That is why we, the undersigned, proudly endorse Kamala Harris to be the next President of the United States.”

The signatories praise Harris for her contrast to Trump, who they call “impulsive and ill-informed,” citing his relations with Xi Jinping, Vladimir Putin, and Kim Jong Un.

“Our endorsement of Vice President Harris is an endorsement of freedom and an act of patriotism. It is an endorsement of democratic ideals, of competence, and of relentless optimism in America’s future,” the letter concludes.

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

The U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC) said on Sept. 20 that it plans to pursue sanctions against Elon Musk for not attending court-ordered testimony in connection with the agency’s investigation into his $44 billion acquisition of Twitter.

The SEC stated in a filing with the U.S. District Court for the Northern District of California, that it plans to file a motion seeking an order requiring Musk to explain why he should not be held in civil contempt for failing to comply with a May 31, 2024, court order requiring him to testify on Sept. 10 at the SEC’s Los Angeles office.

The two parties had originally agreed that Musk would appear for the testimony on Sept. 19, but in July, Musk’s counsel requested to move the date due to a scheduling conflict. The SEC accommodated the request, rescheduling the testimony to Sept. 10. However, on the morning of Sept. 10, Musk’s legal team sent a letter to the SEC stating that his obligations as SpaceX’s chief technology office required urgent travel to the East Coast for a “high-risk” Polaris Dawn launch.

Musk’s attorney, Alex Spiro, argued in the filing that his client’s absence on Sept. 10 was due to an unavoidable emergency regarding the Polaris Dawn launch, requiring his presence in Cape Canaveral.

Musk, as SpaceX’s chief technical officer, “had to be present at the Cape Canaveral launch site for the Polaris Dawn launch, and the timing of the launch was unpredictable due to weather,” Spiro wrote, adding that it was impossible to predict more than a few hours in advance when the launch would take place.

Spiro argued that sanctions are unnecessary since the rescheduling was due to an emergency, and Musk has already agreed to a new testimony date in October. He added that Musk has fully cooperated with the SEC in multiple investigations.

But an SEC attorney said in the filing that, given Musk’s role at SpaceX, he was surely aware of the planned launch and that his excuse of an emergency rings hollow.

“Musk’s excuse itself smacks of gamesmanship,” SEC lawyer Robin Andrews wrote in the filing. “The court must make clear that Musk’s gamesmanship and delay tactics must cease.”

Andrews argued that Musk’s last-minute cancellation resulted in unnecessary costs, as SEC attorneys from San Francisco and Washington had already traveled to Los Angeles for the testimony.

Besides planning to file a motion for an order requiring Musk to explain why he should not be held in civil contempt for failing to appear at the scheduled testimony, the SEC is also requesting to recoup travel costs associated with the canceled deposition.

The SEC’s investigation is part of an ongoing probe into whether Musk violated securities laws in connection with his 2022 purchase of Twitter, which he has since renamed to X.

Specifically, the regulator is examining whether Musk made required filings in a timely manner when he initially bought a stake in the social media company.

A court hearing on the matter is expected later this month.

The United Nations is warning of ‘catastrophe’ in Lebanon while Turkey’s President Recep Tayyip Erdogan is accusing Israel of dragging the whole Middle East region into war. He has frequently laid sole blame on Israel for everything that’s happened since Oct.7.

United Nations special coordinator for Lebanon, Jeanine Hennis-Plasschaert, said on X, “With the region on the brink of an imminent catastrophe, it cannot be overstated enough: there is NO military solution that will make either side safer.”

President Erdogan appeared to agree, but took his assessment a big step further, laying blame fully on Israel. He blasted Israel as a “terrorist organization” – which isn’t the first time he’s denounced the country in fiery remarks.

“I have been saying all along that Israel targets not only the Gaza Strip. The recent attacks on Lebanon have confirmed our suspicion that the Israeli leadership’s plan is to spread the war to the entire region,” Erdogan said.

“Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu and his gang have been staging all kinds of provocations to implement their radical Zionist ideology,” he added. The pressure on Israel must be intensified further to prevent the region from being dragged into an even greater disaster.”

He made the remarks Saturday just before traveling to the United States to attend a UN General Assembly meeting.

“Once again, unfortunately, we see that Israel is carrying out attacks not as a state but as a terrorist organization. This is state terrorism. The latest digital attacks [the explosions of communication devices in Lebanon] are a very clear confirmation of this,” he described in reference to last Tuesday and Wednesday’s pager explosion attacks which left scores dead in Lebanon and hundreds wounded and injured.

“With this attack Israel clearly demonstrated that it does not care about civilians and will try to achieve its mean aims goals at any cost,” Erdogan said. Israel and its supporters have asserted that it was a highly ‘precision’ operation which took out Hezbollah members. The Lebanese government has said that children and other bystanders were killed and wounded also in the attack.

On Saturday Israel very clearly intensified its airstrikes on Hezbollah positions in southern Lebanon. Hezbollah retaliated with dozens of rockets in the early Sunday morning hours targeting Israel’s Ramat David Airbase, east of Haifa.

The White House has basically given up trying to steer events in the Middle East and is betting the farm on the hope that Israel’s government, which turned its Gaza war into a strategic disaster, will somehow prove to be a strategic genius in Lebanon. https://t.co/jvdDbPbM6G

— Gregg Carlstrom (@glcarlstrom) September 22, 2024

Israel has been forced to close all schools and ban public gathers across broad swathes of the north. Its military said in total over 100 projectiles were launched from Lebanon Sunday morning.

The stated objective of Israel’s military leadership at this point is to make the north safe enough for people to permanently return to their homes, but that’s still looking far away at this point.

Authored by Jeffrey A. Tucker via The Epoch Times (emphasis ours),

We’ve all experienced something like the following. The topic of politics comes up at a party, and someone in the group, seeking some way to say something smart but not divisive, will just toss out that we need to get rid of the Electoral College, the Constitution’s structure for electing the U.S. president and vice president.

The expectation is that everyone present will readily agree. And usually that is precisely what happens because few people have ever heard the other side.

We celebrate democracy so much, so often, that it seems like a no-brainer: the popular vote should always prevail. What possible reason would there be for any other system, much less this convoluted one in which states appoint electors who then weigh in with their choice?

Well, a cocktail party is not the ideal time to take up the topic but let’s just say it very clearly. The Founders were too smart, too well read in history, too aware of the complications and geographical diversity in the United States, and respectful of the federal system, to embrace something as crude and unsustainable as direct democracy.

Under such a system, the large population centers would dominate everyone else, and result in the worst excesses of mob rule.

The purpose of the Electoral College is to provide a fairer weighting between the states, which were seen as the primary political jurisdictions in the U.S. system. The federal government had defined roles and defined limits while everything else was left to the states. The U.S. president needs to represent the whole and therefore the states would serve as an essential buffer.

This is why the United States is a republic on the old Roman model and not a democracy of the form that Aristotle said can only work in small homogenous territories. A direct democracy in which the popular vote elected the president would disenfranchise all small states and, within them, everyone who lived outside the large population centers. Essentially five or so of the most populous cities would elect the president and there would be no reason to campaign anywhere else.

In other words, anyone arguing for the abolition of the Electoral College is very plainly arguing for a one-party state forever, with elections as nothing other than a veneer on top of it.

Anyone who moved from one of America’s Gothams to get peace and quiet, run a small business or start a family, or simply wants to raise a family and be left alone, would essentially surrender all political rights. He would then be subject to tyrannical control forever by the mobs and masses left behind in the population centers.

The reason this topic has come up, and this is the only reason, is that the popular vote is yielding different results than the Electoral College. This happened in both 2000 and 2016. Both were wildly contentious and disputed and led to the claim that we just need to stop with all this crazy confusion and defer to the masses. Of course the claim is only made by the party that lost out.

Alexander Hamilton in Federalist #68 explained the consensus view at the time of the drafting of the Constitution:

“The process of election affords a moral certainty, that the office of President will never [editor’s note: it was also published as “seldom”] fall to the lot of any man who is not in an eminent degree endowed with the requisite qualifications.

“Talents for low intrigue, and the little arts of popularity, may alone suffice to elevate a man to the first honors in a single State; but it will require other talents, and a different kind of merit, to establish him in the esteem and confidence of the whole Union.”

“The choice of several, to form an intermediate body of electors, will be much less apt to convulse the community with any extraordinary or violent movements, than the choice of one who was himself to be the final object of the public wishes.” (emphasis Hamilton’s)

He admitted that the system was not perfect but, he said, “it is at least excellent.” He pointed out too that the system itself had not met with any real controversy precisely because it protected the rights of the states and guarded against mob rule and manipulation.

To be sure, the system as established bumped into some problems soon after and some clarifications were added in the 12th Amendment.

An essential piece of the system was reinforced by a bicameral Congress that mirrored the old English system of a House of Commons and a House of Lords, the first elected by popular vote and the second appointed as a reflection of high status and deep investment in tradition and order. The House of Lords also reflects the deeper history of liberty in the English tradition wherein it was the landed aristocracy that first stepped up to limit the power of the king with the Magna Carta.

The U.S. Senate was to be the American version of the House of Lords. There were to be two in each state regardless of population size. These would be appointed positions emanating from the legislatures of the states. Thus would the Senate always represent the interests of the lower orders of government against the centralist tendencies of the federal government.

That’s why Article I, Section 3, Clause 1 reads: “The Senate of the United States shall be composed of two Senators from each State, chosen by the Legislature thereof, for six Years; and each Senator shall have one Vote.”

A disastrous change was made to this bicameral system in 1913. Woodrow Wilson and many other progressives pushed through the 17th Amendment that blew it all up with these words: “elected by the people thereof.”

It was a change in only two words: chosen became elected, and legislature became people.

As a result, the major metropolitan areas of the states became the centers of political power, and the U.S. Senate became another version of the House. The careful design of the Framers was immediately blown up, leaving only the Electoral College and the 10th Amendment as the remaining bulwarks against mass direct elections that the Founding generation knew from history would lead to tyranny.

Ideally, there would be a repeal of the 17th Amendment. I would push that button right now if I could.

That would rebalance a major part of the system that is broken, re-enfranchise the rural areas, drive more focus on states’ rights, and set up the Senate to be a genuine force of resistance against centralization. I’m assuming that this change won’t happen anytime soon, since only a few of us even write about this subject which most everyone else regards as eccentric and irrelevant.

That said, there are ways to make the existing system even worse. One of them is to abolish the Electoral College. These days, in the cocktail set of the elites, the presumption that the system needs to go is all the rage. It is said as if no one of any high credential or social status could possibly disagree.

I’m telling you, this is all deeply dangerous. A president elected directly by popular vote would be the end of the republican system of government and probably liberty in America along with it.

The framers knew exactly what they were doing. The wisdom of that generation—as Hamilton said, they created not a perfect system but an excellent one—becomes more apparent with each passing year.

Views expressed in this article are opinions of the author and do not necessarily reflect the views of The Epoch Times or ZeroHedge.

In the overnight and early Sunday morning hours Hezbollah has apparently retaliated against Israel for this week’s series of Beirut attacks which have left scores of Hezbollah operatives (long with many civilians) dead and injured. 

Hezbollah has launched an attack on targets deep inside Israel in what is likely the longest range strike since the conflict began. Israel’s Haifa has been devastated waves of rockets, and significant damage on the ground has been revealed Sunday, including on Israeli residential neighborhoods.

The distance from Haifa to the Lebanese border is about 30km, or some 18 miles. Thus far through the conflict which began after Oct.7 last year, Hezbollah’s rockets have been concentrated to within a few miles deep inside Israel.

The early Sunday morning hours witnessed Hezbollah launch approximately 150 rockets into northern Israel. The Israel Defense Forces (IDF) said that most were intercepted.

But videos from Haifa confirm that some rockets made it through anti-air defenses, causing devastation on the ground:

🔥 This is wild! For the 4th time today Hezbollah rained Haifa and the surrounding area with medium range missiles striking multiple targets. And this is still not a response to the Israeli terrorist attacks. This is welcoming Haifa into the new rules of engagement. pic.twitter.com/XB8dNAKEiP

— Hadi (@HadiNasrallah) September 22, 2024

Hezbollah issued an official statement as follows: “In an initial response to the brutal massacre committed by the Israeli enemy in various Lebanese regions on Tuesday and Wednesday (the Pager and wireless devices massacre).”

“We bombed the military industries complexes of the Rafael Company, which specializes in electronic means and equipment, located in the Zevulun area north of Haifa, with dozens of Fadi 1, Fadi 2, and Katyusha missiles, at 6:30 am on this Sunday morning, September 22, 2024,” Hezbollah continued.

Another location, the Ramat David Military Airport, which lies south east of Haifa, was also hit. The base, which is one of the country’s largest, houses Israeli Air Force fighter jets. This retaliation marks significant escalation in terms of the Shia paramilitary group’s targeting and range.

The attacks sowed chaos in Haifa and surrounding towns, resulting in at least one death:

Some 85 rockets were launched by Hezbollah from Lebanon at the Haifa area in northern Israel on Sunday morning, following overnight launches at the Jezreel Valley, the terror group’s deepest rocket fire into Israel since the beginning of the war in October.

A teenager was killed when he crashed his vehicle as sirens sounded in the early hours of the morning, and at least three people were injured as a result of the rocket fire.

A settler from Kiryat Bialik, north of occupied Haifa, told Zionist newspaper Maariv:

“We have never seen anything like this before, not even in 2006. We all assumed that there would be a response from Hezbollah, but we did not think it would be this strong, especially when… pic.twitter.com/NYK6gEwn7L

— vanessa beeley (@VanessaBeeley) September 22, 2024

There are reports suggesting coordination with Iran-linked Iraqi paramilitaries as well:

According to the Associated Press, one rocket caused damage near a residential building in Kiryat Bialik, a city near Haifa. Emergency medical services announced that one man was “lightly wounded by shrapnel from a missile,” according to Reuters. The Times of Israel reported two further injuries.

Around the same time, Israeli air defenses intercepted “two cruise missiles and two drones fired from Iraq, none of which hit Israeli territory,” the military claimed via the Times of Israel. 

Israeli authorities have ordered the closure of all schools and banned public gatherings across the north, where at least 80,000 citizens have remained in a permanent state of evacuation going back to last October.

More destruction. Hezbollah announced that a target in the attacks was an initial response to the pager massacres in Lebanon. They bombed the military industries complexes of the Rafael company, which specializes in electronic means and equipment. Meaning more responses to come pic.twitter.com/bMWd0WtQ2J

— Hadi (@HadiNasrallah) September 22, 2024

Among the harrowing videos to appear online is one showing a direct Hezbollah missile strike on a home in Haifa. An elderly lady says it’s a miracle she escaped the attack unharmed:

A Haifa woman whose home sustained a direct hit in a Hezbollah rocket attack early this morning says she “hates to think what might have happened” if she wasn’t able to take cover in her safe room during the impact.

“It’s a miracle,” Zehava Sofer tells Channel 12. Sofer says she could hear loud explosions from inside the safe room in her home in Kiryat Bialik, a suburb of the northern coastal city, and that she stayed put until rescue workers arrived to extract her.

“Everything in the two upstairs rooms was burned,” she said. “The rest of the house I’m not sure, I haven’t checked yet.”

Below: direct missile strike on Israeli residential building in port city of Haifa:

POV: You’re a terrorist the just woke up in Haifa pic.twitter.com/NMMGWM2Na3

— War Monitor (@WarMonitors) September 22, 2024

She expressed frustration that the fighting on the border has persisted for nearly a year: “We can’t live like this anymore. It’s enough. It’s just lucky I didn’t have small children at home,” she told Israeli media.

The IDF says it has ramped up offensive operations against Hezbollah in southern Lebanon in order to restore safety to northern Israel, but looks like there will be a long war ahead.

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

Caterpillar Inc. has introduced new guidelines that refocus the company’s various employee programs on core business goals as part a broader review of its Code of Conduct and other underpinnings of corporate culture.

With the move, the company joins a growing number of U.S. companies that are rethinking policies related to diversity, equity, and inclusion (DEI) as such initiatives come under pressure from conservative activists.

The updated guidelines, laid out in a Sept. 19 internal memo from the company’s executive office to employees that was viewed by The Epoch Times, include mandating senior management approval for external speakers at company events, concentrating employee training programs on promoting “high performance,” and establishing new rules for employee resource groups.

Caterpillar executives wrote in the memo that the new guidance comes after a “comprehensive review” of programs and policies, with the changes meant to better align the company’s culture with its enterprise strategy.

“All training, both formal and informal, must be focused on our business and designed to foster high performance and execution of our enterprise strategy,” the memo reads.

Initiatives related to external recognition for employees, such as surveys and awards, must be focused on the company’s business objectives and be approved in writing by upper level management.

The use of any external speakers must also be approved by managers, who are responsible for ensuring that speakers are properly vetted and that the content “aligns to our enterprise strategy and our purpose.”

Employee Resource Groups (ERG), which Caterpillar says exist “to foster an inclusive culture” through networking, mentoring, and staff development opportunities, must now operate explicitly “in support of enterprise strategy,” with the memo indicating that the company will provide more detailed ERG guidelines for staff in the near future.

Conservative activist Robby Starbuck, who has campaigned against DEI programs at other companies, claimed in a post on social media that the changes at Caterpillar were made after he began communicating with the company last week and threatened “to expose their woke policies.”

Starbuck characterized the changes as amounting to doing away with “woke” trainings, banning donations to “divisive” events, and ensuring that there’s nothing “divisive or politically charged” in the material presented by external speakers.

“Those employees will no longer be subjected to the insanity we found during our investigation,” Starbuck wrote. “Work going forward should be a neutral place for everyone to co-exist without any ideology or divisive issues shoved down their throat. This is a massive win for sanity.”

Caterpillar did not respond to a request for comment on the changes and on whether they were prompted by Starbuck’s actions.

Starbuck recently put John Deere into his anti-DEI crosshairs, accusing the company of having “gone woke” and being all-in on DEI, with the agricultural machinery maker subsequently dialing down on its DEI programs.

He also launched a similar campaign against Tractor Supply, which led to a boycott that prompted the company to back away from its DEI initiatives.

Other companies, including Ford, Harley-Davidson, Lowe’s, and Molson Coors have revised their DEI-related policies in recent months.

As companies such as Caterpillar pull back on DEI efforts, advocacy groups have warned of potential consequences. The Human Rights Campaign (HRC), in a letter co-signed by other civil rights organizations, claimed that abandoning DEI efforts could prove harmful.

​​”Abandoning DEI will have long-term consequences on business success—ultimately shirking fiduciary responsibility to employees, consumers, and shareholders,” the letter stated, pointing to studies showing that companies with diverse workforces tend to outperform their peers financially.

“Businesses that fail to include women, people of color, people with disabilities, and LGBTQ+ people neglect their financial duty to recruit and retain top talent from across the full talent pool and limit their company’s performance overall,” the letter states.

HRC puts out a Corporate Equality Index that gives companies DEI scores, with points for having an LGBTQ+ Employee Resource Group, for instance. The group calls the index the “national benchmarking tool on corporate policies, practices and benefits pertinent to lesbian, gay, bisexual, transgender, and queer employees.”

HRC claims that an “extreme group of right-wing activists” is trying to pressure companies into abandoning their DEI programs.

Starbuck wrote in his message on social media that Caterpillar had also ditched participation in HRC’s Corporate Equality Index.

A spokesperson for Caterpillar told Bloomberg that the company has been in communication with Starbuck and confirmed the content of the executive office memo to staff. However, the spokesperson denied that the company’s decision to withdraw from the the Corporate Equality Index—which took place last year—was related to Starbuck’s activism in any way.