Authored by Anna Stanley via FathomJournal.org,

Scandalous Indoctrination: Inside a Kings College Counter-Terrorism Course for UK Civil Servants

A former civil servant, Anna Stanley reports on a counter-terrorism course she attended which she found a deeply, existentially depressing experience. She argues that ‘prestigious’ educational institutions are delivering politically biased, anti-government training, amounting to indoctrination and that extremism and terrorism are misunderstood by civil servants to the point of being a national security risk.

I recently attended a Kings College course called ‘Issues in Countering Terrorism’. Organised by the Centre for Defence Studies, it was designed for civil servants and professionals in Counter Terrorism. Staff from the Foreign Office, Ministry of Justice, Ministry of Defence and Home Office attended. Facilitating this relatively new 3 day course were senior lecturers from the Security Studies Department.

The civil servants were given presentations by Kings College lecturers while Visiting Senior Research Fellows and Professors also spoke. These included those formerly holding positions such as Permanent Secretary of the Home Office and Director of GCHQ, Defence Minister and Foreign Office Director.

The course was a deeply, existentially depressing experience.

‘Prestigious’ educational institutions are delivering politically biased, anti-government training, amounting to indoctrination. It confirmed my fears – that extremism and terrorism are misunderstood by civil servants to the point of being a national security risk.

Underpinning their presentations, some of the lecturers relayed typical post-modern identity politics.

The course began with the issue of definitions. What is Terrorism? Without anyone providing an opposing standpoint, we were taught the adage, ‘One man’s freedom fighter is another man’s terrorist.’

I posed to the room: ‘Surely we can acknowledge subjectivity while being able to come up with a collective understanding of what terrorism is?’ Some 40 civil servants looked at me blankly. No?

I wondered why we were there.

The danger of understanding terrorism with cultural relativism is that it breeds moral apathy; the kind that says ‘Who are we, mere democratic, liberal Westerners to impose our morality onto others? Who are we to say our culture is superior to others?’

These are luxury attitudes.

It is easy to be sat in Kings College London and feel that all cultures are equal, when you haven’t been anally raped at a peace festival by someone shouting ‘Allahu Akbar’ and held hostage. In the introduction to the course, labeling an organisation as terrorist was described as a problem because it ‘implies a moral judgment’. Nothing was said about why a moral judgment might be appropriate.

All the civil servant participants were given a topic to research and present. One attendee said her brother had been radicalised and fought in Syria for Islamic State (ISIS). ’Phew’, I thought. At least one person here will understand the problems of extremism (!) Her presentation was about the UK’s Counter Terrorism Strategy, Prevent.  She argued Prevent is inherently racist because it focuses on Islamist extremism. The mere mention of Islamist extremism makes Muslims ‘feel uncomfortable’, she argued. Her brother would most certainly have agreed.

I raised the point that nearly 70 per cent of terrorist attacks in the UK are Islamist. Similarly, 70 per cent of lung cancer cases are caused by smoking. It would be absurd to avoid mentioning this in the study of cancer so smokers don’t feel uncomfortable. Unsurprisingly, this comparison was not well received.

Later on, we were shown an ISIS propaganda recruitment video filmed in Syria. The same attendee’s face lit up. Laughing and pointing at the Jihadi in the video, ‘He used to go to my school! I know him!’ she exclaimed. Mouth agape, I looked around the room for responses to yet another disclosure involving personal links to ISIS terrorists. I appeared to be the only one to find this extraordinary.

There was an irony to being surrounded by civil servants who hate the concept of the State.

As young professionals, they represented a microcosm of the views emanating from British universities: When it comes to extremism and counter terrorism, the State is not to be trusted.

The head of Security Studies at Kings College read concernedly, ‘Problems of Definitions: Labelling a group terrorist can increase the state’s power.’ The civil servants nodded in agreement.

The visiting speakers were political heavyweights. Possessing genuine expertise with interesting anecdotes, their past responses to crises like the ‘Northern Ireland Troubles’ were referenced frequently. Yet I couldn’t help but feel many of their insights were lost by the audience.

One attendee provocatively asked a former head of GCHQ whether he ‘felt bad infringing on our civil liberties in the pursuit of terrorists?’ Naïve and uninformed, the questioner had highlighted mainstream opinion that security services are routinely listening to innocent, random people’s phone calls or stalking their WhatsApps. Lacking was any appreciation the UK is exemplary. Protective legislation is laborious to the point of being near obstructive and investigations pursuing criminals and terrorists are rigorously audited.

Israel was referenced throughout the course. We were told some consider Hamas terrorists as freedom fighters whereas Israel was provided as a prime example when considering the question of whether a state can commit terrorism. In the introduction, one slide read ‘Condemning terrorism is to endorse the power of the strong over the weak’, a dangerous conclusion breeding anti-Israel positions. In this perspective, Israel is seen as a powerful aggressor and the Palestinians militarily disadvantaged in asymmetric warfare. Thus, the Palestinians are inherently oppressed an axiom that fuels the view that Israel is a terrorist state and Hamas’ atrocities are justifiably ‘contextualised’. To call Hamas terrorist – as the BBC is so pointedly resistant to doing – would be to ‘endorse the power of the strong over the weak’.

Another slide read, ‘Terrorism is not the problem, rather the systems they oppose are terrorist,’ reflecting post-modern identity politics wrapped up as counter terrorism education. Everything was viewed through the lens of power.

While the lecturer did not explicitly present the slides as reflecting his own beliefs, he said nothing to counter them.

I am grateful I attended the course before the October 7 Hamas terrorist attacks. I have no doubt the pogrom would have been contextually justified as ‘merely the oppressed countering the oppressor’; with Israel’s response described as morally equivalent (or worse) to the atrocities.

None of the Counter Terrorism lecturers (bar two) posted about the attacks on their otherwise informative social media platforms.

Of these two, one Professor wrote a RUSI Think Tank commentary, saying Israeli ‘crisis meetings could be affected by a desire for revenge’ and why ‘restraint in Counterterrorism is so important’.

During the span of the course, there was no mention of immigration being relevant to terrorism in the UK, except as a view ‘given by the right wing’.

The course’s overriding emphasis was that Islamist extremism is exaggerated. Right-wing extremism was given more weight than is proportionate. This is in direct conflict with William Shawcross’ findings, in the latest government commissioned review of its anti-radicalisation programme, Prevent.

One lecturer derogatively described Shawcross as ‘the type of person who would say all current counter-terrorism professionals are woke…He is of that ilk.’

This of course discredited Shawcross to the course attendees.

The lecturer further argued that Douglas Murray and Joe Rogan are both examples of the far right.

‘To what extent should Joe Rogan and Douglas Murray be suppressed?’ he asked.

‘They have millions of followers. To de-platform them would cause issues.’

Concluding his talk, the lecturer told a room full of government professionals, ‘so, society needs to find other ways to suppress them.’

Amid growing pressure on the Biden administration in the wake of Defense Secretary Lloyd Austin going MIA for nearly four days as he was in the ICU of Walter Reed hospital but without telling anyone at the White House (as basic long-standing national security protocol would require), new details have been unearthed which reveal the situation to have been far worse (and comical) than previously known.

Not only was there no one officially at the helm of the Department of Defense at a moment Iran-backed militias targeted US bases in the Iraq-Syria region, but Austin’s #2 was “running the Pentagon” from the beach, apparently.

Austin and his staffers have tried to paint a picture that Deputy Defense Secretary Kathleen Hicks was basically running things. But while Hicks is said to have been tasked with “some duties” during Austin’s absence – it remains that she was on vacation and didn’t so much as know that her boss was out of commission.

According to fresh details in The Wall Street Journal, Hicks was literally on a beach in Puerto Rico—and what’s worse is that she stayed on vacation even as Austin was laid up:

On the evening of Monday, Jan. 1, Austin experienced severe abdominal pain and was rushed via ambulance to Walter Reed, where he was put in the intensive care unit, the Pentagon said. Once there, doctors identified a urinary tract infection and abdominal fluid collections in Austin, and he remained in the ICU for several days. 

On the day Austin returned to the hospital, Kelly Magsamen, his chief of staff, was sick with the flu, and her deputy was out, U.S. officials said, a factor that contributed to the delayed communications.

The following day, Jan. 2, Hicks, who was on a beach in Puerto Rico with her family, was informed by the Pentagon that she needed to assume some of Austin’s duties. The request was a surprise since Hicks had planned her vacation well in advance and normally, if she was to assume the defense chief’s duties, she should be in Washington to perform them.

The comedy of errors was compounded from there. It would be hard to make this up…

The communications team which routinely travels with her, even while on leave, prepared for an elevated role while at the hotel, which required her to stick close to her communications suite, forgoing walks on the beach. She began to make some routine operational and management decisions in Austin’s stead, and was “fully authorized and ready to support the president on other military matters, should the need have arisen,” a Pentagon official said. 

So Hicks, who found herself in charge (somewhat unknowingly perhaps) of the world’s most powerful military, and at a moment the US is engaged in several hotspots from Ukraine to Syria to the Red Sea, decided that she must sacrifice walks on the sandy beaches.

During that very time, the Pentagon was engaged in some high-risk aerial operations against Iran-linked groups in Iraq. The WSJ underscores there was nothing about that week that was mere “business as usual”: 

For two more days, information about Austin’s condition was kept to the small group of aides. 

In the meantime, the U.S. conducted a strike in Baghdad targeting a leader of an Iranian-backed Iraqi militia, which Austin had approved earlier. Air Force Maj. Gen. Pat Ryder briefed reporters on Thursday, Jan. 4, and made no mention of the secretary’s whereabouts. 

Hicks continued carrying out some duties while she stayed in Puerto Rico, and the White House remained in the dark for most of the day.

That very strike has triggered Iraq government efforts to boot American troops from the country to gain steam and popularity in the region.

But important to emphasize is that the person who was effectively acting secretary of defense stayed on her vacation, in a posh hotel room, only “foregoing walks” – as we are assured. More broadly, there was a window of days where it seems that simply no one was actually in charge of the US armed forces.

Given Donald Trump’s absolute dominance over the current 2024 GOP field, Vivek Ramaswamy has a prediction:

Nikki Haley will become the establishment’s ‘puppet’ candidate, and Ron DeSantis will be forced to join her ticket as VP.

“Here’s the plot: 1. Narrow this to a 2-horse race between Trump & a puppet they can control. 2. Eliminate Trump. 3. Trot their puppet into the White House. Prediction: next up, Ron DeSantis joins Nikki Haley’s ticket as VP. Ron may not know it yet, but he won’t have a say in the matter,” Ramaswamy posted on X.

Here’s the plot:
1. Narrow this to a 2-horse race between Trump & a puppet they can control.
2. Eliminate Trump.
3. Trot their puppet into the White House.

Prediction: next up, Ron DeSantis joins Nikki Haley’s ticket as VP. Ron may not know it yet, but he won’t have a say in the… pic.twitter.com/EZzWn4WVya

— Vivek Ramaswamy (@VivekGRamaswamy) January 10, 2024

Of course, Chris Christie thinks Haley is ‘gonna get smoked‘ because ‘she’s not up to this,’ but we digress.

Haley and DeSantis take shots at Trump

On Wednesday, and we don’t blame you if you missed it, Haley and DeSantis took shots at the former president (and each other) at a debate hosted by CNN in Des Moines, Iowa – after two other contenders, Gov. Asa Hutchinson and Vivek Ramaswamy, failed to meet the heightened requirements to participate.

At the start of the debate, Mr. DeSantis said—as he often has—that the former president is “running to pursue his issues.” Ms. Haley soon said that she doesn’t think the 45th president “is the right president to go forward,” touting herself as “a new generational leader.”

Mr. Tapper, one of CNN’s moderators, noted that President Trump had not accepted their invitation to take part in the pre-caucus debate. The former leader of the United States instead held a town hall elsewhere in Des Moines that aired on Fox News.

DeSantis tried to capitalize on his comments via X following the debate. 

Donald Trump is running to pursue his issues.

Nikki Haley is running to pursue her donors’ issues.

I’m running to pursue your issues, your family’s issues, and to turn this country around. pic.twitter.com/srace9EkPL

— Ron DeSantis (@RonDeSantis) January 11, 2024

Haley, meanwhile, is right on course to piss off the more than 1/3 of US adults who say the 2020 election was illegitimate.

“That election—Trump lost it [and] Biden won that election,” said Haley, adding that Trump would “have to answer” for Jan. 6, without specifying what she meant.

HALEY: “That election — Trump lost it — Biden won that election.” pic.twitter.com/0zyftLEJhs

— Breaking911 (@Breaking911) January 11, 2024

Haley and DeSantis also slammed Trump’s claim of presidential immunity in a DC federal appeals court considering his 2020 election case, with DeSantis saying: “I think the D.C. circuit is going to rule against Trump on that issue,” and that “a stacked, left-wing D.C. jury of all Democrats” is going to give Trump the business.

Haley suggested Trump’s immunity argument is “absolutely ridiculous.”

“What has President Trump done? You look at the last few years, and our country is completely divided,” Haley said, apparently unaware that Trump hasn’t been president ‘the last few years.’

For a deeper dive into the Haley – DeSantis slap fight, the Daily Caller has a good writeup here.

Trump, meanwhile…

While Haley and DeSantis traded barbs, Trump sat down with Fox News hosts Bret Baier and Martha MacCalllum for a live town hall event, also in Iowa.

When asked by Baier about his plans for “retribution and looking backwards” during a second term, Trump said: “Well, first of all, a lot of people would say that’s not so bad,” adding “Look, what they did: Russia, Russia, Russia hoax; the FBI/Twitter hoax; the 51 intelligence agents hoax – all of these different hoaxes that they did. You know, a lot of people would say that’s probably quite normal.”

“I’m not going to have time for retribution,” the former president continued. “We’re going to make this country so successful again, I’m not going to have time for retribution. And remember this: our ultimate retribution is success.“

HOST: “How much of a Donald Trump presidency…would be about RETRIBUTION…and how much would be about looking forward?”

TRUMP: “I’m not going to have time for retribution. We’re going to make this country so successful again, I’m not going to have time for it.” pic.twitter.com/NFMODtKyru

— The Post Millennial (@TPostMillennial) January 11, 2024

Trump has taken flack for March comments at CPAC, in which he told the crowd: “In 2016, I declared, ‘I am your voice.’ Today I add: I am your warrior, I am your justice, and for those that have been wronged and betrayed, I am your retribution. I am your retribution.”

Authored by Maggie Kelly via The College Fix,

Former Stanford University President Marc Tessier-Lavigne, who resigned in July of last year after an investigation found flaws in his research, retracted a 2009 science paper formerly described as “groundbreaking.”

The prestigious science journal Nature announced the retraction in a December 18 article signed by Tessier-Lavigne (pictured below), the lead author, and his three co-authors, The Stanford Daily reported.

In 2009, Tessier-Lavigne, a neuroscientist, was an executive at the biotechnology company Genentech, according to The Daily.

Two days after the paper’s publication, Genentech described it to its shareholders as “groundbreaking basic research about an entirely new way of looking at the cause of Alzheimer’s disease.”

A Nature article published about the paper shortly after was titled, “Alzheimer’s theory makes a splash.”

Tessier-Lavigne told The Daily, “As with all of my papers, at the time of publication of Nature 2009, I believed the results in the paper were correct and accurately presented.”

“I absolutely believe that there are no falsified data in the paper,” he told The Daily in a subsequent email, it reported.

The retraction is Tessier-Lavigne’s fourth in four months, according to The Daily. 

Such incidents are rare, as just eight out of every 10,000 science papers are retracted, according to Retraction Watch.

The Daily reported that “two of Tessier-Lavigne’s influential neurodevelopment papers published in Science and a third published in Cell were withdrawn earlier this fall after they were found to contain manipulated images.”

“Another Tessier-Lavigne paper published in Nature was issued an expression of concern over ‘manipulation of research data’ this month, implying it will likely face correction or retraction,” according to the paper.

The investigation leading to the former president’s resignation in July determined data “were manipulated in some published scientific papers on which he was a main contributor,” according to The Wall Street Journal.

An investigative panel also stated Tessier-Lavigne “failed to decisively correct mistakes in published papers as they were uncovered and had lapses in oversight of his labs at multiple institutions,” the outlet reported.

After the opening day of hearings at The Hague for South African’s genocide case against Israel, the Israeli Foreign Ministery blasted the South African government, saying it is “functioning as the legal arm of Hamas.”

Foreign Ministry Spokesman Lior Haia further called the proceedings “one of the greatest displays of hypocrisy in history” soon after the first day wrapped up.

He also said that South Africa “seeks to allow Hamas to return to commit the war crimes, crimes against humanity and sexual crimes they committed repeatedly on October 7,” in a statement posted to X, additionally calling South Africa’s lawyers “the representatives of Hamas at the court.”

For the first day of its International Court of Justice case (ICJ, or also commonly called the World Court), South Africa urged an “end to the targeting of healthcare workers, facilities, ambulances and civilians, including women and children” and “a permanent ceasefire and a diplomatic solution for lasting peace.”

Despite it having no power to actually make this happen, other than symbolic censure, Pretoria is demanding that the court impose an order for Israel to immediately halt fighting and abide by a ceasefire.

According to a summary of South Africa’s filing at the court:

The case lists the killing of Palestinians in Gaza in large numbers, especially children; the destruction of their homes; their expulsion and displacement; and a blockade on food, water and medical assistance to the strip as acts of genocide. It also includes the destruction of essential health services crucial for the survival of pregnant women and babies as further crimes of genocide against Israel.

Israel denies the allegations of genocide and says it launched the bombardment and ground invasion of Gaza to destroy Hamas, which killed 1,139 people in attacks on October 7 in southern Israel.

To be sure, there is a minority view in South Africa— mostly among the small white community — that is more sympathetic to Israel. “The comparison to South African apartheid is fully embraced by some but rejected by others,” said 28-year-old Mark du Plessis, a Cape Town-based multimedia producer who requested that his real name be withheld in South Africa’s charged atmosphere over the war.

Starting last month, Israel’s Foreign Ministry issued a blistering rebuke in response, rejecting the filing “with disgust” and called Pretoria’s accusations a “blood libel” – essentially saying the South African government’s charge is being fueled by antisemitism.

“The first genocide in history where its victims are broadcasting their own destruction in real time in the desperate, so far vain hope that the world might do something.”

Blinne Ni Ghralaigh at the ICJ in the Hague pic.twitter.com/WGU1e8M23y

— Saul Staniforth (@SaulStaniforth) January 11, 2024

Israel has gone on a full-court diplomatic press pushing back against the case. There’s not much that the court can enforce in terms of action regardless, but a ruling against Israel would be a huge reputational black eye. International boycotts of Israeli goods could also grow as a result.

“We call on the International Court of Justice and the international community to reject the baseless claims of South Africa out of hand,” a prior formal government response stated. Major US mainstream networks largely ignored Thursday’s World Court proceedings, while Al Jazeera streamed most of it live.

* * * 

Watch the day one oral arguments…

THE HAGUE: South Africa v. Israel – DAY 1 – S.A. Oral Arguments – International Court of Justice https://t.co/MRbMg5k9Xi

— Consortium News (@Consortiumnews) January 11, 2024

Authored by Charles Hugh Smith via OfTwoMinds blog,

Where is the global deflator expansive enough to replace China’s one-off deflation of global inflationary forces? There isn’t one.

In broad brush, central banks got away with the illusion of permanently low inflation even as they pumped trillions in new currency into the global economy for one reason: China. It is useful to think of China in the early-to-mid 1990s as a system of vast, interconnected, untapped pools of:

1. Cheap labor just awaiting exploitation by global corporations, local entrepreneurs and state entities

2. Ambition, drive and long-frustrated desires for improved opportunities for individual/family betterment

3. Need for capital/credit to build a modern economy and infrastructure

4. Potential for national issuance of currency and credit on an unimaginably large scale

All four pools were tapped at ever larger scales over the past 30 years, enabling China to deflate the cost of good globally as “the workshop of the world.” All else being equal, issuing unprecedented quantities of currency and credit, both public and private, typically boosts consumption and production in the early “boost phase” of the S-Curve. But once the most productive uses of credit are satiated, the new money flows into unproductive speculation and financial skimming operations.

At that point, all the new money flooding into the system drives inflation, a trend reinforced by the depletion of all the cheap pools of labor and easiest-to-exploit materials.

The pool of cheap, abundant Chinese labor has been completely drained. Wages in China have soared, along with inflation, and demographics is shrinking the labor pool even as the high expectations generated by 30 years of rapid expansion have diminished the labor force’s willingness to perform low-paid factory work far from home and family.

China’s economy is now beset with the inevitable downside of the S-Curve. Pouring more new money into an economy that is inflating speculative bubbles with the money doesn’t create productive uses for the new credit; it simply encourages the perverse incentives to speculate and skim.

China is not alone in boosting its money supply and debt, but it is the current leader, whose gigantic expansion of credit bailed out the Chinese and global economy in 2009 and again in 2020. But that mechanism is now crippled by diminishing returns; inflating the money supply, borrowing trillions to fund deficit fiscal spending and expanding private credit to fund student loans, auto loans and bloated mortgages globally is no longer creating growth–it’s creating inflation and the permanent drag of higher debt service.

If excesses pop a few of the planet’s proliferating speculative asset bubbles, we’ll discover that deflation in overvalued assets won’t translate into lower-real-world inflation of goods and services, which depend on the costs of labor, capital and risk, all of which are rising in long-overdue turns of cycles.

Meanwhile, for a variety of well-known reasons, globalization as a source of deflation has run its course and is no longer able to offset inflation in either China or the nations importing Chinese goods globally. Wages in the US have been suppressed for 45 years in favor of capital and financiers, and now the pendulum is swinging to higher wages for demographic, financial and political reasons.

Reshoring, friend-shoring, building redundant supply chains, securing national-security sources of minerals and energy–every one of these costs far more than the supply chains being replaced, not just initially, but into the future.

With China as a global deflator now a spent force, inflation will not drop to 2% and linger there indefinitely. All the currency and credit flooding into the global economy while production, quality and quantity all stagnate or collapse will fuel inflation.

All those counting on AI to magically boost productivity globally on a scale large enough to counter the tsunami of new currency and credit being issued to “bring demand forward” will be disappointed. When consumers run out of credit, the profit spigot dries up, AI or no AI. When higher debt payments suck companies and government entities dry, adding more currency and debt isn’t a solution, it becomes the problem.

Where is the global deflator expansive enough to replace China’s one-off deflation of global inflationary forces? There isn’t one, and those counting on AI are forgetting that right now AI is a bottomless sinkhole of corporate spending, as CEOs are just as motivated by fads and the crowd as any clueless consumer. Most of the billions being dumped into AI projects will return nothing in the way of higher productivity or profits because AI is already a commodity.

Sure, inflation may well drop for a time as consumers rein in spending, but the “solution”–the accelerating issuance of more currency and debt–will only fuel inflation. The decades-long swing of the deflationary zero-interest rate pendulum has ended, and the swing to higher interest rates and higher inflation will only gather momentum in the decade ahead.

*  *  *

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Washington has ratcheted its anti-Iran rhetoric following what’s been widely described as the single biggest Houthi missile and drone attack on vessels in the Red Sea since Oct.7.

The Tuesday night attack saw up to 24 missiles and drones sent against international shipping lanes in the southern part of the Red Sea, and crucially directly against a US warship, as we detailed previously. The Pentagon said that three destroyers that are part of Operation Prosperity Guardian took part in shooting down the incoming barrage.

Secretary of State Antony Blinken has in fresh comments charged that ultimately Iran was behind this “biggest attack” by the Yemen-based Houthi rebels. He warned “there will be consequences” if the aggression continues. “We had the biggest attack just yesterday, aided and abetted by Iran,” Blinken told reporters at Bahrain International Airport on Wednesday.

“We’ve been clear with more than 20 countries that if these continue, as they did yesterday, there will be consequences,” Blinken continued. “The support [Iran is] providing to the Houthis needs to stop. It’s not in their interest for the conflict to expand.” But he offered nothing in the way of a plan or strategy of response.

Blinken is still on his tour of Middle East countries, which earlier included meetings with Israeli leadership in Tel Aviv, in efforts to contain the spread of the Gaza War.

The US top diplomat in the comments stopped short of saying that Iranian officers are directly assisting on the ground in Yemen. Washington’s accusations against Tehran regarding the Houthis have for years highlighted indirect support, including financial, weaponry, and intelligence assistance. 

Blinken said these Red Sea attacks are aided by Iran with “technology, equipment, intelligence, information, and they are having a real-life impact on people,” as cited also in VOA.

Yet the White House still doesn’t seem to have a strategy to ensure the safety of commercial transit through the Red Sea. The Biden administration has been accused of dithering and of losing deterrence, as the Houthis continue attacking with impunity, also openly boasting of targeting US Navy vessels. 

For example, soon after Tuesday’s attack, The Associated Press wrote as follows:

The Houthis, a Shiite group that has held Yemen’s capital of Sanaa since 2014, later claimed responsibility for the attack in a televised statement by rebel spokesman Brig. Gen. Yahya Saree. Saree claimed the attack “targeted an American ship that was providing support to the Zionist entity,” without offering any further information. He also described it as an “initial response” to American troops sinking Houthi vessels and killing 10 rebel fighters last week.

Many observers have highlighted the current US policy Catch-22: Washington wants de-escalation in the region, but is simultaneously unwilling to seriously press Israel to implement ceasefire in Gaza…

The #US is moving quickly to organise and condemn #Yemen‘s Ansar Allah at the UN Security Council, but opposes any ceasefire and condemnation of #Israel‘s crimes and violations of international laws.

The US insists on losing more global credibility.https://t.co/BtzyLRtju8

— Elijah J. Magnier 🇪🇺 (@ejmalrai) January 11, 2024

Meanwhile the Houthis have vowed in a fresh statement to keep up and expand the attacks, per Bloomberg:

Yemen Houthi rebels “will confront US aggression” and no US attack will remain unanswered, the group’s leader Abdul Malik al-Houthi says in a televised address. 

Central Command has at this point confirmed, “This is the 26th Houthi attack on commercial shipping lanes in the Red Sea since Nov. 19.” This has included the launch of multiple dozens of missiles and drones at this point. While US destroyers have intercepted many of them, the US military has yet to strike back directly on Houthi positions.

Authored by James Rickards via DailyReckoning.com,

What happened to Boeing, the former gold standard of American industry? Nothing good, as I’ll show you today.

Simply put, Boeing isn’t the company it used to be.

By now, I’m sure you’ve heard about the Jan. 6 near crash of a Boeing 737 Max 9 operated by Alaska Airlines, after the fuselage door blew off the plane. That caused decompression and the use of emergency oxygen.

The door blew out because of a door-plug failure at about 16,000 feet. At that altitude, temperatures are freezing, and oxygen is quite low relative to sea level.

The oxygen masks deployed, and passengers were able to secure them and hope for the best as the pilots tried to land the plane safely.

An altitude of 16,000 feet is practically the highest altitude that the passengers and crew could have survived the ordeal. At altitudes of 20,000 or higher, the depressurization would have caused extreme instability and possibly crashed the plane.

It’s also likely that passengers and crew would have passed out before being able to secure the oxygen masks. At 30,000 feet, just slightly higher than the summit of Mount Everest, the plane certainly would have crashed.

Fortunately, the plane landed safely with only minor injuries despite badly shaken nerves.

A Double Disaster

The fuselage door detaching was not the only disaster that occurred in those frightening minutes. The depressurization also caused the cockpit door to blow open, which exposed the pilots to the extreme wind and noise going on in the back of the plane at a time when they were desperately trying to stage an emergency landing.

Cockpit doors have been required to be highly secure and open from inside the cockpit only since the 9/11 hijackings. This was an added shock to the pilots at a critical time.

Boeing later lamely explained that the cockpit door is supposed to blow open during an extreme depressurization incident. But they never put that critical detail in the operating manual, and the pilots on the Alaska Airlines flight had no idea that would happen. Neither did many experts and engineers who were consulted by the media.

This separate critical incident will only add to the scrutiny, liability and criticism that Boeing is now experiencing for what is seen as gross incompetence.

MORE Problems With This Plane?

The double-door blowouts on the 737 Max 9 were bad enough. Of course, this comes not long after the double crashes of Boeing 737 Max 8 planes in Indonesia in October 2018 and Ethiopia in March 2019. These were due to software flaws that put the planes into dives that pilots hadn’t been trained to counter.

Boeing’s global fleet of 737 Max 8 planes were grounded at that time. However, Boeing was seen as slow to respond after the first crash. It was really the airlines themselves that took the lead in grounding their own planes.

Boeing vowed internal investigations and improvements in quality control at that time. The flaws were subsequently corrected, but obviously problems remain. Here we are just five years later with another quality control fiasco grounding another fleet of aircraft.

The plane involved in the latest incident was basically brand-new. It wasn’t an older aircraft that experienced metal fatigue.

According to news reports, both Boeing and Alaska Airlines had some indications that there were difficulties with the door plugs on the fuselage door.

Since the 737 Max 9 is a relatively new model and the particular plane that suffered the door failure was, again, almost brand-new, engineers decided to ignore the warnings as just a kink that sometimes appears in new equipment and will self-correct or be easily adjusted.

This was not the case; the manufacturer and operator were both receiving warnings of a potential catastrophic failure that they chose to ignore.

Boeing has now grounded its entire global fleet of 737 Max 9s, about 170 aircraft in all.

When It All Started Going Wrong

Where did it all start going wrong for Boeing? You can trace the answer to its 1997 merger with rival aircraft manufacturer McDonnell Douglas. That changed Boeing’s culture, and for the worse.

Boeing was known for its strong emphasis on engineering and quality control. It was part of the company’s ethos.

McDonnell Douglas, on the other hand, placed special emphasis on cost cutting and financial innovations to improve its bottom line. It’s not that it completely neglected quality control or that it didn’t care about safety. Obviously, airplane manufacturers can’t afford to disregard them.

It’s just that it placed relatively greater emphasis on financial considerations than Boeing.

But after the merger, the McDonnell Douglas model began to encroach on Boeing’s traditional ethos. The engineering department was greatly reduced, for example, while the financial engineers went to work.

Starting in 2010, Boeing spent tens of billions on stock buybacks and other financial machinations to enhance its share price. At the same time, the company took on massive amounts of debt.

Boeing’s new CEO, Harry Stonecipher, even cited all this as a feature, not a bug. He was proud of it.

He said, “When people say I changed the culture of Boeing, that was the intent — so run like a business rather than a great engineering firm.”

What was the result? Safety issues that resulted in two crashes and the latest close call. As one Boeing engineer who worked on the 737 Max said in 2019:

This program was a much more intense pressure cooker than I’ve ever been in. The company was trying to avoid costs and trying to contain the level of change. They wanted the minimum change to simplify the training differences, minimum change to reduce costs and to get it done quickly.

The irony is that by attempting to cut costs, Boeing has suffered great costs.

Penny Wise, Pound Foolish

Legal liability will be enormous. Business losses will also be huge based on grounding the entire fleet, identifying the defects and repairing them on all of the existing planes as well as making assembly adjustments to any work in progress.

New safety protocols will have to be developed to make sure the problem does not reoccur, and pilots, crews and ground personnel will have to be retrained to look for future problems. The airlines will suffer losses from the groundings and will seek recourse from Boeing.

Boeing stock has fallen from $265 per share on Dec. 15 to $227 per share today (about a 15% decline in three weeks).

Has Boeing’s stock already taken its hit on this fiasco? The answer is no. The market price has adjusted somewhat but the investigations are ongoing, and the costs of responding are being grossly underestimated.

Markets can be partly efficient but are not highly efficient and sometimes get taken in by “all clear” narratives put out by Wall Street that are far from the truth.

This story has much longer to run, more negative facts will emerge, management changes are likely and the stock has much further to fall.

I wouldn’t be buying Boeing right now. Don’t buy this dip.

Chris Christie’s withdrawal from the 2024 GOP presidential field surely brought smiles to rival Nikki Haley — until a hot mic caught the former New Jersey governor scoffing at Haley’s political prospects as he chatted backstage moments before officially announcing he was bailing out. “She’s gonna get smoked,” said Christie. 

Christie’s candor offered an amusingly blunt counterpoint to Big Media’s relentless attempts to bolster the warmongering Haley as the establishment’s last hope of eliminating Trump — through standard means, anyhow. 

According to Daily Beast, just before he took the stage at a Windham, New Hampshire venue, Christie was talking to former New Hampshire Republican Party chair and Christie-backer Wayne MacDonald. The audio of the two discussing the race with an unidentified woman was heard by anyone tuned into the event livestream: 

“People don’t wanna hear it, Wayne. We know we’re right, but they don’t wanna hear it. We couldn’t have been any clearer, we couldn’t have been any more direct or worked any harder… I mean, look, she’s spent $68 million so far — just on TV — $59 million by DeSantis, and we’ve spent 12. I mean, who’s punching above their weight, and who’s getting a return on their investment? And she’s gonna get smoked. And you and I both know it, she’s not up to this.”

As the two continue chatting, Christie goes on to say, “DeSantis called me, petrified that I would—.”  Unfortunately, the audio cuts off, leaving observers to speculate over what Ron DeSantis was purportedly scared of — a Christie endorsement of Haley?  

The audio of Chris Christie’s hot mic moment is clear and high quality.

Just disappointed that it ends where it does. pic.twitter.com/4RjodHvdmi

— Yashar Ali 🐘 (@yashar) January 10, 2024

When primary candidates drop out, the remaining contenders always hope for an endorsement. In his farewell speech, Christie gave none, choosing instead to take shots at both DeSantis and Haley for being too deferential to Trump. “I would rather lose by telling the truth than lie in order to win,” he said. “And I feel no differently today because this is a fight for the soul of our party and the soul of our country.”

An anti-Trump attack dog for the establishment, Christie’s kamikaze campaign against the popular former president never gained traction. As of this week, he was in last place at 3.5% in the RealClearPolitics average — unless you count former Arkansas governor Asa Hutchinson (0.5%), whom most people haven’t heard of. 

In his final campaign speech, Christie reiterated his condemnation of Trump, and vowed he wouldn’t do anything to help him return to the Oval Office.  

I promise you this: I will make sure that in no way do I enable Donald Trump to ever be President of the United States again. That’s more important than my own personal ambition. pic.twitter.com/f9epxUxRM0

— Chris Christie (@GovChristie) January 10, 2024

Meanwhile, Donald Trump and DeSantis jumped on the opportunity to amplify Christie’s resounding non-endorsement of Haley…

I agree with Christie that Nikki Haley is “going to get smoked.”

— Ron DeSantis (@RonDeSantis) January 10, 2024

Headline Consumer Price Inflation printed hotter than expected in December, +0.3% MoM vs +0.2% exp and +0.1% prior, pushing the YoY headline CPI up to +3.4% (from +3.1% prior and hotter than the +3.2% exp)…

Source: Bloomberg

Services (Shelter mostly) costs re-accelerated and energy deflation stalled in December…

On the brighter side, core CPI rose 0.3% MoM as expected, dropping the YoY change below 4.00% (3.93%) for the first time since May 2021…

Source: Bloomberg

Goods deflation has stalled as the used cars and trucks index rose 0.5 percent over the month, after rising 1.6 percent in November.

More problematically for The Fed (and the rate-cut ‘hypers’), is the fact that Core CPI Services Ex-Shelter (SuperCore) rose 0.4% MoM, upticking the YoY rise to +4.09%…

Source: Bloomberg

This is a category that Fed Chair Jerome Powell and other policymakers have highlighted as a focus. 

All the subsectors of SuperCore rose MoM with the shelter index increased 6.2 percent over the last year, accounting for over two thirds of the total increase in the all items less food and energy index.

But shelter inflation is slowing (slowly):

• Shelter inflation was up 6.15% YoY in Dec, down from 6.51% in Nov and the lowest since July 2022

• Rent inflation was up 6.47% YoY in Dec, down from 6.87% in Nov and the lowest since July 2022

And the next time someone from the Biden administration says ‘inflation is down’ in an attempt to gaslight the public into believing ‘prices are down’ – show them this chart…

• Headline costs at record highs

• Core costs are record highs

• Food costs at record highs

• Fuel costs on the rise again

Source: Bloomberg

Four of the six major grocery store food group indexes increased over the month.

The index for meats, poultry, fish, and eggs rose 0.5 percent in December, led by an 8.9-percent increase in the index for eggs.

The index for food away from home rose 5.2 percent over the last year.

The index for limited service meals rose 5.9 percent over the last 12 months, and the index for full service meals rose 4.5 percent over the same period.

Is this a pause before the re-plunge? M2 thinks so…

So what happens next?

Not so much Goldilocks perfection. 

Powell is in a real pickle now – does the Fed begin shrinking QT in March (which it has to if it is terminating BTFP and Reverse Repo is drained) without starting rate cuts.