Six of the 21 Starlink satellites launched from Vandenberg Space Force Base, California, have direct-to-cell capabilities that provide connectivity for most 4G LTE devices when in range.
SpaceX plans to “eliminate dead zones” with its new service that could be rolled out in 2025, pending regulatory license for commercial use.
The initial rollout in the US will be with SpaceX’s US mobile partner, T-Mobile. Other partners include mobile operators in Australia, Canada, Chile, Japan, New Zealand, and Switzerland.
Musk commented on the launch Tuesday night. He said, “This will allow for mobile phone connectivity anywhere on Earth.”
“Note, this only supports ~7Mb per beam and the beams are very big, so while this is a great solution for locations with no cellular connectivity, it is not meaningfully competitive with existing terrestrial cellular networks,” Musk said.
This will allow for mobile phone connectivity anywhere on Earth.
Note, this only supports ~7Mb per beam and the beams are very big, so while this is a great solution for locations with no cellular connectivity, it is not meaningfully competitive with existing terrestrial… https://t.co/ymHpw8XBHl
In a fiery exchange last month, CNN anchorwoman Abby Phillip told GOP presidential candidate Vivek Ramaswamy that there was “no evidence” to support his claim that federal agents abetted protesters at the Capitol on Jan. 6, 2021.
Ramaswamy shot back that the FBI conspicuously has never denied that law enforcement agents were on duty in the crowd. He argued that federal officials have repeatedly “lied” to the American people about not only that investigation but one that has gotten much less attention: the alleged failed plot to kidnap and kill Democratic Gov. Gretchen Whitmer of Michigan in 2020.
“It was entrapment,” Ramaswamy said. “FBI agents putting them up to a kidnapping plot that we were told was true but wasn’t.”
His zeroing in on the Michigan case highlighted an uncharacteristic development in contemporary politics, where progressives vigorously defend law enforcement power while conservatives view it with deep suspicion. Further, Ramaswamy’s linking of Jan. 6 and the Whitmer plot resonated with many on the right who want similarities between the two episodes exposed to the general public, especially the FBI’s reliance on informants and other paid operatives.
On Oct. 8, 2020, Whitmer announced the shocking arrests of several men accused of planning to kidnap and possibly assassinate her. The case produced alarming headlines just weeks before Election Day; Democrats, including Whitmer, used news of the plot to blame Trump for inciting violence.
Joe Biden commended the FBI for thwarting the abduction plan and, in a written statement issued the same day, claimed that “there is a through line from President Trump’s dog whistles and tolerance of hate, vengeance, and lawlessness to plots such as this one.” Biden continued that line of attack during campaign speeches in Michigan, a swing state that voted for Trump in 2016, and one Biden needed to capture to win the presidency.
In the years since the election, the national press has given little attention to the case since the initial arrests, even though court documents have recast the episode as something more sinister. Instead of a heroic effort by the FBI to safeguard the country from domestic terrorists, it now appears to have been a broad conspiracy by law enforcement to entrap American citizens who held unpopular political views.
The FBI’s tactics were first exposed by BuzzFeed in July 2021, when reporters Ken Bensinger and Jessica Garrison disclosed startling details based on court filings as the matter headed to trial. They found that the number of FBI confidential human sources involved in the scheme was equal to the number of defendants.
“An examination of the case by BuzzFeed News also reveals that some of those informants, acting under the direction of the FBI, played a far larger role than has previously been reported,” they wrote. “Working in secret, they did more than just passively observe and report on the actions of the suspects. Instead, they had a hand in nearly every aspect of the alleged plot, starting with its inception. The extent of their involvement raises questions as to whether there would have even been a conspiracy without them.”
Six men ranging in age from 22 to 44 – Adam Fox, Barry Croft Jr., Brandon Caserta, Daniel Harris, Ty Garbin, and Kaleb Franks – faced federal charges of conspiring to kidnap and use a weapon of mass destruction. Eight others faced state charges. BuzzFeed recreated much of the defendants’ movements between March and October 2020, including attendance at “field training” exercises and the surveillance of Whitmer’s properties.
While BuzzFeed offered the first account of the entrapment operation, further reporting by RealClearInvestigations, along with details revealed in court filings and trial proceedings, make the operation sound like something out of a Hollywood script. It features secretive cash payouts; drug- and booze-fueled parties; a convicted wife-beating FBI investigator; a career felon revealed as a longtime FBI asset and later accused of acting as a “double agent”; and a dramatic takedown scene at the end.
Public defenders representing the accused have identified at least 12 FBI informants and three undercover FBI agents managed by FBI officials in numerous field offices responsible for framing the men.
“In this Case, the undisputed evidence … establishes that government agents and informants concocted, hatched, and pushed this ‘kidnapping plan’ from the beginning, doing so against defendants who explicitly repudiated the plan,” defense lawyers wrote in a Dec. 25, 2021 motion. “When the government was faced with evidence showing that the defendants had no interest in a kidnapping plot, it refused to accept failure and continued to push its plan.”
At the center of the action was the FBI’s ringleader, Dan Chappel, 34 years old at the time, an Iraq war veteran and contract truck driver for the U.S. Postal Service. Chappel, the official story goes, joined a group called the “Wolverine Watchmen” in early 2020 to burnish his firearms skills. Members generally interacted on social media. The government claimed Chappel became alarmed at alleged online chatter about killing police and took his concerns to a friend in law enforcement in March 2020.
A week later, the FBI hired Chappel as an informant.
Over the course of the next seven months, Chappel “ingratiated” himself with the men, as one defense attorney described his method, with his eye particularly on Fox, 37, the reported mastermind of the plot. While the media portrayed Fox as a military leader prepping an army of “white supremacists” to overthrow state governments across the country, he was, in reality, a homeless man living in the dilapidated basement of a vacuum repair shop without running water or a toilet in a Grand Rapids strip mall. One co-defendant referred to him as “Captain Autism.”
Fox’s lawyer, Christopher Gibbons, said Chappel took on a “father figure” role to his fatherless and destitute client. Fox and Chappel exchanged thousands of texts. Chappel drove Fox, who did not own a car, to various meetups and staged events while recording every moment to preserve as evidence against him. On at least three occasions, according to testimony offered at trial, Chappel offered Fox a prepaid credit card authorized by the FBI with a $5,000 limit to help him buy guns and ammunition; Fox, despite being broke, declined each time.
Chappel, known as “Big Dan” to the group, created encrypted chats and gave real-time access to his FBI handlers working out of the Detroit FBI field office as the farfetched plan unfolded.
Informants and targets mulled over how to blow up a bridge outside Whitmer’s summer cottage; kill her security detail; take her to a nearby boat launch; and either abandon her in the middle of Lake Michigan or bring her across the lake to Wisconsin to stand a “citizen’s trial” over her COVID-19 lockdown policies. One discussion involved the implausible use of a military helicopter.
From appearances, a demonstration at the Michigan state Capitol in Lansing on April 30, 2020 might well have been a law enforcement dress rehearsal for Jan. 6. Chappel traveled to the event with three members of the Watchmen later held on state charges. Some protesters were clad in military gear and carried firearms but could not enter the building. When Chappel told his FBI handler what was happening, the FBI ordered the Michigan State Police to stand down and allow protesters inside. News photographers captured the moment when protesters “stormed” the Michigan Capitol and called out for Whitmer, resulting in the same sort of optics produced on Jan. 6.
The incident took on greater significance when it was revealed that Steven D’Antuono, head of the Detroit FBI field office during the Whitmer caper, was promoted to head up the Washington, D.C., FBI field office three months before the events of Jan. 6.
In exchange for his work, the FBI paid Chappel at least $54,000 in cash. Part of that haul included an envelope, handed over by his primary FBI handler in December 2020, filled with $23,000 in cash as payment for a mission accomplished. (Department of Justice policy requires informants to be paid in cash.). The bureau also supplied Chappel with other personal items, such as a laptop computer and tires for his car. Chappel also used a rented SUV, again funded by the FBI, to drive his targets to various locations as part of the trap.
Other informants were involved, too. A longtime FBI source named Steve Robeson, from Wisconsin, organized a “militia” meeting in Ohio in June 2020 and pressured the government’s targets, including Fox and Croft, to attend as he wore a wire to record what was said during the event.
Robeson arranged other events throughout the summer including at his remote property in Cambria, Wisconsin. He constructed a so-called “kill house” for the men to practice shooting. At one point, Robeson suggested the exercises could be used to “storm” a state Capitol building or governor’s residence. Robeson is a convicted felon several times over, including on charges of sex with a minor, with a rap sheet spanning at least nine states. He was paid roughly $20,000 for his involvement in the Whitmer caper. Prosecutors later accused him of acting as a “double agent” for allegedly tipping off one of the defendants that his arrest was imminent.
At least two other informants were tasked with managing Croft, who had been under FBI surveillance since 2019 for his “extremist” views, according to documents.
It was later revealed that the informants, including Chappel, violated FBI protocol by getting drunk and high on drugs with their targets numerous times, sleeping in the same hotel, and suggesting ways to advance the kidnapping plan. At one point, Chappel took an oath to join a separate group called the “Three Percent Patriot Militia” group – one fabricated by the FBI – then convinced Fox to become the head of the Michigan chapter, all in an effort have the men believe Chappel was part of a nonexistent “militia” movement.
Defense lawyer Gibbons described the ruse during the April 2022 trial as “free money, free bombs, daily contact for months, fake militia, build up vulnerable adult with a fake militia and a title of commanding officer, send him a federal agent to join his militia.”
More behind-the-scenes machinations were disclosed when the defense uncovered hundreds of communications between the agents and informants that showed how they guided the plot every step of the way. One text suggests that the FBI and Chappel attempted to lure a disabled Vietnam War veteran named “Frank” into initiating a similar plan against Virginia Gov. Ralph Northam. “Mission is to kill the governor specifically,” Chappel’s FBI handler texted him in August 2020.
Despite the FBI’s best efforts, the group of so-called kidnappers started to disband by August 2020. Chappel asked his handlers how to “put more pressure” on the individuals so no one would break off. To rally the increasingly uninterested group that month, Chappel proposed firing live rounds into Whitmer’s cottage and the residences of other governors, then sending the shell casings to news reporters. “Look at you bringing people together,” one of Chappel’s FBI handlers texted to him after he successfully kept the group intact.
Even that wasn’t enough to solidify a kidnapping scheme so, according to numerous exchanges between the FBI assets and trial testimony from one cooperating witness, the FBI ran another undercover agent into the plot in September 2020 to tempt the men into trying to purchase bomb-making material. During a get-together in mid-September, an FBI undercover agent known as “Red” showed the group a video of a Chevy Tahoe being blown up as a way to demonstrate his credentials.
The video had been produced by the FBI.
At the same get-together, several FBI informants and “Red” took their targets on a reconnaissance mission to stake out Whitmer’s vacation cottage, the scene of the alleged prospective crime. It was the second time Chappel drove Fox to the property. (The governor and her staff were in communication with authorities for months as the entrapment scheme was under way; the FBI installed pole cameras and 3D devices around her property to record any activity to be used as evidence.)
Chappel also drove the men to the location of the FBI arrest point in Ypsilanti, Mich., on Oct. 7, 2020, under a ruse to meet “Red,” who promised to sell them military-style garb, not explosive materials. Members of the FBI’s Hostage Rescue Team, whose missions include “high-risk arrests,” were there waiting.
But things went downhill for the government after that. Richard Trask, one of the main FBI investigators on the case, who signed the complaint against the federal defendants, was criminally charged in July 2021 for brutally assaulting his wife after a swingers’ party in Kalamazoo. Police body cam video showed a partly clothed, bloody, and apparently intoxicated Trask talking with police during his arrest. Reporters also found profane anti-Trump posts on Trask’s social media account.
Trask was removed from the case and fired by the FBI in September 2021.
Prosecutors removed Chappel’s two primary FBI handlers, Henrik Impola and Jayson Chambers, from the government’s witness list after defense attorneys accused Impola of committing perjury in a previous case and discovered that Chambers was moonlighting as head of a security firm on the side and posting inside information about the pending arrests on social media as a way to attract business.
Robeson and his wife, Kimberly, were charged with fraud in December 2021 for convincing a couple to purchase a used SUV and donate it to the Robesons’ nonexistent charity, a crime committed while Robeson was working the Whitmer plot.
Robeson also was charged separately with illegally purchasing a firearm as a felon; he threatened to plead his Fifth Amendment right against self-incrimination, so he also was not called as a witness.
By the time the federal case went to trial in western Michigan in March 2022, Ty Garbin and Kaleb Franks had accepted plea offers and planned to testify against their remaining four co-defendants: Fox, Croft, Harris, and Caserta.
Judge Robert Jonker allowed the defense to raise the entrapment issue but only after the government presented its case. That plan, however, did not last beyond the first day as defense attorneys struggled during opening remarks to explain their clients’ behavior without mentioning the key role of FBI informants and agents. Jonker suspended his own order – at which point the FBI essentially went on trial.
The trial lasted four weeks. Prosecutors insisted the defendants were solely responsible for conceiving the plan but the defense argued the group’s activities amounted to little more than “crazy, stoned talk.” Chappel took the stand for the prosecution but his testimony appeared to backfire as his central role in the plot came into view. He also admitted he became an informant to pad his resume in hopes of pursuing a job in law enforcement.
During closing arguments, the four defense attorneys emphasized the FBI’s misconduct while asking the jury for not-guilty verdicts.
“[This] is unacceptable in America,” Gibbons said during closing arguments on April 1. “That’s not how it works. They don’t make terrorists so we can arrest them.”
On April 8, 2022, after nearly four days of deliberation, the jury found Caserta and Harris not guilty on all charges; after 18 months behind bars, both men went free.
The jury, however, could not reach a unanimous verdict for Fox and Croft, resulting in a mistrial.
It was a shocking blow to the government. In what the Justice Department considered its biggest domestic terror case over the past few decades (until Jan. 6), prosecutors did not yet have a single conviction – an outcome practically unheard of for a department with a more than 90% conviction rate. “It felt so good, I was so happy. We did it, we beat them. We got justice,” Caserta told me in a post-trial interview in 2022.
Prosecutors immediately announced they would retry Fox and Croft. A different version of Judge Jonker appeared on the bench in August 2022; the trial was marked by open hostilities between the judge and defense attorneys.
At one point, Jonker took the rare step of setting a time limit for cross-examination of a key government witness. He also refused to allow defense attorneys to interview a juror suspected of bias against the defendants based on comments he had made to co-workers during jury selection and his affiliation with Black Lives Matter. Jonker repeatedly admonished both lawyers in front of the jury, accusing counsel of causing jurors to “tune out” and rushing them through important lines of questioning. Over objections by the defense, Jonker kept the man on the jury. He became the foreman.
Croft and Fox were convicted on August 23, 2022 of conspiring to kidnap and use a weapon of mass destruction, and are serving out multi-year sentences in supermax prisons reserved for the country’s worst criminals.
They are now appealing their convictions. In an August 2023 brief, Croft’s new appellate attorney, Timothy Sweeney, wrote: “It is staggering the extent to which the FBI and its agents/informants used excessive pressure, exploited the anger from COVID lockdowns and destructive summer riots, and manipulated emotional issues among vulnerable and excitable citizens. This included: nearly constant real-time monitoring of FBI’s communications with Fox, plus thousands of government-initiated texts/chats; the deployment of multiple paid agents/informants who sought to elicit and encourage extremist and violent behavior; and the FBI’s instigating, planning, promoting, and conducting of nearly all key events.”
In response, the government wrote in a December 2023 motion that “there was no evidence that government agents or informants suggested the plot or offered more than opportunity and facilities.”
Sweeney and Fox’s new appellate attorney, Steven Nolder, further accused Jonker of severely hamstringing the defense by refusing to admit into evidence the hundreds of messages that showed extensive communication between FBI agents and informants as they advanced the plot. Jonker, in both trials, denied defense motions to allow the jury to see the communications.
“These communications – constituted relevant evidence of the shocking degree to which Chambers, Chappel, and the other FBI agents/informants orchestrated this scam and generally engaged in incessant and oppressive inducement,” Sweeney wrote.
A recent verdict for the last three defendants charged in the Michigan state case may add weight to the appeal. An Antrim County jury in September 2023 found Willam Null, his brother Michael Null, and their co-defendant Eric Molitor not guilty of providing material support to an act of terror and illegally possessing firearms.
The acquittals represented another blow to the overall case and a poor showing for the government; of the 10 defendants who went to trial, five were found not guilty and two were convicted after a second trial. Four others pleaded guilty—outcomes that represent a poor showing for both the DOJ and Michigan Attorney General Dana Nessel. Nessel was so infuriated by the acquittals for the Null brothers and Molitor that she publicly criticized jurors as coming from “a very, very right-leaning county (were) seemingly not so concerned about the kidnapping and assassination of the governor.”
Fox and Croft and the DOJ have asked for oral arguments. An appellate court in western Michigan could render a decision by mid-2024. “When I look at what happened in this case,” Croft’s public defender, Joshua Blanchard, said during closing arguments in the April 2022 trial, “I am ashamed of the behavior of the leading law enforcement agency in the United States. This investigation was an embarrassment, and we have to tell them this isn’t how our country operates. This isn’t how our justice system is supposed to work.”
CPI Reality Check: Chick-Fil-A Has Hiked Prices 21% In Just Two Years
While we keep letting the government tell us that inflation is at 3%, back out in the real world price hikes are staggeringly higher.
Just take one look at Chick-fil-A, for example: the popular fast food chain has hiked its prices a whopping 21% over the last two years, according to a new report from the NY Post.
In 2022, the chain first raised prices by 15%, the report says. In January 2023, the company then implemented a menu-wide 6% hike in prices, resulting in the average price of its chicken sandwich – which was under $5 in 2021 – to now cost $5.79.
The report notes that in high cost of living areas, like New York City, the same sandwich is going to run customers $6.99. An 8 piece nuggets, which would cost $5.99 elsewhere and which were also under $5 in 2021, now cost $7.09.
The Post noted the discrepancy between the real world and the CPI, which showed a 3.1% increase in November. Meanwhile, the Bureau of Labor Statistics noted a 0.2% monthly rise in the food index for November, a slight decrease from the 0.3% rise in the previous month.
Labor costs are playing a role in driving costs higher, the report says.
New York saw its minimum wage increase from $15 to $16 in New York City, Long Island, and Westchester County as the new year began. This increment is part of a plan, agreed upon last April by Governor Kathy Hochul and legislative leaders, to gradually raise the minimum wage to $17 in these areas and $16 in other parts of the state by 2026.
Twenty-two other states, including California and Connecticut, have also recently raised their minimum wages. California increased its rate to $16, and Connecticut to $15.69. Now, approximately 30 states have minimum wages higher than the federal minimum of $7.25 per hour.
These wage increases have been linked to rising prices, such as the anticipated $15 cost for a McDonald’s Big Mac in states with the wage hikes. Brandon Arnold of the National Taxpayers Union highlighted California’s mandate for a $20 minimum wage in fast food restaurants.
Establishments are “either gonna have to raise prices, start to reduce those labor costs or a combination of both,” Arnold said on Fox. “And that’s not fair to those employees that are getting laid off, nor is it fair to the customers that are all of the sudden paying $12, $15 for a Big Mac.”
India’s lower imports of Russian crude oil in recent weeks were the result of unattractive discounts, not because of payment issues amid tougher U.S. sanctions on Russia’s exports, Indian Oil Minister Hardeep Singh Puri said on Wednesday.
“There is no payment problem,” Puri told a briefing in New Delhi on Wednesday, as quoted by Bloomberg.
“It is a pure function of price at which our refiners will buy,” he said, adding that India’s priority is to ensure the cheapest price possible for its consumers.
The tougher enforcement of the G7 sanctions and related payment issues have been holding up Indian purchases of some cargoes of Russian crude oil, with tankers previously headed to India now turning back eastwards, tanker-tracking data monitored by Bloomberg showed on Tuesday.
At the end of last year, the United States took a tougher stance on the sanctions against Russia and sanctioned several vessels for violating the G7 price cap of $60 per barrel, above which cargoes cannot use Western insurance and financing. Some of those tankers were already en route to India loaded with Russia’s Sokol grade and departed from the Far Eastern ports in Russia.
According to the ship-tracking data Bloomberg has compiled, five tankers carrying Sokol were headed to India last month. But now all five – the NS Commander, Sakhalin Island, Krymsk, Nellis, and Liteyny Prospect – are headed away from India and on to the Malacca Strait, suggesting that India wouldn’t be taking those purchases after all.
A sixth tanker, the NS Century, which has been idling off Sri Lanka for months caught up by the sanctions, is still in that area, according to the data.
As of the end of November, India was still considering whether to allow the now-sanctioned tanker carrying Russian oil to approach and dock at one of its ports—a sign that the U.S. clampdown on Russian crude trade could limit India’s ability to buy and import cheaper oil.
US Slams Hardline Israeli Ministers For Plan To Expel Palestinians From Gaza
The Biden administration continues to clash with Israel over Gaza war policy, especially the question of the “day after” Hamas and how the Gaza Strip will be administrated. The White House has sought to advance a plan that would see the West Bank-based Palestinian Authority (PA) under Mahmoud Abbas eventually take control of the Strip. Prime Minister Netanyahu has been adamant in rejecting this, decrying the PA as terror sympathizers and supporters.
Washington on Tuesday condemned remarks by two top Israeli ministers who expressed a policy of fostering the migration of Palestinians from the Strip. Hardline Finance Minister Bezalel Smotrich and Minister of National Security Itamar Ben Gvir both said Monday they not only want “encourage the migration” of Palestinians from Gaza but they want to begin establishing Jewish settlements in place of Palestinian homes.
Here’s what the controversial ministers said, according to Israeli media translation:
The war presents an “opportunity to concentrate on encouraging the migration of the residents of Gaza,” Ben Gvir told reporters and members of his far-right Otzma Yehudit party, calling such a policy “a correct, just, moral and humane solution.”
“We cannot withdraw from any territory we are in in the Gaza Strip. Not only do I not rule out Jewish settlement there, I believe it is also an important thing,” he said.
The “correct solution” to the ongoing Israeli-Palestinian conflict is “to encourage the voluntary migration of Gaza’s residents to countries that will agree to take in the refugees,” Smotrich told members of his Religious Zionism party, predicting that “Israel will permanently control the territory of the Gaza Strip,” including through the establishment of settlements.
Supporters of this plan have previously urged Arab countries like Egypt or Qatar to take in expelled Palestinians. Arab leaders have reacted fiercely against the statements, rejecting that it’s so much as a possibility that can be broached.
Importantly, the US State Department issued the following swift rebuke on the same day the statements were made by the Israeli officials: “The United States rejects recent statements from Israeli Ministers Bezalel Smotrich and Itamar Ben Gvir advocating for the resettlement of Palestinians outside of Gaza. This rhetoric is inflammatory and irresponsible,” State Department spokesman Matt Miller said at a briefing.
Miller also noted this is not the official policy of the Netanyahu government, saying the Biden administration has been informed “repeatedly and consistently by the Government of Israel, including by the Prime Minister, that such statements do not reflect the policy of the Israeli government. They should stop immediately.”
But it remains that Netanyahu has been on record as seeking to convince Arab countries to “absorb” Palestinians, a policy he repeated only last week at a Likud party meeting.
Following the State Department’s rebuke, Ben Gvir didn’t back down but actually hit back, saying “We highly value America’s friendship, but respectfully, we aren’t another star on the American flag.” He added: “We’ll do what’s best for Israel: facilitating the relocation of hundreds of thousands from Gaza will allow those in the Israeli-Gaza border communities to return home and live securely while safeguarding the IDF soldiers.”
Still, the US has refused to impose ‘conditions’ on Israel’s use of American-supplied weaponry, and has done nothing to slow the flow of defense aid, which Israeli forces have been using on Gaza in the fight against Hamas.
Hezbollah Losses Grow To 9 In One Day After Israel Mounts Another Major Airstrike
Update(1719ET): Within hours after the Nasrallah speech, Israel has conducted another major airstrike on Lebanon, this time against a residential building which housed Hezbollah members.
“Two security sources told the Reuters news agency that four Hezbollah members were killed in the attack on what had been described as a residential building,” Al Jazeera reports. Importantly, “It brings the number of Hezbollah members killed on Wednesday to nine” – which suggests we are witnessing a significant escalation.
A Pentagon statement has also implicated Israel in the earlier targeted drone strike which killed Hamas deputy head Saleh al-Arouri. While Israel had not officially owned up to it, a CENTCOM statement said to reporters, “The strike was an Israeli strike. Please refer all questions to IDF.”
Update(1304ET): As is typical of his speeches, Hezbollah Secretary-General Hassan Nasrallah gave no details on the paramilitary group’s next steps, or whether an escalation in the conflict is on the horizon, but he asserted that the killing al-Arouri will not go without punishment, issuing all the usual fresh threats and warnings. He did warn of a ‘no limit’ war.
“If the enemy thinks about waging war against Lebanon, then our fighting will be with no ceiling, with no limits, with no rules. And they know what I mean,” Nasrallah said. “We are not afraid of war. We don’t fear it. We are not hesitant. If we were, we would have stopped at the front.”
He called Israel’s targeting south Beirut the day before, which resulted in the assassination of al-Arouri and some six others, a “dangerous” act. According to an outline of his main points, via Al Jazeera:
Israel has been dealt a strategic defeat in the region since the October 7 attack.
Assassinating al-Arouri is a “dangerous” act that will not pass without punishment.
The Houthis’ Red Sea attacks are “qualitative” and “effective”.
The US administration is fuelling the war in Gaza and preventing a ceasefire.
Israel is failing to declare casualties “in the thousands” on the Lebanese front.
Hezbollah is not afraid of an all-out war with Israel and is willing to fight with “no limits”.
Meanwhile Ayatollah Ali Khamenei has been posting English messages to X throughout the day…
The enemy should know the soldiers on Soleimani’s bright path won’t tolerate their vileness & crime. The hands stained with the blood of innocent people & the corrupt, evil minds that misdirected them will definitely be the target of a severe pounding & a deserving retribution.
Earlier in the day Iranian Foreign Minister Hossein Amir-Abdollahianstruck a similar theme, denouncing the “cowardly terrorist operation.”
“The evil terror machine of this regime in other countries is a real threat to peace and security and a serious alarm for the security of the countries in the region,” he said a Wednesday social media post. State media also underscored, “The Iranian diplomat further noted that Israel’s terrorist operations prove that the occupying regime has failed to reach its objectives in the war in Gaza despite US support.”
* * *
All eyes are on Hezbollah chief Hassan Nasrallah and what he’s going to say during his 6pm speech (Beirut time, 11am eastern in US). There were reports yesterday that he canceled the speech in the wake of the Israeli drone assassination of Hamas deputy head Saleh al-Arouri in a southern Beirut neighborhood. But by day’s end Tuesday, it became clear that the speech will go on, which will be his third since the start of the Israel-Gaza war.
Israel’s military now says it is on “high readiness for any scenario” after the killing of Arouri along with six other Hamas operatives. As if things in the region weren’t on edge enough, amid continuing tit-for-tat fighting between Hezbollah and the IDF along the southern Lebanese border, twin explosions rocked the site of memorial events for the death of IRGC General Qasem Soleimani.
Regional analyst Amal Saad was quoted in The Washington Post as saying Israel’s drone strike on Beirut yesterday sent two messages: “One is to Hezbollah: You can’t harbor Hamas operatives anymore. Lebanon is not going to be a sanctuary for Hamas and Islamic Jihad.” And “The second, more obvious message, she said, is to Hamas leaders: that nowhere is safe.” According to more:
Hezbollah’s challenge, she added, will be to respond in a careful and calculated manner “to ensure that Israel understands that you can’t do this again,” but without dragging the country into a full-scale war.
In August, Arouri told the Lebanese Al-Mayadeen channel that the repeated Israeli threats against his life are “part of the price we pay.” The 57-year-old said he had not expected to make it to his current age, and predicted that assassinations and other actions by the Israeli government could push the region into “a comprehensive war.”
Watch the speech live, expected to begin at 11am eastern…
Additionally, the geopolitical analysis site Moon of Alabama comments on what to expect… “Hizbullah must respond carefully to not give Netanyahoo a reason for a wider attack on Lebanon.”
The analysis continues, “On the other side the response must be strong enough and soon enough to give Netanyahoo some trouble. But what kind of operation he will chose to do is yet unknown. I for one expect an unexpected but serious surprise in a direction that Israel has not foreseen.”
An analysis of Vaccine Adverse Event Reporting System (VAERS) data indicates that the COVID-19 vaccines are “significantly” more deadly than the flu vaccine, according to Sen. Ron Johnson (R-Wis.).
The review was conducted by the senator’s staff and involved a certain level of assumption given that no publicly available data exist regarding how many flu vaccine doses were administered in the United States over the past 10 years.
Using the number of distributed doses to generate that figure, they found that the number of deaths per million doses of the COVID-19 vaccines (25.5) far exceeded those estimated for the flu vaccine (0.46).
“Using the midpoint assumption that 70 percent of distributed flu vaccines were administered, the 25.5 deaths per million doses of the COVID-19 vaccine represents a 55-fold increase over the flu vaccine deaths per million doses,” Mr. Johnson wrote in a Dec. 21 letter to the heads of the Department of Health and Human Services, U.S. Food and Drug Administration, and Centers for Disease Control and Prevention.
“This is a shocking difference and only adds to the growing evidence of safety signals that are screaming to be taken seriously,” he added.
Mr. Johnson cited the study as part of a request for internal studies, documents, and data surrounding the COVID-19 vaccines’ development and safety.
“When it comes to responding to my data requests on the adverse events associated with the COVID-19 vaccines, your arrogant lack of transparency has been unprecedented, irresponsible, and completely unacceptable,” chided the senator, who serves as the top Republican on the Senate’s Permanent Subcommittee on Investigations.
“Over the course of the last 32 months, I have raised questions, sent formal requests, and conducted oversight on the safety and efficacy of the COVID-19 vaccines.
“Instead of addressing my legitimate questions and requests for information, you and other public health officials continue to promote the COVID-19 vaccines as safe and effective and often use the number of vaccine doses administered as support for that misleading claim.”
He also requested that the agencies advise whether they were aware of and had acted on another recent study published in Nature that has raised additional concerns about the safety of the Pfizer vaccine—namely, whether it produces “off-target,” or unintended, proteins that could potentially elicit harmful immune responses.
The administration officials have been given until Jan. 18 to produce the requested information.
Mr. Johnson’s letter coincided with a survey published on Dec. 21 by the JAMA Network revealing that Americans are more skeptical of the COVID-19 vaccines’ safety than that of the flu vaccine.
Conducted between July 7 and July 16, 2023, the survey found that 55 percent of respondents believed the flu vaccine to be “very safe,” while just 41 percent said the same about the COVID-19 vaccines.
Meanwhile, a majority (51 percent) said they were worried about the safety of the COVID-19 vaccine, compared to only 24 percent who expressed concern about the flu vaccine’s safety.
The results also showed that more people are “not at all likely” to get vaccinated against COVID-19 this year (28 percent) than the flu (22 percent), with 60 percent of respondents saying they wanted more research conducted on the former shot. Just 24 percent said the same about the flu vaccine.
Yet on the question of efficacy, nearly the same percentage of respondents claimed the COVID-19 vaccines (42 percent) and flu vaccines (40 percent) are effective against serious illness and hospitalization.
In a Nov. 22 post, the CDC conceded that “COVID-19 vaccine uptake is lower than we’d like to see.”
As of Nov. 4, only 14 percent of U.S. adults were estimated to have received the updated vaccines.
WTI Holds Day’s Gains After API Reports Big Crude Draw
Crude prices soared today, round-tripping yesterday’s losses, after traders apparently woke up to the tensions in the MidEast.
Traders have largely looked past shipping disruptions in the Red Sea and the threat of a wider war in the Middle East over the past few weeks as those factors have yet to impact global oil supply and output, but the Danish shipping giant Maersk said today it would indefinitely suspend shipments through the Red Sea.
But major fatalities following explosions at a ceremony held to mark the four-year death anniversary of an Iranian Maj. Gen. Qassem Soleimani (prompting Iran to explicitly threaten a response) and reports that Libya’s largest oilfield has been shut down due to protests, may have been the straw to break the back of complacency.
Overall, the oil market seems “likely to be in rough balance, but uncertainty about supplies abound – from sanctions on Iran, Russia and Venezuela having less effect, to the possibility that [U.S. President Joe] Biden will try to tighten them,” said Michael Lynch, president of Strategic Energy & Economic Research.
Will tonight’s API data give us any hints
API
Crude -7.42mm (-3.00mm exp)
Cushing +765k
Gasoline +6.91mm
Distillates +6.69mm
Crude stocks saw an unexpectedly large drawdown last week, but very large builds in products spoiled the bulls’ party. Cushing stockpiles rose for the 11th month…
Source: Bloomberg
WTI was hovering at $73 ahead of the API print and maintained it after…
“Nobody wants to be short crude below $70 when there is unrest in the Middle East,” said Dennis Kissler, senior vice president at BOK Financial.
OPEC also on Wednesday released a statement saying it was committed to “unity, full cohesion and market stability.”
The political left that I came to know in college – that one that rallied around free speech, reason over faith, fairness to all, and peace – seems to have evaporated completely.
I barely recognized what has replaced it.
Truth is, I cannot make heads or tails out of any of it.
It seems like this chaotic assembly of seemingly random biases, all shoved together in a package like a grab bag of the bizarre and dangerous.
Here are five of the oddest doctrines you find on the left that make zero sense to me.
Russia.
Coming of age during the Cold War meant that college was filled with debates about the character of what was called the Soviet Union, meaning Russia and many neighboring states. The conservative right saw the Soviets as imperialistic communists hellbent on global domination through industrial supremacy and arms exports. It was the core of the revolutionary conspiracy that threatened to overthrow tradition and freedom, and that’s why it must be resisted and rolled back.
The left in those days had a different view, and it always intrigued me. They said Russia was a normal country with normal problems and issues. The United States and Russia were strong allies in the Second World War and the country made great sacrifices to defeat Nazism. Since then, it has not really been imperialistic so much as nationalistic, defending its economic and political interests. Moreover, they would say, communism in Russia is no longer a prevailing practice but more of a slogan. They have reformed substantially and want to reform more, so it is time to make peace, which the nation desperately desires.
This debate over how to think of Russia was pervasive, even affecting the way they thought about the Soviet role in Afghanistan. U.S. conservatives rallied against the Soviet occupation but the left would point out that actually the Soviets are a moderate force in the country, attempting to keep religious extremism at bay and foster a kind of moderate secular government. The main message of the left was, for many decades, stop demonizing this country and its foreign policy ambitions, and treat the Russians as just another country with its own distinct problems and issues.
That whole paradigm is now ancient history. After the collapse of the Soviet Union, U.S. conservatives generally adopted a new attitude much more in keeping with what the left once believed about the country. Meanwhile, and gradually especially during the 21st century, the left holds a similar view to what the right once held: this country is a rogue state headed by a monster who supports reactionary politics the world over, interferes in elections, and wars against progress.
The anti-Russia doctrine on the left is now ironclad and unshakeable. Even after the claim that Russia somehow got Trump elected in 2016 was shown to be completely rot the left won’t let go. Anything that goes wrong anywhere is blamed on Russia. Any pundit who disagrees with the left is smeared as a Russian agent (yes, they have said this about me!).
I have no real explanation for this bizarre turn.
Oil, gas, and coal.
Another odd turn on the left is how within their circles of opinion, it is seen as incontrovertibly true that all energy to power the human experience should come from wind, water, and sun. Nothing else. Digging up coal is bad. Drilling into the oceans of oil beneath our feet is bad. I’ve gradually come to realize that these people truly do desire the complete end to the use of what they call “fossil fuels” and are hellbent on achieving it.
No evidence can shake their view. Raise doubts about this “climate change” story and you are dismissed as an anti-science crank, even though Nobel Laureates have debunked the narrative too. It’s an article of faith among this whole crowd, a serious ambition and belief that the whole world should be purged of petroleum products. But that itself is strange because the same gang has long promoted fake fur and fake leather as clothing even though the replacement is entirely a petroleum product. So it seems like they only oppose the use of oil in the production of energy, for whatever reason.
As for electric cars, don’t be fooled: there is no way the grid can be supported by sunbeams and breezes. It requires vast use of coal, which the left opposes. So it’s only a matter of time. First, convert the world to EVs and then, second, announce that coal digging and processing is massively throttled, and, third, explain that bicycles and Flintstone cars are really the only way to get around. It’s hard to avoid the conclusion that these people have a strangely malicious hatred of the good life that oil, gas, and coal enable.
Which is also weird because the mainstream left a century ago strongly believed in industrialization and material progress. That was the original vision of socialism: through collective effort and a strong state, we will industrialize the world through man’s strength and awesome machines. Look at old-time Soviet propaganda: it’s all about industrial strength, smokestacks, and immense production. How did that ambition come to be converted to a neo-Manichean longing for a state of nature where a tiny and immobile population forages for food and lives in caves?
I have no real explanation for this bizarre turn.
Gender transitions.
The idea of emancipating women from subjugation and subservience is certainly part of the liberal idea from the 19th century. This migrated to the women’s suffrage movement and later to waves of feminism in the 1960s and 1970s. The message was always that women are normative human beings, distinct from men but deserving of full rights, dignity, and respect. If men have sports teams, women should too. If men are paid high salaries, women should be too. The idea here was that society needed to recognize the distinct contribution that women as women make to the good life.
All fine. But then in a phantasmagoric twist, left-wing doctrine suddenly shifted. There is nothing biologically distinct about women at all. There is nothing about gender identity that is reflective of inner biological differences. Everything can be moved around through pure volition such that men can become women and vice versa. All that a man needs to do to compete in women’s sports is grow longer hair, put it in a bun, wear some fun colors, affect a high voice with rising intonation, and voila he is a woman! With assistance of drugs and surgery, anything is possible.
For a while, this turn seemed to be about tolerating eccentricities. Most everyone can play along with that game, just as we indulge the family friend who suddenly picks up a high English accent for whatever reason. We are polite people and don’t normally want to shame people for their unique ways. But then it became more than that. The codification of this wacky stuff came only recently when federal government documents, even from the CDC, struck the existence of women from reality altogether. Now there are only “people who are pregnant.”
The left, which had traditionally rallied around rights for women, has come full circle and is now literally deleting the existence of women as biological entities! It’s gotten so extreme that the left is even fine with hacking off the genitalia of adolescents in the name of gender therapeutics—a barbaric practice from the ancient world designed to create eunuchs to guard harems and sopranos to sing in choirs. The same people who only a few years ago were raging about “blackface” are now thrilled about “womanface.”
Again, I have no real explanation for this bizarre turn.
Free speech.
The idea of free speech was once settled doctrine on the left, from John Stuart Mill and forward. One hundred years ago, it was a rallying cry. The idea was absolute: no one should be throttled, much less censored. To speak and be heard was the very essence of freedom itself. The most famous of all liberal organizations spent many decades litigating for the right. Nothing was as settled as this idea.
In 1965, this thinker named Herbert Marcuse wrote an essay called “Repressive Tolerance.” His idea was that freedom as we know it is really nothing more than a bourgeois slogan that was thrown around to cover up ruling-class domination. The only path to real free speech was through the complete silencing of culturally dominant voices and the forced raising up of marginal voices. Only the vanguard of leftist elites know precisely how to achieve this so they should be in charge.
Nothing much came from this barrage of bilge and it was largely forgotten. It seems like some people found the essay a few years ago and, seemingly out of nowhere, the left became massive champions of censorship and speech control. Now every major social media platform but one is routinely used as a censorship tool at the behest of the government. The left not only puts up with this but actively champions it too. Now this same gang says that anyone who pushes free speech is really just a sloganeer for bourgeois interests, probably paid by Russia or the fossil fuels industry.
I have no real explanation for this bizarre turn.
The Working Class.
Let’s end this litany of the absurd with an obvious observation: the left has turned against everything associated with the working class. We saw this during the pandemic controls. Everyone on the left seemed to agree that the professional class should luxuriate at home and watch movies while the working classes should drive around trucks with food and deliver it to the front doors of the progressive vanguard of pathogenic control. They simply cared nothing at all for those doing actual work. Later they came after them with experimental meds and tried to force them on all workers.
What a contrast from the past! The left had for many decades been the champions of labor over capital. This has been true from about 1880; indeed the core of socialist theory was that labor was entitled to a much greater share of surplus value that was being unjustly hoarded by capital. This view was foundational on the left, all the way back from the mid-19th century until about 2016, when the working classes voted for a guy that the left didn’t like. Now, they have flipped sides: favor capital over labor, provided that capital is funding their projects, nonprofits, and helping to rig elections in their favor.
They are unapologetic about their status as the new Robber Barons who are entitled to rule the rest of us.
For this bizarre turn, there really is an explanation.
They like power. They want to retain and exercise power. For that to happen, they need money. Capital is where the money is and, hence, that is where the left hangs out. Yes, that’s a cynical take but that’s where all the facts point.
Still there remains a fundamental theoretical problem with the 2020s version of progressive/leftist ideology. None of it makes any sense. It’s a hodgepodge mix of crazy that stands in complete contradiction to what everyone within this camp believed only a few years ago, dating back a century and more. In this way, the new leftism is completely unsustainable from an intellectual point of view.
There can only be defectors from the group in the future. People with integrity will continue to flee, leaving this to become a tiny junta of bromide-rich babblers focused on wielding power for its own sake. How can there be a future in this?
By Michael Msika, BLoomberg Markets Live reporter and strateigst
After partying frenziedly for two months before the New Year, stock markets might well need to take a breather in January.
On the face of it, momentum still looks robust. But a closer look shows investors gravitating toward last year’s laggards, an oft-observed January pattern. On the first trading day of 2024, telecoms and energy, alongside value stocks such as banks and autos, benefited from the rotation, while tech slid.
There are also reasons to be cautious on markets as a whole.
Technically, global stocks have started the year in overbought territory, while Europe’s Stoxx 600 has been overbought for a record 20 sessions in a row, based on its 14-day RSI. And as our chart below shows, it’s repeatedly come up against resistance, failing yet again yesterday to breach a level that’s been unchallenged for two years. The index last broke above that barrier in January 2022, but the subsequent record high proved short-lived.
Given the recent rally was propelled by bets on big interest rate cuts, investors will probably want to make sure economic dataflow continues to back the case for aggressive policy easing. “Even if investors remain widely optimistic regarding the outcome for global economies this year, with decreasing inflation and recession fears, they will remain data dependent,” says Pierre Veyret, a technical analyst at ActivTrades.
The rate-cut optimism faces a test Friday, with euro-area inflation forecast to show a small upward bump. And final PMI readings released yesterday confirmed manufacturing activity and new orders remain stuck in contraction — a stark contrast with buoyant stock markets.
John Stoltzfus at Oppenheimer Asset Management, a big-time equity bull who correctly predicted last year’s S&P 500 surge, says “it’s not uncommon for markets to pause to digest a bull run of the magnitude experienced in the fourth quarter just ended.”
Stoltzfus sees the earnings season — officially starting in the US on Jan. 12 — as the next catalyst for markets. Yet, earnings expectations are becoming less upbeat. For the Stoxx 600, 12-month blended EPS estimates have been sliding since October. Citi’s quantitative indicator of European earnings recently hit its lowest in a year, having been negative since September.
For European companies, “a combination of margin pressure across staples, industrials and financials, along with heavy exposure to China, create challenges for first half earnings,” Bloomberg Intelligence strategists Tim Craighead and Kaidi Meng write. They predict further negative revisions, compared with upgrades in the US.
None of the above means people are turning gloomy. In fact, a January pause may be the prelude to further stock gains, according to Bank of America quantitative strategist Savita Subramanian. Her “Sell Side Indicator” (SSI), suggests equity sentiment is now the most bullish in over 18 months but remains stuck at neutral. That implies a 13.5% price return on the S&P 500 this year.
“Wall Street is now halfway over the wall of worry,” Subramanian writes, noting that while the average recommended equity allocation increased last year by 1.6 percentage points, it had dropped in 2022 by more 6 percentage points.
