Friday, March 29, 2024

The Business Losses From The Baltimore bridge Wreck Are Immense - The Logistics tangle To Be Sorted Out Is Mind-Boggling.

The business losses from the Baltimore bridge wreck are immense, and the logistics tangle to be sorted out is mind-boggling




The economic wreckage from the destruction of the Francis Scott Key Bridge is staggering. Consider the following mushroom cloud of losses:


  • The entire Port of Baltimore is closed until the channel can be cleared, halting about $15-million in daily activity in the Baltimore region.


  • A critical highway has been severed for much longer than the channel will be closed with a cost in lost business, slowed business, and higher expenses that is incalculable and widespread.


  • The combination of the two closures will impact railways, trucking, regional distribution centers, to name some of the most obvious transportation industries impacted. It is estimated the losses to those industries will add tens of millions daily to the $15-million mentioned above.


  • The port alone is responsible for 140,000 jobs that will be impacted until the channel is cleared with the downstream affect from any unemployment diminishing revenue to other industries as people tighten their belts.


  • With forty ships that were already in route to Baltimore that have to be diverted plus those that would be coming in the weeks ahead, the delay of products into other parts of the country will cause spot shortages around the nation and will increase the cost of shipping wherever those products that are rerouted are slated to go. The port handles “over a million TEUs," said one logistics CEO, referring to the number of containers Baltimore handles in a year. "It's not marginal." He alone had 800 containers already in route that are already being rerouted.


  • East Coast ports may not even have enough residual capacity to handle the extra shipping traffic, forcing reroutes to go through the choked Panama Canal or, at least, to the gulf or through Canada to find entry into the country. Some businesses with shipping facilities that span the nation are already rerouting some shipments to the West Coast that are not ultimately destined for West Coast business. Those will backtrack to the Midwest.


  • Vehicles hauling hazardous materials that are not allowed to go through Baltimore or through tunnels will now have a longer, slower route to make to get around Baltimore.


  • Baltimore was in rough shape economically to begin with. Now it will sink to the bottom of its own channel without a huge amount of national support.


  • The costs of all the rerouting and delays will be mostly borne by the businesses receiving the goods that are being rerouted, as some shipping companies are already declaring force majeure, “telling shippers including U.S. retailers, that once cargo is dropped at alternate ports, it’s no longer their responsibility.” 


    So, the ocean-freight companies will get the cargo to another port, but the costs of finding warehousing that will suddenly be in short supply at those ports and transport out of those ports will be up to the retailers, shipping companies and other businesses downstream from the ocean freight companies. This could include intentionally expensive port penalties (detention and demurrage) for shipments that get stored on the port site because an alternative shipper and warehousing are not found right away. Said one shipper: “Those (containers) on the water will be discharged at an alternate port where they will be made available for pick-up, and CMA CGM’s bill of lading will terminate.” COSCO and Evergreen this morning also announced their services would “be concluded” once the diverted container arrives at the alternate port. They’ll get you that far, but then you’re on your own.


In the process of all that, there will be a lot of confusion about what went where, things getting lost sitting in some back corner of some port facility where they got stashed in the overflow and the rush and not well recorded, and a lot of competition for the alternate shipping suddenly needed.



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Christian and Jewish faith leaders visit Israel, tell Netanyahu: Stand strong against external pressures


Christian and Jewish faith leaders visit Israel, tell Netanyahu: Stand strong against external pressures



A solidarity mission of American Christian and Jewish faith leaders recently visited Israel to strengthen the nation and its leaders against external pressures from all sides – and especially the U.S. push for Palestinian statehood.

“What our administration is doing in pressuring Israel into a unilateral two-state solution…is absolutely outrageous,” Mario Bramnick, delegation leader and head of the Latino Coalition For Israel told the Jewish News Syndicate.

Besides Bramnick, the delegation included Family Research Council president, Reverend Tony Perkins; Sara Carter, Fox News contributor; and Ellie Cohanim, Special Envoy to Monitor and Combat Antisemitism during the Trump Administration.

“Evangelical support of Israel in America and worldwide is essential and more important today than at any other time in the history of modern Israel,” the delegates stated.

In a meeting with Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, the members of the delegation expressed their solidarity with Israel in the wake of the Oct. 7 invasion and massacre carried out by Hamas terrorists. They also expressed their support for Israel’s military initiatives, as well as the “protection of the sovereignty of Israel in light of the United States pressure towards a unilateral two-state solution,” according to the delegation’s press release.

The delegation also met with former U.S. ambassador to Israel David Friedman under the Trump administration, as well as other senior government officials.

“Israel and the United States are fighting a common enemy, an enemy that wants to destroy not just Israel, but the Western world,” the delegates stated.

The faith leaders received security briefings while touring key strategic locations in Israel, including the Gaza Envelope, Israel’s northern border, where Hezbollah has been carrying out daily attacks since last October, and Judea and Samaria, internationally known as the West Bank.

In the Gaza Envelope, they visited the site of the Nova party massacre near Kibbutz Re’im.

“We had a time of prayer and repentance at the Nova music festival in the Gaza corridor to repent for the actions of our government that led to the October 7th massacre,” the delegation stated.

“I am more worried about America because Israel has an unconditional covenant of God’s protection,” Pastor Bramnick told Israel 365 News.

“I believe we’re in a spiritual existential threat in America. If we turn our backs against Israel, we have no hope for God’s favor, grace, or protection only of the wrath and judgment of God.”

The pastor said he believes that the Church and the Jewish people were sharing an “Esther moment,” referring to the Jewish holiday of Purim this week.

He said the Church and Jews “are facing a wave of Hamans. Like Haman used Ahasuerus, the haters of Israel are using the governments of the United States and European Union in an attempt to destroy the Jewish people,” Bramnick said, drawing parallels to the Purim story as told in the Book of Esther.


“This is our moment, it is for this time, that Christians, like Esther, have to stand up against these anti-Israel decrees in the month of Adar to raise our voice to reverse every Haman decree against Israel, against the Jewish people. The enemy comes to steal, kill, and destroy but God came so that we might have life and have life more abundantly.”





Israel Must Stop Bowing To International Threats And Pressure


Israel can't be pushed around anymore by international pressure

Dan Zamansky



As the current international pressure on Israel intensifies, the country must finally learn that it has no choice but to reject it, if it is to survive. In order to do so, it is first necessary to remember the awful consequences that Israel suffered from bending to international, and more specifically American, pressure in the past.

In November 1956 and again in February 1957, President Dwight D. Eisenhower threatened to withhold aid to Israel if it did not completely withdraw from the Sinai peninsula, which it had captured during the Suez campaign of 1956. Israel duly withdrew.

Years later, in 1965 Eisenhower, allegedly expressed remorse, in the following terms: “I regret what I did. I should have never pressured Israel to evacuate Sinai.” Such comments by a retired President were, of course, of no consequence. Just two years after that, in May 1967, Egyptian President Nasser imposed a blockade on the Straits of Tiran south of Eilat, boasting that “there is a big difference between yesterday and today, between 1956 and 1967”.

Less than a month later, Israel had to fight a desperate war of survival against a coalition of Egypt, Jordan, Syria and Iraq. Withdrawing from the Sinai, only to retake it in a bitter war, had been a remarkably short-sighted action. It need not be written that neither Eisenhower, nor any other non-entity in his administration, was ever held accountable for their actions in 1956.

In March 1975, American diplomacy, or rather the incoherent blackmail that so often substitutes for diplomacy in America’s relationships with her Allies, was back. Israel was at that time still in control of most of the Sinai, and America was again busy pushing Israel out. On that occasion, President Ford infamously declared a “reassessment of United States policy in the region, including our relations with Israel”.
It took seven years, but in 1982 Israel handed all of the Sinai back to Egypt, in return for a cold peace which is still in force at present. In the process, a little town called Rafah was split in two, between Egyptian-controlled Sinai and Israeli-controlled Gaza. Within a mere two years, the first smuggling tunnel between Sinai and Gaza was in operation. Not coincidentally that year, 1984, was the year when future Hamas founder Ahmed Yassin was first arrested by Israel for weapons possession, as I recalled in my previous article.
President Ford died at the end of 2006, a ripe 93 years of age. Henry Kissinger, his Secretary of State, died a centenarian, a few short months ago. A great many other people have been killed, and continue to be killed, at a much younger age, because neither Ford nor Kissinger knew or cared about the consequences of Israel’s second withdrawal from the Sinai.

The newest and perhaps also the bloodiest chapter of Lebanon’s tragedy will most probably be written this year, when Israel will be forced to fight a war to put an end to the constant, and ever-growing, danger posed by Hezbollah. When Israel does so, it will do well to remember how President Reagan ended his involvement in the affairs of Lebanon. On 23 October 1983, Hezbollah killed 241 American and 58 French military personnel in two bombings. Reagan decided he was a lot less powerful than he had imagined, and promptly withdrew from Lebanon on 7 February 1984.

The lesson to be drawn from the above examples is that listening to American threats is not just dangerous for Israel, it is devoid of any purpose. Even Eisenhower and Reagan, men made of rather firmer stuff than President Joe Biden, did not possess the moral fortitude and strength of character to deal successfully with the crises of the Middle East.
Biden’s flailing administration, which cannot even get a UN resolution intended to pressure Israel past the double veto of the Chinese and Russian dictatorships, has no credible plan to deal with Hamas, or Hezbollah, or the Houthis. In fact, it has no plan at all, other than to somehow win another bitter electoral struggle in the United States, which will reach its conclusion less than 230 days from now.

America’s unreliability as an ally is not Biden’s fault alone. Donald Trump is engaged in his own fervent pursuit of the noble ideal of beating the other guy by any means, fair or foul. In the process, he claimed that “you would have had Iran in the Abraham Accords” had he not lost in the previous round of the Biden-Trump electoral circus.

Israel must stop listening to nonsense, and start decisively defeating its enemies. At the same time, it must explain to Americans at large, and publicly, that a long string of bipartisan failures of American foreign policy has brought the United States to a very low ebb. It is the U.S., not Israel, which is finding Middle Eastern crises increasingly impossible to deal with. It is the U.S., not Israel, which is bitterly divided between supporters of two exceptionally flawed Presidential candidates.

The Crocus Concert Hall Atrocity: No Going Back


The Crocus Concert Hall Atrocity: No Going Back

The details of the arrested perpetrators and their mode of operation however, does not comport with the notion of their being ideological supporters of ISIS. They may have ostensibly been broadly Islamist, but were in reality mercenaries motivated by the lure of money. ISIS recruits expect and get martyrdom. These men simply jumped in a car, wanting to escape. In an ISIS operation, they would have continued the massacre -- until shot dead.

There are many other inconsistencies to the ISIS claim. The assailants may have been pious Islamists, but likely not ISIS. Even their oath with the left hand raised was wrong. The Amaq statement too, is problematic in several respects. In the past Amaq has claimed attacks in Iran, with subsequent Amaq communiques having to be ‘corrected’. Livestream coverage of an attack is unheard of.

The Kremlin spokesman Dmitry Peskov insists that though Russia knows who carried out the attack, it is too early to speculate on ‘who gave the ultimate order’ (President Putin’s, as yet, unanswered question).   

Ultimately, the EU’s ruling élites seek to ‘trans-nationalise’ power upwards from member states to Brussels.

Here lies the seeds of the present putative panic: When it became evident that Ukraine’s conventional military efforts were a flop, a number of hawks in the US and Europe quickly swung to singing the praises of asymmetric warfare -- on Russia and its civilian population, itself.

This asymmetry began slowly: a few random drone attacks that did little damage.  This then accelerated to missiles fired into the centres of Belgorod killing civilians; then it became an attack on a Russian transport Ilyushin plane transporting prisoners; and then moved to drone attacks on Russian refineries and naval drone war on Crimea. 

The process accelerated. And on the eve of last week’s Russian elections, there was the attempt by purported dissidents to disrupt the elections by invading Russia in order to seize small towns and Russian civilians to hold as hostages. (It failed; Russia had prior knowledge of the plan).

The question the Euro-élites must be asking themselves now is: Has this Ukrainian asymmetric warfare effort spun out of Washington’s and European control?  Who is in charge, if anyone?  It is unproven yet, but the fear haunting the West must be that  either directly, or even very indirectly,  it will emerge that they may find themselves complicit in mass terrorism -- sheltering under an ISIS-K franchise?

The implications: Huge.





Thursday, March 28, 2024

Syria says several killed in alleged Israeli airstrikes near Aleppo


Syria says several killed in alleged Israeli airstrikes near Aleppo

The Times of Israel is liveblogging Friday



Syria says several troops, civilians killed in alleged Israeli strike

Syria’s army says an unspecified number of soldiers and civilians were killed in an Israeli attack on several points around the north of the country early Friday, according to Damascus state-run media.

The attacks were centered around the town Ithiriya, about 100 kilometers (60 miles) southeast of Aleppo, SANA says.

“The aggression resulted in the martyrdom and injury of a number of civilians and military personnel and caused material losses to public and private property,” the statement says.

The report says the attacks occurred at 1:45 a.m., just as a drone assault by rebels from Idlib on the city of Aleppo and areas west of the city was also taking place.

There is no comment from the Israel Defense Forces.

Alleged Israeli airstrike reported at Aleppo airport in northern Syria

Large explosions are being reported in Aleppo in northern Syria, in what is being described as an Israeli attack.

According to reports, the attack has targeted the city’s main airport, which has been blown up in alleged Israeli strikes several times in the past few years.

Unverified videos show a large fireball rising over the city. One video also appears to show anti-aircraft fire streaking into the sky.

As expected, one of the significant targets that was hit is a strategic weapons depot. Video from Aleppo after the recent Israeli airstrikes.

Video coming in of strikes by #Israel around Aleppo, #Syria tonight. Some reports suggest Aleppo Int’l Airport and Syrian Scientific Studies and Research Center facilities were a target. #IRGCterrorists


US blasts four Houthi drones threatening warships in Red Sea

The US military said it has destroyed four unmanned drones launched by Iran-backed Houthi forces in Yemen.

The US Central Command says on the social media site X that the drones “presented an imminent threat to merchant vessels and US Navy ships in the region.”

The drones “were aimed at a coalition vessel and a US warship and were engaged in self defense over the Red Sea,” the statement from the US Central Command says, adding there were no injuries or damage reported to the US or coalition ships.