Nikki Haley Will Exit Republican Presidential Race After Super Tuesday Flop
Republican presidential candidate Nikki Haley plans to end her campaign as early as Wednesday morning following her dismal results on Super Tuesday, The Wall Street Journal reported, citing people familiar with her plans.
Nikki Haley plans to suspend her Republican presidential primary bid in a speech Wednesday morning: WSJ
During last night’s not-so-super-Tuesday, she only secured only a victory in one state – Vermont – out of the 15 states that held GOP contests; to go along with her ‘victory’ in the swamp (D.C.).
According to the NBC News’ delegate tracker, former President Trump led with 1057 delegates, significantly outpacing Haley’s total of 92.
WSJ sources expanded more on what Haley is likely to discuss in Charleston this morning around 1000 ET:
Haley won’t announce an endorsement Wednesday, the people said. She will encourage Donald Trump, who is close to having the delegates needed to win the GOP nomination, to earn the support of Republican and independent voters who backed her.
She is expected to emphasize that she will continue to advocate for the conservative domestic and foreign policies she supports and caution against some of the dangers, such as isolationism and a lack of fiscal discipline, that she sees coming from Washington.
Haley was the first major candidate to challenge Trump for the nomination and the last to stand down, showing determination even as she came under significant attack by the former president and his supporters.
MSNBC will be disappointed…
Reacting to the results of Super Tuesday late last night, Haley said a large number of Republican voters continue to have “deep concerns” about the former president.
“We’re honored to have received the support of millions of Americans across the country today, including in Vermont where Nikki became the first Republican woman to win two presidential primary contests,” Haley’s campaign said in a statement.
“Unity is not achieved by simply claiming ‘we’re united’. Today, in state after state, there remains a large block of Republican primary voters who are expressing deep concerns about Donald Trump,” she added.
With Haley’s departure from the race, Trump has all but guaranteed the Republican party’s nomination to a November showdown with President Joe Biden.
On Feb. 12, 50-year-old Angela Chao was found dead in her Tesla that was submerged in a pond on private property in Blanco County, Texas, according to the incident report from fire department EMS personnel. Ms. Chao was the sixth and youngest daughter of Chinese-American shipping magnate Dr. James Si-Cheng Chao, who founded the New York-headquartered Foremost Group in 1964. Angela had been CEO of the company since 2018 and was a founding member of The Asian American Foundation.
On Feb. 28, 82-year-old Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell (R-Ky.) announced his intention to step down from his leadership position in November.
Angela Chao was the sister-in-law of Mitch McConnell, and speculation has been rife about these two seemingly unrelated events. Is there any connection other than familial? Let us examine the topic.
Angela Chao
Angela Chao lived in Austin, Texas, and “served on the boards of American and Chinese groups, including the American Bureau of Shipping Council, the Bank of China, and a holding company for China State Shipbuilding,” MSN reported. Her connections to China loom large, particularly in her capacity as the former chair of the U.S. Risk and Management Committee of Bank of China USA, a director of the holding company for state-run China State Shipbuilding, and a former vice chair of the Council of China’s Foreign Trade. China State Shipbuilding Corporation (CSSC) builds ships for the People’s Liberation Army-Navy while the Council of China’s Foreign Trade is a promotional group created by Beijing to facilitate Chinese trade worldwide. Why did the CCP place such trust in Angela Chao?
Her father maintained connections to Chinese communists at the highest levels. As noted here, he “cultivated a close relationship with Jiang Zemin, a former schoolmate from Shanghai” who later became the general secretary of the Chinese Communist Party and the fifth communist leader of China from 1993–2003. The rise of the Foremost Group mirrored the rise of Jiang in the CCP hierarchy. There are no such things as coincidences.
Lastly, according to China Insights, the Chao family “is known in overseas Chinese circles as ‘The First Chinese American Family,’” with James Chao known as the “Chinese Ship King.” That moniker was well-earned.
Mitch McConnell
Mr. McConnell will step down in November as the longest-serving party leader ever in the U.S. Senate. He was first elected to the Senate in 1985 and rose to Republican minority leader in 2007 and later majority leader in 2015 before reverting to minority leader in 2021. He married his second wife, Elaine Chao, in February 1993. Together, they became an important political power couple in Washington, with Ms. Chao having served as U.S. Secretary of Labor from 2001–2009 and Secretary of Transportation from 2017–2021.
In his 2018 book “Secret Empires: How the American Political Class Hides Corruption and Enriches Family and Friends,” investigative journalist Peter Schweizer noted that Mr. McConnell had hardline positions on communist China before his marriage to Ms. Chao. That seemed to change just a year after their marriage, and in 1994, he was invited by China State Shipbuilding Corporation (!) to meet then-Party leader Jiang Zemin and Vice Premier Li Lanqing as arranged by Ms. Chao’s father, James. As reported by the New York Post, Mr. Schweizer maintained in his book that Mr. McConnell “would increasingly avoid public criticism of China” as additional meetings and visits were conducted over the years. Perhaps that shift was facilitated by a multimillion-dollar “gift” from James Chao to Mitch and Elaine in 2008 that increased Mr. McConnell’s net worth nearly 10-fold.
Other McConnell gifts to China over the years included the following, as documented by Mr. Schweizer:
He defended communist China in its actions against Hong Kong and Taiwan.
He claimed that “the United States needed to be ‘ambiguous’ as to whether we would come to the defense of Taiwan if attacked by China.”
When needed to continue China’s most-favored-nation status with the United States, he cosponsored S.2277, which removed the requirement that China had to demonstrate progress on human rights after the 1989 Tiananmen Square massacre.
Ms. Chao, for her part while Secretary of Labor, opposed a petition filed against China on the subject of workers’ rights based on the U.S. Trade Act of 1974 while also criticizing a bipartisan congressional report citing Chinese espionage against the United States.
A moderate Republican, Mr. McConnell clashed with populist President Donald Trump on various policy issues, including China tariffs and closing the border, to the point of threatening the president with impeachment if he pardoned Julian Assange in the final hours of his presidency, as reported by Tucker Carlson.
Dots and Questions
Are there any connections between Angela Chao’s death and Mitch McConnell’s upcoming relinquishing of his job as Republican minority leader in the Senate?
NTD reported that officials have been slow to release additional information about the incident and Ms. Chao’s family allegedly blocked an autopsy, leading to “speculation about the circumstances surrounding Ms. Chao’s death.” NTD cited a YouTube video by Lei’s Real Talk, who has been an independent reporter of the “latest geopolitical events concerning China” since 2020. A number of points were made in that Feb. 22 report, as well as in other news reports since then:
The “suspicious death” took place at a ranch that is owned by a corporate entity connected to her husband, venture capitalist Jim Breyer, according to CNBC. Her death is under a criminal investigation, as reported by the Daily Mail.
There is a surveillance video of Ms. Chao’s car going into reverse and “aggressively backing over a significant obstacle.” The Daily Mail reported on March 1 that “[police] refuse to release the 911 call and video evidence” associated with the incident.
General information about identity, time, and place of death was not released to the media per standard practice, as noted by USA Today on Feb. 21. Further information is possibly being withheld because of an ongoing investigation into the circumstances surrounding her death.
The death took place one week after IDG Capital was listed as a “Chinese military operation,” which her husband Jim Breyer’s venture capital firm had heavily invested in. As reported by the House Select Committee on the Strategic Cooperation between the United States and the Chinese Communist Party on Feb. 8. Breyer’s net worth is estimated at $1.5 billion.
These circumstances may have been unremarkable, but that has not yet been determined, and there are other interesting coincidences.
China Insights noted that the Foremost Group “placed an order worth $168 million with a subsidiary of the state-owned China State Shipbuilding Corporation.” This was confirmed by Ship&Bunker on Jan. 26 as an order for “four 82,200 DWT duel fueled bulkers capable of running on methanol from CSSC Chengxi Shipyard.”
Angela Chao’s position as a director of China State Shipbuilding Corporation was unique. No ordinary member of the CCP would have the qualifications or opportunity to become a member of a state-run enterprise that is part of a military-industrial enterprise in China.
China Insights reported that Beijing-based Chinese media Caixin Global was the first to report Ms. Chao’s death by claiming that her car was hit by a truck while on her way to a business meeting in Austin, Texas. She supposedly died at the scene, and the truck driver was arrested for manslaughter. Caixin Global is backed by former Chinese Vice President Wang Qishan and reports the state’s geopolitical narrative, not sensational news stories. How did Caixin Global—half a world away!—scoop U.S. media on the story, even if the details were wrong? Another coincidence!
Ms. Chao was dismissed as an independent director of the Bank of China in 2022 after relations between the bank and Evergrande soured. The Bank of China (BoC) seized Evergrande’s assets beginning in 2021 as Evergrande failed to repay its debt. The BoC also reported Evergrande’s regulatory violations to relevant CCP anti-corruption authorities. Evergrande’s Xu Jiayin fought back by making default allegations against the BoC and disclosing other embarrassing insider information, including alleged scandals of Liu Liange, the BoC president.
Was the Caixin story intended to send a message to the Jiang Zemin faction (the “Shanghai clique” in China)? The Hong Kong head of the BoC, the founder of the Lenovo Group, and members of the now-defunct Taishan Club, a chamber of commerce-type group that dominated certain sectors of the Chinese economy and represented the wealthiest people in China, could have been some of the intended recipients of such a message.
Concluding Thoughts
On Feb. 29, CNBC reported that the Blanco County Sheriff’s Office wrote a letter to Texas Attorney General Ken Paxton that included the statement, “Although the preliminary investigation indicated this was an unfortunate accident, the Sheriff’s Office is still investigating this accident as a criminal matter until they have sufficient evidence to rule out criminal activity.” The letter further states that “this incident was not a typical accident.”
Then there were Mitch McConnell’s cryptic remarks about his sister-in-law’s passing as he announced stepping down on Feb. 28. “Perhaps it is God’s way of reminding you of your own life’s journey to reprioritize the impact of the world that we will all inevitably leave behind,” he said. What does “reprioritize the impact of the world” mean? Is he sidelining himself because of the Caixin Group’s message?
Or is Mr. McConnell getting out ahead of the Senate posse that has become disenchanted with his leadership of late? After the debacle of the super-secret border deal that went down the tubes, his credibility is decidedly waning, but this is a way for him to retain a modicum of power for another eight months, albeit in a decidedly weakened lame-duck status.
Certainly, there is more than meets the eye about Angela Chao’s death and Mitch McConnell stepping down as Republican minority leader in the Senate. We will have to wait for the completion of the criminal investigation into her death to learn more.
The end.
Views expressed in this article are opinions of the author and do not necessarily reflect the views of The Epoch Times or ZeroHedge.
EU Pushing Arms Industry To ‘War Economy Mode’ While Seeking To Trump-Proof Itself
Russia’s war in Ukraine, which at the moment is going very badly for the Ukrainians and their NATO backers in what by now can more appropriately be called a proxy war, is causing Europe to shift to a “war economy mode”.
Urgent preparation for such a shift is precisely what’s being proposed by the European Commission on Tuesday, as several European Union countries are desperately seeking to revive and boost their arms production industry, also at a moment the Zelensky government is begging for more weapons and artillery shells to hold off the steady Russian advance in the east.
“We need to change the paradigm and move into war economy mode. This also means that the European defense industry must take more risks, with our support,” said Thierry Breton, the European industry commissioner who is pushing the proposal.
He’s laying out a package which promotes expanding arms production capacity and incentivizes countries to purchase more weapons from European companies.
Of course, European countries shouldering more of the defense spending burden for NATO, a role which has long disproportionately fallen on the United States, was long ago loudly called for by then President Trump. He was shunned and mocked at the time by European officials.
But it seems that now Europe is bracing for a possible Trump presidency after the November election. Reuterswrites:
Breton, a French former tech company CEO, has also said the possibility of another U.S. presidential term for Donald Trump – who has questioned Washington’s commitments to NATO – means Europe has to do more to protect itself.
“In the current geopolitical context, Europe must take greater responsibility for its own security, regardless of the outcome of our allies’ elections every four years,” Breton said.
This is likely also in expectation of a potential Republican administration in the White House which would ensure no more arms funding for Ukraine (or at least not the $60+ billion that Biden is still seeking). Trump on the campaign trail has promised to seek to negotiate a very swift end to the Russia-Ukraine conflict.
Europe is busy trying to “Trump-proof” itself, as officials indicated last month:
“If Trump were re-elected, we would face a situation in Europe that has not occurred since the end of the Second World War,” said Norbert Röttgen, a veteran German lawmaker and ex-chair of the Bundestag’s foreign affairs committee. “Europe would have to stand up for its own security in an unprecedented way.”
Reuters further details of the new “war economy” package, “But officials say the package will create a legal framework that would allow much greater coordinated spending in years to come, if the EU is willing to stump up the cash.” Breton wants a special 100 billion euro fund which can be coordinated for defense projects.
Hell of a stat. “Rheinmetall in Germany is producing way more 155 artillery shells than the entire US defense industry combined.” https://t.co/G2IXHJMCXd
Alarmingly, one official was cited in the report as saying, “Our mission here is to treat Ukraine as almost equivalent to a member state.” Very likely a potential future Trump administration will not see things this way.
A survey highlighted by The Telegraph has found that only 58 percent of scientists at British universities believe that sex is binary.
The poll also found that most of the 200 scientists surveyed believe that gender is fluid.
Twenty-nine percent of respondents to the survey agreed with the statement that “sex is not binary,” while 13 percent of respondents did not share a view on the question or preferred not to give an opinion.
That means that 42 percent of the scientists would not classify sex as binary.
Wrong headline.
Sex is binary. That is a fact, not an opinion to be polled. The article gives us the alarming information that 29% of scientists (which sciences, I wonder?) deny something that is obviously, demonstrably, true. https://t.co/88aR7XdzdT
The poll, conducted by Censuswide, a market research consultancy, also found that 64 percent of scientists said gender is fluid, with only 22 percent saying the believe gender is binary, and a further 14 percent not providing an answer.
Commenting on the findings, Dr. Wolfgang Goymann, a professor of behavioral biology at the Max Planck Institute for Biological Intelligence, said “To me this just means that at least 29% of the academics that filled out this questionnaire do not understand the biological concept of sex, and at least 22% of them do not know what gender means.”
Goymann has noted that some scientists are now positing that sex is a graded spectrum rather than a binary trait.
“Leading science journals have been adopting this relativist view, thereby opposing fundamental biological facts,” he urged.
“While we fully endorse efforts to create a more inclusive environment for gender-diverse people, this does not require denying biological sex,” Goymann continued.
He added, “On the contrary, the rejection of biological sex seems to be based on a lack of knowledge about evolution and it champions species chauvinism, inasmuch as it imposes human identity notions on millions of other species.”
Helen Joyce, director of advocacy at Sex Matters, told The Telegraph “This survey has two remarkable findings. The first is that 29 per cent of academics are apparently unaware of the obvious fact that sex is binary. The second is that nearly two-thirds of academics say that ‘gender is fluid’. That is a strikingly confident statement about a nebulous concept.”
“This muddle feeds through into academic research and public policy. It’s concerning that people supposedly among our best and brightest are seemingly blind to this confusion,” Joyce further noted.
— Jennifer 🟥🔴🧙♀️🦉🐈⬛ 🦖 (@babybeginner) March 2, 2024
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While 2022 had been heralded as a “possible turning point” as about as many countries showed improvements as marked declines, 2023 saw a new low of nations bettering their freedom prospects – only 21.
This number stands opposite 52 countries where political freedoms and civil liberties declined.
The report mentions Ecuador as an example of a country where elections were impacted negatively and downgraded the nation from designated as “free” to receiving the “partially free” label. In the South American country, criminal organizations had killed officials and candidates ahead of the general election that took place in August. In other countries it was incumbents who hindered the access of the population to a free election last year, including in Cambodia, Guatemala, Poland, Turkey and Zimbabwe.
Despite Thailand’s military Senate continuing to yield much power over the country’s legislative bodies, a more competitive election that saw a progressive party finish first earned Thailand a “partially free” designation, up from “not free”. Other nations improving their score were Fiji, Nepal, Liberia and Mauritania.
A total of 195 countries and 15 territories were analyzed on their levels of access to political rights and civil liberties, before being categorized as either “free”, “partly free” or “not free”. While democracy has been in decline for nearly two decades, the global landscape has improved since the report was first published 51 years ago. Back then, 44 out of 148 countries were counted as “free”, versus 83 out of 195 today.
The Wall Street Journal (WSJ) claimed to have viewed the 17-page draft Russian-Ukrainian peace treaty from spring 2022 that was sabotaged by former British Prime Minister Johnson and which President Putin waved around while speaking with African leaders last summer.
They dishonestly described the terms as “punishing” even though they can objectively be described as overly generous considering the previously unthinkable compromises that Moscow was willing to make at the time.
Ukraine would have restored its constitutional neutrality and the Russian language’s status, limited its armed forces, agreed not to use foreign arms, and recognized Russian influence in Crimea in exchange for the UNSC guaranteeing its security. Donbass’ status would be resolved via talks between their leaders, with the innuendo being that it might be reincorporated into Ukraine per the Minsk Accords, while it’s implied that Russia would have withdrawn from the rest of Ukraine’s pre-2022 borders.
Had these terms been accepted, then not only would Ukraine have averted destruction and the depopulation that came with it, but this former Soviet Republic could have then served as a bridge between China and the EU (which it would be allowed to join) exactly as Russia always envisaged. Even if Russian-NATO talks didn’t resume afterwards, their security dilemma that was exacerbated by the bloc’s clandestine expansion into Ukraine would have been much better managed to everyone’s benefit.
The reason why this never happened was because the West believed its own propaganda that Russia could be dealt a strategic defeat through economic sanctions and proxy warfare, both policies of which the New York Times admitted had failed by January 2023 and September of that year respectively. The conflict continued to drag on till today despite the failure of last summer’s counteroffensive because the West can’t admit that Russia was the one that ended up strategically defeating its opponent instead.
The opportunity cost of perpetuating this proxywar is that the West ran through all of its stockpiles, exposed the weakness of its military-industrial complex, and is now unable to adapt as flexibly as before to any major contingences in the Asia-Pacific like those that they expect might one day involve China. Clinging to false hopes of victory over Russia at all costs is also increasingly dangerous due to the chances that a potential NATO intervention in Ukraine could lead to World War III by miscalculation.
It’s amidst the growing awareness of these consequences that the WSJ reported on the entirety of spring 2022’s draft Russian-Ukrainian peace treaty, albeit while dishonestly describing the terms as “punishing” instead of overly generous as they objectively are. Their angle is disadvantageous to freezing this conflict like former Republican presidential candidate Ramaswamy, former NATO Supreme Commander Admiral Stavridis, and Senator Vance earlier proposed, but the substance is an altogether different story.
These details prove that President Putin was willing to make previously unthinkable compromises in order to obtain his strategic goals of restoring Ukrainian neutrality, denazifying it (with the restoration of the Russian language’s status playing the key role here), and demilitarizing that country. Donbass would likely be reincorporated into Ukraine, prior to which its residents could obtain Russian citizenship to relocate there if they wanted, and Russia would withdraw from everywhere except for Crimea.
Those territorial compromises are no longer in the cards after Donbass, Kherson, and Zaporozhye voted to join Russia in September 2022, which is why Kremlin spokesman Peskov just described the reported details about that spring’s draft Russian-Ukrainian peace treaty as outdated. Nevertheless, it’s still possible in theory for Russia to compromise on asserting its writ over the entirety of its new regions’ borders if their regional assembles voted to change them with parliamentary and presidential approval.
The Line of Contact (LOC) could therefore become the international frontier if the Constitutional Court rules that this doesn’t violate the 2020 constitutional amendment against surrendering Russian territory on the basis that Moscow hadn’t asserted any writ over those potentially “ceded” parts of its lands. President Putin has repeatedlysignaled that he’s willing to compromise on a political solution if Russia’s security interests are met, most recently during his interview with Tucker, so this scenario is possible.
The problem is that Ukraine legally forbade the resumption of peace talks with Russia, thus requiring the West to coerce it into repealing that legislation, which could happen if domestic pressure over Zelensky’s illegitimacy after his term ends on May 20 leads to him forming a “national unity government”. An expert from the powerful Atlantic Council think tank proposed this scenario in an article for Politico last winter, and it could represent a “face-saving” way to move everything forward if the political will exists.
The West knows that the only way to stop Russia from steamrolling through Ukraine in the event that it achieves a breakthrough across the LOC sometime this year is to risk World War III by miscalculation through a conventional NATO intervention aimed at drawing a red line as far east as possible. This sequence of events might be preemptively averted, however, by implementing the abovementioned proposal in order to freeze the conflict along the LOC and then turn that frontier into the new border.
To be absolutely clear so that nobody misunderstands what’s been written in this analysis, Lavrov confirmed as recently as Saturday that Russia hasn’t received any serious proposals for talks with Kiev, so it seems like the West’s ruling liberal–globalist elite isn’t yet comfortable with this end game. It’s also true that the way in which the WSJ dishonestly described the draft Russian-Ukrainian peace treaty’s overly generous terms as “punishing” could harden some policymakers’ resistance in this respect.
Even so, the actual details of those terms could convince some on-the-fence policymakers that President Putin is indeed willing to make previously unthinkable compromises, thus potentially increasing the number of them who’d support the scenario of freezing the conflict along the LOC. The WSJ’s report is therefore a double-edged sword for both camps since it works for and against each of their interests as explained, but the timing is no coincidence since it’s meant to shake up the balance between them.
It’s debatable which side this outlet really supports since one can argue that dishonestly describing the details as “punishing” favors those who want another “forever war” while reporting on their overly generous substance is tacitly intended to give an edge to those who want to resume peace talks.
The impact of their report will take some time to see, but the point is that it might make a difference at this pivotal moment in the proxy war, with it remaining to be seen whether it’d be for better or for worse.
Real Madrid Overtakes Man Utd As Word’s ‘Richest’ Soccer Club
Over the past two decades, professional football has seen an unprecedented influx of money, reshaping the landscape of the sport on a global scale.
As Statista’s Felix Richer details below, the surge in financial means and change in the balance of power between clubs and leagues can be attributed to several key factors, notably the rapid growth of broadcasting deals and the emergence of billionaire owners and what are effectively state-sponsored clubs.
The English Premier League in particular has seen a staggering increase in broadcasting rights fees over the past two decades, with the amount paid for the league’s global media rights roughly quadrupling from $3.16 billion for the 2007-2010 period to $12.85 billion for the 2022-2025 period. This influx of broadcasting revenue has provided clubs with previously unimaginable financial resources, allowing them to invest heavily in player transfers, wages and state-of-the-art facilities.
In addition to broadcasting deals, the rise of billionaire owners has played a pivotal role in reshaping football’s financial landscape. Wealthy individuals from various industries have seized the opportunity to acquire football clubs, viewing them as lucrative investments with vast potential for growth.
Furthermore, the emergence of de-facto state-sponsored clubs has further intensified the financial arms race in football. Clubs like Manchester City and Paris Saint-Germain, majority-owned by government-backed investment funds from Abu Dhabi and Qatar, respectively, have transformed into financial powerhouses capable of outspending their competitors on transfer fees and wages. It has enabled them to assemble star-studded squads and compete at the highest levels of domestic and European competition, with Manchester City’s 2023 treble the latest testament to their financial and sporting superiority.
Our latest Racing Bars video shows not only how revenue has increased for the world’s “richest” football clubs, but also tells the story of how the balance of financial power has shifted between leagues and clubs during the past two and a half decades.
Fear sells—the more existential the better, as with all the loose talk about the possible use of nuclear weapons by Vladimir Putin. While nuclear dread is good for “driving clicks,” it must not blind us to reality. The U.N. nuclear ban treaty will do nothing to reduce such nuclear dangers. How could it? None of the countries possessing nuclear weapons will have anything to do with it. Not unlike “The Emperor’s New Clothes,” proponents of the Treaty on Prohibition of Nuclear Weapons (TPNW) want us to believe in its magnificence, to go along with the pretense while it is plain to see that the treaty is stripped of any credibility.
The second gathering of signatories late last year revealed a host of treaty flaws. Any hope that member states and civil society would staunchly self-police the treaty were dashed. They all turned a blind eye to the involvement of Kazakhstan, a treaty member, in the testing of a Russian ICBM—a missile whose sole purpose is to deliver nuclear weapons.
When the test occurred in April last year, the International Campaign to Abolish Nuclear Weapons (ICAN) trumpeted that under the TPNW, it was “illegal” for Kazakhstan “to allow its territory to be used for testing of nuclear-capable missiles.”[i] Yet, ICAN and TPNW member states, including Kazakhstan, were silent about the ICBM test—at a meeting whose purpose is to assess the implementation of the ban treaty.
Evidently, because Kazakhstan is struggling with the legacy of Soviet nuclear tests on its territory and will host next year’s treaty review, it was given a “pass.” So much for the assertions of TPNW advocates that the treaty is non-discriminatory, a contrast they like to draw with the Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty (NPT) which recognized in 1968 the United States, the United Kingdom, France, Russia, and China as nuclear weapon states—and everyone else as non-nuclear weapon states.
Once again, TPNW member states failed to call out Russia by name for its irresponsible nuclear behavior, this time including de-ratifying the Comprehensive Nuclear Test Ban Treaty (CTBT) and moving to deploy tactical nuclear weapons in Belarus. Why? Because the diplomatic corps of the non-nuclear weapon states consider it impolite to call out bad actors by name.
How can a treaty that won’t call out malign behavior of even non-member states like Russia— or hold accountable one of its actual signatories like Kazakhstan—be expected to resolve disputes in the event the major powers somehow join its ranks and warily give up their nuclear bombs. The answer is plain, it cannot, which is why those powers boycott it.
They are not alone. NATO member states and U.S. allies in Asia also refuse to join the TPNW. Others have read the writing on the wall. Finland and Sweden, which attended the first meeting of TPNW states parties as observers in 2022, balked last year, preferring to join NATO rather than place their faith in the ban treaty. Other states that observed the first gathering but punted this time include the Netherlands, Burundi, Ghana, Mauritania, Niger, and Senegal. You wouldn’t know that, though, by reading any of the self-congratulatory statements issued after the meeting by TPNW member states and civil society.
It is a tough time for TPNW supporters. The initial euphoria of circumventing the major powers and rushing the treaty through is over. Now comes the more mundane work of implementing it, structurally weak as it is. That’s not helpful for ICAN and others who need to keep members motivated and attract donors. That’s become harder now that the MacArthur Foundation has pulled out of the nuclear disarmament field, seeing poor prospects ahead. Austria has a solution for that, however.
In a weak decision document, Austria has convinced TPNW member states that what they really need is better talking points about the so-called evils of nuclear deterrence. This is a hobby horse of a few individuals in the Austrian foreign ministry, somehow convinced that they can simply debate Western countries into surrendering their nuclear protection, even as their counterparts in the Austrian ministry of defense seek closer ties with NATO. This new initiative will fail—states under the nuclear umbrella are not under any obligation to engage in such theater.
The reality is, since the brutal 2022 Russian invasion of Ukraine and the rapid build-up of nuclear arms by such stalwarts of international law and human rights as China and North Korea, free people everywhere are rediscovering the value of nuclear deterrence over one-sided nuclear disarmament. There is a reason why ICAN has not published any polls since 2022 purporting to show vast public support for the TPNW and opposition to U.S. nuclear weapons forward deployed in Europe.
Surely, the TPNW must be good for something? The ban treaty is slowly carving out an important niche in assisting victims and remediating environments impacted by nuclear weapons use or testing. It also is promoting new standards of inclusivity and gender balance. But it has been divisive, too. Its insistence on nuclear disarmament irrespective of the security environment lacks realism and only deepens the chasm between nuclear weapons states and non-nuclear weapons states.
Let’s face it, progress on nuclear disarmament won’t be coming anytime soon. TPNW supporters can lament this and withhold cooperation from the nuclear weapons states, or they can apply their energy in a more promising area—non-proliferation. Surely, keeping nuclear weapons from spreading is just as important as easing the grip of those who already possess them. Making progress on the former should not be held hostage to progress on the latter—that would be a wasted opportunity indeed.
Gregory F. Giles is a Senior Director with Science Applications International Corporation (SAIC). For the past three decades, he has been advising U.S. government clients on issues related to deterrence and nonproliferation. Mr. Giles holds a B.A. from Dickinson College and an M.I.A. from Columbia University. His work has been published in War on the Rocks, Survival, Comparative Strategy, The Washington Quarterly, and elsewhere. The views expressed in this article represent the personal views of the author and are not necessarily the views of SAIC, Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory, the Department of Defense, or the U.S. Government.
The ripe smell of garbage baking in the tropical sun mixed with the stench of human waste is one of the first things visitors notice at Bajo Chiquito, one of four large migrant camps in the Darién Gap.
The next is a sea of weary migrants, who hiked from Colombia along the infamous jungle trail, lined up to be processed by Panamanian officials.
One young boy in line with a furrowed brow seems worried. Others stare blankly at ramshackle buildings slapped together with wood, tin, and cinder blocks. They wait patiently in the brutal heat and humidity.
Most of them are coming to the United States aided by the United Nations, its nongovernmental partners, and regimes hostile to the United States.
Experts have said the migrants are being used as a weapon, just as deadly as a missile aimed straight at the United States.
Mass migration is being “weaponized” to overwhelm and destabilize the United States and ultimately break it apart, according to Joseph Humire, who studies unconventional warfare and is the executive director of the Center for a Secure Free Society.
“That’s why I think the term ‘invasion’ is appropriate,” Mr. Humire told The Epoch Times.
Migrant Pawns
Last year, a record 500,000 migrants traveled through the Darién Gap, documents show.
In February, The Epoch Times visited all four migrant camps in Panama: Lajas Blancas, Bajo Chiquito, San Vicente, and Canaán Membrillo.
The United Nations and related nongovernmental organizations (NGOs), which receive millions of U.S. taxpayer dollars, have made mass migration easier by facilitating and augmenting migrant movement with food, shelter, and water.
Reporters spoke with migrants from China, Somalia, Venezuela, Ecuador, and Colombia and others who hiked out of the treacherous jungle leading from Colombia into Panama.
Many at the camps suffered from injuries and illnesses such as trench foot and broken limbs. Several complained that the water was untreated at the camps run by the NGOs and that they lacked essential items such as diapers. One migrant told The Epoch Times that food supplied at the camps was stale or spoiled, so he spent $7 to buy a meal from a local vendor.
Others said they were stranded at the camps because they were robbed during their journey or couldn’t pay the $60 needed for the bus ride north.
The number of illegal immigrants entering the United States has surged under the Biden administration as policies from the Trump era have been reversed or eliminated.
Illegal immigrant encounters at U.S. borders in fiscal 2022 totaled more than 2.7 million nationwide, according to CBP data.
By 2023, that number topped 3.2 million.
The numbers also correspond with President Joe Biden’s renewed pledge to support the U.N.’s Global Compact for Safe, Orderly, and Regular Migration—a 2018 plan to manage global migration that was approved by 152 nations.
“The Biden–Harris Administration is committed to safe, orderly, and humane migration around the world, including to the United States,” a government statement in December 2021 read. The United States had voted against the compact under President Donald Trump.
Most migrants are oblivious to their role as human ammunition, according to Trevor Loudon, an expert on communist regimes and host of EpochTV’s “Counterpunch.”
The U.N. and NGO workers at the City of Knowledge in Panama—which was once part of the U.S. military base given to Panama—have exposed migrants to violence, injury, death, and disease, he said.
“These bureaucrats with fat salaries, eating at nice local restaurants, are having a great old time facilitating one of the biggest crimes against humanity that’s ever been perpetrated,” Mr. Loudon said.
Panama’s former border director Oriel Ortega told The Epoch Times the NGOs should be educating and helping migrants in their own countries instead of facilitating migration.
The Epoch Times knocked on multiple U.N. agency doors at the City of Knowledge complex while in Panama in an unsuccessful attempt to interview officials with the U.N. and HIAS, founded as the Hebrew Immigrant Aid Society.
At one U.N. office, reporters could see workers through blinds scrambling to hide after The Epoch Times knocked and rang the doorbell repeatedly.
Migrants said the trek through dense rainforest, steep mountains, thick mud, and swamps was exhausting and dangerous.
They told stories of murder, rape, and desperation.
Estimates of deaths reported by NGOs are probably low. The American Red Cross reported that 60 people died crossing the Darién Gap during the first half of 2023, but anecdotal information from people who have been in the jungle put that number in the hundreds or thousands each year.
Michael Yon, a war correspondent who has been reporting on the flood of migrants moving through the jungle into Panama, told The Epoch Times he estimates that about 1 percent of those making the journey die.
At the Bajo Chiquito camp on Feb. 18, one Venezuelan migrant sitting under the shade of a tin roof shelter counted himself as lucky.
He was only robbed during the journey through the Darién Gap that he described as “hell” through an interpreter.
He witnessed a man who was stoned and then shot in the head for trying to protect his wife from being gang raped, he said.
“He went to go defend the girl,” he said.
Close by, a Venezuelan woman, Fabiola Suarez, appeared despondent. She had hiked through the Darién Gap to reunite with her husband in Colorado.
She was almost raped by criminals preying on migrants, but there were enough people in her group to stave off an attack, she said.
“There was a lot in the group, so they didn’t,” she said through an interpreter.
Dripping with sweat, Gustavo Toala emerged from the Darién jungle trail on Feb. 17 with only the clothes on his back—and a cellphone in his hand.
Everyone had cellphones, a lifeline for many at the camps.
He and two companions from Ecuador trudged over a rudimentary bridge into Lajas Blancas camp, looking exhausted after a five-hour walk from camp Bajo Chiquito.
Mr. Toala said through an interpreter that he and his two companions started as a group of 12, but they got separated during the journey.
He had been traveling for almost two weeks, hoping for a better life in the United States.
He left because of the high crime rate in Ecuador and the inability of small business owners to make a living due to extortion, he said.
With no map and little water, he blindly followed other migrants through the Darién Gap, where robbery, rape, and death await many.
He hoped to catch a bus to Costa Rica next.
At Lajas Blancas, migrants have access to a number of large maps provided by NGOs that display detailed migration routes heading to the United States.
One map is from HIAS, which recently received $11 million from the U.S. in two grants awarded specifically to go to Latin American migrants.
One HIAS map shows the migration route from Colombia to Costa Rica, including detailed bus stops, temperatures, altitudes, and “migration kiosk” locations.
The top languages spoken in the world reflect economic trends, populated countries, and even colonial history.
In the image below, Visual Capitalist’s Marcus Lu visualizes the most spoken languages around the world as of 2023. These figures come from Ethnologue, which publishes a list of the largest languages every year.
The 12 Most Spoken Languages on Earth
English was born in the United Kingdom but today belongs to the modern world as the main international language of business and politics.
That’s why it’s not very surprising to find English as the world’s most spoken language, with 1.5 billion speakers as of 2023.
In second place is Mandarin, the most spoken Chinese language dialect with 1.1 billion speakers. Originating in North China, it has become the most spoken language in China and Taiwan, as well as having millions of speakers spread across Southeast Asia and the world.
India is also represented in this ranking, but despite being the world’s most populated country, its speakers are spread out over multiple different languages. Hindi is the main language spoken in North India and an official language of the government, but other languages like Bengali are widely spoken in other regions, in this case in East India (and neighboring Bangladesh).
It’s also notable how languages from former colonial powers – like English, Spanish, French, and Portuguese – all have hundreds of millions of speakers, despite their mother countries accounting for a fraction of that total.
