These Are The Largest UN Peacekeeping Operations In 2023
The United Nations is withdrawing 13,000 personnel from Mali, in what UN Secretary-General António Guterres has called an “unprecedented” move, following a request from the Malian military junta to vacate the country.
As Statista’s Anna Fleck reports, Mali’s Foreign Minister Abdoulaye Diop told the United Nations Security Council in June that the UN’s peacekeepers had “become a part of the problem in fuelling intercommunal tensions.” The UN has been given until December 31 to pull out its mission members, as well as to close its 12 camps and to hand over a temporary base to the authorities.
Mali has been under military rule since a coup in 2012, and has since experienced ongoing instability with separatist and jihadist rebellions. In 2020 and 2021 the country saw two more coup d’etats and in June 2023, Human Rights Watch (HRW) released a report stating that the Malian armed forces and foreign fighters – allegedly from the Wagner Group who had been brought in to fight jihadist groups – had killed dozens of civilians since December 2022.
The following chart shows that as of May 31, 2023, the Mali peacekeeping mission, formally known as the United Nations Multidimensional Integrated Stabilization Mission in Mali, or MINUSMA for short, was the fourth largest of its kind, with more than 13,000 uniformed personnel stationed there. The mission that was established in April 2013 supported the now deposed elected government of Mali with the stabilization of the country. According to the UN peacekeeping platform, a total of 303 MINUSMA personnel have been killed in Mali so far, making it the second deadliest of the 12 UN missions currently ongoing. Only UNIFIL in Lebanon is more fatal for peacekeepers, with 329 deaths recorded.
Three other UN missions currently rank higher in terms of personnel numbers, all of which are in Africa.
As the chart above shows, as of May 31, the largest of the group was the United Nations Multidimensional Integrated Stabilization Mission in the Central African Republic (MINUSCA) with nearly 17,000 personnel, which became operational in September 2014. The United Nations Mission in South Sudan (UNMISS) was the second largest with more than 15,000 personnel, followed by MONUSCO, the United Nations Organization Stabilization Mission in the Democratic Republic of the Congo with around 14,600 members.
We have previously discussed the denial of religious expression in France for Islamic women who wish to wear abaya, Islamic swimsuits, or burkas.
Many of us have lamented about how France, the cradle of so many individual rights in history, has become so inimical to those rights.
France has adopted the opposite position to these rights.
It has relentlessly attacked free speech (including the criticism of religious beliefs) while denying the expression of religious beliefs.
The latest example is the ban announced this weekend on Muslim women wearing the Islamic abaya to school as violations of France’s strict secular laws in education.
Education Minister Gabriel Attal declared:
“When you walk into a classroom, you shouldn’t be able to identify the pupils’ religion just by looking at them. I have decided that the abaya could no longer be worn in schools.”
It is, in my view, an outrageous denial of the religious freedom of these women and girls.
They must choose between an education and their faith.
To adopt a Millian Harm Principle approach, how does the wearing of an abaya harm others beyond irritating those who reject their beliefs?
We previously discussed France’s ban on the wearing of full face veils in public. The same intolerance could be used to ban crosses around necks or yarmulkes on heads as conveying religious faith.
There are five million Muslims living in France who want to be able to move around in public and go to school without being forced to discard their religious beliefs.
How is banning religious garb and symbols in France any different from requiring them in countries like Iran or Afghanistan?
Both sets of laws regulate and criminalize the expression of religious faith and values.
Despite closing its nuclear power plants to focus on renewable energy production, more than a fifth of imported electricity last month was produced from nuclear power…
Germany is importing more electricity than ever before after purchasing a record 6,505 gigawatt hours from abroad in August, according to the Federal Network Agency.
The federal government has replaced much of the electricity produced by its recently closed nuclear power stations with imported electricity, almost half of which was ironically produced using nuclear power and fossil fuels.
This resulted in a significant electricity trade balance deficit, with the country importing €557 million worth of electricity more than it exported to its EU neighbors last month.
Electricity imports typically occur through the construction of transmission lines or undersea cables that connect power grids across national borders. The energy can be generated from various sources including hydroelectric, nuclear, fossil fuels such as gas and coal, or renewable energy.
And despite the German federal government seeking to prioritize renewable energy sources to generate power, evidenced by its policy decision to shut down the country’s remaining nuclear power plants earlier this year, 21 percent of the imported electricity last month was generated by nuclear power and 28 percent was generated by burning coal and gas, according to the Bild newspaper.
Chancellor Olaf Scholz sought to play down concerns over rising imports back in July, claiming that “every year there are phases in which we buy electricity from other countries.”
However, electricity imports into Germany have increased significantly since the closure of the country’s nuclear power plants on April 15.
As Tim Meyerjürgens, the managing director of transmission system operator Tennet, explained, the rising imports don’t necessarily imply that Germany isn’t capable of generating enough electricity itself, but they do “say something about the price of production,” namely that is has become more expensive.
Following the nuclear phase-out, much of Germany’s electricity has been produced through natural gas and coal-fired plants when renewable energy production hasn’t been viable.
“These are often more expensive than renewables and nuclear power abroad,” Meyerjürgens explained, implying that the federal government is approving imports of nuclear-produced electricity when it could have simply produced this itself with domestic nuclear plants at a cheaper rate.
By now we all “know” that Brexit has had an enormous detrimental effect on the UK economy. We ‘know’ this because the MSM and various “independent experts” have continually told us so.
Take the BBC who in their January 2023 article entitled “What impact has Brexit had on the UK economy?” included the chart below to argue that Brexit is the cause of the UK’s failure to grow GDP above pre covid levels:
Or the FT which published a similar chart to blame Brexit for the failure of the UK economy to return to pre Covid levels and who in their article entitled “UK economy set to be one of the last to recover from pandemic” were quick to emphasise that Brexit was the cause:
CNN, Politico and many others made exactly the same point about the failure of UK GDP to recover and how it was all a result of Brexit.
The argument was clear.
Brexit could be proven to be the culprit for the UK’s weak economic performance post the covid outbreak because only the UK had left the EU and only the UK of all of the G7 had failed to see GDP return to pre covid levels.
However, today the ONS published updated estimates of UK GDP, in part to adjust for the different way the UK accounts for health spending vs the rest of the G7, which they state shows that the UK economy has actually performed much more strongly than previously calculated since Covid.
The main changes they highlight are:
Annual current price gross domestic product (GDP) growth in 2021 is revised up 0.9 percentage points to an 8.5 per cent increase; this follows an unrevised fall of 5.8% in 2020.
Annual volume GDP growth in 2021 is revised up 1.1 percentage points to an 8.7% increase; this follows an upwardly revised 10.4 per cent fall in 2020 (previously an 11% fall).
Upward revisions to annual volume GDP growth in 2020 and 2021 mean that GDP is now estimated to be 0.6 per cent above pre-coronavirus (COVID-19) pandemic levels in Quarter 4 (Oct to Dec) 2021; previously this was estimated as 1.2% below.
In 2021, the services sector is now estimated to have grown by 10.9 per cent, revised up by 3.9 percentage points. Annual services growth has also been revised up in 2020 by 0.5 percentage points.
These changes, as Simon French, @shjfrench the Chief Economist and head of Research at investment bank Panmure Gordon tweeted are “extraordinary”, adding:
“The entire UK economic narrative — post-pandemic — has just been revised away.”
He continued:
“Every ‘UK not back at pre-CV-19 level’ headline (is) now obsolete. ‘UK bottom of the G7’ no longer true.”
He could (and probably should) have added, that the same is true of every claim of a Brexit inspired economic collapse.
Simon also posted the chart below comparing G7 members GDP performance since Q4 2019 with the previous ONS UK GDP estimates and the new revised figures.
As you can see, all signs of a Brexit inspired collapse in UK GDP growth have simply disappeared:
Independent Economist Julian Jessop tweeted that the “revised @ONS data show that UK #GDP recovered to pre-Covid levels in 2021, roughly 18 months earlier than previously thought… Maybe #BrexitBritain isn’t such a laggard after all?”
John Burn-Murdoch of the FT tweeted“Vibe shift, economic data edition: After the latest GDP revisions, turns out the UK economy had recovered to its pre-pandemic size by the end of 2021, has recovered more strongly than Germany, and roughly as strongly as France.
He also quoted FT Economics Editor Chris Giles (who has been extremely vocal in his negative view on the economic cost of Brexit): “Per @ChrisGiles_ calculations, by the end of 2021, UK recovery was behind only the US and Canada!”
Indeed in its article published today on the ONS data changes entitled “UK Covid-era economic performance better than previously stated”, the FT writes that the “Statistical agency’s revisions put Britain’s post-pandemic recovery in line with G7 peers” stating that “revised figures (have) added nearly 2 per cent to the size of the economy.”
It continues to state that:
The revisions suggest the UK no longer has the worst growth record among G7 countries since 2019. They are also likely to show Britain performing better than Germany, Europe’s biggest economy, once they are included in official figures in October.
Quite a change….
Some of us have been arguing for years that the cries of a Brexit economic catastrophe were overdone and driven by an ideological aversion to the UK leaving the EU rather than the economic reality.
All these arguments of a huge negative economic effect from Brexit have been simply blown out of the water by the ONS today.
Not that I think this means the UK economy is performing well. Quite the opposite. The whole of Europe is struggling with issues of poor productivity and lack of investment — in no small amount driven by ludicrous energy policies which are inevitably leading to de-industrialisation and economic decline.
But as the ONS has demonstrated today, Brexit is simply not a primary cause or major factor in our economic weakness. But taking advantage of our new found post-Brexit freedoms may well be a very big part of the solution.
Censorship of the Internet has been getting worse for years, but we just crossed a threshold which is going to take things to a whole new level.
On August 25th, a new law known as the “Digital Services Act” went into effect in the European Union. Under this new law, European bureaucrats will be able to order big tech companies to censor any content that is considered to be “illegal”, “disinformation” or “hate speech”. That includes content that is posted by users outside of the European Union, because someone that lives in the European Union might see it. I wrote about this a few days ago, but I don’t think that people are really understanding the implications of this new law. In the past, there have been times when governments have requested that big tech companies take down certain material, but now this new law will give government officials the power to force big tech companies to take down any content that they do not like.
Any big tech companies that choose not to comply will be hit with extremely harsh penalties.
Of course mainstream news outlets such as the Washington Post are attempting to put a positive spin on this new law. We are being told that it will “safeguard” us from “illegal content” and “disinformation”…
New rules meant to safeguard people from illegal content, targeted ads, unwanted algorithmic feeds and disinformation online are finally in force, thanks to new regulation in the European Union that took effect this month.
Under the EU law, governments would be able to ask companies take down a wide range of content that would be deemed illegal, including material that promotes terrorism, child sexual abuse, hate speech and commercial scams.
In addition to “illegal content” and “hate speech”, the Digital Services Act also applies to “hoaxes” and any material that is considered to be “disinformation”. The following comes from the official website of the European Commission…
At the same time, the DSA regulates very large online platforms’ and very large online search engines responsibilities when it comes to systemic issues such as disinformation, hoaxes and manipulation during pandemics, harms to vulnerable groups and other emerging societal harms.
These new content rules are so vague that they could apply to just about anything.
And that is precisely what they want.
From this point forward, if you post something that they do not like, they will have the power to have it taken down.
Even if you don’t live in the European Union, they can have your content taken down, because someone in the European Union might see it.
Under this Orwellian regime, a team of hundreds of unelected EU bureaucrats will decide what constitutes disinformation and instruct Big Tech firms to censor it. The firms themselves, faced with reputational risk and financial penalties, will have little choice other than to comply. This can be done in all manner of ways: simply by human moderators removing content, by shadow-banning problematic creators to reduce their reach, by demonetising certain content, and by tweaking algorithms to favour or disfavour certain topics. And though, legally speaking, the DSA only applies in the EU, once installed inside Big Tech firms, this vast content-regulation apparatus will surely affect users in the rest of the world, too.
In addition, the official website of the European Commission is telling us that big tech companies must “react with priority” to any content that has been reported by “trusted flaggers”…
A priority channel will be created for trusted flaggers – entities which have demonstrated particular expertise and competence – to report illegal content to which platforms will have to react with priority.
This means that far left organizations that have been set up to police content online will now be given extraordinary power to restrict speech on the Internet.
Needless to say, the Internet is never going to be the same after this.
The online platforms affected are Alibaba AliExpress, Amazon Store, Apple AppStore, Booking.com, Facebook, Google Play, Google Maps, Google Shopping, Instagram, LinkedIn, Pinterest, Snapchat, TikTok, X (listed as Twitter), Wikipedia, YouTube, the European clothing retailer Zalando, Bing and Google Search.
If any of those large online platforms choose not to comply with the new law, the penalties could be extremely severe…
A firm that does not comply with the law could face a complete ban in Europe or fines running up to 6% of its global revenue.
Last month, X/Twitter said it was on track to generate $3bn (£2.4bn) in revenue. A fine of 6% would be the equivalent of £144m.
Once we get to February 24th, 2024, the Digital Services Act will also apply to a vast multitude of smaller platforms.
At that point, it will be very difficult to escape the reach of this new law.
And just to make sure that they can keep a very close eye on things, the EU just established a brand new office in San Francisco on June 22nd…
European Commissioner for Internal Market Thierry Breton cut the ribbon to commemorate the official launch of the European Union’s San Francisco office on Thursday, June 22, alongside Lieutenant Governor of California Eleni Kounalakis, California State Senator Scott Wiener, and Chair of the European Parliament’s Committee on Legal Affairs Adrian Vazquez.
“I am very glad to be here today in Silicon Valley, a global centre for digital technology and innovation, to officially inaugurate the new European Union office in San Francisco,” Commissioner Breton said in his keynote address to an audience of business and technology sector leaders. “As like-minded partners who strive for reciprocity and common principles, all while respecting our respective democratic processes, our transatlantic ties are more relevant than ever in the area of technology.”
For many years, the Internet was one of the last bastions for free speech.
But now everything has changed.
From this point forward, far left European bureaucrats will get to determine what is acceptable and what is not acceptable on our large online platforms.
Direct government censorship of the Internet is here, and that is going to make it much more difficult to share the truth with a world that desperately needs it.
These are such dark times, and they are getting darker with each passing day.
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Michael’s new book entitled “End Times” is now available in paperback and for the Kindle on Amazon.com, and you can check out his new Substack newsletter right here.
The 2024 version of the National Defense Authorization Act (pdf) allows the Air Force to retire 42 A-10 Thunderbolt 2s in 2024, with the remaining 220 or so to be retired with prejudice by 2029. This retiring of the A-10 “Warthog” is predicated on the fantastical disproven idea that the A-10, which to this day is the most cost-effective plane in the Air Force’s inventory, can be replaced by the F-35.
This power play by the Air Force is just another chapter in the long, ongoing saga of senior Air Force leaders using every tactic, including underhanded tactics, threats, and rigged testing, to justify retiring the A-10. It certainly isn’t about improving our country’s close air support (CAS) capabilities that have saved countless American lives. Instead, it’s about converting A-10 maintainers to F-35 maintainers in order to satisfy the F-35s endless, ravenous appetite for maintenance and support. And it’s about killing off the plane that will continue to show up the F-35 as long as it continues to fly.
Before talking about the respective CAS capabilities of the A-10 and F-35, an understanding of what’s meant by CAS is necessary. Joint Western military doctrine defines CAS as “air action by fixed- and rotary-winged aircraft against hostile targets that are in close proximity to friendly forces and which require detailed integration of each air mission with the fire and movement of those forces.”
More specifically, CAS pilots must be able to coordinate in real time and near real time with their certified joint terminal attack controllers (JTAC), to be able to dynamically adjust targeting and be able to relay enemy positions and movements back to their JTACs in real time. In a real CAS mission, the plane will be flying close enough to frontlines that even if it’s stealthy, it will still be seen on radar and by plain old human eyes.
In terms of what you want in a CAS plane, the engineers and experienced CAS pilots who designed the A-10 in the mid-1960s concluded that a CAS attack plane must be able to operate near the frontlines from an austere airfield with short runways, have low maintenance requirements and high reliability, be able to carry a large weapons load including anti-armor capability, be tough enough to survive small arms fire and be resistant to the kind of anti-air weapons one will find at the frontline of a ground battle, have long range and endurance, have a speed of at least 350 knots, have great low-speed maneuverability, and have a low cost of acquisition so that the CAS planes that will inevitably be lost in combat can be quickly and cost-effectively replaced as needed.
To say that the A-10 design team hit it out of the park is an understatement. And the heavily modernized A-10C, despite unsubstantiated Air Force claims, has the most sophisticated CAS capabilities of any plane in the world. Consequently, modernized A-10Cs, combining modern A-10-enabled tactics with its air defense capabilities, can operate in environments full of anti-air weapons that other aircraft, including the F-35, can’t. And, the Warthog, with its triple redundancy, twin engines, and titanium bathtub to protect its pilot, is the toughest plane in the world that gets its pilot home after sustaining many times the damage that would have downed any other aircraft.
While the F-35 certainly can fly fast enough, it fails to meet any of the other CAS criteria. And while the F-35, a flying fuel tank, does have decent range when flying stealthily, its inability to fly out of austere air bases located near the frontlines means that it will spend most of its fuel flying back and forth from the battle. In contrast, the A-10, with its ability to fly from austere makeshift airfields with short, unimproved runways, can be based mere minutes from the frontlines and can spend hours in or near the battlefield. This, plus the fact that the A-10 can conservatively double the number of sorties per day of an F-35, means that an A-10 will minimally be able to spend four to eight times more time at or near the frontlines delivering lifesaving, mission-advancing support than an F-35.
Adding insult to injury is that the A-10 can carry far more ordnance than an F-35 flying in stealth mode. And while the F-35 can swap out stealth mode for its “Beast Mode,” which allows it to carry more ordnance than the A-10, its operational range will be cut in half, meaning that it almost certainly will require infight refueling to be able to use its ordnance.
So far, the F-35 isn’t looking so great as a CAS plane, but things only get worse, much worse.
What About the Guns and ‘Danger Close’?
One of the critical missions that a CAS plane needs to be able to execute is a “danger close” mission. This is an operation in which the CAS plane will be attacking enemy troops and equipment that are within 50 meters of friendly troops. Consequently, explosive ordnance use is restricted or not used out of fear of harming or killing friendlies. In these cases, the A-10’s fearsome GAU-8 Avenger 30-millimeter cannon is vastly superior to the 25-millimeter cannons that the F-35s mount. And much to the chagrin of enemy forces, the A-10 carries 1,174 rounds of ammunition, five to six times what the F-35 carries, allowing it to make multiple attack runs per sortie. However, these comparisons are pointless when it comes to the F-35A, whose gun is hopelessly inaccurate and damages the plane when it’s fired.
Finally, equipment critical to protecting the F-35 from going up in flames was either stripped off or left off due to weight considerations (pdf). This arguably makes the F-35 the most fragile plane in the U.S. fighter inventory. Not only is the F-35 highly vulnerable to small fragments common to anti-aircraft artillery fire and near missile misses, but it can’t fly anywhere near lightning, while the A-10 is capable of flying in weather conditions that will ground all other aircraft.
F-35 Will Be Able to ‘Fire and Flee,’ but Can’t Do Real CAS
The F-35’s extreme vulnerabilities to weapons and weather, and its poor low-speed maneuverability, mean that it won’t be allowed to do genuine CAS; instead, it will fire extremely expensive weapons at ranges far enough from the frontline that the situation will often have changed dramatically by the time the glide bomb or missile reaches its target. The F-35 pilot won’t be able to dynamically adjust targeting second by second, as can an A-10 pilot who can actually see the battlefield, even when electronic jamming is present. Further, the F-35 pilot won’t be providing real-time information on enemy movements and positions as can the A-10 pilot.
Col. William Smith, a retired Air Force pilot with more than 3,000 hours of A-10 flight time and 128 combat sorties, said in 2015, “We are regularly able to use something that other planes often cannot, the Mark I Human Eyeball, and sometimes there is no substitute for that,” and “we live in the armpit of the guy on the ground.”
In sharp contrast, the F-35 pilot, in his fragile, flammable, flying tinderbox, will be firing and fleeing many miles away from the frontlines.
In conclusion, the F-35—with its extreme fragility, high acquisition cost, high cost of support and maintenance, inability to operate near the frontlines, poor low-speed maneuverability, lack of an effective gun, poor sortie generation rate, short loiter times, and lack of ability to carry a large weapons payload without inflight refueling—is the antithesis of a CAS plane.
Consequently, in canceling the A-10, the U.S. Air Force will be canceling the most important and effective plane it has to execute lifesaving, mission-advancing CAS. And it will be killing the only plane that can do danger close support. This could cost the lives of countless Marines and soldiers. But on the upside, the A-10 maintainers can be moved over to support the troubled, maintenance-hungry F-35s.
15 Years On, Google’s Chrome Has Taken Over The World
When Google announced the release of its own web browser Chrome in 2008, many people asked themselves why Google was building a web browser.
In retrospect, the better question would have been, why Google hadn’t built a web browser earlier. After all, the company’s entire business was people using a browser to access Google’s services.
As a matter of fact, as Statista’s Martin Armstrong reports, the plan to make a Google web browser had existed for years, Google’s CEO Eric Schmidt just hadn’t considered his company ready to enter the resource draining ‘browser wars’. By 2008, Google was making billions of dollars a year and had finally matured enough to go head to head with Microsoft and it’s market dominating Internet Explorer.
15 years ago, on September 2, 2008, the first official release of Chrome was published and the open-source browser began its steady climb through the ranks. By the third quarter of 2009, Chrome had caught up with Apple’s Safari and set its sights on the next contender: Firefox. It took a bit longer to catch up with Firefox, but in the fourth quarter of 2011, Chrome’s share of global web browsing surpassed that of Firefox. Less than a year later, Chrome became the world’s number one browser, overtaking Microsoft’s Internet Explorer which had utterly dominated the market just five years earlier.
Remarkably, Chrome’s ascent came almost entirely at the expense of Microsoft’s browser. Since the third quarter of 2008, Internet Explorer’s market share dropped from 68 to 25 percent, while Chrome’s soared from zero to 43 percent. Today, Internet Explorer’s successor, Edge, commands just 5 percent of the global market, while Chrome is sitting at the top of the pile with a slice of the pie consistently and securely above the 60 percent mark – the nearest competitor being Safari with 20 percent in August 2023.
According to data from web-tracking firm StatCounter, Chrome is the world’s number 1 internet browser. Between July and August 2023, Chrome was used by 63.6 percent of internet users worldwide. Safari ranked in second place, having been used by just under 20 percent of the world’s online community. Edge (5.4 percent), Firefox (2.9 percent), Opera (2.7 percent) and Samsung (2.3 percent) trail much further behind.
Regionally, Chrome is particularly popular in South America where it has a browser market share of 78.9 percent. In Europe and North America, the share is comparatively lower, at 58.6 percent and 53.1 percent, respectively. The United States’ Chrome market share was only marginally below North America’s regional average, with the browser seeing a 51.7 percent use rate, followed by Safari (30.8 percent), Edge (8.4 percent), Opera (3.5) percent, Firefox (3.5) percent and Samsung Internet (1.1 percent).
Safari ranks as the most prevalent web browser in a number of smaller countries and islands, including North Korea (90.99 percent), Bermuda (92.7 percent), the Faroe Islands (78.52 percent) and Andorra (56.9 percent), while Armenia is one of the only countries worldwide to favor Firefox (Firefox was 55 percent of the online population, Chrome 31.9 percent and Safari 8.7 percent).
Africa is the only continent where Safari does not take second place, but is pushed to third after competitor Opera.
The spiderweb of conflicting court dates in cases involving President Donald Trump places unfair pressure on defense lawyers and must be untangled, according to legal experts.
The former president is scheduled to appear in a pair of major trials, one in Washington and the other in Florida, beginning just 77 days apart. Those are just two of the seven, possibly eight, criminal and civil trials for which President Trump is scheduled during the 12 months prior to the 2024 presidential election, in which he is the leading Republican candidate.
Stacking the trials virtually on top of one another is unfair to the defendant, according to Kevin J. O’Brien, a New York-based trial lawyer and former assistant U.S. attorney who specializes in white-collar criminal cases.
“It’s an awfully burdensome responsibility placed on the defense. And in fairness, it really shouldn’t be placed upon them. It should have been the government’s job and the courts’ job to sort these things out and make sure there’s reasonable time between cases,” Mr. O’Brien told The Epoch Times.
President Trump has maintained his innocence and repeatedly said the criminal cases against him are politically motivated.
“Keep Indicting your Political Opponent, it makes no difference for what, or why. Keep him off the ‘campaign trail’ and in the courthouse instead. Don’t think of his Rights, the Constitution, or Liberty. Sit back and WATCH AMERICA CRUMBLE!” President Trump wrote on the social media platform Truth Social on Sept. 1.
President Trump announced his campaign to return to the White House nine months ago. He has consistently led the field of more than a dozen challengers for the Republican nomination by some 40 percentage points.
In the end, one or more of the trials will have to be rescheduled in the interest of justice, Mr. O’Brien believes.
Spiraling Calendar
President Trump’s legal troubles have snowballed since March when he was indicted in state court in New York on charges of falsifying business records related to payments made to Stormy Daniels before the 2016 presidential election. Judge Juan Merchan scheduled that trial for March 25.
In June, the former president was indicted in federal court in Florida on charges related to classified documents kept at his residence, Mar-a-Lago, Palm Beach. Additional charges were added in July. Judge Aileen Cannon initially set that trial to begin on Aug. 15 but agreed to delay it until May 20 at the request of the defense.
In August, President Trump was indicted in Washington, on federal charges for allegedly conspiring with six unnamed, unindicted co-conspirators to overturn the 2020 election results in events culminating on January 6, 2021.
Special Counsel Jack Smith, the prosecutor in the Florida and Washington cases, asked Judge Tanya Chutkan to schedule the Georgia case to begin Jan. 2. Judge Chutkan set the trial date for March 4.
Later in August, President Trump and 18 others were indicted in a Georgia state court on charges concerning an alleged conspiracy to overturn that state’s 2020 presidential election results.
Two co-defendants in the Georgia case, former campaign lawyers Kenneth Chesebro and Sidney Powell, have asked that their trials begin on Oct. 23, citing their right to a speedy trial. President Trump has asked to sever his case from that of his co-defendants. Judge Scott McAfee has not ruled on either request.
In New York, President Trump is named in three civil lawsuits with trials scheduled to begin on Oct. 2, Jan. 25, and Jan. 29.
Complications for the Defense
Though the two federal criminal trials will begin 11 weeks apart, other court deadlines overlap, creating a nearly impossible challenge to mounting a defense.
“It is not a ‘March 4’ trial,” Attorney William Shipley said, referring to the Washington trial.
“This schedule has the defense attorneys filing motions in December. They have 4 months to review millions of pages of discovery, do their own investigation of matters contained in that discovery—including interviewing witnesses (both [government] witnesses and others who were not part of [government] investigation)—and formulating their own defense plan,” Mr. Shipley, who has represented a number of defendants in cases related to the events of January 6, wrote on the social media platform X on Aug. 30.
“This is at the same time there are pretrial proceedings already scheduled in the Florida case involving the documents.”
The schedules for both trials list more than a dozen deadlines for filing motions or other documents. Many of those filings will require a response from the other party, creating the possibility of submitting hundreds of pages of legal documents to each court through the fall and early winter.
Speaking of Judge Chutkan’s scheduling choice, Mr. Shipley wrote, “What she has done indirectly is derail the FL case—a tactical move to reduce the influence of decisions by the judge in that case that might cause problems for SCO Smith.”
The proposed trial schedules simply cannot be met, according to Mr. O’Brien. Court cases tend to lengthen as attorneys wrangle over pre-trial questions. And life itself is too complicated to bank on the clockwork precision required to manage even one trial on schedule, let alone eight.
“I’ve been in big cases before. Scheduling dates have a habit of slipping. Issues come up. Discovery disputes, motions, appeals, lawyers who get sick, witnesses who are unavailable, fights over every issue under the sun—all these things can wreak havoc and even the best-laid plans,” Mr. O’Brien said.
“Even in the Washington trial lasts until the end of April, it’s still unfair. That’s not nearly enough time to get ready for the second trial,” Mr. O’Brien added. “[The Florida trial] is going to have to be pushed back many, many months to make it a fair process.”
Solutions
Judge Cannon could try to resolve the scheduling conflict between the two federal criminal cases by ordering Mr. Smith to state his rationale for requesting a date for the Washington trial that conflicts with the Florida case, according to Mr. Shipley.
“She could issue an [order to show cause] to the government asking for them to explain why they sought a schedule in that case that interfered with the schedule she already issued in her case. When the [government] doesn’t have a good answer, she could cite [the Department of Justice] for contempt,” Mr. Shipley wrote.
“What might happen after that would be anyone’s guess.”
The more likely resolution, according to Mr. O’Brien, is that the judges in the two federal criminal cases will confer to arrange a compromise on the schedules.
“I suspect this process is just starting. There’s going to be jawboning and discussions behind the scenes with at least the two federal judges. Who knows how it’s going to go, but I think the push is going to be made for the January 6 case to go first,” he said, because the case involves the Constitution and the transfer of presidential power.
That appears to be Mr. Smith’s intention, evidenced by his requesting an early trial date and by streamlining the case to include only President Trump and not his alleged co-conspirators.
However, judges, not prosecutors, schedule trials. So the resolution will likely come after a consultation between Judges Cannon and Chutkan, Mr. O’Brien said, and there’s no telling what each might do.
“[Judge Cannon] has shown that she is willing to buck the norms, to put it mildly, in making decisions involving this case,” Mr. O’Brien said.
In 2022, prior to President Trump’s indictment, Judge Cannon appointed a third party to review documents seized by the FBI from Mar-a-Lago. The 11th U.S. Court of Appeals reversed that order and dismissed a lawsuit filed by President Trump to shield documents from federal investigators.
Manhattan District Attorney Alvin Bragg, who is prosecuting the criminal case against President Trump in New York, has said that he will defer to the wishes of Judge Merchan regarding the Mar. 25 trial.
“Ultimately, the judge sets the schedule, and we will follow the court’s lead, but we’ll take a broad look at what justice requires,” Mr. Bragg said in a July 25 radio interview with WNYC.
Japan’s defense ministry is submitting a record spending request as part of a larger plan that will double Japan’s total defense spending over five years.
The ministry’s FY24 request for more than $52 billion would bring the Pacific nation closer to realizing Prime Minister Fumio Kishida’s plan to bring defense spending up to a total of two percent of Japan’s gross domestic product in the coming years.
Mr. Kishida’s administration aims to raise defense spending to a total of about $68 billion by 2027. The move will bump Japan from being the ninth largest military spender in the world to the third, after only the United States and communist China.
The most recent budget request was approved by Japan’s defense ministry on Aug. 31 and sent to the finance ministry for negotiations.
If adopted, the request would add more than $6 billion to the defense budget for the second year in a row, and augment Japan’s defense forces with considerable new firepower.
The budget request includes billions of dollars worth of investments that would fill out Japan’s defense forces with warships, cruise missiles, and hypersonic warheads.
Among the proposed expenditures is more than $6 billion to secure ammunition and weapons, $4 billion to strengthen logistics capabilities needed to deploy weapons throughout the island chain, $2 billion for new landing ships, transport helicopters, and a new specialized transport team, and another $2 billion to buy 400 Tomahawk cruise missiles to deploy on new and existing ships by 2027.
Smaller amounts will also contribute to jointly developing weapons systems with the United States, UK, and Italy. These include new interceptor missiles designed to counter hypersonic warheads and new fighter jets.
Japan Eyes Threats From China, North Korea
The new weapons and platforms present the latest in a major pivot away from the pacifism that has defined Japan’s post-war defense investments. Such investments are increasingly viewed by the Kishida administration as necessary, however, as Japan faces increasing hostility from the communist regimes of China and North Korea.
Communist China has flown spy balloons through Japan’s airspace and launched missiles into the waters of Japan’s exclusive economic zone in recent years.
North Korea, meanwhile, has made repeated threats of nuclear terror against Japan, South Korea, and the United States.
Japan has thus undertaken historic steps to build up its ability to deter conflict and defend itself and its allies and partners from such actors.
Japan announced in 2021, for example, that it will deploy 500 to 600 military personnel to the southwestern island of Ishigaki, which is near Taiwan, in a move that experts say will solidify the country’s commitment to defending Taiwan from Chinese communist aggression.
In January of this year, Japan and the United States signed new commitments regarding defense spending, military modernization, and a new agreement that will extend their mutual defense treaty to apply to space.
Those deals followed a flurry of activity between the two nations at numerous levels of government, which also resulted in an overhaul in the U.S.–Japan defense posture and strategy, to include an expansion of Japanese forces and a restructuring of the U.S. Marine Corps forces stationed on and around Okinawa.
Accompanying these actions has been a swift detente with South Korea, through which Mr. Kishida and South Korean President Yoon Suk Yeol have worked to ease historic tensions dating to Japan’s occupation of Korea in the first half of the 20th century.
Those efforts are now bearing fruit. In February, Japan, South Korea, and the United States agreed to increase their security cooperation and “push back” against China and North Korea’s malign activity in the Pacific. Later, in August, leaders from the three nations met in Delaware for the first-ever stand-alone trilateral summit between the three powers.
A super PAC backing Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis’s 2024 run for the White House said it’s pausing voter canvassing in four states and investing some of the freed-up field resources into three early-voting states.
Never Back Down, the PAC supporting Mr. DeSantis’s presidential bid, is suspending door-knocking operations in Nevada, California, Texas, and North Carolina, The Epoch Times has learned.
Instead, the PAC will be refocusing its efforts and investing some of those field resources into Iowa, New Hampshire, and South Carolina—three early-voting states.
“We want to reinvest in the first three, we see real opportunities,” PAC spokeswoman Erin Perrine told The Epoch Times in an emailed statement, referring to Iowa, New Hampshire, and South Carolina.
“The first three are going to set the conditions for the March states,” she added. California, North Carolina, and Texas hold their primaries in March 2024, according to the GOP primary calendar, while Nevada, an early-voting state, holds its primary in February.
However, Nevada faces what Ms. Perrine described as a volatile situation, where the state Republican Party has announced plans to hold its own party-run presidential caucus in addition to a statewide primary.
“When you have that kind of uncertainty about how the election’s going to be conducted, that becomes a pretty unstable environment to be investing the kind of resources that we’re investing,” Ms. Perrine said.
“Nevada is heading to a lawsuit,” she added.
Turbulence in California, Nevada
Nevada Republicans insist on holding their own caucus despite a new state law calling for a primary election.
Some say that the competing contests could confuse some voters and it seems that the Republican primary wouldn’t count as the party-run caucus plans to decide which candidate will receive the state’s delegates.
While it’s not yet clear when the Nevada caucus will take place, reports suggest it will be around the same time as the Feb. 6, 2024, primary, which falls after the Iowa caucus and primaries in New Hampshire and South Carolina.
Ms. Perrine told The Epoch Times that the Nevada GOP’s move is meant to favor former President Donald Trump’s chances at winning in 2024. Other officials at Never Back Down have made similar comments.
“The situation in Nevada is very clear. They’re eliminating important grassroots processes which doesn’t benefit voters, but it does benefit one person: Donald Trump,” Jess Szymanski, deputy communications director of Never Back Down, told the Washington Examiner.
“Nevada Republicans continue to lose elections with Trump at the top of the ticket, yet state GOP leaders are so obsessed with appeasing Trump that they’ve rigged their primary to prioritize Trump above their own voters,” Ms. Szymanski added.
Nevada Republican Party Chairman Michael McDonald, who was heavily involved in the process of maintaining the state’s GOP caucus, told ABC News that it’s a long-standing tradition that is “bigger than Gov. DeSantis” or “anybody that’s running for office.”
Ms. Perrine told The Epoch Times that the situation with the primaries in California is similar to what’s happening in Nevada.
“A similar situation in California, where they eliminated the California Republicans’ say in their own primary as well as making grassroots involvement impossible,” she said.
“Now the central committee will have a convention and a vote at the end of September, which could alter that. But that was a Trump-inspired rigging as well,” Ms. Perrine added.
In July, California Republicans changed delegate rules (pdf) in a way that a number of political pundits have said makes it less competitive and benefits President Trump.
Under the new rules, a Republican presidential candidate who receives over 50 percent of the vote in the state’s primary election will be awarded all 169 of the state’s delegates.
The old rules let Republican presidential candidates win three delegates in each congressional district, letting them target specific areas rather than focusing on expensive statewide campaigns, while allowing multiple candidates to get at least some delegates.
“When they changed it to a proportional, statewide winner-take-all, that completely eliminated the opportunity for grassroots campaigning,” Ms. Perrine said. “Literally a landmark decision they made with breathtaking speed.”
“And so with neither state having a fair process, the door knockers that were in Nevada and California, we decided to make them kind of refocus into the first three,” she explained.
By contrast, California GOP Chairwoman Jessica Patterson argued that the new rules would encourage candidates to campaign more extensively and put forward their proposal to a broader swathe of voters.
“Republican presidential candidates will not only be encouraged to spend real time campaigning in our state and making their case to voters, but Republican voters will equally be encouraged to turn out to support their chosen candidate to help them win delegates,” Ms. Patterson said in a statement.
‘Scam’ PAC Closes
Elsewhere, Mr. DeSantis’s presidential campaign said recently that the closure of the Ron to the Rescue super PAC was “welcome news,” while calling the PAC a “scam.”
“We’ve made clear from the beginning that this was a scam PAC looking to grift off Ron DeSantis, and it comes as welcome news they are no longer attempting to fleece our donors,” Andrew Romeo, communications director for the campaign, said in a statement.
“Ron DeSantis outraised both [President Joe] Biden and [former President Donald] Trump last quarter, and we look forward to continuing our fundraising success as we capitalize on his strong debate performance and momentum in the early states,” Mr. Romeo added.
Republican strategist John Thomas launched the Ron to the Rescue super PAC last fall to urge Mr. DeSantis to enter the 2024 presidential race.
In an exclusive interview with the Daily Mail, Mr. Thomas said he and the committee’s donors had become disenchanted with the governor following his botched campaign launch on Twitter, now X.
“We were hoping to do like a formal TV campaign of air support when DeSantis officially launched,” he told the outlet.
“But the problem with that is, with the Twitter Spaces blunder, like almost from the get-go, all of our major donors said, ‘Let’s just see how this plays out.’”
According to Federal Election Commission filings, the Ron to the Rescue PAC raised just over $1,600, of which more than $1,200 was disbursed to Mr. Thomas’s political consulting firm, Thomas Partners Strategies, for “PAC strategy consulting.”
Now, Mr. Thomas said he and his donor network intend to shift their support to President Donald Trump, who had surprised him with “a level of campaign savvy and discipline” that he had not previously seen from him.
“We’re going to see, after the reporting period of Sept. 30, how Trump’s cash on hand is, and then we’re going to try to determine where we can fill in gaps, if it’s needed.”
Since announcing his third presidential bid, President Trump has maintained his position as the clear frontrunner in the primary contest, with Mr. DeSantis consistently polling in second place.
According to the latest RealClearPolitics average of polls, the 45th president holds a commanding 39-point lead over Mr. DeSantis and is supported by 53.6 percent of Republicans.
