Category: History

Inside the Trilateral Commission: Power elites grapple with China’s rise

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Inside the Trilateral Commission: Power elites grapple with China’s rise (original)

Each new candidate for Commission membership is carefully scrutinized before being allowed entry. As a rule, members who take up positions in their national governments — which is uncannily common — give up their Trilateral Commission membership while in public service. Those include U.S. Secretary of State Antony Blinken, Jake Sullivan, the U.S. national security adviser, Danish Prime Minister Mette Frederiksen and Indian External Affairs Minister Subrahmanyam Jaishankar.

This revolving door between the commission and senior government ranks has always been fodder for conspiracy theorists. Its first director in 1973, Zbigniew Brzezinski, later became U.S. President Jimmy Carter’s national security adviser. The very existence of the commission, meanwhile, seems predicated on the question of whether governing should be left to the people. It is a question the commission itself has tackled head-on since 1975: Is democracy functioning? Or does someone need to guide it?

That year, three scholars — Michel Crozier, Samuel Huntington and Joji Watanuki — wrote a report for The Trilateral Commission titled “The Crisis of Democracy.” In it, Huntington wrote that some of the problems of governance in the U.S. stem from an “excess of democracy.”

Related:

The Crisis of Democracy – Trilateral Commission – 1975

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Chiang Kai-shek’s Great-Grandson’s Election Win Means Much To Taiwan’s Future

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Chiang Kai-shek’s Great-Grandson’s Election Win Means Much To Taiwan’s Future

But there is much more to the win of the young (43) Chiang and his Chinese Nationalist (KMT) Party over the candidate of the ruling Democratic Progressive Party. Even before he has taken office at city hall, Chiang is being promoted as the next president of Taiwan when incumbent Tsai Ing-wen must by law step down in 2024.

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Where most of the KMT embrace the “one nation, two systems” policy that opponents fear will lead to Taiwan being absorbed by China, young Chiang in January, 2020 denounced the policy and embraced the stance of President Tsai that China must recognize the independence of Taiwan and the values of freedom and democracy held dear by Taiwanese.

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Chiang-Wan-an’s grandfather, Chiang Ching-kuo, served as Taiwan’s president from 1978 to 1988.* The lawmaker’s father John Chiang is a past vice premier and foreign minister of Taiwan.

*Related (Notes for Myself):

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U.S. and NATO scramble to arm Ukraine and refill their own arsenals

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Either this narrative about weapon stockpiles, being depleted, is part of the information war or Russia is demilitarizing NATO!?!

U.S. and NATO scramble to arm Ukraine and refill their own arsenals

In Ukraine, the kind of European war thought inconceivable is chewing up the modest stockpiles of artillery, ammunition and air defenses of what some in NATO call Europe’s “bonsai armies,” after the tiny Japanese trees. Even the mighty United States has only limited stocks of the weapons the Ukrainians want and need, and Washington is unwilling to divert key weapons from delicate regions like Taiwan and Korea, where China and North Korea are constantly testing the limits.

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So the West is scrambling to find increasingly scarce Soviet-era equipment and ammunition that Ukraine can use now, including S-300 air defense missiles, T-72 tanks and especially Soviet-caliber artillery shells

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There are even discussions about NATO investing in old factories in the Czech Republic, Slovakia and Bulgaria to restart the manufacturing of Soviet-caliber 152-mm and 122-mm shells for Ukraine’s still largely Soviet-era artillery armory.

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The European Union has approved €3.1 billion ($3.2 billion) to repay member states for what they provide to Ukraine, but that fund, the [ironically-named] European Peace Facility, is nearly 90 percent depleted.

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Smaller countries have exhausted their potential, another NATO official said, with 20 of its 30 members “pretty tapped out.” But the remaining 10 can still provide more, he suggested, especially larger allies. That would include France, Germany, Italy and the Netherlands.

NATO’s secretary general, Jens Stoltenberg, has advised the alliance — including, pointedly, Germany — that NATO guidelines requiring members to keep stockpiles should not be a pretext to limit arms exports to Ukraine. But it is also true that Germany and France, like the United States, want to calibrate the weapons Ukraine gets, to prevent escalation and direct attacks on Russia.

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Washington is also looking at older, cheaper alternatives like giving Ukraine anti-tank TOW missiles, which are in plentiful supply, instead of Javelins, and Hawk surface-to-air missiles instead of newer versions. But officials are increasingly pushing Ukraine to be more efficient and not, for example, fire a missile that costs $150,000 at a drone that costs $20,000.

The Sordid History of the CIA

Ms. Cat

The CIA is a huge organization mostly filled with good people who consolidate information from other American intelligence agencies, foreign intelligence agencies, and corporate intelligence agencies. Some CIA officers work with murderous dictators and criminal organizations involved in the drug trade, arms dealing, and government contract fraud. There are great YouTube videos that provide insight into covert CIA operations. This is far too much material to condense into a short video. Here is a quick review of great YouTube videos about the CIA with a link to them below.

The Sordid History of the CIA via Tales of the American Empire

Related (Regis Tremblay’s YouTube was removed, so including different interviews):

Rev. Bill Davis: Contragate (1990)

Douglas Valentine: The CIA and the war in Ukraine (2022)

The CIA As Organized Crime With Doug Valentine

Sweden Expands Espionage Law, Endangering Freedom of Journalists and Whistleblowers

Ms. Cat

Sweden’s parliament adopted a major espionage law expansion that will permit the country’s police to investigate journalists, publishers, and whistleblowers if they reveal secret information that “may damage Sweden’s relationship with another state or an international organization.”

Sweden Expands Espionage Law, Endangering Freedom of Journalists and Whistleblowers