The “Karen National Defense Organization” (KNDO) is among several ethnic armed groupspropped up by the US and British governments for decades as part of an ongoing effort to divide Myanmar territorially and undermine the nation’s central government and military since it gained independence from Britain in 1948.
The US and British governments had openly armed and trained these groups during World War 2 and have since provided them with support through organisations like USAID, the National Endowment for Democracy (NED) and through more clandestine and indirect forms of support, particularly in regards to providing arms and military training.
Xi Jinping has ordered the People’s Liberation Army to be ready to seize Taiwan by 2027. Whether he launches an invasion may depend on President Trump’s defense secretary. If confirmed by the Senate, Army National Guard veteran and Fox News host Pete Hegseth, Mr. Trump’s nominee, will have to confront the collapse of deterrence in Europe and the Middle East, resource constraints on Capitol Hill, recruitment challenges, and a deteriorating balance of power in the Indo-Pacific. The only way to promote peace is to go to war on day one—not with China, Russia or Iran but with the Pentagon bureaucracy.
Gallagher wants a wartime economy while leaving the financing to the private sector. It won’t work. 👇👇👇
In reality, Russia and China’s industrial bases are larger than America’s because of a number of factors, including factors no amount of American political will, can overcome. China in particular has a population four times greater than the US. China graduates millions more each year in the fields of science, technology, engineering, and mathematics than the US, and the physical size of its industrial base – military or otherwise – reflects this demographic disparity.
Even if the US had the political will to reform its military industrial base, stripping away profit-driven private industry and replacing it with purpose-driven state-owned enterprises, even if the US likewise transformed its education system to produce a skilled workforce rather than squeeze every penny from American students, and even if the US invested in its national infrastructure – a fundamental prerequisite for expanding its industrial base – it still faces a reality where China has already done all of this, and done so with a population larger than it and its G7 partners combined.
FYI, Gallagher is with Palantir, as well as the Hudson Institute.
Purge at the Pentagon! Reuters reports that the incoming Trump administration is drawing up a list of generals to be fired. These are generals associated with former Chairman of the JCS Mark Milley and anyone else branded with a scarlet “W” for woke. The current Chairman, Air Force General C.Q. Brown, may also be fired, as some within the Trump camp suspect he may have been a DEI hire.
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As Army officer Paul Yingling famously wrote (“A Failure in Generalship”), a private is severely punished for losing a rifle but generals get promoted for losing wars. I doubt this is going to change. Instead, under Trump it appears the firing of generals is another leg of his vengeance tour, a purge of those who are perceived as disloyal.
In 2022, the US kicked Russia out of the SWIFT system, causing significant losses for Russian businesses and ordinary citizens. Even Switzerland’s traditionally neutral banks joined this looting. The monopoly over the financial system and global currency once gave the U.S. and EU such capability, but at the 2024 BRICS summit, Western countries permanently lost this advantage.
Chinese President Xi Jinping on Wednesday called on BRICS countries to work for high quality development of greater BRICS cooperation, in a speech addressing the 16th BRICS Summit.
U.S. Secretary of State Antony J. Blinken and YouTube’s Global Head of Music Lyor Cohen announced today a new Department of State-YouTube partnership in support of the Department’s Global Music Diplomacy Initiative, a worldwide effort to elevate music as a diplomatic platform to promote peace and democracy insupport of the United States’ broader foreign policy goals. At the core of the partnership is a roster of U.S. Global Music Ambassadors, which builds on the legacy of the iconic Jazz Ambassadors of the 1950s and 1960s and promotes peace across generations of people worldwide.
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In addition to the new U.S. Global Music Ambassadors, the Department and YouTube will join efforts to enhance English language learning through music and across the YouTube platform. This new partnership will support opportunity and equity in the creative economy through in-country engagements with audiences and aspiring creators – beginning in Australia, Brazil, Canada, France, and India. It will offer micro-grants to State Department exchange program alumni around the world who use music as a means to expand access to education, economic opportunity and equity, and inclusion. And it will raise even greater awareness and inspire action globally around the unifying power of music, during global moments, such as the G20 meetings in Brazil later this year.
Menomonee Falls School District banned 33 titles. The same day the ACLU made its open records requests, Elkhorn Area School District received a request from a parent challenging 444 books, prompting the temporary removal and review of those titles.
The letter to the school districts accompanying the requests notes that removing books from school libraries threatens the First Amendment rights of students and their families. The Supreme Court held over 40 years ago that “local school boards may not remove books from school library shelves simply because they dislike the ideas contained in those books.”
Parents should be able to have a say in their children’s education (although, they shouldn’t be astroturfed). The thing is, these articles are selective in revealing the money behind some of these groups. I’ve included links to a few, of the financials/partnerships, below the cut. I wasn’t able to find information on a couple of them, though. Another thing, PEN has ties to the CIA and the Congress for Cultural Freedom.
Ms. Cat’s Chronicles 
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