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.
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.
A new report from Griffith Asia Institute, a unit of Australia’s Griffith University, shows 10 years after the launch of China’s Belt & Road Initiative (BRI) cumulative engagement tops $1 trillion with about $634 billion in construction contracts and $419 billion in non-financial investments.
Evers had called on the Legislature to pass a package that included $365 million in new child care funding; a $65 million boost in University of Wisconsin funding; $200 million to pay for a new engineering building at UW-Madison; $243 million to create a new 12-week family medical leave program for Wisconsin workers and millions more for workforce education and grant programs.
The Republican bill would also create a state tax credit for families paying for child care; increase income tax deductions for private school tuition; make professional credentials granted to workers in other states valid in Wisconsin; and prohibit state examining boards from requiring counselors, therapists and pharmacists pass tests on state law and regulations. 😳
A senior official at the US State Department issued his resignation on Wednesday evening, citing the Biden administration’s approach to the Israel-Palestine conflict.
In an almost inconceivable action, a Christian nationalist GOP congressman, Rep. Mike Turner of Ohio, has introduced legislation to shut MRFF down — to make it ILLEGAL for Department of Defense personnel to even communicate with MRFF!
Republican Ohio Senator J.D. Vance accused the Biden administration of “moralizing and lecturing” other countries in a floor speech opposing a new diplomatic nominee late Wednesday.
“Right now, you know that Joe Biden is not sending weapons to Taiwan, weapons that we promised the Taiwanese, because we’re sending those weapons to Ukraine or elsewhere,” Vance said.
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Though Vance said he admires the brave people of Ukraine, he said America should remove troops and resources from Ukraine.
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“It’s time to manufacture our weapons in the United States,” the Ohioan said. “And it’s time to send a message to the world that America is the arsenal of democracy, but we cannot do that unless you get out and stop the focus on Ukraine.”
“The great arsenal of democracy” came to specifically refer to the industry of the U.S., as the primary supplier of material for the Allied war effort [WWII].
Meanwhile, he wants to pull a Zelensky back home. /s
Ms. Cat’s Chronicles 
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