Tag: front organizations

Concerns over MEK’s potential Influence in Congress + More

Tina Marie (Ms. Cat)
The National Council of Resistance of Iran (NCRI) and the Mojahedin-e-Khalq (MEK) are synonymous.

The Mujahedin-e-Khalq (MEK) has renewed its efforts to position itself as a credible opposition movement to the Islamic Republic. The recent outcome of the group’s lobbying activities has been a resolution submitted by 160 congressmen. However, a comprehensive new report from the Congressional Research Service [CRS] critically assesses these ongoing efforts, underscoring significant concerns regarding the MEK’s extremist ideological origins, historical involvement in terrorism, documented human rights abuses, and notably weak popular support among Iranians both domestically and within the diaspora.

Concerns over MEK’s potential Influence in Congress (archived)

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The Latest on Colby’s Strategy of Denial

Tina Marie (Ms. Cat)

There’s little in Elbridge A. Colby’s past to suggest that President Trump’s most loyal and fierce allies would embrace him.

Mr. Colby, 45, has deep roots in the foreign policy establishment that Mr. Trump is trying to destroy. He is the grandson of the former C.I.A. director William Colby; a product of Groton, Harvard and Yale Law School; someone who has spent much of his career working across party lines on some of the most complex national security issues: nuclear weapons strategy, China’s military buildup, the commercialization of space.

A Pentagon Nomination Fight Reveals the New Rules of Trump’s Washington

Related:

US Army War College: Adapting US Defense Strategy to Great-Power Competition

USNI: A Forward Denial Defense: Inside the First Island Chain

Colby-Pottinger document

Beware of the Juan Guaidó of Türkiye

Tina Marie (Ms. Cat)

Ekrem İmamoğlu, mayor of Istanbul and a prominent figure in the Republican People’s Party (CHP), is widely regarded as President Recep Tayyip Erdoğan’s primary political opponent. His arrest occurred just days before the CHP was expected to officially announce him as their candidate for the 2028 presidential election. Ironically, Wikipedia characterizes him as a “dark horse” candidate, a relatively unknown figure who emerged as a challenger in the 2019 Istanbul mayoral election. In other words, the Juan Guaidó of Türkiye.

During his tenure as Mayor of Istanbul, İmamoğlu appointed Yavuz Saltık as the Chief of Staff of the Istanbul Metropolitan Municipality. Saltık had previously served as an advisor for prominent international organizations, including the International Republican Institute (IRI), the National Democratic Institute (NDI), and the Konrad Adenauer Foundation (KAS). Notably, the IRI and NDI are key elements of the National Endowment for Democracy (NED), while KAS is closely linked to the German political party, the Christian Democratic Union (CDU). NED gets the majority of its funding from the U.S. Congress. The origins of the NED trace back to the late 1960s, when the Central Intelligence Agency (CIA) came under scrutiny for covertly backing activists and opposition groups in countries perceived to be aligning with the Soviet Union. After these CIA operations were exposed, the agency faced widespread criticism for what many viewed as underhanded interference in the affairs of sovereign nations. Following years of debate over whether and how such funding should persist, Congress ultimately established the NED in 1983. 

Unsurprisingly, Trotskyist factions are rallying behind what appears to be another color revolution, aimed at “balkanizing” Iran, establishing Greater Kurdistan, and undermining China and Russia.

Related:

Flashback 2019: Could the US force regime change in Turkey- The short answer is yes.

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Judge blocks Trump 2.0’s declaration of war on Venezuelan “gangs”

Tina Marie (Ms. Cat)

Federal judge blocks Trump’s plan to target ‘alien enemies’ for deportation

In his latest move to clamp down on illegal immigration and immigration more broadly, President Trump has filed a presidential action invoking the Alien Enemies Act of 1798, a seldom-used law that gives the president authority to detain or deport nationals of an enemy nation during wartime. It’s only the fourth time in American history a president has used the act — and the first since World War II.

The directive targets members of Tren de Aragua, a Venezuelan prison gang, and authorizes expedited removal of all Venezuelan citizens 14 and older, deemed to be members of the organization, who are not U.S. citizens or lawful permanent residents.

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Duterte Arrest Raises Stakes in Clash for Control of Philippines

Tina Marie (Ms. Cat)
YouTube

Duterte Arrest Raises Stakes in Clash for Control of Philippines

Three years ago, the most powerful political families in the Philippines joined hands to secure the nation’s biggest election victory in four decades. Now they are locked in a feud that threatens to derail one of Asia’s economic growth stars.

In dramatic events on Tuesday, Philippine President Ferdinand Marcos Jr.’s government arrested and deported his predecessor Rodrigo Duterte to face the International Criminal Court in The Hague. The move came just over a month after the impeachment of his daughter, Vice President Sara Duterte, by allies of Marcos. A Senate trial, which would determine whether she gets removed from office, is scheduled to begin in July.

The Philippines Inaugurates New President Marcos Jr.
Sara Duterte, left, with Ferdinand Marcos Jr. in 2022. Photographer: Ezra Acayan/Getty Images
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More Inconvenient Facts Regarding USAID, Its Connections to Blackrock, and Blackrock’s Connections to Trump

Tina Marie (Ms. Cat)

More Inconvenient Facts Regarding USAID, Its Connections to Blackrock, and Blackrock’s Connections to Trump

As US Secretary of State Marco Rubio confirms USAID was not “dismantled” and instead streamlined to make it a more effective tool of interference and regime change (that is all USAID ever was), there are some other interesting facts regarding USAID…

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EDSA1: The Snap Revolution

Tina Marie (Ms. Cat)
Christopher Hitchens: Hitch 22

Off to the side was a more youthful Wolfowitz. He told me that this picture, which had pride of place in his office, was of exactly the moment when the Reaganites had narrowly voted to dump the Ferdinand Marcos dictatorship in the Philippines in 1986 and to recognize the election victory of his opponent Cory Aquino.* “It was the first argument I won,” said Wolfowitz proudly. “I said that if we supported a dictator to keep hold of a base, we would end up losing the base and also deserving to do so. Whereas,” he went on, “by joining the side of ‘people power’ in Manila that year, we helped democracy movements spread through Taiwan and South Korea and even I think into Tiananmen Square in 1989.“

* See, for the best account of this upheaval in real time, James Fenton’s book The Snap Revolution.

Related:

*The Snap Revolution (Part One: The Snap Election) | James Fenton

*The Snap Revolution (Part Two: The Narrow Road to the Solid North)

*The Snap Revolution (Part Three: The Snap Revolution)

Previously: PH’s EDSA1 AKA People Power Revolution

Google Document: PH’s EDSA1 AKA People Power Revolution & Chile’s 1988 Plebiscite

Tiananmen Square

The Trumpists Agitating To Coup Honduras + More

Tina Marie (Ms. Cat)

The Trumpists Agitating To Coup Honduras

Prospera, a Peter Thiel-backed crypto ‘city’ running unregulated medical experiments on a Honduran island may very well be the spark for a US coup against Honduras this November.

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Another group to have visited Prospera in recent weeks are Republicans for National renewal, a MAGA-aligned group founded by Mark Ivanyo, a former staffer in Trump’s first term Department of Justice. They touted Prospera as ‘similar to President Trump’s proposed Freedom Cities’ and also took aim at Castro, saying Prospera was ‘a bastion of pro-Americanism, economic freedom & Bitcoin acceptance in socialist Honduras.’

Prospera was also visited last week by Cremieux, an anonymous twitter account regularly retweeted by Elon Musk (and likely run by more than one white crypto-libertarian type) that helps set the libertarian discourse.

Given these links it’s inconceivable that Trump hasn’t heard about Prospera and the threats to its existence. Marco Rubio, a man aggressively hostile to anything that looks or smells like socialism in Latin America, almost certainly has as well. It was telling that he didn’t bother visiting Honduras on his recent trip to Latin America, his first outside the US.

I’ve strongly suspected that these so-called ‘Network States’ would be used as staging grounds for regime change operations. I am aware of the ones in Venezuela and Brazil, as well as a few others in Africa.

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How to DOGE USAID: The Wall Street Consensus under Trump

Tina Marie (Ms. Cat)

How to DOGE USAID: The Wall Street Consensus under Trump

We often hear that the new Trump administration inaugurates the age of technofeudalism. Just look at Elon Musk, pontificating about so-called “Department of Government Efficiency” (DOGE) democracy from the Oval Office while undemocratically occupying the US Treasury payment system. But is the administration simply using bullying as a mode of power, as Adam Tooze recently diagnosed it, destroying institutions without measure or plan?

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