Free Republic

SPIEGEL ONLINE talks to historian and Oxford professor Timothy Garton Ash about the European Union's weak image in the world, the limits to EU expansion and how Europe should tackle Russia and Iran.Timothy Garton Ash is Professor of European Studies at St. Antony's College, Oxford, a senior fellow at the Stanford University-based think tank the Hoover Institution and a founding member of the European Council on Foreign Relations, a new European think tank. He has earned renown for a genre of writing he calls the "history of the present." His eight books feature historical analysis of transformations undergone in Europe...

China's Communist Party is intensifying covert influence operations in the United States that include funding Washington think tanks and coercing Chinese Americans, according to a congressional commission report. The influence operations are conducted by the United Front Work Department, a Central Committee organ that employs tens of thousands of operatives who seek to use both overt and covert operations to promote Communist Party policies. The Party's United Front strategy includes paying several Washington think tanks with the goal influencing their actions and adopting positions that support Beijing's policies. "The [Chinese Communist Party] has sought to influence academic discourse on China...

In an era of obsession with Russia, 'Blood Money' asks 23 minutes of tough questions about Qatar. Op-ed. Why do countless headlines focus on Russian collusion and not on Qatari hacking, media manipulation, think-tank funding, and terror sponsorship? It's one of the central questions raised in 'Blood Money', the new documentary by journalist Mike Cernovich. In 23 fast-paced minutes, Cernovich dissects the web of Qatar's influence - buying campaign on U.S. soil with interspersed commentary from security experts J. Michael Waller, vice president of the Center for Security Policy; David Reaboi, senior vice president of the Securities Studies Group; and...

"Collusion," anyone?  Bill Gertz of the Free Beacon reports on the efforts, directed at the highest level of the Chinese government, to shape our politics: China's Communist Party is intensifying covert influence operations in the United States that include funding Washington think tanks and coercing Chinese Americans, according to a congressional commission report. The influence operations are conducted by the United Front Work Department, a Central Committee organ that employs tens of thousands of operatives who seek to use both overt and covert operations to promote Communist Party policies. The Party's United Front strategy includes paying several Washington think tanks with the...

The Chinese Communist Party is providing funding support to a number of U.S.-based think tanks as means of ramping up Beijing’s covert influence and information warfare operations, a recent congressional committee report noted. In addition, the CCP is also attempting to influence Chinese Americans primarily by touting Beijing’s political and economic agendas...

China's Communist Party is intensifying covert influence operations in the United States that include funding Washington think tanks and coercing Chinese Americans, according to a congressional commission report. The influence operations are conducted by the United Front Work Department, a Central Committee organ that employs tens of thousands of operatives who seek to use both overt and covert operations to promote Communist Party policies. The report said the Johns Hopkins School of Advance International Studies, a major foreign policy education and analysis institute, has received funding from Tung Chee-hwa, a vice chairman of the Chinese People's Political Consultative Conference, the...

arly last August, an envelope with extraordinary handling restrictions arrived at the White House. Sent by courier from the CIA, it carried “eyes only” instructions that its contents be shown to just four people: President Barack Obama and three senior aides. Inside was an intelligence bombshell, a report drawn from sourcing deep inside the Russian government that detailed Russian President Vladi­mir Putin’s direct involvement in a cyber campaign to disrupt and discredit the U.S. presidential race.

<p>Stephen Moore, a member of the Wall Street Journal’s editorial board and founder of the Club for Growth, is returning to The Heritage Foundation as chief economist.</p> <p>Now, with immigration reform likely to be debated in Congress again this year, Moore said he welcomed the opportunity to work on the issue at Heritage. Jim DeMint and I may not agree on everything about immigration, but what Jim wants me and others to do is develop a pro-growth immigration policy for the country. I don’t want Heritage to be viewed as anti-immigration. We all know immigration is vitally important to our economy. Our goal will be to develop an immigration policy that’s in the best interest of America, our economy, and allows the United States to get the best and brightest people to come here.</p>

The liberal Center for American Progress (CAP) this year promised corporate donors a chance to meet Hillary Rodham Clinton in return for a $250,000 donation, documents obtained by The Hill show. The meeting never happened, though Clinton spoke at the anniversary gala at the Andrew W. Mellon Auditorium that was cited on the solicitation. “None of the patrons were able to meet with Secretary Clinton but our board and trustees did meet with her at the event,” said Andrea Purse, a CAP spokeswoman. The documents ask prospective donors to contribute to CAP’s “Progressive Party,” which was held Oct. 24 to...

BOISE, Idaho – A growing number of conservative groups are bankrolling startup news organizations around the country, aggressively covering government and politics at a time when newspapers are cutting back their statehouse bureaus. The phenomenon troubles some longtime journalists and media watchdogs, who worry about political biases and hidden agendas. The news outlets have sprouted in larger numbers in recent months to fill a void created by the downsizing of traditional statehouse coverage and to win over readers, including those from the tea party movement who don't trust the local paper or the TV news.

What if Iran's hardline leadership emerges from the current confrontations at home strengthened and emboldened? If so, the nuclear issue will be back with a vengeance. And three recent war games focused on the Iranian nuclear weapons issue suggest that the prospects for halting the regime's progress toward nuclear weapons are not good. The games -- conducted by highly respected Western think tanks -- explored various strategies for preventing the Iranian nuclear threat from becoming real. The results, unfortunately, were uniformly negative. Given that these were serious games played by serious people, officials who deal with the nuclear problem as...

SNIPPET: "Think-tanks from a host of Islamic countries gathered this week at the Think-Tank Forum of Islamic Countries under the theme Civilization of Peace and Cooperation, organized by the Turkish Asian Center for Strategic Studies (TASAM) in Istanbul. The focus of the forum was the role of think-tanks in the Islamic world, which was late to recognize their importance in policy formation. The rising tide of conflict in the world was also discussed. These points were stressed in both speeches and seminars." SNIPPET: "The role and development of the Organization for the Islamic Conference (OIC) were discussed in a specific...

The Brookings Institution has been named America’s most influential think tank in the first-ever comprehensive study of the industry. The University of Pennsylvania’s James McGann analyzed about 5,500 think tanks around the world. He sent out surveys to thousands of scholars and experts and asked them to evaluate think tanks based on their ability to shape or drive public policy questions in their home countries and regions. The United States, home to more than one-third of the globe’s think tanks, got its own category for top tanks. Brookings was listed first, followed by New York’s Council on Foreign Relations, D.C.’s...

Lawrence W. Reed is one of those people with so much passion for an unusual line of work that he invented a new occupation, and it has helped shape the conservative movement from here to the Himalayas. Mr. Reed runs a conservative think tank school. Twice a year, ideological allies from across the globe travel to his program at the Mackinac Center for Public Policy in Midland, Mich., to study the tricks of the idea-peddling trade. Policy institutes have been central to a national organizing strategy that has long won the right a reputation for savvy, and state-level versions are...

George Soros told a carefully vetted gathering of 70 likeminded millionaires and billionaires last weekend that they must be patient if they want to realize long-term political and ideological yields from an expected massive investment in “startup” progressive think tanks. The Scottsdale, Ariz., meeting, called to start the process of building an ideas production line for liberal politicians, began what organizers hope will be a long dialogue with the “partners,” many from the high-tech industry. Participants have begun to refer to themselves as the Phoenix Group. Rob Stein, a veteran of President Bill Clinton’s Commerce Department and of New York...

by Mark Finkelstein August 31, 2006 - 09:27 If the Today show were ever to air the opinions of a think tank founded, say, by a former Reagan administration official and free-market economist Milton Friedman, and funded by large corporations, it's inconceivable that the show would have failed to identify the organization's conservative leanings. Yet Today didn't feel the need to do the obverse when relying extensively on a liberal think tank founded by a former Clinton official and far-left economists and largely funded by Big Labor. From a New York Times editorial to a Boston Globe political cartoon, the...

ONE of the best passages of “Gulliver's Travels” concerns his visit to the Grand Academy of Lagado. Gulliver is naturally bemused by the schemes of the “projectors” for making life more comfortable: extracting sunbeams out of cucumbers, or training pigs to plough fields with their snouts. But what really shocks him is their “wild impossible chimeras” for fixing politics: “schemes for persuading monarchs to choose favourites upon the score of their wisdom, capacity and virtue; of teaching ministers to consult the public good; of rewarding merit, great abilities and eminent services.” For much of the past 200 years Europe has...

With no real issues to promote, Democrats are putting all their eggs into the basket of corruption to restore their political fortunes. They and their friends in the mainstream media are working overtime to connect everyone and everything on the right side of the political spectrum to disgraced former lobbyist Jack Abramoff, who has pleaded guilty to multiple felonies. One channel that Democrats and liberals are working is tying conservative think tanks to the Abramoff scandal. They know that these think tanks have been one of the most effective forces in Washington over the last 30 years in advancing a...

How John Olin and William Simon helped create the conservative counterintelligentsia. Recent reports of gloominess besetting conservatives may be exaggerated, but there is one real reason for them to shed a tear: Last month, the trustees of the John M. Olin Foundation met to approve its final grants. After a half-century of operation, the foundation is closing up shop, following the wishes of its founder, who deliberately limited the organization's lifespan to prevent its one day falling into the hands of directors who were foes of his ideas. (Mr. Olin took comfort in the wisdom of this policy after Henry...

At least 80 wealthy liberals have pledged to contribute $1 million or more apiece to fund a network of think tanks and advocacy groups to compete with the potent conservative infrastructure built up over the past three decades. The money will be channeled through a new partnership called the Democracy Alliance, which was founded last spring -- the latest in a series of liberal initiatives as the Democratic Party and its allies continue to struggle with the loss of the House and the Senate in 1994 and the presidency in 2000. Many influential Democratic contributors were left angry and despairing...