Free Republic

Kenneth Wollack, a Co-Chair of the Commission of Presidential Debates, participated in several “off-the-record” dialogues with Chinese Communist Party officials and influence groups, The National Pulse can exclusively reveal.Wollack – also the Chairman of the publicly-funded National Endowment for Democracy (NED) board – was one of ten principal delegates for what was called the inaugural U.S.-China High-Level Political Party Leaders Dialogue, hosted by the EastWest Institute “in partnership” with the International Department of the Central Committee of the Communist Party of China.

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...

U.S. Economic Recovery? Sign's Of What's Ahead Economics / US EconomyOct 08, 2012 - 01:38 AM By: EWI Several signs suggest economic contraction instead of expansion. The first was recent front-page news: 8.1% August jobless rate. The number would have been higher, but it excludes people who gave up the job search. The second is summed up by this Sept. 4 Bloomberg headline: Food-Stamp Use Climbs to Record Nearly one in seven Americans use food stamps. Before the downturn it was one in 10. You can find the third sign at the other end of the income scale. The chart...

Relations between the US and Russia are deteriorating badly and there is a danger of conflict in the flashpoints of the south Caucasus, according to senior former officials and corporate leaders advising the EastWest Institute (EWI). EWI board members at the think-tank's annual meeting in Charleston were almost unanimous in calling for moves to prevent what one called an emerging "cold peace" between the US and Russia. John Mroz, founder and president of EWI, called the deterioration worrisome. He placed the trend in the context of growing distrust between the major powers, including China, with the world in a state...