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Exploring my news feed today, I came upon an article from the Strategic Cultural Foundation. The article just happened to involve a city that has been brought to my attention through two unrelated circumstances. First, I am going to partake in my third cruise in a year to five separate European countries (Greece, Montenegro, Croatia, San Marino and Italy). This will be the first time visiting the country, Croatia, that my father’s ancestors are from. My wife and I extended the trip to spend an extra day in Athens (Our departing port) and a few extra days in…Trieste (Our return port). Through my own mistaken ability to read a map properly, I thought our final port was going to be Venice, Italy. But Venice is not part of the itinerary even though the city of Ravenna (South of Venice) and Trieste, Italy (Across the Adriatic Sea) are. As the reality of missing Venice began to matriculate, this article popped up into my newsfeed about my final port, Trieste (Who says Windows 10 and the Microsoft Edge Browser are not spying on your email?). The article discusses recent geo-political meetings occurring inside this smaller sized, strategically located city between some powerful forces:
Members of NATO Members of the Atlantic Council Members of the Hungarian think tank Danube Institute linked to Viktor Orbán Members of Donald Trump’s entourage Members of the Italian Armed Forces and Police forces Representatives of the Trieste city government Two of those organizations are heavy hitters. NATO is a powerful Western military organization currently involved in Ukraine, and the Atlantic Council is an infamous global organization that exists to promote and endorse Western power (And famously monitors content on Facebook). The Danube Institute represents Central European powers and promotes their conservative ideals, liberal economic policies and an Atlanticist foreign policy. Throwing in Donald Trump, the Italian security forces and city reps got me thinking. What is it about this unknown town that has attracted such powerful interests? Turns out, Trieste may be one of the most important cities in Central Europe that no one knows about. First, it is important to gain some historical context. After doing some basic research, this geographical area at the northeast top of the Adriatic Sea turns out to have a very interesting history. Trieste is located east of Monfalcone where Italy narrows and is located southeast of that town at the northeastern border of Italy. While it is only attached to Italy to the northwest and borders the Adriatic Sea to the west, Slovenia surrounds the city from the north down to the southwest. The port of Koper, Slovenia was once part of Trieste. This area, due to its prime northern Adriatic Sea location, has been a primary source of commerce for over 2000 years. Being part of the Roman Empire, the ancient city of Aquileia was nearby here in the year 181. During its history, this region has been conquered many times by various European powers. Charlemagne as part of the Frankish Empire captured it in 774 but it was eventually partitioned into a frontier region between the Kingdom of Italy and the Kingdom of Germany. This unique status in this region would continue till the present day. It became the March of Friuli, a borderland, between the powers of Western Europe and the rising Slavic populations to the east and was eventually recognized as an autonomous region by the Holy Roman Emperor in the 11th Century after Otto the Great established the Holy Roman Empire in the 10th Century. Just to the east in 177 BC after the conquest of the Istrian peninsula, the area around Trieste became a Roman principality called Tergeste. After the Roman Empire, Trieste became part of the Kingdom of Italy but fell and was occupied by Justinian I of the Byzantine Empire who turned it into a military colony during the Gothic Wars before being recaptured. It was eventually destroyed by the Lombards in the 6th Century and slowly rebuilt over the next 200 years where it was eventually recognized by the Franks. From here on out, the history of Trieste and Aquileia begins to overlap. As a transitional spot between two completely different parts of Europe, a mass conversion of Slavic tribes to Christianity began in the 10th Century. Trieste was eventually given to bishops to run while it maintained close ties to the Kingdom of Italy and repelled takeover attempts by nearby Aquileia. After maintaining the city over hundreds of years, the bishop gave up control and helped establish the free municipality of Trieste. While Aquileia would fall to the Venetians in the 1400s, Trieste fought off invasion attempts and influence from that empire. To maintain its sovereignty, Trieste took a deal with the Duke of Austria who protected the city’s autonomy. Under Austrian control, the city of Trieste became a free port with lots of civic freedoms. In fact, for all the warmongering that occurred in Europe over thousands of years, the area around Trieste was known for protecting the civic and mercantile rights of its citizens better than almost any other European state. Austria began to develop Trieste in the 18th Century, and it soon became a multicultural hub of Venetians, Dalmatians, Slovenes, Austrians, Hungarians, Serbs and Greeks. A stock exchange was built alongside the port as well as a general department store and shipyard. The city was captured by Napoleon on three separate occasions but after his defeat at Waterloo, the Austrian-Hungarian Empire took back control and kept growing Trieste. The city having a close relationship with the Italians to the West, the Austrians to the north, and the Slavs to the east made it the cultural hybrid town that it is today. Trieste was eventually annexed by Italy during World War I in 1918. After World War II due to the mixed population, the UN established the area as the Free Territory of Trieste resting between Italy and Communist Yugoslavia. The city was eventually divided up into two zones, Zone A and Zone B, in 1954. Thanks to the Treaty of Osimo signed in the mid-1970s, the borders became fixed. Zone A is now part of the nation of Italy where Trieste is located while Zone B is inside Slovenia and Croatia after the fall of Yugoslavia in the 1990s. Understanding this history is why the power players of our present day have a fascination with the city. During World War II in 1942, a book title America’s Strategy in World Politics became the basis for the future United States imperial strategy. The Trimarium Doctrine also known as the Three Seas Initiative, became our policy. Involving Hamburg, Germany on the North Sea and Constanta, Romania bordering the Black Sea and Trieste, Italy on the Adriatic Sea made these three ports a triangle of influence to keep the Ottoman Turks and Russians under control. This effectively sealed off Central and Southern Europe from Eastern European influence. So having a meeting with NATO, the Atlantic Council and neutral politicians like Orban makes sense in terms of involving the historically free city of Trieste. Plus, the importance of its position cannot be overlooked. Its borderlands status truly allows Trieste to be the last Western city before the back wood ideologies of the Southern and Eastern Slavs, Poles, and Romanians take effect whose alliances with the Western and Eastern powers has always been conditional. Another great example of how this area ended up being “free” involves the Free State of Fiume (Now Rijeka, Croatia which is also on the Adriatic Sea and mere miles from where my ancestors lived and very close geographically to Trieste). After World War I and the creation of the Communist Yugoslavia (Called the Kingdom of Croats, Serbs, and Slovenes at the time) state, the city which had a unique autonomy within the Hungarian Empire since the late 18th Century (And a 20-year timeframe where a Croatian named Josip Jelacic occupied it), fought off demands to abandon its autonomy. Finding itself in a battle for control between Italians and the Southern Slavs, Italian General Gabriele D’Annunzio ruled the country and created a libertarian, anarchist state during his short reign. The city was eventually invaded and occupied by the UK, France and the United States which declared it an independent state. After this declaration, the Autonomous Party (Defeating the Fascist Party in an election) which was made up mostly of Croats elected their first president in 1921. But as usual with small, decentralized nations, Italian Fascists created a coup d’etat and took control of the city. The Italian Army invaded and put down this coup. After this, the city state was run by the Communist Party of Fiume, a more anarchist decentralized branch of Communism. The city succeeded economically and independently until January of 1924 when the Treaty of Rome turned the region over to the Italians. After the German occupation was thrown out in 1945, the autonomous voices of the city returned calling for Fiume/Rijeka to be a “free state.” This idea was quickly squelched as these voices were “silenced” and Rijeka and Istria officially became part of Yugoslavia in 1947 during the Paris Peace Treaty. With the fall of Yugoslavia in the 90s, both cities are now part of Croatia. For those interested in the political system of Fiume, the takeover of the country by D’Annunzio created an actual libertarian, anarchist state for a very short time. Anyway, I hope you enjoyed this weird dive into history. Until next time. And now, I am looking forward to spending some time in this incredibly historical region.
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As an avid podcast listener, I actively subscribe to a wide range of podcasts on my open-source Antenna Pod app and the video platform Rumble. A total of 24 podcasts, they range from daily updates on my Los Angeles Rams to another with a famous actor that discusses folklore conspiracies involving everything from whether there is an afterlife to wondering if werewolves exist. Some of the most common listens involve present day political and cultural topics revolving around long form interviews or speculating on foreign policy and geo-political decisions. Since JD Vance was selected as Trump’s running mate right after the failed assassination attempt on the ex-president, a few political podcasts have been discussing a new topic that seems to have materialized out of thin air. But before diving into this topic, a little background on how I believe this country works.
“By means of ever more effective methods of mind manipulation, the democracies will change their nature; the quaint old forms…elections, parliaments, supreme courts and the rest…will remain. The underlying substance will be a new kind of Authoritarianism. All the traditional names, all the hallowed slogans, will remain exactly like they were in the good old days. Democracy and freedom will be the theme of every broadcast and editorial. Meanwhile, the ruling oligarchy and its highly trained elite will quietly run the show as they see fit.” Aldous Huxley 1962 That quote above aligns with my personal belief about the current political state of the United States. Our country has become an oligarchy. Inside of this political system, there are different groups of elites that do conspire via NGOs, media propaganda, and financial manipulation that allows them to enrich themselves on the taxpayer dime and gain power over our society. This oligarchy is a soft tyranny. These rulers, who despise their subjects, are also aware that their power can only persist if the people are provided with the bare necessities of food, money, and personal freedom which they allow as long as it doesn’t hinder their government extortion. This is the 21st Century United States. The elites can be divided up into specific groups with each one pursuing their own self interests. Elites will align with each other if their cumulative interests align. But they can also be in opposition and will fight each other over certain political issues. Some of these groups are: The WEF and its aligned NGOs like the Open Society Foundation, the Bill Gates Foundation, the Rockefeller Foundation, and the media and entertainment corporations that go along with the plan to create a globalized, digitized, automated and tyrannical futuristic world. Liberal organizations that directly benefit from government subsidies like higher education, the medical/pharma industry, the insurance industry, and the green energy industry. The bankers who control the Federal Reserve and are currently acting in opposition to the WEF as their globalized plans will cause many banks to shutter or go bankrupt. This is in opposition to the bankers’ own globalized, central digital currency plans. You get the idea. This is American democracy. Rich elites and corporations debating amongst themselves over the direction that they want this nation to go while enhancing and gaining power along the way. Recently on the Marc and Ben Show (Involving the founders of Andreessen Horowitz), they recently went public with their support for Trump. This follows a pattern lately in the tech industry. Just analyze a few things that have occurred over the last few years. Elon Musk bought Twitter, renamed it X, and exposed the tech industry’s compliance with the government in censoring conservative accounts and anti-vaccine voices in the Twitter Files. Musk also came out in support of Trump. Even the cyborg Mark Zuckerberg who was probably the one person more responsible for the election corruption in 2020 is rejecting the Democrats and not endorsing either candidate. With this change in Silicon Valley politics, there is also a message. With JD Vance and Vivek Ramaswamy in near alignment, Silicon Valley figures bombarded podcasts to deliver this new message. Tucker Carlson had Amjad Masad on his show discussing AI and Silicon Valley Extropian Cults. Gold, Goats N Guns had Pete Quinones on his podcast who mentioned the Ben and Marc show above and what he believes is happening. Welcome to THE RISE OF THE TECHNOCRATS. And no, this isn't the title of a bad 1950s black and white science fiction movie or the latest science fiction book series. You may be asking yourself, what does this all mean? And the only answer I can provide is speculation. The technocrats entering this competitive elitist cabal appear to have schemed together and planned this media blitz. What do they intend to accomplish? That is a question that is difficult to answer. If people think that supporting this group is going to lead to a new generation of freedom, you should probably contain your hopes. These guys had no interest in speaking up during COVID or when various social media companies were actively censoring people including an ex-president (That they now support). Musk has already shown that he supports right wing foreign policy interventions. So based on the hours of podcasts I have listened to, I can only provide my opinion. 1) They seem very concerned with pending legislation involving AI which they believe will hinder innovation and give China control over the industry. Bills do linger in Congress like this one that will create new regulations. 2) They generally seem interested in shrinking parts of the government as these tech leaders appear to have created parallel systems that they believe will work better. This is a controversial aspect because the question that needs to be answered is: Did we really need these government programs to begin with? Isn’t this just moving our tools of repression from government to corporations. How will these tools be used? 3) Supporting Trump with Vance as his running mate seems to be a gamble taken that Trump will create a more business friendly environment for the tech industry. Again, I could very well be wrong about all of this. The important thing to remember about these technocrats is that they are acting in their own interest. Maybe some of these ideas will be beneficial a decade down the line. Or maybe they will lead us down the path of destruction. But they have pushed their voices into the elite political climate, and they have their own vision for our world. We will see what happens. |
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February 2025
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