The Club des Cent (sometimes referred to in intelligence literature as the “Cercle des Cent” or simply “Le Cercle”) is a secretive, invitation-only foreign policy group that has operated since the early Cold War period. It is distinct from the gourmet dining club of the same name in Paris (the actual “Club des Cent” for food critics). The intelligence-related group is often called Le Cercle in French sources or The Pinay Circle in Anglo-American ones, named after its most influential early chairman, former French Prime Minister Antoine Pinay.
Origins and Structure
Founded in the early 1950s by Antoine Pinay and French Prime Minister Jean Violet (a lawyer with close ties to French intelligence, particularly the SDECE – the predecessor of DGSE).
Created as a private, anti-communist forum to coordinate Atlanticist (pro-NATO, pro-US–Europe alliance) foreign policy and intelligence efforts outside official channels.
Membership has always been small, elite, and transnational: senior politicians, intelligence officers, bankers, diplomats, industrialists, and occasionally royalty. Former members or attendees include:
Franz Josef Bach (German diplomat and CDU politician)
Alan Clark (British Conservative MP)
Giulio Andreotti (Italian PM)
Otto von Habsburg
Henry Kissinger (attended at least once)
David Rockefeller
Margaret Thatcher (met with the group)
Senior figures from MI6, CIA, French SDECE/DGSE, German BND, Belgian Sûreté, etc.
Involvement in Covert Operations
Le Cercle has never been an operational intelligence agency, but it functioned as a high-level private intelligence coordination and strategy group. Its documented or strongly alleged involvement includes:
Anti-communist propaganda and psychological warfare
Financed and coordinated anti-Soviet and anti-leftist operations in Europe through linked organizations such as the Interdoc network and the Institut de Politique Internationale.
Funded anti-communist trade union activities and media operations.
Africa and the “Françafrique” network
Jean Violet and other Cercle members were deeply involved in French neocolonial networks in Africa, especially through the Safari Club (a 1970s intelligence alliance between France, Iran, Saudi Arabia, Egypt, and Morocco designed to bypass CIA restrictions after the Church Committee).
Supported interventions in Congo/Zaïre, Chad, and elsewhere.
1980s anti-neutrality campaigns in Europe
Coordinated private funding and strategy against European neutralism and the peace movement (especially in West Germany and the Netherlands). Linked to the creation of front organizations that received covert CIA and MI6 funding.
The “Clockwork Orange”–style operations in the UK
British Cercle members (Julian Amery, Brian Crozier, Nicholas Elliott) were implicated in attempts to destabilize the Labour government of Harold Wilson in the 1970s via smear campaigns involving MI5 and private intelligence networks.
Support for the 1980s Reagan–Thatcher hardline policies
Acted as a back-channel between European conservative circles and the incoming Reagan administration, particularly on intermediate-range nuclear forces (INF) deployments in Europe.
Secrecy and Current Status
The group deliberately avoids publicity. Meetings are held twice a year in different countries, always under heavy security and with no minutes published.
After the end of the Cold War, its focus reportedly shifted toward the Middle East, Islamic terrorism, and later Russia/China.
As of the 2010s–2020s, it is believed to still exist in a much reduced form, sometimes under different informal names, with younger Atlanticist politicians and intelligence veterans.
In summary, the Club des Cent / Le Cercle was one of the most important private covert action networks of the Cold War era – not an official agency, but a place where senior Western intelligence officers, politicians, and financiers could plan and fund operations that official agencies could not or would not touch. Its influence peaked in the 1970s–1980s and has significantly declined since, but its model of private–public coordination continues to fascinate researchers of “deep politics.”
This video is self-described as speculative but presents a very notable, and probably telling, coincidence of ‘intelligence-grade activity’.
See the link above for comments on this video.
One possibility is the planes dropping very low were releasing and picking up drones, possibly used in Kirk’s murder.
Drones make sense to me as their technology is surely far beyond what we know publicly.
A shot from a super-fast mini-drone with a small projectile that explodes a micro-second after impact would account for Kirk’s neck wound not acting like an entry, but an exit, wound. ABN
Pope Leo XIV must state clearly and publicly – by name – that Nick Fuentes and Candace Owens do not represent Catholic teaching or Catholic values and that their antisemitism is sinful and dangerous.
Across the United States, antisemitism is not merely rising – it is metastasizing. It has taken on new forms, new platforms, and new proponents who weaponize modern media to amplify an ancient hatred.
Among the most toxic of these figures are Nick Fuentes and Candace Owens, two of the most influential and hostile anti-Jewish voices in America today. And there is an uncomfortable and undeniable fact that demands a response from the Vatican: both are fervent Catholics who routinely invoke their faith while also spewing bile and hate.
Fuentes, a self-styled “America First” agitator, has built a large online following by preaching rage, conspiracy theories, and unapologetic Jew-hatred. He has praised Adolf Hitler, admired Joseph Stalin, minimized the Holocaust, revived medieval slanders, and cast Jews as enemies of America and Christianity.
He calls for a “Christian nationalist” America that excludes Jews altogether. And Fuentes revels in extremist rhetoric while positioning himself as a defender of Catholic teachings and tradition.
Owens, meanwhile, peddles in the same toxins. Over the years, she has repeatedly used her social media platform to spread virulent antisemitic tropes about Jewish influence and power. According to the Anti-Defamation League, she has claimed that Judaism is a “pedophile-centric religion that believes in demons… and child sacrifice.”
Human beings are semiotic entities. We largely live in and react emotionally to semiotics. Virtually everything we think, feel, and believe is built on a foundation of signs and symbols—semiotics.
A recent German study elegantly shows that people with arachnophobia see spiders more quickly than people who do not fear spiders.
The authors of the study say that there probably is “an evolutionary advantage to preferentially process threatening stimuli, but these effects seem to have become dysfunctional in phobic patients.”
I would argue that “these effects” have also migrated into human semiotics and are similarly dysfunctional. That is, humans perceive some signs and symbols as more threatening than they are. For some of us these signs and symbols can seem so threatening we become “phobic” or neurotic about them.
For example, insecure people may become hypersensitive to signs of rejection. People who have been abused or tortured may perceive signs that seem ordinary to others as serious threats. If the person who tortures you also smiles, you will probably see human smiles as being dangerous when to others they indicate kindness.
Once a semiotic becomes associated with strong emotions, and this can happen in many ways, we will tend to see that semiotic as an emotionally charged sign from then on.
FIML practice is designed to interrupt our emotionally-charged responses to semiotics the moment those responses occur. By doing this repeatedly with the same sign, FIML practice can extirpates the neurotic response to that sign.
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Edit: Extirpating semiotic “phobias” or neuroses should be easier to do in most cases than extirpating phobias based on visual perceptions of things, such as the spiders discussed in the linked study. This is likely due to the more direct connection between emotional or limbic responses and the visual cortex. Complex semiotics are signs and symbols built on top of other signs and symbols, and thus their “architecture” is more fragile than direct visual perception and probably simpler to change in most cases. Human facial expressions probably fall somewhere between complex signs and direct visual perception. A good deal of what we call “psychology” are networks of complex semiotics. When a network becomes “neurotic” it is probably true that it contains erroneous interpretations of some or all of its semiotics. That said, a complex neurosis than involves many semiotic networks may be more difficult to extirpate than a straightforward phobia like arachnophobia.
Worldwide most citizens by far oppose mass immigration. In Japan, their government has been pretty good at respecting this. Japan is an important example for the world. Do not fear low birth rates or a shrinking population. That can easily be fixed. Replacing your population cannot. ABN
Two days ago I was contacted by a high-ranking employee of the French Government. After determining this person’s position and proximity to the French couple, I have deemed the information they gave me to be credible enough to share publicly in the event that something happens.
In short, this person claims that the Macrons have executed upon and paid for my assassination. Yes, you read that correctly. More specifically, that the green light was given to a small team in National Gendamarie Intervention Group. I am told there is one Israeli that is on this assasination squad and the plans were formalized.
Again, this person provided concrete proof that they are well placed within the French government apparatus. Further to this point, this person claims that Charlie Kirk’s assassin trained with the French legion 13th brigade with multi-state involvement. Journalist Xavier Poussard’s life is also at risk.
This is deadly serious. The head of state of France apparently wants us both dead and has authorized professional units to carry this out. I ask that every person RETWEET and share this.
I do not know who in the American government can be trusted, since this source claims our leaders are aware. But I have more specific information which is definitively verifiable, should they care to reach out to me.
To the brave official in France who did this because they were so moved by the evil of Charlie’s public execution to risk their own life— May God bless you. Truly.
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Not implausible at all. It is right for her to report this.
She should go into hiding in a place she has never been before. And even that may not be enough.
I have my differences with Christians but I deeply respect their courage and honesty.
It’s possible the warning she received was designed to frighten her, but it’s smartest for her to take it seriously. ABN
Minnesota, under Governor Waltz, is a hub of fraudulent money laundering activity. I am, as President of the United States, hereby terminating, effective immediately, the Temporary Protected Status (TPS Program) for Somalis in Minnesota. Somali gangs are terrorizing the people of that great State, and BILLIONS of Dollars are missing. Send them back to where they came from. It’s OVER! President DJT
The Second Lady was ringless during her visit to Camp Lejeune military base in Richlands, North Carolina on Wednesday with First Lady Melania Trump.
Photos show Usha, 39, getting off a plane with her left hand in full view – and the wedding band nowhere to be seen.
Second Lady Usha Vance was seen traveling to Marine Corps Base Camp Lejeune on Wednesday with her wedding finger noticeably bare
Additional images from Camp Lejeune and Marine Corps Air Station New River confirm the ring remained off throughout the visit.
The Vice President, meanwhile, was photographed wearing his wedding band during a speaking event in Washington on Thursday.
The image comes after weeks of nasty trolls whispering about the state of the Vance marriage, which began in October with the Vice President’s tight hug he gave to Erika Kirk during a memorial for her husband, the right wing activist Charlie Kirk.
The speculation about a possible rift between the Second Couple was fueled by the VP admitting that he has pleaded with his wife to convert from Hinduism: he is a Roman Catholic.
‘Therefore, O monks, do not brood over [any of these views]. Such brooding, O monks, is senseless, has nothing to do with genuine pure conduct (s. ādibrahmacariyaka-sīla), does not lead to aversion, detachment, extinction, nor to peace, to full comprehension, enlightenment and Nibbāna.[17]
This means that the Buddha did not have a rigid, verbalizable view of human metacognition.
The story above is silly for obvious reasons.
But it is a culturally clickbait-worthy story because both Christians and most Hindus hold rigid metacognitive ‘beliefs’ about their religions.
From a Buddhist point of view, rigid metacognitive beliefs or ‘views’ are:
‘Accompanied by suffering, distress, despair, & fever, and do not lead to disenchantment, dispassion, cessation; to calm, direct knowledge, full Awakening, Unbinding…
‘Whoever speculates about these things will go mad & experience vexation’.
In like manner so it is with all rigid meta-cognitive views on the self, our analyses of ourselves, our understanding of others, our political views, our scientific views, our religious and spiritual views.
In Buddhism, all metacognitive views should be open, pliable, moveable, viewed as impermanent, viewed with a healthy skepticism that allows us to focus on what is of greatest importance — the attainment of liberation through wholesome practice.
Buddhism must be experienced to be understood.
A battle between opposing metacognitive views, such as the one being implied in the story above, is a waste of Usha’s time, Vance’s time, and everyone’s time, except insofar as this example may help others understand the futility and unwholesomeness of being rigid in any metacognitive view about ultimate matters. ABN
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