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Aug 08, 2015 | usatoday.com
Moody's Investors' Service rates seven countries Caa1 or worse, several tiers lower than Ba1, which still carries a significant credit risk. These countries are approaching or have narrowly escaped bankruptcy. Ukraine is rated Ca, which is currently the lowest credit rating of any country reviewed by Moody's.
... ... ...
Ukraine
> Moody's credit rating: Ca
> Moody's outlook: Negative
> 2015 Gov't debt (pct. of GDP): 94.1%
> 2015 GDP per capita (PPP): $8,278Ukraine's conflict with Russia over its annexation of Crimea continues to fuel the country's financial problems. While the IMF approved Ukraine's debt restructuring plan in March, Ukraine has the worst credit rating of any country reviewed, downgraded this year from Caa3 to Ca, the second lowest possible level. Creditors can expect a 35% to 65% recovery rate on loans issued by the country. According to Moody's, "The likelihood of a distressed exchange, and hence a default on government debt taking place, is virtually 100%."
The same day that Moody's issued the downgrade, the National Bank of Ukraine announced the establishment of the Financial Stability Council. According to Governor of the National Bank of Ukraine Valeriia Gonatreva, the Council's function will be to "take a comprehensive and systemic approach to identify and mitigate the risks threatening the stability of the banking and financial systems of the country."
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marknesop.wordpress.com
yalensis, August 7, 2015 at 2:54 pm
Op-ed by Sergei Markov, a Russian political analyst who is considered to be close to the views of the Kremlin:http://rusnext.ru/recent_opinions/1438977256
According to Markov, Kiev was only interested in the first part of the Minsk Accords, namely in a panic to stop counter-offensive of Novorossiya army, after their debacle at Debaltsevo.
But they have zero interest in carrying out the rest of the accords.
Plus, according to Markov, Kiev is under instructions from their American masters, to continue the war at all costs.
According to Markov, Kiev is actually carrying out a plan called the "Gorbulin-Poroshenko Plan", and I googled Gorbulin, but couldn't get any more information, so I don't know who this person is.But the main points of this Gorbulin-Poroshenko Plan are said to be:
1. Kiev does not take on any (Minsk) obligations which involve peace-making moves.
2. Full blockade (of Donbass).
3. Continue artillery shelling of residential areas of Donbass, kill as many civilians as possible.
4. This in order to make life unbearable in Donbass.
5. The goal is to turn the residents against their leaders, in DPR and LPR.
6. Weaken Russia with sanctions.
7. Planning a military blitzkrieg against Donbass, on the model of the attack of Croatian army against Serbian Krajina.
8. NATO will station troops in Kharkov, Zaporozhie and Dnipropetrovsk.
9. NATO will beef up Ukrainian army and prepare for fatal strike against Donbass.
10. The police state/dictatorship in Ukraine will be strengthened.marknesop, August 7, 2015 at 5:45 pm
Volodymyr (Ukraine has to spell it differently so they can all high-five each other, the way the British deliberately misspell "tire") Gorbulin is the former National Defense and Security Council (NDSC) Secretary, now a personal adviser to Poroshenko. Looks a right Himmler type.
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September 25, 2012 | FPIF
The struggle over the Trans-Pacific Partnership reveals a disturbing trend in American politics. The much discussed Citizens United ruling granting corporations personhood has given way to a trade negotiation process in which corporations are granted more rights than American citizens, their elected representatives, or foreign governments impacted by the deal.
That trade negotiations with such an immense potential impact on numerous sectors of the American economy have been conducted in secret is troubling enough. To consider that those negotiating the treaty have willfully ignored experts and elected representatives in favor of corporate interests calls into question the sustainability of American democracy.
tom anocu
Patricia Gray is right. It's better if we stop using the much maligned term 'democracy' to a system that works against and NOT for the interests or ordinary people. Using it to justify the abuses government and corporations commit against citizens the world over is a travesty. You CAN'T have both, concentrations of power in the hands of the few and democracy. That is a contradiction not very well understood in the US. Journalists should recognize this and stop perpetuating the patent FARSE. The illusion of 'choice' in the Nov. elections reflects all this.
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Mar 11, 2015 | The National Interest Blog
The connection between the sort of behavior we are talking about and the standing of the United States overseas, however, is even broader than that and extends to the handling of domestic policy. Foreigners and foreign governments observe how the United States, the superpower with the world's largest economy, handles its own affairs, and they draw conclusions about how viable and reliable an interlocutor the United States would be on international matters. The foreigners are looking to see whether there is consistency and rationality in how the U.S. political system pursues U.S. national interests. If they do see those things, then the United States is someone they can do business with, whether as a rival or as an ally, even if U.S. interests differ from their own. If they do not see those things, then opportunities are lost for doing business that would benefit both the United States and the foreign state.
A nation does not represent itself as a viable interlocutor, whose execution of policy can be trusted by other nations, if passionate internal divisions supersede sober pursuit of the nation's interests. As an outsider we encounter such situations in, say, Iraq, where sectarian loyalties and hatreds make it impossible to rely on a government in Baghdad consistently pursuing an Iraqi national interest. We also see it in Bangladesh, where the personal animosity between the "two begums" who head each of the major political parties there have made Bangladeshi politics so dysfunctional that in the recent past the military has had to step in.
A pattern that is similar in some respects has, tragically, come to prevail in the United States. Foreigners could hear the then minority (now majority) leader of the United States Senate state a few years ago that his number one priority was not any particular U.S. national interest in either domestic or foreign affairs but instead the prevention of a second term for the incumbent U.S. president.
Foreigners then were able to see the senator's party act along the same lines, using extortionate legislative methods to push a partisan agenda even at the expense of damaging the country's credit rating and causing disruptive interruptions to government operations. Once the same party achieved a majority in both houses of Congress there was much talk about how this would lead to newly responsible behavior, but the opening gavel of the new Congress had hardly fallen when once again there was the tactic of holding the operations of a government department hostage to press a specific partisan demand (this time on immigration) in opposition to the president's policies.
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December 30, 2014 | The Washington Post
Adrian Karatnycky is a senior fellow at the Atlantic Council, where he co-directs the "Ukraine in Europe" initiative.
Kiev is abuzz with creative reforms in governance, major anti-corruption initiatives and budgetary clawbacks against rent-seeking oligarchs. Civic activism is on the upsurge, and a new government team - populated with many foreign-born and Western-educated ministers - is largely free from the control of the country's super-rich, who dictated policy in the past.
In recent months, Ukraine's defenses have strengthened since the Russian takeover of Crimea and the eastern industrial Donbas region. Ukraine's security service, formerly riddled with corruption and Russian infiltration, has rebuilt its leadership. Combat readiness has improved and weapons production is on the rise, as are the refurbishment and modernization of tanks, artillery and armored personnel carriers. With winter in full swing, the danger of a major Russian offensive has faded.
In many ways, Ukraine is intelligently addressing its key challenges: restructuring the national budget to avoid default and meeting the military threat posed by Russia. Despite such important progress, however, a new threat is emerging: independently operating warlords and armed groups.
After the collapse of the Yanukovych regime in February and subsequent Russian aggression, Ukraine's new government was saddled with an ill-prepared military and required the help of thousands of volunteers. These volunteer fighters were motivated by a patriotic desire to protect their homeland. Many were veterans of the Maidan civic protests. The fighters were mainly supported by grass-roots financing from civic initiatives and small and mid-size businesses.
A minority of the fighters were ideologically motivated members of far-right movements. These included the ultra-conservative Right Sector and the notorious Azov brigade, whose members had been shunned during the Maidan protests because of their white-supremacist, anti-democratic views. Other volunteer brigades, such as the Dnepr-1, were recruited by business oligarchs, who financed them and commanded their loyalty.
During the spring and summer, many of these volunteer forces exhibited remarkable courage and helped stem the Russian-backed offensive. In the months that followed, most were integrated into the interior or defense ministries as special-status units.
But now several of these units, especially those linked to oligarchs or the far right, are revealing a dark side. In recent months, they have threatened and kidnapped government officials, boasted that they will take power if Ukrainian President Petro Poroshenko fails to defeat Russia, and they served as armed muscle in illegal attempts to take over businesses or seize local governments.
In August, members of the Dnepr-1 battalion kidnapped the head of Ukraine's state land fund to prevent him replacing an official deemed inimical to business interests. On Dec. 15, these volunteer units interdicted a humanitarian convoy destined for the Russia-controlled Donbas, where a major emergency is emerging.
On Dec. 23, the Azov brigade announced that it was taking control of order in the eastern port city of Mariupol, without official approval from local or national officials.
Government prosecutors have opened 38 criminal cases against members of the Aidar battalion alone.
A pattern of blatant disregard for the chain of command, lawlessness and racketeering is posing a growing threat to Ukraine's stability at a critical juncture. Concern about volunteer groupings is widely shared in the Poroshenko administration, which reportedly raised the question of dealing with these dangers at a meeting in November of his National Security and Defense Council.
Most alarming, however, is the role of Ukraine's interior minister, Arsen Avakov. Instead of reining in these fighters, conducting background checks on their records and reassigning those who pass muster, he instead has offered them new heavy weapons, including tanks and armored personnel carriers, and given them enhanced brigade status. Amazingly, in September he even named a leader of the neo-Nazi Azov brigade to head the police in the Kiev region.
Equally worrying is the activity of Ihor Kolomoyskyy, the governor of Dnipropetrovsk oblast. Kolomoyskyy, who played a crucial and widely respected role in stabilizing his East Ukrainian region, is now flouting central authority by interdicting aid convoys headed to the Donbas and permitting brigades he finances to engage in activities that contravene the law.
What can be done? Poroshenko clearly wants this problem resolved but has been reluctant or unable to act. For him to succeed will likely require coordination with Prime Minister Arseniy Yatsenyuk, who has also been slow to address the threat, possibly because Avakov is one of his key political allies.
Western donors, however, must make countering incipient warlordism a top priority and press Ukraine's leaders to reassign qualified members of the volunteer brigades into regular militia and military units.
Ukraine's elected leaders can no longer sweep this emerging threat under the rug for fear of stoking resistance or stirring up negative international headlines. Ukraine faces many challenges, but it is heading in the right direction. Nipping the problem of warlordism in the bud can only add to the country's strength and resilience.
Read more on this issue:
- The Post's View: Ukraine's economy is on the rocks and needs Western help
- O'Hanlon and Shapiro: Crafting a win-win-win for Russia, Ukraine and the West
- Henry Kissinger: To settle the Ukraine crisis, start at the end
- Charles Krauthammer: Ukraine abandoned
- David J. Kramer: If Ukraine wins against Russian aggression, freedom wins
Sim Gu, 1/3/2015 1:25 AM EST
could you please write a serious, down-to-earth, professional analysis in which you can explain
- what exactly did Europe gain from dragging Ukraine to sign the EU agreement?
- what are Europe's benefits - economically, financially, socially - from the EU-Ukraine agreement?
- what will Europe achieve from trying to cripple Russia's economy through sanctions?
- when everybody knew that extremely corrupt Ukraine is a bottomless ''financial black hole'' that will need an infinite billions bail-out - why did EU's politicians support the coup in Kiev in 21st of Feb 2014?
covay, 1/3/2015 10:32 PM EST
These are all good questions, Sim Gu. The truth, I think, is that US foreign policy hawks and certain EU anti-Moscow leaders (i.e., Sikorski) wanted to render Russia permanently vulnerable by turning Ukraine into a military asset.
This has everything to do with the Wolfowitz Doctrine and the policy recommendations of people like Brzezinski.
There's no other explanation, particularly since the West didn't try to do this before 2013, when Russia's strength didn't yet appear to be on the rise.
Sim Gu, 1/3/2015 1:24 AM EST
30 July 2014 - thelocal
"They are not fighting for a democratic Ukraine," Anton Shekhotsov, a Ukrainian political scientist who researches right extremist movements in Europe, told Sveriges Radio (SR). "Their vision of Urkaine is a fascist dictatorship."
Denize Murray, 1/2/2015 2:49 PM EST
The point of this article is to try and distance these Neo-Nazi's from the majority of the Ukrainian Government, the truth is they all knew exactly who they were in bed with from the start.
covay, 1/2/2015 6:02 AM EST
@Willard Jackson
"So, your conclusion is that it's better to put that part of the Donbass under Moscow's abusive governance... I actually agree with that."
My point was to disabuse MeriJ of his misunderstandings about the nature of the Donbass conflict.
Donbass needs to be divided along ethnic lines territorially. 3 to 3.8 million Donbass residents are openly siding with Moscow against Kiev. The ATO is bombing those people, Moscow isn't.
How, then, can you reasonably think that those 3 to 3.8 million Donbass residents need to be protected from "Russia's abusive governance." Is that what the ATO tells those people when it shoots them?
Are you saying the ATO should kill pro-Russian Donbass rebels to protect them from Moscow?
That sounds so much like medievalistic Catholic thinking: send crusaders to kill heathens in order to save their souls. Torture people (like in the Inquisition) to purge them of evil, then kill them to save their soul from the devil.
Do you think your views are enlightened?
covay, 1/2/2015 5:55 AM EST [Edited]
@Willard Jackson
"Why are you putting all this on the Western Ukrainians? The ethnic hate in Ukraine has always been a 2-way street, and it was the ethnic Russians brutally repressing the ethnic Ukrainians for the entire 20th century. The current revolution is a product of this history. You express yourself well, but to refuse to acknowledge that reality is to betray yourself as just another Muscovite troll. And we know that the Muscovite trolls have no answers to the tough questions - you guys just flail around in the wind."
Clarify what you mean by "Russians brutally repressing Ukrainians for most of the 20th century." You're vague here, most likely because you aren't well read on the subject, or because you comprehend what you've read.
Ukraine's problems under the Bolsheviks and Stalin were not products of "Russian hatred," as you imply. Quite the contrary: all of the Soviet Union -- Russians more than anyone else -- were chafing under Soviet rule. Ukraine was not singled out for mistreatment by the Soviets...Ukraine was just getting what all other Soviet nationalities dealt with.
There's no evidence of widespread hatred by Russians against Ukrainians. That's nonsense. On the other hand, western Ukrainians, on a widespread basis, tend to nurse grudges against Russians. That's clear especially from the Ukraine's educational curriculum, where schoolchildren are indoctrinated to believe lots of canard about about historical injustices allegedly perpetrated by against their country by Russia.
Please give up on the "Muscovite troll," stuff. You don't realize that you're betraying about your mental qualities when you talk this way. You make it impossible for others to discuss things or reason with you when you blindly dismiss them as robotic propagandists. That way of thinking, that you display, is just stupid. Get over it.
Alexey Strelkov, 1/2/2015 5:44 AM EST
This article is horrible! How can this scoundrel claim that gentle angelic freedom fighters can be bad?
What's next? Al Qaeda (a well-known human rights organization) is evil? Libyan democrats are murderers? Syrian liberals are beheading people?But seriously, what the hell is going on here? Back in May I tried to explain to other WaPo readers that Kolomoyskiy is a power-hungry corrupt oligarch who wants to have his own private army and Azov and their colleagues are dangerous neo-Nazis - I was called a Putinbot. And now almost a year later WaPo itself basically rewrites my posts. Ah, the irony!
Maria Gambrelli, 1/2/2015 4:33 AM EST [Edited]What a pastoral picture! Ukraine is up to its eyeballs in debt, power grids collapsing because of absence of fuel, nuclear plants have to be stopped because of serious accidents, companies are for sale or rather giveaway (to kind Western investors, of course - see Greece), army's a disintegrating gang... and the only problem of the "developing" Ukraine are the nazi groups (see the torchlight procession in Kiev yesterday, btw. - a nice reminder of Germany in the 30ies)
Boy you are brainwashing your readers, author.
covay, 1/1/2015 8:33 PM EST
@MeriJ
"Many nations have regional differences which lead to simmering conflict or resentment. Normally, these conflicts are addressed via shifting voting patterns and negotiation. "
After what the western Ukrainians did at Euromaidan -- and especially given west Ukraine's history of ethnic hatred -- Donbass secessionists had little choice except to forcibly take over local government in their region. How could you possibly fault them for this, given that you endorse western Ukrainian's decision to do something similar in Kiev?
Also, once the secessionists took over government in Donbass, they limited themselves to remaining in their own area. They did not invade the rest of the Ukraine. This means that Kiev, at that point, had no legitimate reason for using military force against Donbass. Kiev should have reacted by opening negotiations with Donbass secessionists at once.
Remember...most of the Donbass secessionists were strong supporters of Yanukovych, who comes from their region. The Donbass militiamen were mainly Berkut policemen, locals who had tried to defend Yanukovych at Euromaidan. It makes perfect sense that these men would fall back on their home province and set up their own government, especially given that 3 million or so locals demanded this of them.
The "voting patterns" you speak of should have started after the secessionists took power in Donbass. Kiev should have reached out to the secessionists and initiated negotiations, referendums, and elections leading to a political solution, but it didn't.
You've got everything backwards.
covay, 1/1/2015 8:27 PM EST
@MeriJ
"This is not Crimea. The people who lived in East Ukraine a year ago were not overwhelmingly in favor of splitting the country in half."
First of all, what exactly do you mean by East Ukraine? That could be taken as meaning just Donbass – essentially the easternmost regions of Ukraine – or it could refer to everything east of the Dniepr River, which some call Novorossiya.
If you're talking about Donbass, you're wrong. Out of 6.8 million residents of Donbass, 38%, or 2.7 million, are ethnic Russians. It's widely believed that, at least, another 15% of the area's population consists of Russified Ukrainians who tend to move in tandem with the Russians. Between the two groups, that amounts to roughly 3.8 million people.
What did these 3.8 million people desire earlier this year? They desired independence or far reaching autonomy from Kiev. That's a fact. An April poll conducted by the Kyiv Institute of Sociology found that 27.5% of Donbass residents – 1.9 million people -- favored full independence. Between 38% and 41% – nearly 3 million citizens – favored remained in Ukraine, but for Donbass to be self-governing. Here's where I found my data:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Donbass_status_refere...
Any reasonable person would agree that the facts prove, beyond a shadow of a doubt, that nearly half of Donbass's population rejects Kiev. These people don't want war, but they clearly support Russia or are not in the least unwelcoming of Russia's protection. And, like it or not, these people have reasons for fearing Kiev's goons.
3 million people is way too many to ignore. Donbass should be split, with half of it removed permanently from Kiev's abusive governance. How could you possibly argue with this?
RoyTyrell 1/1/2015 4:20 PM EST [Edited]
Ukraine better able to defend itself? Against a boyscout troop?
If real fighting broke out again, Ukraine would be stomped.. Just as they were 4 months ago. Only next time Russia won't take prisoners.
Ukraine is a silly, toy soldier, puppet regime.
Ukraine would be a force to be reckoned with... Against Paraguay...
covay, 1/1/2015 8:13 PM EST
The Ukrainian army is no match for the Russian army...that's for sure. Small numbers of Russian troops whipped the numerically superior ATO in August. That tells us everything we need to know.
Ukraine's biggest military problem is most of its people don't support the war in Donbass. That's why Kiev's army is drawn mostly from Galicia. That means that only part of Ukraine is actually waging this war. It's not really a national Ukrainian effort.
As for the fighting acumen of the Galicians, that's an opening question. They're ideologically motivated, but the Russians whip them every time.
Willard Jackson, 1/1/2015 8:11 AM EST
The article is absolutely right. Avakov has been a huge problem for the pro-Ukrainian side from day one. The local media reported that, as soon as Avakov got appointed Interior Minister, he sold the positions of regional heads of police for 500,000 dollars each. This guy has a dirty past (stealing land while governor of Kharkov) and, more importantly, a dirty present. Most disturbingly, it now looks like he has Arseny Yatsenyuk firmly in his pocket. Poroshenko didn't want Avakov (who by the way, can't even speak the Ukrainian language) to stay as Interior Minister, but in the end, he apparently had no choice in the matter...
Vivekwhu, 1/1/2015 9:19 AM EST
How can any sane and civilised person visit Kiev now that the Chief of Police is a neo nazi??? The Ukrainian police were bad enough but with a neo nazi in charge, what are the limits? Maybe, on my next encounter with them I might end up being the guest of the Kiev government for such a long time that I may qualify for Ukrainian citizenship and be drafted into the neo nazi battalions.
I am boycotting Kiev until all the neo nazis and their stooges, apologists and admirers are removed from government.
Vivekwhu, 1/1/2015 2:57 AM EST
I see a bit more truth is being reported in the WP: better late than never.
It a permanent stain on the "civilised" reputation of the US/EU/NATO gang that they used the neo nazi Right Sector and Sloboda gangs to remove an elected president Yanukovych, and when the regular Ukrainian army refused to fight against their own people , used these same "nationalists" to subjugate the 6.7 million people of the Donbass in a unitary Ukraine. Shame on all of you who are their stooges and apologists. Pensioners have died by starvation and 4700+ have died on both sides as a direct result of the "civilised" US/EU/NATO gang giving their full support to Kiev neo nazi's "Anti Terrorist Operation" against the Donbass.
Socialist Pig, 1/1/2015 12:40 AM EST
Amazingly, in September he even named a leader of the neo-Nazi Azov brigade to head the police in the Kiev region.
---
This is par for the course in Ukraine where Nazi war criminals are celebrated as national heroes.Vivekwhu, 1/1/2015 3:03 AM EST
How on Earth do the Ukrainians imagine they will join the EU with neo nazis and neo nazi stooges, apologists and admirers in government and neo nazi Troyan as chief of Kiev police? So much for Kiev neo nazi stooges new found "European values". Did they mean the "European values" prevalent in Nazi Europe during WW2?
covay, 12/31/2014 10:19 PM EST
@MeriJ
"By destabilizing Ukraine, Putin has created a huge opening for these people in both countries. He has acted as a provocateur, instigating a breakdown in civil society in the East and then a full blown civil war."
What exactly are you thinking? Please answer these questions.
Do you believe that Donbass's three million ethnic Russians don't really want to secede from post-Euromaidan Ukraine...that they're happy with Kiev? Do you think these people would have no resentments against Kiev if only Putin hadn't "instigated" them?
Or, do you agree that the Russians of Donbass do indeed want to secede from Ukraine, but that Kiev more or less "owns" these people, and has the right to ruthlessly pound them into submission via the ATO? If so, do you think Putin is supposed to respect Kiev and humbly allow the ATO to wipe out the Donbass Russian secessionists?
I'd like to know what's going through your mind.
Vivekwhu, 1/1/2015 7:52 AM EST
The current stance by the "superior and civilised" US/EU/NATO gang the Donbass people have no brains of their own and need constant guidance from Putin. I call that simply RACIST!
covay, 1/1/2015 10:21 AM EST
What?
MeriJ, 1/1/2015 3:12 PM EST
Sorry, covay, I just saw your post.
This is not Crimea. The people who lived in East Ukraine a year ago were not overwhelmingly in favor of splitting the country in half. Many nations have regional differences which lead to simmering conflict or resentment. Normally, these conflicts are addressed via shifting voting patterns and negotiation.
By encouraging armed men to seize government buildings and severely beat anyone expressing public support for a unified Ukraine, Putin turned a civil crisis into war. Is Kiev blameless? Of course not. But it is their country, not Putin's.
You can go on and on about "where's the proof?" No one is listening.
Denize Murray, 1/2/2015 2:21 PM EST
"You can go on and on about "where's the proof?" No one is listening.".......... yeah you hit the nail on the head there, no one is listening and they haven't been since this western coup d'état started
bhulihan, 12/31/2014 8:21 PM EST [Edited]
We are supposed to believe that the new ministers are free from control of the evil oligarchs, because the author says so. I have no way of finding out, so I'm not taking his word. Something that has been a way of life for decades just changes overnight. Did they all just promise to be good?
The case is made that the nazis were oligarch spawn, but wait, a regime bureaucrat is giving them tanks, and if they really repelled the Russian menace, was it without the help and gratitude of the regime that just rotated in a few western favorites and claims it has reformed?
Oh the explanation, the regime needs donors. They really are the good people and they promise to defeat the bad people if we give them money and weapons. That's novel.
Well the only donors are the evil oligarchs, apparently, because everything else had been given by governments who create nothing and tax or print up the money at the expense of their people. Why publish here, when the people who read this have no say in this matter at all? So war is a privately funded exercise in democracy, is it?
Well the US is not going to be able to help you, even though they say they are with you. They are out of money. When Americans are as poor as Ukranians they won't care so much about money pits that need democracy, and the donors you want will not have as much money to throw into it. It has to be made by other people first. It's always bankrupt places that have these great humanitarian needs and ask for military aid. The US is not as far from that as you think, and when Americans begin to see it , they are going to wonder why we are trying to conquer Russian when nobody can pay their bills, especially the government.Zizau, 12/31/2014 2:54 PM EST
A Primer for carefully installing right wing military control, anywhere. In this case it's easy, because they're getting lots of help from western powers.
amb137, 12/31/2014 1:53 PM EST [Edited]
Drone hitman Obama has just celebrated a total victory over Afghan people.
Now he and his Admiral-Generals set sights on a much juicier target - liberation of "Ukraine".
The op "Ukr Freedom" would start by a propaganda war conducted by newly minted Ukr Dr Goebbels Ministry of Information. Then, when a mountain of arms would get relocated from Afghanistan to Ukraine, the conscripted Ukr army (18-60 yo) would undergo an accelerated training by CIA/Pentagon. On June 22, 2015, Ukr Army would attack Ukraine in the South-East. Te goal of a 2nd Decisive Blitzkrieg directed by Pentagon and CIA advisers is to reclaim the territory from the locals and push the remaining 7 millions Russian Ukrainians out.To support the Operation Ukr Freedom, CIA would train 1 million Ukrs in Russia in sabotage and disinformation missions.
After successful takeover of Donbass and Rostov, Duce Parashenko would appoint Hunter Biden the Snorter to be The Hetman of Ukraine and Supreme Ataman Hui Bidenko.
covay, 12/31/2014 10:23 PM EST [Edited]
Nice thinking...but the Ukrainian army could never succeed regardless of how much weaponry and support it receives from the USA. That's because, ultimately, Russia could fall back on the use of crude but massively powerful ordnance to obliterate a Ukrainian offensive. This kind of war, remember, favors the defender.
Militarily, it's just a question of what Russia wants to do. The Ukrainian army will always be powerless against the Russians in battle.
amb137, 12/31/2014 1:31 PM EST
What, as I wrote many time before, a Night of Long Knives would come to "Ukraine", the patriotic part of it? No, Duce Parashenko is no Hitler and neo-Nazi thugs are there to stay.
More likely it will become a land a free roaming Ataman gangsters like after 1917, until Bolsheviks came and kicked them all out or killed.Would Ukr foreign ministers pave the way into Ukraine's bright European future? More likely they will be all gone before long leaving behind a cleaned out carcass of this sorry land of thieves.
mishingk, 12/31/2014 12:55 PM EST
Not neo-nazis 'warlordism', but Kiev's Hitler-style war criminality is main problem of Ukraine. It needs an International Military Tribunal, I think. Above all, respect self defence of Donetsk and Lughansk people. Maybe these ex-federalists should be independent.
Roman Serbyn, 12/31/2014 12:33 PM EST
No democratic state can tolerate the presence on its soil of independent military formations, even if they are fighting the same enemy. Nor can any country at war tolerate conflicting policies and behavior by its ministries. The President must rein in the oligarchs like Kolomoysky, Akhmetov and others, independent-minded ministers like Avakov, and exclude at least from high public office functionaries professing non-democratic ideologies.
Ukraine needs Western help and the West needs Ukraine to become a free, democratic and law abiding society and state. Ukraine can become a stronghold of civilized free world, or a pawn in the hands of the communist turned capitalist Vladimir Putin. The West can be instrumental in turning Ukraine into the one or the other.
amb137, 12/31/2014 1:34 PM EST
The West 'helped' a year ago - but they don't want to pay for it. The EU ruling apparatchiks want to get reelected, and throwing money into black sheathole called "Ukraine" won't help with that - as for Ukraine, US broke it and they should harvest the results.
christiansmiller, 12/31/2014 12:11 PM EST
Ukraine is a good place for the United States to stop being involved. We are only capable making things worse.
MeriJ, 12/31/2014 12:00 PM EST
There are prominent ultra-right wing characters operating from all three sides of this conflict – pro-unity Ukraine, pro-Russian separatists and in Russia itself.
By destabilizing Ukraine, Putin has created a huge opening for these people in both countries. He has acted as a provocateur, instigating a breakdown in civil society in the East and then a full blown civil war. Since Ukraine doesn't have a real army, it has to rely on volunteer forces, including worrisome right wing nationalists like the Azov Battalion.
On the separatists' side, we are seeing Russia's equivalent right wing nationalists flocking to Ukraine for blood and power. We are seeing small-time thugs from Ukraine given the power to detain, torture and kill virtually any citizen they suspect of being an artillery spotter. Who do they suspect? Anyone not openly serving as a separatist.
The very worst elements are ascending on both sides. This is what anarchy looks like. When you unchain the hounds of hell, they feed.
MeriJ, 12/31/2014 12:09 PM EST [Edited]
One of many theories for Putin's motivation for this war is that he needed to channel the rising energy of his own right wing nationalists safely outside of Russia. So he gave them this conflict in Ukraine.
I doubt anyone thinks this was a primary motivation or a consideration at all in the early stages, but it probably is true that giving these people a place to go act out their aggression helps Putin in the short term.
The question for Putin and Kiev is whether employing these groups will destroy both countries in the long run. Osama bin Laden was not worn thin from his earlier efforts fighting the Soviet Union in Afghanistan. To the contrary, it hardened him and taught him the skills he needed to move on to larger works. When he went home, the Saudi royal family was lucky he targeted us instead of them for his next act.
MeriJ, 12/31/2014 12:12 PM EST [Edited]
Here's an earlier piece on this danger. I'd be very worried if I were Kiev. The reason they employ these groups is that they are excellent fighters. With each battle, however, they become more capable and thus more a threat:
http://www.theguardian.com/world/2014/sep/10/azov-far-right-fighters-ukraine-neo-nazis...
amb137, 12/31/2014 1:41 PM EST
Bombs Away! Obama Signs Lethal Aid to Ukraine Bill
written by daniel mcadams
thursday december 18, 2014
President Obama made good today on his promise to sign the Ukraine Freedom Support Act of 2014, which had passed Congress last week. Dubbed by former Rep. Dennis Kucinich the bill that "reignited the Cold War while no one was looking," the Act imposes new sanctions on the Russian defense and energy industries, authorizes $350 million in lethal military assistance to the US-backed government in Kiev, urges that government to resume its deadly military operations against the Russian-speaking areas of east Ukraine seeking to break away from Kiev's rule, and authorizes millions of dollars to fund increased US government propaganda broadcasts to the countries of the former Soviet Union. Just days before Christmas, this bill is a massive gift to the US defense industry from which Ukraine will be required to purchase its lethal wish list.MeriJ, 12/31/2014 3:24 PM EST [Edited]
Not surprisingly, your summary of this bill is totally false. That is the sanctions bill Congress passed and that Obama expressed great reservations about, but signed away since it requires no specific action by the him or the US.
It merely authorizes him to take certain actions if he chooses:
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[Note: This item comes from friend Steve Schear. This is from 2012. I thought it was appropriate to post it now, given all the protests in play all over the country. It is not to hard to imagine that similar tactics as outlined here are not being deployed against citizens involved in these protests. DLH]Revealed: how the FBI coordinated the crackdown on Occupy
New documents prove what was once dismissed as paranoid fantasy: totally integrated corporate-state repression of dissent
By Naomi Wolf
Dec 29 2012
<http://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2012/dec/29/fbi-coordinated-crackdown-occupy>It was more sophisticated than we had imagined: new documents show that the violent crackdown on Occupy last fall – so mystifying at the time – was not just coordinated at the level of the FBI, the Department of Homeland Security, and local police. The crackdown, which involved, as you may recall, violent arrests, group disruption, canister missiles to the skulls of protesters, people held in handcuffs so tight they were injured, people held in bondage till they were forced to wet or soil themselves –was coordinated with the big banks themselves.
The Partnership for Civil Justice Fund, in a groundbreaking scoop that should once more shame major US media outlets (why are nonprofits now some of the only entities in America left breaking major civil liberties news?), filed this request. The document – reproduced here in an easily searchable format – shows a terrifying network of coordinated DHS, FBI, police, regional fusion center, and private-sector activity so completely merged into one another that the monstrous whole is, in fact, one entity: in some cases, bearing a single name, the Domestic Security Alliance Council. And it reveals this merged entity to have one centrally planned, locally executed mission. The documents, in short, show the cops and DHS working for and with banks to target, arrest, and politically disable peaceful American citizens.
The documents, released after long delay in the week between Christmas and New Year, show a nationwide meta-plot unfolding in city after city in an Orwellian world: six American universities are sites where campus police funneled information about students involved with OWS to the FBI, with the administrations' knowledge (p51); banks sat down with FBI officials to pool information about OWS protesters harvested by private security; plans to crush Occupy events, planned for a month down the road, were made by the FBI – and offered to the representatives of the same organizations that the protests would target; and even threats of the assassination of OWS leaders by sniper fire – by whom? Where? – now remain redacted and undisclosed to those American citizens in danger, contrary to standard FBI practice to inform the person concerned when there is a threat against a political leader (p61).
As Mara Verheyden-Hilliard, executive director of the PCJF, put it, the documents show that from the start, the FBI – though it acknowledges Occupy movement as being, in fact, a peaceful organization – nonetheless designated OWS repeatedly as a "terrorist threat":
"FBI documents just obtained by the Partnership for Civil Justice Fund (PCJF) … reveal that from its inception, the FBI treated the Occupy movement as a potential criminal and terrorist threat … The PCJF has obtained heavily redacted documents showing that FBI offices and agents around the country were in high gear conducting surveillance against the movement even as early as August 2011, a month prior to the establishment of the OWS encampment in Zuccotti Park and other Occupy actions around the country."
Verheyden-Hilliard points out the close partnering of banks, the New York Stock Exchange and at least one local Federal Reserve with the FBI and DHS, and calls it "police-statism":
[snip]
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Dec 11, 2014 | marknesop.wordpress.com
Fern, December 11, 2014 at 4:13 pm
Russian analyst Dimitry Babich has an interesting and important article on Moldova, showing how techniques used to gain control of Ukraine were finely honed there:
Whatever the context, early elections were called in 2009, and that was the REAL aim of the riots.
"The elections of 2009 were won by the parties which later formed the Alliance for European Integration, and after that these people never ceded power, and they won't cede it peacefully in future," says Svetlana Gamova, the main Moscow-based analyst on Moldova, who for almost 20 years served as Nezavisimaya Gazeta's Chisinau correspondent. "In fact, the scheme later used in Kiev: "riots-control of the parliament building – early elections – iron grip on power" – this plan of action was first tested in Moldova," Gamova said.
It appears that the new election will be no exception to this rule. The local court has already taken a very promising opposition party, Patria, off the ballot. The Constitutional Court recently stated that "opposing Moldova's European integration" was an illegal activity."
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Dec 04, 2014 | President of Russia
How did it all begin? I will have to remind you what happened back then. It is hard to believe that it all started with a technical decision by President Yanukovych to postpone the signing of the Association Agreement between Ukraine and the European Union. Make no mistake, he did not refuse to sign the document, but only postponed it in order to make some adjustments.
As you recall, this move was fully in line with the constitutional authority vested upon an absolutely legitimate and internationally recognized head of state.
Against this background, there was no way we could support this armed coup, the violence and the killings. Just take the bloody events in Odessa, where people were burned alive. How can the subsequent attempts to suppress people in Ukraine's southeast, who oppose this mayhem, be supported? I reiterate that there was no way we could endorse these developments. What's more, they were followed by hypocritical statements on the protection of international law and human rights. This is just cynical. I strongly believe that the time will come when the Ukrainian people will deliver a just assessment of these developments.
How did the dialogue on this issue begin between Russia and its American and European partners? I mentioned our American friends for a reason, since they are always influencing Russia's relations with its neighbors, either openly or behind the scenes. Sometimes it is even unclear whom to talk to: to the governments of certain countries or directly with their American patrons and sponsors.
As I mentioned, in the case of the Ukraine-EU Association Agreement, there was no dialogue at all. We were told that it was none of our business or, to put it simply, we were told where to go.
All the arguments that Russia and Ukraine are members of the CIS free-trade zone, that we have deep-rooted cooperation in industry and agriculture, and basically share the same infrastructure – no one wanted to hear these arguments, let alone take them into account.
Our response was to say: fine, if you do not want to have a dialogue with us, we will have to protect our legitimate interests unilaterally and will not pay for what we view as erroneous policy.
So what's came out of it all? The agreement between Ukraine and the European Union has been signed and ratified, but the implementation of the provisions regarding trade and economy has been postponed until the end of next year. Doesn't this mean that we were the ones who were actually right?
There is also a question of why all this was done in Ukraine? What was the purpose of the government coup? Why shoot and keep shooting and killing people? In fact, the economy, finance and the social sector were destroyed and the country ruined.
What Ukraine currently needs is economic assistance in carrying out reforms, not petty politics and pompous empty promises. However, our Western colleagues don't seem eager to provide such assistance, while the Kiev authorities are not willing to address the challenges their people are facing.
By the way, Russia has already made a major contribution to helping Ukraine. Let me reiterate that Russian banks already invested some $25 billion in Ukraine. Last year, Russia's Finance Ministry extended a loan worth another $3 billion. Gazprom provided another $5.5 billion to Ukraine and even offered a discount that no one promised, requiring the country to pay $4.5 billion. Add it all up and you get as much as $ 32.5-33.5 billion that were provided only recently.
Of course, we have the right to ask questions. What was this Ukrainian tragedy for? Wasn't it possible to settle all the issues, even disputed issues, through dialogue, within a legal framework and legitimately?
But now we are being told that this was actually competent, balanced politics that we should comply with unquestionably and blindfolded.
This will never happen. If for some European countries national pride is a long-forgotten concept and sovereignty is too much of a luxury, true sovereignty for Russia is absolutely necessary for survival.
Primarily, we should realise this as a nation. I would like to emphasise this: either we remain a sovereign nation, or we dissolve without a trace and lose our identity. Of course, other countries need to understand this, too. All participants in international life should be aware of this. And they should use this understanding to strengthen the role and the importance of international law, which we've talked about so much lately, rather than bend its standards to suit someone's strategic interests contrary to its fundamental principles and common sense, considering everyone else to be poorly educated people who can't read or write.
It is imperative to respect the legitimate interests of all the participants in international dialogue. Only then, not with guns, missiles or combat aircraft, but precisely with the rule of law will we reliably protect the world against bloody conflict. Only then, will there be no need to scare anyone with imaginary self-deceptive isolation, or sanctions, which are, of course, damaging, but damaging to everyone, including those who initiate them.
Speaking of the sanctions, they are not just a knee-jerk reaction on behalf of the United States or its allies to our position regarding the events and the coup in Ukraine, or even the so-called Crimean Spring. I'm sure that if these events had never happened – I want to point this out specifically for you as politicians sitting in this auditorium – if none of that had ever happened, they would have come up with some other excuse to try to contain Russia's growing capabilities, affect our country in some way, or even take advantage of it.
The policy of containment was not invented yesterday. It has been carried out against our country for many years, always, for decades, if not centuries. In short, whenever someone thinks that Russia has become too strong or independent, these tools are quickly put into use.
However, talking to Russia from a position of force is an exercise in futility, even when it was faced with domestic hardships, as in the 1990s and early 2000s.
We remember well how and who, almost openly, supported separatism back then and even outright terrorism in Russia, referred to murderers, whose hands were stained with blood, none other than rebels and organised high-level receptions for them. These "rebels" showed up in Chechnya again. I'm sure the local guys, the local law enforcement authorities, will take proper care of them. They are now working to eliminate another terrorist raid. Let's support them.
Let me reiterate, we remember high-level receptions for terrorists dubbed as fighters for freedom and democracy. Back then, we realised that the more ground we give and the more excuses we make, the more our opponents become brazen and the more cynical and aggressive their demeanour becomes.
Despite our unprecedented openness back then and our willingness to cooperate in all, even the most sensitive issues, despite the fact that we considered – and all of you are aware of this and remember it – our former adversaries as close friends and even allies, the support for separatism in Russia from across the pond, including information, political and financial support and support provided by the special services – was absolutely obvious and left no doubt that they would gladly let Russia follow the Yugoslav scenario of disintegration and dismemberment. With all the tragic fallout for the people of Russia.
It didn't work. We didn't allow that to happen. Just as it did not work for Hitler with his people-hating ideas, who set out to destroy Russia and push us back beyond the Urals. Everyone should remember how it ended.
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November 20, 2014 | RT Russian politics
Russian President Vladimir Putin has:at forces willing to reshape the world often used extremism as a tool in so-called "color revolutions" and urged law enforcement to use international experience to fight such tendencies in Russia.
"In the modern world extremism is used as a geopolitical tool for redistribution of spheres of interest. We can see the tragic consequences of the wave of the so-called color revolutions, the shock experienced by people in the countries that had went through the irresponsible experiments of hidden, or sometimes brute and direct interference with their lives," Putin told the Security Council on Thursday.
"This is a lesson and a warning for us," Putin:We will do everything to never let this take place in Russia."
Putin also noted in his speech that everyone advocating the freedom of assembly and expression must remember about the responsibility that comes together with these rights.
"People should understand that instigating conflict between people of different ethnic and religious background, the promotion of nationalist ideology, mass violations of public order and calls for forceful overthrow of the existing regime are all … direct manifestations of extremism," he told top security officials. He noted that everyone should remember about the destructive consequences of such actions as well as about the fact that those involved would have to answer for them.
The president also:at senior regional officials would have to personally answer for shortcomings in the fight against extremism. He urged all civil servants to monitor and analyze relations between various ethnic and social groups.
In late June, Putin signed into force a set of fresh laws targeting public calls in support of extremist activities as well as providing extremists with financial assistance.Now those found guilty of financing extremist activities could face up to six years in prison. Public calls for extremism, or attempts to humiliate people, will be punished with up to five years in prison. This applies to internet posts as well as media publications.
However, the new law provides immunity for those who turn against the organizations and help law enforcers to prevent crimes.
The new laws are in line with Russia's anti-extremism strategy, prepared by the Interior Ministry and made public in mid-June. According to the document, the authorities see the internet as the main channel for spreading dangerous information, and want to counter the threat through intensive monitoring of the web and imposing traditional values on the young.
In the strategy, the police list radical Muslim movements, domestic nationalist groups, football hooligans, illegal immigrants and certain foreign NGOs and religious groups as the main threats to security.
At the same time the Russian leader has repeatedly stated that the fight against extremism must not turn into a campaign against dissidents. He raised the issue again at Thursday's Security Council session, saying that Russia was a free and democratic country where citizens could have their own opinions and express them, including the right to be in opposition to the authorities.
"All people have the right to suggest solutions for and approaches to current problems, they have the right to form parties and groups, to participate in elections and fight for power," Putin:The most important thing is to ensure that the process of realization of citizens' political preferences was civilized and strictly within the framework of the law," he said.
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Nov 1, 2014 | Daily News Online Sri Lanka's National News
In a recent debate reported in The Journal of Democracy Francis Fukuyama:I think we pay too much attention to civil society, and not enough to political parties or to helping democratic groups come up with programmatic ways of governing. ……… To this day, I don't think anyone has come up with an alternative to the political party as a means of electoral mobilization. That is why political parties exist. Civil society cannot substitute for them in taking on that function."
With this succinct summation Fukuyama has hit the nail on the head. His judgment is most relevant to the "civil society" in Sri Lanka which refers, in a very narrow sense, to the foreign-funded NGOs serving a Western agenda. He was focusing on the unrepresentative character of NGOs and their inability to be a dynamic force for change in the democratic process. Fukuyama cannot be faulted because the NGO activists of the anti-national "civil society" – so vastly different from the Hegelian-Marxian concept of civil society – are strutting the political stage, both nationally and internationally, as if they are the makers and breakers of nations who represent the legitimate will of the people. They mistake their role of being the hired agents of their paymasters in the West to be that of the representatives of the people of Sri Lanka. Unlike the political parties that interact directly with the people because politicians are dependent on the people and derive their power from the people, the NGO agents in Sri Lanka are totally alienated from the people and derive their power from foreign funds and links to Western diplomatic missions. They have no credible or viable base rooted in the people.
Western political culture
They do not have any power to impact decisively or effectively in electoral politics. In fact, their names are unknown to the electorate. They are elitist groupies who circulate essentially in the rarefied diplomatic cocktail circuit, or in their own incestuous circle scratching each other's back when they are not fighting each other for the dwindling dollar in the donors' market. As stated by Fukuyama they are totally incapable of "electoral mobilization" and, therefore, they cannot be a substitute for the elected representatives of the people. In contemporary times, they are the successors to the Christian missionaries who came to civilize the natives. The Christian missionaries were carriers of the colonial flags. And the NGOs are carriers of the neo-colonial flags. Serving their Western masters, using their ideologies and terminology, has been their primary objective.
Their ultimate aim is to impose the Western political culture as the superior force to dominate post-colonial nations. Taming the natives with the Western culture is a key means of converting the indigenous people into mindless, slavish Occidentalists. At the zenith of imperialist power, brain-washing the indigenous people in colonized countries was the first step in consolidating their grip on power. They were aided and abetted by the Christian missionaries who brought the Bible to glorify the thunder of the colonial masters' guns. The converted Brown Sahibs, also known as "Coconuts", accepted the legitimacy of the white masters without questioning. They constituted the willing congregation that was created to sing "Alleluia" to the Empire.
In the main. the primary function of NGOs has been to challenge, criticize and undermine the developments of ex-colonies to impress their Western donors that they are the guardians of morality, legality and politics of the day. In their submissions to rake in more funding from the Western paymasters they justify applications for increased funding by citing their subversive activities to deracinate and de-nationalize nation-states which do not conform to the agenda of the Western paymasters. For instance, in making submissions for funding they would cite the articles and interviews published in the local media as proof of the success of "soft power" pursued by the West. Freedom and liberty are catch-cries raised by the NGO mudalalis to liberalize the economies for Western neo-colonialists to get untrammeled access to exploit the local resources and markets.
Getting the dirty work done through NGOs (example: getting the anti-national Western agenda publicized in the local media) eases the tasks of the diplomatic missions located abroad. To the West it is cheaper to get the Ph Ds in local NGOs to do the "research" work than to pay entire families of Western diplomats posted to monitor and report from Sri Lanka, India, Bangladesh etc. And the anti-national reporting of the NGOs – the "soft power" – is used to undermine the sovereignty and the national interests of states battling terrorists, foreign interventionists, and Western plunderers of local resources.
In the NGO industry Paikiasothy Saravanamuttu who heads the Centre for Policy Alternative (CPA) and Jehan Perera who heads the National Peace Council are the two leading experts in raking in millions from Western donors. Their business is to raise mega millions and they have succeeded in becoming multi-millionaires overnight. Their cries for human rights, justice and equality are in reality calculated business ploys to keep the money rolling in. There is no money in presenting positive reports of the achievements of the people or the governments of Sri Lanka. There is money only in promoting the Western agendas and values, preferably by demonizing Sri Lanka.
NGO mudalalis have enriched themselves by marketing the misery, suffering and the agony of the people trapped in wars, poverty, social injustice, etc. In the case of Sri Lanka Saravanamuttu and Jehan Perera, like any other common-or-garden politico, are full of hot air without having contributed to solve any of the critical issues facing Sri Lanka in any substantial way. Their main role, played in the name of human rights, has been to prepare the ground work to help Western diplomats struggling to write reports to their supervisors in Washington, London or Berlin.
Post-independent era
These two politicos measure their success by the extent to which they have demonized Sri Lanka abroad. Their ambition is to be the darlings of West and not problem-solvers of the nation. The most pathetic sign of their failure is confirmed in the fact that they have neither won a mass following by winning the hearts and minds of the people nor have they contributed substantially to solve the critical issues of the nation. So what is their worth to the nation? Their interventions have invariably worsened the situation because they adhered to their dogma of keeping the fascist regime in the north intact as a means of arriving at peace when all the evidence was against this fictitious fancy. It was not myopia that made them defend Prabhakaran's regime even when he was going down in Nandikadal. It was their need to keep the war going which was like the beggar's wound to them. Greater the bleeding greater the income! So on what moral or political basis can these multi-million dollar lackeys of the neo-colonial West justify the existence of NGOs as necessary institutions for the progress of the nation?
The problems of Sri Lanka were solved by the creative genius of the people of Sri Lanka, as they have done throughout their history. For instance, in the post-independent era, Sri Lanka went through agonizing traumas of two uprisings in the South led by the lumpen Marxists in the JVP, a Right-wing coup organized by the Westernized elite, and, worst of all, a deadly 33-year-old terrorist war led by mono-ethnic extremists of the Tamil North and emerged victorious as a viable democracy. What part did the NGOs play in these victories? Zilch. Zero. Nothing. On the contrary, they actually played an undermining role obstructing the path to a final resolution of any one of the crises.
The usual mantra of NGOs was to demonize the state and hold it responsible for the violence ignoring the fact that there were opportunities to resolve differences non-violently within the democratic main stream, however tardy it may have been. The failure of the southern and northern violence prove that there is no alternative to non-violent processes within the constitutional framework. But, on the grounds of addressing the underlying causes, NGOs went all out to appease the southern and northern terrorists and justify their self-destructive violence. Theoretically, it is possible to justify the argument that if you give in to their demands that violence would end. But in reality this punditry has only worsened the situation. Their theories of appeasing Prabhakaran did not work even when maximum concessions were made by Chandrika Bandaranaike in P-TOMS and Ranil Wickremesinghe in the international agreement brokered by Norway.
On balance, it is clear that if the NGOs had to make a moral stand their choice should have been to defend the democratic south, with all its infirmities, and condemn unreservedly the fascist north for the evils that shocked the world. Saravanamuttu told Australian Broadcasting Corporation, in his recent interview, that "one must take a stand in the face of injustices". So where was he when the Tamils were facing the worst injustices under the regime of Prabhakaran? Did he go round the world condemning Prabhakaran, demanding global action for regime change in the north? Or did he go round the world seeking help to save him and keep him alive to perpetuate the one-man regime?
Political landscape
Saravanamuttu's counterpart in the multi-million dollar NGO industry, Jehan Perera, went to the extreme of hero-worshipping Anton Balasingham, the leading ideologue of the fascist regime, by conferring on him a post-graduate doctorate which he never had. So how credible are the NGOs when they claim that they stand for democracy, liberty, basic individual rights when they were openly serving as willing partners in perpetuating and bolstering the fascist regime of the north? Their policy has been, as seen in the available records, to condemn the south for not living up to their political standards. But they were quite happy to go along merrily with the one-man regime that had suppressed all democratic norms and imposed his fascist terror in the north. NGO theories promoted Prabhakaran as a part of the solution when he was the intransigent problem that stood in the way of peace.
History has proved that Nandikadal was the only path to peace. It is absolutely clear that peace dawned at the end of 33 years because all the theories, lectures and formulas of Saravanamuttu and Jehan Perera have been laid to rest at the bottom of Nandikadal – the ultimate graveyard of Tamil fascism. Besides, the failed politics of the NGOs confirm that the path to progress can be made to run smoothly if they are removed from the political landscape. Their meddling in the past has taken the nation nowhere. The future has better prospects if they are thrown into the dustbin and the lid is closed as tightly as possible.
Now that the nation is settling down to a post-conflict era serious attention should be paid to the anti-national, anti-peace, anti-reconciliation role of the politicized NGOs. At the time they were needed most they were sleeping with the enemy of peace. Their bogus theories boosted the morale and legitimized the violence of the enemies of peace and hardly ever the nation. Both in times of war and peace they have been going along directly or tangentially with either the anti-peace Tamil fascists, or with the anti-national West. So when we have Jehan Pereras and Saravanamuttus do we need Prabhakarans? What has been their contribution to this nation to regain peace or reconciliation? Does this nation need these failed Neo-colonial Governments' Oxen?
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October 13, 2014 | dissidentvoice.org
I read and heard about Hong Kong's students putting themselves at risk demonstrating for democracy, and my first instinct was sympathy, sympathy for their passionate idealism, but sympathy in another sense too, for their sad illusions. I ask myself, and it is not a trivial question, what is it exactly that they believe they fight for? Democracy has become such a totemic word, we all are trained to revere it, unquestioningly, almost the way 16th century people were expected to behave in the presence of the Host during Communion. But just where in the West do we see countries who call themselves democracies behaving in democratic ways, indeed where do we see genuine democracies? And if it is such an important concept, why should that be?In Canada, to start where I live, we have a serious democratic deficit. A Conservative government today, elected to a parliamentary "majority" with about 39% of the national vote, behaves for all the world as an authoritarian government in many things at home and abroad. It turned its back completely on Canada's historic support of green initiatives, embarrassing our people in international forums with blunderingly incompetent ministers of the environment. It has built a large new batch of prisons, completely against the general public's sympathies and in contradiction to historically low and falling crime rates. It echoes the sentiments from Washington on almost anything you care to name and does so completely against Canada's modern history and prevailing public opinion. It has lost the respect Canada once commanded in the United Nations. It has dropped Canada's tradition of fairness in the Middle East, blindly supporting Israel's periodic slaughters, ignoring the horrifying situation of the Palestinians. Only now the government decided to send fighter jets to support the American anti-ISIS farce, an act completely out of step with Canada's long-term policy of using force only where there is a United Nations' mandate.
But Canada still has a way to go to match the appalling modern record of Great Britain. Its recent prime ministers include Tony Blair and David Cameron – men, supposedly from separate parties, who both cringingly assent to America's every wink or nod suggesting some policy, ever ready to throw armies, planes, money, and propaganda at questionable enterprises their people neither understand nor would be likely to support if they did. Promoting the mass deaths of innocents and the support of lies and great injustice are now fixtures in the mother of all parliaments. And, with all the scandals around Rupert Murdoch's news empire, we got a breathtaking glimpse of how shabbily public policy is formulated behind the scenes, of how smarmy politicians like Blair and Cameron cater to unethical individuals of great wealth and influence.
Israel's endless patter of propaganda always includes the refrain, "the Middle East's only democracy." The press does not think to ask how you can have a democracy with only one kind of person wanted as a voter and with only one kind of citizen enjoying full rights. Nor do they inquire about the millions who live under systematic oppression enforced by that "democracy." Effectively, Israel rules millions of people who have no rights and no ability to change their status through any form of citizenship, not even the ability to keep their family home if Israel suddenly wants to take it. We have seen "democracies" like that before, as, for example, in South Africa or in the Confederate States of America, both places where people voted but only a specified portion of the people, millions of others being consigned to a netherworld existence maintained with a carefully designed structure of fraudulent legality. Ironically, viewed from the Middle East's perspective, it is undoubtedly a good thing there are not more such democracies as Israel.
And the students should perhaps keep in mind the tragic example of Egypt. It too had huge demonstrations with thrilling moments like a dictator of thirty years fleeing and the nation assembling its first free election. But a brief spring garden of elected government was bulldozed after the government:d did things its small neighbor, Israel, did not like. There were more huge demonstrations and thousands of deaths and illegal arrests and the return to military dictatorship in a threadbare disguise of elected government. Eighty million people must now continue life under repressive government because seven million people with extraordinary influence in Washington can't tolerate democracy next door.
As far as what Colin Powell once called, in a tit-for-tat with a French Foreign Minister, "the world's oldest democracy," well, he was just as inaccurate in that assertion as he was about hidden weapons of mass destruction in Iraq. America's own founding documents do not proclaim a democracy but rather that most fuzzily-defined of all forms of government, a republic. It was a republic in which the President was not elected by the general population, where the Senate was appointed, where the Supreme Court had no authority to enforce the high-sounding phrases of the Bill of Rights, and where as little as one-percent of the population could even vote – it was, in sum, an aristocracy of wealthy and influential citizens dressed up in high-sounding phrases. The American Revolution was aptly summed up by a writer as "a homegrown aristocracy replacing one from abroad."
And since America's founding, while the voting franchise gradually has been extended to become nearly universal (prisoners and ex-convicts still often cannot vote in a nation with the world's highest incarceration rate), equally gradual changes in the structure of America's institutions pretty much keep that original form of government intact. At every level, barriers erected by the two ruling parties make it nearly impossible to establish an effective alternative party. Even getting listed on all the ballots was an immense task for a billionaire – Ross Perot – who, in fact, represented no substantive alternative by any measure. The two parties' privileged position also is protected by the need for immense amounts of campaign funds, America's regular election costs being in the billions, the Supreme Court having declared money as "free speech." You do not get that kind of money from ordinary citizens, and you necessarily owe those who do supply it, and you simply cannot compete in American politics without it.
For major offices, the vetting of politicians is now so long and demanding that no candidate can possibly run who isn't completely acceptable to the establishment. The campaign money simply will not appear otherwise. Such quiet political controls are now backed up by a gigantic military-intelligence establishment with such authorities and resources that it much resembles a government within the government. For example, with the NSA spying on every form of communication by every person around the clock, information about politicians is close to perfect. No undesirables can slip through and no undesirable policy can be enacted given the ability to threaten or blackmail every politician over his or her monitored personal and financial affairs. Nobody in his right mind calls that democracy.
The truth is that despite a long history of struggle, revolutions, and movements of various descriptions characterizing the West's modern era, those with great wealth and influence still rule as effectively as they did centuries ago. Their rule is not as apparent and open to scrutiny as it once was, and there are many mechanisms in place to give the appearance of democracy, at least for those who do not examine closely. Modern elections require money and lots of it. Voters' choices are limited as surely as they are in many authoritarian states. The ability of any elected officials to act in the public interest is curtailed by a powerful establishment and a number of special interests.
Once in power, modern democratic governments behave little differently than many authoritarian states do. Wars are started without consent and for purposes not in the public interest. Secret services carry out acts government would be ashamed to be seen openly doing. Armies for needless wars are conscripted or bribed into existence. Rights people regarded as basic may be suspended at any time. Injustices abound. Many "democratic" states practice illegal arrest, torture, assassination, and, above all, secrecy. Secrecy is so much a part of things today that when citizens do vote, they haven't the least idea what they are voting for. Public education is generally poor, especially with regard to the real workings of government and the encouragement of critical thinking. The press has become nothing more than an informal extension of government, a volunteer cheering section, in many important matters. Voters go to the polls hardly understanding what is happening in the world.
So I praise the idealism and bravery of the Chinese students, but I know democracy everywhere remains only a small, hopeful glimmer in the eyes of people.
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The Saker is an ex-military analyst who was born in Europe to a family of Russian refugees. He now lives in Florida where he writes the Vineyard of the Saker blog and is a regular contributor to Russia Insider. The international community of Saker Blogs includes, besides the original Saker blog, French, German, Russian, Oceania and Serbian members and will soon include a Latin American member. – Mike Whitney
Mike Whitney: Is the United States responsible for the troubles in Ukraine?
The Saker: Yes, absolutely, there's no doubt about it. While it's true that the Ukrainian people were unhappy with the corrupt Yanukovich regime, the coup itself was definitely CIA orchestrated. The EU was also involved, especially Germany, but they didn't play nearly as big a role as the U.S. The taped phone messages of (US Undersecretary of State) Victoria Nuland show who was really calling the shots behind the scenes.
Mike Whitney: What role did the Obama administration play in Kiev's decision to launch a war on its own people in the east of Ukraine?
The Saker: A central role. You have to understand that there is no "Ukrainian" power in Kiev. Poroshenko is 100% US-run as are the people around him. The head of the notorious Ukrainian secret police (the SBU), Valentin Nalivaichenko, is a known CIA agent. It's also true that the US refers to Poroshenko "our Ukraine insider". All of his so called "decisions" are actually made by U.S. officials in Kiev. As for Poroshenko's speech to Congress a few weeks ago, that was obviously written by an American.
... ... ...
Mike Whitney: What influence does Obama have on Ukrainian President Petro Poroshenko's decision-making? Is Washington actually running the show?
The Saker: Yes, totally. Obama gives the orders and Poroshenko obeys.
Just as they do everywhere, the US uses local oligarchs to colonize a country. Take for example Russia between 1991 and 1999. It was run by oligarchs behind a drunken figurehead. (Boris Yeltsin) Everyone knew that Russia had become a American colony and that the US could do whatever it wanted. It's the same today.
Yanukovich was no more pro-Russian than any other Ukrainian President. He's just an oligarch who's been replaced by another oligarch, Poroshenko. The latter is a very intelligent man who knows that his survival depends on his complete obedience to Uncle Sam.
I wouldn't put it past the US to dump Poroshenko and install someone else if it suits their purposes. (Especially if the Right Sector takes power in Kiev.) For now, Poroshenko is Washington's man, but that could change in the blink of an eye.
Mike Whitney: How close is the Obama administration to achieving its goal of establishing NATO bases (and, perhaps, missile sites) in Ukraine? What danger does this pose for Moscow?
The Saker: The only place where NATO bases really make sense is in Crimea, and that option is no longer available. But there's more to this issue than meets the eye, that is, if the US continues to pursue this provocative policy of establishing NATO bases on the Russian border, then Russia will withdraw from the INF Treaty (Intermediate-Range Nuclear Forces Treaty) and deploy advanced versions of the SS-20 (Soviet Nuclear Ballistic Missile) closer to Europe. The point is, US meddling could lead to a confrontation between nuclear-armed adversaries.
Mike Whitney: The European Commission has created a number of obstacles to prevent Russia from building the Southstream pipeline which will diversify export routes for natural gas from Russia to central and southern Europe. Critics have:at the Obama administration is behind the move, and that powerful US energy giants want to either block or control the flow of energy from Russia to Europe. Is this the broader context of the troubles in Ukraine, that is, are we really seeing an energy war unfold in real time?
The Saker: This is an important part of the equation, but not the central one. The central one is the mistaken belief (put forward by Zbigniew Brzezinski) that without the Ukraine Russia cannot be a superpower, and the equally mistaken belief (put forward by Hillary Clinton) that Putin wants to re-create the Soviet Union. For the AngloZionists, the Ukraine is a zero-sum game in which the US must either control the Ukraine or destroy it, but not allow Russia to have it. The problem with this theory is that Russia doesn't really want or need the Ukraine. What Russia wants is a stable, dependable and neutral partner with which it can do business. Even now, while the Novorussians are demanding full independence, Russia has been pushing a different plan altogether. Moscow wants a unitary Ukraine in which each region would have de-facto autonomy but still be part of the same state.
Powerbrokers in the West are so maniacally obsessed with controlling the Ukraine, they can't imagine that Russia doesn't want the same thing. But Russia doesn't want the Ukraine. It has no need for a broken, dysfunctional, failed state with massive social problems, that will require billions upon billions of dollars to rebuild.
Sure, there are cultural, historical, religious and even family ties between Russia and the Ukraine, but that does not mean they want to run the place. Russia already got what it wanted, Crimea. As for the rest, Moscow's attitude is, "You broke it, you own it."
Mike Whitney: What's the endgame here? Will Poroshnko succeed in keeping Ukraine together and further isolate Russia from Europe or will Ukraine splinter along political lines? Or is there another scenario that you see as more likely?
The Saker: Crimea is gone forever. So is Novorussia. But in the case of the latter, there might be a transitional phase in which Kiev retains some degree of sovereignty over areas in the east.
In the near term, there could be more fighting, but eventually there will be a deal in which Novorussia will be given something close to independence. One thing is certain, that before reaching an agreement on final status, two issues will have to be settled:
- There must be regime change in Kiev followed by de-Nazification. Neither Russia nor Novorussia will ever be safe as long as the Nazis are in power in Kiev. That means that these russophobic, nationalist freaks will have to be removed before final status issues can be resolved. The Russians and the Novorussians are somewhat divided on this issue. While the Novorussians want their independence and say "To hell with the Nazis in Kiev", the Kremlin wants regime change and sees it crucial for their national security. We'll have to wait and see how this plays out in the future.
- There will have to be a conference of donors. The Ukraine is basically dead, it's been reduced to rubble. It will take years to rebuild, and immense sums of money. The US, EU and Russia will all have to contribute. If the AngloZionists persist in their maximalist position and continue to support the Nazi junta in Kiev, the Russians will not pay a single kopeck. Russian aid will go exclusively to Novorussia.
Sooner or later the US and EU will realize that they need Russia's help. And when they finally figure that out, they'll work together to reach a comprehensive political agreement. Right now, they're more preoccupied with punishing Putin (through economic sanctions and political isolation) to prove that no one can defy the Empire.
But that kind of bullying behavior won't change the reality on the ground. The West needs Russia's cooperation, but Russia isn't going to cooperate without strings attached. The US will have to meet certain conditions before Moscow agrees to a deal.
UKRAINE: "Gone forever"
Though it's too early to tell, I think the Ukraine as we know it, is gone forever. Crimea will remain part of Russia, while Novorussia will become independent and probably end up in some kind of association status with Russia. As for the rest of the Ukraine, there's bound to be a confrontation between the various oligarchs and Nazis, after which the pragmatists will appear and lead the way to a settlement. Eventually, there will be some kind of accommodation and a new state will emerge, but I can't imagine how long it will take for that to happen.
If you want a more systematic analysis of the points above, please see my analysis (here: http://vineyardsaker.blogspot.com/2014/09/the-russian-response-to-double.html)
MIKE WHITNEY lives in Washington state. He is a contributor to Hopeless: Barack Obama and the Politics of Illusion (AK Press). Hopeless is also available in a Kindle edition. He can be reached at [email protected].
Concerned German :Hi from Germany, read the Mike Whitney interview recently but despite my consent about many things told concerning Ukr and Russia I feel one issue has been strongly underestimated.StevenStarrThe intention of the US to really "destroy" Europe" as consolidated independent player in the game of big powers.
After WWII the US had the choice to deindustrialize Germany or to rebuild it as an outpost against the Sovjet empire. They chose the latter but had a good chunk of mistrust against such a reemerging economical and political strength of Germany. Therefore they installed a vast network of so-called "Transatlantics". These are many organisations that have substantial influence in economy, politics and media. They now perfectly dominate political live in Germany. They literally are able to switch political carriers on and off as - for example - they also dominate the media with the broadest coverage. Furthermore they extensively utilize the principle of "divide et impera" and so one could follow "the cut" through parties as well as between parties and even between countries as a whole.
An example of the party level is the US Agent J Fischer, having been rewarded for his pro Iraq intervention position with a good live in the US opposing his own coalition partner Gerhard Schroeder who followed the idea of an axis France-Germany-Russia which endangered the US influence. Look how he is bashed nowadays. On the country level this can be recognized when looking at the difference between Baltikum, Poland and UK, strongly opposing Germany, France, and others which traditionally good relationships to Russia. UK is being on the run to leave the EU which will definitely is weakening Europe.
This US principle worked so well that the US installed the same principle on the EU level. The EU as being a habitat without necessity of democratic legitimation from the citizens is perfectly suited for activities of politicians against their own citizens best interests. So it comes that the green Party but also conservative politicians as well as guys like Barroso, Rompuy or Degucht are fierce enemies of Russia and are promoting sanctions - even at the price of economic failure of Europe.
Furthermore they promote the divorce of Europe from Russia - its logical natural resource base, its market and the access to Asia. Not only by spending billions into non EU Ukrainian trash can, the association of Georgia and Moldavia provides much more future potential regions of conflict once the UKR crises might get solved. Furthermore the funds needed to stabilize UKR will clearly be far beyond what the EU can afford and therefore a lot of internal trouble to distribute funds will arise. Additionally the rise of a Nazi destabilized UKR at the border of Europe will provide additional instability in Europe through potential cooperation of Nazi terroristic activity and proliferation of weapons. All this supports und justifies more totalitaristic NSA efforts in Europe beside damaging Europe.
This is accompanied by the Goldmann Sachs agents in ECB promoting deficit spending and QE to undermine the Euro as reserve currency.
All this is to destroy Europe and Russia as petrochemical competitor. Russia is pushed to China to rebuild a new "Eastern block" and to support its Nationalism because this constitutes the perfect "enemy" that justifies further military expenses which had been endangered to be cut in 2013 until spring 2014 exactly when Maidan started. This way the US "military-petrochemical complex" is able to redirect poor US taxpayers funds into their pockets instead of into a health care system that would work.
Finally the US have act now and have to start a war against such a new "Eastern bloc". In case they will wait another 10 years China will be too strong.
Therefore I really see the future in dark, which will mean reestablishing of trouble in UKR - for ex by a Nazi Putsch against Poroshenko but real trouble to start somewhere in Far-east.
Great interview, one disagreement, however.You say, "Sooner or later the US and EU will realize that they need Russia's help. And when they finally figure that out, they'll work together to reach a comprehensive political agreement."
Maybe the EU will come to this realization, or at least the Germans and French. But I don't think the neocons in the US are capable of such an understanding. Their plan is to dismantle Russia, to remove it as a threat to US hegemony and simultaneously open it up to corporate and IMF exploitation.
I worry that they believe they own propaganda to the point where they think they can "win" a nuclear war with Russia. The "nuclear primacy" arguments published in Foreign Affairs 8 years ago may be part of the belief system of these fools.
That is why Putin needs to begin public discussion of the likely consequences of a strategic nuclear war, which peer-reviewed scientific articles predict would wipe out the human race. See the Bulletin of the Atomic Scientists article, "Self-Assured Destruction: The climate impacts of nuclear war" by Drs. Alan Robock and Brian Toon at http://climate.envsci.rutgers.edu/pdf/RobockToonSAD.pdf
The US scientists would back Putin up, should he care to initiate the conversation.
Pessamist:
Dear Saker: Re your "1– There must be regime change in Kiev followed by de-Nazification. Neither Russia nor Novorussia will ever be safe as long as the Nazis are in power in Kiev."
Unfortunately, like Franco in Spain, the Kiev regime may be around for a long time, especially while the U.S. backs it, with our deep pockets and unforgiving nature. (Like the Bourbons, we learn nothing and forget nothing.) Consequently Russia may need to endure the Kiev Nazis for a long time, while building up its defense, hoping for the best.
The alternatives, possibly leading to WW3, may be worse.
16 October, 2014 00:47Anunnaki:
@Ingrian
The same clusterfock foreign policy Obama has regarding ISIS in Syraq. They make it up as they go along
Same as Bush: assume that the best case scenario is the most likely scenario in Ukraine as it has failed miserably in Iraq AngloZionists have equally purged the Arabists and Russian specialists at the State Dept.
Icky Vicky Nuland worked for Cheney for Chrissakes.what is she doing in a "Progressive" President's employ? Obama deserves these massive failures in Iraq and Ukraine for years of "kicking the can down the road". Too bad thousands are dying for his feckless weakness and craven arrogance
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Unrest in Hong Kong are declining. On Monday, the part of the fence was dismantled, the main government complex resumed its work. Protesters with umbrellas behave peacefully and do not interfere with civil servants getting in/out of work; the number of activists on the streets has decreased dramatically:http://www.bbc.co.uk/russian/rolling_news/2014/10/141006_hong_kong_protest_monday.shtml
Of course, it's too early to say "Done". As recently as last winter EuroMaidan a few times almost completely faded, but then petrol to sustain fire was injected again and again; in the end all this ended with national socialist revolution and Anti-Russian course for Ukraine as well as the rapid destruction of economy, and civil war at the East. However, the initial success of China authorities is obvious, and if the organizers of "umbrella Maidan" will not be able to inject new resources and money into the protest and/or organize a serious provocation along the class like of sharpshooter from the roof, Hong Kong might soon return to a normal life.
Let's see what methods the China used in response to the orange infection.
1. As we remember the significant contribution to EuroMaidan was transportation by buses of residents of Western regions of Ukraine into Kiev. In Hong Kong this trick failed. China has established a tight cordons on the border of Hong Kong - tourists who looks like potential street fighters and coordinators tourists were turned back. Buses with armed bits and fittings gull of young aggressive young people had no chance to get into the area of unrest.
2. China has carefully worked the Hong Kong professors, who trying to repay the US grants by droving students to the streets. Dismissal, conversations with the Chinese KGB, check about the payment of taxes from money from grants make this method of generating the crowd from university students by-and-large closed. Similar problems were created for all American NGOs.
Yanukovich during his time in power did not managed to close this channel of feeding of Maidan via "pre-paid" university professors, and NGOs has almost diplomatic immunity status in Ukraine. At the end he almost paid with his life for that.
3. A dangerous groups that could take on the role of storm troopers for insurgents - such as radical environmentalists were placed under administrative arrest and could not participate in the riots.
4. Around the Maidan was organized by the cordon of police, who did not give peaceful protesters the ability to smuggle to the place of unrest Molotov cocktails and such. Those who were caught were packed into police car and removed.
5. China found for local Poroshenko, who fanned the Maidan through his media resources, some very convincing words. Jimmy Lai for a couple of days disappeared from the public view, and when he returned, his revolutionary enthusiasm had sharply diminished.
6. Chinese media together were explained to local residents that because of protests big business and big money will move to other cities. which gladly will cease the opportunity to take over Hong Kong financial hub. For residents of Hong Kong this is a very troubling prospect: at least in terms of higher unemployment and lower wages. At this point many will not be able to pay their mortgages and other loans.
Explanations had its effect - CNN reports that the locals became really aggressive toward protesters. Quote:
The news of official talks comes as a dwindling number of pro-democracy demonstrators continue to cling on to their protest sites in key areas of the tightly packed city. As their numbers wane, so does patience of some of their fellow citizens.
"At first, I supported them, but then I started to think they are being selfish because they block the roads -- and that's wrong,":rginia Lai, who has sold newspapers from a stall in the busy district of Mong Kok for 45 years.
Lai says her business is down 30% and getting worse. The student-led demonstrators are camped out at a major intersection in the neighborhood, which witnessed violent clashes between protesters and their opponents over the weekend.
At the moment on the streets of Hong Kong are still about 300 protesters:
http://itar-tass.com/mezhdunarodnaya-panorama/1492865
As we know from previous color revolutions experience, hardcore protesters themselves usually do not disperse voluntarily: they sit until the last, waiting for the moment when the police begin to disperse them. How will China to solve the problem is unclear.
However, we can already say that Americans have faced this time with an intelligent and cold-blooded enemy: the enemy, who had carefully studied all of their previous games, and provided a strong response to each standard course of manuals.
Perhaps, in the place of the Americans, I would think not even about Hong Kong, but about Texas and Washington. In the U.S., more than enough smoldering conflicts that an experienced player will be able, with a little luck to inflate to a full-scale protest. and amount of armed people could make it problematic for policy to crash.
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September 29, 2014 | moonofalabama.org | Comments (205)
Some organized "student groups" in Hong Kong tried to occupy government buildings and blocked some streets. The police did what it does everywhere when such things happen. It used anti-riot squads, pepper spray and tear gas to prevent occupations and to clear the streets.
The "western" media are making some issue about this as if "western" governments would behave any differently.
The alleged issue in question is the election of new Hong Kong chief executive in 2017. According to Hong Kong's basic law, which was implemented when Britain gave up its dictatorship over the colony, there will be universal suffrage - everyone will be allowed to vote - but the candidates for the position will have to go through some pre-screening by a commission. This is what China had promised and this is what the students, falsely claiming that China is backtracking from its promises, want to change.
Peter Lee aka Chinahand has an excellent piece on the issue at Asia Times Online. But Lee is making one mistake in that he does not consider outside influence:
Occupy Hong Kong decided to light it, starting with a class boycott and demonstrations organized by the Hong Kong Federation of Students. And, since I'm never afraid to mix a metaphor, the Hong Kong government poured fuel on the fire by pepper-spraying and teargassing it.Who really "decided to light this"? To me the protests, and the "western" reporting about it, have the distinct smell not of tear gas but of some expensive Color Revolution perfume of "western" origin.
So lets look up the usual source of such exquisite fragrance. The 2012 annual report of the U.S. government financed National Endowment of Democracy, aka the CCA - Central Color-Revolution Agency, includes three grants for Hong Kong one of which is new for 2012 and not mentioned in earlier annual reports:
National Democratic Institute for International Affairs - $460,000To foster awareness regarding Hong Kong's political institutions and constitutional reform process and to develop the capacity of citizens - particularly university students - to more effectively participate in the public debate on political reform, NDI will work with civil society organizations on parliamentary monitoring, a survey, and development of an Internet portal, allowing students and citizens to explore possible reforms leading to universal suffrage.
So the U.S. government in 2012 (2013 numbers are not yet available) hands over nearly half a million to "develop the capacity" of "university students" related to the issue of "universal suffrage" in the election of Hong Kong's chief executive.
Two years after the money starts to flow from the U.S. government university students in Hong Kong provoke street riots with demands exactly on the issue the U.S. government money wanted to highlight.
That is just some curious coincidence - right?
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PS (1): There is no reason to believe that a majority of the people in Hong Kong are supporting the U.S. induced demands of the "students". Hong Kong has some 7 million inhabitants. Ten to twenty thousands protesting amounts to some rather marginal 0.2% of the population.
PS (2): We noted earlier that the new Color Revolution scheme 2.0 - see Libya, Syria, Ukraine - now includes lots of violence:
Color revolutions in the old form had become too obvious a scheme to be of further use. The concept was therefore extended to include intensive use of force and mercenaries and to support those forces from the outside with weapons, ammunition, training and other means.While earlier Color Revolutions employed mostly peaceful measures the aim now is blood in the streets and lots of infrastructure damage to weaken the forces resisting the regime change attempts. Accordingly the authorities in Hong Kong should prepare for much more than just unruly demonstrations.
PS (3): The NDI through which the NED money was funneled is the Democratic Party arm for regime change campaigns. It also does quite a bit of other Hong Kong meddling by financing various other organizations. Such foreign agents need to be restrained.
JohnH | Sep 29, 2014 1:27:21 PM | 2Hoarsewhisperer | Sep 29, 2014 1:35:29 PM | 3Let's not forget that John McCain is COB of the National Republican Institute, which receives the majority of NED money doled out by the State Department.
McCain is also a member of the Senate Foreign Affairs Committee, the Armed Services Committee, and the Homeland Security Committee.
This incestuous relationship between the executive and legislative branches is not something foreseen in the Constitution and should be banned. It raises the question of who is working for whom--McCain for Obama, or Obama for McCain. (Not that it makes any difference in Obama's increasingly public neocon policy positions.)
Where-Wolf | Sep 29, 2014 2:39:59 PM | 11One certainly doesn't need 3 guesses to suspect whether the people behind HK's 'troubles' are the Usual Suspects. I'm genuinely curious to see how China plays this - aside from the Tienanmen Option. Vlad booted several Yankee NGO's out of Russia a few years ago (for violating WRITTEN agreements to refrain from certain specified activities; would you believe?).
The spooks left on such short notice that they had to leave things behind which would have left with them if their departure was more leisurely. I'm treating this as a test to see whether China & Russia, together, can outsmart the regime changers, or whether they're unbeatable - like the US Military....
LOL.While the Empire runs simulataneous destabilization ops in Hong Kong and Xinxang, the mind control grid gives lotsa love to Ali Babba and its techno-fascist CEO on 60 Minutes. When you're allowed to raise 25 billion on US markets and your compatriots own trillions in potentially worthless US paper, you are compromised and/or dependent. It seems only Vlad so much as considers the possibility of up turning the NWO apple cart and I'm not even sure about that.
The promise to China goes like this: support Zion and we'll keep paying interest and rent with our worthless paper.
Will China take this 'deal' or will they do exactly as Deng did in Tiananmen? Things worked out pretty good for the PRC leadership after 1989. Does the belligerent faction hold any sway? Someone might be itching to teach 'Democracy' advocates a lesson.
Don Bacon | Sep 29, 2014 3:37:30 PM | 12
Demian | Sep 29, 2014 3:59:10 PM | 14The HKFS Declaration for Students' Strike -
(extracts)And shockingly, the government is insolent enough to simply ignore the people's voices. In other words, the nominating committee, which is to a great extent controlled by the capitalists locally and from the mainland, will continue to turn a deaf ear to all kinds of rights and welfare we legitimately called for!Beijing has removed the right for Hong Kongers to determine their future, and handed it to a committee of Beijing loyalists and tycoons with vested commercial and political interests. They have ignored our call for the right to a Chief Executive who is representative of Hong Kong's interests at large.
At this rate, Hong Kong is doomed to remain to be one of the cities in the world with the most ridiculously wide wealth gap. Millions of our people would live under the poverty line, and the enactment of universal retirement security or standard working hours policies would be nowhere in sight.
--The Hong Kong Federation of Students, 10 September 2014
@ben #8:
It's interestiyng that #universalsuffrage is one of the three main hashtags for the Hong Kong protests, given that it is mentionined in the 2012 NED report that b quotes.
Peter Lee writes in the post b links to:
Clearly, the PRC's envisioned terminus (the "ultimate aim") of the democratic reform line is universal suffrage to vote for candidates put forth by a nominating committee, not universal suffrage in the nomination as well as election process, which is the Occupy Hong Kong movement's demand.Americans do not have universal suffrage in the latter sense. Because of the corruption caused by TV commercials in election campaigns being legal, the 0.01% get to nominate political candidates for major positions.jayc | Sep 29, 2014 4:02:28 PM | 15
The Chinese government relies on surveillance and informant networks to identify and block potential challenges to its political equilibrium. The one-party system is prone to corruption and lack of accountability, and is resistant to genuine grassroots reform efforts.
That:rograms like the NED, starting from assumptions which are condescending and arrogant, do indeed meddle in the internal affairs of other nations - and serve a counter-productive role in that they allow the authorities of a target nation to assume and proclaim any political unrest as the direct result of foreign intervention (NED funded or not).
NED mission statements usually overflow with feel-good nostrums about the will of the people and transparency - but as Ukraine shows, those concepts can and will be dropped at convenience.
Comparing the NED Ukraine mission statement with the actions and intent of the coup government reveals that the supposed intent of the NED project couldn't be further away from being realized and in fact was dealt a disastrous setback by the coup - yet the organization has been silent or quietly supportive of the coup regime.
Don Bacon | Sep 29, 2014 4:09:37 PM | 16
Ralph Nader wrote a book, Crashing The Party, about trying to counter the two-party juggernaut in the US. The states have restrictive requirements about getting on the ballot, they wouldn't allow Nader to even sit in the audience at the "presidential debates," etc. "I asked one British reporter what could possibly occupy him hour after hour, and he replied: 'Well, you try and garnish the dullards a bit as best you can.'"
Don Bacon | Sep 29, 2014 4:33:16 PM | 17
One party, two party -- there's little difference because in the US the R's and the D's go after the same voters and similar money, and the "elections" end up being on irrelevant issues (by design) as promoted by establishment media.
Then add in gerrymandering, where most of the Ins stay in, and you get declining participation in elections, 62% in the last presidential, less in off-years.
Seamus Padraig | Sep 29, 2014 6:11:15 PM | 25
@21, Coldy von Moldy:
I don't remember OWS knocking over the US Govt. Do you? That usually requires a little foreign help.
And if that movement were operating in the belly of beast, that would require a LOT of foreign help.
brian | Sep 29, 2014 6:16:56 PM | 26
this appeared on Pravda
US backed colour revolution in Hong Kong:
'The leaders of the protest movement "Occupy Central", which organizes in Hong Kong, various public events with the requirements of the democratization of the management system, pre-workshops held in the "Hong Kong-American Center."
It is noteworthy that they were trained in the spring and summer campaign began. This information is leaked to the media. Officially stated purpose of the nonprofit organization is "to promote mutual understanding between the Chinese and the Americans", ITAR-TASS reported.
Pravda.Ru, that it is a social movement in Hong Kong, which formally aims to reform the electoral system, a special area (not to recall the NGO "Voice").
During the workshops, some international experts taught them the tactics of protest actions, negotiation strategies with the authorities in a large-scale popular uprisings, were isolated from the list of political demands points from which in any case should not be abandoned, says Chinese newspaper "Huanqiu Shibao".
Head of the "Hong Kong-American Center," Morton Holbrook appointed to this position at the end of last year, is "an important spy," about 30 years in the American intelligence agencies, says "Huanqiu Shibao." As noted in the article, Holbrook, as well as Hong Kong media mogul Jimmy Lai, a sponsor opposition, close to the former Minister of Defense Paul Wolfowitz.
"One gets the impression that the United States-based" Hong Kong-American center "is trying to use the experience of Eastern European" color revolutions "in Hong Kong in order to influence the internal situation," - emphasizes the newspaper.
Pravda.Ru recalls that color revolutions are called "non-violent" overthrow the government.
http://www.pravda.ru/news/world/asia/25-09-2014/1228147-Cina-0/
harry law | Sep 29, 2014 6:22:45 PM | 28
"Hong Kong has some 7 million inhabitants. Ten to twenty thousands protesting amounts to some rather marginal 0.2% of the population".
Islamic State has between 15 to 20,000 fighters yet they are just 1 mile from Baghdad entering the suburbs http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-2773268/ISIS-militants-fighting-Iraqi-government-forces-just-six-miles-Baghdad-despite-Western-airstrikes-against-terror-group.html Are these people supermen?
the Iraqi army is over 200,000 strong the numerous Shia militias number in the many 10's of thousands, where are they?
rjj | Sep 29, 2014 6:37:04 PM | 29
Meanwhile ....
http://www.economist.com/blogs/analects/2014/09/confucius-institutes
Half a million dollars in one year is not much. I should think the US spends that on "democracy" in each and every member of the United Nations. Nothing compared with the $5 billion spent by Nuland in Ukraine, which if averaged out is more than $200 million a year.
Alexno | Sep 29, 2014 7:15:48 PM | 30
Half a million dollars in one year is not much. I should think the US spends that on "democracy" in each and every member of the United Nations. Nothing compared with the $5 billion spent by Nuland in Ukraine, which if averaged out is more than $200 million a year.
Alexno | Sep 29, 2014 7:22:46 PM | 31
re 28. Are these people supermen? the Iraqi army is over 200,000 strong the numerous Shia militias number in the many 10's of thousands, where are they?
ISIS are sitting in Sunni villages outside Baghdad. They don't have a hope of getting into the city, because Baghdad is almost entirely Shi'a these days.
Actually yes, they probably are as near to supermen as you can get. They are feared, like the Mongols were, and the Israelis used to be.
Farflungstar | Sep 29, 2014 7:32:34 PM | 34
@27
Sorely needed! Ironic to have "these" people trying to open up the average US person's eyes, I'll take it from wherever I can get. Can't wait to hear US pols and pundits crying about it.
@28
I had wondered that also. ISIS is like God...or a strange ghost army no once can quite pin down, except for Amrikans on der Homefront looking under their beds because Faux News and their ilk, that's all their mouthpieces can talk about.
Immune they are to the bullets and bombs of the Iraq military and US air strikes, invisible to satellite imagery as convoys pf pickups cross wide open stretches of desert, and apparently, absent completely are any MOSSAD, CIA, Jordanian, Turkish, KSA-backed spooks, spies, infiltrators and informants to disrupt forthcoming plans.
Keep it on a low boil until after the Nov. midterms' then President Redline can go back to doing what he does best - killing people and making shit up as he goes along.
brian | Sep 29, 2014 8:08:29 PM | 35
dh | Sep 29, 2014 4:47:46 PM | 20
oligarches and capitalists? when they are being funded by oligarches and capitalists.
HK looks like a Ukraine rerun: once again 'corruption' is the excuse to wage a colour revolution...where the end result will be worse corruption and more oligarchs
the guy who is @GazaGlobal (tweets on gaza) has been supporting the HK patsies
brian | Sep 29, 2014 8:14:47 PM | 36
ive just tweeted this page to @waiminglo and ask why he is a front for US NED
people should do the same ...put pressure on him
dh | Sep 29, 2014 8:44:34 PM | 37
@35 I'm not sure this is Maidan again. That turned violent quite quickly. You need something like Pravyi Sektor to get a real response from the police. Don't see that in Hong Kong.
If Beijing handles it carefully it could end peacefully.
brian | Sep 29, 2014 9:07:48 PM | 38
dh | Sep 29, 2014 8:44:34 PM | 37
no this is another maidan....which also began peacefully before local and imported snipers took over.
cant wait for the snipers to appear as they did in Egypt, venezuela
http://www.globalresearch.ca/unknown-snipers-and-western-backed-regime-change/27904
Demian | Sep 29, 2014 9:14:53 PM | 39
@dh #37:
I agree. I don't think this is going anywhere, so I don't see the point of stirring up these protests. The US State Department just can't help itself.
There was a pretty big turnout at the demo. I am suprised that so many Hong Kong students let themselves get fooled.
Don Bacon | Sep 29, 2014 10:09:01 PM | 41
We've had huge demos in the US that didn't affect anything. Hundreds of thousands of people.
Aren't these mostly college kids blowin' it off?denk | Sep 29, 2014 11:15:25 PM | 42
ah, the ubiquitous ned !
but dont forget hk has been the gateway to destabilisation of china since the opium war, its a virtual homeground of mi6/cia cunts.
in 1997 those perfidious albions literally passed a trojan horse back to china, laden with hk born n bred wogs, fukus patsies in all walks of life. a perfect hotbed for color rev.
ex mi6 spy Baroness Park
* MI6 uses traditional spying methods and ''a few new ones'' was ''very good'' at disruptive or covert action* [1] ;-)
snowden giving out limited handout...
*eah. I could be rendered by the CIA, I could have people come after me, or any of their third party partners, you know. They work closely with a number of other nations. Or, you know, they could pay off the Triads, or any, any of their agents or assets. We've got a CIA station just up the road in the consulate here in Hong Kong,* [2]
as if we need a *whistleblower* to tell us hk is clawing with cia, mi6 !
[1]
http://www.scmp.com/article/52872/former-spy-chief-reveals-mi6-targets-chinaToivoS | Sep 29, 2014 11:18:41 PM | 43
For some reason I do not think that China will let any color revolution spin out of control. They have been paying attention to what has been happening in eastern Europe. There is also something else going on in China today.
The new government has been vigorously pursuing an anti-corruption campaign. It is very difficult to figure out who is being targeted right now but I suspect that the campaign is being directed toward wealthy capitalist (and their allies in the government) and not just corrupt officials.
The government is working hard to prevent the emergence of any oligarchies that might compete for political power. They must see what happened in Russia not to say the mess Ukraine has become.
Putin spent a decade trying to reverse the political power of the Russian oligarchs and it is still uncertain if he succeeded.
Demian | Sep 30, 2014 12:47:58 AM | 44
Very interesting article about Japan: Japan as an American Client State
let this sink in: Washington managed, without the use of violence, to manipulate the Japanese political system into discarding a reformist cabinet. The party that had intended to begin clearing up dysfunctional political habits that had evolved over half a century of one-party rule lost its balance and bearings, and never recovered. Hatoyama's successor, Kan Naoto, did not want the same thing happening to him, and distantiated himself from the foreign policy reformists, and his successor in turn, Yoshihiko Noda, helped realign Japan's bureaucracy precisely to that of the United States where roughly it had been for half a century. By calling for an unnecessary election, which everyone knew the DPJ would lose, he brought the American-blessed LDP back to power to have Japan slide back into its normal client state condition, essentially answerable, even if only tacitly, to Washington's wishes.Where earlier a China policy of friendly relations was being forged, there was suddenly nothing.
Almand | Sep 30, 2014 12:53:05 AM | 45
China has a great deal of experience handling internal unrest. The Chinese government spends more on internal security than defense suppressing strikes and riots (180,000 such incidents in 2010). Most of these "incidents" are actions taken by those exploited or left behind by China's great capitalist experiment. A lot of them also take place in the factories of Western interests, so it's in everyone's "interest" to ignore them.
Nobody wants to see rustic, unsophisticated dirty faced miners and workers asking for mundane things like higher wages (although the Xi government may be much more receptive to these demands in the near future) when there are bright, fresh-faced, Westernized Hong Kong students protesting for something glorious like democracy!
nomas | Sep 30, 2014 2:51:48 AM | 46
"The "western" media are making some issue about this as if "western" governments would behave any differently"
Oh the "western" (American) police would come in blazing with live ammo. You kiddin?
Sunny Jim R | Sep 30, 2014 3:37:04 AM | 47
You bet lots of the student protesters are there for the p**** and beer plus something to do on a a day off, a few care about the politics, maybe the US has groomed a few abbie hoffman, jerry rubin, tim leary types for misdirection. where is the smart money on this?
denk | Sep 30, 2014 6:28:25 AM | 49
what did neocon wolfowitz and mark simon the spook talk with jimmy lai, the shady financier of the hk *democratic movement* in lai's pte yacht ? [1]
u bet it aint about the weather !incidentally, wolfowicz was anwar ibrahim's mentor in that zwo outfit aei [2].
for the uninitiated, anwar is zwo's man in malaysia.
no sooner than he was convicted of sodomy in mar this yr when mh370 got *disappeared.*
those who think that two mal airliners got zapped in less than six months is sheer *coincidence* would do well to take a look into the anwar saga and fukus decades old covert wars against malaysia. -- [3][1]
http://www.chinadailyasia.com/hknews/2014-06/20/content_15142785.html[2]
http://www.aei.org/article/society-and-culture/religion/anwar-ibrahim/[3]
http://bigdogdotcom.wordpress.com/2007/04/22/gores-racist-assault-against-malaysia/
http://bigdogdotcom.wordpress.com/2011/02/28/paul-wolfowitz-al-gore-mat-king-leather-and-the-strange-case-of-mister-john-malott-is-he-lonely-and-frustrated-or-just-well-paid/ChipNikh | Sep 30, 2014 6:47:20 AM | 50
21
OWS was a displacement operation, the magician's 'brilliant object'. When The Seeing Eye of Mordor glimpsed, in the wake of 'Grampa War Bucks - Princess See It From Here' defeat in 2008, amid the concomitant wipeout of US equities and 401ks, a rising phoenix of the Teabag Movement, seeking to sever the cord between NYC and WADC-NOVA, and therefore, as dangerous as the Tango were to the Muj in Afghanistan, The Chosen moved more brilliantly than we give them credit for.
The Blue Team created 'Occupy Wall Street', it's that simple. Directly athwart American Tealiban's march to Wall Street, bent on lynching The Chosen, The Right Stuff laid a psychic moat of radical, rebellious unwashed hoi polloi, a nocuous atheist antitrope to the American Tealiban's gray beards and blue hairs, hoping to pull the Temple pillars down.
And golly gajammit, it worked!
The Chosen laughed in derision at OWS, pissed out the windows on them. Breitbart taunted them in drunken glee. OWS were hosed with tear gas, the cops tended their clown show, the union garbagemen made their rounds. Then . they . all . went . home, leaving the American Tealiban in 'white hot rage', fecklessly slashing at their Twitters into an uncaring void.
After that inglorious defeat, the American Tealiban were coopted by trolls and trollops, led off madly tilting at Muslims, Migras and Microbes, or whatever Rush, Bill and Glenn served up for the day. Education and Ebola. Burkhas and Bimbos. Huddled in their basement bunkers, the MOST POWERFUL GROUP OF HUMANS IN WORLD HISTORY, who collectively control more wealth than lower four age quintiles combined, in fact, the last reserve of unconsolidated distributed private wealth still on Earth, were left helplessly blatherskite.
Think about that! Only 7,000 people showed for their Sovereigntist '10,000,000 Man March'!
The oldest jujitsu in the book. The Three Card Monte switcheroo. He who controls the meme, controls the masses. As Huxley:r maybe it was McLuhan, 'the medium is the message'.
Now scale 'OWS' up to snuff flicks on You Tube by Brit pop-star wannabes, with a compliant corporate media running ISIS PSYOP front page, until every NATO member was back on board, and you have a small glimpse of the power of meme displacement, as it's being used today.
As Yuval Harari points out, "What is so special about us that allows for such cooperation? Unflatteringly, it is our talent for deluding ourselves. If you examine any large-scale human cooperation (or co-option), you will always find some imaginary story at its base. As long as many people believe in the same stories about gods, nations, money or human rights (memes and antitropes) – they follow the same laws and rules (of conduct)."
You all might as well go pound your keyboards in the bathtub for all the good it will do, and rename MoA, ♫ La Société des Acolytes Jean-Paul Marat ♫. It's one World Mil.Gov Uber Alles, and it absolutely will not stop, ever, until you are dead. That's what it does!!
The Fourth Reich of a Thousand Years, on Prime Time, in plain view. Dig it.
Demian is a dumbshit | Sep 30, 2014 7:12:37 AM | 51
Right, of course:
"The promise to China goes like this: support Zion and we'll keep paying interest and rent with our worthless paper.
Will China take this 'deal' or will they do exactly as Deng did in Tiananmen? Things worked out pretty good for the PRC leadership after 1989. Does the belligerent faction hold any sway? Someone might be itching to teach 'Democracy' advocates a lesson."
Israel has nothing to do with this. And that's also a hilarious misreading of Deng Xiaoping.
c1ue | Sep 30, 2014 8:07:16 AM | 52
@Demain #139
You:There was a pretty big turnout at the demo. I am suprised that so many Hong Kong students let themselves get fooled."
I am not surprised at all. Kids in college - besides being in a bubble, are also at an age where then naturally tend to rebel against authority. Throw in a nice line and some funding - which "democracy" and the NED do nicely, and there you have it.
I do think it is amusing that protests in Hong Kong are such big news when far larger and violent student protests in South Korea have been going on for decades.
They were so common at one point, there was a "protest season"
Yastreblyansky | Sep 30, 2014 9:23:02 AM | 53
2013 numbers are available: NED funding for Hong Kong was down by a third from your 2012 figure, at slightly under $300,000, half of it for one human rights monitor. Compared to three times as much for Malaysia, say, or Ecuador, where any US hegemonic aims are certainly not being realized.
You really need to think in terms of what kind of power an empire is capable of projecting (military yes, nonviolent protest no), and what kinds of class interest are involved. I can understand how dirty US interests can be guilty of fomenting an upper-class coup in Venezuela, say, but I cannot understand how they could bring people out into the streets the way people are doing in Hong Kong--especially students: tight as the labor market in HK always is, youth unemployment is 11.6%. That's a real grievance, not a pretext made up by some American.
Farflungstar | Sep 30, 2014 9:49:29 AM | 55
@ 50: "The Fourth Reich of a Thousand Years, on Prime Time, in plain view. Dig it."
AKA, the coming "Global Plantation". Love the prose.
ben | Sep 30, 2014 9:34:12 AM | 54
If this wasn't NED sponsored, this story wouldn't have such legs. In Amrika, radio and TV twats are talking about it, so now people who normally do not give a crap about anything that doesn't directly affect them, are talking about it.
brian | Sep 30, 2014 10:13:37 AM | 56
http://landdestroyer.blogspot.com.au/2014/09/us-openly-approves-hong-kong-chaos-it.html
brian | Sep 30, 2014 10:16:34 AM | 57
Yastreblyansky | Sep 30, 2014 9:23:02 AM | 53
real grievances? amercains have real grievances yet we see no american springs, maidains or HK twats
what we do see in HK is the leaders meeting with 'people' like Joe Biden...just like Ukraine and Vicki(Fuck the EU) Nuland and M
Demian | Sep 29, 2014 9:14:53 PM | 39
There was a pretty big turnout at the demo. I am suprised that so many Hong Kong students let themselves get fooled.
brian | Sep 30, 2014 10:18:45 AM | 58
the ukrainians of euromaidan also let themselves be fooled
what im waiting for now is part 2: the SNIPERS
IhaveLittleToAdd | Sep 30, 2014 10:39:53 AM | 60
The synopsis is that the non-elite US citizenry and their interest groups have no influence on public policy. I sense this is fairly accurate.
Noirette | Sep 30, 2014 10:42:10 AM | 61
Don Bacon | Sep 30, 2014 12:44:35 PM | 62This is a typical Color Revolution Move.
Hong Kong is a fantastic place for it.
The young people, school-, students, are all wired (smartphones), close by and near to each other, very into group young 'activities', in a particular social slot as part of an age category and position which is very strictly defined, generally massed together in their daily lives, imho also quite conventional and ready to follow leaders / their popular guys / gals, etc. Partly because they are, in my imagination, never set foot there, pretty a-political.
1. OK a bit of a caricature, to make a point. Which is that such fires can be lit but then may die down, collapse under their own weight, the line between 'doing our thing' and political action dissolves into insignificance. Yet, they may spin off into violence on a reaction-counter-reaction scenario. An instigation of a color buzz in Hong Kong is in a way an admission of down-scaling.
Note the Hong Kong young ppl are occupying, demonstrating, or crowding, on questions that are not burning issues for them/their mates/families. The wider scope is perhaps sympathetic in a way, but not thought out (imho)
Contrast with what happened at the Maidan. What happened there is far more complicated, and many ordinary citizens of all ages / categories supported Maidan. Maidan was not your regular US-NED-type instigated color revolution. Ukraine had a color revolution - Orange - in 2004, which failed.
1. In other places, young ppl (not all of course..) are politised. In CH, for ex, they are Green, Neo-Nazi, libertarian, Goths, Radical-Liberal just like Dad, mainstream social democrats, People's Party supporters, etc. All have other outlets for political action that they would not eschew (except in dire cases of course.) Some defend only the interests of their corporation (watch-maker apprentices! A plan for life!)
The NED, often acting with its partner USAID, working for the US State Department and CIA, has been active in Latin America also. Their involvement in the 2009 Honduras coup and the current unrest in Venezuela have been fully described. Bolivia wisely expelled USAID last year.
Demian | Sep 30, 2014 12:50:34 PM | 64
Maybe we've been relying to much on the msm on this.b | Sep 30, 2014 12:51:29 PM | 65Counterpunch: Hong Kong's Fight Against Neoliberalism
As protesters flood the streets of Hong Kong demanding free elections in 2017, the international media puts on its usual spin, characterizing the struggle as one between an authoritarian state and citizens who want to be free. ...So according to this Hong Kong student (currently living in London), this protest movement is authentic after all.But regardless of what the BBC wants the world to believe, Occupy Central isn't so much a fight for democracy as a fight for social justice. ...
The main issue with CY Leung's administration isn't the fact that it wasn't democratically elected, but that it serves two main groups: Beijing on one hand, and local elites on the other – in other words, far from democratic in its representation. It's not hard to see why big business and the oligarchs are terrified of Occupy Central: any movement towards real democracy would see them losing power and losing their grip over the territory.
As documented by Tony Carlucci here many of the Hong Kong protest leaders have a long of contacts with NED/NDI.
Behind the so-called "Occupy Central" protests, which masquerade as a "pro-democracy" movement seeking "universal suffrage" and "full democracy," is a deep and insidious network of foreign financial, political, and media support. Prominent among them is the US State Department and its National Endowment for Democracy (NED) as well as NED's subsidiary, the National Democratic Institute (NDI). ...They also seem to have found some additional funding from some local oligarchs (with fonancial interests in the U.S.)
Don Bacon | Sep 30, 2014 1:21:15 PM | 66
Demian | Sep 30, 2014 1:28:02 PM | 67@Demian #64
Hong Kong's Fight Against NeoliberalismJuan Cole wrote about the neoliberal angle here, in regard to Syria but the general case applies.
@b #65:dh | Sep 30, 2014 2:17:37 PM | 70Hm, I guess I should have paid more attention to that Hong Kong student studying at LSE. David Lindorff got fooled, too.
More from that Tony Carlucci piece:
The "Occupy Central" protests in Hong Kong continue on – destabilizing the small southern Chinese island famous as an international hub for corporate-financier interests, and before that, the colonial ambitions of the British Empire. Those interests have been conspiring for years to peel the island away from Beijing after it was begrudgingly returned to China in the late 1990′s, and use it as a springboard to further destabilize mainland China. ...@Noirette #61:To push this agenda – which essentially is to prevent Beijing from vetting candidates running for office in Hong Kong, thus opening the door to politicians openly backed, funded, and directed by the US State Department – NDI lists an array of ongoing meddling it is carrying out on the island.
Maidan was not your regular US-NED-type instigated color revolution.No, it wasn't. NED-type instigated color revolutions don't typically have racist fascists playing a leading role.nomas | Sep 30, 2014 5:07:42 PM | 74Kinda interesting look at the protest leaders.....
"Wong, 17, the razor-thin leader of the student group Scholarism, has been one of the city's most outspoken pro-democracy activists for three years. Wong founded the group in 2011 to protest a Beijing-backed proposal to implement a "patriotic education" curriculum in the city's public schools; the following autumn, he mobilised 120,000 people to occupy the city government headquarters, leading officials to shelve the plan.
As a testament to his influence, state media has attempted to discredit him by portraying him as an "extremist" with shadowy ties to the US (he firmly denies the charge). Police arrested him on Friday night after a group of students scaled a fence to invade the government complex. By the time they released him on Sunday afternoon, his detention had already catalyzed further demonstrations."
http://www.theguardian.com/world/2014/sep/30/hong-kong-pro-democracy-protest-leaders-occupy
guest77 | Sep 30, 2014 9:36:56 PM | 76In all the pictures I have seen the Hong Kong "students" all look like mercenaries. They are all men, 20-30 YOA, muscular, all dressed in workout clothes, all carrying fanny packs, all wearing boots. If these aren't US trained troops then, bullshit. Because 90% of them are.
guest77 | Sep 30, 2014 9:40:31 PM | 77"Sticking with the neolib angle"
I don't think it is too far fetched to say that countries like Libya, Egypt and Syria bought into the neo-liberal bill of goods and faced - at least in part - some homegrown agitation because of it. The US is well known for "making economies scream" and the Bush-era was the height of neoliberal encroachmment into the former socialist areas.
Nothing is more sure to create a riot that slashing of food and fuel subsidies. The Americans know this, and push for this.
This is not to say that those who rush out into the streets and chop off the heads of the Shia have legitimate grievances, or are even motivated by the hurt of the average Arab citizen. But it does play a role, I have no doubt.
Gaddafi and Assad as well toyed with neoliberalism when the GWOT threatened them. It was "the offer they couldn't refuse" that lead to chaos in Libya and civil war in Syria.
What a joke to discuss "democracy" at a time like this.
The choice on the world stage is not wether this island city will have "democracy" but wether we will have a world dominated by one power - the worst conception of life that fascism strives for.
None of us know what occurs in HK past the slogans. What we do know is that, if China or Russia falls to the US - no matter how "autocratic" they may be - there will be no independent action anywhere.
Unless you call what is happening in Greece "democracy" or what is happening in Ukraine "democracy" or what is happening in Libya "democracy". In which case - you've:ough.
Demian | Sep 30, 2014 9:51:46 PM | 79
@guest77 #76:
Maidan demonstrators might not have wanted neoliberalism, but that's what they're getting, thanks to their "revolution". It would be the same with Hong Kong, if it citizens got "universal suffrage", a.k.a. officials chosen by the Empire (instead of China).
guest77 | Sep 30, 2014 9:59:54 PM | 81
denk | Sep 30, 2014 10:30:29 PM | 82@Demian - there is no fascist who does not work for the oligarchy, no matter what he or she thinks. The Night of the Long Knives comes - always.
besids wolfowitz the neocon and mark simon the spook, media tycoon jimmy lai's buddies include the well known ned patsy martin lee, a hk born n bred wog.
his ned connection is beyond doubt, hell, he got standing ovation whenever he went to the *hill* to sermonise on democracy in china.
hehehe
guest77 | Sep 30, 2014 10:42:21 PM | 83
Andre Vitcheck sums up Western "freedom" succinctly:
The West has finally reached the highest level of 'freedom'. It is a freedom for itself – a terrible freedom to play with the world as if it were a ball, a cheap and insignificant thing.
denk | Sep 30, 2014 11:10:34 PM | 85
brian | Sep 30, 2014 11:28:25 PM | 90http://zcomm.org/znetarticle/the-west-perfecting-its-techniques-to-hurt-china-by-andre-vltchek/
So according to this Hong Kong student (currently living in London), this protest movement is authentic afteer all. Hong Kong's Fight Against Neoliberalism Posted by: Demian | Sep 30, 2014 12:50:34 PM | 64
think that one thru! euromaidan in ukraine and the reforms rallies in syria may have had valid goals...this didnt stop them from being used by shadowy persons...both groups ended up being attacked by snipers..used to put pressure of the govts
if no snipers appear we can take this is a legit rally for what they claim....but my guess is others are there with other agendasDemian | Sep 30, 2014 11:47:05 PM | 91
@brian #90:
I think that the role that the NED has played here by itself shows that the demonstrators are being used and duped. I doubt that snipers will be used in Hong Kong.
By the way, from #66, Juan Cole wrote:
Only when the regime dealt with the 2011 protests by drawing up tanks and firing on peaceful protesters, and by stationing snipers on rooftops, did the protesters gradually take up arms.As far as I can tell, he is just lying there. First, as far as I know, the snipers did not work for the "regime": same as in Kiev. Second, the "protesters" did not "take up arms". The armed fighters are foreign jihadists trained by the US, as Andre Vitchec explains.Juan Cole is such a pompous, hypocritical whore. Informed Comment my foot.
Posted by: Don Bacon | Sep 30, 2014 11:50:49 PM | 92
Democracy is a Western concept, not an Asian one.
Don Bacon | Sep 30, 2014 11:52:35 PM | 93
@ Demian #91
Get issues into perspective.
Juan Cole may be wrong on snipers (you don't know), but not on neoloberalism.brian | Sep 30, 2014 11:53:04 PM | 94
@89
Global research has picked up on the students articlehttp://www.globalresearch.ca/occupy-central-hong-kongs-fight-against-neoliberalism/5405426
so we have two more sides to this issue! where lies the truth?
brian | Sep 30, 2014 11:55:06 PM | 95
Ming Chun Tang has a blog
http://clearingtherubble.wordpress.com/
its often useful to go back thru a persons blog to gain an idea of his/her orientation(....sorry!)Don Bacon | Sep 30, 2014 11:59:12 PM | 96
Toby Carroll's description of the HK economic situation might be applied almost verbatim to that in the U.S. One in five in poverty? US -- 15%. etc.
Crest | Oct 1, 2014 12:01:40 AM | 97
@95 Brian
I hope that's correct. It would be nice if there was an organic movement for social justice. Color revolutions seem to make everything worse for everyone but oligarchs.
Demian | Oct 1, 2014 12:31:09 AM | 98
@Don Bacon #93:
I never:at Cole is wrong on neoliberalism.
Cole also says that "ISIL surprised [Obama] and his intelligence officials". Cole doesn't mention that the ISIL is a CIA creation, so he is just backing up Obama with his lying.
denk | Oct 1, 2014 2:17:33 AM | 100
xxxbrian 94
do hkers have grievances , do mainlanders hve grievances too, do indians have grievances, indonesians have grievances ?
u betcha !
here's the truth....
what u can be damn sure is someone out there have been spending yrs in infiltrating and manipulating these dissidents movements. There's an army of cunts out there whose *day jobs* consist of looking for *sparks* at every corner of the world and ignite it into an inferno.
witness tibet, xinjiang, south china sea, east china sea, ukraine and....hk --
the uber militancy of these protestors is rather revealing, now they demand the hk chief to step down. -- the puppet masters know full well china wouldnt budge, in fact the police has issued an ultimatum to the protestors to back off.
in demanding a regime change, the manipulators are no doubt trying to provoke a clash, hopefully leading to *tam massacre* sequel. u bet they already have the editorials, headlines standing by...
*hk police shot at unarmed protestors, killing hundres....*wow , i could almost visualise these cunts wanking themselves in front of the screen already !
in every guardian thread abou tibet, xinjiang and now hk, there'd be idiots chanting about the tam *massacre*, where *the brutal ccp used tanks to crush the bones of unarmed protestors* [sic]
some cunts are already salivating that this would turn into tam2. !p.s.
in every fukus destabilisation caper, there'r always the willing and unwitting patsies, then there'r the useful idiots .....
*********************************************************************
http://www.moonofalabama.org/2014/09/the-ned-hong-kong-riots.html#c6a00d8341c640e53ef01bb078feb09970duseful idiot
*If it's true - then they must have learned it from Red China *kid,
ukus [ i cant use fukus over there] wrote the book on ff, any idea whats a false flag ?
http://www.globalresearch.ca/americas-foreign-policy-script-false-flags-humanitarian-crises-and-russias-phantom-tanks/5399836*However, as usual, you do the people of Hong Kong a great
disservice. Hong Kong people are westernised and are very politically aware.*u bet -- your idols martin lee, anson chan are typical hk born n bred wogs lol -- mind u,
politically aware isnt the same as politically astute -- a politically aware but obtuse activist is perfect target for brainwashing !*A bit of tear gas isn't brutal. What's brutal is sending in tanks and armed infantry into a bunch of students in Tianamen Square.*
see what i mean, u've been kept in the dark n fed bs all these yrs !
*Let's also not forget when China was inspiring not just riots in Hong Kong but also planting bombs in numerous places.
You want links? Here you are:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hong_Kong_1967_Leftist_riots
The true face of China.*
i dont want *links*
i want evidence, if u think wiki is credible *evidence* that just goes to show how brainwashed you'r. :-(hmm,
i forgot to tell him, ever heard of gladio ?Pro-Beijing Media Accuses Hong Kong Student Leader of U.S. Government Tiesxxx
By: WUFYS
Tags: CHINA CURRENT EVENTS PROTESTS/REVOLUTION
The face of Hong Kong's student democracy movement came under furious attack by a pro-Beijing newspaper today, upping the ante in the fight over the former British colony's political future.WEBMASTER ADDITION: "Evidence for Mr. Wong's close ties to the U.S. that the paper cited included what the report described as frequent meetings with U.S. consulate personnel in Hong Kong and covert donations from Americans to Mr. Wong. As evidence, the paper cited photographs leaked by "netizens." The story also:. Wong's family visited Macau in 2011 at the invitation of the American Chamber of Commerce, where they stayed at the "U.S.-owned" Venetian Macao, which is owned by Las Vegas Sands Corp."
Las Vegas Sands Corp. is owned by Sheldon Adelson, who is facing bribery charges under the current Chinese government and thus has a powerful motive to fund an overthrow.
Posted by: brian | Oct 1, 2014 8:20:30 AM | 103
speaking of hedge fundersxxx'Argentina is engaged in a debt row with a number of US hedge funds.'
http://www.presstv.ir/detail/2014/10/01/380657/kirchner-says-us-plotting-to-oust-her/and
'The top Argentine official further insisted that on her recent visit to Argentinian Pope Francis, she was alerted by police of a purported assassination plot against her by ISIL terror elements.'
now why would ISIL attack an argentinian leader? a clue as to who owns them?
Posted by: brian | Oct 1, 2014 9:09:53 AM | 105
@97:xxxSo these are the idealistic young people fighting for social justice and "against Neo-liberalism" (frankly, I wonder what percentage of them has ever heard of the concept), while simultaneously calling mainland people "locusts"? Hmmm, calling an entire huge group of people by the dehumanizing name of an insect...Does that remind anyone of anything?
What I understand, there is indeed a big wealth gap and social injustice in Hong Kong, stemming from the stranglehold of the financial and real estate oligarchs. But where did these oligarchs come from, and where did the legal system that protects them come from? IMHO, the Beijing government's fault was precisely too many concessions toward "local interests".
By the way, Here is an interesting article from, of all places, the Guardian. It does not see all the sides of the issue, but does make some good points.
Posted by: Chinese american | Oct 1, 2014 10:27:08 AM | 106
It is truly heart warming to hear people like Chris Patten calling for democracy. Under British rule democracy wasn't even up for discussion.xxxPosted by: dh | Oct 1, 2014 10:31:48 AM | 107
#OccupyCentral leader Jimmy Lai Chi-Ying is a business partner of Paul Wolfowitzxxxhttp://journal-neo.org/2014/10/01/hong-kong-s-occupy-central-is-us-backed-sedition/ …
Posted by: brian | Oct 1, 2014 10:32:04 AM | 108
@107 Thank you, brian, for connecting the dots.xxxPosted by: madisolation | Oct 1, 2014 10:52:20 AM | 109
David Cameron is "deeply concerned" about the situation in Hong Kongxxxhttp://uk.reuters.com/article/2014/09/30/uk-hongkong-china-britain-idUKKCN0HP0JH20140930
Nick Clegg meets the "activists" from Hong Kong.
http://www.theguardian.com/world/2014/jul/15/nick-clegg-hong-kong-china-democracyPosted by: Willy2 | Oct 1, 2014 10:55:48 AM | 110
Cameron and Clegg are right to be deeply concerned. The FTSE is crashing.xxxPosted by: dh | Oct 1, 2014 11:02:42 AM | 111
@103 My point is that the extreme neoliberal system in Hong Kong ("the world's freest economy") is the cause of Occupy Central, which is a symptom of the problem. I didn't say, nor do I think the movement's leaders are necessarily concerned about neoliberalism or indeed informed about the ideology. I think democracy could be a way for Hong Kongers to take back their own territory, and the vote is just the starting point. Once the vote is won, there'll still be a long way to go. BUT having the vote provides the opportunity and is therefore a condition for any real change to happen.xxx@105 There is indeed a lot of racism in Hong Kong, especially towards the Chinese nowadays. But that in itself doesn't make people's grievances illegitimate. Also note that the people labelling the Chinese "locusts" are a minority. The fact is that it's becoming increasingly difficult to make a living in Hong Kong, largely thanks to mismanagement by a government in bed with local elites and controlled by Beijing, and that is one of the main reasons why so many Hong Kongers are taking to the streets.
Also note that China has been paying protesters to rally against Occupy Central. One thing that Occupy Central's leaders haven't done is hand out cash to participants.
Posted by: Ming Chun Tang | Oct 1, 2014 11:23:29 AM | 112
@112 "I think democracy could be a way for Hong Kongers to take back their own territory..." That suggests you envision an independent Hong Kong.xxxAs I understand it Hong Kong has never been independent. Not under the Manchu and certainly not under the British.
Do you think Hong Kong would be economically better off as an independent entity? If that happened it's hard to imagine foreign companies that use HK as a base would be welcome in China.
Posted by: dh | Oct 1, 2014 12:14:58 PM | 115
@dh #114:xxxGood point. An independent Hong Kong makes no more sense than an independent Okinawa.
@114xxxI don't know if that is what @112 means exactly; there is the whole "one country, two systems" idea, after all.
Though of course I cannot read anyone's mind. It would not surprise me if @112 identifies more with the British, and does not see himself as "Chinese" (e.g. when it comes to those being called "locusts", he uses the word Chinese when I would have used mainlander.) But maybe I'm wrong.
As for Hong Kong independence, I suppose it is theoretically possible -- if China is utterly destroyed. I don't think Hong Kong will be better off economically better off in that situation, though.
Posted by: Chinese american | Oct 1, 2014 12:46:08 PM | 120
Ming Chun Tang, do you consider yourself to be on the left? Or even left leaning? In US there is a form of what I, and others on this blog, call fake democracy.xxxThe US now only trails the EU in being neoliberal. In other words, US has brought in fascism by popular vote. The EZ has had their democracy totally destroyed.
So called, free elections, can get any state neck deep in neoliberal orthodoxy.
Posted by: okie farmer | Oct 1, 2014 1:13:37 PM | 122
So China is by far the most democratic country in the world:xxxSo this is not about democracy but about imperial aggression.
Posted by: Ben | Oct 1, 2014 1:17:30 PM | 123
Peter Lee has responded to b's post which started this thread at Counterpunch:xxxBernhard of Moon of Alabama unearthed a fascinating budgetary item for the NDI in 2012 (and also, I must own, rebuked me for my naïveté in regarding the Hong Kong demos as home grown).I think we should treat Ming Chun Tang as an imposter and a troll. Someone here:at the real Ming Chun Tang has a blog. If a person with a blog makes a post at MoA, he will give a link to his blog.@123 Troll perhaps. But interesting. He is echoing the protesters line. They avoid using the word 'independence'. Too early for that I think.xxxPosted by: dh | Oct 1, 2014 1:22:30 PM | 125
Americans inciting the sheep in Hong Kong against their will.xxxhttps://twitter.com/RaviCNN/status/517018598616072192/photo/1
Posted by: ab initio | Oct 1, 2014 2:02:33 PM | 126
dh, I agree. Independence is a loaded word that, if used, could bring the Beijing authorities down hard on on occupy cnetral.xxxto take back their own territorySounds like the US Tea Party folk, "We have to take back America." WARNING: Ming Chun Tang don't use that word.Posted by: okie farmer | Oct 1, 2014 2:10:31 PM | 127
@124 "I think we should treat Ming Chun Tang as an imposter and a troll. Someone here:at the real Ming Chun Tang has a blog. If a person with a blog makes a post at MoA, he will give a link to his blog."xxxThat's pretty funny. Someone would actually impersonate me, a 20-year-old college student with a blog? Here is my piece published on three sources:
CounterPunch http://www.counterpunch.org/2014/09/30/hong-kongs-fight-against-neoliberalism/
ZNet http://zcomm.org/znetarticle/occupy-central-hong-kongs-fight-against-neoliberalism/GlobalResearch.ca http://www.globalresearch.ca/occupy-central-hong-kongs-fight-against-neoliberalism/5405426
Now, my blog: http://clearingtherubble.wordpress.com/
On the right, you'll see my Twitter feed, where I acknowledge your suggestion that I may be an imposter. Happy?
Posted by: Ming Chun Tang | Oct 1, 2014 4:26:00 PM | 130
Amrika needs her own color revolution. The kind that we like to meddle and instigate from the outside of target nations. It's almost a shame how many still respect the term sovereignty and do not habitually meddle in the internal affairs of others. Minding their own business now is clearly endangering the lives of their own citizens and way of life.xxxHow easy it would be for foreign $$ to manipulate desperate and stupid Amrikans into fighting and killing each other on their way to toppling the USG. There are so many of the sheep that are better off dead than breeding...the Amrika Uber Alles crowd who think no matter who or what Amrika is killing overseas, that they somehow deserve it. Amrika Uber Alles. Never Wrong, Always Right Always Killing for the Good Of Mankind. So many who could be on fire and I would not stop to piss on them to put them out.
Posted by: Farflungstar | Oct 1, 2014 4:31:36 PM | 131
Okay, I figured out how to include a link to my blog. There it is.xxx@118 Fair enough. Hong Kongers have never had prior ownership - HK has essentially been colonized twice, once by Britain and once by China. Taking ownership would be a better way to put it, and by that I mean the people actually having a say in how Hong Kong is run, rather than it being dictated solely by Beijing and by local elites.
@122 Yes, I do consider myself to be on the left, and I agree with you about the US being a pseudo-democracy. But now, what's the lesser of two evils: having a vote, or having no vote and having policy imposed on you from above? You're suggesting that free elections lead to neoliberal orthodoxy, but that isn't necessarily the case, and nor do a lack of free elections in any way lead to socialist utopia. The purpose of free elections is to provide the OPPORTUNITY for Hong Kongers to rule themselves and thereby change the status quo. Whether we take that opportunity is another question.
@127 Again, I never mentioned independence. I'm also not American, I don't follow the Tea Party, and I wasn't aware that they use that language, but I'll take your advice.
Posted by: Ming Chun Tang | Oct 1, 2014 4:36:49 PM | 132
@112 Ming Chun Tangxxxthe extreme neoliberal system in Hong Kong ("the world's freest economy")
The extreme neoliberal system in Hong Kong was created by the British. In the 90s, the big talking points in Hong Kong, what people were saying they were afraid of, were the terrifying "communist takeover" and losing their "economic freedom", and the Beijing government promised that it would not happen, that they would keep its hands off Hong Kong. Beijing is content to let the local elites run Hong Kong, but this does not necessarily imply that the local elites are "controlled by Beijing". Hong Kong does not even pay a cent of taxes to the central government, among other things.
I think democracy could be a way for Hong Kongers to take back their own territory, and the vote is just the starting point.
Has that been shown to actually work in places where there is the popular vote? How do you fight neo-liberalism by (NED-funded) neo-liberalism?
I am not denying that people in Hong Kong have real economic grievances. But grievances are enough to destroy and not enough to build. And they are easily turned to use by other forces. As for the "locust" talk, and the contemptuous attitude toward mainlanders (which I'm not sure is only on the part of the minority of protesters)--that does make one pause to consider about the suggestion that legitimate grievances are not the only reasons for the protests. How much of this sense of grievance is the grievance of losing one's superiority and privileged position, compared to the mainland? It is increasingly difficult to make a living in Hong Kong--how much of this is due to the fact that people now need to compete more and more with the rest of the country?
I was where you were 25 years ago. No, actually, you're way ahead of me at age 20: I certainly did not know what neo-liberalism was.
Posted by: Chinese american | Oct 1, 2014 4:38:03 PM | 133
@124 "I think we should treat Ming Chun Tang as an imposter and a troll. Someone here:at the real Ming Chun Tang has a blog. If a person with a blog makes a post at MoA, he will give a link to his blog."xxxThat's pretty funny. Someone would actually impersonate me, a 20-year-old college student with a blog?
well, Demian has a bit of a habit of making a fool of himself with his unwarranted speculations
he seems to think he can bully others into silence by making false/ridiculous claims such as the one above
Posted by: yeowzaa | Oct 1, 2014 4:40:17 PM | 135
All I am saying is that, if one want to fight neo-liberalism, then it seems to me that one needs to realize that neo-liberalism is pervasive in this day and age--in the political "science" and economic theories they teach in the universities, and in the articles of faith that they tell you are cherished universal ideals.xxxThat's how deep the rabbit hole goes. Once you've doubted an idea, every idea, then you can decide what it is good for.
Posted by: Chinese american | Oct 1, 2014 4:45:45 PM | 136
@133 It's true that it was created by the British - I don't deny that. I also don't think (and didn't say, mind you) that the HK elites are controlled by Beijing. What I:s that the HK elites are ALLIED with Beijing against the social movements because they're doing great under the status quo and the last thing they want is democracy.okie farmer | Oct 1, 2014 4:56:51 PM | 138On your second point, yes, there is. I'm sure I'll be slaughtered for saying this, but Venezuela has seen genuinely positive social change under a genuine democracy (unlike what the right-wing elites claim). But what makes you say Occupy Central is neoliberalism? They haven't got an agenda other than demanding the vote. And the declining standard of living has nothing to do with competition with China, because if that were the case, we would be seeing HK in economic decline. But that hasn't happened. What has happened is that wealth has been redistributed from the middle and working classes to the rich, as naturally tends to happen under capitalism. I think you're confusing two different issues - the issue of racism and the issue of class conflict. Hong Kongers aren't the type to protest over just anything, least of all that kind of resentment that you're talking about. Occupy Central is only happening because the middle and working classes are getting increasingly angry at the elites.
@134 So these American establishment papers are genuinely left-wing? Wow.
Posted by: Ming Chun Tang | Oct 1, 2014 4:54:33 PM | 137
xxxThe purpose of free elections is to provide the OPPORTUNITY for Hong Kongers to rule themselves and thereby change the status quo.Fair enough. It'll be an uphill battle for sure, the HK plutocracy will pour money into the elections, run stealth candidates, with the aim to get a TRUE neoliberal in office.For instance, in France, the Socialist Hollande has embraced neoliberal orthodoxy completely. His approval rating are now at 13%, but he doesn't care, he doesn't work for the people. Like Obomber, he's broken every campaign promise he made.
@138 Let me make it clear. I'm not optimistic about Occupy Central. Not at all. I don't think Hong Kongers are informed enough. But at the same time, I don't agree with your defeatism. When there are no good options, you've got to take the least bad option. Having a vote is, in my opinion, the lesser evil compared to having no vote when you look at who currently runs HK.xxx@139 Well, I would have signed into this site through my Twitter account, if only the site had allowed it. But good to see you now know I'm real.
Posted by: Ming Chun Tang | Oct 1, 2014 5:03:16 PM | 140
No, American establishment papers are way right wing, all of them, and supporters of neoliberalism. The only left leaning paper in US was a south San Francisco paper that got bought by some guy from Chicago who turned it into blah.xxxNo, the reason I would like to see your article in NYT etc is because you would, first, get a larger audience, and second, because you would have established a yourself as a journalist.
Still, I'm glad your got your article in those 3 sites.
Posted by: okie farmer | Oct 1, 2014 5:11:30 PM | 141
Cy Leung seems to be the main hate figure. The next big event will be Friday morning when he tries to get into his office.....which happens to be next door to the PLA barracks. Lots of media will be there for that.xxxPosted by: dh | Oct 1, 2014 5:31:07 PM | 142
'Posted by: I take it back, all of you are dumbshits | Oct 1, 2014 3:25:46 PM | 129xxxbut how much is 'democracy' a western concept? the american founding fathers (landed gentry) rejected it, and most states establish political parties who tend to ignore those that vote for them.
'rule by the people' is in no country on earth
Posted by: brian | Oct 1, 2014 6:29:32 PM | 145
'On your second point, yes, there is. I'm sure I'll be slaughtered for saying this, but Venezuela has seen genuinely positive social change under a genuine democracy (unlike what the right-wing elites claim). 'xxx
@137i presume most people here support the Bolivarian revolution and the late Hugo Chavez!
Posted by: brian | Oct 1, 2014 6:35:25 PM | 147
Posted by: Ming Chun Tang | Oct 1, 2014 5:03:16 PM | 140xxxthe problem with these movements is they way they get co-opted: witness what happened in Ukraine: grievances by people of euromaidan were used by shadowy forces to topple a legitimate govt, leading to chaos, fascist terror and war.
Posted by: brian | Oct 1, 2014 6:38:07 PM | 148
I would think that the very best thing for the HK protestors to do at this point is distance themselves as far as possible from the US Empire, and denounce it and its machinations. Otherwise, people will assume they are merely pawns.xxxDistancing oneself from the US Empire has to be the first priority of any genuine movement for justice. Even if the campaigns of protest are being waged outside of the US. Perhaps especially so, at this point.
Posted by: guest77 | Oct 1, 2014 7:12:49 PM | 149
@denk - thanks for the link to the '67 riots. Very interesting.xxxFunny to think that it used to be communism which put the fear of god into every government.
Riots, coups, strikes, real revolutions. Now the US has taken all those methods, injected them with millions of dollars and social and psychological research, and redeployed them.
The US is giving revolution a bad name. No doubt, that's part of the plan.
Posted by: guest77 | Oct 1, 2014 7:39:32 PM | 150
Totally OT, but Hong Kong was former home of one of the most amazing human structures ever built.xxxPosted by: guest77 | Oct 1, 2014 7:42:18 PM | 151
@151 The closest thing to that now is Chungking Mansions on Nathan Road...xxxhttp://arzucanaskin.com/2014/06/30/17-floors-five-thousand-people-friends-and-delicious-food/
Posted by: dh | Oct 1, 2014 8:16:16 PM | 152
@152 Oh wow, that's still pretty amazing. Thanks for that.xxxPosted by: guest77 | Oct 1, 2014 8:23:43 PM | 153
@153. Spent a couple of nights there some time ago. Didn't run into any university educated Hong Kongers.....:)xxxPosted by: dh | Oct 1, 2014 8:32:18 PM | 154
Hong Kong plays a fairly substantial role in McCoy's The Politics of Heroin in Southeast Asia.xxxIts worth remembering the decrepit state the British maintained it in during much of their rule. Addiction to opium and heroin was staggering. A big moneymaker for the big boys.
Posted by: guest77 | Oct 1, 2014 8:46:47 PM | 155
Posted by: brian | Oct 1, 2014 6:29:32 PM | 145xxxYes, I know. That doesn't justify the CCP's rejection of democracy, even back when it was still actually committed to Communism.
Posted by: I take it back, all of you are dumbshits | Oct 1, 2014 9:01:09 PM | 156
Hong Kong was built on the opium trade. Shanghai was part of the deal after the First Opium War. Beijing was sacked. A lot of Chinese haven't forgotten.xxxPosted by: dh | Oct 1, 2014 9:03:19 PM | 157
@124 demian quote "If a person with a blog makes a post at MoA, he will give a link to his blog." i was going to challenge this as i read down the thread just now, but i see i don't have to.. some folks posts here demian who don't feel the need to share their blog or website.. as a musician, i have a website, but i feel no need to share it.. i think you have to think a bit more out of the box then you imply in the quote of yours above..xxx@137 MCT quote - "@134 So these American establishment papers are genuinely left-wing? Wow." no.. those publications are propaganda central in the usa and for any bozo who thinks they want to understand the exceptional nation better and are stupid enough to digest these publications without a serious filter.
@147 guest77. ditto the first paragraph..
@150 guest77.. ditto the gist of that post too..
Posted by: james | Oct 1, 2014 9:17:49 PM | 158
guest 150xxxthe hierachy of a fukus destabilisation op
[1] fukus embassy,aka cia, mi6 nest[a]
[2] the willing patsies doing the bidding of foreign masters
[3] the unwitting patsies who do not realise they'r doing the bidding of the foreign powers,
[4] the agent provocateurs who provoke violence when plan A fails
[5] the grunts who do battle with the police, the cannon fodders who got killed , not necessarily by the police, when the shit hits the fan.i bet ming chun tang aint no [1] lol but he seem to be your typical wog,
tang is your surname innit ming chun ?btw, is martin lee one of your mentor, is he your idol ?
[a]
why isnt there a real color rev in washington dc ? coz there aint no murcun ambassy in washington dc lol.im still dying to know why aint fukus *diplomats* fitted with electronic tagging device to curb their monkey business.
Posted by: denk | Oct 1, 2014 10:59:53 PM | 160
China is currently overriding the FRB Cabal's funny money scam with real gold-backed RMB currency now - to help liberate the world from their scaly grip.xxxANYTIME A COUNTRY tries to create its own gold-backed currency that would render the USD fiat crap obsolete - the US stirs up dissent and invades (Iraq, Libya, Iran, etc).
Soooo...right on cue...color protest in HK...
and you thought ebola was bad!xxxHe [McCain]:A year ago, Ben-Ali and Gaddafi were not in power. Assad won't be in power this time next year. This Arab Spring is a virus that will attack Moscow and Beijing." McCain then walked off the stage.
Considering the overt foreign-funded nature of not only the "Arab Spring," but now "Occupy Central," and considering the chaos, death, destabilization, and collapse suffered by victims of previous US subversion, "Occupy Central" can be painted in a new light – a mob of dupes being used to destroy their own home – all while abusing the principles of "democracy" behind which is couched an insidious, diametrically opposed foreign imposed tyranny driven by immense, global spanning corporate-financier interests that fear and actively destroy competition. In particular, this global hegemon seeks to suppress the reemergence of Russia as a global power, and prevent the rise of China itself upon the world's stage.
The regressive agenda of "Occupy Central's" US-backed leadership, and their shameless exploitation of the good intentions of the many young people ensnared by their gimmicks, poses a threat in reality every bit as dangerous as the "threat" they claim Beijing poses to the island of Hong Kong and its people. Hopefully the people of China, and the many people around the world looking on as "Occupy Central" unfolds, will realize this foreign-driven gambit and stop it before it exacts the heavy toll it has on nations that have fallen victim to it before – Libya, Syria, Ukraine, Egypt, and many others.
http://www.globalresearch.ca/us-now-admits-it-is-funding-occupy-central-in-hong-kong/5405680
John McCain is the Typhoid Mary of the Occupy/arab springs/euromaidans. ..he needs to be quarantined preferably on Mars!
Posted by: brian | Oct 1, 2014 11:30:49 PM | 162
"why isnt there a real color rev in washington dc ?"xxxThere was one moment in the post-war period when the US faced precisely the phenomenon that have come to define "color revolutions", that being to occupy the central square, bring huge numbers into the seat of government, live in protestors.
This moment was Martin Luther King's planned "Poor People's March" on Washington. DC at the height of the Vietnam War. MLK planned to bring one million people to the National Mall, and to hold a massive, open-ended sit in.
Knowing people's love for him, his charisma, and indeed the violence that erupted in numerous cities following his death, we can certainly assume that he had the "political capital" to bring the country to a standstill and effect a genuine, Second American Revolution. Or we would have witnessed unbelievable bloodshed in our nation's capital to unknown effect.
There is no telling what that event may have grown into. He was, of course, murdered in the planning stages. The violence that followed was extreme but directionless. The "Poor People's March" would not have been.
Since then, consider what the US has witnessed in terms of loss of civil liberties, surveillance, police powers, and media control. There is little chance for such an event now, but if there is one, it will repeat what King intended on the National Mall.
_______________________
I presume the US has modeled its own global warfare on this and similar events it faced at home during the 1960s. The Ukraine and Venezuela - both of which included mystery snipers - has been the nadir of all of this. Gone are the days (mostly) of military coups followed by mass repression. Now we see "the people" driven out of their minds by carefully orchestrated media campaigns, push onto the streets under the guidance of professionals, to overthrow governments and impose repression and austerity, or simply rip the society to shreds as in Syria and Libya.
Humpty Dumpty sat on a wall...
Posted by: guest77 | Oct 2, 2014 12:24:01 AM | 164
guess 164xxxThe Times They Are a-Changin
http://12160.info/photo/mlk-i-have-a-dream-obama-i-have-a-drone-05-1?context
Posted by: denk | Oct 2, 2014 12:51:10 AM | 165
a possible solution is sugggested here:xxx'In truth, the ball is in Baba Beijing's court. They have the power and the ability to read the riot act to Hong Kong's elite billionaires and their corrupt, toady politicians. All Baba Beijing needs to do is say,
OK boys, it's time for a haircut. Your current inverted pyramid of wealth accumulation doesn't need to be re-inverted, but it sure needs to be flattened out enough to keep the peace. Make that apex angle more obtuse, much more obtuse.'
http://44days.net/the-skinny-on-hong-kongs-occupy-central-movement/NOTE supposedly Beijing cant act directly till 2047 so HK people cant blame mainland china, only their local billionaire masters
Posted by: brian | Oct 2, 2014 1:14:07 AM | 166
44days is a serious resistance blog, no doubt. Here's an OT article about the EU which shows a EU flag with a wolfsangel centerpiece.xxxhttp://44days.net/europes-inglorious-ignimonious-infamy/
Posted by: okie farmer | Oct 2, 2014 2:58:08 AM | 167
The American deployment of double standards never ends:xxxHong Kong protests: China warns US not to meddle in 'internal affairs'
"We believe human rights and the freedom of expression is [sic] something that's important not just in China but countries around the world," [Jen Psaki] insisted, asked about Wang's assertion that Hong Kong was an internal Chinese matter.I don't remember Psaki urging Kiev to engage in dialog with the people of eastern Ukraine, who only wanted a federal system of government and the ability to keep their children for being forced to learn a brain damaged form of Russian. Instead, she:at Ukraine had every right to bomb its own people with artillery and air strikes to preserve its "territorial integrity"."We're continuing to urge dialogue between the authorities and protestors," she added.
When are inside-the-Beltway types going to realize that Obama, with his neocon-infested State Department, has turned the US into a laughingstock as far as everyone but Americans and the English are concerned? America's persistence in this holier that though attitude is just lessening any remaining credibility it might still have as some kind of moral authority.
OT but, Russian currency going down even more..xxx
http://rt.com/business/192496-russia-capital-controls-putin/Posted by: Anonymous | Oct 2, 2014 6:47:04 AM | 169
Andrew Korybkoxxx
1 hr ·Gene Sharp's protoge, Jamila Raqib, coauthored an op-ed in Huffington Post advertising the fact that the 'Albert Einstein Institute's' destabilization tactics are being used in Hong Kong.
I've read every one of Sharp's major works and they are designed, even in his own words, to topple governments. He has written strategic guiding manuals on how to achieve this.
http://www.huffingtonpost.com/michael-shank/why-hong-kongs-occupycent_b_5906184.htmlHong Kong is not a protest, it is a Color Revolution. Well-intentioned individuals are being duped to join a movement aimed at overthrowing the authorities through a soft coup (for now), in a move that has never happened before in modern China. Legitimate grievances are being exploited by a revolutionary core and their cohorts to bring as many peaceful civilians into the fracas for use as human shields, in the hope that this will guarantee their own security amids the crackdown that some of them are trying to provoke.
My full analysis on this event will be forthcoming in the next couple of days on Oriental Review
https://www.facebook.com/permalink.php?story_fbid=10104993491934055&id=12462833Posted by: brian | Oct 2, 2014 6:51:54 AM | 170
i wonder why tang ming chun [1]
never appear in guardian, hell he'd get an army of cheerleaders from fukus, kinda like his home ground really.what has he gotta say about this charge....
brian 103
*WEBMASTER ADDITION: "Evidence for Mr. Wong's close ties to the U.S. that the paper cited included what the report described as frequent meetings with U.S. consulate personnel in Hong Kong and covert donations from Americans to Mr. Wong. As evidence, the paper cited photographs leaked by "netizens." The story also:. Wong's family visited Macau in 2011 at the invitation of the American Chamber of Commerce, where they stayed at the "U.S.-owned" Venetian Macao, which is owned by Las Vegas Sands Corp.*
im still waitin for his view on martin lee, the god father of hk democratic movement, is he your mentor, your idol , ming chun ?
[1]
i'd rather call deng xiao ping instead of the wog way like xiao ping deng.Posted by: denk | Oct 2, 2014 6:57:58 AM | 171
brian | Oct 2, 2014 7:04:17 AM | 173
xxxwonder who is the dumbshit here:
so:
'Under the revolutionary leadership of Muammar Qaddafi, Libya has attained the highest standard of living in Africa. In 2007, in an article which appeared in the African Executive Magazine, Norah Owaraga noted that Libya, "unlike other oil producing countries such as Nigeria and Saudi Arabia, utilized the revenue from its oil to develop its country. The standard of living of the people of Libya is one of the highest in Africa, falling in the category of countries with a GNP per capita of between USD 2,200 and 6,000."
This is all the more remarkable when we consider that in 1951 Libya was officially the poorest country in the world. According to the World Bank, the per capita income was less than $50 a year - even lower than India. Today, all Libyans own their own homes and cars. Two Fleet Street journalists, David Blundy and Andrew Lycett, who are by no means supporters of the Libyan revolution, had this to say:
"The young people are well dressed, well fed and well educated. Libyans now earn more per capita than the British. The disparity in annual incomes... is smaller than in most countries. Libya's wealth has been fairly spread throughout society. Every Libyan gets free, and often excellent, education, medical and health services. New colleges and hospitals are impressive by any international standard. All Libyans have a house or a flat, a car and most have televisions, video recorders and telephones. Compared with most citizens of the Third World countries, and with many in the First World, Libyans have it very good indeed." (Source: Qaddafi and the Libyan Revolution)
Large scale housing construction has taken place right across the country. Every citizen has been given a decent house or apartment to live in rent-free. In Qaddafi's Green Book it states: "The house is a basic need of both the individual and the family, therefore it should not be owned by others."
This dictum has now become a reality for the Libyan people.
Large scale agricultural projects have been implemented in an effort to "make the desert bloom" and achieve self-sufficiency in food production. Any Libyan who wants to become a farmer is given free use of land, a house, farm equipment, some livestock and seed.
"The standard of living of the people of Libya is one of the highest in Africa."
Today, Libya can boast one of the finest health care systems in the Arab and African World. All people have access to doctors, hospitals, clinics and medicines, completely free of all charges. The fact is that the Libyan revolution has achieved such a high standard of living for its people that they import labor from other parts of the world to do the jobs that the unemployed Libyans refuse to do. Libya has been called by many observers inside and out, "a nation of shop keepers." It is part of the Libyan Arab psyche to own your own small business and this type of small scale private enterprise flourishes in Libya. We can draw on many examples of Libyans with young sons who expressed the idea that it would be shameful for the family if these same young men were to seek menial work and instead preferred for them to remain at home supported by the extended family.'
http://blackagendareport.com/content/libya-getting-it-right-revolutionary-pan-african-perspective
so readers: ask yourself: who is the dumbshit here?
so my conclusion is mr dumbshit is either ignorant, of Gadafi and libya, and now is no longer
OR
he is a trollWhile I've got no doubt that US and englander agents have been stirring up shit in Honkers it is naive and patronising to write off the entire situation as a mob of idiots being told what to do by USuk.xxxThe root cause of the Honkers problem was the englander government's refusal to offer all the residents of Hongkong (remember they had been subjects of the englander queen for 100+ years), english citizenship when Honkers was returned to its legal owners.
If you actually listen to the occupy mob and the mouthpieces who support it, (journos and members of the legislative assembly), one quickly notices the prevalence of petit bourgeois englander accents.
Many of these types didn't require any encouragement from outside to be stirring shit.
It is disingenuous for Bernard to claim that the protests opposed to the Beijing screening then choosing candidates for Provincial Governor/Chief Executive or whatever it is called, are some sort of recent thing which HKers have only just picked up on. This issue was central to the demands of the HKers back when the english were running the joint and the english & chinese governments banded together to ignore the people's wishes at that time.Since no one seriously imagines there is the slightest chance of HK becoming independant or even largely semi-autonomous it is equally silly to imagine USuk are seriously stirring up a colour revolution. It is in the interests of the globalists that HK stay exactly as it is - but this doesn't mean that USuk mind creating some chaos for the CP regime to have to deal with.
A minor prick into China's ass to remind Beijing that straying too far from the script at the security council will always result in payback.So setting aside the deliberately provocative wind ups USuk has been engaged in, it is appropriate for normal humans to feel for the average HK shit-kicker. Many MoA habitues will be too young to remember when the englanders ruthlessly suppressed HK workers claims for equal wages with english workers back in the 1960's. At that time the englander government behaved exactly the same way - maybe worse than Beijing is currently alleged to be doing.
The englanders claimed that the workers were all 'Red Chinese' plants fighting for a commie takeover - The Harold Wilson Labour government was in power in england for much of this time, claiming to be fighting for trade unions and the working man, yet they were just another bunch of greedy white supremacists when push came to shove.Instead of just mindlessly deciding 'my enemy's enemy is my friend', a self defeating and unsupportable cry which has been dragged out on MoA with gay abandon on most ME issues of late, how about recognising that all of these large states and their corporate puppet masters are a bunch of cunts who don't give a fuck about ordinary humans outside of the time us shitkickers' misery can be exploited for the greedheads' own ends.
The only way justice can be got for any of us is by way of a concerted push for decentralisation and the breaking up of these larger than can possibly be fair sovereign entities into much smaller units where there is only 2 or 3 degrees of separation between all citizens.HK sure isn't the place where that can be advanced at the moment, because as I:rlier, the assholes in USuk plus the rest of the western neoliberals are just as opposed to and independent HK deep down as Beijing is.
Honkers works for them because it is part of China - break that relationship and the island's economic raison d'etre disappears.amerika, england, france - most of western europe, in fact - including germany, have all got populations too large to be able to deliver the things that humans expect from their society.
These are the states in post industrial decline and the best candidates for the first wave of entropic decline and degeneration that would stir citizens into demanding then forcing decentralised political structures.Posted by: Debs is dead | Oct 2, 2014 7:38:51 AM | 174
@137 Ming Chun TangxxxSorry, I am just going by what you write, but to be honest, from your posts, I can't help but get the sense that you don't actually know how the protests/the chief executive resigning/the popular vote will solve the neo-liberalism problem (or how these things are related to the problem at all), and as for most of the protesters, the have even less of an idea than you do, but just a sense of grievance.
So in what sense are you saying this is a fight against neo-liberalism?
Posted by: Chines american | Oct 2, 2014 8:04:56 AM | 175
So, Kerry is now making statements about US support of the protestors goals.xxxhttp://www.presstv.ir/detail/2014/10/02/380750/china-warns-us-over-hong-kong-meddling/
"As China knows, we support universal suffrage in Hong Kong, accordant with the Basic Law," Kerry told reporters, standing alongside Wang.The Chinese official apparently meekly stood there and:mething about China's internal affairs. Why? Why not bring up US treatment of the Occupy movement? Why not bring up militarization of US policing as seen in Ferguson? Why do these countries allow these schmucks to just spout off without calling them out?
Crazy.
Posted by: guest77 | Oct 2, 2014 8:34:47 AM | 176
xxx"We believe an open society with the highest possible degree of autonomy and governed by rule of law is essential for Hong Kong's stability and prosperity," Kerry added.At this point in world history, for the US to bring up a Chinese territories "stability", this is just an open threat.
Posted by: guest77 | Oct 2, 2014 8:37:44 AM | 177
xxxamerika, england, france - most of western europe, in fact - including Germany, have all got populations too large to be able to deliver the things that humans expect from their society.I don't think so. These countries have never in history been more capable of delivering peace, health, and a decent living standard to their peoples.
There is just an all out refusal to do so. This being on the part of those who own these countries and most everything in them.
Posted by: guest77 | Oct 2, 2014 8:42:12 AM | 178
The Chinese official apparently meekly stood there and:mething about China's internal affairs. Why? Why not bring up US treatment of the Occupy movement? Why not bring up militarization of US policing as seen in Ferguson? Why do these countries allow these schmucks to just spout off without calling them out?xxx
Crazy.
Posted by: guest77 | Oct 2, 2014 8:34:47 AM | 176The Chinese coined the term Paper Tiger having seen, first-hand, what the cowardly, incompetent, racist schmucks did in, and to, Korea and 'Vietnam'.
The Chinese, like the Russians, think defensive bluster is a waste of breath.
They prefer the Ugly Truth ...
Those who can, do.
Those who can't, talk.
... incessantly in America's case.Posted by: Hoarsewhisperer | Oct 2, 2014 9:14:15 AM | 179
neocons in Hong KongxxxHongkong Upheaval is Classic Neocon Regime Change "Color Revolution"
Sept. 30, 2014 (EIRNS)-Although there are multiple foreign "Project Democracy" operations involved in the current mass upheaval in Hongkong (such as substantial annual funding from the National Endowment for Democracy, and open support from Chris Patten, the last British colonial Lord of Hongkong), the most instructive input comes directly from the right-wing "neocon" movement in the US, through Hongkong's one and only "pro-democracy" newspaper, the Apple Daily.
Apple Daily was founded and run by Next Media chief Jimmy Lai (Lai Chee-Ying), who launched the media chain after the 1989 Tiananmen mass demonstrations in Beijing. He has funded the "democracy movement" groups in Hongkong for years, a fact that was revealed this past spring when his emails were leaked to the press. Jimmy Lai is now holding interviews from the streets of Hongkong, where tens of thousands of students have shut down major sections of the city since the weekend. Since riot police used pepper spray to clear out the rioters who had occupied a govenment building over the weekend, the riot police have pulled back and the demonstrators have taken over three main squares, sleeping out and refusing to leave.
The key role is that of Lai's bag-man and top assistant, Mark Simon, an American from Falls Church, Virginia, who previously worked for the Pentagon, did an internship with the CIA (where his father worked), and is a sworn defender and collaborator of the neo-con crowd which ran the Bush Administrations. The South China Morning Post revealed on August 11 that Simon, Lai, and Paul Wolfowitz spent five hours on a yacht in Hongkong (on an unspecified date), and Simon brags in interviews that he is a dedicated neocon. He was introduced to Lai by Bill McGurn, a leading neocon and G.W. Bush's chief speech writer. Lai, himself, reports Simon, "was truly friends with Milton Friedman and Gary Becker."
Tomorrow, Oct. 1, is National Day in China, commemorating the founding of the PRC in 1949, but most celebrations have been cancelled. The demonstrations in Hongkong are being covered in the mainland press, although in a low key manner, calling on the protesters to go home, and the local government not to give in. The International press is all rah-rah, warning of another Tiananmen "massacre."
http://www.larouchepub.com/pr/2014/140930_hongkong_color_rev.html
Posted by: brian | Oct 2, 2014 10:09:45 AM | 180
forget hongkongxxx
Ruptly @Ruptly 7m7 minutes ago
Police clash with anti-#ECB protesters in #Napoli http://ow.ly/CcCWKPosted by: brian | Oct 2, 2014 10:38:29 AM | 181
a surprisingly decent piece on Putin in WSJxxx'Russia has begun portraying the Hong Kong protests, too, as U.S.-inspired. Russian state-controlled television channels this week claimed that Hong Kong protest leaders had received American training.'
..
"Putin is a bold and decisive leader of a great power, who's good at achieving victory in a dangerous situation,":j. Gen. Wang Haiyun, a former military attaché to Moscow, in an interview with the Chinese website of the Global Times newspaper.
http://online.wsj.com/articles/why-russias-president-is-putin-the-great-in-china-1412217002
Posted by: brian | Oct 2, 2014 10:40:36 AM | 182
Is the BBC having second thoughts? Apparently not all Hong Kongers like the protests...xxxhttp://www.bbc.com/news/world-asia-29460118
Posted by: dh | Oct 2, 2014 11:04:09 AM | 183
this is a repost about a less well known foreign instigated riot in tibet 1987. i want to highlight the modus operandi of fukus covert ops these days... sacrificing innocent dupes, children, women etc to further their nefarious scheme.xxxHypocritical elegies
I learned of the participation of some 50 *foreign tourists* in the recent Lhasa riots with considerable outrage. But not exactly surprise.
I've been a foreign tourist in Tibet myself on three occasions since 1985. Each time, I met tourist after tourist who, in an interval of a few weeks at most, had become infatuated with a kind of vicarious Tibetan nationalism, Sometimes it was because of one or two conversations with inevitably pro- Western English-speaking Tibetans (there are many returnees from India now); [1] sometimes it was a rather thoughtless extension of genuine awe for Tibetan culture. But often enough it was something much more sinister. Many a blond, blue-eyed "Tibetan" nationalist with a backpack [1] was convinced that the Tibetans were nothing but a race of "noble savages," doomed to the same kind of extinction at the hands of the Hans that native Americans have suffered at the hands of the West.
Such hypocritical elegies are premature, to say the least. But there can be no reasoning with these bigoted "saviours" of the Tibetan people. They do not care that there are fewer than 100,000 Hans in Tibet and there were undoubtedly even fewer during the Cultural Revolution (actually, an anti-communist travel guide, the Lonely Planet Tibet Survival Kit, even admits that most of the damage was done by people who were ethnically Tibetan).
They do not care that there is not a single Chinese "multi-national" corporation in Tibet pumping the area of its non-existent wealth. They don't care that Tibet has never paid a fen in taxes and has on the contrary been richly subsidised for everything from education to industry to commerce. They don't care that the people's republic has waged a long, tough fight to modernise Tibet; in fact, they don't care at all about the modernisation of Tibet, as they themselves will tell you. They are beyond such arguments and mundane concerns; somehow they have all become fanatical vicarious Buddhists and are ready to lay down other people's lives to prove it,
What is really behind all this bornagain Buddhism on the part of foreign tourists to Tibet? Why do young Westerners who wouldn't waste 5 minutes on a religious fanatic in their own country and live in horror of Khomeini in Iran suddenly become devoted (if somewhat patronising) followers of the Dalai Lama, a kind of super-Khomeini who longs for the days when every pebble and tree in Tibet is his personal property. It is not simply ignorance, though there is plenty of that. It is, in a word, racism. Not just racist hatred for the Han people (though I have certainly
heard enough tourists describe Hans as "animals," meaning everything from their behaviour on buses to their alleged "occupation" of Tibet).
It is a particularly sickening kind of patronisation of the Tibetan people, who they see as a simple, happy, carefree race of child-like savages, free from the cares of the modern world and most in need of advice on how to remain so. I know this kind of patronisation. It is the sort enjoyed by native Americans when the reservations were set up and by Black people in the US as a way of keeping them out of White schools and successful careers that would only make them unhappy. It is this kind of patronisation which, in this world, is ultimately genocidal. There can be no better proof than the apparent willingness of large numbers of foreign tourists to bravely risk the lives of large numbers of Tibetan women and children in the name of the travellers' new-found convictions.
According to the REVIEW [15 Oct.], the mob used children to seize automatic weapons from policemen and set a car alight at the height of the violence. Of course, that is horrible, callous, cynical manipulation. But there are plenty of foreign tourists who would use the whole of the Tibetan people to take out their petty anti-communism and narrow-mindedness on China. Let Tibet forever remain closed to such cynical travelling "nationalists"! Or, better yet ... let them come, let them leave their money in the autonomous region, and let them take their idiotic notions of an "independent" Tibet (hopelessly dependent on the West) with them when they leave.
Canton David Kellogg[1]
i wonder how many of these *tourists* had a desk back in langley ?
Posted by: denk | Oct 2, 2014 12:59:23 PM | 186
http://www.wsws.org/en/articles/2014/10/02/hong-o02.htmlxxxWhile a narrow layer of super-wealthy tycoons has prospered, the living standards of the majority of working people have fallen. Jobs in manufacturing have been replaced by low-wage positions in service industries that benefitted from a growing numbers of tourists from the Chinese mainland. Despite declining real wages, the cost of living, especially housing costs, have risen sharply. The waiting time for public housing has blown out to ten years, forcing the low paid into makeshift accommodation and what are known as "cage homes."[...]
These pressing social issues, however, find no expression in the perspective advanced by those parties and organisations dominating the current protests-the pan-Democrats, Occupy Central and various student groups-which are all, despite tactical differences, narrowly focussed on ensuring opposition candidates can stand in the 2017 election. This is a significant factor in the predominantly middle class composition of the protest movement and its failure to attract substantial support from the working class.[...]
The demand for full and open elections reflects the interests of layers of the Hong Kong elite who resent being marginalised by pro-Beijing tycoons and fear that the Beijing's control over Hong Kong's political affairs will undermine its competitiveness as an Asian financial centre. This wealthy stratum is determined to defend what it regards as Hong Kong's competitive advantage, particularly over Chinese financial centres such as Shanghai: the long-established defence of capitalist property that unpins all commercial and financial transactions and is entrenched in the legal system established under British colonial rule.[...]
Even if the opposition parties and organisations achieved their objective in full-an open election in 2017 for chief executive-the result would be a contest, dominated by big money, between candidates representing rival factions of the Hong Kong tycoons.
The pro-Western orientation of much of the official Hong Kong opposition leaves the present protests open to manipulation by the major imperialist powers. At this stage, the US and Britain have expressed concerns, but not called for the resignation of Hong Kong's chief executive or explicitly backed the opposition's demands over the 2017 election.
Posted by: okie farmer | Oct 2, 2014 1:04:04 PM | 187
to recap what brian has reported so far....xxx
*Do you remember the "please help us" video clip from Ukraine?Here it is:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=DgpELf-0X8EAnd here you have another "please help us" video. This time from Hong-Kong.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0vvxlGUki7UDid you notice any similarities? :)
Posted by: denk | Oct 2, 2014 1:32:11 PM | 188
Excellent article from Ambrose Evans Pritchard.xxxPosted by: Willy2 | Oct 2, 2014 2:46:07 PM | 190
@188xxxvery interesting, as is this comment left by someone
Do you remember the "please help us" video clip from Ukraine?
Here it is:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=DgpELf-0X8E
And here you have another "please help us" video. This time from Hong-Kong.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0vvxlGUki7U
Did you notice any similarities? :)also its 'open' societies that are more prone to penetration/infiltration by foreign powers
Posted by: brian | Oct 2, 2014 5:44:16 PM | 193
This helps one understand the riots:xxxHong Kong and China: One Country, Two Histories
Unlike pupils in most schools around the world, students in secondary school in Hong Kong will see history twice on their timetables. Chinese History to teach them about their national past and History to teach them about their local and global story.For "global", read Anglophone.In Chinese History, pupils study the long and glorious history of the Middle Kingdom. From the first people to inhabit the China, through the rise and fall of dynasties, to the first half of the 20th century and the mass movements that period produced. Students are taught the basis for their nation, and the foundation for a pervasive nationalism. The Hong Kong Education Bureau's syllabus makes quite clear that the aim of the subject is in part to "nurture a sense of belonging to the Chinese nation and ethnicity."
Compare this with the aims of History – a subject that teaches local and global history in English – to "prepare students for citizenship," "develop values and attitudes in relation to moral, civic, and environmental education," and crucially "relate the study of the past to contemporary life." It is in the syllabus of this course that we can see how Hong Kong's values, variously defined as a commitment to liberty, equality, rule of law, and democracy, are developed and reinforced.
With a colonial foundation and Western inspiration, the History curriculum frames the history of Hong Kong in the development of universal ideals and liberal modernity. …
In Form 2, students are taught the "Transition to Modern Times." With themes like the rise in living standards due to the Industrial Revolution, and the impact of the Enlightenment and French Revolution on the world, they learn about the origins of modernity. The individual is at the heart of these movements, and the modernity that students are being told of is decidedly Western and not all that Chinese. …
The splitting of Hong Kong and China's histories serves to illustrate how difficult it has been and how difficult it will continue to be to integrate Hong Kong, with a globally informed political view, into a China that is actively seeking an alternative path.
What people are taught about history and politics in high school certainly molds their ideology. That Ukrainians have been taught using a highly nationalistic and Russophobic curriculum for 23 years explains explains why they are willing to make cannon fodder of themselves for the glory of a unified Ukraine. An interesting Russian piece I read pointed out that unlike Americans, Europeans, and Russians, Ukrainians do not appear to care in the least about the death and maiming of their soldiers. The country has become zombified.
Posted by: denk | Oct 2, 2014 12:59:23 PM | 186xxxlets not get carried away! i happen to be a student of Tibetan buddhism..tho not DL, and a quite aware of western infiltration into tibet in order tro surround china wih a ring of american steel
Posted by: brian | Oct 2, 2014 6:04:00 PM | 195
@brian #193:xxxBrilliant catch! The juxtaposition of those two videos tells you everything you need to know about the Hong Kong riots. That comment deserves to be front paged. (I still don't think that snipers will be used in Hong Kong, though.)
As is the case with ISIS, MoA is turning out to be my most useful source of information.
For the Euromaidan video, I used the Youtube comment translation feature for the first time: very nice. Since the vast majority of commenters are Polish, it comes as no surprise that most comments are very stupid.
@Ming Chun Tang:
I'm curious, what do you think of the Euromaidan? Do you know what Occupy Hong Kong people think about it? What the Occupy Hong Kong people are doing – camping out in the center of the city, causing much mischief – seems to be identical to what Euromaidan did. The only difference is that Occupy has not thrown Molotov cocktails at police or shot them yet.
@Chinese american:
I believe you are new here. Welcome!
I found out from thiis post at the same Web site as in #194 that International Relations actually has a concept of a revisionist power. How diabolically imperialist. When I read the following in a hit piece on Russia, I thought the author's use of the word "revisionist" in this sense was peculiar to him:xxxNurturing Chinese distance from a revisionist Russia is especially important, as is fostering the independence of states in Central Asia and the Caucasus.From Wikipedia:
Organski and Jacek Kugler defined status quo states as those that have participated in designing "the rules of the game" and stand to benefit from these rules. Challengers, or "revisionist states", want "a new place for themselves in the international society" commensurate with their power.Given that Russia was one of the victors of WW II, and hence participated in setting up the rules of the game embodied in the UN, it is by definition a status quo state. It is the US that is the revisionist, since with the collapse of the Soviet Union, the US started aiming for ""a new place for [itself] in the international society": that of unopposed world hegemon. Destroying nations, which the US began to do with Yugoslavia, thus violating the UN Charter, is not the behavior of a status quo power.@197 Demian- "Given that Russia was one of the victors of WW II, and hence participated in setting up the rules of the game embodied in the UN, it is by definition a status quo state. It is the US that is the revisionist, since with the collapse of the Soviet Union, the US started aiming for ""a new place for [itself] in the international society": that of unopposed world hegemon. "xxxWow. Damn. Dead on.
Thanks Demian. I'll be using that one.
Posted by: guest77 | Oct 2, 2014 7:01:34 PM | 198
@guest77 #198:I just look at these things from Lavrov's point of view. ;-)
It all depends on what you take the status quo to be. Russia takes the status quo to be the end of WW II; the US takes it to be the period of Yeltsin's Russia.
That Wikipedia article is worth reading, since it helps one understand how US foreign policy types think.
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September 22, 2014 | consortiumnews.com
By driving a wedge between President Obama and President Putin over Ukraine, America's neocons and the mainstream media can hope for more "shock and awe" in the Mideast, but the U.S. taxpayers are footing the bill, including $1 trillion more on nuclear weapons, writes Robert Parry.
The costs of the mainstream U.S. media's wildly anti-Moscow bias in the Ukraine crisis are adding up, as the Obama administration has decided to react to alleged "Russian aggression" by investing as much as $1 trillion in modernizing the U.S. nuclear weapons arsenal.
On Monday, a typically slanted New York Times article justified these modernization plans by describing "Russia on the warpath" and adding: "Congress has expressed less interest in atomic reductions than looking tough in Washington's escalating confrontation with Moscow."
Assistant Secretary of State for European Affairs Victoria Nuland, who pushed for the Ukraine coup and helped pick the post-coup leaders.
But the Ukraine crisis has been a textbook case of the U.S. mainstream media misreporting the facts of a foreign confrontation and then misinterpreting the meaning of the events, a classic case of "garbage in, garbage out." The core of the false mainstream narrative is that Russian President Vladimir Putin instigated the crisis as an excuse to reclaim territory for the Russian Empire.
While that interpretation of events has been the cornerstone of Official Washington's "group think," the reality always was that Putin favored maintaining the status quo in Ukraine. He had no plans to "invade" Ukraine and was satisfied with the elected government of President Viktor Yanukovych. Indeed, when the crisis heated up last February, Putin was distracted by the Sochi Winter Olympics.
Rather than Putin's "warmongering" – as the Times: the lead-in to another Monday article – the evidence is clear that it was the United States and the European Union that initiated this confrontation in a bid to pull Ukraine out of Russia's sphere of influence and into the West's orbit.
This was a scheme long in the making, but the immediate framework for the crisis took shape a year ago when influential U.S. neocons set their sights on Ukraine and Putin after Putin helped defuse a crisis in Syria by persuading President Barack Obama to set aside plans to bomb Syrian government targets over a disputed Sarin gas attack and instead accept Syria's willingness to surrender its entire chemical weapons arsenal.
But the neocons and their "liberal interventionist" allies had their hearts set on another "shock and awe" campaign with the goal of precipitating another "regime change" against a Middle East government disfavored by Israel. Putin also worked with Obama to resolve the dispute over Iran's nuclear program, averting another neocon dream to "bomb, bomb, bomb Iran."
The Despised Putin
So, Putin suddenly rose to the top of the neocons' "enemies list" and some prominent neocons quickly detected his vulnerability in Ukraine, a historical route for western invasions of Russia and the scene of extraordinarily bloody fighting during World War II.
National Endowment for Democracy president Carl Gershman, one of the top neocon paymasters spreading around $100 million a year in U.S. taxpayers' money, declared in late September 2013 that Ukraine represented "the biggest prize" but beyond that was an opportunity to put Putin "on the losing end not just in the near abroad but within Russia itself."
The context for Gershman's excitement was a European Union offer of an association agreement to Ukraine's elected President Viktor Yanukovych, but it came with some nasty strings attached, an austerity plan demanded by the International Monetary Fund that would have made the hard lives of the average Ukrainian even harder.
That prompted Yanukovych to seek a better deal from Putin who offered $15 billion in aid without the IMF's harsh terms. Yet, once Yanukovych rebuffed the EU plan, his government was targeted by a destabilization campaign that involved scores of political and media projects funded by Gershman's NED and other U.S. agencies.
Assistant Secretary of State for European Affairs Victoria Nuland, a neocon holdover who had been an adviser to Vice President Dick Cheney, reminded a group of Ukrainian business leaders that the United States had invested $5 billion in their "European aspirations." Nuland, wife of prominent neocon Robert Kagan, also showed up at the Maidan square in Kiev passing out cookies to protesters.
The Maidan protests, reflecting western Ukraine's desire for closer ties to Europe, also were cheered on by neocon Sen. John McCain, who appeared on a podium with leaders of the far-right Svoboda party under a banner honoring Nazi collaborator Stepan Bandera. A year earlier, the European Parliament had identified Svoboda as professing "racist, anti-Semitic and xenophobic views [that] go against the EU's fundamental values and principles."
Yet, militants from Svoboda and the even more extreme Right Sektor were emerging as the muscle of the Maidan protests, seizing government buildings and hurling firebombs at police. A well-known Ukrainian neo-Nazi leader, Andriy Parubiy, became the commandant of the Maidan's "self-defense" forces.
Behind the scenes, Assistant Secretary Nuland was deciding who would take over the Ukrainian government once Yanukovych was ousted. In an intercepted phone call with U.S. Ambassador Geoffrey Pyatt, Nuland crossed off some potential leaders and announced that "Yats" – or Arseniy Yatsenyuk – was her guy.
The Coup
On Feb. 20, as the neo-Nazi militias stepped up their attacks on police, a mysterious sniper opened fire on both protesters and police killing scores and bringing the political crisis to a boil. The U.S. news media blamed Yanukovych for the killings though he denied giving such an order and some evidence pointed toward a provocation from the far-right extremists.
As Estonia's Foreign Minister Urmas Paet: another intercepted phone call with EU foreign affairs chief Catherine Asthon, "there is a stronger and stronger understanding that behind snipers it was not Yanukovych, it was somebody from the new coalition."
But the sniper shootings led Yanukovych to agree on Feb. 21 to a deal guaranteed by three European countries – France, Germany and Poland – that he would surrender much of his power and move up elections so he could be voted out of office. He also assented to U.S. demands that he pull back his police.
That last move, however, prompted the neo-Nazi militias to overrun the presidential buildings on Feb. 22 and force Yanukovych's officials to flee for their lives. Then, rather than seeking to enforce the Feb. 21 agreement, the U.S. State Department promptly declared the coup regime "legitimate" and blamed everything on Yanukovych and Putin.
Nuland's choice, Yatsenyuk, was made prime minister and the neo-Nazis were rewarded for their crucial role by receiving several ministries, including national security headed by Parubiy. The parliament also voted to ban Russian as an official language (though that was later rescinded), and the IMF austerity demands were pushed through by Yatsenyuk. Not surprisingly, ethnic Russians in the south and east, the base of Yanukovych's support, began resisting what they regarded as the illegitimate coup regime.
To blame this crisis on Putin simply ignores the facts and defies logic. To presume that Putin instigated the ouster of Yanukovych in some convoluted scheme to seize territory requires you to believe that Putin got the EU to make its reckless association offer, organized the mass protests at the Maidan, convinced neo-Nazis from western Ukraine to throw firebombs at police, and manipulated Gershman, Nuland and McCain to coordinate with the coup-makers – all while appearing to support Yanukovych's idea for new elections within Ukraine's constitutional structure.
Though such a crazy conspiracy theory would make people in tinfoil hats blush, this certainty is at the heart of what every "smart" person in Official Washington believes. If you dared to suggest that Putin was actually distracted by the Sochi Olympics last February, was caught off guard by the events in Ukraine, and reacted to a Western-inspired crisis on his border (including his acceptance of Crimea's request to be readmitted to Russia), you would be immediately dismissed as "a stooge of Moscow."
Such is how mindless "group think" works in Washington. All the people who matter jump on the bandwagon and smirk at anyone who questions how wise it is to be rolling downhill in some disastrous direction.
But the pols and pundits who appear on U.S. television spouting the conventional wisdom are always the winners in this scenario. They get to look tough, standing up to villains like Yanukovych and Putin and siding with the saintly Maidan protesters. The neo-Nazi brown shirts are whited out of the picture and any Ukrainian who objected to the U.S.-backed coup regime finds a black hat firmly glued on his or her head.
For the neocons, there are both financial and ideological benefits. By shattering the fragile alliance that had evolved between Putin and Obama over Syria and Iran, the neocons seized greater control over U.S. policies in the Middle East and revived the prospects for violent "regime change."
On a more mundane level – by stirring up a new Cold War – the neocons generate more U.S. government money for military contractors who bestow a portion on Washington think tanks that provide cushy jobs for neocons when they are out of government.
The Losers
The worst losers are the people of Ukraine, most tragically the ethnic Russians in eastern Ukraine, thousands of whom have died from a combination of heavy artillery fire by the Ukrainian army on residential areas followed by street fighting led by brutal neo-Nazi militias who were incorporated into Kiev's battle plans. [See Consortiumnews.com's "Ukraine's 'Romantic' Neo-Nazi Storm Troopers."]
The devastation of eastern Ukraine, which has driven an estimated one million Ukrainians out of their homes, has left parts of this industrial region in ruins. Of course, in the U.S. media version, it's all Putin's fault for deceiving these ethnic Russians with "propaganda" about neo-Nazis and then inducing these deluded individuals to resist the "legitimate" authorities in Kiev.
Notably, America's righteous "responsibility to protect" crowd, which demanded that Obama begin airstrikes in Syria a year ago, swallowed its moral whistles when it came to the U.S.-backed Kiev regime butchering ethnic Russians in eastern Ukraine (or for that matter, when Israeli forces slaughtered Palestinians in Gaza).
However, beyond the death and destruction in eastern Ukraine, the meddling by Nuland, Gershman and others has pushed all of Ukraine toward financial catastrophe. As "The Business Insider" reported on Sept. 21, "Ukraine Is on the Brink of Total Economic Collapse."
Author Walter Kurtz wrote:
"Those who have spent any time in Ukraine during the winter know how harsh the weather can get. And at these [current] valuations, hryvnia [Ukraine's currency] isn't going to buy much heating fuel from abroad. …
"Inflation rate is running above 14% and will spike sharply from here in the next few months if the currency weakness persists. Real wages are collapsing. … Finally, Ukraine's fiscal situation is unraveling."
In other words, the already suffering Ukrainians from the west, east and center of the country can expect to suffer a great deal more. They have been made expendable pawns in a geopolitical chess game played by neocon masters and serving interests far from Lviv, Donetsk and Kiev.
But other victims from these latest machinations by the U.S. political/media elite will include the American taxpayers who will be expected to foot the bill for the new Cold War launched in reaction to Putin's imaginary scheme to instigate the Ukraine crisis so he could reclaim territory of the Russian Empire.
As nutty as that conspiracy theory is, it is now one of the key reasons why the American people have to spend $1 trillion to modernize the nation's nuclear arsenal, rather than scaling back the thousands of U.S. atomic weapons to around 900, as had been planned.
Or as one supposed expert, Gary Samore at Harvard, explained to the New York Times: "The most fundamental game changer is Putin's invasion of Ukraine. That has made any measure to reduce the stockpile unilaterally politically impossible."
Thus, you can see how hyperbolic journalism and self-interested punditry can end up costing the American taxpayers vast sums of money and contributing to a more dangerous world.
Investigative reporter Robert Parry broke many of the Iran-Contra stories for The Associated Press and Newsweek in the 1980s. You can buy his new book, America's Stolen Narrative, either in print here or as an e-book (from Amazon and barnesandnoble.com). For a limited time, you also can order Robert Parry's trilogy on the Bush Family and its connections to various right-wing operatives for only $34. The trilogy includes America's Stolen Narrative. For details on this offer, click here.
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September 12, 2014 | Consortiumnews
The Obama administration has refined the practice of "regime change," moving away from old-fashioned tanks in the street or overt invasions by U.S. troops, opting instead for "democracy promotion" that relies on "information warfare" to unseat elected governments disfavored by Washington, says Ted Snider.When placed in the proper context, recent events in Ukraine emerge as part of a pattern of "silent coups" typical of the era of President Barack Obama in which "regime change" is disguised as "democracy promotion" but actually overturns democratically elected leaders.
The Ukrainian coup unfolded in three stages: the establishment of the justification for the coup, the coup itself, and the exploitation of the coup to move Ukraine into the American sphere. All three stages bear the Obama administration's fingerprint of looking like democracy even as the democratic will of a population is negated and reversed.
These modern coups are unlike the classic military coups executed by earlier U.S. presidents, such as those that removed Mossadeq in Iran in 1953, Arbenz in Guatemala in 1954 and Allende in Chile in 1973. Nor are they like President George W. Bush's "regime change" involving overt U.S. invasions. The Ukrainian coup was so disguised as to be unrecognizable as a coup. The Obama-era coups require no tanks and few guns. They usually don the trappings of "pro-democracy" domestic protests.
The first stage establishes the justification for the coup. It pretends to be the expression of the public will through mass democratic expression in the streets. But it actually amplifies the voice of a disaffected and defeated minority. This pattern under President Obama took shape in the streets of Tehran in 2009 after the people of Iran made the mistake of once again choosing Mahmoud Ahmadinejad as their president – not the choice America wanted, so the choice had to be changed.
Next, the complaints of the U.S.-desired but defeated Hossein Mousavi and his Green Movement were picked up and amplified by the West, claiming that the election had been fraudulent, justifying a popular uprising for "regime change." Except that the result hadn't been forced on the people.
Despite frequent promises to furnish evidence and despite frequent opportunities to do so, Mousavi never delivered the case for electoral theft. And, as Ayatollah Ali Khamenei himself pointed out, this was no narrow victory where the rigging of a few votes or even a few hundred thousand votes could steal a victory. "How can they rig eleven million votes?" the Ayatollah asked of an election that got about an 85 percent turnout and saw 40 million people cast ballots.
But it is not just the titanic challenge of moving millions of votes from one side of the electoral ledger to the other. The polls, both before and after the election, continually showed that the votes were always there for Ahmadinejad. Former U.S. national security officials Flynt Leverett and Hilary Mann Leverett have documented that 14 methodologically sound polls - run externally by experienced Canadian and American polling organizations and internally by the University of Tehran - demonstrated the predictability, reasonableness and legitimacy of Ahmadinejad's 62.5 percent vote total.
On election night, the University of Tehran's polls showed Ahmadinejad vacuuming up 57 percent of the vote. In post-election polls, between 55 percent and 66 percent of voters:ey had voted for Ahmadinejad (who had a strong base of support among poorer Iranians and especially among rural voters whose opinions were less noticeable to the Western press).
The Western refusal to recognize the democratically elected Ahmadinejad coupled with the credence and amplification that America gave to the exaggeratedly popular Green Movement created the umbrella under which Mousavi's movement could take to the streets and attempt the removal of a regime unwanted by Washington.
Such a coup-in-disguise exploits one of the potential troubles with democracy. It is the nature of democracy that the majority of people, not the unanimity of people, get to select the government. Even if a government wins a convincing 62.5 percent of the vote, that leaves a sometimes dissatisfied 37.5 percent of the people to take to the streets.
In a large country like Iran, where 40 million people voted, that translates into 15 million people who can take to the streets. When picked up by a sympathetic Western media, protests by even a fraction of those numbers that can create the appearance of a mass social movement that justifies supporting what appears to be a popular demand for a change in regime. A "pro-democracy" social movement is born.
In Iran, a group that could not change the government through the democratic electoral process appeared to make a strong "democratic" case to change the government through social pressure. A mass minority protesting in the streets produced a cry heard more loudly around the world than a silent majority in a secret polling booth. It was still the minority, but – in such cases – "democracy" can be wielded as a weapon against democracy. If you can't bring about the government you want in the polls, bring it about in the streets.
This Iran experiment of legitimizing a coup by transforming the minority, which failed to democratically change the government at the polls, into a mass movement expressing the "public will" to change the government in the streets fell short of its goal although creating a widespread impression in the West that Ahmadinejad's reelection was illegitimate.
Other 'Silent Coup' Attempts
Four years later, a similar silent coup attempt appeared in the streets of Venezuela. With the death of Hugo Chavez, America saw the opportunity for the first time since 1988 to have a leader elected in Venezuela who did not insist on his country's autonomy from the U.S. But, to America's dismay, the people voted to continue the Bolivarian Revolution by electing Chavez's chosen successor, Nicolás Maduro.
The Western media lens immediately focused not on the election of Maduro and Chavez's party but on the claims of fraud issued by Maduro's opponent (and Washington's choice) Henrique Capriles. Despite Maduro agreeing to an audit of the voting machines, despite Capriles never filing his legal charges, despite 150 electoral monitors from around the world – including the Carter Center – certifying the election as fair and despite recognition by every other country in the world, the U.S. State Department continued not to recognize the Maduro government and continued to call for a recount and review.
When Capriles called his democratically defeated supporters to the streets, the Western media lens, as in Iran four years earlier, focused on and amplified the protests. As with Iran, Washington's refusal to recognize the elected government and the U.S. legitimization of the protests provided cover to the opposition while it attempted to overturn the election results and overthrow the elected government.
Once again, "democracy promotion" was wielded as a weapon against democracy. Yet, in Venezuela, the experiment failed again, as it may have in Turkey and Brazil where Washington also looked with disfavor on the election outcomes.
In Brazil, Lula da Silva won 61.3 percent of the vote in 2002 and 60.83 percent in 2006. In the most recent election, in 2010, Lulu's successor, Dilma Rousseff, won a majority 56.05 percent of the vote. In Turkey, Recep Tayyip Erdogan, far from declining in popularity, had seen his government's actions rewarded with increasing voter support: 34 percent in 2002, 46.66 percent in 2007 and 49.83 percent in 2011. Nevertheless, in both countries, the defeated minorities took to the streets to attempt what they could not achieve in the polls.
This silent coup technique would prove more successful in Egypt where the democratically elected Mohamed Morsi would be removed from office not by democracy and the ballot box but, at least in part, by the defeated minority walking out of the polls and into the streets. "Democracy promotion" protests in Cairo and elsewhere set the stage for Morsi's ouster by the Egyptian military.
The Ukrainian 'Success'
The first stage of the Ukrainian coup - the establishment of a justification for the coup - fits this same pattern. As Seamus Milne: the Guardian, the protest in the streets of Ukraine was "played out through the western media according to a well-rehearsed script. Pro-democracy campaigners are battling an authoritarian government." But, he adds: "it bears only the sketchiest relationship to reality."
Though President Viktor Yanukovych is often portrayed in the Western media as a dictator who was flown in by Russia, the man the protestors were trying to remove on the streets was elected in 2010 by a plurality of 48.9 percent of the people in elections declared fair by international observers.
So this was not a mass "pro-democracy" movement ousting an unelected dictator. As in Iran, Venezuela and Egypt, this was the case of the losers of the last election trying to reverse those results by going into the streets. But, to make the script work, Western governments and media alter the roles and turn the democratically elected president into the undemocratic one and the opposition into the democracy.
Thus, the West cooperated in the de-legitimization of the elected government of Ukraine and the legitimization of a coup. Such a silent coup is made to appear "democratic" by making it look like a heroic "peoples" movement arising spontaneously from the street.
Having legitimized the cause of the coup-makers, the second stage is the silent coup itself. In this stage, the silent coup is disguised as the shuffling of the legal and constitutional workings of a nation's parliament. Once again, the coup is executed by wielding "democracy" as the chief weapon.
This aspect of the silent coup – making it appear as simply a discontented population leading to a dispute among constitutional institutions – was developed and perfected in Latin America. During Obama's presidency, it first appeared in Honduras where democratically elected President Manuel Zelaya was whisked out of the country in a kidnapping at gunpoint that was dressed up as a constitutional obligation because Zelaya had announced a plebiscite to determine whether Hondurans wanted to draft a new constitution (since the old one favored the privileged oligarchy).
The political establishment – hostile to Zelaya's proposal – falsely translated his announcement into an unconstitutional intention to seek reelection. The ability to stand for a second term would have been considered in the constitutional discussions, but was never announced as an intention by Zelaya.
The Honduran Supreme Court declared the President's plebiscite unconstitutional; the military kidnapped Zelaya; and the Supreme Court charged Zelaya with treason and declared a new president. In other words, it was a coup in constitutional disguise. As American diplomatic cables made clear, the U.S. State Department knew the change in regime was a coup cloaked in the costume of a constitutional act. (Nevertheless, the result of the coup was supported by Secretary of State Hillary Clinton.)
The second appearance of this coup pattern occurred in Paraguay when the right-wing Frederico Franco took the presidency from democratically elected, left-leaning Fernando Lugo in a replay of the parliamentary coup. As in Honduras, a coup was made to look like a constitutional transition.
The right-wing opposition opportunistically capitalized on a skirmish over disputed land that left at least 11 people dead to unfairly blame the deaths on President Lugo. It then impeached him after giving him only 24 hours to prepare his defense and only two hours to deliver it. Embassy cables again show that the U.S. was prepared to permit this kind of coup.
The Ukrainian coup is the third incarnation of this pattern of silent coup during the Obama administration. The coup that removed Viktor Yanukovych was disguised to appear as the workings of parliamentary democracy (after street protests in Kiev – supported by U.S. officials – and violent clashes between police and demonstrators created a crisis atmosphere).
With the clashes growing more intense, the parliamentary process that removed the democratically elected leader of Ukraine had three phases. In Act I, after Yanukovych had reached an agreement guaranteed by three European nations to accept reduced powers and to call early elections so he could be voted out of office, government security forces withdrew from the streets leaving public buildings unguarded. That allowed protesters to take control.
In Act II, the opposition made sure that it had the numbers and the strength to take over the parliament by pouncing when, according to the UK Guardian, "many of the MPs for southern and eastern Ukraine were absent from the session. Instead they were at a pre-scheduled congress of regional politicians in Kharkiv" and by intimidating those who remained who were loyal to Yanukovych.
Journalist Robert Parry wrote that neo-Nazi right-wing protesters occupied the government buildings "and forced Yanukovych and many of his allies to flee for their lives."
In Act III, political parties that held just a minority of the Ukrainian parliament - mostly from the west - dismissed Yanukovych, favorably altered the constitution and formed a new government and began passing new laws often unanimously under intimidation. Parry wrote that "With Yanukovych and many of his supporters fleeing for their lives, the opposition parties seized control of parliament and began passing draconian new laws . . . as neo-Nazi thugs patrolled the scene" – a coup in constitutional disguise.
So, what was really a coup was made to look, as in Honduras and Paraguay, like the legitimate democratic actions of the parliament.
Creating a Pretext
The original issue used as a pretext for the coup was Yanukovych's abandonment of an economic alliance with the European Union in favor of an economic alliance with Russia. But polls clearly demonstrate that the numbers on each side of the choice paralleled the numbers in the 2010 election: a nearly even split. So, the side that took over in the streets and in the parliament was the same side that lost in the 2010 election and did not represent a democratic change of the people.
As in Honduras and Paraguay, the silent coup in parliamentary disguise was assisted by the West. The trigger for the coup was consistently presented in the West as Yanukovych simply abandoning the E.U. in favor of Russia. But the West pushed him into a situation that made the crisis inevitable.
According to Stephen Cohen, Professor Emeritus of Russian Studies at Princeton, "it was the European Union, backed by Washington, that: November to the democratically elected President of a profoundly divided country, Ukraine, 'You must choose between Europe and Russia'." Cohen added that Washington and the E.U. rejected Russian President Vladimir Putin's offer of collaboration for the E.U., America and Russia all to help Ukraine without forcing it to choose.
Having:at Yanukovych must choose one or the other, the West then made it impossible for him to choose the West. Robert Parry reported that the E.U. was "demanding substantial economic 'reforms,' including an austerity plan dictated by the International Monetary Fund." Russia, however, offered $15 billion in loans without such demands.
And in addition to the austerity measures, Cohen added that the E.U. proposal also "included 'security policy' provisions . . . that would apparently subordinate Ukraine to NATO." The provisions compelled Ukraine to "adhere to Europe's 'military and security' policies."
In effect, the West forced Yanukovych to choose Russia, thus setting the stage for the violent protests in the street. The U.S. government then protected and nurtured those protests. Both Sen. John McCain and Assistant Secretary of State for European and Eurasian affairs Victoria Nuland publicly endorsed and supported the protesters' undemocratic demand for regime change.
Washington then provided cover and legitimacy to the violent movement in the street by condemning not the protesters' fire bombs and other acts of violence but the police response. And America did more than rhetorically support the protest: it helped finance the disruptions.
The National Endowment for Democracy (NED) was created by Ronald Reagan in 1983 to, according to Robert Parry, "promote political action and psychological warfare against targeted states." Allen Weinstein, its original project director,: 1991 that "a lot of what we do today was done covertly 25 years ago by the C.I.A."
Parry reported that the U.S.-government-funded NED listed a staggering 65 projects that it funded inside Ukraine, creating "a shadow political structure of media and activist groups that could be deployed to stir up unrest when the Ukrainian government didn't act as desired." (In a September 2013, op-ed in the Washington Post, NED President Carl Gershman had referred to Ukraine as "the biggest prize.")
In other words, NED money financed projects that helped drive the coup, but there was apparently much more U.S. money than what NED supplied. In December 2013, Victoria Nuland told an audience at the Ukraine Foundation Conference that the U.S. had invested over $5 billion in a "democratic Ukraine."
But Nuland:re than that. She accidentally revealed the American handwriting on the Ukrainian coup script. In an intercepted phone call that was made public, she was caught plotting who the Americans wanted to be the winner of the regime change. She told the American ambassador in Kiev, Geoffrey Pyatt, that Arseniy Yatsenyuk was America's choice to replace Yanukovych (and he did).
Pyatt also refers to the West needing to "midwife this thing," a metaphorical admission of America's role in the coup. At one point, Nuland even seems to say that Vice President Joe Biden, himself, would be willing to do the midwifery.
The Third Stage
Having made what was clearly a coup appear to be the legitimate shuffling of parliamentary democracy, the new government was ripe to advance to the third stage: moving Ukraine into the American sphere. Like the silent justification of the coup and the silent coup in constitutional disguise, the moving of Ukraine into the American sphere was a silent takeover: no invasion necessary.
The new government formally asked to ally itself with the patrons who helped place it in power in the first place. On Aug. 29, Ukrainian Prime Minister Arseniy Yatsenyuk-the very man Victoria Nuland was caught naming as America's choice to replace Yanukovych – announced that his cabinet had approved a bill putting an end to Ukraine's non-aligned status that would pave the way for "resumption of Ukraine's course for NATO membership." The bill will now be sent on to parliament.
NATO Secretary General Anders Fogh Rasmussen responded immediately to Yatsenyuk's announcement by reminding the world of NATOs 2008 decision that Ukraine would become a member of NATO if it so wanted and added that NATO would "fully respect" Ukraine's intention to join.
So the silent coup had set the stage for the silent takeover of Ukraine by the West, as Ukraine slides out of Russia's orbit and into NATO's, a hostile takeover of a country in democratic disguise.
On its own, the Ukrainian intervention clearly has the markings of a U.S.-backed coup. But, removed from isolation and placed into the context of other coups and attempted coups that have taken place during Obama's presidency, the Ukrainian coup can be seen to be the culmination of a pattern of coups made to look not like coups but like the admirable exercise of "democracy."
Ted Snider has a graduate degree in philosophy and writes on analyzing patterns in U.S. foreign policy and history.
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Sep 02, 2014 | Information Clearing House - ICH
3.2 Ukraine – Regime Change
For years, the association agreement between the EU and Ukraine was of minor importance. Many European politicians, first of all the German Chancellor, showed provocative disinterest in Ukraine. When, in November 2013, Russia asked for access to the negotiation table, it was rebuffed by the EU.
While Brussels was playing for time, the US was preparing the overthrow of the government. Since the end of the Cold War the United States has been surrounding Russia, building one military base after another, ceaselessly looking for new ones, including in Ukraine. The US deployment of new weapon systems in Eastern Europe is consistent with a plan for antagonizing Moscow that was proposed in the Washington Post by the Obama administration's ideological godfather, Zbigniew Brzezinski, immediately after a group of self-proclaimed Maidan leaders chased away the elected government. It betrays all those who suspect that he might have changed his position in his recent publications: "The West should promptly recognize the current government of Ukraine as legitimate. Uncertainty regarding its legal status could tempt Putin to repeat his Crimean charade. … Meanwhile, NATO forces, consistent with the organization's contingency planning, should be put on alert. High readiness for some immediate airlift to Europe of U.S. airborne units would be politically and militarily meaningful. If the West wants to avoid a conflict, there should be no ambiguity in the Kremlin as to what might be precipitated by further adventurist use of force in the middle of Europe" (Brzezinski, Z. 2014).
The US had tried, but failed, to take Ukraine in 2004 with the Washington-financed "Orange Revolution." According to Assistant Secretary of State (and wife to PNAC godfather Robert Kagan) Victoria Nuland, since this failure Washington has invested $5 billion in Ukraine in order to foment agitation for EU membership for Ukraine [30]. EU membership would open Ukraine to looting by Western bankers and corporations, but Washington's main goal is to establish US missile bases on Russia's border with Ukraine and to deprive Russia of its Black Sea naval base and military industries in eastern Ukraine. EU membership for Ukraine means NATO membership (Roberts, P.C. 2014b).
When President Yanukovich declared on 21 November he would not sign the EU association agreement, clashes erupted in the streets of Kiev. Hundreds of thousands took to the streets and to Maidan Square on December weekends. This was the critical stage of a campaign fueled by the three opposition parties „Fatherland" (Yuljia Tymochenko, Arsenji Yatsenyuk), „Bang" (German Konrad Adenauer Foundation funded box champion Vitali Klitschko) and „Freedom" (Svoboda leader and closely tied in the network of European fascist parties, Oleh Tjahnybok). Their common goal was to oust President Viktor Yanukovych whose Party of the Regions had succeeded in the 2012 elections. Kiev's membership in the EU would then not be far off; after which the country could embrace the joys of neo-conservatism, receiving the benefits of the standard privatization-deregulation-austerity package and join Portugal, Ireland, Greece, and Spain as an impoverished orphan of the family. Crimea's deputy prime minister, Olga Kovitidi, described as predatory the terms of an agreement Kiev is ready to accept from the International Monetary Fund (Voice of Russia, 2014).
Since the 2004 revolt, fascist militias had been built up and paid for who would now ignite the actual uprisings and prevent compromise (Svoboda, Right Sector). They call for violence, and occupy provincial governments in the mostly agricultural and right-wing West of the country. In the Western regions of Lwow, Ternopol, Rovno, Luzk and Iwano-Frankowsk and others, they stormed office buildings and pressed governors to sign their resignations. While thousands of people took part in anti-government protests in Kiev, a small group of radical fighters were at the core of the violent clashes. Judging by their looks and actions, they are armed, trained and prepared for war. Apart from individual gear, the rioters know urban guerrilla tactics. The protesters were also well-prepared for offensive. They had a wide assortment of melee weapons.
The National Endowment for Democracy website [31] lists 65 projects that it has supported financially in recent years in Ukraine. Their programs impart the basic philosophy that people are best served under a system of free enterprise, minimal government intervention in the economy, and opposition to socialism in any shape or form. A free-market economy is equated with democracy, reform, and growth; and the merits of foreign investment in their economy are emphasized. The NED would do somewhat overtly what the CIA had been doing covertly for decades, and thus eliminate the stigma associated with CIA covert activities. NED receives virtually all its financing from the US government. Why were Washington officials grooming a replacement for President Yanukovych, legally and democratically elected in 2010 who, in the face of protests, moved elections up so he could have been voted out of office – not thrown out by a mob? Yanukovych made repeated important concessions, including amnesty for those arrested and offering, on January 25, to make two of his adversaries prime minister and deputy prime minister; all to no avail. Key elements of the protestors, and those behind them, wanted their putsch. Ukraine's junta prime minister announced March 7 that he has invited the NATO Council to hold a meeting in Kiev over the recent developments in the country. "I invited the North Atlantic Council to visit Kiev and hold a meeting there," Arseny Yatsenyuk:ring a visit to Brussels, where he met with NATO Secretary General Anders Fogh Rasmussen and EU officials. "We believe that it will strengthen our cooperation" (Blum, W. 2014a).
In addition to NED, the foreign donors included the U.S. State Department and USAID along with the National Democratic Institute for International Affairs, the International Republican Institute, the NGO Freedom House and George Soros's Open Society Institute (Ames, M. 2014). They all have supported non-governmental democracy-building efforts in Eastern Europe since 1988. Each of these social movements included extensive work by student activists. The most famous of these was Otpor, the youth movement that helped bring in Vojislav Koštunica. In Georgia the movement was called Kmara. In Ukraine the movement has worked under the succinct slogan "Pora" ("It's Time"). Pora was built up in Ukraine in 2004 in order to assist in regime change. "We trained them in how to set up an organization, how to open a local chapter, how to develop a brand with logo, symbols, and key messages",: Otpor activist in the US-funded Radio Free Europe/Radio Liberty. "We trained them in how to detect societies' weaknesses and what the most burning problems of the population are." Srdja Popovic, Otpor's founder and director, was found to have close working relationships with US intelligence firm Stratfor. He boasted to be a revolutionary for hire (Gibson, C., Horn, S. 2013; Traynor, I. 2004). Many of the protest actions including criminal offenses against security personnel and the takeover of government buildings, accompanied by assassinations and acts of violence against many had been supported, organized and planned in cooperation with the US embassy and representatives and politicians of the EU who not only meddled into the inner affairs of Ukraine but also by the fascist guerrillas they raised up and made them commit acts of aggression against the country, among them the sniper killings of February 20 and the Odessa massacre of May 2, 2014 [32].
Already in 1992-95, the IMF imposed structural adjustment program had reduced Ukraine's GDP by sixty per cent. Now, conditions for new credits include doubling gas prizes, increase fees for public services, cut social services and funds for education, limit wages and pensions, lay-offs in the public sector, investment guarantees for foreign private corporations, and devalue the currency, thus raising the prices of imports which include Russian gas, and open Ukrainian assets to takeover by Western corporations (Burke, M. 2014). Ukraine's agriculture lands will pass into the hands of American agribusiness. "For Ukraine, the association agreement with the EU means to transfer to Brussels all sovereign tasks for the regulation of commerce and external relations, technical standards, veterinary, hygiene and disease inspections and to open its market to European goods. The agreement contains some thousand pages of EU directives to be followed by Ukraine. Every chapter demands that Ukraine's legal system must be brought to correspond to the European system. Moreover, Ukraine not only accepts the obligation to follow EU's present directives but also future ones without being eligible to contribute to their wording" (Glazyev, S. no date). It was all too clear for President Yanukovych and his partisans that the elections of 2015 could not be won on this basis. Permission to set up a missile shield, also included in the IMF package, was a pure provocation to Russia. Also, the 11 billion euros that the EU is offering Kiev is not aid, it is a loan. It comes with many strings, including Kiev's acceptance of the IMF austerity plan.
The Obama administration's rationale for supporting the fascist-led coup in Ukraine collapsed on March 7 when a hacked phone call between EU foreign affairs chief Catherine Ashton and Estonian foreign minister Urmas Paet revealed that the snipers who fired on protestors in Maidan Square in Kiev on February 20, 2014, were not aligned with President Yanukovych, but with the protest leaders themselves. Estonian foreign ministry has confirmed the recording of his conversation with EU foreign policy chief is authentic. Urmas Paet:at snipers who shot at protesters and police in Kiev were hired by Maidan leaders.
With pro-Russian candidates off the ballot, Svoboda leader Oleh Tyahnybok is a dominant political power in Ukraine. He certainly is a bigger votegetter than Yatsenyuk, whose main responsibility is to negotiate with the West over financial aid and the EU package, and Vitali Klitschko who announced he will be running for mayor of Kiev. In recognition of Tyahnbyok's clout, Svoboda members got the posts of Deputy Prime Minister, Minister of Agriculture, Minister of Ecology, and acting prosecutor general. A founder of the Social Nationalist party was made secretary of the Ukraine National Security and Defense Council. Several hundred members and supporters of the militant nationalist Right Sector swarmed Ukraine's parliament building for the second day in a row on March 28 to demand the resignation of Interior Minister Arsen Avakov and an investigation into the suspicious death earlier in the week of one of its leaders [33]. This new though illegal government composed according to US wishes and flattered by Western heads of state, has announced to sign the EU association agreement successively. It has asked the US for far-reaching military assistance. And it has brought the country's gold reserves into US custody (Chossudovsky, M. 2014).
They did not wait until a legitimate government were elected on May 25 but were eager to create faits accomplis.
Not only had the members of the "government" been handpicked by the US State Department, but also President Poroshenko, oligarch and close State Depatment affiliate (Collins, M. 2014). The National Guard mostly recruited from Svoboda and the fascist Right Sector, is commanded by the Ministry of Domestic Affairs, and equivalent to the US Department of Homeland Security, and openly displays a symbolic swastika as their emblem, and so does the Azov Battallion. "The American public does not know that their government continues to support neo-nazi groupings with money, arms and training. Nobody in the US knows this because the words neo-nazi, or fascist, in connection with the Ukraine are taboo (Chossudovsky, M. 2014b). Claims have often been made that mercenaries of the firm formerly known as Blackwater operate in the city of Donetsk. Numerous FBI and CIA agents assist the putsch government to combat "criminal elements" in the Eastern parts of the country. The alleged peace plan submitted by Poroshenko was intentionally unacceptable by the pro-Russian side because it demanded their disarmament but not disarmament of the government forces.
„The conflicts in Ukraine, Venezuela, and Syria have one thing in common: In all three cases there are leading groups steering the "opposition" that want absolutely nothing to do with democracy - these groups are as far-right as politics gets: European-style fascism in Ukraine, Islamic extremism in Syria, and in Venezuela the elite-favored tradition of military dictatorships. But there has been a virtual U.S. media blackout as to the leadership of the movements in Ukraine, Syria, and Venezuela, and for good reason; if these groups come to power, the country will be far worse off than it is now. The American public would give zero support to these groups if they knew the truth, which is why the level of U.S. media misinformation about these groups is as Orwellian as the workings of Obama's NSA. (Cooke, S. 2014). A State Department official was quoted saying that the US would "affirm our support for the sovereignty and territorial integrity of both countries and for all post-Soviet states" (Brunnstorm, D. 2014).
What is this all about? What interests does the US government have in Ukraine? In a process of steady hegemonic decline, the US has deliberately provoked the Ukraine conflict in order to prevent the deeper cooperation between Europe and Russia. Should it succeed it might even open doors to export American fracking gas to Europe. Ukraine could even invent arguments to encourage a direct NATO-Russian confrontation. "As with the ruins of Iraq and Afghanistan, Ukraine could then develop into a theme park for the CIA – personally directed by CIA director John Brennan from Kiev, with dozens of special forces of FBI and CIA to build a "security structure" to prosecute all those not in agreement with the February coup" (Pilger, J. 2014). Above all, the sanctions and pinprick policy against Russia is of little cost for the US as it has close to no commercial exchange with Russia – quite contrary to the EU. Their economic decline in consequence of the sanctions is most welcome as it preserves the US hegemonic role for the time being.
In strange uniformity the Western mainstream media have adopted an interpretation of events which ignores Western provocative actions as well as selfish interests of the West, and demonize President Putin and Russia (Smith, P. 2014). Interestingly enough, this goes to a large extent against public opinion as revealed in opinion polls. It is mostly the Western media which foment Cold War sentiments and thus play into the hands of neocon politicians. Most presumably the shooting down of Malaysian flight MH17 and the almost total secrecy in which the US intelligence and the expert investigations are veiled must be seen in this context.
This paper was written for a special edition of FORESIGHT on Who Rules the World? edited by Dennis Morgan, to be published this fall by Emerald
Bernd Hamm is professor emeritus of sociology, University of Trier, now living in Berlin, Germany. His recent publications include Devastating Society – The Neo-conservative Assault on Democracy and Justice (London 2005), Cultural Imperialism – Essays on the Political Economy of Cultural Domination (ed. together with Russell Smandych, Ann Arbor 2005) and Umweltkatastrophen (Environmental Catastrophies, Marburg 2011). He can be reached under [email protected]
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atlantico.fr
The United States are working hard to identify the perpetrators of the attack against the plane of the Malaysian Airlines and were very quick to point the finger at pro-Russian rebels.
Atlantico: The United States put a lot of efforts for blaming those who they consider to be the perpetrators of the attack against the plane of the Malaysian Airlines and were very quick to point the finger at pro-Russian. What interest do they have to point finger at Russia?
Jean-Bernard Pinatel: Since the fall of the Berlin Wall in November 1989, policy makers and American politicians perceived a major threat: that a reconciliation and an alliance between Europe and Russia would challenge the supremacy of the United States, which is allowing them with impunity to interfere in the internal affairs of any country, or invade them, and interpret international law in their private interests as most recently demonstrated the case of the BNP bank.
To understand this undeniable reality requires that we consider a historical context of those events.
In 1997, former National Security Adviser of the United States, Zbigniew Brzezinski, published under the title "The Grand Chessboard" a book adopting the two concepts, coined by Mackinder, Eurasia and "Heartland." He repeated his account his famous maxim: "who governs the Eastern Europe dominates the Heartland; who governs the Heartland dominates Eurasia; which governs the Eurasia dominates the World World. "
He makes the following conclusion: "For America, the chief geopolitical issue is Eurasia." In another publication (1), he make this though more explicit: "If Ukraine fell, he wrote, it would greatly reduce the geopolitical options for Russia. Even without the Baltic states and Poland, Russia, which would retain control of Ukraine could always aspire with confidence to the direction of a Eurasian empire. But without Ukraine and its 52 million Slav brothers and sisters, any attempt to Moscow to rebuild the Eurasian empire threatens to lead Russia in lengthy disputes with non-Slavic national and difference religious groups. ".
Between 2002 and 2004, to implement this strategy, the United States has spent hundreds of millions of dollars to help the pro-Western Ukrainian opposition to gain power. Millions of dollars also cooperation came from private institutes such as the Soros Foundation and European governments. This money does not go directly to political parties. He passed by including foundations and non-governmental organizations who advised the opposition, allowing it to be equipped with the technical resources and the latest advertising tools. An American cable from January 5, 2010, published on the WikiLeaks website (ref. 10WARSAW7) shows the involvement of Poland in color revolutions of former Eastern European countries. The role of NGOs is particularly exposed (2). The Wikileaks cables demonstrate continuous efforts and the continued commitment of the United States to extend their sphere of influence in Eastern Europe, and first of all in Ukraine.
Ukraine is undergoing a civil war. Yet nobody in the West denounced the ardor with which the Ukrainian government is trying to subdue the separatists. What is the real interest of Americans to ignore this reality and support the Ukrainian government? What did they gain?
The Ukrainian state is a construction of Stalin and exists independently only since 1991, after the breakup of the Soviet bloc. He previously existed between 1917 and 1921 between the fall of Tsarism in 1917 and the victory of the Bolsheviks that dismembered this new state into 4 parts. Ex-Russian part of Ukraine, with Kiev as its capital, the birthplace of civilization and Russian culture was integrated with the USSR while the former Austrian part, with Lviv's as the local capital was absorbed by the Poland.
Little Ukraine "Transcarpathia" voted for unification with Czechoslovakia and in Bukovina Ukrainian minority resigned himself to unification with Romania.
But Ukraine does not mean a nation. Ukrainians have no common history. Quite the contrary. During the second world war, when in the summer of 1941, Ukraine was invaded by the armies of the Reich, the Germans were received as liberators by the Western part of Ukraine. In contrast in the Easten Ukraine, they met strong resistance from the local population which continued until 1944
In retaliation, the Germans track down supporters and burned hundreds of villages. In April 1943, an SS division Galicia is made from Ukrainian volunteers whose descendants formed the storm troops of the EuroMaidan. This SS division was also used by the Germans in Slovakia to suppress the Slovak national movement. But Ukrainian and American pro-Western did everything at the end of the war, to throw a veil over the atrocities committed by this division and retain only the anti-Soviet struggle. However, historians estimate more than 220,000 Ukrainians enlisted alongside the German forces during the Second World War to fight the Soviet regime.
This history helps explain why civil war is possible and why the part of Ukrainian forces consisting of troops from the West can use tanks and planes against separatists from the East.
Ukrainian President with the complicity of silence of the majority of politicians and Western media launched a war against part of the population of the country with the same cruelty that is attributed to Syrian dictator. In addition, the Ukrainian armed forces are advised by American special forces and mercenaries.
The USA and Obama was provoke Russia into invasion of Ukraine in order to revive the cold war between the West and the East. Putin has understood the trap "Nobel Peace Winner" Obama created for him. First he advised the Ukrainian separatists not to hold the referendum; then he did not recognize its result and showed a moderation which surprised all independent observers while tanks and planes indiscriminately attack a Russian-speaking population.
How Ukraine can prevent the creation of a Europe-Russia alliance? Why the United States so actively try to prevent it?
The Americans continued to put pressure on Europe in order to integrate Ukraine and Georgia into NATO, which would constitute an unacceptable provocation to Russia.
Fortunately, European leaders have not bent to the will of Washington, which in this case acts solely in its own interests. Similarly, if Putin gave in to pressure from ultra-nationalist and openly intervened in Ukraine, the United States would achieved their strategic goal and the Cold War in Europe would be restarted damaging our fundamental interests.
Why Europe acts as vassal of the USA? Does it really interested to follow the American strategy?
Many European leaders got their education in the United States. They are members of American "Think-Tanks" or "transatlantic foundations" such as the "American Foundation" which largely finance their benefits and travel. The Atlanticism is certainly manufactured not only by the awareness that we share the same democratic values with the American people but also by the multitude of personal interests of many European leaders whose standard of living depends on their submission to the will of the USA.
Nevertheless, more and more Europeans are beginning to tell the difference between the American state which is, in fact, run by lobbies, the most important of which is the military-industrial lobby and the American nation whose values and economic and cultural dynamism possess an undeniable attractiveness and remains for young European wonderful school.
Angela Merkel and the Germans are at the forefront of this awareness because they have not accepted the permanent industrial espionage which the NSA use against this country. Furthermore, the revelation of the laptop plays Angela Merkel strongly shocked the country. Spiegel of November 3, 2013 claiming that now even political asylum for Edward Snowden in on the agenda. In the article "Asil Für Snowden" Europe's biggest daily published extensive excerpts of his revelations.
On 10 July 2014, the German government announced the expulsion of the head of the American secret services in Germany, as part of a spy case against German officials who provided intelligence information to Washington, a move unprecedented among allies within NATO. "The representative of the United States Intelligence Agency at the Embassy of the United States of America was asked to leave Germany,":e government spokesman Steffen Seibert: a statement. The expulsion comes "in response to a lack of cooperation that was long in efforts to clarify" the activity of American intelligence agents in Germany, told a German MEP, Clemens Binninger, President of the Parliamentary Oversight Committee on intelligence, which met in Berlin on Thursday.
In France, the former Prime Minister Michel Rocard, a sociologist Edgar Morin, former ministers Luc Ferry and Jack Lang and former European MP Daniel Cohn-Bendit, launched a petition calling on President Francois Hollande, his Prime Minister Manuel Valse and Foreign Minister Laurent Fabius "promptly grant Edward Snowden political asylum.
Unfortunately for France and Europe, Francois Hollande, as part of the French intelligentsia, still admires Barack Obama, and Laurent Fabius for a long time received funds from U.S. foundations. Neither of them realize that their policies pose a threat to the strategic interests of France and Europe.
Jean-Bernard Pinatel, General, recognized expert on economic and geopolitical matters.
Original publication: La véritable raison pour laquelle les États-Unis se préoccupent tant de l'Ukraine tout en se foutant éperdument des Ukrainiens
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Dec 10, 2013 | http://alexeyjango.livejournal.com/
Note: this article was written Dec 10, 2013, before the final phase of the national-oligarchic coup.I realizing that my voice could drown in objections and even ridicule of supporters of EuroMaidan. Still I feel that I should to disclose my position. As a citizen of Ukraine and as kieivite. It is better to speak, knowing that you will hit a flurry fierce criticism, than to keep silent and stay on the sidelines at such a moment.
In order to try to deal with the situation, it is necessary first to understand what the situation was created, no matter how bleak is to understand that, not at the level genuinely angry people who filled the Maidan.. It was formed as a conflict in the sphere of geopolitical interests of the major world powers: the United Corporation "United Kingdom-United States-the FED", the European Union and Russia. There is also China somewhere in the background, of course.
Ukraine is in the sphere of geopolitical interests of all the players listed above. Especially the USA and Russia. The goal of the USA is to weaken Russia, due to a complete break with Ukraine and with any other country were they can archive the same goal; the goal of Russia is opposite: to prevent this. And so, in this case, Ukraine has to play with those "grandmasters" its party.
Have you tried ever to play chess with grandmaster? After approximately a dozen of moves you usually do not even know were you can put any of your figure safely for the next move, all your king protection is destroyed and initiative lost. If you try to the attack you will lose even faster! And why so? You also know the rules, you remember how the pieces move, you easily win games when you play with your neighbors. All the time! Yes because you, unlike your opponent do not know even a tiny part of the art of chess, all those multi-step debuts, complex combinations, the tactics and the ways to play the beginning of the game and its end. All of which along with natural talent are essential for playing on grandmaster level in chess!
Geopolitics is also kind of chess. Who is the strongest geopolitical player in the world now? Alliance of UK and the USA. Or rather to His Majesty Dollar, which FED prints as they wish. Who has the most money, the best specialists, technologies, weapons of mass brainwashing in the form of MSM based on the above? Again the USA. So they can take on and defeat on the world stage whom they want. And do it with impunity. Afghanistan - no problems, Iraq - of course yes, Libya - coup with the murder of their leader. And we don't even mention Egypt, Yugoslavia, Syria. And Iran can well might be next, they are already encircling it... But with not everybody an easy game of conquest is possible. There are some problem with those states which have nuclear weapons. For example, with Russia. Russia's nuclear shield means that she has very strong figures on the geopolitical chessboard. Ukraine used to have them too, until our valiant "the first President" lost them all, and not without purpose or probably some benefit for himself, I think. In this case we would be counted differently.
Even now Ukraine's can't be simply occupied - Russia will react, it's a direct threat to her interests. But in such an important matter as the weakening of Russia, to conquer Ukraine is the problem of paramount importance, as Lenin used to say. So the same effect as achieved via military conquest need to be achieved via "the will of the people", legally. The first step here is to achieve control of MSM. As soon as MSM, and especially TV are under your control, and will tell people according to your instruction, the next stage can be launched. This is called color revolution, and deposing legitimate government and installing your puppets is what color revolutions are about.
So we now know that this is a beginning of the complex multi-move chess combination. And what is the next move after you get control on national mass media. Right. The next move is to being to power with the help of chaos and "people's" revolution, subservient to the "grossmeister" puppet government. And here, we can see that the first attempt to play this combination took place in 2004.
By the way, your truly too stood on the Maidan, accommodated in in his apartment visiting "ardent revolutionaries" and rejoiced achieved victory over the "Mordor". The consequences of this "victory," we know all too well.
Now we can observe the attempt number two. BTW "attempt number five" will never happen. Ukraine has clearly will not survive. The first kick in the door failed to know it out. But with the second or third might succeed...
So the key strategic objective is to bring to power obedient, puppet government. With what purpose, I think, is pretty clear. Why usually the door of the house is kicked out?
Please note that we not yet got to the stage of "popular discontent", the crackdown by "Berkut" of peaceful protesters, pound boulders flying into the heads of the internal troops soldiers who try to protect government buildings, thousands of likes and sharing of passionate articles on Facebook, revolutionary songs, hunger strikes, statements about the self-immolation and tent camps on Maidan. We have not reached this stage yet. But this is just a logical consequence of the first moves by the chess master. But people do not want to delve into the underling reasons - this is not our business. We see that they beat our people, now will take revenge and beat them! Who beat whom, who benefits is not important, and in the chaos of the actions there is no time to investigate. Captured by the spirit of the revolutionary events and righteous anger we rush into action - we want to make history!
Sorry, but it's not you who is making history now, you are just pawns for chess master who makes this history using you as pawns.
Now we have to understand HOW this is done. This is simple to decode, as we see the sequence of event by our naked eyes! Please write down the sequence of events and before each event put the title "organization responsible for that event is: .... Key beneficiary is ... ". That will help.
For example, the first point: the people's discontent with the non-entry of Ukraine into the EU, let's mark it with "unknown financiers of popular discontent". Now let's turn to such events as the brutal dispersal of students on Maidan that night, with the launch of misinformation about the dead woman - "organization of acceleration, statement of George Clooney about his support of the protesters - "organization of support by prominent people template" and so on make perfect sense. If it would be necessary even dead Michael Jackson would be dug out of the grave and forced to perform on the Maidan Square! But fear not, this was not necessary.
Now, after writing such a list for both EuroMaidan and Orange revolution, you will be surprised to find how much two different color revolutions resemble each other. It is not surprising - they all have the same dad, pardon the pun.
Here, of course, it would be nice to get information directly from color revolution planners, from those who are directly involved in the development of the action plan and its subsequent implementation. To trace the path from the specialist in a certain organization, to the protester throwing a stone at his compatriot. But his is impossible, because those grossmeisters do not intent to tell anybody else the secrets of their craft. And might punish you if you try too hard to reveal it.
So you will never know that name and the face, But it does not matter, his actions speak more loudly then record in his dairy. And we also can turn to the relevant literature. For example - "Confessions of an economic hit man" by John Perkins, etc. I will not mention any Russian authors for obvious reasons - they are all "Pro-Putin propaganda".
Important Note: EuroMaidan began under the motto "we want to Europe". And now, the people standing there, want to overthrow the legitimate government that is "rotten", "criminal", "destructive", "obtuse", "corrupt", and so on. The power that pours batons on the heads of innocent students, women, old people and children!
How this masterful substitution occurred. Why they could not begin with the expression of discontent with the government and need this "Eurointergation rejection" moment?
Government has become "criminal" due to particular event that happened (or was deliberately staged) in the night of 30th November? From pure logic, Yanukovich would be the last man interested in such a brutal move, it was equivalent to committing a political suicide to order disband tiny peaceful demonstration that does not matter much. Therefore, I think that no one will argue with the statement that the President did not give such a stupid order. Self preservation at the top priority for any politician and this trait is pretty well developed in all of them.
Since, as we now see, such action still took place, the question arise who pushed the button, and ensured that such an event happened despite Yanukovich in no way wanted it. Yes. and your don't need to be an Oracle to predict that such event will happen in advance. But the blood has to be shed, so that the fire of the revolution "blazed up.
So all the complex chain of actions has come to its logical focal point with Euro integration substituted to "regime change". To the attempt to change power in Ukraine to a more subservient to the West and much less to Russia puppet government. And what was the easiest way to achieve this? Right, somehow prevent Maidan from going home on Christmas and turning it into full scale anti-government revolt!
This was a turning point, a decisive move by grandmaster and helpless counter move by the beginner in the form of hapless Yanukovich government, who was on the short leash too! And while mate are some steps ahead, the result of the party is a foregone conclusion. That's the power of planning combinations in advance and knowing when to use which.
Allow yourself to dream and imagine some "fantastic" situation which, however, is not impossible. Just figments of my imagination.
How smart people support different political forces? They are funding both sides. Then it is not so important which side won, it is important the winner feel that owns his victory to you as a sponsor. But here we support only one party, the opposition, because, with a certain consistency and persistence of actions, you can guarantee, with a high degree of predictability, to achieve the desired reaction of the other party. This is called a provocation.
The first there were "student protesters" on Maidan. Well, they don't need too much effort to excite them, they will come themselves, after certain doze of clever brainwashing. But hardly anyone of them will rush to fight the spetsnaz, stick in their faces burning logs and spray paint in their eyes. The students are generally a good, intelligent, kindly, intelligent crowd. You need bold and impudent hooligans, preferably with experience of fighting police. And then come into play real extremists - far-right, ultraleft, ultraprime , their views are not that important. You simply put a suitcase with dollars to their leader and promised additional remuneration in case of the success of the event. That's it. We are done. Now everything is arranged, you can only wait for the right moment... At this moment extremists suddenly appear in the crowd of Maidan, refuse to fulfill the requirements to "clean the space", trying to provoke a spetsnaz, spit in their faces, insult them, beat them. One wounded soldier, second, and - voila: the nerves of spetsnaz give up , they get the order and under their hot hand gets everything that moves. And here is the most important part: you need to record how it was done and have enough journalists who take photo and video of this beating. Then all these materials urgently go to controlled media. On which you already have spend billions. So instantly all those shows and talking head start to discuss the event show the footage and condemn the government, conveniently forgetting, however, to show the beginning of the event. And the people are accustomed to believe in TV. And here is the right picture: monsters of the "Berkut" beating of peaceful protesters, our children! For what? Now government instantly became criminal power! The gang to deal with! And so on...
So far, the plan worked. The script is so masterful that it accurately calculated collision of two antagonists so that this clash as if by accident happened. Only I do not believe in such coincidence - without script no movie is shot! If you threw a rabbit in a cage with a hungry snake, the snake will surely ate it. I call this combination "putting house on fire". Yes you did not light it, and was just accidentally set on fire! And by whom the history has not recorded. The lightning. or fell candle, or unclosed gas, or poorly designed fireplace, or not switched off , of cigarette in the bad, or, finally, the torch of the attacker. The reason is always there.
So the fire of the revolution lit! And then what happens with the concerned public reminds me of the situation when the person at the speed of light is rushing in some "make money fast" scheme, to give them the money on promised huge interest. And he/she meets on the way his neighbor, who say is an economist by training. Neighbor tries to talk off this poor fellow of stupid investment, he explains that it is a pyramid, deception, free lunch, but the one listen. And with dismissive words "you understand nothing", "you're behind the time, you're not in trend" or "fuck you", they continues to rush in a given TV direction. And predictably loses all their savings. The neighbor then spins a finger to his temple - I warned you, why, they say, you wouldn't hear me? Hell if I know -all ran and I ran... I was Young, hot, I wanted to be Europe...
What are the results of these actions? With "make money fast" scheme the result is clear - bye, buy all invested money. And here?Don't know the exact ideas of the authors of the scenario, but possible two variants of the development of the plot we can try to guess: it is iether the overthrow or forcing the resignation of the present government. Then to power comes the provisional government, IO, so to speak - Yatsenyuk, Klitschko, and anyone not important.
Then a new government decides to release Yulia Tymoshenko is now the strongest move, even though she is not liked anymore and would be of no benefit to the current opposition. People are rejoicing in the Maidan, again.
Then early elections of the President, the "right" composition of the Parliament and so on. Then - you know who becomes President. And then - a disco, as in children's ironic joke... We join NATO. As a consequence, the cooling of relations with Russia.
We are reforming the economy under the European standards, which will lead to the closure of factories and as a result - to a massive outflow of population to the West. The nation will dissolve in Europe, and nobody cares what will happen with the country. It will cease to be our home. Weather this experience is good or bad - we will see in ten years, may be fifteen. I don't judge and to campaign for anything. Perhaps it is necessary to take the risk, in order to understand that it was not necessary to do that and it would be better if we suffered its not very good roads. Or all will be well. Such experience may need us. The main thing not to repeat what happened with the Lithuanian city of Kaunas. I was there in 1990 - a lovely, lively, vibrant city! Now travel to it, just for the sake of interest - the city was empty, most of population is working in Europe...
What this, created the skilful puppeteers, situation offers us today? What conclusion should we make seeing their actions, what to strive for, and what to do? The gang should go, OK will be deposed, what's next? Another gang? Then again - get out? Then it will not work, because in control will be hard and strong boys from Washington, acting via no less brutal local puppets. Those guys are much more cruel then Donetsk mafia. They don't care whether you are Ukrainian, Russian or Uzbek. And they grow up not "The dawns here are quiet" movies, but on completely different stuff.
So, what to do? For a start I propose to calm down, make a couple of deep breaths to calm a revolutionary temper tantrum. Then think about what will be profitable for Ukraine, as a state, in this chess battles. That will be profitable personally for you and your family. Stop giving your energy to those poorly educated but power hungry people, striving at any price grab the power pie, who calls themselves by a beautiful word "opposition. Stop to demand good life, try to make it good. or at least bearable! Stop being angry, jealous neighbors, that litter on the streets, who are swearing, who deceive others. Who are rude and try to make money on Maidan. Remember that we are one great nation, one people, inherited from the ancestors of the great culture. And to seek reconciliation, and not to oppose the West to the East and oppose the Ukrainian language to the Russian language. We should talk to each other. Not to divide and conquer, but to unite and make friends. Remember that we are all children of God! Don't throw rocks at their own brothers and not to allow others to do it.
We should continue evolution, as a great Slavic nation, we must improve ourselves, to become better educated and obtain spiritual strength, to try to love your neighbor, because we are the body and soul are one people! And then we get a power that is worthy of us and which we ourselves worthy, because the power comes from the people, from its culture.
No revolutions can achieve this goal! We should continue our Evolution, for any Re-volution is, essentially, a step back!With love to my compatriots, Alexey Poddubny (Django)."
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Jul 01, 2014 | matveychev_oleg
We can't chosen we live and die... this sad but true quote is especially valid for Ukrainians who are now hoping that worst is over. The same idea is expressed in the famous Chinese curse "May you live in an epoch of change!" And this understanding of the tragedy of what is happening and sad prospects of our future makes me sad and scary. Remember quite recently we considered a curse saying "I wish that you live on just your salary..." But I'm afraid for many of my compatriots this last saying will soon no longer be considered a curse, but a good wish, as even one meager salary or pension is much better then none not all.
But I would like to talk not so much about troubles that hit us recently, but about the concepts of good and evil. Or rather the absence of these concepts is in the coordinate system of real politics, or realpolitik, as refined intellectuals like to call it . The essence of this term is quite simple - the complete refusal ideological or moral principles in the formation of the political course of the state, i.e. the formation of specific decisions of the responsible person come only from considerations of the benefits and practicalities. That is, proceed from the current REALITY.
Most clearly and openly the principles of Realpolitik were formulated by Nicolo Machiavelli's famous work "the Prince" (published in 1532). In this small volume, the booklet the aspiring medieval political scientist Machiavelli first voiced the simple truth that all sovereigns already quite well: you need to speak and promise it what the elite and citizens (voters) want to hear from you; but you need to act only as PROFITABLE to you at the moment. The responsibility for discrepancy between words and actions can be offloaded to some third party, called scapegoat.
For almost five hundred years that passed since the publishing of the first edition, numerous critics have branded comrade Machiavelli as fine cynic, but the book has not lost its relevance to our time, and is a desktop manual not only for the bloody tyrants of Stalin type, but also quite a democratic leaders. However, the latter should carefully hide this book from prying eyes. Keep it not like bible on the table but under the table, but read and reread this "under-the-table" guide to action frequently. It is still a very useful - guide for aspiring politicians. And they can't behave differently for one very good reason - the real political life does not look like a glamorous picture we see of the TV. In reality it is an iron barrel, in which a dozen hungry rats are thrown: the rat which ate all the rest is the king, president, you name it. The only bad thing is after such a diet that rat will not eat anything else but their own compatriots. So life in the barrel completely changes the nature of particular rat.
It does not make sense to condemn democratic leaders for the strength of their carnivorous tendencies - naive idealists in the system Realpolitik do not survive and, more specifically, that they have no chances to get to the top of the food chain. They do need "eat" the competitors on the way up, otherwise they will be eaten alive by their more unscrupulous fellow politicians. If by some twist of fate, the man who does not want to behave this way breaks in the first row, then he lives a bright, but not for long life: let's recollect even the Russian Emperor Paul I, or American presidents Lincoln and Kennedy.
The same principle is applied in relations between States: policies and rulers can, with honest eyes to broadcast anything and proudly beat themselves in the chest about adherence to noble principles, but the basis of government decisions will always be someone specific BENEFIT. As a rule, for the elite of the country. Other people does not matter.
And if the state does not act in accordance with the principles of Realpolitik, i.e. does not have its own strategic purposes and does not seek its own benefit (for example, due to the fact that the country is managed by a comprador elite which itself is controlled by foreign forces), this country will exist only as long as it will benefit the surrounding more powerful players. And the funny thing is a bet in this game is exactly this country - its territory, resources, markets, and other pleasures of life. That is, from the subject (actor) international policy, a country becomes an object, often someone's dinner. And the fate of the population of a country, as you know, absolutely is not taken into consideration, because the neighbors look at it again from the position of Realpolitik, and in this system of coordinates sentiments are completely irrelevant - it is like to feel sorry for pawns and knights, which "killed" during a chess game.
And why to feel sorry for the people who failed to form the elite are able to create a state that serves their purposes and is able to protect its territory and sovereignty?
The question is whether the described phenomenon evil, totally inappropriate. Real politics is a sort of earth's gravity: it can be a burden, but you should take it into account in all political actions.
If someone thinks that the earth's gravity can be ignored and it is easy to overcome the ideological spells can do simple and striking experiment: jump shooting some ideologically charged defining gravity slogan like "Glory to Ukraine!", or "Glory to the CPSU!" (depending on the beliefs) from the window at the top of the high riser, You will quickly relieve the surrounding world from yourself and your folly. The analogy with the policy of direct - one who takes quite inadequate political decisions and rushing against the trend (gravitation) quickly became iether broke or removed for power or even dead.
And only in best case victims are politicians themselves - sometimes because of their ambitions or inadequate solutions. Typically nations in which those politicians came to power suffer instead of them or along with them And often for decades to come. Let us recall the possessed Adolf who lowered Germany to the level below the floor for so many years.
Fortunately for the peoples of our long-suffering planet, clinical idiots in the higher echelons of power are rare - most are pretty adequate evidence, even outward they look complete assholes. And if we do not understand the meaning of some political maneuvers, it does not mean that those action are taken by the people who are plain stupid. Most often we just can't see or understand the motives of their actions.
But in this place it is necessary to provide some additional details. The first thing to understand that it only SEEMS to us that the states, politicians including rulers of the States are free in their actions. In fact, in every situation there are only two or three POSSIBLE variants of the solution, not more. Often all of them are bad. A great politician of the 19th century, Otto von Bismarck, called by his contemporaries "iron Chancellor", has called the politics "the art of the possible".
And really - often space for any maneuvers is iether absent or is very small and the politician needs to act and survive in extremely difficult and adverse conditions. And for each move one needs to take into account the thousands of external and internal factors, as well as his/her own interests and interests of "significant others" that may somehow affect the situation. Step right up, step to the left - always run into someone's ass. And if something did not consider, and your decision is wrong - irresistible force, abruptly terrestrial gravity, gently smashes your head often along with heads of your relatives, friends, who believed you, your allies and sympathizers. And in the worst case all your whole nation and the state, which you head. Most political games remind me of acrobatic feats performed on the razor blades, mounted above a bottomless canyon. Moreover, during this spectacle the performer eyes are covered with blinds his hands tied, and he needs convincingly smile to the stupid crowd which watch the performance and wants him to perform a little jump. As you know, in such a position the only way is straight ahead very precisely and smoothly moving your legs, and if you do some step n the wrong direction you iether fall, or cut yourself or both.
Well, now let's try to analyze our recent Ukrainian history from the height of the newfound understanding of the underlying essence of any political processes. That is, let us try to understand what happened in Ukraine in fact, what was gained by it, who benefits, what is happening now, and next time, you may be able to formulate and what is beneficial for us, i.e. people (or if you want to population). But first you must understand and accept some simple logical statements, rejecting any ideological clichés and even national pride - we're from the point of view of Realpolitik talk.
First, we need exactly yourself to understand that Ukraine was never a subject, that is equal participant in international relations. For one simple reason - we have a deeply flawed elite: the anti-popular, kleptocratic and comprador, tailored to serve foreign interests, for it allow her to steal a little and with comfort to spend stolen abroad on yourself with loved ones, their wives, children, mistresses, etc. of the People for many years calmly looks at it, claps her eyes sleepily and continue toiling.
Second, p. 1 implies that in this territory no one EVER going to build an independent sovereign state is simply NO one to do it (who doesn't agree with this statement - I'm in the Studio surnames and names of the heroes). The idea of our elite simpler: steal several billion, to prepare a safe area and to escape to the West. That is why no one tried to develop, to build appropriate government institutions - we lack many attributes of a normal state, including combat-ready army (by the way, there are a lot of hungry people in Egypt, but it still has a strong combat-ready force). This is despite the fact that after the collapse of the USSR in Ukraine inherited the biggest in Europe army group, armed and equipped by the standards of wartime, the strongest in the region Navy, nuclear weapons and their means of delivery, including strategic aviation and the Intercontinental ballistic missile, had powerful military industry, related research and science institutions, and much more. All this used to exist, and now taken away by forces of nature, and no one knows exactly how it happened, though all easily can guess what . We do not even have normal state defense apparatus - look at our pitiful security service and the interior Ministry, unable to resist neither Maidan, nor South-East "separatism". And compare with the monsters like the FBI or the FSB, or even with Mossad, if you don't want to confuse the country size.
Thirdly: as a full-fledged state in Ukraine was never built, own interests not have accepted other people, to protect themselves unable - our territory in the coordinates of Realpolitik is considered by global players as a fair game - who got it first will eat it all.
And we can accuse absolutely no one in such a dismal situation - it was us who built is gradually, all together! It is we ourselves were not able to organize normal viable state, formulate and defend their own national interests! Look at little poor but proud Syria - their whole Western world together with al-Qaeda and the oil sheikhs few years hits with full force, and they are still standing, and not going to give up - moreover, slowly start to win. Now compare with us. The fight did not even started, but three richest provinces are already disappeared in the morning fog, escaped the gravity of common Ukrainian nation. And who is to blame Putin? Merkel? Pula with Barroso? Or ourselves, with our inability to state-building?
Generally, when I hear the slogans of the type - Putler is rascal and schizophrenic, or Babamka is monkey with a grenade, I feel simultaneously amused and distressed from such level of human stupidity! In fact, these political figures (very important political figures, who would argue) are just national politicians who act on an international arena, serving the interests of the ruling class of their countries. They are limited by the framework of international treaties and domestic legislation. Which limits their actions in conditions of severe crisis, actions which are dictated by the real internal and international situation, as well as the interests of their States and their ruling classes. There is nothing personal in their activities "It's just business, baby!". More precisely, the Realpolitik.
Guys, come out, detach yourselves from computer screens and take a look around! So how do you like it?.. Welcome to the brutal real world! We already on alien Safari, where we are considered to be a fair game, since we did not want and could not become the hunters. What you want is people being carnivores like to eat the meat. And the same is true about particular countries and their elite (on a different level of course). To make this meat more compliant so that it not interfere with the hunting process, it is possible to tell fairy tales about vegetarian essence of world capitalism, invisible and fluffy hand of the market, the rights of men and sexual minorities (aka gays), about international law and the right of Nations to self-determination, cheap gas, and benefits of the European Association (or entry to the Customs Union), the visa-free regime and so on and so forth. However, the basis of all political decisions by sovereign players will always lie the BENEFIT, and it's not YOUR benefit that they are fighting for, as strange as it may seem to sound.
Now let's try to figure out who actually created the current Ukrainian chaos. To think we will be using this almost forgotten and seldom applied in our country is the tool of logic, but will come from the ancient principle Latin saying "Is fecit, qui prodest " - did the one who benefit most. let's try to find the beneficiary, and we may be able to find the initiator.
For a start, let's try to understand the general morphological features of the mess called the Maidan, which finished off a fuckin rudiments of Ukrainian statehood and sovereignty.
First, this mess was not spontaneous, but clearly man-made and well-organized. Remember oligarchic regime a year ago - he seemed to be unshakable. Leadership in some regions was replaced by representatives of Donetsk clan on two or three levels (the head of the organization, heads of departments, heads of departments). The only criterion for the obtaining particular position were the place of birth and loyalty to the regime. Everybody was tied together by corruption and fear. The financial situation of Yanukovich regime was stable, social and political situation also stable, salaries and pensions were paid on time, political rivals were swiped under the carpet, sat there quietly and did not voiced any objections. Remember - just before Maidan trio of homegrown opposition leaders tried to organize a protest action with a loud name "Arise Ukraine!" - And what, someone stood up?
Now think of how many times the Maidan was ready to go home, but every time some "accident" take it to the next level. I don't believe in such "accidents": Yanukovych's regime deliberately and very correctly was thrown under the bus. And it was done not by the "power of people", because the people are not capable of self-organization - for this you need both the organizers and financial resources (Yes, those with portraits of American presidents...) For comparison and understanding one can read the story at least the great French and October revolutions. Who organized them and who financed them.
Secondly, the mess is clearly inspired from the outside. This conclusion arises from the analysis of opportunities of the opposition and its institutional, financial and media resources, as well as the basic level of trust in Ukrainian society to its conflicting with each other leasers: "rabbit" Yatsenyuk, the nationalist Tiahnybok and "intellectual" Klitschko. They got their political weight way too fast, like chickens who are fed with import antibiotics and steroids (or maybe Nuland's cookies served the same purpose?).
Another important point - financing. The question is who paid for this huge celebration, when all the financial flows within the country are strictly controlled by the regime? I strongly doubt that that were local oligarchs. That to cross Yanukovych is pretty deadly, new all of them including their dogs. And everybody new that those who did has lost property, sometimes freedom and sometimes even life. He kicking in a chin anybody who cross him without any hesitance. And besides, there is another interesting financial detail: during Maidan events in all Kiev currency exchange shops suddenly materialized huge number of fresh American banknotes issued in 2013, which the National bank never imported (and the Bank of Russia by the way, too) - hence they were brought into the country by somebody else. To do this trick in a serious volumes bypassing customs is possible only with the use of diplomatic mail. Believe me that that even a million dollars a pretty difficult to smuggle into the country in bra).
Thirdly, the Maidan was a clear response to specific decisions of the Ukrainian authorities. While Yanukovych like a bull to the slaughter rushed into EU, progressive European public was ready to close my eyes for all the crimes of the regime - selective justice (if to call things by their proper names - political repression and killing of unwanted, for example Kushnaryov), wildest corruption, lawlessness of police raiding in the interests of "family" and much more. There were no limits of the European tolerance and benevolence, even sick with her whole spine cord Yulia was left to rot in jail in order to show those wild Ukrainians the real European values (not that they never have found any spare currency for us). But it all until the process was going in the right direction, but as soon as the direction has changed - Europe miraculously recovered his strict view on any moral transgression, and quickly had found that this corrupt regime turned out to be quite repressive and is absolutely undemocratic, and, in some areas clearly illegitimate... And the people waked up also suspicious quickly - and it doesn't even look like us. For example, three weeks ago a few dozen of people in Odessa were killed and burned without trial with utter cruelty. Do what. People corpses were just removed away from the eyes and business as usually with Europe was not disturbed even to the slightest degree. And people of Odessa calmly continued to go to work. No new Maidan. And in November Berkut put a couple of scratches on "protesting children" with sticks and stones and scandal rocked the whole Europe and the USA. How this brutal beast Yanukovich could do this? Unimaginable. simply unimaginable...
Another very suspicious nuance was complete and sudden paralysis of the Executive power, which had been strong, cruel and unscrupulous with any regime opponents before.
What happened on the Maidan Square is ideally corresponds to the classic scenario of "color" revolutions, which in the past decade were used multiple times in many different countries almost like assembly line with a conveyer belt. Some were quite democratic, and many not very. Let me explain immediately how color revolution differs from the classical. Color revolution does not change ANYTHING, only faces of puppets who are shown on TV. Socio-political system remains the same, the oligarchs are the same, but new puppets come to power, changing the balance of influence of external players, and the final as well companies beneficiaries of state policy (it's clear that who take the girl to the date, has the right to dance with her). For the common people, nothing change other then taxes. Looks we already have had two Maidan. And what changed ? We even local political Olympus. In 15 years there were no real changes, no new persons (though some people dropped out).
Any color revolution is organized using old, pretty much polished to perfection algorithm (by the way, if anyone wants to learn, in open access there are good books, I recommend starting with Gene Sharp). Slightly simplifying the procedure looks like the following: good civil society of course spontaneously self- organizes through social networks and come out for protest actions and action of civil disobedience. This is probably the most crucial moment, for that is "spontaneity" requires a log of hard work and even more money. It's hard to cook and it take a long time, but there are special, well-trained and motivated activists, which are for many years are educates and fed (sorry motivated), and at the right moment they are: GO.
Further into the script, bad government starts brutally suppress those "accidental" demonstrators, and it is a beautiful TV pictures of this suppression (if it is impossible to take a real picture it can be made up and fake pictures made in studio are as good as a real thing as it was in the channel al-Jazeera when covering the events in Libya). The picture is transmitted by the maximum number of communication channels, thus forming the secondary circuit of excitation of people, who are already in large quantities are out on the streets and demolish "bad" power, establishing "good" and "democratic", although necessarily dictatorship (legal authorities at this point are absent - they are torn down with "evil regime"). Then the dictatorship organizes election, but there is a technical trick - in modern democracy winner is the one who organizes elections and vote counting.
There is one very important thing: at the stage of "demolition" the authorities someone should "disable" state security apparatus, because if you don't do it, none of the organized civil society can stand against power of security apparatus of the state. Demonstrators would be simply wiped out, as Chinese students learned on Tiananmen square, or even shot from helicopters like the Egyptian Muslim Brotherhood during the anti-Islamist military counter-revolution. And nobody will help - as they say, you can't defend yourself from state sword with your bare hands. So the question in whose hands is a button "off" for security apparatus of the state is very important.
As a rule, this question is solved through corrupt officials of relevant agencies, which store stolen fund in Western banks. It will start up until the hour comes with X, then SPECIFIC to the responsible person receives the signal as follows : "we're going to confiscate the money of all involved in the bloody regime. So in order not to fall under this confiscation, you as a friend need to help by sabotaging illegal orders of the tyrant; and we guarantee security to you, your family and your money".
So that is how it was done - and in Egypt, and Tunisia, and Libya, and Syria, and Ukraine too. With the only difference that Yanukovych tried to prevent the bloody telecasting, and even when peaceful demonstrators burned alive with "Molotov cocktails" his loyal Berkut solders, those did not shoot at "unarmed" crowd. I suspect that Mr. President also got a phone call about the need to refrain from violence in exchange for preservation of the capitals. So in general it is clear who knocked out security services and police - The Guarantor of Constitution wanted both to eat fish, and save his power, and save money, but this never happen: because the terms of the situation were such that you can save only one thing (Oh, it's a real pity that Yanukovich didn't read in childhood Russian classics. Unfortunately he generally read very little, even as an adult). Yanukovich make a wrong choice, ignoring recommendations of Vladimir Lenin and comrade Machiavelli.
As a result he lost money, power and almost lost his life. And is not expected that in any way he ever will get them back (please remember about the political version of the law of gravity: power attracts money and loss of power mean loss of money).
And so - does anyone really thinks that one armored carrier with rapid-fire gun of caliber 30mm would not stop Maidan once and for all, and kill in western Ukraine any desire to come to this square for three generations ahead? And you can always find a couple or reckless thugs on this dirty business? - yeah, I can, especially considering the connection of the "evil regime" with the criminal underground. And if anyone think that after such an event NATO peacekeeping force will land in Kiev, it democratic aircraft carriers come to Odessa to punish the oppressor, he is seriously delusional. It's not enough aircraft to depose all tyrants unless of course they control vast reserves of oil. In Egypt, for example, in one court decision 700 representatives of "civil society" was sentenced to death by hanging for "peaceful" the attack on the police station, and before that "peaceful demonstrators" were soaked using large-caliber machine guns, and many, by the way, were killed. And nothing happened in the West - someone probably was disappointed, but you cannot please everyone. But the rest of Egypt friends, continued to give money and weaponry to the regime. And soon there will be election in Egypt, of course completely democratic, you should even have slightest doubts! And after that all Western countries will recognize the General-President Sisi. Sure they will instantly recognize them as legitimate and democratic.
Interim conclusions - Maidan organized and financed by external forces, the classical scenario of "color" revolutions, using as the "smokescreen" imported from Western Ukraine nationalists as extras.
Now let's calculate the possible foreign customer of our mess, having analyzed the interests of the main players which have the physical ability to organize such a thing, i.e. have the resources: both organizational and financial. Actually under suspicion can come only four real players, possessing a certain extent of sovereignty and respective capabilities: the US, China, EU, Russia.
China cut off at once - first, far, secondly, it is not their field of interest (there is no or little interesting to China resources in Ukraine, and moreover, color revolution is not a Chinese method. China works differently - buys parts of the country, i.e. buys the assets involved in the overall infrastructure projects, and invests in social sphere, and rebuild the Diaspora, in short slowly increase its influence.
Now Russia. The main interests of Russia in respect of independent Ukraine were always simple and straightforward, at least this:
1. No NATO bases on its territory (the non-aligned status)
2. The guarantees of transit of Russian hydrocarbons to Europe
3. Base of the Russian fleet in SevastopolAnd that's it! Other wishes of the Russian leadership, including Ukraine's accession to the Customs Union is an option (although important), but the above is a necessity of life, and without observance of these interests, Russia will quickly lose its geopolitical weight, and in the future - might cease to exist as a historical subject. So make no mistake, Russia will never leave Ukraine alone, no matter how many time hot and stupid heads from western Ukraine cry "We never will be brothers" - their opinion on the Hamburg count is not interesting to anybody, because at stake is the physical SURVIVAL of the superpowers in an iron barrel with hungry Western rats.
Now, if you look at the terms of the agreement, which was signed by Putin and Yanukovych on December 17 of last year, as well as Kharkov agreement on gas and Sevastopol 2010 it is clear that these agreements Russia has achieved ALL its economic and political goals, and received massive bonus in the form of industrial cooperation in the defense industry and high-tech. The only one who understood and announced this interesting fact in public space, was, strangely enough, ordinary prisoner Kachanovsky prison, Yulia Tymoshenko, who:at the agreement worse than joining the Customs Union, as tightly binds Ukraine to Russia (and thus detaches from the EU). Therefore Russia from the list of suspects can be instantly excluded. Russia ALREADY had EVERYTHING she needed, and Maidan all of it stripped, and added headache and very serious problems.
For the morons who believe that Russia is simply sleeps and sees how would it be quick to occupy Ukraine and raped her economically, I recommend to take a calculator and calculate: for the salvation of the Ukrainian economy, in the current year it is necessary to put at least $35 billion (excluding the drop in industrial production, which is eminent). The revenues of the Russian budget for 2014 are just $400 billion. Now add the cost of maintaining the occupation army and the occupation administration. The percentage of the budget argues for themselves. And most importantly remember: if you drop all sentimentality, in the framework of Realpolitik Russia from us had only p.p. 1,2,3, and the issue with the base in Sevastopol today already solved without our consent, and that Russia needs us now at minimum - the absence of NATO bases and transit of gas. This question can be solved much cheaper and easier than a full occupation of 45 million poor people of the state in which not everyone is sure like Russia.
Now consider the EU policy that out for climbed to involve Ukraine in its orbit. Of course, Germany would be very interested to receive Ukrainian market (why it is so important, I already described in the previous post), and at the same time be able to destroy a part of the Ukrainian industry, which produces products for oily Russian market and dumping the basis compete for them with European goods. That way, the EU could expand its presence on the Russian market, too. Who does not believe that all this was laid down in the Association agreement initially, remember what obligations regarding compliance with European regulations assumed Ukraine is killing almost all Ukrainian industry, except mining. Never objection to deliveries in EU-Ukrainian cheap raw materials was ever raised.However, the EU's position was a very vulnerable place - in contrast to Russia, Europe was not ready to pay for Ukraine and to subsidize its economy, because the debt crisis, and why own, if you can not pay. However, a lot of money here is definitely needed, otherwise Ukraine is bankrupt in early 2014 (the process is described in detail in the letter №4 "On the manure and the trade deficit").
The original idea of the European politicians, is to force Russia to pay for the integration of Ukraine using the WTO rules. However, Putin quickly explained all about the WTO and about customs tariffs to EU politicians, and he even mentioned the possible deficit of the Ukrainian trade balance. Explained so clearly that fingers of some people in the West still are in pain. As to Yanukovich as well and we have seen that in 2013 seen how convulsively rushed our former President around the world in search of money to last at least till re-election (it was his personal planning horizon). But no one gave, and when Yanukovych arrived in the EU and firmly put the demand to give him money, or it will be no deal", Europeans politely laughed in his face and gently hinted that Sheriff is not concerned with the problems of Indians casic. And if he needed the money, he should ask his own people, for example, raising prices for communal services. And treaty of association he should sign anyway, otherwise things quickly became much worse - to HIM PERSONALLY.
But Yanukovych has already made his mind, because for him to follow friendly advice Western partners meant to make a political Hara-Kiri, without waiting for the elections 2015. (what Western partners strongly desired - they were already sick and tied of Yanukovych). But hara-kiri does not fit into the plans of Yanukovich - first he didn't know what honor code of the samurai was about, and secondly, seriously expect another five years to take a walk in pantry and realize the cherished dream of his hungry childhood - to become richer that all his countryman, famous all over the Donbass and not only.
So, as one person offered real money on the whole planet (we should not name this person), Victor Yanukovich had to accept the proposed terms and quickly changed his geopolitical orientation. Although I guess it much cheaper than it would be to change the sexual orientation and put the confirmation of this fact on YouTube. It may well be that as a person with two previous criminal convictions our President would have accepted this procedure, if it's could improve his situation. But he really didn't have a choice at that moment: iether to marry Vova or in 2015 with Julia to the Prosecutor. So when Victor Yanukovich finally realized his perspectives, he did not think too long, and the decision was quite reasonable. Instead of the third term in jail he chose a second term in President Office. And we should not condemn him too quickly -- after all this way this man expressed his ultimate love to own persona instead of his country.
The funny thing is that a couple of years before the events, Viktor Yanukovych was visiting the then Russian President Medvedev and Prime Minister Putin, who spent the whole day at the show Yanukovych all the fish in the ponds Novoogarevo and along the way to persuade it to the Customs Union. And ON VERY favorable terms, both for Ukraine and for Viktor Yanukovych PERSONALLY (including warranties for the second term). But inexorable and proud Yanukovych from the height of their own greatness and quite a considerable human height told the Kremlin to go to hell: "in short, the boys! Russia is your business, and Ukraine is my business! F*ck off!" (this is a quotation of our former President from closed, but reliable sources close to the informed). Perhaps if Yanukovych had the skills of scientific forecasting, and understood well not only the business of personal enrichment but also macro-Economics and geopolitics, his answer would be different. And then our history would have been very different scenario. But not complicated - as Ukrainian like to say" If you eyes saw what you bought, you need to eat this even is they jump out of you as a result"...
Now, the development of the events of summer-autumn 2013 clearly proved that the laws of gravity and Realpolitik are quite objective, and sometimes are even a person with totally frozen out personal consciousness and inadequate character could understand that he might quickly lose everything gained via his excessive presidential labor and stored in the West banks so Viktor Yanukovich on December 17, 2013. signed with Vladimir Putin an epochal (as many thought) document that is in addition to any standard phrase about mutual benefits of the two Slavic nations, clearly sent the European Union to the long erotic journey. So, if we thing about it, there is already a strong tradition of sending EU you know where, and here history shows our Ukrainian national priority, since Ms. Nuland with its famous "F*ck EU" was just a second, though unlike our former President and she:is with disarming, male directness.
European bureaucratic leaders were, to put it mildly, taken aback by the refusal of Yanukovych as they did not expect any resistance from rude and stupid Ukrainian undermentch. Who with the bear grace called them suckers to the entire civilized world. By the way, if someone does not know, but EU leaders are not elected, but appointed, so they bureaucratic not democratic leaders. And BTW on May 25 of this year there will be elections to the European Parliament, which will change the main Euro bureaucrats. And to be in a position of suckers diminish chances of renewing the employment contract, making them to feel very uncomfortable, even the foreign Minister of the EU Baroness Ashton.
So to EU bureaucrats held VERY deep resentment Mr. Yanukovich. Which is humanly understandable - in the last decade, Europeans has little chances to experience the direct simplicity of the Slavs, not once in history who was wiping his dirty boots with sleek and well-maintained European faces. But here, he committed a sin worse than usual humiliation - the dinner was annonced, knives/forks were ready and main course at the last moment left the table, immediately after hungry guests sat on the designated places.
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Moon of Alabama
The Russian Foreign Ministry held a conference for Arab military experts to explain its view on U.S. "regime change" endeavors:
On May 23, 42 Arab military and security officials attending the third annual Moscow International Security Conference were briefed by a team of top Russian government officials on the growing danger of "color revolutions." The uniform message presented by the Russian speakers was that the United States and NATO have adopted a new mode of warfare, focused on the use of irregular warfare forces, religious fanatics, and mercenaries, combined with the heavy use of information warfare. In a series of English language power-point graphs and maps, presenters gave a detailed chronology of the past decade, highlighting Western regime change operations in Ukraine, Georgia, Kyrgyzstan, Afghanistan, Iraq, Syria, Egypt, Libya and Yemen.KMFMeanwhile, NATO accuses Russia of exactly the same thing. See this document published this week: http://cips.uottawa.ca/nato-policy-experts-report/
This claims that 'The crisis in Ukraine has revealed the threats to NATO members from "non-linear" forms of aggression, which combine mass disinformation campaigns, cyber-measures, the use of special forces, sometimes disguised as local partisans, mobilization of local proxies, intimidation through displays of strength, and economic coercion'. Sound familiar?
JSorrentine
harry lawThis is all overdue, well and good on the part of Russia and Western observers to address the tactics that the US war criminals have been effectively utilizing in waging their war of aggression against the world.
HOWEVER, you MUST NOT make the mistake that Cordesman and the US Establishment are crazy because the war criminals won't believe - or at least admit to - what is becoming apparent to everyone with two fucking brain cells - namely, that the world is catching on to their MO of color revolutions strategy, etc. No, their tactic of full-on reality creation - not just lying, not just spin, but reality-creation - and the unanimous adherence to it by the US Establishment is actually very clever from a sociopath's POV. Again, I really believe that this whole reality-creation paradigm was some wunderkind's idea at an American think tank or something and was created as a way to seemingly get around the prisoner's dilemma and other scenarios that had somewhat tied the hands of US leaders during the Cold War.
Instead of being stuck gaming through scenarios/outcomes of game theory such as MAD etc etc, you can - if implemented successfully/totally - short circuit the "game" by developing a situation where the two opponents are NOT sharing the same environment. No longer are the two participants really prisoners. Only one is because he still believes he is a prisoner while the other is free to act as it wants.
This is what the US elite MEAN when they speak of American Exceptionalism. It is not just a innocuous and trite term, it is a strategy. It is the reality-creation paradigm in practice.
It sounds crazy but after seeing episode after episode after episode of this seemingly psychotic behavior on the part of US war criminals I've come to the conclusion that this is a conscious strategy that itself has been gamed and scenario-ed to demonstrate that there were found/discovered ways to still "win" the "game" if only one prisoner still was stuck at the chessboard.
No, the US Establishment isn't crazy because they won't admit reality.
No, why the US war criminals are fucking crazy is that they have adopted this "denial of reality" policy in the first place as it necessarily endangers/threatens the real world in which the rest of us live - and themselves along with it.
The constant and blatant repudiation of fact and reality over the years by the entire US Establishment - especially from 9/1 on down - shows that they are all-in with this paradigm.
They are not crazy because they are seemingly denying reality but because they have CHOSEN a plan that denies reality in hopes of pushing the bounds of what they can accomplish - read: steal/conquer/kill.
The mistake Russia and others are still making is the same one observers such as the posters here sometimes make:
Their reaction to the seeming insanity of the US is like that of a person who is watching his long-time friend/assoicate spin out of control totally drunk. Yeah, yeah, he's doing crazy shit now and is out of control but I know that he's really a rational person. I'll just have to wait until he comes "down" and then deal with him. The alternative would be a fight, right?
The US is not going to "come down". Likewise, the apartheid genocidal state of Israel is not going to "come down".
What options are Russia et al left with in this situation?
1) Treat the US like it really is a fucking out of control madman. Well, that means physical confrontation possibly nukes. No good.
2) Treat the US like it's "drunk". Well, that means ever more US wars/crimes until both parties are brought back to #1 but a return in which Russia has to deal with more of the messes/encroachments that the US gained due to Russia's adherence to/choice of #2.
Calling out the tactics of the US war of aggression are a first step but I'm afraid it goes a bit deeper than that.
scalawagHow come those Russians missed out the 'new Manhattan project'
"It is a new kind of war, like a creeping financial insurgency, intended to constrict our enemies' financial lifeblood, unprecedented in its reach and effectiveness," says Juan Zarate, the Treasury and White House official who helped spearhead policy after 9/11.
"The new geo-economic game may be more efficient and subtle than past geopolitical competitions, but it is no less ruthless and destructive," he writes in his book Treasury's War: the Unleashing of a New Era of Financial Warfare.
The stealth weapon is a 'scarlet letter', devised under Section 311 of the US Patriot Act. Once a bank is tainted in this way – accused of money-laundering or underwriting terrorist activities, a suitably loose offence – it becomes radioactive, caught in the "boa constrictor's lethal embrace", as Mr Zarate puts it.
"This can be a death sentence even if the lender has no operations in the US. European banks do not dare [to] defy US regulators - they sever all dealings with the victim. Mr Zarate [said] that the US can "go it alone" with sanctions if necessary. It therefore hardly matters whether or not the EU drags its feet over Ukraine … Washington has the power to dictate the pace for them", notes Evans-Pritchard.
- See more at: http://www.conflictsforum.org/2014/conflicts-forums-weekly-comment-9-%e2%80%93-16-may-2014/#sthash.cljaqK3r.dpuf"The uniform message presented by the Russian speakers was that the United States and NATO have adopted a new mode of warfare, focused on the use of irregular warfare forces, religious fanatics, and mercenaries, combined with the heavy use of information warfare."
It looks like the Russians are going proactive and exposing the western strategy for what it is. Good for them. The western war making strategy requires an impenetrable wall of propaganda to hide the repulsive covert agenda. Which is unmarketable. The more light that is shined on these war crimes, the fewer people who get fooled and the less effective they are.
"Not the Russians that are crazy in there analysis but rather people like Cordesman who evidently fit Albert Einstein's definition of "insanity".They are not insane in the usual sense, but pathologically dishonest to the point they probably believe some of the justifications they invent to excuse their greed. The whacked out propaganda they spew is necessary to hide the real intent of western actions, which can not be justified within the "good guy" narrative they've sold the public for generations.
bevin
The US tactics are an adaptation and updating of those of the Comintern in the '20s and '30s. This isn't surprising given the enormous influence, since the early '40s, of comintern renegades on US Foreign Policy: the neo-cons whose mouths are not simply used for foaming, its 'intellectuals', have all sipped if not drunk at the well of Trotsky's strategy of Revolution.
The problem that the neo-cons face and cannot deal with is that underlying any successful uprisings there has to be some sort of mass consciousness or delusion. In the past the attractions of the American Way of Life (Dream included) have formed a pale, but serviceable, imitation of the promise of human liberation that cheered millions of socialist martyrs to their deaths in the battle against imperialism and capitalism. But it has become very pale indeed: the future America offers to its partisans in, for example, the Ukraine is so bleak that it lends the past a roseate hue.Nothing is so calculated to strike dread in the heart of a people as the promise of IMF assistance.
There is something very symmetrical about the coincidence of a foreign policy, of the sort the Russians describe, coming into its own at the very moment that the world-from the EU nations outwards- is awakening to the realisation that the Dream promoted by Hollywood, central to the ideology of NATO, is actually a nightmare of deprivation, Panopticon surveillance and control, eternal warring and a steady retreat to the social relations of the Plantation and the sweat shop. a journey back to the slums and the caves.
The propaganda in the west's information war will be, increasingly, viewed against a background of 50% Unemployment, riots and water cannons, declining life expectancy and millions of homeless emigrants wandering from country to country, away from war and looking for work.
As Goebbels learned, it is hard to promote a circus when the Four Horsemen are galloping around town.
The truth would seem to be that, just as millions in the Donbass would happily settle for a Peoples Republic, so most Iraqis would be as happy to welcome back Saddam as Libyans would be to see the return of Ghaddafi. The common theme being to beware of US agents marketing enslavement as freedom and civil wars as liberation.
PuppetMaster | Jun 12, 2014 3:44:05 PM | 20
Isn't history coming to a full circle? Russia imitating the US imitating Russia of Comintern era?
Anyone watched the movie 'Queimada', a 1969 film directed by Gillo Pontecorvo, starring Marlon Brando?Marlon Brando, as a British agent, instigated a slave rebellion on a Portuguese colony in the Caribbean. He formed a fragile alliance between the slave rebels and the white settlers to expel the Portuguese rule. Though the ex-slaves gained emancipation and the white settlers formal independence, they were hollow. They were now wage slaves and British colony all but name.
After 10 years of betrayed hope, the ex-slaves revolted again, and this time British marine landed on the island and put down the rebellion in a brutal scorched earth tactic.
The rebel leader, José Dolores, was captured and offered an exile, but he chose the martyrdom of gallows, hoping that his legacy would live on.
All the matrix of the color revolution are there. You can watch the full movie on the YouTube.
Also this Ukrainian color revolution has all the trappings of the story of Boris Godunov and false Dmitri.
Someone who pretended to be the murdered boy prince Dmitri, a son of Ivan the terrible, invaded Russia leading a Polish army, and welcomed by peasants suffering from misrule and famine. Though he captured Moscow and installed as a Tsar, his rule didn't last long. He turned out to be a Polish puppet and killed by angry mob. His body was cremated and his ash was stuffed into a canon and fired into the direction of Poland.
At that time, they had three false Dmitris. Even after the death of the first false Dmitri, there was a second false Dmitri, and a third one, too. That was the period of Russian history called the time of troubles. I hope, this time, we can settle for just one.
VietnamVet | Jun 12, 2014 3:44:26 PM | 21
Night Owl | Jun 12, 2014 4:54:24 PM | 30The Russians have come out with the West's scheme for regime change that took off in the last decade. It is a combination of shock economics and war for profit on steroids plus good old fashion American Exceptionalism. Graham Green described it best 50 years ago in "The Quiet American" as a combination of naivety, hubris and power that leaves a wake of destruction in its path.
The Baathists are back in Iraq. The puppet Iraqi Army collapsed. The USA had better start evacuating the Green Zone today before ISIS starts beheading hostages unless Iran saves the day. The Bush/Obama Administration has been a disaster; invading Iraq, pushing Austerity, and supporting Nazis in Ukraine.
It is time for the USA reign in Wall Street, ditch the House of Saud and Israel, and make peace with Russia.
scalawag:Thank you b.
Great find
Cordesman appears to be quite astonished at that Russian conference, but thinks that it is important to study the Russian point of view about threats to their security. Why the surprise, that the Russians have just suddenly thought of "Color Revolutions" as a threat? Tthat has been obvious for years, and the Russians are no fools.
There is another Cordesman article, both surreal and instructive - to understand Cordesman's point of view.
NATO and Ukraine Need Real World Strategies
IMO it shows extremely rigid, incomplete thinking about US goodness.
Quote - purpose of NATO "deterring war in Europe" ?
Well, completely ignoring that phone call between US Ambassador Pyatt and Victoria Nuland talking about who should be the next President of Ukraine after the government is changed. Or the other phone call about the snipers in Kiev Maidan shotting at both sides.
"Juan" describes why the swift action by Russia re Crimea, the real threat of a massacre of thousands of people. If posted here before, then just a reminder.
Russians are sub-humans in the eyes of the West
Cordesman completely ignores the Georgian massacres in S. Ossetia 08/08/08 which caused the swift Russian response.
Cordesman's article is interesting, however, in order to see what currently annoys him.
- - the French sale of two amphibious ships to Russia
- - French President Hollande's dinner with Putin
- - Germany putting its economy and energy dependence on Russian gas first, above its security - now just when did I miss the news that Russia threatened to invade Germany, or that the Germans were in a real panic over this imminent threat?
Obviously the universe is not unfolding as it should.
Anonymous | Jun 12, 2014 3:52:22 PM | 23scalawagThis accound tells us that Pushilin just has been killed.This says he wasn't in the vehicle.
The attack in Donetsk - blown up the car of the head DND Putilina
"The junta has moved to the individual terror in Donetsk an attempt on the leader of the Donetsk national Republic (DND) Denis Pushilin."Unknown persons blew up a car Denis Pushilin, in which there were three of his guards. Putilina weren't there. One of the guards hospitalized in serious condition. At the moment arrived at the scene firefighters who extinguish the light in the car", - have informed in the press-service of DND.
The press service also:at wounded several people who were at this moment next to the machine.
Meanwhile, in the official Twitter DND reported undermining of the minibus. "Near the building of the Government House DND in Donetsk there was an explosion. Was blown up leaving the building minibus. SAT DND assumes act of terrorism", - is spoken in the message."
A few days ago, the western nazis assassinated a leader of the DND in his car in a typical Mossad/Jewish mafia style "hit" (he was in charge of humanitarian efforts - I don't have his name at hand). The man looked a lot like Pushilin and Pushilin often borrowed his car, it is thought Pushilin was the intended victim of that terrorist attack. The western nazis are going all Israeli in their tactics, using the assassination of leaders as their main effort, now that their nazi "army" has shown they are good for use as fertilizer and nothing else.
Demian | Jun 12, 2014 4:34:36 PM | 26
Colonel Cassad has a VK site here.
He probably mentions the story of the freeze-out of his live journal site there, but I have not had time to look at the VK site yet. In the comments of the LJ site towards the end, people were discussing the potential the western nazis would close his site (currently "Russian" owned, but by an American and "Russian" Yeltsin butt bro, Live Journal is run out of San Francisco - probably Silicon Valley). The western nazis are censoring everything they can it seems.
whatever | Jun 12, 2014 5:34:23 PM | 37where's the fucking hero of the left now, eh? the russians are sitting there whilie civvies get bombed phosphoros. wheres putin now, and the great russian liberators. fuck this shit, both sideas bad as the other and anyone who thinks otherwise is delusional. its all state bullshit talk and they wont do a thing till it suits them. real world. and its mean. cruel . heartless. capitalism_ you digStop carrying on like a schoolgirl and put your head back in the sand then. The "they are all equally bad, so piss on it" routine is standard establishment web trolling used to dissuade people from seriously objecting to western war crimes. Z Magazine used that shilling approach to avoid covering the western nazi assault on Yugoslavia in the 90's when readers objected to their silent acquiescence of the western war crimes there against the people.You western shills need to find some new techniques, the ones you are using are long past their sell by dates.
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Apr 18, 2014 | NYTimes.com
Guo Shengkun, China's minister of public security,: a six-nation security conference in Tajikistan that Russia and Central Asian countries must strictly control the Internet and prevent "external forces" from trying to overthrow governments and "provoke a new wave of color revolutions," according to news agency reports on Friday.
Mr. Guo, who was apparently referring to Western nations, made the remarks at a meeting of the Shanghai Cooperation Organization, the security alliance that is composed of China, Russia and four Central Asian nations that were once part of the Soviet Union.
"This is a serious threat to the sovereignty and security of countries in the region and is a shared concern of the S.C.O. member states," Mr. Guo:ccording to Reuters. The news agency quoted Mr. Guo as saying that "external forces are using the social-economic contradictions and problems" to try "to overthrow the authorities."
Ta Kung Pao, a Hong Kong newspaper that has at times supported the Chinese Communist Party, also reported the remarks.
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April 8, 2014 | Alternet
Soon after the 2004 U.S. coup to depose President Jean-Bertrand Aristide of Haiti, I heard Aristide's lawyer Ira Kurzban speaking in Miami. He began his talk with a riddle: "Why has there never been a coup in Washington D.C.?" The answer: "Because there is no U.S. Embassy in Washington D.C." This introduction was greeted with wild applause by a mostly Haitian-American audience who understood it only too well.
Ukraine's former security chief, Aleksandr Yakimenko, has reported that the coup-plotters who overthrew the elected government in Ukraine, "basically lived in the (U.S.) Embassy. They were there every day." We also know from a leaked Russian intercept that they were in close contact with Ambassador Pyatt and the senior U.S. official in charge of the coup, former Dick Cheney aide Victoria Nuland, officially the U.S. Assistant Secretary of State for European and Eurasian Affairs. And we can assume that many of their days in the Embassy were spent in strategy and training sessions with their individual CIA case officers.
To place the coup in Ukraine in historical context, this is at least the 80th time the United States has organized a coup or a failed coup in a foreign country since 1953. That was when President Eisenhower discovered in Iran that the CIA could overthrow elected governments who refused to sacrifice the future of their people to Western commercial and geopolitical interests. Most U.S. coups have led to severe repression, disappearances, extrajudicial executions, torture, corruption, extreme poverty and inequality, and prolonged setbacks for the democratic aspirations of people in the countries affected. The plutocratic and ultra-conservative nature of the forces the U.S. has brought to power in Ukraine make it unlikely to be an exception.
Noam Chomsky calls William Blum's classic, Killing Hope: U.S. Military and CIA Interventions since World War II, "Far and away the best book on the topic." If you're looking for historical context for what you are reading or watching on TV about the coup in Ukraine, Killing Hope will provide it. The title has never been more apt as we watch the hopes of people from all regions of Ukraine being sacrificed on the same altar as those of people in Iran (1953); Guatemala(1954); Thailand (1957); Laos (1958-60); the Congo (1960); Turkey (1960, 1971 & 1980); Ecuador (1961 & 1963); South Vietnam (1963); Brazil (1964); the Dominican Republic (1963); Argentina (1963); Honduras (1963 & 2009); Iraq (1963 & 2003); Bolivia (1964, 1971 & 1980); Indonesia (1965); Ghana (1966); Greece (1967); Panama (1968 & 1989); Cambodia (1970); Chile (1973); Bangladesh (1975); Pakistan (1977); Grenada (1983); Mauritania (1984); Guinea (1984); Burkina Faso (1987); Paraguay (1989); Haiti (1991 & 2004); Russia (1993); Uganda (1996);and Libya (2011). This list does not include a roughly equal number of failed coups, nor coups in Africa and elsewhere in which a U.S. role is suspected but unproven.
The disquieting reality of the world we live in is that American efforts to destroy democracy, even as it pretends to champion it, have left the world less peaceful, less just and less hopeful. When Harold Pinter won the Nobel Prize for Literature in 2005, at the height of the genocidal American war on Iraq, he devoted much of his acceptance speech to an analysis of this dichotomy. He: the U.S., "It has exercised a quite clinical manipulation of power worldwide while masquerading as a force for universal good. It's a brilliant, even witty, highly successful act of hypnosis… Brutal, indifferent, scornful and ruthless it may be, but it is also very clever."
The basic framework of U.S. coups has hardly evolved since 1953. The main variables between coups in different places and times have been the scale and openness of the U.S. role and the level of violence used. There is a strong correlation between the extent of U.S. involvement and the level of violence. At one extreme, the U.S. war on Iraq was a form of regime change that involved hundreds of thousands of U.S. troops and killed hundreds of thousands of people. On the other hand, the U.S. role in General Suharto's coup in Indonesia in 1965 remained covert even as he killed almost as many people. Only long after the fact didU.S. officials take credit for their role in Suharto's campaign of mass murder, and it will be some time before they brag publicly about their roles in Ukraine.
But as Harold Pinter explained, the U.S. has always preferred "low-intensity conflict" to full-scale invasions and occupations. The CIA and U.S. special forces use proxies and covert operations to overthrow governments and suppress movements that challenge America's insatiable quest for global power. A coup is the climax of such operations, and it is usually only when these "low-intensity" methods fail that a country becomes a target for direct U.S. military aggression. Iraq only became a target for U.S. invasion and occupation after a failed CIA coup in June 1996. The U.S. attacked Panama in 1989 only after five CIA coup attempts failed to remove General Noriega from power. After long careers as CIA agents, both Hussein and Noriega had exceptional knowledge of U.S. operations and methods that enabled them to resist regime change by anything less than overwhelming U.S. military force.
But most U.S. coups follow a model that has hardly changed between 1953 and the latest coup in Ukraine in 2014. This model has three stages:
1) Creating and strengthening opposition forces
In the early stages of a U.S. plan for regime change, there is little difference between the methods used to achieve it at the ballot box or by an anti-constitutional coup. Many of these tools and methods were developed to install right-wing governments in occupied countries in Europe and Asia after World War II. They include forming and funding conservative political parties, student groups, trade unions and media outlets, and running well-oiled propaganda campaigns both in the country being targeted and in regional, international and U.S. media.
Post-WWII Italy is a case in point. At the end of the war, the U.S. used the American Federation of Labor's agents in France and Italy to funnel money through non-communist trade unions to conservative candidates and political parties. But socialists and communists won a plurality of votes in the 1946 election in Italy, and then joined forces to form the Popular Democratic Front for the next election in 1948. The U.S. worked with the Catholic Church, conducted a massive propaganda campaign using Italian-American celebrities like Frank Sinatra, and printed 10 million letters for Italian-Americans to mail to their relatives in Italy. The U.S. threatened a total cut-off of aid to the war-ravaged country, where allied bombing had killed 50,000 civilians and left much of the country in ruins.
The FDP was reduced from a combined 40% of the votes in 1946 to 31% in 1948, leaving Italy in the hands of increasingly corrupt U.S.-backed coalitions led by the Christian Democrats for the next 46 years. Italy was saved from an imaginary communist dictatorship, but more importantly from an independent democratic socialist program committed to workers' rights and to protecting small and medium-sized Italian businesses against competition from U.S. multinationals.
The U.S. employed similar tactics in Chile in the 1960s to prevent the election of Salvador Allende. He came within 3% of winning the presidency in 1958, so the Kennedy administration sent a team of 100 State Department and CIA officers to Chile in what one of them later called a "blatant and almost obscene" effort to subvert the next election in 1964. The CIA provided more than half the Christian Democrats' campaign funds and launched a multimedia propaganda campaign on film, TV, radio, newspapers, posters and flyers. This classic "red scare" campaign, dominated by images of firing squads and Soviet tanks, was designed mainly to terrify women. The CIA produced 20 radio spots per day that were broadcast on at least 45 stations, as well as dozens of fabricated daily "news" broadcasts. Thousands of posters depicted children with hammers and sickles stamped on their foreheads. The Christian Democrat Eduardo Frei defeated Allende by 17%, with a huge majority among women.
But despite the U.S. propaganda campaign, Allende was finally elected in 1970. When he consolidated his position in Congressional elections in 1973 despite a virtual U.S. economic embargo and an ever-escalating destabilization campaign, his fate was sealed, at the hands of the CIA and the U.S.-backed military, led by General Pinochet.
In Ukraine, the U.S. has worked since independence in 1991 to promote pro-Western parties and candidates, climaxing in the "Orange Revolution" in 2004. But the Western-backed governments of Viktor Yushchenko and Yulia Tymoshenko became just as corrupt and unpopular as previous ones, and former Prime Minister Viktor Yanukovich was elected President in 2010.
The U.S. employed all its traditional tactics leading up to the coup in 2014. The U.S. National Endowment for Democracy (NED) has partially taken over the CIA's role in grooming opposition candidates, parties and political movements, with an annual budget of $100 million to spend in countries around the world. The NED made no secret of targeting Ukraine as a top priority, funding 65 projects there, more than in any other country. The NED's neoconservative president, Carl Gershman, called Ukraine "the biggest prize" in a Washington Post op-ed in September 2013, as the U.S. operation there prepared to move into its next phase.
2) Violent street demonstrations
In November 2013, the European Union presented President Yanukovich with a 1,500 page "free trade agreement," similar to NAFTA or the TPP, but which withheld actual EU membership from Ukraine. The agreement would have opened Ukraine's borders to Western exports and investment without a reciprocal opening of the EU's borders. Ukraine, a major producer of cheese and poultry, would have been allowed to export only 5% of its cheese and 1% of its poultry to the EU. Meanwhile Western firms could have used Ukraine as a gateway to flood Russia with cheap products from Asia. This would have forced Russia to close its borders to Ukraine, shattering the industrial economy of Eastern Ukraine.
Understandably, and for perfectly sound reasons as a Ukrainian president, Viktor Yanukovich rejected the EU agreement. This was the signal for pro-Western and right-wing groups in Kiev to take to the street. In the West, we tend to interpret street demonstrations as representing surges of populism and democracy. But we should distinguish left-wing demonstrations against right-wing governments from the kind of violent right-wing demonstrations that have always been part of U.S. regime change strategy.
In Tehran in 1953, the CIA spent a million dollars to hire gangsters and "extremely competent professional organizers", as the CIA's Kermit Roosevelt called them, to stage increasingly violent demonstrations, until loyal and rebel army units were fighting in the streets of Tehran and at least 300 people were killed. The CIA spent millions more to bribe members of parliament and other influential Iranians. Mossadegh was forced to resign, and the Shah restored Western ownership of the oil industry. BP divided the spoils with American firms, until the Shah was overthrown 26 years later by the Iranian Revolution and the oil industry was re-nationalized. This pattern of short-term success followed by eventual independence from U.S. interests is a common result of CIA coups, most notably in Latin America, where they have led many of our closest neighbors to become increasingly committed to political and economic independence from the United States.
In Haiti in 2004, 200 U.S. special forces trained 600 FRAPH militiamen and other anti-Lavalas forces at a training camp across the border in the Dominican Republic. These forces then invaded northern Haiti and gradually spread violence and chaos across the country to set the stage for the overthrow of President Aristide.
In Ukraine, street protests turned violent in January 2014 as the neo-NaziSvoboda Party and the Right Sector militia took charge of the crowds in the streets. The Right Sector militia only appeared in Ukraine in the past 6 months, although it incorporated existing extreme-right groups and gangs. It is partly funded by Ukrainian exiles in the U.S. and Europe, and may be a creation of the CIA. After Right Sector seized government buildings, parliament outlawed the protests and the police reoccupied part of Independence Square, killing two protesters.
On February 7th, the Russians published an intercepted phone call betweenAssistant Secretary of State Nuland and U.S. Ambassador Geoffrey Pyatt. The intercept revealed that U.S. officials were preparing to seize the moment for a coup in Ukraine. The transcript reads like a page from a John Le Carre novel: "I think we're in play… we could land jelly-side up on this one if we move fast." Their main concern was to marginalize heavyweight boxing champion Vitali Klitschko, who had become the popular face of the "revolution" and was favored by the European Union, and to ensure that U.S. favorite Arseniy Yatsenyuk ended up in the Prime Minister's office.
On the night of February 17th, Right Sector announced a march from Independence Square to the parliament building on the 18th. This ignited several days of escalating violence in which the death toll rose to 110 people killed, including protesters, government supporters and 16 police officers. More than a thousand people were wounded. Vyacheslav Veremyi, a well-known reporter for a pro-government newspaper, was dragged out of a taxi near Independence Square and shot to death in front of a crowd of onlookers. Right Sector broke into an armory near Lviv and seized military weapons, and there is evidence of both sides using snipers to fire from buildings in Kiev at protesters and police in the streets and the square below. Former security chief Yakimenko believes that snipers firing from the Philharmonic building were U.S.-paid foreign mercenaries, like the snipers from the former Yugoslavia who earn up to $2,000 per day shooting soldiers in Syria.
As violence raged in the streets, the government and opposition parties held emergency meetings and reached two truce agreements, one on the night of February 19th and another on the 21st, brokered by the foreign ministers of France, Germany and Poland. But Right Sector rejected both truces and called for the "people's revolution" to continue until Yanukovich resigned and the government was completely removed from power.
3) The coup d'etat.
The creation and grooming of opposition forces and the spread of violence in the streets are deliberate strategies to create a state of emergency as a pretext for removing an elected or constitutional government and seizing power. Once the coup leaders have been trained and prepared by their CIA case officers, U.S. officials have laid their plans and street violence has broken down law and order and the functioning of state institutions, all that remains is to strike decisively at the right moment to remove the government and install the coup leaders in its place. In Iran, faced with hundreds of people being killed in the streets, Mohammad Mosaddegh resigned to end the bloodshed. In Chile, General Pinochet launched air strikes on the presidential palace. In Haiti in 2004, U.S. forces landed to remove President Aristide and occupy the country.
In Ukraine, Vitaly Klitschko announced that parliament would open impeachment proceedings against Yanukovich, but, later that day, lacking the 338 votes required for impeachment, a smaller number of members simply approved a declaration that Yanukovich "withdrew from his duties in an unconstitutional manner," and appointed Oleksandr Turchynov of the opposition Fatherland Party as Acting President. Right Sector seized control of government buildings and patrolled the streets. Yanukovich refused to resign, calling this an illegal coup d'etat. The coup leaders vowed to prosecute him for the deaths of protesters, but he escaped to Russia. Arseniy Yatsenyuk was appointed Prime Minister on February 27th, exactly as Nuland and Pyatt had planned.
The main thing that distinguishes the U.S. coup in Ukraine from the majority of previous U.S. coups was the minimal role played by the Ukrainian military. Since 1953, most U.S. coups have involved using local senior military officers to deliver the final blow to remove the elected or ruling leader. The officers have then been rewarded with presidencies, dictatorships or other senior positions in new U.S.-backed regimes. The U.S. military cultivates military-to-military relationships to identify and groom future coup leaders, and President Obama's expansion of U.S. special forces operations to 134 countries around the world suggests that this process is ongoing and expanding, not contracting.
But the neutral or pro-Russian position of the Ukrainian military since it was separated from the Soviet Red Army in 1991 made it an impractical tool for an anti-Russian coup. So Nuland and Pyatt's signal innovation in Ukraine was to use the neo-Nazi Svoboda Party and Right Sector as a strike force to unleash escalating violence and seize power. This also required managing Svoboda and Right Sector's uneasy alliance with Fatherland and UDAR, the two pro-Western opposition parties who won 40% between them in the 2012 parliamentary election.
Historically, about half of all U.S. coups have failed, and success is never guaranteed. But few Americans have ended up dead or destitute in the wake of a failed coup. It is always the people of the target country who pay the price in violence, chaos, poverty and instability, while U.S. coup leaders like Nuland and Pyatt often get a second - or 3rd or 4th or 5th - bite at the apple, and will keep rising through the ranks of the State Department and the CIA. Direct U.S. military intervention in Ukraine was not an option before the coup, but now the coup itself may destabilize the country and plunge it into economic collapse, regional disintegration or conflict with Russia, creating new and unpredictable conditions in which NATO intervention could become feasible.
Russia has proposed a reasonable solution to the crisis. To resolve the tensions between Eastern and Western Ukraine over their respective political and economic links with Russia and the West, the Russians have proposed a federal system in which both Eastern and Western Ukraine would have much greater autonomy. This would be more stable that the present system in which each tries to dominate the other with the support of their external allies, turning Ukraine and all its people into pawns of Western-NATO expansion and Russia's efforts to limit it. The Russian proposal includes a binding commitment that Ukraine would remain neutral and not join NATO. A few weeks ago, Obama and Kerry seemed to be ready to take this off-ramp from the crisis. The delay in agreeing to Russia's seemingly reasonable proposal may be only an effort to save face, or it may mean that theneocons who engineered the coupare still dictating policy in Washington and that Obama and Kerry may be ready to risk a further escalation of the crisis.
The U.S. coup machine has also been at work in Venezuela, where it already failed once in 2002. Raul Capote, a former Cuban double agent who worked with the CIA in Cuba and Venezuela, recently described its long-term project to build right-wing opposition movements among upper- and middle-class students in Venezuelan universities, which are now bearing fruit in increasingly violent street protests and vISISantism. Thirty-six people have been killed, including six police officers and at least 5 opposition protesters. The protests began exactly a month after municipal elections in December, in which the government won the popular vote by almost 10%, far more than the 1.5% margin in the presidential election last April. As in Chile in 1973, electoral success by an elected government is often the cue for the CIA to step up its efforts, moving beyond propaganda and right-wing politics to violence in the streets, and the popularity of the Venezuelan government seems to have provoked precisely that reaction.
Another feature of U.S. coups is the role of the Western media in publicizing official cover stories and suppressing factual journalism. This role has also been consistent since 1953, but it has evolved as corporate media have consolidated their monopoly power. By their very nature, coups are secret operations and U.S. media are prohibited from revealing "national security" secrets about them, such as the names of CIA officers involved. By only reporting official cover stories, they become unwitting co conspirators in the critical propaganda component of these operations. But the U.S. corporate media have turned vice into virtue, relishing their role in the demonization of America's chosen enemies and cheerleading U.S. efforts to do them in. They brush U.S. responsibility for violence and chaos under the carpet, and sympathetically present U.S. policy as a well-meaning effort to respond to the irrational and dangerous behavior of others.
This is far more than is required by strict observance of secrecy laws, and it reveals a great deal about the nature of the media environment we live in. The Western media as it exists today under near-monopoly corporate ownership is a more sophisticated and total propaganda system than early 20th century propagandists ever dreamed of. As media corporations profit from Western geopolitical and commercial expansion, the propaganda function that supports that expansion is an integrated part of their business model, not something exceptional they do under duress from the state. But to expect factual journalism about U.S. coups from such firms is to misunderstand who and what they are.
Recent studies have found that people gain a better grasp of current affairs from John Stewart's Daily Show on Comedy Central than from watching "news" networks. People who watch no "news" at all have more knowledge of international affairs than people who watch MSNBC or Fox News. A previous survey conducted 3 months after the U.S. invasion of Iraq found that 52% of Americans believed that U.S. forces in Iraq had found clear evidence of links between Saddam Hussein and al-Qaeda. Among Republicans who:ey were following "news on Iraq very closely", the figure was 78%, compared with only 68% among Republicans at large.
If the role of the corporate media was to provide factual journalism, these studies would be a terrible indictment of their performance. But once we acknowledge their actual role as the propaganda arm of an expansionist political and economic system, then we can understand that promoting the myths and misinformation that sustain it are a central part of what they do. In that light, they are doing a brilliant job on Ukraine as they did on Iraq, suppressing any mention of the U.S. role in the coup and pivoting swiftly away from the unfolding crisis in post-coup Ukraine to focus entirely on attacking President Putin for reclaiming Crimea. On the other hand, if you're looking for factual journalism about the U.S. coup machine, you should probably turn off your TV and keep reading reliable sources like Consortium News and Venezuela Analysis.
Nicolas J. S. Davies is the author of Blood On Our Hands: The American Invasion and Destruction of Iraq. He wrote the chapter on "Obama At War" for the book, Grading the 44th President: A Report Card on Barack Obama's First Term as a Progressive Leader.
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January 27, 2014 | Oriental Review
Ukraine's "peaceful pro-European" protesters leave a burnt land behind. Photo of a burnt police bus taken by S.Morgunov at the Euromaidan in Kyiv on January 20, 2014
Rioters have seized the administration building in Lvov and forced the governor to resign. It is not known who is currently in power in this region, but a puppet government formed by 'opposition forces' may soon be set up. Demands for 'autonomy', or quite possibly, explicit separatist flirtations, may give Klitschko and his thugs added bargaining power to use against the democratically elected government during 'negotiations'. It is likely that even more extremist activity will occur, led by Klischko, as he proclaimed on 22 January that, "If I have to go (on to the streets) under bullets, I shall go there under bullets." Batkivshchyna Party leader Arseniy Yatsenyuk seconded this provocative threat to delve Ukraine into de-facto civil warfare, as he similarly stated on 22 January that "Tomorrow [23 January] we will go forward together. And if it's a bullet in the forehead, then it's a bullet in the forehead, but in an honest, fair and brave way."
It is evident now that both men kept their threats in encouraging their respective militias to unleash carnage within the country. As with the Arab Spring events, these provocateurs are fiending for 'some of their own' to be killed by government forces seeking to re-establish control over anarchic areas. A full-fledged military or Berkut response by Yanukovich is exactly what Klitschko and Yatsenyuk want. For them, the more dead 'protesters', the better. It should be kept in mind that 1980s Poland was placed under martial law for much less violent disturbances than what we are witnessing in Ukraine at the moment.
The authorities now have to make a tough decision over whether to try to restore order to the restive region or to attempt to regain control over the capital. The situation is extremely grave, and it is now obvious that this hybrid Color Revolution/Arab Spring frankenstein is schizophrenically taking on more characteristics of the latter (not that any is good, for that matter). The Libyan method has apparently been 'perfected' to the point where outside actors feel comfortable deploying this Pandora's Box inside of Europe itself.
It is clear that ever since the 'Bulldozer Revolution' in Serbia over a decade ago, the Color Revolution template has evolved into the Arab Spring, and now the two have morphed into EuroMaidan, a new type of warfare for our century. Because of the ease of NGO infiltration of targeted nations in today's globalized world, as well as the synchronized terrorist and weapons-trafficking rings under the strong influence of various intelligence organizations, the threat of this 'social' weapon/virus being deployed in more and more countries has never been higher. It should be seen as no coincidence that 3,000 Middle Eastern terrorists were planned to be relocated to Romania, possibly for use in militantly training certain elements of the Ukrainian 'opposition'. This demonstrates that the outside powers are intent on digging in for the long-run and unleashing as much destabilization as possible. Ukraine's "peaceful pro-European" protesters leave a burnt land behind. Photo of a burnt police bus taken by S.Morgunov at the Euromaidan on January 20, 2014
Gene Sharp is the mastermind of the seemingly innocuous strategies that serve as a prelude and 'dog whistle' to this viral outbreak, and George Soros is the financier. Nations need to work together to repel this leprosy and protect themselves, their citizens, and global stability. The movement of Arab Spring-like warfare to Europe shows the confidence that the coordinators have in using this weapon anywhere they please. Today, Ukraine - Tomorrow, any other subjectively defined 'non-Western non-Liberal-Democratic' state.
Ukraine has long been the focus of Western meddling as part of a larger geostrategic game aimed at countering Russia. Zbigniew Brzezinski wrote in 1994 that "it cannot be stressed strongly enough that without Ukraine, Russia ceases to be an empire, but with Ukraine suborned and then subordinated, Russia automatically becomes an empire." A little over a year ago, the US implis economic integrationist efforts. After describing Russia's Eurasian Union plans as "a move to re-Sovietize the region", she proceeded to threaten that "we know what the goal is and we are trying to figure out effective ways to slow down or prevent it."
Undoubtedly, the world is now witnessing what the US had in mind when it threatened to "slow down" and "prevent" economic cooperation between Ukraine and Russia. With Ukrainian stability cracking under the pressure of continued chaos and the economy on the brink of near-total collapse, the lie of EuroMaidan's 'pro-EU integrationist' goals have been revealed. Either the EU will in no way accept a future failed-state Ukraine, licking its wounds from prolonged civil strife, to enter into the organization, or it, in coordination with its NATO overseers, had it planned all along to collapse the country and profitably rebuild it under the aegis of the West. Either way, the fabled 'path to Europe' has been exposed as the sham that it is, and absolutely nothing of positive value can come to the average citizen from what the militant participants have done to their country in the name of 'Euro-integration'.
The much-publicized talks of a 'ceasefire' are nothing more than an attempt for the saboteurs to buy time and continue overthrowing as many regional governments (in Western Ukraine) as possible. They are unfortunately as much of a sham as the Geneva II talks, as both 'opposition' groups want nothing more than regime change, and will stop at nothing to achieve this. Every action, every word, is no more than a deception to trick, disarm, and pacify any resistance to them so that they can inch ever more closely towards their directed-from-abroad nationwide coups.
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Oriental Review
Poland, the eager American servant that it has been, has now officially taken on the role of the 'Slavic Turkey' in relation to Ukraine. Just as Turkey has been a geopolitically convenient conduit for arms, personnel, and material support for the Syrian terrorists, so too has Poland begun to officially fulfill this role for their Ukrainian counterparts.
Prime Minister Tusk stated on 20 February, 2014 that Poland is already treating the injured insurgents from Kiev, and has actually ordered the military and interior ministry to provide hospitals to help even more [1]. The deputy health minister has confirmed that Warsaw is in contact with the rebels in Kiev "in making plans to take in Ukrainian wounded". This means that Poland has formally extended its covert and diplomatic reach nearly 300 miles into the interior of Ukraine, and that its intelligence services are obviously doing more in Ukraine than just 'helping the wounded' (terrorists). It is even more likely that Polish influence is even stronger in Lviv and Volyn Oblasts, the regions bordering Poland, and coincidentally or not, Lviv has already attempted to declare independence. The same can be: Turkish influence deep into Syria at the height of the crisis in that country, and one must be reminded of the fact that Turkey also helped the wounded fighters in that country recover on its territory.
The structural similarities between Poland and Turkey in relation to Ukraine and Syria need to be examined in order to more clearly understand how the 'Lead from Behind' template has been applied to both case studies.
First of all, the 'Lead from Behind' strategy has been defined as "discreet U.S. military assistance with [others] doing the trumpeting". It is the new strategy of warfare for theaters where the US, for whatever reasons, is reluctant to directly militarily engage itself. It relies on using regional allies/'leaders' as proxies to further US geostrategic and geopolitical goals via asymmetrical measures while Washington pivots to Asia, where it aims to present a conventional deterrent to China. Both Poland and Turkey are the US' puppets of choice in their respective theaters against their neighboring targeted states (Ukraine and Syria). At the least, the US provides intelligence support and the training of 'opposition' units, while Poland and Turkey pull the weight in directly assisting those members during their deployments in the victimized nations. In the case of Ukraine, the US utilized NGOs to infiltrate the country over a more than 10-year period and also allocated $5 billion to "help Ukraine achieve [the development of democratic institutions]". The National Endowment for Democracy has also been pivotal in peddling the 'Kony 2012 of Ukraine' in order to advance their psy-op campaign against Kiev, just as 'Syrian Danny' was the version deployed against Damascus.
But the similarities do not end there.
Both Poland and Turkey are frontier NATO states, with Poland being described as "the largest and most important NATO frontline state in terms of military, political and economic power." These two geostrategic states also have an overwhelming population when compared to their neighbors, as well as national inferiority complexes stemming from their lost imperial legacies (the Polish-Lithuanian Commonwealth and the Ottoman Empire). They share a significant land border with the states targeted for a 'democratic transition', as well as important cultural and political connections with those societies (as a result of the aforementioned imperial legacies) prior to the unleashing of the respective crises. This gives them significant intangible benefits over the future battlefield, both in state, non-state, and informational activities.
Poland and Turkey also host important American military installations. Turkey houses the US Air Force at Incirlik and an anti-missile defense radar in the east, while Poland provides the US with the Lask Air Force Base and an anti-missile defense outpost in the northeast near Kaliningrad. In regards to the development of the insurgents' mission, the Ukrainian Fascists are taking on disturbingly similar characteristics to the Jihadists in Syria. In 2011, random sniper fire (attributed to the 'rebels') was targeting civilians in Damascus, just as the same has begun to occur in Kiev, even targeting a reporter from RT. The Lviv request for independence can be seen as following the declaration of autonomy of Syria's Kurds, as both areas abut the border of the proxy state interfering in the affairs of its neighbor. In a similar fashion, both insurgent groups have taken over border control posts connected to their patron state, and this move obviously increases the ease with which Ankara and Warsaw can funnel arms, personnel, and materials to their subversive spawn. When the borders cannot be held by the insurgents, they resort to ransacking government depots and stealing arms from captured government forces and occupied buildings [2]. The Syrian fighters have a history of hostage taking and brutal executions, and their Ukrainian comrades have followed their lead by capturing over 60 police officers in Kiev.
It has thus clearly been demonstratively shown via the aforementioned examples that the destabilizations of both Ukraine and Syria are modelled off of a patterned approach. The US utilizes proxy states with injured imperial legacies in order to advance its 'Lead from Behind' strategy, targeting pivotal geostrategic areas where the US prefers to maintain a plausible deniability over its role and is reluctant to get too directly involved. One can also discern a larger trend developing – the use of extreme macro-regional ideological movements to support long-term destabilization. In the Middle East, extreme Islam is the method of choice for application and export, whereas in Ukraine, it is increasingly appearing as though extreme far-right (in some applications, even Neo-Nazi) group fit the 'Wahhabi role' for Europe. Ukraine could quite possibly become a training ground for other European far-right militants, or the ones currently in Ukraine can go on to teach the 'tools of their trade' to the highest bidder in other European states. Just as Turkey is supporting the extreme Islamists in Syria via its support for the fighters there, Poland can be: be flirting with extreme far-right nationalists in Ukraine through its statements of support for the violent opposition and its recent decision to evacuate and help the wounded insurgents (not even counting the unreported level of covert involvement already ongoing). And just as the extreme Islamists got out of the control of their handlers and now endanger the entire Middle East, the risk remains that the extreme far-right nationalists may become uncontrollable in Ukraine as well and come to endanger the entire EU. When comparing Poland to Turkey and Ukraine to Syria, it is proven that the Arab Spring has come to Europe in more ways than meet the eye.
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Mar 6, 2015 | The Ron Paul Institute for Peace and Prosperity
The National Endowment for Democracy (NED) is a Washington D.C-based quasi-governmental organization funded by the U.S. which boasts that it is "supporting freedom around the world."[1]
Alan Weinstein, one of the founders of the NED, explained in 1991:
A lot of what we [NED] do was done 25 years ago covertly by the CIA [2]
Most of the NED, and its affiliated organizations, deals with influencing political processes abroad. The means employed range from influencing civil society, media, fostering business groups, lending support to preferred politicians/political parties, election monitoring, and fostering human rights groups.
It's right there in the organizations own statements:
The National Endowment for Democracy was set up by President Ronald Regan in the 1980s, and it employed an assortment of organizations across the political spectrum including the AFL-CIO and the U.S. Chamber of Commerce to help funnel US tax dollars to overseas groups working to develop democracy in their respective countries. In the 1980s, especially in Poland, the NED had proved an effective tool in loosening and weakening Soviet power by supporting Polish dissidents.
The NED was the chief pillar of a plan by then President Clinton to get rid of Serbian dictator Slobodan Milosevic. The plan, developed by the CIA, was intricate and comprehensive. Basically, it was to work through the NED's two subordinate wings, the International Republican Institute (IRI) and the National Democratic Institute (NDI) as well as the Center for International Private Enterprise, an offshoot of the U.S. Chamber of Commerce. The IRI would focus on dissident students while the NDI would work closely with different opposition parties. The State department and the U.S. Agency for International Development would play the leading role in channeling funds through commercial contracts and nonprofit groups. Under the authority AID, other money would be funneled to opposition groups and the mayor of opposition cities.
Because of their freedom of travel and their ability to move in closed off areas, the CIA recruited the staff of the NGOs, mainly relief agencies and human rights groups, which produced a great deal of useful intelligence. According to one former CIA official, such recruitment was done very selectively. "We didn't want the organization discredited or people killed nor could they be seen as foreign vassals,":former official of the agency's Directorate of Operations. Another agency official:There was a lot of reluctance in this area."
The proposed coup against Milosevic had to be "very tightly controlled from the beginning, middle and end. You had to support one group against another group; you helped people who were going to help you," one said.
So the Clinton plan was to use covert/overt, insider/outsider elements simultaneously, which meant employing NGOs in coordination with sophisticated espionage.:e former senior agency official, who was closely involved, "We planned to do to Milosevic what he'd done to us. We went in to create trouble spots, support dissidents, circulate subversive literature, beam in anti-Milosevic broadcasts, and neutralize his army and security forces. Solidarity was the model."
The agency plan had several general goals; first the program should be a region-wide effort, making use of a Central European network of banks, corporations, political, and social organizations to fund coup assets plus use the intelligence services of Austria, Germany, Albania, Italy, and even Greece, for recruitment and penetration. All of these nations had their own excellent collection networks inside Serbia. The plan was also to develop useful and valuable sources inside Milosevic's circle.
A big part of the Clinton plan was to have the president appeal directly to Serbia's people. Clinton saw them as an irreplaceable ally. He wanted to forge a direct bond with them by speaking past the Milosevic government. U.S. support could not win them their freedom; that was their task, and backing Slobodan was not in their best interest. This took place before huge public demonstrations. Since Milosevic controlled the media, the U.S. would counter with radio and TV broadcasts whose theme would be Slobodan's decay. The broadcasts would also contain phrase of code to agents on the ground, much like the French resistance in WWII. The NGO's would smuggle in tons of printed materials and organize "a get out the vote" campaign.
"You had to be very careful; you had to look at every facet, every aspect,":US intelligence officer who was involved.
Such operations in the Balkan were usually run out of the CIA's European Division in Frankfurt, Germany, but this time it would the CIA's Central Eurasian Division at Langley who would look to it. Key support points would be U.S. Embassies in Austria, Hungary, Kosovo, Croatia, Germany, the Czech Republic, Bulgaria and Romania. Support would also come from the major German political parties, all of which had "action arms" that would contribute resources. Vienna would be the major focus of intelligence collection efforts. In Vienna, intelligence poured in like "water through an open sluice," a former participant:ustrian military intelligence had given America details of Milosevic's "Operation Horseshoe," a major Serb military plan, which would force 800,000 Kosovars into rootless exile. Austria and the countries of Central and Eastern Europe entirely wired. "Vienna's information was amazing, and so was Germany's,":participant in the operation.
Another resource was the 30,000-40,000 Serbs living in Austria. Serbia had established the military draft, and the CIA had many walk-in Serbs who gave it detailed assessments of troops, list of security and police officials and other valuable information. Other Serb deserters went by ratlines to Germany where they were debriefed at Westport, a former US military base turned intelligence center. Many Serbs returned to Belgrade to continue to report.
Milosevic was constantly passing draconian new laws to root out dissidents and make war on his own students, and the CIA, having learned from the attempts by the Soviets who tried to decapitate Polish union, Solidarity, using mass arrests, the Serbian rebel students, whose outfit was called Otpor, set up a brilliant horizontal structure exactly the opposite of Milosevic's central structure. Otpor was made up of small cells, and to escape capture, its members constantly shifted to a complicated network of safe houses. Operations were launched from these. A safe house used signals such as a raised blind or a closed window or a raised flag on a mailbox to indicate that all was well.
In addition, the CIA, through NGO's, supplied the rebel Serbian students with thousands of cell phones, radio transmitters, and fax machines. Calls and e-mails went out through servers outside Serbia to escape Belgrade's magpie scrutiny. Otpor was also supplied with printing equipment and supplies, and the publications and leaflets began to have an impact.
But the most urgent priority had been to establish a money conduit to fund Otpor and other Serbian defectors in place. Much of the money was cash gathered in Hungary and smuggled in suitcases over the border into Serbia., preferably U.S. dollars or German deutsche marks that were widely used in Serbia and had a higher value than the worthless Serb dinar. To avoid detection, the money trail moved constantly. Very early Otpor received money to a tune of $3 million from NED. The money was transferred to accounts outside of Serbia, mainly in Hungary and Austria. Since Milosevic had nationalized the Serb banks, a lot more money came over the Serb border in suitcases from Hungary. The NED would not know where the money was going, and would receive a receipt signed by a dissident as to how the funds were used. For example, money going to underground publications would be acknowledged by a secret code on one of the pages.
Using its covert monies, the students began to buy t-shirts, stickers, leaflets that bore its emblem of a clenched fist. Soon the clenched fist of Otpor appeared on walls, postal boxes, cars, the sides of trucks and statues. The students painted red footsteps on the ground to symbolize Milosevic's bloody exit from parliament and passersby found thrust into their hands cardboard telescopes that described a falling star called "Slobotea." They also used public relations techniques including polling leafleting and paid advertising. As days went on recruitment was expanded and new assets acquired and in cities like Banja Luka in northern Bosnia in Pristina in Kosovo, and in the provincial cities of Serbia, activity was mounting to a climax All the beatings of crowds, the disbanding of political parties, the fixing of the 1997 elections, the dismissal of honest Serb officials, the snubbing, the humiliating defeats, the arrogant indifference of Milosevic had been piling up, generating a pent-up violence that was going to be discharged in one shattering explosion of revolt.
The money trail expanded. Regarding the funding of certain persons or groups, the agency took pains to use false flag recruitments – acting through intermediaries to get new agents while the CIA pretended that its own agents came from other countries. Clinton did not want the opposition derided as U.S. lackeys. A participant: me, "I don't think a lot of our assets had a sense of working for the U.S. government. It's a grey area letting them know where their monies are coming from." In the end, they got over $70 million.
Communications gear came next. The dissidents had to be supplied advanced CIA equipment such as Inmarsat scrambler phones to organize a command, control and intelligence, (C3I) network so they could remain underground and stay a step ahead of capture. Training for specific opposition leaders and key individuals was given U.S. assets within Serbia whose purpose was to serve as the eyes and ears for key dissident as well as to provide funds and security.
By now Otpor had developed a crisis committee to coordinate resistance that enabled networks from different regions to keep in close touch. All branches of U.S. intelligence were going to provide an early warning system for the students. The NSA and the CIA Special Collections Elements in neighboring countries had hacked into Slobodan's key security bureaucracies and were reading Ministry of Internal Affairs' orders for police raids against the demonstrators. This intelligence was passed to the dissidents who gave advance alerts to Otpor cells which allowed them to disperse and avoid arrest. By now the student group even had a committee to deal with administrative tasks such as lining up new safe houses, cars, fake IDs. As the campaign to dethrone Milosevic went on, the money and activities grew more and more quickly with more than $30 million from the U.S. alone.
There were now seventy thousand Otpor students in 130 groups with twelve regional offices, and the Otpor leaders had been schooled in non-violent techniques designed to undermine dictatorial authority. They were using a handbook, From Dictatorship to Democracy: A Conceptual Framework for Liberation," written by Gene Sharp. Chapters were copied and handed from cell to cell throughout the country. He: an interview that his non-violent method "is not ethical. It is not pacifism. It is based on an analysis of power in dictatorship and how to break it by withdrawing the obedience of its citizens and the key institutions of society."
In the meantime, the United States and Britain and others were seeing to it that Serbia felt more and more encircled. Covert operations continued and gained momentum as meetings were held in Szeged in Hungary, in Croatia, in Ulm, Germany, and in Montenegro. In addition to Hungary, the U.S Embassies in Bulgaria and Romania were involved as well. The Clinton presidency was now involved in establishing a new, anti-Milosevic elite in Serbia.
In the end, of course, Milosevic fell from power in 2000. In Clinton's view, the huge debts of blood Milosevic had run up during his campaigns of aggressive war, massacre, rape and plunder had to be paid in full. Milosevic had already been indicted as a war criminal before the Dayton talks, and after he returned to his fortified house in 2001, the new President George W. Bush carried out the Clinton plan to carry out a plan established by the CIA, the U.S. Army and U.S. Special Forces. In the end, Bush sent in SEAL Team Six, acting on a plan set up in the headquarters of EuroCom, the U.S. Army in Stuttgart, to capture Slobodan and send him to The Hague. That story should be told, but not here.
Milosevic was a truly evil, heartless, merciless man. His greed for power was unbounded and his reign was one of predatory massacres, institutional corruption, abuse, exploitation.
By the time of the Dayton talks, after nearly four years, there were 250,000 killed, two million refugees, and there had been atrocities that had appalled the word. In interview a UN woman who was the first US official to get new of the Srebrenica massacre when a man with a bullet graze, appeared to tell her his story, resulting in an urgent telegram to the State Department.
But talking recently to former CIA and other intelligence officials, they see nothing in the Ukraine that provides any reasonable pretext to whip up ignorant mobs there who talk democracy but who behave like thugs. A former deputy chief of the National Intelligence Council at the CIA, once a backer of NED, now sees it with distrust, its ambitions "too imperial," manifesting the U.S. obsession with meddling with other countries internal affairs. Remember what Sharp: his program, ""is not ethical. It is not pacifism. It is based on an analysis of power in dictatorship and how to break it by withdrawing the obedience of its citizens and the key institutions of society."
Were such methods required in the case of the Ukraine? You tell me.
Reprinted with permission from Sic Semper Tyrannis.
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gwu.edu
Declassified Mar 22, 2000
The objectives of the propaganda action phase will be to assist military and political action developments; such as,
Strategically:
- To maintain morals of anti-Castro fighting forces.
- To instruct pro-patriot forces, and tell them how to join the fight.
- To intimidate pro-Castro forces; to make them defect or become panic stricken, confused, and uncertain.
- To present the designed picture to the internal fighting to world opinion. (Minimizing U.S. participation).
- To counteract Sino-Soviet propaganda and negate international Soviet support
- To appeal to other governments and people for support -- through the dramatic presentation or declarations of fighting forces and new government.
Tactically
- To instruct individuals, telling them how and where they can join fighting forces
- To announce the common purpose of military fighting and civic resistance
- Instruct the populace how to fight in places *sab instructions, call to general strike, etc.).
- To deceive the opposition, causing wasteful action and movement of troops, (including pre-D-day deception)
- To provide a means of giving tactical instructions to patriot forces without communication channels
- To provoke fence-sitters into joining "the winning side".
- To cause interference to opposition forces. (Example: Headquarters is aware that government reinforcement are nearing Santa Clara to join the local garrison, by road X from Trinidad. The radio can warn inhabitants of Santa Clara of impeding danger from battle of bombing, they say the only safe road out of town is road X. Warn then to leave by that road, caring all the possessions they can.)
- To persuade local populations to support military operations (Example: Aircraft crews find they need the light of Havana as a check pint for drop missions. But a blackout is enforced.. Thus radio explains the problem and asks patriots to put lighted candles in tin case placed on roofs or in patios.)
- To intimidate as to obtain local support (Example: The people are frightened to place the candles mentioned above. The radio says: "We will bomb only military targets. This will be easy in spite of blackout because only on military installations are there no candles to guide us. Thus, we can bomb only those areas where there is no candles."
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Washington, D.C., May 3, 2000 – Shortly after the CIA's botched paramilitary invasion of Cuba at the Bay of Pigs, President John F. Kennedy established a commission to investigate the failure and to consider whether the United States should conduct similar covert operations in the future. The commission -- chaired by General Maxwell Taylor, but also including the president's brother, Attorney General Robert Kennedy, Admiral Arleigh Burke and DCI Allen Dulles -- produced a highly critical series of narratives and memoranda, concluding, in part, that "the impossibility of running Zapata as a covert operation under CIA should have been recognized" as early as November 1960, five months before the invasion.Long the focus of declassification efforts, highly excised portions of the Taylor Commission's report were first released in 1977 and again in 1986, while the original remained tucked away in the coffers of the JFK Presidential Library. In 1996, the document was again up for review, this time in response to a request from the JFK Assassination Records Review Board, but declassification required the concurrence of the CIA, the Defense Intelligence Agency, the Joint Chiefs of Staff, the National Security Council, the State Department and the National Security Agency, each of which was to review the document for sensitivity. More than three years passed. It was not until December 1999 that the National Security Archive learned the reason for the hold-up: The Pentagon had simply lost the report. The Archive immediately requested the document under Mandatory Declassification Review, and the multi-agency declassification process, normally subject to a long, grinding backlog, began anew.
This time, thanks to the expeditious efforts of officials at the National Archives and Records Administration, the report was declassified in less than four months, an astonishing achievement for a process that under normal circumstances requires years of patience. The National Security Archive can remember no other case where the concurrence of multiple agencies -- illustrated by the dates of the "Declass" stamps adorning the cover pages of each document -- was gathered so quickly.
The release of the Taylor Report follows the long-awaited declassification of the CIA's own scathing evaluation of the invasion, a report prepared in October 1961 by Lyman Kirkpatrick, the CIA's Inspector General, and called by Newsweek reporter Evan Thomas, "The most brutally frank and honest government document ever written." Kirkpatrick's report was released to the National Security Archive in February 1998. Appended to the IG Report is a point-by-point rebuttal from Richard Bissell, the operation's chief architect. These and other associated documents, including interviews with key CIA managers of the Bay of Pigs operation, have been published in Bay of Pigs Declassified: The Secret CIA Report on the Invasion of Cuba, now available from The New Press.
While the full report of the Taylor Commission is too long to reproduce here, this Electronic Briefing Book provides excerpted passages from eight key documents, substantial portions of which were previously unavailable in the censored versions of the report released in 1977 and 1986. The appended graphic, compiled by Catherine Nielsen, summarizes the two major previous releases of the Taylor Report, published in Operation Zapata (Frederick, MD: University Publications of America, 1981) and in Foreign Relations of the United States, 1961-1963, Volume X, Cuba, 1961-1962 (Washington: US Government Printing Office, 1997), and compares their content with the newly declassified version. Other releases of parts of these materials have occurred elsewhere. Researchers are encouraged to refer to these sources for the rest of the report, which is also available at the National Archives and Records Administration facility in College Park, Maryland. We owe special thanks to the staff of the JFK Library for assisting researchers in identifying key passages that were previously classified.
THE DOCUMENTS
Document 1: Propaganda Action Plan in Support of Military Forces, Undated
Document 2: Chart of Command Organization for Operations
Document 4: After Action Report on OPERATION PLUTO, 4 May 1961 [Excerpt]
Document 8: Mr. Phillips [Interview of David Atlee Phillips] [Excerpt], Undated
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The Kremlin Stooge
teo:
I have been reading your posts with great interest for some time. Very interesting analysis and a great reading. Now I think I have something to add.
I do not believe that Yanukovich is either weak or stupid.
The entire fight is one for legitimacy. Opposition and their Western backer intended /intend to paint him as a murderous dictator killing his own people. It is a well tested approach, media knows the story by hard having told and retold it countless times.
What the government had to do was just give them enough rope so that they could hang themselves.
This means in practice:
1. Be as peaceful as possible. Neo nazi interpret this as weakness. They smell blood.
2. Try to harm them as little as possible. Police will be hurt inevitably. Some of them might be burned alive – didn't happen until now.
3. Seeing that they can burn and crack heads with impunity, the shock troops of the revolution ( can insert NATO ) get very bold and empowered. Large wave of violence is predictable.
4. President continues to beg for peace and restoration of public order. He is refused and attacks continue. It might seem that the brave extremist's commandoes are taking over the country.
5. But…. the power structures are intact. Repression forces are itching for a fight. They have been burned and beaten for some time now. Hospitals are full of their comrades. And majority of the people gets sick of seeing the punks playing civil war on their streets.
6. What follows next is easy to predict.
What I wrote above happened in almost the same form in 1941 in Romania. Extreme right party tried to take over the country by the same means as we see today..
Their main opponent , general Antonescu let them take over government buildings, newspapers etc , cried for a peaceful solution. He even called them my children, pls pls do not be violent. :):) Brave neo nazis sensed blood. So they burned and killed.
Even managed to burn some soldiers alive.
But their behavior only scared people and made the repression forces – army in that case – hate them like poison. They got crushed in a few hours when Antonescu felt the right moment.
They went so far that Hitler himself approved their destruction.
The Ukrainian case is not so extreme. Level of violence is significantly lower for now. US has not approved the repression of their local stooges.
So a moderate level of repression is to be expected. Of course from Yanukovich's point of view there is no hurry. The longer it drags the more embolden the shock troops from the streets will feel. The more empowered. So they might try to punish their enemies. Might even succeed in burning alive some Berkut operator.
Government is in no danger. The chances that the police officers might side with the goons trying to burn them alive is exactly zero. And cleaning the streets would be a very easy operation taking only a few hours.
So there is no hurry to chase the far right rebels from the streets. The entire fight is one of perceptions. Branding yourselves as mindless thugs hell bent on destruction and oblivious to the voice of reason does not help ones cause. Why would an enemy stop you prematurely when you do such a good job scaring people and delegitimizing yourself?
His only logical line of action is to help you. Prevent police from intervening. Cry and beg for peace and a stop to violence in order to embolden the aggressors. And so on and on….until moment when even such a kind and peaceful man is forced to take actions.
I do not know how strong are Yanukovich's nerves. This is a unique opportunity. The best idea for him would be to let the neo nazi bring the country to the brink of collapse and civil war.
Better that everyone sees them for real before they take the levers of power.
I do not know if his nerves will hold but from what we have seen until now it seems he can do it.
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Jan 27, 2014 | Ukrainian Pravda
David Kremer was in the past Undersecretary of State Condoleezza Rice on Human Rights, he also worked in State Department in Europe and Eurasia. As a member of the Bush team, his views are more radical than in the current US administration. But his proposals sooner or later finds their way into steps of the current US administration. Kramer was the first to call for sanctions on December 3, the last year - and approximatly a month later, US administration announced the first restrictions for Ukrainian officials.
In addition to thse activities, the organization led by Kremer prepares an annual report on freedom around the world, to which the U.S. authorities refer in public justification of policy steps toward the "problem" countries.
In an interview with "Ukrainian Pravda" David Kramer predicts that further steps will be taken by the U.S. authorities against Yanukovych - and gives advice on whom Washington ahouls concentrate its pressure as soon as possible.\
Q: Mr. Kramer, how President Yanukovychas is now perceived in Washington ?
A: Yanukovych looks very bad due to latest events. He looked bad when he decided to stop the process of the EU integration, he looked bad when it was first used force on November 30, and then on December 9. He looked bad throughout all past months.
Now it starts to look like a leader, who will do everything to stay in power. The use of force against protesters is unacceptable. And when the West is saying that something is unacceptable, that we do not accept it, we have to do something about it.
I think that Yanukovych lost the confidence of the West, and any possibility of signing the association agreement with the European Union lost. Now the question is whether Yanukovych is able to conduct a dialogue for the peaceful resolution of the conflict - or pressure should be applied to those around him to try to remove him from power.
To remove peacefully, without coup detat. I tend to think that the attempts to negotiate the settlement will not work, no matter how much I want them to happen. I think that too much blood has been spilled, too much violence occurred. So the question on the agenda is how to put pressure on its close cicle.
Q: Not to him personally ?
A: To him as well. But I would start with the people around him and who are very close to him: his family. And then just increase the pressure from that point.
Q: Did he reached the point of no return ?
A: I think so.
Q: What does this mean?
A: In 2010, Yanukovych won legitimately, in election which were considered by most observers, including me, democratic. I was there during the two rounds of elections. But to win a legitimate election - it does not guarantee legitimacy fo the rest of the life! I would say that today Yanukovych lost legitimacy due to his behavior.
From the early event in Ukraine my organization was for his resignation and early presidential elections, but not for his overthrow and not for forceful removal of him from power by protesters or by military or anyone else.
For him it's time to draw the correct conclusions: admit that he ruined his own legitimacy and now is the time to resign. He created this reality by himselve, not that somebody else created it for him.
The West should apply pressure on him - and those around him - so that it became clear to him and his close cicle that human rights violations, violence against protestors entail consequences. If we do not do that - the situation will only became worse.
Q: What is the future for Yanukovych?
A: I still think the best option for him is to resign, allowing to run for another term in the new elections if he wants to. Let the voters to decide whether they want him back in office. But we can not pretend that nothing happened. We can not wait until next March for new presidential elections.
Q: Should the opposition give him some guarantees?
A: This probably will be not a popular idea among opposition supporters to do so. But I would be inclined to say that they have to provide them.
Q: What are the guarantees?
A: For example, that before the new presidential elections there will be no investigation of Yanukovich actions. And only after elections independent investigators should determine whether there are grounds for such an investigation or not. The key now is to stop the violence. And if that condition is achieved, there should be such guarantees, if Yanukovych agreed to resign.
Q: Party of the Regions reply to all the statements of Western leaders that in Europe and America to the police would act similarly in the case of such disturbances.
A: You can not compare democracy in the United States and Ukraine . Our democracy is built over time, we have an independent judiciary , we have separation of powers, we have a system of checks and balances , we have a strong civil society, a strong media. Ukraine has only some of this.
I think that civil society manifested itself impressively in the last few years. Journalists like you and others behaved remarkably well despite the existence of a real threat. But Parliament is not a truly independent, judicial system is abused by the government. As long as there is no real separation of powers in Ukraine, and the courts did not become independent, our countries can not be compared.
Q: Also, the Ukrainian government:at in America there is the same legislation that passed the Party of Regions. For example, criminal liability for defamation.
A: First, in the USA slander is not a criminal offense. This is a civil issue , which is decided by the court, and a person may be awarded damages. Second, approval of legislation on Jan. 16 was totally undemocratic, untransparent, just by vote. This was really stupid.
Why Yanukovych went for it ? I think they would use the law to begin the attack on protesters. Although it would be far better to leave them alone. After all demonstrations lose momentum if they do not face countermeasures. However, this legislation added fuel to the fire.
Of course, there should be no violence by the protesters, but they also has the right for defence in case the fire at them. We should not equate the violence of a small minority of protesters to the level of violence committed by the authorities entrusted with a great responsibility.
Q: What will be the next step towards Ukraine USA ?
A: The U.S. announced the first round of visa sanctions, we do not know against whom specifically. Not even the number of persons named in this list. I hope that the U.S. will announce another round of visa sanctions, but more importantly - the freezing of assets, the introduction of financial sanctions. I know there are steps in this direction, some work on it. I hope they will be announced soon, although in my view they should already be annonced. I have worked in government for eight years and I know that those things take longer than some people would like.
Q: During your work in the Bush administration do you have any experience of implementing sanctions ?
A: Yes, with respect to Belarus. Ukraine is not Belarus , but unfortunately , getting closer and closer to it. Yanukovych is behaving more and more like Lukashenko. But Lukashenko, if you remember, was hit by visa sanctions and asset freeze not only the U.S. but also from the European Union.
Q: How would you start this policy of sanctions ?
A: Ideally, the U.S. and the EU should work together. America must take the lead because the EU comprises 28 governments. And to reach agreement in a team is difficult, while the U.S. has only one government and the agreement is much easier to find . After the U.S. does, the EU would be easier to follow it .
Q: How long does it takes for sanctions to be in full force?
A: In Belarus, it began after the presidential elections in March 2006, and the financial and visa sanctions take effect in June. That is, it takes a few months. But it should not take so long in the case of Ukraine, at least I hope so.
Q: Do you think that Yanukovych is afraid of sanctions ?
A: I do not know whether Yanukovych fear of sanctions. But I think people around him do have the fear of sanctions.
Q: Whom do you mean ?
A: I mean some of the oligarchs. Such as Akhmetov, Firtash, Kolomoysky sons of Yanukovych, and we can continue this list up to Yanukovich personally. So we have to build up pressure , affecting the way those people think.
Q: An the goal should be a revolt of oligarchs against the President ?
A: I think I should try to push those people out of the circle of Yanukovych, to make them understand that it's time to make the most important decision in their life: on which side they want to be ? And we can help them make that decision, hinting that there inevitably will be consequences for the events which are now happening in Ukraine.
Q: How would you rate the work of opposition in the current situation ?
A: They are in a difficult position. The question is to what extent they control the protesters. I think some of them behaved courageously - remember how Klitschko put himself between protesters and police. The key is to unite the opposition - they must show that there is an alternative to Yanukovych, who has already communicated that he is determined to stay in power at any cost . I hope he will understand what is on the wrong track.
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A feeling that they are watching bugs or spiders. Well, what a normal person , seeing as ten bulls with sticks beat one victim will not try to climb between them and just take pictured who they kill the victim ? So maybe he is an accomplice not a jurnalist. Or watch quietly as the white bear dies from hunger while shooting a fim about him ? It's was too cruel. And well- trained voice behind the footage: Journalist ethics does not allow to interfere -- Fucking hell . Watching us like bugs -- And who in this case they actually are and what they are doing here ?
Modern media have placed themselves outside the law. They are everywhere , as if above the events. Peope are stabbed, blown up, but they just take footage in order to show to the public all the details of the committed crimes. And they never just do not interfere , but not even express condemnation, or give legal assessment what they see , not to mention how to write a statement as a witness . They are demanding immunity !
And these people feel entitled to teach people! They think they are the fourth branch of government . How come? Only because they monopolize and distort the flow of information ?. But if they were only recording , as they are trying to reassure us(and then distorting them), they in effect are always participants, and not the last in importance. No events in the world can now happen without the "right" media coverage.
In essence the media have become a illegal combatants, the essential part of a military strategy, the part of a criminal strategy. They are now themselves helping to spread evil, anti-human ideas.
The world needs an alternative.That will not become complicit in atrocities. Problem worth thinking about .
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December 19, 2013 | StratRisks
The Secretariat of the Collective Security Treaty Organization (CSTO) held a "round table" on "Interaction between the authorities and society in order to counter external intervention and the" color revolutions. " Document, which contained recommendations that should help to prevent conditions favorable for the organization of "color revolutions" on the territory of the CSTO member states was adopted at the end of the meeting.
Tone of the discussion asked CSTO Secretary General Nikolai Bordyuzha . " Striking machiavellism of organizers and conductors of the revolutionary changes that have completly selfish goals and do not stop at using any means to achieve them, including those clearly beyond the legal and moral norms," "Kommersant daily reported.After that Bordyuzha brought a fresh example : " The case of outright cynicism when a senior official of one of the respected countries, which supposly promotes democratic values is, publicly flirting with a radical nationalist and anti-Semite. It looks like Bordyuzha meant here the meeting of Foreign Minister of Lithuania Linas Antanas Linkevičius with one of the organizers of the Ukrainian Maidan , leader of "Svoboda" Party Oleg Tyagnybok.
Ukraine was mentioned more then one time at the conference. According to participants , the events on Independence became the latest evidence that the "danger of color revolutions comes to the top in the list of challenges, threats and risks to members of the CSTO Collective Security". In this case , the term "color revolutions" in the CSTO understand " special model of the coup using political, information, communication , moral and psychological methods of influence ," and his ultimate goal - " the complete disintegration of the state, the change of legitimate goverment and the establishment of foreign control over the country".
Panelists agreed that Russia is losing the information war to the West, which " unscrupluly use the methods developed NATO in 1970-ies agains the USSR". Today, in their opinion, these actions are handled by experts if cybersecurity centers of NATO, one of which operates in Estonia .
In the list of the "agents of influence " of the West CSTO experts included NGOs, the media, the international organizations monitoring the elections (PACE and OSCE were mentioned), as well as sociological companies conducting exit polls . "Election commission announces the election results, but the people believe more to exit polls . Who conduct them? Our enemies , "- noted Assistant Deputy Defense Minister of Russian Federation Alexander Konuzin. He however , noted that he acts on the forum as a private individual.
Several quite radical proposals were made at the conference. Among them the measure proposed by Dmitry Rjurikov (RISI) "to think how to influence on our partners." "After all, our partners are moving to actions that become really dangerous ," - he believes.
Following the discussion, the organizers of the roundtable will prepare a list of proposals to counter forign intervention into internal affares of mamer states and the "color revolutions ". They will be circulated among the leadership of the countries - members of the Collective Security Treaty Organization . In particular, the CSTO might offer " blocking negative information which contributes to the escalation of tension in the country - a potential victim of the revolution " and " counter-propaganda tools ."
Bordyuzha seems has no doubt that goverment of the member states will listen to warning of the experts
Organization of the Collective Security Treaty - a military-political union created several States of Eurasia ( at different times united organization of six to nine states) on the basis of the Collective Security Treaty , signed on 15 May 1992. Currently CSTO includes Armenia, Kazakhstan , Kyrgyzstan, Russia , Tajikistan and Belarus .
Among proposed measures:
- To develop international legal mechanisms for the protection of information space of the CSTO and advanced system of countering the spread of ideology and external interference in the form of "color revolutions", by filling an ideological vacuum and an emphasis on the positive experience of joint activity and the historical past.
- Creation of the interstate databases with the counter information and descibing psychological pressure against the government and the population of the CSTO countries and counting them based on the spiritual and moral values.
- Coordination of social, cultural and other humanitarian resources of CSTO member states in combating the ideology of external interference and "color revolutions" to ensure that the population of the CSTO accurate and objective, without misrepresentation of information.
- Diagnosis and detection activities of media and agents that process ideology of external interference and "color revolutions" in the information space of the CSTO, blocking the spread in the information space CSTO of negative information which contributes to the escalation of tension in the country – a potential victim " color revolution. "
- Creation of special mechanisms of interaction media CSTO member states with state authorities in crisis situations conducive to the manifestation of ethics and civic responsibility of journalists in covering events outside interference and "color revolutions."
- Development of common approaches (concept base) to implement the policy in the sphere of interstate interaction between the government and civil society institutions.
- Implementation intrastate and interstate activities aimed at involving NGOs to address strategically important state issues: political stability, national security, harmonization of interethnic relations, maintaining sovereignty.
- Formation of public (trustees) councils at all levels of government, especially in law enforcement and security.
- Conduct a series of training activities in which models include consideration of responses to external interference with the direct participation of representatives of civil society institutions. Establish cooperation with network-profit organizations, which include more than 30 non-profit organizations. Ensure transparent financing mechanisms NGOs clearly identifying appropriate targets.
At COP "The interaction of government and society in order to counter external intervention and the" color revolutions "was attended by heads of information and analytical structures – Analytical Association members and representatives of CSTO Foreign Ministry, the Ministry of Defense, Ministry of Internal Affairs of the Russian FSB, the SVR, the CIS Antiterrorism Center. His report was presented by the CSTO Secretary General Nikolai Bordyuzha.
Participants in the event have come to believe that the West has adopted a new propaganda techniques in the arsenal of NATO 1970s. During the "round table" noted that "nest of propaganda" today based in cybersecurity alliance centers, one of which is located in Estonia.
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People's Deputy from the Party of Regions Oleg Tsarev believes that certain forces want to use people on Maidan "blindly" for the destruction of the state. He wrote about this possibility in his Facebook.
"Weapons and principles of warfare are changing with time. Cutting weapons were displaced by firearms, then atomic weapons was created. And now a new era of information warfare for world domination is coming. Wars are becoming more cynical and unprincipled. NGOs, unfortunately, are tools of such wars .
The Machiavellism of information wars is that very many sincere and honest people I have met often on the Maidan are protesting against the problems and shortcomings that exist in today's Ukraine, including in government. I, as a deputy, also want to fight against corruption and abuse of power. And I do it all the time - that fact can confirm my constituents .
But the trouble is that the energy of the protesters on Independence is used to destroy the state . It is well known that no [color] revolution has moved the state forward, [color] revolution always is a destructive process . In all countries where "color revolutions" have won, they have not improved the situation, and most importantly - living standards of the people.
If revolutionary scenario which is actively promoted by Western political technologists and some leaders of the opposition materialize, we would have gone through a large blood. And Ukraine as a unified state would cease to exist. People in the country now feel the aggression, a threat that comes from the Maidan. That is why Maidan support falls, "- he wrote.
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Jan 20, 2014 | doppel_herz
With great interest I watch the opposition Russian bloggers who post pictures from Maidan. If you believe them, just an hours are left for the corrupt regime of criminal Yanukovich. Equally interesting to see how their opponents groan - statists who in best Akhedzhakova style are calling Yanukovich to crush with tanks Wanton Galician cattle. Out of disgust do not read comments of "ukro-bloggers" as sane people are rarity in this cycle and are am not interested in the art created by insane people that much. And what can they, except exported from abroad banalities about the European choice and anti-people regime ?
Meanwhile, the protest which began to mold , for a new life. I even used to think that Ukrainians are got their share of troubles already. But no now the second part surreal ballet started. And it was more fun to watch then the first. I can not judge whether Yanukovich is a political genius, capable of multi-move ahead chess combinations, or interesting solutions were suggested by invited spin doctors, but to me the situation looks as following:
- Yanukovich defiant disregard of Maidan prolonged the protest to the point, when it is turning into the absurd. Holiday of flowers and liberation has turned into a dirty pigsty, The revolution started to smell with something far different from the small of roses.
- The Verkhovna Rada of Ukraine adopted a series of laws that toughen responsibility for violations of public order during the mass actions. Let's thank for this present to baboons of Tyanigbok.
- Opposition leaders realizing that the seats they occupy became too hot and they can be squeezed one by one, decided to oppose the news lawfs and throw thier boeviks with a crowbars and Molotov cocktails to capture the Verkhovna Rada
- During protests Ukrainian opposition has lost carefully created image of peaceful opposition , welcoming bruts from Berkut with flowers in their hands. This image disappeared in flames of burned buses and now real face of Ukrainian opposition is quite visible.
- All official leaders of EuroMaidan have demonstrated that they do not control the protesters. Boxer Klitschko looked particularly comical getting into the chin from both sides. To impose a trio of clowns as opposition leaders will now be much more difficult. Such a loss of ratings even without any election requires abilities that are very rare among politicians
- Attempts to pressure Kiev from the U.S. and Europe are continuing, but the position of the Western powers became less coherent: no sane citizen of Europe would applaud the pictures in which marginal kick police with crowbars and are throwing Molotov cocktails into the crowd.
- Police received a beating from marginals, to whom they were barred to return the kicks. Apparently, in the near future we should not expect pictures in which police join the protesters. And given a possibility it will try to inflict a revenge of those marginals. With so many cameras to find out who are the most obnoxious "Euro-integrators" is not too difficult.
- Europe MSM aka "Euro propaganda" tries to present the situation in the style of "aggressive rednecks who discredit peaceful protest ." Which makes attempt to protest the anti-extremist laws just adopted more difficult , "And what should I do? " now can asks his Western friend Mr. Yanukovych, showing pictures of the glow of burned buses near Khreshchatyk . I suspect that in Europe is not very welcome those who burn police buses .
- Right-wing youth which for so many years was diligently educated using examples Shukhevich and Bandera, began to bite the hand that feeds. Fame to the heroes. And it is difficult now to try to present all those stories with government provocateurs and agents of Moscow which supposedly fought with police despite best effort of peaceful protesters. ?
I was always skeptical about "the role of the masses in history", assuming that they are pawns, which players move around the chessboard to solve their own problems. To stimulate the crowds to action they use a variety of sticks and carrots . Recently carrots became completely virtual in the form of promises of bright Euro future. Great savings on carrots. But to imagine that thos newly minted Bolsheviks are able to topple the "evil empire" without the support of some "Foreign army headquarters" is a great stretch. So for me the events in Kiev is an interesting chess party of foreign players. Who will win, will put the pawns in the box.. The future will tell who will be this foreign player.
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Dec 20, 2013 | Ukrnovosti.net
Everyone runs his own movie on EvroMaidan, but its time to stop it. Time is over! Please understand that there was never any real desire to sign documents about " EU association status" -- You was brutally deceived, or by your own folly engaged in wishful thinking !
Your diagnose can be vary among the following options: Thoughtlessness, hypoplasia , inability to think deeply and thoroughly, failure to properly understand anything ; stupid brainless stupidity , simple stupidity , idiocy , cretinism, mental retardation , mental retardation, etc.
Our dear mentally retarded (as in "Dobkin realized that rally on Independence is staffed with mentally retarded "), performing the role of extras -- Nobody was waiting you in Europe now, and probably in the near and distant future too. And here's why.
The agreements signed by Putin and Yanukovych really surprised many observers, with some entering the state of a strong bewilderment. But it is only at first glance.
Political Science Mikhail Alexandrov ( Head of the Department of Baltic Institute of CIS countries ) , analyzing the recent agreements presidents of Russia and Ukraine,: is too difficult to explain the actions of the Russian leadership at Russia's expense desire to maintain the integrity of Ukraine.
The view that the Russian leadership was so naive that succumb to Ukrainian racket and rushed to help Ukraine to prevent the overthrow of Yanukovich does not look too convincing. Same about possibility of a coup by powerful pro-Western circles, which supposedly are ready to sign an association agreement with the European Union on any conditions.
Such an agreement would not have saved the Ukrainian economy from collapse, but instead would accelerate it. The West is now simply has no money to save Ukraine. They can' even safe their full EU member states. And the Kremlin is well aware .
The truth is that from the very beginning there was no real interest of the Ukrainian authorities in the agreement. The idea was different: it was playing the EU against Russia. Plan. I must say quite well known, polished trick , and which was used repeatedly in the past.
That is why the Association Agreement was prepared with Kiev not looking into any details, and not even bothering to translate it into Ukrainian or Russian language, which means that key players never read it and, especially, delve into the meaning for Ukraine of the pretty humiliating requirements of the agreement. It is because it was simply as an instrument of pressure on Russia and the Ukrainian side from the very beginning did not intend to sign it. And in this case - what's the difference what is written there ?
The same was true for the European Union . That is why just before the Vilnius summit IMF toughens conditions of the new loans to Ukraine (required to raise tariffs for gas and electricity for the population). Existing tariffs are already almost unbearable for Ukrainians with their low salaries and and hence represent clearly unacceptable conditions.
That is why, when the idiots from Maidan, so successfully make a dirty camp of the central square of of the capital of Ukraine, and started to want to Europe way too much, the condition of release of release of Tymoshenko about which they actually dreamed three years, resurfaced .
But the release of the Iron lady with the scythe is extremely undesirable to the current leaders of Ukrainian " ass-position", because as soon as Tymoshenko became free that first thing she does is to sent those nice guys packing. Because they are not in the same league with clever, ruthless and cunning Tymoshenko.
Nobody really wanted the civil war and the collapse of Ukraine, nether the government not the opposition. Simply when neither Moscow nor Brussels flinch, Kiev has decided to raise the level of tension to a new level -- to imitate the political crisis in Ukraine to get loans. With unpredictable consequences . Ukrainian oligarchs, and Western NGO which support the opposition were happy to help.
The theatric of this staged event is just conspicuous. Both sides restrained from moving their extras over a certain limit. Looks like they acted if not in coordination, but at least within a certain agreed plan .
Militants of SBU agent Dmitry Korchinskiy did stage a nice fight with the " Berkut ". Also "Berkut" kicked asses of some protesters, but whom exactly is unclear, as it was night . But in the media began such hysterics as if Russian tanks entered the Baltic.
NATO Secretary General began to seriously ask what steps should the alliance take, if Russia were to move troops to Ukraine and in Sevastopol some deputies demanded Russian troops , although they were already there.
Funny, but President Yanukovych in the midst of crisis flew to China to ask for money . But because China is far and events on Maidan excite China very little, the Chinese comrades did not give loans to Ukraine .
The question is, did the Kremlin understand the meaning of all this freak show on Independence Square ? Certainly it understood . But it decided to help Ukraine anyway. And in a very nice way -- that the Ukrainian side has not incurred any counter -- commitments for the development of integration with the Customs Union . Well, except , perhaps, the construction of a bridge across the Kerch Strait .
It looks like Putin agreed to concessions to Ukraine for geopolitical reasons. The collapse of the Ukrainian state for Russia can hurt Russian economy, and that's why Ukraine was allowed for some time to stay afloat.
What were exact considerations, we can only guess . But Russian President probably has has pretty full information, including intelligence, about how grade the economic situation in Ukraine became. Most likely, Putin is aware that in the near future in the West expected some serious events such as default. And the West is trying to divert attention and resources of Russia in the other direction , to bind Russia with the collapse of Ukrainian economics.
It's only Yanukovich and his entourage think they play their own game. In reality they are just pains in a wider global game. That's why Western emissaries are so actively involved in the events on Independence Square trying to convert them into full fledged color revolution. But they might be so active for a different reason that the intense desire to force Ukraine to sign the treaty of association with the European Union on the conditions previously specified.
Indeed, if the Ukraine split as the result of this signing and the Civil War started, then most probably Russia would have to get involved in the conflict , including by military means. And that effectively ended Russia abilities to to influence events in other parts of the world, and in general at the global level, for example, at the level of global finance for a long time.
... ... ...
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December 27, 2013 | The Kremlin Stooge
yalensis:
This is a follow-up to the story of the 36 foreign colour revolutionaries (including Misha Saakashvili) who were either expelled from Ukraine or denied entry visas a few days ago.
Party of Regions deputy Oleg Tsarev recounts how he helped identify, not just these 36, but as many as 240 foreign agents on Ukrainian soil, who were there to bust up Ukraine and foment revolution.
Tsarev's point of view: Ukraine came within a hair of falling prey to the "Yugoslav scenario", and it was no accident that Marko Ivković was there (and expelled), he is one of the founders of Otpor who overthrew Milošević.
According to Tsarev, the colour revolutionaries attempted to adapt the exact same scenario which they had previously employed in Yugoslavia, almost down to the smallest details. For example, in their "National Council" on the Maidan ("Narodnoe veche"), they attempted to elect (by acclamation of the mob) a "technical government" which would serve as the transitional government. According to the Yugoslav scenario, this technical government would make an appeal to the municipal authorities, the police, army, etc. It would be recognized by foreign governments as the legitimate government of Ukraine. These same governments would put pressure on Yanukovych to resign in favor of the "transitional government". Eventually Ukraine would be broken up into several states, just like Yugoslavia.
However, what worked for Yugoslavia didn't work (or at least hasn't worked yet) for Ukraine.
yalensis: Maybe the difference is that NATO can't bomb Ukraine into submission?
kirill:
I think the difference is that the municipal authorities, the police, the army and over 70% of the people would not join the mob government. You need, using atmospheric physics language, an unstable background state for the instability to grow. Milosevic's regime was authoritarian.
Yanukovych got elected fair and square in 2010. In spite of all the issues Ukraine has, the vast majority to not see any benefit from a revolution. Especially one that is clearly a NATO Trojan horse.
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December 26, 2013 | Reuters
Protesters demanded Ukraine's interior minister resign on Thursday after an opposition journalist known for documenting the extravagance of the country's political elite was chased down in her car and savagely beaten in a midnight attack.
Clutching pictures of Tetyana Chornovil's badly bruised face, hundreds marched on the Interior Ministry in the capital, Kiev.
The attack on the 34-year-old restored passion to protests that have been losing steam more than a month after the government spurned a pact on closer ties with the European Union, turning instead to former Soviet master Moscow.
Pro-EU demonstrators have been occupying central Kiev, but their numbers have been falling since Russia offered Ukraine a $15 billion bailout this month.
The United States:e journalist's beating was "particularly disturbing" and that Washington was concerned and watching the situation.
View galleryA protester holds a picture of journalist Tetyana Chornovil, who was beaten and left in a ditch just …
"The United States expresses its grave concern over an emerging pattern of targeted violence and intimidation towards activists and journalists" who participated in or reported on the protests,:statement issued by State Department spokeswoman, Jen Psaki on Thursday evening.
Psaki called on Ukraine's government to ensure respect for human rights and to send an "unequivocal message" that violence against government critics "will not be tolerated."
"The United States, in concert with our European partners, will continue to closely watch the disposition of this and other cases," she: the statement.
Ukraine's interior minister, Vitaly Zakharchenko, had already become a target of opposition anger following a violent crackdown on protesters by police late last month that helped swell the demonstrations.
The attack on Chornovil, shortly after midnight on Wednesday, came hours after she posted pictures online of what she:s Zakharchenko's home, part of a campaign to expose the opulence of the political elite under President Viktor Yanukovich.
View galleryProtesters hold upturned portraits of Ukrainian President Viktor Yanukovich and journalist Tetyana C …
"Our police no longer protect their people, but fight them instead, hurt and oppress them,":otester Valentina Gorilova, a 47-year-old housewife.
Some protesters, their hands chained, kneeled before a row of police in mock supplication.
With Ukraine winding down for the Orthodox Christian holiday season, the opposition movement has shown signs of waning. A hard core of hundreds continue to camp out around braziers on Kiev's Independence Square, swelled by weekly mass rallies of around 100,000 or more.
BILLIONS IN RUSSIAN AID
Chornovil, who has played an active role in the protests, shot to prominence last year when she infiltrated the grounds of Yanukovich's opulent residence in a park near the Dnieper River.
View galleryPeople walk past pro-European integration supporters' tents near Independence Square where the s …
She has since posted photographs online of the homes of other senior officials. Zakharchenko was her target on Tuesday. "Here lives the executioner," the journalist wrote in her blog, above pictures of a handsome country property.
Hours later, Chornovil was chased on a road outside the capital, a dashboard camera capturing how a black Porsche Cayenne veered and rammed into her car before at least two men jumped out.
"When a very, very posh car is ramming you first on the side, then from behind, then from the front you understand that they've been paid already for your life," a beaten and bloodied Chornovil told local television station Channel 5, laying on a hospital bed.
Her lips were swollen and split, one eye blackened and closed by bruising.
"I am a Revolution activist ... and I am very well known as a journalist, I've made a number of journalistic investigations which ... are irritating them (government officials)," she said.
View galleryProtesters hold upturned portraits of Ukrainian President Viktor Yanukovich during a protest rally i …
The Organisation for Security and Cooperation in Europe (OSCE) and the United States embassy in Kiev condemned the attack.
The embassy noted "a strikingly similar series of events over the last few weeks, targeting individuals, property, and political activity, apparently aimed at intimidating or punishing those linked to the ... protests."
"We condemn the attack and call for an immediate investigation, which unlike previous such incidents must result in those responsible being held fully accountable under the law," it: a statement.
Media reports:other opposition activist was stabbed in the eastern city of Kharkiv on Tuesday.
Yanukovich on Wednesday called on police to find those responsible for the attack on Chornovil. Two men were detained later on the same day and police:ey had detained a third suspect on Thursday.
The president's pivot away from Europe last month has thrown the country of 46 million people into turmoil, exposing a deep rift among Ukrainians over whether their future lies with the EU or Russia.
Rejecting the EU trade deal, Yanukovich turned instead to Russia for an aid package worth $15 billion to help ease a worsening financial crisis. It received a first $3 billion tranche this week.
On Thursday, ratings agency Standard and Poor's revised the outlook on Ukraine's long-term sovereign 'B-' rating to stable from negative, saying the bailout would cover the country's financing needs over the next year.
(Additional reporting by Olzhas Auyezov, and Susan Cornwell in Washington; Writing by Matt Robinson; Editing by Peter Graff, David Evans and Peter Cooney)
The Kremlin Stooge Comments
yalensis:kirill:And, sure enough, the Chonovil beating has reinvigorated the dying-out Maidan protests.
Being of a suspicious mind, I cannot help but think of that page in the Gene Sharp manual, in which a martyr is sacrificed to enrage the masses and goad them into violent revolution.
I suppose we'll know more, once they release the names of the suspected attackers in that SUV.
Seems kind of suspicious that they didn't even bother to cover up their license plate while committing a felony. Especially during an attack that was apparently well planned, and in which they stalked their victim.I see 3 basic logical possibilities:
(1) It's just like the Opps say: anti-Maidan goons, possibly working for the government, beat up an Oppositionist journalist; or
(2) Tatiana didn't actually get beaten up, and the whole thing is a fake done in a movie studio; or
(3) Tatiana DID get beaten up, by people from her own side (colour revolution specialists), posing as pro-government goons.Those are the only 3 possibilities that I can see at this time.
Moscow Exile:She wasn't decapitated. Nothing to see here, move along.
Gene Sharp's playbook is not going to be effective in Ukraine. They can beat up as many "journalists" as they want but that is not going to convert the over 70% of the population who do not subscribe to the Maidan agenda into pro-NATO zealots. And the Maidan collection is radicalized enough already. They can, all 100,000 of them, go back to the Maidan and camp out there for the next 15 months and that will get them nothing.
- marknesop:
They are grimly sticking to the playbook, though – one of those stories featured a protester draped in the de rigueure Ukraininan flag, getting his picture taken beside an electronic poster of Yaukovych with a big red clown nose on, and a dripping bullet hole in his forehead. Chapter One – make the enemy appear ridiculous, so that people will laugh at him; mockery is more powerful than guns.
yalensis:And so far, as far as I can see, bugger all in the Western press about this horrific beating.
The Tin-Tins of the Western media must still be sleeping off the effects of too much plum pudding and brandy.
There was also a multiple stabbing of a Maidan protester reported in the Russian press yesterday. I have seen no report of this in the Western media either.
One thing about the unfortunate Chonovil that I have only seen once mentioned so far – also in the Russian press – is that she seems to have been something more than an "investigative journalist" (mega brownie points given for such an accolade in the West – you know the score, just like the Blessed Anna Politkovskaya etc.)
Apparently, at the peak of the Maidan show, an oppositionist peace-keeping patrol (for want of a better term) caught a team of masked "provocateurs" (the term the oppositionists used) smashing the windows of a government ministry near the Maidan.
The activists were unmasked and photographs of them taken in order to reveal to Maidan protesters the identities of troublemakers to the cause.
One of the unmasked provocateurs was investigative journalist Chonovil.
I've just checked the Web again for Anna Chonivil: nothing in the English language media, though there are some reports in Spanish.
See: Tatiana Chonovil, la última de una larga lista de periodistas agredidos en Ucrania official
I've just searched the Grauniad and Telegraph and Independent, so-called British "qualities": nix.
It seems that "gentlemen in England now a-bed" haven't a clue what's going on beyond their sleepy shires.
I feel that I should add that I most certainly do not condone what happened to that unfortunate woman. Those animals that performed such a cowardly and horrendous act of violence against a woman cannot be described as "men".
Moscow Exile:Dear Moscow Exile: During the height of the Maidan I also saw that same report about the "unmasking of Chornovil". That was the first time I had ever heard of her, and unfortunately I didn't save that link. I would have saved it if I had foretold how important she was to become in a couple of weeks.
Anyhow, that article and others do show that, far from being an impartial journalist, Tatiana was/is an engaged commando and militant in the Orange movement.
Even though I am very strong anti-Orange I would never condone a beating of anyone, especially a woman, and especially a beating of such savagery as the photos show.
Having:at, I am not convinced that she really was beaten. Remember my logical possiblity #2 (above), being a major player in the colour revolution gang, she would have access to, and be capable of, Hollywood style staged events; not to mention Hollywood-level make-up artists. When you watch a movie in which Bruce Willis is beaten to a pulp, I assure that Bruce is actually fine.
Having:at, I personally lean towards Option #3, that she WAS beaten, but was beaten by her own side, in order to turn her into a martyr. I am pretty sure this was done without her permission, nobody in their right mind would submit to that.
My thoughts are as follows: The attackers made no effort to conceal their car, their license plate, or even their faces from the dash-cam. If they were security forces goons, they would have been more careful, and their attack would have been more subtle. Although, I suppose one could argue that they could be highly INCOMPETENT security force goons.
Also, they have been arrested, and Yanukovych has made a big statement about how they will be prosecuted, and what a terrible thing this was. Yan is clearly rattled by this incident, knowing that he would probably be blamed for it.
And the third point of interest is what everybody is remarking on, which is the almost total lack of interest in the Western press. If this attack was for real, then they would be all over it, like lice on Phil Robertson's beard.
(On the other hand, if they themselves planned the attack, then they would also be all over it, so that part is ambiguous.)
In conclusion, the Western press simply does not know how to spin this incident, so they are keeping mum until they get more facts?
marknesop:There you go again about beards!
POGONOPHOBE !!!
Good job you never lived in the USA in the 1860s!
I presume you are not a fan of ZZ-top.
- yalensis:
You know who else wears long beards?
TERRORISTS! that's who.I rest my case.
AP:The funny thing about ZZ Top is that the drummer is actually named Frank Beard. And he's the only member of the trio who usually does not have one. I loved ZZ Top back in their "Fandango" days when "Tush" was tearing up the charts, but not long after that their music began to sound less spontaneous and more like it was synthesized.
yalensis:As recent events have shown, there ought to be no assumption of competence when considering the Ukrainian government and its characters and branches. Therefore, excluding the government (or, more likely someone from within the government or with ties to it, but acting on their own) as the culprit because the job was too sloppy doesn't make sense, in my opinion. These people are sloppy through and through.
There are many possible culprits. It could have been someone tied to Zakharchenko, or to some businessman (she pissed off a lot of people with her reporting), or it could have been part of some murky intra-government struggle, with someone trying to discredit someone else by blaming them for this crime. Or maybe even the government trying to make it look like the opposition did it, in order to discredit them, by hiring a turncoat from the opposition. Something like the Soviets, during the final years of the UPA struggle, employing former UPA soldiers to kill civilians in order to discredit UPA in the yes of the population:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/NKVD_units_dressed_as_UPA_fighters
Some form of government involvement seems more likely than the idea of the opposition itself turning her into a martyr.
AP:Sorry, but that wikipedia article is bullshit, and the 3 or 4 footnotes are bullshit too. That old lie about the NKVD dressing up as UPA is just fairy stories that the UPA folks made up and passed along to the gullible. Maybe some of them were ashamed afterwards about all the people and families they butchered; they were even more brutal than their Nazi overlords. After slaughtering thousands of Jewish, Russian, and Ukrainian families, UPA made up that fanciful tale: "That wasn't us, it was NKVD dressed as us." Yeah, right. I'm amazed that some people still believe this bullshit.
marknesop:The guy who assassinated Bandera was former UPA, wasn't he?
UPA slaughtered 10,0000s of civilians, the NKVD were not very nice either and some former UPA did fight for the NKVD. There was also a large influx of Galicians (often, young siblings of UPA veterans) into the KGB in the 1960s and 1970s. The latter was told to me by the only person in Russia whom I met who admired UPA ( a grudging respect) – an FSB officer. This was corroborated by an SBU general with such a Galician background whom I know (sorry, no names).
Moscow Exile:That's pretty casual treatment they have at that hospital for a broken nose; not only is it not splinted, it isn't even bandaged. It seems to have responded to this tough love, though; it doesn't appear even to be swollen.
I wouldn't dispute that she has been smacked around, though. And her attempts to escape looked genuine. I don't want to come off like anything less than being beaten to within an inch of one's life is powder-puff stuff, because any physical violence at all is wrong, but it appears the initial reports were a little exaggerated.
But her apparent attraction for taking a walk on the wild side, and not just reporting the news but helping to shape it with a little bit of anarchy, put things in a different light. The lure of becoming an iconic investigative journalist to the world, "The Face Of The Maidan" and right up there with Politkovskaya and Estemirova, must be strong. Also, there would be no motivation for the government to have her followed and beaten – they could have simply arrested and jugged her for public vandalism, at which she had already been caught in the act.
This whole thing smells to me. If someone could supply the link about her being caught smashing windows while masked, it might be helpful.
Moscow Exile:"If someone could supply the link about her being caught smashing windows while masked, it might be helpful."
It was reported in the Ukrainian Kommersant. I had a link, but it's gone.
RT also reported her unmasking here.
Moscow Exile:How should her name be correctly spelt?
I'll settle for "Chornovol" as in here: "Журналистка и активистка Татьяна Чорновол" [Journalist and activist Tatyana Chornovol].
Her surname means "Black Bull"!
Some more links:
http://en.itar-tass.com/world/709714
http://rt.com/news/ukraine-protests-court-ban-538/
She's been up to various attention attracting tricks before:
marknesop:More links on the "journalist-provocateur":
From Kommersant.ua:
13.52 Возле здания КГГА большое скопление людей. В самом здании не более двух десятков милиционеров. На крыльце стоит Татьяна Чорновил и агитирует митингующих штурмовать КГГА. В свою очередь участники митинга отказываются это делать.
[13.52 Near the KGGA (Киевская городская государственная администрация - Kiev City State Administration, i.e. Town Hall - ME) building there is a large crowd of people. In the building there are not more than twenty policemen. Standing on the porch is Tatiana Chornovil, who is agitating people that are attending the meeting to storm the KGGA, but those taking part in the rally refuse to do so.]
marknesop:"Indeed, I'm not hurrying to give myself up, because it's possible I can still do more that will be useful for the revolution."
Prophetic words, indeed.
She was quite nice-looking before, in her PR shot. I was not aware that she was not only an opposition journalist and activist, but an honest-to-God opposition politician. Of course, her victory was "stolen".
;yalensis:The attack begins to smell more and more.
yalensis:This lunatic reads like a female version of Father Gapon!
yalensis:Yes, that was the same link that I read at the time. This was during the height of the protest, when tens of thousands, maybe even 100K people were out on the Maidan. Orange parties political leaders were kind of scared themselves of what they were doing; they were on edge and easily rattled; they were constantly warning their own troops to beware of provocateurs. That was the backstory to why Opps activists would "unmask" their own comrades: It was because they didn't know "who was that masked man", and initially assumed they were provocateurs from the other side. Hence, they cornered them and triumphantly unmasked them, just like Sargeant Gonzalez unmasking Zorro. Tada! Ooops! A case of mistaken identity:
As no one had been guarding either the mayor's office or Maidan Square, some activists from the crowd urged other demonstrators to keep order and watch out for provocateurs earlier on Sunday. On the way to Maidan, a column of protesters detained a group of provocateurs who attempted to vandalize the mayor's office by breaking the windows. A group of young masked people dressed in black wearing orange safety helmets was surrounded by opposition activists, who tore the masks off their faces to take photos of the youths for further identification. It turned out that the group was being led by opposition journalist, Tatyana Chornovil.
And, as Mark rightfully says, this shows Tatiana to be a revolutionary activist who was in the business of MAKING, not just REPORTING, news. Or, maybe making it, and THEN reporting it.
Which is why I wouldn't put it past her to fake her own beating, in the hopes of resuscitating a dying Maidan.
Two benefits would accrue: (1) to revitalize the flagging movement; and (2) obtain all the sympathy, respect, and glory due to such a martyr.marknesop:P.S. Mark: I don't think they splint broken noses. It's mostly cartilage, anyhow.
Not sure, though. I never had a broken nose. Ask Klichko, he would know.yalensis:I've never had my nose broken, though some say I deserve it and a few have offered to do it. However, a mate of mine had his nose broken by a British sailor of undetermined identity when we were in Funchal, Madeira with the NATO fleet. HMS NORFOLK had just been recalled to the UK to have her weapons fit stripped out and to be turned into a training ship. Since she had just started our 3-month NATO stint and we had already warmed up with a few good port visits, NORFOLK's sailors were jubilant. We were joined in Funchal by HMS ANTRIM, on her homebound leg from a Far East cruise and ordered to assume NORFOLK's responsibilities for the rest of the deployment, and her sailors were somewhat less than jubilant, shading distinctly toward bitter.
Anyway, Madeira's delicious export being well-known, Funchal was dotted with little pubs and drinking establishments, and every place big enough to hold a bar had a few tables. Some of us were in one and my mate was at the bar when one of ANTRIM's crowd, in a belligerent mood,:mething provocative to him. My mate was in the mood to exchange verbal barbs only, and was doing quite well for himself, I thought. The ANTRIM lad must have thought so, too, because he invited my mate to step outside. My mate:pansively, "Sure; bring your friends".
As he was holding the door open, several British sailors walked through it one after another, and all punched him in the face as they did so. Thus it was not possible to say who really broke his nose. Anyway, he had it taped and splinted by SickBay, and although it is true it is only cartilage, it will likely not heal straight if it is not splinted. Mind you, that was many years ago, and the recommended treatment may have changed. But it is inconceivable to me that the girl shown in the video has a broken nose, and although her lips and eye are clearly bruised her nose looks undamaged. And why is one side of her face covered? The side you can see has injuries – are we to suppose that what is concealed is worse?
Her hands do look in fairly good shape, although it looked to me as if two of them were taped together which usually means one is broken or badly sprained. But again, neither is swollen as you would expect considering the recent nature of the injuries.
Did the original report say she was beaten with a pipe? I didn't see it. What you usually get from being hit in the face with a pipe is a broken cheekbone and a face that is swelled up like a pumpkin.
Could have happened just like she:ut she is also clearly ambitious and a tricky piece of work. I would not put anything past her. One thing we can be fairly sure of – her pursuers intended to be identified. Otherwise they would have taken the dash cam or taken steps to ensure their license plate would not be read, not to mention using a less distinctive vehicle.
marknesop:One of the reports:e attackers chased her down and hit with her with poles and/or pipes. But that could have been inaccurate. Her injuries, assuming they weren't faked, look more like fist punches to me. Either way, she would have put up her hands defensively and suffered extensive injuries of her hands. Unless one of the attackers was able to hold her down down and disable her hands, while the other 2 punched her.
Still a lot of unanswered questions. And, to my knowledge, police still haven't released the names of the 3 arrested guys.
yalensis:Indeed. As we have discussed before, the old crime triad for suspects is motive, means and opportunity, with motive being the strongest leg; it's why the husband is always a suspect when a wife is murdered. What would be the motive in this instance? The Maidan movement was weakening by the day – why beat up some opposition journalist and stir it all up again? Had she discovered something that must be kept secret? If so, why didn't they kill her? Now she can still blab the whole thing. They certainly could have finished her off; it wasn't like some good Samaritan arriving upon the scene frightened them off, was it? The dash-cam timer is functioning correctly, it's still counting off time, it's just set to the wrong date. If there was some kind of set-up, which looks like a good possibility, it doesn't look like she was part of it as she seems genuinely to be trying to get away. I have to wonder about those other vehicles they pass on the road – could they not see something unusual was going on?
Whatever the case, and I agree it sounds very suspicious, the government does not need to prove who these people were associated with – if they took no trouble to conceal their license plate, didn't bother to take the dash cam and have already been arrested, they must have known that was a likely prospect and would have their stories all ready – it just needs to prove they are not associated with the government.
The story which accompanied the dash-cam video reports that her most recent blog entry "posted photos of a country mansion belonging to Interior Minister Zaharchenko."
If they shopped around for a guy to tie this to, they did their homework – Vitaliy Zakharchenko is a nasty-looking piece of work, and reached the rank of Major General in the police (that always cracked me up, the way Soviet ranks went so high in the police; I think the top rank in the western police is something like Lieutenant, at which point you're running a Division, and ranks above that are non-military, like Commissioner). He is also supposed to be a close personal friend of Yanukovych Jr., although he is not a member of a political party. As Minister of Internal Affairs he is also head of the State Tax Service.
Moscow Exile:Yes Zakharchenko is the one the Opps are pointing to and accusing him of ordering the Chornovil beating. Supposedly as revenge for her exposing his lavish lifestyle.
If he IS the guilty party, then, even though he had access to the creme de la creme, he must have for some reason decided to hire the most incompetent gangsters since Fredo Corleone.Moscow Exile:The Grauniad has finally got hold of the story.
Moscow Exile:And the Guardianistas are all convinced the beating is the work of "Putin thugs" or in imitation of that of "Putin thugs".
"Yanukovych copying Putin's tactics against any opposition. At least she is still alive, unlike Anna Politkovskaya who was killed by Putin's thugs."
"Follows the similar pattern of intimidation and murder of journalists in Russia, if they upset powerful people by exposing corruption or asking awkward questions."
"I guess democratic freedoms go cheap these days. Only $15 billion to make Yanukovych president for life, destroy civil society, beat up and murder journalists and opposition leaders with impunity, let corruption run rife while roads, schools and universities crumble. Sounds like a good deal… if you're a psychopath."
"Ordinary Ukrainians in their hundreds of thousands are risking their lives to avoid being pulled back into the cesspit of violence and corruption that is Russia. But they're up against government sponsored gangsters, a brutal security force and of course Putin's unlimited funds. These are good decent people who are being sold-out to the Kremlin by a corrupt clique at the top."
"The Kremlin's Internet Institute trolls are clearly working overtime before they can retreat to the happy and holy Orthodox Feast of the Nativity and ten days of vodka-soaked oblivion."
"And these are the people whose hospitality Ed Snowden is enjoying, whilst he criticises our government."
And so it goes on…
kirill:re. the last quoted comment above, the Guardianista yapper does not seem to realize that Chornovil, a Ukraine citizen, was assaulted in the Ukraine and that Snowden is resident in Russia.
Yet these opinionated Guardianistas never stop blathering away their nonesense.
marknesop:These people have issues. They are searching for something to hate and spew bile at. This reflects underlying psychological problems. We are not seeing merely some righteous indignation, we are seeing spluttering hate.
yalensis:Indeed. As we have discussed before, the old crime triad for suspects is motive, means and opportunity, with motive being the strongest leg; it's why the husband is always a suspect when a wife is murdered. What would be the motive in this instance? The Maidan movement was weakening by the day – why beat up some opposition journalist and stir it all up again? Had she discovered something that must be kept secret? If so, why didn't they kill her? Now she can still blab the whole thing. They certainly could have finished her off; it wasn't like some good Samaritan arriving upon the scene frightened them off, was it? The dash-cam timer is functioning correctly, it's still counting off time, it's just set to the wrong date. If there was some kind of set-up, which looks like a good possibility, it doesn't look like she was part of it as she seems genuinely to be trying to get away. I have to wonder about those other vehicles they pass on the road – could they not see something unusual was going on?
Whatever the case, and I agree it sounds very suspicious, the government does not need to prove who these people were associated with – if they took no trouble to conceal their license plate, didn't bother to take the dash cam and have already been arrested, they must have known that was a likely prospect and would have their stories all ready – it just needs to prove they are not associated with the government.
The story which accompanied the dash-cam video reports that her most recent blog entry "posted photos of a country mansion belonging to Interior Minister Zaharchenko."
If they shopped around for a guy to tie this to, they did their homework – Vitaliy Zakharchenko is a nasty-looking piece of work, and reached the rank of Major General in the police (that always cracked me up, the way Soviet ranks went so high in the police; I think the top rank in the western police is something like Lieutenant, at which point you're running a Division, and ranks above that are non-military, like Commissioner). He is also supposed to be a close personal friend of Yanukovych Jr., although he is not a member of a political party. As Minister of Internal Affairs he is also head of the State Tax Service.
Moscow Exile:Yes Zakharchenko is the one the Opps are pointing to and accusing him of ordering the Chornovil beating. Supposedly as revenge for her exposing his lavish lifestyle.
If he IS the guilty party, then, even though he had access to the creme de la creme, he must have for some reason decided to hire the most incompetent gangsters since Fredo Corleone.Moscow Exile:The Grauniad has finally got hold of the story.
Moscow Exile:And the Guardianistas are all convinced the beating is the work of "Putin thugs" or in imitation of that of "Putin thugs".
"Yanukovych copying Putin's tactics against any opposition. At least she is still alive, unlike Anna Politkovskaya who was killed by Putin's thugs."
"Follows the similar pattern of intimidation and murder of journalists in Russia, if they upset powerful people by exposing corruption or asking awkward questions."
"I guess democratic freedoms go cheap these days. Only $15 billion to make Yanukovych president for life, destroy civil society, beat up and murder journalists and opposition leaders with impunity, let corruption run rife while roads, schools and universities crumble. Sounds like a good deal… if you're a psychopath."
"Ordinary Ukrainians in their hundreds of thousands are risking their lives to avoid being pulled back into the cesspit of violence and corruption that is Russia. But they're up against government sponsored gangsters, a brutal security force and of course Putin's unlimited funds. These are good decent people who are being sold-out to the Kremlin by a corrupt clique at the top."
"The Kremlin's Internet Institute trolls are clearly working overtime before they can retreat to the happy and holy Orthodox Feast of the Nativity and ten days of vodka-soaked oblivion."
"And these are the people whose hospitality Ed Snowden is enjoying, whilst he criticises our government."
And so it goes on…
kirill:re. the last quoted comment above, the Guardianista yapper does not seem to realize that Chornovil, a Ukraine citizen, was assaulted in the Ukraine and that Snowden is resident in Russia.
Yet these opinionated Guardianistas never stop blathering away their nonesense.
These people have issues. They are searching for something to hate and spew bile at. This reflects underlying psychological problems. We are not seeing merely some righteous indignation, we are seeing spluttering hate.
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December 25, 2013 | RT News
Ukraine has temporarily banned a number of foreign citizens from entering its territory over "national security" concerns. The move comes amid ongoing mass rallies, with thousands of pro-EU demonstrators demanding the government's resignation.
The Security Service of Ukraine (SBU):at in November-December 2013, in accordance with the law and "in the interests of ensuring Ukraine's national security," it made the decision to "temporarily ban" a number of foreign nationals from entering the country.
The decision to close the country's door to each of those persons was made individually, rather than under a so-called "blacklist," the SBU: a Wednesday statement, as quoted by Interfax Ukraine news agency.
The SBU has not specified who has been temporarily denied entry into Ukraine.
The statement follows reports in the media that 36 foreigners suspected of working with the opposition "to destabilize the situation in the country" were blacklisted in the former Soviet republic.
The idea had been put forward by Oleg Tsaryov, a lawmaker from the ruling Party of Regions, who had filed a request to Ukraine's Foreign Ministry and the SBU.
"The more frequent visits by foreign political strategists and specialists in protests cause quite reasonable concerns," Tsaryov: the document, which was published on his Facebook page.
The document was submitted together with a list of people, who, "as part of the advisory work" with the opposition, pursue the political interests of other states. It included three Americans, a Brit, a German, a citizen of Serbia, 29 Georgians, and former Georgian President Mikhail Saakashvili. No current politicians were among the names proposed by the Ukrainian lawmaker.
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Dec 23, 2013 | kp.ru
The main driving force pulling Ukraine to Europe are Ukrainian nationalists. To answer this question, a special correspondent for "KP " Daria Aslamova went to Maidan.
Here is what she reports:
" That's imagine the driver named Yanukovich, who speed the car called the Ukraine towards the western border, and at the last minute slammed the breaks and hit the border post. Completely smashing the front, them whole hood, passengers hit the windshield, the international community is in hysterics. All ran to the crash site and give tips on what to do. And Yanukovich himself, pale, keeps saying I am not guilty, car mechanics are guilty, I'm driving it for only three years and for all this time did not notice that brakes were completely disabled by infiltrated hostile elements. I've saved all the last moment. Galichina is shocked -- the man who turned on a giant propaganda machine to brainwash the population for joining the EU, went to Europe and changed his mind at the last moment. East was long offended Yanukovich betrayal but is silent -- they mistaken still thing that he is one of them and represent their interests. Tribalism, tribal consciousness , In short, Yanukovich managed betrayed and confused everybody."
Ukrainian writer Oles Elder is ironic, take no prisoners in his judgments, but pragmatic, as a true citizen of Independent Ukraine:
" And then came Putin with 15 billion dollars. And once it became clear that cheap Ukrainians ended. Ukrainians rednecks are now expensive."
How Ukraine again reached Maidan
You are still going to laugh till you drop, as people from Odessa used to say, but essentially nobody ever read the famous Ukrainian Association Agreement with the European Union (by the way , written in English). Or rather, it was only read by completely zombified, from college bench nurtured by Americans fifth column who served as experts from Ukrainian side. Or let's call them agents of influence . Actually, when Yanukovich babbled in terror that it would be good to find out who so blatantly betrayed the national interests of Ukraine in the negotiations on the Association with the EU, and that it smells like treason - he was absolutely right .
"People who prepare documents for initialing, unfortunately, are not paid agents of influence. They are unpaid volunteers, and it's really scary - the Oleg Havic expert told us. - With paid agents it's pretty understandable. But here are ideologically brainwashed zombies, fluent in English and German, who got an excellent education in the West and they sincerely believe that those conditions of full capitulation and betrayal of national interest is what Ukraine needs. Yes, bottom three quarter of population will suffer and starve, an economic will collapse , country become a colony, but Ukraine will be forever cut off from Russia."
"In our country about 10 thousand employees of non-governmental organizations - says Ukrainian Parliament (Rada) deputy Oleg Tsarev . - More than Ukraine, Soros spends only in Africa. We can hardly find any minister or administration official who did not spend some time in training in the NGO or was not at some time an employee of the NGO . These are people who for twenty years were prepared for the task: to change the matrix Ukrainian people. And they almost succeeded."
Here is what Oleg Tsarev, the leader of the Party of Regions stresses: " We're already Europe , we are its center, so in no way will perish without European Union -- "
But there were also true patriots in Ukraine, which this summer became alarmed and demanded to translate text of the agreement into Ukrainian and post it on the government website. This despite the fact that part of the Russian-speaking deputies does not fluently speak Ukrainian, and that this economic agreement has the size of the Great Soviet Encyclopedia . Somebody hurried up. Later our people from the Customs Union were not to lazy and managed to translate the text into Russian as a gesture goodwill.
However, summer, hot, singing birds , MPs and businessmen are leaving on vacation. The mood was, why you are bothering me with you f**n Association ? But then came the "the trade war between Ukraine and Russia " ( as Ukrainian media called it) . And in fact , Russia has shown that in the case of sighing of a trade agreement between Ukraine and the EU and the abolition of customs duties it will protect its market and erect strong customs barriers to the flow of goods from the West, which will transit through Ukraine. This means that the window of opportunity closes for Ukrainian producers. Local businessman has had a stroke , and the business instantly appealed to the President of Ukraine to postpone the Association at least a year.
As the representative of the Government of Ukraine in the Eurasian Economic Commission Viktor Suslov noted
"Business was initially inert: we say, do not study the projects we will studying law when it will pass. Business is not accustomed to participate in government - says ex-Minister of Economy of Ukraine. When the serious decline in the volume of trade with Russia happened, it became clear that the inevitable consequence of signing will be the de-industrialization of the country, the loss of manufacturing, and possible death of agriculture. And that this is not a horror story, but pretty realistic scenario.
But the problem is that most of the media and most experts in Ukraine is paid by Western funds. There was a massive brainwashing of public via MSM, which all claimed that the Association with the EU is a huge plus for our state. And any government is dependent on the MSM. In essence, the government was misled by people who have entrusted to negotiate with EU."
The best way to lose independence ("nezalezhnost" in Ukrainian)
By October, the Association Agreement became a hit , the most popular detective reading matter among politicians in Ukraine . And there really was something to read . It suddenly became clear that Ukraine is committed to follow the instructions of the EU in the field of its foreign and security policy (without the right to vote and the possibility of future membership in the EU) , to participate in all civilian and military EU operations in conflict zones , to cooperate with the European Defense Agency ( I mean to abandon the remaining military technologies , which, incidentally directly affects Russia ) . With regard to moral standards the Orthodox part of Ukrainian population in the spirit of political correctness was ordered to follow certain directives. But were even curious people who tried to read very directives that Europeans do not even dare to publish in English in order to avoid scandal.
" In fact, we impose common European homosexual dictatorship -:e deputy of the Verkhovna Rada Kolesnichenko . - Protection of the rights of sexual minorities and in the future legalization of gay marriage. In addition, abolished the presumption of innocence in the employment relationship . For example, if I did not take a gay to work for some reason, he does not have to prove in court that he was discriminated against because of his sexual orientation, its me who need to explain and justify that gay was not discriminated against."
It turned out that the West does not plan to giving anything to Ukraine for free and that 25 percent of foreign trade of Ukraine already lost. And that money in the treasury is enough only for three months.
But it's just nuisance. The real deal was the establishment in Ukraine EU economic dictatorship.
"These trade agreements the EU has with many countries in North Africa , but none of them had the enslaving demand, which does not allow Tunisia or Algeria to join whatsoever trade agreements with third countries with which the EU will not agree - says economist Michael Kuhar . - In fact, the treaty of Association of Brussels gave authority to decide whether, for example, sovereign Ukraine can join any trade agreement with Russia or China or not. This is a dishonest approach. "
But the main jewel of the Association Agreement - the introduction of European standards . The word " European standards" sounded so beautiful (almost as high quality home renovation using best European materials ) that local Liberasts were awash with happiness. But ...
"This document , which is physically impossible to comply with , - assured us the analyst Rostislav Ishchenko . - In order to prevent the market to sell grandmothers homemade pickles and jams, you need to occupy Ukraine with at least half-million army. No, theoretically grandmother can produce coleslaw, but she can not sell it. Not because the coleslaw can not be made , but because it does not meet European standards. Even Lithuanians, who entered EU long ago and on more decent conditions, almost lost their agriculture, as they never managed to fit to rules."
"Yes, Ukrainian grandmothers did not produce chicken and bacon according to EU standards . And you know why ? Because they make it to a higher standard -:rainian writer Oles Elderberries . - And to lower standards they can just go to Western technology and this pump chicken with hormones and water. The most striking example of European standards : express train number one Kiev - Moscow, which consists entirely of Polish wagons. I rode on it from Moscow during really low temperatures. So their clever eurowashers sensors did not work because Russian low temperatures are not Euro Low temperatures. And how conductors solve this problem ? They are pore boiling water into a bottles and pour it into the toilets to unfreeze them .
We can assume that German tanks that invaded Russia in 1941, were made by European standards. They have narrow tracks and run on petrol. But they all became a useless pile of metal near Moscow when temperatures dropped in winter of 1941. In France, the tank worked, but in Russia it ceased to start. You see, we have ( ha ha!) quote different isotherm for January"
The signing of the Association means not just operetta Maidan protesters, but real hungry and angry crowd of unemployed on the streets next year
What is EuroStandart and how much it cost to convert Ukraine to them?
According to conservative estimates , the conversion to euro standard will cost Ukraine about 160 billion Euros. After the conclusion of the Agreement with the EU all that Ukraine has - all the infrastructure, railways, roads , businesses and even the Ukrainian soil (best in Europe) ceases to comply with the technical regulations of the European Union. As economist Michael Kuhar noted:
"The basic difference between agriculture in Europe from Ukrainian that the certification of land there , that we do not have. It is necessary to make a chemical analysis of the soil, in order to determine how much herbicides it contains, and whether it is suitable, for example, to grow tomatoes. This is an expensive procedure, which costs 800 Euros per each hectare of land. And in Ukraine, 33 million hectares of arable land -- That is billions of Euros. I'm not talking about the requirements for infrastructure , on the chemical and metallurgical plants, all of which do not meet the emission standards. "
EU condescending recommends Ukraine to pay special attention to "micro enterprises and craftsmen (!)" This despite the fact that Ukraine can produce nuclear stations equipment, aircraft, rockets, military vessels, engines, railway cars, etc.
As the representative of the Government of Ukraine in Eurasian Commission Viktor Suslov noted:
"There are two key points in the agreement with the EU. First, the Ukrainian economy is not competitive with European and when imposed on a free trade zone and mutual zero custom duties. It will inevitably perish in this struggle, . - Zero custom duties calls into question the existence of entire industries . For example, Ukraine is the largest producer of sunflower seeds and sunflower oil. Export seeds we set the export duty, so we are making it more economical to process seeds within the country, and Ukraine has one of the most powerful oil extraction industry. When you abolish custom duties, the same EU will directly procure seeds and will process them outside of Ukraine. Therefore, local oil extraction industry will die.
Generally, few people understand that when you cancel the import duties, incentives for foreign investment might not increase but actually decrease. Contrary to common opinion it might be that for foreign companies it does not make sense to build new factories in Ukraine and create jobs. In this case Ukraine is becoming just a new market for EU goods. Investments in the country are often made only if they serve as a means of overcoming trade barriers when the country can not enter with the goods, and with the investment company organized in its territory. ( For example creation foreign car assembly plants in Russia. )
And the second important point: the introduction of the EU technical standards, Yes it is a revolution. Let's assume that they are the best in the world, but who will pay for such a transition ? This way a unique situation is created: the more competitive European manufacturers come here not just free of duties, but also by dictating their own rules of the game! So all Ukrainian companies do not comply , for example, environmental standards , must be shut down and give up their market share -- And again, very few people saw in this the additional problem: the introduction of European standards means cutting the whole body of the economy of the former USSR in two parts. It breaks existing economic ties and in some cases (railways) make standards incompatible with the rest of former USSR.
Destruction of cooperation means a sharp weakening of Russia as Ukraine still has some enterprises that are part of the former USSR military-industrial complex, including Russia's nuclear shield. Missiles that carry Russian nuclear armor are made by famous Ukrainian YUZHMASH factory. Engines for military helicopters are produced by Ukrainian "Motor Sich" plant. And the newest fifth-generation fighter " T-50 " will not fly without Ukrainian details. These are the key things for Russian military-industrial complex . In addition, we have lots of joint major projects : the resumption of production of aircraft type "Ruslan" , the construction of a bridge between the Kerch Crimea and the Caucasus .
Yes, Ukraine is now got between Scylla and Hayrides. When the West felt that fish can let off the hook , it made unprecedented pressure on our elite , and now actually provokes the creation of the EuroMaidan . It is time to call a spade a spade . It's not just about money . Former Polish President Aleksander Kwasniewski: absolutely correctly: there is a geopolitical battle for Ukraine! "
Who is behind the Maidan
EuroMaidan - is a giant business project, the furnace in which hundreds of thousands of dollars are burned every day. Need to transport people from the West of Ukraine, feed them , clothe them, give them accommodation, to provide them with toilets and comply with the minimum standards of hygiene, to compensate for daily expenses. It is necessary to monitor their health, protect them, constantly entertain them, so they do not get bored and do not melt away, led them dance and walk on any pickets and demonstrations. For "Not Yet Perished" crowd (from the Ukrainian national anthem " Ukraine Has Not Yet Perished ") sing and dance well-known artists.
To understand where the money for such a huge, multi-day show come from, we must understand the system of government in Ukraine. This is an oligarchic republic in spirit Russian 90s. Ukraine is like Yeltsin's Russia in miniature with local variants of Khodorkovsky, Berezovsky, and Gusinsky running the snow.
But there is a difference between the current Ukrainian and current Russian oligarchs. As Oleg Havich noted:
"Current Russian oligarchs are more or less like technocrats. Well, they have their money, but they have provide some vital service. Much like people who work as custom officer, or policemen. Similarly some people work as oligarchs. Such people proved that he is capable to run particular business. This is quite in the tradition of the Russian Empire.
That's why Ukrainian oligarchs are so afraid of Russian oligarchs. First of all, the scale of enterprises is quite different, with Ukrainian much smaller. Secondly, the Russian oligarchs , who will come to Ukraine and will buy this company or that company, are not simply "new rich" personalities. They are simultaneously representatives of the Russian state. They might be not be Russian by nationality, but are all Russian in their actions."
As Member of Ukrainian Parliament (Rada) Oleg Tsarev noted:
"In Russia there is powerful administrative apparatus, the presidential model of republic, and the president is still the strongest player. But Ukraine is the country were the oligarchs won the political power. To explain the difference , let's assume that some sheiks from Saudi Arabia come to Russia with bags of money and ask Putin to hand Syria to them. They will be rejected as in Russia there are things that are not for sale, period. . Sheikhs will be listened politely, their money will be rejected and Russian will not surrender Syria to them.
And in Ukrainian politics such a decision is hard to imagine . For oligarchic capitalism ideal system of government is a parliamentary republic. In this case Parliament works simply as a negotiating platform between the oligarchs . Each of them have their own media , their elected representatives, which perform the function of negotiating their interest in their name: who would be given which state property, what is the cost of energy resources, and what is the level of taxes. That is, we have a basis in the form of oligarchic capitalism and superstructure in the form of a presidential republic. It's clear that there is a contradiction between two. From the point of view of oligarchs, the President has too much power"
No wonder a few days ago opposition deputy Yatsenyuk:at the opposition will fight for a return to the old Constitution , restoring Ukraine parliamentary republic in which the president is a figurehead , and actually cementing the polyarchy in the country .
As journalist Alexander Chalenko noted:
"Why oligarchs advocate signing the Association Agreement with the EU? Their business entities are all in south- east Ukraine, but the money, children, wives, mistresses, villas, accounts - are all in Europe. Everything was mover their , you know? Now if they misbehave, the Americans can closed and/or arrest them account and deny visas.
Russia began to move from this dependency in the summer. Prior to this, the oligarchs were thinking that they can settle things with Putin. But now became clear that Russia was not joking: it might close the market for Ukrainian goods. This means that there will be terrible losses and huge unemployment in the 2014, which is the election year. And that means that the opposition comes to power and will be forced to release Tymoshenko. And then Tymoshenko will put Yanukovich in the same prison were she used to be jailed. "
Politolog Rostislav Ishchenko made the following point.
"Experts and the whole Yanukovich entourage tried to convince him that in the fall of the IMF will give a lot of money without any conditions, and that he do not need to release Tymoshenko , that Putin is bluffing and will never close the Russian markets. But then it became clear that the West will give no money with pre-conditions and that 25 percent of foreign trade of Ukraine already disappeared and that the treasury has money just for three months, Yanukovich at last understood that came the signing of the Association Agreement with EU this is not an operetta Maidan, but real hungry crowd of unemployed on the streets the next year. Really angry masses who will sweep everything. That is, he will have nothing: no pants , no hat, and no horse. And the only solution exists. Even if you hate mortally Russia , no treaty with it does not obligate you to love her. Enough to stabilize the situation, to sign certain agreements, and then you can argue with Putin as you want , as it does Lukashenko . "
But once Yanukovich:at Europe can wait, oligarchs entered the game .
Oleg Havich:
"Maidan is not three heroes who are standing on the podium: Klitschko Yatsenyuk Tyahnibok . All of them are puppets. Behind them stand really serious people like Dmitry Firtash, Poroshenko , Viktor Pinchuk , and Rinat Akhmetov . The way oligarchs controlled MSM cover events on Maidan proves that their owners are the co-conspirators of the action or at least implicitly support it. That means that we see a classic scenario of palace coup attempted by oligarchs. "
writer Oles Busina:
"There is a " family " - Yanukovich , son and people close to them. Old oligarchs fear the family who in recent years has greatly increased its share . Their goal - not to destroy the family, but to limit its appetites. I.e. drive Yanukovich into more controllable limits . Why they do not want to remove Yanukovich? Because there is no good alternative to replace him. If they get rid of Yanukovich , then radical extremists like Tyagnibok will climb out of the woodwork"
How West Ukraine launched and is winning the offensive against east Ukraine
Since Soviet times, it happened that the south-east of Ukraine worked ( there were all major enterprises ), and west mainly taught and was responsible for the culture. I. e. it was West to which ideology was farmed out. After the collapse of the USSR it was the Western Ukraine which raised and promoted the Ukrainian nationalism, Ukrainian national idea, because the east had nothing to say on this subject : the people there did not feel the Ukrainians , and most importantly there never were opposed to Russian .
Oleg Havich:
"There is the expansion of the west to the east of Ukraine. Galicians are all slaves of size, they think "Bigger is better". I'm tired of shouting after them : " Dude , you should not go there -- You can't digest all of Ukraine -- "
journalist Alexander Chalenko
"As soon as a team there are two Western Ukrainians Nationalists ("zapadentzi") , they all begin to remodel for themselves, - says . - This totalitarian mentality that if you're not with us, you Western Ukraine Nationalists Moscow. To the whole of Ukraine zapadentsy are associated with the name of Bandera. And we have to admit honestly : Ukrainians are simply afraid of them. Why ? Bandera led nationalist ("banderovets") were a terrible people real beasts in Soviet time . I remember that my grandmother told me that the Soviet government sent to teach the west. (Incidentally, the Ukrainian school appeared in the West only with the advent of the Soviet Union. Before there were only Polish schools . ) Her stories struck me with unimaginable cruelty of Bandera fighters. For them it was not enough to shot people dead, they beheaded man, they cut open stomachs in women, they burned babies , that is, they committed terrible inhuman crimes...
Before the collapse of the USSR the power of central government protected us from Western Ukraine extremists. They were always for us as for you Chechens . That is, you can kill a Chechen , but then come ten Chechens and cur your throat . And our people are cowardly intellectuals . And now all of Kiev and all Ukraine is infected with Stockholm syndrome. This is when the victim begins to play along with the terrorist. We hate them so to speak conditionally: if we have an opportunity to eliminate them, we would eliminated them long too. We have way too different culture codes. And the current Maidan is Ukrainian Nationalist Maidan. On TV show only cheerful, happy faces of students and not the Bandera Gopniks, who come in large numbers from Galicia.
On Independence 2004 Yushchenko did not behave as a nationalist. He spoke of his friendship with Russia. What Bandera ? I do not even know his followers. Then you can speak in iether Ukrainian or Russian from the podium. And now, if you speak Russian, they shout "Shame! " ("Ganba! ").
Why Maidan is not a Revolution
Maidan consists of four groups of people:
- Marginal intellectuals from Kiev, who damaged their brains on the previous Maidan and who want to move to Europe ( as if somebody is waiting for them in EU)
- People brought from Western Ukraine
- Those whom you rightly call Gopnik and homeless ,
- A small amount of Kiev students and radicals, to put it bluntly , the neo-Nazi
Kievites morally support Maidan, come there for just to see the show , but do not believe the opposition . They have completely "give me decent life style" perceptions about Europe . As a security guard in the parking lot told ne: I want to finally live like human beings. People here are somehow convinced that Europe will feed them , clothe , shoe .
Now we have a paradoxical situation : there is a rebellion, called the revolution, which has one hundred times could win. And there is a power that can the same hundred time to crush them . But neither the government does not disperse the rebellion, nor the opposition is ready to takes power . Existing leaders have exhausted their moral capital . The only person who could make a revolution - Tymoshenko , but she in jail. Like all sociopath she does not have self-preservation instinct, she does not believe that she can be killed, and is therefore able to lead the people into fire.. Such people without moral brakes in such a situation feel like a fish in water. That is why she is equally dangerous for the authorities and the opposition. But with Tymoshenko for current revolutionaries situation will be much worse. She will not stop at half-measures like Yanukovich . She will strangle them all or send them to jail for betrayal. "
The fact that the leaders of Maidan do not have guts , is now clear to everyone. That's what I told people close to the government: "When one of the three opposition "heroes" was asked why they are not going to storm the building of the presidential administration, he: dismay :" What do you mean ? They can jail me for that -- "
It can not be the leader of the revolution who is afraid of jail (a revolution - it is always a violation of the law ) , which fears to make a move for which he/she can be jailed. It would be helpful if vandals who crashed the statue of Lenin read his works. Type "Marxism and Insurrection ." in Google. And you instantly come across the famous slogan by Lenin " Procrastination in such situations is equal to death ."
Maidan now turned into idle people and crazies asylum paid by the USA. Because they does not have a leader who understands the theory of revolution . No Lenin-level figure capable of directly from the armored car to announce the "April Theses". But truth be told now in Ukraine there is no public demand for great people. It's just a cockroach races where everyone is running for their shallow goal. "
With whom Russia can speak ?With no one. And we have ourselves to blame . That's what I was told on condition of anonymity, people from " Party of Regions ":
" Our government and our oligarchs panic fear of awakening Russian reunification movement. They are willing to finance fascist Tyagnibok, but in any case will not allow Russian reunification movement to at the East. That's a night horror for Yanukovich that someone will work with his electorate. And as long as your Putin will meet with Yanukovich and enter with the gentlemen's agreements that you do not interfere in the internal affairs of Ukraine, you will lose here.
Americans working here for twenty years. For them to make a step forward , they need to spend a thousand dollars. And Russia could spend a dollar and make the same one step forward, because it is an enormous affinity with Russia in the heats of people. And now you've lost the Ukraine, because total propaganda of hatred will always be successful. People even in the east are already embarrassed to talk in Russian. Nevertheless, they still can raised against West Ukrainian fascists"
I will never forget the intensity of hatred on the evening on Maidan Square when the news came that Russia is ready to give $15 billion to save sinking Ukrainian economy and decide to lower gas prices by one third. As people shouted : "No Taiga Union -- " ( So here mockingly called the Customs Union ) . How to know that I am from Moscow, Western Ukrainians shouted at me : "You can't buy us! We are not selling Motherland your thirty pieces of silver -- We'll take your money, spend them and then spit in your face -- "
writer Oles Busina:
"And what do you want? Pro-Russian organizations in Ukraine today simply do not exist -- But there are way too many thriving grant-sucking gangs. A new generation is oriented to the west, for which the word "three fraternal nations" an empty phrase for them. Why do young people believe Liberasts? When I was a student I was also for Perestroika, and you also was for Perestroika. And we both now know how that ended.
None of us could expect that the next Russian president will be an alcoholic, that the Soviet army unconditionally withdraw from Europe that Russia will survive a demographic catastrophe, there will be first and second Chechen wars . Well we did not know that the Liberasts can not do anything.
And Kiev students also do not know that. But we need to explain that to them. We need to create a support group . Russia is trying to act through diplomatic channels and negotiate directly with officials , but this tactic does not work anymore . "
Political analyst Rostislav Ishchenko:
"On the political field, where Yanukovich is dancing , now there is no other politician. This is a trampled field. In the near future you have no one to talk to Ukraine. Americans themselves have created their partners for twenty years. You have a huge pro-Russian population in the east and in the Crimea, but you do not want to talk to them. Why ? Because it is your position : we will only work with the current legal authority. We do not want to upset Viktor Yanukovich .
If we work with the pro-Russian opposition to his course , Yanukovich will be offended us. Well, now, he likes your behavior. It's all good with him now, until his next betrayal. It's just with Ukraine you are in deep shit."
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December 13, 2013 | ronpaulinstitute.org
Who could argue that the moves and maneuvers taking place on the Ukraine geo-political chessboard are as surreal as they get?
The events occurring in Kiev are so transparent as to motive and purpose that one wonders if the CIA has all but abandoned their cloak and dagger MO of the past … in favor of living color revolutions taking place in real time. CNN must be jumping for joy at the prospects of improving their ratings plummet. They get to advertise and propagandize yet another CIA-conceived, coordinated, and controlled-from-the-top COLOR Revolution.
Can the reader imagine high level representatives from other countries, showing up in the midst of the most tense political standoffs in Washington DC, offering every kind of support to those Americans protesting against the US Federal Government? That's exactly what US Assistant Secretary of State, Victoria Nuland is doing in the Ukraine at this very moment.
Were any other nation to meddle in US internal affairs, they would become an immediate target of terrifying Yankee gunboat diplomacy. The individuals involved would be promptly placed on the TSA No-Fly List list for the rest of their incarnation. That is, of course, if they even made it out of the US alive.
Fool me once, shame on you; fool me twice, shame on me
What is particularly surprising about the current color revolution unfolding in the Ukraine is that this nation was the site of the very same CIA implementation plan back in 2004/2005. The Orange Revolution, as it was known at the time, was a classic CIA-engineered plot to impose their political outcome on the Ukrainian people. And they succeeded with flying colors.
That CIA-sponsored coup d'etat was so successful that it has since been used as a model for every other CIA-manufactured scheme that has toppled governments and reversed fair election outcomes the world over. In fact, the Ukraine is where the various social network utilities were used so effectively that the new MO has become known as the digital blitzkrieg. Never in human history have so many citizens been stampeded in the direction of overthrowing their government while being completely ignorant of the real forces manipulating the cattle prods.
Many commentators have wondered how the current protests have been so successful in light of their leaders previous experience with EU-US meddling in their domestic affairs. It was so obvious during the Orange Revolution 1.0 that the Western powers wanted to annul one election only to subsequently secure the victory of their chosen representative, Viktor Yushchenko. Can the Ukrainian people still be that unaware of the outright interference by foreign powers in their electoral process? Or, to overturn the recent presidential decision to postpone the signing of the EU deal.
Amassing a few hundred thousand people on the Capital square has become the weapon of choice for the CIA.
Ironically, if a few thousand angry protestors ever tried to congregate around the US Capitol building, they would be swiftly herded into fenced-in holding pens out of earshot of the closest Congressman. They would then be arrested, fingerprinted and ferried as far away from the scene of the crime as possible . . . never to fly again.
US-EU-NATO Juggernaut rolls into any town, any time it wants to
What is especially striking about the blatant intervention by the EU et al. in Kiev is their carelessness. The various 'diplomats' and leaders who are meddling seem not to care a whit about their extraordinarily aggressive and unrelenting intrusions. They just proceed to act with complete impunity. Then, the host nation - the Ukraine - permits them every opportunity to meddle without consequence. Every proxy is given an apparently free hand to execute their agenda unimpeded on behalf of the IMF & Company.
As a matter of fact, the Ukraine government response has been so dysfunctional and inappropriate that one wonders if the current Administration has been unwittingly co-opted by the same CIA subterfuge. It's as though the President, Prime Minister and Parliament have been wired in such a way as to be perfectly reactive to the many strategically placed CIA cattle prods. Likewise, who has ever seen a body politic herded so easily as those who have shown up in the city square working for foreign interests which operate against their own national interests?!
The European Union has been nothing but a slow sinking Titanic.
This is precisely why the protests have been so fast in the making and fierce in their effect. With the southern flank of the EU (PIIGS) in such disarray, and the main economic engines of Germany and France ready to blow a gasket, the EU leadership is downright desperate. The Ukraine represents their last hope to prevent the final submersion of the Eurozone ship.
The Ukrainian people don't even know that they are being corralled onto a ship in order to save a Titanic that has already hit an iceberg. Why would any nation at this point join the European Union in view of its gross mismanagement, trampling of national sovereignty, and frightful financial condition? The EU is clearly a quasi fascist/communist political construct designed to thoroughly disempower the citizenry of each participating nation. In this way it can be used as a very large and monolithic political, military and economic bloc to carry out the wishes of those who ultimately oversee the Eurozone.
The EU has become such an economic drain on the rest of the world, especially the US Federal Reserve, that its current and future indebtedness and unfunded liabilities are simply untenable. Hence, the Ukraine is looked to as a temporary savior because of its many large and robust markets, well established industrial base and transportation links to Asia, as well as it vast natural resources and raw materials.
Coup d'état by way of consensus, especially within US, EU, NATO leadership
Now you know why Western leaders, near and far, have snapped into action at the failure of the Ukraine to sign the landmark deal at the EU Summit. Also, why every CIA black op is being implemented and surrogate mobilized to reverse the President's decision. In reality, the very existence of the EU depends on Ukrainian wealth because of its critical need to feeds its predatory version of corrupt, crony, corporate capitalism*.
What reigns supreme across the global landscape is the terror "ism" known as naked, predatory capitalism. It utilizes faux democracy and bogus 'rights' and globalization (aka resource theft) as its main mantras. The ability of its promoters to take down a nation using other tools like economic terrorism, currency manipulation, financial sabotage, and corporate espionage is now the most feared force on the planet among those victimized by such criminal conduct.
Truly, a slick and sophisticated form of New Age colonialism has been advanced with awesome speed and success throughout this New Millennium. With the penetration of the internet into every national nook and cranny, revolutions and civil wars can now be twittered and facebooked from the CIA offices at Langley. Even YouTube and Instagram have gotten into the 'picture'.
As more of the world population becomes digitally connected, greater numbers of unsuspecting souls fall prey to every MSM fabrication that originates in the bowels of the CIA Directorate of Operations (now known as National Clandestine Service). The end result just may be a Color Revolution coming to a theatre near you … in a format, mind you, that is much more than the traditional living color!
*The authors have no problem with genuine free market capitalism that respects the sovereignty of each and every nation; however, that is not the predominant form operating worldwide today.
Reprinted with permission from author.
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telegraph.co.uk
...some pro-Kremlin journalists praised the reshuffle as a long-overdue move against fifth columnists.
"The destruction of RIA Novosti is a welcome step from Putin. The systemic nest of anti-Russian information forces has been destroyed," Maxim Shevchenko, a pro-Kremlin TV host, tweeted.
Employees:ey were given no warning of the announcement, and that they were waiting to hear if they would be fired or hired into the new agency.
Agnes Maria
From my perspective, from online, the copy-and-pasted articles, quoted directly from Western media, did very often times contain language inappropriate for one to use to speak about oneself, such as Russians about Russia. There would be anti-Russian and anti-Soviet jokes and language too subtle for everyone to notice, and they do get published via RIA online all the time. It does not look good and you cannot take it seriously, though it is not usually intentional. I hope we will see all straight up reporting and no sensationalised nonsense from now on.
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izvestia.ru
To unblock the situation Ukraine needs not foreign intermediaries , and the willingness of the opposition to negotiate and cooperate constructively with the current government . Kiev correspondent of "Izvestia" Yanina Sokolovska take interview of the leader of the People's Party , the head of the Parliamentary Committee on National Security and Defense, Volodymyr Lytvyn . It was he who, in 2004, being the head of the Verkhovna Rada, played the role of arbitrator between "first Maidan" and the government. For this, as well as outstanding personal service to the country in the development of state-building , he received the highest award - the star of the Hero of Ukraine .
Q: In Kiev on witnessing the radicalization of the protest movement . Capture administrative buildings , hard skirmishes with the law-enforcement authorities . It is turns more and more into civil war, into fighting. How to stop further escalation of violence?
A: Organizers of Maidan need to read serious books on psychology. It says that any crowd every day becoming more radical. And to those who claim to be leaders, could lead, they need to be more radical it. Otherwise the masses will replace them with new leaders.
Radicalization is occurring today. Everyone should feel the responsibility, the demands should be reasonable and should correspond to the legal realities of Ukraine. Revolution might not write off everything .
Q: You have experience in overcoming confrontaion of the government and its opponents during the "Orange Revolution ." In fact, you become a reconciler of the warring parties . Is this experience applicable now?
A: The Ukrainian politicians, both pro-government and opposition should have the feeling of thier of resposibility and tact to find an acceptable solution in the interests of the country, without involving intermediaries abroad. There are too many forigh parties who are willing to participate in defusing the conflict. If we go for it, we became not a subect of international law, we will not be considered to be a nation any longer.
Q: Ukrainian politicians, especially the opposition , saying that the current Maidan was provoked by Russia
A: It is wrong to question itself. Russia has its own policy and their vision of the world order. You can can deny that fact or fail to understand this fact, but you can't change this. Now Russia is just watching what is happening in Ukraine. Her concerns are quite understandable because any Ukrainian instability is not good for either Russia or Europe.
Q: Postponement of Ukrainian European integration - is a long time? In Kiev say - six months in the EU - 2015.
A: There is nothing more lasting than temporary solutions . I think the current government at last realized that the this choice is a very serious matter indeed. It should be done only with taking into account all existing factors. But only now people started to analyze possible consequences and consider the warnings voiced earlier, but which were ignored and not taken into account.
We do not stop relations with the EU and its constituent countries. It would be unwise. But when they say that half of Ukrainians want to join EU, it is necessary to take into account the interests of the second part of the society . We can't evacuate them from the country.
Ukraine is very well tailored, but poorly sewn . Our people have way different geopolitical sympathies, and political preferences and that should be taken into account . Take for example the question of morality. EU offers us a more "relaxed" approach than we used to. This factor may not be paramount , but is very significant - we are required to make a choice of civilization. And, in fact, to abandon the whole layer of history and traditions.
Q: But there is a chance that the result would be Ukraine between two fires - will not get neither the Customs Union, or the European Union?
A: There is very happiness when you are sandwiched between two powerful partners, between two geopolitical entities. It's a matter of fine diplomacy and balanced policy - what to do to avoid being crushed.
We proclaimed neutral status and have found ourselves between NATO and the CSTO. We need to ensure our safety . Budapest Memorandum gave Ukraine political security guarantees for the renunciation of nuclear weapons, but it is a fiction. It does not have a legally binding character. Responsibility for the sovereign Ukraine was the politicians in the background at the signing of this document.
Q: Euro-Maidan is not like the Maidan 2004 . It is not peaceful, protesters fights with the police , participants and journalists were in turn beaten by special forces . This is the first time in Ukraine . And where is the vaunted Ukrainian tolerance?
A: Politicians who call themselves inspirators and organizers of the action, they lose control. We need a normal open political dialogue about the responsibility of government and the opposition for the country and for the safety of people.
All of us - the deputies of the Verkhovna Rada should categorically condemn the practice of beating people and consider the report of the General Prosecutor's Office on this matter. A new generation which came to Maidan does not have a sense of fear that has grown up in an independent country . In place of the color revolutions come network revolutions, without distinct leaders. Through information technology the process of orgnizing large masses of protesters can be launched, and the youth who constitute the majority , has immanent to it radicalism, which often leads to excesses .
Q: In Kiev poeple talk that three former Ukrainian president - Kravchuk , Kuchma and Yushchenko - made the statement actually supported Euro-Maidan...
A: I have carefully read this statement . I did not find in thier statement the direct support of Maidan . They were outraged that the force used on the protesters was disproportionate . Now, every politician is obliged to say that he is on the side of the people.
Q: Opposition finally formulated demands of the protesters. European integration in them was the last paragraph . A Euro Maidan supposly was organized exactly for the support of Eurointegration. Why is this aspiration moved to the shadow?
A: European integration - it's like a trigger that opens the floodgates to the general discontent . Part of the protest was the reaction to the destruction of small and medium-sized businesses . However, European integration itself does not solve our problems. Although politicians say that tomorrow will be better, no one tells people that they it will be very hard first, until the country will be reconstructed on a new track.
What happens now is a struggle for political power. Politicians use this moment to force early elections and are trying to grab a the biggest piece of power for themselves. Opposition classically and traditionally accuse the current government in all ills and try to get into power themselves.
Q: During Maidan Ukrainian president is often abroad. For example, he did not abolish long visit to China.
A: This can be considered as a demonstration of confidence and strength. If the president sat in his office, refused to visit, they would have: was scared. In any case, his decition would be a cause for criticism .
Parliament now - is in reality a materialized indifference despite the fake forefront of false activity and demonstrative indignation. Parliament does not react even when I say that we are going to armed coup d'etat scenario . There are no legal grounds for early elections. Opposition can offer only the path tried by Yulia Tymoshenko, who did this trick in the 2007. At that time she made all the members of her party to resign, to zero the party list in Parliament, move tot he streets and make the Parliament dysfunctional . Now on the meetings, which seem to have been for Tymoshenko, she is the person about which nobody speaks anymore. Her fate and European integration faded into background on which politicians try to hijack as much power as possible whatever means possible.
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RT Op-Edge
RT: In May this year, there was a public protest in Turkey, where tear gas was used every day - yet no Euro MP went to Ankara to support them. In fact, there was little media coverage. Why the different reactions?
AT: No, this is not true. I can really tell you there have been many MEPs, many members of the European Parliament who went there, and who went and also spoke with the opposition. This is normal.
RT: Well it certainly seemed low-key…
AT: This is totally normal. It is totally normal that we go there and we speak also with the opposition. But of course we also try to speak with the government. We always speak with both sides, we speak with everybody. It is not only to speak with one side.
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The Party of Regions has published an official statement in which it declared that the extremist wing of the Maidan acts by the same methods as their political predecessors in the 20th century, organized the " reign of terror " in the west of Ukraine against the authorities, law enforcement , political opponents and their families.
PR : We have offered our political opponents to return to the constitutional field and ready to create a negotiating group to normalize the situation in the capital.
PR : We have offered our political opponents to return to the constitutional field and ready to create a negotiating group to normalize the situation in the capital / of Korrespondent.net
" Extremists crossed boundaries of humanity and morality when threatened with physical harm to family members of law enforcement officials and politicians , judges, police officers who participated in the investigation of unlawful acts during street protests ," -: a statement.
The report noted that the blockade hampers the administrative buildings of the Government , the National Bank, the Presidential Administration and other government agencies.
" Who do we engage in dialogue ? With those calling capture administrative buildings and the police beat ? " - Ask the Party of Regions .
In addition, the Party of Regions is furious that instead offers reconciliation with Maidana sound requirements to create a " Black Book of traitors - violators of human rights in Ukraine."
Party of Regions argues that its position is met with understanding among the participants of the meeting of Council of Foreign Ministers of the OSCE.
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This is very weak, amateur analytics... Example of the author who does not understands the realities and mechanisms of color revolutions. See comments
Maidan, like any public event without a purpose, inevitably turns into a show. It attracts not only local city freaks, which always are present in any large city, but also freaks of larger caliber .Apparently, Kiev attracted sex showman Dzhigurda and "Bulldog" Kharlamov . Ukrainian colleagues are not far behind - Ruslana solemnly and publicly threatened to burn herself, "if there are no changes "
If you remove the inevitable waste and psychosis characteristic of mass action, then announced on Sunday the next meeting must inevitably became a moment of truth for the opposition.
Deflated if might die. In fact, a week ago Maidan was obviously unprepared event, and simply did not have the resources for a prolonged confrontation with the authorities. Power behaved, in principle, quite sensibly, allowing Maidan fizzle out, although it is possible that this procrastination is not a virtue, but just demonstrates the inability to adopt any course of actions.
Nevertheless, Sunday will be the culmination obviously, during which iether the government should fail, or Maidan finally run its course. Keeping indefinitely the situation in limbo is possible, but in this case the whole country should all fall into nirvana of revolution.
Kiev half hectare territory is clearly not the whole Ukraine. And opposition fills with supporters even this area with great difficulty. So the apparent dissatisfaction on both sides of the Dnieper with the authorities did not translated into desire to support opposition. There are few people ready to stand on the Maidan.
Rumors are thrown about preparing for Sunday provocations blood planned victims , but this development is not probable . Militants from "Svoboda" and Korchinskog's Bratsvo fired with blank the last week. It is doubtful that they will be able to rise for an attack this time.
Victims already exist, and if this "color revolution" were ready for them, the campaign for amplification of this topic would be completely deafening. If such standard government discrimination campaign was not launched, then it looks like for some reason currently there is no need for them.
Of course, in real revolution there is always a place for heroes (especially dead heroes --NNB), but the heroes from the opposition are not visible. Looks like they are mostly interested in obtaining beautiful life for themselves, not so much in sacrificing their head on the altar of revolution.
"There are very few real madman" (phase from Vissotski --NNB) -- and thank God that they are mainly represented by showmen
Denis Eroshenko, Simferopol
"I visited Maidan. Want to share some impressions. This is really depressing. Please repost on any patriotic sites freely. There is real lack in Internet of objective view on Maidan.
Yesterday I was able to visit for Kiev while on a business trip. After finishing my business part of the trip I deciding to visiting the Independence Square (Maidan), where protesters now settled .
It was a depressing experience. The capital of Kievan Rus captured by aggressive anti-russian mob. Kiev is occupied again. In social networks are already calling it Ragulya City. Descendants of those who in 1941 joined Hitler armies, whoi served in the occupation police , who shot Jews in Babi Yar, fought on the front with the Russian and Ukrainians in the division SS "Galicia " , conducted ethnic cleansing of Poles. Who in Bandera gangs , hung , shot and cut the Ukrainians , Russian , Slovak , Belarusians, Poles , Jews, is now completely free to roam the streets of Kiev and proclaim thier ideology from the stands. Today they changed only master...
First they tested thier power by sending several thousand of Galicia people and organizing march of UPA. Authorities looked at it favorably. Moreover, they sent the police to storm the apartment where barricaded several patriots, who hung out the red flag and transmitted the Soviet songs. Neonazis liked that attitude and they realized that no one will stop them. The dispersal of "evromaydaunov" was a pre-planed provocation. After that they began open clashes with police officers storming government agencies and capturing buildings. Now there are very few people of Kiev on Independence Sqare. Mostly those are are present are iether overexcited students and shopkeepers , or marginal, or representatives of fifth column . Everywhere heard Galician dialict. Near the stage there is a crowd who came to listen to the speeches of politicians and look at them closely, although they can be seen on the gigantic screen, located on the wall of a building . On the periphery roam groups the athletic lads . Along Khreschatyk roam in groups of 5-10 people young neo-Nazis, some with swastika armbands . On approaches to Maidan sell "color revolution" symbols such as ribbons, flags of Ukraine and the EU, in all sizes . Some businessmen made a tidy profit from this psychosis . Prices start at 10 hryvnia , rising gradually . People say that on Maidan of 2004 reigned elation and euphoria . Here aggressive depressed mood dominates. Romantics , published pursue European integration is no longer seen. and slogans about joining the European Union no longer heard. From the podium there are calls to overthrow the government , to block government agencies , threats to the president. One speaker described how the blocked blocked 730 special forces in Vasilkovo. "(c ) samson
Ivan Shahov
Sensible article, thank you! Especially "There are very few really violent madmen, that's why there is always lack of leaders" (Vladimir Vysotsky). But the law of this genre, of this circus is that it can't be immediately dispersed, and even more so when it is not all of the clowns performed ;-). Although at the end of the show they can drew some blood from kievites, village always hates city in any country in the world :-(.
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December 8 , 2013 | KID
The opposition and the West supports them want to repeat Maidan -2004 - expert
The opposition wants to use people's desire to improve thier living standards only for graqbbing political power, not to change living standards for the better - says Eugene Filindash , director of the Ukrainian Center for Social Intelligence (as reported by UNN).
When we come to the question " what next? ", opposition has ready-made answer. And it boils down to one thing: hold a new election and give us power . In other words , the opposition and the West supports them want to repeat the Maidan-2004 and install in power the new Yushchenko with just a different last name"-:Filindash .
According to him, apart from the regular rotation of the names and parties in power, most of those who now stands at EvroMaidane will receive nothing.
"That's because both the government and the opposition does not fundamentally differ from each other . They change each others in power for over ten years . With the invariably the same bad result for common folk. Both are integral part and supporters of the neoliberalism and do not want to change it. The only change is to which pockets country wealth will flow before being transferred to the foreign banks. That what they mean by "evrointegation". They want to join "evroelite", while the majority of the population will join "eurolumpens" and will be be forced to take evro-Mcjobs - the analyst said .
"It's not even against the local Predators vs Aliens Predators . This is just Alien Predators vs Predator Aliens" - he concluded.
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Dec 07, 2013 | RBC-Ukraine
On Wednesday a meeting in Kiev between Arseniy Yatsenyuk and Marko Ivkovic was held, According to sources close to Yatsenyuk they discussed issues of further coordination Maidan ,:C-Ukraine.
Mr. Ivkovic - U.S. citizen of Serbian origin . Hi is 32 years old. Marko Ivkovic is one of the members of the National Democratic Institute, the United States. Persona non grata in Russia . He led the organization of the Serbian "Otpor" that overthrew Slobodan Milosevic.
He was instrumental in creation the Georgian protest movements " CIDA " and Ukrainian "Pora"(time).
He also participated on organization of color revolution in Kyrgyzstan in 2010 - when President Kurmanbek Bakiyev was deposed. During the revolution in Kyrgyzstan, killing 268 people and more than 1.5 thousand injured.
Marko Ivkovic was trying to organize something similar in Russia, but was deported and received the status of Persona non grata.
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March 6, 2013 | Evrasia.org
Today, March 6, the 68th U.S. Secretary of State John Kerry completes first overseas tour. The list of the countries he visited, beginning on February 24, is impressive: the UK, Germany, France, Italy, Turkey, Egypt, Saudi Arabia, United Arab Emirates and Qatar.
Some experts heard in the statements that the new head of U.S. diplomacy systematically made throughout his journey, an attempt to remedy the situation, into which Hillary Clinton plunged the U.S. foreign policy - raffling feathers of the U.S. opponents and alienating allies. Once again they are talking that, at least for now, the U.S. expansionist pressure eased somewhat. There are opinions that Barack Obama will give us a chance to take a breath. Never mind that the first time "reset" did not work. There are even opinions that now Obama is starting to build a new foreign policy framework. And even that the time is not far off, when America will be forced to abandon its expansionist plans.
Americans are constantly finding new and new ways, new approaches and apply tremendous pressure as soon as existing technology of keeping vassals under control start failing and cease to work. That include tough scenarios that we have seen Afghanistan or Iraq. Indeed, the American foreign expansion slowed somewhat, and pressure from the U.S. to other countries weakened - for objective reasons. However, the crisis faced by the American elite, the crisis of promotion of their interests, their values, like any crisis, even on a global scale - was never a reason for the Americans to retreat. The emergence of such difficulties for persistent, bend on world domination elite, with is the type of elite that the US has, the elite which relentlessly try to increase their sphere of influence, can not be something that will knock them out of the saddle, demoralizing and/or cause to abandon their plans.
This situation can develop into to separate paths. First, the current crisis for American expansion will create some kind of immunity among the American elite, meaning that they adapt to this crisis, amend exposed the weaknesses, strengthen them and will continue to move toward their goal of word domination, but using other methods, and other technologies.
What we have, in principle, and have seen in recent years. Americans take any technology to promote their interests, for example, the technology of "color" revolutions, deploy it once, twice, three times ... and then a fourth, and fifth. But on the sixth time it begins to falter as states and nations are beginning to resist the technology by solving its nature, and better understanding its meaning, its consequences. At this point they immediately abandon it, or postpone until better times. But at this very moment they adopt a different, alternative technological model, which they begin to implement immediately.
American intellectuals pursue non-stop development of new technologies of subduing and controlling other nations by manipulation of social processes, contradictions in the societies, and, in fact, by working with elites of those societies. History of selection of such technologies can be traced for the last several decades. We still remember how in the Soviet period, they used economic leverage to get a foot in those States, which tried to rely more on the Soviet bloc. This, incidentally, is fine details was described by former U.S. political consultant John Perkins in his book "Confessions of an Economic Hit Man." But when this technology has ceased to operate, has exhausted its possibilities, they moved on to the "color revolutions" technology developed by Gene Sharp. When the "color revolutions" technology begun to fail, they moved on to the theory of controlled chaos by Steven Mann, which is implemented today in the Middle East. And on the other approach is in the pipeline.
Americans are constantly finding new and new ways, new approaches and apply tremendous pressure as soon as existing technology of keeping vassals under control start failing and cease to work. That include tough scenarios that we have seen Afghanistan or Iraq.
Therefore it is naive to argue that stopping or slowing U.S. expansion due to economic crisis will cause them to abandon their idea of global domination. Especially, taking into account that the historically expansionist policy of the United States can't be changes by election of the next U.S. president, no matter what are his own views and approaches. He is only a nominal representative of the entrenched for the last two centuries American elite, a hired manager, recruited by the powers that be.
But there is another scenario - a situation in which the number of failures, errors and blunders will increase, and the errors can became self-reproducible. In this case a single failure will entail two new additional failures, which in their turn will cause another four, and so on. This is what is called a systemic crisis, which can be eliminated only by the change of the elite.
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August 1, 2006 | YaleGlobal online
Both China and Russia sat up and took notice of the role played by nongovernmental organizations (NGOs) in the political unrest and subsequent color revolutions in Georgia, the Ukraine and Kyrgyzstan. This two-part series examines the two governments' responses to NGO activity within their borders. China dispatched intelligence officers to research the NGO role in Central Asia and also conduct background checks on NGO members in China – though no arrests, detentions or restrictions are known to have occurred. China expects local partners of foreign NGOs to report on activities to the central government, a policy that has slowed approval for some NGO projects. The organizations pose little threat to China's one-party government, studies suggest, and public-policy experts anticipate that the surveillance will subside. In fact, local governments tend to thwart central-government goals more than the NGOs do, according to one political scientist. NGOs take the increased attention in stride, hoping for more visibility and perhaps even appreciation for their diverse efforts to improve Chinese communities. – YaleGlobal
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June 8, 2006 | 2001-2009.state.gov
Barry F. Lowenkron, Assistant Secretary for Democracy, Human Rights, and Labor
Remarks to the Senate Foreign Relations Committee
Washington, DC
June 8, 2006Chairman Lugar, Members of the Committee, thank you for your active interest in the essential role that non-governmental organizations play in the defense of freedom and the development of democracy across the globe. I welcome this opportunity to highlight the contributions of NGOs, to share with you our concerns about the restrictions that a growing number of governments are placing on NGO activities, and to offer suggestions on how we can protect NGOs' vital work. I will summarize my prepared remarks, Mr. Chairman, and request that my full testimony be entered into the record.
When I appeared before this Committee last September seeking confirmation as the Assistant Secretary for Democracy, Human Rights and Labor, I stated that, if confirmed, one of my highest priorities would be "to consult and partner closely with the many dedicated and capable NGOs working on human rights and democracy." I also pledged to "make every effort to protect the work of NGOs against efforts by foreign governments to constrain, harass, intimidate, and silence their work."
As Assistant Secretary, I have had the privilege of meeting with many NGOs, both here and abroad, and I have greatly benefited from their information, their insights and their ideas. As President Bush stated in his second inaugural address: "… it is the policy of the United States to seek and support the growth of democratic movements and institutions in every nation and culture, with the ultimate goal of ending tyranny in our world." The work of NGOs is crucial to reaching that goal.
A Wide World of NGOs
The rise of NGOs as international actors as well as shapers of national policy is one of the most important trends in international relations. NGOs encompass the entire range of civil society: from lobbying for better health, protection of the environment, and advancement of education for all; to delivering humanitarian relief and securing and protecting basic civil and political rights.There are NGOs devoted to specific health issues, such as women's health care or HIV/AIDS. I note the tireless effort and good work of the Whitman Walker Clinic here in the Washington Metropolitan area. There are also NGOs based thousands of miles away that are battling these same concerns. For example, the Kenya AIDS NGO Consortium is a coalition of some 600 NGOs and religious organizations that deal with AIDS-related activities in Africa. Indeed, the AIDS pandemic has spawned a host of indigenous NGOs in sub-Saharan Africa.
Environmental NGOs in the former Soviet Union and Eastern Europe played a vital role in the political, social and economic changes of the 1980s. Today, they continue to have an enormous impact in countries across the globe, pushing for governmental transparency and accountability which in turn can fuel political reform.
Today, my primary focus will be the so-called political NGOs -- those that advocate for human rights and democratic principles and practices. Although they constitute only a small component of the global NGO community, they are the ones that draw the most fire from governments who view them as a threat to their power.
These NGOs build on a legacy of championing human rights through norm-setting and monitoring. They have helped to shape international agreements, instruments, institutions and human rights mechanisms over decades. NGOs were key to shaping the language on human rights and fundamental freedoms in the United Nations Charter and of the U.N. Universal Declaration on Human Rights itself. These NGOs courageously defend human rights activists, often while risking reprisal themselves.
Together with the increasing worldwide demand for greater personal and political freedom often reflected in the work of these NGOs is the growing recognition that democracy is the form of government that can best meet the demands of citizens for dignity, liberty, and equality.
Today, all across the globe, NGOs are helping to establish and strengthen democracy in three key ways:
- First, NGOs are working to establish awareness of and respect for the right of individuals to exercise freedoms of expression, assembly and association, which is crucial to participatory democracy.
- Second, NGOs are working to ensure that there is a level playing field upon which candidates for elective office can compete and that the entire elections process is free and fair.
- Third, NGOs are working to build and strengthen the rule of just laws and responsive and accountable institutions of government so that the rights of individuals are protected regardless of which persons or parties may be in office at any given time.
These efforts by NGOs mirror the discussions I have had with Secretary Rice on democracy promotion in which she outlined the three main areas that inform our democracy activities: electoral -- the right of assembly, free speech and all other elements that constitute representative democracy; the importance of good governance -- a government by the people that is accountable, transparent, and willing to accept constraints on power and cede it peacefully; and a flourishing civil society. NGOs play a vital role in all three areas.
U.S.-based NGOs such as the National Endowment for Democracy, the Center for International Private Enterprise, the American Center for International Labor Solidarity, the National Democratic Institute for International Affairs, the International Republican Institute, IFES and Freedom House actively promote democracy across the globe. This type of activity is not unique to the United States. The German political Stiftungen served as models for the creation of the NED family in the 1980s. The British Westminster Foundation is a leader in democracy promotion. The Danes promote worker solidarity and labor rights. The Czech Aide to People in Need actively supports human rights. All of these efforts are conducted openly and transparently and are consistent with international standards and practices.
The Push-Back
Not surprisingly, there are those in power who do not welcome NGOs and other agents of peaceful, democratic change. After all, the work of NGOs may vary widely, but what they all have in common is enabling individuals to come together to create an independent voice distinct from, and at times in disagreement with, the government's views.
Mr. Chairman, I experience this every day as Assistant Secretary when I meet with NGOs who want to discuss the U.S. Government's human rights record here and abroad. I often agree with NGOs. At times, I disagree with them. But I never view them as a threat to our democratic way of life. Indeed, their contribution to our debate on America's role in the world can only strengthen our democratic ideals at home and advance them abroad.
Other governments, however, feel threatened by their work. In many countries, we see disturbing attempts to intimidate NGOs and restrict or shut them down. The recent assessment of the National Endowment for Democracy captures this growing challenge. The conclusions are sobering. States are developing and using tools to subvert, suppress and silence these organizations. They invoke or create restrictive laws and regulations. They impose burdensome registration and tax requirements. Charges are vague, such as "disturbing social order," and implementation and enforcement are arbitrary, fostering a climate of self-censorship and fear. Governments play favorites, deeming NGOs "good" or "bad", and they treat them accordingly. NGOs deemed "good" are often ones created by governments themselves -- Government Organized NGOs or "GONGOs." The Tunisian government established a GONGO staffed by members of its intelligence service to attend conferences and monitor what is being:out the government. China sends GONGOs to UN NGO functions to defend China's human rights policies.
When states find that their efforts to pass or apply restrictive laws and regulations against NGOs are not enough, they resort to extralegal forms of intimidation or persecution. Often these regimes justify their actions by accusations of treason, espionage, subversion, foreign interference or terrorism. These are rationalizations; the real motivation is political. This is not about defending their citizens from harm, this is about protecting positions of power.
From Russia to China, Zimbabwe to Venezuela, no region has been spared this push-back. Mr. Chairman, we can point to individual cases unique to each country. A key impetus for the recent crackdown has been reaction by many rulers to the "Color Revolutions" of 2003-2005. They believed that the popular pressure for change was instigated and directed from abroad through U.S and other foreign support for NGOs on the ground. They have not grasped that the "Color Revolutions" were examples of citizens standing up for their right to free elections and demanding accountability when election results did not reflect the clear will of the people because of manipulation.
During my trip to Moscow in early January, the deep suspicion that Western states had manipulated election outcomes was evident from my discussions with officials and lawmakers. Our promotion of democracy is seen as part of a zero-sum game of geopolitical influence. I emphasized to my Russian interlocutors that they were fundamentally mistaken about what happened in Ukraine and Georgia, that our NGO funding and activities there were transparent, fully in keeping with the Organization for Security and Cooperation in Europe's and other international norms, and designed to help ensure that elections are free and fair, not to pick winners and losers.
After he had signed the restrictive new NGO law in January, Russian President Putin acknowledged that NGOs can and do contribute to the well-being of society, but he added that their financing must be transparent and efforts to control them by "foreign puppeteers" would not be tolerated. The new Russian law has the potential to cripple the vital work of many NGOs, including foreign NGOs there to support the local NGOs, and could retard Russia's democratic development. The new law is now in effect. Recently, the Russian Ministry of Justice issued extensive implementing regulations along with dozens of forms for NGOs to complete. These detailed reporting requirements on NGOs' financial and programmatic activities allow for broad review and oversight by Russian officials that could go beyond international norms. The authorities have wide discretion to implement the law. The authorities can request various documents and information or attend any NGO event to verify that an organization's activities comply with the goals expressed in its founding documents. Foreign NGOs appear to be singled out for even more extensive reporting requirements, including quarterly financial reports and annual reporting on planned activities, subject to review by authorities. Officials could order a foreign NGO to cease funding a particular program, ban the NGO from transferring funds to certain recipients or shut it down completely. While we are told such measures would be subject to court approval, this could entail lengthy and expensive litigation that could cripple an NGO.
The Russian government has claimed that the new NGO law is similar to U.S. and other Western regulations regarding civil society. As a basis for that claim, the Russian Federation's Ministry of Foreign Affairs has posted an unattributed chart on its website comparing selected provisions from the new NGO law with the laws of the United States, France, Finland, Israel and Poland. An NGO called The International Center for Not-for-Profit Law has done a careful analysis of the chart and the laws of the various countries cited and has found the contrary. According to this center of legal expertise, the Russian law is "substantially different from the laws of the selected countries" and is actually "more restrictive", both in terms of the specific provisions of the Russian law and in its cumulative effect. We continue to urge the Russian government to implement the new law in a way that facilitates, not hinders, the vital work of NGOs and is in compliance with Russia's international commitments.
Russia is not the only country where NGOs face serious challenges. In Belarus, the Lukashenko government increasingly uses tax inspections and new registration requirements to complicate or deny the ability of NGOs, independent media, political parties, and minority and religious organizations to operate legally. All but a handful of human rights NGOs have been deregistered or denied registration. In February, Belarussian KGB spokesman Valeriy Nadtochayev stated: "Such political events inside our country as … elections attract the attention of foreign secret services, diplomats, and representatives of various non-governmental organizations and foundations like magnets. All of them are united by a common task involving the collection of biased information about events in our country and the creation of newsbreaks, especially those connected with so-called human rights violations …"
The Chinese government applies burdensome requirements to groups attempting to register as NGOs. They must first find a government agency sponsor before they can register with the Ministry of Civil Affairs. NGOs must have more than fifty individual members -- a Catch 22 situation since hosting such large gatherings without a license can lead to official persecution. This means that groups that do not have adequate government ties have no hope of meeting legal requirements to register. The financial requirement of $12,000 makes it difficult for many nascent, cash-strapped organizations to register. Moreover, sponsoring agencies and the Ministry of Civil Affairs can refuse applications without cause or recourse.
The government closely scrutinizes NGOs working in areas that might challenge its authority or have implications for social stability, such as groups focused on human rights and discrimination. It is more amenable to groups that it sees as supporting social welfare efforts rather than operating in a political role. In this context, some NGOs are able to develop their own agendas and, in some cases, even undertake limited advocacy roles in public interest areas like women's issues, the environment, health, and consumer rights.
The Chinese government studied the role that NGOs ostensibly played in the "Color Revolutions" and ordered an investigation into the activities of both foreign and domestic NGOs in China. The government also established a task force to monitor the activities of NGOs, especially those with links overseas.
In Venezuela, the leadership of the electoral watchdog NGO Sumate awaits trial on charges of conspiracy and treason for accepting a $31,150 grant from the NED for voter education and outreach activities consistent with the International Covenant on Civil and Political Rights. While Sumate is the most well known target of harassment by the Venezuelan government, it is not alone. The government continues to restrict the ability of NGOs to conduct their activities and to cut off sources of international support for their work.
In May 2005, Eritrea issued an NGO Administration Proclamation that imposes taxes on aid, restricts NGOS to relief and rehabilitation work, increases reporting requirements for foreign and local organizations and limits international agencies from directly funding local NGOs. All NGOs must meet demanding annual registration requirements. The few local NGOs that are allowed to register also face new funding barriers. In a televised speech last November, Eritrean President Isaias Afwerki stated: "In many cases, spy agencies of big and powerful countries use NGOs as smokescreens." In March 2006, in the midst of a devastating drought, Eritrea expelled the U.S.-based humanitarian NGO Mercy Corps, the Irish NGO Concern and the British NGO Accord.
In March 2005, the Ethiopian government expelled IRI, NDI and IFES shortly after their arrival in advance of the May national legislative and regional council elections. The three organizations had never before been expelled from any country. They had made numerous attempts to register with the government. The government cited "technical difficulties related to their accreditation and registration" as reasons for the expulsions.
Blatantly disregarding the welfare of its people, the concerns of its neighbors and the call of the United Nations, the regime in Burma has not eased, it has increased, restrictions on UN agencies and international NGOs doing humanitarian work in Burma, particularly in ethnic areas. For example, Medecíns Sans Frontiéres was forced to close its French Section that was responsible for programs in the conflict-ridden Mon and Karen states. As the manager of the French Section put it: "It appears the Burmese authorities do not want anyone to witness the abuses they are committing against their own people."
The cases I mentioned are only a few examples what I call rule by law -- of governments seeking to control, restrict or shut down the work of NGOs by appropriating the language of law and the instruments and institutions of democracy. When states wield the law as a political weapon or an instrument of repression against NGOs, they rule by law rather than upholding the rule of law. The rule of law acts as a check on state power; it is a system designed to protect the human rights of the individual against the power of the state. In contrast, rule by law can be an abuse of power -- the manipulation of the law, the judicial system and other governmental bodies to maintain the power of the rulers over the ruled.
To suppress the work of NGOs, states also employ more blatant forms of persecution. Since the uprising and violent suppression in Andijan, Uzbekistan in May 2005, the government has harassed, beaten and jailed dozens of human rights activists and independent journalists, sentenced numerous people to prison following trials that did not meet international standards, forced many domestic and international NGOs to close, including Freedom House. Those that continue to operate are severely restricted. Local NGO employees have been convicted of criminal offenses for their work making it virtually impossible for them to find other jobs.
The Sudanese government's obstruction of humanitarian assistance and support for civil society has severely hampered relief efforts in Darfur. Domestic and international NGOs and humanitarian organizations are constantly harassed and overburdened with paperwork. The Sudanese government has expelled international NGO and humanitarian personnel, delayed their visas, and placed restrictions on their travel inside Darfur. Sudanese police and security forces have arrested, threatened and physically harmed NGO and humanitarian workers. In April 2006, the Sudanese government expelled the Norwegian Refugee Council from Kalma Camp, the largest internally displaced persons camp in Darfur with over 90,000 internally displaced persons. Prior to its expulsion, the Norwegian Refugee Council had served for two years as the Kalma "camp coordinator", in charge of coordinating all humanitarian programs and protection for the camp's residents and serving as a liaison for community leaders, government officials, humanitarian agencies, and African Union peacekeepers. On May 31, the South Darfur State Security Committee approved an agreement allowing the Council to return as camp coordinator. Nevertheless, Sudanese government obstructionism caused Darfur's largest IDP camp to go without a camp coordinator for two months, during which time insecurity and tension rose.
The last remaining civil society discussion group in Syria, the Jamal al-Atassi Forum, has been prevented from meeting for almost a year and many of its members have been arrested or intimidated into silence. The Forum is a predominantly secular group encouraging dialogue among political parties and civil society to promote reform.
We are concerned that the situation in Egypt for politically active NGOs is deteriorating. For example, last week Egyptian civil society activists Mohammed el-Sharkawi and Karim Shaer were beaten and arrested for participating in demonstrations in support of the independence of the judiciary. Reportedly, they were subsequently tortured while in custody and denied medical treatment. International democracy NGOs active in Egypt are also facing increasing government pressure.
What We and other Democracies Can Do to Defend and Support NGOs
Mr. Chairman, in today's world, the problems confronting states are too complex even for the most powerful states to tackle alone. The contributions of NGOs are crucial in addressing a host of domestic and international challenges. Restricting the political space of NGOs only limits a society's own political and economic growth. A strong nation fosters the development of NGOs and other elements of a vibrant civil society; a state that tries to control everything from the center becomes brittle. A society that allows broad participation by its citizens in national life is a society that will flourish from the contributions of its own people.When NGOs are under siege, freedom and democracy are undermined. How then can we best support and defend the work of NGOs in countries across the globe?
The United States must continue to stand up for what President Bush calls "the non-negotiable demands of human dignity" and that includes the exercise by individuals of their rights to freedom of expression, association and assembly through their membership in NGOs.
As we monitor and report on conditions for human rights and democracy in countries worldwide, we in DRL, our posts overseas, and the State Department generally must sharpen our focus on the increasing pressures governments are putting on NGOs. We must think creatively about how we might help to open political space for NGOs and create opportunities for NGOs and their governments to exchange views in an honest and constructive manner. We must ensure that a government's treatment of NGOs is an element in our bilateral dialogue and that it factors into the decisions we make on developing our bilateral relationships.
Mr. Chairman, we need to defend human rights and democracy promotion. To do so, we need to defend the defenders. In short, we need to push back. Let me suggest seven ways:
First, we need to speak out. We must be prepared to counter what I call the NGO "Legal Equivalency" argument made by governments that unduly restrict NGOs, namely that since all countries regulate NGO activity in some fashion, criticism is unwarranted. For example, there is a difference between giving NGOs the opportunity to register for non-tax status, and demanding that NGOs register to simply function. Most countries, including ours, only require notification of registration, not permission from authorities, in order to operate as a formal, legal entity.
We must not succumb to arguments that the prime reason that governments which impose burdensome registration and other reporting requirements on NGOs is to combat terrorism or other criminal behavior. All governments have a responsibility to protect their populations from acts of terrorism and crime, and it is of course appropriate to subject NGOs to the same laws and requirements generally applicable to all individuals and organizations. At the end of day, however, a burdensome registration and reporting process is unlikely to sway determined terrorist organizations, but very likely to weaken legitimate NGOs.
We must counter false charges that US activities tied to NGOs are led covertly by the United States and other democracies. We must reiterate that our support is out in the open and that thousands of NGOs never even approach our government. And when they do, it is more likely than not that they are pressing us on our own behavior, or on individual cases, and not soliciting funding.
Second, we need to ensure that NGO protection is an integral part of our diplomacy. We must highlight the protection of NGOs as a legitimate issue on our government-to-government agenda. This spring, when Russian Foreign Minister Lavrov came to Washington, Secretary Rice had an extensive discussion with him on our NGO concerns, a discussion in which I participated. The Secretary raises our concerns in her bilateral meetings as do I and many of my colleagues at the State Department. When I travel, I insist on seeing NGO representatives, as does the Secretary.
We must also continue to multiply our voices. Time and again NGOs have told me that their work would be further protected if others would join us. Russian NGOs were heartened that, just prior to my arrival in Moscow in January, German Chancellor Merkel paid an official visit and not only spoke out in defense of NGOs but met with them to hear first-hand their concerns. In the case of China, my Bureau has taken the initiative to develop a coordinated approach among all members of the so-called Bern process -- the process that brings together all countries which have human rights dialogues with China. We meet twice yearly, to exchange lists of political prisoners, to compare best practices, and to monitor Chinese behavior toward NGOs.
Third, we must expand the role of regional organizations in protecting NGOs. Acting in defense and support of NGOs on a bilateral basis is essential, but it is not sufficient. NGOs are a global phenomenon; they are facing pressures in countries in every region. I believe that there is greater scope for us to partner with leading regional democracies and to work with regional organizations to defend and support the work of NGOs.
The OSCE and the European Union have adopted some of the most advanced provisions regarding the role and rights of NGOs, as well as guidelines on how they can interact and participate in OSCE and EU activities. In the OSCE context, the role of NGOs in pressing for adherence to democratic standards and practices including monitoring elections remains vital. We will do all we can to ensure that the defense and promotion of human rights and democratic principles remain central to OSCE's mandate. Every quarter I hold consultations with the EU on a host of human rights and democracy issues worldwide. These consultations are also a good vehicle to take up the cause of NGO protection.
The OAS has formal structures for NGO participation and Secretary General Insulza has:at he seeks greater engagement by civil society organizations. Last month, I held a roundtable with a diverse group of NGOs from Latin America. The NGOs were in Washington to attend an OAS ministerial. We intend to build on that dialogue: through the OAS and among the NGOs themselves as they press for implementation of the OAS Democratic Charter.
NGO engagement with the African Union remains limited. However, prior to the AU Heads of State Summit July 1-2 in Banjul, the AU will host a Civil Society Forum and a Women's Forum. Later this year I hope to travel to Addis Ababa to meet with the AU and place protection of NGOs on our agenda
ASEAN has formal guidelines for NGO participation in its activities. To date, the NGOs affiliated with ASEAN do not tend to have a democracy or human rights focus, but operate in other fields such as business and medicine. ASEAN's recent steps to press the regime in Burma is an encouraging sign that countries in the region are beginning to recognize that the protection of human rights, and of human rights defenders, is a legitimate issue, and not one to be dismissed as interference in the sovereignty of its neighbors. We will encourage ASEAN to take further steps on this path.
Fourth, we must maximize global opportunities to raise concerns about the treatment of NGOs and take coordinated action in their defense. We will work to that end with like-minded members of the new U.N. Human Rights Council. I would note that in negotiating the creation of the Council, the United States successfully insisted that NGOs must retain the same access to the new body that they had to its predecessor.
The UN Democracy Fund, proposed by President Bush in September 2004 and launched in September 2005, is another important instrument for supporting NGOs. The Fund will support projects implemented by NGOs as well as governmental and multilateral entities. Recognizing the important contributions that NGOs make, the designers of the Democracy Fund ensured that two of the 17 members of the Fund's Advisory Board are NGO representatives. To date, 19 countries have contributed or pledged approximately $50 million to this voluntary Fund. The United States has contributed $17.9 million to date, and the President's Budget has requested an additional $10 million to support the Fund in FY 2007. We have successfully pushed for the Fund to focus on support for NGOs and other elements of civil society in states transitioning to democracy, complementing existing UN programs on free and fair elections and the rule of law.
The Community of Democracies and the collective action of its members can be an important focal point within the international community and international organizations in helping sustain and protect NGOs across the globe. The time has come to institutionalize the Community itself, and to use its members to press for fundamental freedoms, including with regard to the protection of NGOs.
Fifth, we must protect and nurture new organizations that allow NGOs to flourish. Here let me single out the Middle East. The Forum for the Future was established in the summer of 2004 at the G-8 Summit in Sea Island, Georgia. In partnership with the countries of the Broader Middle East and North Africa, the Forum seeks to advance political, economic, and educational reforms in the region. From its inception, we have pressed for inclusion of NGOs indigenous to the Middle East. At the first meeting of the Forum in Rabat in December 2004, there were five NGOs. By the time I accompanied Secretary Rice to the second meeting, held in Bahrain a year later, the five had grown to 40. At the conference, leaders of these NGOs participated, pressing an agenda of political reform, economic opportunity, educational advancement, and gender equality.
Among those serving on this civil society delegation in Bahrain were representatives from the Democracy Assistance Dialogue (DAD) -- a dialogue led by the Italy, Turkey, and Yemen as well as three NGOS from each country. The DAD presented the outcomes of discussions and debates held over the course of the year between civil society leaders and their government counterparts. The growing DAD network includes hundreds of civil society leaders from the region. The level and depth of civil society participation at the Forum was historic and positive, and has set an important precedent for genuine dialogue and partnership between civil society and governments on reform issues.
At Bahrain all the participating countries agreed to establish a Foundation for the Future to help fund NGO activity. We did not agree on a Bahrain declaration of principles, however, because a number of countries wanted to include in that declaration language to constrain NGOs. In the end, the United Kingdom as G-8 co-sponsor that year, supported by us and others -- walked away from the declaration. Our reason was simple: We could not cripple in the afternoon what we had created in the morning. I applaud the host of the next Forum, Jordan, for its unwavering commitment to a continued robust role for NGOs.
We are already acting in concert with the Jordanian government and others to ensure that the NGO presence grows for the meeting this December.
Sixth, we must ensure that NGOs have the resources they need to carry out their vital work. Many NGOs look to a variety of funding sources, both government and private, to ensure a diverse support base. Many of them never approach the U.S. government for any funding at all.
A number of private, grant-making foundations specialize in supporting the work of other non-governmental organizations, and here I cite the MacArthur Foundation, the Ford Foundation, the Open Society Institute and other well-known foundations. Organizations such as the independent, nonprofit Pew Charitable Trusts, the International Crisis Group, the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace and its Moscow Center often fund or produce reports on topics which contribute to public policy discourse on the development of civil society, conflict prevention and management, and other goals compatible with advancing freedom and democracy. We must continue to encourage more private sector support.
We in government can often provide the needed seed money for democracy promotion programs, or assistance to maintain on-going programs. This is a dynamic process that adjusts to new demands, shifting priorities, and different emphases. We must continue to seek out innovative solutions that merit our support, for example, programs that monitor and publicize attacks on NGOs, much as the MacArthur Foundation has funded the Berkman Center at Harvard University to monitor worldwide constraints on internet freedom.
I also want to express my appreciation to the Congress for its support of the Human Rights and Democracy Fund, a program managed by my Bureau. I call it the "venture capital" of democracy promotion for it gives us the flexibility to support innovative programming by NGOs targeted at key countries and issues. We are able to make hundreds of grants a year to organizations around the world addressing vital democracy and human rights issues.
All free nations have a stake in the strengthening of civil societies and the spread of democratic government worldwide, and we welcome and encourage contributions from other donor countries and institutions in support of the work of NGOs.
Seventh, we should consider elaborating some guiding principles by which we as a country would assess the behavior of other governments toward NGOs, and which we would take into account in our bilateral relationships. I would welcome consulting with Congress on the drafting of these principles. I would envision a short list of principles -- no more than a page. They would be user-friendly in non-legalistic language. The principles would proceed from the premise that NGOs, as elements of a vibrant civil society, are essential to the development and success of free societies and that they play a vital role in ensuring accountable, democratic government. The principles should pass the "reasonableness test" in any open society. We would pledge our own adherence to the principles and we would of course encourage their embrace by other countries as well.
I do not see these principles as being duplicative of other efforts. The best word is still the plainspoken word, and in plainspoken words, these principles would distill the basic commitments to the rights to freedom of expression, association and assembly enshrined in such documents as: the U.N. Universal Declaration on Human Rights and other international documents such as the International Covenant on Civil and Political Rights, relevant International Labor Organization Conventions, the Helsinki Final Act and subsequent OSCE Copenhagen and Moscow documents, and the European Convention on Human Rights and relevant documents of the Council of Europe.
Among the possible principles we could elaborate could be:
Mr. Chairman, Members of the Committee, in closing I cannot emphasize enough the value of the continued active involvement of this Committee and of other Members of Congress in the worldwide defense and support of the work of NGOs. It greatly strengthens my hand when I meet with foreign officials to know that I have your strong bipartisan backing. It is profoundly important that you continue to demonstrate your support for NGOs and raise concerns about their treatment to foreign governments. And any efforts you could make to encourage your counterparts in the legislatures of other democracies to press these issues and to work in concert on them would be extraordinarily helpful.
- That an individual should be permitted to form, join and participate in NGOs of his or her choosing in peaceful exercise of his or her rights to freedom of expression and assembly.
- That any restrictions which may be placed on the exercise of the rights to freedom of expression and assembly must be consistent with international law.
- That governments will not take actions that prevent NGOs from carrying out their peaceful work without fear of persecution, intimidation or discrimination.
- That laws, administrative measures, regulations and procedures governing or affecting NGOs should protect -- not impede -- their operation, and that they should never be established or enforced for politically motivated purposes.
- That NGOs, like all other elements of a vibrant civil society, should be permitted to seek and receive financial support from domestic, foreign and international entities.
- And perhaps the most important principle of all, that whenever NGOs are under siege, it is imperative that democratic nations act to defend their rights.
As President Bush has:Freedom, by its nature, must be chosen, and defended by citizens, and sustained by the rule of law and the protection of minorities. … America will not impose our own style of government on the unwilling. Our goal instead is to help others find their own voice, attain their own freedom, and make their own way."
By America's leadership in supporting and defending the work of NGOs, that is exactly what we are doing -- helping men and women across the globe shape their own destinies in freedom, and by so doing, helping to build a safer, better world for us all. Thank you.
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February 13, 2013 | The American Conservative
Some god-terms that issue from the media, and which I had the misfortune of hearing incessantly as an academic, make me wince as soon as they come out of someone's mouth. Among these particularly obnoxious terms are "social justice," "fairness," and "sensitivity," all of which drip with righteousness and dishonesty.
The term or concept that lately has been causing me the most visceral pain, however, is "human right." The pain became excruciating last week, when I heard Fox News commentator Juan Williams insist that gay marriage is a human right. If Williams had his way, the Supreme Court would impose recognition of this arrangement on every hamlet in this country. That's because he thinks it's "fair" and in any case required by the equal protection clause of the Fourteenth Amendment. I've no idea how the Fourteenth Amendment can require the imposition of a marital practice that differs from how marriage was understood since the beginnings of human societies and up until a few years ago in this country. It is possible to see why the Fourteenth Amendment might be invoked to uphold the right of every American taxpayer, whatever his color, to use the public facilities he or she pays for. But how can it require, except by an act of judicial usurpation, that all Americans be forced to recognize as marriage a cohabitation arrangement between people of the same sex. Supposedly this entails a right that must be equally protected. Right to what? Presumably of anything that those involved decide to call marriage and then oblige everyone else, on pain of punishment, to accept as such.
What happens, however, if those who wish to experiment with new forms of marriage decide that it would be a good idea to practice incest? Does that too become a right protected by the Fourteenth Amendment? What about group marriage, a practice that's already being tried in Holland? Is that too protected by our constitution, according to Juan Williams? The answer is that incest and group marriages may be entitled to legal protection against discriminators, if Williams decides to characterize them as human rights. What the hell-two more rights added to the list really won't muddle the term "human rights" any more than it's already been muddled. And in fact the term has now been reduced to a rhetorical trope that is meant to impress the listener with the moral seriousness of the person who pronounces it.
My objection to the term is not based on moral relativism, since I don't pretend to be a moral agnostic. I could think of at least one right that all people should be entitled to and which government should provide: it's Thomas Hobbes's single example of a natural right, which is to be protected by government against violent death. But who believes in what rights is not the point here. I am arguing against the use of human rights bombast whenever some individual, institution, or state wishes to express a political preference or a program of social reconstruction. Just make your arguments and let the listener decide. Further, I don't object to listening to moral arguments against societies that do horrible things. Mention what the leaders of these societies do and then leave it to others to decide whether your indictment is correct. Saying that what you deplore violates human rights fills space with noise without contributing anything substantive to human knowledge. For example, if someone shows me that the Taliban stones women to death if they're seen talking to young men to whom they're not married, that's a sufficient indictment. In no way would the speaker be strengthening his brief by adding that the Taliban "violates human rights."
I would also make a traditionalist case against human-rights language. Whereas most of us in the same society up until a few decades ago could have agreed on what actions were right and wrong, human rights are more subject to change than traditional moral verities. Their validity depends on political and cultural winds; and it is foolish to believe that one can bridge the breakdown of moral or social consensus throughout the Western world by resorting to a new universal ethic based on "human rights" or "democratic values." There are sharp and even growing differences in our society about fundamental behavioral questions, and appeals to supposedly universal rights language will not likely heal these divisions. Significantly, both those who favor and those who oppose the right to abort a fetus shower us equally with human-rights rhetoric. That practice settles nothing of importance, except for allowing the speakers to feel good about their cause and about themselves for upholding it.
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Jul 4, 2012 | Stratfor
Recent protests throughout Sudan are the latest in an ongoing trend of protest movements around the world, from Muslim Brotherhood supporters in Egypt to oil workers in Norway and opposition parties in Thailand. Protests have proved an effective strategy against autocratic regimes, political repression and austerity measures. As with insurgency strategy, protests rely on underlying support from the population rather than on superior weapons. Both insurgency and protests are forms of asymmetric opposition in which the insurgents or protesters cannot succeed by using force to overwhelm the state but must find (or create) and exploit specific weaknesses of the state.
However, protest movements are not as aggressive as insurgencies. Violence is integral to insurgent strategy, but protest movements may be simply a negotiation tactic to extract concessions from a state or a corporation. Strikes are one of the most common forms of protest used to leverage labor resources for higher wages or more benefits. Thousands of protests, such as strikes, occur around the world every week. Most are small and insignificant outside the protesters' community. In order to address the geopolitical importance of protest movements, this analysis will focus on protests intended to create political change.
Sometimes protests can spur insurgencies. In the case of Syria, civilians congregated in the streets and public places to call for political change. As the state's responses became increasingly violent, elements of the movement formed a militia that began a parallel insurgency. As violence escalated in Syria, insurgent tactics eventually replaced protest tactics.
Not all protests evolve into insurgencies, though. Some are repressed by the regime, while others are able to achieve their objectives through other means. The ultimate challenge of analyzing protest movements is to distinguish between movements that could successfully change the order of a country and movements that fizzle after grabbing a few headlines. Stratfor distinguishes the two by looking at the tactics a given group of protesters uses and the strategic imperatives of the state against which the protesters are demonstrating.
Protest Tactics
Protest movements usually start with far fewer resources and far less organization than the established entity against which they are protesting. They are fighting an asymmetric battle against a state that has far more resources to use against protesters. For example, the April 6 movement that was behind Egypt's 2011 protests got its name from April 6, 2008, the day Egyptian authorities clamped down on a fledgling political youth movement with a series of arrests. The Egyptian state was able to end the 2008 protest movement relatively quietly; this is how most protest movements end.
Those groups that do survive must have a fluid yet responsive organizational capability, and they must control the perception of what they -- and their opponents -- stand for.
Organization
Organizing protests becomes increasingly dangerous as the movement becomes more successful. Most authorities will tolerate a certain amount of activism because it is seen as a way to let off steam. They appease the protesters by letting them think that they are making a difference -- as long as the protesters do not pose a threat. But as protest movements grow, authorities will act more aggressively to neutralize the organizers. Sincere protest movements may prove successful if they can survive a round of arrests, a baton charge from the police or a counterprotest from government supporters.
Another element to look for in protest organization is the unity of message. Using the same slogans and carrying mass-produced signs, especially if the protesters are in multiple cities, shows a level of unity that indicates a single organizer, whether that be an individual or a committee. The centralization of a protest movement is key because it means better coordination and swifter decision-making in response to obstacles. And later on, if the protest movement is successful, there is an individual or small group of individuals who can exploit the power generated by the protest movement for political gains.
The level of discipline shown by the members is another important indicator of a movement's organization. It is absolutely critical that a protest movement maintain the moral high ground; otherwise it is too easy for their opponents to smear the protesters as thieves, thugs or hooligans. Once protest movements number in the tens or hundreds of thousands it is impossible for organizers to enforce discipline themselves. However, organizers can recognize the importance of discipline and instill a zero-violence rule across the movement, while relying on grassroots security efforts to enforce it.
Protest movements become successful when large groups of people gather, yet abstain from the obvious power they have to loot, steal or commit other crimes in the chaos of street protests. That abstention shows discipline, and discipline indicates control over what is effectively a civilian army.
Perceptions
In the beginning, protest organizers must overcome the authorities' attempts to disperse the movement as well as the movement's initial lack of legitimacy. Protest movements typically start small and represent a fringe opinion. In order to increase the movement's numbers, organizers have to convince others that their interests are best pursued through protest. One way to do this is to make the smaller demonstrations appear larger in order to convince people that the protests represent the interest of more of a majority.
Protest movements often frame their demonstrations to make them appear larger. If a protest only has a few hundred people, it will look small and insignificant huddled in the middle of a massive central square. It will look much more formidable walking down a narrow, winding street that conceals the length of their procession and amplifies their noise. This doesn't mean that protest movements demonstrating on narrow, winding streets are necessarily small, but if they are, it is likely someone skillfully picked an appropriate venue for their demonstration. Knowing when and where to demonstrate indicates the sophistication of a protest movement.
Many times, the availability of imagery of a protest indicates how media savvy a protest movement is. A sophisticated movement will alert the media ahead of a demonstration to ensure it is broadcast -- more sophisticated movements will make sure to provide symbolic images for the media to disperse. A good example of this is when Iranian students breached the perimeter of the British Embassy in Tehran in November 2011. Dozens of journalists and cameramen (many with pre-positioned tripods) were on hand to record the symbolic moment. In that case, the actual breach did not cause much damage, but the degree to which Iranian authorities flaunted their disregard for embassy security eventually led to the British abandoning the mission. Imagery of protest scenes is crucial to analysis of a protest; if the scenes are set up well, it's likely someone organized it that way to ensure the message got out.
Perception becomes reality when fear of the regime evaporates. Despotic regimes rule through fear, and when demonstrators lose their fear of the regime and begin to realize that they have power to make changes, the protests often can make some quick progress -- as seen with the rapid fall of former Romanian President Nicolae Ceausescu in 1989. However, this loss of fear does not always guarantee success; the government sometimes can drastically increase violence to counter protesters' lack of fear -- as seen in Tiananmen Square in 1989. In the Syrian uprising in 1982, fear of the regime never evaporated, and the movement was quickly and firmly put down in a few weeks. In the Syrian opposition's current iteration, the fear of the regime has been broken, and the movement has persisted for more than a year.
Pillars of the State
Once the tactics of a protest movement have been assessed as organized and sophisticated, it's time to assess strategic weaknesses of the state that the movement can attack. Governments rule by controlling key pillars of society, through which they exercise authority over the population. These pillars include security forces (police and military), the judicial system, civil services and unions. If the protest movement is trying to overthrow the government and not just extract concessions, the movement will work to undermine the pillars of the state. Removing the support of one or more of these pillars will erode a government's power until it can no longer effectively govern, at which point protest movements can begin assuming institutional control.
It's important then to assess the key pillars of the government that a protest movement is targeting. Stratfor has done this in Syria by identifying the al-Assad clan, Alawite unity, supremacy of the Baath party and control over the military-intelligence apparatus as the key pillars of the Syrian state. The Syrian opposition may employ the most sophisticated tactics possible, but unless those tactics erode one or more of those pillars, the government can continue to exercise power over the state.
Context
Finally, when considering the overall impact of a protest movement, context is crucial. Some states have a higher tolerance for protests than others. Typically, open democratic states tolerate protests more than closed repressive states because security is not as crucial a pillar in open states as it is in closed states. For example, Thailand regularly sees protests with participants numbering in the tens of thousands. Protests have effectively shut down Bangkok and even disrupted the Association of Southeast Asian Nations conference in 2009, but the basic pillars of the state have remained intact.
Meanwhile, the protests that began June 16 in Sudan have numbered only in the hundreds but are grabbing media attention. Due to Sudan's reputation as being repressive, even such small protests could trigger dramatic responses from the state. Thailand has a number of state institutions -- particularly the monarchy -- with which it wields authority, whereas the Sudanese regime relies much more on security and energy revenues to assert its authority. Sudan has less tolerance for even mild threats to either pillar. Stratfor is watching Sudan carefully to see if the protest movement there can survive the ongoing security crackdown.
By understanding how a protest movement works and how well it targets and exploits the weaknesses of the state it is demonstrating against, we can assess how successful movements are likely to be.
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A Spine Chilling prediction of present circumstances. September 2, 2004
Like others offering their reviews, I rate this book very highly not because it is a real "page turner" or is particularly well written, but because of its cold Machiavellian analysis of the need to protect and expand the American Empire and what that means to the ordinary Joe and Jane Citizen.
Three things in this book made my blood run ice cold. The first is the complete absence of any sense of morality in the whole discussion. I do not mean that this is an *im*moral book, it is not a moral book, it is *a*moral in that there is literally no discussion whatsoever whether what is being proposed is RIGHT or should be done. That the recommendations to grow the American Empire are valid is simply assumed, not proven or even argued. The second thing was the whole discussion on how the political center of mass was Central Eurasia (i.e. the region between Turkey and Pakistan and between Iran and Turkmenistan) and how unlikely it was that we were going to be able to have a substantial presence in the region (in the near term) unless we have SOME PERL HARBOR CLASS EVENT to accelerate the populations willingness to accept the costs. Also, This Was Bad because it would delay our needed expansion. Then, just on cue, we have the 9/11 attacks, and dang if we don't end up with a Whole Bunch of military presence all throughout the heart of Eurasia... Coincidence? Makes one wonder. As if that is not enough, the book closes with a clear and unambiguous reference to the steps needed to get us to the One World Government of the New World Order.
Read it and weep because, as another reviewer stated, he is not predicting the future, he is *planning* the future. Coldly. Methodically.
4 CommentsA chilling account of Roman-style imperialism January 3, 2002
By A CustomerThis is how Brzezinski views the (supposedly sovereign) nations of Central Asia:
"The last decade of the twentieth century has witnessed a tectonic shift in world affairs. For the first time ever, a non-Eurasian power has emerged not only as a key arbiter of Eurasian power relations but also as the world's paramount power. The defeat and collapse of the Soviet Union was the final step in the rapid ascendance of a Western Hemisphere power, the United States, as the sole and, indeed, the first truly global power..."
"Two basic steps are thus required: first, to identify the geostrategically dynamic Eurasian states that have the power to cause a potentially important shift in the international distribution of power and to decipher the central external goals of their respective political elites and the likely consequences of their seeking to attain them;... second, to formulate specific U.S. policies to offset, co-opt, and/or control the above..." (p. 40)
- "...To put it in a terminology that harkens back to the more brutal age of ancient empires, the three grand imperatives of imperial geostrategy are to prevent collusion and maintain security dependence among the vassals, to keep tributaries pliant and protected, and to keep the barbarians from coming together." (p.40)
- "Henceforth, the United States may have to determine how to cope with regional coalitions that seek to push America out of Eurasia, thereby threatening America's status as a global power." (p.55)
- "America is now the only global superpower, and Eurasia is the globe's central arena. Hence, what happens to the distribution of power on the Eurasian continent will be of decisive importance to America's global primacy and to America's historical legacy." (p.194)
- "That puts a premium on maneuver and manipulation in order to prevent the emergence of a hostile coalition that could eventually seek to challenge America's primacy..." (p. 198)
- "The most immediate task is to make certain that no state or combination of states gains the capacity to expel the United States from Eurasia or even to diminish significantly its decisive arbitration role." (p. 198)
- "For Pakistan, the primary interest is to gain Geostrategic depth through political influence in Afghanistan - and to deny to Iran the exercise of such influence in Afghanistan and Tajikistan - and to benefit eventually from any pipeline construction linking Central Asia with the Arabian Sea." (p.139)
And ponder the meaning of these statements in a post-9-11 world:
- "Moreover, as America becomes an increasingly multi-cultural society, it may find it more difficult to fashion a consensus on foreign policy issues, except in the circumstance of a truly massive and widely perceived direct external threat." (p. 211)
- "The attitude of the American public toward the external projection of American power has been much more ambivalent. The public supported America's engagement in World War II largely because of the shock effect of the Japanese attack on Pearl Harbor. (pp 24-5)
To most Americans the people of the world are just that- people, just like us, with a right to self-determination. To Brzezinski, they are merely pawns on a chessboard. Such an imperialist strategy does not make me feel any safer- how did Napoleon's strategy fare for the French in the long run? Or the Roman emperors for their citizens?
Rome fell, Hitler fell, all imperialist powers ultimately fail, because they follow the over-extended geopolitical strategy advocated by Brzezinski. While our military is busy fighting for oil interests all around the world, who's watching the front door?
Do strategists love their children too? February 16, 2002
By D. GhicaI read this book with disbelief. Brzezinski was for a long time a strategist, a political planner of the highest rank so I have to take him seriously. But I couldn't help but constantly wonder if the book is for real.It displays an unabashed and unapologetic view of the U.S. as a world 'hegemon' (author's word) and divides the rest of the world in 'vassals' (author's word), rivals, 'pivots' and strategically irrelevant countries. Western Europe and Japan are the prominent members of the first category, Russia and China of the second. The pivots are the countries that have strategic choices important to the U.S., such as the Ukraine. United Kingdom is an (amusing) example of strategically irrelevance.
The book proceeds by systematically and often tediously analyzing case-by-case scenarios and what-ifs concerning the strategic impact of the policy decisions of the players (vassals, rivals and pivots) in four main theatres: Europe, Russia, Central Asia and the Far East. The analysis seemed rather un-principled to me but by the end I could discern some key points. The most important of them is that the U.S., despite is global hegemony cannot afford wars but it has to maintain its dominance by smartly playing the rivals against each other so that a major global rival does not emerge.
I think the book's shocking disregard of democracy and national self-determination is quite consistent with the way the American administration tends to act in international affairs. Unfortunately, the current administration does not seem to take the book's main advice regarding the need for America to avoid outright wars and to dominate through smart diplomacy.
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June 18, 2012 | The Nation
As Washington and Moscow sink deeper into another familiar cold war–like conflict, this time over Syria, American policy-makers and commentators, Democrats and Republicans alike, declare that President Obama's "reset" of relations with Moscow has failed. With equal unanimity, they blame only Moscow, in particular President Vladimir Putin, while entirely deleting Washington's longstanding role in the deteriorating relationship, as they have done for more than a decade.
But as I pointed out in this Nation article a year ago, Obama's reset was all but doomed from inception because it was based on the same bipartisan, winner-take-all triumphalism that had guided US policy toward post-Soviet Russia since the 1990s. As before, Obama's "new" policy meant "selective cooperation"-that is, concessions from Moscow without US reciprocity.
Until the US-Russian conflict over Syria erupted this year, the Obama White House wanted three major concessions from the Kremlin as part of the reset:
- support in the US confrontation with Iran (new negotiations are under way in Moscow this week);
- assistance in supplying NATO forces in Afghanistan;
- and then withholding Russia's veto of a UN Security Council resolution for a "no-fly zone" over Libya.
The Obama administration got all three concessions. In return, Moscow wanted a compromise on the administration's plan to place missile defense installations near Russia's borders; an end to NATO expansion in the direction of Ukraine and Georgia; and a curtailment of US interference, known as "democracy promotion," in Russia's internal politics. The Kremlin got none of these.
In short, another chance for expansive cooperation in US-Russian relations, even the partnership possible after the Soviet Union ended in 1991, has again been squandered in Washington, not in Moscow.
That the historical and political analyses set out in my 2011 article, as well as the concerns expressed there, have been amply justified by events gives me no satisfaction. Nor to add that a year later, things have only gotten worse. The three US policies to which Moscow reasonably objected before the reset have become more aggressive, and indeed, in the Kremlin's view, have been supplemented by Washington's policy of selective military "regime change" in the Middle East.
In response, as I also warned, anti-American forces in Russian politics have continued to grow, along with the possibility of "another escalation of the arms race," about which both Putin and former Russian president Dmitri Medvedev, on whom Obama unwisely based the reset, warned.
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Foreign Policy
On Thursday, Egypt's interim military government, known as the SCAF, decided to end the crisis it had provoked, or perhaps stumbled into, by raiding the offices of four American organizations which promote democracy abroad, and arresting sixteen U.S. citizens. Rather than risk the loss of $1.3 billion a year in military funding, as the U.S. Congress had threatened, Egypt allowed the Americans to leave.
...Vladimir Putin in Russia and his brethren in Central Asia "were shaken by the color revolutions" as Larry Diamond, a leading democracy scholar at Stanford University, puts it. And they fought back. In 2006, the National Endowment of Democracy -- the parent body to NDI and to the International Republican Institute (IRI), also targeted in Egypt -- produced a report titled "The Backlash Against Democracy Assistance," which documented the growing efforts by autocratic states to block democracy assistance, including by expelling foreign organizations and harassing their staff. The color revolutions, Diamond points out, posed less of a threat to totalitarian regimes like those in Beijing or Havana than they did to the more numerous states, like Russia or Venezuela, which practiced "authoritarian pluralism," in which elections offered the illusion of democratic choice without threatening the regime's control. International groups could help local activists seize these empty rituals to threaten or unseat authoritarian rulers. And this was where the backlash was concentrated.
Autocrats like Putin wildly overestimate the capacity of democracy groups to make a difference, perhaps because they refuse to acknowledge that the real threat to their rule comes not from outsiders, but from the frustrated aspirations of their own citizens. They have adapted (and over-adapted) to the training, organizing, and polling work which groups like NDI and IRI do in the way that football defenses respond to a new wrinkle in an opponent's passing game. Some do thus more subtly than others.
...
Mitchell thinks that the problem is inherently insoluble, and thus that the democracy promotion moment has come and gone. Another way of looking at it, though, is that the United States and other outside actors will have to decide how much they care about helping democratic forces in non-democratic states, and thus how much pressure they will impose on regimes to let those forces work. The Obama administration has gone to the mat in Egypt, where the regime was foolish enough to threaten American citizens, but not in Ethiopia. But the SCAF is still free to repress domestic groups -- a far greater threat to their continuing rule -- even though they've released the Americans. Larry Diamond argues that the United States must not let a disingenuous argument over sovereignty "trump a more basic international principle that people have a right to peacefully organize a civil society." He would like to see the Obama administration "push back very, very hard" against regimes that try to throttle democracy assistance, and do so in collaboration with other Western states and with the United Nations. International actors must be prepared at times to withhold goodies that matter to such rulers, whether in the form of aid or a diplomatic embrace.
Selected Comments
XTIANGODLOKI
A lot of these NGOs are funded by foreign governments
The goal of these "Democracy advocate" NGOs are to influence foreign voting decisions rather than letting the people to naturally decide what is the best for them. Moreover many of these NGOs are clearly associated with foreign governments. Freedom House for example gets 80% of its budget from the US government.
The US would not tolerate foreign money from swaying voters' decisions for good reasons. John Huang for example, donated money to Clinton which originally came from one wealthy Indonesian family. As the result of this Clinton had to return the money and Huang was convicted of felony. Should foreign NGOs bring money into the US political system like the US NGOs are trying to do with Egypt, the US would have persecuted the foreign NGOs just like Egypt is resisting US NGOs.
MARKANGELO
Manipulation
Your first example is laughable : Chile ? It was not a democratic organization that overthrew Pinochet but a violent coupe by the CIA. that established his rule in the first place by assassinating a democratically elected Allende. No wonder Egypt & others do not trust these pushy institutions. Didn't they promote secular Sadem in Iraq then hang him when they were tired of him ?
BASHY QURAISHY
The Egypt Backlash
"Is it a fantasy to believe that the United States can still promote democracy in non-democratic states?" asks JAMES TRAUB in FP, MARCH 2, 2012. The right question would be; Is USA really interested to let the Islamic world decide their own fate and be owner of their own destiny?
Looking at the record of US interference, plots and covert operations to kill and eliminate democratic leaders and movements in the developing world, one should not wonder that youth do not trust the West. Even the caption under the photo of a young Egyptian girl: "It's a Whole Lot Harder to Export Democracy Than It Used to Be." tell us that FP and USA still consider democracy an exportable commodity as burgers and coca cola. Has it occurred to the people in Washington that democracy should evolve and cannot be pushed down the throat of people, especially when USA is always in cohort with the oppressors of the same very people.
KUNINO
Neither improbable nor impossible
It's neither improbable nor impossible that people who arrive in a foreign country proclaiming that their only interest is democracy; who start tampering with the foreigners' understandings of how their government should be voted in and administered; could really be spies acting on behalf of the nation they came from.
There have been many examples in earlier years of "businessmen" and "journalists" being found guilty of espionage and handed lengthy prison sentences; of their government's having vigorously defended their "innocence" of "trumped-up charges"; and of our learning in later decades that yes, they were really spies and they had been properly tried and found guilty of espionage by their foreign hosts.
There is abdundant evidence that people with legitimate business or professional interests in foreign countries who have been approached and seduced by espionage agencies of their own governments to add spying against their foreign hosts to their original reasons for being in those nations. Members of such things as "democracy organizations" would be natural targets for such seductions.
No need to think back more than 14 months when Raymond Alan Davis shot dead two men in a public street in Lahore. The US government later bought him out of a Pakistani jail with a $2.4 million payment to the grieving families of the men. The next generation might at some time get to the bottom of what happened that day in Lahore, but few people think today that official protestation that Davis was acting in legitimate self-defense and was in Lahore on legitimate business when he fired. It wasn't the Pakistani government alone that noticed those events.
ADAN SIGNORILE
Colour revolution
I know that, Color revolutions is a term that was widely used by the media to describe related movements that developed in several societies in the CIS (former USSR) and Balkan states during the early 2000s. The term has also been applied to a number of revolutions elsewhere, including in the Middle East. Some observers[who?] have called the events a revolutionary wave, the origins of which can be traced back to the 1986 People Power Revolution (also known as the "Yellow Revolution") in the Philippines. Participants in the color revolutions have mostly used nonviolent resistance, also called civil resistance. Such methods as demonstrations, strikes and interventions have been intended protest against governments seen as corrupt and/or authoritarian, and to advocate democracy; and they have also created strong pressure for change. These movements generally adopted a specific color or flower as their symbol. The color revolutions are notable for the important role of non-governmental organizations (NGOs) and particularly student activists in organizing creative non-violent resistance.
Such movements have had a measure of success, as for example in Serbia's Bulldozer Revolution (2000); in Georgia's Rose Revolution (2003); and in Ukraine's Orange Revolution (2004). In most but not all cases, massive street protests followed disputed elections, or requests for fair elections, and led to the resignation or overthrow of leaders considered by their opponents to be authoritarian. Some events have been called "colour revolutions" but are different from the above cases in certain basic characteristics. Examples include Lebanon's Cedar Revolution (2005); and Kuwait's Blue Revolution (2005).
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Strategic-Culture.org
US National Security Senior Director of Russian and Eurasian Affairs until recently, Michael McFaul, a 48 year old Stanford University professor, was appointed US ambassador to Russia at the end of last year. He's widely known as someone who initiated the "reset" Russian policy but not only.A long time Russia scholar, he has written about 20 books and many articles about Russian internal politics. At he same time, the newly fledged ambassador has rich experience in organizing color revolution in the post Soviet space.
It is confirmed by his monographs like: Russia's Unfinished Revolution: Political Change from Gorbachev to Putin, Popular Choice and Managed Democracy: The Russian Elections of 1999 and 2000, Democracy and Authoritarianism in the Рostcommunist World and Advancing Democracy Abroad: Why We Should and How We Can, as well as his own admissions during public appearances and US Congress special hearings. It was Michael McFaul who was the author of the United States Agency for International Development (USAID) final report on specifics of working with Ukrainian electorate before the 2004 Ukraine elections, when Victor Yushchenko snatched victory that was widely noted by the US establishment.
A fluent Russian speaker, the new Washington envoy has already been to Russia and Ukraine many a time to study all walks of life voters opinions in order to find ways to influence them. He also took the most active part in working out and bringing into life political election technologies in the post Soviet space.
As he confessed publicly American non-government organizations spent totally $ 18,3 million to support Victor Yushchenko in the Ukraine presidential election in 2004. Though a history now, it's curious to see how the US dollars were spent before and during the vote.
As the new US ambassador to Moscow recalls, the money came mainly through USAID channels and was spent along five directions for propaganda and information to be distributed among the voters, as well as among the electoral committees. As Michael McFaul:e money defined the outcome of the Ukrainian 2004 elections that was greeted so enthusiastically in Washington.
Upon his recommendation in the capacity of chief funds distributor, the major part of all these financial flows, $ 12,45 million or 68% of the total sum to be exact, was spent on the elections monitoring and spurring efforts of various political parties to come out in support of Victor Yushchenko.
The money went to support the mission of 250 US observers working for the OSCE Office for Democratic Institutions and Human Rights (ODIHR) that organized the work of all political parties and leaders and analyzed the pre-election process.
Some funds went to "district coordination centers" destined to survey the pre-election campaign and convey the corresponding information to the "central election observation group". Partly the money went to the Committee of Voters of Ukraine through the US National Democratic Institute (NDI). The Committee surveyed the Ukrainian media outlets, organization of civil local monitoring groups and regional election observers training.
Aided by NDI and International Republican Institute (IRI), the US Freedom House allocated funds for civil society monitors training, ensuring voters turnout, distribution of pre-election propaganda posters and materials, the mission of international NGOs 1000 monitoring specialists, including "activists" from Georgia, Poland, Serbia and Slovakia. The IRI funded training of specialists in formation of interparty coalitions, pre-election planning, special activities among women and children and opinion study for all the parties supporting Yushchenko.
Simultaneously the NDI allocated money to ensure unity among pro Yushchenko parties supporters and to improve cooperation among election districts at local and regional levels. Some funds went to training the parties members, who selected specialists who would work with voters, as well as experts in electoral process analysis, relations with media, and exit polls counting.
The United States Association of Former Members of Congress aided by the US - Ukraine Foundation funded training in monitoring internal situation before and at the time of election. Some activities took place among the Ukraine security service officers. The goal was to cause a split among them along political lines and prevention of their participation in dispersals of voters protests.
$ 2,62 million came through American Association for Development to organize round tables with participation of Rada members, representatives of state structures and leaders of Ukrainian NGOs. A lot of attention was paid to professional improvement of heads of election committees. Special grants were received by civil groups standing for the Ukraine's electoral legislation reform. In parallel the American Association for Development allocated money for training pro Yushchenko election committees personnel, parties members and lawyers. The methods to detect violations and rigging were a priority in the training course.
$ 1,13 million went to pro Yushchenko media, partly spent on training journalists of print and internet media to enhance their special skills in covering pre election campaign and election as a whole. A special foundation (Media Development Foundation) was opened at the US Kiev embassy to encourage individual journalists and NGO staffers, as well as individual media outlets. Michael McFaul admits special "grants" for the same purposes were provided by "some other Western embassies" in Ukraine.
Part of US funds for working with Ukrainian media was allocated through the OSCE channels.
$ 1,12 million went for the research in the field of presidential election and potential voters high turnout studies. It was also spent on local media pre-election agitation, public opinion surveys by research bodies, training election observers and civil society vote tellers enhancing their skills to survey exit polls.
The Institute for Sustainable Communities, National Endowment for Democracy, Ukrainian Eurasia foundation, and Committee on Democracy specially established at the US embassy in Kiev (it gave money to Ukrainian NGOs, including dissemination of election information) coordinated the funds distribution.
Special attention was paid to the strategy of disruption of first round election, that didn't end in Victor Yushchenko's favor, by spreading information about so called "significant violations occurred during the voting". The information was prepared and spread by about 10 thousand people, mainly members of "The Committee of Voters of Ukraine".
At last, $ 985 thousand was allocated through the American Bar Association Central European and Eurasian Law Initiative (ABA/CEELI) to hone electors, lawyers, party members and NGOs skills for the purpose of complete monitoring of pre-election campaign.
It's worth to mention Michael McFaul saying the Victor Yushchenko's victory in 2004 was mainly ensured by intensive cooperation with Ukrainian young people made possible thanks to the US money.
Afterwards Michael McFaul used this "experience" of manipulating Ukrainian voters extensively at the time the State Duma and presidential elections in Russia were organized and held in 2007-2008.
The US House of Representatives Committee on Foreign Affairs held special hearings on May 17, 2007. A decision was made to work out an adequate conceptual analytical study before the Russia's would be pre-election campaigns start defining ways and methods to conduct corresponding activities.
The leading US analysts and Russia scholars were involved, including Michael McFaul. At the hearings he presented concrete recommendations and practical proposals that were accepted for implementation.
Right now the US experts prepare recommendations for the administration on rendering substantial financial, political and moral support to the opposition parties and individual Russian media outlets before the 2012 presidential election. The worked out strategy envisions to purposefully influence the Russian citizens working in state structures, employed in private business and elected into the State Duma. Remembering the Michael McFaul's statements in 2011, as head of US embassy in Moscow he has an intention to establish the structures for dialogue on human rights, media freedom, fight against corruption in Russia. While expressing his views to Radio Liberty in June 2011, McFaul: had an intention to make the "reset" concept an instrument of involvement of the Russian government into democracy and human rights discussions.
It is suggested to support the individuals who possess the makings of leaders, no matter their views may be murky, during the elections. Special importance is attached to intensive propaganda activities among the citizens expressing their discontent with the incumbent regime's policy, as well as with the young people who, as sociological centers studies show, make 60% of protesters gathered for the Academician Sakharov avenue for a meeting held on 24 December 2011.
Coming to Moscow in his new capacity, the former director of Stanford University Center on Democracy, Development and the Rule of Law is to establish close contacts with the Russian "non-systematic" opposition hoping to prevent Vladimir Putin's election victory at the coming presidential election, no matter Putin enjoys wide support among voters, as sociological surveys say. In Washington they would like to see someone else to win the race, someone with sympathy for the West and who's plans do not include the defense of the Russian state interests. Michael McFaul thinks "some dictatorships" simply are not able to achieve progress in the development of democracy and should be assisted, as The New York Times wrote on February 24, 2011 in an article "Seizing Up Revolutions in Waiting".
Larry Diamond, one of Stanford University professors, who knows him closely having worked together,:t's McFaul who, once in Russia, would be sticking to the policy of enhancing American values and principles, and he would also be trying to support and involve various social and political forces in Russia into his activities. That's what The Stanford Daily reported on September 26, 2011.All these activities will be coordinated by the new US ambassador to Russia, who never had any particular sympathy for the country. For instance, many a time he has openly expressed negative attitude towards Vladimir Putin, the head of the Russian Government. That's what the New York Times (May 29, 2011):d Michael McFaul himself wrote in the Foreign Affairs magazine (January-February 2008) as well as in his other numerous publications.
It was on his initiative the leading US newspapers started a series of publications aimed at the Vladimir Putin's defeat or, at least the minimization of his victory, at the presidential elections in March 2012. They are not making a secret of the alternative goal: to weaken Vladimir Putin's authority in case he wins the election, to undermine the Government's policy aimed at solving the pressing socials and economic problems and to weaken the Moscow's international standing in general.
The newly assigned US ambassador's political portrait should be added by the following: going back to history he is the second head of the embassy who's not a career diplomat. He supported the August 2008 Georgian aggression against South Ossetia. Not long ago he exerted efforts to exclude Russia from the process of defining the Libya's future after Muammar Gaddafi's overthrow in October 2011.
He also stands against legally binding obligations by the USA not to use missile defense against Russian strategic nuclear forces and achieving an agreement with Moscow on joint European missile defense on the basis of mutual acceptance and equality.
Finally. By the end of 2011 the US Congress confirmed $50 million for anti Russia propaganda before the Russian presidential election. It's twice as much as the sum allocated for the very same purpose back in 2008.
This and the fact Michael McFaul is coming to Russia at the time between parliamentary and presidential elections gives much food for thought about non-terminating efforts on the part of Washington to make an open and multidimensional interference into Russian internal affairs. That's what in substance is meant by the "reset" policy in US-Russian relations. The one, as some US experts say, had been elaborated by the very same Michael McFaul.
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As Pakistan reasserts national-sovereignty, the US responds with arming & backing Baluchi terrorists
Tony Cartalucci
Prisonplanet.com
Friday, April 13, 2012Carving up Pakistan by fomenting separatist movements along Pakistan's western border has been on the US geopolitical drawing board for years. As reported in December 2011′s, "The Coming War With Pakistan:"
"In a 2006 report by the corporate-financier funded think tank Carnegie Endowment for International Peace titled, "Pakistan: The Resurgence of Baluch Nationalism," violence starting as early as 2004-2005 is described. According to the report, 20% of Pakistan's mineral and energy resources reside in the sparsely populated province. On page 4 of the report, the prospect of using the Baluchi rebels against both Islamabad and Tehran is proposed. In Seymour Hersh's 2008 article, "Preparing the Battlefield," US support of Baluchi groups operating against Tehran is reported as already a reality. As already mentioned, in Brookings Institution's "Which Path to Persia?" the subject of arming and sending Baluchi insurgents against Tehran is also discussed at great depth.
The 2006 Carnegie Endowment for International Peace report makes special note of the fact that above all, the Baluchistan province serves as a transit zone for a potential Iranian-India-Turkmenistan natural gas pipeline as well as a port, Gwadar, that serves as a logistical hub for Afghanistan, Central Asia's landlocked nations as well as a port for the Chinese. The report notes that the port was primarily constructed with Chinese capital and labor with the intention of it serving as a Chinese naval station "to protect Beijing's oil supply from the Middle East and to counter the US presence in Central Asia." This point in particular, regarding China, was described in extricating detail in the 2006 Strategic Studies Institute's report "String of Pearls: Meeting the Challenge of China's Rising Power across the Asian Littoral." Throughout the report means to co-opt and contain China's influence throughout the region are discussed.The Carnegie Endowment report goes on to describe how the Baluchi rebels have fortuitously begun attacking the development of their province over concerns of "marginalization" and "dispossession." In particular attacks were launched against the Pakistani military and Chinese facilities. The question of foreign intervention is brought up in this 2006 report, based on accusations by the Pakistani government that the rebels are armed with overly sophisticated weaponry. India, Iran, and the United States are accused as potential culprits.
The report concludes that virtually none of Pakistan's neighbors would benefit from the insurgency and that the insurgency itself has no possibility of succeeding without "foreign support." The conflict is described as a potential weapon that could be used against Pakistan and that it is "ultimately Islamabad that must decide whether Baluchistan will become its Achilles' heel." This somewhat cryptic conclusion, in the light of recent reports and developments can be deciphered as a veiled threat now being openly played."
Quite obviously, tensions between the US and Pakistan have only further deteriorated, with the West playing victim accusing Pakistan of "double dealing" them during America's decade-long occupation of neighboring Afghanistan and frequent cross-border murder-sprees in Pakistani territory. Pakistan has more recently passed a resolution calling for the cessation of all US drone attacks on Pakistani soil. Additionally, as noted by geopolitical analyst Eric Draitser ofStop Imperialism, Pakistan has also prepared provisions to ban foreign bases on Pakistani soil and stem US covert terrorist activities inside Pakistan operating under the guise of "security contractors."
US Prepares Armed Uprising
The US had frequently answered the reassertion of Pakistani national sovereignty with random drone attacks on civilian populations, but seems now to be shifting into gear for a full-blown destabilization of Pakistan's Baluchistan province. Violence has notably increased in tandem with calls from Western politicians to support the "Free Baluchistan" movement and the establishment of an independent "Baluchistan" carved out of sovereign Pakistani territory.
The most astounding of these most recent calls is US Representative Dana Rohrabacher's "Why I support Baluchistan" op-ed in the Washington Post. Rohrabacher cites the US State Department and Amnesty International – which in reality are one in the same – while accusing the Pakistani government of "violations of human rights." He then, point-for-point, repeats the above mentioned corporate-financier funded US think-tanks regarding Baluchistan's rich natural resources and the strategic location the province's Gwadar seaport serves for the Chinese before admitting that Baluchistan's brief period of autonomy resulted from the British Empire and the Persians carving it up as a buffer state.
Photo: In the 1980′s Rohrbacher (right) would actually travel to Afghanistan and "fight" alongside the Mujaheddin. It is also reported that he met Bin Laden and his foreign fighters – making him, like many others leading the fraudulent "War on Terror," quite the hypocrite. The US use of proxy forces to ravage parts of the world is confirmed, and Rohrbacher's direct role in such ploys is now also confirmed. US State Department-funded propaganda front Radio Free Europe in their article titled, "U.S. Lawmaker Questions Approaches To Pakistan, Afghanistan," memorializes Rohrbacher's role in the US-Soviet proxy war.
….
Rohrabacher entirely reveals his hand and the disingenuous concern he hamfistedly feigns in regards to the Baluchi plight when he cites a laundry list of grievances the US has with the Pakistani government and concludes by holding the threat of developing "a closer friendship with India and, perhaps, Baluchistan" over the head of Islamabad. Clearly, just as the British did before them, the US fully plans on carving out a Baluchistan buffer-state to balk Pakistani-Chinese relations, destabilize Pakistan itself, and provide more pressure on Iran's eastern border.Video: A proposed Iranian-Pakistani-Indian pipeline which would travel through Pakistan's Baluchistan province, would essentially render moot US sanctions on Iran and provide Central, Southwest, and East Asia with Iranian oil. There is now talk of Russia helping to implement the planned project – a project the West is apparently willing to start a war and "Balkanize" Pakistan over to prevent.
….One point Rohrabacher fails to mention is the planned Iranian-Pakistani-Indian pipleline which would in effect render moot all US sanctions and whose proposed path just so happens to pass through Baluchistan province. Such a pipeline would also converge with a planned logistical network being built by the Chinese from the province's Gwadar port in the south all the way to the Chinese-Pakistani border in the north.
Image: Gwadar in the southwest serves as a Chinese port and the starting point for a logistical corridor through Pakistan and into Chinese territory. The Iranian-Pakistani-Indian pipeline would enter from the west, cross through Baluchistan intersecting China's proposed logistical route to the northern border, and continue on to India. Destabilizing Baluchistan would effectively derail the geopolitical aspirations of four nations.
….Just like the US used fighters in the 1980′s in Afghanistan to fight a proxy war against the Soviets, the US is now planing to use Baluchi terrorists to wage war against both Pakistan and Iran. Rohrabacher is just the latest peddler of a geopolitical ploy long since predetermined, and echos verbatim of calls by Selig Harrison of the Soros-funded Center for International Policy, in editorials like "Free Baluchistan," and "The Chinese Cozy Up to the Pakistanis."
US Already Subverting Pakistani Governance in Baluchistan
As in all neo-imperial 4th generation warfare scenarios, arming militants is only half of the overall strategy for defeating targeted nation-states. Subverting national institutions and replacing them with those interlocking with the neo-imperial unipolar order is the other half. The usual suspects, the US State Department-funded National Endowment for Democracy (NED)and its various subsidiaries, found all across the theater of 4th generation global warfare, are busy at work in Pakistan's Baluchistan province as well.
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Five groups of the protest movement
As presently constituted, the protest movement can be divided into roughly five groups:
(1) The most popular group consists of artists, poets, television personalities, writers, and journalists. People like Artemy Troitsky, who came to the last rally dressed as a condom, Leonid Parfyonov, Boris Akunin, Dmitry Bykov, Olga Romanova, singer Alexei Kortnev, and socialite Kseniya Sobchak. They all make it a point, however, to declare that they are 'non-political,' that their concern is to give the nation back its 'moral voice.'
2) Another large group at these protests have been Russian nationalists like Vladimir Tor, and 'true communists' like Sergei Udaltsov. Udaltsov, a scion of the Old Bolshevik elite-one of Moscow's streets is named after his great-grandfather-parted ways with other communist organizations when the failed to adequately reflect, in his view, worker's interests. His latest project, the Russian United Labor Front--Left Front, also objects to mere party politics and calls for power to be transferred directly to the working masses. Tor, on the other hand, is one of the perennial leaders of the right wing 'Russian March,' which also counts blogger Alexei Navalny among its participants.[3] He also abjures the divisive term 'party politics', preferring to speak on behalf of the whole Russian nation.
While many at Sakharov Square might wish to distance the protests from his appeal 'Russia for Russians,' as Tor pointed in his address to the crowd, the nationalist protesters in Manezh square in Moscow who battled riot police last February share one important bond with the current protests--an uncompromising hostility to political authority. 'Without the heroes of Manezh,' Tor reminded the audience, 'there would never have been a Bolotnaya.'[4]
(3) Smaller in number, but much better known, are the perennial leaders of the Old Opposition, figures like , Boris Nemtsov, Mikhail Kasyanov, Garry Kasparov, and Grigory Yavlinsky. While some have worked in the government, they have all publicly broken with Putin, and now demand that the entire political system be reconstituted. Their personal ambitions have prevented them from agreeing on a common political strategy, much less a joint list of candidates. As a result, while theoretically they could represent the beginnings of a political opposition, in practice they have placed themselves at a safe remove from the political process.
(4) A fourth group is one I call the new Internet Opposition. It is composed of people like Alexei Navalny, Evgenia Chirikova, Grigory Melkonyants, and Ilya Yashin, who have developed a core following among Russia's rapidly burgeoning internet community. Navalny is the most charismatic of this group. He has made clear that he considers himself a politician, and that he will run for office (under a different system). For now, however, his political views are hard to pin down. He is all things to all people, refusing, for example, to even discuss whether a (hypothetical) political party he might lead would be on the left or the right side of the political spectrum.[5]
With the exception of Navalny and Yashin, who were once active in Yabloko (Navalny also served briefly as an advisor to Belykh in Kirov), their rise to prominence has been largely due to persecution by the authorities and devotion for a single cause, be it corruption, the environment, or election monitoring. Their persecution has garnered them "street cred," but not much else. Some in the Old Opposition thinks these youngsters look to them for guidance, and that they will ride into political office on the latter's coat tails. I very much doubt it.
(5) The latest addition to protest movement are individuals who have been part of, or directly benefited from, the Putin regime but have since abandoned it. They include former finance minister Alexei Kudrin, oligarch Mikhail Prokhorov, and "A Just Russia" deputy Ilya Ponomarev. While they too reject the Old Opposition and share the values of the Internet Opposition, at the last two mass rallies they were met by resounding disapproval. Prokhorov, for example, chose not to address the crowd in Sakharov Square after being hectored by shouts of "Go back to Courchevel"-the Swiss ski resort favoured by Russian nouveau riches. The crowd's antipathy to individuals with practical political experience are once again on full display here.
Thus, by default, the government retains the sole practical political agenda and, as such, its dominance is unassailable. It can easily afford to wait for opposition leaders to devour each other as they have so often in the past. It can then step in to co-opt the best and the brightest by giving them the opportunity to apply themselves in the only meaningful political game in town.
'… the government retains the sole practical political agenda and, as such, its dominance is unassailable. It can easily afford to wait for opposition leaders to devour each other as they have so often in the past.'Despite what opposition leaders may say, the fault for this lies primarily with them. They have ritualistically rejected any meaningful political dialogue with the government, despite the fact that under president Medvedev attempts were regularly made to set the stage for a liberal political party. But no matter what the Kremlin did to encourage the emergence of such a party--simplifying party registration, reducing the percentage quota for a parliamentary seat from seven to a five percent minimum, guaranteeing federal funding and air time to parties that get even three percent of the popular vote--the opposition has been either unable or unwilling to assume its proper political role in a democracy, that of constructive gadfly.
Those few opposition leaders who have accepted the challenge of constructing real political life from the ground up, however, have found the current regime to be, if not a friend, then at least a receptive partner. Asked about his differences with his former aide Alexei Navalny, Nikita Belykh summed them up as follows: 'By my actions I am attempting to mitigate the crisis [of confidence in government] and improve relations between government and society. He is attempting to tear apart what connections remain.'[6]
Belykh did not attend the meeting on Sakharov Square in Moscow. Instead, he attended the rally in Kirov and spoke to a small crowd of opposition supporters that gathered there. His impromptu remarks were an appeal for the kind of personal civic engagement that could transform 'opposition to everything' into a true revival of politics. "I believe that civic activism must be constructive in nature, not destructive. In my opinion, the government took a step in our direction today. A major and truly significant step. And we need to seize this opportunity, instead of telling the government to go to hell. The ball, he says, 'is now in society's court.'[7]
... ... ...
Nicolai N. Petro is professor of politics at the University of Rhode Island (USA). He served as the U.S. State Department's special assistant for policy on the Soviet Union under George H.W. Bush.
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Pakalert Press
Morgan D. Rose
This week, John McCain removed a post on his twitter feed that read, "Dear Vlad, The #ArabSpring is coming to a neighborhood near you". McCain's blatant provocation of Russian Prime Minister Vladimir Putin appeared as a stark admission of US geopolitical meddling in both the Arab World and Russia, and revealed the arrogance with which the US/NATO establishment has pursued its policy of 'Color Revolution' directed towards the member-states and strategic allies of the Shanghai Cooperation Organization (SCO).
Foreshadowing this latest instigation by McCain was a comment made in mid-February of this year in an interview with CBS's Face the Nation, in which McCain stated, "These winds of change that are blowing, I think I would be a little less cocky in the Kremlin with my KGB cronies today if I were [Russian Prime Minister] Vladimir Putin. I would be a little less secure in the seaside resort that [Chinese] President Hu and a few men who govern and decide the fate of 1.3 billion people."
This statement was made in the context of the ongoing unrest across the Arab World at the height of hysteria in the West over the so called "Arab Spring". Absent in this discussion within the Western corporate media was the intimate involvement of US and NATO-backed NGOs in organizing and facilitating the pro-democracy protests. In fact, McCain himself chaired one of the NGOs credited as having helped "nurture the Arab uprisings". These NGOs would play the role of attempting to destabilize the entire region, with disastrous results for the people on the ground.
NGO's and Color Revolution
While the protesters soaked in the limelight of media attention, US and NATO-backed NGOs lurked in the background having been trained in the techniques of 'Color Revolution', an ongoing geopolitical phenomena which has already taken hold in former Soviet and Warsaw Pact satellites like Serbia, Ukraine, and Georgia. The techniques of Color Revolution were developed in the 1980s as a means to employ "non-violence as a form of warfare". The primary NGOs which developed these techniques were Gene Sharp's Albert Einstein Institute, State Department auxiliaries Freedom House and The National Endowment for Democracy (NED), as well as, various foundations associated with billionaire financier George Soros.
Observers of Color Revolutions in the middle part of the decade have identified a common theme among the techniques employed by these NGOs to include: the presence of 'flash mobs' of 'swarming' adolescents linked together by technologies such as SMS or Twitter, sloganeering and branding using colors such as Ukraine's 'Orange Revolution' and the more recent failed 'Green Revolution' in Tehran, as well as, the presence of telegenic demagogues, backed by Western influence, to steer the movement, such as Georgia's Mikheil Saakashvili and Egypt's Mohammad ElBaradei. In many ways, the Arab Spring exhibited the use of these techniques, and are documented to have received training from NGOs affiliated with the proliferation of Color Revolution.
Beginning in January of this year with the toppling of Ben Ali and Mubarak, Color Revolution did for Washington's Greater Middle East Initiative, what Bush's occupations could not: destabilize the region to embrace the potential for NATO and IMF hegemony over sovereign national economies. However, by mid-summer, the obstinacy of Gaddafi's Jamahariya had slowed the procession of Color Revolution across the Arab World to an abortive state. It look 8 months of violence and nearly 100,000 civilian casualties to install the Libyan rebel National Transitional Counicl (NTC), who could not have achieved victory without NATO carpet bombings under the absurd UN mandate of the "Right to Protect". However, with the fall of Tripoli and subsequent extrajudicial lynching of Gaddafi this October, new life was given to Color Revolution destabilization and higher stakes were lain on the geopolitical table.
Obama's 'Grand Chessboard': Escalations with Syria, Iran, and Pakistan
The ascendancy of the Obama Administration has been marked by a veritable policy shift away from the brutal aggression of the Neoconservatives towards a "soft power" faction in American imperial circles, signified by figures like Joseph Nye and Zbigneiw Brzezinski. While the inner-workings of this policy shift tend more towards subtleties and deception, its intentions may indeed be more sinister. While the Neoconsertative Weltanschauung centered its focus on Tel-Aviv, the faction represented by Obama has its sights on a more formidable opponent in the Shanghai Cooperation Organization (SCO), namely, the rising powers of Russia and China.
Brzezinski's 1998 thesis, The Grand Chessboard and his more recent Second Chance, are in many ways representative of the implicit goals of the Obama regime: Balkanization of the Eurasian peninsula and a heightened geopolitical escalation with the SCO and its strategic allies. Given this context, we see the geopolitical stakes of NATO adventurism in Libya to be quite tame compared to the looming intervention in Syria. In Libya, the geopolitical stakes were largely afrocentric, as Gaddafi had positioned himself as a leading African statesman, championing development and aid of neighboring Mali, Chad, and Niger, and working to secure African unity through his ambitious plan for a Pan-African "Gold Dinar" currency.
In Syria, we see the stakes as much larger. Not only does an attack on Syria lead strait to Tehran, and its proxy army in Hezbollah, it also signifies a direct assault on the SCO, in particular Russia. Syria has for many years been of strategic importance to Russia, in that it is home to one of Russia's primary warm-water naval bases, located in Tartus on the Mediterranean coast. The recent announcement of the Arab League's sanctions on Syria, lead primarily by the NATO puppet states of the United Arab Emirates and Saudi Arabia, has prompted a move on the part of Russia to send warships to Syria, as it aims strengthen its naval presence in the Mediterranean.
Meanwhile, the US has put new pressures on SCO ally Iran, beginning in October with the announcement of the laughably ridiculous 'Iran assassination plot', which has been largely debunked even in the sphere of mainstream corporate media. On the heels release of the latest IAEA report, Iran has seen numerous covert attacks on its military installations and nuclear facilities. For years, the US has funded and armed separatist and terrorist factions within Iran, who continue to destabilize Iran's border regions around Afghanistan and Pakistan.
Yet, in the midst of these ground-shaking escalations to the west of NATO's decade-long occupation of Afghanistan, last week's attack on a Pakistani military base, killing 24 Pakistani soldiers, has thrown the logistical feasibility of a continued NATO presence in the region into doubt. This egregious violation of long standing US-Pakistani relations prompted the head of the Pakistani Military, General Kayani, to force the closure of a US/NATO drone base in Balochistan, and a revision of the Pakistani rules of engagement to order all commanders to respond with force to any attack within the Pakastani national borders.
The attack puts the NATO mission into jeopardy, as Russia has come to the aid of its fellow SCO partner in threatening to cut vital NATO supply lines to Afghanistan. This upsurge in tensions between the US and Pakistan is a dangerous game for the West, as China has been warning since May of this year that, "any attack on Pakistan would be construed as an attack on China". This has prompted some American commentators to speculate on the rise of a new Cold War with China, as the US ramps up its strategic naval presence in the South China Sea and the Straits of Malacca.
Russia's Color Revolution
McCain's provocative tweet, which not so subtlety indicated a US role in recent Russian protests regarding its elections, comes at a crucial time for US-Russian relations as the weak and ineffectual President Dmitry Medvedev's fading from power signals a reemergence of Putin on the world stage. Putin's resurgence has also signaled a shift in geopolitical posturing for the Russians as they move away from Medvedev's "reset" with Obama and the West, towards a more defensive position, as demonstrated by Russia's recent veto of sanctions on Syria in the UN Security Council. Last week, the US's insistence on moving foward with its Ballistic Missile Defense Sheild (BMD) prompted Russia to threaten the deployment of missiles along its boarders with Turkey and Poland. With good reason, Russia has feared that completion of the BMD, which could also be used offensively, and would give the US and NATO a thermo-nuclear first strike capability which would threaten the existence of the Russian Federation. Russia is not naive about the West's intentions for dominance over its geopolitical sphere as NATO encroachment and encirclement of Russia remains a key strategic initiative of the West.
In 2008, as the Neoconservatives were fading from power in Washington, the US attempted to launch a proxy war using its newly installed puppet and beneficiary of the "Roses Revolution", Georgian President Mikheil Saakashvili in a bid to occupy disputed territory in South Ossetia. Putin's restraint in that blatant provocation adverted the potential for a wider war with NATO. Today, we cannot expect Putin to be so forgiving, as the US is now clearly using NGOs to destabilize his country in the wake of its elections. Central to this US meddling in Russian electoral politics is the organization Golos, which masquerades as an election monitoring organization, while being heavily funded by the promulgators of Color Revolution, the National Endowment for Democracy. Putin has now placed the blame on Hillary Clintons doorstep, calling the recent outbreak of protests and the Russian government's subsequent response, "defense from interference from abroad". These new direct confrontations with Russia should serve as a grim harbinger of events to follow, as the West, in the throws of an economic breakdown crisis, becomes increasingly desperate. Expect the likelihood for greater and more violent provocations to become exponentially greater in the near future.
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December 8, 2011 | Pakalert Press
As chairman of the International Republican Institute, an organization dedicated to fomenting extraterritorial sedition and revolution throughout the world, US Senator John McCain has become a central figure in the current Western-engineered campaign against the Arab world. The IRI was even credited by the New York Times as helping "nurture the Arab uprisings" by funding and training activists from across the Arab world who would later go on to overthrow their respective governments. Unlike many of the other podium-bound puppets that constitute Western politics, McCain is fully aware and very public about the final destination of the unrest and now open war, he is ceaselessly promoting.
Image: McCain stands before the tri-color flag of the Benghazi terror brigades he, the US government and NATO funded, trained, armed, and provided air support for as they committed wholesale genocide across the nation of Libya. This would be just one of several celebratory strolls through nations he helped sow sedition and chaos throughout. Egypt being another. He now aspires to stand in the ruins of Moscow.
Earlier this year John McCain openly: the unrest his IRI had helped fund in Egypt, "I would be a little less cocky in the Kremlin with my KGB cronies today if I were Vladimir Putin. I would be a little less secure in the seaside resort [of] President Hu and a few men who govern and decide the fate of 1.3 billion people."
On the IRI's official website in regards to Russia, the organization confesses to "identifying and supporting leaders" at the local and regional levels of Russian politics to "lay the groundwork for Russia's next generation of democratic leadership."
The IRI then goes on to explain it has, "created a new network of politicians, NGO activists and elected officials who are interested in the democratic development of municipal governance." And with this US-created Russian opposition network, the IRI then sponsors conferences, and roundtables to help them "increase public participation," (read: find people to join a US-backed opposition movement).
Image: Screenshot taken from the National Endowment for Democracy website featuring US funding for the NGO "Golos." Golos allegedly was searching for "election irregularities." Golos and other US-backed NGOs and opposition parties are now attempting to trigger an "Arab Spring" in Russia. (click to enlarge.)
Within this context, we find that the work of McCain's IRI recently manifested itself when it was caught meddling in Russia's elections. The National Endowment for Democracy (NED), a US government funded umbrella organization under which the IRI falls and the IRI itself, were behind several US-backed NGOs, particularly Golos, seeking to "expose voting irregularities." The purpose of this was of course to cast doubts on the validity of the elections and justify street mobs brought out by the Russian opposition groups the IRI had been cultivating in an attempt to trigger an "Arab Spring" in Russia.
Image: Screenshot taken of McCain's messages regarding unrest he and his IRI have prepared and are now trying to trigger in the streets of Russia. (click to enlarge.)
As if to immediately head off the skeptics of this unfortunate reality - of the US meddling in an immensely populated, nuclear armed, sovereign nation-state - McCain himself would arrogantly declare on Twitter, "Dear Vlad (Vladimir Putin), The ArabSpring is coming to a neighborhood near you." McCain would then link to a Wall Street Journal article framing with exactitude the very narrative of opposition parties filling the streets with protesters after "election irregularities" were exposed by US-financed NGO "Golos."
McCain would later link to an anonymous Washington Post editorial (which we now know are written by paid corporate lobbyists, like those within the Podesta Group) which tried to draw comparisons between the recent protests in Russia and the "Arab Spring." Golos was again mentioned, however, the Washington Post made no mention of its US-funding. The Post then breathtakingly states that in response to the protests and the apparent losses during the elections, Putin would, "move in a more dangerous direction, stoking Russian nationalism and looking for enemies at home and abroad." This, after the US has just attempted to destabilize and overthrow Putin's government, and with one of the very men funding the sedition threatening Russia with an "Arab Spring."
More alarmingly was the Washington Post's anonymous advice to President Obama which was to,
"be prepared to deflect such attacks and to defend other likely Putin targets, such as the democratic government of Georgia. In the meantime, the democratic world can hope that Sunday was the beginning, and not the end, of a Russian awakening."
Of course Georgia in 2008, under directions of its US allies, attempted to invade Russian-protected South Ossetia, triggering a dangerous proxy conflict that saw hundreds killed. And as we've seen in Libya, and now in Syria, protests in the street verifiably triggered by the US NED and its subsidiaries, while portrayed as genuine and spontaneous by the corporate-media, are in fact the first step of American military aggression. The veiled threats by the Washington Post regarding proxy military agitators like Georgia are analogous to the US' funding and arming Libyan and now Syrian militants.
While McCain and a growing, concerted chorus of corporate-media propagandists insist that it is Vladimir Putin who must be vISISant and wary of coming unrest, it is actually both the American and Russian people, and the various proxies these two powerful nations will mobilize to their defense that will inevitably suffer the consequences. John McCain and the corporate-fascists surrounding him, the Obama administration and every lever of power within the Western world is steering "we the people" into an escalating crisis with a nuclear armed superpower. When one nation attempts to overthrow the sovereign government of another nation, it most certainly is an act of war.
Unlike during the Libyan conflict, or any number of other nations that the US has meddled in and sown deadly chaos throughout, a similar conflict with Russia will not be one enjoyed by Americans watching it unfold on TV. As the end approaches of this zero sum game, the stakes will exponentially rise, so too will the consequences. If Americans would like to edge their nation away from the precipice of World War III, they may want to examine just who is behind men like McCain. Then we must expose them, boycott them, and ultimately replace them.
Tony Cartalucci's articles have appeared on many alternative media websites, including his own at Land Destroyer Report.
i>And by the way, I agree that the Western media is far too fixated on Nemtsov. I've met the guy…I don't like him. But it's not like he's the only other choice for president besides Vlad. There are millions of people in Russia. If elections here were truly open, free, and fair then I'm certain excellent candidates that the Western media has never heard of would rise to the occasion.</i>
A couple of points:
1. First of all election are a form of power stuggle and as such they are never completly open, free or fair. Politics is essetially a dirty business and if you don't like it get out of the kitchen. Or you never heard about Gerrymandring which is an established form of stealing votes by ruling party in the USA. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gerrymandering
2. I think you are hallusinating that anybody exapt leaders of main parties have chances to win Russian presidentail election. Outside mainstream parties structures (which already have thier leaders who don't care much about somebody else, no maqtter how talanted this guy can be) you have no chances in elections with 65 million voters or so. For example outside Moscow Nemtsov chances are zero. It's probably Zhirinovski who will get substancial amount of protest votes from periphery.
3. "Americans can't keep secrets". How about killing of President Kennedy, my friend. Or for a change about building 7 collapse during 9/11.
4. I know what happened during and after the Orange Revolution with Ukraine. And have a distinct impression that I already saw those events and this is just a repletion of the same technology played in Ukraine seven years ago. If we assume that 170 thousand votes were stolen (that's an exaggerated total number of people who particulated in protests in all Russian cities, how many percent that will be out of 61 millions of votes?) So how those people can talk about mass falsifications if the election results were signed by representatives of all parties they are by definitly frince group that is not even close to 1%. For who they speak and does then have any standing in the case?
5. Like in Ukraine the ruling party is demoralised (Medvedev proved to be especailly weak player in this situation). Anybody to try to revise election results outside court system should be promply reminded about Russian election law and penalties for its vialation. And if they don't listen authorities should act not wait. of view for vialation of elections law (which spcify the form of overturning election via cort order only). And there are video materian that became a currency of "falsifications". Exactly like in Ukraine. Orangists simply stole electins from Yanukovich (who was far from ideal figure too) and called this fight agaisnt falsifications.
In-depth Anglophone blog commentary on the results of the Dec. 4 parliamentary elections in Russia: OpenDemocracy.net - here and here; Sean Guillory of Sean's Russia Blog onSiberian Light - here, here, and here; Sublime Oblivion - here; The Kremlin Stooge - here; Mark Adomanis - here and here; The Ivanov Report - here and here; Joera Mulders of RussiaWatchers - here; ClubOrlov - here.
Al Jazeera - The 'New Decembrists' face off against Putin ; -- junk
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http://statesmansentinel.com/2011/10/26/covert-agenda-occupy-wall-street-protests/
The "occupying" protests here in America have been characterized as spontaneous and leaderless. Protesters, politicians, and the mass media have compared it to the so-called spontaneous uprisings of the Arab Spring. In reality, neither has been spontaneous nor leaderless. The Arab Spring was planned years ago and then executed by the forces of oppression that the people thought they were attempting to overthrow.
In an AFP article last April, Michael Posner, Assistant Secretary of State, admitted that the US trained 5000 activists last February from Egypt, Tunisia, Syria, and Lebanon. The goal was to provide the technology to circumvent government obstruction and help activists create a ripple effect by training their colleagues in the arts of government destabilization. Posner:r Federal government budgeted $50 million to develop new technologies to protect activists from arrest by authoritarian governments.
This assistance did not create the Arab Spring, but it helped perpetuate it. The campaign to destabilize the Middle East began much earlier, as geopolitical analyst Tony Cartalucci has repeatedly demonstrated.
Last May, Cartalucci wrote an article America's Arab Deception. He stated, "The Arab Spring was entirely engineered, prepared for, activists trained, funded, and equipped by the United States, years in advance, based on successes and experience garnered from decades of extraterritorial meddling. In particular, a coalition between the US State Department, NGO's, corporations, and organizations entirely contrived for the sole purpose of fomenting unrest in foreign nations, began as early as 2008 preparing for what is now unfolding in the Middle East and North Africa."
Much of this can be corroborated in Ron Nixon's April 14th New York Times article, "US Groups Helped Nurture Arab Uprisings." Nixon spinned past Cartalucci's logical assessment when he wrote, "No one doubts that the Arab uprisings are home grown, rather than resulting from 'foreign influence,' as alleged by some Middle Eastern leaders."
Good writers always avoid categorical statements, but Nixon's statement is also illogical. He claimed there were no doubters, which he refuted when he mentioned the allegations of Middle Eastern leaders. And no one doubts the New York Times is intolerant of logic.
To reinforce his position, Nixon quoted Stephen McInerney, executive director of the Project on Middle East Democracy (POMED), "We didn't fund them to start protests, but we did help support their development of skills and networking. That training did play a role in what ultimately happened, but it was their revolution. We didn't start it."
On April 15th, Cartalucci wrote in LandDestroyer, "Also conceding involvement is the Project on Middle East Democracy (POMED), chaired by various Council on Foreign Relations and Brookings Institute alumni. POMED claims that they helped protestors develop skills and to network. Such training has taken place annually under Movements.org starting in 2008 where Egypt's April 6 movement among many others, learned techniques to subvert their government. Movements.org of course is sponsored by a conglomerate of corporations and government agencies including the US State Department, Google, MTV, the Edelman public relations firm, Facebook, CBS News, MSNBC, and others. Despite the claim that such meddling is 'promoting democracy,' looking at the sponsors and war mongering interests involved in this operation, it appears to be more about promoting global military and economic hegemony."
Despite his extreme message, Cartalucci's analysis is supported by facts.
Big Brother's Clenched Fist Leads the Clueless
In America, our protests appear leaderless, ill-defined, and uncoordinated. To mask the central planning, the protests began small in a few cities before the national rollout proceeded, a common tactic of most marketing schemes. These protests are not leaderless. And their well-defined agenda can be derived from those manipulating the leaderless mobs behind the scenes.
Last July, Adbusters Media Foundation announced they were organizing a street protest to occupy Wall Street. Founded in 1989 by Kalle Lasn and Bill Schmalz, this Canadian firm describes itself as "a global network of artists, activists, writers, pranksters, students, educators, and entrepreneurs who want to advance the new social activist movement of the information age." They are anti- Capitalism, anti-consumerism, pro-environment, and pro-violence.
Adbusters is financed through its magazine subscriptions, but it also received grants the last ten years totaling $185,000 from the Tides Foundation, which is partly financed by the mastermind of financial destabilization, George Soros. Soros announced his sympathy for the protestors and has committed his organizational and financial resources.
Soros' MoveOn.org has organized liberal protest movements in the past and urged its members to join the "occupying" protests. MoveOn.org has also promoted an Internet-based demonstration in conjunction with Rebuild the Dream, another radical group financed by Soros and led by Van Jones. Van Jones was President Obama's former Green Jobs Czar, who resigned when his past extremism was exposed.
In an e-mail to its supporters, MoveOn predicted, "Together, we'll add hundreds of thousands of voices of solidarity from the American Dream Movement for the protests across the country and show just how widespread outrage at the Wall Street banks really is."
Van Jones is a central planner using his front group Rebuild the Dream among others. In a speech to the Soros funded Center for American Progress, he compared our protests to the Arab Spring. "They had the Arab spring, which was a people-powered, non-violent opportunity to change the conversation in those countries. We should have an American Autumn, people-powered, non-violent."
David DeGraw of AmpedStatus is another central player who spent the last three years trying to organize protests in America against the international bankers. As his website was attacked and knocked offline, the loosely led hacker group, Anonymous, approached him covertly and helped salvage his work and website. DeGraw organized a protest to begin against Wall Street on Flag Day, June 14th. Anonymous also announced "Operation Empire State Rebellion" to begin June 14th. When that fizzled, DeGraw teamed with Adbusters to coordinate the September attack.
DeGraw has a comprehensive world view. His claim that the global rebellions are decentralized and leaderless is a liberal lie. He expects these revolts to eventually destroy the power of the global elite, but this Utopian posture is a common ploy.
In August, Anonymous announced they were joining the September protests. Anonymous destabilizes government agencies, corporations, and affiliated associations by hacking into their computer networks. They revile the central bankers and have demanded Bernanke's resignation. They've also encouraged the Wall Street protesters and declared victory in a video message with a "checkmate."
Anonymous was also involved in the Arab Spring. During the height of the protests, they waged cyber-attacks on Egyptian government websites. In August, they did the same to Syria's Ministry of Defense.
Julian Assange of WikiLeaks has been discredited by astute observers as a pawn of the globalists he seemingly exposes. On October 15th, Assange addressed an adoring crowd of protesters in London. As he champions greater transparency through leaked documents, regimes have crumbled. Last May, Amnesty International praised WikiLeaks and the newspapers that published their released confidential files as a catalyst behind the Arab Spring.
Tony Cartalluci has described the central planning of Movements.org behind the Arab Spring. These consultants of revolution have recently developed a series of educational resources for the protesters. On October 7th, Rachel Silver posted on their website, "In response to the widespread protests and demonstrations happening across the USA we've compiled a series of guides that will help organizers to sustain their movement nationally and locally and make the most of online and digital tools." These how-to guides for activists and organizers were allegedly developed "in response" to the protests, not prior, but sometimes the truth is inconvenient.
For years, both ACORN and Service Employees International Union (SEIU) have organized campaigns against Capitalism. On a video last March, Steve Lerner of SEIU spoke of a scheme to destroy the stock market, destabilize our nation, and redistribute its wealth. About the same time, ACORN's founder Wade Rathke also called for massive "Day of Rage" protests that would target bankers. Both men are allied and close to President Obama.
ACORN filed for bankruptcy after it was exposed for a variety of criminal activities, but over the years, it has spawned front groups across our nation, most notably the Working Families Party, which helped organize "Occupy Wall Street." WFP's Nelini Stamp has been a regular at the site since day one.
Anthropologist David Graeber leads the global justice movement and promotes direct democracy to replace representative democracy. He's provided the intellectual groundwork that justifies these protests, their embrace of direct democracy, and consensus building through group manipulation.
Garret LoPorto adds a valuable skill to the central planning. LoPorto learned his craft as a media consultant for Skull and Bones member, John Kerry, when Kerry ran for President. He helped organize "Occupy Boston."
The radical street organizer Lisa Fithian has been involved since the beginning of the protests. For decades she has fought alongside anti-war advocates, anti-globalists, labor unions, and anarchists. She's been a regular at "Occupy Chicago" Her specialty is the creation of a crisis, because as she explained, "Crisis is that edge where change is possible."
Legendary Socialist professor, Frances Fox Piven, is another central planner who has fought Capitalism all her life. Last January in an interview with Amy Goodman, she:I think it's also crazy to call me a commie, a socialist, a revolutionary or whatever." As an academic, she's been taught that the truth is relative. In 2003, Piven was elected Honorary Chair of the Democratic Socialists of America.
Countless labor unions and leftwing community groups have swelled the ranks. Other leftwing organizations supporting the protests include the Socialist Party USA, Planned Parenthood, Democracy For America, Campaign for America's Future, People for the American Way, Public Campaign, Code Pink, Common Cause, Action United, Organize Now, and on and on.
In a development similar to the 1950's, when Congressional investigations exposed the interlocking network of hundreds of Communist front groups with the nonprofit foundations, which was quickly covered up, many of these organizations are interlocked, working together, and financed by the powerful nonprofit foundations.
The protests appear to be the culmination of much prior work nationally and globally, perhaps decades of work. The leaders comprise a Who's Who of anti-American radicals. There is nothing spontaneous or leaderless about these protests.
Days of Rage
The protests are parroted as nonviolent, but every now and then, undercurrents arise that gush with revolution and its necessary violence. This is more consistent with its initial theme as "Days of Rage," which is reminiscent of the violent Days of Rage riots orchestrated by the Weather Underground in Chicago in 1969.
Frances Fox Piven doesn't seem averse to the rhetoric of nonviolence, because she sees its true intent, as a marketing ploy. In a recent speech at Messiah College, she indicated her only problem with violence is the negative publicity that would result. She also:Riots are what poor people do when they get together."
In a January article in The Nation, Mobilizing the Jobless, Piven wrote "Local protests have to accumulate and spread - and become more disruptive - to create serious pressures on national politicians. An effective movement of the unemployed will have to look something like the strikes and riots that have spread across Greece in response to the austerity measures forced on the Greek government by the European Union, or like the student protests that recently spread with lightning speed across England in response to the prospect of greatly increased school fees."
Due to public outrage at her position, The Nation defended her in a February editorial. They also added, "Recognizing the leverage that oppressed groups have – and working with them to use it – is her special genius." This special genius is the hallmark of all good revolutionaries, who then exploit the powerless for their own aims.
On October 2nd after Piven addressed the OWS crowd, she concluded, "This is going to be the fight of our lives."
In his book Culture Jam, Kalle Lasn predicted, "We will wreck this world." He's also:Rage drives revolutions."
Van Jones no longer wants reforms or incremental changes. "We're not going to put a new battery in a broken system. We want a new system."
In interviews, Lisa Fithian promotes peaceful protests, but she's also stated, "I have no issue with property destruction." She helped instigate the violent Seattle riots in 1999 when the WTO was in town.
For years, these anti-American activists have sown seeds among our youth awaiting the harvest. They are the catalysts, and they expect an inferno.
Manipulating the Masses
By design, the protesters have been unclear about their central demands and agenda. On Oct 5th, Garret LoPorto was interviewed by radio host Michael Graham. He:It's a process of reclaiming democracy. We all know there's something wrong with the system. How are we going to fix it? How can we make it better?" He offered no solutions – specific goals will come later.
On Aug 12th, Adbusters posted an update prior to the protests that explains their approach. "Strategically speaking, there is a very real danger that if we naively put our cards on the table and rally around the 'overthrow of capitalism' or some equally outworn utopian slogan, then our Tahrir moment will quickly fizzle into another inconsequential ultra-lefty spectacle soon forgotten."
Adbusters prefers stealth at the beginning. A consensus can be engineered at any time using the Delphi technique, which relies on mass psychology to manipulate the group toward a predetermined consensus. It uses Hegel's dialectic to reconcile opposing forces and create a new synthesis. The successful "change agent" or facilitator must be an astute observer of human behavior and trained in psychology. This process has been mastered by the Progressives, who used it across our nation to transform our schools into rubbish.
The Delphi technique is a sophisticated process, but on its simplest level, the facilitator uses peer pressure and other group dynamics to isolate or marginalize dissenting voices, while rallying those sympathetic to the "correct" position. The group is not only led to the preconceived consensus, but they are also led to believe they arrived at it independently. This process has been fine-tuned over the decades "awaiting the time when it would be implemented extensively in the interests of transforming America." (This quote was posted anonymously last July.)
To prevent any political or moneyed interest from hijacking the movement, the protesters convene a General Assembly every day in every city, so that everyone has a voice – although, not everyone is granted that right as Congressman John Lewis found out. The group engages in direct democracy which leads to a consensus on a variety of topics from when and where to march to trash pick-up. Hand signals either arouse the group's favor or incite disapproval. Consensus is engineered daily, while the crowd is indoctrinated in direct democracy.
Perhaps more sinister, as Dr. Webster Tarpley reported weeks ago, the general assembly may be a simple diversion. Tarpley:ewitnesses have identified about twenty mysterious individuals who seem to comprise a secret steering committee that supersedes the General Assembly. They're much older than the average protester and appear to have a military orientation. Recently, thousands of leaked e-mails have confirmed the existence of two secret committees, a Demands Committee and a Constitution Committee. These leaders prefer to remain behind the scenes. When their work is done, they will present it to the General Assembly for approval.
For decades, psychology has been mined for better methods to manipulate the masses. Today, the methods are more sophisticated, more brazen, and more effective. The protest organizers are manufacturing dissent within society, while creating consensus within the movement.
Garret LoPorto is a depth psychologist who understands how to manipulate unconscious urges. To promote his marketing firm TotalConvert, LoPorto wrote, "If you want people to believe in your brand, (and share that belief with others), your brand must be evolved into a cult brand. If you want buzz; if you want viral marketing; if you want sky-high conversion rates and you want customers to not just be customers, but total converts, then you've come to the right consulting firm."
Creating a cult brand is his specialty. To accomplish this, he uses psychographics marketing, which divides people into groups based on their psychological profile. Psychographics relies on surveys, interviews, and focus groups, but now marketers also mine the social networks for psychological data. Using the Internet and its social networks, psychographics enables viral marketing.
LoPorto is a rarity. He's also creating a cult following called the Wayseers. The Wayseers Manifesto is a slick video production that reveals LoPorto's understanding of human behavior. Many viewers were reduced to tears, as if their eyes were suddenly opened and they found their long lost home. It is powerful propaganda that uses trance music, which shifts consciousness from a beta state to an alpha state. This renders the viewer more susceptible to its message. It begins:
"Attention: All you rule-breakers, you misfits and troublemakers – all you free spirits and pioneers – all you visionaries and non-conformists … Everything that the establishment has told you is wrong with you – is actually what's right with you. You see things others don't. You are hardwired to change the world. Unlike nine out of ten people – your mind is irrepressible – and this threatens authority. You were born to be a revolutionary. You can't stand rules because in your heart you know there's a better way. You have strengths dangerous to the establishment – and it wants them eliminated, So your whole life you've been told your strengths were weaknesses – Now I'm telling you otherwise."
The video is ten minutes of New Age mystical Gnosticism that promotes revolutionary thinking and action. It ends:
"Wayseers reveal this divine truth by devoting themselves to the birth of some creative or disruptive act expressed through art or philosophy, innovations to shake up industry, revolutions for democracy, coups that topple hypocrisy, movements of solidarity, changes that leave a legacy, rebellions against policy, spirit infused technology, moments of clarity, things that challenge barbarity, watersheds of sincerity, momentous drives for charity." (LoPorto isn't your ordinary "high priest" – he's also a poet.) "This is your calling, Wayseer. You've found your tribe. Welcome home."
LoPorto reassures the disenfranchised viewer that they are special, needed, and welcome. They don't need to follow rules that have been rigged against them. They must destroy the rule-makers and revolt against the established order. The video is a recruiting device to build a network of mindless revolutionaries who will blindly follow their self-proclaimed enlightened leader.
Soros is the most dangerous of the central planners because of his wealth, organizational skills, and diabolical ambition, but LoPorto is dangerous because of his creative genius.
New Agers Have the Answers
Pure Energy Systems News announced a new documentary that will be released on 11/11/11: "An upcoming documentary named, 'Thrive – What on Earth will it take?' will seek to explain the sources of human suffering, expose the elite power structures (such as big oil) that have contributed to it, and provide an answer including free energy, explaining what it will take to improve the human condition on this planet."
Supposedly, an ancient code embedded by extraterrestrials in ancient ruins, crop circles, and art has been suppressed by the global elite. Unlocking its secret is the key to free energy which will save our distressed planet from imminent destruction. The documentary has been plugged by prominent New Agers who hope the Thrive Movement goes viral.
The PESN article also posed an ominous question: "Could this documentary be a trigger that sparks a revolution?"
Triggers
There are many triggers that might spark the fuse. A manufactured crisis is the standard approach. An epic economic meltdown cannot be avoided for long and would trigger widescale rioting.
Another trigger is foreshadowed by an Anonymous slogan. They issued a conditional demand that was featured in LoPorto's Manifesto, has its own facebook page, and was displayed on posters during the Arab Spring. "If your government shuts down the Internet, shut down your government." This crisis also seems inevitable.
The clamor for a Constitutional Convention is growing which could also cause chaos because it would certainly be co-opted by a predetermined consensus that would overthrow our Constitutional liberties. This crisis must be avoided.
Villains
The protesters are supplied with enough villains to keep the blame game running like an endless marathon: greedy bankers, crony capitalists, corrupt politicians, and selfish rich people.
President Obama is sympathetic. He cannot run for re-election on his record, so he's been blaming everyone and everything else from the prior administration to his opponents, natural disasters, the Arab Spring, etc. But he's recently focused on a common villain that the protesters revile – the bankers and other rich people, especially those of the Wall Street variety. His slogan "the rich must pay their fair share" gets shriller as he stokes class warfare.
Charles Krauthammer warned in a recent column, "Popular resentment, easily stoked, is less easily controlled."
Our President's sympathy for the Wall Street protesters is disingenuous but consistent with his administration's widespread deception and complicit lack of transparency. Wall Street enriched Obama's 2008 Presidential campaign and helped him get elected. Objective observers include mainstream journalists on the list of villains because only the alternative media mentions this.
This was illustrated a few weeks ago as Van Jones mixed with the Wall Street protesters. Luke Rudowski of We Are Change questioned him on camera about Wall Street's generosity during Obama's 2008 campaign. Van Jones promptly fled the area.
If Mitt Romney wins the Republican nomination, the villains of Wall Street could derail his Presidential bid. Wall Street has reversed its support of Democratic candidates and is backing Romney with a steady flow of campaign dollars. More likely, this is another phony opposition campaign to taint his campaign. The globalists who own Wall Street would love to see President Obama re-elected.
The International Agenda
On October 15th, the protest movement held events in over 900 cities in 82 countries. In America, hundreds of organizations are engaged in the destruction of old fashioned American liberty based on our Constitution. Across the globe, there are thousands of groups rallying for regime changes in the form of democratic socialism.
Common themes include a false spontaneity in the face of manufactured dissent. The clenched fist is the universal symbol, a staple of socialist and communist groups worldwide. The protests are youth-led, who bring high energy, have no negative political baggage, and are more pliable than their elders. They are also more indoctrinated, as the techniques of propaganda have evolved in step with technology. Their primary needs are organizational skills, positive media exposure, and money, needs easily exploited.
The US State Department and the US Agency for International Development (USAID) both have mandates to promote democracy internationally. Direct involvement in the internal affairs of other countries can compromise their support, so they contract with non-governmental organizations (NGO's) like the National Endowment for Democracy (NED), International Republican Institute, National Democractic Institute, Asia Foundation, Center for the Study of Islam and Democracy, Middle East Partnership Initiative (MEPI), the Democracy Council, and previously mentioned POMED, among many others.
Sometimes financing is misdirected through front groups. WikiLeaks released diplomatic cables from Damascus that showed one channel to finance Syrian opposition groups. Our State Department granted $6.3 million to the Democracy Council who then financed MEPI who financed Syrian exiles.
In Egypt and Tunisia, as the US government publicly supported the puppet regime, it also privately financed the opposition. Dictators can become inconvenient for a variety of reasons including massive public unrest, which sometimes is manufactured for other reasons. To control the outcome, the US must co-opt the dissent. This explains our President's behavior during the Egyptian revolt. Initially, out of instinct, he supported our old ally Mubarak, but he finally caught on.
The Egyptian uprising provides a case study of how revolutions are US-engineered. The conventional mainstream media myth portrayed the revolutionaries as spontaneous freedom fighters. To retain their prestige, mainstream journalists do not investigate or expose the lies in the State Department handouts they parrot, but the alternative media does. Tony Cartalucci exposed the myriad groups that were involved long before the moment became ripe.
Cartalucci also showed how Movements.org, a subsidiary of the Alliance for Youth Movements, sponsored by Google and staffed by former executives, helped the young Egyptians develop the technological skills for communication and social networking. But the real revolution required bodies in the streets not digitalized avatars or Facebook friends. In 2009, Egyptian activist Mohamed Adel went to Belgrade, Serbia for guidance, home of the Center for Applied NonViolent Action and Strategies (CANVAS), which was spawned by OPTOR, the resistance group that ousted Slobodan Milosevic.
CANVAS provided the necessary training. According to Tina Rosenberg's February article in Foreign Policy Revolution U, "They have worked with democracy advocates from more than 50 countries. They have advised groups of young people on how to take on some of the worst governments in the world – and in Georgia, Ukraine, Syria-occupied Lebanon, the Maldives, and now Egypt, those young people won."
Perhaps winning is a relative term like the truth. Eight months after her article appeared, it doesn't look like the Egyptian people have won anything except a sorry economy.
Another media myth has portrayed young Serbian Ivan Marovic as the heroic visionary who helped topple Milosevic using a brilliant grass roots strategy. He was instrumental, but NATO bombs also helped. Not reported was that Marovic's vision and strategy came from an American, Harvard professor Gene Sharp. Hundreds of copies of his handbook From Dictatorship to Democracy were translated into the Serbian language and distributed by the Albert Einstein Institute, which specializes in methods of non-violent resistance.
An award winning documentary, How to start a Revolution, was recently released last month and reveals Sharp's global influence.
In addition to Sharp's assistance, the OPTOR revolutionaries also received CIA training and were partly financed by the US government through Freedom House and NED. Despite OPTOR's lies to the contrary, this financing was confirmed after the Serbian coup, and many members quit.
On September 22nd, Marovic addressed the sympathetic OWS crowd in New York.
OPTOR and CANVAS adopted the clenched fist symbol over a decade ago, so it was not surprising to see it prominently displayed in the streets of Cairo during their uprising. It's become the official logo of OWS and all the global protests and revolutions. Perhaps this universal symbol will unite us all in one-world government after the destabilization campaigns accomplish their global destruction through economic ruin and the resulting riots.
A Populist Revolution
The protests are portrayed as a populist movement by the 99% have-nots against the elite. In an Oct 7th article, the Activist Post wrote, "The elite are specialists at divide-and-conquer techniques, but that becomes exceedingly difficult when the melting pot of America truly spills over."
The elite are also experts at false-flag operations and phony opposition campaigns that appear to undermine their interests, while it consolidates their power. History illustrates the success of this tactic. In 1913, a phony opposition campaign enabled the approval of the Federal Reserve Act.
The Activist Post called for its readers to "participate in what looks like the genuine start of the Second American Revolution." A revolution against the controlling elite that thrusts off the tyranny of their central banking, the indoctrination in their schools, the lies of their media, and the brainwashing of their entertainment, would be a welcome development. But a revolution that appears to free the oppressed masses from the ultra-rich, while it is manipulated behind the scenes by the globalist elite will only lead to more enslavement.
The Doom of Liberty
Kalle Lasn of Adbusters is correct when he says that mega-corporations promote mass-consumerism through the brainwashing of television commercials. He was correct when he called television viewing "a major mental health problem." Public opinion is now mass manufactured, and behaviors are created to keep the public distracted from the real issues in life. Television, movies, and computer games are not only addictive forms of vicarious living, rather than real living, but the audio-visual images are also powerful propaganda.
The protesters are correct when they condemn our mega-corporations, because they practice a crony Capitalism that inhibits free enterprise through government regulations, lobbyists who rig the rules, trade associations, campaign donations, and the swinging door between business and government. Crony Capitalism must be abolished.
The protestors are correct about the ills of Wall Street. Wall Street enriches itself, but only as a facilitator for big business and the Federal Reserve, which are the real culprits behind our economic woes and injustices.
Our young college graduates are justifiably angry when they can't find a job or are forced to take a low paying job that will not pay down the enormous debt they incurred to get a worthless degree. But their anger is misdirected at the corporations that don't want or need them. They should blame the real villains – the universities who swindled them with outrageous tuitions that had to be borrowed. In the past thirty years, college tuition has risen over 400%, while the quality of education has declined inversely.
Anger is becoming epidemic, but we will see the relationship between the protesters and our President get cozier. We will see demands clarified and leaders emboldened. We will probably see the harsh winter disperse the crowds to warmer climes. But networks are being established, and protesters are being indoctrinated.
The socialist cancer has invaded our vital organs: our government, our public and higher education, our mass media, our arts and sciences. Our language has changed, and our dialogue has been misdirected. The cancer might go away for a moment, but it will return more virulent, and it will eventually get violent.
As a nation, we waste our leisure time in pursuits of excitement, idleness, or pleasure. In the old days, leisure time was a valuable gift. Leisure and liberty were both hard earned by our great forebears, which many have taken for granted. We are living on borrowed time, a debt that must be repaid.
A time of reckoning is now upon us. It is time to turn off the insidious TV, the dehumanizing music, a time to tune out the deceptive media. It is time to replace our trivial pursuits with fasting, fervent prayer, and the study of the Scriptures. It is time to turn to our Lord with full purpose of heart. If we follow His lead, our concerns will be eased, our burdens will be lighter, and our spirituality will be strengthened.
Robert Beaudine is the author of the novel Based Upon a Lie, which you can purchase as an ebook.
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Color Revolutions – The Modern Coup d'Etat
The Technique of a Coup d'État by John Laughland http://www.voltairenet.org/article163453.html
Former administrator of the British Helsinki Human Rights Group, Laughland is currently European Director of the European Foundation (Think Tank). He has a doctorate in philosophy from the University of Oxford and has been a lecturer at the Sorbonne and at the Institut d'Études Politiques de Paris.
The technique of a coup d'état, more recently also referred to as "coloured revolution", finds its origins in abundant literature dating back to the beginning of the 20th century. It was successfully applied by the U.S. neo-conservatives to set the stage for "regime change" in a number of former Soviet republics. However, the technique backfired when it was tried in a different cultural environment (Venezuela, Lebanon, Iran). John Laughland, who reported on some of these operations for the Guardian, sheds new light on this phenomenon.
In recent years, a number of "revolutions" have broken out all over the world.
- Georgia. In November 2003, the president of Georgia Edward Shevardnadze was overthrown following demonstrations, marches and allegations that the parliamentary elections had been rigged.
- Ukraine. In November 2004, the "Orange Revolution" of demonstrations started in Ukraine as the same allegations were made, that elections had been rigged. The result was that country was ripped away from its previous geopolitical role as a bridge between East and West, and put it on the path to becoming a fully-fledged member of NATO and the EU. Considering that Kievan Rus is the first Russian state, and that Ukraine has now been turned against Russia, this is a historic achievement. But then, as George Bush:You are either with us or against us." Although Ukraine had sent troops to Iraq, it was evidently considered too friendly to Moscow.
- Lebanon. Shortly after the US and the UN declared that Syrian troops had to be removed from Lebanon, and following the assassination of Rafik Hariri, demonstrations in Beirut were presented as "the Cedar Revolution." An enormous counter-demonstration by Hezbollah, which is the largest political party in Syria, was effectively ignored while the TV replayed endlessly the image of the anti-Syrian crowd. In one particularly egregious case of Orwellian double-think, the BBC explained to its viewers that "Hezbollah, the biggest political party in Lebanon, is so far the only dissenting voice which wants the Syrians to stay." How can the majority be "a dissenting voice"?
- Kyrgyzstan. After the "revolutions" in Georgia and Ukraine, many predicted that the same wave of "revolutions" would extend to the former Soviet states of Central Asia. So it was to be. Commentators seemed divided on what colour to label the uprising in Bishkek – was it a "lemon" revolution or a "tulip" revolution? They could not make up their minds. But on one thing, everyone was in agreement: revolutions are cool, even when they are violent. The Kyrgyz president, Askar Akayev, was overthrown on 24th March 2005 and protesters stormed and ransacked the presidential palace.
- Uzbekistan. When armed rebels seized government buildings, sprung prisoners from gaol and took hostages on the night of 12th–13th May in the Uzbek city of Andijan (located in the Ferghana Valley, where the unrest had also started in neighbouring Kyrgyzstan) the police and army surrounded the rebels and a long standoff ensued. Negotiations were undertaken with the rebels, who kept increasing their demands. When government forces started to move on the rebels, the resulting fighting killed some 160 people including over 30 members of the police and army. Yet the Western media immediately misrepresented this violent confrontation, claiming that government forces had opened fire on unarmed protesters – "the people."
This constantly repeated myth of popular rebellion against a dictatorial government is popular on both the Left and the Right of the political spectrum. Previously, the myth of revolution was obviously the preserve of the Left. But when the violent putsch occurred in Kygyrzstan, The Times enthused about how the scenes in Bishkek reminded him of Eisenstein films about the Bolshevik revolution, The Daily Telegraph extolled the "power to the people," and the Financial Times used a well-known Maoist metaphor when it praised Kyrgyzstan's "long march to freedom."
One of the key elements behind this myth is obviously that "the people" are behind the events, and that they are spontaneous. In fact, of course, they are often very highly organised operations, often deliberately staged for the media, and usually funded and controlled by transnational networks of so-called non-governmental organisations which are in turn instruments of Western power.
The literature on coups d'état The survival of the myth of spontaneous popular revolution is depressing in view of the ample literature on the coup d'état, and on the main factors and tactics by which to bring one about.
It was, of course, Lenin who developed the organisational structure for overthrowing a regime which we now know as a political party. He differed from Marx in that he did not think that historical change was the result of ineluctable anonymous forces, but that it had to be worked for.
But it was probably Curzio Malaparte's Technique of a Coup d'état which first gave very famous expression to these ideas. Published in 1931, this book presents regime change as just that – a technique. Malaparte explicitly took issue with those who thought that regime change happened on its own. In fact, he starts the book by recounting a discussion between diplomats in Warsaw in the summer of 1920: Poland had been invaded by Trostky's Red Army (Poland having itself invaded the Soviet Union, capturing Kiev in April 1920) and the Bolsheviks were at the gates of Warsaw. The debate was between the British minister in Warsaw, Sir Horace Rumbold, and the Papal nuncio, Monsignor Ambrogio Damiano Achille Ratti – the man who was elected Pope as Pius XI two years later. The Englishman:at the internal political situation in Poland was so chaotic that a revolution was inevitable, and that the diplomatic corps therefore should flee the capital and go to Posen (Poznán). The Papal Nuncio disagreed, insisting that a revolution was just as possible in a civilised country like England, Holland or Switzerland as in a country in a state of anarchy. Naturally the Englishman was outraged at the idea that a revolution could ever break out in England. "Oh never!" he exclaimed – and was proved wrong because no revolution did break out in Poland, according to Malaparte because the revolutionary forces were simply not well organised enough.
This anecdote allows Malaparte to discuss the differences between Lenin and Trotsky, two practitioners of the coup d'état/revolution. Malaparte shows that the future Pope was right and that it was wrong to say that pre-conditions were necessary for a revolution to occur. For Malaparte, as for Trotsky, regime change could be promoted in any country, including the stable democracies of Western Europe, providing that there was a sufficiently determined body of men determined to achieve it.
Manufacturing consent This brings us onto a second body of literature, concerning the manipulation of the media. Malaparte himself does not discuss this aspect but it is (a) of huge importance and (b) clearly a subset of the technique of a coup d'état in the way regime change is practised today. So important, indeed, is the control of the media during regime change that one of the main characteristics of these revolutions is the creation of a virtual reality. Control of this reality is itself an instrument of power, which is why in classic coups in a banana republic the first thing that the revolutionaries seize is the radio station.
People experience a strong psychological reluctance to accept that political events today are deliberately manipulated. This reluctance is itself a product of the ideology of the information age, which flatters people's vanity and encourages them to believe that they have access to huge amounts of information. In fact, the apparent multifarious nature of modern media information hides an extreme paucity of original sources, rather as a street of restaurants on a Greek waterfront can hide the reality of a single kitchen at the back. News reports of major events very often come from a single source, usually a wire agency, and even authoritative news outlets like the BBC simply recycle information which they have received from these agencies, presenting it as their own. BBC correspondents are often sitting in their hotel rooms when they send despatches, very often simply reading back to the studio in London information they have been given by their colleagues back home off the wire. A second factor which explains the reluctance to believe in media manipulation is connected with the feeling of omniscience which the mass media age likes to flatter: to rubbish news reports as manipulated is to tell people that they are gullible, and this is not a pleasant message to receive.
There are many elements to media manipulation. One of the most important is political iconography. This is a very important instrument for promoting the legitimacy of regimes which have seized power through revolution. One only need think of such iconic events as the storming of the Bastille on 14th July 1789, the storming of the Winter Palace during the October revolution in 1917, or Mussolini's March on Rome in 1922, to see that events can be elevated into almost eternal sources of legitimacy.
However, the importance of political imagery goes far beyond the invention of a simple emblem for each revolution. It involves a far deeper control of the media, and generally this control needs to be exercised over a long period of time, not just at the moment of regime change itself. It is essential indeed, for the official party line to be repeated ad nauseam. A feature of today's mass media culture which many dissidents lazily and wrongly denounce as "totalitarian" is precisely that dissenting views may be expressed and published, but this is precisely because, being mere drops in the ocean, they are never a threat to the tide of propaganda.
Willi Münzenberg
One of the modern masters of such media control was the German Communist from whom Joseph Goebbels learned his trade, Willi Münzenberg. Münzenberg was not only the inventor of spin, he was also the first person who perfected the art of creating a network of opinion-forming journalists who propagated views which were germane to the needs of the Communist Party in Germany and to the Soviet Union. He also made a huge fortune in the process, since he amassed a considerable media empire from which he creamed off the profits.
Münzenberg was intimately involved with the Communist project from the very beginning. He belonged to Lenin's circle in Zurich, and in 1917 accompanied the future leader of the Bolshevik revolution to the Zurich Hauptbahnhof, from whence Lenin was transported in a sealed train, and with the help of the German imperial authorities, to the Finland Station in St. Petersburg. Lenin then called on Münzenberg to combat the appalling publicity generated in 1921 when 25 million peasants in the Volga region started to suffer from the famine which swept across the newly created Soviet state. Münzenberg, who had by then returned to Berlin, where he was later elected to the Reichstag as a Communist deputy, was charged with setting up a bogus workers' charity, the Foreign Committee for the Organisation of Worker Relief for the Hungry in Soviet Russia, whose purpose was to pretend to the world that humanitarian relief was coming from sources other than Herbert Hoover's American Relief Administration. Lenin feared not only that Hoover would use his humanitarian aid project to send spies into the USSR (which he did) but also, perhaps even more importantly, that the world's first Communist state would be fatally damaged by the negative publicity of seeing capitalist America come to its aid within a few years of the revolution.
After having cut his teeth on "selling" the death of millions of people at the hands of the Bolsheviks, Münzenberg turned his attention to more general propaganda activities. He amassed a large media empire, known as "the Münzenberg trust," which owned two mass circulation dailies in Germany, a mass circulation weekly, and which had interests in scores of other publications around the world. His greatest coups were to mobilise world opinion against America over the Sacco-Vanzetti trial (that of two anarchist Italian immigrants who were sentenced to death for murder in Massachusetts in 1921) and to counteract the Nazis' claim in 1933 that the Reichstag fire was the result of a Communist conspiracy. The Nazis, it will be remembered, used the fire to justify mass arrests and executions against Communists, even though it now appears that the fire genuinely was started on his own by the man arrested in the building at the time, the lone arsonist Martinus van der Lubbe. Münzenberg actually managed to convince large sections of public opinion of the equal but opposite untruth to that peddled by the Nazis, namely that the Nazis had started the fire themselves in order to have a pretext for removing their main enemies.
The key relevance of Münzenberg for our own day is this: he understood the key importance of influencing opinion-formers. He targeted especially intellectuals, taking the view that intellectuals were especially easy to influence because they were so vain. His contacts included many of the great literary figures of the 1930s, a large number of whom were encouraged by him to support the Republicans in the Spanish civil war and to make that into a cause-célèbre of Communist anti-fascism. Münzenberg's tactics are of primary importance to the manipulation of opinion in today's New World Order. More then ever before, so-called "experts" constantly pop up on our TV screens to explain what is happening, and they are always vehicles for the official party line. They are controlled in various ways, usually by money or by flattery.
Psychology and the manipulation of opinion There is a second body of literature, which makes a slightly different point from the specific technique which Münzenberg perfected. This concerns the way in which people can be made to react in certain collective ways by psychological stimuli. Perhaps the first major theoretician of this was Sigmund Freud's nephew, Edward Bernays, whose book Propaganda in 1928:at it was entirely natural and right for governments to organise public opinion for political purposes. The opening chapter of his book has the revealing title – "Organising chaos" – and Bernays writes:
"The conscious and intelligent manipulation of the organised opinions and habits of the masses is an important element in democratic society. Those who manipulate this unseen mechanism of society constitute an invisible government which is the true ruling power of our country." [my italics]
The text continues: "We are governed, our minds are moulded, our tastes formed, our ideas suggested, largely by men we have never heard of. This is a logical result of the way in which our democratic society is organized. Vast numbers of human beings must cooperate in this manner if they are to live together as a smoothly functioning society. … In almost every act of our daily lives, whether in the sphere of politics or business, in our social conduct or our ethical thinking, we are dominated by the relatively small number of persons … who understand the mental processes and social patterns of the masses. It is they who pull the wires which control the public mind."
Bernays says that, very often, the members of this invisible government do not even know who the other members are. Propaganda, he says, is the only way to prevent public opinion descending into dissonant chaos. Bernays continued to work on this theme after the war, editing Engineering consent in 1955, a title to which Edward Herman and Noam Chomsky alluded when they published their seminal Manufacturing Consent in 1988. The connection with Freud is important because, as we shall see later, psychology is an extremely important tool in influencing public opinion. Two of the contributors to Engineering consent make the point that every leader must play on basic human emotions in order to manipulate public opinion. For instance, Doris E. Fleischmann and Howard Walden Cutler write:
"Self-preservation, ambition, pride, hunger, love of family and children, patriotism, imitativeness, the desire to be a leader, love of play – these and other drives are the psychological raw materials which every leader must take into account in his endeavour to win the public to his point of view … To maintain their self-assurance, most people need to feel certain that whatever they believe about anything is true."
This was what Willi Münzenberg understood – the basic human urge for people to believe what they want to believe. Thomas Mann alluded to it when he attributed the rise of Hitler to the collective desire of the German people for "a fairy tale" over the ugly truths of reality.
Other books worth mentioning in this regard concern not so much modern electronic propaganda but the more general psychology of crowds. The classics in this regard are Gustave Le Bon's work The Crowd: A Study of the Popular Mind (1895), Elias Canetti's Crowds and Power (Masse und Macht) (1980); and Serge Tchakhotine's Le viol des foules par la propagande politique (1939). All these books draw heavily on psychology and anthropology. There is also the magnificent oeuvre of one of my favourite writers, the anthropologist René Girard, whose writings on the logic of imitation (mimesis), and on collective acts of violence, are excellent tools for understanding why it is that public opinion is so easily motivated to support war and other forms of political violence.
The technique of opinion-forming
After the war, many of the techniques perfected by the Communist Münzenberg were adopted by the Americans, as has been magnificently documented by Frances Stonor Saunders' excellent work, Who Paid the Piper?, published in America under the title The Cultural Cold War.
In minute detail, Stonor Saunders explains how, as the Cold War started, the Americans and the British started up a massive covert operation to fund anti-communist intellectuals. The key point is that much of their attention and activity was directed at left-wingers, in many cases Trotskyites who had abandoned their support for the Soviet Union only in 1939, when Stalin signed his non-aggression pact with Hitler, and in many cases people who had previously worked for Münzenberg. Many of the figures who were at this juncture between Communism and the CIA at the beginning of the cold war were future neo-conservatives luminaries, especially Irving Kristol, James Burnham, Sidney Hook and Lionel Trilling.
The left-wing and even Trotskyite origins of neo-conservatism are well-known – even if I still continue to be astonished by new details I discover, such as that Lionel and Diana Trilling were married by a rabbi for whom Felix Dzherzhinsky – the founder of the Bolshevik secret police, the Cheka (forerunner of the KGB), and the Communist equivalent of Heinrich Himmler – represented a heroic paragon. These left-wing origins are particularly relevant to the covert operations discussed by Stonor Saunders, because the CIA's goal was precisely to influence left-wing opponents of Communism, i.e. Trotskyites. The CIA's view was simply that right-wing anti-communists did not need to be influenced, much less paid. Stonor Saunders quotes Michael Warner when she writes:
"For the CIA, the strategy of promoting the Non-Communist Left was to become 'the theoretical foundation of the Agency's political operations against Communism over the next two decades'."
This strategy was outlined in Arthur Schlesinger's The Vital Center (1949), a book which represents one of the cornerstones of what was later to become the neo-conservative movement. Stonor Saunders writes:
"The purpose of supporting leftist groups was not to destroy or even dominate, but rather to maintain a discreet proximity to and monitor the thinking of such groups; to provide them with a mouthpiece so that they could blow off steam; and, in extremis, to exercise a final veto over their actions, if they ever got too 'radical'."
Many and varied were the ways in which this left-wing influence was felt. The USA was determined to fashion for itself a progressive image, in contrast to the "reactionary" Soviet Union. In other words, it wanted to do precisely what the Soviets were doing. In music, for instance, Nicholas Nabokov (the cousin of the author of Lolita) was one of the Congress' main agents. In 1954, the CIA funded a music festival in Rome in which Stalin's "authoritarian" love of composers like Rimsky-Korsakov and Tchaikovsky was "countered" by unorthodox modern music inspired by Schoenberg's twelve-tone system.
For Nabokov, there was a clear political message to be imparted by promoting music which announced itself as doing away with natural hierarchies …
Support for other progressives came when Jackson Pollock, himself a former Communist, was also promoted by the CIA. His daubs were supposed to represent the American ideology of "freedom" over the authoritarianism of socialist realist painting. (This alliance with Communists pre-dates the Cold War: the Mexican Communist muralist, Diego Rivera, was supported by Abby Aldrich Rockefeller, but their collaboration ended abruptly when Rivera refused to remove a portrait of Lenin from a crowd scene painted on the walls of the Rockefeller Center in 1933.)
This cross-over between culture and politics was explicitly promoted by a CIA body which went under an Orwellian name, the Psychological Strategy Board. In 1956, it covertly promoted a European tour by the Metropolitan Opera, the political purpose of which was to encourage multiculturalism. Junkie Fleischmann, the organiser, said:
"We, in the United States, are a melting-pot and, by being so, we have demonstrated that peoples can get along together irrespective of race, colour or creed. Using the "melting-pot" or some such catch phrase for a theme we might be able to use the Met as an example of how Europeans can get along together in the United States and that, therefore, some sort of European Federation is entirely practicable."
This, by the way, is exactly the same argument employed by, among other people, Ben Wattenberg, whose book The First Universal Nation argues that America has a special right to world hegemony because she embodies all the nations and races of the planet. The same view has also been expressed by Newt Gingrich and other neo-cons.
Other themes promoted include some which are at the forefront of neo-conservative thinking today. First among these is the eminently liberal belief in moral and political universalism. Today, this is at the very heart of George W. Bush's own foreign policy philosophy: he has stated on numerous occasions that political values are the same all over the world, and he has used this assumption to justify US military intervention in favour of "democracy." Back in the early 1950s, the director of the PSB (the Psychological Strategy Board was quickly referred to only by its initials, no doubt in order to hide its real name), Raymond Allen, had already arrived at this conclusion.
The principles and ideals embodied in the Declaration of Independence and the Constitution are for export and … are the heritage of men everywhere. We should appeal to the fundamental urges of all men which I believe are the same for the farmer in Kansas as for the farmer in Punjab.
To be sure, it would be wrong to attribute the spread of ideas only to covert manipulation. They have their force in large-scale cultural currents, whose causes are multiple. But there is no doubt that the dominance of such ideas can be substantially facilitated by covert operations, especially since people in mass-information societies are curiously suggestible. Not only do they believe what they have read in the papers, they also think they have arrived at these conclusions themselves. The trick of manipulating public opinion, therefore, lies precisely in that which Bernays theorised, Münzenberg initiated, and which the CIA raised to a high art. According to CIA agent Donald Jameson:
"As far as the attitudes that the Agency wanted to inspire through these activities are concerned, clearly what they would like to have been able to produce were people who, of their own reasoning and conviction, were persuaded that everything the United States government did was right."
To put it another way, what the CIA and other US agencies were doing during this period was to adopt the strategy which we associate with the Italian Marxist, Antonio Gramsci, who argued that "cultural hegemony" was essential for socialist revolution.
Disinformation Finally, there is a huge body of literature on the technique of disinformation. I have already referred to the important fact, originally formulated by Tchakotine (Chakotin), that the role of journalists and the media is key in ensuring that propaganda is constant: "Propaganda cannot take time off," he writes, thereby formulating one of the key rules of modern disinformation, which is that the required message must be repeated very frequently indeed if it is to pass. Above all, Tchakotine (Chakotin) says that propaganda campaigns must be centrally directed and highly organised, something which has become the norm in the age of modern political "spin": British Labour Members of Parliament, for instance, are not allowed to speak to the media without first asking permission from the Director of Communications in 10, Downing Street.
Sefton Delmer was both a practician and theoretician of such "black propaganda." Delmer created a bogus radio station which broadcasted from Britain to Germany during the Second World War, and which created the myth that there were "good" patriotic Germans who opposed Hitler. The fiction was sustained that the station was actually an underground German one, and was put on frequencies close to those of official stations. Such black propaganda has now become part of the US government's armoury of 'spin': the New York Times revealed that the US government makes news reports favourable to its policies which are then carried on normal channels and presented as if they were the broadcast company's own reports.
There are many other such authors, some of whom I have discussed in my column, "All News is Lies". But perhaps the most relevant to today's discussion is Roger Mucchielli's book, Subversion, published in French in 1971, which shows how disinformation had moved from being an auxiliary tactic in war to a principal one. The strategy had developed so far, he:hat the goal was now to conquer a state without even attacking physically, especially through the use of agents of influence inside it. This is essentially what Robert Kaplan proposed and discussed in his essay for The Atlantic Monthly in July/August 2003, "Supremacy by Stealth." One of the most sinister theoreticians of the New World Order and the American empire, Robert Kaplan, explicitly advocates the use of immoral and illegal power to promote US control of the whole world. His essay deals with the use of covert operations, military power, dirty tricks, black propaganda, hidden influence and control, opinion-forming and other things like political assassination, all subject to his overall call for "a pagan ethic," as the means to ensuring American domination.
The other key point about Mucchielli is that he was one of the first theoreticians of the use of bogus non-governmental organisations – or "front organisations" as they used to be known – for effecting internal political change in another state. Like Malaparte and Trotsky, Mucchielli also understood that it was not "objective" circumstances which determined the success or failure of a revolution, but instead the perception created of those circumstances by disinformation. He also understood that historical revolutions, which invariably presented themselves as the product of mass movements, were in fact the work of a tiny number of highly organised conspirators. In fact, again like Trotsky, Mucchielli emphasised that the silent majority must be rigorously excluded from the mechanics of political change, precisely because coups d'état are the work of the few and not the many.
Public opinion was the "forum" in which subversion was practised, and Mucchielli showed the different ways in which the mass media could be used to create a collective psychosis. Psychological factors were extremely important in this regard, he:specially in the pursuit of important strategies such as the demoralisation of a society. The enemy must be made to lose confidence in the rightness of his own cause, while all effort must be made to convince him that his adversary is invincible.
The role of the military One final historical point before we move onto a discussion of the present: the role of the military in conducting covert operations and influencing political change. This is something which some contemporary analysts are happy to admit is deployed today: Robert Kaplan writes approvingly of how the American military is and should be used to "promote democracy." Kaplan says deliciously that a phone call from a US general is often a better way of promoting political change in a third country than a phone call from the local US ambassador. And he approvingly quotes an Army Special Operations officer saying, "Whoever the President of Kenya is, the same group of guys run their special forces and the President's bodyguards. We've trained them. That translates into diplomatic leverage."
The historical background to this has recently been discussed by a Swiss academic, Daniele Ganser, in his book, Nato's Secret Army. His account begins with the admission made on 3rd August 1990 by Giulio Andreotti, the then Italian Prime Minister, that a secret army had existed in his country since the end of the Second World War, known as "Gladio"; that it had been created by the CIA and MI6; and that it was coordinated by the unorthodox warfare section of NATO.
He thereby confirmed one of the most long-running rumours in post-war Italy. Many people, including investigating magistrates, had long suspected that Gladio was not only party of a network of secret armies created by the Americans across Western Europe to fight in the resistance to a putative Soviet occupation, but also that these networks had become involved in influencing the outcome of elections, even to the extent of forming sinister alliances with terrorist organisations. Italy was a particular target because the Communist Party was so strong there.
Originally, this secret army was constructed with the aim of providing for the eventuality of an invasion. But it seems that they soon moved to covert operations aimed at influencing the political process itself, in the absence of an invasion. There is ample evidence that the Americans did indeed interfere massively, especially in Italian elections, in order to prevent the PCI from ever winning power. Tens of billions of dollars were funded to the Italian Christian Democrats by the US for this very reason.
Ganser even argues that there is evidence that Gladio cells carried out terrorist attacks in order to blame Communists, and to frighten the population into demanding extra state powers to "protect" them from terrorism. Ganser quotes the man convicted of planting one of these bombs, Vincenzo Vinciguerra, who duly explained the nature of the network of which he was a foot soldier. He:at it was part of a strategy "to destabilise in order to stabilise."
"You had to attack civilians, the people, women, children, innocent people, unknown people far removed from any political game. The reason was quite simple. They were supposed to force these people, the Italian public, to turn to the state to ask for greater security. This is the political logic which remains behind all the massacres and the bombings which remain unpunished, because the state cannot convict itself or declare itself responsible for what happened."
There is an obvious relevance to the conspiracy theories swirling around 9/11. Ganser presents a host of good evidence that this is indeed what Gladio did, and his arguments shed light on the intriguing possibility that there might also have been an alliance with extreme left-wing groups like the Red Brigades. After all, when Aldo Moro was kidnapped, shortly after which he was assassinated, he was physically on the way to the Italian parliament to present a programme for a coalition government between the Socialists and the Communists – precisely the thing the Americans were determined to prevent.
Today's revolutionary tacticians
These historical works help us to understand what is going on today. My colleagues and I from the British Helsinki Human Rights Group have personally witnessed how the same techniques are used today.
The main tactics were perfected in Latin America during the 1970s and 1980s. Indeed, many of the operatives of regime change under Ronald Reagan and George Bush Sr. have happily plied their trade in the former Soviet bloc under Bill Clinton and George Bush Jr. For instance, General Manuel Noriega reports in his memoirs that the two CIA-State Department operatives who were sent to negotiate and then engineer his downfall from power in Panama in 1989 were called William Walker and Michael Kozak: William Walker resurfaced in Kosovo in January 1999 when, as head of the Kosovo Verification Mission, he oversaw the artificial creation of a bogus atrocity which proved to be the casus belli for the Kosovo war, while Michael Kozak became US ambassador to Belarus, where in 2001 he mounted "Operation White Stork" designed to overthrow the incumbent president, Alexander Lukashenko. During an exchange of letters to The Guardian in 2001, Kozak brazenly admitted that he was doing in Belarus exactly what he had been doing in Nicaragua and Panama, namely "promoting democracy."
There are essentially three branches to the modern technique of a coup d'état. They are non-governmental organisations, control of the media, and covert operatives. Their activities are effectively interchangeable so I will not deal with them separately.
Serbia 2000 The overthrow of Slobodan Miloševic was obviously not the first time the West used covert influence to effect regime change. The overthrow of Sali Berisha in Albania in 1997 and of Vladimir Meciar in Slovakia in 1998 were heavily influenced by the West and, in the case of Berisha, an extremely violent uprising was presented as a spontaneous and welcome example of people power. I personally observed how the international community, and especially the Organisation for Security and Cooperation in Europe (OSCE), fiddled its election observation results in order to ensure political change. However, the overthrow of Slobodan Miloševic in Belgrade on 5th October 2000 is important because he is such a well-known figure, and because the "revolution" which unseated him involved a very ostentatious use of "people power."
The background to the putsch against Miloševic has been brilliantly described by Tim Marshall, a reporter for Sky TV. His account is valuable because he writes approvingly of the events he describes; it is also interesting because this journalist boasts of his extensive contacts with the secret services, especially those of Britain and America.
At every turn, Marshall seems to know who the main intelligence players are. His account is thick with references to "an MI6 officer in Priština," "sources in Yugoslav military intelligence," "a CIA man who was helping to put together the coup," an "officer in US naval intelligence," and so on. He quotes secret surveillance reports from the Serbian secret police; he knows who the Ministry of Defence desk officer is in London who draws up the strategy for getting rid of Miloševic; he knows that the British Foreign Secretary's telephone conversations are being listened to; he knows who are the Russian intelligence officers who accompany Yevgeni Primakov, the Russian prime minister, to Belgrade during the Nato bombing; he knows which rooms are bugged in the British embassy, and where the Yugoslav spies are who listen in to the diplomats' conversations; he knows that a staffer on the US House of Representatives International Relations Committee is, in fact, an officer in US naval intelligence; he seems to know that secret service decisions are often taken with the very minimal ministerial approval; he describes how the CIA physically escorted the KLA delegation from Kosovo to Paris for the pre-war talks at Rambouillet, where Nato issued Yugoslavia with an ultimatum it knew it could only reject; and he refers to "a British journalist" acting as a go-between between London and Belgrade for hugely important high-level secret negotiations, as people sought to betray one another as Miloševic's power collapsed. (My suspicion is that he may be talking about himself at this point.)
One of the themes which inadvertently runs through his book is that there is a thin dividing line between journalists and spooks. Early on in the book, Marshall refers casually to "the inevitable connections between officers, journalists and politicians," saying that people in all three categories "work in the same area." He then goes on jokingly to say that "a combination of 'spooks', 'journo's' and 'politicos', added to 'the people'" were what had caused the overthrow of Slobodan Miloševic. Marshall clings to the myth that "the people" were involved, but the rest of his book shows that in fact the overthrow of the Yugoslav president occurred only because of political strategies deliberately conceived in London and Washington to get rid of him.
Above all, Marshall makes it clear that, in 1998, the US State Department and intelligence agencies decided to use the Kosovo Liberation Army to get rid of Slobodan Miloševic. He quotes one source saying, "The US agenda was clear. When the time was right they were going to use the KLA to provide the solution to the political problem" – the "problem" being, as Marshall explains earlier, Miloševic's continued political survival. This meant supporting the KLA's terrorist secessionism, and later fighting a war against Yugoslavia on its side. Marshall quotes Mark Kirk, a US naval intelligence officer, saying that, "Eventually we opened up a huge operation against Miloševic, both secret and open." The secret part of the operation involved not only things like stuffing the various observer missions which were sent into Kosovo with officers from the British and American intelligence services, but also – crucially – giving military, technical, financial, logistical and political support to the KLA, which, as Marshall himself admits, "smuggled drugs, ran prostitution rackets and murdered civilians."
The strategy began in late 1998 when "a huge CIA mission (got) underway in Kosovo." President Miloševic had allowed the Kosovo Diplomatic Observer Mission to enter Kosovo to monitor the situation in the province. This ad hoc group was immediately stuffed with British and American intelligence agents and special forces – men from the CIA, US naval intelligence, the British SAS and something called "14th intelligence," a body within the British army which operates side by side with the SAS "to provide what is known as 'deep surveillance'." The immediate purpose of this operation was "Intelligence Preparation of Battlefield" – a modern version of what the Duke of Wellington used to do, riding up and down the battlefield to get the lie of the land before engaging the enemy. So as Marshall puts it, "Officially, the KDOM was run by the Organisation for Security and Cooperation in Europe … unofficially, the CIA ran (it) … The organisation was just packed with them … It was a CIA front." Many of the officers in fact worked for another CIA front, DynCorp, the Virginia-based company which employs mainly "members of US military elite units, or the CIA," as Marshall says. They used the KDOM, which later became the Kosovo Verification Mission, for espionage. Instead of doing the monitoring tasks assigned to them, officers would go off and use their global positioning devices to locate and identify targets which would be later bombed by Nato. Quite how the Yugoslavs could allow 2,000 highly trained secret service agents to roam around their territory is difficult to understand, especially since, as Marshall shows, they knew perfectly well what was going on.
The head of the Kosovo Verification Mission was William Walker, the man deputed to oust Manuel Noriega from power in Panama, and a former ambassador to El Salvador whose US-supported government ran death squads. Walker "discovered" the "massacre" at Racak in January 1999, the event which was used as a pretext for starting the process which led to the bombing which began on 24th March. There is much evidence to suggest that Racak was staged, and that the bodies found were in fact those of KLA fighters, not civilians as was alleged. What is certain is that Walker's role was so key that the country road in Kosovo which leads to Racak has now been renamed after him. Marshall writes that the date for the war – spring 1999 – was not only decided in late December 1998, but also that the date was communicated to the KLA at the time. This means that when the "massacre" occurred and when Madeleine Albright declared, "Spring has come early," she was behaving rather like Joseph Goebbels who, on hearing the news of the Reichstag fire in 1933, is supposed to have remarked, "What, already?"
At any rate, when the KVM was withdrawn on the eve of the Nato bombing, Marshall says that the CIA officers in it gave all their satellite phones and GPS equipment to the KLA. "The KLA were being trained by the Americans, partially equipped by them, and virtually given territory," Marshall writes – even though he, like all other reporters, helped propagate the myth of systematic Serb atrocities committed against a totally passive Albanian civilian population.
The war went ahead, of course, and Yugoslavia was ferociously bombed. But Miloševic stayed in power. So London and Washington started what Marshall happily calls "political warfare" to remove him. This involved giving very large sums of money, as well as technical, logistical and strategic support, and including arms, to various "democratic opposition" groups and "non-governmental organisations" in Serbia. The Americans were by then operating principally through the International Republican Institute (a branch of the National Endowment for Democracy), which had opened offices in neighbouring Hungary for the purpose of getting rid of Slobodan Miloševic. "It was agreed" at one of their meetings, Marshall explains, "that the ideological arguments of pro-democracy, civil rights and a humanitarian approach would be far more forceful if accompanied, if necessary, by large bags full of money." These, and much else besides, were duly shipped into Serbia through the diplomatic bags – in many cases of apparently neutral countries like Sweden who, by not participating formally in the NATO war, were able to maintain full embassies in Belgrade. As Marshall helpfully adds, "Bags of money had been brought in for years." Indeed they had. As he earlier explains, "independent" media outlets like the Radio Station B92 (who is Marshall's own publisher) were, in fact, very largely funded by the USA. Organisations controlled by George Soros also played a crucial role, as they were later to do, in 2003–4, in Georgia. The so-called "democrats" were, in reality, nothing but foreign agents – just as the Yugoslav government stolidly maintained at the time.
Marshall also explains something which is now a matter of public record that it was also the Americans who conceived the strategy of pushing forward one candidate, Vojislav Koštunica, to unite the opposition. Koštunica had the main advantage of being largely unknown by the general public. Marshall then describes how the strategy also involved a carefully planned coup d'état, which duly took place after the first round of the presidential elections. He shows in minute detail how the principal actors in what was presented on Western TV screens as a spontaneous uprising of "the people" were, in fact, a bunch of extremely violent and very heavily armed thugs under the command of the Mayor of the town of Cacak, Velimir Ilic. It was Ilic's 22 kilometre-long convoy carrying "weapons, paratroopers and a team of kick boxers" to the federal parliament building in Belgrade. As Marshall admits, the events of 5th October 2000 "looked more like a coup d'état" than the people's revolution of which the world's media so naïvely gushed at the time.
Georgia 2003 Many of the tactics perfected in Belgrade were used in Georgia in November 2003 to overthrow President Edward Shevardadze. The same allegations were made, and repeated ad nauseam, that the elections had been rigged. (In the Georgian case, they were parliamentary elections, in the Yugoslav case presidential.) Western media uncritically took up these allegations, which were made long before the actual voting took place. A propaganda war was unleashed against both presidents, in Shevardnadze's case after a long period in which he had been lionised as a great reformer and democrat. Both "revolutions" occurred after a similar "storming of the parliament," broadcast live on TV. Both transfers of power were brokered by the Russian minister, Igor Ivanov, who flew to Belgrade and Tbilisi to engineer the exit from power of the incumbent president. Last but not least, the US ambassador was the same man in both cases: Richard Miles.
The most visible similarity, however, came in the use of a student movement known as Otpor (Resistance) in Serbia and Kmara (It's enough!) in Georgia. Both movements had the same symbol, a black-on-white stencil of a clenched fist. Otpor trained people from Kmara, and both were supported by the US. And both organisations were ostensibly structured along communist lines – combining the appearance of a diffuse structure of autonomous cells with the reality of highly centralised Leninist discipline.
As in Georgia, the role played by US money and covert operations has been revealed – but only after the event. During the events, the television was full of wall-to-wall propaganda about how "the people" rose up against Shevardnadze. All images which counteracted the optimistic view were suppressed, or glossed over, such as the fact that the "march on Tbilisi" led by Mihkail Saakashvili started off in Gori, Stalin's birthplace, beneath a statue of the former Soviet tyrant who remains a hero to many Georgians. The media was equally unconcerned when the new president, Saakashvili, was confirmed in office by elections which awarded him the Stalinist score of 96%.
Ukraine 2004 In the case of Ukraine, we observe the same combination of work by Western-backed non-governmental organisations, the media and the secret services. The non-governmental organisations played a huge role in de-legitimising the elections before they occurred. Allegations of widespread fraud were constantly repeated. In other words, the street protests which broke out after the second round, which Yanukovich won, were based on allegations which had been flying around before the beginning of the first round. The main NGO behind these allegations, the Committee of Ukrainian Voters, receives not one penny from Ukrainian voters, being instead fully funded by Western governments. Its office was decorated with pictures of Madeleine Albright and indeed the National Democratic Institute was one of its main affiliates. It pumped out constant propaganda against Yanukovich.
During the events themselves, I was able to document some of the propaganda abuses. They involved mainly the endless repetition of electoral fraud practised by the government; the constant cover-up of fraud practised by the opposition; the frenetic selling of Viktor Yushchenko, one of the most boring men in the world, as a charismatic politician; and the ridiculously unlikely story that he had been deliberately poisoned by his enemies. (No prosecutions have been brought to date on this.) The fullest account of the propaganda and fraud is given by the British Helsinki Human Rights Group's report, "Ukraine' Clockwork Orange Revolution." An interesting explanation of the role played by the secret services was also given in The New York Times by C. J. Chivers who explained that the Ukrainian KGB had been working for Yushchenko all along – in collaboration with the Americans of course. Other important articles on the same subject include Jonathan Mowat's "The New Gladio in Action: Washington's New World Order 'Democratization' Template," which details how military doctrine has been adapted to effect political change, and how various instruments, from psychology to bogus opinion polls, are used in it. Mowat is particularly interesting on the theories of Dr. Peter Ackermann, the author of Strategic Non-Violent Conflict (Praeger, 1994) and of a speech entitled "Between Hard and Soft Power: the Rise of Civilian-Based Struggle and Democratic Change," delivered at the State Department in June 2004. Mowat is also excellent on the psychology of crowds and its use in these putsches: he draws attention to the role of "swarming adolescents" and "rebellious hysteria" and traces the origins of the use of this for political purposes to the Tavistock Institute in the 1960s: that institute was created by the British Army as its psychological warfare arm after World War I and its illustrious alumni include Dr. David Owen, the former British Foreign Secretary and Dr. Radovan Karadžic, the former President of the Bosnian Serb Republic. Mowat recounts how the ideas formulated there by Fred Emery were taken up by one Dr. Howard Perlmutter, a professor of "Social Architecture'' at the Wharton School, and a follower of Dr. Emery, (who) stressed that "rock video in Katmandu," was an appropriate image of how states with traditional cultures could be destabilized, thereby creating the possibility of a "global civilization." There are two requirements for such a transformation, he added, "building internationally committed networks of international and locally committed organizations,'' and "creating global events" through "the transformation of a local event into one having virtually instantaneous international implications through mass-media.
Conclusion None of this is conspiracy theory – it is conspiracy fact. The United States considers as a matter of official policy that the promotion of democracy is an important element of its overall national security strategy. Large sections of the State Department, the CIA, para-governmental agencies like the National Endowment for Democracy, and government-funded NGOs like the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace, which publishes several works on "democracy promotion." All these operations have one thing in common: they involve the interference, sometimes violent, of Western powers, especially the US, in the political processes of other states, and that interference is very often used to promote the quintessential revolutionary goal, regime change.
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That "spontaneous alchemy of mass networking" nonsense is – much like the "Arab Spring" itself – predicated on a process similar to the Power of Positive Thinking; the concentrated focus of the media insists it is a kind of modern magic against which there is no defense, so it must be so. In fact there is a good deal of old-fashioned pick-and-shovel work going on, OTPOR-style community organizing, training in networking and using social media to spread dissent, how to get noticed by the authorities and how to rally people to your cause, and how to get arrested in a manner that will make you a martyr and make the authorities look like brutes for enforcing the law. It may even be OTPOR themselves, although I doubt it. The techniques are widely enough known now that it could be any one of a field of democracy advocacy groups.
This would all be lovely if, as I've:fore, the aim at bottom was to make Russia a better country, with freedom to do as you please and great salaries and generous pensions and human rights out the wazoo. It isn't – it's dangling something shiny in front of the population so it will overthrow its government, thus doing the west's heavy lifting for it. I wouldn't go so far as to suggest nobody would realize any benefits at all if revolution removed the government and the west managed to install a toady government. Failing to deliver on any of the promises would only bring more revolution, only this time directed against the western surrogates. But it would be just enough to keep the people quiet, and no more, and much of it would be cheap gratifications that cost little but look flashy.
It's a pity to have to mistrust the west's motives, since I am a westerner myself, but repeated examples suggest the west cannot be satisfied with simply establishing its version of democracy, investing and making money. Nobody expects those who risk much to do it for free. But no; it has to control everything, and make crazy money. It doesn't have to do it directly – the west has long wanted to wrest control of global energy from OPEC, and it is slowly but surely tightening its grip on the world's energy supplies; initiating revolutions, throwing out the government and getting its own industries in on the ground floor. Those deposed by "Twitter Revolutions" tend to be nationalists who retained tight state control of national energy resources, and those who are empowered tend to take power owing the west a debt of gratitude for their position. Western global giants begin to control more and more of the world's resources, and anyone who buys that "Putin uses energy as coercion" argument and thinks the west would not do the same if it were in control is optimistic indeed.
It's unlikely to work in Russia; it manifestly would never have worked in Libya without military intervention, since the cookie-cutter rebels numbered considerably less than those involved in the Moscow demonstrations and were losing badly when NATO entered the picture and began flying combat missions for al Qaeda. But it would be wise to note how the west was able to take a tiny group of radicals, talk them up as mainstream and steadily build the narrative in the western press until it became reality.
Democracy as an ideal is fabulous. In practice it tends to lose some of its lustre. The USA is the world's model democracy, Land of the Free. It has a two-party system (theoretically) with a strong opposition. Most of you have noticed the current government is powerless, and couldn't get a school lunch program passed in today's climate of lockstep opposition.
Is that what Russian liberals want, with their cacophony about political diversity? A myriad of political parties all agitating against anything getting done until attention is paid to their own pet projects and government funding directed to their constituents on a preferential basis? The effect that will have is to weaken a strong government until it can't get anything done, and it'll be voted out at the first opportunity. Problem solved
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December 11, 2011 | Pakalert Press
This week, John McCain removed a post on his twitter feed that read, "Dear Vlad, The #ArabSpring is coming to a neighborhood near you". McCain's blatant provocation of Russian Prime Minister Vladimir Putin appeared as a stark admission of US geopolitical meddling in both the Arab World and Russia, and revealed the arrogance with which the US/NATO establishment has pursued its policy of 'Color Revolution' directed towards the member-states and strategic allies of the Shanghai Cooperation Organization (SCO).
Foreshadowing this latest instigation by McCain was a comment made in mid-February of this year in an interview with CBS's Face the Nation, in which McCain stated, "These winds of change that are blowing, I think I would be a little less cocky in the Kremlin with my KGB cronies today if I were [Russian Prime Minister] Vladimir Putin. I would be a little less secure in the seaside resort that [Chinese] President Hu and a few men who govern and decide the fate of 1.3 billion people."
This statement was made in the context of the ongoing unrest across the Arab World at the height of hysteria in the West over the so called "Arab Spring". Absent in this discussion within the Western corporate media was the intimate involvement of US and NATO-backed NGOs in organizing and facilitating the pro-democracy protests. In fact, McCain himself chaired one of the NGOs credited as having helped "nurture the Arab uprisings". These NGOs would play the role of attempting to destabilize the entire region, with disastrous results for the people on the ground.
NGO's and Color Revolution
While the protesters soaked in the limelight of media attention, US and NATO-backed NGOs lurked in the background having been trained in the techniques of 'Color Revolution', an ongoing geopolitical phenomena which has already taken hold in former Soviet and Warsaw Pact satellites like Serbia, Ukraine, and Georgia. The techniques of Color Revolution were developed in the 1980s as a means to employ "non-violence as a form of warfare". The primary NGOs which developed these techniques were Gene Sharp's Albert Einstein Institute, State Department auxiliaries Freedom House and The National Endowment for Democracy (NED), as well as, various foundations associated with billionaire financier George Soros.
Observers of Color Revolutions in the middle part of the decade have identified a common theme among the techniques employed by these NGOs to include: the presence of 'flash mobs' of 'swarming' adolescents linked together by technologies such as SMS or Twitter, sloganeering and branding using colors such as Ukraine's 'Orange Revolution' and the more recent failed 'Green Revolution' in Tehran, as well as, the presence of telegenic demagogues, backed by Western influence, to steer the movement, such as Georgia's Mikheil Saakashvili and Egypt's Mohammad ElBaradei. In many ways, the Arab Spring exhibited the use of these techniques, and are documented to have received training from NGOs affiliated with the proliferation of Color Revolution.
Beginning in January of this year with the toppling of Ben Ali and Mubarak, Color Revolution did for Washington's Greater Middle East Initiative, what Bush's occupations could not: destabilize the region to embrace the potential for NATO and IMF hegemony over sovereign national economies. However, by mid-summer, the obstinacy of Gaddafi's Jamahariya had slowed the procession of Color Revolution across the Arab World to an abortive state. It look 8 months of violence and nearly 100,000 civilian casualties to install the Libyan rebel National Transitional Counicl (NTC), who could not have achieved victory without NATO carpet bombings under the absurd UN mandate of the "Right to Protect". However, with the fall of Tripoli and subsequent extrajudicial lynching of Gaddafi this October, new life was given to Color Revolution destabilization and higher stakes were lain on the geopolitical table.
Obama's 'Grand Chessboard': Escalations with Syria, Iran, and Pakistan
The ascendancy of the Obama Administration has been marked by a veritable policy shift away from the brutal aggression of the Neoconservatives towards a "soft power" faction in American imperial circles, signified by figures like Joseph Nye and Zbigneiw Brzezinski. While the inner-workings of this policy shift tend more towards subtleties and deception, its intentions may indeed be more sinister. While the Neoconsertative Weltanschauung centered its focus on Tel-Aviv, the faction represented by Obama has its sights on a more formidable opponent in the Shanghai Cooperation Organization (SCO), namely, the rising powers of Russia and China.
Brzezinski's 1998 thesis, The Grand Chessboard and his more recent Second Chance, are in many ways representative of the implicit goals of the Obama regime: Balkanization of the Eurasian peninsula and a heightened geopolitical escalation with the SCO and its strategic allies. Given this context, we see the geopolitical stakes of NATO adventurism in Libya to be quite tame compared to the looming intervention in Syria. In Libya, the geopolitical stakes were largely afrocentric, as Gaddafi had positioned himself as a leading African statesman, championing development and aid of neighboring Mali, Chad, and Niger, and working to secure African unity through his ambitious plan for a Pan-African "Gold Dinar" currency.
In Syria, we see the stakes as much larger. Not only does an attack on Syria lead strait to Tehran, and its proxy army in Hezbollah, it also signifies a direct assault on the SCO, in particular Russia. Syria has for many years been of strategic importance to Russia, in that it is home to one of Russia's primary warm-water naval bases, located in Tartus on the Mediterranean coast. The recent announcement of the Arab League's sanctions on Syria, lead primarily by the NATO puppet states of the United Arab Emirates and Saudi Arabia, has prompted a move on the part of Russia to send warships to Syria, as it aims strengthen its naval presence in the Mediterranean.
Meanwhile, the US has put new pressures on SCO ally Iran, beginning in October with the announcement of the laughably ridiculous 'Iran assassination plot', which has been largely debunked even in the sphere of mainstream corporate media. On the heels release of the latest IAEA report, Iran has seen numerous covert attacks on its military installations and nuclear facilities. For years, the US has funded and armed separatist and terrorist factions within Iran, who continue to destabilize Iran's border regions around Afghanistan and Pakistan.
Yet, in the midst of these ground-shaking escalations to the west of NATO's decade-long occupation of Afghanistan, last week's attack on a Pakistani military base, killing 24 Pakistani soldiers, has thrown the logistical feasibility of a continued NATO presence in the region into doubt. This egregious violation of long standing US-Pakistani relations prompted the head of the Pakistani Military, General Kayani, to force the closure of a US/NATO drone base in Balochistan, and a revision of the Pakistani rules of engagement to order all commanders to respond with force to any attack within the Pakastani national borders.
The attack puts the NATO mission into jeopardy, as Russia has come to the aid of its fellow SCO partner in threatening to cut vital NATO supply lines to Afghanistan. This upsurge in tensions between the US and Pakistan is a dangerous game for the West, as China has been warning since May of this year that, "any attack on Pakistan would be construed as an attack on China". This has prompted some American commentators to speculate on the rise of a new Cold War with China, as the US ramps up its strategic naval presence in the South China Sea and the Straits of Malacca.
Russia's Color Revolution
McCain's provocative tweet, which not so subtlety indicated a US role in recent Russian protests regarding its elections, comes at a crucial time for US-Russian relations as the weak and ineffectual President Dmitry Medvedev's fading from power signals a reemergence of Putin on the world stage. Putin's resurgence has also signaled a shift in geopolitical posturing for the Russians as they move away from Medvedev's "reset" with Obama and the West, towards a more defensive position, as demonstrated by Russia's recent veto of sanctions on Syria in the UN Security Council. Last week, the US's insistence on moving foward with its Ballistic Missile Defense Sheild (BMD) prompted Russia to threaten the deployment of missiles along its boarders with Turkey and Poland. With good reason, Russia has feared that completion of the BMD, which could also be used offensively, and would give the US and NATO a thermo-nuclear first strike capability which would threaten the existence of the Russian Federation. Russia is not naive about the West's intentions for dominance over its geopolitical sphere as NATO encroachment and encirclement of Russia remains a key strategic initiative of the West.
In 2008, as the Neoconservatives were fading from power in Washington, the US attempted to launch a proxy war using its newly installed puppet and beneficiary of the "Roses Revolution", Georgian President Mikheil Saakashvili in a bid to occupy disputed territory in South Ossetia. Putin's restraint in that blatant provocation adverted the potential for a wider war with NATO. Today, we cannot expect Putin to be so forgiving, as the US is now clearly using NGOs to destabilize his country in the wake of its elections. Central to this US meddling in Russian electoral politics is the organization Golos, which masquerades as an election monitoring organization, while being heavily funded by the promulgators of Color Revolution, the National Endowment for Democracy. Putin has now placed the blame on Hillary Clintons doorstep, calling the recent outbreak of protests and the Russian government's subsequent response, "defense from interference from abroad". These new direct confrontations with Russia should serve as a grim harbinger of events to follow, as the West, in the throws of an economic breakdown crisis, becomes increasingly desperate. Expect the likelihood for greater and more violent provocations to become exponentially greater in the near future.
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The ascendancy of the Obama Administration has been marked by a veritable policy shift away from the brutal aggression of the Neoconservatives towards a "soft power" faction in American imperial circles, signified by figures like Joseph Nye and Zbigneiw Brzezinski. While the inner-workings of this policy shift tend more towards subtleties and deception, its intentions may indeed be more sinister. While the Neoconsertative Weltanschauung centered its focus on Tel-Aviv, the faction represented by Obama has its sights on a more formidable opponent in the Shanghai Cooperation Organization (SCO), namely, the rising powers of Russia and China.
Brzezinski's 1998 thesis, The Grand Chessboard and his more recent Second Chance, are in many ways representative of the implicit goals of the Obama regime: Balkanization of the Eurasian peninsula and a heightened geopolitical escalation with the SCO and it's strategic allies. Given this context, we see the geopolitical stakes of NATO adventurism in Libya to be quite tame compared to the looming intervention in Syria. In Libya, the geopolitical stakes were largely afrocentric, as Gaddafi had positioned himself as a leading African statesman, championing development and aid of neighboring Mali, Chad, and Niger, and working to secure African unity through his ambitious plan for a Pan-African "Gold Dinar" currency.
In Syria, we see the stakes as much larger. Not only does an attack on Syria lead strait to Tehran, and its proxy army in Hezbollah, it also signifies a direct assault on the SCO, in particular Russia. Syria has for many years been of strategic importance to Russia, in that it is home to one of Russia's primary warm-water naval bases, located in Tartus on the Mediterranean coast. The recent announcement of the Arab League's sanctions on Syria, lead primarily by the NATO puppet states of the United Arab Emirates and Saudi Arabia, has prompted a move on the part of Russia to send warships to Syria, as it aims strengthen its naval presence in the Mediterranean.
Meanwhile, the US has put new pressures on SCO ally Iran, beginning in October with the announcement of the laughably ridiculous 'Iran assassination plot', which has been largely debunked even in the sphere of mainstream corporate media. On the heels release of the latest IAEA report, Iran has seen numerous covert attacks on its military installations and nuclear facilities. For years, the US has funded and armed separatist and terrorist factions within Iran, who continue to destabilize Iran's border regions around Afghanistan and Pakistan.
Yet, in the midst of these ground-shaking escalations to the west of NATO's decade long occupation of Afghanistan, last week's attack on a Pakistani military base, killing 24 Pakistani soldiers, has thrown the logistical feasibility of a continued NATO presence in the region into doubt. This egregious violation of long standing US-Pakistani relations prompted the head of the Pakistani Military, General Kayani, to force the closure of a US/NATO drone base in Balochistan, and a revision of the Pakistani rules of engagement to order all commanders to respond with force to any attack within the Pakastani national borders.
The attack puts the NATO mission into jeopardy, as Russia has come to the aid of its fellow SCO partner in threatening to cut vital NATO supply lines to Afghanistan. This upsurge in tensions between the US and Pakistan is a dangerous game for the West, as China has been warning since May of this year that, "any attack on Pakistan would be construed as an attack on China". This has prompted some American commentators to speculate on the rise of a new Cold War with China, as the US ramps up its strategic naval presence in the South China Sea and the Straits of Malacca.
Russia's Color Revolution
McCain's provocative tweet, which not so subtlety indicated a US role in recent Russian protests regarding its elections, comes at a crucial time for US-Russian relations as the weak and ineffectual President Dmitry Medvedev's fading from power signals a reemergence of Putin on the world stage.
Putin's resurgence has also signaled a shift in geopolitical posturing for the Russians as they move away from Medvedev's "reset" with Obama and the West, towards a more defensive position, as demonstrated by Russia's recent veto of sanctions on Syria in the UN Security Council. Last week, the US's insistence on moving foward with its Ballistic Missile Defense Sheild (BMD) prompted Russia to threaten the deployment of missiles along its boarders with Turkey and Poland.
With good reason, Russia has feared that completion of the BMD, which could also be used offensively, and would give the US and NATO a thermo-nuclear first strike capability which would threaten the existence of the Russian Federation. Russia is not naive about the West's intentions for dominance over its geopolitical sphere as NATO encroachment and encirclement of Russia remains a key strategic initiative of the West.
In 2008, as the Neoconservatives were fading from power in Washington, the US attempted to launch a proxy war using its newly installed puppet and beneficiary of the "Roses Revolution", Georgian President Mikheil Saakashvili in a bid to occupy disputed territory in South Ossetia. Putin's restraint in that blatant provocation adverted the potential for a wider war with NATO. Today, we cannot expect Putin to be so forgiving, as the US is now clearly using NGOs to destabilize his country in the wake of its elections. Central to this US meddling in Russian electoral politics is the organization Golos, which masquerades as an election monitoring organization, while being heavily funded by the promulgators of Color Revolution, the National Endowment for Democracy.
Putin has now placed the blame on Hillary Clintons doorstep, calling the recent outbreak of protests and the Russian government's subsequent response, "defense from interference from abroad". These new direct confrontations with Russia should serve as a grim harbinger of events to follow, as the West, in the throws of an economic breakdown crisis, becomes increasingly desperate. Expect the likelihood for greater and more violent provocations to become exponentially greater in the near future.
Morgan D. Rose is a writer, researcher, and political activist and holds degrees in History and Political Science. Rose
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December 2, 2011 | Lew Rockwell
Reaction in the Western press to reports that Russian authorities have investigated the activities of the Russian NGO "Golos, the Regional Civic Organization in Defense of Democratic Rights and Liberties," was predictable: Putin was "trying to gag election monitors" and, as expected, we read that the "US condemns Russia's 'harassment' of monitor group".
The Russian electoral authorities found that Golos had violated Russia's election laws by publishing polls in the "quiet period" immediately preceding parliamentary elections and fined the organization just under $1,000 for the violation. Russian lawmakers have also accused Golos and several other political opposition friendly NGOs of receiving funding from foreign sources for their political activities, which would be against Russian law (as foreign funding of US elections would be against US law).
The organization, we read, was "the country's main non-government election watchdog," so of course it having been "gagged" on the eve of parliamentary elections was ominous and troubling to the Western press. US-regime friendly (and George Soros-funded) Human Rights Watch complained that Golos was the "victim of a smear campaign."
Major Western media outlets once again trotted out the old "Russia just cannot help its authoritarian tendencies" reporting on the event, with the Reuters report adding that "The complaint echoed Vladimir Putin's speech on Sunday at his United Russia party congress, where he accused foreigners of funding his political opponents in what reminded some of the anti-Western rhetoric that marked his 2000-08 presidency."
But what of the claims by politicians and voters' rights groups that foreign funded NGOs were inciting another "Orange Revolution"in Russia?
A perusal of Golos's own website (Google's translation features helps non-Russian speakers) lists its foreign partners being the US "regime change" specialists National Endowment for Democracy (NED) and National Democratic Institute (NDI), two of the major US sponsors of the Orange Revolution in Ukraine and the Rose Revolution in Georgia, among other adventures.
USAID is also listed as a "partner" organization to Golos, with whom it "works to decrease the number of violations, especially administrative abuses, in election campaigns." Apparently violations committed by the organizations it funds are OK, however. To make an omelet, NGOs must break a few eggs.
The National Endowment for Democracy's own website advertises openly that it provided "independent" NGO Golos with a generous grant in the 2010–2011 cycle to:
…carry out a detailed analysis of the autumn 2010 and spring 2011 election cycles in Russia, which will include press monitoring, monitoring of political agitation, activity of electoral commissions, and other aspects of the application of electoral legislation in the long-term run-up to the elections. GOLOS will hold local and national press conferences and publish reports on its findings, as well as provide detailed methodological advice to its monitors and other monitoring agencies.
Not to be outdone, the US government-funded National Democratic Institute proudly admits that "since 2000, NDI has worked with GOLOS…[to] provide…ongoing consultation and training for the organization's regional partners."
Are Russians "paranoid" to be wary of US government funding of domestic Russian NGOs through its most notorious "regime change" and "color revolution" specialists? Would Americans be similarly "paranoid" if they found out that a Russian or Chinese government-funded "NGO" with a track record of internal subversion and fomenting revolutions was funding political organizations in the United States? Why is it OK if the US does it to others, but outrageous and threatening if it is done to us?
Destroying the concept of national sovereignty in the rest of the world will come back to haunt the United States. Interventionism is a virus that we cannot hope to spread worldwide yet quarantine just outside our own shores.
UPDATE: Could US criticisms of Russia on the eve of elections somehow be related to Russia's surprisingly firm stance in favor of its ally Syria as NATO and its corrupt puppets in the Arab League prepare a Libya-style "liberation"?
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Dec 14, 2011 | Oriental Review
Irina LEBEDEVA (USA)The "global" protest action for "just Russian elections" set for December 10 by its coordinators has started to encompass the European capitals and, as should be expected, the major US cities. I'm writing these lines from Boston. I can see here the "Fair vote" pages on the Facebook full of things like: "Anybody we have in Holland?…Will have to go there myself". .."What about San Francisco?…Great! You really can get one hundred men joining there? Superb!" All remarks saying the same thing. And these people, who get their knowledge about Russia from Internet, rush to join "the fight against injustice".
The cosmopolitan opposition has launched a determined attack these days hoping to get back the 1990s. The notorious RTVI of Gusinsky, the most powerful US Russian language TV outlet spreading the propaganda of the "Echo of Moscow" radio station and the Russophobia ideologists of Washington's establishment, already declared its victory on December 9. Vladmir Kara-Murza, junior, US Congress RTVI permanent correspondent, reported from the American Enterprise Institute (a major Republican strategic center) imposing the idea of the "beginning of the Putin's time end". The news anchor reported smiling that "As the leading US experts see it the Putin's epoch is coming to the end". One could see the serious expressions on the faces of Andrew Kuchins, Leon Aron, Anders Aslund predicting in various ways the 'end of dictator" and strongly suggesting the idea of the end of patience for the dictator's rule. The prime time news presented a big show of "the leaders of thousands of protesters" presenting their ultimatum like programs. Michael Schneider, one of such leaders representing "the Solidarity", made public the programme of the "protesters": cancellation of the December 4 election results, new elections in March, registration of the opposition parties, setting free the political prisoners, resignation of Vladimir Churov, head of Central Election Committee, no power to "the party of crooks and thieves".
The liberal opposition has no chance to play any significant role in the Russia's political life without strong Washington's financial support. So it laid open its marks and crap cards. The present hysteria concerning the Russian Duma elections is a test or a way to prepare ground for banning Putin from the presidential elections. The aim is to destabilize the situation in the country and make it impossible for the elections to take place.
Many US outlets had the editorials headlines presenting the Putin's rebuff to Mrs. Clinton's words in straight negative light. December 8 Putin met the all-Russian National Front representatives. Talking about the Russian post elections situation he stated that "the internal process is influenced on orders from someone abroad. And the US State Secretary has already given a signal to those in Russia who is supposed to hear it. The country must defend its sovereignty". Putin suggested "to toughen responsibility of those who carry out the orders coming from other states".
The New York Times has recently published an interview with the old man Gene Sharp, father of "colour revolutions", who described in each and every detail his ways to implement state coups d'etat in the countries of the post Soviet space.
A "colour revolution" is a separate case of geopolitical world redivision where an inside putsch masked under a democratic movement is the key component.
Well known British researcher Jonathan Mowat gave the Americans their due in the headlines of his work "Coup d'etat in Disguise: Washington's "Democratization" Template". A provocation is to take place by the time of elections in presence of "foreign observers" and "exit polls". Angry young people are there equipped with up to date communication devices, blogs and websites provide real time connections to make precise the way operational activities are conducted. The "swarm" may be regrouped any time and global media makes possible the internationalization of any event, no matter how insignificant it may be. The Washington's pattern is a planned and financed from outside attack against the institutes of another state…
The pattern is not easy to defend from – it must be cramped in a tough, uncompromised way!
The Fox news channel gets people scared of growing Russian protests showing them the pictures of Greek anarchists armed with Molotov cocktails.
The same way information distortions have already taken place in Libya. Now it takes place in Syria – is Russia a part of the scenario?
The contemporary political jargon calls such imitations "cognitive political technologies", a "memetic weapon". There are many books devoted to the subject in the West, the whole schools function to teach it. The gist of the phenomenon is psychic contagion, spreading the "virus" information in a special way. The memes – units of such information are introduced into certain environment (the very same social net) and get activated according to the principle of self-induction, instilling certain state of mind – anger, enthusiasm, breakdown etc.
"The cognitive capture" is a thing in focus in the USA. Cass Sunstein, the Administrator of the White House office of Information and Regulatory affairs in the Obama administration has a reputation of being a convinced advocate of cognitivism. New terminology – old ideas.
In the USA they thoroughly study the Russian Internet segment in the cognitive context, analyzing the views of potential friends or foes. The very same Cass Sunstein even wrote a research work about the necessity of overt and covert intervention into the social nets discussions to achieve the "cognitive dissonance" defined goals.
Political scholar Valery Korovin explained what "cognitive dissonance" is in plain language using "Navalny project" as an example.
- Navalny introduces his Internet audience to a simple formula: "United Russia is a party of crooks and thieves". It's repeated by thousands of Internet social nets users. A man distant from politics encounters this formula everywhere on Internet pages, comics, caricatures – step by step he gets convinced its everyone's view. A person gets accustomed to it, sees it as an obvious thing, common perception. There may be really serious consequences of such conviction.
When someone sees this kind of Memes in thousands of blogs, – it becomes a factor influencing the powers that be. Making election results public brings population into "cognitive dissonance" condition. All are convinced that "the party of crooks and thieves" is seen as such be everyone and it just cannot get so many votes. Korovin says it's a dissonance, "As the memes authors see it, the population is provoked to get to the streets in protest. Afterward the scenario is well known and runs smoothly, it's a technical matter".
One should take notice the technique gets ample financial support rendered to the memes human rights defenders by the West. Valery Korovin is right saying their activities are coordinated by "specially trained people". It's not a fact they all belong to the State Department though no doubt that's where the leading "moderators" come from. The social nets of the Russian Federation as well as other countries get engaged from afar and are literally bought (by providing grants for instance).
Here is an example. The protests are in the focus of the "International network" website of a youth human rights movement.
- The money comes from US and European funds. The website offers detailed information on "global geography" of the ongoing meme-protest action. There is an instruction describing ways to defend oneself from police, a reference to the Garry Kasparov's website. One can get lost in networks but they will inevitably lead you to "The Other Russia" scum and ubiquitous "memorials" hidden by ominous signs like "strategic control" or giving reference to faraway places like headquarters in Voronezh, for instance. No wonder, the Washington's "regional committee" sends hundreds of thousands of dollars exactly to Voronezh through the MacArthur Foundation. It's in this city where "the falsification" of the elections is especially widely spread. Provocations, conspiracies, "false flag operations" to discredit the opponent – these are routine activities of the US employers of the human rights defenders.
The International network website says there is a number of structures created destined to provide information and resource support of the network users. There is an impression that the number of this humanoid like network members is a legion and the mission of the legion is of outstanding importance. One of these human rights defending structures is the Committee Against Torture. It's head is a well known person who has recently received an award in one of world capitals. The topic of "Russian torture chambers" will be purposefully kept in focus in connection with the planned protests against elections fraud. The other network member is also one of those who receive US grants – the website "Caucasian Knot", the one that describes horrible things taking place in the Russian "torture chambers".
So the covert state coup d'etat process is launched. It will have to be dealt with corresponding resoluteness and toughness
* * *
It's long ago the scenarios of the "unthinkable" have become normal practice of the "Western reforms". As one of "justice supporters" told some time ago the Gusinsky TV a "peaceful opposition" that hasn't broken a single window, will be joined by a sniper when the time is propitious. The sniper will kill someone, better be it a child or a juvenile (this way the protest will follow the pattern), – and an extremely destabilizing chain of events will be self-induced.
No way one can enumerate the whole plethora of meme – non state actors, expert entities, "independent" publications, radio stations, religious issues, human rights champions, innumerous network outlets in just one article. But what unites them all is getting wide financial support for going to great length to undermine Russia's sovereignty.
No way a compromise is possible with this kind of opposition! Even Gene Sharp agrees there are things beyond compromise. Here the maitre of "colour revolutions" finds it expedient to prepare a substitution, a meme -simulacrum. The main rule of the state overthrows is that those who get involved in it should be convinced they act on their own. Convictions, ideology, faith create immunity to meme-viruses. There are volumes written on the issue. But we don't know how to defend ourselves allowing a discussion about the undiscussable – the things like fundamental issues of life of an individual and society as a whole. We forget the manipulators need the discussion as much as air to implement their substitution schemes…
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December 2, 2011 | LewRockwell.com
Reaction in the Western press to reports that Russian authorities have investigated the activities of the Russian NGO "Golos, the Regional Civic Organization in Defense of Democratic Rights and Liberties," was predictable: Putin was "trying to gag election monitors" and, as expected, we read that the "US condemns Russia's 'harassment' of monitor group".
The Russian electoral authorities found that Golos had violated Russia's election laws by publishing polls in the "quiet period" immediately preceding parliamentary elections and fined the organization just under $1,000 for the violation. Russian lawmakers have also accused Golos and several other political opposition friendly NGOs of receiving funding from foreign sources for their political activities, which would be against Russian law (as foreign funding of US elections would be against US law).
The organization, we read, was "the country's main non-government election watchdog," so of course it having been "gagged" on the eve of parliamentary elections was ominous and troubling to the Western press. US-regime friendly (and George Soros-funded) Human Rights Watch complained that Golos was the "victim of a smear campaign."
Major Western media outlets once again trotted out the old "Russia just cannot help its authoritarian tendencies" reporting on the event, with the Reuters report adding that "The complaint echoed Vladimir Putin's speech on Sunday at his United Russia party congress, where he accused foreigners of funding his political opponents in what reminded some of the anti-Western rhetoric that marked his 2000-08 presidency."
But what of the claims by politicians and voters' rights groups that foreign funded NGOs were inciting another "Orange Revolution" in Russia?
A perusal of Golos's own website (Google's translation features helps non-Russian speakers) lists its foreign partners being the US "regime change" specialists National Endowment for Democracy (NED) and National Democratic Institute (NDI), two of the major US sponsors of the Orange Revolution in Ukraine and the Rose Revolution in Georgia, among other adventures.
USAID is also listed as a "partner" organization to Golos, with whom it "works to decrease the number of violations, especially administrative abuses, in election campaigns." Apparently violations committed by the organizations it funds are OK, however. To make an omelet, NGOs must break a few eggs.
The National Endowment for Democracy's own website advertises openly that it provided "independent" NGO Golos with a generous grant in the 2010–2011 cycle to:
"...carry out a detailed analysis of the autumn 2010 and spring 2011 election cycles in Russia, which will include press monitoring, monitoring of political agitation, activity of electoral commissions, and other aspects of the application of electoral legislation in the long-term run-up to the elections. GOLOS will hold local and national press conferences and publish reports on its findings, as well as provide detailed methodological advice to its monitors and other monitoring agencies."
Not to be outdone, the US government-funded National Democratic Institute proudly admits that "since 2000, NDI has worked with GOLOS...[to] provide...ongoing consultation and training for the organization's regional partners."
Are Russians "paranoid" to be wary of US government funding of domestic Russian NGOs through its most notorious "regime change" and "color revolution" specialists? Would Americans be similarly "paranoid" if they found out that a Russian or Chinese government-funded "NGO" with a track record of internal subversion and fomenting revolutions was funding political organizations in the United States? Why is it OK if the US does it to others, but outrageous and threatening if it is done to us?
Destroying the concept of national sovereignty in the rest of the world will come back to haunt the United States. Interventionism is a virus that we cannot hope to spread worldwide yet quarantine just outside our own shores.
UPDATE: Could US criticisms of Russia on the eve of elections somehow be related to Russia's surprisingly firm stance in favor of its ally Syria as NATO and its corrupt puppets in the Arab League prepare a Libya-style "liberation"?
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November 28, 2011 | landdestroyer.blogspot.com
US-funded agent Ales Bialiatski in a Belarus prison. Bialiatski was VP of FIDH, a US-backed organization that has fomented unrest from Tunisia to Russia and China.
Tony Cartalucci, Contributing Writer
Activist PostFreedom House, premier peddlers of the entirely disingenuous Western "human rights" crusade, has made a passionate plea for the release of Ales Bialiatski, a "prominent Belarusian human rights defender and head of the Human Rights Center "Viasna,"" who has been sentenced to over 4 years in a Belarus prison. What Freedom House doesn't tell you is that Bialiatski is actually the vice president of the US National Endowment for Democracy and George Soros Open Society-funded International Federation for Human Rights (FIDH) – making him anything but a "human rights defender" and instead a coordinator of US-backed destabilization efforts that have been ongoing in the Eastern European nation for years. Bialiatski's US-funded FIDH has also been recently exposed as behind the entire Tunisian uprising in January 2011.
That Freedom House calls the arrest, trial, and imprisonment of one of their agents of sedition a "human rights abuse" illustrates just how credible their entire "human rights" agenda turns out to be, i.e. not credible at all.
BBC, while also obfuscating Bialiatski's ties to the US government-funded FIDH, claims that his "organisation called Vyasna (Spring)" works to monitor "government's activities against opposition figures." In other words, all the US-backed opposition parties are given rhetorical support from Vyasna who portrays them as hapless victims at the hands of the "tyrannical" Belarus government – just as the US does in many other nations around the world in a bid to install their own autocratic regimes. BBC also notes that Soros' Open Society-funded Human Rights Watchhas also predictably come to Bialiatski's aid.
As reported as far back as April, 2011, Belarus has been overtly marked as "next" by Wall Street-London interests dissecting the planet, starting with their premeditated "Arab Spring" destabilization. After Tunisia fell and protests began brewing in Egypt, Foreign Policy magazine published Freedom House's list of "Who's Next?" On the list was Belarus' Aleksander Lukashenko. NATO has admitted the reluctance of Belarus to join its now unjustified yet ever expanding organization, and at the Globsec 2011 conference, Belarus was considered a threat to both the EU and NATO, having turned down NATO in favor of closer ties with Moscow. The corporate mainstream media for their part, has berated the Belarusian government for putting down protests launched after the results of recent elections that saw the Western-backed opposition defeated.
In a March 2011 speech, Joe Lieberman called for the unconditional release of Belarusian "activists" as well as the tightening of sanctions against Belarusian president Aleksander Lukashenko. His speech outlines a clear intention to meddle in the sovereign affairs of Belarus and to fold the nation into an Atlantic NATO EU order.
It is also a matter of record that Lieberman's Belarus protesters were the recipients of training from the US created and funded CANVAS of Serbia. In Foreign Policy's article "Revolution U, it states that "Slobodan Djinovic, one of Otpor's original organizers, began traveling to Belarus, meeting clandestinely with a student movement there. It was soon infiltrated, however, and eventually collapsed."
In a March 2011 report, it was noted that with such a failure as described in Foreign Policy's article, "it is more than likely the US is looking for ways around this, and judging from the contempt Lieberman speaks of the Belarus regime with, it must have long since taken its gloves off and fully recognizes the threat the US State Department has left on its doorstep."
With the Belarus government specifically targeting the ring leaders of US-funded sedition within their borders, it is clear that this analysis was correct and that Belarus knows exactly who its real enemies are and exactly how to deal with them. FIDH's Mr. Bialiatski isn't the first US agent of sedition to see the inside of an Eastern European jail cell, Russia's Mikhail Khodorkovsky has also been imprisoned for his role in US-funded sedition within the Russian Federation. Again, Wall Street and London reacted by claiming his imprisonment was a "miscarriage of justice" and a sign of Russia's "human rights abuses." A full account of Khodorkovsky's "defense" and his crimes can be found here.
Belarus is setting an important precedent in dealing with foreign-funded sedition masquerading behind a disingenuous "human rights" agenda. As pointed out previously, the US National Endowment for Democracy, Freedom House, and their various pet projects are overseen by perhaps the most morally bankrupted men humanity has ever produced. They include warmongers, corporate-fascists, and unabashed promoters of Wall Street-London global hegemony (imperialism). It is an absolute certainty that these individuals and the organizations they collectively belong to are not interested in "human rights" beyond how they can leverage and pervert these noble ideals to deceive well-meaning people into helping them achieve their self-serving agendas.
Tony Cartalucci is a syndicated journalist whose work can also be seen on his blog the Land Destroyer
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Ukraine is now more or less in the hands of a Washington-backed 'democratic' regime under Viktor Yushchenko and his billionaire Prime Minister Yulia Timoshenko, known in Ukraine as the 'gas princess' for the fortune she made as a government official, allegedly through her dubious dealings earlier with Ukraine Energy Minister Pavlo Lazarenko and Gazprom.
The Yushchenko government's domestic credibility is reportedly beginning to fade as Ukrainian Orange Revolution euphoria gives way to economic realities. In any event, on June 16 in Kiev, Yushchenko hosted a special meeting of the Davos World Economic Forum to discuss possible investments into the New Ukraine.
At the Kiev meeting, Timoshenko's government announced that they plan to build a new oil and gas pipeline from the Caspian across Ukraine into Poland which would lessen Ukraine's reliance on Moscow oil and gas supplies. Timoshenko also revealed that the Ukrainian government was in positive talks with Chevron, the former company of Condoleezza Rice, for the project.
It goes without saying that such a project would run counter to the Russian regional interest. One reason for Washington's strong backing for Yushchenko last year was to counter a decision by the Kuchma government and Parliament to reverse the flow of the Brody-Odessa pipeline from a planned route from the Black Sea port into Poland. The initial Odessa-to-Poland route would have tied Ukraine to the West. Now Ukraine is discussing with Chevron to build a new pipeline doing the same. The country presently gets 80% of its energy from Russia.
A second project Ukraine's government, and the state NAK (Naftogaz Ukrainy) are discussing is with France's Gaz de France to build a pipeline from Iran for natural gas to displace Russian gas. Were that to happen it would simultaneously weaken ties of mutual self-interest between Russia and Iran, as well as Russia and France.
On the same day as the Kiev conference, Kazakhstan's government told an international investors' conference in Almaty that they were in negotiations with Ukraine to route Kazakh oil as well through the proposed new Ukrainian pipeline to the Baltic. Chevron is also the major consortium leader developing Kazakh oil in Tengiz. Given the political nature of US Big Oil, it is more than probable that Condoleezza Rice, Dick Cheney and the Administration in Washington are playing a strong role in such Ukraine pipeline talks.
The Orange Revolution, at least from the side of its US sponsors, had little to do with real democracy and far more with military and oil geopolitics.
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Amazon.com
Margot L. White "M. Lachlan White"
FULL SPECTRUM DOMINANCE is a rare and essential book -- one that orients readers quickly and deeply to the world we live in, and how we arrived here. William Engdahl presents the historical background of policy making and decision analysis that explains how the United States arrived at its present "mission" in the world. The value of Engdahl's brilliant book is not only that it familiarizes American readers with a history that is not usually revealed to us, but it also guides us through the many overt and covert tactics employed by the US for regime change-- primarily via the Pentagon and its nefarious weapons contractors, but also through various think tanks and foundations with innocuous names disingenuously referring to "democracy" and "freedom." The "full spectrum" of tactics and deceptions and tricks -- both violent and non-violent -- is revealed here. Needless to say, this book falls within the honorable tradition of political histories that blow the cover off America's much vaunted pretense and propaganda about serving the cause of "freedom" and "democracy" around the world! It is the only book available today that covers ALL of this, with ample quotations and documents from the architects of US policies, in just 250 well written pages.
FULL SPECTRUM DOMINANCE is unique in presenting the evolution of CIA tactics, ranging from its crude "coups" of yesteryear (as in Iran and Guatemala) to its current -- and perhaps more insidious -- use of "non-violent" electronically manipulated technological "crowd control" via cell phones and (as is currently evident on the streets of Tehran) Twitter. If Americans are woefully ignorant of the full range and dangerous extremes of American violence around the world, of American interventions into and manipulations of other countries' elections and environments and economics, then there is no longer any excuse for such ignorance.
FULL SPECTRUM DOMINANCE is a "must read." To understand pipeline politics, the critical importance of Eurasia to US defense contractors, read this book. To understand how and why America has become such a rapacious and violent empire with bases all over the world and tens of thousands of agents provocateurs doing its dirty work from Tibet to Tehran, manipulating elections, staging phony "revolutions" to surround Russia with hostile Made-in-USA regimes, propping up American-trained puppets or fomenting chaos from Myanmar to Congo and from Ukraine to Iran -- read this book!
C. A. Fitts "Catherine Austin Fitts"
I started F. William Engdahl's new book, "Full Spectrum Dominance: Totalitarian Democracy in the New World Order," this weekend and literally could not put it down.
Engdahl begins with the US-Russia confrontation in Georgia and then takes us through the recent politics of oil and US military policy as the US asserts dominance in Eurasia. The goal? The US must make sure that China and Russia do not surpass the power of the traditional Anglo-American alliance.
For anyone interested in how the Slow Burn works, how the military holds the dollar up and the risks that rising levels of centralized force create, this is a valuable read.As in his other books, F. William Engdahl exposes vital aspects of the world today and, in the first place, the battle for total control of our planet and the space around it.
After the fall of the Berlin Wall, important segments of the US establishment panicked as their power base (national security and the Cold War) fell apart: how to justify the huge arms spending and a massive intelligence apparatus without a direct enemy?
The solution for them was to replace the Cold War by a geopolitical agenda: Full Spectrum Dominance. Crucial aspects of this agenda are control of the Eurasian Heartland, the encircling of Russia and control of China's lifelines (oil tanker traffic). With the help of their diabolical media machine, this agenda was sold to the public under the veil of colonial liberation, democracy and free markets, and partly realized by false flag operations. A major aspect of this agenda is also Nuclear Primacy (First Strike).As V. Putin stated: `today almost uncontained hyper use of military force in international relations is plunging the world into an abyss of permanent conflicts.' Adds Russian general L. Ivashov: `terrorism is simply a new type of war in order to install a unipolar world, a pretext to establish the rule of a world elite.'
According to Z. Brzezinski, those who control Eurasia control Africa, the Middle East and global oil and gas flows (the economic artery system of the world).
The Balkan, Kossovo and Afghanistan wars, as well as the installation of military bases in the `Stans' were (are) major pieces in an encircling network of Russia. The Yukos - Khodorkovsky affair was a battle for the control of Russian oil and gas (Yukos would have been partly sold to foreign private interests).
The wars in Africa (Congo, Darfur) as well as the Myanmar issue (control of the coastline of the Strait of Malacca, good for 85 % of Chinese oil tanker traffic) are indirect confrontations with China and its vital economic interests.
Ultimately, F. William Engdahl poses the cardinal question: can the US survive this obsessive and costly military agenda?
This book is a must read for all those who want to understand the world we live in.
Citizen John (USA):
Provides Argument Why Many Around the World are Fed Up, January 28, 2011
From Engdahl's perspective, the U.S. approach to geopolitics after the end of the Cold War sowed the seeds blowback all over the world. Specifically, the U.S. showed a new unilateralism and continued big ticket military spending not targeted against immediate threats such as terrorism. This led many to suspect a grand strategy of creating chaos in other places. In fact, Engdahl sees the U.S. as a spoiler, using stratagems to prevent rival powers from emerging.
The immediate question I had to Engdahl's spoiler viewpoint was why the U.S. would have allowed so much trade with China, the obvious rising power. Engdahl's answer to this is that the Afghan War was expanded precisely to position the Pentagon in a geopolitical way to contain China. Since it costs the U.S. well over a million a year to support just one soldier or Marine in Afghanistan, I have not been able to reconcile Engdale's reasoning here. Nevertheless, I value this book because it tells us about the grand mistakes made after the Cold War and the likely consequences of those policy actions.
There are several examples in the book of popular movements being turned into color movements due to the involvement of foreign influencers. I think Engdahl offers a sophisticated perspective regarding these various uprisings. At the same time, Engdahl offers some surprising views such as his idea that there is no peak oil or global warming. I don't think Engdale's opinions on these issues discredit his core political critiques.
LooseLucyLuz(Louisiana)
a thriller, February 16, 2010
A brilliant, clear, and forceful book on US foreign policy. Eurasia is ours through "color" revolutions, "swarming" coups and so-called NGOs with peaceful-sounding names. We even paid for 5,000 cans of spray paint used by Serb graffitti subversives.
Our group AFRICOM, headquartered in Engdahl's Germany, includes 53 African countries. The Congo stretch of the Great Rift has coltan (for circuit boards) and oil we want so a Congalese 7th Day Adventist trained at Ft. Leavenworth led a genocide of 5,000,000 in which Congo was balkanized, partitioned into ethnic States.
YODA, a.k.a. Andre W. Marshal, has a cameo appearance here. He devised the bogus missile "gap," war with spy satellites, drugs, computer viruses and unmanned vehicles for urban war.
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June 27, 2009 | voltairenet.org
Color revolutions " are to revolutions what Canada Dry is to beer. They look like the real thing, but they lack the flavor. They are regime changes which appear to be revolutions because they mobilize huge segments of the population but are more akin to takeovers, because they do not aim at changing social structures. Instead they aspire to replace an elite with another, in order to carry out pro-American economic and foreign policies. The " green revolution " in Tehran is the latest example of this trend.
Origin of the concept
This concept appeared in the 90s, but its roots lie in the American public debate of the 70s-80s. After a string of revelations about CIA instigated coups around the world, as well as the dramatic disclosures of the Church and Rockefeller Senate Committees [1], admiral Stansfield Turner was given the task by President Carter to clean up the agency and to stop supporting " local dictatorships ". Furious, the American Social Democrats (SD/USA) left the Democratic party and sided with Ronald Regan. They were brilliant Trotskyist intellectuals [2], often linked to Commentary magazine. After Regan was elected, he charged them with pursuing the American interference policy, this time using different methods. This is how the National Endowment for Democracy (NED) was created in 1982 [3] and the United States Institute for Peace (USIP) in 1984. Both of these institutions are organically intertwined: NED administrators sit on the USIP board of directors and vice versa.
Legally the NED is a not-for-profit organization under US law, financed by an annual grant voted by Congress as part of the State Department budget. In order to operate, this organization is co-financed by the US Agency for International Development (USAID), which is part of the State Department. This legal structure is used jointly as a cover by the American CIA, the British MI6 and the Australian ASIS (and occasionally by Canadian and New Zealand secret services).
The NED presents itself as an agency promoting democracy. It intervenes either directly or using one of its four tentacles: one designed to subvert unions, the second responsible for corrupting management organizations, the third for left-wing parties and the fourth for right-wing parties. It also intervenes through friendly foundations, such as the Westminster Foundation for Democracy (UK), the International Center for Human Rights and Democratic Development (Canada), the Fondation Jean-Jaurès and the Fondation Robert-Schuman (France), the International Liberal Center (Sweden), the Alfred Mozer Foundation (Netherlands), the Friedrich Ebert Stiftung, the Friedrich Naunmann Stiftung, the Hans Seidal Stiftung and the Heinrich Boell Stiftung (Germany). The NED thus claims to have corrupted over 6000 organizations throughout the world over roughly 30 years. All of this, of course, under the disguise of training and assistance programs.
As for the USIP, it is an American national institution. It is financed annually by Congress as part of the Defense Department budget. Contrary to the NED which serves as a cover for the three allied states, the USIP is exclusively American. Under the guise of political science research, it can pay salaries to foreign politicians.
As soon as it commanded resources, the USIP financed a new and discrete structure, the Albert Einstein Institution [4]. This small association for the promotion of nonviolent action was initially charged with designing a form of civil defense for the populations of Western Europe in case of an invasion by the Warsaw Pact. It quickly became autonomous and designed a model following which a state, whatever its nature, can lose its authority and collapse.
First attempts
The first attempted " color revolution " failed in 1989. The goal was to overthrow Deng Xiaoping by using one of his close collaborators, the Chinese Communist Party secretary-general Zhao Ziyang, in order to open Chinese markets to American investors and to bring China into the US orbit. Young supporters of Zhao invaded Tiananmen square [5]. They were presented in the Western media as unpoliticized students fighting for freedom against the party's Conservative wing, when in fact this was infighting within the Deng entourage between pro-American and nationalist factions. After having ignored provocations for a long time Deng decided to use force. Depending on sources, the repression ended with 300 to 1000 dead. 20 years later, the Western version of this failed coup has not changed. Western media which recently covered the anniversary of that event presented it as a " popular uprising " and expressed surprise that people in Beijing do not remember the event. This is because there was nothing " popular " about this struggle for power within the Party. This was not a concern for people.
The first successful " color revolution " succeeded in 1990. As the Soviet Union was disintegrating, state secretary James Baker went to Bulgaria to participate in the electoral campaign of the pro-American party, heavily financed by the NED [6]. However, despite pressure from the UK, the Bulgarians – afraid of the social consequences induced by the transformation from soviet union to market economy – made the unforgivable mistake to elect in Parliament a post communist majority. While European community observers testified to the legality of the voting process, the pro-American opposition screamed that electoral fraud had occurred and took to the streets. They set up camp in the center of Sofia and threw the country into chaos for the following six months, until pro-American Zhelyu Zhelev was elected president by the parliament.
" Democracy " : selling your country to foreign interests behind the people's back
Since then, Washington has kept instigating regime changes everywhere in the world, using street unrest rather than military juntas. It is important here to understand what is at stake. Behind the soothing rhetoric of " the promotion of democracy ", Washington's actions aim to impose regimes that are opening their markets to the US without conditions and which are aligning themselves to their foreign policy. However, while these goals are known by the leaders of the " color revolutions ", they are never discussed and accepted by the mobilized demonstrators. In the event when these takeovers succeed, citizens soon rebel against the new policies imposed on them, even if it is too late to turn back. Besides, how can opposition groups who sold their country to foreign interests behind their populations' backs be considered " democratic "?
In 2005, the Kyrgyz opposition contested the legislative elections and brought to Bishkek demonstrators from the south of the country. They toppled President Askar Akayev. This was the " Tulip Revolution ". The national assembly elected Kurmanbek Bakiyev as president. Unable to control his supporters who were looting the capital, he announced having chased the dictator and pretended that he intended to create a national union government. He pulled General Felix Kulov (former Bishkek Mayor) out of prison and named him prime minister. After the situation was back under control, Bakiyev got rid of Kulov and sold the country's few resources to US companies with no invitation to tender but with significant backhanders. He set up a US military base in Manas. The population's standard of living had never been lower. Felix Kulov offered to get the country back on its feet by federating it to Russia as it used to be. He was quickly sent back to jail.
A blessing in disguise?
It is sometimes objected that for states which were subjected to repressive regimes, even if these " color revolutions " only bring the appearance of democracy, they nonetheless constitute an improvement for their populations. Experience shows however that this is far from certain. The new regimes can turn out to be far more repressive than the old ones.
In 2003, Washington, London and Paris [7] organized the " Rose Revolution " in Georgia [8]. According to a classic scheme, the opposition blew the whistle about electoral fraud during legislative elections and took to the streets. The demonstrators forced president Eduard Shevardnadze to flee and they seized power. His successor, Mikheil Saakashvili, opened the country to US economic interests and broke off from his Russian neighbor. The economic aid that Washington promised to replace Russian aid never came. The already weakened economy collapsed. In order to continue to please his backers, Saakashvili needed to impose a dictatorship [9]. He shut down the media and filled up the prisons, which did not prevent Western media from continuing to describe him as a " democrat ". Continuing on his collision course, Saakashvili decided to bolster his popularity by engaging in a military adventure. With the help of the Bush administration and of Israel to which he rented air bases, he ordered the bombing of the population of South Ossetia, killing 1600 people, most of whom also held Russian citizenship. Moscow stroke back. American and Israeli advisers fled [10]. Georgia was left devastated.
Enough!
The main mechanism of the " color revolutions " consists in focusing popular anger on the desired target. This is an aspect of the psychology of the masses which destroys everything in its path and against which no reasonable argument can be opposed. The scapegoat is accused of all the evils plaguing the country for at least one generation. The more he resists, the angrier the mob gets. After he gives in or slips away, the normal division between his opponents and his supporters reappears.
In 2005, in the hours following the assassination of former prime minister Rafik Hariri, a rumor spread in Lebanon according to which he was killed by " the Syrians ". The Syrian army, which had been maintaining order since the end of the civil war according to the Taëf agreement, was now booed. Syrian president Bashar al-Assad was personally accused by the US authorities, which was as good as proof for the public opinion. To those who noted that Rafik Hariri, despite stormy episodes, had always been useful to Syria and that's his death deprived Damas of a central collaborator, it was answered that the " Syrian regime " is so fundamentally evil that it cannot help but killing even its friends. The Lebanese people were calling for the G.I.s to come and get rid of the Syrians. But to everyone's surprise, Bashar al-Assad, considering that the costly deployment of his army was not welcome in Lebanon any longer, decided to pull it back. Legislative elections were organized in which the " anti-Syrian " coalition triumphed. This was the " Cedar Revolution ". After the situation calmed down everyone realized that even if Syrian generals had looted the country in the past, the departure of the Syrian army did not change anything to the country's economic situation. Furthermore, the country was now in danger: it was not able to defend itself from the expansionism of the Israeli neighbor. The main " anti-Syrian " leader, general Michel Aoun, thought better of it and joined the opposition. Furious, Washington multiplied assassination plans to get rid of him. Michel Aoun formed an alliance with Hezbollah on a patriotic platform. It was about time: Israel attacked.
In every case, Washington prepared the " democratic " government in advance, which confirms that these are takeovers in disguise. The names composing the new team are kept secret for as long as possible. This is why the pointing out of the scapegoat is always done without suggesting a political alternative.
In Serbia, young pro-US " revolutionaries " chose a logo that belonged to the Communist popular imagination (the raised fist) to hide their subordination to the United States. They used " he is done! " as a slogan, which federated the anger against the personality of Slobodan Milosevic, who was held responsible for the bombing of the country even though it was done by NATO. This model was replicated numerous times, for example by the Pora! group in Ukraine, or by Zubr in Bielorussia.
The deceiving appearance of nonviolence
The PR staff members of the State Department maintain the non-violent image of the " color revolutions ". They all put forward the theories of Gene Sharp, who founded the Albert Einstein Institution. Yet nonviolence is a combat method used to persuade authorities to a political change. In order for a minority to seize power and to exercise it, it must always use violence at some point. All " color revolutions " did.
In 2000, Slobodan Milosevic called for anticipated elections despite still having a year to run as president. After the first round, neither he nor his principal opponent, Vojislav Koštunica, had secured a majority of the votes. Without waiting for the second round, the opposition claimed voting fraud and took to the streets. Thousands of demonstrators walked on the capital, including the miners from Kolubara. Their daily salaries were paid indirectly by the NED, without them realizing that they were paid by the United States. The pressure from the demonstration was insufficient so the miners started attacking buildings with bulldozers that they had brought, hence the name " bulldozer revolution ".
In cases when the tension is just dragging on, and when counterdemonstrations are being organized, the only solution for Washington is to throw the country into chaos. Inciting agents are then placed in both camps to fire on the crowd. Each party can then observe that the others are shooting while they are peacefully advancing. The confrontation spreads.
In 2002, Caracas' upper-class took to the streets to protest the social policies of President Hugo Chavez [11]. Using clever manipulation, private TV stations created the impression of a human tidal wave. There were 50,000 people according to observers and 1 million according to the press and the State Department. Then there was the Llaguno Bridge incident. TV stations clearly showed armed pro-Chavez supporters firing on the crowd. In a press conference, the National Guard general and vice minister of domestic security confirmed that the " Chavez militias " fired and killed 19 people. He resigned and called for the dictator to be overthrown. The president was quickly arrested by military rebels. However millions of people descended in the capital's streets and constitutional order was restored.
A subsequent journalistic investigation went over the details of the massacre of the Llaguno Bridge. It brought to light a deceptive picture manipulation, where chronological order was modified as proved by the protagonists' watch dials. In reality, the pro-Chavez supporters were under attack and after having fallen back, they were trying to escape by using their weapons. The inciting agents were local policemen trained by a US agency [12].
In 2006, the NED reorganized the opposition to Kenyan President Mwai Kibaki. It funded the creation of the Orange party of Raila Odinga. He received the support of Senator Barack Obama, who was accompanied by destabilization experts (Mark Lippert, current chief of staff for the national security adviser, and general Jonathan S. Gration, current US special envoy to Sudan). During a meeting with Odinga, the Illinois Senator invented a vague family relationship with the pro-US candidate. However Odinga was defeated during the 2007 legislative elections. Supported by Senator John McCain as president of the IRI (the NED's Republican pseudopod), he disputed the validity of the vote and called for his supporters to take to the streets. This is when anonymous text messages were sent en masse to ethnic Luo voters. " Dear Kenyans, the Kikuyu have stolen the future of our children… we must treat them in the only way that they understand… with violence ". The country, despite being one of the most stable in Africa, suddenly erupted in violence.
After days of rioting, president Kibaki was forced to accept the mediation of Madeleine Albright as president of the NDI (the NED's Democrat pseudopod). A prime minister position was created and offered to Odinga. Since the hate text messages had not been sent from the Kenyan installations, one can wonder which foreign power was behind them.
Mobilizing the international public opinion
During the last few years, Washington had the opportunity to instigate " color revolutions " with the understanding that they would fail to seize power but that they would help manipulate public opinion and international institutions.
In 2007, many Burmans were up in arms because of the domestic fuel price increase. Demonstrations spread as Buddhist monks took a leading role in the protest. This was the " Saffron Revolution " [13]. Washington could not care less about the Rangoon regime; however they were interested in orchestrating the people of Burma in order to exercise pressure on China which holds strategic interests in Burma (pipelines and military bases for electronic intelligence gathering). It was therefore crucial to distort people's perception of reality. Pictures and films shot on mobile phones started to appear on YouTube. They were anonymous, impossible to verify and without context. It was precisely their lack of reliability that gave them authority, and allowed the White House to fit them with their interpretation of the situation.
More recently, a 2008 student demonstration brought Greece to a grinding halt following the murder of a 15 year old young man by a policeman. Hoodlums were soon seen rioting. They had been recruited in neighboring Kosovo and brought in by bus. The city centers were devastated. Washington was trying to scare foreign investors away in order to secure a monopoly on the investments in the gas terminals that were being built. The weak Karamanlis government was portrayed as being iron fisted. Facebook and Twitter were used to mobilize the Greek Diaspora. Demonstrations spread to Istanbul, Nicosia, Dublin, London, Amsterdam, The Hague, Copenhagen, Frankfurt, Paris, Rome, Madrid, Barcelona, etc.
The Green Revolution
The operation conducted in 2009 in Iran belongs to the long list of pseudo revolutions. First, a 400 million dollar budget was voted in 2007 by Congress to orchestrate a " regime change " in Iran. This was in addition to the ad hoc budgets of the NED, the USAID, the CIA & Co. How this money is being used is unclear, but the three main recipients are the following: the Rafsanjani family, the Pahlavi family and the People's Mujahedin of Iran.
The Bush Administration decided to instigate a " color revolution " in Iran after confirming a decision by the Joint Chiefs of Staff not to conduct a military attack of that country. This choice was then approved by the Obama Administration. The plans for a " color revolution " which had been drawn up by the American Enterprise Institute in 2002 with Israel were then reopened. I had published an article at that time regarding this plan [14]. In it, one can identify the current protagonists: that plan has not changed much since then. A Lebanese chapter was added which predicted an uprising in Beirut in case of a victory of the patriotic coalition (Hezbollah, Aoun), but it was later cancelled.
The script included huge support for the candidate chosen by Ayatollah Rafsanjani, the disputing of the presidential election results, widespread bombings, the toppling of president Ahmadinejad and of Supreme Leader Ayatollah Khamenei, setting up a transition government headed by Mousavi, restoring the Monarchy and creating a government headed by Sohrab Sobhani.
According to the 2002 plans, the operation was overseen by Morris Amitay et Michael Ledeen. It mobilized in Iran the Irangate network. Here is a necessary quick historical background: the Irangate (Iran–Contra affair) was an illegal arms deal. The White House wished to supply weapons to the rebels in Nicaragua (to fight against Sandinistas) and to Iranians (in order to drag the Iran-Iraq war for as long as possible), but was prevented from doing so by Congress. Israelis then offered to act as subcontractors for both operations. Ledeen, who has both US and Israeli citizenships, served as a link in Washington, while Mahmoud Rafsanjani (the brother of the Ayatollah) was his counterpart in Tehran. This took place over a background of widespread corruption. When the scandal broke out in the United States, an independent inquiry committee was headed by Senator Tower and General Brent Scowcroft (Robert Gates' mentor) to investigate.
Michael Ledeen is an old fox involved in many secret operations. He could be found in Rome during the assassination of Aldo Moro. He also appears to have been linked to the fake Bulgarian connection after the assassination attempt on John Paul II, or more recently to the fake claims of Nigerian uranium supply to Saddam Hussein. He currently works for the American Enterprise Institute [15] (with Richard Perle and Paul Wolfowitz) and for the Foundation for the Defense of Democracies [16].
Morris Amitay is a former director of the American Israel Public Affairs Committee (AIPAC). He is today the vice president of the Jewish Institute for National Security Affairs (JINSA) and the director of a consulting company for the weapon industry.
On April 27, Morris et Ledeen held a seminar on Iran with Senator Joseph Lieberman at the American Enterprise Institute, regarding the Iranian elections. On May 15, a new seminar was held. The public part of the event consisted of a round table discussion headed by Senator John Bolton about the " haggling " over Iran: would Moscow agree to end its support of Tehran in exchange for Washington renouncing its missile shield project in Central Europe? French expert Bernard Hourcade took part in the debates. At the same time, the Institute launched a website, intended for the press, about the coming crisis: IranTracker.org. The website includes a section on the Lebanese elections.
In Iran, the responsibility for overthrowing old rival Ayatollah Khamenei rested on Ayatollah Rafsanjani. Born in a family of farmers, Hashemi Rafsanjani built his fortune on real estate speculation during the time of the Shah. He became the main pistachio dealer in Iran, and increased his wealth during the Irangate. His assets are estimated to several billion dollars. After he became the wealthiest man in Iran, he became successively president of the parliament, president of the Republic, and now chairman of the Assembly of Experts (an arbitration body for the parliament and the Guardian Council of the Constitution). He defends the interests of Tehran's merchant class. During the electoral campaign, Rafsanjani required Mir-Hossein Mousavi, his former adversary who became his protégé, to promise he would privatize the oil sector.
With no connection to Rafsanjani, the People's Mujahedin of Iran have been used by Washington [17]. This organization, protected by the Pentagon, is considered a terrorist organization by the State Department and has been considered as such by the European Union. Indeed, it is responsible for dreadful operations in the 80s, including a huge bombing which killed Ayatollah Beheshti, four department heads, six department head assistants and one fourth of the parliamentary group of the Islamic Republic party. The People's Mujahedin of Iran is headed by Massoud Rajavi, who first married the daughter of former President Abol-hassan Banisadr and then the cruel Maryam. Its headquarters are located outside of Paris and its military bases in Iraq, first under the orders of Saddam Hussein, are now under the Defense Department. The People's Mujahedin provided the logistics for the bombing attacks which took place during the electoral campaign [18]. They were responsible for instigating clashes – which they probably did – between Pro Ahmadinejad supporters and their opponents.
Should chaos have followed, the Supreme Leader could have been overthrown. A transition government, headed by Mir-Hossein Mousavi, would have privatized the oil sector and brought back the Monarchy. The son of the former Shah, Reza Cyrus Pahlavi, would have ascended to the throne and would have nominated Sohrab Sobhani as prime minister. With this in mind, Reza Pahlavi published in February a number of interviews with French journalist Michel Taubmann, the director of Arte's information office in Paris, and who presides the Cercle de l'Observatoire, the club for French neo conservatives. It is useful to remember that Washington had made similar plans for the restoration of the Monarchy in Afghanistan. Mohammed Zahir Shah was supposed to ascend to the throne again and Hamid Karzai would have become prime minister. Unfortunately, at age 88, the pretender had become senile. Karzai thus became president. Both Sobhani and Karzai hold United States citizenships. Both were involved in the Caspian sea's oil sector.
As far as propaganda was concerned, the initial plan had been given to Benador Associates, a public relations firm. But it evolved with the influence of Goli Ameri, the United States Assistant Secretary of State for Educational and Cultural Affairs. This American Iranian woman is John Bolton's former colleague. As a new media specialist, she implemented infrastructure and Internet training programs for Rafsanjani's friends. She also developed radio and television programs in Farsi for the State Department propaganda, in conjunction with the BBC.
Iran's destabilization failed because the main drive behind the " color revolutions " was not appropriately initiated. Mir-Hossein Mousavi did not manage to make Mahmoud Ahmadinejad the focus of popular anger. The Iranian people did not fall into the trap; they did not hold the outgoing president responsible for the United States' economic sanctions against the country. Therefore the protests were limited to the northern suburbs of Tehran. The authorities refrained from creating counter demonstrations, and let the plotters expose themselves.
However, it must be noted that the propaganda was successful with the Western media. International public opinions really believed that two million Iranians took to the streets, when the real figure was ten times lower. The fact that foreign correspondents were under house arrest facilitated these exaggerations because they were exempt from having to provide evidence for their allegations.
Having given up war, and having failed at overthrowing the regime, what is Barack Obama's remaining option?
English version by J.C.[1] The numerous reports and documents published by these committees are available online on the following website: The Assassination Archives and Research Center.
[2] " New York Intellectuals and the invention of neo-conservatism ", Denis Boneau, Voltaire Network, November 26 2004.
[3] " The NED, the networks of democratic interference ", Thierry Meyssan, Voltaire Network, January 22 2004.
[4] " The Albert Einstein Institution: non-violence according to the CIA ", Thierry Meyssan, Voltaire Network, January 4 2005.
[5] " Tiananmen, 20 ans après ", professor Domenico Losurdo, Réseau Voltaire, June 9 2009.
[6] At the time, the NED was relying in Eastern Europe on the Free Congress Foundation (FCF), operated by Republicans. Later on, this organization disappeared and was replaced by the Soros Foundation, operated by Democrats, with the assistance of which the NED would plot new " regime changes ".
[7] Concerned with smoothing out relations between France and the US, French president Jacques Chirac tried to establish better relations with the Bush Administration on Georgia's back, all the more because of French economic interests in Georgia. Salomé Zourabichvili, number 2 in the French secret services, was nominated as ambassador in Tbilisi. She then switched nationalities and became the Foreign Secretary for the " Rose Revolution ".
[The Secrets of the Georgian Coup", Paul Labarique, Voltaire Network, January 7 2004.
[9] " Géorgie : Saakachvili jette son opposition en prison " (Georgia: Saakachvili jails the opposition) et " Manifestations à Tbilissi contre la dictature des roses " (Protests in Tbilisi against the dictatorship of the roses), Réseau Voltaire, September 12 2006 and September 30 2007.
[10] The Bush Administration was hoping that this conflict would act as a smoke screen. Israeli bombers were supposed to take off simultaneously to strike neighboring Iran. But even before attacking Georgian military installations, Russia bombed the airports that had been rented out to Israel, pinning its planes to the ground.
[11] " Opération manquée au Venezuela " (Failed operation in Venezuela), Thierry Meyssan, Réseau Voltaire, May 18 2002.
[12] Llaguno Bridge. Keys to a Massacre. Documentary by Angel Palacios, Panafilms 2005.
[13] " Birmanie : la sollicitude intéressée des États-Unis " (Burma: United States' selfish concern), Thierry Meyssan, Réseau Voltaire, November 5 2007.
[14] " False reasons to intervene in Iran ", Thierry Meyssan, Voltaire Network, February 12 2004.
[15] " The American Enterprise Institute in the White House ", Voltaire Network, June 21 2004.
[16] " Les trucages de la Foundation for the Defense of Democracies " (The Foundation for the Defense of Democracies' tricks), Réseau Voltaire, February 2 2005.
[17] " Les Moudjahidin perdus " (The lost Mujahedin), Paul Labarique, Réseau Voltaire, February 17 2004.
[18] " Le Jundallah revendique des actions armées aux côtés des Moudjahidines du Peuple " (The Jundallah claims responsibility for actions with the People's Mujahedin), Réseau Voltaire, June 13 2009.
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September 30, 2006 | Antiwar.com
How quickly we forget. It seems like only yesterday that the headlines were ablaze with news of the color-coded revolutions supposedly inspired by our president's commitment to fostering "democracy" throughout the globe. In an inaugural speech widely derided by those who hadn't quaffed too deeply of the neoconservative Kool-Aid, George W. Bush declared that U.S. foreign policy has "the ultimate goal of ending tyranny in our world." Not content with "liberating" Iraq, while reducing it to a pile of rubble, the U.S. government went on the offensive on a global scale, hailing the color revolutions in Ukraine, Kyrgyzstan, Georgia, Belarus, and Lebanon as examples of what the president had earlier referred to as a U.S.-led "global democratic revolution."
It's only a few years later, however, and the "revolution" seems to have petered out. Worse, in all instances, the "revolution" turned out to be completely illusory, i.e., little more than a flimsy pretext for U.S.-engineered regime change on the cheap.
Revisiting the scene of these various "democratic" upsurges, one thing becomes all too clear: nothing has really changed. Ukraine provides the best example of this "meet the new boss, same as the old boss" syndrome.
The saga of Viktor Yushchenko's rise – and near fall – as the leader of the "democratic" resistance to Ukraine's neo-Soviet apparatchiks contained all the essential elements of the Bush administration's revolutionary narrative: a handsome, young, rising political star challenges the sclerotic, corrupt, election-stealing leadership of a decrepit post-communist former Soviet republic – and nearly becomes a martyr to the cause of capital-D democracy. In Yushie's case, it was an attempt to poison him, allegedly carried out by an official of the Ukrainian secret services – and, it just so happens, a key ally of Yushchenko's election opponent, Viktor Yanukovich.
This alleged assassination attempt badly disfigured the formerly handsome Yushie's face, and it is fair to say, this event was the turning point in the election. The finger was pointed directly at Yanukovich and his supporters, and the more radical Orange revolutionaries, led by the "gas princess," Yulia Timoshenko, openly accused the Russian KGB of being behind the plot. The Western media jumped on the story and unquestioningly accepted the narrative peddled by the Orange revolutionaries and their sponsors in the U.S. government, who were covertly (and overtly) funding Yushchenko to the tune of millions.
This supposed poisoning, however, was diagnosed under the most curious circumstances: Dr. Lothar Wicke, the former chief of the Rudolfinerhaus clinic where Yushchenko went for treatment, denied that Yushchenko had been poisoned at all, and testified that he had been threatened by supporters of the Orange movement if he failed to come up with the "right" diagnosis. The poisoning diagnosis was disputed by several Western experts, who questioned the timeline laid out by Yushchenko and his entourage – Yushie got sick immediately after dining with the head of the security services, whereas dioxin poisoning would take at least 3 days to manifest symptoms – and many doubted that dioxin would be the poison of choice, in any case.
Furthermore, after all that heavy breathing about a Russian-Yanukovich plot to take out the rising star of the Orange Revolution, the investigation into who poisoned Yushchenko, and why, never got much further than vague insinuations directed at the Yanukovich camp, and dark intimations of KGB involvement. Two years later, after a long silence, the "investigation" has yet to bear any fruit: not a single suspect has been charged. The comic-opera character of this criminal probe is underscored by the first few paragraphs of a recent Radio Free Europe story:
"Speaking to journalists in Baku on September 8, the Ukrainian president:e investigation into the alleged poisoning in September 2004 was 'one step away from the active phase of solving this case.'
"Yushchenko's statement came as Ukraine's prosecutor-general, Oleksandr Medvedko, announced that investigators had determined the time, place, and circumstances in which the poisoning attempt took place.
"All that remains, apparently, is to find the individual, or individuals, responsible."
Ukraine's Keystone Kops know everything about this crime – except who did it. It has taken them two solid years to get to the brink of "the active phase of solving this case." Yet how do we account for the longevity of the passive phase?
One would think that the president would be eager to utilize the full resources of Ukrainian law enforcement – not to mention the expertise and assistance of his American allies – to get to the bottom of the plot that ruined his good looks and almost took his life. However, we have seen just the opposite: a strange reluctance to pursue the investigation, punctuated by laconic public pronouncements over the interceding years, culminating in this most recent Orwellian formulation of being "one step away" from "the active phase."
Just how seriously we ought to take accusations that Yanukovich – and, standing behind him, the Kremlin – engineered the poisoning of Yushchenko is indicated by the post-"revolutionary" politics of Ukraine, now dominated by a coalition of Yushchenko and Yanukovich supporters. Would the Yushchenko group agree to share power with Yanukovich and his party if they really believed their coalition allies had tried to kill their dear beloved Yushie? Somehow, I doubt it.
In any case, the so-called Orange Revolution has faded to a pale pinkish hue, with the color almost completely washed out of it. Ukraine is still corrupt, poor, and owned lock, stock, and barrel by a nomenklatura of unusual avariciousness. All that has changed is the likelihood of NATO membership, and that's all the U.S. government ever cared about anyway. The containment, of the Russian bear – recently stoked by copious infusions of honey (in the form of sky-high oil prices) – and not the export of "democracy," was and is the real objective of U.S. support for Yushchenko and his fellow "revolutionaries."
The same motives can be easily discerned in the case of the former Soviet republic of Georgia, where the Rose Revolution catapulted Mikheil Saakashvili to power in 2003.
The Ukrainian Orange phenomenon was modeled quite explicitly on the example of the Rose Revolution, which featured a disputed election, massive youth-oriented street protests, and plenty of subsidies from U.S. government agencies. The evil neo-communist leftovers from the old order, led by Eduard Shevardnadze, were swept away by the rising tide of pro-Western, modernizing young "democrats," exemplified by Saakashvili,: be a Georgian combo of George Washington and Thomas Jefferson. Or so went the official narrative.
It wasn't long, however, before the wolf disdained his sheep's clothing and openly began to exhibit distinctly wolfish characteristics, imprisoning his political opponents and cracking down on the opposition in the name of "national security." His latest assault on his political enemies involves busting up an alleged Russian "spy ring" – which, just coincidentally, includes the leaders of most of the opposition. Dozens of Justice Party and Conservative Party (monarchist) leaders and activists have been arrested and imprisoned on what are obviously trumped-up charges. Russian military headquarters in Tbilisi – where the Russians still have a nominal presence – has been surrounded by Georgian military and police, and a major standoff is in the making, with Russia calling for an emergency meeting of the UN Security Council over the matter.
This crisis has a long history. U.S. support for Saakashvili and the Rose Revolution had, as usual, nothing to do with devotion to the principles of what is loosely referred to as "democracy," and everything to do with the geopolitics of oil and the regional objective of encircling – one might even say strangling – resurgent Russia. The construction of an oil pipeline that somehow avoids traversing Russian territory is the dearest dream of the Chevron wing of the Republican party, and would please to no end the Clintonian Democrats, who, you'll remember, set up a special office of the U.S. government devoted to making that pipeline a reality.
The Caucasus is a volatile region, every bit as volcanic and rife with ethnic and religious fissures as the Middle East. In Georgia alone, several ethno-religious groupings compete for title to the land and the right of self-rule in some very cramped quarters, and it takes a scorecard to know all the players. Without getting too much into the specifics – the particular historical and political factors giving rise to the Georgians' struggle with the Ossetians, the Ajarians, and the Abkhazians – it's important to know that all these rebellious regions share cultural and political ties to Russia. Russian-speakers, primarily Orthodox Christians, these peoples see their history as inextricably bound up with the fountainhead of Slavic civilization represented by the Kremlin.
Russia, in turn, has given them limited diplomatic, political, and military support in their respective struggles for self-determination and kept the Georgian wolf at the door. However, Saakashvili, in his bid to create a Greater Georgia and prove his usefulness to the anti-Russian alliance of NATO nations, is taking the offensive. Even as he jails the opposition, cracks down on the media, and seeks to label anyone who fails to march in lockstep to his authoritarianism a "Russian spy," Georgia creeps closer to full NATO membership. First Ukraine, then Georgia – the creation of a cordon sanitaire around the former Soviet Union requires just a few more links, one of which was provided in the delightfully obscure country of Kyrgyzstan.
In Kyrgyzstan, you'll remember, the classic pattern of these color-coded revolutions ran true to form: a disputed election, massive street protests, and the flight of the former leader to Russia. This was hailed by Condoleezza Rice and numerous commentators as yet more evidence that the Bushian "global democratic revolution" was taking hold – inspired, or so we were told, by the American "liberation" of Iraq and the president's "forward strategy of freedom."
The former president, Askar Akayev, an ex-communist bureaucrat, was accused by all the pertinent "human rights" organizations to be an election-thief as well as a mini-Stalin. Compared to what followed, however, the era of Akayev's rule will go down in the history of the country as relatively benign: compared, that is, to the reign of his successor, President Kurmanbek Bakiyev, which has been marked by what the International Herald Tribune describes as "political instability and deteriorating public security, including a string of high-profile murders." The latest outrage is the news that the president's brother tried to have heroin planted on a prominent opposition leader. Against the backdrop of mysterious hooligan attacks on the independent media, one thing seems clear: in Kyrgyzstan, the Tulip Revolution has wilted, and the familiar weed of autocracy has grown up in its place.
Both Russia and the U.S. maintain military bases in the country – there was, you may recall, that mysterious incident with the disappearing U.S. officer, who turned up several miles away from where she was last seen, for reasons that aren't quite clear. And now we have this collision in the air over Manas Air Base, involving a Kyrgyz airliner and a U.S. military refueling aircraft – both reminders of the shadowy American presence in this far corner of Central Asia.
It was under Akayev that the Russians were granted access to their base near the village of Kant, not far from the capital city of Bishkek, in 2003. Shortly afterward, he was overthrown. While Bakiyev got into a tiff with the U.S. over the price of basing rights – he wanted $50 million more, to start – his increasingly repressive regime has not occasioned any reprimands from the Americans. What may provoke the ire of the U.S. are increasing military and economic ties with Russia, such as the recent joint "anti-terrorism"military exercises conducted by Kyrgyz and Russian forces. Who wants to bet that the guardians of liberty over at Freedom House and the constellation of "human rights" organizations will suddenly begin to take note of Bakiyev's shortcomings?
We always:ese color-coded "revolutions" were made in Washington, and now that they have all been betrayed in Washington and on their home turf, our view – not exactly a popular one at the time these "revolutions" were occurring – is confirmed. The people of these countries still suffer and are in virtually all cases worse off than before: the only achievement they can rack up to date is the prospect of NATO membership, or, in the case of Kyrgyzstan, increased aid.
The "revolutions" in the former Soviet republics and Eastern Europe were meant not to spread "democracy," but to extend the reach of American military power, via NATO and more directly. The American goal is to encircle the Russians and the Chinese, keeping both in check and extending the far frontiers of the rising American empire deep into Central Asia. It isn't about democracy, or free markets – it's all about imperialism, pure and simple.
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October 27, 2011 | The Kremlin Stooge
kievite
I think the West manipulates and are being manipulated by Islamists and vice versaIslamists proved to be perfect for secular regime destabilization, especially potent in poorer countries as here grievances are higher. Kind of a new fifth column for "divide and conquer" strategy. So in general it looks like Western countries foreign policy is based on the assumption that Islamism represents much greater danger to political regime in poorer countries then at home, providing long term and difficult to eradiate destabilizing force for the country and weakening its political regime. In poor countries Islamism often mutates into militant sects and that provides excellent opportunities for destabilization of those regimes that are classified as "unfriendly". Friendly regimes like Bahrain monarchy is another case.
I would see it as another variant of "Otpor"/"Orange revolution" tactics of creating civil unrest for undermining unfriendly regimes, often using Saudis as a probe (financial support if the key). The only difference is that this time the unrest is based on religious sentiments and not on to "longing for democracy" and "anticorruption sentiments" althouth the latter can be a part of appeal for Islamists too (before people realize that a religious regime/party tend to be more corrupt then secular). Young people are the key group in both cases. As such it might be especially effective for Russia and China. In both countries low level Islamic insurgency continues despite all effort by authorities. There are a lot of analogies between Islamists and Bolsheviks (actually I read somewhere that Bolshevism has had Islamic overtones).
It is difficult to predict but even with higher birth rate chances of Islamists as an internal political force in any Western country looks slim. Also existence of Al Qaeda or any other similar Jihadist group provides a very good cover for 24×7 police monitoring of all major activities and infiltration into the movement. It hands like Sword of Damocles over any Islamist Party in Western Country. I did not hear much about Nation of Islam lately.
A very interesting point is about Islamic intellectuals. This is where classic Marx saying "religion is an opium for the people" suggests that sellers of opium can prosper and some members of intelligencia are reluctant to miss a chance. Also the primitivism of Islam has its own set of attractions in a complex societies we are living now. It provides an answer that is simple, easily understandable and wrong.
In any case Western diplomacy in this area looks extremely competent and is pretty flexible in using this potent weapon. I think that the UK was a master of such tricks in the past so this rich heritage might play a role, especially in Middle East and Caucasus.
yalensis
@kievite: Thanks for insightful comment. I agree with everything you say except for comment about Bolshevism. Coming from Communist/Red Army family/heritage as I do, I often feel I must defend Bolshevik honor, especially when people carelessly compare them to somebody else, like fascists or, in this case, Islamists.
Is true that there are a couple of superficial similarities between Bolshevism and Islamism. I can think of three off the top of my head:
(1) Both are internationalist movements, both reject nationalism in favor of a supra-national ideology. For example, the Marxist slogan is "The proletariat knows no country." Islamists also claim to be internationalists and support some kind of super-caliphate that replaces current national borders.
(2) Both promote (or claim to promote) the rights of the poor in their thirst for justice.
(3) Both formed secret (subversive) organizations to overthrow governments – but then this would be the case for any illegal political parties, regardless of ilk.
Aside from that I really cannot think of any similarities whatsoever? These two ideologies come from completely different roots, represent different class interests, have completely different attitudes towards every single issue of human life (for example, Marxists want to liberate women, Islamists want to suppress them; Marxists are atheists, Islamists are very religious, etc etc). The fact that there would be any similarities whatsoever is only an accident of evolutionary convergence, in the same way that sharks and dolphins look very similar, both animals swim in the sea and have a dorsal fin, etc., but one is a fish and the other is a mammal. I would also note, in conclusion, that during the Bolshevik Revolution and Civil War, the Islamist parties of Central Asia fought ferociously against the "atheist infidels" of the Red Army. No love lost there. Aside from that one quibble, great comment, and I particularly liked your comparison with OTPOR.
kievite
Aside from that I really cannot think of any similarities whatsoever?
Extremes meet. Both belong to "The Coercive Utopians" class of doctines. The underlying arguments are well summarized by Bertrand Russell:
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Bolshevism combines the characteristics of the French Revolution with those of the rise of Islam…. Marx has taught that Communism is fatally predestined to come about; this produces a state of mind not unlike that of the early successors of Mahommet…. Among religions, Bolshevism is to be reckoned with Mohammedanism, rather than with Christianity and Buddhism. Christianity and Buddhism are primarily personal religions, with mystical doctrines and a love of contemplation. Mohammedanism and Bolshevism are practical, social, unspiritual, concerned to win the empire of this world.
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Indeed, I think that the end game for both Bolshevism and Islam is totalitarian control of social, political and economic life. The freedoms of the individual are non-existent, with the individual controlled by the religion of Islam in the case of the former or the state in case of Bolshevism.
Free will is abolished, with institutionalized total subservience for citizens either to Allah or to the Party, benevolent or not so benevolent. Every aspect of one's life is highly regulated, and the non-believers should either convert or face consequences.
Here is more modern quote from http://initialdastroboy.wordpress.com/2011/04/11/soekarno-nationalism-islam-and-marxism/
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True Islam contains no anti-nationalist principles; true Islam is not anti-socialist in character. So long as Moslems remain hostile to the ideas of broad-minded Nationalism and genuine Marxism, they will never stand on the Sirothol Mustaqim'~ and they will never be able to lift Islam from its present state of humiliation and decay. I am certainly not saying that Islam accepts Materialism; nor do I forget that Islam transcends national boundaries and is supra- national in character. I am only stating that true Islam is socialist in nature and imposes obligations which are nationalist obligations as well.
Is it not the case, as I have already explained, that true Islam requires all its adherents to love and to work for the country in which they reside, to love and to work for the people among whom they live, so long as that country and its people are part of the Dar al-Islam?
… … …
Alas! How strong our movement would now be if this struggle had not occurred! Our ranks would surely not be in their present disarray. Our movement would surely have made progress in spite of all obstructions. I am convinced that there is no fundamental barrier to friendship between Moslems and Marxists. I have already explained that true Islam has a socialist quality. Even though this socialist quality is not necessarily Marxist in orientation, even though we know that Islamic socialism does not have the same foundation as Marxism, since Islamic socialism is based on spirituality whereas Marxist socialism is based on Materialism-nonetheless, for our purposes it is enough to show that true Islam is essentially socialistic.
Moslems must not forget that the Marxist materialist view of history has often served to guide them in confronting the difficult and complicated economic and political problems of the world. They must also not forget that the Historical-Materialist method for explaining events which have already occurred here on this earth is also a method for predicting events that are to come-and thus may be very useful to their group.
Moslems must never forget that capitalism, the enemy of Marxism, is also the enemy of Islam, since what is called surplus value in Marxist doctrine is essentially the same as usury from the Islamic viewpoint. Theoretically, surplus value is the appropriation of the product of another's labor and denying the workers theft proper share of the value they produce. This theory of surplus value was formulated by Karl Marx and Priedrich Engels to explain the origins of capitalism. Surplus value is the inner essence of every capitalist system; by combating surplus value, Marxists combat the very roots of capitalism. The true Moslem accordingly comprehends immediately that it is wrong for him to be hostile towards Marxism, which combats the system of surplus value, since he does not forget that true Islam combats this system too, that true Islam strictly prohibits usury and the collection of interest. He understands that usury is basically no different from what the Marxists view as surplus value.
"Devour not usury, doubled and redoubled, and fear you Cod; haply so you will prosper."
So it is written in the Koran, sunrh Al 'Imran verse 129.32 A broad-minded Moslem, a Moslem who understands the requirements of our struggle, will certainly agree to an alliance with the Marxists, since he is aware that usury and the collection of interest are forbidden by his religion. He is aware that this is the Moslem way of attacking the very foundations of capitalism, for, as we have previously explained, usury is the same as surplus value, the inner essence of capitalism. He is aware that, like Marxism, Islam, with its "belief in God," with its "recognition of the Kingdom of Cod," is a protest against the evils of capitalism.
The "fanatical" Moslem, who is hostile to the Marxist movement, is a Moslem who does riot know what his own religion forbids. Such a Moslem does not understand that true Islam, like Marxism, forbids the capitalistic hoarding of money, forbids the accumulation of wealth for selfish ends. He forgets the verse in the Koran: "Those who treasure up gold and silver, and do not expend them in the way of Cod,-give them the good tidings of a painful chastisement!"~ 3 He does not understand that, like the Marxism he opposes, Islam hereby attacks the existence of capitalism in the clearest possible terms!
kievite
As for Soviet exprience, from "The Bolsheviks and Islam," an article written by Dave Crouch in the Spring 2006 International Socialism Journal (http://www.isj.org.uk/index.php4?id=181&issue=110), we learn:
sharia law had been a central demand of Muslims during the February Revolution of 1917 and, as the civil war drew to a close in 1920-1921, a parallel court system was created in Central Asia and the Caucasus, with Islamic courts administering justice in accordance with sharia law side by side with Soviet legal institutions. The aim was for people to have a choice between religious and revolutionary justice. A sharia Commission was established in the Soviet Commissariat of Justice to oversee the system. In 1921 a series of commissions were attached to regional units of the Soviet administration with the purpose of adapting the Russian legal code to the conditions of Central Asia, allowing for compromise between the two systems on questions such as under-age marriage and polygamy.
yalensis:
@kievite, you have provided a lot of valuable material, and I cannot really do it justice right now, but will just begin with a couple of rejoinders on 3 specific points:
(1) On the utopian angle: Is Islam a utopian type ideology? Maybe. I can't say, because I never read the Quran and I don't know too many Muslims. I do know some fundamentalist Christians who believe that Jesus will return on horseback and become an absolute (unelected, totalitarian) ruler of the entire world.
I would allege that Marxism is not a spiritual/utopian philosophy, it is more like a down-to-earth economic program. Although it is no doubt true that many Bolsheviks believed they were fighting to transform human nature itself and build a really great society. I mean, when you're fighting and dying in appalling conditions, you have to believe that something good will emerge from all this suffering, right?
I also dispute that Marxism is intrinsically totalitarian, although socialist organization does in fact require a higher level of social mobilization. (Just as trade unions require a higher level of organization because, by the nature of it, less powerful people who band together to make themselves more powerful must maintain a higher level of internal organization and solidarity.)
(2) Friendships and alliances between Muslims and Marxists. (In references to the Soekarno piece.) Well, this is interesting, but I do not believe it proves anything. If you wander through youtube you will find many examples of strange friendships between completely different species: a horse whose best friend is a cat; a dog and a monkey; even a lioness and a gazelle hanging out together. There is also the expression "Politics makes strange bedfellows." I mean, we ARE all human beings, after all, despite our different ideologies, and it is possible to find something in common from time to time with almost any other person. Also recall that Hugo Chavez (a devout Catholic) is best friends with Fidel Castro (a devout atheist). Hugo has tried for years to convert his buddy Fidel, but without success, so far.
(3) Coexistence of Soviet legal system and sharia law in several Soviet autonomous regions. I believe this is actually a counter-proof. Soviet central government struggled for many decades to eliminate some of these local courts and customs – as late as the Khruschev period, there were still some remote areas that allowed polygamy and child marriage. Central government had uphill struggle to replace local and tribal laws with socialist legal system, mostly successful except in the most backward areas, and actually speaks to the tolerance (or perhaps impotence) of supposedly vicious totalitarian Soviet power. Your strongest point, I think, is the one about usury. I am not familiar with Muslim usury laws, but if usury is truly a defining platform of this religion then I would condede that, yes, in this one point perhaps there is some ideological intersection between that and the Marxist concept of "surplus value" as being extracted from the industrial proletariat. On the other hand, I do not believe this one point is strong enough to claim a spiritual kinship between the two ideologies. I would actually see a case for a stronger kinship between Marxism and Christianity, because there are so many Jesus quotes about, e.g., caring for the poor, and "the meek shall inherit the earth", and so on, which come off sounding quasi-socialistic. Also, there was a movement in Central America in the 60's and 70's called "Liberation Theology", which was pretty much a bunch of Catholic priests and nuns fighting alongside Marxist revolutionaries trying to overthrow authoritarian right-wing regimes. Does that prove that Marxism and Christianity are spiritually akin? Dubious.
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After a short-term fall in price below the $50 a barrel level, oil is hovering at $60 a barrel and likely to go far higher. In this situation one might think that the announcement of the opening of a major new oil pipeline to pump Caspian oil to world markets might dampen the relentless rise in prices.
However, even when OPEC agreed to raise its formal production quota by another 500,000 barrels per day (bpd) on June 15, the reaction of NYMEX oil futures prices was to rise, not fall. Estimates are that world demand in the second half of 2005 will average at least 3 million barrels a day more than the first half.
Oil has become the central theme of world political and military operations planning, even when not always openly said.
Caspian Pipeline Opens a Pandora's Box
In this situation it's worth looking at the overall significance of the May opening of the Baku to Ceyhan, Turkey oil pipeline. This 1,762 km long oil pipeline was completed some months ahead of plan.
The BTC (Baku-Tbilisi-Ceyhan) Oil Pipeline was begun in 2002 after four years of intense international dispute. It cost some $3.6 billion, making it one of the most expensive oil projects ever. The main backer was BP, whose chairman Lord Browne is a close adviser to Britain's Tony Blair. BP built it in a consortium including Unocal of the US and Turkish Petroleum Inc., and other partners.
It will take until at least late September before 10.4 milllion barrels can provide the needed volume to start oil delivery to the Turkish port Ceyhan on the Mediterranean. Ceyhan is conveniently near to the US airbase Incirlik. The BTC has been a US strategic priority ever since Clinton first backed it in 1998. Indeed, for the opening ceremonies in May, US Energy Secretary Samuel Bodman attended and delivered a personal note of congratulations from US President George W. Bush.
As the political makeup of the Central Asia Caspian region is complex, especially since the decomposition of the Soviet Union opened up a scramble in the oil-rich region of the Caspian from the outside, above all from the United States, it's important to bear in mind the major power blocs which have emerged.
They are two. On the one side is an alliance of US-Turkey-Azerbaijan and, since the Rose Revolution, Georgia, that small but critical country directly on the pipeline route. Opposed to it, in terms of where the pipeline route carrying the Caspian oil should go, is Russia, which until 1990 held control over the entire Caspian outside the Iran littoral. Today, Russia has cultivated an uneasy but definite alliance with Iran and with Armenia, in opposition to the US group. This two-camp grouping is essential to understand developments in the region since 1991.
Now that the BTC oil pipeline has finally been completed, and the route through Georgia has been put firmly in pro-Washington hands, an essential precondition to completing the pipeline, the question becomes how will Moscow react? Does Putin have any serious options left short of the ultimate nuclear one?
A clear strategy
A geopolitical pattern has become clear over the past months. One-by-one, with documented overt and covert Washington backing and financing, new US-friendly regimes have been put in place in former Soviet states which are in a strategic relation to possible pipeline routes from the Caspian Sea.
Ukraine is now more or less in the hands of a Washington-backed 'democratic' regime under Viktor Yushchenko and his billionaire Prime Minister Yulia Timoshenko, known in Ukraine as the 'gas princess' for the fortune she made as a government official, allegedly through her dubious dealings earlier with Ukraine Energy Minister Pavlo Lazarenko and Gazprom.
The Yushchenko government's domestic credibility is reportedly beginning to fade as Ukrainian Orange Revolution euphoria gives way to economic realities. In any event, on June 16 in Kiev, Yushchenko hosted a special meeting of the Davos World Economic Forum to discuss possible investments into the New Ukraine.
At the Kiev meeting, Timoshenko's government announced that they plan to build a new oil and gas pipeline from the Caspian across Ukraine into Poland which would lessen Ukraine's reliance on Moscow oil and gas supplies. Timoshenko also revealed that the Ukrainian government was in positive talks with Chevron, the former company of Condoleezza Rice, for the project.
It goes without saying that such a project would run counter to the Russian regional interest. One reason for Washington's strong backing for Yushchenko last year was to counter a decision by the Kuchma government and Parliament to reverse the flow of the Brody-Odessa pipeline from a planned route from the Black Sea port into Poland. The initial Odessa-to-Poland route would have tied Ukraine to the West. Now Ukraine is discussing with Chevron to build a new pipeline doing the same. The country presently gets 80% of its energy from Russia.
A second project Ukraine's government, and the state NAK (Naftogaz Ukrainy) are discussing is with France's Gaz de France to build a pipeline from Iran for natural gas to displace Russian gas. Were that to happen it would simultaneously weaken ties of mutual self-interest between Russia and Iran, as well as Russia and France.
On the same day as the Kiev conference, Kazakhstan's government told an international investors' conference in Almaty that they were in negotiations with Ukraine to route Kazakh oil as well through the proposed new Ukrainian pipeline to the Baltic. Chevron is also the major consortium leader developing Kazakh oil in Tengiz. Given the political nature of US Big Oil, it is more than probable that Condoleezza Rice, Dick Cheney and the Administration in Washington are playing a strong role in such Ukraine pipeline talks.
The Orange Revolution, at least from the side of its US sponsors, had little to do with real democracy and far more with military and oil geopolitics.
Pipelines and US-Azeri ties
The Baku-Ceyhan pipeline was originally proclaimed by BP and others as The Project of the Century. Zbigniew Brzezinski was a consultant to BP during the Clinton era, urging Washington to back the project. In fact, it was Brzezinski who went to Baku in 1995, unofficially, on behalf of President Clinton to meet with then-Azeri President Haidar Aliyev, in order to negotiate new independent Baku pipeline routes including what became the BTC pipeline.
Brzezinski also sits on the board of an impressive, if little-known, US-Azerbaijan Chamber of Commerce (USACC). The chairman of USACC in Washington is Tim Cejka, President of ExxonMobil Exploration. Other USACC Board members include Henry Kissinger, and James Baker III, the man who in 2003 personally went to Tbilisi to tell Shevardnadze that Washington wanted him to step aside in favor of the US-trained Georgian President Mikhail Shaakashvili. Brent Scowcroft, former National Security Adviser to George H.W. Bush, also sits on the board of USACC today. And Dick Cheney was a former board member before he became Vice President. A more high-powered Washington team of geopolitical fixers would be hard to imagine. This group of prominent individuals certainly would not give a minute of their time unless an area was of utmost geopolitical strategic importance to the United States or to certain powerful interests there.
Now that the BTC pipeline to Ceyhan is complete, a phase 2 pipeline is in consideration undersea, potentially to link the Caspian to Kazakhstan and Turkmenistan with its rich gas reserves, directing that energy away from China to the West in a US-UK-controlled route.
In this context, it's worth noting that President Bush himself made a trip to Tbilisi on May 10 to address a crowd in Freedom Square, promoting his latest war on tyranny campaign for the region. He praised the US-backed 'color revolutions' from Ukraine to Georgia. Bush went on to attack Roosevelt's Yalta division of Europe in 1945. He made the curious declaration: 'We will not repeat the mistakes of other generations, appeasing or excusing tyranny, and sacrificing freedom in the vain pursuit of stability," the president:We have learned our lesson; no one's liberty is expendable. In the long run, our security and true stability depend on the freedom of others.' Bush went on to say, 'Now, across the Caucasus, in Central Asia and the broader Middle East, we see the same desire for liberty burning in the hearts of young people. They are demanding their freedom -- and they will have it.'
What color will the Azeri revolution take?
Not surprisingly, that speech was read as a 'go' signal for opposition groups across the Caucasus. In Azerbaijan four youth groups – Yokh! (No!), Yeni Fikir (New Thinking), Magam (It's Time) and the Orange Movement of Azerbaijan – comprise the emerging opposition, an echo of Georgia, Ukraine and Serbia where the US Embassy and specially-trained NGO operatives orchestrated the US-friendly regime changes with help of the US National Endowment for Democracy, Freedom House and the Soros Foundation.
According to Baku journalists, Ukraine's Pora (It's Time), Georgia's Kmara (Enough) and Serbia's Otpor (Resistance) are cited by all four Azeri opposition organizations as role models. The opposition groups also consider George Bush's February meeting in Bratislava with Pora leader Vladislav Kaskiv as a sign that Washington supports their cause.
It seems the same team of Washington regime change experts are preparing for a 'color revolution' for the upcoming November elections in Azerbaijan as were behind other recent color revolutions.
In 2003, on the death of former Azeri President, Haider Aliyev, his playboy son, Ilham Aliyev, became President in grossly rigged elections which Washington legitimized because Aliyev was 'our tyrant,' and also just happened to hold his hand on the spigot of Baku oil.
Ilham, former president of the state oil company, SOCAR, is tied to his father's power base and is apparently now seen as not suitable for the new pipeline politics. Perhaps he wants too big a share of the spoils. In any case, both Tony Blair's UK Government and US State Department's AID are pouring money into Azeri opposition groups, similar to Otpor in Ukraine. US Ambassador Reno Harnish has stated Washington is ready to finance 'exit polling' in the elections. Exit polling in Ukraine was a key factor used to drive the opposition success there.
Moscow is following the Azeri events closely. On May 26 the Moscow daily, Kommersant wrote, '"While the pipeline will carry oil from the East to West, the spirit of 'color revolutions' will flow in the reverse direction.' The commentary went on to suggest that Western governments want to promote democratization in Azerbaijan out of a desire to protect the considerable investment made in the pipeline. That is only a part of the strategic game, however. The other part is what Pentagon strategists term 'strategic denial.'
Until recently the US had supported the corrupt ruthless dictatorship of the Aliyev's as the family had 'played ball' with US geopolitical designs in the area, even though Haider Aliyev had been a career top KGB officer in the Soviet Gorbachev era. Then on April 12, Defense Secretary Rumsfeld went to Baku, his second visit in four months, to discuss demands to create a US military base in Azerbaijan, as part of the US global force redeployment involving Europe, Mideast and Asia.
The Pentagon already de facto runs the Georgia military, with its US Special Forces officers, and Georgia has asked to join NATO. Now Washington wants to have direct bases in Azerbaijan proximate to Russia as well as to Iran.
The Pentagon has also allocated $100 million to build a Caspian Guard of special forces military, ostensibly to guard the new BTC pipeline, though the latter was deliberately built underground to make it less vulnerable, one reason for its high cost. Part of the Pentagon money would go to build a radar-equipped command center in Baku, capable of monitoring all sea traffic in the Caspian. The US wants airbases in Azerbaijan which naturally would be seen in Teheran and Moscow as a strategic provocation.
In all this maneuvering from the side of Washington and Ten Downing Street, the strategic issue of geopolitical control over Eurasia looms large. And increasingly it is clear that not only Putin's Russia is object of the new Washington War on Tyranny. It is becoming obvious to most now that the grand design in Eurasia on the part of Washington is not to pre-empt old Osama bin Laden and his Tora Bora cave dwellers.
The current Washington strategy targets many Eurasian former Soviet republics which per se have no known oil or gas reserves. What they do have, however, is strategic military or geopolitical significance for the Washington policy of dominating the future of Eurasia.
That policy has China as its geopolitical, economic and military fulcrum. A look at the Eurasian map and at the target countries for various US-sponsored Color Revolutions makes this unmistakeably clear. To the east of the Caspian Sea, Washington in one degree or another today controls Pakistan, Afghanistan, potentially Kyrgystan, Uzbekistan and Kazakhstan. These serve as a potential US-controlled barrier or buffer zone between China and Russian, Caspian and Iranian energy sources.
Washington is out to deny China easy land access to either Russia, the Middle East or to the oil and gas fields of the Caspian Sea.
Whither Kyrgystan?
Since early 2005 when a series of opposition protests erupted over the fairness of parliamentary elections in February and March, Kyrgystan has joined the growing list of Eurasian republics facing major threat of regime change or color revolution. The success of former Kyrgystan Prime Minister Kurmanbek Bakiev in replacing ousted President Askar Akayev in that country's so-called 'Tulip Revolution,' becoming interim President until July Presidential elections, invited inevitable comparisons with the Orange Revolution in Ukraine, or the Georgian Rose Revolution.
Washington's Radio Liberty has gone to great lengths to explain that the Kyrgystan opposition is not a US operation, but a genuine spontaneous grass roots phenomenon. The facts speak a different story however. According to reports from mainstream US journalists, including Craig Smith in the New York Times and Philip Shishkin in the Wall Street Journal, the opposition in Kyrgystan has had 'more than a little help from US friends' to paraphrase the Beatles song. Under the Freedom Support Act of the US Congress, in 2004 the dirt poor country of Kyrgystan got a total of $12 million in US government fundsto support the building of democracy. Twelve million will buy a lot of democracy in an economically desolate, forsaken land such as Kyrgystan.
Acknowledging the Washington largesse, Edil Baisolov, in a comment on the February-March anti-government protests, boasted, 'It would have been absolutely impossible for this to have happened without that help.' According to the New York Times' Smith, Baisolov's organization, the Coalition for Democracy and Civil Rights, is financed by the National Democratic Institute for International Affairs, a Washington-based nonprofit organization in turn funded by Condi Rice's State Department. Baisolov told Radio Liberty he had been to Ukraine to witness the tactics of their Orange Revolution, and got inspired.
But that isn't all. The whole cast of democracy characters has been busy in Bishkek and environs supporting American-style democracy and opposing 'anti-American tyranny.'
Washington's Freedom House has generously financed Bishkek's independent printing press which prints the opposition paper, 'MSN,' according to its man on the scene, Mike Stone.
Freedom House is an organization with a fine-sounding name and a long history since it was set up in the late 1940's to back the creation of NATO. The chairman of Freedom House is James Woolsey, former CIA director who calls the present series of regime changes from Baghdad to Kabul, 'World War IV.' Other trustees include the ubiquitous Zbigniew Brzezinski, former Clinton Commerce Secretary Stuart Eizenstat, and National Security Adviser Anthony Lake. Freedom House lists USAID, US Information Agency, Soros Foundations and the National Endowment for Democracy, among its financial backers.
One more of the many NGO's active in promoting the new democracy in Kyrgystan is the Civil Society Against Corruption, financed by the National Endowment for Democracy (NED).The NED which, with Freedom House, has been at the center of all the major Color Revolutions in recent years, was created during the Reagan Administration to function as a de facto privatized CIA, privatized so as to allow more freedom of action, or what the CIA likes to call 'plausible deniability.' NED chairman Vin Weber, a former Republican congressman is close to neo-conservative Bill Bennett. NED President since 1984 is Carl Gershman, who had previously been a Freedom House Scholar. NATO General Wesley Clark, the man who led the US bombing of Serbia in 1999, also sits on the NED Board. Allen Weinstein, who helped draft the legislation establishing NED,: 1991, 'A lot of what we do today was done covertly 25 years ago by the CIA.' Mmmmmm UhHuh...
Not to be forgotten, and definitely not least in Kyrgystan's ongoing Tulip Revolution is George Soros' Open Society Institute -- which also poured money into the Serbian, Georgian and Ukraine Color Revolutions.
The head of the Civil Society Against Corruption in Kyrgystan is Tolekan Ismailova, who organized the translation and distribution of the revolutionary manual used in Serbia, Ukraine and Georgia written by Gene Sharp, founder of a curiously-named Albert Einstein Institution in Boston. Sharp's book, a how-to manual for the color revolutions is titled 'From Dictatorship to Democracy.' It includes tips on nonviolent resistance -- such as 'display of flags and symbolic colors' -- and civil disobedience.
Sharp's book is literally the bible of the Color Revolutions, a kind of 'regime change for dummies.' Sharp created his Albert Einstein Institution in 1983, with backing from Harvard University. It is funded by the US Congress' NED and the Soros Foundations, to train people in and to study the theories of 'non-violence as a form of warfare.' Sharp has worked with NATO and the CIA over the years training operators in Burma, Lithuania, Serbia, Georgia, Ukraine to Taiwan, even Venezuela and Iraq.
In short virtually every regime which has been the target of a US-backed soft coup in the past twenty years has involved Gene Sharp and usually, his associate, Col. Robert Helvey, a retired US Army intelligence specialist. Notably, Sharp was in Beijing two weeks before student demonstrations at Tiananmen Square in 1989. The Pentagon and US intelligence have refined the art of such soft coups to a fine level. RAND planners call it 'swarming,' referring to the swarms of youth, typically linked by SMS and web blogs, who can be mobilized on command to destabilize a target regime.
Then Uzbekistan…?
Uzbekistan's tyrannical President Islam Karimov had early profiled himself as a staunch friend of the Washington War on Terror, offering a former Soviet airbase for US military actions including the attack on the Taliban in Afghanistan. Many considered Karimov too close to Washington to be in danger. He had made himself a 'good' tyrant in Washington's eyes.
That's also no longer a sure thing. In May Secretary Condoleezza Rice demanded Karimov institute 'political reforms' following violent prison uprisings and subsequent protests over conditions in the Ferghana Valley region in Andijan. Karimov has fiercely resisted independent inquiry into allegations his troops shot and killed hundreds of unarmed protesters. He insists the uprisings were caused by 'external' radical Muslim fundamentalists allied with Taliban and intent on establishing an Islamic 'caliphate' in Uzbekistan's Ferghana Valley bordering Kyrgystan.
While ouster of Karimov is unclear for the moment, leading Washington backers of Karimov's 'democratic reform' have turned into hostile opponents. As one US commentator expressed it, 'the character of the Karimov regime can no longer be ignored in deference to the strategic usefulness of Uzbekistan.' Karimov has been targeted for a Color Revolution in the relentless Washington War on Tyranny.
In mid-June Karimov's government announced changes in terms for the US to use Uzbekistan Karshi-Khanabad military airbase, including a ban on night flights. Karimov is moving demonstrably closer to Moscow and perhaps also to Beijing in the latest chapter of the new Great Game for geopolitical control over Eurasia.
Following the Andijan events, Karimov revived the former 'strategic partnership' with Moscow and also got a red carpet welcome at the end of May in Beijing, including a 21-gun salute. At a June Brussels NATO meeting Russian Foreign Minister Sergei Ivanov backed Karimov, declaring there was no need for an international investigation of what happened in Andijan.
Tajikistan, bordering Afghanistan and China, is so far the only remaining Central Asian republic not yet to undergo a successful US-led Color Revolution. It's not for lack of trying. For several years Washington has attempted to woo Dushanbe away from its close ties to Moscow, including the economic carrot of US backing for Tajik membership in WTO. Beijing has also been active. China has recently upgraded military assistance to Tajikistan, and is keen to strengthen ties to all Central Asian republics standing between it and the energy resources to the Eurasian west from Russia to Iran. The stakes are the highest for the oil-dependent China.
Washington Playing the China Card
The one power in Eurasia that has the potential to create a strategic combination which could checkmate US global dominance is China. However China has an Achilles Heel, which Washington understands all too well-oil. Ten years ago China was a net oil exporter. Today China is the second largest importer behind the USA.
China's energy demand is growing annually at a rate of more than 30%. China has feverishly been trying to secure long-term oil and gas supplies, especially since the Iraq war made clear to Beijing that Washington was out to control and militarize most of the world's major oil and gas sources. A new wrinkle to the search for Black Gold, oil, is the clear data confirming that many of the world's largest oil fields are in decline, while new discoveries fail to replace lost volumes of oil. It is a pre-programmed scenario for war. The only question is, with what weapons?
In recent months Beijing has signed major oil and economic deals with Venezuela and Iran. It has bid for a major Canadian resources company, and most recently made the audacious bid to buy California's Unocal, a partner in the Caspian BTC pipeline. Chevron immediately stepped in with a counter bid to block China's.
Beijing has recently also upgraded the importance of the four-year-old organization, Shanghai Cooperation Organization, or SCO. SCO consists of China, Russia, Kazakhstan, Uzbekistan, Kyrgystan and Tajikistan. Not surprisingly, these are many of the states which are in the midst of US-backed attempts at soft coups or Color Revolutions. SCO's July meeting list included an invitation to India, Pakistan and Iran to attend with Observer Status.
This June the foreign ministers of Russia, China and India held a meeting in Vladivostock where they stressed the role of the United Nations, a move aimed clearly at Washington. India also discussed its project to invest and develop Russia's Far East Sakhalin I, where it has already invested about $1 billion in oil and gas development. Significantly, at the meeting, Russia and China resolved a decades-long border dispute, and two weeks later in Beijing, discussed potentials for development of Russia's Siberian resources.
A close look at the map of Eurasia begins to suggest what is so vital here for China and therefore for Washington's future domination of Eurasia. The goal is not only strategic encirclement of Russia through a series of NATO bases ranging from Camp Bond Steel in Kosovo to Poland, to Georgia, possibly Ukraine and White Russia, which would enable NATO to control energy ties between Russia and the EU.
Washington policy now encompasses a series of 'democratic' or soft coup projects which would strategically cut China off from access to the vital oil and gas reserves of the Caspian including Kazakhstan. The earlier Asian Great Silk Road trade routes went through Tashkent in Uzbekistan and Almaty in Kazakhstan for geographically obvious reasons, in a region surrounded by major mountain ranges. Geopolitical control of Uzbekistan, Kyrgystan, Kazakhstan would enable control of any potential pipeline routes between China and Central Asia just as the encirclement of Russia controls pipeline and other ties between it and western Europe, China, India and the Mideast.
In this context, the revealing Foreign Affairs article from Zbigniew Brzezinski from September/October 1997 is worth again quoting:
'Eurasia is home to most of the world's politically assertive and dynamic states. All the historical pretenders to global power originated in Eurasia. The world's most populous aspirants to regional hegemony, China and India, are in Eurasia, as are all the potential political or economic challengers to American primacy. After the United States, the next six largest economies and military spenders are there, as are all but one of the world's overt nuclear powers, and all but one of the covert ones. Eurasia accounts for 75 percent of the world's population, 60 percent of its GNP, and 75 percent of its energy resources. Collectively, Eurasia's potential power overshadows even America's.
'Eurasia is the world's axial supercontinent. A power that dominated Eurasia would exercise decisive influence over two of the world's three most economically productive regions, Western Europe and East Asia. A glance at the map also suggests that a country dominant in Eurasia would almost automatically control the Middle East and Africa. With Eurasia now serving as the decisive geopolitical chessboard, it no longer suffices to fashion one policy for Europe and another for Asia. What happens with the distribution of power on the Eurasian landmass will be of decisive importance to America's global primacy….'
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Jul 1, 2011 | Land Destroyer
By 1885, the entire landmass of Myanmar was swallowed up by the British Empire after nearly a century of calculative annexation and three Anglo-Burmese Wars. A period of selective economic prosperity began, enabling the British to exploit the resources and local labor of the 'natives' while creating an economic climate where local farmers and business owners were forced to take high interest loans to meet demand if they intended to stay in business, mirroring today's IMF lending protocol. The collective British opinion regarded the Burmese population closer to 'creatures' rather than human beings and unsurprisingly public discontent grew in the form of Student-led Nationalist Uprisings around the 1920's.
Through various front groups such as 'The Friends Of The Burma Hill Peoples', agents of British Intelligence armed and funded various ethnic groups, most notably the Karen tribes in an attempt to foster a breakaway state and to overthrow the post-independence government..... ... ...
It is no question that foreign intelligence groups are using identical tactics today in an effort to install a globalist compliant regime at whatever cost. During the early years of post Independence widespread civil war took place between warring paramilitary factions of covertly funded ethnic minorities such as the Karen and Arakanese Muslims, Communist factions led by Thakin Than Tun (Uncle of foreign funded Democracy icon, Aung San Suu Kyi) which received training from the Chinese Revolutionaries, and exiled Chinese Nationalist Kuomintang fighters who built military bases in North Eastern Myanmar; this created a climate of foreign funded secessionist movements causing the country to be ungovernable and set the stage for heavy handed centralized military rule. In 1962 former General and Prime Minister Ne Win successfully formed a revolutionary council with himself as chairman by means of a military coup d'état, he would be in power until 1988 and head a tactless military regime whilst authoring economic policies of total incompetence under his Burmese Way To Socialism. Although his polices initially nationalized private hospitals, opened public school systems and launched campaigns that aspired to eradicate illiteracy, the end result was widespread poverty and gradual economic and intellectual isolation from the world.... ... ...
Like Serbia's "Democratic Opposition of Serbia" and Zimbabwe's "Movement for Democratic Change", we come to Aung San Suu Kyi's patron movement, the "National League of Democracy". Prior to the contrived color revolution of 2007, Helvey's mercenaries created workshops where over three thousand Myanmarese and hundreds of Buddhist monks were trained in "philosophies and strategies of non-violent resistance and community organizing" which included providing dissident religious leaders with mobile phones and organizing a widespread religious boycott of the government, knowing fully well that monks were held in the highest esteem in that country and regarded as the moral authority. Under the umbrella of the auspicious Asia Society, Globalist George Soros and his Open Society along with co-chairs General Wesley Clark (the former NATO commander during the Serbian conflict), Henrietta Fore (former administrator of USAID, CEO of Holsman International investments) and members from Human Rights Watch, authored US policy towards Myanmar which laid it's objectives as the following: "
The National League for Democracy should continue to be a focal point of U.S. policy support, and its leader, Aung San Suu Kyi, will remain an important figure for achieving the dialogue necessary to bring about national reconciliation of the military, democracy groups, and minority nationalities. At the same time, U.S. policy also must place greater emphasis on reaching out to other democratic forces, including civil society groups, and ethnic minorities and ensuring that they benefit from U.S. assistance programs inside Burma.
... ... ...
According to an interview with Gene Sharp in New Internationalist Magazine, he has stated,"Burmese opposition activists acknowledge receiving technical and financial help for their cause from the Washington-based National Endowment for Democracy, George Soros's Open Society Institute and several European countries. International donors and activists figure Burmese opposition groups received eight to ten million dollars in 2006 and again in 2007 from American and European funders. In 2006 and 2007, the (U.S.) congressionally funded NED spent around three point seven million dollars a year on its Burmese program. These funds were used to support opposition media, including the Democratic Voice of Burma, a radio station and satellite television channel to bolster dissidents' information technology skills and to help exiles' training of Buddhist monks and other dissident techniques of peaceful political resistance."
From 1992 to 1998, Helvey personally conducted courses to hundreds of members of the National Council Union of Burma regarding the implementation of Gene Sharp's techniques of destabilization, while hundreds more have been instructed at Sharp's n. New Republic writer Franklin Foer says it best,
It should be noted that there is nothing morally superior or progressive in the tactics utilized by Sharp, Ackerman and Helvey, for they simply implement imperialism in ways, which appear to be morally conducive at first glance. It is 21st century warfare. Peter Ackerman was the former Freedom House chairman and has extensive ties to the Council on Foreign Relations who has rubbed elbows with former U.S. Secretary of State Madeleine Albright, former Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff and former U.S. Secretary of State Colin Powell, openly bracketing with neo-imperialist war criminals such as National Security Advisor Zbigniew Brzezinski and former CIA Director and current U.S. Defense Secretary Robert Gates and has been instrument in authoring a new approach to destabilizing Iran as he tentatively warns "watch the streets". The motivation for Ackerman's ideology is to the cushion the environment for private investment firms to commandeer the fruits of third world labor as he boasts the United States "has an awful lot to teach people around the world"."Ackerman's affection for nonviolence has nothing to do with the tactic's moral superiority. Movements that make a strategic decision to eschew violence, he argues, have a far better record of success."
... ... ...
If Soros's Open Society Institute fails in its mission to 'open' Myanmar to vampire crony-capitalism, the institute supports the increase of business and banking sanctions. If Myanmar's legs are pried open, the Asia Society Task Force demands "reform-oriented economic activity" based on the expert advice of the IMF, World Bank and Asia Development Bank partnered with the United States (clearly a country who's economic climate reflects its ability to give beneficial advice on anything); "
A second measure is for the United States and other appropriate countries to provide Burma with assistance in economic institution building."
The economy of Myanmar is 'paranoid' and under state direction (investment opportunities are only available to firms which partner with the State) to avoid being consumed by larger transnational piranhas and if objectives such as implementing
"market opening policies, including the removal of remaining restrictions on private enterprise, openness to foreign trade and investment"
are realized, expect executives from Halliburton and Coca-Cola to accompany John McCain on his next visit to the land of a thousand pagodas. Because unelected bodies such as the Open Society Institute, the National Endowment for Democracy and the highbrow Council on Foreign Relations act as the central authors of US foreign policy objectives, democracy in the United States is totally undermined in every facet with virtually every Presidential Administration using the exact wording as it's predecessor to shape public opinion of countries resistant to foreign subversion.
Society
Groupthink : Two Party System as Polyarchy : Corruption of Regulators : Bureaucracies : Understanding Micromanagers and Control Freaks : Toxic Managers : Harvard Mafia : Diplomatic Communication : Surviving a Bad Performance Review : Insufficient Retirement Funds as Immanent Problem of Neoliberal Regime : PseudoScience : Who Rules America : Neoliberalism : The Iron Law of Oligarchy : Libertarian Philosophy
Quotes
War and Peace : Skeptical Finance : John Kenneth Galbraith :Talleyrand : Oscar Wilde : Otto Von Bismarck : Keynes : George Carlin : Skeptics : Propaganda : SE quotes : Language Design and Programming Quotes : Random IT-related quotes : Somerset Maugham : Marcus Aurelius : Kurt Vonnegut : Eric Hoffer : Winston Churchill : Napoleon Bonaparte : Ambrose Bierce : Bernard Shaw : Mark Twain Quotes
Bulletin:
Vol 25, No.12 (December, 2013) Rational Fools vs. Efficient Crooks The efficient markets hypothesis : Political Skeptic Bulletin, 2013 : Unemployment Bulletin, 2010 : Vol 23, No.10 (October, 2011) An observation about corporate security departments : Slightly Skeptical Euromaydan Chronicles, June 2014 : Greenspan legacy bulletin, 2008 : Vol 25, No.10 (October, 2013) Cryptolocker Trojan (Win32/Crilock.A) : Vol 25, No.08 (August, 2013) Cloud providers as intelligence collection hubs : Financial Humor Bulletin, 2010 : Inequality Bulletin, 2009 : Financial Humor Bulletin, 2008 : Copyleft Problems Bulletin, 2004 : Financial Humor Bulletin, 2011 : Energy Bulletin, 2010 : Malware Protection Bulletin, 2010 : Vol 26, No.1 (January, 2013) Object-Oriented Cult : Political Skeptic Bulletin, 2011 : Vol 23, No.11 (November, 2011) Softpanorama classification of sysadmin horror stories : Vol 25, No.05 (May, 2013) Corporate bullshit as a communication method : Vol 25, No.06 (June, 2013) A Note on the Relationship of Brooks Law and Conway Law
History:
Fifty glorious years (1950-2000): the triumph of the US computer engineering : Donald Knuth : TAoCP and its Influence of Computer Science : Richard Stallman : Linus Torvalds : Larry Wall : John K. Ousterhout : CTSS : Multix OS Unix History : Unix shell history : VI editor : History of pipes concept : Solaris : MS DOS : Programming Languages History : PL/1 : Simula 67 : C : History of GCC development : Scripting Languages : Perl history : OS History : Mail : DNS : SSH : CPU Instruction Sets : SPARC systems 1987-2006 : Norton Commander : Norton Utilities : Norton Ghost : Frontpage history : Malware Defense History : GNU Screen : OSS early history
Classic books:
The Peter Principle : Parkinson Law : 1984 : The Mythical Man-Month : How to Solve It by George Polya : The Art of Computer Programming : The Elements of Programming Style : The Unix Hater’s Handbook : The Jargon file : The True Believer : Programming Pearls : The Good Soldier Svejk : The Power Elite
Most popular humor pages:
Manifest of the Softpanorama IT Slacker Society : Ten Commandments of the IT Slackers Society : Computer Humor Collection : BSD Logo Story : The Cuckoo's Egg : IT Slang : C++ Humor : ARE YOU A BBS ADDICT? : The Perl Purity Test : Object oriented programmers of all nations : Financial Humor : Financial Humor Bulletin, 2008 : Financial Humor Bulletin, 2010 : The Most Comprehensive Collection of Editor-related Humor : Programming Language Humor : Goldman Sachs related humor : Greenspan humor : C Humor : Scripting Humor : Real Programmers Humor : Web Humor : GPL-related Humor : OFM Humor : Politically Incorrect Humor : IDS Humor : "Linux Sucks" Humor : Russian Musical Humor : Best Russian Programmer Humor : Microsoft plans to buy Catholic Church : Richard Stallman Related Humor : Admin Humor : Perl-related Humor : Linus Torvalds Related humor : PseudoScience Related Humor : Networking Humor : Shell Humor : Financial Humor Bulletin, 2011 : Financial Humor Bulletin, 2012 : Financial Humor Bulletin, 2013 : Java Humor : Software Engineering Humor : Sun Solaris Related Humor : Education Humor : IBM Humor : Assembler-related Humor : VIM Humor : Computer Viruses Humor : Bright tomorrow is rescheduled to a day after tomorrow : Classic Computer Humor
The Last but not Least Technology is dominated by two types of people: those who understand what they do not manage and those who manage what they do not understand ~Archibald Putt. Ph.D
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Last modified: March, 03, 2020
