Wednesday, 20 August 2014

colour revolutions

The Ukraine has been very much in the news:
Jay Doubleyou: english language media as propaganda in the ukraine

It started with the 'Orange Revolution':
Orange Revolution - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

There have been questions about 'where it all came from'....

Involvement of outside forces

Activists in each of these movements were funded and trained in tactics of political organisation and nonviolent resistance by a coalition of Western pollsters and professional consultants who were partly funded by a range of Western government and non-government agencies but received most of their funding from domestic sources.[nb 2][2] According to The Guardian, the foreign donours 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.[34] The National Endowment for Democracy, a foundation supported by the U.S. government, has supported non-governmental democracy-building efforts in Ukraine since 1988.[35] Writings onnonviolent struggle by Gene Sharp contributed in forming the strategic basis of the student campaigns.[32]
Former president Leonid Kravchuk accused Russian oligarchBoris Berezovsky, of financing Yushchenko's campaign on 14 September 2005.[36][nb 3] Yushchenko denied Berezovsky financed his election campaign.[36] Financing of election campaigns by foreign citizens is illegal in Ukraine.[37] At first Berezovsky refused to confirm or deny Kravchuk's allegations, but in November 2005 he did claim that indeed he had heavily financed the Orange Revolution.[38][nb 4]

In fact, this was not the only 'colour revolution':
Colour revolution - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

This is what RT thinks:



You say you want a revolution, but be careful what you wish for — RT News

Here's a very strong opinion on the issue - from a Canadian news website:

Colored Revolutions: A New Form of Regime Change, Made in the USA

Global Research, March 05, 2014
hcvanalysis.wordpress.com 10 February 2011

In 1983, the strategy of overthrowing inconvenient governments and calling it “democracy promotion” was born.
Through the creation of a series of quasi-private “foundations”, such as Albert Einstein Institute (AEI), National Endowment for Democracy (NED), International Republican Institute (IRI), National Democratic Institute (NDI), Freedom House and later the International Center for Non-Violent Conflict (ICNC), Washington began to filter funding and strategic aid to political parties and groups abroad that promoted US agenda in nations with insubordinate governments.
Behind all these “foundations” and “institutes” is the US Agency for Inter- national Development (USAID), the financial branch of the Department of State. Today, USAID has become a critical part of the security, intelligence and defense axis in Washington. In 2009, the Interagency Counterinsurgency Initiative became official doctrine in the US. Now, USAID is the principal entity that promotes the economic and strategic interests of the US across the globe as part of counterinsurgency operations. Its departments dedicated to transition initiatives, reconstruction, conflict management, economic development, governance and democracy are the main venues through which millions of dollars are filtered from Washington to political parties, NGOs, student organizations and movements that promote US agenda worldwide. Wherever a coup d’etat, a colored revolution or a regime change favorable to US interests occurs, USAID and its flow of dollars is there.
How Does a Colored Revolution Work?
The recipe is always the same. Student and youth movements lead the way with a fresh face, attracting others to join in as though it were the fashion, the cool thing to do. There’s always a logo, a color, a marketing strategy. In Serbia, the group OTPOR, which led the overthrow of Slobodan Milosevic, hit the streets with t-shirts, posters and flags boasting a fist in black and white, their symbol of resistance. In Ukraine, the logo remained the same, but the color changed to orange. In Georgia, it was a rose-colored fist, and in Venezuela, instead of the closed fist, the hands are open, in black and white, to add a little variety.
About | Global Research

Here is a 'less biased' view on the same process:

Between 2000 and 2005, Russia-allied governments in Serbia, Georgia, Ukraine, and (not 
discussed in this paper) Kyrgyzstan were overthrown through bloodless upheavals. Though 
Western media generally portrayed these coups as spontaneous, indigenous and popular (‘people 
power’) uprisings, the ‘color revolutions’ were in fact outcomes of extensive planning and energy 
─ much of which originated in the West. The United States, in particular, and its allies brought to 
bear upon post-communist states an impressive assortment of advisory pressures and financing 
mechanisms, as well as campaign technologies and techniques, in the service of ‘democracy 
assistance’. Their arsenals included exit and opinion polling, focus groups for ‘revolutionary 
messaging’, and methods and training in ‘strategic nonviolent conflict’. 

https://www.westminster.ac.uk/__data/assets/pdf_file/0011/20009/006WPCC-Vol5-No3-Gerald_Sussman_Sascha_Krader.pdf

On the other hand, here's a very critical piece - again from Canada:

The West Marches East, Part 1: The U.S.-NATO Strategy to Isolate Russia

By: Andrew Gavin Marshall
17 April 2014
Originally posted at The Hampton Institute


Mark Almond wrote in the Guardian in 2004 that, “throughout the 1980s, in the build-up to 1989′s velvet revolutions, a small army of volunteers – and, let’s be frank, spies – co-operated to promote what became People Power.” This was represented by “a network of interlocking foundations and charities [which] mushroomed to organize the logistics of transferring millions of dollars to dissidents.” The money itself ” came overwhelmingly from NATO states and covert allies such as ‘neutral’ Sweden,” as well as through the billionaire George Soros’ Open Society Foundation. Almond noted that these “modern market revolutionaries” would bring people into office “with the power to privatize.” Activists and populations are mobilized with “a multimedia vision of Euro-Atlantic prosperity by Western-funded ‘independent’ media to get them on the streets.” After successful Western-backed ‘revolutions’ comes the usual economic ‘shock therapy’ which brings with it “mass unemployment, rampant insider dealing, growth of organized crime, prostitution and soaring death rates.” Ah, democracy!
Following Serbia in 2000, the activists, Western ‘aid agencies’, foundations and funders moved their resources to the former Soviet republic of Georgia, where in 2003, the ‘Rose Revolution’ replaced the president with a more pro-Western (and Western-educated) leader, Mikheil Saakashvili, a protégé of George Soros, who played a significant role in funding so-called ‘pro-democracy’ groups in Georgia that the country has often been referred to as ‘Sorosistan’. In 2004, Ukraine became the next target of Western-backed ‘democratic’ regime change in what became known as the ‘Orange Revolution’. Russia viewed these ‘color revolutions’ as “U.S.-sponsored plots using local dupes to overthrow governments unfriendly to Washington and install American vassals.”
Mark MacKinnon, who was the Globe and Mail‘s Moscow bureau chief between 2002 and 2005, covered these Western-funded protests and has since written extensively on the subject of the ‘color revolutions.’ Reviewing a book of his on the subject, the Montreal Gazette noted that these so-called revolutions were not “spontaneous popular uprisings, but in fact were planned and financed either directly by American diplomats or through a collection of NGOs acting as fronts for the United States government,” and that while there was a great deal of dissatisfaction with the ruling, corrupt elites in each country, the ‘democratic opposition’ within these countries received their “marching orders and cash from American and European officials, whose intentions often had to do more with securing access to energy resources and pipeline routes than genuine interest in democracy.”
The ‘Orange Revolution’ in Ukraine in 2004 was – as Ian Traynor wrote in the Guardian - ” an American creation, a sophisticated and brilliantly conceived exercise in western branding and mass marketing,” with funding and organizing from the U.S. government, “deploying US consultancies, pollsters, diplomats, the two big American parties and US non-governmental organizations.”
The enlargement of the European Union into Eastern Europe reflected a process of Eastern European nations having to implement neoliberal reforms in order to join the EU, including mass privatizations, deregulation, liberalization of markets and harsh austerity measures. The enlargement of the EU into Central and Eastern Europe advanced in 2004 and 2007, when new states were admitted into EU membership, including Bulgaria, Romania, Poland, the Czech Republic, Hungary, Slovakia, Latvia, Estonia and Lithuania. 309. A Neoliberal Trojan Horse? The New EU Member States and EU Social Model | Wilson Center
These new EU members were hit hard by the global financial crisis in 2008 and 2009, and subsequently forced to impose harsh austerity measures. They have been slower to ‘recover’ than other nations, increasingly having to deal with “political instability and mass unemployment and human suffering.” The exception to this is Poland, which did not implement austerity measures, which has left the Polish economy in a better position than the rest of the new EU members. The financial publication Forbes warned in 2013 that “the prospect of endless economic stagnation in the newest EU members… will, sooner or later, bring extremely deleterious political consequences .”
In the words of a senior British diplomat, Robert Cooper, the European Union represents a type of “cooperative empire.” The expansion of the EU into Central and Eastern Europe brought increased corporate profits, with new investments and cheap labour to exploit. Further, the newer EU members were more explicitly pro-market than the older EU members that continued to promote a different social market economy than those promoted by the Americans and British. With these states joining the EU, noted the Financial Times in 2008, “the new member states have reinforced the ranks of the free marketeers and free traders,” as they increasingly “team up with northern states to vote for deregulation and liberalization of the market.”

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