Posted on 04/05/2005 7:37:04 AM PDT by dead
The US is turning on old friends in Europe, writes John Laughland.
Before he denounced the "prevailing influence" of the US in the "anti-constitutional coup" that overthrew him, President Askar Akayev of Kyrgyzstan used an interesting phrase to attack those who were stirring up trouble in the drug-ridden Ferghana Valley. A criminal "third force", linked to the drug mafia, was struggling to gain power.
Originally a label for covert operatives shoring up apartheid in South Africa before it was adopted by the US-backed "pro-democracy" movement in Iran in November 2001, the third force is also the title of a book published by the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace which details how Western-backed non-governmental organisations can promote regime and policy change. The formulaic repetition of a third "people power" revolution in the former Soviet Union in just over a year - Georgia in November 2003 and Ukraine last Christmas - means the post-Soviet space now resembles Central America in the 1970s and '80s, when a series of US-backed coups consolidated Washington's control over the western hemisphere.
Many of the same US government operatives in Latin America have plied their trade in Eastern Europe under George Bush, most notably Michael Kozak, the former US ambassador to Belarus, who boasted he was doing in Belarus exactly what he had been doing in Nicaragua - "supporting democracy".
But for some reason, many seem not to have noticed this continuity. Perhaps this is because these events are being energetically presented as radical and left-wing even by commentators and political activists on the right, for whom revolutionary violence is now cool.
As protesters ransacked the presidential palace in Bishkek, one British correspondent said the scenes reminded him of Bolshevik propaganda films about the 1917 revolution, as others extolled "power to the people" while welcoming Kyrgyzstan's "long march" to freedom.
This myth of the masses spontaneously rising up against an authoritarian regime exerts such a grip over the collective imagination that it persists despite being false: try to imagine the American police allowing demonstrators to ransack the White House, and you will immediately understand that these "dictatorships" in the former Soviet Union are in reality among the most fragile, indulgent and weak regimes in the world.
The US ambassador in Bishkek, Stephen Young, spent months denying claims the US was interfering in Kyrgyzstan's internal affairs. But with anti-Akayev demonstrators telling Western journalists they want Kyrgyzstan to become "the 51st state", this official line is wearing a little thin.
Kyrgyzstan is the largest recipient of US aid in Central Asia: the US has spent $746 million ($975 million) since 1992 in a country with fewer than 5 million inhabitants. In 2004, $31 million alone was outlaid. As a result, the place is crawling with what Young calls "American-sponsored NGOs".
The case of Freedom House is particularly arresting. Chaired by the former CIA director James Woolsey, Freedom House was one of the main sponsors of the orange revolution in Ukraine. It set up a printing press in Bishkek in 2003 which prints 60 opposition journals. Although it is described as "independent" the body that owns it is chaired by John McCain, a Republican senator, while the former national security adviser Anthony Lake sits on the board. The US also supports opposition radio and TV.
Many recipients of this aid are open about their political aims: the head of the US-funded Coalition for Democracy and Civil Society, Edil Baisalov, told The New York Times the overthrow of Akayev would have been "absolutely impossible" without American help. In Kyrgyzstan, as in Ukraine, a key element in regime change was played by elements in the local secret services, whose loyalty is easily bought.
Perhaps the most intriguing question is why? Bill Clinton's assistant secretary of state called Akayev "a Jeffersonian democrat", winning kudos for welcoming US-backed NGOs and the American military. But the ditching of old friends has become something of a habit: both Edward Shevardnadze of Georgia and Leonid Kuchma of Ukraine were portrayed as great reformers for most of their time in office.
To be sure, the US has well-known strategic interests in Central Asia, especially in Kyrgyzstan. Freedom House's friendliness to the Islamic fundamentalist movement Hizb ut-Tahrir will certainly unsettle a Beijing concerned about Muslim unrest in its western provinces. But perhaps the clearest message sent by Akayev's overthrow is this: in the new world order the sudden replacement of party cadres hangs as a permanent threat - or incentive - over even the most compliant apparatchik.
The Guardian
I wish we'd be instituting the same course of action in Venezuela.
I don't think Chavez will be long for the world.....
We need to take out Castro first, that will make getting rid of Chavez a lot easier. I will never understand why we didn't deal with Castro back in the mid-80's.
That's because the Trotskyite Neocons are in power (have been since Clinton). Under Clinton they tried armed revolutions - usually by Islamic forces - that had a bad blowback on 9/11 - so they switched to Soros inspired tactics.
I remember Lech Walenza saying the same thing, that he wanted Poland to become our 51st state. He said, if Puerto Rico doesn't want to become a state, we do.
It was somewhat tongue in cheek, it was after his election to the presidency, he flew directly to the US and on to California to shake Reagan's hand and thank him personally. He was pretty emotional.
Bill Clinton's assistant secretary of state called Akayev "a Jeffersonian democrat",
Thats not exactly a ringing endorsement. Albright's assistant?
Well, for this article to make sense you need to read the NY Times article where the State Dept. where it detailed how they drew up and funded class warfare leaning political adds and basicaly published the opposition papers.
The whole mess in the former Eastern Bloc countries makes me wonder just who is minding the store these days in the state department.
Pretty much the same people as under Clinton - but with more brakes in the first 4 years -
My bride's first cousin works in D.C. and she has often commented that the same people are always there no matter what the administration.
Maybe they forgot to see the USSR broke up?
bump
Bolshevik Leninist revolution failed, so now Menshevik/EU/Neocon/Gramscian revolution is being tried.
Do you want to learn about such revolutions - read Solzhenitsyn's August 14 and prophetic novel by Dostoyevsky Possessed (Devils).
Menshevik:
"Member of the minority of the Russian Social Democratic Party, who split from the Bolsheviks in 1903. The Mensheviks believed in a large, loosely organized party and that, before socialist revolution could occur in Russia, capitalist society had to develop further. During the Russian Revolution they had limited power and set up a government in Georgia, but were suppressed in 1922."
The goal is the same - perfect mankind without God:
Imagine by John Lennon Imagine there's no heaven, It's easy if you try, No hell below us, Above us only sky, Imagine all the people living for today... Imagine there's no countries, It isnt hard to do, Nothing to kill or die for, No religion too, Imagine all the people living life in peace... Imagine no possesions, I wonder if you can, No need for greed or hunger, A brotherhood of man, Imagine all the people Sharing all the world... You may say Im a dreamer, but Im not the only one, I hope some day you'll join us, And the world will live as one.
The "third force" concept is being mentioned in the Graham Greene's 1950's prophetic book about Vietnam and promotion of democracy - Quiet American. See the story amd movie review at http://www.geocities.com/~polfilms/quietamerican.html
Russian NGO to Monitor US Democracy : The Other Russia
Jan 26, 2008 ... The Moscow-based Institute for Democracy and Cooperation has officially registered branches in New York and Paris, with hopes to expand to ...
http://www.theotherrussia.org/2008/01/26/russian-ngo-to-monitor-us-democracy/
The world in Russia's eyes: A new 'soft power' offensive
Europe Features, dpa - Deutsche Presse-Agentur
Jan 29, 2008, 17:22 GMT
(DPA) Moscow - A Russian non-profit organization has opened offices in New York and Paris to improve Russia's image abroad by hunting for flaws in western democracies.
Russia has grown increasingly hostile of what it considers western organizations' 'meddling' after the 2004 democratic Orange Revolution in neighbouring Ukraine, accusing them of funding opposition groups.
Born out of President Vladimir Putin's speech at a European Union- Russia conference in October, the Institute for Democracy and Cooperation (IDC) is typical of Russia's vocal, relativist response to western nations in recent months.
The organization's founder Anatoly Kucherena said the centre would disseminate Russian political concepts, such as its pursuit of 'sovereign democracy,' highlighting Russia's growing desire to target foreign public opinion through non-military or so-called 'soft power' initiatives.
'No country can monopolize the definition of standards of democracy and human rights,' said Kucherena, a pro-Kremlin lawyer and Public Chamber member.
But analysts were skeptical as to what positive ideology the organization could export and its possible impact.
Rose Gottemoeller, head of the US-based Moscow Carnegie Institute, told Deutsche Presse-Agentur dpa that the institute had been almost two years in the planning. As such the IDC - pitched as a cross between a think tank and a rights' watchdog - seems to be the latest in Russia's new soft power offensive.
With Russia's coffers sighing with oil funds, Putin has made it his priority to reclaim Russia's greatness - to this end hiring foreign public relations consultants for summits and launching a generously-funded English-speaking news channel, Russia Today.
'The Russian government has recently been showing a glimmer of recognition that they have been behaving in a way that has lost it allies,' Gottemoeller said.
Kucherena denied the institute was a Kremlin project, emphasizing it would be funded by Russian businessmen. But he refused to identify the donors, raising suspicions that they may be well-disposed businessmen doing the Kremlin's bidding.
Gottemoeller highlighted that it was unclear whether the centre would be independent, saying 'I don't know where they get their money from.
She said it was natural for Russia to want to promote its interest abroad, but 'we have to draw the line between a government-funded and independent institute.'
The real question, Gottemoeller said, was how they receive their working instructions: 'No argument, it is illegitimate, but it has to come with no strings attached.'
Political analyst Andranik Migranian, who is to head the foundation's New York office, was more circumspect, saying the foundation had been conceived in consultation with the Kremlin.
'I understand that [Kucherena] is afraid ... always trying to prove that it is independent and grass-roots - this is true, but our civil society is not separate from state structures,' he told journalists in Moscow on Monday.
Western rights' organizations and vote monitors have become increasingly critical of Putin, even as the Kremlin moved to limit their scope with new restrictive non-governmental laws.
Christopher Walker, director of studies at the democracy watchdog Freedom House, told dpa that the IDC was redundant and would do better to look to home first.
'An extensive number of independent NGOs and news media are already scrutinizing the activities of United States and EU governments. Such scrutiny is no longer the case in Russia where they have been systematically sidelined,' Walker said.
The US-based Freedom House particularly pricked Russia's ire with a report last year that ranked Russia near last out of 195 countries - at the authoritarian end of the scale.
While Russia's state-owned newspaper Rossiskaya Gazeta Tuesday led with the headline 'Freedom House Russian style,' Kucherena was quick to reject the comparison. At a news conference punctuated with such attacks on Monday, Kucherena said, 'Any report published today, especially by organizations such as Freedom House, are always ideological works.'
The head of Human Rights Watch's Moscow office Alexander Petrov said he wished Russia luck, but 'the competition is fierce, and I am not sure that a new organization will be able to add anything,' Interfax news agency reported. Analysts said Tuesday that the CDI was most likely a tit-for-tat ideological move by Russia.
In October, tepid reactions from EU diplomats who mistook Putin's overture for joint project were quickly quelled by Russia's top EU negotiator Sergei Yastrazhembsky, who quipped, 'It won't be a joint venture.'
Yastrazhembsky called the project a 'symmetrical response' to the EU's funding of democracy promotion in Russia. Natalia Narochnitskaya, chosen as the institute's director in Paris, has accused the West of double standards and using human rights issues as a political tool. She cut in to the United States for its purported police abuses and high incarceration rate.
'There are many problems. The sun has spots too,' Narochnitskaya said.
© 2008 dpa - Deutsche Presse-Agentur http://64.233.169.132/search?q=cache:Uh3S3Yr_h84J:www.monstersandcritics.com/news/europe/features/article_1389023.php/The_world_in_Russias_eyes_A_new_soft_power_offensive+%22Institute+for+Democracy+and+Cooperation%22&hl=en&ct=clnk&cd=14&gl=us
Western criticism of what many see as Kremlin backsliding on democratic principles has long rankled Mr. Putin and his allies. Recently, Moscow has taken a more assertive stance, firing back at countries whose governments have been particularly strident. ....
Those tensions were underlined yesterday as the British government said it would suspend the work of two Russian offices of its cultural arm, the British Council, citing "blatant intimidation" by Russian authorities. Moscow accuses the organization of tax and legal violations, charges London rejects. "We saw similar actions during the Cold War, but frankly thought that they had been put behind us," United Kingdom Foreign Secretary David Miliband told lawmakers.
Seeking to deflect Western attacks on their repressive system, Soviet propagandists frequently took the U.S. and its Cold War allies to task for what Moscow called human-rights violations. This time, the new think tank would provide "constructive" criticism, according to Anatoly Kucherena, the pro-Kremlin lawyer.
"You can only be a pupil for so long," said Mr. Kucherena, a well-known trial lawyer named by Mr. Putin in 2006 to a special advisory body. Mr. Kucherena said he presented the idea to Mr. Putin at a meeting at the president's official residence in May and won his support.
A Kremlin spokesman couldn't be reached for comment. But Mr. Putin publicly plugged the idea at a summit in Portugal in October, saying European countries had long had such think tanks in Russia. "It is high time, given our increasing economic and financial potential, that the Russian Federation can do the same thing," he said.
Mr. Kucherena said the new organization would scrutinize U.S. election law, the state of human rights, race relations and the American response to terrorism. He said there were troubling questions in all those areas. "The U.S. election system is intriguing," he said. "In a country with such a democratic history it's interesting that the outcome is decided by the electoral college and not by the people."
He questioned the compatibility of capital punishment in some U.S. states with democracy and highlighted problems with America's police and law-enforcement system. He cited the 1992 police beating of Rodney King and the subsequent riots in Los Angeles as an example of difficulties in race relations....[/snip]
------ "Russia-Backed Think Tank To Study Western Democracy," by ANDREW OSBORN / Wall Street Journal, 18jan2008
http://www.mindfully.org/Reform/2008/Russia-Democracy-Study18jan08.htm
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