tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-54011253382665823062024-03-05T00:58:30.892-08:00Guerillas Without GunsUtopian means for imperial gain in the former USSRCaustic Logichttp://www.blogger.com/profile/03082923821952309709noreply@blogger.comBlogger42125tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5401125338266582306.post-63958693251256194632014-02-27T06:32:00.001-08:002014-03-02T00:49:13.197-08:002014 Putsch in Ukraine <b>February 27, 2014</b><br />
<b><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: x-small;">(edits and video March 1)</span></b><br />
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Thanks to my friend and co-conspirator Petri Krohn, this old site has been getting new views. The research was not deep, but I just wanted to lay out some of what what I didn't like about this stuff. I also haven't kept up much on events in Ukraine or Georia or the rest since writing in 2004-2007
The idea of regime change by protests has gone through some twists and turns so worth covering I just don't feel up to yet, and there are so many mini-lies to correct... In Libya and Syria both I've tackled some lies, increasingly with a network of friends starting with Petri, usually with more detail and intellectual force than any other source, sometimes by a long shot.<br />
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Obviously the Ukraine situation makes the topic of this old site more relevant like few other events. Although what happened in Kiev a week ago was not non-violent by any measure, but the guerillas had <i>relatively few</i> guns, its public perception is more in line than reality is with the image of a peaceful peoples' revolt, and in all other ways it's relevant to cover here.<br />
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But it may not be covered here, by me. I will direct readers to a dedicated page at A Closer Look On Syria (ACLOS) <a href="http://acloserlookonsyria.shoutwiki.com/wiki/Talk:Ukraine_2014">Talk:Ukraine 2014</a> and <a href="http://forums.randi.org/showthread.php?t=269584">a discussion at the Randi educational forum</a> where a reader following my posts (Caustic Logic) and fellow ACLOS member CE (Childlike Empress) can learnm much. Already we have a collection of evidence, needing assembled and checked more, that's nearing proof of <b>an engineered false-flag sniper event</b>, plus an undeclared assault by Romper-Stomper Nazi thugs (displaying almost none of their symbols this time) on Ukraine's democratic government. The details remain unclear, but few over here seem to care as a mysteriously truncated parliament is rushing through a spate of radical measures: cementing their own power and the appearance of gain for their Western supporters, and in ridiculous ways framing and illegalizing the previous government, whose members and supporters seem slated for unexplained "lustration," trial at the ICC or other kangaroo court, or assassination.<br />
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I have removed comment moderation, an anti-spam measure set long ago. I imagine there were pending comments, but after changing settings, it said none. So I hope I didn't delete anyone's thoughts.<br />
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I may not keep up closely, but this platform is again open for comment activity. It's also quite possible I will post some of our important findings here or in related posts.<br /><br />Here's a video of one of the snipers legal president Yanukovych has been recommended to the ICC over:
<iframe width="420" height="236" src="//www.youtube.com/embed/er2aAvs180g" frameborder="0" allowfullscreen></iframe>
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Adam/CausticCaustic Logichttp://www.blogger.com/profile/03082923821952309709noreply@blogger.com1tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5401125338266582306.post-74745319922681808312007-06-25T17:00:00.000-07:002007-06-24T21:31:41.460-07:00TABLE OF CONTENTS {masterlist}<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgHQYRVxdlGEaL6nikpuO4nrUDcPGICDh2C2uz6S3xug5Z7ohCdoC-xnKGu0aa3RyvyIvYGkOI2r1z6shW8bAVXdfGnuEJzjruhBFBXYuW7bE-Lk4vwBh5rnITpGshC7U741KjqCr8gS0w/s1600-h/chessgame.jpg"><img style="display:block; margin:0px auto 10px; text-align:center;cursor:pointer; cursor:hand;" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgHQYRVxdlGEaL6nikpuO4nrUDcPGICDh2C2uz6S3xug5Z7ohCdoC-xnKGu0aa3RyvyIvYGkOI2r1z6shW8bAVXdfGnuEJzjruhBFBXYuW7bE-Lk4vwBh5rnITpGshC7U741KjqCr8gS0w/s400/chessgame.jpg" border="0" alt=""id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5035929069182055698" /></a><br />This was originally conceived as a book, or series of books, and some sections still flow into each other naturally, so I just realized I should put together a Table of Contents masterlist that can make the site as readable as a partially-assembled book. It'll fill in as we go, and the gaps will shrink. Some sections I never finished. Some I never will. Most are too verbose. Some have been altered a bit for this website, and some posts have been written or assembled outside the book format. I'll figure it all out. <br /><img src="http://i133.photobucket.com/albums/q62/chainsawmoth/GWG/Barbedwireline.jpg" /><br /><b>I – Nonviolence and the New World Order: Between Cold Wars</b> <br /> <table cellspacing="0" align="right" border="1" width="408" cellpadding="6"> <tr><td> <span style="font-size:80%; font-style:italic; text-align:right;">“Our first objective is to prevent the re-emergence of a new rival [and deter] potential competitors from even aspiring to a larger regional or global role.” <br />– Paul Wolfowitz, Defense Planning Guidance, 1992<br />“A plan to achieve that objective will usually consist of a phased series of campaigns […] designed to strengthen the oppressed population […] and to weaken the dictatorship.” <br />- Gene Sharp, From Democracy to Dictatorship</span> </td></tr> </table><br /><b>- Original Sub-Sections, -> <span style="color:#667755;">Posted Sections, <span style="color:#990000;">-> Addenda/New Divisions</span></b><br />-> <a href="http://guerillas-without-guns.blogspot.com/2007/03/poland-and-china-1989.html"><span style="color:#667755;">East-West 1989: The Twin Pillars of Nonviolence</span></a> <br />-> <a href="http://guerillas-without-guns.blogspot.com/2007/03/iraq-and-new-world-order-at-end-of.html"><span style="color:#667755;">Iraq and the New World Order at the End of History</span></a> <br />-> <a href="http://guerillas-without-guns.blogspot.com/2007/05/euro-nato-how-west-was-run.html"><span style="color:#667755;">Euro-NATO: How the West was Run</span></a> <br />-> <a href="http://guerillas-without-guns.blogspot.com/2007/02/gene-sharp-master-of-nonviolent-warfare.html"><span style="color:#667755;">Gene Sharp: Master of Noviloent Warfare</span></a> <br />-> <a href="http://guerillas-without-guns.blogspot.com/2007/04/col-helvey-weaponizing-noviolence.html"><span style="color:#667755;">Weaponizing Nonviolence: Col. Helvey</span></a> - a former soldier and officer turned man of peace helps translate Sharp for battlefield use. <br />-> <a href="http://guerillas-without-guns.blogspot.com/2007/05/american-end.html"><span style="color:#667755;">The American End: Overt Ops/A Bi-Partisan Effort</span></a>: National Endowment for Democracy, NDI, IRI, Arlington, Ackerman, etc... <br />-> <a href="http://guerillas-without-guns.blogspot.com/2007/02/soros-money-and-open-society.html"><span style="color:#667755;">Soros Money and the Open Society</span></a> <br />-> <a href="http://guerillas-without-guns.blogspot.com/2007/05/some-notes-on-timing-and-consent.html"><span style="color:#667755;">Some Notes on Timing and Consent</span></a> <br /><br /><img src="http://i133.photobucket.com/albums/q62/chainsawmoth/GWG/Barbedwireline.jpg" /><br /><b>II – Gotov Je: Yugoslavia and the Otpor Precedent</b><br /><table cellspacing="0" align="right" border="1" width="408" cellpadding="6"> <tr><td> <span style="font-size:80%; font-style:italic; text-align:right;">"Removing the authority of the ruler is the most important element in nonviolent struggle." <br />– Col. Robert Helvey, to Serbian activists in Budapest Hungary, mid-2000<br />“It should be clear to all, after the past ten years, that NATO isn't attacking Serbia because of Milosevic; it is attacking Milosevic because of Serbia.” <br />- Slobodan Milosevic, October 2 2000<br />“Regarded by many as Eastern Europe's last great democratic upheaval, Milosevic's overthrow may also go down in history as the first poll-driven, focus group-tested revolution.”<br /> – Michael Dobbs, Washington Post, December 2000</span></td></tr></table><br /><b>- Original Sub-Sections, -> <span style="color:#667755;">Posted Sections, <span style="color:#990000;">-> Addenda/New Divisions</span></b><br />-> <a href="http://guerillas-without-guns.blogspot.com/2007/04/heart-of-serbiapoint-of-no-return.html"><span style="color:#667755;">The Heart of Serbia / Point of No Return</span></a> <br />-> <a href="http://guerillas-without-guns.blogspot.com/2007/04/divide-and-conquerstate-sponsors-of.html"><span style="color:#667755;">Divide and Conquer / State Sponsors of Terror </span></a><br />-> <a href="http://guerillas-without-guns.blogspot.com/2007/03/limits-of-air-powerthe-pariahs-club.html"><span style="color:#667755;">The Limits of Air Power / The Pariah’s Club</span></a>: Post-war Serbia: Milosevic still in charge, and making new friends. the time to move draws close... <br /><span style="color:#990000;">-><a href="http://guerillas-without-guns.blogspot.com/2007/04/milosevics-pipeline-plans-prevented.html"><span style="color:#990000;">Milosevic's Pipeline Plans Prevented</span></a> (brief - moved from another section)</span><br />-> <a href="http://guerillas-without-guns.blogspot.com/2007/02/otpors-origins.html"><span style="color:#667755;">Biting the System: Otpor's Origins</span></a><br />-> <a href="http://guerillas-without-guns.blogspot.com/2007/06/bulldozer-revolution.html"><span style="color:#667755;">The Bulldozer Revolution:</span></a> October 2000 - Milosevic has left the building<br />- Behind the Fist: Helping Hands at Hungarian Hotels <br />- Fallout: Radioactive, Political and Otherwise <br /><span style="color:#990000;">-><a href="http://guerillas-without-guns.blogspot.com/2007/04/otpor-fallout-just-another-weapon.html"><span style="color:#990000;">Otpor Fallout</span></a>: Just Another Weapon</span><br /><span style="color:#990000;">->- Radioactive Fallout<br />- Territorial Fallout <br />- Political Fallout: A prolonged, tragic sorting of loose ends</span><br />- A New Direction for Otpor: Eastward <br /><br /><img src="http://i133.photobucket.com/albums/q62/chainsawmoth/GWG/Barbedwireline.jpg" /><br /><b>III – No to Saddam, No to Peace: Why there was no Iraqi Otpor</b><br /><table cellspacing="0" align="right" border="1" width="408" cellpadding="6"> <tr><td> <span style="font-size:80%; font-style:italic; text-align:right;">“To achieve the third choice, we need help. Not with armies or with money. We need help in the form of nonviolent training to protect ourselves from Saddam and his agents. We can do it, but we need help now.” – Ismael Zayer, exiled Iraqi opposition leader, early 2003</span></td></tr></table><br /><b>- Original Sub-Sections, -> <span style="color:#667755;">Posted Sections, <span style="color:#990000;">-> Addenda/New Divisions</span></b><br />-> <a href="http://guerillas-without-guns.blogspot.com/2007/02/zimbabweiraq-2003.html"><span style="color:#667755;">Zimbabwe / Iraq 2003: The Limits of Nonviolence</span></a> <br />-> <a href="http://guerillas-without-guns.blogspot.com/2007/04/zayer-and-helvey-no-to-saddam-no-to-war_11.html"><span style="color:#667755;">Zayer and Helvey: No to Saddam, No to War</span></a> <br />- Washington: No to Zayer, Yes to Force Presence <br />- Transforming the Middle East <br /><br /><img src="http://i133.photobucket.com/albums/q62/chainsawmoth/GWG/Barbedwireline.jpg" /><br /><b>IV – Reviving Great Russia: Low Tide, Russia’s 9/11, and the Rise of Putin</b><br /><b>- Original Sub-Sections, -> <span style="color:#667755;">Posted Sections, <span style="color:#990000;">-> Addenda/New Divisions</span></b><br />- <a href="http://guerillas-without-guns.blogspot.com/2007/04/pipelines-from-black-hole.html"><span style="color:#667755;">Pipelines From the Black Hole</span></a> - The Caspian Great Game as backdrop for the New Cold War <br />- <a href="http://guerillas-without-guns.blogspot.com/2007/02/bleeding-russia-dark-decade.html"><span style="color:#667755;">Bleeding Russia: Oligarchs, Collapse, Bail-out... Then Revival</span></a> <br />- The Terror of 9/99 / Putin Ascendant (see below)<br /><span style="color:#990000;">-> <a href="http://guerillas-without-guns.blogspot.com/2007/04/terror-of-999-masterlist.html"><span style="color:#990000;">The Terror of 9/99 {masterlist}</span></a> - new masterlist with links to posts on another CL blogsite<br />- America's War on Terror, Meet Russia's (coming soonish - previously neglected in the shuffle)</span><br />- <a href="http://guerillas-without-guns.blogspot.com/2007/04/state-control-and-oligarch-retrieval.html"><span style="color:#667755;">State Control and Oligarch Retrieval </span></a>: Putin moves to Reverse the 90s. <br />- Reviving Great Russia / The Switch is Flipped <br /><br /><img src="http://i133.photobucket.com/albums/q62/chainsawmoth/GWG/Barbedwireline.jpg" /><br /><b>V – Roses and the Power of Conviction: A Bold First Move in the Caucasus</b><br /><b>- Original Sub-Sections, -> <span style="color:#667755;">Posted Sections, <span style="color:#990000;">-> Addenda/New Divisions</span></b><br />- <a href="http://guerillas-without-guns.blogspot.com/2007/02/georgia-old-order.html"><span style="color:#667755;">Georgia’s Place on the Chessboard / The Old Order</span></a> <br />- <a href="http://guerillas-without-guns.blogspot.com/2007/02/story-of-three-idealists-saakashvilis.html"><span style="color:#667755;">The Story of Three Idealists: The Saakashvilis and Zhvania</span></a> <br />- Kmara, Liberty Institute, and the Mark of Soros <br />- <a href="http://guerillas-without-guns.blogspot.com/2007/02/misha-takes-tblisi.html"><span style="color:#667755;">The Rose Revolution: Misha Takes Tbilisi </span></a><br />- The New Order in Tbilisi <br />- Mr. GasPutin, South Ossetia, and the Wine Wars <br /><br /><img src="http://i133.photobucket.com/albums/q62/chainsawmoth/GWG/Barbedwireline.jpg" /><br /><b>VI – The Bridgehead is Extended: Ukraine and the Orange Sunrise</b> <br /><b>- Original Sub-Sections, -> <span style="color:#667755;">Posted Sections, <span style="color:#990000;">-> Addenda/New Divisions</span></b><br />- <a href="http://guerillas-without-guns.blogspot.com/2007/02/ukraines-fate-and-brzezinskis-flanking.html"><span style="color:#667755;">Ukraine's Fate and the Brzezinski's Flanking It</span></a><br />- <a href="http://guerillas-without-guns.blogspot.com/2007/02/ukraine-state-of-play-in-2004.html"><span style="color:#667755;">Ukraine: The State of Play in 2004</span></a>: President Kuchma, PM Yanukovych, Russian influence, estern ambitions, Tymosheno and the emerging opposition. "Oligarch wars." <br />- Pora and the Yushchenkos: High Time for a Revolution <br /><span style="color:#990000;">-> <a href="http://guerillas-without-guns.blogspot.com/2007/04/pora-high-time-for-revolution.html"><span style="color:#990000;">Pora!</span></a> High Time for a Revolution</span><br /><span style="color:#990000;">->The Yushchenkos: On the Right Path For Ukraine</span><br />- <a href="http://guerillas-without-guns.blogspot.com/2007/02/like-john-le-carre-novel-yush-poisoned.html"><span style="color:#667755;">Like a John Le Carré Novel: Yush Poisoned!</span></a> <br />- Blue Twilight / Orange Dawn <br />- <a href="http://guerillas-without-guns.blogspot.com/2007/02/western-winds-feeding-ukrainian-fire_18.html"><span style="color:#667755;">Western Winds That Fed the Fire</span></a>: Orange Revolution assistance from Europe and the US. Trying to keep an appearance of distance... <br />- <a href="http://guerillas-without-guns.blogspot.com/2007/04/preventive-operation.html"><span style="color:#667755;">A Preventive Operation: Help from Inside </span></a> <br />- Away From Russia <br />- The Poisoning Investigation <br />- Splits and Reversals / An Uncertain Future <br />- The Geopolitics One More Time… Closing the Bridgehead <br /><br /><img src="http://i133.photobucket.com/albums/q62/chainsawmoth/GWG/Barbedwireline.jpg" /><br /><b>VII – The Bridgehead Meets the Bulkhead: Power Plays in Central Asia</b> <br /><b>- Original Sub-Sections, -> <span style="color:#667755;">Posted Sections, <span style="color:#990000;">-> Addenda/New Divisions</span></b><br />- <a href="http://guerillas-without-guns.blogspot.com/2007/05/new-great-game.html"><span style="color:#667755;">The New Great Game</span></a> History repeating itself: Russia's interests in Central Asia clash with the Anglo-American aliance <br />- <a href="http://guerillas-without-guns.blogspot.com/2007/02/from-shanghai-with-love.html"><span style="color:#667755;">From Shanghai with Love</span></a>: Origins of the Shanghai Cooperation Organization <br />- After the First Snows in Afghanistan: The US Incursion, basing, and response <br />- <a href="http://guerillas-without-guns.blogspot.com/2007/04/russias-grip-on-kyrgyzstan.html"><span style="color:#667755;">Russia’s Grip on Kyrgyzstan</span></a>: The scrable for Central Asian basing - Washington's post-9/11 interests vs. Russia's enduring interests. <br />- Bulb of Opposition / The Tulip Revolution <br />- An Uglier Turn / Akayev Flees <br />- <a href="http://guerillas-without-guns.blogspot.com/2007/05/hopes-of-reform-shot-deadscos.html"><span style="color:#667755;">Hopes of Reform Shot Dead / The SCO’s Controlled Burn</span></a> <br />- The SCO Holdouts: Kazakhstan, Tajikistan <br /><br /><img src="http://i133.photobucket.com/albums/q62/chainsawmoth/GWG/Barbedwireline.jpg" /><br /><b>VIII – Showing America the Door: The Tide Turns in Uzbekistan</b> <br /><b>- Original Sub-Sections, -> <span style="color:#667755;">Posted Sections, <span style="color:#990000;">-> Addenda/New Divisions</span></b><br />- America’s New Ally: Terror vs. Terror <br />-> <a href="http://guerillas-without-guns.blogspot.com/2007/02/andijan-and-truth-massacre.html"><span style="color:#667755;">Andijan and the Truth Massacre</span></a> <br />- Rakhimov’s Paradise: The Missing Link? <br />- After Andijan: A Victory for the Eurasian Bloc <br />-> <a href="http://guerillas-without-guns.blogspot.com/2007/02/international-order-terror-of-77-first.html"><span style="color:#667755;">International Order, 7/7, the First Eviction</span></a> <br />- Peace Mission 2005: An Assault on the Unipolar World <br /><br />The rest of the book - the revolutions that failed and on Oborona in Russia, on ethical and tactical issues, etc., was never even properly organized. <br /><img src="http://i133.photobucket.com/albums/q62/chainsawmoth/GWG/Barbedwireline.jpg" /><br /><b>IX - Where the Fist Failed: The Regimes that Didn’t Crack or Weren’t Attacked</b><br /><b>- Original Sub-Sections <span style="color:#990000;">-> Addenda/New Divisions</span></b><br />- Turkmenistan: <a href="http://guerillas-without-guns.blogspot.com/2007/02/zubr-in-belarus.html"><span style="color:#667755;">Turkmenbashi's Dreamland</span></a><br />- Azerbaijan:<br /><b>- Armenia and Moldova: Not Ripe for Revolution</b> <br /> <a href="http://guerillas-without-guns.blogspot.com/2007/04/armenia-not-ripe-for-revolution.html"><span style="color:#990000;">-> Armenia: Not Ripe for Revolution</span></a><br /><span style="color:#990000;">-> Update: Election 2007 - Coming in May<br />- >Moldova: Grape Revolution Squashed - coming soon</span><br />- <a href="http://guerillas-without-guns.blogspot.com/2007/02/zubr-in-belarus.html"><span style="color:#667755;">Zubr in Belarus</span></a>: Outpost of Tyranny/Jeans on the 16th<br /><br /><img src="http://i133.photobucket.com/albums/q62/chainsawmoth/GWG/Barbedwireline.jpg" /><br /><b>X - untitled and unfinished chapter on Democracy Promotion etc. inside Russia and counter-trends<br /><br /><img src="http://i133.photobucket.com/albums/q62/chainsawmoth/GWG/Barbedwireline.jpg" /><br />XI - untitled and unfinished chapter on further observations and criticisms of weaponized nonviolence in its current uses</b><br />- See from Ch I, <a href="http://guerillas-without-guns.blogspot.com/2007/05/some-notes-on-timing-and-consent.html"><span style="color:#667755;">"Some Notes on Timing and Consent"</span></a> for a basic outline of my own gripesCaustic Logichttp://www.blogger.com/profile/03082923821952309709noreply@blogger.com3tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5401125338266582306.post-53552972376215113222007-06-24T19:51:00.000-07:002007-06-24T21:28:08.226-07:00THE BULLDOZER REVOLUTION<span style="font-weight:bold; font-size:120%;">THE BULLDOZER REVOLUTION: <br />Adam Larson / Caustic Logic<br />Guerillas Without Guns / Chapter 2<br />Posted June 24 2007</span> <br /><br />As Milosevic’s tottering regime came up against the “NATO foot soldiers” of Otpor in 2000, the group and its allies also looked ahead and worked to co-opt as much of the security forces as possible. For example, the young members of Otpor sent bouquets of flowers to the military on Army Day. An article in Peace explained that “such tactics recruited sympathizers in numbers that would not be apparent until the final days of the regime, when soldiers and police stood by while massive crowds stormed the Serbian parliament.” [1] <br /><br /> As the September 2000 election neared, the Serbian president banned international observers from monitoring elections, which were carried out on Sunday the 24th. The opposition claimed victory, with DOS leader Vojislav Kostunica winning over 50 percent support and declaring himself the “people's president.” But others were not so sure, and the Federal Election Commission called for a second ballot set for October 8, saying neither candidate won an outright majority. [2] Another top DOS leader, Zoran Djindjic announced “we will call people onto the streets and tell them not to leave until [Milosevic] gives up power.” [3] Djindjic said the opposition would call for continued protests, including a strike campaign and boycotts of schools, offices, theaters and cinemas. [4] <br /><br />By this time, Milosevic’s Red Berets had evolved into an independent, self-perpetuating power, and when the regime began to crumble in mid-2000, they switched sides and negotiated a nonaggression pact with Djindjic, assuring him that they would refuse any orders to crack down on demonstrators. [5] With this floodgate opened, a coal miners' strike set the ball rolling; when Milosevic sent Interior Ministry soldiers to break the strike, thousands more citizens turned out in solidarity, blocking streets with barricades and their bodies. [6] <br /><a href="http://i133.photobucket.com/albums/q62/chainsawmoth/GWG/Oct_5.jpg"><img style="display:block; margin:0px auto 10px; text-align:center;cursor:pointer; cursor:hand;width: 380px;" src="http://i133.photobucket.com/albums/q62/chainsawmoth/GWG/Oct_5.jpg" border="0" alt="" /></a> <span style="font-size:80%; font-style:italic;">Mass protests in front of the Parliament building, Belgrade, Oct. 5 2000. </span> <br /><br />The strikes spread and by the 5th the country had come to a virtual standstill, except in the capital, where crowds swelling into perhaps hundreds of thousands of opposition supporters marched and swarmed around, over, and into all the official buildings. The central square was hazed with smoke from fires started by the protesters, lending to the air of chaos as police simply refused to crack down and the insurgents took the whole area, notably the State-run broadcasting apparatus. [7] Kostunica told supporters at a Belgrade rally that Serbia had been “liberated,” a message broadcast to the world. European and world leaders called for Milosevic to admit the obvious and step down as he finally did the following day. [8] <br /><br />Otpor’s Ivan Marovich proudly boasted that Otpor and the people of Serbia had thus “organized the control of the elections by the civil society.” [9] When that alone proved insufficient, with Milosevic declaring victory anyway, they also helped organize the control of Belgrade, which finally did the trick. The actions of Otpor could not be credited entirely with the results, but they were by all accounts a huge, probably decisive factor in this bloodless revolution that achieved what NATO’s bombs had not. And their spirit of fun was infectious, leaving its mark on the October 5 uprising, dubbed “the Bulldozer Revolution.” It got this unofficial title when a man inspired by Otpor’s lead drove his bulldozer into the building of RTS, Serbian state television, which had been a symbol of Milosevic's rule. (this was a new building, the original having been recently destroyed by NATO bombs). <br /><br /> In the months following, Otpor members were the cause celebré of Serbia and the world at large and their clenched fist logo started popping up everywhere. Especially in Europe, politicians, rock stars, soccer teams and more brandished it proudly. Representatives of the group were even handed a special “Free Your Mind” award at the November 2000 MTV Europe Music Video Awards in Stockholm. MTV Europe’s CEO praised the youngsters’ “constant struggle against injustice and oppression.” [10] Americans in general were faintly pleased but basically unaware of the entire episode. Serbs were by and large elated. It had all seemed so easy once they figured it out – “break the fear,” follow the lead of the superbly-trained and confident young activists, take a clever, flawlessly printed sign and join the thousands of others doing the same. Like a powerful drug secretly administered in their sleep, the whole episode was liberating and exhilarating, almost too good to be true. <br /><span style="font-size:80%;"><br />Sources:<br />[1] From Peace Magazine Apr-Jun 2003, p.10. Author=John Bacher; Title=Robert Helvey's Expert Political Defiance; URL=http://www.peacemagazine.org/archive/v19n2p10.htm<br />Robert Helvey's Expert Political Defiance<br />John Bacher<br />[2], [3], [4] Fletcher, Philippa. “Opposition Pressures Milosevic To Resign.” Reuters. St. Petersburg Times (Russia). Issue #607 (0), Friday, September 29, 2000. <br />http://www.sptimes.ru/index.php?action_id=2&story_id=12704<br />[5] Aaron, Paul. “The Anguish of Nation Building: A Report from Serbia.” World Policy Journal. Volume XXII, No 3, Fall 2005. <br />http://worldpolicy.org/journal/articles/wpj05-3/aaron.html<br />[6], [7], [8] A Force more Powerful: Films: Bringing Down a Dictator: Chronology of Events. <br />http://www.aforcemorepowerful.org/films/bdd/story/chronology.php<br />[9] Htet, U Min. “Serbia: Demise of a Dictator.” BBC News. September 16 2005. <br />http://www.bbc.co.uk/burmese/learning/story/2005/09/050912_transition_prog12.shtml<br />[10] BBC News. “Madonna's MTV triumph.” November 17, 2000. <br />http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/entertainment/1027299.stm</span>Caustic Logichttp://www.blogger.com/profile/03082923821952309709noreply@blogger.com1tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5401125338266582306.post-19852678753633980782007-06-12T17:00:00.000-07:002007-06-24T13:55:21.222-07:00PIPELINES FROM THE BLACK HOLE<span style="font-weight:bold; font-size:120%;">POWER PLAYS ON THE CASPIAN<br />Adam Larson <br />Caustic Logic/Guerillas Without Guns <br />Posted 4/7/07</span><br /><br />Absent the binding force of Soviet-era political and military control, a power vacuum that Zbigniew Brzezinski called in 1997 “the black hole” hovered over the void, once Soviet, “middle space” in the “Grand Chessboard” of Eurasia. Russia was eventually bound to regain its regional power and at least some of its global reach, so Western efforts were stepped-up to politically and economically integrate more former SSRs along the path to Europe taken by the Baltic states. The window of opportunity could be only so long before Russia got its shoelaces untangled and started closing the West’s lead, but until then it was largely land-locked and ice-bound; the USSR had enjoyed direct access to ice-free ports in the Baltic and near-total domination of the Black Sea, its window onto the Mediterranean and world markets. Now it had lost most of its south Baltic ports (retaining the Kaliningrad exclave and of course St. Petersburg in the north) while access to the Black Sea relied on close relations with independent Ukraine, which took a joint role in managing the Black Sea Fleet and maintained a fluctuating relationship with Moscow. <br /><br />Unlike the Baltic and Black Seas, the Caspian’s value for shipping is only local; its prime value lay in that its littoral basin held the remains of a vast inland sea that left behind widespread oil and natural gas deposits, known since the 1970s at the latest and used by the Soviet Union to add to its vast Siberian gas reserves. The Caspian’s oil supplies are moderate, but its supplies of natural gas are huge, believed to be about 250 trillion cubic feet or 5% of world total, and well-placed to help feed the growing energy demands of Europe, Russia, China, or India. Like the Black Sea, the Caspian basin was once nearly totally dominated by the USSR, but after 1991 was dominated by Iran and the independent nations of the Caucasus and Central Asia, with Russia only maintaining a decent toehold on the north shore, from which pipelines carry Russia’s share of oil and gas north, near the war-torn Muslim autonomous region of Chechnya. (Brzezinski, it must be noted, is the chaorman of the American Committee for Peace in Chechnya (ACPC), which calls itself “the only private, non-governmental organization in North America exclusively dedicated to promoting the peaceful resolution of the Russo-Chechen war.") <br /><br /> While the “black hole” and the Caspian’s promise beckoned Western interest in the 1990s, the Eurasian powers still had the clear advantage in Caspian export routes; Russia’s Soviet-era pipeline system provided the most established route to the vast markets of Europe. China had the possibility of eastbound landlines, if dauntingly long, mountainous, and set to feed in through its own Kosovo, Muslim-dominated Xinjiang. Southbound routes could feed markets in India, China, and all of East Asia by sea, most easily making their way to port and tanker via Iran. Indeed as the only nation with access to both Caspian and Persian Gulf supplies, Iran has among the world’s most developed pipeline systems, but so long as it was ruled by the Ayattolahs, Iran was not to be rewarded with Western investment. <br /><br /><img width="414"; src="http://i133.photobucket.com/albums/q62/chainsawmoth/Pipelines.jpg" /><br /><span style="italic; color:#669966;">Caspian export routes, existing and proposed. General contours of Russian-Iranian-Chinese-dominated systems vs. the American-led model.</span> <br /> <br /> So American and Western planners sought to get as much as possible of the fuels out right by China, Russia and Iran, and so looked in two directions for pipelines in open areas where they could muscle in on the action (see map). One direction is east and as south as possible, away from Russia and around Iran, with the ultimate target of markets in South and East Asia. The main problem with this route was that they would all of necessity cross Afghanistan, which was in the 1990s embroiled in civil war with no end in sight, and in 2007 much the same, although now with a solid US military boot in the door a favorble outcome seems possible - eventually. <br /><br />The other main window of opportunity was due west across the Caucasus states of Azerbaijan and Georgia, the rocky alley between Russian and Iranian turf. These Caucasian pipelines could then connect via Turkey to the Mediterranean, to pipelines - running through the Balkans - into Europe and its vast energy markets. Other planned lines could snake beneath the Black Sea to enter Europe at Bulgaria, and flow west through Macedonia (split from Yugoslavia in 1991) and end on the Albanian coast. <br /><br />(all this is covered in slightly greater depth <a href="http://causticlogichub.blogspot.com/2007/01/caspian-great-game.html"><span style="color:#667755;">here</span></a>).Caustic Logichttp://www.blogger.com/profile/03082923821952309709noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5401125338266582306.post-87728692791046382112007-06-02T17:00:00.000-07:002007-06-24T13:56:44.114-07:00SOME NOTES ON TIMING AND CONSENT<span style="font-size:120%; font-weight:bold;">ROOFIES FOR REVOLUTION?<br />Adam Larson<br />Caustic Logic/Guerillas Without Guns<br />Posted May 2 2007</span><br /><br />The first time there was a general consensus in Washington on using Soros and NED money, IRI, NDI and OSI skills, and the principles laid out in From Dictatorship to Democracy in a battlefield setting would be in the year 2000. The “force more powerful” would rattle Serbia, the heart of a disintegrating Yugoslavia, to sever the supply of Slobodan Milosevic’s power, as we’ll see in detail in the following chapter. The key to the success of the tactic is in the timing, knowing when it will be effective. The timing considerations, as they were taken into account before the Serbian campaign, must be made on a number of levels, including historical, technological, biographical, and immediate political timing. <br /><br /> For an insight on historical timing, it must be noted that mass nonviolence as a way of achieving power is a relatively new phenomenon. Historically, most rebellions have been either violently victorious or violently suppressed. But with the evolution of global interconnectedness, greater media coverage, and political liberalism, wider avenues were opened in the 20th century, which saw the movements of Gandhi, King, Walesa, Mandela, Suu Kyi and on and on. Shifting public perception of war and peace also played a role. The horrors of total war as seen in the first World War had made pacifism incredibly popular, but the even greater horrors of the sequel conflict highlighted the dangers of pure pacifism – sometimes war was preferable to an unjust peace as agreed to disastrously at Munich. The advent of nuclear weaponry in the course of that monstrous war again made non-violence seem an attractive alternative by making violence so exceptionally dangerous to life on Earth itself. But this came just as the menace of Stalin’s Soviet Union made clear the need for continued struggle if not outright war. As we’ve seen, it is precisely this series of historical developments that drove the evolution of Gene Sharp’s thinking towards the peculiar notion of weaponizing mass non-violence. <br /><br /> The advent of nuclear weaponry is thus an important underpinning, but the other end of technological timing that could help aid these nonviolent actions came decades later. As Jonathan Mowat pointed out, the internet, cell phones, instant and text messaging, and the other communications breakthroughs have been used “to rapidly steer angry and suggestible ‘Generation X’ youth into and out of mass demonstrations and the like.” [1] This capability only developed in the mid-1990s, just in time to play a role in Serbia in 2000. <br /><br /> By 2005 American programmers were working with a Serbian activist in developing a computer game called A Force More Powerful, clearly a franchise of Ackerman’s book and TV series. Ian Traynor explained for the Guardian that the game is won “by outwitting and toppling regimes through techniques of non-violent guerrilla activism.” [2] Ackerman’s mark is also to be seen on his co-project with Lawrence Livermore Laboratories, the top US weapons designer. They hope to produce new communications technologies that could be used to facilitate “youth movement insurgencies.” “There is no question that these technologies are democratizing,” Ackerman stressed. “They enable decentralized activity. They create, if you will, a digital concept of the right of assembly.” [3] <br /><br /> By biographical timing I mean that activists of a certain age and class are called on to flesh out these insurgencies. The West’s planners looked to the American left as evidenced in the protest movements of the 1960s and after, and most recently at the “Battle of Seattle” in 1999. Middle class youth with a liberal education, internet access, a little energy and time to spare and a certain mixture of insulation and teen angst create the right mindset to throw a fist in the air at public rallies. Young people bring to the table energy, free time, rebelliousness and an optimism not yet ravaged by years in the adult world, and bring less of that desire for stability that often comes with age. The young are always ready to rebel against the forces of the old and the corrupt, and they are “cleaner,” more innocent, and more lovable than the old. All these are important elements in their primarily psychological campaign, but most importantly, the young represent the future, and so by manifesting Washington’s vision, they give it the mark of the inevitable course of events. <br /><br /> Another key feature of the 18-24 age bracket, the prime recruiting pool, is their lack of wisdom and general malleability. As with military recruiters, these are apparently also positive traits for the recruiters of nonviolent insurgents. And they’re more prone to peer pressure and illogical mass psychosis; Jonathan Mowat noted a 1967 report from the UK’s Tavistock Institute (the psychological warfare arm of the British military) that noted the then-new phenomenon of “swarming adolescents” found at rock concerts. Author Dr. Fred Emery reported the swarming was associated with “rebellious hysteria,” and predicted that with more study the phenomenon could be controlled effectively. By the end of the 1990s, he predicted, these hormonal mobs could be used at will to bring down a national government. [4] Jonathan Mowat, in his brilliant synthesis, noted “the tactic of swarming” at work as a “a new philosophy of war, which is supposed to replicate the strategy of Genghis Khan as enhanced by modern technologies […] intended to aid both military and non-military assaults against targeted states through what are, in effect, ‘high tech’ hordes.” <br /><br /> And what brought this approach to warfare to the streets of Belgrade, Serbia in 2000 is the final consideration, immediate political timing. Once the technology and the right activist demographic has been identified, mass political resistance is a powerful force that can indeed “restrict or sever the supply” of a dictator’s power, as Sharp noted, but not always “when needed,” as if on cue. First, the behind-the-scenes plotters must be in agreement with the wishes of the mobilized citizenry, or the citizens must be brought around to supporting the plotter’s decisions. In order for support from Washington to flow to a viable movement willing to support its agenda, the political goals of both parties must be synchronized and manifested in the opposition leader(s). This is one of the trickier parts, but deals can be and would be made time after time. <br /><br /> Non-violent resistance can drive a corrupt regime from power, but more often such attempts at a widespread uprising end in mass arrests or even mass killings - think Rangoon 1988, Tiananmen Square 1989, and a thousand smaller, less bloody examples spanning human history. Far more potential rebellions are simply not even attempted due to citizen apathy or fear, as in the 21st century USA; so a mass movement could do better if it had a good “marketing department” to excite involvement, or was helped by a powerful and sympathetic outside force to neutralize the terror of state power. Such help could be either indirect (diplomatic support, etc) or direct (financial or tactical support). There would be no troublesome weapons shipments to learn of as with the debacle of illegal US support to the Contras in Nicaragua, but the idea is still much the same – support the opposition to destabilize and hopefully sever the targeted regime. There’s no law against that yet. <br /><br /> This can lead to charges of engineering other country’s affairs, an action that carries unpleasant aftertastes of Imperialism. However, as supporters would argue, only part of the equation can be engineered from without – a revolution also must have, first and foremost, a fertile soil of political discontent in order to take root, and to appear legitimate, the new leadership must be voted on by the subjected people. <br /><br /> Thus a good metaphor for this type of intervention is a consensual sexual tryst – both partners may well agree to the act (the revolution) after a period of intense courtship, mutual flattery, and heavy petting (financial and diplomatic support, promises of obedience to the West’s aims). Appropriately, the teeming hordes of turned-on activist teenagers would play the part of the hormones, coursing through the body politic of the targeted partner and driving to the inevitable end. Even two consenting adults may not enter into sex with the same set of facts or the same motives. One may be drunk or otherwise impaired, or there may be a serious power imbalance in which one partner is clearly, creepily compelling the other, pushing himself on her in the motel hallway. And no matter the mood right before and during the act, the two may be left with very different feelings about the whole thing in the morning. But still, it’s not rape – that would be war.<br /><br />Next: <a href="http://guerillas-without-guns.blogspot.com/2007/04/heart-of-serbiapoint-of-no-return.html"><span style="font-family:verdana;color:#998877;">The Heart of Serbia/Point of No Return</span></a><br /><span style="font-size:80%;"> <br />Sources:<br />[1], [3], [4], [5] Mowat, Jonathan. “Coup d'État in Disguise: Washington's New World Order "Democratization" Template.” Global Research. Center for Research on Globalization. February 9 2005. http://www.globalresearch.ca/articles/MOW502A.html<br />[2] Traynor, Ian. “Young Democracy Guerillas Join Forces: From Belgrade to Baku, activists gather to swap notes on how to topple dictators.” The Guardian. June 6 2005. http://www.guardian.co.uk/international/story/0,,1499871,00.html</span>Caustic Logichttp://www.blogger.com/profile/03082923821952309709noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5401125338266582306.post-7217478541682551742007-05-26T17:00:00.000-07:002007-06-24T13:56:04.911-07:00THE NEW GREAT GAME<span style="font-weight:bold; font-size:120%;">Adam Larson/Caustic Logic<br />Guerillas Without Guns/Chapter 7<br />Posted 5/9/07</span><br /><br />Russia’s response to the assault on its European periphery states in 2003-2004 demonstrates two unique and related historical patterns. The first is Russia’s split personality, straddling the arguably imaginary line that separates Europe from Asia. Russian thinkers have tackled the issue of Asian vs. European identity for centuries. Peter the great tried to settle this in 1703 by founding St. Petersburg and tying Russia into Europe’s affairs, but during the Great Game with England over Central Asia in the 1800s again European vs. Eastern/Asian/other became the paradigm. Since the Bolsheviks moved the capitol back to Moscow, and more so since the collapse of the USSR, Russia's European aspirations have been lessened in favor of a centralizing view that looks south and east as well as west. <br /><br />The other key factor is Russia’s tactic of withdrawal when threatened, as they did when Napoleon invaded. Moscow was abandoned and burnt to the ground, leaving nothing for the French army, most of whom died in the attempt to get back home ahead of winter. When things get rough on the European front, Russians pull back to the east, relying on the continental vastness of their Eurasian territory to wait out the crisis. <br /><br /> 2004-05 was such a time, and indeed Russia’s power focus has to a remarkable degree shifted east as ambitions in Europe slid into political obscurity. It’s not so much that the Kremlin has abandoned its plans for Europe as that it is diversifying its holdings and making contingency plans for an uncertain future there. So Putin’s Moscow started taking greater interest in increasing control over its former Central Asian holdings; the independent but cooperative nations of Kazakhstan, Uzbekistan, Kyrgyzstan, Tajikistan, and to a much lesser extent ‘neutral” Turkmenistan. <br /><br /> The Central Asian Republics seemed relatively safe from the Orange Revolution type of tactic. In Europe there is the EU, NATO, and a long history of Democratic institutions and mindsets. But these landlocked Muslim-dominated nations, resource-rich but impoverished and still run largely on Soviet habits and older memories, lie in an area still jointly dominated by “great power rivals” Russia and China. Central Asia is a long way from Brussels – and so as the democratic bridgehead struggled to cross the last spans of Europe, this was the Bulkhead of Russia’s Eurasian power outside its own borders. <br /><br /> The area also represents the heart of “the Grand Chessboard” of Eurasia as portrayed by Zbigniew Brzezinski. He describes this region as the “Eurasian Balkans,” encompassing the Caucasian and Central Asian flanks of the former USSR plus Iran and Afghanistan. Compared to the European Balkans, “the Eurasian Balkans are infinitely more important as a potential economic prize,” at twenty times the size and presenting an enormous zone of instability “astride the inevitably emerging transportation network meant to link [Eurasia’s] western and eastern extremities.” [1] Thus as in times ancient, the region was to be the crossroads of Eurasia, host to a 21st Century Silk Road as Unocal called it – pipelines, fiber optic cable, superhighways, all facilitating further globalization of a previously under-tapped region. <br /><br /> There was more than transport at stake though; Central Asia straddles the Himalayan foothills, producing a tectonic cornucopia of mineral wealth, including tin, gold, and platinum in large quantities. And to a world increasingly thirsty for oil and natural gas, Central Asia has stood out for one key reason – the energy reserves of the Caspian Sea; Fortunes and political careers were made and broken in what Ahmed Rashid in 1997 dubbed “the New Great Game.” After 9/11 we found that the prize was not as big as originally thought, (and hence the war was not about that). But by mid-2006, world oil prices climbed from a pre-9/11 baseline of about $25 a barrel to well over $70 a barrel, US News and World Report noted in their September 11 2006 issue “the stakes have suddenly shot up,” and interest is now as intense as ever. [2] <br />---<br /><b>Next: <a href="http://guerillas-without-guns.blogspot.com/2007/02/from-shanghai-with-love.html"><span style="color:#667755;">From Shanghai with Love</span></a>: The Shanghai Cooperation Organization</b><br /><span style="font-size:80%;"> <br />Sources: <br />[1] Brzezinski. "The Grand Chessboard." 1997. Page 124. <br />[2] Fang, Bay. “The Great Energy Game.” US News and World Report. Vol 141, no. 9. September 11 2006. p 60-62. </span>Caustic Logichttp://www.blogger.com/profile/03082923821952309709noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5401125338266582306.post-21303499355871289012007-05-18T17:00:00.000-07:002007-06-24T13:57:48.467-07:00TURKMENBASHI'S DREAMLAND<span style="font-size:120%; font-weight:bold;">Adam Larson <br />Caustic Logic/Guerillas Without Guns<br />November 2006<br />Re-posted 4/23/07</span><br /><br />Turkmenistan is an interesting case, nearly 5 million inhabitants, 98% Muslim, in the former Soviet space, on the Caspian, and ruled by perhaps the most bizarre and repressive dictator in the region. And yet it is a nation remarkably undisturbed by the democracy guerillas that had struck further west in Georgia and Ukraine, an ambiguous “revolution” as per Kyrgyzstan’s “tulip Revolution,” or Andijan-style unrest as happened further east. It is the calm at the eye of the Central Asian storm. <br /><br />Rich in natural resources but with per-capita incomes at sub-Saharan African levels, the country is held under the effectively permanent rule of dictator Saparmyrat Niyazov, or “Turkmenbashi” (father of the Turkmen people) as he calls himself. Niyazov first assumed leadership of the Turkmen Communist party in 1985, and thus headed the government of the Soviet Republic during its last years. The republic of Turkmenistan declared independence in 1991 just before the collapse of the USSR and soon joined the CIS, signing the divorce papers as it were along with the other republics. Afterwards though Niyazov and the government at Ashkabad refused to join any other such organization, in pursuit of a “status of permanent neutrality,” which was accepted by the UN General Assembly in December 1995. The country retained its membership in Russia’s CIS, though never agreeing to the mutual defense clause that later morphed into the CSTO, and in August 2005, Turkmenbashi downgraded the country officially to CIS “Associate Member,” an exclusive sort of friendly non-membership. [1] <br /><br /><table cellspacing="0" align="right" border="1" width="174" cellpadding="3"> <tr><td> <div> <img height="266" hspace="1" vspace="1" border="0" width="168" alt="Turkmenbashi" src="http://i133.photobucket.com/albums/q62/chainsawmoth/GWG/Turkmenbashi.jpg" /> </div> <span style="font-size:80%; font-style:italic;">One of the many tributes erected to and by the great “Turkmenbashi” </span> </td></tr> </table> Like Nazarbayev in Kazakhstan, Turkmenbashi has instead focused on apolitical pipeline diplomacy, since independence encouraging foreign investment in its oil and gas reserves. Niyazov works with everybody, West and East, boasting huge deals with Russia’s Gazprom, planning pipeline to China, and hoping for Western sponsored paths south through Afghanistan. The city of Krasnovodsk on the Caspian coast was named in 1993 “Turkmenbashi” after the President and served as the oil hub, commercial capital, and center of ego for the country. While cooperative with western economies, Niyazov is not the model of a democratic leader by a long shot, with arguably the worst record on democracy is in the region. The city naming is a telling sign of what most observers agree is Niyazov’s cult of personality; in the manner of Stalin or Hussein he has monuments and portraits of himself erected everywhere to remind citizens of their beneficent ruler. <br /><br />In 1992 Turkmenistan’s first post-independence constitution enshrined Niyazov as head of government as well as head of state – President and Prime Minister. He promised on taking the post that within a decade all Turkmen families would own a house and a car. He was later re-elected to the post in a direct popular ballot in which he stood unopposed, and his rule was extended indefinitely in 1999, with parliament giving Niyazov the legal right to rule for life with no need for elections. [2] He modified this the following year, announcing that he would step down by no later than 2010, after reaching the age of 70. In early 2003 Niyazov started making good on his cars promise, handing out free Mercedes-Benzs to top officials whose loyalty he needed, just as he announced a new commission, as the BBC described, “to monitor foreign trips by politicians, and to track the movements of foreigners within Turkmenistan.” [3] <br /><br />The BBC’s official timeline of Turkmenistan notes the idiosyncratic nature of his rule, marked by ironic choices of a ruler undisturbed in his delusions. In August 2002 Niyazov ordered the months of the year renamed after himself, his mother and his spiritual guide, the Ruhnama. In August 2004 he ordered construction of a grandiose ice palace in the middle of the Turkmen desert, and in November had to explain this project at a Turkmen-Uzbek summit on water resources. And in February 2005 the president went under the knife for eye surgery, just after suggesting all Turkmen hospitals other than those in capital should be closed to save money. [4] <br /><br />Niyazov’s total suppression of opposition is unparalleled: In November 2002 the president easily survived an armed attack on his presidential motorcade as it drove through Ashkabad. Authorities blamed “mercenaries” acting for exiled opposition leaders who in turn accuse Niyazov of arranging the incident as excuse to crack down. Within the month opposition activist and former foreign minister Boris Shikhmuradov was arrested, accused of masterminding the attack and sentenced to life imprisonment. More than 40 others were convicted and jailed along with him. Another crackdown in mid-2005 saw Deputy Prime Minister Elly Kurbanmuradov, a senior figure in the energy sector, sacked and jailed for 25 years on corruption charges, and Rejep Saparov sacked as head of presidential administration and sentenced to 20 years in jail for corruption. [5]<br /><br />Thus Turkmenistan has avoided the destabilizing aspects of divisive politics and continues to provide a perfect totalitarian state with its enforced stability, everything the West claims to be against. Indeed, the US State Department and the rest admit the truth of Niyazov’s regime – Freedom House, banned from the country, listed it in 2005 as "not free," noting "Turkmenistan remained one of the most repressive societies in the world” in 2005. [6] Yet we see no reports of real US aid to opposition parties, training of youth movements or the like – no Kostunica or Saakashvili reported here, no Otpor-Kmara-Pora-Zubr equivalent reported.<br /><br /> Some would argue that state repression is to blame for the lack of democratic activism, and certainly the evidence is there. But there are other factors at work – Belarus is remarkably oppressive and hard-line as well, but Zubr and Malady Front have thrived with Western support and coordinated diplomatic offensives, launching campaigns every other year for the six years now (2001, 2003, 2005-06). But Turkmenistan, with even less democracy and a more unreasonable ruler, has remained remarkably quiet. And as far as diplomatic pressure, sanctions and trade restrictions, pressure has not been applied on these levels either to any meaningful degree as has happened in Belarus. Turkmenistan was not listed as an “outpost of tyranny.” <br /><br />It’s perhaps no coincidence that Niyazov is also an enthusiastic, long-term partner in US drive to tap the Caspian – had been party to Unocal’s Turkmen-Afghan-Pakistan pipeline. Back in 1995 Niyazov and Pakistan’s PM Benazir Bhutto commissioned a feasibility study of Afghan pipeline. [7] Both leaders had initially backed a rival pipeline offered by Argentine company Bridas, and Niyazov signed an exclusive contract with them. But while it took something like a coup to get Pakistan's mind to change, Niyazov was then the first to see the potential in Unocal’s version and broke his contract with Bridas, who later sued Unocal for $15 billion, finally awarded $47 million in 1998. They tried suing Unocal in Texas also, but the international court threw the case out, saying they had no jurisdiction; the case was based on Turkmen law; which it turns out is basically Niyazov’s whim. [8] Unocal spokesman John Maresca later noted with no apparent irony that the region was “dynamic and changing. Business contracts can be rescinded without warning.” [9] <br /> <br />Niyazov’s switch shows both his ambition and his impatience. Ahmed Rashid, in his book Taliban, revealed the hopes that Niyazov had nurtured that Turkmenistan’s oil and gas exports would make his country “the new Kuwait,” as he described it back in 1991 (interestingly, just as Kuwait was recovering from an invasion with U.S. help.) Niyazov is self-interested enough to be a constant ally of whoever supports the project and offers him the highest return on his nation’s investment. And the backing of the U.S. government is certainly a plus for any pipeline plan in the post-Cold-War world. It could also help him deliver on that Mercedes promise. Rashid noted “Niyazov saw that Unocal could become the means to engage a major U.S. company and the Clinton administration in Turkmenistan’s development.” [10] And he was putting his own country’s neck on the line; the government of Turkmenistan was listed as a financial partner in the CENTGAS consortium, holding a 7% stake scraped together from the nation’s scant funds. [11] <br /><br />After the worst of the afghan campaign passed in early 2002, it was reported that “with the demise of the Taliban, talk of a new pipeline has begun to resurface.” [12] But even as Niyazov rules undisturbed in dreamland, the TAP pipeline has still not come to fruition by late 2006, with a new insurgency in Afghanistan rivaling anything since the fall of the Taliban just as world oil prices surged and made the pipeline yet more desirable. <br /><br />Postscript: Turkmenbashi is dead. He expired from heart attack on December 20 2006. Under the constitution, the Parliament chairman Ovezgeldy Atayev should have become the interim leader, but deputy prime minister Gurbanguly Berdymukhamedov was named instead on the 22nd. He explained that Mr Atayev had been sacked after a criminal probe was opened into his activities on the 21st. [13] <br /> <span style="font-size:80%;"><br />Sources: <br />[1] REF/RL "CIS: Turkmenistan Reduces Ties To ‘Associate Member.'" August 29, 2005. Acc. June 21 2006 at: http://www.rferl.org/featuresarticle/2005/08/26dab4c9-5ba1-4193-86e7-62fc991f8a6c.html<br />[2]"Turkmen leader to rename calendar." BBC News. August 8 2002. http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/world/asia-pacific/2181151.stm<br />[3] "Top Turkmens to get free Mercs." BBC News. February 5 2003. http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/business/2729053.stm<br />[4] "Turkmenistan: Profile." BBC News. http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/world/asia-pacific/country_profiles/1298522.stm<br />[5] various - google the names <br />[6] Turkmenistan – 2005 Overview. Freedom House. http://www.freedomhouse.org/template.cfm?page=22&year=2005&country=6852<br />[7] "Timeline of Competition between Unocal and Bridas for the Afghanistan Pipeline." World Press Review. December 2001. http://www.worldpress.org/specials/pp/pipeline_timeline.htm. Accessed via: http://www.hartford-hwp.com/archives/51/119.html<br />[8], [10] Rashid, Ahmed. "Taliban." 2001. <br />[9] Maresca, John J. Testimony to Hose Subcommittee on International Relations. February 1998. Accessed January 9, 2005 at: http://propagandamatrix.com/testimony_by_john_j_maresca.html<br />[11], [12] Blagov, Sergei. "Bold Turkmen project in the pipeline again." Asia Times. February 9 2002. http://www.atimes.com/c-asia/DB19Ag01.html<br />[13] "Turkmen leader pledges stability." BBC News. December 22 2006. http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/world/asia-pacific/6204561.stm </span>Caustic Logichttp://www.blogger.com/profile/03082923821952309709noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5401125338266582306.post-60835825522649127702007-05-10T15:23:00.000-07:002007-05-10T15:28:28.340-07:00EURO-NATO: HOW THE WEST WAS RUN<span style="font-weight:bold; font-size:120%;">Adam Larson/Caustic Logic<br />Guerillas Without Guns/Chater 1<br />Poated 5/11/2007</span><br /><br />One of the prime avenues for containing and steering the power of the EU into conformity with the Anglo-American Alliance was the North Atlantic Treaty Organization (NATO). Also called “the Western Alliance:” the US, UK, Belgium, France, et al, NATO was the grand World War II Alliance minus the USSR. After forming in 1949, NATO took in Greece and Turkey (1952), and then West Germany (1955), but afterwards sat steady for decades as it stared Moscow down, never used its mutual defense clause, and remained a potential military force only. <br /><br />Yet despite the final crumbling of the Warsaw Pact and even the USSR itself, the objects of its vigilance, NATO remained and looked for a new mission. In a 1992 Pentagon report leaked before scrubbing, then Undersecretary of Defense for policy Paul Wolfowitz offered a role for NATO if not a mission. The report admitted “we must seek to prevent the emergence of European-only security arrangements which would undermine NATO, particularly the alliance’s integrated command structure.” This command structure keeps the United States in the loop so that the Europeans could not make military or security decision the US was unwilling to sign off on. Indeed, Wolfowitz noted how this arrangement would allow NATO to remain “the primary instrument of Western defense and security as well as the channel for U.S. influence and participation in European security affairs.” [1]<br /><br /> CFR heavyweight and former National Security Adviser Zbigniew Brzezinski saw the same role for NATO. In his 1997 strategic tome The Grand Chessboard, he took a placating line that the organization’s leadership should eventually give Europe a greater role, coequal with Washington in a 1+1 (US + EU) formulation. While he noted the existing “American primacy within the alliance,” European membership was set to grow, and thus “NATO will have to adjust.” [2] But in an accompanying article for Foreign Affairs, the official publication of the CFR, he wrote more frankly: <br /><br /> “With the allied European nations still highly dependent on US protection, any expansion of Europe's political scope is automatically an expansion of US influence. […] A wider Europe and an enlarged NATO will serve the short-term and longer-term interests of US policy. A larger Europe will expand the range of American influence without simultaneously creating a Europe so politically integrated that it could challenge the United States...” [3] <br /><br /> To date, NATO remains Europe’s only credible security force, is now in fact waging wars over its member’s interests while expanding its member list (and therefore possible conflict trigger-points), and the US has consistently promoted European expansion, especially the CFR people. <br /><br />Who exactly is pulling whose strings in this arrangement is a matter of contention. Some, like John Laughland, would argue that Europe has thus been made the “51st state of America,” [4] while some Americans claim their country has been “Europeanized” as the economic powerhouse to bolster the European order. More likely neither side holds the reins exclusively, and a carefully managed confluence of interests is the wellspring of this trans-Atlantic union we call the West. Either way, regarding Russia and its sphere, it can be treated as a unified and hungry whole. Upon the USSR's collapse, if not before, the West set to wooing the former Warsaw Pact states; Internal political and economic reforms, once verified, could lead to inclusion in the solidifying EU and even NATO, then taking new applications as it considered its new agenda. <br /><br /> It was known Russia could not react favorably to NATO expansion, as noted in a 1995 analysis by Alexei K. Pushkov, onetime adviser and speech-writer for Premier Gorbachev, an eminent Russian mind. The report was published in Strategic Forums, an offshoot of National Defense University in Washington, and warned that NATO expansion into Eastern Europe or beyond would lead to seven key problems. Pushkov listed among these: “deepening of the gap between Russian and Western civilizations,” “an unwelcome influence on internal Russian politics,” and “a rebirth of the Russian sphere of influence among the former states of the Soviet Union.” On this point, he explained “if Russia considers itself geopolitically cut off from Europe and the Euro-Atlantic community, it would have no choice but to strengthen its historical sphere of influence.” [5]<br /><br /> Most ironically, Pushkov predicted, the expansion of this tool of Western security could well lead to “a weakening of overall European security” by expanding the number of NATO’s mutual defense trigger points while simultaneously increasing the tensions with Russia over those, and by encouraging “a new militarism in Russia.” Expansion would surely be seen in Moscow as an unfriendly act of distrust, no matter the spin put on it, and could cause Russia “to become a more independent player, less constrained by a real or illusionary partnership with the West.” Pushkov warned “Russia might well become a loose cannon in world politics” with “very serious” effects on world stability.<br /><br /> Yet in March 1999 the NATO blithely accepted applications from former Warsaw Pact states Poland, Hungary, and the Czech Republic, expanding its geographic scope greatly at the expense of Russia’s recent sway. Others got in the queue; Latvia, Lithuania, and Estonia, the last Republics fused into the USSR and first to leave, ran away and joined this circus. A later round of NATO additions in March 2004 scored all three, its first former SSRs, along with Romania, Bulgaria, Slovakia, and the alliance’s first former Yugoslav republic, Slovenia. <br /><br /><img src="http://i133.photobucket.com/albums/q62/chainsawmoth/NATO_CIS_MAP-1.jpg" /><br />left: NATO states vs. Warsaw Pact in 1988, Iron Curtain highlighted. <br />right: NATO vs. Russia’s sphere (CIS) in mid-2004 <br /><br /> During the Cold War the West always maintained they propped up the Iron curtain to keep the Soviet wolf at bay – in its time that may have been true, but once the fence fell, every bit of devouring has been in an easterly direction as the Euro-Atlantic community expands deeper into Eurasia and what was being called the post-Soviet Space, with Russia’s influence receding like a melting glacier.<br /><br /><b>Next: <a href="http://guerillas-without-guns.blogspot.com/2007/02/gene-sharp-master-of-nonviolent-warfare.html"><span style="color:#667755;">Gene Sharp: Master of Noviloent Warfare</span></a></b><br /><span style="font-size:80%;"><br />Sources: <br />[1] Tyler, Patrick E. "US Strategy Plan Calls for Insuring No Rivals Develop A One-Superpower World: Pentagon’s Document Outlines Ways to Thwart Challenges to Primacy of America." The New York Times. March 8, 1992. <br />http://work.colum.edu/~amiller/wolfowitz1992.htm<br />[2] Brzezinski, Zbigniew. "The Grand Chessboard: American Primacy and its Geostrategic Imperatives." New York. Basic Books. 1997. First Printing. Page 76<br />[3] Zbigniew Brzezinski, "A Geostrategy for Eurasia," Foreign Affairs, 76:5, September/October 1997.<br />http://www.comw.org/pda/fulltext/9709brzezinski.html<br />[4] Laughland, John. “Becoming the 51st State.” Antiwar.com. May 20, 2003<br />http://antiwar.com/laughland/?articleid=2071<br />[5] Pushkov, Alexei. "NATO Enlargement: A Russian Perspective." Strategic Forums. July 1995. http://www.ndu.edu/inss/strforum/SF_34/forum34.html</span>Caustic Logichttp://www.blogger.com/profile/03082923821952309709noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5401125338266582306.post-57268597634124985152007-05-09T16:00:00.000-07:002007-05-09T00:13:51.691-07:00HOPES OF REFORM SHOT DEAD/SCO'S CONTROLLED BURN<span style="font-weight:bold; font-size:120%;">Adam Larson/Caustic Logic<br />Guerillas Without guns/Chapter VII<br />Posted 5/9/07</span><br /><br />Following the ambiguous “Tulip Revolution” of March 2005, Kurmanbek Bakiev was confirmed the second President since independence with an election on July 10. He received an astounding 89% return of the vote (turnout 53%), partly based on his new political alliance with opposition leader Felix Kulov, released from prison with all charges dropped and soon appointed Prime Minister as agreed to before the election. Bakiyev was inaugurated on August 14, and the old parliament agreed to dissolve, and all seemed in order: another successful Color Revolution. <br /><table cellspacing="0" align="right" border="1" width="186" cellpadding="3"> <tr><td> <div> <img height="207" hspace="1" vspace="1" border="0" width="180" src="http://i133.photobucket.com/albums/q62/chainsawmoth/GWG/Bakiev_Rummy.jpg" /> </div> <span style="font-size:80%; font-style:italic;">President-elect Bakiyev meets with Rumsfeld, Bishkek, July 2005</span> </td></tr> </table>On April 14 Defense Secretary Rumsfeld met the acting President Bakiev, who assured the Americans that they could keep using the Ganci Air Base. [1] For Washington the status quo was thus largely maintained, though the new government was not strongly embraced. Something went wrong with the Tulip revolution - The violence in Osh and Jalal-abad should have been a clue. The government was thereafter locked in widespread power struggles and accusations of corruption and even murder. Parliament went on to reject some of the more reform-minded and Western-oriented among the opposition, including Roza Otunbayeva, one of the driving forces behind the early, more “legitimate” phase of the Tulip Revolution. [2] <br /><br />One “legitimate” opposition leader that did make it into the new government, though he didn’t stay long, was Azimbek Beknazarov, whose 2002 jailing had led to the bloody protests that caused Bakiyev to resign as PM and join the opposition. President Bakiyev rewarded Beknazarov with the post of Prosecutor General, and IWPR explained that the new PG aggressively launched a series of investigations into corruption and criminal activity by Akayev era officials, including a former Central Electoral Commission chief, the head of the Kyrgyz National Bank, and former-PM Nikolai Tanaev. On September 19th, Beknazarov finally got parliament to strip the immunity normally accorded to one of its members - Aydar Akayev, recently-elected son of the ex-president – to allow corruption charges against him to proceed. Later on the same day, President Bakiev dismissed Beknazarov, officially for improper procedures in another investigation. [3] <br /><br />Other powers behind Akayev’s ouster, like Bamayan Erkinbayev, a ‘controversial businessman’ [ie - mafia-connected] also took power. Once accused of being behind deadly gun battles over control of a local marketplace, Erkinbayev was also a popular politician who entertained presidential ambitions. But he stepped aside for the Bakiev-Kulov coalition, and reportedly helped to organize the southern ‘protests’ which eventually brought them to power. Afterwards he was rewarded with a seat in parliament and the chairmanship of the national Olympic Committee The BBC noted the wide concern that the new influence of “shady businessmen like Mr. Erkinbayev is one of the most worrying trends of the past year.” [4] <br /><br /> Erkinbayev was only in government a few months before he was killed by gunmen on September 22, in an incident widely attributed to his business dealings. [5] Worse, this was only one of at least seven leading and controversial politicians shot dead in various incidents between June 2005 and May 2006. Among them was new MP Tynychbek Akmatbayev, head of parliament’s Committee on Law Enforcement, but reportedly connected to organized crime and embroiled in a long-running feud with new PM Felix Kulov. During an October visit to a prison near Bishkek to calm an uprising there, Akmatbayev and his entourage were somehow engulfed by the rebellion and he was shot dead in the chaos. [6] There were rumors that Kulov had been involved in engineering Akmatbayev’s killing, as Byzantine as such a plot would have been.<br /><br />After his bother’s death, Ryspek Akmatbayev’s, himself widely thought of as a major mafia kingpin, was asked if his family feud with Kulov could lead to bloodshed. Ryspek responded “nobody [else] needs to suffer […] I suggest that we meet man to man. I will kick his ass, and that will be that.” [7] And he was working his way up, in April 2006 winning a special election to represent his home district in parliament, [8] though he was unable to take up his seat immediately because of pending murder charges against him. [9] His election prompted international condemnation from the West and even Russia expressed concern about the possible “criminalization” of Kyrgyz politics. [10] That noise didn’t last long though - Ryspek himself was reportedly shot dead as he left a Bishkek Mosque on Wednesday May 10. Akmatbayev’s aides carried his body away before police could investigate. The city police chief told the media “I can see spent gun cartridges and blood, but no bodies.” [11] <br /><br />On the political front, there was some improvement in the political and civil sphere, as noted in the west: Freedom House upgraded the country from “Not Free” to “Partly Free” in 2006 based on “the continuing permissive environment for the promotion of civil liberties and political rights.” They noted a “mixed” record, including increased media freedom and local elections in December 2005 went off “with only ‘rough irregularities.” [12] But despite these “positive steps forward,” the good news was far outweighed by the bad; continued financial hardships across the country fed a deepening sense of dispirited frustration, by BBC reports. [13] Of course the government remained upbeat and established a new national holiday marking the anniversary of the Tulip Revolution, which president Bakiyev described as “the triumph of justice.” To mark the first anniversary, the new government threw a nationwide party on March 24, but BBC News released an article explaining that the “so called” tulip revolution was in fact “no revolution:”<br /><br /> <i>“Many residents of this poor Central Asia republic are still not in the mood for a party. ‘There was never a time in the history of Kyrgyzstan when the confidence of the people in their government was so low,’ said Edil Baisalov of the Bishkek-based NGO, the Coalition for Democracy and Civil Society. An international think tank, the International Crisis Group, has gone further, labeling the nation a ‘faltering state.’”</i> [14] <br /><br />From early on Bakiyev was supported by government-sponsored youth groups; RFE/RL reported in July 2005 on a youth team headquartered in Gorky Square, Central Bishkek. They operated from a yurt (a traditional nomadic tent) stocked with music equipment, national costumes, and T-shirts and baseball caps printed with slogans like “We are for Bakiev!” [15] Their support proved needed as the president’s popularity took a nose-dive in the wake of Beknazarov's dismissal and Erkinbayev's assassination. Bakiev’s approval rates reached their lowest point on September 24, when thousands of protesters took to the streets of Jalalabad to again demand a president’s resignation. [16] Hinting at the methods of the “Tulip Revolution,” another RFE/RL piece from November warned of “the frightening prospect of a rent-a-mob free-for-all” which could lead to many ends, “including an authoritarian drive to reestablish order.” [17] <br /><br /> The Tulip revolution was first lumped in with the Orange and Rose Revolutions, and taken as another victory for the West. But it didn’t work quite right – the protests weren’t properly done, all the bloodshed was discouraging, and the reforms have not come. It seems the West’s Tulip Revolution was hijacked from within via Erkinbayev et al, paid off by the new government first with the ballot then the bullet to wash its hands of once useful but now embarrassing criminal benefactors. There may well have been behind-the-scenes Akayev/Bakiyev deals to stage the president’s flight to Russia to complete the drama. I sense Russia’s or China’s complicity in this episode, and it certainly would serve their interest. It would allow the SCO leaders to publicly take yet another “hit” and exaggerate the perceived extent of the color revolution campaign. This would justify their own counter-measures – which would come within weeks - while causing no real lasting change. A SCO-planned upheaval would preempt any real pro-West color revolution, as it were preventing a forest fire with a controlled burn.<br />---<br /><b>Next: The SCO Holdouts: Kazakhstan, Tajikistan</b><br /><span style="font-size:80%;"><br />Sources:<br />[1]</span>Caustic Logichttp://www.blogger.com/profile/03082923821952309709noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5401125338266582306.post-41797001027204287732007-05-08T16:19:00.000-07:002007-05-08T16:29:16.960-07:00THE AMERICAN END<span style="font-weight:bold; font-size:120%;">OVERT OPS/A BIPARTISAN EFFORT<br />Adam Larson <br />Caustic Logic/Guerillas Without Guns<br />Posted 5/8/07</span><br /><br />In the last yeas of the Cold War and afterwards, efforts in Washington mushroomed to help further the USSR’s decline and usher the suddenly-nations shaken loose away from Moscow and into the Western system. Over time, many of the individuals, governmental, non-governmental and semi-governmental groups and think tanks would take up and champion Sharp’s and Helvey’s strategies in their quest for spreading “democracy,” “human rights,” and “open markets” around the world. <br /><br />Neither the revolutions of 1989 nor the “color revolutions” of the early 21st Century would not have gotten far without the National Endowment for Democracy (NED), founded in 1983 to assist fledgling democracy movements in the Third World. One of the arcitects of the legislation establishing the NED, Allen Weinstein, pointed out in 1991 “a lot of what we do today was done covertly 25 years ago by the CIA.” As the NED was created, the CIA had been wounded and sidelined by the revelation of its clandestine operations, its powers and reach limited. So ironically, attempts to gain influence abroad were shifted over to a more overt approach by the Reagan Administration. William Blum wrote in Rogue State [2000], the hope was that this would “eliminate the stigma associated with CIA covert activities. It was a masterpiece. Of politics, of public relations, and of cynicism.” [1] While it describes itself as a private non-profit organization, the NED is in essence a government agency, staffed by high-profile politicians and receiving the majority of its funding from Congress, allocated by the State Department as their policies see fit. The NED’s government funding was $40 million in 2004, roughly doubled in 2005 at the request of the once non-interventionist president Bush. [2]<br /><br /> NED co-founder and prominent CFR member Mark Palmer is a key figure in this story; he boasts a long bi-partisan record as a presidential speechwriter and as a diplomat, from Nixon’s administration to the 1990s promoting “freedom” and “people power” abroad. Starting with work for the SNCC during the civil rights movement of the 1960s, Palmer “has witnessed and practiced the power of organized nonviolent force in achieving freedom and justice,” as his State Department bio reads. He put this training to work as ambassador to Hungary in 1989, “helping persuade its last dictator to leave power” by stepping out of his office and “demonstrating in the streets of Budapest” along with the masses. [3] After leaving government proper Palmer became a venture capitalist, investing in liberalized media in the Middle East and Eastern Europe, arguing for the democratizing force of a free media floated with US dollars. He’s written a book called Breaking the Real Axis of Evil: How to Oust the World's Last Dictators by 2025 [2003], and continued to advise the Clinton and Bush regimes, helping persuade them to initiate new democracy policies, including for the first time promoting Western-style Democracy in the Arab world. [4] <br /><br /> The NED Palmer helped launch spends a large portion of its budget on grants to two organizations: the National Democratic Institute for International Affairs (NDI), and the International Republican Institute (IRI). They are the global wings of the Democratic and Republican parties, respectively, and NED support, critics point out, has allowed the two parties to pursue their own foreign policy agendas under the radar of government oversight. Yet despite their respective parties’ heated shows of disagreement for the home audience, the two agencies usually work side-by-side in their overseas freedom-building exercises, though often focusing on different aspects. <br /><br /> Many of the Republican Party’s top internationalists do some work with the International Republican Institute; chaired by John McCain, the IRI’s ranks also include Lawrence Eagleburger, Chuck Hagel, Jeane Kirkpatrick, and Brent Scowcroft. The majority of its funding comes from the federal government via the NED to “support the growth of political and economic freedom, good governance and human rights around the world” and to “strengthen free markets and the rule of law.” The IRI claims credit for helping organize and maintain a unified political bloc that won elections and held the reins of power in Poland from 1997 - 2001 and was thus able to help steer Poland into joining NATO during that window. [5]<br /><br /> The IRI has had its hands in some decidedly anti-democratic operations, like the 2002 Venezuelan coup that removed the elected Socialist president Hugo Chavez, replacing him with American-friendly free-market supporters. The Venezuelan population in fact used something like Sharp’s tactics – mass strikes and demonstrations - to demand the re-instatement of Chavez, thus dramatically re-affirming his popularity and strengthening his grip on power. It was a debacle for the American plotters and president Bush, whom Chavez called “an asshole” for allowing the plot, and the IRI was strongly criticized by its NED benefactors for the episode. The IRI is also accused of funding activities connected to the successful and only slightly violent 2004 Coup d’etat that had Haiti’s elected president Aristide deposed and allegedly kidnapped away to Africa by US soldiers “to prevent bloodshed.” [6] Perhaps due to the success of this campaign, putting the US effectively in control of the interim government, the NED issued no vocal criticism of the IRI’s role. <br /><br /> On the other side of the aisle, the National Democratic Institute for International Affairs (NDI) is headed by former Secretary of State Madeleine Albright, and also includes Tom Daschle and a roster of former Democrat White House hopefuls – Bill Bradley, Michael Dukakis, Walter Mondale, and Geraldine Ferraro. Boosted by their constituency’s greater acceptance of foreign interventionism, the NDI maintains a global network of “volunteer experts” who help them provide “assistance” on every continent “to build political and civic organizations, safeguard elections, and promote citizen participation, openness and accountability in government.” As far as supporting coups and the like, the NDI seems to have a cleaner record than the IRI, and by my research seems <i>relatively</i> true to its name. Or perhaps they just can’t handle getting their fingernails dirty like the Republicans do? <br /><br /> In 2004, the NDI and its Republican counterparts joined forces in Iraq, jointly helping to form political parties and monitor the January 2005 elections for the National Assembly. The Washington Post explained how the NDI “focused on organization while IRI, in a division of labor, focused on message.” [7] The effort was orchestrated from NDI office in Baghdad where a multinational staff delivered training to selected activists and political leaders to get out the vote. [8] American politicians have the skill sets necessary to read and manipulate public opinion, essential as they are to American political survival. Their support and advice would be highly useful in a country like Iraq, unaccustomed to the ways of electoral politics. But only approved parties could benefit from this useful training; the NDI-IRI program had no competition, remaining “the only game in town” as the Post put it. [9] <br /><br /> The spread of democracy via direct people’s action has been supported by various foundations and think tanks outside the government proper but staffed with influential elites, a nexus that journalist Trish Schuh calls “the regime change industry.” [10] The most enthusiastic support for Sharp’s post-military weapons system came from specific think tanks like the Albert Einstein Institution itself and from dedicated individuals like CFR Director Dr. Peter Ackerman. Ackerman is the founding chairman of the Washington-based International Center on Nonviolent Conflict (CNC), another key supporter of the Sharp approach. Ackerman helped define the subject with his 1994 book <i>Strategic Nonviolent Conflict, his Emmy-nominated 2000 documentary series A Force More Powerful: A Century of Nonviolent Conflict</i>, and his companion book of the same name co-authored with former US Air Force officer Jack DuVall. At the time, Duvall was president of CNC, and along with Ackerman has worked side-by-side with Colonel Helvey in spreading the word. <br /><br /> Freedom House is a widely cited monitor of the various levels of freedom worldwide, serving as a guide to where the Sharp approach would be desirable to use. Chaired by former CIA Director and key Rumsfeld policy Adviser R. James Woolsey, and vice-chaired by the illustrious Mark Palmer, Freedom House has also been involved in hosting seminars and training opposition leaders (see [link-chapter III]) and has reportedly been approved for “covert action” inside Iran. [11] Together with CNC’s DuVall, Woolsey is also a director at the Arlington Institute, a “futurist” organization created in 1989 by former Chief of Naval Operations advisor John L. Peterson “to help redefine the concept of national security in much larger, comprehensive terms,” it boasts, through introducing “social value shifts into the traditional national defense equation.” [12] In other words, AI wants to put the peace movement to work in the war industry. <br /><br />Next: <a href="http://guerillas-without-guns.blogspot.com/2007/02/soros-money-and-open-society.html"><span style="font-family:verdana;color:#998877;">Soros Money and the Open Society</span></a><br /><span style="font-size:80%;"><br />Sources:<br />[1] Blum, William – Rogue State. Page number lost...<br />[2] Duncan, Benjamin. “Venezuela: What is the National Endowment for Democracy up to?” Al Jazeera, via Venezuelanalysis. May 04, 2004 http://www.venezuelanalysis.com/articles.php?artno=1169<br />[3], [4] “Mark Palmer.” Wikipedia. Last modified August 17 2006. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mark_Palmer<br />[5] “Solidarity Electoral Action.” Wikipedia. Last modified June 21 2006. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Akcja_Wyborcza_Solidarnosc<br />[6] Kurlantzick, Joshua. “The Coup Connection.” Mother Jones. November/December 2004. http://www.motherjones.com/news/outfront/2004/11/11_401.html<br />[7], [9] Vick, Karl and Robin Wright. “Coaching Iraq's New Candidates, Discreetly: U.S.-Funded Programs Nurture Voting Process.” Washington Post. January 26, 2005; Page A01 http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/articles/A36582-2005Jan25.html<br />[8] Ashkenaz Croke, Lisa and Brian Dominick. "Controversial U.S. Groups Operate Behind Scenes on Iraq Vote." New standard. Dec 13, 2004. http://newstandardnews.net/content/index.cfm/items/1311<br />[10] Schuh, Trish. “Mehlis's Murky Past; US and Isreali Proxies Pushing the Next Neo-Con War<br />Faking the Case Against Syria.” Counterpunch. November 18, 2005. http://www.counterpunch.org/schuh11182005.html<br />[11] Dinmore, Guy. "Bush enters Iran 'freedom' debate." Washington Post. March 31 2006. Accessed from: http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/blog/2006/03/31/BL2006033100695_pf.html<br />[12] The Arlington Institute. http://www.arlingtoninstitute.org/</span>Caustic Logichttp://www.blogger.com/profile/03082923821952309709noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5401125338266582306.post-71274126992420009012007-05-02T17:00:00.000-07:002007-05-03T01:57:26.850-07:00THE STORY OF THREE IDEALISTS<span style="font-weight:bold; font-size:120%;">THE SAAKASHVILIS AND ZHVANIA<br />Adam Larson / Caustic Logic<br />Guerillas Without Guns/Chapter 5<br />Posted February 2007</span><br /><br />While useful to Washington, Shevardnadze was ever more unpopular with his own people, whose patience was wearing thin on territorial integrity and those economic issues as well as widespread official corruption, which the president seemed incapable of stopping. Presented in 1999 by his old friend James Baker with the esteemed “Enron Prize for Distinguished Public Service,” by 2003 Shevardnadze’s government was increasingly seen as plagued with corruption, mismanagement, and secrecy. [1] These problems steadily drained Shevardnadze’s power like a hole in his gas tank and strategically vital Georgia began to look rather vulnerable to another round of instability and violence, sure to put the brakes on any pipeline with a “T” in the middle. Major protests had been staged off-and-on since 2001; criticism from the media was squashed with raids on the opposition stations, while political protest was met with dismissal of the government. US Secretary of State Colin Powell announced at one point “an unstable Georgia automatically results in an unstable Caucasus,” a statement some took to mean that rather than expend more political capital propping Shevy up, the Americans should “ditch him to ensure stability.” [2] <br /><br />There are certainly other reasons as well for the US to support Shevardnadze’s ouster, like the attractiveness of the well-formed, popular, and more firmly pro-West opposition leader - 36-year-old Mikhail Saakashvili. His role in this episode is the U.S.-supported front-runner who had spent years cultivating an image as a youthful, optimistic crusader against corruption and the forces of the old. Saakashvili is a skillful demagogue, promising a brighter, more liberal future aligned less with Moscow than with London and Washington – pure gold for frustrated voters, especially the young and naïve. <br /><br />Saakashvili was born in Tbilisi, but came to power as an international man, reportedly fluent in seven languages. He is married to a Dutch woman, Sandra Saakashvili-Roelofs, a human rights crusader, founder of the humanitarian foundation SOCO, and author of the autobiography The Story of an Idealist (2005). Not only is she Saakashvili’s Western wife, illustrating his desire to marry Georgia into Europe, the two also met and solidified their partnership in the system and cities of the Euro-Atlantic community. <br /><br /><table cellspacing="0" align="left" border="1" width="155" cellpadding="3"> <tr><td> <div> <img height="230" hspace="1" vspace="1" border="0" width="149" src="http://i133.photobucket.com/albums/q62/chainsawmoth/GWG/saakashvili_2.jpg" /> </div> <span style="font-size:80%; font-style:italic;">"Misha" in the early '90s</span> </td></tr> </table> A 25-year-old Mikhail graduated college in Georgia with a degree in international law in 1992 and briefly worked in the new government under Shevardnadze. This early on, someone in Washington saw promise in the budding leader and extended him a fellowship from the newly-created and Soros-funded Edmund S. Muskie/Freedom Support Act (FSA) Graduate fellowship Program. Under this program Saakashvili received law degrees from Columbia University in 1994 and the George Washington University law school in 1995. <br /><br /> He also studied at the International Institute of Human Rights in Strasbourg, France, where in 1993 he met fellow student Sandra. The two of them wed quickly and moved to New York where she worked at Columbia while he studied there, and later she worked at a Dutch law firm while he worked with an American one in Manhattan during 1995. They were busy people. Not a lot of time for romance I would guess. <br /><br /> Later that year, Mikhail was approached in New York by his old Georgian friend Zurab Zhvania, then working on behalf of President Shevardnadze to recruit promising young Georgians to join his party, the Georgian Citizens Union. By the end of the year, Saakashvili and Zhvania had both returned home and won elections for seats in parliament, serving together under the party’s banner. Sandra relocated with Mikhail and worked for the International Committee of the Red Cross and at the Consulate of the Kingdom of the Netherlands in Tbilisi. [3] (keep the red cross in mind when looking at the new flag adopted after the Sakkashvilis came to power - coincidence?)<br /><a href="http://i133.photobucket.com/albums/q62/chainsawmoth/GWG/G_F_new.jpg"><img style="display:block; margin:0px auto 10px; text-align:center;cursor:pointer; cursor:hand;width: 320px;" src="http://i133.photobucket.com/albums/q62/chainsawmoth/GWG/G_F_new.jpg" border="0" alt="" /></a><br />Next: A Warm Relationship: Kmara, Soros, Saakashvili<br /><span style="font-size:80%;"><br />Sources:<br />[1] Cohen, Ariel. “Shevardnadze’s Journey.” Policy Review Online. April/May 2004. http://www.policyreview.org/apr04/cohen.html<br />[2] Feinberg, Leslie. “Washington and the coup in former Soviet Georgia.” Worker’s World. January 22, 2004. Accessed at: http://www.workers.org/ww/2004/georgia0122.php<br />[3] Sandra Roelofs Biography and Activity. Communications Office of the President of Georgia. 2005. http://www.president.gov.ge/?l=E&m=2<br />[4] Georgian Justice Minister resigns. RFE/RL Newsline, Vol. 5, No. 179. September 20 2001. <br />http://www.hri.org/news/balkans/rferl/2001/01-09-20.rferl.html<br />[5] Areshidze, Irakly “Georgia’s Mounting Opposition.” Eurasianet. January 21 2003. <br />http://www.eurasianet.org/departments/rights/articles/eav012103.shtml<br />[6] Areshidze, Irakly “Tbilisi City Council Controversy Deals Blow to Political Opposition in Georgia.” Eurasianet. November 12 2002. http://www.eurasianet.org/departments/insight/articles/eav111202a.shtml<br />[7] Traynor, Ian. “US campaign behind the turmoil in Kiev.” The Guardian. November 26 2004. http://www.guardian.co.uk/ukraine/story/0,15569,1360236,00.html</span>Caustic Logichttp://www.blogger.com/profile/03082923821952309709noreply@blogger.com2tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5401125338266582306.post-37128873771271860212007-05-01T16:00:00.000-07:002007-05-02T23:02:56.879-07:00WESTERN WINDS FEEDING THE UKRAINIAN FIREWhen asked on December 2 about possible Russian intervention in Ukraine’s election President Bush stressed “I think any election, if there is one, ought to be free from any foreign influence.” The official government position remained that neither Russia nor the US nor any other country should interfere in the free elections of a sovereign nation. Both Pora And US officials insist this policy was adhered to, and there was no U.S. funding or direct support to the youth movement at the heart of this transformation nor to any particular candidate. Both the yellow and black wings of Pora claimed they relied almost solely on domestic and overseas Ukrainian financial support. [1] <br /><br /> This is not true of course - Yellow Leader Vladyslav Kaskiv noted “the campaign’s initial funding was supplied by PORA founders” but grew with time to include American support for activist training via “small grants provided by the German Marshall Fund of the United States, Freedom House and the Canadian International Development Agency.” Totaling only $130,000 US by Kaskiv’s account, “unlike its counterparts in Serbia and Georgia, [Pora!] received only minimal financial support from the international community.” [2] Taras Kuzio also pointed to the Yellow Pora’s having tapped into Western funds sent to the Freedom of Choice Coalition, of which they were part. For their pivotal election monitoring in Crimea, the coalition also received training from Freedom House in August 2004. [3] <br /><br /> Such help was more limited and indirect than in Georgia, at least in relation to the size of the Ukrainian playing field. But in fact it seems reasonable to deduce that less was needed. By 2004 the system was set up and rolling; the fear had been broken in Serbia, and the bloodless victory in Georgia had shown that the pattern was to continue. Thus when someone told the Ukrainian people “it’s time,” they jumped on board quicker and followed the lead of the other revolutions they remember. Officially, the US government spent $41m funding the original trial run against Milosevic in 1999-2000. In Ukraine, the figure is said to be around $14m, one third the original cost, and for a much larger prize. [4] <br /><br /> As supporters point out, the eighteen Pora members who traveled to Serbia to train with the US-trained Otpor veterans paid their own way, as presumably did those who traveled to Tbilisi to learn from the Serbian-trained Kmara vets. But the bright future they planned held promised rewards of its own, and with the precedents of recent years to learn from, they had good reason to expect success. It would seem the Orange Revolution would be well worth the price of a few bus tickets. The question that remains is what the activists drew from these pilgrimages to the sites of previous civil insurgencies. Such travels would risk making the revolution appear part of the then well-known pattern of U.S. backed/engineered revolutions, but the risk was seen as worth it to learn the secrets of the trade in an unbroken chain of enlightened masters, all on NATO, NATO-occupied, or NATO-allied soil.<br /><br /> American political support of these campaigns in general is bipartisan and also highly popular and few would bother to complain over such a utopian brand of political engineering. But Ukraine was especially touchy, and those who were worried voiced their concerns. US Representative Ron Paul (R-TX) delivered testimony on December 7 2004 citing the large amounts of American taxpayer’s money that was funneled into the Ukraine election despite the non-interference rules. “There are so many cut-out organizations and sub-grantees that we have no idea how much U.S. government money was really spent on Ukraine, and most importantly how it was spent,” Paul said. What was known, he explained, was that “much of that money was targeted to assist one particular candidate, and that […] millions of dollars ended up in support of the presidential candidate, Viktor Yushchenko.” [5] Paul elaborated:<br /><br /><i> “The US government, through [USAID], granted millions of dollars to the Poland-America-Ukraine Cooperation Initiative (PAUCI), which is administered by the US-based Freedom House. […] PAUCI then sent US Government funds to numerous Ukrainian NGOs. […] Consider the Ukrainian NGO International Center for Policy Studies […] funded by the U.S. government through PAUCI. On its Web site, we discover that this NGO was founded by George Soros' Open Society Institute. And further on we can see that Viktor Yushchenko himself sits on the advisory board!” [6] <br /> Paul concluded that “Congress and the American taxpayers have a right to know […] how much U.S. government money was spent in Ukraine and exactly how it was spent,” and called for an investigation by the Government Accounting Office. [7] So far there has been no such investigation. </i><br /><br /> Some Western aid came in outside government channels. In September 2005, former President of Ukraine Leonid Kravchuk accused London-based Russian oligarch Boris Berezovsky (aka Platon Elenin) of financing Yushchenko's presidential campaign. Kravchuk showed documentation of money transfers from Berezovsky’s companies to companies controlled by Yushchenko’s official backers. The exiled tycoon has confirmed these transfers, which he said were arranged at meetings with Yushchenko's representatives in London, even though financing of election campaigns by foreign citizens is illegal in Ukraine. [8] <br /><br /> The Russian News and Information Agency explained “from his London villa, the ex-oligarch is focusing his armed-struggle activities not only on Moscow […] but also on Kiev […] to help propel compliant political forces to power.” [9] They cited recent publication of “what is said to be the transcript of a telephone conversation between Berezovsky and Yulia Tymoshenko” in late 2004: <br /><br /><i> Berezovsky: “What the hell are you waiting for in the square? You should lead people there, now! You must take the institutions of power into your own hands...” Tymoshenko: “Yes, my Boris... We will be seizing one site per day starting tomorrow. Railways, airports - business as usual...”</i> [10] <br /><br /> This recording sounds suspiciously like the script of a Russian-produced radio drama, but some combination of evidence led Jack Straw, who headed the British Foreign & Commonwealth Office at the time, to be “struck by Berezovsky's putsch aspirations,” as RIAN put it. He threatened to cancel the Russian’s refugee status, stating that someone who had been granted protection should not “use the UK as a base from which to foment violent disorder” abroad. [11] <br /><br /> Nonetheless most of the help for the revolution was provided from native Ukrainians and the wealthy Diaspora communities banded together, donating money and needed items and volunteering time. As we’ve seen, municipal leaders like Kiev mayor Olmchenko were instrumental in allowing the protests to flourish. Others who sympathized with the movement pitched in by not doing things like cracking down. Petro Rondiak noted: “the riot cops were laughing at our jokes and I certainly doubt they would put up much resistance if...” [12] The authorities simply refused to clamp down on their fellow citizens and all remained peaceful. <br /><br />As per Sharp’s strategy the protesters did what they could to co-opt the security forces, but in this case, for whatever reasons, the main effort behind this co-option came from within the security services themselves, the final stroke of which came just in time to prevent the Orange Revolution from turning red with blood.<br /><br />next post: <a href="http://guerillas-without-guns.blogspot.com/2007/04/preventive-operation.html"><span style="color:#667755;">A Preventive Operation</span></a>: Help From WithinCaustic Logichttp://www.blogger.com/profile/03082923821952309709noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5401125338266582306.post-72146167966346792522007-04-23T16:07:00.000-07:002007-04-23T16:17:57.616-07:00ARMENIA: NOT RIPE FOR REVOLUTION<span style="font-weight:bold; font-size:120%;">Adam Larson/Caustic Logic<br />Guerillas Without Guns/Chapter 9<br />Posted 4/23/07</span><br /><br />An ancient center of Christianity, Armenia was made an SSR around Christmas of 1920. Memories of Soviet-era repression of the Armenian Church did not keep the former SSR from signing on to Russia’s CIS at independence, and later the CSTO as Russia’s only remaining close partner in the Caucasus. But the government at Yerevan also has created a full market economy, allowing high economic freedom and low corruption by CIS standards, and has even gained membership to the WTO as of 2003. Robert Kocharian, second President since independence, has ruled from Yerevan since 1998. The Armenian election process is often criticized in the West, [1] but opposition parties are allowed, and have formed into the Justice Bloc coalition. <br /><br />Again the transition to independence here was not smooth, with the early 90s witnessing a fierce Armenia-Azerbaijan war over the territory of Nagorno-Karabakh. The conflict claimed over 20,000 lives before it was ended with a Russian-brokered cease-fire and OSCE-brokered peace talks in 1994. Nikolai Kovalyov, former head of Russia's FSB, insisted in early 2004 that Armenian activists had trained alongisde Pora and Kmara kids at the “U.S.-funded camps in Serbia” [2] Following Ukraine’s Orange Revolution, Western and Russian media predicted that Armenia could be the next setting for a “color revolution.” Some Armenian media outlets went so far as to suggest names for that would-be revolution, including “The Apricot Revolution” and “The Peach Revolution.” [3] <br /><br />It started with Armenia’s presidential election in March 2003 followed by parliamentary elections in May; big changes were possible just months before the Rose revolution would finally announce the opening of the color phase in neighboring Georgia. Widespread complaints about voting irregularities and general discontent helped opposition parties, but they failed to “fully capitalize” on this, and the protest campaign fizzled. Again in 2004 an upheaval as planed, but the authorities resorted to tough tactics like illegally blocking the bus system into Yerevan to prevent masses of opposition supporters from joining the rallies there. [4] <br /><br />Opposition parties were predicting big changes again in April 2005 as parliamentary elections again drew near. But analysts pointed out their organizational weaknesses, lack of a charismatic leader comparable to Saakashvili, and the competition and bickering between the challengers for the slot - Artashes Geghamian and Stepan Demirchian. They jointly announced a boycott of parliament in early 2004, hoping the progressives absence from the government would gain them wider popular support. Instead, one year later EurasiaNet explained, “the boycott appears to have only denied the opposition an opportunity to express their opinions on the national stage.” Given the failures of the past, and the relative lack of urgency there, the population was not enthusiastic about revolution in 2005. “The peach has not matured yet,” the Yerevan-based daily Aravot concluded. The 2005 campaign fell apart and there are no new elections until 2007 – they missed their chance for the time being. [5]<br /><br />Sources: <br />[1] "Armenia." Wikipedia. As modified on September 3 2006. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Armenia<br />[2] Feinberg, Leslie. “Washington and the coup in former Soviet Georgia.” Worker’s World. January 22, 2004. Accessed at: http://www.workers.org/ww/2004/georgia0122.php<br />[3], [4], [5] Khachatrian, Haroutiun. ARMENIA’S OPPOSITION: IN SEARCH OF A REVOLUTION Eurasia Insight. April 19 2005. http://www.eurasianet.org/departments/insight/articles/eav041905.shtml<br /></span>Caustic Logichttp://www.blogger.com/profile/03082923821952309709noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5401125338266582306.post-83162144683581202412007-04-23T15:45:00.000-07:002007-04-23T15:55:00.763-07:00A PREVENTIVE OPERATION:<span style="font-weight:bold; font-size:120%;">HELP FOR THE ORANGE REVOLUTION FROM THE INSIDE<br />Adam Larson <br />Caustic Logic/Guerillas Without Guns<br />Posted 4/23/07</span><br /><br />Despite the little-seen bull import of <a href="http://guerillas-without-guns.blogspot.com/2007/02/western-winds-feeding-ukrainian-fire_18.html"><span style="font-family:verdana;color:#998877;">Western assistance</span></a>, most of the help for the Orange Revolution was provided from native Ukrainians and the wealthy Diaspora communities who donated money, space, supplies, time, and energy. As we’ve seen, municipal leaders like Kiev mayor Olmchenko were instrumental in allowing the protests to flourish. Others who sympathized with the movement pitched in by not doing things like cracking down. Petro Rondiak noted: “the riot cops were laughing at our jokes and I certainly doubt they would put up much resistance if...” The authorities simply refused to clamp down on their fellow citizens and all remained peaceful. As per Sharp’s strategy the protesters did what they could to co-opt the security forces, but in this case, for whatever reasons, the main effort behind this co-option came from within the security services themselves. And some of the assistance came just in time to prevent the Orange Revolution from turning red with blood. <br /><br /> The behind-the-scenes intrigue was well-related in an unprecedented January 2005 piece in the New York Times by Ukraine expert C.J. Chivers, who interviewed dozens of people involved, including ex-president Kuchma, to assemble his account. Chivers explains how Smeshko’s SBU and other Ukrainian security Agencies (collectively called siloviki) played an unusually powerful role throughout the Revolution – on behalf not of the government they worked for but of the opposition. Oleg Ribachuk, Yushchenko's chief of staff, called this siloviki support “a very important element” that aided their cause “professionally and systemically.” [2] <br /> <br /> Opinions on motives differ – Yulia Tymoshenko felt the intelligence agencies were “hedging their bets” in a “complicated game.” But Ribachuk felt they were real allies who “risked their lives and careers” to help keep Yanukovych out of office. [3] They were reportedly motivated by personal aversion to serving a president Yanukovych, who was in his youth convicted of robbery and assault, besides his connection with corrupt businessmen, his unpopularity, and willingness to use fraud. Smeshko in particular reportedly loathed Yanukovych intensely. “They were doing this like a preventive operation,” Ribachuk said of the siloviki intervention. [4] <br /><br /><table cellspacing="0" align="right" border="1" width="181" cellpadding="3"> <tr><td> <div> <img height="224" hspace="1" vspace="1" border="0" width="175" src="http://i133.photobucket.com/albums/q62/chainsawmoth/GWG/Smeshko.jpg" /> </div> <span style="font-size:80%; font-style:italic;"> SBU Director Ihor Smeshko, back-channel ally of the Revolution </span> </td></tr> </table>Long before the election, the siloviki and the opposition opened quiet lines of communication, including General Smeshko's assignment of an SBU general as secret liaison to Mr. Ribachuk. [5] Ribachuk said that he ultimately had several SBU contacts, with whom he met regularly. The officers leaked him documents and information from the offices of the President and Prime Minister, he said, and were sources for much of the material used in the opposition's media campaign. Particularly useful was the November 24 publication of a recording in which Yanukovych officials discuss exactly how the vote would be fixed: “we have agreed to a 3 to 3.5 percent difference in our favor. We are preparing a table. You will have it by fax.” General Smeshko refused to discuss the tapes in detail with Chivers. “Officially, the S.B.U. had nothing to do with the surveillance of Yanukovich campaign officials. Such taping would be illegal in this country without permission from the court. I will say nothing more.” [6] <br /> <br /> After the November run-off fraud, The SBU leadership met at Smeshko’s office, and “contemplated a public resignation,” but as Chivers explains “decided to try steering the gathering forces from a clash, and to fight from within.” “Today we can save our faces or our epaulettes, or we can try to save our country," the spy chief was recalled as saying. [7] Chivers reported that at this time, late November, “General Smeshko agreed to provide [Yushchenko] eight specialists from the elite Alpha counterterrorism unit - a highly unusual step - and to arrange former SBU members to guard the campaign.” [8] It turns out this was agreed to in a secret meeting not three months after their last meeting on September 5, after which Yushchenko had “fallen ill” and essentially blamed Smeshko or his cronies for poisoning him. All indications are that Smeshko’s Alpha troops continued to protect Yushchenko’s campaign nonetheless, though from exactly whom is unclear. <br /><br /> The protection extended beyond the candidate himself and over the whole Revolution. As protests escalated, on the evening of November 28 over 10,000 troops from the Kuchma-allied Interior Ministry – 3,000 armed with guns, the rest with riot gear - were mobilized to Independence Square to put down the protests, by the order of their commander Lt. Gen. Sergei Popkov. [9] As the military convoy rolled into the night Kiev moved towards what Chivers called “a Soviet-style crackdown that could have brought civil war.” [10] But then the Siloviki stepped in. Oleksander Galaka, head of GRU (military intelligence) made calls to “prevent bloodshed.” Senior officials with the SBU learned of this mobilization and moved quickly to warn opposition leaders. SBU Director Ihor Smeshko claimed to have warned Popkov to pull back his troops, as has Maj. Gen. Vitaly Romachenko, the military counter-intelligence chief. [11] Popkov indeed pulled back and bloodshed – a Tiananmen Square in Europe - was narrowly averted. <br /><br />Next: Away From Russia<br /><span style="font-size:80%;"><br />Sources:<br />[1] [1] Rondiak, Petro. “Kiev resident and supporter of the revolution: E-mail messages sent to friends abroad.” The Ukrainian Weekly, January 2, 2005, No. 1, Vol. LXXIII http://www.ukrweekly.com/Archive/2005/010522.shtml<br />[2] – [11] Chivers, C.J. “Back Channels: A Crackdown Averted: How Top Spies in Ukraine Changed the Nation's Path.” The New York Times. January 17, 2005. Accessed via: http://www.ukrainiantime.com/news.html</span>Caustic Logichttp://www.blogger.com/profile/03082923821952309709noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5401125338266582306.post-20248416333799339102007-04-19T17:00:00.000-07:002007-04-19T15:11:18.862-07:00DIVIDE AND CONQUER/STATE SPONSORS OF TERROR<span style="font-weight:bold; font-size:120%;">THE DARK SIDE OF THE WEST'S STRATEGY FOR YUGOSLAVIA<br />Caustic Logic/Guerillas Without Guns<br />4/19/07</span><br /><br /><table cellspacing="0" align="left" border="1" width="168" cellpadding="3"> <tr><td> <div> <img height="229" hspace="1" vspace="1" border="0" width="162" src="http://i133.photobucket.com/albums/q62/chainsawmoth/GWG/milosevic_sketch.jpg" /> </div></td></tr> </table> Slobodan Milosevic had charted an effective but unremarkable career in the Socialist party as a typical toady who was fiercely supportive of orthodox Marxism. But he was also an international banker and economic moderate who favored partial privatization of the economy and closer cooperation with the Americans, who saw him as a “breath of fresh air” in the 1980s. [1] Milosevic was a master sculptor of his media image, and knew just how to destroy an opponent politically. After protracted power struggles with President Stambolic, Milosevic emerged as the highly popular President of Serbia in 1989, just as the Warsaw Pact was crumbling away to the north. <br /><br /> He would be President of the Yugoslav Federation as well, but not until 1997, by which time the former SFRY had been nearly dismantled. Over the 1990s, four of six republics seceded, finally leaving only Serbia and Montenegro in a “rump” Yugoslavia. This was not simply a passive process but one helped along by outside powers. Greek peace activist Evangelos Mahairas took issue with the United States effectively cutting off aid to Yugoslavia as a whole in 1990, promising money to the six republics individually if they held separate elections. [2] Thus from 1990 on, the breakup of Yugoslavia was nearly inevitable as the West, notably Germany and the US, extended recognition to one Republic after the other that broke free from Belgrade’s control. <br /><br /> In fact if seen as intentional, this is essentially a divide-and-conquer strategy, as was being done with the former Soviet sphere. The plan is to decentralize, create multiple poles of power, get competition working in your favor and cut bilateral deals with independent states. By the mid-1990s the world was left with a mess of five bickering fragments (in alphabetical order): Bosnia and Herzegovina, Croatia, Macedonia, Slovenia, and “Yugoslavia” (or Serbia and Montenegro, capital at Belgrade). Serbia also contained two autonomous provinces: Vojvodina in the north (capital, Novi Sad) and the now well-known southern region of Kosovo (capital at Pristina). While Milosevic's critics allege he sought annexation of Serb-dominated areas in the neighboring republics under the banner “all Serbs in one State,” apologists explain that his role in this process was reactionary, seeking to keep Yugoslavia from disintegrating under outside pressure. In 1991 Serbia went to war with Croatia and again in 1992 fighting broke out in Bosnia-Herzegovina. It’s worthy of note that both of these conflicts occurred only after the republics in question had moved to secede, putting at least some of the impetus for conflict outside Milosevic’s court, an important but often overlooked factor in assigning blame for the ensuing destruction. <br /><br /> Fighting and Byzantine political maneuvers roiled the region for the next few years. The second conflict in particular grabbed the world’s attention, with Muslim Bosniacs pitted against Serbian forces and local Serb paramilitaries. This violence triggered in response the first offensive use of NATO – not the first since the end of the Cold War, but the first ever - in 1995. Dubbed Operation Deliberate Force, NATO’s fierce bombing of Serb positions had the Bosnian War decided and called off before the year was out. Peace was re-established with the Dayton Accords but sanctions were imposed and Yugoslavia was left a Pariah state, withdrawing from the European mainstream (the OSCE) and even leaving the United Nations. <br /><br /> As war raged in the north during the early 1990s, Kosovo languished under total Serbian governance with the Albanian majority locked out in an apartheid system. Poverty and unemployment reached catastrophic levels, swelling the ranks of the dispossessed, desperate, and well-armed. On April 22, 1996, four attacks on Serbian civilians and security personnel were carried out simultaneously in several parts of Kosovo. A hitherto unknown organization calling itself the “Kosovo Liberation Army” (KLA) claimed responsibility, and it all went downhill from there. Milosevic cranked up the pressure of repression and ushered in the widely publicized phase of paramilitary terror: prison camps, mass rapes and massacres ensued – at least in Western accounts - and demanded the West’s leadership. <br /><br /> Criticism from Washington and Brussels cited the violence in Croatia, Bosnia, and Kosovo as unilateral Serbian “ethnic cleansing,” casting Milosevic as the Hitler of the 1990s, seeking to kill or drive away as many innocent Croats/Bosniacs/Albanians as possible and Serbianize the regions by force. While not entirely untrue, this is a simplification of the situation that serves to distort the issue and give NATO moral carte blanche. For example, Western citizens heard hardly a mention of outside involvement in the Yugoslav civil wars like that presented by Canadian economist, researcher, and critic of globalization Michel Chossudovsky. In an essay written in October 2001, he brought attention to a 1994 report of the London-based International Media Corporation which noted tacit US approval of transfer by Iran of weapons to the separatists in Bosnia. Iranian Revolutionary Guard soldiers were even landed in Croatia and marched into Bosnia, and the report further noted that “the United States is now actively participating in the arming and training of the Muslim forces of Bosnia-Herzegovina.” [3] <br /> <br />These charges were serious enough to be used by a Republican Party Committee report published in 1997 that criticized the Clinton administration for “complicity in the delivery of weapons from Iran to the Muslim government in Sarajevo.” It noted the policy’s personal approval by he U.S. ambassador to Croatia Peter Galbraith, NSC Director Anthony Lake, and President Clinton himself. [4] Despite the political heat this could have applied to Clinton, such activities served the interests of the Anglo-American empire, which are bi-partisan, and so it was allowed to be buried and forgotten as focus shifted to other scandals, making such support into an invisible weapon that made Milosevic’s action seem yet more unjust as he seemed to battle the brave Bosnians for no good reason except blind ethnic hatred. <br /><br /> Such covered-up outside support is also seriously alleged to have flowed in Kosovo, to the militant KLA. Michel Chossudovsky tackled this angle as well, citing British military sources to argue that “the task of arming and training of the KLA had been entrusted in 1998 to the US Defence Intelligence Agency (DIA) and Britain's Secret Intelligence Services MI6” along with former British Air Force vets from the 22 SAS Regiment and private Anglo-American security companies. [5] On the other end, the KLA is linked by some evidence to Osama bin Laden’s Islamist and criminal activities in the Balkans; Chossudovsky cited Kosovo as part of the conduit for Afghan opium on its way to refineries and markets in Europe. Supplying roughly 80% of the street supply there, this massive operation is said to have helped bin Laden fund his operations in Afghanistan, and the KLA was reportedly in on the trade. [6] And on the return end, it’s well known that along with Kashmir and Chechnya, Kosovo was one of the main export regions for Islamist militants training at the Afghan camps. <br /><br />A brief survey of Chossudovsky’s evidence shows that the Bin Laden-KLA-Anglo-American link and the Iranian-Bosnian-Anglo-American link both follow a similar pattern; both helped provoke Belgrade into open hostilities, both times followed up with NATO wars against Serbia. There was enough evidence all in all for US-based Bosnian Serb historian and analyst Srdja Trifkovic to call this “the biggest unknown scandal of the Clinton years.” “Throughout the 1990's,” Trifkovic wrote, “the U.S. government effectively aided and abetted bin Laden's operations in the Balkans, long after he was recognized as a major security threat to the United States.” [7] Bin Laden was not the big enemy just yet, and at the time it seems plausible that he and his allies were seen as simply convenient tools to help pry Yugoslavia apart. <br /><br />This would be well within the lines of how Osama had begun his Islamist adventures in Afghanistan. At the urging of National Security Adviser Brzezinski, president Carter signed the first directive for secret aid to the anti-Communist opposition in Kabul on July 3, 1979. With this aid, “we didn't push the Russians to intervene, but we knowingly increased the probability that they would,” Brzezinski explained. [8] Thus the Soviet invasion of December was the result of a conscious American plan to trick the USSR into “its Vietnam War,” with the Muslim guerillas secretly funded, armed, and trained by the U.S. and its allies (notably Pakistan and Saudi Arabia) to “make the Soviets bleed for as much, as long as possible” [9] Zbig continued to boast of this whole deal as “an excellent idea” even as late as a January 1998 interview with a French paper. Just six months before bin Laden started blowing up American embassies. [10] <br /><br />Next: <a href="http://guerillas-without-guns.blogspot.com/2007/03/limits-of-air-powerthe-pariahs-club.html"><span style="font-family:verdana;color:#998877;">The Limits of Air Power/The Pariah’s Club</span></a><br /><span style="font-size:80%;"> <br />Sources:<br />[1] Sell, Louis. Page 140-141. <br />[2] Mahairas, Evangelos. The Breakup of Yugoslavia. <br />[3], [4], [5], [6] Chossudovsky. “Osamagate.” Center for Research on Globalization. October 9, 2001. Accessed December 15, 2004 at: http://www.globalresearch.ca/articles/CHO110A.html<br />[7], [8] December 2001. Chronicles Intelligence Assessment. Srdja Trifovic “Osama bin Laden: The Balkans Connection.” http://www.chroniclesmagazine.org/Chronicles/December2001/1201CIA.htm<br />[9] CNN. Cold War Experience. Episode 20. Soldiers of God. Accessed November 9, 2005 at: http://www.cnn.com/SPECIALS/cold.war/episodes/20/script.html<br />[10] Johnson, Chalmers. Abolish the CIA!. November 5 2004. Accessed November 6, 2005 at: http://www.zmag.org/content/print_article.cfm?itemID=6583§ionID=11</span>Caustic Logichttp://www.blogger.com/profile/03082923821952309709noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5401125338266582306.post-47591392774481502612007-04-19T16:00:00.000-07:002007-04-19T15:12:26.178-07:00PORA! HIGH TIME FOR A REVOLUTION<span style="font-size:120%; font-weight:bold;">THE WORD ON THE STREET IS “NOW!”<br />Adam Larson <br />Caustic Logic / Guerillas Without Guns <br />Posted 4/8/07</span><br /><br />It should be no surprise that Ukrainian democracy guerillas looking to drift their country closer to Europe would want to tap into the well-established nexus of western-funded and native-organized revolutionary movements. Initially links between Otpor vets and a first wave of Ukrainian activists were established in 2003. [1] Just as Kmara picked up the methods and logo of Otpor in Belgrade in 2003, eighteen young Ukrainians made their own pilgrimage to that same Mecca of revolution in the spring of 2004. They met with Otpor leaders at a seminar in Novi Sad before returning home to put the valuable lessons to use. <br /><br /> Otpor even sent its own volunteers into Ukraine to work with the youth movement forming there. Indeed, two of the leaders from Belgrade, Aleksandar Maric, [2] and Marko Markovych [3] were turned away at the border when they attempted entry. (Markovych later applied for citizenship in Ukraine to work on revolution there full time) But others got in just fine when they were needed, and taught the Ukrainians what they knew. One of the Serbian trainers, Sinisa Sikman, later explained “we helped educate them on how to campaign, how to organize themselves, how to focus their message and energy and motivate voters.” [4] <br /><table cellspacing="0" align="left" border="0" width="222" cellpadding="0"> <tr><td> <div><br /> <img height="84" hspace="1" vspace="1" border="0" width="216" alt="Pora logo" src="http://i133.photobucket.com/albums/q62/chainsawmoth/Pora_logo.jpg" /> </div> <span style="font-size:80%; font-style:italic;"> Pora! Logo as pictured on their flag – note the absence of a fist.</span> </td></tr> </table><br /> The brave and optimistic young people who rose up in Ukraine chose as their obligatory one-word slogan Pora! (“It’s Time”). While Kmara in Georgia seems to have been created specifically for the 2003 anti-Shevy campaign, Pora was first formed in 2002 from the hard-core activists who had participated in “Ukraine Without Kuchma!” and other protest movements from as far back as 2000. [5] <br /><br /> There were actually two wings formed, Yellow Pora and Black Pora, with divided responsibilities. The yellow wing focused on candidates and political-level work, essentially a constituent party within the emerging “Freedom of Choice” coalition. [6] Black Pora made its first public moves in early 2004, posting fliers across the country in March calling on Ukrainians to remove “Kuchma-ism” from their minds. It was the kids of the black wing who linked up with Otpor in 2003, and it was they who more closely mimicked Otpor, keeping the decentralized structure, and focusing on branding activism and mobilizing the street protests. <br /> <br /> While Pora drew great inspiration from Otpor, they chose not to directly mimic their iconography as Kmara had in Georgia. The Ukrainian activists instead developed their own images; their equivalent of the clenched fist was a ticking clock set at 11:45, incorporated as the “O” in the Cyrillic rendition of P-O-R-A. And they made excellent use of graphics, from the “Orange Sunrise” pyramid to ones with more aggressive imagery such as a giant boot crushing a cockroach. These were repeated ad infinitum on mass-produced t-shirts, posters, pamphlets, bumper stickers, etc.<br /><br /> Pora started to work “weeding out” corrupt officials; who was a weed and who a flower was sorted out by blacklists, compiled by both yellow and black wings. Yanukovych's Regions party cited these lists as reason enough for the Security Service to ban Pora as terrorists seeking another popular coup as had occurred in Georgia. [7] Indeed, Liberty Institute’s Givi Targamadze, along with several other Georgian parliamentarians visited Kiev and shared their knowledge and experience of civil disobedience with the newly created Pora. Targamadze allegedly used a televised interview in Ukraine to give activists specific instructions about things such as seizing strategically important buildings. [8] Kmara delegates were also allegedly involved in this trip, and Pora sent its own representatives to Tbilisi to learn more from Kmara members on their own turf. <br /><br /> Well-advised and eventually numbering in excess of 10,000 members, Pora used civil disobedience and Otpor-Kmara-style street theater tactics to agitate against Kuchma’s regime in Kiev and elsewhere. Ian Traynor noted “their websites and stickers, their pranks and slogans aimed at banishing widespread fear of a corrupt regime.” Pora member Alina Shpak explained their approach; “we mocked the power as much as possible. You can't be afraid of someone you're laughing at.” [9] So they weren’t afraid of Kuchma’s designated successor, who was laughed at widely for the “egg incident;” on a September 24 visit to western Ukraine (Ivano-Frankivsk), an opposition activist threw an egg at Yanukovych in public. BBC News explained the victim “collapsed to the ground, groaning and clutching his chest. Initially hospitalised in intensive care, he recovered within hours and went on television to say he felt sorry for the ‘wayward’ youngster who had thrown the egg.” [10] Pora-types noted the loser-like behavior and took heart. <br /><br /> Not everyone was so daring, and as in Serbia, the young activists organized harmless, humorous street happenings. For example Pora dumped a mound of pumpkins in a Kiev street in a “Pumpkins for Yanukovych” action. This had the benefit of keeping to the orange color scheme decided on for the revolution, chosen for its cheerful vibrancy and its discernability from the traditional Ukrainian colors blue and yellow – taking the yellow and shifting it to orange, directly chromatically opposed to blue, the color of the governing party. But the main thing about pumpkins in Ukraine, and the point of the action, is the rural custom of a girl rejecting an inferior suitor by handing him one. It was an inderect, culturally appropriate, and pointed way of telling Kuchma he was out - the people had accepted a different husband.<br /><span style="font-size:80%;"><br />Sources: <br />[1], [3], [5], [6]. [7] Kuzio, Taras. "Pora! takes two different paths." Eurasia DailyMonitor. February 2 2005. <br />http://www.jamestown.org/edm/article.php?volume_id=407&issue_id=3218&article_id=2369186<br />[2]. [4] Vasovic, Aleksandar. "At root of Ukraine's revolution, the disciplined crowd." San FranciscoGate. December 11 2004. http://sfgate.com/cgi-bin/article.cgi?f=/news/a/2004/12/11/international1342EST0526.DTL<br />[8] Anjaparidze, Zaal. "Georgian Advisers Stepping Forward in Bishkek." Eurasia Daily Monitor. Volume 2, Issue 59 (March 25, 2005) http://www.jamestown.org/publications_details.php?volume_id=407&issue_id=3276&article_id=2369483<br />[9] Traynor, Ian. "Young democracy guerrillas join forces: From Belgrade to Baku, activists gather to swap notes on how to topple dictators." The Guardian. June 6 2005. http://www.guardian.co.uk/international/story/0,,1499871,00.html<br />[10] Profile: Viktor Yanukovych Last Updated: Monday, 27 March 2006, 13:22 GMT 14:22 UK http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/world/europe/4038803.stm</span>Caustic Logichttp://www.blogger.com/profile/03082923821952309709noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5401125338266582306.post-91290149327619830532007-04-19T15:00:00.000-07:002007-04-19T15:10:32.753-07:00GEORGIA: THE OLD ORDER<span style="font-weight:bold; font-size:120%;">SHEVARDNADZE AND GEORGIA'S PLACE ON THE CHESSBOARD</span><br /><br /><table cellspacing="0" align="center" border="1" width="360" cellpadding="3"> <tr><td> <div> <img height="213" hspace="1" vspace="1" border="0" width="351" src="http://i133.photobucket.com/albums/q62/chainsawmoth/GWG/Map_Georgia.jpg" /> </div> </td></tr> </table> <br />The former Soviet republic of Georgia, birthplace of Josef Stalin, is a fractious little land in the volatile and strategically important Caucasus - a ridge of mountains between the Caspian and Black Seas shoehorned between Russia, Turkey and Iran (and, yes, the origin of the word “Caucasian.”) Georgia shares borders with former SSRs Armenia and Azerbaijan, in a near-constant war over disputed territory. Georgia’s Pankisi Gorge is just across the border from the conflict-torn Russian republic of Chechnya, and frequently absorbs Chechens hiding from Russia’s reach. Georgia itself is torn by internal divisions; separatist struggles between ethnic Russians and Georgians in Abkhazia killed thousands and marred the country’s transition to independence in the early 1990s. A United Nations Observer Mission in Georgia (UNOMIG) was set up in 1993 to monitor the cease-fire, its mandate renewed by the UN Security Council every six months. UNOMIG remained for a decade before being expanded in 2003, and in 2006 is still in place, awaiting a final settlement thirteen years later. <br /><br /> Russians were among the UNOMIG observers but were excluded from its military security force. However peace-keepers under Russian command were also deployed in Abkhazia alongside the UN, part of the overall pattern of domination Moscow reserved in Georgia, part of the southern outpost of Moscow’s withered Empire. Though an agreement to pull the troops out was reached with the OSCE-brokered Istanbul Accords of 1999, a controversial rotating force of Russian troops and heavy weaponry remains in Abkhazia into 2006, with smaller forces and Russian-sponsored militias remaining in the breakaway regions of South Ossetia and Ajaria. <br /><br />As late as 2001 Russian troops had been sent into the Pankisi Gorge to ferret out Chechen rebels, but the Russian role there was taken over by Georgian troops, trained since May 2002 by American Special Forces as part of its “War on Terror.” In addition to fighting Chechen bad guys, Political analyst Matthew Riemer succinctly explained, the U.S. policy was “to strengthen an independent, Moscow-free Georgia that would eventually become a member of NATO and the European Union,” a shift that would be enabled by privatization and Western capital injections. [1] <br /> <br />The most obvious investment was in westbound Caspian oil pipelines; Georgia’s capital Tbilisi was attractive to Western investors as the middle link in at least two ambitious Europe-bound pipelines through the Caucasus alley. Both originate in Baku, Azerbaijan and pass through Tbilisi before diverging. The more famous of the two is set to end at Ceyhan, on Turkey’s Mediterranean coast. A consortium of companies headed by British Petroleum backed this Baku-Tbilisi-Ceyhan (BTC) pipeline, and President Bush has endorsed it by name as furthering his energy policy as work began on laying it in May 2003. [2] The Baku-Tbilisi-Supsa (BTS) pipeline was set to end at Georgia’s coast to feed 120,000 to 150,000 barrels a day of Azerbaijani oil into an underground pipeline beneath the Black Sea to Europe. Soros’ EurasiaNet described how these pipelines “will allow both Georgia and Azerbaijan to more effectively resist geopolitical pressure exerted by Russia.” [3] The flip side, of course, is the ability they could give the West to exert such leverage against Russia. <br /> <br /><table cellspacing="0" align="right" border="1" width="204" cellpadding="3"> <tr><td> <div> <img height="147" hspace="1" vspace="1" border="0" width="198" alt="Shevardnadze" src="http://i133.photobucket.com/albums/q62/chainsawmoth/Shev.jpg" /> </div> <span style="font-size:80%; font-style:italic;">President Shevardnadze, problematic US ally and target of the Rose Revolution</span> </td></tr> </table> In these efforts the West worked closely - or tried to - with long-term Georgian President Eduard Shevardnadze. He was a former Soviet heavyweight: KGB officer, Chairman of Georgian Communist Party, and Soviet Foreign Minister from Gorbachev’s ascendancy in 1985. In December 1990 he dramatically resigned both his post and his Party membership, complaining of a resurgence of hard line military types. “Boys in colonels’ epaulettes are pushing the country to dictatorship,” he declared in a speech from the floor of the Supreme Soviet on his resignation, eight months before those boys would try to overthrow his ally Gorbachev. [4] <br /> <br /> After the USSR collapsed, Russian President Yeltsin sent Shevardnadze to reign in the chaos in his native Georgia, where President Zviad Gamsakhurdia had been deposed in a coup while the region of Abkhazia had moved to split and civil war broke out. He took effective control in Tbilisi in mid-1992, and when stability allowed was finally elected president in mid-1995. While somewhat dictatorial by Western standards, Shevardnadze was no Milosevic. He had charted a path amenable to the US, generally playing Russia and the West against each other as so many other nations did during the Cold War. In 1994-1995, he collaborated with Azerbaijan’s leadership on a Western-backed transportation and energy corridor the Europeans dubbed Transportation Corridor Europe-Caucasus-Asia (TRASECA). The BTS oil pipeline was the first phase of this ambitious endeavor that Ariel Cohen noted “will create relatively few jobs and relatively little transit-tariff revenue for Georgia.” [5]<br /><br />As Soviet Foreign Minister “Shevy,” as the Americans came to call him, had been a great help in the prelude to the 1991 Gulf War; he grew so close to Secretary of State James Baker, the Texan once sang the standard Georgia on My Mind to him in one of their less formal meetings in Wyoming. [6] The Georgian leader also proved a workable ally in the post-9/11 world; in addition to allowing American special forces in 2002, he also offered enthusiastic support for the controversial 2003 Iraq War. Georgia was a proud member of the “Coalition of the Willing” (with 400 troops as of mid-2005, including special forces, medics and engineers, at least seven wounded so far.) [7] President Shevardnadze addressed his countrymen as the war opened, explaining that Saddam Hussein's Iraq was “a totalitarian regime […] which poses a threat to the whole region.” He reiterated the Washington line that the coalition was forced to take on the role that the UN Security Council should have fulfilled (Recall Russia’s resounding “Nyet” vote). He also noted that a Georgian-US partnership “could help Georgia resurrect its territorial integrity and resolve a number of economic issues.” [8] <br /><br />Yet while useful to Washington, Shevardnadze was ever more unpopular with his own people, whose patience was wearing thin on territorial integrity and those economic issues as well as widespread official corruption, which the president seemed incapable of stopping. Presented in 1999 by his old friend James Baker with the esteemed “Enron Prize for Distinguished Public Service,” by 2003 Shevardnadze’s government was increasingly seen as plagued with corruption, mismanagement, and secrecy. [9] These problems steadily drained Shevardnadze’s power like a hole in his gas tank and strategically vital Georgia began to look rather vulnerable to another round of instability and violence, sure to put the brakes on any pipeline with a “T” in the middle. Major protests had been staged off-and-on since 2001; criticism from the media was squashed with raids on the opposition stations, while political protest was met with dismissal of the government. US Secretary of State Colin Powell announced at one point “an unstable Georgia automatically results in an unstable Caucasus,” a statement some took to mean that rather than expend more political capital propping Shevy up, the Americans should “ditch him to ensure stability.” [10]Caustic Logichttp://www.blogger.com/profile/03082923821952309709noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5401125338266582306.post-4668459815303606782007-04-11T23:25:00.001-07:002007-04-11T23:48:31.481-07:00ZAYER AND HELVEY: NO TO SADDAM, NO TO WAR<span style="font-weight:bold; font-size:120%;">Adam Larson<br />Caustic Logic/Guerillas Without Guns<br />Posted April 11 2007</span><br /><br />Ultimately weaponized nonviolence failed to replace outright war in Iraq, but that doesn’t mean some people didn’t push to give peace a chance to bring down the Butcher of Baghdad. As the long-suffering citizens of Iraq turned out for the October 2002 Presidential “election,” it was clear that there was little chance of change by that route. Banners across the country urged Iraqis to vote “Yes, yes, yes for Saddam,” a message reinforced by both outright State power and by state radio repetition of Hussein’s campaign song – reportedly <i>I Will Always Love You</i> by Whitney Houston, another sign of his relentless cruelty. [1] As with previous elections, marked ballots were used so those who voted no, no, no against Saddam would be known, and thus the Iraqi dictator hoped to match the 99.96 percent affirmation he had previously claimed. Exiled opposition leader Ismail Zayer described the election as “a forced pledge of loyalty […] The whole practice is a fiasco, orchestrated by a regime that does not believe in the people's voice. […] Their real voices, if given the choice, will say no to Saddam loud and clear.” [2] <br /><br /><table cellspacing="0" align="right" border="1" width="168" cellpadding="3"> <tr><td> <div> <img height="186" hspace="1" vspace="1" border="0" width="162" src="http://i133.photobucket.com/albums/q62/chainsawmoth/GWG/Zayer.jpg" /> </div> <span style="font-size:80%; font-style:italic;">Iraqi dissident and No to Saddam founder Ismael Zayer in 2004 </span> </td></tr> </table> Zayer had already been saying it himself for a while, and working with other Iraqi exiles had formed his own organization actually called “No to Saddam.” The organization was patterned to some extent on Otpor and was committed to severing Saddam’s dictatorship with massive strikes and other nonviolent civil insurgent tactics. [3] He proposed that the world should neither tolerate Saddam’s Tyranny nor resort to carpet bombing – Zayer called his approach “The Third Choice.” [4] “We have already succeeded in establishing a small network within the country and are planning a clandestine media campaign,” promised Zayer, a journalist by trade. [5] <br /> <br /> One demonstration he seems to have organized early on “really opened people's eyes.” Demonstrators in Baghdad shouted pro-Saddam chants as cover for taking over the streets, refusing to allow their patriotic display to be dispersed even by warning gunshots. Saddam was not looking for an excuse to crack down as the US war machine loomed, and so no one died. “Many thought such protests were not possible,” Zayer said, but they had been emboldened by the positive example. [6] <br /><br /> He had hoped initially to forge a millions-strong civil insurgency, and approached US decision-makers about helping him. While overall support remained muted and Zayer’s group received almost no media coverage even after the war, some influential people in the regime change industry did answer the call. John Bacher reported in Peace magazine that a seminar was held in 2001 to discuss the possibility of such a campaign. Hosted by Peter Ackerman’s Center for Nonviolent Conflict, Woolsey’s Freedom House, and the US Institute for Peace, this reported gathering occurred “almost a year after the successful nonviolent Serbian Revolution of 2000,” so right around the time of the September 11 attacks, one would presume before. Details like exact date, location, speakers and itinerary remain unclear, but it seems to have been in Western Europe. <br /><br /> This 2001 seminar was followed by a two-day workshop in Washington called “Prospects for Democratic Change in Iraq,” held at American University on May 24 and 25 2002. It was organized by the Iraq Institute For Democracy, based in “Iraqi Kurdistan” and sponsored by Freedom House. A tentative itinerary I located online listed the legendary Robert Helvey as set to speak right before lunch during session two, “Civilian-based Resistance and Regime Change in Iraq.” Jack DuVall and Peter Ackerman from the Center for Nonviolent Conflict were also to present in this session; collectively they were to address three topics: “1. The record of nonviolent conflict in bringing down a dictator 2. Developing a strategy for Iraqi civilian resistance 3. International assistance for civilian-based action in Iraq.” [7] At this session as in his earlier venture in Burma, Bacher explained, “Helvey's military experience helped persuade skeptical Iraqi exiles that nonviolence is a viable approach.” [8] <br /><br /> Helvey's strongest supporter at the May strategy session was reportedly Ismael Zayer, and for the next year Helvey proceeded to help him pursue the Third Choice, delivering preliminary training to 50 leaders of No to Saddam. [9] Presumably the group was considered a central element of any such planned upheaval, but “unfortunately,” Bacher reported, “[Zayer’s] effort was not assisted by other countries and only thousands of Iraqis took part - far short of the millions he had hoped for.” He diligently continued the crusade, asking European supporters to send monitors to future Iraqi elections. In a phone interview on the eve of the Iraq War’s commencement, Zayer pleaded that “to achieve the third choice, we need help. Not with armies or with money,” he explained from his home in the Netherlands. “We need help in the form of nonviolent training to protect ourselves from Saddam and his agents. We can do it, but we need help now.” [10] <br /> <br />Next: Washington’s answer: No to Zayer, Yes to Force Presence <br /><span style="font-size:80%;"><br />Sources:<br />[1], [2] “In Iraqi vote today, choice is Hussein or ... Hussein.” St. Petersburg Times (Florida). Compiled from Times wires - published October 15, 2002. http://www.sptimes.com/2002/10/15/Worldandnation/In_Iraqi_vote_today__.shtml<br />[3], [4], [8], [9], [10] Bacher, John. “Robert Helvey's Expert Political Defiance”<br />Peace Magazine. Apr-Jun 2003, p.10. http://www.peacemagazine.org/archive/v19n2p10.htm<br />[5], [6], Bacher, John. “The Price for Peace: How a Cool $45 million could solve Saddam problem.” http://www.nowtoronto.com/issues/2002-12-05/news_story4.php<br />[7] Partial Schedule of event, found at: http://www.kurd.org/events/SinjariConf.html</span>Caustic Logichttp://www.blogger.com/profile/03082923821952309709noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5401125338266582306.post-58292982381071676382007-04-11T16:18:00.000-07:002009-03-28T17:36:48.348-07:00COL. HELVEY: WEAPONIZING NOVIOLENCE<span style="font-weight:bold; font-size:120%;">Adam Larson<br />Caustic Logic/Guerillas Without Guns<br />April 11 2007</span><br /><br />The president of the Albert Einstein Institution as of 2006 is retired US Army Colonel Robert Helvey, a longtime proponent of Sharp’s theories. More than anyone else it has been Helvey who has weaponized his mentor’s ideas of nonviolent conflict and put it to use in the field. He holds a BA and MA from Marshall University, is a graduate of the US Army Command and General Staff College, and US Navy War College. [1] He has 30 years of experience in Southeast Asia, including two tours of duty in Vietnam (awarded the Distinguished Service Cross, January 1968). [2] Helvey has also worked with the U.S. Defense Intelligence College, which is in turn connected to the Defense Intelligence Agency (DIA) in which he was reportedly an officer. [3] Exact details of his life and career remain somewhat vague, but among other posts he held, from 1983 until 1985 Helvey was a US military attaché at the American Embassy in Rangoon, the capital of Burma. The Colonel later described how he became dismayed by the utter futility of the two-decade-old US-backed armed struggle against the military dictatorship there. [4] <br /><br /><table cellspacing="0" align="left" border="1" width="132" cellpadding="3"> <tr><td> <div> <img height="133" hspace="1" vspace="1" border="0" width="126" src="http://i133.photobucket.com/albums/q62/chainsawmoth/GWG/Helvey_Sketch.jpg" /> </div> <span style="font-size:80%; font-style:italic;">Col. Robert Helvey, leading strategist of nonviolent struggle. </span> </td></tr> </table> He spent his last years of military service mulling over this dilemma, the final year in an academic setting. Curiously, he wound up with a senior fellowship at Harvard's Center for International Affairs, where he happened to hear about a lecture on nonviolent sanctions to be given by the department’s esteemed professor Gene Sharp. Helvey later recalled how Sharp “started out the seminar by saying 'Strategic nonviolent struggle is all about political power,” spurring Helvey to muse “Boy is this guy speaking my language, that is what armed struggle is about.” [5] An article from Peace magazine, April 2003 explained: <br /><br /> <i>“From conversations with Sharp and like-minded colleagues at the Albert Einstein Institution, Helvey learned a systematic strategy of resistance. For example, he learned to avoid exposed situations that could lead to heavy casualties such as the protest in 1988 when 3,000 unarmed students were massacred in Rangoon. He came to see that even greater pressure could be applied to the regime with less risky tactics, such as having people simply stay at home during a general strike.”</i> [6] <br /><br /> After officially retiring from the Army in 1991, Helvey took Sharp’s ideas to a wider audience of influential people. He soon secured funding to go back to Burma to spread his message and, if possible, test the technique. From 1992-98 Helvey made over a dozen trips to the Thai-Burmese border to meet with leaders of pro-democracy groups there. He developed and taught a six-week course, with students cycling through in shifts to work on confidence building, identifying the regime's weaknesses, and forming “usable pressure groups.” When confronted by Burmese leaders who scoffed at non-violence against the thugs in charge, Helvey started using the more militant-sounding phrase “political defiance,” which, he stressed, “like military struggle, is both an art and a science. To be effective, it must be studied and carried out with skill and discipline.” [7] <br /><br />The training Helvey brought to Burma is still used, in line as it is with the non-violent tactics stressed by “the Lady,” Aung San Suu Kyi, daughter of Modern Burma’s founding father. Helvey describes Suu Kyi, under house arrest for years, as “the symbol of the entire pro-democracy movement. Without her, the movement has not demonstrated the ability to take on strategic struggle.” It was reportedly at Suu Kyi’s urging that Sharp's book FDTD was translated, published, and smuggled into Burma. [8] So far the repressive regime is still in power, but Suu Kyi maintains a strong following and has gradually been given more freedom, and thankfully there have been no more massacres like the one in 1988. But direct success or not, Helvey adopted and championed Sharp’s approach to winning conflicts, retired and became a man of peace heading the AEI as it embarked on its many adventures. Over the following years and the course of this book, Helvey would fulfill an important niche in the real-world implementation of Sharp’s ideas in over a half-dozen countries. Some of his handiwork will play a role in the following chapters. <br /><br /><b>Next: <a href="http://guerillas-without-guns.blogspot.com/2007/05/american-end.html"><span style="color:#667755;">The American End: Overt Ops/A Bi-Partisan Effort</span></a></b> <br /><span style="font-size:80%;"><br />Sources:<br />[1] About AEI > Staff & Board > Bob Helvey, President. Accessed at: http://www.aeinstein.org/organizations.php3?action=printContentItem&orgid=88&typeID=7&itemID=48&User_Session=346723d93fdd7b3f54352c8c92b94d2f<br />[2] First Cavalry Division Distiguished Service cross Recipients. Acc. June 12 2006 at: http://www.1stcavmedic.com/DSC-CAV.htm<br />[3] Mowat, Jonathan. “Coup d'État in Disguise: Washington's New World Order "Democratization" Template.” <br />GlobalResearch.ca February 9, 2005. http://www.globalresearch.ca/index.php?context=viewArticle&code=MOW20050209&articleId=437<br />[4], [6], [7] Bacher, John. "Robert Helvey's Expert Political Defiance." Peace Magazine Apr-Jun 2003, p.10. http://www.peacemagazine.org/archive/v19n2p10.htm<br />[5] Mowat, Jonathan. "The new Gladio in action? Ukrainian postmodern coup completes testing of new template." Online Journal. March 19 2005. http://www.onlinejournal.org/Special_Reports/031905Mowat-1/031905mowat-1.html<br />[8] Rozen, Laura. "Dictator downturn: It just isn't as easy being a tyrant as it used to be." Salon. February 3 2001. <br />http://archive.salon.com/news/feature/2001/02/03/dictators/print.html</span>Caustic Logichttp://www.blogger.com/profile/03082923821952309709noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5401125338266582306.post-15991214464085018782007-04-06T16:40:00.000-07:002007-04-19T15:09:03.544-07:00THE HEART OF SERBIA/POINT OF NO RETURN<img src="http://i133.photobucket.com/albums/q62/chainsawmoth/GWG/Map_Yugoslavia.jpg" /><br />At the heart of a disintegrating Yugoslavia is the ancient land of Serbia, a nation with a strong sense of self and a long memory. A particularly poignant and long-standing element of Serbian nationalism is the “Kosovo myth,” a 600-year old specter hovering over a site called Kosovo Polje (the field of blackbirds), from which the modern region of Kosovo in southern Serbia takes its name. It was here that Serb forces were vanquished in a major battle with the Islamic Ottoman Turks in the year 1389, an epic loss marked every year, on June 28, as the vidovnan, or St. Vitus’ Day - the most significant date in the Serbian calendar. For centuries they nurtured the dark memory under Turkish rule, only to emerge by struggle and Ottoman decay and re-enter “the European mainstream” in the early 1800s. The re-emergence of the Serbian kingdom into a much-changed Europe opened them to new oppressors. Serbia and its surrounding areas were wrangled over by the Austrian empire (and increasingly Germany) – who had the advantage of proximity – and the Russian empire, which had the advantage of common Slavic identity with the Serbs and a serious drive to gain influence over the shipping lanes to warm water ports to the Mediterranean Sea. <br /><br />By the early 1900s the Austro-Hungarian Empire had taken effective control of the region that would become Yugoslavia, to the dismay of Russian-supported Serb nationalists. In the spring of 1914, a small group of them associated with the “Black Hand” society was tipped off that Austrian Archduke Franz Ferdinand would visit the Capital, then Sarajevo, to oversee regional military operations. His date of arrival was listed as June 28. One of the young men involved later fumed “how dared Franz Ferdinand, not only the representative of the oppressor but in his own person an arrogant tyrant, enter Sarajevo on that day? Such an entry was a studied insult.” To clarify that it was the date that clinched the deal, the conspirator noted “only four letters and two numbers were sufficient to make us unanimous, without discussion, as to what we should do about it.” [1] The Archduke’s killing on the 525th commemoration of the vidovnan of course set into motion the chain of events that led to World War I, which finally eliminated the power of both the Ottomans and the reviled Austrians, but also killed half of Serbia’s male population. <br /><br /> Of course this also laid the groundwork for the Second World War in which the area was jointly occupied by Nazi Germany and Fascist Italy. After the war was done and the Axis was knocked down, Soviet-organized Communist rule took hold over the area, merging six republics together into the Socialist Federal Republic of Yugoslavia. Marshal Tito ran the country tightly during nearly the entire Cold War, but after a falling out with Stalin in 1948, he pulled his nation from the Warsaw Pact and until his death in 1980 charted a more moderate Socialist course outside the Iron Curtain, earning points with the West. Tito’s Yugoslavia posed an unusual case for America and Europe - neither a puppet nor an outright enemy, and an important member of the global Non-Aligned Movement, playing both sides against each other for maximum gain. <br /><br /> Serb nationalism was of course suppressed at this time in the interest of Yugoslav unity (“a weak Serbia makes a strong Yugoslavia” was the gist), but beneath the culturally muting blanket of Socialist harmony, it was a nation deeply gouged by the ridges and valleys of the Balkan Mountains and by its intense history long before being glued together in 1945. The six republics were peopled with a tense ethnic mix of Serbs, Croats, Bosniacs, Albanians, and others; many were Muslims, a remnant of centuries of Ottoman rule. Like a mini-USSR, it was ideologically Socialist and composed of numerous smaller republics united around a dominant central state (with Serbia as its Russia). Like the USSR, the glue could only hold so long. <br /><br /> After Tito died, the Kosovo myth was re-introduced by Serb nationalists in the 1980s in Kosovo itself, peopled with a mix of Muslim ethnic Albanians and Christian ethnic Serbs. The efforts of Kosovar Serbs to increase their population – and thus power - were outstripped by the astounding Albanian birthrate; it was the region’s Albanians, 78% of the population and overwhelmingly Muslim, who made Kosovo far and away the most densely populated part of Yugoslavia. Louis Sell, a US State Department veteran involved in the diplomatic efforts in the 1990s explained how in March 1989, the Serbian Parliament adopted a constitutional amendment stripping Kosovo of autonomy; the intention was clarified with a rally held by the newly elected president in a Kosovar town three months later. On the 600th commemoration of the Vidovnan, Slobodan Milosevic dropped onto the stage from a helicopter to dramatically welcome a million mostly Serbian attendees to “Kosovo – the heart of Serbia.” [2] He had invited American and European diplomats to the speech but they declined, and this day has been widely seen as the point of no return that led to the Kosovo conflicts, the next major test of the New World Order. <br /><br />Next: <a href="http://guerillas-without-guns.blogspot.com/2007/04/divide-and-conquerstate-sponsors-of.html"><span style="font-family:verdana;color:#998877;">Divide and Conquer/State Sponsors of Terror</span></a><br /><span style="font-size:80%;"><br />Sources:<br />[1] The Murder of Archduke Franz Ferdinand at Sarajevo, 28 June 1914. Borijove Jevtic. Eyewitness to history. Ed. John Carey. New York. Avon Books. Page 442. <br />[2] Slobodan Milosevic and the Destruction of Yugoslavia. London. 2002. Duke Universiry Press. Page 88. </span>Caustic Logichttp://www.blogger.com/profile/03082923821952309709noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5401125338266582306.post-10573883581372457572007-04-06T11:54:00.000-07:002007-04-19T15:04:15.950-07:00STATE CONTROL AND OLIGARCH RETRIEVAL<span style="font-weight:bold; font-size:120%;">PUTIN MOVES TO REVERSE THE '90s<br />Adam Larson<br />Caustic Logic/Guerillas Without Guns<br />Posted 4/6/07</span><br /><br />Putin’s Kremlin has largely reversed the privatization trend of the 1990s, notably reasserting effective state control over the media sector. District newspapers were reined in early, and the techniques that worked there were then used to bring more politics and less dissent to the pages of national newspapers [1] - like the Moscow Times, which had so recently published rather damning doubts about the Ryazan incident. [2] By 2002 the television networks were being taken over by a new management style, and by the time of an October 2005 piece that was allowed in Nezavisimaya Gazeta, “all programming on Russia's three national television networks was strictly state-controlled: usually determined at weekly meetings between network executives and presidential administration officials.” News broadcasts have become nearly identical regurgitations of the Kremlin line, and to squelch any dangerous spontaneity, “live broadcasts have almost been eliminated.” [3] <br /><br />The oil and gas sectors went through a similar process. The most dramatic move on this front was the June 2005 government stock purchase in the mammoth gas company Gazprom, giving the state a stake of over 50%, a controlling interest. Thus Putin had effectively re-nationalized a company that supplies about one fourth of Europe's gas needs. This was neither the first move nor the last; the previous year the government seized a portion of the Yukos oil conglomerate over past-due back taxes, and since then has used its growing control over the world’s largest supply of natural gas to exert leverage on its neighbors and on Europe. <br /><br /> Closely related to this trend was the new President’s approach to the Yeltsin-era privatization Oligarchs – at least those that crossed his path as he charged into their turf. One of them, Mikhail Khodorkovsky, in addition to helping drain the treasury, had basically created Yukos, advocated popular liberal policies, and used his vast wealth to finance two liberal parties opposed to Putin. [4] In October 2003 he was arrested on tax and fraud charges, just months ahead of Putin’s buyout of a portion of the company over related issues. Khodorkovsky was convicted and sentenced in May 2005, in the old school tradition, to eight years in a Siberian penal colony. [5] <br /><br /><table cellspacing="0" align="left" border="1" width="222" cellpadding="3"> <tr><td> <div> <img height="192" hspace="1" vspace="1" border="0" width="216" src="http://i133.photobucket.com/albums/q62/chainsawmoth/GWG/Berezovsky.jpg" /> </div> <span style="font-size:80%; font-style:italic;">Berezovsky representing “Russian Business” outside the embassy in London, May 2004. </span> </td></tr> </table> Perhaps the most politically active of the Oligarch lot, former media mogul Boris Berezovsky - accused of gangster-ism and murder but nothing proven - started losing his vast empire in 2000 under Putin’s efforts to regain state control of the media. Fearing prosecution for corruption at home he fled and was offered asylum in London. Moscow has sought his extradition but the request was repeatedly blocked on the grounds that the U.K. had given Berezovsky political asylum and the status of refugee. The Russian News and Information Agency (RIAN) complained pointedly that “Berezovsky's deposits in British banks and the renewed vigour he brought to the local real estate market seemed more important [to London] than the legal request of a supposedly friendly nation.” [6] In 2003 Boris changed his name in the British courts to Platon Elenin, which he reportedly swiped from the lead character in a biographical movie made about himself. [7] Contrary to normal rules he was allowed to make some controversial travels in 2003 on a visa with this name. Still at large in 2006 as the “No. 1 man on Russia's most-wanted list,” RIAN announced that he was to be the test case for a tough new approach to retrieve the Diaspora Oligarchs. [8] <br /><br /> Animating Moscow’s desire to get their hands on the exiled tycoon is his ongoing agitation for pro-West revolutions in the former SSRs, and his public campaign to link the “abominable autocrat” Putin to the 9/99 apartment bombings that helped bring him to power. Berezovsky first announced this campaign with a March 5, 2002 press conference in London, here he announced: “I am sure the bombings were organised by the FSB. It's not just speculation. It's a clear conclusion.” He clarified “I'm not saying Mr. Putin gave an order to blow up those buildings, but at the least he knew the FSB was involved” as he blamed Chechen rebels and punished them to the tune of a major war. Berezovsky called on a British explosives expert and a former FSB officer to support his claims, which were based mostly on the size and sophistication of the operations. He also cited the Ryazan incident as proof that the FSB was involved in placing wired bags of Hexogen “sugar” in at least one apartment block during the crisis. [10] <br /><br /> The same day as his press conference, an official from Putin’s suddenly ominous government again blamed Chechnya and announced that Berezovsky was not to be trusted. In addition to his long-alleged links to Chechen mafia figures, he was also being investigated for links to rebel leaders and to the murder of a senior Russian police officer in Chechnya. [11] Whatever protests they may lodge against the tycoon, London will not be likely to hand him over any time soon. <br /><br />Next: Reviving Great Russia/The Switch is Flipped<br /><span style="font-size:80%;">Sources:<br />[1], [3] Simonov, Alexei. “Transformations of the Fourth Estate.” Original source: Nezavisimaya Gazeta. October 7, 2005. translation by Tatiana Khramtsova, appeared in Johnson's Russia List on October 10, 2005. <br />http://www.sras.org/news2.phtml?m=457<br />[2] Reynolds, Maura. “Ryazan Fears Darker Truth of Bombings.” The Moscow Times. January 18, 2000. <br />http://eng.terror99.ru/publications/013.htm<br />[4] Greene, S.A. “Kremlin Targets Jewish Tycoons In War on Critics.” <br />Forward. October 31 2003. Via NCSJ. <br />http://www.ncsj.org/AuxPages/103103Forward_Khod.shtml<br />[5] Country Profile: Russia. BBC News. http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/world/europe/country_profiles/1102275.stm<br />[6], [8] Simonov, Vladimir. “Bad news for wanted Russian expatriates in London.” Russian News And Information Agency. July 3 2006. Accessed at: <br />http://en.rian.ru/analysis/20060703/50805984.html<br />[7] “Boris Berezovsky.” Wikipedia. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Boris_Berezovsky<br />[9], [10], [11] Steele, Jonathan and Ian Traynor. “Former ally links Putin to Moscow blasts.” <br />The Guardian. March 6, 2002 http://www.guardian.co.uk/russia/article/0,2763,662476,00.html</span>Caustic Logichttp://www.blogger.com/profile/03082923821952309709noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5401125338266582306.post-77452167200822333082007-04-05T16:42:00.000-07:002007-04-06T02:23:37.663-07:00RUSSIA’S GRIP ON KYRGYZSTAN<span style="font-size:120%; font-weight:bold;">CAPTAIN ASKAR AKAYEV AT THE HELM, MUTINY BREWING<br />Adam Larson<br />Caustic Logic/Guerillas Without Guns<br />Written mid-2006, posted 4/5/07</span><br /><br /> It certainly did not go unnoticed that these arrangements totally bypassed Russian and Tajik offers and seem designed to undermine the SCO by skirting recognition of the bloc in favor of nation-to-nation deals. This backdrop of a quiet American military presence in the former Soviet Space held for the next three years as the revolutions unfolded in Georgia and Ukraine and resentments grew sharper. The next move in America’s campaign came soon after Ukraine – perhaps too soon and too far east. In Kyrgyzstan, the US basing agreement was followed by an attempt – if tentative - at a Ukraine-style revolution there, a bold stab into a stronghold of loyalty to mother Russia. <br /><br /> The former SSR is nestled in the Himalayan foothills, sharing convoluted borders with Tajikistan, Uzbekistan, Kazakhstan, and China’s western frontier. Despite a total lack of Caspian Sea hydrocarbons, Kyrgyzstan is an energy exporter, with hydro-electric stations fueled by raging mountain runoff promising enough power to attract substantial American investment. Political scientist Igor Ryabov summed up “Turkmenistan has gas, Kazakhstan has oil, and Kyrgyzstan has its water.” [1] <br /><br /> The dramatic peaks of the Tien Shan mountains also divide the country into numerous regions and remote valleys. The most important general split for the study at hand is between the poorer south (dominated by the Ferghana Valley with its restive Muslim majorities), and a well-developed north (dominated by the Capital, Bishkek). Nationwide the population of about five million is about half Kyrgyz and 20 percent Russian, [2] 75% Muslim and with an average per capita GDP of $1600. [3] Kyrgyzstan has grappled with forging a united sense of nationhood since independence, but has often failed; ethnic clashes in the south during the 1990s killed hundreds of people. [4] <br /> The local Russian population holds great sway in the capital, and in May 2000 Russian was declared an official state language, given equal in status with Kyrgyz. Bishkek is also home to a Kyrgyz-Russian Slavic University, which trains political elites in the Russian tongue and is financed by the Russian government. [5] Bishkek and the north, closer to Russia in more ways than one, ruled the scene as it had under the old Soviet system. Askar Akayev, while born in the South (Jalal-Abad), rose to leadership among the Soviet-era elite. A mathematician and physicist by education who wrote his doctoral thesis on holographic systems of information storage, he was appointed in 1990 to the new post of President of the more autonomous republic. [6] Akayev held his position in Bishkek after independence and for over a decade past that. In a country racked by mafia crime and corruption, the president earned a reputation as a crusader against the opium smuggling criminal networks. Yet the situation has remained chaotic and unstable; Bishkek has seen more than its share of mafia-connected political assassinations, and the voters had had more than enough. <br /><br /> The US basing agreements had upset the status quo - Russia and China sought to reaffirm their prerogatives in the region, and a year later, in October 2002, Kyrgyzstan and China’s People’s Liberation Army staged their first-ever joint military exercise to co-ordinate their response to terrorism. Carried out along the common border, these were the first bilateral anti-terror exercise conducted by SCO members. [7] <br /><br /> But it was Russia that really rushed in to bolster Eurasian power. At the same time as the exercise with China, Moscow’s Anti-Terrorism Center decided to open in Bishkek its first regional division outside of Russia. Putin announced the idea of the Bishkek branch as “countering the threats from the south” - Islamist militants and opium flowing from American-occupied Afghanistan. [8] This was followed in November [9] and December [10] 2002 by joint Kyrgyz-Russian announcements on the dangers of terrorism and the importance of unity against it. <br /><br /> Two days after Christmas, an explosion at Bishkek’s main market killed seven people and injured scores. The very same day but a thousand miles away, a truck bomb detonated at the government’s headquarters in Chechnya, killing fifty and wounding hundreds. The immediate impression was of synchronized acts of terrorism aimed at Russia and its allies, and suspects linked to the Islamic Movement of Uzbekistan were later arrested, tried and convicted. [11] But early reports had described a container of fireworks at the market going off, detonating a gas tank in a freak accident, an account still reported as fact in a few spots. [12] Some western media outlets seem to buy the Kyrgyz version of events, and even tie the terrorists in to an alleged plot against America. [13] But otherwise the western media remains vague or ignores the episode altogether. The BBC’s timeline simply calls it an explosion, and a State Dept. chronology of every Islamist terrorist attack includes the 12-27 blast in Chechnya, but not the one in Kyrgyzstan. Either way, the synchronicity of the blasts helped tie Russia and Kyrgyzstan together on the counter-terror front just two months after the decision was made to set up the Bishkek center to that very end. <br /><br /><table cellspacing="0" align="right" border="1" width="240" cellpadding="3"> <tr><td> <div> <img height="130" hspace="1" vspace="1" border="0" width="234" src="http://i133.photobucket.com/albums/q62/chainsawmoth/GWG/Kant_sketch.jpg" /> </div> <span style="font-size:80%; font-style:italic;">Russian military assembled at the Kant air base, Kyrgyzstan, in 2004. </span> </td></tr> </table>A year later, Russia again marked its territory, this time on the military front, throwing a new wrinkle into the great game with Uncle Sam. In early October 2003, Putin announced the opening of a new Russian air base at Kant, near Bishkek. This was the first air base outside of Russia’s borders since the end of the Cold War, hosting Russian Air Forces as part of the CSTO’s Collective Rapid Deployment Forces. [14] The Kant base was about eighteen miles from the Americans’ Ganci base, which had been in operation for two years. A BBC correspondent traveled for the opening of the new base and to see both it and the existing American one. He joked a bit about conditions at Ganci but slammed the vibe at Kant, where it:<br /><br /> <span style="font-style:italic;">“wasn't so much efficient and mechanical as a bit cloak and dagger. The base was shabby and broken-down. Scruffy conscripts were wiping the jets down with filthy rags. […] Security men in overcoats strode to and fro. I felt like I was on the set of a James Bond movie, witness to some clandestine […] chess moves in an international power play.” </span> [15] <br /><br /> President Putin arrived for the dedication, declared the base open, watched an air show, and addressed the media. The BBC reporter asked Putin “are you just opening this base because the Americans have one here?” “We're partners with the Americans,” Putin responded. “I'm sure we'll co-operate.” With that he closed the press conference and walked away. [16] <br /><br /> An agreement was reached in May 2004 by which soldiers at Kant would receive the same status as the diplomatic mission’s technical staff, making them effectively immune to criminal prosecution in Kyrgyzstan. [17] Kyrgyz Foreign Minister Askar Aitmatov visited Moscow in mid-February 2005 and immediately announced two decisions; to send more Russian military equipment and weaponry to the Kant air base, and to deny the U.S. request to deploy AWACS reconnaissance planes at Ganci air base. Aitmatov said on the 14th that a decision was made that an AWACS deployment would not fit the mission of Ganci “which is to provide support to the operation in Afghanistan,” not to spy on Russia and other SCO signatories. [18] So the government there seemed to have sided with the Russians, encouraging a slow growth of their capabilities there while curtailing or at least limiting the Americans’.<br /><span style="font-size:80%;"><br />Sources:<br />[1] Arutunyan, Anna. “Geopolitics at Heart of Kyrgyzstan Unrest.” MosNews. March 23 2005 http://www.mosnews.com/interview/2005/03/23/kyrgyz.shtml<br />[2], [5] Olcott, Martha Brill. “Regional study on Human Development and Human Rights – Central Asia.” Human development background report 2000. United Nations Development Program. Accessed May 22 2006 at: http://hdr.undp.org/docs/publications/background_papers/Olcott2000.html<br />[3] Kyrgyzstan: Almanac Facts. Acc June 24 2005 at: http://www.eurasianet.org/resource/kyrgyzstan/index.shtml<br />[4] “Kyrgyz Leader Akayev Defies Protests, Rules out Force.” MosNews. March 23 2005. http://www.mosnews.com/news/2005/03/23/kyrgyz.shtml<br />[6] “Askar Akayev.” Wikipedia. Last modified September 22 2006. <br />http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Askar_Akayev<br />[7] “Twelve Military exercises: A chronology.” China Daily. August 19 2005. <br />http://www.chinadaily.com.cn/english/doc/2005-08/19/content_470467.htm<br />[8] Socor, Vladimir “CIS Antiterrorism Center: Marking Time in Moscow, Refocusing on Bishkek.” Institute for Advanced Strategic and Political Studies. Washington D.C. November 3, 2002. Accessed April 10 2006 at: http://www.iasps.org/strategic/socor10.htm<br />[9] Burke, Justin. “CIS antiterrorist centre in Kyrgyzstan ensures unity and cooperation.” Eurasianet.org. December 18, 2002. Accessed April 10, 2006 at: http://www.eurasianet.org/resource/kyrgyzstan/hypermail/200212/0029.shtml<br />[10] Text of report by Kyrgyz Radio first programme, Bishkek, December 19 in Russian 1500 gmt http://www.eurasianet.org/resource/kyrgyzstan/hypermail/200212/0037.shtml<br />[11] http://www.eurasianet.org/resource/kyrgyzstan/hypermail/200307/0060.shtml<br />[12] http://www.securisk.com/alerts/alertdisplay2.asp?Country=KYRGYZSTAN<br />[13] Baker, Peter. “A Confessed Bomber's Trail of Terror: Uzbek Details Life With Islamic Radicals, Turn Back to Violence.” Washington Post Foreign Service. Thursday, September 18, 2003; Page A01<br />[14], [17] “Russian Military in Kyrgyzstan Granted Diplomatic Immunity.” MosNews. May 11 2004. http://www.mosnews.com/news/2004/05/11/kyrgyz.shtml<br />[15], [16] Grammaticas, Damian. “Military rivalry in Kyrgyzstan.” BBC News, Bishkek, October 25 2003. http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/programmes/from_our_own_correspondent/3211825.stm<br />[18] Saidazimova, Gulnoza. “Kyrgyzstan: Is Bishkek Moving Toward Russia Ahead of Elections?” RFE/RL via EurasiaNet. February 15 2005. <br />http://www.eurasianet.org/departments/insight/articles/pp021505.shtml</span>Caustic Logichttp://www.blogger.com/profile/03082923821952309709noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5401125338266582306.post-44985294532400114482007-04-05T16:37:00.000-07:002007-04-05T16:40:11.952-07:00OTPOR FALLOUT: JUST ANOTHER WEAPONOnce the initial sweetness of Otpor’s example and the bloodless revolution faded, a sort of saccharine aftertaste in the Serbian mind became evident. Brian Pozun wrote for <i>Central Europe Review</i> in early 2001:<br /><br /> <i>“Ostensibly, the movement accepted Western aid to promote their goal of a purged, democratized Serbia. When it became clear, however, that Western governments were involved, many in Yugoslavia and elsewhere began to wonder what sort of return those generous governments will want on their investment in Otpor.</i> [1]<br /><br /> Citing Milosevic’s ads that had Otpor’s fist stuffed with American dollars, Pozun explains, “many are left wondering just how far off the ad really was.” In another play from Milosevic’s propaganda campaign, the President made public an intercepted, top-secret CIA plan to remove him from power by supporting Otpor and other such groups. But the paper Milosevic cited was in fact an openly available plan to unseat him by supporting and training the opposition. It was a memorandum to the US Congress, written by Daniel Server at the US Institute of Peace, recommending a trial run of Sharp’s and Helvey’s strategic nonviolence. It was Milosevic’s secret police that made the changes to make it appear secret and CIA-sponsored, and thus sinister. [2] But again, despite the creative license, the paper was otherwise presented as written, and we must wonder how far off the mark Milosevic really was. <br /><br /> <i>Peace</i> magazine in 2003 described how American support for Otpor “benefited from a temporary consistency and coherence in American foreign policy during the Clinton presidency, which actually pursued the strategies advocated by Gene Sharp.” [3] The Server letter Milosevic cited led to Congressional approval of $41-$45 million for the project (overall estimates vary). While NATO set its bomb sights, the article explains, “sanctions were applied in a more targeted fashion. For example, they were not applied to municipalities that voted to support opposition politicians.” To further the freeing of Serbian minds in other towns, Radio transmitters were set up in Eastern Europe and organized into a “Ring Around Serbia,” beaming in western media like the BBC, Agence France-Presse, and Voice of America. Other actions approved included the US Treasury Department’s freezing of Milosevic’s assets tracked down to banks in Cyprus. [4] Not being able to pay one’s security forces can’t help one’s cause. <br /><br /> The revelations that Otpor in fact had been part and parcel of the well-orchestrated American-led campaign that had also produced the bombings and the ‘Allo ‘Allo re-runs eroded the widely held view of Otpor as spontaneous, grass-roots people's movement. While they were still free of Milosevic and sanctions, the sunshine of public optimism was now overcast with doubts. Serbia’s youth had been co-opted into a “post-military weapons system” of the NATO campaign, a troubling precedent to ponder. Originally they had felt their country was under attack because of their leader’s wrongdoing, but now had to reflect on one of Milosevic’s last speeches; on October 2, as Otpor and the DOS “NATO foot soldiers” closed the noose on him, Milosevic explained that his people had it all backwards. “It should be clear to all, after the past ten years, that NATO isn't attacking Serbia because of Milosevic; it is attacking Milosevic because of Serbia.” [5] Just three days later the attack was complete, Milosevic was removed from the scene, and the DOS took control of Serbia and started selling it to the West.Caustic Logichttp://www.blogger.com/profile/03082923821952309709noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5401125338266582306.post-57682659264562421602007-04-02T15:00:00.001-07:002007-04-06T12:24:51.342-07:00TERROR OF 9/99 {masterlist}Originally posted at the 12/7-9/11 Treadmill Page<br />Re-posted at Guerillas Without Guns 4/6/07<br />All sub-post links lead back to the other page<br /><br />This post is to organize all those related to the "Terror of 9/99," the series of apartment bombings in Russian cities in 1999 that triggered the Second Chechen War and paved the way of Vladimir Putin to the Presidency. Since the beginning, Putin's career has been shadowed by widespread suspicion that Putin or an ally, <i>not</i> Chechen terrorists, was actually behind the bombings. like the hardcore 9/99 Truthers, I believe the Russian state was behind the campaign, though the full story is certainly more complex. I sense weird forces at work.<br /> <br /><span-style="font-weight:bold;">Notes on terminology/weird thoughts about weird coincidences:</span> <br />9/99 is itself not a universally accepted name for the episode, but I took it up due to its catchiness and similarity to the branding of 9/11, which helps me illustrate my argument about <i>that</i> event. I first saw the term on the English-language Russian site <a href="http://eng.terror99.ru/"><span style="font-family:verdana;color:#998877;">Terror-99</span></a>. I'm not sure, but I would guess that this site excellent and damning website is supported by Boris Berezovsky and other questionable anti-Putin characters - so while their facts seem fairly solid and the case itself is remarkably easy to make, I question their true motives. I also got a bit of a chill one day when I realized recently that 9/99 upside down is 666, the mark of the Beast. I don't believe in such nonsense, but many others do, and some have gone to pains to avoid the branding. Wikipedia's "Russian Apartment Bombings" page mentions the number "9/99" only in the sources, referring to the above website. A Google search of "9/99" shows a few sources, including me, and "terror of 9/99" reveals only Terror99.ru and myself. (Gulp). I'm on Putin's radar with the illicit inverted 66/6. <br /><br />But what else could he expect? A series of bombings with 300 dead as they slept, dated 9/4, 9/9, 9/13, and 9/16 - with no precise date, we could pick the midpoint between the two middle bombings (which is reasonable since these happened in the capital and killed the most) - but that gives us 9/11, which doesn't have the same emergency implications as it does in America and it was left unused for the Americans' use two years later. But it wasn't about a single day, but rather a month, that bleak and nervous September as block after block was demolished - Black September 1999 - the Terror of 9/99 on the precipice of the Millenium. Some say it was Putin's 666 devil deal for power, the most logical name for it has that built right in, and if he did it himself, he had to have known this would happen. Couldn't it have waited 'till October? <br /><br />Oh well - I guess as in America people see what they want to - those predisposed to see fire and horns see that, the rest who can't stomach the thought and face the obvious would argue Putin couldn't or wouldn't do that. Facts are of secondary nature to such strongly held beliefs and rarely can do much to change them. But it's worth a try. <br /><br /><img src="http://i133.photobucket.com/albums/q62/chainsawmoth/GWG/9-99_panel_blogsize.jpg" /><br />Aftermath of 9/13 in Moscow, New President Putin resolute in January, Russian troops re-enter Grozny in October - kind of the wrong order I guess but you get the picture. <br /><br /><a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Russian_apartment_bombings"><span style="font-family:verdana;color:#998877;">Wikipedia entry:</span></a> Russian Apartment Bombings. They cite September 8 for the first bombing in Moscow, but I stick to the date from the Terror 99 site, which is from Russian Primary sources. Plus 9/8 throws off the spooky 9/11 hinge point. <br /><br />- 9/99 part I: <a href="http://12-7-9-11.blogspot.com/2007/01/999-part-i-putins-godsend.html"><span style="font-family:verdana;color:#998877;">Putin's Godsend</span></a> <br /><br />- 9/99 part II: <a href="http://12-7-9-11.blogspot.com/2007/12/999-part-ii-ryazan-incident.html"><span style="font-family:verdana;color:#998877;">The Ryazan Incident</span></a> - The Bombing that didn't Happen? <br /><br />- 9/99 part III: The Investigation - The official investigation, PR campaign, the Kovalev Commission, its supporters, and its troubles. people die here. <br /><br />- 9/99 part IV: The Conspiracy Theory - an "independent" investigation formed in London, pushed by exiled oligarchs, KGB/FSB defectors, and US Seantors. More people die here, and Europe is thrown into a subcontinent-wide radiation scare.<br /><br />Next: <a href="http://guerillas-without-guns.blogspot.com/2007/04/state-control-and-oligarch-retrieval.html"><span style="font-family:verdana;color:#998877;">State Control and Oligarch Retrieval </span></a>Caustic Logichttp://www.blogger.com/profile/03082923821952309709noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5401125338266582306.post-17653103255193633062007-03-31T17:00:00.000-07:002007-04-07T19:26:25.466-07:00UKRAINE: THE STATE OF PLAY IN 2004<span style="font-size:120%; font-weight:bold">Adam Larson <br />Caustic Logic / Guerillas Without Guns <br />2/20/07</span><br /><br /><table cellspacing="0" align="left" border="0" width="141" cellpadding="0"> <tr><td> <div> <img height="203" hspace="1" vspace="1" border="0" width="136" src="http://i133.photobucket.com/albums/q62/chainsawmoth/GWG/Kuchma_Sketch.jpg" /> </div> <span style="font-size:80%; font-style:italic;">President Leonid Kuchma, isolated in November 2003</span> </td></tr> </table> About a year after the rose Revolution in Georgia, the Otpor-Kmara template was again applied to great effect in the much larger and more vital former Soviet Republic of Ukraine. Here the nonviolent sniper sights were set on the corrupt, repressive, allegedly murderous government of Leonid Kuchma that – coincidentally, of course – was increasingly allied with Moscow. Kuchma was first elected to the Ukrainian Parliament in 1990, staking out a role in the Committee on Defense and State Security. After independence Kuchma was appointed Prime Minister in 1992, but resigned in late 1993 to run for the presidency on a platform of boosting the economy by restoring economic relations with Russia. Kuchma won the race in 1994 and soon signed a ‘Treaty of Friendship, Cooperation, and Partnership’ with Russia, and endorsed a new round of talks with the CIS. But he also arranged a $730 million loan from the Washington-based IMF, signed a special partnership agreement with NATO, and even raised the possibility of membership in the alliance, a pretty radical idea by Ukrainian standards. [1] <br /><br /> As for democratic procedure, as Canadian-Ukrainian journalist Taras Kuzio pointed out “under Kuchma, Ukraine never experienced free elections.” [2] After a scam re-election in 1999, serious problems for Kuchma’s regime began in November 2000. Opposition leader Oleksandr Moroz and others had accused President Kuchma of involvement in the abduction and killing of journalist Georgiy Gongadze, a prominent critic of the regime whose headless corpse was found in the woods after he went missing in September. The November release of incriminating recorded conversations, including an order from Kuchma’s own mouth to have Gongadze kidnapped, launched what came to be known as the “cassette scandal,” or “tapegate.”<br /><br /> Kuchma's former bodyguard was named as the source of the secret recordings, which Kuchma claimed were computer-generated forgeries. But his popularity at home and abroad sank as many others were convinced and as further revelations came from the tapes, if noticed a bit late. In 2002 Washington was alarmed to learn that the tapes also revealed an apparent transfer of a sophisticated Ukrainian defense system to Saddam Hussein’s Iraq. [3] As a result, Kuchma was boycotted by the US and other Western governments for a time, and Ukraine turned increasingly to Russia for support, saying the country needed a “multivector” foreign policy that “balanced” Russian and Western interests with, hopefully, Ukraine’s own. <br /><br /> He also started referring to Russian as “an official language,” which was lucky news for Viktor Yanukovych, whom Kuchma appointed as Prime Minister in November 2002. Yanukovych hailed from Donetsk, the Russo-centered eastern capital of industry and was extremely unpopular in Kiev. Yanukovych was a criminal thug in his youth, accused of massive corruption in power, and while fluent in Russian, Yanukovych was considered clumsy with the Ukrainian language. The West’s planners frowned and turned back to their plan books. <br /><br /><table cellspacing="0" align="right" border="0" width="148" cellpadding="0"> <tr><td> <div> <img height="198" hspace="1" vspace="1" border="0" width="142" src="http://i133.photobucket.com/albums/q62/chainsawmoth/GWG/Tymoshenko.jpg" /> </div> <span style="font-size:80%; font-style:italic;">Fashionista billionaire and sweetheart of the West Yulia Tymoshenko</span> </td></tr> </table>In early 2004 Ukraine was set to join Russia’s United Economic Space along with neighboring Belarus. This prospect was blasted by rising Ukrainian opposition leader Yulia Tymoshenko as “one free-trade deal that won’t free trade.” She warned “the treaty will only entrench post-communism's corrupt and criminal business practices, not increase trade or prosperity […] The proposed 'united economic space' will also have its own norms - the ways of the oligarch, the corrupt bureaucrat, the crony capitalist, and the politically motivated prosecutor.” [9]Ironically, she is generally classed as a crony capitalist (whose cronies were simply not in power at the moment) and among the wealthiest of Ukraine’s oligarchs. While unpopular with many of their citizens, the West, and the West’s political allies in Kiev, Kuchma and Yanukovych remained in power and fully capable of stealing elections. If only there were a way of preventing that… <br /><br /> In the context of a great game with Russia, the emphasis on Ukraine is understandable - it’s the biggest thing one can take from Russia besides Russia itself. It seems a stretch to even attempt such a move, but apparently the successes of Belgrade and Tbilisi had left some people feeling very cocky. One should not be surprised if the western planners would play this touchy game a bit more carefully than they did in Georgia. Indeed, promoter of “democratic transformations” Michael McFaul noted that “in the years leading up to the 2004 votes, American ambassadors in Ukraine insisted that no U.S. government money could be provided to any candidate.” Instead, McFaul explains, the US simply urged the Orange Revolution on from the sidelines as they chose their own leaders and their own direction. Directly U.S. sponsored education seminars for activists have not yet been reported to my knowledge. Richard Miles was not made ambassador there. But while the U.S. government and its linked NGOs emphatically deny that they were involved in any real way, the same thumbprints are all over this case.Caustic Logichttp://www.blogger.com/profile/03082923821952309709noreply@blogger.com0