Protesters are being killed in Kiev, and revolutionaries enthusiasts are buying into the Western Media narrative. Even Democracy Now is parroting the theme, describing the demonstrations as opposing their government's rejecting closer ties to the European Union. "Closer ties?" Ukraine was rejecting growing indebtedness to EU banks, favoring a bailout from Putin instead. Let's remember that Senator John McCain jetted to Kiev to rally the uprising, seeing it as part of the rolling "freedom movement" not coincidentally encircling Russia, the former Soviets now no longer foe to Capitalism but rival. Unfortunate developments have led to government snipers firing at the "rebels" many of whom are dupes but many too are supremacist fascists not particularly misguided about US-EU hegemony. Perhaps we can find consolation in the hope that Ukrainian snipers were able to hit the OTPOR and CIA provocateurs coordinating the urban warriors. I support all popular uprisings, but unfortunately US covert ops have picked up on our game. The only way to insulate rebellions against Western provocateurs is to build movements around political ideology they will not embrace. For the onlooker, ideology is also the means to discern destabilitation projects parading as protest. If the offending government is anti-Western-Capitalism, our counterinsurgency ops are there. Of course Socialist, Islamic, or non-World Bank client regimes are not imune to being authoritarian, but hardly more so than the Capitalist empire. Often US adversaries are forced to authoritarian measures by US covert ops working to destabilize them.
Tag: Otpor
If you have to ask for whom the fat lady sings, it is not for Tahrir Square.
--And to really mix my malaprops, she sings for them that bought her. If there was one variable which got away from the underdogs of Egypt's Jan25 Revolution, it was who would referee the endgame. While Hosni Mubarak's stunning defiance Thursday night looked like a Hail Mary pass hoping to provoke the protesters to mayhem, as a defensive strategy he was moving the goalposts. Anticipating a capitulation, the Tahrir Square demonstrators made clear it was the entire regime which needed ousting, no Suleiman, no Emergency Law, an inviolate list of demands. Mubarak's insulting buffoonery focused the great beast's wrath like a rodeo clown. When the announcement came he was stepping down, who could not help but raise a cheer, drowning out the earlier precautions. Mubarak played Egypt like a fiddle, as he burned it, while the fat lady of state media called the game over. It's not over until the fat lady sings So opera advises American football, in reality a game governed strictly by elapsed time. The expression describes the mutual sense that every competition has a natural denouement. Actually another false notion, as this feeling is not often shared by the side fallen behind at the final score. I've convoluted ask not for whom the bell tolls-- and if you have to ask how much it costs--, Hemingway and Bugatti I believe, to stress the obvious, that Wagnerian sopranos are kept in furs by the wealthiest of patrons. As epic as might be your struggle, unless you transcend the stage to torch the theater, the status quo raises and lowers the curtain. Without seizing the state media, if even that had been possible, and without staging a narrative to compete with Mubarak's Greekest of tragic high dives, the Tahrir Square revolutionaries became mere players to please the king. How could we have missed the grand theatricality of Mubarak's televised last stands, lighting and makeup dialed to Bela Lugosi? Anyone who knows to dramatize a campfire tale by holding a flashlight under his chin also knows they don't do that for their profile pic. In all three of his televised responses to the Jan25 reformers, Mubarak could be paraphrased to have said "over my dead body." It was a road map his adversaries probably should have heeded. Where is Mubarak now? He's not gone, he hasn't even left Egypt. We are informed Mubarak has stepped down by the same henchmen who told protesters "all your demands will be met," then meeting none. We learn now that Egypt's Supreme Council of the Military is trying to clear Tahrir Square. It's outlawing those who would cause chaos and disorder, and forbidding labor unions to assemble or strike. It's refusing to end Egypt's emergency law, or to release the unknown thousand detained during the protests. What of Suleiman and the regime's other cronies? We have only Mubarak's doppelganger in an army cap. Field Marshall "Happy" Tantawi, takes to the microphone with no other agenda it appears than to restore Egypt its accustomed sonorous normalcy.
Who killed Neda Agha-Soltan?
The video footage is shocking. An attractive young woman watching the demonstrations in Tehran is struck by a sniper's bullet and dies before several video cameras. The tragedy is projected unto Facebook and Youtube, with advocates hoping it will galvanize (American) public support for the brave reform movement in Iran. News accounts blame "Basij snipers" on the rooftops. Other protesters have been killed in confrontations with Iranian riot police, without the benefit of video witnesses, much like two million Iraqis, Afghans, Pakistanis et al. Poor 27-year-old bystander Neda Soltani stood at the quite improbable convergence of bullet and camera --correction-- cameras. I don't have to suggest the scene was staged; whether or not the triggerman was an American is immaterial. Think about just the improbability of your seeing this video. When was the last time the mainstream press has circulated a snuff film? The average person is embarrassed to watch a person die. It's exploitive. Even when America was fixated on beheaded hostages, our television gatekeepers refused to broadcast the footage. Many horrific war killing moments have found their way unto Youtube, which antiwar activists could only hope would find wider distribution, if only to bring home the inhumanity of our soldiers' deeds. It never happens. The western press is running with this story because it demonizes the apparently naked inhumanity of Islam. Muslims stone women, hang gays, look: the bastards shoot their own people arbitrarily. Curiously our media doesn't make hay with the hapless victims of US snipers. The Neda Soltani snuff footage hit internet shores prepackaged with a smiling mug, and a name that translated means "the voice." Could a casting director have picked a better title character to represent Iran's repressed? The western press is even poised to outdo the Muslims in indignant piety, already lauding Neda as a martyr, whom we are informed should launch a thousand Shiite funeral processions. Western pundits compare Neda to the first Shiite martyr, the grandson of Mohammed himself. Of course, also showing excessive Islamic sensitivity, western reporters readily dismiss the vanishing of Neda's body, to the Muslim tradition of hasty burials. For the record, in case you missed it, Neda dies onscreen from an apparent gunshot. We do not see the bullet strike, nor now can anyone habeas corpus. If the scenario was acted entirely, given the success with which the girl's face is being made into an icon, young Neda's life is probably as utterly expendable now as already depicted. You think you're mourning Neda now, imagine her fate if this is a hoax. OR the gunman could just as well have been a US black-op hit-man who had his eye on the videographers approaching innocent Neda. The US military has long admitted that special forces are already operating in Iran. If the Iranian forces are shooting civilian protesters, what's the harm of helping them out where there's a camera ready? When we're not meant to see it, the soldiers shoot the cameramen too. It could be the work of Moussavi henchmen, who are
From Y to V- The CIA’s Otpor strategy to overthrow governments
Since so many pacifists seem prone to accept at face value and fall for any rhetoric that appears to be supporting 'peaceful' means of protest, even when it is being pushed from the Pentagon and Washington DC, the following information is quite important. This is from Setting the Stage for Turmoil in Caracas... ---Repeating the East European experience in Venezuela--- The new imperial strategy includes something called "American Corners." These "corners" are small offices set up by Washington throughout the target country that basically serve as mini-embassies. It is not completely clear what exactly these "corners" do, but inside you will find an array of information about the United States, including study abroad opportunities, English classes, and pro-U.S. propaganda. On top of this, the mini-embassies also organize events, trainings, and lectures for young students. Interestingly, they seem to be very abundant in countries that Washington seeks to destabilize. The former Yugoslavian countries have a total of 22 American Corners, including 7 in Serbia. The Ukraine has 24, Belarus 11, Russia 30, even Iraq, with 11. By far the highest concentration of the "corners" is in Eastern Europe, where Washington has focused its destabilization efforts in recent years. [17] There are at least 4 "American Corners" in Venezuela, the most for any Latin American country, and the U.S. also finances literally hundreds of organizations throughout the country to the tune of more than $5 million a year. [18] Together, these U.S.-funded organizations are working to implant the Eastern European experience in Venezuela. As reported by Reuters, the Venezuelan opposition is already learning the Serbian tactics to overthrow a regime from a retired U.S. army colonel named Robert Helvey. "Helvey, who has taught young activists in Myanmar and Serbian students who helped topple the former Yugoslav leader Slobodan Milosevic in 2000, is giving courses on non-violent opposition tactics this week at an east Caracas university," said the article. "Neither Helvey nor the organizers of the Caracas seminar would give details of exactly what opposition tactics were being taught. But in his work in Serbia before Milosevic's fall, Helvey briefed students on ways to organize a strike and on how to undermine the authority of a dictatorial regime," reported Reuters. [19] And more recently, in the university city of Mérida, history professor from Texas, Neil Foley, hosted an event sponsored by the U.S. embassy and the Venezuelan-American Center (Cevam), not an official "American Corner" but serving the same purpose. Foley, who has also spoken in various "American Corners" in Serbia, gave speeches in both Bolivia and Venezuela on "American values." [20] I attended one of Foley's speeches and, as expected, it was a complete pro-U.S. propaganda campaign imposed upon the university students. The professor gave exactly the message that the U.S. Embassy had paid him to give, speaking wonders about American society and "American democracy." According to Foley, the United States solves all of its problems by tolerance for others and an all-inclusive "dialogue," between opposing parties. And sending a clear hint to the Venezuelan students,
Numb skulls awarding peace prizes
Two weeks ago I wrote about a CIA funded Otpor spokesperson in town talking to local pacifists of Gandhi and nonviolence and how supposedly that had overthrown Milosevic in Yugoslavia instead of the US and NATO bombs rained down on his country. Then last week I wrote about a NM Department of Tourism run 'peace' festival in Albuquerque funded to the tune of $450,000. Sappy 'peace' rhetoric run by the Chamber of Commerce basically. This week I guess the focus has to be on the Australian 'Sidney Peace Prize'. This one just blows me away, too! The prize was awarded to none other than Hans Blix, which is the most absurd award of a peace prize since Henry Kissinger was given the Nobel Prize for Peace in 1973! We truly live in an Orwellian world these days when initiators of wars are so often given prizes by people spouting pacifist ideology. Hans Blix was the guy who set up all the lies about Saddam Hussein and Iraq having WOMD that Bush and his Democratic and Republican Party enablers used to launch the invasion and occupation of Iraq. No way he deserves a peace prize, and actually he might better be executed as a war criminal instead. Without his personal act as wrench-er up of the propaganda, hysteria, and panic, the world public would never have gone along much as they did with initially supporting the illegal invasion and occupation of Iraq. This is just one more example of how pacifist beliefs and desires by much of the public can often be distorted into its opposite by simplistic twists of illogic. Then we get numb skulls awarding peace prizes to war criminals like Hans Blix and Henry Kissinger. PS- I am still trying to get over how the local ACLU cut off audience questioning of CS police chief Richard 'Liars' Myers last week. The ACLU organizers required that all questions be vetted and then read by one person alone to the audience. Because of this, the annual meeting of the ACLU turned into a hug and handshake fest with the cops. Shameful. If the city of Colorado Springs had tried to do this sort of stunt at the city council meeting we would all have gotten peeved off. But instead, the audience silently sat by while the police chief fed them a long sermon of crap. And then many of the crowd applauded just that! Sometimes some amongst the 'peace' crowd can make one wanna cry with their innocence and naivete.
Otpor and the US made coup attempts against Chavez in Venezuela
As a leader of Otpor (now called Canvas) meets with people in Colorado Springs and at Colorado College, it might be of interest to follow the trail of Otpor to Venezuela, and efforts of the US to overthrow Hugo Chavez there. Contrary to how Otpor represents itself, it is not just a group of nice Serbian student leaders from Belgrade, that through Gandhi inspired tactics non-violently overthrew Milosevic in the wake of a very violent US war on Yugoslavia. The story is quite a bit more complex than that, so we follow their trail to Venezuela. To understand the following Reuters report dated back in 2003, though, one must first realize that Otpor is connected with 'The Albert Einstein Institute' of which Colonel Robert Helvey is an integral part of. This is a US government run operation designed to link Gandhian methods of nonviolent protest to Pentagon and US State Department efforts to overthrow foreign governments. Hence, we move from Belgrade to Caracas as the US government goes after Hugo Chavez. It's Gandhi in the service of the Pentagon to help make a coup! ----------------------------- US democracy expert teaches Venezuelan opposition By Pascal Fletcher CARACAS, Venezuela, April 30, 2003 (Reuters) - Retired U.S. army colonel Robert Helvey has trained pro-democracy activists in several parts of the world so he knows something about taking on military regimes and political strongmen. Now he is imparting his skills in Venezuela, invited by opponents of President Hugo Chavez who accuse the leftist leader of ruling like a dictator in the world's No. 5 oil exporter. Helvey, who has taught young activists in Myanmar and Serbian students who helped topple the former Yugoslav leader Slobodan Milosevic in 2000, is giving courses on non-violent opposition tactics this week at an east Caracas university. Secrecy surrounds the classes. A sign outside the door, apparently there to deflect the curious, reads: ``Seminar on strategic marketing.'' But the strategies Helvey is sharing with some of Chavez's foes focuses not on balance sheets but on how to resist, oppose and change a government without the use of bombs and bullets. After initially declining to answer questions, Helvey, a former U.S. military attache in Burma and now a consultant with the private U.S. Albert Einstein Institution that promotes non-violent action in conflicts, told Reuters non-violence was the key to the tactics he taught. ``In every political conflict, there is a potential for violence, and it is incumbent on leaders to make sure they don't cross the threshold of violence,'' he said. Organizers of the seminar did not welcome journalists. ``This is a private meeting of friends,'' one said. The attendees included representatives of Venezuela's broad-based but fragmented opposition, who are struggling to regroup after failing to force Chavez from office in an anti-government strike in December and January. Chavez, a fiery populist first elected in 1998, survived a brief coup last year by dissident military officers who now form part
What does ‘Otpor’ have to do with Colorado Springs?
You probably missed the notice, but Otpor will be at Colorado College this week and next, 'organizing non-violence' oriented people. Otpor claims credit for itself for supposedly non-violently bringing down Milosevic in Yugoslavia, though the real credit for this feat had more to do with the violence of an illegal war against Yugoslavia organized by the US and its European allies than any local student movement in Belgrade. And it had more to do with the funds the US government channelled into Yugoslavia to illegally influence the national elections there. Many of these funds went to Otpor. These days, Otpor ideology acts in many other countries where the US channels funds to subvert local autonomy. It has changed its name to 'Canvas' and receives much aid not only directly from the US government, but also from many a rich American think tank. Essentially, it is a Right Wing imperialist US government pushed campaign masquerading as a form of international Leftism. It's symbols are a clenched fist, even as it plays on the image of being Gandhi-ist and nonviolent, which has become a semi mystical religious cult amongst many US campuses harboring hordes of American middle class student types. Very attractive cover to keep help hide its hidden agenda of backing US government propaganda campaigns and interventions in nations around the world. Imperialists posing as non-violent pacifists recruiting relatively naive and innocent students who often believe in the sugar coated rhetoric being spread. What results is a 'non-violence' working side by side with US military and economic subversion of other countries. The US government in the '70s and ''80s at one time pushed another camouflaged Right Wing group inside the US disguised as Leftism. The leader of that cult effort was a man named Lyndon LaRouche, who still plies his wares from time to time. To the utter discredit of the Pikes Peak Justice and Peace Commission, this group a few months ago accepted for its newspaper a full page advertisement from this fascist who has many connections with US government and military high officials. A split off of this group operates in Mexico where it postures as being Far Left in a similar manner to how it has operated in the US. OTPOR in a way, is an extension of this type of covert government operation in private politics that Lyndon LaRouche got quite well known for at one time. Wikipedia has done an excellent job in its coverage of Otpor, whose connections to US funding remain shadowy and hidden though it operates across the planet. Since they will have 2 of their operatives as Colorado College doing their thing, hopefully some of us will be there to challenge them on their real record this week.