The USA Manufactured the Arab Spring
A recent Journeyman video questions the roots of the recent Jasmin Revolutions.
The video looks at Otpor, a revolutionary training school that was instrumental in the toppling of Slobodan Milosevic in the 1990s. Their logo is the logo of the Egyptian revolution.
Gene Sharp is the American author of the "revolution guide book" that was used in the recent revolutions to topple US-backed dictators. He has been branded by Hugo Chavez and the Russian regime as a "rabble rouse in the employ of the CIA."
Leaders within the Arab revolutions, as well as leaders of the revolutions of Eastern Europe in the 1990s, maintain that they were not coerced by free-market ideologies.
Believe this video or not, there remain forces within the Jasmine Revolutions that seek to blunt the effects of the peoples' struggle.
Must be one hell of a factory...
So millions of people are just passive puppets to the great masters in the CIA, eh?
We've had this discussion before. Some folks can't accept that there are people in the world who fight for freedom and democracy in spite of the USA.
Indeed. One would think that the world would go spinning off into the sun without USA assistance in all thing non-USA...
In the name of GOD, son, don't be bashin' gladio terrierists round here! You'll be labelled a heretic, gutted and strung-up by your chestnuts at dawn. Ye might as well just fall on your own sword, if ya know what I mean.
God bless us, and Happy Coincidenting Every One.
Establishment Media and babble Plagued by 'Coincidence Theorists'
It is a little disheartening to see a report like this dismissed because it doesn't endorse the political well-wishing we project onto the Arab world. Are we content to simply accept that these linked instances of revolution were solely the result of popular dissent? How many of us towed the party line on 9/11? Yet there is compelling evidence and a formidable movement that suggests sinister forces were at work.
I don't necessarily endorse these ideas, but the video makes a considerable argument. It doesn't only espouse coincidental theory, but causal as well. The video shows current and previous revolutionary leaders confessing to the use of the revolutionary book written by Sharpe. Doesn't it occur to anyone that if this book was responsible for the ousting of US-friendly dictators, that Sharpe would at the very least by under FBI harassment? Yet there he is, fine as day, with only a secretary as his guide. Bradley Manning was imprisoned for far less. I don't mean to suggest that this is an irrefutable bit of evidence, but it is definitely provocative. If we have the confessions of these leaders to the use of the book, and their admission that Otpor was an organizing member, then all that's left to debate is whether Otpor and Sharpe indeed further Washington's interests, knowingly or not.
Puppet or not, it wouldn't be the first time the CIA effected widespread change in the face of millions. Latin America, 1980s?
Don't go cutting your own throat, Dibbler, some of us made that point the first time around. Mind you, the argument that the turbanned horde cannot conceive of such western ideas as freedom from despotism without the friendly guidance of gentle whitefolk nevertheless seems to hang around.
I think it's more "anti-imperialism at any cost" than racism that drives this type of thinking (here).
Democracy should more appropriately be referred to as corporatism because it is a merger of state and corporate power. - George Warshington
Nowhere did I explicitly state that the people of the Arab states are incapable of developing their own democratic aspirations, although I suppose that, if you want to dig, that is tacitly suggested.
At the time of my original posting, my skepticism was well entrenched. I posted this video to elicit discussion. In light of several new reports and articles I've read, that doubt has gradually given way to a benign horror at what is probably just the latest in a long line of manufactured regime changes. Regarding conspiracy theories, especially ones that gnaw at our most optimistic projections of world events, I ask what amount of evidence is required to begin the process of doubt? Consider what you know of Canadian politics. The tendency of most of us here on the forums is to doubt the coverage of the mainstream press and seek out alternative sources of information, like this website. Why does that change with regards to the Arab Spring? Why are we so eager to embrace the status quo espoused by the corporate media, but apt to disregard the dissenting views of others who poke holes in the official version?
I suppose that in this case, we would love to believe that the Arab Spring was completely spontaneous. It affirms our belief as progressives that bottom-up social change is manifest - tangible. It could be the case, somewhere, someday. But right there right now?
Revolution U, article in Foreign Policy magazine
Article on website of Webster Tarpley
A New York Times article of a Wikileak that chronicles the Washington meet n' greets with a young Egyptian revolutionary.
Egypt Protests: Secret US Document Discloses Support for Protesters
One more, an analysis on the role of Gene Sharp and his progeny in the popular revolutions of the past 20 years.
Gene Sharp's Goal: Liberty in a World of Market Imperatives
Confusing two divergent issues is rarely helpful in analysing geo-political situations. On the one hand we've witnessed such genuine and heartfelt sentiments being expressed by people literally putting their lives on the line, if only for the opportunity to voice an opinion at all about their long standing conditions, and on the other, we have rumour and sign of the imperium's best men being assigned to oversee and direct the various situations as best they can, which amounts to a darn good turnout indeed when considering that thus far, nothing even remotely resembling a democratic changing of the guard has taken place in any of the circumstances which unfolded during the past several months.
Sibel Edmonds says Pepe's essay is briliant, so here it is:
There is credibility to the idea.
I think it is more like Pres. Obama saw the writing on the wall - the Tunisian, Egyptian and Libyan people were going to rise up, so get on good terms with them so they will continue to deliver the oil to the USA when the dust settles. If the brutal dictators have control over their people, then fine, support them and the oil keeps flowing to the USA. Obama has to do this "dancing with Arab friendlies" very carefully.
There is another game behind all this, where "if the USA didn't do it, then China or Russia would be in there like a dirty shirt snapping up all the oil for themselves". So, America/Obama has to do whatever it takes to be the best friend of Arab nations with oil.
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Aside: Fidel, is that an actual quote by the framer George Washington, but with a sarcastic spelling error? {Warshington}
Was "corporatism" a word used in the time of Pres. G Washington?
{RE:" Democracy should more appropriately be referred to as corporatism because it is a merger of state and corporate power." - George Warshington
The quote is a distortion of Benito Mussolini's definition of fascism.. Fidel's trying to be funny...I believe.
Nowhere did I label the Arab masses as collaborators. There may be collaborators among them in the revolutionary leadership, and definitely within the ruling junta. I suggest that external forces might be manipulating the proletariat. I think the evidence is more than circumstantial.
Once again, I urge everyone to think about this critically - not just project your well-wishing on the situation. The two narratives of mass struggle and interference from the intelligencia are convergent, not divergent, and it would do well to analyze this from every possible angle.
I rather think that many of us suffer from political amnesia. Does nobody remember the Contras? The Cuban terrorists operating freely on American soil? Why is it so difficult to imagine? Unless, of course, we want to believe it so bad that we're willing to forego the critical analyses we afford to everything else.
Except that China or Russia would prolly cut a better deal with Qadaffi. British Petroleo, for instance, were pretty ruthless in Iran last century and didn't even believe that the oil revs should be shared with the Iranian people at all.
And U.S. energy companies were darned near as crooked when signing deals with Russia for oil and gas development projects at Sakhalin Island in the early 1990s. Putin decided that those contracts were created at a time when Russia was at a disadvantage economically, and so decided to raise taxes on natural resource exports across the board. That was one more reason the west claimed the Russians were "backsliding" on democracy. IOWs they were daring to user perferctly legit free market mechanisms to raise oil revenues which the gladio gang's corporate friends didn't appreciate very much. That and some issues with US and European oligarchs, and probably with CIA seed money, attempted to bribe members of the Duma in 2003 in order to slide out of paying taxes they legally owed to the government in Moscow.
Exxon and the rest signed some pretty crooked oil deals in Iraq in the 2000s. Blood for oil hounds really were after the oil in Iraq as it's right there in the ground same as Libya's lowest cost to extract oil fields. They've been right bloody bastards these mass murderers.
If you listen to some of the wishy-washy lefties on this site, there is no such thing as the corporatocracy. It's all above board, and fascism just isn't possible without goosestepping thugs and private railroad companies with fat contracts for transporting tourist class box cars loaded with old people and daycare groups to the outskirts of Kracow for "tea and delousing" on a steady basis. They just don't get it or don't want to one or the other.
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I made it up. It's really describing fascism according to a quote by Mussolini. he he It should begin with, Fascism should more appropriately ...
Clueless? In Iran? Nicaragua? Cuba?
More recently, so clueless they basically warned the US administration that there were no WMDs in Iraq?
You're very right that the US meddling in those countries generally didn't achieve its goals. I concede in the failure of the CIA there. That doesn't erase the fact that they did meddle and caused untold suffering. The CIA basically ruined any hope for democratization in Iran, at least in the short term. They starved the Cubans. They murdered tens of thousands of Nicaraguans. Yet that is not the official narrative we find in the American media. That's why I'm skeptical.
I think that the masses had every right to revolt. I don't endorse the meddling of any external forces. Revolution has to come from within. That's why, when I see evidence that there was a guiding hand at play, red flags immediately start popping up. What will we say when the Egyptians or the Tunisians elect a free-market racketeer as their new leader? Someone who will effect policies in stark opposition to the popular demands articulated by the revolution.
I have presented evidence here that casts doubt that the movement was completely spontaneous. I am still waiting for anything to concretely refute these claims.
They've worked pretty hard to pave the way for militant Islam in the "Middle East" and Central Asia. The US and Israelis allowed a militant Hamas to form at a time when the PLO was cut off from international funding.
The US and western allies paved the way for militant Islam in Iran once their brutal dictatorship under the Shah had run its course. Muslim clerics wondered how they themselves could be deemed fit to run a country. Iran's Revolutionary Guard aided Clintonites in creating a militant Islamic base in 1990s Bosnia. They worked closely with "al-Qaeda" in achieving their goals on the edge of Eastern Europe. And the oil companies love Ahmadinejad. Every time he utters the word Israel or oil, the price of a barrel of oil skyrockets.
They crippled the Sandinistas before electing one of their neoliberal stooges who basically ran the country into the ground for years. It's all about preventing socialism and maintaining poverty and backwardness in the colonies.
US Democrats have at least had the sense to admit that they created the Gucci Mujahideen, Taliban, and even al-Qaeda. And it could just as easily have been called Saudi bin Laden with all the western aid and assistance that country has received from the west in propping up imperialism there.
Hawks in the west love militant Islam and right wing extremists in general. What they did was create another unseen enemy in Central Asia and headed by Emanuel Goldstein's protege, Elvis bin Laden.
What they fear most is legitimate political opposition on the left like the political wing of Hamas today. They fear people's revolutions and so work hard to re-install another stooge, or in the case of Egypt ensure that the old military order remains in control.
And they fear stooges like Karzai and his drug trafficking brother being woo'd away from CIA/ISI controllers by Asian leaders. Anything resembling democracy is fighting dirty as far as they are concerned. They really are working overtime to maintain empire. It's slipping away though.
Man, Fidel. You should invest in some synonyms for 'stooge'.
Your overuse of the term has stripped Larry, Curly, Moe and even Shemp of all their powers.
Oh I'm simply making up for the five or six decades that it was entirely underused in this Northern Puerto Rico. Whether stooge, kleptocrat, hireling, toady, sycophant, I've used them all but have settled on stooge for ease of typing. Our stooges are not worth the extra keys. Only 0.18% of Canadians actually voted for our latest head stooge.