The "patient zero" of Color Revolutions

While it should be obvious why the "Yellow October" of 2000 matters to the Serbs and Serbia, the oft-unanswered question is, why should it matter to anyone else?

In my most recent op-edge on RT.com, I strive to explain just that:

"Wherever they go, these agents of chaos infect the target country’s politics, manipulating genuine local activists into becoming the agents of their people’s demise. While they preach democracy, their dirty tricks are effectively destroying its credibility in the long term. That’s fine with them, however; the objective is not democracy but obedience. Besides, they won’t stick around to see the consequences - there is always the next revolution to plan and execute."

October 5, 2000: Flashback to Yugoslavia, West's first color revolution victim (@NebojsaMalic for RT) https://t.co/eLP9Ev6YXs pic.twitter.com/Ol8x2epUqA

— RT (@RT_com) October 5, 2017

It's not just that having done it once, the Empire proceeded to do it again elsewhere (and whether it succeeded or failed, made the lives of those involved miserable to some degree or another), but that it used these Janissaries to spread its virus far and wide - and calling them Serbs all along, thus adding insult to injury.

Macedonia - what gives?

Roughly three weeks ago, protests began against the government in Macedonia (FYROM). The folks protesting said the government was "corrupt" and spying on them. Big surprise, I figured - like the rest of the Balkans, the regime in Skopje is run by a vassal of Washington, so what else were they expecting?

But then these opposition activists ignored the Albanian terrorists - who came in from Kosovo and tried to take over a village, then seemed surprised when Macedonian police and military actually dared attack and kill a bunch of them (who were later given heroes' funerals in "Kosovo", to wit).

In fact, these protesters claimed the government had staged the whole thing as a way to defeat the protests! So I looked into the whole thing a bit, and found an all too familiar pattern. Soros, NED, "human rights activists," an opposition politician polling terribly but crusading against "corruption," the fact that the government favored a Russian-backed pipeline (can't have that, oh no)...

Then there was the hashtag. My knowledge of the language spoken in Macedonia (FYROM) is a little rusty, but I thought it weird that the hashtag they were using was "#протестирам" (or even "#protestiram" for reasons unfathomable; unlike the occupied Serbs, I was not aware that even in the wildest self-hating fantasies the Macedonians would give up on Cyrillic).

I looked up the Macedonian phrases for "I protest" (протестираат) and "we protest" (протестираме). Neither matched.  So what does the word actually mean in Macedonian? Is it even Macedonian at all?

To me, it sounds like a foreign consultant picked something that maybe sounded Macedonian-ish, but was based on their knowledge of "Croatian" (a dialect most Westerners who bother studying the region tend to learn). Except they goofed, since in actual modern Croatian, the word for protest is "prosvjed," so the proper form would have been "prosvjedujem/prosvjedujemo."

I can't be sure, though. I was ready to reach out and ask, to borrow a phrase, "I'm confused. Can somebody help me?"

But then today, I saw this from a "media fact-checker" backing the protesters.

Defending #Mariupol is admirable/breathtaking task. Task legends are made of. My support for #Ukraine. #Macedonia http://t.co/Ouql9hFA4K

— Vladimir Petreski (@VPetreski) June 7, 2015

Lavishes praise on the Banderite regime in Ukraine, cites Interpreter as the authoritative source,  in another tweet praises Soros for "helping" Macedonia - and oh, funded by USAID. Greeaat.

Let's say I'm much less confused now.

(see Disclaimer at top right of page)

Why Empire Needs a Conquered Serbia

Back in the summer of 2011, when most of the Western public still believed in the big lie of the "Arab Spring" - which ended up producing chaos in Libya, civil war in Syria, and the ISIS "caliphate" - I mentioned a great little documentary about Empire's revolution business. The filmmakers brought up the role an ostensibly private, non-violent, civil society NGO played in a string of "color revolutions," from Serbia to North Africa. In doing so, they committed the two cardinal sins in the modern West: Noticing, and Remembering.

CANVAS leader Srdja Popovic, with the logo of Empire's "color revolutions" (source) 

For you see, nobody is supposed to notice that "spontaneous peaceful activists" are in fact coached by an Empire-backed operation; that their slogans are always the same; that their graphics are always the same; and that, whatever their official claims may be, the outcome is always the same: self-destruction of the targeted society and state, often to the point of civil war. Nor is anyone supposed to remember seeing that same pattern anywhere else before.

After the October 2000 coup that replaced Slobodan Milosevic's government with a regime more or less loyal to the Empire (today, that loyalty is absolute), some of the "student activists" instrumental in duping the Serbian public became professional revolutionaries. They named their organization "CANVAS" - Center for Applied NonViolent Action and Strategies. In English. Please notice and remember that, it's important.

This morning I came across a Russian analysis of a suspicious explosion in Kharkov (reportedly involving one Aleksandar "Aca" Kazun, an Otpor/CANVAS operative), against the backdrop of a little-too-convenient murder of Boris Nemtsov. A marginal political figure polling in single digits while alive, once dead Nemtsov was made into a sacred martyr of the "progressive opposition."

Anyway, the analysis (seen here in the English translation) keeps talking about the "Serbian trail", the "Serbian organization," etc. when referring to CANVAS. I understand this might be shorthand. But if it isn't, if the authors genuinely believe that CANVAS is a Serbian outfit, then they are playing right into Empire's narrative.

To wit, as I pointed out in the 2011 article mentioned above:

Branding Otpor and CANVAS as Serbian is no accident. Few in the world would be inclined to suspect a Serb of working for the Empire, after everything that happened in the Balkans in the 1990s. Washington policymakers have just about admitted that American bombers flew over Belgrade because of "Yugoslavia’s resistance to the broader trends of political and economic reform," rather than any reports of atrocities, exaggerated or fabricated on demand.

Merely defeating and conquering Serbia would not do. The Serbs had to be turned into the Empire’s most dedicated servants: when even a people like that can be so thoroughly crushed, resistance to the Empire must surely be futile.

This is why CANVAS has to be presented as a "Serbian" organization, when it is really a rabidly anti-Serb one. This is why the 2008-2012 government in Serbia was installed as puppets of Washington - because the junior partner in it were the Socialists once led by Milosevic, and demonstrating them broken was proving Empire's point. And this is why the current government, led by the former Radicals (now cynically rebranded as "Progressives") has plumbed the depths of submission and sycophancy like no other.

I may be personally invested in seeing Serbia throw off the yoke, but that last paragraph I quoted earlier is why Serbia ought to matter to everyone else.

"Serbian Music Promoters" and the Failed USAID Revolution in Cuba

Many Americans skeptical of the government give no second thought to USAID. The agency may be spending taxpayers' money overseas, they figure, but at least it's for the purpose of buying the world's goodwill with American kindness and generosity, right?

Little do they know that USAID also produces threatening political ads, and tries to subvert governments through pop culture. Recent reports by AP (see here) indicate the U.S. agency has tried to foment a coup in Cuba by infiltrating the Cuban hip-hop scene. This was part of a broader scheme involving a knockoff of Twitter, some details of which emerged earlier this year. Though some U.S. government officials (e.g. Vermont Senator Patrick Leahy) are blasting the venture as "reckless and stupid," USAID is claiming it was only "developing civil society."

It is certainly interesting that the original round of revelations about the project, supposedly discontinued in 2012, were leaked to the media as everyone was paying attention to the political meltdown in Ukraine this spring - and this story comes while everyone is focusing on the CIA torture report. The best time to "to take out the trash" is when the public's attention is elsewhere...

Notice also that only one person has been identified by name in the whole scandal: one Rajko Bozic, called "a Serbian contractor," though Western media indicate he wasn't the only Serbian "music promoter" working the gig. Turns out Bozic isn't an ordinary music promoter - Serbian papers reveal he was "involved in projects in Tunisia, Ukraine, Lebanon and Zimbabwe." So he is really one of those professional revolutionary types, who go around the world spreading the Imperial gospel of "democracy" and "human rights." This particular lot was chosen because of their role in the Exit Festival, a drugs-and-alcohol-addled extravaganza started in 2000 as part of the campaign to overthrow the government, and continued every year since, at Serbian taxpayers' expense.

But don't believe for a second their "outing" as Serbian is an accident, or an irrelevant detail. Back in 2011, when a damning documentary appeared linking these professional putschists to the so-called "Arab Spring" upheavals in Tunisia, Egypt, Libya and Syria, I wrote:

"Branding [them] as Serbian is no accident. Few in the world would be inclined to suspect a Serb of working for the Empire, after everything that happened in the Balkans in the 1990s... Merely defeating and conquering Serbia would not do. The Serbs had to be turned into the Empire’s most dedicated servants: when even a people like that can be so thoroughly crushed, resistance to the Empire must surely be futile."

And while every place that's been touched by these "activists" bears the scars of their involvement, Serbia is actually run by them, and has been for the past 14 years. So great has this "democratic democracy" been, ordinary Serbians are now worse off than during the era of sanctions and war. That ought to tell you everything about the kind of bliss these people - and their paymasters - truly stand for.

Seeds of Chaos

So, according to the U.S. government, ransacking and burning government buildings, looting armories and attacking law enforcement are all part of "peaceful protests" and fighting them in any way is "repression" and "completely unacceptable"...

...as long as it happens elsewhere, the perpetrators are U.S. puppets and the target is a government that does not take orders from Washington, that is.

This is what all that talk of "human rights and American values" really means.

Between the "regime change" and "color revolutions" and overt meddling in others' elections to the point of making them meaningless, the Empire has sown chaos. The reaping cannot be far behind.

The Great Despoilment

Thirteen years have passed since the "democratic revolution" of October 5 in Serbia. It became clear almost right away that there was nothing democratic, or revolutionary, about it. Rather, it was a coup on par with the 1953 overthrow of Mohammed Mosadegh in Iran - and with similar consequences for the country.

National Assembly on fire, October 5, 2000

I've written much over the years about the political consequences of the "peaceful occupation" by the devotees of Empire's quisling cargo cult: the mockery of laws and elections, destruction of the country's military capability, corruption of its politics and society, complete abdication of sovereignty and statehood, appeasement and empowerment of separatists, etc. But all that was accompanied by old-fashioned looting as well.

According to one study, in the years since the 2000 coup, as much as $51 billion has been siphoned out of Serbia into various offshore accounts. This figure does not include whatever the quislings and their followers have managed to rob and stash inside the country, so the real extent of Serbia's economic rape is actually greater. Even if the promised EU donations and pie-in-the-sky stories of Arab investment turn out to be true - and they won't - they are utterly insignificant in comparison to how much of Serbia's actual wealth has been looted by various "democratic reformers", "moderates" and "pragmatists."

They have systematically looted, corrupted, and defiled everything they've touched, ensuring that no civilized means of contesting their vile reign remained available. Their reckoning, when it comes, will be nasty, brutish and short.

Wages of Servitude

John Laughland's piece in yesterday's Guardian, quoted by Daniel McAdams on the LRC blog, warns that reports in Uzbekistan are to be taken with a grain of salt. After all, the chief source of "information" from the Ferghana valley is IWPR (enough said).

But he also shares another bit of wisdom that ought to be self-evident to anyone harboring delusions of "partnership" and "friendship" with the Empire:

"Washington is unforgiving towards people who think loyalty is a two-way street, and the Uzbek president is about to learn the lesson learned by Manuel Noriega, Saddam Hussein, Eduard Shevardnadze and scores of others: that it is better to be an enemy of the Americans than their friend. If you are their enemy, they might try to buy you; but if you are their friend they will definitely sell you."

To which I would add, for the benefit of people in the testing-chamber of the first "people power" revolution: the next time a politician talks about "working together with the international community" or other such imperialist agitprop nonsense, remember: whether they are selling or being bought, you get stuck with the bill.

Admission

In today's Guardian, Ian Traynor has an analysis that flat-out admits that the Empire used elections to subvert Serbia, Belarus, Georgia, and now Ukraine. The UK paper may have opposes George W. Bush, but it just loves the postmodern State and the Atlantic Empire. However slimy the Brit government is - I mean, Tony Blair really sets the standard for sleaziness - and however muzzled their press, they still manage to get to the truth more often than their American colleagues, who just march in lockstep. Remarkable.

Anyway, here's some highlights from Traynor's piece, with my occasional comments:

"the campaign is an American creation, a sophisticated and brilliantly conceived exercise in western branding and mass marketing that, in four countries in four years, has been used to try to salvage rigged elections and topple unsavoury regimes."

Notice the spin here, implying the elections are always "rigged" and the Empire merely "salvages" them from "unsavouries"!

"...the campaign was first used in Europe in Belgrade in 2000 to beat Slobodan Milosevic at the ballot box. Richard Miles, the US ambassador in Belgrade, played a key role. And by last year, as US ambassador in Tbilisi, he repeated the trick in Georgia, coaching Mikhail Saakashvili in how to bring down Eduard Shevardnadze."

[...] "...the experience gained in Serbia, Georgia and Belarus has been invaluable in plotting to beat the regime of Leonid Kuchma in Kiev. The operation – engineering democracy through the ballot box and civil disobedience – is now so slick that the methods have matured into a template for winning other people’s elections." [emphasis mine]

[...] "The Democratic party’s National Democratic Institute, the Republican party’s International Republican Institute, the US state department and USAid are the main agencies involved in these grassroots campaigns as well as the Freedom House NGO and billionaire George Soros’s open society institute." [Here he follows the money: future victims, take note!]

"The usually fractious oppositions have to be united behind a single candidate if there is to be any chance of unseating the regime. That leader is selected on pragmatic and objective grounds, even if he or she is anti-American. In Serbia, US pollsters Penn, Schoen and Berland Associates discovered that the assassinated pro-western opposition leader, Zoran Djindjic, was reviled at home and had no chance of beating Milosevic fairly in an election. He was persuaded to take a back seat to the anti-western Vojislav Kostunica..."

Reviled is the right word; deplored is another good one. That his death was used as a pretext to impose martial law, create political capital for his party, and put in charge a cabal of far less competent but even more unsavory types, leads me to suspect his own associates offed ol' Zoran. The whole cui bono? thing, you know. But back to Traynor.

"Officially, the US government spent $41m (£21.7m) organising and funding the year-long operation to get rid of Milosevic from October 1999. In Ukraine, the figure is said to be around $14m."

Consider there were "suitcases full of cash" coming into Serbia, in the words of the Washington Post, and you'll realize these figures are much too low.

"Freedom House and the Democratic party’s NDI helped fund and organise the 'largest civil regional election monitoring effort' in Ukraine, involving more than 1,000 trained observers. They also organised exit polls. [...] The exit polls are seen as critical because they seize the initiative in the propaganda battle with the regime, invariably appearing first, receiving wide media coverage and putting the onus on the authorities to respond."

First Strike propaganda doctrine, so often used in the Balkans wars: any claim, however outrageous, is believable if it comes first. Any denial, no matter how truthful or believable, will be discounted because of perceptions already created by the first strike. Oh, and this also shows that exit polls favoring the pro-Imperial challenger were fabricated, of course.

"If the events in Kiev vindicate the US in its strategies for helping other people win elections and take power from anti-democratic regimes, it is certain to try to repeat the exercise elsewhere in the post-Soviet world. The places to watch are Moldova and the authoritarian countries of central Asia."

Of course, if the US loses in Kiev, like it did in Minsk in 2001, it will try again. But such a defeat would be a big victory for liberty.