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Requiem for the 'Colour Revolutions'
Georgia's troubles provide the nail in the coffin.
As the world watches democratic protests in Pakistan and Burma, the state crackdown in Georgia highlights the frustrated hopes of the wave of fruit/flower/tree-named uprisings kicked off by the Rose Revolution four years ago.
Following this week’s street clashes, Georgian President Mikhail Saakashvili declared a state of emergency and shut down private and opposition broadcasters before agreeing to early elections.
After riding the Orange Revolution to power, Ukraine’s President Viktor Yushchenko ran into problems so bad a poll in the spring placed him well behind the man who wound up on the wrong end of the mass protests. Sure enough, his party finished a distant third in September’s parliamentary election. While his allies will be in the coalition government, the numbers suggest Ukrainians have changed their minds about the man they marched for just three years ago.
In Kyrgyzstan, the Tulip Revolution seems to have withered after last month’s constitutional referendum increased President Kurmanbek Bakiyev’s powers. This month’s election will decide whether or not the parliament – with which he struggled from the time he came to power until he dissolved it the day after the the constitutional vote – will return to its toothless ways.
Lebanon’s Cedar Revolution may well be in the worst shape as the possibility of two rival administrations looms if the country’s main factions fail to agree on a replacement for pro-Syrian President Emile Lahoud when his term ends later this month.
As these revolutions followed each other in rapid succession, Western politicians and media applauded the arrival of democracy in the former Soviet Union and the Arab world. There were even whisperings of possible NATO and European Union memberships for Ukraine and Georgia.
Although U.S. President George W. Bush stuck to his message of spreading democracy this week, he acknowledged some of the difficulties his world view has encountered over the past two years.
“Isn't it interesting that the places where there's most violence is where there's young democracies trying to take hold, whether it be Iraq or Lebanon or in the Palestinian territories,” he told reporters.
Interesting indeed. At least the Velvet Revolution is looking pretty secure for now. ![[Tyee]](http://thetyee.cachefly.net/ui/img/ico_fishie.png){kind=small}
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James Burns
4 years ago
Part of the problem with a
Part of the problem with a lot of these "revolutions" is that they are in large part orchestrated by Americans through the National Endowment for Democracy (NED), and similar US organizations. The Americans funnel money to groups that support American style free market economics, in other words disaster capitalism. If those supported by the US gain power they then proceed to shock the system, and dismantle the public and civic sphere, while their friends pocket the proceeds and the economy is opened up to US corporate interests. It creates a lot of hardship for the majority of the population, and tends to throw more people into ever greater levels of poverty, while a local elite and foreign corporations get wealthier.
It's not about freedom, or democracy. It's about spreading an American colonial corporate model that is exploitive at its core.
darcy.mcgee
4 years ago
Tulip is note a colour...
nor is Cedar.
(Unless you let Benjamin Moore define the term "colour" of course, but tulips come in more than one colour so...)
asher
4 years ago
Ahh, there is no mention in
Ahh, there is no mention in this article that these colour revolutions are projects of the American government through agencies such as the National Endowment for Democracy. Is it really a democratic revolution when it is funded by the American government? I guess in the sense that Iraq was given a democracy by the US.
ME2
4 years ago
Choices
And so, Asher, while we yearn for the collapse of the American Empire and an end to its manipulation of client economies, we also fear the effect of that collapse on our own economy, which is sure to be very unpleasant.
And while we focus in on what the Yanks are doing in Eastern European countries, the EEC competes with the US by making the EEC version of Globalism a mandatory condition of joining the Union. They, no less than the Yanks, are big proponents of the World Bank and the WTO, etc.
Given the dearth of "Good Guys" to root for, it's little wonder why so many Canadians bury themselves in "reality" TV.
Canis Latrans
4 years ago
The BS is shining through...
James Burns gets it essentially right, of course. What is going on in much of Eastern Europe post the collapse of the old USSR is all about propaganda and buying warm and weak politicians bodies, bought and paid for by the US Empire, and extending the influence and clout of same in continuing the controlling Cold War military ring around Russia. And it is why we are seeing the ongoing chafing of Russia against this US Empire attempt to further "contain" it, and Putin's recent manoeuvring and alliance rebuilding with China and Iran, as but two examples.
It is about Amerika building and putting in place the objective preconditions for WWIII, regardless of any best intentions, and Bush knows it, which is why he speaks of the possibilities of a great third world war.
The US Empire may not be, indeed will not likely be, the last empire attempt, it is but only the most current and dangerous one operating. (The new and vying up and comers are already in motion) And these so-called "democracy" games in much of Eastern Europe are but part of attempting to put Amerika and its bootlick allies in a most favourable position.
Working against this empire attempt of Amerika of course, is the huge and increasingly debilitating cost of it being borne by the Amerikan people no less, as but one example of a number. It is the bleeding away of their treasure, alongside the other market corruptions of capitalism, as Iraq and Afghanistan is the bleeding away of their blood AND treasure as well. And it is when the cost of this bleeding away exceeds the benefits of Empire, given all the other examples in history, that these Empires come to collapse and fail.
Observe Amerika closely today-, even from watching them through the perspective of their own eyes, via such as CNN. The Empire heartland itself is already evidencing all the classic symptoms of Empire over-reach and internal demise.
And who has chosen this moment to ally itself with an already clearly failing US Empire? (Not unlike this so-called "national entity" standing and fighting the wars to the bitter end, for the old, now extinct, British Empire.)
Why, friggin' Canada, of course. Sad Sack doofus excuse for a country that we be.
But then the same US Empire endowment/investment cash is up here too, in larger quantities even than Eastern Europe, performing castration surgery on our so-called "democratic" institutions and national cajones.
Weep for the nation, ye as give a rat's ass about it.
Canis Latrans
4 years ago
we also fear...
And with good goldang reason too, no doubt. For I would suggest that at the end of the current, and entirely likely temporaryy euphoria of our dollar's heady high flying, there is one of capitalism's many bubble awaiting to be pricked and burst. (It's not so much that "the fundamentals" for our economic position have so much led to a real, qualitative or absolute increase in its value, for the Euro and most world currencies have in fact also "relatively" risen only in relation to the collapse of the US dollar. There is even continuing, already there for awhile now, a large movement away of countries even being willing to accept US dollars as the accepted medium and standard in global capitalist market trading relations. The publicly available evidence to which I am privy being, that it is being increasingly supplanted by the Euro already.)
The US Empire truly is in the early period of its collapse-, even if still dangerous like a wounded beast. Amd we. this country, are the lamb that has chosen and placed itself to lie down next to this increasingly desperate predator state.
The question is not "if", but how much time do we have remaining and when. And is there yet any sign of an emergent national "will" to change our impending circumstances?
In my view of this country-, not as yet even on any serious horizon. Though that can change very quickly too-, dependant upon many outcome possibilities.
Whether Canadians will continue to choose to ride this near spent US Empire horse until it drops over stone dead or not, is yet to be revealed. I suspect they will. There is a deeply rooted "colonial's mindset" that still afflicts the Canadian psyche, and holds it back from its own true independence and development potential.