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OpEdNews Op Eds    H3'ed 6/29/09

Color Revolutions, Old and New

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Myanmar's August - September 2007 "Saffron Revolution" used similar
tactics as in Georgia and Ukraine but failed. They began with protests
led by students and opposition political activists followed by
Engdahl's description of "swarming mobs of monks in saffron, Internet
blogs, mobile SMS links between protest groups, (and) well-organized
(hit-and-run) protest cells which disperse(d) and re-form(ed)."

NED and George Soros' Open Society Institute led a campaign for regime
change in league with the State Department by its own admission.
Engdahl explained that the "State Department....recruited and trained
key opposition leaders from numerous anti-government organizations in
Myanmar" and ran its "Saffron Revolution" out of the Chaing Mai,
Thailand US Consulate.

Street protesters were "recruited and trained, in some cases directly
in the US, before being sent back to organize inside Myanmar." NED
admitted funding opposition media, including the Democratic Voice of
Burma radio.

Ahead of the 2008 Beijing Olympics, Washington tried to embarrass and
destabilize China with a "Crimson Revolution" in Tibet - an operation
dating from when George Bush met the Dalai Lama publicly in Washington
for the first time, awarded him the Congressional Gold Medal, and
backed Tibetan independence.

On March 10, Engdahl reported that Tibetan monks staged "violent
protests and documented attacks (against) Han Chinese
residents....when several hundred monks marched on Lhasa (Tibet's
capital) to demand release of other monks allegedly detained for
celebrating the award of the US Congress' Gold Medal" the previous
October. Other monks joined in "on the 49th anniversary of the Tibetan
uprising against Chinese rule."

The same instigators were involved as earlier - NED, Freedom House,
and others specific to Tibet, including the International Committee
for Tibet and the Trace Foundation - all with ties to the State
Department and/or CIA.

The above examples have a common thread - achieving what the Pentagon
calls "full spectrum dominance" that depends largely on controlling
Eurasia by neutralizing America's two main rivals - Russia militarily,
China economically, and crucially to prevent a strong alliance between
the two. Controlling Eurasia is a strategic aim in this resource-rich
part of the world that includes the Middle East.

Iran's Made-in-the-USA "Green Revolution"

After Iran's June 12 election, days of street protests and clashes
with Iranian security forces followed. Given Washington's history of
stoking tensions and instability in the region, its role in more
recent color revolutions, and its years of wanting regime change in
Iran, analysts have strong reasons to suspect America is behind
post-election turbulence and one-sided Western media reports claiming
electoral fraud and calling for a new vote, much like what happened in
Georgia and Ukraine.

The same elements active earlier are likely involved now with a May
22, 2007 Brian Ross and Richard Esposito ABC News report stating:

"The CIA has received secret presidential approval to mount a 'black'
operation to destabilize the Iranian government, current and former
officials in the intelligence community tell the Blotter on
ABCNews.com. The sources who spoke on the condition of
anonymity....say President Bush has signed a 'nonlethal presidential
finding' that puts into motion a CIA plan that reportedly includes a
coordinated campaign of propaganda, disinformation and manipulation of
Iran's currency and international financial transactions."

Perhaps disruptions as well after the June 12 election to capitalize
on a divided ruling elite - specifically political differences between
Mahmoud Ahmadinejad and Supreme Leader/Grand Ayatollah Ali Khamenei on
one side and Mir Hossein Mousavi, former president Hashemi Rafsanjani,
and Grand Ayatollah Hossein Ali Montazeri on the other with Iran's
Revolutionary Guard so far backing the ruling government. It's too
early to know conclusively but evidence suggests US meddling, and none
of it should surprise.

Kenneth Timmerman provides some. He co-founded the right wing
Foundation for Democracy in Iran (FDI) and serves as its executive
director. He's also a member of the hawkish Committee on the Present
Danger (CPD) and has close ties to the equally hard line American
Enterprise Institute, the same organization that spawned the Project
for the New American Century (PNAC),  renamed the Foreign Policy
Initiative (FPI) for much the same purpose.

On the right wing newsmax.com web site, Timmerman wrote that the NED
"spent millions of dollars during the past decade promoting color
revolutions in places such as Ukraine and Serbia, training political
workers in modern communications and organizational techniques." He
explained that money also appears to have gone to pro-Mousavi groups,
"who have ties to non-governmental organizations outside Iran that
(NED) funds."

Pre-election, he elaborated about a "green revolution in Tehran" with
organized protests ready to be unleashed as soon as results were
announced because tracking polls and other evidence suggested
Ahmadinejad would win. Yet suspiciously, Mousavi declared victory even
before the polls closed.

It gets worse. Henry Kissinger told BBC news that if Iran's color
revolution fails, hard line "regime change (must be) worked for from
the outside" - implying the  military option if all else fails. In a
June 12 Wall Street Journal editorial, John Bolton called for Israeli
air strikes whatever the outcome - to "put an end to (Iran's) nuclear
threat," despite no evidence one exists.

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