Guardian to gadzinówka !!

IP: *.ha3.agh.edu.pl 15.12.04, 17:31
www.guardian.co.uk/comment/story/0,,1367965,00.html

The price of People Power

The Ukraine street protests have followed a pattern of western orchestration
set in the 80s. I know - I was a cold war bagman

Mark Almond
Tuesday December 7, 2004
The Guardian

People Power is on track to score another triumph for western values in
Ukraine. Over the last 15 years, the old Soviet bloc has witnessed recurrent
fairy tale political upheavals. These modern morality tales always begin with
a happy ending. But what happens to the people once People Power has won?

The upheaval in Ukraine is presented as a battle between the people and
Soviet-era power structures. The role of western cold war-era agencies is
taboo. Poke your nose into the funding of the lavish carnival in Kiev, and the
shrieks of rage show that you have touched a neuralgic point of the New World
Order.

All politics costs money, and the crowd scenes broadcast daily from Kiev cost
big bucks. Market economics may have triumphed, but if Milton Friedman were to
remind the recipients of free food and drink in Independence Square that
"there is no such thing as a free lunch", he would doubtless be branded a
Stalinist. Few seem to ask what the people paying for People Power want in
return for sponsoring all those rock concerts.

As an old cold war swagman, who carried tens of thousands of dollars to
Soviet-bloc dissidents alongside much better respected academics, perhaps I
can cast some light on what a Romanian friend called "our clandestine period".
Too many higher up the food chain of People Power seem reticent about making
full disclosure.

Nowadays, we can google the names of foundations such as America's National
Endowment for Democracy (NED) and a myriad surrogates funding Ukraine's Pora
movement or "independent" media. But unless you know the NED's James Woolsey
was also head of the CIA 10 years ago, are you any wiser?

Throughout the 1980s, in the build-up to 1989's velvet revolutions, a small
army of volunteers - and, let's be frank, spies - co-operated to promote what
became People Power. A network of interlocking foundations and charities
mushroomed to organise the logistics of transferring millions of dollars to
dissidents. The money came overwhelmingly from Nato states and covert allies
such as "neutral" Sweden.

It is true that not every penny received by dissidents came from taxpayers.
The US billionaire, George Soros, set up the Open Society Foundation. How much
it gave is difficult to verify, because Mr Soros promotes openness for others,
not himself.

Engels remarked that he saw no contradiction between making a million on the
stock market in the morning and spending it on the revolution in the
afternoon. Our modern market revolutionaries are now inverting that process.
People beholden to them come to office with the power to privatise.

The hangover from People Power is shock therapy. Each successive crowd is sold
a multimedia vision of Euro-Atlantic prosperity by western-funded
"independent" media to get them on the streets. No one dwells on the mass
unemployment, rampant insider dealing, growth of organised crime, prostitution
and soaring death rates in successful People Power states.

In 1989, our security services honed an ideal model as a mechanism for
changing regimes, often using genuine volunteers. Dislike of the way communist
states constrained ordinary people's lives led me into undercover work, but
witnessing mass pauperisation and cynical opportunism in the 1990s bred my
disillusionment.

Of course, I should have recognised the symptoms of corruption earlier. Back
in the 1980s, our media portrayed Prague dissidents as selfless academics who
were reduced to poverty for their principles, when they were in fact receiving
$600-monthly stipends. Now they sit in the front row of the new Euro-Atlantic
ruling class. The dowdy do-gooder who seemed so devoted to making sure that
every penny of her "charity" money got to a needy recipient is now a
facilitator for investors in our old stamping grounds. The end of history was
the birth of consultancy.

Grown cynical, the dissident types who embezzled the cash to fund, say, a
hotel in the Buda hills did less harm than those that launched politico-media
careers. In Poland, the ex-dissident Adam Michnik's Agora media empire - worth
€400m today - grew out of the underground publishing world of Solidarity,
funded by the CIA in the 1980s. His newspapers now back the war in Iraq,
despite its huge unpopularity among Poles.

Meanwhile, from the shipyard workers who founded Solidarity in 1980 to the
Kolubara miners of Serbia, who proclaimed their town "the Gdansk of Serbia" in
October 2000, millions now have plenty of time on their hands to read about
their role in history.

People Power is, it turns out, more about closing things than creating an open
society. It shuts factories but, worse still, minds. Its advocates demand a
free market in everything - except opinion. The current ideology of New World
Order ideologues, many of whom are renegade communists, is Market-Leninism -
that combination of a dogmatic economic model with Machiavellian methods to
grasp the levers of power.

Today's only superpower uses its old cold war weapons, not against
totalitarian regimes, but against governments that Washington has tired of.
Tiresome allies such as Shevardnadze in Georgia did everything the US wanted,
but forgot the Soviet satirist Ilf's wisdom: "It doesn't matter whether you
love the Party. It matters whether the Party loves you."

Georgia is of course a link in the chain of pipelines bringing central Asian
oil and gas to Nato territory via Ukraine, of all places. Such countries'
rulers should beware. Fifty years ago, Zbigniew Brzezinski argued that the
"politics of the permanent purge" typified Soviet communism. Yet now he is
always on hand to demand People Power topple yesterday's favourite in favour
of a new "reformer".

"People Power" was coined in 1986, when Washington decided Ferdinand Marcos
had to go. But it was events in Iran in 1953 that set the template. Then,
Anglo-American money stirred up anti-Mossadeq crowds to demand the restoration
of the Shah. The New York Times's correspondent trumpeted the victory of the
people over communism, even though he had given $50,000 and the CIA-drafted
text of the anti-Mossadeq declaration to the coup leaders himself.

Is today's official version of People Power similarly economical with the truth?

· Mark Almond is lecturer in modern history at Oriel College, Oxford

mpalmond@aol.com



    • Gość: anuszka Geremka list do redakcji Guardiana IP: *.ha3.agh.edu.pl 15.12.04, 17:32
      Rewriting the transition to democracy

      Wednesday December 15, 2004
      The Guardian

      A number of recent articles in British newspapers have presented the "orange"
      revolution in Ukraine as an element of some sort of American bid for world
      domination. Instead of an authentic revolution we have a stage-managed coup,
      designed to weaken Russia and gain access to new markets. Politics is reduced to
      an interplay between world powers, and history to a story of corruption. This
      ignores one essential element: the Ukrainian people.

      Mark Almond (The price of people power, December 7) rewrites the history of the
      last quarter century in central Europe to more forcibly elucidate the horrors
      awaiting Ukraine if it chooses the pro-European path of its western neighbours.

      What actually happened in central Europe? Our societies rejected communist
      dictatorships and embarked on the project of building democratic systems of
      freedom and the rule of law. The breakthrough in 1989 followed efforts of those
      who refused the yoke of oppression - members of Poland's Solidarity, of Charter
      77 in Czechoslovakia, and Hungarian dissidents.

      Almond sees that "springtime of nations" quite differently. He paints a
      grotesque picture of US-funded dissidents acquiring personal fortunes while
      putting their nations in economic slavery. I was often accused by the communist
      regime of being a mercenary and an American spy. I am staggered to encounter
      similar accusations today.

      I am equally astounded by what Almond writes about Adam Michnik: "His Agora
      media empire grew out of the underground publishing world of Solidarity, funded
      by the CIA in the 1980s. His newspapers now back the war in Iraq, despite its
      huge unpopularity among Poles."
      Almond fails to mention that Michnik spent six years as a political prisoner. He
      also omits to note that Michnik is not the owner of Agora, and that when the
      company gave shares to its founders and employees, Michnik refused to take any.
      And that the Iraq war is the subject of fierce debate in Gazeta Wyborcza.

      Fortunately, neither the opinions of western commentators nor any designs of US
      politicians will determine Ukraine's future. It will be decided by the Ukrainians.
      Prof Bronislaw Geremek
      Former Solidarity adviser and Polish foreign minister

      • Gość: anuszka Re: Geremka list do redakcji Guardiana IP: *.ha3.agh.edu.pl 15.12.04, 17:32
        i link: www.guardian.co.uk/letters/story/0,,1373721,00.html
        • czyzunia Re: Geremka list do redakcji Guardiana 15.12.04, 17:33
          a nie możesz coś w ludzkim a nie w psim języku.
          • Gość: anuszka Re: Geremka list do redakcji Guardiana IP: *.ha3.agh.edu.pl 15.12.04, 17:37


            To test - kto nie umie przeczytac, ten za glupi, zeby dyskutowac na dany temat.


            • Gość: czyzunia Re: Geremka list do redakcji Guardiana IP: *.neoplus.adsl.tpnet.pl 15.12.04, 19:29
              i jakoś q..a ty jedna mądra.
              • Gość: anuszka :-) IP: *.ha3.agh.edu.pl 15.12.04, 21:41
                > i jakoś q..a ty jedna mądra.

                smile
                Nie wiedzialam, ze jeszcze sa ludzie, ktorzy znajomosc angielskiego uwazaja za
                snobizm.


    • leje-sie I nie on jeden (Almond) 15.12.04, 19:43
      z sierot po komunizmie na Zachodzie. Gdzie moga przysrywaja i podgryzaja - a
      (ze uzyje po raz drugi dzis tego sformulowania, choc w innym kontekscie) zal im
      dupy sciska.

      Tyle tylko, ze dziwnym trafem, glosy tych pogrobowcow komunizmu dziwnie
      wspolbrzmia z glosami niektorych polskich politykow - a i niektorych
      uczestnikow niniejszego Forum rowniez - dla odmiany mieniacych sie prawica.

      Taki psi chorek obszczyjmurkow.
      • Gość: anuszka Re: I nie on jeden (Almond) IP: *.ha3.agh.edu.pl 15.12.04, 21:38
        > Taki psi chorek obszczyjmurkow.

        Gdyby tak bylo, to nie byloby to niepokojace.

        Ale Guardian uwazany jest za renomowana gazete...
        • tad9 Re: I nie on jeden (Almond) 15.12.04, 23:09
          Gość portalu: anuszka napisał(a):

          > Ale Guardian uwazany jest za renomowana gazete...

          Jak może być renomowaną gazetą, skoro nie pisze tak, jak myśli prof. Geremek?
          Renomowaną gazetę poznajemy po tym, że prof. Geremek zamieszcza w niej
          artykuły, a nie polemiki. Jeśli kto chce zobaczyć prawdziwą, renomowaną gazetę,
          nich kupi sobie "GW".
          • Gość: anuszka Re: I nie on jeden (Almond) IP: *.ha3.agh.edu.pl 16.12.04, 09:14
            Czyli zgadzasz sie z tym, co pisze Almond w Guardianie?
            • Gość: z boku Re: I nie on jeden (Almond) IP: *.neoplus.adsl.tpnet.pl 16.12.04, 15:20
              eeechh.. ten Almond .. poputczik po prostu.. tacy nas wlasnie sprzedali w
              jalcie ..
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