DEMOCRACY INDUSTRY

A student-led Serbian uprising,Otpor! (Serbian Cyrillic: Отпор!,English: Resistance!) led to the overthrow of Slobodan Milošević(murdered later in Hague Tribunal) in 2000. The campaign–almost entirely obstructive program–was carefully planned with assistance from Gene Sharp and his colleagues. Additionally, information started to appear during this time about substantial outside help, both in funds and logistics, which "Otpor" received leading up to the revolution. A group of activists made one trip to neighbouring Hungary in June 2000 to attend a lecture by retired US Army Col. Robert Helvey, a colleague of Sharp, who was later portrayed as the "creator" of Otpor, although the movement had already reached its peak when the lecture took place. Otpor was also a recipient of substantial funds from U.S. government affiliated organizations such as the National Endowment for Democracy (NED), International Republican Institute (IRI), and US Agency for International Development (USAID).

­There was Georgia’s Rose Revolution in 2003, the Orange Revolution in Ukraine in 2004, the Tulip Revolution in Kyrgyzstan in 2005 and the Cedar Revolution in Lebanon in 2005. Similar opposition rebellions were attempted in Uzbekistan in 2005, in Armenia in 2008, in Moldova in 2009, and several in 2010: in Iran, in Thailand and finally in Belarus in December. Next it was the turn of Tunisia and then Egypt. Who's next? Yemen, Syria, Algeria... Iran.

“If you look more closely, you look at the so-called people who are leading this, are being coached. And they're being coached by the US Intelligence Services, the same way the Orange Revolution was in Ukraine or the Rose Revolution with Saakashvili in Georgia,” /revealed author and researcher William Enghdal.

A string of revolutions – some bloodless, some not – rocked the post-Soviet space at the beginning of the 21st century. There were a number of common factors: an uprising against the regime, rooted in a popular dissatisfaction with standards of living, and also a unifying theme for the protesters. Hence the collective name “color revolutions”. Analysts recall the similarities in the color revolutions where youth groups were energized, rock bands lined up, and laser shows put on. The movements were marketed as cool. Amazingly, their outcomes have been quite similar too. Six years ago on Ukrainian capital Kiev’s Independence Square was the birthplace of the Orange Revolution. It promised a new dawn and major changes for the country, but ultimately all aspirations came to nothing. Poverty and corruption increased, the country is now divided by ideological issues. Nothing changed for the better, only for the worse. Viktor Yushchenko, the revolutionary hero [who became Ukrainian president in the aftermath of the revolution] got only five per cent of the votes at the next presidential election. The lowest result for an acting president in the world. It was a similar story in Georgia, where the heady optimism of the Rose Revolution soon gave way to disappointment and eventually to mass protests. Their anger with President Saakashvili was met with a response that was all too familiar, as gas grenades and water cannons were used to quell the unrest. Washington’s formula for regime change underwent a makover in the 1980s. In a bid to ensure US political and economic interests were safeguarded, CIA backed coup d’états ousted democratically elected leaders from Iran to Chile. In their place were brutal dictatorships and governments that committed heinous crimes against their people. By the 1980s, the reign of terror that blazed across Latin America was too much for most people to stomach. From death squads to torture chambers and various massacres, the Latin American generals who trained in the US to spread democracy around the world quickly gained reputations for major human rights abuses. To replace the overt support for dictatorships, a new concept for regime change was born; one that sounds and looks better – democracy promotion. The concept of democracy promotion is simple; finance, train, and politically back local opposition forces around the world that support the American agenda. Experts agree that it may take some time before the world sees whether or not the revolts in Tunisia and Egypt will change things for the better in these countries. Just as they have a common opinion that if these uprisings flop, Europe will be the first to suffer from waves of immigrants. What is going on in the Middle East with the Jasmine Revolution in Tunisia that we saw a few days ago, and now in Egypt with Mubarak in his 80s, and obviously a regime that is not exactly the most stable one, we have a food crisis taking place as a backdrop and the IMF coming and telling these countries to eliminate their state food subsidies so you have, of course, the explosive background for popular unrest. Within that you have these NGOs, like Freedom House, training activists and trade unions and various other organizations to demand democracy, demand human rights and so forth. Lawrence Wilkerson, the former Chief of Staff to former Secretary of State Colin Powell said, “We do this through surrogates and nongovernmental organization and through people who are less suspecting of the evil that may lurk behind their actions than perhaps they were before. Have we learned some lessons in that regard? You bet! Do we do it better? You bet? Is it still just as heinous as it has always been? You bet!”. So while the goal remains the same, it’s no longer the CIA but the US Agency for International Development (USAID) and its partners spearheading the effort. Since 2000, USAID has activated more than 620 programs in Venezuela alone, costing up to $20 million dollars. The USAID has implemented so called democracy promotion initiatives in over 100 countries in the past 25 years. This year’s budget is $1 billion dollars. And like the CIA, USAID, the National Endowment for Democracy and a number of similar organizations receive funding from Congress. But these are just the tip of the iceberg. There’s an entire network of organizations involved in the democracy promotion business. Their goal: "stable, free-market orientated democracy to ensure US political and economic interests were safeguarded."

Happening right now:

"Organizers younger than 30 taking the lead to topple a regime older than they are. Nobel Peace laureate Mohamed ElBaradei's appearance in Tahrir, or Liberation, Square underscored the jockeying for leadership of the mass protest movement that erupted seemingly out of nowhere in the past week to shake the Arab world's most populous nation." ElBaradei, the former head of the U.N. nuclear watchdog agency, has gained a following among young secular democracy activists with his grassroots organizing. But some demonstrators dismiss him as an expatriate long removed from Egypt's problems. The anarchy was further fueled when gangs of armed men attacked at least four jails across Egypt before dawn, freeing hundreds of criminals and Muslim militants. Gangs of young men with guns and large sticks smashed cars and robbed people in Cairo. Secretary of State Hillary Clinton urged "a peaceful, orderly transition to a democratic regime". Yemen next: More than 20,000 Yemenis filled the streets of Sanaa on Thursday for a "Day of Rage" rally, demanding a change in government and saying President Ali Abdullah Saleh's offer to step down in 2013 was not enough.

TO BE CONTINUED...

Human organs theft in Kosovo

Kosovo's prime minister is the head of a "mafia-like" Albanian group responsible for smuggling weapons, drugs and human organs through eastern Europe, according to a Council of Europe inquiry report on organised crime. Hashim Thaçi is identified as the boss of a network that began operating criminal rackets in the runup to the 1998-99 Kosovo war, and has held powerful sway over the country's government since. The report of the two-year inquiry, which cites FBI and other intelligence sources, has been obtained by the Guardian. It names Thaçi as having over the last decade exerted "violent control" over the heroin trade. Figures from Thaçi's inner circle are also accused of taking captives across the border into Albania after the war, where a number of Serbs have been murdered for their kidneys, which were sold on the black market.

Dick Marty's Report

The Swiss senator Dick Marty, conducted a two-year inquiry into organised crime in Kosovo after the Council of Europe mandated him to investigate claims of organ harvesting by the Kosovo Liberation Army (KLA) after the war with Serbia ended in 1999.

Dick Marty's report suggests Thaçi's links with organised crime date back more than a decade, when those loyal to his Drenica group came to dominate the KLA(UCK), and seized control of "most of the illicit criminal enterprises" in which Kosovans were involved south of the border, in Albania. During the Kosovo war and for almost a year after, Thaçi "The Snake" and four other members of the Drenica group named in the report carried out "assassinations, detentions, beatings and interrogations". This same hardline KLA faction has held considerable power in Kosovo's government over the last decade, with the support of western powers keen to ensure stability in the "Europe's youngest democracy". Marty's report suggests the KLA held Serbs and other captives in secret detention centres in Albania for almost a year after the war ended. A small number of prisoners that survived, the report suggests, were transferred to a makeshift clinic just north of the capital Tirana, where they were shot in the head before their kidneys were removed. The report paints a picture in which ex-KLA commanders have played a crucial role in the region's criminal activity. It says: "In confidential reports spanning more than a decade, agencies dedicated to combating drug smuggling in at least five countries have named Hashim Thaçi and other members of his Drenica group as having exerted violent control over the trade in heroin and other narcotics." Marty says: "Thaçi and these other Drenica group members are consistently named as 'key players' in intelligence reports on Kosovo's mafia-like structures of organised crime. I have examined these diverse, voluminous reports with consternation and a sense of moral outrage." His inquiry was commissioned after the former chief prosecutor for war crimes at the Hague, Carla Del Ponte, said she had been prevented from investigating senior KLA officials. Her most shocking claim, which she said required further investigation, was that the KLA smuggled captive Serbs across the border into Albania, where their organs were harvested. Inquiry finds the KLA did hold mostly Serb captives in a secret network of six detention facilities in northern Albania, and that Thaçi's Drenica group "bear the greatest responsibility" for prisons and the fate of those held in them. The report states: "As and when the transplant surgeons were confirmed to be in position and ready to operate, the captives were brought out of the 'safe house' individually, summarily executed by a KLA gunman, and their corpses transported swiftly to the operating clinic.''

Serbs and Roma from Albanian concentration camps, during the war, were not the only victims of organ trafficking in Kosovo. Many desperate Russians, Moldovans, Kazakhs and Turks were lured into Kosovo "with the false promise of payments" for their kidneys. The organs had been illegally removed from victims and transplanted into wealthy recipients in the clinic, known as Medicus. Those who paid up to €90,000 (£76,400) for the black-market kidneys included patients from Canada, Germany, Poland and Israel.

A human body could be sold on the black market for EUR 2mn, that kidneys fetched between EUR 15,000 and 100,000, while prices for a liver or heart could reach as much as EUR 1mn.

Serbia has long complained of atrocities committed by the KLA after July 1999, when Nato-led air strikes forced Slobodan Milosevic's troops to retreat from the province. Marty finds evidence for those concerns, stating that Kosovo's guerrilla army formed "a formidable power base in the organised criminal enterprises" in Kosovo and Albania. A group known as Drenica, led by Thaçi, became the KLA's dominant faction and senior KLA figures from the group hold senior positions in Kosovo's government today.

Le Figaro (fra)