Arab spring... ...Russia

ChiefRunningPhist

Well-Known Member
So been thinking about it for a min and was curious what others had to say about the Russian meddling in the 2016 US election, and the rise of nationalism across the globe. Why? ...


Some questions:
Did the western countries manipulate the middle east to install certain people of power? CIA and others instigated "Arab Spring?"

Did Russia then retaliate in like kind but to the western countries?

Why did they retaliate (?), or was it the initial assault, and what purpose does Iran, Syria, Saudi, Turkey, Ukraine, ect serve for Putin? Imo everything political is transactional, in an effort to secure more money, or more power to then secure more money, or visa versa, to secure more money to buy more power..

I've seen some posts about the oil pipelines that run through Qatar and barely remember people vaguely talking Russia and the US over Syria. Everyone needs oil, so I see how that's important to Russia, but they have their own oil fields... Is the middle East oil that much cheaper? Or, is the draw to the middle East due in part to the arms market, ie the opportunity for foreign powers to profit from selling their arms to the conflicting parties? Or are our weapons actually buying peace? What is the real draw to the middle East for Russia and the US? Petrodollar?

Curious if anyone wants to put the pieces of the puzzle together for me. I'm pretty green when it comes to geo-political but thinking we initiated the Arab Spring which messed up a bunch of "who knows what" for Putin and so he's now retaliating? Has he been able to install certain people of power in any of the western countries he's fighting with?
 

too larry

Well-Known Member
Power and influence is what Russia is after. Since the USSR imploded, he's been trying to relive his glory days. As we withdraw from the world, he is trying to take up the slack. The Middle East just happens to be where it's happening.
 

hanimmal

Well-Known Member
So been thinking about it for a min and was curious what others had to say about the Russian meddling in the 2016 US election, and the rise of nationalism across the globe. Why? ...


Some questions:
Did the western countries manipulate the middle east to install certain people of power? CIA and others instigated "Arab Spring?"

Did Russia then retaliate in like kind but to the western countries?

Why did they retaliate (?), or was it the initial assault, and what purpose does Iran, Syria, Saudi, Turkey, Ukraine, ect serve for Putin? Imo everything political is transactional, in an effort to secure more money, or more power to then secure more money, or visa versa, to secure more money to buy more power..

I've seen some posts about the oil pipelines that run through Qatar and barely remember people vaguely talking Russia and the US over Syria. Everyone needs oil, so I see how that's important to Russia, but they have their own oil fields... Is the middle East oil that much cheaper? Or, is the draw to the middle East due in part to the arms market, ie the opportunity for foreign powers to profit from selling their arms to the conflicting parties? Or are our weapons actually buying peace? What is the real draw to the middle East for Russia and the US? Petrodollar?

Curious if anyone wants to put the pieces of the puzzle together for me. I'm pretty green when it comes to geo-political but thinking we initiated the Arab Spring which messed up a bunch of "who knows what" for Putin and so he's now retaliating? Has he been able to install certain people of power in any of the western countries he's fighting with?
I haven't seen anything that says we instigated the Arab Spring, but it makes sense they might have tried to use social media (that was used to organize if I'm remembering right) to sway to get the other guy elected that lost by a narrow margin based on @too larry 's link.

That was in 2012, Snowden jets off to Russia in late 2013 with the NSA data files and by 2014 Russia is hammering us with propaganda, 2015 they pushed Brexit, 2016 they got us with Trump.

I really am out of my depth with much in the world events when it starts getting into geo-political stuff though.

The earliest I started really noticing hate stuff being used for politics online was around 2006ish. There has been a lot of things like the 'Yellow Vest' riot in France that has been linked back to Russian trolls too. They have gotten too big for their britches imo, and are about to get burnt wince Trump can't keep a strait face and is going to bring it all out in the open.
 

ChiefRunningPhist

Well-Known Member
Not sure how relevant this is...

Or this book?



I thought I had read that the CIA and MI6 had instigated the "Arab Spring" but I really can't find anything that says that anymore...

Also, seems Saudi Arabia was spared?
 

ChiefRunningPhist

Well-Known Member

"
Democracy: America’s Biggest Export

According to Bensaada, the MENA Arab Spring revolutions have four unique features in common:

  • None were spontaneous – all required careful and lengthy (5+ years) planning, by the State Department, CIA pass through foundations, George Soros, and the pro-Israel lobby.1
  • All focused exclusively on removing reviled despots without replacing the autocratic power structure that kept them in power.
  • No Arab Spring protests made any reference whatsoever to powerful anti-US sentiment over Palestine and Iraq.
  • All the instigators of Arab Spring uprisings were middle class, well educated youth who mysteriously vanished after 2011.
Nonviolent Regime Change

Bensaada begins by introducing non-violent guru Gene Sharp (see The CIA and Nonviolence), his links with the Pentagon and US intelligence, and his role, as director of the Albert Einstein Institution, in the “color” revolutions.2in Eastern Europe and the attempted coup against Hugo Chavez in 2002.))

The US goal in the Arab Spring revolutions was to replace unpopular despotic dictators while taking care to maintain the autocratic US-friendly infrastructure that had brought them to power. All initially followed the nonviolent precepts Sharp outlines in his 1994 book From Dictatorship to Democracy. In Libya, Syria and Yemen, the US and their allies were clearly prepared to introduce paid mercenaries when their Sharpian “revolutions” failed to produce regime change.

Follow the Money

Relying mainly on Wikileaks cables and the websites of key CIA pass through foundations (which he reproduces in the appendix), Bensaada methodically lists every State Department conference and workshop the Arab Spring heroes attended, the dollar amounts spent on them by the State Department and key “democracy” promoting foundations,
e, Facebook, Twitter and Obama’s 2008 Internet campaign team in training Arab Spring cyperactivists in encryption technologies and social media skills, US embassy visits, and direct encounters with Hillary Clinton, Condoleezza Rice, John McCain, Barack Obama and Serbian trainers from CANVAS (the CIA-backed organization that overthrew Slobodan Milosevic in 2000).

Bensaada focuses most heavily on the Tahrir Square uprising in Egypt. TheWashington Post has estimated approximately 10,000 Egyptians took part in NED and USAID training in social media and nonviolent organizing techniques. For me the most astonishing information in this chapter concerned the role of an Egyptian exile (a former Egyptian policeman named Omar Afifi Suleiman) in coordinating the Tahrir Square protests from his office in Washington DC. According to Wikileaks, NED paid Suleiman a yearly stipend of $200,000+ between 2008-2011.

When Nonviolence Fails

Arabesques$ devotes far more attention to Libya, Syria and Yemen than Bensaada’s first book.

In the section on Libya, Bensaada zeroes in on eleven key US assets who engineered the overthrow of Gaddafi. Some participated in the same State Department trainings as the Middle East opposition activists and instigated nonviolent Facebook and Twitter protests to coincide with the 2011 uprisings in Tunisian and Egypt. Others, in exile, underwent guerrilla training sponsored by the CIA, Mossad, Chad and Saudi Arabia. A few months after Gaddafi’s assassination, some of these same militants would lead Islamic militias attempting to overthrow Assad in Syria.

Between 2005 and 2010, the State Department funneled $12 million to opposition groups opposed to Assad. The US also financed Syrian exiles in Britain to start an anti-government cable TV channel they beamed into Syria.

In the section on Syria, Bensaada focuses on a handful of Syrian opposition activists who received free US training in cyberactivism and nonviolent resistance beginning in 2006. One, Ausama Monajed, is featured in the 2011 film How to Start a Revolution about a visit with Gene Sharp in 2006. Monajed and others worked closely with the US embassy, funded by the Middle East Partnership Initiative (MEPI). This is a State Department program that operates in countries (such as Libya and Syria) where USAID is banned.

In February 2011, these groups posted a call on Twitter and Facebook for a Day of Rage. Nothing happened. When Sharpian techniques failed to produce a sizable nonviolent uprising, as in Libya, they and their allies (Saudi Arabia, Turkey, Qatar and Jordan) were all set up to introduce Islamic mercenaries (many directly from Libya) to declare war on the Assad regime.

Notes

  1. I was astonished to learn that Forum Fikra, a forum for Arab activists working against authoritarian governments, was mainly funded by the Nathan and Esther K Wagner Family Foundation. The latter also funds numerous pro-Israel groups and projects, as well as the Washington Institute for Near East policy (a pro-Israel group with close ties to AIPAC).
  2. The color revolutions were CIA-instigated uprisings that replaced democratically elected pro-Russian governments with equally autocratic governments more friendly to US corporate interests:
    Serbia (2000) – Bulldozer Revolution
    Georgia (2002) – Rose Revolution
    Ukraine (2004) – Orange Revolution
    Kyrgyzstan (2005) – Tulip Revolution
  3. Democracy promoting foundations (as used here, “democracy” is synonymous with capitalism, ie favorable to the interests of US investors). Here are seven of the main ones involved in funding and training Arab Spring activists:
    USAID (US Agency for International Development) – State Department agency charged with economic development and humanitarian aid with a long history of financing destabilization activities, especially in Latin America.
    NED (National Endowment for Democracy) – national organization supported by State Department and CIA funding dedicated to the promotion of democratic institutions throughout the world, primary funder of IRI and NDI.
    IRI (International Republican Institute) – democracy promoting organization linked with the Republican Party, currently chaired by Senator John McCain and funded by NED.
    NDI (National Democratic Institute for International Affairs) – democracy promoting organization linked with the Democratic Party, currently chaired by Madeline Albright and funded by NED.
    OSI (Open Society Institute) – founded by George Soros in 1993 to help fund color revolutions in Eastern Europe. Also contributed major funding to Arab Spring revolutions.
    • Freedom House – US organization that supports nonviolent citizens initiatives in societies were liberty is denied or threatened, financed by USAID, NED and the Soros Foundation.
    CANVAS (Center for Applied Non ViolentAction and Strategies) – center originally founded by the Serbian activists of Otpor who the US funded and trained to over throwSlobodan Milosevic and who were instrumental in training Arab Spring activists. Funded by Freedom House, IRI and OSI.
Dr. Bramhall is a retired American psychiatrist and political refugee in New Zealand. She has published a free, downloadable non-fiction ebook 21st Century Revolution. Her first book The Most Revolutionary Act: Memoir of an American Refugee describes the circumstances that led her to leave the US in 2002. Email her at: [email protected].Read other articles by Stuart Jeanne, or visit Stuart Jeanne’s website.
"
 

hanimmal

Well-Known Member
the specific involvement of Google, Facebook, Twitter and Obama’s 2008 Internet campaign team in training Arab Spring cyperactivists in encryption technologies and social media skills,
From that link you did, it looks like they are saying that the USA was doing stuff for 5 years leading up to the Arab Spring, so that would have been Bush territory,right before the economic collapse of the Great Recession, so it is possible. But I heard someone say something about this before that was pretty spot on.

You have two guys push down old ladies. The one guy pushed her down to steal her purse, the seconds pushed her out of the way of a bus that was going to hit her. Russia is pushing countries vulnerable citizens to elect in the worst possible candidates for their countries so that Russia can gain advantage of them. I am again out of my depth with (recent and old) American intervention around the globe, but generally it seems they have tried to get the not would be dictator's a chance to get in power.
 
Top