Mar 10, 2006
And Now the Denim Revolution (Belarus)
Readers will likely remember the Rose Revolution (Georgia) and the Orange Revolution (Ukraine). Now it seems we’re about to experience the Denim Revolution in Belarus. Not surprisingly, this is the handiwork of the American, British, German and Polish governments and tax-supported non-profits.
Go here for Jonathan Steele’s account of how the U.S. and European countries are blantantly interfering in the Belarussian election.
"… there is a huge campaign by foreign governments to intervene in the Belarussian poll, even more controversially than in Ukraine in 2004. While Russia is hardly engaged in this election, Europe and the US are pumping in money. According to the New York Times, cash is being smuggled from the US National Endowment for Democracy, Britain's Westminster Foundation and the German foreign ministry directly to Khopits, a network of young anti-Lukashenko activists."
"Some of this foreign money will be used to fund street protests promised by opposition activists if Lukashenko is declared the winner. They have already dubbed it the 'denim revolution', giving supporters little bits of the cloth as symbols to copy the successful demonstrations in Ukraine and Georgia.
"But why is the US, with the EU in its wake, so concerned about Belarus? Is it because Belarus stands out as the only ex-Soviet country that maintains majority state ownership of the economy and gets good results? Is ideological deviance forbidden? (The IMF, while admitting Lukashenko's economic success, calls it 'ultimately unsustainable', being based on cheap Russian energy imports and wage increases that outstrip productivity growth.) Is the problem Lukashenko's independence, his friendliness to Russia and resistance to Nato, his abrasive, don't-push-me-around style? As one Minsk resident put it to me, he's a 'Slavic Castro'."
Go here for Jonathan Steele’s account of how the U.S. and European countries are blantantly interfering in the Belarussian election.
"… there is a huge campaign by foreign governments to intervene in the Belarussian poll, even more controversially than in Ukraine in 2004. While Russia is hardly engaged in this election, Europe and the US are pumping in money. According to the New York Times, cash is being smuggled from the US National Endowment for Democracy, Britain's Westminster Foundation and the German foreign ministry directly to Khopits, a network of young anti-Lukashenko activists."
"Some of this foreign money will be used to fund street protests promised by opposition activists if Lukashenko is declared the winner. They have already dubbed it the 'denim revolution', giving supporters little bits of the cloth as symbols to copy the successful demonstrations in Ukraine and Georgia.
"But why is the US, with the EU in its wake, so concerned about Belarus? Is it because Belarus stands out as the only ex-Soviet country that maintains majority state ownership of the economy and gets good results? Is ideological deviance forbidden? (The IMF, while admitting Lukashenko's economic success, calls it 'ultimately unsustainable', being based on cheap Russian energy imports and wage increases that outstrip productivity growth.) Is the problem Lukashenko's independence, his friendliness to Russia and resistance to Nato, his abrasive, don't-push-me-around style? As one Minsk resident put it to me, he's a 'Slavic Castro'."