Interesting article . . . K v Heuvel implies US behind Ukraine protests

[ProfessorPlum]

http://www.cbsnews.com/stories/2004/11/30/opinion/main658315.shtml

<snip>

On the hypocrisy meter: Consider how the Ukrainian protesters' charges of election fraud have been treated so seriously by Bush and his team, while they dismiss such charges when they are raised here at home. And how exactly does the Bush Administration — which has said that it cannot accept the results of the Ukrainian presidential election as legitimate "because it does not meet international standards" — explain why those international standards don't apply to the U.S.? What right does this Administration have to lecture Ukraine when Bush came to office in a non-violent coup d'etat in 2000, and when numerous reports document that the 2004 election was marred by GOP voter suppression and intimidation tactics, flawed voting equipment and unexplained discrepancies between exit polls and official results in key swing states?

Then there's the reality that the mass street protests in Ukraine are not as sweet or homegrown as they appear. Although it is virtually unreported in our media, the U.S. has been closely involved in funding and training Ukraine's youth protests, and the united opposition.

As Ian Traynor reports in The Guardian, "...while the gains of the orange-bedecked 'chestnut revolution' are Ukraine's, the campaign is an American creation, a sophisticated and brilliantly conceived exercise in Western branding and mass marketing that, in four countries and four years, has been used to try to salvage rigged elections and topple unsavory regimes...Funded and organized by the U.S. government, deploying U.S. consultancies, pollsters, the two big American parties and U.S. non-government organizations...the operation — engineering democracy through the ballot box and civil disobedience — is now so slick that the methods have matured into a template for winning other people's elections."

It was even U.S. funding that organized and paid for key exit polls; those gave the opposition candidate Viktor Yuschenko an 11-point lead and set the stage for charges of vote fraud.

<end snip>

It seems the real pattern here is not Ukrainians taking their democracy more seriously than Americans . . . but rather, just another example of Rove and Bushco making elections meaningless: or that elections mean exactly when they intend them to mean.

To think they would use exit polls to challenge election of a regime they don't like . . . that's chutzpah, and hypocrisy in the extreme.

What do you make of it?

[htuttle]

1. This has been fairly plain and obvious for months

It's not just the US government. I've been getting the impression that George Soros' organization is in there, too (supporting the US-supported candidate).

The two of them played the exact same game in Georgia (the country, not the US state).

[ProfessorPlum]

3. So the game of the future is really to just make all elections

so untrustworthy that they are illegitimate, start a whispering campaign and declare victory right away, like Yushenko and Bush did in 2000.

Huh.

Well, that's one way to take over the world.

[htuttle]

6. Makes you see where the lines are really drawn, too

You'd think that Soros and Bush would be mortal enemies, but when their interests coincide, ie., advancing the interests of Western global finance, they work hand-in-glove.

Same in Haiti. You'd think that Bush and Chirac are diametrically opposed, but when the time came to overthrow Aristide, Bush and France worked as a team to advance the cause of global capital.

[ewagner]

2. Very suspicious

Remember the candidate who won was backed by Russia and the candidate who lost was supported by the US. This seems more and more like a cold war contest between Russia and the US more than anything else.....

I'd like to see the documentation that the US paid for the exit polls.

[cthrumatrix]

4. why doesn't mainstream media report this....that's the story !

Of course it's a US operation....that's how they knew it so fast.

That's why German yand Russia are pissed...they see what is going on.

[bloom]

5. It would be so great to have it backfire

And have people over here think THEY should be as concerned about exit polls, over-votes, absentee ballot duplicate votes...


Seems like the only difference is the protests.

[ProfessorPlum]

7. It really seems like they have figured out how to spin and beat elections

Support the legitimacy of the official results when necessary, support the legitimacy of exit polls when necessary, create enough fog around it that people don't wise up right away.

When will we (Amurcans) catch on?