Justin Raimondo

EU leaves door open for Ukraine deal after summit

Ukraine Defends Its Sovereignty Against the EU and the new cold warriors

Remember the "Orange Revolution"? - You’ll be forgiven if you don’t: Ukraine’s "color revolution," organized, financed, and planned in the West, blends into the rainbow gallery of failed Western-backed regime-change operations launched in the wake of the Soviet Union’s fall: Yugoslavia (2000), which rid the world of Slobodan Milosevic and yet failed to permanently install a "pro-Western" government; Georgia’s "Rose Revolution" (2003), which ensconced the lunatic Mikhail Saakashvili in power; Kyrgyzstan’s 2005 "Tulip Revolution," which adopted the color pink as its emblematic tint, that ended in a bloody uprising and fueled continuing chaos; Lebanon’s "Cedar Revolution," which tried to impose this template in yet another (2005) attempt to install a "pro-Western" regime with backing from "pro-democracy" groups in the US and Europe. The Cedar-ites succeeded in driving Syria from Lebanon, but failed in their attempt to neutralize Hezbollah and seize power in their own right.

The "Orange Revolution" was different, however, in that it had a powerful narrative that went beyond mere talking points: the charismatic leader of the revolution, Viktor Yushchenko, former Prime Minister under the pro-Soviet government of Leonid Kuchmas, and once head of the Bank of Ukraine. He arose as the West’s "golden boy," a "reformer" lionized by the Western media who was famously "poisoned" with dioxin, a highly unusual method of murdering someone, to say the least – on a par with the mysterious deaths of Russian exile Alexander Litvinenko and Palestinian leader Yasser Arafat by means of polonium poisoning.

On the strength of alleged election fraud on the part of the Ukrainian authorities in favor of Viktor Yanukovich, the pro-government pro-Russian candidate, and his alleged poisoning – purportedly at the hands of Vladimir Putin and the KGB – Yushchenko was elevated to the presidency in a 2004 run-off election. However, the Orange revolutionaries soon started devouring their own, as the movement split into different interest groups aligned with this or that dubious oligarch and the economy continued its downward slide.

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Sharmine Narwani

American national security journalist Jeremy Scahill and leftist British columnist Owen Jones announced recently that they would not share a platform with a Palestinian-Lebanese nun at the Stop The War Coalition’s November 30 UK conference.

Neither Scahill nor Jones provided any reason for their harsh “indictment” of Mother Agnes Mariam, who has worked tirelessly for the past few years on reconciliation in war-torn Syria, where she has lived for two decades.

The journalists – neither of whom have produced any notable body of work on Syria – appear to have followed the lead of a breed of Syria “activists” who have given us doozies like “Assad is about to fall,” “Assad has no support,” “the opposition is peaceful,” “the opposition is unarmed,” “this is a popular revolution,” “the revolution is not foreign-backed,” “there is no Al Qaeda in Syria,” “the dead are mostly civilians,” and other such gems.

For some of these activists, anything short of Syrian President Bashar al-Assad’s departure is no solution of any kind. Mother Agnes Mariam, whose Mussalaha (Reconciliation) movement inside Syria works specifically on mediation, dialogue and the promotion of non-violence, is unmoved by black-and-white solutions: Reconciliation, after all, is a series of political settlements forged on both local and national levels. There are only compromises there, not absolute gain. She doesn’t actually care who leads Syria and who wins or loses, providing the choice comes from a Syrian majority.

Yet the smear “Assad apologist” persists in following Mother Agnes on her visits to foreign capitals to gain support for Massalaha and its methods. It puts her at risk on the ground in Syria and inhibits her ability to open communications with those who would otherwise welcome the relief she brings.

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