The US-funded CANVAS, “Otpor” who helped overthrow the government of Serbia offered revolution consultancy to "Arab Spring" movements

Potent News Interview with Michel Chossudovsky

 Another organization which is OTPOR! OTPOR! was an organization involved in Serbia in the year 2000. It was not a pro-democracy organization, it was actually an organization which shunted the 2000 elections in which Kostunica, who was the runner-up together with Milosevic, would have won in any event. But they prevented the second round of elections from occurring. And they essentially established the conditions for regime change. That was a colored revolution.

 

The Arab Spring, Islam and oil wealth

A poster of Army chief Abdel Fattah al-Sisi adorns the wall of a shop in Cairo's Gamaliya district, where he spent his childhood, Jan. 21, 2014. Three years after the "Arab Spring" toppled Hosni Mubarak, a secretive general with a cult-like following is expected to win Egypt's presidency.  

 

 

Both the western and eastern parts of the Arab world today seem quite different than three years ago, when the so-called Arab Spring started. Several regimes are gone and have been replaced by new forces that are trying to reformulate their countries’ “regimes” with varying degrees of success.

Arab Spring fallout fuels rise in Mediterranean smuggling

By Peter Apps

File - The U.S. Navy helps rescue 128 men adrift in an inflatable raft in the Mediterranean Sea on Oct. 16.

LONDON: The chaotic fallout of the “Arab Spring” is fueling a surge in the smuggling of drugs, weapons and people across the Mediterranean, and cash-strapped regional powers are struggling to respond.

Last month, European leaders in Brussels turned down calls from southern European states already hard hit by the eurzone crisis for additional support to tackle record numbers of migrants attempting to cross to the continent in frequently perilous journeys arranged by people smugglers.

The Economic Blunders Behind the Arab Revolutions

by David P. Goldman

Sometimes economies can't be fixed after decades of statist misdirection, and the people simply get up and go. Since the debt crisis of the 1980s, 10 million poor Mexicans—victims of a post-revolutionary policy that kept rural Mexicans trapped on government-owned collective farms—have migrated to the United States. Today, Egyptians and Syrians face economic problems much worse than Mexico's, but there is nowhere for them to go. Half a century of socialist mismanagement has left the two Arab states unable to meet the basic needs of their people, with economies so damaged that they may be past the point of recovery in our lifetimes.

Democracy in retreat! So much for "Arab Spring"!

Over the past two years, the world's attention has been captured by previously unimaginable -- even rapturous -- changes throughout parts of the Arab world, Africa, and Asia, where political openings have been born in some of the most repressive and unlikely societies on Earth. In Burma, where only six years ago a thuggish junta ordered the shooting of red-robed monks in the streets, the past two years have seen a formal, and seemingly real, transition to a civilian democratic government. In Tunisia, Egypt, and Libya, longtime autocrats were toppled by popular revolutions, and citizens in these states seemed at last to be enjoying the trappings of freedom.

Arab Islamists and the Turkish model

It has become quite fashionable these days to be cynical about the prospects of democracy in the Arab world.

Many international observers argue that the Arab Spring has turned into an Islamist winter. They focus on the violent clashes in the streets of Tunis and Cairo, the frustration about unmet expectations of more jobs and especially the authoritarian practices of the ruling Islamists.

Tunisia’s revolution annexed

by Serge Halimi

Almost everyone in Tunisia believes that the benefits of the revolution are in danger. Perhaps from a “secular” opposition that refuses to admit that the conservative An-Nahda Islamists were the clear winners in the National Constituent Assembly elections in October 2011. Or from the An-Nahda Islamists, who want to use their victory to infiltrate the state from within, while exploiting the fear inspired by the Salafist militias. Or simply from a political circus reminiscent of the Fourth French Republic, with parliamentary alliances breaking up as soon as a member was not appointed, big surprises forgotten next day, innumerable tiny groups endlessly redefining their position. Meanwhile, mining production is down, tourism is shaky, insecurity is worsening and hundreds of young Tunisians have left to join the jihadis fighting in Syria, Algeria and Mali.

Joseph S. Nye: The Information Revolution Gets Political

NEW DELHI – The second anniversary of the “Arab Spring” in Egypt was marked by riots in Tahrir Square that made many observers fear that their optimistic projections in 2011 had been dashed. Part of the problem is that expectations had been distorted by a metaphor that described events in short-run terms. If, instead of “Arab Spring,” we had spoken of “Arab revolutions,” we might have had more realistic expectations. Revolutions unfold over decades, not seasons or years.

Illustration by Paul Lachine

Consider the French Revolution, which began in 1789. Who would have predicted that within a decade, an obscure Corsican soldier would lead French armies to the banks of the Nile, or that the Napoleonic Wars would disrupt Europe until 1815?

Why Has the Arab Spring Skipped Central Asia (So Far)?

During his official visit to Uzbekistan in January, Lamberto Zannier, Secretary-General of the Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development, discussed the human rights situation in the country with government and civil society representatives. Uzbekistan is not the only Central Asian country that periodically appears on the radar screen of human rights organizations and faces criticism from international organizations and western governments. Nor is it the only country in the region that faces socio-economic challenges similar to those of many Arab Spring countries. In fact, soon after the uprisings began in 2011, academic papers began to ask ¹ if the uprisings would spread to the region.

While there are socio-economic similarities between North Africa and Central Asia, most conclude that the historical circumstances and prevailing conditions are significantly different, making revolution unlikely. So, have the governments of the region been successful in thwarting a “Central Asian Spring,” are we comparing the incomparable, or is this just the calm before the storm?

The Future of the Arab-Muslim World

By Johan Galtung

In this column, Johan Galtung, Rector of the TRANSCEND Peace University, writes about the Middle East-North Africa - MENA -, an Arab-Muslim region with a growing Jewish island in its midst. It was colonised for over four centuries by the Sunni Ottoman Turks and for the last half century by the secular West, England-Italy-France -- and is now under Israeli colonialism and U.S. imperialism. Galtung is author of "Peace Economics: from a Killing to a Living Economy" (www.transcend.org/tup)

LIVERPOOL, Feb 4 2013 (IPS) - The Middle East-North Africa – MENA — is Arab-Muslim with a growing Jewish island in its midst. It was colonised for over four centuries by the Sunni Ottoman Turks, then the secular West, United Kingdom-France-Italy — for half a century and is now under Israeli colonialism and U.S. imperialism.

Johan Galtung

The latter two have controlled MENA through dictatorships, condoning violence and corruption as long as they support U.S.-Israel policies in the area. The Arab awakening is against the violence in favour of democracy, against corruption in favour of growth and jobs, and against U.S.-Israel domination. There is also a Muslim awakening — to believe that Islam tolerates imposed secularism is incredibly naive. But there are many Islams, like there are multiple Christianities and Judaisms.

How does the U.S.-Israel react, and what would be a positive reaction to their reaction — keeping in mind that this is old colonial territory?

Jihadists’ Surge in North Africa Reveals Grim Side of Arab Spring

As the uprising closed in around him, the Libyan dictator Col. Muammar el-Qaddafi warned that if he fell, chaos and holy war would overtake North Africa. “Bin Laden’s people would come to impose ransoms by land and sea,” he told reporters. “We will go back to the time of Redbeard, of pirates, of Ottomans imposing ransoms on boats.”

In recent days, that unhinged prophecy has acquired a grim new currency. In Mali, French paratroopers arrived this month to battle an advancing force of jihadi fighters who already control an area twice the size of Germany. In Algeria, a one-eyed Islamist bandit organized the brazen takeover of an international gas facility, taking hostages that included more than 40 Americans and Europeans.

Militant jihadists’ rise in Arab world imperils region’s stability

The proliferation of militant jihadi groups across the Arab world is posing a new threat to the region’s stability, presenting fresh challenges to emerging democracies and undermining prospects for a smooth transition in Syria should the regime fall.

From Egypt’s Sinai desert to eastern Libya and the battlegrounds of Syria’s civil war, the push for greater democracy made possible by revolts in the Middle East and North Africa has also unleashed new freedoms that militants are using to preach, practice and recruit.

The 'Arab Spring' and other American seasons

The dubbing of the uprisings in the Arab world by western governments and media as an "Arab Spring" (it is said that the American journal Foreign Policy coined the term first) was not simply an arbitrary or even seasonal choice of nomenclature, but rather a US strategy of controlling their aims and goals.

There have been a number of uprisings in the past several decades in the Arab World, foremost among them the Egyptian uprising in January 1977 against President Sadat's austerity measures, which Sadat dubbed an "uprising of thieves" and the West dubbed "bread riots", the Sudanese uprising against the US-backed dictator Ja'far Numeiri in 1985, and the Palestinian uprisings of 1987-1993 and 2000-2004 against Israeli occupation (which brought the word "intifada" into global usage), but none of these merited the term "Spring".