The revolution televised (Ukraine)

[Briar]

The revolution televised

The western media's view of Ukraine's election is
hopelessly biased

John Laughland


..."The western imagination is now so gripped by its own
mythology of popular revolution that we have become dangerously tolerant of blatant double standards in media reporting. Enormous rallies have been held in Kiev in support of the prime minister, Viktor Yanukovich, but they are not shown on our TV screens: if their existence is admitted, Yanukovich supporters are denigrated as having been "bussed in". The demonstrations in favour of Viktor
Yushchenko have laser lights, plasma screens, sophisticated sound systems, rock concerts, tents to camp in and huge quantities of orange clothing; yet we happily dupe ourselves that they are spontaneous.

"Or again, we are told that a 96% turnout in Donetsk, the
home town of Viktor Yanukovich, is proof of electoral fraud. But apparently turnouts of over 80% in areas which support Viktor Yushchenko are not. Nor are actual scores for Yushchenko of well over 90% in three regions, which Yanukovich achieved only in two. And whereas Yanukovich's final official score was 54%, the western-backed president of Georgia, Mikhail Saakashvili, officially polled 96.24% of the vote in his country in January. The observers who
now denounce the Ukrainian election welcomed that result in Georgia, saying that it "brought the country closer to meeting international standards".

The blindness extends even to the posters which the "pro-democracy" group, Pora, has plastered all over Ukraine, depicting a jackboot crushing a beetle, an allegory of what Pora wants to do to its opponents. Such dehumanisation of enemies has well-known antecedents
- not least in Nazi-occupied Ukraine itself, when pre-emptive war was waged against the Red Plague emanating from Moscow - yet these posters have passed without comment. Pora continues to be presented as an innocent band of students having fun in spite of the fact that - like its sister organisations in Serbia and Georgia, Otpor
and Kmara - Pora is an organisation created and financed by Washington.

..."Voters in Britain and the US have witnessed their governments lying brazenly about Iraq for over a year in the run-up to war, and with impunity. This is an enormous dysfunction in our own so-called democratic system. Our tendency to paint political fantasies on to countries such as Ukraine which are tabula rasa for us, and to present the west as a fairy godmother swooping in to save the day,
is not only a way to salve a guilty conscience about our own political shortcomings; it also blinds us to the reality of continued brazen western intervention in the democratic politics of other countries."

http://www.guardian.co.uk/ukraine/story/0,15569,1360951,00.html

What I would like to see is millions of Americans filling Washington on inauguration day and silencing Bush with a carefully planned "spontaneous" pop concert, complete with laser lights, plasma screens and sophisticated sound systems.

Any chance of that?

[alittlelark]

1. How is it that we can claim to 'spread democracy'

when we are vapid and vacant?

The Ukrainians are PRACTICING democracy. What we are spreading is a virulent corporate virus.

[Briar]

2. Can't grass root Americans use these same techniques to fight it?

The Corporate fixers evidently know how to blow up and sustain a "revolution" - but these methods are transferable. Isn't now the time to take notes and learn from the masters? All the Dems are doing are arguing among themselves and blaming feminists and gays for alienating the "moderate" Americans who, they imagine, would otherwise have voted for them. But real democracy is about grass root power, and here's how to mobilise it, brand it, market it and make it the must-do item on everyone's agenda.

Corporate power is showing us how to defeat it - and we needn't dump the unfashionable minorities along the way either!