While Baltimore burns, the city has proven itself to be yet another staging ground in a long line of scenes involving “violent protests,” riots, and racial violence following an incident concerning police brutality, real or otherwise.Īlthough the issues that have set off the spark in most of these protests were entirely legitimate, government agencies, foundations, organizations, and NGOs immediately swooped in to divert the protests into racially charged fit throwing and often violent riots. Please leave a tip or answer the Exit Poll.By Brandon Turbeville, Activist : See our last posts on Tunisia and the WikiLeaks scandals The notion that the Tunisians needed WikiLeaks to know they were oppressed, or needed George Soros to be able to organize a revolution, is deeply condescending. Of course there has to be a white guy behind the Tunisian revolution, right? Well, no. Shall we become the victims of Facebook and Kleenex and YouTube? Any useless person, any liar, any drunkard, anyone under the influence, anyone high on drugs can talk on the Internet, and you read what he writes and you believe it. Since a Wiki-cable disclosure that his favorite Ukrainian “nurse” accompanies him everywhere, Qaddafi has had a special grudge against WikiLeaks, which he has dubbed “Kleenex.” The Guardian quotes some more of his anti-WikiLeak rant:Įven you, my Tunisian brothers, you may be reading this Kleenex and empty talk on the Internet. Qaddafi warned of the dark designs of “WikiLeaks which publishes information written by lying ambassadors in order to create chaos.” The New York Times’ The Lede blog notes that Col. Moammar Qaddafi, who we may imagine has every reason to fear a spread of revolutionary contagion in North Africa, has been quick to scapegoat WikiLeaks. In private, regime opponents mock her even those close to the government express dismay at her reported behavior. Tunisians intensely dislike, even hate, First Lady Leila Trabelsi and her family. Even average Tunisians are now keenly aware of it, and the chorus of complaints is rising.
And, corruption in the inner circle is growing. Increasingly, they rely on the police for control and focus on preserving power. They tolerate no advice or criticism, whether domestic or international. Tunisia is a police state, with little freedom of expression or association, and serious human rights problems…. The New Yorker provides a sample, from a July 17, 2009, cable: WikiLeaks apparently released a mess of typically unflattering US diplomatic cables on the Zine el-Abidine Ben Ali regime. If Soros isn’t behind the Tunisian revolution, it must be Julian Assange. KR Bolton asks in Foreign Policy Journal: “Tunisian Revolt: Another Soros/NED Jack-Up?” But his screed makes no mention of George Soros or National Endowment for Democracy programs in Tunisia-only in Georgia, Ukraine and Kyrgyzstan. Requisite Sorosphobobia is already in evidence. But he notes the differences between Tunisia and Georgia (“Rose”), Ukraine (“Orange”) and Kyrgyzstan (“Tulip”). Thomas Carothers of the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace (proudly billing itself “A Global Think-Tank”) notes the suddenness with which the moniker “Jasmine Revolution” has been adopted (and mostly by intellectuals abroad, not protesters in Tunis). The neocon conspiracies can’t be far behind now.
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