Some anti-Syrian commentators say that the demonstrators were acting in conscious imitation of those who prosecuted the “orange revolution” in Ukraine.[1] The similarities are certainly legion, especially the lovely idea that “the people” would come out onto the streets in support of a billionaire, as they supposedly did when they held aloft pictures of Rafik Hariri or chanted the name of gas oligarch Yulia Timoshenko in Kiev. So does this mean that a “Cedar Revolution” being prepared in Lebanon, modelled on the one in Ukraine? The spiritual leader of Hizb Allah, Nasr Allah, thinks not. He told the demonstrators, “Lebanon is not Ukraine.” Reassuring words—except when you recall that the Ukrainian government told its people for a year that Ukraine was not Georgia.

It was striking that many of the pro-Syrian banners in the Hizb Allah march said “No to foreign interference”. In other words, they consider that main interference is American, not Syrian. How can this be? A key was inadvertently given by Radio Free Europe, the US propaganda and news outlet. In an article discussing the chances of an “orange revolution” in Moldova (the former Bessarabia, between Romania and Ukraine), columnist Ilian Cashu explained the specificities of the Ukrainian situation.[2] Intriguingly, he claimed that the outgoing President Kuchma had “lost control of the election process” and that he therefore had to resort to rigging the results. Leaving aside the question whether vote-rigging was proved, how can Cashu say Kuchma had lost control if he fiddled the results?

The answer to this question is key to understanding how US-backed televised revolutions operate. Stalin’s famous dictum— Stalin’s famous dictum— “It is not who votes that counts, it’s who counts the votes” —has been amended: it should now read, “It’s not who votes that counts, it’s who pulls the strings from behind the scenes.” As Cashu himself explains, “outside involvement in Ukraine was significant, with the West firmly siding with the opposition.” He then writes: “Prior to the second round of elections, Ukraine had already met the Leninist criteria for a successful revolution; i.e., the inability of the country’s rulers to govern and the unwillingness of the majority of the population to accept their rule.” (It is always reassuring to know that the analysts and cheerleaders of the New World Order know who their ideological lodestars are.) ~John Laughland