Like many, I am sure, I have been following the "revolution" in the Ukraine — through both conventional media and the blogs, Ukraine Revolution and Command Post. For a Polish perspective, see here and here. And if it’s just photos you want, go to this link.
Fascinatingly (link via Ross Mayfield), the Ukrainian democratic uprising is American-led, it would seem:
But while the gains of the orange-bedecked "chestnut revolution" are Ukraine's, the campaign is an American creation, a sophisticated and brilliantly conceived exercise in western branding and mass marketing that, in four countries in four years, has been used to try to salvage rigged elections and topple unsavoury regimes.
Funded and organised by the US government, deploying US consultancies, pollsters, diplomats, the two big American parties and US non-government organisations, the campaign was first used in Europe in Belgrade in 2000 to beat Slobodan Milosevic at the ballot box.
Richard Miles, the US ambassador in Belgrade, played a key role. And by last year, as US ambassador in Tbilisi, he repeated the trick in Georgia, coaching Mikhail Saakashvili in how to bring down Eduard Shevardnadze.
Ten months after the success in Belgrade, the US ambassador in Minsk, Michael Kozak, a veteran of similar operations in central America, notably in Nicaragua, organised a near identical campaign to try to defeat the Belarus hardman, Alexander Lukashenko.
That one failed. "There will be no Kostunica in Belarus," the Belarus president declared, referring to the victory in Belgrade. But experience gained in Serbia, Georgia and Belarus has been invaluable in plotting to beat the regime of Leonid Kuchma in Kiev.
Meanwhile, back in the UK, civil rights are at sixes and sevens. Today's Sunday Telegraph carried an astonishing story about a man being arrested in Central London for carrying a Victorinox Swiss multi-tool (a potential terrorist, clearly) and, earlier this year, the young British journalist and blogger, Azeem Azhar, reflected:
Tony Blair is going to announce a five-year plan which will mark the end of the "1960s liberal consensus" on law and order. [BBC].
And the Tories are no better:
Countless millions of people up and down the country are fed up with being assailed by foul language, bad behaviour, the burning of things, and then, apparently, a penalty that is more of a badge of honour for the culprits.
The PM tells us that people want "rules, order and proper behaviour" which sounds like a reactionary crowd pleaser to me and it contrasts sharply with the open-minded consultation on prostitution.
I'm not sure if I want rules, order and proper behaviour. I am certain that I want the maximum liberty consistent with similar liberties for others.
I am certain I want a rational and analytic approach to legislation rather than an emotional and political kludge. (For example, might own-race policing be better at reducing property crime than mixed race policing? Shouldn't we legalise drugs ?)
My craw is burning by the increasing conservatism of our so-called tolerant Government. The world is not going to hell in any hand cart, except the one pushed by Messrs Bush, Blair and Blunkett.
Political idealism seems in short supply, but I would like to celebrate here the work of Clive Stafford Smith, a former pupil of the school I teach at (and once its head boy), and a light in dark times. He featured on last week's BBC-broadcast programme, Desert Island Discs:
Clive Stafford Smith spent more than twenty-five years representing people on death row (in the US). He’s saved hundreds of lives and counts his clients among his friends. He says his work is his calling – one he was drawn to after writing an essay on capital punishment while at school. Initially he thought it was a history essay and was appalled to find the death sentence was still in use. He planned to become a campaigning journalist, but a summer spent meeting prisoners on death row inmates convinced him that he would be able to achieve more by representing them directly. So he trained in law and set up his own legal practice to enable him to do so.
Where are tomorrow's visionaries going to come from? Are today's schools and UK examination syllabuses the right seed-bed for the kind of leadership needed to create a peaceful and equitable world?
