Last month, a day after Donald Trump's inauguration, the anti-Trump movement got a new symbol: the pink 'p****hat', worn by protesters at the Women's March. Russian observers, well-acquainted with the color revolution technology that the US once meticulously exported to Eastern Europe, are surprised to see the formula returning home to the US.
Boomerang Effect: US's Color Revolution Formula Comes Home to Roost
https://sputniknews.com/us/201702051050375104-us-color-revolution-danger-russian-analysts/
On Thursday, Sputnik reported on billionaire financier George Soros' extensive secret spending on special interest groups meant to help keep the global anti-Trump protests going. "The source of funding for this unrest is important to note," Thursday's report emphasized, given that "organizations affiliated with the billionaire have been deeply connected to color revolutions and political uprisings across the globe, including the Arab Spring."
On Saturday, tens of thousands of protesters took to the streets of major cities across the US for the third weekend in a row, condemning Trump's agenda, his executive orders and his cabinet appointees. Protests rocked New York City, Washington, D.C., San Francisco and Los Angeles, with smaller demonstrations held in other cities and at US embassies in other countries.
Russian observers, well-acquainted with State Department's use of color revolution technology in countries near Russia in the past, have marked their surprise in seeing some of the formula's well-known methods being deployed in the US itself.
In a recent op-ed for RIA Novosti, Radio Sputnik contributor Svetlana Kalmikova suggested that when "one looks through the images of the fervent anti-Trump protests, one unwittingly starts to search among the pink caps for the severe-looking lady handing out cookies. And who knows, maybe she's already there among the masses."
On a serious note, the journalist explained that the protest actions against the democratically-elected US government are starting to look more and more reminiscent of a well-organized campaign, and welcomed the US into the worldwide fraternity of countries subjected to the formula of color revolutions.
"Serbia, Georgia, Kyrgyzstan, Ukraine, Lebanon, and the 'Arab Spring' in Tunisia, Egypt, Libya and Syria – the technology has been well tested," Kalmikova wrote.
"First, an issue or incident is chosen. In the case of the US, it's Trump's decree on immigration. The next step is to attract maximum attention to the issue from society, so that it becomes a headline in the news. And here the internal US issue is blown up by global media. Politicians from the EU, Asia and the Middle East rush to comment on the issue with conviction, and the US press eagerly quotes even those people whom they paid little attention to only yesterday."
"To drive their point home," the journalist added, "Trump's executive order is called 'anti-Muslim', and claims are made that it infringes on US rights and freedoms, and contradicts Western values, even if the issue is really about the threat of terrorism and national security."
And so, Kalmikova noted, the country "is filled with thousands of disgruntled representatives of the 'creative' liberal class, and they take to the streets, the same way it happened in other countries. Again, it's all presented as a spontaneous process…In reality, everything is well-orchestrated. The crowds are well-organized. Bright 'revolutionary' symbols are used for the purpose of separating friend from foe. They started with pink caps. In the future, something else may be added. The crowds are warmed up by opinion makers, including movie stars, musicians, directors, etc. All of this is very familiar."
The next step," the journalist explained, "is the formation of the leaders of the protest movement on the political level."
"It's no accident," she noted, "that former President Barack Obama expressed his support for the protesters, and added that he was 'heartened by the level of engagement taking place in communities across the country.'"
After that, Kalmikova wrote that "traditionally, the next step is to issue threats against the legitimate authorities, and demand that they leave office."
In his own op-ed, political commentator Alexei Pankin recalled that from
the first days following Trump's election, "efforts began to try to deprive him of his victory, from charges of electoral fraud, to calls for impeachment as an 'agent of the Kremlin'…After the inauguration, his opponents began murmuring something about the 25th Amendment of the US Constitution, which deals with mechanism to replace a president in the event that he is unable to fulfill his duties."
"All of this is unprecedented in American history," Pankin emphasized, and points to "classic signs of a color revolution, with dissatisfaction with election results by the active part of the losing side's electorate mixing with an elite conspiracy."
Trump, the analyst recalled, faces opposition from the "globalist-oriented part of both the Democratic and Republican establishment, from intelligence agencies, NGOs and, with a few exceptions, leading media. Influential world powers, including the leadership of the EU, Germany and France, are also on their side. We all remember the immensely important role played by international actors in the color revolutions in Yugoslavia, Georgia and Ukraine."
That it would be more correct to call Trump's election the 'revolution', since he spoke against the party of power, is another matter altogether," Pankin wrote. Still, with that in mind, "any attempt to deprive him of his victory should really be defined as a 'counterrevolution'…"
The Democrats, the observer noted, lost their chance at victory in the elections when they failed to nominate their own 'revolutionary' candidate, Vermont Senator Bernie Sanders. "Trump and Sanders are two sides of the same coin. Both are anti-globalists, both see solving internal problems as their main priority, both challenged the ruling parties and appealed to the under-privileged sections of the population," Pankin suggested.
Now, Russian observers warn, the biggest danger stems from the next step in the color revolution playbook: a provocation against police or other law enforcement agents, for example by 'unprovoked' violence by police against protesters which serves to further galvanize protesters' anti-government moods, and results in more demonstraters joining in.
This final step was most vividly (and brutally) demonstrated in Kiev in February 2014, when snipers (whose identity remains a mystery to this day) fired on protesters and police alike. Protest leaders then accused the government of extreme brutality, authorities lost their nerve, and a coup d'état followed. Hopefully, US officials are aware of the dangers of such an eventuality, and won't allow things to reach that point.
Despite media representing protests against US President Donald Trump as grassroots spontaneous uprisings, there is actually a significant amount of money being spent on special interest groups to keep the disruptions happening.
Billionaire Financier Soros Continues to Fund Anti-Trump Protests
https://sputniknews.com/us/201702021050292146-soros-anti-trump-protests/
As we previously reported, billionaire financier George Soros has provided funding to at least 56 of the “partner” organizations, including National Resource Defense Council and Planned Parenthood, on the Women’s March on DC. MoveOn.org has also been consistently organizing and calling for protests, and shocker, is also financed by Soros.
[...]
The source of funding for this unrest is important to note, as organizations affiliated with the billionaire have been deeply connected to color revolutions and political uprisings across the globe, including Arab Spring. This point has led many to question what his end goal is for the US, where heavily-funded protests are raging on over a fair and free election.
“Soros is effectively the puppet-master pulling most of the strings in Kiev. Soros Foundation’s Ukraine branch, International Renaissance Foundation (IRF), has been involved in Ukraine since 1989. His IRF doled out more than $100 million to Ukrainian NGOs two years before the fall of the Soviet Union, creating the preconditions for Ukraine’s independence from Russia in 1991. Soros also admitted to financing the 2013-2014 Maidan Square protests that brought the current government into power,” a report in the New Eastern Outlook journal explained in 2015.
These “democracy-building” projects have been used, much like the Clinton Foundation in Haiti, to line Soros’ own pockets.
Make no mistake that the events you’re seeing transpire nationwide are being orchestrated in part by a billionaire political elite class that is looking to subvert the will of the American people by attempting to foment a new American revolution. Soros’ formula has been duplicated in numerous nations, and it looks as if he now has the US in his sights as the next target,” the Free Thought Project wrote of Soros meddling in November 2016.
US Senator Bernie Sanders called President Trump a fraud and an authoritarian in an interview February 5, and said he hoped mainstream conservatives would stand up to him.
Trump is a 'Fraud' and an Authoritarian - Bernie Sanders
https://sputniknews.com/us/201702061050378298-sanders-trump-fraud-authoritarian/
"This guy is a fraud," Sanders told CNN's State of the Union.
This guy ran for president of the United States saying, 'I, Donald Trump, I'm going to take on Wall Street — these guys are getting away with murder.' Then suddenly, he appoints all these billionaires," Sanders said.
"He told us- in fact, it's in the Republican platform, he's going to bring back Glass-Steagall, we're going to be dividing up commercial banks from investment banks to insurance companies. Then he has all of the big Wall Street guys on his side, and now he is working for Wall Street." (The Glass-Steagall Act, repealed under Bill Clinton, separated commercial and investment banks.)
Gary Cohn, who heads Trump's National Economic Council, was a Goldman Sachs executive; his pick for treasury secretary, Steve Mnuchin, also comes from the multinational financial group that took billions from the US government in its 2008 bailout of "too big to fail" banks.
Trump on February 3 signed an order asking federal regulators to come back to him in 120 days with suggestions on how to change US legislation to allow more money to flow to businesses; Sanders predicted that he would "dismantle legislation that protects consumers."
I think he is going to sell out the middle class and the working class of this country," Sanders said.
Trump ran as the only Republican promising not to cut Social Security, Medicare and Medicaid, US public assistance programs, but that the makeup of his advisers suggests he'll do exactly that, Sanders said. He had voters fooled.
"He is a good showman, I will give you that — he is a good TV guy."
Sanders, Democratic primary rival of eventual nominee Hillary Clinton, ran a campaign focused on economic inequality in the US and on challenging corporate power. Trump pretended he would do that, too, he said.
"You have a president who, I think, in a totally fraudulent campaign said that, 'I'm going to stand up for the working people,'" the senator elaborated.
"Look at his Cabinet: we've never had more billionaires in a Cabinet in the history of this country. Look at his appointees. These are people who are going to go after the needs of working families, the elderly, the children, the sick, and the poor. That is called hypocrisy."
Citing the president's habit of tarring all media as "fake news," and of consistently putting himself and his opinions as the final authority, Sanders predicted that mainstream conservatives would soon find themselves in a very difficult position and hoped they would stand up to Trump's authoritarianism.
"We are not another Trump enterprise," he said. "It's called the United States of America. We're not a business run by Mr. Trump." 
