Armenia: #ElectricYerevan protests

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Never think the ongoing Armenian demonstrations have ended----

'Electric Yerevan' Insists No One Has Pulled Plug On Armenia Protests. #electricyerevan

http://www.rferl.org/content/armenia.../27108667.html …

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http://euromaidanpress.com/2015/07/0...shmelyev-says/

Post-Soviet states entered second anti-communist revolutionary period, Shmelyev says

2015/07/02 • Analysis & Opinion, Politics

The post-Soviet world is entering its own version of 1968, Aleksandr Shmelyev says, “and everything taking place in Armenia, Belarus, Moldova, Ukraine, Russia and so on can be conceived as a wave of ‘secondary anti-communist revolutions,’ as attempts to put the authorities under the control of society.”

In 1968, 23 years after the end of World War II, “a new generation of Europeans who were not satisfied with the post-war level of civil rights and freedoms appeared,” the Moscow commentator says. Now, 24 years after the end of the USSR, a new generation has appeared with the same anger and the same goal.

“Despite 24 years of a divided history and anything but simple relations among the post-Soviet states, Shmelyev says, civil society encounters in them approximately one and the same set of problems.” Among these are “weakly developed democratic institutions, an appalling level of corruption, unjust laws, the absence of an independent judicial system, insane income differentiation, the treatment of the political opposition as ‘enemies,’ intolerance to minorities, and torture in the police and penal system.”

At the same time, however, he continues, over this almost quarter of a century, “under conditions of relative freedom and inclusion in the globalized world have appeared a sufficient number of citizens who disagree with such arrangements but do not have the opportunity to change them by political means.”

According to Shmelyev, “the Internet is allowing those protesting from Mensk, Kyiv, Moscow, Yerevan and so on to be in constant contact with each other, to share experiences and to support one another.” In the post-Soviet space, this is facilitated by the fact that there is as yet no real language barrier: most of these communications are in Russian.

“If one can speak about ‘a Russian spring’ in the social-political sense, then only in this context as a series of mass protests against post-communist authoritarian hybrid systems. Then analogies with ‘the Arab spring’ appear completely logical.”
Consequently, “if one can speak about ‘a Russian spring’ in the social-political sense, then only in this context as a series of mass protests against post-communist authoritarian hybrid systems. Then, analogies with ‘the Arab spring’ appear completely logical,” the Moscow commentator says.

“No one knows,” he says, how the current round of events in Yerevan will end. “In Tunisia, Egypt, Libya, and Ukraine, street protests grew into revolutions; in Thailand and Belarus, they were harshly suppressed… in Turkey and Russia, the brakes were applied and a reaction followed; and in Syria, things descended into a long civil war.”

But if one considers these phenomena from a global perspective and not from a conspiratorial geopolitical one, “it is almost obvious that the future of each of the post-Soviet republics lies with those who are now protesting in the streets.” They have the advantage over those in power generationally and in terms of education.

“It is almost obvious that the future of each of the post-Soviet republics lies with those who are now protesting in the streets.” They have the advantage over those in power generationally and in terms of education.
And consequently, Shmelyev says, “sooner or later, Lukashenka, Nazarbayev, Putin, Sargsyan, Aliyev, and Karimov will pass into history together with the systems they have created. The question involves only when and at what cost in victims.”

Shmelyev’s optimism comes placing events in the post-Soviet states within a broader context (there have been mass civic protests in almost 80 countries since the beginning of the global crisis in 2008) and from three characteristics the post-Soviet cases share with the others.

First of all, he says, “contemporary protests do not need leaders and organizers.” Consequently, parties and trade unions play very little role in them and “cannot take them under control.” Horizontal ties are more important for the protesters, and they are suspicious of any vertical organization.

Indeed, he continues, “the agora of modern times does not need representation; its strength is in the absence of leaders whom the powers that be can so easily intimidate, deceive, buy off or isolate.”

Second, those protesting are not supporters of any particular ideology. They may “advance some specific demands,” but “at a deeper level they are typically moved by a global dissatisfaction with the authorities whom they view as backward and out of date.”

And third, Shmelyev says, this means that “the occasion for mass civic protests in our time can be almost anything,” including what many might think are minor or marginal issues. That makes these protests “practically impossible” either to predict or prevent, and it also means there will continue to be more of them.

[OUTLAW 09]

Another small victory for #ElectricYerevan
Armenia opens probe into police violence against protesters


http://news.yahoo.com/armenia-opens-...184517328.html …

[OUTLAW 09]

The Armenian pol reality. Investigative journalists, not law enforcement/courts expose corruption #ElectricYerevan

https://twitter.com/hetq_trace/statu...45480501694464 …

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Is Armenia trying to provoke a response????

ElectricYerevan: The employers dismissed many of the #Baghramyan Avenue protesters. http://bit.ly/1CSG0Ay pic.twitter.com/OCrnJHO0lH

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Armenians have lost faith in Russia @AJEnglish

http://aje.io/4xzw

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http://windowoneurasia2.blogspot.com...m-victory.html … pic.twitter.com/9zjrx2a3dW

Saturday, June 27, 2015

In Armenia, Moscow Seeks Phantom Victory over Phantom Color Revolution, Latynina Says

Paul Goble

Staunton, June 27 –

Many Russian analysts have suggested that the Kremlin views what is going on in Armenia as a color revolution because it is incapable of thinking about any protests in the former Soviet republics as anything but the actions of foreign governments in general and the United States in particular.

But Yuliya Latynina suggests there may be another factor at work here: Moscow is only to ready to declare some event as the beginning of a color revolution so that when passions cool, the Russian leadership will be in a position to claim that it has won another victory over the West and thus impress the Russian population (novayagazeta.ru/columns/68983.html).

Street demonstrations have now spread to five cities in Armenia, Latynina wrote in a commentary published in “Novaya gazeta” yesterday, but she argues that these protests are “typical for a post-Soviet country” in which people are being forced by the market to pay more for electricity than they expected to at a time when they are being increasingly impoverished.

Indeed, she suggests, “this is a classic post-Soviet contradiction. On the one hand, there is the habitual view of the poor population that electricity doesn’t cost anything; and on the other, there is the market economy” and monopoly ownership of electric power generators combined with a collapse of industry thus forcing the population to bear even more of the real cost.

In time, “the impoverished population must pay just as much [for electricity] as people do in developed countries.” But the process of shifting from expectations inherited from Soviet times to that condition inevitably creates problems and generates protests as has happened in many former communist countries in the past and is occurring in Armenia now.
In those countries where there is still some industry functioning, firms can bear some of the higher costs of energy. That is the case in the Russian Federation, Latynina says. But in others where industry has collapsed as is the case in Armenia, there is no one around to pay the higher costs except the increasingly poor population.

That not surprisingly sparks anger and sometimes demonstrations, the Moscow commentator says, but “these protests do not have any particular political subtext.” The problem here is that “even without such subtexts, [those like in Armenia now] hit Russia in a special way.”

On the one hand, she points out, Armenian President Serzh Sargyan is “one of the few oriented toward the Kremlin.” And on the other, Russian firms own the Armenian power producers. Those two things alone are sufficient, Latynina observes, to set the conspiracy theorists in the Russian capital to working overtime.

The Russian reaction is in fact the most instructive thing about the current situation. “In that total paranoia in which the ruling circles of Russia live, there is no explanation for anything that happens in the world besides the machinations of the United States.” Indeed, she says, she is surprised someone hasn’t suggested that “only prayers and FSB special operations have saved us from the fall of the moon,” something the Americans supposedly have an interest in.

But there is something more at work in the Armenian case, she argues. “Our conspiracy theorists need phantom victories over America, and when everything in Armenia calms down, they will with pride describe it as their suppression of a ‘rates Maidan.’ And everything will calm down in Armenia because that country doesn’t have any other way out.”