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The latest reports coming in claim that Hasina has resigned and fled Bangladesh:

https://www.aljazeera.com/news/2024/8/5/bangladesh-pm-hasina-quits-and-flees-as-protestors-storm-palace-reports

If true, then it means that the Color Revolution succeeded, but a military coup could follow.

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Thank you Mr. Korybko for your continued insight into the region. Stay safe everybody - Bulbash

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The foundation of Bangladesh agriculture is weak. Other factors aside, population would be the permanent time bomb there. If a color revolution succeeds, the usual steps of asking for loans and loan forgiveness would follow. The west can print (both USD and EURO) but India would have to bear the consequences of the inherent instability within Bangladesh.

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India and Bangladesh fail to understand that the United States does not play nice and is utterly indifferent to the people there.

Like a mafia thug, either you bend the knee or we'll just have to do the other thing.

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Whenever I hear of conflict in a given area the first thing I do is look at a map to see what's there, and sure enough, gas fields in the Bay of Bengal, and a pipeline to China that runs through Myanmar, right next door. So maybe this isn't about India at all?

https://www.indianarrative.com/world-news/china-alarmed-after-strategic-oil-pipeline-station-in-myanmar-is-attacked-19264.html

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Yes, and the uprising in Myanmar also looks like a US-funded attempt at revolution. As always, the message promoted in the US is that the Myanmar government is not democratic and is therefore illegitimate. As though the US were the global arbiter of government legitimacy -- which many Americans are indeed indoctrinated to believe!

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I just subscribed to your channel. Looks like I'm the first. You should write, since you're obviously a clear thinker. Doesn't have to be a lot. Change occurs at the margin, and what you say may influence someone who might have an impact beyond what you could achieve on your own. That's the attitude I've taken with my own channel. I don't advertise, I just let people find me, mostly through the comments I make on other sites. I've been at it just over a year and have about 80 subscribers. Not all active of course, but a few are and have registered their appreciation.

You know what a neural network is, right? Well, that's what Substack is. It's not really about building a large audience, it's about transmitting ideas from one person to another, like a chain reaction that starts with a single collision and expands exponentially. Good ideas spread faster that way than just listening to popular figures pontificate.

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Thank you for the suggestion and encouragement!

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You are more than welcome:)

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I know very little about Bangladesh, so this is more of a generic question. I'm sure we're all familiar with the concept of 'colour revolution' but by now I'm sure most of the governments on Earth are equally familiar with the idea. Likewise, we're all familiar with the idea of intelligence agencies infiltrating opposition movements, or even creating them out of whole cloth as a means of monitoring and controlling dissent.

So the question then is, how can we as outsiders tell the difference between an externally sponsored uprising, something completely organic, and something manufactured by the government to rally their own supporters? How can someone observing events from a distance actually know what's happening on the ground in any definitive way?

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One way to recognize a color revolution happening is to look at where the money is coming from. The US sponsors color revolutions by funding non-governmental organizations (NGOs) that are supposedly working for humanitarian / human-rights purposes. Such NGOs provide a pathway through which foreign governments (e.g., United States) can funnel money that is ultimately used for political purposes (e.g., regime change). The US network includes the AID (Agency for International Development), which is managed by the State Dept. and the National Security Council. The AID funds groups such as the National Endowment for Democracy (NED), which is quasi-governmental and allows funding of NGOs which is not so obviously coming from the State Dept.

The recent kerfuffle in Georgia about the legislature passing a Foreign Agents Registration law (which is almost identical to the US FARA) has brought to light the fact that some 90% of the NGOs in Georgia are foreign-funded and that most receive no domestic funding at all. And the number of NGOs there is large: more than 10,000 (source: https://www.thenation.com/article/world/georgia-dream-protests-ngo-color-revolution/ ). With that many NGOs, a lot of foreign money can be put to work for political ends. No wonder the US government was unhappy about Georgia's new law; it closes off a major pipeline for color revolutions.

The Maidan coup in Ukraine in 2014 was another color revolution and Victoria Nuland, then US Under Secretary of State for Political Affairs, boasted that she had achieved regime change at a low-budget cost of only $5 Billion, channeled through the State Dept. of Ukrainian NGOs over a 20-year period beginning in 1991. (source: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Victoria_Nuland).

Another signal that protesters are part of a color revolution is when you see them holding signs written in English in a country like Georgia. That would be like me going to Washington and holding up a sign in Russian.

Although most governments in the world include people who are familiar with the color revolution concept, many of the government leaders may not be so familiar and, importantly, may not know how to recognize and head off a color revolution. For example, a color revolution was attempted in Belarus in 2020-2021 and President Lukashenko was able to defuse the tension, partly by receiving advice from President Putin of Russia. Color revolutions typically try to bait the government into a violent response, which the revolutionaries can then leverage to boost their claims that the government is unfair and undemocratic. Lukashenko made some concessions and engaged his opponents in dialogue, avoiding the trap. But often the leaders of government are caught off-balance by a sudden upsurge in public demonstrations and complaints.

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Good summary. Thanks.

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These protest happen only when the sneak wants to shed its skin

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Reading up a bit on the background I learn that the protests stemmed from a jobs quota policy which to me sounds like government sponsored nepotism. Nothing like making it official to get people's backs up I'd say, and if I were a student there I'd probably join the protest.

This looks more like a government scored own-goal than something conjured up from outside. Similar to the 'scheduled castes' in India, nepotism is nothing new in that part of the world. Maybe it just reached its natural end-point and the government was just too stupid to realize that?

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