"Ukraine, traditionally passive in its politics, has been mobilised by the young democracy activists," reports the Guardian. But "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." The student groups Otpor in Serbia, Khmara in Georgia, Zubr in Belarus, and Pora in Ukraine have been assisted by the U.S. State Department, National Democratic Institute, International Republican Institute, and U.S. AID. Other players include Freedom House, George Soros' Open Society Institute, and U.S. pollsters Penn, Schoen & Berland.

Al-Qaeda and radical Islamists are winning the propaganda war against the United States, according to a new report by the Defense Science Board, a high-level Pentagon panel. "American direct intervention in the Muslim World has paradoxically elevated the stature of and support for radical Islamists, while diminishing support for the United States to single-digits in some Arab societies," the report states. "Muslims do not 'hate our freedom,' but rather, they hate our policies. ... The critical problem in American public diplomacy directed toward the Muslim world is not one of 'dissemination of information,' or even one of crafting and delivering the 'right' message. Rather, it is a fundamental problem of credibility. Simply, there is none