I love the suspision that its due to outside agitators. They assume people must have learned that protest and mostly nonviolent movements don't work. I just don't get how this can be traced back to Russian ambition. Frankly the story line of Red Alert 3 involving a time machine and the assassination of Einstien is more believable. Nato powers have encouraged or run the various peaceful revolts of the past decade and now this sort of thing is due to outside agitators, really? Could it be that people are p'd off at their goverments no matter what ism they masquerade as. What will we say when it happens here? Will we call it the arival of the much talked about white alqueda? Or mabye its communist infiltration. Whatever happended to the simplest answer? You reject conspiracies about World government, but you believe this is being done by outside agitators. The simplest answer is that people are worse off and they see their government as at best incompetant or more likely corrupt. If that is the true cause then prepare for it to happen here sooner rather than later. Good thing we have the guys in darth vader outfits to protect us from the downtrodden masses just like Estonia.

Actually the concern about outside agitation in the two cases is quite legitimate.. and the NYT did not do a good job on the background here, so would be clear that the clear majority of protestors were ethnic russians. The large Russian populations in both Latvia and Lithuania (and Estonia as well, but there was not this time a disturbance) have been totally infiltrated by pro-Putin youth organization (Nashi) and Russian ultra-nationalist activists who are actively trying to undermine the independence of these NATO and EU states.

I don't know why Brutus or Clifford Bates should be in disagreement. I wouldn't doubt that either is right. While the agitators might be largely Russians/Nashi, it seems reasonable enough to assume as Brutus puts it that people are p'd off at their governments no matter what ism they assume. Unfortunately for Brutus, or fortunately depending on how he looks at it I don't see that agitators will ever find great purchase in the United States. I mean they will without a doubt, and there will always be agitators, but that is why Clifford Bates is wrong in opposing his thinking to Brutus. A thousand agitators spring up every day, not all without cause or complaint...but like seed it needs to grow roots that endow it with a firm purchase. So Brutus argues in favor of soil and Clifford Bates argues in favor of seed, neither alone is sufficient.

In addition to this even if the agitators find folks to riot, not all of them riot for the same cause, in fact maybe very few of them riot for any cause beyond securing some loot, getting while the getting is good so to speak.

Even if it is Russian ultra-nationalists I agree with Brutus about Russian ambition...I might agree with the idea that these folks are tools in a larger design, but they are unyieldy tools with ideas of their own. I mean a serious anti-immigration politician is not altogether pleased that the American Neo-Nazi party agrees with him. Some Black Panthers are happy Obama is president but it isn't reciprocal.

At the end of the day isn't it all about gangs? I mean even Al Queda is a gang, a gang that might at one point have been justly considered by russians to be an outlet for american ambition(or restrainning russian ambition in Afghanistan).

I don't think such things will find purchase in the United States (to the degree that you concede that they haven't already given as how we do have a lot of gangs) in part because Hobbes is right in saying that while people might be p'd off at the government they are equally or more p'd off at the prospect of gangs that would presume to replace them.