This isn't about the NYT, it's about whether or not the US is capable of, and interested in, running a PR campaign to promote its interests.

Reading around it's clear that the mythology of the Heroic Peace Activist doesn't stand up to scrutiny.

If it stood out on its own, with no context, it might be plausible.

But let's be realistic here.

US foreign policy has a long history of installing, financing, arming and backing dictatorial regimes which back its imperial policies and interests as long as they retain control over their people.

In the past, Republican and Democratic presidents worked closely for over 30 years with the Trujillo dictatorship in the Dominican Republic; installed the autocratic Diem regime in pre-revolutionary Vietnam in the 1950’s; collaborated with two generations of Somoza family terror regimes in Nicaragua; financed and promoted the military coup in Cuba 1952, Brazil 1964, Chile in 1973, and in Argentina in 1976 and the subsequent repressive regimes. When popular upheavals challenged these US backed dictatorships, and a social as well as political revolution appeared likely to succeed, Washington responded with a three track policy: publicly criticizing the human rights violations and advocating democratic reforms; privately signaling continued support to the ruler; and thirdly, seeking an elite alternative which could substitute for the incumbent and preserve the state apparatus, the economic system and support US strategic imperial interests.

For the US there are no strategic relationships only permanent imperial interests, name preservation of the client state. The dictatorships assume that their relationships with Washington is strategic: hence the shock and dismay when they are sacrificed to save the state apparatus. Fearing revolution, Washington has had reluctant client despots, unwilling to move on, assassinated (Trujillo and Diem). Some are provided sanctuaries abroad (Somoza, Batista),others are pressured into power-sharing (Pinochet) or appointed as visiting scholars to Harvard, Georgetown or some other "prestigious" academic posting.

The Washington calculus on when to reshuffle the regime is based on an estimate of the capacity of the dictator to weather the political uprising, the strength and loyalty of the armed forces and the availability of a pliable replacement. The risk of waiting too long, of sticking with the dictator, is that the uprising radicalizes: the ensuing change sweeps away both the regime and the state apparatus, turning a political uprising into a social revolution. Just such a `miscalculation' occurred in 1959 in the run-up to the Cuban revolution, when Washing stood by Batista and was not able to present a viable pro US alternative coalition linked to the old state apparatus. A similar miscalculation occurred in Nicaragua, when President Carter, while criticizing Somoza, stayed the course, and stood passively by as the regime was overthrown and the revolutionary forces destroyed the US and Israeli trained military, secret police and intelligence apparatus, and went on to nationalize US property and develop an independent foreign policy.

Washington moved with greater initiative, in Latin America in the 1980's.It promoted negotiated electoral transitions which replaced dictators with pliable neo-liberal electoral politicians, who pledged to preserve the existing state apparatus, defend the privileged foreign and domestic elites and back US regional and international policies.

So that's the background. And we're supposed to believe that suddenly the NYT and almost every other media outlet of note have simultaneously discovered an ageing intellectual who just happened to write some books that just happened to find their way to the revolutionaries and just happened to inspire them towards an irresistibly non-violent rush to democracy?

And who is paying for this?

On February 9, Al Jazeera aired an episode in its People and Power series entitled "Egypt: Seeds of Change." The programme offers a revealing behind the scenes look at a core group of activists from the April 6 Youth Movement who played a crucial role in Egypt's nonviolent revolution.

"This is not a spontaneous uprising," reporter Elizabeth Jones stressed. "The revolution has been in the making for three years." The key to its success, we learn, was the instruction April 6 leaders received from veterans of groups like Otpor, the student movement that brought down Serbian president Slododan Milosevic.

Srdja Popovic, a leader of that revolution, we are told, "shared his firsthand experience with April 6." Mohamed Adel, one of the April 6 leaders, describes his training in Serbia in the tactics of nonviolent resistance, including "how to organise and get people out on the streets." He brought back videos and teaching aids to help train the other leaders, who are shown "directing the uprising from the start."

Since the ouster of Milosevic in 2000, Popovic has been busy spreading the gospel of nonviolent warfare. In 2003, he founded the Centre for Applied Nonviolent Action and Strategies (CANVAS) in Belgrade. By spring 2010, the globe-trotting Serb reportedly had "five revolutions already under his belt." In a Mother Jones puff piece, Nicholas Schmidle writes: "CANVAS got off to an impressive start, training the pro-democracy campaigners in Georgia, Ukraine, and Lebanon who went on to lead the Rose, Orange, and Cedar revolutions, respectively."

But who funds it all? Schmidle, a fellow at the Soros-linked New America Foundation, cites Popovic: "CANVAS is '100 percent independent from any government' and funded entirely by private donors." Yet an LA Times profile of Nini Gogiberidze, a Georgian employee of CANVAS, says the group is funded in part by the near-governmental organisation Freedom House. "Gogiberidze," the Times adds, "is among Georgia's 'velvet' revolutionaries, a group of Western and local activists who make up a robust pro-democracy corps in this Caucasus country--so much of it funded by American philanthropist George Soros that one analyst calls the nation Sorosistan."

CANVAS works closely with the International Center for Nonviolent Conflict (ICNC), with which it has shared a number of staff members--including Dr. Stephen Zunes, who has collaborated with CANVAS in training Egyptian activists. Founded in 2002, the ICNC is funded entirely by Peter Ackerman, its founding chair. Ackerman, who chaired the board of Freedom House from September 2005 until January 2009, also indirectly funds CANVAS.

Ackerman's wealth derives mainly from his time at Drexel Burnham Lambert, the Wall Street investment bank that was forced into bankruptcy in February 1990 due to its involvement in illegal activities in the junk bond market. As special projects aide to junk bond king Michael Milken, Ackerman cleaned up. In 1988 alone, he took home a salary of $165 million for his critical role in financing Kohlberg Kravis Roberts's $26 billion leveraged buyout of RJR Nabisco. But four months before Drexel collapsed into bankruptcy, Ackerman "beat a fortuitously timed retreat" to the International Institute for Strategic Studies in London. While the "king" was sentenced to 10 years for securities fraud, "the highest-paid of all of Michael R. Milken's minions" emerged as "the big winner" with a fortune of approximately $500 million--prompting one of his former colleagues to complain: "Peter Ackerman is a real Teflon guy."

Having successfully escaped "the stench of Drexel," Ackerman completed what BusinessWeek called "an improbable transformation from junk-bond promoter back to scholar." Prior to his financial exploits, he had written his doctoral thesis under the guidance of Gene Sharp, the Harvard academic whose theories of nonviolent struggle had inspired the velvet revolutionaries. In fact, while he was still working for Milken, Ackerman had been funding Sharp's Albert Einstein Institution. According to the Wall Street Journal, "A large part of ICNC's and Canvas's theoretical arsenal is drawn from Mr. Sharp's writings."

As part of his own contribution to worldwide revolution, Ackerman has helped produce two documentaries on nonviolent conflict and even a regime change video game.

So at the very least the home-grown revolution turns into a deliberately trained one.

But it's deliberately trained in non-violent conflict - as opposed to the more explosive conflict which might lead to social transformation.

This isn't a difficult jigsaw to piece together.

As for the NYT - if it hadn't been quite so obvious in its praise of Sharp, I doubt anyone would have noticed. As it was, from a PR point of view, when you see the same point of view being repeated from multiple sources during a period of heightened emotion you can be damn sure you're being gamed.

Because that's pretty much the textbook definition of a PR campaign. We're not talking about one little story in an obscure journal - we're talking about significant air time for this modest, hitherto undiscovered meek intellectual who just happens not to mention that a former military operative was president of his institute, and that he's funded by an apparently frictionless investment banker who spent significant time at the very non-violent International Institute for Strategic Studies.

Goodness me - what interesting company Mr Sharp keeps.

Meanwhile we still don't know why and how the Muslim Brotherhood were reading Sharp. Supposedly they just happened to find his work online - which is a fine story, and is perfectly believable if you ignore the obvious support efforts the US has been making for the last few years.

(Is the story even true? Where was it sourced originally?)