chapotraphouse

Are they waving the flags of the great Satan and one of the most violent imperialist countries in modern history?

it's an imaginary distinction. every "color revolution" represents some real current of popular sentiment within a society. the question is not "are all these people that i'm seeing in the streets actually all paid protestors?" but rather "what segment of the society as a whole are these people speaking for, and what are their interests?"

recall the trucker protests in canada. these were real pissed off truckers using a small number of large machines to cause a lot of economic disruption. but by and large they were middle class small holders who owned their own vehicles and could afford to miss work for weeks at a time, not to articulate any specific demands, but to throw a tantrum brought on by their ambient sense that they were not the god kings of their own legacy that settler mythology taught them they could be.

Having multiple sources of information helps. Hanging out in leftist spaces one can (sometimes) hear rumblings before an explosive incident. It's when it happens in a vacuum that I get suspicious.

If rfa or rferl is too chummy about it.

The blueprint of regime change operations

You should read what the local communist party is writing about it, and see if it makes sense. if they're self-hating imperialist sell outs, it's normally not that hard to pick up on, like the handful of freaks in Left 21 who tried to claim a left opposition to the PRC in some cringe english articles during the HK Revolution of Our Times.

If it’s a Latin American country: what % of the protesters are white lol.

The presence of and nowadays, flags, with the latter also becoming much more of a virulent sight.