Thanks for reading and not going ad hominem. To your points, the article doesn't say that protesters were the only ones firing. It emphasizes that they may at least have been among them. The fact that some police were charged doesn't disprove that. Nor is it surprising that no protesters have been charged since the government granted them immunity.ATL Bear said:The phone call specifically discusses Klitschko as Deputy PM which was announced ending Jan. beginning of Feb 2014. %A0This was solid spycraft by the KGB. %A0Took a Nuland intercept to undermine the new government transition plans. %A0 They also emboldened Yushenko and the protestor body count got ugly not long after this. %A0Sam Lowry said:No one had agreed to anything at that point. The violence was still escalating, there was no agreement for an interim government much less an election, and Yanukovych had yet to flee the country.ATL Bear said:Source and sources?Sam Lowry said:At that time we were deep in preparations to oppose Yanukovych in the upcoming election, as we had done in 2004. The strategy included generating and analyzing poll data, marshaling opposition under the leadership of Yanukovych's opponent, training thousands of partisan "election monitors," and disseminating propaganda in the guise of voter education. We exaggerated reports of Yanukovych's corruption while downplaying his opponent's (much like we've exaggerated Russian atrocities during the war and ignored those of Ukraine). We bused in paid protesters from across the country, produced TV shows, and distributed protest signs and other items. The massing of protesters following the election, according to British journalist Daniel Wolf, was "a meticulous operation of careful, secret planning by Yushchenko's inner circle over a period of years that oversaw distribution of thousands of cameras, backup teams of therapists and psychologists, transportation, heaters, sleeping bags, gas canisters, toilets, soup kitchens, tents, TV and radio coverage, all of which needed "large sums of cash, in this case, much of it American."sombear said:Sam Lowry said:It depends. For example, is there a large Anglo population under attack by the Mexican army? Your scenario omits almost all of the pertinent facts.Mothra said:So in that instance, you would be ok with us invading Canada and Mexico, carpet bombing their cities, and overthrowing their govts.? %A0Redbrickbear said:Mothra said:The "coup" of course (or if you prefer, the generally non-violent occupation of Ukraine's govt. buildings) which resulted in the replacement of the pro-Russian govt. with the pro-European govt. - an executable offense to Putin. %A0Sam Lowry said:Much has been made of the fact that Crimea was content with the status quo prior to 2014. Here's what's going to blow your mind: despite their alleged territorial ambitions, so were the Russians. What changed?Mothra said:Would you agree with me that actions speak louder than words? %A0If so, the problem with taking Putin at his word is we put the two together, as we should, his actions bely his words, and as most well know, the man lies constantly. %A0Sam Lowry said:I know, I know%85"but but the history lecture!" Can you not think of any reason he'd want to preface the discussion that way? Or is he just a really stupid guy who "accidentally" said the quiet part out loud for half an hour?Mothra said:LOL.Sam Lowry said:He doesn't. Putin specifically said he has no problem with Ukrainian independence.Mothra said:
I simply find it incredible that he finds Putin's beliefs that Ukraine shouldn't exist "sincere," as if that somehow operates as an excuse or justification, as Tucker seems to suggest.
He also spent about 25 minutes of the interview essentially explaining why Ukraine should never exist. %A0Given that 2 years ago he tried to take down Kyiv and assassinate Ukrainian leadership, I am sure we should take him at his word. %A0I am sure he meant that.
Let's begin with Putin falsely accusing Georgia of committing genocide and aggression against South Ossetia and his launching of a full-scale land, air and sea invasion, which resulted in the Russian occupation (and de facto incorporation) of South Ossetia and Abkhazia. Everyone in the world of course realizes that was a false flag operation, but it did result in what was essentially incorporation of these strategically important areas. %A0And then of course we had Crimea a few years later, and now all of Ukraine under attack by Russian forces.
That is the problem with taking Putin at his word, Sam, and not listening to ALL of his words. Putin did say the quiet part out loud, and he has shown that with his actions. %A0
Georgia was a similar situation to Ukraine. Russia tolerated NATO expansion to a great extent, but they always made it clear that Georgia was off limits.
A coup that replaced the current government in Ottawa or Mexico City with a pro-Chinese communist party would also be completely unacceptable offense to our rulers in DC
If we want to overthrow governments around Russia and China...then fine
But we can't exactly complain when they respond with military force.
After all we sent in troops to regime change Iraq....and that country was on the other side of the planet from us.
Contrary to your assertions, the 2014 uprising wasn't a US or European led "coup." %A0It was organic, composed of mostly younger Ukrainians who were unhappy that the regime in place at that time wouldn't vote on free trade agreements and a closer association with Europe. %A0Thankfully, we were not involved, and neither was Europe. %A0So this is another apples to oranges comparison.
The idea that we weren't involved in Maidan is just ridiculous. If that's what you believe, I can see why you don't think Russia was under threat. In fact we were involved, and Russia had every reason to believe we'd do more of the same. The presence of a large army to back up any regime change effort in Russia significantly increases that threat. Remember when Biden stated that Putin can't remain in power? He said it after the war started, but it was no surprise to anyone who was paying attention, particularly not in Russia. They are taking him at his word.
I'm still waiting on someone to tell us exactly how we were involved in Maidan aside from that nothingburger Nuland the Conqueror phone call.
The same or similar tactics were used in 2014, but this time with the additional leverage of the right-wing forces we've been talking about. There is evidence that they, and not Yanukovych's police, were responsible for shooting and killing anti-government protesters at Maidan. The killings re-energized mob violence that might otherwise have died down. One can only speculate about American involvement, but Putin's claim that we deceitfully offered to call off the extremists is food for thought.
As for Nuland, you should read the full transcript of the phone call if you haven't. Far from being passive supporters, it's clear that they are actively involved in making sure the illegal coup is successful and the new government suits American wishes down to the last detail.
And anyone with a brain not fogged by US hate or Russian love knows the phone call was about the possible leadership changes and upcoming election that had already been agreed to. %A0
Some sources below.Quote:
For our purpose, it is interesting to note that compared to humanitarian and development Ingos, which have often promoted US foreign-policy objectives, democratisation and human-rights Ingos boast of a far greater preponderance of US government and intelligence operatives. This owes much to the fact that democratisation is a sensitive political minefield with direct bearings on international relations. It is too important a foreign policy subject for the US government to hand over reins to the voluntary sector.
Usaid's avowal that democracy can be promoted around the world without "being political" is totally fictional, because the onus of NED and its family is on altering the balance of political forces in the target country in the pretext of "civil society assistance."
Neutral assessments would rate these as electoral manipulations.
Having penetrated Ukraine in 1990 at the behest of the George H Bush administration with the assent of the pro-American Leonid Kravchuk, the effective leader of the republic, these Ingos had the power to finance and create the local NGO sector from scratch, controlling its agenda and direction.
The neo-liberal Pora organisation, for instance, was an offshoot of the groundwork done by the "Freedom of Choice Coalition" that was put together in 1999 by the US embassy, the World Bank, NED and the Soros Foundation. On the eve of the orange revolution, NED Gongos hired American pollsters and professional consultants to mine psephological data and unite the opposition under Yushchenko's electoral coalition, months before the poll; trained thousands of local and international election monitors partisan to Yushchenko; organised exit polls in collaboration with western embassies that predicted Yushchenkos victory; and imported "consultants" who had experience in the Serbian overthrow of Milosevic and the Georgian rose revolution.
The mass mobilisation in Kiev was handpicked from Yushchenko's western Ukraine bastions and did not reflect nationwide sentiments. "A few tens of thousands in central Kiev were proclaimed to be 'the people', notwithstanding the fact that many demonstrators nursed violent and anti-democratic viewpoints", writes John Laughland. The NGO monitors, teamed up with western media outlets, deliberately exaggerated electoral fraud involving Yanukovych's party, ignoring serious violations by Yushchenko's.
US government expenditure on the orange revolution has been put at $14 million, while the overall civil-society promotion budget set by Washington for Ukraine (2003-2004) was $57.8-$65 million. The Soros Foundation and Freedom House pumped in a steady flow of funds through Ingos and local NGOs for "elections-related projects."
The NED family's role in first following the Bush administrations lead and anointing Yushchenko's outfit as the only valid manifestation of "civil society" (at the expense of non-neoliberal, anti-authoritarian parties) and then consistently bolstering it with funds and regime-toppling expertise completely blurs lines between impartial democracy promotion and meddling in Ukraines political process.
It tinkers with Robert Dahls basic dimension of democratisation contestation, i.e. the playing-field of political competition and the relative strengths of contenders. Much that was done by the Ingos in the name of democratisation in Ukraine was outright biased, including voter education that is supposed to neutrally inform citizens to make free choices rather than to campaign for a particular candidate: "Yushchenko got the western nod, and floods of money poured in to groups which support him, ranging from the youth organisation, Pora, to various opposition websites."
https://www.opendemocracy.net/en/colour_revolutions_3196jsp/Quote:
Arriving in the Ukrainian capital on August 3, Pyatt almost immediately authorized a grant for an online television outlet called Hromadske.TV, which would prove essential to building the Euromaidan street demonstrations against Yanukovych. The grant was only $43,737, with an additional $4,796 by November 13. Just enough to buy the modest equipment the project needed.
Many of Hromadske's journalists had worked in the past with American benefactors. Editor-in-chief Roman Skrypin was a frequent contributor to Washington's Radio Free Europe / Radio Liberty and the US-funded Ukrayinska Pravda. In 2004, he had helped create Channel 5 television, which played a major role in the Orange Revolution that the US and its European allies masterminded in 2004.
Skrypin had already gotten $10,560 from George Soros's International Renaissance Foundation (IRF), which came as a recommendation to Pyatt. Sometime between December and the following April, IRF would give Hromadske another $19,183.
Hromadske's biggest funding in that period came from the Embassy of the Netherlands, which gave a generous $95,168. As a departing US envoy to the Hague said in a secret cable that Wikileaks later made public, "Dutch pragmatism and our similar world-views make the Netherlands fertile ground for initiatives others in Europe might be reluctant, at least initially, to embrace."
For Pyatt, the payoff came on November 21, when President Yanukovych pulled back from an Association Agreement with the European Union. Within hours Hromadske.TV went online and one of its journalists set the spark that brought Yanukovych down.
"Enter a lonely, courageous Ukrainian rebel, a leading investigative journalist," writes Snyder. "A dark-skinned journalist who gets racially profiled by the regime. And a Muslim. And an Afghan. This is Mustafa Nayem, the man who started the revolution. Using social media, he called students and other young people to rally on the main square of Kiev in support of a European choice for Ukraine."
All credit to Nayem for his undeniable courage. But bad, bad history. Snyder fails to mention that Pyatt, Soros, and the Dutch had put Web TV at the uprising's disposal. Without their joint funding of Hromadske and its streaming video from the Euromaidan, the revolution might never have been televised and Yanukovych might have crushed the entire effort before it gained traction.
For better or for worse, popular uprisings have changed history long before radio, television, or the Internet. The new technologies only speed up the game. Pyatt and his team understood that and masterfully turned soft power and the exercise of free speech, press, and assembly into a televised revolution on demand, complete with an instant overdub in English.
https://readersupportednews.org/opinion2/277-75/22758-meet-the-americans-who-put-together-the-coup-in-kievQuote:
Across the political spectrum in Washington, soft-power intervention has enormous support, especially now that the State Department and its offshoots have taken over so much of it from the CIA. Former secretary of State Madelyn Albright chairs one of the National Endowment for Democracy's "core institutes," the National Democratic Institute for International Affairs (NDI). Her board members and senior advisors include everyone from former presidential candidates Howard Dean, Bill Bradley, and Michael Dukakis to one of the true heroes of the civil rights movement, Congressman John Lewis. NDI has offices and staff from Afghanistan to Silicon Valley.
Senator John McCain chairs the parallel International Republican Institute, with a board that stretches from his longtime advisor and a paid lobbyist for Georgia, neocon Randy Scheuneman, to foreign policy realist Brent Scowcroft, who served as National Security Adviser to President George H.W. Bush.
Controlled by the State Department rather than by either political party, both groups have operated for years in Ukraine, as have NED's two other core institutes. The Center for International Private Enterprise works closely with the US Chamber of Commerce and "strengthens democracy around the globe through private enterprise and market-oriented reform." The American Center for International Labor Solidarity, or "Solidarity Center," is formally part of the American Federation of Labor - Congress of Industrial Organizations and is chaired by AFL-CIO president Richard Trumka. Funding comes from NED, USAID, the State Department, the U.S. Department of State, the U.S. Department of Labor, the AFL-CIO, private foundations, and national and international labor organizations.
Add these groups to NED itself, USAID with all its private contractors, allied NGOs and foundations, largely government-funded groups like Freedom House, and State's Bureau of Democracy, Human Rights, and Labor. What emerges is the non-military infrastructure of an American empire that no one but boastful neocons admits we have. In countries like Ukraine, they and their NGOs regularly meet with local officials, advising on what and what not to do. At home, they lobby endlessly for more imperial intervention, often military. And they feed the ideological notion that the US has some God-given right to intervene, "not only for our own narrow self-interest, but for the interest of all," as Obama told the UN General Assembly last year.
https://readersupportednews.org/opinion2/277-75/22940-focus-part-ii-meet-the-americans-who-put-together-the-coup-in-kievQuote:
The far right, of course, cared nothing for democracy, nor did it have any love for the EU. Instead, the popular uprising was an opportunity. Dmytro Yarosh, the Right Sector leader, had urged his compatriots in 2009 to "start an armed struggle against the regime of internal occupation and Moscow's empire" if pro-Russian forces took control. As early as March 2013, Tryzub, one of the organizations that formed Right Sector, had called for the Ukrainian opposition to move "from a peaceful demonstration to a street-revolutionary plane."
They may also have played an even more sinister role in the events that unfolded. One enduring mystery of the Maidan Revolution is who was behind the February 20 sniper killings that set off the final, most bloody stage of protests, with accusations against everyone from government forces and the Kremlin to US-backed mercenaries. Without precluding these possibilities, there's now considerable evidence that the same far-right forces who piggybacked on the protesters' cause were also at least among the forces firing that night.
At the time, men resembling protesters had been witnessed shooting from protester-controlled buildings in the capital, and multiple Maidan medics had said the bullet wounds in police and protesters looked to have come from the same weapon. A Maidan protester later admitted to killing two officers and wounding others on the day, and crates of empty Kalashnikov bullets were found in the protester-occupied Ukraina Hotel, the same place a decorated military pilot and anti-Russian resistance hero later said she had seen an opposition MP leading snipers to. The government's investigation, meanwhile, which focused only on the protester murders, started out filled with serious flaws and irregularities.
The University of Ottawa's Ivan Katchanovski has analyzed evidence that's come out in the course of the investigation and trial into the murders. According to Katchanovski, a majority of wounded protesters testified they either saw snipers in protester-controlled buildings or were shot by bullets coming from their direction, testimony backed by forensic examinations. Closure on the matter is unlikely, though, since the post-Yanukovych interim government, in which leading far-right figures took prominent positions, swiftly passed a law giving Maidan participants immunity for any violence.
https://jacobin.com/2022/02/maidan-protests-neo-nazis-russia-nato-crimea
I took the time to read your links. %A0Given the impossibility of disproving a lie and fabricated framing of circumstances, I'd prefer to deal with the situational facts. %A0For example if you're going to push the disproven idea of a Maiden protester false flag op when a number of arrests and convictions have occurred of Berkut police, you're not dealing in reality. %A0If you're going to tie every NGO or other effort in Ukraine going back to denuclearization post Soviet break up as some grand CIA scheme, that's just bizarre world. %A0
I'm not sure how you define a "grand scheme." If our diplomats fund a TV channel which sparks a riot leading to the overthrow of their host government, is that a grand scheme or a petite scheme? Phrases like that don't mean much; they're more just a way of verbally rolling one's eyes. If you're asking whether something like Maidan was planned for 20+ years, obviously no one's saying that. That doesn't mean our NGOs weren't instrumental in making it happen when it did.
