MattSh
MattSh's JournalMeet the Americans Who Put Together the Coup in Kiev
If the US State Department's Victoria Nuland had not said "Fuck the EU," few outsiders at the time would have heard of Ambassador Geoffrey Pyatt, the man on the other end of her famously bugged telephone call. But now Washington's man in Kiev is gaining fame as the face of the CIA-style "destabilization campaign" that brought down Ukraine's monumentally corrupt but legitimately elected President Viktor Yanukovych.
"Geoffrey Pyatt is one of these State Department high officials who does what he’s told and fancies himself as a kind of a CIA operator," laughs Ray McGovern, who worked for 27 years as an intelligence analyst for the agency. "It used to be the CIA doing these things," he tells Democracy Now. "I know that for a fact." Now it's the State Department, with its coat-and-tie diplomats, twitter and facebook accounts, and a trick bag of goodies to build support for American policy.
A retired apparatchik, the now repentant McGovern was debating Yale historian Timothy Snyder, a self-described left-winger and the author of two recent essays in The New York Review of Books – "The Haze of Propaganda" and "Fascism, Russia, and Ukraine." Both men speak Russian, but they come from different planets.
On Planet McGovern – or my personal take on it – realpolitik rules. The State Department controls the prime funding sources for non-military intervention, including the controversial National Endowment for Democracy (NED), which Washington created to fund covert and clandestine action after Ramparts magazine and others exposed how the CIA channeled money through private foundations, including the Ford Foundation. State also controls the far-better-funded Agency for International Development (USAID), along with a growing network of front groups, cut-outs, and private contractors. State coordinates with like-minded governments and their parallel institutions, mostly in Canada and Western Europe. State's "democracy bureaucracy" oversees nominally private but largely government funded groups like Freedom House. And through Assistant Secretary of State for European and Eurasian Affairs Victoria Nuland, State had Geoff Pyatt coordinate the coup in Kiev.
http://readersupportednews.org/opinion2/277-75/22758-meet-the-americans-who-put-together-the-coup-in-kiev
My view as a resident of Kiev Ukraine - 3/17 edition
As a resident of Kiev, I'd just like to give a couple of my perspectives. They might mean something; or they might mean nothing at all. Who can tell?
The day after the ban on Russian TV was announced, my wife called up our cable provider and said "if there are no Russian channels, I don't need your cable service anymore." Our cable company then proceeded to upgrade us to their premium package for free for the next six months. Plus, we still have each and every one of the Russian channels. Her aunt reports that two blocks away, her Russian channels are gone. The only difference being, we called and complained; her aunt had not. We never expected to continue to have the Russian channels.
Here in Kiev, most of the people we know are pro-Russian. Yeah, I know, that's not supposed to be that way. So says the official propagandists. The pro-Maidan propaganda here has been strong though. My wife today just returned from the local clinic. She reports that the Doctor, the nurse, and the receptionist of all pro-Russian. Now there is no doubt a strong pro-Ukrainian thing going on here too; first because of Ukrainianization policies since independence, and second, there's a whole lot more opportunity in Kiev than in the west of Ukraine, so there's a good number of west Ukrainians here.
The main English language newspaper in Kiev, the Kyiv Post, is disgustingly pro-Maidan and pro-coup. Now, the Kyiv Post has not had the best of reputations among a good portion of the expat community. In my eyes, the events of the last three months have hurt its reputation greatly. Not only has its coverage been very one-sided, they've gone beyond that and were basically the whole trumpet section for the protests. But in the end, I think the Kyiv Post will do well. I think early on they realized if they chose the correct side, the newspaper would survive. If they chose incorrectly, their financial problems would catch up to them quite quickly. But more than that, I highly suspect the US Embassy played a role in helping them to choose the "correct" side.
Facebook, well, it is Facebook, it's just not a place where you even want to hint at an alternative opinion. It took me a while to figure out exactly why it was just so lopsided. People with last names like Mann, Parke, O'Ehley, McAlister, and Wheat. Not the usual surnames from this part of the world. The most likely explanation is a State Department recruited numerous Ukrainian-American organizations whose job it is to go out to Facebook and post the official State Department story. Though there might be more to it than that.
Now, about the propaganda. There are two totally different yet parallel worlds trying to occupy the same space. Now, the propaganda is basically used to reinforce everybody's particular point of view. I don't believe that it is leading anybody to switch from one side to the other. But to listen to the stories that come out from the opposite side can certainly be an amusing distraction. Recently I heard recently is Mr. Putin and Mr. Yanukovitch have summer cottages on the same street in Russia, likely paid for by Mr. Yanukovitch. And then there's the one where Putin talks about Sharia law. Funny, I though only US politicians did that.
These event will definitely split families and end friendships. One of my wife's few pro-Maidan acquaintances felt compelled this last weekend to send her an email telling her to "wake up" to which was attached to a very romanticized view of Stephan Bandera. My wife's father had never shown any strong Ukrainian feelings in the past, but since his girlfriend is pro-Maidan, so is he, obnoxiously so at times.
This recent situation in Crimea, I believe, is a godsend. First, it has permitted the situation here in Kiev to assume a certain level of normalcy. And I've been thinking recently that how much better the 20th century would have been if, within the first couple of months of Hitler's rule in Germany, someone had decided it was time to put an end to his nonsense and went ahead and invaded Germany. Maybe people in the states don't learn from history, but it certainly looks like Mr. Putin has.
A couple stories about Right Sector but I want to pass on. It may be possible that it's propaganda, though I suspect that if these stories are not correct, that it's more related to the children's game of telephone. You know the one with the first child whispers something to the second child who whispers it to the third child and by the time it gets down to the 10th child it's a much different story. So here goes:
This a building just down the street from us that has just been broken into for the second time in two weeks. (That's confirmed). This latest incident was apparently performed by Right Sector, who were attempting to free a bank of some of its assets. Most banks here apparently don't keep a lot of assets on-site, but this one did, so they attempted to break in and security on-site barricaded themselves into a safe room and called the police. In normal times, Berkut would respond to these types of calls. But there is no Berkut anymore. So they had to figure out whose responsibility it was. But that's not the end of it. Police eventually showed up and removed the perpetrators, and shortly thereafter release them to the protest camp at Maidan.
The second story is that Right Sector is running an extortion scam. They go off to business owners and for one-time payment of $10,000, they are promised that they will be able to run their business in peace. Or at least until the next time Right Sector decides they need more money. And with breakaway sentiment growing in various parts of the country, it's likely the scam will continue. This in the end will only force the economic situation in Ukraine to go downhill far quicker than it would normally have gone. These extortion course will be passed on to buyers, at the same time that austerity sets it. An ugly situation will just continue to get uglier.
It is difficult to determine truth from rumor around here these days, but I'll pass along something if it seems relevant.
An Interview with Mira, Andrei, and Sascha of AntiFascist Action Ukraine
A group of Defense Militia members at EuroMaidan. On the left one gives a Nazi salute.
Sascha, Andrei, and Mira are members of AntiFascist Union Ukraine, a group that monitors and fights fascism in Ukraine. We sat down to talk about the influence of fascism in EuroMaidan, this is what they told me:
Sascha: There are lots of Nationalists here, including Nazis. They came from all over Ukraine, and they make up about 30% of protesters.
Mira: The two biggest groups are Svoboda and Pravy Sektor (Right Sector). The defense forces aren’t 100% Pravy but a large percentage is.
S: Svoboda is more legal as a group, but they also have an illegal militant faction. Pravy Sektor is more illegal, but they want to usurp Svoboda.
M: There’s a lot of infighting between Pravy and Svoboda. They worked together during the violence but now everything is calm so there’s time to focus on each other. Pravy and Svoboda both take donations and they have lots of money. Recently Pravy has all these new uniforms, military fatigues.
One of the worst things is that Pravy has this official structure. They are coordinated. You need passes to go certain places. They have the power to give or not give people permission to be active. We’re trying to be active but we have to avoid Nazis, and I’m not going to ask a Nazi for permission!
S: A group of 100 anarchists tried to arrange their own self-defense group, different Anarchist groups came together for a meeting on the Maidan. While they were meeting a group of Nazis came in a larger group, they had axes and baseball bats and sticks, helmets, they said it was their territory. They called the Anarchists things like Jews, blacks, Communists. There weren’t even any Communists, that was just an insult. The Anarchists weren’t expecting this and they left. People with other political views can’t stay in certain places, they aren’t tolerated.
More at:
http://www.timothyeastman.com/uncategorized/an-interview-with-mira-andrei-and-sascha-of-antifascist-action-ukraine/
And the plot thickens. Who's behind regime change in Ukraine.
Just hours after last weekend’s ouster of Ukrainian president Viktor Yanukovych, one of Pierre Omidyar’s newest hires at national security blog “The Intercept,” was already digging for the truth.
Marcy Wheeler, who is the new site’s “senior policy analyst,” speculated that the Ukraine revolution was likely a “coup” engineered by “deep” forces on behalf of “Pax Americana”:
<snip>
Wheeler is partly correct. Pando has confirmed that the American government – in the form of the US Agency for International Development (USAID) – played a major role in funding opposition groups prior to the revolution. Moreover, a large percentage of the rest of the funding to those same groups came from a US billionaire who has previously worked closely with US government agencies to further his own business interests. This was by no means a US-backed “coup,” but clear evidence shows that US investment was a force multiplier for many of the groups involved in overthrowing Yanukovych.
But that’s not the shocking part.
What’s shocking is the name of the billionaire who co-invested with the US government (or as Wheeler put it: the “dark deep force” acting on behalf of “Pax Americana”).
Yes, in the annals of independent media, this might be the strangest twist ever: According to financial disclosures and reports seen by Pando, the founder and publisher of Glenn Greenwald’s government-bashing blog,“The Intercept,” co-invested with the US government to help fund regime change in Ukraine.
Step out of the shadows…. Wheeler’s boss, Pierre Omidyar.
http://pando.com/2014/02/28/pierre-omidyar-co-funded-ukraine-revolution-groups-with-us-government-documents-show/
Behind the Barricades, Kiev (Photo series)
Because of the nature of this series, I've posted them on GD. The links are here...
http://www.democraticunderground.com/10024590401
http://www.democraticunderground.com/10024590404
http://www.democraticunderground.com/10024590408
http://www.democraticunderground.com/10024590417
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Gender: Do not displayHome country: USA
Current location: Former USSR
Member since: Wed Oct 25, 2006, 02:04 PM
Number of posts: 3,714