Ukrainian Riots Accelerating

[Magda Hassan]

A huge affront to Empire. It will be interesting to see what happens in the next move.

[Lauren Johnson]

A huge affront to Empire. It will be interesting to see what happens in the next move.

::popcorn::

[Magda Hassan]

The Empire is wheeling this out now:

Ukraine. Memorandum on Security Assurances

[TABLE="class: headertemplate"]
[TR]
[TD="class: gen_header_backlink"][/TD]
[TD="class: gen_header_title"]Memorandum on Security Assurances in connection with Ukraine's accession to the Treaty on the Non-Proliferation of Nuclear Weapons[/TD]
[TD="class: gen_header_forelink"][/TD]
[/TR]
[/TABLE]
[TABLE="class: header_notes"]
[TR]
[TD]Budapest, 5 December 1994[/TD]
[/TR]
[/TABLE]

The United States of America, the Russian Federation, and the United Kingdom of Great Britain and Northern Ireland,
Welcoming the accession of Ukraine to the Treaty on the Non-Proliferation of Nuclear Weapons as a non-nuclear-weapon State,
Taking into account the commitment of Ukraine to eliminate all nuclear weapons from its territory within a specified period of time,
Noting the changes in the world-wide security situation, including the end of the Cold War, which have brought about conditions for deep reductions in nuclear forces.
Confirm the following:

1. The United States of America, the Russian Federation, and the United Kingdom of Great Britain and Northern Ireland, reaffirm their commitment to Ukraine, in accordance with the principles of the CSCE Final Act, to respect the Independence and Sovereignty and the existing borders of Ukraine.
   
2. The United States of America, the Russian Federation, and the United Kingdom of Great Britain and Northern Ireland, reaffirm their obligation to refrain from the threat or use of force against the territorial integrity or political independence of Ukraine, and that none of their weapons will ever be used against Ukraine except in self-defense or otherwise in accordance with the Charter of the United Nations.
   
3. The United States of America, the Russian Federation, and the United Kingdom of Great Britain and Northern Ireland, reaffirm their commitment to Ukraine, in accordance with the principles of the CSCE Final Act, to refrain from economic coercion designed to subordinate to their own interest the exercise by Ukraine of the rights inherent in its sovereignty and thus to secure advantages of any kind.
   
4. The United States of America, the Russian Federation, and the United Kingdom of Great Britain and Northern Ireland, reaffirm their commitment to seek immediate United Nations Security Council action to provide assistance to Ukraine, as a non-nuclear-weapon State Party to the Treaty on the Non-Proliferation of Nuclear Weapons, if Ukraine should become a victim of an act of aggression or an object of a threat of aggression in which nuclear weapons are used.
   
5. The United States of America, the Russian Federation, and the United Kingdom of Great Britain and Northern Ireland, reaffirm, in the case of the Ukraine, their commitment not to use nuclear weapons against any non-nuclear-weapon State Party to the Treaty on the Non-Proliferation of Nuclear Weapons, except in the case of an attack on themselves, their territories or dependent territories, their armed forces, or their allies, by such a state in association or alliance with a nuclear weapon state.
   
6. The United States of America, the Russian Federation, and the United Kingdom of Great Britain and Northern Ireland will consult in the event a situation arises which raises a question concerning these commitments.
   

This Memorandum will become applicable upon signature.
Signed in four copies having equal validity in the English, Russian and Ukrainian languages.


https://en.wikisource.org/wiki/Ukraine._...Assurances

But they did not feel that same need to apply the 1975 Helsinki Final Act, a treaty on which territorial integrity is recognised, and which the Budapest Memorandum is based on, with regards to Yugoslavia.

[Magda Hassan]

Pierre Omidyar co-funded Ukraine revolution groups with US government, documents show

By Mark Ames
On February 28, 2014

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":

"There's quite a bit of evidence of coup-ness. Q is how many levels deep interference from both sides is."

These are serious claims. So serious that I decided to investigate them. And what I found was shocking.
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").
Step out of the shadows…. Wheeler's boss, Pierre Omidyar.
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.
[Update: Wheeler has responded on Twitter to say that her Tweets were taken out of context, but would not give specifics. Adam Colligan, with whom Wheeler was debating, commented on Pando that "while Wheeler did raise the issue of external interference in relation to a discussion about a coup, it was not really at all in the manner that you have portrayed." Further "[Pax Americana] appeared after the conversation had shifted from the idea of whether a coup had been staged by the Ukrainian Parliament to a question about the larger powers' willingness to weaken underlying economic conditions in a state." Neither Wheeler or Colligan has commented on the main subject of the story: Pierre Omidyar's co-investment in Ukrainian opposition groups with the US government.]

* * * *

When the revolution came to Ukraine, neo-fascists played a front-center role in overthrowing the country's president. But the real political power rests with Ukraine's pro-western neoliberals. Political figures like Oleh Rybachuk, long a favorite of the State Department, DC neocons, EU, and NATOand the right-hand man to Orange Revolution leader Viktor Yushchenko.
Last December, the Financial Times wrote that Rybachuk's "New Citizen" NGO campaign "played a big role in getting the protest up and running."
New Citizen, along with the rest of Rybachuk's interlocking network of western-backed NGOs and campaigns "Center UA" (also spelled "Centre UA"), "Chesno," and "Stop Censorship" to name a few grew their power by targeting pro-Yanukovych politicians with a well-coordinated anti-corruption campaign that built its strength in Ukraine's regions, before massing in Kiev last autumn.
The efforts of the NGOs were so successful that the Ukraine government was accused of employing dirty tricks to shut them down. In early February, the groups were the subject of a massive money laundering investigation by the economics division of Ukraine's Interior Ministry in what many denounced as a politically motivated move.
Fortunately the groups had the strength which is to say, money to survive those attacks and continue pushing for regime change in Ukraine. The source of that money?
According to the Kyiv Post, Pierrie Omidyar's Omidyar Network (part of the Omidyar Group which owns First Look Media and the Intercept) provided 36% of "Center UA"'s $500,000 budget in 2012 nearly $200,000. USAID provided 54% of "Center UA"'s budget for 2012. Other funders included the US government-backed National Endowment for Democracy.
In 2011, Omidyar Network gave $335,000 to "New Citizen," one of the anti-Yanukovych "projects" managed through the Rybachuk-chaired NGO "Center UA." At the time, Omidyar Network boasted that its investment in "New Citizen" would help "shape public policy" in Ukraine:

"Using technology and media, New Citizen coordinates the efforts of concerned members of society, reinforcing their ability to shape public policy.
"… With support from Omidyar Network, New Citizen will strengthen its advocacy efforts in order to drive greater transparency and engage citizens on issues of importance to them."

In March 2012, Rybachuk the operator behind the 2004 Orange Revolution scenes, the Anatoly Chubais of Ukraine boasted that he was preparing a new Orange Revolution:

"People are not afraid. We now have 150 NGOs in all the major cities in our clean up Parliament campaign' to elect and find better parliamentarians….The Orange Revolution was a miracle, a massive peaceful protest that worked. We want to do that again and we think we will."

Detailed financial records reviewed by Pando (and embedded below) also show Omidyar Network covered costs for the expansion of Rybachuk's anti-Yanukovych campaign, "Chesno" ("Honestly"), into regional cities including Poltava, Vinnytsia, Zhytomyr, Ternopil, Sumy, and elsewhere, mostly in the Ukrainian-speaking west and center.

* * * *

To understand what it means for Omidyar to fund Oleh Rybachuk, some brief history is necessary. Rybachuk's background follows a familiar pattern in post-Soviet opportunism: From well-connected KGB intelligence ties, to post-Soviet neoliberal networker.
In the Soviet era, Rybachuk studied in a military languages program half of whose graduates went on to work for the KGB. Rybachuk's murky overseas posting in India in the late Soviet era further strengthens many suspicions about his Soviet intelligence ties; whatever the case, by Rybachuk's own account, his close ties to top intelligence figures in the Ukrainian SBU served him well during the Orange Revolution of 2004, when the SBU passed along secret information about vote fraud and assassination plots.
In 1992, after the collapse of the Soviet Union, Rybachuk moved to the newly-formed Ukraine Central Bank, heading the foreign relations department under Central Bank chief and future Orange Revolution leader Viktor Yushchenko. In his central bank post, Rybachuk established close friendly ties with western government and financial aid institutions, as well as proto-Omidyar figures like George Soros, who funded many of the NGOs involved in "color revolutions" including small donations to the same Ukraine NGOs that Omidyar backed. (Like Omidyar Network does today, Soros' charity armsOpen Society and Renaissance Foundationpublicly preached transparency and good government in places like Russia during the Yeltsin years, while Soros' financial arm speculated on Russian debt and participated in scandal-plagued auctions of state assets.)
In early 2005, Orange Revolution leader Yushchenko became Ukraine's president, and he appointed Rybachuk deputy prime minister in charge of integrating Ukraine into the EU, NATO, and other western institutions. Rybachuk also pushed for the mass-privatization of Ukraine's remaining state holdings.
Over the next several years, Rybachuk was shifted around President Yushchenko's embattled administration, torn by internal divisions. In 2010, Yushchenko lost the presidency to recently-overthrown Viktor Yanukovych, and a year later, Rybachuk was on Omidyar's and USAID's payroll, preparing for the next Orange Revolution. As Rybachuk told the Financial Times two years ago:

"We want to do [the Orange Revolution] again and we think we will."

Some of Omidyar's funds were specifically earmarked for covering the costs of setting up Rybachuk's "clean up parliament" NGOs in Ukraine's regional centers. Shortly after the Euromaidan demonstrations erupted last November, Ukraine's Interior Ministry opened up a money laundering investigation into Rybachuk's NGOs, dragging Omidyar's name into the high-stakes political struggle.
According to a Kyiv Post article on February 10 titled, "Rybachuk: Democracy-promoting nongovernmental organization faces ridiculous' investigation":

"Police are investigating Center UA, a public-sector watchdog funded by Western donors, on suspicion of money laundering, the group said. The group's leader, Oleh Rybachuk, said it appears that authorities, with the probe, are trying to warn other nongovernmental organizations that seek to promote democracy, transparency, free speech and human rights in Ukraine.
"According to Center UA, the Kyiv economic crimes unit of the Interior Ministry started the investigation on Dec. 11. Recently, however, investigators stepped up their efforts, questioning some 200 witnesses.
"… Center UA received more than $500,000 in 2012, according to its annual report for that year, 54 percent of which came from Pact Inc., a project funded by the U.S. Agency for International Development. Nearly 36 percent came from Omidyar Network, a foundation established by eBay founder Pierre Omidyar and his wife. Other donors include the International Renaissance Foundation, whose key funder is billionaire George Soros, and National Endowment for Democracy, funded largely by the U.S. Congress."

* * * *

What all this adds up to is a journalistic conflict-of-interest of the worst kind: Omidyar working hand-in-glove with US foreign policy agencies to interfere in foreign governments, co-financing regime change with well-known arms of the American empire while at the same time hiring a growing team of soi-disant "independent journalists" which vows to investigate the behavior of the US government at home and overseas, and boasts of its uniquely "adversarial" relationship towards these government institutions.
As First Look staffer Jeremy Scahill told the Daily Beast…

We had a long discussion about this internally; about what our position would be if the White House asked us to not publish something…. With us, because we want to be adversarial, they won't know what bat phone to call. They know who to call at The Times, they know who to call at The Post. With us, who are they going to call? Pierre? Glenn?

Of the many problems that poses, none is more serious than the fact that Omidyar now has the only two people with exclusive access to the complete Snowden NSA cache, Glenn Greenwald and Laura Poitras. Somehow, the same billionaire who co-financed the "coup" in Ukraine with USAID, also has exclusive access to the NSA secretsand very few in the independent media dare voice a skeptical word about it.
In the larger sense, this is a problem of 21st century American inequality, of life in a billionaire-dominated era. It is a problem we all have to contend withPandoDaily's 18-plus investors include a gaggle of Silicon Valley billionaires like Marc Andreessen (who serves on the board of eBay, chaired by Pierre Omidyar) and Peter Thiel (whose politics I've investigated, and described as repugnant.)
But what is more immediately alarming is what makes Omidyar different. Unlike other billionaires, Omidyar has garnered nothing but uncritical, fawning press coverage, particularly from those he has hired. By acquiring a "dream team" of what remains of independent media Greenwald, Jeremy Scahill, Wheeler, my former partner Matt Taibbi not to mention press "critics" like Jay Rosen he buys both silence and fawning press.
Both are incredibly useful: Silence, an absence of journalistic curiosity about Omidyar's activities overseas and at home, has been purchased for the price of whatever his current all-star indie cast currently costs him. As an added bonus, that same investment buys silence from exponentially larger numbers of desperately underpaid independent journalists hoping to someday be on his payroll, and the underfunded media watchdogs that survive on Omidyar Network grants.
And it also buys laughable fluff from the likes of Scahill who also boasted to the Daily Beast of his boss' close involvement in the day to day running of First Look.

"[Omidyar] strikes me as always sort of political, but I think that the NSA story and the expanding wars put politics for him into a much more prominent place in his existence. This is not a side project that he is doing. Pierre writes more on our internal messaging than anyone else. And he is not micromanaging. This guy has a vision. And his vision is to confront what he sees as an assault on the privacy of Americans."

Now Wheeler has her answer that, yes, the revolutionary groups were part-funded by Uncle Sam, but also by her boss one assumes awkward follow up questions will be asked on that First Look internal messaging system.
Whether Wheeler, Scahill and their colleagues go on to share their concerns publicly will speak volumes about First Look's much-trumpeted independence, both from Omidyar's other business interests and from Omidyar's co-investors in Ukraine: the US government.
Editor's note: Pando contacted Omidyar Networks for comment prior to publication but had not received a response by press time. We will update this post if they do respond.

* * * *

Chesno document showing total funding from USAID and Omidyar Network to "Centre UA":

Chesno document showing numerous Omidyar fundings for activities in regional cities:

09 09 2013 Chesno 2012 Finance Campain Final

[David Guyatt]

Well done Glen Greenwald -- bailing from The Guardian to Omidyar's propaganda organ. Nice move.

[Tracy Riddle]

http://www.paulcraigroberts.org/2014/02/...rels-guns/

Don't think it's been posted already.

» Ukrainian Neo-Nazis Declare that Power Comes Out of the Barrels of their Guns

By: pcr3| February 26, 2014 | Categories: Articles & Columns | Tags: | Print This Article


Ukrainian Neo-Nazis Declare that Power Comes Out of the Barrels of their Guns

Paul Craig Roberts

Reality on the ground in Ukraine contradicts the incompetent and immoral Obama regime's portrait of Ukrainian democracy on the march.

To the extent that government exists in post-coup Ukraine, it is laws dictated by gun and threat wielding thugs of the neo-Nazi, Russophobic, ultra-nationalist, right-wing parties. Watch the video of the armed thug, Aleksandr Muzychko, who boosts of killing Russian soldiers in Chechnya, dictating to the Rovno regional parliament a grant of apartments to families of protesters. http://rt.com/news/radical-opposition-intimidating-techniques-882/

Read about the neo-nazis intimidating the Central Election Commission in order to secure rule and personnel changes in order to favor the ultra-right in the forthcoming elections. Thug Aleksandr Shevchenko informed the CEC that armed activists will remain in CEC offices in order to make certain that the election is not rigged against the neo-nazis. What he means, of course, is the armed thugs will make sure the neo-nazis win. If the neo-nazis don't win, the chances are high that they will take power regardless.

Members of President Yanukovich's ruling party, the Party of Regions, have been shot, had arrest warrants issued for them, have experienced home invasions and physical threats, and are resigning in droves in hopes of saving the lives of themselves and their families. The prosecutor's office in the Volyn region (western Ukraine) has been ordered by ultra-nationalists to resign en masse .

Jewish synagogs and Eastern Orthodox Christian churches are being attacked.

To toot my own horn, I might have been the first and only to predict that Washington's organization of pro-EU Ukrainian politicians into a coup against the elected government of Ukraine would destroy democracy and establish the precedent that force prevails over elections, thereby empowering the organized and armed extreme right-wing.

This is precisely what has happened. Note that there was no one in the Obama regime who had enough sense to see the obvious result of their smug, self-satisfied interference in the internal affairs of Ukraine.

If a democratically elected president and ruling party are so easily driven from power by armed neo-nazis, what chance do Washington's paid stooges among the so-called "moderates" have of forming a government? These are the corrupt people who wanted President Yanukovich out of office so that they could take the money instead. The corruption charge against Yanukovich was cover for the disloyal, undemocratic "moderate" schemers to seize power and be paid millions of dollars by Washington for taking Ukraine into the EU and NATO.

The Washington-paid schemers are now reaping their just reward as they sit in craven silence while neo-nazi Muzychko wielding an Ak-47 challenges government officials to their face: "I dare you take my gun!"

Only Obama, Susan Rice, Victoria Nuland, Washington's European puppets, and the Western prostitute media can describe the brutal reality of post-coup Ukraine as "the forward march of democracy."

The West now faces a real mess, and so does Russia. The presstitutes will keep the American public from ever knowing what has happened, and the Obama regime will never admit it. It is not always clear that even the Russians want to admit it. The intelligent, reasonable, and humane Russian Foreign Minister, a person 100 cuts above the despicable John Kerry, keeps speaking as if this is all a mistake and appealing to the Western governments to stand behind the agreement that they pressured President Yanukovich to sign.

Yanukovich is history, as are Washington's "moderates." The moderates are not only corrupt; they are stupid. The fools even disbanded the Riot Police, leaving themselves at the mercy of the armed right-wing nazi thugs.

Ukraine is out of control. This is what happens when an arrogant, but stupid, Assistant Secretary of State (Victoria Nuland) plots with an equally arrogant and stupid US ambassador (Pyatt) to put their candidates in power once their coup against the elected president succeeds. The ignorant and deluded who deny any such plotting occurred can listen to the conversation between Nuland and Pyatt here:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=MSxaa-67yGM&feature=player_embedded

The situation will almost certainly lead to war. Only Putin's diplomatic skills could prevent it. However, Putin has been demonized by Washington and the whores who comprise the US print and TV media. European and British politicians would have their Washington paychecks cut off if they aligned with Putin.

War is unavoidable, because the Western public is out to lunch. The more facts and information I provide, the more emails I receive defending the "sincere [and well paid] protesters' honest protests against corruption," as if corruption were the issue. I hear from Ukrainians and from those of Ukrainian ethnicity in Canada and the US that it is natural for Ukrainians to hate Russians because Ukrainians suffered under communism, as if suffering under communism, which disappeared in 1991, is unique to Ukrainians and has anything to do with the US coup that has fallen into neo-nazi hands,

No doubt. Many suffered under communism, including Russians. But was the suffering greater than the suffering of Japanese civilians twice nuked by the "Indispensable people," or the suffering by German civilians whose cities were firebombed, like Tokyo, by the "exceptional people"?

Today Japan and Germany are Washington's puppet states. In contrast, Ukraine was an independent country with a working relationship with Russia. It was this relationship that Washington wished to destroy.

Now that a reckless and incompetent Washington has opened Pandora's Box, more evil has been released upon the world. The suffering will not be confined to Ukraine.

There are a number of reasons why the situation is likely to develop in a very bad way. One is that most people are unable to deal with reality even when reality directly confronts them. When I provide the facts as they are known, here are some of the responses I receive: "You are a Putin agent;" "you hate Ukrainians;" "you are defending corruption;" "you must not know how Ukrainians suffered at the hands of Stalin."

Of course, having done Russian studies in graduate school, having been a member of the US-USSR student exchange program in 1961, having traveled in Russia, Georgia, Ukraine, and Uzbekistan, having published in scholarly journals of Slavic and Russian studies, having twice addressed the Soviet Academy of Sciences, having been invited to explain to the CIA why the Soviet economic collapse occurred despite the CIA's predictions to the contrary, I wouldn't know anything about how people suffered under communism. The willingness of readers to display to me their utter ignorance and stupidity is astonishing. There is a large number of people who think reality consists of their delusions.

Reality is simply too much for mentally and emotionally weak people who are capable of holding on to their delusions in the face of all evidence to the contrary. The masses of deluded people and the total inability of Washington, wallowing it its hubris, to admit a mistake, mean that Washington's destabilization of Ukraine is a problem for us all.

RT reports that "Russian President Vladimir Putin has ordered an urgent military drill to test combat readiness of the armed forces across western and central Russia." According to Russia's Defense Minister, the surprise drill tested ground troops, Air Force, airborne troops and aerospace defense. http://rt.com/news/putin-drill-combat-army-864/

The Defense Minister said: "The drills are not connected with events in Ukraine at all."

Yes, of course. The Defense Minister says this, because Putin still hopes that the EU will come to its senses. In my opinion, and I hope I am wrong, the European "leaders" are too corrupted by Washington's money to have any sense. They are bought-and-paid-for. Nothing is important to them but money.

Ask yourself, why does Russia need at this time an urgent readiness test unrelated to Ukraine? Anyone familiar with geography knows that western and central Russia sit atop Ukraine.

Let us all cross our fingers that another war is not the consequence of the insouciant American public, the craven cowardice of the presstitute media, Washington's corrupt European puppets, and the utter mendacity of the criminals who rule in Washington.

[Magda Hassan]

Of Neo-Fascists and Smiley-Face Neoliberals

Posted on March 1, 2014 by emptywheel
Back before February 4, weeks before the most violent crackdown that killed protestors that led to Viktor Yanukovych's ouster, Assistant Secretary of State Victoria Nuland and US Ambassador to Ukraine had a conversation about how to divvy up power between 3 opposition figures in a post-Yanukovych Ukraine. Nuland deemed "Yats" the necessary post-Yanukovych leader.

Nuland: [Breaks in] I think Yats is the guy who's got the economic experience, the governing experience. He's the… what he needs is Klitsch and Tyahnybok on the outside. He needs to be talking to them four times a week, you know. I just think Klitsch going in… he's going to be at that level working for Yatseniuk, it's just not going to work.
Pyatt: Yeah, no, I think that's right. OK. Good. Do you want us to set up a call with him as the next step?

Thursday, Yatseniuk was appointed Prime Minister. (Update: See this Forbes piece on Yatseniuk.)
On Monday, Mark Ames wrote a piece explaining why "Everything You Know about Ukraine Is Wrong." In it, he treated claims about two main groups involved in Ukraine's uprising: the general protestors, and the far right.
Of the general protestors, he says,

In fact, the people who are protesting or supporting the protesters are first and foremost sick of their shitty lives in a shitty country they want to make bettera country where their fates are controlled by a tiny handful of nihilistic oligarchs and Kremlin overlords, and their political frontmen. It's first and foremost a desire to gain some control over their fate.

Of the far right, he says,

They're definitely real, they're a powerful minority in the anti-Yanukovych campaignI'd say the neo-fascsists from Svoboda and Pravy Sektor are probably the vanguard of the movement, the ones who pushed it harder than anyone. Anyone who ignores the role of the neo-fascists (or ultranationalists, take your pick) is lying or ignorant, just as anyone who claims that Yanukovych answered only to Putin doesn't know what they're talking about. The front-center role of Svoboda and the neo-fascists in this revolution as opposed to the Orange Revolution is, I think, due to fact that the more smiley-face/respectable neoliberal politicians can't rally the same fanatical support they did a decade ago. [my emphasis]

I generally agree with this: there is abundant reason for protestors, of their own accord and with full agency, to want to change the status quo. And that's what has been going on for months. A big change to the status quo going forward is probably not going to happen, because the existing offerings on all sides are all pretty crummy. And there is a concerning faction the loud violent one, which therefore played an outsized role in Yanukovych's ouster that espouses troubling far-right politics.
Sunday, partly because of real legal questions about Yanukovych's ouster, partly because some of the tactics we're seeing in Ukraine seem to have ties to those we saw in Syria, and partly because of a 20-month old twitter conversation with Adam Colligan involving Paraguay laid out here, I tweeted, "There's quite a bit of evidence of coup-ness. Q is how many levels deep interference from both sides is," though I said we don't really know what went on yet. Later in the conversation I suggested this part of the invitation for all parties to sow instability arose because American power is waning. "Of course, part of it is just that Pax America is spinning out, trying to sustain itself."
As Colligan laid out, our conversation existed in the context of a long-ago conversation we had about the potential role of parliaments in "coups." Nowhere did I get into specifics about who I believed to behind any coup (though later I suggested John Brennan might one day rival Allen Dulles for the number of coups he pulls off; I actually think he might instead rival him for coups attempted, not coups successfully pulled off). But in any case, we were talking about very recent events still in the last week, which is part of the reason I said we probably don't know everything there is to know yet, in the context of violence that led to Yanukovych's ouster.
Ames took that one tweet "There's quite a bit of evidence of coup-ness. Q is how many levels deep interference from both sides is" and my reference to Pax Americana and used it as a hook for this piece. Here's how he uses those tweets:

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":

"There's quite a bit of evidence of coup-ness. Q is how many levels deep interference from both sides is."

These are serious claims. So serious that I decided to investigate them. And what I found was shocking.
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").
Step out of the shadows…. Wheeler's boss, Pierre Omidyar.
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.

Now, Ames apparently couldn't even cut and paste competently because he added "force" inside quotation marks attributed to me, and in the original reference used "dark" instead of "deep," all of which played a key rhetorical role in giving his claims their "dark deep" tinge. (In several tweets, Ames' editor Paul Carr assured me he thought Ames' citations of me were fair.)
Cue Hollywood villain music: Bum bum bum!
But let's look at what Pando claims it has proven: It claims it has presented (1) clear evidence that (2) US (and Omidyar's) investment was a "force multiplier" (3) for "many" of the groups "involved" in overthrowing Yanukovych. It also says Omidyar (4) "co-invested with the US government" (5) "to fund regime change."
The "clear evidence" in question consists of:
A) In 2011, the Omidyar Network awarded $335,000 to New Citizen (Centre UA), an NGO headed by former Viktor Yushchenko aide Oleh Rybachuk. The goal of that award was to:

Why We Invested

Established prior to the February 2010 presidential elections in Ukraine, New Citizen seeks to enable citizen participation in national and regional politics by amplifying the voices of Ukrainian citizens and promoting open and accountable government. Using technology and media, New Citizen coordinates the efforts of concerned members of society, reinforcing their ability to shape public policy. Additionally, the organization monitors the performance of government, giving people access to valuable information to hold their leaders to account.
In a nation where civic action historically has been fragmented, New Citizen provides Ukrainians with a platform to collectively advocate for positive social change, from defending human rights to solving problems of local governance, the environment, and healthcare. With support from Omidyar Network, New Citizen will strengthen its advocacy efforts in order to drive greater transparency and engage citizens on issues of importance to them. [I've bolded the pieces of this description Ames decided to quote to make it easier to see what he ignored]

This is in line with other donations Omidyar Network makes, such as the 3 years of funding it gave to Sunlight Foundation to build tools to help Americans hold its legislators accountable.
B) The Kyiv Post reported that in 2012 (the year after New Citizen received this grant, and therefore presumably the year it got spent), Omidyar Network funded 36% of New Citizen's budget, Pact, a non-profit funded in part by USAID funded 54% of it, and other funding came from the National Endowment for Democracy.

Center UA received more than $500,000 in 2012, according to its annual report for that year, 54 percent of which came from Pact Inc., a project funded by the U.S. Agency for International Development. Nearly 36 percent came from Omidyar Network, a foundation established by eBay founder Pierre Omidyar and his wife. Other donors include the International Renaissance Foundation, whose key funder is billionaire George Soros, and National Endowment for Democracy, funded largely by the U.S. Congress."

C) Pando links 2011-2012 funding documents from Chesno, another Rybachuk group, providing line-item funding from Omidyar Network and USAID via Pact. You can see a statement about that audit in English here.
D) In March 2012 (that is, after Omidyar Network granted the funds), Rybachuk said he wanted to repeat the Orange Revolution by developing grassroots organizations.

That is what Oleh Rybachuk is doing. He worked for both the Orange Revolution's leaders as Yushchenko's campaign chair, Chief of Staff and Tymoshenko's assistant. He is disgusted with them for their actions and devotes his time to developing grassroots organizations, NGOs, throughout the country to restart the Orange movement.
[snip]
"People are not afraid. We now have 150 NGOs in all the major cities in our clean up Parliament campaign' to elect and find better parliamentarians," he said. "People don't watch the propaganda in the media. Facebook had 300,000 members a year ago and now has two million. The Orange Revolution was a miracle, a massive peaceful protest that worked. We want to do that again and we think we will." [again, I've bolded what Ames quoted; note, I think, elsewhere in his piece he attributes the last quote to a Financial Times piece]

E) He links but does not quote from this article, claiming it is a 2012 article (it is a 2013 one describing the protests in December). It quotes Rybachuk saying the movement is not the product of political technologists, and also claiming that New Citizen doesn't rely on western donors for "this work," instead relying on "domestic donations from a mushrooming middle class."
F) In February, Yanukovych's government launched a money laundering investigation into Center UA. (This post provides a more accessible description.)
Here's what Pando has shown: Clear evidence that Omidyar network awarded funds in 2011, spent in 2012, tied to a networked NGO pushing transparency, human rights, and grassroots civil society.
Bum bum bum!
It has also shown clear evidence that that same year, a non-profit funded in part by USAID provided even more of that group's funding, and NED less.
Pando has not shown that these donations were linked in any way, though it's definitely possible: here's what Pact, the non-profit, says about partnerships:

Pact works side by side with as many 10,000 partners, from community nonprofits to civil society organizations, village and town governments to citizen volunteers. These partnerships in turn partner with millions of people for whom Pact is a promise of a better tomorrow.
Pact can't do it all. So Pact also partners with other international NGOs that may have particular expertise, relationships or resources Pact needs to better help more people. In different places around the world, Pact partners with ChildFund, FHI360, Marie Stopes International and Population Services International, for example.
Much of Pact's work is supported by national aid agencies such as the United States Agency for International Development (USAID), Great Britain's Department for International Development (DFID), the Swedish International Development Cooperation Agency (SIDA), the Danish International Development Agency (DANIDA) and the Australian Government Overseas Aid Program (AusAID) fund much of Pact's work.
Foundation and corporate partners The Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation, The Coca-Cola Foundation and Chevron, among them also fund Pact projects.

I guess, if you count all the groups tied to Center UA, that 2011 grant funded "many" organizations.
I don't see any evidence here that those donations were explicitly intended to pay for regime change (indeed, Ames' evidence for that post-dates the awarding of the grant and leaves out the bit about grassroots networking, though I suspect Rybachuk can be found saying he wanted to support more grassroots change before 2011, too), unless you presume transparency and better governance equates to regime change. Though Rybachuk clearly wanted better parliamentarians.
So far so good: the Pando accusation against Omidyar Network is that back in 2011 it gave money to do things like foster transparency. And USAID also donated money via a non-profit, Pact. Pando has not presented evidence about what Pact's goals were, but here's what they say about their Ukraine governance project.

Pact helps people who may lack resources, education or influence exercise their voice through education, networking, coalition-building and advocacy. Our tools and strategies connect people with their public servants, enable them to track their activity and efficiency, and give communities a voice in policy-making and priorities.
Likewise, Pact also works directly with host government officials, legislators, local government councils and key ministries to devise ways to share information, decisions, plans and progress reports with communities.
In more than dozen countries today, Pact nurtures positive state-society engagement based on inclusiveness, responsiveness, transparency and accountability.
Pact's emphasis on partnership cultivates grassroots support for reform by encouraging collaborative efforts between civil society organizations; local, regional and national NGOs; businesses; and government. These networks build broad-based constituencies whose voices command attention.
Pact and its partners also help train women in political leadership, conduct civics education in schools and communities, raise awareness of issues critical to marginalized groups, and reinforce democratic and gender-equal ideals.

Cue the Hollywood villain music again. Bum bum bum! Women in leadership?
It's the "force-multiplier" thing that really confuses me. Setting aside the temporal issue (and even assuming, just for sake of argument, that Rybachuk's claim that the protests themselves the ones in 2013 were domestically funded is not true, though I'm not making that claim), I'm really curious by the different picture of what groups played what role that Ames has provided. Again, on Monday, he said this:

I'd say the neo-fascsists from Svoboda and Pravy Sektor are probably the vanguard of the movement, the ones who pushed it harder than anyone.
[snip]
the more smiley-face/respectable neoliberal politicians can't rally the same fanatical support they did a decade ago.

Yesterday, he said this:

When the revolution came to Ukraine, neo-fascists played a front-center role in overthrowing the country's president. But the real political power rests with Ukraine's pro-western neoliberals. Political figures like Oleh Rybachuk, long a favorite of the State Department, DC neocons, EU, and NATOand the right-hand man to Orange Revolution leader Viktor Yushchenko. [my emphasis]

That is, on Monday, the "smiley-face neoliberal politicians" couldn't rally support like they used to be able to, which made the neo-fascists the vanguard in the movement, which in turn contributed to the violence that led to Yanukovych's ouster. That would seem to say whatever funds Rybachuk got, it didn't serve as enough of a force-multiplier.
Yesterday, the neo-fascists were still "front-center," but "the real political power" was now back in the hands of the "smiley-face neoliberal politicians," and one in particular, Rybachuk, the one Omidyar Network happened to give money to in 2011 which got spent in 2012.
I guess, ultimately, this comes down to whether Foundation support of NGOs funding transparency is a bad thing, and whether that amounts to funding regime change.
http://www.emptywheel.net/2014/03/01/of-...oliberals/

[Lauren Johnson]

Here are number of comments from various non-MSM sources.

Two from Sic Semper Tyrannis:

From Pat Lang:

It is becoming clear that the Nuland/neocon/NED campaign against Russia in Ukraine was probably a covert action intended to punish Russia for not supporting US/Israeli/Saudi and Turkish policy in Syria and to some extent with regard to Iran. I have no specific knowledge of US actions in this but "back azimuths" run into events and actors make the true story obvious. Was there to be a second phase of the spread of revolution, a phase aimed at Russia itself? We will probably never know.

In any case Putin has called Obama's bluff. You should not threaten if you are not prepared to act.

And from the anonymous TTG:

RT reported Putin has asked the upper house of parliament for authority to use the armed forces to stabilize the situation in Ukraine. The request is for the entire Ukraine, not just Crimea. The Federation Council opened the parlimentary session to the Russian national anthem just hours ago. The session was televised live on RT with several speeches and a unanimous vote to support the decision. One senator suggested recalling the Russian ambassador in Washington in response to the inflammatory speech given by Obama yesterday. History in the making.

Sergei Aksenov, the new Crimean prime minister asked Putin for military assistance after revealing armed thugs from Kiev attempted to take over several Crimean state buildings last night. Local citizen self defense squads repelled the attacks. He placed all Ukrainian armed forces and police in Crimea under his personal command. This is after the events of two nights ago when unidentified, incredibly disciplined forces appeared at Simferopol apparently thwarting the arrival of Tartar "jihadists" and weapons from Turkey. This incident is well reported by the Saker and Moon of Alabama.

Klitschko in Kiev just called for Ukrainian mobilization to face an imminent Russian invasion. Do the upstarts in Kiev have any control over the Ukrainian armed forces? RT just reported a Ukrainian naval vessel steaming in the Black Sea lowered the Ukrainian flag, raised the Russian flag and headed for Sevastopol. Surely Russian officers have been talking with their Ukrainian counterparts to gauge their loyalty. Undoubtedly some of these Ukrainian forces will greet the Russian columns as liberators and assist in controlling airfields and maintaining order. GRU Spetznaz teams have undoubtedly been monitoring Ukrainian forces and are prepared to act at the right moment. They will certainly target the Maidan neonazi hooligans and their Western supporters with cold, lethal precision. The SVR is collecting most, if not all, activist communications to aid the impending military operations and to further expose the mounting evidence of Western perfidy. Long range reconnaissance troops will soon be clearing routes into the Ukrainian heartland. Any of us who trained to face the Soviet 3rd Shock Army across the Fulda Gap knows this was standard procedure decades ago.

Yes, the tanks will be rolling in a matter of days. Once they cross the border, I doubt they will stop until they are in Kiev and at the Polish border.
TTG

and a [URL="http://www.moonofalabama.org/2014/03/the-crimean-anti-coup-move/comments/page/1/#comments"]snippet from Moon of Alabama
[/URL]

...

• Turkish intelligence helped with training Tatars in support of a local Crimea anti-Russian coup
  
• Russian intelligence has thoroughly penetrated the coup-plotters communications (see Nuland tape) and knew what was coming
  
• Russian aligned forces secured the Crimea and prevented infiltration of more Tataric units from Turkey
  
• On the Crimea, as well as in other Russian aligned areas in east Ukraine (Donetsk, Mykolaiv and Dnipropetrovsk), counter coups are establishing separate regions which will ask for Russian support and eventual incorporation into the Russian Federation
  
• If all this goes well for the Russians the "western" coup in Kiev will have resulted in the "west" acquiring a bankrupt, dirt poor west Ukraine while Russia will acquire the industry and resource rich east Ukraine and will keep the Crimea as its strategic asset
  
• In the context of the war of Syria the coup in the Ukraine was a countermeasure to Russian support for Syria. Unless the Crimea falls to coup forces that countermeasure will have failed.
  

...

[Lauren Johnson]

A snippet from Pepe Escobar:

As Immanuel Wallerstein has already observed, [2] Nuland, Kagan and the neo-con gang are as much terrified of Russia "dominating" Ukraine as of a slowly emerging, and eventually quite possible, geopolitical alliance between Germany (with France as a junior partner) and Russia. That would mean the heart of the European Union forging a counter-power to the dwindling, increasingly wobbly American power.

Holy Cow! The possibility of Germany uniting with Russia? Certainly the CFR's nightmare. Did Russia go off script? What was that guy's name? Yah. Preparata. Guido Preparata.

[Magda Hassan]

A snippet from Pepe Escobar:

What was that guy's name? Yah. Preparata. Guido Preparata.

Yep. That's the one. And goes back to Halford Mackinder. Earliet perhaps.