The following video shows a 20-minute debate between The Grayzone’s Max Blumenthal on the one hand, versus the U.S. Government’s coup-producing machine, the “National Endowment for Democracy” (NED), on the other, which latter (NED) was created in the 1980s to replace the CIA as being the organizer of coups (such as in 1953 Iran, 1954 Guatemala, 1973 Chile, and, then, finally, under NED, 2014 Ukraine). This is a debate regarding the NED’s historical record of planning and helping to carry out coups and attempted coups:
In that video, NED denied having been involved in coups, and said that NED is an organization only to promote peace and democracy — an independent anti-violence and pro-democracy organization. The Grayzone said that that was a lie, and that NED is involved in planning and helping to carry out coups, some of which have been very bloody. The Grayzone was right, and, in fact, the most important coup in which NED was involved is the one that has now brought the world to the very brink of WW3, the February 2014 coup in Ukraine, because if this coup succeeds totally, then it will entail getting Ukraine into NATO, so that America will be allowed to place a nuclear missile on Ukraine’s Russian border a mere 317 miles or five minutes of missile-flying time away from beheading Russia’s central command in The Kremlin in Moscow. That would be like achieving a checkmate in chess. And that has been the U.S. Government’s intention ever since the Truman Administration. (In fact, the CIA had actually attempted a coup in Ukraine — and in many other parts of the Soviet Union — as early as 1949.)
Fortunately, the all-time best documentary was made about and documented this coup (the successful one in Ukraine, in 2014) and is a mere ten minutes long, and it presents the key — including the “smoking gun” — evidences that the February 2014 overthrow and replacement of Ukraine’s government was NOT the ‘democratic revolution’ that America and its colonies allege it to have been (the so-called ‘Maidan REVOLUTION’), but was instead a very bloody and entirely illegal COUP by the U.S., which was hidden behind those public demonstrations. This video is shown immediately following, and it has only a single false statement in it — an error instead of intentional — and that error occurs at 0:21 into it, where the announcer says “On February twentieth of two thousand and thirteen,” but had meant to say “On February twentieth of two thousand and fourteen.” This otherwise 100% truthful ten-minute video provides conclusive proofs that what has brought us now to the very brink of a world-destroying nuclear war was this very bloody U.S. coup shown here, overthrowing and replacing the democratically elected and neutralist Ukrainian President, with a U.S. selected and rabidly anti-Russian leader, who immediately imposed an ethnic-cleansing program to get rid of the residents in the regions that had voted overwhelmingly for the overthrown President. This being, of course, the government of the country that borders the very closest of any to The Kremlin — Ukraine, which is only 317 miles away from The Kremlin. And this 10-minute video also shows NED’s involvement in the carrying-out of that coup:
At 7:14 in this video of the coup is shown Larry Diamond, who is the Co-Chair of NED’s International Forum for Democratic Studies, and who was, along with Carl Gershman, NED’s own Founder, the Founding co-Editor of NED’s Journal of Democracy — which is mentioned near the top of his extensive academic CV. In the video at 7:14 he is shown as having produced the most popular-in-Ukraine overthrow-Yanukovych TV ad in Ukraine during the lead-up to the coup, at 7:14 in the video.
What other involvement NED might have had in this super-coup is as-yet unknown, but obviously a coup like this is a very major international organization, at the very top of which was U.S. President Barack Obama, who had started much earlier to plan it, and who gave the top responsibility for that to Victoria Nuland in his State Department. She was the person who is shown in that video as assigning Arseniy Yatsenyuk, “Yats,” to lead the post-coup government — which he did.
As regards NED’s claim to be ONLY a supporter of non-violence and of democracy, here is proof (beyond the first-mentioned video here, the debate between The Grayzone and NED) that this coup had been the exact OPPOSITE:
Already by 19 January 2014, the extremely violent phase of the coup-operation had started, and it continued on 20 January 2014; and, by 21 January 2014, it was clear to anyone in Ukraine that this was no “Revolution of Dignity” (such as the U.S. propaganda for it claimed) but instead was organized riots whose aim was to end democratic rule in Ukraine (to the extent it ever existed). On 25 January 2014, a crowd of rioters viciously assaulted the police, who had been courageously doing their job, and who were using no force to resist — their job which, moreover, Ukraine’s taxpayers were paying them to do (though the American regime claims that the police themselves were carrying out the violence — against only ‘peaceful demonstrators’).
On the day of the coup, 20 February 2014, it culminated with snipers firing down upon the crowd from high up in a tall building, but the BBC’s news-report on it mentioned this fact only in passing and excluded any footage which showed the Nazi emblems that were common among the ‘protesters’. Also it misidentified “demonstrators” as “police.” However, all of the billionaires-owned media likewise presented that violence as having been originated by the elected President, Viktor Yanukovych, instead of by the violent far-rightwing U.S.-hired organized paramilitaries among the demonstrators. The hyper-propagandistic British “Vice News” even simply assumed that the snipers in that tall building were “police opening fire upon the largely unarmed protesters” (saying this while showing footage of police — not “protesters” — being shot dead while holding their police-shields facing upwards toward those high-up, firing-down, snipers.) That report then continued by showing the ‘protesters’ bringing their wounded into the ground floor of the Hotel Ukraine (now Kiev Radisson Blu), where their medics were. That was the main tall building from whose top-floor opened windows the snipers were firing down into the crowds. (The other such building was the Conservatory.) So: who was actually behind these events? A superb compendium-video (an hour long, and which starts with the ten-minute compendium-video we first discussed) showed clearly that the Obama Administration was behind it, and that even Catherine Ashton, the EU’s Foreign Policy chief, was surprised on February 26th to learn that those snipers’ bullets had come NOT from the security forces but from the ‘protesters’ (hirees of the U.S. Government, sometimes by way of its foreign contractors) who were overthrowing the democratically elected Government. An Italian TV investigative reporting team issued to youtube on 19 November 2017 its 20-minute documentary “The HiddenTruth About Ukraine”, interviews with two of the snipers, who said that they weren’t told why they were being paid to travel to and work briefly in Kiev, but only told, by an American Brian Christopher Boyenger (not an “assumed name” such as some German academics have alleged), what to do, once they arrived there. And they did their job — which was to fire down and indiscriminately kill people there — and then they packed their bags and left as soon as the Government was overthrown. And there were other foreign snipers too, who likewise admitted that they had participated at the Hotel Ukraine and/or the Conservatory (both of which buildings were then controlled by the ‘protesters’ — NOT by the Government).
This was a job that the Obama Administration had been planning at least since June 2011, and was training Right Sector people for both inside the U.S. Embassy starting on 1 March 2013, and also at facilities in Poland provided by the Polish Foreign Ministry.
And the U.S.-and-allied press have also been scandalously misrepresenting Ukrainian public opinions in regard to both of the U.S. regime’s European empire organizations, the economic/political EU, and the military NATO: The U.S. Government had engaged the Gallup polling organization, both before and after the coup, in order to poll Ukrainians, and especially ones who lived in its Crimean independent republic (because one of Obama’s top objectives was for the U.S. Navy to replace Russia’s Navy at the Sevastopol Naval Base in Crimea — which goal his coup failed to achieve — so, the U.S. regime wanted to know whether it would receive resistance there from the local population), regarding their views on U.S., Russia, NATO, and the EU; and, generally, Ukrainians were far more pro-Russia than pro-U.S., NATO, or EU, but this was especially the case in Crimea; so, America’s Government knew that Crimeans would be especially resistant. However, this was not really new information. During 2003-2009, only around 20% of Ukrainians had wanted NATO membership, while around 55% opposed it. A poll published in Ukraine on 11 February 2008 found that whereas “57.8% of Ukrainians support the idea of a national referendum on joining NATO,” “50% of Ukrainians would vote against membership of NATO,” and only “24.3% of Ukrainians would vote for Ukraine’s joining NATO.” In 2010, Gallup found that whereas 17% of Ukrainians considered NATO to mean “protection of your country,” 40% said it’s “a threat to your country.” Ukrainians predominantly saw NATO as an enemy, not a friend. But, after Obama’s February 2014 Ukrainian coup, “Ukraine’s NATO membership would get 53.4% of the votes, one third of Ukrainians (33.6%) would oppose it.” However, afterward, the support averaged around 45% — still over twice as high as had been the case prior to the coup. But by the time of 2017, Gallup reported that 35% of Ukrainians viewed NATO as a threat again, and only 26% saw NATO as protection, but Gallup buried this fact in their article and alleged that unfortunately “Ukrainians may be losing confidence in NATO’s ability to help them in this crisis,” and that if the U.S. will do likewise, then NATO “would be less equipped to curtail any Russian military and political expansion” (thereby suggesting that Russia invaded Ukraine in order to acquire more territory — a ludicrous allegation, which would be vastly more applicable to America’s Government than to Russia’s, so that it is just propaganda from that major U.S. Government contractor).
By Eric Zuesse