Here is a February 13, 2014 article in Workers World, U.S. officials caught in Ukraine plot.

On Feb. 6, Victoria Nuland, U.S. assistant secretary of state for European affairs, discovered that someone considered her recent phone discussion with the U.S. ambassador to Ukraine, Geoffrey Pyatt, too frank and pithy to remain in the archives.

First of all, their conversation showed Washington considered it perfectly normal and reasonable not only to have an opinion on who among the Ukrainian contenders should run the country, but to intervene to make sure a U.S. favorite won. In addition, it showed that the U.S. is contemptuous of the role of its EU partners, who are also imperialist rivals.

Why bring this up now?  I got into a discussion where I was challenged by my assertion that the U.S. was meddling in Ukrainian affairs before Russia started taking military action against the Ukraine.  I remembered the incident that helped form my opinion, but I wasn’t sure I could find the article on this blog to show it.  The key name that I did not remember was Victoria Nuland.  How could everyone, including me, forget this important name?

Although I did get a long list of articles when I searched the blog for the word “ukraine”, I didn’t have the time to read them all enough detail to pick out the reference to this incident.

Now that I know the name, I see that a search for “nuland” does bring up two of those articles.

This all fits in nicely with my previous post, The science of protecting people’s feelings: why we pretend all opinions are equal.  The incident of finding Victoria Nuland’s name is a perfect demonstration of why I have this blog.  I get so frustrated when I know the “facts” support me, but people put an equal weight on the opinions of others who just don’t know what they are talking about.  Marden Seavey is always calling me out for my believing I am always right.  The purpose of the blog is to archive the material to prove I am always right.  (Come on folks, can’t you see the self-deprecating humor in what I have just written?)  You might notice I also like to hear myself blather on.

Consortium News has the article NYT Revamps Its False Ukraine Narrative.

The Ukraine crisis really emerged from the European Union’s offer of an association agreement that President Yanukovych was initially inclined to accept. But it was accompanied by harsh austerity demands from the International Monetary Fund, which would have made the hard life for the average Ukrainian even harder.

Because of those IMF demands and a more generous $15 billion loan offer from Russia, Yanukovych backed away from the EU association, angering many western Ukrainians and creating an opening for U.S. neocons, such as Assistant Secretary of State for European Affairs Victoria Nuland and Sen. John McCain, to urge on protests to unseat Yanukovych

I know I have posted this type of story innumerable times on this blog.  I thought it might be good to refressh your memory so that you can appreciate the recent post EU Association Agreement with Ukraine Is a Gift to Kleptocrats.

I wonder how many times The New York Times has to blatantly lie to you before you believe that the NYT may very well be up to its usual tricks. See for example The Source of the Trouble.

Pulitzer Prize winner Judith Miller’s series of exclusives about weapons of mass destruction in Iraq—courtesy of the now-notorious Ahmad Chalabi—helped the New York Times keep up with the competition and the Bush administration bolster the case for war. How the very same talents that caused her to get the story also caused her to get it wrong.

It really makes no difference why The New York Times published such erroneous stories, the fact is that they did publish them, and they may very well be doing it again.

The Real News Network has two interviews that are worth considering together.

The first is Did the U.S. Carry Out a Ukrainian Coup?

PARRY: Well, the United States has been trying to pry Ukraine away from a close relationship with Russia. Assistant Secretary of State Victoria Nuland said in December to a group of business leaders that the United States had invested $5 billion, she said, in helping Ukraine achieve its European aspirations, that is, moving it away from Russia into the E.U. So, obviously, the United States has played a role in trying to achieve this antidemocratic transition. As much as they may call it democratic, overthrowing an elected leader is on its face not democratic.

There’s also the issue of the National Endowment for Democracy and another U.S.-funded political operations. NED, according to its report, has 65 projects underway in Ukraine, including training activists, supporting journalists, organizing business groups, essentially creating a sort of a shadow political structure that could be put in play to destabilize the country. And that’s what we’ve seen here. We saw a destabilization of a country–which had problems, no question, and had leadership that was very flawed. But still, instead of going through a constitutional electoral process, another approach was taken.

And Yanukovych did agree–after the protests turned violent, he agreed to a deal negotiated by the E.U. to advance the elections and to have the police stand down.

The second interview is Is Russian-Ukraine Intervention Illegal?

QUIGLEY: Yeah, I think what Jeffrey said is really key here, namely, that you have a population that is not cohesive, as a result of the fact that the country was cobbled together over a period of time. And that makes it very hard to talk about the sentiment of the people, very substantial sentiment for participation in the European Union, on the theory that, you know, that will make life better. You know, whether it will or not is something that can only be speculated.

Whether or not a country is cohesive or fractured, and whether or not we prefer one side or the other, shouldn’t our first principle be to let them figure out how to come to a working agreement among the factions? Do we want some outside country coming in and trying to settle our differences because we can’t seem to overcome our own paralysis? These kinds of divisions are hard for any group to settle. Experience has shown that an outside force doesn’t have a better chance of finding an acceptable solution than do the people directly involved. That is why international law tries to prevent outside forces from intervening in the internal affairs of another country. When will we learn to respect these principles?

With regard to the first interview, does it seem strange to you that an administration that promised a more humble foreign policy than the Bush administration would allow a diplomatic holdover from that administration to involve us in such  arrogant policy? Assistant Secretary of State Victoria Nuland is the person to whom I am referring.