Foreign NGOs: “Philanthropists” with Hidden Agendas

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The recent disputes over NGOs operating in Russia financed from abroad rage on as the parties concerned doggedly repeat their own arguments without listening to what the other side has to say. Members of the Human Rights Centre “Memorial”, founded by the late academician Andrei Sakharov, and liberal {that is, “conservative” in Anglosphere terms: editor} Western media outlets keep pointing up the sinister meaning the expression “foreign agent” had under Stalin. In turn, critics of anti-Putin NGOs say that Russian law only imitates the US Foreign Agents Registration Act of 1938, which is still in force and in operation. For the younger generation, all this could seem somewhat dated… Stalin died 60 years ago, in 1953, whilst the Foreign Agents Registration Act became law shortly before World War II. Even the oldest of those taking part in the current NGO-related disputes were little kids back then.

More recently, ex-Georgian President Eduard Shevardnadze… a respected political figure in the West… accused the Open Society Foundation (OSF) (an NGO funded by George Soros) and Georgian NGOs affiliated to it of orchestrating the 2003 coup that brought Mikhail Saakashvili to power. Curiously, US Ambassador to Russia Michael McFaul, who’s keen on seeing Russia repent for Stalinism, doesn’t intend to admit America‘s wrongdoings himself. Maksim Grigoriev, a member of the RF Public Chamber, said that McFaul, in a speech to the Public Chamber, said that he felt no need to be sorry for the USA having a hand in the Georgian coup, or, in hiring intelligence experts to work for American NGOs based in post-Soviet republics, including Russia.

The post-Soviet space offers a wide range of opportunities for American-funded NGOs, which arrived only in the 1990s. In the 1970s and 1980s, the same American groups operated in Latin America, and before that, in the Middle East. In what is seen as a “quiet revolution in American official history”, former US President Bill Clinton acknowledged the role of the CIA in orchestrating the 1973 coup in Chile, whilst Barack Obama spilled the beans on the American part in staging the Iranian coup of 1953 that toppled the progressive government of Prime Minister Mohammad Mosaddegh. Coincidentally or not, at the time of the coups, American “charitable” bodies operated in both countries.

Grigoriev, who also runs the Democracy Research Foundation, said, “Assurances from pro-western NGOs that their activities have nothing to do with politics are all lies. They pursue political goals and coordinate their operations with foreign governments. However, this doesn’t mean that we should label them as ‘foreign spies’. Even though these organisations receive funds from abroad, they pose no danger if their operations are transparent and clear”.

Grigoriev is certainly right. The world that we live in is an open space where public likes and dislikes travel freely across borders. The negative attitudes in the EU and the USA to some highly-placed Russian politicians are well-known, and one could feel them during President Putin’s recent visit to Germany and the Netherlands. These attitudes are bound to have minority support in Russia… at least, amidst the liberal-minded intelligentsia {that is, amongst “libertarians” in American terms: editor}. Nevertheless, whatever happens, Russia can’t afford any more revolutions… its first, and foremost, priority is to avoid upheavals. Therefore, “philanthropists” with hidden agendas will have to come clean on the real aims of their activities.

11 April 2013

Dmitri Babich

Voice of Russia World Service

http://english.ruvr.ru/2013_04_11/NGOs-suitcases-with-false-bottoms/

Editor’s Note:

Do note that the author points up that US Ambassador to Russia Michael McFaul is “keen on seeing Russia repent for Stalinism”. Hmm… that puts the anti-Stalin screed on the ROCOR official website in a new light, doesn’t it? Does this mean that certain parties in the ROCOR are back on Langley‘s payroll (after all, Alexander Lebedeff said, “We were grateful for the money”)? Does this mean that certain parties lied about their purported change of heart? You pays your money and you takes your choice… but I’d say that the trail’s rather clear. Sad, ain’t it? Don’t forget Potapov’s mean-spirited and objectively-false comments about Patriarch Aleksei Ridiger in the Nasty ’90s (at the Georgetown shindig… remember that?)… did he had a real change of heart or was it a case of “Paris is well worth a mass?” Interesting question…

BMD

At UN Hearing, Serbian President Tomislav Nikolić Sez Yugoslav War Crimes Tribunal Guilty of Flagrant Violations of Human Rights

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On Tuesday, the President of the UN General Assembly, former Serbian Minister of Foreign Affairs Vuk Jeremić, accused his critics of trying to intimidate and pressure him into cancelling a special meeting on international criminal justice boycotted by the USA and some of its allies. Jeremić set up the meeting last week, whilst serving as President of the Assembly, a largely-ceremonial, but high-profile, post. Critics of the event said Jeremić that organised it as an excuse to attack the International Criminal Tribunal for the former Yugoslavia (ICTY)… an allegation Jeremić rejected. A spokesman for the American mission to the UN explained its decision to boycott the event by saying, “It’s an unbalanced, inflammatory, thematic debate … on the role of international criminal justice in reconciliation”.

Jordan and Canada also boycotted the event, whilst EU countries sent junior diplomats. A number of key officials from international organisations and tribunals, including the ICTY, International Criminal Tribunal for Rwanda (ICTR), and the International Criminal Court (ICC), chose not to attend. Without accusing any individual countries, Jeremić suggested that the 11 officials from the international organisations and tribunals didn’t attend due to outside pressure, adding that he, too, was under pressure to cancel the debate entirely, saying, “Unfortunately, these ladies and gentlemen refused to come to this debate. So, we worked with those who accepted, given that I wouldn’t balk under pressure to cancel what I believe is a debate on a critically-important topic. Somebody obviously thought that I could be embarrassed and intimidated into giving it (the debate) up”.

Jeremić said that the fact that the tone of the debate was more critical than supportive of the ICC, ICTY, ICTR, and other war crimes tribunals was because those who would’ve supported those courts chose not to attend the UN session. Serbian President Tomislav Nikolić was amongst those who spoke. He hammered away at the ICTY in a 45-minute speech to the assembly, telling participants, “The prosecution was favoured over the defence” and that the court was guilty of the “most flagrant violation of human rights”. Serbia and its ally Russia sharply criticised the tribunal over recent decisions to free two Croatian generals and a former Kosovo Albanian guerrilla commander.

Jeremić said that amongst those who avoided last week’s debate were the presidents of the ICC, ICTY, and ICTR, head of the UN Office of Legal Affairs Patricia O’Brien, head of Human Rights Watch Kenneth Roth, and former ICTY/ICTR chief prosecutor Carla Del Ponte. He said, “How did it come about that all of them at the end of the day couldn’t be with us, couldn’t be with the member states on 10 April? We’re talking about too big a number … just to put it down to chance, that they just couldn’t make it”.

 17 April 2013 (MSK)

Voice of Russia World Service

http://english.ruvr.ru/2013_04_17/Yugoslav-tribunal-guilty-of-flagrant-violations-of-human-rights-Nikolic-027/

Editor’s Note:

Let’s keep it simple. The USA chooses to cloak its warmongering under a façade of smarmy pseudo-legality. These courts deal in ex post facto “victor’s justice”… they aren’t real courts at all. The USA invaded the former Yugoslavia, Afghanistan, Somalia, Iraq, and Libya… and it’s beating the war drums for an invasion of Syria and Iran. I know who belongs in the prisoner’s dock… it’s not Serb patriots whose only crime was opposing the American-fomented and –financed breakup of the Socialist Federal Republic of Yugoslavia (don’t forget, the present Croatian leadership is the direct descendant of the murderous Ustaše of World War II… the USA turned a blind eye to butchers of Orthodox Serbs and Croatian Jews escaping to South America and the USA). The USA refused to participate because its amoral and noxious foreign policy was under scrutiny… and they hate it when the truth is told about their unprincipled, unscrupulous, and brutal warmongering. God bless Vuk Jeremić… he told the truth.

Orthodox people have an obligation to support their Serb co-religionists in this. We shouldn’t follow disreputable quislings like Victor Potapov and James Paffhausen, who’ve sold out to the American powers-that-be (making them two of the worst “Sergianists” who ever existed… ironically, Potapov screams loudly about “Sergianism” in Russia whilst being more guilty of it than his targets are… fancy that). That’s the way it is…

BMD

Russian Vessels may be Detained in American Ports

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The press service of the Sakhalin and Kuriles regional department of the RF Agency for Fisheries warned in a statement citing the Transportation Ministry that the American authorities might try to detain Russian vessels in seaports in the USA. Its statement read, ”A US Federal Court in Washington DC complied with the demand of the American Hassidic organisation, Agudas Chasidei Chabad, in introducing financial sanctions against Russia for its refusal to return the collection of manuscripts of Lubavicher rabbies known as the Schneerson Collection”. Therefore, the press service warned that Russian state property that isn’t protected by diplomatic immunity, including vessels that enter American seaports, might be detained in order to make Russia comply with the American court decision.

 25 March 2013

Voice of Russia World Service

http://english.ruvr.ru/2013_03_25/Russian-vessels-may-be-arrested-in-US-ports-agency/

Editor’s Note:

No US court, federal or state, has ANY jurisdiction over affairs or property in Russia. NONE. The Hasids are going too far… they always do, that’s why those who encounter them generally detest them. This is too much. The Schneerson Collection is Russian state property, full stop, end of story. If the Hasids want to use it, they must go to Moscow. After all, remember WHY they want the collection… they want to restrict access to it to only those they approve of. That is, they’d restrict access to the collection only to Jews that kowtow to them. The Schneerson Collection is part of the general religious legacy of Russia… that’s where it belongs. If the Hasids don’t like that, it’s too bloody bad. I find it detestable that these nasty and bloody-minded individuals embody every stereotype of the Jew bruited by anti-Semites. It’s not fair… all too often, innocent Jews suffer because Hasid blowhards engage in disgusting unpleasantness like the court case to steal the Schneerson Collection (they never owned it, therefore, they have no right to it whatsoever). It’s not fair nor is it just (the guilty parties don’t suffer… they wall themselves off from the world)… that’s a thought on this Passover Eve, isn’t it?

BMD  

Please Don’t Lecture Russia

THIS was the REAL USSR… any questions?

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When I first visited Russia more than 30 years ago, it was still part of the USSR. The idea of any independent or critical press, of open debates in a parliament, or of popular demonstrations against government policies that would bring scores of thousands of people into the streets of Moscow, was inconceivable then. Today, Russia has many critics in the West, who accuse it of sliding back into dictatorship. What is their proposed solution? Usually, it is to criticise Russia and its leaders and try to strong-arm them into adopting policies of greater democracy and alleged greater respect for human rights.

These attitudes stem from a pervasive faith shared by liberal Democrats and conservative Republicans in the USA that’s so pervasive, that its greatest believers are totally unaware of how much they’re in thrall to it. They believe that democracy is the only acceptable political system around the world, and that, consequently, the USA should wage a ceaseless ideological crusade, not resting until, at least, all the major nations of the world share the same limitless blessings of a perfect democratic system.

Now, I’m all in favour of democracy myself… I prefer living within a fully-democratic system rather than under a communist, fascist, or repressive theocracy. However, I’m against waging wars to imposing the American, or any other, democratic system, on other nations. I’m equally opposed to a purely-ideological foreign policy that would treat the governments of the world purely according to how Freedom House and similar bodies grade them according to how it assesses their freedoms. This is hardly an anti-American position. George Washington, Benjamin Franklin, John Quincy Adams, and modern Presidents Dwight Eisenhower, Harry Truman, Richard Nixon, Ronald Reagan, George Herbert Walker Bush, and Bill Clinton believed and acted exactly the same way.

Ironically, the history of the West and the USA over the past three-quarters of a century exposes the dangerous folly of such self-righteous fantasies. Britain and the USA only won World War II against Nazi Germany because they were allies with the USSR under Iosif Stalin. I believe that not one in 100,000 Americans alive today knows or remembers that it was the Red Army, not the American or British forces, which liberated the Nazi extermination complexes of Auschwitz and Majdanek in Poland.

Nor did Western pragmatism… or hypocrisy… end with the destruction of the truly-evil Third Reich. Many still hail President Nixon as an American statesman and peacemaker for his détente policy with the USSR and his outreach to China. Not all the repercussions of the Watergate scandal that forced him to resign can take that away. Yet, Nixon, like Reagan after him, supported the two most corrupt régimes on the planet for decades, which ground hundreds of millions of their unfortunate peoples into degradation and despair. These were the kleptocratic dictatorships of Indonesia under President Suharto and Zaïre (today called the Democratic Republic of the Congo) under President Mobuto Sese Seko.

Russia has come an amazingly long way since I first visited it in the spring thaw season of 1982. That doesn’t mean its political system is the same as those of the USA or the major nations of Western Europe. However, it’s no Indonesia under Suharto or Zaïre under Mobutu either. What’s more, the USA never had any trouble getting along with them. All the moral lecturing of Russia by Western critics misses two crucial points.

First, even if Russia were to relapse back into some form of strict authoritarian government… and so far it hasn’t… that wouldn’t make war or conflict with the USA or the West inevitable. The USA, the British Empire, and the communist USSR were reliable and exceptional successful allies to each other throughout World War II. Then, the USA and the USSR successfully steered clear of any direct conflict in the 44 years of the Cold War from 1945 to 1989. It wasn’t easy; at times, they came dangerously close to war. Second, ensuring Russia remains a democracy won’t be a guarantee of peace with Russia, even if such a starry-eyed, ill-defined, reckless, and irresponsible policy such as intervening in Russia’s internal affairs could ever succeed. For throughout modern history, democracies have often waged war on other countries, including on other democracies. The idea that the best guarantee of world peace is a world filled with, and dominated by, democracies is just another myth.

What the USA and Russia really need is a serious dialogue between their top leaderships aimed at defusing tensions and managing real and unavoidable conflicts of interest. Both nations need to work hard on identifying their areas of mutual interest, and expanding them. The last thing American and other Western leaders need to do is to cave into the mounting hysteria from the think-tanks and the armchair strategists churning out their endless morally-outraged columns for the op-ed pages, and embrace a policy of ideological criticism and name-calling against Russia. The two thermonuclear superpowers need to respect each other and improve their cooperation… the peace of the world demands it.

9 March 2013

Martin Sieff

Voice of Russia World Service

http://english.ruvr.ru/2013_03_09/Please-don-t-lecture-Russia/

Editor’s Note:

Orthodox people should note that Victor Potapov, Alexander Webster, James Paffhausen, and Rod Dreher have sold out to the American Consumerist Dream and to the American Democratic Fantasy. They’re Sergianists (those who suck up to the powers-that-be for the scraps that fall from the high table) of the foulest and worst sort. They’re part of the “mounting hysteria from the think-tanks and the armchair strategists churning out their endless morally-outraged columns for the op-ed pages, and embrace a policy of ideological criticism and name-calling against Russia”. Potapov was/is an open US government propagandist. Webster and Dreher are “stink-tankers”; Paffhausen is tied to the American Enterprise Institute (one of the most Far Right stink-tanks in the District). In short, these people are traitors to the Orthosphere, and we must treat them accordingly.

You can follow HH and his support of Social Justice… or you can follow the above sell-out jabronies who’re supporters of “Greed is Good” and “The Race Goes to the Swiftest” (that’s what support of the contemporary Republican Party means). I’ve chosen… it doesn’t take a rocket scientist to know where I stand… by the way, I’m far from alone…

BMD