Russia Outlaws the National Endowment for Democracy
Source: Newsweek
The National Endowment for Democracy, an American nongovernmental foundation based in Washington, D.C., and “dedicated to the growth and strengthening of democratic institutions around the world,” is now illegal in Russia. On Tuesday, the office of the prosecutor general released a statement saying that after analyzing the organization’s activities, the decision was made to designate the foundation as “undesirable.”
The decision comes two months after a new law was passed by the Russian parliament and signed by President Vladimir Putin. The law allows the prosecutor general to shut down local branches of international nongovernmental organizations (NGOs) without a court order or any other legal procedure, if their actions are considered a threat to Russian national security or “constitutional order.”
After the law came into effect, a member of Parliament asked law enforcement authorities to check such organizations as Transparency International, Human Rights Watch and Amnesty International for "undesirability." In the beginning of July, the Federation Council, the upper chamber of Russian Parliament, suggested the creation of a “patriotic stop-list” of undesirable organizations, on which six NGOs were included. Even though no further action had yet been taken against those groups, the move provoked the McArthur Foundation to leave Russia.
The National Endowment for Democracy is the first organization to be officially designated as undesirable. In a statement, Deputy Prosecutor General Vladimir Malinovsky said the foundation “participated in activities to acknowledge the results of electoral campaigns as illegitimate,” organized political events in order to influence the decisions made by officials and tried to discredit Russian military forces (no further details were provided). The statement also alleges that in 2013-2014 the National Endowment for Democracy spent $5.2 million to help Russian commercial and nonprofit organizations.
Read more: http://www.newsweek.com/russia-outlaws-national-endowment-democracy-357717
Why not? They've already outlawed democracy.
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RufusTFirefly
(8,812 posts)https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/CIA_influence_on_public_opinion
candelista
(1,986 posts)It has always been a CIA front.
Jake Stern
(3,145 posts)This "NGO" is funded primarily by the US Government and has VERY troubling ties to the CIA and RW groups abroad. Several coups have NED fingerprints on them.
Wouldn't want them in my country either.
cosmicone
(11,014 posts)They must accept whatever plan CIA has for their country damnit!!
NuclearDem
(16,184 posts)No more than despising the Bush administration was hating America.
And no, before you even try it, I have no love for the NED.
uhnope
(6,419 posts)something to be crushed for the benefit of his dictatorship
Agony
(2,605 posts)good way to save 100 million dollars, defund the NED
Comrade Grumpy
(13,184 posts)geek tragedy
(68,868 posts)plenty of live rounds coming up.
NED is a pretty easy target. Amnesty International and Human Rights Watch, not so much.
uhnope
(6,419 posts)slightly better umpire than you can provide
ensemble
(164 posts)China’s NGO Law: Countering Western Soft Power and Subversion
"However, amid all the hand-wringing about human rights and democracy, what is conveniently left out of the narrative is the simple fact that foreign NGOs, and domestic ones funded by foreign money, are, to a large extent, agents of foreign interests, and are quite used as soft power weapons for destabilization. And this is no mere conspiracy theory as the documented record of the role of NGOs in recent political unrest in China is voluminous. It would not be a stretch to say that Beijing has finally recognized, just as Russia has before it, that in order to maintain political stability and true sovereignty, it must be able to control the civil society space otherwise manipulated by the US and its allies."
http://www.counterpunch.org/2015/07/28/chinas-ngo-law-countering-western-soft-power-and-subversion/
NuclearDem
(16,184 posts)I'm totally surprised.
And Eric Draitser no less! Well done.
ensemble
(164 posts)I think of this site first. It's interesting how some people freak out when you go outside of mainstream "acceptable" news.
NuclearDem
(16,184 posts)There's always been a contingent of apologists and those making excuses for Venezuela, Mugabe, Putin, China, and even North Korea.
Marksman_91
(2,035 posts)It's almost like today's apologists for this supposedly left-leaning "allied" batch of Mao-loving, Stalinism Lite-emulating governments have no qualms whatsoever with the utter hypocrisy that those governments' leaders tend to display, or their human rights abuses and anti-democratic behavior. But then bark loudly when they see a supposedly right-leaning government do the same. That's when you know you're dealing with ideologically biased useful idiots, and it's best to avoid buying into their game of trying to defend the indefensible.
Monk06
(7,675 posts)
Recursion
(56,582 posts)Modi can't throw them out of India fast enough...
Monk06
(7,675 posts)want to start another cold war on the Ukrainian, Georgian and Lativian borders,
Modi doesn't want the greens from interfering with expansion of Indian industry
Recursion
(56,582 posts)Monk06
(7,675 posts)NuclearDem
(16,184 posts)inside the Georgian and Ukrainian borders.
The only reason there isn't one in Latvia is because one of the only successes of the Bush foreign policy was to bring the Baltic states into NATO.
Monk06
(7,675 posts)to humiliate Russia. I thought the US would be satisfied with the fall of the USSR but no, nothing short of eliminating Russia as an international power will satisfy.
The US created and strengthened Putin by supporting his drunken mafia boss Yeltzin and now America once again rails against an evil empire Russia while trying to install NATO missile bases in Poland, the Czech Republic, the Ukraine and Denmark of all places.
Now tell me how patriot missiles in Denmark would protect Europe from Iran (the original excuse for a missile shield in Eastern Europe). In addition please inform me of a time in European history when Denmark was ever threatened by Russia? The fact is Denmark has traditionally been an ally of Russia against Sweden since the 15th century.
Putin is a gangster but so is the entire US military oligarchy who will never give up trying to isolate Russia and any country aligned with it.
The present policies of the US government are pushing Russia into a military and economic union with China similar to the Euro bloc. Trade in energy, weapons technology and consumer goods being the glue holding the alliance together, making US/China trade of less importance to the Chinese economy.
Brilliant strategy, just brilliant.
NuclearDem
(16,184 posts)The former Eastern Bloc and Soviet states that have joined NATO have done so willingly and after having approached NATO first.
Russia has absolutely nobody but themselves to blame for NATO being right at their doorstep. Their policy towards their neighbors--particularly the Baltics and Ukraine--for generations has been one of attempts to wipe out Ukrainian and Baltic culture. There are plenty of people alive today who remember the illegal occupation of the Baltics.
So, shockingly, once they got the opportunity, Eastern European countries flocked to NATO and the West for protection.
So what? Absolutely zero bearing on the current situation.
Considering Ukraine is not a member of NATO, how would NATO go about putting portions of the missile shield there?
Monk06
(7,675 posts)to Russian aggression. The push to put NATO on the Russian border has been the US aim long before the crisis in the Ukraine erupted.
http://www.nytimes.com/2008/02/13/world/europe/13iht-nato.4.10021504.html
And if you doubt the US has been behind the scenes manipulating the political situation from the beginning til the present then let me recall this little tidbit of US diplomacy.
http://www.bbc.com/news/world-europe-26079957
Nuland's remarks make it clear the US wanted a confrontation in order to overthrow Yakunovich.
These are exactly the same tactics the US used in Iran in 1953 and Chile in 1973.
It also demonstrates the historical contempt the US has for allies who refuse to go along with their plans.
The US are acting just as much like gangsters as Russian in eastern Europe
NuclearDem
(16,184 posts)But then after those overtures were made, all of a sudden Georgia started experiencing "difficulties" with its ethnic Russian population--which was followed immediately by a Russian invasion of the country and an occupation that continues to this day.
When that corrupt bastard Yanukovich backed out of a deal with the EU at the last minute in favor of a deal with the Russians, he sealed his own fate. Believe it or not, Ukrainians didn't require some CIA influence to not want to be closely tied to Russia any longer--another trope of the faux anti-imperialist crowd, foreigners having no agency of their own.
Frankly, I'm pretty sure Latvia and the rest of the Baltics are pretty damn happy they joined 11 years ago.
Monk06
(7,675 posts)Georgian troops while NATO was conducting exercises in the country?
I guess you would call that a coincidence.
The US is trying to move NATO forces into all the countries on the Russian border and that gambit will end very badly. Possible with the end of NATO itself.
Saakashvilli was responsible for that little adventure which failed and remains a stalemate to be taken up after the Ukraine is somehow settled and NATO can poke it's nose in somewhere else.
In case you think I have a low opinion of NATO you are right. It should have been disbanded after the fall of the USSR.
NuclearDem
(16,184 posts)Or bullshit, whatever works. Immediate Response wrapped up almost a month before the outbreak of the war.
As for the exercises, they came shortly after Russia had started building up its own forces in the separatist regions--coincidentally, you might say, Ossetian rebels started increasingly violent attacks against Georgia, giving Russia the justification it needed to invade a country that had just had significant talks with NATO.
Yeah, dream on. Russia has no more business telling its former victims who they can align themselves with anymore than we have telling Cuba, Mexico, or
Venezuela.
If anything, Russia just guaranteed NATO's survival with their invasions of Georgia and Ukraine. Ukrainians had been wishy-washy about the idea of joining NATO, but after the invasion, support for it has skyrocketed. Hell, it's increased popular opinion for joining NATO in Scandinavia as well.
If Russia was looking to end NATO with these little adventures, it's failed miserably.
Monk06
(7,675 posts)'somewhat' surreptitiously through NATO.
NATO is a creature under the control of the US and it enforces US foreign policy objectives in Europe and now in North Africa when the mood strikes.
If Russia has made NATO more attractive by it's incursions into Georgia and the Ukraine, then by the same logic the US has created ISIS by conning it's NATO allies into attacking Syria. That would include Canada thanks to Harper and his toadying to US ring wing elements.
After Syria NATO can no longer hide behind the fig leaf of defending Europe. It is a military adjunct to US foreign policy in Europe, the Middle East and the Caucasus.
As such it is pernicious, destructive and should be dissolved.
NuclearDem
(16,184 posts)NATO's goal is not to defend Europe. It's a military alliance.
One of the members of this alliance is called Turkey, which borders Syria.
You figure out what NATO's interest in dealing with ISIS and the Syrian civil war might be from there.
Monk06
(7,675 posts)from the USSR. As for Turkey it seems more interested in using ISIS as a cover for bombing the Kurds.
Turkey was originally shoehorned into NATO to give the US an excuse to base missiles there aimed at Russia, which led to the Cuban Missile Crisis. Unless of course you think of Turkey is an Atlantic nation perched as it is at the far end of the Mediterranean, more Asian really than European.
It was only after missiles were removed from both Cuba and Turkey that that NATO instigated crisis was averted.
You seem to have the sanguine view that the US and NATO are in the benign business of defending democracy in the Caucasus. It isn't. This is all just right wing Cold War agit prop. Democracy has nothing to do with the situation in the Ukraine.
Russia is run by gangsters. So is the Ukraine and so most importantly is the US which has, according to General Smedley Butler, been run by military racketeers since he wrote about it in 1935.
Everywhere in the world the US has set foot democracy has disappeared.
NuclearDem
(16,184 posts)Right, it's clear where you stand on this. There's absolutely no point in our continuing to discuss it.
Monk06
(7,675 posts)because Canada has been a vassal of the US since the second world war. Thanks to NATO
djean111
(14,255 posts)DetlefK
(16,423 posts)As Germany was split during the Cold War, Germany has historically close ties to both Russia and the US.
Anyways, this german politician (whose name I forgot) said that the West shouldn't be so harsh to Russia and should make amends with it. Russia shouldn't be judged by western standards: Democracy simply has no tradition in Russia!
And you know what? He's right: Tsarist Russia was an absolutist dictatorship. It was Empress Catherine the Great (second half of 18th century) that introduced the concept of laws in Russia! Before that, the aristocrats made judgements as they saw fit! Compare that with Europe and legal traditions that date back to roman times.
And after the Tsars came the Communists.
Lenin? Eradicated anyone connected to the old regime.
Stalin? Eradicated anyone who so much as looked at him in a weird way. Stalin's era was dominated by fear and terror towards Russia's own citizens.
For about 60 years, Russia lived under a philosophy that the individual is nothing, that the nation is everything, and that suffering for the greater good is just what life is like. Choosing your leader? In a democratic way? Nonono, you only get to choose from the pre-sorted politicians hand-picked for you.
And after Communism, Jelzin fucked up the dissolution of the socialist economy and created the oligarch class.
And after 10 short years, power went back to Putin, a strongman who cast away the doubts and brought back the certainty and clarity of the old soviet times. No squabbling, thieving politicians. Instead, one strong, honorable leader at the top.
Many Russians don't want the western way of complicated humanism instead a clear God-given purpose in life, of confusing pluralism instead of a clear monolithic society, of the political uncertainty of democracy instead of the imperial steadfastness of one strong, reliable leader.
(I remember reading an interview with an old russian woman: She bemoaned that many Russians are still trapped in the soviet mindset that hardships and pain are a part of life. That being unhappy and powerless is normal. She bemoaned that many Russians simply accept the lack of rights in Russia instead of demanding more.)
