{"id":182548,"date":"2015-08-15T20:05:00","date_gmt":"2015-08-16T01:05:00","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.panix.com\/~msaroff\/40years\/2015\/08\/15\/russia-declares-blatant-cia-front-organization-to-be-undesirable\/"},"modified":"2015-08-15T20:05:00","modified_gmt":"2015-08-16T01:05:00","slug":"russia-declares-blatant-cia-front-organization-to-be-undesirable","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.panix.com\/~msaroff\/40years\/2015\/08\/15\/russia-declares-blatant-cia-front-organization-to-be-undesirable\/","title":{"rendered":"Russia Declares Blatant CIA Front Organization to Be “Undesirable”"},"content":{"rendered":"

Russia has now officially declared that the National Endowment for Democracy is an undesirable organization<\/a>, which limits their actions, and the actions of organizations that they fund, in that country:<\/p>\n

Vladimir Putin! Now you\u2019ve really done it. You have had the temerity to declare our National Endowment for Democracy (NED), America\u2019s most important Non-Governmental Organization (NGO) to be \u201cundesirable.\u201d Where will this end? Don\u2019t you respect our right, as a US Government-financed NGO, to meddle in internal Russian affairs? After all, we are the most important NGO of the world\u2019s Sole Superpower. We can go wherever we want and do whatever we like. We are truly upset!<\/i><\/span>

<\/span>This is the clear reaction of Washington to the decision by the Russian Prosecutor General\u2019s Office on July 28 to declare the activities of the US National Endowment for Democracy as \u201cundesirable in the territory of Russia.\u201d The official statement stated that, \u201cthe National Endowment for Democracy used Russian commercial and non-commercial organizations under its control to take part in campaigns aimed at denying the legitimacy of results of Russian elections; organize political actions designed to influence the authorities\u2019 decisions and discredit the service in the Russian Armed Forces.\u201d It further elaborated, \u201cIn pursuit of these goals, the fund allocated about 2.5 million US dollars to Russian commercial and non-commercial organizations in 2013-2015.\u201d<\/span>

<\/span>Vladimir Putin! Now you\u2019ve really done it. You have had the temerity to declare our National Endowment for Democracy (NED), America\u2019s most important Non-Governmental Organization (NGO) to be \u201cundesirable.\u201d Where will this end? Don\u2019t you respect our right, as a US Government-financed NGO, to meddle in internal Russian affairs? After all, we are the most important NGO of the world\u2019s Sole Superpower. We can go wherever we want and do whatever we like. We are truly upset!<\/span>

<\/span>This is the clear reaction of Washington to the decision by the Russian Prosecutor General\u2019s Office on July 28 to declare the activities of the US National Endowment for Democracy as \u201cundesirable in the territory of Russia.\u201d The official statement stated that, \u201cthe National Endowment for Democracy used Russian commercial and non-commercial organizations under its control to take part in campaigns aimed at denying the legitimacy of results of Russian elections; organize political actions designed to influence the authorities\u2019 decisions and discredit the service in the Russian Armed Forces.\u201d It further elaborated, \u201cIn pursuit of these goals, the fund allocated about 2.5 million US dollars to Russian commercial and non-commercial organizations in 2013-2015.\u201d<\/span>

<\/span>Under Russia\u2019s law on Undesirable NGOs, adopted by the Duma or parliament and signed into law by President Putin this May, any foreign or international non-governmental organization could become \u201cundesirable\u201d if it threatened the foundations of Russia\u2019s constitutional order, the country\u2019s defense capability and the security of the Russian state.<\/span>

<\/span>Significantly, in a statement regarding the decision, Russia\u2019s Foreign Ministry named Carl Gershman, the neo-conservative who has been president since NED was founded in 1983. They noted that Gershman said \u2013 absolutely openly \u2013 that the NED organization was intended to be a beautiful facade for distributing funds among opposition circles in foreign countries. That suggests they have done their homework very well before banning the NED.<\/span>

<\/span>\u2026\u2026\u2026<\/span>

<\/span>The NED, along with Freedom House, has been at the center of all major US State Department-financed \u2018color revolutions\u2019 in the world since 2000 when it was used to topple Milosevic in Serbia. The NED was created during the Reagan Administration to function as a de facto CIA, privatized so as to allow more freedom of action. Allen Weinstein, who helped draft the legislation establishing NED, said in a Washington Post interview in 1991, \u201cA lot of what we do today was done covertly 25 years ago by the CIA.\u201d<\/span>

<\/span>\u2026\u2026\u2026<\/span>

<\/span>The majority of the historic figures linked to clandestine CIA actions have at some time been members of the Board of Directors or the Administrative Council of the NED, including Otto Reich, John Negroponte, Henry Cisneros, and Elliot Abrams. The Chairman of the NED Board of Directors in 2008 was Vin Weber, campaign fundraiser for George W. Bush in 2000. Gershman, head of the NED since its creation to the present, worked closely with Richard Perle, Elliott Abrams and Frank Gaffney. Gershman was in a sense \u2018present at the creation\u2019 of the political-intelligence faction known as neo-conservativism.<\/span>

<\/span>On September 26, 2013, weeks before Ukraine President Viktor Yanukovich announced he would join Russia\u2019s Eurasian Economic Union rather than the less appealing EU \u201cassociate membership\u201d, Gershman wrote an OpEd to the Washington Post where he called Ukraine \u201cthe biggest prize,\u201d explaining that pulling it into the Western camp could contribute to the ultimate defeat of Russian President Putin. Gershman wrote, \u201cUkraine\u2019s choice to join Europe will accelerate the demise of the ideology of Russian imperialism that Putin represents. Russians, too, face a choice, and Putin may find himself on the losing end not just in the near abroad but within Russia itself.\u201d<\/span>

<\/span>In other words, NED is a US government-financed entity that intends to topple Russia\u2019s elected President because he displeases the folks in the Washington neo-con war faction.<\/span>

<\/span>Notably, at the same time as Russia is banning NED under its new Undesirable NGO law, China has just signed into law its Overseas NGO Management Law to restrict foreign NGO\u2019s there. Last October, the same National Endowment for Democracy financed the Hong Kong Umbrella Revolution protests and the NED is financing Uygur separatists in China\u2019s Xinjiang Province, cross-roads of all major Chinese oil and gas pipelines from Russia and Kazakhstan<\/a>.<\/span><\/p><\/blockquote>\n

The NED, Freedom House, and their ilk are bad for a number of reasons:<\/p>\n