The recent DC Leaks,
of over 2,500 documents from George Soros NGOs, has shed a bright light
on how the billionaire uses his vast wealth to create global chaos in
an never ending push to deliver his neo-liberal euphoria to the peasant
classes.
While Soros has managed to thoroughly destabilise the European Union by
promoting mass immigration and open borders, divided the United States
by actively funding Black Lives Matters and corrupting the very
corruptible US political class, and destroyed Ukraine by pushing for an
illegal coup of a democratically elected government using neo-nazi
strong men…one country that Soros has not bee able to crack has been The Russian Federation.
Russia’s political pragmatism and humanist value system rooted in a
traditional, “nation-state” culture most likely infuriates Soros.
Russia is Soros’ white whale…a creature he has been trying to capture and kill-off for nearly a decade.
Unfortunately for Soros (and fortunately for the entire planet) the
Russian government realised the cancerous nature of Soros backed NGOs,
and took the proper preventative measures…which in hindsight, and after
reviewing the DC Leaks memos, proved to be a very wise move.
Russian Prosecutor General’s Office issued a statement in
which it recognized George Soros’s Open Society Institute and another
affiliated organization as “undesirable groups”, banning Russian
citizens and organizations from participation in any of their projects.
–prosecutors said the activities of the Open Society Institute and the Open Society Institute Assistance Foundation were a threat to the foundations of Russia’s Constitutional order and national security. They
added that the Justice Ministry would be duly informed about these
conclusions and would add the two groups to Russia’s list of undesirable
foreign organizations.
According to RT,
prosecutors launched a probe into the activities of the two
organizations – both sponsored by the well-known US financier George
Soros – in July this year, after
Russian senators approved the so-called “patriotic stop-list” of 12
groups that required immediate attention over their supposed
anti-Russian activities.
The Law on Undesirable Foreign Organizations came into force in early
June this year. It requires the Prosecutor General’s Office and the
Foreign Ministry to draw up an official list of undesirable foreign
organizations and outlaw their activities. Once a group is recognized as
undesirable, its assets in Russia must be frozen, its offices closed and the distribution of any of its materials must be banned. That
said, it is doubtful that Soros still has any active assets in Russia –
his foundation, which emerged in Russia in its early post-USSR years in
the mid-1990s, wrapped up active operations in 2003 when Putin cemented
his control on power.
The huge document tranche released by DC Leaks shows how
dangerous the Open Society and George Soros were to the well being and
preservation of the Russian Federation and the Russian culture.
In a document from November 2012 entitled, “OSF [Open Society Foundation] Russia Strategic Planning Meeting Notes”, Participants:
Leonard Benardo, Iva Dobichina, Elizabeth Eagen, Jeff Goldstein, Minna
Jarvenpaa, Ralf Jürgens, Elena Kovalevskaya, Vicki Litvinov, Tanya
Margolin, Amy McDonough, Sara Rhodin, Yervand Shirinyan, Becky Tolson
Discuss how to …
Identify joint priorities for OSF’s Russia activities in the coming
year. How can we most effectively collaborate, considering the
deteriorating political environment for our partners?
The main revelation of the document minutes comes from the hope that Medvedev’s years as president would provide the NGOs the “opening” they would need to finally break the Russian bear.
That all evaporated in 2012, when Vladimir Putin returned to the President’s office.
The OSF, clearly distraught and disappointed, begins to lay down the
groundwork for how to challenge the Putin administration, in light of
his very different approach to dealing with NGOs like the Open Society
Foundation.
The human rights context has greatly changed from 2006 to 2012: the Medvedev period allowed for a number of improvements and significant openings for NGOs. Amendments to the NGO law in 2006 led to campaigning on behalf of NGOs; many of our grantees benefited during this period. Surkov
established ties with many groups that were willing to cooperate with
the state and our partners served as experts in key processes like
police reform. A space was created for modernization and for the inclusion of civil society during Medvedev’s term. However, pressure has come back very quickly in the short time that Putin has been back in power.
A major turning point for NGO operation in Russia came with the botched
Russian “Maidan like” protests, which were promptly dismantled before
any damage could be inflicted.
The Russian protests deeply affected the life of NGOs. The state had been providing money for self-organization, thinking this would defuse the possibility of large-scale opposition. But by encouraging self-organization, they had opened up a Pandora’s Box. People became active and began to feel that it was possible to change something; the door was opened for self-mobilization.
The state has responded with repression and political prisoners, in
order to instill fear in the population. The state is also working to
undermine social support for the protests. Its support of
socially-oriented (“good”) NGOs is a way to divide the community, while
the foreign agents law frames the protests as foreign money undermining
Russia.
Why the fascination with Russia? Why is it important for OSF to focus
on Russia? With Russia comes immense wealth and tremendous geo-political
power.
Key open society themes and issues are highly relevant in Russia
– Transparency and accountability (anticorruption)
– Rights and justice (i.e., criminal justice, policing, rule of law, LGBT, women’s rights)
– Migration
– Inclusive education (disability, Roma)
– Media freedom, access to information
– Health (access to medicines, HIV, harm reduction)
Copy-cat problem: Russian tactics are picked up by Central Asia (ie, anti-extremism law in Kazakhstan)
Russia’s influence in UN Human Rights Council – pushing resolution that says human rights should take into consideration traditional values of country in question – very few HR orgs that are following the council saw this coming – has large implications beyond Russia
Participation
in global international regimes (G20, ICC, WTO) – a more open Russia
creates changes in international governing bodies
European Court litigation
The document details in an extensive bullet point list, “what must be done” to
destabilize Russia, focusing on many recurrent neo-liberal themes that
Soros uses to infect host nations and overturn governments…
– Political prisoners (Bolotnaya, etc.)
– Media censorship and control (pressure in independent media – work w/ NMP)
– Surveillance
– LGBT (push against propaganda laws, which are driven by local officials, not by the federal gov’t)
– Women’s rights
– Disability rights and inclusive education
Prisons
– Lots of funding is going to monitoring; where is our money best placed?
– ONKs don’t have sufficient $ for travel and legal representation
Policing and police violence (Public Verdict, Man and Law, etc.)
Migrants
Transparency and accountability
– State spending – monitoring, analysis
– Tracking cross-border transactions and business purchases
– Connections between accountability, human rights, and ordinary citizens’ interests
Following the 2012 document, and the apparent disappointment expressed
by OSF members at Russia’s resistance to the neo-liberal way of life, DC Leaks provides a follow up memo entitled, “Russia Project Strategy, 2014-2017”.
The document summary…
Russia today faces a regrettable backsliding into authoritarian
practice. Confronted with serious domestic challenges, the regime has
become more insular and isolationist, seeking to solidify its base. The
progressively draconian laws promulgated since Putin’s return to the
presidency have placed all foreign- funded organizations under threat of
isolation and disrepute. Despite these decidedly challenging
conditions, it is essential that we continue to engage Russia, both to
preserve its extant democratic spaces, and to ensure that Russian voices
do not go dark on the broader global stage.
The destabilization of Russia, now aptly named, “the Russia Project” goes on to identify three cornerstone concepts…
Amid the grim landscape, there nonetheless remain apertures for the
Russia Project’s intervention. Exploiting all available opportunities, we will undertake the following three concepts, which we deem vital in the current climate:
1) We will mitigate the negative impact of new laws via domestic and international advocacy. Key allies in this regard are the growing numbers of diverse Russian citizens opposing the country’s regression, along
with the sizeable community of Russian legal experts with an in-depth
knowledge of NGO law and a strong motivation to help the sector continue
its activities.
2) We will integrate Russian voices into the global exchange of ideas.
Given that Russian intellectuals, practitioners and activists are
increasingly sidelined domestically, and academics are often isolated
from the international community, we will support venues for inserting diverse, critical Russian thinking into the global discourse. Such
opportunities allow Russian actors to enter into mutually beneficial
collaborations on topics ranging from migration to digital activism,
thus maintaining their relevance and reducing their provincialization.
3) We aim to mainstream the rights and dignity of one of Russia’s most marginalized populations: LGBT individuals. The
RP’s diverse network of partners provides an opportunity to build a
broader base of civil society allies at a time when the LGBT community
is under profound threat. We hope to see a more balanced discourse on
LGBT rights among the Russian public, as well as a strong cohort of
mainstream independent organizations actively incorporating LGBT
interests into their work.
Social mobilisation and the funding of alternative media networks, to
promote social discourse and dissatisfaction, are common tactics that
Soros NGOs uses to build up towards a revolution.
Along with these initiatives, we remain committed to supporting three primary fields: (a)
access to justice and legal empowerment of marginalized groups, (b)
access to independent information and alternative media, and (c)
platforms for critical debate, discussion, and social mobilization. The
RP plans to provide core support to our trusted partners in each of
these fields, investing in their growth and development, and remaining
flexible about the funding arrangements necessary to allow them to
continue their essential work. We also seek to strengthen their
legitimacy and financial sustainability, in order to build a more
transparent, effective, and organizationally efficient third sector.
Russia is currently in a gradual, arbitrary, and haphazard process of becoming more closed. Amid
this background, the RP’s cardinal role is to create a dense and
wide-ranging field of independent civil society actors, who can in the
best case help set the agenda for a more open and democratic future in
Russia, and in the worst case survive the effects of new draconian
legislation.
Engaging with Russian diaspora who oppose the current government, and
mobilising the LGBT community through mass media propaganda, are
recurrent themes in the Soros document.
The media focus on LGBT rights in the run up to the Sochi winter olympics was an opportunity not to be missed by Soros.
In the short to mid-term, the
RP aims to engender broader civil society support for this highly
marginalized group. Even though the “propaganda of homosexuality” law
has gained unprecedented international attention in the lead-up to the
Winter Olympics in Sochi, the voices of Russian activists are
barely being heard over larger international LGBT organizations. We want
to make sure that our Russian partners have a leading role in shaping
the strategy of the international movement, that
planned campaigns have a domestic rather than just an international
focus, and that the momentum gathering around Sochi does not dissipate
immediately after the Olympics end.
Our comparative advantage lies in the deep and wide networks that we have fostered these past years. A
strategic use of these networks will maximize the long-term impact of
the work that LGBT rights organizations are doing. LGBT rights groups in
Russia are professional and effective, yet they lack the capacity to
reach far beyond their immediate communities and galvanize other civil
society players necessary for their long-term success.
Destabilisation of a country the size of Russia does not come without a
significant price tag, for which George Soros seems more than ready to
pony up…
Given
the large number of grants in the RP portfolio, we see a need for
additional staffing in order to implement our strategic priorities and
effectively monitor our activities. However, as a number
of programs in the Eurasia region are being restructured, we are
awaiting the results of this transition before making any substantive
recommendations.
Their can be no doubt that the 2014-2017 plan outlined by Soros NGOs,
which even envisioned staff growth and Eurasian region restructuring,
has hit a major speed bump with the 2015 law that saw these divisive
forces operating within Russian finally get booted out of the country.
Alex Christoforou
