First things first

Those few hours seem to have turned into a couple of days. Also, although I really ought to tackle Ukraine as a blogging issue, the situation seems so fluid that I can never quite decide where to call my own halt. Of course, to nobody's surprise, attention is now on Crimea, a bone of contention between Russia and Ukraine ever since the collapse of the Soviet Union. Could Putin have had this in mind all along: the detachment of Crimea from its sixty-year old home, Ukraine (then still the Ukraine)? It is, otherwise, hard to explain why he decided to intervene and destabilize (well, help to destabilize) that country for the second time in ten years, with no particular advantage for Russia.

But first, something about British politics. Among the various envelopes that awaited me at home was the latest paper from the IEA, The Sock Doctrine by Christopher Snowdon. This is the third in the "Sock" series of papers about the so-called charities, voluntary organizations and members of the "third sector" that actually receive money from the government in one form and another in order to lobby the same government to introduce legislation that would increase or fail to decrease the role of the government.

This paper deals specifically with organizations whose aim is actual political campaigning that ought not to be financed out of the tax money in any circumstance. Well worth reading if only for the arguments that the defenders of the system put up and for the (incomplete) list of organizations that wage various unpopular campaigns out of our money.

Couldn't have put it better myself

My friend, Jim Bennett, author of The Anglosphere Challenge and co-author of America 3.0: Rebooting American Prosperity in the 21st Century-Why America's Greatest Days Are Yet to Come, summed up very what the panacea of taxing the rich to distribute among the poor really means:

Actually, tax the non-connected slightly more prosperous, and give the money to bureaucrats and crony NGOs claiming to be working on behalf of the poor.

We call them quangos rather than NGOs and our political funding rules are different from American ones but those are details compared to the essential point.

Phoney Charities and civil society

Christopher Snowdon:

Euro Puppets –The European Commission’s remaking of civil society

IEA Discussion Paper No. 45

February 2013

It is not precisely news that a large number of organizations that assume the mantle of charities with all the public approval (vague but widespread) that it implies are, in reality, funded by the state that uses taxpayers’ money often to ensure that the organizations in question pursue a political line that is of benefit to it. Nevertheless, this knowledge is carefully hidden, partly by the organizations in question but partly by the public’s own desire not to know the truth, which might result in a completely new way of looking at “settled” notions or supposed right and wrong.

It is, however, useful to have some chapter and verse as we get in this pamphlet and its predecessor, the IEA’s Paper No. 39, also by Christopher Snowdon, published last June and entitled Sock Puppets – How the government lobbies itself and why.

Both papers enumerate organizations that receive money from the government or the EU, which would not exist without that input and which do not, therefore, need to answer to their donors about their activity as charities. Many of them are really lobby groups, coincidentally or not, lobbying for policies that the government or the EU (it is often hard to tell the difference) want to push through and which are not particularly popular with the populace.

With the Euro Puppets there is a further complication: the EU, by and large an unpopular project imposed on the population of various member states by the political elites, has felt for some years that it needs to find some credibility with that population. As it is not about to become accountable or less centralized (au contraire), let alone less devoted to the ideas of regulating every aspect of life it can lay its hands on, it has to think of another solution. One presented itself almost immediately, an adapted version of something instituted in the early Soviet years: the creation of something called civil society. This is an expression that is used more and more and particularly by transnational organizations of which the EU is particularly important as its aim is to become a state (not something it hides or is particularly ashamed of. Such organizations have no accountability and their credibility has to rely on emotionalism rather than political structures, just as the governance they try to impose is managerial (sometimes openly as it happened recently in a few EU member states, sometimes less so, as in normal EU legislation). They, therefore, announce that certain organizations to do with social activity are the real civil society. It just so happens that those organizations are ones either founded or approved of by the governing structures and, as the Euro Puppets demonstrates, funded by them. A closed and rather vicious circle is created: the unaccountable and managerial governance “proves” its credibility by pointing to the support given it by the civil society that consists of organizations it has created and approved that will never display any kind of independence. Needless to say, we are paying for it and for the legislation that those organizations campaign for.

Boris Berezovsky and other matters

Readers of this blog would have heard by now of the sudden and  unexplained death of Boris Berezovsky, enemy number one for President Putin and his cohorts. Apparently,  he was found in his bath at about 11 o'clock this morning. One is awfully tempted to use the old KGB slang мокрое дело or wet business and I shall leave it to my readers to remember or work out what that might stand for.

The way the story broke was interesting. This afternoon I escaped early from yet another conference of seminar about what eurosceptics should do now or this time next year (can't remember) and went to London Library (after conferring with the Boss who is snowed in up north), checked my e-mails and went on Facebook to see if there was anything interesting happening in the world. There I found several postings from Russian friends or British friends who follow Russian affairs that were wondering if Berezovsky was dead. Apparently, some Russian outlets were saying it, at first cautiously then more boldly that they had heard from Berezovsky's son-in-law who posted the information on Facebook that the old man was dead. Others referred to some telephone call from London to Moscow, yet others quoted people "close" to Berezovsky.

By this time it was about half past four in the afternoon, several hours after the body had been found. Or so it seems.

Meanwhile the western media was desperately trying to confirm the story and were, therefore, keeping quiet. I am delighted to say that I tweeted about it a while before the Wall Street Journal came up with "Breaking: Boris Berezovsky dead". Before confirmation came and the police said "in a statement they had launched a "full inquiry" into what they described as "the unexplained death" of a 67-year-old man at a property near London" the Russian media started saying that this was definitely a suicide, that he had been depressed, was facing bankruptcy and was, in general, feeling that he was a failure. Presumably, this was an effort to get in there first as most of us thought of some other explanation when we first heard the news. (Jokes about ice picks have already been made.)

There have also been news from Russia and not just about the Cyprus shenanigans. Readers of this blog might recall last year's law that "foreign-funded non-governmental groups (NGOs) involved in political activity to register as "foreign agents" in Russia". The term has a very special and sinister sound in a country where not so long ago you were imprisoned for many years at best if  you were named a "foreign agent".

A number of NGOs that could be said to have some foreign funding and foreign links have been raided by the police and tax inspectors. Among these were Memorial that tries to reconstruct what happened to the millions of victims of the Soviet system and also deals with human rights issues since its collapse.

Memorial says inspectors returned to its Moscow offices on Friday, having already seized 600 documents including accounts on Thursday.

A statement on the Memorial website said the inspections were directly linked to the new law on NGOs and the targeted groups' compliance with it.

Memorial director Arseny Roginsky, quoted by the Russian news website Vesti, said it was "a complete check on everything concerned with our sources of funding".

He insisted that the NGO law "will not change our position at all". "We won't refuse foreign donations, nor will we register as a 'foreign agent'," he said.

Helpfully, as the picture in the story shows, somebody (could one possibly guess who) has written a graffiti on the wall of Memorial offices, describing them as "a foreign agent".

The legislation against NGOs that get foreign funding and have foreign links is seen as a response to the agitation around the Magnitsky Act that was signed into law by President Obama in December of last year and campaigns against so-called foreign agents have intensified.

Meanwhile, the Russian investigation into Magnitsky's death in prison has been dropped.

The committee posted a statement on its official website on March 19 saying Magnitsky was placed legally in pretrial detention and died there from heart complications in 2009. The committee said there was no evidence of a crime.

Indeed, how could there be a crime? The man was arrested for trying to find out what happened to the companies he was supposed to be working for that had been stolen in order to claim enormous tax rebates by people linked to the security services, kept in appalling conditions for a year without any charges, denied medical attention, evidently tortured and was eventually found dead in his cell. All very normal.

However, the Magnitsky case is not dead even if the man is. His posthumous trial has opened in Moscow but  has been adjourned till the 27th. Gogol, the author of Dead Souls, should be alive now. He, alone could do justice to this tragic farce.

We need people like him

Oxfam, the charity turned NGO but claiming all the benefits of charitable status, is at it again. It is campaigning for the infamous worldwide Robin Hood Tax, a contentious political issue with misleading arguments. How do taxes on banks not affect people who are shareholders or pensioners or, simply, depositors?

One chap in Taunton has decided to campaign against what he rightly sees as political campaigning on the part of Oxfam. The NGO's big charity's answer?

Oxfam is seeking court action to ban a pensioner from one of its shops, and is asking him to pay a £10,000 legal bill.

But Barry Nowlan, 63, of Taunton, says he has a legitimate complaint about Oxfam’s “political campaigning.”

The charity banned the retired bank clerk and Lloyds shareholder from its shop at The Bridge in Taunton after he complained about a poster which highlighted Oxfam’s call for a “Robin Hood” tax of banks and financial institutions.

The charity accuses Mr Nowlan of causing: “great distress” and “harassing volunteers”.

He denies the claims but admits entering the building since Oxfam banned him by letter.

Oxfam says seeking an injunction at county court is a “last resort.”

Mr Nowlan said on Friday: “Oxfam claims its Robin Hood Tax will come from bank profits and bankers’ bonuses, not from the ordinary people”. But banks are owned by shareholders.

Someone pointed out to me that Mr Nowlan is probably a royal pain the derrière. Probably. But we need more of them.

An aid agency being honest?

Well, reasonably honest. We are talking about Médecins Sans Frontières, which has gone against the usual compound of pointless boasting and demands for more funds that aid agencies and NGOs indulge in as a matter of course.

Four million Somalis are said to be in crisis. Given that insecurity is limiting international aid groups’ activities and some have been banned from territory controlled by Islamist rebels, to what extent are they actually able to help?

"We know we are not yet fully meeting the enormous needs the Somali people are facing," the U.N. humanitarian coordinator for Somalia, Mark Bowden, said in Nairobi this week, while stressing that additional funds are now enabling international and local agencies to scale up their work in famine-hit regions.

Around 1.2 million people received food assistance in August, for example. That's up from 750,000 in July, but still only covers just over a quarter of those who are going hungry.

Merlin's move to expand its clinics follows comments from a top official at another medical aid group, Medecins Sans Frontieres (MSF), who accused other agencies of "glossing over the man-made causes of hunger and starvation in the region and the difficulties in addressing them."

Unni Karunakara, president of MSF's International Council wrote that

that many aid and media organisations have portrayed Somalia’s emergency in "one-dimensional terms," ascribing it largely to the severe drought affecting large parts of East Africa.

"But only blaming natural causes ignores the complex geopolitical realities exacerbating the situation and suggests that the solution lies in merely finding funds and shipping enough food," he said.

He added that it's the war between hardline Islamist rebels and the transitional government, backed by the international community, "that has kept independent international assistance away from many communities."

MSF continues to work in Somalia but has at least a glimmering of why the problems stay and stay and stay.

Here is the full article on Comment Is Free. For once the responses are interesting, too.

Let us not forget that the African Union leaders, who talk long and loud about African needs and African brotherhood, have failed their brothers and sisters who are suffering from famine (again). Perhaps, they, too, are suffering from aid fatigue though their help and donations have been little enough; or, perhaps, they do not want anyone to look too closely at the political reasons for the frequently repeated crises.

NGOs criticized shock!

A very good and very detailed article in Der Spiegel about the ghastly NGOs in Afghanistan and their lack of popularity. Something to do with the fact that they dare not leave Kabul, spend their money on their own security and welfare, appear to be pally with the Taliban, undermine the local economy and, generally, help nobody but themselves. Otherwise, there is nothing terribly wrong with them.

The Boss over on EUReferendum is ahead of me. He has linked already.

How appropriate

Big Hollywood has an article about a new film about an event that took place in Iran soon after the Ayatollah Khomeini and his goons took over, but one that has been replicated across that country and numerous others - the stoning of a young woman for alleged adultery and about the subsequent discussion, which had some disgraceful aspects to it.

The film is called "The Stoning of Soraya M" and sounds even more harrowing than the one I saw this week-end, Andrzei Wajda's "Katyn". There is also an interview with the director, Cyrus Nowrasteh, who explains that the real thing is considerably worse than the horrific scenes in the film. I have not seen it so have to go by the accounts I have read.

Most of us would say, especially with the Iran protests still in the news that any information we can have about the horrors of that country and of Sharia law as it is applies to individuals, in particular to those of the female gender, is useful. Apparently not. Well, not according to that soi-disant human rights organization, Amnesty International.

According to Elise Auerbach, Iran specialist for Amnesty International, USA (that is not a memebr of the central research team but someone attached to the American group), this film merely exploits the human rights issues in Iran for its own, "sensational" purposes. Hmm. I guess she could not blame Bush for it.