Russian Spring Cancelled – Nyet* to NGOs

Introduction by Gilad Atzmon: Time is ripe to look into NGOs (non-governmental organizations), what they are and who stand behind them. In the following Deliberation piece, Jonathon Blakeley explores recent shift in Russian attitude towards NGOs. I may as well confess that in the last few weeks I have been looking into Palestinian NGOs and their funders. My findings are pretty worrying...
In a wonderfully chess-like move, the Russian Parliament skillfully moved to block attempts to de-stablize Russia by using NGOs to encourage dissent. AlJazeera reported today that a new law had been passed with only one vote against and one abstention. The law would limit the operation of NGOs in Russia. Specifically foreign-funded NGOs would have to declare that they are foreign agents on all their publicity materials.
But what are NGOs exactly?
No one describes the NGOs better than Phyllis Schlafly who has watched them for decades: “The NGOs are energetic lobbyists for dramatic changes in the mission and structure of the UN to achieve global governance. Most NGOs are also members of the International Union for the Conservation of Nature (IUCN), which originated many of the global environmental polices set forth in the Convention on Biological Diversity, the Convention on Climate Change, and Agenda 21. The most prominent NGOs are the radical environmental groups such as the Sierra Club and the feminist and population-control groups such as Planned Parenthood.”