Elena Karaeva
US House of Representatives Speaker Nancy Pelosi called for women to participate in negotiations on a political settlement in Afghanistan. The latter is not sarcasm, not irony and not a cruel joke, but quite an official message.
In this phrase, as in a drop of water, all the ideological battles (and their successive fiasco), which were waged by globalists of various kinds, were reflected. The subtext of the statement of the third official in the US state hierarchy after the President and Vice President is the following – we, the people of the United States, stand up for human rights in this crisis situation as well.
The planet may go to hell, but “the entire civilized world” cannot but declare its moral superiority with snobbish aplomb. The topic of human rights (not to be confused with civil liberties) began to be discussed in Parisian cafes at the beginning of the 18th century. Philosophers and educators carefully composed ideological maxims, which ultimately ended in revolution and the overthrow of the monarchy.
Human rights have been presented and evaluated over the past three hundred years as an undoubted pro-gress in the development of European civilization. Much less debated was the price paid to triumph (on paper) these rights. The uprisings that were suppressed, the Great Terror (no, not the 37th year, but the rule of the Convention) – and so on until the adoption under the auspices of the UN of the Universal Declaration of Human Rights in 1948. And also in Paris.
Less than 30 years later, in Helsinki, the states of both the Western and Eastern Bloc, having gathered for a meeting on security and cooperation, returned to this topic by signing the Final Act, which included the so-called third basket, the seventh chapter of the document dedicated to in particular, to what Nancy Pelosi is appealing to today: rights and freedoms, as well as equality. And what her adherents refer to: we are talking about the primacy of the rights of the individual over the state and the powers that it has to govern society according to the consensus in this society.
Everything that in a particular society does not suit the minority, according to the spirit of these declarations, can and should be questioned, and then removed from the path of progress. Of course, it was not Soviet dissidents and not Polish Solidarity who destroyed the Warsaw Pact, CMEA or the USSR “with these very hands, but the ideology of human rights protection lay at the heart of the collapse of the previous system: in its form and in its interpretation that was required by the beneficiaries of these political shocks.
As soon as “the whole civilized world”, read – the EU and the US, needs to solve a military, political or military-political problem, the first thing that is always appealed to is “violation of human rights.” This phrase has become an incredibly convenient bogey that can cover any meanness, and any spilled blood, and any adventure.
When Paris brought special forces into the Central African Republic – in fact to ensure the safety of French companies and corporations operating there – the Elysee Palace said the decision was made to “maintain calm and equality between men and women and to prevent gender-based violence.” The UN issued the mandate for the military operation immediately. The same exact scheme of supporting all that is good (that is, human rights understood in a certain way) is already used for internal interventions.
One of the first NGOs that ex-criminal and still tycoon Khodorkovsky decided to create and finance was the human rights organization Open Russia When the question of media support arose, the wallet swung open very wide: any accusation of the most serious crime was turned inside out, in public space it was interpreted as “persecution of dissidents.” Or as “punishment for the truth.”
Even if it was about pedophilia proven in court and the facts of child abuse. Even if it was about drug trafficking. Even if the case files could contain charges of brutal murders. In general, playing with thimbles is a favorite hobby of human rights defenders who live (or have lived) on various grants.
One of the Russian NGOs, which defended against judicial arbitrariness, defended themselves to the point that the head of the organization, who had the right to financially sign, to solve his family problems, closed, as they used to say in the dashing 90s, cash flows on himself. The cost of such a closure is many tens of thousands of euros. Why Euro?
But because this NGO (like others) received grants through numerous foundations and associations affiliated with the European Commission. Serious European men do not like it very much when private problems are solved at their expense, so a cry was thrown – among their own people – and the lack of Don Juan from human rights protection was closed in time. With Russian donors they stand on ceremony less, Buratin’s business is to give soldo. Without delay. And don’t ask for a report.
Well, the fact that the activities of such NGOs resemble a painted hearth on the wall of Pope Carlo’s closet does not matter for those who manage the budget. Stories like this – with less or more filth, depending on less or more funds circulating in this lucrative Sword and Plowshare Alliance – are enough to conclude that such advocacy becomes a paycheck.
And in its monetary and media form too. Conferences, colloquia, seminars, forums – in support of “democracy in Russia” or in Belarus. The budget for Russia is larger and more generous. This, of course, is not only about funding NGOs, but also the Russian-language media.
But knowing the amount of appropriations for Bel-arus (this is three billion euros), one can easily im-agine how much is planned to “support democracy and human rights” in our country. Just as in the days of the revolutionary Convention the issue of power was, as at the time of the signing of the Helsinki Act, victory in the Cold War was at stake, so today the topic of human rights is in the same way connected with power, its change, succession or overthrow.
The side dish may be different, as well as the method of cooking, but the fact that under the same sauce of human rights protection from various NGOs was, is and will be, work on the erosion of Russian state institutions is quite obvious. Nobody hides this, by the way. Russia is the enemy, and here all means are good. Another thing is that our ability to live with our own mind saved the country many times, regardless of the observance of gender balance so dear to Nancy Pelosi’s heart.
