Under Kremlin Pressure, 'Undesirable' U.S. charity Pulls Out Of Russia

Reuters ^ | 7/22/15 | Tom Esslemont

[LRoggy]

LONDON (Thomson Reuters Foundation) - A U.S.-based non-governmental organization has become the latest casualty in what campaigners say is a global tightening of restrictions on charitable activity by authoritarian governments, by deciding to close its operations in Russia.

The MacArthur Foundation, which has operated in Moscow for more than 20 years - financing higher education, human rights and anti-nuclear proliferation campaigns - said new laws had made it "impossible to continue," by placing the charity on a list of "undesirable" organizations - a criticism it said was baseless.

"We are entirely independent of the United States government and receive no funding from it. We have never supported political activities or other actions that could reasonably be construed as meeting the definition of "undesirable," MacArthur Foundation President Julia Stasch said in a statement Tuesday.

[LRoggy]

From Wiki . . . looks like this was a Foundation that was highjacked by the Left:

John D. MacArthur owned Bankers Life and Casualty and other businesses, as well as considerable property in Florida and New York. His wife, Catherine T. MacArthur, held positions in many of these companies. The MacArthurs' attorney, William T. Kirby, along with Paul Doolen, the MacArthurs' CFO, suggested that the family create a foundation to be endowed by their vast fortune.

When John died on January 6, 1978, he was worth in excess of $1 billion and was reportedly one of the three richest men in the United States. MacArthur left 92 percent of his estate to begin the John D. and Catherine T. MacArthur Foundation. The composition of the Foundation’s first Board of Directors, per MacArthur’s will, also included Catherine, J. Roderick MacArthur (a son from John's first marriage), two other officers of Bankers Life and Casualty, and radio commentator Paul Harvey.[1]

John MacArthur was a conservative and capitalist. The Foundation’s original 1970 deed said that one purpose of the foundation was to support “ways to discover and promulgate avoidance of waste in government expenditures.” However, MacArthur did not spell out specific parameters for how his money was to be spent after he died. MacArthur told the Foundation's board of directors, "I figured out how to make the money. You fellows will have to figure out how to spend it.”[1][6] Between 1979 and 1981, John's son J. Roderick MacArthur, a political liberal, waged a legal battle against the Foundation, wresting control of the board of directors away from conservative members. The Foundation became and remains one of the pillars of the liberal philanthropic establishment.[7][8][9][10]

[Bryanw92]

I guess Russia doesn’t want Progressive activists.

[Rodamala]

No doubt, Russia would imprison Planed Parenthood employees if they tried to set up shop there.

[Paulie]

—”We are entirely independent of the United States government and receive no funding from it. We have never supported political activities or other actions that could reasonably be construed as meeting the definition of “undesirable,” MacArthur Foundation President Julia Stasch said in a statement Tuesday.—

Guilt by association probably.

Being U.S. based automatically makes them tainted with the stench of 0bama.

[stephenjohnbanker]

Leftists are experts at hijacking conservative foundations.

Long list of them.

[DesertRhino]

http://www.usatoday.com/story/news/nation/2015/04/26/gay-marriage-supreme-court-lawyers/26422349/

This group pushes homo marriage and culture. How would we like a Russian group over here pushing,,,, well, I don’t really know anything too depraved to be pushed and accepted here, but you get my point.

[MarchonDC09122009]

Yes, and they also kicked out the Soros Foundation.
Funny that Putin and Russia have no qualms about reducing threat ‘ s to their country, ie: Soros, Muslims, globalist bankers.
Putin and China know everything’s going as planned to eliminate America as their threat.
The leftists here are seeing to that.

[Paine in the Neck]

A formerly conservative organization now completely riddled with the spawn of commie termites set loose by the Bolsheviks’ Comintern operations, now undesirable in Russia. What a laugh.

[DesertRhino]

Google “MacArthur foundation gay” and look at the hit parade. NO wonder they were feeling unwelcome.

[MplsSteve]

In a totally sarcastic kind of way, I wouldn’t entirely mind it if some of these “foundations” would close up shop here in the US too.

I get the feeling that many of them were hijacked by more liberal relatives who suffered from “white wealthy liberal guilt” and decided that the only way they could atone for this wealth was to spend it on the polar opposite of how the wealth was raised in the first place.

[Buckeye McFrog]

So who will be underwriting telecasts of Masterpiece Theater in Russia?

[FreedomNotSafety]

What better way to weaken a rival than to unleash a U.S. based liberal prog think tank on them? But I guess Putin is smarter than that.

The downside to this is that they may focus the extra resources on us.

I usually apologize to my Russian customers that they no longer have the U.S. Of the Reagan era to look towards. They still love the idea of that America.

[Bryanw92]

>>Putin and China know everything’s going as planned to eliminate America as their threat.

Which is exactly what any sovereign nation should do. A strong nation can resist that sort of interference. Voice of America and Radio Free Europe worked because the target nations were economically weak and we could influence their people just by our talk. Berlin Betty and Tokyo Rose had little effect on the morale of the US, and I doubt that some kind of “People’s Radio America” would have influenced us during the Cold War.

The fact that a self-serving monster like Soros (who is simultaneously a Jew and a Nazi, and a Capitalist and a Socialist) has any influence in this once-great nation is a barometer of just how weak we have become.

[PGR88]

Putin was KGB, and knows all about organizing radical attempts to corrupt the institutions and long-standing traditions of civil society for the purpose of political change.

They wrote the book on the subject and perfected it over 70 years.

In that regard Russia has recovered from their collectivist/marxist fever, while we are still vectoring the disease around the world.

[VanDeKoik]

Ah, that is that organization that pays for so many PBS shows.

[A Formerly Proud Canadian]

So true! They so not want baby killers like PP because Russia already has a problem with an even lower birthrate than the West at 1.75 births per woman. Too many years of communism and alcoholism! They’ve grown in the past several years but expect a decline due to the ‘echo’ of baby bust of the 1990s.

PP would not like to be there either because there are so few black babies they could kill there!

Are my comments ‘rayciss’? No, but PP is!

[WayneS]

Hmmmmmmm.

Maybe we should encourage them to "go global"

[WayneS]

I get the feeling that many of them were hijacked by more liberal relatives who suffered from “white wealthy liberal guilt” and decided that the only way they could atone for this wealth was to spend it on the polar opposite of how the wealth was raised in the first place.

That is exactly what happened.

[The Toll]

These are the kind of NGO’s used to identify Putin’s internal competitors and report information to the CIA. Followed shortly by funneling American money back to the chosen opposition candidate.

Putin, he no dummy.

[Norm Lenhart]

Oh, not just foundations. Websites too.