Israel to probe foreign funding of human rights groups

[Igel]

1. This kind of thing always frustrates me.

And amuses me. It's a very difficult set of feelings to deal with.

But whenever there's some action abroad that "we" (whoever 'we' is) don't like happens, one of the first things is to "follow the money" and say "cui bono?" Ooh ... Protests in Ukraine? Follow the cookies! A political opposition in Venezuela? Who's funding it?

Now, this isn't bad by itself, but the question always has to be, Is the money going to fund something that is locally driven and would happen if there were sufficient resources or knowledge or organizational skill? The alternative is that basically we're bribing people to protest and driving the movement by somehow brainwashing people to do what they wouldn't normally do.

This breaks down a bit when it's things like sabotage and death, of course. Then it's being accessory to murder and sabotage.

When Putin pointed out that protests in 2012 (2011?) were partly organized by groups receiving USAID money, some went ballistic. But now I suspect they'd say, "Ah, finally!"

When Assad pointed out the same thing, far fewer went ballistic. I suspect that if we had USAID funding anti-Hitler movements in 1938 there'd be far, far fewer alive now who'd object.

My view: If it's homegrown and the funding is meeting a need, then it's neutral. If it's going in and ginning up opposition, then it's bad and no better than what Russia did last fall. But I don't bias my opinion based upon what the outcome is I'd like to see. If a government I like can't make its citizens happy enough so that a foreign government can't find easy purchase among a broad swath of society it really doesn't deserve my support.