Speaker 1: Welcome to our classic episode. Fellow conspiracy realist. I think
Speaker 1: we should start this one by thanking everyone who legitimately
Speaker 1: volunteered their time and their energy to work with an NGEO. Legitimately.
Speaker 2: Yeah yeah, because some of them are great and the
Speaker 2: stuff they do is awesome.
Speaker 1: Yeah yeah, I GEO non governmental organization. It's something everybody
Speaker 1: can get behind you. Like imagine you're on your first
Speaker 1: date and you're, you know, you're meeting and mysterious lady
Speaker 1: and see what do you what do you do for work?
Speaker 1: And then she says, well, I've dedicated my life to
Speaker 1: saving children from old land mines.
Speaker 2: Holy crap.
Speaker 1: Yeah, I sell loose cigarettes by the wah wah. You
Speaker 1: know what I mean. We're a match made in heaven.
Speaker 3: Is measurements?
Speaker 1: Is that like some sort of it's a shade of
Speaker 1: like convenience stores.
Speaker 3: I thought you mean, like by the truck low by
Speaker 3: the wah wah.
Speaker 1: I like that too. I like it as a unit
Speaker 1: of measurement.
Speaker 3: Guys.
Speaker 2: You know, there's a non governmental organization in South Carolina
Speaker 2: that I just learned about called El Cheapo Gas and
Speaker 2: they're everywhere and.
Speaker 1: They're an in GEO. No no, but I guess technically
Speaker 1: there are non governmental organization Yeah, yeah, So what is
Speaker 1: not a government in geo really is? You know, in
Speaker 1: many cases the term comes from international aid. It comes
Speaker 1: from attempting to create solutions in step with, but distinct
Speaker 1: from government efforts. So like, the US can support green
Speaker 1: Peace in different capacities, but you can't work at green
Speaker 1: Peace and then fulfill certain government positions, yes, or you
Speaker 1: can't have worked in those positions and then join green Peace. Dude?
Speaker 3: Can I just say? I just googled el Cheapo Gas
Speaker 3: and their website links directly to the most GeoCities web
Speaker 3: one point zero website of all time, and the url
Speaker 3: is Summer's Oil and it says Adobe flash Player is
Speaker 3: no longer supporting of.
Speaker 2: It is wild man. So you're saying, don't use your
Speaker 2: credit card there.
Speaker 3: So it's entirely possible. He's in the same code that
Speaker 3: four Chan was.
Speaker 1: I guess I think you're also saying that everybody outside
Speaker 1: of el Chiapo is a non geo cities organization under construction.
Speaker 1: So our classic episode today is why don't nations trust
Speaker 1: in geos?
Speaker 3: Yeah?
Speaker 2: And as we enter this world of usaid going away
Speaker 2: and goos are going to be doing a lot more
Speaker 2: of the work out there in other countries, right, So
Speaker 2: let's keep that in mind as we listen to this episode.
Speaker 4: From UFOs to psychic powers and government conspiracies, history is
Speaker 4: riddled with unexplained events. You can turn back now or
Speaker 4: learn this stuff they don't want you to know. A
Speaker 4: production of iHeart Radios How Stuff Works.
Speaker 2: Hello, welcome back to the show.
Speaker 3: My name is Matt, my name is name.
Speaker 1: They call me Ben. We're joined as always with our
Speaker 1: super producer Paul Mission Control Decant. Most importantly, you are
Speaker 1: here and that makes this stuff they don't want you
Speaker 1: to know. In today's episode, we're revisiting a topic we
Speaker 1: picked up in twenty fourteen, both as a video and
Speaker 1: as a short audio podcast. This is something that may
Speaker 1: be controversial to some people, it may be personal to
Speaker 1: some of us listening today, and we're going to do
Speaker 1: our level best as always to stay objective. We're talking
Speaker 1: about non governal organizations the street name NGOs. Most of
Speaker 1: us are vaguely aware of these institutions, and oddly enough,
Speaker 1: they're defined by what they are not rather than what
Speaker 1: they actually are. They're just non governmental. The whole definition
Speaker 1: is the thing that they are not in the name.
Speaker 1: And that's tricky because this is an umbrella term. It
Speaker 1: encompasses everything from you know, the Red Cross or the
Speaker 1: Red Crescent to Greenpeace, from the World Wildlife Fund to
Speaker 1: Oxfam and so many, many, many, many more. And typically
Speaker 1: these organizations are going to focus on a distinct set
Speaker 1: of concerns or problems, right human rights, equality or fighting dysentery.
Speaker 1: It's usually the kind of stuff every human being can
Speaker 1: get behind, you know, solving world hunger. It's philanthropy, Yeah,
Speaker 1: saving the cute animals.
Speaker 2: Yeah, doing the right thing.
Speaker 3: I always confuse philanthropy with philandering. Those aren't the same thing,
Speaker 3: are they?
Speaker 1: In a way? They both mean lover of men, that's true,
Speaker 1: a lover of humanity, It's true. I confuse them as well.
Speaker 1: In goos are all about distribution. And it might surprise
Speaker 1: many of us, especially people who have donated to one
Speaker 1: cause or another. Might surprise us to learn that NGOs
Speaker 1: are not as squeaky clean and as utopian as their
Speaker 1: proponents would have us believe. In fact, many people, a
Speaker 1: growing number of people will argue that these institutions and
Speaker 1: organizations are at the very least disingenuous, maybe even evil.
Speaker 1: We'll get to that, but first things first, what exactly
Speaker 1: is this term we're throwing around? What is an NGO?
Speaker 1: Here are the facts?
Speaker 3: Are all pals at the Oxford English Dictionary have a
Speaker 3: fabulous definition for what an NGO is. They define it
Speaker 3: as a nonprofit organization that operates independently of any government,
Speaker 3: typically one whose purpose is to address a social or
Speaker 3: political issue. And in fact, the term non governmental organization
Speaker 3: was created in Article seventy one of the Charter of
Speaker 3: the United Nations in nineteen forty five. And that's when
Speaker 3: select a club I guess you could call it of
Speaker 3: international non state agencies were given observer status to some
Speaker 3: of this body's meetings.
Speaker 1: Yeah, so that means that, let's just make up an example.
Speaker 1: Let's just say the Red Cross is now allowed to
Speaker 1: hang out in the room during meetings that might might
Speaker 1: be applicable to its mission right to save lives. They
Speaker 1: don't get to vote because they're not countries. They can
Speaker 1: maybe make some speeches, right, but the big thing is
Speaker 1: they do not have voting power. And there are other
Speaker 1: entities that have observer status in the United Nations. This
Speaker 1: is different because that Select group of organizations and institutions
Speaker 1: that were allowed to be called non governmental organizations were
Speaker 1: already very, very politically connected. They were already kind of
Speaker 1: in the room. Now they just get the name drop
Speaker 1: in the official designation. But again, like you said, Noel,
Speaker 1: they are addressing social or political issues. The only common
Speaker 1: factor that these this original group had back in forty
Speaker 1: five was that they were not government agencies and they
Speaker 1: weren't technically businesses. They weren't making money hand over fist,
Speaker 1: or if they were, that was a secondary aim.
Speaker 2: Yeah, well there isn't the idea that their nonprofit or
Speaker 2: not for profit, right and go's like, that's the whole
Speaker 2: one of the major points.
Speaker 1: Right, got right. Now they can distribute money, yes, very
Speaker 1: into distribute today, they can distribute money or funding to
Speaker 1: take donations and take donations of course from any number
Speaker 1: of donors. But they're not supposed to keep it and
Speaker 1: roll it over. They're supposed to invest it in their mission.
Speaker 1: So originally the UN said, okay, you're going to be
Speaker 1: advocating for human rights, you're gonna be advocating for the
Speaker 1: environment or quote unquote development, another umbrella term that can
Speaker 1: be very tricky. So an NGO really can be any
Speaker 1: kind of organization so long as it's ostensibly independent from
Speaker 1: government influence. And as you said, Matt, is not for profit.
Speaker 1: There are a ton of them now and they're just
Speaker 1: going to keep growing.
Speaker 2: Yeah, if you check out Nonprofitaction dot org, and this
Speaker 2: is a group that tracks the stats that pertain to NGOs,
Speaker 2: they estimate that they're listen to this, roughly ten million
Speaker 2: non governmental organizations worldwide that are functioning. And I mean
Speaker 2: that's a lot, right if you think about that, and
Speaker 2: has been mentioned. They're not out there trying to make
Speaker 2: profit for things, but they are trying to function and quote,
Speaker 2: you know, do good, do some kind of social good.
Speaker 2: So they are trying to get in as much money
Speaker 2: as they can through donations and as we'll see later
Speaker 2: other means. Let's just go to a fact here. In
Speaker 2: twenty eleven, people donated one point two billion dollars to
Speaker 2: various non governmental organizations, and then just three years later,
Speaker 2: by twenty fourteen, that number had risen to one point
Speaker 2: four billion dollars.
Speaker 3: So by twenty thirty, this number is expected to make
Speaker 3: the meteoric rise up to two point five billion.
Speaker 1: So more than twice what it was in twenty eleven.
Speaker 1: They are also huge employers. We're talking about a gigantic
Speaker 1: mass of people. Two quick examples. There are more than
Speaker 1: six hundred thousand NGOs in Australia and their employees may
Speaker 1: up eight percent of the Australian workforce. Wow, eight percent
Speaker 1: doesn't sound huge until you think of, you know, the
Speaker 1: fact that it's the entire nation and continent of Australia.
Speaker 3: What do you think that's Australia a part.
Speaker 1: Oddly enough, not that much. The NGO industry is huge
Speaker 1: in the United States as well as Western countries. Part
Speaker 1: of the reason it seems so big is because again
Speaker 1: the term has so much leeway. It encompasses so much stuff.
Speaker 1: You know, one INNGO can be doing something entirely different
Speaker 1: and irrelevant to the aims or activities of another in GEO.
Speaker 1: But get this, if all the NGOs in the world
Speaker 1: were a country, they would have the fifth largest economy
Speaker 1: in the world. That's according to John Hopkins. So they're here,
Speaker 1: they're here to stay. They're growing. You know, as as
Speaker 1: we pointed out, they are going to be at least
Speaker 1: a two point five billion dollar business within the next
Speaker 1: you know, ten years.
Speaker 2: And a ton of people worldwide depend on them, both
Speaker 2: for employment and perhaps for some aspect of their lives,
Speaker 2: whether it's from water being treated and cleaned in some
Speaker 2: remote part of the earth, or you know, shelter being
Speaker 2: provided and created as in, you know, talking about development.
Speaker 1: On the good side at least, yeah, on the good side, right,
Speaker 1: we're throwing and already. Yeah, So I'm just.
Speaker 2: Trying to remind everybody that, you know, we mentioned at
Speaker 2: the top here are like a lot of people think
Speaker 2: these things are evil in a general sense. We're just
Speaker 2: making sure to point out that there is real good
Speaker 2: that is occurring. Yes, it gets so complicated, we haven't
Speaker 2: hit it yet, so maybe we'll save some of this
Speaker 2: discussion for later.
Speaker 1: Hashtag not all NGOs. Yes, And this becomes incredibly important
Speaker 1: as we continue, because our big question is what do
Speaker 1: NGOs do. Their activities include, but are not limited to,
Speaker 1: the stuff we just named environmental work, advocacy, human rights,
Speaker 1: social betterment. And sometimes this will happen on a large,
Speaker 1: somewhat abstract scale, and sometimes it'll happen very locally, like
Speaker 1: this NGO is just providing this specific type of water
Speaker 1: pump to a specific region on a continent or we're
Speaker 1: just passing out life straws. That's what we're doing. Life
Speaker 1: straws are great, by the way, They're incredibly reasonable. If
Speaker 1: you don't have one, and if you, like me, believe
Speaker 1: in building go bags for your home or your car,
Speaker 1: you need a life straw.
Speaker 3: We should can't. We've talked about this. Why don't we
Speaker 3: have something I want you to know, branded life straws.
Speaker 1: I would love that.
Speaker 3: And you talk about we came up so you can
Speaker 3: like drink out of like a puddle with one of those. Yes,
Speaker 3: that's pretty cool. Yeah, I would do it just for
Speaker 3: the novelty of drinking out of a puddle.
Speaker 1: Yeah. The only I think the only problem is that
Speaker 1: they can't filter some heavy metals. So according to the
Speaker 1: latest reports, life straws are not has used in the
Speaker 1: continental US as we would have wanted to believe, because
Speaker 1: the pollution is rampant. A different episode, what no, oh man,
Speaker 1: different episode. So that's a story for a different day.
Speaker 1: But inngos are on the front lines, in the trenches
Speaker 1: of combating these problems and making a world in twenty
Speaker 1: eighty five or world in thirty twenty a place where
Speaker 1: people would still like to live So the thing is
Speaker 1: they're not all created equally and they have different broad categories.
Speaker 1: The two big divisions are what we would call operational
Speaker 1: NGOs and advocacy or campaigning in geos. They overlap, but
Speaker 1: they are different entities.
Speaker 3: So operational inngos actually have to mobilize resources in the
Speaker 3: form of their financial donations, things like raw materials, volunteer labor,
Speaker 3: so that they can actually keep these projects in pros going.
Speaker 3: It's a really difficult and complex process with a lot
Speaker 3: of moving parts, and these NGOs usually have some kind
Speaker 3: of hq A built in bureaucracy and all kinds of
Speaker 3: support and field staff. Then you've got advocacy or campaigning
Speaker 3: NGOs that carry out kind of similar types of activities,
Speaker 3: but there's kind of a different balancing act that goes
Speaker 3: on between them. You still have to raise money, of course,
Speaker 3: it's the name of the game for any NGO, but
Speaker 3: on a much smaller scale, and it serves more of
Speaker 3: a symbolic function and kind of strengthening the identification with
Speaker 3: a particular cause that donors might have. I mean, it
Speaker 3: sort of goes into the whole idea of the that's
Speaker 3: not pure vanity, but there is something of a status
Speaker 3: symbol involved in participating in some of these NGOs, and
Speaker 3: this kind of bolsters that so when you persuade people
Speaker 3: to donate time, it becomes more valuable. Successful campaigning NGOs
Speaker 3: have the ability to kind of get large numbers of
Speaker 3: people to mobilize for very specific issues and types of events.
Speaker 1: Yeah, the advocacy campaigning in goos are think of them
Speaker 1: as the raising awareness in gos. Sure we'll have funding,
Speaker 1: we want to keep the lights on. It's more important
Speaker 1: to us that we get people to volunteer X amount
Speaker 1: of days out of the year, et cetera. And these distinctions,
Speaker 1: like a lot of on paper distinctions, get real muddy
Speaker 1: when we go to the field operational NGOs. You know,
Speaker 1: if the impact of their projects doesn't seem like it's
Speaker 1: really moving the needle, then they'll go of course they'll
Speaker 1: go into campaigning. What are they going to say, No,
Speaker 1: we don't do that here. And these operational NGOs, especially
Speaker 1: the big ones, always run regular campaigns, or at least
Speaker 1: they support other affiliated organizations that are running campaigns. And
Speaker 1: then sometimes on the other side in goos that are
Speaker 1: campaigning in gos feel like they cannot ignore immediate real
Speaker 1: problems in their policy domain. So like, if you are
Speaker 1: an NGO that wants to raise awareness and support in
Speaker 1: society for human rights or for women's rights, then you
Speaker 1: may say, you know, the problem here is happening so blatantly,
Speaker 1: it's so pervasive, and we have the tools to fix it,
Speaker 1: So we can't hold off. We can't just have a
Speaker 1: raise awareness dinner or gala. We need to put the
Speaker 1: money directly into assisting the victims of these crimes so
Speaker 1: they can trade back and forth. They're a bit mercurial,
Speaker 1: a bit chameleon like. And there are other NGOs that
Speaker 1: specialize outside of these primary functions, right.
Speaker 2: Yeah, there's a whole other kind of arm of NGOs
Speaker 2: called the research institute. You've probably heard of these before.
Speaker 2: They're really great. One of their primary things they do
Speaker 2: is to increase knowledge and understanding. And these you know,
Speaker 2: range across the whole spectrum, of course, from those you
Speaker 2: know who are just looking to promote academics like the
Speaker 2: non political issues out there that are going to help
Speaker 2: our world become a better place to then you know,
Speaker 2: sending out information across the world or across a population
Speaker 2: for campaigning to get more money in right, to then
Speaker 2: spread more awareness. So it's kind of just like a
Speaker 2: nice little cycle thereof send us some money so we
Speaker 2: can let other people know this cool thing that you
Speaker 2: know now that you.
Speaker 1: Know who we are, and think tanks operate in this
Speaker 1: realm too, oh for sure. Right, seriously, your political affiliation
Speaker 1: and no people hate to hear this, but in this conversation,
Speaker 1: your political affiliation does not apply. It does not matter.
Speaker 1: What we're about to tell you is very true. The
Speaker 1: majority of the time that a politician has a smart
Speaker 1: policy plan, it didn't come from them, because they're typically
Speaker 1: not going to be professors. It came from think tanks,
Speaker 1: it came from ng it came from places like alec
Speaker 1: al e c.
Speaker 3: And a lot of.
Speaker 2: Times these groups are on the ground somewhere that have
Speaker 2: the best visibility for a problem or a big issue,
Speaker 2: right absolutely, which so it's we're not saying that's necessarily bad.
Speaker 2: It's just perhaps a bit disingenuous when you get that
Speaker 2: messaging from a politician.
Speaker 3: Wait a minute, Wait a minute, politicians are disingenuous, say
Speaker 3: it is, so we.
Speaker 2: Kind of we all know this and we're all jaded
Speaker 2: to some extent at this point, but it is I
Speaker 2: think good just to know what you were saying, Ben,
Speaker 2: that these NGOs a lot of times have a heavy
Speaker 2: hand in policy making.
Speaker 3: Absolutely, but I think to your point, Matt, they're able
Speaker 3: to be more specialized, right, so they can, you know,
Speaker 3: really have the smarts specifically to deal with a particular
Speaker 3: problem like climate change, or to really help develop a
Speaker 3: policy where every aspect has been fully thought out and
Speaker 3: vetted before. You know, these politicians may be shop around
Speaker 3: for what they consider to be the best form of
Speaker 3: that plan, and then they go with the one that
Speaker 3: maybe has the best backing or the most bona fides right.
Speaker 1: Right, or what their masters allow them to endorse, which
Speaker 1: I know sounds super cynical, but you're right, it's not
Speaker 1: a bad thing. It's actually very very good thing that
Speaker 1: politicians lean on this expertise because to your point, Noel, Uh,
Speaker 1: these organizations are more nimble and they will tend to
Speaker 1: have a depth of understanding that can get lost in
Speaker 1: a big bureaucratic machine. But okay, so I know we're
Speaker 1: getting a little in the weeds here. There is one
Speaker 1: great hilarious way to think of NGO's and to differentiate them,
Speaker 1: and it goes like this, Bingo Ingo, gong Go Ingo
Speaker 1: and of course Quongo love that band.
Speaker 2: Wait was Ingo twice?
Speaker 1: Uh Ingo e nng o and then Ingo maybe Ingo?
Speaker 2: Okay, yeah, oh ngo ingore go Ingo Okay, out, I
Speaker 2: gotta got it.
Speaker 3: Okay, can go bango bongo?
Speaker 2: All right, so let's let's do these.
Speaker 3: You're ready to go blanco?
Speaker 1: Right?
Speaker 2: Oh boy, here we go. Just so somebody just take
Speaker 2: this from this moment on and you will have all
Speaker 2: the examples in audio format. Let's just go through them
Speaker 2: really quickly.
Speaker 3: These are the real ones too, He's the real Yes.
Speaker 2: Let's just go around. Robin Sure, is there a one
Speaker 2: in particular you want to hit, Ben Sure?
Speaker 1: BINGO stands for Business Friendly International NGO. Think of something
Speaker 1: like the Red Cross.
Speaker 2: NGO E nng O. That's an environmental NGO. Think of Greenpeace,
Speaker 2: perhaps the World Wildlife Fund.
Speaker 3: I'm touring between this being my favorite or the number five.
Speaker 3: But we've got gong go government organized non governmental organization
Speaker 3: such as International Union for Conservation of Nature.
Speaker 2: I'm sorry, government organized non governmental organization.
Speaker 1: I swear to you that's the real thing. That just means,
Speaker 1: That means that that blasted right past it. That means
Speaker 1: that a government said, Okay, we're gonna set aside money,
Speaker 1: We're gonna give it to this place. We're going to start,
Speaker 1: you know, to your example, the International Union for Conservation Nature.
Speaker 1: But then you know, you all go ahead, yeah, yeah,
Speaker 1: take the money and run. And then we have INGO
Speaker 1: I n g O, an international NGO.
Speaker 2: Like OXFAM, and finally quango I love it, a quasi
Speaker 2: autonomous NGO. An example here would be the International Organization
Speaker 2: for Standardization. Highly important thing.
Speaker 1: I propose that we that we start an NGO to
Speaker 1: change the pronunciation of quango to quango. It just sounds
Speaker 1: so much more fun. I feel like I know a
Speaker 1: guy there must there's a guy who lives in our
Speaker 1: neighborhoods somewhere whose street name is probably quango.
Speaker 3: Then there could be the obvious ted nugent tie in
Speaker 3: and call it quango tango.
Speaker 1: There we go. Wow, I hope his last name is
Speaker 1: Tango Quango tango. If you're listening, that's just cool.
Speaker 2: We were just in Los Angeles and I always think
Speaker 2: of that road.
Speaker 1: Yeah, yeah, that's an outlier because like sunset Cosmo and
Speaker 1: someone in the back is just like Kwa.
Speaker 2: It's probably as great significance to somebody somewhere.
Speaker 3: My favorite Los Angeles adjacent name for a town is
Speaker 3: Rancho Cucamonga.
Speaker 1: Yes, pretty fabulous. It feels fancy just hearing it.
Speaker 2: It does.
Speaker 1: So all of these things, the the bingo, ingo gongo
Speaker 1: and ingo quango wongo, they all, they all get their
Speaker 1: money from a couple of easily identifiable places or types
Speaker 1: of places. Membership dues. You're you're a member of World
Speaker 1: Wildlife Fund or whatever. So every month or every year
Speaker 1: you you give them money because you want wild animals
Speaker 1: to still be a thing when your kids.
Speaker 2: Grow up and you get a really fancy, lovely calendar.
Speaker 1: Or private donations. Uh, there's a there's a very clever
Speaker 1: thing that we'll go back to this. The other two
Speaker 1: are the sale of goods and services right by this
Speaker 1: mug by this t shirt, a portion of the proceeds
Speaker 1: blah blah blah. And the other one is grants you
Speaker 1: apply to a government or another organization, they give you
Speaker 1: money to accomplish a name. Going back to number two,
Speaker 1: private donations. The very very clever thing about private donations
Speaker 1: may may make me sound like a jerk to say
Speaker 1: it is that it is not altruism for a philanthropist
Speaker 1: to donate. Sure, maybe they want to help that cause,
Speaker 1: but they're also saving so much money in write offs
Speaker 1: when they donate as much when they donate a portion
Speaker 1: of their own proceeds.
Speaker 3: Wait a minute, so is NPR and one of these.
Speaker 1: Well, it's definitely a nonprofit. But I wonder that's a
Speaker 1: good question then, because it receives so much government money.
Speaker 3: It does, but it also does what you're talking about
Speaker 3: with the pledge drives and the private donations and also
Speaker 3: lots of grants. You always hear, you know, this funded
Speaker 3: by a grant from the Johnny and Catherine T. MacArthur Foundation,
Speaker 3: any Cacy Foundation, the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation, exactly,
Speaker 3: all the big ones. So even if it's not, it
Speaker 3: certainly functions in a similar way to some of these
Speaker 3: NGOs that we're talking about.
Speaker 1: Absolutely, and as big MPR fans, both on the federal
Speaker 1: and regional level, we just want to say we know
Speaker 1: that you probably don't like doing the pledge drives either,
Speaker 1: so sol draw onward, folks. We're doing a great job. Yeah,
Speaker 1: but Ben, yes, are.
Speaker 3: These groups they sound eerily similar to those special interests
Speaker 3: people are always accusing politicians of pandering too.
Speaker 1: That's right, It's absolutely right, because they are special interests.
Speaker 1: Their special interests just happen to be ostensibly again on
Speaker 1: the surface, beneficial. You are absolutely not wrong. They are
Speaker 1: very much special interest groups. I do want to I
Speaker 1: do want to bust a scam real quick. While we're
Speaker 1: on the concept of private donations, this happens all the time.
Speaker 1: If you go to your local grocery store, especially around
Speaker 1: the holidays, you know you're ringing, You're buying magazines, dog
Speaker 1: food and egg whites and I don't know whatever else,
Speaker 1: shoe cleaner.
Speaker 2: I'm getting a real picture of your life, Ben, I'm taking.
Speaker 1: To duct tape something to burn your fingerprints off. Whatever.
Speaker 1: And then at the end of the transaction, they say,
Speaker 1: would you like to donate to this holiday fund? Would
Speaker 1: you like to donate a dollar, five dollars, ten dollars right,
Speaker 1: and they ask you right at the register. It's very
Speaker 1: easy to say yes. Here's what's happening with that. Those
Speaker 1: companies are taking that money that they're they're getting from
Speaker 1: individual grocery store customers, they're pulling it into a single
Speaker 1: fund and they're using it to make a large charitable
Speaker 1: donation that offsets their tax burden. So what you're actually doing,
Speaker 1: what you're actually doing now, you are helping people on
Speaker 1: the way, but what you're actually doing is paying that
Speaker 1: grocery store taxes for them.
Speaker 2: Man Kroger, Why would you do me wrong like that?
Speaker 1: I just that's I'm pretty sure that's what's going on.
Speaker 1: I would love to be wrong.
Speaker 2: I think that's called a loophole, ben and that's what
Speaker 2: they're they found it.
Speaker 1: But don't you feel like a jerk sometimes, like do
Speaker 1: you want to donate and you say no? You know,
Speaker 1: what do you say, like, I don't want children to
Speaker 1: have toys? I think dogs should just die?
Speaker 2: Yeah, yeah, no, I agree. I think my problem, just
Speaker 2: personally speaking personally here is that I am so embarrassed
Speaker 2: by the thought of denying a one dollar donation. At
Speaker 2: any point, when someone points at me and says, would
Speaker 2: you like to donate? You're already paying just click this thing.
Speaker 2: I have to say yes. So if you ever want
Speaker 2: to squeeze money out of me, just make it look
Speaker 2: like seem like a charitable donation and hit me while
Speaker 2: I'm doing a transaction.
Speaker 3: Do you typically give handouts to handhandlers I did for
Speaker 3: a long time. Then what happened? Mat who hurts you?
Speaker 2: I just ooh, I could tell you an actual story.
Speaker 2: I know. Yes, we're going to take a break. Geez, Paul,
Speaker 2: he's just staring at me.
Speaker 3: He is.
Speaker 2: We're gonna go do a break soon, I promise. I
Speaker 2: gave a gentleman in a wheelchair more money than I
Speaker 2: generally would and.
Speaker 3: Then he got up and walked away, didn't.
Speaker 2: He No, he he took it, like just snatched it
Speaker 2: from me and then just wheeled off really quickly. But
Speaker 2: was very much just like I got away with it
Speaker 2: kind of thing. I don't know the way the way
Speaker 2: I felt afterwards. And then I also went to I
Speaker 2: went to school at Georgia State in downtown, and I
Speaker 2: think it just the interaction, that type of interaction occurs
Speaker 2: so frequently, get numb to it. Well, it's tough because
Speaker 2: if you want to truly help someone in that type
Speaker 2: of situation, just handing them cash that is transferable in
Speaker 2: that moment probably isn't the best way to do it.
Speaker 2: Many times that's gonna be enabling perhaps behavior that is
Speaker 2: already occurring. But again, I don't have all the answers,
Speaker 2: you know, one thing you can do is donate to
Speaker 2: an organization like ones that we're talking about today, right, Yeah,
Speaker 2: But then you don't really know exactly where your money's going,
Speaker 2: and probably only a small portion of it is going
Speaker 2: to truly helping those people anyway. Blah blah blah blah.
Speaker 1: That's perfect. That's perfect. That's the point, because what if
Speaker 1: there's more to the story behind these NGOs. Why do
Speaker 1: some governments want to ban non governmental organizations? And what
Speaker 1: if the goals of these organizations on paper are not
Speaker 1: their actual goals on the ground. Will attempt to answer
Speaker 1: some of these questions after a word from our sponsor.
Speaker 1: Here's where it gets crazy.
Speaker 3: So you know, like, like many of the things we
Speaker 3: talk about on this show, things are not always as
Speaker 3: they seem. There's a problem here. It turns out that,
Speaker 3: at least in a few cases, folks are quite right
Speaker 3: to distrust inngos in the way that Matt had the
Speaker 3: inkling of a minute ago before the break back. In
Speaker 3: nineteen sixty seven, Mike Wallace, the seasoned television journalist, helped CBS.
Speaker 3: Mike Wallace led an investigation into reports of CIA front companies,
Speaker 3: only to find that the CIA regularly used front companies
Speaker 3: as a way to circumvent laws domestic and international alike.
Speaker 3: For example, the sixty seven investigation found that the CIA
Speaker 3: was functioning under the title the Bureau of Public Roads.
Speaker 1: Yeah, the BPR.
Speaker 2: Yeah.
Speaker 3: So it's all kind of a smoke screen. So let's
Speaker 3: dig into this starting with intelligence agency assets.
Speaker 2: So really quickly before we completely I just want to
Speaker 2: give everyone the tools to look at this if they
Speaker 2: want to on their own. It was called CBS News
Speaker 2: Special Report with Mike Wallace and the title was in
Speaker 2: the Pay of the CIA and American Dilemma.
Speaker 1: Yeah, you can watch the entire thing on YouTube. We
Speaker 1: think it's very much worth your time. Also, keep in
Speaker 1: mind that all the disturbing stuff you hear about in
Speaker 1: that investigation happened back in nineteen sixty seven. This is
Speaker 1: from the fifties to the sixties, and.
Speaker 2: CBS News one of the largest providers of information, a
Speaker 2: media company. They were the ones helming this investigation and
Speaker 2: giving this information to the American public.
Speaker 1: Here's what they found. So the CIA created front companies.
Speaker 1: It's not explosive news to anyone, but they use these
Speaker 1: front companies to donate to legitimate charitable organizations, some of
Speaker 1: which existed beforehand, right, and some of which were also
Speaker 1: probably custom made. Wallace characterized these charitable funds, these institutions
Speaker 1: and foundations as part of the country's financial power structure.
Speaker 1: And he's very blunt about it. Yes, it says, these
Speaker 1: are large aggregations of private money. They are influencing policy
Speaker 1: and influencing culture with very few checks on their activities,
Speaker 1: very like when I say check, I mean checks and
Speaker 1: balances style, very little oversight.
Speaker 2: Well, and it's weird too, because as they're tracing these things. Right,
Speaker 2: Let's just give an example of something like the it
Speaker 2: was called the Granary Fund, right, and it's this organization
Speaker 2: that takes money in directly from the CIA, right. And
Speaker 2: it's literally just money goes from the CIA to this
Speaker 2: thing called the Granary Fund. And CBS News tried to
Speaker 2: track down where this place was, and they found that
Speaker 2: it had an address in Boston, Massachusetts, at this one
Speaker 2: place in this one you know, room or suite within
Speaker 2: that building. They got up to that suite and it
Speaker 2: was actually a law firm of hemenway in Barns, and
Speaker 2: the person that actually signs all the checks and all
Speaker 2: of the financial and tax documents for this granary fund
Speaker 2: was one of the major guys there at this law firm,
Speaker 2: who also happens to be a part of the CIA,
Speaker 2: if you'll look him up and who's who. And then
Speaker 2: you realize that that granary fund is donating to all
Speaker 2: these other funds, you know, like charitable organizations and true
Speaker 2: real life funds. And then you realize, wait, that money
Speaker 2: that those real funds have is all mixed in with
Speaker 2: this CIA money. And we're talking about thousands and thousands
Speaker 2: of dollars.
Speaker 1: This isn't chump change, and this is a great money
Speaker 1: laundering exercise, you know what I mean. Car washes are
Speaker 1: for schmucks and amateurs.
Speaker 3: Now, so isn't that extortion not extortion fraud? I mean,
Speaker 3: if people are taking your money and then it's just
Speaker 3: going into this imaginary smoke screen pot.
Speaker 2: Well, what do you mean taking your money?
Speaker 1: You're talking about taxes, you're talking about donations, donations.
Speaker 2: Well, in this case, it's the CIA funneling money, taxpayer
Speaker 2: money into a fake account or a false company. Then
Speaker 2: that company is donating to a real fund and then
Speaker 2: those funds get distributed fun So it's.
Speaker 3: Not individual donations that are just going off into space, like.
Speaker 2: But it is it's taxpayer donations essentially, right, But that's
Speaker 2: just theft.
Speaker 1: Then it's not donations at all, right, I think I
Speaker 1: think the question. I think the question here is are
Speaker 1: inngo's bilking individual donors, right, Like, yes, Like Paul signs up,
Speaker 1: Paul signs up for the International Institution for the Proliferation
Speaker 1: of Applebee's and they want to build Applebee's in developing
Speaker 1: countries across the world. And then he finds out that
Speaker 1: his you know, two hundred dollar a year donation is
Speaker 1: actually going to build Chili's or something like that. You know,
Speaker 1: like if it's not doing I think legally, when you
Speaker 1: donate that money, they can do whatever they want with it.
Speaker 1: And I think now I would like to say there's
Speaker 1: some more oversight for charities because you can see all
Speaker 1: these sites rating charities on their trustworthiness and so on,
Speaker 1: and there are a lot of other like predatory things
Speaker 1: that purport to be charities but aren't really. They just
Speaker 1: sound alike, you know, and they're there to you know,
Speaker 1: bilk people out of money. Here's the thing. By donating
Speaker 1: through these front companies, the CIA specifically other organizations did
Speaker 1: this to the KGB. In their time, they were huge
Speaker 1: fans of doing this. But by donating through front companies,
Speaker 1: the CIA is muddying the financial waters, making it increasingly
Speaker 1: difficult to track where this cash goes. And again it
Speaker 1: is taxpayer money and more importantly, what it is spent on.
Speaker 1: I mean, it makes sense. Think of it this way.
Speaker 1: Let's say the four of us had, you know, no
Speaker 1: plans for the weekend, and so we decided to destabilize
Speaker 1: a region of the world or promote regime change in
Speaker 1: a country, but do a geopolitical worries, concerns, norms, laws,
Speaker 1: all that jazz. We cannot risk and open war. We
Speaker 1: can't just send people in to depose the leader. We
Speaker 1: can't have a hot war on our hands. Heck, we're
Speaker 1: at the point where, you know, we can't even get
Speaker 1: intelligence agency employees over the border as long as they
Speaker 1: are acknowledged to be intelligence agency employees, because what we
Speaker 1: can do instead is get members of an NGO over
Speaker 1: the border. Right. So, now, our operative Matt, Frederick, Matt,
Speaker 1: what's your spy name?
Speaker 2: Cranberry sauce.
Speaker 1: Okay, so Matt Cranberry Sauce, Frederick Operative Cranberry Sauce can't
Speaker 1: get in. But uh, you know, Cranberry Matthews, the member
Speaker 1: of the Red Cross or the Society for the Betterment
Speaker 1: of the Pangolin, can absolutely get into the country.
Speaker 2: I think it's actually Barry Cranston.
Speaker 1: Barry Cranston. There we go, and this guy Cranston can,
Speaker 1: if he's careful, gather like minded students from local universities,
Speaker 1: disaffected utes to utes, uh in areas with high unemployment,
Speaker 1: arm them with weapons smuggled in by someone else, teach
Speaker 1: them guerrilla tactics, and boom, you've got a quote unquote
Speaker 1: student union, slash rebel force, slash terrorist group. And so
Speaker 1: back in Washington, as politicians can say, we morally support
Speaker 1: the goals of this student union, spread in freedom, spread
Speaker 1: in democracy, morally support, only we do not have an
Speaker 1: attachment to them. And that's when it goes to the politically,
Speaker 1: that's when it goes to plausible deniability. The president may
Speaker 1: really think that somehow, in a country where guns are
Speaker 1: generally banned, a bunch of college kids got together, got
Speaker 1: armed with military grade weaponry.
Speaker 2: They had what started as a stand in or a
Speaker 2: sit down, turned into a full scale of rebellion.
Speaker 1: Right right, right, and suddenly just they pulled out of
Speaker 1: the top hat of their asses, the most ass hats,
Speaker 1: their ass hats, thank you. They pulled out the most
Speaker 1: effective protests and counterinsurgency techniques that the human civilization has discovered.
Speaker 1: They just made it up, right, I mean, sell me
Speaker 1: a bridge.
Speaker 2: That that's what I mean.
Speaker 1: That sounds so hypothetical, Ben all right, yeah, yeah, you
Speaker 1: know the Ted talking here, But this is a hypothetical scenario.
Speaker 1: This happened in the past, this might be happening right
Speaker 1: now as we record this episode, and Dollars to Donuts,
Speaker 1: it's going to happen again in the future, which then
Speaker 1: you think.
Speaker 2: In that CBS special, they did specifically track the Granary
Speaker 2: Fund donations that went through this little spider spider web
Speaker 2: of money flow. They tracked it to specifically student union
Speaker 2: foundations that were operating internationally. So it's just it's already
Speaker 2: ringing true.
Speaker 1: Yeah, I mean, and I don't want to vilify everybody,
Speaker 1: you know, like students, students are doing things, and grassroots
Speaker 1: groups are an important part of challenging authoritarian regimes, but
Speaker 1: sometimes they're not as grassroots as they appear to be.
Speaker 1: And it's a pickle for sure. We actually have. We
Speaker 1: have many, many cases of NGOs and media outlets that
Speaker 1: are completely more or less independent. They're doing what they
Speaker 1: say on the label right. Unfortunately, we have many examples
Speaker 1: of mediats and in geos that are controlled, infiltrated, or
Speaker 1: manipulated by intelligence services. Again, this doesn't necessarily mean they're bad, and.
Speaker 2: It also doesn't mean we're going to talk about it
Speaker 2: right now because we're going to take a quick word
Speaker 2: from our sponsor and special thanks to that NGO that
Speaker 2: was sponsoring us.
Speaker 1: Maybe not, it's all Illumination Global Unlimited.
Speaker 3: You're doing God's work.
Speaker 2: Now, that is a fine example of a non governmental organization.
Speaker 1: That's true.
Speaker 3: That that's just an n O, non organization.
Speaker 1: Non organization would go, I'm a proud member of a
Speaker 1: non organization. It's true. Though maybe we're over emphasizing this
Speaker 1: a little, but it's it's all to the good. Of course,
Speaker 1: the vast majority of people working at these organizations are
Speaker 1: not inherently bad. They're not members of specter are something.
Speaker 1: In fact, it's plausible. I mean, it's almost certain that
Speaker 1: many many people within these organizations, from volunteers to career staffers,
Speaker 1: have no idea there's any ulterior motive at play, you
Speaker 1: know what I mean. It's like you could work at
Speaker 1: the States Apartment and have no idea that the it
Speaker 1: guy down the hall is actually a CIA asset because
Speaker 1: he just fixes your email, you know what I mean?
Speaker 2: Yeah, is he?
Speaker 1: And that course doesn't mean all NGOs are currently fronts
Speaker 1: or even compromised, but it makes you think.
Speaker 3: It does make you think the collaboration between NGOs and
Speaker 3: intelligence services is kind of you know, like Bill Cosby
Speaker 3: and Hollywood in the nineties. It's an open secret. In
Speaker 3: twenty ten, Joe mcspeeden is great a great name for
Speaker 3: an agency official for international development. In fact, he launched
Speaker 3: a social media messaging network in Cuba called Zunzunio that
Speaker 3: was very much resembling Twitter, and it was used by
Speaker 3: thousands of Cubans who were unaware that the project was
Speaker 3: actually designed to essentially infiltrate their privacy and monitor their
Speaker 3: communications to get a sense of what was going on
Speaker 3: on the ground there in Cuba.
Speaker 2: Well, and according to the AP from twenty fourteen, it
Speaker 2: was also to stir up unrest within the country by
Speaker 2: affecting the populace like that was one of the goals
Speaker 2: of this thing whoops or you know, score, depending.
Speaker 3: On which side you know.
Speaker 1: Yeah.
Speaker 3: Another example, Ben, I know this was one of your favorites,
Speaker 3: was the National Endowment for Democracy or NED, which was
Speaker 3: funded by the US Congress.
Speaker 4: Yeah.
Speaker 1: This comes to us from an investigative reporter named Robert
Speaker 1: Perry pa R r. Y. Perry writes that NED National
Speaker 1: Endowment for Democracy took over the CIA's role of influencing
Speaker 1: electoral outcomes and destabilizing governments that got in the way
Speaker 1: of US interests. So do you have a left wing,
Speaker 1: duly elected president who's a little bit to leftist? Is
Speaker 1: this guy? Does this guy have the nerve to nationalize
Speaker 1: that country's resources they're oil, their gas, they're heavy metals,
Speaker 1: their timber, or to alter.
Speaker 2: The currency that is being exchanged for those resources.
Speaker 1: Yeah, you know what I mean, as far as it
Speaker 1: seems like, as far as the geopolitical apparatus is concerned,
Speaker 1: people can burn flags all they want, so long as
Speaker 1: they buy those flags with dollars US dollars. That's I mean.
Speaker 1: You know, there's a case to make that the real
Speaker 1: flag of a country is its currency.
Speaker 3: What was the name of the care We did an
Speaker 3: episode earlier today, Ben and I ridiculous history about Ernest
Speaker 3: Hemingway's younger brother who tried to declare a sovereign nation
Speaker 3: on a raft and he had a really cool name
Speaker 3: for the currency of New Atlantis, right, scruples, scruples.
Speaker 1: Because they thought wealthy people should have a lot of scruples. Right, Yeah,
Speaker 1: that's a that's a true story.
Speaker 2: But this is this is this thing we're talking about
Speaker 2: destabilizing governments that the United States, specifically the CIA has
Speaker 2: an issue with. That's an interest in, all right, but yes,
Speaker 2: for various strategic reasons. It's just it's rough that that's
Speaker 2: the avenue through which it's occurring, through these supposedly you know,
Speaker 2: good organizations that are trying to do good for a world.
Speaker 2: This is really bothering me.
Speaker 3: Guys, you're saying you just think it's inherently ichy and wrong.
Speaker 3: It feels very ichy.
Speaker 2: It's so cloak, I mean, it is, Okay, it's so
Speaker 2: perfectly cloak and dagger, I suppose. And yet once you'd
Speaker 2: think that once it's found out that this kind of
Speaker 2: thing is occurring, let's say, from those reports, that nineteen
Speaker 2: sixty seven report from CBS, once that's found out you'd think, oh, well,
Speaker 2: maybe that ended right. We figured that out and the
Speaker 2: world figured it out. It's over now.
Speaker 1: Yeah, that's the thing, though I wish there were a
Speaker 1: better response than Yeah, that's the thing. That's a big
Speaker 1: oo for me.
Speaker 2: Man.
Speaker 1: Yeah, places like NED or organizations like NED, these kind
Speaker 1: of slush funds for foreign policy operations that are a
Speaker 1: little that are not above the board. This is a
Speaker 1: prolific practice. And it's only a practice because it works.
Speaker 1: It's not like everybody chose a theme just for the
Speaker 1: sake of esthetics. There's undeniable proof that the CIA has
Speaker 1: conspired and is likely conspireen as we speak, to execute
Speaker 1: illegal campaigns in other countries using NGOs and charities as
Speaker 1: co again not necessarily the fault of the charities, not
Speaker 1: the fault of the NGOs. In fact, there's a case
Speaker 1: to be made that these innocent people may have their
Speaker 1: lives put in danger if one of these intelligence operations
Speaker 1: goes wrong.
Speaker 3: But you know, with this being such an open secret,
Speaker 3: like you said, and with that sixty seven investigation uncovering
Speaker 3: so much of this cloak and daggery, surely you know
Speaker 3: sovereign nations are hipped to this and don't want this
Speaker 3: kind of influence infiltrating their borders. Surely we would feel
Speaker 3: the same from ngeos from other countries, you know, masquerading
Speaker 3: behind this idea of do good ory this veil. Right.
Speaker 3: Aren't there laws that would prevent this kind of stuff
Speaker 3: from happening.
Speaker 1: It's a good question. There are a lot now Before
Speaker 1: we anybody in the more skeptical side of the audience
Speaker 1: relegates this to the land of alarmism and sensationalism in
Speaker 1: tinfoil hattery. Note that other world powers are very aware
Speaker 1: of this strategy have participated in it on their own.
Speaker 1: You can see again in that sixty seven investigation there's
Speaker 1: a little bit of what aboutism on the side of
Speaker 1: people who say, yeah, the CIA does do these dirty
Speaker 1: deeds thun dirt cheap to other countries, but that other
Speaker 1: powers are doing the same thing. Like there's this fantastic
Speaker 1: footage of a Russian organized huge concert. It was a blowout,
Speaker 1: but it was all to make the great idea of
Speaker 1: Cold War communism more palatable and to make it cool.
Speaker 1: It was a war for the hearts and minds. And
Speaker 1: we also know that people take this seriously because many
Speaker 1: other countries have made laws explicitly banning inngo's foreign owned
Speaker 1: in geos from their borders. Amnesty International was a very
Speaker 1: interesting source on this because they're you know, they're pro
Speaker 1: and GEO. Well what could go wrong, right, and they
Speaker 1: do great work. They say that governments across the world
Speaker 1: are increasingly attacking in geos by creating laws that subject
Speaker 1: them in their staff to surveillance, bureaucratic hurdles, and the
Speaker 1: ever present threat of imprisonment. And they have a lot
Speaker 1: of examples here too.
Speaker 2: Yes, and we have a quote here from Amnesty International.
Speaker 2: It says in the past two years alone, almost forty
Speaker 2: pieces of legislation that interfere with the right to assemble
Speaker 2: and are designed to hamper the work of civil society
Speaker 2: organizations have been put in place or are in the
Speaker 2: works around the world. These laws commonly include implementing ludicrous
Speaker 2: registration processes for organizations, monitoring their work, restricting their sources
Speaker 2: of resources, and in many cases, shutting them down if
Speaker 2: they don't adhere to the unreasonable requirements imposed on them.
Speaker 1: Yeah, so this could be killing people with the thousand
Speaker 1: paper cuts of paper work, you know, like you need
Speaker 1: you need approval to assemble or to hold this meeting
Speaker 1: right to tell people about d the benefits of sanitation,
Speaker 1: or to teach people how to for being totally totally
Speaker 1: benevolent about it. Let's say you're trying to teach people
Speaker 1: how to operate and maintain a solar power phone charging station,
Speaker 1: right and valuable. That's great stuff. And then let's say
Speaker 1: the country and what you're trying to do, this doesn't
Speaker 1: care for your whole the cut of your jib, and
Speaker 1: so they say, okay, to hold this class where you
Speaker 1: teach this, you have to get approval from this authority,
Speaker 1: and that authority has to approve it sixty days before
Speaker 1: you do this. However, that approval can only be submitted
Speaker 1: thirty days before you have the things. So now you're
Speaker 1: in to catch twenty two bureaucratically. It's weird. It's a
Speaker 1: weird flex for sure. But we also have examples of
Speaker 1: specific countries who have started banning or excluding NGOs. Make
Speaker 1: no mistake because of these concerns that spies may be
Speaker 1: infiltrating the country via NGOs.
Speaker 3: So Pakistan's Ministry of the Interior rejected registration applications from
Speaker 3: eighteen international NGOs in October of twenty eighteen, and they
Speaker 3: dismissed all of the appeals that came without giving a reason.
Speaker 3: They are clearly very suspicious of these agencies. Just in general,
Speaker 3: in Saudi Arabia, the government can deny licenses to new
Speaker 3: organizations and disband them a step further, even if they
Speaker 3: are deemed to be quote harming national unity. And this
Speaker 3: has affected human rights groups, including women's human rights groups,
Speaker 3: who have not been able to register and operate freely
Speaker 3: in the country. This is a really good example of like,
Speaker 3: you know, a couple of bad apples spoiling the bunch,
Speaker 3: you know, I mean, because as we said at the
Speaker 3: top of the show, clearly there is good work being
Speaker 3: done by these NGOs. Well because of a few bad actors,
Speaker 3: everyone that's like, you know, everyone kind of gets screwed, right.
Speaker 2: Well, it's also a convenient reason to keep things as
Speaker 2: they are, right, Like, if you're talking especially about women's
Speaker 2: rights groups operating in Saudi arabia's absolutely right. I mean,
Speaker 2: if you can just ban a group that is advocating
Speaker 2: for a certain thing because of reason a.
Speaker 3: Potential threat to our sovereignty or whatever.
Speaker 2: Yeah, you know, and and that that phrase, like I'd
Speaker 2: love to get your take on that phrase been national
Speaker 2: harming national unity.
Speaker 1: Oh yeah, yeah, I mean same sex equality is seen
Speaker 1: as harming national unity. That's right. Arabia, that's right.
Speaker 2: That's that's kind of what we're talking about. And you
Speaker 2: can kind of see that at play, that kind of
Speaker 2: phrasing at play in countries across the world, even ones
Speaker 2: that you, you know, you may live in right now
Speaker 2: that you identify with as like having this equality thing down, Pat,
Speaker 2: Perhaps perhaps it's not that way. That's right.
Speaker 3: I mean, the very basis of your national unity could
Speaker 3: be on the wrong side of human rights.
Speaker 2: In general as a whole. Yeah, those aveiled shade at
Speaker 2: the United States, by the way, just everybody's aware.
Speaker 1: Okay, well take off cantail in general. But this is
Speaker 1: an interesting case, and I'm glad you brought it up
Speaker 1: because in the case of Saudi Arabia, yeah, there might
Speaker 1: be some insidious intelligence agency activity going on, but it's
Speaker 1: also just as likely it's more likely that a lot
Speaker 1: of those in geos are getting shut down because they
Speaker 1: are advocating for things that in the West are seen
Speaker 1: as in alienable human rights. Bell Reus goes a little
Speaker 1: bit further. Any in GEO that can operate in the
Speaker 1: country is closely observed scrutinized by the state. And if
Speaker 1: you work for any in GOO who tried to register
Speaker 1: and got rejected, you have committed a crime and you
Speaker 1: may be in prison, and you may also just disappear.
Speaker 2: You should probably get out.
Speaker 1: Yeah, these are just a few examples. Other countries Azerbaijan,
Speaker 1: China and of course Russia have introduced more registration and
Speaker 1: reporting requirements and if you don't comply, you can be
Speaker 1: thrown in prison. Which is it sounds weird, you know,
Speaker 1: to say that you didn't complete some paperwork, so now
Speaker 1: you're going to jail, possibly for a long long time,
Speaker 1: especially if you're foreign national, right, because usually we think, well,
Speaker 1: if you don't do paperwork, right, you get a fine
Speaker 1: for being late, you know.
Speaker 2: Yeah, unless it's I'm trying to think of like a
Speaker 2: really bad traffic violation where you actually end up having
Speaker 2: to go to jail for a couple of days if
Speaker 2: you don't fill out your paperwork i e. Pay or
Speaker 2: show up.
Speaker 1: Sure, yeah, I guess for people on probation, that's paperwork
Speaker 1: that can get you in trouble. But we mentioned Russia.
Speaker 1: Maybe the lead a little bit here. Russia is one
Speaker 1: of the most well known anti in GEO organizations. They
Speaker 1: a few years back banned all NGOs that they considered undesirable.
Speaker 2: It's true.
Speaker 3: The government has regularly labeled NGOs who receive foreign funding
Speaker 3: as foreign agents, which is a term that you could
Speaker 3: very easily correlate to ones that are a little more
Speaker 3: direct like spy, traitor, enemy of the state. The government
Speaker 3: applies this kind of thinking so broadly, not only thinking
Speaker 3: actual legislation, that even an organization that supports people with
Speaker 3: say diabetes, actually gets could be subject to fines, put
Speaker 3: on a blacklist of foreign agents, and forced to close.
Speaker 3: This is not hypothetical. This actually happened in October of
Speaker 3: twenty eighteen. Medical Environment, until women's groups, all of these
Speaker 3: have also come under serious scrutiny and fire from the
Speaker 3: Russian government, and all of these moves have really galvanized
Speaker 3: the developing world and launched a kind of a renaissance
Speaker 3: of anti NGO legislation.
Speaker 1: Yeah, and so for anyone listening now who has dedicated
Speaker 1: their life to service, thank you for being one of
Speaker 1: the good forces in the world, even though I'm sure
Speaker 1: at times it feels like you are outnumbered. If you're
Speaker 1: having a hard time trying to understand why these countries
Speaker 1: would so profoundly distrust in Geo's, think about it this way.
Speaker 1: If you are in the US or Australia or wherever
Speaker 1: you're listening to this show, imagine how you would feel
Speaker 1: if there were organizations from say China or Russia or
Speaker 1: Iran popping up in the capitol, popping up in your town,
Speaker 1: and they were funneling hundreds of of millions of dollars
Speaker 1: given to them by their parent government just to influence
Speaker 1: your local politics. Right, so now now it doesn't matter
Speaker 1: how you vote, because there is a new special interest
Speaker 1: group in town. They have more money than you could
Speaker 1: ever raise, and they have a bigger say, even though
Speaker 1: they don't live where you live.
Speaker 2: And even if it's not specifically influencing politics, but it's
Speaker 2: influencing some kind of social norm or movement, right you know,
Speaker 2: just that perhaps your immediate area doesn't agree with I mean,
Speaker 2: that would be that would be very strange if it
Speaker 2: was coming, If that money is coming and influence is
Speaker 2: coming from outside of your own country, that it would
Speaker 2: certainly feel.
Speaker 1: Odd, and it feels like an attack on sovereignty. You know,
Speaker 1: this would understandably here in the US, this would generate
Speaker 1: a lot of anger if people were aware of this,
Speaker 1: especially if these groups tried to tilt an election one
Speaker 1: way or another. But suppose they weren't just trying to
Speaker 1: tilt an election. They had success doing that, and now
Speaker 1: they wanted to upend the system of government. This is
Speaker 1: something that the US financed NGOs have done in the past,
Speaker 1: or sorry, people operating out of those NGOs. Again, the
Speaker 1: NGOs may have no knowledge of what's actually happening, and
Speaker 1: this has occurred numerous times. This is rinse and repeat
Speaker 1: because again it works, and the story is not over.
Speaker 1: Our only conclusion we can make is that NGOs are
Speaker 1: not going away. The CIA is pretty open about the
Speaker 1: fact that they dig it. They're like, we like working
Speaker 1: with these guys.
Speaker 3: Yeah, they actually have a term for They coin it
Speaker 3: deep cooperation between the agency and these NGOs, and they
Speaker 3: refer to this whole process as quote information sharing end quote.
Speaker 4: Yeah.
Speaker 3: So I don't know, it seems pretty unlikely that that's
Speaker 3: the end of the story.
Speaker 2: Yeah, so let's really quickly let's mention something that that
Speaker 2: CBS News special report to talk about and that is
Speaker 2: the Security Act of nineteen forty seven, just to give
Speaker 2: an idea of why, why the heck is the CIA
Speaker 2: operating in this way, Because as we learned back back
Speaker 2: in the old days in our school books, we learned
Speaker 2: that the Central Intelligence Agency is in fact an intelligence agency,
Speaker 2: and it is meant to carry out what would be
Speaker 2: called intelligence in all the various ways we've talked about
Speaker 2: on this show numerous times. Yeah, gathering information, right, But
Speaker 2: because of that Security Act of nineteen forty seven, they
Speaker 2: were essentially ordered through this Act to do a whole
Speaker 2: bunch of other things, and all of these things that
Speaker 2: they would have to do then and now are currently
Speaker 2: having to do our duties quote as directed by the
Speaker 2: President and his National Security Council. And that phrase is
Speaker 2: so vague it allows essentially whoever the standing president is
Speaker 2: and the National Security Council, which have elected officials, are
Speaker 2: in there. They get to direct the CIA outside of
Speaker 2: the Director of the CIA, or at least nudge very
Speaker 2: harshly what they need to do and what they should
Speaker 2: be interested in.
Speaker 3: It reminds me of the term, which I've always found
Speaker 3: weird and a little creepy, serving at the pleasure of
Speaker 3: the president.
Speaker 1: Yeah, it's like you're going to a Chick fil a.
Speaker 3: Yeah.
Speaker 2: Well, and in that case, it doesn't matter who the
Speaker 2: president is, because if you've got we talked about it
Speaker 2: in an episode not long ago, But if you've got
Speaker 2: you know, a security council with officials that have been
Speaker 2: on there for a long time, who see a big picture,
Speaker 2: who see the chess moves, I can only imagine what
Speaker 2: things occur, what other countries perhaps should be very much
Speaker 2: aware of.
Speaker 1: Well said, And that's a great question. Are other nations
Speaker 1: right to be concerned? Is there a solution to this problem?
Speaker 1: Or's the money gotten too good? Is the system too effective?
Speaker 1: The question it's not whether the machine is broken, because
Speaker 1: you know, there's an argument to be made that the
Speaker 1: people who are running this thing love it. It's doing
Speaker 1: what they wanted.
Speaker 3: To know exactly what it's doing, and then and what
Speaker 3: their role in all of it is for sure, right,
Speaker 3: it reminds me very much of diplomatic immunity and functioning
Speaker 3: out of embassies. Yeah, yeah, I was thinking the same
Speaker 3: thing when it in terms of the uh, the aid
Speaker 3: workers or whatever, the NGO employees being able to get
Speaker 3: kind of carte blanche. Uh, that's that's the sort of
Speaker 3: the root of some of these laws where they're like, no,
Speaker 3: you can't come anymore, we don't want you.
Speaker 1: We know what you did. Are you familiar with the
Speaker 1: term Cranberry?
Speaker 2: Oh, I know a guy named Cranston.
Speaker 1: Lock him up. But we want to we want to
Speaker 1: hear from you, as we said earlier, if you have been,
Speaker 1: if you have been abroad or here in the US,
Speaker 1: we're in your home country helping out with a non
Speaker 1: governmental organization. Thank you for the work you're doing. Thank
Speaker 1: you for making the world a better place, because for pizza,
Speaker 1: we need the help. And if you have, if you
Speaker 1: have experience with anything sketchy going on in one of
Speaker 1: these organizations, we would love to hear from you.
Speaker 3: So like the Peace Corps would be one, right, Yeah,
Speaker 3: a lot of people go to the Peace Corps.
Speaker 2: Yeah, yeah, yeah, and that's an upstanding, fine organization. Everything's
Speaker 2: fine about in the Peace Corps.
Speaker 1: There used to be a statue for the founder of
Speaker 1: the Peace Corps at our old office. I remember, you know,
Speaker 1: that's where you that's when you made it. When you
Speaker 1: have a statue, that's a flex made And that's our
Speaker 1: classic episode for this Evening We can't wait to hear
Speaker 1: your thoughts. It's right let us know what you think.
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