February 5, 2020 • 59 mins
On paper, non-governmental organizations often sound like something everyone can get behind: these institutions are often dedicated to addressing some of the most dangerous, long-running problems on the planet. It may be surprising, then, to learn that a growing number of nations are taking increasingly aggressive actions to ban NGOs, especially foreign ones. Supporters of NGOs argue these nations are attempting to fight progress in hopes of saving their own corrupt regimes -- but the opponents inside these countries claim many of those do-gooder NGOs are more sinister than they'd have you believe: instead of saving the world, critics argue, these institutions are foreign-owned fronts for everything from illegal activities of intelligence agencies to acts of industrial espionage, forced regime change and more.
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Episode Transcript
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Speaker 1 (00:00):
From UFOs to psychic powers and government conspiracies. History is
riddled with unexplained events. You can turn back now or
learn the stuff they don't want you to know. A
production of I Heart Radios How Stuff Works. Hello, Welcome
(00:25):
back to the show. My name is Matt, my name
is They called me Ben. We are joined as always
with our super producer Paul Mission Controlled decond. Most importantly,
you are you. You are here, and that makes this
stuff they don't want you to know. In today's episode,
we're revisiting UH topic we picked up in fourteen, both
(00:46):
as a video and as a short audio podcast. UH.
This is UH. This is something that may be controversial
to some people, it may be personal to some of
us listening today, as we're going to do our level
best as always to stay objective. We're talking about non
governmental organizations the street name in geos. Most of us
(01:11):
are vaguely aware of these institutions, and oddly enough, they're
defined by what they are not rather than what they
actually are. They're just non governmental. The whole definition is
the thing that they are not in the name. And
that's tricky because this is an umbrella term. It encompasses
everything from you know, the Red Cross, to the Red Crescent,
(01:32):
to Green Peace from the World Wildlife Fund, ox FAN
and so many, many, many, many more. And typically these
organizations are going to focus on a distinct set of
concerns or problems, right human rights, equality or fighting dysentery.
It's usually the kind of stuff every human being can
(01:53):
get behind, you know, solving world hunger. It's philanthropy, Yeah,
saving the cute animals, doing the right thing. I always
confuse philanthropy with philandering. Those aren't the same thing, are they?
In a way? They both mean lover of men, that's true,
lover of humanity, It's true. I confuse them as well. Uh.
NGOs are all about distribution, and it might surprise many
(02:17):
of us, especially people who have donated to one cause
or another. Might surprise us to learn that NGOs are
not as squeaky clean and as utopian as their proponents
would have us believe. In fact, many people, a growing
number of people will argue that these institutions and organizations
are at the very least disingenuous, maybe even evil. We'll
(02:41):
get to that, but first things first, what exactly is
this term we're throwing around? What is an NGO? Here?
Are the facts are all pals at the Oxford English
Dictionary UM have a fabulous definition for what an NGO is.
They define it as a nonprofit organization that greates independently
(03:01):
of any government, typically one whose purpose is to address
a social or political issue. UM. And in fact, the
term non governmental organization was created in Article seventy one
of the Charter of the United Nations in and that's
when select you know, club, I guess you could call it,
(03:23):
of international non state agencies were given UM observer status
to some of of this body's meetings. Yeah, so that
means that, let's just make up an example. Let's just
say the Red Cross is now allowed to hang out
(03:43):
in the room during meetings that might uh might be
applicable to its mission right to save lives. They don't
get to vote because they're not countries. They can maybe
make some speeches, right, but the big thing is they
do not voting power. And there are other entities that
(04:03):
have observer status in the United Nations. This is different
because that select group of organizations and institutions that were
allowed to be called non governmental organizations were already very
very politically connected. They were already kind of in the room.
Now they just get the name drop in the official designation.
(04:25):
But again, like you said, no, they are addressing social
or political issues. The only common factor that these this
this original group had back in forty five was that
they were not government agencies and they were technically businesses.
They weren't making money hand over fist or if they were,
that was a secondary aim. Yeah, well there isn't the
(04:49):
idea that their nonprofit or not for profit, right, Like,
that's the whole one of the major points right right now.
They can distribute money, yes, very into distribute today. They
can distribute money or funding to take donations and take
donations of course from any number of donors. But they're
(05:09):
not supposed to keep it and roll it over. They're
supposed to invest it in their mission. So originally the
u N said, Okay, you're gonna be advocating for human rights,
you're going to be advocating for the environment or quote
unquote development, another umbrella term that can be very tricky.
(05:31):
So an NGO really can be any kind of organization
so long as it's ostensibly independent from government influence. And
as you said, Matt is not for profit. There are
a ton of them now, and they're just going to
keep growing. Yeah, if you check out Nonprofit Action dot
org and this is a group that tracks uh the
(05:54):
stats that that pertained to NGOs. They estimate that their
listen to this roughly a million non governmental organizations worldwide
that are functioning. And uh, I mean that's a lot,
right if you think about that, and has been mentioned.
They're not out there trying to make profit for things,
but they are trying to function and quote, you know,
(06:15):
do good, do some kind of social good. So they
are trying to get in as much money as they
can through donations and uh, as we'll see later other means,
let's let's just go to a fact here. In twenty eleven,
people donated one point two billion dollars to various non
governmental organizations, and then just three years later by that
(06:39):
number had risen to one point four billion dollars. So
by twenty thirty, this number is expected to make the
medeorc rise up to two point five billion, so more
than twice what it was in twenty eleven. They are
also huge employers. We're talking about a gigantic mass of people.
To quick examples, there are more than six hundred thousand
(07:03):
in geos in Australia and their employees make up eight
percent of the Australian workforce does eight percent doesn't sound
huge until you think of, you know, the fact that
it's the entire nation and continent of Australia. What do
you think that's Australia A part oddly enough, not not
that much. The in geo industry is huge in the
(07:24):
United States as well as Western countries. Part of part
of the reason it seems so big is because again
the term has so much leeway. It encompasses so much stuff.
You know, one in GEO can be doing something entirely
different and irrelevant to the aims or activities of another
in GEO. But get this, if all the NGOs in
(07:46):
the world where a country, they would have the fifth
largest economy in the world. That's according to John Hopkins.
So they're here, they're here to stay. They're growing, you know,
as as we pointed out, they are going to be
at least at two point five billion dollar business within
the next you know, ten years, and a ton of
(08:08):
people worldwide depend on them, both for employment and perhaps
for some aspect of their lives, whether it's from water
being treated and cleaned in in some remote part of
the earth where you know, shelter being provided and created,
as in, you know, talking about development on the good
(08:30):
side at least. Yeah, on the right we're throwing in already. Yeah,
so we're just trying to remind everybody that, you know,
we mentioned at the top here like a lot of
people think these things are evil in a general sense.
We're just making sure to point out that there is
real good that is occurring. Yes, Um, it gets so complicated,
(08:51):
we haven't hit it yet, so maybe we'll save some
of this discussion for later. Hashtag not all NGOs. And
this becomes incredibly important as we continue, because our big
question is what do NGOs do? Their activities include but
are not limited to the stuff we just named environmental work, advocacy,
human rights, uh, social betterment. And sometimes this will happen
(09:13):
on a large, somewhat abstract scale, and sometimes it will
happen very locally, like this NGO is just providing this
specific type of water pump to a specific region on
a continent, or we're just passing out life straws. That's
what we're doing. Lifestraws are great, by the way, they're
incredibly reasonable if you don't have one, and if you,
(09:35):
like me, believe in building go bags for your home
or your car, you need a life straw. We should
can't we talked about this? Why don't we have something?
I want you to know, branded life straws. I would
love that you talk about then we we we came up.
So you can like drink out of like a puddle
with one of those. Yes, that's pretty cool. Yeah, I
would do it just for the novelty of drinking out
of a puddle. Yeah. The only I think the only
(09:57):
problem is that they can't filter uh heavy metals. So
according to the latest reports, lifestraws are not as useful
in the continental US is we would have wanted to believe,
because the pollution is rampant. A different episode, what oh man,
different episode. So it's a that's a story for a
(10:18):
different day. But in geos are on the front lines,
in the trenches of combating these problems and making a
world in five or world in thirty twenty a place
where people would still like to live. So the thing is,
they're not all created equally, and they have different broad categories. Uh.
(10:39):
The two big divisions are what we call operational in
geos and advocacy or campaigning in geo's they overlap, but
they are different entities. So operational NGOs actually have to
mobilize resources in the form of their financial donations, things
like raw materials, volunteer labor um, so that they can actually,
(11:04):
you know, keep these projects and programs going. It's a
really difficult and complex process with a lot of moving parts,
and these ngeos usually have some kind of hq UM
built in bureaucracy and all kinds of support and field staff.
Then you've got advocacy or campaigning NGOs that carry out
kind of similar types of activities, but there's kind of
(11:27):
a different balancing act that goes on between them. You
still have to raise money, of course, the name of
the game for any NGO, but on a much smaller
scale UM, and it serves more of a symbolic function
and kind of strengthening UH the identification with a particular
cause that donors might have. I mean, it sort of
(11:48):
goes into the whole idea of the UH that's not
not pure vanity, but there's something of a status symbol
involved in participating some of these NGOs, and this kind
of bolsters that. So when you persuade people to donate time,
it becomes more valuable. Successful campaigning in geos have the
ability to kind of get large numbers of people to
(12:08):
mobilize for very specific issues and types of events. Yeah,
the advocacy campaigning in geo's are think of them as
the raising awareness in geo's. We'll have funding, we want
to keep the lights on. It's more important to us
that we get people to volunteer x amount of days
out of the year, et cetera. And these distinctions, like
(12:30):
a lot of on paper distinctions, get real muddey when
we go to the field operational NGOs. You know, if
if the impact of their projects doesn't seem like it's
really moving the needle, then they'll go of course they'll
go into campaigning. What are they gonna say, No, we
don't do that here. Uh. And these operational NGOs, especially
(12:51):
the big ones, always run regular campaigns, or at least
they support other affiliated organizations that are running campaigns. And
then sometimes on the other side, and geos that are
campaigning in geo's feel like they cannot ignore immediate real
problems in their policy domain. So like, if you are
(13:12):
an NGO that wants to raise awareness and support in
society for human rights or for women's rights. Then you
may say, you know, the problem here is happening so blatantly,
it's so pervasive, and we have the tools to fix it,
So we can't hold off. We can't just have a
raise awareness dinner or gala. We need to put the
(13:34):
money directly into assisting the victims of these crimes, so
they can they can trade back and forth. They're they're
a bit mercurial, a bit chameleon like. And there are
other NGOs that specialize outside of these primary functions, right, Yeah,
there's a there's a whole other kind of arm of
NGOs called the research institute. You've probably heard of these before.
(13:58):
They're really great. One of their primary things they do
is to increase knowledge and understanding. And these, you know,
will range across the whole spectrum. Of course, from those
um you know, who are just looking to promote academics
like the the uh, non political issues out there that
are going to help our world become a better place too,
(14:19):
then you know, sending out information across the world or
across a population for campaigning to get more money in
right to then spread more awareness. So it's kind of
just like a nice little cycle thereof send us some
money so we can let other people know this cool
thing that you know now that you know who we are,
and think tanks operate in this realm too, oh for sure. Right, seriously,
(14:41):
your political affiliation and know people hate to hear this,
but in this, in this conversation, your political affiliation does
not apply. It does not matter. What we're about to
tell you is very true. The majority of the time
that a politician has a smart policy plan, it didn't
come from them, because they're typically not going to be professors.
(15:04):
It came from think tanks, it came from NGOs, it
came from places like ALEC, A, L E. C UH
and a lot of times these groups are on the
ground somewhere that have the best visibility for a problem
or a big issue, right absolutely, which so it's we're
not saying that's necessarily bad. It's just perhaps a bit
disingenuous when you get that messaging from a politician. Wait
(15:27):
a minute, Wait a minute, politicians are disingenuous, say it is,
so we we kind of we all know this and
we're all jaded to some extent at this point, but
it is I think good just to know what you
were saying, Ben, that these NGOs a lot of times
have a heavy hand in policy making. Absolutely, but I
(15:47):
think to your point, Matt, um, they're able to be
more specialized, right, so they can you know, really have
the smarts specifically to deal with a particular problem like
climate change, or to really help develop a policy every
aspect has been fully thought out and vetted before. Um.
You know, these politicians may be shop around for what
they consider to be the best form of that plan,
(16:09):
and then they go with the one that maybe has
the best backing or the most bona fides right, right,
or what their what their masters allow them to endorse,
which I know sounds super cynical, but you're right, it's
not a bad thing. It's actually very very good thing
that politicians lean on this expertise because your point, noeal, Uh,
these organizations are more nimble and they will tend to
(16:30):
have a depth of understanding that can get lost in
a big bureaucratic machine. But okay, so I know we're
getting a little in the weeds here. Uh. There is
one great hilarious way to think of NGOs and to
differentiate them, and it goes like this, Bingo Ingo, Gongo Ingo,
and of course Quogo I love that band. Wait was
(16:53):
ingo twice? Uh ingo e n g O and then
I ingo maybe and go okay, yeah, oh end go
in go and we go okay, gotta gotta gota go
bango bongo. All right, so let's let's do these right,
go bango right? Oh boy, here we go. Just uh so,
somebody just take this from this moment on and you
(17:17):
will have all the examples in audio format. Let's just
go through them really quickly. These are the real ones
to go. Let's just go around, Robin, Is there a
one in particular you want to hit? Ben sure? BINGO
stands for business Friendly International. In GEO, think of something
like the Red Cross. End go e n g O.
That's an environmental NGO. Think of green Peace, perhaps the
(17:39):
World Wildlife Fund. I'm torn between this being my favorite
or the number five. But we've got gongo government organized
non governmental organization, uh, such as International Union for Conservation
of Nature. I'm sorry, government organized non governmental organization. I
swear to you. That's the thing that just means. That
(18:01):
means that it blasted right past. It means that a
government said, okay, we're gonna set aside money. We're gonna
give it to this place. We're gonna start, you know,
to your example, the International Union for Conservation Nature. But
then you know, you all go ahead take the money
and run. Uh. And then we have INGO I n GEO,
(18:22):
an international NGEO like ox FAM. And finally quango I
love it, a quasi autonomous n g O. An example
here would be the International Organization for Standardization. Highly important thing.
I I propose that we uh, that we start an
NGO to change the pronunciation of quango to quango. It
(18:45):
just sounds so much more fun. I feel like I
know a guy there must there's a guy who lives
in our neighborhood somewhere who's whose street name is probably quango.
Then there could be the obvious ted nugent Tian and
call it quango tango. There we go, and I hope
his last names tango, quango, tango. If you're listening, that's
just cool. We were just in Los Angeles and I
(19:06):
always think of that road. Yeah, yeah, that's an outlier
because it's like sunset Cosmo, and someone in the back
is just like it's probably has great significance to somebody somewhere.
My favorite Los Angeles adjacent name for a town is
Rancho Cucamonga. Yes, pretty fabulous. It feels fancy just hearing it.
(19:31):
So all of these things, the mingo, ingo gongo and
ingo quango quongo, they all, they all get their money
from a couple of easily identifiable places or types of places.
Membership dues. You're you're a member of World Wildlife Fund
or whatever. So every month or every year, you you
(19:52):
give the money because you want wild animals to still
be a thing when your kids grow up and you
get a really fancy, lovely calendar. Or private donations. Uh,
there's a there's a very clever thing that we'll go
back to the second. The other two are the sale
of goods and services right by this mug, by this
t shirt, a portion of the proceeds blah blah blah.
(20:13):
And the other one is grants you apply to a
government or another organization, they give you money to accomplish
a name. Going back to number two, private donations. The
very very clever thing about private donations, less may may
make me sound like a jerk to say it, is
that it is not altruism for a philanthropist to donate. Sure,
(20:33):
maybe they want to help that cause, but they're also
saving so much money in right offs when they when
they donate as much, when they donate a portion of
their own proceeds. You mean, so it's NPR and one
of these, Well, it's definitely a nonprofit. Uh, But I
wonder that's a good question then, because it receives so
(20:54):
much government money. It does, but it also does what
you're talking about with the pledge drives and the private
nations and also lots of grants you always hear you know,
was funded by a grant from the Johnny and Katherine
te MacArthur Foundation, any any Casey Foundation, the Bill and
Melinda Gates Foundation, exactly all the big ones. So even
if it's not, it's certainly functions in a similar way
(21:15):
to some of these NGOs that we're talking about. Absolutely,
and as big MPR fans, both on the federal and
regional level, we just want to say we know that
you probably don't like doing the pledge drives either, so
soldier onward, folks. We're doing a great job. But ben, yes,
are these groups they sound eerily similar to those special
(21:38):
interests people are always accusing politicians of pandering too. That's right,
It's absolutely right, because they are special interests. Their special
interests just happened to be ostensibly again on the surface, beneficial.
You are absolutely not wrong. They are very much special
interest groups. I do want to I do want to
(21:58):
bust the scam real quick. While we're on the concept
of private donations. So this happens all the time. If
you go to your local grocery store, especially around the holidays,
you know, you're ringing, you're buying magazines, dog food and
egg whites and I don't know whatever else, shoe cleaner,
I'm getting a real picture of your life, duct tape,
something to burn your fingerprints off, whatever. And then at
(22:21):
the end of the transaction, they say, would you like
to donate to this holiday fund? Would you like to
donate a dollar, five dollars, ten dollars right and ask
you right at the register. It's very easy to say yes.
Here's what's happening with that. Those companies are taking that
money that they're they're getting from individual grocery store customers,
(22:43):
they're pulling it into a single fund and they're using
it to make a large charitable donation that offsets their
tax burden. So what you're actually doing, what you're actually
doing now, you are helping people on the way, but
what you're actually doing is paying that grocery stores taxes
is for them, Man Kroger. Why would you do me
wrong like that? I just that's I'm pretty sure that's
(23:06):
what's going on. I would love to be wrong. I
think that's called little loophole, Ben, and that's what there
they found it. But don't you feel like a jerk sometimes,
like do you want to donate? And you say no?
You know what, what do you say? Like, I don't
want children to have toys. I think dogs should just die?
You know? Yeah, no, I agree. I think the my problem,
(23:28):
just personally speaking personally here is that I am so
embarrassed by the thought of denying a one dollar donation.
At any point when someone points at me and says,
would you like to donate? Uh, you're already paying just
click this thing, I have to say yes. So if
you ever want to squeeze money out of me, just
(23:50):
make it look like seem like a charitable donation and
hit me while I'm doing a transaction. Do you UM
typically give handouts to UM hand handlers. I did for
a long time. Then what happened? Man? Who hurt you?
I just oh, I could tell you an actual story.
I know. Yes, we're going to take a break. Geez, Paul,
he's staring at me. We're gonna go to a break soon,
(24:14):
I promised. I gave a gentleman in a wheelchair, UM
more money than I generally would and then he got
up and walked away. Didn't he know? He he took it,
like just snatched it from me and then just wheeled
off really quickly. But was very much just like I
got away with it kind of thing. I don't know
(24:36):
the way the way I felt afterwards. Um, and I
also went to I went to school at Georgia State
in downtown, And I think it just the interaction, that
type of interaction occurs so frequently, getting them to it
kind of Well, it's tough because if you want to
truly help someone in that type of situation, just handing
them cash that is transferable in that moment probably isn't
(25:00):
the best way to do it. Many times that's going
to be enabling perhaps behavior that is already occurring. But again,
I don't have all the answers, you know, you one
thing you can do is donate to an organization like
ones that we're talking about today, right, but then you
don't really know exactly where your money is going, and
probably only a small portion of it is going to
(25:21):
truly helping those people anyway. Blah blah blah blah. That's perfect.
That's perfect. That's the point, because what if there's more
to the story behind these NGOs. Why do some governments
want to ban non governmental organizations? And what if the
goals of these organizations on paper are not their actual
(25:42):
goals on the ground. Will attempt to answer some of
these questions after a word from our sponsor. Here's where
it gets crazy. So you know, like, like many of
the things, as you talk about on this show, things
are not always as they seem. Uh, there's a problem here.
(26:05):
It turns out that at least in a few cases,
UM folks are quite right to distrust in g os
in the way that that Matt had the inkling of
UM a minute ago before the break back. In nineteen
sixty seven, Mike Wallace, Uh, the seasoned television journalist CBS
(26:27):
Mike Wallace lad an investigation into reports of c I
A front companies, only to find that the c I
A regularly used front companies as a way to circumvent
um laws domestic and international alike. For example, the sixties
seven investigation found that the c I a UM was
(26:49):
functioning under the title the Bureau of Public Roads BR. Yeah,
so it's all kind of a smoke screen. So let's
let's dig into this um star with intelligence agency assets,
so really quickly before we completely jump in and just
want to get give everyone the tools to look at
this if they want to on their own. It was
(27:11):
called CBS News Special Report with Mike Wallace and the
title was in the Pay of the CIA and American Dilemma.
Yeah you can. You can watch the entire thing on YouTube.
We think it's very much worth your time. Also, keep
in mind that all the disturbing stuff you hear about
in that investigation happened back in nineteen sixty seven. This
(27:33):
is from the fifties to the sixties and CBS News
one of the largest providers of information of a media company.
They were the ones helming this investigation and giving this
information to the American public. Here's what they found. So
the CIA created front companies. That's not it's not explosive
(27:54):
news to anyone, but they used these front companies to
donate to legitimate charitable organizations, some of which existed beforehand, right,
and some of which were also probably custom made. Wallace
characterized these charitable funds, these institutions, and foundations as part
(28:15):
of the country's financial power structure, and he's very blunt
about it. Says, these are large aggregations of private money.
They are influencing policy and influencing culture with very few
checks on their activities, very like when I say check,
I mean checks and balances style, very little oversight. Well,
and it's it's it's weird too, because as they're tracing
(28:38):
these things. Right, Let's just give an example of something
like the it was called the Granary Fund, right, and
it's this it's this organization that takes money in directly
from the CIA, right, And it's literally just money goes
from the CIA to this thing called the Granary Fund.
And CBS News tried to track down where this place
(28:59):
was and they found that that it had an address
in Boston, Massachusetts, at this one place, in this one
you know, room or suite within that building. They got
up to that suite and it was actually a law
firm of Hem and Way in Barnes and the person
that actually signs all the checks in all of the
(29:19):
financial and tax documents for this This granary Fund was
one of the major guys they're uh at this law
firm who also happens to be a part of the CIA.
If you'll look him up, who and who's who? And
then you realize that that granary fund is donating to
all these other funds, you know, like charitable organizations and
(29:42):
true real life funds. And then you realize weight that
money that those real funds have is all mixed in
with the CIA money. And we're talking about thousands and
thousands of dollars. This isn't chump change, and this is
a great money laundring exercise, you know what I mean.
Car washes are for schmucks and amateurs. Now, so isn't
(30:03):
that extortion not extortion fraud? I mean, if if a
few people are taking your money and then it's just
going into this imaginary smokescreen pot, Well, what do you
mean taking your money? You're talking about taxes, you're talking
about donations. Well, in this case, it's the CIA funneling money,
taxpayer money into a fake account or a false company.
(30:26):
Then that company is donating to a real fund and
then those funds get distributed, so it's not individual donations
that are just going off into space, like but it is.
It's taxpayer donations essentially. But that's just that's not donations
at all, Right, I think I think the question I
think the question here is are in Geo's bilking individual donors, right, Like,
(30:52):
like Paul signs up, Paul signs up for the International
Institution for the Proliferation of Applebee's and they want to
build up will bees in developing countries across the world.
And then he finds out that his you know, two
hundred dollar a year donation is actually going to build
chilis or something like that. You know, like if it's
(31:14):
not doing I think legally, when you donate that money, um,
they can do whatever they want with it. And I
think now I would like to say there's some more
oversight for charities because you can see all these sites
rating charities on their trustworthiness and so on, and there
are a lot of other like predatory things that purport
to be charities but aren't really. They just sound alike
(31:36):
you know, uh, and they're there to you know, build
people out of money. Here's the thing by donating through
these front companies. The CIA specifically, other organizations did this
to the KGB in their time. They were huge fans
of doing this. But by donating through front companies, the
CIA is muddying the financial waters, making it increasingly difficult
(31:58):
to track where this cash goes. And again it is
taxpayer money and more importantly, what it is spent on.
I mean, it makes sense. Think of it this way.
Let's say the four of us had, you know, no
plans for the weekend, and so we decided to destabilize
a region of the world or promote regime change in
(32:18):
the country, but do a geopolitical worries, concerns, norms, laws,
all that jazz. We cannot risk an open war. We
can't just send people in to depose the leader. We
can't have a hot war on our hands. Heck, we're
at the point where, you know, we can't even get
intelligence agency employees over the border as long as they
(32:40):
are acknowledged to be intelligence agency employees. Because what we
can do instead is get members of an NGO over
the border. Right, So now our operative uh Matt, Frederick,
uh Matt, what's your spy name? Cranberry sauce. Okay, so
matt Brandberry Sauce, Frederick Operative Cranberry Sauce can't get in.
(33:05):
But uh, you know Cranberry Matthews, the member of the
Red Cross or the Society for the Betterment of the
Pangolan can absolutely get into the country. I think it's
actually Barry Cranston. Cranston, and this guy Cranston can, if
(33:26):
he's careful, gather like minded students from local universities, disaffected uts,
de utsu in areas with high unemployment, arm them with
weapons smuggled in by someone else, teach them guerrilla tactics,
and boom, you've got a quote unquote student union, slash
rebel force, slash terrorist group. And so back in Washington,
(33:49):
politicians can say, we morally support the goals of this
student union, spreading freedom, spreading democracy. Uh, morally support, only
we do not have an attachment to them. And that's
when it goes to political Uh, that's when it goes
to plausible deniability. The president may really think that somehow,
(34:11):
in a country where guns are generally banned, a bunch
of college kids got together, got armed with with military
grade weaponry. They what started as a stand in or
a sit down turned into a full scale rebellion right
right right, and suddenly just they they pulled out of
(34:32):
the top hat of their asses, the most ass hats,
their ass hats, thank you. They pulled out the most
effective protests and counterinsurgency techniques that the human civilization has discovered.
They just made it up, right, I mean, SEMy Abridge
that that's what yothetical then all right, yeah, yeah, you
(34:53):
know the Ted talking here, But this is not hypothetical scenario.
This happened in the past, This might be happening right
now as we record this episode, and Dollars to Donuts,
it's going to happen again in the future, much sooner
than you think. In that CBS special, they did specifically
track the Granary Fund donations that went through this little
(35:14):
spider spiderweb of money flow. They tracked it to specifically
student union foundations that were operating uh internationally. So it's
just it's already ringing true. Yeah, I mean, and I
don't want to vilify everybody, you know, like students, students
(35:34):
are doing things, and and grassroots groups are an important
part of challenging authoritarian regimes, but sometimes they're not as
grassroots as they appear to be, and it's it's a
pickle for sure. We actually have we have many, many
cases of NGOs and media outlets that are completely more
(35:58):
or less independent that they're doing what they say on
the label right. Unfortunately, we have many examples of media
outlets and in geos that are controlled, infiltrated, or manipulated
by intelligence services. Again, this doesn't necessarily mean they're bad,
and it also doesn't mean we're going to talk about
it right now because we're going to take a quick
(36:19):
word from our sponsor and special thanks to that NGO
that was sponsoring us from maybe not. It's all illumination
Global and limited. You're doing God's work. Now. That is
a fine example of a non governmental organization. That's that's
(36:43):
just that's that's just an n OH, non organization and
non organization, probably member of a non organization. It's true
though that maybe we're over emphasizing this a little, but
it's it's all to the good. Of course, the vast
majority of people working at these organizations are not inherently bad.
(37:04):
They're not members of specter or something. In fact, it's plausible,
I mean, it's almost certain that many, many people within
these organizations, from volunteers to career staffers have no idea
there's any ulterior motive at play, you know what I mean.
It's like you could work at the States Department and
have no idea that the I T guy down the
(37:26):
hall is actually a CIA asset because he just fixes
your email, you know what I mean? Yeah, is he?
And that the course doesn't mean all in geos are
currently fronts or even compromise, but it makes you think.
It does make you think. The collaboration between NGOs and
(37:48):
intelligence services is kind of you know, like Bill Cosby
in Hollywood in the nineties. It is an open secret
um in Joe mc speedon great a great name for
an agency official um for international development. In fact um,
he launched a social media messaging network in Cuba called
(38:11):
zun Zunio that was very much resembling Twitter, and it
was used by thousands of Cubans who were unaware that
the project was actually designed to essentially infiltrate their their
privacy and monitor their communications to to get a sense
of what was going on on the ground there in Cuba. Well.
(38:31):
According to the AP from it was also to stir
up unrest within the country by affecting the populace like
that was one of the goals of this thing. Uh
whoops or you know, score, depending on which side you know.
(38:53):
Uh yeah. Another example, Ben, I know this was one
of your favorites, was the National Endowment for Democracy or NED,
which is funded by the US Congress. Yeah. This comes
to us from an investigative reporter named Robert Perry p A. R. R. Y.
Perry writes that NED National Endowment for Democracy took over
(39:14):
the CIA's role of influencing electoral outcomes and destabilizing governments
that got in the way of US interests. So do
you have a left wing, duly elected president who's a
little bit to uh to leftist? Is this guy? Does
this guy have the nerve to nationalize that country's resources,
their oil, their gas, their heavy metals, their timber or
(39:37):
two alter the currency that is being exchanged for those resources. Yeah,
you know what I mean, as far as it seems like,
as far as the geopolitical apparatus is concerned, people can
burn flags all they want, so long as they buy
those flags with dollars US dollars. That's uh. I mean,
(39:58):
you know, there's a case to ma that the real
flag of the country is its currency. What was the
name of the car. We did an episode earlier today,
Ben and I on Ridiculous History about Ernest Hemingway's younger
brother who tried to declare a sovereign nation on a
raft and he had a really cool name for the
currency of New Atlantis, right, scruple scruples because he thought
(40:23):
wealthy people should have a lot of scruples. Right, Yeah,
that's a that's a true story. But this this, this
thing we're talking about destabilizing governments. Yeah, that the United States,
specifically the CIA has an issue with Um, that's an
interesting right, But yes, for various strategic reasons. It's just
(40:45):
it's rough that that's the avenue through which it's occurring,
through these supposedly you know, good organizations that are trying
to do good for our world. This is really bothering me. Guys,
you're saying you just think it's inherently itchy and wrong.
It feels very itchy. Um, it's so cloak, I mean
(41:06):
it is, Okay, it's so perfectly cloak and dagger, I suppose.
And yet once once you'd think that once it's found
out that this kind of thing is occurring let's say
from those reports, that seven report from CBS. Once that's
found out, you'd think, oh, well maybe maybe that ended right,
we figured that out and the world figured it out.
It's over now. Yeah, that's the thing. Though I wish
(41:30):
they were a better response then. Yeah, that's the thing
that's a that's a big oof for me. Man. Yeah,
places like NED or organizations like NED, these kind of
slush funds for foreign policy operations that are a little
that are not above the board. Uh, this is a
prolific practice. And it's only a practice because it works.
It's not like everybody chose a theme just for the
(41:52):
sake of aesthetics. There's undeniable proof that the CIA has
conspired and is likely conspiring as we speak, to execute
illegal campaigns in other countries using NGOs and charities as covers.
Again not necessarily the fault of the charities, not the
fault of the NGOs. In fact, there's a case to
(42:13):
be made that these innocent people may have their lives
put in danger if one of these intelligence operations goes wrong.
But you know, with this being such an open secret,
like you said, and with that sixty seven investigation uncovering
so much of this cloak and daggery. Surely you know
sovereign nations are hip to this and don't want this
(42:34):
kind of influence infiltrating their borders. Surely we would feel
the same from ngeos from other countries, you know, masquerading
behind this idea of do good ory this veil. Right,
aren't there laws that would prevent this kind of stuff
from happening? It's a good question. There are a lot
now before we anybody in the more skeptical side of
the audience relegates this to UH the land of alarmism
(42:57):
and UH sensationalism in tinfoil hattery. Note that other world
powers are very aware of this strategy, have participated in
it on their own. You can see again in that
sixty seven investigation there's a little bit of what about
is um on the side of people who say, yeah,
the CIA does do these dirty deeds, thun they're cheap
(43:20):
to UH to UH to other countries, but that other
powers are doing the same thing. Like there's this fantastic
footage of a Russian organized huge concert. It was a blowout,
but it was It was all to make the great
idea of Cold War communism more palatable. And to make
(43:41):
it cool, it was a war for the hearts and minds.
And we also know that people take this seriously because
many other countries have made laws explicitly banning in geo's
foreign owned geo's from their borders. Amnesty International was a
very interesting source on this because they're you know, they're
(44:01):
pro and geo like, what could go wrong, right, and
they do great work. They say that governments across the
world are increasingly attacking in geo's by creating laws that
subject them in their staff to surveillance, bureaucratic hurdles, and
the ever present threat of imprisonment. And they have a
lot of examples here too. Yes, and we have a
quote here from Amnesty International. It says in the past
(44:24):
two years alone, almost forty pieces of legislation the interfere
with the right to assemble and are designed to hamper
the work of civil society organizations have been put in
place or are in the works around the world. These
laws commonly include implementing ludicrous registration processes for organizations, monitoring
their work, restricting their sources of resources, and in many cases,
(44:48):
shutting them down if they don't adhere to the unreasonable
requirements imposed on them. Yeah, so this could be killing
people with the thousand paper cuts of paperwork, you know,
like you need a you need approval to assemble or
to to hold this meeting, right to tell people about
the dane, the benefits of sanitation, or to teach people
(45:11):
how to for being totally uh totally benevolent about it.
Let's say you're trying to teach people how to operate
and maintain a solar powered phone charging station, right and valuable.
That's great stuff. And then let's say the country in
which you're trying to do this doesn't care for your
(45:31):
whole the cut of your jib, and so they say, okay,
to hold this class where you teach this, you have
to get approval from this authority, and that authority has
to approve it, uh sixty days before you do this. However,
that approval can only be submitted thirty days before you
have the things. So now you're in a catch twenty
(45:53):
two bureacratically. It's it's weird. It's a weird flex for sure.
But we also examples of specific countries who have started
banning or excluding in geo's make no mistake because of
these concerns that spies may be infiltrating the country via
in geos. So Pakistan's Ministry of the Interior rejected registration
(46:18):
applications from eighteen international NGOs in October UM and they
dismissed all of the appeals that came without giving a reason. Uh.
They they are clearly very suspicious of these agencies. Just
in general, in Saudi Arabia, the government can deny licenses
to new organizations and disband them a step further, even
(46:41):
if they are deemed to be quote harming national unity.
And this is affected human rights groups, UM, including women's
human rights groups who have not been able to register
and operate freely in the country. This is a really
good example of like, you know, a couple of bad
apples spoiling the bunch. You know, because as we said
at the top of the show, clearly there's good work
(47:02):
being done by these NGOs. Because of a few bad actors, um, everyone,
it's like, you know, everyone kind of gets screwed, right, Well,
it's also a convenient reason to keep things as they are, right, Like,
if you're talking especially about women's rights groups operating in
Saudi Arabia, right, I mean, if you can just ban
(47:23):
a group that is advocating for a certain thing because
of reason a potential threat to our sovereignty or whatever. Yeah,
you know, and and that that phrase, like I'd love
to get your take on that phrase been national harming
national unity. Yeah, yeah, I mean same sex seen as
(47:43):
harming national unity. That's Arabia's right, That's that's kind of
what we're talking about. And you can kind of see
that at play, that kind of phrasing at play in
countries across the world, even ones that you you know,
you may live in right now that you identify with
as like having this equality thing down pat Perhaps perhaps
(48:03):
it's not that way. That's right, I mean, the very
basis of your national unity could be on the wrong
side of human rights in general as a whole. Yeah,
does veiled shade of the United States, by the way,
just everybody's well take off contail in general. But the
this is this is an interesting case and I'm glad
(48:25):
you brought it up because in the case of Saudi Arabia, Yeah,
there might be some insidious intelligence agency activity going on,
but it's also just as likely it's more likely that
a lot of those in geo's are getting shut down
because they are advocating for things that in the Western
scene as in alienable human rights. Belarus goes a little
(48:47):
bit further. Any in GEO that can operate in the
country is UH is closely observed, scrutinized by the state.
And if you work for any in GEO who tried
to register and got rejected, you have committed a crime
and you may be imprisoned. UH. You may also just disappear.
(49:09):
You should probably get out. Yeah, these are just a
few examples. Other countries, Azerbaijan, China, and of course Russia
have introduced more registration and reporting requirements and if you
don't comply, you can be thrown in prison. Which is
it sounds weird, you know, to say that you didn't
(49:30):
complete some paperwork, so now you're going to jail, possibly
for a long long time, especially if you're foreign national, right,
because usually we think, well, if you don't do paperwork, right,
you get a fine for being late, you know, um,
um yeah, unless it's um I'm trying to think of
like a really bad traffic violation where you actually end
(49:53):
up having to go to jail for a couple of
days if you don't fill out your paperwork i e.
Pay or show up. Sure, yeah, I guess for blow improbation,
that's paperwork. They could get you in trouble. But we
mentioned Russia. Maybe we bury the lead a little bit here.
Russia is one of the most well known anti in
GEO organizations. They few years back banned all in geos
(50:17):
that they considered undesirable. It's true, UM. The government has
regularly labeled in geos who receive foreign funding as foreign
agents UM, which is a term that you could very
easily correlate to ones that are a little more direct
like spy, traitor, enemy of the state. The government applies
(50:41):
that this kind of thinking so broadly, not only thinking
actual legislation, that even an organization that supports people with
say diabetes, actually gets could be subject to findes UM,
put on a blacklist of foreign agents and forced to close.
This is not hypothetical. This actually happened in October. Medical, environmental,
(51:06):
women's groups, all of these have also come under serious
scrutiny and and and fire from the Russian government, And
all of these moves have really galvanized the developing world
and launched a kind of a renaissance of anti and
geo legislation. Yeah, and so for anyone listening now who
(51:28):
has dedicated their life to service, thank you for being
one of the good forces in the world, even though
I'm sure at times it feels like you are outnumbered. Uh,
If you're having a hard time trying to understand why
these countries would so profoundly distrust in Geo's, think about
it this way. If you are in the US or
(51:49):
Australia or wherever you're listening to this show, imagine how
you would feel if there were organizations from say China
or Russia or Iran popping up in the capital, popping
up in your town, and they were funneling hundreds of
millions of dollars given to them by their parent government
(52:11):
just to influence your local politics. Right. So, now, now
it doesn't matter how you vote, because there is a
new special interest group in town. They have more money
than you could ever raise, and they have a bigger say,
even though they don't live where you live. And even
if it's not specifically influencing politics, but it's influencing some
kind of social norm or movement, right you know, just
(52:34):
that perhaps your immediate area doesn't agree with I mean,
that would be that would be very strange if it
was coming. If that money is coming and influence is
coming from outside of your own country, that it would
certainly feel odd and it feels like an attack on sovereignty.
You know, this would understandably here in the US, this
(52:55):
would generate a lot of anger if people were aware
of this, especially if these groups tried to tilt an
election one way or another. But suppose they weren't just
trying to tilt an election. Suppose they had success doing
that and now they wanted to up end the system
of government. This is something that the US financed and
geo's have done in the past, or sorry, people operating
(53:18):
out of those NGOs. Again, the NGOs may have no
knowledge of what's actually happening, and this has occurred numerous times.
This is rinse and repeat because again it works and
the story is not over. Our only conclusion we can
make is the NGOs are not going away. The CIA
is pretty open about the fact that they dig it.
They're they're like, we we like working with these guys. Yeah.
(53:40):
They actually have a term for they coin it deep
cooperation between the agency and these NGOs, and they refer
to this whole process as quote information sharing end quote.
Uh So, I don't know. It seems pretty unlikely that
that's the end of the story, don't think. So Let's
(54:01):
let's really quickly let's mention something that that CBS News
special report talks about, and that is the Security Act
of nineteen forty seven, just to give an idea of why,
why the heck is the CIA operating in this way,
Because as we learned back in back in the old
days in our school books, we learned that the Central
(54:21):
Intelligence Agency is in fact an intelligence agency, and it
is meant to carry out what would be called intelligence
in all the various ways we've talked about on this
show numerous time. Yeah, gathering information, right, um. But because
of that Security Act of nineteen forty seven, they were
(54:41):
essentially ordered through this Act to do a whole bunch
of other things, and all of these things that they
would have to do then and now are currently having
to do our duties quote as directed by the President
and his National Security Council. And that phrase is so
vague it'll allows essentially whoever the standing president is and
(55:04):
the National Security Council, who have whichever elected officials are
in there, they get to direct the CIA outside of
the director of the CIA, or at least nudge very
uh harshly what they need to do and what they
should be interested in. It reminds me of the term,
which I've always found weird and a little creepy, serving
(55:24):
at the pleasure of the president. Yeah, it's like you're
going to a Chick fil a. Well, and in that case,
it doesn't matter who the president is, because if you've
got we talked about it in an episode not long ago,
but if you've got you know, a security council with
officials that have been on there for a long time,
who see a big picture, who see the chess moves,
(55:48):
I can only imagine what what things occur, what what
other countries perhaps should be very much aware of. Well said,
and that's a great question. Are other nations right to
be concerned? Is there a solution to this problem? There's
the money gotten too good? Is the system too effective?
The question is not whether the machine is broken, because
(56:09):
you know, there's an argument to be made that the
people who are running this thing, I love it. It's
doing what they wanted to know exactly what it's doing,
and then and what their role in all of it is.
For sure. It reminds me very much of diplomatic community
and functioning out of embassies. Yeah. I was thinking the
same thing when it in terms of the the aid
workers or whatever, the n GEO employees being able to
(56:30):
get kind of carte blanche. Uh. That's that's the sort
of the route of some of these laws where they're like, no,
you can't come anymore, we don't want you. We know
what you did. Are you familiar with the term Cranberry? Oh,
I know a guy named Cranston. Lock him up. But
we want to we want to hear from you, as
(56:51):
we said earlier, if you have been, if you have
been abroad or here in the U. S. We're in
your home country helping out with a non governmental or organization,
thank you for the work you're doing. Thank you for
making the world a better place, because for Pete's sake,
we need to help. Uh. And if you have, if
you have experience with anything sketchy going on in one
(57:14):
of these organizations, we would love to hear from you.
So like the Peace Corps would be one, right, Yeah,
a lot of people go to the Peace corpser yeah, yeah,
and that's an upstanding, fine organization. Everything's fine about the
Peace Corps. There used to be a statue for the
founder of the Peace Corps or old office. I remember,
you know that's where you that's when you made it.
When you have a statue, that's a flex may. So
(57:35):
if you want to send us any of that information
and you're not afraid to share it with us because
of whatever situation you may have been in, um, you
can send it to us right now. You can find
us on Facebook and on Twitter where we're conspiracy stuff.
On Instagram we are conspiracy stuff. Show do the Facebook
group thing. If you want to have some more real
time chats with the community, it's called Here's where it.
(57:55):
It's crazy. All you gotta do to get in his
answer a simple question, name one or all of us
or say some combination of of of the witching words
that Ben, you know, speaks into a dark mirror midnight
with the ritual winter shins and all that stuff. Did
you catch any rap lyrics or mentions that Ben or
one of us may have put into this episode or
(58:17):
previous episodes? Let us know any reference will do. Yeah,
you can also give us a call. We are one
eight three three st d w y t K. That's yeah,
std W y t K. If you didn't get it there,
you just type it in your old phone using those
letters as numbers, and generally there's a handy guide on
(58:37):
whichever phone you're using. You can also leave us terrible
jokes on any of these avenues. I want to shout
out to a journalist friend of ours who's legit, a
guy named Jared Alexander who just said, what concert costs
just forty five cents? Guys, ready, you're not ready? I'm ready.
It's fifty cent featuring Nickelback, I wasn't ready and stuff
(58:58):
like that. But if none of that quite bags your badgers,
we still want to hear from you. There is one
more way that you can always contact as twenty four seven,
five year and sixty four this year days a year
until we get black bagged, burned down. That's right, folks,
we have a good old fashioned email address. We are
conspiracy at iHeart radio dot com stuff they don't want
(59:37):
you to know, as a production of I heart Radios
how stuff works. For more podcasts from my heart Radio,
visit the i heart Radio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever
you listen to your favorite shows.
From UFOs to psychic powers and government conspiracies. History is
riddled with unexplained events. You can turn back now or
learn the stuff they don't want you to know. A
production of I Heart Radios How Stuff Works. Hello, Welcome
(00:25):
back to the show. My name is Matt, my name
is They called me Ben. We are joined as always
with our super producer Paul Mission Controlled decond. Most importantly,
you are you. You are here, and that makes this
stuff they don't want you to know. In today's episode,
we're revisiting UH topic we picked up in fourteen, both
(00:46):
as a video and as a short audio podcast. UH.
This is UH. This is something that may be controversial
to some people, it may be personal to some of
us listening today, as we're going to do our level
best as always to stay objective. We're talking about non
governmental organizations the street name in geos. Most of us
(01:11):
are vaguely aware of these institutions, and oddly enough, they're
defined by what they are not rather than what they
actually are. They're just non governmental. The whole definition is
the thing that they are not in the name. And
that's tricky because this is an umbrella term. It encompasses
everything from you know, the Red Cross, to the Red Crescent,
(01:32):
to Green Peace from the World Wildlife Fund, ox FAN
and so many, many, many, many more. And typically these
organizations are going to focus on a distinct set of
concerns or problems, right human rights, equality or fighting dysentery.
It's usually the kind of stuff every human being can
(01:53):
get behind, you know, solving world hunger. It's philanthropy, Yeah,
saving the cute animals, doing the right thing. I always
confuse philanthropy with philandering. Those aren't the same thing, are they?
In a way? They both mean lover of men, that's true,
lover of humanity, It's true. I confuse them as well. Uh.
NGOs are all about distribution, and it might surprise many
(02:17):
of us, especially people who have donated to one cause
or another. Might surprise us to learn that NGOs are
not as squeaky clean and as utopian as their proponents
would have us believe. In fact, many people, a growing
number of people will argue that these institutions and organizations
are at the very least disingenuous, maybe even evil. We'll
(02:41):
get to that, but first things first, what exactly is
this term we're throwing around? What is an NGO? Here?
Are the facts are all pals at the Oxford English
Dictionary UM have a fabulous definition for what an NGO is.
They define it as a nonprofit organization that greates independently
(03:01):
of any government, typically one whose purpose is to address
a social or political issue. UM. And in fact, the
term non governmental organization was created in Article seventy one
of the Charter of the United Nations in and that's
when select you know, club, I guess you could call it,
(03:23):
of international non state agencies were given UM observer status
to some of of this body's meetings. Yeah, so that
means that, let's just make up an example. Let's just
say the Red Cross is now allowed to hang out
(03:43):
in the room during meetings that might uh might be
applicable to its mission right to save lives. They don't
get to vote because they're not countries. They can maybe
make some speeches, right, but the big thing is they
do not voting power. And there are other entities that
(04:03):
have observer status in the United Nations. This is different
because that select group of organizations and institutions that were
allowed to be called non governmental organizations were already very
very politically connected. They were already kind of in the room.
Now they just get the name drop in the official designation.
(04:25):
But again, like you said, no, they are addressing social
or political issues. The only common factor that these this
this original group had back in forty five was that
they were not government agencies and they were technically businesses.
They weren't making money hand over fist or if they were,
that was a secondary aim. Yeah, well there isn't the
(04:49):
idea that their nonprofit or not for profit, right, Like,
that's the whole one of the major points right right now.
They can distribute money, yes, very into distribute today. They
can distribute money or funding to take donations and take
donations of course from any number of donors. But they're
(05:09):
not supposed to keep it and roll it over. They're
supposed to invest it in their mission. So originally the
u N said, Okay, you're gonna be advocating for human rights,
you're going to be advocating for the environment or quote
unquote development, another umbrella term that can be very tricky.
(05:31):
So an NGO really can be any kind of organization
so long as it's ostensibly independent from government influence. And
as you said, Matt is not for profit. There are
a ton of them now, and they're just going to
keep growing. Yeah, if you check out Nonprofit Action dot
org and this is a group that tracks uh the
(05:54):
stats that that pertained to NGOs. They estimate that their
listen to this roughly a million non governmental organizations worldwide
that are functioning. And uh, I mean that's a lot,
right if you think about that, and has been mentioned.
They're not out there trying to make profit for things,
but they are trying to function and quote, you know,
(06:15):
do good, do some kind of social good. So they
are trying to get in as much money as they
can through donations and uh, as we'll see later other means,
let's let's just go to a fact here. In twenty eleven,
people donated one point two billion dollars to various non
governmental organizations, and then just three years later by that
(06:39):
number had risen to one point four billion dollars. So
by twenty thirty, this number is expected to make the
medeorc rise up to two point five billion, so more
than twice what it was in twenty eleven. They are
also huge employers. We're talking about a gigantic mass of people.
To quick examples, there are more than six hundred thousand
(07:03):
in geos in Australia and their employees make up eight
percent of the Australian workforce does eight percent doesn't sound
huge until you think of, you know, the fact that
it's the entire nation and continent of Australia. What do
you think that's Australia A part oddly enough, not not
that much. The in geo industry is huge in the
(07:24):
United States as well as Western countries. Part of part
of the reason it seems so big is because again
the term has so much leeway. It encompasses so much stuff.
You know, one in GEO can be doing something entirely
different and irrelevant to the aims or activities of another
in GEO. But get this, if all the NGOs in
(07:46):
the world where a country, they would have the fifth
largest economy in the world. That's according to John Hopkins.
So they're here, they're here to stay. They're growing, you know,
as as we pointed out, they are going to be
at least at two point five billion dollar business within
the next you know, ten years, and a ton of
(08:08):
people worldwide depend on them, both for employment and perhaps
for some aspect of their lives, whether it's from water
being treated and cleaned in in some remote part of
the earth where you know, shelter being provided and created,
as in, you know, talking about development on the good
(08:30):
side at least. Yeah, on the right we're throwing in already. Yeah,
so we're just trying to remind everybody that, you know,
we mentioned at the top here like a lot of
people think these things are evil in a general sense.
We're just making sure to point out that there is
real good that is occurring. Yes, Um, it gets so complicated,
(08:51):
we haven't hit it yet, so maybe we'll save some
of this discussion for later. Hashtag not all NGOs. And
this becomes incredibly important as we continue, because our big
question is what do NGOs do? Their activities include but
are not limited to the stuff we just named environmental work, advocacy,
human rights, uh, social betterment. And sometimes this will happen
(09:13):
on a large, somewhat abstract scale, and sometimes it will
happen very locally, like this NGO is just providing this
specific type of water pump to a specific region on
a continent, or we're just passing out life straws. That's
what we're doing. Lifestraws are great, by the way, they're
incredibly reasonable if you don't have one, and if you,
(09:35):
like me, believe in building go bags for your home
or your car, you need a life straw. We should
can't we talked about this? Why don't we have something?
I want you to know, branded life straws. I would
love that you talk about then we we we came up.
So you can like drink out of like a puddle
with one of those. Yes, that's pretty cool. Yeah, I
would do it just for the novelty of drinking out
of a puddle. Yeah. The only I think the only
(09:57):
problem is that they can't filter uh heavy metals. So
according to the latest reports, lifestraws are not as useful
in the continental US is we would have wanted to believe,
because the pollution is rampant. A different episode, what oh man,
different episode. So it's a that's a story for a
(10:18):
different day. But in geos are on the front lines,
in the trenches of combating these problems and making a
world in five or world in thirty twenty a place
where people would still like to live. So the thing is,
they're not all created equally, and they have different broad categories. Uh.
(10:39):
The two big divisions are what we call operational in
geos and advocacy or campaigning in geo's they overlap, but
they are different entities. So operational NGOs actually have to
mobilize resources in the form of their financial donations, things
like raw materials, volunteer labor um, so that they can actually,
(11:04):
you know, keep these projects and programs going. It's a
really difficult and complex process with a lot of moving parts,
and these ngeos usually have some kind of hq UM
built in bureaucracy and all kinds of support and field staff.
Then you've got advocacy or campaigning NGOs that carry out
kind of similar types of activities, but there's kind of
(11:27):
a different balancing act that goes on between them. You
still have to raise money, of course, the name of
the game for any NGO, but on a much smaller
scale UM, and it serves more of a symbolic function
and kind of strengthening UH the identification with a particular
cause that donors might have. I mean, it sort of
(11:48):
goes into the whole idea of the UH that's not
not pure vanity, but there's something of a status symbol
involved in participating some of these NGOs, and this kind
of bolsters that. So when you persuade people to donate time,
it becomes more valuable. Successful campaigning in geos have the
ability to kind of get large numbers of people to
(12:08):
mobilize for very specific issues and types of events. Yeah,
the advocacy campaigning in geo's are think of them as
the raising awareness in geo's. We'll have funding, we want
to keep the lights on. It's more important to us
that we get people to volunteer x amount of days
out of the year, et cetera. And these distinctions, like
(12:30):
a lot of on paper distinctions, get real muddey when
we go to the field operational NGOs. You know, if
if the impact of their projects doesn't seem like it's
really moving the needle, then they'll go of course they'll
go into campaigning. What are they gonna say, No, we
don't do that here. Uh. And these operational NGOs, especially
(12:51):
the big ones, always run regular campaigns, or at least
they support other affiliated organizations that are running campaigns. And
then sometimes on the other side, and geos that are
campaigning in geo's feel like they cannot ignore immediate real
problems in their policy domain. So like, if you are
(13:12):
an NGO that wants to raise awareness and support in
society for human rights or for women's rights. Then you
may say, you know, the problem here is happening so blatantly,
it's so pervasive, and we have the tools to fix it,
So we can't hold off. We can't just have a
raise awareness dinner or gala. We need to put the
(13:34):
money directly into assisting the victims of these crimes, so
they can they can trade back and forth. They're they're
a bit mercurial, a bit chameleon like. And there are
other NGOs that specialize outside of these primary functions, right, Yeah,
there's a there's a whole other kind of arm of
NGOs called the research institute. You've probably heard of these before.
(13:58):
They're really great. One of their primary things they do
is to increase knowledge and understanding. And these, you know,
will range across the whole spectrum. Of course, from those
um you know, who are just looking to promote academics
like the the uh, non political issues out there that
are going to help our world become a better place too,
(14:19):
then you know, sending out information across the world or
across a population for campaigning to get more money in
right to then spread more awareness. So it's kind of
just like a nice little cycle thereof send us some
money so we can let other people know this cool
thing that you know now that you know who we are,
and think tanks operate in this realm too, oh for sure. Right, seriously,
(14:41):
your political affiliation and know people hate to hear this,
but in this, in this conversation, your political affiliation does
not apply. It does not matter. What we're about to
tell you is very true. The majority of the time
that a politician has a smart policy plan, it didn't
come from them, because they're typically not going to be professors.
(15:04):
It came from think tanks, it came from NGOs, it
came from places like ALEC, A, L E. C UH
and a lot of times these groups are on the
ground somewhere that have the best visibility for a problem
or a big issue, right absolutely, which so it's we're
not saying that's necessarily bad. It's just perhaps a bit
disingenuous when you get that messaging from a politician. Wait
(15:27):
a minute, Wait a minute, politicians are disingenuous, say it is,
so we we kind of we all know this and
we're all jaded to some extent at this point, but
it is I think good just to know what you
were saying, Ben, that these NGOs a lot of times
have a heavy hand in policy making. Absolutely, but I
(15:47):
think to your point, Matt, um, they're able to be
more specialized, right, so they can you know, really have
the smarts specifically to deal with a particular problem like
climate change, or to really help develop a policy every
aspect has been fully thought out and vetted before. Um.
You know, these politicians may be shop around for what
they consider to be the best form of that plan,
(16:09):
and then they go with the one that maybe has
the best backing or the most bona fides right, right,
or what their what their masters allow them to endorse,
which I know sounds super cynical, but you're right, it's
not a bad thing. It's actually very very good thing
that politicians lean on this expertise because your point, noeal, Uh,
these organizations are more nimble and they will tend to
(16:30):
have a depth of understanding that can get lost in
a big bureaucratic machine. But okay, so I know we're
getting a little in the weeds here. Uh. There is
one great hilarious way to think of NGOs and to
differentiate them, and it goes like this, Bingo Ingo, Gongo Ingo,
and of course Quogo I love that band. Wait was
(16:53):
ingo twice? Uh ingo e n g O and then
I ingo maybe and go okay, yeah, oh end go
in go and we go okay, gotta gotta gota go
bango bongo. All right, so let's let's do these right,
go bango right? Oh boy, here we go. Just uh so,
somebody just take this from this moment on and you
(17:17):
will have all the examples in audio format. Let's just
go through them really quickly. These are the real ones
to go. Let's just go around, Robin, Is there a
one in particular you want to hit? Ben sure? BINGO
stands for business Friendly International. In GEO, think of something
like the Red Cross. End go e n g O.
That's an environmental NGO. Think of green Peace, perhaps the
(17:39):
World Wildlife Fund. I'm torn between this being my favorite
or the number five. But we've got gongo government organized
non governmental organization, uh, such as International Union for Conservation
of Nature. I'm sorry, government organized non governmental organization. I
swear to you. That's the thing that just means. That
(18:01):
means that it blasted right past. It means that a
government said, okay, we're gonna set aside money. We're gonna
give it to this place. We're gonna start, you know,
to your example, the International Union for Conservation Nature. But
then you know, you all go ahead take the money
and run. Uh. And then we have INGO I n GEO,
(18:22):
an international NGEO like ox FAM. And finally quango I
love it, a quasi autonomous n g O. An example
here would be the International Organization for Standardization. Highly important thing.
I I propose that we uh, that we start an
NGO to change the pronunciation of quango to quango. It
(18:45):
just sounds so much more fun. I feel like I
know a guy there must there's a guy who lives
in our neighborhood somewhere who's whose street name is probably quango.
Then there could be the obvious ted nugent Tian and
call it quango tango. There we go, and I hope
his last names tango, quango, tango. If you're listening, that's
just cool. We were just in Los Angeles and I
(19:06):
always think of that road. Yeah, yeah, that's an outlier
because it's like sunset Cosmo, and someone in the back
is just like it's probably has great significance to somebody somewhere.
My favorite Los Angeles adjacent name for a town is
Rancho Cucamonga. Yes, pretty fabulous. It feels fancy just hearing it.
(19:31):
So all of these things, the mingo, ingo gongo and
ingo quango quongo, they all, they all get their money
from a couple of easily identifiable places or types of places.
Membership dues. You're you're a member of World Wildlife Fund
or whatever. So every month or every year, you you
(19:52):
give the money because you want wild animals to still
be a thing when your kids grow up and you
get a really fancy, lovely calendar. Or private donations. Uh,
there's a there's a very clever thing that we'll go
back to the second. The other two are the sale
of goods and services right by this mug, by this
t shirt, a portion of the proceeds blah blah blah.
(20:13):
And the other one is grants you apply to a
government or another organization, they give you money to accomplish
a name. Going back to number two, private donations. The
very very clever thing about private donations, less may may
make me sound like a jerk to say it, is
that it is not altruism for a philanthropist to donate. Sure,
(20:33):
maybe they want to help that cause, but they're also
saving so much money in right offs when they when
they donate as much, when they donate a portion of
their own proceeds. You mean, so it's NPR and one
of these, Well, it's definitely a nonprofit. Uh, But I
wonder that's a good question then, because it receives so
(20:54):
much government money. It does, but it also does what
you're talking about with the pledge drives and the private
nations and also lots of grants you always hear you know,
was funded by a grant from the Johnny and Katherine
te MacArthur Foundation, any any Casey Foundation, the Bill and
Melinda Gates Foundation, exactly all the big ones. So even
if it's not, it's certainly functions in a similar way
(21:15):
to some of these NGOs that we're talking about. Absolutely,
and as big MPR fans, both on the federal and
regional level, we just want to say we know that
you probably don't like doing the pledge drives either, so
soldier onward, folks. We're doing a great job. But ben, yes,
are these groups they sound eerily similar to those special
(21:38):
interests people are always accusing politicians of pandering too. That's right,
It's absolutely right, because they are special interests. Their special
interests just happened to be ostensibly again on the surface, beneficial.
You are absolutely not wrong. They are very much special
interest groups. I do want to I do want to
(21:58):
bust the scam real quick. While we're on the concept
of private donations. So this happens all the time. If
you go to your local grocery store, especially around the holidays,
you know, you're ringing, you're buying magazines, dog food and
egg whites and I don't know whatever else, shoe cleaner,
I'm getting a real picture of your life, duct tape,
something to burn your fingerprints off, whatever. And then at
(22:21):
the end of the transaction, they say, would you like
to donate to this holiday fund? Would you like to
donate a dollar, five dollars, ten dollars right and ask
you right at the register. It's very easy to say yes.
Here's what's happening with that. Those companies are taking that
money that they're they're getting from individual grocery store customers,
(22:43):
they're pulling it into a single fund and they're using
it to make a large charitable donation that offsets their
tax burden. So what you're actually doing, what you're actually
doing now, you are helping people on the way, but
what you're actually doing is paying that grocery stores taxes
is for them, Man Kroger. Why would you do me
wrong like that? I just that's I'm pretty sure that's
(23:06):
what's going on. I would love to be wrong. I
think that's called little loophole, Ben, and that's what there
they found it. But don't you feel like a jerk sometimes,
like do you want to donate? And you say no?
You know what, what do you say? Like, I don't
want children to have toys. I think dogs should just die?
You know? Yeah, no, I agree. I think the my problem,
(23:28):
just personally speaking personally here is that I am so
embarrassed by the thought of denying a one dollar donation.
At any point when someone points at me and says,
would you like to donate? Uh, you're already paying just
click this thing, I have to say yes. So if
you ever want to squeeze money out of me, just
(23:50):
make it look like seem like a charitable donation and
hit me while I'm doing a transaction. Do you UM
typically give handouts to UM hand handlers. I did for
a long time. Then what happened? Man? Who hurt you?
I just oh, I could tell you an actual story.
I know. Yes, we're going to take a break. Geez, Paul,
he's staring at me. We're gonna go to a break soon,
(24:14):
I promised. I gave a gentleman in a wheelchair, UM
more money than I generally would and then he got
up and walked away. Didn't he know? He he took it,
like just snatched it from me and then just wheeled
off really quickly. But was very much just like I
got away with it kind of thing. I don't know
(24:36):
the way the way I felt afterwards. Um, and I
also went to I went to school at Georgia State
in downtown, And I think it just the interaction, that
type of interaction occurs so frequently, getting them to it
kind of Well, it's tough because if you want to
truly help someone in that type of situation, just handing
them cash that is transferable in that moment probably isn't
(25:00):
the best way to do it. Many times that's going
to be enabling perhaps behavior that is already occurring. But again,
I don't have all the answers, you know, you one
thing you can do is donate to an organization like
ones that we're talking about today, right, but then you
don't really know exactly where your money is going, and
probably only a small portion of it is going to
(25:21):
truly helping those people anyway. Blah blah blah blah. That's perfect.
That's perfect. That's the point, because what if there's more
to the story behind these NGOs. Why do some governments
want to ban non governmental organizations? And what if the
goals of these organizations on paper are not their actual
(25:42):
goals on the ground. Will attempt to answer some of
these questions after a word from our sponsor. Here's where
it gets crazy. So you know, like, like many of
the things, as you talk about on this show, things
are not always as they seem. Uh, there's a problem here.
(26:05):
It turns out that at least in a few cases,
UM folks are quite right to distrust in g os
in the way that that Matt had the inkling of
UM a minute ago before the break back. In nineteen
sixty seven, Mike Wallace, Uh, the seasoned television journalist CBS
(26:27):
Mike Wallace lad an investigation into reports of c I
A front companies, only to find that the c I
A regularly used front companies as a way to circumvent
um laws domestic and international alike. For example, the sixties
seven investigation found that the c I a UM was
(26:49):
functioning under the title the Bureau of Public Roads BR. Yeah,
so it's all kind of a smoke screen. So let's
let's dig into this um star with intelligence agency assets,
so really quickly before we completely jump in and just
want to get give everyone the tools to look at
this if they want to on their own. It was
(27:11):
called CBS News Special Report with Mike Wallace and the
title was in the Pay of the CIA and American Dilemma.
Yeah you can. You can watch the entire thing on YouTube.
We think it's very much worth your time. Also, keep
in mind that all the disturbing stuff you hear about
in that investigation happened back in nineteen sixty seven. This
(27:33):
is from the fifties to the sixties and CBS News
one of the largest providers of information of a media company.
They were the ones helming this investigation and giving this
information to the American public. Here's what they found. So
the CIA created front companies. That's not it's not explosive
(27:54):
news to anyone, but they used these front companies to
donate to legitimate charitable organizations, some of which existed beforehand, right,
and some of which were also probably custom made. Wallace
characterized these charitable funds, these institutions, and foundations as part
(28:15):
of the country's financial power structure, and he's very blunt
about it. Says, these are large aggregations of private money.
They are influencing policy and influencing culture with very few
checks on their activities, very like when I say check,
I mean checks and balances style, very little oversight. Well,
and it's it's it's weird too, because as they're tracing
(28:38):
these things. Right, Let's just give an example of something
like the it was called the Granary Fund, right, and
it's this it's this organization that takes money in directly
from the CIA, right, And it's literally just money goes
from the CIA to this thing called the Granary Fund.
And CBS News tried to track down where this place
(28:59):
was and they found that that it had an address
in Boston, Massachusetts, at this one place, in this one
you know, room or suite within that building. They got
up to that suite and it was actually a law
firm of Hem and Way in Barnes and the person
that actually signs all the checks in all of the
(29:19):
financial and tax documents for this This granary Fund was
one of the major guys they're uh at this law
firm who also happens to be a part of the CIA.
If you'll look him up, who and who's who? And
then you realize that that granary fund is donating to
all these other funds, you know, like charitable organizations and
(29:42):
true real life funds. And then you realize weight that
money that those real funds have is all mixed in
with the CIA money. And we're talking about thousands and
thousands of dollars. This isn't chump change, and this is
a great money laundring exercise, you know what I mean.
Car washes are for schmucks and amateurs. Now, so isn't
(30:03):
that extortion not extortion fraud? I mean, if if a
few people are taking your money and then it's just
going into this imaginary smokescreen pot, Well, what do you
mean taking your money? You're talking about taxes, you're talking
about donations. Well, in this case, it's the CIA funneling money,
taxpayer money into a fake account or a false company.
(30:26):
Then that company is donating to a real fund and
then those funds get distributed, so it's not individual donations
that are just going off into space, like but it is.
It's taxpayer donations essentially. But that's just that's not donations
at all, Right, I think I think the question I
think the question here is are in Geo's bilking individual donors, right, Like,
(30:52):
like Paul signs up, Paul signs up for the International
Institution for the Proliferation of Applebee's and they want to
build up will bees in developing countries across the world.
And then he finds out that his you know, two
hundred dollar a year donation is actually going to build
chilis or something like that. You know, like if it's
(31:14):
not doing I think legally, when you donate that money, um,
they can do whatever they want with it. And I
think now I would like to say there's some more
oversight for charities because you can see all these sites
rating charities on their trustworthiness and so on, and there
are a lot of other like predatory things that purport
to be charities but aren't really. They just sound alike
(31:36):
you know, uh, and they're there to you know, build
people out of money. Here's the thing by donating through
these front companies. The CIA specifically, other organizations did this
to the KGB in their time. They were huge fans
of doing this. But by donating through front companies, the
CIA is muddying the financial waters, making it increasingly difficult
(31:58):
to track where this cash goes. And again it is
taxpayer money and more importantly, what it is spent on.
I mean, it makes sense. Think of it this way.
Let's say the four of us had, you know, no
plans for the weekend, and so we decided to destabilize
a region of the world or promote regime change in
(32:18):
the country, but do a geopolitical worries, concerns, norms, laws,
all that jazz. We cannot risk an open war. We
can't just send people in to depose the leader. We
can't have a hot war on our hands. Heck, we're
at the point where, you know, we can't even get
intelligence agency employees over the border as long as they
(32:40):
are acknowledged to be intelligence agency employees. Because what we
can do instead is get members of an NGO over
the border. Right, So now our operative uh Matt, Frederick,
uh Matt, what's your spy name? Cranberry sauce. Okay, so
matt Brandberry Sauce, Frederick Operative Cranberry Sauce can't get in.
(33:05):
But uh, you know Cranberry Matthews, the member of the
Red Cross or the Society for the Betterment of the
Pangolan can absolutely get into the country. I think it's
actually Barry Cranston. Cranston, and this guy Cranston can, if
(33:26):
he's careful, gather like minded students from local universities, disaffected uts,
de utsu in areas with high unemployment, arm them with
weapons smuggled in by someone else, teach them guerrilla tactics,
and boom, you've got a quote unquote student union, slash
rebel force, slash terrorist group. And so back in Washington,
(33:49):
politicians can say, we morally support the goals of this
student union, spreading freedom, spreading democracy. Uh, morally support, only
we do not have an attachment to them. And that's
when it goes to political Uh, that's when it goes
to plausible deniability. The president may really think that somehow,
(34:11):
in a country where guns are generally banned, a bunch
of college kids got together, got armed with with military
grade weaponry. They what started as a stand in or
a sit down turned into a full scale rebellion right
right right, and suddenly just they they pulled out of
(34:32):
the top hat of their asses, the most ass hats,
their ass hats, thank you. They pulled out the most
effective protests and counterinsurgency techniques that the human civilization has discovered.
They just made it up, right, I mean, SEMy Abridge
that that's what yothetical then all right, yeah, yeah, you
(34:53):
know the Ted talking here, But this is not hypothetical scenario.
This happened in the past, This might be happening right
now as we record this episode, and Dollars to Donuts,
it's going to happen again in the future, much sooner
than you think. In that CBS special, they did specifically
track the Granary Fund donations that went through this little
(35:14):
spider spiderweb of money flow. They tracked it to specifically
student union foundations that were operating uh internationally. So it's
just it's already ringing true. Yeah, I mean, and I
don't want to vilify everybody, you know, like students, students
(35:34):
are doing things, and and grassroots groups are an important
part of challenging authoritarian regimes, but sometimes they're not as
grassroots as they appear to be, and it's it's a
pickle for sure. We actually have we have many, many
cases of NGOs and media outlets that are completely more
(35:58):
or less independent that they're doing what they say on
the label right. Unfortunately, we have many examples of media
outlets and in geos that are controlled, infiltrated, or manipulated
by intelligence services. Again, this doesn't necessarily mean they're bad,
and it also doesn't mean we're going to talk about
it right now because we're going to take a quick
(36:19):
word from our sponsor and special thanks to that NGO
that was sponsoring us from maybe not. It's all illumination
Global and limited. You're doing God's work. Now. That is
a fine example of a non governmental organization. That's that's
(36:43):
just that's that's just an n OH, non organization and
non organization, probably member of a non organization. It's true
though that maybe we're over emphasizing this a little, but
it's it's all to the good. Of course, the vast
majority of people working at these organizations are not inherently bad.
(37:04):
They're not members of specter or something. In fact, it's plausible,
I mean, it's almost certain that many, many people within
these organizations, from volunteers to career staffers have no idea
there's any ulterior motive at play, you know what I mean.
It's like you could work at the States Department and
have no idea that the I T guy down the
(37:26):
hall is actually a CIA asset because he just fixes
your email, you know what I mean? Yeah, is he?
And that the course doesn't mean all in geos are
currently fronts or even compromise, but it makes you think.
It does make you think. The collaboration between NGOs and
(37:48):
intelligence services is kind of you know, like Bill Cosby
in Hollywood in the nineties. It is an open secret
um in Joe mc speedon great a great name for
an agency official um for international development. In fact um,
he launched a social media messaging network in Cuba called
(38:11):
zun Zunio that was very much resembling Twitter, and it
was used by thousands of Cubans who were unaware that
the project was actually designed to essentially infiltrate their their
privacy and monitor their communications to to get a sense
of what was going on on the ground there in Cuba. Well.
(38:31):
According to the AP from it was also to stir
up unrest within the country by affecting the populace like
that was one of the goals of this thing. Uh
whoops or you know, score, depending on which side you know.
(38:53):
Uh yeah. Another example, Ben, I know this was one
of your favorites, was the National Endowment for Democracy or NED,
which is funded by the US Congress. Yeah. This comes
to us from an investigative reporter named Robert Perry p A. R. R. Y.
Perry writes that NED National Endowment for Democracy took over
(39:14):
the CIA's role of influencing electoral outcomes and destabilizing governments
that got in the way of US interests. So do
you have a left wing, duly elected president who's a
little bit to uh to leftist? Is this guy? Does
this guy have the nerve to nationalize that country's resources,
their oil, their gas, their heavy metals, their timber or
(39:37):
two alter the currency that is being exchanged for those resources. Yeah,
you know what I mean, as far as it seems like,
as far as the geopolitical apparatus is concerned, people can
burn flags all they want, so long as they buy
those flags with dollars US dollars. That's uh. I mean,
(39:58):
you know, there's a case to ma that the real
flag of the country is its currency. What was the
name of the car. We did an episode earlier today,
Ben and I on Ridiculous History about Ernest Hemingway's younger
brother who tried to declare a sovereign nation on a
raft and he had a really cool name for the
currency of New Atlantis, right, scruple scruples because he thought
(40:23):
wealthy people should have a lot of scruples. Right, Yeah,
that's a that's a true story. But this this, this
thing we're talking about destabilizing governments. Yeah, that the United States,
specifically the CIA has an issue with Um, that's an
interesting right, But yes, for various strategic reasons. It's just
(40:45):
it's rough that that's the avenue through which it's occurring,
through these supposedly you know, good organizations that are trying
to do good for our world. This is really bothering me. Guys,
you're saying you just think it's inherently itchy and wrong.
It feels very itchy. Um, it's so cloak, I mean
(41:06):
it is, Okay, it's so perfectly cloak and dagger, I suppose.
And yet once once you'd think that once it's found
out that this kind of thing is occurring let's say
from those reports, that seven report from CBS. Once that's
found out, you'd think, oh, well maybe maybe that ended right,
we figured that out and the world figured it out.
It's over now. Yeah, that's the thing. Though I wish
(41:30):
they were a better response then. Yeah, that's the thing
that's a that's a big oof for me. Man. Yeah,
places like NED or organizations like NED, these kind of
slush funds for foreign policy operations that are a little
that are not above the board. Uh, this is a
prolific practice. And it's only a practice because it works.
It's not like everybody chose a theme just for the
(41:52):
sake of aesthetics. There's undeniable proof that the CIA has
conspired and is likely conspiring as we speak, to execute
illegal campaigns in other countries using NGOs and charities as covers.
Again not necessarily the fault of the charities, not the
fault of the NGOs. In fact, there's a case to
(42:13):
be made that these innocent people may have their lives
put in danger if one of these intelligence operations goes wrong.
But you know, with this being such an open secret,
like you said, and with that sixty seven investigation uncovering
so much of this cloak and daggery. Surely you know
sovereign nations are hip to this and don't want this
(42:34):
kind of influence infiltrating their borders. Surely we would feel
the same from ngeos from other countries, you know, masquerading
behind this idea of do good ory this veil. Right,
aren't there laws that would prevent this kind of stuff
from happening? It's a good question. There are a lot
now before we anybody in the more skeptical side of
the audience relegates this to UH the land of alarmism
(42:57):
and UH sensationalism in tinfoil hattery. Note that other world
powers are very aware of this strategy, have participated in
it on their own. You can see again in that
sixty seven investigation there's a little bit of what about
is um on the side of people who say, yeah,
the CIA does do these dirty deeds, thun they're cheap
(43:20):
to UH to UH to other countries, but that other
powers are doing the same thing. Like there's this fantastic
footage of a Russian organized huge concert. It was a blowout,
but it was It was all to make the great
idea of Cold War communism more palatable. And to make
(43:41):
it cool, it was a war for the hearts and minds.
And we also know that people take this seriously because
many other countries have made laws explicitly banning in geo's
foreign owned geo's from their borders. Amnesty International was a
very interesting source on this because they're you know, they're
(44:01):
pro and geo like, what could go wrong, right, and
they do great work. They say that governments across the
world are increasingly attacking in geo's by creating laws that
subject them in their staff to surveillance, bureaucratic hurdles, and
the ever present threat of imprisonment. And they have a
lot of examples here too. Yes, and we have a
quote here from Amnesty International. It says in the past
(44:24):
two years alone, almost forty pieces of legislation the interfere
with the right to assemble and are designed to hamper
the work of civil society organizations have been put in
place or are in the works around the world. These
laws commonly include implementing ludicrous registration processes for organizations, monitoring
their work, restricting their sources of resources, and in many cases,
(44:48):
shutting them down if they don't adhere to the unreasonable
requirements imposed on them. Yeah, so this could be killing
people with the thousand paper cuts of paperwork, you know,
like you need a you need approval to assemble or
to to hold this meeting, right to tell people about
the dane, the benefits of sanitation, or to teach people
(45:11):
how to for being totally uh totally benevolent about it.
Let's say you're trying to teach people how to operate
and maintain a solar powered phone charging station, right and valuable.
That's great stuff. And then let's say the country in
which you're trying to do this doesn't care for your
(45:31):
whole the cut of your jib, and so they say, okay,
to hold this class where you teach this, you have
to get approval from this authority, and that authority has
to approve it, uh sixty days before you do this. However,
that approval can only be submitted thirty days before you
have the things. So now you're in a catch twenty
(45:53):
two bureacratically. It's it's weird. It's a weird flex for sure.
But we also examples of specific countries who have started
banning or excluding in geo's make no mistake because of
these concerns that spies may be infiltrating the country via
in geos. So Pakistan's Ministry of the Interior rejected registration
(46:18):
applications from eighteen international NGOs in October UM and they
dismissed all of the appeals that came without giving a reason. Uh.
They they are clearly very suspicious of these agencies. Just
in general, in Saudi Arabia, the government can deny licenses
to new organizations and disband them a step further, even
(46:41):
if they are deemed to be quote harming national unity.
And this is affected human rights groups, UM, including women's
human rights groups who have not been able to register
and operate freely in the country. This is a really
good example of like, you know, a couple of bad
apples spoiling the bunch. You know, because as we said
at the top of the show, clearly there's good work
(47:02):
being done by these NGOs. Because of a few bad actors, um, everyone,
it's like, you know, everyone kind of gets screwed, right, Well,
it's also a convenient reason to keep things as they are, right, Like,
if you're talking especially about women's rights groups operating in
Saudi Arabia, right, I mean, if you can just ban
(47:23):
a group that is advocating for a certain thing because
of reason a potential threat to our sovereignty or whatever. Yeah,
you know, and and that that phrase, like I'd love
to get your take on that phrase been national harming
national unity. Yeah, yeah, I mean same sex seen as
(47:43):
harming national unity. That's Arabia's right, That's that's kind of
what we're talking about. And you can kind of see
that at play, that kind of phrasing at play in
countries across the world, even ones that you you know,
you may live in right now that you identify with
as like having this equality thing down pat Perhaps perhaps
(48:03):
it's not that way. That's right, I mean, the very
basis of your national unity could be on the wrong
side of human rights in general as a whole. Yeah,
does veiled shade of the United States, by the way,
just everybody's well take off contail in general. But the
this is this is an interesting case and I'm glad
(48:25):
you brought it up because in the case of Saudi Arabia, Yeah,
there might be some insidious intelligence agency activity going on,
but it's also just as likely it's more likely that
a lot of those in geo's are getting shut down
because they are advocating for things that in the Western
scene as in alienable human rights. Belarus goes a little
(48:47):
bit further. Any in GEO that can operate in the
country is UH is closely observed, scrutinized by the state.
And if you work for any in GEO who tried
to register and got rejected, you have committed a crime
and you may be imprisoned. UH. You may also just disappear.
(49:09):
You should probably get out. Yeah, these are just a
few examples. Other countries, Azerbaijan, China, and of course Russia
have introduced more registration and reporting requirements and if you
don't comply, you can be thrown in prison. Which is
it sounds weird, you know, to say that you didn't
(49:30):
complete some paperwork, so now you're going to jail, possibly
for a long long time, especially if you're foreign national, right,
because usually we think, well, if you don't do paperwork, right,
you get a fine for being late, you know, um,
um yeah, unless it's um I'm trying to think of
like a really bad traffic violation where you actually end
(49:53):
up having to go to jail for a couple of
days if you don't fill out your paperwork i e.
Pay or show up. Sure, yeah, I guess for blow improbation,
that's paperwork. They could get you in trouble. But we
mentioned Russia. Maybe we bury the lead a little bit here.
Russia is one of the most well known anti in
GEO organizations. They few years back banned all in geos
(50:17):
that they considered undesirable. It's true, UM. The government has
regularly labeled in geos who receive foreign funding as foreign
agents UM, which is a term that you could very
easily correlate to ones that are a little more direct
like spy, traitor, enemy of the state. The government applies
(50:41):
that this kind of thinking so broadly, not only thinking
actual legislation, that even an organization that supports people with
say diabetes, actually gets could be subject to findes UM,
put on a blacklist of foreign agents and forced to close.
This is not hypothetical. This actually happened in October. Medical, environmental,
(51:06):
women's groups, all of these have also come under serious
scrutiny and and and fire from the Russian government, And
all of these moves have really galvanized the developing world
and launched a kind of a renaissance of anti and
geo legislation. Yeah, and so for anyone listening now who
(51:28):
has dedicated their life to service, thank you for being
one of the good forces in the world, even though
I'm sure at times it feels like you are outnumbered. Uh,
If you're having a hard time trying to understand why
these countries would so profoundly distrust in Geo's, think about
it this way. If you are in the US or
(51:49):
Australia or wherever you're listening to this show, imagine how
you would feel if there were organizations from say China
or Russia or Iran popping up in the capital, popping
up in your town, and they were funneling hundreds of
millions of dollars given to them by their parent government
(52:11):
just to influence your local politics. Right. So, now, now
it doesn't matter how you vote, because there is a
new special interest group in town. They have more money
than you could ever raise, and they have a bigger say,
even though they don't live where you live. And even
if it's not specifically influencing politics, but it's influencing some
kind of social norm or movement, right you know, just
(52:34):
that perhaps your immediate area doesn't agree with I mean,
that would be that would be very strange if it
was coming. If that money is coming and influence is
coming from outside of your own country, that it would
certainly feel odd and it feels like an attack on sovereignty.
You know, this would understandably here in the US, this
(52:55):
would generate a lot of anger if people were aware
of this, especially if these groups tried to tilt an
election one way or another. But suppose they weren't just
trying to tilt an election. Suppose they had success doing
that and now they wanted to up end the system
of government. This is something that the US financed and
geo's have done in the past, or sorry, people operating
(53:18):
out of those NGOs. Again, the NGOs may have no
knowledge of what's actually happening, and this has occurred numerous times.
This is rinse and repeat because again it works and
the story is not over. Our only conclusion we can
make is the NGOs are not going away. The CIA
is pretty open about the fact that they dig it.
They're they're like, we we like working with these guys. Yeah.
(53:40):
They actually have a term for they coin it deep
cooperation between the agency and these NGOs, and they refer
to this whole process as quote information sharing end quote.
Uh So, I don't know. It seems pretty unlikely that
that's the end of the story, don't think. So Let's
(54:01):
let's really quickly let's mention something that that CBS News
special report talks about, and that is the Security Act
of nineteen forty seven, just to give an idea of why,
why the heck is the CIA operating in this way,
Because as we learned back in back in the old
days in our school books, we learned that the Central
(54:21):
Intelligence Agency is in fact an intelligence agency, and it
is meant to carry out what would be called intelligence
in all the various ways we've talked about on this
show numerous time. Yeah, gathering information, right, um. But because
of that Security Act of nineteen forty seven, they were
(54:41):
essentially ordered through this Act to do a whole bunch
of other things, and all of these things that they
would have to do then and now are currently having
to do our duties quote as directed by the President
and his National Security Council. And that phrase is so
vague it'll allows essentially whoever the standing president is and
(55:04):
the National Security Council, who have whichever elected officials are
in there, they get to direct the CIA outside of
the director of the CIA, or at least nudge very
uh harshly what they need to do and what they
should be interested in. It reminds me of the term,
which I've always found weird and a little creepy, serving
(55:24):
at the pleasure of the president. Yeah, it's like you're
going to a Chick fil a. Well, and in that case,
it doesn't matter who the president is, because if you've
got we talked about it in an episode not long ago,
but if you've got you know, a security council with
officials that have been on there for a long time,
who see a big picture, who see the chess moves,
(55:48):
I can only imagine what what things occur, what what
other countries perhaps should be very much aware of. Well said,
and that's a great question. Are other nations right to
be concerned? Is there a solution to this problem? There's
the money gotten too good? Is the system too effective?
The question is not whether the machine is broken, because
(56:09):
you know, there's an argument to be made that the
people who are running this thing, I love it. It's
doing what they wanted to know exactly what it's doing,
and then and what their role in all of it is.
For sure. It reminds me very much of diplomatic community
and functioning out of embassies. Yeah. I was thinking the
same thing when it in terms of the the aid
workers or whatever, the n GEO employees being able to
(56:30):
get kind of carte blanche. Uh. That's that's the sort
of the route of some of these laws where they're like, no,
you can't come anymore, we don't want you. We know
what you did. Are you familiar with the term Cranberry? Oh,
I know a guy named Cranston. Lock him up. But
we want to we want to hear from you, as
(56:51):
we said earlier, if you have been, if you have
been abroad or here in the U. S. We're in
your home country helping out with a non governmental or organization,
thank you for the work you're doing. Thank you for
making the world a better place, because for Pete's sake,
we need to help. Uh. And if you have, if
you have experience with anything sketchy going on in one
(57:14):
of these organizations, we would love to hear from you.
So like the Peace Corps would be one, right, Yeah,
a lot of people go to the Peace corpser yeah, yeah,
and that's an upstanding, fine organization. Everything's fine about the
Peace Corps. There used to be a statue for the
founder of the Peace Corps or old office. I remember,
you know that's where you that's when you made it.
When you have a statue, that's a flex may. So
(57:35):
if you want to send us any of that information
and you're not afraid to share it with us because
of whatever situation you may have been in, um, you
can send it to us right now. You can find
us on Facebook and on Twitter where we're conspiracy stuff.
On Instagram we are conspiracy stuff. Show do the Facebook
group thing. If you want to have some more real
time chats with the community, it's called Here's where it.
(57:55):
It's crazy. All you gotta do to get in his
answer a simple question, name one or all of us
or say some combination of of of the witching words
that Ben, you know, speaks into a dark mirror midnight
with the ritual winter shins and all that stuff. Did
you catch any rap lyrics or mentions that Ben or
one of us may have put into this episode or
(58:17):
previous episodes? Let us know any reference will do. Yeah,
you can also give us a call. We are one
eight three three st d w y t K. That's yeah,
std W y t K. If you didn't get it there,
you just type it in your old phone using those
letters as numbers, and generally there's a handy guide on
(58:37):
whichever phone you're using. You can also leave us terrible
jokes on any of these avenues. I want to shout
out to a journalist friend of ours who's legit, a
guy named Jared Alexander who just said, what concert costs
just forty five cents? Guys, ready, you're not ready? I'm ready.
It's fifty cent featuring Nickelback, I wasn't ready and stuff
(58:58):
like that. But if none of that quite bags your badgers,
we still want to hear from you. There is one
more way that you can always contact as twenty four seven,
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until we get black bagged, burned down. That's right, folks,
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(59:37):
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