I understand and sympathize entirely with your position. Many years ago, I was caught up for a few years in supporting Amnesty International's letter writing campaigns about political prisoners being detained by hostile dictatorships. Only years after did I realize that I was being gamed.
I realized it only after information came to light for me that AI was being lavishly supported and funded by the KGB of the USSR as a way of weakening the NATO alliance against the Warsaw Pact. (This was the reason why Yuri Andropov was selected as the successor to Leonid Brezhnev in 1982.) My engagement was less than yours, but my disillusionment was complete. Everything the western press told me about this organization was false. Worse, AI ignored the ongoing horror of the Khmer Rouge killing fields in Cambodia.
In recent years, we have discovered that the antinuclearism in Germany was a deliberate construct of Andropov’s KGB. The purpose was to weaken NATO and to make Germany dependent on Russian oil and gas. As payment for his Quisling work, Gerhard Schroeder became a top official in Gazprom.
I suspect none of these organizations will stand up to the light of close examination. Greenpeace, for example, gave birth to Sea Shepherd. This organization was formed to carry out piracy and sabotage on the high seas. Adding to their hypocrisy, Greenpeace, so vociferous in attacking the fossil fuel industry, OWNS a gas retailing company in Germany.
The final blow for me was participation in two UNFCCC conferences in Milan in 2003 and Montreal in 2005. At both, nuclear power was treated as an entirely undesirable presence. Producing lots of energy reliably and at an affordable cost, nuclear power should have been ideal to reducing coal consumption. Instead it was treated at ALL UNFCCC conferences as a pariah. Clearly the UNFCCC was owned by the professional antinuclear organizations.
Zion Lights, I always am especially impressed with people like you who have been open enough to change their position once they get more facts. I have a similar respect for scientists who grew up being brainwashed with one thing or another, and then changed their opinion once they got into the field and saw the evidence they hadn't been told about in their biased schooling.
On a personal level, I was really mad when I learned lots and lots of evidence (that had been kept from me in school and college) showing evolution is not even close to being a "fact" as we're so often told.
I suspect there are several NGOs in different industries (healthcare for one) that will be exposed as grifters verses change agents…it is going to be an interesting year or two…I appreciate you.
Great article. My concern over NGOs has been growing over the past 15 years. I appreciate your insights and information. They are powerful and undemocratic with a media ruthlessness
Agreed. What adds to the concern is that they are always obscure in the source of their funding. In Canada, a huge amount of funding of First Nations opposition to everything particularly lawfare was being done by Tides Canada.This was nothing more than an agency flowing cash to activists from foreign (read American) charitable trusts. The funding into political intervention became so egregious that Greenpeace lost its charitable status in Canada about three decades ago.
This became a huge political issue about a decade ago. The Harper government instituted legislation that all Charities had to have annual audits. This required financial disclosure of funding sources. It was one of the very first things Justin Trudeau's government revoked when it got into office in 2015.
Thanks for the comments - I’m also Canadian. The lack of transparency and accountability of NGOs wouldn’t be acceptable for corporations. One of many Trudeau trip-ups
The NGOs were first given the big handwave by government to excuse them from any normal corporate behaviour by Pierre Trudeau. He's the pile of reeking crap who:
1. Gave us a constitution which cannot be amended (the Constitution Act of 1982);
2. Deliberately warped the Government of Canada so that only people within 200 km of Ottawa-Montreal can work for the government (the Official Languages Act of 1969);
3. Commenced a deliberate assault of the federal government against the Province of Alberta over control of natural resources (National Energy Program of 1980).
All of this was deliberate. It separates most Canadians from their federal government and divides Canadians against each other.
And we haven't even gone into the issue of non-existent aborignal graves.
I would love to read something about the current landscape of new nuclear tech like SMRs. As a layperson it is hard to separate the hype from reality but I am really excited about the futre of nuclear and I want to understand it. Would be cool if you could get into the weeds on some of the technical advantages of different architectures or manufacturing techniques 😀
The Germans made the mistake of waiting for bodies to appear before they realized how psychotic Hitler was, I hope the world doesn’t make the same mistake with the environmental movement.
That was the problem. The Germans never came to such a realization until AFTER Germany had been conquered and devastated. As a religious cult, National Socialism's hold over Germans was extremely strong. As a nation they believed completely in the myth of the 'Stab in the Back'. They believed in the racist theory of history that National Socialism embodied. That's why they kept fighting even after 1942 when the war was utterly hopeless for Germany.
They had to be frogmarched en masse through the death camps to understand what utterly despicable people they had become. Germany as a nation was insane.
(Sorry, this is a long post.)
I understand and sympathize entirely with your position. Many years ago, I was caught up for a few years in supporting Amnesty International's letter writing campaigns about political prisoners being detained by hostile dictatorships. Only years after did I realize that I was being gamed.
I realized it only after information came to light for me that AI was being lavishly supported and funded by the KGB of the USSR as a way of weakening the NATO alliance against the Warsaw Pact. (This was the reason why Yuri Andropov was selected as the successor to Leonid Brezhnev in 1982.) My engagement was less than yours, but my disillusionment was complete. Everything the western press told me about this organization was false. Worse, AI ignored the ongoing horror of the Khmer Rouge killing fields in Cambodia.
In recent years, we have discovered that the antinuclearism in Germany was a deliberate construct of Andropov’s KGB. The purpose was to weaken NATO and to make Germany dependent on Russian oil and gas. As payment for his Quisling work, Gerhard Schroeder became a top official in Gazprom.
I suspect none of these organizations will stand up to the light of close examination. Greenpeace, for example, gave birth to Sea Shepherd. This organization was formed to carry out piracy and sabotage on the high seas. Adding to their hypocrisy, Greenpeace, so vociferous in attacking the fossil fuel industry, OWNS a gas retailing company in Germany.
The final blow for me was participation in two UNFCCC conferences in Milan in 2003 and Montreal in 2005. At both, nuclear power was treated as an entirely undesirable presence. Producing lots of energy reliably and at an affordable cost, nuclear power should have been ideal to reducing coal consumption. Instead it was treated at ALL UNFCCC conferences as a pariah. Clearly the UNFCCC was owned by the professional antinuclear organizations.
Yes, of course, stop the funding.
Zion Lights, I always am especially impressed with people like you who have been open enough to change their position once they get more facts. I have a similar respect for scientists who grew up being brainwashed with one thing or another, and then changed their opinion once they got into the field and saw the evidence they hadn't been told about in their biased schooling.
On a personal level, I was really mad when I learned lots and lots of evidence (that had been kept from me in school and college) showing evolution is not even close to being a "fact" as we're so often told.
I suspect there are several NGOs in different industries (healthcare for one) that will be exposed as grifters verses change agents…it is going to be an interesting year or two…I appreciate you.
Why let some of that pesky science and reason get in the way of a good grift ?!?
NGO. Governmental authority without accountability
Great article. My concern over NGOs has been growing over the past 15 years. I appreciate your insights and information. They are powerful and undemocratic with a media ruthlessness
Agreed. What adds to the concern is that they are always obscure in the source of their funding. In Canada, a huge amount of funding of First Nations opposition to everything particularly lawfare was being done by Tides Canada.This was nothing more than an agency flowing cash to activists from foreign (read American) charitable trusts. The funding into political intervention became so egregious that Greenpeace lost its charitable status in Canada about three decades ago.
This became a huge political issue about a decade ago. The Harper government instituted legislation that all Charities had to have annual audits. This required financial disclosure of funding sources. It was one of the very first things Justin Trudeau's government revoked when it got into office in 2015.
Thanks for the comments - I’m also Canadian. The lack of transparency and accountability of NGOs wouldn’t be acceptable for corporations. One of many Trudeau trip-ups
The NGOs were first given the big handwave by government to excuse them from any normal corporate behaviour by Pierre Trudeau. He's the pile of reeking crap who:
1. Gave us a constitution which cannot be amended (the Constitution Act of 1982);
2. Deliberately warped the Government of Canada so that only people within 200 km of Ottawa-Montreal can work for the government (the Official Languages Act of 1969);
3. Commenced a deliberate assault of the federal government against the Province of Alberta over control of natural resources (National Energy Program of 1980).
All of this was deliberate. It separates most Canadians from their federal government and divides Canadians against each other.
And we haven't even gone into the issue of non-existent aborignal graves.
No, it’s time to defund ALL NGOs. An NGO funded by a government is a GO.
YES! Let the DOGE have at them!
I dont think thats quite the message shes trying to send here...
I would love to read something about the current landscape of new nuclear tech like SMRs. As a layperson it is hard to separate the hype from reality but I am really excited about the futre of nuclear and I want to understand it. Would be cool if you could get into the weeds on some of the technical advantages of different architectures or manufacturing techniques 😀
The Germans made the mistake of waiting for bodies to appear before they realized how psychotic Hitler was, I hope the world doesn’t make the same mistake with the environmental movement.
That was the problem. The Germans never came to such a realization until AFTER Germany had been conquered and devastated. As a religious cult, National Socialism's hold over Germans was extremely strong. As a nation they believed completely in the myth of the 'Stab in the Back'. They believed in the racist theory of history that National Socialism embodied. That's why they kept fighting even after 1942 when the war was utterly hopeless for Germany.
They had to be frogmarched en masse through the death camps to understand what utterly despicable people they had become. Germany as a nation was insane.