John Rosenthal has a very interesting piece in PJM about the incestuous relationship between private and public entities; in this particular case about the WWF and the IPCC (a UN agency). Much has been written in the past about the cozy and questionable relationship that exists between the UN and various NGOs (non-government organizations; generally non-profit corporations), but John asks an interesting question: at what point does a private, non-profit corporation take so much government money that they cease being an NGO, and start being a PGO (para-government organization)?
As a point of background, there have been several scandals uncovered of late involving the IPCC using non-peer reviewed papers from among other sources, the WWF. And so John asks:
That the IPCC’s assessment would rely so heavily on the claims of an activist organization raises obvious questions about its objectivity. But the issues raised by the IPCC’s reliance on WWF are even more troubling than might appear on first glance. For exactly what sort of activist organization is WWF? It is commonly assumed that it is a private advocacy organization funded by donations from the public: in other words, a “non-governmental organization” or “NGO.” But closer inspection of WWF’s finances reveals that the “NGO” moniker is here — as indeed in so many cases — a misnomer. It would be more accurate to describe WWF rather as a “PGO”: a para-governmental organization. In fact, WWF receives massive funding from states. Moreover, it receives massive funding not from just any states, but from precisely that federation of states that has made combating supposed “global warming” into one of its highest policy priorities, if not indeed its highest priority — namely, the European Union.
What do we have going on so far? The UN, which is a strange beast to begin with, because while not being a government itself, is a syndicate of governments. They in turn are breaking their own rules by using this “gray” literature from the WWF. But wait! The WWF is getting huge grants from the EU, and thus is beholden to the EU:
According to European Commission data, WWF was awarded nearly €9 million in EU support in 2008 alone. In 2007, the figure was over €7.5 million. Most of this support came in the form of ostensibly project-linked grants to WWF-International or its national affiliates. It is typical for the EU to provide support to so-called NGOs in the form of project grants. The largest single grant — bizarrely, for €3,499,999 — went to WWF-International in 2007. Its ostensible purpose was for a project on “Strengthening Indigenous Community Based Forest Enterprises (CBFEs) in Priority Ecoregions in Latin America, Asia-Pacific and Africa.”
So what is going on behind the scenes? This is where the other dirty little open secret comes in: the IPCC itself is overrun with activist NGOs, which as Rosenthal correctly points out are PGOs. So we have a government-activist complex here, where you can’t tell where the government stops and the activists start. Now is this limited to just the IPCC, or for that matter just the UN?
Think Obamajugen. On a less obvious level, this is going on here, and has been going on for quite some time. Here too, we have a government-activist complex. They call themselves community organizers. And just like their UN/EU counterparts, they’ve mastered the art of taking over private charitable trusts and absorbing them into the government-activist complex.
ACORN comes immediately to mind, but if you start turning over rocks, everyone from Planned Parenthood to a whole panoply of activist professors are getting government grants which they use for support while they engage in political activity. How does Bill Ayers have food on his table? Foundations and government grants put it there, so he can conspire to destroy this country. And Islamists have also learned how this game is played. So is ACORN an NGO, or a PGO? You decide. Is Planned Parenthood an NGO, or a PGO?
This is a source of energy (i.e. funding) that the left has, because they’ve marched through the institutions. And they’ll always have this advantage, at least for the foreseeable future. They’re vampires; sucking the blood out of private and public entities alike, and channeling money that was set aside to actually help people into pure activism for activism’s sake. But it’s not really a parasitic relationship; it’s symbiotic. The government benefits from the activists and the activists benefit from the government. The symbiotic complex is parasitic. And we all know who the host is.
And btw, lest I be accused of obsessing over the climate issue, let me point out that every special interest issue has this kind of government-activist complex with it’s associated junk science. A recent example that I blogged about was the Lancet, and their ludicrous conclusion that Israel is responsible for Palestinian domestic violence. Other examples include health journals and activist medical personnel producing junk science studies in favor of gun control. Not to be outdone by those, we have the various sexual grievance groups all claiming junk biology, junk anthropology or junk philosophy (the gay gene, why white men are violent, why all sex is rape). What’s really going on is a panoply of issues are being pushed by the authority of “science” with corrupted processes. Science has become a tool in the hands of ideologues.
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Kinda related: Normally I think these H–ler dubbed vids are pretty dumb, but this one was done by someone who really knows the players and the back story:
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