194 Comments
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Dr Richard B Belzer's avatar

There seems to be a misunderstanding. The purpose of government spending is to spend money. Clearly, this program is a success.

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jim's avatar

Definitely agree. Since the funding began in 2020 neither I nor any of my friends or relatives have come across any Sudanese hate speech.

Problem solved. We can stop sending them money.

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Dr Richard B Belzer's avatar

The level of hate speech in South Sudan (not to be confused with Sudan, to the north) is likely quite high. They fought a terrible civil war. But this is irrelevant to the purpose of spending the money, which was spending the money.

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Jeremy Poynton's avatar

The EU has two purposes

1. To piss away their citizens' money.

2. To regulate and regulate and regulate.

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Kevin Beck's avatar

You can't do that; there's nothing so permanent as a temporary government solution.

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Te Burt's avatar

You guys are cracking me up!

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Epaminondas's avatar

The obvious thing that struck me when reading about this NGO is that there seems to have been zero effort placed into defining success and how to actually measure progress against that definition. This is likely by design, since the last thing either the NGO or bureaucrats overseeing them would want is accountability.

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Henrybowman's avatar

It's by design. From last week's news:

https://www.reuters.com/legal/government/trump-administration-slashed-federal-funding-gun-violence-prevention-2025-07-29/

EXCLUSIVE: TRUMP ADMINISTRATION SLASHED FEDERAL FUNDING FOR GUN VIOLENCE PREVENTION

"These programs five years ago, if they did exist, had very small budgets and didn't have large, multimillion-dollar federal investments," said Michael-Sean Spence, managing director of community safety initiatives at Everytown for Gun Safety"

Nowhere does anybody running these programs compare their RESULTS -- only the amount of money they successfully wasted.

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Andrew Marsh's avatar

I think we can say it is indeed an outrageous success.

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The Brothers Krynn's avatar

Lmao well put

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Henrybowman's avatar

Until Substack implements a mute control, is there a way for the moderator to mute and ban persistent spammers?

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Te Burt's avatar

LOL

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Nicholas Edward Bednarski, MD's avatar

What’s the German word for “DOGE”?

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cm27874's avatar

It is BASE - Bundesamt für Staatliche Effizienz

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Psammetich II's avatar

There is NO such thing in Germany!

Other question: What is "NGO" short for? - Near-Governmental Organisation"!

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Nicholas Edward Bednarski, MD's avatar

The British have a similar term—“guanos”— quasi-governmental organizations

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Al's avatar

Quango is the term we use.

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Nicholas Edward Bednarski, MD's avatar

Wow, Germany actually has such an entity? Or just translation?

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Knalldi's avatar

Does the catholic church have a satanic ritual department?

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cm27874's avatar

Thank God it is just a joke. Imagine the level of crazy of such an institution in Germany.

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Rikard's avatar

You may laugh but in April, the Swedish government presented a promemoria about the stablishing of a new government agency tasked with increasing the efficiency of government agencies.

All 400-450 of them.

And yes, it's 400 to 450. Because we don't actually know how many government agnecies there are.

One of my favourites to bring up when talking about this is the one overseeing stamps. Fourteen employees earning a minimum of €60 000/month/gross, plus living expenses compensation for "having" to live in Stockholm, plus paid parking, free dental, special private health insurance, and so on, and also a flat for the head of the agency in case he/she needs to saty overnight in the city.

We don't need DOGE. We need to nuke the site from orbit.

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Tardigrade's avatar

'the stablishing of a new government agency tasked with increasing the efficiency of government agencies.'

For some reason, this put me in mind of the decades-old US government Paperwork Reduction Act. As a result of this Act, every government mailing to citizens included an extra piece of paper: a Paperwork Reduction Act Notice.

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the long warred's avatar

AFD Audit Fur Deutschland

AuditFurDeutschland ?

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The Watchman's avatar

👍 "der Hund" LOL!!!!!!!!

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Tardigrade's avatar

Judith, you're starting to get a little bit spammy here.

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Nicholas Edward Bednarski, MD's avatar

Unsure what your comment has to do with the discussion, can you clarify?

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PatriotInGibraltar's avatar

This is an excellent example of a now-universal Western scam. Money is filtered from government officials to their crony friends in NGOs for dubious projects and then back to those officials. The insult is the purported use of taxpayer funds--$1 million to support lesbian ant farming in Peru or whatever. All the outrage is directed at the audacious waste of taxpayer dollars, but with zero accounting for what that money was spent on. The line item gets all the attention, but the real injury is that such a ridiculous cause wasn't actually funded--it was flat-out STOLEN.

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Grape Soda's avatar

It keeps supporters employed. It seems very like the patronage era. A job as reward.

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SCA's avatar

This has always been the purpose of power-accrual. A country is just a feudal fiefdom, expanded.

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Chixbythesea's avatar

Bloated Bureaucracy is the nation killer.

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Tardigrade's avatar

That's why DOGE was so great. They may not have saved a substantial percentage of the budget, but making public all those databases of NGOs and grants and things made a wonderful rabbithole to spend a few hours in.

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Chixbythesea's avatar

It let people know the ridiculousness of the situation. Pretty disgusting when you consider our down and out Vets.

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The Green Hornet's avatar

This is almost as good as USAID pissing away millions on condoms for Palestine or DEI education in Nicaragua. Many pockets were lined which is surely the case here.

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JaidenWalnut's avatar

Or funding democrat party political campaigns. It'd be fun to peak behind the EU's curtain and see how corrupt and insane their NGO funding apparatus is.

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UnvaxxedCanadian's avatar

It's all funding to keep the credentialed class "employed". What is not known is how much of the money makes its way into the campaign coffers of political parties.

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LJinTX's avatar

I think you have perfectly described the operating mechanism and existence of all NGO's ...

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Tank Hough's avatar

Just look to the Clinton Foundation to find the perfect scam NGO.

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Judith Brown's avatar

Media literacy is a dangerous form of brainwashing. See my Substack here https://judithbrown.substack.com/p/the-control-of-information-b52

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Grape Soda's avatar

If Billy didn’t invent it, he perfected it.

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Henrybowman's avatar

Pretty sure it wasn't Bill.

Clinton-era joke: Bill and Hillary are motoring up into the Berkshires for a weekend mountain getaway. They stop to get gas, and for Bill to use the rest room. Coming out, Bill sees Hillary paying at the register, having a strangely sociable conversation with the clerk, then actually hugging him goodbye. When they return to the car, Bill asks, "What was that about?" Hillary replies, "I can't believe it! That was Lawrence! I told you about him, we dated for two years while I was at Wellesley. Imagine running into him again!" Bill chuckles. "Just think -- if you had married him, you'd have spent your life pumping gas here in the Berkshires." Hillary looks Bill in the eye and replies, "If I'd have married him, he'd be President, and you'd be pumping gas in Little Rock."

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SCA's avatar
18hEdited

I can promise you (from grim personal experience) that programs like this are happy grift fountains for local authorities (charity registration officers, bank managers) and upper-middle class boards and administrators and this is always, always so. Plus the European or American grantmaking organizations that disburse/oversee these programs are so naive that one wonders how their own boards and staff manage not to break their ankles getting out of bed each morning.

It was very sad for me to learn this but I learned it real well. The only useful programs anywhere in the non-Western world are those directly teaching local people moneymaking skills they can exercise from their own homes. Those make a difference in individual lives and regardless of how miserable the local culture may be. Everything else is fantasy.

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Judith Brown's avatar

Media literacy is an extremely dangerous form of brainwashing. See here https://judithbrown.substack.com/p/the-control-of-information-b52

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SCA's avatar

Geez. You discovered that the sun rises every morning? This has been going on since people invented making marks on clay with scratchy thingies.

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Tardigrade's avatar

Judith. Time to lay off.

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V Gonzalez's avatar

I don't usually like to cast suspicion upon anyone, but this smells like money laundering to me. Not just senselessly spending money on wasteful do-gooders, but actively embezzling public funds. Someone should look closely upon the money trail left by this NGO.

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Suzanne O'Keeffe's avatar

🤣 I'd say it ranks as literally the most obvious money laundering effort ever seen.

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ZuZu’s Petals's avatar

Eugyppius, I’d like to get exercised about this, but somehow I have to admire the cheek of these NGOs and their ability to wrest funds from the EU. If only more of us had their imagination and chutzpah, we too could be laughing all the way to the bank.

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Jeremy Poynton's avatar

Same here in the UK. Some "charities" here are more or less taxpayer funded. Usually to lobby for something the government would like to push through.

Circle jerk of corruption, in reality. But the boiler nuts are corroded and rusting, and the boiler pressure increases by the day.

There's serious trouble going to happen here. The level of loathing for Starmer only equalled by his personality disordered assault on us.

Fuck them all. May they rot in hell.

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ZuZu’s Petals's avatar

Living in Britain myself, I can only agree.

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Spaceman Spiff's avatar

As can I. And I will second the motion: fuck them all, indeed. Not a patriot among them.

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Marion's avatar

Me too

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Not Me's avatar

I think Britain and Germany are the new China….SAD

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EppingBlogger's avatar

I don’t think they have to work hard to get the money. Bureaucrats would chase them down the street with pre populated application forms.

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Henrybowman's avatar

And if they don't middlemen will.

Near the end of COVID, I was besieged by phone calls from "account managers" begging me to apply for COVID relief loan funds to cover all the money I had had to pay my employees who were unable to work. Now, I ran four businesses at the time, two of which were Mom and Pop, and two of which were just Pop. I even wasted time telling the first couple of callers that, and was urged to apply anyway.

Any time any government offers free money, scammers quickly devise scams to game whatever system is in place.

The total fraud number for this particular government freebie came in at $10 billion. (https://www.irs.gov/compliance/criminal-investigation/five-years-post-cares-act-irs-ci-has-launched-2039-covid-fraud-investigations-totaling-10b-in-attempted-fraud) Anyone could have predicted this. That the nitwits who proposed it didn't, means only that they didn't want to.

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Judith Brown's avatar

This is not the cheek of NGOs. It is an extremely dangerous and very well funded form of brainwashing. See here https://judithbrown.substack.com/p/the-control-of-information-b52

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KurtOverley's avatar

Don't Bellinghausen and Kovats look like people you would like to get to know and spend lots of time with?

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eugyppius's avatar

lol

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Spaceman Spiff's avatar

They sound like a law firm that would have Nosferatu as a client.

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Rick Olivier's avatar

Gurlboss got a great Adam’s Apple, tho

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William Webster's avatar

Someone is on a nice little earner. Wonder if UvDL is on a commission?

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Andrew Marsh's avatar

Just checking the phone... no text messages about this but - wait - no way - gosh.....Oh no! Just dropped it. Woops.

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Rikard's avatar

I don't know...

How about a nation where people die while awaiting surgery or other treatments (or even just a doctor investigating their ailments) offering to take on an unspecified number of children from Gaza (plus their caretakers/parents and siblings of course) and let them get treatments before anyone else, with no way or plan to check IDs or make sure they leave after receiving medical treatments?

And said nations socialised health care literally being on its knees, with fully 1/# of newly minted doctors emigrating to work in the private sector in nations where they can earn more than the eq. of $60 000/year before taxes. Where the legal limit for overtime-hours/month simply must be waived or the entire sector would collapse.

Where these problems have been known for 20 years or more.

I think that's even more stupid.

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Lon Guyland's avatar

“Fighting hate speech” is an industry, pure and simple. Just like “fighting climate change” and whatever other “fights” (the red-flag word) may be afoot.

“Fight” and “war on” mean “fleece the middle class”.

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Spaceman Spiff's avatar

Are you trying to tell me the war on drugs was not a success?

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Henrybowman's avatar

It was a smashing success. Just like the wars on alcohol and guns were before it, and the war on terrorism is currently proving to be.

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Tardigrade's avatar

Don't forget fact-checking.

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Crixcyon's avatar

I hate the EU...so fight that with your million Euros.

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Henrybowman's avatar

It has possibilities. If the EU sends me €1M, I will almost certainly not hate them as much.

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Dr Richard B Belzer's avatar

The level of hate speech in South Sudan (not to be confused with Sudan, to the north) is likely quite high. They fought a terrible civil war. But this is irrelevant to the purpose of spending the money, which was spending the money.

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Judith Brown's avatar

Media literacy is an extremely dangerous and very well funded form of brainwashing. See here https://judithbrown.substack.com/p/the-control-of-information-b52

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António Pereira's avatar

Another glorious day on Ngoland!

None of us could make this stuff up, no matter how hard we tried...

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