USAID amputation a blessing and a curse with China the only winner and NZ MSM the biggest loser

The USAID amputation in America is clever politically while being a curse and a blessing with the biggest winner China and the biggest loser the New Zealand Mainstream media .

 

USAID amputation in America is clever politically

Musk has managed to highlight spending that the wider American electorate had no idea about and he has cleverly weaponised that information.

USAID is a necessary promotion of democratic values donating aid worth $43billion each year for water, food and public health services that promote the values of the West.

Taking aid out of the CIA and making it a public health and basic care issue was the right thing to do, amputating it because some money was spent on condoms and a transgender opera is incredibly spastic when you consider none of this was a secret and was all open for the public to check!

The way Fox News has been covering this as if all the spending was somehow a secret that no one knew is ridiculous because the spending was all online!

Musk has exploited American’s ignorance of their own Aid budget and presented it as a shocking surprise.

 

USAID amputation is a blessing

As the incomparable Chris Hedges points out, USAID is a rort…

Foreign aid is not benevolent. It is weaponized to maintain primacy over the United Nations and remove governments the empire deems hostile. Those nations in the U.N. and other multilateral organizations who vote the way the empire demands, who surrender their sovereignty to global corporations and the U.S. military, receive assistance. Those who don’t do not.

When the U.S. offered to build the airport in Haiti’s capital Port-au-Prince, investigative journalist Matt Kennard reports, it required that Haiti oppose Cuba’s admittance into the Organization of American States, which it did.

Foreign aid builds infrastructure projects so corporations can operate global sweatshops and extract resources. It funds “democracy promotion” and “judicial reform” that thwart the aspirations of political leaders and governments that seek to remain independent from the grip of the empire.

U.S.A.I.D., for example, paid for a “political party reform project” that was designed “as a counterweight” to the “radical” Movement Toward Socialism (Movimiento al Socialismo) and sought to prevent socialists like Evo Morales from being elected in Bolivia.

It then funded organizations and initiatives, including training programs so Bolivian youth could be taught American business practices, once Morales assumed the presidency, to weaken his hold on power.

Kennard in his book, The Racket: A Rogue Reporter vs The American Empire, documents how U.S. institutions such as the National Endowment for Democracy, the World Bank, the International Monetary Fund, the Inter-American Development Bank, U.S.A.I.D. and the Drug Enforcement Administration, work in tandem with the Pentagon and Central Intelligence Agency to subjugate and oppress the Global South.

Client states that receive aid must break unions, impose austerity measures, keep wages low and maintain puppet governments. The heavily funded aid programs, designed to bring down Morales, eventually led the Bolivian president to throw U.S.A.I.D. out of the country.

The lie peddled to the public is that this aid benefits both the needy overseas and us at home. But the inequality these programs facilitate abroad replicates the inequality imposed domestically. The wealth extracted from the Global South is not equitably distributed. It ends up in the hands of the billionaire class, often stashed in overseas bank accounts to avoid taxation.

 

USAID amputation is a curse

While Comrade Hedges is correct to point out the rort of USAID, those dependent upon it are cursed…

Trump and Musk’s attack on USAid is causing global chaos. Millions of lives are now at risk

mid the daily troubling news coming from the United States are the ongoing and increasingly damaging efforts by President Donald Trump, supported by secretary of state Marco Rubio and Elon Musk, to shut down the US Agency for International Development (USAid). Musk has called it a “criminal organization” and said that it was “time for it to die”. The agency website is down, so little official information is available. But in the week since funding to the agency was frozen, and the majority of staff placed on leave, thousands of public health and development programmes worldwide have been thrown into turmoil, and now face an uncertain future.

USAid is the main federal agency that works to provide foreign aid assistance to the poorest countries and people in the world. On Friday, a US judge prevented around 2,000 USAid employees from being placed on leave, and ordered the reinstatement of about 500 more. But Trump and Musk appear to want to move forward with a plan that would see its global workforce reduced from about 10,000 staff and contractors, to just over 600.

It’s hard to overstate how disruptive this has already been to humanitarian work worldwide: most programmes have just been shut overnight with staff laid off, drugs and food left in warehouses, and patients and others not able to access services. The people affected live in some of the most vulnerable countries like Ukraine, Jordan, Ethiopia, Somalia, the Democratic Republic of the Congo, and Afghanistan.

Although we don’t know the full extent of the damage, specific reports suggest that vital services have been thrown into chaos. Some walk-in sexual health and HIV services in South Africa shuttered overnight without notice, Ethiopia’s health ministry has reportedly laid off 5,000 healthcare professionals who were hired with US funding, and nearly half a billion dollars worth of food aid overseen by the agency and currently in ports, transit or storage is destined to spoil.

USAid’s overall contribution is immense. It is the largest humanitarian operator globally – in 2023, the US provided 42% of all humanitarian assistance or about $68bn (£55bn), of which USAid spending made up about $40bn. And yet at the same time, both foreign aid and USAid specifically make up a tiny fraction of federal government spending: less than 1%. Cutting back makes little difference to overall US government spending, but is massively destructive to programmes reliant on this funding to deliver their on-the-ground work.

What does that less than 1% of federal spending buy the US public? This argument has been re-hashed in presidency after presidency, and the answers are clear.

Foreign aid can reduce instability, conflict and extreme poverty, which are major causes of mass displacement. Supporting programmes that keep more places safe and stable means fewer people needing to flee persecution, dire poverty or violence. With all the concerns over illegal immigration, reducing aid could make this challenge even harder to manage. Foreign aid can support countries to grow economically and create new markets and opportunities. Think of places like India, which have managed to create a vibrant and growing middle class.

In the world of global health, foreign aid is vital to support countries in managing health challenges, including outbreaks of infectious diseases. Just think back to the west Africa Ebola outbreak in 2014. Liberia, Guinea and Sierra Leone struggled to contain Ebola spreading and were reliant on international partners to assist them. It was in the interest of all countries to help them given that the global spread of Ebola was imminent. In addition, the US builds vital soft power and influence in countries in which it provides help. Russia and China have learned this lesson – and will probably step into the aid vacuum left by the US.

And beyond any of those “enlightened self-interest” arguments above is the simple fact that foreign aid helps other human beings who are struggling, including some of the poorest and most vulnerable in the world. It’s good to do because it’s simply good to do. Cutting programmes overnight means that women who might have lived are more likely to die in childbirth; those with HIV face not having access to clinics for lifesaving antiretroviral treatment; and hungry children no longer get nutritional supplements and food.

…yes USAID has been used as a means of control as Hedges points out, but those dependent upon the aid are desperate without it.

 

USAID amputation biggest winner – China

America spreading democratic values and progressive social policy is one of the few things they do that is actually necessary, to gut .7% of US spending for aid the planet needs will open the door for China to step in and take over.

As America retreats, the biggest winner here will be China

 

USAID amputation biggest loser – NZ Mainstream media 

The biggest loser from amputating USAID surprisingly turns out to be the New Zealand Mainstream media.

Despite The Daily Blog breaking this recent Wikileaks story, no one in the mainstream has mentioned it once.

Why is that?

USAID were secretly funding 25 New Zealand Mainstream Media brands through an advertising scam.

We need an immediate explanation from our Mainstream Media Owners if they changed any editorial stance that aligned us with America while taking this money.

Every single one of those 25 media need to explain the funding and its possible impact on the way news was angled in favour of America.

Once this part of the USAID story breaks, those media will need to explain themselves to the NZ public.

 

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