The perma stun proceeds
This isn’t a meme at all…
Fun fact, they’re still providing USAID funding to Israel and Egypt but stopped providing funding to Ukraine.
Trump executive order requiring the state and all state-funded education institutes to not acknowledge Ukrainian as a language separate from Russian coming in 3…
That’s awesome. One less headcount for federal budget.
Hahah you’re right fuck people looool
USAID - that’s just for funding CIA operations if I recall. they don’t really do food and water help.
I actually don’t mind this.
Nah it’s mostly graft. A large amount of USAID’s budget goes to DC consulting firms, while claiming it goes to developing countries.
But some of it did go to the developing world. Have to read through a lot of legalese to find the loopholes to avoid the money staying DC tho. I remember when I was doing work for NGOs in a developing country those computer cases with USAID stickers on them were kinda valuable for this reason. Getting money to buy a new computer was basically impossible, but you could get money from USAID to “upgrade” the computers with a new motherboard, CPU, RAM, hard drive, etc.
But any chance they’d get, they’d direct them money to DC consulting firms which would do very little.
🎶 Just want one thing, just to play the king
But the castle’s crumbled and you’re left with just a name 🎵USAID is corruption central and a job program for certain type of “american”
What was USAid?
It’s the organization that manages all of the official external humanitarian aid from the US government. It does everything from food distribution to micro loans in developing countries.
external humanitarian aid from the US governmen
its not. its just a cover. It’s funding for CIA programs.
I think people are asking for a source for your claims.
It’s really easy to say flagrant things like this. Do you have any information or proof or can you hear me through the layers of tin foil wrapped around your head?
The USAID people I know would be very surprised to hear that delivering food to starving people is somehow a CIA front.
It provided funding to Ukraine, Irsael, and Egypt among other things.
Now it provides funding to Israel and Egypt.
And soon to Russia.
Also you can read this link if you accept a more opinionated article:
Did a Trump executive order just cripple the global US regime change network?
A branch of the state department that sows dissent and destabilizes countries that don’t bend the knee to the US.
It’s a CIA front that mascarades as an aid organisation. Part of the US’ soft power projection. I’m guessing for all their talk about hating China, they’re really keen on China taking on the role the US has been playing since WWII, as they’re simultaneously doing their best to undermine the US dollar as the global reserve currency.
Your comment appears to be very controversial judging by the votes.
That’s because it’s batshit crazy. Off to the right start, but no, the CIA is not secretly undermining the US for the benefit of China, wtf
That’s not what my comment is saying.
You think that the CIA pretends to be an international aid organization for the sake of advancing the interests of checks notes… China? The 3-letter agency that has spent decades building and maintaining American hegemony is now serving that same purpose for a rival nation? And the people that have also spent decades building for this moment to take over the federal government entirely… want to now give their power away? … what?
The first two statements are describing USAid and the last sentence is a sarcastic remark, indicating taking it down is working in Chinas best interest. Thats how it reads to me.
Here’s an article that casually lays out the ties.
As for USAID helping China, I don’t see how you could’ve read my comment like that. I’m saying defunding it helps China. One of the roles of the organisation is providing aid to friendly countries. If that stops, the countries will stop being friendly and will look for other countries to provide aid. It looks like someone deleted my comment, but I thought I was pretty clear about that.
There’s a lot of taking anti-western government’s word at face value with no modern evidence in that article. The Cuba thing is well documented, in fact it’s documented well enough that it looks like it was an unsanctioned operation that got shut down when the higher ups learned about it. Everything modern after that relies on the reader nodding along with the Cuba stuff as evidence for all of the unrelated stuff after it.
That’s a pretty manipulative form of writing and it immediately makes me think there’s no actual evidence for those other allegations.
I’m guessing for all their talk about hating China, they’re really keen on China taking on the role the US has been playing since WWII, as they’re simultaneously doing their best to undermine the US dollar as the global reserve currency.
I’m genuinely having trouble understanding your comment then.
Who is “they” in the quote above?
The Trump admin, who just stopped funding USAID. They are seperate from what has historically been the foreign policy consensus. Whether intentionally or due to incompetence, that’s going to be the effect of their actions.
How does this have 36 votes? It’s ridiculous.
Why do you think they would be keen to release power to China? Economics?
Because trump views ties as weakness. He thinks isolationism is strength. The exact opposite is true - our ties and treaties, both hard and soft power - have ensured American strength for a century.
Trump is going to set all that ablaze because he can’t think further than his own experience: fuck everyone else to get ahead.
Maybe too stupid to realise that they’re doing that.
I think they are taking bribes
They’re not doing it on purpose. The people currently making these decisions do not understand the government, what it does, why it is powerful, where the money comes from, etc. It’s like someone stripping the copper wiring out of their own house.
Yeah, that could be it. It’s highly irrational to me, and only a pathological greed combined with a complete lack of understanding that money without a functioning society means jack shit. Yes, you’ll be rich, but you built a society where you’ll need to fly in a helicopter between your properties over slums.
This may be the best description of the Trump presidencies I’ve ever read.
Trump is keen on doing it because he’s being told to do it by the people who control him.
Russia and China are allies and in BRICKS. Russia paid for Trump to get elected twice.
I don’t know, the American Empire basically exists to serve billionaires like him, I don’t see how a Chinese takeover would serve them, as they just disappear billionaires if they don’t get in line.
I guess they just want to turn the USA into what Russia is now, but even there you really don’t want to get on Putin’s bad side or you lose everything. It’s honestly very irrational IMHO, as the US has the right mix of opportunity and lack of any personal risk for the wealthy. They want to turn the US into a crime ridden shithole where they’re beholden to the whims of Trump or whomever follows him.
Each of them personally wants to be Putin and cannot comprehend the idea that they won’t be at the top of the pile when the ashes fall.
State Department regime change operationan aid organization.
Wow, I guess I better get used to a ton of USA events and news per day for the next years.
Probably not. Sooner rather than later most free press will be shut down by trump and the only news that anyone will get is whatever there government wants you to hear. Stories like this will disappear.
Nah the free press like the billionaires and everyone else who wants to stay in business will lick Trump’s balls.
That’s already the case.
Do you remember every single mainstream outlet falling in line to promote the Iraq war? To blackout the antiwar protests? Going to Occupy Wallstreet and interviewing random weirdos instead of the organizer’s designated press people? The coverage of Ukraine? The coverage of Israel?
I think you vastly overestimate how organized the Trump admin is. I’m sure they will try, though.
Don’t you think that’s a bit of a hysterical take?
Stories like this one, someone noticing that a website has been taken down, will disappear??
It’s hardly the peak of investigative journalism or a complicated story requiring hundreds of hours of work by a trained journalist.
Hysterical as in funny? It’s already happening.
https://www.commondreams.org/news/fcc-investigation
If you cut off a story before it’s printed, you never even have to take it down.
No, I mean hysterical as in overly exaggerated due to high emotion.
Well, you’re just wrong on that front given the examples shown
The examples given are about Trump limiting access for news agencies to the government, and trying to bully big news orgs. How would those things prevent someone writing a story about a public website disappearing?
Don’t get me wrong, what he’s doing is bad for press freedom and will have a chilling effect on the more complicated stories that need more journalistic input and explanation to gain traction and public understanding, but as I said “this kind of story” isn’t exactly complicated and saying “stories like this will disappear” is just not realistic.
I’m pretty sure by “stories like this” they’re referring to ones that highlight the activities of the Trump administration, not literally stories about websites going down (if that’s a mischaracterization of what you’re saying, I apologize, but I’m not sure what your meaning was if not that)
You seriously wrote that first paragraph and can’t see what the other person is saying?
Have you watched the news in the US in the time period since the original post? Has any news media even mentioned this? A post on mastodon is great. I would venture that 99% of the population from the US doesn’t use Mastodon, tho I don’t really know for sure the numbers . Of the percentage that do, how many are going to see this person’s post?
It keeps burning the wick at this rate and you’ll only have to deal with it for months
It is far easier to knock something down than to bring something up.
Life is an anthology of destruction. Everything you build eventually breaks. Everyone you love will die. Any sense of order or stability inevitably crumbles. The entire universe follows a dismal trek toward a dull state of ultimate turmoil.
https://www.quantamagazine.org/what-is-entropy-a-measure-of-just-how-little-we-really-know-20241213/
From barbarism to civilization requires a century; from civilization to barbarism needs but a day.
Will Durant
lmao Trump accidentally defunding US soft power. Who is going to pay the CIA to train torturers and traffic drugs now?
Got anything more recent than 50 years ago?
There’s that time they tried to do a counter-revolution in Cuba in 2016, the whole using a USAID-administered vaccination program to find Osama Bin Laden, causing a backlash against vaccines, that time the USAID pier in Gaza had a humanitarian aid truck filled with Israeli soldiers proceed to kill nearly 300 people, with air support.
Alright so hold on, USAID is not equipped to stop the Israeli military. So that’s right out. And the vaccination ruse was a CIA operation.
It is interesting to see that USAID has an office meant to react to rapidly changing political situations. But there are several things about the Cuban Internet story. First, obviously it’s not torture and similar stupid stuff. Second, from the article it looks like it was never properly authorized and was beyond what USAID is meant to do.
The point I was illustrating is that USAID is and always was a tool of the CIA.
USAID is absolutely equipped to tell the Israeli military “We’re not going to give you one of our trucks and a landing pad for a blackhawk at our pier”.
How are they equipped to do that? Are you going to stand there in the way of an army with your clipboard?
And I’m sorry but Internet access and social media doesn’t evoke scary secret agent the way you’re trying to use it. At best it’s the furthest extent of soft power, which is USAID’s purpose. At worst it’s an unsanctioned covert program that got shut down and swept under the rug.
Yes, they are equipped to not hand over their resources. They’re also equipped to not lie and cover it up afterwords.
Okay so a few things here. USAID wasn’t even on that side of the delivery system, that was WFP. Far from covering it up, the raid was headline news and is covered in an OIG report on the pier. Finally, USAID is not a military organization. If a military unit lands near them and demands a truck they are going to hand it over. They do not possess weapons or training. This entire line of argument is ridiculous.
Wow, you really shot yourself in the foot there
The entire Western world maintains that he won that election. So we’re going to disagree on that right away. Then if you read what it was for it’s literally aid funds not weapons or such. Then it’s not even flowing through Guaido, but local NGOs instead.
You may want to read the articles you use as sources before using them.
Oh, you’re a neoliberal, that explains a lot. I guess you wont care about any actions that override another countries Democratic process when its funneled through NGOs or provides America a strategic advantage.
Condescending conservatives who are naive enough to take the most milquetoast yahoo news explanation at face value are not going to be worth discussion, because yalls politics actually align with USAids mission plan.
Wow that’s quite a leap. You’re the one who brought a Yahoo news article to the discussion. Now it’s not to be trusted? So bring one you do trust. And the entire point is that we are trying to respect the democratic process in Venezuela. Saying I have the army so I win is not a democratic process.
Is it an accident?
Trump (and specifically, the heritage foundation) believe in isolationism. Alienating its geopolitical and geographical neighbors serves that purpose. Think of it as the groundwork for a full North Korea style break from non-state controlled culture.
In 2016, Trump’s issue with Libya was that we didn’t send troops in to steal their oil, and then make a deal with whatever faction was willing to sell us the oil cheaply. Same with Iraq. You’re are wildly overestimating his moral character if you think he is trying to dismantle the american empire.
Really silly question tbh. Trafficking drugs pays for itself and the torture. The CIA may be the only government agency making a net profit.
