seen from United States
seen from United States
seen from Germany
seen from China
seen from China
seen from United States
seen from China
seen from United States
seen from China
seen from Australia
seen from China
seen from Malaysia
seen from Malaysia
seen from Malaysia
seen from Philippines
seen from China
seen from Netherlands
seen from Malaysia
seen from Malaysia
seen from France
There is no “anti imperialist” case for defunding USAID if you actually understand imperialism, which is what is primarily at fault for the dire poverty and lack of health infrastructure in many former colonies around the world. USAID and similar programs (in the U.S. and other imperial powers) are essentially a form of reparations.*
I am guessing some of this is rooted in reasonable critiques of like, other kinds of Western charity "voluntourism" that sweep in and help people for a few weeks or months and then leave nothing behind to keep those programs going. But that stuff is fundamentally different from what USAID and similar government aid programs do, much of which involves not just handing out vaccines and medicine but also building lasting health infrastructure in those countries. The fact that organizations like Partners in Health that are specifically devoted to building things like medical schools, state-of-the-art hospitals, and other institutions devoted to ensuring poorer countries will one day no longer require foreign aid, are strong supporters of those countries giving that aid now and opponents of the DOGE cuts, should prove that to you.
Also, how is it not "imposing your Western values" on another country if you say "you may want vaccines, but we're not going to give it to you because it looks bad and imperialist for us to do that? because it flatters my belief that America is evil?" How is that not rooted in a worldview that sees poor and sick people in other countries as not fellow human beings who want to live, but as political symbols? How is the mentality behind that not the very essence of imperialist ideology?
*update for the reading comprehension lacking: obviously I don’t mean this literally in the sense of being the reason why groups like USAID exist — of course it originated as a form of soft power, designed to improve the US’s standing abroad. But the effect of these programs as they are practiced in 2025 is reparative, for all the reasons previously stated. There’s nothing so far in the notes that disputes this (the one that seems to is contradicted by their own sources, lol, which reveal the info they’re conveniently leaving out to further their particular narrative) and plenty from people actually involved with aid that backs it up — because there just isn’t any coherent anti imperialism that is okay with millions of people in imperialized countries dying of preventable diseases. You don’t actually care about them if you think they are that disposable. No amount of buzzwords can bring them back.
A journey through the front lines of global poverty shows that when the world’s richest men slash aid for the world’s poorest children, the
Peter Donde was a 10-year-old infected with H.I.V. from his mother during childbirth. But American aid kept Peter strong even as his parents died from AIDS. A program started by President George W. Bush called PEPFAR saved 26 million lives from AIDS, and one was Peter’s.
Under PEPFAR, an outreach health worker ensured that Peter and other AIDS orphans got their medicines. Then in January, Trump and Musk effectively shuttered the U.S. Agency for International Development, perhaps illegally, and that PEPFAR outreach program ended. Orphans were on their own.
Without the help of the community health worker, Peter was unable to get his medicines, so he became sick and died in late February, according to Moses Okeny Labani, a health outreach worker who helped manage care for Peter and 144 other vulnerable children.
fuck everyone who voted for Trump, and particularly fuck everyone who said it didn't matter who won, who said there was some higher point to prove by having Democrats lose, fuck everything, this ocean of blood and human suffering is all your fault and it a far and just universe you would all burn in hell for it.
And now the media’s afraid of Elon and Vivek cutting all this spending. Why? They’ll lose kickbacks.
Why is the US finding any country other than the US?
Foreign Aid = Money Laundering 101
This is really what they fear. Just where has the money been going? Only about 1/3 ever reached Ukraine. Where’s the money?
Trump's complete cut off of foreign aid last year increased armed conflict in Africa, and probably in other parts of the world as well.
"Aiding Peace or Conflict? The Impact of USAID Cuts on Violence," D. Rohner, et. al. Science 392.6799. May 14, 2026:
We tested whether the abrupt shutdown of USAID led to increased conflict in the regions of Africa that had historically received the most support. Using geocoded data on USAID disbursements merged with detailed records of violent events, we applied a difference-in-differences design that compared conflict outcomes in subnational regions 10 months before and after the January 2025 shutdown, and between regions with varying levels of historical USAID exposure (disbursements in 2017 to 2020)... Regions that had received more aid per capita experienced relatively more conflict after the shutdown. In regions at the 75th percentile of exposure to aid from the United States, the withdrawal of USAID was associated with an approximately 6.5% greater probability of any conflict event as compared with that of regions with no aid from the United States. The probability of protests and riots was 10% greater, the number of conflict events increased by 10.6%, battle counts increased by 6.9%, and battle-related fatalities increased by 9.3%. Event-study analysis confirmed no preexisting differences in conflict trends between high- and low-exposure regions before the shutdown. Effects are of similar size, with a 12.3% relative increase in the number of conflict events. The effects also persist over time. Protests and riots responded immediately, whereas the effects on battles intensified over subsequent months. In addition, the effects of the aid withdrawal were substantially mitigated in countries with stronger, more inclusive political institutions... The abrupt withdrawal of USAID led to a significant and sustained increase in conflict across Africa’s most USAID-dependent regions. The findings demonstrate that large-scale, sudden aid cuts can destabilize fragile settings. A core mechanism that can explain this result is that the economic opportunity costs of violence drop faster than the rents over which groups compete. The mitigating role of inclusive institutions highlights the persistent vulnerability of regions with weak governance to humanitarian and economic shocks. These results have implications for the design and timing of changes in international aid.
Federal workers warned for months that the high-energy biscuits would go to waste.
Five months into its unprecedented dismantling of foreign-aid programs, the Trump administration has given the order to incinerate food instead of sending it to people abroad who need it. Nearly 500 metric tons of emergency food—enough to feed about 1.5 million children for a week—are set to expire tomorrow, according to current and former government employees with direct knowledge of the rations. Within weeks, two of those sources told me, the food, meant for children in Afghanistan and Pakistan, will be ash. (The sources I spoke with for this story requested anonymity for fear of professional repercussions.)
Sometime near the end of the Biden administration, USAID spent about $800,000 on the high-energy biscuits, one current and one former employee at the agency told me. The biscuits, which cram in the nutritional needs of a child under 5, are a stopgap measure, often used in scenarios where people have lost their homes in a natural disaster or fled a war faster than aid groups could set up a kitchen to receive them. They were stored in a Dubai warehouse and intended to go to the children this year.
Since January, when the Trump administration issued an executive order that halted virtually all American foreign assistance, federal workers have sent the new political leaders of USAID repeated requests to ship the biscuits while they were useful, according to the two USAID employees. USAID bought the biscuits intending to have the World Food Programme distribute them, and under previous circumstances, career staff could have handed off the biscuits to the United Nations agency on their own. But since Elon Musk’s Department of Government Efficiency disbanded USAID and the State Department subsumed the agency, no money or aid items can move without the approval of the new heads of American foreign assistance, several current and former USAID employees told me. From January to mid-April, the responsibility rested with Pete Marocco, who worked across multiple agencies during the first Trump administration; then it passed to Jeremy Lewin, a law-school graduate in his 20s who was originally installed by DOGE and now has appointments at both USAID and State. Two of the USAID employees told me that staffers who sent the memos requesting approval to move the food never got a response and did not know whether Marocco or Lewin ever received them. (The State Department did not answer my questions about why the food was never distributed.)
