If one concedes that the intention of USAID is more than former Under Secretary Nuland handing out bread in Ukraine to save the starving, and more a front for the CIA, one will understand the enormity of the following story. We read that Politico, Bill Kristol and soon to be revealed many other media types are on the payroll of USAID. They would prefer to say they are receiving “Grants.” Now, buried in the Columbia Journalism Review, we find that was just the beginning of the revelation.
After a long winded diatribe of the nasty effects that Musk and Trump are unleashing on the world, we find buried in a story written by Jon Allsop. Here it is:
Columbia Journalism Review:
Journalists have been among those affected: according to Reporters Without Borders (RSF), the aid freeze appears to have put a hold on $268 million that was earmarked to fund “independent media and the free flow of information” this year. In the recent past, USAID had boasted of supporting more than six thousand journalists, around seven hundred independent newsrooms, and nearly three hundred media-focused civil society groups in thirty or so countries—and yet, RSF notes, the full impact of the freeze is hard to measure, since many recipients are “hesitant to draw attention for fear of coming under political attacks.
News outlets that have been exiled from Iran and Belarus did tell RSF, under the cover of anonymity, that the freeze has forced them to take drastic measures just to survive, while DataCameroon, an investigative site, said that it had to suspend projects linked to journalist safety and upcoming elections in the country. RSF also noted the harsh effect on journalism in Ukraine, where 90 percent of news organizations rely on USAID funding, some very heavily; writing last week, Olga Rudenko, the editor in chief of the Kyiv Independent (which has received USAID grants in the past but doesn’t currently), claimed that the freeze “has caused harm to independent Ukrainian journalism on par with the COVID-19 pandemic and the onset of Russia’s full-scale war,” and could soon surpass both in severity if not reversed.
There have been reports, too, of concrete effects on journalism from Moldova, Cambodia, and Myanmar; writing in the Indian publication Scroll, Nandita Haksar, the coauthor of a new book on the prominent Burmese newsroom Mizzima, reported that the freeze has plunged that outlet into uncertainty exactly four years on from a brutal coup that forced Myanmar’s independent media into exile or underground.
USAID’s website has been offline since Saturday, but a surviving post under the agency’s profile on Medium, from around a year ago, is telling of its approach toward funding journalism overseas. The article states that “supporting independent media has been part of USAID’s democracy and governance assistance efforts since the 1980s” and that the US government “is now the largest public donor to independent media development globally,” above a graphic featuring a quote from President Biden describing press freedom as “the bedrock of democracy” and an outline of recent initiatives aimed not only at steering grants to journalists around the world, but also at helping them sustain themselves commercially and defending them against nuisance lawsuits.
By now you have the drift. The closing paragraph sums up this dirty business:
Ultimately, much of the work that USAID and other donors have supported would simply cease without it, in countries where commercial revenue streams for journalism are restricted by war, authoritarianism, or simple market forces.
Well worth reading the whole thing here.
Now the deep state responds. Rallies are being organized, and soon we shall see demonstrations everywhere. For USAID is the biggest rock to be turned over, and Musk will find all the bodies literally that have been buried. It must be stopped.
See Bunks earlier post for background.
USAID a Front for the CIA and Regime Change
Accused of being involved in regime changes, a front for CIA operatives. It is opined that they took their bag of tricks and turned it inward on Americans, funding NGO’s, and organizations such as the Tides Foundation that took it upon themselves to take out Trump.
The best of the swamp.
BUNKERVILLE | God, Guns and Guts Comrades! 