President Trump explains why he will not sign the “Covid relief” bill passed by Congress on Monday (December 21, 2020).

He rightly objects that it has very little to do with “Covid relief”. While it lavishes dollars on foreign countries and absurd esoteric causes, it grants a mere pittance to suffering Americans:

The Democratic majority in the House of Representatives is guilty of abuse of power and conspiracy to overthrow a duly elected president.

We quote from an article (well worth reading in full) by Michael Anton at the Claremont Review.

People capable of feeling shame would not have immediately followed up the Russiagate hoax fiasco with another transparently phony—and in “substance” nearly identical—attempt to remove President Trump from office, overturn the 2016 election, and shower deplorable-Americans with contempt and hatred. But our ruling elites have no shame. …

The Democrats, the corporate-Left media (CLM), the permanent bureaucracy or “administrative state”,and the “deep state” (which is not precisely the same thing), along with a few Republicans, have “publicly voiced” many causes for removing the president—a few specific but most maddeningly, yet safely, vague.

From the beginning—that is to say, from November 9, 2016—impeachment has been a cause in search of a trigger, an occasion. The president’s enemies hoped they’d finally hit pay dirt when an anonymous “whistleblower” alleged that the president made, or attempted to make, foreign aid to Ukraine contingent on that country’s government investigating his likely 2020 challenger. Or, in other words, that Trump attempted to “collude” with a foreign power to influence an American election. …

If we are to take the current “publicly voiced” cause at face value, then we may say that the entire Washington establishment, plus most of the country’s elites, are trying to remove the president from office on the basis of an anonymous individual’s private opinion of the content of one phone call he heard about second or possibly even thirdhand. A phone call, let’s remember, of which we have extensive notes that almost, but not quite, constitute a transcript—in other words, whose content everyone in the country can examine for himself.

That the “telcon” (national security geekspeak for what people are calling the “transcript”) does not support the “publicly voiced” cause is made plain by two facts. First, you can read it yourself and see that it doesn’t say what it is alleged to say. Second, if it did say what the president’s enemies want it to say, they could just quote it verbatim, which they never do, instead of deliberately mischaracterizing it, which they always do.

Only two substantive points make the phone call at all interesting. First, President Trump very plainly wants to get to the bottom of the entire, still-obscure “election-meddling” story of 2016. That includes not just “deep state” attempts to prevent his election and to set him up for removal should the first effort fail, but also allegations of Russian hacking against American targets, including the Democratic National Committee. It appears—and the Justice Department apparently agrees—that some actors within Ukraine may have had something to do with some of this, possibly colluding … with a shady, Democrat-linked tech firm called CrowdStrike, though we as yet know nothing like the full story. Trump wants to know and asked the Ukrainian president for his help in finding out. …

The second question President Trump asked the Ukrainian president is another “publicly voiced” cause to seek his removal. That question regarded a specific instance of a well-known Washington-insider phenomenon. It is a measure of how insouciantly our elites accept and even welcome the immense corruption of our government that they raise not a single eyebrow at the phenomenon that underlay the president’s question: exactly how is it that well-connected Americans with no particular or relevant skill sets can “earn” enormous sums of money for doing, essentially, nothing? …

The “specific instance” was to do with Hunter Biden being paid an enormous sum for doing nothing but getting his dad, Obama’s Vice-President Joe Biden, to threaten to withhold funds in aid to Ukraine if its government didn’t stop investigating corruption in the firm that was … well, to put it bluntly, bribing Hunter. Joe Biden did as he was asked. President Trump wanted to have the matter investigated and said so in the phone call to a new Ukrainian leader.

Understand this plainly: Trump may well be impeached, ostensibly, for asking about this corrupt arrangement. But no one is ever impeached for engaging in it. Nor can our elites, who almost all benefit from this system one way or another, muster the integrity to do, or even say, anything against it.

Though currently central to the “publicly voiced” case, this charge is not the only one levelled [against President Trump in connection with the phone call]. It is also insinuated that the administration somehow acted improperly by not making the telcon available within the government to a wide enough range of bureaucrats. But that’s preposterous.

Such documents are inherently products of the executive branch. They may be shown to, or withheld from, absolutely anyone the president and his senior staff want. To argue anything else is to presuppose that bureaucrats whom the president doesn’t know and likely will never see somehow are entitled—have a “right”—to review anything and everything they wish. Does this sound reasonable to anyone not out to get Trump? Would you run your business this way? Or would you try to limit information—especially sensitive information—on a “need-to-know” basis? Formally, the U.S. government insists that it operates according to the latter principle, but in reality, everyone in Washington believes himself so important that he becomes indignant when not allowed to see what he believes by right he ought to see.

Then ask yourself: assuming the president and his team did try to limit access to this or other documents, why would they do that? Perhaps to prevent illegal and damaging leaks? What could possibly give rise to that concern? I dunno—maybe because this has been, and continues to be, the most leaked-against White House and administration in the history of the United States government?

When one thinks for a second about the impact this particular document has already had—the president may well be impeached over it, on the say-so of precisely such a bureaucrat from whom his team allegedly tried, but evidently failed, to withhold it—can one blame Trump or his team for trying to limit the dissemination of internal documents? A saner response is to wish they had restricted the circle even more. The detail, alleged in the press, that the “whistleblower” (more on him below) heard it from a friend who heard it from a friend, etc., does not, to say the least, suggest any kind of cover-up. …

[But] “cover-up” is the latest “publicly voiced” charge. A member of the National Security Council staff  [Lt.-Col. Vindman] alleges that he attempted to include language in the telcon that others insisted on excluding. This is held to be a very serious charge.

Here’s what they’re not telling you. The document, as noted, is not a transcript; there’s no stenographer on the line and such calls are not recorded. Several people, however, will be listening and taking notes for the express purpose of creating the telcon. These will include duty officers in the White House Situation Room, who are not necessarily—and are not expected to be—experts on the country being called; rather, they are covering the call simply because it takes place during their shifts. These duty officers, with the aid of impressive but not infallible voice recognition software, prepare a first draft of the telcon. Since neither the voice recognition software nor human notetakers can catch every word perfectly, sometimes “Inaudible” appears in brackets. But ellipses—about which much is currently being made—represent not omissions but natural pauses in the conversation. This is before we even get into the thorny issues raised by sequential translation, which is necessary for most foreign leader calls.

After the first draft of the telcon is prepared, the duty officer hands it over to the National Security Council’s (NSC’s) executive secretary (ExecSec), the office responsible for all NSC paper flow and records management (among other things). ExecSec then routes the telcon to specific individuals, whom the national security advisor has personally authorized to review it, for their “chop” or edits. The person responsible for shepherding the document through this phase of the process is the “country director”, the NSC staffer who coordinates policy and handles documents with respect to a given country or countries. The country director will, in almost all cases, have been listening to the call. He will check the draft telcon against his notes and make corrections, even as others cross-check against their own notes. These will include the relevant senior director (the country director’s boss) and others, up to and including the national security advisor.

The key takeaway here is that the country director is the not highest or final authority on the content of the call. He’s one person who heard it; others may have heard it or parts of it differently. And the country director does not have the final say over what the telcon says. He works in a chain of command and has superiors. His senior director—who presumably was also on the call—can overrule him. If other “equities” such as classification or legal issues are affected, the senior director for intelligence programs and the legal advisor can as well. Ultimately the final say falls to the national security advisor—who, in almost all cases, would also have been listening to the call.

The person alleging a cover-up, Lieutenant Colonel Andrew Vindman, was, at the time, the country director for Ukraine. But the way he’s being presented—and has presented himself—is meant to convey a much grander impression. No less than the “whistleblower”, he is being sold as a patriotic, dedicated, impartial, non-partisan, career officer simply standing up for what’s right. …

But he is also, unquestionably, a mid-level officer in the U.S. Army working a mid-level staff job at the National Security Council, i.e., someone who as such has no standing even to serve as the final arbiter of a telcon, much less make policy or remove a president.

We actually don’t know what language the country director was prevented from including in the telcon, but we do know … that “the phrases do not fundamentally change lawmakers’ understanding of the call”. …

At least the country director [Vindman] was actually in the NSC chain of command and so had some standing to weigh in on the issue. This cannot be said of the so-called “whistleblower”, who of course is nothing of the sort—not as defined by law nor in any commonsense understanding. As to the former, the statute is clear: officials qualify for legal protection if they blow the whistle on activities within their own organizations and relevant to those organizations’ official duties. There is no possible way to interpret this particular “whistle” as consistent with that standard. By definition, the president’s phone call was not conducted under the auspices of the “whistleblower’s” “home agency” (reportedly the CIA) nor did it have anything to do with intelligence matters. …

The “whistleblower” reportedly wasn’t on the call and never saw the telcon. Given that several—probably at least a dozen—others were and did, why didn’t one of them lodge a complaint? One—our country director—did complain to the NSC’s top lawyer, who could find no wrongdoing. The others? Nothing. Is it possible most of them also saw no wrongdoing? …

But then the question arises: complain to whom? Neither the NSC nor its parent organization, the Executive Office of the President (EOP), have a formal whistleblower process. If one wishes to make a complaint, one has five options: complain within your chain of command, complain to the lawyers, complain to the White House chief of staff, complain to Congress, or complain to the press. Even our country director declined four of these five avenues, and all the others apparently declined them all. Why? Perhaps someone calculated that the optics would be better—more “disinterested,” less nakedly political—if the complaint came from somewhere else, a “patriotic career civil servant just doing his job”. …

The “whistleblower” was just a tool, witting or not (I’m betting on the former) to get something new going after the ignominious collapse of Russiagate. His usefulness over—indeed, his presence in the drama now counterproductive—we are instructed to forget he ever existed. …

It was a dirty plot. How did it begin? Who leaked (inaccurate) information about the phone call to “a friend” who leaked it to “a friend” who leaked it to his friend the “whistleblower”. Or was that not really how the “whistleblower” came to know about it?

Vindman, the “country director”, is the obvious suspect for the original leak: “One [who was on the call] —our country director—did complain to the NSC’s top lawyer, who could find no wrongdoing.”

Did Vindman then report the call to Adam Schiff? (Had Schiff asked him to report anything he could use against the President? Very possibly.)

If so, Schiff would need to account for the leak reaching him, and Vindman would certainly not let himself be named as the leaker. A stooge had to be found to take on the role of the leaker  a “whistleblower”.  Someone who would be “good for the optics”.

Did Schiff consult with Biden, and did Biden suggest Eric Ciaramella – who has been named on social media as the “whistleblower” – be employed in that role? Or did Vindman suggest him?

Who is Eric Ciaramella?

The Washington Examiner reports:

[Eric] Ciaramella is a career CIA analyst and was the Ukraine director on the NSC from 2016 until the summer of 2017. In October 2016, he was [Joe] Biden’s guest at a State Department banquet. …

Ciaramella could be told to say that he had heard about the call “from a friend who had heard about it from a friend” and had been shocked and appalled by what he heard.

But there would be no obvious reason why he would take his complaint to Adam Schiff. A plausible explanation for Schiff finding out about it had to be invented. 

Well, what if there happened to be someone on Schiff’s staff who knew Eric Ciaramella? 

There wasn’t, but that was a lack easily remedied.

The alleged whistleblower filed an Aug. 12 complaint with the Intelligence Community inspector general about the July 25 phone conversation between Trump and Zelensky …

 … which he “had heard about from a friend who had heard about it from a friend” …

… after meeting with a House Intelligence Committee aide on Schiff’s staff about the call …

Hey presto! Suddenly there was someone on Schiff’s staff to whom Ciaramella might reasonably confide his outrage. Who was this “aide on Schiff’s staff”?

Sean Misko, who [had] worked with alleged Ukraine whistleblower Eric Ciaramella at the NSC during the Obama and Trump administrations”, was hired by Schiff [on July 26] the day after the phone call between President Trump and Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky.

Both Ciaramella and Misko started their tenures during the Obama administration and left during the first year of the Trump administration. The Washington Examiner was told by a former senior White House official that both had a close, “bro-like” relationship while working at the NSC together.

Smell a rat? There’s a whole stinking nest of them.

Michael Anton again:

The worst charge thus far alleged against President Trump is that he attempted to make $400 million in aid to Ukraine contingent on that country’s government investigating possible corruption by the Bidens. This is the much hoped for “smoking gun,” the “quid pro quo”—as if the foreign policy of any country in history has ever been borne aloft on the gentle vapors of pure altruism. …

I don’t see it. Especially since a) no aid was actually withheld; b) no investigation was actually launched; c) the American people don’t care about Ukraine and would probably prefer to get their $400 million back; and d) they would inevitably ask: so were, in fact, Joe Biden and his son on the take from a foreign government? And if it looks like they might have been, why, exactly, was it improper for the president to ask about it?

Trump’s enemies’ answer to the last question is: because the president was asking a foreign government to investigate a political opponent for purely personal gain. Really? Is potential corruption by a former vice president—and potential future president—and his family a purely private matter, of no conceivable import or interest to the public affairs of the United States? That’s what you have to insist on to maintain that the request was improper. That’s the line we can expect the Democrat-CLM axis to flog, shamelessly and aggressively. But will a majority of Americans buy it? Especially since career officials at the Department of Justice already determined, and anti-Trump witnesses appearing before Representative Adam Schiff’s secret star chamber reluctantly conceded, that nothing Trump did or is alleged to have done was technically, you know, illegal.

And besides all that, aren’t all relations between nation-states conducted on the perpetual understanding of quid pro quo? Isn’t quid pro quo what all diplomacy is about: the exchange of envoys; the setting up of embassies and consulates; treaties? Isn’t even the giving of aid done in wistful hope for some reward (such as a supportive vote in the UN)? What is trade between countries – or, come to that, what is all trade – but a system of quid quo pro?

A system of honest, open, mutually beneficial quid pro quo is what international trade needs to be. And President Trump is working to make it so. Part of that effort may involve asking the more trustworthy leaders of foreign governments to investigate corruption, even if an American Democratic leader and his son get caught in the sweep.

They call it charity. And “saving the children”.

Virginia Hale reports at Breitbart:

“Poverty-stricken children in third world countries were gang-raped and paid for sex by staff working for foreign aid NGO” [British members of Parliament] have been told.

The International Development Committee heard how children revealed a decade ago that they were abused by men at peacekeeping camps while their families reported being powerless to act.

Corinna Csáky, a child development consultant who investigated claims of child abuse carried out by humanitarian staff and peacekeepers in 2008 for Save the Children, said both local and international aid workers were involved in the sexual exploitation of children.

MPs investigating exploitation in the charity sector were told how the research found perpetrators preyed on the most vulnerable, with victims often existing “outside the system” — not on any register for schooling, humanitarian aid nor other services.

“These children are often alone. They are separated from their families. …

How? Why?

“… They are living in extreme poverty. Without the protection and support from families, many are using transaction sex just to survive,” Csáky said.

Sharing testimony from the research, for which she interviewed victims from Haiti, South Sudan and the Ivory Coast, she reported a father lamenting that aid workers who abused children “don’t even hide what they are doing”. MPs heard from the report, entitled ‘No One To Turn To’, how a homeless girl in Haiti was taken “to a man who works for an NGO” by a “group of people who decided to make money off of her”.

“He gave her one American dollar and the little girl was happy to see the money,” according to a young whistleblower. “It was two in the morning. The man took her and raped her. In the morning the little girl could not walk.”

Testimony given at the committee also included evidence from a 14 year-old boy who had described how he and his peers went to work [?] at the peacekeeping camp in order to “earn money to help support our families”. “Sometimes they ask us to find girls. Sometimes they ask us to find girls, especially our age. Often between eight and 10 men will share two or three girls. They also use their mobile phones to film the girls,” the boy disclosed.

A young girl in Haiti had stated that “the people who are raping us and the people in the office are the same people”, Ms Csáky said, telling the committee that the majority of abuse goes unreported because victims are “scared of retaliation”.

Save the Children, which was last year accused of working with criminal gangs smuggling migrants into Europe, has been under serious scrutiny amidst allegations that the pro-open borders NGO failed to properly investigate claims of sexual misconduct by staff including former chief executive Justin Forsyth and former policy director Brendan Cox  …

Having withdrawn from government funding bids as a result of the controversy, the organization has announced that it expects income this year to plummet by more than £67 million.

Give it a dollar. Then let it die.

For more about the corruption and criminality of professional philanthropists, see our post, Charity: a weapon of mass destruction (February 15, 2018). It relates that …

Personnel from Doctors Without Borders have been sexually exploiting the most vulnerable people, including children, in the poorest and frailest societies they go to “help”.

And how …

The UN killed hundreds of thousands in Haiti, and the Clintons found a way to grow richer out of both the natural and the man-made disasters.

The international charities would do the world a favor by dying.

Stop all foreign aid. Let there be strong borders.

And of course –

The UN must be destroyed!

Why?

The answer according to the US Ambassador to the UN, Nikki Haley, is in order (at least partly) to ensure the recipients’ supporting votes in that assembly.

But how’s that working out?

From Breitbart:

The U.S. State Department has released a report on the voting behavior of other countries at the United Nations — and has identified the top ten best and worst countries in terms of voting for or against the U.S., respectively.

The April 26 report, Voting Practices in the United Nations 2017, was prepared after the Trump administration made clear it would consider cutting aid to countries that voted against the U.S. in UN institutions. That warning came after the UN General Assembly voted 128 to 9 (with 35 abstentions) last December to oppose President Donald Trump’s decision to relocate the U.S. embassy in Israel from Tel Aviv to the capital city of Jerusalem.

“They take hundreds of millions of dollars and even billions of dollars, and then they vote against us. Well, we’re watching those votes. Let them vote against us. We’ll save a lot. We don’t care,” the president said.

His warning was reiterated by UN Ambassador Nikki Haley, who said after the vote: “We will remember it when we are called upon to once again make the world’s largest contribution to the United Nations and we will remember it when so many countries come calling on us, as they so often do, to pay even more and to use our influence for their benefit.”

The report on UN votes is prepared annually, but has additional significance this year due to those warnings.

In 2017, the best U.S. ally at the UN was Israel, and the worst U.S. enemy at the UN was Zimbabwe.

The report also notes the best ten: “The 10 countries with the highest voting coincidence with the United States were, in descending order: Israel, Micronesia, Canada, Marshall Islands, Australia, United Kingdom, France, Palau, Ukraine, and the Czech Republic.”

It also notes the worst ten: The 10 countries with the lowest voting coincidence with the United States were, in ascending order: Zimbabwe, Burundi, Iran, Syria, Venezuela, North Korea, Turkmenistan, Cuba, Bolivia, and South Africa.”

According to the USAID website, the latter countries received the following amounts of U.S. aid, across all agencies, in fiscal year 2016 (the last year for which full records are available, rounded to the nearest million):

• Zimbabwe: $261 million
• Burundi: $75 million
• Iran: $3 million
• Syria: $916 million
• Venezuela: $9 million
• North Korea: $0
• Turkmenistan: $3 million
• Cuba: $16 million
• Bolivia: $1 million
• South Africa: $597 million

The total was close to $2 billion.

Haley said last week, upon release of the report: “This is not an acceptable return on our investment. When we arrived at the UN last year, we said we would be taking names, and this list of voting records speaks for itself. President Trump wants to ensure that our foreign assistance dollars – the most generous in the world – always serve American interests, and we look forward to helping him see that the American people are no longer taken for granted.”

Of the ten countries voting least often with the U.S., South Africa may already be feeling the consequences.

On Monday, South Africa learned that the U.S. would not be exempting it from new steel tariffs. The South African government released a statement in protest against the U.S. decision: “South Africa is concerned by the unfairness of the measures and that it is one of the countries that are singled out as a contributor to US national security concerns when its exports of aluminium and steel products are not that significant.”

The there’s the $320 million a year that goes to Mexico, where it is funding “human right abuses”.

USAID, an “independent agency” of the US government, is the spigot.

From Wiki:

USAID’s programs are authorized by Congress in the Foreign Assistance Act which Congress supplements through directions in annual funding appropriation acts and other legislation. As an official component of U.S. foreign policy, USAID operates subject to the guidance of the President, Secretary of State, and the National Security Council.

But who are the actual decision makers? Almost certainly denizens of the Swamp: Obama appointees, Hillary Clinton voters, Muslim Brotherhood fans, Iran “deal” supporters, President Trump haters (crocodile-green with envy) …

Tax payers of the United States protest! You have a world to leave to its own follies, and nothing to lose but your exploitation.

What is it now, among myriad wrongs, that in particular needs protesting about?

Foreign aid.

Foreign aid always does more harm than good. It keeps tyrants in power. If any of it gets into the economy of the targeted country, it distorts the local markets. The only increased happiness it causes is in the minds of the donors themselves, the socialists in the deep state who feel generous and compassionate when they give away other people’s money.

And when the money goes to al-Qaeda … 

Well, to a state that fosters al-Qaeda …

… and to the arch-fiend of international politics, George Soros, to help him achieve his nefarious aims to abolish all borders and so destroy the nation-state, it is not just a misguided idea, it is evil in action. At present he is intent on undermining Hungary, and Macedonia (see below), and the United States itself.

That is what your tax dollars are doing, by the will of the State Department through USAID.

The U.S. Agency for International Development (USAID) is an independent agency of the U.S. Government that works closely with the State Department and receives overall foreign policy guidance from the Secretary of State. It has  an annual budget of $27 billion.

Judicial Watch reports:

The U.S. government keeps sending an Islamic nation that serves as an Al Qaeda breeding ground hundreds of millions of dollars in humanitarian aid. The cash — $768 million since October 2016 — flows through the famously corrupt U.S. Agency of International Development (USAID), which has a monstrous budget and little oversight. The money is reportedly helping to counter a humanitarian crisis in Yemen, the headquarters of Al Qaeda in the Arabian Peninsula (AQAP). In its Country Reports on Terrorism, the State Department reveals that AQAP militants carried out hundreds of attacks including suicide bombers, vehicle-borne improvised explosive devices (VBIEDs), ambushes, kidnappings and targeted assassinations. …

Dozens of terrorists freed from the U.S. military prison in Guantanamo Bay, Cuba, have joined Al Qaeda in Yemen. Among them is an Al Qaeda chief who masterminded a U.S. Embassy bombing after getting released … His name is Said Ali al-Shihri and after leaving Gitmo he became an Al Qaeda deputy chief in Yemen and he organized a deadly bombing of the United States Embassy in Yemen’s capital.The former captive was also involved in car bombings outside the American Embassy that killed 16 people. Remember that the convicted terrorist who planned to blow up an American passenger jet over Detroit on Christmas in 2009 trained in Yemen and the plot was organized by Al Qaeda leaders in the Middle Eastern Arab country. A recent study published by the RAND Corporation concludes that the most significant threat to the United States comes from terrorist groups operating in Yemen, Syria, Afghanistan and Pakistan.

So why does the U.S. government continue giving Yemen huge chunks of taxpayer dollars? Because it is “gravely concerned about a worsening humanitarian situation” in the Islamic nation, according to a statement issued this month by USAID. The document was released to announce a recent $130 million in “emergency food assistance to Yemen”.  The U.S. government has determined that “protracted conflict” has created the “world’s largest food security emergency” in Yemen as well as the “world’s worst cholera outbreak”.  More than 17 million people are at risk of severe hunger or starvation, according to the agency. …

USAID is well known for gushing out cash with no follow up or oversight to assure the money is spent appropriately and the Yemen allocations are probably no exception. A perfect example is that millions of dollars in malaria drugs provided to Africa are stolen each year and sold on the black market. … The U.S. government has spent billions of dollars to combat malaria in Africa in the last few years. One USAID program alone has dedicated north of $72 million since 2011 to give 19 African countries free malaria drugs, $15 million in 2016 alone. The agency has long acknowledged that malaria drugs financed by American taxpayers are regularly stolen in Africa.  …

Earlier this year Judicial Watch obtained records showing that USAID spent millions of taxpayer dollars to destabilize the democratically elected, center-right government in Macedonia by colluding with leftwing billionaire philanthropist George Soros. 

The scheme was masterminded by Barack Obama’s U.S. Ambassador to Macedonia, Jess L. Baily, who worked behind the scenes with Soros’s Open Society Foundation to funnel large sums of American dollars for the cause, constituting an interference of the U.S. Ambassador in domestic political affairs in violation of the Vienna Convention on Diplomatic Relations. Judicial Watch’s ongoing probe has so far revealed that USAID earmarked at least $9.5 million to intervene in the Balkan nation’s governmental affairs, which deviates from its mission of providing humanitarian assistance.

The US is interfering in the domestic political affairs of another country? You mean like it accuses Russia of doing in US domestic political affairs? Say it ain’t so!

Nope. Can’t do that. Judicial Watch knows that the US Department of State is doing just that.

Worse – it is doing it IN COLLUSION with George Soros. 

Has Judicial Watch told the President? Now that Rex Tillerson has gone, and Mike Pompeo is President Trump’s choice for his successor as Secretary of State, will USAID be guided to better practices?

Ideally the agency would be roughly guided out the door, and the door closed on it forever.

In our post Paying to be hated and betrayed (January 1, 2018), in which we deplored the giving of foreign aid by the United States, we also reported that President Trump was stopping aid to the terrorism-sponsoring state Pakistan.

He tweeted:

The United States has foolishly given Pakistan more than 33 billion dollars in aid over the last 15 years, and they have given us nothing but lies & deceit, thinking of our leaders as fools. They give safe haven to the terrorists we hunt in Afghanistan, with little help. No more!

Meanwhile, Britain under the weak and incoherent leadership of Prime Minister Theresa May, is increasing its aid to Pakistan.

The Daily Mail reports:

Britain is to increase foreign aid to Pakistan by more than £100 million even though it has a space programme and nuclear weapons.

The Asian country is now the biggest recipient of UK handouts despite preparing to splash out billions on arms including a new fleet of submarines.

It comes after the Mail yesterday revealed how £300 million of British taxpayers’ money is being handed out to Pakistanis on pre-loaded cash cards as part of a scheme dogged by claims of corruption.

The allegations have led to renewed calls for the UK to ditch its foreign aid targets when there is a crisis in social care at home.

Figures from Britain’s overseas aid department, the Department for International Development, show total spending on Pakistan will soar by more than 30 per cent this year.

Some £441 million will be handed to projects in 2016-17, up £105 million from £336 million in 2015-16.

Yet Islamabad has unveiled a massive military spending plan, pumping £654 million into the defence budget this year – an 11 per cent boost to £6.7 billion. 

The figures do not include money spent on its atomic weapons programme. The country is one of a small number of nuclear powers, and has between 110 and 130 warheads.

Pakistan spends around 3.6 per cent of its national income on defence, compared to Britain, which only just fulfils its Nato commitment of at least two per cent.

Last year Pakistan announced it would buy eight new submarines at a cost of around £4 billion, with the country expected to lavish more than £10 billion on new weapons by 2024.

Its space programme has successfully launched a satellite and has an annual budget of around £19.5 million.

Backbenchers have been calling on Theresa May to ditch the Government’s commitment to spend 0.7 per cent of national income on overseas aid when there is a crisis in care for the elderly in Britain. …

The Prime Minister’s spokesman last night said the system helped focus aid on ‘those who need it, when they need it’. The aide said the policy was ‘an investment in our security’ and claimed there were ‘robust’ policies in place to protect against fraud and corruption.

There are no such policies in place. In no way is this vast handout toPakistan an investment in British security.

[Another] spokesman added: ‘Our investment in Pakistan is making the world a safer place by tackling poverty, improving governance and disrupting serious crime, which left unchallenged breeds violent extremism and drives mass migration.’

It is a myth, a lie, an apparently ineradicable illusion that “poverty breeds violent extremism”. There is not a trace of evidence that it does or ever has.

It needs to be noted that most of the gangs that “groom” underage girls for prostitution in Britain are Pakistani Muslims.

It also needs to be recalled that Pakistan has persistently aided the Taliban, has sheltered Osama bi Laden, and imprisoned the doctor who finally revealed bin Laden’s hiding place.

Pakistan does no good to the West. On the contrary, it does as much harm as it can. There is no justification for giving vast sums of British tax money to Pakistan. None.

Who in the days of Churchill and Margaret Thatcher, or for that matter at any time in the past, would have believed that a British government could be so stupid?

And the party in power calls itself the Conservative Party!

 

(Hat-tip for the Daily Mail report to our British associate, Chauncey Tinker, editor of the online magazine of political commentary, The Participator.)

In an individual, generosity may be considered a virtue; but a state holds its tax-payers’ money in trust, and has a duty to be thrifty with it.

Why does the US give money to other countries? We can think of no good reason.

If the giving had secured the supporting votes of the recipients in that abominable institution, the United Nations, through the last seventy years, there would have been at least a small reason, but that did not happen.

The streams of monetary foreign aid must dry up. The Trump administration may be starting to stem the flow. A cause for celebration if it does.

There was global outcry after President Trump announced his intention to move the U.S. Embassy in Israel to Jerusalem, but that might actually turn out to be a good thing for America’s economy if the White House makes good on the threat made to the countries opposing the move. …

The bold move by the Trump administration sparked international backlash, so much so that a referendum condemning the move was put forward at the United Nations.

Nikki Haley said that the United States would be “taking note” of the countries that “disrespected” America by voting in favor of the resolution, and President Trump said bluntly that the countries who don’t vote with the U.S. will have their funding cut.

We quote the Daily Caller’s report.

Here are the countries that voted against the U.S., listed alphabetically, along with America’s 2016 financial “obligation” to each country:

Afghanistan — $5,060,306,050

Albania — $27,479,989

Algeria — $17,807,222

Andorra — $0

Angola — $64,489,547

Armenia — $22,239,896

Austria — $310,536

Azerbaijan — $15,312,389

Bahrain — $6,573,352

Bangladesh — $263,396,621

Barbados — $5,442,370

Belarus — $11,166,107

Belgium — $3,101,636    ???

Belize — $8,613,838

Bolivia — $1,378,654

Botswana — $57,252,922

Brazil — $14,899,949

Brunei — $354,829

Bulgaria — $20,066,715

Burkina Faso — $74,469,144

Burundi — $70,507,528

Cabo Verde — $5,044,716

Cambodia — $103,194,295

Chad — $117,425,683

Chile — $2,266,071

China — $42,263,025      !!!!!!!!!!!!!!

Comoros — $1,057,063

Congo — $8,439,457

Costa Rica — $14,650,552

Cote d’Ivoire — $161,860,737

Cuba — $15,776,924      !!!

Cyprus — $0

Democratic People’s Republic of Korea (North Korea) — $2,142,161    !!!!!!!!!!

Denmark — $3,455     ???

Djibouti — $24,299,878

Dominica — $616,000

Ecuador — $26,014,579

Egypt — $1,239,291,240

Eritrea — $119,364

Estonia — $15,937,295

Ethiopia — $1,111,152,703

Finland — $33,492

France — $4,660,356         ??????

Gabon — $31,442,404

Gambia — $3,197,858

Germany — $5,484,317     ????????????

Ghana — $724,133,065

Greece — $8,508,639

Grenada — $690,300

Guinea — $87,630,410

Guyana — $9,691,030

Iceland — $0

India — $179,688,851

Indonesia — $222,431,738

Iran — $3,350,327              !!!!!!!!!!

Iraq — $5,280,379,380

Ireland — $0

Italy — $454,613

Japan — $20,804,795

Jordan — $1,214,093,785

Kazakhstan — $80,418,203

Kuwait — $112,000

Kyrgyzstan — $41,262,984

Laos — $57,174,076

Lebanon — $416,553,311

Liberia — $473,677,614

Libya — $26,612,087

Liechtenstein — $0

Lithuania — $15,709,304

Luxembourg — $0

Madagascar — $102,823,791

Malaysia — $10,439,368

Maldives — $1,511,931

Mali — $257,152,020

Malta — $137,945

Mauritania — $12,743,363

Mauritius — $791,133

Monaco — $0

Montenegro — $2,118,108

Morocco — $82,023,514

Mozambique — $514,007,619

Namibia — $53,691,093

Nepal — $194,286,218

Netherlands — $0

New Zealand — $0

Nicaragua — $31,318,397

Niger — $144,122,239

Nigeria — $718,236,917

Norway — $100,000

Oman — $5,753,829

Pakistan — $777,504,870    !!!

Papua New Guinea — $14,836,598

Peru — $95,803,112

Portugal — $207,600

Qatar — $95,097

Republic of Korea (South Korea) — $3,032,086

Russia — $17,195,004      ??????

Saint Vincent and the Grenadines — $612,000

Saudi Arabia — $732,875      !!!!!!

Senegal — $99,599,642

Serbia — $33,062,589

Seychelles — $223,002

Singapore — $468,118

Slovakia — $2,585,685

Slovenia — $715,716

Somalia — $274,784,535

South Africa — $597,218,298

Spain — $81,231

Sri Lanka — $27,192,841

Sudan — $137,878,835

Suriname — $232,672

Sweden — $1,269      !

Switzerland — $1,168,960      ??????

Syria — $916,426,147

Tajikistan — $47,789,686

Thailand — $68,182,970

The Former Yugoslav Republic of Macedonia — $31,755,240

Tunisia — $117,490,639

Turkey — $154,594,512

United Arab Emirates — $1,140,659

United Kingdom — $3,877,820         ??????????

United Republic of Tanzania — $628,785,614

Uruguay — $836,850

Uzbekistan — $20,067,933

Venezuela — $9,178,148         !!!!!!

Vietnam — $157,611,276

Yemen — $305,054,784

Zimbabwe — $261,181,770

TOTAL — $24,485,383,599

If any country wants aid from the United States, it needs to have a mighty good reason to ask for it. Then let it beg for its aid, and in return promise loyalty to its benefactor. If it breaks the promise, no more aid.

President Trump is making a good start with Pakistan. Daniel Greenfield writes at Front Page:

Pakistan is an Islamic terror state.

That point can’t objectively be disputed. Pakistan’s political and religious elites promote terrorism. Its government funds and directs terrorists. It even hid Osama bin Laden. …

President Trump opened 2018 with a social media salvo against Pakistan, accusing the Muslim-majority nation of harboring terrorists while expressing frustration that the United States has “foolishly” sent billions in aid to the country.

“The United States has foolishly given Pakistan more than 33 billion dollars in aid over the last 15 years, and they have given us nothing but lies & deceit, thinking of our leaders as fools,” Trump tweeted Monday morning. “They give safe haven to the terrorists we hunt in Afghanistan, with little help. No more!”

“No more!”

May every regime throughout the hellish Third World hear those words.

And may they be true.

 

(Hat-tip Cogito for the list)