No. At least certainly not if we’re talking about USAID. Myself, I’m thinking of the loss of human life that is taking place as I write….
The impact of the billionaire’s declaration has been swift and brutal, with food and crucial drugs abandoned in warehouses, vital programmes closed and workers laid off
www.theguardian.com
The impact around the world has been immediate and catastrophic.
No country on earth is more affected by malaria then Uganda. Every single day, the
mosquito-borne disease kills 14 children under the age of 5. Because of
Trump and Musk’s actions, Uganda’s Malaria Council has suspended insecticide spraying and shipments of bed nets, one of the most effective tools in limiting the spread of the disease, have ended.
Medical supplies to help pregnant women and save babies from dying of diarrhea are no longer reaching villagers in Zambia.
Efforts to
eradicate polio and stop an outbreak of the Marburg virus, which is similar to Ebola and has a death rate of up to 90%, have stopped.
Trump has tasked the billionaire Musk – who has falsely accused USAid of being
a “criminal” organisation – with scaling down the US government’s lead agency for humanitarian assistance.
The impact on the global aid sector has been profound and immediate. US foreign aid accounts for four out of every $10 spent globally on humanitarian aid.
One former senior
USAid official described Musk’s crackdown as an “extinction-level event” for the international humanitarian sector.
The initial repercussions include the abandonment in warehouses of supplies of crucial drugs in Sudan, the site of what is currently the world’s
worst humanitarian crisis, as well as in the Democratic Republic of the Congo (DRC), where
recent fighting in the east has further destabilised the fragile region.
Across
Africa, hundreds of thousands of children who rely on school meals have been left without sustenance after food was left to rot in the wake of Musk’s declaration that he wanted the US aid agency to “die”.
“Partners on the ground [are saying] that in DRC and
Sudan, medical supplies are stuck in warehouses,” said a spokesperson for a leading international aid organisation.
Like many aid workers the Guardian interviewed, the spokesperson requested anonymity, amid claims that officials from the
Trump administration have put pressure on those in the humanitarian sector not to speak out. Many were also reluctant to talk on the record over fears of future funding.
In Bangladesh,
the International Centre for Diarrhoeal Disease Research, which coordinates pioneering research into one of the most prolific killers of children, has laid off some of the world’s most respected scientists working on malaria programmes.
In Africa, malaria-control programmes in Uganda have been forced to adopt equally draconian measures with reports that dozens of vital projects for frontline care have been closed.
Farther south in
Malawi, where many rely on donor-funded programmes for survival, fears are mounting that the aid freeze could redraw the country’s entire economy.
Within farming communities – the backbone of Malawi’s economy – Mike Dansa, chair of the
Nsanje Civil Society Organisation, warned it could upend agricultural aid programmes that support smallholders with improved seeds, irrigation and climate-resilience projects, threatening food security in a country reeling from extreme weather events.
…..Across the Atlantic, similar scenes of chaos were playing out. In
Colombia, which has been plagued by six decades of internal conflict and drug-related violence, large numbers of organisations rely on USAid funding.
Programmes providing emergency relief to families fleeing violence between armed groups and encouraging farmers to swap coca – the base ingredient of cocaine – for legal alternatives have ceased operating.
Colombia’s former president and Nobel peace prize laureate, Juan Manuel Santos, told the Guardian: “I have seen the massive benefit these programmes funded by USAid have generated for people across the country. To cut it, suddenly, is going to have a terrible humanitarian effect.”
Elsewhere, the director of a major international aid organisation in Colombia – who also requested anonymity – feared the impact on those who most needed help. “The people who this is going to affect the most are those already without a safety net. Precisely those who are least able to find another source of food, shelter or income,” they said.
The purge at the U.S. Agency for International Development is a blow to American interests and a boon to our adversaries.
www.msnbc.com
The impact around the world has been immediate and catastrophic.
No country on earth is more affected by malaria then Uganda. Every single day, the
mosquito-borne disease kills 14 children under the age of 5. Because of
Trump and Musk’s actions, Uganda’s Malaria Council has suspended insecticide spraying and shipments of bed nets, one of the most effective tools in limiting the spread of the disease, have ended.
Medical supplies to help pregnant women and save babies from dying of diarrhea are no longer reaching villagers in Zambia.
Efforts to
eradicate polio and stop an outbreak of the Marburg virus, which is similar to Ebola and has a death rate of up to 90%, have stopped.
In Sudan, staffers at a U.S.-supported aid agency
faced an impossible choice — “defy President Donald Trump’s order to immediately stop their operations or let up to 100 babies and toddlers die.”
Thankfully, they chose to save the children in their care, but they still may run out of supplies in weeks or face reprisals from the Trump administration.
Across the globe, aid agencies have been forced to lay off staff, turn away the needy and even shut down operations.
Meanwhile, back in Washington, Musk has
sent out a host of tweetscalling “USAID a criminal organization,” comparing foreign aid to “money laundering,” and calling USAID employees an “arm of the radical-left globalists.”
For good measure,
Trump said the agency was “run by a bunch of radical lunatics.”
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So, Political Jazz Fan, to answer the question, no, I’m a lot more upset with the results Musk is allowing to happen, like children starving to death. Guess you could say it’s pretty telling when the richest man on Earth says “we ain’t feeding no starving kids anymore. That’s for suckers”. No, he didn’t say that, explicitly, he’s just promoting death and disease. I’m sure you don’t want to see this happening anymore than I do.