Another Day in the Universe
https://www.onthenatureofthings.net/forum/
https://www.onthenatureofthings.net/forum/viewtopic.php?t=49
At the current spending rate, in another generation we [the USA] will have a lot of rich contractors and no aircraft or Naval fleets to speak of
Good this "usaid" is now on the radar and being grilled. Never heard of it. Huge budget. Probably a good idea to kill and resurrect it with new non-woke people and as a transparency secured version with no ties to cia or party affiliation.
Yeah tell me about it. Since Trump stopped the USAID from giving out most foreign aid Ukrainian news outlets and bloggers are going brokeParodite wrote: ↑05 Feb 2025 15:21Good this "usaid" is now on the radar and being grilled. Never heard of it. Huge budget. Probably a good idea to kill and resurrect it with new non-woke people and as a transparency secured version with no ties to cia or party affiliation.
But it looks to me like just one of the symptoms of an underlying problem: the bancrupty of independent investigative journalism. I would use part of the savings that DOGE generates to invest in a new body of investigative journalism with the best people available who monitor and investigate all the powers that be home and abroad. Glenn Greenwald, Matt Taibbi, Michael Shellenberger, Victor David Hanson, Constantin Kisin come to mind to create such a departement/Advisory body of reliable investigatve journalism DORIJ next to DOGE.
Now people have to rely on the already defunct msm or thousands of podcasters, influencers and self-appointed experts, all the way down stream to flat earth believers and alian reptilian invaders disguising as human beings. Saving science from politics another one.
US aid freeze spells uncertain future for international
Doc wrote: ↑05 Feb 2025 22:04Yeah tell me about it. Since Trump stopped the USAID from giving out most foreign aid Ukrainian news outlets and bloggers are going brokeParodite wrote: ↑05 Feb 2025 15:21Good this "usaid" is now on the radar and being grilled. Never heard of it. Huge budget. Probably a good idea to kill and resurrect it with new non-woke people and as a transparency secured version with no ties to cia or party affiliation.
But it looks to me like just one of the symptoms of an underlying problem: the bancrupty of independent investigative journalism. I would use part of the savings that DOGE generates to invest in a new body of investigative journalism with the best people available who monitor and investigate all the powers that be home and abroad. Glenn Greenwald, Matt Taibbi, Michael Shellenberger, Victor David Hanson, Constantin Kisin come to mind to create such a departement/Advisory body of reliable investigatve journalism DORIJ next to DOGE.
Now people have to rely on the already defunct msm or thousands of podcasters, influencers and self-appointed experts, all the way down stream to flat earth believers and alian reptilian invaders disguising as human beings. Saving science from politics another one.
https://www.voanews.com/a/us-aid-freeze ... 58494.html
US aid freeze spells uncertain future for international
https://podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast/h ... 1585243541
POLITICO SCANDAL: POLITICO RECEIVED $34.3M FROM US GOVERNMENT
Nonc Hilaire wrote: ↑05 Feb 2025 17:37 I attended several Democrat sponsored community development meetings lobbying accountability for USAID and compliance with state department goals. No interest from the White House.
Doc wrote: ↑06 Feb 2025 02:52Nonc Hilaire wrote: ↑05 Feb 2025 17:37 I attended several Democrat sponsored community development meetings lobbying accountability for USAID and compliance with state department goals. No interest from the White House.
Democrats FREAK OUT as Elon Uncovers Their MASSIVE Media Scandal
Questions Swirl Over $9 Million DoD Funding For Reuters “Active Social Engineering” Program
Paul Joseph Watson
6th February 2025
2 comments
The truth may be more prosaic than it seems.
294 views
Questions are being asked over the Department of Defense under Biden funding Reuters to the tune of $9 million to engage in “active social engineering” and “large scale deception,” with some claiming conspiracy and others asserting the funding was related to defending against cyber attacks.
Elon Musk’s Department of Government Efficiency has been busy targeting the US Agency for International Development, revealing some absolutely ridiculous amounts of taxpayer money being spent on projects around the world.
As part of that process, it has emerged that the US Department of Defense handed $9,147,532 dollars to news agency Reuters for “ACTIVE SOCIAL ENGINEERING DEFENSE (ASED) LARGE SCALE SOCIAL DECEPTION (LSD).”
The outlay began in September 2018 and was scheduled to end in November 2022.
Some have asserted that the funds were used in the context of the COVID pandemic to ‘socially engineer’ the public to swallow government narratives about the virus and the vaccine.
However, others have claimed that the money was actually part of a DARPA program started under the first Trump administration to prevent hacking and deception by malicious actors.
A page about the program on DARPA’s website explains that it was intended to “identify, disrupt, and investigate social engineering attacks” targeting the military and critical infrastructure.
While that explanation seems valid, it’s still a mystery as to why Reuters, a news network, was involved in the program.
Meanwhile, the media is claiming that the Trump administration announcing it would cancel $8 million worth of Politico subscriptions was driven by a “false right-wing conspiracy theory.”
After it was revealed that federal agencies were spending $8.2 million on Politico Pro, CNN claimed that the issue was being deliberately mischaracterized because “the payments are not exclusively USAID funds.”
However, commentator Tim Pool hit back by calling CNN “evil lying garbage.”
“It is a FACT that the US gov spends an exorbitant amount of money on pro accounts for media companies,” said Pool.
USAID funneled $799 million to a group that launched a global censorship platform and pushed radical gender ideology.
America’s foreign aid agency, USAID, has given nearly $800 million to a group that has pushed censorship and suppressed “heteronormativity” across the globe, according to documents reviewed by The Federalist.
The Consortium for Elections and Political Process Strengthening (CEPPS) took in $799.7 million in funding from 2015 to 2021, per IRS tax documents. According to InfluenceWatch, “The organization is solely funded by the U.S. Agency for International Development (USAID).”
As President Donald Trump pushes to “wind down” USAID — which has apparently become a massive “scam on U.S. taxpayers” — government funding disclosures have brought to light the often frivolous, and in this case nefarious, use of public tax dollars. As The Federalist previously reported, the federal government has been bankrolling America’s legacy media outlets for years with tens of millions of dollars in lucrative contracts.
CEPPS — whose website is no longer public — claims to be a “nonpartisan” group focused on global “democratic development,” according to an archived webpage. But its website suggests that, while corporate media have been pushing propaganda domestically, CEPPS has been advancing censorship — and radical gender ideology — throughout the rest of the world.
The Money Trail
CEPPS was funded by USAID’s “Global Elections and Political Transitions” award from 2016 to 2020, according to InfluenceWatch. After that award was discontinued in 2022, USAID gave the group a “Democratic Elections and Political Processes award” for another five years.
CEPPS’s online IRS documents only show the group’s funding up until 2021, so The Federalist analyzed the group’s funding based on that publicly available information. The group received more than $94.1 million in 2015 — eventually reaching nearly $160.8 million in 2021, for a total of $799,699,782 in federal funding over seven years. Interestingly, in these documents, the group does not report the salaries of top officials.
funding
CEPPS annual funding from 2015 to 2021. IRS 990 tax forms
CEPPS divided the federal funding between its three member groups — the International Foundation for Electoral Systems (IFES), the International Republican Institute (IRI), and the National Democratic Institute (NDI). The group has worked with “partners” in 140 countries and has observed elections in 40 countries.
Pushing to Censor Disapproved Speech
CEPPS launched a “Countering Disinformation Guide” in April 2021 “with funding from USAID” for use by “practitioners, donors, political leaders, and civil society organizations around the world, to highlight the work being done to counter disinformation.”
Jerry Lavery, then-technical director of CEPPS (and now regional coordinator for Southern and East Africa at the USAID Bureau for Democracy, Human Rights, and Governance), said in an online launch event that IFES, IRI, and NDI “contributed” to the speech control project. He said USAID’s “Global Elections and Political Transitions Award” “funded this important activity,” which would “update over time.”
“CEPPS developed the guide as a living project designed to empower partners around the world to learn from each other the best ways to counter disinformation, no matter who they are — governments, donors, implementers, candidates, civil society, media, or elections management bodies,” Lavery said. “Disinformation challenges to democracy require that we work together as a community to share our experiences, and to hold governments, social media platforms, and political leaders accountable. …”
Jerry Lavery, a CEPPS/USAID official, opens the group’s disinformation tool launch session. CEPPS | Wayback Machine
Lavery introduced David Black, a senior official at USAID, during the video. Black said that “the guide will be an important tool for those who are working to counter these negative impacts of disinformation.” He said, “For a while now,” USAID and CEPPS have been working to silence speech deemed “disinformation” — using an “evidence base” of which programs are effective, “programming in the field to counter disinformation,” and a “disinformation primer for USAID staff and others.”
USAID official David Black spoke during the launch of CEPPS’ disinformation platform. CEPPS | Wayback Machine
Black said CEPPS’s guide will be “very useful to USAID staff,” as well as “other donors, aid organizations, partner governments, civil society organizations, and others.”
The “countering disinformation” platform is no longer public, but an archived webpage says the platform featured nine main categories. These included “legal and regulatory responses” to “inhibit political actors from using disinformation,” “platform specific engagement” to leverage “social media policies and enforcement actions,” and the “gender dimensions of disinformation” that provide a framework for silencing “gendered disinformation” that promotes “heteronormativity.”
The platform listed “legal and regulatory responses” to disapproved speech. It suggested countries could “criminalize the dissemination of fake news or disinformation,” though it cautioned doing so, citing the “potential for democratically damaging downstream results.”
The “countering disinformation” platform gave more favorable treatment to approaches that infringed on speech in less direct ways. When “party members or supporters share bad information,” it said, one response could be to force “parties and candidates to issue corrections.” It referenced South Africa — a current human rights nightmare — as an example of a country where “the Election Commission can compel parties and candidates to correct electoral disinformation.” It also said countries could “hold platforms liable for all content and require removal of content,” pointing to online content laws in Germany, France, and the United Kingdom.
CEPPS’s Countering Disinformation Guide included a “global database of organizations, projects, and donors working on and supporting these efforts” to suppress disapproved speech. It featured a menu with groups explicitly focused on censorship, like NewsGuard and the Global Disinformation Index — which attempted to defund conservative outlets, including The Federalist. The Federalist, The Daily Wire, and the state of Texas sued the State Department, which was funding the GDI, for First Amendment violations.
CEPP’s platform included a GDI profile (last updated in February 2021) that glowingly portrays GDI’s “aims to disrupt, defund and down-rank disinformation sites.”
‘Gender Transformative and Intersectional’ Strategy
While CEPPS was pushing to silence unapproved speech, it was advancing an “inclusive development approach” — one “that is gender transformative and intersectional,” according to an archived webpage.
The group planned to “remove systemic inequities and discriminatory norms” worldwide. To do so, it would “dismantle systems of discrimination” and “use political organizing and collective action” to “influence political processes and outcomes.” CEPPS aimed to “challenge heteronormative values and assumptions” and “create an enabling environment supportive of the full inclusion and participation of LGBTQI+ people.”
CEPPS highlighted its “Global Pride” work, including “Trans Queens Of The Night” in Guatemala and “LGBTI rights” groups in Burma, Lebanon, Serbia, and Haiti. The group celebrated “Global Pride Month” in 2021, 2022, and 2023 in joint statements with USAID — one of which promoted CEPPS’s censorship platform.
A document by USAID and CEPPS outlined “Effective Lesbian, Gay, Bisexual, Transgender, Queer, and Intersex+ (LGBTQI+) Democracy and Governance Programming.” It defined gender as the “socially constructed characteristics and related roles, rights, responsibilities, entitlements, and obligations associated with men and women.”
While defining “intersectionality,” the groups adopted the Marxist framework that “racism, sexism, and homophobia” work together to “create systems of oppression that reflects the intersection of multiple forms of discrimination.”
Part of CEPPS’s work includes mitigating what it has deemed “online violence” — not just to women, but, again, to “gender-diverse individuals.” It takes issue with “gendered commentary” and “harassment.”
“Perpetrators of online violence against women and technology-facilitated gender-based violence (GBV) exacerbate existing harmful gender norms and inequalities, enforce heteronormativity, increase social intolerance, and deepen existing societal cleavages,” the archived webpage reads.
CEPPS suggested guides on “the gender dimensions of disinformation,” “men, power, and politics,” and “addressing online misogyny and gendered disinformation.”
Billionaire Elon Musk, heading up Trump’s efforts in the Department of Government Efficiency (DOGE), responded to an X post that used CEPPS as an example of how USAID shuttles money to different actors.
“Exactly,” Musk wrote. “The money laundering is done through several intermediaries.”
Organizations Linked To Soros Received Hundreds of Millions of Dollars From USAID
Fact checked by The People's Voice Community
February 9, 2025 Niamh Harris News 4 Comments
George Soros
Before it was shuttered, USAID routed funds to Soros-aligned causes.
Organizations with close links to George Soros’s Open Society Foundations received hundreds of millions of dollars of taxpayer money in recent years.
Government records show that the East-West Management Institute backed by the Open Society Foundations, received more than $260 million in grants from USAID for a wide variety of projects across the world.
InfoWars reports: The Institute came under intense scrutiny during the Obama administration and then again during Trump’s first term, when Senators wrote to Secretary of State Rex Tillerson to allege the Institute was interfering in Albanian politics in a way that may “give the Prime Minister and left-of-center government full control over the judiciary.”
A number of other Soros-backed organizations received funding from USAID, including the Anti-Corruption Action Center in Ukraine and Transparency International. The Anti-Corruption Action Center appears to have been involved in the Maidan coup of 2014 that toppled Ukrainian President Viktor Yanukovych and precipitated the first Russian invasion of the country.
The Soros Open Society Foundations have been responsible for distributing hundreds of millions of dollars to left-wing causes in the US, including the election funds of radical district attorneys like Alvin Bragg and Fani Willis, both of whom prosecuted Donald Trump during the Joe Biden presidency.
Soros has spent over $40 million just on direct campaign funding for radical prosecutors in the last decade. It’s reckoned that 40% of all murders in the US take place in districts represented by Soros prosectuors.
Soros also contributed $60 million to President Biden’s re-election campaign.
When pressed for comment by Just the News, the Open Society Foundations did not respond to comment.
The White House is planning to cut 97% of USAID staff, reducing the number from around 10,000 to less than 4300.
On Tuesday, the administration ended all USAID work and put all employees on leave, with thousands of overseas workers to be recalled within 30 days.
According to Reuters, Secretary of State Marco Rubio said the Trump administration was identifying critical programs that would be exempted swingeing cuts.
More than two thirds of USAID workers are located outside the United States. As of 2023, the ‘aid’ organization managed more than $40 billion in projects.
There have been organized protests against the cuts, led by senior Democrat politicians.
