Tag: foreign aid

Rand Paul ‘Festivus’ grievances: US millions for Ukraine TikTokers

Every December 23, Senator Rand Paul (R-Ky.) releases a “Festivus Report” based on the spoof holiday featured in the 1990s television show “Seinfeld.” On this made-up holiday, people would engage in an annual “airing of grievances,” and when it comes to wasteful government spending, each year Paul always has a very long list of beefs.

But this year, in finding over $1 trillion in wasteful, stupid spending, like $12 million for a pickleball complex, $15 million in new furniture for empty federal offices, $873,000 for film making in Jordan, and over $400,000 to study lonely rats, there appears to be some substantial spending related to Washington’s ongoing role in the Ukraine-Russia conflict.

Th 2024 ‘Festivus Report’ reveals that, “despite American taxpayers providing nearly $174 billion in aid and military assistance to Kyiv since the beginning of Russia’s war in Ukraine, someone over at State thought it was a brilliant idea to drop an additional $4.8 Million for ‘KYIV, Ukraine public affairs – Influencer Staff.’”

That’s right. Apparently the U.S. government was bankrolling Ukrainian TikTokers and Instagram personalities. To the tune of $4.8 million.

From Paul’s report:

“Apparently, what we really need in a war zone are more Instagram stories and TikTok dances. The dangers here are more than just cringeworthy content; this kind of spending opens the door to disinformation, propaganda, and international PR disasters. And don’t even get me started on the potential to escalate tensions with other nations.”

Sen. Paul proceeds to mock the funding’s aim: “after all, nothing says ‘peacekeeping’ like a viral video.”

More “Festivus” airing of the grievances: “But the absurdity doesn’t end there. The State Department also splurged $15,220 on an ‘influencers event’ and another $22,231 on a ‘USAID Social Media Influencers Campaign.”

Keep reading

U.S. Taxpayers Kicked in $11.5 Billion for Global Vaccine Program Targeting Low-income Countries

U.S. taxpayers are the largest contributor to Gavi, the Vaccine Alliance, the public-private partnership dedicated to expanding vaccine distribution and uptake in lower-income countries.

Gavi is often referred to as Bill Gates’ “international vaccination campaign,” according to Substack writer Jon Fleetwood. However, a recently published White House report revealed that the U.S. government to date has contributed $11.5 billion to Gavi through taxpayer-funded government allocations.

The Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation has committed only $4.1 billion to Gavi, according to the organization’s website — less than 36% of what U.S. taxpayers have contributed.

The Gates Foundation, which co-founded Gavi in 2000 with a $750 million pledge, is one of Gavi’s four permanent board members.

UNICEF, the World Bank and the World Health Organization — whose second-largest donor is Gates — hold the other permanent seats. The Clinton Health Access Initiative also sits on the board.

In a recent investigation, Fleetwood analyzed the details of the Biden-Harris administration’s 40-page “U.S. Government Support for Global Health Security” report, which provides an update on the Global Health Security Strategy the administration rolled out in April.

At the heart of the plan was a new 50-country strategy to combat future pandemics and a new Pandemic Fund that would be channeled through organizations like Gavi.

The report showed the Biden-Harris administration allocated $2 billion to Gavi’s “Day Zero Financing” — a “suite of tools” that would allow the organization to quickly meet vaccine demand during a pandemic.

Keep reading

Israel ‘outright denied’ 90 percent of aid deliveries to north Gaza in November: UN

Israel “outright denied” 82 out of 91 attempts since 26 October to deliver aid to besieged areas in northern Gaza, said Georgios Petropoulos, head of the UN humanitarian office in Gaza.

More attempts were unsuccessful because of “denials of specific locations or specific supplies,” he said in a statement reported by The Washington Post on 26 November.

The aid that has reached Gaza is being looted by criminal gangs, which are able to operate freely after Israel began killing members of the Gaza police attempting to secure aid deliveries earlier this year.

“It is tactical, systematic, criminal looting,” Petropoulos told the BBC.

He says this is leading to “ultra-violence” from “the looters towards the truckers, from the IDF towards the police, and from the police towards the looters.”

“Hamas’ security control dropped to under 20 percent,” the former head of Hamas police investigations told the BBC.

“We are working on a plan to restore control to 60 percent within a month.”

The BBC was told that “thefts often happen in clear sight of Israeli soldiers or surveillance drones but that the army fails to intervene.”

“Stolen goods are apparently being stored outside or in warehouses in areas under Israeli military control,” the BBC wrote.

As a result, hunger and malnutrition among Palestinians are increasing.

Keep reading

Amid Gaza’s Humanitarian Catastrophe, US Claims Israel is not Hindering Aid

The State Department Deputy Spokesperson, Vedant Patel repeatedly declined on Tuesday, after being pressed by reporters, to say if the criteria mentioned in the American letter had been met

The State Department announced on Tuesday that it has concluded that Israel is not hindering humanitarian aid to the besieged Gaza Strip and thus Tel Aviv is not breaching US law, Reuters news agency reported.

The declaration came on the day of a deadline previously set by US Secretary of State Antony Blinken and Defense Secretary Lloyd Austin in a letter on October 13 for Israel to implement a set of steps within 30 days to attend to the dire humanitarian situation in the Gaza Strip.

The letter had warned that “failure to do so may have possible consequences on U.S. military aid to Israel.”

The US administration’s denial that Israel is impeding aid entry to the besieged enclave also coincided with a scorecard issued by eight aid organizations indicating that Israel has indeed failed to comply with a number of requirements.

The State Department Deputy Spokesperson, Vedant Patel repeatedly declined on Tuesday, after being pressed by reporters, to say if the criteria mentioned in the American letter had been met, Reuters said.  

Keep reading

U.S. Soldier Dies From Injuries Sustained on Biden’s Failed Temporary Pier in Gaza

Sgt. Quandarius Davon Stanley, a 23-year-old U.S. soldier who was badly hurt last summer while carrying out his duties on the U.S. President Joe Biden’s temporary pier off the coast of Gaza, died from his injuries, according to reports.

“Stanley was injured while supporting the mission that delivered humanitarian aid to Gaza in May 2024 and was receiving treatment in long-term care medical center,” Capt. Shkeila Milford-Glover, a spokesman for the 3rd Expeditionary Sustainment Command, said, according to CNN.

The report said it was unclear how Stanley was injured.

Biden, with growing domestic pressure, announced in March the plans to build the temporary pier off Gaza’s coast on the Mediterranean to help speed up the transfer of humanitarian aid to the starving people in the enclave.

Keep reading

Biden Regime Gives $157 Million to Lebanon as Flood Victims Continue to Suffer in Southeast US – They Really Don’t Care About You

On Friday evening Secretary of State Antony Blinken broke the news on X that the Biden regime is sending $157 million to the people of Lebanon.

In his announcement on Twitter Blinken bragged that the Biden regime is “committed to supporting those in need and delivering essential aid to displaced civilians, refugees and the communities hosting them.”

Earlier today Alejandro Mayorkas warned that there would be a FEMA funding shortfall for the rest of the hurricane season this year.

Keep reading

Violating the Law To Provide War Aid to Israel

In March, I wrote about eight United States Senate members sending a letter to President Joe Biden declaring that Section 6201 of the Foreign Assistance Act of 1961 requires the termination of offensive military aid to the Israel government because the Israel government “prohibits or otherwise restricts, directly or indirectly, the transport or delivery of United States humanitarian assistance.” This declaration seemed then and continues to seem now true to observers of the situation where Gazans suffer from the deprivation of daily needs including food and medical supplies as they also suffer from bombs and bullets. Still, the US military aid flow to Israel has continued at a high rate.

To overcome the legal objection presented by these senators and others, the US Department of State asserted in a May 10 report that “We do not currently assess that the Israeli government is prohibiting or otherwise restricting the transport or delivery of U.S. humanitarian assistance.” Ta-da: legality.

That dishonest State Department assertion enabled the Biden administration to take action prohibited under US law. And, because of the die-hard pro-Israel bent of congressional leadership, the ruse was sure not to be met with effective legislative answer.

Important new information concerning the State Department’s assertion is provided in a Tuesday ProPublica article by Brett Murphy. Looking at internal communications in the State Department, Murphy recounted how the State Department’s assertion not only flew in the face of what people could readily observe in regard to Israel’s actions to suppress aid reaching Gazans, it also was outright contradicted by two State Department organizations that were charged with assessing the situation.

Keep reading

Blinken buried reports indicating Israel blocked aid to Gaza so U.S. would keep sending them weapons

U.S. Secretary of State Antony Blinken received an assessment from a pair of prominent authorities on humanitarian assistance showing that Israel purposely blocked deliveries of food and medicine to Gaza but rejected the finding so the U.S. could continue sending weapons to Israel.

The report by the U.S. Agency for International Development (USAID) reached this disturbing conclusion, and it was corroborated by a separate report from the State Department’s Bureau Of Population, Refugees And Migration. The latter also determined that the Foreign Assistance Act needed to be enacted to freeze more than $800 million worth of taxpayer dollars that had been set aside for weapons and bombs for Israel.

However, Blinken and the Biden administration rejected the findings of both authorities. Shortly thereafter, Blinken saw fit to tell Congress: “We do not currently assess that the Israeli government is prohibiting or otherwise restricting the transport or delivery of U.S. humanitarian assistance.”

It’s a shocking stance to take when you consider the fact that USAID’s 17-page memo detailed some of the most blatant examples of Israeli interference with aid efforts, such as bombing hospitals and ambulances, turning away trucks that were full of medicine and food, razing agricultural structures, sitting on supply depots and most appallingly, killing aid workers.

The memo noted that while the population of Gaza grappled with famine and countless children starved to death, food that could have potentially saved people’s lives was stockpiled just miles across the border at a port in Israel, where it is believed there was enough flour on hand to feed 1.5 million Palestinians for a span of five months. The Israeli government would not let the flour be transferred because they claimed that the UN Palestinian branch it was destined for had ties to Hamas.

U.S. law requires the government to stop shipping weapons to countries that have been found to be preventing the delivery of American-backed humanitarian aid, and USAID officials said that America should stop selling arms to Israel. They stated that the famine in Gaza was caused by Israel’s “arbitrary denial, restriction, and impediments of U.S. humanitarian assistance” and called it “one of the worst humanitarian catastrophes in the world.”

The situation was so bad that a senior State Department official resigned over it. Stacy Gilbert, a senior civil military adviser for the Bureau of Population, Refugees and Migration, claims that the State Department falsified her report. The 20-year State Department veteran said that when the report was ultimately published, she couldn’t believe it when she saw its conclusion that Israel was not blocking humanitarian assistance given the fact that the experts who wrote it reached the opposite conclusion.

Keep reading

Report from humanitarian groups proves Israel is deliberately blocking essential aid from entering Gaza

Israel has been preventing the majority of essential aid from entering the Gaza Strip since the Israel-Hamas conflict began on Oct. 7.

A report conducted by 15 humanitarian aid organizations recently revealed that essential aid – including food, medicine, fuel and shelter – has been systematically blocked from entering Gaza for almost a year. (Related: UN investigator accuses Israel of “deliberately starving” Palestinians in Gaza; Netanyahu denies allegation.)

“Agencies have detailed six main ways their life-saving aid is systematically obstructed on a daily basis,” the report stated. “These include the denial of safety, with more than 40,000 Palestinians and nearly 300 aid workers killed since last October; the sharp tightening of a 17-year blockade to a full siege, which prevents aid from entering Gaza; delays and denials which restrict the movement of aid around Gaza; tightly restrictive and unpredictable control of imports; the destruction of public infrastructure such as schools and hospitals; and the displacement of civilians and humanitarian workers (witnessed again in recent displacement orders from the so-called “humanitarian zone” in Deir el-Balah.)”

This obstruction has driven the people of Gaza into a worsening state of desperation, with nearly half a million now facing starvation and the entire population suffering from hunger and disease.

For instance, 83 percent of the necessary food aid is being blocked from entering the area, up sharply from 34 percent in 2023. In turn, residents, who previously had access to two meals a day, now face the grim reality of surviving on just one meal every other day. It is estimated that by the end of 2024, around 50,000 children between the ages of six and 59 months will require urgent treatment for malnutrition.

Aside from the food crisis, 65 percent of the required insulin and half of the necessary blood supply are unavailable in Gaza. Meanwhile, the availability of hygiene items has dropped to just 15 percent of what was accessible in September 2023. This has left one million women without essential hygiene supplies.

The healthcare system, which was already strained before the war, is now in a state of collapse. Only 1,500 hospital beds remain operational, down from 3,500 in 2023 and far below the needs of Gaza’s more than two million residents.

As of January, 60 percent of homes in Gaza have been destroyed, leaving 1.87 million people in need of shelter, but tents have been supplied for only 25,000 people since May. In August, an average of 69 aid trucks per day entered Gaza, compared to 500 trucks per working day in 2023, leaving more than one million people without food rations in central and southern Gaza.

Moreover, the destruction of critical infrastructure such as water networks, sanitation facilities and bread mills has compounded the situation. To date, only 17 out of the 36 hospitals in Gaza remain partially functional, while large-scale destruction of schools and public facilities continues.

Keep reading

US To Release $3.5 Billion in Military Assistance for Israel

The State Department is set to release $3.5 billion in Foreign Military Financing to Israel. The massive transfer of funds comes as the White House is asking Israel to investigate claims of rape in its detention centers for Palestinians.

CNN reported speaking with multiple officials who confirmed the funds will be released. The money was allocated by Congress in the $95 billion foreign military aid bill that included $61 billion for Ukraine and $14 billion for Israel.

Foreign Military Financing (FMF) is a State Department program that gives US taxpayer dollars to foreign governments to purchase weapons from American arms dealers. However, Tel Aviv is allowed to use some of the FMF funds on Israeli-made weapons.

As the funds are used to contract with arms deals, the weapons are typically not delivered immediately.

Israel is heavily dependent on the US to arm its military, giving Washington significant leverage over Tel Aviv. Over the ten-month Israeli onslaught in Gaza, the White House has resisted domestic pressure to condition arm sales to Israel.

The release of funds will likely be viewed by Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu as a green light for Israel to continue its brutal treatment of the Palestinians.

One point where the White House could have used the FMF funds as leverage is to push Israel to investigate the rape occurring in its detention facilities. Late last month, Israeli military police arrested several soldiers accused of using sodomy as a means of torture that left the victim bleeding and unable to walk.

Keep reading