Tag: foreign aid

US D-9 bulldozers worth billions of shekels arrive in Israel after Trump admin. releases shipment

A US shipment of dozens of D-9 bulldozers for IDF ground troops arrived in Israel on Wednesday, following its release by the Trump administration, the Defense Ministry confirmed.

“The shipment of D9 bulldozers is part of a broad-scale arming and military equipment effort worth billions of shekels, which the US government released and the Defense Ministry procured and transported to Israel,” Defense Ministry Director-General Maj.-Gen. (res) Amir Baram said, adding that Israel has received a number of cargo ships and aircrafts in the past several weeks.

“We must continue to strengthen our military buildup to support all of the IDF’s needs in the current campaign and in preparation for the next decade,” Baram said. 

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Report: USAID Quietly Sent Thousands of Viruses to the Infamous Wuhan Lab

The U.S. Agency for International Development (USAID) reportedly shipped thousands of viruses to a Chinese military-linked biolab in Wuhan.

USAID sent 11,000 viral samples to the Wuhan Institute of Virology (WIV) over the course of a ten-year program, despite not having any formal agreement with the laboratory, according to documents obtained by Daily Caller.

The viruses were reportedly sent from China’s Yunnan province to Wuhan — the infamous epicenter of the Chinese coronavirus pandemic — with the exportation being funded by the USAID, which seemingly failed to devise a strategy that would prevent the samples from becoming bioweapons and staying accessible to the U.S. government.

Notably, the Wuhan Institute of Virology lacks adequate biosafety practices and has ties to the Chinese Communist Party (CCP)’s military, People’s Liberation Army (PLA).

The $210 million USAID program, dubbed PREDICT — which failed to implement a long-term storage plan when funding ceased — was spearheaded by the University of California-Davis and involved gathering virus samples from countries around the world.

Among the thousands of viral samples sent via USAID funding to the Wuhan lab is one of the closest known relatives of the Chinese coronavirus that ravaged the world in 2020, Daily Caller noted.

“Investigations involving USAID’s former funding of global health awards remain active and ongoing,” a senior State Department official told the outlet. “The American people can rest assured knowing that under the Trump Administration we will not be funding these controversial programs.”

Last week, USAID was finally shuttered after President Donald Trump’s Department of Government Efficiency (DOGE) uncovered a slew of examples of waste, fraud, and abuse of taxpayer dollars.

“Beyond creating a globe-spanning NGO industrial complex at taxpayer expense, USAID has little to show since the end of the Cold War,” U.S. Secretary of State Marco Rubio said.

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New footage exposes ragtag US mercenaries firing toward Gaza aid seekers

Following an AP investigation accusing a US mercenary firm of firing on desperate Gaza aid seekers, the company has released extensive new footage in an attempt at damage control. But the video only further implicates the scandal-plagued operation.

On July 2, the Associated Press released an exposé containing short videos which appeared to show American mercenaries associated with the Gaza Humanitarian Foundation (GHF) opening fire on aid-seekers in Gaza during an incident in southern Gaza this May. The footage was supplied by a former employee of UG Solutions, a firm charged with securing GHF distribution sites.

“I think you hit one,” one soldier of fortune says to another following a loud burst of gunfire.

“Hell yeah, boy!” another exclaims.

In an apparent attempt to control the damage from the AP investigation, UG Solutions has distributed a pair of videos comprising over seven minutes of footage to the press. 

The newly released footage offers an unprecedented glimpse of the disturbing interactions between the starving population of Gaza and well-armed, clearly unprepared Americans hired to provide security for GHF’s chaotic aid operations.

Filmed by one of its own employee, the recordings were seemingly distributed in an effort to show UG Solutions’ agents have not fired live bullets on unarmed crowds of Palestinians. According to a UG Solutions statement, the videos “not only clarify what happened, but provide critical context, which contradicts that [sic] AP’s reporting and shows that the accusations are unfounded.”

However, a closer examination by The Grayzone demonstrates that the video was anything but exculpatory. 

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US To Spend $1.5 Billion Building New Air Bases and Facilities for the Israeli Military

The US is poised to spend over $1 billion on building new air bases and various other types of military facilities, Haaretz reported on Tuesday, citing documents and presentations from the US Army Corps of Engineers.

The construction projects include building a facility to accommodate Israel’s new KC-46 refueling aircraft, a facility for CH-53 helicopters, new headquarters for the Israeli army’s Shayetet 13 naval commando unit, ammunition storage, and other projects.

Ongoing US construction projects inside Israel are valued at about $250 million, and the total for all of the projects being planned is $1.5 billion. All of the construction will be funded by US military aid.

Israel receives $3.8 billion in military aid each year, but has received significantly more since October 7, 2023. According to Brown University’s Costs of War Project, from October 2023 to October 2024, the US approved at least $17.9 billion in new military aid for Israel to support the genocidal war in Gaza and other Israeli wars in the region.

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Reuters Forced to Retract After Blaming GHF for Gaza Relocation Plan

The Reuters news agency was forced to issue a correction Monday after falsely attributing a plan for the relocation of Palestinians in Gaza to the Trump administration-backed Gaza Humanitarian Foundation (GHF).

The article originally claimed in its headline: “Exclusive: US-backed aid group proposed ‘Human Transit Areas’ for Palestinians in Gaza.”

It claimed, further:

A controversial U.S.-backed aid group proposed building camps called “Humanitarian Transit Areas” inside – and possibly outside – Gaza to house the Palestinian population, according to a proposal reviewed by Reuters, outlining its vision of “replacing Hamas’ control over the population in Gaza.”

The $2 billion plan, created sometime after February 11 for the U.S.-backed Gaza Humanitarian Foundation, or GHF, was submitted to the Trump administration and recently discussed in the White House, according to a source familiar with the matter.

There was no basis or the story — the latest in a series of mainstream media efforts to smear the GHF, which is replacing the United Nations and undermining Hamas’s control over the delivery of aid in Gaza.

Reuters later published a corrected version, “Exclusive: Proposal outlines large-scale ‘Humanitarian Transit Areas’ for Palestinians in Gaza.”

At the end of the story, it added: “(This story has been corrected to remove ‘U.S.-backed aid group’ in the headline, and to reflect that while the document bears the name of the Global Humanitarian Foundation, it could not be determined who created or submitted it, in paragraphs 1 and 2).”

It could not even report the name of the group correctly in the correction.

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DOGE Team Terminates 256 Wasteful Contracts Worth $14.3 Billion – Including $850k USAID Contract for “Resilience Adviser” in Somalia

Although they are not making as many headlines as earlier this year when they were first introduced, the DOGE Team is hard at work and continues to save money for American taxpayers.

Earlier this week DOGE announced they had eliminated another $14.3 billion in bogus contracts, including international contracts tied to USAID.

The DOGE team terminated one contract tied to USAID worth $850,000 for a “resilience adviser” in Somalia.

Let’s hope the DOGE team digs deeper into that slush fund. Where do you suppose the money really went?

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US Support For Israel Comes At A Staggering, Multifaceted Price

When asked about the cost of their government’s support of the State of Israel, some Americans will say it’s $3.8 billion a year — the amount of annual military aid the United States is committed to under its current, 10-year “memorandum of understanding” with Israel. However, that answer massively understates the true cost of the relationship, not only because it doesn’t capture various, vast expenditures springing from it, but even more so because the relationship’s steepest costs can’t be measured in dollars.

Since its 1948 founding, Israel has been far and away the largest recipient of American foreign assistance. Though the Ukraine war created a brief anomaly, Israel generally tops the list every year, despite the fact that Israel is among the world’s richest countries — ranked three spots below the UK and two spots above Japan in per capita GDP. Driving that point home, even when using the grossly-understating $3.8 billion figure for US expenditures on Israel, America gave the Zionist state $404 per person in the 2023 fiscal year, compared to just $15 per person for Ethiopia, one of the poorest countries on Earth and America’s third-largest beneficiary that year.

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Dept. of Defense Leakers Claim Secretary Pete Hegseth Suspended Military Aid to Kiev without Notifying Allies

The warmongers in the US Department of Defense leaked another report to their associates in the mainstream news this weekend.

According to the anonymous sources Secretary Pete Hegseth suspended military aid to Kiev and did so without notifying US allies in Europe.

The Trump administration halted missile deliveries to Ukraine over concerns that US stockpiles have declined significantly under Joe Biden.

However, anonymous sources told NBC that American stockpiles are not yet under critical minimums.

This is the latest anonymous leak from US Defense officials to smear the Hegseth and the Trump administration.

And, fake news NBC gladly ran with it despite the pushback from the Trump administration.

Russia Today reported:

US Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth suspended shipments of weapons to Ukraine on his own accord despite a military review claiming that the aid would not endanger US readiness, NBC News has claimed. The decision was reportedly made without consulting lawmakers or foreign partners.

Reports of a halt in US military aid to Ukraine emerged earlier this week. US news outlets claimed that the items affected included Patriot missile systems, artillery shells, GMLRS rockets, and other munitions. Washington’s envoy to NATO, Matthew Whitaker, has since confirmed the move, attributing it to concerns that continued military assistance to Kiev could deplete key munitions needed for US forces.

However, NBC reported on Friday, citing three unnamed sources, that a review by senior military officers had found that American stockpiles are not yet beyond critical minimums. The outlet claimed that Hegseth nevertheless halted the shipments in a “unilateral step,” marking the third time he has done so since taking office. The previous suspensions were reversed following pushback from Congress.

This is the latest leak from the military and intel communities to damage President Trump and his team.

In June, anonymous leakers incorrectly announced that the US military strikes on nuclear facilities were unsuccessful.

This turned out to be another lie by anonymous leakers.

The FBI is investigating where that leak originated.

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USAID Gave Known Con Man $800M Contract To Do Kamala’s Work On ‘Root Causes Of Migration’

President Joe Biden’s USAID awarded an $800 million contract to a business operating out of a Virginia home even after it formally ruled that its key manager lacked “honesty or integrity” — a reference to the fact that, according to a May 12 guilty plea, he had secured USAID contracts through bribery for a decade.

The contract was for addressing “issues affecting the root causes of irregular migration from Central America to the United States” — the work that Biden assigned to Vice President Kamala Harris, but which she never appeared to address, a Daily Wire investigation found.

The Department of Justice announced Friday that Walter Barnes III, the founder of government contractor Vistant (previously known as PM Consulting Group, or PMCG) and Roderick Watson, a USAID contracting official, pleaded guilty to a bribery scheme in which Barnes and two others conspired to pay Watson $1 million in exchange for $544 million in contracts.

What has not been reported is that the Biden administration continued to steer contracts to Vistant/PMCG even after it knew of the massive corruption: the migration contract, even larger than the $544 million in the indictment, and others that are still active.

The $800 million contract went to a joint venture between Barnes’ company and CollaborateUp, a tiny consultancy run out of a suburban home in Falls Church, Virginia, where its CEO, Richard Crespin — who runs the company while also working at a think tank — lives. The Virginia home was the address listed on the $800 million contract.

In announcing its $800 million contract, CollaborateUp said it would address the “irregular migration from Central America to the United States” by addressing “climate change.” Its website also touts its work “advancing DEIA” and combating “misinformation.”

This year, it added Mark A. Green, a former Republican congressman who served as Donald Trump’s appointee to lead USAID during his first term, to its payroll as a “senior advisor,” according to its website.

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Rubio Announces USAID Has ‘Officially’ Ceased Operations

Secretary of State Marco Rubio confirmed on Tuesday the shutdown of the U.S. Agency for International Development (USAID), which had been rapidly dismantled earlier this year by the Trump administration.

In a blog post on the State Department’s website, Rubio wrote that foreign assistance provided by USAID had failed to deliver results for Americans and also said that the agency was part of the “globe-spanning NGO [non-governmental organizations] industrial complex” that was funded by taxpayers.

“USAID has little to show since the end of the Cold War,” Rubio said.

“Development objectives have rarely been met, instability has often worsened, and anti-American sentiment has only grown. On the global stage, the countries that benefit the most from our generosity usually fail to reciprocate.”

Rubio wrote that as of July 1, the agency “will officially cease to implement foreign assistance” and that only assistance programs that align with the Trump administration’s priorities will be facilitated.

Democrats and a union representing foreign service workers have strongly pushed back against the dismantling of USAID, claiming that cuts to the agency would lead to a reduction in aid to poor countries and would ultimately put lives in danger.

But Rubio said in the blog post that USAID pushed anti-American ideas across the world along with “censorship and regime change operations” overseas and that it collaborated with NGOs that were “in league with Communist China and other geopolitical adversaries.”

On the day of Rubio’s announcement, the American Foreign Service Association union, which has filed a lawsuit against the Trump administration, said in a statement that USAID’s closure would cause the United States to lose its standing in the world and would impact the government’s capacity to wield “soft power.”

“Rather than engage in constructive conversations to lessen the devastating impact of these layoffs, the administration chose instead to inflict maximum pain and hardship through a barrage of questionable—and likely illegal—policies, accompanied by dismissive and dehumanizing rhetoric, all delivered with little thought to implementation or human consequences,” the American Foreign Service Association stated.

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