Diversity and DEI have already joined woke, communism, socialism and others as words that the cultist don’t know the actual meaning of the word except that it’s “bad.” Compassion and empathy are also starting to be pulled into that pool.
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AAAAAUUUUUGH!!!
Idiots! Everywhere there are idiots!!
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On the other hand, biodiversity is one of those reasons people think billionaires shouldn’t destroy the natural world even though they could make a few extra pennies from it, so MAGA probably would hate studying it either way.
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I have not watched this yet, and will likely get to it either later tonight or tomorrow…
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One point he mentioned in the above interview and in another discussion…
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Ooh! I know! I know!
Because they know just what an idiot he is, and they know from bitter experience that stupidity results in lack of knowledge, and that lack of knowledge leads to stigmatization?
(As quiz questions go, that one seems like kind of a gimme.)
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A point to consider:
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That’s a bit accelerationist. It’s not a change that’s worth thousands of innocent people dying and tens of thousands suffering needlessly.
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I agree, but I also think it’s good to hear from non-US people who are affected by this, that it’s not as simple as we make it out to be.
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It’s not a change that’s worth thousands of innocent people dying an tens of thousands suffering needlessly.
I agree, but to say so in response to that article is to ignore the author’s main point — that there’s more to western aid than helping to alleviate the suffering and prevent the deaths of people in “underdeveloped” countries.
The author does not say that that western aid should end as abruptly as Tramp is ending USAID efforts, salutary and otherwise. He does say that the demise of this agency’s efforts could be a chance to rethink and rework how such aid functions when it’s extended by an ultimately self-interested empire.
It’s that extractive side that most USains fail to realize, because we so rarely hear a perspective like that of the author, Patrick Gathara, who points out that many non-USians will not miss the overall impact of USAID (and probably would not miss those of other US “international outreach” efforts like the Peace Corps and the Fullbright Program as well).
I wish articles like this one would appear in the NY Times or WaPo, as a corrective to USian naivete about the US as an extractive empire, with forms of aid that work to prop up the empire more than to provide the kinds of aid they do.
I’m reminded of how charity is often used by corporations and wealthy — as a tax write off, or a form of window washing or conscience salving, and more to Gathara’s point, as a way of avoiding more helpful efforts to fix an extractive system that results in ridiculously disproportionate wealth gaps: “the entire enterprise of aid has been a tool for geopolitical control, a means of preserving, rather than eliminating, global inequality and the resource extraction that feeds it.”
Indeed,
The aid industry, in effect, inherited colonialism’s “civilising mission”. Its do-gooder image papers over the extractive nature of the international system and attempts to ameliorate its worst excesses without actually challenging the system. If anything, the two are in a symbiotic relationship. The aid industry legitimises extractive global trade and governance systems, which in turn produce the outcomes that legitimise the existence of the aid agencies.
As a result, today, despite the proliferation of aid and development agencies, the racialised global order has barely budged, and deep inequality continues to characterise the relations between nations. A 1997 study by the US Congressional Budget Office found that foreign aid played, at best, a marginal role in promoting economic development and improving human welfare and could even “hinder development depending on the environment in which that aid is used and the conditions under which it is given”.
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All true… I think a part of the overall problem here is that too much of our political class are absolutely unwilling to admit we’re an empire, and that’s yet another way that fascists can (or did, I guess) get a toe-hold. At least some Americans do understand that we are an empire and that stuff like US AID is the soft power part of it… that means that at least some liberals and leftists might be persuaded by an argument from the right that we should pull out of wars, paying out foreign aid, and focus on the homeland instead. I mean, that forget that you can never trust a fascist to do what he’s going to say, but some people might be so fed up with the hard power part of US Empire that they were willing to give Trump a chance, not once, but twice, especially when it was clear that the Democrats had no plans to address imperialism in any serious or meaningful way…
But yeah, just gutting US AID and cutting off the spigot for all the programs is bad news, but it doesn’t mean that these programs aren’t also problematic.
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I must not have expressed myself clearly. You won’t get any argument from me that the US doesn’t need to stop setting fire to developing nations all over the globe in the name of corporate greed. Rather, my point is that we have to stop setting fires before turning off the water hose.
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LaFontaine Oliver, president and CEO of New York Public Radio, talks about the very real threats to public radio coming from Washington, and what NYPR plans to do to deal with them.
In other news, why can’t I have a cool name like “LaFontaine Oliver?”
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Brain drain 2025
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Check off another box from 1930’s Germany…
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I’d head there in a second if I was in that boat.
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