Gutting VOA

Mar 18 2025 The BBC & The Guardian

A few days ago Trump signed an executive order “to strip back federally funded news organisation Voice of America, accusing it of being "anti-Trump" and "radical".

Trump moves to close down Voice of America

A White House statement said the order would "ensure taxpayers are no longer on the hook for radical propaganda"

The order targets the Agency for Global Media, which funds VOA, Radio Free Europe/Radio Liberty and Radio Free Asia. Overall the organisation broadcasts in 49 languages, and has a weekly estimated audience of more than 361 million people.

VOA was founded during WWII to counter Nazi propaganda, and Radio Free Europe and Radio Free Asia were originally founded to counter communism.

Mike Abramowitz, VOA's director, said he and virtually his entire staff of 1,300 people had been put on paid leave.

Some US politicians and right-wing media were happy about the cuts in funding, but nowhere near as happy as the Chinese state media.

Chinese state media celebrates Trump’s cuts to Voice of America and Radio Free Asia

Beijing's Global Times said that the VOA has "now been discarded by its own government like a dirty rag".

“From smearing human rights in China’s Xinjiang … to hyping up disputes in the South China Sea … from fabricating the so-called China virus narrative to promoting the claim of China’s ‘overcapacity’, almost every malicious falsehood about China has VOA’s fingerprints all over it”

But not everyone agrees that it is a good idea to dismantle VOA.

Radio Free Asia’s union said in a statement that the move would “hand a victory to the Chinese Communist party, which harbors a particular disdain for free media and truth” and would “embolden Kim Jong-un’s totalitarian regime in Pyongyang, where information control reaches unprecedented levels”.

After a War

Mar 17 2025 The Guardian

Two pieces in The Guardian today, one on Syria and landmines, and the other on Gaza’s heritage sites.

Landmines in Syria kill hundreds of civilians returning home after fall of Assad

‘I will spend my life rebuilding’: Gaza’s heritage sites destroyed by war

The sad truth is, absolutely nothing in society escapes the destruction of war, neither people nor culture.

The war in Gaza has cost at least 48.000 lives already, and there will be more, healthcare is not functioning, about 90% of homes have been destroyed, and unexploded ordnance litters the ruins.

Apart from the human cost, there is the destruction of culture and history of Gaza. The 800-year old Pasha Palace, with its museum, and the 700-year-old bath house Hamam al-Samara, are both in ruins. And the Al-Omari mosque, which by the way was originally a byzantine church, is damaged as well. It will take a lot of effort, time and money to rebuild them.

“A recent report by Palestinian conservation experts in the occupied West Bank and UK-based archaeologists estimated that just protecting historical sites from further damage in Gaza – if the current ceasefire holds – will cost about $33m and take up to 18 months. Full reconstruction could cost almost 10 times more and take up to eight years.”

If there is any good news here it is that the will to rebuild is there:

“It [Al-Omari] will definitely be restored. In fact, we are already working on that. There is a team collecting the broken stones of the mosque to restore it as soon as possible. True, the old mosque held irreplaceable history within its walls, but we will rebuild it.”

“If no one else takes on the task, I will spend the rest of my life rebuilding [the Hamam al-Samara] myself,” - says its guardian Salim al-Wazir, 74.

In Syria, since the war ended about three months ago, more than 200 people have been killed by explosive remnants of war, mines, unexploded shells, cluster munitions and other ordnance left from the war.

The Syrian war lasted 14 years, and there are thousands of landmines and unexploded munitions scattered across the country. The problem is acute, as 1.2 million refugees and IDPs return to their homes and farms to rebuild their lives. A quote from the piece says it all: “We cannot say that any area in Syria is safe from war remnants”

Removing the mines and other explosives, and making the country safe will take decades, and cost millions. And there will be more casualties, and not just civilians, volunteers clearing the mines are dying as well. After the death of one volunteer, his brother said:

“He sacrificed himself so that others could live” “The country has been liberated, and we, the engineering specialists, must stand by these people and remove the mines to help them return to their homes.”

Gutting U.S.A.I.D.

Feb 7 2025 The New York Times
Updated Feb 8 - The Washington Post
Updated again Mar 15 2025 - NY Times, Nicholas Kristof

*****

I’ll keep this short. The three pieces below have it all, really no need for me to add anything; except this from Winston Churchill

“To build may have to be the slow and laborious task of years.
To destroy can be the thoughtless act of a single day.”

I Ran U.S.A.I.D. Killing It Is a Win for Autocrats Everywhere.

The World’s Richest Men Take On the World’s Poorest Children

This Isn’t Reform. It’s Sabotage.

*****

Update Feb 8 2025 The Washington Post

NIH cuts billions of dollars in biomedical funding, effective immediately

“A sane government would never do this.”

*****

Update Mar 15 2025 - This piece is about the real world consequences of the USAID cuts. Musk has said that “No one has died as a result of a brief pause to do a sanity check on foreign aid funding, … No one.”

Well read this piece and decide for yourself.

Musk Said No One Has Died Since Aid Was Cut. That Isn’t True.

Spineless politicians

Mar 10 2025

Just the other day, I was thinking about what the Russian government, the current US administration, and a few others are doing, and I realised that I have made a profound mistake.

I do have to apologise to anyone who has spent their valuable time reading this blog. My most sincere apologies to you all, sorry, totally my bad.

The thing is, I knew that to be a certain type of politician you could not really have a strong moral spine, you had to have a high level of what is called, ethical elasticity.

But what I had not realised was, that, actually, the requirement for this kind of politician is to have no moral spine at all, that is to say, you need to have a 360 degree moral compass, with a freely adjustable needle.

In fact, though this breed of politicians are carbon based lifeforms like the rest of us, and though they deceptively look like the rest of us, they are fundamentally very different, they belong to the Invertebrate group of beings on this planet. They are spineless.

Now that I have finally understood this basic fact, I have come to the conclusion that I have been both totally inadequately cynical and inadequately sarcastic in my posts in the past. But, I promise you, I will do my best to remedy the situation, and will try to be more accurate and unbiased in my posts in the future.

*****

Then again, with a few posts, I think I have had some success in the past as well. For example, I don’t think the Russians, the present government that is, have a very positive opinion of my blog, and with the new administration in the US, I don’t think they do either.

But like George Orwell said:

“If liberty means anything at all, it means the right to tell people what they do not want to hear.”

Afghan students - USAID cuts

Mar 8 2025 The BBC

Afghan women who fled Taliban to study abroad face imminent return after USAID cuts

More than 80 Afghan women who fled the Taliban to pursue higher education in Oman now face imminent return back to Afghanistan, following the Trump administration's sweeping cuts to foreign aid programmes.

Funded by the US Agency for International Development (USAID), their scholarships were abruptly terminated after a funding freeze ordered by President Donald Trump when he returned to office in January.

Knowing what you know about the Taliban government, what do you think will happen to these women once they are back in Afghanistan?

On Leadership

Mar 8 2025

The fight is here; I need ammunition, not a ride.

There has been some debate on if Zelenskyy actually said that to the US in Feb 2022 when the Russians invaded.

I don’t know one way or the other, and anyway, it is totally irrelevant if those words were actually said or not, Zelenskyy has conveyed the message with his actions, and actions speak louder than words.

Today, three years later, Zelenskyy is still there, and Ukraine is still independent and fighting, and though Russia is making small gains on the battlefield, the Special Military Operation is definitely not going according to plan.

*****

The other day Zelenskyy said: I am exchangeable for NATO

A standard twelve-in-a-dozen politician thinks about the next election, and how to win and stay in power, and that affects every decisions they make.

A Statesman thinks about what is good for the country, regardless of the consequences of the decisions they make.

Zelenskyy literally just said: give Ukraine what it needs, and I will resign if you want me to.

That is not a politician speaking, that is a Leader.