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Gordon Brown’s role model for life post Downing Street is surely the late Jimmy Carter.

‘An earthquake of magnitude 7.0 or above could not have caused more carnage’

He rationally unpicks with numbers and cold hard facts the truth at odds with #Trump’s claim that #USAid is:

“run by a bunch of radical lunatics, and we’re getting them out”.

“I don’t want my dollars going towards this crap,

https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2025/feb/07/donald-trump-elon-musk-usaid-poverty-america
‘#USAid cuts – which will see funding slashed and just 290 of the more than 10,000 employees worldwide retained, according to the New York Times - have already begun to bite this week.

We have seen the halting of landmine-clearing work in Asia, support for war veterans and independent media in Ukraine, and assistance for Rohingya refugees on the border of Bangladesh. This week, drug deliveries to fight the current mpox and Ebola outbreaks in Africa have been stopped’
‘Pepfar, created by Republican president George W Bush, offers antiretroviral prescriptions to 20 million people around the world to combat HIV and Aids. Its activities escaped the ban only after warnings that a 90-day stoppage could lead to 136,000 babies acquiring HIV. But it has still been blocked from organising cervical cancer screening, treating malaria, tuberculosis and polio, assisting maternal and child health, and efforts to curtail outbreaks of Ebola, Marburg and mpox.’

#USAid
‘#Trump’s claim that America has been over-generous is exposed as yet another exaggeration.

‘Norway tops the list as biggest donor of official development assistance (ODA) as a percentage of gross national income (GNI) at 1.09%; Britain is at just over 0.5%, albeit down from the UN target of 0.7%; but the US is near the bottom of the advanced economies at 0.24% – alongside Slovenia and the Czech Republic.’

#USAid
And a very large proportion of their 'aid' wouldn't stand scrutiny next to any realistic definition of that term.

The Fly America act and Buy America acts for eg, dent the budget heavily to no benefit to any one but corporate US. The Beltway consultants consume massive chunks of the aid budget - so it never leaves DC.

I don't know if they class their military assistance to Egypt and Israel as aid though? If they do, obviously...
The phrase ‘throwing the baby out with the bath water’ springs to mind.
overall - I’m really not a fan of USAID: they are a branch of the colonialist, soft power movement. But juts stopping suddenly will see many poor people suffer and die.
‘#Musk shared a screenshot quoting the false claim that “less than 10 percent of our foreign assistance dollars flowing through #USAID is actually reaching those communities”.

The implication is that the remaining 90% was diverted, stolen, or just wasted. In fact, the 10% figure is the proportion of the budget going directly to NGOs and organisations in the developing world.’
I would presume that the stingiest contributions have been during Republican terms?