USAID - American agency has been funding trans propaganda projects around the globe

As predicted on page 1, Musk using Twitter to spread fake news about USAID:

https://united24media.com/latest-news/elon-musk-shares-fake-video-claiming-usaid-paid-hollywood-stars-to-promote-zelenskyy-5653
Elon Musk has once again shared a fake video, this time targeting USAID, Ukraine, and Volodymyr Zelenskyy.
The billionaire, known for spreading unverified information, posted a video on his X page claiming that USAID allegedly pays celebrities to visit Ukraine and boost Zelenskyy’s popularity. The video, originally shared by an anonymous account that frequently posts pro-Trump content and criticizes Democrats, features the E! News logo and includes footage of Angelina Jolie, Sean Penn, Ben Stiller, and others who have supported Ukraine since the full-scale invasion.
However, fact-checkers confirmed that E! News never published such a video. Despite this, Musk’s post has already been viewed by more than three million people.
Ben Stiller also responded, calling the claims false and stating that the video was created by Russians.

Honestly the British taxpayer should
be funding the BBC’s media charity for independent journalism. Quite outrageous that any American taxpayer funded this:

www.bbc.co.uk/mediaaction/press-release/4-feb-25

Independent media is media that is not influenced by government. USAID was - until days ago - (to a large extent) independent of the US government (until it was brought under State - that was the point of folding it into State, for the executive to exert more/total control over it). Its priorities were heavily influenced by US foreign policy but were not controlled by it.

All independent media is funded by someone or something. The question is about the conditions of funding. USAID contracts usually run to 100s pages. Federal Assistance Regulations (known as FAR) also run to 100s of pages. This was not some unregulated entity operating on a whim.

I will bow out now as I have said my bit. Everyone is entitled to their view and to express their view (another thing USAID money supported) but there is sadly a lot of mis/disinformation on this thread and I encourage people to read more deeply about foreign assistance and what it has achieved over the decades.

None so blind as those who don't want to see.

Not so small beer when you are a disinformation correspondent.

The OP, which implied BBC Media Action was a vehicle to spread DEI propaganda.

Having Googled, you mean Marianna Spring, the BBC’s Disinformation Correspondent. That’s nothing to do with Media Action, which is a charity so legally will have its own structure.

On Marianna Spring, though - she was promoted very young but I think she is a very brave reporter who has handled rapid promotion extremely well. Embellishing her CV at the age of 21 was a silly thing to do, but it doesn’t negate everything she has done since. She’s not the only person in the world to have done it. She’s said she worked with a Moscow correspondent whom she worked alongside and had only spoken to socially. It’s pretty small beer.

I think it was a bigger factor than you realise and the Kamala is for the they/them ad is widely accepted to be a turning point in favour of the Trump campaign. It got a lot of airtime and got this issue on the radar of people who probably hadn't paid much heed to the trans ideology agenda previously.

Funding for trans initiatives is absolutely tiny compared to say, the budget for international famine relief, which is also been pulled.

Trans women are a high transmission risk as a population, it is important to understand how it occurs so that interventions can be trialled to help protect the wider population from infection. Similar studies were done years ago with sex workers in Thailand - understanding transmission and well designed interventions cut the infection rates across the whole population, and sex workers benefited as well. I am gender critical btw, but these things are important.

Aid is rarely given for purely altruistic reasons. It is also about soft power, having a presence and influence in a region. It is not always benign.

This whole shitshow is a perfect display of the man on the bike meme sticking a stick into his own wheel and falling off his own bike and blaming everyone else.

But it is not independent when it relies on a single funder. It is by definition a dependent media.

Weren’t the people who managed USAID also unelected?

Thirty Million Dollars to look at how HIV is passed through men who have sex with other men?

Come on. We know how HIV is transmitted no matter what these men call themselves.

Agree.

Every new administration comes in with its agenda for aid funding. That is why every Republican administration introduces the Global Gag Order and every Democrat administration rescinds it. Shifting funding priorities is normal and expected (even if people don't like it). What is not normal is to have an unelected billionaire shut down (pretty much overnight) a longstanding institution that provides lifesaving support to millions of people around the world.

An independent media is the cornerstone of a functioning democracy and a truly democratic government understands that necessarily includes creating spaces for criticism.

From reading the original post, the most heavily funded work, to understand HIV transmission in these groups, is useful from a public health standpoint. The rest are relatively speaking, small sums of money.

What other useful initiatives outside of supporting trans will now no longer go ahead? That should be our focus.

Again, you are using US, EU and UK money to support independent media to be critical of US, EU and UK policy which includes...yourself.

You cannot make this up. Or you could if we were allowed to have actual comedy any more.

As I have I. Indeed I worked for 3.5 years on a program that supported independent media and yes - that includes being critical of US, EU, and UK foreign policy, among other things. That's how independent media works.

I did not. I stated that the richest nations have benefited from colonialism - largely in terms of access to resources which have enabled them to amass wealth, develop infrastructure, have outsized roles in international diplomacy, and so on.

Why do you say ‘though not through USAID’ when OP has already given several examples concerning LBGTQ+?

So you are saying the American tax payer is funding anti-American media in other countries and Americans should be happy with that?

But this is the problem - I’m sure they probably are, though not through USAID, but it is not ‘as much as China and Russia’, because the latter are doing it considerably more. It’s a false equivalence.

p.s, I am highly critical of some US interventionism, as well as the way that UK does its aid. But it really is not the case that they’re all the same.

I used to audit UK funds from government.

When auditing, I was accused of inventing the concept of an 'invoice' for daring to audit the financial records of a training provider. I had to spend 18 months on one [different] claim, because of the levels of fraud and I had to hire a forensic accountant to check my work as for the life of me, I couldn't find any work that HAD been carried out, let alone hunting for the work that hadn't.

I reported this provider to the [large city in the UK] Mayor's Fraud team and I provided all the evidence and they are still on their network as getting funds from different branches of the UK government.

There is so much fraud in all these institutions and providers, I am all for ending the whole fucking rotten lot and starting again.

I fail to see why I, as a US taxpayer (remember we are taxed no matter where in the world we live) have to subsidize these projects.

Give me my money back and let me donate individually. Never been easier with PayPal and other platforms tbh.

Yes, because I have seen it with my own eyes. Next.