Nick Kristof spotlighted two lives lost: a 5-year old and his mother, who both had been receiving medication for HIV from PEPFAR. The ‘savings’ was 12 CENTS a day. That’s not just avoidable; it’s murder. You can be culpable not just for actively harming another but also for not giving aid. If I’m in a boat and someone is drowning, just watching the person die when I could have pulled them in is criminal.
I hear the excuse that there’s too much criminal behavior from the White House to make a big deal of everything, but why not try? Thanks for writing about this and giving it the seriousness it deserves.
I don’t like Ken’s work much, and this article is a good example of why. He mocks Ds here for pointing out atrocities, and seems to think that’s worse than the atrocities themselves? It just seems callous and morally bankrupt to me.
Yes. I gave to The Intercept for years and I truly appreciated the large majority of Ken's work there. When he left and started on substack I signed up immediately and as a paying subscriber. (Whereas with Drop Site I subscribed but I felt like I'd contributed enough to Jeremy Scahill already, that's a whole separate clusterfuck). There is a new edge to Ken's work and while I agree with his take on the death grip the elderly established Dems have on the party, I'm not understanding how letting allies or anyone die from treatable illnesses we promised to help is a misuse of USAID. Was every USAID program totally aboveboard? Unlikely. But these programs were or close enough for me. So I canceled my financial support for now because I don't know what his current direction is, but I don't need to help anyone bring more cruelty to the less fortunate.
I'm going to put a link to another substack in my comment and say that it wasn't solely this one piece maybe looking at the wrong part of the story, but that there were many articles with this type of coverage, or much harsher takes even. It wasn't primarily THIS story that led to me taking a break from funding Ken, this was more one piece out of several that seemed a little reckless or hyperbolic. He was FAR from the only voice framing it in this way. I can understand and accept that MANY US foreign aid programs have been involved in geo-political intrigue AND I can still understand that there are programs providing life-saving care communities have no replace for if ours ends. I can even imagine that occasionally it's the same program! Should it be more transparent? Yes. Should we just leave people who depend on us to die? Um. That's a big fucking No. I can't imagine how the employees involved in these programs that have lost their jobs, lost their purpose, been left to make their way home without assistance , knowing their absence will lead to unnecessary death. I know we've done shady shit under sunny names before but I have a hard time believing USAID was currently more nefarious than benign and effective. I haven't seen evidence to support that. Good job with this piece Noah!
But, yeah…this is what I was saying about there being a real failure on parts of the left to highlight this. The knee jerk “all us fp is bad” can easily drift into a very grumpy isolationism. Which is especially grotesque right now.
Please explain to me why everyone has managed to leave The Intercept and land ok as long as they are men?
Natasha Lennard, Liliana Segura were they invited to Drop Site? Were they invited to work with Ken? Prem Thakker stayed the longest and landed at Zeteo but I think both journalists mentioned above are still at The Intercept, when they should be doing as well or better than the men who left. When I learned how much Scahill's salary had been for years I really felt played. Until I realized he didn't as far as I understand, use much of it to grow the site or build a rainy day fund. Well, maybe for himself. SO DISAPPOINTING.
the easiest way to make bank as an indie journalist is to appeal to general angry anti establishment sentiment. that's a space that has a lot of crossover with MAGA, which means it's skewed male.
I feel like I can understand and agree with what you're saying without being ok “liking” it, if that makes sense. And I hope it's not the case but I did stop underwriting his anyway.
Well, certainly that's likely a big part of the now situation. But the situation at The Intercept was that , well...sorry I linked to the wrong article that pissed me off, it was actually a CJR article older than the Semafor one. And I asked a lot of questions about this and got nowhere. Read the numbers and you'll understand my feelings of betrayal and basically being a sucker for a handsome face.
I think there is an affective difference - if not a difference of outcome - between killing people directly (through violence, for example) and killing people by ceasing to help them. You can certainly draw lines of causation between direct, violent acts in the past and the material conditions that necessitate aid in the present, but that is too tenuous a connection to really activate people. Most people feel a moral obligation to not punch people in the face, but don't feel an equally strong obligation to help someone who was punched in the face. That, on top of all the other factors you described, makes it hard to get the kind of public outrage that moves the needle on policy.
I thought that USAID also had some foreign policy goals as “soft power.” If that’s the case, and it makes sense, maybe future democratic leaders can push on that. Also, isn’t it illegal? That money was authorized by congress. I thought the courts were involved in reinstating it.
There’s another ramification of this policy. When trump leaves a vacuum by cutting aid, where will these countries turn to? The obvious answer is China who are totally ready to step in to that vacuum. They’ve already been cozying up to these countries with their Belt and Roods initiative. Though in the long term it isn’t actually aid. They eventually ask the countries to pay up. And usually at severely inflated numbers. China doesn’t really need us as much as people realize. After his last tariffs on china they refused to buy our soybeans leaving us to bail them out. We were at that time the largest growers. Now china is buying their soybeans from Brazil who, thanks to trumps excessive tariffs, are producing double the amount we do. What does he think china will do? Roll over and play dead? Not a chance in hell.
Nick Kristof spotlighted two lives lost: a 5-year old and his mother, who both had been receiving medication for HIV from PEPFAR. The ‘savings’ was 12 CENTS a day. That’s not just avoidable; it’s murder. You can be culpable not just for actively harming another but also for not giving aid. If I’m in a boat and someone is drowning, just watching the person die when I could have pulled them in is criminal.
I hear the excuse that there’s too much criminal behavior from the White House to make a big deal of everything, but why not try? Thanks for writing about this and giving it the seriousness it deserves.
Thank you.
Speaking up IS a solution. Informing people and rallying against evil IS a solution.
I care.
I’m with you.
"Hey, Elon: do you know you're responsible for 25 million deaths?" "Fuck off. NPG..."
https://www.kenklippenstein.com/p/bureaucracy-first
I don’t like Ken’s work much, and this article is a good example of why. He mocks Ds here for pointing out atrocities, and seems to think that’s worse than the atrocities themselves? It just seems callous and morally bankrupt to me.
Yes. I gave to The Intercept for years and I truly appreciated the large majority of Ken's work there. When he left and started on substack I signed up immediately and as a paying subscriber. (Whereas with Drop Site I subscribed but I felt like I'd contributed enough to Jeremy Scahill already, that's a whole separate clusterfuck). There is a new edge to Ken's work and while I agree with his take on the death grip the elderly established Dems have on the party, I'm not understanding how letting allies or anyone die from treatable illnesses we promised to help is a misuse of USAID. Was every USAID program totally aboveboard? Unlikely. But these programs were or close enough for me. So I canceled my financial support for now because I don't know what his current direction is, but I don't need to help anyone bring more cruelty to the less fortunate.
I'm going to put a link to another substack in my comment and say that it wasn't solely this one piece maybe looking at the wrong part of the story, but that there were many articles with this type of coverage, or much harsher takes even. It wasn't primarily THIS story that led to me taking a break from funding Ken, this was more one piece out of several that seemed a little reckless or hyperbolic. He was FAR from the only voice framing it in this way. I can understand and accept that MANY US foreign aid programs have been involved in geo-political intrigue AND I can still understand that there are programs providing life-saving care communities have no replace for if ours ends. I can even imagine that occasionally it's the same program! Should it be more transparent? Yes. Should we just leave people who depend on us to die? Um. That's a big fucking No. I can't imagine how the employees involved in these programs that have lost their jobs, lost their purpose, been left to make their way home without assistance , knowing their absence will lead to unnecessary death. I know we've done shady shit under sunny names before but I have a hard time believing USAID was currently more nefarious than benign and effective. I haven't seen evidence to support that. Good job with this piece Noah!
But, yeah…this is what I was saying about there being a real failure on parts of the left to highlight this. The knee jerk “all us fp is bad” can easily drift into a very grumpy isolationism. Which is especially grotesque right now.
It was this story:
https://www.semafor.com/article/04/14/2024/the-intercept-is-running-out-of-cash
Trumpy, not grumpy. Damn it.
Please explain to me why everyone has managed to leave The Intercept and land ok as long as they are men?
Natasha Lennard, Liliana Segura were they invited to Drop Site? Were they invited to work with Ken? Prem Thakker stayed the longest and landed at Zeteo but I think both journalists mentioned above are still at The Intercept, when they should be doing as well or better than the men who left. When I learned how much Scahill's salary had been for years I really felt played. Until I realized he didn't as far as I understand, use much of it to grow the site or build a rainy day fund. Well, maybe for himself. SO DISAPPOINTING.
the easiest way to make bank as an indie journalist is to appeal to general angry anti establishment sentiment. that's a space that has a lot of crossover with MAGA, which means it's skewed male.
would be my guess.
I feel like I can understand and agree with what you're saying without being ok “liking” it, if that makes sense. And I hope it's not the case but I did stop underwriting his anyway.
Well, certainly that's likely a big part of the now situation. But the situation at The Intercept was that , well...sorry I linked to the wrong article that pissed me off, it was actually a CJR article older than the Semafor one. And I asked a lot of questions about this and got nowhere. Read the numbers and you'll understand my feelings of betrayal and basically being a sucker for a handsome face.
https://www.cjr.org/business_of_news/layoffs-the-intercept.php
I think there is an affective difference - if not a difference of outcome - between killing people directly (through violence, for example) and killing people by ceasing to help them. You can certainly draw lines of causation between direct, violent acts in the past and the material conditions that necessitate aid in the present, but that is too tenuous a connection to really activate people. Most people feel a moral obligation to not punch people in the face, but don't feel an equally strong obligation to help someone who was punched in the face. That, on top of all the other factors you described, makes it hard to get the kind of public outrage that moves the needle on policy.
I thought that USAID also had some foreign policy goals as “soft power.” If that’s the case, and it makes sense, maybe future democratic leaders can push on that. Also, isn’t it illegal? That money was authorized by congress. I thought the courts were involved in reinstating it.
There’s another ramification of this policy. When trump leaves a vacuum by cutting aid, where will these countries turn to? The obvious answer is China who are totally ready to step in to that vacuum. They’ve already been cozying up to these countries with their Belt and Roods initiative. Though in the long term it isn’t actually aid. They eventually ask the countries to pay up. And usually at severely inflated numbers. China doesn’t really need us as much as people realize. After his last tariffs on china they refused to buy our soybeans leaving us to bail them out. We were at that time the largest growers. Now china is buying their soybeans from Brazil who, thanks to trumps excessive tariffs, are producing double the amount we do. What does he think china will do? Roll over and play dead? Not a chance in hell.