This one is way faster and more hostile.
A brief message posted late Tuesday night on USAID’s website states, “On Friday, February 7, 2025, at 11:59 pm (EST) all USAID direct hire personnel will be placed on administrative leave globally,” except for select employees in “mission-critical functions, core leadership and specially designated programs. Essential personnel expected to continue working will be informed by Agency leadership by Thursday, February 6, at 3:00pm (EST).”The government will arrange return flights for all USAID workers stationed outside the United States within 30 days. The administration “will consider case-by-case exceptions and return travel extensions based on personal or family hardship,” such as children’s school term, “personal or familial medical needs, pregnancy, and other reasons.”“Thank you for your service,” concludes the message.
We've seen a lot of demonstration that USAID was also performing improper functions -- maybe mostly performing improper functions -- so perhaps it is warranted. It won't be free, though.
2 comments:
Maintaining a cancer is "good"---for whom?
I'll give you an example of what I'm talking about. Fifteen years ago when I was in the Southern Philippines, USAID had just built a water treatment plant for a local community on one of the islands where some Islamist groups were trying to recruit. (Abu Sayyaf was the more problematic one, but also Jemaah Islamiyah and the local crew, the Moro Islamic Liberation Front or 'MILF' as they amusingly chose to be called.) They also funded the local schools and, importantly, provided the textbooks to those schools -- textbooks that described the American influence otherwise than as a Great Satan, but pointed out helpful things that came to everyone in the area from the relationship.
They had relationships throughout the limited local government even in that remote corner of the world. They knew people who could get things done. And, most likely, they provided a cover for clandestine operations and officers as necessary to target the radical Islamist groups using the area.
I'm not saying that it shouldn't be stood down. It's looking like it has been transformed into a way of the US government bureaucracy targeting the US citizenry for information operations and manipulations that are probably unconstitutional as well as certainly illegal. It probably has to be done, and will improve the health of our polity.
I'm just saying it won't be free.
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