Rogan Spreads Insane Conspiracy Theories About DOGE Victim USAID

Joe Rogan spreads false and misleading information about USAID.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=NZ5rdhXUzl4

Trump reinstates “Mexico City” policy on abortion

“President Trump will reinstate a policy cutting off U.S. global health funding to international organizations that provide legal abortion information, referrals or services”

“The gag rule has negatively affected global health care systems beyond family planning, according to a 2019 review of existing research on the policy.”

“Only a handful of studies actually examined the rule’s impact on abortion rates, and those three papers concluded that the policy does not decrease abortion rates, per the scope review.”

https://www.axios.com/2025/01/25/trump-reinstates-mexico-city-policy-abortion

A Year of War in the Middle East Cost Americans Nearly $23 Billion

“A new study by the Costs of War Project at Brown University pinned down exactly what that cost is: at least $22.76 billion from October 7, 2023, to September 30, 2024. The bulk of the money, $17.9 billion, was spent on U.S. aid to the Israeli military—both financial grants given to Israel to purchase weapons, and the cost of replacing munitions such as artillery shells sent directly from American stockpiles to the Israeli army.”

“The study only counts the direct burden on the U.S. military budget. It doesn’t include indirect costs, “such as increased U.S. security assistance to Egypt, Saudi Arabia or any other countries, and costs to the commercial airline industry and to U.S. consumers.” Nor does it count the $1 billion in U.S. humanitarian aid to Palestinians.”

https://reason.com/2024/10/08/a-year-of-war-in-the-middle-east-cost-americans-nearly-23-billion/

How Biden’s Gaza pier project unraveled

“The resulting pier mission did not go well.
It involved 1,000 U.S. troops, delivered only a fraction of the promised aid at a cost of nearly $230 million, and was from the start beset by bad luck and miscalculations, including fire, bad weather and dangers on shore from the fighting between Israel and Hamas.”

“The U.S. military aimed to ramp up to as many as 150 trucks a day of aid coming off the pier.
But because the pier was only operational for a total of 20 days, the military says it moved a total of only 19.4 million pounds of aid into Gaza. That would be about 480 trucks of aid delivered in total from the pier, based on estimates by the World Food Programme from earlier this year of weight carried by a truck.
The United Nations says about 500 truckloads of aid are needed daily to address the needs of Palestinians in Gaza.
Just days after the first shipments of aid rolled off the pier in Gaza, crowds overwhelmed trucks and took some of it.
Israel’s killings of seven World Central Kitchen workers in April and its use of an area near the pier as it staged a hostage rescue recovery mission in June also dented the confidence of aid organizations, on whom the U.S. was relying to carry the supplies from the shore and distribute to residents.
A senior U.S. defense official acknowledged that aid delivery “proved to be perhaps more challenging than the planners anticipated.”
One former official said Kurilla had raised distribution as a concern early on.
“General Kurilla was also very clear about that: ‘I can do my piece of this, and I can do distribution if you task me to do it,'” the former official said.
“But that was explicitly scoped out of what the task was. And so we were reliant on these international organizations.”
Current and former U.S. officials told Reuters that the United Nations and aid organizations themselves were always cool to the pier.
At a closed-door meeting of U.S. officials and aid organizations in Cyprus in March, Sigrid Kaag, the U.N. humanitarian and reconstruction coordinator for Gaza, offered tacit support for Biden’s pier project.
But Kaag stressed the UN preference was for “land, land, land,” according to two people familiar with the discussions.
The United Nations declined to comment on the meeting. It referred to a briefing on Monday where a spokesperson for the organization said that the U.N. appreciated every way of getting aid into Gaza, including the pier, but more access through land routes is needed.
The underlying concern for aid organizations was that Biden, under pressure from fellow Democrats over Israel’s killing of civilians in Gaza, was pushing a solution that would at best be a temporary fix and at worst would take pressure off Netanyahu’s government to open up land routes into Gaza.
Dave Harden, a former USAID mission director to the West Bank and Gaza, described the pier project as “humanitarian theater.”
“It did relieve the pressure, unfortunately, on having the (land border) crossings work more effectively.””
https://www.reuters.com/world/how-bidens-gaza-pier-project-unraveled-2024-07-25/

China’s “Balance Sheet Recession” Has Already Started | Richard Koo

The U.S. trade deficit is a problem, and the best way to solve it is by a weaker dollar. Free trade is good, broad tariffs are bad, and the trade deficit is best dealt with by a weaker dollar.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=KRSpfG6hRTQ

U.S.-Funded Armies Fight Each Other In Lebanon

“The fighting between the U.S.-funded army of Israel and the U.S.-funded army of Lebanon seems to be another such consequence of U.S. policy. When the Lebanese militia Hezbollah and Israel began fighting last year, the Lebanese government tried its best to stay out of the fray. It reportedly even pulled troops away from the border when Israel announced a ground invasion and ordered Lebanese citizens to evacuate north of the Awali River. But on Thursday, the Lebanese army announced that it had, in fact, been sucked into the conflict.
“One of the soldiers was martyred as a result of the Israeli enemy targeting an army center in the area of Bint Jbeil South, and the center’s personnel have responded to the source of fire,” the army stated on social media. An official in Lebanon told Agence France-Presse that it was the first time the Lebanese army fired on Israeli forces throughout the war.

Two hours before, the Lebanese army had announced that one of its soldiers was killed by Israeli fire while “carrying out an evacuation and rescue mission alongside the Lebanese Red Cross in the town of Taybeh-Marjayoun,” down the road from Odaisseh, a town that several Israeli troops were killed trying to enter on Wednesday morning. The Red Cross said that four of its paramedics were injured, and the Israeli army said that it would be investigating the incident.”

https://reason.com/2024/10/03/u-s-funded-armies-fight-each-other-in-lebanon/

Why The Gaza Pier Failed | Five Issues and the Ultimate Cause Why JLOTS Did Not Succeed

Why The Gaza Pier Failed | Five Issues and the Ultimate Cause Why JLOTS Did Not Succeed

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=eJgspVr2wpM