I was in first grade the first time I recall hearing how America was sending aid to millions overseas. The year was 1962, at the time we only had 3 TV stations to watch, that is if one lived in a big town. Over half a century later the truth of American giving casts a dark and ominous shadow over our heritage. Here is a short story my countrymen need to hear, but one which few will enjoy reading.
My Dad was in the US Navy in World War II. A PT boat commander, he returned to America’s shores from the South Pacific to take up life where he had left off after graduating college. Like most of his contemporaries, Albert E. Butler truly believed his sacrifices had defeated a great evil. He also believed in the America we’ve all been taught to believe in, the one where the dream of peace and freedom is not just possible, but an eventuality. Later in his life, my father began writing a book about politics, geo-strategy, and the causation for most of the world’s ills. He never finished the work; an epic work entitled “One Nation Under Two Flags”. I mention it here, because we have been a nation ruled by two masters. One, our own immutable sense of equality and potential, it has driven us to paramount achievements and noble sacrifices. While the other “master” has deceived us, manipulated us, and soiled the name of the United States of America like a dirty dish rag. I think many reading this will agree, this betrayal is not simply onerous, it is unforgivable. Chief among the mistruths we’ve been told, is the real nature of our good heartedness and charity, our giving of ourselves and what we have – only so that wealthy elitists can do what they always do – take advantage. If you are like I am, you will be incensed to know, the devastation and death that has come about in the name of goodness. The fact is, anytime the United States or her allies invest in giving aid, there is a profitable payoff of strategic goal behind.
Sorry – USAID Is Not Mother Teresa
US aid in its various forms has been fluffed up for decades to equal the “good” Americans have done, as opposed to the reality of “leverage or profit” gleaned from its distribution. This sounds cynical and harsh, but this is the reality. In my father’s generation, the Lend Lease program and other assistance sent out to help our allies in World War II, naturally progressed into what we children heard legends of how we fed everybody in Africa, rumors the world would starve but the United States cornucopia. These ideas Americans were taught came about with the rise of something known as the “European Recovery Program”, after World War II ended. Better known as the “Marshall Plan”, these billions were advertised as “aid” to the distraught European nations, when in fact the aid was highly profitable for the elites, the industrialists, and the old world royalty that always ruled the continents. This is a far wider discussion, but my contentions are incontrovertible, meaning they can be proven. The billions slated for European nations under the Marshall Plan were contingent upon those nations joining something known as the Organization for Economic Co-operation and Development (OECD). This was in fact the core principle under which the current European Union was constructed. I’ll not bore the reader with too many details, suffice it to say that two entities essentially created funds for the reconstruction of Europe after WW II. Some $19.3 billion in 1948 loans ($205 billion in 2016) came from the United States, while $3.1 billion (32.9 billion in 2016) came from the International Bank for Reconstruction and Development (IBRD was and is a constituent of the World Bank and the IMF). To make a long story shorter, the interest on these funds went to the elites, as well as much of the profit from the rebuilding. Imagine the long tail of credit, the rebuilding processes, and the companies involved, and you’ll get the idea. “Bankers” … please consider what bankers are always about. Every cent spent rebuilding Europe then, rebuilding Ukraine, Libya, or Syria now, will pay a commission to these people.
Next, the Truman Doctrine took hold. In another twist of truth, a US hegemony pitted itself against a broken USSR, the big-bad-red-scare that wasted trillions on orchestrated discord. NATO was formed, and this was where the policy of “containment” began. Truman spent billions creating this great scare, and the Truman Doctrine even became a metaphor for emergency aid to keep a nation from communist “disease”, NATO was to be a protective shield to surround contaminated communist countries in the world. As it turns out, and as we see now, this “protective shield” has done nothing but ruin the legacies of millions. NATO is an utter failure; the forces arrayed never had the capacity of really deterring the Soviet Union or China. Korea and Vietnam both showed us the frailty of those notions. NATO was, and it, a money making machine for the military industrial complex, as well as a lever to subjugate allies. Truman lied to America, everyone involved in these programs lied, Americans spent their tax dollars to make rich bankers even richer, and that is all. The Soviet Union never was a threat; Russia inherited broken nations, and gave them up eventually out of economics. As for the Marshall Plan and the Truman Doctrine, these were formalizations to effectively profit from the demise of nations, nothing more. Even if the original intentions were to reconstruct free societies, the tiers of loans and business dealings underneath proved once again, the bankers only profit from wars.
In his book “Science Technology and Reparations: Exploitation and Plunder in Postwar Germany”, author John Gimbel discusses the billions (in 1946 dollars) US and UK companies pirated from German companies in copyrights alone. His term for the stealing of German inventiveness was “Intellectual Reparations”. The influx of technology for American manufacturers was massive stimulus; America would become the envy of the world for a time, in large part owing to being the victor in the World War. But back home, veterans and their families were brainwashed into thinking it was all for some great world good. Hell, the British imprisoned German scientist if they would not reveal trade secrets. The secrets stolen from companies like; IG Farben, Krupp, Theissen, and others fast forwarded American industry 10 years ahead of other nations. Not until Germany became part of the European Coal and Steel Community (ECSC), the precursor to today’s EU, would moderation come to the veritable rape of Germany and other former Axis nations. Aid, in the sense some Washington political genius wanted to help his fellow man, never existed at all. My father was right, America hoisted two flags long ago.
USAID: Inconvenient Gifts
Moving forward to today, reconstruction and the ensuing “business” behind has been a repetitive model of western leadership. Leaving off the wars of Korea, Vietnam, and the larger Cold War lunacy, crisis equals profit, and philanthropy is a business proposition, plain and simple. In 2014 aid from the United States was apportioned disproportionately; 9% to Israel (About $3.1 billion), $1.5 billion to Egypt, $1.1 billion to Afghanistan, another $1 billion to Jordan, and nearly one more to Pakistan. Now I know these numbers won’t mean to much to every reader, but the gist is, of the $35 billion or so given only about 24% went to health programs, the rest was primarily spent on financing various militaries, and nebulous economic activities that were essentially payoffs or regime change operations. Even the money given to assist people in need, was tainted with the corporate stamp of approval. But knowing that billions earmarked to help the world often are spent ruining it, this does not help us to understand the true villainy of the situation.
Another point most readers may not be aware of is how little of the total Federal budget is really spent on foreign aid. It may surprise you to know that less than 1% of taxpayer dollars are spent helping other nations. That means less than a penny buys all that “freedom” and good will out there. By comparison we spend as much as 53 cents out of every dollar on the military. Nation of Change contends that 69 cents out of every dollar goes to the military. But let’s not divert from our central argument here. American aid networks are notorious for having duality of purpose, for being levers used by the Pentagon and the CIA. You may remember a Guardian article in 2014 about USAID helping to set up a Cuban Twitter-like network called ZunZuneo. Now some ask the question; “What was Joe McSpedon, a US government official doing setting up a secret plan to build a social media network to overthrow the communist government there?” That’s right, USAID and the US Agency for International Development that oversees billions in aid to the world, they were complicit in a plan to, as the Guardian puts it, “renegotiate the balance of power between the state and society.” The Associated Press broke the story that the U.S. Agency for International Development, or USAID, had actually funded Zun-Zuneo through grant money. The origins of the money were disguised through off-shore accounts in the Cayman Islands and Spain.
Evidence of USAID’s involvement in regime change in and around the former Soviet Republics is widespread. Another instance where the aid agency was involved was something known as “ Center UA” a key component of the Euromaidan affair, which received more than $500,000 in 2012 from Pact Inc., a project funded by the U.S. Agency for International Development, and from Omidyar Network, a foundation established by eBay founder Pierre Omidyar and his wife. Other donors include the International Renaissance Foundation, whose key funder is billionaire George Soros, and National Endowment for Democracy, funded largely by the U.S. Congress.” I’ll leave off USAID now, and return to my original argument, the fact this has been going on for generations. As I’ve outlined before for Latvia Georgia, and in Libya, USAID, along with Soros’s Open Society Foundations, and a massive web of interconnected NGOs and government agencies have reshaped the social and political landscape of all of Europe, and much of the rest of the world. Sadly, while it would be convenient to put the blame on Soros, this subterfuge has been going on since he was a child leaving Hungary. The organization he is part of, the veritable James Bond 007 “Spectre” of our world, only uses people like him as chieftains.
America’s Toughest Challenge – Knowing the Truth
It is not an easy thing to love one’s country so mightily, only to find out much of its history is a lie. Americans are strong people, brave, noble, and naïve too. We are not unlike other people really, only opportunity and geography have made us a subset of the great humanity. Americas are also known for being resilient in the face of adversity, and honest, “as the day is long”, my Mom would say. We are not bankers, but mostly hard workers, which explains why Washington so easily betrayed us. Past and current presidents have cast us adrift these generations. In this Heritage Organization piece entitled; “Then World Banks and Economic Growth: 50 Years of Failure”, author Bryan T. Johnson makes his introduction framing former President Bill Clinton’s “cohesiveness” with the World Bank:
“The Clinton Administration has obligated the U.S. to contribute $800 million to one of the Bank’s agencies, the International Development Agency.2 This is about $100 million more than was requested for the last fiscal year. Spending more on the World Bank ignores the overwhelming evidence that its programs have done little to promote economic growth in less developed countries. Moreover, it ignores the economic lessons of what really causes countries to develop.”
Among his other arguments, central to my premise is the fact that private outside investment, along with World Bank lending, has profited from war and crisis since World War II. Food and other humanitarian aid systems currently in place, also glean profits for corporations, banks, and private investors like Soros, the Rothschild banking family, the Rockefellers, and many more. AID as a weapon of enterprise, this is the strategy of the other America.
We have to come to grips with the fact that, no matter how noble our hearts were in wanting to save the world, America has taken far more than she has given in the last 71 years. One quarter of everything used or enjoyed, fully 25% of all the resources consumed on this world, a disproportionate amount of shared wealth, has been spent by Americans. And it is in this that we see our leaders desperate. For it they fail in keeping the system going…. Well, I think you know the answer.
Yeah, I know my redneck friends, “America, love her or leave her.” Right, well I follow another American icon’s advice.
“Life is hard. But it’s a lot harder if you are stupid” – John Wayne
Phil Butler, is a policy investigator and analyst, a political scientist and expert on Eastern Europe, exclusively for the online magazine “New Eastern Outlook”.