By Juana Carrasco Martín on February 4, 2025 from Havana
The “gibberish” was formed in Washington. The couple of the moment, Donald Trump and Elon Musk, closed USAID — the United States Agency for International Development, — one of the arms that mask US interventionism in the world, one of the claws of the CIA and other intelligence services to obtain information about other countries and influence their internal and external policies, a tentacle of the State Department to foment dissidence that leads to “regime change” when it is provided, in short: a driving force behind US positions on the world stage.
Musk, the tsar of governmental efficiency at the head of the department created especially for the purpose of bringing order to the administrative institutions of the State and even probably privatizing it, had for days been criticizing the agency on his powerful networks and, although it may seem unheard of to you, he went so far as to describe it as “a radical left-wing psychological political operation”, which is impossible to prove and very difficult to believe even for the most naive earthling, but that is of no importance for the absolute power enthroned in the White House.
In any case, on Sunday, after signing an executive order freezing foreign aid, Trump followed the rhyme and told reporters that USAID had been run “by radical crazies, we will get them out and then we will make a decision”.
USAID is being dismantled by the Department of Government Efficiency (DOGE). With a single stroke of the pen, the police closed its doors and put up yellow tape to prevent employees from accessing the facility, its website was disconnected, as were the accounts of hundreds of its employees and hundreds of fired contractors.
The AP news agency even said that senior USAID officials — the “candorosos” John Voorhees, director of security, and deputy director Brian McGills — were escorted out of the building after blocking DOGE’s access to secure systems and refusing to hand over classified material. But the almighty DOGE accessed it, including intelligence reports, which is something else. They were unaware that Musk had passed sentence: USAID is a criminal organization and it is “time for it to die”.
The Democrats came to the defense of USAID, created in 1961. Senate Minority Leader Chuck Schumer (D-N.Y.) said late last week that any attempt to dissolve USAID would be “illegal and contrary to our national interests,” but Trump made it clear to him that he would not require an act of Congress to eliminate it. “I don’t think so. Not when it comes to fraud. There is fraud. These people are crazy. And if it’s fraud, we wouldn’t have a congressional act, and I’m not sure we would have one anyway.”
Senator Andy Kim (Democrat-New Jersey), who was one of the agency’s soldiers, came out quickly to defend it: “Its vindictive way of trying to shut down USAID sends signals to the whole world that we are a nation at war with itself,” and sends a message to adversaries that “the United States is distracted and divided.” “Distracted, I don’t know, but divided, yes.”
However, Secretary of State Marco Rubio tempered the situation when he announced his appointment of the acting director of USAID: “There are many functions of USAID that will continue, that will be part of US foreign policy, but they have to be aligned with US foreign policy.” If you didn’t understand, the translation is easy, the policy spearheaded by the Trump-Musk duo, and of which Rubio is a devalued underling, has as its ultimate goal “making America — read it carefully: the United States — great again.”
So far they have not spoken, or I have not read anything about USAID’s close coordination with the National Endowment for Democracy (NED), the spearhead and front for the spy services that works with non-governmental organizations, nor how their alliance with the Pentagon will turn out, where some of their manuals recognize their role in so-called counterinsurgency and nation-pacification operations.
Considering the services provided, I would venture to say that we will soon see the same old boy, with almost identical aims, perhaps with a different name, remodeled and more efficient, to guarantee the hegemony of the USA against an emerging world ready for multipolarity.
For now, a couple of well-intentioned questions: Will they or won’t they leave the budget of more than 50 billion dollars to the whatever-it’s-called, to be fished out of the swamp? Will the generous contributions to the organizations of the anti-Cuban mafia lobby in Florida flow again and with them the allowances to their low level employees in Cuba?
Source: Juventud Rebelde, translation Resumen Latinoamericano – English