Elon Musk was wrong to say the US Agency for International Development (USAID) had funded ($US32,000) a comic book in Peru promoting trans guys in frocks. My own fact-check shows that the funder was actually the State Department, and the protagonist in Peru’s The Power of Education comic (above) was a gay super-hero, not a transitioner. See here.[1]

My main interest in the USAID boondoggle is how it’s been corrupting journalists on a global scale. That’s what this essay’s about.

USAID from its $US40-billion budget allocated $US268 milion last year alone to propping up global “independent” media, better called “dependent”. USAID was supporting 6,200 journalists in nearly 1,000 outlets. Reporters Without Borders (RSF) unblushingly complained that Trump has plunged NGOs, media outlets, and journalists doing ‘vital work’ into chaotic uncertainty.

Doubters might need some perspective on how USAID became and remained a Deep State player while Republican and Democrat presidents came and went. There’s nothing comical in USAID’s $US18.5-billion largesse to Muslim terror states since 2019 — states which have killed some 3,000 US military personel.  A sample:

♦ $US3.4 billion to Yemen in the past five years, including $US753m last year with another $US2 billion queued, while the Houthis attacked US and other shipping

♦ $US3.5 billion in “humanitarian aid” for Somalia in 2022-24, including $US29m from Biden on his way out the door last December.

♦ $US3.4 billion to Syria since 2019 during its wars between al Qaeda and the Iranian-aligned Shiites.

♦ $US3.7 billion for Afghanistan since the 2021 Taliban victory, much of the money now beyond any audit

♦ $US600 million to anti-Christian Pakistan and $US700 million to Iraq, run by Iranian puppets, since 2019.

♦ $US2.1 billion to Gaza and the West Bank just since October 7, 2023. Earlier USAID sent $US310 million to Hamasfor a cement factory, which the terrorist tunnel builders must have greatly appreciated.

♦ Just weeks before his January exit, Biden sent  $US3 million to the Palestinian Authority Security Forces  for “weapons training” – after the same forces had launched more than 1500 terror attacks on Israelis in 2023.

♦ $US1.1 billion to Hezbollah-run Lebanon

♦ A civil engineering course at Colorado State University financed for Anwar al-Awlaki, from Yemen and a mentor to the US Army psychiatrist Nidal Hasan who killed 13 in the Fort Hood, Texas, massacre of 2009. Al-Awlaki was on the short list (until killed by a US drone) of successors to Osama bin Laden.[2]

♦ $US10 million to an al-Qaeda-linked terrorists’ Nusra Front, part of $US164 million to radical groups worldwide.

What’s still being uncovered is astounding. The Washington Examiner unearthed on February 7 that USAID gave $US270 million over 15 years to East West Management Institute (EWMI), an outfit of radical left billionaire George Soros. With just $US9 million of that money, EWMI set up in Albania a “Justice for All” campaign that saw the leftist government jail the opposition leader Sali Berisha after staging a kangaroo court trial.[3] Until Trump cut off the funds, EWMI was up to equivalent monkey-business in Uzbekistan and Kyrgyz.

Against that background, don’t believe USAID’s blather about funding to strengthen transparent media and misinformation-free communications. Just recall the Biden apparatchiks’ suppression of the New York Post’s Hunter Biden laptop revelations in the pre-election weeks of 2020. This Democrat conspiracy was abetted by the New York Times and Washington Post, the FBI and tech giants, USAID client Politico newsletter and 51 lying intelligence ex-executives — with Their ABC contributing its own mite of disinformation .[4]

I haven’t found USAID going to the taxpayer-funded Australian Broadcasting Commission and other Australian and NZ legacy media. That’s a mercy as USAID certainly shovelled millions to the BBC’s Media Action charity promoting its narratives million worldwide through local “media ecosystems”. Media Action in 2023-24 got GB£2.4 million or 8% of its budget from USAID. Asked officially, “Who the charity helps?”, Media Action responds: “The General Public/mankind.”

I did discover that our Department of Foreign Affairs and Trade (DFAT) since 2020 has sent GB£233,000 ($A462,000 at today’s rate) to the same BBC charity.[5] I queried DFAT, “For what purpose?”. Its normally responsive media team hasn’t replied, despite reminders. I might be wrong, but maybe DFAT sends the BBC our taxes because the BBC can corrupt the media in South-East Asia, Indonesia, PNG and the Pacific Islands more efficiently than DFAT can manage on its own, using the ABC as sub-contractor. BBC Media and DFAT/ABC both mentor credulous Third World journos to brainwash audiences about fake climate extremes, useless renewables, “diversity, equity and inclusion” and other claptrap.What of Australia’s orthodox foreign aid? With the ABC cheering from the sidelines , Official Development Assistance (ODA) involved $1.6 billionon climate alarmism in the three years to 2022-23. Labor and Coalition governments have competed to donate in total $460 million in foreign aid to Bill and Hilary Clinton’s corrupt Clinton Foundation, according to Alan Moran’s Regulatory Review.

Meanwhile the ABC in the past fortnight has run about 20 items on Trump’s USAID clean-out, such as a Myanmar/Thai medical clinic now lacking US taxpayer funds. Keep in mind that the “AID” in USAID stands for “Agency for International Development”, the euphemism for its original Cold War commie-fighting. There’s nothing to stop other governments or charities plugging gaps in civil aid. The ABC ran only one piece that wasn’t negative: Katim USAID ino bagarapim public health wok long PNG, which translates as “USAID cut does not affect public health work in PNG”.

I’ll detail shortly how BBC Media Action is corrupting cash-strapped journos in the Third World and the Pacific, but first I’ll deal with how USAID funds world-wide investigate  journos.

USAID and the US government have provided more than half the budget of the Organized Crime & Corruption Reporting Project (OCCRP), a shadowy consortium of journalists and sleuths exploring the occasional big data dumps on global corruption. Another funder of OCCRP is the UK Foreign, Commonwealth & Development Office (FCDO), which is also a principal funder of the BBC’s Media charity.

USAID’s ex-boss, Samantha Power, had described OCCRP as a “partner” able to do the US government’s work at one remove. The US government can even veto appointments of OCCRP’s editors-in-chief and CEOs.

OCCRP has 200-plus staff in 60 countries. It even pays selected journalists’ salaries and expenses when they work on favoured projects. It says its staffers are “across six continents”,suggesting that some are likely operating in Australia, not that they advertise it.

At times OCCRP partners with the like-minded International Consortium of Investigative Journalists (ICIJ). This OCCRP/ICIJ network has facilitated scoops by at least one of Australia’s most celebrated journalists, along with the Pandora Papers by the ABC, Financial Review, Age and SMH and Guardian. This excellent expose of 2021 involving 600 investigative journalists worldwide and 12 million documents about politicians, billionaires, royals and celebrities using offshore strategies for personal investments, along with 400 Australians. Listed were Ukraine’s Zelensky, King Abdullah II of Jordan, and in a small way Cherie and Tony Blair (UK).

There is a darker side to the USAID/OCCPR combo. Through its client journalists, it was able to dig political dirt for Democrats where the CIA feared to tread. OCCRP’s reporting on ex-New York mayor Rudy Giuliani’s political work in Ukraine was cited four times in the whistleblower letter that led to President Donald Trump’s impeachment. Former State Department executive Mike Benz says: “Everyone can look this up. They [USAID] paid $20 million to a group of hit-piece journalists.”

A parallel investigative journalist group Drop Site News late last year exposed OCCRP’s reliance on USAID/US government money ($US44m from 2014-23). OCCRP’s Chief Executive and co-founder Drew Sullivan, described there as “one of the most influential journalists in the world”, used multiple threats of lawsuits to try to squash Drop Site’s story. Ironically, OCCRP itself helps fund“Reporters Shield”, a State Department-backed program defending investigative journalists against lawsuits.[6]

Sullivan claimed gamely the USAID money didn’t influence the reporting. The New York Times, with links to OCCRP, said it hadn’t been aware of the USAID money, a let-down for its investigatory reputation.Now let’s get back to the BBC Media Action charity showering its money, perks, training and tips on Third World journos. Like a modern-day Sir Galahad, it fights “division, disinformation and distrust” around the world.

It stresses its independence from the BBC when USAID money flashes into view, but in May 2024 unveiled its new strategy “TRUST. DEMOCRACY. TRANSFORMED LIVES” that

brings us closer to the heart of the BBC… BBC Media Action truly brings the best of the BBC – its creativity, diversity, innovation and absolute commitment to truth with no agenda – to all of its work.[7]

Other donors to BBC Media are a roll-call of censorious states and authorities, along with UN bodies, leftist lobbies such as World Wildlife Fund and World Vision, and corporates including Twiggy and Nicola Forrest’s $A8 billion Minderoo Foundation(donating GB£44,000 or $A87,000).[8] Another donor is Internews (GB£ 67,000), yet another journo group – one of the world’s largest – ensuring “healthy information ecosystems” in which local media bother the poor and oppressed about their imaginary “climate crisis”.

Media Action has a handy 500 staff and GBP32m ($A63m) income last year, but complains about donors shrinking and its audience drifting to social media. CEO Simon Bishop is on a modest GB£115,000 ($A230,000), although with add-ons his cost to the charity is GB£ 189,000 ($A370,000).[9]

Media Action delivers to the Third World BBC-style bilge like “adapting livelihoods amid the climate crisis”. It runs a retinue of alarmist scientists and WWF lobbyists to brief journos about “cheap” renewables and dirty coal. It’s now reaching into Australia’s front yard, saying:

Climate is a major focus for our work, supporting communities in Bangladesh, Cambodia, Nepal and Solomon Islands with access to media content that helps them to adapt to and cope with the impacts of climate change, and hold leaders to account…

In the next financial year, our work in the Pacific will expand to

Fiji, Tonga, Samoa, Vanuatu and Papua New Guinea under an

FCDO [UK government] funded project to support trustworthy, public interest

media in the region. (P23).

In Indonesia, Media Action used social media clients to get to 20 million people last year about purported climate perils:

♦ In Makassar, Indonesia, it comes up with young lady Firda, 23 —

Every day I read news about disasters, including ice melting in the North Pole [she means Arctic sea ice, but that’s stabilised for a decade], drought during the dry season, forest fires, clean water crisis, global warming, floods, and other disasters that happen even where I live… Start with simple actions like planting trees, reduce electricity consumption from unsustainable energy sources [cheap coal?] … Inform and spread the message of the danger of the climate crisis, so more people can take action. — Annual Report, 2021-22, p17

♦ In Jakarta, a brainwashed youngster emotes for Media Action,

Whenever my mother tells me to buy a motorcycle, I tell her that I don’t want to buy it as it is going to add more pollution in our atmosphere. — Annual Report, 2023-24, p28

He quite probably now gets about on foot or in packed smoke-belching public transport. I’d guess that the motorbike could have enhanced his study or work productivity no end, but BBC Media likes him less mobile.

In the Solomons, DFAT’s media education (via ABC), with taxpayers’ $2 million aid for the next three years, is being upstaged by Media Action, which is brainwashing educating “more than 100 journalists, program producers and presenters”.[10]

Media Action’s main thrust is in sub-Saharan Africa. It boasts getting at 4.6 million Somalis via 26 radio stations and nine languages, spruiking among other things, “extreme weather linked to climate change”.

It was getting handy money from IGAD (Intergovernmental Agency on Development) covering eastern Africa (GBP58,000 two years back) but nothing lately. IGAD now issues reports on “Slow Onset Climate Change” rather than the BBC’s headless-chook climate hysteria. For that “slow-onset” study IGAD interviewed 137 cattle herders in the Uganda-Kenya border region, but they were more worried about Kalashnikov-toting cattle raiders, drought and regulatory interference than “slow-onset” warming.

BBC Media does manage to find a herder with three cows and one calf (previously 50 cows). Its trained announcers converted the herder to tomatoes and cabbages watered with water bottles. Although quoted by Media Action, he/she fails to mention global warming. (2022-23 Report p30).

While it may seem a sacrilege in modern journalism, I’ve accessed the past century’s temperature record (HADRUT4) in Kenya and Somalia. For what it’s worth, Kenya shows a warming rate of about half a degree per century (hardly a crisis). Somalia shows about 1.2degC, but it would be negligible except for a single spike in 2017. So much for Media Action saving mankind from misinformation.Turning to the Middle East, Arab associated with Reporters for Investigative Journalism (ARIJ) was getting a fifth of its income from USAID and other US government entities, supposedly buttressing “one of the leading investigative outlets in the Middle East”.

Checking ARIJ’s website, first-up came the ARIJ-sponsored 15-minute documentary titled: The Artists of Gaza: Can You Hear Us?Its theme is that displaced Gazan poets, singers and artists are suffering from Israel’s “genocidal war” against “the relentless spirit of the Palestinian struggle for freedom.”

Here are some snippets. Decide for yourself if it’s “investigative” or Hamas-friendly propaganda:

6.00 minutes: A mother cries — “I would see the bombing, destructions and killing of children. I died a hundred times each day.”

10.00: An attractive teen girl

I used to easily switch on the electricity and turn on the tap.

Hamas pre-October 7 ripped up water pipes for rocket casings].

10.40: Elderly male artist:

I cry over my brother who died of hunger. Is there any harsher death than that? [sobbing]… The whole world can’t even bring food to sustain us. The way we are treated in Gaza — animals are treated in a better way

Hamas steals food aid for itself or re-sale

12.00: The attractive teen again and in tears: “It makes me feel that my life is worthless. Why is this happening to me?” She sings,

How many times are we to die, to be forced from our homes, no-one hears the sounds of our limitless dreams.

Left unmentioned: that Hamas on October 7, 2023. massacred 1200 Israelis

In Ukraine, 90 per cent of Ukrainian media was being bankrolled from offshore, most through USAID. A lot of that appears to have gone missing.

USAID’s BBC client is proud to have worked with Ukraine’s national broadcaster, Suspilne,

to produce Visible, a landmark series of films dispelling LGBTQI+ stigma in Ukraine and showcasing the wartime contributions of these communities … In telling their stories in relatable ways, this project tackles deeply held stigmas and stereotypes.

As Russian missiles plough into Ukrainian apartments, the families’ top concern might not be stigma against Ukraine’s gay, bi, trans, questioning, queer and intersex folk.

Last year Media Action was “thrilled” to win an Averted Disaster Award for what it called life-saving work with 20 Kenyan radio stations on climate change. I see unlimited potential for “Averted Disaster” awards, such as for the Teals  “saving” a Great Barrier Reef from its tenth imminent death.

Elon Musk has been busy finding stuff for just a few weeks. Who knows what he’ll find next about the legacy media?

Tony Thomas’s latest book from Connor Court is Anthem of the Unwoke – Yep! The other lot’s gone bonkers. $34.95

[1] The website’s record for the grant read, “To cover expenses to produce a tailored-made comic, featuring an LGBTQ+ hero to address social and mental health issues.”

[2] al-Awlaki also masterminded the “underwear bombing” that almost destroyed a passenger airplane heading to Detroit on Christmas Day 2009.

[3] The head of the Justice for All project, Anne M. Trice (on her quarter-million salary) explained, “The Albanian people need to have institutions that they can rely on to be acting with integrity.”

[4] To this day, the ABC has not acknowledged the laptop contents are authentic and not Russian compromat.

[5] BBC Media Action annual reports, 2019 to 2024.

[6] Sullivan also went in for personal attacks on the investigators, calling one of the journalists a possible “Russian asset”

[7] Media Action’s annual report 2023-24 p4 and 37.

[8] Ibid p41

[9] Ibid p71. Media Action staff on the BBC’s defined benefit scheme contribute between 4% and 7.5% of annual salaries while the BBC gives them a credit worth 30-42% of salaries. (P78). This scheme had a GBP841m deficit ($A1.7b) at 2022, but it targets viability by 2029.

[10] “The Solomon Islands-Australia Media Sector Partnership ($2 million over FY2024-25 to FY2027-28) is implemented by ABC International Development to supplement the regional PACMAS program by increasing journalist capability, strengthening public broadcaster capabilities and reach, and supporting the Media Association of Solomon Islands.