U.S. Sent Billions in Famine Relief to Yemen. The Population Rose 30%

By Daniel Greenfield @ Sultan Knish Blog

In May 2024, the Biden administration announced that it was providing $220 million in aid to Yemen which the United States had been at war with since the start of that year.

Even while the US Navy was engaged in what the Associated Press would describe next month as the “most intense combat since World War II” with Yemen’s Houthi Jihadists, the U.S. Mission to Yemen boasted of having provided “nearly $5.9 billion” in aid beginning with the Obama administration, of being “the largest donor of humanitarian assistance” and urged that “other donors must join us in stepping up” to fund an Iranian-backed terror group at war with us.

A terror group whose motto, like its Iranian patrons, is “Death to America.”

One arm of the United States government, the Pentagon, was fighting the Houthis, while another arm, the State Department and USAID, were funding them. While Navy personnel on board US Navy vessels had seconds to prepare and counter Houthi strikes, State Department and USAID personnel worked to keep the Houthi’s Hodeidah port open so more “aid” could pass through it. The US Navy was not allowed to strike Hodeidah even though it was the Houthi lifeline for the weapons that the Houthis were using to attack American and other vessels.

The Biden administration had ended President Trump’s support for Saudi action against the Houthis and lavished a fortune on the terrorist areas because terrorist supporters and international groups had falsely claimed that Yemen was suffering from a deadly famine.

Before Islamic terrorist supporters, their leftist allies and international aid groups faked a famine in Gaza to save Hamas, #YemenFamine was trending on social media along with photos of wounded and starving children. Much as in Gaza, there was no famine. Rather the Houthis were seizing international aid which they then resold to create food shortages. The more aid came in, the more the Houthis seized. The fake famine was used to mount an international pressure campaign to end the attacks on the Houthis and send billions of dollars in relief to Yemen.

Massive shipments of urea, a fertilizer also used in explosives, were allowed into Yemen to help grow crops and stop the mythical famine. Even though urea was proscribed, the shipments were not interfered with in the name of ending the famine that wasn’t happening. Along with the urea came ammonium perchlorate which is used in rocket fuel. The rockets being fired at US Navy vessels were fueled by the famine lie. False claims of a famine were a tool of war.

By 2018, over $4 billion in humanitarian aid had poured into Yemen. The UN’s World Food Program, which would later invent and become the loudest voice promoting the Gaza famine hoax, operated 5,000 distribution sites to supposedly aid 10 million people whom it claimed were facing emergency conditions, but could only track 1 in 5 of its food basket allotments.

In 2017, two-thirds of those who were supposed to be receiving food had not gotten anything.

In one Houthi province, the UN sent twice as much food as the people needed, and came away claiming that the majority of the population was still in desperate need of food.

The WFP, and even the AP eventually admitted that the Houthis were taking much of the food. The Houthis created fake lists of starving people who needed food. International aid groups resorted to sending money so that Yemenis could buy the food aid that was being resold.

Even though all of this was well known, the Biden administration kept on sending more aid five years later. The money didn’t go to the people: it went to the Houthis at war with America.

Secretary of State Antony Blinken’s first order of business was taking the Houthis off the list of foreign terrorist organizations, making it legal to fund them, despite “their reprehensible conduct, including attacks against civilians and the kidnapping of American citizens” because of “the humanitarian consequences” that would take place in Yemen. Even as the Houthis went to war against America, “humanitarian aid” provisions protected the delivery of fuel, and the port and airport operations that allowed the Houthis to get more money and weapons.

Earlier this year, the UN demanded $2.47 billion for its 2025 Yemen Humanitarian Needs and Response Plan. In February, the Houthis killed a WFP worker (an event that got far less publicity than the deaths of aid workers in Gaza), but in April, the WFP expressed outrage that the United States was finally, at least temporarily, pausing aid and would not be allocating over $100 million in funds to the enemy region at war with the United States.

After 9 years of non-stop famine (and billions in spending), 17 million people are facing acute hunger in Yemen. That’s up from 15.9 million people in 2019.

Since the famine began, Yemen’s population shot up from 30 million to 39 million.

Having a population increase by 10 million or 30% during a famine is unprecedented. What accounts for this Yemeni miracle? Miraculously, Yemen’s population rose sharply as an unprecedented wave of foreign aid poured into this country. It’s unknown how many of these miracle births were real or fake names to collect yet more humanitarian aid for the hungry.

After the latest round of airstrikes, a Yemeni man interviewed on camera, chanted, “Death to America” and bragged that “our country is fortified with the skulls of American demons.”

More accurately, it’s fortified with $5.9 billion in American taxpayer money.

Since Yemen’s population seem to have figured out how to increase by a third during a famine affecting half their population, they clearly don’t need any more help from us, which should be used to help actual starvation victims in African countries that can’t just pump oil from the ground. Not only should we stop sending aid to Yemen, we should block all further aid.

If we don’t want to be in a perpetual war over passage through the Red Sea or depend on the goodwill of a terrorist group for access to it, we should cut off the money to the terrorists.

And while Iran has supplied the Houthis with weapons and money, in Yemen, much as in Afghanistan, Iraq and Gaza, much of the money going to the terrorists comes from us.

Daniel Greenfield is a Shillman Journalism Fellow at the David Horowitz Freedom Center. This article previously appeared at the Center's Front Page Magazine. Click here to subscribe to my articles. And click here to support my work with a donation.  Thank you for reading.

 

Foreign Aid Is a Failure

August 28, 2024 by Dan Mitchell @ International Liberty

When debating my left-leaning friends about economic policy, I often hit them with my “never-answered question” by asking them to name any country, at any point in history, that became rich with big government.

They usually evade the question, though some of them mistakenly mention countries such as China (definitely not rich) or Sweden (became rich before big government).

I now have a corollary. Here’s another never-answered question.

I’m focusing on this issue today because the Center for Freedom and Prosperity has just issued a report on foreign aid.

Supporters of these handouts generally argue that giving money to poor governments will help them climb out of poverty.

In the paper, I explain the evidence is overwhelming that foreign aid does not achieve this goal.

…most arguments for foreign aid are based on the theory that donor nations can jump-start growth in the developing world with smartly targeted aid. …Skeptics…argue that foreign aid is wrong in theory since it focuses on giving money to governments rather than the policy reforms that would boost growth. And they argue that foreign aid has failed the real-world test since countries receiving large transfers have not climbed out of poverty. …the question is whether any foreign aid spending passes a cost-benefit test. …

There is no evidence that foreign aid has ever turned a poor country into a rich country. Indeed, it is much more likely that foreign aid undermines economic development by giving politicians in recipient nations an excuse to delay or avoid needed reforms. …we can say, with full confidence, …that poor countries have received about $4 trillion of aid since 1960 and none of them escaped poverty as a result. Aid has been a total failure. There are a few success stories in the post-World War II era, but they all got rich with good policy.

In the paper, I have a list of the jurisdictions that have received the most aid over the past 60-plus years.

I then augment that data by showing how those places rank in terms of per-capita GDP.

Here’s how I summarize these findings.

The results are damning. Every one of the top 20 aid recipients is in the bottom half of the world. In most cases, the big aid recipients are in the bottom 10 percent or bottom 20 percent of the world. Some of these nations suffer from political instability or military conflict, so it would be a big exaggeration to claim in some instances that foreign aid is the cause of a jurisdiction’s poverty. Moreover, these numbers are not adjusted for population. So even though India has received about twice as much aid as Mozambique over the past six decades, it has a population of more than 1.4 billion, dwarfing Mozambique’s 35 million. That being said, adjusting aid numbers for population does not change the conclusion. Nations that receive lots of aid have dismal economic outcomes.

My CF&P study contains several specific case studies (Asian Tigers, Chile, Botswana, etc), but let’s focus on Moldova.

In the report, I note that Moldova has received much more foreign aid, on a per-capita basis, than Romania.

So why, then, has Moldova languished while Romania has enjoyed decent growth?

My study gives the answer.

According to the World Bank data, Moldova has received more than $7.8 billion of aid over the past three decades, making it one of the world’s biggest recipients on a per-capita basis. Romania, however, has only received $5.6 billion. And since Romania has 19 million people compared to 2.5 million in Moldova, per-capita handouts to Moldova have been immensely larger. …Has all that aid helped Moldova grow faster than Romania? No. Has all that aid helped Moldova keep pace with Romania? No. In all likelihood, the handouts to Moldova have led to less growth. Why? Because politicians have less incentive to fix problems when they can simply put their hands out for freebies.

By the way, I have written about whether Moldova might have achieved good results if aid was linked to pro-market reforms.

That might be a good idea in theory, but it seems that donor nations (including the United States) never try – or never succeed – in doing that.

I’ll close by acknowledging that there are persuasive arguments for foreign aid. During a war, earthquake, or famine, aid can save lives. Also, aid can be a way of bribing nations to be on the right side when dealing with geopolitical rivalries.

But nobody should delude themselves into believing that foreign aid can help a poor country climb out of poverty. There’s only one tried-and-true recipe for becoming prosperous.

P.S. The Marshall Plan was not a success, at least if the goal was Western Europe’s economic rejuvenation.

Foreign Aid and Conditionality

June 24, 2024 by Dan Mitchell @ International Liberty

Because of my libertarian instincts and sympathy for taxpayers, I’m not a fan of foreign aid.

But there’s also the very practical argument that foreign aid simply does not work. More aid doesn’t produce more growth. Indeed, handouts may hinder economic development by propping up bad governments and bad policy.

Let’s use Moldova as an example. I’m currently in that country for a speech that will focus of rule of law and the quality of the judicial system.

As part of my research, here are the World Bank Governance Indicators for Moldova in 1996 (shortly after it achieved independence from the Soviet Union) and 2022 (the most-recent data). As you can see, modest improvements in two areas is offset by modest declines it three other areas.

Incidentally, I didn’t even include the “Political Stability” category, which dropped significantly. I’m guessing that Russia’s invasion of Ukraine (which borders Moldova) has played a role in that decline, and it would not be fair to blame the current Moldovan government for having a conflict next door.

The bottom line is that Moldova has not taken advantage of independence, at least when measuring quality of governance.

Why should this matter to American readers? Or to readers from just about any place other than Moldova.

Well, it should matter to Americans (and Europeans and Japanese) because we’re helping to finance Moldova’s government.

With regards to American aid, here are some excerpts from a recent Associated Press report by Matthew Lee and Vadim Ghirda. 

U.S. Secretary of State Antony Blinken…pledged $135 million in aid to Moldova for energy security and to counter Russian disinformation as the Western-leaning nation struggles to blunt Moscow’s push for influence that has been buoyed by recent successes in its war in neighboring Ukraine. Blinken opened a short visit to Eastern Europe with a stop in Chisinau, Moldova’s capital, where he announced the assistance at a news conference with President Maia Sandu. America’s top diplomat said $85 million would go to bolster energy infrastructure and $50 million was aimed at overhauling the energy and farming industries and deterring disinformation. …the U.S. had provided Moldova with $774 million in financial aid since the Ukraine war began in February 2022. Some $300 million of that was earmarked for energy security. …Sandu thanked the U.S. for its financial support, …“Thanks to the financial American assistance of $80 million, in the past winter we managed to compensate the energy bills of our citizens.”

So, among other things, U.S. aid is being used to subsidize energy consumption in Moldova.

I don’t think that the U.S. government should subsidize anyone’s energy bills, either at home or abroad.

 

For what it’s worth, my philosophical objections to foreign aid don’t apply to money that is used to buy friends. If someone can convince me that handouts to a foreign government will keep that country from siding with Russia (or some other unfriendly country), that might be worth it.

But I’m very skeptical that the U.S. handouts to Moldova are achieving that goal. Heck, foreign aid might even backfire (as it probably did in pre-war Ukraine…and probably will in post-war Ukraine).

The bottom line is that foreign aid has a terrible track record.

But if politicians insist on sending taxpayer money to other nations (either to make themselves feel good or to buy friends), the funds should be tied to something concrete, such as better scores on the World Bank’s Governance Indicators.

Or, even better, make aid conditional on getting better scores from Economic Freedom of the World (and conditional on ignoring bad advice from the IMF and OECD).

Is Foreign Aid the Beginning of the End for Speaker Mike Johnson?

The future looks bleak for the speaker of the House.

by James Fite @ Liberty Nation News, Apr 20, 2024 Tags:Articles, Opinion, Politics

(Photo by Andrew Harnik/Getty Images)

The House of Representatives opted Friday, April 19, to advance billions in foreign aid to Ukraine, Israel, and Taiwan to a final vote on Saturday. The package received truly bipartisan support – and, for that matter, bipartisan opposition. But now House Speaker Mike Johnson (R-LA) is under fire once again from some in his own party for relying on the Democrats to get things done.

Funding Foreign Wars

Speaker Johnson revealed a handful of bills earlier in the week, including three that would send $26.4 billion to Israel, $60.8 billion to Ukraine, and $8.1 billion to “counter China in the Indo-Pacific,” which largely means sending money to Taiwan. The Israel measure also includes just shy of $10 billion to address Palestinian humanitarian needs, a caveat Democrats demanded in return for their support.

What it does not include, however, is an increased in funding or stricter policies for US border security, and that was a sticking point for many of the 55 Republicans who opposed the measure in Friday’s floor vote and all three of the GOP committee members who voted against it late Thursday night.

While the trio of funding bills didn’t address US border security, a separate measure in the package does, though it failed to clear the committee on Friday. Speaker Johnson said the House would still consider it under a suspension of the rules this weekend, but that means it will require two-thirds support to pass – a tall order for an “aggressive” border security bill with such a narrow GOP majority.

Another bill aims to address other Republican foreign policy priorities. For example, it would allow the sale of frozen assets of Russian oligarchs to fund Ukraine, potentially require the sale of TikTok to a company not owned by the Chinese government, and authorize stricter sanctions on China, Russia, and Iran.

Whatever bills from this set pass the House will be combined into a single package before heading for the Senate. President Biden said he would sign the package into law and called on both chambers to act quickly, as Congress is scheduled to be in recess next week.

Which Is Worse, the Math or the Politics?

The spending bills have so far proven to be quite bipartisan, yet those who oppose the funding of foreign wars with US tax dollars – or, in some cases, those who are quite alright with it so long as they get some border security out of the deal – accuse Speaker Johnson of, for lack of a better term, colluding with the Democrats behind their backs. The committee vote was 9-3, with all four of the Democrats voting in support, and more Democrats supported the bill Friday than Republicans, so surely that means Johnson’s in cahoots with the enemy, right?

 

That’s certainly the way some Republicans are presenting it. Rep. Thomas Massie (R-KY), one of the three House Rules Committee Republicans who voted against the spending package – not because it funds foreign wars, but because it didn’t come with a border security rider – said as much Thursday. “Unprecedented: Speaker Johnson plans to pass the rule for the $100 billion foreign aid package using Democrats on the Rules Committee,” Massie declared on X. “Is he working for Democrats or Republicans now?” Rep. Jim Banks (R-IN) chimed in with: “Never happened before that minority party has carried a rule vote.”

But is that what actually happened? It doesn’t take a math whiz to look at the 9-3 committee vote and the fact that all four Democrats on the committee voted in support of Johnson’s bills to determine that more Rules Committee Republicans voted in favor of it than voted against, or, for that matter, that the bills drew more GOP votes in committee than Democrat. After all, that nine total minus four Democrats equals five Republicans is far from a complex calculation – it’s an equation most first graders could solve!

Then there’s the 316-94 floor vote on Friday. Yes, once again a higher percentage of Democrats supported this than Republicans – and, this time, a higher raw number of Democrats supported it. But, also once again, more Republicans voted in favor of the bills than against – almost three times as many this time, in fact.

The Beginning of the End for Speaker Johnson?

Wherever one stands on the idea of sending US tax dollars to fund foreign wars – and whether it makes good or bad policy – spinning the Republican speaker as a Democrat tool because of the vote results, in this case, is terrible math and politics alike. It just doesn’t add up. One could just as easily level the same accusations at the more hard line Republican holdouts had the Democrats decided to stand united against anything GOP Speaker Johnson proposed.

For Johnson’s position as speaker of the House, however, none of that may matter. Rep. Marjorie Taylor Greene (R-GA) and the two colleagues she has rallied to her cause already, Reps. Thomas Massie and Paul Gosar (R-AZ), are apparently committed to removing him as speaker regardless of how this vote-filled weekend goes. Thanks to the spending packages, though, others are beginning to lean in that direction as well.

Rep. Lauren Boebert (R-CO), who just a day earlier said she didn’t want to put the House through the chaos of another vote to vacate, now predicts that “this could be the beginning of the end for the speaker.”

 

Read More From James Fite

Haiti is Run by Gangs. Our Foreign Aid Paid for It.

After over $5 billion in foreign aid, Haiti is worse off than ever.

By Daniel Greenfield  @ Sultan Knish Blog

Since the 2010 earthquake, the United States has provided over $5 billion in aid to Haiti. That doesn’t include Biden’s latest batch of $133 million after gangs took over much of the country.

The $100 million in security assistance announced by Biden is on top of the $312 million that we already provided to fund, train and arm Haiti’s police forces over the last decade and a half.

And with over $400 million in backing, Haiti’s police still can’t compete with gang members. But many of the gang members were once the police officers whom we helped to train.

Jimmy “Barbeque” Cherizier, the leader of the G9 gang which controls the streets and is the most powerful man in Haiti, was a former police officer who had been accused of playing a role in the murder, rape and arsons that burned 400 homes and killed 70 people.

The massacre was perpetrated by former President Jovenel Moïse’s government and by its Ministry of the Interior, which controls the police. The killers, wearing Haitian police uniforms “removed victims, including children, from their homes to be executed and then dragged them into the streets where their bodies were burned, dismembered, and fed to animals.”

The targets were supporters of former ousted President Jean-Bertrand Aristide.

Since 2020, the Haitian police force has fired around 3,000 members for abandoning their posts and the Biden administration convinced the UN to deploy an international police force. But Kenya, which had agreed to lead the force and send 1,000 of its people, decided to pull out.

That means the United States will be expected to do it. And it won’t be the first time.

The Clinton administration sent in the Marines to put former Jean-Bertrand Aristide in power in Operation Uphold Democracy. Once the Marines left, Aristide, lacking a functional military, turned to the Cannibal Army, a local gang, to stay in power, which went wrong once the ‘Cannibals’ turned on him and joined with elements of the police to oust him from office.

Aristide blamed the whole thing on the United States instead of his own pet ‘cannibals’.

Rep. Barbara Lee claimed that the Bush administration had overthrown a “true democracy” while Rep. Maxine Waters charged that the whole thing had been an American conspiracy. Leftists to this day insist that Haiti would have been fine if it wasn’t for George W. Bush.

The Bush administration sent Marines to keep order after Aristide’s overthrow when rival Haitian gangs, both pro and anti-Aristide, roamed the streets of Port-Au-Prince killing each other.

The UN sent in a peacekeeping mission that operated in one form or another for the next 15 years through street battles, a cholera outbreak (blamed on the UN peacekeepers), sexual abuse (also blamed on the peacekeepers) and earthquakes including one which leveled the local UN base and killed the Assistant-Secretary-General of UN Peacekeeping Operations.

To whatever extent Haiti’s police had ever been functional, Aristide’s effort to hold power by replacing the police leadership (which opposed him and launched periodic attacks on the country) and relying on armed gangs for support made Port-au-Prince into a war zone.

By the time Bill Clinton rushed in to exploit the 2010 earthquake, the situation was already hopeless. Haiti could be nothing else except a war zone and a fundraising tool for aid groups. It’s a permanent disaster area of the kind that keeps NGOs and UN officials in business for life.

Haiti’s now former prime minister has spent the last year demanding that the peacekeepers or somebody, including Kenya, come back and secure Haiti.

Since nobody else wants to, the odds are that it will eventually turn out to be us.

There’s plenty of blame to go around for everyone from Bill Clinton to South Africa’s ANC Klepto-Communist regime which lectured about colonialism while treating Haiti like a colony, but the ultimate responsibility for Haiti’s current condition lies with the Haitians.

Haiti has been an independent country for over two centuries and the earthquake that has been blamed for all of its problems happened a long time ago. Haiti’s problem is that it doesn’t have a functional government or society. After over $5 billion in foreign aid, it’s no better off now.

Port-au-Prince is overrun with gangs because there’s a thin line between the police and gangs, because there’s no such thing as a legitimate government or a functional society. And no matter how many troops we send or how much foreign aid we provide, there won’t be.

After Afghanistan and Iraq, we should have learned the lesson that these are not things that arise from thin air or can be bought with a foreign aid package. Countries are not naturally occurring phenomena, UN recognition, a flag and a spot on a map don’t make a nation.

Failed states are not nations. And that’s true of not only Haiti, but much of the UN. The UN membership is littered with failed states that have functional dictatorships. Haiti can’t even manage that. Its armed gangs, official police and ex-police militias are a Praetorian guard that is always on the verge of seizing power or deciding who the president is with some street riots.

The various sides in Haiti’s permanent civil war, which includes a leftist movement linked to Aristide and gangs like G9 all claim that they want to build a better and more just Haiti.

Mostly they steal, kill, seize power and kill some more before they’re overthrown.

Is this our problem? Failed states produce fleeing migrants and serve as platforms for enemy nations. China had formerly dispatched its Ministry of Public Security (MPS) thugs to try and keep order in Haiti (with no result, since they lacked the infrastructure of a social credit system, gulags and swift executions that allow them to peace at home) and has been sniffing around.

But it’s not a problem that we can solve or should keep trying to solve.

We are not going to fix Haiti. No amount of money is going to do it. And international efforts to “professionalize” Haiti’s police force go back to at least the 90s and the UN Civilian Police Mission in Haiti. Despite all of that, Haiti’s police force functions like an armed gang. And last year, the police union was asking for armored helicopters, drones and more firepower.

Sending in the troops is not going to fix the situation. Haiti hasn’t been invaded. There’s no foreign enemy to “liberate” the Haitians from. It’s a classic warlord situation and even if we were to keep thousands of troops there for a decade, trying to suppress the gangs, things would almost certainly go right back to where they were the moment the troops got back on the boat.

We can rebuild countries, but we can’t rebuild societies. Only the Haitians can do that.

Some failed states bounce back. There was a time when China was overrun by warlords and bandits, and was considered a failed state. And the same was true of Russia. But Haiti is less likely to have a happy or even a more structured unhappy ending because it’s not a country.

The best thing we can do for Haiti is put its future in the hands of its own people.

Foreign aid can help countries that have experienced a temporary setback, but Haiti is not suffering from temporary problems, and the only thing foreign aid does is prop up a crisis.

America should stay out of Haiti and let its own people decide their future. Maybe the Haitians can save themselves.

We certainly can’t.

Daniel Greenfield is a Shillman Journalism Fellow at the David Horowitz Freedom Center. This article previously appeared at the Center's Front Page Magazine. Click here to subscribe to my articles. And click here to support my work with a donation. Thank you for reading.

Islamic Terrorists Create Famines to Profit From Foreign Aid

By Daniel Greenfield @ Sultan Knish Blog

Secretary of State Antony Blinken’s first order of business was taking the Houthis off the list of foreign terrorist organizations. That 2021 decision helped lead to the Red Sea crisis today.

Only four days after being confirmed, the State Department announced that “undertaking an expeditious review”, Blinken had decided that it should be legal to fund the Islamic terror group.

The State Department claimed that it was lifting the terror ban on the Houthis, despite “their reprehensible conduct, including attacks against civilians and the kidnapping of American citizens” because of “the humanitarian consequences” that would take place in Yemen.

Now, even in the midst of the Red Sea crisis, the Biden administration has refused to put the Houthis fully back on the list of Foreign Terrorist Organizations, instead it listed them under the much weaker Specially Designated Global Terrorist category which does not ban providing material support to them and has delayed imposing even these sanctions for 30 days. .

During this 30-day-period, the Biden administration will listen to complaints and demands from aid groups “crucial to facilitating humanitarian assistance and the commercial import of critical commodities in Yemen.” Special licenses, similar to those allowing USAID and its partners to do business with the Taliban, Al Qaeda and Hamas in Afghanistan and Gaza, will be issued to aid groups working with the Houthis. And extra loopholes will be introduced to aid the Houthis.

Even if the sanctions finally take effect on Feb 16, they will protect not only “food, medicine, and fuel” but also “personal remittances, telecommunications and mail, and port and airport operations.” Meanwhile the Houthis will be cutting off traffic and shipping through the Red Sea.

How are a group of terrorists able to keep attacking ships and not be listed as terrorists?

During the Trump administration, Iran and its leftist allies initiated a disinformation campaign claiming that the Saudis and the United States were guilty of causing a famine in Yemen.

This lie was picked up and promoted by pro-terrorist and simply clueless politicians.

In December 2021, fifteen senators demanded that the Biden administration force an end to the Saudi campaign against the Houthis. The signatories included Sen. Elizabeth Warren, Sen. Bernie Sanders, Sen. Pat Leahy, Sen. Kirsten Gillibrand, Sen. Patty Murray, Sen. Richard Blumenthal, and a number of others. They insisted that the Houthis receive fuel, claimed that 230,000 Yemenis had died during the war and warned that Yemen was facing a famine.

The same lies that had been used to save the Houthis and enable them to blockade the Red Sea would be used by many of the same politicians to protect Hamas from Israel’s campaign.

The truth was that the Houthis, much like Hamas, had manufactured the famine by seizing food.

Nearly three years before Sen. Warren and others were spreading these lies, an AP investigation had already revealed that the Houthis were taking and reselling UN food aid.

In one Yemeni province, 65% of residents faced food shortages even though the UN had sent enough food to feed a million people. The Houthis imposed “taxes” on aid workers and then used the food to feed their own terrorists or resell it to finance their operations.

The more food aid was sent, the richer the terrorists got and the worse the famine became.

The Houthis understood that the best way to profit and end the attacks against them was by causing a famine. And that, with the complicity of politicians like Sen. Warren, is what they did.

Hamas had been doing the same thing even longer, seizing food and medicines, and then blaming Israel for shortages of both. No amount of “humanitarian aid” sent into Gaza was ever enough because it was pilfered, resold or repurposed for its terrorist operations.

After the Oct 7 massacres, Hamas allies used the same playbook that had worked in Yemen to force Israel to end the siege of Gaza and allow in massive amounts of foreign aid. The Biden administration had assured Israelis that the aid would not go to Hamas and yet numerous videos show that the terrorist group continues to seize the incoming aid at gunpoint.

Even back in 2021, the State Department had asked for exemptions in Gaza because, in their own words, “we assess there is a high risk Hamas could potentially derive indirect, unintentional benefit from U.S. assistance to Gaza.”

In Afghanistan, the Taliban and even Al Qaeda are continuing to benefit from our foreign aid.

The Biden administration has bragged about sending over $2 billion to Afghanistan since the Taliban takeover to help with their “humanitarian crisis” including a “famine”. Providing humanitarian aid has required the administration to seize money from 9/11 victims, print money for the Taliban, and issue licenses allowing transactions with the Taliban and the Haqqani Network which has been closely interlinked with Al Qaeda.

Our food aid goes through the Taliban. And the Taliban use aid to pay salaries and those Afghans who want a share of the food aid have to register and work for the Jihadist group.

USAID is aware that the aid we send is being seized by the Taliban because it commissioned a report which warned of “the Taliban’s growing tendency to attempt to increasingly control delivery” and that “the Taliban appear to view the UN system as yet another revenue stream, one which their movement will seek to monopolize and centralize control over.”

But Afghanistan under the Taliban was always facing famine. During the summer of 2001, the UN and international agencies were warning that Afghanistan needed more international aid or five million people faced starvation. The problem went away once the Taliban were defeated and came back when they returned to power. The famine problem is really a terrorist problem.

Terrorist sympathizers claim that fighting Islamic terrorists in Afghanistan, Gaza or Yemen causes famine. The truth is that Islamic terrorists cause famines when they seize power.

Anyone who truly cares about famines in these places wants the terrorists to be defeated.

But most politicians who cry about the famines that terrorists strategically manufacture to extract money and political support from civilized nations don’t care about hungry people. Much as Hamas, the Houthis and the Taliban exploit hungry people, so do politicians like Sen. Bernie Sanders and Sen. Elizabeth Warren who use the famines to prop up Islamic terrorists.

The lies that they tell finance the terrorists who cause the famines and then engage in terrorism.

Foreign aid to Afghanistan before 9/11 helped finance international terrorism. Foreign aid to Gaza before Oct 7 helped build up the Hamas war machine that killed over 1,000 people. The relief and aid provided to Yemen allowed the Houthis to launch their Red Sea blockade. And now the Houthi blockade is preventing actual humanitarian aid from passing through.

Fighting terrorism doesn’t cause famines, letting them remain in power does. Famines end when terrorists are defeated while humanitarian aid to terrorists actually causes famines.

Daniel Greenfield is a Shillman Journalism Fellow at the David Horowitz Freedom Center. This article previously appeared at the Center's Front Page Magazine. Click here to subscribe to my articles. And click here to support my work with a donation.Thank you for reading.

Across America, we labor, only to have DC give our money away overseas

October 28, 2023 By M.W. Gail

Yesterday, I met with folks from the Lakota Nation about implementing a beekeeping initiative to provide honey, beeswax, etc., for both personal and commercial endeavors. This meeting made me angry. I saw grinding poverty right here in my own country. Having served this nation in the US Marines, working alongside Crow, Navajo, Sioux, Chippewa, Cherokee, and other American Indians, I simply cannot fathom the idea that the US Government sends massive amounts of US taxpayer money outside of the US, to people who literally hate us, hate our way of life, and really want to do us harm...........Why? What are We the People getting for all this spending? Absolutely nothing. Nada. Nil. Zip. And, being cynical, while we citizens aren’t getting anything for the money, how much are D.C.’s residents and workers getting via kickbacks and other tasty treats? As with their rampant Insider Trading, it is likely a whopping amount............To Read More...

Dollars Can’t Buy Victory in Ukraine If There’s No Strategy

Biden wants another $13 billion for Kyiv, but why? the White House needs to explain. 

By Dave Patterson August 15, 2023 @ Liberty Nation News

Americans learned last week that President Joe Biden will ask Congress for an additional $13 billion in “emergency” aid to Ukraine. But why? Biden continues to throw Americans’ tax dollars at the Kyiv government with no explanation of strategy or purpose, or program controls to ensure the money goes where it is intended. The result is the US taxpayer is losing enthusiasm over Biden’s cavalier spending on Ukraine without telling the billpayers what the end game is. Whereas Congress has been generous in the past, raiding the US treasury may not be so easy this time.

In an Associated Press article, correspondents Lisa Mascaro and Colleen Long wrote that, despite the relative ease with which prior requests for Ukraine military and financial aid have received congressional approval, this time may be different. They explained:

“A political divide on the issue has grown, with the Republican-led House facing enormous pressure to demonstrate support for the party’s leader, Donald Trump, who has been very skeptical of the war. And American support for the effort has been slowly softening. Biden and his senior national security team have repeatedly said the United States will help Ukraine “as long as it takes” to oust Russia from its borders.”

Regardless of the media’s inclination to blame former President Trump for all the ills of the country, failing support for Biden’s blank check spending drawing from the American taxpayers’ account is shaky reasoning. In a June 15, 2023, Pew Research poll, “Currently, 44% of Republicans and Republican-leaning independents say the US is giving too much to Ukraine, up modestly since January (40%) and the highest level since shortly after Russia invaded Ukraine last year,” Andy Cerda wrote for the Pew Research Center. Though four percentage points does not seem like much, it represents a recent trend of a ten percent increase.

Furthermore, there is a more troubling statistic from the recent survey of Ukraine supporters. The total of those surveyed showed a four-fold increase compared to March 2022 among Republicans, Democrats, and Independents who believe the amount of money the US gives Ukraine is “too much.” Biden’s party stalwarts are also showing flagging support, with 14% indicating that too much is being spent on Ukraine, compared to only 5% in March last year.

The problem for the White House is of its own making. Americans are traditionally willing to stand up for the little guy against the bully. With its brutal invasion and the wanton killing and maiming of thousands of Ukrainians that followed, Russia was the clear aggressor. Throwing US support to the Ukrainian fighters was the right thing to do. As the fighting has continued, however, the piecemeal, weak approach the Biden administration is taking in providing military support particularly has caused Americans to wonder what the strategy is. The “as-long-as-it-takes” approach Biden’s national security team keeps touting is not a strategy; it’s an activity.

Furthermore, the unwillingness of Biden’s Defense and State Departments to come clean on exactly what pathway to success they are following in Ukraine is fomenting skepticism regarding the president’s intentions. Adding to the loss of confidence that Biden has a plan to end the horrific fighting in Ukraine, the administration objected strongly to recently passed House of Representative legislation establishing an Office of the Special Inspector General for Ukraine Assistance. “The American taxpayer deserves an accurate accounting of the money being shoveled to Ukraine. No one benefits, least of all the Ukrainian fighters, when US military aid is not managed with system integrity,” Liberty Nation reported recently.

Biden’s plan for Ukraine is incomprehensible, and the White House staff doesn’t want the American public to know how the money currently going to Ukraine is being spent. It’s not former President Trump’s lack of enthusiasm for supporting Ukraine that is the problem; it’s the failure of the Biden administration to explain what it’s doing with the money. President Biden could reverse the weakening resolve of many Americans simply by holding a televised address to the nation to explain the plan. Tell the people what he believes it will cost, why he believes it will end the fighting, and describe what that end will look like. Short of that, Americans dwindling support for Ukraine will continue.

Read More From Dave Patterson

All opinions expressed are those of the author and do not necessarily represent those of Liberty Nation.

How U.S. Foreign Aid to Iraq Funds Terrorism Against Americans

By Daniel Greenfield July 09, 2023 @ Sultan Knish Blog

In 2020 and 2021, the United States spent over $600 million on foreign aid in Iraq. That’s down from a high of over $2 billion in 2018 and $4.4 billion in 2016. But it still means that we have blown through over $10 billion on Iraq since 2016. That’s long since we officially withdrew.

Meanwhile, where was Iraq’s money going? Iraq’s latest budget dedicates $2.8 billion to Shiite PMU terror militias including Kataeb Hezbollah: an Iran-backed terror group that has been responsible for the deaths of numerous American soldiers.

At the height of the Iraq War, Kataeb Hezbollah was using Iranian IEDs to kill American soldiers. Kataeb Hezbollah is listed as a foreign terrorist organization which makes it a crime for Americans to fund it. But that hasn’t stopped the Biden administration from providing massive amounts of foreign aid to Iraq.

While some U.S. conflicts with Jihadists in the region are old news, Kataeb Hezbollah fired rockets at the U.S. embassy in Baghdad in 2019, and has bombed U.S. bases in recent years. Kataeb Hezbollah killed two American soldiers in 2020: Army Spc. Juan Miguel Mendez Covarrubias and Air Force Staff Sgt. Marshal D. Roberts.

Politicians and the media have mostly ignored the fact that Americans are continuing to be killed in Iraq, that the Iraqi government is funding their killers, and that we’re funding Iraq.

While Iraq funds Iran’s terror militias, the United States funds the UN Development Programme to “stabilize” Iraq and has invested over $100 million into “conflict, peace and security” funding.

The United States has spent over $1 billion financing the nation’s military while Iraq spends billions financing the Iranian PMU terror militias which are expected to approach a quarter of million Jihadis. The rise of ISIS provided the Shiite regime running Iraq with the perfect excuse for discarding the ISF military built by the U.S. and turning over security to Shiite terror groups.

The foreign policy establishment claims that we need to fund the Iraqi military as a counterbalance to Iran’s PMU militias, but that just allowed Iraq’s government to shift even more defense funding to the Shiite terror groups. Iraqi Prime Minister Mohammed al-Sudani and his government were backed by the PMU’s and are turning them into an even bigger army.

That’s not surprising since al-Sudani is a second generation member of a Shiite Islamist movement loyal to Iran’s Islamic Revolution. The Shiite Coordination Framework, which is behind the Sudani government, is filled with Shiite Islamists groups with their own militias. For example, the Badr alliance, created by Iran, controls both sizable chunks of Iraq’s military and police forces, as well as one of the larger militias, and has a sizable presence in Iraq’s parliament.

Iraqi democracy consists of Shiite blocs, some Islamists, some fronted by former leaders like Maliki, fighting each other for power and competing for Iran’s favor. Iran has helped them set up militias that, in imitation of Iran’s IRGC and Lebanon’s Hezbollah, also control large portions of the economy, running their own businesses, scoring construction contracts and oil deals.

The foreign policy establishment has refused to acknowledge that Iraq has long since become an Islamic terror state under the political control of Iran and that the only reason it isn’t more of a threat is the constant infighting between the Shiite majority which often turns violent. If Iraq’s Shiite Islamists were ever united under a single leader, like Muqtada Al-Sadr, a perennial player, it will become as much of a threat to the region and the world as Iran and Lebanon’s Hezbollah.

Instead, we keep sinking more money into Iraq in the hope of a better outcome.

Iraq, until recently, was on the list of the top 5 recipients of U.S. foreign aid. And the Baghdad regime continues to come up with new ways to extract money from U.S. taxpayers.

Last month, Prime Minister Al-Sudani claimed that the Islamic terror state was going green and pleaded for foreign aid to save the Tigris and Euphrates rivers, which according to media accounts, was blamed on “climate change”. In fact, the Tigris river is a filthy mess because Sadr City’s Islamists pour tons of filth into it. Five million cubic meters of waste are dumped daily into both rivers from sewage to corpses. That isn’t the work of climate change, but of Iraqis.

The United States provided military aid to the Baghdad regime and its military in order to defeat ISIS. But what we were actually doing was intervening in a Shiite-Sunni civil war while disregarding the fact that the side we were backing was just as much our enemy as ISIS.

While military aid has fallen under the Biden administration after the decline of ISIS, much as in Afghanistan, even humanitarian aid easily finds its way into the hands of Islamic terrorists.

Iran’s PMU militias control large swathes of territory, including farmland, own construction companies and demand payoffs from nonprofits who operate in the areas claimed by them. Humanitarian aid, no matter how seemingly benevolent, to people in terrorist areas, funds terror.

It’s a hard lesson that we have failed to learn in either Afghanistan or Iraq.

Like most failed Islamic terror states in the region, Iraq is perpetually on the verge of bankruptcy. In an effort to crack down on money from Iraq going to Iran, the Treasury Department restricted Iraqi banks from sending dollars to unknown parties. Since much of the Iraqi economy consists of moving dollars to Iran, this has become a real problem.

Despite the existence of the Iraqi dinar, much of the country uses the dollar. And the United States provides pallets of dollars to Iraq that then go on to Iran. Earlier this year, an Iraqi banker warned that if the rules weren’t suspended, “Within one year, most banks will declare bankruptcy”. That says more about what Iraqi banks really do than about our rules.

And yet no amount of economic problems keep the regime in Baghdad from spending billions on its terror militias. That’s a choice and it should not be subsidized by American taxpayers.

Especially when it costs American lives. 

Daniel Greenfield is a Shillman Journalism Fellow at the David Horowitz Freedom Center. This article previously appeared at the Center's Front Page Magazine.Click here to subscribe to my articles.  Thank you for reading.

How U.S. Foreign Aid to Iraq Funds Terrorism Against Americans

By Daniel Greenfield June 28, 2023 @ Sultan Knish Blog 

In 2020 and 2021, the United States spent over $600 million on foreign aid in Iraq. That’s down from a high of over $2 billion in 2018 and $4.4 billion in 2016. But it still means that we have blown through over $10 billion on Iraq since 2016. That’s long since we officially withdrew.

Meanwhile, where was Iraq’s money going? Iraq’s latest budget dedicates $2.8 billion to Shiite PMU terror militias including Kataeb Hezbollah: an Iran-backed terror group that has been responsible for the deaths of numerous American soldiers.

At the height of the Iraq War, Kataeb Hezbollah was using Iranian IEDs to kill American soldiers. Kataeb Hezbollah is listed as a foreign terrorist organization which makes it a crime for Americans to fund it. But that hasn’t stopped the Biden administration from providing massive amounts of foreign aid to Iraq.

While some U.S. conflicts with Jihadists in the region are old news, Kataeb Hezbollah fired rockets at the U.S. embassy in Baghdad in 2019, and has bombed U.S. bases in recent years. Kataeb Hezbollah killed two American soldiers in 2020: Army Spc. Juan Miguel Mendez Covarrubias and Air Force Staff Sgt. Marshal D. Roberts.

Politicians and the media have mostly ignored the fact that Americans are continuing to be killed in Iraq, that the Iraqi government is funding their killers, and that we’re funding Iraq.

While Iraq funds Iran’s terror militias, the United States funds the UN Development Programme to “stabilize” Iraq and has invested over $100 million into “conflict, peace and security” funding.

The United States has spent over $1 billion financing the nation’s military while Iraq spends billions financing the Iranian PMU terror militias which are expected to approach a quarter of million Jihadis. The rise of ISIS provided the Shiite regime running Iraq with the perfect excuse for discarding the ISF military built by the U.S. and turning over security to Shiite terror groups.

The foreign policy establishment claims that we need to fund the Iraqi military as a counterbalance to Iran’s PMU militias, but that just allowed Iraq’s government to shift even more defense funding to the Shiite terror groups. Iraqi Prime Minister Mohammed al-Sudani and his government were backed by the PMU’s and are turning them into an even bigger army.

That’s not surprising since al-Sudani is a second generation member of a Shiite Islamist movement loyal to Iran’s Islamic Revolution. The Shiite Coordination Framework, which is behind the Sudani government, is filled with Shiite Islamists groups with their own militias. For example, the Badr alliance, created by Iran, controls both sizable chunks of Iraq’s military and police forces, as well as one of the larger militias, and has a sizable presence in Iraq’s parliament.

Iraqi democracy consists of Shiite blocs, some Islamists, some fronted by former leaders like Maliki, fighting each other for power and competing for Iran’s favor. Iran has helped them set up militias that, in imitation of Iran’s IRGC and Lebanon’s Hezbollah, also control large portions of the economy, running their own businesses, scoring construction contracts and oil deals.

The foreign policy establishment has refused to acknowledge that Iraq has long since become an Islamic terror state under the political control of Iran and that the only reason it isn’t more of a threat is the constant infighting between the Shiite majority which often turns violent. If Iraq’s Shiite Islamists were ever united under a single leader, like Muqtada Al-Sadr, a perennial player, it will become as much of a threat to the region and the world as Iran and Lebanon’s Hezbollah.

Instead, we keep sinking more money into Iraq in the hope of a better outcome.

Iraq, until recently, was on the list of the top 5 recipients of U.S. foreign aid. And the Baghdad regime continues to come up with new ways to extract money from U.S. taxpayers.

Last month, Prime Minister Al-Sudani claimed that the Islamic terror state was going green and pleaded for foreign aid to save the Tigris and Euphrates rivers, which according to media accounts, was blamed on “climate change”. In fact, the Tigris river is a filthy mess because Sadr City’s Islamists pour tons of filth into it. Five million cubic meters of waste are dumped daily into both rivers from sewage to corpses. That isn’t the work of climate change, but of Iraqis.

The United States provided military aid to the Baghdad regime and its military in order to defeat ISIS. But what we were actually doing was intervening in a Shiite-Sunni civil war while disregarding the fact that the side we were backing was just as much our enemy as ISIS.

While military aid has fallen under the Biden administration after the decline of ISIS, much as in Afghanistan, even humanitarian aid easily finds its way into the hands of Islamic terrorists.

Iran’s PMU militias control large swathes of territory, including farmland, own construction companies and demand payoffs from nonprofits who operate in the areas claimed by them. Humanitarian aid, no matter how seemingly benevolent, to people in terrorist areas, funds terror.

It’s a hard lesson that we have failed to learn in either Afghanistan or Iraq.

Like most failed Islamic terror states in the region, Iraq is perpetually on the verge of bankruptcy. In an effort to crack down on money from Iraq going to Iran, the Treasury Department restricted Iraqi banks from sending dollars to unknown parties. Since much of the Iraqi economy consists of moving dollars to Iran, this has become a real problem.

Despite the existence of the Iraqi dinar, much of the country uses the dollar. And the United States provides pallets of dollars to Iraq that then go on to Iran. Earlier this year, an Iraqi banker warned that if the rules weren’t suspended, “Within one year, most banks will declare bankruptcy”. That says more about what Iraqi banks really do than about our rules.

And yet no amount of economic problems keep the regime in Baghdad from spending billions on its terror militias. That’s a choice and it should not be subsidized by American taxpayers.

Especially when it costs American lives.  

Daniel Greenfield is a Shillman Journalism Fellow at the David Horowitz Freedom Center. This article previously appeared at the Center's Front Page Magazine.Click here to subscribe to my articles. And click here to support my work with a donation.
Thank you for reading.

After billions in US aid (including a recent $1 billion pledge), South Africa is conducting joint military exercises with Russia and China

By Thomas Lifson  March 20, 2023

 

South Africa, alas, is not our friend. Despite decades of financial and moral support from the United States, South Africa is drifting into alignment with our rivals for global supremacy. Daniel Greenfield reports for Front Page Magazine:.............Unfortunately, bad things are in store for South Africa no matter what the US does. Horrendous levels of violence are now commonplace. And matters could get much worse if, as appears increasingly likely, the power grid collapses. Frank Chung writes:............To Read More....

 

Biden Administration to Spend $14M a Year Rebuilding Mozambique Province

Gabrielle Reyes 16 Jun 2022

The administration of U.S. President Joe Biden announced on Tuesday plans to provide $14 million annually over the next decade to the Mozambique province of Cabo Delgado in an effort to rebuild the region after it was overrun by Islamic terrorists in recent months, the state-run Mozambique News Agency (AIM) reported Thursday.

“The funding was announced by the US Under-Secretary of State for Political Affairs, Victoria Nuland, at a Maputo press conference on Tuesday [June 14], held shortly after [Mozambique] President Filipe Nyusi had granted her an audience,” according to AIM.

“This sum [$14 million per year] will allow the United States government to work on the reconstruction of Cabo Delgado and the rest of the country, and in training young people for employment, and thus discouraging them from being recruited by the terrorists,” Nuland said on Tuesday as quoted by AIM........To Read More......

 

Exclusive — Sen. Rand Paul: Congress Has to Borrow from China to Send $40 Billion in Aid to Ukraine

Sean Moran18 May 2022

Sen. Rand Paul (R-KY) told Breitbart News Daily that America has to borrow the money to send $40 billion in aid to Ukraine.  Breitbart News Daily host Alex Marlow spoke with Paul as the Senate remains poised to pass legislation that would send $40 billion in military and economic aid to Ukraine while Americans grapple with inflation and food shortages. Paul has “single handedly worked to hold up the Ukraine package, contending that the package needs an inspector general to ensure that the billions of dollars are spent wisely.  Paul said that America would have to continue borrowing from China to appropriate the proposed Ukraine aid package.

“I think it’s important to know that we don’t have any money to send, we have to borrow money from China to send it to Ukraine. And I think most people kind of get that, and many Republicans will say that when it’s a new social program, but if it’s military aid to a country, they’re like we can borrow that, that’s a justified borrowing,” Paul explained to Marlow.............To Read More.....

•  Here Are the 11 Senators Who Voted Against Another Unaccountable $40B for Ukraine - Senator Paul's initial objection was over the lack of accountability in how the taxpayer funds would be spent in Ukraine, and he sought to have U.S. oversight on how the money was eventually used amid Putin's invasion of Ukraine. By Tuesday evening, ten additional Republicans joined him in opposing the legislation.  Explaining his opposition to the $40 billion legislation, Senator Josh Hawley (R-MO) pointed out that the legislation is "not national security, it's nation building. I mean this is right back to the failed policy in Afghanistan and Iraq where we are literally funding the Ukraine government," he reminded. "This legislation would write a check for $9 billion directly to the Ukrainian government that's in addition to all of the other money," Hawley said. "I'm not for nation-building, I'm for putting the national security of the American people first.".............
• Should George W. Bush go down in history as one of our worst presidents? - Looking back, he has more in common with Woodrow Wilson than any conservative Republican..... 
• Senate Passes $40 Billion in Aid to Ukraine During 40-Year-High Inflation No Inspector General Oversight
• What’s This Fuss About Conservatives Not Joining the Left in Cheering for Ukraine?
• CORTES: Warriors v. Warmongers – The America First Candidates Using Ukraine AGAINST Washington’s War Machine.

Can Economic Aid Help Ukraine?

By Dan Mitchell @ International Freedom 

My Take - Let's make this point clear. Ukraine's government is stunningly corrupt, and that's the reason for their lagging behind countries like Poland.  As for those who are jumping up and down insisting we print money we don't have to give to Ukraine:  Where does it say America is responsible for the economic survival of the world's nations.  Bretton Woods didn't even require that.  So why are Americans expected to foot the bill for Ukraine's recovery? And what would be recovered?  A stunningly corrupt government? As Dan says:  This is flushing money down the toilet.

Regarding Russia's reprehensible attack on Ukraine, I've written three columns.

• Russian oligarchs don't deserve much sympathy because they got their riches through cronyism rather than capitalism.
• Western nations should weaken Putin by opening their doors to young and educated Russians who wish to emigrate.
• Russia is being hit by sanctions because of the long-standing recognition that trade restrictions weaken a country's economy.

Today, let's address the topic of foreign aid for Ukraine, specifically whether American taxpayers should help restore that country's economy once the conflict ends.

I'll start by recycling an observation I made back in 2014, which is that Ukraine has been an economic laggard because of statist economic policies.

More specifically, I compared Poland (which has engaged in substantial liberalization) and Ukraine (which has not) and showed a growing gap between the two nations (another case study for the anti-convergence club).

Now let's look at some updated data from the latest edition of Economic Freedom of the World.

As you can see, Ukraine is a cesspool of statism, ranking a miserable #129 out of 165 jurisdictions.

That's lower than Russia, which is #100.

And the same is true if you look at the latest edition of the Index of Economic Freedom, which ranks Ukraine #130 and Russia #113.

At the risk of stating the obvious, giving economic aid to Ukraine would be flushing money down the toilet.

Unless, of course, western nations such as the United States somehow made aid contingent on sweeping economic liberalization.

We know what works. Don Boudreaux, Deirdre McCloskey, and Dan Hannan have all explained how Western Europe and North America became rich in the 1800s and early 1900s with the tried-and-true approach of free markets and limited government.

Even a curmudgeonly libertarian like me would relax my long-standing hostility to aid under those conditions.

The odds of that happening, however, are slim to none. And I would put my money on none, as explained by the "Foreign Aid Paradox."