This was a sane and sober discussion of what is actually happening in the U.S. empire. Katie Halper and Aaron Maté have a long discussion with Brian Berletic about what USAID actually does, with its arms like the NED. <media href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8euNOY-g-tE" src="https://www.youtube.com/v/8euNOY-g-tE" source="YouTube" width="560px" author="Useful Idiots" caption="Extended episode: Former Marine DEBUNKS USAID Rumors"> <bq quote-style="none">Former U.S. Marine Brian Berletic, who focuses on geopolitics in Eurasia and hosts the informative Youtube show The New Atlas, joins Useful Idiots this week as Elon Musk and the Trump administration are gutting USAID and attempting to move it under the control of Marco Rubio’s State Department. Musk claims he’s “dismantling the Deep State.” Berletic, whose years as a marine gave him a harsh awakening about the reality of US hegemony, gives an in-depth analysis of what’s really going on. He explains why each side is up-in-arms over the issue: Dems are painting USAID as an all-loving agency that is essential to upholding Democracy around the world, while Republicans are crying wokeism by finding relatively trivial expenses in the fine print. <b>Neither, Berletic says, are highlighting the real, and much more nefarious issues with USAID.</b> “They have not mentioned foreign interference, regime change, subversion, stifling development, and they have not said that they are going to stop any of that.” “And here's a photo,” he shows us from the U.S. Government Counterinsurgency Guide, drafted in part by the U.S. Agency for International Development (USAID). “Just think about how tone deaf or brazen they are to post this picture. This is a picture of the Philippines, <b>the U.S. conquered the Philippines. There was an uprising because they wanted to be an independent nation. The US military brutally suppressed it. Mass murder, concentration camps. This is all listed on the State Department's website.</b> And so they're talking about insurgency, counterinsurgency, and USAID's role in the counterinsurgency process.”</bq> At <b>39:00</b>, <bq><img attachment="brian_berletic.jpeg" align="right" caption="Brian Berletic"><b>Brian:</b> I'm pretty sure that that's what they're doing: they're just rebranding it [USAID]; they're sharpening it; they're streamlining it. <b>They're definitely not going to do away with it. Because they're telling you their foreign policy, and it depends entirely on a tool like this [USAID].</b> <b>Aaron:</b> The example that you raise of Georgia is so important, because it recently emerged that <b>USAID spent more than $40 million on Georgia's elections.</b> $40 million! Compare that to the freakout in the US over allegations that a Russian troll Farm spent $100,000 on the 2016 election---when, in fact, the reality was it was about $46,000, but whatever, even if it was $100,000---so a Russian troll Farm spent $46,000 on social-media posts and ads that nobody saw, that weren't even about the election (most of them) and there was just a national freakout for years during Russia-gate. This was blamed as the cause of Trump's Victory---or as a major factor in Trump's Victory---whereas <b>we spend $40 million in Georgia's elections and that's considered to be totally normal.</b></bq> At <b>42:00</b>, <bq><b>Brian:</b> There are organizations attacking me. They're going so far as claiming that I'm some sort of Russian or Chinese agent, when they themselves---the people attacking me: you can go to their website, you can look through their bio, and they themselves will admit that they're receiving all kinds of US government money. [...] <b>I think you know they're on the take. So they're assuming that other people are [too] and the craziest thing is they're trying to convince people that they stand for human rights and democracy and freedom.</b> And they're taking money from the absolute worst violator of human rights in this 21st century. No one else comes even close even. <b>The things the US makes up about China that aren't even true.</b> But let's just pretend for a minute they were true. It pales in comparison to what the US has openly done in front of the entire planet all throughout the 21st century and that's who they're taking money from. And then they'll say, 'Brian, the National Endowment for Democracy ... it's got the word 'democracy' in in its name! What's wrong with that! It says democracy! You hate democracy?!?' And I tell them, 'look at the board of directors. You have Elliot Abrams[, who's] a convicted criminal. He's on the board of directors. You have people like Scott Carpenter, who participated in the illegal occupation and illegal administration of Iraq. I mean, that's who you're taking money from.' And so, it is immense hypocrisy. I believe that it's unsustainable. And <b>I think as multipolarism emerges, as a balance of power begins to grow, they're not going to be able to get away with this. They're not going to enjoy the impunity that they have almost certainly had all of these decades.</b> They got away with it because there was no one else able to check and balance them. Now that there is---or soon will be---they have to start taking that into account. And I think that's all secretary Rubio was talking about, when he was talking about a unipolar world. <b>They're worried about comeuppance, maybe they're worried that they're going to have to change their tactics, and the impunity that they've enjoyed for so long is over.</b></bq> At <b>51:36</b>, <bq>The United States has been exploiting potential vulnerabilities for decades in regards to China. So we all hear about Tibet and the free-Tibet movement and, again, if you go to the [U.S.] State Department's Office of the Historian, <b>they have documents there admitting that there was a CIA operation arming militants in India and sending them over the border to kill Chinese soldiers in Tibet, to free Tibet. It was a CIA operation. It always was.</b> <b>The same goes for Xinjiang, China.</b> This was the U.S.---together with Turkey, Saudi Arabia---importing a radical, politically perverted version of Islam, overriding the indigenous version of Islam that people there have practiced regenerations, radicalizing them, and promoting separatism. So, there was this---people may remember all the horrible violence and the Western media was very happy at the time to report all of this horrible violence because at the time China couldn't control it---and <b>so then there was this crackdown on the violence and then the West spun that as the infamous Uighur genocide that they're still talking about.</b> Hong Kong: they tried to promote separatism there. We remember the violent protests there. And, of course, Taiwan. This has been a project long in the making, building up a separatist administration there, arming them, which is still going on right now. So, these are the different projects the West is still working on, to pressure China within their own borders and then setting up this Global Network and setting up the battlefield, really, for a maritime blockade, an international maritime blockade. <b>Even though they claim that China is this military threat to the entire world. In the think tank documents, they admit that China's military is confined to China. It does not have the ability to project military power abroad</b>, and so they know that, if they were to enact some kind of maritime blockade against Chinese maritime shipping, far from China, it would disrupt their economy, but <b>the Chinese military wouldn't be able to project power to do anything about it.</b></bq> At <b>01:07:05</b>, <bq><b>Aaron:</b> Putting aside the morality of that, does Ukraine even have access anymore to its most valuable rare-earth minerals? Because it's my understanding that <b>Russia actually has taken the territory where most of those resources are.</b> <b>Brian:</b> Yes, absolutely. I mean, <b>most of the mining was taking place in eastern Ukraine, and now eastern Ukraine is Western Russia</b>, so what Rare Earth minerals?</bq> <img src="{att_link}values_of_rare-earth,_critical_minerals_in_ukraine.jpg" href="{att_link}values_of_rare-earth,_critical_minerals_in_ukraine.jpg" align="none" caption="Values of rare-earth, critical minerals in Ukraine" scale="50%">