Western-Backed NGOs: A Hollow Version of Civil Society https://jacobin.com/2025/02/western-ngos-funding-civil-society  Byv
Almut Rochowanski ..deploying their vast fortunes to pursue their own ideas of what ails the world and how to fix it, creating entire countries’ NGO sectors from scratch, micromanaging them with armies of program officers, and, as the ultimate prize, capturing policymaking in the countries targeted by their munificence.. 

After World War II, in parallel to decolonization, NGOs — tellingly, “nongovernmental organizations” — rose slowly but unstoppably to become one of the main players in international development aid, because donor countries did not trust the (Third World) state with social and economic agendas...

Western legislative traditions going back to the nineteenth century reflected the classic civil right of freedom of association and thus provided a regulatory framework for associations in the literal sense: people coming together as members of a club or union, taking action primarily through members’ volunteer activities to benefit each other or the common good, funded by default by membership fees. The NGOs that Western governments finance with their development aid budgets look nothing like this, but more like start-ups run by social entrepreneurs. Instead of members and volunteers, they have bosses and employees organized in strict hierarchies, and hard borders separate those who build lucrative careers managing NGOs from those who benefit from their assistance.

Since last year, the European Commission has been hammering out a new directive on “transparency of interest representation carried out on behalf of third countries,” which explicitly includes NGOs as the carriers of such “interest representation.” ..

Without foreign grant funding, the majority of NGOs in the Global South would not exist at all. ... Without foreign financing, the NGO sector would have never generated a high-earning, aloof upper class, similar to that of investment bankers and management consultants in the West.

https://discomfortzone.substack.com/p/western-backed-ngos-a-hollow-version 

https://www.cruz.senate.gov/imo/media/doc/Letters/20170314_Letter%20toTillersononMacedoniaUSAID.pdf 

“Antiwar” Trump wants the US to ethnically cleanse Gaza. https://jacobin.com/2025/02/trump-netanyahu-meeting-gaza   Two years ago, J. D. Vance wrote an op-ed for the Wall Street Journal endorsing Donald Trump on the grounds that Trump was antiwar. In that op-ed, Vance brought up the Abraham Accords between Israel, Bahrain, and the United Arab Emirates in a way that suggested that, by brokering that deal, Trump had brought peace to the Middle East.  in Feb 25,  The United States, Trump said, should “take over” Gaza. “We’ll own it.” Its entire population of around two million Palestinians would leave. The United States would raze all the destroyed buildings, “level it out,” and rebuild the territory from scratch as the “Riviera of the Middle East.” 

https://www.wsj.com/articles/miss-the-trump-foreign-policy-jd-vance-11675699749 

https://thedispatch.com/article/how-j-d-vance-became-the-veepstakes-favorite/ In 2022, Vance won the Ohio GOP Senate nomination by securing the decisive endorsement of Donald Trump, and two years later the 39-year-old senator is the odds-on favorite to be selected as Trump’s running mate. 

 After multiple Indian deportees claimed that they were handcuffed and had their legs chained during the long flight, the United States embassy maintained that it was enforcing immigration laws against “inadmissible and removable aliens,” while the Chief of the US Border Patrol shared photos of shackled Indians boarding the plane. https://thewire.in/diplomacy/us-border-chief-posts-video-of-shackled-indians-boarding-plane-opp-calls-it-black-day-for-india 

The treatment of Indian citizens onboard the US military plane sparked an outcry from the opposition.

On Wednesday afternoon, 104 Indians arrested for entering the United States were deported to India on a US military plane after a gruelling 40-hour flight. On arrival at Amritsar air force base, they were grilled by security personnel, before they were allowed to return to their homes late in the night.

06/02/2025

‘Never Thought She’d Be Sent Back in a Month’: Families Grapple With Deportation of Kin From US

by Kusum Arora

 Families of deported Indian migrants revealed that the US primarily targeted those who had entered the country recently, many through illegal routes. https://thewire.in/diplomacy/families-grapple-with-deportation-of-kin-from-us 

Among them is 20-year-old Ajaydeep from Mahal village in the Amritsar cantonment, who went to the US via a ‘dunki’ route just 15 days ago. His grandfather confirmed that Ajaydeep had spoken to his mother before being deported. His mother, present at the airport exit gate, declined to speak to the media.

Another case is that of Harwinder Singh from Tahli village in Hoshiarpur district, who had illegally entered the US a month ago. At his home, villagers gathered to console his wife and brother, who disclosed that they had paid Rs 42 lakh to a travel agent to facilitate his journey.

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I risked everything for America—confinement, torture: Robin Handa returns to Haryana

https://theprint.in/ground-reports/i-risked-everything-for-america-confinement-torture-robin-handa-returns-to-haryana/2481990/ 

“The hands and feet of children and women were tied in chains. The Punjabis were forced to remove their turbans on the plane, and wore them only after landing in India,” he said. Handa was part of the first batch of 104 illegal immigrants that the United States deported to India on 5 February. A bitter and humiliating end to their American dream.

Handa’s father Manjeet Singh paid Rs 45 lakh to send his son to America via the ‘dunki’ route – portrayed in Shah Rukh Khan’s 2023 film of the same name. The endeavour cost him a chunk of his land. While agents promised to send his son to the US in just a month, it took seven months for Robin to reach there.

Robin took a flight from Mumbai to Ghana on 24 July, from where he travelled by road to reach Brazil. He told ThePrint about crossing “the Amazon jungles, seas and rivers” before moving on to Peru, Ecuador, Colombia, and finally the US border.

He recalled his days in the Amazon rainforests, where he survived with little to no supplies. “There were 30 people in our group whom our agent was helping to cross the border. These people were from India, Nepal and Bangladesh. Agents used to beat them and did not even give them food,” he remembered.

by Krishan Murari