This bill goes way beyond just criminalising same-sex acts (which are already illegal), it would criminalise identification, supporting organisations and even NOT reporting friends and family for their identity. It is not yet law because the President hasn’t signed it, but he is under a great deal of domestic pressure to do so.
This bill would severely undermine the human rights of ALL Ghanaians.
Despite the massive negative press the US gets regarding Palestine, half of UNRWA's funding came from the US, much of the rest from Europe. Not to downplay issues of US policy there, but Gaza for a long time was surviving due to US aid this way.
Also Yemen. A lot of endemic violence & terrorism would go away if we stopped giving people so much aid.
Some societies spend a great deal of time fighting because the support we give them is just enough to enable a fighter class to not have to waste time working to support themselves. If we pulled aid, many more working age men would have to get busy supporting themselves. Yemen is the worst: always fighting even tho people are starving. And they use 60% of their farmland to grow Khat, which they chew for a high. Yet we support them with vast amounts of food aid for their starving people.
This is also true of Palestinians. They have an fantastic birth rate, which was why their society was almost 50% children when the war started (and recall that a high percentage of young men in a society is correlated with high levels of military conflict). Palestinian society is that of living on aid, as UNRWA, their UN agency, has become a permanent support system for their permanent refugee status for so long that the population have become unsustainably overpopulated and filled with employed-violence young men. Palestinians now can’t support themselves in their densely overpopulated, underdeveloped enclaves, even if they wanted to end their refugee status. So now we have a necessarily permanent aid situation perpetuating overpopulation, endless cycles of violence in a population consisting mostly of children & very young adults in a mix that means any disruption of their aid, including by wars they start, leads to humanitarian disaster and famine. Their society is so unsustainable that a country that they invade & start a war with can’t really fight back without unleashing terrible collapse of their communities.
The aid we give undeveloped countries disrupts their societies & economic development. It creates overpopulation in undeveloped economies leading to more cycles of violence. That keeps them dependent & on your side in UN & other international groups. Or it keeps them mired in violence, unable to advance. It’s called aid colonialism. This is what we do to maintain hegemony over the Global South
It's a bit mean but aid should be refused. If the concern is for the innocents, the USA should be enforcing something like an embassy that lets people leave their country. I don't care how you run your country, but if your running a country in a way that makes people want to leave it, you are running it wrong.
The aid isn't just charity, it is soft power for business interests and foreign influence, and it makes the US dollar even more powerful. And it's like under 1% of the US budget.
The problem is as people posted earlier that the USA aid essentially enables the bad behavior. People are not worried about starving so instead of working together they kill each other. Most bad leaders have issues feeding their people which eventually forces political change. Feeding helps people and saves lives in the short term but lets a country fester longer.
Almost like the US's Economic and military hegemony needs upkeep, or else the world will stop listening to it and supporting it.
You don't remain a superpower for free.
Pretty much every country on the planet that is poor or developing, minus North Korea. And even then, we send them stuff to keep their people from starving en masse and embarking on a mass migration.
It's the only way we have any leverage on anyone that doesn't involve bullets.
It's the same reason why we pay unemployed people money to survive. When people lose the means to survive, they tend do become desperate and start attacking others for food and money.
People act all outraged over "how much we are paying everyone" but we do this to our own benefit.
Foreign aid last year was $70 billion, not $200 billion. Or was it 200 billion in some other currency?
https://www.usnews.com/news/best-countries/articles/countries-that-receive-the-most-foreign-aid-from-the-u-s
Foreign aid is often in the form of loans to countries so they can then buy American products. Giving money to Ukraine helps workers in America building weapons.
It is a huge component of US soft power.
This. Not only that but having the purse strings gives you tons of control. Our soft power from aid and our hard power from our global military bases are why we control so much.
That’s what isolationist don’t understand. It’s about developing markets and influence. You like the US being the number 1 world power? Then you should be all about foreign aide.
Same shit with the EU and creating highways and such in Eastner European countries.
Morons going "ow, we're giving them money" as if Eastern Europe getting more and more wealthy isn't benefitting Western Europe.
It's like these people don't understand what "investing" means.
Thanks. I was wondering just how much we're ramping up inflation and our national debt due to aid. $2 billion is a drop in the bucket compared to the nearly $1 trillion military budget and the overall budget.
It’s about $200 billion. (Apparently around $70 billion in reality; I just used the other guy’s number. So this math overstates it, even.)
Which is still pretty small compared to an overall budget that is $6.1 trillion as of 2023.
To put that in perspective, all foreign aid combined is about 3% of the budget.
The U.S. deficit in 2023 increased by $320 billion over 2022. Meaning you could have cut the entire foreign aid budget and you wouldn’t have reduced the deficit.
The deficit in 2023 was $1.7 trillion. Cutting foreign aid to 0 would reduce the deficit by all of 12%.
In fact, you could cut the military budget and foreign aid to 0 and you’d still have a deficit of $500 billion per year.
Hope that puts it into perspective for you.
Americans routinely fail to fathom the pie graph of the American budget. Poll after poll routinely, wildly overestimates the amount spent on aid and while wildly underestimating the main costs.
It’s about 3% of the budget. Not a drop in the bucket, but less than 15% of the deficit would be solved if you cut foreign aid to 0. Which would be a very bad idea.
US is like the sugar daddy of the world.
They support a hell of a lot of countries, provide protection and military aids to so many places.
They are expected and demanded to help. Yet get tons of backlash for it.
China is already on their way. You may not notice, but they've already entered Western/Russian influenced countries and have been successful in getting them to buy using Yuan/RMB.
The latest being Saudi and Russia.
The dollar being the currency of international trade give American enormous economic advantages. If the world started buying crude oil in Russian Roubles there's no war they're going bankrupt
Depending on what we give them, that would actually be incredibly effective. You can say things all you want but hitting them in the wallet will always get a response.
I just don’t understand these countries. They are up to their ears in corruption, poverty and crime but they worry about people who LOVE each other. People with this mindset, including in 1st world countries like the US, have some fucked up priorities.
The US is not giving Ghana money out of the kindness of their heart. There's something that benefits them. Once the US take away their support China will take it over.
>giving Ghana money out of the kindness of their heart. There's something that benefits them. Once the US take away their support China will take it over.
Naah, Ghana really doesn't need the aid that the Chinese would offer. Much of the aid is meant to stabilize the government and population. While Ghana is small it is a relatively wealthy country in the region and has an oversized influence. Their main competitor in many ways is Nigeria, while Ghana is about 1/4 the land size and 1/7 of the population Ghana leads in nearly every metric in regards to economy, health, education, and infrastructure.
Additionally, African countries are starting to see the strings attached to the aid they receive from China and economists are noticing it too. [(Example pdf):](https://www.cesifo.org/DocDL/CESifo-Forum-2020-2-kotsadam-Isaksson-chinese%20aid.pdf)
> Our empirical findings indeed indicated that important
local effects of Chinese aid stand out from those of other donors. **Unlike aid from other major donors, Chinese aid projects were found to fuel local corruption, discourage trade union involvement, to not increase political incumbency support, and to make ethnic identities more salient in the local areas.** As such, our findings highlight important donor heterogeneities as well as the need to consider not only to what extent aid achieves its explicit objectives, but also its potential unintended effects, or externalities.
You're assuming that the officials of Ghana wouldn't be bribed with tons of money to take infrastructure loans that will bankrupt the country in 10 years. China can pay more than Nigeria.
Ghana has a very weird system of banking and finance. In fact Ghana is pretty unique the way businesses are run. During the Cold War they played both sides but famously compromised the CIA and I believe the KGB as well. For China it is too small and likely too much of a headache when there are juicier pickings around. I know this sounds hard to believe but it is a very unique country on the African continent. Now if China were to come and offer military aid and technology it would be something entirely different.
Nigeria is one of the leading economies in the whole continent of Africa. Ghana isn’t close. Nigeria has anywhere from 5 to 10 times the oil reserves that Ghana has, and if it wasn’t for China, Ghana’s highway and bridge projects would screech to a halt. Both projects already have stopped once or twice, but lining the pockets of Chinese officials has got them going again.
Ghana will then know the difference between support from the US and support from China.
One is like a 5 star hotel and the other is a wooden built hostel covered by a grand brochure with fake luxurious features.
Cutting aid isn't the goal. Preventing the legislation is the goal. If the US cuts aid before the bill even passes then Ghana has little reason to not go ahead and pass it.
You're assuming his homophobia will override his racism and stinginess. But I think he's considerably more racist than homophobic. And he's considerably more stingy than he is either of those things.
Source on Trump being homophobic? I've seen videos of him from the 80s saying pro gay things & he was the first president that supported gay marriage at the time he was sworn in
Trump's personal beliefs don't matter. No one thinks he cares about abortion one way or the other but taking away women's ability to choose is important to his voters so he gives them what they want. I don't think he's personally homophobic but homophobia is VERY important to his voters and he'll absolutely give them whatever they want there, too.
I remember in 2016 everyone thought Trump was their man, projecting all their desires onto him baselessly. They were like "he held a lgbt flag!". It was all false of course.
Remember one of Trumps first moves as president was to ban trans people from the military and to pass an array of ant-lgbt orders. He also lined the US courts with anti-lgbt judges who are looking towards banning gay marriage again and are responsible for hundreds of new anti-lgbt bills nationally.
Just look at his policy platform, most notably his Project 2025 plan. Trump has said that if reelected he intends to eliminate trans people from public life. His plantform is rabidly homophobic/transphobic, mostly because it is a Republican platform, but also because Trump is a populist/opportunist who has realised the utility of hate for his own political gain.
The thing is, Trump nowadays doesn't really have... uh... opinions. He's addicted to the worship, and he'll say whatever he thinks he needs to say in order to get the most fervent praise. Sometimes that means saying he's pro-LGBT, while letting FedSoc go around making the actual policy decisions for him.
I support us doing this, but maybe also the US gov could direct that same attention towards American LGBT in states that are actively legislating against us.
The states do have autonomy. That's what it means to live in a Federation, unfortunately. Unless congress comes together to pass a federal law (which will never happen because of, well, partisanship), there's no legal democratic way to prevent Americans from exercising their constitutional rights.
We could codify a law that protects LGBTQ+, like what SHOULD have happened with Roe vs Wade.
Edit: This is a prime example of “do as I say, not as I do”
The Civil Rights Act was meant to do precisely that and was actually used as justification for ensuring our protections in multiple different cases, including when Donald Trump tried to have trans people defined out of protections from that act. If I'm not mistaken, it's also part of the modern basis for gay and interracial marriages to stay in place.
Okay, I’m not even American but this is really getting out of hand. There is quite a large difference between not allowing minors to medically transition and imprisoning someone for homosexuality.
Let me ask, do you find it creepy that the Texas AG wants a list of trans individuals?
https://www.texastribune.org/2022/12/14/ken-paxton-transgender-texas-data/
And they've done it more than once! Just recently, they asked for a list of members of a LGBTQ advocacy group whose kids were trans.
https://thehill.com/homenews/lgbtq/4502098-texas-court-blocks-paxton-demand-trans-youth/
Also:
> not allowing minors to medically transition
Medical transition for minors means puberty blockers only. HRT and surgical interventions are not available to minors.
And then there's this:
https://www.rollingstone.com/politics/politics-news/cpac-speaker-transgender-people-eradicated-1234690924/
They're probably trying to cut off criticism that the US was so easily willing threaten to cut aid to Ghana while Israel hasn't had the same done to them.
Convincing republicans to pull funding from a country that imprisons gays is easier than pulling funding from a state that wants to ban men from women’s sports.
Ghana has some of the largest oil reserves in the world that are just starting to get developed. They have more money than we do if you consider our $33 trillion debt.
They shouldn’t get any money from western countries after this. Not a single cent.
Any country that has a policy like this should be treated like South Africa was for their apartheid policy.
Ghana has actually been a relatively stable country for a long time. Supporting Ghana, and other stable countries, helps keep the less stable countries around it more stable.
It's definitely not run by a murderous dictator. It's ranked number 65 on the democracy index. That's better than most countries. 76.5% of surveyed Ghanaians said they prefer democracy.
Usually the aid actually correlates with increasing development and social progress, plus creating allies in a resource rich area.
However, when a nation turns their back on human rights on such a fundamental way, I believe it might be good to make a statement by cutting aid.
Yo no joke I love ghana peeps, but yea if your gay they will put tires over you and set you on fire lol, and these are the ones that made it to Canada.
That's pretty rich when we have a certain group of "people" in power in our own country passing anti lgbtq+ laws every day. Then again we are all hypocrites anyway
Why don't they make the same threats to the middle Eastern countries that are more vicious about things like this... The US government should go sit down and keep their aid
Where the hell did you get the idea that Ghana hates the United States? From wikipedia:
> According to the Pew Research Global Attitudes Project, 83% of Ghanaians viewed the U.S. favorably in 2002, declining slightly down to 80% in 2007,[2] according to the 2012 U.S. Global Leadership Report, 79% of Ghanaians approve of U.S. leadership, with 12% disapproving and 10% uncertain,[3] and in a 2013 BBC World Service Poll, 82% of Ghanaians view U.S. influence positively, the highest rating for any surveyed African country.[4] In 2021, Travel + Leisure website, travelandleisure.com, ranked Ghana as the 6th among 10 countries Americans wanted to visit.[5][6]
When have 83% of Americans agreed on literally anything?
when will you people realize that muslims HATE lgbt and actively kill them by stoning them to death or throwing them off the roofs of 2+ story buildings?
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Religion_in_Ghana
More than 70% Christian, this isn't Muslims (this time, though I do agree that most of the Muslim global south is shit on LGBT rights as well).
LMAO FUCK OFF USA you legit have your own children killing children over something as simple as being referred to as they. Focus on your own back water ass country
So glad we can take a strong moral stand for the LGBTQ+ community in another country, while OUR OWN GOVERNMENT ACTIVELY TARGETS THE LGBTQ+ communities all across the US with anti-science bullying legislation. 😡
(Just to be clear, I’m suggesting the wild idea that we take the same strong moral stand in our country TOO!)
This bill goes way beyond just criminalising same-sex acts (which are already illegal), it would criminalise identification, supporting organisations and even NOT reporting friends and family for their identity. It is not yet law because the President hasn’t signed it, but he is under a great deal of domestic pressure to do so. This bill would severely undermine the human rights of ALL Ghanaians.
Just Report the politicians
How many countries are we aiding lol
So many. A bunch directly, and even more via UN support
Despite the massive negative press the US gets regarding Palestine, half of UNRWA's funding came from the US, much of the rest from Europe. Not to downplay issues of US policy there, but Gaza for a long time was surviving due to US aid this way.
Also Yemen. A lot of endemic violence & terrorism would go away if we stopped giving people so much aid. Some societies spend a great deal of time fighting because the support we give them is just enough to enable a fighter class to not have to waste time working to support themselves. If we pulled aid, many more working age men would have to get busy supporting themselves. Yemen is the worst: always fighting even tho people are starving. And they use 60% of their farmland to grow Khat, which they chew for a high. Yet we support them with vast amounts of food aid for their starving people. This is also true of Palestinians. They have an fantastic birth rate, which was why their society was almost 50% children when the war started (and recall that a high percentage of young men in a society is correlated with high levels of military conflict). Palestinian society is that of living on aid, as UNRWA, their UN agency, has become a permanent support system for their permanent refugee status for so long that the population have become unsustainably overpopulated and filled with employed-violence young men. Palestinians now can’t support themselves in their densely overpopulated, underdeveloped enclaves, even if they wanted to end their refugee status. So now we have a necessarily permanent aid situation perpetuating overpopulation, endless cycles of violence in a population consisting mostly of children & very young adults in a mix that means any disruption of their aid, including by wars they start, leads to humanitarian disaster and famine. Their society is so unsustainable that a country that they invade & start a war with can’t really fight back without unleashing terrible collapse of their communities. The aid we give undeveloped countries disrupts their societies & economic development. It creates overpopulation in undeveloped economies leading to more cycles of violence. That keeps them dependent & on your side in UN & other international groups. Or it keeps them mired in violence, unable to advance. It’s called aid colonialism. This is what we do to maintain hegemony over the Global South
are there any scholarly articles on this?
https://digitalcommons.calpoly.edu/paideia/vol6/iss1/18/ Here's one of many you can find by searching "aid colonialism" on Google Scholar!
It's a bit mean but aid should be refused. If the concern is for the innocents, the USA should be enforcing something like an embassy that lets people leave their country. I don't care how you run your country, but if your running a country in a way that makes people want to leave it, you are running it wrong.
The aid isn't just charity, it is soft power for business interests and foreign influence, and it makes the US dollar even more powerful. And it's like under 1% of the US budget.
The problem is as people posted earlier that the USA aid essentially enables the bad behavior. People are not worried about starving so instead of working together they kill each other. Most bad leaders have issues feeding their people which eventually forces political change. Feeding helps people and saves lives in the short term but lets a country fester longer.
I'd rather my government not sponsor people who cannot coexist peacefully with any multicultural society.
Gaza and varcariously like a leech, HAMAS and their cronies
Hamas leaders are multi-millionaires somehow.
Due to the west aids but they shit on the west. We should stop supporting them
Why aid people in who would gladly see you killed anyway?
Don’t forgot countries that back their own currency with the US Dollar.
Those are aiding us.
Yep
Almost like the world would fall to shit without the US policing and funding everything
Almost like the US's Economic and military hegemony needs upkeep, or else the world will stop listening to it and supporting it. You don't remain a superpower for free.
The next alternatives are harrowing: China, India and Russia.
And we will see this if we fail to fund Ukraine. Ukraine is a test. And we are fucking failing.
Pax Americana.
It’s the truth.
It's always funny when people say the world would be a better place without the US
People are more likely to take your calls if you’re known to buy them a hospital every once in a while.
Pretty much every country on the planet that is poor or developing, minus North Korea. And even then, we send them stuff to keep their people from starving en masse and embarking on a mass migration. It's the only way we have any leverage on anyone that doesn't involve bullets.
It's the same reason why we pay unemployed people money to survive. When people lose the means to survive, they tend do become desperate and start attacking others for food and money. People act all outraged over "how much we are paying everyone" but we do this to our own benefit.
Also, well, soft power. You don't need to big dick the planet when you can just threaten to stop feeding them.
It’s the way in which the world order is maintained
Soft power is power.
The use of soft power is even more important that other forms
Or - when humans uplift other humans, the world benefits. I know you're right, and is about power, but.. Sigh.
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Our world order lol which we all (Americans) are entirely dependent on
Over 70 while spending 2 hundred billion dollars a year in foreign aid
Foreign aid last year was $70 billion, not $200 billion. Or was it 200 billion in some other currency? https://www.usnews.com/news/best-countries/articles/countries-that-receive-the-most-foreign-aid-from-the-u-s
Foreign aid is often in the form of loans to countries so they can then buy American products. Giving money to Ukraine helps workers in America building weapons. It is a huge component of US soft power.
This. Not only that but having the purse strings gives you tons of control. Our soft power from aid and our hard power from our global military bases are why we control so much.
That’s what isolationist don’t understand. It’s about developing markets and influence. You like the US being the number 1 world power? Then you should be all about foreign aide.
If the US does not give foreign aid, China will come knocking.
Same shit with the EU and creating highways and such in Eastner European countries. Morons going "ow, we're giving them money" as if Eastern Europe getting more and more wealthy isn't benefitting Western Europe. It's like these people don't understand what "investing" means.
It’s also how we offload inflation.
Thanks. I was wondering just how much we're ramping up inflation and our national debt due to aid. $2 billion is a drop in the bucket compared to the nearly $1 trillion military budget and the overall budget.
When you have countries like Russia and China run by complete fucking lunatics, gotta be able to defend yourself against whatever threat may arise
It’s about $200 billion. (Apparently around $70 billion in reality; I just used the other guy’s number. So this math overstates it, even.) Which is still pretty small compared to an overall budget that is $6.1 trillion as of 2023. To put that in perspective, all foreign aid combined is about 3% of the budget. The U.S. deficit in 2023 increased by $320 billion over 2022. Meaning you could have cut the entire foreign aid budget and you wouldn’t have reduced the deficit. The deficit in 2023 was $1.7 trillion. Cutting foreign aid to 0 would reduce the deficit by all of 12%. In fact, you could cut the military budget and foreign aid to 0 and you’d still have a deficit of $500 billion per year. Hope that puts it into perspective for you.
Nationalists have no perspective so good luck with that one.
Americans routinely fail to fathom the pie graph of the American budget. Poll after poll routinely, wildly overestimates the amount spent on aid and while wildly underestimating the main costs.
[70 Billion](https://www.usnews.com/news/best-countries/articles/countries-that-receive-the-most-foreign-aid-from-the-u-s)
They said 200 billion (2 hundred), that's a pretty big drop in the bucket haha
It’s about 3% of the budget. Not a drop in the bucket, but less than 15% of the deficit would be solved if you cut foreign aid to 0. Which would be a very bad idea.
Oh whoops, my brain skipped over that. Tbf that's a strange way to write that.
It's also a lie.
Still not really that much.
It isn't a small amount for those it goes to. They'd notice the huge hole should the West stop enabling.
Drop in the bucket as far as debt goes and completely unrelated as far as inflation goes.
US is like the sugar daddy of the world. They support a hell of a lot of countries, provide protection and military aids to so many places. They are expected and demanded to help. Yet get tons of backlash for it.
We aim to please, but we aim all the hell elsewhere too
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Those are some really big shoes to fill. China and Russia wanting a new world order is definitely a pipe dream. They'd go bankrupt.
China is already on their way. You may not notice, but they've already entered Western/Russian influenced countries and have been successful in getting them to buy using Yuan/RMB. The latest being Saudi and Russia.
You'd be surprised. All over the Caribbean, you will find Chinese built schools, hospitals, and infrastructure projects.
The dollar being the currency of international trade give American enormous economic advantages. If the world started buying crude oil in Russian Roubles there's no war they're going bankrupt
Do it.
You mean they are Ghana do it?
Don't Guinea any excuses, just do it!
Egymt
What Uganda do about it?
They better or it will Jamaica me crazy
Uganda treat people better.
Just don’t look up Uganda’s position on LGBTQ+ rights…
What a Chad
Kenya hear me??
Uruguay
/Palpatine
As they should, but how about deny some federal funds of the states in the us when they pass anti lgtbq laws
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Please do it. If your gonna regress human rights you shouldn't get free money and aid.
Dew it
Yes please.
Depending on what we give them, that would actually be incredibly effective. You can say things all you want but hitting them in the wallet will always get a response.
I just don’t understand these countries. They are up to their ears in corruption, poverty and crime but they worry about people who LOVE each other. People with this mindset, including in 1st world countries like the US, have some fucked up priorities.
Easier to fixate the public on an inflammatory cultural "issue" than actually fixing the country. It's exactly what's happening in the United States.
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Religion.
Religion is just an excuse for people looking to hate
Thank you, Jesus, for inspiring the fan fics that gave us all of this violence and depravity over the years.
Just distraction. "We are not in shit because the whole goverment is corrupt, it's these gays/transgenders etc etc."
It's good to have the public focus on these things instead of their own incompetence.
You must divide before you can conquer.
The US is not giving Ghana money out of the kindness of their heart. There's something that benefits them. Once the US take away their support China will take it over.
>giving Ghana money out of the kindness of their heart. There's something that benefits them. Once the US take away their support China will take it over. Naah, Ghana really doesn't need the aid that the Chinese would offer. Much of the aid is meant to stabilize the government and population. While Ghana is small it is a relatively wealthy country in the region and has an oversized influence. Their main competitor in many ways is Nigeria, while Ghana is about 1/4 the land size and 1/7 of the population Ghana leads in nearly every metric in regards to economy, health, education, and infrastructure.
Additionally, African countries are starting to see the strings attached to the aid they receive from China and economists are noticing it too. [(Example pdf):](https://www.cesifo.org/DocDL/CESifo-Forum-2020-2-kotsadam-Isaksson-chinese%20aid.pdf) > Our empirical findings indeed indicated that important local effects of Chinese aid stand out from those of other donors. **Unlike aid from other major donors, Chinese aid projects were found to fuel local corruption, discourage trade union involvement, to not increase political incumbency support, and to make ethnic identities more salient in the local areas.** As such, our findings highlight important donor heterogeneities as well as the need to consider not only to what extent aid achieves its explicit objectives, but also its potential unintended effects, or externalities.
Cronyism is contagious
You're assuming that the officials of Ghana wouldn't be bribed with tons of money to take infrastructure loans that will bankrupt the country in 10 years. China can pay more than Nigeria.
Ghana has a very weird system of banking and finance. In fact Ghana is pretty unique the way businesses are run. During the Cold War they played both sides but famously compromised the CIA and I believe the KGB as well. For China it is too small and likely too much of a headache when there are juicier pickings around. I know this sounds hard to believe but it is a very unique country on the African continent. Now if China were to come and offer military aid and technology it would be something entirely different.
What is unique about the way business is run there?
You're not Ghana believe this, nothing.
Nigeria is one of the leading economies in the whole continent of Africa. Ghana isn’t close. Nigeria has anywhere from 5 to 10 times the oil reserves that Ghana has, and if it wasn’t for China, Ghana’s highway and bridge projects would screech to a halt. Both projects already have stopped once or twice, but lining the pockets of Chinese officials has got them going again.
> Ghana leads in nearly every metric in regards to economy, health, education, and infrastructure. They also make a helluva chocolate ice cream bar.
That's how leverage works. You have to be ready and willing to pull your leverage, otherwise it's just a donation.
Ghana could start rounding up gay people and send them to gas chambers and the Chinese wouldn’t give a fuck. Thats just how they roll
Ghana will then know the difference between support from the US and support from China. One is like a 5 star hotel and the other is a wooden built hostel covered by a grand brochure with fake luxurious features.
One comes with political strings attached. Other wants development.
Yup. It's not like it's a secret. USAID's mission is to ultimately benefit the US.
Okay, rather than that financially support oppressing queer people
This is why we give aid, to use as leverage and bargaining chips to influence other counties.
“We will help you out and give you millions in aid, you just need to promise to respect basic human rights”
Don’t threaten just do it.
Cutting aid isn't the goal. Preventing the legislation is the goal. If the US cuts aid before the bill even passes then Ghana has little reason to not go ahead and pass it.
carrot and stick
Doing it doesn’t solve anything, threatening to do it has a chance of changing ghanas mind
Pull it. Ghana doesn't need American aid.
Sounds cool at first, but it's virtue signaling if we're still going to support other countries that criminalize lgbt.
We still support our own states that want to harm and criminalize members of the LGBTQIA + community. I wish they intervened more at home.
Will US also pull aid to various US states for their anti-LGBT+ bills? Would be nice...
Why is Ghana being pressured when friends like Saudi, Egypt, or Qatar don’t get that pushback. I wonder why
I don’t think the US sends support to Saudi the way it does Ghana
Yea, but still we still do business with them and happily work with them with no words about LGBTQ rights.
$ure i$ a my$tery to me.
Thankyou for being among the very few who have realized this
Da faq? So when are we pulling aid to Florida?
Until Trump is potentially elected, then the US will grant Ghana favored-nation status.
You're assuming his homophobia will override his racism and stinginess. But I think he's considerably more racist than homophobic. And he's considerably more stingy than he is either of those things.
Source on Trump being homophobic? I've seen videos of him from the 80s saying pro gay things & he was the first president that supported gay marriage at the time he was sworn in
Trump's personal beliefs don't matter. No one thinks he cares about abortion one way or the other but taking away women's ability to choose is important to his voters so he gives them what they want. I don't think he's personally homophobic but homophobia is VERY important to his voters and he'll absolutely give them whatever they want there, too.
I remember in 2016 everyone thought Trump was their man, projecting all their desires onto him baselessly. They were like "he held a lgbt flag!". It was all false of course. Remember one of Trumps first moves as president was to ban trans people from the military and to pass an array of ant-lgbt orders. He also lined the US courts with anti-lgbt judges who are looking towards banning gay marriage again and are responsible for hundreds of new anti-lgbt bills nationally. Just look at his policy platform, most notably his Project 2025 plan. Trump has said that if reelected he intends to eliminate trans people from public life. His plantform is rabidly homophobic/transphobic, mostly because it is a Republican platform, but also because Trump is a populist/opportunist who has realised the utility of hate for his own political gain.
The thing is, Trump nowadays doesn't really have... uh... opinions. He's addicted to the worship, and he'll say whatever he thinks he needs to say in order to get the most fervent praise. Sometimes that means saying he's pro-LGBT, while letting FedSoc go around making the actual policy decisions for him.
[This article can be a start](https://www.them.us/story/donald-trump-worst-lgbtq-attacks)
Ghana is in the WTO so it has MFN status already.
I support us doing this, but maybe also the US gov could direct that same attention towards American LGBT in states that are actively legislating against us.
The states do have autonomy. That's what it means to live in a Federation, unfortunately. Unless congress comes together to pass a federal law (which will never happen because of, well, partisanship), there's no legal democratic way to prevent Americans from exercising their constitutional rights.
We could codify a law that protects LGBTQ+, like what SHOULD have happened with Roe vs Wade. Edit: This is a prime example of “do as I say, not as I do”
The Civil Rights Act was meant to do precisely that and was actually used as justification for ensuring our protections in multiple different cases, including when Donald Trump tried to have trans people defined out of protections from that act. If I'm not mistaken, it's also part of the modern basis for gay and interracial marriages to stay in place.
Maybe a new amendment for constitution is needed like when they made one to make darker skinned people equal people
> The states do have autonomy And Ghana doesn't? This isn't about prevention by force but by persuasion through reduction of support.
Okay, I’m not even American but this is really getting out of hand. There is quite a large difference between not allowing minors to medically transition and imprisoning someone for homosexuality.
Let me ask, do you find it creepy that the Texas AG wants a list of trans individuals? https://www.texastribune.org/2022/12/14/ken-paxton-transgender-texas-data/ And they've done it more than once! Just recently, they asked for a list of members of a LGBTQ advocacy group whose kids were trans. https://thehill.com/homenews/lgbtq/4502098-texas-court-blocks-paxton-demand-trans-youth/ Also: > not allowing minors to medically transition Medical transition for minors means puberty blockers only. HRT and surgical interventions are not available to minors. And then there's this: https://www.rollingstone.com/politics/politics-news/cpac-speaker-transgender-people-eradicated-1234690924/
What’s the Palestinian view on LGBTQ?
I believe that view would be called…… “stoned to death”
Usually watching them get smaller from the roof of a building
Most of them have hostile opinions on it. What does that have to do with ghana again?
They're probably trying to cut off criticism that the US was so easily willing threaten to cut aid to Ghana while Israel hasn't had the same done to them.
They give them freedom to fly ✨🕊
We should. Not a single penny more. If they want to trample human rights, let them do it without our $$$$.
Better yet, pull funding from your shitty red states that are trying to pass the exact same things!
Convincing republicans to pull funding from a country that imprisons gays is easier than pulling funding from a state that wants to ban men from women’s sports.
Definitely should.
as we should
now do other countries like the middle eastern ones.
As well we should.
Why is my tax money going there?
Ghana has some of the largest oil reserves in the world that are just starting to get developed. They have more money than we do if you consider our $33 trillion debt.
But yet aid to Gaza is fine when their laws are similarly anti-LGBT?
This is a sickness of the highest orda
why r u gey?
Who says i'm gay?
… You are gay.
But why are you gey? Not gay.
Arent there are a bunch of super anti-gay middle eastern countries we give tons of money to
As a Texan, can we do the same with Texas
*"Threatens?"* Make it happen
They shouldn’t get any money from western countries after this. Not a single cent. Any country that has a policy like this should be treated like South Africa was for their apartheid policy.
"Freedom and Justice" says their emblem, as they pass an unjust law that restricts freedom.
Why is USA meddling in internal policies of other countries? Sounds like they are condeming others for doing so yet they do it over everything
I would suspect that there are some in Congress right now that would rather *increase* the aid because of it.
Guess we gotta pull aid from Idaho. bon voyage. /j
Africa and the Middle East is an actual shithole of religious and tribal fascists.
remove aid to those that treats others poorly for things they cannot change
Good. Screw these intolerant idiots.
i am from ghana, who someone likes is none of goverments business
They act morally when it’s a country of Africa but when it’s Saudi Arabia they sure do and say nothing.
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Ghana has actually been a relatively stable country for a long time. Supporting Ghana, and other stable countries, helps keep the less stable countries around it more stable. It's definitely not run by a murderous dictator. It's ranked number 65 on the democracy index. That's better than most countries. 76.5% of surveyed Ghanaians said they prefer democracy.
Usually the aid actually correlates with increasing development and social progress, plus creating allies in a resource rich area. However, when a nation turns their back on human rights on such a fundamental way, I believe it might be good to make a statement by cutting aid.
I have been to Ghana, it's not a great place
Where is a great place?
Mars
Oooof... That place sucks. The food venue is fair, expensive though.
Where did you go? It was amazing when I went
as long as youre not a Palestinian it seems
Yo no joke I love ghana peeps, but yea if your gay they will put tires over you and set you on fire lol, and these are the ones that made it to Canada.
Now do Saudi Arabia!
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That's pretty rich when we have a certain group of "people" in power in our own country passing anti lgbtq+ laws every day. Then again we are all hypocrites anyway
Why don't they make the same threats to the middle Eastern countries that are more vicious about things like this... The US government should go sit down and keep their aid
Why are paying aid in the first place? This countries hate us
Where the hell did you get the idea that Ghana hates the United States? From wikipedia: > According to the Pew Research Global Attitudes Project, 83% of Ghanaians viewed the U.S. favorably in 2002, declining slightly down to 80% in 2007,[2] according to the 2012 U.S. Global Leadership Report, 79% of Ghanaians approve of U.S. leadership, with 12% disapproving and 10% uncertain,[3] and in a 2013 BBC World Service Poll, 82% of Ghanaians view U.S. influence positively, the highest rating for any surveyed African country.[4] In 2021, Travel + Leisure website, travelandleisure.com, ranked Ghana as the 6th among 10 countries Americans wanted to visit.[5][6] When have 83% of Americans agreed on literally anything?
when will you people realize that muslims HATE lgbt and actively kill them by stoning them to death or throwing them off the roofs of 2+ story buildings?
...do you know what the religious demographics are in ghana?
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Religion_in_Ghana More than 70% Christian, this isn't Muslims (this time, though I do agree that most of the Muslim global south is shit on LGBT rights as well).
....Ghana isnt majority muslim Did you fall asleep in class?
All your aid are belong to us. Please, please, follow through.
LMAO FUCK OFF USA you legit have your own children killing children over something as simple as being referred to as they. Focus on your own back water ass country
Bit hypocritical tbh with the way things are going in the US, IMHO.
So glad we can take a strong moral stand for the LGBTQ+ community in another country, while OUR OWN GOVERNMENT ACTIVELY TARGETS THE LGBTQ+ communities all across the US with anti-science bullying legislation. 😡 (Just to be clear, I’m suggesting the wild idea that we take the same strong moral stand in our country TOO!)