America - take over

[littlebilliie]

There is a LOT going on in America today

From Washington Post

"Billionaire Elon Musk’s deputies have gained access to a sensitive Treasury Department system responsible for trillions of dollars in U.S. government payments after the administration ousted a top career official at the departmentt_, according to three people who spoke on the condition of anonymity to describe government deliberations."

While on the subject, can anyone recommend a British/European alternative to Facebook, X, Google etc?

Not a recommendation as such, but Mastodon is European. It has just under 2 million active users, apparently. Which isn't a lot.

@Kendodd
that last post was answering your question

I had a tea friend on x who went to mastodon as it was different from bluesky and less likely to be taken over or changed

Thank you!

Thanks

Crazy. Can't even imagine how this will impact the world economy. I love mumsnet for critical thinking of what's going on in the world.

I sincerely hope you don't imagine they are going to stop with the excesses of the trans/gender movement.

Already, staff at US government agencies have been told to remove the words "gay" and "homosexual" from ongoing research papers. Also the words (literally, the words: the sequences of letters, regardless of context) "ability", "binary", "black", "representation", and "white".

And the CDC has taken down its guidance on contraception and HIV testing.

If ever there was a "First they came for the Communists" moment, this is it. Or as we say these days, "I never thought think leopards would eat MY face".

That's the appeal of authoritarianism. When liberal democracy allows something to happen that you can't tolerate (and in the case of the gender nonsense I sympathise), it's so tempting to imagine that you can somehow play a wild card just this once, and keep the benefits of a free society while just shutting up that one group of annoying stupid fuckers. But it doesn't work. It never works.

I'm not naive at all. Just fully aware that there's absolutely nothing we can do. We can't vote him out, we can't stop him, any more than the president of any other country.

I'm not prepared to worry about something that isn't my fault and that I can't change.

In very recent history Russia waltzed into Crimea and claimed it as their own. Israel waltzed into Gaza and raised half of it to the gounrd. Russia invaded Ukraine and whilst that has not gone as they expected, they nonetheless occupy a portion of it. No other country did anything to stop any of these actions.

Am I suggestng Trum would occupy Canada - no - but if he seized the Panama Canal nobody would stop him.

I don’t suppose “Friends Reunited” still exists somewhere?

Friend Reunited, shut down as of 26 February 2016.

There was Ello, touted as an alternative to Facebook, launched March 2014, inactive since July 2023.

Thank you for sharing. it's like going on a weight loss thread or a style thread and saying, I don't really care about what people saying, if you're not interested in politics and current affairs. Is it just a matter if you just want to come on tell everybody that you're not interested - then okay understoood

The tariffs are now a "misunderstanding" with Canada and Mexico

I hope he rolls back on more. But reading about Musk in USAID makes me more concerned. The technocrats who seem to think they’re god are a far bigger risk than Trump himself who despite his many, many faults is also somewhat inept.

He appears inept, but knows what he is doing with his technocrats

Oh no! I use that all the time to look up stuff.
I can't believe what's going on!

I was curious about the fast rightward move made by Musk, who until relatively recently was openly a Democrat voter and broadly centre-left, so I watched several in depth interviews with him. He seemed sane, essentially decent, and very far from the crazed wannabe autocrat Bond villain some people on this thread are describing. (And I say that as someone who used to think he was basically a real life Max Zorin minus the whole genetic modification by the KGB back story.) His bromance with Trump, who seems pretty ignorant, malevolent and chaotic makes very little sense to me, but his feeling that there’s a ton of waste in the political system that could be trimmed to tax payers’ benefit, and his concern that a country without properly enforced borders and immigration control risks losing any proper sense of identity seem to me legitimate (not least in as much as >50% of US voters plainly share those concerns). I’d be really interested to know what all your fears are founded on re Musk specifically — the Trump administration more broadly is a different thing, though I’ve seen some legitimate concerns raised above about PubMed for instance, but my understanding is that when it comes to questions of science and medicine Musk is more likely to be a desirable moderating influence than anything else.

I think you might not be keeping up with the news of what's actually happening?

Specifically…? If you mean USAID, yes, I’ve been keeping up with that and I can see why the US population might feel they don’t want $mm of their tax funding (as one example) education designed to promote gender ideology in other countries. I am open minded about this, and I would appreciate specific examples of things Elon Musk has done or supported that you consider actually wrong (as opposed to a legitimate political aim in light of the electoral choices made by the American public that you personally do not support)? If you or anyone else can produce any that support the claims I have seen on this and other threads I’ll quite likely change my opinion. So…?

You know USAID is about healthcare in developing countries much more than it's about gender ideology? And thousands of people will now get very ill and many will die thanks to the cut in USAID. It was a drop in the ocean to America and an absolute life saver to the recipients.

If you can't see that that's a problem then there's no point us posting anything.

It’s not just USAID. It’s all agencies. An unelected billionaire now has control of sensitive, personal data belonging to Americans. This should concern everyone. Globally.

I know that USAID spending is being paused and scrutinised. I think that is reasonable in light of where some of the money was going. I understand — perhaps incorrectly — that the types of expenditure you’re referring to here will shortly be continued rather than permanently stopped. Would be grateful if you could direct me to reports showing otherwise as that would be troubling indeed.

They are all over the news. On every site. It isn’t hard

I don’t think the fact that Musk is a billionaire has much to do with anything aside from likely guaranteeing independence so let’s put that aside. Being wealthy and running highly successful tech companies doesn’t make him a bad person. All civil servants are unelected, and many have varying degrees of access to sensitive data. To my knowledge Musk and his team have large amounts of government data to analyse but Musk personally does not have access to sensitive data about individuals or access to some magic on-off money button. Actually he’s running a department, for free, that will scrutinise government spending. If my understanding is wrong I’d be grateful for suggested reading to correct it.

Ok! Link to a credible article that states specifically that Musk’s team are permanently stopping medical assistance to developing countries? Thanks!

why should I if you cannot be bothered to look at ANY news story!
Billionaires aren’t benevolent. You don’t get that rich through being a good person. There are checks and balances in place on government employees and elected representatives. There are none on him. None.
He himself was an illegal immigrant to the US.
He is not a genius. He’s an entitled, rich boy who makes profit off the work of others. Ask the astronauts trapped in space if they’re happy with how he runs SpaceX and his current government contracts.
He is not great at efficiency. He’s great at destruction and he’s working with someone who managed to bankrupt a casino!