General News

[Jon the Hat]

2 hours ago, Tommy G said:

Really sad to read about the boy who was stabbed at a catholic school yesterday - no child should go to school in the morning and not return. 
 

Be interesting to see how the truth of what happened comes out - lots of stuff online to approach with caution but direct quotes from numerous parents on how the prior week the perpetrator had been suspended for carrying a knife and on his first day back committed murder. If this is the case that is sheer negligence from the school and head.

Unless the rules only allow them to suspend for a week of course.  

[Foxdiamond]

52 minutes ago, Jon the Hat said:

Unless the rules only allow them to suspend for a week of course.  

I certainly don't know the legality but taking a knife into school should be far beyond a school  suspension.

[Jattdogg]

https://www.aljazeera.com/amp/news/2025/2/5/trump-says-us-will-take-over-and-own-gaza-in-redevelopment-plan

 

I have no words. Trump is a cvnt of the highest order. Man talks like he knows what's best for everyone. Why don't you tell the Jewish people to leave and move to the US instead of being surrounded by Arab nations. Ohhhhh, someone's sending you dollars in an offshore account huh?

[Jon the Hat]

3 hours ago, Jattdogg said:

https://www.aljazeera.com/amp/news/2025/2/5/trump-says-us-will-take-over-and-own-gaza-in-redevelopment-plan

 

I have no words. Trump is a cvnt of the highest order. Man talks like he knows what's best for everyone. Why don't you tell the Jewish people to leave and move to the US instead of being surrounded by Arab nations. Ohhhhh, someone's sending you dollars in an offshore account huh?

I hope he is doing his old trick of making outrageous statements so when a sensible compromise is later offered both sides see it as an acceptable option.  I am probably being too generous.

[leicsmac]

5 hours ago, Jattdogg said:

https://www.aljazeera.com/amp/news/2025/2/5/trump-says-us-will-take-over-and-own-gaza-in-redevelopment-plan

 

I have no words. Trump is a cvnt of the highest order. Man talks like he knows what's best for everyone. Why don't you tell the Jewish people to leave and move to the US instead of being surrounded by Arab nations. Ohhhhh, someone's sending you dollars in an offshore account huh?

 

1 hour ago, Jon the Hat said:

I hope he is doing his old trick of making outrageous statements so when a sensible compromise is later offered both sides see it as an acceptable option.  I am probably being too generous.

It's like that article Peaky posted a couple of days ago - he views it all as a glorified real estate deal. The idea that he might have to extend empathy to living, breathing human beings that haven't paid him or kowtowed to him is alien to him.

[leicsmac]

Incidentally, if anyone would like an excellent day-by-day of what's going on over there, Heather Cox Richardson is worth a follow. Here's her latest:

 

February 4, 2025 (Tuesday)

 

Shortly after 1:00 this morning, Vittoria Elliott, Dhruv Mehrotra, Leah Feiger, and Tim Marchman of Wired reported that, according to three of their sources, “[a] 25-year-old engineer named Marko Elez, who previously worked for two Elon Musk companies [SpaceX and X], has direct access to Treasury Department systems responsible for nearly all payments made by the US government.”

 

According to the reporters, Elez apparently has the privileges to write code on the programs at the Bureau of Fiscal Service that control more than 20% of the U.S. economy, including government payments of veterans’ benefits, Social Security benefits, and veterans’ pay. The admin privileges he has typically permit a user “to log in to servers through secure shell access, navigate the entire file system, change user permissions, and delete or modify critical files. That could allow someone to bypass the security measures of, and potentially cause irreversible changes to, the very systems they have access to.”

 

“If you would have asked me a week ago” if an outsider could’ve been given access to a government server, one federal IT worker told the Wired reporters, “I'd have told you that this kind of thing would never in a million years happen. But now, who the **** knows."

The reporters note that control of the Bureau of Fiscal Service computers could enable someone to cut off monies to specific agencies or even individuals. “Will DOGE cut funding to programs approved by Congress that Donald Trump decides he doesn’t like?” asked Senator Chuck Schumer (D-NY) yesterday. “What about cancer research? Food banks? School lunches? Veterans aid? Literacy programs? Small business loans?”

 

Josh Marshall of Talking Points Memo reported that his sources said that Elez and possibly others got full admin access to the Treasury computers on Friday, January 31, and that he—or they—have “already made extensive changes to the code base for the payment system.” They are leaning on existing staff in the agency for help, which those workers have provided reluctantly in hopes of keeping the entire system from crashing. Marshall reports those staffers are “freaking out.” The system is due to undergo a migration to another system this weekend; how the changes will interact with that long-planned migration is unclear.

 

The changes, Marshall’s sources tell him, “all seem to relate to creating new paths to block payments and possibly leave less visibility into what has been blocked.”

 

Both Wired and the New York Times reported yesterday that Musk’s team intends to cut government workers and to use artificial intelligence, or AI, to make budget cuts and to find waste and abuse in the federal government.

 

Today Jason Koebler, Joseph Cox, and Emanuel Maiberg of 404 Media reported that they had obtained the audio of a meeting held Monday by Thomas Shedd for government technology workers. Shedd is a former Musk employee at Tesla who is now leading the General Services Administration’s Technology Transformation Services (TTS), the team that is recoding the government programs.

 

At the meeting, Shedd told government workers that “things are going to get intense” as his team creates “AI coding agents” to write software that would, for example, change the way logging into the government systems works. Currently, that software cannot access any information about individuals; as the reporters note, login.gov currently assures users that it “does not affect or have any information related to the specific agency you are trying to access.”

But Shedd said they were working through how to change that login “to further identify individuals and detect and prevent fraud.”

 

When a government employee pointed out that the Privacy Act makes it illegal for agencies to share personal information without consent, Shedd appeared unfazed by the idea they were trying something illegal. “The idea would be that folks would give consent to help with the login flow, but again, that's an example of something that we have a vision, that needs [to be] worked on, and needs clarified. And if we hit a roadblock, then we hit a roadblock. But we still should push forward and see what we can do.”

A government employee told Koebler, Cox, and Maiberg that using AI coding agents is a major security risk. “Government software is concerned with things like foreign adversaries attempting to insert backdoors into government code. With code generated by AI, it seems possible that security vulnerabilities could be introduced unintentionally. Or could be introduced intentionally via an AI-related exploit that creates obfuscated code that includes vulnerabilities that might expose the data of American citizens or of national security importance.”

 

A blizzard of lawsuits has greeted Musk’s campaign and other Trump administration efforts to undermine Congress. Today, Senator Chuck Schumer (D-NY) and Representative Hakeem Jeffries (D-NY), the minority leaders in their respective chambers, announced they were introducing legislation to stop Musk’s unlawful actions in the Treasury’s payment systems and to protect Americans, calling it “Stop the Steal,” a play on Trump’s false claims that the 2020 presidential election was stolen.

 

This evening, Democratic lawmakers and hundreds of protesters rallied at the Treasury Department to take a stand against Musk’s hostile takeover of the U.S. Treasury payment system. “Nobody Elected Elon,” their signs read. “He has access to all our information, our Social Security numbers, the federal payment system,” Representative Maxwell Frost (D-FL) said. “What’s going to stop him from stealing taxpayer money?”

 

Tonight, the Washington Post noted that Musk’s actions “appear to violate federal law.” David Super of Georgetown Law School told journalists Jeff Stein, Dan Diamond, Faiz Siddiqui, Cat Zakrzewski, Hannah Natanson, and Jacqueline Alemany: “So many of these things are so wildly illegal that I think they’re playing a quantity game and assuming the system can’t react to all this illegality at once.”

 

Musk’s takeover of the U.S. government to override Congress and dictate what programs he considers worthwhile is a logical outcome of forty years of Republican rhetoric. After World War II, members of both political parties agreed that the government should regulate business, provide a basic social safety net, promote infrastructure, and protect civil rights. The idea was to use tax dollars to create national wealth. The government would hold the economic playing field level by protecting every American’s access to education, healthcare, transportation and communication, employment, and resources so that anyone could work hard and rise to prosperity.

 

Businessmen who opposed regulation and taxes tried to convince voters to abandon this system but had no luck. The liberal consensus—“liberal” because it used the government to protect individual freedom, and “consensus” because it enjoyed wide support—won the votes of members of both major political parties.

 

But those opposed to the liberal consensus gained traction after the Supreme Court’s 1954 Brown v. Board of Education of Topeka, Kansas, decision declared segregation in the public schools unconstitutional. Three years later, in 1957, President Dwight D. Eisenhower, a Republican, sent troops to help desegregate Central High School in Little Rock, Arkansas. Those trying to tear apart the liberal consensus used the crisis to warn voters that the programs in place to help all Americans build the nation as they rose to prosperity were really an attempt to redistribute cash from white taxpayers to undeserving racial minorities, especially Black Americans. Such programs were, opponents insisted, a form of socialism, or even communism.

That argument worked to undermine white support for the liberal consensus. Over the years, Republican voters increasingly abandoned the idea of using tax money to help Americans build wealth.

 

When majorities continued to support the liberal consensus, Republicans responded by suppressing the vote, rigging the system through gerrymandering, and flooding our political system with dark money and using right-wing media to push propaganda. Republicans came to believe that they were the only legitimate lawmakers in the nation; when Democrats won, the election must have been rigged. Even so, they were unable to destroy the post–World War II government completely because policies like the destruction of Social Security and Medicaid, or the elimination of the Department of Education, remained unpopular.

 

Now, MAGA Republicans in charge of the government have made it clear they intend to get rid of that government once and for all. Trump’s nominee to direct the Office of Management and Budget, Russell Vought, was a key architect of Project 2025, which called for dramatically reducing the power of Congress and the United States civil service. Vought has referred to career civil servants as “villains” and called for ending funding for most government programs. “The stark reality in America is that we are in the late stages of a complete Marxist takeover of the country,” he said recently.

 

In the name of combatting diversity, equity, and inclusion programs, the Trump administration is taking down websites of information paid for with tax dollars, slashing programs that advance health and science, ending investments in infrastructure, trying to end foreign aid, working to eliminate the Department of Education, and so on. Today the administration offered buyouts to all the people who work at the Central Intelligence Agency, saying that anyone who opposes Trump’s policies should leave. Today, Musk’s people entered the headquarters of the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA), which provides daily weather and wind predictions; cutting NOAA and privatizing its services is listed as a priority in Project 2025.

Stunningly, Secretary of State Marco Rubio announced today that the U.S. has made a deal with El Salvador to send deportees of any nationality—including U.S. citizens, which would be wildly unconstitutional—for imprisonment in that nation’s 40,000-person Terrorism Confinement Center, for a fee that would pay for El Salvador’s prison system.

 

Tonight the Senate confirmed Trump loyalist Pam Bondi as attorney general. Bondi is an election denier who refuses to say that Trump lost the 2020 presidential election. As Matt Cohen of Democracy Docket noted, a coalition of more than 300 civil rights groups urged senators to vote against her confirmation because of her opposition to LGBTQ rights, immigrants’ rights, and reproductive rights, and her record of anti-voting activities. The vote was along party lines except for Senator John Fetterman (D-PA), who crossed over to vote in favor.

 

Musk’s so-called Department of Government Efficiency is the logical outcome of the mentality that the government should not enable Americans to create wealth but rather should put cash in the pockets of a few elites. Far from representing a majority, Musk is unelected, and he is slashing through the government programs he opposes. With full control of both chambers of Congress, Republicans could cut those parts themselves, but such cuts would be too unpopular ever to pass. So, instead, Musk is single-handedly slashing through the government Americans have built over the past 90 years.

 

Now, MAGA voters are about to discover that the wide-ranging cuts he claims to be making to end diversity, equity, and inclusion (DEI) programs skewer them as well as their neighbors. Attracting white voters with racism was always a tool to end the liberal consensus that worked for everyone, and if Musk’s cuts stand, the U.S. is about to learn that lesson the hard way.

 

In yet another bombshell, after meeting with Israeli prime minister Benjamin Netanyahu, Trump told reporters tonight that the U.S. “will take over the Gaza Strip,” and suggested sending troops to make that happen. “We’ll own it,” he said. “We’re going to take over that piece, develop it and create thousands and thousands of jobs, and it will be something the entire Middle East can be proud of.” It could become “the Riviera of the Middle East,” he said.

 

Reaction has been swift and incredulous. Senator Tim Kaine (D-VA), who sits on the Foreign Relations Committee, called the plan “deranged” and “nuts.” Another Foreign Relations Committee member, Senator Chris Coons (D-DE), said he was “speechless,” adding: “That’s insane.” While MAGA representative Nancy Mace (R-SC) posted in support, “Let’s turn Gaza into Mar-a-Lago,” Senator Thom Tillis (R-NC) told NBC News reporters Frank Thorp V and Raquel Coronell Uribe that there were “a few kinks in that slinky,” a reference to a spring toy that fails if it gets bent.

 

Senator Chris Murphy (D-CT) suggested that Trump was trying to distract people from “the real story—the billionaires seizing government to steal from regular people.”

[Lionator]

I suppose blatant ethnic cleansing isn’t quite as bad as debatable genocide. 
 

The worst part is that all the slimeball politicians (probably Macron aside) in Europe will not call this out for what it is because they’re so scared of losing their pathetic trade deals with this monster. Even Netanyahu looked taken aback by the depravity of it all which is some achievement. 

 

 

[blabyboy]

This is an interesting play on a macro level. To the (Rep) mind, they are draining the swamp and once that's gone, where will the leeches go and what will they do?

 

The Gaza comment... That has Netanyahu's fingerprints all over it, which is no surprise as the Israeli's had the bulldozers into the North of Gaza and redeveloping seafront areas within weeks of the start of the bombing campaign.

 

We will truly live in interesting times 😞

[leicsmac]

39 minutes ago, blabyboy said:

This is an interesting play on a macro level. To the (Rep) mind, they are draining the swamp and once that's gone, where will the leeches go and what will they do?

 

The Gaza comment... That has Netanyahu's fingerprints all over it, which is no surprise as the Israeli's had the bulldozers into the North of Gaza and redeveloping seafront areas within weeks of the start of the bombing campaign.

 

We will truly live in interesting times 😞

Yes, "interesting" in the sense of the Chinese adage, or when an astronaut says "things are getting interesting".

[foxile5]

9 hours ago, Super_horns said:

Must be hard for the families of those poor babies who died to hear all this but guess she has the right to defend herself and appeal against the conviction. 

Absolutely. Again - if this evidence is true then any closure they had (horrific or otherwise) is lost.

[st albans fox]

6 hours ago, Jattdogg said:

https://www.aljazeera.com/amp/news/2025/2/5/trump-says-us-will-take-over-and-own-gaza-in-redevelopment-plan

 

I have no words. Trump is a cvnt of the highest order. Man talks like he knows what's best for everyone. Why don't you tell the Jewish people to leave and move to the US instead of being surrounded by Arab nations. Ohhhhh, someone's sending you dollars in an offshore account huh?

Very rude about the Qataris ….  They’re still paying off the previous administration 

[Trav Le Bleu]

Buying/conquering Greenland.

Taking control of the Panama Canal.

Subjugating Canada 

Turning the Gaza Strip into an American protectorate.

Buying Tik Tok.

 

Put a lid on it Donald. You haven't even ended the war in Ukraine yet 

 

 

Edited 5 February by Trav Le Bleu

[Sampson]

1 hour ago, Trav Le Bleu said:

Buying/conquering Greenland.

Taking control of the Panama Canal.

Subjugating Canada 

Turning the Gaza Strip into an American protectorate.

Buying Tik Tok.

 

Put a lid on it Donald. You haven't even ended the war in Ukraine yet 

 

 

There were people in this very forum arguing Trump was “the candidate of peace”  during the election campaign. Not even sure who they were trying to convince. Setting fire to the institutions, checks and balances that were created after WW2 at both national and international level to help stop authoritarianism and the constant threat of both economic and military action against multiple countries doesn’t feel like how you go about creating peace to me.

 

What is going to happen to those who don’t want to leave Gaza as it’s their home in Trump’s plan, forcefully arrest them and deport them from their own country?

Edited 5 February by Sampson

[jgtuk]

58 minutes ago, Sampson said:

There were people in this very forum arguing Trump was “the candidate of peace”  during the election campaign. Not even sure who they were trying to convince. Setting fire to the institutions, checks and balances that were created after WW2 at both national and international level to help stop authoritarianism and the constant threat of both economic and military action against multiple countries doesn’t feel like how you go about creating peace to me.

 

What is going to happen to those who don’t want to leave Gaza as it’s their home in Trump’s plan, forcefully arrest them and deport them from their own country?

There were (are) people on this forum arguing in defence of Israel insinuating that they were justified in their attacks on a civilian population because ‘antisemitism’. 
 

[leicsmac]

33 minutes ago, Sampson said:

There were people in this very forum arguing Trump was “the candidate of peace”  during the election campaign. Not even sure who they were trying to convince. Setting fire to the institutions, checks and balances that were created after WW2 at both national and international level to help stop authoritarianism and the constant threat of both economic and military action against multiple countries doesn’t feel like how you go about creating peace to me.

 

What is going to happen to those who don’t want to leave Gaza as it’s their home in Trump’s plan, forcefully arrest them and deport them from their own country?

All of this had been foreseen, too.

 

The unfortunate part is that this time, the administration appears to be faster and more competent at what they are doing.

[Sampson]

10 minutes ago, leicsmac said:

All of this had been foreseen, too.

 

The unfortunate part is that this time, the administration appears to be faster and more competent at what they are doing.

I wonder if any of the moderates who’ve for years been saying “Trump/Farage/Musk are not fascists” are having the wobbles yet

[Trav Le Bleu]

Just now, Sampson said:

I wonder if any of the moderates who’ve for years been saying “Trump/Farage/Musk are not fascists” are having the wobbles yet

But the can't be Fascists cos they're working with Israel.

 

Amazing (and sad) how it works when the boot is on the other foot.

[leicsmac]

22 minutes ago, Sampson said:

I wonder if any of the moderates who’ve for years been saying “Trump/Farage/Musk are not fascists” are having the wobbles yet

Perhaps some of them should be asked.

[Jattdogg]

With his attack on the system, I wouldn't be surprised if some CIA, FBI or career federal workers seek him out. Guys making enemies within and around the globe. Pissing off people  that most other previous presidents wouldn't (perhaps).

Edited 5 February by Jattdogg
Not that I advocate for those things but I just think of Americans and their nutbars

[jgtuk]

Another Brexit bonus…

 

 

https://www-bbc-com.cdn.ampproject.org/v/s/www.bbc.com/news/articles/cglydk3d7wko.amp?amp_js_v=0.1&amp_gsa=1#webview=1&cap=swipe

Edited 5 February by jgtuk
Pic

[South Shire Fox]

11 hours ago, Jattdogg said:

https://www.aljazeera.com/amp/news/2025/2/5/trump-says-us-will-take-over-and-own-gaza-in-redevelopment-plan

 

I have no words. Trump is a cvnt of the highest order. Man talks like he knows what's best for everyone. Why don't you tell the Jewish people to leave and move to the US instead of being surrounded by Arab nations. Ohhhhh, someone's sending you dollars in an offshore account huh?

Alright Adolf

[blabyboy]

7 minutes ago, jgtuk said:

Another Brexit bonus…

 

 

https://www-bbc-com.cdn.ampproject.org/v/s/www.bbc.com/news/articles/cglydk3d7wko.amp?amp_js_v=0.1&amp_gsa=1#webview=1&cap=swipe

Hasn't that always been the case... or rather over in the shadier areas of a pub or the car park...

 

When I used to work in the Blaby Co-Op we had ppl coming in nicking bacon and the sozzies fairly regularly who we then saw nipping into the Egyptian Queen with a bag over their shoulder.  It often got written off as Wastage, police not interested unless you had the tea leaf held on site... and this was in the late 80's and 90's.

[blabyboy]

1 hour ago, leicsmac said:

All of this had been foreseen, too.

 

The unfortunate part is that this time, the administration appears to be faster and more competent at what they are doing.

Back in 2024, you could Google "Project 2025" and see it unfolding.

 

Trump did say in the run-up to the Election that he knew who he could trust, who he could not and where they needed to make changes asap. He obviously did learn a few things in his first term which he is applying with relish now.

[South Shire Fox]

Yayyy

[blabyboy]

38 minutes ago, Jattdogg said:

With his attack on the system, I wouldn't be surprised if some CIA, FBI or career federal workers seek him out. Guys making enemies within and around the globe. Pissing off people  that most other previous presidents wouldn't (perhaps).

He's already offered buy-outs to the CIA and FBL employees that are 'not with him' so I doubt they'd do anything like that... more like get a nice payoff and then do 'contract consultancy' at higher $$$s using all the contacts they have back in the TLA's