Minitrue

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It would seem that Elon Musk, in his newly-minted rôle of head of the nattily titled "Department of Government Efficiency [DOGE: obviously so-acronym-ed as a reference to the very first 'Meme Coin' of the same name], has installed a team of wet-behind-the-ears code-heads, including one member apparently still in college, to skim off the data of millions of US citizens, including social security data; and trawl the data of US businesses and foreign development projects. And in no great surprise, simultaneously this weekend, a large number of US government websites - many dealing with foreign aid and youth programs - have simply gone offline. At least one of my feeds is claiming that Musk is actively engaging in a soft coups d'etat, but I wouldn't go quite so far as to echo that sentiment at this early stage, but it does smell of groupthink at play: the rewriting of reality is Trump's modus operandi, after all, and he and Musk are simply greedy powerfreaks who will utilise what they can in the service of that power. Just excise what you disagree with in the moment from the record and effectively remove it from public scrutiny, and eventually, memory. I'm minded not only of Orwell's 1984, but also of the excellent novel by Yoko Ogawa, "The Memory Police" where, echoing both Orwell and Kafka, a society is collectively gaslighted by an anonymous authoritarian state apparatus into collective amnesia of people and events that the state would rather they not engage with: the ultimate aim being to strip society of free will, and ultimately of language itself. Alternative facts, anyone? We so need the support of the EU, now: our position on the global stage is looking woefully isolated and fragile, right now. We need to step away from the groupthink, the bullshit - the 'alternative, Trumpian facts', the influencers, the right-wing lunatics and the billionaires, and into the daylight of once again thinking for ourselves, both individually and collectively. Citizens of Airstrip One, you have nothing to lose but the chains of 'The Special Relationship'...

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