We are barely a month into the second presidential term of Donald Trump
and he has made his top priorities clear:
the destruction of America’s government and influence
and the preservation of Russia’s.

Unleashing Elon Musk and his DOGE cadres on the federal government, menacing Canada and European allies,
and embracing Vladimir Putin’s wish list for Ukraine and beyond are not unrelated.

These moves are all strategic elements of a plan that is familiar to any student of the rise and fall of democracies, especially the “fall” part.

The sequence is painfully familiar to me personally,
because I marched in the streets as it played out in Russia at the start of the 21st century.

With ruthless consistency, and the tacit approval of Western leaders,
Putin and his oligarch supporters used his fair-ishly elected power to make sure that elections in Russia would never matter again.

-- Gary Kasparov
https://www.theatlantic.com/international/archive/2025/02/putinization-america/681837/

#Trump’s new #Pentagon chief said I’m “here today to directly & unambiguously express that stark strategic realities prevent the United States of America from being primarily focused on the #security of #Europe”.

Essentially #NATO without the #US

#ANZUS will go the same way. Trump has no interest in defending #Australia or #Aotearoa

Boot the U.S. military out of #Darwin & #PineGap.

Cancel any treaties & distance Australia from the current corrupt #UnitedStatesOfAmerica #auspol

"Having loyalist #lawyers in place will make it much harder for #military officers to resist Trump’s orders. #Hegseth has been critical of military lawyers constraining officers in the field. In practical terms, this might result in a legal blessing and greater practice of what is commonly regarded as #WarCrimes. Hegseth’s selection for Sect of #Defense came after he lobbied #Trump to pardon convicted #WarCriminals."
https://donmoynihan.substack.com/p/military-purges-and-complacent-judges

#Trump #Coup #Purge #Politics #Law #News #USA #US

You know why we Germans are so pedantic about data protection? Someone around 90 years ago went through all records available, selected people with certain criteria, with the help of IBM, and then killed them all.

We don't want to be on any list.

And now the US Gov and Musk are trying to get access to all data they have about every person and put them into a big fat DB and run AI over it.

I am afraid what they will do with that.