Dan Graetz

Host of @TheUCNews, filmmaker, action-sports tragic, idealist.

[The Lever @LeverNews]

How did America go from Obama to Trump?

Maine Senate candidate @grahamformaine tells @davidsirota it wasn’t some great mystery: Democrats bailed out banks, abandoned working people, and let corporate power keep running the party.

Go and listen to the full episode over on The Lever's Youtube channel.

[Stuart McCarthy @StuartMcCarthy_]

Total ignorance of McBride's intent in leaking the 'Afghan Files' to the ABC, which was in fact to expose higher level command/superior responsibility.

[Anonymous @YourAnonNews]

Fractures Emerge Between GOP's Pro-Pedophilia and Extremely Pro-Pedophilia Wings
Via @TheOnion

[TheRealThelmaJohnson @TheRealThelmaJ1]

Gas would be so much cheaper if Donald Trump hadn't raped children with Jeffrey Epstein

[Yanis Varoufakis @yanisvaroufakis]

Palantir were kind enough to sum up its hideous ideology in 22 points. And I have taken the liberty of annotating each one of them. Here is my interpretation of all 22 of them (preserving the original numbering - for the original see their tweet below):

1. Silicon Valley owes an immeasurable debt to the ruling class who bailed out the criminal bankers that wrecked the livelihood of the majority of Americans. The engineering elite of Silicon Valley will defend that ruling class to the death (literally!), in the name of the majority of Americans whom they treat with contempt – i.e., like cattle that have lost their market value.

2. Palantir is eyeing the Apple Store, salivating over the prospect of creating its own technofeudal estate. Time to replace the iPhone with another device that dissolves what is left of people’s privacy.

3. Palantir shall give nothing away for free. It cares uniquely over its own growth which it pursues by sowing fear so that it can sell a fake sense of security.

4. Glory to brute force! Ethics is for suckers. The West needs more of Palantir’s murderous software.

5. AI-powered killer robots are coming. The task is to profit magnificently by building killer robots first and ask questions later. To be able to do so, Palantir will do whatever it takes to avoid at all cost any international treaties that limit AI-driven killer robots.

6. Every poor sod (lacking the connections to avoid being thrown into the trenches with killer drones targeting them from the sky) must be drafted into the army. Forget paying soldiers a salary. All payments should be directed to Palantir, where our own people will be serving their ‘national service’ – leaving the dying to non-shareholders.

7. Palantir works overtime to equip US Marines with killer bots that take away from the US Marines whatever remnants of ethical judgment they are left with on the battlefield. American society should be rendered perfectly incapable of any debate that restricts Palantir’s capacity to get the US Military to eliminate any remaining opportunity to reject its software’s choice of targets.

8. Palantir deplores the fact that the public sector is still not totally devoid of a conscience. Public servants must be fired en masse, except some very few approved by Palantir who will receive huge salaries, paid by taxpayers.

9. Palantir thinks that Donald Trump must be beatified for throwing himself into public service. Not forgiving folks like Trump everything risks our soul, not to mention that it raises the prospect of officials that restrict Palantir’s evil project.

10. Politics needs to be AI-like, devoid of anything that can be mistaken for human empathy. Those who look to the political arena to nourish their soul and sense of self must be sent to the gulag forthwith!

11. There are some people too eager to hasten Palantir’s demise. They should rethink, or else!

12. Palantir makes no nuclear weapons but is happily developing other weapons of mass destruction. We proudly announce that we are now ready to add to nuclear Armageddon the AI-driven threat to humanity’s existence.

13. No other country in the history of the world has committed so many war crimes in the name of progress and freedom. The United States offers infinite freedom to people like Palantir’s founders to profit so handsomely by inflicting so much damage upon humanity.

14. American power has feasted on causing one war after another, one putsch after another, one avoidable financial disaster after another. Too many have forgotten or perhaps have taken for granted America’s capacity to pursue forever wars in the name of peace and democracy.

15. German and Japanese Fascism must be made great again. The denazification of Germany was an overcorrection for which Europe is now paying a heavy price. A similar and highly misplaced commitment to Japanese pacifism must also end immediately!

16. We should applaud those who attempt to monopolise everything by means of generous government contracts. Billionaires must not be satisfied merely with their billions. To become even more obscenely rich they need grand narratives that help them convince the poor to use their freedom to keep them, the billionaires, in power. And, by the way, Palantir loves Elon, especially his grand apartheid-inspired narrative.

17. Silicon Valley must be free to do in America’s cities what it did in Gaza. Many politicians across the United States have essentially shrugged when it came to granting Palantir the right to annihilate all remaining civil liberties and human rights. This must end.

18. Epstein’s syndicate should be forgotten lest lovely people like Trump and the Clintons are deterred from entering government. The public arena must be scrutiny-free unless subversives like Sanders or Mamdani enter it.

19. We love banal public figures as long as they give Palantir all the juicy contracts. We also love colourful public figures who give Palantir all the juicy contracts.

20. We need more opium for the masses, as they are not sufficiently inebriated for us to be unimpeded in the pursuit of their complete subjugation. Questioning organised superstition is dangerous and must end.

21. Time to bring back Hitler’s hierarchy of races, with Palantir’s founders and Elon at its Aryan pinnacle. The idea that it is wrong to judge someone by the colour of their skin or their ethnicity or their religion must be jettisoned.

22. Blacks, Muslims, most Asians, and of course women, are inferior untermensch. Blokes in America, and more broadly the West, have for the past half century resisted putting these subhumans in their places in the name of inclusivity. It was a mistake. Such subhumans must never be allowed in, except as servants or sex service providers – at least until we can improve our robots, in which case we won’t need them at all.

[Evan @EvanWritesOnX]

Australia was not established as a nation-building project.

It was established as an extraction platform.

The British did not colonize Australia to build a civilization.

They colonized it to extract l; first convict labor, then wool, then gold, then minerals, then gas.

The political architecture was built around that extraction logic from day one, and it has never been restructured away from it.

You assume the state exists to serve the population, and therefore bad outcomes must mean the state is being run poorly.

Australia is not a sovereign state that happens to have a mining sector.

It is a private sector extraction platform that happens to have citizens.

Every Australian who “owns” a home is servicing a debt instrument that enriches the FIC.

The minerals get dug up by foreign-owned multinationals.

The profits get distributed to global shareholders.

The taxation office is structured; by design, through decades of lobbying, to ensure the extraction proceeds leave the country with minimal sovereign capture.

The politicians are doing exactly what the structure requires of them: absorbing public anger, rotating every few years to reset the pressure valve.

Australia is not mismanaged. Australia is managed perfectly,

just not for Australians.

[Anthony Klan @Anthony_Klan]

🚨The ALP's rigging of Victorian "donations" laws – in favour of it and Coalition –– deemed unconstitutional in explosive, unanimous High Court decision.

Federally, "anti-Independents" duopoly stitch-up also before the courts. Massive ramifications...
https://t.co/xfsNsQcXWJ

[Trita Parsi @tparsi]

"And now, somewhere in Riyadh, the Crown Prince is staring at a charred THAAD radar, a half-empty interceptor magazine, and a $142 billion receipt, and he is doing the math Rubio did on television: 100 missiles a month versus six or seven interceptors. And he is realizing, perhaps for the first time, that the Abraham Accords were not a security guarantee. They were a customer acquisition strategy."

https://t.co/FzsHwuBjlS

[Bruno Maçães @MacaesBruno]

Best summary of America I have seen

[Amy Remeikis @AmyRemeikis]

This isn’t 2020 as we can’t just turn the global economy off and then on like what happened with Covid - the level of capital destruction that is happening at the moment means there is no switch to turn back on. 2020 doesn’t apply here.

https://t.co/IBXX2e9Q77

[Jack Prandelli @jackprandelli]

🚨Hormuz update: 8 transits yesterday 4 this morning

normal was 60-75 per day.

The ships that ARE moving?
🇮🇷 Iran linked 🇨🇳 China linked ⛽ Sanctioned VLCCs. Fully loaded.

10+ million barrels of Iranian oil have passed since Feb. 28.

#Iran mined the strait.
Targeted allied tankers.
Declared zero tolerance for US/Israeli shipments,then kept its own oil flowing.

This is a selective blockade.

Iranian and Chinese barrels move.
Everyone else turns back or gets hit.

#oott

[Cameron Murray @DrCameronMurray]

FET Thursday Throwback:
Finding The Money

My take on a film about Modern Monetary Theory (MMT), its insights and limits.

https://t.co/Oq2V5k0y8d

[Will Schryver @imetatronink]

https://t.co/n0lEPw0Lzi

[Nabil Al-Nashar | نبيل النشار @NabilAlNashar]

“Political Propaganda” that’s how the ABC’s @TheLyonsDen described the Australian PM’s @AlboMP response to the US/Israel attacks on Iran.

[Dan Graetz @graetzy]

@AmyRemeikis @BelindaJones68 Hell yes. Can help (free) with AV, streaming if needed.

[Pete Shadbolt @PeteShadbolt]

we simply will not stop letting random people look around our labs https://t.co/rmQRjYF9YT ... our lawyer REALLY hates this

[Tony Windsor @TonyHWindsor]

Farrer is a safe seat and hence has been neglected.
Labor will never win the seat so why vote for them.
Libs will be out of Govt for years so why vote for them.
Vote for an Independent and get things done.
Political competition works.

[Dan Graetz @graetzy]

@downroundpod Thoughts on Commonwealth Backed Digital Currency? Reserve Bank is partway thru testing/ruminating. Could be a chance for decent tax reform - build in smart contracts to deduct ~0.5% tax from every transaction. Ditch income & company tax. Tax amount could scale with economic heat

[David Shoebridge @DavidShoebridge]

Make no mistake: the changes the Liberals made with Labor on the hate speech laws make them worse. Hear me explain just some of the impacts here.

[Dan Graetz @graetzy]

How did these legends get this excellent, but decidedly un-AFR article past the editor’s spike??

[Alison Pennington @ak_pennington]

Australia’s tax system is punishing wage earners. I’m in AFR on why taxing work more than wealth means a less civilised, less innovative society. Hard work and dynamism are devalued & living standards sacrificed. Co-author w M Wright ⁦@ETU_national⁩ https://t.co/QDchO0nIGn