16 Comments
User's avatar
drbilldean@gmail.com's avatar

Palantir Peter Theil and Government Surveillance of Americans

It’s not a big leap from surveilling immigrants to surveilling American citizens George Orwell’s 1984 comes to mind

And yet that’s what fascist billionaire Peter Theil’s(Musk’s good buddy from apartheid South Africa) software Palantir is ramping up to become a surveillance tool not just for immigrants but for in the long run American citizens That’s right, you and me

Creating a database of American citizens from multiple databases from federal agencies fascist Theil and his Nazi sympathizers is setting the stage for a Big Brother surveillance system And no one or government entity can stop him

This is serious business Protest Protest Protest

Expand full comment
Amy Williams's avatar

Spot on in my opinion.

Expand full comment
Amy Williams's avatar

Well said Mehdi!!

You wouldn't believe it but there are things going on in my small country of Aotearoa New Zealand. Far worse in the US of course, but many moves have the same smack on democracy and wins for the rich.

Something I didn't realise about Trumps big ugly bill a US friend just told me about. I knew it was a massive tax haul for the rich and these efforts by trump in California are part of some distraction (albeit useful for trumps agenda in ways we might not realise yet) while the senate now deals with the bill. It's quite frightening on its own but this really ups the anti and focus needs to be on trying to prevent his meddling in midterm elections?

She said:

"That's why he's pushing all the distraction this week. It also includes a 10 year moratorium that prevents any state from implementing any regulations over any form of AI. Big implications for healthcare quality, safety, and privacy but I'm also wondering/worried about how it might be used to control elections, voter registration, vote counting, flow of information, etc. Law reviews are looking at the healthcare implications but haven't seen any on election implications yet.

More than 20 states — from conservative strongholds to liberal bastions — have passed laws to ban deepfake robocalls, require transparency in AI-generated political ads, and penalize deceptive uses of AI in campaigns. In short, they’ve tried to protect voters from being manipulated by machines.

This bill would erase all of that.

This provision bars any such regulation - including existing laws - for ten years."

Somehow being in NZ I missed that this stuff was in the big ugly bill! Atlas think tanks have been behind so many things in our western countries under the guise of "freedom and libertarian ideologies".

Distraction is a key part of their techniques and are being used here too, and their well planned efforts and honed ability to manipulate media over time using big money seems at the moment like smashing your head against a wall. Somehow the opposition to this right wing attack in western countries have to outsmart and outmanoeuvre this in a cohesive way.

That is more important than ever.

When you take into account Yanis Varoufakis's thoughts on technofeudalism and that new form of market 'capital' and power and all the dangerous surveillance and drone tech thats been developed and trialed on Palestinians. With involvement of tech companies like Palanitir and Peter Thiel. This is truly dystopian and imagine the power here and how it can be used to control populations.

This is why my hope is in 'there are more of us than them'... and that every action causes a reaction". In what way this manifests is obviously yet to be known.

These tectonic plate shifts going on with money, power and control while the earth burns up and the oceans die. Their goals at the moment I don't think people fully grasp what their end game is here...

But while trump may be playing some form of racketeering and poker in a way, opposition needs to be playing Chess and the the Korean game of Go. But they are still busy reacting to big bush fires Trump/media ignite while democracy is crumbling, and distracted with internal battles due to old establishment Dems within the party being completely out of touch.

We are having similar problems in my country with this. The world needs to know what's happening under the noise.

Expand full comment
JLT's avatar

Please don’t have background music playing during a news video. Unnecessary and annoyingly distracting. Thanks for the great reporting.

Expand full comment
Sarah Olson's avatar

Also for those of us with hearing impairment, it makes it difficult to understand.

Expand full comment
Brown Cecelia Linda's avatar

Shoot people. He needs to experience a leg, arm, back bullet. He probably wouldn’t even recognize that it’s a response to how he feels, or lacks feeling about us PEOPLE!

Expand full comment
Susan Linehan's avatar

Finally getting my creaky old bones to No Kings day because of all this.

It is important to remember that when Johnson ordered the national guard it was because Gov Wallace REFUSED to protect protestors. Not really what is happening here, as Newsom says over and over and over.

Expand full comment
MM's avatar

Ok. does anyone find it weird that Trump is trying to distract us from his Elon fallout/ Epstein accusations. By bring in the guards over roughly few hundred protestors???

Expand full comment
Sharon Hom's avatar

Since Trump’s admiration for the Chinese authoritarian leaders has been referenced again by Mehdi Hassan— In 1989, the Chinese leaders called out the People’s Liberation Army (PLA) on the people — Chinese citizens protesting for greater democracy, independent unions and rights. These are the voices the autocrats crushed as they too invoked restoration of social order (i.e. maintaining Party control). Same playbook. But people in U.S. still have space to resist, organize and mobilize💪🏻

Expand full comment
Polly Parrish's avatar

Well said!!

Expand full comment
Carole Langston's avatar

He has openly threatened any DC No King's Day protestors. His manhood has been bruised by Musk talking back, Putin dismissing him, Zelensky forging on, and other countries not crawling on their bellies to him. It's appropriate that he wears a diaper.

Expand full comment
Sb's avatar

Democrats? Schumer? Biden? They opened the way! Hell! The entire democratic senate allowed his appointments.

Expand full comment
Mo Khan's avatar

Trump chose to make protest all about ICE and immigration to keep just on immigration. That is the ground he has chosen to fight on.

That was not the Ground. We chose to fight and we’re absolutely winning on. “No Kings”, meaning protection of democracy and all of our rights and an into the corruption. And“Hands Off”, meaning the protection of all of our laws and all of our components of government from Medicare to Medicaid to Social Security to NIH to all of our research to niosh to NOAA, to all our infrastructure legislation and DEI, and Universities and law abiding undocumented families and much more.

We need to get back to this ASAP and to move off from the place. Trump wants us to be. June 14 is already scheduled as the King’s day and this can reset itself on that day.

Expand full comment
RSV's avatar

Führer Trump and Reichsführer Miller are living their fascist dick-tatorial wet dream in LA.

Expand full comment
Jeff Biss's avatar

Trump actually has no authority to send in troops under these circumstances but he gets away with it because the GOP refuses to act according to their role in our liberal government as specified in the constitution. Trump and the GOP are traitors and should hang.

Expand full comment
JR's avatar

"Weren't you listening?"...many people weren't....many now are awake....many still sleeping-complacency:

"First they came for the socialists, and I did not speak out— Because I was not a socialist. Then they came for the trade unionists, and I did not speak out— Because I was not a trade unionist. Then they came for the Jews, and I did not speak out— Because I was not a Jew. Then they came for me—and there was no one left to speak for me,"

https://encyclopedia.ushmm.org/content/en/article/martin-niemoeller-first-they-came-for-the-socialists

Martin Niemöller, 1892-1984, a German Lutheran pastor (also a Nazi sympathizer for the radical-right, until he spoke out against Hitler) reflectively wrote this after the Holocaust, and remembering his own, as well as others', failure to speak out against the persecution of groups targeted by the Nazi regime. He spent several years in a Nazi prisons and concentration.

Are we checking our own humanity, or blindly, blocking it?

Expand full comment