245 Comments
User's avatar
Alison Anthony's avatar

Well done Carole, keep on keeping on!! You shine a light where it’s needed in this dark, dark world. Thank you for giving your time & energy to this commitment, it’s gonna be worth it!

Jjg's avatar
Jan 11Edited

Thank you, Carole. I have emailed my MP (Labour) so don’t hold out lot of hope in receiving a transparent, informed response. I am very disturbed at everything going on but find few people to talk about with. Most friends and colleagues shrug it off and seem to think that stuff happening in USA is not relevant. This makes it seem even worse, sleepwalking into dystopia. I did find you report gloomy, especially receiving it Sunday evening with work scaries hovering, but it is what it is and I am most grateful for your time and effort keeping us informed. We just need to take action somehow, something US Congress is failing to do.

DD.'s avatar

My god that’s insane !

So sorry your friends are cowards. Mine are just too scared to think.

User's avatar
Comment deleted
Jan 12
Comment deleted
Jjg's avatar

Thank you for responding. I think we are already way in too deep. Trump was the Trojan horse for Putin, Heritage Foundation, broligarchs etc. I was mad with tears in autumn 24 and friends with family in US insisted that he would be better than Biden for cost-of-living and with Palestinian relatives they also believed he would help. I felt like I was banging my head against a brick wall and get no satisfaction whatsoever thinking “I told you so”. Have to avoid even discussing politics so feel left in a bubble.

ABossy's avatar

How very frustrating!

Susan Cooke's avatar

Thank you Carole (from an American). I didn't know about these effects of Trump on the UK. I'm so sorry, and lately have been wanting to apologize to the whole world about what Trump is doing to it. I hope most of the world knows that most of us are horrified about just about everything Trump and his lying fascist underlings say and do.

User's avatar
Comment deleted
Jan 12
Comment deleted
Penelope Price's avatar

I hope what you say is true about most people in the USA being horrified about Trump's actions, but I keep remembering that he won the popular vote as well as the electoral college in 2024. Have opinions changed so much in less than two years? He has, after all, only been doing what he said he was going to do. Keep talking to people, telling people the truth, and hopefully he'll get trounced in the midterms (and they'll happen peacefully).

Kay's avatar

Yes, opinions have changed in two years - even those of Marjorie Taylor Greene and Lauren Boebert, both staunch MAGA, but both having openly criticised the effects of Trump's policies in areas that matter to them. The most recent polls show that Trump's approval rating is at an all-time low with 60% of the US population disapproving of various aspects of his presidency and we are hearing more and more of his former supporters saying "I didn't vote for this". We need to build on this and amplify our opposition as silence will be seen as tacit agreement, but when that opposition takes the form of street protests, they MUST be peaceful as Trump will use any excuse to crack down harder. (Currently, I'm waiting to see what "state of emergency" he will fabricate to give him an excuse to cancel the mid-terms.)

User's avatar
Comment deleted
Jan 12
Comment deleted
Penelope Price's avatar

Yes, voter apathy is an issue in the UK too, because people think they're all the same and it doesn't really matter who's in power. Hopefully people are beginning to realise that it absolutely does matter. There is certainly hope. All those people in the streets, and the words of the mayor and other officials - it feels like this is a real shift.

GabrielM's avatar

I don't think it's so much voter "apathy" in the UK, as voter cynicism. The worst aspect of this is the possibility of a Reform government under the loathsome Farage (also extremely reluctant to criticise Trump) -- unless Reform is sufficiently identified by 2029 as a party of opportunistic Tory has-beens. Especially if Jenrick proves unable to contain his leadership ambitions against dear Nigel. Whatever, the approaching May Council elections are set to be disastrous for Labour, in terms of current polling.

Feral Finster's avatar

"I think the thing to take hope from is that only around 65% of Amercans voted, and the difference in what trump & kamala had was very small (not a landslide like trump states. Kamala was 48.3% of the vote and trump 49.9%."

None of this matters, just as it doesn't matter that Trump and his policies are wildly unpopular.

Trump's orders are carried out all the same.

Tue W.P. 🇩🇰's avatar

In Denmark the intelligence services of both the military branch and the police have been using Palantir software since 2018. I’ve been called a tinfoil hat wearing nutter for pointing out the dangers of that. In 2025 our Minister of justice, Peter Hummelgaard, said he was confident that both branches have done all necessary assessments of these systems.

This is truly terrifying. I do not feel reassured. Our politicians just doesn’t get how dangerous and unscrupulous Peter Thiel is. And faced by the hassles and the cost of ditching Palantir, they choose to look the other way and hope for the best. That is not strategy it is negligence.

Christy's avatar

Well that is beyond frightening for Greenland, with all the threats the felon and his goons are directing at them 😱

Tue W.P. 🇩🇰's avatar

This is alarming. I will write the Danish EU-reps today and express my concern.

GabrielM's avatar

No wonder Trump is so confident in threatening to annex Greenland... with the advantage of insider intel on Denmark's security arrangements. I guess that includes any European negotiations on Greenland not kept strictly secret from the Danish military and police: a hopeless situation?

Liz Francis's avatar

At least thiel hasnt manipulated Danish citizenship as he has done here in New Zealand! We too have palantir embedded in our military systems and worse still is the tocket company which a young entrepreneur started up here has been bought by usa and isnow participating in their satellite launching surveillance network. This evil network is tying up the "free" world in its dystopian plans.

SueGenevanana's avatar

I’ve been calling out Palantir for more than a year. They are also in several Police Forces, our NHS and the Cabinet Office. The most dangerous company in the world.

Martina Nicolls's avatar

With you on all of that. Have been horrified since 2000 about those Heritage goons

Serena's avatar

I've been meaning to write to Peter Kyle, my MP, this week and reading this, I'm composing next week. British appeasement of the Facists didn't work in the 1930s either.

Anne Lawton's avatar

Brilliant Carole and thank you for pulling all those videos together. The Chief of Police was great ….but loved the N.I.C.E spoof.

Sharing your post.

Richard Luke's avatar

We seem to be living out the conspiracy theory my brother was ranting about in 2022. Whatever. But is this all tying in with Zionism/ Israel, white supremacy/ colonialism sort of final stages of capitalism building us a digital authoritarian prison versus some kind of revolution? Am I going mad? Love your work x

Rebecca York's avatar

No, you're not going mad. You're pretty much spot on.

Sabatina Andreucetti's avatar

Your brother wasn't wrong.

Maddalena's avatar

Palantir has a contract with Canada's Department of National Defense administered through Deloitte so data management, surveillance of both military and Health applications contracts with the Canadian govt. The Deloitte administration is via Palantir as well. All Health data, surveillance etc. is held by Cloud Technologies administrators are American controlled like Google, encryption is a subject being discussed by alternative groups as media does not cover this at all.

Sharon D. Bailey's avatar

Alarming!

And this is why we all benefit from Carole’s broader perspective of how all the moving parts fit together.

Jasmine R's avatar

You should check out Paris Marx's Disconnect newsletter if you haven't already. He's a Canadian tech journalist that covers this stuff regularly.

Maddalena's avatar

Thanks Jasmine!

Hollander Barrett's avatar

Hi Carole, don’t know enough to decide not doomery enough / too doomery, but I wouldn’t know without your commitment to journalism and actual news reporting. No changes required and thank you.

Sue Billington's avatar

This is perfect, thank you. I’ve signed so many petitions about Palantir and the NHS but to find out about our defence now being swallowed up by it is of even greater concern. Starmer has been a huge disappointment and his grovelling around Trump has been sickening. He talks about the lies of Brexit then refuses a close relationship with Europe and all the time creating closer ties to Trump and his network of Oligarchs! He refuses to call out Israel for what is going on in Gaza and all the while continuing to supply weapons, he refuses to condemn Trump for the kidnap of Maduro(evil man) and he hasn’t been vocal enough about Trump and Greenland. We had 14 years of disaster for this country with the Tories and now we have Starmer’s Labour! Are all parties leaning even more towards the right? Then we have far right Farage in the wings with his ties to Russia and Trump! I really despair, this is only going to end badly!

Mark Epping-Jordan's avatar

Thanks Carole. I am appalled that the UK has been sucked into the American vortex on our way down the democracy toilet. Starmer is a useful idiot and Thiel is a monster.

Here's another great social commenter to follow - Jesse Welles, who has been cranking out biting, sarcastic songs immediately after the horrors we are seeing in Trump's America in the great tradition of American folk singers such as Woody Guthrie and Bob Dylan. Here's his latest after the murder by an ICE agent of Renee Good in Minneapolis:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=El0CLduLgew

Kindler's avatar

Love your work, just one quibble - there is no way in hell that Trump is going to add an extra $500 billion to the military budget. Not because the Republican capacity to brown nose him has limits but because there is literally nowhere for that amount of money to come from. We all need to question every bit of nonsense that comes out of Mad King Donald’s mouth, not take any of it at face value.

Melissa's avatar

No telling what the real outcome of Trump's meeting with the oil company dudes will be, but he was asking each of them for a billion (maybe more?) to participate in divvying up Venezuelan oil. That would cover it.

Amira Tharani's avatar

The NICE agent made me laugh so much. Only in Canada.

Sharon D. Bailey's avatar

Carole - keep up your courageous reporting! The NICE video was the first laugh I’ve had all day, so thanks!

Caroline Clark's avatar

Of course Palantir won’t be sharing UK military secrets with the US administration. Especially not in the lead up to what might be one NATO member invoking an attack on another, and the rest having to coordinate a defence. Of course not. We are compromised in so many ways and Starmer / Labour are too dumb to see it yet.

Feral Finster's avatar

They see it just fine. They know that the uk's sole claim to power is by being the Americans' Favorite Catamite.