Month: December 2025

The seeing stones. Australia and its New CIA-Made Friend.

“Pure undistorted truth burns up the world.”Nikolai Berdyaev(Also, apparently, Palantir’s unofficial mission statement.) I. Enter the Magical Spy Orb, Stage Right In Tolkien’s Middle-earth, the palantír was a sort of medieval CCTV camera with attitude. A seeing stone that showed you just enough truth to … Continue reading The seeing stones. Australia and its New CIA-Made Friend.

Wronski’s News on Wednesday

Tuesday 10 December revealed Australian politics at its finest: banning teenagers from social media while spending $368 billion on submarines the UK admits it can’t build, from a country that’s already moved on diplomatically. Welcome to the Kingdom of the Unfalsifiable, where policy exists beyond verification, protected by the impenetrable forcefield of good intentions. As Richard Denniss observed, only a fabulously rich country could commit such sums without troubling Treasury or Parliament. We’re not battlers – we’re loaded enough to operate entirely in the realm of political fan fiction.

CAUGHT IN THE CRUNCH: The Surveillance State Comes to Your Local Supermarket

Walk into any Coles outlet today and you’re not just buying milk. You’re feeding a surveillance machine processing 10 billion rows of data through Peter Thiel’s Palantir Technologies. In early 2024, Coles signed a deal to deploy Palantir’s “Foundry” platform across more than 840 stores, analysing every transaction, every worker’s movement, every shift allocation. Workers across Victoria are monitored, with one shelf-stacker in Ballarat saying: “The computer knows where I am before my manager does.”

The Moral Hazard of Being US Deputy-Sheriff

Australian officials watched as US missiles struck Venezuelan fishermen. Eleven died. It was legal, Washington insists. But Australia is not just an observer—we have ADF personnel embedded in US commands, we host Pine Gap targeting facilities, and we help aim weapons we never authorised and cannot refuse. AUKUS binds us more tightly than any alliance since 1945. The question is whether we’ve traded sovereignty for security theatre. And whether a second strike on drowning men will finally be the line we refuse to cross.

Stand By Your Ban: A Post-Truth Reflection

Welcome to Post-Truth Australia, where the lies have become so brazen they’ve stopped pretending to be anything else. The Coalition’s “Net Zero Heroes” want to dig up every tonne of coal in the country. Tasmania’s preparing a modern potlatch ceremony – ceremonially bankrupting itself with a stadium that’ll cost billions while the AFL chips in $15 million. And our Communications Minister stands firm on a social media ban that wouldn’t work in an iron lung. It’s mythomania at industrial scale, and as Hemingway knew: we go broke gradually, then suddenly.