"By killing [Khamenei], the US and Israel didn’t just strike Iran’s government. They struck a spiritual leader with transnational religious authority – and created exactly the kind of martyr that galvanizes movements for generations." - fascinating and important piece by Iran scholar Narges Bajoghli
Yes, we're live again at the Cockpit Theatre on March 2nd!
Joining us: @natashadevon.bsky.social @johnmitchinson.bsky.social @askwilliamblake.bsky.social @mayeroflondon.bsky.social @jamesbloodworth.bsky.social
Tickets: www.thecockpit.org.uk/show/the_lur...
I mean look: the wealthiest person in the world is extremely rude and obnoxious; the largest party in the world is far-right; the two most populous countries in the world are autocracies. The bad guys are the System. Opposition to them is transgression.
Infographic showing Nigel Farage with the headline Follow the money: sources of Reform UK’s declared funding. 81% Ex Conservatives, £29,210,931; 11% Reform leadership, £3,913,919; 8% everyone else, £2,988,902
👀 👀 Look how much Reform funding has come from Tory donors!
Nerve investigation finds:
🟡 Donors giving to both parties at once
🟡 Tory donors switching to Reform, jacking up amounts
🟡 Reform donors giving to specific Tory MPs… who then defect to Reform
By @charlienotold.bsky.social 🧵
I wish it were true that "no one is above the law". But while the City of London acts as laundromat for the world's dirty money, as almost all fraud and waste crime go unprosecuted, as no one has gone to jail for the financial crash or the poisoning of our rivers, this is manifestly untrue.
Infographic showing Nigel Farage with the headline Follow the money: sources of Reform UK’s declared funding. 81% Ex Conservatives, £29,210,931; 11% Reform leadership, £3,913,919; 8% everyone else, £2,988,902
Read the full piece by @charlienotold.bsky.social and subscribe: www.thenerve.news/p/reform-fun...
Revealed: 80% of Reform’s funding comes from Tory donors. The Nerve. Photograph of Reform UK Leader Nigel Farage (centre) stands with his “shadow cabinet” (l-r): Zia Yusuf, “shadow home secretary,” “shadow chancellor” Robert Jenrick, Richard Tice, “shadow deputy prime minister”, Suella Braverman, “shadow education secretary”, 17 February 2026
Follow the money: 80% of Reform’s funding comes from Tory donors, we can exclusively reveal
The majority of the money behind Farage’s movement was being supplied by Conservative interests even before the defection of so many high-profile figures from the party, writes @charlienotold.bsky.social
Graphic showing Peter Thiel - chair of Palantir Technologies - and some of the powerful figures in his network including Donald Trump, Elon Musk, Larry Ellison, Peter Mandelson, Steve Bannon
What’s happening in America is technofascism. It could happen here
Peter Thiel's data company is powering ICE operations in the US. In part 2 of the Nerve’s Palantir series, @carolecadwalla.bsky.social argues that the UK will be next - and we map Thiel’s network🧵
www.thenerve.news/p/technofasc...
🔴 'Domestic Terrorism': ICE Contractor Palantir's Tools for Tracking Dissent
Peter Thiel's firm – which has contracts with the UK's NHS and MoD – researched protest prediction for the US Army before agreeing to build ICE's data platform to conduct mass deportation, @nafeez.bsky.social reports
Well this seems to have hit home… Worth taking a moment to appreciate human graphic design.
Contracts data is boring. The names of government agencies are grey. IT language is dull.
Convert it all into a single visual hit? BOOM! Thank you to Lynsey Irvine, the Nerve’s genius creative director. 🙏⚡️
NEW: Our investigation for @thenerve_news reveals not only that Peter Thiel’s Palantir is completely enmeshed in our critical national infrastructure.
It’s also the ‘cloud support’ for our nuclear weapons system 🤯
1/
www.thenerve.news/p/palantir-t...
(For even more on the clear and present danger of Palantir, Peter Thiel, Alex Karp, the US Department of War and the future of Europe, see the excellent Authoritarian Stack, here)
Palantir wants to weave itself into the heart of the British State. If they do, we could end up as an extension of the US Department of War. That’s not a special relationship. It's something else entirely: the invasion of the bodysnatchers
This is Louis Mosley (Executive VP of Palantir for the UK and Europe): Mosley is a former Conservative Party councillor, used to work as a research associate for Rory Stewart and is the grandson of Oswald Mosley, founder of the British Union of Fascists (and wears black shirts for his interviews)
This is Peter Thiel (Palantir Co-founder and Chairman): the libertarian billionaire; Mentor, former employer and mega-donor to J D Vance; Thiel has donated to Trump personally, and is described by some as the Kingmaker of the modern MAGA movement
This is Alex Karp (Palantir CEO): Author of The Technological Republic: Hard Power, Soft Belief and the Future of the West (2025). Karp has a PhD in Neoclassical Social Theory and titled his dissertation “Aggression in the Life-World” (trans.)
Like Palantir, The Ministry of Defence say our data is safe. But experts call this “woefully naïve”, even “deliberately misleading.” US legislation could give the Trump administration access UK citizens’ data. Not much has escaped Palantir’s reach
Our revelations come in a month of geopolitical “rupture”, Trump said “sometimes you need a dictator”, and the UK signed a £240m Strategic Partnership with Palantir – just as Palantir-enabled ICE agents murdered Reneé Good and Alex Pretti. Some sobering quotes from our piece:
Now Palantir, full-on boosters of the Trump project home and abroad, are weaving themselves deep into the British State. History shows that once Palantir is in, they’re like knot-weed. You must dig them out by the root, before it spreads too far
Palantir is the company supercharging ICE with spyware and data mining. They have a deep relationship with the IDF's genocide in Gaza. They’re deep in DOGE, and their history’s littered with dark experiments like predictive policing
Other deals include back-end software for ALL public sector bodies, the Government Digital Service, DEFRA, software for post-Brexit Borders, AI platforms for councils, the Homes for Ukraine platform, and more. These stretch back to 2012 at least
REVEALED: Peter Thiel’s Palantir have over £630m in UK Government contracts. They’re laced through major projects with the NHS, the Home Office, and the Ministry of Defence: including our nuclear weapons program.
By @carolecadwalla.bsky.social, @mc00.bsky.social and myself for @thenerve.news
🔴NEW: I worked w @carolecadwalla.bsky.social and Charlie Young on this investigation mapping Palantir's public sector contracts, including previously unreported spend with the Nuclear Propulsion Integrated Project Team (NP-IPT) and AWE Nuclear Security Technologies:
www.thenerve.news/p/palantir-t...
Infographic: Peter Thiel and detail of Palantir’s contracts with UK government departments, agencies and authorities. Where the amount is unknown, the contract has not been included in the overall £672m+ spend. The bulk of the contracts are post 2018, the Olympics contract dates back to 2012 and some work with unreleased dates could be earlier. Design: Lynsey Irvine
NEW Nerve investigation reveals extent of Palantir's enmeshment in UK state operations
Peter Thiel's surveillance company has deals with government bodies amounting to at least £670m – inc. £15m contract with nuclear weapons agency
By @carolecadwalla.bsky.social Charlie Young & Max Colbert
🔗⏬
Two things to learn from this.
1. The rightwing newspapers are lobby groups whose purpose is to advance the class interest of their proprietors.
2. Lobbyists for the rich and powerful lose their jobs if they are not prepared to lie.
www.carbonbrief.org/analysis-uk-...
NO KINGS MASS CALL EYES ON ICE: DOCUMENT AND RECORD GET THE TOOLS YOU NEED TO EXERCISE YOUR RIGHTS AS FEDERAL AGENTS TERRORIZE OUR COMMUNITIES. MONDAY, JANUARY 26 8PM EST / 5PM PST
RSVP: bit.ly/masscall126
On Saturday, federal agents horrifically shot and killed 37-year-old Alex Pretti, an ICU nurse who cared for veterans, in the Eat Street neighborhood of south Minneapolis after brutally beating him in front of witnesses. Enough is enough. #NoKings #ICEOUTforGood #AbolishICE
Verge headline: It doesn't matter if Alex Pretty had a gun by Sarah Jeong Photo by Steven Garcia depicts several masked law enforcement agents soaked in red light at night
"Why is it so normal for law enforcement — those who are supposed to be keepers of law and order — to kill Americans? And why is the only question at the end of the day how much their victims deserved to die?"
Read more from @sarahjeong.bsky.social: www.theverge.com/policy/86745...
open.substack.com/pub/brightbl...
Unrolled thread on BBC online coverage of the shooting (and false claims about the shooting)
skywriter.blue/pages/did:pl...
' #RachelReeves reduced the UK shared prosperity fund for 2025-26 from £1.5b to £900m – a cut of 40%.'
Whilst, pumping £13BILLION into the blood-stained,claws of Arms and Bomb-making vultures!
#GetTheRedToryWarmongers OUT of OUR misery!
www.theguardian.com/commentisfre...
