A Mayan pyramid
The Mayan Empire didn't fall overnight.
Overextraction, inequality, rulers demanding more from people who had less to give... Sound familiar?
Societal collapse isn't necessarily the end of everything; it's an opportunity to build something fairer.
Lead Belly was the mid-century Kendrick Lamar.
He coined the term "woke" in 1938 in his song Scottsboro Boys, about Black Americans in Alabama being falsely accused of rape.
He was saying stay alert, stay awake to oppression, and be careful out there in racist America.
Jimmy Carter wins the Nobel Peace Prize
It doesn't have to be this way.
The USA could dedicate its incredible resources to promoting peace and democracy.
And The Strokes could go back to being a party band.
The Pasteur Institute after bombing
US-Israeli strikes have hit more than 30 universities across Iran since the war broke out, such as Sharif University of Technology in Tehran, often compared to MIT. And the century-old Pasteur Institute, which produces vaccines and runs diagnostics for infectious diseases.
a school in Gaza destroyed
95% of all school buildings in Gaza have been damaged or destroyed - including all 12 universites. The term scholars now use is scholasticide - the deliberate erasure of a people's educational infrastructure. The US has provided the weapons, the funding and the diplomatic cover.
Jaime Roldós Aguilera
Jaime Roldós was Ecuador's democratically elected president. Was against foreign oil companies. Championed human rights. Tried to hold US-backed regimes to account. In 1981 his plane went down in the Andes. In Confessions of an Economic Hit Man, John Perkins says it was the CIA.
Martin Luther King delivers a speech
A 1999 civil trial resulted in a jury finding Loyd Jowers and others "including government agencies" liable for MLK's murder. Media blackout. The FBI surveilled, harassed and attempted to blackmail King for years before his death. James Earl Ray pleaded guilty but later recanted.
Juan José Torres
Juan José Torreswas Bolivia's left-wing president who nationalised industries and expelled the US military mission from the country. The CIA backed a coup that removed him. Then in 1976, he was kidnapped and murdered. Henry Kissinger gave the green light to the participating regimes.
Patrice Lumumba under arrest, in handcuffs
Patrice Lumumba, Congo's first democratically elected PM, gave an electrifying independence speech. He'd been in office 67 days when they moved against him. The CIA sent poison to kill him; Belgium's forces got there first - he was tortured, shot and dissolved in acid (really).
Mohammad Mosaddegh lifted up by a crowd
Mohammad Mosaddegh was Iran's democratically elected Prime Minister. He nationalised Iranian oil so the Iranian people could benefit from it rather than BP. The CIA and MI6 bribed military officers, staged riots and toppled him in 1953. Iran's democratic experiment died.
Here's the charge sheet against the USA, as revealed by (checks notes) @thestrokes.bsky.social at Coachella. 🧵
Pierre Laval during his trial
After France’s liberation, Laval was convicted of treason and sentenced to death. He tried to cheat the firing squad with a hidden cyanide capsule but the poison had degraded. It didn’t kill him. Doctors revived him and marched him out to face his fate. He was shot the same morning.
REFORM UK: FAMILY, COMMUNITY, COUNTRY
FUN FACT. Reform UK’s slogan is one word away from that of France’s Vichy regime in WWII, which was “work, family, country” (they never specify which country).
Do you know what happened to Pierre Laval, Vichy’s leading Nazi collaborator?
Kwame Nkrumah in traditional clothing
Kwame Nkrumah had a dream bigger than Ghana.
He wanted to unite all of Africa - one continent, one voice, free from Western control forever.
So in 1966, while he was abroad on a peace mission, the CIA helped topple him as president.
He died in exile - but the dream lives on.
(alongside images of the US, megaphones, Liam Conejo Ramos’ bunny hat, and signs that read “NO ICE WAREHOUSE,” “SHUTDOWN DETENTION CENTERS,” and “NOT HERE/NOT ANYWHERE”) NATIONAL DAY OF ACTION STOP ICE WAREHOUSE DETENTION APRIL 25, 2026
On April 25, join a local event in defense of immigrants in your community. As the regime buys up warehouses to convert into concentration camps, it’s critical that we come together to oppose the literal warehousing of people in our country: www.mobilize.us/disappearedi...
Why did football hooliganism run out of steam in the 80s?
Acid house 🙂
The lads turning up to raves were often the same ones who'd been fighting on Saturdays.
The firms were about belonging. Violence was the price of admission. Then raves came along and gave them the community without the cost.
Their path to winning is simple: knock every door. Twice. They’re close - but need more people. If you want to change how politics works, it’s happening in Lambeth: shakeitup.org.uk
Shake It Up and friends outside court after winning an injunction against the closure of Brixton Plaza
One of those challengers: Shake It Up. Six candidates. A new model. If they win, councillors don’t decide alone - residents do, through local assemblies. Not just another councillor. One who actually does what you tell them.
Map of Lambeth
Labour look set to lose Lambeth Council for the first time in a generation.
Polls show their vote collapsing across London. On the doorstep in Brixton, Clapham & Stockwell, only 1 in 20 say they're voting Labour.
A combo of Greens and independents could break their grip.
Popular as in ratings were high. But yes, fair point.
The film was popular on release but the BBC didn’t show it again for another 20 years. Some suspect political pressure from the UK’s pro-nuke government.
The 1984 film Threads begins with the US instigating a coup in Iran and ends with the grim aftermath of nuclear war.
It's being remade by the team behind Adolesence. Let's hope they can get it out before it's too late.
BP hails exceptional trading as oil prices soar in Iran war.
While people at home are dreading the next energy bill landing in their inbox, fossil fuel bosses are filling their coffers
We need a permanent, tightened windfall tax to claw back every penny of excess profit being made on this crisis and put it towards supporting households
“A human being is a part of the whole called by us universe, a part limited in time and space. He experiences himself, his thoughts and feeling as something separated from the rest, a kind of optical delusion of his consciousness. This delusion is a kind of prison for us, restricting us to our personal desires and to affection for a few persons nearest to us. Our task must be to free ourselves from this prison by widening our circle of compassion to embrace all living creatures and the whole of nature in its beauty.” ― Albert Einstein
Einstein was a refugee who became an American but he would have despised “America First”.
St Peter shows a no entry sign to a man and says “yes he was the test”
(And Christian nationalism is a contradiction in terms)
Octavia Butler
In 1998, a Black American sci-fi writer invented a fascist US presidential candidate who ran on the slogan "Make America Great Again". "Christian Nationalism", walls, crackdowns on the poor...
She died in 2006 so never saw how right she was.
Octavia Butler was a prophet.
Highland cattle at Strawberry Hill
35 years ago, a Bedfordshire farmer just stopped farming. Turtle doves, nightingales, grasshopper warblers moved in.
When the owner died, it was nearly ploughed under. But a fundraiser saved it.
Now Strawberry Hill shows what happens when we give nature a little space to be.
Gustavo Petro speaking at the UN
Most world leaders claim to care about climate. Colombia actually stopped issuing oil and gas licences. Every single one. Not a single new permit under Petro's watch.
His term ends in 2026. Every right-wing candidate running to replace him has promised to reverse it immediately. 😱
Iceland asked a simple question: what if we taught kids they don’t have to do what society expects?
So boys learn care. 💅
Girls learn boldness. 🔨
And children grow up knowing both are part of being human. 👯♂️
