On the Devastating News (that I allegedly predicted the outcome of the referendum wrong) There are some scurrilous rumours going around, and I just want to nip them in the bud now. Some people are saying that I predicted that the Remain camp would win with a solid 10% lead. These people, if I can […]

Read more "Broken Brexit Promises- Things I didn’t Say (Even though you say I did)"

In Imam Khomeini Hospital Tehran this morning, a teacher and trade unionist called Mahmoud Beheshti Langaroudi began to suffer internal bleeding in his stomach.  Nearly a month into his hunger strike, and two days into a hunger strike without water, the doctors have warned his wife that persevering will likely result in serious and irreversible […]

Read more "Anti Semitism, The Labour Party and the Syrian Revolution"

This weekend anti war demonstrations have taken place all over Britain. Once again, Stop the War Coalition (StW), have chosen not to invite any Syrians to speak at their demonstrations, worried that this would “muddy the water” of their campaign. The self proclaimed leadership of the anti war movement have chosen to completely silence the […]

Read more "We Like Our Syrians Dead: The British Left and David Cameron"

Sometimes things happen and its best to keep your disagreements to yourself. People who you cannot countenance not having on your side, people who you turn to for help, to think things through, start adopting a form of behaviour that you find alien.  So alien to the high regard you hold them in, that you […]

Read more "Take that fucking French flag down."

“Is it only the strength of God/ that can save us from giving ourselves to the night?/ Even the blind mouse who you call the enemy of light/ doesn’t give his throat so easily to the dagger of the night” Ahmad Shamloo One problem with the debate around Syria is that it has actually become […]

Read more "Russian Bombs in the Middle East: A View from Anzali Bridge "

The Twentieth Century is Born In the constituent assembly elected just after the revolution the class battle lines were already drawn. Whilst the majority of people tied to the land, women, the illiterate and even some poorer craftsmen did not receive the franchise, three main groups appeared. The Mostabed (Royalists), the Moderates (Mo’tadel) and the […]

Read more "Their Engineering Students and Ours Part 5: From the Birth of the 20th Century, to colonial re occupation"

The Constitutional Revolution This is not the place to provide a full narrative account of the Constitutional Revolution, and the reader will be able to find really strong historical or poetic accounts in either the books I am talking about here or historical novels such as Amin Malouf’s Samarkand. Unfortunately, this is not the place […]

Read more "Their Engineering Students and Ours 4: The Constitutional Revolution"

The Tobacco Revolt and The Birth of the Middle Classes The  Constitutional Revolution was the first revolutionary popular challenge to royal absolutism and imperialism in Iran.  To see how and why this came to be, we have to trace its development, in a the struggle for reform which predated it, in particular the struggle against concession […]

Read more "Their Engineering Students and Ours Part 3: The Birth of the Middle Classes"

Iran: Between Two Revolutions Abrahamian point outs that the neo-colonial coup of 1953 arrived in a country that had already been through its first two periods of mass politics, mass left movements and something like the beginning of democracy. Not only had the Constitutional Revolution and its aftermath announced the emergence of the Iranian “nation” […]

Read more "Their Engineering Students and Ours: Part 2"