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Built from Scratch
Podcast On the Equation That Turns a Nation Into Acceptable Rubble Do we distinguish between Iran and the Islamic Republic? Are they one and the same? It sounds like a pedant’s quarrel, a hotspot for social media. It is not. And you may be surprised which side of it you find yourself on. Begin… — read more
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Wounded, Not Defeated: On the Endurance of a People and the Failure of Shortcuts
Podcast Chah Kouran Caravanserai, a Qajar era brick building visible from the road while driving. This is a response to a comment by Kayvan Hosseini, a brilliant and intelligent journalist at BBC Persian, whose interventions are generally sharp, disciplined, and to the point. Precisely for that reason, his recent formulation merits serious engagement. In this… — read more
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Je Me Souviens: After Mahshahr
Podcast Photo by Jerry “Woody” / Wikimedia Commons / CC BY-SA 2.0 The Iranian diaspora keeps sending its people to the barricades. The people at the barricades keep dying. The diaspora keeps forgetting. In Quebec, every licence plate bears three words: Je me souviens—I remember. Not celebration, but defiance against erasure. Quebec remembers conquest, linguistic… — read more
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Speculators in Suffering: The Moral Bankruptcy of Diaspora War Advocacy
PodcastThere is a peculiar species of political actor that emerges from every fractured nation—those who, having escaped the inferno, appoint themselves firefighters from across the ocean and prescribe gasoline as the cure. They populate the comment sections, the conference panels, the corridors of foreign capitals, advocating with remarkable enthusiasm for missiles to rain down on… — read more