Journal
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2024: The Year of Gradual Collapse of Labor Rights
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In a year when nearly half of the world’s population is expected to vote, the International Trade Union Confederation (ITUC) has released a report that goes beyond just another annual overview of labor conditions. The 2024 Global Rights Index doesn’t just map how labor rights are respected or violated in…
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Guernica in Tehran: From Anti-War Icon to Tool of Hypocrisy
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In a time when the world is blurred by the smoke and fire of wars, the exhibition of one of the most famous anti-war paintings of the 20th century—Guernica by Pablo Picasso—in Tehran is not just ironic; it’s a symbolic disaster. Guernica was created in memory of the brutal bombing…
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The Racism of Anti-Racists: Bourdieu, Said, and Inverted Orientalism
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There’s a kind of violence that doesn’t wear a uniform, doesn’t raise its voice, and doesn’t need to spill blood to be effective. It speaks in well-published books, sits on academic panels, tweets in solidarity, and signs petitions. It insists on cultural understanding. It warns against Western arrogance. It tells…
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What Happened to Protection?
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I have lived in Athens for eight years. Long enough to know its rhythms, and long enough to watch the word “protection” disappear. Every headline speaks of “illegal immigration,” every policy turns arrival into suspicion. The system doesn’t ask why you came—it asks how. And in that shift, survival becomes…
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They Made Her a Metaphor, Then Made Her Illegal
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I still remember the first time I watched Baran. It was 2001. That film did something rare—it showed us what we already knew but refused to admit: that Afghan migrants were building our cities, stone by stone, and sleeping in their shadows. In those years, I saw the world behind…
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Banners in the Wind, Walls at the Border
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In late 2006, I took part in a small gathering in Sanandaj for World Children’s Day. We held signs that said children deserve education, not war—hardly a radical demand. Most of us were under 25. Some were students, some workers, some artists. We were thinking about Afghan children without access…
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Geopolitics and Social Movements in Post-2023 Iran
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The Islamic Republic built a tool and named it the “Axis of Resistance.” For three decades, it used this label to present itself as a force against Israel and in support of Palestinian liberation. This construction was not accidental. It served a strategic purpose: to expand the regime’s regional influence…
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Your Values Burned the World
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There is something about this crazy simplification. There’s no such thing as “Western values.” That clean, polished idea never really existed. The West wasn’t handed down from the sky. It was built through war, slavery, blood, and fire. Without that brutal history, it wouldn’t be what it is today. Even…
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National Conflict, Netanyahu, and Iran’s Revolutionary Future
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The slogan “Woman, Life, Freedom” represents a political movement that emerged in Iran with significant implications for the entire Middle East. It was a progressive and radical moment in recent regional history. However, it cannot be understood in isolation. It must be seen as part of a broader process of…
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We Were Never Meant to Belong
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Photo: Refugee temporary accommodation by IOM, Athens, November 17, 2020. In Iran, when the last days of a administrative come around, they do not go out with humility. No. They celebrate. They build stages and stand behind microphones, handing each other awards and shaking hands like they just saved the…
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The Monarchist-IRGC Bloc and the Suppression of Iran’s Opposition
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The polarization of Iranian society is intensifying. What is unfolding is not a chaotic battle of competing factions but a deliberate convergence of reactionary forces. The IRGC and monarchist groups, though seemingly at odds in ideological rhetoric, are engaged in a joint effort to eliminate political dissidents. The IRGC carries…
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The MEK: Ghosts of the Past, Agents of the Present
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During the tumultuous days of the Woman, Life, Freedom movement, one absence was glaring—the Mojahedin-e Khalq (MEK), an organization that otherwise seizes every opportunity to wave its banners and flood European streets with hollow slogans. In Vienna and other European cities, where protests erupted daily, the MEK was nowhere to…
