There have been penalties for those who looked the other way when Epstein was convicted of child sex offences and decided to maintain relationships with the financier — but not for the British ambassador to Washington, reveals SOLOMON HUGHES
Using divine traditions theocratic regime launches a new wave of repression in Iran
Human rights advocates have called for an international outcry against the wave of arrests taking place in Iran, explains JAMSHID AHMADI
Iran’s flag flying over its capital city, Tehran
Labour’s new Treasury unit will ‘challenge unnecessary regulation’ by forcing nominally independent bodies like Ofwat to bend to business demands — exactly what Iain Anderson’s corporate clients wanted, writes SOLOMON HUGHES
DR DYLAN MURPHY looks at a Big Brother Watch report which exposes the government as an enabler of DWP secret spying on benefit claimants
The EU faces a critical choice: will it remain in the shadow of an increasingly unreliable US ally, or will it forge its own path in a multilateral world where co-operation with China is essential, asks MARC VANDEPITTE as leaders meet for the EU-China Summit
A lot of discussion about how the left should currently organise – including debate on whether the Green Party is a useful vehicle for advance – runs the risk of refusing to engage with or learn from the reasons the left was defeated previously, argues KEVIN OVENDEN
For Egypt trade trumps the Israeli genocide of the Palestinians, but how long can the country’s ‘misleaders’ – and others in the region – continue their indifference against the popular will of their own people, asks ROGER McKENZIE
IN LATE June 2022, Ayatollah Ali Khamenei, the Supreme Leader of the theocratic dictatorship in Iran, threatened those involved with the mass protest movement currently taking over the country that if they continued along this path then a fate of the kind witnessed in the 1980s would await them.
He was referring to a dark era in Iran’s history, when the then-nascent Islamic Republic regime started a wave of killings of opposition activists — during which all political parties and activities, other than those loyal to the regime, were outlawed and bloodily purged leading to thousands of executions. This was an era during which any expression of dissent, however mild, was answered with executions (even summary), brutal torture, lengthy imprisonment, and forced disappearances.
The mere reference to this era is often enough to bring terror to the hearts and minds of most ordinary Iranians.
More from this author
The Islamic Republic is attempting to deflect from its own failures with a scapegoating campaign against vulnerable and impoverished migrants, writes JAMSHID AHMADI
As the regime in Iran continues to face international pressure to reduce its nuclear programme, workers continue to struggle for wages they can live on despite harsh repression of trade unionists, reports JAMSHID AHMADI
Activists who are carrying forward the democratic struggle of the Iranian people for peace, human rights and social progress need our urgent solidarity, says JAMSHID AHMADI
As a new president takes office amid a suspiciously low turnout, the regime’s grip on power grows ever more tenuous as the crises and rebellions become more regular, writes JAMSHID AHMADI
