Paul O’Connell

I’m really proud to be part of this new initiative - we desperately need independent working class organisation and power, get involved and help build the better world we need and deserve ✊

This interview shows what we all have seen since Oct 2023: The Economist has served as a propaganda outlet for Israel's genocide in Gaza

Israeli society is harvesting the bitter returns of Zionism.

I lived and traveled in Iran for months. In Tehran I lived with the family of a retired bank worker who saw me looking for housing. I roomed with his son for months, ate all my meals with them, and they never accepted any money. Once I was sick and throwing up and they all came into the bathroom and the dad stroked my head while I barfed and told me “Aybi nadare” (no shame, it’s ok). I traveled around most of the country by plane, train, bus, shared taxi, etc. Eventually I stopped booking hotels because I’d always meet people on the train, bus etc who’d insist I stay with them. The family of Iran/Iraq war vets from Yazd who took me to Taft for bbq in the mountains. The taxi driver from Rasht who made a bed for me on the floor of his tiny apartment because all the hotels were full. The only time a police officer talked to me was once to make sure I was ok. I never felt in any danger day or night. The land of Iran is as incredibly diverse as its people. There are mountainous rain forests and desert salt flats. I met among the most liberal and most conservative people there, and everything in between. Everyone was so kind it makes me cry with shame.

Deepcut’s coverage is continually excellent — well worth a subscription

Keep Dungeons and Dragons cunts out of politics.

"the power to ban a march had not been used since 2012" Shabana Mamhoud is leading the way to the evisceration of any meaningful right to protest!

"Amid Israel’s deliberate imposition of conditions of life calculated to bring about the physical destruction of Palestinians in Gaza, Palestinian women face compounded and life-threatening consequences"

Another attack on our democratic rights - the Home Secretary happy to ban a protest which has taken place peacefully for 40 yrs - the same Home Secretary was incensed that police banned Macabi Tel Aviv’s violent hooligans from rampaging though Birmingham bbc.co.uk/news/articles/…

Deterrence or Nothing: Iran's Logic of Total War or Total Cease-Fire Iran’s rejection of a ceasefire is not simply a disagreement over timing or terms, but reflects a challenge to the entire framework through which negotiations with the US have been conducted for decades. The Islamic Republic is refusing to negotiate from a position in which its own capabilities are treated as the problem to be solved or contained, whether its nuclear program, missile arsenal, or its regional alliances and support for the Axis of Resistance, and is instead insisting that the issue at stake is US and Israeli aggression and the regional order that underpins it. In other words, Tehran seeks to overturn the longstanding US framework that treats negotiations essentially as arms control over Iran and behavioural disciplining and to redefine the negotiating agenda as one concerning the existing regional security order and the conduct of the US and Israel. This amounts to a struggle over agenda-setting power, or the framing of the bargaining space itself. Tehran is refusing to operate within the negotiating parameters Washington has historically imposed and is instead seeking to fundamentally reshape them, moving the objective from ceasefire management to a definitive end to the war, while keeping its political identity as a revolutionary Islamic Republic (and not merely an islamic republic) intact. Iran is also keen to ensure that the US and Israel's weaponization of diplomacy as a method of warfare becomes very costly for them. Twice now, in June 2025 and again in the current round, the US has used the cover of active diplomacy to strike Iran directly, reinforcing the perception that negotiations have functioned less as a path to conflict resolution than as an instrument of subterfuge. For Iranian officials, this only deepens the view that Iran’s long-practised strategic patience has been met not with good-faith negotiation but with strategic deception. The Islamic Republic also wants to ensure that negotiations can no longer be used to reproduce the cycle of war itself. Iranian leaders have been explicit about this shift. Parliament Speaker Mohammad-Bagher Ghalibaf declared that Tehran is “absolutely not seeking a ceasefire,” arguing that Israel sustains its position through the recurring cycle of “war–negotiation–ceasefire and then war again,” while other senior officials have similarly indicated that Iran will only consider ending the war under conditions that ensure such a conflict cannot be easily resumed. As such, Tehran’s objective is not a temporary suspension of hostilities but a decisive settlement that changes the strategic conditions that have allowed war to recur. In this context, the conventional assumption in conflict resolution theory that negotiations become possible or "ripe" once both sides reach a mutually hurting stalemate, where neither can win outright and the costs of continued war become intolerable, does not apply here. Iran’s strategic aim is to absorb whatever pain is necessary, for as long as required, to ensure that the outcome of “total war” translates into a deterrence-restoring outcome that yields what might be described as a "total cease-fire": a comprehensive settlement in which the costs of resuming the conflict become prohibitive. Such an outcome would be qualitatively different from previous arrangements involving Iran and would necessarily extend beyond strictly bilateral understandings with Washington to encompass the broader regional deterrence system that Iran spearheads. In practice, this means that any durable settlement would have to account not only for Iran’s own security but also for the regional alliances that now operate under its security umbrella, including close allies such as Hizbullah who have become integral to its deterrence.

An endless sea of people in Tehran is making its way toward Enghelab Square, though we are still far from the square itself, while warplanes have been flying overhead all morning with bombs, as people move to pledge their allegiance to their new leader. Iranians remain as determined as ever to expel the United States from the Persian Gulf. It is a beautiful day in Iran.

Irish writer Sally Rooney argues that standing in solidarity with Palestine is equivalent to fighting for life on earth.

US-Israeli forces have struck 77 medical sites across Iran. Barbaric.

This wretched ghoul has shown unwavering support for Israel’s genocide in Gaza, and its wider crimes and now has the audacity to us Palestinian children as a social media gimmick - reprehensible

The Centre for Palestine Studies @SOAS Annual Lecture 2026, by Professor Ussama Makdisi @UssamaMakdisi, UC Berkeley, is now available on @YouTube: "History, Gaza, and the Question of Genocide" youtube.com/watch?v=CtLHjd…

From Gaza to Lebanon to Iran - Israel is defining and epitomising the modern meaning of barbarism.

1. What a huge loss. Professor Walid Khalidi was an intellectual titan. A doyen of modern Arab and Palestinian historians. A pioneer of debunking Zionist fictions, and uncovering historical truth. May he rest in peace. Here is a reminder of some of his important publications.

Ongoing genocide in Gaza

1. Your regular reminder that Israel's 1967 aggression against Egypt and Syria, leading to occupation of Palestinian and Arab lands, was also fraudulently justified as a "preemptive" or "preventive" war:

"These acts must be understood in their totality: the ethnic cleansing of Palestine, by whatever means, whatever the cost and whatever crimes it takes. This environment is coercing Palestinians to leave their homes and life in a city where their roots run deep"

For centuries, to justify colonialism, western states promoted the lie that they bequeath the rule of law on lawless, uncivilised nations. Now the instrumentality of international law is openly admitted. The west admits its own lawless barbarism. 1/2 archive.ph/v29yt