(By Farhang Jahanpour) The Iranian revolution succeeded exactly 35 years ago this week. After 37 years of rule, Mohammad Reza Shah left Iran on 16 January 1979, never to return. His nemesis, Ayatollah Ruhollah Khomeini, who had waged a campaign against him mainly from his exile in Najaf in Iraq for 14 years returned in […]
Month
Category
- Africa (255)
- Asia (1,281)
- Australasia (36)
- Authoritarianism (413)
- Canada (9)
- Culture (597)
- Economy (1,084)
- Agriculture (3)
- Banking (67)
- Boycotts (1)
- Carbon Footprint (6)
- Corporations (56)
- Cryptocurrency (2)
- Debt (21)
- Degrowth (1)
- Democratic Socialism (20)
- Demographic Decline (1)
- Development (26)
- Downward Mobility (1)
- Employment (118)
- Food Insecurity (21)
- Homelessness (17)
- Industry (5)
- Inequality (428)
- Inflation (5)
- infrastructure (11)
- Insurance (1)
- Investment (93)
- Market Crash (12)
- Middle Class (61)
- Monopolies (9)
- Neoliberalism (206)
- Plutocracy (637)
- Poverty (209)
- Poverty (17)
- Regulation (3)
- Retirement (1)
- Sanctions (5)
- Tariffs (4)
- Taxes (38)
- Technology (5)
- Trade (121)
- Weapons sales (8)
- Education (202)
- Energy (1,790)
- Agrovoltaics (4)
- Batteries (53)
- Coal (141)
- Electricity Cost (2)
- Fossil Fuels (333)
- Fracking (50)
- Geothermal (7)
- Green ammonia (5)
- Green Energy (430)
- Green Hydrogen (8)
- Heat Pumps (6)
- Hydroelectric (16)
- Hydroelectric (2)
- Mining (1)
- Natural Gas (108)
- Nuclear Energy (161)
- Petroleum (303)
- Power Grid (12)
- Pumped Hydro (6)
- Solar Energy (443)
- Tar Sands (13)
- Wave Energy (10)
- wind energy (360)
- Environment (2,782)
- Climate Change (1,692)
- Acidification of Oceans (54)
- Agriculture (26)
- Biodiversity (15)
- Climate Refugees (6)
- CO2 (133)
- Dehydration (5)
- Denialism (154)
- Desalinization (5)
- Desertification (163)
- Divestment (2)
- Dust Storms (7)
- Environmental Investment (1)
- Extreme Heat (406)
- Extreme Weather (300)
- Flooding (139)
- Food Supply (3)
- Forests (18)
- Green New Deal (42)
- Green Recycling (2)
- Greenwashing (3)
- Mass Extinction (63)
- Methane (21)
- Net Carbon Zerio (8)
- Nitrous Oxide (2)
- Rainforests (19)
- Rivers (13)
- Sea Level (341)
- Soil Carbon Release (14)
- Super Storms (266)
- wildfires (245)
- Wood Buildings (1)
- Climate Crisis (1,408)
- Drought (300)
- Ecology (2)
- Ecology (12)
- Environmentalism (393)
- Green Transportation (259)
- Ice Melt (141)
- Invasive Species (2)
- Islands (3)
- Oceans (106)
- Oil Spills (8)
- Pollution (234)
- Water (102)
- wildlife (23)
- Climate Change (1,692)
- Europe (1,409)
- Featured (4,429)
- Haiti (1)
- Health (720)
- History (377)
- Human Rights (1,684)
- Apartheid (263)
- censorship (344)
- Death Penalty (32)
- Disappeared (4)
- Displaced and Refugees (585)
- Food Insecurity (31)
- Gay rights (29)
- Genocide (81)
- Human Rights Watch (93)
- Indigenous Rights (1)
- Migrants (4)
- privacy (21)
- Rights (92)
- Slavery and Trafficking (16)
- Starvation (5)
- Torture (103)
- Trans Rights (5)
- Transgender Rights (5)
- Unlawful Imprisonment (111)
- Unlwful Killing (85)
- War Crimes (435)
- War Rape (9)
- International Politics and Economy (2,159)
- Arms Sales (75)
- BRICS (3)
- Corruption (269)
- Crime (133)
- Democracy (341)
- Dissent (463)
- Domestic Terrorism (15)
- Drones (113)
- Espionage (1)
- G20 (1)
- Guns (9)
- Hacking (8)
- Immigration (22)
- Immigration (5)
- Islamophobia (385)
- Migrants (2)
- military (125)
- nationalism (118)
- NATO (40)
- Neocolonialism (1)
- Peace (150)
- Policing (3)
- Politics (311)
- Politics&Culture (22)
- Propaganda (13)
- Race (2)
- Smuggling (1)
- Juan Cole (272)
- Latin America (107)
- media (493)
- Middle East (10,375)
- Arab World (5,364)
- Iran (1,420)
- Israel (1,000)
- Israel/ Palestine (3,898)
- Israel/Palestine (9)
- Kurds (297)
- Red Sea (1)
- Turkey (610)
- Turkiye (137)
- Patriarchy (12)
- racism (479)
- religion (1,541)
- robots (3)
- Romance (1)
- science (177)
- Secular (West) (9)
- Secularism (30)
- Spirituality (22)
- Statelessness (15)
- Stranded Assets (1)
- Surveillance (285)
- Terrorism (1,096)
- Tolerance (6)
- Uncategorized (8,088)
- United Nations (188)
- Urbanization (4)
- US Foreign Policy (1,426)
- US politics (5,616)
- Anti-War Movement (13)
- Campaign Finance (31)
- Censors (22)
- Central Intelligence Agency (63)
- Charity (1)
- Civil Rights (96)
- Congress (82)
- Conspiracy Theories (24)
- Constitution (421)
- Courts (16)
- crime (12)
- Democratic Party (978)
- Democratic Socialists of America (22)
- Domestic Terrorism (20)
- Drone Warfare (27)
- Espionage (124)
- Ethnicities (397)
- Far Right (405)
- FBI (48)
- Federal Government (1)
- Foreign Policy (204)
- Gay Rights (17)
- Guns (97)
- Immigration (259)
- Israel Lobbies (131)
- Marijuana (4)
- Militarization (274)
- National Security State (477)
- Native Americans (41)
- Nuclear arsenal (8)
- penitentiaries (6)
- Pentagon (582)
- Police (43)
- prison reform (10)
- Private Prisons (4)
- Progressive Politics (15)
- Puerto Rico (30)
- Religious Right (16)
- Reproductive Choice (69)
- Republican Party (3,190)
- Supreme Court (133)
- Voter suppression (36)
- Whistleblowers (7)
- Xenophobia (9)
- Veterans (35)
- Voting Rights (16)
- War (634)
- White Supremacists (241)
- wikileaks (8)
- women (575)
- workers (235)
- Writing (5)
- Youth (220)
poetry
Omar Khayyam (497): “You’re beast and demon, angel, human being”
You who distill within you the whole world, attend to this voice from the realm beyond: You’re beast, and demon, angel, human being; whatever you show forth, you are that thing. Translated by Juan Cole from Omar Khayyam’s Rubaiyat, [pdf] Whinfield 497
Bringing medieval Persian verse to the West: Dick Davis Interview
PBS Newshour’s Jeff Brown interviews Dick Davis, among the foremost Persian scholars and translators of our time, on the delights and glories of Persian poetry. Davis is the translator of Faces of Love: Hafez and the Poets of Shiraz For Barnes and Noble fans the book is here. And here it is at the indie […]
Tagore’s “The New Year” (Poem of the Day)
(By Rabindranath Tagore) The New Year LIKE FRUIT, shaken free by an impatient wind from the veils of its mother flower, thou comest, New Year, whirling in a frantic dance amid the stampede of the wind-lashed clouds and infuriate showers, while trampled by thy turbulence are scattered away the faded and the frail in an […]
Coleridge, Kubla Khan (Poem of the Day)
(By Samuel Taylor Coleridge) Kubla Khan Or, a vision in a dream. A Fragment. In Xanadu did Kubla Khan A stately pleasure-dome decree: Where Alph, the sacred river, ran Through caverns measureless to man Down to a sunless sea. So twice five miles of fertile ground With walls and towers were girdled round; And there […]
Walt Whitman’s “Salut au Monde” (Poem of the Day)
(By Walt Whitman) “Salut au Monde” [Greeting to the World: from Leaves of Grass, 1856] 1 O TAKE my hand, Walt Whitman! Such gliding wonders! such sights and sounds! Such join’d unended links, each hook’d to the next! Each answering all—each sharing the earth with all. What widens within you, Walt Whitman? What waves and […]
Omar Khayyam (162) “Be happy, since once you’re upset it goes on forever”
Be happy, since once you’re upset it goes on forever– as stars move into conjunction in the sky, it will go on. The brick they will one day mold from your clay will be lodged in the portico of someone else’s palace. Translated by Juan Cole from Omar Khayyam’s Rubaiyat, [pdf] Whinfield 162
Omar Khayyam (259) “Have some wine, since no one is given a long life”
The revolving sky, which has never revealed any mysteries, has brutally crushed a thousand innocents. Have some wine, since no one is given a long life and once people have left this world they aren’t coming back. Translated by Juan Cole from Omar Khayyam’s Rubaiyat, [pdf] Whinfield 259
Omar Khayyam (458) “Be happy in this fleeting moment”
Since you can’t comprehend the mysteries, why wallow uselessly in grief? Since you ‘re not going to get your way, be happy in this fleeting moment for which you exist. Translated by Juan Cole from Omar Khayyam’s Rubaiyat, [pdf] Whinfield 458
© 2025 All Rights Reserved