Maziar

Researching corporate power, public debt & EU financial governance @CGPE_Sussex also: capitalist futurity, social networks, political ecology, Middle East, Iran

[Maziar @Muzyar]

A long US-Israel war against Iran would push the Middle East’s environment to breaking point.
I wrote something on war on the environment and the ecology of war. 🔗👇

[Maziar @Muzyar]

Unlike hoards of Iranian artists, journalists, and academics who jump through hoops to exoticise and homogenise Iran and cater to Western gaze, be it ultimately racist right-wingers or arrogant authritarian type of leftists, Satrapi reflected on the contradiction she had lived.

[Maziar @Muzyar]

Marjan Satrapi was one of very few internationally recognised Iranian voices who remained true to an authentically Iranian lifeworld; deeply tragic and defiantly humorous.

[Maziar @Muzyar]

@ShimaVezvaei شیما وزوایی = حاتم طایی

[Maziar @Muzyar]

Why would a university need "sustainable growth"? Is it a country with GDP?
And why would the budget analysis choose an Econ 101 framework that is concerned whether "expansion reduces marginal cost"?
With managers like this, is it a surprise that UK universities are a mess?

[Financial Times @FT]

Several UK universities nearly ran out of cash last year, says report https://t.co/HqQZXVnD0f

[Maziar @Muzyar]

https://t.co/O9SXCogq4I

[Sarah Osment @sm_osment]

have I mentioned that I teach first year writing here and that I am being laid off

[Maziar @Muzyar]

Two decades of antagonisation of politics, militarisation of state, and automation of culture has culminated in the AI hype that could enable a far-right assault on media and academia.
Against this looming cultural revolution, resistance is not enough.
https://t.co/0IzvAjKoUw

[Maziar @Muzyar]

@ShimaVezvaei "دانش نظری پیشین" رو زیادی سخاوتمندانه صورت‌بندی نکردید قربان؟

[Maziar @Muzyar]

This is too dark.
Five migrant workers who weren't paid burnt alive in a minivan after a dispute with the employer.
4 Afghans and 1 Pakistani, an Afghan survived.
The arrested middlemen are also Pakistani.
Such violence and cruelty, so we can enjoy cheap, succulent strawberries.

[Yeganeh Torbati @yjtorbati]

We talked to over 70 people and examined thousands of pages of documents and emails to uncover how the Iranian state seized the tech sector from the entrepreneurs who made it. An excerpt of our new book, in @TheAtlantic today https://t.co/IprUrOXagu

[Maziar @Muzyar]

Chinamaxxing awfully sounds like geopolitical Looksmaxxing: admiring the glow, glossing the flaws, promising liberation, selling back insecurity.
Fewer people in poverty must be celebrated, but this TikTok approach skips asking what forms of power relations dominate their escape.

[Jostein Hauge @haugejostein]

Chinamaxxing started as a cultural phenomenon. But there's a strong material case for Chinamaxxing too — simply put, a tribute to the pace and scale of poverty reduction and economic development China has achieved, unprecedented in human history.

I've been sharing data on China's economic achievements for some time now. Alongside genuine positive engagement, I've been receiving a recurring type of comment, especially from people based in North America and Europe: “yeah, that’s super impressive, and we have to stop them.”

Challenging this Western hegemonic anxiety — the idea that development is only legitimate when it doesn't disturb the existing hierarchy — is one of the most important intellectual tasks of this moment.

I recently spent some time travelling in China. The high-speed rail network, the urban infrastructure, and the sheer scale of what's been built actually exceeded expectations. But the most impressive part isn't that China is good at building things. It's that it builds things that deliver tangible material outcomes for hundreds of millions of people.

None of this means China is without real problems. Air pollution, labour precarity, and a thin welfare state are all genuine structural economic and social issues worth scrutinising.

But my core position is simple, and it follows more from a basic moral commitment than any particular affection for China: when a poor country becomes less poor, when hundreds of millions of people escape material deprivation and lead longer, healthier, more dignified lives — this is worth celebrating. And not only when it happens in ways convenient for those countries already wealthy and powerful.

[Maziar @Muzyar]

The man's silent protest against the riot police was an iconic moment of the latest Iran protests. It happened on the 2nd day and quickly captured collective imagination.
Today, Masoud Payahoo, who published the video, was sentenced to 10 years in jail.

[Maziar @Muzyar]

UK universities could be saved from immediate insolvency for ~£1bn and have recent losses covered for ~£10bn: that is about a TENTH of the 2008 bank bailout and a HUNDREDTH of the backstop promised then. Yet there’s no bailout for one of the UK’s last real comparative advantages.

[Jacob Bard-Rosenberg @Prolapsarian]

THREAD: The collapse of higher education in the UK is misunderstood by almost everyone involved. We are told it is because of volatile international student markets. The truth is more to do with real estate and capital investment. Here is what is going on: in places like the US

[Arash Massoudi @ArashMassoudi]

Iran International is the most-watched Persian news channel in the world.

It's lost £410mn in five years, just had £650mn of debt quietly erased — and won't say who funds it. We found some answers.

w/ @cynthiao @DanielThomasLDN @EuanHealy

https://t.co/4qGc8ANqSy

[Farzad Seifikaran @FSeifikaran]

Yesterday, Abbas Akbari, one of the protesters arrested during the January 2026 protests, and today Gholamreza Khani Shekarab were executed on charges of “spying for Israel.”

Since the start of the war, Iranian authorities have executed 37 political prisoners.

[Farzad Seifikaran @FSeifikaran]

Ramin Zela and Karim Maroufpour, two Kurdish political prisoners, were secretly executed today in Naqadeh Prison.

Since the start of the war, Iranian authorities have executed 34 political prisoners, including 14 protesters.

[Maziar @Muzyar]

@nazikhappy @TrulyPariah شانس پذیرش به چیزهای مختلفی بستگی داره. برای بورسیه در علوم اجتماعی و انسانی خیلی خیلی فرصت‌ها کم و رقابتیه.

[Maziar @Muzyar]

بورسیه برای ارشد روزنامه‌نگاری تحقیقی فمینیستی در دانشگاه سواس لندن.
ریتوییت کنید.
اگه برای اپلای کمک لازم داشتید بهم دایرکت بدید.
https://t.co/mpu7mDEgZh

[Maziar @Muzyar]

"Mahdi Amel was assassinated by Islamic sectarian forces."
Curiously, these culprits are not mentioned on his Arabic Wikipedia page, but the Misri version does mention them.

[كريم صفي الدين - Karim Safieddine @safieddine00]

On this day, May 18, Lebanese Marxist Hassan Hamdan “Mahdi Amel” was assassinated 39 years ago. He was not only a brilliant thinker and university professor, but also an organizer, someone deeply committed to justice, freedom, collective action, and the courage to confront.

[Maziar @Muzyar]

Ben-Gvir is the poster boy of the post liberal world: a slimey show of crude force instead of concealed cruelty or theatrics of justifiable authority.

[Maziar @Muzyar]

@lionel_trolling @danielkolitz No piece of writing has stuck with me over the past couple of years like that.

[Kamran Matin @KamranMatin]

In this interview, I speak publicly for the first time about some childhood experiences that enduringly shaped my scholarship and politics. We also discuss the war, Rojava/Kurdish politics, “inter-subaltern colonialism”, Eurocentrism and UCD, and much more.

Many thanks to Kadir Can and @pungmedia for hosting this conversation.

#Kurdistan #IranWar‌ #Iran #Rojava #intersubaltern_colonialism #Marixsm #uneven_and_combined_development

https://t.co/ZhnVPxAXiR