iran | the brilliantly leaping gazelle

March 8, 2026

33:64 presents ‘Lewis Carroll.’

In Lewis Carroll’s “ Through the Looking-Glass”, the White Queen tells Alice that she praises believing ‘six impossible things before breakfast.’ This, she maintains, is a good thing; that it illustrates how the power of power of belief and imagination can make the impossible possible. In the Britain of 2026 however, where objective reality for some is objectionable, the power of belief and imagination causes them to believe more than six impossible things, and not just before breakfast either. All day, every day.

Including today, International Women’s Day. People in the UK, and around the world no doubt, have been protesting their support for the Iranian regime, and decrying the death of Supreme Leader Snoke. These idiots are blinded by their own moral certainty. So invested are they in their belief that everything America and Israel do is evil incarnate and that therefore who they do it to is deserving of their outrage, that their breathtaking hypocrisy escapes them.

The sheer level of contradictions one would need to overcome in order to think such a thing is incomprehensible.. That large numbers of ostensibly sensible people think it is worse. That they imagine that International Women’s Day is a suitable occasion upon which to lament and mourn what Iranian women have been pleading for for years only proves how deluded the protesters are

Under Supreme Leader Snoke, the evil empire of Iran was not exactly known for being a staunch defender of women’s rights. The legal restrictions upon them and the ruthless application of them, defies any rational understanding. Women in Iran, if they even get to see the images of the protesters, can only wonder at the absolute betrayal of people who would call themselves feminists. But who still have no problem putting their dangerous political fantasy before universal principles of equality. Who enjoy the freedoms that living in a Western nation offers, one that has had the Enlightenment and its attendant values woven into society. A society moreover, that derives its laws not from religious interpretations of a book written over a thousand years ago, but from set of laws that are being constantly updated to better reflect the society it serves.

But getting back to Lewis Carroll, the White Queen and the six impossible things. If you believe that women can have penises, that achieving Net Zero is a worthwhile undertaking or that free speech isn’t absolute, then I suppose you can also think that Supreme Leader Snoke’s death is a bad thing.

March 6, 2026

33:64 presents “Jeremy Bowen.”

As has always been the case, I usually find myself not being in the least shocked by something other people find shocking, but by the fact that they find it shocking at all. The current conflict in Iran being a good example of this. The joint US/Israeli military campaign, one of overwhelming force has been, initially at least, brutally effective. The deaths of basically the entire senior Iranian political leadership and with them the ability of its military to effectively co-ordinate a response, was both long overdue and totally a good thing.

Would that this sentiment be shared by all. However, this is the Britain of 2026, a Britain where a crude Third Worldist narrative has taken hold. One which casts the US is as the origin of all wickedness, Israel the ultimate villain, and consequently anyone or anything opposed to them must be virtuous. The sincerity of those that believe in this nonsense, however is questionable, not least because it also fortuitously allows them to be either ruthlessly opportunistic, conditionally concerned or shamelessly bandwagoning.

By ruthlessly opportunistic, I mean those who manufactured, and then exploited the anger of the conditionally concerned regarding the civilian deaths in Gaza. Broad swathes of the UK media, and quite probably media around the world are guilty of this. Conveniently reducing the many horrors over many decades of a regime that gave religious intolerance a new benchmark, they seek to downplay its well documented barbarism to highlight just how evil the military action is.

If this seems worryingly familiar then thats because it is.The parallels between how the media reported the Israel/Gaza war and the current one in Iran are near identical. Again, that crude Third Worldist narrative, the one that always has America as being little more than a puppet controlled by Israel and consequently their enemies of deserving uncritical support, created the conditionally concerned.

By conditionally concerned, I refer to those who claim to be all kinds of distressed by the deaths of Iranians, just so long as it is the right sort of people killing them. That would be the US and the Israelis. But not if it was the Iranian regime that was killing them. Those deaths, while reported on, did not garner a sustained, relentless and partisan global media campaign. Nor did they trigger widespread demonstrations in major cities around the world.

The many thousands of people who attended these demonstrations, held sit-ins on university campuses and demanded that politicians ceased supporting Israel because of its war in Gaza and civilian deaths were conspicuously silent when the Iranian regime was killing thousands of protesters. The irony of that silence was beyond irony. The protesters in Iran wanted nothing more than to have the same freedoms that protesters busily denouncing Israel enjoyed. But when deaths occurred because of US/Israeli military action, action which the protesters had long been calling for and which the US had promised, only then did Iranian deaths matter.

This brings us to the shamelessly bandwagoning. The charities, the NGO’s and all the others in the alphabet soup of moral certitude and probity who are all plugged into a mutually beneficial circle of criticism. Again, just as in the Israel Gaza war, if these charities and others issue damning reports full of fearful projections, alarming statistics and calls for immediate action, their profile will raise along with their funding. They’ll then cite these other reports as evidence something must be done, only as long as they approve it and can blame others – Israel and now America – if it goes wrong,

Then there are my favourite kind of shameless bandwagoneers, the political ones, who never see a tragedy without seeing an electoral opportunity as well. Which in the light of the recent trouncing of Labour by the Greens in the Gorton and Denton by-election, meant that Emu initially refusing, then reluctantly and since critically supporting the US/Israeli action. This had nothing whatsoever to do with attempting to placate Muslim voters ahead of Mays local elections, so better to prevent the widely predicted disaster.

The Cunning Stunt, who got even more of a trouncing at the same by-election, has pivoted wildly to signal his principled opposition to any such disaster in May. His speech in Parliament on Monday was textbook pleading. He quickly signposted his antipathy towards the regime, but then focused upon who he thought were more deserving of his condemnation; the British influencers and assorted tax exiles in Dubai who wanted to be flown home by the the government.

All of the above, the ruthlessly opportunistic, the conditionally concerned and the shameless bandwagoneers, exist in a perfectly engineered eco-system. One that is constantly propagating itself, sustained by its own imagined moral certainties but which is also oblivious of its inherent contradictions and manifold hypocrisies.

June 23, 2025

33:64 presents “Kemi Badenoch.”

We are indeed living in strange times. Times made all the stranger by things happening, that up until quite recently would’ve seemed by turns ridiculous, outlandish or farcical, but now seem to be another indicator of just how strange the strangeness is. And nothing seems to perfectly encapsulate the strangeness of these times more than the demonstrations against the bombing of Iran that took place in London last weekend.

Had one no knowledge of the well documented brutality of the Iranian regime, one might be forgiven that rather than being an unspeakably strict theocratic regime, it was a much maligned innocent in world affairs, one that had been unfairly cast as a villain by others in their pursuit of some unfathomably evil plan.

One might also be forgiven for thinking that because of the presence of women in the photographs that accompanied these demonstrations, that Iran was an implacable defender of female rights, and that these women doing nothing more than showing solidarity with their Iranian sisters.

Seeing such photographs and having read accounts of these demonstrations online, as so much news is accessed nowadays, one might also imagine that Iran was a bastion of press freedom, where internet access is as ubiquitous as it is unfettered.

To say nothing of the fact that these demonstrations, whilst heavily policed, were nonetheless allowed to take place and as such were part of the same freedoms as enjoyed by the citizens of Tehran.

The reason why you’d never think any of these things is possibly because you’d been aware of Irans previous abominations long before last weekend. The numerous reports on its human rights violations. It’s medieval treatment of women. It’s censorship of the internet. And that would mean that you didn’t rely on social media for your news and most importantly, weren’t infected by the current plague for interpreting every act through an incredibly subjective and highly reductive prism of anti-Israelism.

So whilst Iran may be bad, the US is far worse, there aren’t words sufficiently descriptive enough to describe just how bad Israel is. Despite Israel being the only country in that part of the world where most Britons – especially women and gays – would choose to live, it has attained a place in some peoples minds as the embodiment of evil. Which is utterly insane, factually unsustainable and morally repugnant.

Kemi Badenoch found herself engulfed in a media brouhaha a while ago after she made the claim that not all cultures were equal. Quite why is a mystery. It is undeniable fact. Life in Britain is better than life in Iran and only a fuckwit would suggest otherwise. But to users of the same reductive prism that absolves Iran for any complicity in the situation it now finds itself in and who happily march in support of it, it also allows them to denounce Britain as somehow being a jackboot away from being fascist.

There are protests to be had, causes deserving of media attention, injustices to be highlighted, action to be demanded. Iran however, isn’t one of them and for proof of that, I’d suggest that those protesting support for Iran in London, try protesting support for Britain on the streets of Tehran and see where that gets them.