History in the Making - A Livre Ouvert

About History in the Making - A Livre Ouvert

Welcome to A livre Ouvert with me Avanti Victoire, A livre ouvert literally means an open book, but it also implies the promise of transparency and knowledge. If you are exhausted with Left or Right electoral politics & wish to explore different views on current affairs, then your journey begins here.

Publisher

Avanti Victoire RAO

Category

history

Language

en

Explicit

No

First episode

20 Jul 2023

Latest episode

24 Jun 2026

Latest episodes

20 episodes in the feed.

1. 

   24 Jun 2026

   Two Books on Iran before the Advent on the Ayatollah

   Christopher De Bellaigue is a journalist and author who has spent time in Iran and knows the country and its complexities. His book Patriot of Persia is a good read for those interested in learning about Mossadegh, the man who had great ambition to modernise Iran. Jack Straw is a British politician who served in the Cabinet from 1997 to 2010. His book, The English job provides insight into why Iran distrusts the West. Years ago, I came across Christopher De Bellaigue’s lecture online where he narrated an anecdote on Tony Blair. Apparently, the then Prime minister of Britain went through years not knowing that there once was a man called Muhammad Mossadegh! When I learned of this, I thought to myself , How on earth can Iran ever make peace if Tony Blair ( a man of the Left, or at least he was supposed to be ) had simply no historic memory of Mossadegh and the ‘theft’ of Iran’s oil by the British under the conservative government Patriot of Persia is a fascinating biography of Muhammad Mossadegh, the towering leader of Iran who was overthrown in a Churchill ordered and M16 & CIA orchestrated coup. In 2000, Madeleine Albright herself admitted that the US role in the overthrow of the popular leader was a setback for Iran’s political development. (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Q5HYUtYa3wI) Mossadegh’s mother was a prominent Qajar princess and his father -whom he lost in childhood- was a senior Mandarin (a high ranking bureaucrat). Mossadegh was educated in France and Switzerland, but he had remained true to uplifting the poor and modernising his country. His brand of politics had to be socialism because the vast majority of Iran was deprived of modernity. For that he needed oil revenues to be in the hands of his nation. Back then, the AIOC (Anglo-Iranian oil company, now British Petroleum) gave merely 16 % of the profits to the royals of Iran (most of them were despots) The lion’s share of the oil went to the British. Churchill -then 78- endorsed Operation Ajax with the help of MI6 & CIA to get rid of Mossadegh -then 73-. Why? Because Mossadegh, the then Iranian Prime minister had made clear his intentions to nationalise oil. Back then, over 80 % of Iranians lived in the countryside and there was no sign of modernity, and getting control of their key resource was one way to bring about much-needed change. Churchill, having lost the Indian empire, wanted Iranian oil to remain in the hands of Britain or at least the West. And so began the corporate racketeering of Iranian oil. But it was not just oil, it also was the Iranian banks, railways, resources like tobacco, telegram and more ! The coup is a reminder of the cold war era meddling when the US lost the capacity to tell the difference between the Left and Communists. It also is a good place to start to understand why Iran remains deeply mistrusting of Western powers. Explore these books and learn more about the Bazaaris , the concept of Bast, the Basij and the Betrayals. Factoid: Iran got its first constitution in 1906-1907. It was modelled after the 1831 Belgium constitution. Food for thought: Churchill may be perceived as a gatekeeper of democracy in the West, but his penchant to overthrow democratically elected leaders in the East paints an entirely different picture of the man. Next up: The Islamic revolution in 1979 and the treacherous alliances between Israel, the US and Iran.

2. 

   12 Feb 2026

   Munich 1938 should have served as an impetus for a real European Defence community

   If all roads lead to Munich 1938, then our foreign policy options are restricted to belligerence or betrayal. In the absence of American muscle power, shouldn’t the EU, explore the fine art of diplomacy? Neo-Conservatism is an ideology that adheres firmly to the view that military might-not diplomacy or negotiations must achieve foreign policy goals. But is Neo-conservatism, allied with Neo-Liberalism today, in foreign policy prudent for the EU that has virtually no military might apart from NATO which is heavily if not entirely dependant on the US?

3. 

   22 Oct 2025

   Victims can morph into perpetrators: The Tutsi dominated M23 are proof of it.

   Zone into Africa and you will notice that Rwanda’s neighbours are Burundi (slightly larger than Rwanda) Uganda (9 times bigger than Rwanda), Tanzania (35 times bigger than Rwanda), and Congo (89 times bigger than Rwanda). Rwanda is the smallest in size, but over the years because of military backing from the West, ( mainly the US) Rwanda has managed to bully all its neighbours, including the largest of them; the DRC or Congo. When my wife heard that she threw her hands up in exasperation and quipped, “ That’s like if Luxembourg were to bully Germany”. As baffling as it is, I am going to get into why and how Rwanda is doing this, but first I would like to give you some context. One must bear in mind that African borders were drawn in the most senseless and crude manner by western colonisers who invaded Africa ( a continent 3 times the size of Europe ) and merged 10,000 polities (political entities) into just 40 colonies. The new territories were artificial territories that paid no attention the diversity of the people, their monarchies, their chiefdoms, their ethnicities. People who shared no common language, history and even religion inherited what the west thought was a modern Africa. Most colonisers practised the divide and rule policy which basically meant privileging one minority ethnicity over the majority. When the Western colonisers left, it was evident that powerful ethnicities would try to subjugate weaker ethnicities and today certain conflicts quite often has led to ethnic pogroms and genocide.

Reach and audience

Public platform figures. Ratings count people who left a rating, not total listeners.

Spotify

5.0 / 5

11 ratings

Podcast Authority Score: 35 / 100

A composite of feed quality, social presence, YouTube performance and engagement. Read the methodology.

Quality

50

Social presence

0

YouTube

0

Engagement

51

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