Iran before 1979.

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[youtube]http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=dF47rrHd7wo[/youtube]

Wherever Americans go, culture is destroyed..When Americans arrive they immediately begin conditioning the natives to adapt to us or be considered an inferior class of human beings. In return for allowing us to destroy their identity, we "help"them in some way. Just like the Christians who run shelters and soup kitchens who dictate compliance with their rituals and services in order to receive aide.

Some of that era involved was restatement of the Shar, which arguably set all of this off. Or the previous Shar.

Regardless there are few places in the middle east where you are free to walk around in miniskirts. That era was a brief window anyway, and obviously very western influenced. Yes there are some places where is socially acceptable to be in bikini, but it it is not widespread.

I don't think this western influence would have happened without the Ottomans/Turks being eventually influenced by western tastes.

The original revolution in 1979 had nothing to do with the Ayatollahs. The Ayatollahs basically took over.

I do take you point though, It was unwise meddling a bad thing all round.

There is was also a nasty side the Shar's rule not shown here.

MI6 and the CIA overthrew the democratically elected leader of Iran Mohammad Mosaddegh because he wanted a bigger share of the oil for his country that BP controlled. They reinstalled the the pro-western Shah as absolute dictator who ruled with an iron fist until 1979 driving enough of the population into the hands of Islamists and communists. Textbook example of blowback.

Yeah, one of my best friends grew up under the Shah. Were are the people getting disappeared and tortured that he always talks about?

Makes one wonder what the average Iranian citizen thought 5 years (or less) after 1979. Where things actually better?

I dunno. I do know that we paid Saddam Hussein to fight Iran, on the theory that we could break the Iranian will via a war of attrition. So many Iranians died in that war that the ayatollahs were forced to turn the country into a baby factory. Something like 65% of the population of Iran is under 30.

During the war, the ayatollahs were marching little kids across minefields as mine sweepers, blowing up the country's future in the name of Allah. Iran also did human wave attacks against the better armed Iraqis, and the bodies piled up. It was absolutely crazy, but it didn't break them. In the end, there likely weren't enough Iranians left to consider whether things were better in 1989 (the war ran from 1980-88 ) than in 1979. I remember an old editorial cartoon where an Iranian fighter hands the Ayatollah a peace settlement. Khomeini says, I shouldn't sign this, I promised to fight to the last man. The fighter responds, but imam, I *AM* the last man!

Years ago I met a young woman whose parents had fled Iran after the revolution. She was a nonpracticing Muslim, lived out of wedlock with a guy who had two kids from another marriage, didn't wear a headscarf or a Muslim style robe, and was very Western in her thinking. I suppose that families like hers either fled or were killed after Khomeini took power. I thought of her a few days ago, I was driving past a local high school just after classes let out for the day, and I could see several groups of Muslim teen girls, notable for their headscarves and robes, totally different dress than their American counterparts. This is in an area that has several halal (Muslim) food/meat markets. The Muslim world is FAR more conservative than it was 40 years ago.

I watched about half of that video, and one thing I noticed was that everybody looked like they were rather wealthy. Late model cars, people in paddle boats on the water, people skiing on a mountain behind a parking lot packed with late model cars, etc. Compare that to the poverty in evidence in today's Iran. From the few photos I've seen of modern Iran, it is much like Buenos Aires. Those brand new cars in those old photos are now 40-50 years old and still on the road. Or maybe Cuba would be a better comparison, as Cuba seems to have gone from wealth to poverty in one fell swoop when radical elements took power. I once heard a BBC news story about how the buildings in Tehran are in such bad shape that the govt fears that a moderate earthquake (two faults meet in Iran) will send the whole city collapsing into dust, killing millions. There is no money to repair or replace the old buildings, so all they can do is pray for Allah to spare them. Yes, the Shah was brutal and authoritarian, but what came after was worse.

Ther is some evidence there was some plots to overthrown Harrold Wilson PM of UK in 60a and 70s
http://www.thelondoneveningpost.com/bri ... sons-govt/

I think the cold war was very negative all round it led to culture of Paranoia lack of common sense.

Part for the reason why Putin and his ilk are still stuck in this mode.

In those days domestic intelligence Mi5 was split into different disciplines such as anti-terrorism, espionage, counter-espionage, and crucially anti-subversive.

Now we have the freedom of information act it is interesting to know who was flagged as a 'subversive'.

No only that the police were involved. They operated deep cover officers, where were allowed to lead double lives, have relationships, marry have children with those they were spying on. This scandal is actually quite recent.

In at least one case an officer was tried for a crime one group did, under a false name. I believe it was something like arson to a business.

The identity used were children who died young.

This wasn't necessarily targeted intelligence either these people were to infiltrate "subversive" cultures such animal rights, and environmental groups. It wasn't all organized crime, or even group that were for violent direct action. Some group were for civil disobedience but non-violent.

They were wealthy, many of them were famous people like the royal family. There was still poverty in Iran. Much of the population were not literate back then, as was normal in developing countries.

Cuba was bound to blow up. My father lived there as a child. The government secret police there was as bad if not worse the the Shar's secret. It was also controlled by the American mafia.

The only thing that happened in Cuba is to go from a far right system to the Marxist system, as brutal.

Ahh, Operation AJAX, Kermit Roosevelt's greatest achievement. I've always thought that was an amazing feat of a covert operation, even if the end result wasn't exactly great.

Roosevelt nearly blew his cover by shouting out 'Oh Roosevelt!" when playing tennis at the Turkish embassy.

I would say in this day an age, his cover would never work.

This has actually been the criticism of failure of Intelligence since. Nowadays foreign intelligence requires native agents, and you need handlers. it never treated as 100% reliable. However this relies on trust and where there is a break down it trust gernally it difficult. You have to use other means such as financial, and blackmail.

For instance, when my dad was posted to Angola everybody new who the CIA man was. He was called "fatso" . In terms of military intelligence this in nearly always run by the military attache, in the Embassy. This isn't even a secret. In the case of the British embassy, they operated out of a prefab building as their base of operations.

Non-military intelligence doesn't usually have the cover of diplomatic protection though. They are basically on their own.

What I think does annoys countries in when the sate operate federal agencies like FBI/ATF in other countries, etc as if they have jurisdiction when they don't. there was a general expectation of special treatment.

On the other hand, it seems that FBI are rather better an interviewing people the CIA, or a least CIA tried some hard tactic on people who were turning in FBI "custody" in Pakistan, and all that happened is they lost any cooperation there was.

Btw in foreign intelligence such as Mi6, nobody directly employed is a "spy", the closest thing to a spy is an "intelligence officer".

They are aren't like James bond. Sometime there are special forces that have been either temporarily or permanently removed from military status for operational reasons.

Khomeini was a genius weasel, he had used the Marxists and moderate Muslims to win over without revealing his Islamist agenda from the very beginning.

Yes, yes that's true.

Where I live for example, the Baba au rhum cake (Rum baba) was pretty popular in patisseries even in the Muslim areas; when I was child it had actual Rum, now it's just soaked in sugar syrup, urgh...I just had one today and I was kinda disappoint.

That one is made by a Yemeni photographer:

http://www.veoh.com/watch/v15903348Gamb ... ersepolis+[ENG+SUB]

I'm not a Marxist-leninist, but here is a story of Iran that isn't in western lense.