Politician, Political Worker or Spy – An Account – Page 5

Son of Hamas

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The Book of the Week is “Son of Hamas, A Gripping Account of Terror, Betrayal, Political Intrigue, and Unthinkable Choices” by Mosab Hassan Yousef, with Ron Brackin, published in 2010. In this alpha-male bragfest, Yousef’s unique position as the son of a top Hamas leader afforded him special treatment at the hands of the Israelis.

Born in the West Bank (in the Middle East) in 1978, Yousef was his family’s oldest son. His father and six other men formed Hamas in 1986 in order to assert their perceived rights to the territories occupied by Israelis (Jewish people). At the end of 1987, the group encouraged discontented, impressionable youths to throw stones and burn tires in protest.

Thus began the First Intifada, which was comprised of a boatload of violence in Gaza and the West Bank (the “Occupied Territories”). In the ensuing decades, the violence waxed and waned, pursuant to shifting hatreds and alliances between and among various groups. It was actually in the best interests of most parties (whose motives differed) to keep the fighting going.

The Palestine Liberation Organization (PLO), a group on the side of Palestinians– had an ideological rather than religious (Muslim) bent. Hamas had the latter; its source book, the Quran, was considered the ultimate authority governing their lives. Its leaders staged school closings and work stoppages so that they wouldn’t have to pay as much in taxes than otherwise to the Israeli government. In the early 1990’s, Hamas and the PLO took turns inciting the strikes in the West Bank.

By spring 1991, without their leaders’ permission, impatient to reclaim Palestine for themselves, some younger Hamas members armed themselves with guns (rather than stones, spray cans for graffiti and Molotov cocktails) and committed serious violence against Israelis. Hamas’ leaders didn’t want to acquire a reputation for attacking their enemies with savagery, so they created a spinoff group (called Ezzedeen Al-Qassam Brigades) for public relations purposes, that could take responsibility for particularly ugly attacks.

The bloodshed escalated through 1992. In December, the Israeli military arrested hundreds of leading Palestinian activists of Hamas, Islamic Jihad and the Muslim Brotherhood. Those detained were bused to southern Lebanon and jailed. During their confinement, Hamas members allied with Hezbollah, a terrorist group based in Lebanon. Various other historical events all but guaranteed that the vendetta would plague the region for a long while.

One major sticking point in the negotiations among the warring parties was recognition of the sovereignty of Israel. In the early 1990’s, PLO leader Yasser Arafat conceded such recognition in treaty discussions. He and Israel’s prime minister Yitzhak Rabin signed a 1993 document (containing terms and conditions of a truce which didn’t last long) with the help of mediator, American president Bill Clinton.

On that territorial point, Hamas vehemently disagreed because, “… the land belonged to Allah. Period. End of discussion. Thus for Hamas, the ultimate problem was not Israel’s policies. It was the nation-state Israel’s very existence.” Hamas and Israel insisted they had to have the geographic entity they were claiming– they wouldn’t agree to settle on land elsewhere of equivalent size or value.

In 1996, at age eighteen, Yousef was an angry young man who wanted to wreak revenge by killing people such as members of the Palestinian Authority (formerly the PLO) and /or Israelis. He therefore tried to get hold of weapons through his cousin’s contacts in Nablus. He got caught. For, the Israeli intelligence service Shin Bet was tapping his phone.

Read the book to learn of how the course of events in Yousef’s life prompted a maturation process that led him to:

quell his anger at his perceived enemies;
play adolescent-boy spy games;
learn Israel’s techniques for dividing and conquering their Palestinian rivals;
learn why the United States was caught with its pants down in connection with national security that allowed 9/11 to happen;
study the Christian bible;
understand where his father was coming from (hint: Yousef’s father helped plot terror attacks carried out on the ground by restless young males temperamentally similar to his son, so he was able to rationalize away his sociopathic behavior); and do much more.

Memoirs of A Fortunate Jew

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“We must therefore supply them with plausible news and only from time to time plant unverifiable items of propaganda and denounce personalities in the Fascist regime.”

–the philosophy of the author’s boss in the British Intelligence Service’s Psychological Warfare Department, in the early 1940’s

The Book of the Week is “Memoirs of A Fortunate Jew, An Italian Story” by Dan Vittorio Segre, published in 1985.

In December 1922, the author was born into a wealthy Jewish family in Piedmont, Italy. When his father had a reversal of fortune at the start of the Great Depression, his family moved to Udine in northern Italy to live with his mother’s rich relatives. In July 1938, he was expelled from public school for being Jewish. Since Italy hated Germany, Italy turned anti-Semitic only after Mussolini had decided to throw in with Hitler. In order to kiss up to Hitler, in 1938, Mussolini made Italy comply with the Nuremberg Laws.

However, that same year, the author’s father, who had previously become– under duress– a Fascist Party member, refused to comply with the Laws. He helped the author flee to Palestine by financing a visa for him. The author joined other brash, opinionated young refugees who became kibbutzniks. He didn’t believe in socialism, but he did want to fight for a cause bigger than himself– the Jews.

Human nature governed the conflict-fraught motley bunch of parties fighting and / or allying with each other in Palestine during WWII. In general, it was (in no particular order) Palestinians, Arabs, Jews and British subjects. The first three aforesaid groups acquired a kind of Stockholm Syndrome, imitating their British masters.

Read the book to learn the fates and ideological bents of the author, his family members, and others in his life and times.

The Nation City – BONUS POST

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The Bonus Book of the Week is “The Nation City, Why Mayors Are Now Running the World” by Rahm Emanuel, published in 2020.

As is fairly well-known, Rahm Emanuel served as mayor of Chicago, IL from 2011 through 2019. He bragged about the various education programs he set in motion in his city, and described a bunch of other programs and ideas put forth by other mayors across the country.

Mayor James Brainard of Carmel, Indiana signed onto one particularly environmentally-friendly, accident-reducing transportation project that could be implemented nationwide: that of installing traffic circles (also called roundabouts). The circles eliminate the need for traffic lights (which saves electricity), reduce emissions of motor vehicles– they less often need to make a full stop for a minute or more at a time, and eliminate games of “chicken” that young drivers might play on previously straight, long streets!

One of many points the author made about American mayors was that they, irrespective of their political parties, have been cooperating and sharing ideas at conferences in recent decades.

Read the book to learn much more about additional ways mayors have made their cities more livable for their residents, pursuant to the fact that, “A city that improves its infrastructure, its education, its research facilities, and its protections (of things like the environment) will attract businesses and employees without having to dole out corporate welfare.”

Yuri Andropov

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The Book of the Week is “Yuri Andropov, A Secret Passage Into the Kremlin” by Vladimir Solovyov and Elena Klepikova, published in 1983.

“But the same man who, with the aid of his all-powerful organization, had put them in the saddle was now, while continuing to use them, discrediting them in every way he could, perceiving them no longer as reliable allies but as dangerous rivals in the struggle for power.”

No, not everyone’s favorite former American president. Yuri Andropov.

Born in July 1914 just north of the Caucasus, as a Soviet politician, Andropov manipulated the situation in Hungary in 1956, and helped plan the construction of the Berlin Wall in 1961. He benefited from the power vacuum resulting from executions ordered by Josef Stalin. Khrushchev (Soviet supreme leader until his ousting in 1964, to be replaced by Brezhnev) inspired pride in Russian-ness, replacing the Communist Party with the Russian Party. But one-party rule still prevailed in the empire.

In May 1967 Andropov was named head of the then-KGB and was elected to be a member of the Politburo. His ultimate goal was to hold onto all of the territories over which Moscow ruled. The following year, he was involved in political machinations in Czechoslovakia.

Brezhnev– a sick, old man desperately clinging to power, acquired a reputation for having a passive leadership style. He was under the delusion that all was well, but behind the scenes, Andropov as head of the KGB was quite manipulative. The latter employed the usual thought-control techniques of dictators. One was divide and conquer. At the tail-end of the 1970’s, he began an insidious KGB propaganda campaign through mailed letters and pamphlets, insinuating that three Politburo members and Brezhnev’s wife were Jewish, and that Brezhnev himself was a Zionist. If the smears were true, the victims would be socially stigmatized– given the then-anti-Semitic bent of the USSR. This got the government’s factions fighting among themselves.

In April 1982, Andropov had the KGB secretly invite (rebellious) young-adult children of Politburo members to a (then-politically incorrect) Nazi rally at Pushkin Square in Moscow to celebrate Hitler’s birthday. Parents and teachers of the youths wouldn’t have wanted them to attend the event. In this way, the Politburo members’ reputations were damaged.

Andropov launched other initiatives such as the anti-corruption ones in Azerbaijan and Soviet Georgia that turned the former into a police state. Azerbaijan would have become a military dictatorship, but for the fact that it, along with all the other Soviet satellites, had to report to the central government in Moscow, with its layers and layers of bureaucracy. In Georgia, starting in 1978 or so, all manner of government functionaries accused of financial crimes were arrested, jailed, tortured, killed– for five years running.

Andropov used Stalin’s trick of exploiting free labor to give an economic boost to his empire. By criminalizing all manner of minor transgressions (petty hooliganism, drunkenness, lateness for work, theft of any kind– because the Communist government owns ALL), scores of otherwise law-abiding citizens were thrown into the Gulag, where they were put to work.

Read the book to learn how Andropov played his cards correctly in many other ways in order to become the head honcho of the Soviet Union (hint: linguistically and agriculturally in Georgia, militarily in Poland, politically in the 1980 U.S. presidential election; in terms of the Pope’s nationality; etc.).

To Change the World

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The Book of the Week is “To Change the World, My Years in Cuba” by Margaret Randall, published in 2009. This volume recounted the author’s brief descriptions of different episodes of her life, and some of the reasons she decided to move to Mexico, Cuba, Nicaragua and the United States.

In the 1960’s, the American author wanted to live in a nation that espoused the ideology of Communism, and she thought Cuba might fit the bill. In 1968, as a political activist and journalist, she attended the Cultural Congress of Havana. Beginning that year in Cuba, even in the hotels, there were severe shortages of consumer goods (that Americans took for granted), such as toilet paper.

In January 1969, the author visited again. Billboards sported public service announcements and slogans– similar to those one sees in Asia. The propaganda in the country “…never missed an opportunity to portray the U.S. as a cesspool of drugs and crime.” Cuba’s newspaper “Granma” (not to be confused with “Granta”) printed speeches of party hacks.

However, there was a government-sponsored education initiative to send all kids to school and make the whole populace literate. All the Cuban publishing houses in the 1960’s and 1970’s were Communist-Party-funded and run. But Cubans loved reading and books were affordable. The kinds of books available included Don Quixote, the autobiography of Malcolm X, and Che Guevara’s Bolivian Diary. For some years in the 1960’s, magazines were generally permitted to publish dissenting opinions. But in 1971, one University of Havana journal was shut down (and other publishers were harassed) by the Communist Party for criticizing Cuba’s government.

In late December 1969, the author and her family made the move to Cuba. Christmas gifts were given to her four children via a neighborhood lottery. For, the stores lacked sufficient toys or books for everyone. In the early 1990’s, the Cuban Christmas holiday became a religious celebration only, and children got gifts on International Children’s Day in June instead. The author omitted information on how Cuban Jews were treated at holiday time.

Upon arriving, the author’s family was assigned to live in an apartment, through which they received a booklet entitling them to rationed goods when shopping. After a couple of months, because they were foreigners, they were allowed to move into a spacious but fully-furnished, dilapidated apartment (of a wealthy, pre-Revolutionary former Havana resident). Home-improvement items were difficult to acquire. They had termites and roaches that were difficult to eradicate. And worst of all, women were still expected to do most of the shopping, house-cleaning and childcare.

Whenever word got around among personal social contacts of the family, that certain goods such as lettuce or onions would be sold at the local market, there appeared long queues during business hours. Those waiting in line were older relatives who didn’t work. Each person was allowed a quota of eggs and meat on a regular schedule every one to two weeks. The family also received two packages of cigarettes, which they bartered for goods they wanted.

A lot of domestic violence in Havana was prompted by stresses caused by cramped housing– to which native Cubans were assigned. Even divorced couples were forced to continue to cohabitate due to a housing shortage.

Read the book to learn: why the author eventually moved where she did, more about her work, her family and her beliefs. For her, the ideal of Communism wasn’t all it was cracked up to be. She soon realized that Cuba had a drama queen (in the form of Fidel Castro) for a leader.

Speaking of drama queens, here’s a little song Donald Trump ought to sing at his rallies.

I RANT AND I GET WHAT I WANT

sung to the tune of “You Can’t Always Get What You Want” with apologies to the Rolling Stones.

back-up singers:

[My foes-of-the-day give me conniptions.
I trash them all in my notes.
With my Party I make a connection.
At my feet are, a thousand scapegoats.

Yes, I rant and I get what I want.
I rant and I get what I want.
I rant and I get what I want.
And if you try-me for crimes,
I’ll waste your time.
You-won’t get what-you need.]

My foes-of-the-day give me conniptions.
I trash them all in my notes.
With my Party I make a connection.
At my feet are, a thousand scapegoats.

Yes, I rant and I get what I want.
I rant and I get what I want.
I rant and I get what I want.
And if you try-me for crimes,
I’ll waste your time.
You-won’t get what-you need.

I had to greet my fans at my rally,
and give my fair share of abuse
to Big Tech, the media and Joe Biden.
I delight in my propaganda ruse.

I rant and I get what I want.
I rant and I get what I want.
I rant and I get what I want.
And if you try-me for crimes,
I’ll waste your time.
You-won’t get-what you need.

I had to help my, lawyers at the hearing,
just to say your conflict, won’t-fly with me.
I was exercising my Constitutional rights,
and heroically trying to keep this country free.

You’re out to GET me! How dare you? I’m seeing red.
I sung my song to my loyal base.
Yeah, and they said I won the race-for-prez.

I’m so powerful.

I rant and I get what I want.
I rant and I get what I want.
I rant and I get what I want.
And if you try-me for crimes,
I’ll waste your time.
You-won’t get-what you need.

You-won’t get-what you need.

My foes-of-the-day give me conniptions.
In my arsenal is my Party’s war chest.
My rivals use the art of deception.
My victims know I won’t give it a rest.

I rant and I get what I want.
I rant and I get what I want.
I rant and I get what I want.
And if you try-me for crimes,
I’ll waste your time,
I’ll waste your time,
you-won’t get-what you need.

By Way of Deception

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The Book of the Week is “By Way of Deception, The Making and Unmaking of A Mossad Officer” by Victor Ostrovsky and Claire Hoy, published in 1990. The former’s slightly sloppily edited, detailed account asserted that the Mossad (a spying agency in Israel that acted like a self-regulatory organization– that conducted operations with neither the government’s permission nor knowledge, so that leaders would have plausible deniability) had become too big for its britches. By the mid-1980’s, the Mossad had about twelve hundred true insiders and an unknown number of agents or contacts worldwide.

The author was born in Edmonton, Alberta, in Canada in November 1949. He grew up in Canada and Israel, and began his Mossad training in the early 1970’s. At that time, the Mossad pretended to recruit women, but never actually hired any to be insiders; for, women were harder to protect, and even though women were used as enchantresses and seductresses (and were killed when necessary) no Arab men (Mossad’s main target) would accept them as their bosses.

For starters, the author passed months and months of numerous, rigorous hiring tests that required him to be dishonest yet naturally creative and charismatic– getting strangers to do his bidding. During his two years’ training to be a spy, the author was brainwashed into living a lie without a second thought. In his business, one also needed to be paranoid.

There were no second chances for the inexperienced. In June 1973, a PLO terrorist thought he was careful in checking his car for explosives (under the hood, underneath, in the trunk, and in the exhaust pipe) on every occasion prior to driving. However, he was killed by a pressure mine under his car seat.

In the 1970’s, France possessed the Exocet, a missile with cutting-edge technology– it could walk on water, undetected by radar. Israel wanted this weaponry, but its reputation in the world was tarnished, so France and the countries that bought it wouldn’t sell to Israel. In 1976, the Mossad stepped in and brokered a secret deal among Chile’s number two man under Pinochet, and Panama’s number two man under Noriega. The agency successfully paid a million American dollars for the head of the missile, which was all Israel needed to reverse-engineer it and manufacture it.

In the eventful year of 1981, the Mossad didn’t want to see peace in the Middle East. It launched a complicated operation involving missiles, raisins and hash that put millions and millions of dollars in its coffers (the revenue was a happy side effect) “… with the ever-treacherous PLO… the key was to ensure that everything was synchronized in Vienna, Hamburg and Frankfurt…” It wrapped up in July, when the said cities’ local police arrested tens of spies, and at least one person was killed.

Read the book to learn of additional ways the Mossad’s sociopathic operatives disregarded rule-of-law in order to achieve their missions in mostly playing adolescent-boy spy games, but occasionally orchestrating international incidents in which the course of history was significantly changed, and in which innocent people died.

Secrets of the Sprakkar – BONUS POST

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The Bonus Book of the Week is “Secrets of the Sprakkar, Iceland’s Extraordinary Women and How They are Changing the World” by Eliza Reid, published in 2022.

The author, born in the mid-1970’s, grew up in the Ottawa Valley in Canada. She met and married an Icelander, who was later elected president of Iceland. She wrote that numerous studies have shown: gender equality in a society increases happiness, economic prosperity and lifespans in that society. Another interesting factoid: Iceland has no military (translation: NO organized group of mostly males who would be trained to fight and kill Iceland’s enemies– a masculine mentality).

Taxpayers of Iceland fund, among other health and human services: maternity leave for both parents– even for part-timers, and childcare. Even so, in 2016, a female attorney who happened to be a member of Parliament, brought her baby to work with her after taking her six-week paid maternity leave. She happened to be televised breast-feeding her baby while she delivered a speech behind a podium (It was NOT a publicity stunt as it would be in the U.S.!). She also chaired committee meetings while her baby slept in a stroller nearby. No one batted an eye. So far, Iceland is one of the very few countries of the world in which that might happen.

The author interviewed a young mother who listed numerous occasions in the wee hours she was woken up repeatedly by her babies and children, whom she of course, fed or soothed and put back to bed. It appeared that this parent missed reading Julie Andrews’ memoir. For, the book provided a priceless tip on how new parents can minimize their own sleep-deprivation: the mother (or father!) should make the baby conform to their own schedule, with feedings at regular intervals (three or four hours), and if the baby happens to be sleeping when a feeding or diaper-changing is due, wake him or her up.

Anyway, read the book to learn much more about how Iceland’s gender-equality, which is still not yet 100%, is still superior to other countries’ in terms of parenting, family relationships, work, schooling and politics. By the way, the author also did admit to the specific cultural problems Iceland has. So the United States shouldn’t mimic all aspects of Iceland’s culture– but only the ones that result in a better society– for which there is ample scientific evidence (such as gender-equality, and widespread book-reading instead of TV-watching!).

100,000 First Bosses

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The Book of the Week is “100,000 First Bosses, My Unlikely Path as a 22-Year-Old Lawmaker” by Will Haskell, published in 2022.

This slim volume contained a personal account of an idealistic, fresh college graduate who made a difference in politics, by getting himself elected to the state senate of Connecticut. According to the book (which appeared to be credible although it lacked Notes, Sources, References, or Bibliography and an index), the author learned that only about $6 million would be the total annual costs to Connecticut taxpayers for providing a tuition-free, two-year degree to all community college students who wanted to earn one.

Read the book to learn of additional informational political gems, such as how, in connection with creative legislative bills: oil lobbyists came to cooperate with leading environmentalists; and both Republicans and Democrats voted yes together– as they liked to see taxes cut for businesses while college tuition was reduced for students, respectively; and learn about the proposal that triggered a “… ridiculous round of questioning [that] was a performance for the Second Amendment fan club in the back row of the hearing room” and much more about how young adults can make a difference through getting elected to political office, and what they have to do to get started.

ENDNOTE: It bears repeating that the reason voting is so important– even though most Americans feel as though their vote doesn’t count, or that it might be miscounted due to error or foul play– is that:

Democracy requires that a significant number of people show through voting that they believe in the democratic process. Otherwise, a very harmful leader (like Nixon) could be elected or reelected in a landslide (like in 1972) due to low voter turnout!

Anyway, along these lines, here’s a little ditty about what Donald Trump was thinking or saying to his allies on January 6, 2021.

GIMME SOME BLUFFING

sung to the tune of “Gimme Some Lovin” (the studio version, in stereo) with apologies to Steve Winwood and the Spencer Davis Group.

Hey!
Well, my vote count’s rising,
got my crew on the floor.
Four years I’ve been rockin’
and I’m getting four more.
Stop the steal, people, and don’t you dare leak.
Find me more votes, my VP is weak.

And I’m, so mad they rigged this.
So mad they rigged this.

Why won’t you gimme some bluffing,
gimme some bluffing,
gimme some bluffing,
what do you say?

Hey!
Well, I need to cause chaos,
everyone’s getting slammed.
I’ll take charge Tweeting,
dem-AH-racy be damned.

Been a hard year.
My machine is well-oiled.
I can’t relax.
My plot’s getting foiled.

And I’m, so mad they rigged this.
So mad they rigged this.

Why won’t you gimme some bluffing,
gimme some bluffing,
gimme some bluffing,
what do you say?

Hey!
Well, I feel so good,
the vote count’s gettin’ higher.
I won’t take it easy,
’cause the situation’s dire.
Better bluff and blame Cheney
’cause we’ve got so much to do.
We’ll make the states crazy
and then I’ll pardon you.

And I’m, so mad they rigged this.
So mad they rigged this.

Why won’t you gimme some bluffing,
what do you say?
Gimme some bluffing,
I’ll get my way.
woo woo
Gimme some bluffing,
gimme some bluffing,
what do you say?

Hey, hey,
woo woo
gimme some bluffing…

The Life and Times of the Shah

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The Book of the Week is “The Life and Times of the Shah” by Gholam Reza Afkhami, published in 2009. This tome (whose roughly chronological contents were organized by political issues, which made it redundant in spots) provided a history of two leaders known as “shah” or king, of Iran, and global context, beginning with the father, Reza Khan, born in a village near the Caspian sea in 1877. Iran’s first Constitution was written in 1907.

A 1919 agreement signed between Persia (which became known as Iran in 1935) and Great Britain basically stated that the former was to become a colony of the latter. Reza Khan and his fellow Iranian government officials chafed under the agreement and refused to sign it. Iran’s soldiers were resentful that Britain’s military arrogantly came to train them. Nevertheless, the Iranians did approve of Britain’s taking control of northern Iran, a region of Cossacks (anti-Bolshevik Russians).

In October 1919, Mohammad Reza (the shah-to-be) was born. February 1921 saw his father survive a failed coup, declare martial law and arrest tens of members of the old-line Iranian aristocracy. In the 1920’s, there was a shuffling around of governmental cabinet members, and no real improvement in the country’s affairs. Diverse tribes with their various rivalries populated Iran’s different regions. But Reza Khan was a social democrat and a nationalist– the people should take pride in being Iranian, irrespective of tribe or religion. He believed in: the English system of law, compulsory education, land reform and separation of church and state.

In December 1925, the leadership committee in Iran, called the Majlis, named Reza Khan king of Iran, or shah. His son was named crown prince, and at twelve years of age, was sent to boarding school in Switzerland. By 1933, the shah was fed up with foreign powers’ exploitation of Iran’s oil. He signed an agreement giving Iran more control, although Iran lacked the expertise and resources for maximizing profits from all things oil-related. Even so, the years 1938 to 1941 saw Iran profit handsomely due to Britain’s straitened circumstances in its dire need for fuel. However, Reza Khan had to tread lightly with all parties (the Allies and Axis nations) because any party could take over Iran.

In September 1941, after a series of untoward events, under British pressure, shah Reza Khan went into exile in Mauritius and eventually South Africa, transferring power to his son. In 1942, in exchange for declaring war on Germany, Iran became a candidate for membership in the then-proposed United Nations. Meanwhile, there was domestic unrest in connection with a newly formed Iranian political party called the Tudeh, which was neither Communist nor revolutionary, at least initially.

By the end of WWII, the Soviets were entrenched in the Tudeh party, and occupied the northern region of Iran, eager to acquire the oil in Azerbaijan. The Iranians had regained control by summer 1947, but martial law had to be declared. Again. For, against the wishes of ordinary Iranians, their government had signed an oil agreement with the Soviets.

After a few more years of international shenanigans and posturing, and violent domestic gyrations, in March 1951, Iran nationalized its oil industry. The British believed this action was going to hinder the modernization of Iran. Nevertheless, by summer, Iran had formed its own oil company, snubbing Britain’s oil company– which was co-owned with Iran and had been in Iran’s industry-oligopoly for decades. In October 1952, Iran broke off diplomatic relations with the British.

American president Dwight Eisenhower was concerned that Iran would cave in to Soviet influence. Also in 1952, Iranian citizens were expressing their displeasure with their government’s actions, through street protests and rioting. Political opponents of Iran’s prime minister were arrested. The shah didn’t want to be deposed, so he dismissed the prime minister, and held a people’s referendum on whether to dissolve the Majlis. Although voters were physically harassed, dissolution won out, thanks to a secret CIA operation dubbed TPAJAX. Alpha males (the kind who later fancied themselves as James Bond) in the American and British intelligence services claimed credit for the regime alterations. The shah and his queen flew to Baghdad (a place friendly to Iranians at the time) for a tabloid distraction– er, uh, diplomatic visit– until things calmed down. Unresolved oil issues prompted Iran to resume diplomatic relations with Britain in December 1953. In August 1954, an oil consortium was formed.

In the mid-1950’s, Iran’s economy began to improve due to various factors, including U.S. aid, oil profits, and anti-Communist regional alliances of Iran’s neighbors. As a world leader, the shah considered his job to be head of human resources of his government’s top leaders, pursuant to Iran’s Constitution. He looked at the two-party system of the United States, and liked what he saw. However, in summer 1958, in the shah’s view, “We did not have the security guarantees that NATO enjoyed” so Iran signed a non-aggression pact with the Soviets. But in March 1959, it signed a bilateral defense treaty with the United States.

After clearing various hurdles, Iranian women got the right to vote in January 1963. However, the shah failed to see a future power struggle he would have with the ayatollah Khomeini, whom he had arrested and exiled (to the unwise location of Paris) in June 1963. As is well known, Khomeini wanted to make Iran a theocracy. In autumn 1964, Iran signed a controversial piece of paper with the United States in connection with court jurisdiction and adjudication of crime-cases of U.S. military personnel and U.S. embassy workers in Tehran.

Khomeini and his followers were livid at America’s double standards and the fact that the shah was an American puppet. Too, in the next several years, for various reasons, Iran’s energy needs couldn’t be entirely satisfied by oil and gas, so it was looking into nuclear power plants. By the mid-1970’s, Iran had become a storage dump for nuclear waste.

By summer 1975, the shah was starting to get too big for his britches, even though he had brought certain aspects of democracy to Iran. His government was on its way to one-party rule. His new political movement would be governed by three major sources which contradicted each other: Iran’s Constitution, the Shah-People Revolution, and the imperial order. That last one conflicted with whether the shah was the ultimate authority over the governing of his country (in later years, there was a conflict also with the authority of Iran’s top military leader), but he was a king, indefinitely.

The United Kingdom is also a Constitutional monarchy, BUT the head of the royal family is merely a figurehead, while the prime minister and government bodies have all the power to, and do, all the work of governing the country. Those bodies can be forced to resign pursuant to a vote of no-confidence– between formally scheduled election days, which increases uncertainty in the system and for the people governed.

In the United States, the First Family is not supposed to be a royal family. Its system does have problems, but uncertainty due to resignations en masse is not one of them. The two major parties keep each other’s power in check. The president is always a member of one or the other.

Anyway, by spring 1977, the international community was pressuring Iran to curb its human rights abuses. Oops. It was already too late. The shah was unable to see the writing on the wall: that Khomeini was a threat to his power (even from Paris!); and that he was giving mixed signals by declaring martial law but at the same time, failing to train Iran’s law enforcement officers to control crowds and instructing them to refrain from firing on street protesters to quell violence in Iran’s major cities. So there appeared to be chaos and anarchy. Not to mention revolution.

Khomeini’s propaganda had been inflaming the masses for years. One tabloid item in spring 1979 from the government of the Bahamas revealed that the shah kept a large quantity of money in Swiss bank accounts. Unsurprisingly, the shah and his queen went into exile. In the next year or so, protesters angrily surrounded every residence in the world where they were temporarily tolerated.

In the shah’s absence, Iran’s military was rudderless because its members had always practiced blind obedience to the shah. Besides, Iran’s law enforcement and security personnel had always thought of themselves as ordinary Iranians, so they didn’t want to harm people like themselves.

Read the book to learn about: how, in the regime’s last several years, the U.S. mishandled Iranian foreign policy and misjudged Khomeini; plus much, much more. Here’s a little ditty that explains how Americans can keep our country from becoming a Constitutional monarchy (or theocracy), like that of Iran’s:

VOTE

sung to the tune of “Vogue” with apologies to Madonna.

SHOP around.
Election time is in the offing.
Find out where YOU need to go.
(shop around)

You elect the people who’ll help you improve,
the LIFE that-you-know.
(life-that-you-know)

You can get ACtive in politics,
or just research candidATES today.

I know a time when you can make the change.
It’s called election day
and you can make-the-losers pay.

So c’mon, vote.
Feel your power-as-an-American.
hey hey hey
C’mon, vote.
Not all nations HAVE what we have.
(you know you can do it)

All you need is your own registration.
So use it. You count, rich or poor.
(both rich and poor)
It’s democracy. Show-you-believe-in-the-process.
More VO-ters open the door.
(open up the door)

It makes no difference if you’re Left or Right,
if you’re pro-this or pro-that.
Free and fair elections ensure sta-bi-li-ty.
You’re a civics star,
yes that’s what you are.
(you know it)

C’mon, vote.
Feel your power-as-an-American.
hey hey hey
C’mon, vote.
Not all nations HAVE what we have.
(you know you can do it)

Leaders need to govern well,
not just deny and cover up.
Soul is in society.
That’s where we feel so LIStened to.
Learn from mistakes, keep us safe.
Get things DONE-on-the Congress floors.

Vote.
Feel your power-as-an-American.
hey hey hey
C’mon, vote.
Not all nations HAVE what we have.
(you know you can do it, do it, do it)

(vote vote)
(Leaders need to govern)
(as Amer-i-cans)
(vote)
(Leaders need to govern)
(not all nations)

Adolf Hitler, Juan Peron, Milosevic and Marcos
Kim Il-sung, Saddam Hussein
got 99-percent-of-votes-in-their-name.
“The people love me” they did gloat.

Others seized power, you should note:
Joseph Stalin, Pinochet,
Khomeini, Papa-Duvalier.
They had weapons, they used force.
Mao-Tse-Tung had no remorse.

Gaddafi, Franco, Castro too.
Kim Jong-un, is anything new?

Leaders with an attitude,
some of whom the U.S. wooed.
Don’t put up with bad government.
Take a position.
You can make a dent.

(vote vote vote vote)
(vote vote)
(oooh, you’ve got to)
Feel your power-as-an-American.
(oooh, you’ve got to do it)
Not all nations HAVE what we have.
(oooh, you’ve got to)
Vote. Vote. Vote. Vote.

The Professor and the President – BONUS POST

[Please note: The word “Featured” on the left side above was NOT inserted by this blogger, but apparently was inserted by WordPress, and it cannot be removed. NO post in this blog is sponsored.]

The Bonus Book of the Week is “The Professor and the President, Daniel Patrick Moynihan in the Nixon White House” by Stephen Hess, published in 2015.

“We cannot learn from one another until we stop shouting at one another– until we speak quietly enough so that our words can be heard as well as our voices.”

The above was uttered by president Richard Nixon in a speech. Although he was best known for committing political crimes and war crimes and then attempting to hush them up– socially good pieces of legislation signed by him (pro-environmental and against sex discrimination), were actually passed during his presidency (!) This slim volume discussed how Moynihan’s unlikely relationship with Nixon played a role in eventually establishing Supplemental Security Income. Read the book to learn the details.