Tuesday, March 31, 2009

Iran History Revisited: Part 9

(See parts 1-8 below)

In January 2007, the editor-in-chief of the Kuwaiti-based Arab Times, Ahmed Al-Jarallah, reported that “A reliable source said President Bush… held a meeting with Vice President Dick Cheney, Defense Secretary Robert Gates…and other assistants in the White House where they discussed the plan to attack Iran in minute detail.” Yet in 2009 President Bush’s Defense Secretary, Robert Gates, is still the U.S. Secretary of Defense.

And as Eric Margolis observed in the February 16, 2009 issue of the Khaleeq Times:

“The CIA… funds at least one extremist Pakistani Sunni group that launches raids into Iran, attacking government posts, soldiers and civilians. Further covert American aid goes to armed separatist groups among Iran’s Arab and Azeri minorities…The US Congress has repeatedly voted hundreds of millions for such covert operations.

“The US has also waged a…financial and economic war against…Iran…

“Israeli elections produced a sharp move to the right, increasing chances Israel may make good on threats to attack Iran…”

Yet most U.S. high school social studies departments, ironically, still don’t require their students to study much 20th-century Iranian history.


In exchange for the promise by the Shah of Iran’s central government on April 4, 1946 that the Soviet Union would be given an oil concession in the North of Iran, Soviet troops were withdrawn from the northern regions of Iran in May 1946. And on May 1, 1946, 500,000 demonstrators—mainly Tudeh Party members, Iranian trade union members or Tudeh Party sympathizers—also celebrated May Day in Iran and demanded more favorable labor laws, pay raises for Iranian workers and redistribution of Iranian land to Iran’s peasantry.

To block a plot by the Anglo-Iranian Oil Company to destroy the Iranian oil workers union, a general strike was subsequently called in the Khuzistan region of Iran on July 14, 1946, which was suppressed by the Iranian central government, with heavy casualties for the striking Iranian workers. But on August 1, 1946, the Shah of Iran’s regime allowed a new government coalition cabinet to be formed by a Prime Minister named Ghavam, which included 3 Tudeh Party members. It was estimated at this time that the Tudeh Party now had about 50,000 supporters in Tehran and about 50,000 supporters in the rest of the country.

In September 1946, however, the Shah of Iran regime’s Prime Minister Ghavam encouraged a tribal revolt in the southern Iranian province of Fars which demanded both autonomy and the expulsion of Tudeh Party representatives from the Iranian central government’s cabinet. A new cabinet was then formed by Ghavam that excluded Iranian leftists and, in October 1946 an Iranian right-wing offensive against Iranian leftist activists was launched. In November 1946, for example, a strike by Tudeh Party-sponsored unions was again suppressed and hundreds of Tudeh Party members and Iranian labor union members in the southern part of Iran were arrested. To discourage such independent labor militancy in the future, the Shah of Iran’s regime then also set up its own government-sponsored labor unions, established a Ministry of Labor and finally passed a labor code for Iranian workers. (end of part 9)

Monday, March 30, 2009

Iran History Revisited: Part 8

(See parts 1-7 below)

In January 2007, the editor-in-chief of the Kuwaiti-based Arab Times, Ahmed Al-Jarallah, reported that “A reliable source said President Bush… held a meeting with Vice President Dick Cheney, Defense Secretary Robert Gates…and other assistants in the White House where they discussed the plan to attack Iran in minute detail.” Yet in 2009 President Bush’s Defense Secretary, Robert Gates, is still the U.S. Secretary of Defense.

And as Eric Margolis observed in the February 16, 2009 issue of the Khaleeq Times:

“The CIA… funds at least one extremist Pakistani Sunni group that launches raids into Iran, attacking government posts, soldiers and civilians. Further covert American aid goes to armed separatist groups among Iran’s Arab and Azeri minorities…The US Congress has repeatedly voted hundreds of millions for such covert operations.

“The US has also waged a…financial and economic war against…Iran…

“Israeli elections produced a sharp move to the right, increasing chances Israel may make good on threats to attack Iran…”

Yet most U.S. high school social studies departments, ironically, still don’t require their students to study much 20th-century Iranian history.


Between 1942 and 1945, the number of Tudeh Party members in Iran continued to increase along with the Tudeh Party’s political influence. In the 1943-44 Iranian elections, for example, around 20% of all the Iranian votes went to either Tudeh Party candidates or Iranian left-oriented candidates who were part of the left-of-center bloc that the Tudeh Party supported. Of the 120 elected members of the Iranian parliament, the Majlis, 8 were members of the Tudeh Party in 1944. In addition, three elected members were pro-Tudeh Party but not formal Tudeh Party members; and 30 elected members of the Iranian parliament were politically left-of-center. Despite the death of the first Tudeh Party Chairman Eskandari in February 1944, by the time of the Tudeh Party Congress in 1944, the number of Iranians who were Tudeh Party members had jumped to 25,000; and 75% of the Tudeh Party members were recruited from the Iranian working-class.

The majority of the members of the Iranian Parliament in 1945, however, were still right-wing and anti-communist in their political orientation. But fearful of the Tudeh Party’s increasing political influence in Iranian society, the troops of the Shah of Iran’s government were ordered to occupy the Tudeh Party’s headquarters in August 1945 and publication of the Tudeh Party’s newspaper was then prohibited by the Shah’s regime. The Tudeh Party was ordered to also disband its branches in areas of Iran that were outside of Tehran.

When Tudeh Party members in Tehran attempted to protest the regime’s outlawing of their political group by marching in Tehran, the Shah of Iran’s security forces blocked the march. A street fight then broke out between Tudeh Party members and the Iranian police in which a leading Tudeh Party activist, Dr. Freydoun Keshavarz, was beaten up. In response, militant pro-Tudeh Party groups of Iranian workers then occupied towns, factories and railroad junctions in the northern part of Iran that was still occupied by foreign Soviet government troops.

An insurrection then broke out in the Turkish-speaking Azerbaijan region of Iran in September 1945; and, protected by the Soviet troops there, an autonomous Azerbaijan government was set up in November 1945 by leftist Azerbaijan activists that demanded national autonomy within a unified Iran for Azerbaijan and land reform. A regular army was also then formed by the new Azerbaijan government. With the support and protection of the Soviet troops that were occupying the north of Iran, a Kurdistan People’s Republic was also established within Iran in February 1946. (end of part 8)

Sunday, March 29, 2009

Iran History Revisited: Part 7

(See parts 1-6 below)

In January 2007, the editor-in-chief of the Kuwaiti-based Arab Times, Ahmed Al-Jarallah, reported that “A reliable source said President Bush… held a meeting with Vice President Dick Cheney, Defense Secretary Robert Gates…and other assistants in the White House where they discussed the plan to attack Iran in minute detail.” Yet in 2009 President Bush’s Defense Secretary, Robert Gates, is still the U.S. Secretary of Defense.

And as Eric Margolis observed in the February 16, 2009 issue of the Khaleeq Times:

“The CIA… funds at least one extremist Pakistani Sunni group that launches raids into Iran, attacking government posts, soldiers and civilians. Further covert American aid goes to armed separatist groups among Iran’s Arab and Azeri minorities…The US Congress has repeatedly voted hundreds of millions for such covert operations.

“The US has also waged a…financial and economic war against…Iran…

“Israeli elections produced a sharp move to the right, increasing chances Israel may make good on threats to attack Iran…”

Yet most U.S. high school social studies departments, ironically, still don’t require their students to study much 20th-century Iranian history.


Following its founding in October 1941, Iran’s Tudeh Party members chose Soleiman Mobsen Eskandari as the first chairman of the Tudeh (“Masses of the People”) Party. The Tudeh Party then formed anti-fascist committees in the Soviet-occupied areas of Iran which attempted to turn the Iranian nationalists, who were mostly pro-German, in a more anti-fascist political direction.

Under the Reza Shah Pahlavi regime trade unions had been banned in Iran. But following Reza Shah Pahlavi’s forced abdication, Iranian trade unions once again formed and a Central Council of the Trade Unions of Iran was established. A Tudeh Party journal, Siyassat (“Politics”), also began publishing in November 1941 in Iran.

By the following June, around 6,000 Iranians were now members of the Tudeh Party; and about 80% of all Tudeh Party members had been recruited from the Iranian working class. At the Tudeh Party’s first conference in June 1942, 120 Tudeh Party delegates participated and they voted to make the following demands on the new Iranian regime of Reza Shah Pahlavi’s son, Mohammed Pahlavi (a/k/a the Shah of Iran), which had been set up by UK imperialism following Reza Shah Pahlavi’s September 1941 abdication:

1. formation of a democratic government in Iran;
2. restoration of political liberties and human rights in Iran;
3. abolition of the anti-democratic laws enacted during Reza Shah Pahlavi’s regime that prohibited anti-monarchical parties and communist parties in Iran;
4. distribution among Iranian peasants of Iranian state lands and large Iranian landlord holdings; and
5. recognition of Iranian trade unions and collective bargaining rights by the new Shah of Iran’s government.


(end of part 7)

Saturday, March 28, 2009

Iran History Revisited: Part 6

(See parts 1-5 below)

In January 2007, the editor-in-chief of the Kuwaiti-based Arab Times, Ahmed Al-Jarallah, reported that “A reliable source said President Bush… held a meeting with Vice President Dick Cheney, Defense Secretary Robert Gates…and other assistants in the White House where they discussed the plan to attack Iran in minute detail.” Yet in 2009 President Bush’s Defense Secretary, Robert Gates, is still the U.S. Secretary of Defense.

And as Eric Margolis observed in the February 16, 2009 issue of the Khaleeq Times:

“The CIA… funds at least one extremist Pakistani Sunni group that launches raids into Iran, attacking government posts, soldiers and civilians. Further covert American aid goes to armed separatist groups among Iran’s Arab and Azeri minorities…The US Congress has repeatedly voted hundreds of millions for such covert operations.

“The US has also waged a…financial and economic war against…Iran…

“Israeli elections produced a sharp move to the right, increasing chances Israel may make good on threats to attack Iran…”

Yet most U.S. high school social studies departments, ironically, still don’t require their students to study much 20th-century Iranian history.


In response to growing anti-British mass nationalist pressure in Iran during the 1930s, Reza Shah Pahlavi’s regime agreed to annul one of its previously agreed to oil concessions to UK imperialism in Khuzistan on November 27, 1932. Reza Shah Pahlavi’s regime then began to pursue a more nationalist policy; and some reforms were also introduced by Reza Shah Pahlavi’s regime during the 1930s which Westernized Iranian society somewhat and provided public school educational opportunities for the children of Iran’s middle-class families.

Political repression of Iranian left intellectuals continued, however, during the 1930s by this regime. In April 1937, for example, Dr. Taghi Erani and 52 members of his Donya magazine discussion group were arrested by the Reza Shah Pahlavi’s regime and charged with conspiracy to violate the Anti-Communist Act of 1931. At their subsequent November 1938 trial, Erani attacked the constitutionality of the regime’s Anti-Communist Act of 1931 as a violation of the right to freedom of expression. But all 53 defendants were convicted. Ten of the convicted Iranian left defendants were then sentenced to 10 years of imprisonment.

The leader of the Donya journal circle, Erani, died in an Iranian prison, however, on February 4, 1940--apparently as a result of deliberate negligence by the Reza Shah Pahlavi regime’s prison hospital authorities. But in September 1941, the other imprisoned left intellectuals of the Donya circle were granted amnesty and released, after Reza Shah Pahlavi’s authoritarian regime--which was seen as too politically supportive of Nazi Germany--was overthrown by a joint military invasion of Iran by the foreign troops of the Soviet and UK governments. The released Donya journal circle prisoners then joined other Iranian leftists in establishing the Tudeh Party in October 1941.

One reason that Reza Shah Pahlavi’s regime was pro-Nazi Germany in its politics in early 1941 was that between 1933 and 1941 Nazi Germany had helped this regime modernize and industrialize Iran and had become Iran’s largest trading partner. Between 1929 and 1941, for example, the number of Iranians who were urban workers rather than peasants jumped from 300,000 to 600,000; and the size of Iran’s middle-class and intelligentsia also increased.

Despite Reza Shah Pahlavi’s nationalism and his regime’s pro-Nazi, pro-German political orientation during the late 1930s, in 1933 his government added another 60 years to the term of the British-owned Anglo-Persian Oil Company’s lucrative oil production concession. In 1935, the Anglo-Persian Oil Company’s name was also changed to the Anglo Iranian Oil Company when the name of the country was officially changed from “Persia” to “Iran” during that same year. (end of part 6)

Friday, March 27, 2009

Iran History Revisited: Part 5

(See parts 1-4 below)

In January 2007, the editor-in-chief of the Kuwaiti-based Arab Times, Ahmed Al-Jarallah, reported that “A reliable source said President Bush… held a meeting with Vice President Dick Cheney, Defense Secretary Robert Gates…and other assistants in the White House where they discussed the plan to attack Iran in minute detail.” Yet in 2009 President Bush’s Defense Secretary, Robert Gates, is still the U.S. Secretary of Defense.

And as Eric Margolis observed in the February 16, 2009 issue of the Khaleeq Times:

“The CIA… funds at least one extremist Pakistani Sunni group that launches raids into Iran, attacking government posts, soldiers and civilians. Further covert American aid goes to armed separatist groups among Iran’s Arab and Azeri minorities…The US Congress has repeatedly voted hundreds of millions for such covert operations.

“The US has also waged a…financial and economic war against…Iran…

“Israeli elections produced a sharp move to the right, increasing chances Israel may make good on threats to attack Iran…”

Yet most U.S. high school social studies departments, ironically, still don’t require their students to study much 20th-century Iranian history.


In 1927 a second congress of the repressed Persian Communist Party [PCP] was held and PCP activists decided to work underground for the following aims in Iran:

1. elimination of Iranian monarchy and rejection of an Iranian “bourgeois” parliamentary republic;
2. national rights for all nationalities within Iran;
3. a new army of workers and peasants for Iran;
4. confiscation of all installations of the Anglo-Persian Oil Company in Iran;
5. abolition of foreign concessions in Iran;
6. establishment of agricultural lending banks;
7. surrender of all Iranian religious endowments and Iranian big estates to Iranian peasants;
8. confiscate the property of the Shah of Iran, the Iranian aristocracy and Iranian tribal chieftains; and
9. abolish all debts owned by the Iranian peasants.


The following specific political demands were also made by the Second Congress of the PCP in 1927:

1. full freedom for Iranian labor unions and Iranian political organizations;
2. Iranian government recognition of labor unions;
3. free speech, freedom of assembly, freedom of the press and the right to strike be established in Iran;
4. collective bargaining and contract rights for labor unions in Iran;
5. establishment of a minimum wage in Iran; and
6. housing be provided for Iranian workers in the oil and fishing industries.


Two years after this 1927 PCP Congress, oil industry workers in the Khuzistan area of Iran went on strike. But by 1931, Reza Shah Pahlavi’s regime had formally outlawed even more extensively the PCP and the PCP’s front groups under the June 1931 Anti-Communist Act. So by the end of 1931, around 150 Iranian communist activists were being held in the Reza Shah Pahlavi regime’s prisons. Yet between 1933 and 1937 a discussion group of left intellectuals in Iran, led by Dr. Taghi Erani, was still able to start and publish abroad, in Europe, a theoretical journal, titled Donya (‘Universe”), to promote the democratization of Iranian society. (end of part 5)

Thursday, March 26, 2009

Iran History Revisited: Part 4

(See parts 1-3 below)

In January 2007, the editor-in-chief of the Kuwaiti-based Arab Times, Ahmed Al-Jarallah, reported that “A reliable source said President Bush… held a meeting with Vice President Dick Cheney, Defense Secretary Robert Gates…and other assistants in the White House where they discussed the plan to attack Iran in minute detail.” Yet in 2009 President Bush’s Defense Secretary, Robert Gates, is still the U.S. Secretary of Defense.

And as Eric Margolis observed in the February 16, 2009 issue of the Khaleeq Times:

“The CIA… funds at least one extremist Pakistani Sunni group that launches raids into Iran, attacking government posts, soldiers and civilians. Further covert American aid goes to armed separatist groups among Iran’s Arab and Azeri minorities…The US Congress has repeatedly voted hundreds of millions for such covert operations.

“The US has also waged a…financial and economic war against…Iran…

“Israeli elections produced a sharp move to the right, increasing chances Israel may make good on threats to attack Iran…”

Yet most U.S. high school social studies departments, ironically, still don’t require their students to study much 20th-century Iranian history.


On July 31, 1920 a National Committee for the Liberation of Persia was set up by the non-communist Jangali leaders and their Persian Communist Party allies, and in mid-August 1920 the revolutionary army of the National Committee for the Liberation of Persia marched on Tehran. The UK imperialist-backed Iranian central government’s army, however, was able to defeat this revolutionary army.

On February 26, 1921, the Soviet government then signed a friendship treaty with the pro-British Iranian central government to withdraw all Soviet troops from northeast Iran by September 21, 1921. Once the Soviet troops were gone, Reza Khan Pahlavi’s Iranian central government then was able to more easily decrease the Persian Communist Party’s political influence in Iran by the end of 1921.

At the end of 1921, however, there were still 10 labor unions or guilds in Iran, with 10,000 members, that represented bakers, printers, telegraph workers, tailors, street cleaners or government employees. The newspaper that expressed the political goals of these Iranian unions, Haqiqat (‘Truth’) promoted the following four demands during the early 1920s:

1. lift martial law in Iran;
2. amnesty for all Iranian political prisoners;
3. confiscate and distribute the lands of those who had abused Iranian peasants’ rights; and
4. distribute Iranian state land among Iranian peasants.


By 1922, worker membership in Iranian trade unions had increased to 15,000, with 12,000 of the unionized Iranian workers living in Tehran. Around 1,000 Iranians were also still members of the Persian Communist Party in 1922. But by 1924 the number of Persian Communist Party members had dropped to 600.

And after Reza Khan--backed by the Iranian landlords, the Iranian Army and the Anglo-Persian Oil Company which ruled southern Iran—became the Iranian monarch in 1925, he then both suppressed the Iranian trade unions and began to outlaw the Persian Communist Party. (end of part 4)

Wednesday, March 25, 2009

Mark Rudd's `Underground' Book & Imprisoned Columbia SDS Founder David Gilbert's `No Surrender' Book

If Mark Rudd’s autobiographical book about the 1968 Columbia University Student Strike and Weather Underground that Rupert Murdoch’s HarperCollins firm just published (Underground: My Life with SDS and the Weathermen) interests you, then you might also be interested in checking out David Gilbert’s No Surrender: Writings From An Anti-Imperialist Political Prisoner that the anarchist Abraham Guillen Press published in 2004.

In his book, the still-imprisoned Columbia Students for a Democratic Society [SDS] co-founder and former Weather Underground member Gilbert, for example, wrote the following in reference to the Weather Underground Organization [WUO]:

“In a society where every single movie and TV program showed that the FBI `always got their man,’ the Weather Underground eluded capture and sustained armed action for six years…In a world where `legitimate’ governments bombed villages and assassinated activists but decried any armed resistance as `terrorist,’ the WUO carried out more than 20 bombings against government and corporate violence without killing anyone or so much as scratching a civilian.

“…The WUO was not formed as a narrow conspiracy but instead was a focal point within a much broader surge of anti-war militancy, as thousands of military buildings and Bank of America branches were burned to the ground, and as hundreds of thousands of people joined demonstrations that broke government windows, disrupted meetings of bigwigs, and resisted arrest.

“Weather’s exciting breakthroughs coexisted with costly mistakes. The earliest and most visible came during the first six months (late ’69 to early ’70), while we were still aboveground: our sickening and inexcusable glorification of violence, which grievously contradicted the humanist basis for our politics and militancy…To this day, almost all `history’ about the WUO makes the mania of those six months the whole story, without looking at our correcting of that error and the ensuing six years of solid and humane anti-imperialist action…

“Early Weather’s grave sins of commission were glaringly visible. The opposite movement sins of omission, which usually aren’t even noticed, can be even more lethal. The terrible passivity of most of the white Left to the early attacks on the Panthers gave the government a signal that it would not face widespread political costs for proceeding with its full-fledged COINTELPRO campaign, which killed scores and jailed thousands of Black, Native, and Latino activists.

“Weather’s militarism culminated in March 6, 1970, when a frantic bomb-making effort, including anti-personnel weapons, resulted in an accidental explosion in a safehouse (known as the townhouse explosion) that killed three of our own beautiful young comrades…

“…Our middle-class background meant that we did a poor job at outreach to more working-class sectors of youth.

“There were related problems in our internal life…

“To me, a crucial lesson is that activists must consciously grapple with the powerful pull of ego that can lead us to put our own position and leadership above advancing the interests and power of the oppressed…

“Despite these serious weaknesses, six years of impressive successes resulted from what was right about anti-imperialism. Contrary to the spy movie mystifications that are all about sophisticated techniques and technology, our survival underground was based on popular support from radical youth and the anti-war movement. That was the key to solving needs such as ID, money, and safehouses. There were moments when the FBI hunt was breathing down our necks, but popular support meant that information was kept from the state and instead flowed to the guerrillas.

“Our stage of struggle was `armed propaganda,’ with no illusion of yet contending for military power. Instead, the purposes of actions were to (1) draw off some of the repressive heat concentrated on Black, Native, and Latino movements, (2) create a leading political example of white solidarity with national liberation, (3) educate about key political issues, (4) identify the institutions most responsible for oppression, and (5) encourage others to intensify activism despite state repression. We also provided examples of non-armed struggle (e.g. spray painting), pursued dialogue with the above ground movement by writing to and reading responses in radical newspapers, and even created our own underground print shop. We wrote and published the book Prairie Fire, a well-developed statement of the politics of revolutionary anti-imperialism…

“The FBI never broke the WUO, but in 1976-1977 we imploded from our own weaknesses…”

Tuesday, March 24, 2009

Iran History Revisited: Part 3

(See parts 1-2 below)

In January 2007, the editor-in-chief of the Kuwaiti-based Arab Times, Ahmed Al-Jarallah, reported that “A reliable source said President Bush… held a meeting with Vice President Dick Cheney, Defense Secretary Robert Gates…and other assistants in the White House where they discussed the plan to attack Iran in minute detail.” Yet in 2009 President Bush’s Defense Secretary, Robert Gates, is still the U.S. Secretary of Defense.

And as Eric Margolis observed in the February 16, 2009 issue of the Khaleeq Times:

“The CIA… funds at least one extremist Pakistani Sunni group that launches raids into Iran, attacking government posts, soldiers and civilians. Further covert American aid goes to armed separatist groups among Iran’s Arab and Azeri minorities…The US Congress has repeatedly voted hundreds of millions for such covert operations.

"The US has also waged a…financial and economic war against…Iran…

"Israeli elections produced a sharp move to the right, increasing chances Israel may make good on threats to attack Iran…”

But most U.S. high school social studies departments, ironically, still don’t even require their students to study much 20th-century Iranian history.


Between 1941 and 1978, the Tudeh Party was generally the most mass-based Iranian left-wing party to oppose the Shah of Iran’s U.S.-supported dictatorial regime. Yet prior to the Tudeh Party’s founding in 1941, there had been previous attempts by people in Iran to politically and economically democratize Iranian society.

During the Iranian Revolution of 1905 to 1911, for example,, equal rights under the Constitution of 1906 had been obtained by Iranians of Jewish background. In April 1918, a group of Iranians, the Adalat Group, had also been founded to politically oppose the Iranian monarchy, the Iranian clergy and the privileged Iranian landholding aristocracy.

During the Russian Civil War that followed the October 1917 Revolution in Russia, Soviet military and naval detachments that were pursuing the anti-revolutionary White Russian troops temporarily entered Northeast Iran on May 18, 1920. Aided by these Soviet troops, a non-communist Jangali movement, led by Kuchek Khan, then sought to liberate Iran from its oppression by UK imperialism, its anti-democratic Iranian clerics and its anti-democratic Iranian feudal landholders. And the Jangali movement proclaimed the establishment of the Gilan Republic in Northeast Iran on June 4, 1920.

Influenced by pro-communist and left sectarian Iranian activists, however, the Gilan Republic then began to distribute anti-religious propaganda in the small area of Iran it controlled and closed 19 mosques. It also prohibited religious instruction in its schools and decreed that Iranian women should be forcibly unveiled. Predictably, the Islamic clergy opposed such measures and the still religious Iranian peasants were alienated by the Gilan Republic’s anti-religious policies-- despite the fact that the Gilan Republic’s land reform decrees would have benefited these same peasants economically.

On June 23, 1920, 37 members of the Persian Communist Party (which had been created by members of the Adalat Group) then held their first congress and proposed the following political and economic democratization reforms for Iranian society:

1. overthrow of British imperialist domination in Iran;
2. confiscation of all foreign enterprises in Iran;
3. recognition of the right of self-determination of all nationalities within a unified Iran;
4. confiscation of all the land of big Iranian landowners and its redistribution to Iranian peasants and to the soldiers of an Iranian revolutionary army.


(end of part 3)

Monday, March 23, 2009

Iran History Revisited: Part 2

(See part 1 below)

Democratic Party politicians now control the U.S. Congress and the White House. Yet the U.S. military-industrial-media complex’s troops and private contractors have still not been immediately withdrawn from Iraq and Afghanistan.

The Israeli government allies of the Democratic Obama Regime also may still be threatening to order the Israeli War Machine to use U.S. government-provided weapons to eventually attack Iran before the November 2010 U.S. congressional elections.. Yet most people in the United States know little about the history of people in Iran since foreign imperialist powers began illegally and undemocratically intervening in Iran’s internal political and economic affairs in the late 1800s.


During World War I, an increased number of Czarist Russian army troops occupied Iran in the north, while an increased number of UK troops occupied Iran in the south. Following the Russian Revolution of October 1917, Russian troops were soon withdrawn from Iran. But in 1918, British imperialist troops occupied all of Iran, created a puppet Vosugh al-Dauleh government on August 6, 1918 and forced the puppet government to sign an even more exploitative Anglo-Iranian Treaty than the ones that previous feudalist Iranian governments had signed.

In reaction to these moves by UK imperialism in Iran, Iranian tribes in rural Iran, predictably, began an uprising between 1918 and 1922 in which they attacked British occupying troops. By early 1919 the anti-imperialist Iranian mass uprising had forced the Iranian puppet regime to revoke its Anglo-Iranian Treaty; and by 1920 some Iranians had even formed the country’s first communist party.

After the now-deceased Shah of Iran’s father, Reza Khan, pulled a coup in February 1921 that overthrew the previous puppet government of UK imperialism in Iran, the anti-imperialist revolt in Iran began to wind down. A constituent assembly in Iran was then established and, by December 12, 1925, Iran’s constituent assembly had stripped the Qajar royal dynasty members of their royal family privileges. Reza Khan was, instead, then proclaimed “Shah of Iran” and renamed “Reza Shah Pahlavi.”

Reza Shah Pahlavi ruled Iran between 1925 and 1941. During his reign, workers and peasant movements were persecuted and, in the 1930s, strikes of Iranian workers at the Anglo-Persian Oil Company’s refineries were suppressed by his regime. After Soviet Union troops and British government troops both marched into Iran during World War II in August 1941, Reza Shah Pahlavi was compelled to abdicate because of his previous expressions of support for a Nazi Germany military victory. His son, Mohammed Reza Pahlavi (who wasn’t considered as pro-Nazi), however, was allowed to replace him as the new Shah of Iran. For most of the years between 1941 and early 1979, Mohammed Reza Pahlavi would rule Iran as a dictator, with the bipartisan support of the U.S. White Corporate Male Power Structure’s government. (end of part 2)

Sunday, March 22, 2009

Iran History Revisited: Part 1

Democratic Party politicians now control the U.S. Congress and the White House. Yet the U.S. military-industrial-media complex’s troops and private contractors have still not been immediately withdrawn from Iraq and Afghanistan.

The Israeli government allies of the Democratic Obama Regime also may still be threatening to order the Israeli War Machine to use U.S. government-provided weapons to eventually attack Iran before the November 2010 U.S. congressional elections. Yet most people in the United States know little about the history of people in Iran since foreign imperialist powers began undemocratically and illegally intervening in its internal political and economic affairs in the late 1800s.


By the early 1900s, Iran (which was then more commonly known as “Persia”) was pretty much a semi-colony of the UK and Czarist Russia. A government controlled by the Qajar royal dynasty of Iranian feudal landowners had handed out telegraphy, railroad and other commercial concessions to British and Russian business people during the late 1800s, after the British imperialists opened the Shahanshah Bank in 1889 and the Russian imperialists opened the Discount-Loan Bank in 1890.

In the early 20th century the British imperialists received what would turn out to be its most valuable concession from the Qajar dynasty’s government: a concession for the exploitation of Iranian oil. By 1909, the British company that exercised a special influence in Iranian society for much of the 20th century, the Anglo-Persian Oil Company, had been founded. By the early 1900s, foreign advisers had also been put in charge of Iranian customs and finances by the subservient feudalist Iranian government. The southern part of Iran was by then dominated by UK imperialist interests and the northern part of Iran by Russian imperialist interests.

Not surprisingly, in reaction to increased domination by foreign imperialist economic interests, nationalist consciousness began to grow in Iran in the late 19th century and various secret anti-government societies were formed by Iranian intellectuals who sought democratic reforms and an end to Iran’s semi-colonial status. By 1905, the Iranian Revolution of 1905-1911 had begun.

The demands of the revolutionary movement were anti-imperialist and anti-feudalist; and, during this revolutionary period, there was an uprising in the Iranian city of Tabriz in 1909. But both the Czarist Russian government and the UK government decided that their special imperialist economic interests were threatened by the Iranian Revolution of 1905-1911. So at the end of 1911, the Czarist Russian troops and the British troops that were stationed in Iran united with their reactionary Iranian domestic allies and suppressed by force the Iranian Revolution of 1905-1911. (end of part 1)

Saturday, March 21, 2009

Perlo's 1973 Alternative Jobs Creation Proposal Revisited

Most hip anti-war people in the United States probably realize by now that the Democratic Obama Regime’s "Corporate Stimulus” legislation won't really create enough high-wage jobs for U.S. workers to really restore economic prosperity for most U.S. working-class people; or quickly stop the rapid rise in long-term unemployment rates for U.S. blue-collar and office workers.

Yet until anti-war left dissidents in the United States are able to quickly present some kind of anti-militarist alternative left jobs creation program for U.S. working-class people to mobilize in support of on the U.S. streets, the suffering of U.S. working-class people in the current U.S. historical "era of permanent war abroad and economic depression at home" will probably continue to increase--until there's finally some kind of upturn in U.S. capitalism's business cycle.

In a 1973 book, The Unstable Economy: Booms and Recessions In The U.S. Since 1945 (International Publishers), a Marxist economist named Victor Perlo indicated what an anti-war alternative left jobs creation program for the U.S. economy might look like by proposing the following:

"Nationalization and government operation of major economic units are essential for overcoming monopoly domination of the economy to the extent necessary for realizing significant progressive reforms.

"Plants abandoned by private owners, or left with substantially curtailed operations, are prime targets for nationalization. Conspicuous in this respect are enterprises in the aerospace and other armament-connected industries, whose private owners have proved unwilling or unable to shift to civilian production. Also there has been large-scale phasing out of electronic plants, as multinational corporations have shifted output to foreign lands. There continues a constant flow of industrial enterprises from urban areas, where workers are organized into relatively strong unions, into rural areas, and especially to open-shop southern areas offering special tax concessions and a prospect of low wages and no resistance to inferior working conditions.

"The government should take over all such plants, fully maintain employment, and charge the corporation with all transitional costs.

"It should take over munitions plants generally, thereby weakening the economic base of the notorious `military-industrial complex.'

"The transportation system should be nationalized...The entire system should be made into an integrated public system for freight and passengers, covering all modes of transportation, with lowered fares and rates, greatly increased and improved service.

"The telephone system and other `public utilities' should be made really public, to end the superhigh charges and corresponding private profits now guaranteed by business-dominated regulating commissions.

"Along with a system of socialized medicine, available without charge to all, there should be nationalization of the drug industry, hospitals, and related industries.

"The construction of new housing should be nationalized. That is the only way to build quickly the tens of millions of units needed to decently house America at rents the ill-housed can afford, with adequate employment opportunities for Black and other minority workers...

"Nationalization of industry should not be like that of the `public authorities' and some quasi-government corporations run by boards of directors and managers from the officialdom of the private big corporations and banks, for the profit of these enterprises rather than service to the public.

"Democratic nationalization is required, involving direct, major participation by the workers of the nationalized enterprises in their management, and a real voice for the users of the services. It calls for boards of directors to be elected directly by the voters and by the enterprise workers...

"A whole series of measures would be directed towards cutting unemployment...A major element in the fight against unemployment is to win a shorter work week and the elimination of overtime. This, of course, would directly add millions of jobs...

"...The demand has become popular among workers for continuation of unemployment insurance for the full term of unemployment. This should be accompanied by expanding coverage to all workers, minimizing the waiting periods, ending the exclusion of strikers and other categories of workers, and ending the humiliating compensation offices with their pressure on the client to take sub-standard jobs at sub-standard pay.

"A uniform Federal system should be substituted for the state systems, and the payments should be financed out of general revenues.

"Every enterprise, private and public, should be required to employ Black and other minority workers at least in proportion to their numbers in the area's population at each occupational level, including the highest managerial and professional levels...

"All Government support for and privileges granted to existing foreign investments would be ended. New private corporate foreign investments would be completely prohibited or sharply curtailed. This would encourage economic growth in the United States, by making it not longer possible for big corporations to give priority to overseas operations while cutting back at home..."

Friday, March 20, 2009

Obama's FCC Chairman-Designate Genachowski's Conflicts-of-Interest

The Federal Communications Commission [FCC] is supposed to regulate the U.S. telecommunications/media industry in the public interest. Yet the Democratic Obama Regime's FCC Chairman-Designate Julius Genachowski has apparently worked for over 10 years on behalf of some of the same telecommunications/media industry special corporate interests that the FCC regulates. As the website of FCC Chairman-Designate Genachowski's Launchbox private media business firm notes:

"Julius Genachowski was a senior executive for eight years at IAC/InterActiveCorp (1997-2005) , serving as Chief of Business Operations, General Counsel, and a member of Barry Diller’s Office of the Chairman, and playing a key role in IAC’s growth to become a multibillion-dollar global e-commerce and new media company.

"He is cofounder & managing director of Rock Creek Ventures, and a special advisor at General Atlantic.

"He is chairman and cofounder of Thummit, and has served on the Boards of Directors or Advisors of several companies, including Web.com, Ticketmaster, The Motley Fool, Beliefnet (sold to NewsCorp), Truveo (sold to AOL), and Rapt (sold to Microsoft)."


Ironically, despite the Obama Regime's FCC Chairman-Designate Genachowski's recent ties to telecommunications/media conglomerates, the FCC's website makes the following claim:

“The FCC is directed by five Commissioners appointed by the President and confirmed by the Senate for 5-year terms, except when filling an unexpired term. The President designates one of the Commissioners to serve as Chairperson. Only three Commissioners may be members of the same political party. None of them can have a financial interest in any Commission-related business."

In his 1967 classic book of power structure research, Who Rules America?, G. William Domhoff indicated, however, why the federal government regulatory agencies generally do not represent the public interest very effectively, when he wrote the following:

"The unwieldy bureaucracy of regulatory agencies, which are often styled as a fourth branch of government, is a jungle of self-contained entities, each one beholden to the constituent group it is supposed to regulate. There are 9 such agencies, among the best known of which are the Federal Trade Commission (FTC), the Federal Communications Commission (FCC),… the Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC), and the Federal Power Commission (FPC). The constituent groups--the industries of the American business aristocracy that the agencies supposedly regulate--control the regulatory agencies in several ways. First, through committees and associations of specific industries, the industries give advice to the agencies. Second, they are able to control key appointments to the agencies by providing as candidates for the positions corporation executives, corporation lawyers, and various other salaried specialists. Most importantly, the industries can appeal to the President to block appointments that are not acceptable to them. Indeed, appointive power is the only power which the Executive branch legally holds over the regulatory agencies, which are not responsible to it...

"Since no government report or academic study yet published contradicts our claim that those who are supposedly being regulated dominate the regulatory agencies, it is not necessary to go into laborious detail on any one agency. The reader is referred to Henry Kariel's The Decline of American Pluralism, Bernard Nossiter's The Mythmakers, and Grant McConnell's Private Power and American Democracy for relevant examples and detailed bibliography. A quote from one of the sources on regulatory agencies will suffice. It is from Judge Lee Loevinger, who was head of the Antitrust Division of the Department of Justice at the time of the drug hearings in the early 1960's:

"`Unfortunately, the history of every regulatory agency in the government is that it comes to represent the industry or groups it's supposed to control. All of these agencies were fine when they were first set up, but before long they became infiltrated by the regulatees and are now more or less run by and for them. It's not a question of venality, either. More, the agency people consort with this or that representative of some special-interest group, and finally they all come to think alike. Every company that's concerned about government control and is big enough to manage it hires a man--or maybe four or five men--at anywhere from thirty to seventy thousand dollars a year [in 1960s money] to find out what we're up to. And, by God, they find out! They wine and dine the agency people and get to be great friends with them. Like a lot of people without much money, some bureaucrats are impressed by being around big shots and by the big life. Sooner or later, all of these agencies end up with constituents. And they represent them damned well, too.'"


So don't expect the Democratic Obama Regime's FCC to democratically enforce anti-trust laws within the world of the Big Media conglomerate monopolies; or work too hard to finally democratically transfer control of the radio and television airwaves in the USA from the special private corporate interests and global media barons back to the people of the United States.

Thursday, March 19, 2009

Obama Regime Solicitor General's AIG & Pro-Israeli Government Lobby Links?

Did you notice that the former Williams & Connolly D.C. law-lobbying firm associate and Clinton White House Staff member-lawyer that Democratic President Obama appointed to be U.S. Solicitor General, Elena Kagan, both sat on a "non-profit" board with an AIG executive and spoke at an American Friends of the Hebrew University/lobby function honoring a Goldman Sachs executive?

As the Equal Justice Works website notes, U.S. Solicitor General Kagan recently sat on the Equal Justice Works “non-profit” board next to Anastasia “Stasia” Kelly; and “Anastasia `Stasia' Kelly is the executive vice president and general counsel and senior regulatory and compliance officer of American Insurance Group (AIG)” who “leads a worldwide legal and regulatory team and manages the Corporate Secretary function of this international insurance and financial services firm.”

And, as the Jewish Forward newspaper’s website revealed:

"Unlike Jewish women comics who tend to malign their mothers, Elena Kagan, dean of Harvard Law School (whose awesome curriculum vitae includes a stint as associate counsel to the president (1995-1999), paid homage to hers. At the October 19 American Friends of the Hebrew University lawyers lunch at Cipriani 42nd Street, Kagan told the sea of suits that (despite all her accomplishments) her mother “would be proud” that she was the keynote speaker at this George A. Katz “Torch of Learning” luncheon honoring Robert Katz, a philanthropist and partner at The Goldman Sachs Group, Inc".

So don't expect the White Corporate Male Power Structure’s Democratic Obama Administration to go into court against any of the AIG, Goldman Sachs, or AIPAC executives who may have been recently involved in either white collar crimes or the support of the Israeli War Machine’s war crimes in Gaza.

Wednesday, March 18, 2009

Aronowitz's Alternative Jobs Creation Plan Of 2005

If you're wondering what an alternative anti-corporate left jobs creation program to the Democratic Obama Regime’s "Corporate Stimulus" economic program (for yet another jobless recovery) might look like, here's what CUNY Grad School Professor Stanley Aronowitz proposed in his 2005 book Just Around The Corner: The Paradox of the Jobless Recovery:

"Slightly less than 10 percent of the annual military budget (not counting emergency Iraq funds), $50 billion, would create almost 2.5 million jobs...Jobs could be created to build low-and moderate-rental or limited-equity cooperative housing (where `owners' are obliged to sell their apartments back to the co-op rather than offer them for sale in the private market)...

"...The housing story of the postwar era has been one of federal, state and local abandonment and betrayal of the brave New Deal public-housing program. It was replaced by a program that used public funds to subsidize private developers...

"Where will we get the funds for creating public jobs and for building new housing...? We urgently need to reinstitute a progressive tax system where large corporations and wealthy individuals are required to pay their fair share and no individual or profitable business is exempt from paying taxes. In addition, in the interest of creating these jobs, loopholes for upper-middle-income taxpayers should be closed. And the bloated military budget, much of which neither enhances our security nor is justified if we had a reasonable foreign policy that was not oriented toward empire, could be slashed and reorganized. The savings could help fund a labor-intensive public-service jobs program.

"Would this jobs program require a new government institution such as the New Deal Public Works and Works Project Administration (PWA and WPA)? Probably...It would be important to stipulate that these are public jobs to expand public goods, and slots should not be created to subsidize wages in the private sector. Right now, huge quantities of federal funds are shoveled into private contractors' pockets...

"...When will working people share in the benefits of the technological revolution of our time?

"We need to amend the Wage and Hour Act to provide for overtime pay for work performed after 6 hours in any day, and after 30 hours a week...

"What to do about the unwaged and the underwaged?...America needs a basic-income guarantee...It is time to revive the concept of a basic guaranteed income for all Americans...

"...Corporations that register offshore must be required to pay U.S. taxes. Those who avoid such taxes should lose their right to sell their goods and services in this country. (Of all U.S. corporations, 60 percent failed to pay taxes in 2003. Many of them were registered in another country, usually a Caribbean site; others simply took advantage of gaping loopholes in U.S. tax law.)"

Tuesday, March 17, 2009

Truthout's Moyers/Schumann Foundation Connection

On its website, the Truthout.org alternative media group makes the following claim:

“…We are almost entirely reader-supported. There is absolutely no controlling financial interest behind this organization. Over 95% of our financing comes from small, individual donations. The remainder comes from a small number of grants…We depend solely upon our readership for survival, and so we answer to them alone.”

Yet according to the Schumann Center for Media & Democracy’s Form 990 filing for 2007, Truthout.org was given a grant of $500,000 by the Schumann Center for Media & Democracy “for general support to strengthen editorial content through 2008.”

The president of the Schumann Center for Media & Democracy that subsidizes the Truthout.org website is Bill Moyers, the former Johnson White House Press Secretary turned-PBS show producer/host. Besides funding the Truthout.org web site, the Schumann Center for Media & Democracy also owned stock in the following corporations in 2008: Goldman Sachs; American International Group; Fannie Mae; J.P. Morgan Chase; Wachovia; Washington Mutual; Wells Fargo; Exxon Mobil; Chevron; ConocoPhilips; Royal Dutch Shell; General Motors; Ford Motor; Time Warner; Time Warner Cable; Time Warner Telecom; Viacom; CBS; Yahoo; Microsoft; Google; General Electric/NBC; Disney/ABC; United Technologies; Boeing; United Health Group; Starbucks; McDonald’s; and Coca-Cola

Moyers’ Schumann Center for Media & Democracy also gave the Fairness & Accuracy In Reporting [FAIR] alternative media group a grant of $500,000 in 2007. In addition, the Institute for Public Affairs/In These Times magazine alternative media publication was given a $200,000 grant by the Schumann Center for Media & Democracy, while the Independent Media Institute/AlterNet alternative media group was given a $500,000 grant by Moyers’ foundation in 2007.

Between May 1, 2007 and April 30, 2008, the “non-profit” Truthout.org’s total revenues of $1,979,,617 exceeded its total expenses of $1,699,495 by over $290,000, according to its Form 990 filing for 2007. The same Truthout.org financial statement also indicated that the president of the “non-profit” Truthout.org alternative media group, Marc Ash, was paid an annual salary of $207,933 in 2008.

Monday, March 16, 2009

Iraq's Post-December 1963 History Revisited: Conclusion

(See parts 1-6 below)

The history of Iraq is still being influenced by 150,000 U.S. occupation troops and 200,000 private contractors. Yet the mainstream "educational television" stations of the Public Broadcasting Service (PBS) often appear more eager to broadcast programs about the history of rock music since 1960 than programs about the history of Iraq.

But as Rashid Khalidi observed in the introduction to the 2005 edition of his Resurrecting Empire, "the hubris that allowed Pentagon planners to think that they were somehow immune to the lessons of history produced a grossly mismanaged occupation that has become hated by most Iraqis and has engendered fierce resistance." U.S. anti-war activists, however, may find some knowledge of post-December 1963 Iraqi people's history of use in debating with U.S. opponents of an immediate U.S. military withdrawal from Iraq in 2009.


One result of the change in U.S. government policy toward Iraq after August 1990 has been continued suffering for most people in Iraq since 1991. At least 100,000 Iraqis were killed by the Pentagon's 1991 attack on Iraq, for example. Another 1 million Iraqis died as a result of the U.S. government-organized economic embargo between 1990 and 2001, according to a United Nations estimate.

Continued U.S. military attacks on Iraq and U.S. military intervention in Iraq's internal affairs has been a bipartisan policy of the U.S. White Male Corporate Power Structure's political duopoly. The Democratic Clinton Administration, for example, launched 27 cruise missiles against Iraq in 1996 and 400 cruise missiles against Iraq in December 1998. In addition, Clinton also ordered 600 air raids that killed many people in Iraq in December 1998.

More recently, of course, the Republican Bush Administration’s war machine attacked and occupied Iraq in March, 2003, under the false pretext that the Iraqi government was developing "weapons of mass destruction." Tens of thousands of Iraqis and over 4,500 U.S. occupation troops have died as a result of this latest U.S. military intervention in Iraq. Yet in March 2009, the U.S. military occupation force of nearly 150,000 troops and 200,000 private contractors has still not been withdrawn from Iraq by the Democratic Obama Administration..

But isn't it about time that the people in Iraq were finally allowed to determine for themselves the direction that the people's history of their country should go?

Sunday, March 15, 2009

Iraq's Post-December 1963 History Revisited: Part 6

(See parts 1-5 below)

The history of Iraq is still being influenced by 150,000 U.S. occupation troops and 200,000 private contractors. Yet the mainstream "educational television" stations of the Public Broadcasting Service (PBS) often appear more eager to broadcast programs about the history of rock music since 1960 than programs about the history of Iraq.

But as Rashid Khalidi observed in the introduction to the 2005 edition of his Resurrecting Empire, "the hubris that allowed Pentagon planners to think that they were somehow immune to the lessons of history produced a grossly mismanaged occupation that has become hated by most Iraqis and has engendered fierce resistance." U.S. anti-war activists, however, may find some knowledge of post-December 1963 Iraqi people's history of use in debating with U.S. opponents of an immediate U.S. military withdrawal from Iraq in 2009.


After the then-Iraqi Internal and Military Intelligence Chief, Saddam Hussein, took over as president of the Ba'th regime in 1979, the repression against the surviving Iraqi communist activists again intensified even more. In April 1979, Saddam Hussein's Ba'th regime again completely outlawed the Iraq Communist Party. According to The People's History of Iraq book, "it is estimated that between 20,000 and 30,000 people were arrested in the period 1979-81 (thousands of whom were subsequently detained), while hundreds [of Communist militants] `disappeared' or were killed."

Not surprisingly, after Iraq's Ba'th government ordered the Iraqi military to attack Iran in September 1980, the surviving Iraq Communist Party leaders decided to retreat into Iraqi Kurdistan and form an alliance with Kurdish nationalist activists in Iraq. In 1981, the Iraq Communist Party then expressed its support for the overthrow of the Ba'th regime by means of armed struggle in the countryside.

The Ba'th regime's war with Iran lasted eight years and cost the lives of about 500,000 Iraqis and 500,000 Iranians, before an August 1988 cease-fire agreement between the Iraqi and Iranian governments was finally reached. War damage in Iraq resulting from the Ba'th regime's policy of 1980s military adventurism also exceeded $67 billion.

During the 1980-1988 war, domestic political opponents of the Ba'th regime and war against Iran continued to be persecuted. Between 250,000 and 400,000 Iraqis of Kurdish or Shiite background in Southern Iraq were also deported to Iran in the early 1980s by the Ba'th regime. In 1981, meanwhile, an Iraqi nuclear plant near Baghdad was bombed and destroyed by the Israeli government's jets, in violation of international law.

After 1984, the U.S. government replaced the Soviet Union as the major supplier of foreign military aid to Saddam Hussein's Ba'th regime. But when the Ba'th regime moved Iraqi troops into the oil-rich area of Kuwait that Iraqi nationalists have traditionally claimed as part of Iraq's national territory in August 1990, the U.S. government then adopted a more hostile policy towards Saddam Hussein's Iraqi government. (end of part 6)

Saturday, March 14, 2009

Iraq's Post-December 1963 History Revisited: Part 5

(See parts 1-4 below)

The history of Iraq is still being influenced by 150,000 U.S. occupation troops and 200,000 private contractors. Yet the mainstream "educational television" stations of the Public Broadcasting Service (PBS) often appear more eager to broadcast programs about the history of rock music since 1960 than programs about the history of Iraq.

But as Rashid Khalidi observed in the introduction to the 2005 edition of his Resurrecting Empire, "the hubris that allowed Pentagon planners to think that they were somehow immune to the lessons of history produced a grossly mismanaged occupation that has become hated by most Iraqis and has engendered fierce resistance." U.S. anti-war activists, however, may find some knowledge of post-December 1963 Iraqi people's history of use in debating with U.S. opponents of an immediate U.S. military withdrawal from Iraq in 2009.


After the U.S. government and Israeli government-backed Shah of Iran's regime seized the Arab island of Abu Musa in November 1971, the post-1968 Ba'th regime in Iraq decided to sign a 15-year treaty of friendship with the Soviet Union.

So at the request of the Shah of Iran (who was later overthrown in early 1979), the Republican Nixon Administration's CIA then began to provide $16 million in covert military aid between 1972 and 1975 to the leaders of the Kurdish campaign for self-determination within Iraq. By providing covert military aid to the Kurdish leaders, U.S. State Department officials like Henry Kissinger apparently also hoped to de-stabilize a Ba'th regime which it now felt was becoming too friendly with the Soviet Union.

Despite the Ba'th Party leadership's previous history of executing Iraqi communist activists, the post-1968 Ba'th regime's domestic policy of social democratic economic reforms and foreign policy shift towards friendship with the Soviet Union, apparently persuaded the surviving Iraq Communist Party leaders to temporarily become supporters of the Ba'th regime. On May 14, 1972, for example, some Iraqi communist activists, as individuals, agreed to take positions within the Ba'th government; and, the following month, Iraqi communist activists were pleased by the June 1, 1972 nationalization by the Ba'th regime of the Iraq Petroleum Company that had previously been owned by UK and U.S. oil companies. Support for the post-1968 Ba'th regime by the surviving Iraqi communist activists continued to increase after September 1973, when the Iraq Communist Party was legalized by this Ba'th regime and allowed to publish its party newspaper openly.

Between 1972 and 1976, however, Ba'th Party activists gained control of the Iraqi trade unions, peasant unions and other mass organizations which had, historically, tended to be led by activists who were sympathetic to the Iraq Communist Party. An agreement with the Shah of Iran in 1975 also made it easier for the Ba'th regime to suppress the Kurdish campaign for self-determination in Iraq in the late 1970s.

Although the Soviet Union shipped $4.9 billion in weapons to the Ba'th regime between 1975 and 1979, by 1978 the anti-communist Ba'th regime leaders, however, were again repressing the surviving Iraqi communist activists. In March 1978, for example, twelve Iraqi communist activists were executed for "conducting non-Ba’thist political activity within the armed forces," according to the Haymarket Books' A People's History of Iraq book by Ilario Salucci. Mass arrests of Iraqi communist activists by the Ba'th regime were also made during the summer and fall of 1978. (end of part 5)

Friday, March 13, 2009

Iraq's Post-December 1963 History Revisited: Part 4

(See parts 1-3 below)

The history of Iraq is still being influenced by 150,000 U.S. occupation troops and 200,000 private contractors. Yet the mainstream "educational television" stations of the Public Broadcasting Service (PBS) often appear more eager to broadcast programs about the history of rock music since 1960 than programs about the history of Iraq.

But as Rashid Khalidi observed in the introduction to the 2005 edition of his Resurrecting Empire, "the hubris that allowed Pentagon planners to think that they were somehow immune to the lessons of history produced a grossly mismanaged occupation that has become hated by most Iraqis and has engendered fierce resistance." U.S. anti-war activists, however, may find some knowledge of post-December 1963 Iraqi people's history of use in debating with U.S. opponents of an immediate U.S. military withdrawal from Iraq in 2009.


In April 1969, tension between the U.S.-government-backed Shah of Iran's regime and the Ba'th regime increased when the Shah declared a 1937 Treaty which gave Iraq control of the Shatt-al-Arab border waterway null and void and ordered Iranian troops to march to the Iranian-Iraqi border in large numbers.

During this same year an alliance developed between the anti-communist Ba'th regime and the pro-Soviet German Democratic Republic [GDR] which led the Ba'th regime to temporarily tolerate the Iraq Communist Party until March 1970.

On March 21, 1970, however, the Ba'th regime arrested the surviving Iraq Communist Party leadership and hundreds of surviving Iraq Communist Party members. Two months before--following an unsuccessful January 1970 Shah of Iran-backed right-wing coup attempt in Iraq--the Ba'th regime had hung or shot 29 Iraqi military officers and 12 Iraqi civilians for allegedly being involved in the coup plot.

The post-1968 Ba'th regime apparently combined its policy of domestic political repression with a policy of democratic economic reform The Ba'th regime prohibited the expulsion of Iraqi peasants from their land, further reduced the maximum amount of land a large Iraqi landlord could own and freed Iraqi peasants from previously required tax payments.

The post-1968 Ba'th regime also introduced national health insurance for all Iraqis, mechanized agriculture, created people's markets and reduced middleman exploitation of the Iraqi peasantry. Minimum wages for Iraqi workers and state subsidies for bread were also increased by the Ba'th regime. In addition, price controls that benefited Iraqi consumers and more extensive social security benefits for Iraqis were established by the Ba'th regime. (end of part 4)

Thursday, March 12, 2009

Iraq's Post-December 1963 History Revisited: Part 3

(See parts 1-2 below)

The history of Iraq is still being influenced by 150,000 U.S. occupation troops and 200,000 private contractors. Yet the mainstream "educational television" stations of the Public Broadcasting Service (PBS) often appear more eager to broadcast programs about the history of rock music since 1960 than programs about the history of Iraq.

But as Rashid Khalidi observed in the introduction to the 2005 edition of his Resurrecting Empire, "the hubris that allowed Pentagon planners to think that they were somehow immune to the lessons of history produced a grossly mismanaged occupation that has become hated by most Iraqis and has engendered fierce resistance." U.S. anti-war activists, however, may find some knowledge of post-December 1963 Iraqi people's history of use in debating with U.S. opponents of an immediate U.S. military withdrawal from Iraq in 2009.


The Ba'th Party remained in control of the Iraqi government until the 2003 invasion of Iraq by the Republican Bush Administration. And by 1976, the number of Ba'th Party activists in Iraq had increased to 10,000 and the number of Ba'th Party supporters in Iraq had jumped to about 500,000.

In 1967, the Democratic Johnson Administration had sent former U.S. Treasury Secretary Robert Anderson to Baghdad to assist the Ba'th Party, according to a December 24, 2003 column by Larry Everest which was posted on The Athens News website. Reuters also reported in an April 20, 2003 article, titled "Ex-U.S. Official Says CIA Aided Ba'thists," that former U.S. State Department official and National Security Council staff member Roger Morris revealed that in 1968 "the CIA encouraged a palace revolt among Ba'th party elements." According to Morris, the post-July 1968 Ba'th regime "was unquestionably midwifed by the United States, and the [CIA's] involvement there was really primary."

Although still denying the Iraq Communist Party legal status, the post-July 1968 second Ba'th regime pardoned all Iraqi political prisoners in September 1968; and it allowed exiled Iraq Communist Party activists to return to Iraq.

But in 1969, at least 20 members of the Iraq Communist Party faction that had split off to form the "Iraq Communist Party-Central Command" group were arrested by the regime and killed by torture. After breaking down under torture, the surviving leader of the Iraq Communist Party-Central Command faction, Aziz al-Hajj, was put on Iraqi television by the Ba'th regime to call on his followers to cooperate with the Ba'th regime. In addition, 53 Iraqis were also executed on alleged spying charges by the Ba'th regime in 1969. (end of part 3)

Wednesday, March 11, 2009

Iraq's Post-December 1963 History Revisited: Part 2

(See part 1 below)

The history of Iraq is still being influenced by 150,000 U.S. occupation troops and 200,000 private contractors. Yet the mainstream "educational television" stations of the Public Broadcasting Service (PBS) often appear more eager to broadcast programs about the history of rock music since 1960 than programs about the history of Iraq.

But as Rashid Khalidi observed in the introduction to the 2005 edition of his Resurrecting Empire, "the hubris that allowed Pentagon planners to think that they were somehow immune to the lessons of history produced a grossly mismanaged occupation that has become hated by most Iraqis and has engendered fierce resistance." U.S. anti-war activists, however, may find some knowledge of post-December 1963 Iraqi people's history of use in debating with U.S. opponents of an immediate U.S. military withdrawal from Iraq in 2009.


The Ba'th Party was repressed within Iraq between November 18, 1963 and July 1968 by the Aref brothers' nationalist, yet anti-communist, military regime.

But Ba'th activists of Shiite religious backgrounds were apparently repressed more severely by the Aref regime's police (who were primarily of Sunni religious background) than were the Ba'thists of Sunni religious background. So the apparently CIA-backed Ba'thists of Sunni religious background from Takrit were thus able to reorganize the Ba'th Party in 1964 under the leadership of the then-40-year-old Said Ahmad Hassan Al-Bakr and the then-27-year-old Saddam Hussein.

And by July 1968, the Ba'th Party was able to return to power in Iraq by means of two coups--which were each supported by the U.S. oil companies that were angered by the Rahman-Aref regime's oil deal with the Soviet Union.

In the first July 1968 coup, an alliance of Ba'th Party leaders and a clique of palace officers who were Rahman-Aref's closest advisors overthrew the Rahman-Aref regime.

At 2 a.m. on July 17, 1968 the head of the Ba'th Party's Republican Guards, Abd-uf-Rahman ad-Daud, occupied the Broadcasting House in Baghdad with a number of tanks and Republican Guard battalions. Simultaneously, the head of the Rahman-Aref regime's military intelligence network, Abd-u-Razzaq an-Nayet, took control of the Iraqi Ministry of Defense and arrested Iraqi Premier Taher Yahaya.

Ba'thist tanks then encircled the Iraqi presidential palace at 3:30 a.m. and Rahman-Aref was arrested.

At 7:28 a.m., the new pro-Ba'thist coup regime leaders then broadcast a proclamation; and by 9:30 a.m. the ousted Rahman-Aref had been flown to the UK.

A second coup was then initiated by the apparently CIA-backed Ba'thist leaders on July 30, 1968 to remove the close advisors of Rahman-Aref who had supported the July 17, 1968 coup from their positions of power. After additional Iraqi military officers had been won over by the Ba'th leaders for this follow-up coup, the Iraqi Army's Tenth Brigade's tanks moved into Baghdad. The Rahman-Aref regime's military intelligence network head who had aligned with the Ba'th leaders to pull the July 17, 1968 coup, Abd-u-Razzaq an-Nayet, was then sent into exile.

The Iraqi head of state prior to the 2003 U.S. military occupation of Iraq (who was captured by U.S. troops on December 13, 2003 and later executed on December 30, 2006), Saddam Hussein, had headed the apparently CIA-backed Ba'th Party's National Security Bureau prior to the July 1968 Ba’th Party coups. And following the July 30, 1968 coup, Saddam Hussein was then given control of the second Ba'th regime's Internal Security and Military Intelligence government operations. (end of part 2)

Tuesday, March 10, 2009

Iraq's Post-December 1963 History Revisited: Part 1

The history of Iraq is still being influenced by 150,000 U.S. occupation troops and 200,000 private contractors. Yet the mainstream "educational television" stations of the Public Broadcasting Service (PBS) often appear more eager to broadcast programs about the history of rock music since 1960 than programs about the history of Iraq.

But as Rashid Khalidi observed in the introduction to the 2005 edition of his Resurrecting Empire, "the hubris that allowed Pentagon planners to think that they were somehow immune to the lessons of history produced a grossly mismanaged occupation that has become hated by most Iraqis and has engendered fierce resistance." U.S. anti-war activists, however, may find some knowledge of post-December 1963 Iraqi people's history of use in debating with U.S. opponents of an immediate U.S. military withdrawal from Iraq in 2009.


The first post-Ba'th regime in Iraq was headed by Abdel Salem Aref from November 18, 1963 until his death in a helicopter crash on April 13, 1966. At first, the anti-communist, but pro-Nasserist, pan-Arab nationalist Iraqi activists exercised a special influence on the post-Ba'th regime's policies; and Aref's government nationalized all Iraqi banks, all Iraqi insurance companies and 32 large Iraqi industrial and commercial firms on May 26, 1964.

But by July 1965, the political influence of the pro-Nasserist Iraqi activists had declined; and following their failed attempt to seize political power in Iraq in September 1965, the leading pro-Nasserist, pan-Arab nationalists fled the country.

The Iraqi activists who were leaders of the Iraq Communist Party branch in Kurdistan managed to escape execution or imprisonment between February and November 1963, during the first anti-communist Ba'th regime. And, initially, these surviving party leaders in Kurdistan expressed support for the anti-communist, but pro-Nasserist Aref regime--especially, in light of the 1964 improvement in relations between Nasser's government in Egypt and the USSR government (which the Iraq Communist Party considered to be its international political ally).

But after the Aref regime ordered the Iraqi military to continue to wage war in Kurdistan in opposition to Kurdish self-determination demands and began pursuing a less pro-Nasserist policy, the surviving Iraq Communist Party leaders began to characterize the Aref regime as dictatatorial. So on April 5, 1965, the Iraq Communist Party then called for the overthrow of the Aref regime.

By the spring of 1965, two-thirds of the Iraqi Army was bogged down in the Iraqi government's attempt to militarily suppress the Kurdish campaign for self-determination in Iraq. The membership of the Iraq Communist Party, meanwhile, was still about 5,000 at this time--despite the executions during the February 1963-November 1963 first era of of Ba'th Party rule in Iraq.

After Abdel Salem Aref's death in the 1966 helicopter crash, his brother--Major Abdel Rahman-Aref--succeeded him as Iraq's president. The following year, the Iraqi military only suffered casualties of 10 killed and 30 wounded, when it ineffectively supported the unsuccessful attempt by the Egyptian, Syrian and Jordanian armies to block the Israeli government's seizure of the Sinai Peninsula, the Gaza Strip, the West Bank, East Jerusalem and the Golan Heights, during the June 1967 "Six-Day War". And on July 10, 1967, an Iraqi politician named Taher Yahaya was chosen as the Rahman-Aref government's premier and asked to form a new cabinet.

Between April 1966 and June 1967, meanwhile, the Iraq Communist Party opposed Rahman-Aref's anti-communist and anti-Nasserist regime in Iraq; and--influenced by Che Guevara's writings on the Cuban Revolution--apparently considered adopting a political strategy of guerrilla warfare in Iraq. And by September 17, 1967 a faction within the Iraq Communist Party, the "Iraq Communist Party -Central Command," had split from the main party and was calling for armed struggle in Iraq, a unitary Arab-Jewish democratic state in Palestine and an Arab people's liberation war against all the other undemocratic, repressive Arab states.

Yet on December 24, 1967, the Rahman-Aref regime in Iraq, under Taher Yahaya's premiership, seemed to be seeking closer economic ties to the Soviet Union. And an agreement was reached for the Soviet Union to furnish Iraq with oil drilling machines for use in its North Ramallah oil field and to help the Iraqi government market the oil of Iraq's state-controlled Iraq National Oil Company--despite the fact that the Iraq Communist Party regarded the Rahman-Aref regime that the Soviet Union was doing business with as an oppressive government (end of part 1).

Monday, March 9, 2009

Iraq's Post-1950 History Revisited: Part 17

(See parts 1-16 below)

Most people in the United States would like to see the nearly 150,000 U.S. troops and 200,000 private contractors who are still occupying Iraqi soil (in support of special U.S. corporate interests) to finally be withdrawn from Iraq by Easter 2009. But the Democratic Obama regime is still not willing to immediately bring U.S. troops and private contractors in Iraq back home; and the Obama regime apparently plans to leave between 30,000 and 50,000 U.S. occupation troops stationed in Iraq as "military advisors" until January 1, 2012.

Yet if the Obama Administration officials responsible for authorizing the use of U.S. armed forces in Iraq--like U.S. Secretary of State Hillary Clinton--had known more about Iraq's post-1950 history, perhaps U.S. troops and private contractors would not still be spending another Easter in Iraq in 2009?


After undemocratically seizing Iraqi state power in February 1963, the Ba'th Party leaders "discovered that their opposition to" Qasim's "government was the only factor that held them together," according to The Old Social Classes and the Revolutionary Movements of Iraq. And divisions between pro and anti-Nasser Ba'th leaders, as well as between right and left pan-Arab nationalist Ba'th leaders, led to the first Ba'th regime in Iraq's collapse in November 1963, while 7,000 Iraqi communists still remained imprisoned.

On November 11, 1963, 15 armed Iraqi Army military officers burst into a Ba'th Congress meeting, seized the Ba'th left nationalist faction leaders at gun point and flew them to Madrid. Then, on November 18, 1963, Abdel Salem Aref, his brother, Brigade General Abdel Rahman and their Iraqi Army supporters suppressed the Ba'th National Guard Militia (which had increased in size from 5,000 to 34,000 between February and August 1963) and bombed the Ba'th National Guard Milita headquarters. The first Ba'th regime was thus overthrown; and a new, pro-Nasserist regime was established with Abdel Salem Aref as Head of State.

Revisiting Iraq’s post-1950s history between 1950 to November 1963 thus indicates that U.S. government involvement in Iraq's internal political affairs led to major human rights violations in Iraq by the first U.S.-supported Ba'th regime in 1963. As the Haymarket Books published A People's History of Iraq by Ilario Salucci noted in its chronology of events:

"[In 1963] The Ba'th Party strengthens its ties with the United States, and the CIA lends its support to the party's repression of more than ten thousand people: the bloodbath of that year is to remain in the memories of the Iraqi people forever."

Opponents of an immediate withdrawal of U.S. troops from Iraq by the Obama-Clinton Regime sometimes claim the U.S. government still has a moral right to attempt to exercise a special influence on Iraqi history, despite the record of human suffering produced by U.S. government intervention in Iraq since 1950.

But U.S. reparations for the Iraqi people, rather than continued U.S. military occupation of Iraq until January 1, 2012, would seem like the more morally appropriate and democratic U.S. foreign policy to implement in 2009. (end of part 17)

Sunday, March 8, 2009

Iraq's Post-1950 History Revisited: Part 16

(See parts 1-15 below)

Most people in the United States would like to see the nearly 150,000 U.S. troops and 200,000 private contractors who are still occupying Iraqi soil (in support of special U.S. corporate interests) to finally be withdrawn from Iraq by Easter 2009. But the Democratic Obama regime is still not willing to immediately bring U.S. troops and private contractors in Iraq back home; and the Obama regime apparently plans to leave between 30,000 and 50,000 U.S. occupation troops stationed in Iraq as "military advisors" until January 1, 2012.

Yet if the Obama Administration officials responsible for authorizing the use of U.S. armed forces in Iraq--like U.S. Secretary of State Hillary Clinton--had known more about Iraq's post-1950 history, perhaps U.S. troops and private contractors would not still be spending another Easter in Iraq in 2009?


Officially, 149 Iraq Communist Party members were executed between February 8, 1963 and the end of the initial 1960s period of Ba'th Party rule in Iraq in November 1963, including 7 of the 19 members of the Iraq Communist Party's Central Committee. But the actual number of Iraqi communist activists executed after the February 8, 1963 coup was apparently much higher. According to Said Aburish's book, A Brutal Friendship: The West and the Arab Elite:

"The number of people eliminated remains confused and estimates range from 700 to 30,000. Putting various statements by Iraqi exiles together, in all likelihood the figure was nearer five thousand…There were many ordinary people who were eliminated because they continued to resist after the coup became an accomplished fact, but there were also senior army officers, lawyers, professors, teachers, doctors and others. There were pregnant women and old men among them and many were tortured to death in the presence of their young children…The British Committee for Human Rights in Iraq, one of the few international groups to investigate what happened after the coup, confirmed all this in a 1964 report and compared the Ba'thist hit squads to `Hitlerian shock troops.'"

The CIA-backed Ba'th Party was able to overthrow the Qasim regime and then violate the human rights of thousands of Iraqi leftists in February 1963, despite there only being about 15,000 Ba'thist civilian supporters within Iraqi society at that time. But even after it eliminated its Iraqi communist political opponents and held Iraqi state power for the first time between February and November 1963, "the Ba'th was never able at any time to bring together one-third of the crowds that the Communists attracted in 1959," according to The Old Social Classes and the Revolutionary Movements of Iraq book.

Although the Iraq Communist Party enjoyed much more support in Iraqi society between 1958 and early 1963 than the Ba'th Party, surviving Iraq Communist Party leaders later concluded in a 1967 internal self-criticism document that:

"We gave ourselves up to the delusion that we could preserve the mighty revolutionary army, which we built under the extraordinary revolutionary circumstances of 1958-1959, in a condition of passive defense or passive watchfulness indefinitely."

(end of part 16)

Saturday, March 7, 2009

Iraq's Post-1950 History Revisited: Part 15

(See parts 1-14 below)

Most people in the United States would like to see the nearly 150,000 U.S. troops and 200,000 private contractors who are still occupying Iraqi soil (in support of special U.S. corporate interests) to finally be withdrawn from Iraq by Easter 2009. But the Democratic Obama regime is still not willing to immediately bring U.S. troops and private contractors in Iraq back home; and the Obama regime apparently plans to leave between 30,000 and 50,000 U.S. occupation troops stationed in Iraq as "military advisors" until January 1, 2012.

Yet if the Obama Administration officials responsible for authorizing the use of U.S. armed forces in Iraq--like U.S. Secretary of State Hillary Clinton--had known more about Iraq's post-1950 history, perhaps U.S. troops and private contractors would not still be spending another Easter in Iraq in 2009?


Following the Kennedy Administration-backed February 8, 1963 military coup in Iraq, the 39-year old poet who had been Secretary General of the Iraq Communist Party since 1955, Husain ar-Radi (a/k/a Salam 'Adil), was arrested by the new Ba'th regime on February 20, 1963. But The Old Social Classes and The Revolutionary Movements of Iraq book noted that "although various means were employed to make him speak, he did not yield;" and "four days later he died under torture."

By March 1963, an estimated 10,000 Iraq Communist Party members had been arrested by the Ba'th regime and many imprisoned Iraqi leftist activists were not treated gently. As the book The Old Social Classes and the Revolutionary Movements of Iraq recalled:

"In the cellars of an-Ninayah Palace…were found all sorts of loathsome instruments of torture, including electric wire with pincers, pointed iron stakes on which prisoners were made to sit, and a machine which still bore traces of chopped-off fingers. Small heaps of blooded clothing were scattered about, and there were pools on the floor and stains over the walls."

And even some members of the anti-communist Ba'th Party apparently began to protest against the way some of their imprisoned Iraqi leftist political opponents were being tortured after the February 8, 1963 coup. (end of part 15)

Friday, March 6, 2009

African-American Male Worker Jobless Rate Under Obama Regime: 16.1 Percent In February

The official “not-seasonally adjusted” unemployment rate for African-American male workers over 20 years-of-age in the United States under the Democratic Obama Administration increased from 15.8 percent to 16.1 percent between January 2009 and February 2009; while the “seasonally adjusted” unemployment rate for African-American male workers increased from 14.1 percent to 14.9 percent, according to the latest Bureau of Labor Statistics data.

The “not-seasonally adjusted” jobless rate for all African-American workers increased from 13.4 percent to 13.8 percent during this same period; while the “seasonally adjusted” jobless rate for all African-American workers increased to 13.4 percent.

For all U.S. workers over 20 years-of-age, the “not-seasonally adjusted” jobless rate jumped from 8.5 percent to 8.9 percent between January 2009 and February 2009; while the “seasonally adjusted” jobless rate for all U.S. workers increased to 8.1 percent.

The “not-seasonally adjusted” unemployment rate for white male workers also increased from 8.3 percent to 9 percent between January 2009 and February 2009. In addition, the “not-seasonally adjusted” jobless rate for Hispanic or Latino male workers increased from 11 percent to 12.1 percent between January 2009 and February 2009.

Between January 2009 and February 2009, the “seasonally adjusted” jobless rate for African-American youth between 16 and 19 years-of-age increased from 36.5 percent to 38.8 percent; while the “seasonally adjusted” jobless rate for white youth between 16 and 19 years-of-age was 19.1 percent.

According to the Bureau of Labor Statistics’ March 6, 2009 press release:

“The number of unemployed persons increased by 851,000 to 12.5 million in February…

“Among the unemployed, the number of job losers and persons who completed temporary jobs increased by 716,000 to 7.7 million in February…

“The number of long-term unemployed (those jobless for 27 weeks or more)increased by 270,000 to 2.9 million in February…

“In February, the number of persons who worked part time for economic reasons (sometimes referred to as involuntary part-time workers) rose by 787,000,reaching 8.6 million…This category includes persons who would like to work full time but were working part time because their hours had been cut back or because they were unable to find full-time jobs…

“There were 731,000 discouraged workers in February…Discouraged workers are persons not currently looking for work because they believe no jobs are available for them…

“Total nonfarm payroll employment dropped by 651,000 in February…

“Employment in professional and business services fell by 180,000 in February. The temporary help industry lost 78,000 jobs over the month….In February, job declines also occurred in services to buildings and dwellings (-17,000), architectural and engineering services (-16,000), and business support services (-12,000).

“Widespread job losses continued in manufacturing in February (-168,000). The majority of the decline occurred in durable goods industries (-132,000), with the largest decreases in fabricated metal products (-28,000) and machinery (-25,000). Employment in nondurable goods manufacturing declined by 36,000 over the month.

“The construction industry lost 104,000 jobs in February…

“Employment in truck transportation declined by 33,000 in February…The information industry continued to lose jobs (-15,000)…

“Employment in financial activities continued to decline in February (-44,000).... In February, job losses occurred in real estate (-11,000); credit intermediation(-11,000); and securities, commodity contracts, and investments (-8,000).

“Retail trade employment fell by 40,000 over the month…In February, employment decreased in automobile dealerships (-9,000), sporting goods (-9,000), furniture and homefurnishing stores (-8,000), and building material and garden supply stores(-7,000). Employment in wholesale trade fell by 37,000 over the month,with nearly all of the decline occurring in durable goods.

“Employment in leisure and hospitality continued to trend down over the month (-33,000), with about half of the decrease in the accommodation industry (-18,000)…”

Thursday, March 5, 2009

Iraq's Post-1950 History Revisited: Part 14

(See parts 1-13 below)

Most people in the United States would like to see the nearly 150,000 U.S. troops and 200,000 private contractors who are still occupying Iraqi soil (in support of special U.S. corporate interests) to finally be withdrawn from Iraq by Easter 2009. But the Democratic Obama regime is still not willing to immediately bring U.S. troops and private contractors in Iraq back home; and the Obama regime apparently plans to leave between 30,000 and 50,000 U.S. occupation troops stationed in Iraq as "military advisors" until January 1, 2012.

Yet if the Obama Administration officials responsible for authorizing the use of U.S. armed forces in Iraq--like U.S. Secretary of State Hillary Clinton--had known more about Iraq's post-1950 history, perhaps U.S. troops and private contractors would not still be spending another Easter in Iraq in 2009?


Following the Democratic Kennedy Administration-backed February 8, 1963 military coup in Iraq, the then-pro-Ba'thist colonel, Abdel Salem Aref, was named to head the post-coup Ba'th regime in Iraq. And between February and November 1963, there apparently was a reign of terror against Iraqi leftists during this first Ba'th regime.

According to the 1978-published book, The Old Social Classes and the Revolutionary Movements of Iraq:

"The new rulers had a past score to settle and, in their revengeful ardor, went to unfortunate extremes. Upon the slightest resistance on or a mere suspicion of intent to resist, Communists--real or hypothetical--were felled out of hand. The number of those seized so taxed the existing prisons that sports clubs, movie theatres, private houses, An-Rihayah Palace…were turned into places of confinement. The arrests were made in accordance with lists prepared beforehand."

The Kennedy Administration's CIA apparently helped prepare the Ba'th regime's arrests "lists." As the now-deceased King Hussein of Jordan told the Al Ahraim newspaper on September 27, 1963:

"I know for a certainty that what happened on 8 February [1963] had the support of American intelligence. Some of those who now rule in Bagdad do not know of this thing but I am aware of the truth. Numerous meetings were held between the Ba'th party and American Intelligence, the most important in Kuwait. Do you know that on 8 February a secret radio beamed to Iraq was supplying the men who pulled the coup with the names and addresses of the Communists there so that they could be arrested and executed?"

According to A Brutal Friendship--The West and the Arab Elite by Said Aburish, a Time magazine reporter named William McHale was apparently also an undercover CIA operative in Beirut who furnished Ba'th leaders with a list of Iraqi communist suspects. McHale had previously been expelled from Iraq on March 26, 1959, after interviewing Qasim and then writing a hostile article for Time magazine about the Qasim regime's successful suppression of the Ba'thist-supported 1959 coup attempt in Mosul.

In his April 10, 2003 investigative report, UPI Intelligence Correspondent Richard Sale also revealed that "the CIA provided the submachine gun-toting" Ba'thist National Guardsmen of the post-coup regime "with lists of suspected communists who were then jailed, interrogated, and summarily gunned down, according to former U.S. intelligence officials with intimate knowledge of the executions."

According to Sale's "Exclusive: Saddam key in early CIA plot" investigative report:

"Many suspected communists were killed outright, these sources said. [Unholy Babylon book author Adel] Darwish told UPI that the mass killings, presided over by Saddam, took place at Qasr al-Nehayat, literally, the Palace of the End.

"A former senior U.S. State Department official told UPI: `We were frankly glad to be rid of them. You ask that they get a fair trial? You have to be kidding. This was serious business.'”

"British scholar Con Coughlin, author of Saddam: King of Terror, quotes Jim Critchfield, then a senior Middle East agency official, as saying the killing of Qasim and the communists was regarded `as a great victory.' A former long-time covert U.S. intelligence operative and friend of Critchfield said: `Jim was an old Middle East hand. He wasn't sorry to see the communists go at all. Hey, we were playing for keeps.'"


(end of part 14)

Wednesday, March 4, 2009

Iraq's Post-1950 History Revisited: Part 13

(See parts 1-12 below)

Most people in the United States would like to see the nearly 150,000 U.S. troops and 200,000 private contractors who are still occupying Iraqi soil (in support of special U.S. corporate interests) to finally be withdrawn from Iraq by Easter 2009. But the Democratic Obama regime is still not willing to immediately bring U.S. troops and private contractors in Iraq back home; and the Obama regime apparently plans to leave between 30,000 and 50,000 U.S. occupation troops stationed in Iraq as "military advisors" until January 1, 2012.

Yet if the Obama Administration officials responsible for authorizing the use of U.S. armed forces in Iraq--like U.S. Secretary of State Hillary Clinton--had known more about Iraq's post-1950 history, perhaps U.S. troops and private contractors would not still be spending another Easter in Iraq in 2009?


At 8:30 a.m. on February 8, 1963, Brigade General Jalal al-Awqati, the pro-Iraq Communist Party Air Force chief, was assassinated near a confectionary shop in Baghdad. Next--at 9:30 a.m.--two Iraqi military jets first dive-bombed at Rashid Airport, making its runway unusable. Then they joined other Iraqi MIG-17s in firing rockets and cannons at the Iraqi Ministry of Defense.

From their camps, other Iraqi military troops were also ordered to then march and Baghdad's radio transmitter was seized by the Iraqi military coup-plotters. And by 9:40 a.m. a statement of the Ba'th-led coup plotters was being aired over the radio.

At 10 a.m., however, the Iraq Communist Party’s Central Committee issued a proclamation that called for resistance to the February 8, 1963 coup and stated:

"A worthless band of reactionary and conspiratorial officers has made a desperate attempt to seize power in preparation for the putting of our country back into the grip of imperialism and reaction."

Thousands of Iraq Communist Party and/or Qasim regime supporters then began massing in front of Iraq's Ministry of Defense, forming an outer ring. And when Qasim arrived at the Ministry of Defense at 10:30 a.m., the crowd of anti-coup demonstrators outside apparently was begging Ministry of Defense officials to distribute arms to it.

In addition, on the other side of Baghdad, meanwhile, Iraqi communist protesters tried to rush the Broadcasting House which the Ba'thist coup leaders had seized. But the Iraqi Army's Fourth Tank Regiment blocked the protesters from gaining control of Baghdad's radio transmitter.

At 11:30 a.m. hundreds of anti-coup protesters were then killed in front of the Ministry of Defense when an Iraqi Army tank regiment linked up with armed Ba'th militia members and fired on the mainly civilian protesters. Although the majority of Iraq's soldiers apparently were against the February 8, 1963 coup, they were indecisive, however, in attempting to resist the coup.

At 3 p.m. a battle to seize Qasim's headquarters at the Ministry of Defense began which did not end until noon of the following day, February 9, 1963. A half-hour later after the battle to seize Qasim's headquarters ended, Qasim was arrested by the pro-coup soldiers; and at 1:30 p.m. on February 9, 1963 Qasim was then executed.

In the fighting in Baghdad between February 8 and 10, 1963, 5,000 Iraqi citizens were apparently killed, including 80 Ba'th Party activists and 340 Iraqi communist activists. (end of part 13)