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 Yet the U.S. military-industrial-media complex’s troops and private contractors have still not been immediately withdrawn from Iraq and Afghanistan.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 Following the Russian Revolution of October 1917, Russian troops were soon withdrawn from Iran.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)

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)

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..."

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.

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.

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.)"

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.