NOVEMBER 4: ONE OF THOSE DAYS THAT WILL LIVE IN INFAMY
Ben Affleck’s recent (excellent) movie Argo reminds us that on November 4, 1979, a mob of Iranian students breached the walls and “occupied” the American Embassy in Tehran, which they proceeded to hold for another 444 days until Ronald W. Reagan became took his oath of office as President, largely as a result of Jimmy Carter’s shame in not being able to resolve the crisis or liberate the hostages beforehand. The feeling in this country and the world was that Carter would never go to war to defend American Honor, and that Ronald Reagan would, even though the best he ever really did was to invade the tiny island of Grenada to defend against about 200 Cuban medical students…..
Last month I attended a distinctly pro-Iranian lecture by Mark Weber at the IHR (Institute for Historical Realism) in Orange County, but Argo reminded me of how angry and personally offended I felt by the seizure of my country’s embassy in Iran. The repeated presentation of the disgraceful history of the US & British subversion of Prime Minister Mohammed Mossadegh’s brief progressive democratic interlude in Iran is a stain on America’s honor, and Great Britain’s, which is hard to overcome. Especially considering we allowed Saudi Arabia, Kuwait, Qatar, and other distinctly anti-Democratic countries to nationalize and manipulate our oil markets in 1973 with little or no resistance at all. “Argo”, along with last year’s “The Big Fix” both start out with reminding us of Mossadegh, once Time Magazine’s “Man of the Year” (of course, so was Hitler, once, Time’s “Man of the Year”). At his Imperial trial in Shah Reza Pahlavi’s courts of justice, Mohammed Mossadegh answered the charge of treason as follows:
“Yes, my sin — my greater sin and even my greatest sin is that I nationalized Iran’s oil industry and discarded the system of political and economic exploitation by the world’s greatest empire. This at the cost to myself, my family; and at the risk of losing my life, my honor and my property. With God’s blessing and the will of the people, I fought this savage and dreadful system of international espionage and colonialism …. I am well aware that my fate must serve as an example in the future throughout the Middle East in breaking the chains of slavery and servitude to colonial interests.”
BUT WAS THE SHAH OF IRAN REALLY SO BAD?
I confess that, during my youth, at least in part because of my dearly departed Grandfather’s support and extreme enthusiasm for the Shah’s fabled “White Revolution”, I had intensely respected, even admired, Shah Mohammad Reza Pahlavi for his work in westernizing Iran and for brining the U.S. and Iran close together as partners against World Communism. The Shah’s policies sought to modernized Iran (making Iran more like Sweden, was his stated goal) liberated women from some of the harshest effects and constraints of Sharia Law, including a ban on the horrific practice of female circumcision.
I went to a fairly unusual high school in Hollywood and there had the chance to learn the views several aristocratic (secular Muslim, Westernized) Iranian “foreign exchange” students who were very strong supporters of their King and Emperor. Finally, I know that my grandfather’s positive views of the Shah were by no means unique to him, one of my best friends for most of the past 40 years has been one Helen Sorayya Carr, named after the Shah’s beautiful half-German Empress (Shahbanu) or Queen (Malakeh), named by her father Denzel Carr, a Professor of Linguistics at Berkeley, for the most ancient beauty Queen of the West (Helen of Troy) and the most modern beauty Queen of the East (Sorayya of Isfahan). Obviously, and for many good reasons, that Shah or Iran was well-liked in the United States and Europe—he was “one of us” trying to assimilate his country with ours and trying to raise his population from the Middle Ages to the 20th Century…… Mark Weber in his speech had very little to say about the Shah….
But the portrayal of the Shah in “Argo” (or at least its portrayal of the spirit and causes of the Iranian Revolution) is that Reza Pahlavi was a tyrant on the level of, if not even worse than, Iraq’s Saddam Hussein. There was no justice in the American invasion of Iraq, or the subsequent execution of Saddam Hussein and many of his regime’s top officials. There is certainly no apparent justice in the fact that we supported the Shah but invaded Iraq to overthrown Hussein while all during this period we have done nothing but support the House of Saud and related regimes in Kuwait, Bahrain, Qatar, Yemen, and the United Arab Emirates.
And of course, as Mark Weber correctly pointed out in his presentation at IHR, immediately after the overthrow of the Shah, Iraq and Iran went to war and at THAT time it seemed that the US could and should support Saddam Hussein as the Secular Muslim opponent of “Lunatic” Islamic Fundamentalism under the Grand Ayatollah Sayyed Ruhollah Mostafavi Musavi Khomeini. Saddam Hussein seemed like the great beacon of progress and Westernization in the Middle East.
Isolation and Non-Interference are the Best Policies Available.
It is very confusing to be a 52 year old Anglo-American and look at Iran and Iraq today. I cannot do anything but regret that we ever violated President George Washington’s counsel in his Farewell Address that we stay clear of all foreign entanglements. The bottom line is simply this: the United States has done no good at any stage by interference in the Middle East: we certainly did terrible injury by opposing Mossadegh and participating in his overthrow in 1953—there is simply no doubt about that. We did no good by supporting the Shah of Iran afterwards, but frankly he was so rich from Oil, especially after 1973, that whether we supported him or not seemed quite irrelevant.
One recurring theme in US-Middle Eastern Politics is that we (in the US) seem to put Israel First, no matter what it costs to do so. Dinesh D’Souza strongly supported the pro-Israeli position in his movie “Obama 2016″ which also made more than passing reference to Iran….and Obama’s seeming non-opposition to Iran, despite the continual beat of war drums throughout his Administration. Mark Weber made the excellent case that the blindly pro-Israeli policies of the United States are extremely destructive to the future of our relationship with the Iranian people—UNDER ANY GOVERNMENT, PRESENT OR FUTURE—and of course, Ron Paul concurs 100% in this view, and it is for that reason that the pro-Israeli lobby in the US has all but banned Media coverage of Ron Paul and his successor Gary Johnson…..
We, the American people, should simply keep our noses OUT of other countries’ affairs. Freedom is fundamentally the freedom to be left alone, and every sovereign country on earth deserves that freedom from interference by the US, Russia, China, the UK, or France—or an aggressive Iran or “Brazil” of the Future…
Separation of American Interests from foreign interests is consistent with maintaining real diversity in the world, and I am in favor of real diversity. Iranians should develop Iranian culture as Iranians see fit, but they should mostly develop it in Iran, and yet I live in a city sometimes called “Irangeles” and find myself enlisted to assist in mediating constant bickering and civil disputes between Iranians and non-Iranians, but also between Jewish Iranians and Islamic Iranians (especially in Beverly Hills), and even between Iranian Jews and Non-Iranian Jews.
It’s enough to make one wonder: where DID all the blonde California beach girls go? How DID West Los Angeles become Irangeles after Iranians overtook and then outnumbered Armenians as the largest Middle Eastern Population in California? ”Middle Eastern Population in California?”—oh yes, there’s a large Mosque on Shaw Avenue in Fresno not far from Cal-State Fresno—although there’s still a monument to William Saroyan, Armenian-American novelist and Playwright, in a park in his native Fresno close to the courthouse……
Again speaking as a 52 year old American WASP, I cannot comprehend the religion of Islam at all. I despise the Muslim oppression and suppression of women—I have known too many Egyptian women, in particular, who have been subjected to the almost unspeakably inhumane savage and brutal practice of female circumcision (which according to WHO reports results in approximately 10% fatalities).
I cannot believe that such practices (and worse yet, the “Muslim grooming” of young English and French girls) are not only being tolerated among immigrant populations in France, Great Britain and the USA but are actively condoned by the Archbishop of Canterbury in the name of “diversity” and “tolerance” and saying that adoption of some form of “Sharia Law” in the UK is all but inevitable. I say: it is avoidable—just say no and vote Front National, BNP/English Resistance…. which is a good point to move over to another point about today’s dates:
A Day Which has Lived in Infamy (Justifiably or Otherwise) for 407 years now—Was the Protestant Reformation about anything important other than Nationalism and Autonomy from Rome? (Probably Not….)
Tomorrow, on November 5, we remember that Guy Fawkes was a Catholic who wanted to blow up the Houses of Parliament in 1605, or so they say, because he wanted to oppose the final triumph of Protestantism in England embodied in the recent accession of Catholic Queen-of-Scots Mary Stuart’s son, James I and VII, to the throne of a finally united kingdom of what was not yet called “Great Britain”.
The Gunpowder Treason and Plot, as described in the history books anyhow, has to be one of the lamest conspiracy theories ever. How exactly, I would love to know, could Catholic, Jesuit (and therefore automatically suspect in early Jacobean London), co-conspirators LEASE strategically located space (i.e. make a written contract) and then use this space solely for the purpose of managing to get 36 Barrels of Gunpowder into a strategic location to blow up the House of Lords at the Palace of Westminster in July, keeping them there until November 5, without ever being discovered? And all this happened during a time of plague and pestilence in London? And all of the participants were already well-known Papists suspected by the crown of treason?
The history of the “Gunpowder Treason and Plot” stinks of being a Stuart-Crown initiated “false flag” episode like the explosion of the Battleship Maine, the Reichstag Fire, and of course, the most recent, 9-11-2001, as being a staged event to organize and inspire loyalty to an at best shaky oligarchy….. James I & VII was considerably smarter than his son, Charles I, and much more likely to have ordered and pulled off a “false flag” attack that would define history for a long time to come…. So in retrospect now, I strongly suspect, as I have to admit I did from “Day 1″ of the 9-11 business, that Guy Fawkes was just another Patsy, like Lee Harvey Oswald, made to take the blame for something that was carefully planned just to use him as a symbol to be burned in effigy every year just after Halloween—-”Penny for the Guy?”
V-for-Vendetta Revisionism?
The movie “V-for-Vendetta” that was filmed for the 400th anniversary of the Gunpowder Treason and Plot made the Patsy into a symbol of heroic resistance which appealed deeply to me and to many around the world. The Guy Fawkes’ mask has turned the “Guy” into a symbolic of Patriotic resistance completely inconsistent with the historical reality, so that the revised myth of “The Fifth of November” as a great revolutionary people’s insurrection against oppression is just as phony as the original “False Flag” Jacobean cover story about a Papist Plot to blow up the House of Lords was…..
But what are the elements that the myths have in common? Both the original theory of the Gunpowder Plot as “Compassing the Death of the King” and causing a major Catholic (counter-reformationist) insurrection in England and the “V-for-Vendetta” version both focus on religious identity and intolerance as key elements of statehood and established power. ”Guy” Fawkes was often ridiculed as “Guido” because he used allegedly used this Italianate version of his name in correspondence with Jesuit “co-conspirators”, in short, Guy Fawkes became the first “real Guido.”
And so it is, of course, just another ironic if little-known fact of history that the first Guido to make a name for himself was not an Italian at all but an Englishman: Guido Fawkes, a.k.a. Guy Fawkes. There is, to be sure, no evidence whatsoever that the Real Original Guido wore Armani Exchange T-shirts and artfully distressed jeans or that he tended to strut and flex steroid- pumped up muscles. (Modern ethnologists from New Jersey & Staten Island report that the call of the Guido is bellowing, and frequently slurred, invariably starting with the sound, “Yo,” followed all too often by some creative variation on an expletive beginning with the letter, “F”).
In V-for-Vendetta the disfavored religion is Islam and the disfavored ethnics or behavioral subgroups are Muslims and Homosexuals. Ever since the movie came out, it has occurred to me that the Patriotic fervor of the anonymous, amnesiac character who wears the Guy Fawkes mask would (in the modern world) be shared largely if not predominantly by people who supported some version of the conservative “Norsefire” platform on which Chancellor Adam Suttler and his government stood. But the use of Guy Fawkes’ image as a paradigm for revolutionary action and advocacy transcends right and left—the mask is as popular among members of the (mostly but not exclusively left-wing) “occupy” movement as well as the “We the People” anti-IRS tax protestors.
I suspect that Natalie Portman and the other luminaries who participated in the making of “V” would tell you that their movie is a paradigm in favor of multiculturalism and diversity—where everyone can be united “behind the mask” no matter what their ethnic or religious affiliation and/or origin.
But “Guy Fawkes’ Day” used to be called “Pope’s Day” as well as “Gunpowder Day” and it was a celebration of anti-Catholicism and Protestant Triumph. I was born into a Southern Protestant family in which Catholicism was strongly frowned upon on one side and fairly strongly favored on the other, albeit under the rubric of “Anglo-Catholicism” and adherence to the notion of Jacobite Stuart monarchism and “Charles the Martyr” day on January 31. “Charles the Martyr Day” commemorates the admittedly unjust and more than slightly appalling execution of King Charles I and the equally unjust and more than slightly appalling “Commonwealth” of Oliver Cromwell. Cromwell and his son created little more than a beetle-browed Puritan dictatorship with no long-lasting heritage or accomplishments.
Cromwell’s “Commonwealth” Dictatorship was replaced after a mere 11 year experiment by the Stuart Restoration of Charles II which shaped and formed “all the best” of England basically as it was to be until 1914. The death of Charles II with tons of illegitimate children but not one single legitimate heir led to a Guy Fawkes’-like “Hiccup” in the formation of modern England, namely the reign of Charles’ brother James who was overthrown for trying to restore, for the last time in England, Roman Catholicism as the official religion.
Modern readers are reasonably suspicious of religion. Even those of us (like me) who may be going to Church on Sunday have only limited confidence in any creed. Philosophy and Science, including Anthropology and Evolutionary Biology, have taken a huge toll on what we can unquestioningly “believe” or not. I love my Church—the Episcopal Church, part of the Anglican Tradition, but I do not believe in its embrace of multiculturalism AT ALL. Rather, I love the fact that in the past, and especially in my past—my personal and family history—that Church embodies all that is AGAINST multiculturalism and globalism in favor of “Anglicanism.” I would define “Anglicanism” as the English people’s worship of themselves, primarily, as being created in the image of God—how’s that for an anthropologically reasonable, post-Vatican II liturgically blasphemous explanation of my Church and my Faith?
The modern ethnocentric Anglican has to address the political correctness of multiculturalism. I do so as follows: we must choose and define our own identities. Not merely do we have the INALIENABLE right to do so, we MUST do so. We must define our own identities and try to keep and develop them for our children for the sake of preserving real diversity in the world, for the purpose of FOSTERING more “micro-diversity” and hence “micro-evolution” in the world. We must not shrink from our obligations.
England should NOT become a Muslim country, nor should Sweden or Norway or Denmark or the Netherlands or France or Greece. I that sense, I stand by Chancellor Adam Sutler and “Norsefire.” However, it is only by a “Guy Fawkes” like uprising” led by the BNP or “English Resistence” or “UKIP” or some group like that who can make it happen.
About the United States—what is this country and what should it be? Los Angeles and New York (and up to a certain point, Chicago) are cities culturally dominated not by Muslims but by Jews, even if demographically Jews remain a minority. Henry Waxman represents me in Congress (actually, he doesn’t represent anything about me, but I guess it’s more appropriate to say “I live in his Congressional District”). I did not vote for him, but I have no confidence in Bill Bloomfield for whom I did vote. (New York Mayor Republican Mayor Bloomberg endorsed Obama—I find this appalling, although I did not vote for Romney, I voted for Gary Johnson, the Libertarian Candidate (by mail, I sent my ballot in last Tuesday). I might have written in one of several other candidates but the California Legislature has for the time-being at least all but outlawed write-in candidates and I have voted Libertarian more than any other party ever since I decided in 1992 never to vote Republican again after George H.W. Bush’s treason on both the tax question and the invasion of Iraq—-which some propose that we now follow by the Invasion of Iran…)
Of course, adding to the confusion about Iran, as noted, Ronald W. Reagan owed his election in no small part to President Jimmy Carter’s complete ineptitude in defending American honor around the world, especially in Iran. And yet, 5 years into the Reagan Presidency, a good-looking Colonel named Oliver North was on all the Radio and Television stations defending his PURCHASE (with White-House approved fund) of ARMS FROM Iran for sale AGAINST U.S. Law to the Contras in Nicaragua. Huh? I almost decided never to vote Republican again after that. Reagan knew that the Revolutionary Islamic Republic of Iran was the chief enemy of the United States after the Communist Soviet Union and China, and he was clearly authorizing this Colonel North to give “Aid and Comfort” to the Iranians by doing business with them, paying them for guns to a cause which Reagan personally supported, although the Congress of the United States had barred official support of it, namely the Contras (Anti-Sandinistas) of Nicaragua. And yet I made the mistake, as did many Americans, of voting for George H.W. Bush in 1988 and that led to the first U.S. invasion of Iraq (for the heinous crime of overthrowing the Kuwaiti monarchy??????) and my final defection from the Republican Party. THERE WAS NO EXCUSE FOR OUR INVASION OF IRAQ in 1991 or in 2003, and THERE IS NO POSSIBLE EXCUSE FOR US TO INVADE IRAN NOW.
I for one unequivocally oppose all American adventurism and imperialism abroad. I agree with Pat Buchanan that we are “A Republic, not an Empire”, and I hope that over the next few years we can restore the American Republic and work towards a restoration of American Identity—”Los Angeles”, not “Irangeles”—with no disrespect to the rights of the people of Iran to maintain their own culture and civilization as they see fit, and as they have done without Anglo-American assistance for most of the past 4,000 years since Susa, the Sassanians, and Persepolis….
