Film(s) at 11
Via Persian Students is this gem:
Militarilism, Corruption, Torture, and Denial
Browsing YouTube for clips about Iran, I came across a few interesting old clips from the 70's, some are interviews with the Shah. They are amazing and I thought I'd share them with you. It's funny how all the four words I mentioned in the title of the post were/are being repeated in today's Iran, and how statesmen and politicians in our country tend to forget the past quickly and never seem to learn the lessons of history. What do you think?
In an interview (in English) with Mike Wallace of American TV programme CBS 60 minutes:
(1) Shah denies torture by Savak.
(2) Shah denies corruption in his government and accuses the west (particularly Americans) for being corrupt.
(3) Shah claiming he's in touch with the people of Iran, and that it's OK to execute traitors!
Mike Wallace is the same person who recently interviewed Ahmadinejad.
(4) Iran's Imperial Guard; it fascinates me to see how these officers seem to love to look like German Nazi officers. And they seem to be very proud of their army which, unlike the Nazi German or American or British armies, was not an Iranian product but entirely purchased from the west (the hardware I mean). As a side note, some of the military tunes they play in this clip are familiar to me, they were later played during the war with Iraq by the revolutionary Army.
(5) 2500th Anniversary of the Persian Empire; when Shah sent his famous message to Cyrus the Great: "Sleep in peace because we are awake". The truly glorious party where everyone was invited except unfortunately the people of Iran.
Of course, if you see George W. Bush rather than Mahmood Ahmadinejad as the logically obvious successor to the role played by Mohammad Reza Shah Pahlavi, that is, a costumed flunky nattering on about how torture and worse aren't really what's going on, and how clued in he is with his people and how his justice is ... the best there is, and a military swept away by a militarism that is unable to function, or grasp that militarism fully articulated includes mutually assured force destruction and its urban targeting sequela, or white picket fence nonsense from a state without elections or law ... then you're probably culturally American not Iranian.
Comments
What a little gold mine you have uncovered here!
Like Bush, the Shahnshah was a fool and a puppet. And a cowardly one at that.
I lived in Iran in the 70s, and one thing which drives me absolutely nuts is how hard it is to explain the role played by the US in supporting the Shah/Savak against the groups struggling for human rights and democracy.
Iran under Truman/Eisenhowe/Kennedy/Johnson/Nixon-er-Kissenger/Carter was a tyranical police state, every bit as brutal as Saddam's regime in Iraq. SAVAK was everpresent. There were constant whiserings. "this or that guy is SAVAK." Interestingly, I once had the strange fortune to meet up with Kermit Roosevelt's son Jonathon at a dinner party, who flat out told me he was posted as a CIA agent in Iran (his cover was a Peace Corps volunteer if I remember rightly) in the 60s.
Posted by: Sunrunner | October 15, 2006 03:04 PM
Geez, I'm certain that I could have gone all year w/o even thinking about the dreaded & ever evil Savak. Yes, we helped them. It doesn't make it right either. Then nor now, by anyone, for almost any reason. Amnesty had extensive documentation on the abuses, torture & killings, yet we have strangely even less info today on the ongoing situation inside Iran now. Like torturing and killing foreign journalists, a Canadian women journo to be exact in the last instance. The WSJ has a front page article (Sat. 14Oct) on the corruption inside the the RG's too, what goes around comes around. The people get a choice of their own brutal dictators. The only thing that changes is the public performance aspect of the leadership. Cheers, 'VJ'
Posted by: VJ | October 15, 2006 03:54 PM