Monthly Archives: December 2010

All the Shah’s Men

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All The Shah’s Men, An American Coup and the Roots of Middle East Terror
By Stephen Kinzer
Published by John Wiley and Sons, Inc.

The United States took the lead in organizing, funding, and carrying out the 1953 coup that removed the democratically elected Prime Minister of Iran, Mohammed Mossadegh, and restored Mohammad Reza Shah to the Peacock Throne. Iranians generally had admiration and respect for Americans, but the coup created hatred and distrust. The oppressive regime of the Shah led to his overthrow in 1979 by the Ayatollah Ruhollah Khomeini.   Predicting alternative history is at best imprecise, but perhaps without this coup Khomeini would not have come to power. Perhaps the United States would not have decided to give the Shah asylum, which precipitated the Iranian hostage crises. Perhaps Jimmy Carter would have been elected to a second term. Perhaps the Iranians would not have supported insurgents in Iraq, Afghanistan, and other places, and perhaps they wouldn’t be pursuing development of nuclear weapons. Of course that is all meaningless speculation, since the CIA did engineer the overthrow of the legitimate leader of Iran and installed a replacement who used brutality to remain in power until the Carter administration decided Khomeini and his plane full of supporters should not be killed when they landed in Tehran.

Iran was poor but strategically located at a time when the Russians and the West were vying for advantage. The country became even more important when massive deposits of oil were discovered. The British moved in, negotiated a deal to control the oil with most of the profits going to the English, and acted like selfish imperialists. Their refinery managers lived in luxury next to the Iranian workers who lived in squalor. Iranians were pleased when Mohammed Mossadegh became their leader. He inspired memories of the Persian Zoroastrian religious belief that people have the right to enlightened leadership, the duty to obey wise rulers, and a further duty to rise up against the wicked. Mossadegh saw the British as wicked, nationalized the oil resources and refinery of the British-controlled Anglo-Iranian Oil Company, and pushed the British out of the country. Time Magazine named him “Man of the Year” in 1951. 

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What tax rates are fair, and who decides?

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News reports are filled with politicians debating whether cuts in tax rates passed in the Bush era should be extended, or whether rates for people making the most money should have their rates increased.  Would you be surprised to hear that the share of the tax burden paid by the highest income earners increased after the Bush tax cuts were fully in effect, according to the data in the Tax Foundation report?  The top 0.1% of earners paid 15.68% of all taxes in 2003 and 18.47% of the total in 2008. The top 1% of earners paid 34.27 % of total taxes in 2003 and 38.02% in 2008.   On the other end of the spectrum, the bottom 50% of earners paid 3.46% of the total tax burden in 2003, and that percentage has dropped every year since to 2.70% in 2008.

What tax rate is fair? The Freeman Online has a quote that, “Under Roosevelt, the top rate was…raised—first to 79 percent and later to 90 percent. In 1941, in fact, Roosevelt proposed a 99.5 percent marginal rate on all incomes over $100,000. ‘Why not?’ he said when an adviser questioned him.”   I would hope most people wouldn’t think that to be either good policy or fair.  I believe we have a powerful economy and country in large part because there are incentives to succeed through energetic efforts and willingness to take risks.  Those who have their risks rewarded gain wealth for themselves and employ others.  Some politicians encourage us to resent those who have succeeded financially, and promise they will take more from the wealthy and dole out services to those deemed worthy by massive, inefficient bureaucracies.  Margaret Thatcher said, “The problem with Socialism is that you eventually run out of other people’s money” (The quote is included in Mike Rosen’s column on page 11B of the Denver Post, December 10, 2010.)

Shellacked

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President Obama recently characterized what happened in the November elections as a “shellacking” of the Democratic Party. Word Detective explains that shellac was introduced in the 17th century for use as furniture polish. The slang became a description of very drunk, badly beaten, or vanquished. The word detective proposes that those meanings “comes from the fact that shellacking is often the last step in furniture manufacture, so when someone is ‘shellacked’, he or she is absolutely, positively finished and done.”

Video of Nuclear Detonations 1945-1998

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This post provides a link to the subject video that is a haunting presentation prepared by Isao Hashimoto of the 2053 detonations in the 53 year time frame.  I also put the link in the book about Rocky Flats, but want to make it available to as wide an audience as possible.  The United States conducted 1032 of the total detonations.  The first was Trinity and the next two were over Hiroshima and Nagasaki.  It takes about 15 minutes to watch, but I recommend it.

A Hog on Ice

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Charles Earle Funk, author of “A Hog on Ice & Other Curious Expressions, The Origin & Development of the Pungent and Colorful Phrases We All Use,” explains the title in the Foreword. His mother would say with a toss of her head, “as independent as a hog on ice” when she “…saw a pompous person strutting down the street, a girl leading the way to a restaurant table without the head waiter’s guidance, a young man with hat atilt jauntily striding along…” “She meant cockily independent, supremely confident, beholden to none.” The author recounts the many literature sources he searched for a clue about the origin and meaning of the expression, and also consulted with experts on hogs. He learned that the smooth pads of a hog’s feet don’t allow the animal to walk on ice. The hog will often have to be dragged off the ice before it attempts to move. He also found that the curling stone is called a “hog” on occasion, and speculates that might have something to do with the origin of the expression. Regardless of the origin, the meaning can be as the author’s mother intended, a description of someone or thing that is awkward or helpless, or used to describe someone who is idiotically independent. Mr. Funk describes his efforts to research the expression in several pages, and you should find a copy of his book if you have further interest in this or the hundreds of other expressions it describes. I bought a used copy from Abebooks.com.

Money is no object, world of credit?

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A portion of the RockyFlatsFacts.com website is dedicated to “Expressions” because I’m interested in the derivation of how we communicate. I believe the two expressions mentioned in this title can be used to develop a commentary about how our nation is being run today. We want our representatives to give us everything now, and we don’t want to worry about the impact for the future. What is the meaning of “money is no object?” The word “object” in this case is usually taken to mean money is no cause for attention or concern. What I’m inferring is that the expression instead means that we are behaving as if money is not real. We can print it at will to buy everything the government thinks we want right now. The other expression “a world of credit” is usually intended to mean that someone has performed admirably, and deserves credit from everyone. My interpretation is that expression has changed to mean that we are, in addition to printing money freely, borrowing from everyone in the world to fund our excesses.