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70 years ago, an Anglo-US coup condemned Iran to decades of oppression

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Re: 70 years ago, an Anglo-US coup condemned Iran to decades of oppression

#171

Post by dragonwriter »

thephyber wrote: post #170
mensetmanusman wrote: post #165

Earlier quoted context omitted.

So Marshall law means the US isn’t a democracy (which is true, being a republic)…

Democracy (as in will of the people) doesn’t really exist during wars on domestic soil. Martial Law declarations are at least the honest admission of that. And the democracy / republic pedantry is tiresome. We are a Democratic Republic (and also a Constitutional Republic). They are not mutually exclusive.

> And the democracy / republic pedantry is tiresome. We are a Democratic Republic

We’re a functionally plutocratic federal republic with some very loosely representative-democratic elements. Ironically, as a result of federal rules imposed on the states but not on the federal government itself, like one-person, one-vote, the states, while still more than a little plutocratic in practice, do a better job of approximating representative democracy in their formal structures (and many also have elements of direct democracy.)

Re: 70 years ago, an Anglo-US coup condemned Iran to decades of oppression

#172

Post by thephyber »

bsder wrote: post #156
thephyber wrote: post #132

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I’d argue the US government/military involvement was crucial in both Japan and West Germany. The US military ran their governments for a few years, eliminated their domestic politics from being involved in war/defense decisions, restructured their governments, made excellent choices when it came to social, education, healthcare, transportation, and industrial policies. I would argue that local values played a part, b…

> I’d argue the US government/military involvement was crucial in both Japan and West Germany. The Marshall Plan. And people forget that it had quite a lot of opposition back at home in the US.

The Marshall Plan was targeted towards friendly countries that were destroyed during WW2 as a hedge against the USSR. I’m aware that Germany benefitted, but not sure about Japan.

Re: 70 years ago, an Anglo-US coup condemned Iran to decades of oppression

#173

Post by thephyber »

WalterBright wrote: post #157
gottorf wrote: post #149

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> it was a military autocracy until the 1980s, at which point it made an incredible shift towards democracy and the economic growth story was one of the world’s most amazing The economic growth, or at least the seeds thereof, largely came during Park Chung Hee's dictatorship, which ended in 1979 with his assassination. GDP per capita increased over tenfold during his tenure. The shift towards democracy afterwards was…

Aren't free markets incredible?

The China story over the same period is pretty close to the same success, despite much of the economy being far from a free market.

Re: 70 years ago, an Anglo-US coup condemned Iran to decades of oppression

#174

Post by _kbh_ »

cpursley wrote: post #139
reissbaker wrote: post #125

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Japan, Germany, South Korea, Taiwan, Ukraine. Technically Iraq as well, although I don't think the Iraqis were particularly happy about that.

[flagged]

> The same Ukraine that’s disbanded all opposition political parties

They didn't though, they only disbanded the political parties that had ties to Russia, the country thats currently trying to invade and annex them.

> suspended elections and is under martial law?

The elections are suspended per their own constitution.

They are under martial law because they are in a war.

Re: 70 years ago, an Anglo-US coup condemned Iran to decades of oppression

#175

Post by _3u10 »

anigbrowl wrote: post #49
boringuser2 wrote: post #3

There's a certain strain of political outlook exemplified by an article like this, commonly categorized as "post-colonial", that ironically morphs itself into increasingly complex and implausible shapes to explain why all of the bad things are caused by the "first world" and nobody else has or will ever have any autonomy as an agent in the world. The other aspect of irony to this is that this worldview is cultivated…

the US and other Western powers go from bumbling buffoons that can't socially engineer their way out of a paper bag when you can see/prove it (Vietnam, Afghanistan, Iraq, etc.) to master machivellian puppeteers when you can't. Asinine argument. Colonial/aggressive powers do well at first because seizing the initiative gives them the advantage of surprise and dismayed targets take time to catch up. The same approaches…

Could you remind me who is running Afghanistan these days? The name of the group is on the tip of my tongue.

Re: 70 years ago, an Anglo-US coup condemned Iran to decades of oppression

#176

Post by flimsypremise »

metabagel wrote: post #136
flimsypremise wrote: post #119

So many Americans naively believe this fairy story about their country, when the reality is a lot darker and more brutal. The intervention in Iran was neither an isolated event, nor was even close to the first coup that the US perpetrated at the behest of business interests. Starting with Samoa and Hawaii in the 1800s, an extremely violent occupation of the Philippines in the early part of the 20th century, and inter…

The U.S. isn’t responsible for Putin coming to power. Putin handpicked himself to succeed Yeltsin.

Putin didn't have that kind of power nationally during the Yeltsin years. He was powerful in St. Petersburg, but he would never have risen to national prominence had Yeltsin not hand-picked him as his successor. Yeltsin, in turn, was propped by a coalition of Western interests who had helped him orchestrate a slate of "market based" reforms known as shock therapy, which in effect bankrupted the country while simultaneously conducting a fire sale of everything valuable to western business interests. People forget, but when Putin rose to power the American press lavished him with praise as "someone we could do business with", and Putin even broached the idea of joining NATO with President Clinton at one point. Had Bush not (needlessly) pulled out of ABM treaty a year later, the first in a series of utterly pointless provocations of a country we at that point viewed as a potential ally, our relationship with Russia might look very different today.

Re: 70 years ago, an Anglo-US coup condemned Iran to decades of oppression

#177

Post by flimsypremise »

ImHereToVote wrote: post #131
flimsypremise wrote: post #119

So many Americans naively believe this fairy story about their country, when the reality is a lot darker and more brutal. The intervention in Iran was neither an isolated event, nor was even close to the first coup that the US perpetrated at the behest of business interests. Starting with Samoa and Hawaii in the 1800s, an extremely violent occupation of the Philippines in the early part of the 20th century, and inter…

Hasn't stopped. https://theintercept.com/2023/08/09/imran-khan-pakistan-cyph...

They've done it so many times at this point that they don't actually have to bother sending in the CIA, they just make their preference clear and let the "or else" remain unspoken.

Re: 70 years ago, an Anglo-US coup condemned Iran to decades of oppression

#178

Post by MoreSEMI »

thephyber wrote: post #173
WalterBright wrote: post #157

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Aren't free markets incredible?

The China story over the same period is pretty close to the same success, despite much of the economy being far from a free market.

China really only started prospering after the creation of special economic zones, no? And today while there heavy state influence at the largest firms, the rest of the country pretty much operates in a market system, or do you disagree?

Re: 70 years ago, an Anglo-US coup condemned Iran to decades of oppression

#179

Post by oneshtein »

cpursley wrote: post #150
thephyber wrote: post #141

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Yes, the same Ukraine that is still actively at war for its existence after being invaded by a nuclear superpower. The capital is still being bombed, the democratically elected leadership is still under threat of assassination, so many of those infringements upon freedom are actually reasonable.

Suspension of civil rights is NEVER okay in democratic societies. If you suspend them, you’re no longer democratic - Period.

> Suspension of civil rights is NEVER okay in democratic societies.

Except in case of war.

Re: 70 years ago, an Anglo-US coup condemned Iran to decades of oppression

#180

Post by chrysler »

flimsypremise wrote: post #119

So many Americans naively believe this fairy story about their country, when the reality is a lot darker and more brutal. The intervention in Iran was neither an isolated event, nor was even close to the first coup that the US perpetrated at the behest of business interests. Starting with Samoa and Hawaii in the 1800s, an extremely violent occupation of the Philippines in the early part of the 20th century, and inter…

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