RoR: Forum

(paraphrasing) "A liberal society will never give us these things." (Talking about alleviating the stresses of modern living)

I half-watched this movie just last night. I found the part with the fundementalist teacher to be consistent with what I would expect their teaching to be like, but wonder if it is actually as expicit.

Post 1

Wednesday, July 12, 2006 - 7:44am

I posted this in another forum in regards to this film:

The movie is nothing but a pathetic effort to blame oil companies for the problems in the middle east. Which is ridiculous. Every single majority arab or islam nation is a brutal dictatorial or theocratic hell hole. The villians of the middle east are the tyrants who despise western freedoms (if you think that it is not our freedom they despise the please refer to Zarqawi's proclamations against representative governments) Syriana depicts one murderous tyrant of a fictitious country about to die and pass the rule he has not earned onto one of his children who. The older brother, with dreams of reform and economic growth desires to spend the billions stolen from his people on ways he thinks might help. The younger brother wants nothing but to make more wealth, and he secures ties with US oil companies. The US ends up assassinating the 'good' brother in order to ensure China (which brutally oppresses over a billion people) does not make off with the oil the US needs in a deal the older brother was trying to arrange. The moral of the story was 'evil US kills middle east's only hope' yeah right, the only �good� dictator the middle east churns out in 30 years and the big mean ol US kills him. CMON. The real story is that the source of turmoil in the middle east is certainly not the US's fault, in the fact the man who came closer to any other in the history of the modern middle east to unifying it was Anwar Sadat, who was assassinated by Bin Laden's predecessor to Al Qaida, by muslim extremists. The real source of turmoil in the middle east, at every turn and every significant event in their history, has been radical islam. This movie was absurd and completely disingenuous and any rational and cursory understanding of the middle east will reveal. But nope, we love anything that depicts Bush or the US as evil, never mind the murderous tyrants who actually have taken MILLIONS of lives.

If you want some good info on the middle east I suggest starting with Freedom House�s country profiles www.freedomhouse.org and then check out all of Bernard Lewis books (who is probably the leading intellectual in the west on the middle east)

Post 2

Wednesday, July 12, 2006 - 10:40pm

Good responses, fellas.

Ed

Post 3

Thursday, July 13, 2006 - 7:58am

In many cases, the oil companies support those dictatorships. This was the motivation for the overthrow of the popular Mossadegh in Iran back in the 1950's. The CIA replace him with the Shah. The Iranians haven't forgotten about this.

Post 4

Thursday, July 13, 2006 - 9:30am

You make two claims here. I wonder what evidence you have for either.

1. Oil company employees initiated and directed the coup; the US government, including the CIA, merely carried out these employees' directives.
2. Knowledge of this fact drives Iranian policy and public opinion today.

For the first you might produce letters or other official documents, or memoirs or interviews with the principals in the oil business and the CIA (which is not to say these are the only evidences you could bring).

Evidence for the second might be official statements by the government or unofficial (but verifiable) statements by the people in it. Then you'd have to show how this belief affected the government's actions and how these actions would have been different if this were not the motive. How, for example, would they act differently if they believed that the State Department or the CIA, rather than the oil companies, had been in charge?

Public opinion is harder to verify. Election results are one way, but Iran doesn't have elections. Opinion polls, if they are competently conducted and if people feel free to speak out without fear of retaliation, are another. I doubt that you could satisfy either condition in Iran.

Peter

Post 5

Thursday, July 13, 2006 - 1:40pm

One of my best friends is about 35 and was born in Iran. He came to the US as a teenager. He was there during the Revolution. He absolutely despised Ayatollah Khomeini and still does. But he speaks positively of a Mossadegh--who was overthrown by the CIA. Mossadegh is still considered a hero. That is my source for "Iranian public opinion."

(Edited by Chris Baker on 7/13, 1:46pm)

Post 6

Thursday, July 13, 2006 - 3:24pm

I think if you were sincerely interested in learning about this topic, you would do a little investigation yourself. I use a very common tool called Google.

http://www.iranchamber.com/history/coup53/coup53p1.php

http://www.democracynow.org/article.pl?sid=04/03/05/1542249

http://www.counterpunch.org/sasan08192003.html

http://www.nytimes.com/library/world/mideast/iran-cia-appendix-a.pdf

http://www.mohammadmossadegh.com/

http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/main.jhtml?xml=/news/campaigns/iran/irankey.xml

http://www.iranian.com/Opinion/2000/January/Century/mossadegh.html

http://www.lewrockwell.com/hornberger/hornberger21.html

http://www.lewrockwell.com/rozeff/rozeff62.html

http://www.lewrockwell.com/north/north170.html

Wikipedia helps also.

Post 7

Friday, July 14, 2006 - 10:46am

I followed up briefly on some of your links. The Telegraph and New York Times are respectable news sources (though the latter isn't as respectable as it used to be). Most of the others are obscure and clearly partisan. Lew Rockwell is a praise-the-lord-and-pass-the-thorazine nutcase, and your using him as a source raises doubts about your other sources. The Telegraph story backs your claim that Mossadegh was authentically popular, and it seems to say that he came to power in a legitimate election. None of the material I looked at even asserts, much less argues, the two claims I find most questionable in #3 - that oil companies initiated and drove the coup and that this belief is what drives current Iranian policy. Did I miss something?

Peter

Post 8

Friday, July 14, 2006 - 12:41pm