Another Week of “Fake Drama” Unfolding

52 thoughts on “Another Week of “Fake Drama” Unfolding”

1. I was curious…What do the men and women working at the Embasies think about DJT’s action…

   Well i happen to know one that is on Embasy duty and since I know the Mom really good.. I called.. Say what do the kids think about what DJT did.

   THEY FEEL SAFER… Finally they have somone that cares enough about them and their families lives. enough to act rather than wait to see if they are all killed in some rogue attack..

   • While I am in favor of the killing of Suleimani, I doubt if we are safer due to Trumps actions. That region has thousands of years of War in its DNA. They don’t stand down…besides if I was there and had to call my mom, I am certainly not going to worry her. Like all good sons, we would say…Mom, don’t worry. I am fine.

     That said, I have a lot of Iranian-American clients here. All engineers working in tech and they said the biggest issue the Iranian Government has is not Trump and his windbag ways…it’s the fact that Iran shot down innocent people on an airplane. The citizens of Iran are up in arms over the horrible and embarrassing mistake the Iran Government made in killing a plane load of people. My clients still have family there and they are heartbroken and very angry over the plane incident. So…in the end, it was a fatal mistake by their military against their own people and Canadians too that is causing them to stand down…for the momentous until Trump provokes them again…because that’s what the military industrial complex told him to do.

     • You didn’t read the first hand account in the comments, then

     • Thousands of years of war is in there DNA is that what one would call a racist statment? I do believe it’s in all of are DNA just look at world history. Are read the Bible there will be wars and rumors untell the end.

     • There is also a very good reason the Russians have NOT acknowledged that S300 or its Iranian operators made a mistake in shooting their own airline down …perchance the system was remotely hacked..

     • “While I am in favor of the killing of Suleimani, ”

       The citizens in iran shouldnt be afraid.. our president receives Intel saying this guy was planning on killing innocent american citizens working at our embassies.
       Rather than delay to see if the idiot meant it..seeing this guys past records I am sure he figured the idiot wasn’t kidding about his plans. Since he has a pair he took the head off of the snake. In return he let everyone know that hes willing to stand up for those working for america on foreign soil..
       He didnt go after the citizens of iran just the snake in the grass.. it was iran that shot at their own people.

       I am against war and needless death.. but in this case.. the kids feel safer because we have a leader that isn’t afraid to stand up for their safety.
       No Benghazi here..

     • …Not a mistake, not an accident. The Iranian surface-to-air missile batteries are highly advanced and capable, and they have multilayered safeguards against an accidental or renegade launch.

       That plane was brought down intentionally, by direct order from Tehran.

       Tell your Iranian acquaintances to drop in on Jane’s or on John Pike’s globalsecurity.org if they need verification.

       It is rumored there were two passengers onboard whose intent was to defect upon touchdown. I haven’t time to check this right now, but I shouldn’t be surprised…

       • Just give
         Ray (and copy us) on the passenger manifest (or in today’s PC nuttiness is that womanifest?) and we’ll STFU. meantime, who was escaping the mullah’s paradise?

2. george, you like to gamble, well Q says “gold will bring down the Fed” the Fed is the Titans-think gods who rule over us,,49ers are gold miners,,give me a $100 on 49ers
   last year Q was all about the patriotism
   after all the NFL is registered as a entertainment industry and they can legally have anyone win that they want,it is their show,,ask their dead lawyer that got drunk and spilled the beans

   on another note,,,we still have military tribunals to look forward to. Huber has permission to seek outside government help, constitutionally that only leaves the military(as a legal outside of elected government) to ask for help!!!!!!! It has been going on for a couple of years, actually it is a multiple generation plan,first they had to get a person elected that would SUPPORT the military is performing their sworn duty to protect against enemies foreign and DOMESTIC
   TRUST the PLAN, the military knows how to keep it a secret, Sessions is/was military lawyer and he is the one who gave this authority to Huber…It will be a big badda boom

3. George,
   -Instead of responding to the incessant conservative cheerleading, and impolitely noticing once again how The Base’s brilliant leaders have so dramatically increased Iran’s power in the Middle East, and now pushed them back to developing nukes, and exploded our National Debt, and put the Farmbelt on welfare, and . . . —
   You know, all the things that accidentally get overlooked by the cheerleaders, —
   was wondering how the Climate Deniers are feeling about the Great Australian Climate firestorm?
   -But at least we’re finally getting those slacker kids off of their free lunches and getting prayer back in school. You know. The important stuff.
   Best, Mike.

   • Did your pal ever figure how to get two articles across a street? Not so bright on your team, bubba –

     I will take a sincere Christian, Jew, or even Muslim over a freakin socialist any day of the wweek – at least each has a code and some values… watch it!

     • the last I heard, they had arrested 208 people for setting the fires in Australia .

       • Nickel side bet on their religious affiliation?

     • less we forget, the difference between a communist and a socialist is a gun

       • Marvelous reminds. Or, in the modern iteration: A majority on the SupCo.

   • Mike,
     (ad hominem attack self censored) Scientific evidence indicates that Australia has had many burn offs in the past. Us grownups that read widely know that the plight of the American farmer is due to conditions that delayed spring planting then bad summer growing topped off by weather that hindered harvesting what little had grown. Some link this to grand solar minimum. POTUS had nothing to do with it.

     Prayer has always been in the schools. Students .ca
     individually pray. It is always unconstitutional for government to require/sanction/govern prayer. There is also much bs about the Bible in schools. For decades the Bible was used to teach reading. Not because we were a more pious and moral nation but because the Bible was the only widely available printed book. Books used to be prohibitively expensive and frequently not in English.

     So endith today’s lesson.

     • There you go, OL, using that damn “read” word again. Why, if you’re not careful, you’ll get around to writing on such subversive topics as open-ended research, independent study, and free-thinking.
       Careful, it’s as another reader wrote: “tapping on his glass” (we assume in the primate house).

     • >> Prayer has always been in the schools.

       “As long as schools give math tests, there will always be prayer in the schools!”
       (sorry, can’t remember who wrote that)

   • The only people who “deny climate” are those who have a God complex and believe they are qualified to to the job of the Almighty, and those too stupid to realize if Earth’s climate did not change, it would be a dead cinder, incapable of life.

     “the Great Australian Climate firestorm?”

     The one which occurs naturally, roughly every ten years, and is worsened of late by Libtards who prevent the Aussies from doing proper underbrush maintenance, or this year’s, which have spawned nearly 200 arson arrests, so far.

     Your “best” is never very good.

     I’d suggest reading, but that’s obviously not a strong point either…

     • It’s the same agenda in the Republik of Kalifornicate, I’m afraid. Stupid IS contagious. It’s spread by socialists writing curriculum and socialist media.

     • Have you seen the pictures of the burned animals that couldn’t cross fences? Think of all the new fencing in the last 100 years!!! I didn’t see em cutting those fences so those animals could get across to safety!

   • You didn’t see the sign at the entrance? Don’t tap on the glass.

   • Oh look, your leftist pals are already preparing for what comes after the election:

     https://www.zerohedge.com/political/gulags-werent-bad-sanders-staffer-says-trump-supporters-will-need-be-re-educated-camps

     The free sh_t they take will be yours. I mean, if you have something one of Bernie’s boys wants, like a house, a car, some savings, then you are a DJT supporter. That’s the way that works. Your liberal BS will not be an excuse. If Bernie’s boys want your stuff, then you go to the DJT camps and Bernie’s boys take what they please. Once your leftist buddies take over, the looting commences. Unless, of course, you are really just another leftist looter.

4. George

   “And those of us who are “climate ‘skepticologists’” “.

   And from The Big Wobble:

   “Did NASA know back in 1958 our Sun and not CO2 was causing climate change? ”

   http://www.thebigwobble.org/2020/01/nasa-knew-back-in-1958-our-sun-and-not.html

   They have some interesting charts suitable for framing!

   Use a straight edge to show the true alignment between peak events! Things get tight when you try to display 600,000 years in a chart eight inches wide.

   • “Did NASA know back in 1958 our Sun and not CO2 was causing climate change? ”

     Yup.. from papers and studies I have read they knew long before 1900.
     In 1930 thomas Edison tried to convince our politicians into adopting renewable resources and adding them to our country for use along with traditional methods. Nikola Tesla did to..the suggestions were shot down because it would impact profits of the companies associated to our Infrastructure at the time.

5. “When you read how Russia and France Want to Safeguard Iran Nuclear Deal, Macron Says, you gotta think money. Who do you think is selling the mullahs “peaceful nuclear development tools?”

   The thing which made our 18 year adventure in the Iraqi sandbox so exciting at the onset was: Mr. Hussein (a microbiologist by trade and an internationally-recognized authority on anthrax and botulism, before he shot himself into the Royal Palace) had found a way to bind anthrax to microdust, and had purchased dust from (principally) France which was so fine that a spore bound to it could pass between the molecules of our soldiers’ NBC suits. The cheese-eaters will sell anything, to anybody, for a Franc, and the rest of the World be-damned…

6. Volcanoes erupting all over the globe, expect a cool summer.

   • I suppose a cooler summer will mean shorter growing season.

     – Buy extra cans of protein while on sale – packaged & canned meats.
     – Buy extra cans of items that need long grow seasons

     Buy some grow lights and learn to grow indoors.

     Depending on latitude one may be able to use some of the summer for growing. It would depend on how much the Hardiness Zone Map slips south. July and August may be the old May and October. we’ll want your plants ready for the couple of months to lighten the electric meter.

   • I was wondering as well why this wasn’t getting more attention in the news. Low sunspots leads to global cooling which leads to a shrinking planet which leads to more fault slippages which leads to earthquakes and volcanism. Steamboat in Yellowstone has gone bonkers and Puerto Rico is rehearsing for an Atlantis replay. Maybe the “Big One” is now the “Big Ones”? I wonder when we will next read about the north side of the Mediterranean and New Madrid here in the U.S.? Istanbul just had a rumbler, Greece is due for a large shake, and Italy has quite a few volcanoes primed for popping. I recall reading somewhere that the odds for New Madrid making its adjustment were significantly greater than those for San Andreas; it’s just that California has more people…

   • Increased volcanic activity and cloud cover is the ‘B’ side of the sunspot minimum cooling theories. Unlike the cosmic ray (no relation to our Ray) cloud cover on side ‘A’ , no one has come up with a plausible physical mechanism beyond the BS level. Of course, that doesn’t mean that a good guess (hypothesis) is never spot on.

7. Based on what oil prices have done in the last week, there seem to be a lot of insiders who think the Mideast just got a little safer. Apparently DJT is a better faxer than a tweeter.

8. Yep right George. Correct spelling. Good thoughts in article as well!?

9. George you should fool around with this neat toy!
   The US Navy secretly designed a super-fast futuristic aircraft resembling a UFO

   Read more: https://metro.co.uk/2019/04/18/us-navy-secretly-designed-super-fast-futuristic-aircraft-resembling-ufo-documents-reveal-9246755/?ito=cbshare

   Twitter: https://twitter.com/MetroUK | Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/MetroUK/
   The inventor is Salvatore Pias
   More fun than you can have in the whole state of Texas!

10. That was a very entertaining and factual summary George. Yes it’s boom times ok . Kaboom. Tesla’s market cap please. Aw no more funnies!!!

11. Another article.

    https://www.forbes.com/sites/arielcohen/2019/10/30/a-breakthrough-in-american-energy-dominance-us-navy-patents-compact-fusion-reactor/#717a25381070

    • You know LMTC is close to fielding theirs, right?

12. “Oscar nominations being announced for the 92nd Academy Awards today?”

    George…..when was the last time that you voted on who received the academy award?

    I am going to guess.. it was the last time I was asked… never… lol lol..

    https://giphy.com/gifs/reactiongifs-mn1cym1jiJOUg

    My big issue.. is why in the sam hall can’t I think up something as simple as that..
    Maybe call it the dead carp award. Print it up all pretty put it in a fancy frame.. then charge someone a fortune to get it..hang it on the wall..cookie see were are dead carp certified. I got the academy award. Where they basically pay themselves on the back.

    https://images.app.goo.gl/FHBcPHwoMKytLPfx5

13. Your right, a stay in bed day, and avoid: volcanos, British storm, (both wind/rain and royal) and Greta Mc’Thunderburger,s daddy. Ah a day in bed, good cowboy movies and a bottle of whiskey.

    • Terrible plan, really. The whiskey part. Really oughta be vodka….

14. Sir,

    Thanks for shovelling a diversionary path around the msm blizzard.

    Actually, the unfolding Megxit avalanche is not without precedent. The last holder of the Duchy of Sussex, the ninth child of George III, also married outside the accepted boundaries of then then-in-force Royal Marriages Act of 1772. His spouse therefore could only be treated as his mistress but published a book, “Lady Augusta Murray’s Book of Cures”, which can be viewed online at no charge courtesy of the Royal Collection Trust website. It apparently includes a bread recipe for poor people. Not much has changed in how cake bakes.

    Hereabouts though reading has drifted to more seasonal fare, namely “Snow: a scientific and cultural exploration” by Giles Whittell. I had no idea that for a snowflake to begin forming, a speck of dust requires deuterium hydroxide to spark the process. We discourage anyone from trying to distill the latter on the kitchen stove.

    Speaking of things heating up, are the anti-state protests popping up in Iran a harbinger of an early Arab spring?

15. trust nothing .. fourth turning of this earth.. unstopabble evil and greed .. humanity in crisis

16. I find it particularly telling that the lies propagated by those who know so much that isn’t true had to wait until 2020 to take down the signs that proclaim their ignorance so clearly.

    https://nypost.com/2020/01/10/the-telling-tale-of-glacier-national-parks-gone-by-2020-signs/

    • Marvelous find – that story – and one that, dare we say it? Shows how the masses of monkeys mindset works – esp. in gov’t.

17. why George every time I write a explanation on the madness it does not go up and disconnects .. yep its everywhere.. even my old mate George.. still short George.. gotta be tough mate.. sexmagoo

18. yep the robots troll the net trying to silence anyone displaying sanity .. quite simply short or bury money .. this is the worst event ever upon us .. now please robots politely let an ex great gold bull have his say , and further for the good of humanity and children , stop this game ..

    • Len, I quite nearly ever understand what you are saying

19. The Link has been taken down, the whole website where this came from, so I apologize in posting the whole thing, but it is a good summation of Iran’s history.

    Illuminati Vs. IranOil-rich Iran has been in the crosshairs of the Illuminati banksters and their Four Horsemen oil cartel (Exxon Mobil, Chevron Texaco, BP Amoco and Royal Dutch/Shell) for well over a century.

    (Excerpted from Chapter 1: David Rockefeller & the Shah of Iran: Big Oil & Their Bankers in the Persian Gulf…)

    In 1872 British Baron Julius du Reuter was granted an exclusive 50-year mining and communications concession in Persia by that country’s Peacock Throne monarchy. By 1921 the British government had installed Shah Mohammed Reza Khan in a palace coup. [1]

    With their puppet in place, du Reuter’s firm, one of the British Empire’s most important tentacles, busied itself exploiting the rich oil reserves in what is now known as Iran. The Anglo-Persian Oil Company grew swiftly, first changing its name to Anglo-Iranian Oil, and later becoming British Petroleum (BP).

    Prior to WWII du Reuter’s BP dominated the Persian oil patch. Following the war Britain dumped its puppet Shah in favor of his yet more pliable son Shah Reza Pahlevi, whose Nazi sympathies were less overt. By 1943 the US had established a military command in Iran and signed the Tehran Agreement, cutting the US half of the Four Horsemen a generous slice of the Iranian oil pie. [2]

    Iran was coveted for its expansive reserves of crude and remains the most geopolitically strategic Middle Eastern nation, bordering both the unprecedented Persian Gulf oilfields to the south and the vast, largely untapped Caspian Sea crude reserves to the north.

    After World War II the Iranian people became increasingly hostile towards Big Oil and their puppet Shah. Anger was especially prevalent among oilfield workers of the Khuzistan region who formed the main constituency of the Tudeh (Masses) Party.

    In 1951 Tudeh formed a coalition with the National Front Party and elected Mohammed Mossadegh Prime Minister of Iran. Mossadegh, who first campaigned against Soviet occupation of northern Iran, became a vocal critic of Four Horsemen control over Iranian oil. He soon announced plans to nationalize BP interests in Iran. [3]

    BP responded by organizing an international boycott of Iranian crude and called on two long-time associates for more drastic measures.

    US Secretary of State John Foster Dulles and his brother, CIA Director Allen Dulles, both worked for the Washington law firm Sullivan & Cromwell before joining the State Department. The firm represented BP in the US. [4]

    After failed negotiation attempts in Tehran with the populist Mossadegh led by Averell Harriman and Vernon Walters, the Dulles Brothers took charge of a joint CIA/MI6 smear campaign painting the Iranian leader in the most brilliant colors of Red. When this anticommunist rhetoric failed to convince the Iranian people to turn on their popular leader, a military expedition was organized.

    Financing for the CIA coup, code named Operation Ajax, came from Deak & Company, founded by OSS operative Nicholas Deak. The company was the largest currency and gold bullion trader in the US after WWII and financed CIA adventures in Vietnam and the Belgian Congo through their Hong Kong gold monopoly.

    Operation Ajax was led by H. Norman Schwartzkopf, father of the Gulf War General of same name, and Kermit Roosevelt, grandson of President Teddy Roosevelt. A palace coup led by Shah loyalist General Fazlollah Zahedi was organized in 1954. Mossadegh was deposed and the Shah flew into Tehran from exile in Rome seated next to Allen Dulles. [5]

    The Four Horsemen had their puppet back in the National Palace. Kermit Roosevelt stayed in Tehran, his CIA Deputy Director of Plans income soon augmented by a new job as salesman of military aircraft for Northrop Corporation.

    In 1952 the US Federal Trade Commission (FTC) published a report detailing collusion and price-fixing on the part of the Four Horsemen. Titled The International Petroleum Cartel, the report detailed secret production quotas, joint ventures, marketing agreements and other evidence of collusion.

    The Justice Department responded to the 1952 FTC report by bringing an anti-trust case against the US faction of Big Oil. Exxon, Mobil, Chevron, Texaco and Gulf hired Sullivan & Cromwell, but the hotshot lawyers were never needed.

    Ten days before the coup against Mossadegh’s democratically-elected government, President Eisenhower dismissed the FTC case on national security grounds. Ike granted the Horsemen immunity from prosecution, while his envoy former President Herbert Hoover traveled to Tehran to help Big Oil and their puppet Shah establish the Iranian Consortium, which consisted of the Four Horsemen and French oil giant Compaignie Francaise de Petroles (now Total Fina). BP held a 40% share. [6]

    SAVAK Terrorism and US Multinationals

    Wherever the Four Horsemen gallop the CIA is close behind. Iran was no exception. By 1957 the Company, as intelligence insiders know the CIA, created one of its first Frankensteins – the Shah’s brutal secret police known as SAVAK.

    Kermit Roosevelt, the Mossadegh coup-master turned Northrop salesman, admitted in his memoirs that SAVAK was 100% created by the CIA and Mossad, the Israeli intelligence agency that acts as appendage of the CIA. For the next 20 years the CIA and SAVAK were joined at the hip when it came to matters of Persian Gulf security.

    Three hundred fifty SAVAK agents were shuttled each year to CIA training facilities in McLean, Virginia, where they learned the finer arts of interrogation and torture. [7] Top SAVAK brass were trained through the US Agency for International Development’s (USAID) Public Safety Program, until it was shut down in 1973 due to its reputation for turning out some of the world’s finest terrorists.

    In 1963 when JFK was assassinated SAVAK Chief Hassan Pakravan joined the Shah in Tehran to celebrate Kennedy’s death. [8] CIA, MI6 and Mossad supported 30 paramilitary groups in Iran and provided support to Shah-loyalist groups.

    Popular anger towards Big Oil, the Shah and his new police state resulted in mass protests. The Shah dealt with the peaceful demonstrations with sheer brutality and got a wink and nod from Langley. From 1957-79 Iran housed 125,000 political prisoners. SAVAK “disappeared” dissenters, a strategy replicated by CIA surrogate dictators in Argentina and Chile.

    SAVAK’s campaign of terror reached its nadir on June 15th, 1963. That day over 1,000 people were butchered by SAVAK forces, in what became known as the 15th of Khordad Massacre. In 1974 the director of Amnesty International declared that no country had a worse human rights record than Iran. The CIA responded by increasing its support for SAVAK. [9]

    A small group of elite families close to the Shah assumed total control of the Iranian economy. The Aalam, Sadri, Bakhtiyari and Eqbal families were part of this tiny but powerful aristocracy, as were the Rafsanjanis, who owned thousands of hectares of pistachio groves and whose son Hashemi would later become Iran’s President.

    Under the Shah’s reign, the Rafsanjanis made millions in real estate transactions, selling much of their land to the throngs of multinational corporations who flocked to Tehran, where they were awarded tax holidays, exemptions of duties on imported machinery and low-interest US-taxpayer-guaranteed Export-Import Bank loans. [10]

    In 1971 the Shah held an extravagant coronation to celebrate the 2,500-year anniversary of the Peacock Throne. Guests included Chase Manhattan insider John McCloy and George Ball, the long-time State Department hack who was now a senior partner at Lehman Brothers. Chase Manhattan, the Bank of America and Morgan Guaranty had been doing business in Iran for a very long time. Now they were joined by a horde of other banking giants.

    In 1968 Citibank bought a 35% stake in Bank Iranian. Manufacturer’s Hanover Trust (now part of JP Morgan Chase), led by Minos Zombanakis, became intimately involved in Iranian affairs. Chase Chairman David Rockefeller presented the Shah with a hunting rifle and bought up Iranian art. Soon Chase had a 35% share of the Industrial Credit Bank of Iran. Bankers flocked to the Hilton and Intercontinental Hotels in Tehran to put together loan deals, which led to huge contracts for the multinational corporations which these same banks controlled.

    B.F. Goodrich, Allied Chemical and Amoco established huge petrochemical joint ventures in Khuzistan. Chase Investment, Diamond Agatel, Mitsui and Hawaiian Agronomic built an agro-industrial complex. The world’s first aluminum smelter popped up at Arak in a joint venture between Reynolds, Kaiser, British Metal and General Cable. [11] Dow Chemical, FMC and John Deere set up agribusiness operations, while Cargill, Continental and other international grain giants flooded the Iranian market with US taxpayer-subsidized wheat, corn and feed grains.

    Iran had been self-sufficient in foodstuffs. Now the country embarked upon an export-led development strategy that benefited a handful of Tehran elite and their multinational partners. Cotton, sugar cane and sugar beet cultivation for export replaced traditional subsistence crops like maize and rice with help from USAID.

    In 1961, before this “White Revolution”, 79% of Iranian agriculture was for domestic consumption. Ten years later only 50% of production stayed in country while the other half was exported. Most multinationals operating in Iran went through either Chase Manhattan or Bank Omran, which became known at the USDA as “the Shah’s bank”.

    Food deficits weren’t far behind. Soon Iran found itself importing basic foods like wheat and corn to feed its increasingly urbanized population. Destitute farmers, plowed under by foreign agribusiness, flooded into Tehran and other large cities. In 1963 there had been over 40,000 villages in Iran. When the Shah was deposed in 1979 there were less than 10,000. The population of Tehran doubled during the 1970’s, with many of the newcomers living in the growing shantytowns. Ironically, many built their shanties out of US military crates, which were now arriving daily. [12]

    War is Business

    No corporations profited more than US defense contractors. From 1950-63 the Middle East received 3% of US military aid to the world. From 1971-75 it received 60.2%. [13] The bulk of it went to Israel, Saudi Arabia and Iran.

    Iran and Saudi Arabia were the “Twin Pillars” in President Nixon’s 1972 Guam Doctrine. Nixon and his cronies saw these two nations as critical to ensuring a steady cheap supply of crude oil to the US. Saudi reserves are estimated at 261 billion barrels, while Iran sits atop nearly 100 billion barrels.

    In return for cranking out cheap oil for the Four Horsemen these nations, both ruled by dictatorial monarchs, were armed to the teeth by US defense contractors and served as surrogates in financing and implementing US covert actions in the Middle East region aimed at nationalist and pan-Arab governments that threatened Big Oil interests.

    In addition, oil revenues received by both the Shah and his House of Saud counterparts were recycled back into US money-center banks JP Morgan, Chase Manhattan and Citibank. These banks own huge blocks of stock in the Four Horsemen and in the defense contractors which now jostled for position in both Tehran and Riyadh. Chase Manhattan owned Iran’s Central Bank – Bank Markazi. The international bankers were the main beneficiaries of this new oil for arms quid pro quo.

    In Iran the Shah was given carte blanche on US arms purchases. Iran came to account for 25% of US military sales. Westinghouse and Hughes Aircraft worked with Iran Electronics Industry to build a missile assembly and repair plant. Bell Helicopter constructed a helicopter assembly plant at Isfahan. Grumman, Rockwell, Lockheed, Fairchild, TRW, GTE, Boeing and McDonnell Douglas all profited from deals with Tehran.

    Bribery of Iranian officials was the norm in procuring defense contracts. Grumman coughed up $24 million in bribes to sell its F-14 fighters. Textron paid $2.9 million in baksheesh. Kermit Roosevelt’s new employer, Northrop, paid $2.1 million in bribes to sell the Iranian Air Force its F-5 aircraft. When Roosevelt’s memoirs Countercoup came out in 1979, many defense contractors were caught with their pants down as a now disillusioned Roosevelt named names. BP pressured publisher McGraw-Hill to pull the book from circulation due to Roosevelt’s contention that BP had hatched Operation Ajax to overthrow Mossadegh. [14]

    US government officials passed through the revolving door to private industry to get a piece of the US-taxpayer-funded action in Iran. Admiral Thomas Moorer, only months after retiring as head of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, joined Stanwich International Corporation as that ship repair company’s sales representative in Iran. Retired 4-star General Hamilton Howe signed on with Textron’s Bell Helicopter division in Tehran.

    The Shah gave bribes to the US media, which portrayed his government in a favorable light. CBS anchor Walter Kronkite received cigars and caviar, as did NBC anchor John Chancellor. David Brinkley, Mike Wallace, Rowland Evans, Robert Novak and Washington Post publisher Catherine Graham were “gifted” as well. The Shah made a $750,000 donation to the secretive Aspen Institute, which distributed pro-Shah booklets around the US. Politicians were also beneficiaries of the Shah’s largesse. Marion Javits, wife of Sen. Jacob Javits (R-NY), an important member of the Senate Foreign Relations Committee, received a $67,500 public relations contract from the Shah.

    The US sold $20 billion worth of weaponry to the Shah, though only $8.7 billion worth was actually delivered. [15] Some of what did arrive was totally useless. One shipment of Tang class submarines purchased by the Iranians was never deployed because they weren’t designed to operate in the shallow waters off the Iranian coast.

    Iranians were trained in the US to operate the systems that did work. From 1964-72, nearly 5,000 Iranians received training at US Air Force Schools. [16] The US was careful not to train the Iranians on militarily sensitive weapons. By 1977 there were 4,500 US technicians in Iran operating these more advanced systems.

    For his efforts as loyal servant in supplying cheap oil to the Four Horsemen, the Shah would become one of the richest men in the world.

    When Israel invaded Egypt’s Sinai Peninsula in 1967 Egyptian President Gamal Abdel Nasser, a strident nationalist and foe of Big Oil, responded by closing the Suez Canal to tanker traffic, then called on OPEC to launch an oil embargo. Even the Saudis concurred. But the Shah ordered Iran to step up oil production.

    The huge refinery at Abadan was upgraded, providing Big Oil with enough crude to break the embargo. The Suez closure ended up hurting independent oil companies most, since the majors had already developed supertankers, which were too large to pass through the canal anyway. Still the Shah’s decision radicalized many moderate members of OPEC.

    Led by Algeria and Iraq, the nationalists began to exert their influence. In 1969 Colonel Mohamar Qaddafi took power in Libya following a bloodless palace coup which toppled that country’s monarchy. Palestinian guerrillas targeted TAPLINE, a pipeline owned by ARAMCO – the Four Horsemen-controlled Saudi consortium and largest oil company in the world. TAPLINE crosses Syria on its way to the Mediterranean port of Sidon in Lebanon. After one such attack, Syria guaranteed Libya that it would keep the pipeline down for 270 days to drive up oil prices. But again the Shah opened the spigots and prices remained stable. [17] Part of the reason the Israelis came to occupy parts of southern Lebanon was so they could guard the strategic port of Sidon for Big Oil.

    Qaddafi responded to the Shah’s moves by initiating the Tripoli I and II plans, which placed non-negotiable demands on Big Oil. Both plans gained quick support among OPEC nations, but again the Shah countered, this time with the Tehran Agreement, which guaranteed the oil companies unlimited supplies of crude. With this guarantee in place, the Four Horsemen were actually able to stockpile petroleum during the ensuing Arab oil embargo of 1973. Though the Saudis cut production by a full 25%, world output actually increased 8% due to the flood of oil coming out of Iran.

    While US consumers saw gasoline prices quadruple at the pump, Big Oil reaped a huge windfall from the embargo. Had the whole event had been staged as a pretext to permanently raise gasoline prices in the US?

    Indeed, prices have never returned to pre-1973 levels. In 1972, the year before the embargo, the Four Horsemen showed a collective profit of $5.4 billion. The year the embargo ended their combined profits jumped to $8.4 billion – a 56% increase.

    Exxon’s profit during 1973, the year the embargo began, was $2.5 billion, which was at that time the best yearly profit ever in the company’s long history. [18] The embargo also ran many independent oil companies out of business, wiping out Four Horsemen competition. It was not the first time the Horsemen would profit from a crisis. Nor would it be the last.

    • Not history…

      This is a scary treatise.

      There are too many inaccuracies, both historical and factual, for this to be actual history, but it is accurate enough to be taught in schools, whose standards are set in D.C.

      Therefore it is accurate enough to make people more-ignorant…

      • Really? What’s wrong with it? The MSM NEVER tells us how other governments as well as our own government have interfered in Iran. They don’t tell us a lot of things that we should know RIGHT now about Iran’s history. ONE article and it’s not accurate and yet, in the last 35 years, the US citizen has been subjected to one lie after another about Iran to the tune of thousands of lying articles and thousands of hours of lies on air time about Iran so that America (and its allies) can leave out what they have done to destroy the ME. Constant barrage of lies to influence the citizens into destroying Iran.

      • …Not going to do your homework for you, but I will give you a starting point:

        “General Reza Pahlavi Kahn” or “Reza Shah” was the Shah of Iran from the 1920s until he was deposed in 1941. Reza Shah was a former Russian General, and was installed by the Russians. He died in exile, in (I believe South Africa), in 1944. The person WE know as the “Shah of Iran” is “Shah Mohammad Reza Pahlavi,” who was NEVER called “Reza.” The person who IS called “Reza Pahlavi” is Mohammed Pahlavi’s son.

        Reza Pahlavi is alive and well. He is a frequent guest of both the TV news networks, and Congress, and is a prolific writer.

        The reason I called this “scary” is: Like the historical fictions produced and aired by The History Channel, its conclusions are predominately correct from today’s perspective, but it, itself, is not historically-accurate.

      • BTW I have both Iranian, and Syrian acquaintances, some quite close. To glean a perspective on the REAL Middle East, all one has to do is talk a little and listen a lot (and turn off the damn’ TV, because you are exactly right WRT what the lamestream media, and our world history and sociology wonks will tell us.) The refugees and exiles that’re here in the United States are quite well-versed in their respective histories…

20. George, since you’ve been following the Boeing situation rather closely, I’m sure you saw the WSJ article referencing their internal docs showing a ‘Cavalier Attitude to Safety.’ A few choice excerpts: “Would you put your family on a MAX simulator trained aircraft? I wouldn’t.”

    “I still haven’t been forgiven by god for the covering up I did last year. Can’t do it one more time. Pearly gates will be closed.”

    “This airplane is designed by clowns, who in turn are supervised by monkeys.”

    “I don’t know how to fix these things … it’s systemic.”

    “This is a joke. This airplane is ridiculous.”

    “I’ll be shocked if the FAA passes this turd.”

    Yikes! Boeing has sure been in some hot water lately. These revelations certainly are helping with that.

    (https://www.wsj.com/articles/internal-boeing-documents-show-cavalier-attitude-to-safety-11578627206)

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