I do not claim that he was a Marxist – but he played the card.

As for the oil – the Shah nationalised it anyway.

But he did not allow Soviet forces near the Gulf.

“But M. was not serious – he was just playing a card….”

Do that and get your heart cut out. That was the CIA view in the 1950s – and they were correct.

However, if M. was innocent (if he really did not have Soviet contacts) then the British agents who framed him (if they did frame him) should have been force fed their own sexual organs – that should go without saying.

As for the British – I do not understand them (and I am British myself).

Such things as the deal with Nasser in 1954 (i.e. the removal of British forces from the Canal Zone in return for piece of paper) make no sense.

The withdrawl of 1954 made the events of 1956 (the nationalization of the canal – and the collapse of Western influence in much of the Middle East) inevitable.

That’s not a problem. I do it all the time. ALL the time.

Penn’s problem is he’s an idiot. (Fine actors are frequently just a splurge of emotion and empathy. You want superhot steam in a calliope. You don’t want it under your desk with the PC and the genitalia.) ‘His’ government happens to be equivocal on the point currently. But if it agreed with him, it wouldn’t make his view any less idiotic.

Another example of the reduction of the world’s communications network into a global edition of “Screen Digest”.

It’s not the media’s bias that bothers me, but their endlessly boring trivia, their celebrity driven superficiality, and their abject cowardice.

Pathetic.

Mossadegh gave not a toss for Soviet ideology, in fact he was very Pro-American.
Can you not see the irony and hypocrisy of a government (UK) which owned BP throwing a hissy fit over another government (Iran) nationalising its oil?

Thus, the “Soviet” canard dies on its arse when faced with logic.

Why do you think Truman told the Brits to get lost when they called the Waaaambulance?

Operation Ajax was a classic example of big government cronyism and socialism; taxpayers money spent for the benefit of state-owned oil companies.

As for the Falklands, Penn is talking nonsense (but then he is in good company; witness the hilarious, deranged speculation of war in the paranoid UK press), but so is Cameron; the British government’s attitude to sovereignty is truly revealed by the scandalous Wikileaks documents on the Chagos islands.

http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/worldnews/southamerica/falklandislands/9098633/Cristina-Kirchner-told-to-leave-Falkland-Islanders-alone-by-Argentinas-intellectuals.html

OT (kind of): did you see the story about Syrian WMD’s justifying intervention, and, even more mind- boggling if true, that they might be Saddam’s?? What happened to that story?

With the Falklands it seems the only right they have is an ancient claim of the Spanish Monarchy. So essentially the “anti-colonialist” Penn respects the law of the Spanish monarchy more than the rights of a few thousand people. How Radical that is

For example, if the hostility of Iranian regime is caused by America and Britain helping to undermine a pro Soviet government in 1953 (not that most of the media, and so on, could name the date – they would just say “Imperialism” or “colonialism” or some such) then one does not have to know anything about Islamic theology in general, or Shia “hastener” theology in particular.

Just as if Argentina is automatically correct against “colonialist” Britain – then one does not need to know anything about Argentina (for example that this whole islands thing was whipped up by the governments Argentina has had since the 1930s – before this Argentinian governments had little interest in the Falklands).

Nor does one need to know anything about other countries in Latin America – all one needs to know is that the locals are noble, wickedly oppressed by evil Anglo-American big business, and the local rich.

You could actually send one of the elite media (or other such) types to the Latin American county – and they might still get the name wrong (after all – they would know nothing about the place).

“They need to be educated”.

Sadly they have been “educated” – that is the problem.