© Steve Mack/Getty ImagesHe doesn't want to lead Iran. But he doesn't want the current regime to remain, either.
From exile, Reza Pahlavi supports a movement to retake his homeland. But he says he doesn't want a throne.In another era, Reza Pahlavi, the son of the last shah of Iran, would be an ideal candidate to lead an Iranian government in exile.
After all, the
CIA helped his father retain power in the 1953 coup against the elected prime minister, Mohammed Mossadegh. Now, as
Iran is reeling, why wouldn't the U.S. get the old band back together?
There are two reasons. President Donald Trump himself says his goal is not to change Iran's regime, but to change its behavior. The other more important reason is that Pahlavi himself is not interested in the gig."My father was king, and I was the crown prince," he told me in an interview this month. "I have always said to my compatriots: It's not the form that matters, it's the content; I believe Iran must be a secular, parliamentary democracy. The final form has to be decided by the people."In the 1980s, Pahlavi as a young man had a relationship with the
CIA, according to reporting at the time from the
Washington Post's Bob Woodward. But even then, the Reagan administration was not trying to change the new regime in Iran; it was trying to negotiate with it.
As the Iran-Contra affair showed, Reagan's advisers were selling the mullahs Israeli weapons to free hostages in Lebanon.
Pahlavi himself for more than 20 years has consistently said he is not seeking the throne. Today he takes no money from any foreign governments. Instead, Pahlavi sees himself as someone who can bring attention in the free world to the struggle for freedom in his native land.
"I am not running for office," he said. "I have no personal ambitions other than to help the liberation of the Iranian people from the mullahs. If they say we need you to stick around, maybe in this role or that role, maybe. But that is not up to me."
Pahlavi's father was widely despised by the time he was toppled in 1979. Had the Islamic revolution failed in 1979, Pahlavi would have been the heir to that kingdom. Instead he has spent the last 40 years living in America. He first came to train as an
Air Force pilot in 1978, at the age of 17. He studied briefly at Williams College after the revolution. And while he still considers himself an Iranian patriot, he believes his homeland should emulate the open society of his adopted land.
"I am the kind of person that looks at the glass as half full," he said. "Imagine if I was ushered in as the crown prince. I don't think I would have had 1 percent of the experience and knowledge of living in a free society and a democratic country has given me." He said his experience of living in America is the best gift he can give to Iranians organizing today for a transition out of their tyranny.
This has led Pahlavi to lead an interesting life. For example, he was a friend of the late Gene Sharp, the great theorist of nonviolent social change and founder of the Albert Einstein Institute. Pahlavi said Sharp's ideas for how to organize a nonviolent revolution have influenced his own thinking on what to do now to assist Iran's democracy movement.
The influence becomes apparent in the conversation. For example, Pahlavi says a major component of his strategy is "the reintegration of the majority of the non-corrupt, non-criminal members of the existing paramilitary forces." This follows Sharp's own teachings on people-power movements. He stressed the importance of making it safe for members of the dictator's police and security services to join the revolution. "They need to know they will not be victims of regime change. Some of the top leaders will have to answer, but most of the people should not pay a penalty," Pahlavi said.
Pahlavi also says he wants to build a bridge between Iran's democratic activists and their counterparts in the West. "It's about time for Western democracies to engage in open, transparent dialogue with the democratic opposition," he said.
But Pahlavi also says this is a process that must be driven by Iranians themselves. He said he opposes any American military intervention in Iran. He also says it's a pipe dream for the U.S. to support the People's Mujahedin or MEK, an opposition group once allied with the 1979 revolution until it was purged in the 1980s by Ayatollah Ali Khamenei."I have spoken to former MEK members," Pahlavi said. "They force women to wear the Hijab." He added that most Iranians still despise the MEK for siding with Saddam Hussein's Iraq in the Iran-Iraq war. "I cannot imagine Iranians ever forgiving their behavior at that time," he said "If the choice is between this regime and the MEK, they will mostly likely say the mullahs."
Many have said the same thing about the Pahlavi dynasty. His father's regime tortured dissidents, suppressed the press and wallowed in corruption.
Nonetheless, there is now some nostalgia for the days of the shah. When construction workers earlier this year accidentally discovered the mummified corpse of
Pahlavi's grandfather, Iranian social media lit up with excitement. It caused a minor stir in Iran, after the regime refused to say whether they would lay the former leader to rest in a proper burial.
Reuel Marc Gerecht, a retired CIA officer who worked the Iran file, told me there has always been a constituency inside Iran that remembers the Shah fondly. He said he once met an Iranian dissident in Turkey in the 1980s who proved her devotion to the Pahlavis by showing him that she had taped a photo of the crown prince to her chest, under her chador. "The nostalgia for the Pahlavis has been there for some time, and I think it's rising," Gerecht said. "I don't think it represents any effort to restore the monarchy though."
In this respect, Pahlavi has something to offer his people as a patriot - not as a Shah in waiting. Today he told me he is primarily focused on reaching out to Iranians living outside the country to help solve the coming shortage of drinking water. He wants to convene a network of talented emigres to develop policies to address the many problems - ranging from the currency crisis to the desertification of the country - that have been allowed to fester under the current regime.That shows maturity and wisdom. Pahlavi does not present himself as the savior of Iran. He does not seek to restore the dynasty that was snatched from him in the 1979 revolution. No, the son of the late shah seeks a new revolution in Iran to emulate the democratic nation that has become his home away from home.
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"To be governed is to be watched, inspected, spied upon, directed, law-driven, numbered, regulated, enrolled, indoctrinated, preached at, controlled, checked, estimated, valued, censured, commanded, by creatures who have neither the right nor the wisdom nor the virtue to do so. To be governed is to be at every operation, at every transaction noted, registered, counted, taxed, stamped, measured, numbered, assessed, licensed, authorized, admonished, prevented, forbidden, reformed, corrected, punished. It is, under pretext of public utility, and in the name of the general interest, to be placed under contribution, drilled, fleeced, exploited, monopolized, extorted from, squeezed, hoaxed, robbed; then, at the slightest resistance, the first word of complaint, to be repressed, fined, vilified, harassed, hunted down, abused, clubbed, disarmed, bound, choked, imprisoned, judged, condemned, shot, deported, sacrificed, sold, betrayed; and to crown all, mocked, ridiculed, derided, outraged, dishonoured. That is government; that is its justice; that is its morality." - Pierre-Joseph Proudhon
Democracy is largely undefined, suffrage does not define democracy, and suffrage means “prayers or a plea on behalf of another, which is the concept of voting; voting means to make a vow, which is a solemn promise, a promise upon your very soul.
Suffrage being the granted ‘right’ to vote to be bound by the dictates of the one with the cumulative justification, the vote of the body, of a majority of votes forming the authority of the representative of the suffrage, the suffragium, meaning ‘vote commanded’ who can then vote within an assembly of the corporations policy makers, voted representatives, on behalf of the universal suffrage. The purpose of the vote is to allow passive consent, known as sufferance, of the corporations imposed policy, sufferance means, to endure misery, hardship and pain.
Democracy does not exist in any corporate governmental system on Earth, what does exist is representative government , which was first used within ancient Rome and modern representative governments imitate that Roman model. It was reintroduced by Napoleon within Europe through the direction of the Vatican who instigated its return.
All representative governments are in reality oligarchies. “It is organization which gives birth to the dominion of the elected over the electors, of the mandatories over the mandator’s, of the delegates over the delegators. Who says organization, says oligarchy.”---“Historical evolution mocks all the prophylactic measures that have been adopted for the prevention of oligarchy." Robert Michels in his 1911 book, Political Parties
Therefore representative government is a form of government in which all power is vested in a few persons or in a dominant class or clique ; government by the few for private advantage, against the interests of the many.
So to give consent to be the subject of a representative is an act of self-enslavement; democracy is a vague fantasy sold endlessly by the media; politically it is commonly installed by military force against people of a chosen region, blanketed with the medias battle cry ‘democracy’ echoing upon their burning cities, murdered children and stolen natural resources.
Demos – ‘people’; Cratic – ‘rule’. “… democracy means your ignorance is just as good as my knowledge. ” - Isaac Asimov
Democracy is a way to divide brother from brother, taking the responsibilities each living soul has for their neighbour, and inequitably suspending that obligation ; achieved through the collective conferring of those responsibilities upon a representative, an agent of the corporation being the legal fiction of government, an incorporeal entity which removes the unalienable duty of care, and freely commits atrocities, impositions, criminal frauds, etc. upon groups, regions or society at large without any accountability toward those perpetrating such crimes, as they are under the imagined protection of the legal fiction of corporate government, who defends those actions, and gives legal protection to its agents through the fraud of democracy; being the idea of the protection of the majority who consented a collective right, however in truth and by the axioms of the land NO collective rights exist, only individual reciprocal obligations and responsibilities in equity.
The word ‘government’ is derived from the Latin verb Guverno, Guvernare meaning ‘To control’ and the Latin noun Mens, Mentis meaning ‘Mind’. Government means ‘To control the Mind’; “Govern-mental”.
Democracy is a media manufactured propaganda tool, accepted unquestioningly by the masses as a result of the lifelong indoctrination that has accrued within each of them, from the education, media and political institutions, creating a perception of moral justification for impositions upon the individual, and the unprovoked attack upon other neighbouring corporations in hostile take overs, authoring murderous war, an ocean of innocent blood imbued upon the alter of corporate democracy, justified in the name of the governed.
The innate nature of a living soul does not function upon a democratic principle, it function upon the equitable principle of consensus, a jury for example is not democratic, a full consensus must be reached, that is the natural order.
Band societies do not have leaders, instead they make decisions based on consensus, the natural structure of society is in polycentric communities functioning in common unity, no hierarchy to impose, no lords, sovereigns or bureaucrats to steal murder or subjugate, hierarchical structures are predominantly, if not exclusively, dominated by clinical psychopaths.
Islam means “to be free of any evil at all times, without any reference to who the subject and object may be", evil means excessive actions, all corporate government is based upon sovereignty, in Islam the only sovereign that exists is the Creator (who is Not God), not even a messenger of that Creator (who is Not God) can or could be sovereign over any other. The truly Islamic structure is polycentric community free of any sovereign and so from that reality then free of any and all hierarchies, as all hierarchies create subjugation.
The Rothschild's instigated the French revolution in 1789 in an attempt to purge Europe of the widespread failure of Roman Catholic authority, which had been exposed through the propagation of the trivium and later the printing press, the religious frauds of the Roman Catholic corporation were being exposed, and the removal of the absolute monarch system which was difficult for the usury manipulators to dominate , so the Church which is founded upon the fraud of usury, with the aid of the Rothschild’s worked to establishment the fraud of democracy.
"The French armies of the Directory, now intent on the destruction of the structures of Catholic temporal power, entered Rome on 29th August 1799, Pope Pius VI was kidnapped, an action sanctioned by the Directory in Paris who referred to him as the 'last Pope'. He died in captivity, a broken man. The remaining Cardinals fled to Austrian held Venice to convene the conclave for the inauguration of a successor.
The election of Pius VII succeeded despite the denial of St Mark's Cathedral as a coronation venue by the Austrian authorities’ intent on controlling the power of the new pontiff.” (The Popes and European Revolution, Oxford University Press, 1981; pp. 481-3. Owen Chadwick)
The Pope is monarch and is traditionally crowned and ascends to the throne, or See of Rome. The Holy Roman See is derived from 'Sancta sedes', meaning Holy chair, in reference to the throne that the Pope occupies after his enthronement.
The Roman Catholics use the fabricated and carefully engineered threat upon them generated by themselves and the Rothschild's to create support for a new emperor, Napoleon. Cardinal Chiaramonti, the Bishop of Imola, in his 1797 Christmas sermon, baptised democracy, this Bishop was the Pope elected to replace Pius VI, as Pope Pius VII.
"The new Emperor, Napoleon Bonaparte, no longer a tool of the Directory, had now reconciled his views on the position of the Roman Catholic Church in national life, and concluded a Concordat with the Pope later in the year. (1800)” (The Popes and European Revolution, Oxford University Press, 1981; Owen Chadwick)
The fraud of Democracy, which is simply the invention of collective right over the individual, is the first step or beginning of the imposition of socialism, which thrives on propaganda and bureaucracy, using propaganda to indoctrinate the people; once this indoctrination is complete the control of the mind is established, known as 'in capita' meaning ‘in the head’ – within the mind of a living soul or soulless creature acting as an agent of the State corporation, authority is granted for their actions by a person or institution they perceive superior to themselves and all others, allowing them to hold a belief that they can act criminally without accountability, or suffer encroachment with a belief they may not seek relief.
What all government does: uses force and intimidation to coerce people to comply with their demands!
Terrorism is defined as: The use of force and intimidation in the pursuit of political aims. Therefore universally, all forms of government are terrorist aggressors.
Socialism, is the idea where the State corporation steals the wealth of the rich and redistributes it to the poor, the very poor that the rich robbed through government granted monopoly and privilege in the first place to become rich ; while the corporation of State is itself administrated by the very rich who rob the poor. The greater the amount of socialism the greater the interference of the State in the lives, businesses and communities it dominates. The ultimate form of socialism is communism where the State Corporation is all powerful, and the people are cogs in its machine, this takes the fiction of collective right to the extreme, and manifests the greatest abuses, subjugation and inequity.
Libertarians are in opposition to socialism; socialism removes liberty replacing it with state control; natural liberty is the exemption of extraneous control, only constraining a free soul by the innate reciprocal obligation and responsibility that each has for those around them, binding through their inherent power manifest as the true nature of all living souls. Liberty as a ‘legal’ grant is a fiction, being a franchise of privilege granted by a superior, as in equity all are equal, who has greater authority to grant another liberty or prevent another equality?
A superior can only exist if there are inferiors, and that is a master slave structure, a slave is chattel, the basis of libertarianism is the radical notion that another living soul cannot be your property!
Anarchism is the revolutionary idea that you are not State property!
Islamism (although modern Islam has been replaced by Wahabbism) is the quantum leap that all life and the Earth in its entirety is not property to be bought and sold!
Representative democracy is the method the elite apply (the elite are imposed superiors, who act above and beyond the positive law they authorise); you vote for a representative in your local area, this representative then votes, within a body politic (corporation) to establish the dictates, regulations, taxations, wars, service monopolies upon the population, etc. imposed through your consent, if you voted, so viewed as upon your behalf; but even if you refused to vote, the corporation impose upon you through the threat or force of arms, and you must quietly accept these impositions as you consented to it democratically, they claim, or you must concede to the will of the majority if you abstained, in reality of course there is no free choice within that vote, and further the majority no longer vote seeing it as a futile activity.
“If voting changed anything they’d make it illegal.” Emma Goldman
“The people who cast the votes don't decide an election, the people who count the votes do.” Ioseb Besarionis Dze Jugashvili (A.K.A - Joseph Stalin)
Your permission is the difference between sex and rape, one is consensual, the other a submission; or the difference between a gift and robbery; or between volunteering and slavery. To be forced to submit is an act of aggression.
Inherently non-aggression holds, which means a substantiation of self-defence or to substantiate the defence of others being forced to submit against their will.
Reciprocal inherent power is innate, a fundamental. Inherent power is immutable and unalienable because it is within you, as a measure of your creation, for example you must give your permission to all agreements between souls, as an act of informed reason, not merely in submission.
The Kanienkehaka and Onkwehonwe have a word ‘ore˙na’ which means inherent power, as a force present, in varying degrees, in all objects or souls, and to be the force by which the souls accomplishment is attained or accounted for. Inherent power is derived from the nature of your creation, and binds all in reciprocation as everything is connected.
Therefore the most violent act any soul could commit against their neighbour would be to vote a representative upon them.
Representative voting is an act of aggression, because it strip away consent and imposes submission.
"If you have been voting for politicians who promise to give you goodies at someone else's expense, then you have no right to complain when they take your money and give it to someone else, including themselves" - Thomas Sowell
To persuade a soul requires reason, to coerce a soul demands fear, violence generates fear. Inherently violence stands against the concept of Terrente –‘the peace of their mind threatened’, which means violence is injurious physical force; action that causes fear of physical violence if conformity is not submitted to; or treatment that forces conformity, or prevents free passage, use or expression.
“Now I will tell you the answer to my question. It is this. The Party seeks power entirely for its own sake. We are not interested in the good of others; we are interested solely in power, pure power. What pure power means you will understand presently. We are different from the oligarchies of the past in that we know what we are doing. All the others, even those who resembled ourselves, were cowards and hypocrites. The German Nazis and the Russian Communists came very close to us in their methods, but they never had the courage to recognize their own motives. They pretended, perhaps they even believed, that they had seized power unwillingly and for a limited time, and that just around the corner there lay a paradise where human beings would be free and equal. We are not like that. We know what no one ever seizes power with the intention of relinquishing it. Power is not a means; it is an end. One does not establish a dictatorship in order to safeguard a revolution; one makes the revolution in order to establish the dictatorship. The object of persecution is persecution. The object of torture is torture. The object of power is power. Now you begin to understand me.” George Orwell - 1984
1. In the equity of our inherent power being the innate nature of all living souls, understood through the axioms of the land, there can be no superior authority above that inherent power to grant any right, further even in the fictional legal system there is no collective right , which means if 51% of a population want to encroach inequitably upon you, it does not make it somehow just and equitable, as no collective right can or could exist to suspend the immutable inherent powers that are unalienable reciprocal obligations and responsibilities of every individual.
2. Each one of us has an obligation in equitable conduct of a ‘duty of care’ for all those around us, the corporate State is a legal fiction and as such has no duty of care, and the agents of the State corporation, just as any other type of corporation hide behind constructed, chartered legal fictions, to escape accountability; so for example the State can send off those men it subjugates to war, even as a voluntary act, as they act in ignorance , as in for example; the battle of the Somme which took a million British lives, with no one ever held to account, no one ever seeking relief, no one brought to justice within the legal code court system imposed upon the population, the families of those murdered men stood silent, imagining they were extorted from relief!
3. Only someone who is equitably classed as mentally incompetent, or considered too young to be fully competent, can have another represent their interests , so to have a representative in court, council, government, etc., is the action of someone that is equitably considered mentally incompetent, so unfit to make their own decisions; so when you vote for another to represent you, you surrender your responsibilities, and so you surrender your freedom.
4. The fraud of democracy through the fiction it engenders of collective right, grants its re-presented ‘citizens’ (citizen is a legal fictions attached to a living soul, being a nominal title that represents them as a legal fiction- straw man), freedoms, it creates declarations of freedoms, but natural equity is unalienable and immutable, no tangible or intangible superior can grant me any right as a privilege that I do not already have in full, nor can they deny my inherent powers, so only inherent power of an individual must exist as reciprocal obligations and responsibilities upon all in equity. Freedom cannot be given, it cannot be earned, it cannot be enacted; freedom is the result of the social environment you exist within. Government cannot grant you a thing, it can only place limits on that which was equitably yours to begin with.
“ Democracy is a con game, it is a word invented to outplay people, to make them accept a given situation. All institutions sing ‘we are free.’ The minute you hear ‘freedom’ or ‘democracy’ – watch out, because in a truly free nation, no one has to tell you that you’re free.” Jacque Fresco
Shalom