Circle of Strife

   When you sleep with the devil, you should not be surprised when you wake up smelling like a goat. Seems obvious enough, and an idea and process most people would choose not to make, if they had the choice. Often governments make these choices for us. Even worse, they often do these types of things secretly. They do them secretly because they are criminal acts.
   By now you might be wondering what the hell I'm talking about. I will explain;

   In the aftermath of WWII there was a global movement towards democracy and self-determination sweeping the globe. Specifically to this story, in the nation of Iran they did away with a corrupt monarchy and replaced it with the first democratically elected government in Iran's history. High on the agenda of this newly elected government was seeking a fair and just renegotiation of the oil deal between British Petroleum and Iran. This had the potential to disrupt many of the profits and comforts enjoyed by the western capitalist economies. Under the existing deal, Iran got what BP was willing to give them: a percentage of BP's profits on Iranian oil. But Iran had to take BP's word for what their share was. They weren't allowed to see the books. This deal had been arranged through bribing the negotiators for the now defunct monarchy.
   Well, as you might guess the greed worshiping capitalists had an idea, overthrow the first democratically elected government in Iran's history, and reinstall the corrupt monarchy. Criminal yes, but great for the Western Empires, and their corporations annual profits.
  In what we have now been told was the first major criminal undertaking of  the CIA, our government overthrew the fledgling democracy and reinstalled the corrupt and savage Shah of Iran to the Peacock Throne. BP got to keep its exploitative deal going for another twenty-five years, the people of Iran got to suffer economic exploitation, and barbaric intimidation and abuse at the hands of the Shah, and his vicious secret police. What a deal!
  This arrangement blew up with the Islamic Fundamentalist Revolution that occurred in Iran in the late 1970's. Along with the change in government, the young revolutionaries overran the U.S. Embassy and took many U.S. citizens hostage. We the U.S. public were hard pressed to understand why the Iranians seemed to hate us so much. We did not know then, that our government had killed their first democratically elected government, and by extension, subjected many Iranians to barbaric abuse and torture under the criminally corrupt Shah.
But, hey look at the upside, we in the west got to enjoy cheap oil, and economic plenty at their expense.
   Still to this day, we are mired in a monstrous conflict with Iran specifically, and Muslim Fundamentalists generally, derived from our criminal meddling in that nations internal affairs. If the financial accounting could be totaled, we could see that the exploitation we enjoyed in the western economies is now costing us more than was achieved during those years.
   Sadly, there is a measure of "poetic justice" to BP turning the Gulf of Mexico and portions of the U.S. coastline into a huge oil-slick. BP has always made a portion of their profits at others expense; And we, through the criminal activities of our government have a long and sad history of helping them to do it!
  Hence the title of this post; Circle of Strife.
  What goes around, comes around. As ye sow, so shall ye reap.
  For a more detailed accounting of this portion of history, I'm including a link to a timely essay on this subject. I hope you take a few minutes and read more about it, here is the LINK.    
  In the meantime keep smilin', with a little luck we will find a reason to... someday.

           
  Edited by Eric