Pictory

God Bless The Shah

Freedom Lover and Iran Lover.

Look at what people do, not what they say.

He gave us a great example.

Western Media said many things that were untrue, dictator, crook, megalomaniac, corruption, anti womens rights, but having a choice based on deceit, coercion and manipulation is at the heart of western democracy, a masochistic system that no one would honestly want to buy.

The White Revolution (WR) transformed Iran from a backward

society to a modern and progressive one!

Prior to WR, the inhabitants of Iran were poor, uneducated, underemployed, unhealthy, diseased, starved to death, miserable, and lived in conditions worse than the 1500's in Europe.

It was due to the foresightedness and vision of HIM Shahanshah Aryamehr and WR that the Iranian nation propelled itself into 20th century modernity.

Of course, it didn't take that long for the reactionary forces in Iran in 1979 to take the nation back to 600 AD which coincides with the birth of Islam. Unfortunately, Iran and its desperate nation is stuck in that time zone and it will not come out any time soon!

As the first old saying goes, for every one inch forward some would take one light year backward!

As the second old saying goes, you can take the camel to water but you can't force it to drink!

The main objective in the "white revolution" was,

 the industrialization of Iran . It was planned to turn Iran from the "feudalistic mode" to the "Capitalistic mode". The white revolution helped to transform the feudalism into industrial capitalism. It ruined agriculture in Iran . Thus the farmers migration from rural Iran took place to provide the working force needed for the factories and industries .

    Undoubtedly the political atmosphere was stagnant during the Shah's reign but social and individual freedom and most definitely the women 's rights were in a much better position than the current situation. Women's freedom and the right to vote infuriated the clerics of those days .

White revolution

White revolution  was the worst thing that could have ever happened to Iranian agriculture ..... They took lands which were productive in terms of argacutural products and they gave it to the villagers who had no means and no money to basically run the farm.   SO what the poor villagers did was to sell the land and move to the bigger cities . In the cities , once the money was spent, the villagers became either construction workers( Amale ) or just a begger in the streets ....

Roozbeh land owners were not clergies.  My grand father was one of the landowners at the time of Reza Shah and then his son Shah. Owning at least Hundred acres of land growing cottons .... He had two offices one in Shoaml and one in Tehran. Mostly exporting Cottons to other countries  mainly Russia He was not a clergy at all..   Shah took almost all the lands from him and as the result he completely ruined the cotton industry which my grandfather had established .... He had been left with just a few acres to continue but not as much that he needed to run his cotton industry .. well .... those leftover lands did not last for us either because the Islamic revolution Mosadereh it all..... You take from rich who actually is doing something useful and give it to the poor with no plan and no main support ..... As I mentioned the poor ends up selling it and there goes the entire agriculture industry ......  Capitalism works but it needs rules and regulations .... worker unions and workers rights so everyone benefits .... You have to increase the standard of living for everyone while still people can hold to their possessions .....

And Nehzat Azadi didn't like it at all

It didn't take long for Nehzat Azadi (headed by M. Bazargan, Y. Sahabi and ...) to say this in a Bulletin:
خيلي مضحك است كه بخواهند به خانمها حق رأي انتخاب نمايندگان انجمن‌هاي ايالتي و بعد مجلس شورا را بدهند! مگر مردها در اين مملكت چه حالا و چه دوره‌هاي بعد از كودتا كه با آن رسوائي انتخاباتي بعمل مي‌‌آمد حق رأي دارندو داشتند كه زنها از آن محروم باشند؟! (يقيناً خواهران عزيز و روشنفكر ما گول چنين صحنه سازيها را نمي‌‌خورند.)

....
در هر حال و با توجه به همه احتمالات و اغراض فوق نهضت آزادي ايران از دولت بسيار دلسوز و قانون پرست و دمكراسي طلب استدعا دارد فعلا حق باز گرفته مردها را به خودشان پس بدهد و دخالتي در انتخابات ننمايد تا بعد نوبت صحبت خانمها و انجمن‌هاي ايالتي برسد.
به خواهران ارجمند و خانمهاي روشنفكر نيز توصيه مي‌نمايد فريب اين حرفها را نخورند و اگر به فكر رهائي مملكت از سدهاي استعماري و جهل وبيچارگي ملت هستند سنگ خيلي حقوق بديهي‌تر و عمومي‌تر را كه اول آنها حق آزادي مطبوعات و انتخابات است به سينه بزنند.
نهضت آزادي ايران
تهران ـ آبانماه ۱۳۴۱
//nedayeazadi.org/cd/drive/fmi/bayanieh/40_44...
or
بديهي است كه علماي اعلام نخواستند زنها را مادون و بنده مردها بشناسند بلكه بانوان شرعا حق مباشرت مستقيم در اموال و منافع و اتخاذ وكيل در كارهاي خود را دارند ولي چون روحانيون با شرايط موجود و علم باينكه دولت به هيچ دسته‌اي از ملت خدمت نكرده كه حالا بخواهد به خانم‌ها خدمت كند اصرارشان بيشتر از جهت اغراضي است كه در چنين نقشه‌ها نهفته است و شكستن سدهاي اسلام و قانون اساسي كه منظور دولت مي‌باشد آقايان ترس دارند كه با بيرون انداختن زنها در جنجالهاي سياسي و كشاندن به پرده دري و بي‌عفتي هم آنها را از وظايف طبيعي باز دارند

//nedayeazadi.org/cd.php
then click
جلد ١، ٤٤-١٣٤٠، جريان تأسيس و بيانيه‌ها
then click
در زمينه اعلاميه‌های اخير علمی اعلام و مراجع عظام دامت بركاتهم آبان / آذر ١٣٤١

Khomeini's two objections to this white "Revolution":

1) Woman's emancipation (whatever that meant in practice)

2) Land Reforms (Clerics were big landowners at least in my ancestral province of Gilan).

Now how only 16 years later, vast number of people on secular, progressive left, totally ignored this evil man's track record and followed him to the hell of islamist regime, only to become his first victims later on,  will forever baffle me....

This is why I keep saying: NEVER AGAIN .......

"Personal business must yield to collective interest."

Interesting

Thanks for the shareing. Interesting to see women, with and without veil, standing in line to vote. Mohammad Reza Shah's White Revolution, allowed women to stand for public office. Ironically, Dr. Farrokhroo Parsa, the first Iranian Woman Minister of Education, was hanged by the Islamic Regime, a few days after the Revolution.

pre 1979

Almost Every thing during the Shah era was almost  great from the Economy,  culture, army, world recognition, to social freedoms, the only and only "problem"  was certain political freedoms and imprisonment of  the communists, Mojahedeen, and the radical islamic groups , which are ALL nothing but a whole bunch of terrorists anyways and even if they were in the united states, canada or any other western country they would have been thrown in  to prison as well.