Brian H. Appleton

Thanks Anonymous, Good idea.

I will do that. Stay tuned.

gorbanat,

Brian

No more martyrs

//www.iranchamber.com/history/photo_albums/revolution79_album1/revolution79_album1.php

Ramin khan,

Everyone is a critic but how many can offer solutions? You have so far repeatedly called me a lier, a speaker of jibberish, wished me to the bottom of the ocean, told me to go away and basically told me that I have no right to any opinions about Iran. I think all of your blustering is an attempt to engage me in a dialogue and for that I admire your persistence but I am not sure what point you would like to make about Iran leaving me out of the equation for the moment.

 Without intruding on your privacy I wonder when you were in Iran last and what you did in Iran before and during the revolution?

Although you continue to assume  you know what my politics are, I do not presume to know yours. I always say one should never criticize someone else until you have walked a mile in their shoes. So what in an ideal world would you  personally like to see for the future of Iran? I am ready to listen if you have anything to say which is not an attack on me.

Brian it may be a good idea to write a blog about your book.

Everything is sacred.

My problem

is that you LIE, but your lies are not blatant lies, which even a three-toed sloth could detect, but your lies are slimy ones with just enough half-truths in them to evade detection by most. I've read your jibber-jabber, and they're all BIASED and skewed to the left, and almost always partial to the IRI.

That's a fact, jack, whether you admit it or not. And by the way, the Black Friday incident in 1978, the one which you famously write about (= five hours of non-stop shooting by the army at the people) is a classic lie. Tell me, how many people do you think were killed on Black Friday? Are you aware of massive speakers located at crucial sections of Tehran for maximum effect, with taped recordings of bullets being fired, so as to make it look like the army was shooting at people?

And do you know that Palestinian sharpshooters were stationed high above Meydoon Jaleh and were paid by the mullahs to fire at the army, which was caught off guard and fired back, kiling innocent people, giving Khomeini his publicly requested "blood of innocent people so the revolutionary tree can grow."

And Cinema Rex, who was responsible for this unconsionable tragedy? It was the mullahs, Jack! -- and we all know this today. But have you ever actually opened up this incredibly shady and trecherous past and written about it, in the order of Germany and its Nazis? 

Yes

You can read my hostage experience in my book "Dastanha Az Zirzameen" which you can buy directly from the publisher or Amazon or from my website in which case I shall autograph your copy. It has 161 color photos and 33 black and white, some by quite famous photographers. I paid $9K just for the rights to use the photos. My website is www.zirzameen.com It is only $26 plus sales tax if you are in California...it is a great deal!

 You can read 11 5 star reviews and 2 4 star reviews of it on Amazon where it goes as "Tales From The Zirzameen"

gorbanat,

Brian

Brain have u written about ur hostage story? any particular blog

Everything is sacred.

Actually I do worry about my own country a great deal

I write my Senators, Congressmen and the President on a regular basis on issues. Our foreign policies have a direct effect on Iran as do acts of Congress like the gasoline embargo. There is a significant Iranian American population who have an interest in US Iran relations. There isn't a lot of good information here about Iran to base intelligent policies on which is why every attempt ends up in an ultimatum and the regime doesn't change. There was a good article in the Wall Street Journal recently saying it is time for Americans to learn the actual names of the progressives and democrats in Iran and proceeded to name a bunch.

I have lived in Italy for 13 years, Greece for 3 and France for 3, Iran for 5  and the USA for 20 and I think it is fair to say that no country in the world is as capitalist or as controlled by corporations as the USA and no other country has 3000 military bases around the world and a military force 7 times bigger than anyone elses and a military budget during the Bush years that was bigger than the rest of the worlds defense budget combined. Does it really make me an uber uber American hating leftist just to state the facts? I am not going to resort to name calling which is by the way why I removed some of my earlier articles especially after receiving hate mail on my personal e mail address...so what is your problem other than being very right wing?

wrong

I am not left or right. I definately don't hate myself and I am not bitter and I don't hate America...but why hide from the truth?What I did in my comment was describe things that I experienced. Things won't get better in the USA or globally until the past is examined and faced and we move forward together from there. The only way Germany moved forward after the Nazi era was to open Dachau and the other concentration camps to the public, pay lots of reparation to the Israelis and to create a Holocaust museum and monument in Berlin...etc.

Appleton sounds like...

one of those self-hating Jews who supports the Hamas!

Read his uber-uber leftist, uber America-hating jibber-jabber and weep for this bitter man:

"Look at the literally hundreds of thousands of women who out of poverty have resorted to prostitution supported and enabled by the US military in South Korea, the Phillipines and Thailand... Consider the 200,000 bastard babies the US troops left behind in Japan after WWII who were then rejected and treated as untouchables in Japan condemned to lives of poverty."

Funny stuff, Appleton...

"Meanwhile we saw China go from Mao's "Cultural Revolution" and "Great Step Backwards" to something that resembles a free market economy and more political freedom, Tienamen Square not withstanding."

So, the Chinese model, the same totalitarian China that executes the most political prisoners the world over, is the ideal model that Iranians should aspire to?

Are you mad, Rasoul???  

"I mean look at what the CIA did to Mossadeg..."

Oh, really? The MI6 and the British had nothing to do with 28 Mordad? -- it's always the Americans! And what about the role of treasonous Iranians? In fact, but for Ayatollah Kashani's betrayal and the Tudeh party's treason and stupidity in condemning Mossadegh as an aristocratic Qajar), the coup would NEVER have succeeded, no matter what the CIA did in Iran. The coup was only successful when the likes of Behbahani and Kashani (Khomeini's predecessor and spiritual teacher), the leader of the Fedayoun-e-Islam, betrayed Mossadegh.

But of course, lefty leftovers from a dead era always blame the CIA and America for all of the world's problems. First, I would blame the British, then Mossadegh himself, then the Iranian traitors, and finally, the CIA.

Oh, and you never had any dealings with the dreaded CIA while you were stationed in Iran, Rasoul Agha?

Rasoul Agha

GO AWAY!

Why don't you worry more about your own country, the USA, and its monumental economic and political woes? Why are you such a pest, a classic officious intermeddler, when it comes to Iran?

GO AWAY!

You and your self-interested, double-dealing ilk screwed us in 1979, and here you are, at it again... the screwing continues...

Take a thousand Rasouls and Amirahmadis and toss them into the bottom of the ocean and what do you have?

A good start.

Oh, and why did you dissolve your two previous blogs? Did the heat, the biting criticism of your shady past, get to you too much? And I know you're pretty fond of the "flag" button, which frankly doesn't say much for your appreciation of freedom of speech, which smacks of IRI censorship.

And it's not just Iran

whether we want to admit it or not, we are the empire as Steve Ricks said in his travel documentary about Iran. There are two Americas, the one we know and love here and the one the rest of the world experiences and they are not the same. I am not suggesting that only Americans are capable of sin but they seem to have deluded themselves into thinking that their mission abroad is noble and without sin and a selfless exportation of democracy and hi tech civilization for the greater good of all mankind. Isn't that the myth most of us live by?

I grew up in Italy as my parents were civilians working for the US Army at a base there. I witnessed how many of the US soldiers and sailors behaved towards the Italians. As a young child I watched from my balcony as drunk American sailors smashed rows of parked cars right in front of the police station with complete impunity and shreiked foul language or chased old women terrorizing them or made loud public displays of the prostitution they were engaged in. Other nationalities of sailors like French and German would come to port and you didn't even notice they were there, they were so quiet and well behaved.

 Unfortunately it wasn't just the US soldiers, their  dependants, children, American teenage sons living with them, also committed crimes against the locals, destroying property, dropping man hole covers onto passing cars from over passes, etc.often with impunity. I can remember one teenager in the 1960's who actually went to jail for his crime and was amazed to find out that unlike in the US, he had to work to pay for his room and his mother had to bring him meals...what about the US jet fighter from their base in Aviano, which accidently severed a cable car line, plunging the Italian passengers to their deaths. The pilot wasn't even sentenced and no apology or compensation was offered to the next of kin. The pilot blamed it on an old map. What about the Iran Air passenger plane that was shot down? Was any compensation given to the families who lost members?  The captain of the ship was even given a comendation.

I remember after the revolution, one of the newspapers put out a story about a group of Bell Helicopter employees in Esfahan who were all Vietnam veterans, who had been arrested by the local authorities for running a whorehouse using their own South East Asian wives as the prostitutes. It was something that Bell had successfully covered up during the time of the Shah. 

My mother told me when she was a Sargeant in the US Women's Army Corp in Japan after the war that she overheard a young Japanese girl musician, who had been hired to play for a group of American soldiers, being gang raped by them instead, in the hotel room next to hers and how the girl wept and wept. My mother was so terrified of them that she was afraid to call for help lest they do the same to her before any police arrived. She also told me about a US soldier named Havalda, who shot 17 Japanese civilians in the street and was exonerated by an appeal from his congressman to the military court asking for his pardon. This is not ancient history, a US serviceman raped a teenage Japanese girl as she walked home from school in Okinawa just a few years ago. But note how when the naval officers in Vegas molested women military personnel at that "Tailhook Party" some years ago there were law suits all over the bloody place. It is a double standard.

The fact of the matter is that many Americans overseas act like they are above the local laws and in many cases they are. Note how Mr. Bush would not allow the USA to become subject to the laws of the World Court because he did not believe that Americans would get fair trials by foreigners.

Look at the literally hundreds of thousands of women who out of poverty have resorted to prostitution supported and enabled by the US military in South Korea, the Phillipines and Thailand. Surveys show that the vast majority of prostitutes would prefer working in other legitimate professions if other jobs were available or if they weren't sold and forced into it by pimps mostly starting as children. The national governments support the prostitution as a source for gaining hard currency.

Consider the 200,000 bastard babies the US troops left behind in Japan after WWII who were then rejected and treated as untouchables in Japan condemned to lives of poverty. Pearl Buck, the famous American author petitioned the US Congress to help these children of American servicemen....the same thing happened in Viet Nam...I can just hear the cynics saying what do you expect from soldiers of any nationality...well because a lot of people do a bad thing doesn't make it right...the US certainly didn't have any trouble trying Japanese participants in the Rape of Manilla to war crimes trials. How can the US tout itself to be the great world policeman and last bastion and protector of democracy when they treat other nationalities like this? The racism or nationalism let's call it, is so entrenched that people don't even think about it...like I said, the main stream media talks about how a few thousand Americans have died in Iraq but nothing about the Iraqi death count estimated at over 1.2 million by some reputable researchers like John Hopkins University. The suffering of other people is not real to the majority of Americans...that is why high altitude bombing is just a video arcade game for them...think about the message of the sensational new film "Avatar" isn't that the basic message...

Oh and about monarchy

I don't think people were so happy under the feudal system...monarchy was imposed on the people...i don't need to tell you that the Constitutional Revolution of 1906 tried to curtail the power of the Qajar monarchy, Pahlavis were first British and then American puppets, Mossadeg tried to end it...rule by force with no freedom of expression, plurality of legitimate political parties, Savak, Savama, etc. whether it be monarchy or thugocracy is not what the majority of the people want...what I would like to see in Iran, myself, is something like Turkey or Italy or France where many political parties are allowed, even an Islamic party since those types are never going to go away completely, they need representation in the government but not to be in charge of it, so do the communists and the socialists...a parliamentary government by coalition...I have heard so many people in the diaspora say that will never work in Iran but I think that is what the opposition wants?

Thank you Fatollah for your measured response

I do not pretend to be an expert on anything, I try to speak from my heart and my first hand experiences...there is a fine line between collusion and diplomacy, between trying to change and influence a regime towards greater moderation versus legitimizing and cooperating with it and enabling it...all these academics like Trita Parsa and Amirahmadi were around before the opposition movement became such a reality, the whole situation has changed...we mustn't be too hard on them, look how many Iranians who voted  rather than boycotting again, on the chance that there might actually be a fair election and that the regime was becoming more moderate...we were all wrong, I am willing to admit that...I agree  though with the conservative Goli Amiri's recent article in the Wall Street Journal how it is not Russia and China who have kept this regime on its legs for 30 years but rather the EU and all the deals and contracts it has made with them...

...

with all due respect, monarchy was not working for Iran? I thought, we had been ruled by Monorchs for how many years? A revolution ocurred in Iran and it was not due to poverty or discrimination or lack of democracy, but rather a traditional soceity transforming itself into a modern one in a fast pace, that is at least my understanding, but I also know the british having lost Iran to you guys blessed and encourged the revolution.

Iranians were treated as second class citzens? perhaps so, it is in our genes so to speak, to admire a foreigner, specially an American, I assure you this culture is unchanged and alive, as in todays Iran a foreigner would get all the attention compared to any other average Iranian soul, and if I was to be spotted together with an American in Tehrans bazar, they would think I was his guide or servant! I assure you I've experianced this first hand a couple of years ago.

having said all that, I do not know you Mr. Appleton and I do respect you and wish you a lot of success. 

But, there is no doubt in my mind that Mr. Amirahmadi is a lost cause, since the IR has many of Iranian academics on their side these days "living in Europe and USA", and Mr. Amirahmadi is no exception! 

-Fatollah 

first class foreigners

I can't tell you how many times as a Bell Helicopter employee relations officer, I was ordered to take the side of the American employee even when they had clearly broken the law or were at fault...if they hadn't paid the rent and the landlord was holding their personal effects until they paid I was expected to talk them into giving back the stuff and then they would get stiffed. If the employee's daughter opened a taxi door on the wrong side and got the door smashed by a passing vehicle and the driver whose vehicle was his only livelihood was holding her hostage until he got paid, I was expected to talk him into freeing the girl without any guarantee of his getting compensated and he wa stiffed...over and over...I mean look at what the CIA did to Mossadeg...what Hooshie doesn't know is that the name Rasool Aryadust was given to me by my best friend's late father on the occasion of my conversion to Islam in the Tehran Rotary Club in the 1970's. He was a great philanthropist. As I already mentioned to another critic of my Persian pseudonym...should every Moslem in Iran convert to Zoroastrianism, should every Persian with an Arab name change it to a Persian name...shall we rewrite history the way that the regime tries to pretend there is no history in Iran before Islam by pretending that Islam and the Arab conquest are not part of your history and culture now...what good will come of this kind of ethnic cleansing mentality? The regime does not hold a monopoly on God or Islam as the opposition has started to make clear...they are doing God's work too... I am not an apologist of this regime...sometimes to avoid war you have to negotiate with your enemies...whichis why diplomacy has existed for as long as mankind...war never makes anything better and many innocent people are killed...as you can see there are non violent forms of protest and change from within...and yes people are paying with their lives for their protest but compare the numbers so far with the estimated 1.2 million Iraqi deaths and 1.3 million Iraqi refugees in Syria who have given up everything to avoid the war as a result of the US invasion...I know my critic desperately seek to stereotype and profile me as a regime apologist but they are just plain wrong...and by the way how many armchair opponents of the regime in the diaspora are willing to risk their lives to go back and fight it?

masoud jan

brian's take on americans being treated better than iranians sound familiar to me.  perhaps you didn't have such experiences and are chastizing brian for having them.  i have a couple of stories to verify his version:

1) at abdo bowling in tehran, sometimes they checked for membership when you entered; however, they would never do that if the person was a foreigner.  i know that because many times i entered that building with our foreign neighbors. the iranians in the party would be checked for membership while they would wave in the hillbilly foreigners that were with us.  somehow, the people who ran abdo thought that they would be more classy if more foreigners patronized their establishment. 

2) a relative of mine was directing a construction project that was targeted for americans.  following the construction of the facilities, my relative (although a member) would be constantly harrassed by the guards when he wanted to enter the building.  he stopped going there and was very much dissapointed at how iranians were being profiled by other iranians in their own land.

i don't know who brian is nor his agenda, but what you're vehemently denying rings true to me.

another enchanted colusionist?

Listen Brian, your pro-Iranian people antics have never failed to entertain me ever since I read your first comedic piece. For someone like you who were a happy tool in the arsenal of  the same colonialist forces that you are now up against,(does Bell Choppers ring a bell?), you have made a huge attempt to change your image. But Appleton dear, once a colusionist, always a colusionist. Even your adopted name makes me laugh. Rasoul (an Arabic hence Anti-Aryan) and Aryadoust (a made up Farsi word) . The people of Iran, thanks to cheerleaders like you, made a gigantic mistake in replacing the Shah with Khomeini. They have regretted it since. Its only you and your Hooshie who are still asleep. Wake up and smell the coffee.

another embittered monarchist?

would a, should a, could a...the monarchy wasn't working for most Iranians which is why they had a revolution...there were million person marches and millions shouting "death to the king" from the roof tops...hello? Where were you? This is a complex situation...I cannot abide by this regime with its executions, child executions, torture, rape, mock trials, lack of economic ability but nor can I abide by outright warfare in which innocent civilians die...or invasion and colonization of Iran by a foreign power or a consortium of foreign powers giving eachother permission to exploit Iran...diplomacy doesn't mean collusion, it doesn't mean legitimization of the current regime or acceptance of it, negotiation with a hostile government is possible particularly if it is on issues of benefit to the Iranian people. Look back at the pre Nixon years when China and the USA had no relationship but hostility. Millions of Chinese died of famine. Meanwhile we saw China go from Mao's "Cultural Revolution" and "Great Step Backwards" to something that resembles a free market economy and more political freedom, Tienamen Square not withstanding.

Brian H. Appleton

aka

Rasool Aryadust

From Hosshie to Hooshie

Brian

Next time you see your friend Hooshie Amirahmadi, tell him was it not for the revolution he supported in 1979, the grand piano and the picture above it would not have been kept as relics of a bygone era but a pair of insignificant accessories in Iran's drive toward a flourishing civilization that was going to be the envy of the world. Now thirty years later and thanks to your Hooshie's covert double dealings with the Islamic regime and the US administration, you and him have to pose in front of these relics to reassure your viewers by giving them a false hope for improvement under this regime.

Hooshie

Dear Brian

I am glad you show concern about the poor of Iran - as you know, things got even worst after the revolt.   Also - for 6 years before the revolution - as a U student in America, I enjoyed a dual life of going back and forth between the two countries.   I assure you I had a much better life than an average Iranian or an average American.   But I never considered myself a top class citizen, neither in Iran nor in USA.   For some reason you appear to be under the impression that an average American in Iran was considered a higher citizen than an average Iranian - let me assure you - you were not part of the first class life of Iran and nobody considered an American as an upper class citizen.   Yes we had poor and yes, just like in America, the rich enjoyed better lifestyles.   And no - the revolution in Iran was greed driven, with a bit of instigation by not America - but the Anglo-Russian entities which had been stranggling Iran (Ref - Morgan Schuster - Stanggling of Persia) for centuries beefore America stepped in (after WW2) - and they are at it again, after Uncle Sam left in 1978.   And yes again - some of the good love you get from Iranians is because we love and respect Uncle Sam for the 33  years of relative freedom and independence we enjoyed with his help.    Thanx for your response and know that together we will once again win - especially in the much important war against terror.    Good thing about uncle Sam is that despite being fooled by the likes of Brezezinsky (sp?), it does the right thing at the end.

BTW - I know I have you at a disadvantage here - since I am talking from behind the curtain and you are out in the open - and I do appoligize for it - but some of your comments had to be responded to. 

Phantom, I know what you mean

It was a coincidence that I was wearing a Green shirt at the time. It seems like no matter who is in charge, they plunder the public treasury. As far back as  the 19th century, when the American Morgan Shuster was selected by the Iranian parliament to be the Finance Minister, which is amazing story in itself, he was fighting to stop the Qajar from bankrupting Iran and borrowing from the Russian Czar. In fact he demanded that the Shah's brother return hundreds of millions of dollars to the public treasury which ultimately got Shuster ousted.

One contemporary case which I find particularly illuminating is that of the former oil minister who is said to have robbed 90 million dollars from the Shah's personal account only to come to the USA and turn it into 700 million trading with the IRI. For this he received the Ellis Island Good Citizens' Award and a list of other accolades as long as your arm from Bush Sr's administration....go figure...

bottom line as long as a representative system of government is not in place, the Iranian people's patrimony will be robbed from them. Look what the "progressive" Rafsanjani has done...buying the Sultan of Brunei's private jet for example and how much money does Motjaba Khamanei, basij director have in Swiss banks?

Thanks Irandokht

I appreciate your kind comments and thanks. I had an awesome time in Iran and up until 20 minutes before I had to leave for the airport friends I hadn't seen since I was 16 over 40 years ago were fighting Tehran traffic to get a few minutes to visit with me. I saw many wonderful things, a new airport, wonderful public sculpture in the city parks, 80,000 trees planted making Tehran one of the greenest cities in the world in my opinion, a subway system, some great museums that I hadn't been to 30 years ago, some fabulous new restaurants like Kooh Payeh in Darband. But at the same time there was a pervasive sadness like time had stopped for many. Many people were more concerned about the bad economy and their professional future than their political rights and were thinking about or actively trying to emmigrate and asking me for advise as to whether to go to USA, Canada, Australia, Europe or Malaysia?

 It is a very complicated time for Iranians and Americans. For years I have been an advocate of peace as preferable to mutual demonization and outright war but after the response of the regime to the protestors in the wake of the election fraud, I am conflicted, thinking that no government should negotiate with this regime or legitimize it in anyway. I think that the reason for such high voter turn out was that many people believed that perhaps it would be possible to vote in moderation without having to resort to open revolt. I think that the regime was so egotistical and out of touch with reality that it thought it could get away with the election fraud and it was caught by surprise. It's violent response was due to fear like a cornered rat rather than completely pre-meditated in my opinion. Anyway agreed it is a very bitter sweet experience going back.

"every minute you spent in Iran against your will"

Dear Masoud,

I appreciate your concern but being taken hostage did not diminish my love for Iran in anyway and my only regret was I had so little time there two summers ago after such a long absence. I learned many valuable lessons from my hostage experience and from the revolution...I learned how naive and out of touch with reality I was in the 1970's at a time when Americans lived like first class citizens in Iran oblivious to the inequities between the rich and the poor and Iranians were second class in  their own country. One of my captors said to me:"We are sorry to use you as a political tool and we have nothing against the American people but we do not like what your government has done here." I replied: "I don't like what they have done here either." I am really not trying to provoke an argument with you but revolutions don't happen in places where people are happy and there is plenty of blame to go around, conspiracy theories not withstanding.

The other thing you don't know which is in my book is that I was rescued after only 17 hours by a brave Iranian woman friend of mine with the help of two hired guns. She passed away 9 years ago  from natural causes but her daughter who was two at the time and now 34 and her family visited with me both in Tehran and here this Christmas.

Take care,

BA 

Halloween party?

Houshang is a well-known asset to a certain center of gravity in Iran and, I don't doubt about the real nature of your incursion to my beloved homeland, even for a second.

One thing about the photo though, the Iranian fellow in western style business getup; the Ameriacan(you are, are you not?) in , nowadays forcibly popular, Iranian shirt and, pants. Masterful disguise, I might say.  

The Pahlavis and all mullahs must disclose the source and the amount of their wealth.

Merry Christmas

Merry Christmas Brian and I hope you had an enjoyable visit in Iran. It's always a very emotional trip to go back where you have so many (and not-so-pleasant) memories. A lot of native Iranians feel the same when we visit after a long absence.

I'd like to thank you for your contributions on this site. It's great to meet and read from you.

Best wishes for a propserous new year!

IRANdokht

Hey Brian

We already Knew about Amirahmadi.   What is your angle?  what were you doing in Tehran?

PS - personally I hold nothing against a non Iranian businessman making profits in Iran - especially in the oil industry - helping Iran to improve it's technology and infrastructure in all fields except for military and police related fields.  I do however have a problem with any business helping the Islamic Republic stabalize itself in the world political arena. 

PS 2- Thanks for adding the rest of the text explaining your trip.    What I said still stands.

PS 3 - Dear Irandokht - Hooshang Amirahmadi is a couple of wispers away from jail - and so are many others now that IRR finances in America has become a matter of national security.  

PS 4 - About the good and bad points - You should have told them the truth !!!!   I know Irandokht abd co. will soon start their regular hazioon - but you, as one who knows the true meaning of freedom and rights - don't even think about it. 

Finally - on behalf of myself and 70 million Iranians, I wish to tell you how sorry we are for every minute you spent in Iran against your will.