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CIA Confirms Role in 1953 Iran Coup
- WasimBhai 13y agoHow is this even remotely related to Hacker News? I guess if I really wanted to discuss this, I will rather go to /r/worldnews.
- anigbrowl 13y agoAgreed. Historically interesting but not really realevant.
- acuozzo 13y agoA HackerNews user submitted it and other HackerNews users up-voted it. It's that simple.
- davidw 13y agoSo if a bunch of people vote for, say: http://inrng.com/2013/08/on-forecasting/ http://inrng.com/2013/08/on-forecasting/ That's cool? How about Justin Bieber articles, if, say, a bunch of teenage girls sign up? To the downvoters: there is absolutely nothing preventing this from happening outside of the moderators. Anyone can sign up for an account here.
- Karunamon 13y agoWell, except the fact that your hypothetical scenario isn't going to happen. The existing userbase of the site will flag such crap down. On top of that, the 'shadow' moderation behind the scenes that makes posts go dead, nary any feedback or tranparency. I must grudgingly admit it would help in such a case. Try again with a less reductio-ad-absudum scenario?
- davidw 13y agoThe first link is not crap at all, it's very interesting. > Try again with a less reductio-ad-absudum scenario? How about Chomsky material, and various articles about geopolitics ala reddit?
- Karunamon 13y agoI was more referring to the Bieber nonsense. Geopolitics as they relate to technology, though, would seem to be welcome here.
- acuozzo 13y ago> That's cool? Yes. > How about Justin Bieber articles, if, say, a bunch of teenage girls sign up? Yes.
- davidw 13y agoActually it's not, like Karunamon says, stuff that is that off-topic will be ruthlessly killed by the moderators, thankfully.
- gruseom 13y agoIt's very related! From the HN guidelines: On-Topic: Anything that good hackers would find interesting. That includes more than hacking and startups. If you had to reduce it to a sentence, the answer might be: anything that gratifies one's intellectual curiosity. The release of major new documents about a major historical event that still has major side effects today easily clears that bar. What's not related are comments like "how is this even remotely related": Please don't submit comments complaining that a submission is inappropriate for the site. If you think something is spam or offtopic, flag it by going to its page and clicking on the "flag" link. http://ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html http://ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html
- uwotm8920 13y agoSo by that logic, if you got enough people from reddit to come here and upvote political stories and conspiracy theories, it would de facto be Hacker News. Well good thing that's not happening.
- sophacles 13y agoYou're account is not even a day old. You should read the guidelines about how when you're new here you probably shouldn't be saying this site is turning into reddit. Also its relevant because it contextualizes the whole us intelligence apparatus -a topic very relevant given the impact on internet business and traffic.
- uwotm8920 13y agoThis is a throw away. My main account is about 2 years younger than yours. How can you not see that the rhetoric here has declined drastically over the past year? Do you disagree that there are significantly more political/non-technical stories reaching the front page? Even if you agree with the gist arguments being made, disregard your personal politics and beliefs in coming to an assessment.
- sophacles 13y ago
- yread 13y agoIf you don't have anything to say, don't comment, don't upvote and flag (when you get enough karma...)
- tome 13y agoWow, you're getting downvoted for this? Hacker News really has changed. Goodbye Hacker News. I learned a lot from you, but it's time to go our separate ways.
- davidw 13y agoThe problem is where to go. There are still a lot of good stories here, so I'm not ready to just take my toys and leave, so to speak, but I'm actively looking for alternatives.
- uwotm8920 13y agoLobsters seems like the best alternative but it doesn't appear to be very active. I'm in the same boat as you.
- iaskwhy 13y agoC'mon, it's on the guidelines: "Please don't submit comments complaining that a submission is inappropriate for the site. If you think something is spam or offtopic, flag it by going to its page and clicking on the "flag" link. (Not all users will see this; there is a karma threshold.) If you flag something, please don't also comment that you did." Yes, comments like that one will be downvoted.
- ferdo 13y agoLots of geeks with jobs funded by the public sector have no idea of the history of some of the agencies they work for. The history of misdeeds by American intel agencies is a topic that is relevant to hackers, imo.
- WasimBhai 13y agoHaha, so many down-votes. Still love Hackernews though.
- deleted 13y ago[deleted]
- alimoeeny 13y agoI thought they had already accepted the blame years ago, DISCLAIMER I am Iranian.
- cafard 13y agoI don't know whether accepted is the word. It has certainly been common knowledge in the US for 20 years or more. I think that one of the principals on the US side may have included it in his autobiography, but I could be wrong.
- enupten 13y agoIs it just me who is sad for the early demise of what could've been a flourishing democracy in the Middle east (inplace of the silly regime that is now in power) ?
- temphn 13y agoNow all we need to see for the other side of the story are the Soviet archives. Given that the Soviets were behind most worldwide communist revolutions (including the Cuban, North Korean, Ethiopian, etc.), did they plan to do something with/to Mossadegh via their Tudeh puppets in Iran like they did in neighboring Afghanistan later on? http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Democratic_Republic_of_Afghanistan http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Democratic_Republic_of_Afghanis...
- madaxe 13y agoNo. Stalin died in March '53, leaving a directionless power vacuum until September, when Khrushchev took over. This was almost certainly a factor in the timing of the coup, as the US wanted to seize the opportunity of the USSR's disorganisation to carry out a coup on their doorstep with nominal at worst repercussions.
- madaxe 13y agoNo. US foreign policy, when viewed from a perspective other than that of the US, is one heartbreak after another. They take promise, dreams, progress and hope and crush them, in order to preserve hegemonistic power at any cost. The US would happily turn this planet into a barren rock, and all "foreigners" (and likely their own populace) into ash, so long as they can claim dominance.
- twoodfin 13y agoHow does one even go about disagreeing with a comment like this? I guess I'll go for the obvious: If the U.S. wanted to "claim dominance" at any expense, we certainly would have felt much less constrained in the use of nuclear weapons in past conflicts. What you are describing is a mythology. One no better, and probably less accurate, than the mythology that the U.S. is an angel of hope and freedom on the world stage. Anyway, the hn'er below who made the comparison to /r/worldnews is spot on. New historical information is uncovered/declassified every day. This was only posted and upvoted because it's Exhibit A in the case for "The Evils of American Foreign Policy since WWII." There's a good discussion to be had about the pros and cons of America's role in the world since 1945. It's not going to be had here. hn is going downhill faster than I'd ever imagined possible.
- sidcool 13y agoSo, the CIA releases such information years later, when it's not of much relevance. 50 years from now, if they say they had a hand in some of the most inhuman things happening now, we would probably be indifferent. Not sure how can anyone hold them accountable for their actions. Probably none of those individuals who played a part in the coup would be around.
- frank_boyd 13y ago> when it's not of much relevance. What we could ask now, though, is to what degree they were involved in the recent Egyptian coup. The US didn't really denounce the coup right away.
- iaskwhy 13y agoThat's a strange comment. We knew a lot about what happened in Iraq just months after the war started and we know a lot more now. All the individuals responsible for that war are still around.
- loceng 13y agoWe wouldn't be indifferent. The emotional connection and ties would still be fresh.
- jacquesm 13y agoThe rest of what happened in the region including the rise of terrorism is called 'blowback' in CIA terminology. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Blowback_%28intelligence%29 http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Blowback_%28intelligence%29 Some go so far as to argue 9/11 is such blowback. Hard to prove or refute that because of the large number of unknowns, the facts as we know them today leave enough room for either interpretation.
- jokoon 13y agoOne can wonder what both Iraq's invasions will result in. I still wonder how many Iraqis casualties are dead from Iraqis bombings. I often read numbers like 60 at a time. Makes me wonder if political change in a country is worth that kind of situation.
- ecocentrik 13y agoMonthly numbers have been published by the press. This article lists the number of Iraqis killed by attacks in July 2013 at 1057 according to the United Nations. http://www.nytimes.com/2013/08/11/world/middleeast/car-bombings-kill-scores-across-iraq.html?_r=1& http://www.nytimes.com/2013/08/11/world/middleeast/car-bombi...
- jokoon 13y agowell that's lower than I expected. still weird to see iraqis killing each other as the result of an american invasion...
- betterunix 13y agoThere is nothing weird or surprising about it: they are fighting over who will rule the country now that the old government is gone. The government we set up is not what the Kurds had in mind, nor is it what the Shiites had in mind.
- jokoon 13y ago
- msoad 13y agoThis is why my friends ask me as an Iranian how the hell I can be happy living in the U.S. I can't explain them that U.S. citizens are viction of the same policies. The thing that I don't understand is, who are those elite people who make this kind of decisions? Who are they? Who leads the whole thing?
- speeder 13y agoThey are the ones that get your taxes you asshole. If you don't want to depose them, stop.giving them money to pull stunts like this. Although US citizens love to be victims, .no atom bomb would be dropped.without US people.money.
- drcube 13y agoYou realize paying taxes is mandatory in the US, right?
- speeder 13y agoYou realize that people can still for example move out, right? I wrote in a agressive tone, because I see LOTS of US people that just keep complaining about their government, and do nothing about it, beside voting (that clearly, is not working), and when they get for example a 9/11 on their head, they don't understand why other people hate them. It is a thing of owning up to your mistakes, if you are not making a effort to avoid supporting your government that do evil actions, you are evil yourself, because you are allowing you are providing resources to make evil. I am Brazillian, and I am tired of hearing here from US tourists for example, that they don't understand why they are hated, if the US meddling here is not their fault, but their government fault. I don't believe the US population is stupid, or they DO support the government evil actions, or they just don't care, saying that it is "not your fault" is NOT acceptable when you are providing taxes that pay the wages of CIA people that disappear my friends.
- mapleoin 13y agoWould you say you condone all the actions done by your country's government. If not, how are you taking action against them?
- ferdo 13y agoSteve Kangas was ex military intel that became a journalist. In 1999, he was found dead of a gunshot wound in a billionaire's building in Pittsburgh. He was an education for me some 20 years ago when I began learning about the depredations of the National Security Corporate State that now has us in thrall. -- A Timeline of CIA Atrocities By Steve Kangas http://www.huppi.com/kangaroo/CIAtimeline.html http://www.huppi.com/kangaroo/CIAtimeline.html
- jacquesm 13y ago> It was ruled a suicide by local police. How convenient. Maybe Greenwald and other persons of interest should go on the record that they does not intend to suicide.
- ferdo 13y agoI consider Kangas the first internet-age reporter to die under suspicious circumstances. I won't busy up the thread with links but I urge anyone with an interest in this topic to research Kangas and his writings. He imparted much information in his short career.
- anigbrowl 13y agoI have a strong dislike of Richard Mellon Scaife and his influence on politics. But if I were a wicked billionaire who wished a bad end on a troublesome gadfly, why would I have that person assassinated in the bathroom outside my office, as opposed to knocked out, smuggled out via the freight elevator, and done to death in some deserted spot? If the goal is to demonstrate impunity of some sort, why not just have him thrown off the roof of the building? Here, we have to posit a conspiracy powerful and cold-blooded enough to commit and cover up murder, but which is too inept to to put any significant distance between (presumed) co-conspirator and victim. I think we need to give equal consideration to the possibility of it being a 'doorstep suicide,' where a troubled person ends their life in proximity and as a reproach to a perceived antagonist, if only because of Occam's Razor.
- 13y ago
- vermontdevil 13y agoWhat would CIA confirm 50 years from now?
- jacquesm 13y agoConspiracies aplenty to choose from, likely some of those will end up being true after all. The benefit of knowing which is which is today, 50 years hence it won't matter. Some of the records are sealed for 70 years, sometimes with the most transparent of reasons for the sealing attached to them.
- beefxq 13y agoConspiracy theory has become conspiracy fact.
- pazimzadeh 13y agoIs it a requirement that reports become declassified after a certain amount of time? If not, then why is this being released? What does the CIA stand to gain?
- squozzer 13y agoMy favorite quote from the piece -- "There is no longer good reason to keep secrets about such a critical episode in our recent past. The basic facts are widely known to every school child in Iran. Suppressing the details only distorts the history, and feeds into myth-making on all sides." Myth-making is the point of history. Forgive me HN for parroting a quote I first saw in a video game, "History is but a fable agreed upon."
- alexsb92 13y agoGoogling the quote it seems like it originally comes from Napoleon Bonaparte. What game do you attribute it to?
- mncolinlee 13y agoI thought this coup was outed by FOIA documents while I was still in college around 9/11 time. I highly recommend All The Shah's Men if you want a good run-down of what happened. Even the CIA history FOIA document reads a bit like a James Bond novel. Kermit Roosevelt Junior was quite the Bond-like character and the Operation Ajax coup gets busted by the government days before they rescue the captured agents and complete the operation. Thrilling story for a real life tale.