Man of High Education and Still Achieving Many Goals

The government during the 1980's was Islamic Republic. The president at the time was Khatami, which he stayed for eight years as president. The government took control of everything at that time, basically everything was monopolized by the government and nobody could do any movement without their permission. The country was not really progressive in term, they wanted to be progressive, but weren’t progressive internationally, but only withing the borders of Iran. Khatami’s eight year term affected the country negatively. He was not a good president, he was like a puppet, sent by other bigger countries because he had a mission to accomplish and complete his task.

There was no freedoms, all the magazines, the television, the radio was all controlled by the government, and there were governmental agencies, which they were ministering the television stations, newspapers, and the rest of the groups, and the government watched over everything.

Elections started later during the eighties, elections that were ran had been grouped by other parties and was not a fair election. The leader was not appointed fairly by the people but by the Islamic group. Islamic groups had the control, appointing people to their particular position. The leader was an unqualified president. During the time I was not able to vote for I was under-aged. At the kings time the voting age was eighteen, then at Khatami’s time it became sixteen, and right now in Iran you are able to vote at age fourteen. Substantially the voting age is decreasing because they need more votes from people and unfortunately, in Iran the youngsters were inexperienced, which made it easier to talk them into doing something they didn’t want to do, it was much easier to trick them. I'm not sure if in the future the voting age will decrease to twelve years old but right now the voting age is fourteen. It is getting younger by the year just so they can receive more votes. The parents or the government convince the youngsters for whom they should vote for. At the kings time voting age was eighteen and then in 1980 it decreased to sixteen and in present time the age is fourteen. The king of Iran back then departed and died in America Mamadrida Shah in Iran, that was long time ago, he dies as an Asylum in the U.S. in exile.

In Islamic courts two female votes counted as one male vote, women counted as half. Women must abide by men, men were the king or are still respected as the king. Men were the head of the household, and the women counted as half, their vote doesn’t count much in the country. There were particular positions available for women, they could do nursing, secretarial work, but they were only offered few positions, but are now progressing little by little, because the women are getting more jobs that were previously no available and only men were able to do, but that is slowly progressing. The women still don’t have that many rights.

That country was extremely rich, that country was number one in the middle east because as everybody has oil, gold, mineral, these people, Iranian people, during the 1970's , were very strong and powerful. They were number one but because they tried to build atomic bombs, other countries basically they got offended and scared and somehow brought religion into that country and demolished the political system of the country in order to break the back of the country and just not allow them to grow anymore. They are still rich but the profit doesn’t go to the entire people or the population, only goes to the leaders of the country, it goes into their bank account.

The religion they had was Fanatic Muslim. There were also Christian and Jewish people, but they have to abide by the rules. Islamic rule dictates you or dictates the country, the Christian and also the Jewish and also the other religions had to abide by them and have to follow them and cannot do whatever they want. You still have a small portion of freedom of religion, you can own the church, attend your church, but it’s still under Islamic regime.

Islam was extremely educated, as you can see lots of doctors, lawyers came from this country. If we take a look at some of the universities like UCLA or USC. you see so many Persian physicians around. I was fifteen or sixteen then, and I was not involved in the economy, whenever i came over here I became assisted, along time ago. Islam had junior college, regular college, universities, but the number of universities were limited, not as much as the United States. The problems is they have majority of the population would like to go to school but they have only few universities to go to. Among thousand and thousands of students maybe they have a few hundred seats available, we cannot just hop in and go there, Your GPA should be 3.8 to 4.0 straight to get into the university. 3.8 or lower you cannot get in, you have to have a way higher GPA to get in. The limited amount of seats available in the campus is why you should be much tougher with a higher grade which takes a lot to get in, unless you are the government official, or somebody in that branch that you can get in but as a regular student you cannot get in with a low GPA. You cannot get in with a low GPA, anything with about 2.5, 2.7, 2.8, 2.9, 3.0, many students were successful that got into universities.

There was no freedom of press, everything is controlled by the government. There was lots of newspapers, but all of them were controlled y the government. What has been printed means somebody went through it and made sure it is not anti-government and is how it gets printed. People check it just in case, if they get it out, and they don’t check the next day they’re going to go to the station and they’re going to talk to the owner. The punishment depends on how severe and ungovernmental the paper was. They’re going to have some major problems in their hands, they might go to jail or some other things might happen, if they stated they disliked the president.

The country was not a fair country according to their rules and religions that they wanted to be. Take a look at their history, you will see what kind of regime they had, which was a fanatic regime. Fanatic regime is expected are the strict rules and regulations, that is why there is not much freedom available over there.