Word: modernize
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Dates: during 1970-1979
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...women kneel at the banks of mountain streams, pounding their laundry in the frigid waters. Across this primitive scene, an aluminum pipeline traces its course like a splinter of light across the land, eventually becoming part of the maze of an oil refinery. Today in Khuzestan, ancient faith and modern wealth have blended into an irresistible political force. It has emasculated what is left of Shah Mohammed Reza Pahlavi's influence and placed Khuzestan's wealth of oil and natural gas in the hands of one man: Ayatullah Khomeini. "Now we are a power," declared one strike leader...
...other words, the country's bounteous oilfields have now been Islamized. The 39 oil wells in the Khuzestan area, the modern refinery (the world's largest) at Abadan, the depots, pipelines and innumerable areas where drilling and exploration formerly went on, all belong to Khomeini loyalists. The mullah has become the archon of the oilfields. His picture is everywhere...
...have departed. Says one Iranian oil worker: "The foreigners who were here earned enormous salaries for jobs that any one of us could have done. The Shah thought we were too stupid." In the foreign-dominated management compound at Ahwaz, for example, employees enjoyed air conditioning, swimming pools and modern bathrooms. Their kitchens were modern, right down to the inclusion of garbage-disposal units in the sinks. The housing units were tree-shaded, and protected by high fences topped with concertinas of barbed wire...
Company spokesmen acknowledge the complaints. But they point to the broad streets, well-tended lawns and gardens and bright modern houses in the new settlements, and note that the complaints usually dwindle when people move into their new homes. Says Willi Kaiser, the burgomaster of Bedburg, which includes the village of Kaster: "In the end people are usually satisfied...
DIED. Charles Mingus, 56, virtuoso bassist and composer whose emotional, free-floating music helped shape modern jazz; of a heart attack after suffering from amyotrophic lateral sclerosis (Lou Gehrig's disease); in Cuernavaca, Mexico. Raised in the Watts district of Los Angeles, Mingus began studying bass in high school, later played with Louis Armstrong, Duke Ellington and Charlie Parker before forming his own combo in New York in the mid-'50s. Influenced strongly by blues and gospel, he began writing music that highlighted the bass as a solo instrument and featured contorted harmonies and quick-changing rhythms with...