MSNBC has put together a slide-show offering a brief history of Iran. They’ve managed to go back further than 1979 – impressive for a mainstream outlet, whose memories usually begin with the Islamic revolution.
But, amazingly, they’ve contrived to ignore Mohammed Mossadeq, the democratically elected prime minister of Iran who in 1953 was overthrown in a UK/CIA-backed coup, which installed the brutal and corrupt Shah in his place. The overthrow of Mossadeq is probably, together with the 1979 Islamic revolution, the seminal moment in the history of 20th century Iran, and MSNBC has just wiped it out for political convenience. Mossadeq had dared to nationalise the Iranian oil industry at the expense of the Anglo-Iranian Oil Company (now British Petroleum), and such defiance could obviously not be tolerated by the masters of the world.
The slide-show also makes no mention of the fact that the U.S. supported Iraq in its aggression against Iran, which left up a million people dead on all sides.
The mainstream media has been caught, once again, shamelessly re-writing history in the interests of power. That MSNBC has completely obliterated the U.S.’ history of aggression towards Iran at a time when the Bush administration is trying to drum up militaristic fervour amongst the population with a possible view to another imperialistic war against that country is an utter disgrace.
A more accurate overview of modern Iranian history can be found here.
Cross-posted at The Heathlander
Another diary that might be worth writing (although probably not on the Daily Kos since it will probably get you banned) is the Israeli alliance with the Shah and some of the questions it raises.
1.) How much did the Israelis contribute to building Savak?
2.) How much of the Iranian hostility towards the Israelis is traditional anti-semitism and how much of it rational hostility based on the long Israeli alliance with a tyrant who ruled over them for decades.
Robert Fisk explores some of this in “The Great War for Civilization” but it’s worth exploring in more detail.
No reply as of yet. The email address, if you want to send one yourselves, is:
viewerservices@msnbc.com
This is just business as usual. The CIA has overthrown many leaders of countries; Mossadeq was just the first. (See Confessions of an Economic Hit Man.) Everyone is aware of this except Americans. If Americans and other people have a different perception about how the US operates in the world, it must be because the American and the non-American news media represent American foreign policy differently. One is reminded of there being two different editions of Time magazine, one for America, and one for the rest of the world, and the same being the case for CNN.
The real news here isn’t that a major US news outlet is suppressing information about US imperialism. It is that, thanks to the emergence of the blogophere, the view has become widespread that major US news outlets should be made accountable to reality.
Here is the e-mail I sent them:
Good email. Coudl you post any reply you get from them please – it would be v. interesting.
Ironically, as suggested in my post above, the MSNBC slide show is very professional. That is because, other than making profits, the purpose of major US news outlets is to construct a view of the world which serves the interests of American empire. It is not to report reality accurately.
That is more true today than it was say twenty years before, because the seeping of post-modernism into mainstream culture has made it easier for journalists to present twisted versions of reality with a good conscience.