Documentary review: COUP 53

Documentary review: COUP 53
by Ian Sinclair
Morning Star
13 August 2020

Speaking to the BBC in 2011, Noam Chomsky explained “the West has an extremely ugly history” in the Middle East. We may not pay attention to this history, the US dissident noted, but the people in the region negatively impacted by Western military and economic interference don’t forget.

A good example of Chomsky’s truism is the 1953 coup in Iran, the subject of Taghi Amirani’s brilliant new documentary. After Iran’s parliament voted to nationalise the Anglo-Iranian Oil Company in 1951, the CIA and MI6 played a leading, covert role in toppling Iran’s democratically elected prime minister Mohammad Mossadeq, installing the autocratic Shah (King) Mohammad Reza Pahlavi in power.

Much like the best political thrillers, the film has a real momentum. It is anchored around newly discovered testimony from MI6 officer Norman Darbyshire, found after some serious detective work by Amirani. Interviewed for Granada Television’s epic 1985 documentary series End of Empire, Darbyshire’s firsthand memories were mysteriously missing when the programme was broadcast on television. However, the transcript of his interview survived. And from this we find Darbyshire, suavely played by actor Ralph Feinnes, admitting to being involved in the kidnapping and killing of the Iranian police chief and, more broadly, confirming the UK’s central role in the coup – a historical fact which has never been officially recognised by the UK state.

As well as interviews with US and UK experts such as intelligence specialist Stephen Dorril and Stephen Kinzer, author of the 2003 book All The Shah’s Men, the film includes fascinating testimony from key members of Mossadeq’s inner circle and other Iranians involved at the time. Look out, too, for some innovative and effective animation telling key parts of the story.

With events involving President Eisenhower, Prime Minister Winston Churchill, oil and corporate interests, a nefarious BBC and the British secret services, Kinzer is surely right to argue the coup was “a decisive historic episode” of the twentieth century that deserves to be much better known.

The coup strengthened the voices of those in the US government pushing for more US covert action (e.g. Guatemala in 1954). More importantly, it wrecked attempts to build a more democratic Iran. “As a result of that the Shah of Iran came in, a terrible dictator”, US Senator Bernie Sanders educated viewers during a 2016 Democratic Party presidential debate. “And as a result of that you had the [1979] Iranian revolution”.

Essential viewing.

COUP 53 is being screened online on 19 August, the 67th anniversary of the coup. Visit https://coup53.com/screenings/ to buy a ticket.

Neil Clark and other ‘anti-maskers’ vs. the scientific evidence and public wellbeing

Neil Clark and other ‘anti-maskers’ vs. the scientific evidence and public wellbeing
by Ian Sinclair
Medium
25 July 2020

There is a small, but vocal group of people who are strongly opposed to the wearing of masks to reduce the transmission of Covid-19.

One of the most prominent ‘anti-maskers’ is Neil Clark, a self-professed socialist writer and broadcaster. Clark has been posting increasingly absurd, conspiratorial and very dangerous tweets about masks. Here are a few examples:

• ‘I’m quite disconcerted by the number of people with “Socialist” on their bios who seem to be v. strongly in favour of mandatory mask-wearing irregardless of the evidence & its long term effects. I never knew mandatory masks was a tenet of socialism. Or are we all CCP nowadays?’ (8 July 2020)
• ‘Mandatory face coverings, no music, theatre or public performances. The Taliban would feel very much at home in Nicola Sturgeon’s Scotland. Perhaps they’ll relocate there.’ (8 July 2020)
• On masks: ‘it has nothing to do with public health and everything to do with control.’ (10 July 2020)
• ‘I’d advise any young person or anyone who doesn’t have family commitments to leave the UK & build a new life overseas. There’s no future here under the current Covid insanity. Civil liberties have been destroyed. Our lives trashed. We are no longer a free people. Tyranny rules.’ (10 July 2020)
• ‘The “Great Reset” is NOT a conspiracy theory. The radical changes to our lives, our working arrangements, the way we interract with one another, (masks & SD), introduced under the cover of Covid, are meant to be permanent. A “New Normal”. Everyone needs to wake up to this.’ (12 July 2020)
• On the move to make face masks mandatory in shops: ‘Yup. Safety in numbers. If enough people disobey this insane policy will be unenforceable.’ (14 July 2020)
• ‘Face masks will become the “new normal” for AT LEAST the next year. Don’t say I didn’t warn you. They want all this stuff to stay.’ (16 July 2020)

As anyone inhabiting the real world will know, there is a large and seemingly growing body of scientific evidence, and a broad consensus amongst scientific and medical experts, that confirms mask wearing can help to reduce the transmission of COVID-19. Below I have listed some of the expert evidence and advice that supports the wearing of masks, including the World Health Organization, the Royal Society, the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention in the US and Independent SAGE.

Despite this wealth of evidence, Neil continues to oppose the wearing of masks. Indeed, Neil repeatedly quote tweets people who disagree with him, but I have not seen him seriously engage with anyone who opposes his evidence-free position.

Thinking of other people, adhering to scientific and medical evidence and trying to reduce unnecessary suffering — all this seems to fit very well with Socialism. However, ignoring huge amounts of scientific and medical evidence, being selfish and endangering the lives of others certainly doesn’t fit with Socialism. Hard-right Republicanism or Conservatism perhaps, but definitely not Socialism.

Evidence in support of wearing masks to reduce the transmission of COVID-19:

· A study published in The Lancet concludes ‘We encourage consideration of mass masking during the coming phases of the COVID-19 pandemic, which are expected to occur in the absence of an effective COVID-19 vaccine… Mass masking for source control is in our view a useful and low-cost adjunct to social distancing and hand hygiene during the COVID-19 pandemic.’ (The Lancet, 16 April 2020)

• A study in the Proceedings of the US National Academy of Sciences concludes ‘that wearing of face masks in public corresponds to the most effective means to prevent interhuman transmission, and this inexpensive practice, in conjunction with simultaneous social distancing, quarantine, and contact tracing, represents the most likely fighting opportunity to stop the COVID-19 pandemic.’ (Proceedings of the US National Academy of Sciences, 14 May 2020)
• ‘Wearing a face mask or other covering over the mouth and nose reduces the forward distance travelled by an exhaled breath by more than 90 per cent, research suggests.’ (University of Edinburgh, 22 May 2020)
• ‘Taking into account the available studies evaluating pre- and asymptomatic transmission, a growing compendium of observational evidence on the use of masks by the general public in several countries, individual values and preferences, as well as the difficulty of physical distancing in many contexts, WHO has updated its guidance to advise that to prevent COVID-19 transmission effectively in areas of community transmission, governments should encourage the general public to wear masks in specific situations and settings as part of a comprehensive approach to suppress SARS-CoV-2 transmission.’ (World Health Organization, 5 June 2020)
• ‘Population-wide use of facemasks keeps the coronavirus ‘reproduction number’ under 1.0, and prevents further waves of the virus when combined with lockdowns, a modelling study led by the University of Cambridge suggests.’ Lead author Dr Richard Stutt comments: ‘Our analyses support the immediate and universal adoption of facemasks by the public. If widespread facemask use by the public is combined with physical distancing and some lockdown, it may offer an acceptable way of managing the pandemic and reopening economic activity long before there is a working vaccine.’ (University of Cambridge, 10 June 2020)
• ‘A new study has suggested that the compulsory use of face masks can slow the spread of Covid-19 cases by as much as 40%. The German report, published as a discussion paper for the Institute of Labour Economics, determined that mandatory face masks can “reduce the daily growth rate of reported infections by around 40%”.The study involved researchers examining the growth rate of cases in regions across Germany in the days following the introduction of masks in shops and on public transport.’ (RTE, 12 June 2020)
• A study by Virginia Commonwealth University looked at coronavirus death rates in 198 countries in an effort to establish why some had very high death rates and others very low. ‘What we found was that of the big variables that you can control which influence mortality, one was wearing masks’, says Christopher Leffler of Virginia Commonwealth University, one of the study’s authors. ‘It wasn’t just by a few per cent, it was up to a hundred times less mortality. The countries that introduced masks from the very beginning of their outbreak have had hardly any deaths.’ (Global News, 22 June 2020)
• ‘Cloth face coverings are effective in reducing source virus transmission, i.e., outward protection of others, when they are of optimal material and construction (high grade cotton, hybrid and multilayer) and fitted correctly and for source protection of the wearer’ (Royal Society, 26 June 2020)
• ‘Everyone should carry a face covering when they leave home in order to tackle coronavirus, the head of the UK’s national academy of science has said. Prof Sir Venki Ramakrishnan, president of the Royal Society, said the coverings should then be worn “whenever you are in crowded public spaces”.’ (BBC News, 7 July 2020)
• ‘Cloth face coverings, even homemade masks made of the correct material, are effective in reducing the spread of COVID-19 — for the wearer and those around them — according to a new study from Oxford’s Leverhulme Centre for Demographic Science.’ (University of Oxford, 8 July 2020)
• ‘Early in the pandemic, the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) recommended that anyone symptomatic for suspected coronavirus disease 2019 (COVID-19) should wear a face covering during transport to medical care and prior to isolation to reduce the spread of respiratory droplets. After emerging data documented transmission of SARS-CoV-2 from persons without symptoms, the recommendation was expanded to the general community’. John T. Brooks, MD; Jay C. Butler, MD; Robert R. Redfield, MD, Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (Journal of the American Medical Association, 14 July 2020)
• ‘The case of two hairdressers who developed symptoms of COVID-19 and then saw 139 clients before they stopped working, apparently without transmitting the virus to any of them, demonstrates the effectiveness of mandatory face mask policies , according to new research’, published in the weekly morbidity and mortality report of the Centers for Disease Control in the United States. (FR24 News, 14 July 2020)
• “Although we haven’t yet got the gold standard randomised control trial evidence about whether face coverings are effective at preventing the transmission of Covid-19, existing studies are convincing of their benefits.” — Professor Devi Sridhar, chair of global public health at the University of Edinburgh (Guardian, 15 July 2020)
• Independent SAGE recommend the government ‘launch a comprehensive public information campaign to promote effective wearing of face coverings in enclosed public indoor spaces where distancing from others is not possible.’ (Independent SAGE, 15 July 2020)
• ‘A newly published study’ published in the Journal of the American Medical Association suggests ‘that universal use of surgical masks helped reduce rates of confirmed Covid-19 infections among health-care workers at the Mass General Brigham health-care system in Massachusetts.’ (Wall Street Journal, 18 July 2020)
• ‘Robert Redfield, director of the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, said he believes the pandemic could be brought under control over the next four to eight weeks if “we could get everybody to wear a mask right now.”’ (Wall Street Journal, 18 July 2020)