I strongly recommend the investment of a couple of hours to watch the new film, Coup 53, available on-line, for an uncertain time.  All information is here.  I watched it Wednesday, as well as a one hour conversation with the films producer, etc., and a 26 minute YouTube special presentation by the film’s editor (here).  It is very interesting.

The topic is the 1953 Iran Coup ousting Mohammed Mossadeq engineered by England’s MI6 and the U.S. CIA, as enabled by the U.S. and British governments.  The film is engrossing.  Maybe a summary might be “Dead men do tell no tales, but sometimes leave tracks….”

The issue was oil, who has it, who got it.

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I am college graduate, with an active interest in ‘stuff’.  As we all know, in this Information Age, everyone needs to be a specialist, even amateurs like myself.  It is not easy to be ‘informed’. There is simply too much to know, so we must rely on others, and bits and pieces, as this film is, are required to get past disinformation which is pervasive.

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The film led me to recall a visit to England in October 2001, not long after 9-11-01.  It was a trip planned and ticketed before 9-11.  We booked a bed-and-breakfast in easy walking distance of places like Parliament.  It was a perfect venue for first time tourists to London.  We met England shortly after the 9-11-01 events upset the American psyche.  It was an unintended bonus of the trip, which was more than a one-week duration.

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At our walk-up flat, in the hallway, was a set of old Encyclopedia Britannicaa which caught my attention.  My recollection is that it had a 1927 copyright – I had looked specifically for that data.

Quite by chance, I found a Britannica length article about Petroleum production.

In 1927, petrol had a limited history in terms of actual use.  As I recall – I could be wrong – this edition of the encyclopedia recorded that the United States had 75% of the world’s petroleum production at the time.  Its net production far exceeded the demand.

More to the point of the film, the Middle East of that time had only one oil producing area, that in coastal Persia (Iran).  At the time, of course, there was a limited market for petroleum.  The Age of Oil was really in its infancy,  not yet ubiquitous.

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Today I looked up Petroleum in my 1978 edition of Britannica; and also the history of Iran.  In its way, that set has become its own historical artifact.  I remember when I bought it, when it was new.

In 1978 (ironically, the time of the Iranian hostage crisis in the Carter years), my Britannica reveals the U.S. had 31.4% of the demand, and 23.7% of the supply of petroleum; so we had become a net importer of oil.

My Britannica devotes only 9 lines of type to the Mossadeq affair out of nearly 27 pages of text about Iran.  What happened, Britannica said, was “In 1951 Mohammad Mosaddeq nationalized Iranian oil and the British Oil Company withdrew, but regrettably the disturbed political situation during Mossadeq’s premiership, and the grip held by western oil companies on the marketing of the commodity, turned Mossaddeq’s premiership, and the grip held by western oil companies on the marketing of the commodity, turned Mossaddeq’s nationalization triumph into a Pyrrhic victory.  His period in office ended in turmoil in 1953; but by 1961 the Shah was able finally to take the initiative.” 

Coup 53 essentially takes the story in a direction quite different from the official version which Britannica seems to have faithfully presented in my volume in 1978.  The discovery process for the filmmaker took nine often frustrating years and the film seems to have resulted from an unintended discovery of what amounts to treasure from a “dumpster dive” into what most of us would consider junk in a basement. You need to watch the film for the next chapter (which a good friend says does not at all complete what really happened next).

I will append that theory at this space perhaps a couple of weeks from now for anyone interested,  Check back here, in two weeks, if interested.  Add your own thoughts or theories….

The relevant paragraphs of the Britannica article are in the lower left quartile of page 861 of Volume 9, which you can read here: Iran Hist Brit Vol 9 1978 Ed20200821 (two pages, click to enlarge text).

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Do take in Coup 53.  I think you’ll find it eyeopening, as I did.

COMMENTS: (More at the end of this post)

from a long-time friend in England:

Thanks for the alert about the film, it might be quite interesting?

The repercussions of that coup reverberate to the present day – the law of unintended consequences in this case meant that 26 years later a regime much more antagonistic to the UK & the US was installed in Iran . . . & the beat goes on. “And men still keep on marching off to war”

Funny you should ask, an article appeared in UK’s Guardian a few days ago – which mentions the film as well: here   “A first-hand account of Britain’s role in the 1953 coup that overthrew the elected prime minister of Iran and restored the shah to power has been published for the first time.”

There has been a lot of ink expended on the overthrow of Iran’s Mosaddegh in 1953.

I suppose NPR recently provided a good summary & a set of links (all paragraphs below from that site): here. 

How The CIA Overthrew Iran’s Democracy In 4 Days By Lawrence Wu and Michelle Lanz

On Aug. 19, 2013, the CIA publicly admitted for the first time its involvement in the 1953 coup against Iran’s elected Prime Minister Mohammad Mossadegh.

The documents provided details of the CIA’s plan at the time, which was led by senior officer Kermit Roosevelt Jr., the grandson of U.S. President Theodore Roosevelt. Over the course of four days in August 1953, Roosevelt would orchestrate not one, but two attempts to destabilize the government of Iran, forever changing the relationship between the country and the U.S. In this episode, we go back to retrace what happened in the inaugural episode of NPR’s new history podcast, Throughline

Mohammad Mossadegh was a beloved figure in Iran. During his tenure, he introduced a range of social and economic policies, the most significant being the nationalization of the Iranian oil industry. Great Britain had controlled Iran’s oil for decades through the Anglo-Iranian Oil Co. After months of talks the prime minister broke off negotiations and denied the British any further involvement in Iran’s oil industry. Britain then appealed to the United States for help, which eventually led the CIA to orchestrate the overthrow of Mossadegh and restore power to Mohammad Reza Pahlavi, the last Shah of Iran.

According to Stephen Kinzer, author of the book All the Shah’s Men, Roosevelt quickly seized control of the Iranian press by buying them off with bribes and circulating anti-Mossadegh propaganda. He recruited allies among the Islamic clergy, and he convinced the shah that Mossadegh was a threat. The last step entailed a dramatic attempt to apprehend Mossadegh at his house in the middle of the night. But the coup failed. Mossadegh learned of it and fought back. The next morning, he announced victory over the radio.

Mossadegh thought he was in the clear, but Roosevelt hadn’t given up. He orchestrated a second coup, which succeeded. Mossadegh was placed on trial and spent his life under house arrest. The shah returned to power and ruled for another 25 years until the 1979 Iranian Revolution. The 1953 coup was later invoked by students and the political class in Iran as a justification for overthrowing the shah.

If you would like to read more on the 1953 coup, here’s a list: 

“All the Shah’s Men: An American Coup and the Roots of Middle East Terror” by Stephen Kinzer

“Countercoup: The Struggle for the Control of Iran” by Kermit Roosevelt Jr

“Secrets of History: the CIA in Iran” from The New York Times (a timeline of events leading up to and immediately following the coup)

“CIA Confirms Role in 1953 Iran Coup” from The National Security Archive (CIA documents on the Iran operation)

“64 Years Later, the CIA Finally Releases Details of Iranian Coup” from Foreign Policy magazine.

September 6, 2020:

Some last thoughts on the film (at least in this space).

Dick: My friend in 8th grade (1953-54), and still a friend today, was part of a large and vibrant Syrian Moslem community in rural North Dakota.  I apprised him of the film, which I don’t think he watched, but he did watch the YouTube interview referenced at the beginning of this post.  His main comments, both about August 21, were these (he has preferred that his name not be used):

“Hi Dick, when I listen to the trailer they talk about 300 killed and large numbers wounded.  Is that what is said in the two hour film, or do they talk about the 3 million killed as admitted by our CIA leadership in the 1998 PBS documentary?  It also talks about a 1953 Coup, whereas I remember my Dad lamenting about the slaughter that started taking place shortly after Iran won its independence from the British and established their democracy in 1949.  If the movie doesn’t report the true story, it will just be an attempt to downplay the horrors that we really imposed upon the Iranians, just as we did in the Vietnam fiasco. Please let me know your thoughts,”t

“Hi Dick, the YouTube video was interesting [see first paragraph of this blog] , but a bit long. It was also a bit melodramatic and more about filming process, but might be worth watching. And it is based on info from MI-6 [British intelligence] which you can never trust.  And as I had mentioned to you, there were Iranians that did very well under British rule and they put forth a very different view of things.  Stephan Meade headed our CIA activities during the Coup.  He was on the 1998 PBS documentary, and his story was consistent with what my Dad was seeing in his international news papers.  It won’t be til somewhere around 2040 when the data is declassified and the truth will be known.”

Dick: conversations like these, and other sources of information, like the film, and miscellaneous sources of information, are how I learn, often by “bits and pieces”.

My family migrated often, so we only lived in my friends tiny community for a single year, 1953-54.  The previous two years, 1951-53, we were in a similarly tiny community perhaps 100 miles away.  The larger city of Minot was between our two towns.  (Our next stop, 1954-57, was several hundred miles away, so we lost contact for years.)

It occurred to me, that I had seen Dwight Eisenhower in person, in a motorcade, on the Main Street of Minot, probably in the summer of 1953.  He had just been inaugurated President in January, 1953, and his likely reason for visiting Minot was that it was the site of a new major Air Force base.

Eisenhower was Supreme Commander of the Allied forces in WWII, and he worked closely with Winston Churchill.  They had a working relationship in one of the worst global conflicts in human history.

The Iran Coup officially took place 19 August 1953, right before my friend and I would have met in an eighth grade classroom in rural ND.  He was a farm kid, and worked with his Dad and they talked, as Dads and sons talk.  My parents were teachers. We never talked about things like Iran, but I did have the opportunity to actually see Eisenhower’s then-Air Force One fly overhead into Minot ND, most likely that same summer.  In short, my friend and I had rich frames of reference, however limited, and Coup 53 this year for me was an opportunity to fill in more data points.

What my friend says, above, is as true as what I say, and what anybody else has to say who was proximate to the events which led to the coup in 1953.  It may be personal experience, or stories from ancestors, but it is real to the participants.

International relationships are extremely complicated for reasons we all know.  Communications, particularly in these days, is often abused.  We don’t know what is “true”.

Thanks for the conversation.

Here is Just Above Sunsets take on Day Two of the Democratic Convention, August 18.

I often pass along Just Above Sunset as a primary source, and encourage folks to get on its list.  For information, go to the sites About page.

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This afternoon I chose to spend two hours watching on-line Coup 53, a riveting and eye-opening documentary about the Coup that toppled Mossadegh and installed the Shah of Iran in August 19, 1953.  It is an incredible film, extraordinarily pertinent at this time in history.

The film begins a two week run on line on August 21.  You can access details at Minneapolis St Paul Film Festival website. “While making a documentary about the CIA/MI6 coup in Iran in 1953, Iranian director Taghi Amirani and editor Walter Murch discover never seen before archive material hidden for decades.”

At the minimum, you will learn about the dark side of international relationships and how complicit our own society is in the dark side of those relationships.

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Tonight (Day Three) I watched the speeches of Barack Obama and Kamala Harris, and most of the others.  A very impressive evening.  The candidates for President and Vice-President have now been officially nominated.  Tomorrow night will be Joe Biden’s acceptance.

After watching, I checked my e-mails, and found an interesting column by Heather Cox on the 100th anniversary of Women’s Suffrage becoming the law of the land.  You can read her column here.

“The Postal Service”  (Aug 15) has drawn to date 15 most interesting responses, including a most interesting photo from the 1930s.  Check back once in awhile.

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Register.  Vote.  I will vote by mail.  Every state has different rules.  Act early.  Don’t succumb to fear.

You can watch the Democratic convention on line here.  (C-Span).  There are other options as well, including YouTube.  The time is from 9-11 p.m. EDT (8-10 CDT).

In my tiny little corner of the web, I hope to do something related to our political universe each day of both Conventions at this space.  Today’s offering follows: “Snippets“.

My personal philosophy appears in every post, to the right.  My e-mail address is in the upper left corner of this site.

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“After/If: ” A family member asked, yesterday, in response to an e-mail I’d sent: “why do you emphasize AFTER/IF for Biden Harris…I thought that was a pretty sealed choice”.

I responded: “I know.  I have a very long respect for the formal endorsement process.  “The Party”, however reviled it can be, knows the system better than I. This has caused me small problems in the recent past.  We had a very successful governor here, Mark Dayton, [2009-2017] who was Democrat Senator from Minnesota before running for Governor in 2008.  The DFL party that year chose to back a party activist and good person, Margaret Anderson Kelliher…. Dayton skipped the formal process and ran in the primary against her and won.  At the time, I was active in the DFL Senior Caucus, and [a power person in] the Caucus backed Dayton, while I took…flack supporting the parties nominee.”

Politics is not simple.  It is a process of both offense and defense, and in our system, two major parties, one of which I prefer, and trust to know more than I do about the ins and outs.  Yes, it’s imperfect.  So is life.

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I have a bias some would call naive: a society works best if it finds ways to work together.  Recently we’ve been in very tough times on that score.  The emphasis is win-lose.  We are all at fault.  In 2012 I was at a panel at the Nobel Peace Prize Forum and Doug Tice, then and still commentary editor of the Minneapolis Star Tribune, said something that has stuck with me ever since: “The most powerful bias in the press is the story – the unholy trinity of trouble, scandal, conflict is what gets the news.”  Watch and read the news in this context.  It is true.  “If it bleeds, it leads” is another quote I remember from someone.

Even in my own tiny corner, I am always aware that the presenter is the one who creates his/her preferred ‘spin’, from the least to the mightiest.  Start with the premise that they know no more than you, consider the source, and make up your own mind.

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A Possibility:  If you have a ‘soft spot’ for Peace and Justice, I’d invite you to throw a few coins in the kettle for John Noltners indiegogo campaign which you can read here.  

I have followed John’s work since I first met him in 2009.  He follows through and his projects have been appreciated by many nationwide.  Covid-19 set him back on his heels, since his project was based in showings in institutions.  At minimum, please read what he’s about and consider donating some of your own money.  He’ll follow through on his commitments. I’m a financial supporter myself.  Questions?  Ask.  

COMMENTS:

from Mary:  Never underestimate the immense influence of the Trump Base.  I have made it a point to listen to and participate in radio and TV and conversations purporting Trumps immense value to the future of America and to me, much of this propaganda is believed to be very real and very true and as such it is very scary.  Just read Mary Trump’s book as well and (though the book tends towards clinical analysis) I believe she is very insightful-this is a man who suffers the lifelong effects of early abuse.  He is not capable of change.  He is capable of much more damage.  Hopefully the American Voter is capable of supporting change!

response from Dick:  This is an open list, and everything is archived, and I share with people I know as friends, who are of all sorts.  We have Mary Trumps book, and Cathy has read it, and when Michael Cohen’s book comes out we’ll get that too – I’m guessing his will be brutally honest which is to say it will be attacked viciously.  He was Trumps “Roy Cohen” (have you seen “Where is my Roy Cohen?”, the documentary.  We did, and it was blistering.

To your specific comment, I made a list of about 15 people who I know personally, who are Trumpers to the core, and they aren’t the stereotypical types you’d expect.  All I can do is stand for my principles.  I think the key commonality is that they are “me” (opposed to ‘community’) oriented, and addicted to “belief” – sort of an evangelical mindset – the savior is among us and will save us from “radical left wing socialist liberals” such as myself, I suppose.  They are nice about it, but that’s just how it is.  Anything longer than a tweet is too long.  They won’t change.  But they are a minority, they know it, and they’re scared of it.  Thus the effort to suppress the vote, etc.  I tried to describe this in my August 2 post, the T’s.  Take a look.

from Steve: Is the world just spinning too fast, Dick? What’s wrong? It seems as if a room full of TV writers are working as hard as they can to imagine and then conflate another crisis, foolishness or threat every 24 hours. I’m trying to keep up, but the tail is, indeed, wagging the dog. Fun to read your notes but the events are disheartening.

Prenote: each and every single one of us IS government and politics.  I post frequently on politics at this space.  I will write about the Democratic nominee for President and Vice-President after they are officially nominated at the Democratic Convention in a few days.  Check back.  This is our country, all of us, together.

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In our garage, above my car, is the ancient mailbox that stood at the end of the driveway to the ancestral farm of my mother.  Here it is, photo’ed July 4, 2020:

I had rescued the mailbox, as one of the last family artifacts to leave the 110-year family farm in 2015.  No heir even asked about it.  It was just junk.  I just couldn’t leave it behind.

In this picture it sits on the ancient chair that Uncle Vince sat on in his last visit to his farm in 2013, right before the Nursing Home ended his semi-independent living in town.   Vince’s mental acuity was declining rapidly.

For Vincent, and for most everyone else, including me, every day, checking the mail is a daily ritual.  It is central to most of our lives, even in this time of fewer ‘real’ letters, and the dominance of The Tube – TV or computer.

Personally I would guess I’m in the post office, physically, two or three times a week.  I like the post office employees.  I enjoy getting mail at the curb.  I still write letters by hand.

Now the postal service is again controversial, through no fault of its own.  Here’s today’s long post from Just Above Sunset, well worth your time: Mailing it in.

Put “mailbox” into the search box for this blog, as I just did, and you’ll find 26 references, the oldest of which is here, June, 2009, two months after I began to blog.

I wonder what Vince would be thinking, were he around today.  He was a quiet man, but my guess is he would have a strong opinion on this.  One of his daily rituals was to go down to get the mail.

That old chair on which the mailbox sits?  Here’s the story I wrote which includes a photo of that chair, from September, 2013.

Vince is now five years deceased (Feb. 2, 2015).  I can’t ask him for an opinion now, but I’m pretty certain he wouldn’t be happy at the current chaotic state of affairs.

You, reader, and I, and hundreds of millions of others, are still here, and the current issue is in our hands.

Do something.  To use the post is your, and all of our, Constitutional right.

COMMENTS: (see also the on-line comments below)

from Steve: Your latest story was a lovely way to begin this weekend morning. There’s some nostalgia, some plea for more human correspondence, and some politics. Receiving one’s mail–or delivering one’s thoughts and information–without an effort beyond opening a computer or phone is convenient, I guess, but for me it offers less adventure than “going down to get the mail”–an act of some commitment, especially if the hike were more than a short driveway in distance. The current pushing match over this postal system seems especially profane when the tradition of stamps and delivery that’s been a confident exchange has become a political match stick. I hope that the mailbox in your garage has the karma or whatever it takes to keep us from the corruption of this connection to our democracy.

from Carol: My grandparents, living out in the wilds of North Dakota (as you know), got mail from TWO post offices.  Now people are in danger of not getting mail even from one.  This is NOT progress 🙁

This charming little story is from Grandma’s tape-recorded memories:

“You know, the Oriska mailman, he drove horses.  ‘Giddup. Giddup. Giddup. Giddup.’  You could hear him comin’ way from that Catholic church east of our place.  That was a mile.  You could hear him comin.’  ‘Giddup. Giddup. Giddup.’  So Pa told him every time he come to the farm he should put the horses in the barn and feed ‘em and then come to the house and I’d give him somethin’ to eat.  So we did that.  He brought the mail from Oriska, you know.  We had that mailbox right on the corner and then we had a Fingal mailbox down to the other corner, so we could get mail from both routes… That dress that Inez has got in that picture, his wife made that.  We fed the horses, you know, and give him somethin’ to eat.  And then this mail carrier got me a set of pans.  Three of ‘em.  And I liked ‘em so well, they was nice pans.”

(She went on to say that she found some of my uncles had “borrowed” her nice pans to make a still in the woods.  But, I digress…)

from Larry: When “Carol” mentioned Oriska and the postman, I am reminded of my maternal grandfather, Louis B. Musselman. He was a rural mail carrier out of Oriska during the mid-30s. There was a day during each year when he had to distribute Sears catalogs. This would be quite foreign to today’s Amazon users. That distribution day was a huge event to the rural mail carrier, as you can see in the attached photo.  My grandfather is the fellow behind the wheel and the other guy is probably the Oriska postmaster.

from Dick: A letter to the Postal Service which I began to deliver Aug. 17, first to my home mailbox:

Dear Postal Worker:  I have a long and very positive experience record with the USPS, including the last 20 years in Woodbury.  There are no horror stories in my files, and I’m in the post office two or three times a week; am shepherd for one PO Box in Woodbury for an organization I’m part of, have excellent residential service, and spend many hundreds of dollars every year for stamps and other services at the post office.

The Post Office to me has always been the people who provide the service…still today, every day, I look forward to the mail.

Thank you.

from Sonya: This was such an interesting blog post. At age 65, I also love getting “snail mail” instead of only text messages and emails, though I myself very seldom write a paper letter anymore.

from Walt: We still use the USPS every day of the week, and we buy stamps by the roll of 100!  We write checks to mail bills, send actual birthday cards to friends and family,  and mail gifts and other packages.  We do not use FedEx or other delivery companies. This is our choice, and we feel that we are doing our best to support the Post Office.