Iran invades Mexico

international | arts and media | other press Friday April 20, 2007 12:32 by David Manning - MediaBite editors at mediabite dot org

Spreading Theocracy

It is suggested that the Iranian invasion of Mexico in 2003, supported by an alliance of Arab nations including Syria and Lebanon, has now claimed over 2 ½ million lives. The justification for the invasion as we now know was false – Mexico possessed no weapons of mass destruction and posed no threat to Iran’s ally Venezuela. But three years on the Iranian military, supported by their allies, remain as occupiers within a country crumbling under the relentless violence. With one eye on the occupation and one eye on the surrounding region Iran has recently been caught in a bit of a diplomatic crisis – the recent detention of it’s forces by a hostile neighbour.

While it is alleged that Iran has been conducting clandestine operations within the US, Iran’s historic foe, perhaps even so far as supporting extremist groups responsible for numerous deaths, and openly arresting US ‘diplomats’ working within Mexico. The US response to these hostilities and the diplomatic pressure being mounted by Iran to force US nuclear disarmament - the capture of a number of Iranian troops alleged gathering intelligence within US territorial waters and the subsequent parading of the captives on US cable television has been described by commentators as the most ‘hear[t]-rending picture on our screens in recent years.’

Spreading Democracy

Doubtless this account of invasion and occupation is somewhat inconceivable, but as Noam Chomsky suggested in ‘What If Iran Had Invaded Mexico? - Putting the Iran Crisis in Context’ [1], it is a mental exercise that does put this reality in perspective. Assuming these events had happened could we imagine a scenario where the dominant corporate media would portray the US as the aggressor? Would we read in the Irish Independent of the most ‘hear[t]-rending picture on our screens in recent years,’ years where we have witnessed through those little black boxes the results of tsunamis, earthquakes, hurricanes, wars, torture, poverty and terrorism? Would we read in the Irish Times of Iran’s benign ‘pressure’ and the US’s ‘aggressive intent’?

Fortunately, we are unlikely to ever witness Iran invading Mexico and equally unlikely is the possibility of us witnessing the corporate media applying reporting befitting the crime, when that crime is conducted by an ally.

Back to Reality; our latest MediaShot ‘From Rhetoric to Reality’ looks at the dominant corporate media’s reporting of the ongoing stand-off between Iran and ‘the West’:

From Rhetoric to Reality

“Ideally, the media guard the public against abuses of power. It’s not so clear how to guard against the power that the media themselves acquire.” [Paul Starr, ‘Check and Balance’, the American Prospect 29/06/04]

The mainstream corporate media is without doubt the dominant source of information on current ‘newsworthy’ events. These corporate entities reach into almost every corner of every living room; they leave their impression on every coffee table and commuter carriage floor. But while they effectively shape our vision of the world, our influence on them remains marginal. We 'control' them through exercising ‘consumer choice’.

This ‘freedom of consumer choice’ must be carefully distinguished from ‘consumer sovereignty’, as Edward Herman noted:

“This distinction between sovereignty and free choice has important applications in both national politics and the mass media. In each case, the general population has some kind of free choice, but lacks sovereignty. The public goes to the polls every few years to pull a lever for slates of candidates chosen for them by political parties heavily dependent on funding by powerful elite interests. The public has "freedom of choice" only among a very restricted set of what we might call "effective" candidates, effectiveness being defined by their ability to attract the funding necessary to make a credible showing.”

Increased ‘choice’ brings other pitfalls; as the consumer effects ‘specialisation’ in the media it allows those that feed on the media’s commodity to hone their target markets. Media adaptation to consumer wants produces a more effective platform for advertising, allowing the corporation more efficient access to those living room corners it seeks:

continued…

http://www.mediabite.org/article_From-Rhetoric-to-Reali....html

1. http://www.zmag.org/content/showarticle.cfm?ItemID=12507