Iran today and racism in Hollywood (E266)

It’s almost exactly 40 years since the mighty Peacock Throne was toppled; the Shah of Shahs driven into exile; the Ayatollah Khomeini returning from exile and to power. The Shah had been in power courtesy of Britain and the United States that had overthrown the elected left-wing Prime Minister Mossadegh who had committed the cardinal error of nationalising his country’s oil. Sound familiar? The Shah’s terrifying security apparatus SAVAK murdered and tortured the Iranian people for decades without concerns from Western governments about human rights. Like revolutionary France from 1789, Iran has been at war for decades ever since. So, we invited Roshan Salih, a distinguished author, broadcaster, and journalist, into the Sputnik studio to take a look at Iran today.

One of the biggest stories out of Hollywood, since the #MeToo phenomenon, erupted unexpectedly this week when the Irish actor Liam Neeson confessed to having had murderous racist thoughts, albeit 40 years ago, when he armed himself and went looking for a black man to kill after someone he knew had been raped. That he then wondered whether the journalist, to whom he made the confession, would use the story indicates either that he hasn’t learned much in his long career in the public eye or it had been literally a confession in the true Catholic sense of the word. There are signs that he has already been forgiven. We asked Marc Wadsworth, a veteran journalist and activist, friend of the Mandela family and Mohamed Ali, do Black Lives matter in Hollywood?

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