Oprah Winfrey &

The Dumbing Down of America

Iran has not gone to war against its neighbors in modern times (Iraq invaded it in 1980). But Israel and the US have gone to war and invaded other states on a variety of pretexts more than the rest of the world combined, since the end of WWII.

Sarkozy?s bellicose call for action against Iran?s nuclear power installations has been greeted with surprise and satisfaction by the US media. It's part of a broader effort by French imperialism to extend its global military and geopolitical reach.

Paul Wolfowitz was one of the main architects of the Iraq war and a leading purveyor of the false intelligence used to prepare it. This fanatic, who should be indicted and tried for war crimes, is now recycled as an expert on the Iranian ?threat.?

The latest orchestrated provocation against Iran exposes the reactionary character of the “green” movement and its international supporters. The "progressive' middle-class ex-left and “socialist” organizations eagerly support Obama's aggression.

In a manner chillingly reminiscent of the Bush regime’s buildup to the Iraq war, Obama lackeys intensified US propaganda against Iran, threatening heavy sanctions if it doesn't provide unrestricted access to its 'hidden' uranium enrichment plant.

With all the hallmarks of an orchestrated political provocation, the US, Britain and France, with the support of Germany, denounced a supposedly secret Iranian nuclear plant, threatening stepped-up economic sanctions and possible military action.

Smiley Obama has the uncanny ability to achieve Bush-like ends by much smoother means. He initially tones down the rhetoric on Iran, then escalates the pressure. A smooth, intelligent president can be more dangerous than a blustering, boorish one.

Ahmadinejad is the latest in a long line of western bogeymen: Libya's Colonel Gadafy, Panama's Manuel Noriega, Serbia's Slobodan Milosevic, Iraq's Saddam Hussein and Osama bin Laden, to name but a few. You can rely on the media to pump up the volume.

The Greens' attack on the government was from a pro-imperialist standpoint. The political meaning of the slogans was a call for all opposition to be dropped to the predatory actions of the Israeli state and its oppression of the Palestinian people.

How the West Loves to Hate! Now France and Germany have leaped on the anti-Iranian bandwagon with enthusiasm, threatening to implement stringent new sanctions, while Obama comes up with a September deadline by which time Iran must relinquish its righ

The recent events in Honduras and Iran, which pit democratically elected regimes against pro-US military and civilian actors intent on overthrowing them can best be understood as part of a larger White House strategy designed to reassert its power.

For some time the spin masters for war have been directing a well-orchestrated campaign of demonization against Iran, which is literally surrounded by U.S. military bases and warships. It reached a crescendo when Iran held its national elections.

After the election on June 12, it"s certain that many of Iran's more affluent, urban-activist and technologically savvy youth had concluded that they could achieve their political objectives best by using their protests as propaganda in the West.

American propaganda accused Iran in 2002 of being a member of the "Axis of Evil". It was [and is] condemned for pursuing weapons of mass destruction and exporting terrorism, "while an unelected few repress the Iranian people's hope for freedom."

What constitutes a progressive or regressive movement in Iran is not its support of or opposition to the regime of the Islamic Republic. What constitutes a progressive or reactionary movement is its opposition to neo-liberalism or support for it.

The US is fighting a bitter colonial-style war in Afghanistan, occupying Iraq and engaging in overt threats and covert destabilization operations against the clerical regime in Iran, all for the purpose of defending these same “vital interests.”

An Israeli attack on Iran is likely to produce retaliation, which Washington will use to enter the conflict. Have the personal ambitions of Rafsanjani and Mousavi, and the naive youthful upper class Iranian protesters, set Iran up for destruction?

Obama's CIA used cell phone technology to orchestrate the riots in Iran in an attempt to overthrow the government. They spread confusion by flooding Iranians with contradictory SMS messages. Essentially, it was a psychological warfare experiment.

We see the decay of American "freedom" in the way its media line up behind phony “color revolutions” against "enemy" regimes but flagrantly ignores antidemocratic measures by regimes backed by the CIA, the military and the State Department.

In a surprise move, Vice President Joe Biden signaled that the United States would not intervene to stop Iran from launching a "pre-emptive" attack on Israel. Biden's declaration came during an appearance on the ABC news-talk show, "This Week."

These petty-bourgeois leftists make no class analysis of the movements they support, passing over Iran’s history as an oppressed, semi-colonial country in silence as they fall in line with the latest color-coded “democracy” campaign.

June was a busy month for two of Washington’s ‘Axis of Evil’ members. Venezuela’s Chavez completed his nationalisation of oil and Iran’s Ahmedinejad stemmed a Western-backed colour revolution, leaving both 'baddies' revolting against US imperialism.

The political movement of defeated Iranian presidential candidate Mir Hossein Mousavi, named the “Green Wave," has striking parallels with the US-backed “color revolutions” in the former Soviet republics of Georgia and Ukraine.

The mass media narrative of events unfolding in Iran has been set out for us as clear as a fairytale: an evil dictatorship has rigged elections and now violently suppresses its country's democrats, hysterically blaming foreign saboteurs.

There is a deeply ingrained tendency among politicians and the mass media to make unstated but easily discernible distinctions between "worthy" and "unworthy victims". One beautiful 26 year-old Persian woman is worth a hundred Afghan 'ragheads.'