Obama to Iranian Leadership: Let’s Make a Deal

by “Midwest RAIMster”

(http://antiimperialism.wordpress.com)

Marking the Iranian new year’s celebration, Nowruz, U.S. president Barack Obama released a video statement to the adversarial Middle East nation. While on the surface Obama offered his “best wishes” and the “promise of a new beginning,” such a statement can hardly be taken at face value.

The statement was aimed at three audiences specifically: the Iranian leadership, the Iranian people, and the Amerikan and Western masses. Lauding Iranian culture and making vague comparisons between Amerikans and Iranians, Obama both played into Iranian nationalism and invoked a false sense of fraternity between the Iranian and Amerikan people. Obama stressed that it was a “new day” and raised the false hope of a “greater peace.”

In truth, fraternity between the oppressed Iranians and oppressor Amerikans is a myth and Barack Obama is not in the position to offer changes to the basic relationship. Whereas Obama is a good orator whose words have an aire of credibility that George Bush lacked, the capitalist-imperialist system still demands the increasing exploitation of Third World peoples. Obama should be seen for the role he plays in this overall system.

Implied in Obama’s statement was a clear offer to the Iranian leadership: get with the program and there is a place for you in the imperialism system. Amerika’s desire to exploit Iran hasn’t changed. Now it appears as though the door is open for the current Iranian leadership to become the local managers for the Amerikan empire. While Obama emphasized dialogue and ‘mutual respect,’ if these tactics fail to bring about the desired result, Amerika will surely resort to covert destabilization efforts and direct military actions.  In previous statements, Obama said he would not rule out the latter option in dealing with the Iranian leadership.

The statement was also directed to the Iranian masses. By invoking the Iranian holiday, Obama hoped to especially connect to this group. The aim of this was to cast domestic speculation on the Iranian leadership’s current anti-U.S. policies. This is especially hypocritical in that Obama’s efforts are aimed at bringing the Iranian masses under the exploitation the Western imperialism. Amerika’s current stance towards the Iranian leadership is based solely on whether they will be an accomplice to this exploitation.

Amerikans also took in the statement by the millions, many with enthusiasm. For them, Obama represents an imperialist figurehead which they can be proud of. While not giving up the drive to bring every corner of the globe under its domination, Amerika is now better able to claim it is doing so in the name of peace. Such a proposition is no less a tactic of imperialism, albeit a more popular one. As RAIM has previously stated, Obama represents the velvet glove of imperialism. False rhetoric of “mutual respect” and “peace” are likely to be continuing tactics of Obama and Amerika’s never ending war against the Third World masses.

Sources:

http://www.iht.com/articles/2009/03/20/news/IRAN-transcript.php

http://raimd.wordpress.com/2008/06/12/obama-shocks-arabs-touts-imperialist-creditials/

http://raimd.wordpress.com/2008/06/30/obama-%E2%80%9Cblack%E2%80%9D-messiah-for-white-amerika/

Remember Oscar Grant: The Struggle Is Not Over!

This New Years Day 2009 in Oakland, California another tragic incident of police terror against a young Black man occurred.  Oscar Grant III, 22 years old, father of a 4 year old daughter, was shot execution-style by a transit cop.  Videos of the incident clearly show he was shot in the back while face-down on a subway platform, unarmed and posing no threat.

The incident was filmed by bystanders, and police attempted to confiscate most of the videos.  But a few made it to Youtube and were viewed around the world.  Outrage at this incident spread, with protests and rebellions happening in response to this atrocity in the Bay Area and elsewhere.

John Burris, a civil rights lawyer for the Grant family, called this murder one of the worst cases of police terrorism he ever witnessed.  Recently Johannes Nehserle, the pig shown on the video shooting Grant, was charged with murder after he quit the BART police force and fled the state to avoid questioning.  Along with calling for criminal charges against the cop, Burris is helping file a 25 million lawsuit for Grant’s family.

Although this case may be one of a few where justice is brought against a killer cop, it will be too little too late.  Terrorism and injustice are nothing new for Black people in Amerikkka.  It enslaved and killed millions of African people in one of the most brutal slavery systems known to man.  It subsequently lynched thousands of Blacks in its long history of colonial and neo-colonial oppression.  Other non-white peoples have been victims of Amerikkka in its long history of exploitation, land theft, and genocide.

With oppression comes resistance.  The Black Liberation struggle and the leaders it produced have long been an inspiration to oppressed peoples in every corner of the globe.  We take this time on Martin Luther King Jr. Day to remember that spirit of resistance.

This year’s celebration of Martin Luther King Jr. Day coincides with the inauguration of Barack Obama, the first “Black” president of the United States.  While objectively historic, it should be seen as it is, a reinvention of U.S. imperialism as a multicultural empire with a Black figurehead.  As seen by the murder of Oscar Grant, the Obama presidency will not end the police killings of non-white youth.  It will not end the huge incarceration rates of non-white peoples inside the United States.  It will not free Mumia Abu-Jamal and the hundreds of other political prisoners who are continually denied freedom and justice.  It will not end the U.S. instigated bloodbaths in Iraq and Afghanistan, U.S. support for Israel’s aggression against Palestine, or U.S. harassment against independent nations like Venezuela and Bolivia.  And it will not end the parasitic capitalism that steals resources and labor from the Third World to fuel Amerika’s opulent consumerism.

Even Martin Luther King Jr. saw the realities of the political, economic, and military imperialism the United States was inflicting not only to oppressed nations inside the country but all around the world:

A true revolution of values will soon look uneasily on the glaring contrast of poverty and wealth. With righteous indignation, it will look across the seas and see individual capitalists of the West investing huge sums of money in Asia, Africa, and South America, only to take the profits out with no concern for the social betterment of the countries, and say, ‘This is not just’” (“Beyond Vietnam”).

The investments they continue to use to take profits from poor nations were received from previous thefts the U.S. committed throughout its history.  This cycle must stop.

At the same time Oscar Grant was killed, over 1000 Palestinians lost their lives in Gaza by the settler occupation of Israel, funded by the United States.  True freedom and justice will not come by accepting a bigger part of U.S. imperialism but by rejecting and abolishing it outright.  Oppressed nations everywhere must gain their freedom and determine their own destinies.  These freedom struggles are in solidarity with all oppressed peoples in the world, in bringing about a truly just world where an end to oppression with no concessions is more than just a dream.

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