There's something that irks me every time I see a headline like I did just now, "Obama warns Iran to come clean on nukes". I always try to put myself in the shoes or the mind of another and I think that if it irks me it must make Arabs, Muslims, Iranians, and pretty much the majority of the workers in the former colonial world boil with rage.
Why should Iran allow a UN which is a capitalist club dominated by the major western powers, share such information like this at a time like this, with the US, Britain, Israel, which is what the demands amount to?
Does the US allow such access to its nuclear program that it is demanding of Iran? Does Britain? I don't think so. We know Israel doesn't. Israel is reputed by many sources to have hundreds of nuclear weapons but chooses to not confirm it one way or another from what I understand.
And why would a country like Iran that wasn't in favor with US imperialism not try to build a nuclear deterrent? The US didn't invade North Korea. North Korea has nuclear weapons. The most powerful military force in human history along with its few lapdogs, invaded a country that was starving and without defense after 10 yeas of US driven UN sanctions.
So many Americans have no idea that the US orchestrated a coup that overthrew a democratic secular government in Iran and installed a murderous regime led by the Shah. I remember in my youth in London when Iranian students and exiles would demonstrate many of them would wear masks because the Shah's notorious secret police, SAVAK, would murder or torture their family members back home. US and British imperialism in particular have a long history of meddling in other countries affairs, installing murderous anti-democratic puppet regimes and it should come as no surprise to anyone who is interested and can read that there is mistrust.
The Iranian government has stated that its nuclear development is not for weapons. Iran has not invaded countries all over the place. It is a theocratic dictatorship but that is not the reason the US is hostile to it. The US has installed or propped up most of the world's ruthless dictatorships at one time or another.
The people in the Middle East and the rest of the former colonial world see this bias; they're not stupid. Netenyahu was just at the UN asking delegates if they "had no shame" not walking out on Ahmadinejad's speech". He held up a document of some plans for the camp at Auschwitz to counter Ahmadinejad's ludicrous claims and he's right of course. But, Israel has been building settlements on land that belongs to others for years in violation of international law. It has murdered women and children indiscriminately in the occupied territories. Is there no shame there?
And Obama asks them not to stop building illegal settlements when he was over there but to show "restraint." That would be enough to drive any Palestinian in Gaza to retaliate any way they could. What would make the situation peaceful is if the Palestinians just would go away. The Zionists would be happy. The Saudi monarchs would be happy. But those darned Palestinians won't just commit mass suicide like Jonestown or throw themselves in to the sea.
Obama also calls on Palestinians and Israeli's to get their act together, a sort of "curse on both their houses" approach. But this is insulting. It is more taunting and insults for the victims. The Israeli's are armed to the teeth. They are backed by billions in weaponry by the US. They have a navy, a sophisticated air force and armed forces. The Palestinians have no ships, no planes, no military and no state. He's equating a castle with a tent.
Israel is western imperialism's most reliable ally in the middle east; it's not that the ruling class in Britain or the US has any love for Jews either, it's a political decision. The first British governor of Jerusalem referred to the creation of this state as "Our loyal little Ulster in the middle east". Ulster is the part of Ireland in the north containing the six counties occupied by Britain.
Another similarity between Ulster and the Israel/Palestine issue is that it cannot be solved on the basis of capitalism. Only by ending capitalism and a united working class building a federation of socialist states in the Middle East can solve this problem. In this way, the democratic rights that the workers in the middle east desire can be achieved. Democratic rights that not only achieve but surpass the limited democratic rights obtained in the industrial countries which are still ruled by an elite minority who control all aspects of economic and productive life.
I have included a map of Israel/Palestine which shows the theft of land that has gone on. What sort of state would Palestine be with what you see on the most recent map? Nothing but a bunch of Bantustans or reservations like in the US.
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