The Black Commentator: An independent weekly internet magazine dedicated to the movement for economic justice, social justice and peace - Providing commentary, analysis and investigations on issues affecting African Americans and the African world. www.BlackCommentator.com
 
July 21, 2011 - Issue 436
 
 

Is It Time to Impeach Barack Obama?
Keeping it Real
By Larry Pinkney
BlackCommentator.com Editorial Board

 

 

"...That to secure these rights, governments are instituted among men, deriving their just powers from the consent of the governed. That whenever any form of government becomes destructive to these ends, it is the right of the people to alter or to abolish it, and to institute new government, laying its foundation on such principles and organizing its powers in such form, as to them shall seem most likely to effect their safety and happiness..."

- United States Declaration of Independence

"You're not supposed to be so blind with patriotism that you can't face reality. Wrong is wrong, no matter who says it."

- Malcolm X [el-Hajj Malik el-Shabazz]

The reality of corporate greed and domination in this nation, combined with the U.S. corporate-government's wars abroad and de facto political manipulation and repression at home under the administrative auspices of Barack Obama, has brought ordinary, everyday Black, White, Brown, Red, and Yellow people to the very brink of economic and political ruin and emaciation.

Notwithstanding the egregious omissions in the U.S. Declaration of Independence, pertaining to the rights of Indigenous Native people and Black people, etc., this document is and remains, in the 21st century, absolutely correct in its assertion regarding "the right of the people to alter or to abolish..."any form of [this nation's] government" that does not serve "the safety or happiness" of the people [i.e. a government that repeatedly ignores, distorts, and/or subverts the "consent" and will of the people].

The current, overwhelmingly corporate-backed, war and austerity U.S. president, Barack Obama, was ushered into office after having cynically and callously bamboozled everyday people of all colors and both genders, with misleading and fallacious "hope and change" rhetoric. Instead of delivering "hope" or "change," Mr. Obama has, for going on three years, delivered more wars, increased economic austerity, and constant political subterfuge,double-speak, and repression, complete with an unmistakable and huge dose of contempt for ordinary, everyday people (his double-speak rhetoric notwithstanding). Having successfully bamboozled and hoodwinked the majority of everyday people who ushered him into the White House in the first place, he has now subverted their hopes, dreams, and legitimate needs; even as he stalwartly serves the avaricious corporate elite of this nation. His policies of economic austerity at home and U.S. wars and occupations abroad have bestowed upon the everyday people of this nation neither "safety or happiness." In fact, his policies and actions of war abroad and austerity at home have made the people of this nation far less physically and economically safe, and immensely unhappy.  It is time for the people of this nation to seriously consider, and then take the political action, to impeach U.S. president Barack Obama.

As this current U.S. president shrewdly and callously sets out to increasingly crush everyday people, this time by destroying much-needed Social Security, Medicare, and other such essential programs; he and his corporate cabinet protect the rich, even as their accomplices in the corporate elite grow financially ever fatter from the economic misery and corporate gouging and economic blood sucking of everyday people. The giant tax loop holes, etc., enjoyed by the U.S. multi-national corporate elite are, in reality, criminal and utterly unacceptable. Just as Barack Obama, in service to his pharmaceutical and insurance company corporate backers, scuttled single-payer universal health care approximately two years ago, so it that he has set out to destroy Social Security and Medicare, etc., still in service to his corporate backers and masters. The fact is that it is the trillions of dollars of the people's money that Barack Obama gave to the greedy bankers, insurance & pharmaceutical companies, the war profiteering corporations, and all the other Wall Street robber barons that must immediately be returned to the everyday people of this nation!  And not one penny must be taken from Social Security, Medicare, or any other program for the needy, the disabled, the elderly, children, and what's left of the working people in this country!

Both the corporate Democratic Party and the corporate Republican Party feed from the diseased corporate financial trough of greed, and they are both vultures upon everyday people of all colors. They differ only in name, style and rhetoric, but their systemic objectives are collectively and fundamentally the same - which is to perpetuate the status quo (under differing guises) in service to the tiny, bloated, rich and powerful. Thus, there remains the inescapable ultimate necessity to organize for, and bring about, serious and total systemic change. It must also be borne in mind that the majority of the U.S. (so-called) "news" media is owned and/or controlled by the corporate elite, which means that it is a corporate-stream media whose role is manipulate and form opinion - not to honestly inform the people.

While real and over-all systemic change is what is ultimately needed in and by the people of this nation, an impeachment process of Barack Obama, is one of the means, that may serve as an important unifying and rallying cry in the people's struggle for economic, political, social, and judicial justice inside the United States. Barack Obama has repeatedly demonstrated that he will not, of his own accord, abide by international law or the Constitution of this nation (which he has further shredded), nor will he serve the economic and political needs and interests of the masses of ordinary people thereto.

U.S. president Barack Obama is certainly no fool and he knows the enormous pain and despair that his policies and actions of economic austerity at home and wars abroad are causing everyday people, both in this nation and in other parts of the world. Having been a student at an elite private school as a child, having later been a "research assistant" and "financial writer" for the multi-national Business International Corporation, and subsequently having been a university instructor of constitutional law before ascending to the White House; Barack Obama is undoubtedly keenly aware of exactly how to merge corporations and government into essentially one blood sucking and war mongering entity, at the terrible expense of everyday people. He is obviously also cognizant of how his continued shredding of the U.S. Constitution, his acts of war abroad, and his government's refusal to be transparent, in addition to the very real political repression of dissidents in this nation, have made an utter mockery of the Constitution and of the very word 'democracy' itself.

The connection between corporate greed, U.S. wars abroad, economic austerity, the shredding of the U.S. Constitution, and political repression at home are inextricably linked. It is Barack Obama and his blood sucking corporate accomplices who are directly responsible for the intolerable exacerbation of joblessness, home foreclosures, homelessness, wars abroad, and the needless deaths of so many people here and abroad. Obama's pigmentation is absolutely irrelevant, but his unconstitutional, deceitful, hypocritical, unjust, and reprehensible actions at home and abroad are definitely not.

In furtherance to what has already been addressed in this column, the national organization, Voters For Peace, has presented its own "5 Compelling Reasons to Impeach President Obama." Their specific reasons are cited in the text below:

------------

"In little more than two years President Barack Obama has violated the U.S. Constitution by:

1) Ordering military attacks on sovereign nations without Congressional authorization.

2) Issuing Executive Orders for the extra-judicial assassination of U.S. citizens in violation of guarantees of due process.

3) Presiding over military, paramilitary and intelligence service use of torture in violation of prohibitions against cruel and unusual treatment.

4) Ordering and attempting to assassinate foreign heads of state.

5) Obstructing justice by failing or refusing to investigate credible allegations of torture brought against the previous administration."

---------

The sobering reality is that Barack Obama and his corporate and political accomplices have ushered in more of the same only worse for the people of this nation and world. His actions in Iraq, Afghanistan, Pakistan, Libya, and elsewhere, ensure that the insane cycle of "terrorism" will continue unabated. In this too, Obama knows full well that it is the ordinary, common people of this nation and planet who are the cannon fodder for the corporate/military elite whom he serves.

It is time for this president to be impeached! And contrary to systemic mythology, the alternative to Barack Obama and the Democratic Party foxes are not the Republican Party wolves, which represent no alternative at all. Rather, the alternative is what we, the everyday people, create and make of it!

You the reader must decide, but whatever your decision - do something!!! Stop being metaphorical hamsters endlessly running on the spinning wheel to oblivion! Be critical thinkers, not caged hamsters. Humankind and Mother Earth herself hang in the balance.

Collectively organize, educate, and agitate. Each one teach one. Each one reach one. Time is of the essence. Onward then my sisters and brothers! Onward!

BlackCommentator.com Editorial Board Member, Larry Pinkney, is a veteran of the Black Panther Party, the former Minister of Interior of the Republic of New Africa, a former political prisoner and the only American to have successfully self-authored his civil / political rights case to the United Nations under the International Covenant on Civil and Political Rights. In connection with his political organizing activities in opposition to voter suppression, etc., Pinkney was interviewed in 1988 on the nationally televised PBS News Hour, formerly known as The MacNeil / Lehrer News Hour. For more about Larry Pinkney see the book, Saying No to Power: Autobiography of a 20th Century Activist and Thinker, by William Mandel [Introduction by Howard Zinn]. (Click here to read excerpts from the book.) Click here to contact Mr. Pinkney.