OWTU SPEAKS 2003 JULY 02
THE UNITED STATES' AND THE INTERNATIONAL CRIMINAL COURT
It is the OWTU’s view that the United States’ position on the International Criminal Court and its demand for immunity for US citizens smacks of hypocrisy, super power – chauvinism and blackmail.
The United States Administration insists that the Police is above the law and that the US is the Chief Constable or Commissioner depending on which side of the Atlantic you might be. The problems with Peace and of War in the world today are all based on the hegemonic outlook of the United States’ approach to world leadership.
The ultra right and extremist left, right up to the days of détente (datah’nt) and then glasnost and perestroika had always been the cause of conflict and confrontation. Our now bipolar world is troubled mainly by the trigger happiness, repressive nature, autocracy and blackmail as practiced by the world’s self-imposed and appointed chief police.
One of the remedies to this was best exemplified in former President Carter’s statement on the first anniversary of the Rome charter, on the International Criminal Court. Former US President, Jimmy Carter, a strong advocate of the creation of an International Criminal Court said yesterday that it was his hope that as the Court begins its work, the sight of mass murderers and others being held accountable, will send a strong message to the United States and other non-ratifying countries about the power of law and collective international action; and that the court’s first cases will herald a new era in global rule of law. This is not the view of Chief Constable George Bush. He can scarcely see the forest from the trees, encamped as he is in the jungle of Monroeism and the arrogance of the military and economic might of the United States. Such arrogance puts it beyond George Bush’s comprehension that a law which he did not arrogate and a court which the US did not construct, could exist at all, and that they may one day have appearing before them, agents and representatives of the Chief Constable for atrocities, mass murders, drug and money laundering crimes that they continue to commit.
So, in defiance of that which ought to be moral, just and right, the badjohn Chief Constable has decided to blackmail those whom he considers to be weaker and have indicated their subscription to the rules of law and the equality of all before the law. Mr. Bush and the United States decided to suspend military assistance to 50 countries – Trinidad and Tobago included – because of these countries’ support for the International Criminal Court. What does the US have to hide? And who has upstaged the United States in the manufacture of politically-motivated prosecution and persecution?
It is to be hoped that none of the blackmailed sovereign states, particularly in our Latin American and Caribbean region as hand-to-mouth as US and European exploitation has made some of us – it is to be hoped that none will succumb to George’s ambush and to be forced to the ‘stool of repentance’ or become a ‘stool pigeon’. Tell Policeman George to keep his filthy military-aid pittances, which he has been robbing from us anyway. And let us rally behind our own former President’s call for all countries involved to unite against the unilateral and supremacist action of the United States.
Additionally, Antigua and Barbuda, Barbados, Belize, Brazil, Colombia, Costa Rica, Dominica, Ecuador, Paraguay, Peru, St. Vincent and the Grenadines, Uruguay, Venezuela, Trinidad and Tobago and even others in our hemisphere who have received presidential waivers should take another good look at the US sponsored framework and processes for the FTAA and determine which tools we should construct together to lever our developing countries’ best economic, social and political interests in that soon to be established hemispheric trading block – (The Free Trade Area for America).
You do not wait until darkness falls to look for the candle.
Have a Good Wednesday evening.
Errol K. Mc Leod
President General