…but not at UN
No! No! No! Your Eyewitness ain’t getting into that biblical morass as to whether God did in fact stop the sun on the bequest of Joshua, or whether technically it shoulda been the earth that had to be stopped to lengthen the day!! Naaah! The topic de jour is the fact that while the UN was supposedly formed after WWII to stop all future wars, and the members were supposed to resolve their differences peacefully, the five victors in the war were given the power to stop the world by their representative to the UN merely putting up her hand in the Security Council, signalling that it wasn’t a kumbaya moment!
While they try to make that fact low-key, the UN isn’t exactly the democratic institution they “boast and brag” about! In fact, it’s an organisation steeped in the inequity of (interstate) caste! Sure, the 193 countries on planet Earth that now belong to the UN General Assembly are told they’re EQUAL, with equal votes and suchlike, all right. But the real power doesn’t lie with them, it lies with the aforementioned Security Council – with its five PERMAMENT members and ten other members elected every two years. We’re in right now.
But even within the Security Council – which, like the word “but” that wipes out everything that preceded it! – there are the caste hierarchies. The five permanent members: the United States, China, France, Russia, United Kingdom, have a “VETO POWER” over the Security Council’s decisions, and by implication over the rest of the world! The “veto power” thus confers the imprimatur of legitimacy on the decisions of the “Fabulous Five” over the rest of the 188 other members!!
Between 2020 and Feb 2024, this veto was exercised 14 times by the US, 12 of which were in regard to the Israeli -Palestinian conflict!! Last April, the Biden Administration vetoed a resolution recommending that the General Assembly hold a vote on the State of Palestine’s full membership of the organization.
But the US hasn’t been the only permanent member to have used its veto power which was given to the 5 victors of WWII 72 years ago!! In our travails with Mad Maduro and Venezuela over their border conflict, which we passed on to the ICJ, part of the UN system -its enforcement – will depend on the UNSC. And that is where Mad Maduro’s besties – Russia and China – would be exercising their vetoes to stymie the ICJ’s ruling!!
In the 21st century, it’s high time democracy enters the chambers of the UN, with the General Assembly of the 193 nations of the world finally having the last say!
…on Indian Independence
Yesterday was the 77th anniversary of India’s Independence from the British Empire. This event doesn’t resonate as much as when dozens of countries such as ours remained under the British Empire’s thrall. But it’s truly said that “the past is never dead: it’s not even past”. Just as the departing British left the open sores of the partition of India – which left more than a million people dead – and that sore has just exploded in Bangladesh, we’ve been left with our own sore to deal with.
Our “Independence” from Britain under the PNC came in the wake of instigated ethnic violence that took 176 lives and uprooted thousands, as villages were ethnically cleansed. It facilitated election rigging by the PNC for 28 years, in order to keep out the PPP, and solidified the racial/ethnic cleavages once again roiling our politics and our country.
To its credit, India is at last starting to pull itself out of its British-fostered underdevelopment. Will the PNC allow us to do the same?
…and the AFC
The AFC just announced they’re concerned with the rising levels of mental health illnesses – including suicide. Did they investigate that most of the problem in in the communities where THEY closed the sugar estates – especially in Berbice? 42,000 persons dislocated!!
