Over the May Day weekend, the Euro/American establishment carried out two assassinations. The first assassination was committed when the North Atlantic Treaty Organisation (NATO) invaded Libyan territory and murdered Saif al-Arab, the highly accomplished son of Colonel Muammar Gaddafi, and three of Colonel Gaddafi’s young grandchildren. The second assassination was committed when the American military invaded Pakistani territory and put a bullet through the head of Osama bin Laden.
In a sense, when the Americans assassinated Osama bin Laden, they were merely exterminating their own creature! You see, Osama bin Laden and many of his fellow Al Qaeda based Mujahedin fighters were initially organized, trained, armed and funded by the government of the United States of America.
American author Clyde Prestowitz records in his book Rogue Nation that, in response to the presence of the Soviet Union’s army in Afghanistan, “Washington mounted an effort in conjunction with Pakistan to build up the Islamic Mujahedin resistance to the Soviets . . . The US set up training bases in Pakistan for Islamic fighters from Saudi Arabia and elsewhere . . . Among these was Osama bin Laden.”
And so, the partnership between the United States establishment and Osama bin Laden that was utilized to attack the Soviet Union, to destroy the World Trade Centre, and to create conditions that facilitated the US establishment in its pursuit of its foreign policy objectives was a peculiarly American affair!
But the assassination of Saif al-Arab and the three young Gaddafi grandchildren directly concerns all of us Barbadian and Caribbean people, because these four murders were committed in our names.
We make this assertion because when an action is carried out by or under the authority of the United Nations Security Council, it is deemed to have been carried out in the names of all the member states of the United Nations. And so, when the three leading powers of NATO – the United States, Britain and France – all permanent members of the UN Security Council – assassinated these four Libyan citizens, they were purporting to act for us and in our names.
Now, as long ago as April 17, 2011, our party issued a public statement explaining all of this and imploring the governments of the Caribbean to bestir themselves and to request the Secretary-General of the United Nations to convoke a “Special Session” of the UN General Assembly to discuss the threat to international peace and security that has been created by the US, Britain and France carrying out a military assault on Libya in contravention of the relevant Security Council resolutions.
You see, under Article 20 of the UN Charter, a “Special Session” of the General Assembly must be convoked if it is requested by a majority of the member nations. And so, if the 15 nations of CARICOM, the 53 nations of the African Union, and the 20-odd nations of Latin America were to make such a request, UN Secretary General Ban Ki-moon would be obliged to summon a meeting of world governments to deal with the situation that is now unfolding in Libya.
We have done our part. It is now time for Prime Ministers Stuart, Gonsalves, Golding, Persad-Bissessar and all the other political leaders of CARICOM to act!
