In light of Zimbabwean president, Robert Mugabe's recent election to the African Union presidency and his call for Africa to withdraw from the International Court, it's important to reflect soberly on the function of the ICC and other international bodies as to their role and worthiness.
The ICC, like the UN and the World Bank were founded to bring unity on the planet, end wars between nations, bring justice where it is due, and alleviate poverty.
Digest this.
Then remember that the ICC has been used as a tool to indict leaders of the former colonies [good or bad ones, and even some of the ones the West installed but got out of line].
The UN has been used to destabilize former colonial governments, to investigate former colonial governments, to sanction former colonial governments, to sanction wars against former colonial governments. I cannot think of ONE government of the former empires that has suffered sanction or investigation or UN troops occupying it, not even the UK when the World Bank had to bail it out [I'll get to that next].
Neither the UN nor its predecessor, the League of Nations, did nothing to stop the extraction of reparations put upon Haiti for France, nor for any other subsequent reparations put upon African countries when they became liberated.
The World Bank has been used to impose SAP [structural adjustment programs], which is bank's way of saying "give me your shit for nothing, and feed and house your African, First Nation*, and Brown children with hopes." When the UK economy went under in the 70's [google: winter of discontent], no such terms were put on it by the World Bank or IMF when money was lent. The UK wasn't made to end its free health care or unemployment benefits. But Africans were made to do so. In fact, African countries were forbidden from implementing many social programs and to use that money to pay back "debts" to the empires. This was done without irony: these poor, underdeveloped countries were forced to pay money to enrich the Western, developed countries, and the very agency set up to prevent poverty orchestrated it.
So the judgment is clear. Crystal, crystal clear, and we must be just as clear. It is not digestible.
These are Nazis in our homes, these are terrorist forces intent on extracting what they want and making fertilizer into any man, woman, or child who gets in their way. Let me throw Ebola in for a minute, because it is related: Ebola and HIV emerged at around the same time with obviously different consequences, but we know Ebola comes from bat feces; bats who had been living for millennia in some jungle where Africans must have known to leave them alone. Whatever the empires found in that ground became more important, because as the jungle has been decimated to get to the ground, those bats fled like refugees into populated areas, spreading that deadly virus. So once again, Western greed is in fact behind Ebola, and I cannot prove it but I think behind HIV as well. I think there are probably many unknown microbes in the jungles and rainforests of this planet, and when industrial capitalism destroys those jungles, those microbes will be released unto all of us.
* First Nations, not Indians or American Indians or Native Americans, nor Latino or Hispanic. First Nations covers the whole gamut of the Americas.
Africans, not Afro-American, African-American, Afro-Mexican, Afro-Peruvian, nor Afro-Caribbean. AFRICAN. We all come from the same place and suffer the same indices and social exclusions, don't get LOST in your passport.
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