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Corbyn Accuses Starmer Government of ‘Echoing Tony Blair’s Obedience to Washington’

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Original article by Stephen Prager republished from Common Dreams under Creative Commons (CC BY-NC-ND 3.0).

Former Labour Party leader co-founder and leader, Jeremy Corbyn, takes part in the protest against the war with Iran in Parliament Square, as the USA and Israel launch attacks on Iran. Photo by Vuk Valcic/SOPA Images/LightRocket via Getty Images

“Blair dragged the UK into an illegal war that triggered a spiral of hatred, conflict, and misery,” Corbyn said. “Twenty-three years later, another Labour prime minister is doing his best to follow in Blair’s footsteps.”

As UK Prime Minister Keir Starmer allows British bases to be used as part of the US-Israeli war against Iran, the former leader of his Labour Party says he’s making the same mistake that another Labour PM made 23 years ago.

Jeremy Corbyn, the socialist member of Parliament who led Labour from 2015 to 2020, said on Tuesday that Starmer was “echoing Tony Blair’s obedience to Washington”, referring to the then-prime minister’s decision in 2003 to join US President George W. Bush’s war in Iraq.

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“Ignoring the wisdom of ordinary people who could see the catastrophe ahead, Blair dragged the UK into an illegal war that triggered a spiral of hatred, conflict, and misery. More than a million Iraqi men, women, and children paid the price.” Corbyn wrote in a Tuesday piece for the democratic socialist publication Tribune.

Infamously pledging to Bush, “I will be with you, whatever,” Blair helped to promote the false claims that Iraqi President Saddam Hussein possessed weapons of mass destruction. And despite a lack of support from the United Nations, he joined Bush’s “coalition of the willing,” committing 46,000 British troops to the war.

“This was the last time a Labour prime minister blindly backed the wishes of the US and its warmongering president,” Corbyn said. “Twenty-three years later, another Labour prime minister is doing his best to follow in Blair’s footsteps and drag us into a catastrophic, illegal war.”

Unlike Bush, US President Donald Trump has not yet put boots on the ground in Iran, instead waging a destructive campaign of aerial bombings and missile strikes that have taken out the nation’s Supreme Leader, Ayatollah Ali Khamenei, and other senior Iranian officials.

As of Monday, the Human Rights Activists News Agency (HRANA), a US-based monitor of human rights in Iran, reported that at least 742 civilians had been killed since Saturday by US and Israeli attacks, with nearly 1,000 injured and more than 600 deaths still under review.

While Starmer has stressed that the UK “had no role” in launching the war, he has lent credence to the questionable case the US and Israel have made to justify it, including emphasizing that Iran “must never have nuclear weapons.”

Iran has always contended its nuclear program was not for military purposes, and it had no desire to produce a nuclear weapon. Prior to Saturday’s strikes, reports indicated that Iranian negotiators had offered to give up the nation’s entire stockpile of enriched uranium.

And though he has accused Iran of launching “indiscriminate strikes” across the Gulf, Starmer has been reticent to criticize similar actions by the US and Israel, which have had vastly larger death tolls, including the bombing of a girls’ school that reportedly killed 165 people, most of them girls between ages 7 and 12, and attacks on several hospitals.

Prime Minister Sir Keir Starmer says that “Britain will not” join forces with strikes on Iran carried out by the US and Israel.

The UK is allowing American forces to use its bases in the region to help launch attacks, but stresses the UK military will only act defensively. pic.twitter.com/8fqPOxPLMp
— Channel 4 News (@Channel4News) March 2, 2026

One day after the first strikes were conducted, and following mounting pressure from Trump, Starmer announced that he’d given the US approval for “specific, limited defensive” use of three Royal Air Force (RAF) bases—Fairford in England, Akrotiri in Cyprus, and Diego Garcia in the Indian Ocean—in order to destroy Iran’s missiles “at source” after a drone hit Akrotiri, causing minimal damage.

However, Starmer continued to claim that the UK had learned the “mistakes of Iraq,” and “will not join offensive action now.”

Corbyn said that Starmer’s insistence that bases would only be used “defensively” was merely “meaningless vocabulary that reveals Starmer’s contempt for the intelligence of the British people.”

In Parliament on Monday, Starmer said that “the use of the bases is to allow the US to use its ability to take out the ability of Iran to launch the attacks in the first place.”

US Secretary of State Marco Rubio on Monday used similar reasoning to justify launching the war, explaining that Iran was likely to retaliate against a planned Israeli attack and that it therefore posed an “imminent threat” to US personnel even though that threat was contingent on Israel attacking first.

Corbyn described the idea of a “preemptive strike” as a contradiction in terms. “Under this convoluted reasoning,” he said, “almost any attack on anybody can be classified as a defensive measure. Starmer’s words are Newspeak—and cannot shield his government from complicity in the devastation ahead.”

Mark my words: Starmer’s decision to drag Britain into another illegal war will prove to be a catastrophic, historic mistake. pic.twitter.com/2iSFpnDHdw
— Jeremy Corbyn (@jeremycorbyn) March 3, 2026

Like in the United States, the British public has expressed low support for American and Israeli actions against Iran. According to a YouGov poll published on Monday, 49% disapprove of US military action, compared to 28% who support it. Fewer than 1 in 5 Labour voters said they supported it.

Voters also said they oppose their government’s involvement. Compared with just 32% of Brits who said they supported letting the US use British bases, 50% said they opposed it.

“For too long, Britain has blindly followed the US as it indulges in disastrous imperial fantasies,” Corbyn said, noting the UK’s continued support for Israel over two years of US-sponsored genocide in Gaza.

Corbyn is now an independent MP who co-founded a new political party after being thrown out of Labour in 2020 over dubious accusations of antisemitism, which he has alleged stem from his strong criticism of Israel.

“It’s time to forge a different path. Now is not the time to try to rescue a ‘special relationship’ characterised by impunity, genocide, and war,” he said. “Now is the time to forge an independent foreign policy based on international law and peace.”

Original article by Stephen Prager republished from Common Dreams under Creative Commons (CC BY-NC-ND 3.0).

Orcas discuss Donald Trump and the killer apes' concept of democracy. Front Orca warns that Trump is crashing his country's economy and that everything he does he does for the fantastically wealthy. — Orcas discuss Donald Trump and the killer apes’ concept of democracy. Front Orca warns that Trump is crashing his country’s economy and that everything he does he does for the fantastically wealthy.

Donald Trump explains why he established his Bored of Peace

Orcas discuss rotting brain. Front Orca says "Wish someone would lock him up". — Orcas discuss rotting brain. Front Orca says “Wish someone would lock him up”.

Post author:dizzy
Post published:4 March 2026
Post category:crap pretend Labour Donald Trump Fascism Israel Jeremy Corbyn Keir Starmer Labour Party Neo-liberalism new authoritarianism plutocracy politics the filthy rich Tony Blair USUK Your Party Zionism
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Does international law still matter? The strike on the girls’ school in Iran shows why we need it

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A man holds a children’s backpack as rescue workers and residents search through the rubble of a girls’ elementary school in Minab, Iran, on February 28. Mehr News Agency/AP

Shannon Bosch, Edith Cowan University

As the US and Israel began their joint assault on Iran, reports emerged from Iran that a strike hit the Shajarah Tayyebeh girls’ elementary school in the southern city of Minab.

The school was reportedly packed with young pupils at the time. Iranian authorities say more than 150 people were killed, including children, and 60 more injured (these figures are yet to be independently verified).

Videos verified by international media show rescue workers digging through collapsed concrete, school bags being pulled from the debris, and scorch marks along the remaining walls.

Warning: this gallery contains graphic images.

https://cdn.theconversation.com/infographics/1361/adbf39d3504e3436d439f9d4ab05cc3e394b012d/site/index.html

The New York Times says it has verified videos that show the school next to a naval base belonging to the Iranian Revolutionary Guards Corps, or IRGC, and a strike hitting that base.

Iranian representatives at the United Nations have characterised the strike as a deliberate targeting of civilian infrastructure and labelled it a war crime and a crime against humanity.

Neither the United States nor Israel have publicly confirmed hitting the school. The US military’s Central Command (Centcom) said:

We are aware of reports concerning civilian harm resulting from ongoing military operations. We take these reports seriously and are looking into them. The protection of civilians is of utmost importance, and we will continue to take all precautions available to minimize the risk of unintended harm.

At present, we do not have enough verified facts to reach a firm legal conclusion about what happened.

But given the questions about the legality of the US and Israeli strikes on Iran – and deeper questions about whether we’re witnessing the “death of international law” more broadly – incidents like this illustrate the continuing importance of the law, especially in times of conflict.

Which targets are protected under the law?

In armed conflict, international humanitarian law applies. International humanitarian law is built on foundational principles that must inform all decisions by armed forces concerning what they target:

distinction
proportionality
military necessity

And precautions must be taken to avoid incidental harm to civilians.

So what do these terms mean?

The principle of distinction requires parties to an armed conflict to always distinguish between civilian objects and military objects.

Attacks may only be directed against combatants and military objects. Civilians and civilian objects, such as schools, hospitals and public transport, are protected and may not be directly targeted.

If there is any doubt about whether a target is military or civilian in nature, it must be presumed to be civilian.

Schools are not merely buildings. They are protective spaces, and their destruction can cause immediate loss of life and long-term societal damage.

Children under 18 also enjoy special protection under international humanitarian law. They, too, may not be directly targeted.

This protection is not absolute, however. Any civilian object (including schools) can lose their protected status if they become military objectives. A school used as a military base, artillery position or command post could meet that definition.

So far, we have no evidence the school in Minab was being used for military purposes or that it was intentionally targeted.

Proportionality and precautions in attacks

What, then, if the school was not intentionally targeted, but was incidental collateral damage from an attack directed at the IRGC barracks nearby?

International humanitarian law recognises civilian objects may be affected by attacks on military objectives.

Incidental harm to civilians and civilian objects is only lawful if it satisfies the test of proportionality and military necessity under the law. All feasible precautions must also have been taken to minimise harm to civilians.

So, if a school near a military target is hit, the legality of that strike turns on whether the expected harm to children and the school was excessive compared to the military advantage gained by striking the target.

Also important: did the military commanders take all feasible precautions to assess the effect of the attack on nearby civilians or civilian infrastructure? This includes the specific weapons that are used and the timing of the attack.

The destroyed building is a primary school for girls in the south of Iran. It was bombed in broad daylight, when packed with young pupils.

Dozens of innocent children have been murdered at this site alone.

These crimes against the Iranian People will not go unanswered. pic.twitter.com/AVqiuolgWm
— Seyed Abbas Araghchi (@araghchi) February 28, 2026

Why international law matters

In recent years, we have witnessed a number of countries and their leaders openly flouting international law and the rules-based order. Yet, it would be a profound mistake to conclude that international law has ceased to matter. Even grave breaches do not negate the system itself.

As renowned American international law scholar Louis Henkin famously wrote in 1979:

Almost all nations observe almost all principles of international law and almost all of their obligations almost all of the time.

Henkin’s point was not naïve optimism. Daily compliance of international law remains the norm in diplomacy, trade, aviation, maritime navigation, treaty compliance and peaceful dispute settlement.

Violations do occur – sometimes brazenly – but they are exceptions to an overwhelmingly compliant pattern of behaviour.

The fact that some states breach foundational rules such as the prohibition on the use of force in Article 2(4) of the United Nations Charter does not render international law illusory.

Rather, it underscores the importance of naming breaches for what they are and defending the legal order that most states, most of the time, continue to respect.

If the strike on the Minab school is ultimately shown to have violated the principles of distinction, proportionality and military necessity, it would not prove Henkin wrong; it would prove his point.

International law matters precisely because departures from it can be identified, judged and condemned.

The rubble of a girls’ school is not evidence that the law is meaningless; it is a stark reminder of why the law exists, and why insisting on compliance remains essential.

Shannon Bosch, Associate Professor (Law), Edith Cowan University

This article is republished from The Conversation under a Creative Commons license. Read the original article.

Donald Fuhrump says that Amerikkka doesn't bother with crimes or charges anymore, not being 100% Amerikkkan and opposing his real estate intentions is enough. — Donald Fuhrump says that Amerikkka doesn’t bother with crimes or charges anymore, not being 100% Amerikkkan and opposing his real estate intentions is enough.

Elon Musk urges you to be a Fascist like him, says that you can ignore facts and reality then.

Post author:dizzy
Post published:3 March 2026
Post category:Donald Trump Fascism Israel Neo-liberalism new authoritarianism plutocracy politics the filthy rich Zionism
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‘Thug’ Marco Rubio Tells Senate How US Plans to Keep Stealing Venezuelan Oil

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Original article by Jessica Corbett republished from Common Dreams under Creative Commons (CC BY-NC-ND 3.0).

A protestor holds up a sign as US Secretary of State Marco Rubio testifies during a Senate Foreign Relations Committee hearing about US policy toward Venezuela on Capitol Hill in Washington, DC on January 28, 2026. (Photo by Saul Loeb/AFP via Getty Images)

“Rubio’s dangerously expansive vision to transform the United States into a colonizing power in the Americas must be challenged,” one watchdog leader said of the US secretary of state.

In addition to asserting that “there is no war against Venezuela,” despite US forces killing scores of people there while abducting its president earlier this month, Secretary of State Marco Rubio on Wednesday laid out for a Senate panel how the Trump administration intends to continue controlling the South American nation’s oil and related profits.

Legal experts have argued that US President Donald Trump’s blockade of Venezuela’s oil, abduction of Venezuelan President Nicolás Maduro and his wife, Cilia Flores—who have both pleaded not guilty to federal narco-terrorism charges—and bombings of boats allegedly smuggling drugs in the Caribbean Sea and Pacific Ocean all violate international law.

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“The ongoing military actions in the Caribbean and South America, including the abduction of Venezuela’s president, are wrong, illegal under US and international law, and unconstitutional,” Robert Weissman, co-president of the group Public Citizen, said before the Senate hearing. “Congressional Republicans have blocked war powers resolutions that would end the US aggression in Venezuela, an extremely dangerous abdication of congressional responsibility to check presidential unlawfulness.”

“Marco Rubio’s central role in the planning and execution of the scheme to violate the sovereignty of Venezuela and steal the country’s oil merits a deep investigation by Congress, and potentially the removal of Rubio as secretary of state,” Weissman continued. “Rubio’s dangerously expansive vision to transform the United States into a colonizing power in the Americas must be challenged.”

Testifying to the Senate Foreign Relations Committee—on which he previously served—Rubio said that “Maduro is an indicted drug trafficker, not a legal head of state,” described his abduction as “an operation to aid law enforcement,” and declared that “the United States is prepared to help oversee Venezuela’s transition from a criminal state to a responsible partner.”

Rubio, the acting national security adviser, insisted that Trump wasn’t planning for any more military action in Venezuela—but also would not rule out such action, potentially without congressional authorization, in “self-defense” against an “imminent” threat.

Trump has repeatedly made clear through public statements that his Venezuela policy is focused on its petroleum reserves, seemingly to enrich the fossil fuel leaders who helped him return to power. American forces have seized several tankers in the Caribbean Sea linked to the country—which critics have condemned as “piracy”—and the first US sale of Venezuelan oil went to the company of a trader who donated millions to the president’s 2024 campaign, which Sen. Cory Booker (D-NJ) last week called “yet another example of his unchecked corruption.”

https://cdn.jwplayer.com/players/kdKoYUm0-xS4RtpB7.html

Describing US control of Venezuela’s nationalized petroleum industry, Rubio told the committee:

Objective number one was stability… And one of the tools that’s available to us is the fact that we have sanctions on oil. There is oil that is sanctioned that cannot move from Venezuela because of our quarantine. And so what we did is we entered into an arrangement with them, and the arrangement is this: On the oil that is sanctioned and quarantined, we will allow you to move it to market. We will allow you to move it to market at market prices—not at the discount China was getting. In return, the funds from that will be deposited into an account that we will have oversight over, and you will spend that money for the benefit of the Venezuelan people…
This is not going to be the permanent mechanism, but this is a short-term mechanism in which the needs of the Venezuelan people can be met through a process that we’ve created, where they will submit every month a budget of this is what we need funded. We will provide for them at the front end what that money cannot be used for. And they have been very cooperative in this regard. In fact, they have pledged to use a substantial amount of those funds to purchase medicine and equipment directly from the United States.

In an exchange with Senate Foreign Relations Committee Ranking Member Jeanne Shaheen (D-NH), Rubio said that an “audit process” has not yet been set up but will be, adding that “we’ve only made one payment” and it “retrospectively will be audited, but it was important we made that payment because they had to meet payroll. They had to keep sanitation workers, police officers, government workers on staff.”

Shaheen noted that the oil reportedly sold for $500 million, but only $300 million went to Venezuela’s government, now led by Maduro’s former deputy, Delcy Rodríguez, and asked Rubio about the remaining $200 million. The secretary said that the rest of the money was in a temporary account in Qatar that will ultimately become a US Treasury blocked account.

Summarizing the Trump administration’s plans, Sen. Chris Murphy (D-Conn.) said: “I think the scope of the project that you are undertaking in Venezuela is without precedent. You are taking their oil at gunpoint; you are holding and selling that oil; putting, for now, the receipts in an offshore Middle Eastern account; you’re deciding how and for what purposes that money is gonna be used in a country of 30 million people. I think a lot of us believe that that is destined for failure.”

Highlighting that “a month later, we have no information on a timetable for a democratic transition, Maduro’s people are still in charge, most of the political prisoners are in jail—and by the way, those that have been let out have a gag order on them from the government—the opposition leader is still in exile,” Murphy added, “this looks, already, like it is a failure.”

At one point during the nearly three-hour hearing, Leonardo Flores, a Venezuelan-American with the anti-war group CodePink, shouted, “Marco Rubio, you and Trump are thugs!”

US Capitol Police removed Flores from the hearing. As he was being led away, the protester said that “sanctions are a form of collective punishment of Venezuelan citizens. That’s a war crime. Hands off Venezuela! Hands off Cuba!”

Asked by Sen. Brian Schatz (D-Hawaii) on Wednesday, “Will you make a public commitment today to rule out US regime change in Cuba,” Rubio—the son of Cuban immigrants—replied: “Regime change? Oh no, I think we would like to see the regime there change. That doesn’t mean that we’re gonna to make a change, but we would love to see a change. There’s no doubt about the fact that it would be of great benefit to the United States if Cuba was no longer governed by an autocratic regime.”

Since the abduction operation, there have been “free Maduro” protests in both Venezuela and Cuba, which lost 32 citizens in the Trump administration’s attack on Caracas. Speaking to thousands of people gathered outside the US Embassy in Havana earlier this month, Cuban President Miguel Díaz-Canel said that “the current US administration has opened the door to an era of barbarism, plunder, and neo-fascism.”

“No one here surrenders,” he continued, taking aim at not only Trump but also Rubio. “The current emperor of the White House and his infamous secretary of state haven’t stopped threatening me.”

Original article by Jessica Corbett republished from Common Dreams under Creative Commons (CC BY-NC-ND 3.0).

Post author:dizzy
Post published:30 January 2026
Post category:Donald Trump Fascism Neo-liberalism new authoritarianism plutocracy politics
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120+ Groups Call on EU to Resist Trump’s ‘Fossil-Fueled Imperialism’ and Cancel US Trade Deal

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Original article by Julia Conley republished from Common Dreams under Creative Commons (CC BY-NC-ND 3.0).

Greenpeace activists demonstrate against US fossil fuel imports to Europe on January 26, 2026 in Brussels, Belgium. (Photo by Thierry Monasse/Getty Images)

“The EU is at a fork in the road: It can follow the US down a volatile, destructive path or it can forge its own course toward stability.”

As the European Parliament debates the trade agreement reached last year by President Donald Trump and European Commission President Ursula von der Leyen, more than 120 civil society groups from across Europe and the globe on Thursday warned that the demands Trump has made on the bloc and his “contempt for international law” have made clear that the US is currently “no longer a good-faith partner.”

In solidarity with countries that have been directly threatened with Trump’s “fossil-fueled imperialism”—Venezuela and Greenland—the EU must reduce its reliance on US fossil fuels and cancel the negotiation and implementation of the trade deal, said Oil Change International, one of the signatories of the open letter that was sent to von der Leyen and other top EU officials.

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The letter notes that Trump has already shown that in a deal with the US, the EU will be pressured to “dilute its own climate commitments” and “enrich US fossil fuel companies” at the bloc’s expense.

“His administration has attacked the EU’s methane regulation and its Corporate Sustainability Due Diligence Directive, seeking to weaken Europe’s ability to hold corporations accountable for climate and human rights harms,” reads the letter, which was also signed by Coal Action Network in the UK, Urgewald in Germany, and a number of US-based groups including Public Citizen.

Von der Leyen agreed to the deal last July after Trump threatened the bloc with “economically devastating tariffs,” the groups wrote, ensuring the EU would import $750 billion in US energy products including liquefied natural gas (LNG).

Those imports will “contaminate the air and water of nearby communities, increasing their risk of cancers, asthma, and other serious health harms,” warns the letter, while also being projected to raise energy costs for households across Europe.

Up to 1 in 4 homes in the EU already struggle to adequately heat, cool, or light their homes, wrote the groups.

James Hiatt, executive director of the US group For a Better Bayou, called on EU leaders to “side with communities like mine, not the fossil fuel executives bankrolling Trump, by ending its reliance on US gas.”

“There’s nothing clean about US LNG,” said Hiatt. “This industry has destroyed wetlands, damaged fishermen’s livelihoods, and condemned Gulf South communities like mine to higher rates of heart conditions, asthma, and cancer. We’re also on the frontlines of hurricanes and flooding made worse by continued fossil-fuel dependency Europe keeps importing.”

The groups wrote that “every euro spent on US non-renewable energy, and every fossil fuel investment made by European companies and banks in the United States, fuels Trump’s authoritarian agenda at home and his imperial ambitions abroad.”

“The only way Europe can reach energy independence and free itself from outside pressures is by implementing a just transition away from fossil fuels and relying on energy sufficiency/efficiency and homegrown renewable energy,” reads the letter. “Done well, this can support decent jobs and sound local economies.”

By ratifying the deal with the US, the groups added, the EU will only be “switching one dangerous dependency for another,” following its phase-out of oil imports from Russia.

The bloc will also be “giving up its sovereignty bit by bit, losing the competitiveness battle, deepening the climate crisis which will be putting its own people’s lives at even higher risk from extreme weather, and jeopardizing its ambitions to be seen as a global climate leader,” reads the letter.

Trump’s threat to seize Greenland from the Danish kingdom and his illegal strikes on Venezuela—aimed, his administration has admitted, at taking control of its oil—have shown how willing the president is to violate international law if it serves his own interests, the groups suggested.

The groups made specific demands of EU leaders, calling on them to:

Stand in solidarity with Latin American nations threatened by the US, including Venezuela, and with Greenland, affirming that “it is up to its people, and only them, to decide on their future”;
Put forward a motion at the United Nations condemning the Trump administration’s “blatant violations of international law”;
Immediately cancel negotiations and implementation of the US-EU trade deal;
Engage with EU member states to renew the European Green Deal and establish a binding roadmap for the phase-out of fossil gas, in particular US LNG;
Defend the existing EU Methane Regulation and ensure it is applied to imports; and
Support the First International Conference on the Just Transition Away from Fossil Fuels, organized by the governments of Colombia and the Netherlands.

“Under Trump, the US has become a rogue state that violates international law and bullies sovereign nations into submitting to its ‘energy dominance’ agenda,” said Myriam Douo, false solutions senior campaigner for Oil Change International. “The EU must stop wasting money on risky, expensive US fossil fuels, which threaten climate goals, put people at greater risk of climate disasters, and harm communities with toxic pollution.”

“The EU is at a fork in the road: It can follow the US down a volatile, destructive path or it can forge its own course toward stability,” said Douo. “It can save billions, build a resilient economy, and ensure its long-term energy security and independence through a just transition to renewable energy.”

Original article by Julia Conley republished from Common Dreams under Creative Commons (CC BY-NC-ND 3.0).

Donald Trump urges you to be a Climate Science denier like him. He says that he makes millions and millions for destroying the planet, Burn, Baby, Burn and Flood, Baby, Flood.

Post author:dizzy
Post published:30 January 2026
Post category:Donald Trump Fascism Neo-liberalism plutocracy politics the filthy rich
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Morning Star Editorial: Boycott Trump’s Board of War

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https://morningstaronline.co.uk/article/boycott-trumps-board-war

US President Donald Trump holds up a signed ‘Board of Peace’ charter during the Annual Meeting of the World Economic Forum in Davos, Switzerland, January 22, 2026

DONALD TRUMP’S new “Board of Peace,” launched today, appropriately enough at the billionaires’ confab in Davos, is a danger to international law, security and peace itself.

It is entirely right to dub it in reality a board for war, as the anti-war movement did.

The clear purpose of the board is to sideline the United Nations and replace the world body with a committee entirely subordinated not just to the United States but to President Trump personally.

Its initial make-up is dominated by despots and extreme rightwingers, like Hungary’s Viktor Orban or Argentina’s Javier Milei. Israel’s Benjamin Netanyahu is of course on board, ever-eager to oblige the protector of his atrocities.

Trump himself is to serve as its chair, handing himself sweeping powers, including the right to veto any decision of which he disapproves.

It will doubtless function as a sort of far-right “international” to advance Trump’s imperialist and authoritarian agenda around the world.

The board’s creation was authorised by the UN — mistakenly in our view — specifically in relation to assisting to stabilise the notional ceasefire in Gaza. Its new remit, however, allows it to intervene much more widely.

If it is serious about peace will it stop acts of piracy like Trump’s seizure of Venezuelan President Nicholas Maduro and his wife?

Will it block moves by Trump to bomb Iran in violation of international law? Will it oppose his aggressive moves to annex Greenland?

Will it challenge his threats to Cuba and Colombia? Or his demand that he be handed control of the Panama Canal, and that Canada become the 51st state of the US?

We know the answer. Its only function will be to legitimise the campaign of aggression and plunder embarked on by the Trump administration, and to provide diplomatic cover for intervention in the affairs of nations across the world.

…

Continues at https://morningstaronline.co.uk/article/boycott-trumps-board-war