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US Ambassador to the UN Michael Waltz speaks during a United Nations Security Council meeting on the “The situation in the Middle East, including the Palestinian question” at UN headquarters in New York on September 23, 2025. [ANGELA WEISS/AFP via Getty Images]
The United States has suspended its financial contributions to the United Nations until reforms are implemented within the organisation, according to US Ambassador to the UN, Mike Waltz.
Speaking to the American news organization Breitbart in an interview published Monday, Waltz stated, “The President is withholding American funding until we see the reforms.”
Waltz explained that UN Secretary-General António Guterres had agreed, under US pressure, to reduce the organisation’s budget by 15 per cent, cut overall personnel by 18 per cent, and decrease global peacekeeping forces by 25 per cent.
Speaking about the United Nations, the American envoy added: “We are going to give the UN tough love. I think we’re going to save it from itself in many ways, and we’re going to drive change.”
The UN is currently facing a budget deficit due to delayed payments from several member states, including the United States. The total amount of outstanding payments is estimated at around 3 billion US dollars.
Orcas discuss Genocide-supporting and complicit Zionists. Donald Trump, Keith Starmer, David Lammy, Rachel Reeves, Angela Rayner and Wes Streeting are acknowledged as evil genocide-complicit and supporting cnuts.Keir Starmer objects to criticism of the IDF. He asks how could anyone object to them starving people to death, forced marches like the Nazis did, bombing Gaza’s hospitals and universities, mass-murdering journalists, healthworkers and starving people queuing for food, killing and raping prisoners and murdering children. He calls for people to stop obstructing his genocide for Israel.Vote Labour for Genocide.
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Colombian President, Gustavo Petro, speaks as United Nations Security Council visits Bogota, Colombia on February 8, 2024. [Juancho Torres – Anadolu Agency]
Colombian President Gustavo Petro has said that the question of “who will hold Israel accountable for its crimes” should start with Germany, stressing that Germany’s “guilt complex towards the Jews because of the Holocaust” continues to paralyse its decisions.
In an interview with Al Jazeera Mubasher, President Petro said that while Israel “is a state with a government,” it “has committed genocide and is repeating what the Nazis once did to the Jews — but this time against the Palestinians.”
He called on Germany and Europe to take action, as well as democratic people in the United States — particularly the youth — noting that “American capital is trying to silence them.”
The president added that Germans “are paralysed by fear of their past and its burden.” He pointed out that the Nuremberg Trials, which later evolved into the international justice system represented by the International Court of Justice and the International Criminal Court, are now “under attack from the United States.”
President Petro noted that most countries have ratified the courts’ conventions “despite their current inability to act,” adding, “I trust that the Israeli people, especially the youth — who are currently ruled by a Nazi government that oppresses Christians and Arabs alike — will rise up.”
He went on to say that the International Criminal Court had issued an arrest warrant for Benjamin Netanyahu and his former defence minister, but that US President Donald Trump and other states have ignored it.
President Petro concluded by saying that “the chosen people are not Israel or the United States; the chosen people are those who choose humanity.”
This work by Middle East Monitor is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-ShareAlike 4.0 International License.
Genocide denier and Current UK Prime Minister Keir Starmer is quoted that he supports Zionism without qualification. He also confirms that UK air force support has been essential in Israel’s mass-murdering genocide. Includes URLs https://www.declassifieduk.org/keir-starmers-100-spy-flights-over-gaza-in-support-of-israel/ and https://youtu.be/O74hZCKKdpAKeir Starmer objects to criticism of the IDF. He asks how could anyone object to them starving people to death, forced marches like the Nazis did, bombing Gaza’s hospitals and universities, mass-murdering journalists, healthworkers and starving people queuing for food, killing and raping prisoners and murdering children. He calls for people to stop obstructing his genocide for Israel.Orcas discuss Genocide-supporting and complicit Zionists. Donald Trump, Keith Starmer, David Lammy, Rachel Reeves, Angela Rayner and Wes Streeting are acknowledged as evil genocide-complicit and supporting cnuts.
US Vice President JD Vance meeting with Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu and President Isaac Herzog in Israel. Photo: US VP JD Vance/ X
Israel was able to carry out its live-streamed genocide in Gaza because of its powerful Western allies who supplied it with diplomatic cover and weapons
On October 26, Caroline Willemen of Médecins Sans Frontières stated that Israel continues to use the need for humanitarian aid in Gaza as “means of pressure”. “The humanitarian situation in Gaza has not improved significantly,” she told the press, “as water and shelter shortages persist and hundreds of thousands of people continue to live in tents as winter approaches”. Israel’s armed forces have now annexed more than half of Gaza’s land and are dumping vast amounts of debris into that zone, turning it into a mountain of garbage. To move the rubble without experts and equipment is very dangerous, as about ten to twelve percent of the Israeli bombs dropped on Gaza have not exploded.
“Every Gazan person is now living in a horrific, unmapped minefield,” said Nick Orr of Humanity and Inclusion, a non-governmental organization at work in Palestine. “The UXO [Unexploded Ordnance] is everywhere. On the ground, in the rubble, under the ground, everywhere”. As Palestinians dig through the hills of concrete, they risk triggering a dormant bomb – creating more casualties of the Israeli genocide.
Over the past two years, Israel has dropped at least 200,000 tons of explosives on Gaza, a tonnage equivalent to thirteen atom bombs of the scale dropped on Hiroshima by the United States on August 6, 1945. This is unimaginable, particularly given the fact that Palestinians have no air defense systems, no air force, and no ability to defend themselves from high-altitude and drone bombing or to strike back in any comparable way. Genocides are, by their nature, asymmetrical. But to describe these past two years as asymmetrical is obscene: this was one-directional violence, the Goliath-like Israelis using their immense advantages against the David-like Palestinian resistance.
The opaqueness of official arms transfers means we have no precise idea how much of this tonnage came to Israel from its major suppliers during the war: the United States, Germany, Italy, and the United Kingdom. However, we have enough evidence to know that most of the bombs came from the United States, with smaller supplies from the other countries. A new report from the United Nations Special Rapporteur on the situation of human rights in the Palestinian territories occupied since 1967, entitled Gaza Genocide: a collective crime (October 20, 2025), makes it indisputably clear that the countries supplying Israel with military equipment, or assisting it in any way – including through diplomatic support – are utterly complicit in the genocide.
In other words, the obligation to abide by the UN Convention on Genocide is not discretionary; the duty to do what they can to stop the genocide is mandatory. The participation makes them wholly culpable. The report notes that the Israeli genocide of the Palestinians in Gaza makes this “an internationally enabled crime”.
The level of complicity is extraordinary. Take the case of the United Kingdom, whose Prime Minister, Keir Starmer, is a human rights lawyer and indeed wrote the textbook on European human rights law (1999). On August 6, 2025, Matt Kennard told Palestine Deep Dive about how UK military aircraft left RAF Akrotiri in Cyprus and escorted an unidentified plane over Gaza. Six days later, Iain Overton at UK Declassified revealed that amongst these planes was an RAF Shadow R1 surveillance plane flying alongside a Beechcraft Super King Air 350 owned by the Sierra Nevada Corporation (from the United States) with a call sign CROOK 11. What were these aircraft doing? Who had sanctioned them this work? Who is CROOK 11?
In December 2024, Starmer told troops at RAF Akrotiri: “There’s a lot of different work that goes on. I’m also aware that some, or quite a bit, of what goes on here can’t necessarily be talked about all of the time…We can’t necessarily tell the world what you’re doing here…because although we’re not saying it to the whole world for reasons that are obvious to you”. The obvious reason is that this is a genocide, and the UK is complicit, so they cannot talk about it.
The record for the United States is even more ghastly. One paragraph from the Special Rapporteur’s report is damning enough:
Since October 2023, the US has transferred 742 consignments of “arms and ammunition” (HS Code 93) and approved tens of billions in new sales. The Biden and Trump Administrations reduced transparency, accelerated transfers through repeated emergency approvals, facilitated Israeli access to US weapons stockpile held abroad, and authorized hundreds of sales just below the amount requiring congressional approval. The US has deployed military aircraft, special forces and surveillance drones to Israel, with US surveillance purportedly being used to target Hamas, including in the first raid on Al Shifa hospital.
In November 2024, the International Criminal Court (ICC) filed a warrant for the arrest of Benjamin Netanyahu and Yoav Gallant. Based on this recent UN report, the ICC prosecutor, Karim Khan, should be obliged to file warrants against Rishi Sunak, Starmer, Olaf Scholz, Friedrich Merz, Joe Biden, and Donald Trump – at a minimum. Anything less makes a mockery of the rules-based international system, namely the United Nations Charter.
Genocide denier and Current UK Prime Minister Keir Starmer is quoted that he supports Zionism without qualification. He also confirms that UK air force support has been essential in Israel’s mass-murdering genocide. Includes URLs https://www.declassifieduk.org/keir-starmers-100-spy-flights-over-gaza-in-support-of-israel/ and https://youtu.be/O74hZCKKdpAKeir Starmer objects to criticism of the IDF. He asks how could anyone object to them starving people to death, forced marches like the Nazis did, bombing Gaza’s hospitals and universities, mass-murdering journalists, healthworkers and starving people queuing for food, killing and raping prisoners and murdering children. He calls for people to stop obstructing his genocide for Israel.Orcas discuss Genocide-supporting and complicit Zionists. Donald Trump, Keith Starmer, David Lammy, Rachel Reeves, Angela Rayner and Wes Streeting are acknowledged as evil genocide-complicit and supporting cnuts.
An activist from the environmental movement Extinction Rebellion holds up a sign reading “Oil Kills” as police officers remove him from the premises of DNB Bank during a protest in Oslo, Norway on August 21, 2025. (Photo by Javad Parsa/NTB/AFP via Getty Images)
“Requiring governments to assess the global climate consequences of oil and gas combustion before approving new fossil projects is common sense, and long overdue,” said one campaigner.
Although the European Court of Human Rights on Tuesday sided with the Norwegian government over six young adults and a pair of climate groups, the plaintiffs still welcomed the tribunal’s ruling as “a major step forward,” in the words of Frode Pleym, head of GreenpeaceNorway.
The case stems from the Norwegian Ministry of Petroleum and Energy granting 10 exploration licenses to 13 companies for fossil fuel production in the Arctic Barents Sea in 2016. The plaintiffs argued that doing so violated Article 8 of the European Convention on Human Rights, or the right to respect for private and family life.
The court unanimously held that “there had been no violation” of Article 8, but it also affirmed that the government must conduct a full environmental impact assessment, including greenhouse gas emissions from combustion, for any new petroleum production.
“It’s a relief to see the court recognize what science has told us for years—that new oil and gas fields threaten our most basic human rights,” Pleym said in a statement. “Requiring governments to assess the global climate consequences of oil and gas combustion before approving new fossil projects is common sense, and long overdue.”
Young Friends of the Earth Norway, which sued alongside Greenpeace and the six individuals, also praised the ruling as progress.
“This decision is a quantum leap for climate accountability,” said the group’s leader, Sigrid Hoddevik Losnegård. “The government can no longer continue its oil and gas policy as if climate change doesn’t exist. This judgment will have ripple effects far beyond Norway.”
I can think of at least seven ways fossil fuel producers could wiggle out of this, but still: holy shit this is huge.
The plaintiffs noted in a joint statement that the ruling “builds on” recent decisions from the International Court of Justice and the UK Supreme Court. The ICJ said in a landmark advisory opinion in July that countries have a legal obligation to take cooperative action to address the fossil fuel-driven climate emergency. At the time, Danilo Garrido, legal counsel at Greenpeace International, hailed the development as “the start of a new era of climate accountability at a global level.”
That decision came roughly a year after the UK’s top court ruled that Surrey authorities’ approval of the Horse Hill drilling project “was unlawful” because they didn’t consider “emissions that will occur when the oil produced is burnt as fuel,” as required by law. Friends of the Earth UK called the ruling “a heavy blow for the fossil fuel industry” that could impact other projects.
The European court’s Tuesday decision came less than two weeks away from the start of the 30th United Nations Climate Change Conference in Belém, Brazil. In preparation for COP30, the UN on Tuesday released a report warning that governments’ climate plans would reduce fossil fuel emissions by just 10% by 2035 compared to 2019 levels, far short of what is needed to meet the Paris Agreement goal of limiting temperature rise this century to 1.5°C above preindustrial levels.
As Oil Change Internationalpointed out in a June report, Norway and three other wealthy nations—Australia, Canada, and the United States—account for the majority of planned oil and gas expansion over the next decade. This month, the group commissioned a poll that found a majority of Norwegians believe their country should either stop exploring for new oil and gas or slow down the pace.
“The data show that Norwegians increasingly want political leadership that aligns the country’s oil policy with its climate goals,” Oil Change’s North Sea campaign manager, Silje Lundberg, said Monday. “People are calling time on endless oil expansion—it’s the government that’s stuck in the past. The public clearly wants a plan to phase down oil and gas and deliver real climate leadership, not more empty talk from ministers protecting the industry.”
Orcas comment on killer apes destroying the planet by continuing to burn fossil fuels.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.Nigel Farage urges you to ignore facts and reality and be a climate science denier like him and his Deputy Richard Tice. He says that Reform UK has received £Millions and £Millions from the fossil fuel industry to promote climate denial and destroy the planet.
A US Army soldier watching a burning oil well at Rumaila oil field in Iraq in April 2003. Photo: US Navy
With the suspension of dialogue between the US and Venezuela, the sighting of US B-52 bombers in Venezuelan airspace, and the further lethal US strikes in the Caribbean, the US seems to be accelerating its drive towards war with Venezuela
The mood in the Caribbean grows increasingly tense, as the United States intensifies its military threats. Beneath the deceptive shroud of the “war on drugs,” the United States is actively executing a blueprint for military intervention in Venezuela, employing lethal force and projecting power in a manner that legal institutions and regional leaders have condemned as a profound threat to international order. This aggression is not a law enforcement operation; it is the negation of law, a neocolonial revival of the Monroe Doctrine, designed to shatter the sovereignty of Venezuela, seize control of the world’s largest oil reserves, and install a compliant regime.
A license to kill: the precedent of state murder
A chilling adoption of extrajudicial violence has marked the current escalation. The Trump administration has ordered unilateral military strikes against private vessels near the Venezuelan coast, allegedly to stop drug trafficking. To launch these alarming attacks, the US military has deployed a massive naval force of warships, drones, and special operations forces.
These strikes have resulted in the summary execution of at least 27 people as of recent reports. The most recent lethal strike in the Caribbean resulted in the “elimination” of 6 more people. This is not law enforcement; it is extrajudicial murder and a campaign that now stands as part of a war plan against Venezuela. The administration has characterized the victims, without credible proof, as drug traffickers and “terrorists,” a claim that, even if true, provides no legal authority for the US president to execute whomever it decides.
Legal and human rights organizations have been unequivocal in their condemnation of this profound and dangerous policy, which replaces established law enforcement procedures with premeditated lethal force. The New York City Bar Association (NYCBA), a key voice on international legal ethics, has strongly denounced these actions. The NYCBA stated explicitly that “Because the recent attacks on Venezuelan vessels and their crews were unauthorized by US law and in violation of binding international law, they were illegal summary executions – murders.” They further argued that these actions violate the fundamental international principle that “No one shall be arbitrarily deprived of his life” under the International Covenant on Civil and Political Rights.
The US government possesses ample legal authority for the Coast Guard to interdict and search vessels suspected of carrying narcotics, followed by prosecution in US courts according to due process requirements. However, in the case of the Venezuelan vessels, the Coast Guard’s Congressionally authorized police function was bypassed; instead, the crews were simply targeted and executed by overwhelming military force. Regional leaders, including Colombian President Gustavo Petro, have condemned the extrajudicial killings, highlighting the profound anxiety across Latin America over a return to unilateral US military action under the cover of anti-narcotics policy.
Beyond the lethal strikes, the US government has engaged in significant military posturing that amounts to a direct challenge to Venezuelan sovereignty. The sighting of US B-52 bombers in Venezuelan airspace, flying in close range, is a significant escalation. This warmongering has nothing to do with the “war on drugs” and everything to do with regime change to plunder Venezuela’s oil. This reckless push for war is a criminal act of international aggression.
The Trump Administration’s unilateral drone strikes in the Caribbean, combined with the White House’s termination of all negotiations with Venezuela, appear as a precursor for a full-scale regime change operation. This is a critical moment. We must sound the alarm: there is a risk of a new, catastrophic conflict in the region.
The US government’s own officials continue to escalate the crisis with bellicose rhetoric and actions. Secretary of State Marco Rubio, a key architect of the regime-change policy, has consistently refused to rule out a military option, asserting that the Maduro regime has become a “threat to the region and even to the United States.”
Venezuela’s response has been one of principled defense of its sovereignty. Ambassador to the UN, Samuel Moncada has repeatedly sounded the alarm on the global stage, arguing that the US military deployment in the Caribbean is a massive propaganda operation that seeks “excuses to fabricate a conflict” to seize the country’s oil wealth. Moncada affirmed that, “The United States believes that the Caribbean belongs to it because it has been using the expansionist Monroe Doctrine for over 100 years, which is nothing more than a remnant of colonialism.”
President Nicolás Maduro has called on Washington to resume dialogue, stating, “Our diplomacy isn’t the diplomacy of cannons, of threats, because the world cannot be the world of 100 years ago,” while simultaneously mobilizing national defense exercises to ensure the country is prepared for any direct assault. The NYCBA warned that attacks against Venezuelan vessels and reported threats against the Venezuelan government violate the nation’s obligations under the United Nations Charter, with the risk of escalating to open hostilities.
Parallels with the Iraq War: oil, ideology, and deception
The current situation is chillingly reminiscent of the lead-up to the 2003 invasion of Iraq. In that case, the Bush administration justified unilateral action on the basis of “weapons of mass destruction,” but this was a pretext. The true objectives were not limited to oil, but also included achieving profound ideological and political goals – overthrowing a government to reshape Middle Eastern politics and assert dominance.
Washington must learn the lessons of this history. The Bush administration promised a quick victory in Iraq. Instead, the invasions and occupation claimed countless Iraqi lives, resulted in tens of thousands of American soldiers killed or wounded, and destabilized the region. The notion that the US can carry out military invasions into the heart of Latin America without a massive blowback is outlandish.
In the case of Venezuela, the “war on drugs” and the labeling of the government as a “threat” serve as the new rhetorical pretexts. The US interest is multifaceted: it involves securing the world’s largest proven oil reserves and achieving the ideological and political goal of overthrowing a socialist government to assert dominance and reshape Latin American politics. The US seeks to dismantle the Bolivarian Revolution and eliminate a major center of anti-imperialist politics in the hemisphere.
The current escalation is not about law enforcement or counter-narcotics; it is about regime change and plunder. While members of Congress from both Democratic and Republican parties, as well as key voices of public opinion, are increasingly speaking up about the illegality of these strikes and the absence of credible information from the administration, this situation requires much more urgency, once the escalation ladder is climbed, there may be no going back. The international community must recognize this aggressive campaign for what it is: a criminal act of international aggression. The world must stand against this threat of a new, catastrophic conflict.
Manolo De Los Santos is Executive Director of The People’s Forum and a researcher at Tricontinental: Institute for Social Research. His writing appears regularly in Monthly Review, Peoples Dispatch, CounterPunch, La Jornada, and other progressive media. He coedited, most recently, Viviremos: Venezuela vs. Hybrid War (LeftWord, 2020), Comrade of the Revolution: Selected Speeches of Fidel Castro (LeftWord, 2021), and Our Own Path to Socialism: Selected Speeches of Hugo Chávez (LeftWord, 2023).
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.Orcas discuss how Trump was re-elected and him being an obviously insane, xenophobic Fascist.
