Western leaders defend the rules-based international order when it suits them, but remain largely silent as those same rules are breached by the United States and Israel.

The result is a system that shields the powerful and abandons the vulnerable — most starkly in Palestine.

The white men and a few women couldn’t hide their anger over Trump threatening to take over Greenland. NATO members joined in at the horror of Trump subverting the rules-based international order (RBIO).

They were appalled at this breach of the RBIO, that Australian Foreign Minister Richard Marles and all right-thinking people in the West keep talking about.

But these very same people — including the Australian and New Zealand political elite — say precious little or nothing at all when the rules are broken by the US and Israel to attack the poor and vulnerable of this world.

Greenlanders are special, but not Palestinians.

The breaches of RBIO didn’t come with Trump. The West has been breaching the rules for decades. Trump’s rule-breaking is just more gross and explicit.

Not only are we very selective in our concerns, but we also tug the forelock in joining the US and Israel in numerous and wilful breaches of the RBIO, breaches that have brought death and misery to tens of millions of people.

With impunity the rich and powerful break the rules and punish the poor and vulnerable. Or as Canadian Prime Minister Mark Carney put it, “the strong can do what they can and the weak must suffer what they must.”

And those that suffer are not white Christians or Jews but brown Muslims. No wonder our Muslim brothers and sisters believe that the system is loaded against them. They are right to feel aggrieved.

The cruellest example in the world today of breach of rules is the genocide which Israel, with the support of United States, is inflicting on the brave people of Palestine.

This is not to suggest that Mark Carney’s Davos speech is not to be welcomed and applauded. But the RBIO is selectively applied. Are Palestinians of less value than Greenlanders?

Just look at some instances of how the US has breached the RBIO.

1. Use of force without UN authorisation
Under the UN Charter, force is legal only in self-defence or with UN Security Council approval. The US has violated this rule multiple times.

Iraq (2003)

• The invasion had no explicit UN Security Council authorisation.
• Claims about weapons of mass destruction were false. It resulted in massive civilian casualties and long-term regional destabilisation.

Kosovo / Serbia (1999)

• NATO bombing campaign (led by the US) proceeded without UN authorisation.

Panama (1989)

• US invaded to arrest Manuel Noriega. It was condemned by the UN General Assembly as a violation of international law.

Syria (from 2014 onward)

• US military presence and airstrikes occurred without Syrian consent or UN authorisation.

2. Undermining state sovereignty through regime change
The US has frequently violated the principle of non-intervention.

Latin America (1970s–1980s)

• Chile (1973): Supported the overthrow of democratically elected President Allende
• Nicaragua: Funded and armed the Contras, despite a ruling by the International Court of Justice (ICJ) condemning US actions.

Afghanistan (1980s)

• Covertly armed insurgents to weaken the Soviet-backed government, contributing to decades of instability.

Libya (2011)

• UN authorisation was for civilian protection, not regime change. NATO operations (led by the US) went far beyond the mandate, resulting in state collapse.

3. Ignoring or rejecting international courts and legal rulings

International Court of Justice (ICJ)

• Nicaragua vs United States (1986): ICJ ruled the US violated international law by supporting Contra rebels. The US rejected the ruling, withdrew from ICJ compulsory jurisdiction, and refused to pay reparations.

International Criminal Court (ICC)

• The US refuses to join the ICC and passed domestic laws authorising force to free US personnel if detained by the ICC.
• The US sanctioned ICC officials investigating US actions in Afghanistan

4. Torture, detention, and human rights violations

‘War on Terror’ practices

• Guantánamo Bay: Indefinite detention without trial, violating habeas corpus and Geneva Conventions.
• CIA black sites: Secret prisons involving torture (waterboarding, sleep deprivation).
• Extraordinary rendition: Transferring suspects to countries known to practise torture.

These actions directly contradict:

• The UN Convention Against Torture (which the US ratified).
• International humanitarian law.

5. Violations of international humanitarian law in warfare

Civilian casualties

• Repeated airstrikes in Iraq, Afghanistan, Yemen, and Syria caused high death tolls.

Use of controversial weapons

• Cluster munitions: Used despite long-recognised humanitarian concerns (the US is not a signatory to the ban).
• Depleted uranium munitions: Long-term health and environmental impacts.

6. Sanctions and economic coercion outside UN frameworks
The US increasingly uses unilateral sanctions, bypassing the UN.

Examples:

Iran, Venezuela, Cuba, Russia.

Sanctions often:

• Lack UN approval and have severe humanitarian consequences.
• Use extraterritorial enforcement, pressuring third-party states.

7. Selective application of ‘rules’
A core criticism isn’t just violations — but selectivity.

• Condemning territorial conquest while supporting allies doing similar things.
• Defending human rights rhetorically while shielding allies from accountability.
• Promoting international law when convenient.

Israeli breaches of rules-based international order

1. Occupation and settlements in the West Bank

• Under international humanitarian law (Fourth Geneva Convention), an occupying power is prohibited from transferring its civilian population into occupied territory.
• Israel has built and expanded settlements in the West Bank and East Jerusalem.
• These settlements are considered illegal under international law by the UN, the (ICJ).

2. Annexation of East Jerusalem

• Israel annexed East Jerusalem after the 1967 war.
• The UN Security Council has repeatedly declared this annexation null and void.
• Unilateral annexation violates the principle that borders cannot be changed by force.

3. Use of force and civilian harm in Gaza

• Israel’s military operations in Gaza have resulted in large civilian casualties and infrastructure destruction.
• Human rights groups and UN bodies have accused Israel of disproportionate force and potential war crimes, including collective punishment (such as blockades affecting civilians).

4. Blockade of Gaza

• Israel has maintained a land, sea, and air blockade on Gaza since 2007.
• The UN and many legal scholars argue the blockade constitutes collective punishment, which is prohibited under international law.

5. Disregard for UN resolutions and international rulings

• Israel has not complied with numerous UN General Assembly and Security Council resolutions, particularly on settlements and occupation.
• It has rejected the jurisdiction of the International Criminal Court (ICC) over alleged crimes in the occupied territories.

6. Unequal application of law (apartheid allegations)

• Major human rights organisations (e.g., Amnesty International, Human Rights Watch) have accused Israel of practising apartheid due to different legal systems for Israelis and Palestinians in the same territory.

The bigger picture: Israel benefits from political protection, especially from the US, which shields it from sanctions or enforcement — creating a perception that the rules-based order is selective rather than universal.

The RBIO was designed to help protect the weak but is selectively applied by the strong. The US and Israel regularly breach the RBIO.

John Menadue is the founder and editor-in-chief of Pearls and Irritations. He was formerly Secretary of the Department of Prime Minister and Cabinet under Gough Whitlam and Malcolm Fraser, Ambassador to Japan, Secretary of the Department of Immigration and CEO of Qantas. For this article he has been assisted by WeChat for breaches by the US and Israel of the RBIO. He edited to shorten. Republished with permission.

Article by AsiaPacificReport.nz

As a journalist based in Tonga, I have chosen mostly to refrain from giving a view of US President Donald Trump, one way or another, as I thought that he would sooner or later get over his incredible childishness and tyrannical behavior, and start doing something credible for his country, and the world.

I was initially horrified in 2024 watching Trump in a White House televised meeting with Ukraine’s President Volodymyr Zelensky in which he rudely bullied the Ukrainian leader; told lies and acted arrogantly, humiliating him.

Also, I watched him boast unceasingly about “Making America Great Again” (MAGA).

He created an ICE force, unleashing them in states like Minnesota against their will, killing people in Minneapolis and wrongly arresting citizens while looking for illegals to be deported.

Tonga was listed among nations which were banned from entry into the USA, affecting many students who were planning to take up further schooling for 2026. Tongan families who planned to visit the graduation of their children were no longer allowed into the USA.

He ordered America’s military to attack Venezuela and kidnapped the President, against international law; also controlled the sale of their oil.

When the Opposition leader of that country offered him her Noble Peace Prize Award, he accepted — something he has tried to get saying he has “settled peace in 8 wars”.

Bombing of Nigeria
He ordered the bombing of Nigeria as a reaction to the “killing of Christians”. Is this what Jesus would have done whenever there are Christians who are persecuted anywhere in the world? Or is this Trump’s way to help boost his image among American Christians?

And then came the Greenland issue, which he called Iceland in a speech in Switzerland. He has threatened to invade this country which is under Denmark and NATO; then offered to buy it, and then after threats, changed his mind and announced there has been “a deal involving NATO, a peace framework for the future.”

But Trump could not help himself by boasting that “if it was not for us, German would be your language today”. He did not realise that German is the main language spoken in Switzerland.

Much more can be said about what this Nazi-style dictator is doing in America and the world, but the one that eventually tipped me over, was his most recent public statement, during a boast-fest in the White House that “God must be proud of me!”

How can a human be more deceived?

The narcissism of this man exceeds anyone else in that he now boasts that “God must be proud” of him! If God is proud of him, then God must be behind every move he makes.

Trump is not just a product of his own making. He has the support of the extreme rightist Republican Party, and a huge number of American Evangelicals. This is a huge concern, because the views of these groups continue to fuel the ungodly narcissism that is so much a part of Trump’s personality and character.

‘He is always right’
Its not only a case of “might is right” but that “he is always right” and that is why God must be proud of him!

What is also most shocking is that Trump supporters not only worship him as “a god” but also give great sounding explanations to Trump’s actions. An example is like saying Trump is only bringing the Venezuelan President (and his wife) to America to stand trial for drug smuggling.

Never mind about his cruelty, his arrogance, his lies, his “Epstein-style” immorality, and abuse of power resulting in senseless deaths.

“He is a wonderful Christian,” I was told by a Christian leader in the USA, who happens to be a friend of mine. Another Christian leader in Tonga said, “I like Trump because he opposes abortion, the murder of unborn babies.” My response was that I am also apposed to the murder of unborn babies, but I am also opposed to the murder of those who are already born.

I do take some of this personally because as an American citizen, I am a registered Republican voter out of Hawai’i. I am also an evangelical Christian. And yet Donald Trump, President of the country of my citizenship is definitely the most tyrannical and unprincipled leader of the free world we’ve had for some time.

Resisting the Trump nonsense does not mean endorsement of Biden and Obama or the Democrats for that matter. The people of America put Trump where he is, and the people of America have allowed him to do what he has done — his illegal and cruel actions, his senseless threats, his bullying of other world leaders, and international organisations, and so much more.

Reflection of US society
It can be true that a people deserve the leader they get.

In a Republic like America, they voted him in. Trump has become a reflection of American society, a warlike people who seem to look down on everyone else, and whose history is filled with cruel takeovers like they did in Hawai’i and other Pacific Islands; wiped out hundreds of thousands in Japan with the world’s first nuclear weapons, and fought wars in Korea, Vietnam, Iraq, Iran supposedly “to save the world” while killing countless others.

I recently saw an anti-Trump poster that says: “There is nothing more dangerous than an idiot who thinks he is a genius!” I do not think the President of the United States is an idiot, neither do I think he is a genius. But he is dangerous because he is a so-called Christian who does un-Christian things, he is a god-worshipper whose god is himself!

I am publishing the following article by Michael Jochum which speaks for a lot of people including myself.

What we witnessed in Switzerland was not a policy address. It was an X-ray

At the World Economic Forum in Davos, Donald Trump didn’t merely embarrass the United States in front of its allies; he revealed, with clinical clarity, the pathology that now defines his presidency — and the pathology his supporters actively crave. The bluster, the grievance, the thinly veiled threats, the adolescent swagger masquerading as strength: this is not drift or decline. It is the point.

Here’s the dangerous truth that finally snaps into focus after Davos: the unhinged Trump on that stage is exactly the president his followers want. They don’t tolerate the chaos; they require it. They don’t excuse the cruelty; they cheer it. They don’t misunderstand the geopolitical land-grabs and war-mongering postures; they see them as proof of dominance. The spectacle is the substance.

What makes this moment uniquely perilous isn’t just one man’s depravity. It’s the millions who looked at that performance and thought, Finally — someone who speaks for me. We are not up against a conventional politician or an opposing platform.

We are up against a movement animated by:

The racism embedded in “Make America Great Again,” which has always translated to Make America White Again.

The misogyny that waved off “Grab ’em by the pussy” as locker-room talk and called accountability hysteria.

The anti-intellectualism that confuses cruelty with strength and treats knowledge as weakness.

A provincial, grievance-soaked worldview that mistakes bluster for leadership and exclusion for sovereignty.

Trump is not a nightmare by accident. He is the most unprepared, unqualified, and disgraced president in American history by design. A bigot. A hater. A sexist. A xenophobe. A man with the intellectual and emotional maturity of a five-year-old child. He is mentally ill. He is a pathological liar who lies about his lies. He is obsessed with verbally attacking Hillary Clinton, and he reveals his deep racism through his constant, obsessive disparagement of Barack Obama. Donald Trump is a disgrace to humanity.

I have never heard — nor am I hearing — one single coherent, rational, intelligent, informed, educated, moral, fact-based, sane, mature, patriotic, or politically valid reason to support this illiterate, illegitimate, mentally ill, fish-mouthed “president”. What I do hear, loud and ugly, is resentment, self-hatred, impotent rage, and the glee of people who seem perversely proud that they have endangered everyone in this country.

This is no longer left versus right. The real question is whether we normalise this collective sickness — or excise it before it metastasizes further.

Every time someone says, “But the economy . . .  and those illegals . . . ” to justify their support, listen closely. They are telling you exactly which part of Trump’s reflection they see themselves in.

The good news? Mirrors can be shattered. But only if we stop looking away.

— Michael Jochum

Kalafi Moala’s column was first published by Talanoa ‘o Tonga and is republished by Asia Pacific Report with permission.

Article by AsiaPacificReport.nz

Donald Trump is a classic example of why you don’t let bullies prosper. “Trump is cutting the last threads of the tattered cloth of ‘the rules-based international order’  — the self-serving system that touted international law as long as it didn’t apply to the US and its allies.

The Canadians, the Danes, the Panamanians and the rest of us should wake up to reality and see we are objects, we are mere “things” to the Americans, not allies with some deeply shared “values”. 

I wrote that in January 2025 in this article that I reproduce today. It provides a useful backgrounder, including historical precendents, to help us navigate through the times we are living through right now.

What do Panama, Canada and Greenland have in common? Could Trump be getting the US back to brass tacks, to a core strategy of dominating the Western hemisphere? Possibly, and he may be blowing away the fraudulent rhetoric about rules-based international order, territorial integrity, international law and the crusade to expand democracies.

Trump said this week that the US is prepared to use military force to assert control over Panama and Greenland.

“We need Greenland for national security purposes.  People don’t even know if Denmark has any legal right to it but even if they do they should give it up because I’m talking about protecting the free world,” Trump said.

The world’s largest island is bigger than France, Germany, Spain, the United Kingdom, Italy, Greece, Switzerland, and Belgium combined. It’s literally bigger than Texas (300 percent bigger) — and the US wants it.

A greater risk
Think about that.  The US may pose a greater risk to the territorial integrity of the European Union than the Russians do. If they get antsy with the US, Trump will “tariff them”.

The Danes, like the rest of Europe, are frightened of the US. In response to Trump’s Greenland gambit, Foreign Minister Lars Lokke Rasmussen timidly said this week that Denmark was “open to a dialogue with the Americans on how we can cooperate, possibly even more closely than we already do, to ensure that American ambitions are fulfilled”.

To ensure American ambitions are fulfilled. And this was the country that gave us the Vikings. If Ragnar Lodbrok, Eric Bloodaxe or Bjorn Ironside had been around when Donald Trump Junior swooped into Nuuk for his photo op, his skull would have been used as a drinking tankard for a blót sumbl feast that same evening.

Top independent strategists have for years despaired of the strategic brainlessness of US foreign policy — the Midas Touch in reverse, as Professor Mearsheimer calls it.  Wherever they went — from Vietnam to Iraq, Afghanistan, Ukraine and Gaza — Americans embroiled themselves in conflicts of little strategic worth and left behind piles of bodies, millions of implacable enemies and a litany of failures.

Trump’s rough woo-ing of Canada to become the 51st state, and his threat to use military force to seize both Greenland and the Canal, speak to a back-to-basics focus for American imperialism — a shift in US policy that will bring it closer to its core strategic interests.

That’s quite appropriate for a man who counts President Teddy Roosevelt (1901-09) as a role model. There is a whiff of the Rough Rider (Roosevelt’s cavalry which kicked over the Spaniards in Cuba in 1898) about Trump’s recent utterances.

Outside the American Museum of Natural History in New York you could see a magnificent statue of Teddy Roosevelt, cowboy kerchief around his neck, six-shooter hanging off his hip, astride a proud steed with two bare-chested Noble Savages — an African and an American Indian — walking on either side of the Great White Man.

Punkish metal spikes
I particularly like the slightly punkish metal spikes sticking out of his hair to stop birds crapping on his head.  After 82 years, the City finally woke up to the fact that this was a racist, colonialist trope and took the statue down in 2021.

Article by AsiaPacificReport.nz

As the world’s largest Indigenous education conference (WIPCE) closed last night in Tāmaki Makaurau Auckland, a shared sentiment emerged — despite arriving with different languages, lands, and traditions, attendees across the board felt the kotahitanga (unity).

The gathering — held in partnership with mana whenua Ngāti Whātua Ōrākei, brought together more than 3000 participants from around the globe.

Many reflected that, despite being far from home, the event felt like one.

WIPCE officials also announced that Hawai’i would host the 2027 conference.

Throughout the week, the kaupapa — while centered on education — entailed themes of climate, health, language, politics, wellbeing, and more.

‘Being face-to-face is the native way’     Video: RNZ

Delegates travelled from across Moana-nui-a-Kiwa (Pacific Ocean), Canada, Hawai’i, Alaska, Australia and beyond to share their own stories, cultures, and aspirations for indigenous futures.

Among those reflecting on the gathering was renowned Kanaka Maoli educator, cultural practitioner and native rights activist Dr Noe-Noe Wong-Wilson.

She coordinated the 1999 conference, the fifth WIPCE, and has served on the council ever since.

Scale and spirit unique
Dr Wong-Wilson, a Hawai’ian culture educator, retired University of Hawaiʻi-Hilo and Hawaiʻi Community College educator, and former programme leader supporting Native Hawai’ian student success, now serves on the WIPCE International Council.

She believes the scale and spirit of WIPCE remains unique.

“Most of the WIPCE conferences have included over 3000 of our members that come from all over the world . . .  as far away as South, and our Sāmi cousins who come from Greenland, Iceland, and Norway,” Dr Wong-Wilson said.

Wong-Wilson described WIPCE as a multigenerational gathering of educators, scholars, and community knowledge holders.

“We always acknowledge our community knowledge holders, our chiefs, our grandmothers, our aunties, who hold the culture and the knowledge and the language in their communities,” Dr Wong-Wilson said.

“WIPCE is unique because it’s largely a gathering of indigenous people . . .  a lot different than a conference hosted strictly by a Western academic institution.”

She emphasised that WIPCE thrives on being in-person, especially in a climate where technology has largely replaced in-person gatherings.

Face-to-face communication
“Technology is the new way of communicating . . .  but there’s nothing that can replace the face-to-face communication and relationship building, and that’s what WIPCE offers,” she said.

“Being face to face with people is really the native way . . . I think we all know what it’s like when we live in villages and when we live in communities, and that’s what WIPCE is.

“We’re a large community of indigenous, native people who bring our ancestors with us and sit in the joy of being with each other.”

The group travelled to WIPCE to speak on topics of ‘awa biopiracy, and the experiences of Kanak scholars at the University of Hawai’i at Mānoa.

“My mana is being reignited in this space, and being around so many amazing scholars and people to learn from . . . there’s been so much aloha, reaffirming our hope and our healing. This is the type of space we really need,” Taitague-Laforga said.

She added that the power of events like WIPCE lay in seeing global relationships strengthened.

“Especially as a centre for all Indigenous communities globally to connect. Oftentimes . . . colonial tools work to divide us . . .

“it’s just been beautiful to be at a centre where everybody is here to connect and create that relationality and cultivate that,” Taitague-Laforga said.

Vā Pasifika Taunga from AUT Momo’e Fatialofa said it was special to soak up culture from Indigenous communities across the world — including First Nations Canadians, Aboriginal Australians, and Hawai’ians.

‘Sharing our stories’
“I think this kaupapa is important because it allows us to share our stories, to share what is similar between our different indigenous people. And how often can you say that you can be surrounded by over 3000 people from all over the world who are indigenous in their spaces?” Fatialofa said.

“We all face similar problems . . . especially in education,” Anderson said. “We enjoy being here with the rest of the nations, you know.”

“When you look around . . .  in culture, there are differences, but we all have a shared culture, it doesn’t matter where we come from.

“We still have a culture, we still have our language, we still have our knowledge, traditional knowledge, that connects us to our land.”

This article is republished under a community partnership agreement with RNZ.

Article by AsiaPacificReport.nz

AMY GOODMAN: President Trump addressed a joint session of Congress in a highly partisan 100-minute speech, the longest presidential address to Congress in modern history on Wednesday.

Trump defended his sweeping actions over the past six weeks.

PRESIDENT DONALD TRUMP: We have accomplished more in 43 days than most administrations accomplished in four years or eight years, and we are just getting started.

AMY GOODMAN: President Trump praised his biggest campaign donor, the world’s richest man, Elon Musk, who’s leading Trump’s effort to dismantle key government agencies and cut critical government services.

PRESIDENT DONALD TRUMP: And to that end, I have created the brand-new Department of Government Efficiency (DOGE). Perhaps you’ve heard of it. Perhaps.

Which is headed by Elon Musk, who is in the gallery tonight. Thank you, Elon. He’s working very hard. He didn’t need this. He didn’t need this. Thank you very much. We appreciate it.

AMY GOODMAN: Some Democrats laughed and pointed at Elon Musk when President Trump made this comment later in his speech.

PRESIDENT DONALD TRUMP: It’s very simple. And the days of rule by unelected bureaucrats are over.

AMY GOODMAN: During his speech, President Trump repeatedly attacked the trans and immigrant communities, defended his tariffs that have sent stock prices spiraling, vowed to end Russia’s war on Ukraine and threatened to take control of Greenland.

PRESIDENT DONALD TRUMP: We also have a message tonight for the incredible people of Greenland: We strongly support your right to determine your own future, and if you choose, we welcome you into the United States of America. We need Greenland for national security and even international security, and we’re working with everybody involved to try and get it.

But we need it, really, for international world security. And I think we’re going to get it. One way or the other, we’re going to get it.

‘A declaration of war against the American people.’  Video: Democracy Now!

AMY GOODMAN: During Trump’s 100-minute address, Democratic lawmakers held up signs in protest reading “This is not normal,” “Save Medicaid” and “Musk steals.”

One Democrat, Congressmember Al Green of Texas, was removed from the chamber for protesting against the President.

PRESIDENT DONALD TRUMP: Likewise, small business optimism saw its single-largest one-month gain ever recorded, a 41-point jump.

REPUBLICAN CONGRESSMEMBER 1: Sit down!

REPUBLICAN CONGRESSMEMBER 2: Order!

SPEAKER MIKE JOHNSON: Members are directed to uphold and maintain decorum in the House and to cease any further disruptions. That’s your warning. Members are engaging in willful and continuing breach of decorum, and the chair is prepared to direct the sergeant-at-arms to restore order to the joint session.

Mr Green, take your seat. Take your seat, sir.

DEMOCRAT CONGRESS MEMBER AL GREEN: He has no mandate to cut Medicaid!

SPEAKER MIKE JOHNSON: Take your seat. Finding that members continue to engage in willful and concerted disruption of proper decorum, the chair now directs the sergeant-at-arms to restore order, remove this gentleman from the chamber.

AMY GOODMAN: That was House Speaker Mike Johnson, who called in security to take Texas Democratic Congressmember Al Green out. Afterwards, Green spoke to reporters after being removed.

DEMOCRAT CONGRESS MEMBER AL GREEN: The President said he had a mandate, and I was making it clear to the President that he has no mandate to cut Medicaid.

I have people who are very fearful. These are poor people, and they have only Medicaid in their lives when it comes to their healthcare. And I want him to know that his budget calls for deep cuts in Medicaid.

He needs to save Medicaid, protect it. We need to raise the cap on Social Security. There’s a possibility that it’s going to be hurt. And we’ve got to protect Medicare.

These are the safety net programmes that people in my congressional district depend on. And this President seems to care less about them and more about the number of people that he can remove from the various programmes that have been so helpful to so many people.

AMY GOODMAN: Texas Democratic Congressmember Al Green.

We begin today’s show with Ralph Nader, the longtime consumer advocate, corporate critic, former presidential candidate. Ralph Nader is founder of the Capitol Hill Citizen newspaper. His most recent lead article in the new issue of Capitol Hill Citizen is titled “Democratic Party: Apologise to America for ushering Trump back in.”

He is also the author of the forthcoming book Let’s Start the Revolution: Tools for Displacing the Corporate State and Building a Country That Works for the People.

Medicaid, Social Security, Medicare, all these different programmes. Ralph Nader, respond overall to President Trump’s, well, longest congressional address in modern history.

RALPH NADER: Well, it was also a declaration of war against the American people, including Trump voters, in favour of the super-rich and the giant corporations. What Trump did last night was set a record for lies, delusionary fantasies, predictions of future broken promises — a rerun of his first term — boasts about progress that don’t exist.

In practice, he has launched a trade war. He has launched an arms race with China and Russia. He has perpetuated and even worsened the genocidal support against the Palestinians. He never mentioned the Palestinians once.

And he’s taken Biden’s genocidal policies one step further by demanding the evacuation of Palestinians from Gaza.

But taking it as a whole, Amy, what we’re seeing here defies most of dictionary adjectives. What Trump and Musk and Vance and the supine Republicans are doing are installing an imperial, militaristic domestic dictatorship that is going to end up in a police state.

You can see his appointments are yes people bent on suppression of civil liberties, civil rights. You can see his breakthrough, after over 120 years, of announcing conquest of Panama Canal.

He’s basically said, one way or another, he’s going to take Greenland. These are not just imperial controls of countries overseas or overthrowing them; it’s actually seizing land.

Now, on the Greenland thing, Greenland is a province of Denmark, which is a member of NATO. He is ready to basically conquer a part of Denmark in violation of Section 5 of NATO, at the same time that he has displayed full-throated support for a hardcore communist dictator, Vladimir Putin, who started out with the Russian version of the CIA under the Soviet Union and now has over 20 years of communist dictatorship, allied, of course, with a number of oligarchs, a kind of kleptocracy.

And the Republicans are buying all this in Congress. This is complete reversal of everything that the Republicans stood for against communist dictators.

So, what we’re seeing here is a phony programme of government efficiency ripping apart people’s programmes. The attack on Social Security is new, complete lies about millions of people aged 110, 120, getting Social Security cheques.

That’s a new attack. He left Social Security alone in his first term, but now he’s going after [it]. So, what they’re going to do is cut Medicaid and cut other social safety nets in order to pay for another tax cut for the super-rich and the corporation, throwing in no tax on tips, no tax on Social Security benefits, which will, of course, further increase the deficit and give the lie to his statement that he wants a balanced budget.

So we’re dealing with a deranged, unstable pathological liar, who’s getting away with it. And the question is: How does he get away with it, year after year? Because the Democratic Party has basically collapsed.

Courts Just Say No to Trump’s Authoritarian Power Grabs https://t.co/wUZspBh6RQ

— Democracy Now! (@democracynow) March 6, 2025

They don’t know how to deal with a criminal recidivist, a person who has hired workers without documents and exploited them, a person who’s a bigot against immigrants, including legal immigrants who are performing totally critical tasks in home healthcare, processing poultry, meat, and half of the construction workers in Texas are undocumented workers.

So, as a bully, he doesn’t go after the construction industry in Texas; he picks out individuals.

I thought the most disgraceful thing, Amy, yesterday was his use of these unfortunate people who suffered as props, holding one up after another. But they were also Trump’s crutches to cover up his contradictory behavior.

So, he praised the police yesterday, but he pardoned over 600 people who attacked violently the police [in the attack on the Capitol] on 6 January 2021 and were convicted and imprisoned as a result, and he let them out of prison. I thought the most —

JUAN GONZÁLEZ: Ralph? Ralph, I —

RALPH NADER: — the most heartrending thing was that 13-year-old child, who wanted to be a police officer when he grew up, being held up twice by his father. And he was so bewildered as to what was going on. And Trump’s use of these people was totally reprehensible and should be called out.

Now, more basically, the real inefficiencies in government, they’re ignoring, because they are kleptocrats. They’re ignoring corporate crimes on Medicaid, Medicare, tens of billions of dollars every year ripping off Medicare, ripping off government contracts, such as defence contracts.

He’s ignoring hundreds of billions of dollars of corporate welfare, including that doled out to Elon Musk — subsidies, handouts, giveaways, bailouts, you name it. And he’s ignoring the bloated military budget, which he is supporting the Republicans in actually increasing the military budget more than the generals have asked for. So, that’s the revelation —

JUAN GONZÁLEZ: Ralph? Ralph, if I — Ralph, if I can interrupt? I just need to —

RALPH NADER: — that the Democrats need to pursue.

JUAN GONZÁLEZ: Ralph, I wanted to ask you about — specifically about Medicaid and Medicare. You’ve mentioned the cuts to these safety net programmes. What about Medicaid, especially the crisis in this country in long-term care? What do you see happening in this Trump administration, especially with the Republican majority in Congress?

RALPH NADER: Well, they’re going to slash — they’re going to move to slash Medicaid, which serves over 71 million people, including millions of Trump voters, who should be reconsidering their vote as the days pass, because they’re being exploited in red states, blue states, everywhere, as well.

Yeah, they have to cut tens of billions of dollars a year from Medicaid to pay for the tax cut. That’s number one. Now they’re going after Social Security. Who knows what the next step will be on Medicare? They’re leaving Americans totally defenceless by slashing meat and poultry and food inspection laws, auto safety.

They’re exposing people to climate violence by cutting FEMA, the rescue agency. They’re cutting forest rangers that deal with wildfires. They’re cutting protections against pandemics and epidemics by slashing and ravaging and suppressing free speech in scientific circles, like CDC and National Institutes of Health.

They’re leaving the American people defenseless.

And where are the Democrats on this? I mean, look at Senator Slotkin’s response. It was a typical rerun of a feeble, weak Democratic rebuttal. She couldn’t get herself, just like the Democrats in 2024, which led to Trump’s victory — they can’t get themselves, Juan, to talk specifically and authentically about raising the minimum wage, expanding healthcare, cracking down on corporate crooks that are bleeding out the incomes of hard-pressed American workers and the poor.

They can’t get themselves to talk about increasing frozen Social Security budgets for 50 years, that 200 Democrats supported raising, but Nancy Pelosi kept them, when she was Speaker, from taking John Larson’s bill to the House floor.

That’s why they lose. Look at her speech. It was so vague and general. They chose her because she was in the national security state. She was a former CIA. They chose her because they wanted to promote the losing version of the Democratic Party, instead of choosing Elizabeth Warren or Bernie Sanders, the most popular polled politician in America today.

That’s who they chose. So, as long as the Democrats monopolise the opposition and crush third-party efforts to push them into more progressive realms, the Republican, plutocratic, Wall Street, war machine declaration of war against the American people will continue.

We’re heading into the most serious crisis in American history. There’s no comparison.

AMY GOODMAN: Ralph Nader, we’re going to have to leave it there, but, of course, we’re going to continue to cover these issues. And I also wanted to wish you, Ralph, a happy 91st birthday. Ralph Nader —

RALPH NADER: I wish people to get the Capitol Hill Citizen, which tells people what they can really do to win democracy and justice back. So, for $5 or donation or more, if you wish, you can go to Capitol Hill Citizen and get a copy sent immediately by first-class mail, or more copies for your circle, of resisting and protesting and prevailing over this Trump dictatorship.

AMY GOODMAN: Ralph Nader, longtime consumer advocate, corporate critic, four-time presidential candidate, founder of the Capitol Hill Citizen newspaper. This is Democracy Now!

The original content of this programme is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-Noncommercial-No Derivative Works 3.0 United States Licence. Republished by Asia Pacific Report under Creative Commons.

Article by AsiaPacificReport.nz

COMMENTARY: By Eugene Doyle

The Western media went into overdrive this week to work the laconic Kiwis into a mild frenzy over three Chinese naval vessels conducting exercises in the Tasman Sea a few thousand kilometres off our shores.

What was really behind this orchestrated campaign?

The New Zealand government led the rhetorical charge over the Hengyang, the Zunyi and the Weishanhu in mare nostrum (“Our Sea”, as the Romans liked to call the Mediterranean).

 “We cannot hide at this end of the world anymore,” Defence Minister Judith Collins said in light of three Chinese boats in the Tasman.

Warrior academics were next . “We need to go to the cutting edge, and we need to do that really, really fast,” the ever-reliable China hawk Anne-Marie Brady of Canterbury University said, telling 1 News the message of the live-firing exercises was that China wants to rule the waves.

The British Financial Times chimed in with a warning that “A confronting strategic future is arriving fast”.

Could this have anything to do with the fact we are fast approaching the New Zealand government’s 2025 budget and that they — and their Australian, US and UK allies — are intent on a major increase in Kiwi defence funding, moving from around 1.2 percent of GDP to possibly two percent? A long-anticipated Defence Capability Review is also around the corner and is likely to come with quite a shopping list of expensive gear.

What’s good for the goose . . .
It is worth pointing out that New Zealand and Australian warships sailed through the contested Taiwan Strait and elsewhere in the South China Sea as recently as September 2024. What’s good for the goose is good for the Panda.

And, of course, at any one time about 20 US nuclear submarines are prowling in the deep waters of the Pacific Ocean and South China Sea. Each can carry missiles the equivalent of over 1000 Hiroshima bombs — truly apocalyptic.

Veteran New Zealand peace campaigner Mike Smith (a friend) was not in total disagreement with the hawks when it came to the argy-bargy in the Tasman.

“The emergence apparently from nowhere of a Chinese naval expedition in our waters I think may be intended to demonstrate that they have a large and very capable blue water navy now and won’t be penned in by AUKUS submarines when and if they arrive off their coast.

“I think the main message is to the Australians: if you want to homebase nuclear-capable B-52s we have more than one way to come at you. That was also the message of the ICBM they sent into the Pacific: Australia is no longer an unsinkable aircraft carrier.”

According to the Asia Times, China fired the ICBM — the first such shot into the Pacific by China — just days after HMNZS Aotearoa sailed through the Taiwan Strait with Australian vessel HMAS Sydney.

Smith says our focus should be on building positive relationships in the Pacific on our terms. “Buying expensive popguns will not save us.”

China Scare a page out of Australia’s Red Scare playbook
For people good at pattern recognition this week’s China Scare was obviously a page or two out of the same playbook that duped a majority of Australians into believing China was going to invade Australia. They were lulled into a false sense of insecurity back in 2021 — the mediascape flooded with Red Alert, China panic stories about imminent war with the rising Asian power.

As a sign of how successful the mainstream media can be in generating fear that precedes major policy shifts: research by Australia’s Institute of International & Security Affairs showed that more Australians thought that China would soon attack Australia than Taiwanese believed China would attack Taiwan!

Once the population was conditioned, they woke one morning in September 2021 with the momentous news that Australia had ditched a $90 billion submarine defence deal with France and the country was now part of a new anti-Chinese military alliance called AUKUS. This was the playbook that came to mind last week.

There are strong, rational arguments that could be made to increase our spending at this time. But I loathe and decry this kind of manipulation, this manufacturing of consent.

I also fear what those billions of dollars will be used for. Defending our coastlines is one thing; joining an anti-Chinese military alliance to please the US is quite another.

Prime Minister Luxon has called China — our biggest trading partner — a strategic competitor. He has also suggested, somewhat ludicrously, that our military could be a “force multiplier” for Team AUKUS.

We are hitching ourselves to the US at the very time they have proven they treat allies as vassals, threatened to annex Greenland and the Panama Canal, continue to commit genocide in Gaza, and are now imposing an unequal treaty on Ukraine.

Australia’s ABC News on Foreign Minister Winston Peter’s talks in China. Video: ABC

Whose side – or calmer independence?
Whose side should we be on? Or should we return to a calmer, more independent posture?

And then there’s the question of priorities. The hawks may convince the New Zealand population that the China threat is serious enough that we should forgo spending money on child poverty, fixing our ageing infrastructure, investing in health and education and instead, as per pressure from our AUKUS partners, spend some serious coin — billions of dollars more — on defence.

Climate change is one battle that is being fought and lost. Will climate funding get the bullet so we can spend on military hardware? That would certainly get a frosty reaction from Pacific nations at the front edge of sea rise.

The government in New Zealand is literally taking the food out of children’s mouths to fund weapons systems. The Ka Ora, Ka Ako programme provides nutritious lunches every day to a quarter of a million of New Zealand’s most needy children.

Its funding has recently been slashed by over $100 million by the government despite its own advisors telling it that such programmes have profound long-term wellbeing benefits and contribute significantly to equity. In the next breath we are told we need to boost funding for our military.

The US appears determined to set itself on a collision course with China but we don’t have to be crash test dummies sitting alongside them. Prudence, preparedness, vigilance and risk-management are all to be devoutly wished for; hitching our fate to a hostile US containment strategy is bad policy both in economic and defence terms.

In the absence of a functioning media — one that showcases diverse perspectives and challenges power rather than works hand-in-glove with it — populations have been enlisted in the most abhorrent and idiotic campaigns: the Red Peril, the Jewish Peril and the Black Peril (in South Africa and the southern states of the USA), to name three.

Our media-political-military complex is at it again with this one — a kind of Yellow Peril Redux.

New Zealand trails behind both Australia and China in development assistance to the Pacific. If we wish to “counter” China, supporting our neighbours would be a better investment than encouraging an unwinnable arms race.

In tandem, I would advocate for a far deeper diplomatic and cultural push to understand and engage with China; that would do more to keep the region peaceful and may arrest the slow move in China towards seeking other markets for the high-quality primary produce that an increasingly bellicose New Zealand still wishes to sell them.

Let’s be friends to all, enemies of none. Keep the Pacific peaceful, neutral and nuclear-free.

Eugene Doyle is a community organiser and activist in Wellington, New Zealand. He received an Absolutely Positively Wellingtonian award in 2023 for community service. His first demonstration was at the age of 12 against the Vietnam War. This article was first published at his public policy website Solidarity and he is a regular contributor to Asia Pacific Report and Café Pacific.

This article was first published on Café Pacific.

The United States shares the pathologies of all dying empires with their mixture of buffoonery, rampant corruption, military fiascos, economic collapse and savage state repression.

ANALYSIS: By Chris Hedges

The billionaires, Christian fascists, grifters, psychopaths, imbeciles, narcissists and deviants who have seized control of Congress, the White House and the courts, are cannibalising the machinery of state. These self-inflicted wounds, characteristic of all late empires, will cripple and destroy the tentacles of power. And then, like a house of cards, the empire will collapse.

Blinded by hubris, unable to fathom the empire’s diminishing power, the mandarins in the Trump administration have retreated into a fantasy world where hard and unpleasant facts no longer intrude. They sputter incoherent absurdities while they usurp the Constitution and replace diplomacy, multilateralism and politics with threats and loyalty oaths.

Agencies and departments, created and funded by acts of Congress, are going up in smoke.

They are removing government reports and data on climate change and withdrawing
from the Paris Climate Agreement,. They are pulling out of the World Health Organisation.

They are sanctioning officials who work at the International Criminal Court — which issued arrest warrants for Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu and former defence minister Yoav Gallant over war crimes in Gaza.

They suggested Canada become the 51st state. They have formed a task force to “eradicate anti-Christian bias.” They call for the annexation of Greenland and the seizure of the Panama Canal.

They propose the construction of luxury resorts on the coast of a depopulated Gaza under US control which, if it takes place, would bring down the Arab regimes propped up by the US.

Uttering nonsensical remarks
The rulers of all late empires, including the Roman emperors Caligula and Nero or Charles I, the last Habsburg ruler, are as incoherent as the Mad Hatter, uttering nonsensical remarks, posing unanswerable riddles and reciting word salads of inanities. They, like Donald Trump, are a reflection of the moral, intellectual and physical rot that plague a diseased society.

I spent two years researching and writing about the warped ideologues of those who have now seized power in my book American Fascists: The Christian Right and the War on America. Read it while you still can. Seriously.

These Christian fascists, who define the core ideology of the Trump administration, are unapologetic about their hatred for pluralistic, secular democracies. They seek, as they exhaustively detail in numerous “Christian” books and documents such as the Heritage Foundation’s Project 2025, to deform the judiciary and legislative branches of government, along with the media and academia, into appendages to a “Christianised” state led by a divinely anointed leader.

They openly admire Nazi apologists such as Rousas John Rushdoony, a supporter of eugenics who argues that education and social welfare should be handed over to the churches and Biblical law must replace the secular legal code, and Nazi party theorists such as Carl Schmitt.

They are avowed racists, misogynists and homophobes. They embrace bizarre conspiracy theories from the white replacement theory to a shadowy monster they call “the woke.” Suffice it to say, they are not grounded in a reality based universe.

Christian fascists come out of a theocratic sect called Dominionism. This sect teaches that American Christians have been mandated to make America a Christian state and an agent of God. Political and intellectual opponents of this militant Biblicalism are condemned as agents of Satan.

“Under Christian dominion, America will no longer be a sinful and fallen nation but one in which the 10 Commandments form the basis of our legal system, creationism and ‘Christian values’ form the basis of our educational system, and the media and the government proclaim the Good News to one and all,” I noted in my book.

“Labour unions, civil-rights laws and public schools will be abolished. Women will be removed from the workforce to stay at home, and all those deemed insufficiently Christian will be denied citizenship. Aside from its proselytising mandate, the federal government will be reduced to the protection of property rights and ‘homeland’ security.”

Chris Hedges talks to Marc Lamont Hill on Up Front on why “democracy doesn’t exist in the United States” today.   Video: Al Jazeera

Comforting to most Americans
The Christian fascists and their billionaire funders, I noted, “speak in terms and phrases that are familiar and comforting to most Americans, but they no longer use words to mean what they meant in the past.”

They commit logocide, killing old definitions and replacing them with new ones. Words — including truth, wisdom, death, liberty, life and love — are deconstructed and assigned diametrically opposed meanings.Life and death, for example, mean life in Christ or death to Christ, a signal of belief of unbelief. Wisdom refers to the level of commitment and obedience to the doctrine.

Liberty is not about freedom, but the liberty that comes from following Jesus Christ and being liberated from the dictates of secularism. Love is twisted to mean an unquestioned obedience to those, such as Trump, who claim to speak and act for God.As the death spiral accelerates, phantom enemies, domestic and foreign, will be blamed for the demise, persecuted and slated for obliteration.

Once the wreckage is complete, ensuring the immiseration of the citizenry, a breakdown in public services and engendering an inchoate rage, only the blunt instrument of state violence will remain. A lot of people will suffer, especially as the climate crisis inflicts with greater and greater intensity its lethal retribution.

The near-collapse of our constitutional system of checks and balances took place long before the arrival of Trump. Trump’s return to power represents the death rattle of the Pax Americana. The day is not far off when, like the Roman Senate in 27 BC, Congress will take its last significant vote and surrender power to a dictator. The Democratic Party, whose strategy seems to be to do nothing and hope Trump implodes, have already acquiesced to the inevitable.

The question is not whether we go down, but how many millions of innocents we will take with us. Given the industrial violence our empire wields, it could be a lot, especially if those in charge decide to reach for the nukes.

The dismantling of the US Agency for International Development (USAID) — Elon Musk claims is run by “a viper’s nest of radical-left marxists who hate America” — is an example of how these arsonists are clueless about how empires function.

Foreign aid is not benevolent. It is weaponised to maintain primacy over the United Nations and remove governments the empire deems hostile. Those nations in the UN and other multilateral organisations who vote the way the empire demands, who surrender their sovereignty to global corporations and the US military, receive assistance. Those who don’t do not.

Building infrastructure projects
When the US offered to build the airport in Haiti’s capital Port-au-Prince, investigative journalist Matt Kennard reports, it required that Haiti oppose Cuba’s admittance into the Organisation of American States, which it did.

Foreign aid builds infrastructure projects so corporations can operate global sweatshops and extract resources. It funds “democracy promotion” and “judicial reform” that thwart the aspirations of political leaders and governments that seek to remain independent from the grip of the empire.

USAID, for example, paid for a “political party reform project” that was designed
“as a counterweight” to the “radical” Movement Toward Socialism (Movimiento al Socialismo) and sought to prevent socialists like Evo Morales from being elected in Bolivia. It then funded organisations and initiatives, including training programmes so Bolivian youth could be taught the American business practices, once Morales assumed the presidency, to weaken his hold on power.

Kennard in his book, The Racket: A Rogue Reporter vs The American Empire, documents
how US institutions such as the National Endowment for Democracy, the World Bank, the International Monetary Fund, the Inter-American Development Bank, USAID and the Drug Enforcement Administration, work in tandem with the Pentagon and Central Intelligence Agency to subjugate and oppress the Global South.

Client states that receive aid must break unions, impose austerity measures, keep wages low and maintain puppet governments. The heavily funded aid programmes, designed to bring down Morales, eventually led the Bolivian president to throw USAID out of the country.

The lie peddled to the public is that this aid benefits both the needy overseas and us at home. But the inequality these programmes facilitate abroad replicates the inequality imposed domestically. The wealth extracted from the Global South is not equitably distributed. It ends up in the hands of the billionaire class, often stashed in overseas bank accounts to avoid taxation.

Our US tax dollars, meanwhile, disproportionately funds the military, which is the iron fist that sustains the system of exploitation. The 30 million Americans who were victims of mass layoffs and deindustrialisation lost their jobs to workers in sweatshops overseas. As Kennard notes, both home and abroad, it is a vast “transfer of wealth from the poor to the rich globally and domestically”.

Legitimises theft at home
“The same people that devise the myths about what we do abroad have also built up a similar ideological system that legitimises theft at home; theft from the poorest, by the richest,” he writes. “The poor and working people of Harlem have more in common with the poor and working people of Haiti than they do with their elites, but this has to be obscured for the racket to work.”

Foreign aid maintains sweatshops or “special economic zones” in countries such as Haiti, where workers toil for pennies an hour and often in unsafe conditions for global corporations.

“One of the facets of special economic zones, and one of the incentives for corporations in the US, is that special economic zones have even less regulations than the national state on how you can treat labour and taxes and customs,” Kennard told me in an interview.

“You open these sweatshops in the special economic zones. You pay the workers a pittance. You get all the resources out without having to pay customs or tax. The state in Mexico or Haiti or wherever it is, where they’re offshoring this production, doesn’t benefit at all. That’s by design. The coffers of the state are always the ones that never get increased. It’s the corporations that benefit.”

These same US institutions and mechanisms of control, Kennard writes in his book, were employed to sabotage the electoral campaign of Jeremy Corbyn, a fierce critic of the US empire, for prime minister in Britain.

The US disbursed nearly $72 billion in foreign aid in fiscal year 2023. It funded clean water initiatives, HIV/Aids treatments, energy security and anti-corruption work. In 2024, it provided 42 percent of all humanitarian aid tracked by the United Nations.

Humanitarian aid, often described as “soft power,” is designed to mask the theft of resources in the Global South by US corporations, the expansion of the footprint of the US military, the rigid control of foreign governments, the devastation caused by fossil fuel extraction, the systemic abuse of workers in global sweatshops and the poisoning of child labourers in places like the Congo, where they are used to mine lithium.

https://t.co/FLgNuVBwaT

— Chris Hedges (@ChrisLynnHedges) February 7, 2025

The demise of American power
I doubt Musk and his army of young minions in the Department of Government Efficiency (DOGE) — which isn’t an official department within the federal government — have any idea about how the organisations they are destroying work, why they exist or what it will mean for the demise of American power.

The seizure of government personnel records and classified material, the effort to terminate hundreds of millions of dollars worth of government contracts — mostly those which relate to Diversity, Equity and Inclusion (DEI), the offers of buyouts to “drain the swamp” including a buyout offer to the entire workforce of the Central Intelligence Agency — now temporarily blocked by a judge — the firing of 17 or 18 inspectors generals
and federal prosecutors, the halting of government funding and grants, sees them cannibalise the leviathan they worship.

They plan to dismantle the Environmental Protection Agency, the Department of Education
and the US Postal Service, part of the internal machinery of the empire. The more dysfunctional the state becomes, the more it creates a business opportunity for predatory corporations and private equity firms. These billionaires will make a fortune “harvesting” the remains of the empire. But they are ultimately slaying the beast that created American wealth and power.

Once the dollar is no longer the world’s reserve currency, something the dismantling of the empire guarantees, the US will be unable to pay for its huge deficits by selling Treasury bonds. The American economy will fall into a devastating depression. This will trigger a breakdown of civil society, soaring prices, especially for imported products, stagnant wages and high unemployment rates.

The funding of at least 750 overseas military bases and our bloated military will become impossible to sustain. The empire will instantly contract. It will become a shadow of itself. Hypernationalism, fueled by an inchoate rage and widespread despair, will morph into a hate-filled American fascism.

Relentless hunt for plunder, profit
“The demise of the United States as the preeminent global power could come far more quickly than anyone imagines,” the historian Alfred W. McCoy writes in his book In the Shadows of the American Century: The Rise and Decline of US Global Power:

Despite the aura of omnipotence empires often project, most are surprisingly fragile, lacking the inherent strength of even a modest nation-state. Indeed, a glance at their history should remind us that the greatest of them are susceptible to collapse from diverse causes, with fiscal pressures usually a prime factor. For the better part of two centuries, the security and prosperity of the homeland has been the main objective for most stable states, making foreign or imperial adventures an expendable option, usually allocated no more than 5 percent of the domestic budget. Without the financing that arises almost organically inside a sovereign nation, empires are famously predatory in their relentless hunt for plunder or profit — witness the Atlantic slave trade, Belgium’s rubber lust in the Congo, British India’s opium commerce, the Third Reich’s rape of Europe, or the Soviet exploitation of Eastern Europe.

When revenues shrink or collapse, McCoy points out, “empires become brittle.”

“So delicate is their ecology of power that, when things start to go truly wrong, empires regularly unravel with unholy speed: just a year for Portugal, two years for the Soviet Union, eight years for France, 11 years for the Ottomans, 17 for Great Britain, and, in all likelihood, just 27 years for the United States, counting from the crucial year 2003 [when the US invaded Iraq],” he writes.

The array of tools used for global dominance — wholesale surveillance, the evisceration of civil liberties, including due process, torture, militarised police, the massive prison system, militarised drones and satellites — will be employed against a restive and enraged population.

The devouring of the carcass of the empire to feed the outsized greed and egos of these scavengers presages a new dark age.

Chris Hedges is a Pulitzer Prize–winning author and journalist who was a foreign correspondent for 15 years for The New York Times. This article was first published on his Substack page. Republished from the Chris Hedges X page.

This article was first published on Café Pacific.

It generally ends badly.  An old tyrant embarks on an ill-considered project that involves redrawing maps.

They are heedless to wise counsel and indifferent to indigenous interests or experience.  Before they fail, are killed, deposed or otherwise disposed of, these vicious old men can cause immense harm.

To see Trump through this lens, let’s look at a group of men who tested their cartographic skills and failed:  King Lear and, of course, Hitler and Napoleon Bonaparte, and latterly, George W Bush and Saddam Hussein.

I even throw in a Pope.  But let’s start first with Benjamin Netanyahu and Donald Trump himself.

Benjamin Netanyahu and a map of a ‘New Middle East’ — without Palestine
In September 2023, a month before the Hamas attack on Israel, Benjamin Netanyahu spoke to an almost-empty UN General Assembly.  Few wanted to share the same air as the man.

In his speech, he presented a map of a “New Middle East” — one that contained a Greater Israel but no Palestine.

In a piece in The Jordan Times titled: “Cartography of genocide”, Ramzy Baroud explained why Netanyahu erased Palestine from the map figuratively.  Hamas leaders also understood the message all too well.

“Generally, there was a consensus in the political bureau: We have to move, we have to take action. If we don’t do it, Palestine will be forgotten — totally deleted from the international map,” Dr Bassem Naim, a leading Hamas official said in the outstanding Al Jazeera documentary October 7.

Hearing Trump and Netanyahu last week, the Hamas assessment was clear-eyed and prescient.

Donald Trump
In defiance of UN resolutions and international law, he recognised Jerusalem as Israel’s capital, recognised the Syrian Golan Heights as part of Israel, and now wants to turn Gaza into a US real estate development, reconquer Panama, turn Canada into the 51st State of the USA, rename the Gulf of Mexico and seize Greenland, if necessary by force.

And it’s only February.  The US spent blood, treasure and decades building the Rules-Based International Order.  Biden and Trump have left it in tatters.

Article by AsiaPacificReport.nz

COMMENTARY: By Michelle Pini, managing editor of Independent Australia

With President Donald Trump now into his second week in the White House, horrific fires have continued to rage across Los Angeles and the details of Elon Musk’s allegedly dodgy Twitter takeover began to emerge, the world sits anxiously by.

The consequences of a second Trump term will reverberate globally, not only among Western nations. But given the deeply entrenched Americanisation of much of the Western world, this is about how it will navigate the after-shocks once the United States finally unravels — for unravel it surely will.

Leading with chaos
Now that the world’s biggest superpower and war machine has a deranged criminal at the helm — for a second time — none of us know the lengths to which Trump (and his puppet masters) will go as his fingers brush dangerously close to the nuclear codes. Will he be more emboldened?

The signs are certainly there.

So far, Trump — who had already led the insurrection of a democratically elected government — has threatened to exit the nuclear arms pact with Russia, talked up a trade war with China and declared “all hell will break out” in the Middle East if Hamas hadn’t returned the Israeli hostages.

Will his cruelty towards migrants and refugees escalate, matched only by his fuelling of racial division?

This, too, appears to be already happening.

Trump’s rants leading up to his inauguration last week had been a steady stream of crazed declarations, each one more unhinged than the last.

He wants to buy Greenland. He wishes to overturn birthright citizenship in order to deport even more migrant children, such as  “pet-eating Haitians” and “insane Hannibal Lecters” because America has been “invaded”.

It will be interesting to see whether his planned evictions of Mexicans will include the firefighters Mexico sent to Los Angeles’ aid.

At the same time, Trump wants to turn Canada into the 51st state, because, he said,

“It would make a great state. And the people of Canada like it.”

Will sexual predator Trump’s level of misogyny sink to even lower depths post Roe v Wade?

Probably.

Denial of catastrophic climate consequences
And will Trump be in even further denial over the catastrophic consequences of climate change than during his last term? Even as Los Angeles grapples with a still climbing death toll of 25 lives lost, 12,000 homes, businesses and other structures destroyed and 16,425 hectares (about the size of Washington DC) wiped out so far in the latest climactic disaster?

The fires are, of course, symptomatic of the many years of criminal negligence on global warming. But since Trump instead accused California officials of “prioritising environmental policies over public safety” while his buddy and head of government “efficiency”, Musk blamed black firefighters for the fires, it would appear so.

Will the madman, for surely he is one, also gift even greater protections to oligarchs like Musk?

Trump has already appointed billionaire buddies Musk and Vivek Ramaswamy to:

 “…pave the way for my Administration to dismantle government bureaucracy, slash excess regulations, cut wasteful expenditures and restructure Federal agencies”.

So, this too is already happening.

All of these actions will combine to create a scenario of destruction that will see the implosion of the US as we know it, though the details are yet to emerge.

What happens Down Under?
US allies — like Australia — have already been thoroughly indoctrinated by American pop culture in order to complement the many army bases they house and the defence agreements they have signed.

Though Trump hasn’t shown any interest in making it a 52nd state, Australia has been tucked up in bed with the United States since the Cold War. Our foreign policy has hinged on this alliance, which also significantly affects Australia’s trade and economy, not to mention our entire cultural identity, mired as it is in US-style fast food dependence and reality TV. Would you like Vegemite McShaker Fries with that?

So what will happen to Australia once the superpower we have followed into endless battles finally breaks down?

As Dr Martin Hirst wrote in November:

‘Trump has promised chaos and chaos is what he’ll deliver.’

His rise to power will embolden the rabid Far-Right in the US but will this be mirrored here? And will Australia follow the US example and this year elect our very own (admittedly scaled down) version of Trump, personified by none other than the Trump-loving Peter Dutton?

If any of his wild announcements are to be believed, between building walls and evicting even US nationals he doesn’t like, while simultaneously making Canadians US citizens, Trump will be extremely busy.

There will be little time even to consider Australia, let alone come to our rescue should we ever need the might of the US war machine — no matter whether it is an Albanese or sycophantic Dutton leadership.

It is a given, however, that we would be required to honour all defence agreements should our ally demand it.

It would be great if, as psychologists urge us to do when children act up, our leaders could simply ignore and refuse to engage with him, but it remains to be seen whether Australia will have the mettle to be bigger than Trump.

Republished from the Independent Australia with permission.

Article by AsiaPacificReport.nz