The nauseating spectacle of European leaders grovelling before Trump at the NATO summit.
https://theaimn.net/the-nauseating-spectacle-of-european-leaders-grovelling-before-trump-at-the-nato-summit/ 27 June 2025
“I May Vomit”
Those are the immortal first words spoken by the man arriving in “Man Who Came to Dinner” – in the classic 1939 play by George S. Kaufman and Moss Hart. Why did this come to my mind as I watched the evening news tonight?
Oh yes – I just felt like that man, as I learned how , one after another, these pathetic sycophants, including Australia’s Deputy Prime Minister Richard Marles, dutifully bowed and scraped before the Donald Deity, – (as they promised to buy ever more weapons from American manufacturers.) By the way, Trump snubbed NATO’s Indo-Pacific partners, which includes Australia. But Australia’s getting used to accepting being snubbed by Trump and his war-mongering lackey, Pete Hegseth.
The ABC’s Europe Correspondent, Elias Clure, might have felt a bit the same way, as he reported on the meeting:
“Donald Trump was given a royal welcome by the monarch of the Netherlands as he arrived at the NATO summit in The Hague. He left feeling like a king.
Member nations agreed to lift their defence spending to 5 per cent of GDP over 10 years and Mr Trump was quick to take credit, describing it as a “big win” for the United States.……………………………… the event, which aims to hear from delegations of the 32 NATO countries and many more partners and allies, seemed to revolve around the presence of one man.”
Clure went on to describe the gushing of the NATO Secretary-General. Mar Rutte, who was fulsome in his praise of America’s bombing in Iran:
” – the signal it sends to the rest of the world that this president, when it comes to it, yes, he is a man of peace, but if necessary, he is willing to use strength”
So – we all think it’s beaut that America decided to bomb Iran’s nuclear sites – bombing being apparently a great way to get peace? I mean – all this is, as Richard Marles loves to tell us, to preserve the “global rules -based order”
But do these pathetic flunkeys in their tax-payer funded jobs have any idea of what the international rules-based order actually is?
It’s the Charter of The International Military Tribunal (IMT) at Nuremberg which set up international law on war crimes. The “supreme” war crime is explained by world international law expert Geoffrey Robertson – the war crime of aggression:
“It is constituted by using armed force against a felloe United Nations member with such “character, gravity and scale” that it violates the UN charter prohibition on one member country attacking another. A “spectacular military success, the bombing of Iran’s nuclear facilities may have been, but it was, as a matter of international law, no different from Russia’s attack on Ukraine, or the George W Bush Tony Blair, John Howard invasion of Iraq. These a all cases of a breach of the world order agreed after the last war and likely to encourage emulation.”
The Donald worshippers also don’t seem aware that Iran is a member of the Treaty on the Non-Proliferation of Nuclear Weapons (NPT), and there is no evidence that it’s making a nuclear weapon. Iran has always allowed IAEA inspections of its nuclear facilities. Like many other nations it has enriched uranium for medical and other industrial purposes, and this is legal.
Israel, on the other hand, is widely believed to have nuclear weapons – estimated at anything from 90 to 200 nuclear warheads. Israel has refused to join the NPT, and refused to allow IAEA inspections.
Donald Trump and his nefarious acolytes are not content with wrecking America’s national civil institutions, – a process made easier, now that the Supreme Court has put Trump above the law .
Now Trump is moving on to destroy international law.
I can’t go on, I am feeling too sick.
The Chris Hedges Report: Starvation and Profiteering in Gaza (w/ Francesca Albanese)
Francesca Albanese joins Chris Hedges to break down the current starvation campaign in Gaza, and her upcoming report detailing the profiteering corporations capitalizing on the erasure of Palestinians
Chris Hedges, Jun 26, 2025
This interview is also available on podcast platforms and Rumble.
There is not much more that can be said about the unfathomable levels of devastation the genocide in Gaza has reached. Francesca Albanese, the United Nations Special Rapporteur on the Occupied Palestinian Territories, has been chronicling the genocide and joins host Chris Hedges on this episode of The Chris Hedges Report to shed light on the current situation in Gaza, including parts from her upcoming report on the profiteers of the genocide.
Israel’s siege on the Palestinians is leaving the population starving, and Albanese lambasts other nations for not stepping up and completing their obligations under international law. “[Countries] have an obligation not to aid, not to assist, not to trade with Israel, not to send weapons, not to buy weapons, not to provide military technology, not to buy military technology. This is not an act of charity that I’m asking you. This is your obligation,” she explains.
Albanese compares Gaza and Israel’s siege to a concentration camp, stating it is unsustainable but also allows the world to witness how a Western settler colonial entity functions. “There is a global awareness of something that has for a long time been a prerogative, a painful prerogative of the global majority, the Global South, meaning the awareness of the pain and the wounds of colonialism,” Albanese tells Hedges.
In her forthcoming report, Albanese will detail exactly how Palestine has been exploited by the global capitalist system and will highlight the role certain corporations have played in the genocide. “[T]here are corporate entities, including from Palestine-friendly states, who have for decades made businesses and made profits out of the economy of the occupation, because Israel has always exploited Palestinian land and resources and Palestinian life,” she says.
“The profits have continued and even increased as the economy of the occupation transformed into an economy of genocide.”……………………………………………TRANSCRIPT………………………………….. …………..https://scheerpost.com/2025/06/25/the-chris-hedges-report-starvation-and-profiteering-in-gaza-w-francesca-albanese/
Statement on military attacks on nuclear facilities in Iran
25 June 25
Friends of the Earth Australia expresses our profound concern regarding the US attacks of nuclear facilities in Iran. The military strikes were not endorsed by the United Nations or the US Congress. They should not be endorsed by Australia.
The current hostilities would not be occurring if not for the widely criticized decision of the first Trump administration to withdraw from the Joint Comprehensive Plan of Action with Iran. Australia should be condemning the US for that decision rather than endorsing unilateral, unauthorised US military strikes. Australia needs to revisit the US military alliance (including AUKUS nuclear submarines) in light of the reckless behaviour of the US.
There are reports today of strikes near the Bushehr nuclear plant. IAEA Director-General Rafael Grossi has told the UN Security Council that a direct hit on Bushehr could “result in a very high release of radioactivity”, with “great consequences” within and beyond Iran’s borders. A strike on the Bushehr nuclear power plant raises the prospect of a nuclear disaster akin to Chernobyl or Fukushima.
The fact that these attacks have been chosen as first targets highlights the vulnerability of nuclear facilities worldwide to be used as weapons against the local population. There is a history of conventional military strikes on nuclear facilities in the Middle East. Examples include the destruction of research reactors in Iraq by Israel and the US; Iran’s attempts to strike nuclear facilities in Iraq during the 1980−88 war (and vice versa); Iraq’s attempted strikes on Israel’s nuclear facilities; and Israel’s bombing of a suspected nuclear reactor site in Syria in 2007.
From a domestic perspective, recent developments in the Middle East ‒ and Ukraine ‒ highlight the vulnerability of the nuclear power reactors that the Coalition wants to build. The Coalition’s plan to build nuclear reactors would leave Australia vulnerable to missile warfare and sabotage, the Australian Security Leaders Climate Group warns. The group includes former Australian Defence Force chief Chris Barrie, who said: “Every nuclear power facility is a potential dirty bomb because rupture of containment facilities can cause devastating damage. Modern warfare is increasingly focused on missiles and uncrewed aerial systems, and with the proposed power stations all located within a 100 kilometres of the coast, they are a clear and accessible target”.
Australia should:
- Condemn Israel’s nuclear weapons program (the only known nuclear weapons program in the Middle East) and support necessary steps to enforce nuclear disarmament.
- Urgently sign and ratify the Treaty for the Prohibition of Nuclear Weapons (TPNW) ‒ a promise Labor committed to in 2018, but has not fulfilled yet.
- Call for negotiations to reinstate the Joint Comprehensive Plan of Action, or something similar, to guard against nuclear proliferation in Iran.
- Initiate a review into the AUKUS military agreement including the plan to acquire nuclear-powered submarines.
- Initiate a broader review into the military alliance with the US in light of the Trump administration’s latest breach of international rules and norms.
- Review Australia’s uranium export policies. Currently, Australia exports uranium to nuclear weapons states and to states refusing to sign the Non-Proliferation Treaty and the Comprehensive Test Ban Treaty.
1 This month
of the week – Disrupting War & Militarism in Oceania. Active solidarity. Radical practice.
Antinuclear 