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Donald Trump’s speech to the UN General Assembly of September 19th 2017 will surely go down in history as marking the final collapse of a terminally corrupt regime, where any pretence of cooperative co-existence with the world has given way to the logic of the battlefield.

And while it is too soon to decide if the Western World will follow America into this dark space, the early signs are not good. Some US allies have already given their support to Trump’s psychopathic threat to “totally destroy North Korea”, simply by supporting the corollaries to this threat and by failing to condemn it.

But this is only to be expected, particularly from countries already up to the neck in America’s crimes around the world, like the UK and Australia.

More worrying is the response from Western media commentators, who have already sent the wrong signals to the US regime on what behaviour is acceptable and good. Most notably of course Trump’s violent missile attack on Syria following the Al Qaeda-mediated “Sarin attack” on Khan Shaikoun drew their praise instead of condemnation, and now acts as a stepping stone to further delusionary cheer-leading.

Like a dog that has just killed a sheep, yet seeks only to please its owner, this new dog in the White House needed to be sent a strong and unambiguous message so it wouldn’t kill again. Not much chance of that, when that owner – the neo-con friendly media – couldn’t conceal its appetite for roast lamb.

Amongst the world leaders supporting and even praising Trump for “saying it like it is” (though it isn’t actually..) there was one who has slaughtered a few sheep in his time, and who delivered an address to the UN almost exceeding Donald Trump’s in its mendacity and malignancy. Netanyahu has a reputation for such performances however, so making conciliatory speeches about former targets isn’t his style; each one has to be a bit worse than the last.

Echoing Trump, who had already delivered his tirade including some outlandish and ridiculous claims about Iran, most of Netanyahu’s speech described the threat “to the whole world” from a “Nuclear-armed Iran”, and how the Iran deal agreed to by Obama must be rescinded. Failure to act would see an “Iranian-Islamist curtain stretching from Tehran to Tartus” that could target anywhere in the world with its “massive nuclear arsenal”.

While Donald Trump undoubtedly believed the aggressive and abusive nonsense he talked about Iran, he clearly doesn’t know much about the country or its nuclear program. Perhaps the US intelligence services don’t like to tell him Iran gave up its plans for a nuclear weapon back in 2003, because he would ask them, Trump-like, “well why the hell are we spending all that money on missile defence systems against Iran?”

Too hard to explain that Obama’s THAAD systems were actually never against Iran, and hope he doesn’t ask why we still installed them after the Iran deal was signed. The Dog in the White House seems to have quite a nose for odd stuff like that, and he might even start to wonder if South Korea also needs so many THAAD missiles against the DPRK. Could it really be such a great threat, with its handful of unproven nuclear weapons and a few dodgy missiles?

We can’t quite forgive Trump for talking such incoherent and dangerous rubbish, making a complete fool of himself in front of rational and sensible world leaders. (notably including France’s Emmanuel Macron, who was scathing in his criticism). He is the “Leader of the Free World” after all, which carries some responsibilities. But neither can we honestly call him liar, as to lie you need to know you lie. Unlike his new best friend Bibi Netanyahu.

For Israel’s leader, lying has become a creed; his vision is built on it. As Mossad’s motto reads: “by way of deception though shall wage war”. Illustrating this in a sickening paean to Israel in his speech was the boast that Israel had given hospital treatment to Syrian ‘refugees’ in the Golan Heights. It’s true of course – partly - treating Al Qaeda ‘refugees’ from the Syrian Army was part of Israel’s covert war on Syria. But nowhere is this deception so clear as in the issue of nuclear weapons, and Israel’s massive but covert arsenal of them.

Back in 1986, a worker in Israel’s nuclear weapons research program in the Negev desert, Mordechai Vanunu, revealed some of its secrets to the UK’s Sunday Times, including the likely possession of at least 100 nuclear warheads. It is witness to Israel’s stranglehold over information and influence in the West that this strategic arsenal remains both unacknowledged and free from international oversight. As both its certain existence and Israel’s willingness to use it in “aggressive self-defence” are known to Israel’s enemies, this significant strategic advantage is gained at the expense of Israel’s legitimacy.

That Israel’s leader should parade himself at the UN as a “peacemaker”, cautioning the world on the nuclear threat from Iran or the DPRK is an obscene spectacle. In both countries the possession of a nuclear deterrent could be seen as necessary defence against brutal imperial aggressors like Israel and the US. In the case of Iran, which never even had a nuclear bomb, these countries and their slavish allies should be now making amends for years of punitive sanctions based on fabrications and false claims. How could we forget the abuse suffered by Iran’s President Ahmedinejad speaking at the UNGA, and endless accusations that Iran sought to “wipe Israel off the map”? Oh the irony!

And in the case of North Korea, which makes no bones about its desire and perceived need for a nuclear-based defence against attack by the US and its local allies, we are being brought to the brink of a nuclear conflict entirely because America will not abandon its demands for “full spectrum dominance”, and is prepared to destroy anything or anyone that stands in its way. Whether we can be reassured by the slightly more rational statements coming from US defence chiefs is a moot question. This recent discussion on the possible use of “tactical” nuclear weapons sounds reasonable until you realise that much of America’s strategic nuclear arsenal is now carried in submarines, whose location and intent is even more obscure than that of Israel’s.

*(Benjamin Netanyahu and U.S. President Donald Trump are seen during their meeting at the King David hotel in Jerusalem. Monday, May 22, 2017. Image credit: Haim Zach / GPO/ flickr)