Kamal Ghorui
WASHINGTON: US President Donald Trump has withdrawn a formal invitation for Canada to join his “Board of Peace,” deepening the chill between the two neighbors even as the MAGA supremo’s initiatives from Gaza to Greenland are being shredded to pieces by critics at home as the MAGA supremo returned to a frigid country cold to his purported achievements. Trump formally rescinded the invitation to Ottawa after Canadian Prime Minister Mark Carney, a former governor of the Bank of Canada and the Bank of England, used high-profile appearances in Davos to warn that U.S engineered “transactional alliances” and “ad hoc peace clubs” risked hollowing out existing institutions while privileging power over rules.“Dear Prime Minister Carney: Please let this Letter serve to represent that the Board of Peace is withdrawing its invitation to you regarding Canada’s joining, what will be, the most prestigious Board of Leaders ever assembled, at any time,” an evidently piqued Trump wrote to Carney, whose speeches in Davos, coming on the heels of a conciliatory visit to China, was virtually a call to NATO and European partners to resist U.S hegemony. While only 20 of the 60 countries invited to join the Board of Peace – including Pakistan – have accepted the call, 40 nations, including China, India, and major U.S allies in Europe, have ignored the invitation to join what many U.S commentators are ridiculing as a vanity project for which Trump has appointed himself as a chairman for life, while undermining the United Nations. Jokes and memes about the $ 1 billion that board members have to cough up included one showing Pakistan’s PM Shahbaz Sharif begging for a waiver because the country is broke. Referring to the Vatican rejecting the invitation, one comedian joked “There’s a better chance the Pope will join Tinder….after he stops laughing.”The US President’s claim of advancing both peace in Gaza and US interests in Greenland is inviting widespread skepticism and ridicule at home from skeptics more concerned about the strife in Minnesota, where protests against hardball immigration enforcement had taken the form of civil uprising. “The problem that we never had till he created it has been solved,” one late night host joked, comparing the President’s purported success on Greenland to taking back a loaded shotgun from a chimp and handing it a grenade. But Trump insisted he had a successful trip to Davos even as analysts mocked his claims, taunting what one described as a “concept of a framework of a possibility of a shadow of an echo of a deal.” Returning home on Friday ahead of a winter storm, Trump wrote on social media, “What a great trip to Davos it was. So many things accomplished, including the framework of a deal with NATO on Greenland. Also, the BOARD OF PEACE. WOW!!! MAKE AMERICA GREAT AGAIN!”He followed it up with a bizarre observation on the impending snowstorm, writing, “Record Cold Wave expected to hit 40 States. Rarely seen anything like it before. Could the Environmental Insurrectionists please explain — WHATEVER HAPPENED TO GLOBAL WARMING???”
