Greenland
- Thread starter Tecumsehsbones
- Start date
Hasn't it been ice free since 2013? I recall hearing that.
Trump’s takeover play in Greenland gave Europe a moment of shock therapy — bursting a bubble of passivity and deference. By the end of the week Trump, had backed off his demand to buy the island, facing united opposition from European leaders and a sell-off of U.S. stocks and bonds. Greenland was an icy TACO, as many Trump watchers had predicted. But for Europe, it was a wake-up call.
Greenland was a trigger, but the deeper anger was over what Macron described as economic “vassalization,” at a moment when Trump is in imperial overdrive. The transatlantic alliance won’t collapse after this crazy week in Davos, but it’s going to be different.
For the past year, the world has been in a state of chaos. The United States, in the grips of its mad pirate king, has installed tariffs, removed tariffs, made deals, overturned deals, made threats, backed off threats, and all with the randomness of an infant that has not quite achieved object permanence. Nonetheless, a logic is starting to emerge, a logic that explainsAmerica’s Trump’s actions: the logic of the rapist.
The plan to annex Greenland by military force, a plan which has apparently been shelved, for the moment, operates perfectly on the logic of rape. Before the threats, the U.S. could have had any Greenland security guarantees they liked from Denmark, simply because they are both a part of NATO. Mr. Trump and his American government want to take Greenland, not despite but because it is against their will. Denmark’s refusal, their sense of violation, is what gets Mr. Trump and his people off. Some right-wing U.S. intellectuals are calling it “coercive diplomacy.”
According to one poll, less than ten per cent of Americans want to take Greenland by force. That’s also why Mr. Trump wants it. He wants to show the American people that he can make them do whatever he wants them to do, even if they hate it. Europe holds eight trillion dollars worth of US assets, and Trump blinked at that consequence. The fact that Donald Trump has pulled back after Europe threatened to use their anti-coercion instrument shows the path forward. The only way to deal with rapists is to put a gun to their head.
apple.news
Greenland was a trigger, but the deeper anger was over what Macron described as economic “vassalization,” at a moment when Trump is in imperial overdrive. The transatlantic alliance won’t collapse after this crazy week in Davos, but it’s going to be different.
For the past year, the world has been in a state of chaos. The United States, in the grips of its mad pirate king, has installed tariffs, removed tariffs, made deals, overturned deals, made threats, backed off threats, and all with the randomness of an infant that has not quite achieved object permanence. Nonetheless, a logic is starting to emerge, a logic that explains
The plan to annex Greenland by military force, a plan which has apparently been shelved, for the moment, operates perfectly on the logic of rape. Before the threats, the U.S. could have had any Greenland security guarantees they liked from Denmark, simply because they are both a part of NATO. Mr. Trump and his American government want to take Greenland, not despite but because it is against their will. Denmark’s refusal, their sense of violation, is what gets Mr. Trump and his people off. Some right-wing U.S. intellectuals are calling it “coercive diplomacy.”
According to one poll, less than ten per cent of Americans want to take Greenland by force. That’s also why Mr. Trump wants it. He wants to show the American people that he can make them do whatever he wants them to do, even if they hate it. Europe holds eight trillion dollars worth of US assets, and Trump blinked at that consequence. The fact that Donald Trump has pulled back after Europe threatened to use their anti-coercion instrument shows the path forward. The only way to deal with rapists is to put a gun to their head.
Opinion | Europe has stopped pretending — The Washington Post
Trump’s wrecking ball creates new determination to address the continent’s long-festering problems.
I’m no fan of Mark Carney’s, & I’d rather have seen Pierre Poilievre in the big chair, but this is what we’ve got at this point.
They've got to stop falling for this. Trump always leads with the extreme threat, "I'm gonna nuke your harbours, invade your country, enslave your men, rape your women, and eat your children!" After a few days, having pulled all the attention he can from the big brag, he moderates his tone, gets to the fucking point, detaches one of the remorae from his ass to negotiate, and moves on to the next extreme threat.
Jamie Sarkonak: The Trump 'threat' isn't serious and you can tell that by Carney's conduct — National Post
If the Liberals were truly worried about U.S. aggression, they would have opened speed-recruiting centres for the military last week
The unbiased Washington Post still suffering from TDS .Trump’s takeover play in Greenland gave Europe a moment of shock therapy — bursting a bubble of passivity and deference. By the end of the week Trump, had backed off his demand to buy the island, facing united opposition from European leaders and a sell-off of U.S. stocks and bonds. Greenland was an icy TACO, as many Trump watchers had predicted. But for Europe, it was a wake-up call.
Greenland was a trigger, but the deeper anger was over what Macron described as economic “vassalization,” at a moment when Trump is in imperial overdrive. The transatlantic alliance won’t collapse after this crazy week in Davos, but it’s going to be different.
For the past year, the world has been in a state of chaos. The United States, in the grips of its mad pirate king, has installed tariffs, removed tariffs, made deals, overturned deals, made threats, backed off threats, and all with the randomness of an infant that has not quite achieved object permanence. Nonetheless, a logic is starting to emerge, a logic that explainsAmerica’sTrump’s actions: the logic of the rapist.
The plan to annex Greenland by military force, a plan which has apparently been shelved, for the moment, operates perfectly on the logic of rape. Before the threats, the U.S. could have had any Greenland security guarantees they liked from Denmark, simply because they are both a part of NATO. Mr. Trump and his American government want to take Greenland, not despite but because it is against their will. Denmark’s refusal, their sense of violation, is what gets Mr. Trump and his people off. Some right-wing U.S. intellectuals are calling it “coercive diplomacy.”
According to one poll, less than ten per cent of Americans want to take Greenland by force. That’s also why Mr. Trump wants it. He wants to show the American people that he can make them do whatever he wants them to do, even if they hate it. Europe holds eight trillion dollars worth of US assets, and Trump blinked at that consequence. The fact that Donald Trump has pulled back after Europe threatened to use their anti-coercion instrument shows the path forward. The only way to deal with rapists is to put a gun to their head.
Opinion | Europe has stopped pretending — The Washington Post
Trump’s wrecking ball creates new determination to address the continent’s long-festering problems.
I’m no fan of Mark Carney’s, & I’d rather have seen Pierre Poilievre in the big chair, but this is what we’ve got at this point.
We can’t afford it .it would have been funny if canada ended up buying greenland and renamed it after the liberal party. redland.
it would have been funny if canada ended up buying greenland and renamed it after the liberal party. redland.
A great deal of money can be made shorting the right stocks at the appropriate time. It would be interesting to see the portfolios of some of the party insiders and influencers.Trump’s takeover play in Greenland gave Europe a moment of shock therapy — bursting a bubble of passivity and deference. By the end of the week Trump, had backed off his demand to buy the island, facing united opposition from European leaders and a sell-off of U.S. stocks and bonds. Greenland was an icy TACO, as many Trump watchers had predicted. But for Europe, it was a wake-up call.
Greenland was a trigger, but the deeper anger was over what Macron described as economic “vassalization,” at a moment when Trump is in imperial overdrive. The transatlantic alliance won’t collapse after this crazy week in Davos, but it’s going to be different.
For the past year, the world has been in a state of chaos. The United States, in the grips of its mad pirate king, has installed tariffs, removed tariffs, made deals, overturned deals, made threats, backed off threats, and all with the randomness of an infant that has not quite achieved object permanence. Nonetheless, a logic is starting to emerge, a logic that explainsAmerica’sTrump’s actions: the logic of the rapist.
The plan to annex Greenland by military force, a plan which has apparently been shelved, for the moment, operates perfectly on the logic of rape. Before the threats, the U.S. could have had any Greenland security guarantees they liked from Denmark, simply because they are both a part of NATO. Mr. Trump and his American government want to take Greenland, not despite but because it is against their will. Denmark’s refusal, their sense of violation, is what gets Mr. Trump and his people off. Some right-wing U.S. intellectuals are calling it “coercive diplomacy.”
According to one poll, less than ten per cent of Americans want to take Greenland by force. That’s also why Mr. Trump wants it. He wants to show the American people that he can make them do whatever he wants them to do, even if they hate it. Europe holds eight trillion dollars worth of US assets, and Trump blinked at that consequence. The fact that Donald Trump has pulled back after Europe threatened to use their anti-coercion instrument shows the path forward. The only way to deal with rapists is to put a gun to their head.
Opinion | Europe has stopped pretending — The Washington Post
Trump’s wrecking ball creates new determination to address the continent’s long-festering problems.
I’m no fan of Mark Carney’s, & I’d rather have seen Pierre Poilievre in the big chair, but this is what we’ve got at this point.
I once asked a treasurer of my local constituency why all these people were giving checks to the party , she said information . I asked why she didn’t use that information, the response was I do this for our community not to make money . To many have forgotten .
The War of the Greenlandic Accession appears to have ended before it began, the President of the United States having supposedly negotiated a deal on the island’s future with the Secretary-General of NATO, a deal that:
a) no one can describe in any detail,
b) neither of them has any mandate to negotiate and
c) appears to amount to a ratification of the status quo.
Still, the past few weeks have not been a complete waste. They have almost certainly brought an end to NATO as a credible military alliance. They have demonstrated, to a degree that should convince any remaining doubters, that Donald Trump is completely out of his skull.
And they have put the final nail in the strategy of accommodating him (Board of Peace aside I guess). There will be no more attempts to flatter, bribe or otherwise sweet-talk the toddler President. America’s allies are done with Mr. Trump – and to a lesser extent, America. Sad.
Hence the extraordinary reaction to the Canadian Prime Minister’s Davos speech. It has been, to be sure, wildly overpraised. The rhetoric is not particularly eloquent, the insights not especially scintillating. Its main recommendation, that middle powers should lessen their exposure to the great powers by trading more with each other, is essentially warmed-over friendshoring.
Great powers have increasingly taken to using tariffs, supply chain vulnerability, and investment as weapons against their trading partners. Russia and China led the way. Now the United States has said, “Hold my beer.”
What is the alternative? The temptation, Mr. Carney says, is to reduce our vulnerability by retreating within our own borders, closing ourselves to trade generally. The real answer is to trade more with like-minded countries: “Coalitions that work, issue by issue, with partners who share enough common ground to act together.”
A network of rules-based orders, in other words, based not on deference to any hegemon but shared values and mutual benefit. It’s a nervy thing for the leader of a country that depends on the U.S. for 75 per cent of its exports to say. Which may also account for its impact.
apple.news
One lesson in all this is the importance of legitimacy. Middle powers were willing to collaborate in the Pax Americana so long as the United States was seen as a force for good – not always or perfectly, but on the whole.
The narrow self-interest and naked aggression of the Trump regime has destroyed its legitimacy. Without it, without the willing participation of the other powers, the U.S. is at risk of becoming a paper tiger.
The other is the importance of collective action. The whole history of Mr. Trump’s rise has been his ability to exploit divisions – within the United States, and between countries – playing one potential opponent off against the other: divide and rule, in other words.
That era, perhaps, is at an end. The shock of Mr. Trump’s threat to invade Greenland seems to have finally shaken Europe, at least, out of its illusions. European leaders stood together against Mr. Trump. In the end, Mr. Trump backed down.
apple.news
That does not mean the threat has gone away, however. Mr. Trump’s moods are mercurial; his promises are worthless. The Greenland issue could return within a month. Or other threats could materialize: in fact, almost certainly will. There is still a madman in the White House, who is unlikely to have learned any lessons from this episode, and who is guided by no principle other than self-aggrandizement.
Worse, the problem is not just Mr. Trump. Something has cracked in American society, that it could elect so manifestly unfit a person (like Canada with Trudeau), not once, but twice (or in Canada’s case, thrice). The checks and balances that were supposed to contain him have manifestly failed. Mr. Trump could fall under the proverbial bus tomorrow. But the world could have no assurance of any lasting return to sanity in the United States.
The short-term imperative is for the democratic forces in the United States to recover their nerve. The Trumpists seized the advantage over the past year by a combination of speed and fanaticism. They seemed to be moving on all fronts simultaneously, without regard for law, or precedent, or human decency. Mostly, they benefited from their opponents’ failure of imagination – their inability to conceive of just what the Trump people were capable of.
That only gets you so far, however. Like the European leaders, Mr. Trump’s domestic opponents now understand better what they are up against, and what they have to do to stop it. Fortunately, the people around Mr. Trump are not terribly bright. They have plainly taken on far more than they can handle – provided their opponents act together.
Meanwhile, the rest of the democratic world will have to accept that the alliance with the United States has been irreparably damaged, at least for the time being, and move on. NATO may be dead, but that does not mean other alliances cannot be formed: NATO, minus the U.S., but plus Japan, Canada, Australia and some of the other democracies.
Perhaps this Democratic League, or whatever it might be called, might also have a trade dimension, complete with what some have called “an economic Article 5”: a provision that a tariff on one member is to be regarded as a tariff on all, with appropriate retaliatory measures.
And Canada? Short-term, the Prime Minister should follow his own logic, and not invest too heavily in a renewed continental trade deal. If experience is any guide, Mr. Trump will issue a series of extravagant demands as the price of his signature. Moreover, we can have no assurance that he would keep any undertakings he made in return, like last week:
ici.radio-canada.ca
America's "We don't need Canada" narrative is being tested in real-time as new 2026 tariffs threaten to sever the world's largest trading relationship. In this theoretical video, we expose the hard reality behind the trade war rhetoric: The US imports over 60% of its oil, 90% of its uranium for nuclear power, and nearly all its potash for farming from its northern neighbor.
(YouTube & America "We Don't Need Canada" & yeah, it’s AI, but interesting perspective)
a) no one can describe in any detail,
b) neither of them has any mandate to negotiate and
c) appears to amount to a ratification of the status quo.
Still, the past few weeks have not been a complete waste. They have almost certainly brought an end to NATO as a credible military alliance. They have demonstrated, to a degree that should convince any remaining doubters, that Donald Trump is completely out of his skull.
And they have put the final nail in the strategy of accommodating him (Board of Peace aside I guess). There will be no more attempts to flatter, bribe or otherwise sweet-talk the toddler President. America’s allies are done with Mr. Trump – and to a lesser extent, America. Sad.
Hence the extraordinary reaction to the Canadian Prime Minister’s Davos speech. It has been, to be sure, wildly overpraised. The rhetoric is not particularly eloquent, the insights not especially scintillating. Its main recommendation, that middle powers should lessen their exposure to the great powers by trading more with each other, is essentially warmed-over friendshoring.
Great powers have increasingly taken to using tariffs, supply chain vulnerability, and investment as weapons against their trading partners. Russia and China led the way. Now the United States has said, “Hold my beer.”
What is the alternative? The temptation, Mr. Carney says, is to reduce our vulnerability by retreating within our own borders, closing ourselves to trade generally. The real answer is to trade more with like-minded countries: “Coalitions that work, issue by issue, with partners who share enough common ground to act together.”
A network of rules-based orders, in other words, based not on deference to any hegemon but shared values and mutual benefit. It’s a nervy thing for the leader of a country that depends on the U.S. for 75 per cent of its exports to say. Which may also account for its impact.
Trump threatens Canada with 100% tariff over pending trade deal with China — Reuters
U.S. President Donald Trump said on Saturday he would impose a 100% tariff on Canada if it follows through on a trade deal with China and warned Canadian Prime Minister Mark Carney that a deal would endanger his country.
The narrow self-interest and naked aggression of the Trump regime has destroyed its legitimacy. Without it, without the willing participation of the other powers, the U.S. is at risk of becoming a paper tiger.
The other is the importance of collective action. The whole history of Mr. Trump’s rise has been his ability to exploit divisions – within the United States, and between countries – playing one potential opponent off against the other: divide and rule, in other words.
That era, perhaps, is at an end. The shock of Mr. Trump’s threat to invade Greenland seems to have finally shaken Europe, at least, out of its illusions. European leaders stood together against Mr. Trump. In the end, Mr. Trump backed down.
Opinion: How must the world stand up to Donald Trump? — The Globe and Mail
Mark Carney’s speech at Davos is a good starting point
Worse, the problem is not just Mr. Trump. Something has cracked in American society, that it could elect so manifestly unfit a person (like Canada with Trudeau), not once, but twice (or in Canada’s case, thrice). The checks and balances that were supposed to contain him have manifestly failed. Mr. Trump could fall under the proverbial bus tomorrow. But the world could have no assurance of any lasting return to sanity in the United States.
The short-term imperative is for the democratic forces in the United States to recover their nerve. The Trumpists seized the advantage over the past year by a combination of speed and fanaticism. They seemed to be moving on all fronts simultaneously, without regard for law, or precedent, or human decency. Mostly, they benefited from their opponents’ failure of imagination – their inability to conceive of just what the Trump people were capable of.
That only gets you so far, however. Like the European leaders, Mr. Trump’s domestic opponents now understand better what they are up against, and what they have to do to stop it. Fortunately, the people around Mr. Trump are not terribly bright. They have plainly taken on far more than they can handle – provided their opponents act together.
Meanwhile, the rest of the democratic world will have to accept that the alliance with the United States has been irreparably damaged, at least for the time being, and move on. NATO may be dead, but that does not mean other alliances cannot be formed: NATO, minus the U.S., but plus Japan, Canada, Australia and some of the other democracies.
Perhaps this Democratic League, or whatever it might be called, might also have a trade dimension, complete with what some have called “an economic Article 5”: a provision that a tariff on one member is to be regarded as a tariff on all, with appropriate retaliatory measures.
And Canada? Short-term, the Prime Minister should follow his own logic, and not invest too heavily in a renewed continental trade deal. If experience is any guide, Mr. Trump will issue a series of extravagant demands as the price of his signature. Moreover, we can have no assurance that he would keep any undertakings he made in return, like last week:
Trump on Canada-China trade deal: ’If you can get a deal with China, you should do that’ | RCI
'That's OK,' Trump says after Carney strikes 'strategic partnership'
ici.radio-canada.ca
Well, Trump hasn’t left a whole lot of room to advance his threats further here, so backpedalling is about the only step left.
(YouTube & America "We Don't Need Canada" & yeah, it’s AI, but interesting perspective)