But then again, how can someone argue that it is unfair to let this exemplary female student athlete to take home the national championship in swimming:
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âThe U.S. president has once again aired the thought of annexing us,â Prime Minister Mute Egede wrote in a Facebook post.
âDonât keep treating us with disrespect. Enough is enough,â Egede wrote.
Meanwhile Trump sits next to Rutte and says that annexation will happen:
Kind of a bizarre turn in a long allyship between Denmark and the US.
Meanwhile Chatham House is stating the obvious; Chinaâs hand of cards are looking pretty damn good and their optionality is increasing.
"China is often presented as the big winner of current geopolitical shifts, biding its time as the US knocks over the pillars on which its hegemony was built (never interrupt your enemy when he is making a mistake). But China also has much to lose from Trumpâs geopolitical collision course. This could open a window for Europe to not only use closer alignment with Beijing as leverage in conversations with Washington, but also to get concessions from China. "
As I said before, the most likely path for Greenland to join the US seems to be for the Greenlanders to declare independence from the colonial power (Denmark) and then make some sort of deal with the US.
The Greenlanders have proportional representation and, as is often the case with proportional representation, they have a large number of parties and form coalitions after elections. The `winning partyâ means the party which garnered the largest share of the votes, in this case about 30%. Reportedly, 5 of the 6 largest parties are pro-independence (from Denmark), including the winning party, but they differ as to the timeline for independence. Since 2009, the Greenlanders have been promised by Denmark that they can have independence if they vote in favor of it in a referendum.
As I said earlier,
When Erik the Red settled Greenland in 985, the Dorset people were already living there. In the 13th
Century, the Dorset people were `replacedâ (whatever that means) by the Thule, an Inuit people who
migrated from mainland Canada. The Vikings had arrived during the Medieval Warm Period and
appear to have disappeared during the Little Ice Age, with theories ranging from the climate to being
wiped out by the Thule to simply packing up and moving to Iceland and/or Norway.
Greenland was originally a Norwegian colony, and at some point the kingdoms of Norway and
Denmark were united as a result of marriage. When the union dissolved, Denmark kept Greenland,
which is how it came to be the colonial power.
Norway appears to have never fully accepted that the Danes took Greenland off them.
That the Viking colony ceased to exist also weakens the Daneâs claim. Abandonment.
The Vikings do not appear to have ventured to the far north of Greenland, and the first person to discover that Greenland was an island was actually the US explorer Admiral Robert Peary, which gives the US a claim on northern Greenland. As an aside, while they were there, Peary and his team appear to have fathered a number of children with Inuit women, which was only discovered in the 1980s when a Harvard researcher went to northern Greenland to investigate rumors of `black Eskimos,â who turned out to be the descendants of Matthew Henson, a member of Pearyâs team.
There has also been a border dispute between Greenland and Canada over at least one island between Greenland proper and Canada.
The strength of Denmarkâs claim to Greenland would appear to be moot if the Greenlanders have a referendum and vote to secede, and it looks as though sooner or later that will happen.
Once free of the colonial yoke, Greenland may go it alone or choose some sort of association with the US, perhaps as a territory.
If the argument is that Trumpâs tariffs will drive China into the arms of the EU, that makes no sense. The EU itself has large tariffs against China. Those tariffs were hiked in October 2024 (before the US election) and China is currently challenging the hikes in court in the EU.
Chatham House doesnât surprise me. Britain is known as âperfidious Albion,â because its traditional foreign policy was to team up with whoever was the 2nd largest power in Europe to wage war on the largest power in Europe. That kind of intrigue was something the Founding Fathers of the US wanted no part of.
There was a great interview with Howard Lutnick (Commerce Secretary) on Bloomberg discussing President Trumpâs trade policy
Canada may be dragging its feet on becoming the 51st state, or more likely a territory, but they evidently have no qualms about joining the European socialist superstate:
for 46%
against 29%
donât know 25%
In terms of politics, they would be a good match, and both Canada and the EU love tariffs (except the ones imposed against them of course)
The EU has said that Canada is not eligible to join. European.
Edit: added:
This is weird
One of the anti-Israel protestors at Columbia, Ranjani Srinivasan (an Indian national) has had her student visa revoked for participating in extremist protests on campus.
She has used the CBP Home App to âself-deport.â
To Canada???
https://x.com/Sec_Noem/status/1900562928849326488
Added: Canada to nuclear in Trade War?
It seems that one of Canadaâs main exports is pornography and itâs threatening to turn the spigot off.
Meanwhile, the Trump administration is continuing its efforts to broker a peace between Russia and Ukraine.
During the war, Ukraine launched an attack on Russia proper (the Kursk region, as opposed to the `new territoriesâ) which initially was a success as they caught Russia unawares and the Ukrainian troops penetrated deep into Russia. Then the tide turned, and those Ukrainian troops are surrounded and thousands facing certain death.
President Trump is trying to get Putin to stop the senseless slaughter.
The anti-vaxxer didnât make it as head of CDC (Centers for Disease Control and Prevention), as his nomination was withdrawn when a number of Republican senators indicated that they wouldnât vote for him.
The nominee was former congressman Dave Weldon who is a physician who has stated that ``I actually give hundreds of vaccines every year in my medical practice.ââ
While in Congress, he introduced legislation aimed at transferring vaccine safety oversight from the CDC to an independent agency within the Department of Health and Human Services (HHS). He cited concerns about the integrity of the federal vaccine safety review process, stating there were conflicts of interest and inadequate research funding as reasons for introducing the bill.
Evidently that was enough to scupper his nomination.
Rasha Alawieh, who works at Brown (University) Medicine and had a H1B visa (temporary work visa) was refused entry at Boston Logan a couple of days ago when she tried to re-enter the US after a visit to her home country of Lebanon for the funeral of Hezbollah leader Hassan Nasrallah who was killed (several months ago during the Biden administration) by an Israeli airstrike.
The funeral sounds like quite a do, tens of thousands of mourners in a 48,000 seat stadium.
Whatâs the US coming to when they cancel your visa just because you go to a terrorist leaderâs funeral.
Brown professor deported to Lebanon after allegedly attending Hezbollah funeral, government says
Carneyâs other daughter Sasha, 24, who graduated cum laude from Yale University with a degree in
English and Gender Studies, uses they/them pronouns, according to their social media profiles. They
previously went by the name Sophia. Sasha Carney, who currently works as a freelance writer and
reviewer in Brooklyn, New York, has previously posted about their mental health struggles online.
ED may be eliminated for the 2nd time. (Education Department, DoE refers to Department of Energy).
It was originally created in 1867 during the (Andrew) Johnson administration and eliminated a year later due to concerns that it would have too much control over local schools. President Johnson is perhaps the best reminder of the importance of the vice presidency. President Lincoln picked a vice president from the opposing party to help healing after the war between states, and when Lincoln was killed, Johnson ascended to the presidency, as did his namesake Lyndon Baines Johnson a century later.
The 2nd incarnation of ED arose in 1980 during the Carter administration. The initial budget of $14B is now $268B. President Trump has signed a bill eliminating ED. That doesnât mean that the federal government is getting out of the education business, rather that there will once again be an Education Office in another Cabinet department.
Canât blame them.
Finland Is Again Ranked the Happiest Country in the World. the US Falls to Its Lowest-Ever Position
" Other Nordic countries are also once again at the top of the happiness rankings in the annual report published by the Wellbeing Research Centre at the University of Oxford. Besides Finland, Denmark, Iceland and Sweden remain the top four and in the same order.
As an example, the report suggests that people who believe that others are willing to return their lost wallet is a strong predictor of the overall happiness of a population. Nordic nations rank among the top places for expected and actual return of lost wallets, the study found.
These are interesting points. Iâve had lost items returned to me on multiple occasions, apartment complexes have laundry rooms where people just leave their clothes to dry unattended, bikes are stored unlocked in shared spaces - stuff that just wouldnât work in many places of the world. The Nordic model (despite its flaws), with its strong social safety nets and cultural norms around honesty and reciprocity, seems to have something to do with how happy people are.
Difficult to quantify but it would be cool to know how much the polarization impacts happiness. Canât be good when politics become this emotionally charged:
How Democrats and Republicans see each other
"According to the Pew Research Center, members of both parties who have unfavorable opinions of the opposing party have doubled since 1994 while those who have very unfavorable opinions of the opposing party are at record highs as of 2022. "
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At the moment, liberals are setting fire to Tesla cars, chargers, and dealerships
Liberals Defeat Nazis By Painting Swastikas Everywhere And Torching Immigrant Businesses
That canât be good for your mental health.
In 1968, Mitt Romneyâs father George Romney (a Mexican immigrant) was favorite to win the Republican nomination for the presidency, but ran a disastrous campaign and Richard Nixon secured the nomination.
George Romney had been CEO of American Motors (which much later was acquired by Chrysler in 1987), and there was a joke at the time that AMC must have made very good cars if George Romney could sell them.
I donât recall Democrats torching AMC cars back in 1968 to protest Romney.
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Reminds me of Nietzsche: "beware that, when fighting (real or perceived) monsters, you yourself do not become a monster."
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Liberals who bought Tesla vehicles to help the environment and look better than everyone else have
suddenly found themselves on the wrong side of history now that Elon Musk, under the direction of
President Trump, has begun rooting out waste and corruption in the U.S. government. Now bands of
raving leftists are vandalizing Tesla factories, dealerships, and vehicles to get back at the controversial
African-American immigrant.
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if theres anyone we should deporty. it should be the criminals. in my opinion theyve given up their rights to call themselves american.
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Canada is renting billboards across the US to push anti-tariff messages.
Not all tariffs are bad of course as Canada has higher tariffs than the US.
Iâm wondering whether FARA (the Foreign Agents Registration Act) would apply in this instance so that anyone involved in this would need to file paperwork with the DOJ.
FARA was used by the Lawfare group in DOJ/FBI during the Russia hoax to jail Republicans like Paul Manafort who had done work for foreign entities, but the same rules werenât applied to Democrats who had done similar work, or for that matter Hunter.