A huge anti-US and anti-Israel banner hanging on a building in Tehran, Iran.
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Header image is courtesy of Middle East Eye, cropped and slightly enhanced by me.
The EU would be unable defend itself without the US, NATO Secretary General Mark Rutte has said. The bloc’s members would have to spend up to 10% of their GDP on their militaries, which could still be insufficient, he told the European Parliament on Monday.
The secretary general warned that those who “really want to go it alone” should “forget that you can ever get there with 5%” of GDP spent on defense. The bloc would need to at least double that sum, as well as to invest in its own nuclear capability, which “costs billions, billions and billions of euros,” he argued, adding that going alone would mean that “you will lose.”
NATO agreed to the 5% spending threshold at a summit in The Hague last year. The demand was originally made by US President Donald Trump, who has since received endless praise from Rutte. On Monday, he once again lauded the president for making nations like “Spain and Italy and Belgium and Canada” live up to their current 2% spending commitments, as well as agreeing to the new threshold.
Washington has repeatedly stated it would be scaling back commitments to its European allies and urging them to take on greater responsibility for their own security. Last week, the Pentagon said it would prioritize “defending the US Homeland and deterring China.”
Full story at: RT International. Related: Trump is Running the World Like a Mafia Boss
Background image is courtesy of Scanpix, modified by me.
Jared Kushner, who serves as a US special envoy, announced plans for a “New Gaza” – complete with shiny skyscrapers, coastal tourist attractions and entire districts dedicated to business and commerce.
Kushner told world leaders in Davos, Switzerland, during the World Economic Forum that the Palestinian enclave would be run under “free market economy principles” that seek to mirror the “same mindset and same approach” as Trump’s America.
Analysts believe that this plan is yet another example of corporations and individuals attempting to profit from war and genocide.
“People have made money from this genocide and it’s a continuation,” Daniel Levy, a British-Israeli analyst and former peace negotiator, told Middle East Eye. Over 71,500 Palestinians have been killed in the war on Gaza, which has been recognised as a genocide by the United Nations, genocide scholars and human rights organisations.
Full story at: Middle East Eye
Header image is courtesy of The Nation, resized and slightly enhanced by me.
Watching Trump toy with the EU over his vows to seize Greenland is infuriating in the same way that a friend keeps calling you nonstop to describe her nutcase live-in partner, without actually doing anything about it. Know what unnerves a bully? Unpredictability.
Bullies love predictable victims. Ask any woman who has suddenly gone off-script and ended up labeled ‘crazy’ by some deserving man. A woman who doesn’t flinch is terrifying to a bully. Hence the diagnosis.
So why is the EU still playing defense? And so poorly, at that. Sending Danish and Greenlandic leaders on a trip across the Atlantic to negotiate with their blackmailers on the abuser’s own turf and hoping for the best? The minute someone starts manipulating, strong-arming, and intimidating you, you go no-contact. Block them. Then sit back and let them fill in the blanks with every possible worst-case scenario.
Instead, you’re sending European materiel and troops to Greenland for military exercises, all while the US is still kicking its feet up inside NATO and bragging that he’ll eventually get what he wants if he leaves the right amount of cash on Greenland’s nightstand. That’s like living with an abusive partner while insisting on staying under the same roof, thinking that they’ll be deterred because you’ve taken up Boxercise classes and flex in front of them by opening jars of pickles with your bare hands.
You want him to simmer down for real? Call his bluff. Kick him out. Change the locks on all the military bases that he’s installed inside your house. He may have too much stuff to relocate to the front yard. Fine. Then bomb it for extra giggles. Smash that windshield, girl! Key that Mercedes!
Full story at: RT International. Related: Trump is Running the World Like a Mafia Boss
Header image is courtesy of BBC, cropped and slightly enhanced by me.
Europe is too weak to stand up to US President Donald Trump’s ambitions to bring Greenland under American control, journalism professor Greg Simons has said.
Trump stated last week that the US must annex Greenland – a Danish self-governing island – to contain Russia and China, claiming the two countries would “take over” the island unless Washington acted first. Several media outlets have since reported that the UK, France and other European states are discussing plans to send ground forces to Greenland to signal that they take Arctic security seriously.
Speaking to RT on Tuesday, Simons, who teaches at Daffodil International University in Dhaka, Bangladesh, said European governments lack the strength and will to resist Trump.
“A jellyfish has more spine than these Europeans and the EU at this stage,” he argued, calling their stance “hypocritical.”
Commenting on the reports of a potential deployment, Simons said such a move would be largely symbolic. Any European troop presence in Greenland or the wider Arctic would amount to “a token number of troops” facing an “imaginary threat of Chinese and Russian destroyers and submarines,” he argued, adding that even Denmark had acknowledged there were no such vessels in the area.
Full story at: RT International
Header image is courtesy of Reuters, cropped and slightly enhanced by me.
When US President Donald Trump returned to the topic of acquiring Greenland – one that seemed largely forgotten just a month ago – the idea wasn’t considered mere ‘theatrics’, particularly in Europe. And it’s not just about the ‘Maduro effect’. Beneath Trump’s provocative statements, a clear geopolitical strategy is emerging, one that can be termed ‘new globalism’. This approach is far more economically grounded than the concept of globalization, even US-centric globalization.
Trump’s ‘new globalism’ consists of three logically interconnected components:
Transforming the US into an energy superpower that monopolizes the rules of the game in the hydrocarbon market, particularly in regional trade
Enhancing America’s status as an Arctic superpower – a position that the US currently holds only nominally
Trump’s actions are quite logical: dismantling Nicolas Maduro’s regime is crucial for turning Latin America’s resources into a source of short-term economic stability for the US. This is Trump’s ‘entrance ticket’ into the world of ‘new globalism’. America cannot become an energy superpower unless it has control over Venezuela’s (and eventually Brazil’s and Iran’s) oil resources and eliminates ‘shadow fleets’ as soon as possible. Similarly, achieving full legal control over Greenland is essential for establishing the US as an Arctic power. Otherwise, it would be difficult for the US to maintain competitiveness as an energy superpower after 2030.
Full story at: RT International. Header image is courtesy of Mental Floss, cropped and slightly enhanced by me. See also:
“We must replace the European Union’s High Representative for [Foreign Affairs and Security] Policy, Ms. Kallas,” he said, urging the bloc to “come to its senses.” The bloc’s leadership only knows how to “hate Russia” but are unable to come up with any viable solutions to ongoing crises, according to Fico, whose nation joined the EU in 2004.
Kallas is known for her hardline anti-Russian stance. Last year, she told nations that want to join the EU not to celebrate the 80th anniversary of the defeat of Nazi Germany, prompting the Russian State Duma chairman, Vyacheslav Volodin, to call her a “crazy Russophobe.” She has also accused Russia of attacking dozens of nations over the past 100 years while claiming that it had not been attacked by anyone and ignoring the history of WWII.
According to the Slovak leader, some EU nations do not want peace and only want to weaken Russia “through war” – a strategy he said was not working. Fico has previously called Ukraine a “black hole” of corruption that has swallowed billions of euros from the bloc. In December, he refused to provide further funding for Ukraine’s military as part of EU efforts, arguing that the conflict could not be settled on the battlefield.
Source: RT International
Background image is courtesy of Getty Images, cropped and modified by me. See also:
“History doesn’t repeat itself, but it often rhymes.” The deployment of foreign fleets off Venezuela’s coasts leading to the proclamation of two corollaries to the Monroe Doctrine, 123 years apart, seems a confirmation of this saying, attributed to the celebrated writer, humorist and anti-imperialist Mark Twain.
Theodore Roosevelt, however, used the 1902 crisis to amend the Monroe Doctrine in line with the rapacious interests of US imperialism as a rising global power. Trump’s “corollary,” while tipping its hat to TR, is the expression of that same power’s increasingly intractable crisis and loss of global hegemony, which it desperately seeks to overcome by means of militarism and aggression.
China has already outstripped the US as South America’s leading trade partner and is expected to overtake it throughout Latin America and the Caribbean by 2035. It is carrying out large scale infrastructure investments, from the new deep-water port at Chancay, Peru to the creation of 5-G networks, that the US is unable to match. Meanwhile, the European Union is also seeking its own access to the region’s strategically vital sources of raw materials.
Under these conditions, the National Security Strategy document issued by the White House on December 4 states:
The path set out by this new assertion of the Monroe Doctrine seems, at first glance, more delusional than “common-sense.” It represents, more than at any other historical juncture, the sure road to war. The aims spelled out by the Trump administration cannot be achieved outside of military conquest and direct military confrontation with nuclear-armed China and Russia.
At the same time, the drive to impose neo-colonial shackles upon Latin America will inevitably provoke a gigantic eruption of the class struggle throughout the Western Hemisphere.
The alternatives have never been more stark. The working class must unite its struggles across national boundaries, in the Americas and beyond, to put an end to capitalism, or this moribund system will drag humanity into the abyss of a nuclear third world war.
Text extracted from: “From Roosevelt to Trump, Part 1 and 2”.
He built his election campaign on the promise of being an anti-war candidate – a claim so blatantly false that it now risks dividing the so-called Make America Great Again (MAGA) movement.
For a brief moment, some entertained the idea that Trump’s brand of conservatism might be anti-war, while the neo-liberals were pushing for more war.
No more. The fallacy has been well and truly exposed. Trump has revealed himself to be no different from those before him. He’s as much of a war hawk as those he decried in his campaign speeches. While the presidency may change, American foreign policy remains constant. It is centered on more wars driven by resource acquisitions and profit.
And let’s be clear. What the United States did to Venezuela wasn’t a matter of legitimate foreign policy, counter-narcotics, or “law enforcement” by any reasonable standard.
It was a straight-up violation of international law. Bombing a sovereign nation, killing civilians while kidnapping its democratically-elected president, and hauling him to New York like a war trophy.
No UN mandate. No approval from Congress. No extradition process. No legal justification that survives five minutes of basic scrutiny. Just brute force and a smirk.
This was always who Trump was. So let’s call this latest act of military aggression what it truly is: kidnapping for oil. Modern colonialism.
Trump didn’t even bother hiding the motive. He openly declared that the US would “run” Venezuela, a country sitting on the world’s largest proven oil reserves. It is criminal extortion.
Source: Press TV. Header image resized and slightly enhanced by me.
The US President has repeatedly hinted at the prospect of having Greenland become an annexed part of the United States. He recently told reporters that the country “need(s) Greenland from the standpoint of national security”, citing how the country’s location is of strategic value when it comes to defence purposes.
Trump’s threats have renewed fears of a US invasion of the island, which is self-governed but remains part of the Danish kingdom. Denmark also continues to control Greenland’s foreign affairs and defense.
Now, Icelandic music legend Björk has shared a note of solidarity with the people of Greenland, hitting out at Trump – and Denmark – and voicing her support for the country’s independence.
“I wish all Greenlanders blessing in their fight for independence,” she began, going on to make reference to her own country’s history. “Icelanders are extremely relieved that they managed to break from the Danish in 1944. We didn’t lose our language (my children would be speaking danish now), and I burst with sympathy for Greenlanders.”
Björk went on to highlight the scandal of “forced contraception” in the mid-’60s and early ‘70s. She acknowledged last year’s lawsuit by 143 women accusing the Danish government of forcibly giving them IUDs without their consent in an effort to limit Greenland’s population growth. An official inquiry found that around 4,500 Greenlandic Indigenous women were impacted by the forced contraception campaign.
Björk also criticised the parental competency tests that were banned in May 2025, tests which forced families to be separated as young Inuit children were taken from their parents and given to Danish foster families.
Source: EuroNews. Header image is courtesy of Vanity Fair, cropped by me.
Against the Grain 