Trump has lied to Davos and is losing it but the invasion of Greenland is off

Donald Trump just said in his speech at Davos that Spanish flu ended the First World War. That didn't have anything to do with it. The Bulgarian campaign did.

Trump said Iceland 4 times in his speech when he meant Greenland.

When he told the Norwegian PM that he would be less peaceable having not been given Nobel Peace Prize and would need Greenland was he confusing Norway and Denmark?

The important news. The invasion of Greenland isn't going to happen.

Let's hope the great peacemaker doesn't attack Iran.

Trump lies saying Iran was 2 months away from having the atom bomb when he attacked. Tulsi Gabbard has said the CIA told her there was no danger of it happening.

Are they right?

"China is our enemy! Says who? Says us. Why is that? Because we made an enemy out of the them, same as we did to all of our enemies." Robert Lindsay, who is right.

"Forty years ago, the sociologist Charles Tilly concluded that state making may often have much in common with organized crime. This was particularly true when states first manufacture a ‘threat’ and then ‘protect’ their charges from this self-same manufactured threat. Doesn’t this exactly describe the political arrangement we currently have – indeed, that we have long been stuck with -- and by no means only with respect to Iran?" Paul Grenier

“Global warming is part of a natural cycle and there’s nothing we can actually do to stop these cycles. The world is now facing spending a vast amount of money in tax to try to solve a problem that doesn’t actually exist.” David Bellamy the botanist and famous British TV presenter in 2008. His TV career abruptly ended. I suspect he is right too.

Syria was a failed Anglo-American regime change attempt

Jeffrey Sachs says that the uprising in Syria against Assad was another US regime change attempt. I thought it began spontaneously but what do I know? 

This below is from the site of the Modern War Institute at West Point, the military academy where American army officers have trained.  I knew most of this but am astonished to see the American army admit what it did. Assad was saved by Putin sending forces to his rescue in retaliation for the Ukrainian revolution and by Donald Trump defeating Hillary Clinton. She said 8 days before the election she lost that regime change in Syria would be her top priority.

The Belgian Prime Minister admitted just now that European countries were just US satellites

“Being a happy vassal is one thing; being a miserable slave is something else. If you back down now you are going to lose your dignity.”

That Europe has been ruled by the USA for a long time (despite Eden and De Gaulle) is now obvious to everyone. It should have been all the time.

My simple solution to the Greenland question

People say European countries cannot fight the USA if it invades Greenland, but Denmark can send two or three  brigades of soldiers there and dare Trump to shoot them. 

Other countries can send men too.

TACO stands for 'Trump Always Chickens Out'.

Pepe Escobar yesterday

I pray Trump leaves Iran alone. Let's have no more illegal wars. I am sure he won't send in troops. If he did it would end in disaster for the USA.

"It took only a few days to unmask the massive propaganda campaign across NATOstan about “mass casualties” among Iran protesters.

"The – fake – figures came from the Center for Human Rights in Iran, located in, where else, New York, and financed by the CIA-infested National Endowment for Democracy (NED) in Washington and other assorted disinformation entities.

"The list of reasons for urgent regime change in Iran though remains off the charts, featuring, among others, these four key elements:

• Tehran must ditch the Axis of Resistance across West Asia supporting Palestine.

• Because Iran is at the privileged crossroads of trade/energy connectivity corridors in Eurasia, both its connections with the International North–South Transportation Corridor (INSTC) and China’s New Silk Roads (BRI) must be severed. That means blowing up from the inside organic intra-BRICS cooperation between Russia, Iran, India and China.
• As over 90% of Iranian oil exports go to China – and are settled in yuan – that’s a serious threat to the petrodollar: the ultimate anathema. That’s where in Empire of Permanent Strikes terms, Iran aligns with Venezuela. It’s our – petrodollar – way or the highway.
• The staying power of the never-ending dream of an Iran under the Shah remix – complete with a Shah-style SAVAK secret police; cozy Mossad ties to rein in those Arab barbarians; and a sprawling CIA-run net of surveillance hubs targeting both Russia and China."

The USA is still the greatest purveyor of violence in the world today

'But, they asked, what about Vietnam? They asked if our own nation wasn’t using massive doses of violence to solve its problems, to bring about the changes it wanted. Their questions hit home, and I knew that I could never again raise my voice against the violence of the oppressed in the ghettos without having first spoken clearly to the greatest purveyor of violence in the world today, my own government.'

Martin Luther King in 1967.

'That the Black Power movement comes right on top of the Six-Day War is another cruelty of this period. Stanley Levison, Dr. King’s closest adviser, said just a few days after the Six-Day War, We’re in a real pickle here because the architects of nonviolence theory, of the enlightenment of ethical culture, have always been Jewish, and the Jews are turning into hawks because of the Six-Day War. You know–Israel beat five Arab armies in six days, and muscular Judaism was born. And he said this is going to be a big crisis ’cause we’re going to lose a lot of brainpower for nonviolence.'

Historian Taylor Branch in the January 26, 2009 issue of The Nation. Levison was a Jewish Communist and one of King's two speechwriters.

The Vietnam war was a foolish adventure, though you can say that of most wars that are lost.

Unlike the US invasion of Iraq, US toppling of the Libyan government and Hillary Clinton's intention to topple the Syrian government had she won in 2016, the Vietnam war was legal and just. 

The North Vietnamese regime was also very much more horrible than Saddam's, Assad's, Gaddafi's, Milosevic's or the Iranian government today. 

But Vietnam was none of America's business.

Nor is Iran, whose government seems to have a lot of support to judge by the million people who came out in a demonstration days ago.

I find it incredible that she said this. As she thinks this, I expect the rulers of other advanced countries are thinking the same

“AI and technology can be transformative to the whole of the law and order space. When I was in justice, my ultimate vision for that part of the criminal justice system was to achieve, by means of AI and technology, what Jeremy Bentham tried to do with his Panopticon. That is that the eyes of the state can be on you at all times." British Home Secretary Shabana Mahmood, Secretary of State for Justice and Lord Chancellor from 2024 to 2025, in an interview with Sir Tony Blair last month. 

I imagine she has adopted an idea put to her by  a civil servant. Mentioning Bentham makes it sound like something an Oxford or Cambridge graduate would think up.

Quotations

“And now let us believe in a long year that is given to us, new, untouched, full of things that have never been…” Rilke

"Think of how stupid the average person is. And then realize that half of them are stupider than that." George Carlin

A pagan grace before drinking. Virgil, Aeneid 1.734, thanks to
Laudator Temporis Acti:

May Bacchus, giver of joy, be near ...

adsit laetitiae Bacchus dator ...

What they said about the Middle East

“As Gaza goes, we all go. And it’s really critical that we stand up, because Gazans are the canary in the mineshaft here and what happens in Gaza can happen and will happen anywhere." Green Party candidate for the US presidency Dr Jill Stein in April 2024

“You rush to impose new sanctions on Iran, yet Israel faces no sanctions after bombing Syria, Lebanon, Iraq, an Iranian consulate, and hospitals in Gaza.” Marc Botenga, far left Belgian MEP

Greenland

“We do not want to be rich like Americans. Look how greedy they are, even trying to invade their friends. We would not sell ourselves. We know what happened to Indigenous people in Alaska and Native Americans. Their land was taken, and they were not treated well.” Greenlandic politician Tillie Martinussen

"It is dangerous for the American president to back down over Greenland. This would weaken the position of the Republican Party in the midterm elections and likely result in a Democrat majority on Capitol Hill with the ensuing consequences for Trump. Whereas a rapid annexation of Greenland before the elections can change this political trend." Rossiyskaya Gazeta, newspaper published by the Russian government.

This is a very good idea!

 

How could a man who attacked seven countries last year be given the Nobel Peace prize?

In the last few minutes a letter Donald Trump sent to Norway’s Prime Minister over the weekend has been published.

"Dear Jonas: Considering your Country decided not to give me the Nobel Peace Prize for having stopped 8 Wars PLUS, I no longer feel an obligation to think purely of Peace, although it will always be predominant, but can now think about what is good and proper for the United States of America. Denmark cannot protect that land from Russia or China, and why do they have a “right of ownership” anyway? There are no written documents, it’s only that a boat landed there hundreds of years ago, but we had boats landing there, also. I have done more for NATO than any other person since its founding, and now, NATO should do something for the United States. The World is not secure unless we have Complete and Total Control of Greenland. Thank you! President DJT”

The government of Norway has no say in who receives the Nobel Peace Prize. That is decided by the Nobel Institute, a body set up under Alfred Nobel's will which is located in Norway but is an independent entity. 

I knew this when I was ten.

The United States can already station as many troops in Greenland as it likes under an agreement made in 1951 by which the USA recognises Danish sovereignty over the island. 

By an earlier treaty if Denmark wants to give away Greenland she must first offer it to Great Britain but I don't see Starmer asserting his right to first dibs.

How could a man who financed the Israelis in Gaza and attacked seven countries last year be given the Nobel Peace prize?

The idea of taking Greenland was suggested to Trump by his billionaire friend Ronald Lauder who (at least now) owns assets there.

According to the Center for American Progress, “since Trump was reelected, Trump and his family have amassed more than $1.8 billion in cash and gifts from leveraging the presidency for personal gain, including over $1.2 billion in crypto." 

I wonder if Steve Witkoff and Jared Kushner mix diplomacy with business when they talk to Russians, Israelis and Arabs.

Retired US Col Douglas Macgregor

The interview is here. Unlike the Colonel, I do not side with Vladimir Putin, but I do see that he was sorely provoked by Washington. Washington provokes a lot of countries and attacks a lot of countries. Israel does the same. Washington and Jerusalem created the recent turmoil in Iran.

'We are in a state of decline in terms of economic strength, military power, prosperity across the boards, internal cohesion. The Russians, the Chinese, Indians and others are viewing us as a potentially dangerous and irrational actor on the world stage.'

 

'But we've failed in Russia. We wanted to go in there, break the country up, rape it for its resources. That's failed miserably. We have not destroyed the national cohesion or unity of Iran. We don't have control of its oil and gas resources. And now we have China which imports roughly 80% of Iran's oil very interested in ensuring the straits of Hormuz stay open. So how far can you press this war with Iran?'

'We are heart and soul bound to the Israeli state and we are absolutely in the clutches of the billionaires in the United States who want us permanently committed to Israel. Whether we want to admit it or not, we really are committed to the Greater Israel Project.' 

Mad

“The only normal people are the ones you don't know very well.” Alfred Adler


“The days are coming when men will go mad; and, when they meet a man who has kept his senses, they will rise up against him, saying, ‘You are mad, because you are not like us.’" St. Anthony of the Desert


Doctor: You're mad.
Patient: I demand a second opinion.
Doctor: You're ugly too.

NATO is the problem

NATO countries including the USA are in a terrible danger from the consequences of US policy towards Russia since Clinton attacked Kosovo. It could go horribly badly. 

Is it possible for America, Great Britain and Europe to make terms with Russia and be on good terms with Russia before Odessa falls?

If he had the wisdom of Metternich or Bismarck Merz would see that peace and trade with Russia and China offer many advantages.

Germany made big sacrifices when she obeyed Biden, stopped trade with Russia and went cold on China. 

A German friendship with China is Washington’s greatest fear.

The worst possibility is that Europe will slide into war as it did in 1914 and 1939, from incompetent diplomacy. I don't see it happening but it is not impossible.

NATO of course is the reason for the war in Ukraine. 

We knew it before but this post by Arnaud Bertrand makes it even clearer. 

This piece, by Naman Habtom of Quincy Institute, is something that Europeans should think long and hard about: why has integrating Russia into regional frameworks produced security and low military budgets in Asia, while excluding Russia has produced the opposite in Europe?

Very striking to see that over the past 30 years, most of Russia's neighbors in Asia - and that includes China - have been REDUCING their military budgets as a share of GDP.

I actually checked and European neighbors of Russia spend roughly 3x more on defense as a share of GDP than Russia's Asian neighbors. Even more striking, the closer a European country is to Russia and the further east it sits, the more it spends (Poland/Baltics at 3-4%), while in Asia the pattern is reversed - Mongolia and Kazakhstan, with the longest borders, spend the least (0.5-0.6%).

And it's not an "autocracy" thing. As the article highlights, Mongolia is actually rated more democratic by Freedom House than several NATO members like Bulgaria or Poland (freedomhouse.org/countr…). And it is, like them, a former Soviet satellite state.

Which means the difference isn't regime type - it's strategic architecture. Mongolia, and the region as a whole, chose integration over exclusion. The result: more security, and at a fraction of the cost.

He links to this. 

Most of us know by now, despite misinformation in the traditional media, that USA is the most dangerous country in the world, much more so than Russia or North Korea, except in the Middle East, where Israel is the great danger and the USA acts as a restraining influence. 

Netanyahu: Israel is destroying homes in Gaza, so Palestinians have nowhere else to go but outside the Strip

From the Times of Israel, 13 May 2025:

Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu told lawmakers during closed-door testimony before the the Knesset’s Foreign Affairs and Defense Committee yesterday that Israel is “destroying more and more houses [in Gaza and Palestinians accordingly] have nowhere to return,” according to quotes from the session leaked to the media.

“The only obvious result will be Gazans choosing to emigrate outside of the Strip,” Netanyahu continued. “But our main problem is finding countries to take them in.”

Ha'aretz recently.

This man who calls himself Tom London on X says he is a 64 year old British Jew. I think he is probably right in this post.

Tom London

@TomLondon6

The event that has MOST caused the complete collapse of the post WW2 laws & norms designed to make the world safer, is the GENOCIDE in Gaza For over 2 years the whole world saw pitiless mass murder day after day and politicians & media shrugged, ignored or cheered on

Israel failed badly in Iran

Russia gave Iran the means to hack Starlink and by closing the internet apparently it was possible for the Iranian authorities to see who was using Starlink. 

I sympathise with the Iranians who want rid of their government but not with this illegal aggression by Israel and the USA. 

A lot of people died. A lot of innocent people seem to have been deliberately killed by Mossad and/or CIA assets. Tapes are on social media. 

A lot were killed in retaliation by the government forces.

How many died? Thousands, the Ayatollah said. 

It was a bloody attempted coup 

Lots of Kurds have been killed. 

By comparison, deaths during the Iranian revolution from January 1978 to February 1979 are thought to have been between 532 and 2,781, though many more were killed after the Islamic revolution succeeded.

If the USA can do this how can they condemn Putin for wanting to do something comparable in Ukraine? 

Putin expected his men to be greeted as liberators in Kiev, at least by the Ukrainians he had been paying for years. 

Some of those Ukrainians tried to do some things but were dealt with by the Ukrainian government without publicity.

Alon Mizrahi describes himself on X as an 'ex-Israeli, anti-Zionist Arab Jew'. He posted this two hours ago.

'And what an amazing stroke of luck Iran had, because of Israel's overconfidence and stupidity: unable to contain itself and sure of its ability to make the US go to war, Israel did not wait and activated its (and the West's) most lethal terror cells prematurely, allowing Iran to weed them out and take them down, and discover and destroy their networks calmly and methodically, with no rush. 

'Just imagine if those thousands of hired terrorists were free to do what they did with war raging and Iran under heavy attacks: them roaming the cities and towns and gunning down rescuers and medical teams, blowing up hospitals and mosques, and ambushing military units, police, and volunteers. The damage would have been terrible. 

'Israel's stupidity and arrogance gave Iran a truly valuable gift last week. When the war does come, they will have a much quieter home front.'

Elon Musk

Most politicians are just the actors on the stage. You don't see the scriptwriters, directors and producers who control them. 

Even without “replacement”, birth rates are super low almost everywhere on Earth. Unless that changes, entire cultures and countries will disappear.

A dying fall

"BREAKING: over 1 in 3 babies aborted in the UK An estimated 300,000 babies were aborted in the UK in 2025 - the highest ever number." Headline


“Peoples of European descent are not only in relative decline, but in absolute decline. They are aging, dying, disappearing. This is the existential crisis of the West.” Pat Buchanan, Suicide of a Superpower

Landeur 

@Landeur

For perspective: You're more likely to survive 9 months on the front lines of Ukraine than in the womb of a British woman. This is abominable.