In The Shadow Of Mt Hollywood

Via the UK Evening Standard : Britain is in talks with European allies about deploying a military force to Greenland in an effort to dissuade Donald Trump from seizing the Arctic island. Military chiefs are drawing up plans for a possible Nato mission that would involve troops, warships and aircraft protecting the strategically important territory from Russian and Chinese aggression. British officials have held discussions with counterparts in Germany and France in recent days as preparations for the operation begin to take shape, The Telegraph reported. The plans, which remain at an early stage, are aimed at persuading Mr Trump to drop his controversial plans to annex Greenland, a self-governed island that is part of Denmark. European nations believe that significantly boosting their military presence in the Arctic would allow the US president to claim victory by arguing that America's allies were shouldering more of the financial burden. As best I can figure this out,...

Let me see if I can tally up what's happened just since tbe new year: Trump raided Venezuela and removed its dictator Tim Walz dropped out of the Minnesota governor's race in the face of widespread allegations that he enabled Somali fraud There have been two ICE officer-involved shootings that appear to have been justified but badly misreported by legacy media Inchoate questions have been asked about who's funding national anti-ICE demonstrations Anti-government demonstrations have spread in Iran, leading to expectations that the mullahs may fall Trump has intensified his campaign to take over Greenland A coalition of NATO and other countries have organized to fund a continuing war in Ukraine The Trump administration has upped its efforts to investigate and eliminate fraud by and on behalf of illegal migrants. The puzzling thing is how little intelligent or informed reporting or commentary we're seeing about ...

As of this morning : Political leaders in Greenland strongly rejected U.S. President Donald Trump's proposal to bring the Arctic island under American control, saying Greenland’s future belongs to its people. In a joint statement on Friday, Prime Minister Jens-Frederik Nielsen and four party leaders made it clear that any decisions about the territory’s status, which is now a self-governing part of the Kingdom of Denmark, must be made by Greenlanders themselves. “We don’t want to be Americans, we don’t want to be Danes — we want to be Greenlanders,” they said. As of yesterday , US President Donald Trump on Friday again suggested the use of force to seize Greenland as he brushed aside Denmark's sovereignty over the autonomous Arctic island. "We are going to do something on Greenland, whether they like it or not," Trump said at a White House meeting with oil executives looking to benefit in Venezuela, where the United States last week overthrew the p...

The one thing nobody's mentioned about the officer-involved shooting in Minneapolis Wednesday is that yet again, we have a well-publicized case of political violence connected with sexual deviance . A blood-covered woman who identified herself as the wife of Renee Nicole Good hysterically blamed herself for her partner’s killing at the hands of ICE agents, gut-wrenching footage shows. The woman was filmed distraught and sobbing just steps from Good’s wrecked car in Minneapolis Wednesday morning, as a neighbor who heard the commotion asked her what happened. “I made her come down here, it’s my fault,” the woman said through sobs. “They just shot my wife.” “They shot her in the head. I have a 6-year-old in school,” she appeared to say. . . . Just before the gunshots were heard, she was seen closely following federal agents and filming them. She was also standing near the car when the shots rang out, and didn’t seem to notice that anything had happened until the vehicl...

In the midst of his ruminations on Trump's desire to acquire Greenland, Danish Prime Minister Mette Frederiksen cut to the chase : “If the United States decides to militarily attack another Nato country, then everything would stop – that includes Nato and therefore post-second world war security,” Frederiksen told Danish television network TV2. He was, of course, referring to remarks from the administration earlier this week : US President Donald Trump has been discussing "a range of options" to acquire Greenland, including use of the military, the White House said. The White House told the BBC that acquiring Greenland - a semi-autonomous region of fellow Nato member Denmark – was a "national security priority". The statement came hours after European leaders issued a joint statement rallying behind Denmark, which has been pushing back against Trump's ambitions for the Arctic island. I've got to give the intellectual welterweights ...

Reports that have trickled out over the past several days indicate that Trump decided to leave Delcy Rodriguez, who had been Maduro's vice president, in place following Maduro's removal. She was sworn in as "interim president" on Monday by her brother, Jorge Rodríguez, the President of the National Assembly. According to CBS News , She quickly denounced the U.S. operation as a violation of the United Nations founding charter and a unilateral attempt to force regime change on Saturday, but soon adopted a more conciliatory tone. In a social media post following a Cabinet meeting on Sunday, Rodríguez called for "respectful international relations" between Caracas and Washington and extended an invite for "the U.S. government to collaborate with us on an agenda of cooperation." . . . Mr. Trump said Saturday that the U.S. had been in contact with Rodríguez and "she's essentially willing to do what we think is necessary to make V...

One of the most persistent images in cinema is George C Scott limning General Patton's words in front of an American flag. So far, Trump looks like the kind of winner Patton imagined, assuming his bet that the remnant of the Maduro regime will cooperate with the US going forward pays off. The success of the operation vindicates his choice of Secretary Hegseth and Hegseth's purge of the Biden Pentagon, something that had been in question for much of the past year. The operation was a demnonstration of US technological superiority : At the core of Venezuela’s defensive architecture was a network of radars supplied by the China Electronics Technology Group, including JYL-1 three-dimensional surveillance systems and the JY-27 metric-wave radar, which for years had been promoted as a supposed “stealth aircraft hunter“. Based on assessments of the swift and decisive operation, these sensors were disabled during the initial phase through intensive electronic jamming, leav...