State of the Discussion

russell: I did not say they did. I specifically support moves by the EU and Denmark to take global security vis-a-vis Greenland seriously that take any sort of unilateral action off the table.

lj: most of them are talking about the precedent of Panama and Noriega . . .

If memory serves, Noriega tried every argument that Maduro might try and failed as far as the extradition is concerned in his criminal case. Things don't look great for him from a criminal law perspective. Of course separation of powers, international law and foreign policy concerns are another matter.

I’m hoping bc will tell us what her reasoning is (or will be) about the menacing of Greenland (or its takeover), given her extraordinary comments about the US occupation in WW2, bearing in mind for example that Greenland has been Danish longer than the United States has existed.

Well, I'm a guy, but thanks for not assuming. And while I am reluctant to respond to what appears to be another litmus test of some sort, I'll bite.

I think the comments by both Trump and Miller are stupid, disrespectful and unnecessary. It threatens NATO. Prodding NATO members to pay their fair share is one thing. This is entirely another. Or is it?

Maybe it's prodding to wake Denmark and the EU up. There is a geopolitical reality that Denmark's comments seem to indicate it isn't really grasping the threat, IMO. I hear about Greenlander self-determination but precious little about the strategic threat posed by the Russians and Chinese and what I understand is an inadequate response by Greenland specifically and Denmark and the EU in general. As I understand it, Greenland's autonomy has led to more Chinese involvement than the US wants (and in fairness, Denmark seems to be concerned too). China is claiming to be a "near arctic state" and is expanding its influence in places like Greenland (and the waters off of Alaska). The Chinese want access to the rare earth minerals in Greenland and access to shipping lanes and have signaled they want more. Trump has made it clear that Greenland's location and rare earths are a national security concern. Because of the strategic importance and threat to the US, the US is right to be very concerned about any Chinese or Russian presence in or near Greenland.

I don't see my comments about WWII and Greenland as extraordinary. The question was whether the GRU letter prompted Trump's comments on Greenland. I wasn't using WWII as an excuse to annex Greenland.

That being said, when I hear "Danish longer than the United States has existed," that was true at the time of WWII and the geopolitical reality required its occupation militarily. Could that be the case in the future? It doesn't need to be if the situation could be dealt with by agreement now. And maybe it has been to a large extent in terms of US military access? Denmark signed an agreement last July that had been sitting on its desk since 2023 (drafted under Biden). Why did it take so long? Why is that not enough? Agreement here:

https://www.fmn.dk/globalassets/fmn/dokumenter/nyheder/2023/-us-denmark-dca-den-prime-english-20dec2023-.pdf

Interesting discussion about the agreement here ("we had to do it" vs. "But Trump!!"):

https://www.dw.com/en/denmark-finalizes-us-defense-deal-despite-greenland-gripes/a-73210846

Before, the US had to coordinate and it appears Denmark may not have been all that nimble in responding. But maybe this is entirely about giving China access and threatening security and not taking the threat (and the Russians in the Arctic) seriously. If you think the belts and roads initiative is entirely benign, well, I don't. And the Chinese have tried in Greenland (airport and harbor).

Yes, Denmark's claim to Greenland deserves respect. So does the fact that the US tends to pay the bill when things get really tough. Denmark has historically been way behind on NATO commitments. Trump is right to push NATO countries into their fair share (Canada, that means you). You would think Russian aggression would prompt more concern about Greenland. And maybe, just maybe, all this rhetoric is meant to get Denmark and the EU to care enough to do something about it. It seems to be working. Interesting article here from an EU perspective that covers what EU should do (and I largely agree with the suggestions).

https://www.epc.eu/publication/its-a-bargain-the-case-of-greenland/

I have some sympathy for the folks who, a year ago, were just doing their routine jobs as customs inspectors. And now are tarred by association with the horrific thugs Trump, Noem, and Miller have recruited and unleashed.

It seems that what used to be disqualifications are now job requirements for federal agents.

"Video of the shooting, obtained by the Minnesota Reformer, shows a SUV stopped at an angle in the street as a pickup truck with emergency lights on approaches and stops in front of it. Masked ICE agents exited the truck and immediately ordered the woman to get out. As the officers started to pull on the door handles of the SUV, the woman backed the SUV up and then started to pull away, forcing an ICE officer who had stepped in front of the driver-side bumper out of the way. The officer drew his gun and fired three shots in quick succession into the car. The SUV continued down the street a short distance before crashing."

ICE Shoots and Kills Woman in Minneapolis: Video shows ICE officers were trying to pull the woman out of her car when she started to drive away, leading an officer to fire three shots through her window.

I just watched a video of an ICE agent shooting dead a woman in her car, in Minnesota.

Then I read a statement about the shooting from President Trump, who claims that he's watched the video and it shows that she "violently, willfully, and viciously ran over the ICE Officer who seems to have shot her in self defense".

The video is readily available online. It clearly shows that the Officer was in no danger of being hit by her slow-moving vehicle. He fires three shots, one of them through the very corner of her windscreen - the bullet-hole is on video - the others through the side window, which appears to have been open.

Who are the Rs going to believe? Their president, or their eyes?

Regarding " narcoterrorism", apart from the obvious Netflix reference (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Narcos), I always feel that these compound words are coined because they roll of the tongue so easily and thus become popular.

Other examples are:

Islamo-fascism
Islamo-gauchisme

bc, just a short note to thank you for answering. I'm getting most of my information from podcasts as opposed to written pieces, (which I think is a bad thing for everyone, it's difficult to nail down particular points), and most of them are talking about the precedent of Panama and Noriega, but the information is so scattered that, coupled with the inability to accept anything that comes out of admin mouths as being true or not makes it difficult to follow, which makes me think parsing all this is baasically a fool's errand.

Now I can see it, but it still has “awaiting approval” or whatever the exact wording is.

I didn't notice that unspamming it left it waiting for approval, rather than just releasing it completely.

Trump wants four things:

• to keep out of jail
• to have people telling him how great he is
• to make a lot of money
• to be remembered as a great president.

Controlling Venezuela is aimed at making money - he hopes to be paid to bestow oil rights. Kidnapping Maduro is to encourage foreign presidents to toady to him and to bribe him.

Greenland is a greatness project - he wants his legacy to include expanding the territory of the United States

In reality, Venezuela doesn't traffic significant amounts of illegal drugs to the USA - look at the map. The US doesn't need to own Greenland to meet its security needs: Denmark has always co-operated with the US. But facts about his purported justifications are irrelevant to him, because those justifications are not his real reasons.

And an opinion about the comments by Steven Miller about this issue would also be welcome.

J. K. Rowling hasn't yet admitted that Miller is the template for her Lord Voldemort character.

Fake headline from social media:
Maduro says he’s in the country illegally, asks ICE to deport him.

Kinda appalling that, if he did, it might even work. (Although being deported to South Sudan would be only a small improvement for him.)

Somehow I’m in the spam bucket after a comment with no links or anything else I can imagine would flag it.

Freed it. Spam filters are the magic sauce in commercial blogging software. Good ones make sites usable. The companies don't reveal how it works, so there's no reliable way to warn people about what not to do. That's actually understandable: if the spam-detection algorithms were revealed, the spammers would be working even harder to find ways to defeat them.

"How can one be even-handed about this?"

Thank you.

Maduro was not the legitimate winner of the recent election in Venezuela. So a POTUS who exactly five years ago attempted a violent autogolpe to remain in power is going to remove him.

Maduro allegedly is involved in trafficing narcotics. So a POTUS who quite recently pardoned another corrupt leader who was in jail for the crime of trafficing narcotics is going to remove him.

This was an exercise in naked power. Folks around Trump have their own various reasons for championing it. Trump's own reasons are obscure, but could be as simple as his enjoyment of exercises in naked power. Most likely he thinks there is some upside for him, personally, most likely because one of his minions told him so. Good luck to him with that.

I am beyond confident that none of them - not one - is motivated by a desire for a free and peaceful Venezuela. Venezuela is just another example of, to quote Ledeen, a crappy little country that we can throw against the wall.

And Miller's observations about what makes the world go around is how we get world wars. The man is a cancer on the nation.

Venezuelans (papist Latino weaklings) are not expected to put up as much or as successful a resistance as the sand n-words in the Middle East. 

Because it is so much more difficult to hide resistance groups in heavy jungle than it is in the desert. Riiiiight....

“We live in a world in which, you can talk about international niceties and everything else, but we live in a world, in the real world … that is governed by strength, that is governed by force, that is governed by power. These are the iron laws of the world since the beginning of time,” he continued. 

Does this mean I could beat the living sh*t out of Stephen Miller and it would be okay with him?

How can one be even-handed about this? It's clearly illegal according to international law, the charges are ridiculous and hypocritical and the self-interested motivation is crystal clear.

This is just normalization.

I guess that Venezuela is seen as different from Iraq because Venezuelans (papist Latino weaklings) are not expected to put up as much or as successful a resistance as the sand n-words in the Middle East. The US looks at a long tradition of controlling South American countries via right-wing authoritarian proxies who use death squads.

No doubt, this will be enthusiastically repeated when the US invades Greenland and thereby officially ends the postwar consensus and NATO:

“We live in a world, in the real world, ... that is governed by strength, that is governed by force, that is governed by power,” he said. “These are the iron laws of the world since the beginning of time.”

Stephen Miller Asserts U.S. Has Right to Take Greenland

https://www.nytimes.com/2026/01/05/us/politics/stephen-miller-greenland-venezuela.html?unlocked_article_code=1.CVA.rKYs.cbVC6hJAGyHB&smid=url-share

WRT "narcoterrorism" - hoo boy, how fraught and tactical a word.

The FBI defines international terrorism as "Violent, criminal acts committed by individuals and/or groups who are inspired by, or associated with, designated foreign terrorist organizations or nations." From that definition, all that is required is for the federal government to declare a group or a nation as "terrorist." They are a bit more helpful on the subject of domestic terrorism: "Violent, criminal acts committed by individuals and/or groups to further ideological goals stemming from domestic influences, such as those of a political, religious, social, racial, or environmental nature." Neither of these definitions, however, really do much to differentiate terrorism from other political crimes, especially hate crimes.

From my readings on the subject, I think that the crucial element of terrorism is that terrorism is a narrative crime. The media identity of the party doing the terrorizing must be announced to the public, or at the very least the reason for the violent spectacle must be made known to the public in some way, and that violence must have an ideological goal. I'd argue that the tool of the violence itself is not the weapon of the terrorist, but rather that the media is the weapon and that the media narrative is the intended injury.

From this viewpoint the Mexican cartels would qualify as narcoterrorists, but only in as much as they engage in kidnap, torture, and grisly executions as a means to subjugate the Mexican populace and intimidate, subvert, or control the legitimate government. Killing US citizens with the product that they sell is not an act of terror, it's just an illegal business enterprise. The drug cartels don't have any ideological goals they are trying to achieve through the deaths of their customers. They'd probably prefer to keep those customers alive in order to continue selling the drugs to them.

Maduro was a tyrant who violated the human rights of Venezuelans: https://www.amnesty.org/en/location/americas/south-america/venezuela/report-venezuela/ He engaged in political intimidation and authorized arbitrary detentions and unfair trials for his political opponents. He wielded the Bolivaran National Guard against his political opponents in much the same way that the KKK engaged in terrorism against blacks after the Civil War.

But "narcoterrorism" against the US? That's propaganda. The illegal drug trade is just typical organized crime, and not the sort of thing that justifies military intervention in my non-lawyerly view of things.

On editing... To add slightly to @wj's comment, you generally have to be logged in to WordPress and have sufficient privileges to edit comments. I have enough privileges to be really dangerous, so if I want to edit, I log in, do the edit, then log out immediately.