Posts Tagged ‘Trump’

Both Venezuela and Greenland are part of the Great US-China Game

January 20, 2026

I have been amazed at the stupidity of the European response to Trump’s rhetoric about Greenland. They seem to have no clue as to the game that is being played. While Trump is negotiating they are reacting to tactics and red herrings and have no idea what the end goal is and even which game is being played. It is not that Trump is conferring idiocy upon the clueless European leaders – they have been self-harming themselves!

For the US (Trump) the motive in both regions is not personal pique or detest for Maduro. It is not either about resources for just their own sake.  This is part of the Great Game between the US and China for the coming 100 years. It is about strategic leverage against China’s growing global footprint. That is the thread tying them together. In another century it was the Great Britain and Russia. The US and China are taking the Great Game to new regions. The serious geo-political analysts see it. I am afraid that the European leaders get bogged down and utterly distracted by Trump’s injection of red herrings which they just cannot discern.

Venezuela – Yes oil but not only oil

Venezuela’s primary strategic value is its natural resources, above all oil. It has the world’s largest proven oil reserves. The recent U.S. intervention and pressure campaign explicitly cites oil access and disruption of adversarial influence as motives.

  1. China has deep financial and commercial ties with Venezuela, long providing loans and buying Venezuelan energy and commodities.
  2. Venezuelan rare earths and critical minerals are potential future assets — but currently underdeveloped, lacking infrastructure and clear exploitation plans.

The U.S. objectives are no secret and have been discussed so openly that I wonder why reporters of the lower kind and one-note politicians so easily forget.

  1. Deny China Easy Access to Resources
    Even if Venezuela isn’t a top rare-earth producer today, Washington sees value in preventing Beijing from locking up any potential resources or influence that could reduce U.S. leverage. This jibes with official U.S. rhetoric about countering “non-hemispheric competitors.”
  2. Break China’s Growing Footprint in the Region
    Latin America isn’t neutral territory anymore. China is a major trading partner across many states, and U.S. strategy now frames this as a geostrategic threat – something that could give Beijing leverage deep in the Western Hemisphere.
  3. Strategic Oil Supply and Energy Security
    Oil still matters as base strategic power: controlling Venezuelan oil limits Beijing’s access to energy markets, which could constrain China’s industrial or military trajectory in a crisis.
  4. Supply Chain & Rare Earth Sentiment
    Some U.S. policy thinkers argue the future of tech and defence depends on diversifying supply chains away from China – and Venezuela’s minerals could play into that if infrastructure and political stability were achieved.

My assessment is that the U.S. wants to disrupt Chinese access. This fits with how Washington/Rubio/Trump are now framing their moves. This is a long-term geo-political play about material resources and influence. A not insignificant part is the rare earths  potential in Venezuela even if they are not yet a fully realized asset.

Greenland: Raw Materials and Strategic Geography

Greenland doesn’t fit exactly the same profile as Venezuela, but it does fit the same pattern. It is about access to strategic resources and a denial of geo-political access to China. Greenland hosts some of the richest deposits of rare earth elements outside China. U.S. strategic planners see this as a way — someday — to dilute China’s dominance in critical raw materials that power everything from electric vehicles to missiles. Besides minerals, Greenland is a gateway to the Arctic — territory increasingly contested by Russia and China. U.S. military interest there reflects broader strategic positioning. Rather than wait for China (or Russia) to embed itself economically or militarily, the U.S. has pushed aggressive diplomacy, investment deals, and even territorial rhetoric, explicitly meant to keep rival influence out.

Extracting rare earths in Greenland is currently expensive, technically difficult, and far from market scale. Greenland’s harsh climate and lack of infrastructure make mining a long-term project. But from a strategic viewpoint, that doesn’t matter much — the U.S. wants to lock in preferential access and preclude China from doing so first.

The Great Game: supply chain security 

Both cases tie into a bigger story about critical minerals, supply chains, and great-power competition:

  1. China still controls a vast share of refining and processing for rare earths and other minerals, not just mining.

  2. The U.S. has made securing alternative sources, both domestic and allied, a declared priority, often written and described in the language of national security.

  3. Latin America and the Arctic are the competitive regions for the next century where access to resources and influence matters as much as traditional military positioning.

  4. Within the next century new off-Earth regions of supply chain competition and security will be opening up with the moon (China present and US playing catch-up) and Mars (US first) already included within strategic planning

This not about gestures and virtue signalling and personal pique. It is plain and simple geopolitics.

Who is going to have control of critical raw materials and whose military or economic reach will have dominance in key regions?

That is the game being played not whether the Peace Prize can be legally shared or not!!

Afterword

U.S. actions in Venezuela and Greenland are partly about denying China access to strategic resources and partly about securing their own access:

  • Venezuela: important for oil access and preventing Chinese economic dominance in the hemisphere; rare earths are a secondary but growing part of that calculus.

  • Greenland: a long-range bet on critical materials, strategic geography, and preemptive advantage over China and Russia.

This is part of the Great Game between the US and China for the coming 100 years. It is about strategic leverage against China’s growing global footprint. That is the thread tying Venezuela and Greenland together.

Strategic Importance of Greenland | SOF News

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Posted in China, Development, Economy, Global economy, Materials, Politics, US, War | Leave a Comment »

Machado v. the Nobel Committee: When Branding Overreaches Ownership

January 17, 2026

(I dislike the Nobel Peace Prize as being all about politics and being inherently inimical to peace. The Norwegian Nobel Committee are also too woke, self-righteous and sanctimonious for my liking. Too many of the awards are just plain ridiculous and entirely statements of political correctness. But this flurry of stupidity caught my attention this week).

In the wake of María Corina Machado’s decision this week (January 15, 2026) to “present” her 2025 Nobel Peace Prize medal to Donald Trump in the Oval Office, we have witnessed the faintly ridiculous spectacle of a venerable (though somewhat senile) institution getting defensive and huffy about a gift it no longer owns.

The Norwegian Nobel Committee (NC) has responded with a flurry of “cease and desist” style public relations, reminding the world that the prize “cannot be transferred, shared, or revoked.” But in their rush to protect the “Nobel” brand, the Committee is entering the world of nonsense with a legal and logical absurdity.

The Myth of Permanent Authority

The NC’s central argument is that the award and the laureate are “inseparable.” They contend that while Machado can physically hand over the gold, the status of being the 2025 winner remains hers “for all time.”

But this is where the logic fails:

  1. The Right to Award vs. the Right to Own: The NC owns the right to select the winner. Once that choice is made and the physical assets (the medal, the diploma, the money) are handed over, the ownership of the prize, practically and legally, shifts to the recipient.
  2. The Power of Words: If Machado stands in the White House and says, “I share this with you,” she is not usurping the NC’s authority to grant awards. She is exercising her right as an owner to define the meaning of her property.
  3. The Record vs. Reality: The NC can keep their Register of Laureates in Oslo however they like, but they have no legal authority over how a laureate interprets their own achievement in the public square.

Defensive Branding or Political Insecurity?

The sheer vehemence of the NC’s recent press releases is counterproductive. By issuing multiple statements within a single week, the Committee suggests that their 2025 decision is so fragile that it requires constant shielding from the “wrong” people.

When an institution shouts this loudly about why someone isn’t a winner, it stops sounding like a defense of history and starts sounding like a defensive reaction to current politics. If the award is truly “final and stands for all time,” why does the Committee feel the need to argue with a photo-op?

The “Law is an Ass” Problem

To claim that a recipient cannot “share” the honour of their work is to treat the Nobel Prize like a lease rather than a gift. In any other legal context, once a gift is given, the giver loses the right to dictate its subsequent use or interpretation.

By insisting that Machado cannot “transfer” the sentiment of the prize, the NC is trying to police the thoughts and associations of its laureates. They are essentially saying: “We gave you this, but we still control what it means.”

Conclusion

The Nobel Committee would do well to remember that their prestige should come from the merit of their choices (not very impressive lately) and not from their ability to act as a “history monitor.” María Corina Machado can give her medal to whomever she chooses. Donald Trump can claim he “has” a Nobel. The NC can keep their books in Oslo. But when the Committee tries to assert “authority” over a laureate’s personal property and public statements, they aren’t protecting the brand. They are just confirming that, sometimes, the law (and the institution) can be an ass.

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Posted in Behaviour, Law, Nobel Prize, Norway, Politics | 1 Comment »

And he’s not even in office yet ……

January 16, 2025

Unlike many of my friends and acquaintances (and not to mention my religiously liberal relatives), I have rather high expectations of a Trump Presidency. The reversal of some of the obscene wokery that has spread around the world has started. Whether the world can be inoculated against the woke virus remains to be seen. I was expecting the Middle East to get quieter and the NATO expansion to be curbed. I expected some solution – no matter how unpleasant – of the Russia/ Ukraine – NATO-EU conflict. I am expecting a new growth surge to break the EU engendered economic slumber that currently prevails. I am expecting / hoping for a rollback of some of the intellectual prostitution and multilateral excesses that have become globally endemic.

Well, we shall see. He will not take office till Monday, but the signs are promising

HT:

Israel and Hamas have agreed to pause the devastating war in the Gaza Strip that was going on since October 7, 2023.

Netanyahu also called Trump to thank him.

The US State Department on Wednesday said the involvement of President-elect Donald Trump’s team was critical in getting the truce deal between Israel and Hamas in Gaza over the line.

President-elect Donald Trump was in the centre of news after Israel, Hamas deal.(AP)

State Department spokesperson Matthew Miller also thanked Donald Trump and his team for working with the Joe Biden administration and said it was important that they were on the table.

“When it comes to the involvement of President-Elect Trump’s team, it has been absolutely critical in getting this deal over the line. It’s been critical because obviously, as I stand here today, this administration’s term in office will expire in five days…We, of course, thank the Trump team for working with us on this cease-fire agreement. We think it’s important that they were at the table,” he said in a press conference after the deal was announced.

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US Presidential voting – Black women appear the most racist voters

December 19, 2024

The numbers usually tell the tale.

You don’t have to be an expert psephologist to be able to read the numbers (and of course most expert psephologists have been proven not just to be wrong but remarkably so. Prof Allan Lichtman being the unedifying example of one such unable to acknowledge his own mistakes and his ignorance).

What the exit poll numbers show quite conclusively in the US Presidential election is that black men (77/21), all blacks (86/13) and black women in particular (92/8) voted along racial lines. No other ethnic group comes close to this one-sided voting pattern. Of course there are other nuances here that do not surface through the raw numbers. Nevertheless the numbers are not wrong.

Among all other ethnic groups votes were reasonably well distributed and both candidates received over one third of the votes. Certainly the Latino vote was not skewed towards the Democrats as I had first thought it would be. However sometime before the election I realised that illegal immigration is seen very negatively by legal immigrants, both for the economic space they occupy in the country and for the threat the illegals pose to the social standing of the legal immigrants. Only among native American Indians was there a clear preference (68/31 but far from overwhelming) for one candidate (a little surprisingly for the Republicans). It seems the Democrats are no longer the party of choice for Latinos or blue collar workers.

The exit poll results suggests strongly that in practice blacks in the US – and black women in particular – are now probably the most racist ethnic groups, at least with regard to who they vote for.

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Numbers tell the tale – Democrats probably faked millions of voters in 2020

November 10, 2024

The 2020 Presidential election had some 20 million more voters than the total for 2024. All the mainstream media claim that the shortfall is due to votes still being counted. 20 million is almost 13% of the total electorate. At this stage of counting, that 13% are yet to be counted and all the states have been called, strains credulity. It is just nonsense. 15 million of the missing 20 million are Democratic votes and 5 million are Republican. Of course turnout does not have to be the same from one election to the next. But not to this extent.

In 2020 I estimated that the Democrats had generated about 3 million ineligible voters without ID who voted, and that tipped the election. It now seems to me that the number of fake Democratic votes probably exceeded 5 million in 2020. (I find the opposition to voters having to prove their eligibility to vote by showing identification incontrovertible proof of skullduggery being planned).

This bar-chart is from the New York Times which, these days, is trying very hard to be a woke, left-wing rag. (I am beginning to question paying their subscription).

The winning margin declared for Trump in 2024 was around 2.6%. If there were that many votes (13%) left to be counted the results could not have been called.

I think the case of the 2020 election having been stolen is pretty well proven.

QED.

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Media and establishment thrashed by the “people” as Clinton concedes

November 9, 2016

A different world?

Only one US newspaper endorsed Trump.

And it certainly wasn’t the Washington Post or the New York Times (and in this case it was the NYT which copied the WaPo headline).

trump-triumphs

trump-triumphs-2

The polls and the models — not much good that can be said about them.

 

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UK likely to vote to remain but fundamental flaws in the EU concept are now exposed

June 20, 2016

I see the BREXIT vote as an opportunity to correct the glaring flaws in the EU concept of a Holy European Empire. Whether BREXIT wins or not in this vote, the EU will no longer be able to just ignore the disconnect between the concept and the bulk of the voters/tax payers in the EU. Of course if BREXIT does not win, it will slow down the inevitable reforms that the EU must introduce.

I suspect that finally the fear of leaving will govern and that BREXIT will lose by a small margin. The EU politicians and bureaucrats will probably tout this as a win for the EU concept but, in fact, they will have to prepare for drawing back the various EU encroachments into the territory of national sovereignty.

NYT: 

There is no argument that the European Union is a flawed institution. Its dysfunction has been on display in its fitful handling of the Greek debt and refugee crises, its bureaucracy is pathetically slow to recognize or correct its failings and it often acts like an out-of-touch and undemocratic elite. Part of that is the inherent inefficiency of an institution of 28 member states with big differences in size, wealth and democratic traditions, and which participate to different degrees in the single currency and border-free zone.

Yet the E.U. is an extraordinary achievement, a voluntary union of nations whose histories include some of the bloodiest wars ever waged. However flawed the bloc, it has replaced blood feuds with a single market, shared values, free travel and labor mobility. Britain has always been something of an outlier in the E.U., joining what began as the European Coal and Steel Community two decades after it was formed and declining to participate in either the euro currency or the borderless Schengen zone. Yet there is no question that Britain has benefited from membership, both economically and as a strong voice in shaping E.U. policy.

The euroskepticism that has led to the British referendum, and that forms a strong component of the right-wing nationalist parties on the rise in many European countries, is not about efficiency or history. It is about ill-defined frustration with the complexities of a changing world and a changing Europe, a loss of faith in mainstream politicians and experts, a nostalgia for a past when nations decided their own fates and kept foreigners out. To those who hold these views, the European Union is the epitome of all that has gone wrong, an alien bureaucracy deaf to the traditions and values of its members. Not surprisingly, Mr. Trump and the French politician Marine Le Pen both favor Brexit.

I see parallels in the “anti-establishment” views embodied in euroscepticism and in the “anti-establishment” views of the Trump supporters in the US. In both cases the revolt is a reaction to what is perceived as the over-weening arrogance of a political, liberal, elite who insist on defining political correctness and on telling the electorate that they know best what is good for them.

In 2016, both in the EU and in the US, it is immigration and the flawed concept of multiculturalism which is dominating. It is occupying this ground which may well determine many of the elections. In fact the rise of the right-wing nationalists in Europe is the pendulum swinging back from 3 decades of self-righteous, social democratic dogma. Europe has moved further left in the 3 decades after communism fell than while communism was still an acceptable philosophy. But I note that some of the right-wing parties (Sweden, Denmark, France …. ) are losing some support as more of the centrist parties adopt more restrictive measures on immigration and take away this ground from the right. Take Trump’s immigration ground away from him and he will not stand a chance.

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Would Clinton or Trump be better for a global economic recovery?

May 31, 2016

After 8 years of an American Democrat administration the recovery from the global financial crisis of 2008 has still not gathered steam. Europe, with its EU chains, is no longer capable of leading a global economic recovery. (I note that the UK or Germany could have played a bigger part in a global recovery if they were each unhampered by EU membership). China and India, together and if their economies were in phase, could also have led a recovery. But the Chinese growth story has stalled and is out of phase with the Indian growth. The US certainly could have, and could still, lead a recovery. But Barack Obama has been too risk averse (read too scared) to take any real leadership role. So while the US is recovering, very slowly, it has not really contributed to being the global economic motor it could be. The primary reason, of course, is that public spending is much too high and, in consequence, taxes are higher than necessary. Obama has elected to print money (quantitative easing) rather than attempting to get the fundamentals right. The EU is still printing money and public spending is little less than profligate. Spain and Portugal are next after Greece and France is not very healthy. They are all pursuing traditional socialist policies of trying to get out of the economic hole by increasing public spending (with newly printed money of reducing value). And with the structure of the EU being what it is, they hold back the countries which have much sounder fundamentals.

The question is, who of Clinton or Trump would contribute more to a global recovery?

Certainly public spending would be higher with Clinton than with Trump. Public infrastructure spending – which is now necessary in the US – would probably be more likely with Clinton. But her choice would be to print money or to increase taxes. Obama took the easy way out and printed money. Whether Clinton would have the nerve to either cut non-infrastructure spending or to raise taxes is uncertain. She may not dither like Obama, but she is not any less risk-averse. Assuming she did increase taxes, she would probably increase corporate rather than personal taxation and that is always a “growth killer”.  Small businesses would be hard hit. As Europe has demonstrated so well, minimum wage legislation only destroys – for ever – the entry-level and low-qualification jobs. Clinton will find minimum wage legislation tempting and may fall into the trap of destroying jobs. There seems little chance that a Clinton administration would contribute any more to a global recovery than Obama has.

What Trump might or might not do is uncertain. It is possible that he might address the fundamentals and really reduce the size of the bureaucracy. Or he may increase defence spending and try to balance the books by cutting welfare spending. He could take the measures to help small businesses and it is here, with small businesses, that real growth and wealth creation is generated. Or he may just help the large corporations which creates fewer jobs and favours the wealthiest.

The Clinton path will be “more of the same”. Not much to gain but probably not much worse than with Obama. The Trump path is unknown. It has a much larger upside than anything Clinton has to offer, but it has a much larger downside as well. A Trump path is full of risks. If the economic downsides with a Trump Presidency could be limited and he helped small businesses more than large corporates, then he could contribute to a global revival which Clinton would be incapable of. But the risk is significant.

I remain of the opinion that The US choice is now high risk with Trump or low gain with Clinton. 

 

 

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US media overwhelmingly against Trump, but yet …..

March 21, 2016

There is something strange in the mood abroad among the US electorate and it is something that the US media either do not understand or are deliberately ignoring.

That the liberal media oppose Trump is only to be expected. The Washington Post, the Boston Globe, the LA Times, Politico and their ilk cannot be expected to support any GOP candidate at the best of times. But against Trump they are positively vitriolic. The “hard left” media (Slate, Salon, Huffington Post etc) are apoplectic when it comes to Trump. They have compared him to Hitler, Mussolini and even Kim Jung-Un. But now even the right of centre media (Wall Street Journal, Fox News….) are lambasting him. Even the hard right media (Breitbart, Drudge, Washington Times….) will not endorse Trump but just stay “neutral”.

And yet Trump’s numbers continue to rise. It is apparent that the media are failing to capture the mood in the country. I am sticking to my theory that Trump has activated an anti-establishment sentiment where all the mainstream media are considered “establishment”. And this gives the peculiar situation where any attack by an establishment figure only sustains the anti-establishment sentiment that Trump has tapped into.

Observing this from across the Atlantic has proven to be even more fascinating than my wildest expectations. But the anti-establishment sentiment is also abroad in Europe. It shows up in the BREXIT campaign and in the rise of parties which challenge the “politically correct” view. It is not just anti-immigration, far-right parties which are prospering but any party which occupies the “anti-establishment” space. That can be seen in Denmark and Norway and Sweden where mainstream centre-right parties are taking away some support from the far-right  by adopting somewhat “politically incorrect” positions.

I suspect that this is not just restricted to the US and Europe. I see in India and Africa the beginnings of something similar. It is a mood which has global dimensions and is, I think, something primal. A reaction perhaps to 3 decades of sanctimonious “political correctness” which has – or is perceived to have:

  • excused criminality and bad behaviour on genetic or social grounds
  • downgraded the victims of crime or bad behaviour
  • protected criminals and “bad people” in the name of human rights,
  • downgraded “family values”
  • promoted the bureaucracy against the individual
  • downgraded the individual
  • relaxed moral values
  • promoted deviation and deviants
  • demonised progress and economic growth
  • …….

Maybe I am reading too much into this, but the fact remains that the US media are missing something quite fundamental. i expect that to defeat Trump it needs someone to take his ground away from him – not just attack the ground he stands on. And that requires someone who is perceived to be just as “anti-establishment”. And there is no one on the GOP side who can do that and only Bernie Sanders among the Democrats comes close.

From the Reuters tracking poll:

Reuters tracking 18032016

 

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