It's strange that a ruling Establishment (not just the Labour government, but the judiciary, lawyers, academia, media) that cares so much about the human rights of terrorists and rapists is so determined to treat innocent people as criminals. Perhaps, the only way to treat serious criminals as victims is to think of the victims of crime (the general public) as criminals.
I posted a variation on this elsewhere, but it is worth spreading, for context and for puncturing the hypocrisy.
The Louisiana purchase - that doubled the size of America - was effectively real estate, not a country. But there is precedent for buying a country, and with supreme irony it involves the same two countries as the Greenland impasse. And it involved 'rebadging' a lot more people than Greenland.
No one is mentioning that in 1917 America bought the Danish West Indies from Denmark, for $25m (about $630m in today's money.) The U.S. saw the Caribbean as their ‘backyard’ or outer protection cordon, so acquired the Danish West Indies and renamed them the U.S Virgin Islands.
It is fun/sport for people to blame Trump, and one can see why he would want Greenland. But that security trope has been going on for a very long time. It's not Trump's new idea. It has been in the U.S. governments' psyche for over a century, but only he has the balls to move on it.
Of course wanting something and demanding it, or taking it by force, are two completely different things. Morally wrong IMHO. I am just saying there is precedent for a purchase, and Denmark hasn't a leg to stand on, having sold a country before.
As an interesting aside: the Danes had been taking slaves to their plantations there for about 100 years before Britain began slaving; until then we would just buy slaves from them. And they persisted for fifteen years after Britain banned slavery. But no one to my knowledge is pursuing the Dutch for reparations.
I have also just discovered that, as part of the Danish West Indies treaty of 1916, transferring the islands between Denmark and America, the latter agreed that Greenland would remain Danish.
And I believe that there was agreement that if Greenland were ever to be detached from Denmark, Britain has first option, leading to the wonderful image of Starmer, after all he has said, having to agree to pass that option to Trump. Well we have to take our amusement where we can in the dark times.
I encourage anyone who's curious about what Greenlanders think about being under the Kingdom of Denmark, their lived experience, this piece from the NY Post a few days ago is instructive:
It's not an open invitation to become a part of the US, but it certainly lays out a reality that challenges notions of Denmark as benevolent, enlightened stewards. As with most all things, what is best for Greenlanders, global "order" and such is hardly black and white. Much grey. Reflexive "Orange Man Bad" reactions are seldom accurate and the right side of morality. It's quite possible that Greenlanders would be much better off under the US than any other scenario, including as their own sovereign nation. It's complicated.
Fair point. Possibly the Danes (corrected) realise that to complain about something that happened centuries ago is actually pointless. The internet is the only reason that people nowadays know something is happening. Prior to that only the top rulers knew, and most citizens simply concentrated on trying to stay alive!
My error in the final sentence; it's an age thing. It was of course the Danes in this case, not the Dutch. They had the East Indies which became Indonesia.
Agree about the internet, which is why it is under such a threat by so many despotic leaders. If to complain about ancient events is pointless, the Argentines over the Falklands may disagree, or the many indigenous 'First Nationers' around the world, or indeed the Spanish and Gibraltar (ceded as part of the peace settlement by the 1713 Treaty of Utrecht. A treaty is still a treaty unless revised or abrogated, however long ago it was signed, and regardless who knows about it.
There are issues on so many fronts as you highlight. And many more…
FYI regarding the Panopticon, I have replied to the government’s consultation on a legal framework for surveillance by law enforcement. Deadline 12/2. Not sure how much good it will do as I never hear back on any of these consultations apart from a brief email that they have received it….but I feel I am doing something at least…
I used to think that Britain was sleep walking to, but see that it is actually being frog marched into the world prophesied in George Orwell's 1984! Frightening!
How refreshing it is to read an alternative view of what Donald Trump is up to regarding Greenland, it really is quite simple when you drop out the emotion that people spew out whenever Trump is mentioned.
Love your articles so much Laura, I've finally become a paid subscriber. Sorry it's taken me so long. Your 'fairy tale of the rules based order' was so refreshing to read. A substack writer just blocked me from reading her stack (mainly recipes and remote rural life musings - lovely to read) because she launched into a tirade about DT bringing us to the brink of war over Greenland and I demurred in the comments. My view is a) Denmark still has a colony?! and b) I don't think they'd stand much of a chance defending their colony from Russian or Chinese aggression, nor would the Greenlanders themselves. If I lived there I know whose protection I'd rather have - Good Old Uncle Sam with it's free speech and some level of democratic accountability anyway.
This was a wonderful piece. I agree with everything you say. The country has lost its moral compass. No one is prepared to take responsibility for anything. Including the Church of England.
I always think a wait and see is the best way with the US. Iranians desperately need intervention which will have to be carefully plotted. So Lo and behold we have a green rabbit in a hat - not really but a focus on Greenland.
The EU and Britain have made fools of themselves over Greenland sending their toy soldiers en masse to Greenland. Not slighting the brave soldiers just their gormless leaders who in reality depend on the US to defend them. The action just shows how moribund NATO is. Watch and wait.
Heads up, Laura: Ten Ways Billionaires Who Hate You Are Manipulating You Right Now by @thewisewolf
1) The first manipulation is the illusion of choice. You think you have two parties representing different visions for America but both parties are funded by the same billionaires, vote for the same surveillance bills, approve the same defense budgets, and serve the same corporate interests. The choice you are given is which color tie the puppet wears, not who controls the strings.
2) The second manipulation is emotional hijacking. The news does not inform you, it activates you. Every story is framed to trigger fear or anger or disgust because those emotions bypass your rational thinking and make you easier to control. You are not watching journalism. You are being subjected to psychological operations designed to keep you in a constant state of agitation.
3) The third manipulation is tribal sorting. The algorithm learns what makes you angry and feeds you more of it until your entire worldview is shaped by outrage at the other side. You are sorted into a tribe not because you chose it but because keeping you tribal keeps you predictable and profitable.
4) The fourth manipulation is false scarcity. You are told resources are limited and the other tribe is taking what belongs to you. Immigrants are stealing your jobs. Welfare recipients are draining your taxes. The other party is destroying your healthcare. Meanwhile the billionaire class has more wealth than any humans in history and could solve most of these problems tomorrow if they wanted to.
5) The fifth manipulation is memory holing. Stories that threaten powerful interests get buried or forgotten within days. Exposed crimes result in no consequences. Historical context that would help you understand the present is never taught. You are kept in a perpetual present with no past to learn from and no future to plan for.
6) The sixth manipulation is controlled opposition. The voices you think are fighting for you are often funded by the same interests they pretend to oppose. The outrage merchant on your side of the aisle is playing a character designed to keep you engaged and angry and tuned in while nothing ever actually changes.
7) The seventh manipulation is the Overton window. The range of acceptable opinion is artificially narrowed so that anything outside it seems extreme. Ideas that were mainstream fifty years ago are now treated as radical. Ideas that serve elite interests are treated as moderate common sense. You are not choosing your beliefs from the full range of human thought. You are choosing from a menu they wrote.
8) The eighth manipulation is learned helplessness. You are shown so many problems with no solutions that you eventually give up and accept that nothing can change. This is intentional. A population that believes resistance is futile does not resist. They scroll and complain and feel superior for understanding how bad things are while doing absolutely nothing about it.
9) The ninth manipulation is identity capture. Your political affiliation becomes your identity, and any attack on your party feels like an attack on you personally. This makes you defend politicians and policies that harm you because admitting they are wrong would mean admitting you were wrong, and your ego will not allow that.
10) The tenth manipulation is the most insidious of all: you are manipulated into believing you are too smart to be manipulated. Every person reading this thinks the manipulations I described apply to other people, the stupid people, the brainwashed people on the other side. That certainty is itself a manipulation. The moment you believe you are immune is the moment you become most vulnerable
The "You will own nothing and be happy" mob got their noses bloodied well and truly today in Davos.Trump is a real leader and all the naysayers are either weak, jealous or ideologically captured. I wish he was our leader in the UK instead of the charisma by-pass we have.
That Britain has lost its grip on reality is an apposite start to this piece. Unfortunately, while accepting the 'rules based international order' was always a fiction, then making the proposition that the law of the jungle will somehow benefit a country as powerless as Britain, is absurd. Entropy exclusively benefits the strong. While America's strength is showing signs of alarming decline, it has used that power in the past against British interests at least as often as it has aligned with them.
The rules based order was only ever a means to keep any other country, friend or foe, from Challenging US hegemony while America pursued its interests freely. China and Russia have grown powerful enough to abandon that system, with America now dropping the veil entirely. Might is right does not make small countries safer, it makes them lunch. Sadly, too many Britons like the idea and will learn at great cost that failing empires are not at all the same as they were when they could afford the fiction of "partnership". I almost look forward to seeing the confused and horrified faces of the currently hopelessly naive when Britain is forced to hand over the North Sea and Falklands oil fields. We aren't serious enough to hold them anyway.
It's strange that a ruling Establishment (not just the Labour government, but the judiciary, lawyers, academia, media) that cares so much about the human rights of terrorists and rapists is so determined to treat innocent people as criminals. Perhaps, the only way to treat serious criminals as victims is to think of the victims of crime (the general public) as criminals.
The true criminals are the members of the establishment.
I posted a variation on this elsewhere, but it is worth spreading, for context and for puncturing the hypocrisy.
The Louisiana purchase - that doubled the size of America - was effectively real estate, not a country. But there is precedent for buying a country, and with supreme irony it involves the same two countries as the Greenland impasse. And it involved 'rebadging' a lot more people than Greenland.
No one is mentioning that in 1917 America bought the Danish West Indies from Denmark, for $25m (about $630m in today's money.) The U.S. saw the Caribbean as their ‘backyard’ or outer protection cordon, so acquired the Danish West Indies and renamed them the U.S Virgin Islands.
It is fun/sport for people to blame Trump, and one can see why he would want Greenland. But that security trope has been going on for a very long time. It's not Trump's new idea. It has been in the U.S. governments' psyche for over a century, but only he has the balls to move on it.
Of course wanting something and demanding it, or taking it by force, are two completely different things. Morally wrong IMHO. I am just saying there is precedent for a purchase, and Denmark hasn't a leg to stand on, having sold a country before.
As an interesting aside: the Danes had been taking slaves to their plantations there for about 100 years before Britain began slaving; until then we would just buy slaves from them. And they persisted for fifteen years after Britain banned slavery. But no one to my knowledge is pursuing the Dutch for reparations.
Thanks - this is very interesting!
I have also just discovered that, as part of the Danish West Indies treaty of 1916, transferring the islands between Denmark and America, the latter agreed that Greenland would remain Danish.
And I believe that there was agreement that if Greenland were ever to be detached from Denmark, Britain has first option, leading to the wonderful image of Starmer, after all he has said, having to agree to pass that option to Trump. Well we have to take our amusement where we can in the dark times.
I encourage anyone who's curious about what Greenlanders think about being under the Kingdom of Denmark, their lived experience, this piece from the NY Post a few days ago is instructive:
https://nypost.com/2026/01/16/world-news/greenlanders-speak-out-against-danish-rule-they-stole-our-future/
It's not an open invitation to become a part of the US, but it certainly lays out a reality that challenges notions of Denmark as benevolent, enlightened stewards. As with most all things, what is best for Greenlanders, global "order" and such is hardly black and white. Much grey. Reflexive "Orange Man Bad" reactions are seldom accurate and the right side of morality. It's quite possible that Greenlanders would be much better off under the US than any other scenario, including as their own sovereign nation. It's complicated.
Fair point. Possibly the Danes (corrected) realise that to complain about something that happened centuries ago is actually pointless. The internet is the only reason that people nowadays know something is happening. Prior to that only the top rulers knew, and most citizens simply concentrated on trying to stay alive!
My error in the final sentence; it's an age thing. It was of course the Danes in this case, not the Dutch. They had the East Indies which became Indonesia.
Agree about the internet, which is why it is under such a threat by so many despotic leaders. If to complain about ancient events is pointless, the Argentines over the Falklands may disagree, or the many indigenous 'First Nationers' around the world, or indeed the Spanish and Gibraltar (ceded as part of the peace settlement by the 1713 Treaty of Utrecht. A treaty is still a treaty unless revised or abrogated, however long ago it was signed, and regardless who knows about it.
There are issues on so many fronts as you highlight. And many more…
FYI regarding the Panopticon, I have replied to the government’s consultation on a legal framework for surveillance by law enforcement. Deadline 12/2. Not sure how much good it will do as I never hear back on any of these consultations apart from a brief email that they have received it….but I feel I am doing something at least…
https://open.substack.com/pub/myrauk/p/legal-framework-for-surveillance?r=ylgqf&utm_medium=ios&shareImageVariant=overlay
I used to think that Britain was sleep walking to, but see that it is actually being frog marched into the world prophesied in George Orwell's 1984! Frightening!
Except we aren't being frogmarched, we're leading the way!
Oh, I don't know. Australia appears to have leapfrogged over us with their latest anti-free speech legislation.
The population are being frogmarched by their so-called betters. This isn't something the majority asked for, let alone voted on.
Why?
How refreshing it is to read an alternative view of what Donald Trump is up to regarding Greenland, it really is quite simple when you drop out the emotion that people spew out whenever Trump is mentioned.
Love your articles so much Laura, I've finally become a paid subscriber. Sorry it's taken me so long. Your 'fairy tale of the rules based order' was so refreshing to read. A substack writer just blocked me from reading her stack (mainly recipes and remote rural life musings - lovely to read) because she launched into a tirade about DT bringing us to the brink of war over Greenland and I demurred in the comments. My view is a) Denmark still has a colony?! and b) I don't think they'd stand much of a chance defending their colony from Russian or Chinese aggression, nor would the Greenlanders themselves. If I lived there I know whose protection I'd rather have - Good Old Uncle Sam with it's free speech and some level of democratic accountability anyway.
Thank you for subscribing :-)
This was a wonderful piece. I agree with everything you say. The country has lost its moral compass. No one is prepared to take responsibility for anything. Including the Church of England.
You've hit the bullseye again, Laura. You also have some very smart readers/subscribers. See below...
I always think a wait and see is the best way with the US. Iranians desperately need intervention which will have to be carefully plotted. So Lo and behold we have a green rabbit in a hat - not really but a focus on Greenland.
The EU and Britain have made fools of themselves over Greenland sending their toy soldiers en masse to Greenland. Not slighting the brave soldiers just their gormless leaders who in reality depend on the US to defend them. The action just shows how moribund NATO is. Watch and wait.
Re Jeremy Bentham's Panopticon: You might like one of my substacks, "Jeremy Bentham was wrong": https://radicalcartoons.substack.com/p/jeremy-bentham-was-wrong
Heads up, Laura: Ten Ways Billionaires Who Hate You Are Manipulating You Right Now by @thewisewolf
1) The first manipulation is the illusion of choice. You think you have two parties representing different visions for America but both parties are funded by the same billionaires, vote for the same surveillance bills, approve the same defense budgets, and serve the same corporate interests. The choice you are given is which color tie the puppet wears, not who controls the strings.
2) The second manipulation is emotional hijacking. The news does not inform you, it activates you. Every story is framed to trigger fear or anger or disgust because those emotions bypass your rational thinking and make you easier to control. You are not watching journalism. You are being subjected to psychological operations designed to keep you in a constant state of agitation.
3) The third manipulation is tribal sorting. The algorithm learns what makes you angry and feeds you more of it until your entire worldview is shaped by outrage at the other side. You are sorted into a tribe not because you chose it but because keeping you tribal keeps you predictable and profitable.
4) The fourth manipulation is false scarcity. You are told resources are limited and the other tribe is taking what belongs to you. Immigrants are stealing your jobs. Welfare recipients are draining your taxes. The other party is destroying your healthcare. Meanwhile the billionaire class has more wealth than any humans in history and could solve most of these problems tomorrow if they wanted to.
5) The fifth manipulation is memory holing. Stories that threaten powerful interests get buried or forgotten within days. Exposed crimes result in no consequences. Historical context that would help you understand the present is never taught. You are kept in a perpetual present with no past to learn from and no future to plan for.
6) The sixth manipulation is controlled opposition. The voices you think are fighting for you are often funded by the same interests they pretend to oppose. The outrage merchant on your side of the aisle is playing a character designed to keep you engaged and angry and tuned in while nothing ever actually changes.
7) The seventh manipulation is the Overton window. The range of acceptable opinion is artificially narrowed so that anything outside it seems extreme. Ideas that were mainstream fifty years ago are now treated as radical. Ideas that serve elite interests are treated as moderate common sense. You are not choosing your beliefs from the full range of human thought. You are choosing from a menu they wrote.
8) The eighth manipulation is learned helplessness. You are shown so many problems with no solutions that you eventually give up and accept that nothing can change. This is intentional. A population that believes resistance is futile does not resist. They scroll and complain and feel superior for understanding how bad things are while doing absolutely nothing about it.
9) The ninth manipulation is identity capture. Your political affiliation becomes your identity, and any attack on your party feels like an attack on you personally. This makes you defend politicians and policies that harm you because admitting they are wrong would mean admitting you were wrong, and your ego will not allow that.
10) The tenth manipulation is the most insidious of all: you are manipulated into believing you are too smart to be manipulated. Every person reading this thinks the manipulations I described apply to other people, the stupid people, the brainwashed people on the other side. That certainty is itself a manipulation. The moment you believe you are immune is the moment you become most vulnerable
I can also recommend a book called "Free Your Mind: the new world of manipulation and how to resist it".
Yet to read but hear it is a great book by a very smart writer ;)
Thank you Laura, as Caesar said, "not only time, but the tides", i wish we had more time and the tides we're not against us.
If interested, the above is a segment of a larger brilliant analysis here: https://tritorch.substack.com/p/everything-you-watch-or-read-is-owned
I think you will find it more than worth your time.
The "You will own nothing and be happy" mob got their noses bloodied well and truly today in Davos.Trump is a real leader and all the naysayers are either weak, jealous or ideologically captured. I wish he was our leader in the UK instead of the charisma by-pass we have.
I do too.
That Britain has lost its grip on reality is an apposite start to this piece. Unfortunately, while accepting the 'rules based international order' was always a fiction, then making the proposition that the law of the jungle will somehow benefit a country as powerless as Britain, is absurd. Entropy exclusively benefits the strong. While America's strength is showing signs of alarming decline, it has used that power in the past against British interests at least as often as it has aligned with them.
The rules based order was only ever a means to keep any other country, friend or foe, from Challenging US hegemony while America pursued its interests freely. China and Russia have grown powerful enough to abandon that system, with America now dropping the veil entirely. Might is right does not make small countries safer, it makes them lunch. Sadly, too many Britons like the idea and will learn at great cost that failing empires are not at all the same as they were when they could afford the fiction of "partnership". I almost look forward to seeing the confused and horrified faces of the currently hopelessly naive when Britain is forced to hand over the North Sea and Falklands oil fields. We aren't serious enough to hold them anyway.
Have a look at #OperationTalla where rules were disregarded to cover up reported crimes