Trump Won’t Rule Out Military Force to Seize Control of Panama Canal, Greenland
Original article by Julia Conley republished from Common Dreams under Creative Commons (CC BY-NC-ND 3.0).
Trump claimed both the canal and the Danish territory are needed for U.S. “economic security.”
U.S. President-elect Donald Trump has been rebuked in recent days by the leaders of both Panama and Denmark for his insistence that the Panama Canal and Danish territory Greenland must be under American control, and his latest comments on Tuesday were expected to garner more anger—and eye-rolling—from abroad.
At a press conference at his Florida resort, Mar-a-Lago, the Republican leader refused to rule out using military force to take over the canal and Greenland.
“It might be that you’ll have to do something. The Panama Canal is vital to our country,” said Trump. “We need Greenland for national security purposes.”
He added that both the canal and Greenland, the world’s largest island and home to a U.S. military base, are needed for U.S. “economic security.”
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Under President Jimmy Carter, who died late last month, the U.S. signed a treaty returning the Panama Canal Zone to Panama in 1979, and the waterway connecting the Atlantic and Pacific Oceans has been solely controlled by the Panamanian government since 1999.
Trump repeated a false claim that the canal is being “operated by China.”
Last month, after the president-elect demanded “that the Panama Canal be returned to the United States of America in full, quickly and without question,” Panamanian President José Raúl Mulino posted a video to social media in response.
“As president, I want to clearly state that every square meter of the Panama Canal and its adjoining zone is Panama’s and will remain so,” Mulino said. “The sovereignty and independence of our country is non-negotiable.”
Trump’s comments came as his son, Donald Trump Jr., joined right-wing activist Charlie Kirk and other Trump allies on a visit to Greenland.
The president-elect suggested in a social media post that the trip was made in an official capacity, writing: “The reception has been great. They, and the Free World, need safety, security, strength, and PEACE! This is a deal that must happen. MAGA. MAKE GREENLAND GREAT AGAIN!”
But Greenland officials clarified that Trump Jr. was visiting only as a “private individual” and said no representatives would be meeting with him.
Trump said at his press conference that “people really don’t even know if Denmark has any legal right to [Greenland], but if they do they should give it up because we need it for national security.”
Greenland is home to 60,000 people, and is self-ruling with its own legislature while its foreign and defense policy are controlled by Denmark. The Arctic island lies in a region where global powers are vying for military and economic control.
Trump also expressed a desire to purchase Greenland during his first term, a goal that was dismissed at the time as “absurd” by Danish Prime Minister Mette Frederiksen.
“Greenland belongs to the Greenlanders,” Frederiksen reiterated on Tuesday.
Original article by Julia Conley republished from Common Dreams under Creative Commons (CC BY-NC-ND 3.0).
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- The Panama Canal and the Mistreated Treaties
- ‘We Are Not for Sale’: Greenland Once Again Rebuffs Trump Call for US Ownership
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Facebook Follows X Down Path to Becoming Right-Wing ‘Cesspool’ by Ending Fact-Checking Efforts
Original article by Eloise Goldsmith republished from Common Dreams under Creative Commons (CC BY-NC-ND 3.0).
“Zuck isn’t just kissing the ring, he’s slobbering all over it,” said one media reporter.
In a move that some viewed as a means of currying favor with the incoming Trump administration, Meta CEO Mark Zuckerberg announced in a video Tuesday that the company is moving to end its third party fact-checking program.
Instead, the company will use a community notes approach, inspired by the Elon Musk’s platform X—where Musk’s misleading claims about the 2024 presidential election racked up billions of views.
Zuckerberg’s announcement was accompanied by a post authored by Meta’s new, “Trump-friendly” chief global affairs officer, Joel Kaplan, who described the change as “more speech and fewer mistakes.” Kaplan also went on Fox & Friends on Tuesday morning to discuss the update.
“Too much harmless content gets censored, too many people find themselves wrongly locked up in ‘Facebook jail,’ and we are often too slow to respond when they do,” wrote Kaplan in his post. Kaplan and Zuckerberg also noted that Meta plans to phase back in more civic content, as in posts about elections, politics, or social issues.
Real Facebook Oversight Board (RFOB), a group established to counter the perceived failures of Meta’s own oversight board, blasted the move, saying, “‘censorship’ is a manufactured crisis, political pandering to signal that Meta’s platforms are open for business to far-right propaganda.”
“Twitter’s shift from fact checking has turned the platform into a cesspool; Zuck is joining them in a race to the bottom,” the group wrote Tuesday.
The move generated other negative reactions.
“Meta went to Fox News to announce it’s ending its third-party fact checking program. Zuck isn’t just kissing the ring, he’s slobbering all over it,” wrote media reporter Oliver Darcy on Tuesday.
Also on Tuesday, Kara Swisher, a tech journalist, wrote “toxic floods of lies on social media platforms like Facebook have destroyed trust not fact checkers. Let me reiterate: Mark Zuckerberg has never cared about that and never will.”
Co-president of the watchdog group Public Citizen, Lisa Gilbert, weighed in, saying that “misinformation will flow more freely with this policy change, as we cannot assume that corrections will be made when false information proliferates. The American people deserve accurate information about our elections, health risks, the environment, and much more. We condemn this irresponsible move and the harm it will likely contribute to our discourse.”
“Meta’s new promise to scale back fact checking isn’t surprising—Zuckerberg is one of many billionaires who are cozying up to dangerous demagogues like Trump and pushing initiatives that favor their bottom lines at the expense of everything and everyone else,” wrote Nora Benavidez, senior counsel and director of digital justice and civil rights for the organization Free Press in a Tuesday statement.
Meta, which is angling for the U.S. government to use its AI and is facing an federal antitrust trial this spring, has made other bids to enter Trump’s good graces and thaw once frosty relations (Meta temporarily booted Trump from its platforms following his comments regarding the January 6 insurrection). Meta donated $1 million to Trump’s inauguration fund recently and Zuckerberg flew down to Trump’s Mar-A-Lago Club to meet with him this past fall.
Original article by Eloise Goldsmith republished from Common Dreams under Creative Commons (CC BY-NC-ND 3.0).
Israel uses ambulance to storm West Bank refugee camp
https://www.middleeastmonitor.com/20250107-israel-uses-ambulance-to-storm-west-bank-refugee-camp
The Israeli occupation army yesterday admitted that its forces used an ambulance to infiltrate Balata refugee camp in Nablus in the northern West Bank, claiming that it is investigating the incident that Palestinians say led to the death of an elderly woman and a young man.
On Sunday, Palestinians shared videos taken by a surveillance camera in a shop showing Israeli occupation soldiers getting out of an ambulance in the heart of the camp and shooting at passersby, which they say led to the death of an elderly woman and a young man, according to Israeli newspaper Yedioth Ahronoth.
In a statement quoted by the paper yesterday, the occupation army claimed that it operates in accordance with international law and that the incident in question is being investigated.
“The investigation would examine the use of the vehicles shown in the video and allegations of harm to uninvolved individuals during the exchange of fire between the terrorists and our forces.”
The video was taken on 19 December 2024 during an Israeli raid on the camp. On the same day, Palestinians reported that two people were killed in the operation, one of them an 80-year-old woman, according to the Israeli newspaper.
At the time, the Israeli army said in a statement that its forces launched an operation to arrest a suspect in Balata camp, and “during the activity, there was an exchange of fire with fighters who fired shots and threw explosive devices at the forces,” the statement added.
READ: ‘Nablus, Jenin must look like Gaza’s Jabalia,’ says far-right Israel Minister
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World Food Programme condemns Israel attack on its Gaza convoy
The UN World Food Programme said, on Monday, that Israeli forces had opened fire on one of its convoys in the besieged Palestinian enclave of Gaza in what it called a “horrifying incident”, Reuters reports.
The Agency said the convoy of three vehicles carrying eight staff members from central Gaza to Gaza City in the north was struck by 16 bullets near the Wadi Gaza checkpoint on Sunday, causing no injuries but immobilising the convoy.
The vehicles were clearly marked and had received prior security clearances from Israeli authorities, a WFP statement said.
“The World Food Programme (WFP) strongly condemns the horrifying incident on January 5,” it said.
“This unacceptable event is just the latest example of the complex and dangerous working environment that WFP and other agencies are operating in today,” WFP said, calling for improvements in security conditions to allow aid to continue.
The Israeli military did not immediately respond to a request for comment on the incident.
International aid agencies working to alleviate the humanitarian crisis in Gaza have frequently accused Israeli forces of hampering or threatening their operations amid Israel’s campaign to wipe out Hamas fighters.
READ: Rights groups condemn Israel’s targeting of Gaza aid distribution centre
This work by Middle East Monitor is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-ShareAlike 4.0 International License.