By Dave DeCamp / Antiwar.com

The US military is planning to surge military assets to the Middle East to prepare for a potential war with Iran after President Trump backed down from bombing the country, according to a report from The New York Times.

US officials told the paper that the aircraft carrier USS Abraham Lincoln and some warships from its strike group were on their way to the Middle East from the South China Sea, a roughly week-long trip. The US is also planning to send an array of warplanes to the Middle East, including fighter jets and refueling aircraft, and additional air defenses.

According to other media reports, the US military’s message to Trump amid his threats to bomb Iran is that there weren’t enough US assets in the region to face a potential counterattack, which could target the many US bases in the region. Trump was also reportedly told that US strikes likely wouldn’t result in regime change and could lead to a prolonged war.

The Times report also said that Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu asked Trump to postpone his plans to attack Iran, and Axios reported the same thing later, saying that Netanyahu wants more time to prepare for Iranian retaliation.

If the reports about Netanyahu’s request are true, it’s likely that he also wants more US military assets in the region since Israel relied on US forces to intercept Iranian missiles during the war back in June 2025, and many still got through and struck Israeli territory, which is what led to Israel agreeing to a ceasefire after 12 days.

On the other hand, the leaks and delays could be meant to keep Iran off guard as the US and Israel engaged in a deception campaign before Israel launched the opening salvo of the 12-Day War.

The White House has claimed that Iran has postponed planned executions due to Trump’s threats and warned that if the “killing” in Iran continues, there will be consequences. However, the unrest in Iran is just the latest pretext for war with Iran.

Iran’s nuclear program was the pretext for launching the 12-Day War, and while meeting with Netanyahu at Mar-a-Lago back in December, Trump said he would back an Israeli attack on Iran if Tehran “continues” its conventional missile program. There’s no sign that Iran would even consider limiting its ballistic missiles since they are the Islamic Republic’s only form of deterrence.

https://scheerpost.com/2026/01/16/us-surging-military-assets-to-the-middle-east-to-prepare-for-war-with-iran-after-trump-postpones-attack/

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YOURDEMOCRACY.NET RECORDS HISTORY AS IT SHOULD BE — NOT AS THE WESTERN MEDIA WRONGLY REPORTS IT — SINCE 2005.

         Gus Leonisky

         POLITICAL CARTOONIST SINCE 1951.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1rkWnFOgH8w

Donald Trump has announced 10% tariffs on several European countries including Denmark, Norway, Sweden, France, Germany, the United Kingdom, the Netherlands and Finland starting 1 February 2026. These tariffs will go up to 25% starting 1 June 2026 and they will stay in place until the US can acquire Greenland. Donald Trump has criticised Denmark and other European countries for not ensuring Greenland’s security properly and has underpinned this reason for the US “need” to control Greenland. Stephen Miller has also stated that it’s unfair for the US to keep paying for Greenland’s security while it remains under Danish control. Stephen Miller has also criticised Denmark for not doing enough for Greenland. The EU leaders have called an emergency meeting on Sunday afternoon in order to agree on a response to Donald Trump’s tariffs.

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YOURDEMOCRACY.NET RECORDS HISTORY AS IT SHOULD BE — NOT AS THE WESTERN MEDIA WRONGLY REPORTS IT — SINCE 2005.

         Gus Leonisky

         POLITICAL CARTOONIST SINCE 1951.

Shattered families, lost children: the dark legacy of Greenland’s colonial past

Denmark is apologising for its treatment of the island, energised by sudden US interest in its minerals and strategic location. But for many, the agony goes on

Six months into Johanne Geisler’s pregnancy, a psychologist came to her home in central Denmark to test if she was capable of being a good parent.

Geisler, who had moved to Denmark from her native Greenland several years earlier, was nervous as she led the psychologist into the living room. The assessment would determine whether she could keep her unborn baby.

“What’s the opposite of rain?” the psychologist asked, according to Geisler. The question threw her.

Greenlandic was her first language, but the psychologist had refused her request for an interpreter, saying her Danish was good enough. Still, she struggled to understand what was being asked of her and grew increasingly anxious. “I was telling her I am doing my best because this is my second language,” she said.

Over 10 days towards the end of 2019, Geisler underwent a series of examinations including Rorschach and IQ tests, a Reading the Mind in the Eyes test and the ME Million Clinical Multiaxial Inventory-III, as well as being observed while having dinner with her husband and his grandson. The psychometric tests were part of a parental competency test or forældrekompetenceundersøgelse, known as FKU.

Danish social services had previously placed two of Geisler’s children in foster care after she failed an FKU. Someone had informed the local authorities that Geisler and her husband, Ulrik Olsen, were drinking and mistreating their children, which she denies. The move to Denmark was challenging, she admits, but by the time she became pregnant again in 2019, she had settled.

However, the local municipality was concerned about the couple and a psychologist was sent to determine whether their parenting skills were “permanently impaired”. The FKU found that caring for a child was too big a responsibility for Geisler and her husband. “We never stood a chance,” she said at her home.

This year – half a decade after the state took her baby – the Danish government banned the use of the tests for Greenlandic families. A new law acknowledged what indigenous rights advocates and some psychologists have been saying for years: that the tests discriminate against Greenlandic families.

The tests were banned after US president Donald Trump vowed to take over Greenland, setting off a political earthquake in Denmark and beyond. Since then, Denmark has tried hard to address the grievances that are fuelling Greenlanders’ desire to break free, opening up the darkest chapters of their 300-year relationship.

“Stuff I fought for for so many years – that they told me ‘it’s too difficult, we cannot do that’ – was apparently easy enough to do within a week after what Trump had said,” Greenlandic politician Aki Matilda Høegh-Dam said in an interview.

But untangling the colonial legacies is a huge challenge. One of the most delicate issues is the removal of Greenlandic children from their parents in Denmark – six times more common than for Danish children.

A new body is reviewing cases in which FKU tests were used to remove children. Denmark’s minister for social affairs has estimated that about 300 cases will be reconsidered – a small number with an outsize impact on the relationship with Greenland, which has a population of less than 60,000.

For some, however, it is much too late. Several months after Danish social workers took away Geisler’s infant son, he was put up for adoption. The case was closed.

A light snow drifted down as Thorkel Lynge Olsen arranged reindeer meat on a stainless steel counter in a covered market in Greenland’s capital. Nine months have passed since Trump Force One, carrying Donald Trump Jr, touched down at the newly opened international airport in Nuuk, setting off a frenzy in one of the world’s smallest capitals. Olsen’s biggest concern now is the bad weather, which means less produce, but he said he was grateful to Trump for spurring on Denmark to take Greenland more seriously. “I’m glad it has got things moving,” he said. “But I think we have to be careful.”

Trump Jr’s visit took place as his father was preparing to take office, after saying on the campaign trail that control of Greenland was “an absolute necessity” for US national security. The world’s biggest island sits on the shortest flight path between North America and Russia, making it a crucial forward-operating base for surveillance and missile defence. Melting ice is unlocking new shipping lanes through the Arctic, fuelling rivalry between Russia and China. And the rare earth elements buried beneath Greenland’s ice cap, including dysprosium, neodynium and terbium, are essential to modern technologies.

“Everyone knew that if the US wanted to take over Greenland they could do it in a quarter of an hour,” said Rasmus Leander, associate professor at the Centre for Foreign and Security Policy at Greenland’s only university.

Accompanying Trump Jr was Charlie Kirk, the US conservative activist and social media personality who was assassinated eight months later. “Donald Trump Jr, a very good friend of mine, called and said, ‘Hey do you want to come to Greenland?’” Kirk recounted in an episode of his podcast.

On a mound overlooking the fjords, the American visitors posed for a photograph in front of a statue of Danish-Norwegian missionary Hans Egede. It was an unfortunate choice: for many Greenlanders, Egede is a symbol of the colonial shackles they have struggled to throw off for decades. His arrival in Greenland in 1721 marked the beginning of Danish rule over its Indigenous Inuit population, which provided seal blubber for export.

Greenland ceased to be a colony in 1953 and is now a self-governing autonomous territory within the kingdom of Denmark. Kalaallisut, or Greenlandic, is the official language. But the island remains dependent on Denmark for half its budget and does not control key areas such as foreign policy or defence. And while it has the right to pursue independence, the outcome of any referendum would have to be ratified by the Danish parliament.

Efforts to modernise and assimilate the Inuit population during the second half of the 20th century have left deep scars – and anger. As monuments were toppled across the world during Black Lives Matter protests, red paint was smeared on the statue of Egede to make his robes look bloody, and his staff was turned into a whip. Inuit symbols were daubed on the pedestal along with the word: “decolonise”.

Returning to the US, Kirk shared his impressions of Greenland with his listeners. “They can't stand their current Danish masters,” he said. “They want a change. They want to be part of a country that respects them, that gives them human rights… It is a perfect fit for the United States.”

Bula Larsen

Aka Niviâna Pedersen chooses her words carefully. The 30-year-old actor got her break in the True Detective TV series playing the younger sister of Detective Evangeline Navarro. US interest in Greenland has put her under a different kind of spotlight. “I realised how easy it is for people to have this narrative that we want to be with the US,” said Pedersen at a busy cafe in Nuuk’s main shopping centre.

Despite the complicated relationship with Denmark, most Greenlanders do not wish to trade that for fealty to the US, she said. “Considering the Indigenous people of the US, I don’t think they’re going to treat us better – even if Trump says we’re all going to be millionaires. I’m not buying it.”

Growing up in Denmark, she experienced first-hand the discrimination that many Greenlanders complain of, but the anger she felt then has tempered with age. For all the problems, there is a long shared history with Denmark, including family ties. Many Greenlanders, who are citizens of Denmark, move there for education and other opportunities.

And there are pressing issues, including high levels of alcohol abuse, domestic violence and one of the highest suicide rates in the world. “It might have roots in colonial history but we need to do something about it now,” she said. “Will we heal faster if we become independent?”

For now, Trump’s threats have empowered political forces that are wary of the US and favour a cautious approach towards independence. “We shouldn’t build the house from the chimney down,” the prime minister, Jens-Frederik Nielsen, told Greenland’s public broadcaster.

After winning an election this March, Nielsen formed a coalition excluding Naleraq, the party most open to exploring a US relationship. Greenland has since tacked closer to Denmark – and Europe. Earlier this month, Denmark said it would invest 27.4bn Danish kroner (£3.2bn) to strengthen its military presence in the Arctic, including an underwater cable linking it to Greenland and the construction of a military base in Nuuk.

Relations with the US deteriorated further after Denmark summoned the US charge d’affaires this summer over an alleged influence campaign in Greenland. There was no sign of activity at the small clapboard house that serves as the US consulate in Nuuk on an afternoon this month. But US interest in Greenland has not gone away, said Aaja Chemnitz, one of the two Greenlandic members of the Danish parliament.

“When it comes to Americans coming to Greenland and trying to influence the political system, what they are doing is actually feeding the opposition,” she said in her office.

With the US watching, Denmark can’t afford to put a foot wrong, she said. “Every time Denmark is messing up, I know there’s someone on the other side who is trying to get something: whether it’s the opposition or the US administration.”

The tap of heels echoed in the silence as the Danish prime minister, Mette Frederiksen, walked up to the podium in Nuuk last month, wearing a black suit and a sombre expression.

She came to apologise in person to the victims of a campaign dating back to the 1960s to curb population growth in Greenland. An official inquiry this year found that roughly half the women of fertile age in Greenland were fitted with an IUD, including girls as young as 12. Many did not give informed consent, and some were rendered infertile. It has been called genocide by some Greenlandic politicians.

“What you were exposed to was wrong. It was a failure and now we take responsibility for that,” Frederiksen said to the victims, many of whom are now in their 60s and 70s. “On behalf of Denmark, I would like to say sorry.”

The apology represented a growing willingness in Denmark to confront uglier episodes in its history – and the myth of its own benevolence.

“That was the narrative: we are the best colonial power in the world since we treat our colonised [the same as we treat all citizens],” said Ebbe Volquardsen, a German political scientist who has lived in Nuuk for a decade. “Any criticism was seen as a sign of ingratitude, and that made it extraordinarily difficult for anyone in Greenland to put forward demands.”

Frederiksen previously apologised for the removal of 22 Greenlandic children from their parents in a 1950s social experiment that sought to turn them into model citizens or “little Danes”. Instead they lost their identity and suffered lifelong trauma. Frederiksen’s predecessor had resisted calls for an apology, describing the episode as a closed chapter.

As Frederiksen spoke, some of the women wept quietly. One stood with her back turned to Frederiksen in protest – a black handprint painted over her mouth symbolising solidarity with missing and murdered indigenous people. Nielsen dabbed his eyes with a tissue.

The words lifted a weight from Bula Larsen. “It was like it has been there all those years without my knowing it,” she said, gazing out of the window of a cafe in the Danish city of Aarhus, where she now lives.

She was only 14 when the head of the school dormitory in Paamiut chaperoned her and the other girls to the hospital, but the memory is still vivid: the Danish doctor’s white gown; the instruction to remove her underwear; the big metal instruments arranged on a tray; the fear – and the pain. “So you don’t get pregnant,” she recalls the doctor saying as he inserted the IUD.

For years, Larsen suffered from infections, and she couldn’t get pregnant. But it was only decades later, listening to a podcast on Danish radio, that she began to realise it was the IUD that had destroyed her dreams of motherhood.

“I got very angry with the Danish state,” she said, softly.

Other women came forward and together they engaged a lawyer who had represented the survivors of the “little Danes” experiment.

Mads Pramming also represents another group of Greenlanders suing Denmark for discrimination. As the children of unwed Greenlandic women, they were denied the right to know or inherit from their biological fathers, many of whom were Danish. “Greenlanders have always been seen as worthless,” said Claus Frederiksen, a spokesman for the group.

While she welcomed the apology, Larsen said it wasn’t enough. “If they give us compensation, it will show that they mean it,” she said.

Frederiksen has said a “reconciliation fund” will be established but it isn’t clear who will receive compensation – or how much. If need be, Larsen said, she and the other women will go to court to get it. “Either the state will surrender, or we will fight this battle.”

Outside the cultural centre in Nuuk, a battery-powered candle was still flickering weeks after the ceremony alongside a wreath, and a rock painted with the words: “For the children we never had

On the walls of Geisler’s home, paintings of icy Greenlandic landscapes are a window on her distant home. A Greenlandic flag hangs beside a polar bear painting.

Her son is six now, but she knows nothing about him except fragments from the reports she receives every other year from social services.

“If he was home, there would be toy cars everywhere, children playing around us – sounds,” she said longingly.

Months after their baby was taken in 2020, Geisler’s teenage daughter returned to live with her mother. After a decade in foster care, she couldn’t speak Greenlandic and was estranged from her culture. “She was in a very fragile state,” said Geisler.

She has no contact with her older son, whose foster parents turned him against her, she said. Geisler couldn’t understand: if Danish social services considered her fit to care for her older daughter, why not her infant son?

The couple fought to overturn the adoption in court.

Their appeal included a letter from the psychologist who treated Geisler after the child was taken. In her view, Geisler and Ulrik were “loving people” capable of providing a safe home. “The parents may have needed a helping hand from the public sector regarding the upbringing of their little son, but it does not seem that they have been given a chance,” wrote Grethe Drejer.

The court upheld the adoption, citing the results of the parental competency test, which had found Geisler to be mistrustful of others, lacking in empathy and social skills, “immature”, “egocentric”and “chronically vulnerable to stress”.

“Overall, the parental competence survey assessed that taking care of a child’s wellbeing is too big a task for Johanne Geisler and Ulrik Olsen, due to the massive emotional personality and social challenges described,” it read. The couple had already received help from the state and it made no difference, it added.

The court downplayed the lawyers’ argument that the parental competency test was full of problems and had been conducted by Danish psychologists with no knowledge of Greenlandic culture or language. Another appeal was rejected in 2021.

Opposition to the tests began to gain traction in 2022 when the Danish Institute for Human Rights said they were discriminatory. But it was only after Trump’s threats that Denmark moved to scrap them.

The decision raised Geisler’s hopes of getting her son back – until she found out that cases involving adoption weren’t up for review. “It was devastating,” she said.

Two Greenlandic mothers have had their children returned to them since the law changed. Others are mobilising to get theirs back.

“We are never going to give up,” said Geisler. “Never,” echoed her husband.

https://observer.co.uk/news/international/article/shattered-families-lost-children-the-dark-legacy-of-greenlands-colonial-past

=========================

MEANWHILE:

Consider, my fellow Americans. For a country of a mere 5.9 million people, with a gross domestic product not much bigger than the state of Missouri’s, the place has some remarkable accomplishments to boast about. We can thank Jens and Lars Rasmussen for Google Maps. It was a Danish mycologist who developed the yeast that made beer drinkable (incidentally, this chap also translated Darwin into Danish). And of course, they gave the world Lego, which will sell you a Star Wars Death Star for a mere $3,250.

But here’s the interesting Danish fact that really caught my eye over the weekend as I was reading about Trump’s obsession with Greenland. Denmark doesn’t export a whole lot of things to the United States. But it does produce two products that Americans are gaga over: Ozempic and Wegovy. That’s right—the insanely popular diabetes and weight-loss drugs are Danish in origin, from the big pharmaceutical company Novo Nordisk.

Wait a second. This doesn’t make any sense. Because you see, Denmark has socialized medicine; they subsidize it with taxes. Most health care is provided free of charge. So you see the source of my confusion. Because we in America have been told for decades by Republican politicians, a small handful of Democratic ones, and the pharmaceutical industry that if we went to a system like that, we’d kill off the innovation that makes the American system the envy of the world. 

But now, lo and behold, we’re not the envy of the world. Denmark is! They’ve somehow managed to overcome the suffocating weight of socialism to innovate their way to two of the most popular products in the world. According to the Bible of American free enterprise, that isn’t supposed to happen.

I joke—a little. The Danish government does not set prices for prescription drugs. However, manufacturers do have to notify the Danish Medicines Agency of proposed price changes every 14 days. Also, by law, prescription drugs are sold for the same price at every pharmacy in the country. Oh, and this too—pharmaceutical manufacturers aren’t allowed to advertise directly to consumers; only to health care professionals. That cuts costs by many billions right there. In the United States, of course, half the advertising on television is for prescription drugs. (The other half is for online gambling apps.)

I don’t have a strong position on Trump’s Greenland ploy. Part of me has to admit that it makes a certain sense, assuming we accept the idea that the planet is warming. If those northern waters become navigable, I guess it’ll be good for the United States to have control over them—at least in the few short years that humanity will, in those circumstances, have left. Of course, Trump doesn’t accept the idea that the planet is warming, although maybe this is proof that deep down he does. And maybe he’s thinking that the capital city of Nuuk, like the Gaza City of Trump’s imaginings, might be a beachfront playground for the rich someday and a nice home for a future Trump hotel and casino. 

My guess is that Trump just likes the idea because he looks at a map and sees that Greenland is so yuge. I wonder if anyone has explained to him that maps have been drawn since the 1700s in something called the Mercator projection, which converts the actual Earth’s curved lines into straight lines so they’re easier to read, but which exaggerates the size of land bodies near the poles. In real life, Greenland is larger than Libya but smaller than Algeria. On the other hand, Trump doesn’t care much about reality. He cares about how things look. So as long as Greenland looks massive, it’s all good.

The more important illusion here in my book is the bill of goods Americans have been sold for decades about how medical innovation would be utterly impossible if we had a more heavily regulated health care system. It’s just bosh. As the Democrats claw their way out of the wreckage of the election and toward a more viable future, I hope they take a minute to think about how the Danish health care system managed to give us Ozempic. 

Indeed, Ozempic and Wegovy may well be in the news in the coming months—if Trump imposes the massive tariffs on Denmark that he has threatened over Greenland, the prices of the two drugs may well be raised. 

Mind you, they’re already sky-high—here at home anyway. My admiration for Novo Nordisk and its innovative prowess is tempered by a quick look at the prices the company charges across the world. A four-week supply of Ozempic in the U.S. is about $1,000. In Denmark itself, it’s $122. It’s about $150 in Canada and $59 in Germany. Wegovy costs $1,349 here but $186 in Denmark and $92 in the U.K.

Bernie Sanders launched an investigation into Novo Nordisk last year and grilled its CEO in a hearing. The CEO said that rebates, discounts, and fees make the actual prices of the drugs substantially lower than the list prices and that pharmacy benefit managers sometimes exclude the drugs when prices are lowered because PBMs profit from the rebates. Joe Biden’s Federal Trade Commission, under Lina Khan, sued the three largest PBMs, alleging that they excluded covering lower-priced insulin providers in favor of higher-priced ones that offer higher rebates. That suit, we can assume, will not be of much interest to a Trump administration.

So while Trump spends his pre-inaugural days spinning these woolly Lebensraum fantasies, there is still good reason for Americans to be paying attention to Denmark: The private sector produced these two wonder drugs, and the government managed to make them affordable. That’s something that will actually impact people’s lives. But in Trump’s America, that isn’t how things are going to work.

https://newrepublic.com/article/190137/trump-denmark-greenland-ozempic-healthcare...

NO MORE LEGO AND OZEMPIC FOR THE USA? OLALA.... OUCH...!

SEE ALSO: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=sXwna5mPT9M

READ FROM TOP.

YOURDEMOCRACY.NET RECORDS HISTORY AS IT SHOULD BE — NOT AS THE WESTERN MEDIA WRONGLY REPORTS IT — SINCE 2005.

         Gus Leonisky

         POLITICAL CARTOONIST SINCE 1951.