Whatever I Fancy Blog![]() |
incorporating |
Climate Blog UK ![]() |
and remembering |
| Comment | Opinion | Questions |
|
|
|
|
[Entries are in reverse date order, latest at the top. Comments and contributions are welcome to the email address at the bottom.] |
| 2026202520242023202220212020 |
|
Wednesday 21st January |
You'll have seen it, I'm sure, but once again I feel obliged to record this:
That's yesterday's rant. Last May the US State Department published fulsome praise:
Have you looked at Truth Social? Yes, I admit that I have an account, just so I can check out the horse's mouth. Yards of bat-shit-crazy support for DJT. Here's an image posted by WomenForTrump (in fact, there are around 20 so-named accounts, owned by individual women - I assume):
This imagery is everywhere on the platform. Trump as king ... prophet ... God ... saviour. They truly believe. Does he? |
|
Tuesday 20th January |
|
It's been all over the media, but I still have to record its appearance. Final proof of Trump's infancy, toys out of the pram ... the letter to Norwegian Prime Minister Jonas Gahr Støre:
"Dear Jonas, President DJT" Most us cried "Scam!", I imagine. However, it was originally shared by Nick Schifrin, legit journalist, PBS NewsHour's foreign affairs and defense correspondent, previously Al Jazeera America's Middle East voice. Faisal Islam confirmed live on BBC Breakfast from Davos yesterday morning. The letter was all over BBC News and Newsnight last night. Business economist Pepel Klaasa - "I am a Russian, Israeli and Belgian citizen ... yep, such things happen" - suggested on Twitter/X that Macron should write this letter to the US Ambassador to France, Charles Kushner: "Dear Charles, President Emmanuel Macron" Faisal Islam, apologetically distracted from what he sees as his proper job in Davos, took time out to object to Trump's claim of "no written documents" and drew attention to the USA's declaration on Danish sovereignty of Greenland in 1916. The declaration (reproduced below) was included as an appendix to the contract concerning the sale of the Danish West Indies to USA, both of which were signed on 4th August 1916. The American foreign minister Robert Lansing (1864-1928) signed the declaration on behalf of the USA in support of Denmark's claim to sovereignty over Greenland.
I take my hat off to Austrian cartoonist Oliver Schopf for his prescient offering of 6 October 2025:
|
|
Monday 19th January |
|
The Trump approach to Greenland has at the very least ruffled feathers in Europe and should lead to some robust conversation in Davos this week, if European leaders have shaken off their meek tendency to kow-tow.
It's worth noting that the USA has bought territory in the past. Here's a list of significant purchases compiled by ChatGPT:
Yes, they've done business with Denmark before (see the last entry above). They've also discussed the specific possibility of purchasing Greenland, in 1867, 1946 and 2019; all approaches were refused. In military terms, nothing has recently prevented the USA from having a greater presence on the island (see the 1951 Greenland Defense Agreement). There were an estimated 15,000 US personnel on the ground at the height of the Cold War, and it is the USA itself that voluntarily reduced that number to the 150 at Pituffik now (or before this whole furore erupted).
|
|
Sunday 18th January |
No shit. About bloody time, Starmer. I had no intention of focussing on the gloom this year - and I must seek out brighter topics - but so far the POTUS antics beggar belief. It's a longish rant from the Orange Buffoon, but I recommend you take the time to scrutinise and dissect his Greenland tariff "truth" posted yesterday:
PRESIDENT OF THE UNITED STATES OF AMERICA Extraordinary. Does he really write this stuff? If so - and if not - how does it ever make it into print? (Answer: It's social media, innit? His own.) We need to stop believing that it's possible to deal with him, right now. He explicitly dislikes the rule-of-law institutions that underpinned world peace since WWII; does not believe in the USA's role in NATO; despises Europe and the EU; values money above all else; only respects an absolutist exercise of power; is an unpredictable and untrustworthy ally; ... and on it goes. There is no point in trying to cosy up. Our Union-Jack-lampposting neo-patriots are so ploughing the wrong furrow. Their obsession with the word "Great" is valueless, indeed self-harming. The world order has changed and the brute power lies elsewhere. Even the Brexiteer will have to accept that we don't matter that much anymore as an individual nation state - and will need our European neighbours more and more.
Over the years, frequently on these pages, I've poured scorn on Trump, even dismissed him as a risible has-been. My concern now is that he's going to get away with anything and everything. |
|
Saturday 17th January |
Here's the latest UK poll predictor from Electoral Calculus:
How does Reform have such a lead when Farage recruits these people?
Have you really begun to imagine this country governed by people like this? |
|
Friday 16th January |
Resolutions? I really did intend to write a little every day this year ... and then the madness of Trump shut me down. What can you say? It's all there for us to see, in plain sight.
Marķa Corina Machado gives her Peace prize to Trump. Really? How upside down and back-to-front is that? Jenrick defects to Reform. It's as if Farage is deliberately assembling a bunch of unlikeable, untrustworthy failures and misfits. Knives ready to bury in a colleague's back. A display of all that's bad about politicians. |
|
Thursday 1st January |
|
Happy New Year, everybody.
|
| © Charlie Lewis 2026
Email: charlie_c_lewis@hotmail.com |