After Maduro, who's next? Trump spurs speculation about his plans for Greenland, Cuba and Colombia APAAMER MADHANI Jan 4, 2026  WASHINGTON (AP) — A day after the audacious U.S. military operation in Venezuela, President Donald Trump on Sunday renewed his calls for an American takeover of the Danish territory of Greenland for the sake of U.S. security interests and threatened military action on Colombia for facilitating the global sale of cocaine, while his top diplomat declared the communist government in Cuba is “in a lot of trouble.” The comments from Trump and Secretary of State Marco Rubio after the ouster of Venezuela's Nicolás Maduro underscore that the U.S. administration is serious about taking a more expansive role in the Western Hemisphere. With thinly veiled threats, Trump is rattling hemispheric friends and foes alike, spurring a pointed question around the globe: Who's next? “It’s so strategic right now. Greenland is covered with Russian and Chinese ships all over the place," Trump told reporters as he flew back to Washington from his home in Florida. "We need Greenland from the standpoint of national security, and Denmark is not going to be able to do it.”

Asked during an interview with The Atlantic earlier on Sunday what the U.S.-military action in Venezuela could portend for Greenland, Trump replied: “They are going to have to view it themselves. I really don’t know.” Trump, in his administration's National Security Strategy published last month, laid out restoring “American preeminence in the Western Hemisphere” as a central guidepost for his second go-around in the White House. Trump has even quipped that some now refer to the fifth U.S. president's foundational document as the “Don-roe Doctrine.”, causing unease in Denmark Saturday's dead-of-night operation by U.S. forces in Caracas and Trump’s comments on Sunday heightened concerns in Denmark, which has jurisdiction over the vast mineral-rich island of Greenland.

Danish Prime Minister Mette Frederiksen in a statement that Trump has "no right to annex" the territory. She also reminded Trump that Denmark already provides the United States, a fellow member of NATO, broad access to Greenland through existing security agreements. He has also pointed to the 19th century Monroe Doctrine, which rejects European colonialism, as well as the Roosevelt Corollary — a justification invoked by the U.S. in supporting Panama’s secession from Colombia, which helped secure the Panama Canal Zone for the U.S. — as he's made his case for an assertive approach to American neighbors and beyond......read on   https://www.yahoo.com/news/articles/maduro-whos-next-trumps-comments-231024285.html?utm_source=pushly&ncid=pushly

Broken justice- Is this the end of international law? And is there a glimmer of hope with the rise of Zohran Mamdani in the United States. Guardian   Linda Kinstler  26 june 2025 A growing number of scholars and lawyers are losing faith in the current system. Others say the law is not to blame, but the states that are supposed to uphold it. Once viewed as a safeguard against global injustice, international law has become increasingly politicised and dysfunctional in recent years. As Linda Kinstler writes in a fascinating essay for the cover story of this week’s Guardian Weekly magazine, the norms, institutions and good faith essential to the system functioning effectively have been badly eroded, and it’s hard to see how the problems can be reversed. Institutions like the UN security council and international criminal court (ICC) are now often simply ignored or manipulated by powerful member states. 

Francis’s approach was to follow in the footsteps of one of his heroes, Pope John XXIII, who said on the eve of the modernising Second Vatican Council in 1962 that he wished to “open the window and let in some fresh air”. In a memorable dressing down of the Vatican’s civil service, the first non-European Pope of modern times railed against a “pathology of power” and excoriated insiders who “feel themselves ‘lord of the manor’ – superior to everyone and everything”. The Roman Catholic church, he said, needed to “come out of herself and go to the peripheries”; to become “a church of the poor for the poor” and a “field hospital for the faithful”. Over the next decade, traditional Franciscan themes of poverty, humility, solidarity with the poor and with the natural environment dominated the style and substance of the new papacy. His decision to live simply in a clerical guest house in Vatican City, rather than the papal palace, made for a dramatic contrast with Benedict’s grander lifestyle and taste for ceremonial splendour. A plain white cassock and black boots, and a blue Ford Focus for getting around instead of a papal limousine, sent a message regarding what a “poor church” should look like. Financial structures that were all but unregulated began to be reformed, as the Vatican bank was required to conform to Council of Europe anti-money laundering rules, and an independent auditor general was appointed. Initially, much of this was so novel and, to a progressive eye so beguiling, that some western liberals were tempted almost to view Francis as one of their own.

The intensity of that love affair was never going to last. An early informal conversation with journalists caused widespread astonishment when the pope replied “Who am I to judge?” to a question about gay people in the church. But well over a decade later there is no question of the Roman Catholic Church endorsing same-sex marriage. A more compassionate approach was being signalled, but in doctrinal terms Francis remained firmly within the letter of existing canon law. It would be a mistake, therefore, to view Francis’s papacy as a liberal one, but in significant areas it exerted a major progressive influence beyond the church, especially in relation to the climate emergency and the treatment of people migrating between countries. The 2015 papal encyclical, Laudato Si’, subtitled ‘On Care for Our Common Home’, made headlines around the world and offered a powerful critique of unregulated capitalism’s destructive effect on the planet. Delivering the church’s weightiest and most trenchant analysis of the implications of global heating, Francis’s call to hear “the cry of the earth and the cry of the poor” linked the causes of social and environmental justice. At Cop climate summits – which in 2023 he missed due to poor health – the pope repeatedly emphasised the responsibility of the developed world to mitigate the impact on poorer nations of its unsustainable consumption of resources.As the son of Italian immigrants to Argentina, Francis invested personal passion into his advocacy on behalf of migrants. Laudato Si’ noted that, for economic and climate-related reasons, mass migration would be a permanent 21st-century phenomenon. As western governments have increasingly battened down the hatches and adopted draconiaread n short-term responses to the new reality, the pope at times appeared a lonely and isolated ally of millions of vulnerable people on the move.......there's more- on     https://www.theguardian.com/world/2025/apr/21/pope-francis-outsider-whose-reforming-mission-made-him-an-ally-of-progressives