“This bargain no longer works,” Carney told the World Economic Forum. “We are in the midst of a rupture, not a transition.”

But, over the past two decades, great powers like the U.S. are increasingly using “economic integration as weapons,” he said. This is causing countries to retreat into themselves, becoming less reliant on outside sources — which Carney warned will lead to greater fragmentation and volatility.

“Tariffs as leverage, financial infrastructure as coercion, supply chains as vulnerabilities to be exploited. You cannot live within the lie of mutual benefit through integration when integration becomes the source of your subordination,” he said.

Countries like Canada “compete with each other to be the most accommodating,” he said. “This is not sovereignty. It is the performance of sovereignty while accepting subordination.”

He calls for countries to form a third path, one of greater cooperation, in order to push back against the threats by major powers. Doing this would require dispensing with simply signalling support for global order in favor of redoubling efforts to actually enforce principles like those laid out in the UN charter, he said.

“We should not allow the rise of hard power to blind us to the fact that the power of legitimacy, integrity, and rules will remain strong if we choose to wield it together,” he said. Countries must “stop invoking the ‘rules-based international order’ as though it still functions as advertised. Call the system what it is: a period where the most powerful pursue their interests using economic integration as a weapon of coercion.”

The speech comes just weeks after German President Frank-Walter Steinmeier similarly said that the U.S. is ending world order as it’s known, and instead turning the world “into a den of robbers, where the most unscrupulous take whatever they want” and countries are “treated as the property of a few great powers.”

Carney and Steinmeier both, perhaps, ignore their countries’ respective responsibilities for the erosion of the enforcement of international order — in their support for Israel’s genocide in Gaza, their contributions to the global system of imperialism, and their participation in an increasing crackdown on asylum and immigration by wealthy countries, among other actions.

However, many experts have noted the vast erosion of international principles brought on by the U.S. in particular, which is accelerating under Trump.

Amnesty International USA warned in a report on Tuesday, the anniversary of Trump’s inauguration, that Trump’s first year has led to a “human rights emergency” in which the administration is “cracking the pillars of a free society.”

“At stake are the rights that enable people to defend all other rights and live without fear from the arbitrary exercise of power and discrimination, including the rights to freedom of the press, expression, and peaceful protest; a fair trial and due process; equality and non-discrimination; and privacy,” the report said. “When these rights are weakened, the harms do not stay contained — they spread.”

[…]

Via https://truthout.org/articles/mark-carney-warns-american-hegemony-is-destroying-world-order-in-candid-speech/

Philip of Macedonia

Episode 22: Persia and Macedon

The Persian Empire

Dr John W I Lee (2012)

Film Review

Shortly before his death Artaxerxes II was forced to execute his son Darius for plotting to overthrow him. The king’s second son Ariapus committed suicide.

When Artaxerxes II died in 359 BC, his third son Ochus succeeded him, taking the throne name Artaxerxes III. The latter quickly consolidated power, putting down revolts in Phoenicia, Cyprus and Asia Minor. In 343 BC, he also led a campaign that successfully retook Egypt after 60 years of independence.

Also in 359 BC, Philip II became king of Macedon (a Persian client state since 512 BC – see Peloponnesian War: Persia and Sparta Join Forces to Crush Growing Athenian Empire) at the age of 23. After assembling a military to keep Macedonia from breaking up, by 350 BC he had made Macedonia the strongest power in Greece. By 340 BC, he had expanded the territory he controlled to jut north of Athens.

Philip’s phenomenal military success related mainly to getting rid of the Hoplite lances and shields and replacing them with  15-18 foot pikes (sarissas) soldiers carried with two hands. They used them in a tight phalanx formation of up to 16 men.

He also established a cavalry, which he gave long lances, brought in slingers, archers, light cavalry and javelin throwers, and strategically organized his forces into small groups with their own commanders. Philip also engaged engineers to build the latest siege technology.

In 338 BC he invaded southern Greece. which quickly came under his control. He also formed a Hellenic League, which organized an unsuccessful raid on the western Persian empire (the Anatolian peninsula). Murdered 336 BC, he was succeeded by his son Alexander III (Alexander the Great).

The same year Artaxerxes III was poisoned and his eunuch Bagoas installed his youngest son Artaxerxes IV as king. The latter ruled less than two years before he, too, was poisoned. A nobleman and distant relative Codommanus, took the throne as Darius III. He would be the last Persian king.

In 334 BC, Alexander crossed the Hellespont and landed at Troy with 50,000 men, including 7,000 cavalry. He left behind an equal sized army in Greece to prevent revolt. Darius III relied on local satraps to defend their satrapies. In the first battle at Granicus, Alexander employed hammer and anvil tactics to crush Persia’s Greek mercenaries, killing 18,000 of 20,000 of them.

Following this massacre the city of Sardis surrendered without a fight.

Alexander then used his siege engines against the highly fortified Greek coastal cities. He pardoned Greek mercenaries who defected to join his arm. He then moved inland, his forces taking city after city.

Darius III meanwhile was building an army in Babylon. He appointed Memnon of rose as regional commander of the Greek mercenaries. After building up a fleet that retook several Aegean Islands, the latter fell ill and died.

Darius meanwhile led his army north to Syria in 333 BC.

https://www.kanopy.com/en/pukeariki/watch/video/15372393/15372420

Mohammad al-Ayoubi

Washington claims the war has entered a ‘second phase,’ but conditions in Gaza show no power shift, no end to violence, and no real sovereignty – only what appears to be a rebranded form of occupation.

The announcement arrived wrapped in the familiar choreography of diplomacy. Carefully chosen language, optimistic briefings, and reassurances that the war on Gaza had reached a new stage, one that would ease suffering and open the door to political reordering.

According to Washington, “phase two” of the ceasefire agreement had begun, signaling a move away from annihilation toward stability, governance, and transition.

In Gaza, the reality was less abstract. Israeli drones continued to hover above neighborhoods already reduced to rubble, Rafah remained sealed, bodies still arrived at hospitals, and Israeli forces showed no sign of withdrawal.

Aid trickled in sporadically, reconstruction remained a distant promise, and the daily mechanics of siege carried on uninterrupted. Nothing that defines a genuine shift in conditions or authority had materially changed, except the vocabulary used to describe it.

The question raised by the US announcement is therefore not whether ‘phase two’ has begun, but whether it was ever intended to exist as anything more than a political abstraction.

Is this a real transition in the trajectory of the war, or another exercise in linguistic repackaging meant to stabilize Israel’s position without addressing the foundations of the conflict itself?

The historical record leaves little room for doubt. US involvement in Palestine has consistently revolved around managing the scale and visibility of violence, calibrating its intensity in ways that safeguard Israel’s strategic dominance while containing diplomatic fallout.

Read in this context, ‘phase two’ emerges as a political device rather than a substantive shift. It is a framework meant to absorb the aftermath of mass destruction, shield Israel from international isolation, and reorder Palestinian life under post-war conditions, all while leaving untouched the structures that made the war inevitable.

A declaration without enforcement

Ibrahim al-Madhoun, a Palestinian writer and political analyst close to Hamas, tells The Cradle that Washington’s announcement amounts to nothing more than “a political position rather than a genuine transition on the ground,” especially given Israel’s failure to comply even with the terms of the first phase.

Israeli forces continue to expand what Palestinians refer to as the ‘Yellow Line,’ a militarized buffer zone that now consumes much of Gaza’s territory. Rafah remains closed, essential goods are blocked, targeted killings continue, and no meaningful reconstruction effort has begun. The conditions that defined the war before the ceasefire remain largely intact beneath a layer of diplomatic messaging.

Hazem Qassem, Hamas’s official spokesperson, echoes this assessment, acknowledging that while the announcement appears positive in form, “what has happened so far is a media declaration that requires concrete steps on the ground.” He emphasizes that Israel has failed to meet even the benchmarks of phase one, making any talk of a second phase more aspirational than real.

In the logic of international relations, a political declaration without enforcement mechanisms is no declaration at all. The US, which possesses full capacity to pressure Israel, has once again chosen the role of “biased mediator” – or more accurately, a partner in re-engineering the war through less crude means.

Netanyahu’s moment of clarity

Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s statement describing the move to the second phase of the Gaza agreement as “largely symbolic” cannot be read as a marginal opinion or personal estimate.

It is an official Israeli definition of the function of this phase. When Netanyahu makes such a statement immediately after Washington’s announcement, and in front of the families of captives, he makes it clear that Tel Aviv does not treat ‘phase two’ as a binding executive path, but as political and media cover, allowing it to manage time and pressure without offering substantive concessions.

More revealing still was Netanyahu’s dismissal of the proposed Palestinian governing committee as symbolic as well. The implication was unmistakable. Israel does not recognize any Palestinian administration, even one stripped of factional power and framed as technocratic, as a sovereign actor. At best, such bodies are temporary facades. At worst, they are obstacles to be bypassed or neutralized.

This position directly undermines Washington’s narrative of “phased transition.” Israel is not preparing to withdraw, hand over authority, or allow meaningful Palestinian governance to take root.

Instead, it is preserving the outer shell of an agreement while hollowing out its content, a strategy refined through decades of negotiations that maintained form while denying substance.

Seen in this light, the US announcement functions as crisis management rather than conflict resolution, while the Israeli response amounts to an admission that there is no intention to leave Gaza, empower Palestinians, or commit to a political timetable.

‘Phase two’ is designed to freeze escalation and manage fallout, not to dismantle the structures that made the war inevitable.

A first phase that never materialized

From the perspective of Palestinian factions, the premise of phase two is flawed because phase one never truly existed in practice.

Israel did not withdraw from the ‘Yellow Line,’ which now covers roughly 60 percent of Gaza’s land. It did not open the crossings, halt its killing campaign, or allow unrestricted aid. According to the Gaza Health Ministry, more than 460 Palestinians have been killed since the ceasefire was announced, alongside over 1,100 violations, according to Hamas, including assassinations and incursions that continued even as the agreement was being celebrated diplomatically.

These figures alone dismantle the notion of transition.

Speaking to The Cradle, Mahfouz Manwar, a senior figure in Palestinian Islamic Jihad (PIJ), argues “talk of a second phase is premature so long as Israel has not been compelled to implement the first phase.”

What exists, he says, is an agreement that survives on paper but has collapsed on the ground, with the concept of ‘phases’ repurposed as a mechanism to legitimize continued occupation at a reduced political cost.

What a real transition would require

If ‘phase two’ had genuinely begun, its indicators would be unmistakable. Israeli forces would withdraw from occupied areas, Rafah would open fully and without political conditions, targeted killings would cease, and reconstruction materials would begin entering Gaza at scale.

None of this has occurred.

Instead, Israel continues to use Rafah as a tool of pressure, blocking any Palestinian sovereign presence, even in its most symbolic form. Authority remains firmly in Israeli hands, reshaped through security arrangements that leave the underlying power balance intact. ‘Phase two,’ as it currently stands, operates as a managed delay rather than a move toward implementation.

At the center of the ‘phase two’ narrative lies the proposal for a transitional Palestinian administration in Gaza, a question that should not be treated as a bureaucratic detail but as a core indicator of whether any real shift is underway.

According to Madhoun and Qassem, Hamas approached the administrative committee as a Palestinian necessity rather than a concession to external pressure. The movement facilitated its formation, they argue, in order to ease humanitarian suffering and remove the pretexts used to justify continued war.

The principle of such a committee was agreed upon more than a year ago with Egyptian mediation, and clear criteria were established, including local representation from Gaza, independence from the occupation, and professional rather than factional qualifications. Disagreements over specific names did arise, as Madhoun acknowledges, but some were resolved through revisions while others remain under discussion, a dynamic that Manwar describes as natural within a fragmented national context.

What is striking, however, is the absence of Fatah from the Cairo talks, reflecting a deeper structural crisis in the Palestinian political system, where authority is fragmented and accountability diffuse. The more pressing question is not whether consensus exists, but whether Israel will permit any Palestinian body to function with real authority. Thus far, the answer has been unequivocally negative.

Administration without sovereignty

The proposed committee, reportedly headed by a former deputy planning minister in the Palestinian Authority (PA), Ali Shaath, and composed of roughly 14 professionals from Gaza, has been presented as a step toward Palestinian self-administration. In reality, the environment in which it is expected to operate exposes the limits of that claim.

The backgrounds of its members have reportedly been vetted by the US, Israel, and Egypt, while its authority is tied to international oversight structures, and its freedom of movement remains subject to Israeli approval. This produces a familiar paradox: a Palestinian body tasked with administering a territory over which it exercises no control.

There is no authority over borders, airspace, or crossings, and not even autonomy over the movement of its own personnel. What emerges is not governance in any meaningful sense, but service provision under occupation, a structure designed to manage humanitarian fallout without possessing the political tools to address its causes.

Decision-making power remains external, particularly through international mechanisms overseeing reconstruction funding, reproducing a well-worn model in which local administrators operate beneath an internationalized center of control.

Hamas and the politics of withdrawal

One of the most consequential developments in this phase is Hamas’s declaration that it is prepared to relinquish administrative control of Gaza without exiting the national struggle. According to the movement’s leadership, this reflects a genuine effort to facilitate relief rather than a tactical maneuver.

By stepping back from civil governance, Hamas removes the primary Israeli-American justification for continued war. If the movement is no longer administering Gaza, the argument that military operations are necessary to dismantle its rule loses coherence. Yet history suggests that governance was never the real issue, and that Palestinian existence itself has always been treated as the fundamental problem.

Weapons and coercion

The attempt to link reconstruction to disarmament is widely viewed by Palestinian factions as a form of political blackmail. Both Hamas and PIJ reject the premise outright, arguing that it seeks to impose politically what Israel failed to achieve militarily.

Qassem states that Hamas is open to regulating weapons within a national framework, but not to surrendering them. Manwar highlights the contradiction at the heart of Israeli claims: if Israel insists it has already destroyed the resistance’s military capabilities, why does disarmament remain a central demand?

The answer lies not in security, but in symbolism. Weapons in Gaza are not merely arms, but markers of agency, and stripping them away would transform the territory from a space of resistance into one managed externally through security arrangements.

A ceasefire without an endpoint

There is little evidence that ‘phase two’ leads toward a permanent end to the war. What exists instead is a fragile pause, vulnerable to collapse, in which phases are used to reposition rather than resolve.

In its current form, ‘phase two’ risks becoming a form of undeclared trusteeship, a humanitarian administration without sovereignty, or a gradual erosion of resistance under sustained pressure.

None of these outcomes constitutes peace.

Egypt, Qatar, Turkiye, and the US are presented as guarantors of the agreement, yet even American officials concede that there has been no progress on an International Stabilization Force (ISF) and that reopening Rafah ultimately remains an Israeli decision.

This admission captures the essence of the crisis. A second phase cannot succeed so long as Israel retains veto power over every operational detail. Only sustained pressure, not diplomatic optimism, can convert an agreement from text into lived reality.

What is unfolding in Gaza points away from any genuine transition toward peace and toward a reshaping of control under new terms. ‘Phase two’ has evolved into a test of Palestinian factions, regional mediators, and the credibility of international guarantees alike.

It will either open the way to an unconditional end to the war and meaningful reconstruction, or take its place among the many agreements reduced to form without substance.

[…]

Via https://libya360.wordpress.com/2026/01/20/gazas-phase-two-the-illusion-of-transition-and-the-reality-of-control/

RT composite. © Getty Images / Kevin Dietsch; Justin Tallis – WPA Pool

Trump believes France’s reluctance to join the US-led panel can be reversed with a trade tariff

US President Donald Trump has mocked French President Emmanuel Macron after France declined to join an American-led Gaza ‘Board of Peace’, saying Macron’s refusal is irrelevant and could be reversed with the threat of trade tariffs.

The Trump-chaired body, intended to oversee the transition in the war-ravaged Palestinian enclave, will include several US officials and businessmen. Invitations were also sent to multiple world leaders, but France publicly rejected the offer. Foreign Minister Jean-Noel Barrot said “the charter of the Board of Peace extends beyond Gaza and therefore exceeds the scope of the peace plan endorsed by the United Nations.”

When told by reporters on Monday that Macron, whose presidential term expires next year, had rejected the invitation, Trump said: “Well, nobody wants him, because he is going to be out of office very soon.”

“If they feel like hostile, I’ll put a 200% tariff on his wines and champagne. And he’ll join. But he doesn’t have to join,” he added.

US relations with Western European and Nordic nations are already strained over Trump’s push to acquire Greenland from Denmark, which he said will happen “the easy way or the hard way.” Last week, he announced tariffs on countries opposing his bid, including France.

Some critics view Trump’s proposed Board of Peace as an attack on the United Nations rather than a narrowly focused panel to implement the ceasefire deal signed last year between Israel and Hamas.

The US reportedly envisions the board as a permanent body with temporary memberships renewed for donations of at least $1 billion. The Trump administration previously defunded many UN programs, arguing the organization often works against American interests.

Russia has confirmed receiving an invitation for President Vladimir Putin to join the panel, saying it needs time to study the proposal.

[…]

Via https://www.rt.com/news/631183-trump-macron-board-peace/

Amarok Petersen is one of thousands of Greenlandic women unable to have children after learning Danish doctors implanted an IUD birth control device in her womb as a child. Caitlin Doornbos/NY Post

By Caitlin Doornbos

NUUK, Greenland — Native Greenlander Amarok Petersen was 27 years old when she learned the gut-wrenching truth about why she couldn’t have children — and that Denmark was to blame.

Suffering from severe uterine problems, a medical doctor discovered an IUD birth control device in her body that she didn’t know she had.

Danish doctors had implanted it when she was just 13 as part of a population control program for thousands of native Greenlandic girls and women.

“I will never have children,” Petersen told The Post, with tears of anger and sorrow welling in her eyes. “That choice was taken from me.”

While the government of Denmark officially apologized last year for decades of forced sterilization of Indigenous women and girls, the horrific mistreatment has cast a long shadow on the island that has become the center of an international ownership fight.

This week, the Danes hosted European troops for military exercises on Greenland, asserting they are protecting the island from outside powers — particularly the United States. But for many Inuit, Denmark itself has long been the real threat.

“The Danes don’t see us as humans,” Petersen said at a local Inuit restaurant overlooking Nuuk’s famous fjords. “They think we’re too expensive, too small a population. But they take our land, our children, our lives and expect thanks.”

Even in adulthood, medical decisions were made without Petersen’s consent. Plagued with problems after the IUD, she had repeated surgeries for unexplained pain. It wasn’t until years later that doctors informed her that her fallopian tubes had been removed in one of the operations in the early 2000s.

Her family also suffered under Denmark’s so-called “Little Danes experiment,” in which Greenlandic children were forcibly sent to Denmark for adoption or institutional care — often permanently separated from their families, she said.

The program, which ran from the 1950s through the 1970s, was part of Denmark’s broader effort to assimilate Greenlandic children, often without parental consent.

It happened to her mother’s brother, Petersen said. Other relatives were subjected to medical experimentation, she added.

“They wanted us smaller,” she said. “Easier to manage.”

Denmark announced in December compensation for victims of forced sterilization, but Petersen called the payments another insult. The women are being offered about $46,000 in reparations.

As the United States renews interest in Greenland — with President Trump recently expressing a desire to buy the island — Danish officials have repeatedly emphasized that “Greenland is not for sale.” But many Greenlanders argue that slogan masks a deeper truth: Denmark still governs Greenland, not Greenlanders themselves.

“They think we are worth pennies,” she said. “They destroyed generations, and now they say, ‘Here — be quiet.’”

‘Greenland is for Greenlanders’ — but controlled by Denmark

Greenlanders interviewed by The Post said they are not ready to swap Denmark for US ownership, as Trump has prioritized; they want independence after years of what some described as generations of trauma, displacement and economic exploitation that still shape daily life across the island.

“People say ‘Greenland is for Greenlanders,’” Petersen said. “But that’s not reality. Denmark speaks for us. Denmark decides. They don’t let us speak.”

That imbalance was visible recently in Washington, where the Danish foreign minister dominated nearly the entire press conference following talks with US officials on purchasing the island, while the Greenlandic foreign minister was largely sidelined.

Foreign Minister Lars Rasmussen of Denmark insisted the roughly 56,000 Greenlanders wouldn’t be bought off by payments from the US or vote in a referendum to become American.

“There’s no way that US will pay for a Scandinavian welfare system in Greenland,” he told Fox News.

For many Greenlanders, US interest has been uncomfortable — but also clarifying. Not because they want annexation, but because it exposes how little autonomy Greenland actually has.

“It was colonial,” Petersen said of Rasmussen’s assertions. “You could see it in his body language. He didn’t want her to speak.

“If Denmark really believed Greenland belongs to Greenlanders,” Petersen said, “they would let us decide our own future.”

That lack of control extends into everyday economic life.

Karen Hammeken Jensen, a Nuussuaq resident who moved from South Greenland seeking better opportunities for her children, said basic living conditions remain poor.

She lives in a government-owned apartment block built decades ago — cramped, aging and plagued by black mold — while the rent alone consumes most of her household’s income.

“These buildings were never modernized,” Jensen said, speaking to The Post from her living room, cold from poor insulation. “They were built for Inuit, and then forgotten.”

Although Denmark often points to subsidies as proof of generosity, Jensen said the system keeps Greenlanders trapped — with high costs, low wages and little chance to build wealth.

“It’s about affordability,” she said. “Pay versus cost. There is no balance.”

Fishing price hikes

The imbalance is especially stark in fishing — Greenland’s most important industry.

Elias Lunge, a fisherman who has worked the waters for 40 years, said Greenlanders do the labor while Denmark and large corporations capture the value.

“We fish the cod,” Lunge said. “Then it’s frozen whole, shipped out, processed elsewhere and sold for much more.”

In some settlements, fishermen are paid as little as $1.86 per kilo for cod. In Nuuk, the same fish can fetch $2.95. Once processed and sold abroad, the price climbs far higher.

“It’s our fish,” Lunge said, gesturing to freshly caught and filleted Greenlandic redfish, dolphin and seals. “Why shouldn’t the money stay here?”

Local fish markets that sell directly to consumers can charge up to $12.50 per kilo — proof, Lunge said, that Greenland could support its own processing industry if companies would build facilities on its shores.

“This shouldn’t even be a debate,” he said.

The human cost of colonial rule

Behind the anecdotes and statistics are lives marked by trauma, addiction and despair — conditions many Greenlanders link directly to colonial policies.

Jensen described seeing alcoholism, drug abuse and violence daily in her Nuuk neighborhood — symptoms of what she called “generations” of broken systems.

“People don’t see a way out,” she said. “And when no one listens, nothing changes.”

Petersen agreed, explaining that many Greenlanders simply lose hope. The island has one of the highest suicide rates in the world, according to researchers, with an estimated 81 per 100,000 people annually killing themselves.

“They took our resources. They took our bodies. And then they told us to thank them,” she said of Danes. “How do you thank someone who stole your future?”

Petersen doesn’t want to stay quiet as her critics argue the Danes “protect” Greenland from Trump.

Speaking out against the atrocities isn’t anti-Danish, but simply what is needed to heal, make change and get independence, she said.

“We never colonized anyone,” she said. “We never stole children. We never sterilized another people. But they did that to us.”

While Greenlanders are divided on the timing and logistics of independence, many agree on one thing: the current system is unsustainable.

Petersen does not see Trump as a savior — but she does see his interest as an opportunity.

“At least he challenges Denmark’s control,” she said. “That conversation was never allowed before.”

For her, independence is not about choosing between Denmark and the US — it is about finally being treated as human beings with the right to decide.

“We are only 55,000 people,” Petersen said. “If someone truly cared, this would already be fixed.”

Instead, she said, Greenland remains spoken for — but rarely listened to.

“They talk about our land,” she said. “They just never talk to us.”

[…]

Via https://nypost.com/2026/01/16/world-news/greenlanders-speak-out-against-danish-rule-they-stole-our-future/