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The US invaded Venezuela with perfidy. A letter suggests that there is something simpler and more primitive with Greenland: vendetta

January 20, 2026 by usatoday24

The greenland crisis has ceased to be a diplomatic scuffle and has become an open pulse between Washington and its allies, and that means an accelerated deterioration of trust within NATO. While Denmark has sent more troops to the islanda letter points to an idea that was not in the pools: that the germ of everything comes from a question of revenge. The Atlantic Rift. The positions at the moment are clear: Trump insists that the United States must “acquire” a strategic island rich in minerals, while Denmark and Greenland repeat that not for sale and they warn of a climate in which the threat of force is no longer taboo. For its part, Europe is beginning to speak not only of political indignation but of economic responses and security, because what seemed like a campaign eccentricity is becoming a structural crisis regarding sovereignty, alliances and credibility. Meanwhile, Russia observe with popcorn and from the sidelines how the Western bloc is fracturing from the inside. From perfidy to vendetta. The most disturbing element is not only the objective, but the real motive that Trump has hinted at: if in other recent scenarios Washington was able to resort to perfidy (the engineering of deception, the calculated movement, the operation that is disguised as something else) here something simpler, cruel and primitive appears, the vendetta. We don’t say it, Trump himself has linked his determination not to have received the Nobel Peace Prize in a letter to the Norwegian minister, as if a symbolic humiliation was enough to break the mental brakes and justify him no longer feeling obliged to “think purely about peace.” That emotional turn turns everything in unpredictable: It would no longer be a cold dispute over the Arctic, but a personal reckoning elevated to doctrine, an explosive mix of wounded narcissism and state power that degrades any rational alibi and leaves its allies without stable ground on which to negotiate. The economic threat and the language of blackmail. The escalation takes shape in a pressure scheme that sounds more like an ultimatum than diplomacy between partners: as we counted yesterdayTrump threatens 10% tariffs on Denmark and several European countries, with the promise to raise them to 25% if there is no agreement. Not only that. In parallel, he reserves the “no comment” when asked about the use of forcea silence that functions as a threat in itself, because it allows each gesture to be interpreted as preparatory. Europe, for its part, is beginning to speak of countermeasures and activate pressure instruments commercial, making it clear that he understands the movement as political extortion. In other words, sovereignty becomes a currency, and the economy becomes the mechanism to bend the will of an ally. Nuuk The gesture that turned everything on. counted the financial times A revealing story this morning. Apparently, the spark that lit everything is almost ridiculous because of the size of figures: the dispatch of a British soldier, two Finns and small Danish, French and German detachments arriving for an exercise conceived as a sign of commitment to Arctic security and solidarity with Copenhagen. The European message intended to be reassuringas if to say that the region is not neglected and that the allies take the northern flank seriously, but Trump interpreted as a challenge responding with commercial retaliationas if this symbolic presence were an anti-American provocation. There appeared a central problem of the crisis: what for some is a defensive gesture, for the White House becomes an affront that would confirm its story that Europe stands up to it. The island is militarized. Faced with this aggressive reading, Denmark has upped the ante on the ground with a more visible and politically charged reinforcement. sending more soldiers of combat and the head of the Army himself to Greenland. They add to the approximately 200 troops already deployed between Nuuk and Kangerlussuaq in the framework by Arctic Endurancewhich is also accelerated and intensified precisely by the Trump’s verbal escalationas if the exercise went from routine to warning. In parallel, the images of soldiers patrolling the center of Nuuk and the presence of a Danish warship patrolling the coast They project the feeling that the island has entered a new phase, where normality is militarized without the need for shots. NORAD moves pieces. The TWZ analysts They also emphasized another movement that occurs at the same time. NORAD advertisement sending troops and aircraft to Greenland to support “long-planned” and “routine” activities, stressing that they are not linked to the current crisis. The timing may be real, but the political effect is inseparable from context: In the midst of escalation, any American movement on the island seems like a message, and any explanation sounds like a textbook formula. The “security argument.” As the weeks passed, in addition, the Trump’s strategic pretext It is beginning to sound increasingly hollow, because Europe is trying to cover the same need (reinforcing the Arctic) and yet American pressure does not relax. In fact, for many observersthe European shipment uncovers the real reason, because if the problem was that Greenland was exposed to Russia or China, then a greater allied presence should be the solution, not the trigger. Chagos as ammunition. The Guardian had a few hours ago another way: Trump has reinforced his vision of the world using the case of the Chagos Islands as a moral example in reverse, calling of “great stupidity” for the United Kingdom to cede sovereignty to Mauritius even if it maintains the island of Diego García leased 99 years for the joint base. In his story, that act shows weaknessand that weakness is what China and Russia “only understand” as opportunity, so Greenland “must” be acquired for national security reasons. The logic is simplistic: neither law nor history rules, but force, and what is given by agreement is interpreted as a kind of shameful concession, even if it is an arrangement to sustain a military installation. Meanwhile, in Greenland. dSince the beginning of the crisis, … Read more

Ukrainian troops need something much simpler and more urgent than Tomahawks missiles: cheap cars

October 28, 2025 by usatoday24

The month of October began with a trip from Ukraine to the United States and a very specific goal: Tomahawks. The request was as simple as it was dangerous: kyiv requested Washington’s long-range missile to counter Moscow’s attacks. The problem was that this implied crossing a red line that could raise the Russian war escalation. In the end there will be no Tomahawksat least for now, and the truth is that the Ukrainian army has other priorities right now. The visible and the decisive. He told in an extensive report the kyiv Independent that, in Western public debate, the war is projected around long range missileslegislative packages and iconic systemsbut at the level where the war decides the pace (the axes of infiltration, fine logistics and human replenishment) Ukraine is losing because of elementary things. Namely: cars that last only two weeks, drones that are lost faster than they are replaced, and units that are emptied of men before they are emptied of ammunition. In that tactical layer, the tomahawk It does not resolve that a company that must simultaneously transport personnel, food and ammunition has only one vehicle and must choose what to sacrifice each day. The priority: cars. The anecdote of the recruit Ihor in the middle summarized The pattern: three consecutive FPVs against the same vehicle until it is immobilized. The average life of a car in the front is about a monthsometimes two weeks, and each destruction not only takes away mobility but also room for maneuver: without redundancy, each rotation forces us to stretch positions and that exhausts men faster than the ammunition itself. That’s why what they ask they are carsas cheap as possible, but that work. Hence the heavy armor are not a solution (They become priority targets and are less agile than, for example, an old car that accelerates and disappears). In short, what is needed is not weight but number to absorb losses without collapsing the logistics cycle. Drones and sensors. Ukraine uses the order of 9,000 drones a daywith a devastating impact at low cost, but also loses at an industrial rate by electronic warfare and operational consumption. Without enough reconnaissance drones, the “line of sight” contracts to five kilometers and they are left blind to disrupting Russian flows. Some units have a surplus, but others lack the basics: the deficit is not only volume but of distributionand the structural deficiency is not being absorbed by the State but by decreasing donations and the pockets of the troops. Without spare part. The biggest deficiency is, of course, human: hardened brigades that are not refilled, rotations that do not rotate, training centers without means that even train with stones instead of real grenades. Mobilization is politically taboo. The national media recalled that 30% of those mobilized He is not fit and part of the rest are returns from absentees. Thus, even when there is a drone and platform, the pilot is missing. Russia, on the other hand, replenishes its human mass every month. Ukraine stretches the same bodies more weeks under greater drone saturation, and structural fatigue is cumulative and irreversible. System fails. If you also want, the photograph does not describe an army without technology but rather a system with “holes” in its redundancy layer: where there should be five vehicles there is oneand where there should be ten drones per section there is one too, and where there should be a wave of trained reserves arrives a tiny fraction. Plus: where the same men should be relieved every certain cycle, they are kept for months due to lack of substitutes. That is the plane where continuity is resolved: without those cars that are requested, without density of eyes in the air and without competent human replenishment, each meter becomes more expensive than each missile. Trivial lack. It ended media report emphasizing an idea. It is not that the Tomahawk don’t matter (they matter for the purposes of depth and possible future negotiation), is that its strategic effect is diluted if the lower network that supports the line is detached due to cheap shortcomings. Victory today is less like who introduces a miraculous system first than who can continue to move people, food, ammunition and sensors until the last kilometer without breaking the human machine that executes it. Therefore, for those in the trenches, the priority is not the long-range missile that will appear on the front page of all the media, but rather the unglamorous resources that keep alive the ability to continue fighting the next day. Starting with a car that simply works. Image | Ministry of Defense of Ukraine, Pexels In Xataka | Russia’s biggest threat in Ukraine is not a drone or a missile. It is a film agency with 30 secret floors In Xataka | There is something more disturbing than “a Chernobyl”: it is a flying Chernobyl, it is in the hands of Russia and it is already testing it

Statistics tell us that we read more than before. The problem is that books are much simpler than a few years ago

September 23, 2025 by usatoday24

It is not the same to read much than reading well, just as not all books are the same. Some of these conclusions can be taken from a series of recently published statistics and that analyze reading habits both in the United States and Spain. Interestingly, trends in Spain seem to contradict those of the rest of the world, but … is positive news? Global descent. Antonio Ortiz told In his Newsletter ‘Causes and Azares’ that there has been a global decrease in the Reading habits. According to the Bureau of Labor Statistics of the US, the time dedicated to reading for pleasure fell 23 minutes in 2003 to 15 minutes in 2018, 40%, and the trend continued to reduce up to only 16% of the population that reads daily in 2023, as explained by the New York Times in Spanish. In the United Kingdom, the National Literacy Trust He found that in 2023 only 47% of adolescents said they regularly read for enjoyment, lowering 60% in 2005. The Iberian contrast. In Spain the data are more positive: the 2024 reading habits of the Ministry of Culture of Spain It indicates that 65.5% of readers do so by leisure, which represents the highest percentage in historical series. And 70.3% read books in general. In addition, for age stripes, 14 to 24 years represents the greatest readers (82.1%), while the indices fall in over 55 years, indicating that a habit of reading in young people who will give a more reader adult population is being found. Does that perspective make sense, are hopeful data for reading in Spain? Reasons to doubt. These data can be inflated by social bias: when responding to surveys, people tend to overreport Activities considered “educated” how to readand surpassed those perceived as “banal”, such as watching television and spending time with the mobile. And why do we doubt? Because the social prestige of reading is still in force (as reflected The controversy with María Pombo), and recent measurements, such as Eurobarometer 2025They talk that Spain is one of the European countries where more people link reading with being “more cultured and intelligent”, which probably explains some inflation in the answers. Shorter phrases, simpler readings. For example, as Ortiz also points out, ‘The Economist’ has detected that the vocabulary and grammatical structure of the Best-Sellers They have been simplified between the thirties and today: The phrases are 30% shorter due to the least amount of subordinate sentences. And there are more: academic investigations such as the COH-Metrix Project of the University of Memphis have measured that the average readability of the current best-seller equals the level High School Junior (16-17 years), while in the sixties and seventies it was closer to the initial university level (COH-Metrix). On the school level, data from the National Center for Education Statistics show that the active vocabulary of written adolescents has been reduced compared to decades ago. And, finally, essays like ‘Reader, eat home’ Maryanne Wolf warns how fragmented reading in digital media impoverishes the capacity for deep reading. We presume more than we read. If we combine these data with others, which tell us that the UNESCO esteem that only 5% of the population read a book per month or that 40.3% of Spaniards declares never read or almost nevera constant figure in the last decade, we find a certainly contradictory situation. We like to presume that we read, but they are perhaps fattened by our own perception. And in addition, they are readings of a complexity much lower than that of a few decades ago. With readers like that, who needs María Pombo. Header | Clay Banks in Unspash In Xataka | Alatriste’s new book revalidates a throne that remains empty: Pérez-Reverte has created our most popular franchise

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