Octopus Overlords

El Guapo wrote: Mon Dec 23, 2024 11:26 am Does anyone know where Trump's interest in Greenland came from? I know Trump was fixated on it during his first term. Just wondering whether it's some weird MAGA thing, or Trump just looked at a map and saw "hey, that's big land near us, we should take big land", or whether there's some actual national security reason for the U.S. to want Greenland, or what.

Since 1867, the United States has considered, or made, several proposals to purchase the island of Greenland from Denmark, as it did with the Danish West Indies in 1917. While Greenland remains an autonomous territory within the Kingdom of Denmark, a 1951 treaty gives the United States much control over an island it once partially claimed from exploration.

Kraken wrote: Mon Dec 23, 2024 2:37 am Well he also announced that we're going to retake the Panama Canal, so that gives Greenland some breathing room.

hepcat wrote: Mon Dec 23, 2024 6:39 pm Trump also wants to buy Puerto Rico and make it a U.S. territory. He’s tasked his crack team of experts with finding out who currently owns it.

hepcat wrote: Mon Dec 23, 2024 6:39 pm Trump also wants to buy Puerto Rico and make it a U.S. territory. He’s tasked his crack team of experts with finding out who currently owns it.

waitingtoconnect wrote: Mon Dec 23, 2024 6:45 pm

hepcat wrote: Mon Dec 23, 2024 6:39 pm Trump also wants to buy Puerto Rico and make it a U.S. territory. He’s tasked his crack team of experts with finding out who currently owns it.

Don’t you own it: I’m sure there’s a dot matrix printout of a deed with your name on it…

hepcat wrote: Mon Dec 23, 2024 6:49 pm

waitingtoconnect wrote: Mon Dec 23, 2024 6:45 pm

hepcat wrote: Mon Dec 23, 2024 6:39 pm Trump also wants to buy Puerto Rico and make it a U.S. territory. He’s tasked his crack team of experts with finding out who currently owns it.

Don’t you own it: I’m sure there’s a dot matrix printout of a deed with your name on it…

Good lord, I think that’s the first time in a decade I’ve seen the words “dot matrix”.

Grifman wrote: Mon Dec 23, 2024 10:38 pm

LOL!

waitingtoconnect wrote: Tue Dec 24, 2024 7:40 pm Eric trump retweeted it. These people are insane - these are allies

waitingtoconnect wrote: Wed Dec 25, 2024 4:49 am The right to bear memes is a far right channel.

What's New
President-elect Donald Trump has started a quarrel with Panama over the fees it's charging American ships to use the Panama Canal, while the Trump Organization is fighting a court case over taxes in the central American country.

What to Know
In June 2019, the owners of a Panama City hotel that was managed by Trump's businesses, and carried the Trump brand, accused two companies, Trump Panama Hotel Management LLC and and Trump International Hotels Management LLC, of not paying taxes on their Panamanian earnings.

In a filing to the U.S. district court in New York, private equity manager Orestes Fintiklis and his company, Ithaca Capital Partners, alleged that the Trump businesses failed to pay 12.5% taxes on the millions of dollars they earned from managing the Panama City hotel. They also alleged that the Trump units failed to correctly report the number of people the hotel employed so that he could avoid Panamanian social security payments.

The filing documented how the Panamanian government later conducted a tax audit on the hotel and found major irregularities. Fintiklis and his company were forced to pay the money Trump owed, the court filing alleged.

In an updated complaint filed in the same court on March 30, 2020, Fintiklis' attorneys complained that "had Trump been honest with Ithaca about its failure to pay taxes on the management fees it earned and its failure to properly report employee salaries to Panama's social security agency, Ithaca would have never entered into the [licensing deal] because, among other things, (i) Ithaca would have recognized the significant, multi-million dollar tax penalty that could be imposed by the Panamanian government once it started auditing the Hotel; and (ii) Ithaca would have known that the representations made by Trump described above were false in that the Hotel was suffering from significant financial irregularities."

The litigation is still before the courts.

Newsweek sought comment on Monday from Fintiklis, Ithaca Capital Partners and the Trump Organization. Newsweek also contacted the Trump-Vance transition team and Panama's economy and finance ministry.