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denmark
Denmark Summons Trump Diplomat Over Report of Covert Operations in Greenland
Prime Minister Mette Frederiksen noted that the US has so far not denied the reports by Denmark's public broadcaster.
Aug 27, 2025
The top US official in Denmark arrived at the country's foreign ministry Wednesday after being summoned for talks about a recent report that US citizens with ties to the Trump White House have carried out a covert "influence" campaign in Greenland.
Denmark's foreign minister on Wednesday called upon Mark Stroh, the charge d'affaires in Denmark, after the main Danish public broadcaster reported that at least three people have been attempting to sow discord between Denmark and Greenland, an autonomous territory that is part of the Danish kingdom.
President Donald Trump has long expressed a desire to take control of Greenland, and has suggested he could use military force even though Denmark is a close ally and fellow member of the North Atlantic Treaty Organization.
Danish officials and Greenlanders have dismissed the idea, with Danish Prime Minister Mette Frederiksen warning the US that it "cannot annex another country."
"We want to be independent. So we are not for sale," resident Karen Cortsen told NPR earlier this year as the outlet reported that 85% of people in Greenland and Denmark opposed the president's push to "get" the vast, mineral-rich Arctic island.
According to the main Danish public broadcaster, the Trump administration has sought to reverse widespread public opposition to his plan, with at least three people connected to his administration carrying out covert operations to "foment dissent" in Greenland.
The broadcast network, DR, reported that eight government and security sources believe the individuals are working to weaken relations between Greenland and Denmark, compiling lists of Greenlandic citizens who support and oppose Trump's plans, and trying "to cultivate contacts with politicians, businesspeople, and citizens, and the sources' concern is that these contacts could secretly be used to support Donald Trump's desire to take over Greenland."
Danish Foreign Minister Lars Lokke Rasmussen said in a statement that "any attempt to interfere in the internal affairs of the kingdom will of course be unacceptable."
"We are aware that foreign actors continue to show an interest in Greenland and its position in the Kingdom of Denmark," Rasmussen said, adding that he had "asked the ministry of foreign affairs to summon the US charge d'affaires for a meeting at the ministry."
Trump has not yet confirmed an ambassador to Denmark. PayPal cofounder Kenneth Howery, a close friend of Trump megadonor Elon Musk, has been named as his nominee for the position.
Frederiksen told Danish media that "the Americans are not clearly denying the information presented by DR today, and of course that is serious."
"We have made it very clear that this is unacceptable," said the prime minister. "And it is something we will raise directly with our colleagues in the United States—who, if this were untrue, could very easily dismiss the claims."
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Greenpeace Denmark Complaint Accuses Dairy Giant of 'Systemic Greenwashing'
"Greenwashing and false marketing will not be tolerated, no matter how big you are and where you are based," said one Greenpeace Denmark campaigner.
Jun 05, 2025
Greenpeace Denmark this week filed a formal complaint against the Denmark-based dairy producer Arla Foods, accusing the firm of creating a "false and misleading picture" of actual emission reductions the company has achieved.
The green group is arguing the company has both misled consumers when it comes to Arla's progress toward achieving climate goals and that its reporting does not meet requirements under the Danish Annual Accounts Act.
Arla is the world's fifth-largest dairy company, according to its website.
Greenpeace Denmark submitted the complaint to the Danish Business Authority, the body in Denmark that controls and supervises compliance with business regulations, on Monday.
Greenpeace Denmark says it is concerned that data from Arla's annual reports appears to show that Arla has "changed its calculation methods and data foundation for Scope 3 emissions per kilogram of milk and whey since the original 2015 baseline year," but the dairy producer has not consistently or transparently adjusted that baseline across all of its reporting.
"The 2015 baseline is built on older, less precise national statistics from 2012, and the subsequent shift to more specific farm-level data and new emission factors—without a clear and consistent baseline adjustment—creates major uncertainty about Arla's real emission reductions since 2015," per the complaint.
The Danish Annual Accounts Act includes requirements to disclose corporate social responsibility information that is true and not misleading. Compliance with this provision, according to the complaint, "is essential because the provision is intended to ensure transparency about a company's environmental and broader sustainability impacts. The rules aim to give investors, partners, and society at large access to essential, credible, and comparable information about corporate sustainability practices, risks, and objectives."
"Arla presents itself as a Big Dairy role model on climate and nature, with a concern for animal welfare. But behind the scenes, it is lobbying to repeal laws that ensure the well-being of farm animals. This must stop, and the public needs to know," said Gustav Martner, creative lead and advertising expert at Greenpeace Nordic, in a statement published Wednesday.
This latest complaint comes on the heels of two complaints filed by Greenpeace Sweden against Arla, also alleging "systemic greenwashing," and a lawsuit filed by Greenpeace Aotearoa (New Zealand) last year against the dairy firm Fonterra.
"By coordinating complaints against Arla in both countries it calls home, we aim to set a precedent: Greenwashing and false marketing will not be tolerated, no matter how big you are and where you are based," said Christian Fromberg, campaign lead of agriculture and nature at Greenpeace Denmark, in a statement on Wednesday.
Common Dreams wrote to Arla for comment about the complaints. The company did not respond before press time.
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Kristi Noem and the Greenland War–A Dog’s Tale?
As the struggle against Denmark over the island heats up, who better qualified to conduct a national anti-Great Dane campaign than Noem?
Apr 19, 2025
Unless you’ve lived in South Dakota—which Kristi Noem represented in Congress and later served as governor—there’s a good chance that if you recognize her name, it’s due to the video clip from inside a prison in El Salvador that featured the new secretary of Homeland Security in front of a cell full of shirtless, tattooed, shaven headed Venezuelan deportees that she denounces—while sporting a $50,000 Rolex watch. An immediate effect of which was to raise anew the question of why President Donald Trump had appointed her to a position for which she appeared to have little to no relevant experience.
Some attributed it to her exhibiting a superior level of sycophancy during last year’s vice-presidential speculation season. No, thought others, in such times fawners sprout like toadstools after a summer rain; surely there must be something special about this one. And now, a theory—involving America’s upcoming war with Denmark and Noem’s previous career PR highpoint—the story of how she had once shot her 14-month-old dog, out of frustration at her inability to train her.
For those who savor the surprises of the Trump years, the recently articulated hostility to Denmark has to rank as top tier. We can imagine that he himself was actually as amazed as the next American to learn that humongous Greenland is actually an autonomous territory of otherwise tiny Denmark. And, real estate being the president’s primary business interest, he has decided that the U.S. has greater need for the world’s largest island than Denmark does. Heads that take Trump seriously—as well as those that don’t—were set spinning alike by this newly enunciated national security priority. But as the now ubiquitous, but previously unfamiliar, north pole-centered maps clearly show—across the ever-shrinking Arctic ice pack from the U.S. lies… Russia!
Imagine, if you will, her standing there—in front of a pound filled with chained, baying, deported Great Danes—shotgun in hand, and Rolex on wrist.
The thing is, though, Trump doesn’t actually seem all that concerned about Russia as a security threat. During his February 28 Oval Office encounter with Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy, he went so far as to tell him that “Putin went through a hell of a lot with me.” He’s even claimed that it was Ukraine that started the war with Russia. And the fact is that the secret potential war plans on which the Pentagon intended to brief Elon Musk—before public outcry put the kibosh on the idea—concerned China, not Russia. Which should make it pretty clear which nation is actually being ginned up as the “national security threat.”
Now, the fact is that Trump has never particularly been known for an expansive interest in or knowledge of geography that doesn’t hold some kind of business angle for him. Could it be, then, that he thinks Greenland would actually provide some kind of buffer against China? This all, of course, is speculative, but what we do know is that so far as the prospect of the U.S. taking possession of Greenland, Trump says he “thinks there’s a good possibility that we could do it without military force”—which should be quite reassuring to us all, although he cautioned that “I don’t take anything off the table.”
Hey, that’s what the man said, so let’s imagine what happens when the absurd gets serious. Some may recall that when France proved a tough sell on the endless War on Terror, announcing its intent to veto any United Nations resolution calling for invasion of Iraq, the U.S. House of Representatives responded by altering the menus of three congressional cafeterias—renaming French fries as “freedom fries.” (None will recall, however, when the U.S. entry into the First World War against Germany turned frankfurters into hot dogs.) So, if Denmark continues to balk at the presidential whim, we can no doubt look forward to ordering Cheese Americans to go with our coffee in the future.
But the ire directed at the willful little Scandinavian nation will not likely stop at the pastry shop. Which is what brings us back to the question of what Kristi Noem’s doing here. Well, the story she told about her dead dog was that she was “untrainable,” “dangerous to anyone she came in contact with,” “less than worthless … as a hunting dog.” “I hated that dog,” Noem said. The final straw came when she dropped in on some neighbors, let the dog escape her control, and it proceeded to kill the neighbors’ chickens. After paying for the chickens, she took the dog to a gravel pit and shot it. But that’s not all. She then realized that “another unpleasant job needed to be done,” and went back and got a goat her family had who was “nasty and mean,” prone to chasing and knocking down her kids. Oh, and he smelled bad—“disgusting, musky, rancid.” So she shot the goat too. Didn’t get the job done on her first shot though. Had to go back to the truck for a another shell to finish him off.
None of this story, you must understand, required any sort of hard-nosed investigative journalism to uncover. It comes from a book that Noem herself wrote: No Going Back: The Truth on What’s Wrong with Politics and How We Move America Forward, an autobiography—her second—written when she was preening for the vice-presidential nod. She recounted the bizarre anecdote, she says, as an example of her willingness to do “difficult, messy, and ugly” things when they just had to be done. As we know, she didn’t ultimately land the nomination. Some suspect it was because it took her two shots to get the goat. Who knows, but Trump did ultimately decide he wanted her around.
Should the president’s Greenland-Denmark obsession continue to meander on, the campaign against Danish aggression surely won’t stop at the breakfast counter. And it’s when we start to envision additional targets that the potential Kristi Noem role in all this starts to take shape. The most obvious display of this alien roadblock to American national security? It’s the dogs, of course—Great Danes being pretty much the Greenland of dog breeds. The threat that canines of that size—in the service of an enemy power—would pose to America’s most vulnerable citizens—our children—is too obvious to require discussion.
Who—then—better qualified to conduct a national anti-Great Dane campaign than Noem? Imagine, if you will, her standing there—in front of a pound filled with chained, baying, deported Great Danes—shotgun in hand, and Rolex on wrist. Could there be a more powerful image of the nation’s determination in a life and death struggle with Denmark—and if need be against Europe itself? And should any Great Dane think to resist arrest, well, we know that Noem is one government bureaucrat whose bark is not worse than her bite.
Far fetched, you say? Scoff you may, but remember what else you used to consider far fetched until not so long ago. I know that if I had a Great Dane, I’d be thinking about lifestyle alternatives for the dog—perhaps even getting a saddle and trying to pass it off as an Icelandic pony. And I’d get real nervous if I heard that Noem was in town.
As of late, she’s been called ICE Barbie for her appearance at deportation raids. The future? Kristi Noem: Bane of Great Danes? As we are well aware, crazier things have already happened.
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