CRIMINAL CAPITALI$M

Ex-OPEC president in UK court ahead of corruption trial


By AFP
January 19, 2026


Former OPEC president Diezani Alison-Madueke leaves Southwark Crown Court in London ahead of her full trial for corruption - Copyright AFP STEPHANE DE SAKUTIN

Former OPEC president Diezani Alison-Madueke appeared in a London court on Monday, ahead of her full trial on bribery charges relating to her time as Nigeria’s oil minister.

Preliminary proceedings, including technical matters and jury selection, began this week, with Alison-Madueke in attendance.

Alison-Madueke, who was in office from 2010 to 2015, was the first woman oil minister in Nigeria and the first female president of the global oil cartel OPEC.

The 65-year-old has been on bail since she was first arrested in London in October 2015. She has denied six charges against her.

She was formally charged in 2023 by the UK’s National Crime Agency with offences of accepting bribes between 2011 to 2015.

“We suspect Diezani Alison-Madueke abused her power in Nigeria and accepted financial rewards for awarding multi-million-pound contracts,” the NCA said at the time.

According to the indictment, Alison-Madueke benefitted from at least £100,000 ($134,000) in cash, chauffeur-driven cars, flights on private jets and the use of multiple London properties.

The charges also detailed financial rewards including furniture, renovation work and staff for the properties, payment of private school fees and gifts from top designer shops such as Louis Vuitton.

The trial is scheduled to begin on Monday, January 26 and is expected to last 10 to 12 weeks.

Two others are also being prosecuted on bribery charges linked to the case: Doye Agama, who appeared in court via video link on Monday, and Olatimbo Ayinde, who was present in the dock.

Louvre heist probe: What we know

By AFP
January 19, 2026


The thieves broke in on a Sunday morning - Copyright GETTY IMAGES NORTH AMERICA/AFP/File Michael loccisano

Francois Becker, Celine Cornu and Murielle Kasprzak

Thieves in October broke into the French capital’s world-famous Louvre museum in broad daylight, escaping in under eight minutes with jewellery worth $102 million.

Three months on from the brazen heist, four suspects are in police custody but the jewels are still nowhere to be found.

Here is what we know — and don’t.

– Four detained –

Four men in their thirties, arrested in October and November, are suspected of being the team who conducted the theft on October 19, 2025.

The pair suspected of having broken in include Abdoulaye N., an unlicensed taxi driver turning 40 this month, who previously showed off his motorbike stunts on social media.

The other is a 35-year-old Algerian, who was detained in October as he was preparing to fly out of Paris.

A third suspect, aged 37, was involved in a previous theft with Abdoulaye N., while a fourth — who is 38 — hails from the same Paris suburb as the other three.

Investigating magistrates started questioning them this month, but have no significant leads so far, top Paris prosecutor Laure Beccuau has said.

A fifth suspect — a 38-year-old woman who is the partner of the third suspect — has been charged with being an accomplice, but released under judicial supervision pending a trial.

– ‘Genuine preparation’ –

There was “genuine preparation” before the heist, said Beccuau.

The robbers struck early on a Sunday morning, “when everything was slowly getting going at the museum”, after locating and stealing a mover’s truck with an extendable ladder to reach the first-floor gallery housing the French crown jewels.

After parking the truck below, two of the thieves hoisted themselves up the ladder in a furniture lift, the investigation has shown.

They broke a window and used angle grinders to cut glass cases containing the treasures, while the other two waited below.

They then lowered themselves down with their loot, and the four fled on high-powered motor scooters, dropping a diamond-and-emerald crown in their hurry.

But eight other items — including an emerald-and-diamond necklace that Napoleon I gave his second wife, Empress Marie-Louise — remain at large.

– DNA samples –

During the escape, “you can sense a certain amount of stress — no doubt because they are actually doing it — which means they end up dropping the jewellery and also leaving behind DNA traces,” Beccuau said.

The first suspect — the motorbike stuntman — was identified after his DNA was found on broken glass and objects abandoned on site, while the second left genetic clues on a scooter as he fled.

The third — and his female partner — had left DNA on the furniture lift.

Further investigations and cross-checks led to the arrest of a fourth, suspected of having parked the truck under the museum gallery, said Beccuau.

– ‘Not bunglers’ –

Some observers may have called the burglars amateurs, but a source with knowledge of the probe said they were “not such bunglers after all”.

“They had put their scooters and equipment in storage units and had disabled the video surveillance” nearby before the heist, the source said, speaking to AFP on condition of anonymity because they were not allowed to reveal details of the investigation.

Dressed as workmen in high-visibility jackets, they completed the whole burglary in just eight minutes.

After they abandoned their scooters for a van, it headed for the suburbs “to throw off the investigators by entering an area not covered by cameras”, the source added.

“They then didn’t call each other again and went back to their lives as if nothing had happened,” the source said.

Contacted by AFP, lawyers of the suspects did not immediately respond or declined to comment.

– Poor security –

Poor security at the Louvre made the robber’s getaway easier, a culture ministry probe found last month, even if they evaded security forces with just 30 seconds to spare.

Only one of two security cameras was working near the site where the intruders broke in, and agents in the security control room did not have enough screens to follow the images in real time.

– Missing jewellery –

Beccuau said it was still unclear if a third party ordered the heist — or indeed where the jewellery might be.

Beccuau said there was no sign the spoils had crossed the French border, but investigators were relying on contacts abroad to signal if something suspicious showed up.

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Hydrogen power: Best sources for heavy duty vehicles is ‘local’

By Dr. Tim Sandle
SCIENCE EDITOR

DIGITAL JOURNAL

January 18, 2026

Trucks queue in Tijuana near the Mexico-US border. — © AFP Guillermo Arias

If trucks ran on hydrogen instead of fossil fuels, carbon dioxide emissions from heavy-duty road transport could be significantly reduced. At the same time, differences in how the gas is produced, distributed, and used significantly impacts its climate benefits.

New research from Chalmers University of Technology in Sweden finds that locally produced green hydrogen is the best option for the climate – with the additional benefit of enabling all countries to become self-sufficient in energy and fuel, even in times of crisis and war.

Heavy duty vehicles

Heavy-duty road transport currently account for one fifth of global oil consumption and, in the EU, heavy-duty diesel trucks are the largest source of emissions of the transport-related greenhouse gas carbon dioxide. In the future, the need for road transport is expected to increase, and consequently also the sector’s demand for fossil fuels from oil.

Replacing fossil fuels with hydrogen in the heavy-duty vehicle sector is an essential part of strategies to reduce carbon dioxide emissions worldwide. The Chalmers study, which has been published in iScience, provides a full overview of hydrogen’s potential as a fuel: from production and transport to choice of materials in truck manufacturing and the actual use of the fuel.

“Hydrogen does not produce carbon dioxide when used in fuel cells, but we need to make sure that we do not shift emissions from one part of the life cycle to another. Therefore, we built different scenarios of what future supply chains might look like in Sweden, and evaluated different technologies at each life cycle stage,” states lead author Jorge Enrique Velandia Vargas, who was a postdoctoral researcher at Chalmers when the study was conducted.

The main conclusion of the study is that running heavy-duty vehicles on hydrogen instead of diesel significantly reduces carbon dioxide emissions. However, different methods of producing and handling hydrogen lead to significant differences in climate emissions, and the study provides important tools for navigating the options.

Heading towards this goal is a major target of the European Union (EU). The Alternative Fuels Infrastructure Regulation (AFIR) is part of the EU’s ‘Fit for 55’ climate package, a legislative package that aims to reduce the EU’s greenhouse gas emissions by at least 55 per cent by 2030, compared to 1990 levels. This will contribute to achieving climate neutrality by 2050.

Questions about blue hydrogen

One of the clearest findings is that blue hydrogen (which is made from natural gas, and the carbon dioxide produced during the process is captured and stored instead of being released into the atmosphere) can have a higher climate impact than green hydrogen, which is produced from water and renewable electricity.

“In theory, the production of blue hydrogen is climate neutral, but in reality it is not. It is not possible to capture all CO2 after the conversion process, but 5 to 10 percent leaks out to the atmosphere. The supply chain including the manufacturing process also leaks methane, which has 30 times the greenhouse effect of carbon dioxide,” says Maria Grahn, Associate Professor at the Department of Mechanics and Maritime Sciences at Chalmers.

The researchers also point out that biomethane could replace natural gas in the same process. Biomethane is a renewable gas produced from organic waste such as manure or food waste. In theory, it can be used to produce hydrogen in a way that absorbs more carbon dioxide from the atmosphere (through the photosynthesis of plants) than is emitted, i.e. hydrogen production with negative emissions. However, the process still requires carbon capture and storage infrastructure, and each step requires energy. According to the researchers, it may therefore be more efficient to use biomethane directly as a fuel in trucks, rather than first converting it into hydrogen.

Green hydrogen is the best option for the climate, according to the study. Water is used as the raw material, and the energy required to extract hydrogen from the water comes from renewable sources. Maria Grahn points out that, in addition to the fact that its production and use generate very low emissions of carbon dioxide, hydrogen is an energy carrier that can be produced anywhere in the world, regardless of the natural resources available.

“These days, we talk a lot about resilience, i.e. the ability of a community or country to cope in an uncertain world. Energy self-sufficiency is as important as reducing carbon emissions, which we in particular have seen in Russia’s war of aggression against Ukraine. And hydrogen can be produced anywhere in the world using water and energy from the sun or wind,” explains Vargas.

A truck prepares to enter the United States at a border crossing in Blackpool, Canada, a country which has vowed to hit back if Washington goes ahead with 25 percent tariffs on Canadian imports – Copyright AFP/File ANDREJ IVANOV

Local beats large-scale production

The study also shows that it is better for the climate to produce hydrogen close to refuelling stations than to build large central production facilities. If the gas is produced at the refuelling station itself, long-distance transport of hydrogen can be avoided. This would otherwise require a great deal of energy and cause emissions.

“Hydrogen is the lightest of all the elements and does not ‘like’ to be transported. In gaseous form it requires powerful compression and in liquid form extreme cooling. Both options involve energy losses, and with liquid hydrogen you also have to deal with the problem of evaporation during transport,” according to Vargas.

Overall, the researchers argue that the right conditions are needed for hydrogen to maximise its contribution to reducing emissions, and to avoid time and resources being wasted. The study was based on Swedish conditions, but the overarching results can be transferred to the rest of the world.

“The transport sector is changing rapidly and every decision made has long-term consequences. Therefore, it is desirable for decision-making to be supported by thorough evaluations and life cycle analyses. Our research, which is at a high system level, is very suitable for decision-makers to use as a basis for decisions,” observes Vargas.

Facts: Different paths to hydrogen

Green hydrogen: Produced by electrolysis when water is divided into hydrogen and oxygen using electricity. The electricity used must come from renewable sources such as solar, wind or hydroelectric power for the process to be labelled ‘green’. However, the production of green hydrogen demands precious metals such as iridium and platinum.

Blue hydrogen: Produced by natural gas reacting with water vapour at high temperatures; the carbon dioxide released is captured and stored underground. It is not possible to capture all carbon dioxide, and in some places the risk of methane leakage is high during the extraction and transport of natural gas.

Hydrogen from biomethane: By replacing natural gas with biomethane, it is technically possible to achieve negative carbon dioxide emissions. However, it is uncertain whether the volumes of biomethane required are available. A simpler alternative, although one that does not create negative emissions, may be to use biomethane directly as fuel in trucks.
Research paper

The study “Vehicle-oriented and Sweden-framed life cycle assessment: Hydrogen for long-haul trucks” has been published in the journal iScience.

Yemen: The Human Cost of Imperial Ambitions

U.S. allies Saudi Arabia and the UAE are backing different factions and prolonging the conflict.

By Jawad Khalidi

January 17, 2026

Source: Foreign Policy In Focus

Image by: Felton Davis

The conflict in Yemen, a country already exhausted by more than a decade of war, is entering another uncertain phase. In recent weeks, fighters aligned with the Southern Transitional Council (STC)—backed by the United Arab Emirates (UAE)—have taken control of large parts of Hadramout and al-Mahra in southern and eastern Yemen, including key cities and security installations. These provinces are strategically important, rich in resources, and central to trade routes, making their takeover far more than a local power shift.

At the same time, Saudi-backed government forces have regained control of key districts, including Mukalla and Seiyun, following the withdrawal of STC troops. The STC has agreed to talks in Riyadh, while Saudi Arabia consolidates its influence and seeks to prevent further fragmentation along its southern border.

On December 30, a Saudi-led coalition airstrike hit the port of Mukalla, targeting what Riyadh said were UAE-supplied weapons intended for the STC. Saudi Arabia framed the strike as a response to an imminent security threat. The UAE rejected the accusations, denied directing operations that threatened Saudi security, and announced the voluntary withdrawal of its remaining counterterrorism personnel. Yemen’s Presidential Leadership Council responded by demanding a full UAE exit and imposing restrictions on ports and crossings, while STC leaders vowed to defend their territorial gains.

This escalation has exposed deepening disagreements between Saudi Arabia and the UAE over Yemen’s future. For Riyadh, the STC’s advances into Hadramout and al-Mahra are not only political but also a security concern. Both provinces border Saudi Arabia, host oil and gas resources, and sit along sensitive trade corridors. A fractured Yemen risks empowering the Houthis or creating space for Islamist groups, outcomes Saudi Arabia has spent years trying to prevent.

The split is also a growing headache for the United States, particularly for the Trump administration, which has sought to manage Middle East policy through close alignment with Gulf partners while avoiding deeper military entanglements. Washington has long relied on Saudi–UAE coordination as a pillar of its regional strategy. Their open disagreement in Yemen complicates U.S. efforts to claim progress toward “stability,” undermines any coherent diplomatic track, and exposes the limits of an approach that outsources security to regional strongmen while ignoring civilian consequences.

The STC is formally part of Yemen’s UN-recognized government, yet it has long pursued the secession of an independent South Yemen. Although its roots lie in the Southern Movement that emerged in 2007 as a grassroots protest against marginalization, its transformation into a powerful armed actor followed decisive external backing. The group’s formal creation in 2017 came after the dismissal of Aidarus al-Zubaidi as Aden’s governor, and its rapid rise was enabled by UAE political and military support including the formation of proxy forces such as the Security Belt Forces in 2016.

This support was not incidental. Abu Dhabi viewed the STC as a counterweight to Islamist actors, particularly Yemen’s Islah Party, and as a means to secure strategic ports and coastlines. Saudi Arabia, meanwhile, led a coalition intervention beginning in 2015 that has consistently been criticized for prioritizing geopolitical objectives over civilian protection.

Yemen has long been a theater for proxy warfare. Since the Houthis’ takeover of Sanaa in 2014 and the outbreak of civil war in March 2015, an estimated 377,000 people had died by the end of 2021 due to direct and indirect causes. Nearly 15,000 civilians were killed by direct military action, most of them in air strikes carried out by the Saudi-led coalition, which has faced accusations of war crimes and disproportionate attacks on civilian infrastructure. The United States provided critical support for the Saudis in these attacks.

Over the past decade, conflict and economic decline have produced one of the world’s worst humanitarian crises. Some 4.5 million Yemenis—14 percent of the population—remain displaced, many repeatedly. Over 19 million now need humanitarian assistance, with 17.6 million facing food and nutrition insecurity. Yemen ranks among the most vulnerable in the Middle East for malnutrition and poverty, with 2.4 million children under five suffering from acute malnutrition. In addition,16 million people lack safe drinking water, exacerbated by years of Saudi-imposed restrictions on imports and aid. Famine risks are acute: tens of thousands face famine-like conditions, while around 5 million suffer severe food insecurity.

Yemen cannot afford another conflict that kills, maims, and displaces innocent people. Even if large-scale violence is avoided, the socio-economic damage alone would be unbearable for a country already dependent on external aid and humanitarian support. Yet, the world continues to look away.Email

Jawad Khalidi

Jawad Khalid is a Pakistan-based climate and political economy analyst. He writes on climate justice, policy, and geopolitics with bylines in publications such as The Interpreter, Common Dreams, Asia Times, and CounterPunch.

 Trump in Greenland: Old-Fashioned Colonialism And Acceleration Of The Climate Catastrophe!

By Yorgos Mitralias

January 18, 2026

Source: Originally published by Z. Feel free to share widely.

Photo from Craig James (Flickr, CC BY-NC 2.0)

Almost everyone is currently talking, and rightly so, about Trump’s clearly stated intention to occupy and annex Greenland “by hook or by crook.” However, no one has even mentioned what would be by far the most important and serious consequence of this imperialist and colonialist act of unbridled Trumpism: the enormous acceleration and worsening of the climate catastrophe already underway! An acceleration of the climate crisis with nightmarish effects for humanity, which would be incomparably greater than all the—much-discussed—geopolitical and other consequences of its occupation by the United States.

Indeed, given that Greenland is the nerve center of global warming, warming about four times faster than the rest of the world, Trump’s intention to gut it in order to proceed with the widespread plundering of its subsoil, rich in rare earths and even gold and oil, in the name of “US national security,” will only greatly accelerate what is already happening: the melting of its ice cap—the second largest after Antarctica—which has the direct consequence of raising sea levels! A rise in sea levels that is already disrupting ocean currents, to the point of threatening them with collapse.

And to leave no doubt as to the seriousness of this threat, here is what was reported by the world’s major news agencies two months ago: “ Iceland has designated the potential collapse of a major Atlantic Ocean current system a national security concern and an existential threat, enabling its government to strategize for worst-case scenarios, the country’s climate minister told Reuters. ” (1). Indeed, according to climatologists, the increasingly likely collapse of the ocean current system known as AMOC (Meridional Overturning Circulation) “would have devastating and irreversible consequences, particularly for Nordic countries, but also for other regions of the world.” It would raise sea levels in the Atlantic, alter monsoons in South America and Africa, reduce rainfall in Europe and North America, causing a winter cold snap in Europe, with sea ice likely to extend southward to the United Kingdom!

In short, the imminent (?) occupation of Greenland by Trump and his acolytes confirms once again not only how little the climate-denying Trump cares about protecting the environment, but also his total disregard for international law and the rights of indigenous peoples. This contempt was highlighted in all its facets a few days ago by the White House ideologue and strongman Stephen Miller during his interview with CNN.

Preaching a return to the good old days of unapologetic colonialism, Trump’s chief advisor and confidant Stephen Miller, who takes pleasure in drawing inspiration from… Goebbels in his speeches and ideas (!), caused a scandal by making the following statements: “” Not long after World War II the West dissolved its empires and colonies and began sending colossal sums of taxpayer-funded aid to these former territories (despite have already made them far wealthier and more successful). The West opened its borders, a kind of reverse colonization, providing welfare and thus remittances, while extending to these newcomers and their families not only the full franchise but preferential legal and financial treatment over the native citizenry. The neoliberal experiment, at its core, has been a long self-punishment of the places and peoples that built the modern world“. And after this veritable eulogy to old-style colonialism, followed by an unequivocal condemnation of decolonization, Miller concluded by describing the frightening credo of Trumpism: ” We live in a world in which you can talk all you want about international niceties and everything else. But we live in a world, in the real world … that is governed by strength, that is governed by force, that is governed by power. These are the iron laws of the world. (…) We’re a superpower. And under President Trump, we are going to conduct ourselves as a superpower “.

So we have been warned. The real novelty is not that the United States under Trump will act like a superpower, which it already did long before him, but rather that it will act like an old-fashioned colonial superpower! That is to say, practicing direct domination and plunder, unapologetic racism and brute military violence, without the intermediaries, the pseudo-solidarity and democratic hypocrisy, the half-measures, and everything that has made up neocolonialism over the last 6-7 decades! Clearly, the break with the imperialist past is quite significant. This means that Trump’s claims on Venezuela or Greenland are not the passing whims of a deranged and megalomaniacal old man, but rather the first signs and manifestations of a long-term global political, economic, and military project designed to upset all existing balances, including those between the imperialist powers. (2) All the more so as Trump no longer hesitates to publicly display his nostalgia for the good old days when white supremacists practiced their deadly racism with impunity, or his criticism of the American Civil War that saw the defeat of his beloved Southern slave owners…

How naive and irresponsible, then, are those who persist in confusing Trump with Biden, Bush, or the… European Commission. Or who are not preparing to face the racist, militaristic, and warmongering cataclysm heralded by this return to the most extreme capitalist barbarism promised by Trumpism through the mouth of its ideologue Stephen Miller. It is therefore up to all of us to stop Trump and his evil and criminal plans before it is too late. For only our fatalism and passivity can guarantee Trump the success of his predatory, criminal policies, steeped in delusional racism and deeply inhuman. In short, nothing is decided in advance and the outcome of this mother of all battles depends exclusively on us, on those from below everywhere in the world. Starting with those who are already fighting at the heart of the fascist monster, in the United States of America…

Notes

1. Iceland deems possible Atlantic current collapse a security risk: https://www.reuters.com/sustainability/cop/iceland-sees-security-risk-existential-threat-atlantic-ocean-currents-possible-2025-11-12/

2. Testifying in 2019 before the US Congress, Fiona Hill, then Trump’s senior advisor on Russia and Europe, reported on “suggestions” from Kremlin circles regarding Moscow’s possible acceptance of the US occupation of Venezuela in exchange for Washington’s acceptance of Russia’s occupation of Ukraine. Returning a few days ago to her 2019 testimony, Ms. Hill said that the lack of reaction and relative passivity shown by the Kremlin in response to the recent US military operation in Venezuela and the subsequent looting of its hydrocarbons would suggest a possible update of this “exchange” suggested by Moscow in 2019 and rejected at the time by Trump.

 Comment

The Tech Billionaires Behind Trump’s Greenland Push

Today Trump announced 10% tariffs against 8 European countries that oppose his takeover of Greenland.

By Lois Parshley

January 19, 2026

Source: The Lever

Kulusuk, Greenland | Image credit: Nick Russill/Flickr, Attribution CC 2.0 Generic

President Donald Trump started his second term with his sights set on Greenland.

When Trump first proposed buying the arctic nation during his first administration, it was treated like a joke. But in a phone call last week with Denmark’s prime minister, who controls the autonomous territory’s foreign policy, the president doubled down on his efforts to seize power. In the “aggressive and confrontational” conversation, Trump threatened tariffs if he didn’t get his way. In a news conference earlier this month, he also refused to rule out the use of military force. Now Denmark is taking him seriously: on Monday, it announced a $2 billion military expansion in the Arctic.

Though the island is not for sale, the president emphasized Greenland’s importance to US national security. Left unspoken: a US takeover could weaken the country’s mining laws and ban on private property, aiding Trump donors’ plans to profit from the island’s mineral deposits and build a libertarian techno-city.

Trump, who has summarized his own natural resources policy as “drill, baby, drill,” would likely approach the island’s natural resources quite differently from Greenland’s current government, which has opposed large extractive projects.

In 2019, Trump’s ambassador to Denmark and Greenland visited a major rare-earth mining project on the island shortly before Trump’s first calls to buy the country. Opposition to the mine ushered liberal political party Inuit Ataqatigiit into power two years later, which halted the mine and banned all future oil development.

The president’s renewed intention to take over Greenland has reignited debates over its sovereignty, as the country grapples with the trade-offs between economic opportunity and independence from Denmark. As the country’s glaciers recede, it’s also facing sweeping climate-driven transformations, threatening traditional industries like fishing and hunting and exposing valuable mineral resources.

These shifts have prompted interest from powerful players associated with Trump. Tech moguls in the front row of his inauguration, like Mark Zuckerberg and Jeff Bezos, are also investors in a start-up aiming to mine western Greenland for materials crucial to the artificial intelligence boom.

That company, KoBold Metals, uses artificial intelligence to locate and extract rare earth minerals. Their proprietary algorithm parses government-funded geological surveys and other data to locate significant deposits. The program pinpointed southwest Greenland’s rugged coastline, where the company now has a 51 percent stake in the Disko-Nuussuaq project, searching for minerals like copper.

Just two weeks before some of its investors were glad-handing at the Capitol celebrations, KoBold Metals raised $537 million in its latest funding round, bringing its valuation to almost $3 billion. Among the contributors was a leading venture capital firm founded by Marc Andreessen, an early Silicon Valley entrepreneur who has helped shape the administration’s technology policies, including consulting with Trump’s Department of Government Efficiency as a self-proclaimed “unpaid intern.”

“We believe in adventure,” Andreessen wrote in a lengthy 2023 manifesto that outlined his criticisms of centralized government, advocating for technologists to take control, “rebelling against the status quo, mapping uncharted territory, conquering dragons, and bringing home the spoils for our community.” Connie Chan, a general partner at his venture capital firm Andreessen Horowitz, is listed as a KoBold director in its 2022 Securities and Exchange Commission filing.

In addition to KoBold, Andreessen has also backed other ventures eyeing the arctic nation: he is a significant investor in Praxis Nation, a project aiming to use Greenland to establish a “crypto state,” a self-governing, experimental community built around libertarian ideals and technology like cryptocurrency.

The venture is also funded in part by Pronomos Capital, a venture capital group founded by the grandson of economist Milton Friedman and bankrolled by libertarian figures such as Peter Thiel, whose own family reportedly managed a uranium mine in Namibia. Pronomos aims to create private, business-friendly charter cities like Praxis, often in developing countries where investors could write their own laws and regulations.

These “broligarchs” now have the ear of the president. Thiel has been a significant supporter of Trump, throwing millions of dollars behind him throughout his political career and introducing him to current Vice President J. D. Vance.

Most notable, in December, Trump announced Thiel’s partner Ken Howery as his Danish ambassador, making his intentions explicitly clear: “The United States of America feels that the ownership and control of Greenland is an absolute necessity,” he wrote on TruthSocial, his social media platform.

Greenland’s prime minister Múte Egede flatly rejected the idea, responding on Facebook, “Greenland is ours. We are not for sale and will never be for sale. We must not lose our long struggle for freedom.”

When the Price Is Too High

For centuries, the fight to control Greenland has revolved around its natural resources. The ice-gripped country has been part of Denmark since 1721 when a merchant-backed missionary expedition sought to spread Christianity to its Inuit population — and expand whaling and trade routes.

Greenland gained autonomy from Denmark in 1979, though the Danes continued to control its foreign relations and defense, allowing the United States to build and operate military bases there. In a 2008 referendum, Greenlanders voted for greater independence, allowing them to take control of their natural resources along with other state functions.

That same year, the US Geological Survey found the country had one of the world’s largest potential oil and gas reserves. More recent estimates suggest that the Arctic could hold 13 percent of the world’s undiscovered oil and 30 percent of its undiscovered natural gas. The report drew the attention of major oil companies like ConocoPhillips, Chevron, and BP, which began acquiring exploration licenses and conducting surveys around Greenland and its offshore areas.

But producing oil in such harsh conditions is difficult and expensive due to high transportation costs and infrastructure limitations. ExxonMobil, for example, withdrew its application in 2013, as a downward trend in oil prices made further development economically unfeasible.

When Siumut, a pro-independence political party, came into power earlier that year, leader Aleqa Hammond declared the country would instead transition to mineral extraction, saying, “If we want greater autonomy from Denmark, we have to finance it ourselves. This means finding new sources of income.” In 2014, the government announced a four-year national plan to create “new income and employment opportunities in the area of mineral resources activities.”

Because Greenland’s vast mineral deposits often contain uranium, however, the burgeoning mining industry quickly came into conflict with Denmark’s strict policy against extracting radioactive materials. Denmark chose not to develop nuclear energy in the 1980s, and has comparatively strict regulations around radiation protections.

One of the measures the Siumut-led government took in 2014 was proposing a bill that would have limited public access to environmental information and decision-making processes around mineral extraction. It also lowered environmental standards for uranium mining.

The bill failed to pass, but with Siumut’s support, an international project hoping to extract uranium and rare-earth metals gained preliminary approval. The Australian-based company Greenland Minerals (now called Energy Transition Minerals) found backing from Chinese Shenghe Resources Holdings, and brought Trump’s Greenland ambassador Carla Sands to the site for a visit in July 2019. The following month, Trump announced he wanted to buy the island, comparing it to “a large real estate deal.”

Sands, a former chiropractor and soap opera actress, now works for the America First Policy Institute, a conservative think tank concerned with strengthening the US mineral supply chains, among other nationalist issues.

Energy Transition Minerals’ proposed mine triggered massive controversy: concerns over the potential impact on critical fishing industries and food supplies ushered the Siumut party out of decades of power in 2021. “There is an ongoing, generational dialectic,” says Barry Zellen, a senior fellow of Arctic Security at the Institute of the North, between pro-development and pro-subsistence movements “that tends to swing pendularly.”

As the more left-leaning Inuit Ataqatigiit party took over, it quickly passed a law reinstating limits around uranium that revoked Energy Transition Minerals’ permits and banned all future oil and gas exploration.

“The price of oil extraction is too high,” the party wrote in a statement at the time. “This is based upon economic calculations, but considerations of the impact on climate and the environment also play a central role in the decision.”

These kinds of environmental protections are exactly what Trump aims to remove from American mining. On his own first day in office, one of Trump’s many executive orders directed government officials to remove “undue burdens” on the industry, so that the United States could become “the leading producer and processor of nonfuel minerals, including rare earth minerals.”

“I Went to Greenland to Try to Buy It”

The push for control of the arctic country comes as deep-pocketed investors like Andreessen have been drawn to start-ups hoping to build experimental enclaves, sold by the promise of freedom from the constraints of government.

Proposals for these cryptostates have sprung up in Honduras, Nigeria, the Marshall Islands, and Panama, the latter of which Trump has also recently proposed taking over by military force. While each concept looks a little different, often the sales pitch includes replacing taxes and regulations with cryptocurrency and blockchain.

For Praxis, these utopian dreams have led to Greenland, which is often incorrectly imagined as an unpopulated frontier. “I went to Greenland to try to buy it,” Praxis founder Dryden Brown posted on X in November, noting he first became interested in the island “when Trump offered to buy it in 2019.” Once in Nuuk, he learned that the country has long sought independence from Denmark and that many Greenlanders support sovereignty, though the country remains reliant on Denmark for financial support. It currently receives $500 million a year in Danish subsidies that account for 20 percent of the economy.

“They do not want to be ‘bought,’” Brown belatedly discovered, concluding, “There is an obvious opportunity here.” He proposed taxes from an independently run city like Praxis could help replace Danish subsidies.

Greenland, however, does not allow private property, an arrangement that historically has given communities a stronger voice in determining how or if its natural resources are developed — and could prove a problem for Brown’s planned utopia. But perhaps that could change under a new government.

On Monday, in response to a post referencing “Trump’s projects related to Greenland,” Praxis’s official X account — whose bio reads “We’re meant for more” below a version of the endeavor’s hallucinogenic flag — boasted about “A new post-state in the far North.”

The start-up “nation” has raised $525 million, though Brown, who dropped out of New York University and was fired from his last hedge fund job, hasn’t shared many specifics on Praxis’s website about his proposal for Greenland. (His previous efforts to build a city somewhere in the Mediterranean have also so far remained vague, beyond a branding guide that focused on “traditional, European/Western beauty standards” and recruiting tech employees with “hot girls.”)

But other tech tycoons’ plans for the island are more concrete.

“This Is About Critical Minerals”

Greenland is warming at a much faster rate than the rest of the planet, causing its glaciers to precipitously retreat. As the ice recedes, these valuable deposits are becoming more accessible. A 2023 European Commission survey revealed that Greenland has twenty-five out of thirty-four minerals classified as critical raw materials, or resources that are essential to the green energy transition but have a high risk of disrupted supply chains. The country boasts some of the world’s largest deposits of nickel and cobalt, and collectively, its mineral reserves almost equal those of the United States.

This wealth of resources has drawn the attention of companies like KoBold Metals, whose Silicon Valley backers have a vested interest in supplying materials for the tech industry.

KoBold has positioned itself as providing critical solutions for climate change, facilitating a global reduction in greenhouse gas emissions by supplying the materials needed for batteries and other renewable technologies. The company hailed President Joe Biden’s use of the Defense Production Act to encourage mining in 2022, along with the Inflation Reduction Act’s measures to subsidize international mining for rare earth minerals.

In Greenland, KoBold Metals’ exploration licenses focus on searching for nickel, copper, cobalt, and platinum-group minerals — materials important for green energy, but also for data centers’ rapid growth.

KoBold’s primary development so far has been developing a copper mine in Zambia, the largest such find in a century. Copper is used as a key material in the construction of data centers, and is crucial for artificial intelligence’s infrastructure. The AI boom is expected to nearly double the demand for copper by 2050. “We invested in KoBold,” OpenAI chief executive officer Sam Altman said, to “find new deposits.”

Its Zambia venture, too, has been part of a global power struggle, as the Biden administration backed the development of a railway to transport metals from the region to a port in Angola. The initiative was part of a broader US effort to counter China’s growing presence in Africa, offering investments as an alternative to its Belt and Road Initiative, a trade and infrastructure package.

KoBold’s top executive, however, likes to focus on lithium. “The growth [of lithium demand] is sort of staggering,” KoBold CEO Kurt House said in a 2023 presentation at Stanford. “It’s like a 30x increase in global production that you need.” One of the places the United States might turn to for this critical mineral is Greenland, where promising deposits were recently discovered.

“Everyone wants to have lithium” for its role in creating batteries, says Majken D. Poulsen, a geologist at the Geological Survey of Denmark and Greenland. She explains the first exploration for lithium in Greenland was just conducted last summer in collaboration with the US State Department. Under Biden, the agency also helped the country draft a mining investment law, aimed at encouraging investment in Greenland.

Though quite different in tone, Trump’s Greenland bluster shares similar goals. Charlie Byrd, an investment manager at global assets management firm Cordiant Capital, is one of many investors now hoping the president’s gambit will result in policy changes that are more favorable to foreign investment. “There is no doubt that that would lead to bigger institutional involvement and more strategic investment,” he told trade publication Institutional Investor this week.

Much of this interest is driven by tensions with China, which currently accounts for around 70 percent of global rare-earth mining and 90 percent of its processing. This gives the Asian powerhouse enormous leverage over global tech supply chains.

Control over the minerals that power technology has become a major form of soft power, pulling invisible strings in global markets and shaping alliances. That makes mining regulations in Greenland a geopolitical chess move.

Today “regulations from the government of Greenland are quite high,” the Geological Survey’s Poulsen explains. “They have really strict regulations,” she says, including both environmental and social considerations, like “local benefits such as taxes, local workforce, local companies, [and] education.”

Michael Waltz, Trump’s incoming national security advisor, appeared to confirm that gaining access to the country’s minerals was driving Trump’s interest. “This is about critical minerals; this is about natural resources,” he told Fox News.

“You Can’t Put a Name on Land”

Glaciers loomed through Trump Force One’s cockpit window as Greenland’s coast unspooled behind a bobblehead of the forty-seventh president, his plastic bouffant bobbing in the turbulence. Dropping through the sharp, thin air, the plane delivered Donald Trump Jr to the island’s capital of Nuuk in early January with his father’s message: we intend to take over.

The tour de force — which included bribing people to participate in photo shoots — failed to win over many Greenlanders, says Inuuteq Kriegel, a Nuuk resident. “We don’t want to be Americans. We don’t want to be Danish. We’re Greenlanders,” he said.

A week after Trump Jr’s trip, Rep. Andy Ogles (R-TN) introduced the Make Greenland Great Again Act, instructing Congress to support Trump’s negotiations with Denmark to acquire Greenland immediately. (Ogles is currently the subject of an FBI probe around his campaign finance filings and last week announced an amendment that would allow Trump to run for a third term.)

“It might sound crazy, and one might ask, ‘Why would you want Greenland?’” Ogles said in a recent video. He was speaking with Kuno Fencker, a member of Greenland’s parliament representing the Siumut party, who had traveled to Washington, DC. “Your security interest is our security interest,” Ogles told Fencker. “Our ability to make best use of your minerals, your resources, and your riches — to benefit your people and ours — is in our best interest.”

Fencker, who says taxes and royalties from the island’s minerals and fossil fuels could pave the way for the island’s independence, responded, “We have other vast resources, like oil and gas, but that has been stopped by the current government. But my personal view is that we have to utilize those resources.”

Fencker’s US trip ignited local controversy. Typically Greenland’s international negotiations require coordination and approval from Denmark; imagine someone like Rep. Marjorie Taylor Greene (R-GA) single-handedly deciding to negotiate with the European Union without congressional approval. Fencker’s party said he was not authorized to discuss Greenland’s foreign affairs, while Fencker defended his travel as a private mission at his own expense.

The rogue nature of recent developments has been reinforced by bombastic press coverage. In Greenland, Kriegel says foreign reporters “often talk to the loud people — and often the same people — and they can generalize a whole population by speaking to only a few.” His own social networks are deeply uncomfortable with Trump’s attempts to purchase the country.

Trump and his tech donors’ eagerness to seize Greenland, existing culture and laws be damned, are “representative of a particular colonial and extractive worldview,” wrote Anne Merrild Hansen, professor of social science and arctic oil and gas studies at the University of Greenland. The approach treats land and resources as commodities to be claimed, regardless of the rights or interests of the people who live there.

All the unwelcome commotion, however, has succeeded in delivering one change: Kriegel says the country is now unified in wanting to find a path to independence from Denmark, even if there’s not yet agreement on how to do so.

“You can’t put a name on land,” he says. “Land belongs to the people. It’s a part of us, and we’re part of it.”Email

Lois Parshley

Lois Parshley is an award-winning investigative journalist. Her wide-ranging reporting has been published at the New Yorker, Harper’s, the New York Times, Businessweek, National Geographic, and more.