Foreign minister of Slovenija, Tanja Fajon, signals her submission to the globalist agenda with a declaration (or demand) that sovereign nations must “respect” the international rules of the “world order”. 

Fajon is leader of the Social Democrats, part of the Party of European Socialists and a former member of the European Parliament from Slovenia.

Fajon was slated for a discussion on “global fragmentation”, which seems to be the underlying theme of the event in 2023. 

Globalists have hinted in multiple panels about their frustrations with national governments breaking from key agendas of the WEF, including global pandemic response, the war in Ukraine and climate change. 

DAVOS WATCH: WEF declares countries need to respect global rules and says “we have countries that are respecting their national interest going beyond the rules”

She ends by saying, “we have to take into consideration The World Order” #wef23 pic.twitter.com/9K9pd8naYQ

— Drew Hernandez (@DrewHLive) January 20, 2023

In a tweet today, Fajon also called for greater inclusion of more corporate actors rather than just governments into WEF initiatives.

The tone of Davos has so far been decidedly morose, with many in attendance lamenting the outcomes of global pandemic measures and the lack of unification on climate change.  What they do not mention, at least not directly, is that much of this is due to mass public resistance in many regions.  It would seem that the establishment made assumptions about their progress in 2022 that did not come to fruition. 

By Rachel Premack of FreightWaves,

For the past decade, while the rest of us weren’t looking, Russia has invested seriously in its Arctic region. Now, some 20% of the country’s GDP and 30% of its exports come from these chilly lands. Climate change has softened the landscape where critical oil and gas reserves were stuck underground, while melting ice caps have allowed tanker ships to transport that fuel across Eurasia. 

It’s a fascinating trend that’s set to get more critical in the coming decades. To learn more, we spoke with Malte Humpert, senior fellow and founder of the Arctic Institute. Our interview transcript was lightly condensed and edited for clarity.  

FREIGHTWAVES: Just to get started, who or what entities or companies or countries are currently shipping through the Arctic Ocean?

HUMPERT: By and large, it’s Russia. 

We have to distinguish between the ice-covered Arctic and the non-ice-covered Arctic. There’s always been shipping in the Arctic around the Norwegian coastline, Iceland and some shipping along Greenland in the summer, whenever there is no ice.

But what’s really happened in the last 10, 12, 15 years is that we are shipping in an area that was previously just the domain of nuclear icebreakers along the Russian coastline, or through the Canadian Archipelago, along the Northwest Passage. So, that’s really where the big change has been happening over the last 10, 12, 15 years.

Whenever they’re talking about Arctic shipping or new trends or routes, it’s really along the Russian coastline, which goes from Murmansk on the western side to Kamchatka in the far east. It is, in theory, a shortcut to connect markets in Europe and in Asia.

Arctic shipping routes mostly feature liquefied natural gas and oil tankers. No container ships yet! 

In the ’80s and ’90s, and even in the 2000s, it was really just nuclear icebreakers providing supplies to local communities, to supply some military installations. Now, we are seeing a lot of destination shipping. Russia is using the Northern Sea Route to bring oil and gas resources, some coal, some iron ore, but mostly LNG and oil from the Arctic to markets in Europe and in Asia. That’s the big volume, and that’s where Russia has been investing a lot of money into new icebreakers, into new port infrastructures, into new ice-capable tankers, LNG and oil.

We are [also] seeing some branded shipping. There have been a couple hundred voyages now. It started really in 2009 with a German company called Beluga, which was the first one to send cargo ships through the Northern Sea Route. From then, we’re seeing anywhere from a few dozen to now 70, 80, 90 voyages a year. This year we didn’t really see any, because of Ukraine and sanctions. 

A lot of companies that did some trial voyages the last few years decided to not do it anymore.

But the biggest one is probably Cosco of China. They’ve probably been the most adventurous. They’re doing the most trial voyages to gain operational experience. And they’ve probably done 60, 70, 80 voyages in the last seven, eight years. They’re sending easily boxed cargo, like large windmill parts, or windmill blades, or some iron ore from Asia to Europe to use those quick shortcuts.

[There’s also] Maersk, which did one container ship in 2019. That was a big story, when they had a new ice-capable container ship that needed to go to the Baltics. Instead of going the traditional route through the Suez Canal, they just went through the Arctic. It generated a lot of headlines, but it was a one-off voyage.

By and large, it is Russia doing it. Russia is doing it to bring natural resources from the Arctic to Europe and Asia. 

The Arctic Ocean will probably never be a major route

The question is, long term, if the ice keeps melting and eventually you really have an ice-free summer, will eventually big liner operators be able to go through the Arctic? There’s always two sides to it.

There’s those that are saying, “No, it’s just not feasible. It’s not reliable enough. You need schedule reliability. You need that infrastructure, which are 10 to 15 major ports along the route to really make the Arctic container shipping work.”

And then others are saying, “Yes, that’s true. We won’t reform, or we won’t revolutionize the main shipping arteries of the world. But the Arctic can serve as a supplemental shipping route.”

For now, it’s really just destination shipping from the Russian Arctic to markets in Europe and Asia. And then there’s a little bit of the Canadian Arctic. The Northwest Passage probably sees 10, 15, 20 transits every year. There’s some iron ore that gets exported from the Canadian Arctic to market.

But really, Arctic shipping, what everyone is talking about, is the billions of dollars Russia is investing in infrastructure, and getting oil and gas that we previously couldn’t get to, to the markets in Europe and in Asia.

Russia has used Arctic routes in 2022 to still move liquefied natural gas into Europe 

FREIGHTWAVES: Is there a certain amount of uproar that happens when a Western European shipping company, like Maersk, engages in Arctic shipping? It seems like there’s a difference in the response from the public depending on who ships on the Arctic. 

HUMPERT: Anyone can go onto the Northern Sea Route. All you need is to get a permit from the Northern Sea Administration. I mean, that door is wide open. It’s not that hard to do. You need some icebreaker escort.

What’s interesting to look at is, how is Europe behaving in terms of sanctions? [2022] saw a record level of Russian Arctic LNG flowing from the Russian Arctic into the EU. 

While on one hand, you stopped the import of pipeline gas, now they’re receiving record levels of LNG. That comes from the Arctic and uses Arctic shipping.

So, Arctic shipping definitely ties into the geopolitics of what’s going on right now. I think a lot of companies decided that it’s not worth it, the optics or the environmental risk to ship in the Arctic. By and large, it’s Russian LNG and oil. There’s a couple of bulk carriers, just like large items that need to go into the Arctic or come out of the Arctic. 

But 99% of Arctic shipping is really there to support Russian oil and gas development, or the export of those resources.

It’s not easy to ship in the Arctic, especially when it is dark 24 hours a day in the winter

HUMPERT: There’s been very few transit voyages where someone is like, “OK, I need to get something from point A in Europe to point B in Asia.” It will take a few months a year where that voyage into the Arctic might make economic sense. But, at the same time, it requires a lot of logistics. A lot of planning, ice pilots and special certification for the crew. You need to abide by the Polar Code. That brings a host of challenges with it that the crew needs to be certified, and you need to have a special ship, or ice class. You can’t dump your wastewater.

Shipping in the Arctic is still, it’s not the Mediterranean. It’s not the Atlantic. It’s still very challenging, especially in the winter, when it’s 24-hour darkness. It is still very specialized shipping.

It’s also a very pristine environment. A few hundred ships a year represent a significant challenge, and danger to the Arctic environment.

That’s why things like the Polar Code have been put in place to make sure that there are some safety mechanisms; vessels are specifically built and certified for operating in ice and ice-infested waters in the Arctic.

The Polar Code is serious business … but it has some loopholes 

FREIGHTWAVES: What are some of the specifications of the Polar Code? What are some of the most challenging or maybe surprising factors that comes along with shipping in the Arctic as an ocean carrier?

HUMPERT: The Polar Code was established under the International Maritime Organization. And it requires ice pilots on board. You need to have specific crew training, specific survival gear. You need to have ice classes. That’s more based on domestic Russian certification. 

For the Northern Sea Route, there are different categories, depending on if the ice conditions are light, medium or heavy. You need to have either a specific ice class for the vessel, or you need to have an icebreaker escort you through ice conditions that you are not allowed to navigate independently.

Of course, there’s politics as well. There have been instances in the last few years where vessels that are not supposed to be where they are, in terms of ice conditions, are navigating by themselves, because the Russians turn a blind eye to that. There have been instances now where vessels don’t abide by the Russian rules, and they should have a higher ice classification.

The question is, how much of that is because ice conditions are really getting easier and easier because of climate change? Or is it Russians ignoring the rules for economic expediency, and want to push along oil and gas exports?

60% of Russia’s Arctic fuel goes to Europe, and the other chunk goes to Asia 

FREIGHTWAVES: And right now, where is Russia shipping on the Northern Sea Route? Are they exporting only to China? Are they still exporting to Europe? What does that look like right now?

HUMPERT: We have a number of oil and gas projects in the Arctic. The biggest one is Yamal LNG on the Yamal Peninsula, by the Russian company Novatek. They export about 20 million tons of LNG every year. 

Some of that flows to Europe, and some of that flows to Asia. This year it’s probably 60% Europe, 40% Asia. In terms of Asia, most of that goes to China. In previous years, a bit more went to Japan. 

In terms of Europe, a lot of it goes to France, Spain, Portugal, Belgium, countries that actually previously had not really received any Russian gas. Now they are importing Russian LNG.

There is the Novy Port/Arctic Gate by Gazprom Neft. That is also oil that flows to Europe. 

Now there’s going to be a big new terminal called Vostok Oil, which was announced a few months ago. It’s on the Gydan Peninsula. The forecasts say that that’ll be 25 million tons by 2025, and then a hundred million tons by 2030.

There is a lot of volume of the oil already being transported around the Northern Sea. In the 1980s, ’90s and 2000s, that would be between 2 and 4 million tons of cargo that would flow along the Northern Sea Route. Now we’re around 32, 33 million tons. All that increase has come in the last four or five years. The forecasts are 80 to 100 million tons by the end of the decade. So, we’re still looking at a threefold increase in terms of tonnage between LNG and oil.

Arctic oil production is replacing other resources for Russia

FREIGHTWAVES: It seems like Arctic shipping has been pretty important for Russia’s energy industry, and really making them even more of an energy exporter than previously.

HUMPERT: Probably not more. They have to replace other capacity. There’s a lot of oil and gas resources in other parts of Russia that have been producing for many decades, and they’re running out. A lot of future oil and gas resources lie in the Russian Arctic. If you look at the US Geological Survey study that everyone cites from 2009, which looked at oil and gas resources across the entire Arctic, 80% of those resources are located in the Russian Arctic. [AUTHOR’S NOTE: For those who are not familiar with this particular survey, it’s pretty interesting. It estimates that 30% of the world’s undiscovered gas and 13% of its undiscovered oil is in the Arctic.]

For lack of a better term, Russia is the gas station. The future of that gas station definitely lies in the Arctic, and Russia wants to make sure it keeps exporting oil and gas.

Previously it couldn’t get to those oil and gas resources, because it was frozen, and building pipelines in the tundra is very technically challenging and expensive. But now they have a shipping route, and they have the technology, and they can get to the oil and gas that previously was inaccessible.

That’s where Arctic shipping comes in for Russia being really important. The combination of climate change, oil and gas resources, and the Northern Sea Route opens a whole new logistics chain for Russia.

China and Russia are becoming closer than ever, thanks to the Arctic!

FREIGHTWAVES: And how does Arctic shipping strengthen the relationship between Russia and China?

HUMPERT: Well, China is a big investor in Russian Arctic energy projects. They are the recipient of a lot of LNG that flows into China. This year, China is receiving about 25, 30% of the LNG produced at Yamal LNG.

They have a lot of long-term 20-year, 30-year projects. [China is] gobbling up all the LNG being produced anywhere around the world. The Arctic is no exception there. China is really focused on long-term energy security, and receiving all the LNG that they can. That’s the same for the Russian Arctic.

A lot of people focus on the Northern Sea as a potential shipping, export, container shipping route for China. That’s really theoretical. There’s still too much ice. It’s not reliable enough. For China, really, the benefit of the Northern Sea Route and its connection with Russia is the receipt of LNG and oil.

Russia is now the largest oil provider for China, ahead of Saudi Arabia. It’s a lot closer to go from the Russian Arctic to China than it is to go from Saudi Arabia through the Strait of Malacca and Singapore and the South China Sea.

Apparently Western Europeans do not care about the optics of receiving fuel that might endanger the Arctic (even before Russia’s war)

FREIGHTWAVES: At what point is it bad optics for, say, Europe to be importing energy that was moved on through Arctic shipping? Even before the Ukraine war.

HUMPERT: Well, I mean, I don’t particularly think that sovereign countries really cared about that. Germany clearly didn’t care about being super energy reliant on Russia. I think for some individual companies it probably played a role. I mean, there have been companies that said they would not invest in oil projects in the Arctic. But, by and large, it was a lot of the big majors. I mean, Siemens, Linde, Total, Bakers.

All the major companies that work in oil and gas, either construction or servicing, or the production of oil and gas, were all involved to various degrees. Exxon was in the Russian Arctic, because a lot of oil and gas resources are there. 

Now with sanctions, most of them or all of them have actually exited those projects. Russia right now is struggling to replace some of the technology and some of the financing that they lost over the last 10 months with new partners. They’ve looked to the Middle East. They’ve looked to the UAE. China has stepped up. They’re trying to build turbines and gas concentrators, and all the high-tech stuff that is required in the liquefaction of natural gas. They are looking to build it domestically. 

From an environmental perspective, there were not too many qualms on the part of companies. And now with the sanctions, it’s just a general, “We can’t really do business with Russia anymore.” You’ve got to cut the cord and get out of there, and most companies did. 

It is always the interesting facet of this, that previously France and Spain and Portugal and Belgium did not really receive any Russian gas, because there is no pipeline from Russia that goes to France, or from Russia to Spain. It was more Germany and the Eastern European countries. 

But now, France and Spain and Portugal and Belgium are importing significant amounts of LNG, which they previously did not. 

I now have FOMOOA: Fear Of Missing Out On Arctic

FREIGHTWAVES: It’s interesting looking at this Arctic shore as a key part of Russia’s quest for maybe not global dominance, but still being important on the global stage. I feel like I don’t often think of the Arctic shore as part of any country’s coastline. But given the fact that ice caps are melting …

HUMPERT: You make a very good point. I mean, the Arctic plays a completely different role in the national identity and the economic importance in the psyche of Russian people. I think maybe the only other country with that is the Scandinavian countries. 

But if you ask someone in the U.S. in Alabama about the Arctic, they don’t know what you’re talking about, because Alaska is 500,000 people, and contributes less than 1% to the GDP of the U.S. Oil supply has been declining. You have cheaper oil and gas available in the Lower 48. There is really not that much of a need to build icebreakers. Russia has a fleet of a dozen nuclear icebreakers. The U.S. has one conventional icebreaker, and another half one that’s always broken.

The economic importance is a lot less. I mean, if you take Alaska away tomorrow, the U.S. is going to be fine. Well, you take away the Russian Arctic, Russia’s not going to be fine. It generates 20% of its GDP above the Arctic Circle. And that number is probably going to just increase.

Russia isn’t just investing into Arctic shipping. It’s investing into an Arctic military.   

HUMPERT: That’s why they’re investing large amounts of resources into revitalizing old military bases, building new ones, building runways, and building large radar installations. We saw the explosions on the Nord Stream pipelines two months ago, three months ago. That’s exactly the kind of thing that Russia wants to not have happen to its own investments in the Arctic.

That’s why there is a ring of military bases, and forward-looking radar, and S300 and S400 missiles and aircraft — because they know that the Arctic is hugely important for economic development.

On Tuesday, they approved another billion dollars to build two more nuclear icebreakers. That’s just something they do on a Tuesday. While in the U.S., it took 10 years to have the Coast Guard contract one conventional icebreaker that won’t be ready before the end of the decade, because it has to be built domestically, and the U.S. hasn’t built an icebreaker in 35 years.

So, it’s totally understandable why Russia is investing that much money and effort and political capital. Putin is there whenever they launch a new nuclear icebreaker or they open a new military base. Putin is there for the photo op. And it caters to an element of Russia, the Russian empire, Soviet Union, the Arctic, the Arctic frontier. In the U.S., you don’t really have that psyche.

In Canada, 10, 15 years ago, Prime Minister Harper did that a little bit. He would become a little bit more nationalistic when he would talk about the Arctic, and how the Arctic is part of the Canadian heritage, and the Arctic is Canada, Canada is the Arctic, and so forth. But again, no one cared. Of course I’m exaggerating here, but you don’t have 20% of your GDP being generated above the Arctic Circle.

I mean, purely from a logistical aspect, what Russia has been able to do the last 10 years is really, really impressive. You can be for it, you can be against it. You can say the environmental risk is not worth it. We should stop producing oil and gas, and the geopolitics of it. But just looking at it from the infrastructure in the Arctic, and building the ships needed to get the oil and gas out of there, and doing it all in 24-hour darkness in the Arctic, it’s really, really impressive.

It takes a lot of effort, a lot of money. And people were skeptical, but Russia is doing it. And Western Europe and Japan and China are customers of what Russia is producing and exporting in the Arctic.

For the US and Europe, the solution is probably not ‘drill, baby, drill’

FREIGHTWAVES: Yeah, it seems like Russia’s competitive advantage. Canada and other countries also have access to these resources, theoretically. But Russia’s really the one that is investing the most into this, and seeing the most benefit from this massive shoreline that it has with the Arctic Circle.

So, should the U.S. be taking this more seriously? What do you think would be the approach from the U.S. or Europe that counteracts this, or that takes potential Arctic resources more seriously?

HUMPERT: Well, I mean, the question is, should we? Personally, I’m glad we’re not drilling for oil and gas in the Arctic. 

I think what the U.S. and Europe should do is just generally be more aware that the Arctic is opening up, that it is becoming a navigable ocean. Within 20 or 30 years, for at least six months out of the year, it’ll be more like a blue-water navy-type environment. There needs to be more forward-looking and long-term planning to see, how can we operate in the Arctic? How can we contain threats in the Arctic? How can we avoid conflict in the Arctic? 

A lot of that is being done now. I think the U.S. has been waking up to it. They reorganized the 3rd Fleet. They’ve held exercises above the Arctic Circle. There was the Trident Juncture, which was a big NATO exercise a few years ago. They did an exercise off the coast of Iceland maybe two, three years ago. The Coast Guard is getting its new icebreaker, hopefully plural. Supposedly they’re going to build six of them. But, that’s at least 15 years away.

They are doing things, but it’s really hard to find the resources to spend that kind of money when the Arctic is not currently that important to you. When you just finished two wars in Iraq and Afghanistan, and you have terrorism, and you have whatever else is going on in the world, it’s very hard to think about 2030 or 2050.
That’s where Russia and also China are better, because they’re not a democracy. They don’t need to cater to the two-year election cycle and figure out what the immediate priorities are. They’re able to think long term.

But, in general, I mean, the Arctic is opening up. For better or worse, there’s going to be economic activity. There’s hopefully not going to be military conflict in the Arctic. But, the way things are evolving with Russia and future discord or conflict with China, you can never exclude that it could become a theater for conflict.

Cleaning up oil spills in cold water is really hard, which is one of many reasons why Arctic shipping is not great for polar waters

FREIGHTWAVES: Really quickly, or maybe not really quickly, I have one last question. What does Arctic shipping do to its ocean?

HUMPERT: Well, I mean, it’s definitely not good. 

We already had a bunch of near misses of accidents. We had a couple of cruise ships run aground in the Canadian Archipelago a couple years ago. We had a couple of near misses along the Northern Sea Route, where oil tankers ran into each other, luckily without puncturing the double hull. There was, according to the Russians, no loss of oil or whatever.

But the more activity you have, the risk goes up. The question is loss of limb and life. That’s why, under the Arctic Council, we have the search and rescue agreement, because the Arctic is really remote, and we have more and more cruise ships going up there. How do you get 2,000 people off a cruise ship when the entire island that you’re visiting has less people than that? There’s a lot of concern about the risk to people when they venture out in the Arctic.

Of course, you can look at the Exxon Valdez accident in Alaska 25, 30 years ago and what that did. Cleaning up oil in the Arctic is a lot more challenging than in more temperate water, because the oil becomes a lot more viscous, a lot more thick, like a heavy paste. So, how are you going to get it off, and where are you going to put it?

You’re 10,000 miles away from anywhere. The Arctic environment is obviously very pristine and very untouched in a lot of areas. Because it’s so cold, if there were to be an oil spill, it would be dissolved a lot less quickly, because everything, in colder temperature, everything happens a lot slower than in more temperate water.

In an ideal world, you’d say, “Yeah, let’s leave the Arctic the way it is, and let’s not go up there and drill for oil and gas.” But that’s not happening, obviously. What we can do is put the regulations in place to keep it as safe and as pristine as we can. But it’s probably just a matter of time until we will see accidents. The more heavy industrial activity you have, you’ll see an accident.

The Arctic is offering a preview of how much our lives could transform thanks to climate change 

FREIGHTWAVES: Well, great. Thank you so much again for taking the time to talk with me. Anything else I didn’t ask about, or anything else you think would be important? I mean, I’m sure we could talk about this for a long time. But anything else that comes off the top of your head?

HUMPERT: I think we covered it. For me, it’s always important, because I read so many headlines about the new Cold War in the Arctic, or the rush for Arctic resources, or the new super shipping highway — it’s not like that. There is a lot happening in the Arctic, and it’s very, very fascinating. 

But we’re not on the route for World War III in the Arctic. We’re not going to replace the Suez Canal. Russia is not going to become the next Saudi Arabia in the Arctic.

But it doesn’t need to be, right? The Arctic previously was frozen, and now it’s melting because of climate change. And so, it really is the first region where climate change is altering the economic realities and the landscapes. There’s some positives, and there’s some negatives. It’s never just black and white. Some local, indigenous communities are really struggling. Others may have new economic opportunities because of tourism or shipping or whatever is going on.

The Arctic is offering a preview. It’s warming at four times the rate as the rest of the planet. Challenges that are maybe 20 or 30 years away in other parts of the world are already happening in the Arctic today, because the ice is melting. Without climate change, you and I, we wouldn’t be having this conversation right now, because the Arctic would still be frozen.

It’s this nexus of climate change, economic opportunity and geopolitics. It all comes together in the Arctic, over resources, over shipping, over geopolitics. And it’s the first region where climate change is literally altering the map of the world. You can go through the Arctic now for two, three, four months a year in a normal ship. And 20 years ago, that was not possible.

Authored by Adam Coleman via The Epoch Times,

I’m no different from many Americans who still possess anger at how people were mistreated for questioning narratives, forced into struggling economic positions, and repeatedly lied to about the efficacy of lockdowns and vaccines by the most powerful people and institutions in the world.

I still possess animosity toward the formerly respectable so-called experts who’ve become compromised by their political biases and the fear of losing their high status in society if they were to divorce from the narrative and marry objectivity. How can I trust again a media apparatus that guilted an entire population of people into getting an experimental vaccine while simultaneously being sponsored by Big Pharma?

We all want a way to move forward, because anger only breeds more anger, not forgiveness. But it’s also not advisable for us to gloss over the damage that was done to appease the conscience of the people who are now remorseful for their participation in perpetuating falsehoods and who cheered on the social demise of dissenters.

Despite the call for a blanket amnesty discussed in the Atlantic’s op-ed titled “Let’s declare a pandemic amnesty,” I believe we should strive for something that’s more succinct in providing a form of justice that would relieve much of the bitterness that we’ve been carrying for years: COVID reparations.

Often when we discuss reparations, it’s with the concept of throwing an arbitrary amount of cash at people in hopes that it satisfies enough of them in the process, but what I’m advocating for is a reparation that’s socially restorative, fair, and directly benefits the people who were impacted by the injustice.

First, there needs to be a satisfactory acknowledgment of guilt and an apology directly aimed at the American public who were unjustly harmed. For example, there needs to be a recognition of the people who are vaccine injured, and while they’re the minority, their situations are disregarded by people, including medical professionals, who continue to cling to the fallacy that COVID-19 vaccines provide no side effects.

There needs to be a national recognition of the mental damage inflicted upon our children due to seemingly indefinite isolation because of extended lockdowns and school closures, causing youth suicide attempts to soar.

According to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC), in 2020, the proportion of mental health-related emergency department visits among adolescents aged 12–17 years increased by 31 percent compared with 2019. From Feb. 21 to March 20, 2021, emergency department visits due to suspected suicide attempts were 50.6 percent higher among girls aged 12–17 years than during the same period in 2019.

You can’t fix what you don’t acknowledge, and we can’t move forward without public acknowledgment of all the negative consequences that stemmed from an overreaching and politically blinded governmental apparatus and how they encouraged the private sector to mimic their approach.

There should be restitution for the citizens who were forced out of their jobs and other opportunities for refusing to get vaccinated, because this action was motivated by the falsehood of the vaccination stopping the spread, which was overtly stated by many bureaucratic figures, including the CDC Director Rochelle Walensky.

In cities such as New York City, people, like my wife, were forced into an unfair predicament of taking a vaccine that they weren’t fully comfortable being injected with or losing their income, all based on the falsehood of it being the extinguisher of the spread of this virus.

As part of the restitution, every employee who was negatively affected by this should be allowed their positions back or given financial severance compensation directly from their employer, and there should be the immediate reenlistment of military members who were forced out due to this refusal.

Any small business owners who were forced out of business while corporate conglomerates like Amazon, Target, and Walmart were permitted carte blanch operational status should be allowed to file lawsuits against their local government that used edict to choose the economic winners and losers.

Lastly, there should be guarantees of non-repetition by removing all unelected bureaucratic figureheads who perpetuated vaccine falsehoods on behalf of Big Pharma, advocated for lockdowns without regard for our economic survival or impact on our children’s health, and fostered an environment where questioning medical decisions for yourself made you a dissident instead of normal.

Laws should be created to prevent the federal government from providing blanket immunity from lawsuits to pharmaceutical companies, because those companies will undoubtedly put more emphasis on the speed of production and profits over ethics and safety for the American public.

There are countless actions that could be made to show actual repentance for the irreverence shown toward the American public, but there needs to be conscious action alongside the rhetoric of progressing forward.

We haven’t truly learned the lessons from our recent mistakes if we’re willing to continue to pretend that the wounds that were created by our overzealousness aren’t still infected with unresolved acrimony.

Boston Dynamics’ latest video of its six-foot-tall bipedal humanoid, Atlas, shows it has acquired new skills that enable it to operate in complex terrain.

Boston Dynamics’ Atlas team, led by Scott Kuindersma, told The Verge that the video is “meant to communicate an expansion of the research we’re doing on Atlas.” 

The video shows Atlas operating autonomously, working in a makeshift construction site. A worker asks the bipedal robot for his tool bag while high up on a scaffold. The robot retrieves the bag and successfully delivers the bag to the worker. 

“We’re not just thinking about how to make the robot move dynamically through its environment, like we did in Parkour and Dance.

“Now, we’re starting to put Atlas to work and think about how the robot should be able to perceive and manipulate objects in its environment,” said Kuindersma. 

Since Hyundai Motor Group acquired a controlling interest in Boston Dynamics for $1.1 billion in 2021, there’s been a notable change in messaging from the robotics company that appears to push these bipedal robots closer to commercialization for real-world applications. 

What bothers us is the military-industrial complex’s dream of humanoid warfighters could be realized via Atlas.  

Authored by Pepe Escobar via The Cradle,

The adoption of commodity-backed currencies by the Global South could upend the US dollar’s dominance and level the playing field in international trade…

Let’s start with three interconnected multipolar-driven facts.

First: One of the key take-aways from the World Economic Forum annual shindig in Davos, Switzerland is when Saudi Finance Minister Mohammed al-Jadaan, on a panel on “Saudi Arabia’s Transformation,” made it clear that Riyadh “will consider trading in currencies other than the US dollar.”

So is the petroyuan finally at hand? Possibly, but Al-Jadaan wisely opted for careful hedging:

“We enjoy a very strategic relationship with China and we enjoy that same strategic relationship with other nations including the US and we want to develop that with Europe and other countries.”

Second: The Central Banks of Iran and Russia are studying the adoption of a “stable coin” for foreign trade settlements, replacing the US dollar, the ruble and the rial.

The crypto crowd is already up in arms, mulling the pros and cons of a gold-backed central bank digital currency (CBDC) for trade that will be in fact impervious to the weaponized US dollar.

A gold-backed digital currency

The really attractive issue here is that this gold-backed digital currency would be particularly effective in the Special Economic Zone (SEZ) of Astrakhan, in the Caspian Sea.

Astrakhan is the key Russian port participating in the International North South Transportation Corridor (INTSC), with Russia processing cargo travelling across Iran in merchant ships all the way to West Asia, Africa, the Indian Ocean and South Asia.

The success of the INSTC – progressively tied to a gold-backed CBDC – will largely hinge on whether scores of Asian, West Asian and African nations refuse to apply US-dictated sanctions on both Russia and Iran.

As it stands, exports are mostly energy and agricultural products; Iranian companies are the third largest importer of Russian grain. Next will be turbines, polymers, medical equipment, and car parts. Only the Russia-Iran section of the INSTC represents a $25 billion business.

And then there’s the crucial energy angle of INSTC – whose main players are the Russia-Iran-India triad.

India’s purchases of Russian crude have increased year-by-year by a whopping factor of 33. India is the world’s third largest importer of oil; in December, it received 1.2 million barrels from Russia, which for several months now is positioned ahead of Iraq and Saudi Arabia as Delhi’s top supplier.

‘A fairer payment system’

Third: South Africa holds this year’s rotating BRICS presidency. And this year will mark the start of BRICS+ expansion, with candidates ranging from Algeria, Iran and Argentina to Turkey, Saudi Arabia and the UAE.

South African Foreign Minister Naledi Pandor has just confirmed that the BRICS do want to find a way to bypass the US dollar and thus create “a fairer payment system not skewed toward wealthier countries.”

For years now, Yaroslav Lissovolik, head of the analytical department of Russian Sberbank’s corporate and investment business has been a proponent of closer BRICS integration and the adoption of a BRICS reserve currency.

Lissovolik reminds us that the first proposal “to create a new reserve currency based on a basket of currencies of BRICS countries was formulated by the Valdai Club back in 2018.”

Are you ready for the R5?

The original idea revolved around a currency basket similar to the Special Drawing Rights (SDR) model, composed of the national currencies of BRICS members – and then, further on down the road, other currencies of the expanded BRICS+ circle.

Lissovolik explains that choosing BRICS national currencies made sense because “these were among the most liquid currencies across emerging markets. The name for the new reserve currency — R5 or R5+ — was based on the first letters of the BRICS currencies all of which begin with the letter R (real, ruble, rupee, renminbi, rand).”

So BRICS already have a platform for their in-depth deliberations in 2023. As Lissovolik notes, “in the longer run, the R5 BRICS currency could start to perform the role of settlements/payments as well as the store of value/reserves for the central banks of emerging market economies.”

It is virtually certain that the Chinese yuan will be prominent right from the start, taking advantage of its “already advanced reserve status.”

Potential candidates that could become part of the R5+ currency basket include the Singapore dollar and the UAE’s dirham.

Quite diplomatically, Lissovolik maintains that, “the R5 project can thus become one of the most important contributions of emerging markets to building a more secure international financial system.”

The R5, or R5+ project does intersect with what is being designed at the Eurasia Economic Union (EAEU), led by the Macro-Economics Minister of the Eurasia Economic Commission, Sergey Glazyev.

A new gold standard

In Golden Ruble 3.0 , his most recent paper, Glazyev makes a direct reference to two by now notorious reports by Credit Suisse strategist Zoltan Pozsar, formerly of the IMF, US Department of Treasury, and New York Federal Reserve: War and Commodity Encumbrance (December 27) and War and Currency Statecraft (December 29).

Pozsar is a staunch supporter of a Bretton Woods III – an idea that has been getting enormous traction among the Fed-skeptical crowd.

What’s quite intriguing is that the American Pozsar now directly quotes Russia’s Glazyev, and vice-versa, implying a fascinating convergence of their ideas.

Let’s start with Glazyev’s emphasis on the importance of gold. He notes the current accumulation of multibillion-dollar cash balances on the accounts of Russian exporters in “soft” currencies in the banks of Russia’s main foreign economic partners: EAEU nations, China, India, Iran, Turkey, and the UAE.

He then proceeds to explain how gold can be a unique tool to fight western sanctions if prices of oil and gas, food and fertilizers, metals and solid minerals are recalculated:

“Fixing the price of oil in gold at the level of 2 barrels per 1g will give a second increase in the price of gold in dollars, calculated Credit Suisse strategist Zoltan Pozsar. This would be an adequate response to the ‘price ceilings’ introduced by the west – a kind of ‘floor,’ a solid foundation. And India and China can take the place of global commodity traders instead of Glencore or Trafigura.”

So here we see Glazyev and Pozsar converging. Quite a few major players in New York will be amazed.

Glazyev then lays down the road toward Gold Ruble 3.0. The first gold standard was lobbied by the Rothschilds in the 19th century, which “gave them the opportunity to subordinate continental Europe to the British financial system through gold loans.” Golden Ruble 1.0, writes Glazyev, “provided the process of capitalist accumulation.”

Golden Ruble 2.0, after Bretton Woods, “ensured a rapid economic recovery after the war.” But then the “reformer Khrushchev canceled the peg of the ruble to gold, carrying out monetary reform in 1961 with the actual devaluation of the ruble by 2.5 times, forming conditions for the subsequent transformation of the country [Russia] into a “raw material appendage of the Western financial system.”

What Glazyev proposes now is for Russia to boost gold mining to as much as 3 percent of GDP: the basis for fast growth of the entire commodity sector (30 percent of Russian GDP). With the country becoming a world leader in gold production, it gets “a strong ruble, a strong budget and a strong economy.”

All Global South eggs in one basket

Meanwhile, at the heart of the EAEU discussions, Glazyev seems to be designing a new currency not only based on gold, but partly based on the oil and natural gas reserves of participating countries.

Pozsar seems to consider this potentially inflationary: it could be if it results in some excesses, considering the new currency would be linked to such a large base.

Off the record, New York banking sources admit the US dollar would be “wiped out, since it is a valueless fiat currency, should Sergey Glazyev link the new currency to gold. The reason is that the Bretton Woods system no longer has a gold base and has no intrinsic value, like the FTX crypto currency. Sergey’s plan also linking the currency to oil and natural gas seems to be a winner.”

So in fact Glazyev may be creating the whole currency structure for what Pozsar called, half in jest, the “G7 of the East”: the current 5 BRICS plus the next 2 which will be the first new members of BRICS+.

Both Glazyev and Pozsar know better than anyone that when Bretton Woods was created the US possessed most of Central Bank gold and controlled half the world’s GDP. This was the basis for the US to take over the whole global financial system.

Now vast swathes of the non-western world are paying close attention to Glazyev and the drive towards a new non-US dollar currency, complete with a new gold standard which would in time totally replace the US dollar.

Pozsar completely understood how Glazyev is pursuing a formula featuring a basket of currencies (as Lissovolik suggested). As much as he understood the groundbreaking drive towards the petroyuan. He describes the industrial ramifications thus:

“Since as we have just said Russia, Iran, and Venezuela account for about 40 percent of the world’s proven oil reserves, and each of them are currently selling oil to China for renminbi at a steep discount, we find BASF’s decision to permanently downsize its operations at its main plant in Ludwigshafen and instead shift its chemical operations to China was motivated by the fact that China is securing energy at discounts, not markups like Europe.”

The race to replace the dollar

One key takeaway is that energy-intensive major industries are going to be moving to China. Beijing has become a big exporter of Russian liquified natural gas (LNG) to Europe, while India has become a big exporter of Russian oil and refined products such as diesel – also to Europe. Both China and India – BRICS members – buy below market price from fellow BRICS member Russia and resell to Europe with a hefty profit. Sanctions? What sanctions?

Meanwhile, the race to constitute the new currency basket for a new monetary unit is on. This long-distance dialogue between Glazyev and Pozsar will become even more fascinating, as Glazyev will be trying to find a solution to what Pozsar has stated: tapping of natural resources for the creation of the new currency could be inflationary if money supply is increased too quickly.

All that is happening as Ukraine – a huge chasm at a critical junction of the New Silk Road blocking off Europe from Russia/China – slowly but surely disappears into a black void. The Empire may have gobbled up Europe for now, but what really matters geoeconomically, is how the absolute majority of the Global South is deciding to commit to the Russia/China-led block.

Economic dominance of BRICS+ may be no more than 7 years away – whatever toxicities may be concocted by that large, dysfunctional nuclear rogue state on the other side of the Atlantic. But first, let’s get that new currency going.

Authored by Michael Clements via The Epoch Times,

The National Shooting Sports Foundation (NSSF) is as committed to promoting gun safety as it is to gun rights, Bill Brassard, senior director of communications and director of the Child Safe program for the NSSF, told The Epoch Times.

“It’s about much more than firearms,” Brassard said.

According to Brassard, the firearms industry is working to do its part to promote gun safety and mental health.

There are at least seven organizations committed to gun safety, suicide prevention, and mental health services among the more than 2,400 exhibitors at the event.

“Attitudes are definitely changing,” Brassard said.

“Five years ago, they would not have had a presence here.”

Brassard spoke from the Project ChildSafe booth at the NSSF’s 45th Annual SHOT Show in Las Vegas, Nevada. SHOT stands for the Shooting, Hunting, and Outdoor Trade show.

(Right) Ken Stacy, (North American representative for Lokaway safes) and (Left) Corkey Whempner (Lokaway sales representative) display one of their company’s gun safes during the National Shooting Sports Foundation’s 45th annual SHOT Show in Las Vegas, Nev., on Jan. 18, 2023. (Michael Clements)

One of the exhibitors Brassard referenced is Hold My Guns (HMG), a non-profit that arranges temporary gun storage. Whether for a military deployment, a mental health crisis, or the need to prevent unauthorized firearms access, HMG connects clients with federal firearms license (FFL) holders who can legally store their guns so they are ready to be returned.

Sarah Joy Albrecht is the founder and executive director of HMG. She said that in an era of red flag laws and increased attempts to restrict gun ownership, HMG was started to help gun owners temporarily create distance from their firearms without government involvement.

“This is a non-legislative approach,” Albrecht told The Epoch Times.

“This is our community helping our own.”

According to Albrecht, HMG arranges a transfer of firearms to an FFL. Since it is a legal transfer, the owner must be able to pass a federal background check. The guns are logged into the FFL’s records and kept in their secure storage until they are returned to the owner. She said HMG partners with FFLs, who will store the firearms for a nominal fee. The FFL partners require that the storage is legal, but other than that, no questions are asked.

Albrecht said one of HMG’s main objectives is suicide prevention. Her family has been directly affected by suicide, and she started HMG to prevent such tragedies. She pointed out that more than half of all gun-related deaths are suicides. But news reports list those with gun crime statistics. This compounds the stigma of suicide, she said.

Dustin Culbreth (vice president for product development of Vaultek) demonstrates the modular features of one of his company’s long gun safes during the National Shooting Sports Foundations 45th annual SHOT Show in Las Vegas, Nev., on Jan. 18, 2023. (Michael Clements)

“How much more likely is that person to seek help?” Albrecht asked. “(HMG) empowers people to make good decisions during a crisis. This is an option that serves our community.”

Brassard said HMG and other safe storage options are essential in suicide prevention by creating time and distance between the person and the guns.

“It gives the person a chance to find help,” Brassard said.

NSSF has also partnered with the American Foundation for Suicide Prevention, the Department of Veterans Affairs (VA), and Walk the Talk America in addition to starting programs like Project ChildSafe and NSSF Have a Brace Conversation. These organizations are working to educate the public and firearms retailers on recognizing warning signs that a person may be dealing with mental health issues and how to help them find assistance.

Brassard said the programs have been well received.

Along that line, NSSF and the American Foundation for Suicide prevention develop materials for firearms retailers, ranges, and manufacturers to make it easier for their customers to find the support they need when they need it. All the materials are free.

NSSF provides educational materials and services through its Have a Brave Conversation program. The program offers a free toolkit containing brochures, posters, counter cards, and window clings for firearms-related businesses and organizations that want to prevent suicide.

NSSF Suicide Prevention Partners

Walk the Talk America (WTA) has been operating for nearly five years. It hosts free and anonymous mental health screenings in addition to educating clinicians about gun culture, promoting responsible gun ownership, and protecting Second Amendment rights and psychological well-being. WTA works with manufacturers, retailers, wholesalers, ranges, veterans’ groups, community groups, and government agencies.

In addition to suicide prevention, NSSF has made protecting children a priority. This is why NSSF began its Project ChildSafe program, Brassard said. NSSF has provided more than 40 million gun locks to gun owners through local police departments. Brassard said the locks are provided free of charge and come with information on safe gun handling and storage.

NSSF has partnered with 15,000 law enforcement agencies around the United States through the Project ChildSafe program. He said that NSSF safety programs are almost always welcomed by gun owners and those in the firearms industry. He said that as gun ownership has increased in the past several years, so has the desire of gun owners to do what is right.

“It’s really a matter of responsible gun ownership,” Brassard said.

Brassard said proper storage is a big part of responsible gun ownership. The quandary is how to prevent unauthorized access while maintaining availability.

High Tech Storage

Dustin Culbreth told The Epoch Times that safe manufacturers are bridging the gap between secure storage and easy access. Culbreth is vice president for product development at Orlando, Florida-based Vaultek.

“We manufacture smart safes with built-in, cutting-edge technology,” Culbreth said.

In addition to biometric technology, Culbreth said Vaultek safes are programmable. Vaultek’s small pistol safes can be programmed for up to 20 sets of fingerprints, meaning family members, friends, and others who may need access to the firearm will have it. They also come with a smartphone app that will alert the gun owner if someone tries to move or break into the safe.

The app keeps a log of when and how the safe is accessed so the owner can always know what is going on with his firearms. In addition, he said Vaultek safes have backup methods of opening the safes if the technology fails.

Tamper Resistant Latch

Ken Stacy is the North American representative for Lokaway, an Australian safe manufacturer. In addition to incorporating high tech into its safe designs, Stacy said Lokaway has developed a unique pry-resistant latch system.

“This latch system is much more secure,” Stacy told The Epoch Times.

Stacy said Lokaway works to keep its products affordable while focusing on security. He said that anyone shopping for a gun safe should remember they are investing in their family’s safety as well as secure gun storage.

“If you’re going to spend any money on a security device, buy one that works and protects your kids,” Stacey said.

SHOT show runs through Jan. 20 at The Venetian Expo and Caesar’s Forum in Las Vegas, Nev. It features over 2,400 exhibitors on 800,000 net square feet of floor space. This is the 24th SHOT Show to be held in Las Vegas.

Read more here…

Authored by Matthew Vadum via The Epoch Times (emphasis ours),

The Supreme Court on Jan. 18 turned away an emergency request from firearms dealers to halt a months-old New York law that imposed new restrictions on gun purchases and dealers that the dealers say adversely affected sales and violated their rights.

The ruling comes as challenges to gun laws across the nation have escalated since the high court struck down previous New York rules on guns in June 2022. In the same opinion, the court also held that there’s a constitutional right to carry a gun outside the home for self-defense, leading states such as New York and Illinois to respond by doubling down on firearms restrictions.

The new state law in question, New York’s sweeping Concealed Carry Improvement Act, has been hotly litigated in the federal courts since it was approved by lawmakers in Albany. Some state law enforcement officials previously condemned the law, which took effect on Sept. 1, 2022, saying it would be difficult to enforce and may be unconstitutional. The New York State Sheriffs’ Association said the law was a “thoughtless, reactionary action.”

The Supreme Court rejected the application in Gazzola v. Hochul, court file 22A591, in an unsigned order (pdf) on Jan. 18. No justices dissented from the order.

The dealers said in court papers (pdf) that the new law treats “state licensed dealers in firearms as if they are ‘a highly selective group inherently suspect of criminal activities.’” The dealers said they were “urgently [seeking] a preliminary injunction to keep their doors open, while fighting to restore their civil rights through this lawsuit.”

“Petitioners are risking everything to try to stay in business in support of civil rights under the Second, Fifth, and Fourteenth Amendments, and to keep the doors open and the lights on while they pursue this case, but we can’t seem to find a judge in district or circuit court who will back them up,” they said in the brief.

One of the dealers’ complaints was that New York was making what they characterized as an unprecedented demand that all federally licensed firearms dealers and New York state-licensed dealers “surrender their federal firearms compliance records” on pain of “incarceration and license revocation.”

“Until now, no federal, state, or municipal government in this country has attempted to grab the federal firearms compliance records of [a federal firearms dealer],” they said.

The decision came after the Supreme Court similarly declined to block the New York law in an order on Jan. 11 in Antonyuk v. Nigrelli, which was brought by New York residents. Despite turning down the request to stay a ruling by the U.S. Court of Appeals for the 2nd Circuit reinstating the law, Justice Samuel Alito issued a statement, joined by Justice Clarence Thomas, suggesting this wasn’t the high court’s final word on the matter.

“The New York law at issue in this application presents novel and serious questions under both the First and the Second Amendments,” Alito wrote (pdf).

The justice encouraged the Second Amendment advocates involved in the lawsuit to continue fighting the law.

“Applicants should not be deterred by today’s order from again seeking relief if the Second Circuit does not, within a reasonable time, provide an explanation for its stay order or expedite consideration of the appeal,” Alito wrote.

Before the Supreme Court acted on Jan. 11, the 2nd Circuit stayed an order by Syracuse-based U.S. District Judge Glenn Suddaby, who blocked sections of the law on Nov. 7, 2022, in a case brought by Gun Owners of America. The law imposed “unprecedented constitutional violations,” Suddaby wrote.

Suddaby enjoined the new requirement that a carry applicant demonstrate “good moral character” and produce the names and contact information of spouses and other adults in the applicant’s home. He blocked the rule forcing applicants to submit social media accounts for review by government officials.

Suddaby also enjoined the restrictions on carrying in public parks, zoos, places of worship, locations where alcohol is served, theaters, banquet halls, conferences, airports and buses, and lawful protests and assemblies, as well as the blanket ban on carrying on private property without the consent of the owner.

New York’s Concealed Carry Improvement Act was rushed through the state legislature in the summer of 2022 and signed by Democratic Gov. Kathy Hochul after the Supreme Court’s decision in New York State Rifle and Pistol Association v. Bruen invalidated the state’s requirement that a carry permit applicant demonstrate a special need for self-defense.

Hochul denounced the high court ruling at the time, calling it “a reckless decision … senselessly sending us backward and putting the safety of our residents in jeopardy.”

Read more here…

In the second such incident involving a US base in the region already in 2023, multiple suicide drones struck an American base in Syria on Friday morning, leaving two US-backed Syrian fighters injured.

“This morning, three one-way attack drones attacked the At Tanf Garrison in Syria,” a CENTCOM statement began. “Two of the drones were shot down by Coalition Forces while one struck the compound, injuring two members of the Syrian Free Army partner force who received medical treatment.”

The statement noted no American troops or personnel were injured. “Attacks of this kind are unacceptable – they place our troops and our partners at risk and jeopardize the fight against ISIS,” a CENTCOM spokesman added.

The al-Tanf Garrison has since 2016 been the most southerly US-occupied spot in Syria, lying near the border with Iraq and Jordan.

The Pentagon and prior Trump and now Biden administrations have justified the US presence there as key to the ‘counter-ISIS’ mission, despite the Islamic State terror group having long been driven underground. Some 800 to more than 1,000 US troops still occupy the oil-and-gas rich northeast of the country, denying Damascus and the Syrian population vital resources.

Citing the UK-based Syrian Observatory for Human Rights, the regional outlet The Cradle described that it was the first attack on that particular Syria-Iraq border facility in five months: 

SOHR sources stated that the drones carried out several strikes on the base, triggering a state of panic among US occupation forces and injuring members of the CIA-trained Maghawir al-Thawra (MaT) armed group, a US-backed Free Syrian Army (FSA) faction formed to ‘fight ISIS.’

Over the past year there have been sporadic rocket attacks on the US-occupied Conoco gas field in Syria’s eastern city of Deir Ezzor, and other locations.

Syria’s President Bashar al-Assad has meanwhile been engaged in intense talks mediated by Moscow, demanding that Turkish forces withdraw from all Syrian soil. Both the Turkish and Syrian sides ultimately want to see the US occupation squeezed out – something which Russia would like to see through as well. But it would require some level of rapprochement and coordinated strategy between Damascus and Ankara.

Authored by Haley Zaremba via OilPrice.com,

• The global energy crisis is redrawing geopolitical maps.

• Some experts are saying that the global south is increasingly gaining influence in geopolitics on the world stage as climate change is rewriting the rules of trade and consumption.

• While the lesson to be learned from the European energy crisis should be to diversify, diversify, diversify both trade partners and forms of energy,n the global north is instead opting to narrow their trading options even further.

We are currently living through a “global energy crisis of unprecedented depth and complexity,” according to this year’s annual energy outlook from the International Energy Agency (IEA), which warns that “there is no going back to the way things were” before Covid-19 and Russia’s war in Ukraine rocked the globe. Together, these events have already reconfigured energy trade worldwide, but the shockwaves to the global economy and geopolitics in general are just getting started. 

Everyone seems to agree that we’re living through a large-scale reconfiguration of global geopolitics, but there is less consensus as to what is in store for world trade once the dust has settled. Some experts are saying that the global south is increasingly gaining influence in geopolitics on the world stage as climate change is rewriting the rules of trade and consumption, while others argue that reactionary protectionist practices in the developed world will only further marginalize and alienate less developed nations.  

A recent opinion piece by Ravi Agrawal, the editor in chief of Foreign Policy, claims that “the most meaningful trend in global politics for 2023” is that “the global south is becoming more visible—and influential—in every arena.” As evidence, Agrawal cites that the most developed countries made major concessions to historically silenced and sidelined poorer countries a few months ago at COP27, including the landmark “loss and damage” fund to help the developing world contend with climate-related crises – a major turnaround from COP26. 

Agrawal also points to the fact that the balance of power has clearly shifted away from the United States, which was unable to convince many countries in the developing world to mirror U.S. sanctions against Russia. “Leaving aside the thorny issue of ethics in foreign policy,” Agrawal writes of the failed attempt to foster solidarity against the Kremlin, “leaders from New Delhi to Nairobi exhibited a growing confidence in asserting their own strategic interests instead of the West’s.”

While Agrawal may be right that these “younger and faster-growing” parts of the planet are becoming more assertive on the global stage, it’s less clear if he is correct in his assertion that “policymakers and businesses in the West will need to adapt.” Certainly he is correct to some extent, but the shift may not be as seismic as his op-ed would lead readers to believe. In fact, at the same time that these oft forgotten nations are gaining recognition and influence in some key geopolitical debates, their invisibility and outsider status is also being shored up in other arenas. 

The unprecedented energy crisis was kicked into overdrive by the West’s misguided reliance on a volatile and despotic regime, and now the United States, Europe, and its key allies are responding to that critical error by circling the wagons. Instead of following the ideals of free trade and the mandates of the World Trade Organization, protectionist policies are taking over which are sure to shut out poorer nations. 

While the lesson to be learned from the European energy crisis should be to diversify, diversify, diversify both trade partners and forms of energy, nations in the global north are instead opting to narrow their trading options even further. “Staking out spheres of influence and assessing the reliability and trustworthiness of suppliers and countries is the order of the day,” read a recent analysis from Stiftung Wissenschaft und Politik, the German Institute of International and Security Affairs. 

Indeed, Western leaders such as US Treasury Secretary Janet Yellen are openly calling for a shift of strategy, away from free market trading to the concept of “friend-shoring”, in which countries shift supply chains to “trusted countries” with similar values and political allegiances. The Euro­pean Commission’s Strategic Foresight Report 2022, too, has called for a similar shift in trade networks. 

This does not bode well for the global south. As the richest nations in the world increasingly trade only with each other, any viable pathway to economic development becomes much, much harder to navigate for the least developed countries. While it’s all well and good that wealthy nations have agreed to create a disaster fund for the nations that will be hit hardest by climate change, that measure is a drop in the bucket compared to what these nations actually need in terms of climate mitigation and adaptation. More to the point, these nations don’t need endless charity – they need their own robust economies and growth trajectories. That’s what really gives a nation any kind of voice or influence on the global stage, not a check cut by emissions guilt.