Fascinating and must-read article.

REEs are critical components of many civilian technologies as well. A friend of mine is an MRI (Nuclear Magnetic Resonance Imaging) tech. Gadolinium is an essential element in the “contrast medium” injected into patients in order to make the anatomical details “stand out” so that they can be read.

America cannot do without trade from China. It isn’t just tea, silk, and porcelain teacups that we need from her now. Geopolitical conflict with China is no more inevitable than conflict with Brazil or Switzerland. Our Cold War-era ideology is passe.

Americans must seek a more Taoist economic and political policy: to embrace humility and strive to avoid senseless conflict.

we’ve got to look at the bright side of this issue, if this prevents us from building our crappy weapons, it’s a win-win for the entire world. maybe we can follow trump’s lead as a nation and start pretending to be peace makers, in order to cover up the fact that our weapons are useless garbage. before the russians called our bluff in ukraine, the world was terrified into compliance, by our petulant demands and threats of violence.

the russians have revealed all of our weapons systems to be 1990’s vintage, overpriced and overhyped garbage. now the whole world understands the empty threats, issued by war monger trump, can be ignored. the houthis have done a fine job of further revealing our dark secret, helping transform war monger trump, into peace maker trump, who is so concerned about the senseless loss of life, he wants to bring peace to the entire world, “won’t somebody think of the children!” (except in gaza of course).

well now that we’re going to become a nation of hippy peacemakers, maybe we can start thinking of the environment as well. recycling may be a solution. the u.s. navy is already ahead of the game on this. two years ago they began scraping littoral combat ships, some of which were only commissioned two years before.

https://www.propublica.org/article/how-navy-spent-billions-littoral-combat-ship

so there you go that’s a real good start right there. ukraine can also become a player in this game, as their entire country is strewn with blown up zato garbage, think of the tons of recyclable rare earth elements just laying around, ukraine could become the biggest junkyard in all of europe. so you see it’s really a glass half full/half empty situation, now we just have to figure out, how to half fill our empty glass, to achieve this state of equilibrium.

Paradoxically, all of your arguments provide ammunition for Trump’s policy of relocating industry back within our own borders.

USA suffers ignominious defeat at the hands of China without a shot being fired once again proving that capitalists know the price of everything and the value of nothing.

There are a lot of rare earth minerals in North America. Most of them, in fact. It’s just that they require mining and refining.

Indeed. Although for critical weapons I suspect that enough REE can be scavenged from various small sources, even at the cost of gutting civilian businesses like Tesla etc.

It bears mentioning that from the founding of the republic to around 1965 (ish), the United States engaged in a very focused industrial policy, yes with a lot of protectionism – the “American System.” Mercantilism/protectionism took the United States from a backwards agricultural colony to the greatest industrial power the world had ever seen, with the highest standard of living. And yet, when NAFTA and MFN for China etc. were being shoved down our throats, we had all these Nobel-prize winning economists INSISTING and DEMANDING that ‘free trade’ was a no brainer and that absolutely noway nohow could protectionism ever make any sense. These people were all lying whores. And why now no apology? Why aren’t the economics departments of the big universities being purged of such lying treasonous whores? Why aren’t the politicians who voted for this being held to account?

Mind you, just because moderate tariffs over a long period of time with intelligent industrial policy worked out well, does not mean that in our current situation randomly high tariffs cannot be a disaster.

It’s a new world but the US government is still living in the 90’s. Besides, it isn’t China that is the enemy it’s the so-called leaders (Idiots) of the collective west that are our real enemies. Unobtainium is also hard to get. First our government deindustrializes the US, then they find that can’t fight their wars because they are deindustrialized. Brilliant planning that.

You make an excellent case that the whole situation needs to be rethought. It may well be that as in not fighting the last war reindustrialization in America should take a different direction. One might seek to supply not present technology but the technologies of the future. Those technologies by definition would not need the rare earth minerals but be capable of getting the necessary job done.

There is the story, perhaps apocryphal, that Stalin demanded of his scientists after the US unveiled the atomic bomb the complete review of all the extant scientific literature as far back as possible for any hint of a superior weapon to counter the Americans. The result was the recovery for physics of scalar electromagnetics, a technology of great controversy in the West and presumed capable of producing weapons of extraordinary destructive power. We need not get into this, however.

The idea of such a search may have merit here; even a more general search. Why just seek to build a rare earth industry? Substitution is a well thought out concept in economics. Why not seek to change technologies in part or in whole to shift away from vulnerable supply sources, end compromised programs, and move in new directions in both technology and military doctrine and strategy? Seeking to adjust everything to reduce dependence on foreign good will may be the more effective choice in both the short and the long run.

Such fundamental reorganization is the real test anyway and the test you expect the US to fail. Let’s just go straight at it and see what happens.

An excellent article. There is a world of difference between an industrial economy and a financialized economy. IMO a “financialized economy” is only a polite way of describing an economy that is being looted.

China can do this because its national and local leaders are mostly engineers by training who understand the importance of such bolts and nuts matters like rare earth, the refining/processing technologies, and their importance to industries of the future.

Each of the past three leaders in China had an engineering degree – Jiang Zemin with Mechanical Engineering degree from Shanghai Jiaotong University, Hu Jintao and Xi Jinping with Hydro Engineering and Chemical Engineering degrees from Tsinghua University.

Excellent article. Thank you Hua and Ron for giving us such insightful articles. It really explains everything anyone would need to know about the economic situations of both countries. It should be required reading for every American.

The best news is only a suicidal fool would launch an attack on such a superpower like China. Peace is the only option.

Good article. In my opinion, America is not able, in the short term, to perform the steps the author suggests; a change in culture would be necessary. I’m not sure this could be done without a revolution.

Good informative article. Now I can say REE, and know that Chinese leaders are engineers!

Not sure but I think I read somewhere Schumpeter saying that capitalism will be brought to an end by engineers who are socialists.

The US sure were caught with their pants down when they allowed China to take over the rare earths business. It takes a special type of stupid to allow another country to pass you in every industry and ten make yourself totally dependent on them. I don’t think the leadership of the US is any smarter than those clowns in the past, Trump knows what the problems are but really doesn’t have any smart plans on how to fix the problems. His answer to every problem is like a bull in a china shop, smash all the glassware.

Most elected representatives in the US government, if they have a degree, have one in law, business, political science, arts, communications or soap opera studies. Most of them wouldn’t know how to use a ratchet set if it cost them their life, they wouldn’t even know which end of a hammer to bang a nail in with.

This may be more correct than most of us think.

Now that most old malls are dying and even fast food pits are going tits-up, we’re coming to where we’ll either have a jobless nation or a crazy quilt of drug dealers, YouTube influencers, and scammers.

It has to be something new. We’re fresh out of old.

If they did that, Eustace, they would cease being ‘American’.

A financialised economy is a parasitic economy. It suits a tiny few, particularly blood brothers united by religion, nepotism and hatred of the majority, while pauperising the many.

The USA was defeated by ‘the enemy within’. China has NO interest in defeating the USA, just living with it in our one world.

Plenty of Americans, eg Summers, agree with that objective but disagree with the strategy. A blanket tariff on China, not to mention the rest of the world, calculated in ridiculous fashion, was not the way to go about it. Nevertheless, I have heard one decent argument: that in order to achieve political consensus in America something drastic had to be done. Let’s see if America begins developing REE capability.

“Reshoring manufacturing is a long, painful journey. It requires consensus across society—from government, education institutions, to industrial policy and infrastructure. It means rebuilding capability across the board. This isn’t a 4-year term project. It’s a 20 or 30-year commitment.”

This is the crux of the matter.

China has a practice, and theory in public governance, that goes back thousands of years. This is what procured that country’s societal organizational skills to win the game of Western Modernity. But now, that China has won, in spite, the West is destroying the world order, that fostered its hegemony, in the hope of cutting China’s path forward. This is just forcing China to build a new world order along the lines of its civilizational preferences !

Americans are incapable of empathy. They’re hustlers and hucksters.

The us failed amigo.

Why america Failed by Morris Berman

This.
The “rare” earth fixation is the sign of a midwit. And Trump fell for it in the Ukraine.

“By the way, President Trump, the periodic table is not to be confused with ladies’ monthly cycles (“blood coming out of her wherever”).”

Is that supposed to be funny? Kind of tasteless if you ask me. Not unexpected though.

Excellent article and comments so far.
Important subject, timing, and well presented.

We’re gonna need some luck, or a massive miracle to make it work. I sure hope someone, somewhere, has some … plans… Prey$

Paradoxically, all of your arguments provide ammunition for Trump’s policy of relocating industry back within our own borders.

Indeed. But people talk about this as if Trump can knock it off by the end of his term or something. The point is that success will require a concerted effort on a national scale extending over several decades. We’ll have to rebuild our entire educational system, for starters.

As long as any U.S. administration—present or future—adheres to the existing Federal Reserve system, which is owned and controlled by a private Zionist cabal, the reindustrialization of America will not happen. The U.S. must change its current trajectory of being under the sway of the AIPAC lobby, which effectively funds the salaries of corrupt lawmakers, politicians, military leaders, security agencies, media figures, and others.

As a first step, America must break free from AIPAC’s influence and then rejoin the global community as a normal nation once again.

The USA was defeated by ‘the enemy within’. China has NO interest in defeating the USA, just living with it in our one world.

The difficulty there is that what constitutes ‘living with’ is defined by the party with the preponderance of power — not by the weaker party.

For example, we (hopefully) intend to achieve some sort of modus vivendi with Iran. Do you think the terms of that are going to be more pleasing to us, or to Iran?

Ditto with us and China. Only it’s questionable if it will be us deciding the terms.

We’d better get going.

The sad conclusion to be drawn from all this is that the U.S. lost the Third World War in the 1970s when the U.S. began to off-shore jobs and when China began to develop its expertise in the extraction and processing of rare earth elements. But it could more accurately be said that the U.S. lost the Third World War in the 1770s, when it adopted as its legal framework the universalist-egalitarian formalism of the Enlightenment; and the corresponding economic doctrine known as laissez-faire (and eventually “capitalism”). The idea of stockpiling steel or rare-earths, the idea of maintaining manufacturing capacity and a store of raw materials, is central to the Maoist approach to national economy. The bottom line is that Chinese Communist Party looks out for the Chinese people. The American economic system assumes that it will always be able to trade for what it needs, and therefore, it leaves the American people blowing in the wind. It has always done so.

The World War II economy and the concomitant destruction of European manufacturing capacity provided the false perception that America had a middle class and that American society was oriented toward the American dream. The Reagan and Clinton eras extended that false perception by inflating asset values using credit (but not real incomes). But since around the turn of the century, and even more so over the past five years, it is embarrassingly clear that there is something genuinely wrong with the American economic engine. Look at tax revenues, the surest indicator of underlying economic activity. These have plummeted for most of the last five years. I almost think that the fake tariff contest was contrived by Trump as a form of misdirection. The problem isn’t the trade deficit, or even the budget deficit, since both are caused by a defective economic model which espouses “spontaneous economic activity” but does nothing to ensure—- and seemingly everything to prevent—- the conditions necessary for such activity. What the U.S. needs is to imitate the Sino-Marxist model and provide a ring fence of state-run enterprises in critical industries to ensure the production of critical materials and to provide jobs to its economically under-utilized workforce.

As the author beautifully explains, the issues facing the dollar empire are multifaceted. Thanks to correct state planning, patience, and hard labor, China is in a far better position to weather the geopolitical storm ahead.

During his latest visit to the southern Persian Gulf Arab oil producers, it is clear that Trump is putting nearly all the empire’s remaining last eggs in the Arab basket by staging grand, elitist ceremonies to showcase America’s top tech industries—industries that are not only too costly to run but also lag behind competitors, especially those from China.

Hopefully, the supposedly two trillion-plus dollars in contracts with the three Persian Gulf (PG) states are aimed at pulling the oil producers away from the emerging multipolar order for the next 30 years. For Saudi Arabia, the UAE, and Qatar, fulfilling their promises to Trump would require them to continue exporting their energy for the next 30 years in exchange for the US dollar—meaning the US dollar will supposedly remain a global reserve currency for at least 30 years.

Contrary to what Trump—the elitist president—claims, these contracts will not help reindustrialize America or create jobs there. In fact, the opposite is true: these deals will generate more positions for the global majority because they not only have better education and work harder but can also be hired for less pay with fewer benefits like insurance—exactly what the elites want. They have no need for expensive American or European labor forces that demand full insurance coverage.

In short, the US is in a dire predicament. Its only hope for salvation is breaking free from Zionist AIPAC influence and joining the emerging global order led by BRICS+.

After having explained in detail why the following jingoistic assertion is certainly just a paranoid hoax, the author nonetheless repeats it anyway at the end:

“The US is planning to go to war with China…”

We thus know that this self-contradictory allegation is just a distraction from a far more probable claim:

China is planning to go to war against Taiwan.

This intent seems to mirror the ill-fated obsession that Putin had been harboring toward Ukraine. Clear evidence for such ambitious Chinese military plans is the ongoing development and testing of amphibious invasion platforms, which were recently highlighted in the following video:

Video Link

That is not Trump’s policy, that is the justification Trump gave for his policy. Learn the difference.

(I always liked Economic Geology better, scientific intricacies an sheet 😁)

Lead is rarer but no one calls it “rare lead”; the problem is even though all
REE (except Eu, Th) are [III]-valent their ion radii are almost identical to Ca so they
hide in other minerals and it is hard to find a useful concentration (case in point,
13 (!) of the REE are named after a single locality, the Ytterby pegmatite near Stockholm).
“Earth” is an alchemist term for a metal oxide.
– The US enjoyed a de facto world monopoly on REE up until ~1990, and the
Sulphide Queen (Mountain Pass, on the CA/NV border) is still the largest primary
deposit (the largest secondary ones are in Kerala, Brazil and E Australia) so it is
beside the point to invade Greenland and the Ukraine; but wait, it gets worse:
– No one will invest in refining (the bottleneck) unless he intends to go worldwide,
and no one in his right mind buys American because the Jewmericans rip you off
twice as you first have to earn the green paper which they make as hard
as possible; the Chinese refer to Tariff Man as “Builder of Nations” (= China) and
“King of Knowledge” (erm); but wait, it gets worse:
– There are two “competitive” export sectors left, arms and ag;
none of the captive “allies” are under any delusions US arms are worth shit even
if they perform as advertised (yeah, right) because 1) they all have kill switches
unless you are a (((most favored nation))) 2) you are hostage to proprietary spare parts
which they need five times more than the competition 3) you will be forced to give them
up for the next Jew war anyway i.e. they are not yours.
As for the ag, most countries find (subsidized) US imports odious too because again
they have to be paid in dollar and cause Gargantuan social problems by laying waste
to their own ag sectors i.e. this also happens only at gunpoint.

Keynes warned against precisely that after WWI and WWII, and Triffin after him;
but no, the Great Satan had found the magical money tree where the free lunches grow.
For any “reindustrialization” the dollar will have to go – the GS defaulted under FDR,
under Nixon, then by flat out refusing to repatriate Germany´s gold, and the Orange
One is preparing for the fourth time in 100 years – it´s not going to be pretty;
the problem is the funded debt (the fabled $37T) is dwarfed by the unfunded
liabilities (costs already incurred but not yet budgeted, like veterans or pensions,
some $200T), and these cannot be inflated away; the GS cannot stop spending lest
the joggers burn the hooch down – alternatively the GS could defund the military,
watch the dollar lose 97% overnight because no one will “buy” their “debt”, and then
have the joggers burn the hooch down (Carnot taught us the end result will be the same).

.☆☆☆☠️☆☆☆ ®[AP©CALYPSE NOW NEWS]™ ☆☆☆☠️☆☆☆.
https://globalresearch.ca/driving-electric-car-fake-environmentalism/

Video Link

MI6 sub-troll, Has Been crawls out ‘neath its rock! Lying like a champ, as ever. China has said that it will invade ONLY if the traitor compradore and US boot-licker, Lai (how appropriate!) declares independence. The Lai-ing swine has been picked by the Yankee Reich to make trouble and turn Taiwan into another Ukraine. He’ll go down in infamy as nothing but a Quisling enemy of his own people and civilization.
China simply wants peaceful co-existence, like before the dyke mad cat-lady Jap Cai began stirring the pot on orders from the Yankee Reich. Hundreds of thousands of Taiwanese were regularly traveling to China to visit relatives and work, and long-term integration was natural and certain. But racist Western vermin like YOU, Has Been, can’t have that, can you? The Yellow Peril is your greatest fear and dread. As ever all you value is strife, murder and profit, like in The Ukraine, where you’ve murdered over half a million Ukrainians already, to NO advantage for yourselves, whatsoever.

Dear I-and there I was thinking that you were just a troll. A really fine comment, in my lugubrious opinion. You hit the nail right into the (coffin) lid.

Excellent article, thanks the writer and publisher!

It’s seems obvious to me that the correct political response to the ACTUAL situation of the USA is for a political movement to arise that demands the end of US imperialism and its attempts at worldwide military based hegemony, with the movement demanding a reliance, in terms of defense of the country, on its natural oceanic barriers and a ‘normal’ defense policy based on defending the borders.

Thus there would be no problem in trading with China for rare earth metals to be used in non military production, or production for defense only military equipment.

Meanwhile the money currently spent on the military industrial complex would go to a long term plan of re-industrialization for domestic and foreign consumption on non military goods.

The problem is the military industrial complex overseen by Wall Street Bankers, which controls both political parties. The only populist response currently is Ron Paul style libertarianism, which, ideologically, is opposed to long term big government planning.

Given the above facts the current ‘outside pressure’ and ‘huge imperial failures’ (Ukraine, Yemen, etc) will determine what happens inside the US domestically.

What a MORONIC shit-show that is. Reality (???) Books, NO author, and lie after lie after lie, the same ones peddled for twenty years. And the BIGGEST lie of all-there is NO climate destabilisation, even now, as it rapidly accelerates and weather and climate and ecological disasers explode across the world. The existence of FANATICAL, PSYCHOPATHIC denialist scum like you and these knuckle-dragging CRIMINALS might be said by the ungenerous to make human near term extinction not an entirely bad thing.

Please, let’s avoid demagoguery and lies about Russia and Putin. I want to remind you
What military exercises did the West plan to hold in 2022 in Ukraine:

1. Sea Breeze – The United States and Ukraine (7,500 troops, 85 ships, 70 planes and helicopters) spent several weeks in the Black Sea during the summer.

2. Rapid Trident – NATO and Ukraine (8,500 troops, 1,500 of them US soldiers, 2,000 other NATO members), for a month and a half from March to December at a training ground near the western border of Ukraine, in the Lviv region.

3. Silver Saber – Ukraine and Poland (5,000 soldiers, 16 planes and helicopters, 10 ships, 1,000 soldiers from the Poles, four planes and helicopters); in three stages: in February–April, May–July, August–December, NATO experts were going to evaluate the Ukrainian special operations forces.

4. Riverine – Ukraine and Romania (400 military personnel, 20 ships, 10 planes and helicopters), on the Danube in order to work out tasks involving the Navy, Coast Guard and border guards.

5. Cossack Mace – Ukraine and the United Kingdom (5,500 military personnel, 30 aircraft and helicopters, 11 ships: 1,500 military personnel, 10 aircraft and helicopters, three ships from the Veliks, from other NATO members up to 1,000 military, 10 aircraft and helicopters, three ships for testing the interaction of Ukrainian and British military forces.

6. Maple Arch – Canada, Ukraine, Lithuania, Poland and other NATO countries (3,700 soldiers and officers, 22 planes and helicopters, Canada) – 300 Canadian military personnel, four planes and helicopters. Lithuania and Poland have 500 military and aviation personnel, from other NATO members up to 700 military personnel and 6 planes and helicopters). The goal is to increase the compatibility of the armed forces of the participating countries.

7. Blonde Avalanche – Ukraine, Hungary, Romania, Slovakia (1,300 military, 13 aircraft, 200 military from other NATO members and two planes and helicopters each), according to legend, the military must take part in flood relief.

8. Joint Efforts – Ukraine, the United States and other NATO countries (12,500 military, 70 ships, 90 aircraft and helicopters; including 1,000 military, 10 ships, 20 aircraft and helicopters from the United States, 2,500 military, 40 ships, 40 aircraft and helicopters from other NATO members.

9. Viking – Ukraine, Sweden, NATO countries (500 troops, 100 of them from Sweden, 200 more from NATO), exercises without military equipment, aimed at establishing cooperation during international peacekeeping operations.

10. And yet. As part of the Multinational Training program, 4,000 specialists from the United States and other NATO countries were going to train 15,000 Ukrainian military personnel in various regions of Ukraine throughout 2022.

Good article, Hua Bin. Thanks. I visited a rare earth mine in Guangdong in the early 2000s with a provincial level official. It was clear to me then that a long term plan was in place. As has been shown over and over for other sectors as well. This type of planning is impossible outside China for cultural as well as other reasons.

Gadolinium isn’t excreted from the body, so not getting injected with it in the first place because of Chinese bans is a win for the poor sap whose doctor sees him as an ATM.
I suspect there might be other items on Hua Bin’s list that aren’t essential either.

This is the most comprehensive and insightful analysis into this issue I’ve ever encountered.

The reindustrialization of America is doomed to failure. Who among the current young generation has ever seen a factory much less worked in one? Furthermore, is Jewish money going to invest in manufacturing plants and trying to run them for a profit when they know it is easier to buy companies and run them into the ground or ship them overseas?

This type of planning is impossible outside China for cultural as well as other reasons.

The key of course is planning, which requires a long term commitment to a realistic goal. It is the last thing the US has, and it is doubtful it can ever recover what it did have, during its own move toward industrialization. Regardless of whatever Trump decides, who can deny that in another three and a half years everything could change 180?

Consider economic policy and tariffs. Large and small business owners will tell you that the core problem is not high tariffs, per se. Rather, it’s not knowing what the tariff will be tomorrow, and then the day after that. Impossible for them to plan anything. About all they can do is sit it out until things stabilize.

Chinese tell the story of Deng Xiaoping– standing in what would become the world’s industrial powerhouse, Shenzhen, then a small fishing village. Looking out across the water at Hong Kong. Then looking behind him at an essentially Third World country wracked by years of political in-fighting and social turmoil, civil war and foreign military occupation. This was maybe 1980. Just 45 years ago. But he had a vision. Since then, China stuck to his vision. Now, results are there for all to see.

And during the last 45 years, what has the US accomplished? War without end, a political establishment bought and paid for by Our Greatest Ally ™, and here on the domestic front, BLM and Tren de Aragua. But hey, on the business side of the equation, we have EEOC and AA enforced by human resource departments staffed with blue hair lesbians with nose rings, and angry black women. So we’ve got that going for us.

I am a Scientist, who worked in industry most of my career in many different areas, in product development. What is described in this article has been going on for a very long time. For a time, I worked at Alcoa. Visiting the Knoxville, TN plant I was surprised that the old rolling mills were built by a company called ‘United States … something (can’t remember)’, while all the new, computer controlled, automated mills were built by Toshiba. These are colossal machines. That worried me, and it was in 1990.

The current system may have to break down entirely, and that would be extremely painful, and dangerous. However, when I look, for example, at nuclear power, I do see some inventive entrepreneurs in America and Europe, with interesting ideas. It will take government intervention at this point to bring any of these to fruition. But, at least the West still has the entrepreneurial spirit, which I suspect is still lacking in China. And, believe it or not, we still have some Engineers and Scientists.

This is the first time I have seen Russians on this forum…

All US policy is run and informed by the rentiers, and reshoring is the last thing
on their minds; but apart from insider trading I fail to see anyone benefit from
the Incoherent Orange One´s policies (unless it is direct war preparation).
Miners, as rule of thumb, think in 25 years (and crave political stability).

“Chinese foreign policy’s ‘weapon of choice’

“Beijing quickly realised the power it possessed from its stranglehold on rare metals. To put this into perspective, we can look at OPEC, the Organization of the Petroleum Exporting Countries. For decades, its fourteen members have been able to significantly influence the barrel price, yet they represent ‘only’ 41 per cent of global oil production. China, on the other hand, has staked its claim on 95 per cent of global production of the coveted class of certain rare-earth metals. In the words of an Australian expert: ‘It’s OPEC on steroids.’11 So what does a nation do when it realises just how powerful it is? Naturally, its intentions begin to take on a far more aggressive hue.

“This is precisely what China is doing. The precepts of a hostile rare metals trade policy were reportedly outlined by Deng Xiaoping during a tour of the Bayan Obo rare-earths mine in the spring of 1992. ‘The Middle East has oil; China has rare-earth metals,’ he presaged. Chinese businessmen are known to smugly quote these words at raw-materials meetings and summits — words that say all that needs to be said.”

— THE RARE METALS WAR: the dark side of clean energy and digital technologies (La guerre des métaux rares), by Guillaume Pitron

https://www.military.com/defensetech/2013/12/24/report-israel-passes-u-s-military-technology-to-china

https://nationalinterest.org/blog/buzz/did-israel-transfer-military-technology-help-china-build-j-10-fighter-85491

https://www.newsweek.com/why-pentagon-enabling-chinas-theft-americas-tech-opinion-1862894

How did Israel get access to US high technology and intellectual property? It all began in the 1970s, when the US and Israeli governments formed BIRD (Israel-United States Bi-national Industrial Research and Development) Foundation. BIRD funds joint partnerships between Israeli and American companies, with 50 percent of its funding coming from the US government.

That’s right, our taxpayer money is funding Israeli industry, while our infrastructure is in shambles. This quote from a Bloomberg article is Talpiot in action, “The company [BIRD] promotes joint industrial R&D between American and Israeli companies. They provide a maximum of $1.2 million funding per project. BIRD-supported projects allow leading Israeli technology companies to access key world class-US companies and establish business ties.”

There you go, US government funded BIRD gives Israeli tech companies access to “world-class US companies.” That is where the Israeli high tech industry gets its lifeblood.

The good news is the trade deficit will be a thing of the past 😋
The not so good news is there will have to be tariffs on breathing
(rest assured the commerce clause has been used for wackier things).

Humility? Avoid senseless conflict? Not possible. It is contrary to White racial psychology. They aren’t evolved to behave like that.

Yeah. That comment left me a little cold. It was a childish comment in an otherwise lucid, informative essay.

None of which have proposed any concrete alternatives.
“Orange man bad “.
He may be, but what do you propose?

The US faces massive hurdles to enable a ‘reshoring’ of manufacturing ability. You rightly point out that the “entire education system” needs a massive makeover. That alone is a generational challenge.

America will not be able to turn out the engineers required overnight. That is just one of the hurdles to overcome. Many more are elucidated in the essay, so do not need repeating here.

But education? That is the first bigly. (Sorry, had to)

The reindustrialization of America is doomed to failure.

I don’t think that it is necessarily doomed to failure. Not at all. Due to the amount of time it will take to energize the education system, and train up the necessary people to run the factories, then actually build them, you and I are highly unlikely to see this occur in our lifetime. That is not to say however, that it can’t or won’t be done.

Were the US to cease foreign adventurism, and reign in it’s … ahem … ‘defence’ spending, it could free up significant sums to reduce the deficit, and thus the interest on it, and begin a nest egg for the ‘reshoring’ of industry. China is a mature country with a thousand years behind it. A long time to learn stuff. America, on t’uther hand is an immature country that has been living the high life on it’s parent’s credit card. It hasn’t learned frugality or manners or even for that matter, common sense. It is rife with a ‘me’ mentality, and bugger everybody else. A household cannot run on that mentality and neither can a country.

Give it time to grow up and learn. America can still shine. Unfortunately, not in our lifetime.

So Corporate America and Billionaires like Elon Musk are worried about a “rare earth minerals” problem. It gets thorough coverage by the New York Times. The rare earth minerals becomes a Top Priority for the Federal Government. Of note in all this is what is NOT being discussed, let alone worried about. The plight of a large number of American Citizens, aka The Taxpayers. Major Cities look like 3rd World Countries. Retail stores are leaving the inner cities because of organized looting. Millions of Americans are living paycheck to paycheck. NO concern or even talk about this issue. And, imho this will not change until the American People demand change. Will this ever happen? I dunno.

There is one mineral that we export in great quantity: sodomite Found in clusters of the urbane sophisticates.

There are quite a lot of Russians reading this forum. We often translate local articles and post them on our forums. But we are now forming our own interpretation and understanding of world events and problems, so we do not participate much in discussions here.

What does the crack about Don’s knowledge of physiology have to do with all these funny little elements?

There are a lot of rare earth minerals in North America. Most of them, in fact. It’s just that they require mining and refining.

There is now a bridge across Williston Lake between Mackenzie and Fort St James, for no mining reason whatsoever.

“Rare” earth minerals in the mountains in between. And a highway in between the towns for the mining traffic that can’t exist because those rare earth minerals are only in China or the Congo or something.

The BC government will find a way to stop this progress. Which is probably why industry is quietly doing this and not involving tax payer money.

Yes…. I’d stay away from LEAVERITE. Not worth the damn trouble….

The rare earth case also illustrates the fundamental difference between long term and short term planning between Chinese and US businesses. US businesses are short-term, profit driven while state-owned Chinese businesses are long-term, goal-driven.

Some people never learn. Americans say “We are capitalists who believe in the free market.” Whether or not this is true, it is certainly the American narrative. Every other country on earth thinks they have a better way. They say “America is short-term, profit driven while we are long-term, goal-driven. Our system is obviously superior.” I’ve heard this claim made by every country in Europe and Asia and most of Latin America and Africa continuously for my entire life. Yet 99% of those countries with the obviously superior system keep falling farther and farther behind the US in technological progress and material prosperity. The US has lots of problems, but its “short-term, profit-driven” economic system is still the only system that works. In fact, it is the only feature of America that still works.

Only one country in the world has done well with a “long-term, goal-driven” government-run economy – China. However, there are many reasons to believe that China’s success has nothing to do with its state-owned enterprises:
1. There is an alternative explanation which is simply that East Asians are smarter than everyone else. All things equal, capitalism works better than socialism. But not all things are equal when comparing China to other countries. Smart Chinese can make socialism work better than dumb Americans can make capitalism work, even though capitalism is better than socialism as proved by every other country in history.
2. Capitalist countries with a high IQ Chinese population like Taiwan, and even formerly capitalist regions of China like Hong Kong, are stupendously more prosperous than the nominally Communist PRC. This difference can only be explained by the vastly inferior performance of China’s “long-term, goal-driven” government-run system.
3. Before Deng Xiaoping, 100% of the Chinese economy was state-owned, long-term, and goal-driven and the people were unspeakably poor. After Deng Xiaoping, most of the Chinese economy became corporate-owned, short-term, and profit-driven, and as Ron Unz has pointed out many times the result was a 4000% increase in people’s standard of living since then. So, which works better, “state-owned, long-term, goal-driven” or “corporate-owned, short-term, profit-driven”? If the Chinese are unwilling to learn from the history of other countries, can’t they even learn from their own history?

If Hua Bin’s understanding of economics reflects current opinion among Chinese leaders, then America has nothing to fear from a China that cannot learn from its own or anyone else’s history.

Rare Earths are everywhere. It is the processing that is difficult. So far China is the only country that can efficiently process REE at low cost. Just like APIs(Active Pharmaceutical Ingredients), drug precursors. Both REE and API, China process 85% pf the world’s REE and 80% of API.

The Western script (below) bogged down when Russia and Iran deepened their economic and military ties.

https://www.russialist.org/archives/5497-14.php
#14
Novaya Gazeta
No. 75
October 2001
THE THIRD FORCE OF WORLD WAR III
Is China behind all that has been happening?
Author: Viktor Minin

‘The reindustrialization of America is doomed to failure.’

I don’t think that it is necessarily doomed to failure.

Well, first off, I’d think even partial success would be better than no success at all — so there’s no reason not to try.

Second, while underestimating/ignoring China has long been the easy way out, there’s no reason to assume the Chinese are some kind of unbeatable ubermenschen either. The place decidedly has it’s problems; a vast gulf between rich and poor, oppressive regimentation, abused and resentful ethnic minorities, imbedded corruption (?). It’s surrounded by states that hate and fear it — and it persists in attempting to bully them. That nonsense in the South China Sea is not a good neighbor policy.

The fight may be perfectly winnable — but we have to get up and wage it.

Please correct to “…and rein in its … ahem … ‘defence’ spending,…”

1. “Reign” is a verb meaning “to rule” (as a king) and also a noun referring to such a period of rule. This word comes from the Latin “rex, regis: king.” E.g.: “The reign of Louis XIV was glorious.”

“Reins” are those thick leather straps that horsemen use in lieu of brakes (as on a car) and as a steering wheel (as on a car). To “rein in defence spending” is to “apply the brakes to defence spending”.

2. Although the [ ‘s ] symbol is used to indicate the possessive (genitive) case (as in “Trump’s ego”), Modern Standard English seeks to prevent confusion between the [it’s] of [it is] and the [its] of [belonging to it]. E.g.: “It’s the Party’s goal to expand its influence.”

You owe me one litre of Pilsner bier and an Iron Cross, Third Class.

Everybody is WRONG on what actions to take to restore industry and manufacturing to Americur. What uniquely is necessary is a dictatorship, and absolute authority, a benevolent autocrat that has the knowledge, courage, resolution and the talent of selection of mature and knowledgeable people.

Then it is Zero Base Reconstruction. Start from nothing and restructure the Country only upon what works and is doable and efficacious. Effing Right.

I might add the strong stomach to inflict pain and suffering on the many people that deserve it. No mercy. No quarter. No compromises.

It would be advisable to solicit advice and counsel from people who have tread the same path: RUSSIANS. Read my other comments. I have floated this avenue and strategy first 8 years or so ago, in a lengthy article comment on the The Occidental Accidental Orbserver.

First and foremost, this are not rare . Almost all this minerals are plentiful across the world . What is rare is the technology to excavate is . Also how to do it in scale at the lowest cost . That’ s what china is good at but this Chinese supermacist makes it sound as if the chinese discovered air and how people breathe. Gtfo here .

As discussed, rare earth metals can be found in many places. The key is the ability to extract and process them. There is no heavy rare earths separation and processing in the United States at present.

I have not had time to read the comments yet, and so maybe someone might have already pointed out the rather known facts I observe below.

“Rare Earth” metals (REM) are found in nature in the form of compounds with other metals. They are relatively plentiful but not localised, i.e. there is no mine singly-dedicated to the extraction of Cerium or Dysprosium, as there are for extracting Iron or Zinc. These metals are scattered all around the world, beneath the Earth’s crust.

REMS, in fact, are overwhelmingly extracted from waste ores produced as by-product of extracting some other metal.
Waste ores are collected from mines extracting all types of metals, from all over the world, and then shipped to China.

Obtaining REMs from waste ore, entails dipping the ore in a series of acid basins, until all that remains of the original waste ore, are rare earth metals’ residuals.

This is not a particularly complex procedure, and was basically perfected in the 1920s.
Since the acid baths procedure described above for obtaining pure REMs is fairly dirty, it was promptly offshored to China as soon as globalisation and deindustralization in the West gained momentum in the 1980s.

Now I don’t know if China came up with innovations to the process, but it is fairly safe to assume progress to have been merely incremental in the last decades. It is also safe to assume REMs can be produced in satisfying quantity with the basic technology from the 1920-70s period.
Most probably, “electrokynetic mining” – a fancy China “innovation” mentioned in the article – does not apply to rare earth metals, because the latter are not purposely mined, but are extracted – I’ll repeat it once again – as byproducts from other mining processes.

The acid bath procedure is very old technology and there are no technological hurdles in establishing production back in America, a couple of years maximum, if resources are allocated to the project, and Washington politics decides that this is a priority.

China can ban export of REMs all she likes, but then the US can shut China out of importing waste ore from the rest of world, reserving all of it for itself, once its own acid tanks made in U.S.A. are set and ready to go.
If things head in that direction, the balance of forces would reverse, and now it would be China which would be starved for REMs.

All this I report, just to point out how big a nothingburger this “rare earth metals” crisis really is. This is speculating on the gullibility of the layman Unz’s reader, given his understandable ignorance over the specifics of the extracting process, and his tendency to see crises and disasters everywhere.

Govini identified 80,000 weapons parts that were made using antimony, gallium, germanium, tungsten or tellurium – the global supply of which are all dominated by China […] Some of the key components named in the report included the use of antimony in […] germanium in nuclear detection systems and the Javelin missile’s infrared optics; tungsten in armour-piercing tank shells

I seem to recall Germanium is not a REM, while I am positively certain neither Tungsten nor Antimony are REMs.
Incandescent filaments in light bulbs are made out of Tungsten, for Christ’s sake.
There is no danger of being cut out from world supply of Tungsten anytime soon.

In conclusion, this piece from Hua Bin seems to have been written out of a ChatGPT search on Rare Earth Metals.
The bullet points, the useless data spread all around, the lack of unity or focus lying under the appearance of flawless technical expertise -when in fact truly there is none-, everything checks out: AI written.

“What the U.S. needs is to imitate the Sino-Marxist model and provide a ring fence of state-run enterprises in critical industries to ensure the production of critical materials and to provide jobs to its economically under-utilized workforce.”

i.e. companies protected by tariffs whose sustainability is guaranteed by government contracts. The “American System” which was in effect from 1860’s up until greedy Jews took over our corporate boardrooms through phony money loaned into the system by their criminal cronies at the head of the Federal Reserve. The very system adopted by the Asian tigers which has enabled them to emulate our progress.

You’ve put the cart before the horse. But you’re correct in saying that we need to go back to our roots.

poupon, did you check out the article i posted on comment 2? it’s right up your alley, i would like to get your take on it, thanks.

Personally, I propose America at sinking to the bottom of the sea or fragmented into 100 polities. But putting myself in the shoes of a patriotic American(strangely they do still exist), tariffs targeted at key industries (semiconductors, REE, energy, etc.), tariffs on enemies not on friends, gradual increase in tariffs as America develops independence in targeted sectors, govt joint coordination with key industries by subsidizing, training, etc. Basically, what it was already doing. Yeah, it probably won’t work. Nothing will probably work cause China’s just better. So I propose full scale war.

Yes, there seems to be a gulf between the capabilities of the Chinese and American govts to pursue long-term strategic objectives.

Regardless of whatever Trump decides, who can deny that in another three and a half years everything could change 180?

But I doubt it is as much due to the election cycle as you imply. America’s formal form of govt has not changed significantly in 100 years; yet back then it could carry out policy. Meanwhile, in the late 19th century, China under a centralized state (albeit a besieged one) was totally incompetent. I think the reasons lie deeper. Maybe in culture, asabiya or something.

This type of planning is impossible outside China for cultural as well as other reasons.

Outside all of China? There must be other competent states/societies. How about Australia or some of the gulf states, Switzerland?

@Lackadaisical Reader

All this I report, just to point out how big a nothingburger this “rare earth metals” crisis really is.

Scientists have a different view concerning what you call “a nothingburger this “rare earth metals” crisis.”

The following from the Journal of Rare Earths:

“Due to structural conditions, earth science problems, and scarcity, rare earths have gained considerable attention and advancements.4 The demand for these critical materials is likely to grow exponentially over the next few decades because of their unique properties.5,6,7 They are used in various highly advanced technologies and products such as flat-screen TVs, catalysis, optical materials, satellites, defense aircraft, high-performance magnets (Nd, Sm, Dy, Ho, and Tm), glasses, electric vehicles, wind turbines, fluorescent lamps (Pm, Eu, Gd, Tb, and Lu), aerospace industry (Sc), and optical fibers (Er, Yb).8,9 It is impossible to maintain modern life without rare earth elements (REEs).10,11 This makes their extraction and separation increasingly crucial as industry demand increases.12,13 Since rare earth elements have close physical and chemical properties due to their similarly sized stable trivalent ions; their separation is more challenging and expensive.4,14 There are many advanced methods and techniques for separating rare earth elements, but most are inefficient because they generate large amounts of hazardous and radioactive waste.15 There are even reports that the rare earth industry produces more than 20 million tons of wastewater every year, and the ammonia nitrogen content ranges from 2000 to 5000 mg/L, exceeding the national emission standard by a hundred times that of China.16,17 More than 1.5 billion yuan (US$230 million) is needed each year to address this environmental problem.3,18 ”

Of course the US could produce its own rare earths, the question is at what price, economically and environmentally speaking.

Ya got me. Its in the male.

Hua Bin, another lying Chinaman or Chinabot.

Back in 1979 I started working for a small aerospace company in Chicago designing servo electronics for an upgrade to the B52 radar; the motor utilized rare earth samarium-cobalt magnets that were hard to get from China. A warning letter to the DOD by the plant owners regarding future supplies was ignored.

Arsetrailia? Competent? Christ-I’ve pissed myself laughing!

Of course US governance has changed. Instead of being run by native parasites, it is now FULLY controlled by the Jewintern and the local sayanim. That will NEVER happen in China, hence the genocidal hatred being directed at it by various Jewstapos and Sabbat Goy stooges.

How, you arrogant psychopath, does the USA ban ‘the rest of the world’ from exporting ANYTHING they want to to China? The supremacist, racist, imperialist mindset is so thoroughly American, but those days are OVER.

May 29, 2019 China’s Biggest Weapon In The Trade War

“If anyone wants to use the products made from rare earths exported by China to contain and suppress the development of China, I think the people of the old revolutionary base area in the south of Jiangxi Province and the people of China will not be happy,” said the official. According to the Global Times, he made the remarks when asked by reporters if China will use rare earths as a countermeasure against U.S. trade moves to contain China. Obviously, the report added, the response is a strong signal from China to the U.S.

https://oilprice.com/Energy/Natural-Gas/Chinas-Biggest-Weapon-In-The-Trade-War.html

August 09, 2022 How Clean Energy Actually Destroys The Environment And Fuels Abuse

General Motors, Tesla, Apple, Mercedes and Volkswagen are just a few of as many as 78 companies that source rare earths out of Myanmar, the AP reported.

https://dailycaller.com/2022/08/09/clean-energy-destroys-environment/

Mar 22, 2022 The Renewable Energy Fail

Energy shortages, skyrocketing prices… What’s made it worse? The attempt to switch to cleaner, renewable energy.

Video Link

Do you have any recommendations for Russian cuisine that is not too greasy?

How bout them literal Nebbish-class carrier fleets? Oh, the Humanity!

The “rare” earth fixation is the sign of a midwit.

The problems are real enough, but fixating merely on the raw materials misses most of the point.

Indeed. The piece could have been clearer that some of the elements mentioned – e.g. “antimony, gallium, germanium, tungsten [and] tellurium” are not technically “rare earths” and in fact can be extracted – with varying degrees of ease – at various locations in North America.

The real issue for the U.S. is that China’s downstream processing capacities for these materials far outrank those of the U.S.

By the way, President Trump, the periodic table is not to be confused with …

Ah, still pursuing that dream of becoming a stand-up comedian. FRIENDLY ADVICE FOR HUA BIN (with apologies to Sen. Goldwater): Perseverance in pursuit of the unattainable is no virtue, and admitting defeat where there is no hope is no vice. Keep your part-time job.

You might think about rewinding all those unilateral spelling changes America made to English, and join the Metric system (yes, metre).

Everybody is WRONG on what actions to take to restore industry and manufacturing to Americur.

You are very right. Everyone is talking about what is the best way to put the nuts and bolts together. While what they should be doing is making sure that the technician is worthy and competent enough to handle the nuts and bolts in the first place.

Big soul searching questions need to be asked by American society before they can come to some sort of consensus and correct their system. Unfortunately they don’t even know that there is even a need to ask questions, because everybody is already convinced of his own solution.

I think the article is more focused on how hard or impossible it would be to relocate industry, especially rare earth industry, into the US, rather than whether it should be done or shouldn’t be done. I think every nation would like to completely control the supply of “strategic” resources it needs but there’s probably very few countries actually can or who would actually invest the time and money it would need, especially when it wouldn’t actually bring in any profit and only peace of mind.

China can ban export of REMs all she likes, but then the US can shut China out of importing waste ore from the rest of world, reserving all of it for itself, once its own acid tanks made in U.S.A. are set and ready to go.

You evidently have some knowledge about minerals and chemistry. However, your worldview is the same one that caused Trump and his regime of incompetents to place tariffs on the whole world at the same time, to disastrous effect.

It is no longer the 1950s where the USA could call the shots.

If the US Navy, the biggest bestest greatest navy in the whole universe, according to Americans, is unable to stop sandal wearing Yemeni tribesmen from disrupting shipping in the Red Sea, how is the USA going to twist the arm of the rest of the world to stop sending stuff to China?

Americans often boast of choking off the Malacca Straits to strangle China. Malacca is located in Malaysia, a BRICS member. Want to see what Malaysian relations with China and Russia are like?

Video Link

Video Link

LOL, I like your reply.

But frankly, it is really not too difficult to do technically. If they had approached the Chinese with respect and talk to them as equals rather than trying to bully them, the Chinese would have bent over backwards to accommodate them and even help them solve their problems. It would also have taken 20 to 30 years, but the transition would have been far more pleasant for the ordinary Joe.

If US leaders had a little more humility, they would have asked real Asians who have had thousands of years of interacting with China for advice on how to reach such accommodations. Southeast Asia has plenty of elder statesmen who could have given useful advice.

Any true leader seeks out honest advice, including those that are painful to hear. But no, the US leaders only listen to the likes of Gordon Chang, precisely because he tells them what they want to hear.

That’s because Oztrailer is run by incompetent and stupid leftards obsessed with diversity and climate change. Mind you, the UK and other places are far worse.

The way for the US to get along with Iran is for the US to BUTT OUT OF ASIA. It is absurdly simple. USUK did a Kiev-style regime change in Iran in 1941 and never stopped interfering. Just stay far away. Of course, you’re welcome to buy oil and sell stuff, but no militants, OK?
Maybe now you can figure out the way for the US to get along with China.

I think we should all rejoice that the Ching Chongs are refusing to send their REE products to Fatmerica. Anything that reduces this nation of Jew-controlled retards’ ability to run their endless wars for profit must be highly commended.

Were the US to cease foreign adventurism, and reign in it’s … ahem … ‘defence’ spending, it could free up significant sums to reduce the deficit, and thus the interest on it, and begin a nest egg for the ‘reshoring’ of industry.

Good luck in fighting the Military Industrial Complex. Even if you succeeded in saving trillions of dollars that way, would the money be spent appropriately on reindustrialization, or would all that lovely cash be stolen, as usual, by the oligarchs?

You might … join the Metric system (yes, metre).

Contrarian view: people using traditional units are forced to be much more numerate.

In the UK, a pound was 20 shilling, with 12 penny to the shilling. Add in guineas for extra fun.

Price goes up.

Other solutions found for problems.

Other sources found for the resources.

I suspect there’s some over-thinking going on here…

Or some extremely suspect agenda behind the words, such as the early-2000s electronics swing towards the chemical and mining industry’s racket of 30% per smartphone.

It didn’t have to be that way, and anyone in technology 25 years ago hearing “the buzz” will verify this simple fact. SUDDENLY we all needed some “rare earth” minerals in our pockets to irradiate our testicles for some kind of emergency, such as the president calling us or something.

Life was better before.

Let it go.

Nothing is gained by replacing one simplification with another;
of course Chinese dominance is neither total nor forever (few things are) –
true is further the US gave up REE mining and refining for environmental reasons;
thanks for clarifying possible misunderstandings.
I for one found the article rather cogent and encompassing for a non-specialist
(which in this case is a boon; and ChatGPT would not have mixed up “rare earths”
and “strategic metals” 😁).
– The hREE problem is real – Mountain Pass is a carbonatite and therefore poor
in heavier REE; europium (= the red phosphor in your computer screen) is one
of the few that really cannot be substituted (insert the inevitable jokes about Europe
buying its europium from China) – there is no comparable quality red in the
periodic system.
The simplest remedy would be to fire up Kerala – this is where Carl Frhr. Auer von
Welsbach got his monazite from (the dead White dood who pioneered industrial use
of REE – including your ferrocerium and gas lantern); dredges and paddlewheel
swim/sink separators are not rocket science (the East Australian coastal placers
are a nature preserve but we know what that´s worth).

The refining ain´t coming back – nor will anything else; every iniquity the Great Satan
visits upon the World makes it less competitive – and that´s long before anyone
actively boycotts it; it is a Law of Nature (Charles Boycott incidentally was a rent
enforcer in Ireland).
As Keynes tried to explain a hundred years ago, forcing the Germans to undercut you
at any cost to themselves will impoverish them (and piss them off royally) but you
are shooting yourself in the clit as they will become stronger and you will become
uncompetitive (the Depression, come to think about it, wasn´t that Great compared
to what is in store).

Actually a “shilling” is 30, and a dozen is 12; at least they kept the
240 silver pennies to the pound.
If it were just about buying groceries there might be a point, but good luck
with anything scientific.

The fundamental fallacy here is that government is not “of, by and for”
We the People but of, by and for the profiteers, and it has been thus ever since
George W. mobilized more men against Shays´Rebellion than at any one
time against the Brutish, and Hamilton took on the odious debt.
Siccing the American Legion on the Unions after WWI was just the dot on the “i”.
The only thing the System has ever excelled at is extracting and accumulating
capital, which in turn necessitates permanent war lest the profit rate collapse;
of course public corruption has reached levels unimaginable a mere half-century
ago but it was baked in the cake from the beginning.
FDR had to start WWII to get out of the Great Depression; Hoover
(by the US´own foreign policy standards the last POTUS to not belong straight
to the gallows) tried it the honorable way, and he is still universally execrated for it
(if you look more closely his legacy – say, the TVA – still does him proud but again,
no profit 👺).

Disabuse yourself of the idea the gubmint cares two whits about the worker.

Only because your mates in the Labor Party spent 75 years tearing the country down.

Do you have any recommendations for Russian cuisine that is not too greasy?

Not a Russian myself, but try cucumbers and vodka. Probably not too greasy.

In Letters from Russia–1919, by Petyr Ouspensky (first printed, I believe, in A.R. Orage’s English socialist paper, the New Age):

The fire had a wonderful effect on our spirits. It seemed to thaw them out, as well as our bodies. Living, as one did in Russia, from hour to hour, a good fire was a thing to make a fuss about. We found also a quantity of spirit in one of the cupboards in the barn, and despite Zaharov’s protests, we proceeded to convert it into vodka with the addition of some orange peel. Ouspensky told Zaharov that the rightful owner would never get back to Rostov in time to use it before the Bolshevists came—a prophecy which proved to be accurate—and that, if we did not drink it, the Commissars would. So we began to drink it.

“People have been drinking since the beginning of the world,” remarked Ouspensky suddenly, “but they have never found anything to go better with vodka than a salted cucumber.”

“Helium and other noble gases are everywhere. It’s the processing that is difficult. So far China is the only country that can efficiently process noble gasses at low cost”

See how worthless your comment was?

Er… I really can’t drink alcohol… There is something to say about cucumbers.
The last time I cleaned the workspace in the biology laboratory with alcohol, my face turned red instantly because the air was filled with alcohol.
I generally like to eat salty food and consume less sweet food.
People from Shanghai can generally only tolerate mild spiciness. We can still accept Sichuan cuisine, but Hunan and Jiangxi cuisines are basically out of our reach.
The slight spiciness of the locals is the limit that humans cannot bear for us.

You might think about rewinding all those unilateral spelling changes America made to English, and join the Metric system (yes, metre).

Was spelling standardized on either side of the Atlantic when that division developed? You mysteriously felt the need to retain superfluous ‘u’s everywhere; we didn’t. So?

As to your pretensions to using the metric system, I’ve heard you using pounds and feet when you don’t think we’re listening. That ‘metre’ nonsense is basically a pathetic attempt to maintain some sense of superiority over us when more substantial grounds have vanished.

Do or do not, there is no try.

China can do this because its national and local leaders are mostly engineers by training
****************************************************************

Unfortunately america has 40 million blacks who don’t have the intelligence for engineering. Blacks struggle with arithmetic and even low-level math like calculus is way beyond them. As a consequence the DEI (Didn’t Earn It) crowd has demanded subjects like math and physics and engineering be eliminated from our schools and colleges and they are getting their wish.

I wish trump would play the college card. We have 300,000 chinese citizens in our colleges and trump should threaten to kick them out unless china gives us the REEs we need.

How many Tibetans and Uighurs have you slaughtered today Assturd Wang?

The usual imbecile lies The average Rightist dullard not only cannot learn, but rejects reality in favour of his group ego fantasies EVERY time. Not, as ever, that the swinish gibberish is over three years out of date. Two of those years were the hottest ever recorded globally-suits reptiles I suppose.

There is NO doubt that you Sinophobe racists are vicious liars. And nations of Colin Wrights could not even subdue Afghanistan-although they had great sport murdering the locals. Still smarting after your hero, Dutton’s, demise are you?

As your aggressive, illegal and typically vicious proposals to sabotage China’s REE industry show, the aggressor, AS EVER, has been the USA. Point one is the usual Yankee subversion of other States, two is financial warfare that China can easily repel, and will hasten the fall of US financial hegemony, three is pure Americanism, and China will fight back and four is a hoot, as China will be doing the technological leap-frogging.
Nasty, aggressive, vicious, racist-the USA in all its hideous horror. The easier alternative, peaceful co-existence and trade, rejected out of hand in a frenzy of envious race and cultural hatred and rage.

Unfortunately america has 40 million blacks who don’t have the intelligence for engineering. Blacks struggle with arithmetic and even low-level math like calculus is way beyond them. As a consequence the DEI (Didn’t Earn It) crowd has demanded subjects like math and physics and engineering be eliminated from our schools and colleges and they are getting their wish.

We had the blacks when we became the greatest nation on earth.

The problem isn’t having blacks per se. It’s having blacks and trying to pretend they’re the equals of the rest of us.

‘…The bottom line is that Chinese Communist Party looks out for the Chinese people…’

Hence thirty million dead from starvation. It was in their own best interest.

I could entirely do without your phrase “greedy Jews”; I do not think that is relevant, and I do not think it is nice. I would put the problem with our Republic with Jay’s Treaty of Paris, which was negotiated I think in around 1792. 1783, Washington & Co. kick the British bankers out. 1792, John Jay lets them back in.

If you want to talk conspiracy, I have always wondered about the American Revolution; how the Patriots “won” without actually winning too many battles. I have always thought there must have been some sandbagging from the British side, and what makes this make sense would be banking interests. It must have been tantalizing to think of a huge Free Trade Zone in North America. So though I haven’t seen any hard evidence, I do think bankers had something to do with the outcome of the American Revolution; you know, those exploration companies (Washington was a member of one) must have been rooting for the Patriots. But the “Jews”? That’s honestly crazy based on where everyone was situated during the relevant decades and epochs.

Modernity itself, I think of as being basically “guns and butter.” Clear out all the old religious nonsense, and go exploring with trade boats (butter) backed by gun boats. Of course, “Jews” were involved with this project, but not at the top level. The reason modernity is sputtering right now is the same reason why the Roman Empire began to sputter. In the beginning the Romans had very easy victories against enemies that lacked the technology, social organization, and military capabilities they had. Over time the contact between Rome and the barbarians increased the technology, social organization, and military skills of the barbarians; meanwhile, the luxuries and conveniences that the Romans enjoyed weakened their love of conquest, corrupted their morals, and mixed into Roman culture foreign elements who came to be an essential part of, and eventually predominate, the security and military and political apparatus of Rome. So, that’s what we’re experiencing, only we are doing so on the basis of a modern cultural and Constitutional structure FAR WEAKER in my opinion than old Rome.

You can put twenty or thirty events in bold in the timeline of Western history. The advent of gunpowder warfare, which meant the end of the age of chivalry and the beginning of large armies; the Gutenberg Press. Probably the creation of the Bank of Amsterdam would go on that list. Gunpowder warfare leads to the nation state, the Gutenberg Press the end of the religious consensus of medieval Europe. Big nations with big armies are going to need centralized banking, which means they are going to engage in extensive foreign trade and the fighting that goes along with that.

The invention of the Internet is as big an event as the invention of the Gutenberg Press, and its ramifications are here, there, and everywhere. Unz.com is a part of those changes. And the headlines everyone sees about AI and effectively the commodification of software engineering (https://www.ndtv.com/feature/even-the-ai-director-was-not-spared-in-microsofts-recent-layoffs-tech-industry-concerned-8413102), this is big news. Those 6,000 Microsoft workers were probably some of the smartest people in their high schools and colleges. What will these 150-200K earners do?

But the news I do not read about is the plummeting tax revenues at the local, state, and federal level. This is a phenomenon at least five years old. It implies a real lack of spontaneous economic activity. It implies a collapse of global trade, and I wonder, were these tariffs a ruse meant to cover up the real source of the disruption? Is the modern world ending right in front of us? Does the US even have the oomph to stir up a Third World War? Does this all end with a whimper instead of a bang?

Processing and refining monopoly: China dominates roughly 90% global REE processing, turning raw ores into usable oxides, metals and magnets. For heavy rare earth such as terbium, ytterbium and yttrium, China’s dominance is absolute at 100%. Heavy REEs (HREEs) are especially important in high tech and military applications (e.g. jet engine coating).

It’s does not have a monopoly! What it does have is a competitive advantage due to the fact the neither the Chink government nor Chink corporations have to worry about the pollution that is produced during refining.

This pollution has caused a freaking WAVE of cancers in China with even teens getting them.

With Trumps tariffs that competitive advantage, at least in the case of the US, went away by around 30%, the current US tariff rate.

Let us not forget that China pulled this embargo shit on Japan over a decade ago. The Japanese went with the option of “deep-sea” mining for “metal nodules” on the seabed, and were widely successful in their “deep sea” mining efforts.

Basically it involved a hose connected to a high power vacuum which “sucked” the nodules from the sea bed into the ships hold. LOL!!

That embargo caused some short term pain, but that was about it. Considering that the US China trade deal that was recently struck, obligated Chinkland to start re-exporting rare earths … or yet again face 145% US tariffs, the US is suffering less pain then Japan did! LOL!!!!

On the “slightly” plus column, due to the embargo, some of the refineries had to temporarily shut down, due to the loss of their largest client, the US, giving the Chinese a temporary relief from the pollution.

The key of course is planning, which requires a long term commitment to a realistic goal. It is the last thing the US has, and it is doubtful it can ever recover what it did have, during its own move toward industrialization.

150 years ago, the US became the world’s economic powerhouse without a single 5 year plan. Not a single one! ROTFLMAO!!!!!!!!!!!!!

I am 100% certain it can do the same today, through the magic of “the market”. LOL!!!!

Still the old self-importance, eh 🙄
That threat might have carried some weight 50 years ago; now there are
a handful of institutions where it would be inconvenient – MIT, CalTech, Stanford;
a stint in the US is now a nice touch on the ceevee but nothing more.
Unlike Australia the US are not dependent on Chinese tuition, but it´s not nothing;
what tips the scales more rudely is it would make the student body stupider,
and the Orange One is already proudly anti-intellectual
(plus it would impact the most Western-minded, which the CPC probably welcomes);
in science and technology cross-pollination is necessary for both sides –
bitching about Muh Intellectual Property (hah!) is deplorable rentier thinking
(insofar as it isn´t a flat-out lie which it is mostly).

This is one of the best rare earth articles around. I’ve been screaming into the void for like ten years on this subject. Although you didn’t mention the North Korea situation. They have every kind of rare earth element and the largest known reserves in the world along with mines already established. Why aren’t they a rich nation full fat people like America.

It’s because of the western imposed sanctions on North Korea – which quite stupidly and also very retardedly, benefit China the most. They take NKs rare earths on the cheap under the table. The stupid sanctions also benefit the western MIC I suppose – by selling weapons to NKs enemies. Poor old North Korea average skinny people. They are getting ripped off by the west and by China – a status quo which is unlikely to change.

Janes Fighting Planes used to list the Soviet MIG as having a top flight speed of nearly Mach 3. The American equivalent of 2+.

America does not publish true numbers of its actual assets. For all any of us know, there may be (very likely, is/are) ample reserves of rare-Earth metals located in the Rockies, Cascades etc.

As long as it is cheaper to buy Chinese stuff and trade relations are amicable, then we should do so.

As I have argued (with imaginary Paul Krugman) on this site for years, this works for just so long as those trade goods are not essential to ultimate self interest i.e. until war threatens or breaks out. Then, it’s pull up the draw bridges and fall back upon one’s own resources.

In other words, I take war seriously. It happens. It will happen. You can’t take peace as the permanent state of affairs. What do they say about preparing for war as the guarantee of peace? We should always cultivate our own ability to create or procure every item needed to fight for our own autonomy, which sounds like a tautology but is not because it is a process, and that process is the learning and doing of the processes which provide us with the means to be self-reliant.

Because it is so difficult to create our own refining capabilities is exactly why we should do so now, rather than under duress.

In life we encounter many problems. Fix what’s broken the worst first. Patch the biggest leak first. Shore up the foundation timbers. Take care of the toughest problem first. And when that’s done, go on to the next worse and so on. Work your way up the list from the bottom.

The shitiest stuff should be addressed first. Of course, this is not how most people wish to go about solving problems because it means hard work and they’d rather do the soft stuff. There’s a scramble by the weak and lazy for the soft, cushy jobs. Under my reign, those people will be turned out of their sinecures. Meaningful work not only improves the conditions of the nation as a whole, but at the same time makes the doer smarter and stronger. If a person’s occupation doesn’t make them both smarter and stronger then they are wasting their own and everyone else’s time. They will be reassigned—again, part of the process of fixing the worse stuff first.

Clear out the rotting wood. People who do not lose weight as a consequence of their jobs will be ground up and processed into fish meal for salmon pens. Likewise with those who, through testing, show no improvement in intellectual growth. Same with those guilty of heinous, violent crimes. Pellets for salmon pens. Salmon are meat eaters. The current dietary regimen of ground-up vegetative matter just won’t cut it. For that deep orange meat, real protein is essential. The pale stuff available at your grocers is anemic and can’t promote real human brain growth.

We’re not cannibals! But we do enjoy a good plate of fish. In a sense then, salmon provides for the transmigration of Souls, but through a body process. “Take. Eat. This is the body of your former co-worker, now rendered efficacious through an efficacious process. Enjoy. Buttery, no?”

Perhaps the Chinese will trade some rare Earth for some rare, protein-enriched salmon?

Genius is rare enough in Europeans, but virtually non-existent among ethnic Han:

Video Link

“Rare earths are silvery-grey metals. There are 17 of them, ranging from lanthanum (atomic number 57) to lutetium (atomic number 73), and most of them are in their own row in the periodic table because of their unusual atomic structure.”

Basically, they are double transition metals. Electron shells two layers below the valence layer are being filled.

—-I suppose it’s not every day you lose half a billion dollars.

—-200 million it was.

—-They’re always f—- overestimating.

The place decidedly has it’s problems; a vast gulf between rich and poor, oppressive regimentation, abused and resentful ethnic minorities, imbedded corruption (?). It’s surrounded by states that hate and fear it — and it persists in attempting to bully them. That nonsense in the South China Sea is not a good neighbor policy.

Just for clarity, could you tell me which country you are talking about here? Is it China, or is it … America??

And genius is particularly high in Jews.

So in your estimation, Jews are superior.
You should therefore be happy to be ruled by them.

Cope harder, genius!

Why aren’t they a rich nation full fat people like America.

It’s because they have a planned economy … and suck ass planners. ROTFLMAO!!!!!!!!!

The fact that they have mandatory military service of up to 10 years for men and 8 years for women does not help. Thy are the most militarized nation on the planet, and it is a well known fact that the military produces little in the way of economic growth.

https://www.dailynk.com/english/cia-world-factbook-north-korean-men-must-serve-up-to-10-years-in-military/

In other news, North Korea is taking back its workers because the factories there are too close to urban centers … and the North Korean workers might end up disenchanted after seeing China’s “prosperous” LOL!!! living conditions.

It’s all relative folks! LOL!!!

https://www.dailynk.com/english/n-korean-workers-leaving-chinas-liaoning-province-as-factories-close/

Fanny-the ecological collapse, and particularly anthropogenic climate destabilisation, will render ALL human plans, ambitions and speculations irrelevant, very shortly. I would have thought that a self-confessed genius like you would appreciate that.

From my travels, I’ve found that, generally, an indigenous people have their specific diets, and while it is possible to more or less adapt to a non-native cuisine, it is best to adhere to one’s principal local foods. If that isn’t possible, vegetables are the way to go. When I was in China, I mostly ate water boiled vegetables, because I never understood the meat situation.

I never drank Chinese alcohol. The white liquor, baijiu, was too much. Best not to imbibe in a foreign country. That was always my rule. One ought to always be in as much personal control as possible whenever visiting a land one has no control over.

Steve,

For a time (8-1/2 years) I also worked for Alcoa. It was at a factory in Beloit, Wisconsin. Beloit is just across the state line from the Rockford, Illinois (90 miles west of Chicago) area. The Alcoa factory manufactured aluminum wheels for GM, Ford, Chrysler and Honda cars & light trucks. I worked many years in the foundry, which had 30 low-pressure die-casting machines, made by Plume, in England.

Shortly before the factory closed up permanently, the company removed 2 of the die-casting machines. This was when they could not keep up with production requirements. We suspected that the machines were moved to China, where the Chinese would use these machines as “patterns,” for copying the designs and building new die-casting machines.

I was an electrician there and the ONLY reason why I worked there was because I couldn’t find any other job as an electrician at any of the local factories. I absolutely hated every minute, but stayed there, because the job paid well and had good benefits. It was a union factory – United Auto Workers representation.

I had heard “horror stories” about that place before I had even applied for a job there. The plant used to be called Reynolds, but now it was Alcoa. I had “hoped” that with the new name, things might be better. WRONG!

US can shut China out of importing waste ore from the rest of world, reserving all of it for itself

50% come from Myanmar which borders China. Good luck.

It’s interesting that the US has yet to develop its own capabilities. Back in 2012 there was a US-led dispute with the WTO because China reduced REE exports. US has has plenty of time to prepare. My guess is that the problem is that an American or Australian extraction and refining process would have to be continually subsidized because they can’t compete on price which is why it all moved to China in the 80s. They’d only be profitable if China banned exports which it would only do if during tense episodes and if the targeted countries had no capability.

extraction and refining process would have to be continually subsidized because they can’t compete on price

In the face of a national emergency, profits of companies are the least of concerns.
I am always bewildered how Americans think money is the primal mover of things, it’s always surreal to participate in this kind of conversations.
I figure I should really thank you for not having brought the stock market (yet) up

Findings show that after 2010, the median severity of large wildfires surged by 42.9 percent in arid regions and 54.3 percent in boreal zones, with North America’s western regions, northern-central Siberia and southeastern Australia hardest hit.

Post-fire recovery rates have sharply declined since 2010, as areas experiencing stalled recovery rose from 22.6 percent to 25.6 percent – with canopy structure and productivity exhibiting particular difficulties in restoration.

Majority of rare metals are in Xinjiang—under the mosques and vineyards—-USA couldn’t give a rat’s ass about the Uighurs or the other 7 minorities in Xinjiang but those precious metals–are DC”s !!!
God said so !!!

It is the rapidity of change that will kill us. We are about to experience conditions unlike any our species, genus or family have suffered in millions of years.
And there will be surprises-a toxic algal bloom off South Australia is decimating (in the modern usage) sea life, and driving sharks into waters near the cities. Where they are chewing on a happy swimmer or two. There is a possibility that the algal neuro-toxins may be affecting shark behaviour, too. Just looking out at the bloom from a cliff caused a running nose and streaming eyes in one observer. I must urge Turd to take up sea bathig.

I can drink white liquor, but basically only on certain special occasions.
After a few cups, I began to feel dizzy and lost my way.

Sounds very USian-Anglo.

Enjoy the ride amigo–onward and downward to Yankeelandia.

In the face of a national emergency, profits of companies are the least of concerns.

Obviously. But that’s why it hasn’t been done so far. Since at least 2012 it has been clear there has been a need for America to become independent in REE and yet it has not. I’ve heard it say that the REE extraction from ores and their refinement has been shipped to China for purely environmental reasons. Seems highly dubious. You’d think that it could be done in a North American wilderness or in Australia (source of a lot of the ore). Then, there are countries like Argentina which would like to have its own extraction and refinement industries but which lack the technical expertise and industrial organization. Why do you think America and allies have failed to achieve independence?

Tellingly, since April 2 “liberation day”, the New York Times has run more articles on rare earth metals than China’s potential dumping of US Treasuries.

More interesting, though, is that it is the USA’s friends and allies in Europe who have been dumping US Treasuries since then.

☯️

When did I ever profess to being a genius? Where? Nonetheless, I find a bit extreme the idea that “the ecological collapse….will render ALL human plans, ambitions and speculations irrelevant, very shortly.” Many, of course not all, expressions of the form, the X will [predicate] to all Y, invite further questioning. Won’t the ecological collapse make the competition of human beings even more intense? Won’t it focus human ambitions ever more intensely on those technological developments, natural resources, etc, for survival? How many human ambitions in all of history have not been inhibited, rendered irrelevant, etc, by the necessity of mere survival?

Thought experiment: The ecological collapse seems contingent on the growth of the human population, and in one way or another, it seems that the human population is threatened by ecological concerns; but if the ecological collapse, or human interventions concerned with the ecological collapse, dramatically reduces the human population, the ecology of earth will recover. So, I don’t exactly disagree with your simple idea.

Also, combinations of technology and smart policy could intervene to balance population and ecology!

Why do you think America and allies have failed to achieve independence?

Previous administrations didn’t want to juggle with this hot potato. Look at the storm of critiques generated by Trump’s tariffs policy.
Also international tension was not high enough up until the Ukraine war started in 22.

I’ve heard it say that the REE extraction from ores and their refinement has been shipped to China for purely environmental reasons.

Offshored to China, as many other relatively low tech and very polluting processes. I think the main reason was the inertia of the massive offshoring happening at that same time, with the associated profits from cutting labor costs.
It became much of a fashion for the managerial class of the time. If you did not offshore as much as possible you weren’t as cool as the manager of the closing factory next door shipping everything to Taiwan

Thinking out loud, for your entatainment.

I had “college level” physics class in high school and again Physics in college (55 – 60 years ago – math, not picture books). Each time, it was just the one year of it thing but covered electromagnetism. (no Asian girl touching a ball, hair standing up on end) In fact, the first part of electromagnetism was a breeze. A little metaphysical (I’ll admit, the field around a wire carrying current thing got my nipples a bit hard), but that part was easy to get what they were saying. That part in college went (in my mind) LSD crazy. 12 coefficients in a formula, and those pre-meds, with their notes spread on the floor in front of them, during the hourly, and stocking feet shuffling those pages (this was pre-DEI and there were 6 applicants per med school spot, GPA and MCAT scores only!). I got to almost sending my nerdy engineering roomie to go take that test – he wanted to. He could actually “derive” those formulae cold. “Honest injun” that I am, I took my “C” in physics and spent 4 more years kissing ass (fellatio hadn’t yet been invented, I guess) before my turn to med school finally came.

Do you know, today…I don’t even believe in electromagnetism? – I don’t think I ever really did. It’s very likely, bowlshit – sorta like the ascension of BVM (years after catechism I learned she simply went into “dormition” but that’s for another time.) First off, any “formula” to arrive at an answer, requiring 8 or 12 (or God forbid 11!) coefficients, stuck, seemingly randomly, in numerators and denominators, not to mention parentheses is clearly fake! I was enough of a math head to sense that part (but, you know, go along to get along).

So, 50 years later, just living my life, and observing how BS and ass-kissing works in the modern world I realize that trial & error is the actual principle involved in all this “imaging” etc. Mix a little this, mix a little that…eventually “Boom!” you get something tangible. And when we’re talking “imaging” the term “eye candy” should loom high in your mind!

And that idea pervades my entire understanding of this “rare earth” shit. It smacks of that “drink that cod liver oil or be crippled” bowlshit I recall being indoctrinated 70 years ago. You couldn’t pay me enough allowance to even come near me with that shit, but my age mates who willfully took it are all 6′ under years ago (but last I looked – not me ha! ha!).

Rare earths. I smell a rat. And who today is gonna get their hands dirty digging up that shit? You can’t be home at 1 PM, feet up, Porn hub’ing. Or for godsakes, work-at-home? But Jesus Christ somebody has to dig that shit up. And process that 0.03% of the cobble. Slant-eyed Asians are about the only people who’ll possibly do that – Trump or no Trump. I now think the US will have to go through 70 years of (communist?) austerity (or its equivalent) before one can even conceive of ever mining shit in an orderly manner in N America. There isn’t a horde of ( Dagos, Serbs, Slovaks, and Croats or, heck, anybody who at least even look half European-white) barging into the employment office to do the work. And I don’t think a pack of Spanish-speaking brunettes are gonna be up for that task – if it even ever becomes the 21st century version of iron ore. (In Chile-Bolivia they had to put the guys in shackles for copper mining) And so , in that case – whattya gonna do?

Quote:

“covered electromagnetism. (no Asian girl touching a ball, hair standing up on end) In fact, the first part of electromagnetism was a breeze.”

You are describing STATIC electricity – girl touching a ball, with her hair standing on end.

I, too, had physics in high school – 1968-1969. I was bored to death with it. I went to college, studied electrical engineering and dropped out half-way through. I wanted to get out into the world and make some money. I became an industrial electrician and worked in industry in that capacity for over 40 years.

I can assure you that there IS such a thing as electromagnetism, as every electric motor, generator and transformer USE electromagnetism in order for them to work.

I suggest that you do a little research on Nikola Tesla, and his contributions to George Westinghouse’s fine company.

Thank you.

Brad Anbro
United Auto Workers Journeyman Electrician, retired

You’re plainly ignorant. The current forcing of heat-trapping greenhouse gases into the atmosphere is the greatest BY FAR in ALL planetary history. What we have seen so far is NOTHING to what is coming. When similar forcings, but lesser in extent and speed by one or two orders of magnitude, occurred in the past, say after the flood basalt eruptions of the Siberian and Deccan Traps, a ‘wet hot-house’ mass extinction occurred.
Also the planet is befouled by MASSIVE pollution of every other kind, the Sixth mass extinction devastation of bio-diversity, economic collapse, grotesque inequality and geopolitical frenzy as the West resists its collapse with thermonuclear and biological warfare near certain. And you are insouciantly expecting others to die out while you survive, and the Earth recovers. The Earth will recover, after a few hundred millennia.