Geopolitics – Apokalyps Nu!

China, USA and the Geopolitics of Lithium | New Eastern Outlook

18-11-19 01:53:00,

For several years since the global push to develop mass-scale Electric Vehicles, the element Lithium has come intofocus as a strategic metal. Demand is enormous in China, in the EU and in the USA at present, and securing control over lithium supplies is already developing its own geopolitics not unlike that for the control of oil.

China Moves to Secure Sources

For China, which has set major targets to become the world’s largest producer of EVs, developing lithium battery materials is a priority for the 13th Five-Year Plan (2016-20) period. Though China has its own lithium reserves, recovery is limited, and China has gone to secure lithium mining rights abroad.

In Australia Chinese companyTalison Lithium, controlled by Tianqi, mines and owns the world’s largest and highest grade spodumene reserves in Greenbushes, Western Australia near Perth.

Talison Lithium Inc. is the world’s largest primary lithium producer. Their Greenbushes site in Australia produces today some 75% of China’s lithium demands and about forty percent of world demand. This as well as other vital Australian raw materials, has made relations with Australia, traditionally a firm US ally, of strategic importance to Beijing. As well, China has become the largest trade partner for Australia.

However China’s growing economic influence in the Pacific around Australia led Prime Minister Scott Morrison to send a warning message to China not to challenge Australia’s strategic backyard region. In late 2017 Australia, with growing concern over expanding Chinese influence in the region, resumed informal cooperation in what is sometimes called the Quad,with USA, India and Japan, reviving an earlier attempt to check Chinese influence in the South Pacific. Australia has also recently stepped up lending to strategic Pacific island nations to counter China’s lending. All this clearly makes it imperative for China to go global to other sites to secure its lithium in order to become the key player in the emerging EV economy over the coming decade.

As development of electric vehicles became priority in Chinese economic planning, the search for secure lithium turned to Chile,another major source of the lithium. There,China’s Tianqiis amassing a major share of Chile’s SociedadQuimica Y Minera (SQM), one of the world’s largest lithium producers.

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The geopolitics of oil in the Trump era, by Thierry Meyssan

Posted by EN-AG in Geopolitics, Trump

09-04-19 01:46:00,

The United States have become the leading world producer of hydrocarbons. As from now, they are using their dominant position exclusively to maximise their profits, and do not hesitate to eliminate their major rivals in oil production, plunging their citizens into misery. Although in the past, access to Middle East oil was a vital necessity for their economy (Carter, Reagan, Bush Sr.), then a market over which they presided (Clinton), and then again a failing ressouce whose supply they wanted to control (Bush Jr., Obama), hydrocarbons have now become black gold (Trump). Thierry Meyssan retraces the evolution of this bloody market.

Economy depends primarily on the source of energy to which it has access. This need has always been one of the main causes of war. At one time, it was necessary to put slaves to work in the fields then, in the 19th century, to seize coal with which to feed machinery, and today we rely on hydrocarbons (oil and gas).

To avoid looking at this logic too closely, men have always invented good reasons to justify what they are doing.

Thus, today we believe
that Iran is being sanctioned because of its military nuclear programme (which it closed down in 1988);
that the installations and assets of the PDVSA (Venezuelan Oil) have been seized in order to transfer them from the dictator Maduro to Juan Guaido’s team (although it is the former and not the latter who was constitutionally elected President of Venezuela);
or again that the United States maintains its military presence in Syria in order to support their Kurdish allies against the dictator el-Assad (while in fact the Kurds are mercenaries who do not represent their people, and el-Assad was democratically elected).

These narratives have no real basis in truth and are contradicted by the facts. We believe them because we think we can make a profit from them.

The world market

Hydrocarbons represent the major world market, more important than foodstuffs, weapons, medicine and drugs. At first, they were managed by private companies, before becoming, in the 1960’s, the private hunting ground of states. As the economy developed, new actors stepped in, and the market became increasingly unpredictable. Besides this, from the end of the USSR until the return of Russia,

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The Geopolitics of Human Gene Editing | New Eastern Outlook

Posted by EN-AB in Geopolitics, Human

20-10-18 08:39:00,

A cursory warning was left by renowned physics professor Stephen Hawking regarding a future where a race of superhumans, manipulating their DNA, would taking control of their own evolution. The warning came just before his death in March of this year.

The Washington Post in its article, “Stephen Hawking feared race of ‘superhumans’ able to manipulate their own DNA,” would explain (my emphasis):

Before he died in March, the Cambridge University professor predicted that people this century would gain the capacity to edit human traits such as intelligence and aggression. And he worried that the capacity for genetic engineering would be concentrated in the hands of the wealthy.

To be clear, Professor Hawking wasn’t warning about the technology in and of itself, but its monopolization by a handful of wealthy interests.

The Threat of Technological Monopolies

When we look at any chapter in human history, disparity in technology has always led to tragic episodes of exploitation, violence, atrocities and even genocide. The invention and use of firearms by Western Europeans against tribes everywhere from Asia and Africa to North and South America provide us one look at how huge advantages in technology have been abused against those who lack access to it.

The invention of the atomic bomb gave the United States a period of time where it held a virtual monopoly over nuclear weapons. It eagerly used not one, but two atomic bombs on the already defeated Japanese at the end of World War II. Before America’s nuclear monopoly was finally broken up by first Soviet and then Chinese nuclear weapon tests, the US had considered using further nuclear weapons during the Korean War and at at least two junctures during the Vietnam War.

Today, corporate monopolies over the very sort of biotechnology that will give rise to the race of superhumans Professor Hawking warned about, are already a source of constant, steeply controversial use and abuse.

Whether it is deceptive business practices by large agricultural corporations like Cargill, Monsanto and Bayer peddling unsafe genetically modified organisms (GMOs) or pharmaceutical corporations seizing, then price gouging charity and publicly-funded breakthroughs like gene therapy, we can already see attempts being made to concentrate biotechnology in the hands of the wealthy,

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