Tag: natural resources

Lithium Fields: Another Dark Side to the Electrical Vehicle Industry

Chile’s Atacama Desert is hailed as one of the Earth’s most extraordinary places. It’s the driest nonpolar desert on Earth, which stretches across around 600 miles (1,000 kilometers, or km) in a piece of land between the coastal Cordillera de la Costa Mountain range and the Andes Mountains.

The entire area is an oasis of geologic formations and has provided scientists with seemingly never-ending research opportunities.

As with so many areas in our wonderous planet, it also has a history of being raped for its minerals. Prior to the 1930s, it was for nitrate minerals that were used in fertilizers and explosives. But more recently other minerals such as lithium, copper and iodine are also being mined.

Unfortunately, lithium mining is hugely toxic and poses a significant danger to the environment, particularly in South America.

Despite the mining industry’s exploration of technological advancements aimed at reducing the industry’s ecological footprint, the question remains … Should we continue to rape the earth for lithium in the race to electrify?

Do electric vehicles (EVs) do more good than harm? Are the supply chains for the resources needed to electrify our world sufficiently transparent for us to evaluate them properly? Can we really call the move away from fossil fuels toward hyper-electrification another green revolution?

None of us are in a position to fully answer these questions as the data required are just not available. But what we do know suggests we should be concerned — very concerned.

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Hurricane Helene Destroys NC Town Containing ‘Purest’ Quartz Mines, Disrupting Semiconductor Industry

The devastation in a small North Carolina down from Hurricane Helene may cause unexpected issues to the semiconductor production industry, as nearly all of the world’s supply of a necessary mineral comes from that area.

The “purest form” of quartz is mined in Spruce Pine, which has a population of just 2,600 people, according to CNBC. 

With the town’s electricity and running water still out more than a week after the storm and raging flood waters ripped through the foothills of the Blue Ridge Mountains, the $600 billion global semiconductor industry may be crippled, the outlet reported. 

Before Helene, companies like Sibelco and The Quartz Corp. extracted the high-quality quartz before refining it and shipping it to global manufacturing facilities, primarily in China and other Asian countries. 

Those operations have all been placed on pause as the Appalachian community grapples with getting basic necessities such as food and water. 

Neither of the major companies has released a timeline on when they could possibly resume mining. 

“Hurricane Helene has significantly impacted North Carolina, USA, and the Spruce Pine community has been hit particularly hard,” Sibelco said in a September 30 statement, before saying that “many people,” including their own employees and families, are facing “displacement.”

“We have confirmed the safety of most employees and are working diligently to contact those still unreachable due to ongoing power outages and communication challenges,” the company continued. “As of September 26th, we have temporarily halted operations at the Spruce Pine facilities in response to these challenges.”

“The Spruce Pine community has been hit particularly hard,” Sibelco said in a statement on Sept. 30. “We have temporarily halted operations at the Spruce Pine facilities in response to these challenges.”

In a similar October 1 statement, the Quartz Corp announced that “operations at our facilities were stopped on September 26th in preparation of the event and we have no visibility on when they will restart.”

“This is second order of priority. Our top priority remains the health and safety of our employees and their families,” company officials added, noting that they have successfully made contact with all of their Spruce Pine workers. 

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Pipeline Wars Again

An interesting development. As you can see at a glance from the map, the Druzhba pipeline feeds into the heart of Central Europe and services countries countries that, by and large, are skeptics regarding war on Russia. Czechia is a partial exception, although it is doubtful that the population in general is as anti-Russian as the current president.

1/ The US backed and led ex-state of Ukraine said that it would block Druzhba oil pipeline toward Central and South Europe.
This is the second US sponsored attack on European infrastructure , after the US blew up NordStream pipelines for Germany.

2/ A few corrections :
– Gazprom’s contracts expire the end of 2024. The Russians wills NYET to new ones. It’s over.
-EU-peons have 4 months to decide which one is better:
green energy…US LNG 20 times more expensive …new European Ice Age
Choices… 

My assumption is that this decision was not left up to Ukraine—it was arrived at by NATO and the EU—which is to say, by the Anglo-Zionists. It looks like an effort to force these countries to toe the Anglo-Zionist line in its war on Russia. The result will be devastating for the economies of these countries, but that’s not the point, is it?

My guess is that this development will be added to the scales in Putin’s consideration of whether to bring the war in Ukraine to an end sooner rather than later. It’s fashionable to say that Russia has written off the West, but “the West” isn’t a simple concept. Are the Central European and Balkan countries “the West”? Some may believe they are, but my impression is that they are not so regarded—except for political and military expediency—by the traditional West: Britain, France, Germany, non-Finnish Scandinavia, Spain and Italy. Poland undoubtedly considers itself to be a Western country, but most of the traditional West simply regards Poland as a pain in the ass—with no offense intended on my part.

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Why The U.S. Faces Chinese Dominance For Critical Energy Minerals

More than three years ago, in May 2021, I wrote a piece here detailing the importance of a relatively obscure mineral, antimony, to the ultimate success of alternative energy sources like wind and solar and electric vehicles, and thus to the progress of the energy transition itself.

Even more pressing is the fact that antimony is critical to the needs of major weapon systems used by the U.S. military. The piece also discussed the urgent need for policymakers to find ways to speed up the permitting processes for mining of this and an array of other critical energy minerals if the United States were to avoid becoming almost wholly dependent on China for its future energy needs.

The story was focused on the struggles of Perpetua Resources, a mining company that had at the time struggled for over a decade to obtain the needed local, state, and federal permits to mine a long-known major resource of antimony at the Stibnite mine in Idaho. Stibnite is a long-ago abandoned gold mining operation that Perpetua says it could quickly place into antimony production once all the needed permits are secured.

Since that time, West Virginia Sen. Joe Manchin and fellow sponsors have tried to move federal permitting reform bills in both 2022, and again this year. The 2022 bill failed in the face of bipartisan opposition, and this year’s effort currently seems doomed to the same fate. It must seem to Sen. Manchin that no one in Washington, D.C., other than himself and a handful of fellow members of congress, is serious about getting anything real done on this pressing issue that is essential to the entire energy transition effort.

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China’s Restrictions on Antimony Exports Could Cripple US Military-Industrial Complex: Here’s Why

China has slapped export controls on antimony metals, ores and oxides effective September 15. Companies seeking to export these materials will have to apply for export licenses for dual-use products. That’s bad news for resource import-dependent American arms manufacturers.

In its explanation of last Thursday’s decision to introduce export controls on antimony, China’s Commerce Ministry said the measure was not aimed against any country, but at assuring China’s national security and fulfilling the PRC’s “non-proliferation obligations.” But with China accounting for nearly half of global antimony ore production in 2023, and the US a top buyer, it’s not hard to discern who the restrictions may hit the hardest.

The US International Trade Commission considers antimony “critical to economic and national security – similar to rare earth elements, plus cobalt and uranium.” US business media have described it as “the most important mineral you never heard of.”

That’s because in addition to a long list of civilian uses ranging from flame retardants, lead-acid batteries, and plastics, to ceramics, consumer electronics and safety clothing, antimony has a dizzying array of military applications, from armor-piercing bullets and tracer ammo to night vision goggles, laser sights, communications equipment and even components in nuclear weapons.

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How Saudi Arabia went from pariah to patron

Perhaps we should be grateful that it took President Biden over four years to fully abandon his campaign pledge to end arms sales to Saudi Arabia, eroding the promise bit by bit before finally announcing at the end of the day on Friday, August 9, that the administration would resume sales of offensive air-to-ground munitions to the Kingdom.

In reality, the ban was merely the last vestige of a long-abandoned policy to isolate and sanction Saudi Arabia for its various, gruesome atrocities and abuses both at home and abroad. In its place, the Biden administration’s courtiers doubled down on their embrace of Crown Prince Mohamed bin Salman (MBS), offering up a never-ending basket of concessions and goodies, as the golden ticket for continued U.S. primacy in the Middle East, come what may to everyone and everything else.

What follows will be their rush to the finish line, bestowing on the prince the biggest prize of all — an unprecedented U.S. security guarantee — before the clock runs out on Joe Biden’s presidency.

Cutting off the biggest U.S. weapons purchaser in the world carried well-understood costs of its own, upsetting not only U.S. defense companies deprived of the Saudi cash cow, but also encouraging MBS to retaliate by flaunting closer ties with China and Russia. And so just a few months into the first year of the Biden administration, his national security team walked back the arms embargo, clarifying that they only intended to block “offensive” weapons, not “defensive” ones.

Queries from members of Congress about the distinction between these terms went unanswered. Soon, billions in weapons were flowing, paving the way for a further mending of relations with the Saudi ruler, culminating in the now infamous July 2022 Biden/MBS “fist bump” in Jeddah.

Once the Biden team announced that it too would follow Trump’s lead to make adding Saudi Arabia to the Abraham Accords its number one Middle East foreign policy priority, any lingering concerns about rewarding the Kingdom with new military support despite its widespread horrors in Yemen and at home, or fueling its further belligerence in the region, were swept under the desert sands.

Coupled with national security adviser Jake Sullivan’s open admission of his secondary priorities — cheap oil and keeping China out of the region — the only answer to MBS’s “jump” was to ask “how high?” MBS turned to a hardball game of reverse leverage, not only refusing to open his oil spigot to relieve global oil prices ahead of the 2022 November primaries despite Biden’s pleas, but prominently hosting Chinese President Xi Jinping in a multiday red carpet affair, announcing China would build a civilian nuclear plant and support missile development in the country, and refusing to sanction Russia for its invasion of Ukraine.

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US looks to crack down on Iran’s booming oil industry

Washington is considering measures to further crack down on Iranian oil exports, Politico reported on 13 August. 

“Sanctions evasion is very costly – paying middlemen, laundering money, and so on. We assess that the Iranian regime receives only a fraction of the revenue from its oil sales as a result,” an unnamed State Department spokesman told the outlet. 

However, new efforts to put pressure on Iranian oil revenues are being reviewed. “As Iran continues to escalate tensions in the region, we will work with partners to further pressure Iran and reduce their oil exports.”

Iranian oil exports hit a six-year high earlier this year, reaching an average of 1.56 million barrels of oil per day throughout the first quarter. 

Despite harsh western sanctions, Iran’s crude oil exports have surged by 30 percent in the last quarter, and its fossil fuel shipments reached a five-year high, according to data from the Kpler analytics firm. 

Reuters reported earlier in August that shipments of Iranian oil have been reaching new customers, including Oman and Bangladesh. 

The US has imposed harsh sanctions on Iran since the 1979 Islamic Revolution, particularly on trade and energy. These sanctions are linked to a spike in illegal smuggling in the Persian Gulf. 

In recent years, Washington has illegally plundered several shipments of Iranian oil, framing the seizures as sanctions-enforcement operations. 

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US troops return to oil-rich Kirkuk despite talks to withdraw from Iraq

Troops from the US-led international coalition have returned to the K-1 military base in the oil-rich Iraqi city of Kirkuk for the first time since 2020, The New Arab (TNA) reported on 6 August.

An informed Kurdish source told TNA, “The force, comprising about 40 soldiers and 10 to 15 US-made armored Hummer vehicles, was sent from Erbil and deployed at the K-1 military base.”

The US-led coalition did not respond to requests for comment.

The reason for the new US deployment of troops to Kirkuk after four years is unclear.

The source suggested that it may be a response to increased ISIS activities in the disputed province, which leaders of the Kurdistan Democratic Party (KDP) have long wished to annex to the semi-autonomous Kurdistan Region of Iraq (IKR).

Another source, also speaking on condition of secrecy, told TNA that ISIS has recently resumed its insurgency in and around the Diyala province in eastern Iraq.

The Iraqi armed forces have increased security along the country’s western border with Syria following the release of hundreds of ISIS fighters from prison camps controlled by the US-backed and Kurdish-dominated Syrian Democratic Forces (SDF).

In mid-July, authorities from the SDF-controlled Autonomous Administration of North and East Syria (AANES) issued a general amnesty that has so far secured the release of over 1,500 Syrian ISIS fighters convicted of terrorism-related offenses, provided they “did not participate directly in combat” against the SDF.

Informed Iraqi sources speaking with The Cradle stated the US military ordered the release of the ISIS prisoners.

The US-backed SDF holds thousands of ISIS fighters and their family members in around two dozen prison camps in occupied northeast Syria. These include 2,000 foreigners whose home countries have refused to repatriate them.

The deployment of US and coalition troops to Kirkuk follows the Iraqi government’s signing on 1 August of a deal with UK oil giant BP to develop oil and gas fields in Kirkuk. 

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Global Instability and the Rise of the “Great Resource Grab”

In the past three years China has accelerated export agreements and industrial operations in Africa, becoming the continent’s largest bilateral trade partner. Given Africa’s complete lack of development and GDP, the Asian rush to cement economic ties might seem strange. However, I would argue that China is adapting to events that haven’t quite happened yet.

I’m referring to a major global shift away from interdependent markets (i.e. traditional globalism) into a chaotic period of trade “protectionism”. I’m talking about the end of the current model of export-based nations supplying goods to the west in exchange for advantageous trade deficits and access to dollars. This will be the era of what I call the “Great Resource Grab.”

I believe China is positioning itself for this era, perhaps out of desperation due to the disastrous economic decline they are currently trying to hide from the rest of the world, or maybe the CCP has been given a warning from globalist interests (China’s government has been exceedingly supportive of the IMF’s one-world digital currency push, and it makes sense that globalists would give them vital information on future disasters in exchange).

Why Africa? Because of the lack of modern development, Africa is a vast land mass loaded with untapped natural resources. China is importing billions in raw materials including vital metals from Africa and they are trying to establish infrastructure to increase the extraction of these commodities. If you’re familiar with China’s rotting domestic conditions, then you understand what is happening here – China has hollowed out their own country and they must spread into other regions to survive.

To be sure, Africa is not the only place in which the Chinese are quietly setting up camp. There are diplomatic agreements with Russia that have given them access to farm land in the north, and the Chinese have even been buying up farmland in the US (nearly 400,000 acres according to official reports). In America, anyone that questions this trend is immediately accused of “conspiracy theory” and I would argue this tells us A LOT about what is really happening.

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“NATO’s LIES ON MEDITERRANEAN WARS FOR GAS”. Exclusive Interview to Former Interpol EU Officer

Never before have the words that master Geppetto, a psychoanalyst ante litteram, addressed to his puppet been so timely. Lies that have effects on the mind, on the body, on relationships with others, on relationships between states.

How many conflicts – Syria, Libya, Afghanistan, Iraq – began thanks to artfully packaged lies, conflicts that continue even today with the sole purpose of plundering the energy resources of countries that have them in abundance and which Europe, but not only, desperately needs, with the complicity of the energy lobbies.

A Review of Lies Illustrated by Former Interpol Official in Jordan

The proof of these lies is found in the book “Mediterraneo. Same blood, same mud”, written by Antonio Evangelista and illustrated to Gospa News in an exclusive interview

“ is a bit of a review of the lies that have been told about the conflicts in the Balkans, in Libya, in Syria, lies that have now been verified with official sources, interviews with American officials, UN and embassy documents or secret documents that have now been declassified, like the Canadian ones, where we read a different story compared to what was the narrative of the time.”

This is according to author Antonio Evangelista , a former police director, who also served in the United Nations international police, and in Interpol as attaché at the Italian embassy in Amman, Jordan, dealing with war crimes, terrorism and Balkan mafia.

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