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Hermes of the Threshold's avatar

On the topic of the framing of this conflict, it's interesting how boomers, even well meaning boomers, basically are locked into their mindset as their brains calcified with age, unable to update their worldview to account for new information. For example Zman - who writes daily and who I think is well meaning and not controlled, and he sometimes has decent things to say about other topics - is locked into his Russia/Putin Good, West Bad mindset; he simply *cannot process* that both Ukraine, Russia, and the United States are all controlled by higher powers. See his (stupid) post from a couple days ago: https://thezman.com/wordpress/?p=33852 . I have spelled out how it works to him step by step, I have linked to Slavsquat's post with Strelkov's list of excellent questions and linked to a couple of your relevant posts, and it is totally ignored. And he's one of the better ones out there! "As the great Max Planck, himself the originator of the quantum theory in physics, has said, science makes progress funeral by funeral: the old are never converted by the new doctrines, they simply are replaced by a new generation." This concept applies not just to science, I think, but also to political worldviews and metaphysics...

Archangel's avatar

Kiril Dmitriev looks like Germans from Saxony or Brandenburg.

Trump wants cheap oil so he needs Russia and the Middle East to pump and sell. Saudi Arabia and OPEC which made a fuss with Biden have suddenly decided to produce a lot more oil, crashing the price !

Rare earths are not that rare but China produces 70% of them and refines 90% of them. Burma/Myanmar, an ally of China, produces another 10% with Chinese help. The Chinese sell the rare earths cheaply in order to make production outside of China unprofitable. Australia and the USA have developed mines and clean-ish refining facilities but most industrial companies want subsidies in order to purchase more expensive non-Chinese materials. Russia might be part of the push to diversify rare earths out of China : Australian or Canadian or Japanese mining and refining technology for guaranteed deliveries to the West.

Rare minerals go beyond rare earths. They include elements like gallium, germanium, indium, scandium which are mostly produced in Russia. Russia is also the main producer noble gases such as argon or krypton. China is the other big producer or refiner of these. The agreement between Russia and the USA should ensure the supply of these to the Western-aligned countries.

Thus Trump prepares for a confrontation with China.

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