Rare Earth Metals: China’s ‘Nuclear Option’ In The Trade War
May 27th, 2019Via: oilprice.com:
A simple visit to an obscure factory by Chinese President Xi on Monday is all it took to raise the specter that China could be contemplating cutting off supply of critical materials to the U.S. and potentially crippling large swathes of its industries. Also, fueled by political innuendo in Xi’s recent call for a new “Long March” in reference to a key founding tenet of the Chinese Communist Party, speculators are growing increasingly wary of Chinese export restrictions to the U.S., including rare earth minerals.
…
China produced more than 90 percent of the world’s supply of these critical elements over the past decade, though its share was lower at 71.42 percent last year.
In 2018, the U.S. Geological Survey identified 35 minerals critical to the country’s economy and national security. America is heavily dependent on imports of these minerals, producing less than a tenth of the world’s supplies and importing half of what it consumes. It clearly highlights the U.S.’ soft underbelly.
Not surprisingly, rare earth minerals are some of the few products that escaped Trump’s latest tariffs.
The Books of College Libraries Are Turning Into Wallpaper
May 27th, 2019Via: The Atlantic:
University libraries around the world are seeing precipitous declines in the use of the books on their shelves.
Limited Hangout: ‘Wow, What Is That?’ Navy Pilots Report Unexplained Flying Objects
May 26th, 2019My best guess is that this Pentagon/CIA/To the Stars operation is a limited hangout, but to what end, I have no idea.
A limited hangout is:
“Spy jargon for a favorite and frequently used gimmick of the clandestine professionals. When their veil of secrecy is shredded and they can no longer rely on a phony cover story to misinform the public, they resort to admitting—sometimes even volunteering—some of the truth while still managing to withhold the key and damaging facts in the case. The public, however, is usually so intrigued by the new information that it never thinks to pursue the matter further.”
At some level, there probably exists much more knowledge about the nature of the objects in the videos than we are being told.
We can’t know if these objects are related to the government’s missing $21 trillion, but if they’re not, I wonder: What technology was the military able to obtain with that kind of money?
You see, the missing trillions never comes up in conjunction with the mainstream media’s fascination with this Pentagon/CIA driven UFO narrative. However, the two are almost certainly related.
Even assuming that there is no prosaic explanation for what we’re seeing, I think there’s at least better than even odds that an American is at the controls (possibly by remote) of the craft shown in the videos.
And don’t, for one second, take the pilots’ bafflement at what they’re seeing as indicative of anything. They will be kept as in the dark as you and me when it comes to compartmented technologies.
While I’d like to know what they’re showing us, I am far more interested in Why Now? and To What End?
Via: New York Times:
The strange objects, one of them like a spinning top moving against the wind, appeared almost daily from the summer of 2014 to March 2015, high in the skies over the East Coast. Navy pilots reported to their superiors that the objects had no visible engine or infrared exhaust plumes, but that they could reach 30,000 feet and hypersonic speeds.
“These things would be out there all day,” said Lt. Ryan Graves, an F/A-18 Super Hornet pilot who has been with the Navy for 10 years, and who reported his sightings to the Pentagon and Congress. “Keeping an aircraft in the air requires a significant amount of energy. With the speeds we observed, 12 hours in the air is 11 hours longer than we’d expect.”
In late 2014, a Super Hornet pilot had a near collision with one of the objects, and an official mishap report was filed. Some of the incidents were videotaped, including one taken by a plane’s camera in early 2015 that shows an object zooming over the ocean waves as pilots question what they are watching.
“Wow, what is that, man?” one exclaims. “Look at it fly!”
See Why Tesla Scares The Legacy Players
May 26th, 2019Via: CleanTechnica:
EVs are the future, and Tesla is the undisputed market leader, especially in the US, but also globally. If you’re an automaker on the wrong side of this trend, it must be terrifying!
Starlink: Say Goodbye to the Night Sky As You Knew It
May 25th, 2019My children and I like to look at the stars on most clear nights. There is no ambient light pollution where we are so the views are breathtaking. I’ll have to tell them to try to remember the sky as it is now, because it will soon be crisscrossed by thousands of satellites.
Ironically, we’ve actually been out looking for the Starlink birds and hadn’t spotted them yet…
Most people in the developed world never have the opportunity to see stars in the night sky, so they won’t notice any difference.
Via: SatTrackCam:
SpaceX Starlink objects train 24 May 2019 from Marco Langbroek on Vimeo.
On 24 May 2019 at 2:30 UT, SpaceX launched STARLINK, a series of 60 satellites that is the first launch of many that will create a large constellation of satellites meant to provide global internet access.
Just short of a day after the launch, near 22:55 UT on May 24, this resulted in a spectacular view over NW Europe, when a “train” of bright satellites, all moving close together in a line, moved across the sky.
‘Pilots Are Losing Their Basic Flying Skills’
May 25th, 2019Via: USA Today:
Automation has made planes safer and more efficient, but the crashes of two Boeing 737 Max jets is leading some to wonder if there is a dangerous flip side.
While advanced autopilots and computers are now considered an integral part of any modern jetliner, many pilots worry that the systems are detracting from developing and maintaining their own abilities.
“We’ve been talking about this in the industry for years. Pilots are losing their basic flying skills and there’s an overreliance on automation,” said Les Westbrooks, an associate professor at Embry-Riddle Aeronautical University, after the latest 737 Max crash, an Ethiopian Airlines flight in March.
That crash followed the crash of a Lion Air flight into the Java Sea five months earlier. The two accidents together killed a total of 346 passengers and crew. Boeing is redesigning a key computerized system in the plane, but questions are being raised about pilot actions as well.
U.S. Military to Trawl Through 350 Billion Social Media Messages
May 25th, 2019“Individual users won’t be identified in the research, according to the Navy.”
Via: Bloomberg:
The U.S. military plans to analyze 350 billion social-media posts from around the world to help it track how popular movements evolve.
A tender for the project, based at the Naval Postgraduate School in Monterey, California, calls for screening messages from at least 200 million users from more than 100 countries in more than 60 languages to better understand “collective expression.” Messages, including user names, will be examined for comments, metadata, location and hometown identifiers.
While it’s part of an existing Department of Defense Analysis effort to harness big data for social research, “the scale and global reach of this program is striking,” Antoine Bousquet, a senior lecturer in international relations at Birkbeck, University of London, said by email.
The study’s purpose is to look at social-media messages posted publicly between July 2014 and December 2016 on a single platform, according to a solicitation request. No private communications will be included and individual users won’t be identified in the research, according to the Navy.
U.S. Army Asking “How Has Serving Impacted You?” Goes Very Wrong on Twitter
May 25th, 2019I only included the first two responses with this screenshot. At the link, you can keep scrolling down until your mouse wheel falls off if you want to see more.
Via: @USArmy:
Borderless
May 25th, 2019Via: Lauren Southern:
Defying Congress, Trump Sets $8 Billion-Plus in Weapons Sales to Saudi Arabia, UAE and Jordan
May 24th, 2019Mmm hmm.
Via: Reuters:
U.S. President Donald Trump, declaring a national emergency because of tensions with Iran, swept aside objections from Congress on Friday to complete the sale of over $8 billion worth of weapons to Saudi Arabia, the United Arab Emirates and Jordan.
The Trump administration informed congressional committees that it will go ahead with 22 military sales to the Saudis, United Arab Emirates and Jordan, infuriating lawmakers by circumventing a long-standing precedent for congressional review of major weapons sales.
Members of Congress had been blocking sales of offensive military equipment to Saudi Arabia and the United Arab Emirates for months, angry about the huge civilian toll from their air campaign in Yemen, as well as human rights abuses such as the murder of Saudi journalist Jamal Khashoggi at a Saudi consulate in Turkey.
