|
Article received from another list. David If you don't read the newspaper you are uninformed, if you do read the newspaper you are misinformed.--Mark Twain
July 21, 2010 America's Fast Track to the Third WorldBy Dan GorskiThe Department of
Defense has sounded an alarm about our access to a
strategically vital group of metals called the rare earth
elements. A report on the problem prepared by the
GAO is not pretty. It concludes that the Chinese now control
the production, processing, and manufacture of final products
of these vital metals and now own the patents for many of
these processes.
The worries of
the DoD are well-justified; missile guidance systems, smart
bombs, night vision gear, unmanned aircraft, and much more are
dependent on the rare earth elements in some way. Without
these metals, our weapons technology would be approximately
that of the Korean War. Battery-powered tools, hybrid
vehicles, the environmentalists' precious windmills, and
almost everything else electric cannot get by without them.
Rare earth
elements have been described as the vitamins of modern
technology. It took Beijing approximately twenty years to
strip this technology from its birthplace in
the United States and move it to China.
China's success
in capturing the entire production and manufacturing cycle for
the rare earth elements is only the beginning. Their long-term
strategy seems to be to repeat their rare earth coup
in other sectors of mining and manufacturing. Awash in cash,
they are on a gigantic worldwide shopping trip for resources of all
kinds. Copper, lead, zinc, and iron are on their list, to name
a few. Their reserves of U.S. dollars are being converted to
hard assets. Anyone with experience with the Chinese knows
that they are in the game to win. Their objective is world
domination by whatever means necessary. Aided by our
intellectually and morally challenged elites, they stand a
good chance of accomplishing it without firing a shot.
Why the Chinese
were able, at so little cost, to take away this vital sector
of our technology is a question that needs to be asked. The
answer is not hard to find. It is the natural result of a
fifty-year "jihad" against America's producers by the
environmental left. This alarm signal from the Department of
Defense marks the beginning of the endgame in this struggle.
It should now be clear that there is nothing less than the
survival of our Republic at stake. Fifty years of rapine and
pillage by a nihilistic, deranged environmental movement and a
government bureaucracy whose sole mitigating feature is its
incompetence has left us more and more dependent on somebody
else for the commodities and technology necessary for our
existence as a nation. A terminally ignorant public has
watched with detached indifference or has actively supported
this assault on our basic industries. Our national
consciousness is in the grip of such insanity that
schoolchildren are routinely taught to hate the people and
businesses that make their way of life possible. These
environmental chickens are now coming home to roost. We are at
the point where the bill for this half-century-long economic
and environmental stupor is coming due.
This nation is
going to have to realize that the ability to produce resources
and manufacture products defines its military capability and
its standard of living. This fact is as certain as the laws of
thermodynamics. Everything you can touch comes from the earth.
It must be mined, pumped, cut down, or grown by somebody.
Somebody has to process it, refine it, manufacture it, and
deliver it. In the vital sector of basic mineral commodities
and energy, those "somebodies" need to be domestic, not
foreign. The global economy, that our rulers told us would
provide all our necessities, is turning out to be the private
property of the Chinese, bought with our former money. Our
present leadership in Washington, D.C. and most of the rest of
our major institutions appear to have no concept of this
reality and do not vehemently object to it. It is no accident
that the military, our only government institution left with
any grounding in reality, is the one to sense the danger.
Mindless
obstruction by environmental NGOs and federal regulators now
make it almost impossible to develop new or upgrade old
productive facilities in this country. Work, absent
bureaucratic harassment and NGO opposition, that would have
cost hundreds of millions and taken months to complete, now
needs billions and takes decades to complete, if it ever is
completed at all. We are literally thirty years behind now,
and we are rapidly losing the ability to catch up
The government's
solution to this existential crisis is to tax its way out of a
recession and enact energy legislation so horrendous that it
will guarantee to "fast track" us to third-world status.
Environmental zealots in the EPA are on the verge of crippling
both the domestic shale oil/gas industry and the Texas petrochemical complex.
Legislation is in progress that
will essentially make it uneconomic to develop any mineral
resources on public land in the United States. The fevered
plan to stop Gulf oil development is their latest sortie into
the Twilight Zone. The damage now being inflicted on this
country is long-lasting and, if not reversed, fatal. If these
insane initiatives are implemented, the day will not be far
off when the United States will not have the talent,
technology, or money to restart its productive sector even if
it wants to.
When a country is
on a social and economic course so suicidal that the Russians
are warning us about it, some introspection is called for.
Post-racial, post-industrial, postmodern, post-fossil fuel,
post-common sense America has very little time left to
straighten out its priorities and reverse its slide into what
Leon Trotsky called "the dustbin of history."
The ironic
epilogue to all this is that when the United States completes
its journey to political, economic, and military impotence,
the Chinese will walk in and buy up our vast reserves of
mineral and energy resources with our own dollars and produce
them for their own use. They will not be bothered by
environmental niceties, and they will have the power to do as
they please. Environmentalists in their uncompromising,
unhinged war against our producers will have destroyed the
environment they were claiming to save.
Dan
Gorski is a mining geologist and CEO of a publicly traded
mining company.
49 Comments on "America's Fast Track to the Third
World"
-- Centroids: The Center of the Radical Centrist Community <[email protected]> Google Group: http://groups.google.com/group/RadicalCentrism Radical Centrism website and blog: http://RadicalCentrism.org |
Title: If you don't read the newspaper you are uninformed, if you
do read the
newspaper you are misinformed
- [RC] America's Fast Track to the Third World..... David R. Block
