From today's news:
"China has said it will cut exports of rare earth by 10% in 2011.
World manufacturers are heavily reliant on China for these minerals, which are essential for making many electronic goods, such as TVs and PC monitors."
The topic of my Senior Thesis concerned the rare earth chemicals. In those days this group of elements had little practical use. They were mainly of interest when used to separate elements with extremely close chemical and physical properties. Today these elements are used in great quantities to make TV And computer monitors. Imagine if we could no longer get monitors to go with our new computers.
So the Chinese are in a position to use the tools of Capitalism against us. Karl Marx once said he would sell the Capitalists the rope used to hang them. And here we see a monopoly of the chemicals needed to build the equipment needed to defend ourselves in time of war. The Chinese won't need a war to bring us to our knees. Just take away Dancing With the Stars and the US of A will collapse like a tired hound dog. But can you imagine a war in which the Chinese had the latest in technology and we had no monitors?
In an act of irony, during the Roaring Twenties much of the light generated used a bag coated with thorium to make the light brighter. Great quantities of thorium were extracted and the junk left over from isolating the thorium from the original ore was strewn about the location of present day Chicago to raise the ground level. Rare earth minerals are present in commercially large percentages in the same ore in which thorium is found. We could reclaim the rare earths but would destroy Chicago in the process. Irony? To quote a conservative presidential thinker."You betcha!"
Irony is proof that we're all on this flight together.
Dick
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