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18·2 hours agoArresting a soldier for doing something your entire government is openly doing
5·11 hours agothe picture of the author looks like a parody of who would write an article like this
USA continuing to hunt the globe for rare earths
https://tass.com/world/2121251
Lula da Silva calls sale of rare earths mining company to US disgrace
RIO DE JANEIRO, April 23. /TASS/. Brazilian President Luiz Inacio Lula da Silva has blasted the sale of Brazilian rare earth metals producer Serra Verde to the American mining company USA Rare Earth. He accused former governor of the Goias state Ronaldo Caiado, who signed the agreement, of abuse of authority.
more (5 paragraphs)
“Caiado has entered into an agreement with American companies, which he has no right to do, since the issue of resources [is the responsibility of] the federal government. If we don’t move proactively, people like him will sell Brazil. We cannot allow this,” the Brasil 247 portal quoted him as saying.
The head of state said the agreement was a disgrace, but did not indicate whether the federal government would try to review it. The Brasil 247 portal added that “sharp debates about national sovereignty” and control over strategic resources have already arisen in the Brazilian government.
As stated in article 20 of the Brazilian constitution, mineral resources, including those in the subsoil, are the exclusive property of the Union. According to the ninth paragraph of this article, the disposal of these resources is the responsibility of the federal government. This provision of the country’s basic law calls into question the legality of any independent agreements between the states of the country and foreign companies covering mining strategic raw materials such as rare earths.
About the deal
USA Rare Earth struck a $2.8 billion deal to acquire 100% of the shares in Serra Verde in an effort to help the United States and its allies reduce their dependence on rare earth supplies from China.
The Brazilian company is the only major manufacturer outside of Asia capable of supplying the four main elements needed to create permanent magnets: neodymium, praseodymium, dysprosium and terbium. Serra Verde is expected to account for more than 50% of the supply of heavy rare earth metals outside China by 2027. The deal is supported by the US government and includes a 15-year contract with fixed minimum prices for the metals.
Berletic and Medhurst are arguing that the US will try to cut off China’s access to energy by creating a “blockade at a distance” that would be difficult for Chinese military power to reach.
I took it a little bit out of context. It’s more like, “the overall aim is to strangle China, and this contributes.”
Brian Berletic at 44:03, end of the first video
https://inv.nadeko.net/watch?v=2e_z3cctHSE
The takeaway here is, if this war really is about strangling and collapsing China, this war against Iran is not going to stop. It will not stop, nothing will stop it, because, as long as it’s taking place, China is being strangled, in terms of energy imports. China knew this – this is what forced the US to launch it in the first place – they [China] were rapidly moving toward energy independence, faster than the US could close the trap. So they [the US] have rushed, and they have done this, the outcome is unpredictable, this was reckless, and everyone is going to pay, finding out how this all ends.
Maybe this is why this war simultaneously looks like 5D chess and panicked flailing. In Berletic’s analysis, it’s both.
The article links to Brian Berletic’s and Richard Medhurst’s analyses on youtube, that’s what those are ^
Biden Official: Biden Was Preparing To Bomb Iran If Re-Elected
https://www.caitlinjohnst.one/p/biden-official-biden-was-preparing
Former senior Biden advisor Amos Hochstein said during an interview on Sunday that the Biden administration had been preparing to bomb Iran if they had won re-election in 2024.
more:
Hochstein was asked by Face the Nation’s Margaret Brennan, “In July 2024 Secretary Blinken claimed Iran was one or two weeks away from having enough fissile material breakout capacity to eventually make a weapon if Iran had decided to do so. There were indirect negotiations that the Biden administration did, but it went nowhere. So when President Trump argues that he did what no other president would, is it just simply that the bill was coming due and it fell on his watch?”
“I do think there’s a certain element to that, and that’s why I was supportive of President Trump joining in in June to take the strikes that we had thought internally in the Biden administration, we may have to take if there was a second term,” Hochstein replied. “We thought that the spring, summer of 2025 was probably, we may have to be there in the same place. And we did, we did war games. We did some practice runs on what it would look like to look into it, because that may have had to happen under our watch as well.”
Hochstein, for the record, is an Israel-born IDF veteran who reportedly played a major role in the Biden administration encouraging Israel’s horrific bombardment of Lebanon in September 2024. And his narrative that an attack on Iranian nuclear facilities “may have had to happen” under a theoretical second Biden term is false.
In March of last year, US intelligence chief Tulsi Gabbard testified before Congress that the intelligence community “continues to assess that Iran is not building a nuclear weapon and supreme leader Khomeini [sic] has not authorized the nuclear weapons program that he suspended in 2003,” contradicting both the claims of President Trump and of Antony Blinken the year before.
But even if you accept that Iran was a nuclear risk, there was nothing stopping the Biden administration from simply restarting the nuclear deal that the Obama administration secured with Tehran in 2015. The JCPOA was working fine while it was in place; anyone who says otherwise is a lying warmonger. Trump and his handlers torched the JCPOA in 2018 because it was the primary obstacle preventing them from getting to war with Iran, and the Biden administration refused to reverse this move because they wanted war too.
[Embedded tweet by Branco Marcetic – https://xcancel.com/BMarchetich/status/2046284223187726497]
Democratic partisans have been pointing to Trump’s war for weeks to chide Hasan Piker and anyone else they blame (read: everyone but themselves) for losing in 2024. But it turns out the Biden admin was planning to attack Iran if they won a 2nd term
The Democrats were beating the drums of war for Iran well ahead of the 2024 election. Here’s an excerpt from the official 2024 Democratic Party platform explicitly attacking Trump for not going to war with Iran in his first term:
“All of this stands in sharp contrast to Trump’s fecklessness and weakness in the face of Iranian aggression during his presidency. In 2018, when Iranian-backed militias repeatedly attacked the U.S. consulate in Basra, Iraq Trump’s only response was to close our diplomatic facility. In June 2019, when Iran shot down a U.S. surveillance aircraft operating in international airspace above the Straits of Hormuz, Trump responded by tweet and then abruptly called off any actual retaliation, causing confusion and concern among his own national security team. In September 2019, when Iranian-backed groups threatened global energy markets by attacking Saudi oil infrastructure, Trump failed to respond against Iran or its proxies. In January 2020, when Iran, for the first and only time in its history, directly launched ballistic missiles against U.S. troops in western Iraq, Trump mocked the resulting Traumatic Brain Injuries suffered by dozens of American servicemembers as mere ‘headaches’ — and again, took no action.”
Kamala Harris, who controversially replaced the dementia-addled Biden as the Democratic candidate late in the race, labeled Iran the number one enemy of the United States. In their 2024 debate, Harris repeatedly slammed Trump for being too soft on America’s enemies and announced that she “will always give Israel the ability to defend itself, in particular as it relates to Iran and any threat that Iran and its proxies pose to Israel.”
I’ve seen a lot of people trying to argue that Trump’s depravity in Iran proves everyone should support Democrats, but it’s clear the Democratic Party is just the more polite-looking face on the same evil power structure.
The war with Iran was always planned. Analysts like Brian Berletic and Richard Medhurst have been laying out solid arguments that this American war is more about attacking the economic and energy interests of Russia and China in a last-ditch effort to retain planetary hegemony than it is about assisting Israel. This places the United States on a dangerous trajectory toward increasingly hostile escalations between nuclear-armed powers.
These moves were planned years in advance, and would have been rolled out regardless of what impotent meat puppet happened to be wheeled into office in January 2025.
You don’t get to vote out an empire. Whether or not the US will continue working to dominate the planet will never be on the ballot. We will continue seeing reckless US wars of immense human consequence until the empire falls, or until the American people bring the revolutionary change to their country that the world so desperately needs.
Any idea what the scale of disruption from that is? Finding reliable information related to Ukraine is a nightmare
That’s true, but I’m not talking about seizing ships, or attacking just Iranian ships, I specifically mean damaging or sinking ships belonging to nations the US is not openly at war with. If the US wants a global blockade, munitions scale better than boarding ships with helicopters. Currently, afaik, most shadow shipments do not get seized. It would need to be a robust blockade, affecting more than just Iran. China is already 85% energy self-sufficient, and 20% of their oil imports are from Russia, a nation willing to operate a shadow fleet and potentially fire back if fired upon by the US.
Not in this century, but they are visibly building up their military as fast as they can. If someone tells them “You can’t have oil anymore unless you stop the BRI and submit to vassalage,” maybe that would be their red line.
I just mean “politics” as shorthand for “everything that might happen.” Politics is a negotiating layer to mediate all the other leverage nations and constituencies have, or think they have. If the US started targeting the shipping of 3rd parties, stuff would happen, threats would be made, some relationships may shift, it’s a question of how it all balances out in the eyes of the US. Nations that might not stick their necks out for Gaza or Iran may do so for themselves. Or they might not – that’s why I posted this thread, to hear everyone’s takes.
Just to play devil’s advocate, possibly foolishly – If the US breaks the taboo on sinking or damaging cargo ships, can’t anyone with a fleet of nuclear subs do the same? As Boise_Idaho mentioned, Russia and China combined have quite a few more subs than the US, and greater industrial capacity to replace cargo ships and build more subs as needed. Russia has demonstrated willingness to take military initiative when cornered, and China is building up its military at breakneck speed in apparent anticipation of war. Also, China may depend on US consumers but doesn’t the US likewise depend on Chinese producers?
Maybe I’m just logical enough to be annoying but I don’t really grasp the situation, if so I apologize lol
Is this a bit or is there some lore on Larry Johnson
For me it’s a question of timing – Medhurst’s thesis is that US piracy could cause durable capital flight to the US. That requires a sufficiently long period of time in which the US has the energy market cornered. But a symmetrical blockade by both sides would not corner the market for anyone. So there would have to be an initial period of asymmetry, and that initial period would have to be long enough to trigger capital flight – presumably, long enough for industries to collapse or atrophy (is that wrong?). Sincere non-rhetorical question, is this plausible?
Didn’t a ship already defy the US on its way to Venezuela, albeit unsuccessfully? I kinda missed that story.
I agree that the US is infinitely willing to sink infinitely many civilian cargo ships. What I’m wondering is, if they started sinking 3rd party cargo ships, e.g., Chinese ships, what retaliation would they face, how high up the escalation ladder would that be and how long could they remain at that level of the ladder.
As for Larry Johnson, I know the adage is that there are no ex-CIA, but he seems to be ex-CIA. From what I’ve seen, his takes tend to align with other commentators in the anti-US geopolitics circuit. Unless he’s nefariously steering them, I think he’s just an analyst who saw enough to become bitter. Or I’m too credulous.
From yesterday (20th): although Larry Johnson has not watched Medhurst’s video yet, he has apparently heard of it. Johnson says he disagrees with the idea that this war will strengthen the petrodollar. (More bluntly, he says “Dude, what are you smoking.”)
It’s not exactly a rebuttal (just a flippant aside), but it’s at least interesting that, at some point, when he heard “A journalist has argued that this war could actually strengthen the petrodollar,” apparently no scenario popped into his head that he thought was credible.
Timestamp is 33:58 https://inv.nadeko.net/watch?v=aUIRaWUtgTA
I think Johnson is not impressed with US threats to blockade shipping at a distance, at least at this stage. Last week on Diesen’s show he said the US needs to use helicopters to interdict ships, because the US lacks the political ability to threaten to sink cargo ships at sea (*or more accurately is not ready to escalate that far yet), and therefore the ships would call their bluff. If that premise holds, it raises the issue that a carrier with helicopters can only cover so much area at sea, and then there are issues on top of that like maintenance strain on the aircraft, etc.
Timestamp is 3:08 https://inv.nadeko.net/watch?v=78osgairBb4
I guess, by that reasoning, the central question becomes, would the US open fire on cargo ships belonging to third parties? And if so, what would happen?
They wrote it in such a vague and euphemistic way, too, like they are deliberately discouraging critical thought and trying to speak directly to the fascist subconscious of the liberal reader.
The “20x the going rate” estimate appears to be expert commentary by someone speaking to the media (Yoshikiyo Shimamine speaking to Nikkei, behind a paywall), not a published study. It’s so early that there’s probably no reliable number or scaling curve or roadmap that anyone can point to. It seems to be vibes at this point.
There’s a surprisingly lengthy wikipedia article on it which includes a map. The yellow-orange lines are rails.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Interoceanic_Corridor_of_the_Isthmus_of_Tehuantepec