Ms. Greene is a Republican congresswoman who, as I understand it from the news media, I'm supposed to regard as a crank. I have no idea why, nor do I want to know. Suffice it to say that I've seen her name associated with general nuttiness.
Ms. Greene penned a Twitter thread the other day wherein she suggested that the progs are selling us out to China. Like any good conspiracy theory, it's got plenty of facts behind it. Two key ones for me are, first, the resources we allowed to go fallow in Afghanistan that the Chinese will now exploit, having signed a treaty with the Taliban within days of our frantic, "successful" departure.
The second is Afghanistan's location, placed astraddle what could be a superhighway from China to Iran and Turkey and thence to Europe. Her map, below, doesn't show that route, but it's not hard to figure it out from what was drawn.
She lays out China's mercantilist plans for world domination.
The Belt and Road Initiative is the centerpiece of Communist China’s economic plan.
Many countries all over the world are financially invested in helping China dominate the world in manufacturing and trade.
The entire world will depend on China for essential supplies.
Again, she's right on the money. After that, she swerves into the ditch.
They (the progressives) have been working for decades to shift America to Socialism without ever firing a bullet.
The pandemic is now providing the perfect cover and is being used as a political weapon to control people in order to finish the shift.
The first sentence is arguably correct, but the second is pure fantasy. I've said it before and I'll say it again, there is no plan. There is no plan. Of plans, there are none. The box of plans is empty and the cupboard wherein plans are kept is similarly barren of plans.
There's no plan.
The Elites don't know how anything works and have consequently lost the ability to think strategically. These are the same imbeciles who abandoned Bagram air base in the middle of the night, only to have to send 5,000+ soldiers to secure Freaking Kabul Airport* in a disorganized panic. This has led to a 10 point or more drop in Biden's poll numbers. They live and die on poll numbers, these priests of politics, so that hits them where it hurts the most. That wasn't planned, it was simply a consequence of their fantasies about social justice, the right side of history and all the rest.
These are the same people who are stunned to find that inflation is returning after having printed trillions of dollars while at the same time locking down the economy so there were fewer goods and services to buy.
These are the same people who were shocked to find that chasing the cops out of black neighborhoods led to more murdered blacks.
There's no plan. None. No plan at all. No conspiracies, either. They're not capable of conspiracies because they don't live in reality, they live in a world conjured up out of their sense of moral superiority.
John Kerry In China
I'll give one final data point that should put an end to the idea that the progs are working with China. John Kerry, that horse-faced avatar of progressive righteousness, just went to China to negotiate some kind of climate agreement with them. The Chinese don't give a rat's rear end about the environment and, having just seen our armies routed in Afghanistan, have no respect for this crew of morons at all. They sent Mr. Marry-Into-Money, Ivy-League Nincompoop packing with threats and demands. They told him that they wouldn't even consider a climate agreement until we did X, Y and Z. And if we do those, they'll come up with new demands.
Kerry's meeting with the Chinese, a perfect example of how the progs will relate with a serious superpower, went something like the video below. If that makes you think of what's going on here in the US as some kind of conspiracy, please see a mental health professional.
* - Freaking Kabul Airport is it's actual name.
5 comments:
As someone who works in the minerals industry myself, I can't say I am terribly impressed by the "huge mineral wealth in Afghanistan", for several reasons:
- As one of my friends in the industry says, "ore in the ground is worth nothing". What he means by this, is that the value isn't the gross value of the metal content. It is the price you can get for the final extracted and refined product, minus the cost of extracting and refining and shipping it to the customer. The majority of ore bodies have high enough costs that the actual net value is generally surprisingly small, and often goes negative when the market fluctuates.
- Also, ore in Afghanistan is of interest to multinational mining companies, but is not of any particular interest to me as an American. If we are concerned about the risks of being dependent on getting natural resources from China, then getting them from countries with unstable governments that are adjacent to China is not much of an improvement. The only thing that helps here is our own ores, or ores provided by close allies with stable governments, like Canada and Australia. And as far as that goes, mining ores in the US provides employment in the US. Mining outside the US does nothing for us, except provide another money sink overseas. It might benefit suppliers of mining equipment provided they can get the contracts, but Caterpillar does have a lot of foreign competition so that isn't necessarily going to happen.
- About 2/3 of the "value" shown on that chart is iron ore, to which I say, "big fat hairy deal". Iron ore is available all over the place. The area around me is lousy with current and former iron ore mines, all of which either have reserves for up to 50 years at current iron prices, or hundreds of years with either slightly increased iron prices or slightly lower-cost production technology. This is also true of much of Canada. And if you look at the Google Maps satellite image of Australia, almost the entire western half of the continent is dark reddish-brown to almost black. That's almost all iron ore. Hundreds of years of reserves at current prices/technology. And much of this is right on the coast, so shipping it all around the world is a breeze. Afghanistan is nothing like that, and as a landlocked country they'd have to ship it by rail all the way across Asia to actual steel mills, which is way more expensive than sending it by ship.
- There are similar issues with the other elements listed on the graphic. All of them are available from ore bodies in North America, if we care to get them. Copper, molybdenum, and gold are even being mined in quantity. And I think we should get what we can locally. Let the Afghans have their ores, we'll see if they get any benefit from them.
And, on your other point regarding Afghanistan being a "superhighway": I can't really see from where to where they are going to help transportation. They are landlocked, so the don't give access to a port. And if you look at the geography of the Afghan/China border, I certainly wouldn't want to be building roads through that mess.
A correction: I misread the pie chart somewhat, the iron ore is only slightly under half of the hypothetical trillion dollars, not 2/3. Still, given its location and the difficulty of transportation out of there, I can't imagine anyone outside of the immediate area being interested in Afghan iron. In fact, their best bet might be to pipe in natural gas from the Middle East to run direct-reduced iron plants on the spot, and ship out metallic iron instead of ore. And then use it right there in Afghanistan and Pakistan rather than selling it elsewhere. Again, maybe of interest to international investors and multinational mining companies, but not really of any real significance to the US as a country.
Yeah, I kind of wondered about that. Still, the Chinese moved in quickly. Does it make a difference if you just brute force your way to the ore, not caring about the damage done to the environment?
I think they also like the land route to Iran. If nothing else, Afghanistan is a piece on the board that prevents us from doing things in the region. It's what we had in our possession up until a month ago.
That goes back to my main point. Anyone with a lick of strategic sense would never have left Afghanistan. Having large bases in Central Asia, even ones only partially staffed, is an incredible advantage when your potential enemies are Pakistan, Iran and China. Now we have nothing save carrier air power which is only a torpedo or bomb away from landing in the ocean instead of on a deck.
Everyone on the JCS should be fired for not having been screaming and throwing tantrums about this.
"The first sentence is arguably correct, but the second is pure fantasy. I've said it before and I'll say it again, there is no plan. There is no plan. Of plans, there are none. The box of plans is empty and the cupboard wherein plans are kept is similarly barren of plans.
There's no plan."
Isn't it odd that the leftists -- including the Lavender Mafia burrowed within The One True Bureaucracy -- keep achieving the immediate aims, and keep drawing closer to their ultimate goal, with nary plan?
"The Elites don't know how anything works ..."
Catspaws generally are not members of the Planning Commission.
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