The Lost Kingdoms of Africa: Assante Kingdom

BBC (2013)

Film Review

The Asante kingdom arose out of federation of Akan states. Dentye had the richest goldmines and was the most powerful. In the 15th century the Akan used primitive axes and slaves (most likely imported from modern day Nigeria) to clear their forests for agriculture. As the owner of one of the largest gold fields in the world, the Akan used gold to pay for their slaves, a well as textiles, brass, salt (from North Africa) and guns (from Portuguese traders). Asante slaves were allowed to own property and could marry into the families who owned them.

The Assante kingdom reached its zenith in the early 1800s, with over 2 million people and a geographic area 20 times the size of South Africa. The king ruled from a central palace in the capitol Kumasi and created a bureaucracy of administrators to implement his laws. Gold dust was the main currency, and nuggets and ingots were melted down to dust so they could be weighed accuracy. Taxation was used both to fund the government and to ensure no single individual became too wealthy.

As Asante’s power increased, Britain became more interested in the black slaves they captured in battle than their gold. During the 18th century. Asante was in a state of constant war* with inland neighbors and began selling their war captives to the British rather than killing them.

The Asante kingdom was significantly weakened in 1807 when the British abolished slavery. As trade in other commodities increased, traders moved away from the capitol to the southern coat. Gold became more scarce as people began burying it instead of paying taxes. In the second half of the 19th century, some of the southern provinces rebelled and turned to the British for support. In 1874, after British troops burned Kumasi to the ground, the southern provinces became British territory known as the Gold Coast.

In 1880, 16-year-old Prepe I became king and reestablished the gold trade. Determined to make the entire kingdom a British colony, the UK used military force to force Prepe I into exile and incorporate all of Assante into the Gold Coast. In 1924, Prepe returned from exile as a puppet king under British rule. In 1957, all the old Asante traditions were revived with Ghana’s independence.

Osei Tutu II (born Nana Barima Kwaku Duah May 6 1950) is the 16th Asantehene, enstooled** on 26 April 1999. He governs the Asante region of Ghana.

The Asante Mansa is a modern sacred ceremony celebrating the seven clans of Akan people  who cleared forest to found the Assante kingdom. According to tradition, the seven clans emerged from holes in the ground.

*Asante had no standing army, but every village had reservists who were summoned by drums when needed to defend the king.

**In the Asante kingdom, a small stool was used to designate authority. Replicas are still sold in markets in southern Ghana.

Dr. John Campbell | December 21, 2024

Rumble

Medical Embalmers Across The Country

Former Air Force Major Thomas Haviland surveyed embalmers in 2024 about unusual clots being found in the bodies of vaccinated deceased.

NEW YORK – I’ve seen the clots vary from case to case, since the covid shot came around, we have had many young deaths i.e.: 50-60 year-olds with massive heart attacks and every one of them has had clots as discussed in this survey, seems many people just want to turn a blind eye to it all, it’s a shame. As someone who’s been around this for about 12 years, I have never seen anything like this.

VIRGINIA – I’m finding a lot of the white rubbery clots and had been taking pictures of them but it’s become the new normal… I don’t use a drain tube anymore because of all the clots. blood clots and the fibrous white ones. My angular forceps is my to go instrument to help remove them…

OHIO – The past few years I have seen a significantly larger percentage of clotting in almost all embalmings. These white fibrous clots are definitely unusual having never seen them before 2021. Although not seeing the white fibrous clots or micro clotting in a larger percentage of deceased, the number of grape jelly clots has significantly increased from years past in all decedents.

IDAHO – Sometimes I am given the information about if someone has had a certain vaccine. Sometimes I am aware they have had 5-6 doses of it. These are the people we are seeing with the abnormal clots or significant amount of clots.

FLORIDA – With many embalmings that I have seen these clots in, I have had to inject in multiple points. Both with case’s refrigerated and prep done within a couple of hours after death.

FLORIDA – Seems like traditional “chicken fat clots” are less frequent being replaced with Jelly, Fibrous, Micro-clotting.

IOWA – Very thick and large, I have had some the whole diameter of the arteries and longer than a foot long.

LOUISIANA – Some of these fibrous blots come out as a whole, if done carefully, that mimic the arterial system. These clots are clearly the cause of demise of these decedents, but were legally labeled as heart issues, which are not typically autopsied to fully determine actual cause of death.

NORTH DAKOTA – I have had SEVERAL cases in 2020-2023 of the white fibrous clots and most had COVID listed as a factor on their death certificates. However, in each case the family did not know if the decedent was vaccinated.

FLORIDA – Unusual clots has changed since COVID vaccine I only took 2 vaccine Pfizer refuse to take booster nor vaccine again.

Exclusive: 70% of Embalmers Report Finding Strange Blood Clots Beginning in Mid-2021 https://childrenshealthdefense.org/defender/blood-clots-embalmers-report-mid-2021-covid-vaccines

Covid Vaccine Injury Global Study: http://www.react19.org/study

Covid vaccine injury medical expense fund: http://www.react19.org/donate

Original: https://youtu.be/sVpFs2VTgf8

https://www.youtube.com/@Campbellteaching

LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/dr-john-campbell-5256223b

Twitter: https://twitter.com/Johnincarlisle

[…]

Via https://alethonews.com/2024/12/24/covid-19-vaccines-white-clots-results-2024/

At the urging of Dr. Geschickter, the CIA provided $375,000 toward the construction of a new medical facility at Georgetown University Hospital. In return, Geschickter agreed to let the CIA use one-sixth of the new “Gorman Annex” as its “hospital safehouse” and to provide “human patients and volunteers for experimental use.”

Edited by Michael Evans | National Security Archive | December 23, 2024

Today, the National Security Archive and ProQuest (part of Clarivate) celebrate the publication of a new scholarly document collection many years in the making on the shocking secret history of the CIA’s mind control research programs. The new collection, CIA and the Behavioral Sciences: Mind Control, Drug Experiments and MKULTRA, brings together more than 1,200 essential records on one of the most infamous and abusive programs in CIA history.

Under code names that included MKULTRA, BLUEBIRD and ARTICHOKE, the CIA conducted terrifying experiments using drugs, hypnosis, isolation, sensory deprivation, and other extreme techniques on human subjects, often U.S. citizens, who frequently had no idea what was being done to them or that they were part of a CIA test.

Today’s announcement comes 50 years after a New York Times investigation by Seymour Hersh touched off probes that would bring MKULTRA abuses to light. The new collection also comes 70 years since U.S. pharmaceutical giant Eli Lilly & Company first developed a process to streamline the manufacture of LSD in late 1954, becoming the CIA’s chief supplier of the newly discovered psychoactive chemical central to many of the Agency’s behavior control efforts.

Highlights of the new MKULTRA collection include:

• A DCI-approved plan in 1950 for the establishment of “interrogation teams” that would “utilize the polygraph, drugs, and hypnotism to attain the greatest results in interrogation techniques.” (Document 2)
• A 1951 memo that captures a meeting between CIA and foreign intelligence officials about mind control research and their shared interest in the concept of individual mind control. (Document 3)
• A 1952 entry from the daily calendar of George White, a federal narcotics agent who ran a safehouse where the CIA tested drugs like LSD and performed other experiments on unwitting Americans. (Document 5)
• A 1952 report on the “successful” use of ARTICHOKE interrogation methods that combined the use of “narcosis” and “hypnosis” to induce regression and later amnesia on “Russian agents suspected of being doubled.” (Document 6)
• A 1956 memo in which MKULTRA chief Sidney Gottlieb signs off a project that would “evaluate the effects of large doses of LSD-25 in normal human volunteers” on federal prisoners in Atlanta. (Document 13)
• The 1963 report from the CIA’s inspector general, which led CIA leadership to reexamine the use of unwitting Americans in their covert drug testing program. (Document 16)
• The 1983 deposition of MKULTRA chief Sidney Gottlieb in a civil case brought by Velma “Val” Orlikow, a victim of CIA-sponsored projects conducted by Dr. Ewen Cameron at the Allan Memorial Institute in Montreal. (Document 20)

The challenges facing this documentation project were considerable, as CIA director Richard Helms and longtime MKULTRA chief Sidney Gottlieb destroyed most of the original project records in 1973. It is a story about secrecy—perhaps the most infamous cover-up in the Agency’s history. It is also a history marked by near-total impunity at the institutional and individual levels for countless abuses committed across decades—not during interrogations of enemy agents or in wartime situations, but during ordinary medical treatments, inside prison hospitals, addiction clinics, and juvenile detention facilities, and in many cases led by top figures in the field of the behavioral sciences. Despite the Agency’s efforts to erase this hidden history, the documents that survived this purge and that have been gathered together here present a compelling and unsettling narrative of the CIA’s decades-long effort to discover and test ways to erase and re-program the human mind.

The bulk of these records were drawn from records compiled by John Marks, the former State Department official who filed the first Freedom of Information Act requests on the subject and whose 1979 book, The Search for the “Manchurian Candidate”: The CIA and Mind Control: The Secret History of the Behavioral Sciences (New York, W. W. Norton & Company, 1979) remains the single most important source on this episode. Marks later donated his FOIA documents and other research papers to the National Security Archive. Many of the redactions in the documents have been effectively removed with the passage of time, as official investigations, civil depositions, and detailed histories have shed significant light on some of these episodes. In many cases, copies of declassified records donated by Marks to the National Security Archive bear his handwritten annotations.

The legacy of MKULTRA goes far beyond the various “subprojects” described in these documents and that were largely shut down by the mid-1970s. As author Stephen Kinzer points out, the CIA’s behavior control research programs “contributed decisively to the development of techniques that Americans and their allies used at detention centers in Vietnam, Latin America, Afghanistan, Iraq, Guantanamo Bay, and secret prisons around the world.” MKULTRA techniques were cited in the CIA’s 1963 KUBARK interrogation manual that was the basis for prisoner interrogations in Vietnam and later in anti-communist dictatorships in Latin America.[1]

While many of the MKULTRA projects were conducted in hospitals, laboratories, or other institutional settings, others were carried out in clandestine CIA safehouses staffed not by doctors or clinicians but by hard-nosed federal narcotics agents like George Hunter White. Under the direction of Gottlieb, White adopted the persona of a bohemian artist named “Morgan Hall” to lure unsuspecting victims to his “pad” where he and his CIA collaborators secretly experimented on them and recorded their behavior. An OSS veteran who had worked on “truth drug” development for the Army in World War II, White surreptitiously dosed many of his victims with LSD, a drug that the CIA had in abundance thanks to Eli Lilly, which had developed the capacity to produce the drug in “tonnage quantities” and had agreed to become the Agency’s supplier. Gottlieb, his deputy Robert Lashbrook, and CIA psychologist John Gittinger are among the CIA officials who frequently visited White’s safehouses.

Of particular interest is the mysterious 1953 death of Frank Olson, an Army chemist and aerosols specialist for the Special Operations Division (SOD) of the Army’s Chemical Corps, the CIA’s military partner in behavior control research. Officially ruled a suicide, Olson’s death from a 10-story fall in New York City came 10 days after Gottlieb and TSS staff spiked his cocktail with LSD during a CIA-SOD work retreat at Deep Creek Lake, Maryland. The drugging was later determined to have contributed to his death, but many, including members of his family, have questioned the conclusion that Olson—who was sharing a room with Lashbrook that night—threw himself out the window of the Statler Hotel.

At the center of it all was Sidney Gottlieb, the head of the Technical Services Staff (TSS) of the CIA’s Chemical Division and later director of the Technical Services Division (TSD). Gottlieb was “the CIA’s chief poison maker,” according to Kinzer, whose book, Poisoner in Chief: Sidney Gottlieb and the CIA Search for Mind Control (New York: Henry Holt, 2019), is the definitive work on the mercurial chemist. From his position deep inside the CIA’s secret corridors, Gottlieb led the Agency’s decades-long effort to find ways to use drugs, hypnosis, and other extreme methods to control human behavior and, it was hoped, turn them into usable tools for intelligence agencies and policymakers.

Stories about the CIA’s involvement in unsuccessful efforts to assassinate Prime Minister Patrice Lumumba of Congo and Cuban leader Fidel Castro, among others, are among the most legendary, if not the most successful, examples of the Agency’s efforts to operationalize the tricks and tools assembled by Gottlieb’s unit. Less well known is his role in drug experiments and “special interrogation” programs that left hundreds of people psychologically damaged and others “permanently shattered,” according to Kinzer.[2]

Although MKULTRA was approved at the highest levels, it operated with virtually no oversight. As Marks notes, the initial MKULTRA budget authorization “exempted the program from the normal CIA financial controls” and “allowed TSS to start up research projects ‘without the signing of the usual contracts or other written agreements.’”[3] With little accountability, boundless resources, and the backing of CIA covert operations chief Richard Helms, Gottlieb and his staff at TSS developed a series of bizarre experiments that they believed would enhance covert intelligence operations while at the same time improving the Agency’s defenses against the use of similar techniques by enemy forces.

By the time Gottlieb arrived at CIA in 1952, Project BLUEBIRD, which explored “the possibility of control of an individual by application of Special Interrogation techniques,” was already well underway.[4] Led by Office of Security chief Morse Allen, the early BLUEBIRD experiments were performed by teams that included polygraph experts and psychologists and were conducted on detainees and suspected informants at secret U.S. interrogation facilities in Japan and Germany.

The elevation of Allen Dulles to deputy director of central intelligence in 1951 led to an expansion of BLUEBIRD programs under a new name, ARTICHOKE, and under the direction of Gottlieb at TSS. The new program was to include, among other projects, the development of “gas guns” and “poisons,” and experiments to test whether “monotonous sounds,” “concussion,” “electroshock,” and “induced sleep” could be used as a means to gain “hypnotic control of an individual.”[5]

It was under ARTICHOKE that the Agency first began to more systematically recruit the top researchers and court the most prestigious institutions to collaborate in its mind control research. One of the first to participate was the deputy director of Boston Psychopathic Hospital, Dr. Robert Hyde, who in 1949 was the first American to “trip” on LSD after the hospital acquired samples of the drug from Sandoz laboratory in Switzerland. In 1952, the CIA began to fund the hospital’s LSD research, under which Hyde used himself, his colleagues, student volunteers, and hospital patients as his subjects. Hyde would work on four MKULTRA subprojects over the next decade.

Shortly after Dulles became DCI in 1953, he authorized MKULTRA, expanding the Agency’s behavior control research and refocusing it on the development of “a capability in the covert use of biological and chemical materials” in “present and future clandestine operations.”[6] Many of the 149 MKULTRA subprojects were carried out through well-regarded universities like Cornell, Georgetown, Rutgers, Illinois, and Oklahoma. Dr. Carl Pfeiffer, the chairman of the Department of Pharmacology of Emory University, directed four MKULTRA subprojects, all of which involved the use of drugs, including LSD, to induce psychotic states. The horrifying series of experiments left many of his subjects—including prisoners at the Atlanta Federal Penitentiary and juveniles housed at a detention facility in Bordentown, New Jersey—scarred for life.

Many other MKULTRA subprojects were established through grants from false foundations funded by the CIA. One of these, the Geschickter Fund for Medical Research, run by Dr. Charles Geschickter, a professor of pathology at Georgetown University, steered millions of CIA dollars into research programs at Georgetown and other institutions. As part of the agreement, the CIA gained access to a medical safehouse at the newly constructed Gorman Annex of Georgetown University Hospital along with a ready supply of patients and students to use as subjects for MKULTRA experiments.

Another prominent MKULTRA “cutout” foundation, the Human Ecology Society, was run by Cornell Medical Center neurologist Dr. Harold Wolff, who wrote an early study of communist brainwashing techniques for Allen Dulles and later partnered with the CIA to develop a combination of drugs and sensory deprivation that could be used to erase the human mind. Among the most extreme MKULTRA projects funded through Wolff’s group were the infamous “depatterning” experiments conducted by Dr. D. Ewen Cameron at the Allan Memorial Institute, a psychiatric hospital at McGill University in Montreal, Canada. Cameron’s methods combined induced sleep, electroshocks, and “psychic driving,” under which drugged subjects were psychologically tortured for weeks or months in an effort to reprogram their minds.

[…]

View the documents

Via https://alethonews.com/2024/12/25/national-security-archive-publishes-key-records-on-infamous-mkultra-program/

People’s Daily Online

HOHHOT, Dec. 22 (Xinhua) — In the sparse, sandy grasslands of Jarud Banner in north China’s Inner Mongolia Autonomous Region, machinery is filling wind-eroded pits and laying sand barriers while workers are busy supporting the comprehensive management of Horqin Sandy Land.

“Our independently developed sand-fixing machine processes raw materials like reeds and straw into grass mats for sand barrier installation,” said Yu Dongjiang from M-Grass Ecological Environment (Group) Co., Ltd.

The sand-fixing machine is simple in structure, easy to operate, and highly adaptable to various terrains. It improves raw material utilization efficiency, enabling the installation of nearly 30,000 meters of sand barriers daily, according to Yu, who is also the project manager for the comprehensive management of the northern central Horqin Sandy Land.

Previously, the manual weaving of grass mats required significant labor and time.

Yu’s project shows China’s wider push to advance ecological restoration. In the arid landscapes of northern China, cutting-edge technology is transforming the fight against desertification into a story of hope and renewal.

From satellite monitoring systems to innovative tree-planting tools, the integration of advanced equipment has elevated traditional reforestation efforts.

In Inner Mongolia’s Kubuqi Desert, for example, drones have been employed to plant seeds across vast stretches of barren land, significantly improving efficiency and survival rates. These seeds, combined with specially developed nutrient packs, ensure saplings thrive in challenging environments.

While in northwest China’s Gansu Province, solar energy projects are being combined with afforestation programs at the southern edge of the Tengger Desert, creating a synergy that not only restores ecosystems but also boosts local economic development.

Local villagers are also finding employment in these initiatives, blending green technology with grassroots participation.

“I never would have imagined that as a farmer, I could find work in the sand dunes,” said Qin Zhaoping, a resident of Hengliang Township in Gansu’s Gulang County. His job involves adjusting the sprinkler irrigation systems beneath photovoltaic panels and tending to the thriving sand plants.

For Qin, photovoltaic-based desert control is a meaningful effort that benefits future generations. “It generates electricity, combats desertification, and provides me with an income from working here,” he said.

According to official data, 53 percent of China’s treatable desertified land has been restored, leading to a net reduction of approximately 4.33 million hectares of degraded land.

One of the country’s landmark ecological projects is the Three-North Shelterbelt Forest Program. Since 1978, China has expanded its afforestation area by 32 million hectares under the program.

Meanwhile, China’s desertification control technologies and equipment are making their way onto the global stage, sharing ecological restoration expertise with other countries and regions.

To join the efforts of the Global South, China has launched desertification control centers with Arab states and Mongolia, created demonstration sites in Central Asia and Africa, and provided satellite technology and big data support for Africa’s Great Green Wall initiative.

In December, Yu’s company signed a memorandum of understanding with the municipal government of Ulaanbaatar in Mongolia to enhance the country’s ecological environment and promote practical cooperation.

The collaboration includes conducting ecological restoration in desert areas surrounding the city, and jointly developing, maintaining, and cultivating plant resources.

“Through smart machinery, innovative research on grass species, big data analysis, and seed packages, the company has developed a scientific and efficient path for ecological restoration,” said Yu.

“The integrated use of these technologies not only improves the success rate of ecological restoration but also significantly reduces the cost of restoration,” Yu added.

China’s global cooperation in combating desertification also won praise from experts and officials during the 16th session of the Conference of the Parties (COP16) of the UN Convention to Combat Desertification (UNCCD) held in December.

“We’re incredibly proud to be a partner with China. China has been a pioneer in showing how to create prosperous areas in areas that were once desertified and degraded. And we are proud to partner with you (China) to bring those lessons to other countries,” said Valerie Hickey, global director for the environment at the World Bank, at the conference.

[…]

Via http://en.people.cn/n3/2024/1223/c90000-20257040.html

SEASIDE HEIGHTS,  NJ –

Drone sightings in Ocean County and other part of the state are down this week. This comes after state and federal authorities, who previously dismissed the sightings as planes, planets, and stars, started looking into it.

According to Ocean County Sheriff Michael Mastronardy, whose agency operates an oceanfront drone command center, sightings are also down.

After reports of large car-sized drones flying over military bases, trailing Coast Guard vessels, and swarming the beachhead at up to 50 strong, they have suddenly stopped appearing.

For weeks, unexplained drones appeared in the skies over New Jersey, capturing the attention of residents and raising concerns among officials. These weren’t hobbyist drones buzzing innocuously through the air—witnesses reported seeing larger, more sophisticated devices operating in what appeared to be a coordinated manner. And now, just as suddenly as they appeared, the drones have vanished.

What hasn’t disappeared, however, are the questions about their origin and purpose. Neither state nor federal agencies have provided any concrete explanations, leaving residents to wonder: What exactly was going on?

The Drone Sightings

Reports of the mysterious drones came from various parts of New Jersey, often in less populated areas or near infrastructure such as power plants or highways. Witnesses described their size as larger than consumer drones and noted their unusual flight patterns, suggesting they weren’t being operated by hobbyists.

The sightings followed a pattern seen in other parts of the country in recent years, where swarms of drones were spotted moving in grids or formations, raising suspicions that they were part of military exercises or private sector testing. However, no entity—public or private—has stepped forward to claim responsibility for the New Jersey drones.

A Silent Government Response

Requests for information from agencies such as the FAA, Department of Defense, and Department of Homeland Security have yielded little insight. The FAA, which oversees the airspace in which the drones were seen, offered general statements about drone regulations but declined to address the specific incidents.

State officials have expressed similar frustration, with some local law enforcement agencies stating they lack the resources to track and identify drones of this size and sophistication. This lack of transparency from higher levels of government has only deepened public unease.

The federal government’s silence may stem from national security concerns, as disclosing certain operations could compromise their effectiveness. However, this explanation offers little comfort to those who feel the public has a right to know whether potentially invasive or hazardous activity was taking place in their communities.

While some leaders such as U.S. Senator Cory Booker, U.S. Congressmen Chris Smith and Jeff Van Drew raised the red flag on these drones, Governor Phil Murphy and the Administration of President Joe Biden have dismissed any concerns to public safety and national security.

New Jersey Governor Phil Murphy went as far as telling New Jersey to “calm down” over the drone hysteria.

Like other sightings around the world, they just stopped. Perhaps it was a surveillance operation, and the foreign agent or dark business entity already had all the data they needed.

Why Did the Drones Disappear?

One of the most puzzling aspects of this mystery is the sudden disappearance of the drones. If the drones were part of a sanctioned operation, it’s possible the activity was limited to a brief trial period. Alternatively, increased public attention may have led whoever was behind the operation to relocate or pause the activity.

A more concerning possibility is that the drones were operating without authorization. If this were the case, their disappearance could signal an attempt to avoid further detection as officials ramped up their inquiries.

What Comes Next?

For now, New Jerseyans are left without answers. Are the skies truly clear, or will the drones return? If they were part of a government program, will officials eventually provide details, or is this destined to remain an unresolved mystery?

More broadly, these sightings raise critical questions about the monitoring and regulation of drones, especially as their use becomes increasingly sophisticated. Whether they were conducting surveillance, mapping, or tests, understanding who is operating drones in our skies—and for what purpose—should be a priority for regulators.

Until clearer answers emerge, this mystery serves as a stark reminder of the challenges posed by emerging technologies in an era of limited transparency. The disappearance of the drones may have ended the sightings, but for many, the concerns they raised are far from resolved.

[…]

Via https://therearenosunglasses.wordpress.com/2024/12/25/and-just-like-that-the-drones-stopped-flying-over-new-jersey/

US President-elect President Donald Trump. ©  Kevin Dietsch/Getty Images

RT

US President-elect Donald Trump has sent a message to Ukrainian leader Vladimir Zelensky, asking him to start thinking about a ceasefire and to abandon claims to territories that are currently under control of Russia, El Pais reported on Sunday.

Trump has repeatedly pledged to end the Ukraine conflict within a day of taking office, but has yet to elaborate on how he plans to achieve this. His vows have raised concerns in Kiev that it may be facing not only a decline in aid but also an audit of the billions of dollars it has received from the White House under President Joe Biden.

“You look at some of these cities and there is not a single building in good condition left. So, when you say “restore the country,” restore what? This is a 110-year reconstruction,” the Spanish newspaper cited Trump as saying in a “message” to Zelensky from his Florida golf club this week.

Earlier this month, Trump called on both Ukraine and Russia to reach an immediate ceasefire. He posted the call on his social media platform Truth Social after meeting in Paris with Zelensky and President Emmanuel Macron.

The Wall Street Journal reported in early December, citing officials, that Trump had said Western Europe should deploy its troops to Ukraine to monitor a potential ceasefire. He reportedly added that the EU should play the main role in defending and supporting Kiev, while Washington could support the effort without sending troops.

Speaking at his end-of-year press conference on Thursday, Russian president Vladimir Putin reiterated that Moscow remains open to negotiating with Kiev without any preconditions, except those that had already been agreed upon in Istanbul in 2022, which envisaged a neutral, non-aligned status for Ukraine, as well as certain restrictions on deploying foreign weaponry. He also noted that such talks would have to respect the realities on the ground that have developed since that time.

[…]

Via https://www.rt.com/news/609772-trump-zelensky-territorial-claims/

By Jorge Valverde, United Nations University

China recently banned the export of the minerals gallium and germanium to the US amid growing tensions between the two countries on trade.

The minerals are of critical economic value because they are used in computer chips, in military technology such as night vision goggles, and in the renewable energy industry, where they are important for manufacturing electric vehicles and solar cells. All of these areas are very sensitive sectors for the US and EU.

China has overwhelming market power over supply, because it is the source of 98% of primary gallium and 91% of primary germanium. Primary refers to “raw” sources such as mineral ore. In several sectors where the minerals are used, there are no substitutes for them.

Gallium and germanium are present in very low concentration as byproducts of major minerals – they’re known as trace minerals. Germanium’s primary source is the residue from zinc refineries and coal fly ash (a powdered residue produced when coal is burnt in power plants).

Gallium is mainly produced as a byproduct of bauxite ore (which is the main source for aluminium) as well as the processing stage to extract aluminium from bauxite.

The Chinese ban on exports of these minerals to the US closely followed Washington’s third crackdown in three years on China’s semiconductor (computer chip) industry. The US wants to curb exports of advanced chips to China that could be used in applications that threaten America’s security.

For example, advanced chips could be used in electronic warfare applications that make use of artificial intelligence (AI), or in advanced weapons systems such as hypersonic missiles. China said its ban on gallium and germanium was because of the minerals’ “dual military and civilian uses”.

According to a report in Reuters in 2023, the US Department of Defense holds a strategic stockpile of germanium, but no reserves of gallium. In October 2024, the US Geological Survey (USGS) estimated that a total ban on the export of gallium and germanium could result in a US$3.4 billion loss to US GDP.

The minerals’ uses extend far beyond national security applications. Gallium is used in solid-state lighting devices, including light-emitting diodes (LEDs). Germanium is used in optical fibres and as a catalyst to speed up the reactions used in manufacturing polyester and PLA (a bioplastic). The minerals are vital for making the electronic devices we depend on every day, such as smartphones, displays and laptops.

So what can the US do to circumvent the effects of the ban, given China’s near monopoly on the primary production of these critical minerals?

One route is for the US to re-start and expand domestic mining of these minerals. Indeed, the Pentagon has already indicated that this is being explored.

[…]

Via https://activistpost.com/2024/12/china-has-banned-us-exports-of-key-minerals-for-computer-chips-leaving-washington-with-limited-options.html