Tag: China Hawks

Congress and Pentagon seek to shore up strategic mineral stockpile dominated by China

Tina Marie (Ms. Cat)

Congress has repeatedly authorized multimillion-dollar sell-offs of the U.S. strategic minerals stockpile over the past several decades, but Washington’s increased anxiety over Chinese domination of resources critical to the defense industrial base has prompted lawmakers to reverse course and shore up the reserve.

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The stockpile was valued at nearly $42 billion in today’s dollars at its peak during the beginning of the Cold War in 1952. That value has plummeted to $888 million as of last year following decades of congressionally authorized sell-offs to private sector customers. Lawmakers anticipate the stockpile will become insolvent by FY25.

“A lot of what happened is Congress just getting greedy and finding politically convenient ways to fund programs that they weren’t willing to raise revenue for,” said Moulton.

Congress and Pentagon seek to shore up strategic mineral stockpile dominated by China

Blame China for their greed?! 🙄

Progressive Red-Baiting is Still Red-Baiting

Tina Marie (Ms. Cat)

Progressive Red-Baiting is Still Red-Baiting

Interesting stats:

It’s also worth noting that Kunce’s recurring implication that China is driving the buying up of small farms is entirely untrue. Missouri, like a dozen other states, banned foreign-owned corporations from buying farmland in 1978 but lifted the cap from 0% to 1% in 2013, which is what allowed Chinese-owned Smithfield Foods to buy up the pork land in question. China-based corporations are not even a top four foreign owner of Missouri farmland, with Germany, the Netherlands, Canada, and Italy taking the top spots, according to a 2019 federal report. Estimates vary, but the most highly cited number of Chinese farmland ownership in Missouri is 40,000 acres out of 350,000 foreign owned acres, or about 11 percent of all foreign owned land and 0.01% of total Missouri farmland.

China is a very small player in “foreign ownership” of U.S. farmland in general, yet mysteriously, almost exclusively who Kunce talks about when discussing the issue. According to the conservative think tank CSIS, “Canadian investors hold the largest share of [U.S. farmland], at 29 percent, with the Netherlands, Italy, Germany, and the United Kingdom collectively owning another 33 percent. The remaining 38 percent is held by entities from almost a hundred other countries. Although Congress has become increasingly concerned about Chinese land purchases, investors from China currently own only a small fraction of this land, at 191,652 acres (0.05 percent of the total).” Another 2019 federal report puts the number at less than 0.02 percent, less than Cayman Islands.

Australia’s Murdoch media and the Wuhan COVID-19 lab conspiracy theory + How a Bannon-linked conspiracy theory about coronavirus origins landed on Murdoch-owned media

Tina Marie (Ms. Cat)

Australia’s Murdoch media and the Wuhan COVID-19 lab conspiracy theory

What they missed:

How a Bannon-linked conspiracy theory about coronavirus origins landed on Murdoch-owned media, including Fox News

A week later, the Australian Broadcasting Corporation’s Media Watch debunked the story with a roundup of reporting on the many holes in Markson’s work. According to its report, GNews was one of the earliest reported adopters of the conspiracy theory based on the discredited 2015 book.

The debunk explained that “a host of China experts say the book is not outlining China’s plans for biowarfare” but rather “it’s looking at defense against Western attacks, which it claims have already started.” Media Watch also noted that the document Markson based her reporting on is a readily available book that can be purchased online.