Vietnamese rare earth tainted with Agent Orange

 I do not honestly think that USA or Western investors will be going into setting up the facilities en masse for the extraction of recycled gallium and germanium from old computers, washing machines, solar panels and smartphones. It is too costly and knowing the end items are competing with China. If they really do that, well it is up to them to throw good money after bad.

The wholes process of even trying to extract those rare earth minerals from the ground is already a huge challenge. What about the setting up of the refining logistics to make those rare earth raw materials into useful metals? The investments to do that are not puny, coupled with the environmental effects it will cause to the country doing that.

The USA is trying to be chummy towards Vietnam to come together to allow them to extract Vietnam's rare earth deposits, ranked second in the world. Who wants to fund the setting up of the facilities to do the job and will they be competitive enough to rival China? Do the Vietnamese trust the USA again, the destructor of their country and killing millions during the Vietnam War?

The USA even tried its luck with Mongolia and found the idea unfeasible, with China disallowing its ports to be used to ship the ores to Japan for refining. There was even talk of lifting the ores by air to Japan, but that was also impossible, having to fly over Russian and Chinese airspace. China and Russia will not allow that to happen. Mongolia had to eat humble pie after that and tried to be chummy to China.

As I said before, time for China to fully weaponize its control of essential raw materials for National Security reasons. National Security reasons is one excuse that is now a very useful invention for mankind, LOL.

Anonymous

Anwar facing more and more problems with his administration.

 Next door may not be that neighborly going forward, with Anwar facing more and more problems with his administration.

As I said before, Anwar's coalition Government, formed with UMNO as a partner is just a marriage of convenience, not a good strategy for Anwar. UMNO political leaders are using his government to hide behind, and eluding prosecution over their corruption practices when UMNO was in power itself. But then, Anwar could not be in power now without the support of UMNO. Anwar is in deep trouble right now, juggling his political football and facing opposition from all sides.

Anwar's appointment of his daughter as advisor in his government is another bad decision, attracting claims of cronyism. Anwar is facing also criticism over Najib's request to be placed under house arrest, not inside a prison cell, which he is saying is up to the King's decision. Anwar's hands are tied trying to clean up corruption within his own government, not to talk of trying to take to task those of his opponents like Mahathir Mohamed and his family, Ahmad Zahid Hamidi and many other corrupt politicians from UMNO hiding in the swamp, which he is unable to drain without losing support.

Anonymous

USA and the West arrogance, thinking that cooks and laundrymen cannot achieve anything substantial, or game changing

 You know, it is so funny that all the highly qualified CEOs, analysts and trend advisors of all the big ICE vehicle makers in the USA and EU did not know or realized that China was going to eat their lunch, with EVs that was going to flood the market. How long do we think it took China to build up their EV manufacturing logistics under the Western scrutiny, and all the steps China took to secure all the supply chains to set up all those factories? Was it yesterday or the day before?

This was going on right under their noses for years and they choose to ignore the obvious. Now just resorting to crying foul and claiming unfair subsidies is still going to decimate their motor vehicle industry.

Can we believe that all in those years, they just did not have any inkling of what was going on inside China, and that the motor vehicle industry was going through a renaissance, and that China was moving into their turf. What happened to all the intelligence, their spies in China feeding them information about what was going to happen? And all of a sudden China just magically zoomed past them in EV technology and put them in the shade. Can you honestly believe that?

Perhaps it was arrogance of the USA and the West, thinking that cooks and laundrymen cannot achieve anything substantial, or game changing, and can be conveniently pushed aside and ignored as in the distant past. That was their biggest mistake and a mistake that they are still ignoring by claiming consistently that China is producing cheap junks and outdated products, and Chinese weapons are inferior to the USA and the West. The USA thinks that keeping up the demonization and things will change for the better for them. They are living on fat hopes.

Anonymous

Nature provides an environment for life. Man destroying the environment to end life. What climate change?

 If the sun's massive energy can be tapped from space, unhindered by dust particles, blocking clouds, bad weather conditions and other atmospheric anomalies, and transmitted from outer space to earth, it opens up another source of unlimited renewable energy source for China.

We never realize that human lives are totally dependent on the sun, every aspect of it. We just take it as something natural and fail to appreciate how much a part the sun played in our very existence.

First, without the sun, the earth will be just a frozen planet, devoid of living things, like the poles. Polar bears and some animals may be able to adapt, but they too depend on availability of prey for food, whose existence are not certain without the existence of a food chain beginning from basic planktons that also needed sunlight to grow.

Secondly, without sunlight, plants cannot grow. Plants are the only living thing able to manufacture their own food using the sun's energy, something that animals and humans cannot replicate. And plants also provide food for animals to survive, in turn to provide food for humans. Everything in our lives revolves around the sun - the wind, the rain, the flowing rivers, the waves, the seasons, our food.

Sad that nature created a living environment so intricately intertwined, which humans are now destroying - creating wars of destruction, new forms of pollution like extracting more fossil fuel, creation of mountains of plastics and not to mention weapons of mass destruction. As if destroying nature itself is not bad enough.

Anonymous

No more Singaporeans - back to resident and non resident

SINGAPORE: After a previous drop, resident employment rose again as Singapore's labour market continued to expand in the third quarter of 2024, according to the Ministry of Manpower's (MOM) latest report released on Monday (Dec 9).

This increase comes amid an overall expansion in employment, driven largely by non-residents. CNA

in the article in CNA, "Rebound in resident employment as Singapore labour market expands in Q3. Resident employment grew by 4,000 after a drop in Q2, MOM data showed", it was mainly about resident and non resident. The word citizen appeared once, "Unemployment rates continued to fall in September (1.9 per cent overall, 2.6 per cent for residents and 2.7 per cent for citizens), while the resident long-term unemployment rate remained unchanged at 0.8 per cent, just like the past two quarters."

And the word Singaporean was mentioned once, in the last sentence, “The government will continue to invest heavily in Singaporeans to enable them to compete strongly amidst continuous economic transformation and prevailing global uncertainties,” said MOM.

When would the word Singaporean disappear from the statistics of MOM? When would the word Singaporean becomes taboo in Singapore?

I still remember Lawrence Wong's maiden speech as the PM, when he kept repeating the word Singapore more than 10 times. When the PM mentioned the word Singaporean, it means that he is still thinking about Singaporeans, at least.

Has MOM forgotten that there are Singaporeans in Singapore and their interest, especially in getting employed in good jobs is very important to their existence in the most expensive city in the world? When would the word Singaporean be erased from the vocabulary or dictionary of Singapore and the citizens would have to call themselves resident or local, and when asked to fill in their job application letters or official forms, or in their ICs, they would fill in the word, resident, and not Singaporean?

I am a resident of this island. I am not a Singaporean?

What do you think? With the continuous influx of foreigners and given citizenship or PR, EP. WP, would resident and non resident be the official terms for the people in this island? Can Singaporeans be exempted from NS when they started to be officially called resident and not citizen?