In order to safeguard national security and interests, in accordance with the relevant provisions of the Export Control Law of the People’s Republic of China, the Regulations of the People’s Republic of China on Export Control of Dual-Use Items and other laws and regulations, and with the approval of the State Council of China, it was decided to adopt the following export control measures
1. Overseas organizations and individuals “hereinafter referred to as ”overseas specific export operators must obtain a dual-use item export license issued by the Ministry of Commerce of China before exporting the following items to other countries and regions other than China:
(1) Containing, integrating or mixing items listed in Part 1 of Annex 1 to this Announcement originating in China and manufactured overseas, and the items listed in Part 1 of Annex 1 to this Announcement account for 0.1% of the value of the items listed in Part 2 of Annex 1 manufactured overseas and above;
(2) Items listed in Annex 1 of this announcement produced overseas using technologies related to rare earth mining, smelting and separation, metal smelting, magnetic material manufacturing, and rare earth secondary resource recycling originating in China;
(3) Items listed in Annex 1 of this announcement originating in China.
I will be surprised if USA has not already established a plan to overcome this by mining our own rare earth minerals in our own country.
I have no doubt USA has caused China many problems covertly and overtly and China sees itself as fighting back (while also sobbing over their ‘Century of Humiliation’ which USA had little to do with).
China’s entire modernization has come mainly from USA and the West. Same for the entire rest of the world.
I do not expect anyone to kiss our asses and our elite parasites did make huge fortunes selling out our technology to China.
But it would be better if China behaved better than this, and same goes for most of the rest of the world.
Western men created the modern world. And everyone is benefitting from it.
Western-style modernization is without doubt the most significant human achievement in world history. ABN
(Also, USA defeated Japan in WW2, not China which did next to nothing but wait for the end to then seize power and bogus credit.)
Here’s a question I know many are wondering about: why did China wait until now to use rare earths as leverage against the US? Why not in the first Trump administration when the US started the trade hostilities? Or when the Biden administration unleashed the chips export controls 3 years ago?
I just watched a fascinating explanation by a Chinese analyst and, unexpectedly, a big part of the explanation is… helium.
Helium isn’t just a party balloons gas: it has plenty of industrial applications for things such as quantum computing, rocket technology, MRI machines, as a coolant for chip lithography equipment, etc.
In a nutshell what he’s explaining is that with helium the US had an even stronger card to play if China ever used the rare earths card.
The Army is experimenting with arming small, soldier-operated drones with guns to shoot enemy targets with either a 9mm pistol or tiny ink-pen-like gun barrel mounted on.
“We are looking right now at a remotely operated single-shot weapon which looks like a pen,” Col. Sam Edwards, Director of Robotics Requirements, Capability Development Integration Directorate, Ft. Benning, Ga., told The National Interest in an interview.
First and foremost, a small drone armed with a pistol controlled remotely by a human operator can attack an enemy soldier on the other side of a ridge, behind a rock, or even inside a building. It can enable point-to-point small arms fire while protecting the shooter. Such a possibility could clearly bring new possibilities to close quarter battle by offering new angles of attack. The presence of an armed drone might force enemies to reposition and move, potentially exposing themselves to targeting opportunities.
Armed drone aerial small arms attack would be very difficult to defend against, particularly if there were numerous mini-gun tubes loaded onto the drone as is the case with the ink-pen-like drone.
Unlike drones that are themselves engineered to become explosives, mini-armed drones could be recoverable and, for example, return to an operator for reloading and retasking. The system will need to have the right kinds of hardware configuration, software, and camera systems enabled by some kind of data link transmission sufficient to send targeting information.
This article is from 2020. If this weapon was made public at that time, you can be sure it was operable even sooner, let alone today.
A reasonable hypothesis today is Charlie Kirk was shot from a drone like this carrying a small caliber round fired through a ‘pen-like barrel’.
This would explain the super-fast drones observed on that day and the anomalous neck wound on Kirk; and, so far, the absence of an exit wound or a spent bullet.
The projectile could have been designed to home in on a signal coming from Kirk’s earpiece or it could have been aimed by a remote operator or AI program.
Only a nation or powerful private organization would have the means to obtain and use a weapon like this.
Kirk’s autopsy will reveal what happened if it is credible, which is highly unlikely. ABN
Digital IDs are weapons. Forcing them on people is assault. Submitting to them is to be conquered. This massive defeat of UK has been decades in the making. ABN
Good post on Conspiracy subreddit, showing some subreddits are worth viewing. Check the link above for a wide variety of insights into Dead Internet Theory, which says much or most of what we view and respond to on the interwebs is coming from bots. AI images, voices and videos only enhance the theory. ABN
This is a structural kill shot disguised as moderation – not a walk-back.
Trump’s team knew if they slammed existing holders immediately, the courts, corporations, and universities would swarm them with injunctions and sob stories about disruption.
So they carved out the stock, left it untouched, but put a noose around the flow. That’s the actual pipeline that kept Silicon Valley, outsourcing shops, and Indian IT mills running. Kill the flow, the stock ages out, and the model dies in slow motion.
Think of it like choking off oxygen. The body (existing H-1Bs) keeps moving for a while, but without new supply, the system collapses from within.
The real mask-off implication:
•For American labor: This is the first time in decades the cost arbitrage model has been structurally dismantled. Over the next 2–3 years, wages at the bottom tier of STEM jobs will rise, not because of “free markets,” but because the cheap labor conveyor belt is being dismantled.
•For Indian IT giants: Infosys, Wipro, TCS, Cognizant – their stock reactions already show it. Their business model is fundamentally impaired. They can’t win contracts undercutting wages without cheap visa inflows.
•For universities: The H-1B system was a backdoor subsidy to pump STEM enrollments. If the exit pipeline is shut down, the entire higher-ed incentive structure breaks. That’s a slow bleed, but it’s lethal.
•For markets: The knee-jerk calm (“oh, existing holders are safe”) is a misread. This isn’t about the next quarter. It’s about rewiring the labor supply chain. That’s far more radical.
Trump just set a fuse that detonates the 30-year experiment of outsourcing America’s brain. It won’t look explosive at first, it’ll look like a slow policy tweak. But in 12–24 months, it creates a reflexive cascade: higher wages, corporate reshoring pressure, offshoring taxes, universities losing demand, and foreign IT stocks structurally repriced down.
This video appears to show the shot came from above and a bit behind on Kirk’s right.
The streak near his right ear is his earpiece wire flying away from his ear upon impact from the bullet.
The impact of the bullet also pulls a further and thicker length of the cord running to his earpiece up, and it is this cord that you see sort of circling upward under the front of his shirt and around the back of his neck.
The wound on his neck’s left side is the exit wound and conforms precisely with how exit wounds appear but not entry wounds.
There have been many reports and videos of super fast, very small drones present at the rally during his talk.
It may be that one of those drones fired the shot that killed Kirk. Mercifully, if that was the case, he would have died instantly.
Another point worth making is that if he was killed by a miniature, military-grade attack-drone, we can be sure his assailants were professionally trained and equipped. And there was more than one.
This video appears to invalidate the lone sniper on the roof story. ABN
An algorithm-based ranking of the world’s foremost military powers taking into account over 50 different factors to determine each country’s position.
Quantity and quality of armaments, while important, are supplemented by equally important evaluations of training, combat readiness, overseas military bases, defensive infrastructure and fortifications among many other assets considered.
Strategic and tactical nuclear capabilities, due to the extreme caution with which they must be deployed and states’ general refrain from using them, are considered a limited asset rather than the decisive game changer they would be if employed freely.
Nuclear powers are marked accordingly in the right hand column. Due to their highly secretive nature, biological warfare capabilities are not taken into consideration.
As well as ranking states numerically, military powers are also divided into six tiers based on the league in which their military capabilities lie.
Those countries in the same tier can be considered near peer competitors, although the kinds of strengths and capabilities they field can be entirely different.
Outstanding strengths of each country, if any, are listed below their names, as are links to further information for each country’s aerial, naval and ground warfare capabilities.
This is a screen shot of the interactive presentation of the top 60 countries in the world
Just a few decades ago, there was little to no distinction between automotive motor oil and motorcycle oil. These days, the two lubes are quite unique. What are the differences, and more importantly, what happens if you run car oil in your bike?
Motorcycle oils branched off from automotive oils in the 1980s as car oil evolved in a way that caused problems for motorcycles. Specifically, friction modifiers designed to improve fuel economy could cause a bike’s clutch to slip under acceleration.
For the most part, the “it’ll make your clutch slip” explanation is all you’ll hear when it comes to running car oil in a motorcycle. That’s not a guaranteed outcome, and frankly it’s just the tip of the iceberg. There are other differences that make auto oil unsuitable for motorcycles, and it has to do with the fact that bikes usually rev higher and run hotter than cars, and unlike autos where the oil only lubricates the engine, in many motorcycles the same oil serves the engine, clutch, and transmission.
Social media ban was lifted on Tuesday but some demonstrations were continuing
Nepali Prime Minister K.P. Sharma Oli was forced to resign on Tuesday by angry young anti-corruption protesters who defied a curfew and clashed with police a day after 19 people died in a first day of protests.
Demonstrations led by young people angry about the blocking of several social media sites gripped the country’s capital a day earlier, and police opened fired on the crowds, killing 19 and injuring 100.
The ban was lifted Tuesday, but the protests continued, with demonstrators setting fire to the homes of some of Nepal’s top leaders and the parliament building. The airport in the capital of Kathmandu was shut, and army helicopters ferried some ministers to safe places.
As the protests intensified, Oli, 73, said he was stepping down immediately.
Protesters take selfies and celebrate at the Singha Durbar, the seat of Nepalese government ministries and offices, after it was set on fire during a protest against a social media ban and corruption in Kathmandu on Tuesday. (Niranjan Shrestha/The Associated Press)
American Buddhist Net 