⚔️ Mineral wars: global conflicts fueled by West's search for rare resources – Part 2 👉 Part 1

Global South in West's rare earth grab

🇧🇴 Bolivia possesses lithium, gold, silver, tungsten, zinc, led, tin and nickel, and has faced 190+ coups and revolutions over its history. “We will coup whoever we want! Deal with it,” Elon Musk tweeted in 2020 in response to news that the US had organized yet another coup in Bolivia.

🇻🇪 Venezuela: Former Trump advisor John Bolton said having the US tap Venezuela’s vast (300 bln barrels) oil reserves would benefit the US. Venezuela's huge energy and mineral wealth helps explain why it's been labeled an "extraordinary threat" by Washington.

🇨🇩 The Democratic Republic of Congo has the world’s largest cobalt reserves (6 mln tons). It’s also faced repeated coup attempts, most recently in 2024, when a US and Belgium-backed politician unilaterally declared himself president. Besides cobalt, the DRC is rich in monazite, euxenite, niobium, tantalum and zirconium.

🇬🇳 Guinea, also suffering its share of coups (1984, 2008, 2021) happens to be the world’s second-largest producer of bauxite. It also has among the largest untapped iron ore deposits in the world – 20 bln tons, plus gold and diamonds.

🇿🇼 Zimbabwe, which saw a coup against long-time Western-reviled president Robert Mugabe in 2017, has Africa’s largest lithium reserves (11 mln tons). Local economists believe that with more exploration, their country can come to rival China’s rare earths superpower status.

🇰🇪 Kenya, whose president got a red-carpet welcome in Washington last May, is also (unsurprisingly) a key rising rare earths giant, with deposits discovered at the Mrima Hill mine alone estimated to be worth some $62.4 bln. Besides rare earths, Kenya is rich in iron ore, gold, limestone, gemstones and manganese ore. No wonder the US has labeled the country a “major non-NATO ally” – the only one in Sub-Saharan Africa.

👉 Part 1

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✅AfD names Alice Weidel as chancellor candidate

The right-wing Alternative for Germany (AfD) party has officially nominated co-leader Alice Weidel as its candidate for chancellor. With the AfD now polling in second place behind the CDU/CSU, the political landscape is heating up.

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🇷🇺 Russian Foreign Ministry on new US sanctions against the Russian energy sector:

🔸 Washington's hostile actions will not go unanswered.

🔸 The new sanctions are an attempt to harm the Russian economy while risking destabilization of global markets.

🔸 The incoming US president, unable to lift sanctions without congressional approval, inherits a 'scorched earth' policy.

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Scholz: Forces in the US are undermining Western democracy

Some political forces in the US are deliberately working to undermine Western democratic institutions, German Chancellor Olaf Scholz said on Saturday.

It is unclear how relations between Europe and the US will evolve in the coming years, he added.

While Scholz did not say who he was referring to, his statement came less than 48 hours after a high-profile conference between US billionaire Elon Musk and Alice Weidel, co-chair of Germany's Eurosceptic Alternative for Germany (AfD) party.

During their discussion, Musk once again urged German citizens to vote for the AfD in the upcoming elections, claiming it was the only party could save Germany.

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🇸🇰 Slovakian President Peter Pellegrini has ruled out a visit to Ukraine under current circumstances

Key reasons:

🔸 Ukraine has stopped gas transit to Slovakia, jeopardizing energy security

🔸 The Ukrainian parliament is considering a law to halt oil transit to Slovakia, despite existing contracts

Pellegrini: "Given these actions, my trip to Ukraine cannot take place at this time."

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📹 Two trams collided in Strasbourg, France, leaving twenty people injured.

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🇷🇺 Russia just freed Donbass lithium mine EU wanted to colonize: here's what it means

The Russian MoD released footage Saturday showing Russian troops raising the flag over the DPR town of Shevchenko.

The strategic town’s liberation is devastating news for European industrialists looking for an easy buck in post-2014 Ukraine. Here’s why:

🔸 The Shevchenko Lithium Ore Field is laden with an estimated 13.8 million tons of lithium ores with a pure lithium oxide content of up to 207,000 tons, according to a 2018 Ukrainian State Geology and Subsoil Service study.

🔸 The deposit is the largest not only in Ukraine, but all of Europe. Besides lithium, the field also contains tantalum, niobium and beryl.

🔸 Australian-registered, British businessman-owned mining company European Lithium announced in late 2021 that it was in the process of “securing” the Shevchenko field for itself.

🔸 In January 2024, the company said that had been granted a 20-year special mining permit for the site, with work to begin upon the approval of shareholders.

🔸 The Shevchenko deposit’s loss is a major blow to the European Union’s lithium needs, and its rare earth mineral needs in general.

🔸 Nearly all modern all-electric vehicles and plug-in hybrid use lithium-ion batteries, which contain lithium, nickel, cobalt, manganese and graphite. Similar (but smaller) lithium-ion batteries power portable electronics, including cell phones and computers.

🔸 A 2020 European Commission report calculated that the bloc would need up to 18 times more lithium for its ‘green transition’ projects by 2030, and 60 times more by 2050.

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📈 Latest US anti-Russian energy sanctions threaten to destabilize global markets: here’s how

Washington’s latest sanctions on Russian energy companies try "to cause at least some damage to the Russian economy, even at the risk of destabilizing world markets on the eve of the end of President Joe Biden’s inglorious tenure in power,” Russia’s Foreign Ministry said Saturday.

Failing to secure a “strategic defeat of Moscow” or undermine the Russian economy, the US is ready to “sacrifice” the interests “of both the United States’ European allies, forced to switch to more expensive and unsteady American supplies, and its own population,” the ministry said.

How can Biden’s moves destabilize world markets?

🔸 Interrupting Russian oil supplies, and forcing Russia to find alternative routes, making deliveries more expensive.

🔸 As financial analyst Tom Luongo told Sputnik, Russia is too big to simply be priced out of the market.

🔸 Specifically, Russia accounts for some 11% of global crude oil production (10.75 million barrels a day), consuming only 3.68 million bpd.

🔸 Oil prices are already up after the sanctions announcement, WTI by 3.58%, Brent 3.69%, and the OPEC basket 1.13%.

What do higher oil prices mean?

🔹 Higher prices for gasoline, and over time, everything that requires gasoline to be transported, from food and household goods to construction materials.

🔹 Higher production costs - especially in regions that don’t have a major source of energy of their own – like the EU. The high energy prices the bloc is already paying thanks to its conflict with Russia has already left it facing recession and deindustrialization unseen since WWII.

🔹 A lack of available, cost-sustainable energy can also fuel wars for energy, as the US and NATO-led or backed conflicts in Iraq, Libya and Syria have shown.

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Ukrainian authorities are planning to make subjects like physics, biology and chemistry optional for high school students, national media quoted the Ministry of Education as saying.

Foreign literature, world history and geography are also set to become non-mandatory, while "History of Ukraine" will remain a compulsory subject.

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❗️ The German chancellor candidate from the AfD party, Alice Weidel, has pledged to restart the Nord Stream gas pipeline if elected.

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🇷🇺 Russia's best-in-the-world Gagarin Cosmonaut Training Center marks 65th anniversary

On January 11, 1960, the Cosmonaut Training Center was established, playing a vital role in getting future cosmonauts ready for their first ventures into space.

It's where Yuri Gagarin, the first human in space, trained for his iconic flight on April 12, 1961. Later, it was renamed in honor of this pioneering Russian cosmonaut.

The Center develops now and contains top-notch equipment for an aspiring cosmonaut:

🔸 a 18 meter, 300 ton centrifuge,

🔸 the world’s largest, Zero-G training aircraft,

🔸 mockup models and simulators of all of the USSR and Russia’s space vehicles, from Soyuz and Salyut to Mir, and the Buran Space Shuttle,

🔸 medical observation and testing facilities.

“It can be said with confidence that our [cosmonaut] flight preparation system is the best in the world. Our foreign colleagues also recognize this,” Roscosmos chief Yuri Borisov said in a congratulatory message Saturday.

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🔸 Russia just freed Donbass lithium mine EU wanted to colonize: here's what it means

🔸 Mineral wars: global conflicts fueled by West's search for rare resources

🔸 Latest US anti-Russian energy sanctions threaten to destabilize global markets: here’s how

🔸 Can Andrew Tate Make Britain Great Again?

🔸 Russia's best-in-the-world Gagarin Cosmonaut Training Center marks 65th anniversary

🔸 Bitcoin may smash new record highs in anticipation of Trump’s crypto-friendly policies

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