I seem to be a lonely voice of doubt on the Unocal deal (for those who haven't seen my earlier post, the attempt by China to buy one of our big oil companies, supported by the Wall Street Journal, The New Yorker, the Cato Institute, and just about everyone else.
Maybe now that a major Chinese general has threatened to nuke us hundreds of times in a first strike (and gotten less press for it than Tancredo got for his ill- considered remarks on nuking Mecca in retaliation) people will reconsider, but somehow I doubt it.
Meanwhile Cynthia Anderson, an alert reader of the Albuquerque Journal, brings up a point in a letter dated 16 July that I have been unable to find mention of anywhere else.
"Currently China's mines produce over half the world supply of rare earth elements (65 percent) with the US (Molycorp [a subsidiary of Unocal-- SB]) being second (24 percent).
"If the Chinese purchase of Unocal goes through and includes Molycorp, then it appears that China will have control of nearly 90 percent of the rare earth supplies in the world".
The defense and high tech implications alone are scary.
Selling the rope...
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