RUTHFULLY YOURS

https://quadrant.org.au/news-opinions/qed/china-and-those-not-so-rare-earths/

“As ideology dictates renewable electricity sources, and conflict looms, these rare earths are fundamental. Demand for graphite, lithium, cobalt and manganese is surging but, without meeting the increase in future demand for REE’s, we cannot keep the lights on, never mind fight a war.”

As demand increases and China restricts supply, rare earth availability is causing increasing political tensions. Donald Trump is looking for supplies in Greenland, in Ukraine, and in Australia.

Rare earths, also known as rare earth elements (REE’s), are a set of 17 nearly indistinguishable, lustrous heavy metals, most with unpronounceable names. As it happens, it is something of a misnomer to describe them as rare because they are actually quite common. Cerium, for example, is the planet’s 25th most abundant element, even more plentiful than copper.

Compared with other minerals such as iron or bauxite, however, they are thinly spread, making mining difficult, with processing requiring enormous amounts of raw ore. They do at least tend to occur together, but this makes their separation another production issue. Current methods of extraction result in toxic contamination of soil and water and, further complicating matters, deposits are usually found with thorium and uranium, meaning the 2000 tonnes of waste typically generated to produce a single tonne of REE is radioactive. This plunges environmentalists into a state ongoing cognitive dissonance: while they hail the production of CO2-free “clean-energy” minerals as key to “renewable” power sources, they must also countenance the pollution and environmental degradation extraction causes. Fortunately, consistency has never been a prerequisite for the green movement.

Rare earths have diverse applications in electrical and electronic components, lasers, glass, and industrial processes. In the modern age of so-called clean energy, their use has assumed critical importance for batteries, the magnets essential for electric vehicles and wind turbines, not to mention drones, missiles and other military hardware. The global demand for REE’s continues to soar and is expected to at least double again over the next ten years, leaving a supply gap.

https://www.spiked-online.com/2025/04/13/the-uks-free-speech-crisis-is-about-to-get-so-much-worse/

The UK government’s Crime and Policing Bill poses a formidable threat to free speech in the UK. The bill, which is currently at the committee stage in the House of Commons, promises to keep our streets ‘safe’ by giving courts a new power to issue ‘respect orders’. These orders are potentially so draconian and wide-ranging that they could well end up being used for very different purposes – including silencing anyone who says anything online that the authorities disapprove of.

Under the bill, police, local authorities and a number of other bodies will be empowered to ask courts for ‘respect orders’ that can either prohibit someone from doing or require them to do ‘anything described in the order’. You read that right – anything. The only condition that needs to be satisfied is that the court thinks, on a balance of probabilities, that the person ‘has caused, or is likely to cause, harassment, alarm or distress to any person’. This essentially amounts to ‘precrime’. There won’t even be a need to warn people. The court can issue an interim order without notice. Once the order (which can be indefinite in duration) is there, breaching it carries an unlimited fine or two years in prison.

This spectacularly authoritarian measure is supposedly aimed at street hoodlums, but it is not restricted in any meaningful way. It is a racing certainty that the courts will not apply any limits to its scope.

This bill is a particular threat to free speech. Already, you have to worry that police might turn up at your door over a controversial social-media post. At least at present, the poster has a reasonable chance of defending themselves. While our hate-speech laws are vaguely worded and authoritarian, at least the onus is on the authorities to investigate and prosecute.

This changes dramatically under the Crime and Policing Bill. If it passes, all the police would have to do is persuade a county court judge that people are distressed by the post in question. Then, the poster can be compelled, on pain of prosecution, to delete the offending content, not refer to the subject concerned online again and even stay off social media altogether. They might even be forced to provide an official with the passwords to all of their internet-enabled devices.

This law could be used to attack practically anyone who criticises or makes life difficult for their elected officials. It would be straightforward for, say, a local council to obtain such a ‘respect order’, telling a pesky critic to pipe down indefinitely or face possible imprisonment.