So a pretty general article but this part stood out to me:
in vintage Lambie style she warned him not to “suck up”.
“[America] need[s] Australia more than what we need them, and they need our critical minerals. So, if Trump wants to play with Australia, I suggest you start getting your cowboy hats on,” Lambie said.
“… Don’t play bloody Trump’s bluff. Don’t play it. You don’t move Albo. Don’t you move on him. Don’t you dare. Don’t suck up.”
Why does she think they rely on us more than them?
Average Australian has an iphone, uses facebook/instagram/whatsapp/facebook messenger/marketplace, google, gmail and youtube, and all its services along with Apple/Microsoft, most corporates are damn near 100% Microsoft, Microsoft Windows on Microsoft laptops with Microsoft Teams and Microsoft Edge and MIcrosoft Office365, all our movies are American, all our top hit singles in music are American, TV shows, netflix, Food with McDonalds, KFC, products with Amazon, Amazon prime etc Walk around a shopping centre and count the NBA/NFL/American tshirts
Why does she think Americans rely on us more than us on them? We are deeply embedded in America at this point
American social media movies sports etc is a soft power tool. They lose more by cutting us off than we do.
Their are 3 countries with rare earth minerals China, Australia, and greenland. Australian companies own most of the greenlandian rare earth mines plus I doubt Greenland is feeling inclined to help America take their resources.
Most of out trade is with China so us cutting us off has very little impact on our trade. We are in a highly advantageous strategic position as we are the only land mass in the area. The us needs military bases in Australia to mai twin their killchains. The us bases on our soil are critical for all us warfare in the middle east (Israel, Afghanistan, Iran, etc).
The us government literally couped our government when their bases on OUR land where threatened (google our man kurr).
Yes they can fuck us. But we can fuck em back wayyy harder.
What ? Rare earths are everywhere, they are just difficult to extract and toxic as shit to procees, you also always have nuclear waste associated with it that is concentrated in the treatment process.
There’s a reason Lynas set up a plant in Malayasia for thier WA mined ores, they would have been unlikely to get a license way back in the day becase of the toxic shit that comes from processing. They’ve already polluted large parts of the rainforested areas in Malaysia from tailings dam overflows.
https://www.abc.net.au/news/2019-08-22/malaysians-divided-on-radioactive-waste-from-aussie-miner-lynas/11434122
Australia’s advantage isn’t it’s massive rare earth windfall, it’s that only a few “black fellas” live in or near vast areas that can be mined, so we just ignore them or throw them a few tokens as we rape and pillage the natural environment. Much of the rest of the world has people living on it.
There are all sorts of mineral deposits across Europe for example, look at Rio’s large proposed Lithium mine in Serbia and the push back, why ? People… and not just indigenous people no one gives a shit about.
https://www.afr.com/companies/mining/rio-loses-in-serbia-as-europe-s-biggest-lithium-mine-blocked-20220121-p59q3s