A new Zogby poll indicates Americans are wisely beginning to question the manner in which we have financed the war against terrorism. Meanwhile China engages in female infanticide.

More than twice as many U.S. adults (58%) say that debt owed to China is a more serious threat to the long-term security and well-being of the U.S than is terrorism from radical Islamic terrorists (27%).

Interestingly there was little variation by party identification with a majority of Democrats, Republicans and independents all agreeing that the debt owed by the United States to China poses the greater threat.

Meanwhile, in a painful snapshot of the social values of Americas largest creditor ‘gendercide’, discarding infant girls at birth, is still practiced in China to bad effect.

XINRAN XUE, a Chinese writer, describes visiting a peasant family in the Yimeng area of Shandong province. The wife was giving birth. “We had scarcely sat down in the kitchen”, she writes (see article), “when we heard a moan of pain from the bedroom next door…The cries from the inner room grew louder—and abruptly stopped. There was a low sob, and then a man’s gruff voice said accusingly: ‘Useless thing!’

“Suddenly, I thought I heard a slight movement in the slops pail behind me,” Miss Xinran remembers. “To my absolute horror, I saw a tiny foot poking out of the pail. The midwife must have dropped that tiny baby alive into the slops pail! I nearly threw myself at it, but the two policemen [who had accompanied me] held my shoulders in a firm grip. ‘Don’t move, you can’t save it, it’s too late.’

The result of the male female imbalance is that unpartnered young adult males turn to crime and violence.

Throughout human history, young men have been responsible for the vast preponderance of crime and violence—especially single men in countries where status and social acceptance depend on being married and having children, as it does in China and India. A rising population of frustrated single men spells trouble.

The crime rate has almost doubled in China during the past 20 years of rising sex ratios, with stories abounding of bride abduction, the trafficking of women, rape and prostitution. A study into whether these things were connected† concluded that they were, and that higher sex ratios accounted for about one-seventh of the rise in crime. In India, too, there is a correlation between provincial crime rates and sex ratios. In “Bare Branches”††, Valerie Hudson and Andrea den Boer gave warning that the social problems of biased sex ratios would lead to more authoritarian policing. Governments, they say, “must decrease the threat to society posed by these young men. Increased authoritarianism in an effort to crack down on crime, gangs, smuggling and so forth can be one result.”

Gender discrepancy is happening all over the world with a corresponding rise in violence… boys need girls and we girls need boys in equal numbers or all hell breaks out.

Also, while on the subject of China, South Africa is now accepting major investments in energy and rare earth mining and refining from China. Like America, they hope to develop jobs and improve the South African economy. Relying heavily on China hasn’t worked out so well here.

Liz Cheney through her ‘Keep America Safe’ political action committee has connected the dots from al Qaeda to her dad, Dick… No wonder Bush ignored the intelligence memo alerting him to the 9/11 attacks! This would be funny if it weren’t for the almost 5,000 Americans killed in Iraq and 30,000 plus wounded

As I have been writing for some time, China controls the rare earth magnet market. With the push for more wind farms and electric vehicles and China’s own growth in these industries, China may stop exporting except within a completed manufactured product.

“Countries and companies that have or plan to develop industries that need rare earth minerals to make products are concerned about China’s growing consumption, which they fear will eliminate China’s exports of rare earths,” said W. David Menzie, chief of the international minerals section at the U.S. Geological Survey (USGS).

China has also encouraged companies that use rare earths to locate their manufacturing facilities in China, Menzie told TechNewsDaily. But some companies fear moving because of concerns about intellectual property protection, he added.

China is fast becoming known, rightly or wrongly, as the king of IP ripoffs and few companies want to take the chance of partnering with them, especially on their own turf. Then, of course, for socially conscientious companies that want to create manufacturing jobs in the US, moving to China is not an option.

There is some pressure on Congress to provide incentives to support the mining of existing rare earth deposits in the US but the technology to process it still lies with the Chinese. Some are speculating the next resource wars will not be held over oil but rare earth metals.

Rare earth neodymium magnets are critical to the wind industry, including the V-LIM, and while there are plans to reopen Mountain Pass in California for rare earth mining, there is no ready solution in sight despite neodymium being a critical part of all weapons guidance systems and homeland security.

As one of the worst polluters on the planet, knowing the future of green energy, homeland security and the weapons and guidance systems on everytank, fighter jet and aircraft carrier relies on foreign relations with China is a bit scary.

Chris Hayes discusses the audacity of Cheney’s continued defense of torture with Rachel. Hayes calls for the Obama administration to prosecute rather than ignore acts of torture and the defense of torture and provides some history in his recent article in The Nation.

…thanks to the work of the Church Committee. Chaired by Idaho Senator Frank Church in 1975-76, the Select Committee to Study Governmental Operations With Respect to Intelligence Activities labored for sixteen months to produce a 5,000-page report that is a canonical history of the secret government. Over the past three decades the Church Committee has faded into relative obscurity. (I was somewhat surprised to discover how few people my age had heard of it.) But in the wake of further disclosures of crimes and abuses committed by the Bush administration and the escalating war of words between the CIA and Congress over just how much Congress knew about (and approved) these activities, the specter of the committee has begun to haunt Capitol Hill.

Mostly, the Church Committee is invoked by conservatives as a cautionary tale, a case of liberal overreach that handicapped the nation’s intelligence operations for decades. Dick Cheney bemoaned the fact that his time as President Ford’s chief of staff was “the low point” of presidential authority, thanks to a feckless Congress “all too often swayed by the public opinion of the moment.”

Jeremy Scahill joins Bill Maher on Real Time and blast the Obama administration and the mainstream media for not reporting on the misuse of private contractors.

(hat tip/Ward Reilly)

Keith discusses Blackwater’s, now known as Xe, use of God to justify killing Iraqi people or more accurately, Muslims.

Jeremy Scahill discusses more allegations of illegal gun running and the use of non military approved explode on impact ammunition.