The purchase of assets by the Chinese has been going on for some time now. An article in the WSJ on Feb. 10 indicates that the Chinese are now using the OPEC cartel model to control the manufacture and pricing of products such as Vitamin C, acetominophen, and magnesite throughout the world.

The WSJ reported the following: "Chinese manufacturers currently supply more than 85% of the vitamin C used in the U.S. Just like the oil cartel, they can heavily influence world prices. After a 2001 agreement among China's four largest producers, spot prices for vitamin C rose to as high as $9 a kilogram from lows of less than $3."

Chinese companies have the full power and authority of their government behind them. They are working together to control worldwide markets for commodities and manufactured goods. US companies are prohibited by law from working together to counter this strategy. The US government could care less. Our leaders are tools of big money and obviously don't care about the future of our country.

In the early days of the 21st century, nine major copper companies in China formed a new company, the China Non-Ferrous Metal Internaional Mining company, CNMC, having a goal of buying as many copper mines in the world as possible. Its website states that it owns active and passive mines having in excess of 35M tons of Cu. The government of China, through companies like CNMC wants to control the Cu market.

So far, however, the Cu market has been characerized by turbulence and unpredictability and an absence of control. One example of this occurred last November when a trader named Liu Qibing, working for the National Control Center of the State Reserve Board -- a Chinese central government body that stockpiles commodities for the country's industrialization -- shorted copper on the London futures exchange, meaning that he bet that prices would fall. Total losses have been estimated at $60 million to $200 million.

A good summary of the Liu Qibing story can be found at http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2005/11/24/AR2005112400785.html?nav=rss_world/asia

Last week, I e-mailed my Representative a copy of Garrison Keillor's article entitled, "Impeach Bush" and asked him to sign on to Conyer's bill, which begins the process of impeachment.

Surprise of all surprises, he e-mailed me yesterday to say that he had signed on to this bill on March 2.

I am going to buy a bunch of "Impeach Bush" tee shirts and bumper stickers and give them to friends and acquaintances and ask them to put them to use. This is a very small step to push the idea into the collective conscience.

This is not the time for inaction. If you are as disgusted as I am by what you are seeing, and many readers here are, it is time to DO SOMETHING. If that doesn't work, TRY SOMETHING

ELSE!

Most people in the United States are living in a Fool's Paradise when it comes to China in particular, and how the rest of the world perceives us generally. The idea of the United States "containing" China at this late stage is like a dog thinking it has power over the person who feeds and cloths it.

The power game was played out in the 1990's and early 2000's and China won. They now have capital, manufacturing, intelligent geo-political strategy and a world vision. Anyone reading Salon regularly knows what we in the United States have, and unless you think that the world really is going to end soon and you will be carried to heaven in the rapture, you know that it isn't going to get us through this mess as a powerful country.

China has formed a NATO-like alliance with Russia, Mongolia, India, Iran, Pakistan, called the Shanghai Cooperation Organization to "contain" the United States, particularly in Asia. I predict that China will be a lot more successful in containing us than we will be in containing them.

Every day there are new outrages and no real opposition. In my state of Minnesota, the state legislature is preoccupied with the issue of whether to finance construction of three new stadiums for billionare sports team owners or four. Who cares that the federal government is now a dictatorship and the future of the state has been sold to the highest bidder? The collective conscience is that we are the most powerful nation on earth.

The international news only becomes more and more dire. Average citizens around the world think that we have lost our collective mind and they are taking steps to reduce their risk from actions of our government. They are also taking actions to check the international power of the US. We are seeing the early signs of isolation of the US by the rest of the world in the form of rising prices for resources such as metals and oil. The dollar attack has not yet come but it will.

For the first time, my friends and colleagues are starting to make serious plans to create safe havens in countries outside of the US...places to go when this fool's paradise comes to a crashing end.

The cities of Shanghai and Beijing are being re-built to be true cities of the 21st century. The streets are safe and the mass transit is something we can only dream about--it is cheap, clean, new, and universal. There is an optimism in China that I do not see in the United States. They are addressing and solving problems. We just whine and accept and wait for death. This may be due in part to demographics. China has a population that is much younger than the population of the US.

It worked in the case of an issue of Paris Hilton which appeared in Vanity Fair (VF) last fall. That issue resulted in so many subscription cancellations and such poor sales and publicity that Vanity Fair vowed that the Hilton skank would never again grace any pages of VF.

Ann Coulter is the Paris Hilton of politics.