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Over the past two decades, China has quietly built a global dominance in the raw materials needed for green energyand theyre willing to use them to achieve their political ends. By withholding crucial materials, China could threaten parts of Americas energy, transportation, and economic needs. America is in a chess match with China for securing the materials needed for the worlds fastest growing energy source. Avoiding dependence on an adversary for these technologies necessitates making the right moves.

Cobalt, lithium, and a geologically scattered group of materials called rare earth elements are necessary to create wind turbines, solar panels, and electricity-storing batteries needed for electric vehicles and power grid storage. While China and America both have rare earth element reserves (though China has significantly more), both countries must look abroad to secure cobalt and lithium resourcesand, in this, China is winning.

While still a small amount of overall energy supply, green energy is the worlds fastest-growing energy source, shifting investment patterns away from traditional energy sources. Moreover, the Biden administration plans to make rapid investments to irreversibly lead America down a path to green energy reliance. If thats the case, then changes have to be made so were not irreversibly dependent on China for our energy.

Theyll have to be made fast because Chinese companies, backed by their government, are making a major power grab for those most crucial materials. By acquiring foreign mines, securing voting shares in natural resource companies, and buying long-term contracts abroad, China is trading capital for influence. For example, two-thirds of the worlds cobalt production, which is necessary for batteries, comes from the Congobut Chinese companies control half of it. Taking cobalt processing into account, over 80 percent of cobalt chemicals needed for batteries flow through China.

Chinas going after lithium, too. Nearly all of the worlds lithium, critical for batteries and electric vehicles, is in three countries: Chile, Argentina, and Australia. Yet government-supported Chinese companies now control or influence 59 percent of the worlds lithium production, including controlling three-quarters of Australias lithium reserves. We must pay attention to how many private Chinese companies are using government-backed investments to infiltrate market economies.

Within Chinas borders are roughly one-third of the worlds reserves of rare earth elements, as well as many digital technologies common in modern life. Since 2000, China has produced a whopping 80 percent of the worlds supply.

In a show of their tight grip, China temporarily cut off rare earth exports to Japan in 2010 over a political dispute and imposed export quotas several times, shaking the confidence of governments and manufacturers. Flexing its trade war muscles, China even raised the specter of cutting off rare earth exports to America as recently as last year before pulling back to save face internationally. Dominating these materials has been Chinas plan since 1990. Theyre not afraid to wield them as political weapons.

With a President Joe Biden, this Chinese dominance could become a problem for America. Biden has big plans for a carbon-free power sector within fifteen years, which will require significant increases in green energy. But right now, America imports 100 percent of over 20 key minerals needed for green energy technology and is almost as reliant on imports for rare earth minerals. In fact, the only rare earths mine in America ships its materials to China for processing. And American trade disputes with China have been no secret over the past few years, which is a trend the Biden administration appears poised to continue.

Even so, we need China for our green energy.

We can reduce this dependence. Indeed, there are things we can do to prevent China from keeping its stranglehold over our energy source. America can start by increasing mining of more necessary minerals at home, specifically rare earth minerals. And weve got plenty. Under one-third of American lands are adequately mapped for mining and exploration, but increased mapping can encourage more domestic mining, too. Evidence from Canada and Australiatwo environmentally-conscious allies active in heavy miningindicates that each $1 of government investment in mapping draws out $5 of private investments.

Why arent we doing that already?

Shortening the amount of time it takes to open a mine in America would also help. At the moment, it takes five times as long to open one here as it does in Canada and Australiacountries that are also environmentally conscious and responsible miners. The good news is that the Biden administrations energy plan already shows interest in cutting red tape for other aspects of the energy sector. They should consider cutting some red tape here as well.

Moreover, only one percent of these minerals are recycled for reuse. Better recycling practices for these minerals can put them back on the market at competitive prices.

Due to brute geographical facts of where these resources lie, America will also need an international approach. Inking trade agreements with friendly countries to strengthen flows of and investment in new sources of crucial green energy minerals is a must. Partnerships with countries also targeted by China for their natural resources should also be pursued. President-elect Bidens self-professed skills for forging international partnerships should be put to use.

America is looking to dramatically increase its green energy usage in coming years. These technologies depend on specific minerals and metals, the mining and processing of which are largely controlled by China. In order to avoid relying on an adversary for crucial resources, America must start making the right moves, both at home and abroad. The natural resource chess match with China has already begun. After all, energy is vital to all aspects of modern life, so the stakes are, to say the least, quite high.

Jakob Puckett is an energy policy analyst and an associate contributor for Young Voices. Follow him on Twitter @JakobRPuckett.

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America and Chinas Chess Match for the Future of Green Energy - The National Interest

When compared to the Netflix-fable "The Queen's Gambit", chess in the 1960s was a fairly disappointing affair. No fancy clothes, no glamorous tournament locations, not a single woman in sight who could best the world's finest, just rampant sexism. However, the fictional character of Beth Harmon being literally besieged by fans during her voyage to the Soviet Union is fairly realistic.

In the Netflix show, a reporter mentions the name NonaGaprindashvili and claims that sheplays against women only. But the real NonaGaprindashvili did indeed play against men. After all, she greatly surpassed all female players of her generation. And the ambitious Georgian was eager to earnthe title of Grandmaster, a feat which she eventually was the first woman to achieve. WhenGaprindashvili came back to Tiflis after winning the Women's World Championship in 1962, there were hundreds of excited compatriots waiting for her at the train station. Someone held up a sign bearing the inscription which would later serve as title for the documentary.

This kind of archival footage is featured heavily in "Glory to the Queen". After all, the glory days of Georgian womens' chess dates back a few decades. It's greatest moment was the Chess Olympiad 1982 in Lucerne, where NonaGaprindashvili, Maia Chiburdanidze, Nona Alexandria and Nino Ioseliani won gold for the Soviet Union.

For her movie,Tatia Shkirtladze decided to get the four of them together and in front of the camera. "The Encounter" served as aworking title for the project. Eventually, it became "Glory to the Queen", a nod to the strongest piece on the board, as well as the only female one. Why it had to be women from Georgia - a country, in which men like to push themselves to the front all the time, unless there is work involved - who managed to get this far in the world of chessis not explicitly addressed in the movie. However, those who have seen it will understandthat it was Nona Gaprindashvili who paved the way for all of them. She is the mother of Georgian chess and full of energy to this very day. While the other three have long since retired fromtournament chess, she is the only one who is still an active player. This is in spite of her being the oldest of them. In March, she will be celebrating her eightieth birthday.

I first heard of the movie project at the Chess Olympiad 2018 in Batumi.A few weeks later, I metTatia Shkirtladze during the World Championship match between Carlsen and Caruana in London, where the first thing she did after entering the press room was to immediately occupy two of the already limited seats, whiledaily correspondents such as Ihad to periodically switchtheir places. Our second meeting at a cafin Vienna was more relaxed.

Tatia, who had moved to Vienna to study, is actually an artist. And she is just likeNona Gaprindashvili - that is, tenacious. Once she has her mind set on something, she always goes through with it. Why was there no movie about these magnificent womenwhomshe had already heardaboutasa little girl? If nobody else would do it, then it was up to her.

She managed to win overKarin Berghammerfor the project, a movie producer who in turn ensured financial support from a grand total of four Austrian and two European movie funds and also establisheda Serbian co-production company. Georgian director and producerAna Khazaradze joined the team later. This way, the fact that Tatia did not have a background in filmmaking or a lot of experience in the field becameirrelevant.

Part of the movie was filmed at the Rathaus Open in Vienna,with chess historian Michael Ehn servingas a consultant. Belgrade contributed an interview with Grandmaster and chess journalist Milunka Lazarevic, conducted shortly before her death in autumn of 2018. The then 85 year old appears a number of times in front ofa dark background, smoking and providing additional context. Most of the movie was, of course, filmed in Georgia.

Over the couse of filming I got the chance to visit Tiflis, as it was on the way to a conference about scholastic chess in Armenia which I had plannedto attend. There, I saw the film crew meetNona Gaprindashvili at the Chess Palace, which bears her name and houses the office of the chess federation as well as tournament rooms, studying facilitieswith computers and a library. In this building, which had previously been known as the Pioneers' Palace, the camera and I got to witness Nona Alexandria staging an award ceremony with boys and girls dressed in chess themed costumes.

What a contrast! Nona the first, serious and deliberate, and Nona the second, smiling and always in motion. Let us call her that, even if Maia Tschiburdanidze, who was practically still a teenager at the time, managed to snatch away Nona's title of World Champion in 1978. Upon showingNona Alexandria's tears, aSoviet television host phrased his response as if he were trying to console her directly: "Nitshewo, nitshewo! After all, the most important thing is that the title of World Champion remains in the Soviet Union, in the Soviet Republic of Georgia."

Their trainers, which includeVakhtang Karseladze, whose name has almost been forgotten outside of Georgia, as well as Eduard Gufeld, do not appear in the movie, and neither do the Polgar-Sisters. After all, a direct confrontation never took place. When the Polgars won the Chess Olympiad 1988 and beat the Soviet team, which back then was used to winning almost all events in which it started, the only one left in the race had beenChiburdanidze.

Sequences from "Glory to the Queen" were first shown at the last London Chess Conference in December of 2019, very much in line with our theme of "Chess and Female Empowerment". At the time, Tatia was about to have her first child, which is why she had asked a friend living in London to present the movie and answer questions.

The final cut had just been completed in spring when Covid-19 threw allfestival plansinto disarray. "Glory to the Queen" later saw itspremiere at the movie festival in Tiflis, with itsfour protagonists among the audience.

The movie was even shown a second time as the festival's closing film. In October, it was featured at CinEast in Luxembourg and in November at the Serbian festival Slobodna Zone, where it has now been awarded the audience prize.

Berghammer Film...

- Translation by Hugo B. Janz

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"Glory to the Queen": A Tribute to the Georgian Queens of Chess - Chessbase News

TAMPA, Fla., Nov. 23, 2020 /PRNewswire/ --Edison Avenue launches new service line providing virtual Corporate Development Officer services.Organic business revenue growth is not enough; companies need a strategic growth plan in today's tepid economy.

As Sun Tzu said in his ancient bookThe Art of War,"Tactics without strategy is the noise before defeat."

Traditional sales and marketing generated sales are very important to a business's health, but it's no longer enough to remain viable in many industries. Businesses today face the triple vice of rapid technological advancement, talent wars and increasing competition.It's true that companies must grow or die - there is forward or backward, but nostanding still for any business.

This new Edison Avenue service is particularly relevant inmaturing industries when the demand for products or services has stagnated.Also, companies suffering fromthe law of large numbers, where the revenue base is substantial and generating high percentage growth is difficult.Psychological self-protection can also take holdas a company gets larger, creating morepressure to preserve the core businessand less willingness toinnovate and take risks. Each of these conditions can pose a threat to the long-term health of a company.

Most companies do not adequately understand how to address the 3B business growth dilemma Build Buy Borrow.The Buy reference acquiring another business and Borrow is strategic alliances, licensing and other leveraged relationships.

The smartest and best organizations often have a Corporate Development function, which until now has been unaffordable to smaller companies. This function/position usually reports to the CEO and leads strategic growth including: M&A, Joint Ventures, Capability Acquisition, and Licensing/Franchising to exponentially grow business sales beyond the limits of traditional organic sales growth.

The financial fruits of this role and function can be incredible.

This role is often the "secret ingredient" that private equity firms deploy to triple or quadruple the value of the companies they acquire. Edward Valaitis said: "Why leave all the upside on the table for the investors that may acquire your business one day?"

Edison Avenue provides Business Sale, Business Valuation and Growth Strategy Consulting services. Specializing in harvesting the enterprise value of companies with revenue between $2 million and $25 million.

Media Contact: Edward Valaitis 800-975-2114 [emailprotected]

SOURCE Edison Avenue

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Why Do Business Owners Sense They Are Playing Checkers in a Chess World? - PRNewswire

The Netflix chess epic The Queens Gambit has entered the stage of cultural ascendency in which people choose via Buzzfeed quiz or personal inclination which character you are. Sexy Benny (Love Actuallys Thomas Brodie-Sangster), the chess cowboy who thinks for five minutes or so that he is better than prodigy Beth Harmon (Anya Taylor-Joy)? Loyal Harry (Harry Potters Harry Melling), who realizes early on that he isnt even close and loves Beth anyway? Or super-cool Jolene (newcomer Moses Ingram), the fellow orphan turned law student/civil rights activist who needs to have a series of her own?

Ill tell you who I am. Im the girl who lost to Beth in the first round at the local tournament and then gave her a Kotex pad in the ladies room.

Actually, the character has a name, Annette Packer (Eloise Webb), and she shows up again a few episodes later to deliver a short but pivotal speech about how important it was to have been beaten by Beth because it proved that girls could do great things. Its the 1960s as evidenced by Beths Cleopatra eyeliner and kicky hat the same decade when real-life child prodigy turned troubled but brilliant grandmaster Bobby Fischer was giving the United States one more weapon in its Cold War arsenal by beating Russians on his way to the world championship.

In 2020, the message about the value of seeing a woman win in a mans world may seem a bit obvious (and given the whiteness of virtually everyone involved, limited) but to its everlasting credit, The Queens Gambit is not about that. Aside from a few sexist comments from a few minor characters, the series examines a personal journey toward greatness in which the lead character happens to be female.

Still, its tough not to wonder how many lives would have been different if there had been a Beth Harmon, actual or fictional, at the time of Fischers rise. Including mine.

Like thousands of other kids, I learned to play chess during the Fischer boom, the craze that grew around his ascent to world champion in 1972. When I was 7 or 8, my father bought a chess set and taught me how to play. He was nowhere near as good of a player as Beths mentor, orphanage janitor Mr. Shaibel (Bill Camp), but he was good enough to teach me how to play strategically and aggressively. And, like Mr. Shaibel, he offered me books that would advance my ability to play, some of which I actually read.

For four or five years, I played a lot with my dad, with his friends and then with schoolmates and my fifth grade math teacher. Mr. Goetz kept a chess board on his desk and was always happy to play a bit between classes or after school. For a minute, I had fantasies of being that kid who could play seven games at a time and win all of them, but two obstacles quickly became apparent: I did not have the natural ability or dedication to advance beyond Look, a 10-year-old who can actually play chess!

Neither Fischer nor any of his opponents, Russian or otherwise, was female.

Obviously, there are many girls and women who do not need cultural validation to become champions or experts in their field; if that were the case, wed have no female champions or experts in most fields. Nona Gaprindashvili became the first female grandmaster in 1978, and many other women have achieved that title since. But although both Susan Polgar (who became a grandmaster in 1991) and Iriana Krush (a grandmaster in 2013) have played for or lived in the United States, there has never been a U.S.-born female grandmaster, much less anything approaching a female Fischer.

Its impossible to overstate the effect Fischer had on American chess so large and so lasting that in the universe of The Queens Gambit, Fischer does not exist. His historical dominance would have loomed too large over Beths fictional quest; she is his replacement, down to the cultural excitement generated by her rising career.

As Liz Garbus chronicles in her terrific 2011 documentary Bobby Fischer Against the World (which Netflix or HBO Max really needs to pick up pronto, as it is currently available only on YouTube), the prodigy from Brooklyn captured the countrys attention from age 14, when he won the 1957 U.S. Chess Championship. By the time he beat Boris Spassky to win the World Championship in 1972, he was an international celebrity, showing up on The Tonight Show Starring Johnny Carson and the cover of every national magazine.

Garbus loved The Queens Gambit the performances and the way the series captured the edge-of-your-seat excitement that chess held at that time, she says, though it took her a few minutes to adjust to an American chess that did not include Fischer.

I kept wondering if they were going to mention Bobby or Spassky, she says. It was tough for me to imagine chess during the Cold War without Fischer.

Fischers rise gave the United States one more arena in which to compete with the Soviet Union, where, as The Queens Gambit makes clear, chess was taken as seriously as pro football is in the U.S.

It was a kind of cultural propaganda, Garbus says. We dont live in that kind of bipolar world any more. At least not internationally, though the current political divide comes close. (What) we have in American politics right now is a bit like the emotion surrounding the Cold War you can imagine how amazing it was to see someone from your side kick someone from the other side in the butt.

Its no wonder then that the relatively handsome and charming Fischer became a fixture on the talk show circuit and why between national pride and the growing influence of celebrity, chess became a craze the way running did after Frank Shorter won the gold in the marathon at the 1972 Olympics and cycling did after the 1979 hit movie Breaking Away.

Like Beth, Fischer had demons; but unlike Beth, who continually worries whether she is mentally ill, Fischer actually was. Increasingly angry, paranoid and extremely anti-Semitic, he punctuated his world championship by withdrawing from the world and from chess. He refused to play publicly for 20 years including in 1975, when he famously lost his title as world champion by default; he simply did not show up to defend it in a match against Anatoly Karpov. When Garbus read Fischers obituary in 2008, she was shocked to discover there had never been a documentary about the rise and fall of his career.

It was soon after Karpovs default victory that I stopped playing chess for anything more than occasional fun. The charm of being exclaimed over as a girl who knew how to play gave way, in my early teens, to an attitude that was at best patronizing youre pretty good for a girl. More than that, though, it was the miraculous and misleading use of the word prodigy, so often applied to Fischer, that proved my biggest obstacle. I liked the idea of being a prodigy, but I thought that meant possessing some God-given ability that not only transcended hard work but also actually precluded it.

And after I stopped playing, I forgot all about chess.

I mean literally. It was weird how completely I had forgotten all those hours hunched over board or book and my brief dreams of greatness until I watched The Queens Gambit.

Even though I knew going in what the series was about, I didnt connect it with myself until the scenes in which Beth learns how the pieces move, becomes familiar with the names of the basic openings. Then, in a sudden rush like you read about amnesiacs experiencing, it all came back a childs thrill when she realizes that she knows what she is doing, that she is playing with intent, rather than merely reacting to her teachers moves. The joy of finally winning after all those early losses honestly, is there a more satisfying word in the English language than checkmate? and the intoxication of being asked by an adult, Howd you do that?

Where had all those memories and sensations gone for so many years?

Beth Harmon, already an outlier in many ways, was built to not care or even take much notice of the judgmental looks she gets when she takes on a high school chess club made up entirely of young men. That she has been fed a steady diet of tranquilizers only partly accounts for her preternatural calm, just as it only partly accounts for her ability to gaze at the ceiling and work through an endless stream of strategies and scenarios, to learn how to play the game in her head, to live and breathe chess.

Fischer, like Beth, was eccentric so sensitive to sound that during the world championship, he insisted the sound of the cameras was distracting him and moved his games to a small storage room but for Garbus, it is difficult to imagine a grandmaster who is also an addict. The brain fog of addiction is very incompatible with being a chess master. (Although The Queens Gambit captures perfectly the obsession and all-encompassing nature of those who give themselves to the game, Garbus adds, I never found anyone as stylish and chic (as Beth) things like grooming were not much of an issue.)

Watching Bobby Fischer Against the World makes it clear how much of Beth was influenced by Fischers life, down to her late arrival at an important match that opens the show. But even after decades of learning about and in some cases meeting extraordinary groundbreaking women, of knowing that there is nothing a man can do that a woman cant (often better), I was filled with a very specific sense of wonder and gratitude while watching a female character master a thing that, despite no small amount of effort, I could not.

And who knows how many women of my generation once had the actual potential to be chess champions? Who knows what might have happened if theyd had the chance to be inspired by even a fictional female Bobby Fischer? A grandmaster-in-the-making who got her period in the middle of a match and won anyway. Who acted up and acted out and made terrible mistakes but who was respected and even loved because of the rare talent she possessed.

That certainly did not seem possible in chess, or pretty much any other arena during the 1970s, 80s or 90s, when women who achieved or even aspired to greatness continually had to prove that the journey did not come at the cost of their femininity.

I dont want to spoil The Queens Gambit any more than I have, but its most beautiful aspect is its willingness to grant its central character everything she has earned, even as it shows us how very difficult that earning can be. Intuitive brilliance will take you only so far; the deciding factor of genius is always dedication.

I loved The Queens Gambit so much, I watched the final episode three times. Then I went and found the chess set my father bought to teach me how to play; the box was dusty, dented and torn, but all of the pieces were right where I had left them.

Mary McNamara is a culture columnist and critic for the Los Angeles Times.

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So many lives would be different if we'd had 'The Queen's Gambit' 50 years ago. Including mine - South Bend Tribune

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Please take thought of our offered activity in a cost that is affordable to the families therein giving all students some fun and learning and perhaps the new ones to CHESS an opportunity to learn and see to further their skills within the sport and or not ... never know till try.

Age's are from K ~ 6th Grade

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Worry not if they not even know what a pawn is, as we have taught such to now a level in months to playing mini tournaments in our class all online.

We use the software ChessKid.Com and are organized to which have many students in current and the factor of them interacting is just as important as the sport itself

So join us and try it out it will be fun (to keep safe and fun, all students "must" register. Join the day, two or three ...

All regular Chess classes this coming week and private 1-1 Chess classes are closed for break as to bring about this Chess Camp 😉

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Local Event: ONLINE CHINESE CHESS CAMP | THANKSGIVING BREAK | K ~ SIXTH (6th) - Patch.com