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$1 Trillion In Minerals Found In Afghanistan
clustro writes "American geologists working with the Pentagon have discovered deposits of iron, copper, cobalt, gold, and lithium of incredible bounty, amounting to nearly $1 trillion. In fact, the lithium deposits are so vast, an internal Pentagon memo has stated that Afghanistan could become the 'Saudi Arabia of lithium.' The wealth of the deposits completely flattens the current GDP of Afghanistan, estimated at about $12 billion. Mining would completely transform the economy of Afghanistan, which presently is propped up by the opium trade and foreign aid. However, it could take decades for extraction to reach its full potential due to the war, the lack of heavy industry in the country, and a corrupt national government."
most of what they have "found" is probably uneconomical to mine and the nytimes is too dumb to read the fine print of the report.
If you mod me down, I will become more powerful than you can imagine....
Even worse, in the end the only ones who will benefit are USA corporations.
Fixed that for you. And congratualtions since this will be good news for most /. readers as they live in the USA. Another country to expoilt. Go for it.
Those corporations will ask for the local gov to take out a loan to build roads, dams, power, export networks.
As the mining compound is sealed, experts will be needed for building, running the plant.
Over time the loans will need to be paid back, the exports given tax breaks.
Will the taxes collected and "haircuts, food, transportation, cell phones" balance the loans?
Have a look and South America, Africe ect. Loans where cheap but long term you need to pay out a lot more.
Domestic spying is now "Benign Information Gathering"
"probably no worse off than they were before."
Generational loans, no more exports earnings and taxes going to service interest with massive cut backs.
As for a received the benefit, most of that would go in arms, theft and at very best trying to make loan repayments to get a new loan to build what the first loan should have covered.
There is no way for an exporting nation to win, just a slow slide down as they sell cheap to cover loans.
If their leadership works out some way to get around a loan or seeks a better price, they are swapped out - coup or death.
Domestic spying is now "Benign Information Gathering"
. . . better than they can find WMDs.
Given the relative wealth and GDP of East and West, I'd say it worked out pretty well for the population at large.
Did it relay? As far as I see it we are in a depression right now created by - guess what - uncontrolled capitalism and the USA. Not to mention that the great depression of the 1930 was of course also created by uncontrolled capitalism and the USA.
Which is why we did not want capitalism after the war and the CIA propaganda specialist had to give there very best.
But be assured: the US spent a lot of money making sure that the Nazis were defeated, and it was going to get its payback.
An so they will get there money back in Afghanistan. To paraphrase an old saying: for USA war is just the continues of trade with other means.
But this is not the point. The question was: Will Afghans love to have been patronized by the United States in 50 years time. I say: NO, no one likes to be patronized by anyone.
looks like Halliburton is going to have to fire up their earthquake machine again!
There's nothing to "fire up" — causing earthquakes is one of the intended uses of HAARP. It's in the patent on which it's based. Just doing ordinary ground sensing causes the earth to physically vibrate in a way that can be picked up by instruments, and HAARP is orders of magnitude more powerful.
Oh wait, was this meant to be funny? Sorry, I'll stop being serious.
"You're right," Fisheye says. "I should have set it on 'whip' or 'chop.'"
It seems to me that the US is being ruled in effect by the power and influence of some of the major corporations. They are certainly pocketing the tax dollars paid by the citizens of the US, ostensibly for the "War on Terror" (the replacement for the "War on Drugs" which was very successful in generating corporate income I am sure). The corporations get richer, they sponsor the politicians that will continue to let them get rich at the expense of the American people, and its seemingly a juggernaut that can't be stopped. Obama seemed to be the common people's response to their awareness of this, and there has been a tremendous wellspring of support for him early on, but with the massive bailouts to banks and corporations who should rightly have been thrown in jail, not bailed out (and thus rewarded for willful stupidity and greed), I think that support is lessening. If they have found a trillion dollars worth of resources though, I expect the US will find a sudden need to remain longer - at least until the corporations have sucked Afghanistan dry and spit out the withered corpse. The Afghan people won't benefit en route though, just the Swiss bankaccounts of those Afghani warlords who are bribed to let the companies in to rape the countryside. I wouldn't all all be surprised that this "discovery" was a decade old and is the main reason the US is in Afghanistan now. Sadly, that would make my own country of Canada just as complicit.
"The first time I got drunk, I got married. The second time I bought a chimpanzee, after that I stayed sober" Arian Seid