90 billion buried under the Taliban's stronghold!

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   earnestshubposted 12 years ago

   How about this for incentive to be in Afghanistan fighting the Taliban??
   
   From Money Morning Australia.
   
   "The US Geological Survey just re-released the results from an 18-month study of mineral deposits in Afghanistan.
   
   It turns out the country could be sitting on a $1 trillion mineral deposit. That includes 1.4 million metric tonnes of rare earth's. And it could be worth up to $90 billion.
   
   The thing is, the metals are located in the Helmand province. Smack bang in the middle of Taliban territory!
   
   Marc Grossman, a US Special Representative for Afghanistan and Pakistan said, 'The potential that these findings have for the future well-being of the Afghan people is significant."

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      uncorrectedvisionposted 12 years agoin reply to this

      The presence of vast and very valuable mineral deposits in Afghanistan is old news.  The problem is there isn't an Afghanistan, the country, merely an Afghanistan, the region.  There are no good roads, no infrastructure of any significant kind and, most importantly, no real, coherent civil authority.
      
      Not much hope of creating enough of a country to make the extraction of that vast mineral wealth practicable.  By contrast there is an estimated 20 million tonnes of rare earth ore reserve at the Mountain Pass Mine in the equally dysfunctional state of California where interference in production by over regulation has ground production to a halt.  It is no wonder that we are all going to work for the Chinese, before long.
      
      Given enough time and incentive, Chinese corporations will be in Afghanistan extracting that ore and paying off the Taliban with the help of the Pakistanis.

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         earnestshubposted 12 years agoin reply to this

         True dat! Afghanistan is a basket-case with little infrastructure.
         
         A trillion dollars could change the thinking on building roads and other facilities to mine when there is that much money at stake though.

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            Wesman Todd Shawposted 12 years agoin reply to this

            Hey Sir - got some good links to this story?

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               earnestshubposted 12 years agoin reply to this

               No, sorry, I can't link to it, subscribers only. If you go to the newspaper at moneymorning.com.au you may be able to see it. Let me know what you reckon.

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                  uncorrectedvisionposted 12 years agoin reply to this

                  Original story I eluded to earlier.
                  http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/10311752
                  
                  BEWARE - read with your internal editor in place - Caution
                  http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/10311752
                  
                  US Geological Survey Report
                  http://www.usgs.gov/newsroom/article.as … m=rss_home

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                     earnestshubposted 12 years agoin reply to this

                     Thank you, that fills the story out. I read all links, thanks for the filter advice also.

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                        uncorrectedvisionposted 12 years agoin reply to this

                        Ooops wrong link this is the crazy one.  Now I can't find the link - it was an interesting article but it was from a website that also had articles about "The New World Order."

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                           earnestshubposted 12 years agoin reply to this

                           Thus the filter warning I'd guess.

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                              uncorrectedvisionposted 12 years agoin reply to this

                              I like to find unusual sites or ones that I know I will find objectionable or strongly disagree with to find an unusual take on the available information.  It is usually worth it, if one has a strong filter.

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                                 earnestshubposted 12 years agoin reply to this

                                 Not a bad strategy. I picked up a bit more from this, thanks!

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                           uncorrectedvisionposted 12 years agoin reply to this

                           http://100777.com/node/239
                           
                           Found it - Read with Caution

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            uncorrectedvisionposted 12 years agoin reply to this

            Afghanistan is unlikely to be another Arabia.  The sectarian divisions are aided by insurmountable geographical barriers.  High, isolated mountain valleys exacerbate the incoherence of "Afghan" culture.  The wealth of Europe, America, Australia, Japan, South Korea are all products of cultural development rather than exclusively from natural resources.
            
            A purely tribal society suddenly burdened with enormous wealth tends to become more, not less, dysfunctional - witness Saudi Arabia.

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         bgamallposted 12 years agoin reply to this

         I guess you know, uncorrected, that the Taliban went to Texas in 1997 before rejecting the pipeline to Halliburton investments in the Caspian Sea.
         
         I guess that is ok with you right? Nobody seems to be able to get through to you.
         
         Here is the link:
         http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/world/west_asia/37021.stm

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            uncorrectedvisionposted 12 years agoin reply to this

            Who was President of the United States at that time?  The State Department would have had to approve the visit.  But that doesn't matter as long as Halliburton is the name you can attach to the story.   The Taliban, for good or ill, were running Afghanistan at that time and hadn't proved to be too much trouble for the Clinton State Department. There are very few companies in the world that do what Halliburton does but few are automatically evil.
            
            But...Halliburton...Dick Cheney...Halliburton...Halliburton

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               earnestshubposted 12 years agoin reply to this

               and probably another Halliburton.

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                  uncorrectedvisionposted 12 years agoin reply to this

                  The Halliburton song gets tiring.  Its sole purpose for existence is not to serve the evil designs of Darth Cheney.

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         recommend1posted 12 years agoin reply to this

         So you think the Chinese will get to enter the situation and exploit this new find ?  That would mean that Afghanistan would get infrastructure, roads and rail I guess, an influx of people there to work and not with guns, and airplanes with people and materials instead of bombs - will make a nice change after the last few hundred years of colonising bandits trashing their country and treating them like animals.  They may even have a chance of getting some of that education for their kids and the Chinese are especially good at building cheap functional hospitals.
         
         Check out Brazil and the stick it is getting because it is rapidly climbing the development ladder due to it's excellent trade with China, for the same kind of resources of course.  Is that the same Brazil where America funded gangs of right wing thugs to roam about with their American weapons shooting the place up in a prolonged act of terrorism ?

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            uncorrectedvisionposted 12 years agoin reply to this

            I am not anti-Chinese, but, the government of China is not benevolent and there are problems with Chinese businesses.  There is a growing body of evidence that the Chinese economy is not as adamintine as the world is lead to believe.  The closed nature of China internal mechanisms is creating a bubble economy.  Bubbles always pop and when they do they cause chaos.

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               recommend1posted 12 years agoin reply to this

               Having an opinion on this does make you any more anti-Chinese than it makes me pro-Chinese. 
               
               The government of China is no more or less benevolent than any other, especially the US Government that is showing its nature in its wide-ranging aggressive foreign policy.
               
               The stability and success of the Chinese economy is beyond doubt, this is not from US economists forecasting doom and gloom (when they cannot even get their own economy right), it is from the trillions of surplus dollars, the clearly evident higher living standards of all of China, the huge month on month increase in the middle classes.
               
               As for an enclosed bubble economy, this is kinda laughable when you already stated above that China will probably fill the vacuum in Afghanistan, as they already have in Africa, South America, Australia.  Also the establishment of ASEAN which is already the worlds largest free trade area in numbers and turnover and involves around 12 different countries.
               
               You should stop listening to politically motivated economists who are proven to be consistently wrong over and over again - and just look at the world news yourself.

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                  uncorrectedvisionposted 12 years agoin reply to this

                  Check on Gordon G. Chang, a writer for Forbes Magazine, has several insights and lots of contacts in China about the condition of China's economy.
                  
                  There is a developing scandal that offers some insight into the complexity of Chinese businesses.
                  http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sino-Forest_Corporation
                  
                  Chinese Banks and Government Policy conceals currency weakness.
                  http://blogs.wsj.com/economics/2011/04/ … s-warrant/
                  
                  The accountability that many developed nations insist upon from contractors and private businesses is missing in Chinese businesses, especially the government operated ones. 
                  
                  http://www.nytimes.com/2011/07/25/world … .html?_r=1
                  
                  http://www.chinadaily.com.cn/cndy/2011- … 675780.htm
                  
                  http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/worldne … ndals.html
                  
                  The cracks in the Chinese economy are only now beginning to show.  I wonder what China's plans are for the rapidly growing military.
                  
                  China is aggressively expanding in the South China Sea. The following encapsulates and links to several sources.
                  http://bigpeace.com/jxenakis/2011/06/10 … vey-ships/
                  
                  http://hir.harvard.edu/the-spratly-isla … s?page=0,2
                  
                  http://www.japannewstoday.com/?tag=chin … -china-sea

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                     recommend1posted 12 years agoin reply to this

                     Just because Chang is a Chinese name - he still writes for Forbes    The Chinese economy is incorrectly translated by American writers, with or without contacts here.  Chinese business has been allowed pretty much free rein in order to build up economic speed rapidly, other countries do this in different ways by giving companies tax breaks, allowing less vigorous regulations to get ventures off the ground etc., but this is just fiddling with a broken fiddle - China has created a huge business sector first and is fixing it second.
                     
                     China has various issues, some are very real and others are bull created by economists who are unable to understand a different system, the same economists who help engineer the failing economies of the west.   Current Chinese issues include the banking system that is undergoing the reforms to fix problems that western economists identify AFTER they are publicised by the Chinese regulators.  In the last couple of years the banks have undertaken massive changes from being an old boys network to installing proper internal controls of risk and debt and removing all control from individuals to appropriate bodies made up within the bank.
                     
                     The model of change can be seen in the polluting factories.  Initially these factories were anywhere - then about ten years ago they were pretty much all removed to appropriate sites out of the cities and onto custom made estates with pollution controls, safety laws etc.  The polluted city areas are being reclaimed and contained and mostly covered with concrete developments.  Wuhan (where I lived previously) is built around five huge and polluted lakes - and they were just starting a hugely ambitious lake regeneration scheme.
                     
                     The banks have issues - but you can be sure they will fix them before they impact the economy and because of the way the whole system works the banks are not shuffling debt around and holding vaults full of devaluing currencies - they are flooded with appreciating money which makes fixing the system a matter of a moderate course change.
                     
                     I could go on - the military expansion is geared around the navy mostly, the weak spot surrounding China is the sea and the US make regular aggressive excercises near to China with its massive fleet.  What would you like them to do ?  put in safe anchorages for your fleet so that in the case that your out of control military, backed with its political profiteers, choose to launch some kind of Libya or Iraq or Korea or Vietnam style aggression they can do what they like ??
                     
                     One incident that you may not have heard from your western media sources - concerns the habitual over-flying of South coastal China by US warplanes maybe 8 years ago.  This continued for years as far as I know, a demonstration of US air superiority as a threat I guess. Then China shot one down and that stopped.  I don't see any Chinese aggressive moves toward the US or any of its interests, I don't see any Chinese fleet conducting excercises between Cuba and the US, flying warplanes over your coasts, or any aggressive moves of any kind.  And the size of the military has been shouted up but it is still tiny compared to the US military - I could go on but I guess you will just put up more lists of uninformed US media stuff.

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