3 thoughts on “Just because you’re paranoid . . .”
natural resources are exactly what Afghanistan needs to get themselves back on their feet. Unfortunately, the odds of them extracting anything without getting reamed by outside interests is about the same as the odds that Alberto VO5 will call me or O’Grady to do shampoo ads.
Was listening to an NPR reporter on this and she completely missed the point and bought into the DoD line of ‘business development’. The Afghan’s are not in a position to develop any business beyond an agricultural cash crop basis. For US the need is to know if it’s a good idea or not to dump the Taliban/Afghan problem back on the Russians.
Clearly it’s not. Even if the ‘insurgents, freedom fighters, religious fanatics, crazed 14th century zealots’ (pick your label) are expensive to fight in terms of blood and money this mineral wealth is probably worth keeping out of the hands of the Russians or Chinese just to hold back their economic growth.
Here’s a thought. The Afghan poppy business takes off with Afghan’s the primary users of their own locally grown crop. Meanwhile an international consortium extracts the valuable minerals the locals can’t, for the good of the locals of course.
I’m not thinking Avatar, more like the Opium wars over China.
Ain’t History fun? Miss it the first time around. Just wait it’ll be back.
Really? Why didn’t the Soviets find this stuff? LITHIUM, yummy. Why can the powers in charge just tell it like it is. We are running out of resources and need to scale our lives back. Oil and all these other resources will not last for ever.
Mad Blog Media 
natural resources are exactly what Afghanistan needs to get themselves back on their feet. Unfortunately, the odds of them extracting anything without getting reamed by outside interests is about the same as the odds that Alberto VO5 will call me or O’Grady to do shampoo ads.
Was listening to an NPR reporter on this and she completely missed the point and bought into the DoD line of ‘business development’. The Afghan’s are not in a position to develop any business beyond an agricultural cash crop basis. For US the need is to know if it’s a good idea or not to dump the Taliban/Afghan problem back on the Russians.
Clearly it’s not. Even if the ‘insurgents, freedom fighters, religious fanatics, crazed 14th century zealots’ (pick your label) are expensive to fight in terms of blood and money this mineral wealth is probably worth keeping out of the hands of the Russians or Chinese just to hold back their economic growth.
Here’s a thought. The Afghan poppy business takes off with Afghan’s the primary users of their own locally grown crop. Meanwhile an international consortium extracts the valuable minerals the locals can’t, for the good of the locals of course.
I’m not thinking Avatar, more like the Opium wars over China.
Ain’t History fun? Miss it the first time around. Just wait it’ll be back.
Really? Why didn’t the Soviets find this stuff? LITHIUM, yummy. Why can the powers in charge just tell it like it is. We are running out of resources and need to scale our lives back. Oil and all these other resources will not last for ever.