No blood for oil...how about lithium?

[Correction]

I know nothing about Afghanistan's historical economies, so I'll just rant on an unrelated tangent like I always do, hurray attention whores!

Afghanistan needs an industry besides opium farming and 'oh look a toll road in Central Asia!'

[Dainslaif]

Mining asteroids in outer space?
http://www.fmboschetto.it/religione/...Armageddon.jpg

And yeah, we're all shocked that a country we invaded is *gasp* rich in something we want.

This.

[Cephius]

My prediction:

USA will never leave Afghanistan now that there is a financial incentive to stay. The moment we leave the country, China, who shares a border with Afghanistan, is going to march right over and annex the country and turn it into "West China" or something, and you know they don't fuck around (see: Tibet and also the Xinjiang Uyghur Autonomous Region, Xinjiang literally means "New Frontier").

So now the USA has to stick around or forfeit Afghanistan to China. Then who knows what Russia will try to do.

What financial incentive? The aforementioned mineral deposits don't belong to us. The most we could do is negotiate favorable trade agreements or the rights to sell the mining equipment or something. Things we can do without having a military presence there. It's not like the Afghani government/people are going to say "Oh, thank you America for turning our country upside-down, please take all our natural resources!"

Your suggestions about China are funny. Tibet has been a disputed territory for 100 years, don't bring it up as an example of Chinese expansion.

[Max™]

Afghanistan needs an industry besides opium farming and 'oh look a toll road in Central Asia!'

Actually, you dimwit, I was ranting about how this find won't do nearly as much as the same amount spent on trying to open up our currently finite mineral resource based economy.


You're right though, clearly if the last century has shown us anything, it is that any problem can be solved by digging til you hit gold, diamonds, oil... whatever you want, not like there's any better way to get raw materials.



Not like the shit is just floating around in space or something, wait, I just realized something! We haven't depleted the surface locked resources available in the oceans yet. Now that I think about it, wasn't the gulf of mexico a carboniferous forest millions of years ago?

Think there's anything we can dig up, use, and deplete down there?

[Kuya]

Actually, you dimwit, I was ranting about how this find won't do nearly as much as the same amount spent on trying to open up our currently finite mineral resource based economy.


You're right though, clearly if the last century has shown us anything, it is that any problem can be solved by digging til you hit gold, diamonds, oil... whatever you want, not like there's any better way to get raw materials.



Not like the shit is just floating around in space or something, wait, I just realized something! We haven't depleted the surface locked resources available in the oceans yet. Now that I think about it, wasn't the gulf of mexico a carboniferous forest millions of years ago?

Think there's anything we can dig up, use, and deplete down there?

Your comments were irrelevant and stupid.

The main point of this finding was that it might motivate the US to stay in Afghanitan and or that it might help diversify the Afghan economy. Your comment was out of place.

[Ace-o-fire]

a bit of info my dad is working in the private sector in Afghanistan. The main problem is there is no infrastructure. No roads, no electricity lines or companies, or clean water. And another main problem is corruption. Think of goodfellas, and godfather like mafia set ups. he has to deal with those guys.

They need to get that shit set up first before anything progresses.

[Max™]

The people saying it will make the U.S. stay there clearly don't understand why we were there, the implications it has for the goat farmers and opium traders are obvious, but the statements implying that Afghanistan is going to quickly gain some huge status changing type of wealth pinned the needle of my "oh wtf is wrong with this picture" meter.


My bad, as I said, back to being excited over piles of shiny rocks!

[Correction]

Actually, you dimwit, I was ranting about how this find won't do nearly as much as the same amount spent on trying to open up our currently finite mineral resource based economy.

LOL

[Max™]

Ya inorite, not like we'll ever run out of desirable natural resources, the fuck was I worried about?


Totally relevant, yet obscure tangent: wonder how this will affect the snow leopard population there, on the one hand if goat farmers didn't feel the need to protect their livestock, they'd be less likely to kill the cats, but mining operations probably wouldn't improve the situation for them either.

[ZarakiKujata]

Ya inorite, not like we'll ever run out of desirable natural resources, the fuck was I worried about?

So instead of utilizing a means to unify Afghanistan despite their ethnic strife, incentivize disarmament and create a real economy we should say fuck those sand niggers and just go to Mars amirite?

[Max™]

Sure, let's go with that, totally holds together logically, and sounds way better than steps towards eliminating any strife due to limited resources or living space.


Onward, to Mars!

Spoiler: show

We will never stop fighting like hateful ignorant little monkeys while we're in this closed global economic position. If you honestly believe pushing piles of shiny rocks from point A to point B, and adjusting the flow of perceived currency value accordingly, will ever fucking lead to a situation where we're not trying to kill each other, you're too dumb to live.

Seriously, you can try to accuse me of being ignorant of history, but if you can't grasp the reasons behind the dramatic increase of warfare worldwide in the last two centuries, you may as well just give up, and go lay down on a fucking highway.


Here's a question for ya: let's say we help them get all their shit together, eliminate the warlord elements trying to seize the resources, and Afghanistan becomes rich. Do you think this will increase, or decrease the rate of conflicts in that region of the world?

[Demosthenes11]

and this is why we dont let nerds make decisions

[Mytiwar]

Man Max, you make for some genuine entertainment.

[Rhyis.]

Wait, people care about a measly trillion dollars worth of minerals, particularly iron, gold, nickel, and lithium?

http://miningasteroids.com/


http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/science/nature/401227.stm

Why is it a big deal if it's $1,000,000,000 in Afghanistan... but it isn't a big deal if it's $20,000,000,000 in a single asteroid in space, exactly?

Spoiler: show

http://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedi...rSystem-en.png
http://www.boulder.swri.edu/~hal/tal...eroid_belt.gif

http://images.iop.org/objects/phw/news/13/7/14/belt.jpg
http://www.evula.org/solarsystem/Res...eroid-Belt.gif

I'm sorry, maybe I'm just missing something here... I mean sure, it'll be comparitively easier to get the minerals we just found are near the surface there than, I dunno... send some asshole to the moon or whatnot... but it isn't really that much mineral wealth in the long term.

Are we waiting til we use everything up, and THEN we're going to head outwards?

http://captainhawkins.info/pics/sc2/sc2human.gif
Bring back lots of minerals, Captain.

[Max™]

Man Max, you make for some genuine entertainment.

That's the idea, would it really be more fun if people ONLY stuck to the obvious implications of shit, and reverted immediately to "OMG LIBERAL CIRCLE JERK" or "OMG GOD PWNS J00" as usual?


Incidentally:

http://www.gl.iit.edu/govdocs/afghanistan/Industry.html

In January 1984 a report was published by the chief engineer of the Afghan Geological Survey Department of Soviet uranium mining in Afghanistan. It revealed that uranium production was begun in the mountains of Khawaja Rawash north of Kabul after the discovery of deposits in 1983. Soviet engineers were also said to be mining uranium at Koh Mir Daoud, between Herat and Shindand, and also in the Khakriz area of Qandahar province. The uranium projects were restricted to Soviet personnel in order to maintain secrecy and security. All production was sent to the Soviet Union.

Afghanistan has reserves of a wide variety of nonenergy mineral resources, including iron, chrome, copper, silver, gold barite sulfur, talc, magnesium, mica, marble, and lapis lazuli. By 1985 Soviet surveys had also revealed potentially useful deposits of asbestos, nickel, mercury, lead, zinc, bauxite, lithium, and rubies. The Afghan government in the mid1980s was preparing to develop a number of these resources on a large scale with Soviet technical assistance. These efforts were directed primarily at the country's large iron and copper reserves. The iron ore deposits contained an estimated 1.7 billion tons of mixed hematite and magnetite, averaging 62 percent iron. These reserves, among the world's largest, are located at Hajji Gak, almost 4,000 meters up in the Hindu Kush, northwest of Kabul in Bamian Province. Development started in 1983, and because the Afghan authorities had put forth no plan to establish an iron and steel industry, the output appeared destined for the Soviet steel mills in Tashkent.

This shit isn't even news, technically.


So much for me being totally ignorant of the region, btw, a shame, it was funnier when people acted like I was just pulling shit out of my ass, or off wikipedia.

[Therin]

http://captainhawkins.info/pics/sc2/sc2human.gif
Bring back lots of minerals, Captain.

BEST GAME EVER!

[Rhyis.]

Yeah, I wish they made more games like it nowadays.

[Dimmauk]

I thought we attacked Iraq for Oil, and we attacked Afghanistan for 9/11. Wow, you learn something new everyday.

[Kuya]

Everything was attacked because of 9/11.

[Colenzo]

simpsons did it