News Alert

[BSB]

U.S. Discovers Nearly $1 Trillion in Afghan Mineral Deposits

http://www.nytimes.com/2010/06/14/world/asia/14minerals.html?emc=na

[BSB]

This could change everything.

[Kramer]

In your assessment how?

Of course this means mining operations, which means all sorts of employment opportunities for the Afghan people. Makes the land valuable too.

[BSB]

You just mentioned two big changes.

Then you wonder, if the land is now suddenly worth a lot more, what does that do to the contesting parties agenda's? Does it increase their desire to defeat the other side? Does this pull the government together? Does it break it up due to even more corruption? Who controls the mineral rich land at the moment? War lords? The Taliban? The government? The possibilities in a place like Afghanistan are endless.

[Kramer]

You just mentioned two big changes.

Then you wonder, if the land is now suddenly worth a lot more, what does that do to the contesting parties agenda's? Does it increase their desire to defeat the other side? Does this pull the government together? Does it break it up due to even more corruption? Who controls the mineral rich land at the moment? War lords? The Taliban? The government? The possibilities in a place like Afghanistan are endless.

It could make Hamid Karzai's hand stronger. This is an opportunity too for the US to align better with Karzai. But the mixed signals need to stop. This is where having the right leadership in both the USA & Afghanistan is important. This is a time for the right people in the state dept too. Beginning now is a point in time we can all look back on 5 years down the road and say Obama you made the right move or Barry you blew it.

[Xavier_Onassis]

Mining tends to result in a few wealthy people wrecking the land, quite often permanently, to the detriment of those who once used the land for farming or grazing. It tends to pollute the water downstream for a long time, as once hidden minerals like arsenic and sulfides are brought to the surface.

See West Virginia for further details.

I recall that a friend I knew in college lived in Bayard, NM. There was a creek behind the house that had hundreds of beer cans tied together on a rope, like a trot line. Back then, beer and soda cans were steel, and the idea was that the copper sulfate that was washed downstream from the mine tailings would plate copper on the cans, and you could sell them back to the mine in Silver City.

There was a sort of rotten egg smell all around the creek, despite the wind, which always seemed to be blowing. I am thinking that there were no fish in that creek. You needed gloves on to fish out the cans.

[Kramer]

Mining tends to result in a few wealthy people wrecking the land, quite often permanently, to the detriment of those who once used the land for farming or grazing. It tends to pollute the water downstream for a long time, as once hidden minerals like arsenic and sulfides are brought to the surface.

See West Virginia for further details.

I recall that a friend I knew in college lived in Bayard, NM. There was a creek behind the house that had hundreds of beer cans tied together on a rope, like a trot line. Back then, beer and soda cans were steel, and the idea was that the copper sulfate that was washed downstream from the mine tailings would plate copper on the cans, and you could sell them back to the mine in Silver City.

There was a sort of rotten egg smell all around the creek, despite the wind, which always seemed to be blowing. I am thinking that there were no fish in that creek. You needed gloves on to fish out the cans.

I'm sure things have improved since your childhood of 1850. The Gold Rush days in CA, you likely remember, the Forty Niners they were called used high pressure water to erode the land to pull out gold. Well now-a-days mining can be done in a cleaner more environmental safe manner.

[Plane]

Mining has been bad for the people of the Congo.


A lot depends on management and education.

There will be a lot of engineers , I bet eight of ten Chineese.

[kimba1]

it not like the U.S. encouraging people to be anyting in the math & science area. I had one guard whose dad got his son to drop out of school because he did want his son to be better than him. sadly not a rare story.

[Stray Pooch]

it not like the U.S. encouraging people to be anyting in the math & science area. I had one guard whose dad got his son to drop out of school because he did want his son to be better than him. sadly not a rare story.

My mother-in-law, whom I have always loved and respected, had only one child out of four who graduated HS - my wife.  My wife did that on her own, because her mother never enforced school attendance or grades standards.  We always wondered why, since she is a very intelligent woman.  When our last graduated HS and four of them were in college, she said something that absolutely floored me.  She said "You don't want your children to do better than you, because then they won't respect you."  I still love her, but my respect level has gone way down.  I simply cannot understand that mindset.

[Xavier_Onassis]

I do not think that success and respect for someone else are related. The idea that someone will respect you because you have purposefully kept them ignorant is deeply flawed, I'd say.

The point is not that SOME mining can pollute less, it is that mining involved digging ore out of the ground, and that means stripping off the vegetation, either to get at the ore, or to use trees for timber to prop up shafts. It also involves digging out tailings, which contain toxins that ruin the water table. In a poor country like Afghanistan it is likely to be worse than what mining companies are doing right now, in Appalachian coal mines and the Alberta tar sands. It is not clear what minerals they have identified in Afghanistan, but mining has rarely brought prosperity to any country. The money very quickly vanishes and goes elsewhere.

West Virginia and South Dakota, Bolivia and Nauru, are NOT prosperous places, despite all the mining.

[Kramer]

it not like the U.S. encouraging people to be anyting in the math & science area. I had one guard whose dad got his son to drop out of school because he did want his son to be better than him. sadly not a rare story.

My mother-in-law, whom I have always loved and respected, had only one child out of four who graduated HS - my wife.  My wife did that on her own, because her mother never enforced school attendance or grades standards.  We always wondered why, since she is a very intelligent woman.  When our last graduated HS and four of them were in college, she said something that absolutely floored me.  She said "You don't want your children to do better than you, because then they won't respect you."  I still love her, but my respect level has gone way down.  I simply cannot understand that mindset.

It's probably something she learned from her parents. There must be other reasons to still respect her even though she might be confused. It's never too late to try and explain to her why that logic is flawed.

[kimba1]

West Virginia and South Dakota, Bolivia and Nauru, are NOT prosperous places, despite all the mining.

isn`t w.virginia one of the poorest states?

i just don`t see any harm for that state to branch out to other ventures for income. and it`s doubtful the company would turn down the idea of using automated mining equipment to replace the workers if viable.