War torn nation has vastly more mineral wealth than previously thought!!

(10 am. – promoted by ek hornbeck)

Wow.  I’m sure this can only be good news for the impoverished, innocent, and war-torn people of Afghanistan.  They are freaking rich, RICH!  While many think they are sleeping on dirt floors (if not already taking “dirt naps,” heh indeedy), they are instead…well let’s hear it straight from Afghanistan’s minister of mines, Mohammad Ibrahim Adel:

“We are a people who don’t have money, food or clothes. But we are sleeping on gold,” he said. The country’s iron deposits were estimated at between five to six billion tons, he added.

That’s not all.  A 2005-06 joint survey by the US Geological Survery (USGS) and NASA showed they also have considerable copper, gold, precious stones, oil, and natural gas.

Based on the USGS survey, he said, Afghanistan’s north is estimated to hold between 600 to 700 billion cubic meters of natural gas and the country has some 25 million tons of oil in four basins.

Oh boy, pass the Bean-O!  That’s a lot of gas!  I think it’s fortunate for the people of Afghanistan that we are liberating them from al Qaeda the Taliban.  For one thing, by already being there, we were in an excellent position to be invited by former UNOCAL executive Hamid Karzai to send in NASA and the USGS to determine just how minerally enhanced ordinary Afghan citizens might be.  

As it turns out, if ordinary Afghanis weren’t running screaming from their blown out homes or being blasted dead at their wedding ceremonies by drone missile attacks directed by some joysticking 9-5’er in Fallon, Nevada, they’d realize that their mineral wealth could do a lot to improve their material well-being.  Unfortunately, they are far too busy scratching a living from the rocks and dodging the incoming to do this themselves.

So again, it’s also great that we’re already there liberating them from the Taliban, because we and others can now help out with development of these considerable resources in a resource Hungry-Hungry-Hippo world of perpetual economic growth.  China’s going to help out with a piece of the copper action, The US offered some help excavating and cutting the precious stones, and you can bet the rest will be leased out to private firms.

Here’s the best part:

Exploiting the country’s mineral resources will also provide jobs for ordinary Afghans and discourage them from joining the Taliban-led insurgents, he said.

Lure them into thinking they can become filthy little capitalists and they won’t swell the ranks of the Taliban due to their resentments!  How fucking awesome are we?

ladypoverty will tell you how awesome:

Something cool that Marx teaches us is that we aren’t compensated based on the value of what we produce; we are paid the going rate for our willingness to work.

This is the brilliance of capitalism: it buys up every family farm and corner store — every independent means of survival — and then offers cash payments based on how people feel in the face of starvation.

This is precisely why capital is now “globalized”: the most desperate people are in other countries. Those of us in the “developed” world became too spoiled, demanding a decent standard of living. In short, we attached too many conditions to our willingness to work. Therefore, the production process moved elsewhere.

Anyhooker, the difference between what you and me are willing to be paid and the actual market value of what is produced is what is called “profit” — it is absorbed by the owner. Now put that in your hash pipe and smoke it.