So James Risen got played slightly by the Pentagon and ended up writing a “breaking” story about Afghanistan’s mineral wealth – the details of which had been fairly extensively reported over the past several years – right when the Pentagon was looking for a little Afghan War Viagra. Some bloggers pointed to this chronological curiosity, and other nettlesome details, Risen’s ego got bruised, and then he threw a tantrum that would have made a 5 year old cringe.
Now, with arms crossed firmly, and a pout upon his lips, Risen doubles down triples down in his efforts to show those mean pajama jerking bloggers that he is too the boss of them.
A Pentagon team, working with geologists and other experts, has shared its data with the Afghan government, and is working with the Afghan Ministry of Mines to prepare information for potential investors in hopes of placing some mineral exploration rights up for auction within the next six months. On Thursday, Afghan officials said they believed that the American estimates of the value of the mineral deposits — nearly $1 trillion — were too conservative, and that they could be worth as much as $3 trillion.*
Dude, you’re embarassing yourself.
(as cited earlier by Ugh)
June 18, 2010 at 1:48 pm
Not the deadly triple dog dare! Heads will roll! Tongues will be frozen to flag poles! You’ll shoot your eye out!
June 18, 2010 at 2:10 pm
Sweet jeebus on a cracker. Risen works for the fucking New York Times, a rag no longer worthy to line the bottom a birdcage, and he’s putting on attitude? Sheesh, whatta douche.
June 18, 2010 at 3:07 pm
“The ponies are just over that next hill!”
Repeat.
June 18, 2010 at 4:17 pm
Jon Stewart had the right take on this “discovery” of mineral wealth in Afghanistan. It means that Afghans will never not know war.
If they’re smart, they’ll work out an annexation deal with China.
June 18, 2010 at 7:00 pm
The dirt in my garden is 20% silicon. Pure silicon sells for $100+ a kilogram so a ton of my garden dirt must be worth over $20,000 right? If I dug up my yard to a depth of five meters it would be worth over one trillion dollars, right? That’s the way it works, isn’t it? I mean, there’s no actual cost involved in extracting and refining it, is there?
June 18, 2010 at 7:37 pm
The cost of natural resource extraction, like that of military adventures, is plotted on the imaginary axis.
June 18, 2010 at 10:00 pm
Raep tiem!
June 18, 2010 at 11:32 pm
Elebenty billion buys a lotta burkas, bitches.
June 19, 2010 at 12:56 am
I’ve discovered oil in the Gulf of Mexico!
June 19, 2010 at 1:20 am
I’m assuming Risen knows about teh Google, so I don’t think he got suckered. I think he did a favor for the Pentagon in expectation of superduper access to a player to be named later.
June 19, 2010 at 3:48 am
Afghan officials said they believed that the American estimates of the value of the mineral deposits — nearly $1 trillion — were too conservative, and that they could be worth as much as $3 trillion.
I believe the Afghan estimates of the value of the mineral deposits were too conservative, and that they could be worth 8 trillion gajillion dollars. Hey, maybe the mountains of Afghanistan are full of mithril!
June 19, 2010 at 8:02 am
What a hearty band of geologists they must have been, tougher than US Marines in their ability to collect rock samples and prepare geologic maps in obscure, unsecure places while under fire from Taliban miscreants, and such large areas at that.
Speaking as an ex-geologist who understands what it takes to find and declare such mineral wealth exists, I call bullshit on the whole “mine Gott, we’ll be rich beyond our wildest dreams!”.
June 19, 2010 at 10:25 am
Hey, maybe the mountains of Afghanistan are full of mithril!
Unfortunately, it will take 9 trillion gajillion dollars to get rid of the balrogs.
~
June 19, 2010 at 12:12 pm
If we only had a Mr. Fusion machine, all this hand-wringing would be unnecessary. One, two, three trillion $$$ is just about enough cheese to bait the trap, since it will be hard to pry all that loot from the cold, dead hands, of all those wiry Afghanis–without you know–dislodging the latch–tripping the spring and ouch–SNAP.
“Take your place on The Great Mandala as it moves
Through your brief moment of Time;
Win or lose now…you must choose now
And if you lose you’re only losing
Your life.”
June 19, 2010 at 1:32 pm
IMpeccable sources at Pravda inform me that certain highland Pashtuns have incredibly high midi-chloridian counts.
June 22, 2010 at 6:30 am
And all those little Chinese made flash lights we gave em for wampum? Yeah the ones with the built in tiny HeNe laser… all light sabers now, cutting through our Apaches and Bradleys like so many hot knives through butter.
June 19, 2010 at 6:46 pm
Jesus F. Christ, are you fucking kidding me?
June 19, 2010 at 7:36 pm
I am deeply distrustful of Frank Rich, but damn.
June 19, 2010 at 7:41 pm
P.S.: curv3ball, you should see yourself in Safari’s “Reader” thingamajig.
June 20, 2010 at 9:26 am
What is this new fangled thing you speak of?
June 20, 2010 at 10:57 am
http://www.apple.com/safari/whats-new.html
June 20, 2010 at 11:54 am
Me like.
June 20, 2010 at 3:42 pm
No one can imagine what a wonderful portent this is to the great benefit of the peoples of OhJustFuckMeStan!
I mean, what could possibly go wrong?
Unsurprisingly, the Bougainvilleans suffered just as much as [Rio Tinto]‘s victims all over the world. In the initial building of the mine, 220 hectares of rainforest were poisoned, felled, burned and bulldozed and people were displaced from their land, regardless of their protests. To build the mine, BCL brought in hundreds of foreign workers, with differential pay on grounds of race and ‘apartheid-like conditions’, according to an Australian engineer who worked on the project. Contrary to BCL’s claims that it would provide an employment boost to the island, local workers were payed what were described as ‘slave wages’ by an Australian Labor Party minister who visited the island.
…
‘All aquatic life in the Jaba Valley has been killed,’ concluded scientist M.R. Chambers in 1986. The food chain was poisoned, causing long-term health problems and even death for those trying to subsist on the land.
June 20, 2010 at 4:35 pm
OhJustFuckMeStan? Sounds like something a gay Oliver Hardy would say.
June 20, 2010 at 4:07 pm
Three trillion? Why, the war will pay for itself.
June 21, 2010 at 12:06 am
What I find so funny in this is that the Pentagon thinks that “leaking” this news to Risen that, hey, boys and girls, there’s a trillion dollars worth of stuff for our multinational corporations to steal would suddenly provoke the ordinary citizens of the country to rally ’round the Pentagon in its efforts to subjugate yet another desperately poor, but, unruly country.
Anyone doing the math, even haphazardly, is going to figure out that what’s not in the equation is any repayment by those multinationals for the eventual, long-term costs of this war, and that we all could save a bunch of money just by paying the Afghans for what’s theirs, and we’re going to end up paying much more for the privilege of having a puppet in place that lets those multinationals steal the Afghans’ natural resources.
I suppose that’s Neocolonial Economics 101. Hope all our ex-GI amputees get a break on the cost of the textbook.
June 22, 2010 at 5:20 pm
As an article in “The Register” pointed out, both the estimate and the timing are pretty dodgy.
The estimates assign a value to the refined metal without any consideration of extraction, transport, or refining cost. Immaculate delivery of a sort. Almost half the original trillion dollar estimate is for iron ore. A low value/ton commodity normally shipped by rail to bulk ocean carriers – both transport mechanisms notably absent in Afghanistan.
Much of the rest is on coper ore – also bulk shipment stuff UNLESS you have a lot of local electrical power (and acids) available to do anode plating – also not something Afghanistan has.
Timing? Read the article. A good “El Reg” snark…