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Thread: Eric Prince wants to privatize the Afghanistan war and mine its rare earth minerals

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    Eric Prince wants to privatize the Afghanistan war and mine its rare earth minerals

    Eric Prince wants to privatize the Afghanistan war and mine its rare earth minerals

    The British Empire was created, in great part, by the efforts of a private corporation: The British East India Company. Eric Prince (former CEO of Blackwater) wants the US to bring that model to Afghanistan. And Afghanistan has up to $1T in mineral resources just sitting there waiting for someone to mine them.

    Controversial private security tycoon Erik Prince has famously pitched an audacious plan to the Trump administration: Hire him to privatize the war in Afghanistan using squads of "security contractors." Now, for the first time, Buzzfeed News is publishing that pitch, a presentation that lays out how Prince wanted to take over the war from the US military — and how he envisioned mining some of the most war-torn provinces in Afghanistan to help fund security operations and obtain strategic mineral resources for the US.

    Prince, who founded the Blackwater security firm and testified last week to the House Intelligence Committee for its Russia investigation, has deep connections into the current White House: He’s friends with former presidential adviser Stephen Bannon, and he’s the brother of Betsy DeVos, the education secretary.


    Prince briefed top Trump administration officials directly, talked up his plan publicly on the DC circuit, and published op-eds about it. He patterned the strategy he's pitching on the historical model of the old British East India Company, which had its own army and colonized much of Britain's empire in India. "An East India Company approach," he wrote in the Wall Street Journal, "would use cheaper private solutions to fill the gaps that plague the Afghan security forces, including reliable logistics and aviation support."


    But the details have never been made public. Here is the never-before-published slide presentation for his pitch, which a source familiar with the matter said was prepared for the Trump administration.


    One surprising element is the commercial promise Prince envisions: that the US will get access to Afghanistan’s rich deposits of minerals such as lithium, used in batteries; uranium; magnesite; and "rare earth elements," critical metals used in high technology from defense to electronics. One slide estimates the value of mineral deposits in Helmand province alone at $1 trillion.
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    The East India Company and England's military sea power going hand in hand to create perhaps history's greatest empire.

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    Well at least it's more honest than our veiled imperialism has been. I still say no and never work with this mercenary $#@! again

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    Not the worst idea in the world considering the topography

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    Peter1469 (12-09-2017)

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    The Chinese have their eyes on those minerals. It is better that we get that stuff.
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    Quote Originally Posted by Peter1469 View Post
    The Chinese have their eyes on those minerals. It is better that we get that stuff.
    Rare earth minerals are everywhere. The Chinese just happen to be the ones who are idiotic enough to do the mass environmental degradation to harvest them.

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    Quote Originally Posted by Kacper View Post
    Rare earth minerals are everywhere. The Chinese just happen to be the ones who are idiotic enough to do the mass environmental degradation to harvest them.
    They are not everywhere. That is why they are called rare.

    And we need them for modern electronics and batteries.
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    So the military industrial complex used to get oil will now be used to get minerals? Why not steal their coats and women while we're at it?

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    It's not like we were not there already for the oil.
    “Conscientiously believing that the proper condition of the negro is slavery, or a complete subjection to the white man, and entertaining the belief that the day is not distant when the old Union will be restored with slavery nationally declared to be the proper condition of all of African descent, and in view of the future harmony and progress of all the States of America, I have been induced to issue this address, so that there may be no misunderstanding in the future”

    - Jefferson Davis

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    Quote Originally Posted by Safety View Post
    It's not like we were not there already for the oil.
    Does Afghanistan have oil?
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