{"id":1970,"date":"2010-06-14T15:07:42","date_gmt":"2010-06-14T15:07:42","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.rightwinggranny.com\/?p=1970"},"modified":"2010-06-14T15:07:42","modified_gmt":"2010-06-14T15:07:42","slug":"changes_in_afghanistan","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.rightwinggranny.com\/?p=1970","title":{"rendered":"Changes In Afghanistan"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>The <a href=\"http:\/\/www.nytimes.com\/2010\/06\/14\/world\/asia\/14minerals.html\">New York Times<\/a>&nbsp;posted an article yesterday on the discovery of nearly $1 trillion in untapped mineral deposits in <a class=\"meta-loc\" title=\"More news and information about Afghanistan.\" href=\"http:\/\/topics.nytimes.com\/top\/news\/international\/countriesandterritories\/afghanistan\/index.html?inline=nyt-geo\"><font color=\"#004276\">Afghanistan<\/font><\/a>.&nbsp; The minerals involved are iron, copper, cobalt, gold and critical industrial metals like <a class=\"meta-classifier\" title=\"More articles about lithium (metal).\" href=\"http:\/\/topics.nytimes.com\/top\/reference\/timestopics\/subjects\/l\/lithium_metal\/index.html?inline=nyt-classifier\"><font color=\"#004276\">lithium<\/font><\/a>. &nbsp;This is very good news and very bad news.&nbsp; It is good news because the development of these mineral deposits will provide an alternative to the current economic structure of Afghanistan&nbsp;which is based on the opium trade.&nbsp; This could potentially, a few years down the road, put the poppies out of business.&nbsp; This is bad news because of the rampant corruption in the Afghan government.&nbsp; This could evolve into a Saudi Arabia type society where the wealth and power are&nbsp;concentrated among a very small number of people and the majority of the people live in poverty.<\/p>\n<p>There are a lot of potential problems with this discovery.&nbsp; Will the value of Afghanistan&#8217;s minerals give the Taliban more incentive to continue fighting?&nbsp; Will the value of Afghanistan&#8217;s minerals bring the country back to its tribal roots&#8211;with tribal leaders&nbsp;fighting the federal government over income derived in specific locations?&nbsp; Will this discovery encourage involvement in Afghanistan by countries other than the United States and NATO, countries that might not have an agenda of a free, well-governed Afghanistan?<\/p>\n<p>Stay tuned.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>The New York Times&nbsp;posted an article yesterday on the discovery of nearly $1 trillion in untapped mineral deposits in Afghanistan.&nbsp; The minerals involved are iron, copper, cobalt, gold and critical industrial metals like lithium. &nbsp;This is very good news and &hellip; <a href=\"https:\/\/www.rightwinggranny.com\/?p=1970\">Continue reading <span class=\"meta-nav\">&rarr;<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-1970","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-uncategorized"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.rightwinggranny.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1970","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.rightwinggranny.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.rightwinggranny.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rightwinggranny.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rightwinggranny.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=1970"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.rightwinggranny.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1970\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.rightwinggranny.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=1970"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rightwinggranny.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=1970"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rightwinggranny.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=1970"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}