Alex Lantier

This article was first published on 15 June 2010

For anyone who was still undecided, the New York Times has made it official: the war in Afghanistan is an imperialist war of plunder.

This is the inescapable conclusion of yesterday’s lead article, “US Discovers Mineral Riches in Afghanistan,”[*] on Pentagon plans to hand over Afghan mineral resources to major mining corporations and financial firms.

The New York Times cited “senior American government officials” saying that US surveying teams had found “nearly $1 trillion in untapped mineral deposits in Afghanistan.” At current market prices, this includes $421 billion in iron ore, $274 billion in copper, $81 billion in niobium (a metal used in producing superconducting steel), $51 billion in cobalt, $25 billion in gold, $24 billion in molybdenum, and $7.4 billion in “rare earth elements.” The Times left out the value of Afghanistan’s extensive supplies of gemstones and natural gas. Nonetheless, it concluded that Afghanistan might “be transformed into one of the most important mining centers in the world.”

This bonanza is safely in the hands of the US military and major transnational corporations, the Times explained.

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Alex Lantier

The exposure of the bloody record of US Special Forces raids and air strikes in Afghanistan highlights the criminal character of Washington’s deployment of troops and drones to Niger, announced on Friday, ostensibly to fight Al Qaeda. Niger is a strategically located country near oil pipeline routes for the massive Nigerian oil industry and itself home to some of the world’s largest uranium mines. France last month invaded its neighbor, Mali, with US support. As in Afghanistan, these forces will soon be engaged in the torture and murder of African civilians and opponents of US imperialist intervention.

A meeting of Afghanistan’s National Security Council (NSC) chaired by President Hamid Karzai asked US Special Forces to leave Wardak and Logar provinces in two weeks, following an NSC review of reports that the American troops had tortured and murdered Afghan civilians.

The statement issued by the Afghan government—itself a puppet regime set up by the United States and its allies—is a damning indictment of the US-led NATO occupation of Afghanistan, now in its thirteenth year.

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Eric Peters

Perhaps you have seen the loathsome “no more hesitation” target practice sheets (see here, if you haven’t) provided to the Department of Heimat Sicherheitsdienst by an entity called Law Enforcement Targets, Inc. They depict old men, young mothers, pregnant women – even a little boy. Anyone who has seen these cretinous confections has been dismayed – and outraged. What sort of sick mind would even think to create such things – let alone actually create them? And can you imagine the reaction if someone made shooting targets depicting cops? No doubt there would be two-in-the-morning SWAT raids and probably a Waco-style barbeque of the offenders.

But I’d like to bring up another aspect of this despicable affair that’s just as telling – and perhaps even more dismaying. The same government that hectors the country relentlessly about diversity is apparently very happy with a certain homogeneity when it comes to portraying “domestic extremists” on shooting targets: White older man; white young mother; white grandmother; white little boy. No diversity at all.

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