Expanded US Combat Plans Across Africa??

Originally posted by stirling
Europe stripped the place once.....
Where we goin when we run out of world to conquer

Planet Dirt, of course. Only it's sort of empty, and it's all red clay. And red sunlight. All the time.

Well, there are two sorts of lichen, or pseudo-lichens. And there's clay dwellings, sort of, only no one knows if they were made by anything more complex than big bees. But you can grow stuff there, if you bring the lights, so it's got that going for it.

Or Monsanto "Red-light Ready Corn", if they ever get that going. At least you don't have to worry about weeds or bugs: there aren't any.

There was a bit of foreshadowing of this a year ago when US involvement in Mali first started coming up...

ATS thread: Pentagon planning for multinational military operation in Mali

And hasn't the US been doing drone strikes in most of the countries mentioned for years now? But don't worry, no boots on the ground. Right...

Interesting find.

Thing is everyone crys about "were are going to war for resources"

But at the end of the day if the west doesn't seize control of new resources you will end up crying about how a new PC costs $10000 and the how oil is $500 a barrel ect

To continue the good way of life requires resources and unless everyone is willing to share, war either economicayl or with guns with break out.

At the end of the day most wars can be put into three categories:

Money

Religion

Political Ideology

That has been the case for 6000 years at least so why are we going to change now?

And who on here is willing to give up there cars, PC's, Smartphones and lightbulbs so we wont need rare ores, oil, coal and other limited resources? Any takers?

reply to post by crazyewok

I think you make a good point there and Rare Earths define it in a very meaningful way. As the name implies, these minerals are not common to find all over our planet. At least, not that anyone knows to find yet. African nations have a good % of what is known to exist...and while Bush was off playing cowboy and shooting up half the Middle East and Central Asia for 8 years...China secured a good number of the known resources for them.

We do need to counter that if we don't want to be asking China 'Pretty please' for those precious resources as they're used in so much we're coming to depend upon.

I think my main issue and alarm here is that, again, we seem to be lining up to scare and bully the living crap out of people to get what we want. Enough of this....I mean that. Enough, Enough, Enough. It was bad enough to have had "Economic Hitmen" working on behalf of Western Interests for decades before the wars began in 2001/2003. Now? We have LITERAL hitmen in the form of PMC's, Special forces in Uniform and outright U.S. Troops under Department of Defense command.

China isn't a whole lot better ...but they ALSO work to earn their way into trust and respect (whether fully sincere or not), in ways that are lasting and meaningful for their national interests. Fear, as we're pursuing things now, lasts only as long as the ability to enforce consequence remains. Respect and need? That can last generations. China knows this...we used to, but have forgotten it in exchange for expediency and direct use of force.

reply to post by Wrabbit2000


Much appreciation to Wrabbit2000 for locating and posting this information, with equal thanks to those contributing to an intelligent discussion of the matter. However, as the author of the original article, I would likewise be further appreciative if additional emphasis was placed on the source of this information: U.S. Trade & Aid Monitor (www.tradeaidmonitor.com...).

Yes, you accurately quote the FedBizOpps contractor database from which the article derives its information (while somewhere in your post linking to the Monitor site); however, it was only through painstaking database research that this material had come to light. Leapfrogging over the news source -- and, yes, U.S. Trade & Aid Monitor is a blog, but is also a provider of original news -- and largely quoting the documents that the Monitor had obtained, shifts credit -- I don't doubt inadvertently -- away from where credit is due.

Again, thank you for recognizing the value of what the original article has to offer. My goal is not to get pissy about the matter, but to encourage AboveTopSecret's consistent policy on citing news sources. May the discussion continue onward.

Well as a resident of Algeria, one of the largest African nations, I can say things are rocky here. Currently President Boutiflika is in a hospital in France after suffering a mini stroke and many believe he will not be able to run for the next term, especially since already serving 4 terms in office. Many here want reform, and last attempts at such meant 100,000's dead just 15 years ago. There is high unemployment, little infrastructure, and no security guaranteed to foreign investors. Maybe Algeria is next in line now to fall as such surrounding nations as Libya, Tunisia and Egypt or at best will be vulnerable to exploitation in the near future. Good time for the US to move in.

Originally posted by Wrabbit2000
reply to post by crazyewok

 

I think you make a good point there and Rare Earths define it in a very meaningful way. As the name implies, these minerals are not common to find all over our planet. At least, not that anyone knows to find yet. African nations have a good % of what is known to exist...and while Bush was off playing cowboy and shooting up half the Middle East and Central Asia for 8 years...China secured a good number of the known resources for them.

We do need to counter that if we don't want to be asking China 'Pretty please' for those precious resources as they're used in so much we're coming to depend upon.

I think my main issue and alarm here is that, again, we seem to be lining up to scare and bully the living crap out of people to get what we want. Enough of this....I mean that. Enough, Enough, Enough. It was bad enough to have had "Economic Hitmen" working on behalf of Western Interests for decades before the wars began in 2001/2003. Now? We have LITERAL hitmen in the form of PMC's, Special forces in Uniform and outright U.S. Troops under Department of Defense command.

China isn't a whole lot better ...but they ALSO work to earn their way into trust and respect (whether fully sincere or not), in ways that are lasting and meaningful for their national interests. Fear, as we're pursuing things now, lasts only as long as the ability to enforce consequence remains. Respect and need? That can last generations. China knows this...we used to, but have forgotten it in exchange for expediency and direct use of force.

To be honnest there is enough rare "earth" matrials around. They are just a few thousand miles away.....in orbit.
There a few near earth astroids in orbit that have them in them. It what the EU space agency have its eye on and I think and I think NASA now. I read in a artical that although the set up cost would be expensive the long term profit would be far bigger.

But I guess bullying other nations is less effort.

Originally posted by bitsoys
reply to post by Wrabbit2000

 

Much appreciation to Wrabbit2000 for locating and posting this information, with equal thanks to those contributing to an intelligent discussion of the matter. However, as the author of the original article, I would likewise be further appreciative if additional emphasis was placed on the source of this information: U.S. Trade & Aid Monitor (www.tradeaidmonitor.com...).

Yes, you accurately quote the FedBizOpps contractor database from which the article derives its information (while somewhere in your post linking to the Monitor site); however, it was only through painstaking database research that this material had come to light. Leapfrogging over the news source -- and, yes, U.S. Trade & Aid Monitor is a blog, but is also a provider of original news -- and largely quoting the documents that the Monitor had obtained, shifts credit -- I don't doubt inadvertently -- away from where credit is due.

Again, thank you for recognizing the value of what the original article has to offer. My goal is not to get pissy about the matter, but to encourage AboveTopSecret's consistent policy on citing news sources. May the discussion continue onward.

Oh, shoot, I'm terribly sorry I didn't spell out the source name. Thats entirely my fault. If I could change that at this point for the top article in the thread, I absolutely would. Unfortunately, we have roughly a 2 hour window in which we can edit a story as normal members. I'm not sure if site staff can make a modification to change the "Source" link, as it currently is shown now, or not.

I'd linked your blog first but, again, you're absolutely right in it not being as clear as it properly ought to be. I'm making a mental note to insure I don't shorthand sources such as yours in the future.

For the record and for the thread's benefit. I first came to the headline for this thread by way of Cryptome, which directly linked to "Steve Peacock's U.S. Trade & Aid Monitor" as the blog hosting the primary article and point of contact for how this one is properly titled. From there, I jumped out to the Federal Government's bidding sites to grab the top source material in support of the original quote of the blog story.

Thanks for being polite about how you brought this to my and the thread's attention.

Africa would be a logical proxy theatre for a U.S.-China conflict, given how the latter have started exploiting the place in recent years.

Interesting. Seems to me the network will be used a lot sooner than we think. China probably won't need anything like this, they have a disposable army.