Tuesday Open Comments

Why the US has been in Niger.  Really.  According to Leo.

Fighting terrorism?  Nope.  Uranium? Yep.

…The full story would be too harsh for the American masses to process but I’m going to give it to you because I know my audience can handle it.

The CIA, in cooperation with other Western intelligence assets, created al-Qaeda and ISIS and the real reason it built a $100 billion base in Niger has nothing to do with eliminating Islamic terrorism. The real reason that base is there, and why the French have been there for even longer, is because Niger is rich in Uranium and has vast untapped oil reserves, gold-mining operations, coal mining and other resources that the West has been exploiting for decades. And when I say “exploiting,” I mean in the worst way.

Here’s the dirty little secret I found hiding in plain sight on the website World Atlas, among other places on the Internet:

“Niger’s mineral sector faces several challenges such as the employment of children in the mines and fluctuating prices of minerals in the international market. …estimated that more than 40% of children younger than 14 were working in mines. About 5% of the children were involved in hazardous activities….”

Gold mining causes lead poisoning in kids, and uranium mining is even worse.  And the US had a hand in it.  Despite all of its natural resources, desired by so many major nations, Niger is still considered one of the poorest countries in the world.  Now that Russia has offered Niger a better deal, we’re leaving the country and, like Afghanistan, leaving major assets behind for our enemies to find and reverse engineer or exploit for themselves.

While staying silent about the West’s history of stripping Niger of its resource wealth and focusing instead on the “terrorism” angle, The Hill reports that “the U.S. withdrawal plan from Niger is for most equipment to be airlifted from the country before September,… Military infrastructure and some items too large to transport will be left to the Nigerien military…  The coming withdrawal is another setback for the U.S. in the African Sahel region, which has experienced multiple coups in the past few years that have ultimately benefited Russia.”

And what is the end result for us?

…maybe the biggest part, of the post-World War II liberal rules based order has been about protecting the world’s resources for Western commercial interests. This has led to cheap electronics and other goods for America,… etc. As that world order gets upended and shifts to a more bipolar arrangement, I anticipate the American standard of living will further decline and eventually collapse. The dollar’s role as the world’s reserve currency has also allowed the U.S. to run up an insane amount of debt, and that is getting ready to come to an end as well.